Mojave Month is a month-long celebration of the desert ecology, history, culture, music, film, literature – and more – of our Mojave Desert home.
September
Saturday, September 14:
HOWLin’ at the Mountain literary presentations and open mic in the Greenleaf Library, 2 – 4 p.m., Free
A CMC/Mojave Sage Writers literary event. Local authors who will be reading: Greg Gilbert, Ruth Nolan, Kurt Schoeppner, Heather Heyns (aka Jayce Carter), John Sierpinski, and James DaSilva.
Howlin’ at the Mountain 2, 300 Quad, 5:30 – 10 p.m. FREE
Featuring an evening of live music under the desert stars, including Hunter & the Wick’d, and Orquesta Mamboson aka Mambop, 6-piece Latin band, in celebration of Hispanic Heritage Month. Come for live music, dancing on the grass, great Mexican food and margaritas – all under the desert stars at Copper Mountain College in Joshua Tree.
Jorge’s Cafe famous taco bar
CMC Foundation Margarita Garden
September 16, 6 p.m.: Mojave Mondays: Murder, Mayhem & the Mojave: A Night on the Old Spanish Trail. For Hispanic Heritage Month.
Join desert journalist/historian Steve Brown on a Mojave Monday for a journey down the Old Spanish Trail, from Santa Fe to Los Angeles, where we’ll learn about the Mexican city of LA in the early and mid-1800s, trade on the trail (including the slave trade), and the historical American figures who played a part in its use – and abuse. We’ll meet up with the Native chief and legendary horse thief, Walkara, New Mexico trader Antonio Armijo, John Fremont, Kit Carson, Jedidiah Smith, and others, with a special focus on the Old Spanish Trail from Mountain Springs, Nevada, through the Mojave Desert. The documentary Brown has written and produced for public broadcasting and the FNX (First Nations Experience) network, History and Change on the Old Spanish Trail: Mountain Springs to Salt Creek, will be screened as part of the presentation.
This presentation is a Paul and Jane Smith Desert History Lecture, part of CMC’s Mojave Month 2024, a month of desert-focused cultural programs.
Room 101, 100 Quad
Community Education: $5 Click HERE to reserve your spot.
September 23, 7 p.m.: Mojave Mondays: Screening: Of Bombs & Men, a rare public screening of a special cut of the award-winning project that began as “Scrapper,” a 2011 documentary about the scrapper community around Niland on the east side of the Salton Sea where residents make their living through gathering “scrap” from the bombing range in the Chocolate Mountains. The screening features an introduction and Q&A with the film’s writer and co-producer, Michael DiGregorio, desert journalist and former editor of Hustler magazine.
Bell Center Community Room, Free
Friday, September 27, 6 p.m.: An Evening with California Poet Laureate Lee Herrick at CMC
Join California Poet Laureate Lee Herrick for a reading and conversation with poet Ruth Nolan, and book signing.
Lee Herrick is the California Poet Laureate. He is the author of four books of poems: In Praise of Late Wonder: New and Selected Poems (Gunpowder Press, September 2024); Scar and Flower, finalist for the 2020 Northern California Book Award; Gardening Secrets of the Dead; and This Many Miles from Desire.
He is co-editor of The World I Leave You: Asian American Poets on Faith and Spirit (Orison Books 2020) and Afterlives: An AGNI Portfolio of Asian Adoptee Diaspora Writing. His poems appear widely, in The Poetry Foundation, Academy of American Poets, The Place That Inhabits Us: Poems from the San Francisco Bay Watershed, Indivisible: Poems of Social Justice with a foreword by Common, HERE: Poems for the Planet, with a foreword by the Dalai Lama, and Dear America: Letters of Hope, Habitat, Defiance, and Democracy, among others. Herrick serves on the advisory board of Terrain.org and Sixteen Rivers Press. He co-founded LitHop in Fresno. He has taught in Qingdao, China, and for Kundiman.
He was born in Daejeon, Korea and adopted as an infant. He lives with his family in Fresno, California and served as Fresno Poet Laureate from 2015-2017. He teaches at Fresno City College and in the low-residency MFA program at University of Nevada Reno at Lake Tahoe. He is the 10th California Poet Laureate, and the first Asian American to serve in the role.
Bell Center Community Room, Free
Photo by Curtis Messer.
September 30, 7 p.m.: Mojave Mondays: Screening: Mojave Phone Booth.
Thanks to director John Putch, Mojave Month at CMC is hosting a special screening of his 2006 film, Mojave Phone Booth. His feature film has a storyline that revolves around the legendary phone booth in the Mojave Desert that was eventually removed by National Park Service personnel at the Mojave National Preserve. The phone booth, originally erected for those working the cinder mines nearby, became an internet sensation, with people calling the booth from around the world hoping to speak with whomever happened to be out in the desert accepting calls.
Bell Center Community Room, Free
October
October 2: Hump Day History: The History of Hi Jolly and the Great
Camel Experiment in the Southwest (Community Education: $5)
This event has been cancelled due to illness.
Spend your hump day evening on a fast-paced romp through 19th century American history, the Ottoman Empire, Crimean War, Critical Race Theory, Manifest Destiny, slavery, the Civil War, and, of course, camels, and their legendary camel driver, Hi Jolly. Desert journalist/historian Steve Brown takes us back to the 1850s and spins the true story of legendary camel driver Hi Jolly and the “camel corps” of the U.S. Army during the years leading up to the Civil War and beyond, in a fast-paced tale of the Middle East meets the American West, and learn the truth of who – or what – is buried in Hi Jolly’s tomb!
This presentation is a Paul and Jane Smith Desert History Lecture, part of CMC’s Mojave Month 2024, a month of desert-focused cultural programs.
Room 225
Click HERE to reserve your spot.
Thursday, October 10, 5:30 p.m.: President’s Circle and reception for Paul & Jane Smith Desert Studies Collection donation to Greenleaf Library. Featuring a screening of The Real Desert (Southwest Stories) television episode filmed at the 29 Palms Inn, including interviews with Jane Smith, Pat Flanagan, and Vickie Waite.
Greenleaf Library, 300 Quad, Free
Saturday, October 12, Mojave Resource Fair and Mojave Makers Market, 10 a.m. – 5 p.m.
Please note: The Mojave Resource Fair and Mojave Makers Market have been cancelled.
Live Taping of 90 Miles from Needles Podcast
Live taping of 90 Miles from Needles podcast with desert environmentalist Chris Clarke and guests.
Saturday, October 12, 7 p.m.: Screening of Tommy Paul: Portrait of an Artist, a touching film portrayal of musician and former Beatnik Café owner, Tommy Paul, featuring live music and Q&A with Jay Paul, Tommy’s brother and live music from hi-desert musicians who knew Tommy Paul – singer/songwriter Shawn Mafia, and Bradley Trafton.
Bell Center Community Room, Free