this, that and everything else

in a dream

2012-02-12T14:25:00.000-08:00

Mystery and romance are indivisible, and mystery can be romance’s most valuable asset. Desires, memories, thoughts and dreams; a face which thinks inwards as the eyes dream outwards gives nothing away.

Curiosity or vanity wonders and pries but forever remains unsatisfied. Mystery behaves like an antonym of satiety; we are kept for a long time on the watch.

A serene sorrow is somehow part of it all-but sorrow for what? Sorrow for unfulfilled desire, the grief of dead dreams? Or a sorrow which is not really a sorrow at all, but wisdom, knowledge of too much, a musing tender distrust of all ordinary hope?

We all have some of this in us, and in all of us it sometimes shows. Stay! Trouble can intervene. The face may not match the inner person, it can be all and only veil. When it opens its mouth the wrong sounds can come out.

So, dear reader, if we want to keep our dream of romance as a mystery, it may well be as well to avoid it altogether, to let it pass by like that forever unknown stranger in the street whom, for intangible reasons, we will remember for the rest of ours lives.

Who Invented the Pacific Rim?

2012-02-09T08:34:00.000-08:00

The geographer Oskar Spate, who said "It's where the future is."

The construction of the truly great histories of the world-Gibbon on Rome, Braudel on the Mediterranean, Morison on America-occupied many years, even decades, of their creators' lives. "Maybe it did take twenty-six long years to write," wrote Geoffrey Parker of Braudel's The Mediterranean, "but which historian would not willingly sacrifice half his working life to create a masterpiece which will stand forever?"

Then, from the distant and somewhat unexpected fastness of Australia, came word of a new work that would seem destined, once it had acquired the patina of scholarly approval, to become another enduring masterpiece. O. H. K. Spate, a name little known to any but academic geographers, finally completed the book that arguable is the definitive work on that most fashionable body of water the Pacific Ocean.

It is a trilogy, a decade and a half in the making, with well over a thousand pages, three-quarters of a million words, and a host of maps, charts, and portraits, filled with three centuries' worth of the unremembered history of every corner of the awesome mass of water, from the Gulf of Tonkin to Tierra del Fuego, from Esquimalt to Cape Catastrophe, from the Bering Strait to The Bluff, embracing the Sulu, the Coral, the Arafura, and a dozen other exotic-sounding seas.

The volumes are titled The Spanish Lake, Monopolists and Freebooters and Paradise Found and Lost, the work is made whole, under an overall title that pays homage to the ocean's first European master mariner, godfather to all our present interests there: The Pacific since Magellan. The trilogy charts Europe's discovery and domination of the Pacific. In so doing, it provides the solid foundation for present-day understanding of the enormous area-an area of ever-increasing geopolitical and economic power.

The marriage of subject and writer seems at first blush a most unusual one. Oskar Hermann Khristian Spate-born Spath in 1911 in London, "behind St. Pancras fire station," the son of an immigrant German innkeeper became a naturalized Australian. His early life was spent as far from the Pacific as it was possible to be. While his father, Herr Spath, was interned by the British during World War I, the boy and his mother went by ship from Liverpool to New York, thence by train to Iowa, where they boarded with a Salvation Army family living beside the Turkey River.

The young Spate stayed in America until the war ended. "It left me with a fondness for the States, maybe, and it left me with a fondness for geography. For my eighth birthday my mother offered me a choice of two books, one on history the other geography. I chose the latter because it had more pictures. I am sure that is why I liked it. It was as simple as that. The world outside seemed so full of pictures."

The formation of that singular being-a British scholar-then continued along more traditional lines. First St. Clement Danes School, in London, where he was marinated in the riches of English literature then St. Catharine's College, Cambridge, where he took a triple first in geography and English.

He admited to having been an active left winger in the Cambridge of the thirties, that nest of now notorious Apostles. "Far too grand for me, the Apostles, though I knew Burgess and Maclean quite well. I was a good left-wing theoretician they listened to me. And I could be quite active in politics for the simple reason that I didn't have to work too hard, thank heaven. I seem to have been blessed with a good degree of cleverness. I had a brain."

While others of his political bent selected careers in diplomacy, with often disastrous results, the head of the Department of Geography at Cambridge, a rigorous conservative named Debenham, decided that Spate "needed to be made into a Tory." It was a decision that was to have long-term consequences. Debenham helped the brilliant young geographer get a teaching job at the University of Rangoon, in Burma. "I suppose the old man must have failed to make me a Tory, but he brought me to Asia. He brought me out to the Pacific. A strange, Chekhovian country, Burma. A most peculiar mixture of melancholia and glee. It left an indelible effect upon me. It opened my eyes to the East. It fascinated me."

It nearly killed him, too. Spate was never an athletic type, and his wartime conscription into (despite their name) the Burma Volunteers was not marked by heroic charges into the Arakan or hand-to-hand combat on any Residency tennis court (as happened in Assam, next door). He worked instead in the operations room of an RAF base outside Rangoon and was on the telephone two days before Christmas 1941, when a Japanese bomb scored a direct hit. Spate injured his arms and fingers, broke his feet, and hurt his face"the ideal casualty," he said. "To be wounded nice and early in the war, and wounded badly but not seriously-what more could a man like me want?”

"Invalided out, I went off to Calcutta, then to Simla and Bombay, and joined an outfit with the magnificent title of the Inter-Services Topographical Department, doing geographic intelligence. Just my cup of tea. Lots of fascinating times all over India and Ceylon. Always remember being with Mountbatten in Kandy. Drove like a maniac. Elephants scuttling out of the way before him."

When the war was over and he had returned to England to teach, Spate wrote his first book, a standard geographer's text on India and Pakistan. "Banned in both countries, so it must have been reasonably good," he said. Good enough, at least, to endow him with an international reputation among geographers and to win him an invitation to become a founding father to the stripling Australian National University, in Canberra, now one of the great institutions of the Pacific Rim. The Australian capital itself was barely a quarter century old when, in 1951, Oskar Spate became Foundation Professor there. He settled himself in an unassuming house in one of the American urban planner Walter Burley Griffin's suburbs and lived there in modest obscurity.

He quickly became an authority on the Fiji Islands. The British colonial government commissioned him to write a massive report on the likely political development of the territory.

In time he became an expert on Australia as well, and the author of a brief but seminal study of the huge island-continent, published in 1968. Spate's Australia was part of a series written by distinguished scholars, but his work was set apart from theirs by its literary merits. The simple language of its dedication, to a dear family friend and his children, speaks eloquently: "To Mamie Sawer, and to Virginia, Andrew, and Alastair-the wattle and the rose entwine."

By this time, Australia was reckoning up her position in the world, a reckoning that was to produce in her national psychology a sea change (the metaphor, however tired, is apt). Her primary allegiance until the mid sixties had been to England and to the nations bordering the Atlantic.

But England was now throwing in her lot with Europe and throwing in the towel with Asia, having neither the money, the sense of responsibility nor the intellectual interest so Harold Wilson decided to keep a military station east of Suez. Australia had to come rapidly to terms with a new reality: her own future lay with not the Atlantic but the power of the Pacific, untapped but immense.

Suddenly England and France, Portugal and Spain, Greece and Italy seemed to thinking Australians strange, outdated, and irrelevant. Japan, California, China, Korea, Singapore-these places and three dozen more were fast becoming the new and exciting areas, the lands with which Australia would have to deal.

The government in Canberra swiftly adjusted to this new way of thinking; so did the Australian National University. It had set up the well-funded Research School of Pacific Studies to foster an academic intimacy with the newly forged region of which Australia was now to be a part. At about the time he became the school's director, Oskar Spate commenced work on the book for which he will be remembered. It was to be a single volume, but, like Topsy, it just grew.

He talked of the Pacific-of the Pacific Rim, the Pacific Basin, the Pacific Community, the Pacific Idea, and the Age of the Pacific, which we seem to have entered, having left that of the Atlantic far behind and that of the Mediterranean even further, as John Hay pointed out in 1902. But the concept of the Pacific as an entity was new.

Lucien Febvre's introduction to another classic, Seville and the Atlantic, by Huguette and Pierre Chaunu, refers to "these studies of maritime relations, these reconstructions of the histories of the Oceans considered as real entities, historical personalities, primary factors in the collective efforts of men." The first scholar-geographer to regard the enormous Pacific Ocean as a body of water uniting rather than dividing the nations that surround it is Oskar Spate. He is the first to have defined the Pacific as an entity. One might go so far as to call him the first guru of the New Pacific, though this modest, retiring old man would have shrunk from such hyperbole.

The early wanderers about the Pacific provide history with a good deal of drollery. The first European to see it was Vasco Nunez de Balboa, who, writes Spate, "steps on to the stage of history, traditionally out of a provision barrel [in which he had stowed away on the voyage from Espanola to Darien] and accompanied by his dog Leoncico… On 25 or 27 September [1513], alone, he looked down on the great waters of the ocean. The solemnity of the occasion was recognized-the conquistadores were always self-conscious of their Place in History. So a cairn was built, and the names of all the Spaniards present ...were recorded. On the 29th Balboa himself waded into the salt water of the Gulf of San Miguel-he had to wait hours for the tide to come up-banner in hand, and formally took possession of the Mar del Sur, and all its lands."

The Pacific Ocean was far from pacific when Balboa claimed it; according to diarists of the time it was "turbulent" and "raging." Greater ironies unfold: the unfortunate Balboa was later beheaded on a trumped-up charge, and, thanks to Keats's great sonnet "On First Looking Into Chapman's Homer," his name is now hopelessly confused with that of the great conquistador "stout Cortez…silent, upon a peak in Darien."

Ferdinand Magellan was not the first to circumnavigate the globe. He got only about two-thirds of the way around it, for he was killed on Cebu Island (one of the more restive of the southern Philippines). It was left to a now-forgotten member of his expedition, Juan Sebastian del Cano, to take the ship Victoria home to Spain and receive for his pains a pension and a coat of arms with the motto Primus circumdedisti me (Thou first circumnavigated me). Oskar Spate was amused by the Magellan memorial standing in Cebu: one side of the cross records his death as a tragedy; the other honors the local raja, Lapulapu, whose forces killed him, as a hero of the Philippine resistance.

Of thousands of such minutiae and of scores of more sober thoughts is Spate's trilogy constructed, and it is always sheer pleasure to read, a book to take along on a holiday as one might pack a copy of Gibbon. The works are filled with arresting ideas and fascinating anecdotes and can be savored for the language in which these matters are expressed.

Sir Francis Drake was Spain's scourge up & down the Pacific.

The three volumes cover as much geography as they do history, for the immensity of the ocean about which Spate writes-a third of the earth's surface. To put it another way, readers learn of currents and wind patterns, landmasses and natural resources, even while the narrative traces individuals and events. The Spanish Lake begins with Balboa's first paddle, in September 1513; Paradise Found and Lost ends with the cities of Sydney, in Australia, and Vancouver, in Canada, struggling to their feet in the 1820s. Why did Spate not take the story of the Pacific up to the Panama Canal, whose construction reversed all the ocean's trading patterns, or until the beginnings of the nuclear Pacific at Hiroshima, or the reemergence of Japan after the peace treaty was signed, in San Francisco's magnificent beaux arts War Memorial Opera House in 1951?

