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Sonoma County, a diverse county of over one million acres is famed for its agriculture industry and recreation boasting a booming economy and a unique lifestyle for its citizens described by the famed Luther Burbank as the chosen spot of all the earth. Sonoma County is the place

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to live work and play as we move into the 21st century. Led by the forward looking philosophy of its governing bodies. Sonoma County's 340,000 residents are a harmonious, successful blend of ethnic and economic backgrounds. We invite you to take a closer look at Sonoma County in

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the nineties with your host Rich McGlinchey, How you doing everybody? Welcome to another edition of Sonoma County in the 90s on location at our beautiful Sonoma County fairgrounds. This is a very special edition I think and I certainly hope you'll agree. Recently we talked to a

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few gentlemen who were members of a group called broadcast legends and you enjoyed that and told us you did, we have two other members of the broadcast legend, but these two women are really famed for being print legends and be talking to dale, a barren but

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you know if you from up this way and I suppose our audiences as the columnist for the press democrat has been for a long time and on the right of the screen as Merlin Zellerbach and Merlin has a list of credentials, the whole page long which

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I can't read, but she is noted for two things specifically. She was the the author if you will, or the columnist writing y fair City in the san Francisco chronicle for a 23 year period when a lot of awards for that column. She has also written

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nine books, authored three books. I know, is it more about, well I was the editor of that, I wasn't the author really, technically, yes, I want to get people to know both of you just a little bit if I can gay, you're known throughout our county

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certainly for your column, which is extremely popular, well read and been there for quite a number of years. You can tell us about that a little bit later, but I don't think too many of the audience know about gail american and the individual. So tell us

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about where did you come from? What did you do? Well I, I came from, I was born in humboldt County in southern in Scotia actually when the pacific lumber company town when there, when there was a hospital, there is still a lumber town and uh I

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moved from southern humboldt to Sonoma when I was 14 years old and um went to santa rosa Junior College was Sonoma High school, santa rosa junior College and uh to the university of California Berkeley and started working at the press democrat summers when I was still

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in college and I had worked at the Sonoma index tribune when I was in high school for bob lynch. So I've been fiddling around newspapers actually, I worked for a little newspaper called the Valley of the Moon Review in Boy Springs um for for Brent Payne

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and jerry ferrara before that. So I've been fooling around with newspapers in Sonoma County for um a long time, about 45 years. And he went to santa rosa Junior College. And you met a dashing fellow there? Well actually I, yeah, I actually met john the dashing

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fellow my husband I met at the press democrat actually because he's a little bit older than I was and he was all through J. C. When he was a photographer. That's right, he was chief photographer. And uh and then you, well first of all, look at

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you Time wise for the press Democrat. When did you begin working with the press Democrat? I began working for the press Democrat in the summer of 1955 when I was still in college and I came to work for them full time in 1950 for in in

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the summer I'm sorry summer of 57 when I grab And you were sort of a general service reporter. General assignment. I know because my wife was working to county out there, used to cover the county. I used to bounce around on all kinds of uh when

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did you start the columns? The first column was in November of 1959. But I was, well Scott Thurber had been our columnist, you may remember and he had moved on to the chronicle and uh that we were without a column and they devised a notion that

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anybody who was on the staff who wanted to write a column could do it. They called it reserved for, you may remember it had the little sign like you put on a table restaurant restaurant and several of us bony salutes wrote columns and, and Aaron Epstein

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and Neil Leslie and Diane more and a lot of people who were around then and I submitted mine, I was wonderful, we got $3 a column in addition to our, in addition to ourselves, hey, it was great, it should have been a clue really, but uh,

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it was and, and I just generally sort of, I it came that I was writing more of them than other people, so that When my first child was born and I left my reporting job, um they asked me if I would continue writing a column, just

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a column and they upped the ante to $6 Apollo, I think actually it worked up to to be a half time job until um when I worked at home and then I quit in 1970. And in 74 I came back at their request and I came

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back as a full time employee and just a columnist that's right, as you know, ladies and gentlemen in the audience up here, this column is very widely read when she does a good column, she gets accolades from everywhere and when she does and she hears from

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everyone. Both. Both. If I just got Accolades, I wouldn't be writing anything. Get married after we got married in 1958 58. Incidentally was the photographer for the Oak Leaf when I was the editor of way back before that. And we've been friends ever since. Let's get

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over here. Dear, first of all, where do you come from? Where you go to school and maybe what got you into this first of all? Where are you from? Where I was born? In san Francisco. Yes, I'm a rare native. Yeah, I went to Lowell High

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School in stanford. Sorry about that Berkeley graduate the arrival here. Yes. And I never, I majored in psychology. I never expected to get into this kind of business, but um I wrote some articles and very similar to what happened to you The Chronicle had a space

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they needed to fill on the editorial page. Under the book editor Bill Hogan and Scott Newhall was the editor at that time and he was very big on poking fun at everybody. He had Mccabe to poke fun at sports and hoppy to art hoppy to poke

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fun at politics. And um I was hired to quote poke a gentle needle unquote at society And um sometimes I poked a little too hard and I heard about it quite often in fact, but it was fun. That was in 1962 and I stayed until 1985.

