Malcolm Margolin & a bit more

[Joel Pomerantz]

Before I get to the news about Malcolm, a practical note:

The walk for this weekend is now full. I will be unavailable to book more walks until mid October. If you have a request for a walk date after October 12, let me know!


Malcolm Margolin, my “publisher,” has died after some years with Parkinson's. About 10 years ago, after having learned much from his books and going to his presentations, I got the chance to know him personally. The last couple years he has had reduced talking abilities, so for a while now I’ve been missing his conversational flair.

I always thought he was a kind of recent embodiment of the sometimes-rogue sometime-anthropologist Jaime de Angulo, whose writings from a previous generation I also recommend.

Malcolm was my publisher only in the sense that he tried very hard to get a book out of me about my research. It would have been for Heyday books, which he founded.

This, by David Loeb provides wonderful examples of Malcolm’s magic.
https://baynature.org/2025/08/27/malcolm-margolin-and-the-birth-of-bay-nature/?

And here’s an obit you might enjoy.
https://www.berkeleyside.org/2025/08/20/malcolm-margolin-obituary-founder-heyday-books-berkeley

Having now raised the topic of my research being published—raised not with Malcolm, but with you, just now—I would like to fill you in on some basic details of that long-stalled and/or slow-poking effort.

Problem was it took time for me to see that my research would matter in such detail. People have eventually convinced me. For a long time, my info was poorly organized. Also, the incoming flow of information has always been thicker and faster than my ability to digest and evaluate it. The learning curve is steep for how to best organize numerous passions.

I’ll use this email as an opportunity to tell you: I'm much more organized now, including much that's taking shape for online or print publication at *some* point soon(ish).

I don’t do deadlines, as I've learned. So don’t ask when. But I am enjoying the process very much. It brings me pleasure and excitement. And it will produce much of interest. If you’ve been on Thinkwalks, you have benefitted ever more from this better organized and new research.

Expect an overview of the topics of special interest another time. Suffice to say, I’ve debunked a lot of myths and tracked many myth sources, which is even more interesting than the debunking itself. SF sure loves itself (as determined by the sheer number of myths!) and has few folks who hold institutional memory beyond the stories unquestioningly passed along.

Example: Was there an earthquake in 1852 that opened Lake Merced to the sea? Rumor, and many publications, say yes.

The real answer is…No. But something did, and it turns out it’s the same *something* which is the best key to lakes in San Francisco’s prehistory: dune breaches! This type of sudden flood happens when a pile of sand gets saturated and the water building up pressure on one side breaks through. Furthermore the way the quake rumor started was a hilarious breathless report of scary sounds heard in the night by people living at Stern Grove, near Lake Merced.

That’s just a nibble. More to come.


So long, Malcolm. It’s been great getting to know you. And thanks for so much encouragement and for your brilliant trend-setting.

Joel