In celebration and acknowledgement of the people who fired this watershed movement in local history a half-century ago, KZYX, Mendocino County Public Broadcasting, is now airing “Promise of Paradise: Back to the Land Oral Histories of Mendocino County.” The locally produced weekly program showcases the first-hand stories of dozens of the Mendocino County residents who came to the area with that storied wave of dreamers and builders.
The half-hour show airs at 3:30 pm every Thursday, and is archived on the station’s Jukebox feature, found online via www.kxyz.org. Now coming up on its 30th anniversary, listener supported KZYX broadcasts music, news, and public affairs programming across the length and breadth of Mendocino County, and into Lake County. The station is the region’s primary NPR affiliate.
“Promise of Paradise” is the result of a labor of love by producers Kate Magruder, a well-known local historian, actor and director, and radio/print journalist Sarah Reith, a KZYX regular who also produced station’s recent series on homelessness, “A Place to Call Home.” Over the past several months, Magruder and Reith, along with KZYX program director Alice Woelfle, conducted interview sessions in locations around the county, including the Elk Community Center and the Grace Hudson Museum in Ukiah. Together, they recorded the stories of approximately 75 back-to-the-landers.
Magruder says that as she thought about the idea, it began to resonate more strongly.
In the meantime, Reith was looking for a new endeavor to take on. She, too, thought of an oral history project. Through contacts in the arts community, Reith and Magruder, as they put it, “found each other.” Once they had the partnership with KZYX in place, the pair, along with Woelfle, began writing grants, eventually receiving support from the National Endowment for the Humanities, California Humanities, the Arts Council of Mendocino County, the Judy Pruden Historical Preservation Fund of the Community Foundation of Mendocino County, the Mendocino Institute and the Grace Hudson Museum. Local author/historian Cal Winslow has been an important advisor on the project.
Finally, it was time to stop planning the project and to start interviewing. A professional radio documentary maker advised them to create highly produced, themed segments with several people interviewed together. The pair discarded that idea, however, in favor of a more informal approach, interviewing people one at a time, and letting each session, each experience, stand on its own.
“Promise of Paradise,” now airing Thursdays at 3:30 pm on KZYX, offers a detailed look into a storied time in Mendocino County history through the first-hand perspectives of the people who lived through it.
For more information about “Promise of Paradise,” please contact Kate Magruder at katemag@pacific.net. For more information about KZYX, please contact Alice Woelfle, at pd@kzyx.org.
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