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Charles Fracchia speaks on the history of San Francisco
Event held on January 26, 2010


Audience at the Charles Fracchia speaker event


Charles Fracchia with audience members



LITQUAKE panel on:
Consciousness : Where the Mind Meets the Brain
Event held on October 13, 2009


Audience at the LITQUAKE speaker event



Booksigning with author Tamim Ansary,
on September 17, 2009


Afghani cuisine - at Tamim Ansary speaker event

Booksigning at Tamim Ansary speaker event




Authors David Mas Masumoto (Wisdom of the Last Farmer) and Novella Carpenter (Farm City: the Education of an Urban Farmer)
at speaker event, September 9, 2009


Cuisine served at "two farmers" speaker event


Audience at the "two farmers" speaker event




Author William T. Vollmann, Imperial,
booksigning event on August 6, 2009


Audience at William T. Vollmann speaker event



EVENTS
at the Mechanics' Institute
57 Post Street, San Francisco
(between Market and Kearny Streets)
Transporation:  Montgomery BART / MUNI station


Events Program is supported in part by Mark and Lisa Pinto
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****  BOX OFFICE INFORMATION ****
For RESERVATIONS BY PHONE: call the 'Events Line' at (415) 393-0100
For RESERVATIONS BY EMAIL: 
rsvp@milibrary.org 
Reservations are held at Box Office.  Arrive 15 minutes before event for seat selection. OPEN SEATING

If you are not a Mechanics’ Institute member, JOIN NOW, and attend most of our Author events and CinemaLit Film Series for FREE.  Membership application and information.

Books for author events are provided by Alexander Book Company
and William Stout Architectural Books.
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AUTHOR & LITERARY EVENTS

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Thursday, January 14,  6:00 pm 
(2nd floor Library)


A New Literary History of America
Panel with editor Greil Marcus and contributing writers including author Clark Blaise, Professors Kathleen Moran and Bharati Mukherjee, and film critic David Thomson
This provocative and unique look at American history tells the story of American culture and literary life through more than two hundred essays by scholars and authors. Subjects as varied as The Wizard of Oz, Melville’s first meeting with Hawthorne, and Hart Crane’s long evening bull session with Charlie Chaplin illuminate and bring to life the inspirations that shaped our culture. “Our charge to writers,” says editor Greil Marcus, “was not to produce a review of the literature on any given topic, or even necessarily to consider it, but rather to write as if they were the first to seriously ask what a given figure, book, film, song, or speech meant in the life of the country."

Greil Marcus
has been a columnist for many publications, including The New York Times, Rolling Stone, Salon, and, currently, The Believer. He is the author of Lipstick Traces: The Dustbin of History (both by Harvard), and Mystery Train and The Shape of Things to Come.

Clark Blaise, author of Time Lord and I Had a Father
Professor Kathleen Moran, American Studies, University of California, Berkeley
Professor Bharati Mukherjee, author of Holder of the World and Jasmine ; English, University of California, Berkeley
David Thomson, author of The New Biographical Dictionary of Film, The Whole Equation, and Try to Tell the Story
(Werner Sollers is Henry B. and Anne M. Cabot Professor of English and Afro-American Studies at Harvard University)
Members Free : Public $12



Tuesday, January 19,  6:00 pm

Wheels of Change: From Zero to 600 M.P.H. - The Amazing Story of California and the Automobile

Kevin Nelson
"This is a story about cars, California, and perhaps surprisingly, youth and the passions of the young.” So begins the introduction to Kevin Nelson’s Wheels of Change, a history of the automobile in California from the horseless carriages of the 1890s to the hot rods of the 1950s and 60s. Wheels of Change is not just about hardware, but about the people who loved cars and shaped California car culture, including race car drivers like Craig Breedlove and Barney Oldfield, film stars like Steve McQueen, and James Dean, whose legends became permanently entwined with cars, and “King of the Customizers” George Barris, who helped change the look of cars all over the world.