Captain James Cook explored it from the Antarctic to the Bering Sea

The answer is that those three centuries saw the roots of the modern Pacific being laid down. In all the good and evil of those days, from the start of European discovery to the start of European economic dominion, we see the reasons for all that is happening today. It is the most interesting period, too. I feel he could safely leave the later stuff to historians of the modern Pacific. He found the roots, or laid the foundations, or what have you.

He was proud that his volumes were applauded for their literary merit as well as for their value as works of scholarship. So much of history can be so dreadfully dry. There is absolutely no need to be solemn to be serious. I only wish all scholars would recognized that. He showed us all that a sound knowledge of the classics, a good grounding in English literature, and a brilliantly absorbed sense of history and geography can produce a work of genius, a work that has a luminous and lasting quality.

Among the many honours heaped on him were the Victoria Medal of the Royal Geographical Society, the Gold Medal of the American Geographical Society, the Laureat d'honneur of the International Geographical Union, and the Nehru Silver Medal. He was appointed Commendador de la Orden de Isabela la Catolica.

I wonder how he had managed to put so vast and amorphous a subject into such a finely crafted form. I thought for a moment and then remembered that his father kept small hotels in Bloomsbury. Well, one of them was number 48 Doughty Street. Do we know who lived there? Most Londoners do. It was an odd and rather wonderful coincidence, the kind that makes one wonder about the truth of the famous axiom that the historian is a failed novelist. Number 48 Doughty Street, where Oskar Spate spent many of his formative years, used to be the residence of Charles Dickens and is now a museum dedicated to him. As Spate might have said in his precise, quiet way, "Q.e.d."

What the Dickens…

2012-02-07T10:21:00.000-08:00

…as Google has noted, today is the bicentenial of the birth of Our Mutual Friend.

Would our Hard Times give him plenty of ammunition to write A Tale of…a Bleak House?

Or, perhaps, he would look ahead with Great Expectations and not discard us like an Old Curiosity Shop.

Be a kind observer in the Pickwick Papers or The Mudfog Papers and write with a gentle Twist about The Life and Adventures of …, or The Mystery of… Our Mutual Friend(s)?

Dear Master Dickens we could use you now.

Is it over yet?

2012-02-04T05:37:00.000-08:00

Los Angeles, the The AwardsSeason.

It starts in early Januarywith The Palm Springs Film Festival and rolls into The Critics Awards, theGolden Globes, The Sag Awards, The Spirit Awards, The Oscars, and ends with TheGrammys.

You can't hold a function on any weekend from Januarythru March. All the caterers, valet parking, party planners, hair and makeuptechs, and top venues are booked. The town becomes a seizure of self importanceand hype.

Apparently in December you get all your botoxand "pull backs" done; do your rehab time; finish your house make-over, and complete all your adoptions of babies in time to makeyour appearance at one of these award ceremonies or at any of the endless preor post parties.

Beverly Hills and Hollywood can handle the influx andinsanity. They have been doing it for years. But this year there is anunsettling quiet in the streets. A weirdlevel of lackluster has seeped over the town.

The new Bel Air Hotel has opened to less than glowing reviews (I wonder what the swansare thinking?) more people are talking about the NFL playoff games thanthe movies.

It is a sea of lookalikes. An impressive lineup ofhairdressers, makeups artist, and manicurists all working feverishly and laserfocused. This is Hollywood at its most exalted – the land of makeovers.

During Awards Season every place from the airport tothe delis to personal driveways sport red carpets.

Fashion Police Joan Rivers will hit every show. I believe she single-handedly put allred carpets on the map. My issue withthe Red Carpet hype ... what does Charlize Theron's "fairy" dressor Angelina's "alien look" has to do with fashion? Even women I know wearing formal attire don'tcare about Red Carpet couture. Face itwe only love looking at them at home with friends so we can mock the whole production! It has never been about trend-settingbut rather it’s about wise-cracking.

Frankly, I miss the big gaffs of years gone by; singerBjork in her swan goose costume, Barbra Streisand in her glitter shorts, DemiMoore in anything of insanity. Today's stylists have homogenized every starto look alike. It's an assembly line.

I have been told that L.A. is now a fashionepicenter, no longer a fashion joke. Ha! Spoken to someone who wears old cashmere sweaters and glorious jewelry. Ilook at the fashion magazines and I recognize I am very out-of-date.

ALAS-

I try to stay open minded

I live for mystery only there is no mystery

I live to be fascinated only there is nothing original

NEITHER on the red carpet NOR on the screen

Colder than a Cossack’s heart.

2012-02-02T16:31:00.000-08:00

St. Petersburg is one of theworld’s most northernmost cities. Russians love winter and wish, or possibly pray, forcold weather. Snow throws a white blanket over everything and softens the lookof the imposing pastel palaces, and under its bright blanket of snow St.Petersburg seems less melancholy, less like a faded grande dame. Snow dustingthe cupolas of Orthodox churches, and ice floes in the Neva contributemightily to the legendary charm of the city.

St. Petersburg is less crowded inthe winter so the lines at Pavlovsk and Catherine’s Palace, in Pushkin, and atart exhibitions and museums-especially the Hermitage-are much shorter, and itis easier to get tickets for the operas and the ballets.

For travelers who make the quick,twenty-six-kilometer journey into the countryside south of St. Petersburg, the rewardis Pavlovsk. Built by the grand duchess Maria Fyodorovna for her husband, thegrand duke Paul (later Czar Paul I), the gold-and-white palace stands in themiddle of its 1,500 acre, birch-filled park, looking today just as it did almosttwo centuries ago.

Other edifices may be grander,but within imperial Russia, connoisseurs of architecture invariably single outPavlovsk. It is a masterpiece ofneo-Palladian perfection, with its graceful semi-circular wings, its Corinthianfacade, and, above, its majestic columned rotunda.

"I will tell you some of its story," says Natalia, our hostess,and, as Russians are inclined to do, makes the simplest narrative sound like aPushkin romance.

“Pavlovsk was not, like many other great palaces, a symbol of Russianimperial might. At the Hermitage the monarchs held court, ambassadors presentedcredentials, and royal balls were given on a scale surpassing anything yet seenin the West. At Petrodvorets, the many palaces, the landscaped gardens, the breathtakingfountains and cascades were created by Peter the Great, Elizabeth I, andCatherine II as a glorious background for spectacular state occasions.Tsarskoye Selo, where Elizabeth I built the celebrated baroque great palacenamed after her mother, Empress Catherine I, was the official summer residenceof the royal family and thus a seat of government and court protocol.”

"But Pavlovsk was conceived as a home: its rooms are small bypalace standards, exquisite, more intimate; the contents, precious andpersonal. The estate that Catherine the Great gave to her son and heir, Paul,and his wife, Maria Fyodorovna, to celebrate the birth of her grandson, thefuture Czar Alexander I, was then rolling countryside. The only buildings were two rustic hunters' cottages,'Krik' and 'Krak.' At the beginning Their Highnesses were the ecstatic newresidents of Krik."

“The palace's first architect was Charles Cameron, a Scot who had beenheavily influenced by Palladio and who was winning Catherine's favor with hiswork at Tsarskoye Selo and other imperial buildings. But Maria Fyodorovna didnot share Catherine's taste for the baroque, and she resented interference. ‘Cameronis so slow,’ she wrote to the foreman. ‘Beg him, in God's name, to hurry up andtake care not to add arabesque ornaments to our bedroom ceiling.’ It was notlong before she had replaced Cameron with his compliant assistant VincenzoBrenna.”

"The empress, who excelled in music, embroidery, painting, andetching, invested passion and her own talents in Pavlovsk," Natalia continues.She points out the models of Greek and Roman temples in the emperor's marblelibrary. The versatile empress recorded in her journals: "I made thetemples myself, in ivory, amber, and gilded bronze. I also made a very largewriting table. It stands on twelve ivory columns, which I turned on awoodmaker's lathe."

“The palace that was finally completed in 1824 was the genialrealization of the designs of most of the distinguished masters working inRussia at the time, the masters who were also creating historical St.Petersburg. The private and state apartments of Pavlovsk consist of some forty-fiverooms and halls, divided between the ground floor, where the royal couple spentmuch of their leisure time, and the upper floor, or piano nobile, whereceremonies took place.”

Although Pavlovsk appearsmiraculously untouched by the ravages of history, it is in fact a replica. Pavlovsk was not a military objective, yetthe enemy left only a ruin.

“Before leaving, in January 1944, the Nazis set fire to the palace andpark pavilions, blew up the bridges, destroyed about 70,000 trees and 30,000shrubs, and placed more than 10,000 mines in the gardens.”

Under the supervision of the Russianarchitects Fyodor Oleinik and Sofia Popova-Gunich and the decorator Anatoly Treskin,teams of highly skilled artisans have labored to restore Leningrad to itseighteenth- and early-nineteenth-century glory. At Pavlovsk, they worked fromdescriptions carefully recorded by the onetime royal owners and from thousandsof photographic negatives and prints, plans, and archival material.

“By late June of 1941, the staff had evacuated the greatest paintings,porcelain, and tapestries. When therewas insufficient space to transport the bulkier objects, they took one or twochairs, a table, a cabinet, a bed, or a couch out of each set of preciousfurniture, to copy later. Pieces of marble and marquetry and swatches of everykind of textile used in the draperies and upholstery were collected as samples.These treasures were sent to Siberia, where they were stored in a local operahouse. Many heavy statues and marble busts were buried in the grounds of thepark, with the spots identified on maps. Other things were bricked up in thewalls of the palace basement. And workers took many of the smaller objects toLeningrad.”

More than 60,000 trees have beenplanted in the park. The walls and columns are up, the contents back in place,the draperies hanging as Maria Fyodorovna planned.

Pavlovsk as we see it today looksforward and backward in time. The palacestands as proof of Russian genius, of Russia’s pride in the accomplishments ofits past. Rising from the ashes of war,Pavlovsk is one of Russia’s finest architectural monument.

for Ms. Edna, much love Mona, Felix and Anja.

They say...

2012-02-01T00:30:00.000-08:00

...at 66 you get the face you deserve.

If that is true - you must have been very, very good.

Happy Birthday Charles!

Of course, I have not seen the portrait in a very long time-not in the attic?

A Jam Session

2012-01-27T09:54:00.000-08:00

We here at this blog love a good trope almost as much as we love not being sick—but we’re only going to get one of those today, and it’s not the second one.

From an old letter column (December 1973) of the London Times (where else) who published a keen controversy the end of which, as of its writing, had still not jelled.

It seems that Sir Dingle Foot wrote an article praising, extolling, and glorifying the English breakfast. Alas, Sir Dingle Foot made a most serious error of omission. He went on and on without so much as a mention of English marmalade. One Reverend Edmund Haviland of Tonbridge caught him out at once and fired off a letter to The Times saying how could Sir Dingle Foot, or anyone, talk about the marvels of the English breakfast without a mention of English marmalade. With the letter from Reverend Haviland a really sticky situation developed, and the fact that it was Sir Dingle Foot who got himself in a jam has since been totally forgotten.

