u/OldHedgehog5802

It was serialized in Margaret Anderson and Jane Heap's Little Review, and they were literally persecuted for it, as most of you know. I'm reading yet another recount of how what we now know as High Modernism got up on its legs: A Danger To The Minds Of Young Girls: Margaret Anderson, Book Bans, and the Fight to Modernize Literature, by Adam Morgan (2025).

Two lesbians who loved avant, new ideas, anarchism, free love, women's rights, Anderson and Heap. Of course they were persecuted left and right. NB to those who haven't thought about it: lesbians were crucial to the rise of Modernism: Sylvia Beach and Adrienne Monnier, Bryher, HD (bisexual?), Anderson, Heap, Gertrude Stein and Toklas, Natalie Burney.

You, the current reader of this on Reddit, possibly: *This was probably written by a lesbian, self-serving, tryna claim credit....*Naw man: I'm a straight dude.

One of the few remaining subscribers writes to the Little Review in 1920:

"Can you tell me when James Joyce's Ulysses will appear in book form? Do you think the public will ever be ready for such a book?"

Jane Heap wrote 'em back:

"Ulysses will probably appear in book form in America if there is a publisher for it who will have sense enough to avoid the public."

It would take 13 years from then.

EDIT and WARNING: 2 hours after my initial post: there's a huge response to my query and I really appreciate it. To someone just happening upon this thread, there's a LOT OF BRUTAL MURDER stuff mentioned, so if this kind of thing really bothers you, please don't read. I know this stuff makes some people very anxious - it has creeped me out, I know, so I hope I don't have nightmares tonight - so I just wanted to get a warning in. Remember: Sonoma County is one of the safest places in the US! Those who responded already have reminded me of crimes I must have blotted out of my memory. Some I didn't even know about. Wow. I welcome fringe-weird stories about Sonoma County in addition to the hardcore crime. There must be other cults besides the 19th Century Fountaingrove one?

Here's my original post:

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I just finished Joshua Paddison's book on the Thomas Lake Harris cult in Fountaingrove, Unholy Sensations: A Story of Sex, Scandal, and California's First Cult Scare.

And it got me thinking about how relatively calm and quiet Sonoma County seems to me. I mean, there was the Windsor house where Tim Scully and Nick Sands made hundreds of thousands of hits of LSD.

There was the Polly Klaas murder, a national news story.

There has to be a LOT more. But what? What stories about Sonoma County stand out to you about crime, celebrities, cults, drugs, very weird or eccentric people, and sex? The very idea of Sonoma County as some sort of National Enquirer hotbed is ludicrous...not that anyone has ever linked our area of the world with wild drug-crazed sex fiends, etc.

I talked to some friends about this and they basically had little more than what I've just come up. One said Manson and his gang lived here, but we looked it up: it was more Mendocino County. Of course San Francisco is brimming with lurid stories. But I'm wondering about Sonoma County.

But my mind is probably bad at filing away this stuff; I tend to concentrate on how Sonoma County is paradisical in many ways. I think of it as very safe, very sane and a wonderful place and that I got lucky to live here. I suspect there really isn't much more, but maybe there is a dark underbelly I just don't know about?

In doing research for something I thought totally unrelated to DSPD, I'm reading a 2001 book, Sounds In The Dark: All Night Radio in American Life, by Michael C. Keith.

There's a lot of writing on the perceived audience for all-night radio: the insomniacs, night shift workers, the lonely, and those who "like" to stay up after midnight.

Here's an expert: a person who had an all-night radio show for many years:

"Overnight radio is unique. It is a time when a significant number of people are alone lying in bed in the dark with the radio on. Maybe sleep doesn't come because they've got problems. Maybe a physical ailment. Maybe it's the emptiness of being alone that plagues them. For this group of listeners, all-night radio is a lifeline. For all-night workers, such as truckers or third-shift assemblers, there's a disenfranchisement from the daytime world. These people listen as they work for companionship." - Rollye James, who apparently hosted a nationally syndicated all-night radio show. (p.7)

The only thing that resonates here, with me, is the word "disenfranchisement." (You too?)

Nowhere in this book does an expert cite "circadian rhythm," much less delayed sleep phase disorder. These experts thought their overnight radio audience were misfits, lonely people, insomniacs, and shift workers. (To be fair, I think it's mostly true that DSPD creates misfits and loneliness, but that's some other topic.)

By 2001 there had been a lot of inroads in DSPS/DSPD, but they seem to have been confined to medical journals. There are hundreds of people in this book who made their bones by catering to people listening to the radio overnight, and no one has any idea about those of us who feel normal and, speaking for myself, great, at 2:30 AM.

As a kid and into my 30s (a long time ago) I was one of these overnight radio listeners, but I was never working "graveyard," never "lonely." I thought I was just a bad sleeper for many, many years because I didn't know about DSPD. But not one of these experts knew about the (7-10%?) of the population whose genes default to falling asleep after midnight. This book was only published 25 years ago. I wonder how much awareness there is of DSPD in the audiences for overnight radio now? I suspect it's not much better.

The way we make this better is to communicate the truth about this.

Today I rode the SMART path from near Old Caz brewery to the Rohnert Park library. Stiff headwind going there, a bunch of downed branches between E. Cotati and Southwest Blvd, so SMART crew out there with chainsaws. There was no warning and I happened upon it. They stopped cutting and one guy carried my bike through all the branches - cool dude! - and I made it to the library.

On the way back was a very strong tailwind - an almost "perfect" at-your-back tailwind -where you pedal once and the wind just kinda suctions you along the road. Which I remember from being a kid. It still, after all these years, feels weird to ride with such a tailwind, and is the sort of thing that feels like you're dreaming.

They have a ton of the wittiest songs ever written, and this one's a favorite of mine, but I'm reaching out to connoisseurs/mavens/geeks here: the 1970s ambient texture and mood is totally evocative of music I heard as "audible wallpaper" in my childhood (I'm olde!). However, I realize I can't name one "model" Schlesinger and Collingwood may be drawing from here. There's some artist (or a few artists) that were emblematic of this sound in the 1970s, but I can't name one off hand. The Temptations?

Someone throw me a bone here. Maybe you caught a little interview (that I haven't seen) in which they talked about this. The "wakka-choo" wah pedal for guitar is one thing, but that synthesized saturation another.

The chorus...

It's been so long

So long

Darling don't you know

We miss you when you're gone

...Is pure genius.