A Good Idea Clicks Elsewhere

“It is not usually our ideas that make us optimists or pessimists, but it is our optimism or pessimism . . . that make our ideas.” Although the playwright and novelist Miguel de Unamuno wrote these words in Spain at the beginning of this century, they apply as aptly to California now and in the past.

So unbounded was the optimism that propelled California’s entry to the Union in 1850 that it bubbled over into our “Golden State” claim. That optimism burned brightly in the dreams of countless families lured here from the world over and in the ideas they made realities.

We in Los Angeles have been privileged to gaze into the faces of those earnest, hopeful families from decades past as part of the Los Angeles Public Library’s celebrated photography project, “Shades of L.A.: A Search for Visual Community History.” Now other communities around the state will have a chance.

Beginning next year, volunteers from L.A.’s Central Library will train staff from the San Francisco, Fresno and San Bernardino County public libraries to document the visual histories of their own communities. In Los Angeles, the library copied 10,000 photographs, offered from family albums and representing the extraordinary ethnic diversity of this region. All of these beguiling images are now part of the library’s photograph collection; some of the most compelling are still on display in the Central Library and others have been included in a book commemorating the exhibit.

Much of the inspiration to extend this project statewide came from KCET personality Huell Howser. Funding from the Durfee Foundation and from the California State Library will support this “Shades of California” project as it expands to many more communities in succeeding years. In fact, the state library already considers this effort an important part of the sesquicentennial celebration of California statehood, planned for 2000. What a wonderful family affair--a celebration that includes everyone in the party.