Kevin Nelson is author of Operation Bullpen: The Inside Story of the Biggest Forgery Scam in American History, and The Golden Game: The Story of California Baseball.
Members Free : Public $12



Tuesday, January 26,  6:00 pm

When the Water Came
up to Montgomery Street:
San Francisco during the Gold Rush

Charles Fracchia
Well known local historian Charles Fracchia’s latest book covers the years 1848 to 1859 and vividly brings to life the roller-coaster lifestyle and landscape that was San Francisco during the Gold Rush. This instantaneous city that was constantly exceeding its infrastructure, its rogues and colorful characters, its crime and vigilance committees, is brought to life and enhanced with some 200 illustrations, some never before published.
Charles Fracchia is a native San Franciscan who has maintained two parallel careers: one is as an investment advisor and the other as a teacher and writer. Fracchia received his B.A. from the University of San Francisco and did graduate work at the University of San Francisco Law School, the University of California at Berkeley, San Francisco State University, and the Graduate Theological Union/Berkeley. He is the department chair of the Library and Learning Resource Centers of City College of San Francisco and teaches at the Fromm Institute of the University of San Francisco. He is the author of Fire and God: The San Francisco Story and Golden Dreams: California from Gold Rush to Statehood to name a few.
Members Free : Public $12



Tuesday, February 2,  6:00 pm

The Library of Alexandria and Its Revival
Lecture by Professor Andrew G. Jameson
Presented by Humanities West & Mechanics’ Institute
Most of us have heard of the “Library of Alexandria.” It was the eighth wonder of the world, and, popular legend has it, was accidentally destroyed by Julius Caesar’s troops when he conquered Egypt. But what is the truth about this lost cultural treasure? How did it begin? How was it used? And what is the truth about its fate? Professor Andrew G. Jameson will discuss these issues – and the revival of the Bibliotheca Alexandria, whose purpose is to restate the universal legacy of the ancient Library in modern terms.This program at MI precedes the symposium Alexander/Alexandria on February 5, 6 at Herbst Theatre, SF. More information available from Humanities West .

Andrew G. Jameson holds a Ph.D. in history from Harvard University and a doctorate in history from the Sorbonne (University of Paris), a Master of Science degree in library science from Simmons College in Boston, and a degree in archival management from Radcliffe College. He retired after forty-two years of academic teaching (Byzantine, Near Eastern, African history) and administration at Harvard, where he was Senior Tutor, and the University of California, Berkeley, where he was Assistant Vice Chancellor.

Members of MI and HW Free : Public $12



Sunday, February 7,  2:00 pm

Special Performance at the Contemporary Jewish Museum

736 Mission Street, San Francisco (between 3rd & 4th Streets)

Schoenberg on Parnassus:
Schoenberg's Chess, Klee's Jewishness, Benjamin's Obsession, and other puzzles
In its American premiere, London opera star Loré Lixenberg headlines a performance adaptation of Carl Djerassi’s genre-bending book Four Jews on Parnassus - a Conversation, featuring the imagined posthumous conversations of Arnold Schoenberg, Walter Benjamin, Gershom Scholem and Theodor Adorno, as well as songs by Schoenberg, some rap music, and the art of Paul Klee.

This production, directed by Vienna-based Isabella Gregor, features Equity actors Gerry Hiken, Kay Kostopolous, Rush Rehm, Ken Sonkin, and Bill Wolak.
Co-sponsored by the Stanford Institute for Creativity in the Arts and the National Center for New Plays at Stanford. Marketing partner, the Mechanics’ Institute Library & Chess Room.

Members of MI & CJM $30.00: Public $35.   For information call (415) 655-7800




Thursday, February 11,  6:00 pm  (3rd floor Library)

Malcolm Margolin
Unfinished Victory:
The Fight for Civil Rights


Join this important panel discussion on civil rights from a national, state, local, and historical perspective, moderated by Malcolm Margolin, Publisher of Heyday Books featuring:
Wherever There’s a Fight: How Runaway Slaves, Suffragists, Immigrants, Strikers and Poets Shaped Civil Liberties in California, Authors Elaine Elinson and Stan Yogi
When Americans hear the term “Civil Rights,” they generally think of the Black Civil Rights demonstrators in the south during the ‘50s and ‘60s. In California, the struggle for civil rights encompassed not only the issue Black Civil Rights, but a host of others, including Asian civil rights, the rights of political and religious dissenters, the rights of people with disabilities, workers rights, and gay rights. Authors Elaine Elinson and Stan Yogi weave together a complex history of civil liberties in California, touching on subjects that range from California’s pre-civil war Franchise League, a black organization that was perhaps the first civil rights group in California, to the framing of Labor activist Tom Mooney, to the Korematsu case, to the Red Scare. The result is a work guaranteed to inspire, outrage, and fascinate.