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And um I had a contract with ballantine to write four novels. And I was writing for town and country. I had about five articles do for them and something had to give. And I decided writing novels, writing books was more fun to jump in here. You

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major in psychology, what did you learn to get into journalism? I mean, I majored in psychology and I got interested in in some of the things I was finding out, and I sort of wrote a novel around it. And one day I found myself seated next

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to the doubleday editor at dinner and my husband said, tell him about the book you're writing, tell him about the book you're writing. I said, no, I'm not a writer, but he called and he um he asked to see what I'd written and I said, no,

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no, no. And finally, of course I gave in and he agreed that I wasn't a writer, but um he said, use your background in psychology. Well, I don't know about that. Um and find a subject that interests you and and do a book around it because

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people today, uh even though that wasn't quite today, people want to be entertained, they want to be educated as well as entertained. So you have to have some substance, you can't just write a, You know, a romance novel without substance that expect to get published. So

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that's how I wrote my first book and that's how what really caught the eye of the 85. You, you ceased to write the column. I ceased to write the column and the letters are fun too. But people people generally don't write unless they're mad about something

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very few letters say great work. Well done. Don't you get letters? I'm telling you, you're glad you covered that subject or something. Because if you've done a favor for somebody well, a lot of times I know gail write something up here about if your old you

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remember this, if you're if you're really old remember that. I'm always the really old part, but I get more people commenting about that. That's really great. They wish you'd really do more of that. But I mean that's something you have to do. You use up a

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lot of them when you do one column. Well, I think it's time for us to pause for a moment. Ladies and gentlemen, we'll be right back, we'll be talking to jay lebaron and merlin back to print legends. But first this message, what happens when you combine

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the world's finest german hops with rare Canadian malted barley and add the cool clear waters of a shimmering spring fed lake. How about big trouble. Welcome back to this edition of Sonoma County in the nineties and it's really a very special edition. We're doing this on

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location here in our beautiful Sonoma County Fair amount. We're talking to two women that I am privileged to say are friends of mine, but they're also print legends talking to gala Baron who probably recognized as the columnist for the press democrat and Merlin Zellerbach, who I'm

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sure most of you recognized as the former columnist for the san Francisco Chronicle when she wrote My Fair City for about 23 years, Merlin. What's a nice girl like you who usually writes novels writing a book on allergies? Well, I'm allergic to start to. Yes, I

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have some interest. No, no. 14 years ago I wrote a book on allergies because I'm allergic to pollens and grasses and molds and dust and animal fur and all the usual things. But 14 years ago I went to a new type of allergist who is called

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a clinical Ecologist today. They call themselves environmental allergies. And he had a whole new way of approaching the problem and he believed that allergies are not just confined to dust and pollens and such. Uh, but the chemicals in the environment formaldehyde perfume, second hand smoke and

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such uh, contribute greatly to allergies and allergy symptoms. Anyway, he had a whole new approach and new treatment and new diagnostic methods. So I and I had never heard of them. So I suggested we write a book together, which we did. And it was called the

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type one, type two allergy relief program and was based on the premise that there are two different types of allergies. The conventional like me and the environmental and what the differences were and the editor in that book came to me about two years ago and wanted

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an update and that's why I wrote this book. I had written two previous medical books with doctors and I learned that when you write a book with a doctor, you do all the work and they get all the credit. So I said I'm going to do

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this one by myself and I did, I had a doctor look it over for multiple errors but I did it myself. I I remiss I had a copy of her book and I do not have it here to show you it is the allergy source book.

