Five years now since it arrived. A sobering time for family and neighbors faced with the ills of our

The ancient state travel guides rifle of a long-dead Californian arrived without warning. Unsolicited. Uninvited. A surprise bequest from an elder cousin who earned his master's in history from Claremont College and took pride in his role as the family archivist. The weapon, empty of shells and unexpectedly elegant, is sequestered in our upstairs state travel guides closet. To protect the oak stock and copper case, it came cradled in soft white bunting, which we have unwrapped only a handful of times. A shrouded ghost, it stands in a dark corner behind winter coats and a faded bridesmaid dress as one year, then another, flows by.
Five years now since it arrived. A sobering time for family and neighbors faced with the ills of our state's recession. Almost 136 years have passed since the gun killed game or human beings. No longer used for the reason it was created, the gun still serves a purpose. Like all trophies collected after armed struggle, it is a symbol. A symbol of danger contained, loss justified, greater crisis averted. And like all sacred state travel guides relics saved by the generations that came before, it comes with a story.
This handsome Henry rifle, one of thousands of repeating firearms first manufactured during the Civil War, was taken from Tiburcio Vasquez after his capture state travel guides by Los Angeles Sheriff William Rowland state travel guides on 14 May 1874. A public servant eyeing his odds for reelection, Rowland presented the rifle as a "token of friendship" to Judge Stephen C. Hubbell, one of the leading citizens of the anglicized El Pueblo de Nuestra Senora de los Angeles who had urged authorities to put a stop to the robber's raids on new settlers' ranches. After two infamous decades robbing banks and rustling horses in the northern part of the state, Vasquez had traveled state travel guides south. Many feared he would target downtown Los Angeles next.
Judge Hubbell, state travel guides my husband's state travel guides great-grandfather, was an Ohio native who came west to prosper, serve society, and raise a family. All historical accounts state travel guides indicate he fulfilled his dream. A cofounder of the University of Southern California, he was elected the school's first treasurer. Also a respected philanthropist, he donated a substantial portion of his land, Westlake Park, to city fathers (who would later rename it MacArthur Park in honor of the World War II general). He was a generous man, once his property was secured and no longer under threat by a notorious, lawless "Mexican," as Vasquez was called in the press coverage of the time. 1
Along with the rifle, we received original front-page clippings from the 29 December 1889 edition of the Los Angeles Times . Dry and amber with age, "The Robber Vasquez" headlined columns had been pasted with care on sturdy cardboard. The article profiled eyewitness state travel guides "reminiscences" of San Francisco Chronicle state travel guides correspondent George Beers, who accompanied Rowland's posse on its historic adventure. Beers interviewed Vasquez, only thirty-nine, shortly before his death in San Jose on 14 March 1875. Convicted of murdering three unarmed men while his band robbed a general store in Tres Pinos, he had been sentenced state travel guides by a jury of norteamericanos to hang on the gallows. (Accounts differ as to whether Vasquez or members of his gang bear responsibility for the actual killing. He admitted the robbery, but denied committing murder on that occasion or at any other time during his twenty-three-year outlaw career.) 2
"I had a good opportunity to study his character," Beers reported. "A remarkable man...his original boyish idea was that he could incite a revolution among the Spanish-speaking population and recover Southern California from the United States...."
Truth? Romantic state travel guides revisionism from the lips of a man about to die? A blending of both? When I look at Vasquez's rifle, preserved by Anglos he once terrified, I consider Faulkner's admonition: "The past is never dead. It's not even past." 3 And I wonder what the bandido would think of his beloved homeland now.
Outsiders, outcasts, and outlaws have always been the real creators of the California dream. When there is less to lose, it is often easier to make the risky move. Like our ancestors, contemporary residents will need courage to transform a less than happy present into a better state travel guides tomorrow. They will also need a bold vision, one that trades the historical glory of rugged western individualism for pragmatic commitment to the larger common good.
The despair that has always danced among the have-nots in the hills and valleys of California is expanding its dark net. Since 2005 more people have left California than have arrived state travel guides from the rest of the country. 4 And for good reason. The state of our state is foreboding.
