It has NOT changed for the better. Nouveau Riche, immigrants who fled with their wealth when their old governments fell... few native Californians any longer apart from those who stayed, despite everything and kept their small beach cottages and rather unostentatious ranch homes in the Muirlands. Land in La Jolla now is worth far more than the original homes that stood upon its land. Our home was an old historical beach cottage in the Barber Tract... from the garden, we could see a small sliver of the ocean and could walk to the beach in less than five minutes but many of the old views have been replaced by monstrous tasteless edifices built to inflate the egos of sports figures, film stars and politicians. Most of these new residents do not live in La Jolla year round but have more than one residence in more than one city. I despise all of them as well as the merchants who invaded our town like cockroaches to set up tourist traps in the place of our old rather modest but upscale shops. Some of our childhood haunts still exist: Bowers and Warwicks still are to be found on Girard Avenue
Warwicks Book Shop Past and Present
The bastions of culture in my childhood were the old Library and the Athenaeum. I believe the Library sadly no longer exists but the Athenaeum still stands proudly and my sister gives the occasional violin recital there.
UCSD was a new University when I was a child and it changed the entire fabric of society in La Jolla. We brushed shoulders with giants in their various fields, including Linus Pauling, Jonas Salk and Herbert Marcuse. My Mum enrolled in the new University and created a very exciting social life for herself in a rented house on S. Coast Boulevard next to the home of John Williams, a very dignified and elderly British actor. He did not own his home either. The charming but ramshackle trio of houses were owned by a very old ballet dancer whose name now escapes me. He had a grand plan of selling the real estate ultimately for millions... meanwhile, we lived half a block from the Beach across from a rather wonderful home for the elderly named Casa Manana. Our house was built on a hill and from the front room, we had an unobstructed view of the ocean where often we could watch the whales move past.
It was Herbert Marcuse who possibly impressed me the most as I was young, with a passion for justice and protest marches and incendiary speeches were our bread and butter. My Mum took us to protest marches during a very exciting period in history. It was a period when the police could and often were violent, even brutal and even in such a location as middle class La Jolla. The older sister of a schoolmate was shot at Berkeley University during this time and became a sort of hero among the revolutionary student groups.
I attended Marcuse's lectures even though I was a very young girl and was inspired by them. He spoke to me more than once after a lecture, probably because I was a total anomaly in terms of my age.
Here is a link to a little article about Marcuse:
Herbert Marcuse Life and Work
I cannot claim that at an age when my birthdays still were counted in single digits, I wholly comprehended Marcuse's writings or lectures, but he certainly did have a profound effect upon me. It was heady stuff... just an example here:
'The performance principle, which is that of an acquisitive and antagonistic society in the process of constant expansion, presupposes a long development during which domination has been increasingly rationalised: control over social labour now reproduces society on a large scale and under improving conditions. For a long way, the interests of domination and the interests of the whole coincide: the profitable utilisation of the productive apparatus fulfils the needs and faculties of individuals. For the vast majority of the population, the scope and mode of satisfaction are determined by their own labour; but their labour is work for an apparatus which they do not control, which operates as an independent power to which individuals must submit if they want to live. And it becomes the more alien the more specialised the division of labour becomes. Men do not live their own lives but perform pre-established functions. While they work, they do not fulfil their own needs and faculties but work in alienation.' (Marcuse 1955: 45)
In other words, work in a capitalist society far transcends what is needed by the worker himself or herself and life then becomes devoted to the needs of the capitalist Master. The worker's basic instincts and needs are repressed in order to attain goals that are alien to him or her and ultimately 'he desires what he is supposed to desire'. This is the basic of rampant consumerism in our society where people work in order to purchase goods, not for their own benefit but for the benefit of the capitalist, often multinational corporations. Marcuse dubbed the result the 'one-dimensional man'.
Marcuse was very interested in the power of Eros and firmly believed that it should be equal to Logos. Sexuality and all the 'animal needs and desires' should not be repressed, nor sublimated in order to achieve greater wealth or other materialist goals but should hold equal sway with Logic in Life. This is not a carte blanche declaration such as that of Aleister Crowley, his 'Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law' but like Crowley, he believed that the drive of Eros needed to be recognised and followed but within socially-responsible boundaries.
I am not a Communist but despite the failure of Communist experiments throughout the world, I continue to believe that, in certain grave situations, Communism is the ONLY solution, albeit a temporary phase that has to be outgrown once basic needs are met in that society. Overpopulated nations where the majority of the population existed without adequate food, shelter, medical attention or education under the rule of an exploitive, irresponsible minority DEMAND Revolution and a temporary Communist structure to redress the balance and deliver equality where the basic needs are concerned. The problem with most Communist experiments is the lack of a positive and speedy transition to another form of government. It is a mistake, however, to declare that the entire world should be subjected to the same political philosophy and government. Each nation has its own individual set of circumstances and needs.
Thus, when the West purports to deliver 'democracy' to the World, not only is this an extraordinary display of arrogance but it cannot work. Furthermore, I fail to see true 'democracy' in those superpowers who are wielding the clumsy axe of invasion and occupation that is intended to save the people of another nation from its 'errors' or 'dictators' or whatever.
In all honesty, however, Marcuse was a mere footnote in my childhood. The adult with the greatest influence in my life was Myrl Hendershott. The Hendershotts were our best friends. I never have met a more perfect embodiment of the ideal of the 'Renaissance Man' than Myrl.
He introduced me to the joys of Opera, to poetry by Rilke, inspiring me to read, read, and read, to constantly explore the wonders of every civilisation and culture. He was a role model and kindred spirit in another way as well. I graduated from school at an early age and went on to Uni at an early age... he had been subjected to the same experience, albeit at an age even younger than I. Now society has learned not to place a child in the company of young adults, to further the sense of alienation that often is natural to the 'gifted'. When I was in school, however, I always was at least three years younger than every one else in my class. It was horrible and counter-productive.
Here is a link to the CV of one of the most incredible individuals I ever have known:
Myrl Hendershott
Myrl is both scientist and musician. He played the Organ at a local church while teaching Oceanography at the Scripps Institute but he always was and is so much more. My sister and I both were madly in love with him of course in those days, not only because of his incredible mind but because he always had time for every one and had a certain rather unassuming charm as well as a wonderful sense of humour. My debt to Myrl, however, is the way he generated a hunger in my soul for the beauty of poetry and classical music, but especially opera.
This is Myrl as I knew him then:
(Above, Myrl Hendershott)
I have met and known many extraordinary individuals in the course of my life... many artists, writers, philosophers, film stars, musicians and political activists, inter alia, but as I wrote initially, Myrl is the consummate Renaissance Man. John Gross, a very close and dear friend of mine when I lived in Manhattan, had a knowledge of literature that surpassed any one else I have known, but his knowledge of other subjects was not as comprehensive. Myrl crossed the border between Humanities and Science effortlessly and constantly.
