Editor's Introduction w&c #44

The first issue of The Secret Alameda was an 18-page, hand-stapled xerox edition of 80 copies. I’d recently moved from Oakland to the island community of Alameda. It was 1990, and era of desk-top publishing had arrived. One morning, in a meeting of our little art group, I looked around and said “None of us are going to get anywhere just making art. We need to do something else, too, like start a magazine.” And without missing a beat, one of the artists, Dickson Schneider, said, “Why don’t you start one, Richard?” 

I was 47 years old and had travelled a road of turns and switchbacks. I had a BA in Philosophy and a recent MA in Clinical Psychology. Was I going to become a psychotherapist? It wasn’t my aim. After getting the degree, I dreamed of two pairs of shoes—one sturdy and conventional and the other quietly unique. 

Which would I choose? I had a choice to make.

My art pursuits over the years had taken place outside of academia, including 15 years of photography. But what I’d found there shone most brightly and, by the time I’d gotten home from our art group that morning, the idea of starting a magazine had grown into a compelling impulse. 

A number of buried threads had converged in that moment. I had a Mac Plus. My wife, Rue Harrison—part of our group—was using Pagemaker and an H-P scanner in her work at the SF Maritime Museum. A year earlier, I’d attended a seminar on art publishing.

But perhaps most importantly, I’d actually moved to that island community. And within hours, I realized that everything needed to start a magazine was already in place except know-how. But why let that stop us? We were artists, right? 

In my years with a camera, I’d encountered the art world and it was nothing like I’d imagined. The spiritual aspirations of Kandinsky and others at the turn of the 20th century—still partly intact among Abstract Expressionists—had evaporated. By 1990 artists found themselves competing for a back seat in the windowless bus of Postmodern theorizing. But how could anyone in their right mind want a seat there? 

Driving through Oakland’s Webster St. tunnel beneath the estuary into Alameda is still a time warp, and was more so in 1990—a passage into a quiet community of Victorian homes that reminded me of the small towns of my childhood in Pennsylvania and West Virginia. 

Looking back, I see how two things were essential in what felt like a spontaneous decision to start the magazine. One was the containment and separation that goes with living on an island. The second, I’m only now realizing, was a childhood story my father told me. A naval aviator, towards the end of WWII, he found himself at the Alameda Naval Air Station waiting for a flight east to get new orders. When it came, an admiral was on  board. Did he have any news of how the war was going? In response, he would only say, “Remember these words: Manhattan Project.” 

My father, a Leiutenant Colonel, soon returned to civilian life to study mining engineering. From a life at sea and in the air, he was soon working in coal mines. I remember living in a tiny mining village along an Appalachian creek. Coming home from work, my father’s face would be black with coal dust. Seven years was enough. In 1955 he drove the family out Route 66 to a life 35 miles east of LA. What’s taken so long to understand, I now feel with gratitude beyond words.  

And somehow the magazine, and this issue particularly, has been mined unwittingly from such buried influences dimly recognized. May it bring some light and warmth.

The Secret Alameda

In that first issue, I wrote: There are many things we don’t know about the secret alameda. One of the most obvious is that we don’t know where it is, nor do we know the identities of its inhabitants. This is a beginning, we hope, of making some contacts. It was sincere. But TSA’s eight issues also became a joyous exercise in putting a delayed adolesence to bed. Our unscripted journey of initation was also a romp filled with high-jinks and unapologetic fun. 

Then, in 1998, TSA became works & conversations. The moment had come to drop the send-ups and turn directly to publishing work in which one could feel a flicker, at least, of the true light from the heart.

I’m reminded of what Jacob Needleman said about art in one of our conversations: “There’s an aspect of gift. I feel life. I feel connected to another kind of life. 

I think what we’re talking about is, what is a salvational influence in society? What can help? It always starts with a small group. There are films sometimes that really touch something, books that sometimes help people, give them hope. I think what art can do is give hope. Real hope.” It’s how I feel about the work gathered here, and I’m sure Jacob would agree.  

Welcome to issue #44 —R. Whittaker