A few years ago, as my old mentor John Morearty was dying, he named me one of his two literary executors. We (and John's widow) had some other commitments to finish before we could start making real headway on this work, but this summer we all got together and got started. I spent a few weeks in Stockton and we sorted papers and made plans. Jeanne and I aim to make his essays, poems, syllabi, and research available on a comprehensive website (including both photographic scans of documents and the text of those documents), and to editorially select some of his writings to turn into one or more books.

It looks like the VHS tapes of his cable access TV show are in good enough condition that we don't have to go through a preservation process, and can instead have the Internet Archive digitize and post them directly. Here's the John Morearty video archive at archive.org. It includes a description that John wrote:

My TV documentaries shine the light on people who are doing precious work in this valley: cleansing the waters, farming renewably and profitably, restoring the cities, rescuing addicts with tough love, teaching the young who are in danger of going astray. My microphone hears public officials, millionaire developers, physician acupuncturists, university professors, chicken farmers, judges, ex-cons, volunteer moms, teachers and their students, old soldiers, young kids. Wisdom is where you find it; as Gandhi says, every person's life experience teaches them something that others need to hear.

"Talking It Through" points to problems and analyzes them, and portrays creative solutions which are happening right now. But the camera also savors the beautiful people and places around us, imperiled though they be. Human beings do not live by good action plans alone. We are moved to action by delight in beauty, and the hope of more of it. I try to evoke delight and hope, so viewers will be moved to act.

So far it contains one video, the test tape that Internet Archive digitized first: a recording of a Martin Luther King, Jr. Day celebration in Lodi, California on January 15, 2002. John's in there, around 10:00 to 11:30.

If all goes well, that video collection will grow to a few hundred recordings: independent community media, amplifying voices that often get silenced. I'm grateful that I can help preserve the legacy of an activist who mentored me and who modeled values I still try to live by.

Along the way I am becoming an amateur archivist. I don't know how long this project will take, and I will try to blog interesting bits along the way.