Monday, June 12, 2006

A Visit to Jack London State Park



Mary and I are in California for a week and today we went to Glen Ellen to see the property where Jack London and his wife Charmian lived in the early twentieth century. London proclaimed himself a socialist, but that didn't prevent him from acquiring 1400 acres in the Sonoma Valley. I wonder what he would have said if some of his comrades had showed up wanting to occupy his land? Anyway, he spent his last years here, experimenting with organic farming. London died in 1916 of renal failure. His ashes were buried under this big rock in the woods on his property. That's yours truly posing next to the fence around the grave. I'll add this to my budding collection of pictures of me next to landmarks related to dead authors. So far that includes Edgar Lee Masters's house and grave in Illinois, and an apartment building in Greenwich Village where Allen Ginsberg lived.

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