Exhibit-A To dream the im-poss-ible dream to fight the un-beat-able foe to run where the brave (or wise) dare not go -From the Broadway production of The Man of La Mancha, music by Darien and Leigh, 1965 Gracing the awesome coastline of California like a set of stained glass and adobe rosary beads, the 18th-century chain of twenty-one old Spanish missions offer the modern tourist a window into the history of the golden state at once colorful, quaint, often romanticized and just possibly not as benign as the tourist literature would lead us to believe. Investigating just that possibility, three amateur researchers have uncovered an historic mission artifact that, proven authentic, could shaken the golden state to its foundations. Nor would the repercussions end there, cautioned research director Brother Kolbe. Not by a long shot. At the state capitol in Sacramento, the governors Mission Affairs Department, and entrenched bereaucrazy representing the vested interest of the church, civic groups, university and private concerns, is naturally interested in the discovery. With real estate totaling in the multi-billion dollar range, including treasure troves of priceless relics and artwork, the Mission Affairs Department is somewhat hesitant at relinquishing control of their flock of iconic golden geese. Exposing the scandalous mission hullabaloo to the light of day may very well, researcher Samara Del Rio smiled with a perfectly beatific malfeasance, induce a state of anarchy. This my quest, to follow that star no matter how hopeless, no matter how far Along with Sam, ostensibly the team sociologist; Franciscan Brother and linguist Kolbe McCeanna and computer technician Felicia Bonaventura have tracked the legendary article to the derelict ruins of a minor auxiliary mission, Mision Estancia San Micmac, abandoned deep in the cathedral redwoods of Californias rugged pacific coast foothills. Exhibit-A.: as Sacramento knows, the notorious artifact is a legendary mission document lost since the colonial era, and thought to be a Spanish translation of aboriginal petroglyphs, entitled Las Cuentitas Primaveritas de Isla Califia. Past as prologue, a highly divisive work of folkloric Outside Art, colonial-era historians date the slim manuscript to the year 1561. Spakespearean scholars, however, citing key internal references to The Bards colonial-era play The Tempest, insist that the text is no older that the year 1611. Anti-Stratfordians, of course, call the Spakespearean theory leaky as an unstaunched wench. Adding to the debate, pre-Columbian archivists at Villa Poggio Gherado in Canterbury, England claim tevidence supporting a composition date of 1348. Equally divided, modern pundits dismiss Las Cuentitas as nothing more than psychosocial gibberish and third-rate poetic doggerel anyway, or else venerate the document as instrumental to a radical psychosocial transformation. Either way, if birds of a feather flock together than the infamous manuscript resembles a traditional book to the extent a penguin resembles an ostrich. [Embedded in translation throughout the plot of The California Tales], Las Cuentitas represents an extraordinary multimedia-literary genre suppressed censored and banned since the 1960s as irredeemably subversive to the status quo. During its brief hayday in the sun, the tempestuous genre was known as Prosperos Salient Heliotropic Articulation Grids: pSHAGs. And, particularly threatening to the dominate paradigm, pSHAG poetry, (or poemetry), was known, rather tongue-in-cheek, as Teleothanantological Neuropeptidal Algorithms: T.N.A.s. Moreover, reputedly encrypted within a Prospero SHAG TNA are the sole surviving fragments of the theoretical Archetypical Tale: the mother of all manuscripts, the lore at the core. Archetypical Tale theorists insist that this so-called consummate communiqu is simultaneously primordial and pansophic, pro

Three stories reflecting California’s intense pressures and addictions: Sparkling Arabella, high on crystal meth astride a Harley, ascends into the stars. Will she find grace at last? A boy, a girl, and a dog meet in the Viper Room, looking for love on the eve of a devastating Los Angeles earthquake. And Silicon Valley, once filled with apricot orchards, becomes a dream killer for a workaholic on the verge of cashing in.

The discovery of gold in 1848 catapulted California into statehood and triggered environmental, social, political, and economic events whose repercussions are still felt today. Mary Hill combines her scientific training with a flair for storytelling to present the history of gold in California from the distant geological past through the wild days of the Gold Rush to the present. The early days of gold fever drew would-be miners from around the world, many enduring great hardships to reach California. Once here, they found mining to be backbreaking work and devised machines to help recover gold. These machines pawed gravel from river bottoms and tore apart mountainsides, wreaking environmental havoc that silted rivers, ruined farmlands, and provoked the world's first environmental conflict settled in the courts. Native Americans were nearly wiped out by invading miners or their diseases, and many Spanish-speaking settlers—Californios—were pushed aside. Hill writes of gold's uses in today's world for everything from coins to coffins, gourmet foods to spacecraft. Her comprehensive overview of gold's impact on California includes illustrated explanations of geology and mining in nontechnical language as well as numerous illustrations, maps, and photographs.

In 1510 a Spanish romancer described an island called California, "very close to the side of the Terrestrial Paradise." It was inhabited by Amazons, and even the harnesses of the beasts they rode were gold. Thus began the rich literature of California. In a place that boasts so many claims to one's attention, short fiction has flourished. Great California Stories trumpets the immense short story tradition developed by visitors like Mark Twain and Ambrose Bierce but mostly by natives like Jack London and John Steinbeck. The twenty-one stories in this anthology go back to the oral tradition of the American Indians and recall the Hispanic settlement, the gold rush of the 1850s, the agricultural epoch, the growth of cities like San Francisco and Los Angeles, the foibles of early Hollywood, and the rise of ghettos. The ethnic diversity of California is reflected in a cast of story characters including Indians, mission fathers, Asians, Mexican Americans, African Americans, and forty-niners and landseekers from the eastern states. California's varied scenery is drawn on in stories with a strong sense of place, whether Steinbeck's Salinas Valley or Raymond Chandler's Los Angeles. Besides Steinbeck and Chandler, authors represented are Theodora Kroeber, Bret Harte, Gertrude Atherton, Mark Twain, Ambrose Bierce, Edwin Cone, Jack London, Idwal Jones, Walter Van Tilburg Clark, Dashiel Hammett, Eugene Burdick, Janet Lewis, Wallace Stegner, and Danny Santiago. For them California is a memorable background, sometimes a fabulous character, always a distinctive quality.

Dee Merian has authored four books. They are all non-fiction stories telling the reader about fellow Americans during the 20th Century. This is her second book of anthologies. Her first book American Mosiac was recommended by Forbes Readers for three years. She mixes stories about celebrities as well as private American citizens. Stories included are Sarah Vaughan, Gorgeous George, Louella Parsons, Sonja Heine, and Patrick Dennis. Other true stories depict Americans during the stressful times of three different wars. Merian's previous book FLYING HIGH is about TWA during the pre-jet years when Howard Hughes was their CEO.