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

In 1855 an ex-miner lamented that nineteenth-century California "can and does furnish the best bad things," including "purer liquors...finer tobacco, truer guns and pistols, larger dirks and bowie knives, and prettier courtezans [sic]" than anywhere else in America. Lured by boons of gold and other exploitable resources, California's settler population mushroomed under Mexican and early American control, and this period of rapid transformation gave rise to a freewheeling culture best epitomized by its entertainments. Hellacious California tours the rambunctious and occasionally appalling amusements of the Golden State: gambling, gun duels, knife fights, gracious dining and gluttony, prostitution, fandangos, cigars, con artistry, and the demon drink. Historian Gary Noy unearths myriad primary sources, many of which have never before been published, to spin his true tall tales that are by turns humorous and horrifying. Whether detailing the exploits of an inebriated stallion, gambling parlors as a reinforcement and subversion of racial norms, armed skirmishes over eggs, or the ins and outs of the "Spirit Lover" scam, Noy expertly situates these stories in the context of a live-for-the-moment society characterized by audacity, bigotry, and risk. Published in collaboration with Sierra College Press.

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.

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.