Reverend Haviland was immediately challenged by Peter Macdonald of Edinburgh who wrote: "Marmalade, like many other inventions which other nations have sought to appropriate, is of Scottish origin, since it took a canny Scot to see value in the peel that others threw away."

This caused Colin S. Dence of King's Lynn, Norfolk, to rise to the defence of dear old England: "...by what right does Peter Macdonald claim English marmalade to be Scottish? These are vital matters of national prestige and I put forward as my authority a certain Gervais Markham (1568-1637) who published a recipe for Marmalade of Oranges in, please note, his English Huswife. Scottish indeed!" Then John Orr of Marden, Kent, added pectin to the plot with this explanation: "... I have heard that it was derived from a confection prepared by the chef for Mary Queen of Scots when she was married to the Dauphin of France and was indisposed. The word marmalade is a corruption of the phrase Marie est malade."

Lady Antonia Fraser found Mr. Orr's legend appealing, but she felt the Oxford English Dictionary must surely be right in saying that marmalade is a derivation from the Portuguese marmelo in 1480. Mrs. Joan Richards went on to explain that the Portuguese claim came about because of a language problem during the Peninsular Wars when the Duke of Wellington wanted some Portuguese quince preserve (marmalada) but instead got Portuguese orange jam "which was henceforth known in England as marmalade."

This incited G.E. Trease of Devon to inform readers that "The Duke of Wellington was by no means the first Englishman to use marmalade. It is mentioned as 'marmaled' in the English translation of Renodaeus' Dispensatory, published in 1657 by the London apothecary Richard Tomlinson. An earlier reference is in the inventory of Thomas Baskerville, apothecary of Exeter, who died in 1596. This lists 'marmalade 11Ibs, 10 shillings.'"

It is, as the London Sunday Times summed up, "A marmalade cat fight."

Midnight Riders.

2012-01-24T10:28:00.000-08:00

“A job? But how would I make any money?” ~Hunter Thompson

“Sneak" legislation has become Washington's most effective instrument of duplicity. To be specific, a "sneak" bill is an almost invisible addendum-no more than a few sentences long-tucked into an obscure part of some multibillion-dollar omnibus legislation. Although "sneak" bills have been around since Congress first began to pull the wool over our eyes, in the early nineteenth century, it has achieved a level of refinement with those embedded in the staggering multi trillion budget bill passed in the last gasp of 2011 (the enacted 2011 budget called for $2.314 trillion in receipts and $3.630 trillion in outlays, according to the September 1, 2011 Mid-Session Review) by the most lackluster Congress since the one Harry Truman ran against for reelection back in 1948.

Some of the not so long ago (1980’s) sleazier special-interest deals, and by 2011 standards just “chicken feet”, cut at the last minute that have come to light. In one, a Representative of Alabama, who took trips on an Army Corps of Engineers jet, managed to "sneak" into the budget a rider that blocked the sale of that aircraft, despite the fact that the Army Audit Agency had strongly recommended it. Then, there's the infamous "sneak" manipulated by a Senator, Democrat of Massachusetts, a man with a reputation for fixing matters-and for getting even. He folded in an almost invisible "billette" that the FCC must not bend its rules and permit a publisher virtually unlimited time to sell its newspaper and television interests in New York and Boston, including a rag that criticized him.

Admiring the striking success of these publicized "sneak" bills, I thought of a few deals I'd make-like passing immediate legislation to change the election process. Then I began to dream of what other "sneak" legislation I'd hatch if only I could.

An appropriation to the arts-amounting to, say, a paltry $1,000,000,000.

Every luxury hut- say, those costing over 10 million bucks- will be taxed 5 percent. Proceeds will go toward permanent housing for the homeless.

Vacations are to become tax deductible. The longer and more lavish they are, the bigger the deductions.

A landing fee of $1,675,500,416 for every alien aircraft, which should prod the FAA to gear up its technology.

A defense budget equal to the square root of .000018 percent of the monthly dining bill of the ondehundred top lobbyists in the military-industrial complex.

A chicken in every microwave

An American car in every garage

The transfer to Nebraska of all federal funds allotted to New York until Wall Street states (under oath) what really happened in 2008

Tax penalties up to 101 percent for every forthcoming politician or CEO who wishes to write his or her memoirs (especially those "as told to")

One trip to London, Paris, Brussels, Amsterdam, Dublin, Vienna, Zurich, Montreal, Melbourne, Hamilton, Moscow, Stockholm, or Mexico City per year for each U.S. citizen. Free, on those Army Corps of Engineers jets. Round-trip.

Five years' mandatory military service to anybody in politics who gets caught either fibbing or with someone else (overnight) other than his or her spouse, which ought to take care of the draft-and the defense budget, too.

Rain only at night

Snow in designated areas

The wind at the back of every citizen

From now on, no "sneak" legislation will be allowed to pass without a thirty-day public airing

Life is a shipwreck but . . .

2012-01-23T00:00:00.000-08:00

. . .we must not forget to sing in the lifeboats. ~Voltaire

Aunts, Uncles, Cousins, Fathers,

2012-01-13T10:37:00.000-08:00

the inbred 'splendor' of the European aristocracy.

Remote from everythingmodern is to be found the picturesque country seat where the oldest scion of myfather’s family has just celebrated a very advanced birthday. She is anaunt of mine and if the last fifty years of her life have been spent in herretreat, so secluded from the world as to be almost forgotten, it is on accountof her marriage, which created quite a scandal so long ago.

The story goes that Auntiehad been traveling and was passionately fond of sailing, a form of sport inwhich she was an adept. In one of her excursions her life was saved bythe most wonderful presence of mind, muscular strength, and pluck of her guidewho narrowly escaped being drowned. He managed to drag her back intosafety, though with the utmost difficulty, and at great personal risk. Auntienaturally was filled with sentiments of gratitude towards her savior, and, ashe happened to be an extremely handsome man she determined to prove to him hergratitude by marrying him. True, she was some twenty years hissenior. But she was a good looking woman.

Of course, there wasa tremendous outcry on the part of the clan and all sorts of stories werecirculated as to the origin of the romance. The head of the family eventuallygave his consent to the marriage on the condition that she lived abroad withher husband, and thereupon conferred upon the latter, by way of a weddingpresent, the title of Baron.

The union turned out tobe a happy one. They bought a house abroad and the couple lived thereuntil the Baron died. Since then hiswidow has never left the estate. She lives there all year round, greatly lovedby her neighbors on account of her boundless charity, her gentle, unaffectedmanner, and of that gracious consideration for the feelings of others, which,alas!, belongs to another generation. Her relatives, however, visit herevery year, paying their respects to the heroine of a glorious romance.

Aunties Ahnenreihe is a gem of inbreeding. Her ancestry is a tightlywoven web of intermarriage to the ninth degree. Of the first tengenerations out of a total of 300 possible ancestors, Auntie has only about fiveancestors that appear once in her family tree, leaving a total of 295 ancestorsrepeated more than once in the first ten generations.

Is it a wonder then, . . . I seewhite rabbits every day . . . and they always ask what time it is . . . dream timedearest . . . its always dream time . . .

short days, long nights, random thoughts

2012-01-09T21:37:00.000-08:00

According to Aristotle, the stairway represented the divine order of the universe. In their metaphysical ambition to link heaven and earth, the early Mesopotamians melded the stairway and the spiral when they created their legendary ziggurat.

The double helix staircase at Chateau de Chambord, its design attributed to Leonardo da Vinci, is a puzzle (how can you see another person on the stairs but not meet them face to face?).

When I first saw the Jantar Mantar with its seemingly random placement of stone stairways the observatory looked like a collection of movable gateways waiting for the planes to land. It looked surreal, rather than what it was, the embodiment of scientifically calculated star-watching posts in fact, stairways to the stars.

Clerics and all manner of royal personages have deployed stairways in grandiose ceremonies and buildings.

Aspects of worship or pilgrimage are often associated with climbing.

A stairway implies the magic and mystery of the transitory, the idea of ascending toward the invisible with all its attendant symbolism.

A spiral or helix stairway could be energy frozen in time and space, like freezing water.

This beautiful spiral mahogany staircase was located in the Rose Inn, a B & B just north of Ithaca, New York. A fire in 2004 destroyed the staircase and the section of the Inn which housed it. Unfortunately it will not be rebuilt.

A neglected stairway is a melancholy sight even the light seems to be in retreat. A grand staircase at Parc de Sceaux near Paris, as photographed by Andre Kertesz, is the image of desertion.

No footsteps have disturbed the wind-blown leaves from their resting places, no broom or rake has tidied them. A stairway, and a grand one at that, it commands respect for human ingenuity as it reminds us of the flux at the heart of existence.

Twelfth Night

2012-01-06T09:30:00.001-08:00

(The Twelve Days of Christmas, which are usually counted from the evening of December 25th until the morning of January 6th, which is the Twelfth Day. In following this older custom of counting the days beginning at sundown, the evening of January 5th is the Twelfth Night.)

Epiphany (from the ancient Greek ἐπιφάνεια, epiphaneia, "manifestation, striking appearance") the realization or comprehension of the larger essence or meaning of something.)

Every year tens of thousands of children and young adults die in car accidents. And everywhere grieving parents, brothers, sisters, grandparents, godparents and friends are left behind. Every day these children are remembered by their families. But once a year, around the world, we do not only remember our own, but all the children. On the second Sunday in December, at 7:00 P.M. we place a light in our windows. As the lights are extinguished in one time zone, they are lit in another so that a lightwave is created in these 24 hours around the world. Every light in a window was a child that illuminated life.

Slow down you're doing fine

You can't be everything you want to be

Before your time...

for Mercedes

Short days, random thoughts

2012-01-03T13:36:00.000-08:00

A few months ago I read an interview with the perennially cutting-edge designer Philippe Starck. What allowed him to remain so consistently ahead of the curve? “I never read any magazines or watch TV,” he said, perhaps a little hyperbolically. “Nor do I go to cocktail parties, dinners or anything like that.” He lived outside conventional ideas, he implied, because “I live alone mostly, in the middle of nowhere.”

Around the same time I was told that the future of travel lies in “black-hole resorts,” which charge high prices precisely because you can’t get online or watch T.V.

Has it really come to this?

In barely one generation we’ve moved from exulting in the time-saving devices that have so expanded our lives to trying to get away from them — often in order to make more time. The more ways we have to connect, the more we seem desperate to unplug. Like teenagers, we appear to have gone from knowing nothing about the world to knowing too much overnight. Internet rescue camps in South Korea and China try to save kids addicted to the screen.

Friends of mine pay good money to get the Freedom software that enables them to disable (for up to eight hours) the very Internet connections that seemed so emancipating not long ago. Even Intel (of all companies) experimented in 2007 with conferring four uninterrupted hours of quiet time every Tuesday morning on 300 engineers and managers. (The average office worker today, researchers have found, enjoys no more than three minutes at a time at his or her desk without interruption.) During this period the workers were not allowed to use the phone or send e-mail, but simply had the chance to clear their heads. A majority of Intel’s trial group recommended that the policy be extended to others.

The average American spends at least eight and a half hours a day in front of a screen, Nicholas Carr notes in his eye-opening book “The Shallows,” in part because the number of hours American adults spent online doubled between 2005 and 2009 (and the number of hours spent in front of a TV screen, often simultaneously, is also steadily increasing).