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It's a little house hardcover and it's my Merlin Zellerbach period. Yes, looked over by a doctor april april end of april moving I'm the last one to know. I assume so. I saw somebody really well. It went back for a second printing but that doesn't mean

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terribly much right over here gay. I don't remember how many years ago you wrote. I know you said you didn't write, you said you edited but I still wrote it, but I'm not the author wild about whatever that was in 1962. And that was, it's a

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survey history of of Sonoma County in the 19th century and it was written by Harvey, I mean the authors of Harvey Hanson and and jean miller and it came about because Harvey who the late Harvey Hansen who was a friend of mine and he taught history

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at santa rosa Junior College. Uh He and and jean who had been a student of his had had done a lot of research on the various topics in the book and then came down to write it and discovered that right, writing a book is not necessarily

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the same thing as doing the research. So I always like to tease Harvey and say that he brought it to me in a cardboard box and said, here do something with this. So we all, we did it as a project and and I wrote I did

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the writing and we put john worked on the photos along with Beth Winter and we put together a really handsome little book which was printed by Lawton Kennedy who was san Francisco art printer and that has made it special, it's out of print. There's a second

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printing. And jean miller who had the copyright because Harvey had had died um just recently gave the copyright to the Sonoma County Museum. So they have the rights now to reprint that book which is a really nice thing. That's great. Sounds great. Yeah, I have a

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copy. I have a copy. You didn't bring that with you either, did you? I said you didn't bring that with you either, traveled. Yeah I traveled very light. Why why did you get into the newspaper? I've always been I've always been interested in in in the

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newspaper. My older brother was a journalist and he was 18 years older than I was. So that at the time that I was growing up, he was the sports editor of the stars and stripes in Europe and he was leading a pretty glamorous life. He was

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writing letters home, going to the Olympics and there to this and here to that and I thought that sounded and I think, I mean I believe right or wrong that that people have a predilection to music or, or math or words and I've always been a

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word person, I think I would, you know, I'm just better at at words and always have been and I think that comes out just as soon as you learn to read. And um I've I've never, I actually majored in english and minored in history at Berkeley,

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um I wasn't a journalism major and I went was going to be a teacher, but um the job opened up at the press democrat, so I stayed on and never have traveled as much as my brother, but you said once you talk to me two or

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three years ago and one of the things you, well first I asked the question, what do you think it takes for a young person to become either a good reporter or a good journalist and your first remark was curiosity. That's right, You have to really, oh

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yes, you have to really want to know about everything that's around you and want to tell people about it and have the ability to to do that in a straightforward manner or you're not gonna, you can't, you can teach people to write, but you can't teach

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people the gift of writing at least I don't think so. That's true. I agree. You can teach the fundamentals. What what do you think a young person would need in order to be a reporter or a journalist? I have five commandments. The first one is to

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read elements of style, which is, you know, is the writers, writers strunk and white and into it has such suggestions as omit unnecessary words. Yes. And eliminate cliches and that sort of thing. So that's number one and prerequisite prerequisite for anybody I think uh, and of

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course to absorb and apply these suggestions. Um, Number two is to get rid of your typewriter or your lined legal pad and get a word processor or a computer. Not only for your own sake, because it does take all the drudgery out of writing, I find,

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but also because editors are different today and we have passed the time when you could hand in a type written copy, all scribbled over with, you know, read notes and little arrows. And such editors today demand clean copy and probably a disk and um, so you,

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if you're not computer literate, you're, you're not gonna get anywhere. You're not going to publish three is to write every day and don't wait until the muse hits. You don't wait until you feel inspired or until something happens that you want to write about. You have

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to discipline yourself to write every day. Four is not to get discouraged by rejection slips or what other people tell you or etcetera. Five is when you're ready to find an agent, because I don't think you're going to get very far in. Maybe, maybe we're not

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talking about journalism so much. We're talking more about magazine and book publishing. But um, very few publishers today, we'll look at anything that comes in over the transom they want. There's just too much out there. And so if you have an agent and agents are hard

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to find and hard to get. But you should look for one immediately. When you're thinking first, thinking about publishing very, very good points. Gonna pause right here for another message, after which we'll be back. We'll talk more with Kayla Barron and Merlin. But first you listen

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to this very important message. I'm Olympia Dukakis and I want to talk to you about osteoporosis, a disease that devastates women. Osteoporosis progresses silently without symptoms until one day, even the most ordinary activity results in a broken hip or spinal fracture, ending our careers our independence,

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our futures, you can prevent osteoporosis. If you take action now, osteoporosis is something you can live very well without Welcome back to this very special edition of Sonoma County in the nineties were bringing in this edition from the beautiful Sonoma County fairgrounds and setting is really

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pretty here we're talking to to print legends. Talking to gala Baron who has been columnist for the press democrat most of you probably read her for many years. We also talking to Merlot Zellerbach, who for 23 years was the san Francisco chronicle columnist, My Fair city

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uh widely widely read article. We were talking to these folks about how they got into the business and what they feel is important for you. People, young people that might want to get in a couple of other things that I think might be interesting. We got

