What Rebel Girl Did on her Summer Vacation

The peaks overlooking the Squaw Valley writers’ workshop. Pen on paper. Stephanie Taylor 

from the Sacramento Bee:

Over the decades, these writers have become a community at Squaw Valley

BY STEPHANIE TAYLOR
Special to The Bee
AUGUST 09, 2017 12:30 PM (to appear in the Sunday August 13 print edition)

There’s something infectious about 150 or so creative people, all chattering at once. This is a weeklong annual conference of writers, established and aspiring, who come from all over to this valley near the north shore of Lake Tahoe, some every summer, year after year. If ideas and genius are tangible molecules floating in the air, I can only hope they’ll land on me.

The operative word is “community,” chosen on purpose by the founders in 1969, when the novelists Oakley Hall and Blair Fuller gathered to build an institution that’s thrived ever since. Some of the writers have passed — sort of. I say “sort of” because their spirits linger. Some are declining gently into old age. Their children carry on, and their children’s children. It’s an honor to be here, to be included in what has evolved as a family.

It’s also difficult not to be intimidated by those who have been here before, studying and discussing the craft of poetry, fiction, nonfiction and screenwriting: Peter Matthiessen, Richard Ford, Michael Chabon, Robert Hass and Anne Rice, to name a few. In 1985, Amy Tan arrived with stories that became “The Joy Luck Club.” This year, Janet Fitch’s novel “Paint It Black” is her second movie. Anne Lamott’s “Bird by Bird” is every writer’s classic.

Everyone says the realities of writing are the same for all, a maddening struggle that requires thick skin, resilience, endurance, persistence and multitudes of revisions. It only starts as a solitary undertaking. Once a manuscript is ready and is accepted by an agent and then an editor, a team effort begins, one that can take years and is not enhanced by impatience.

In 2013, I came as a student in nonfiction, based on my essays for The Bee. Every morning, the same 12 students met with a different writing professional to present constructive and respectful criticism on two manuscripts that we each had read the night before. It was an intense, exhausting experience. In the afternoons and evenings, everyone met for panels, discussions and readings. As a guest for the past three years, I’m more relaxed and just as grateful for the enlightenment.

Dinner is served on a patio dwarfed by granite mountains still sporting patches of snow. Setting sun illuminates the tops of mountains and then disappears. A place of inclusion, it’s a chance to talk with diverse writers from all over, from ethnicity to career to ambition and inspiration. Night brings music or readings by the multitalented participants.

California writers carry stories. Alex Espinoza is one such writer, as well as a professor and director of the writing program at Cal State L.A. Alex grew up in a neighborhood that offered little opportunity to a kid with three strikes: nonwhite, gay, with a disability that kept him from sports. He pursued what was left — an education.

Alex says that this conference, with its West Coast mentality, embraces differences. He arrived at Squaw as a student in 2002, as he recalls, a little skeptical at first, and found a sincere interest in what he was writing. He says good writing happens everywhere, “writing about places no one else is looking at.” Squaw nurtures an “understanding that writing takes failure, to find the right path.”

This is the last night, a party at a private residence. Lisa Alvarez, who co-directs the fiction program, sits at the feet of a very old woman, Oakley Hall’s widow, Barbara Edinger Hall. Alvarez looks up with a love that is palpable. Love is what binds these people, love of the process and craft of writing, love of each other and relationships that have grown with each passing of 48 creative years.

Many Squaw Valley writers are also musicians. Pen on paper. Stephanie Taylor 

*

Some summer music

The Larry Stevens years, 1982-1986, Part 3: the board really f*cked up, but faculty were no angels

Colonel Stevens

     IT'S 1985-86: Essentially, what happens at Coast happens again at Saddleback, too. Faculty hate the Chancellor, but trustees double down on their man, and so faculty target key trustees for recall. The recall fails, but the anti-establishmentarian momentum is enough to win key victories in the subsequent election. In each case, post election, new board majorities, favorable to the faculty union, emerge. According to conservatives, we’re seeing teachers’ unions “taking over the board of trustees.” According to progressives, knuckle-draggers are being removed from positions of authority, at colleges, where surely they do not belong.
     But it isn’t that simple.
     And do these unions really seek to “control” their boards, their districts? At Coast, lots of payback occurs when the New Majority arrives. Is that what happens at Saddleback, too?
     And what sorts of tactics are these teachers' unions willing to use to win?

     In the case of the Faculty Association at Saddleback, ruthless, win-at-any-price, realpolitik tactics are used—very much like the ones later used, in 1996, when homophobic fliers pander to local Repubs. In 1985, it appears that FA president Sharon MacMillan and her hubby, a local anti-tax, back-to-basics Republican, are behind the nasty tactics.
     And just how bad was Larry Stevens anyway? It’s clear that he should never have been hired, given his worrisome record at Tacoma Community College. That's f*ck-up #1. But he was smart and he was able to convince the board of his ideas, innovations, changes—including the bonehead move of scheduling more classes on Fridays. When the faculty balked, the board doubled down on backing Stevens. That's f*ck-up #2.

