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The composer Roger Sessions taught in the Department of Music at UC Berkeley from 1945 to 1953, the year this recording was made of the Griller String Quartet rehearsing for an upcoming performance of the composer’s String Quartet No. 2 at Wheeler Hall. Hertz and Zellerbach halls did not yet exist. Sessions subsequently left Berkeley for Princeton […]
The San Francisco Bay Area Television Archive has some choice footage from Berkeley back in the days when Berkeley was at war. There’s author and Merry Praskster Ken Kesey rapping at the Greek in May 1970, for example, and the riots that were erupting at that same time. And here’s the 1969 graduation ceremony where students donned gas masks under their […]
With Earth Day approaching it’s a good time to remember the late evolutionary biologist Lynn Margulis, who earned her Ph.D. from UC Berkeley in 1963. Margulis, who was once married to the astronomer Carl Sagan, was famous for advancing the theory of endosymbiosis to explain the origin of eukaryotic cells; in short, the complex cells […]
Julie Otsuka has been awarded the 2012 PEN/Faulkner Award for her second novel, The Buddha in the Attic. Otsuka, a California native who studied art at Yale and later took her MFA at Columbia, opened her first novel, When the Emperor was Divine, in Berkeley, a few months after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, […]
A story published online at The Atlantic.com about “The Very Real Danger of Genetically Modified Foods” has caused a minor sensation and perhaps also some unwarranted hysteria. Unfortunately, it seems that food writer Ari LeVaux got much of the science he was writing about wrong. Various writers with a better handle on the topic have […]
The footage is of the Lair of the Golden Bear from the year 1948, shot by none other than Robert Sibley, former longtime executive director of the California Alumni Association and also for many years editor of the California Monthly, the predecessor publication to CALIFORNIA. Lair veterans will qulckly notice that this is not the […]
Bene Legere Saecla Vincere. To read well is to vanquish the centuries. The Doe Centennial Committee will liberate the monumental painting of Bishop Berkeley from museum storage, offering our namesake an honored place in the Library this centennial year. We liked the expression on his face as he embraced a book. And we were pleased […]
The Cal Band is unique among major college marching bands in being almost entirely student-run and independent of both the music and athletics departments. That independence has engendered intense pride among band members, who, due to a lack of funding, regularly pay out of pocket to travel to away games. As Ezra Carlsen writes in […]
What was your first concert? The first record you bought? What song or songs would you put on a “Soundtrack of Berkeley”? For the Summer Music Issue, CALIFORNIA Magazine sent those questions and more to selected Cal alumni and other folks in the Berkeley community. Respondents include UC President Mark Yudof, Rolling Stone editor Jason […]
Here’s another photo from our files. This one shows what appears to be the old news booth at what was then called Radio KAL. Back in the day (this photo is marked 1967) the station broadcast at a mere 10 watts.Today, it’s known as KALX and the signal is a more respectable 500 watts. For […]
Cal’s dream season on the baseball diamond continues, as the Bears stayed alive in the College World Series with a 7-3 win yesterday over a tough Texas A&M squad. Tomorrow they’ll face the top-ranked Virginia Cavaliers. The Cavs handed the Bears a 4-1 loss in the opening round of the tournament last Sunday, before falling […]
The Cal baseball team was dominant in the Santa Clara super regional this weekend, besting a dangerous Dallas Baptist squad in two straight games, 7-0 and 6-2. Both nights were sold out as Bear fans rallied around the newly restored and suddenly ascendant squad. You’ll recall that this was supposed to be the last season […]
Former Golden Bear Scott Fujita, now with the Cleveland Browns, was on campus Wednesday for a panel discussion organized by the UC Berkeley Labor Center. The discussion revolved around collective bargaining and anti-trust issues as they pertain to the world of professional sports, especially the current NFL lockout. CALIFORNIA Magazine sat down to talk with […]
The Spring 2011 issue of California (“Articles of Faith”) is now out and should be arriving in mailboxes soon. We wanted to do a faith issue that wasn’t strictly about faith in God or religion per se, but rather about all the stuff people believe in–everything from hybrid cars to karma, democracy to deities. We […]
The Cal baseball team went 3-0 at AT&T Park last weekend, notching wins over Louisiana-Lafayette, Long Beach State, and #18 Rice. The Bears were the only undefeated team in what was billed as the first annual Cal Baseball Classic. First, and unless something changes, last, that is. While rugby, women’s gymnastics and women’s lacrosse have […]
Readers of the Wall Street Journal may have been aware that Cal Discoveries had a tour in Cairo when protests there began. There were 35 people in the group, ages 13 to 90. We’re happy to report that they all made it back safely. Cal Discoveries’ Charlotte Sproul served as travel manager for the trip. […]
Richard N. Goldman ’41 has died at his home in San Francisco. He was 90 years old. Mr. Goldman was named CAA’s 2010 Alumnus of the Year. Profiling him for our magazine last spring (see, “The Heroes’ Hero“), writer Sabin Russell described the retired insurance executive and renowned philanthropist as having “an upright ‘Daddy Warbucks’ […]
A century after his passing, Mark Twain is on the bestseller lists. Volume One (of three) of his Autobiography — a production of the Bancroft Library’s Mark Twain Project and Papers published by UC Press— is currently the bestselling book on both Barnes and Noble and Amazon.com. Although parts of the autobiography have been published […]
Joan Didion considers the lights of the Bevatron. Philip K. Dick buys his groceries at a pet store on San Pablo. Beverly Cleary works the cash register. Lincoln Steffens hunts quail under the oaks. And many more such literary moments from “Berkeley in Books.” Read it on the California magazine blog.