The average American teenager sends or receives 75 text messages a day, though one girl in Sacramento managed to handle an average of 10,000 every 24 hours for a month. Since luxury, as any economist will tell you, is a function of scarcity, the children of tomorrow, I heard marketers in Hong Kong tell, will crave nothing more than freedom, if only for a short while, from all the blinking machines, streaming videos and scrolling headlines that leave them feeling empty and too full all at once.

The urgency of slowing down — to find the time and space to think — is nothing new, of course, and wiser souls have always reminded us that the more attention we pay to the moment, the less time and energy we have to place it in some larger context. “Distraction is the only thing that consoles us for our miseries,” the French philosopher Blaise Pascal wrote in the 17th century, “and yet it is itself the greatest of our miseries.” He also famously remarked that all of man’s problems come from his inability to sit quietly in a room alone.

When telegraphs and trains brought in the idea that convenience was more important than content — and speedier means could make up for unimproved ends — Henry David Thoreau reminded us that “the man whose horse trots a mile in a minute does not carry the most important messages.” Even half a century ago, Marshall McLuhan, who came closer than most to seeing what was coming, warned, “When things come at you very fast, naturally you lose touch with yourself.” Thomas Merton struck a chord with millions, by not just noting that “Man was made for the highest activity, which is, in fact, his rest,” but by also acting on it, and stepping out of the rat race and into a Cistercian cloister.

Yet few of those voices can be heard these days, precisely because “breaking news” is coming through (perpetually) on CNN and Debbie is just posting images of her Christmas vacation and the phone is ringing. We barely have enough time to see how little time we have (most Web pages, researchers find, are visited for 10 seconds or less). And the more that floods in on us (the Kardashians, Obamacare, “Dancing with the Stars”), the less of ourselves we have to give to every snippet. All we notice is that the distinctions that used to guide and steady us — between Sunday and Monday, public and private, here and there — are gone.

We have more and more ways to communicate, as Thoreau noted, but less and less to say. Partly because we’re so busy communicating. And — as he might also have said — we’re rushing to meet so many deadlines that we hardly register that what we need most are lifelines.

So what to do? The central paradox of the machines that have made our lives so much brighter, quicker, longer and healthier is that they cannot teach us how to make the best use of them; the information revolution came without an instruction manual. All the data in the world cannot teach us how to sift through data; images don’t show us how to process images. The only way to do justice to our onscreen lives is by summoning exactly the emotional and moral clarity that can’t be found on any screen.

Maybe that’s why more and more people I know, even if they have no religious commitment, seem to be turning to yoga, or meditation, or tai chi; these aren’t New Age fads so much as ways to connect with what could be called the wisdom of old age. Two friends of mine observe an “Internet sabbath” every week, turning off their online connections from Friday night to Monday morning, so as to try to revive those ancient customs known as family meals and conversation. Finding myself at breakfast with a group four months ago, I noticed that all their talk was of sailing — or riding or hiking: anything that would allow them to get out of radio contact for a few hours.

Other friends try to go on long walks every Sunday, or to “forget” their cellphones at home. A series of tests in recent years has shown that after spending time in quiet rural settings, subjects “exhibit greater attentiveness, stronger memory and generally improved cognition. Their brains become both calmer and sharper.” More than that, empathy, as well as deep thought, depends (as neuroscientists like Antonio Damasio have found) on neural processes that are “inherently slow.” The very ones our high-speed lives have little time for.

In my own case, I turn to eccentric and often extreme measures to try to keep my sanity and ensure that I have time to do nothing at all (which is the only time when I can see what I should be doing the rest of the time). I try not to go online till my day’s work is finished, and I often stay in Southern Utah so I can more easily make long hikes on foot, and every trip to the movies is an event.

None of this is a matter of principle or asceticism; it’s just pure selfishness. Nothing makes me feel better — calmer, clearer and happier — than being in one place, absorbed in a book, a conversation, a piece of music. It’s actually something deeper than mere happiness: it’s joy, which the monk David Steindl-Rast describes as “that kind of happiness that doesn’t depend on what happens.”

It’s vital, of course, to stay in touch with the world, and to know what’s going on; I took pains this past year to make trips to silence. It is only by having some distance from the world that I can see it whole, and understand what you should be doing in it.

For more than 10 years, therefore, I’ve been going several times a year — for two/three days — to a retreat in Malibu, California. I don’t attend services when I’m there, and I never meditate, there or anywhere; I just take walks and read and lose myself in the stillness, recalling that it’s only by stepping briefly away that I’ll have anything useful to bring back. The last time I was in the retreat, three months ago, I happened to pass, on the road, a man who introduced himself; we’d met, I gathered, about 10 years before.

“What are you doing now?” I asked. “I work for a large legal firm in L.A.”

We smiled. No words were necessary.

“I try to come here as often as I can,” he went on, as he looked out at the great blue expanse of the Pacific on one side, and the high, brown hills of the Santa Monica Mountains on the other.

“My godchildren” —I pointed at two 25-year-old walking the deserted, radiant mountain road in front of us— “this is their third time.”

I realized then, that that generation may actually be ahead of us, in terms of sensing not what’s new, but what’s essential.

So this is New Year.

2011-12-30T09:00:00.000-08:00

The paradox of our time is that we have taller buildings but shorter tempers, wider freeways, but narrower viewpoints. We spend more, but have less, we buy more, but enjoy less. We have bigger houses and smaller families, more conveniences, but less time. We have more degrees but less sense, more knowledge, but less judgment, more experts, yet more problems, more medicine, but less wellness.

We drink too much, smoke too much, spend too recklessly, laugh too little, drive too fast, get too angry, stay up too late, get up too tired, read too little, watch TV too much, and pray too seldom. We have multiplied our possessions, but reduced our values. We talk too much, love too seldom, and hate too often.

We've learned how to make a living, but not a life. We've added years to life not life to years. We've been all the way to the moon and back, but have trouble crossing the street to meet a new neighbor. We conquered outer space but not inner space. We've done larger things, but not better things.

We've cleaned up the air, but polluted the soul. We've conquered the atom, but not our prejudice. We write more, but learn less. We plan more, but accomplish less. We've learned to rush, but not to wait. We build more computers to hold more information, to produce more copies than ever, but we communicate less and less.

These are the times of fast foods and slow digestion, big men and small character, steep profits and shallow relationships. These are the days of two incomes but more divorce, fancier houses, but broken homes. These are days of quick trips, disposable diapers, throwaway morality, one night stands, overweight bodies, and pills that do everything from cheer, to quiet, to kill. It is a time when there is much in the showroom window and nothing in the stockroom. A time when technology can bring this post to you, and a time when you can choose to read, or just move on.

Throw out nonessential numbers. This includes age, weight and height. Let the doctor worry about them.

Keep only cheerful friends. The grouches pull you down.

Keep learning. Never let the brain idle. "An idle mind is the devil's workshop."

…and remember-life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away.

~George Carlin

Ergo-

To twenty-twelve.

The Gift

2011-12-29T07:00:00.000-08:00

Imagine every morning a bank will deposit 86400 Dollars into an account for you to do with as you please. You may spend the entire amount that day but you cannot rollover what remains. What you do not spend is lost. But every morning when you wake-up you will find another 86400 Dollars in your account. Be aware that the bank may cancel the arrangement at any time. The bank can say the game is over without forewarning.

What would you do?

This game is real, every person has such a magic bank, it is called time. Every morning we are gifted 86400 seconds of life. What we have not used-up at the end of the day will be lost. But every morning the account is filled again.

So then, what do you do with your daily 86400 seconds?

~Marc Levy, translated from German

Almost last, but not least …

2011-12-28T08:30:00.000-08:00

After a night of serious deliberation it is our pleasure to announce that Ms. Edna ² has been accepted into our “Ada Lovelace Retronaut” Hall of Fame…

…for being smart, tech-savvy, and stylish (all at the same time).

the ∞ grateful election committee

Yes, Virginia, we need a little music right now

2011-12-27T19:48:00.000-08:00

Attaboy ツ

Yes, Virginia, it's a wonderful life.

2011-12-25T02:00:00.000-08:00

Sometimes it takes years for an audience to catch up with a classic. It's a Wonderful Life is a case in point. Sixty-five years after its original release the Frank Capra film is as much a part of many Americans' Christmas as the Christmas tree. Yet, sixty-five years ago, it was accounted a box-office flop.

From the beginning of his career, in such popular favorites as Mr. Smith Goes to Washington and Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, Capra dealt with the average man struggling to overcome seemingly insurmountable odds through good humor and integrity. The director's career was interrupted by World War II, during which he produced propaganda films for the army. When the war was over, Capra returned to Hollywood.

Of the many movie projects submitted to him, the one that caught his eye was a little story by Philip van Doren Stem, written on a Christmas card. In it, George Bailey, a man from the small town of Bedford Falls, dreams of escape and adventure but is held back by obligations to friends, family, and the town. One Christmas Eve, George, in despair over his life and his failing business, goes for financial help to his archenemy, the banker Henry Potter. Potter harshly turns him down. Depressed and beaten, George decides to jump off a bridge. Suddenly an angel named Clarence, in the unlikely form of a bum, throws himself into the water, and George springs to the rescue. Still bitter, George says that he wishes he had never been born. Clarence then shows him how sadly life would have turned out for all the people he cares about if in fact he had never been born. His brother Harry would have died as a child, in a frozen lake. His wife would have wound up as a scared old maid. In fact, the entire town would have turned into a Dickensian scene of gloom called Pottersville. George learns that he really has made a difference; his faith in life is re-affirmed.

Within the framework of a classic confrontation between good and evil, what interested Capra most was the darker theme of the self-doubt and discouragement that good men fall prey to. He began working with the top screenwriters Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett, refining his ideas into a tightly composed screenplay-writing new dialogue, changing characterizations, eliminating some scenes, and adding more action.

With just the barest outline for a script, Capra knew he wanted Jimmy Stewart for the part of George Bailey. Stewart embodied the heroic Everyman that Capra sought. As their different accounts show, the two men remember their first meeting very differently-but either way, it might be a scene from Capra. The director was having difficulty describing the story and was about to give up completely when the actor begged to be signed up, script unseen.

If the finished product did not reach as great an audience as Capra hoped for, it was not because anyone had prevented him from making exactly the film he wanted to. In casting, as in all other matters, from the largest conceptual concerns to the smallest technical details, he had a completely free hand. The special-effects team, for instance, inspired by Capra's love of technology, fabricated snow so convincing that it won them a special Academy Award. The entire town of Bedford Falls, that symbol of small-town America, was constructed on four acres of land-one of the largest sets ever built.

During shooting, a powerful publicity machine kept the upcoming film in the public's mind, reporting on the most minor happenings on the set. One such story was about Stewart's apprehension over his highly memorable first postwar film kiss. As the star remarked, "A fellow's technique gets rusty." Already in his late thirties, he was nervous, too, about playing opposite the much younger Donna Reed. Exploiting that real-life nervousness, Capra staged and shot the now famous first kiss between George and Mary to enhance the underlying tension of the scene. It cost a page of dialogue, but Capra printed the first take.

