Celebrate! Western Flyer Returns to Monterey Bay

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Western Flyerthe 77-foot fishing boat John Steinbeck and Ed Ricketts took on their famous 1940 trip to the Sea of Cortezrecently returned to Monterey Bay after nearly a decade of restoration in Port Townsend, Washington. Built in 1937 to serve the commercial fishing industry and presently moored in Moss Landing, California, the Western Flyer will be welcomed back after a 75-year absence on November 4, 2023, with a day of family-friendly festivities around Cannery Row and Monterey’s Old Fisherman’s Wharf. Plans include live music, science and art activities, giveaways, merchandise for sale, and plenty of photo opportunities. The Western Flyer will then return to a life of research and education, and once again ply the waters of Monterey Bay and beyond. All this is the result of the vision of the marine biologist-businessman John Gregg, founding board member of the nonprofit Western Flyer Foundation.

Gregg purchased the boat, which had sunk several times over the decades, in 2015, launching the Western Flyer Foundation to save the severely damaged vessel and recruiting the Port Townsend Shipwrights Cooperative for the job. After eight years of labor, the vessel recently received a Classic Boat Award for its restored presence and sea-worthiness. Though the Western Flyer “gained notoriety from its research trip with John Steinbeck and Ed Ricketts, it’s had a long and storied past as a fishing boat,” Gregg said. “Now restored with a hybrid diesel-electric engine and state-of-the-art marine lab, the Western Flyer symbolizes a bridge linking Monterey Bay’s commercial fishing heritage with its leadership in marine science and education.” Gregg said the foundation’s vision is for the revitalized Western Flyer to stir curiosity by “connecting art and science in the spirit of John Steinbeck, Ed Ricketts, and their journey [recounted by Steinbeck and Ricketts in Sea of Cortez, 1941]. The foundation’s tide-pooling, classroom teaching, and on-board programs will introduce students to a renowned coastal ecosystem that many have experienced only indirectly, or not at all.”

November 4 activities begin at 11:00 a.m. and include a welcoming ceremony at the end of Old Fisherman’s Wharf, a boat parade, and tours of the Western Flyer, all free. On hand for the festivities will be the Alaska artist and Guggenheim Fellow Ray Troll, who created the colorful mural panels at the former facility of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) overlooking Steinbeck’s Great Tide Pool in Pacific Grove. The Center for Ocean Art, Science and Technology (COAST)—a nonprofit organization, like the Western Flyer Foundation—seeks to preserve Troll’s work while converting the NOAA building into a research center blending art and science. A fan of John Steinbeck and Ed Ricketts, Troll put the Western Flyer in the picture when he painted the historic mural.

Photo of Western Flyer courtesy National Fisherman magazine.

Jacqueline Woodson to Receive John Steinbeck Award on October 18, 2022

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Together with the Martha Heasley Cox Center for Steinbeck Studies, the Center for Literary Arts at San Jose State University will present the 2022 John Steinbeck “In the Souls of the People” Award to Jacqueline Woodson, author of the 2014 memoir novel Brown Girl Dreaming. The award is given to writers, artists, thinkers, and activists whose work captures Steinbeck’s empathy, commitment to democratic values, and belief in the dignity of people who by circumstance are pushed to the fringes; and the phrase “in the souls of the people” comes from Chapter 25 of The Grapes of Wrath. Woodson is the recipient of a 2020 MacArthur Fellowship and the 2020 Hans Christian Andersen Award. Brown Girl Dreaming, a New York Times bestseller, won the National Book Award, the Coretta Scott King Award, a Newberry Honor, and the NAACP Image Award. Woodson is also the author of Red at the Bone, a New York Times bestseller; Another Brooklyn, a 2016 National Book Award finalist; and books for young readers including Before the Ever After, The Year We Learned to FlyThe Day You Begin, and Harbor Me. The October 18, 2002 awards ceremony will take place at 7:00 p.m. in the Student Union Theater on the San Jose State campus in downtown San Jose, California. During the event Woodson will have an onstage conversation with Michele Elam, the William Robertson Coe Professor of Humanities at Stanford University. The 7:00 p.m. event is free.

