⚙️🖋️📰 THE PRESSES ARE STILL ROLLING AT THE GAZETTE
🏛️ Civilizations are built one building, one story, one citizen at a time.
Hello, fellow Gazetteers!
I might have seemed a little MIA lately, but I promise the presses are rolling at full speed here at the Gazette. 🖨️⚙️
📚 Julia Morgan Has Arrived!
First, some exciting news!
Julia Morgan, FAIA: Recipient of the 2014 AIA Gold Medal is finally available on Amazon.
If you’ve been waiting for it, simply search for Julia Morgan, FAIA on Amazon, or click the link below.
Julia Morgan, FAIA: Recipient of the 2014 AIA Gold Medal
🌿 Solaria Bloom Is Blooming
The project that’s consumed most of my waking hours is my speculative fiction novel, Solaria Bloom.
I’ve been working furiously because there’s a possibility it will be workshopped this October. That means I need to have the bulk of the manuscript finished before then.
Keep your fingers crossed. 🤞
Every day the story seems to take on a little more of a life of its own.
I’ve finally come to understand what writers mean when they say,
“The work begins to take on a life of its own.”
I used to think that was simply something writers liked to say.
Now I know better.
Somewhere along the way, the work starts making demands of its own.
One of my professors at Mills College had a wonderfully simple equation for becoming a writer:
✍️
Writing = Butt + Chair
I’ve kept those words hanging above my writing desk ever since.
Well...
My butt has definitely been in the chair these past few months.
And I have to admit...
My professor was right.
The pages don’t write themselves.
But if you show up every day, eventually they start telling you what comes next.
Meanwhile, my Gold Rush Bars & Brothels series hasn’t disappeared. 🍻
It’s patiently waiting in the wings while Solaria Bloom occupies center stage.
🏛️ The Julia Morgan Foundation
Another project that’s close to my heart is the Julia Morgan Foundation.
We launched the Foundation several years ago and, if I’m being honest, it’s spent a good deal of that time quietly asking me,
“Now what?”
Well...
Now is the time.
We created the Foundation to tell the world about Julia Morgan’s remarkable life and work while helping preserve the extraordinary buildings she left behind.
Julia Morgan once said,
“My buildings will speak for me long after I’m gone.”
Our goal is simple:
To make sure that voice continues to be heard.
Several people have asked how they can support the Foundation.
Thank you.
Those conversations mean more than you know.
Right now I’m building a new website dedicated to Julia Morgan’s life, career, and legacy.
A lecture...
A book launch...
And many exciting projects are also in the works.
There are organizations that have been doing this longer than we have, and I admire everything they’ve accomplished.
Every foundation begins with a single stone.
We’re laying ours.
Every generation inherits a civilization.
It also inherits the responsibility to care for it.
That’s what the Julia Morgan Foundation is about.
Not simply preserving old buildings...
…but preserving the ideas, craftsmanship, and civic imagination they represent.
Our North Star
The Mission of the Julia Morgan Foundation
The Julia Morgan Foundation is the Living Atelier of Julia Morgan.
Rather than serving solely as a museum of the past, the Foundation extends the spirit of Julia Morgan’s practice into the twenty-first century.
Inspired by the collaborative atelier in which Julia Morgan worked, the Foundation brings together architecture, history, scholarship, technology, preservation, and public conversation in one living institution.
More than one hundred years after Julia Morgan established her practice, her story continues to unfold. New archives are being digitized. Drawings are being rediscovered. Buildings continue to reveal new insights. Each generation finds new reasons to study, preserve, and celebrate her work.
The Foundation exists to explore, preserve, interpret, and share Julia Morgan’s evolving legacy through research, publications, exhibitions, lectures, digital experiences, and education.
We believe the greatest way to honor Julia Morgan is not simply to preserve what she left behind, but to continue the spirit of curiosity, craftsmanship, innovation, and public service that defined her life’s work.
The atelier is still open.
📜 Civics for the Bewildered
I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t sometimes overwhelmed by the news.
Every so often I simply have to stop listening.
The noise becomes so loud it’s difficult to hear anything clearly.
But eventually...
Something pulls me back.
A headline.
An interview.
A constitutional question.
Something that simply won’t leave me alone.
That’s usually when another Civics for the Bewildered essay appears.
Because we have to understand how democracy works if we’re going to care for it.
We have to do something.
What’s surprised me most is that Civics for the Bewildered seems to be writing itself.
The triptych is emerging one essay at a time.
Each essay answers another question.
Each constitutional puzzle leads to another.
Each news story opens another door.
I never quite know what the next essay will be until the news insists that I write it.
✒️ Becoming a Notary Public
One unexpected result of all this has been my decision to become a notary public.
It surprised me to learn that notaries are public officials.
Like the President...
Members of Congress...
Judges...
Military officers...
Police officers...
Attorneys...
…and countless other public servants...
Notaries swear an oath to support and uphold the Constitution.
The words may differ.
The promise is the same.
Our loyalty isn’t to a person.
It isn’t to a political party.
It is to the Constitution.
That realization stopped me in my tracks.
I even carry one of those little pocket Constitutions now.
Every so often I pull it out and read a few pages.
It’s astonishing how small it is.
We tend to think of it as a symbol.
It’s actually an instruction manual for self-government.
It belongs to all of us.
Being a notary may seem like a very small thing.
But democracy isn’t held together only by presidents and Supreme Court justices.
It’s held together every day by ordinary citizens performing ordinary duties with extraordinary integrity.
Sometimes democracy looks less like a grand speech...
…and more like making sure someone is who they say they are before signing a document.
🌎 One Thread
Maybe that’s the thread running through everything I do.
Whether I’m writing about Julia Morgan...
Exploring California’s past...
Imagining the future through Solaria Bloom...
Or studying to become a notary public...
I’m really asking the same question.
How do we build a civilization that’s worthy of the people who inherit it?
Thank you, as always, for traveling this road with me.
Whether we’re wandering through Julia Morgan’s archives...
Pulling up a stool in a Gold Rush saloon...
Untangling democracy...
Or imagining the cities of Solaria Bloom...
Thank you for helping build this little newspaper of curious minds.
📰 The presses keep on rolling.
Until next time...
Kimberly Twain
Twain’s Gazette of the Absurd