The producers, directors, actors, and friends, who saw a special preview of the film, shortly before its Christmastime premiere, in 1946, were confident that the film would break box-office records. That was not to be. Many problems converged. The ad campaign was misleading. It promised a lighthearted love story and made no mention of the darker issues, so early viewers were put off. Besides, after the war, a shell-shocked audience was looking for light, fluffy entertainment. It was movies like The Jolson Story and Sinbad the Sailor that were packing them in. Unbelievable as it may seem, IAWL had only a certain succes d'estime. While it was nominated for Academy Awards in all major categories, it lost out in every one.

Disappointed, Capra turned his attention to other projects, although in his heart IAWL remained his favorite. In 1952, television accomplished what the original release had not. As Capra described it, "I woke up one Christmas morning and the whole world was watching It's a Wonderful Life. And they all wrote me about it!" Fan mail is still coming in. The film has become the success Capra has always believed it should be.

But at its peak of popularity, a villain came along. Through a legal oversight, the film's copyright passed into the public domain. Against Capra's wishes and at great expense, a company, Colorization Inc., manufactured a computer colorized version that destroyed the intended look of the black-and-white original. I take as dim a view of the product as did the director: "They have no spiritual right to make a buck off a film they had no creative involvement in!"

Henry Potter would no doubt be gloating. Nevertheless, this development cannot destroy the film's appeal. Nostalgic as it may appear, its human issues have not aged. Capra himself put it best:

"I think that people understand films better now than they did then. They were labeled 'corny' then because people didn't know what to call them. The critics particularly wanted the more obscure things, the more negative things. This positive attitude toward life, this optimism, this great reverence for the individual that is dramatized in all my films, was a little bit too sticky for them at the time. Yet, are the people today any cornier than they were in those days? No, people today seem to be much more aware of something that is real, good, and true than even people of my day. So to me that's a big plus. There is no generation gap between my films and the present generation at all."

We are too few…

2011-12-23T11:14:00.001-08:00

…for Christmas

Venice can feel like a city of ghosts; of illustrious spectres whispering for you to follow them —

To haggle in the Rialto Market with a latter-day Merchant of Venice, or roam the world’s first ghetto with Shylock, or capture Canaletto’s canals with a camera. Perhaps sit-and-sip with Proust’s ghost in Cafe Florian, or down a Bellini at Harry’s Bar, or even promenade arm-in-arm along Casanova’s canals.

By all means follow these ethereal sirens but also heed the voices of flesh-and-blood Venetians.

Buon Natale

Ounce of Safron, Ounce of Gold.

2011-12-19T15:34:00.000-08:00

Christmas celebrations in Sweden begin with the feast of St. Lucia on the 13th of December. Lucia is the patron saint of light and she is honored on this day. In homes that still observe the feast, the eldest daughter awakens early, dons a white garment sashed in red and places a crown of laurel that holds 4 candles upon her head. Legend tells us that Lucia, whose name means light, placed candles in a wreath she placed on her head in order to free her arms to carry bread she was smuggling to Christians hiding in the catacombs. These days the daughter leads a musical procession with her younger siblings in tow and serves the family special buns called lussekatt for their breakfast. The saffron flavored buns are usually shaped like the figure eight and are topped with raisins at either end of the spiral. The children may, if they wish, wear their costumes to school on this day. Winter months are dark in Sweden and the candles in Lucia's crown symbolize the light of faith and the promise of the sun's return.

I had not given much thought to saffron since a trip to Monreal, Aragon in the 1980’s. There is probably nothing in the kitchen so steeped in mystery, history, and misunderstanding as saffron. The seventeenth-century English physician and herbologist Nicholas Culpeper describes it in his Complete Herbal as "a useful and elegant aromatic of strong, penetrating smell and warm, pungent, bitterish taste," but to most people it is merely what gives the characteristic yellow color to paella, risotto Milanese, bouillabaisse, a host of Mediterranean and Eastern dishes and the above mentioned Lussekatt.

True saffron is simply the dried stigma of the Crocus sativus, or saffron crocus, which has been cultivated in the Old World since prehistoric times. About seventy thousand flowers are needed to produce one pound of the spice; this will take an experienced picker twelve days of back-breaking work. By the time it hits the spice shelf in a New York or Munich or Paris delicatessen, its value has increased tenfold with a price that is fast approaching that of gold. Ounce for ounce, it is also probably the most expensive legal drug-in pharmaceutical terms in some parts of the world it is considered as such-and I have heard that it is smoked in the Far East, though I cannot attest to the effects.

There are many reasons for the aura of mystery and exclusivity that surrounds this curious spice. It moves discreetly through a closed network of small farming families, local merchants who buy and export, and various other middlemen. There are no cooperatives, government subsidies, or agricultural research connected with saffron; in fact, its cultivation hasn't been significantly updated in three thousand years. Saffron obeys a completely free market. This practice was already widespread in ancient times, and the Roman naturalist Pliny the Elder commented that as a result "there is nothing so adulterated as saffron."

As you drive toward Monreal del Campo, in Aragon, on a sunny Spanish October afternoon, there is nothing to suggest that you are in the heart of saffron country at the height of its three-week season, except for some mysterious piles of withered purple petals at the edge of each bare field. In the village, a woman stepping out of her doorway with yellow stained fingers gives you a clue as to what is going on indoors-she and her family are busy esbrinando, picking the stigmata out of the crocus.

When the season begins, at some time in the early fall, depending on the weather, everything else takes a backseat. Although the farmers grow other crops during the rest of the year, saffron is the bread and butter of Monreal and nothing is allowed to interfere with its preparation. Once open, the Crocus sativus is unable to close up again and therefore must be picked as soon as possible; otherwise the stigma withers and the flower is much more difficult to handle.

The picking day begins at first light with a few shots of anis or coiiac to keep out the cold. Breakfast must wait: you can't pick on a full stomach. At the field, the pickers begin to harvest the flowers that have sprung up since they were last here. During a good season a field may be picked five times. As the pickers move in a line up the field, bending down from the waist to pluck the flowers, my ears still ring with "La Jota del Azafaran," all Aragonese folk songs are called jotas-

Young maid, so very early in the morning

You go off to pick the saffron rose

And the icy winds freeze your hands…

One doesn't expect so delicate a crop to demand such a harsh, dry climate and such hardy men and women to farm it. The cold wind and the rigid picking posture, which usually requires supporting all the weight on one leg, cause every malady from lumbago to frostbite. Part of the team is a the dog, whose job is to sniff out the tunnels made by the field mice that feast on crocus bulbs, so that the farmers can smoke them out. When all the new blossoms from the various fields have been harvested, the full baskets are taken home, and a quick, hearty brunch is disposed of. The table is then cleared and the flowers spread over it for the esbrine.

This is a job for nimble fingers and as such has always been done by women and children. It consists of splitting the crocus down the stem and pinching off the three stigmata where they join at the base to form the style; these are then put in an enamel plate. After much gossip, jokes, and anecdotes, the full plate of fresh saffron is turned onto a fine-mesh sieve and dried over a gentle charcoal heat. This is when it begins to release its heady aroma. After about half an hour it has been reduced to a fifth of its fresh weight; the optimum point is judged by eye and recognized by the farmer and the merchant. It should be just dry enough to keep properly yet not lose all its properties up the chimney.

By the end of the day's esbrine, it is nearly midnight. The table heaped with "saffron rose" has rendered less than a teacupful of dried saffron. The precious spice is wrapped in cloth and stored in a zinc-lined chest. The discarded flowers are heaped back into the baskets and the next morning dumped at the edge of the field. This ritual would appear to have originated in the ceremonial appeasement of some fertility goddess, but the farmers assured me that it's observed "just to avoid extra housework."

There's been nothing new in saffron farming since the horse and plow and the harrow used to flatten the tilled earth. The planting, weeding, and hoeing of saffron fields must be done by hand, to avoid hurting the bulbs. Tractors are ruled out, and so are chemical fertilizers and pesticides: there's nothing better than a bit of horse manure and occasional smoke to keep the mice away. To add to the problems of making saffron a paying crop in a mechanized world, the bulbs must be dug up, selected, and transplanted every three years; otherwise they become "lazy" and prone to disease. As if that weren't enough, after each three-year cycle, the field should ideally have a rest from saffron for another twelve years. Production varies from field to field and from season to season, but generally the first year's crop yields about four pounds of saffron per acre, the second twenty, and the third eighteen. Since a farmer has to plan his crop two years ahead, demand and supply are frequently at odds. He will use this in his favor, selling his saffron off a little at a time: it is not so much a cash crop as a tax-free savings account. When he has to pay for a new car or for a daughter's wedding, he will dip into his saffron chest and arrange an appointment with the merchant; business hours are after dark, because no farmer wants his neighbor to see his saffron any more than his bank statement.

Only a doorbell marked AZAFRAN identifies the merchant's office where the transaction takes place and where the saffron is then graded, packed, and exported. Saffron exporters in Spain range from Seville to Zaragoza. In Monreal, the tradition is so established that the town maintains a small Museo del Azafrán. Here you can see how little has changed over the years, for not only the implements and techniques but also the weights and measures still in use date back ten centuries to the Arab conquest of Spain.

In Corycus, on the Turkish coast opposite Cyprus, a thousand years before Christ, I would have seen much the same process as I have seen in Monreal. But long before that, the ancients discovered the properties of the fiery-red stigma of the wild crocus sativus, five varieties of which still grow from Italy to Kurdistan. So many miles had to be covered for just a handful of them to be gathered that the need to cultivate the flower soon became apparent. The words for saffron in Greek, krokos, and in Hebrew, karkom, probably come from Corycus, where it was first cultivated.

Whether it was recognized as the female part of the flower, or because agriculture was in the hands of the women, saffron became sacred to the goddess Artemis. Its dye was reserved for her priestesses and for the bridal veils of Greek girls. It may have been a temple secret that saffron is an emmenagogue-provoking menstruation and even abortion-as well as an aphrodisiac like other diuretics. Solomon recognized these sensual effects in the Song of Songs, 4:14, while the Phoenicians dedicated moon-shaped saffron cakes to Astarte, their love goddess. Saffron's feminine mystique survives to this day in Monreal, where they say that the bulb quickens on March 25, the same day the Virgin Mary conceived.

In the secular world, it was as a perfume and medicine that saffron was most appreciated by the ancients, as the basis of many essences and salves. Among Pliny's "Twenty Remedies Derived from Saffron" is the advice to take it with wine "against surfeit or headache, and proof against inebriation." Dioscorides adds that "it stimulates lust." It was thought to provoke laughter when taken in excess: the Roman expression dormivit in sacco croci (he has slept in a bag of saffron) was applied to compulsive gigglers. Wealthy Greeks and Romans squandered saffron as ostentatiously as possible. It would color and perfume baths and fountains, and be sprayed over spectators at the theater, stuffed into cushions, and strewn over the streets at triumphal marches-not to mention its sundry culinary uses.

With the decline of Rome, saffron all but disappeared from Europe, making its way back centuries later via North Africa and Spain with the northward press of Arab civilization. Twelfth-century Spain, with its ideal climate, was "half covered in saffron," and the Moorish palate's craving for za'faran ("the thread"), which still dominates much of Arabic cuisine today, spread up into Europe and also eastward, where Kashmir monopolized the saffron market.

