California - News from May 8, 1998

Re “California Barely on the Map in Book’s New West,” May 4:

Finally, proof that the scientists have been right all along. Plate tectonics have indeed caused California to slowly drift away from the rest of the continent. But it seems we’ve drifted further than they thought. First our weather patterns are typical of an equatorial rain forest. And now the final proof comes from Colorado, where they’ve informed us we’re not located in the American West anymore.

Well, most of us have always thought of California as an island unto itself. I have only one question: What time zone are we in?

TERRY C. LEFTGOFF

Santa Barbara

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So how does one get any publicity to increase sales for an atlas? Ask William Riebsame, he knows. Just wipe a state off the map and send copies to state historians and librarians.

I can hear Roy Rogers now, singing, “Happy sales to you.”

JEAN LEWIS

Los Angeles

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If we are being slighted by being excluded from “the West” it is not a new slight. No lesser personage than Theodore Roosevelt observed late in the 19th century, “California isn’t the West. California is west of the West.” Nor is it new that California is happily oblivious to its Western neighbors. In 1923 D.H. Lawrence observed, “California . . . has turned its back on the world and looks into the void Pacific.”

ROBERT C. CHANDLER

Beverly Hills

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You report that the editor of “Atlas of the New West,” having decided to exclude the Pacific Coast rim as part of his “new West,” is now having second thoughts and may include us as part of the West in his new edition.

This reminds me of the story that when Margaret Fuller, the New England transcendentalist, stated, “I accept the universe,” Thomas Carlyle said, “By God! She’d better.”

BESS CHRISTENSEN

Lompoc