I’ll be holding forth on Charles Lummis, and showing slides of some of his photographs, at a monthly luncheon meeting of the Huntington Westerners historical association in Pasadena on Saturday, Nov. 5. The location is the Women’s City Club, 160 North Oakland St., Pasadena, and the luncheon gets underway at 12:30. The cost is $25 per person. Advance reservations are required, and can be made by contacting: Carol Criqui at carol@criqui.com or (626) 345-9069.
Here’s the blurb about my talk from the Huntington Westerners flyer:
“Charles Lummis was one of the most talked-about characters in Los
Angeles from the moment of his arrival in 1885, when he strode into town
after crossing the country on foot to take a job at the Los Angeles Times.
He had a knack for attracting attention that lasted for the rest of his life.
Sometimes the publicity was unflattering: his many failed marriages and
affairs were grist for gossip for years. But with his boundless energy an d
the influence he wielded as crusading editor of an influential regional
magazine, Lummis racked up one impressive achievement after another,
from helping save California’s crumbling Spanish missions and founding
the Southwest Museum to nurturing a generation of Western writers and
artists and forcing constructive reforms in federal policies towards
Native Americans. Mark Thompson will discuss the colorful life of
Charles Lummis, and will show slides of photographs from Lummis’s
archives, at an upcoming luncheon talk.
“Thompson is author of American Character, a biography of Charles
Lummis, which was honored by Western Writers of America as best
biography of 2002. Thompson now lives in Philadelphia and is associate
editor of Current History magazine.”