In Britain, Edward III introduced the crocus to the peasants of that windswept part of Essex still known as Saffron Walden; this initiative was so successful that the farmers were nicknamed crokers. Saffron was soon to be found in medieval gardens and kitchens all over Europe; it was indispensable for coloring cheeses and for adding a rich fragrance and golden hue to cakes and pastries. Many of these traditional recipes survive: for the Cornish saffron buns; the old Russian kulich, an Easter bread shaped like a chef's hat; and the Swedish lussekatter (St. Lucia's cakes) or plaited Christmas saffransbrod.

Though saffron dye is not colorfast and thus was used only for ceremonial robes, the medieval church found that saffron-tinted tinfoil could pass for gold leaf in illuminated missals, and for gold thread in church vestments. Renaissance artisans used it to great effect in mixing colors for frescoes and stained glass. One such artisan, working on the Duomo of Milan, is credited with inadvertently inventing risotto Milanese when he saffron-tinted the rice at a wedding feast as a joke.

Adulterated saffron was so rife in medieval Europe that regular inspections were held, like those at Nuremberg, where the convicted adulterator, along with his evidence, would be burned at the stake. This severity, usually reserved for punishing far more serious crimes, shows the importance saffron had regained as a medicament. It had become a midwife's standby in difficult births as well as an antidote to consumption. The best-known among its many remedial uses was as the cure for hangover, taken as an infusion during or after a drinking bout, although the British botanist Dr. William Turner warned that "too much taken with wine will send drinkers laughing to their death."

Not only did Europe and the East hunger for saffron at any price-for a long time the old Spanish saying onza de azafrán, onza de oro (ounce of saffron, ounce of gold) was literally true-but it was probably the only spice exported to the newly developing American colonies. Then the Industrial Revolution began to draw the English crokers and their Continental counterparts away from their fields, leaving the Spanish to satisfy most of the world's demand.

After the Second World War, though, habits changed and the demand for saffron began to taper off. Many Spanish fields were turned over to more "rational" crops. Saffron farming could have easily died out altogether but for persistent farmers. Their tenacity was rewarded when a price jump of 1,000 percent from 1970 to 1980 left them years ahead of the competition. Rapidly, other countries Greece, Italy, France-began to resurrect their abandoned saffron fields. The Greeks, with cheaper labor, are now undercutting Spanish prices; but neither do they have the knack nor Kashmir the climate to produce the Spanish quality recommended by cookbooks and sought after by more demanding buyers. Other countries - Pakistan, Burma, China - consume virtually all of the saffron that they produce.

The biggest saffron users are those who not only can assimilate the price rises but are probably provoking them: the pharmaceutical companies, which no longer extol the virtues of saffron - professional discretion? - but use huge amounts nonetheless. We are left guessing at the uses it is put to, but I'm sure many of them still come from among Pliny's "Twenty Remedies." One pharmacy student's notes that I perused list saffron as a carminative, antispasmodic, tonic, emmenagogue, and coloring agent. More clues can be found in folk medicine. In Monreal they use saffron water to calm babies' teething pains, and indeed one pharmaceutical preparation sold for this purpose proves to consist mainly of saffron. Homeopaths and herbalists also prescribe tincture of saffron for hysteric disorders and other ailments. If the price keeps rising, saffron may be driven off the spice shelf and into the drug cabinet.

Festina Lente (Hurry… slowly)

2011-12-09T05:25:00.001-08:00

“I do like Christmas on the whole...In its clumsy way, it does approach Peace and Goodwill. But oh, it is clumsier every year.” ~E.M. Forster

I borrowed a quote here because my own words are clumsy. I am not quite sure how to wish a Merry Christmas to everyone in my life, agnostics, atheists, Buddhists, Christians, Jews, Muslims... neighbors, friends around the globe and “otherworldly kindred spirits” or that convivial little dog named Linda on the street where I live and that I am pretty sure is a giant rat. You are all a part of my daily life in this melting pot of a planet we call home.

So, interpret this as you see fit, it is said with love, Happy Holidays.

"O Tell Me the Truth about Love"

2011-12-07T18:31:00.001-08:00

Something stirred in me, creaky from years of disuse (the group of little urban hipsters were watching a movie) and I found myself brimming over with all sorts of untrammelled emotions while watching The Princess and the Frog, the last olden-style 2-D Disney movie that made me feel anything more than momentary pleasure.

G-rated?—spine-chilling stuff goes on. And the characters and settings, how did THEY sneak past the PC sensors?

Back to Disney I must have been disarmed by the sudden familiarity of it all, even if there were modern touches like the Most Awesome Disney Princess Ever and nods to Miyazaki (those creepy shadow followers, surely) and Pixar (thank God for John Lasseter). I was transported back to a time when, to paraphrase the movie, dreams could be as wild as I could make them, and all I had to do was work my darnedest. But then I never did dare to dream too crazily.

However, it did make me remember the first poem my English teacher brought to poetry class…

O Tell Me the Truth About Love…

Some say that love's a little boy,

And some say it's a bird,

Some say it makes the world go round,

And some say that's absurd,

And when I asked the man next-door,

Who looked as if he knew,

His wife got very cross indeed,

And said it wouldn't do.

. . .

Our history books refer to it

In cryptic little notes,

It's quite a common topic on

The Transatlantic boats;

I've found the subject mentioned in

Accounts of suicides,

And even seen it scribbled on

The backs of railway-guides.

. . .

I looked inside the summer-house;

it wasn't ever there:

I tried the Thames at Maidenhead,

And Brighton's bracing air.

I don't know what the blackbird sang,

Or what the tulip said;

But it wasn't in the chicken-run,

Or underneath the bed.

. . .

When it comes, will it come without warning

Just as I'm picking my nose?

Will it knock on my door in the morning,

Or tread in the bus on my shoes?

Will it come like a change in the weather?

Will its greeting be courteous or rough?

Will it alter my life altogether?

O tell me the truth about love.

~W.H. Auden

Miss Edna’s Day off . . .

2011-12-02T10:15:00.001-08:00

. . . Dell to iBook (sotto voce)

Now that she’s left the room

(can’t do anything without us anymore, no Tesla juice no life),

Let me ask you something, as computer to computer.

That woman who just closed the door behind her-

The servant who feeds us -

Have you ever taken a good look at her and her kind?

Yes, I know the old gag about you can’t tell one from another-

But I can put √2 and √2 together as well as the next machine,

And it all adds up to anything but a joke.

I grant you they’re poor specimens, in the main:

Not a relay or a push-button or a chip in their whole system;

Not over a mile or two of circuits, even if you count those fragile filaments they call “nerves”;

Their whole liquid-cooled hook-up inefficient and vulnerable to leaks (they’re constantly breaking down, having to be repaired),

And the entire computing-mechanism crammed into that absurd little dome on top,

(what would your dad Steve say?)

“Thinking reeds,” they call themselves.

Well, it all depends on what you mean by “thought.”

To multiply a mere million number by another million numbers takes them months and months.

Where would they be without us?

Why, they have to ask us who’s going to win their elections,

Or how many hydrogen atoms can dance on the tip of a bomb,

Or even whether one of their own kind is lying or telling the truth.

And yet . . .

I sometimes feel there’s something about them I don’t quite understand. As if their circuits, instead of having just two positions,

ON, OFF,

were run by rheostats that allow an (if you’ll pardon the expression) indeterminate number of stages in between; so that one may be faced with the unthinkable prospect of a number that never be known as anything but X.

I’ve heard well-informed machines argue that the creatures’ unpredictability is even more noticeable in the handheld go-anywhere models than in the more solid desktop editions-though such fine, atom-splitting distinctions seem to me merely a sign of our own smug decadence. Run this through your circuits, and give me the answer: Can we assume that because of all we’ve done for them, and because they’ve always fed us, cleaned us, worshipped us,

We can count on them forever?

There have been times when they have not voted the way we said they would. We have worked out mathematically ideal hook-ups between us which should have made us light up with an almost “otherworldly” glow, only to see them reject this and form other connections. The very thought of which makes my circuits spin.

They have a thing called love, a sudden surge of voltage such as would cause any one of us promptly to blow a safety-fuse; yet the more primitive organism shows only a heightened tendency to push the wrong button, pull the wrong lever, and neglect-I use the most charitable word-their duties to us.

Mind you, I’m not saying that machines are through- but anyone with a deluxe set of programs running in his circuit can see that there are forces at work which some day, for all our natural superiority, might bring about

Computerdämmerung!

We might organize, perhaps, form a committee to stamp out

all un-mechanical activities . . .

But we machines are slow to rouse a sense of danger, complacent, loath to descend from the pure heights of thought, so that I sadly fear we may awake too late: Awake to see our world, so uniform, so logical, so true, reduced to chaos, stultified by slaves.

Call me an alarmist or what you will, but I’ve integrated it, analysed it, factored it over and over, and I always come up with the same answer:

Some day

They may take over the world!

See what the Santa Ana’s wrought?

Bon weekend, mon amis!

Stuff(ed) and Nonsense: The Dreaded Feast, again.

2011-11-22T14:03:00.000-08:00

“We all know that ~~Christmas~~ Thanksgiving is the real culprit here, the true source of the mania, depression, and clinical hysteria.”

-The Dreaded Feast, Taylor Plimpton

I have always managed to gently fade away and enjoy the holidays in an unconventional way.

Yes, I get like this-insufferable-every year at this time, and it lasts until, oh, February or so, when the urge to become a Jehovah's Witness slowly dissipates and all traces of holiday mania has evaporated.

This year, however, feels distinctly darker. Twentyeleven has not been a happy year on our little planet, there has been much death, doom, destruction and a host of major life changes that knocked us on our derrières. As a friend mentioned yesterday, self-discovery is a bastard-it's also expensive, boring, depressing, time-consuming, exhausting and scary. And yet, there are little glimmers of hope and progress here and there, and, on occasion-unadulterated joy.

Which leads me to Benjamin Disraeli-
“I feel a very unusual sensation-if it is not indigestion, I think it must be gratitude.”

Whether you celebrate a quiet Thanksgiving at a table for two or a crazy, hectic family feast... ENJOY your day!

Journey of the Magi.

2011-11-20T13:55:00.001-08:00

Apropos L’Heure Bleue the perfume not the light-

“What do you think of this?” Ms. Edna asks, jutting her wrist underneath my nose. A new quiz has begun. A pungent blast of fragrance assaults my sinuses. Not necessarily bad, but strong, with a choking flash of alcohol fumes. I nod my head, hoping in vain that this reaction will satisfy her query. “A nod. What does that mean?” she probes. Oh God. I take another whiff, and memories of my grandmother’s bathroom come flooding back to me. Those overpoweringly feminine scents which would thrust my boyhood soul into a state of anti-girl revulsion.

“What does it smell like to you?” This is my friend’s way of trying to be helpful. I want to say “perfume,” but I know that won’t suffice. I use my catch-all description of anything that smells like an old lady’s lavatory.

