O.C. Fair, citrus book & Neutra/Mariners update

I took today's images on Saturday at the Orange County Fair. The first photo shows the Archives/Clerk-Recorder's booth in the Orange County Building (Building #16), which will be there through this week. Information about the County Archives is available, historic photos are on display, and you can have your own photo taken pretending to be Walter and/or Cordelia Knott in a covered wagon.

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The second photo shows the Fair's Administration Building, which is one of the few remaining structures from the Santa Ana Army Air Base. Three cheers for adaptive re-use!

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John Adams' new book, Then and Now: The Vanishing Orange in Southern California, should be available in the next week or two. Although it leans heavily toward tales of Rialto, it sounds like it will also give a good general "look back at orange growing and orange growing towns in Southern California in the first half of the 20th Century." (I particularly like that his second chapter is titled, "OSHA Would Have Had a Fit.") The book is based on Adams' "interviews with hundreds of old timers during the past 20 years, including many experts from Riverside's Citrus Experiment Station." He has also drawn on his "own experiences as a third-generation Southern California orange grower." (Note: No, this is not the John Adams of OCPL fame.)

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Mariners Medical Arts Center Update: Richard Neutra's son and partner, Dion Neutra, (a renown architect in his own right,) emailed a lengthy thank you note to everyone involved in the preservation effort thus far. After thanking everyone and offering some preservation advice, he wrote:

"I know my dad would be heartened to realize, in this instance, how much our good works have come to be appreciated. We called our building ‘Medical Arts’ for a reason; we hoped it would epitomize how medicine might one day be practiced on a broader scale. We must always keep clear that extant physical examples like this are disappearing fast and furiously including our work in Orange County. Witness the loss of the Police Building [in Santa Ana]; the La Veta Medical building; our two residences in Balboa Island, the water features at the Courthouse; other elements there that have been neglected; you name it. Also our house in La Habra, school work at Alamitos School District, the Buena Park Swim Stadium, and even my library at Huntington Beach where I worry about further desecration. What about Orange Coast [College]; any one looking out for those examples?"

Who wants to tell him that his father's work at OCC has also been disappearing in recent years?