Lake Merritt Festival tomorrow—get yr jig puzz on!
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Joel Pomerantz
Jun 20, 2025, 4:28:52 PM6/20/25
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Do you plan to be at the Lake?!? Lake Merritt Festival is 11 to 7. Saturday June 21.
I will be there 11 to 4 or beyond. Tomorrow at the Oakland Puzzle Company booth between Fairyland and the lawn bowling area, I believe.
If you are in Oakland, stop off and talk or volunteer for a little while. In addition to displaying educational specimens and documents, I will be hawking the new, beautiful Lake Merritt Watershed jigsaw puzzles (500 pcs). The Lake Merritt jigsaw puzzle sales are a fundraiser for a documentary film. Suggested donation is $30 to $50. If you can’t be there in person, make your donation through the seepcity.org poster-curtain order page. Specify you want a puzzle.
At tomorrow’s event, I’ll be alongside the Puzzle Company folks, who will bring a lot of other puzzles. They have another that’s a map: Long Lost Oakland. It’s really nice!
I will also have my SF water maps and a couple Lake Merritt Watershed shower curtains to give to folks who make top-dollar donations. I only ever made six of the curtains of Lake Merritt!
I will also have natural specimens to show and give out at my table. They won’t necessarily be as puzzley as the puzzle bark photo below, but I popped that ponderosa pine bark bit in for thematic reasons. Scroll down to see photos.
Joel
P.S.: In other matters, here is an idea from my old friend Mark. You may have heard that the historical revisionists at Team Trump want the public to turn in anyone and anything that doesn’t properly whitewash American parklands. So, let’s use that.
The Secretary of the Interior has posted signs at the Manzanar concentration camp (now a National Historic Site) in the desert on the east side of the tallest mountains in California. The new signs ask for public comment on anything there that is “negative about either past or living Americans.”
Seriously?
The U.S. apologized for rounding up and locking up Japanese immigrants. That was under Reagan! In 1988, Congress passed and President Reagan signed the Civil Liberties Act of 1988. It acknowledged the injustice of "internment," apologized for it, and provided a $20,000 cash payment to each person who was incarcerated. But that moderated humility is no longer in vogue.
https://www.sfchronicle.com/california/article/manzanar-signs-negative-history-park-20382189.php
The signs have a QR code to the comment website, the link is below. Please go the to the site and leave your comment! Its anonymous! Maybe we can flood them with comments pointing out the ironies. Pass this on to anyone, please.
Comment site:
https://www.nps.gov/aboutus/eo14253.htm
Mark’s letter:
There is a sign that is trying to whitewash the history of Japanese internment in World War 2. It wants me to report any information that is negative about past or living Americans. Not reporting the harm done BY AMERICANS to Americans of Japanese descent in Manzanar and other locations would be lying. The truth matters. Especially when it is unpleasant. Please remove this line from your signs.
The irony here of the President trash talking Americans who disagree with him is not lost on me, even if it is lost on his administration and the Secretary of the Interior, who ordered these signs. Tell the President to stop saying negative things about Americans past and present!
I will be there 11 to 4 or beyond. Tomorrow at the Oakland Puzzle Company booth between Fairyland and the lawn bowling area, I believe.
If you are in Oakland, stop off and talk or volunteer for a little while. In addition to displaying educational specimens and documents, I will be hawking the new, beautiful Lake Merritt Watershed jigsaw puzzles (500 pcs). The Lake Merritt jigsaw puzzle sales are a fundraiser for a documentary film. Suggested donation is $30 to $50. If you can’t be there in person, make your donation through the seepcity.org poster-curtain order page. Specify you want a puzzle.
At tomorrow’s event, I’ll be alongside the Puzzle Company folks, who will bring a lot of other puzzles. They have another that’s a map: Long Lost Oakland. It’s really nice!
I will also have my SF water maps and a couple Lake Merritt Watershed shower curtains to give to folks who make top-dollar donations. I only ever made six of the curtains of Lake Merritt!
I will also have natural specimens to show and give out at my table. They won’t necessarily be as puzzley as the puzzle bark photo below, but I popped that ponderosa pine bark bit in for thematic reasons. Scroll down to see photos.
Joel
P.S.: In other matters, here is an idea from my old friend Mark. You may have heard that the historical revisionists at Team Trump want the public to turn in anyone and anything that doesn’t properly whitewash American parklands. So, let’s use that.
The Secretary of the Interior has posted signs at the Manzanar concentration camp (now a National Historic Site) in the desert on the east side of the tallest mountains in California. The new signs ask for public comment on anything there that is “negative about either past or living Americans.”
Seriously?
The U.S. apologized for rounding up and locking up Japanese immigrants. That was under Reagan! In 1988, Congress passed and President Reagan signed the Civil Liberties Act of 1988. It acknowledged the injustice of "internment," apologized for it, and provided a $20,000 cash payment to each person who was incarcerated. But that moderated humility is no longer in vogue.
https://www.sfchronicle.com/california/article/manzanar-signs-negative-history-park-20382189.php
The signs have a QR code to the comment website, the link is below. Please go the to the site and leave your comment! Its anonymous! Maybe we can flood them with comments pointing out the ironies. Pass this on to anyone, please.
Comment site:
https://www.nps.gov/aboutus/eo14253.htm
Mark’s letter:
There is a sign that is trying to whitewash the history of Japanese internment in World War 2. It wants me to report any information that is negative about past or living Americans. Not reporting the harm done BY AMERICANS to Americans of Japanese descent in Manzanar and other locations would be lying. The truth matters. Especially when it is unpleasant. Please remove this line from your signs.
The irony here of the President trash talking Americans who disagree with him is not lost on me, even if it is lost on his administration and the Secretary of the Interior, who ordered these signs. Tell the President to stop saying negative things about Americans past and present!
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