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maybe 56 minutes left. What are some of the early things that happened to you in journalism that might be amusing or you learn something from? Well that's totally different questions I think that, that, that one of the things that you know, when you look back on

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now that we're legends, we can look back. Uh one of the important things to me that I remember is how my business, how the journalism and many other careers have changed in the 40 years or so. Uh, I was, you know, when I first started at

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the press democrat and it was like every other newspaper in the United States on the news desk on city side as we say, there was one woman and one woman only. We have the token woman. It was, it was jane Conan at the chronicle was it

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was um jane cohen at the called bullet Caroline chronicle. You know, everybody had their own and and for a long time here it was Phyllis sidekick who was a city government reporter. And Phyllis had left when I started working summers. And and I don't think I

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would have been hired if Phyllis had still been there. I think that there was not room at that point for more than one woman per city side. And they were to do what women kind of stories sob sister kind of stories. You know, the child caught

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in the well, you know, we weren't doing the, the tough stuff. I remember once when I was reported getting a tip from, from somebody in the sheriff's office that they were going, the deputies were going up dry creek to rate is still, there was somebody still,

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that was not prohibition, I want to make that clear, but somebody still had an illegal still up there and I was, they would, I was to meet them and they would take me with them and I could write a story and I remember going out and

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telling the boss telling Volkers and he said that's not a job for you and he sent money and I was really ticked. It was my my story. So I think that's the big difference. Now there are almost as many women as men in our city editor

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is a woman. Okay, What do you think? Well, we were talking about letters that reminded me of when I just started out, um as you know, news newspapers have a headline writer who maybe you write your own captions, you do all right, give her a halo.

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I didn't um, and he reads the news stories of the columns and tries to distill the essence into an eye grabbing caption. Well, I had written a story about pigeons in Union Square and I didn't really put them down. I just said I didn't think they

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did much to enhance the beauty of Union Square. And the caption writer wrote Why I Hate loathe and despise pigeons. So of course the reaction was incredible. And every cat dog or pet lover, every mother in town wrote the Chronicle. There were canceled subscriptions, they called

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the publisher. But the most memorable hate letter of all was one that ended, quote. I plan to make sure that you never leave this world alive unquote. Anyway, another yes, I won't forget that. Another very quick story was um, shortly after that I interviewed a very

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sweet young man who had been writing unpublished historical novels for many years. Finally, he put a little sex into one of the books and it got published. So he came to me and I interviewed him and I wrote that he I thought it was pretty good

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the book and I wrote that he had the potential to become a fine writer. Well, he figured if a little sex was good, a lot of sex was better. And he went on to write the most God awful slime ever to use off a typewriter. But

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they're on the flyleaf of every book was my name in Big Letters and the quote, a fine writer, unquote. Oh, how you'd like to take those words back a couple of minutes left to us. Would you change this, your background? Uh, if you would start all

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over again, would I do it differently? Would would you choose a different for you? You know, know, I love to write, I'm thrilled. I'm happy. I love doing it. How about you gave, you know, I wrote, you know, my background, I wrote, that's a different matter

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program back on uh papers I'm trying to say. And and a little daily paper for a long time and especially wrote sports. And I never forget gay and I were giving the name to joe Hoffman's picture called. We called it the Race of the century. Eventually

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we, we jointly suggested that, but I wrote a makeup column and make believe column of how we arrived at the six horses in his, in his painting. And in each one I had to have the horse nip or edge or the horse slipped by or eat

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out. And she said, you notice he doesn't say one anywhere in the next, well, that's journalism. We have a few seconds. What are your plans for the future? Yeah, I'm working on a book. You're working on a book right now. Yeah, I got rejected by my

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publisher, Random House. He said write it over and come back to us. So I'm writing it over. Are you working? Oh no, you did two magnificent books, santa rosa, 19th Century Town and 2020 20. Yeah, you're right about that too. Yeah. Incidentally, if you don't know

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this, Lebaron is one of our foremost historians and she is called upon and used as a reference for anybody who's trying to find out anything it seems like about I know she's helped me 100 times. What about your historian? You remember them? Oh sure of course.

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And the historical society. No, no, not right now. And I don't know that I will ever do another. You know, people say what about the third volume? And I don't think so. I think you have to have 30 years perspective and I won't do it. And

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I was just told that we're out of time. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. All right, ladies and gentlemen, we're talking to marla Zellerbach, former audit columnist in san Francisco, my Fair city 23 years gala Baron who has been a columnist for the press democrat forever.

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My name is I'll be back in the next week with other members, fascinating members of Sonoma County or nearby communities until then, so long. Good luck, good health, each and every one of you.