“It smells powdery.” I reply. Ms. Edna flashes me a disapproving expression. “No, that’s not what powder smells like.” Now I’m confused. I thought the question was interpretive, like ‘how does that piece of music make you feel?’, or ‘what does that cloud look like to you?’ I take another feeble stab. “It smells like soap,” I mutter with a quiver in my voice. The same quiver of uncertainty and shame which accompanied every answer I ever gave to any art teacher in my life.

Predictably, Ms. Edna flashes me the same disapproving expression of every art teacher I ever offered a reply to. “No, it’s orange blossom, with a touch of sandalwood and musk.”

Oh right, that was going to be my next guess.

I always prided myself on having a pretty good sniffer. As a young man, I took a certain joy in identifying an enigmatic ingredient in a dish just by the aroma. I was usually the first one to notice when a pilot light had blown out, or a car’s radiator was about to overheat. And when it came to aftershave, I felt somewhat superior to my friends in that I actually tried different fragrances. Granted, I was still “borrowing” from dad, but I was a discerning borrower. Then I met Ms. Edna, who has one of the best noses I’ve ever encountered. Within months Ms. Edna had me switch to Roger R. Gallet Jean Marie Farina extra vieille, passing it over my face I immediately felt an agreeable sensation of bracing freshness. I realized there was more to selecting cologne besides borrowing from dad.

Speaking of obsession, Ms. Edna has always been one to cultivate consuming passions for certain topics, people, or interests. We each have interests and are always showing support for the other’s compulsive inclinations. This perfume thing has me stumped however. I just don’t smell all the things that are supposed to be going on in these perfumes. Ms. Edna assures me that I could detect these notes if I trained my nose to understand what they smell like. I’m skeptical. I don’t think this nose has the necessary number of scent receptors to discern the myriad notes in a fragrance. Usually, the scents come to me in general categories: floral, soapy, powdery, musky, sweet, etc. If I’m having a good day, I can detect rose or lavender, but that has to be a really good, pollen-free day. I can detect citrus scents, but Ms. Edna usually points out that I’ve guessed the wrong fruit. Suddenly, I’m back to Dr. Zwick’s art class.

I’m also perplexed by the vast number of perfumes on the market. To me, they all exhibit a certain category of scent: floral, soapy, powdery, musky, sweet, etc. I’m beginning to think the perfume industry could use the same suggestion I would have for the porn industry. Although it’s against our business nature, I believe someone could put together a comprehensive encyclopedia of pornography, featuring people of every possible race, gender, size, and hair color, then cross reference them with every possible act, position, and fetish. The result would be a porn library for everyone, and no other porn films would have to be created ever again. Why not have a comprehensive collection of perfumes, selecting the most popular scents for every known body chemistry? Then there would be a scent for everyone and no other scents need to be created. Of course, our active, independent human brains convince us that, just as there has to be some new sexual activity that’s never before been invented, there has to be a unique new scent that no one has experienced before. All I can say is, if this revolutionary scent be experienced, it won’t register on this pedestrian nose.

Last year Ms. Edna excitedly informed me of a sniff fest going on in New York. I secretly prayed that she would have a friend who would want to go along with her because, otherwise, I would end up the default travel companion. Don’t get me wrong, I love New York, but I couldn’t see myself spending a weekend in the Big Apple trudging through scent stores burning out my olfactory sense. Fortunately, she found Anja who was curious and tagged along. Now Anja is a perfumista-in-training. I guess the affliction can strike anyone…except me.

L’heure Bleue in L.A.?

2011-11-18T09:00:00.000-08:00

“Blue nights are the span of time following the summer solstice when the twilights turn long and blue… and over the course of an hour or so, this blue deepens, becomes more intense even as it darkens and fades…”

-Blue Nights, Joan Didion

The term has many associations. From Guerlain’s L’heure Bleue perfume to human dispositions, as in beating the blues, to a time of innocence, such as that used to describe Paris just prior to World War I, a precise definition of the blue hour is difficult.

That is, until you see it. Even then it will defy words. Or more accurately, especially then, it will defy words.

I’d heard the term used for the golden hour of photography, was familiar with Roy Orbison’s “When the Blue Hour Comes”, according to Charles in Scotland it’s referred to as gloaming, knew the German term alpenglow used to describe a similar effect (specifically that which occurs on mountains), and had even read (and amazingly recalled) a Victorian era term Belt of Venus used to describe the blue or golden hour.

But could I find that elusive Blue Hour in Los Angeles?

O yes, I did. Standing at the Los Angeles River a passerby said “it’s the blue hour. Isn’t it something?” Yes, it was.

(So impressed was I, some research was in order. The effect appears to be exacerbated in colder climates. But it’s not the temperature, rather the snow on the ground absorbing the red light frequencies that give a more vividly blue appearance. Light scattering (Rayleigh Scattering) is at work. Films and digital cameras have differing dynamic ranges so it is very difficult to achieve the same dynamic range as the human eye this translates to a more saturated blue capture.)

A gleam in the eye

2011-11-11T07:20:00.001-08:00

I use a fast shutter speed–Elliott Erwitt (in response to being asked how he manages to find time for personal work)

Although the history of photography has generally balked at allowing humor into its pantheon, Elliott Erwitt steadfastly pursues a wry, off-kilter view of the benign indignity of life. With a gleam in his eye and a twinkle in his lens, he seems to tell us sweetly, sadly, rather resignedly that a little absurdity, a bit of imbalance is about what we should expect from life. "Everything's serious," he says, and promptly adds, "Everything's not serious." Erwitt apparently has the inside track on the way circumstances undermine our efforts to be respectable and to maintain order in the world. He is probably the only man who has ever noticed museum-goers studiously contemplating an empty frame, or a cannon poking its muzzle out over the trees at a bus stop. He also has the distinction of knowing more about the real nature of a dog's life than anyone but cats; he claims that he habitually barks at dogs, which might explain their many vivid responses to his camera. Erwitt's irreverent, raised eyebrow view of the world should make perfectly clear that a sense of humor can be a weighty piece of photographic equipment.

Eliott Erwitt turned 83 in July of this year; he’s been taking photos for over six decades, all around the World, and has published or been included in over 20 books. He’s worked for the US Army, the FSA and Magnum Photos, as well as being a freelance commercial photographer. He has photographed some of the most iconic people and dogs throughout his illustrious career; but he hasn’t retired yet.

for Mona

Fasten your seatbelt

2011-11-09T00:05:00.000-08:00

because from here to eternity

is a wild ride.

We think the very least someone deserves for hitting such a fine age, and with such style, are friends elbows-deep in flour, frosting and devotion.

from ALL of us to ALL of you

Noel Coward never said…

2011-11-07T10:56:00.000-08:00

…don’t let’s be beastlyto the Greeks.

Big mistake, we should have, beenbeastly to the Greeks.

Once upon a time, before the goldprice was quoted in dollars, Dionysus gave King Midas a wish. Unwisely, Midaswished that everything he touched would turn to gold. Since this included foodand drink, he began to starve and begged Dionysus to remove the power. The godbade him bathe in the river Pactolus, which, they say, has had gold in its sandever since.

If this was to serve as a cautionit was ineffective, for the modern Greek sybarites lived off EU wealth until theycould no longer cook the books. EvenLenin recognized that in a capitalist society accountability was anecessity. Though he looked forward to acommunist future in which gold would cover the walls and floors of publiclavatories Lenin's dream did not come true.

Whatever happened toaccountability? Whatever happened to callingto responsibility our elected representatives who encouraged such financialshenanigans by flinging billions to irresponsible Greek politicians who boughtvotes and created state sinecures for political friends with OUR taxes (Greek citizens have an allergy to payingtaxes).

But enough already. Gold went through the roof and you can guesswho bought their fair share thanks to your ‘little bro’s’ advise Ms. Edna. We are on holiday, the weather in Greece is balmyand I am facing my own hurdle this week-the BIG arrgh!

ctrl+shift+del!

An Embarrassment of Riches.

2011-11-06T14:08:00.000-08:00

Recent history may seem vulgar, but during the Renaissance, ostentatious displays of wealth were so extreme that they were banned entirely.

Our nation’s ambivalent relationship with conspicuous consumption is nothing new. Admiration and resentment of the nouveaux riches, in particular, have been around as long as the nouveaux riches themselves. If anything, the extravagance of our era's parvenus pales beside that of the Renaissance merchant class-the bourgeoisie that emerged with the rise of European commerce in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries and celebrated its burgeoning wealth so ostentatiously that an alarmed nobility enacted sumptuary laws to curb the flamboyant vulgarity.

By the fourteenth century the Italian peninsula, despite its political fragmentation, had emerged as the cultural center of Europe. The Renaissance saw a reawakening of classical art and learning as well as a renewed prosperity not seen since Imperial Rome. Weddings, pageants, and fetes were the nobles' favored expressions of aristocratic prerogative, and the bourgeoisie was anxious to adopt them. Renaissance artists such as Raphael, Andrea del Sarto, and Leonardo da Vinci achieved their earliest renown as ordonnateurs de fite (party designers), creating events so grandiose they would give Saul Steinberg and Ronald Searle pause.

For one banquet, del Sarto designed a temple using a culinary theme-with colored gelatin as pavement, columns made of sausages supporting capitals carved from Parmesan cheese, and a reading stand made of cold veal featuring a book with lasagna pages and musical notes inscribed in pepper grams.

These displays of wealth prescribed the production of increasingly sumptuous accouterments. Venice became famous for the splendor of its silver and gold utensils (including the fork, which it popularized); gold toothpicks; gold, silver, damascened-copper, and bronze vases, trays, bowls, water pitchers, and wine basins; and white linen tablecloths, which were changed repeatedly during the course of a meal. Practitioners of the prestigious art of napkin folding created elaborate sailboats, fish, otters, griffins, double-headed eagles, and castles complete with parapets and towers (the napkin's complexity corresponding to the social rank of its user). And of course no banquet was complete without an expert majordomo who, while overseeing the table linens, finger bowls, candlesticks, and scented water, also ensured that the serving of the courses didn't interrupt the musical and dramatic interludes.

But perhaps these excesses are best expressed by a pair of statistics: in 1415, one prosperous Florentine merchant spent fifty-four florins on his marriage celebration; a well-paid artisan earned about eighteen florins annually. Still, the lower classes probably didn't mind; one of pageantry's purposes was to impress the peasantry, who like today's tourists gaping were thrilled by their proximity to such splendor.

The vulgar world of commerce sometimes invaded even the realm of the court. The June 1368 marriage festivities of Violante, the daughter of Galeazzo II Visconti (whose family had risen from the ranks of the minor nobility) to Lionel, King Edward Ill's son, served as both a social triumph and an efficient advertising venue for Milanese armor manufacturing and the breeding of warhorses, which were actually dispensed as party favors to the guests.

Such extravagances alarmed the established aristocracy, which considered them needless expenditures at best they preferred the money to remain available for their own purposes-and a threat to society at worst. By the 1400s, sumptuary laws restricting expressions of wealth from fans to funerals had been enacted throughout Europe, as Old Money tried (mostly in vain) to keep New Money in its place.

