There are souvenirs you buy and souvenirs you create, and the ones you create always carry the deepest weight. Anyone can walk into an airport gift shop and pick up a magnet, a T-shirt, or a snow globe with the name of a city printed on it. But when you crouch down on the shore …
When California joined the Union on September 9, 1850, it did so with the kind of drama, speed, and chaos that perfectly suited the place we now think of as the land of reinvention. In a country that was still wrestling with slavery, westward expansion, and fragile compromises, California didn’t wait politely in line like …
