Mary Smathers
I, and my book, are completely a product of my upbringing and my work. I have lived in the San Francisco Bay Area my entire life. I deeply love the state, the wide variety of people who live there and empathize with the difficulties many face living in a wonderful but also challenging place.
I worked in California public schools, and almost exclusively in low income communities, for 30 years. I was a high school teacher and administrator. I ran school district wide programs. I was a charter school co-founder and helped start several education companies where I worked with teachers, students and parents on a daily basis. I have literally interacted with thousands and thousands of California school kids and their families in the wide variety of communities that make up the state. The stories I heard, the families I observed, the colleagues I worked with inspired me every single day.
And because I always lived in the same part of the state, I have seen the place change, I have seen the magic of the innovation that comes out of Silicon Valley, I’ve seen the people and focus change. I have seen people who suffer terrible tragedy persevere to survive and even thrive despite enormous odds against them. California is a magical, fascinating and complex place. It is physically gorgeous with great weather and many, many activities that people can enjoy. People are hard-working and industrious, figuring out how to solve problems. But it is far from perfect.
A lot of people throughout American history have gone there with dreams and lofty goals in mind. Whether the Spanish coming north from Mexico, the priests who were setting up the Missions, and then independent Mexico expanding, people coming out west for the Gold Rush, or people fleeing problems in the South or after WWII, California has always been a beacon on a hill for Americans. But it isn’t all sparkly and gold. The dream is not always realized. There is poverty and income inequality, terrible homelessness, poor treatment of immigrants, segregated communities, discrimination, people struggling to keep up with the expensive cost of living there, the boom and bust economies which have persisted in the state for hundreds of years. And there is the land and what happens to it….its beauty and how people interact with it, how it is forgotten and also abused.
I find that complexity fascinating, and rich with material to write about. SO, I am interested in working people, just regular people, who deal with all kinds of issues and in many cases, are resilient, persistently don’t give up, keep working hard and are doing the best they can against forces way bigger than themselves.
I am interested in regular people who do heroic things and why. What drives someone who doesn’t have much, to look out for someone else with even less? What conditions lead to compassion? To resilience? Why doesn’t everyone just collapse under the weight of terrible unfairness or heavy problems? Not everyone does. And will that continue? Is California sustainable?
Another theme I am really interested in is why the Silicon Valley area is such a hotbed of innovation. What has shaped that place’s culture? What influences have, and continue, to make it one of the most uniquely productive and innovative regions of the world right now. When we were kids we had to study the Fertile Crescent area of the world, as I am sure you did too, a cauldron of new developments, new farming technology and innovation thousands of years ago. Well, I don’t want to overstate the importance of Silicon Valley (because it already takes itself way too seriously in my view!), but it does have some of that same coalescing of people, forces, industry, brainpower as at the confluence of the Tigris and Euphrates millennia ago.
And why is that? What led to that? I find that fascinating. One of my theories is that the Gold Rush had a huge impact on the area and actually is one critical factor in the type of person, attitude and hutzpah, if you will, that exist there to this day.
If you left everything you had back in Connecticut or Virginia and got on a boat to travel around the bottom of South America to get to California, or you got on a horse and travelled 3,000 miles across the plains and mountains of the US with no idea of what you would encounter along the way, or when you got there, I think you would have to be a very certain type of person to do that. Gutsy, brave and a bit thrilled by danger. You’d be a risk-taker and you’d be darn tough. You’d be hard working, persistent and a problem-solver or you would never survive. And you’d have to have quite a bit of hubris to think you’d even survive the journey and get rich in California. So I think those kinds of people and that kind of attitude influenced what the area became, even way beyond the very short lived Gold Rush. I find that historical significance and influence just incredibly fascinating and teeming with rich material to write about.
I worked in California public schools, and almost exclusively in low income communities, for 30 years. I was a high school teacher and administrator. I ran school district wide programs. I was a charter school co-founder and helped start several education companies where I worked with teachers, students and parents on a daily basis. I have literally interacted with thousands and thousands of California school kids and their families in the wide variety of communities that make up the state. The stories I heard, the families I observed, the colleagues I worked with inspired me every single day.
And because I always lived in the same part of the state, I have seen the place change, I have seen the magic of the innovation that comes out of Silicon Valley, I’ve seen the people and focus change. I have seen people who suffer terrible tragedy persevere to survive and even thrive despite enormous odds against them. California is a magical, fascinating and complex place. It is physically gorgeous with great weather and many, many activities that people can enjoy. People are hard-working and industrious, figuring out how to solve problems. But it is far from perfect.
A lot of people throughout American history have gone there with dreams and lofty goals in mind. Whether the Spanish coming north from Mexico, the priests who were setting up the Missions, and then independent Mexico expanding, people coming out west for the Gold Rush, or people fleeing problems in the South or after WWII, California has always been a beacon on a hill for Americans. But it isn’t all sparkly and gold. The dream is not always realized. There is poverty and income inequality, terrible homelessness, poor treatment of immigrants, segregated communities, discrimination, people struggling to keep up with the expensive cost of living there, the boom and bust economies which have persisted in the state for hundreds of years. And there is the land and what happens to it….its beauty and how people interact with it, how it is forgotten and also abused.
I find that complexity fascinating, and rich with material to write about. SO, I am interested in working people, just regular people, who deal with all kinds of issues and in many cases, are resilient, persistently don’t give up, keep working hard and are doing the best they can against forces way bigger than themselves.
I am interested in regular people who do heroic things and why. What drives someone who doesn’t have much, to look out for someone else with even less? What conditions lead to compassion? To resilience? Why doesn’t everyone just collapse under the weight of terrible unfairness or heavy problems? Not everyone does. And will that continue? Is California sustainable?
Another theme I am really interested in is why the Silicon Valley area is such a hotbed of innovation. What has shaped that place’s culture? What influences have, and continue, to make it one of the most uniquely productive and innovative regions of the world right now. When we were kids we had to study the Fertile Crescent area of the world, as I am sure you did too, a cauldron of new developments, new farming technology and innovation thousands of years ago. Well, I don’t want to overstate the importance of Silicon Valley (because it already takes itself way too seriously in my view!), but it does have some of that same coalescing of people, forces, industry, brainpower as at the confluence of the Tigris and Euphrates millennia ago.
And why is that? What led to that? I find that fascinating. One of my theories is that the Gold Rush had a huge impact on the area and actually is one critical factor in the type of person, attitude and hutzpah, if you will, that exist there to this day.
If you left everything you had back in Connecticut or Virginia and got on a boat to travel around the bottom of South America to get to California, or you got on a horse and travelled 3,000 miles across the plains and mountains of the US with no idea of what you would encounter along the way, or when you got there, I think you would have to be a very certain type of person to do that. Gutsy, brave and a bit thrilled by danger. You’d be a risk-taker and you’d be darn tough. You’d be hard working, persistent and a problem-solver or you would never survive. And you’d have to have quite a bit of hubris to think you’d even survive the journey and get rich in California. So I think those kinds of people and that kind of attitude influenced what the area became, even way beyond the very short lived Gold Rush. I find that historical significance and influence just incredibly fascinating and teeming with rich material to write about.
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