Elaine Elinson, who served as the communications director of the ACLU of Northern California and editor of the ACLU News, is a coauthor of Development Debacle: The World Bank in the Philippines. Her articles have been published in the Los Angeles Daily Journal, the San Francisco Chronicle, The Nation, Poets and Writers, and numerous other periodicals. She is married to journalist Rene CiriaCruz and they have one son.
Stan Yogi has managed development programs for the ACLU of Northern California since 1997. He is the coeditor of two books, Highway 99: A Literary Journey through California's Great Central Valley and Asian American Literature: An Annotated Bibliography. His work has appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle, MELUS, Los Angeles Daily Journal, and several anthologies. He is married to nonprofit administrator David Carroll and lives in Oakland.



Marching for Freedom: Walk Together, Children, and Don’t You Grow Weary, Author Elizabeth Partridge
This latest book by author Elizabeth Partridge focuses on the courageous children who marched alongside Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in the 1965 march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama for the vote. Through contemporary photographs and the compelling personal accounts of people who participated, award-winning author Elizabeth Partridge tells the day-by-day story of the inspiring, sometimes harrowing march. Marching for Freedom may be a book aimed at young readers, but it will grip anyone who cares about either history or justice.


Elizabeth Partridge is the award winning author of more than a dozen books, from picture books to young adult non-fiction to photography books. Titles written by this San Francisco author include Restless Spirit: The Life and Work of Dorothea Lange; This Land was Made for You and Me; The Life and Songs of Woody Guthrie, and the biography John Lennon: All I want is the Truth, for which she was awarded the ALA Michael L. Printz Award. The author has chaired the National Book Award committee for young people's literature, and she is a frequent speaker at national conferences for teachers, librarians, and writers.



Breakthrough Communities: Sustainability and Justice in the Next American Metropolis, Edited by M. Paloma Pavel; Foreword by Carl Anthony

This book describes current efforts to create sustainable communities with attention to the "triple bottom line"—economy, environment, and equity—and argues that these three interests are mutually reinforcing.
SPECIAL GUEST, CARL ANTHONY is the founder and, for twelve years, the executive director of the Urban Habitat Program, one of the oldest environmental justice organizations in the country. Until recently he was a Ford Foundation program officer in the Community and Resource Development unit. He is currently a Visiting Scholar/Ford Foundation Senior Fellow in the Department of Geography at the University of California Berkeley.

The mission of Urban Habitat is to promote multicultural urban environmental leadership for sustainable, socially just communities in the San Francisco Bay Area. With a colleague, Luke Cole at the California Rural Legal Assistance Foundation, he published and edited the Race, Poverty and Environment Journal, the only environmental justice periodical in the country.

Members Free : Public $12



Thursday, February 18,  6:00 pm

Trotsky: Downfall of a Revolutionary
Bertrand M. Patenaude
The dark, and tumultuous last days of revolutionary Leon Trotsky are examined in Bertrand M. Patenaude’s compelling biography. Exiled in the wake of the revolution for which he’d fought, Trotsky spent the final years of his life in Mexico hiding out from Stalin’s secret police. Patenaude’s book focuses on those years, while occasionally flashing back to Trotsky’s youth, his career as a Bolshevist leader, and his ultimately fatal estrangement from Stalin.

Bertrand M. Patenaude is a lecturer at Stanford University, where he is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution Library and Archives. He is the author of The Big Show in Bololand: The American Relief Expedition to Soviet Russia in the Famine of 1921, which won the 2003 Marshall Shulman Book Prize.
Members Free : Public $12



Tuesday, February 23,  6:00 pm

Whole Earth Discipline:
An Ecopragmatist Manifesto

Stewart Brand,
in conversation with Nils Gilman,
consultant with Monitor 360
“Greens are no longer strictly the defenders of the natural systems against the incursions of civilization; now they’re the defenders of civilization as well.” Stewart Brand, visionary creator of the groundbreaking publication, Whole Earth Catalog and co-founder of the Global Business Network, grapples with the realities of accelerating climate change. In his new book, he “demands a fundamental and at times surprising shift in the “green” perspective. Urging a more pragmatic approach to ecology, Brand offers the following summary: “Ecological balance is too important for sentiment. It requires science.The health of natural infrastructure is too compromised for passivity. It requires engineering. What we call natural and what we call human are inseparable. We live one life.”

