We came to California the same year as the ill-fated Donner party. It started about a month ahead of us, but it kept taking imaginary short cuts and hurrying until it met with frightful disaster. My father, who was captain of our train, led his party of about eighty people across trackless plains and mountains for five months, simply with the sun and the stars as guides, and came west almost as straight as the crow flies. He believed in moving every day, if only three miles and the result was that all our oxen were in better condition when they arrived in California than when they started. Several of the survivors of the Donner party, young George Donner and Mrs. Reed, came to our house in Napa after they were rescued. I heard the other day that Mrs. Reed’s daughter, ‘Patty’ Reed, who was then a very little girl, is living on Franklin street in Oakland. She is Mrs. Martha Lewis now. – Story from California Gold rush

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” California Revisited ”

01. Takka Takka – Everybody Say
Migration (Ernest Jenning, 2008)
02. Tracy Shedd – Whatever It Takes
Cigarettes & Smoke Machines (Teenbeat Records, 2008)
03. Luke Doucet – Blood’s Too Rich
Blood’s Too Rich (Six Shooter Records, 2008)
04. Telepathique – Love And Lust
Last Time On Earth (Control Group / Tcg, 2008)
05. The Moondoggies – Changing
Don’t Be A Stranger (Hardly Art, 2008)
06. Human Highway – Sleep Talking
Moody Motorcycle (Suicide Squeeze, 2008)

note: Sunday mellow list. California theme in my mind. There is this mythical idea about California. That it’s the last place where civilization stops, hitting the big ocean. The western civilization ends and the east is on the other side. All on one needs to get there is a dream and certain push to get away from the establishment. Life will be different, the weather temperate and the people are happy. Thousand dreams to be made, start afresh without past. It is not the techniques, shape or difficulties to obtain the dream, but if the state of mind to reach the dream exists, sort of post existentialist struggle. It’s beautiful if one can get it to work.

image : sicoactiva , FelipeArte