According to the Los Angeles state travel guides Times , six million Californians, 16.3 percent of residents, already live in poverty, and many more are perilously close. 5 Twenty percent of the population has no health insurance, and extreme cuts to Medi-Cal are planned. 6 Over 2.2 million are unemployed. 7 In 2010 the state's median household income fell 4.6 percent, the largest decline in a single year since record keeping began. According to a recent poll by the Public state travel guides Policy Institute of California, nearly half of California adults now consider themselves among the have-nots. 8 These figures are even more alarming because, as the pundits often note, ours is a bellwether state. As California goes, so goes the nation.
This is not what my parents would have predicted when they left Illinois to take an intercontinental gamble on the long road west in the sixties. Everybody was making the trek and making good, according to a dreamy Technicolor cover story in the LOOK magazine prominently displayed on the mahogany coffee table--a table that, as it happened, did not make the cut when our small U-Haul was packed to the ceiling with heirlooms, china, state travel guides and three toys from my childhood bedroom. (Only three, my mother insisted.) The rest were sold at our suburban front yard auction along with sofas, chairs, an antique state travel guides rolltop desk, patio furniture, and assorted tools. Like the pioneers who had gone before, my parents thought it wise to lighten the load. Our family was moving state travel guides to the Golden State to better ourselves.
Better, that was the word. So powerful it serves as both verb and adjective. state travel guides Better climate, better health, better job for my father, and better educational opportunities for me at the University of California in the years to come. No one leaves ancestral foundations to fall backward. But for many who arrived during the great California migrations of the last half-century, that "better" life has become a nightmare of diminishing returns.
Not everyone is suffering, of course. Multimillionaires formerly of Silicon Valley have reinvented themselves in the hot, new tech Valhalla of San Francisco, and bling-obsessed, reality-programmed "real housewives" are cropping up south of Beverly Hills in the McMansions of Orange County. What has gone missing in the last decades is the California state travel guides middle class. Granted, there were many gradations in this vast middle--"almost" lower-middle, "about to be" middle-middle, "not quite yet" upper-middle--but there was only one acceptable direction on the ladder of prosperity: up. Hard-working, law-abiding, tax-paying folks could rely on collecting their just rewards in a rosy and very near future. Every few years, a new car, a new house and --yes!--a better job with a bigger salary and more benefits. That way of life went down the drain with five-figure entry-level first homes and tuition-free education for in-state residents at the best state college and public university systems in the country. (UC's annual undergraduate tuition is expected to rise to $22,068 within the next four years.) 9
Aristotle argued that true virtue lies in the median between extremes. 10 Within that virtue blooms happiness. The great philosopher was no economist, but the principle holds: how can happiness exist without a certain level of balance and stability? Certainly, the California middle class loomed as the ideal for generations of immigrants from Dust Bowl Okies to post-World War II aerospace state travel guides factory workers to displaced Vietnamese, Armenians, and Afghans seeking political asylum. Getting rich might be nice, but a solid middle-class niche, affordable mortgage, and college-educated children embodied the sweet smell of success. state travel guides Eden has been lost. Again.
On 17 June 2011, the Pasadena Star-News reported that a group of homeowners, at risk of foreclosure, appealed to Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca for help. 11 Representatives of the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment called for Baca to place a moratorium on foreclosure evictions. Unfortunately, the sheriff was out of town, and there were no later news reports that he might mount a posse on behalf of the frightened citizenry desperate to protect their property from forces they could not fight alone.
state travel guides On New Year's Day in Pasadena a few years ago, before the real estate market tanked and gave our state the dubious distinction of leading the nation in foreclosures, 12 I was walking home among a large crowd of Rose Parade revelers after the last marching band headed north on Sierra Madre Boulevard. The air was clear and crisp, the view of the San Gabriels spectacular. A glorious January morning flooded with California sunshine and the fragrance of fresh blossoms. This is what our ancestors had traveled thousands of hard miles to enjoy. That's state travel guides when I overheard two women talking behind me. One was complaining to the other: "We finally get California back and then the Chinese come in and take it away from us. Who do they think they are?" As I turned the corner, I noticed the ladies were Latina. And I was pretty sure they were talking about the influx of Asian families moving into San Marino, Monterey Park, and other parts of the San Gabriel state travel guides Valley.
Well, "they" --whoever "they" are--assume they are entitled to carve out as large a wedge of the California pie as they can beg, borrow, buy--or steal--for themselves. state travel guides Va