Propose a Paper or Panel for March 22-24, 2023 Steinbeck Conference at San Jose State

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San Jose State University invites proposals for papers and panels on reading, teaching, and translating John Steinbeck for the Steinbeck conference to be held March 22-24, 2023 at San Jose State. Said Daniel Rivers, assistant professor of American studies and literature and newly appointed director of the university’s Martha Heasley Cox Center for Steinbeck Studies: “We invite proposals from varied disciplines and critical frameworks, including but not limited to literary/cultural studies, comparative literature, media studies, secondary and post-secondary education, psychology, political science, sociology, ecology, and marine biology. Potential topics include comparative studies of Steinbeck and post-Steinbeck writers, issues in translating Steinbeck’s works into other languages, stage/film/video adaptations, and approaches to teaching Steinbeck in contemporary classrooms.”

Email a 300-word or less abstract of the paper you propose to present, along with your biography of 200 words or less, to Steinbeck@sjsu.edu with the subject line “Steinbeck Conference 2023 Submission, [your last name].” If you are interested in suggesting a pre-constituted panel, workshop, or roundtable session for the conference, note the title, the format, and the names of your co-presenters in your online submission to the same address. If you are interested in soliciting participants for your proposed panel, workshop, or roundtable session, email your topic and request with the subject line “Panel CFP Steinbeck Conference 2023.” Your topic and invitation will be shared with the center’s mailing list. The deadline for all submissions is November 15, 2022.

Above: John Steinbeck caricature by David Levine.

Zoom into John Steinbeck’s 120th Birthday This Tuesday

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Sunday, February 27, 2022, marks the 120th anniversary of John Steinbeck’s birth in Salinas, California. To celebrate this occasion, the Monterey Public Library and the Martha Heasley Cox Centerfor Steinbeck Studies at San Jose State University are collaborating on a birthday conversation that brings together a group of established and emerging Steinbeckians. Join us on Tuesday, February 22 at 4:30 p.m. Pacific Time for a celebration featuring Susan Shillinglaw (author of Carol and John Steinbeck and A Journey into Steinbeck’s California); Robert DeMott (author of Steinbeck’s Typewriter: Essays on His Art); Keenan Norris (director of San Jose State University’s Steinbeck Fellows Program); and Daniel Rivers (director of the Martha Heasley Cox Center). Along with discussing favorite moments and persistent questions from Steinbeck’s work, the panelists will reflect on the author’s creative legacy and enduring relevance for the 21st century. This event takes place on Zoom, and registration closes an hour prior to the program. The Zoom access information will be sent to registered participants shortly before the program begins. Use of a video camera and level of participation are at your discretion. You can also use Zoom’s phone feature to call and listen in to the conversation.

 

Salinas Festival Celebrates Close Mexican Connection

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John Steinbeck was no accidental tourist when it came to the Republic of Mexico. Although he later expressed a preference for the mother culture of Spain, he traveled to Mexico early and often for personal and professional purposes: for escape and recovery, for literary and film material, and (some speculate) for at least one abortion for at least one of his three wives. Current criticism faults him for the absence of Mexicans, blacks, and other non-white characters in his 1939 protest novel The Grapes of Wrath, but four works from the following decade—The Forgotten Village and Sea of Cortez (1941), The Pearl (1947), and Viva Zapata (1952)—reflect Steinbeck’s fascination with the history and people of a country that was less than a day’s drive but utterly different from his hometown of Salinas, California. On October 2-3, 2021, the National Steinbeck Center in Salinas will celebrate Steinbeck’s Mexican connection with a schedule of in-person and online activities packaged and presented as Steinbeck and Mexico and priced at $20 a day ($17 for seniors). In addition to bingo, mural painting, and movies, the 40th annual Steinbeck festival includes online presentations by Richard Astro and Donald Kohrs on the writing of Sea of Cortez and by Vincent Parker on teaching Steinbeck in the 21st century. (The annual Steinbeck festival in Salinas used to take place in the spring to overlap with the triennial Steinbeck conference at San Jose State University, where discussion has begun about convening another conference in 2022.)

