What's in a name?

So, why "The Alta Californian"?

The name actually says a great deal about me, my love for history and geography, my interest in politics and the media, and my love for God and His Church.

The greatest portion of my life so far has occurred within a set of somewhat distinct boundaries encompassing the beautiful country known as Northern California. The geography of my normal reality stretches from the Pacific coastline to the mountains just beyond Reno, Nevada (I have traveled beyond those mountains, but it has always been on a particularly grand adventure, a special occasion). North/South those boundaries are a bit more porous. I rarely travel beyond the Rogue River Valley of Oregon to the north (unless, again, it is a special adventure). South is most complicated of all. Most of my life has been spent north of a line running from about Santa Cruz northeast to about Modesto, east by southeast below Yosemite to Bishop, in the Owens Valley. In the past 8 years, since I have had family living in Southern California, I have ventured south of that line more than ever before. But now that most of that family has returned to the north, I suspect that boundary will gradually harden again.

I love to travel. It is my favorite thing in the world. I have lived briefly on the East Coast, spent a summer in the South, spent a winter on the Northern Plains, and traipsed about most of the country in between. Travels have taken me about Canada, to England, France, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Italy and Honduras. I dearly hope to add Israel and Jordan to that list by the middle of next year. But my life, as I have known it has been here, in upper California, what locals just a bit further north call the Northstate. The glistening peaks of the Sierra Nevada are my mountains, the tumultuous waters of the Pacific crash against my coast, the fragrant vines of Napa grow in my valley, the towering redwoods are my redwoods, and that beautiful city by the bay will always be my city. Alta California, as the Spanish called it (as opposed to "Baja California") is my California. It is not the pride of ownership that makes me say this, it is the pride of having roots in a place, of embracing its beauty, of loving its people, of knowing and being nurtured by such a beautiful land. Wally Stegner, eat your heart out.

The geography of California is very dear to me, and so is its history. "Alta", meaning "Upper" or "Northern" California, comes, of course, from the history of the Golden State. The Spanish had begun exploring the region as early as the 1530s, but colonization had not begun in earnest until the turn of the 18th century. By the dawn of the 19th century, a far flung chain of missions spread up the coast as far as San Francisco. At about the time Lewis & Clark were exploring the Northwest for the young United States, the Spanish split their Pacific colony into northern "Alta California" and southern "Baja California", in an attempt to make it easier to manage. They had little success, and in 1821 formally lost it in the Mexican Revolution. The Mexicans were no match for the ambitions of the United States, and in 1847, Alta California became simply California. The old name did not go away entirely. I actually take the name of my blog directly from one of California's earliest American journalistic enterprises.

The Alta California was a newspaper published in San Francisco from 1849 until about 1891. Also known as The Alta Californian, the paper was one of the earliest periodicals published on the West Coast. Its roots lay even further back, with the California Star, the first newspaper ever printed in San Francisco, in 1847. The Star was begun by Sam Brannan, a gold rush renaissance man who went on to found a town very dear to my heart, Calistoga. When the gold rush began in 1849, Brannan sold the Star. The new owners merged it with another early paper to form The Alta California. For the next four decades it was one of the most prominent newspapers in the West. I first encountered it in college, amidst a research project on frontier perceptions of international news. My research ended up focusing on the 1857 Sepoy Rebellion in British Imperial India, and coverage it received in The Alta California.

So there you have it, California, the Gold Rush, the late 19th century, American journalism and politics. So many of my interests wrapped up in one name.

There is an added bonus, in that "Alta California" roughly corresponds to "Northern California". In my professional and spiritual life, the boundaries of my normal existence are the people and polity of the Episcopal Diocese of Northern California. I may talk more about this in another post, but I am a third generation Episcopalian, albeit a rather eclectic and idiosyncratic one. And at this moment God has blessed me with the opportunity to work for the Church of my birth, in an administrative capacity. As such I try to keep my mind on things higher, things upper, in short, things "alta".

Time will tell if it is an appropriate name, but for now I think it rather suits me.