Stewart Brand

Nils Gilman
Stewart Brand’s legendary Whole Earth Catalog (1968-1985) won the National Book Award in 1972. His previous books include The Media Lab, How Buildings Learn and The Clock of the Long Now. He is president and co-founder of The Long Now Foundation and cofounder of Global Business Network. He lives with his wife Ryan Phelan, on a tugboat near San Francisco.

Nils Gilman is a consultant with Monitor 360, with a focus on national economic development and security. He is the author of Mandarins of the Future: Modernization Theory in Cold War America and the forthcoming Deviant Globalization.
Members Free : Public $12
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CINEMALlT
FILM SERIES

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Michael Fox, Curator



ABOUT CINEMALIT: Film lovers and aficionados enjoy an ongoing feast of classic American and international films at the Mechanics' Institute. CinemaLit programs, which are presented nine months a year, were created to complement and highlight the Mechanics' Institute Library's vast collection of more than 2500 videos and DVDs including classics, drama, comedy, foreign films and documentaries. The CinemaLit Film Series is open to members and the public.

Each program begins with an introduction of the movie, genre and themes by curator Michael Fox or well-known local film writers and critics such as David Thomson, Eddie Muller, Joe McBride and others. The evening concludes with a salon discussion involving the audience and speakers. Films are shown on large screen in the best available format, DVD or video.

The Mechanics' Institute's charming meeting room/cafe space, which seats up to eighty people, provides an intimate, informal atmosphere for film viewing, lively conversation and congenial socializing. The cafe offers light refreshments and freshly popped popcorn.

Location: Mechanics’ Institute, 57 Post Street (near Market St), San Francisco
Transit: MUNI/BART- Montgomery Station
Time: Every Friday. As of January, 2010, the box office and Mechanics’ Café opens at 5:30 pm
          Program begins at 6:00 pm. A salon style discussion follows the film.
Admission: Tickets available at the door.
MIL members: free ; Public suggested donation $10
For more information and reservations: Call (415) 393-0100 or email us
at rsvp@milibrary.org / Reservations are required - Limited seating





JANUARY: FRENCH KISSES : NOUVELLE VAGUE
Friday, January 8
Les Bonnes Femmes (1960) 93 min.

Directed by Claude Chabrol
Starring Bernadette Lafonte, Stephane Audran

Four vibrant Parisian shop-girls harbor secret and not-too-secret dreams.
Friday, January 15
Paris Vu Par ... (Six in Paris)

(1965) 92 min.

Directed by Jean Rouch, Jean Douchet, Eric Rohmer, Jean-Luc Godard, Claude Chabrol, and Jean-Daniel Pollet
Starring Stephane Audran, Jean-Pierre Andreani

An eclectic anthology of short films by leading directors, each set in a different Paris neighborhood.
Friday, January 22
Lola  (1962)  90 min.
Special guest: Anita Monga, artistic director of the Silent Film Festival
Directed by Jacques Demy
Starring Anouk Aimee, Marc Michel

This lovely, lyrical romantic tale, full of homages to America and American movies, centers on a caberet dancer in Nantes.

Friday, January 29
The Bride Wore Black
  (1968) 107 min.

Directed by Francois Truffaut
Starring Jeanne Moreau, Michel Bouquet

A widow pursues revenge against her husband's murderers in this Hitchcock homage featuring a scene by Bernard Herrmann.




FEBRUARY: REEL CRIMINALS - THE HEIST
Friday, February 5
The Asphalt Jungle (1950) 112 min.

Directed by John Huston
Starring Sterling Hayden, James Whitmore

From assembling the gang through pulling the job, this hard-boiled flick laid the foundation for an entire genre.
Friday, February 12
The Great Train Robbery
(1979) 111 min.
Directed by Michael Crichton
Starring Sean Connery, Donald Sutherland

A wily, witty threesome schemes to steal a gold shipment from a moving train in mid-Victorian England.

Friday, February 19
The Taking of Pelham One Two Three   (1974)  104 min.
Directed by Joseph Sargent
Starring Robert Shaw, Walter Matthau

A ruthless gang hijacks a subway train in gritty '70s New York, and the tension just keeps building.

Friday, February 26
A Fish Called Wanda
  (1988) 108 min.

Directed by Charles Crichton
Starring John Cleese, Jamie Lee Curtis

Dishonor among thieves propels this London-set caper comedy co-starring Kevin Kline and Michael Palin.