     Whatever might be said of Stevens' policies, the essence of the "Stevens problem," as many suggested, was his autocratic manner, which made it impossible for faculty to respect him. A wiser board would have seen that and corrected it; they would have cut their losses, for the district’s sake, and sent the Colonel packing.
     But no.
     The result? Three and a half years of discord, disunity, acrimony.
     Here are the gory details:

The Larry Stevens years, 1982-1986, Part 2: a hatchet man "heavy on the decisive action and light on the open, free exchange”

"Decisive"

     Before we get back to a chronological presentation of news articles about the district from 1982 to 1986—i.e., the “Larry Stevens years”—I wanted to present a bit of history from immediately before that period, namely, Stevens' tenure as president of Tacoma Community College from 1975 to 1982.
     Luckily, I have found a website dedicated to the 50th Anniversary of Tacoma Community College in 2015, and it focuses on TCC history. Essentially, the site presents the contents of a book:

“The Open Door: a History of Tacoma Community College"—by Dale Coleman

     The entire book is reprinted on the website. It appears to be excellent....

The Larry Stevens years: 1982-1986, Part 1: looking for candidates with "good working relationships with instructors"

...being a set of newspaper clips chronicling the tenure of disastrously unpopular Saddleback Community College District chancellor Larry Stevens—ultimately taken out by the faculty union, via reconfiguration of the board of trustees....
     Much like the election of 1996.
     Was this a case of Good Guys vs. Bad Guys?
     Bad Guys vs. Bad Guys?
     Good Guys vs. Good Guys?
     "Read more..." 

The origins of our college district, Part 8c: twisty, unpredictable, curious and dubious, Part C [end]

 

     IN THIS POST: with the March 8, 1977, election, charter trustee Pat Backus, who supported the grumbling Tustinites, suffers a major upset; he's OUT and newbies Watts, McKnight, and Price are IN. What emerges is a "new board majority" of Brandt-Taylor-McKnight-Price, two of whom were backed by the faculty union, which seeks to be the sole legal rep of faculty on contract issues, which are going badly.
     Amazingly, this crew immediately REOPENS the supposedly settled subject of site selection for the district's second campus. Tustinites have a cow. The board minority seethes. WTFs all around.
     But the Irvine Co. won't sell the Jeffrey property unless it is first "condemned," thereby relieving the company (and the district) of a big tax payout. Does the new board majority have the five votes necessary for the condemnation move? Seemingly not. (Uh-oh.) 
     Meanwhile, trustee Greinke thinks Child Care Centers are immoral and, over in Irvine, lots of residents are pulling a NIMBY, college-wise, and some begin to suspect dastardly Irvine Co. "tricks." Former trustee Bartholomew weighs in on the crazy site selection issue, bellowing that he expects the district soon to rename itself the "Irvine Company Community College District."

     In May, the Irvine Co. decides to allow Saddleback to purchase the Jeffrey property without condemnation procedures, and so the sale goes forward, ending the matter once and for all. Upshot: the Board Majority has bulldozed the minority and Tustinites are now permanently pissed people. 
     With that, the negotiations logjam concerning the faculty contract is suddenly cleared and faculty get a nice raise and impressive benefits. Greinke calls the contract "excessive." The conservatives seethe.
     What does it all mean? —RB

The origins of our college district, Part 8b: twisty, unpredictable, curious and dubious, Part B

Frank Greinke

     IN THIS POST: back in September, 1976, the Saddleback board chose the Irvine Co.'s Myford-Bryan site, on Tustin's border, for the district's 2nd campus.
     Now, in January, the Irvine Co. does a sudden and mysterious SWITCHEROO: "Why doncha build the new campus over here on Jeffrey and Irvine Center Drive, smack dab in the middle of Irvine, instead?" They're obviously desperate to retain the Myford site (for reasons unexpressed and obfuscated); they sweeten the Jeffrey deal bigtime. PLUS, they start a hard sell, warning about the stink of manure and the lack of roads over at the Myford bean fields.
     Trustee Marshall of Laguna Hills dies after a long illness. The board is down to five members!
     The Tustin News naturally turns up the heat against the Irvine Co. Meanwhile, the Tustin City Council acts like agents of developers (namely, um, the Irvine Co.), not citizens. To trustee Berry, the Irvine Co.'s switcheroo is mighty hinky. Bloviating trustee Frank Greinke openly accuses the Irvine Co. of boondogglin'. Tempers flare and Greinke calls Bartholomew(?) a "Judas," to which trustee Norrisa Brandt strongly objects, whereupon Greinke tells her to just "shut up."
     Brandt notes that "We have Irvine Co. in a bind," and urges the board to take the boffo deal they're offering for Jeffrey. Meanwhile, the March election is drawing near, and Saddleback faculty are backing candidates who prefer the Irvine/Jeffrey site, while Tustinites keep carpin' about the board's alleged "promise" to put a college in the Tustin area (e.g., @ Myford). Trustee Brandt urges the board to wait on the site selection till after the election, when the board will have seven members again. 
     Superintendent Lombardi just wants to flip a goddam coin and move on. Tustinites keep up their infernal yammerin' for the Myford site. Greinke thunders indecorously about "hogwash" and "suede shoes." Citizen Ursula Kennedy challenges the Tustin City Council to come clean about these weird land shenanigans with the Irvine Co., but, natch, to no avail. Finally, less than a week before the election, and despite the board's abject skeleton-crew-itude,  Greinke, Backus, and Berry (a majority of the five) vote in favor of the Myford site, and Tustin celebrates.

     The board thus defies the Irvine Co.—and, maybe, common sense, too.
     But then a new board emerges from the March 8 election. "The new board," says trustee Donna Berry, "is certainly not going to presume to come on and change the site!" 
     Plus the Saddleback faculty are gripin' about pay & bennies. The board is unmoved!
     NOW WHAT? —RB