Residential Care Development in California: History and Policy

This literature review provides a framework for understanding the development of residential care in California, including state licensing, federal funding, and state and local planning policies for the development of facilities. It discusses the history, planning, and licensing of residential care as a home and community-based service in California. It examines the historic and innovative federal programs supporting assisted living in public or affordable housing, the public equivalent of residential care. Finally, it describes how the California housing crisis has prompted a new and sweeping set of state and local planning policies encouraging its development.

Diluting Mexican American History for Public Consumption: How Mendez Became the “Mexican American Brown”

Background/Context To adapt to increasingly diverse classrooms, some school districts are trying to offer additional curriculum that represents the diversity of their students. California, where half of school-age children are Latinx, is at the forefront of including Latinx histories in its curriculum. The state's 2017 California History-Social Science Framework claims to prioritize “engaging and relevant” history curriculum. Yet, as this article reveals, curricular inclusion does not always lead to complex representations of Latinx histories. Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study This article focuses on Mendez v. Westminster School District of Orange County (1946), a Mexican American school desegregation case, as an example of how Latinx experiences were diluted to appeal to a larger audience, gain traction, and justify their addition to the California framework. Research Design This article includes analysis of five forms of data: historiography of the case, primary documents regarding the court trial and appeal, primary documents related to Mendez becoming part of the California framework, educational resources, and interviews with people who advocated for Mendez to be taught in K–12 classrooms. Findings Although Mendez was included in the California History-Social Science Framework, the version that was embraced was more about Brown v. Board of Education than Mendez or Latinx school segregation. To appeal to a larger audience, the Mendez story had to attach itself to an already celebrated and well-known event. This gave rise to the “Mexican American Brown ” interpretation that stretches the historical truth, exaggerating the connection between Brown and Mendez. Educational and curricular resources facilitated this process in three ways: (1) claiming that Mendez was the legal precursor to Brown; (2) fabricating Earl Warren's participation in Mendez; and (3) exaggerating the role that Thurgood Marshall and the NAACP had in Mendez. Historical actors were then used to corroborate the Mexican American Brown story. This article ends with analysis of what is lost when Mendez is represented in the California framework as the Mexican American Brown. Conclusions Mendez v. Westminster's addition to the California framework signifies that it is an event worth learning. Yet, it is Mendez's relationship to Brown that made it worthy. This leads to an “illusion of inclusion,” which gives the impression that Mexican Americans are being incorporated into the curriculum but actually fails to represent their unique experiences. Historical events that validate the stories of Latinx communities are still very much missing from curricular materials.

Air Quality Impact of the Northern California Camp Fire of November 2018

The Northern California Camp Fire that took place in November 2018 was one of the most damaging environmental events in California history. Here, we analyze ground-based station observations of airborne particulate matter that has a diameter

Intimacy and Family in the California Borderlands

Using personal and family letters written between 1876 and 1896, this article charts the life of a post-conquest Californiana, Josefa del Valle Forster (1861–1943). It argues that the industrial and commercial development that took place in Southern California after 1850 reconfigured family relationships and gender dynamics, shifting understandings of intimacies for del Valle Forster. This discussion of an era and community often overlooked in California history contributes to a fuller picture of how Californianas experienced the late nineteenth century, and it highlights the significance of letters as a historical source for understanding how individuals and families negotiated the transformations wrought by war and conquest.

“The Yankees, Señor General, Are Not Like Us:” Vallejo, Bancroft, and the Construction of California History

This article explores the relationship between Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo and Hubert Howe Bancroft. Vallejo was one of the most important contributors to Bancroft’s massive History of California. He entrusted to Bancroft thirty-six volumes of primary source documents and his own five-volume manuscript on California history. He also encouraged other Californios to share their own family documents with Bancroft and to provide oral histories of the Mexican era. Vallejo believed that he was working in partnership with Bancroft, who would in turn compose a sensitive and community-based account of pre-U.S. California. But Vallejo was deeply upset about Bancroft’s finished product, which he believed deliberately suppressed the Hispanic contribution. The conflict between Vallejo and Bancroft lays bare a series of issues revolving around inclusion, omission, and the nature of historical authority that have remained crucial in the construction of Western history.

The 2018 Camp Fire: Meteorological Analysis Using In Situ Observations and Numerical Simulations

The November 2018 Camp Fire quickly became the deadliest and most destructive wildfire in California history. In this case study, we investigate the contribution of meteorological conditions and, in particular, a downslope windstorm that occurred during the 2018 Camp Fire. Dry seasonal conditions prior to ignition led to 100-h fuel moisture contents in the region to reach record low levels. Meteorological observations were primarily made from a number of remote automatic weather stations and a mobile scanning Doppler lidar deployed to the fire on 8 November 2018. Additionally, gridded operational forecast models and high-resolution meteorological simulations were synthesized in the analysis to provide context for the meteorological observations and structure of the downslope windstorm. Results show that this event was associated with mid-level anti-cyclonic Rossby wave breaking likely caused by cold air advection aloft. An inverted surface trough over central California created a pressure gradient which likely enhanced the downslope winds. Sustained surface winds between 3–6 m s−1 were observed with gusts of over 25 m s−1 while winds above the surface were associated with an intermittent low-level jet. The meteorological conditions of the event were well forecasted, and the severity of the fire was not surprising given the fire danger potential for that day. However, use of surface networks alone do not provide adequate observations for understanding downslope windstorm events and their impact on fire spread. Fire management operations may benefit from the use of operational wind profilers to better understand the evolution of downslope windstorms and other fire weather phenomena that are poorly understood and observed.

The Northern California Wildfires of 8–9 October 2017: The Role of a Major Downslope Wind Event

A series of large wildfires began over the terrain north of San Francisco, California, during the evening of 8 October 2017 and spread across nearly 250,000 acres, including areas near the towns of Santa Rosa and Napa. These “Wine Country” wildfires were the most destructive in California history, with 44 deaths; the loss of 9,000 buildings; damage to approximately 21,000 structures; $10 billion of insured losses; and substantially greater total economic loss.This paper describes the synoptic and mesoscale conditions that were associated with the wildfires, with strong, easterly “Diablo” winds playing a central role in both initiating and supporting the fires. The climatological conditions preceding the fires are reviewed, including near-normal precipitation and above-normal temperatures during the summer, as well as much above-normal precipitation the previous winter, which led to abundant dry grass that provided fuel for the wind-driven fires.High-resolution meteorological modeling realistically simulated the strong winds associated with this event. Importantly, operational mesoscale forecast models provided excellent forecasts of the high winds several days in advance. It appears that a vulnerable power system, urbanization of fire-prone areas, flammable invasive species, and poor communication of dangerous conditions contributed to this catastrophic event. The potential for mitigating or preventing such destructive wildfires using skillful weather prediction is examined, as well as the possible role of global warming.