The Cinemalit Program is funded in part by 
Ryan Associates




CinemaLit  Film Series - Guest Speaker Biographies

Michael Fox has written about film for more than 50 regional and national publications since 1987. He created and authored the “Reel World” column in SF Weekly for more than a decade, and hosted the first season of KQED-TV’s short-lived program on independent film, “Independent View.” He has sat on juries for the San Francisco International, Mill Valley, Cinequest and United Nations Association film festivals and the Independent Television Service (ITVS), and contributes notes to the San Francisco, Mill Valley and SFILGBT festival programs. He also teaches courses in documentary film at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at San Francisco State’s downtown campus.
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Terrance Gelenter is a nationally syndicated film critic, lecturer and interviewer.  Among his many interviewees are Billy Wilder, Sidney Lumet, James Ellroy, and Isabel Allende.   He is founder of Paris through Expatriate Eyes, a firm specializing in designing and escorting literary and cultural tours of Paris. The CinemaLit title is used with permission of Terrance Gelenter.  
Matthew Kennedy teaches anthropology at the City College of San Francisco and film history at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. He is a film critic for Bright Lights Film Journal online and has written three books on classic Hollywood: Marie Dressler: A Biography, Edmund Goulding's Dark Victory, and Joan Blondell: A Life between Takes. For more information, please visit his website.
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Eddie Muller is film-noir expert and author of Dark City: The Lost World of Film Noir, Dark City Dames, and co-author of Grindhouse: The Forbidden World of Adults Only Cinema.   His mystery novels include The Distance and Shadow Boxer.
David Thomson’s writing has appeared in Film Comment, Movieline, The New Republic and Vanity Fair.   He is a regular contributor to Esquire and The New York Times.   He is the author of A Biographical Dictionary of Film, Showman: The Life of David O. Selznick, Rosebud, the award winning biography of Orson Welles, Beneath Mulholland and Nevada.
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EXHIBITS and SPECIAL PROGRAMS

Art Exhibit : Found Languages
Works on Canvas by Adriana Diaz
Adriana Díaz is a Bay Area native with a long exhibition history. Among her exhibition venues are: the Mission Cultural Center, the Bechtel Center at Stanford University, SOMAR Arts, the Badé Museum, as well as college and professional galleries in the Bay Area and abroad. She has been on the faculty of numerous colleges and universities including John F. Kennedy University, Holy Names University, and New College of San Francisco. She is a long-standing member of the Women’s Caucus for Art, and Pro Arts.

Adriana is the author of Freeing the Creative Spirit, Drawing on the Power of Art to Tap the Wisdom and Power Within (HarperSan Francisco, 1992); her essays and poetry have been published in magazines and anthologies.

Adriana Díaz is also a creative force in the community. For twenty years she’s been on the Community Advisory Board of the Health Through Art Project, serving last year as the Coordinator of the Project. HTA is a non-profit that puts out a call for art every two years, inviting young and old to submit images and slogans that support individual and public health. If you’ve seen billboards that say “Stop the Violence”, “Honor Diversity”, or “Who is responsible?” then you have seen HTA at work. (see latest brochure and application and information about past winners.)  In the last year, Adriana has also begun teaching creativity classes to Transition Age Youth (ages 17-25, recipients of Behavioral Health Care Services or Foster Care) for Alameda County Behavioral Health Care through the services of the Health and Human Research Education Center.

Learn about Adriana’s work as a life and leadership coach. She is also a member of Prism Coaching, a consortium of six multicultural coaches who provide leadership coaching throughout the Bay Area.

Any bio would be incomplete without mention of Adriana’s deep passion for Argentine Tango. In 2000, she and her partner won the U.S. championship in Argentine Salon Style Tango. She is a regular traveler to Buenos Aires, the home of the Tango, and is frequently seen dancing in the Bay Area.
Exhibition hours: Nov 1, 2009 to Jan 31, 2010
Monday to Friday: 10:00 am - 5:00 pm  :  4th floor Meeting Room and Hall
FREE

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Volunteer Opportunities:
Volunteers are needed for our Events and CinemaLit Film Series. 
Call Laura Sheppard, Director of Events at (415) 393-0114
or Pamela Troy, Events Assistant/CinemaLit Coordinator at (415) 393-0116.



RESERVATIONS: rsvp@milibrary.org      EVENTS OFFICE: events@milibrary.org 

Revised: January 8, 2010