Stetson and Sutterfield perform "The Tramp and the Roughrider" at Pacific

On November 3, Muir impersonator and renowned Yosemite National Park actor Lee Stetson, was joined by Hawaii-based actor/producer/director, Alan Sutterfield, for a special presentation at Pacific: "The Tramp and the Roughrider." The two-man performance in Pacific Theater before a crowd of around seventy-five focused on Muir and Teddy Roosevelt's camping trip in Yosemite National Park in 1903. Original correspondence between Muir and Roosevelt in the John Muir Papers at Pacific was brought out of the archives by Holt Atherton Special Collections Director Shan Sutton and Archivist Michael Wurtz to show the audience the communication that led to this pivotal meeting of these two giants of the Progressive Conservation Movement. Roosevelt requested the camp out in May, 1903, forcing Muir to delay a long-planned World Tour for a month. The postponement proved worth every minute with Roosevelt. Although both leaders were strong-headed and had sharp disagreements on issues such as hunting, animal rights, and the management of public forests, for several days in Yosemite they came to agree that public lands were in serious need of federal protection. At the time, only five national parks and one small wildlife refuge in Florida had been designated by Congress and the nation lacked a national "Park" service. Roosevelt left the camping trip at Glacier Point convinced that Muir was correct. By the end of Roosevelt's presidency, the national forest system was expanded to nearly 200 million acres, five additional national parks were added, and sixty-five wildlife preserves had been designated by Congress. And in 1916, the nation gained a National Park Service within the Department of the Interior.

Mark Raddatz returns to Pacific to perform for Mentor Seminar Students

On November 18, Shakespearean actor and John Muir impersonator, Mark Raddatz, returned to Pacific to perform "Watch, Pray, and Fight!" before an audience of freshmen and their instructors in Mentor I Seminar. Sponsored by General Education and Muir Center, over six hundred people attended the 8:00 AM morning performance in Faye Spanos Concert Hall. A second group of around 500 were present at the second show at 12:30 PM. Raddatz's presentation focused on the battle over Hetch Hetchy Valley between 1908 and 1913, a fight that Muir lost, but one that he believed to his dying day that he was morally bound to lead and ethically right in his uncompromising views. The city of San Francisco argued that they desperately needed a reservoir to prevent another disaster like the San Francisco fire that followed the earthquake of 1906. Muir spent years fighting the development and thought that he would convince Congress to deny San Francisco the dam on the basis of the central argument that Hetch Hetchy is a miniature Yosemite, just as grand in its geologic and water features and just as beautiful and fragile in its meadows, flora, and Tuolomne River valley floor. The passage by Congress of the Raker Act in 1913 by a slim margin authorized the construction of the O'Shaughnessay Dam, the second largest civil engineering project of its day after the Panama Canal. Most historians believe this loss broke Muir's health, leading to his death in 1914.

Following the presentation, Raddatz fielded questions from students and faculty, connecting his lifetime of interest in John Muir's philosophies with contemporary environmental issues. Raddatz lives in College Place, Washington, after a successful career portraying characters ranging from King Arthur in Camelot, Henry Higgins in My Fair Lady, Jud in Oklahoma, Baptista in Taming of the Shrew, Seyton in Macbeth, and King Lear. Muir Center plans to bring Raddatz back annually to meet the Mentor Seminar freshmen, who read several writings by John Muir including his famous expose, "The Hetch Hetchy Valley," first published in the Sierra Club Bulletin in 1908.