Originally posted in 2008
It is again a good day for remembering the Jerry Garcia’s song “Mission in the Rain.” Stewart Oksenhorn’s piece calls the song “an interior monologue of searching for release and redemption.”
(An earlier version credited the song to the Grateful Dead, but a reader, Mike, pointed out correctly that this is Jerry Garcia solo.)
I’ve been a Mission resident since 1998 and a professor emeritus at Berkeley’s J-school since 2019. I got my start in newspapers at the Albuquerque Tribune in the city where I was born and raised. Like many local news outlets, The Tribune no longer exists. I left daily newspapers after working at The New York Times for the business, foreign and city desks. Lucky for all of us, it is still here.
As an old friend once pointed out, local has long been in my bones. My Master’s Project at Columbia, later published in New York Magazine, was on New York City’s experiment in community boards.
As founder and an editor at ML, I've been trying to figure out how to make my interest in local news sustainable. If Mission Local is a model, the answer might be that you - the readers - reward steady and smart content. As a thank you for that support we work every day to make our content even better.
More by Lydia Chávez5 Comments
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I googled Jerry Garcia and Stewart Oksenhorn and found my way to this page. Lydia, I don’t know if you posted this after having heard some news about Stewart. He passed a way on Feb. 2. Mission in the Rain was his favorite song. I have been listening to it a lot since then, and it will surely be played at Stewart’s memorial on Feb. 23.
Wow, so interesting how these connections are made. For those of you who don’t know the journalist Stewart Oksenhorn, here is a link to his obituary. Sounds like he was a lovely man and I’m very sorry for all of you there who must have taken his death very hard. http://www.aspendailynews.com/section/home/161114
Such a beautiful song, Jerry Garcia song, Mission in the Rain, San Fransisco song
It’s a great song but for the record it is a Jerry Garcia solo tune not a GD song
Mike, Thank you. I will correct this.