Proles
Barry Bergman reads from his new book, PROLES, in an event hosted by Book Passage for this event organized by the Left Coast Writers®
Saturday, November 8th — 2pm
Book Passage-Corte Madera|| 51 Tamal Vista Dr. Corte Madera ||
PROLES themes resonate today: Simon Bussbaum’s a film junkie without a cause, a spiritual drifter looking for light in a long-ago time of social tensions, cultural turmoil, political paranoia, and criminal conspiracies in high places.
Inspired by a McCarthy-era reenactment of a triumphant miners’ strike–and freshly liberated from Nixon’s draft—he flees Queens for the Arizona desert, eager to join American workers’ march to the promised land of liberty and justice for all.
But his working-class hero’s journey veers wildly off-script. Instead of the “marvelous adventure” trumpeted by his new proletarian bedfellows, he tumbles headlong into a long, hot summer of hard labor, toxic masculinity, unrequited love, and unexpected insights into the power—and perils—of myth.
“A disturbingly topical tale about a young spiritual drifter (Simon Bussbaum), thrown in with a group of disenfranchised males brutalized by cultural, educational, personal, and political neglect. “Proles” refers, of course, to “proletariat” and that’s not the only connection to “1984”, Orwell’s brilliant and now-we-can-say prescient masterpiece.
Joan Virginia Allen doesn’t just talk about dynamic aging—she lives it. As a retired elder law and estate planning attorney turned dynamic aging life coach, memoirist, and publisher of the online “Dynamic Aging 4 Life Magazine,” Joan is committed to changing the narrative around aging.
biomechanist Katy Bowman—a groundbreaking work that has helped people worldwide to experience greater physical mobility and vitality as they age.
Laurie McAndish King is an award-winning travel writer and photographer with an eye for the quirky. Her subjects include 20-foot-long Australian earthworms, an Ivy League astrophysicist’s explanation of how flying saucers are powered, and finding the perfect site for watching eagle sex. King’s essays and photography have appeared in Smithsonian magazine, the Washington Post, the San Francisco Chronicle Magazine, Travelers’ Tales’ The Best Women’s Travel Writing, Lonely Planet’s The Kindness of Strangers, and other magazines and literary anthologies. Her three books of travel essays—insightful, poignant and often quite funny—are available from Book Passage: 
Join us as we celebrate the life and work of writer, traveler and centenarian Ethel Mussen, who passed away this year, a few years ahead of her 104th birthday. Some of us had the pleasure of her friendship, of knowing and traveling the world with her. Many of us have been delighted by Ethel’s travel tales published in the Wanderland Writers anthologies and elsewhere.
We have fond memories of Ethel Mussen, the world-traveling centenarian who—when she wasn’t out and about sharing her life stories, her wisdom and her the wide-eyed enthusiasm for ideas, people, places, good works and life in general— lived high on a hill above Berkeley.
our lives. Brilliant. Highly recommended.” 
found dead under the Golden Gate Bridge, an apparent suicide, she wrestles with a storm of sadness, guilt, and confusion. Haunted by her failure to prevent this tragedy, she’s determined to understand what went wrong.
Cyn Lubow, LMFT is a psychotherapist in private practice and an award-winning poet and filmmaker. Her professional articles have been reprinted and referenced in numerous publications on the web, and her “Transforming Depression into Empowerment” chapter is published in the anthology Goddess Shift: Women Leading for a Change. Cyn’s films have been distributed worldwide. Her feature documentary is included in the catalogs of dozens of college and university libraries. This is her first novel.