 

William Souder, University of Oklahoma Experts Launch Steinbeck Center Series

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Michele Speich, executive director of the National Steinbeck Center in Salinas, California, has announced a pair of public program initiatives with upcoming target dates. “We are kicking off our fall with a brand-new WebCast series called the NSC Inspiration Series,” explained Speich. “These WebCast events will happen once a month and will feature interviews with authors, scholars, musicians, artists, and more and will focus upon the inspirations that fuel their work, especially if part of that inspiration comes from John Steinbeck.”

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On October 21, William Souder will give a book-launch talk on Mad at the World, his long-awaited life of John Steinbeck, scheduled for release by W.W. Norton and Company on October 13. On October 22, the first installment of a quarterly series called Steinbeck Conversations will feature David M. Wrobel, Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Oklahoma. Joining Wrobel to discuss “Getting History Right” in understanding John Steinbeck will be Pete Peterson, Dean of the School of Public Policy at Pepperdine University, and Wilfred “Bill” McClay, Director of the Center for the History of Liberty at the University of Oklahoma.

Follow the links to register for these events, both of which are free.

Zoom into Monterey Library’s “Cannery Row Days” Party

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William Souder, John Steinbeck Biographer

susan-shillinglaw-john-steinbeckThe author of Mad at the World: A Life of John Steinbeck (William Souder, above) joins an all-star speaker lineup for the Monterey Library’s 75th anniversary publication party for Cannery Row, the “poisoned cream puff” of a novel resented by locals when it appeared but revered by readers ever since for its humorous depiction of human society—high and low—along Monterey’s historic waterfront. The six-week-long celebration kicked off on September 16 with a Zoom webinar led by veteran Steinbeck scholars Robert DeMott and Susan Shillinglaw (in photo left) and by Gerry Low-Sabado, a fifth generation Monterey native and well-known Chinese-American community preservationist. The six-week-long celebration includes lectures, films, and special events and ends on November 7 with public readings, virtual tours of Cannery Row, Monterey Bay Aquarium, and Ed Ricketts’s Pacific Biological Laboratories—the latter led by Shillinglaw and Mike Guardino of the Cannery Row Foundation—and a panel discussion of “Why We Read Cannery Row in 2020” that includes Souder; Donald Kohrs, librarian and archivist of the nearby Hopkins Marine Station; and Katie Rodgers, the pioneering editor of Ricketts’s letters, Renaissance Man of Cannery Row, and of Breaking Through: Essays, Journals, and Travelogues of Edward F. Ricketts. Registration for California’s “Cannery Row Days: A Novel Celebration” is free and open to the public (thanks to Zoom) wherever in the world COVID-19 days may have you cornered. Sessions in the series will be recorded and available for viewing at the Monterey Library website.

Making a Virtue of Necessity, Virtual John Steinbeck Festival Moves Online

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Making a virtue of necessity, officials at the National Steinbeck Center have announced that the August 1-2, 2020 Steinbeck Festival will move online, motivated by COVID-19 and the need to think globally while acting locally to support the arts in John Steinbeck’s home town of Salinas, California. An annual event for more than a quarter of a century, the festival has experimented with dates, formats, and marketing strategies in the past, all in an effort to engage two contrasting constituencies—the multicultural community of Cannery Row and California’s Central Coast; fans of Steinbeck’s fiction from other states and countries—in honoring the famous local author who attracted the latter during his life by celebrating the former in his work. “Looking back, I don’t know why we haven’t done this before,” notes Michele Speich, the center’s director, of plans for this year’s “virtual platform” event. “We have a global audience, and we’re thrilled now to be able to share the Festival on a worldwide level and bring [it] straight to everyone’s home.” For speaker and schedule information, visit the Virtual Steinbeck Country United Global Festival sign-up page.

Steinbeck Center in Salinas, California Celebrates Women Workers of Cannery Row

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The history, lives, and contribution of female canning workers during Cannery Row’s 20th century sardine boom will be celebrated in a special exhibit at the National Steinbeck Center in Salinas, California, starting November 15-16, 2019. Created in honor of the 75th anniversary of John Steinbeck’s 1945 novel Cannery Row, the exhibit features a donated collection from the Monterey History & Maritime Museum that includes cans and labels from the assembly line, union booklets, and cannery workers’ uniforms, along with an opening event screening of the 1973 cinematic poem Street of the Sardine, by the French physician-filmmaker Eva Lothar. “Cannery Girls” runs through the second week of January 2020.

