Date: Fri, 27 Feb 1998 15:27:06 -0800
From: Magnus Torén <hmlib@henrymiller.org>Hello out there!
A short message to let you know that the Henry Miller Library and Big Sur has been under assault by Mother Nature lately. The highway leading in and out of Big Sur has delivered clear evidence that the surgery inflicted on the landscape by us humans is less than perfect: water flows downhill, and if it is not allowed to flow where it has been flowing for the past 5000 years or so, it creates havoc.
We’ve been hammered by a lot of water and a lot of wind, we’ve been cut off from the outside with no power, no phones and no road, we’re the happiest community alive!!
In fact some days ago I was getting down, through mud, trees and huge rocks and boulders, to one of our local bars. I chatted with one of the regulars, he said he’d never seen so many happy locals before in his long life on the coast (Nothing like some time spent looking into the needs of your neighbors, meeting and cheering on!).
Reality for many is not easy though. Roofs gone, driveways washed out, gardens wiped out, houses trashed by falling trees etc. The working folks on the coast living off of the visiting public are out of work. The highway will probably not open up for visitors until early April at the earliest, locals will be allowed in and out on temporary, emergency roads once per week. All predictions are made hoping there won’t be another deluge.
The evening after the worst of the storm (100 mile/hour winds!!) I sat on my front porch at home looking out over what looked like the destruction of Jerusalem: branches, debris, water gushing everywhere and heavy wind still howling through the trees. I thought I’d better phone my Mom at home in Sweden before the phones go out, I did, it was eleven at night here so I woke her up: “Hi Mom, my voice is traveling north along the coast, 40 miles through wires that are dangling in and out of canyons, across raging waters, in-between redwoods swinging like reeds, atop hills exposed to ferocious winds, through whatever switchboards/exchanges, across the north pole, and into your cozy, centrally heated apartment in Gothenburg…how are you?”
The Henry Miller Library stood proudly through it all, just some extra redwood duff on the roof.
This is a very good time for you to help us out! We have no visitors and no income so please consider curing the general lack (?) of Miller books and art on yours and your friends and families bookshelves/walls now! Shipping and mailing in and out works fairly well ( it may take a day or two extra) so the time to buy books and art is now…please e-mail your order with credit card # or phone in at 408-667-2574.
If you need a current list of titles, new and used, (the list also includes many books of interest other than books by Miller) and a list of art work etc. available, please e-mail and we’ll get it right out to you.
Magnus Torén
By the way: if you don’t want e-mail from the Library please reply with a delete in the subject.
From the New York Times Feb 20 1998:
Randall Terry, radio show host in support of the indictments against Barnes and Noble on obscenity charges:
“I’m out to obliterate child pornography”
Mr. Terry after seeing the two titles in question, “Radiant Identity” and “The Age of Innocence”:
“The pictures seemed to be suggestive-the positions of the children, young girls in the shower, full frontal nudity, two young boys on the beach.”
Really!
Said Jock Sturges author of “Radiant Identities”:
“To find the work obscene, you’d have to find homo sapiens between 1 and 17 inherently obscene, and I find that obscene!”
Really! 🙂 + 🙂
Subject:
Date: Mon, 2 Mar 1998 08:28:47 -0800
From: Magnus Torén <hmlib@henrymiller.org>
To: Russel Barryl <ruswrite@aracnet.net>Hello out there!
A short message to let you know that the Henry Miller Library and Big Sur has been under assault by Mother Nature lately. The highway leading in and out of Big Sur has delivered clear evidence that the surgery inflicted on the landscape by us humans is less than perfect: water flows downhill, and if it is not allowed to flow where it has been flowing for the past 5000 years or so, it creates havoc.
We’ve been hammered by a lot of water and a lot of wind, we’ve been cut off from the outside with no power, no phones and no road, we’re the happiest community alive!!
In fact some days ago I was getting down, through mud, trees and huge rocks and boulders, to one of our local bars. I chatted with one of the regulars, he said he’d never seen so many happy locals before in his long life on the coast (Nothing like some time spent looking into the needs of your neighbors, meeting and cheering on!).
Reality for many is not easy though. Roofs gone, driveways washed out, gardens wiped out, houses trashed by falling trees etc. The working folks on the coast living off of the visiting public are out of work. The highway will probably not open up for visitors until early April at the earliest, locals will be allowed in and out on temporary, emergency roads once per week. All predictions are made hoping there won’t be another deluge.
The evening after the worst of the storm (100 mile/hour winds!!) I sat on my front porch at home looking out over what looked like the destruction of Jerusalem: branches, debris, water gushing everywhere and heavy wind still howling through the trees. I thought I’d better phone my Mom at home in Sweden before the phones go out, I did, it was eleven at night here so I woke her up:
“Hi Mom, my voice is traveling north along the coast, 40 miles through wires that are dangling in and out of canyons, across raging waters, in-between redwoods swinging like reeds, atop hills exposed to ferocious winds, through whatever switchboards/exchanges, across the north pole, and into your cozy, centrally heated apartment in Gothenburg…how are you?”
The Henry Miller Library stood proudly through it all, just some extra redwood duff on the roof.
This is a very good time for you to help us out! We have no visitors and no income so please consider curing the general lack (?) of Miller books and art on yours and your friends and families bookshelves/walls now! In addition to the Miller titles we have many other great books. Shipping and mailing in and out works fairly well ( it may take a day or two extra) so the time to buy books and art is now…please e-mail your order with credit card # or phone in at 408-667-2574.
If you would like a current list of titles, new and used, and a list of art work etc. available, please e-mail and we’ll get it right out to you.
Magnus Torén
Latest news on the storm damage:
The splendid solitude that was Big Sur before the Bixby Creek bridge connected it to Carmel in 1933 has returned. Unlike the old days, if you want to go there now you’ll have to show the sheriff some identification. Proof of residency (either a driver’s license or a utility bill) or a letter from a business authorizing entry is required to join the Friday convoys which began February 13 and will end when Highway 1 is repaired. No sightseers or tourists will be permitted, but delivery trucks are allowed on the convoys, which will run every Friday.
There are three reasons for the strict rules about local access to the Highway 1 construction zone: tourists, dollars, and livelihoods. Almost everyone who has a job in Big Sur depend on the tourist industry to survive. “We can’t open Highway 1 quickly if we have to stop the equipment every time people want to come through,” said Orville Morgan, a Caltrans maintenance supervisor. As it is, 150 Caltrans, Granite Construction, and subcontractor employees are working 12 hour shifts, seven days a week to repair the dozen washouts along the closed section of the highway, which stretches 70 miles from Malpaso to the Monterey/San Luis Obispo county line(The Henry Miller Library is located almost smack in the middle of that stretch). If there are no more slides (and geologist Ron Richman said he is “positive there will be more slides when it rains’) they are projecting an open Highway 1 in about a month. They are no longer working at night, for safety reasons. “We’ve had three people killed repairing this road in the past 15 years,” said Caltrans Manager Gary Saunders. “We are not going to jeopardize the lives of the workers out here by working in the dark.” One of the fatalities happened in 1983 near Julia Pfeiffer Burns State Park. A bulldozer rolled over a steep slope when the fill gave way. The body of that worker has never been found. Another worker was killed when he drove his truck off a washed-away portion of Highway 1 in the dark.