Photo from Cannery Row workers exhibit courtesy National Steinbeck Center.

Dog Days Dampen Festival

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One spring morning at Alice’s Dog Park in Pasadena, a few of us dog owners were talking about traveling with your dog when a gentleman in his 80s, named Larry, mentioned Travels with Charley in Search of America by John Steinbeck, a fellow dog-lover and former Californian. When I got home I ordered the book on Amazon and, a few days later, began reading. Several pages into the opening chapter of Steinbeck’s autumnal road trip story, I called to recommend it to my dog-obsessed mother back in Louisiana. At her local library she learned the state system appeared to have only one copy, which she would have to special-request. When I got to the section on school desegregation in New Orleans, near the end of Steinbeck’s narrative, I understood why.

I’d been assigned to read Of Mice and Men and The Red Pony in high school, and I was familiar with the classic films made from East of Eden and The Grapes of Wrath, so I knew John Steinbeck was an important writer who created robust settings and raw-hearted characters with whom, for whatever reason, I could easily identify. But I knew little about the causes of the author’s deeply held concern for the undervalued and marginalized, and the fraying of America’s moral fabric. Travels with Charley sparked my curiosity about this side of Steinbeck’s career.

An internet search for the whereabouts of Steinbeck’s custom 1960 GMC pickup truck, the Rocinante, led me to the National Steinbeck Center in his home town of Salinas, located five hours north of Pasadena. I was delighted to discover that the upcoming Steinbeck festival, the center’s annual event, would focus on Travels with Charley, and that attendees would have a once-in-a-lifetime chance to board the Rocinante. The theme of the 2019 festival was dogs, so I bought tickets and drove to Salinas on Saturday, August 3 with my mother, my wife, and three teenagers—our two sons and a neighbor’s—along for the ride.

Travel to Salinas in Search of John Steinbeck

We left early and arrived at 10:00 a.m. expecting crowds of Steinbeck fans, dog lovers, and social justice types, all eager to chat up strangers about Travels with Charley, like my friend Larry. Instead, a handful of early arrivals were milling about as staff members set up for the 10:30 tour of the Rocinante that had piqued my interest in the festival. While we waited I gave our neighbor’s son a rundown on John Steinbeck. The mention of The Grapes of Wrath, Of Mice and Men, and East of Eden drew a blank stare. The clue about East of Eden—“You know, one of the three movies James Dean made before he died”—caused a response. “Who’s James Dean?”

The Rocinante tour, led by Tom Lorentzen (a.k.a. John Steinbeck), was educational and entertaining, and there was something for everyone on the schedule for the rest of the day: a dog show, a walking tour of downtown, a writers workshop, a scavenger hunt and games for kids, a road trip scene-painting booth, a staged reading of Travels with Charley, a food-and-beverage fundraiser, live music, and more. The highlight for me was author Peter Zheutlin’s talk about writing The Dog Went Over The Mountain—a Travels with Charley-inspired narrative comprised of events and encounters experienced by Zheutlin during his six-week cross-country journey, in a BMW convertible, with his dog Albie.

Unfortunately, none of the crowds for the day’s activities topped 50, and by my count there were no more than 150 people, total, in attendance on August 3, the first full day of the festival. A white poodle—the single entry for the dog show—won Best Charley Lookalike, Best Dressed, and Best Personality. Scheduled for an hour and a half, the canine contest was over in five minutes. The kids games had few players, or none, and the photo booth was quiet. The bookstore looked empty. The food and beer booths, set up to raise money, were also lonely.

I’d read about large crowds at past festivals when I was doing my research, so I wondered what could have caused the drop in this year’s attendance. Was the change in date from early May to the dog days of August at fault, or was it the ticket price of $50-$60 for a festival that used to be free? Could teachers be to blame for declining interest among teenagers (like our neighbor’s son), who never read Steinbeck because he wasn’t assigned? Disappointed by the trip, I headed back to home to Alice’s Dog Park—In Search of John Steinbeck.