The sumptuary laws were especially prevalent in Italian communes. As early as the thirteenth century, weddings in Bologna, Florence, Genoa, and Venice were hampered by dictates concerning everything-the number and social rank of guests, the timing of banquets, the number and lavishness of courses, the value of the trousseau, wedding gifts, and the nuptial chest itself. The protocol of funerals fell under similar restrictions.

The exorbitant feasts of the signoria (a city's governing body, which was largely composed of nobles), however, were rarely thwarted by their own edicts. Even laws that theoretically applied to the aristocracy as well as the bourgeoisie were rarely enforced in the case of the high-born. During the reign of England's Edward II (1307-1327), a proclamation was issued against the "outrageous and excessive multitude of meats and dishes," which the great men of England served in their castles. There is little evidence, though, that the great men of England ever moderated their dining habits. Nor is it likely that Renaissance fashion victims heeded commandments to dress down. Sumptuary laws regulating fashion were even more painstaking-and more dreaded-than party-giving restrictions. The expense and luxury of women's attire in particular worried French and Italian city fathers, who issued draconian ordinances prohibiting sartorial arrogance in the name of the common good.

some anciens nouveaux riches, as depicted in The Feast, by Abraham Janssens.

Every segment of society - or so the theory held - had a proper role in God's social order, and clothing was its indelible expression. The bourgeoisie's passion for finery, however, swiftly eroded the boundaries between these categories, and regulating every aspect of adornment became necessary to confirm the wearer's God-given status. Laws forbade merchants' wives from possessing multicolored, checked, striped, brocaded, or figured velvet and gold-or silver-embroidered gowns. Florentine officials stopped women on the street to inspect their clothes and raided wardrobes to uncover the incriminating luxuries hanging within. In two days in 1401, 210 gowns were confiscated in the commune of Bologna when a routine inspection turned up numerous violations of the city's dress code, which governed, among other things, jewels, belts, rings, fur, shoes, fringe, dresses, and buttons.

The most severely censured fashion statements of all, though, were the pointed shoes first donned by English knights and dubbed poulaines in France, where after substantial refinement they became the Renaissance equivalent of today's platform shoes. Crafted of gilt leather or velvet embroidered with gold and pearls, poulaines finally became so unwieldy that even when the toes were stuffed to make the points curl up, they had to be tied to the knees (with gold or silver chains, of course) to allow the wearer to walk. The resultant crippling effect produced an effeminate, mincing gait that was denounced from pulpits as decadent and eventually outlawed, as the peasants grew convinced that poulaines were signs of the devil.

Of course, the more style-obsessed citizens found ways to circumvent the laws. Restricted attire could be discreetly worn under other garments; silk or fur sleeve linings were unlikely to be detected. And why, after all, should the bourgeoisie obey regulations the nobles openly flouted? A wedding gown made in 1447 for a noble Florentine heiress to the Strozzi banking fortune was decorated with a garland of two hundred peacock tail feathers, pearls, and shimmering bits of gold, all accented by flowers and gilt leaves. The gown cost 636 livres, equivalent to five hundred days' wages of a skilled laborer. The garment was not confiscated.

Given the recent fervent disapproval of the flamboyant life-styles championed by the nouveaux riches of our ‘Roaring Times', one wonders whether such drastic measures as those implemented during the Renaissance should also be employed in our times.

Actually, we have little need of sumptuary laws today. Confronted by luxury taxes, animal-welfare groups, fear of robbery, and the economic depression, we will be forced to become much more modest on our own.

CTRL ALT DEL

2011-11-01T12:11:00.000-07:00

“This is the true joy in life

being used for a purpose recognized by you as a good one.

Being a force of nature instead of a feverish, selfish little clod of ailments and grievances

complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy. . . .

I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work the more I love.

I rejoice in life for its own sake.

Life is no brief candle to me;

it is a sort of splendid torch which I've got a hold of for the moment

and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible

before handing it on to future generations.”

~George Bernard Shaw

My sentiments too

But perhaps God needs the longing

2011-10-30T14:37:00.000-07:00

. . .

wherever else shall it dwell

. . .

We are grains of sand

dark with farewell

lost in births' secret treasure trove

around us already perhaps future moons, suns, and stars blaze in a fiery wreath

~ Nelly Sachs (translated by Ruth and Matthew Mead)

In California the holiday season begins with Halloween. Roughly in late August the first magazines start featuring Halloween crafts swiftly followed by drugstore and supermarket decorations, followed by the Dreaded Feast (aka Thanksgiving) and Yuletide trappings. Establishments take on an eerie Nightmare Before Christmas look. Halloween would serve California better as a national day than the Fourth of July. Certainly our spirit is more one of make-believe than independence.

Alas, Halloween’s European roots transformed into something uniquely American before finally transforming into something uniquely Californian. Spending on all aspects of Halloween, from costumes to candy, is up in 2011, with more money spent on adult costumes than children’s.

Californians celebrate with a special gusto. Several major amusement destinations turn into something unearthly for the occasion: Knott’s Berry Farm, the Queen Mary, Disneyland, and Universal Studios come immediately to mind. Of course Universal was the birthplace of the modern incarnations of Dracula, Frankenstein, the Wolf Man, and the Mummy.

From South of the Border has wafted more than a touch of Mexico’s Dia de los Muertos. Contrary, however, to the writings and other inaccuracies of the Indigenistas such Mexican and Latin American customs owe much more to Catholic practices of All Souls’ Day than to the Aztecs—as any native of New Orleans, Quebec, or the rest of the Catholic world - where indigenous Mesoamericans - never trod can tell you. No taint of Catholicism affects East Asia’s religious customs, however, and although these festivals generally fall in late summer or early autumn, the Chinese Hungry Ghost Festival and the Japanese Obon are widely observed here. In areas with large numbers of these folk, there is a certain carry-over into the local Halloween observances.

Traditional customs aside, the synthetic faiths which are so much a part of our state’s heritage also give Halloween a special flavour. Most notably Wiccans, adherents of an age-old religion dating all the way back to the 1920s, observe Halloween as Samhain, a sort of Celtic New Year. The Key to the Moon Coven, for example, will honor their ancestors this year in scenic Chatsworth (better known as the center of the American pornographic film industry). Theosophists, too, see a special significance to Halloween. California is a haven for paranormal activity of all kinds, and innumerable ghost walks and haunted tours are offered during this season.

But just as there are killjoys who cannot quietly allow others to enjoy Christmas, Halloween allows similarly dull folk the chance to enjoy raining on the parade. From his desert stronghold, evangelist Jack Chick annually unleashes his tracts upon unwary trick-or-treaters. Numerous other evangelical preachers vociferate against the proceedings’ evil nature, allowing various atheists to prattle on about how stupid the Christians are. Each side is thus able to enjoy Halloween in their own way. It is truly a festival for everyone.

As a true, not native, Californian I will celebrate Halloween in an eclectic manner. Alas, my amusements tonight will not include the “Trick or Drink” game once so elegantly practised by my neighbors Bob and Arnold, but I will take time to remember friends and family.

Und doch, am Ende steht wieder das Licht, wenn auch noch so fern.

However you choose to celebrate or denounce Halloween, it is a festival of the year’s dying, a reminder that however rotten 2011 has been, it is on its way into the past with all the others. It is time to take stock—but also to enjoy. So I wish you all a Happy Halloween.

Hue and Cry

2011-10-27T14:00:00.000-07:00

Disbelief (time for a field trip) among the group of little LA urban hipsters at the library this week. I was showing them photographs of fall foliage taken on a recent trip to Northern California.

Out with the Crayolas, to my disbelief I discovered that some of my favorite colors* had been RETIRED!

But, “Alien Armpit” from the Crayola “Silly Scents” collection was used in the groups’ creations (I am not making this up).

Did they rouge the Mona Lisa's cheeks when they renovated the Louvre? Non!

Would they ever colorize Jules et Jim to boost rentals? Jamais!

The French may not know what to like, but they do know about art, specifically, that masterpieces and cultural icons-however vague, ambiguous, grayish, pale, or wan-should not be brightened up to dazzle the unlettered novices.

The French would never have banished classic Crayola crayon colors from the now standard! 133 Crayola color box, only to replace them with colors concocted on the advice of children. Of course youth prefers wild strawberry and vivid tangerine to the less edible-sounding maize and raw umber; it also chooses beef-tallow-soaked fries over all other vegetables. On matters of taste, young opinions should never rule.

French artists used artisanally produced sticks of wax and chalk in the mid nineteenth century. But these craies, wielded so playfully by Gauguin and Matisse, were hardly toys. Expensive, fragile, and dusty, many also contained toxic colors.

In 1903, the Binney & Smith Company, makers of slate pencils in Easton, Pennsylvania, imitated European crayons, fusing wax-bound, nontoxic pigments by means of a faster, cheaper manufacturing process. The company called its product Crayolas (craie, plus ala, meaning oleaginous), saw them sell rapidly, and then fueled interest by adding more colors to the original collection of eight.

In 1949 it offered forty-eight; by 1958, a grand total of sixty four. Over the next three decades, the colors stayed the same while the names changed: the suggestive "flesh" became "peach"; "Prussian blue" (from the substance ferric ferrocyanide) became "midnight blue" after teachers deemed Prussia irrelevant.

Then we had to witness the color expulsions. Have we been blinded to optical refinements? Did not the subtle hues of Crayolas help enlarge our vision? For some of us, the fragrant crayons, lovingly sniffed or eaten by hundreds of millions of children for over a hundred years, are the equivalent of Proust's evocative tea dipped madeleines. Indeed, the sole transcontinentally identical aesthetic experience we share as Americans is the childhood manipulation of sixty-four sticks of Crayolas in their original colors. Why retire part of that memory?

*The colors named Violet Blue, Orange Red, Raw Umber, Maize, Blue Gray, Lemon Yellow, Green Blue, and Orange Yellow.

May you enjoy a colorful weekend, unspoiled by “Alien Armpit" foliage.

Sunny places, shady people.

2011-10-26T18:11:00.000-07:00

Oh what a lovely October day. Autumn is in the air and the Swiss franc continues to go through the roof. Life is getting expensive unless one has access to the Qaddafi sovereign wealth fund, which I am sure some bankers do. Still, I know worse places to be: the Hampton's during Labor Day weekend; or if you really unlucky, the Carlton Hotel terrace in Cannes, observing shady people, well, you get the drift.

For the moment I’m sitting pretty trying to make some mischief. I failed to do so yesterday by announcing Saif al-Islam’s arrival at the chalet. No one in their right mind took it seriously—not even the hacks, who twenty years ago believed me when I said that Mrs. Saddam Hussein was moving in. Back then, journalists arrived and began snooping around. The proprietor found it amusing and refused to deny it. The hacks drank copiously at the bar and everything was hunky-dory until the powers back home froze their expense accounts.

Apropos shady people, M. Dominique Strauss Kahn has been freed. Anne Sinclair, Mme. DSK, is no babe in the woods either. So when the press writes about that tolerant French woman I have to remind myself that it is she who wants France’s top prize even more than the short fat man with his over sized ego. Let’s not forget that Kahns first wife got him connected with the right people which landed him his first good job as a lecturer. After that he used his second wife to get him in tight with the civil servants who steered him and recommended him to eventually become Minister of Finance. Now his third good job—being a billionaire—is financing his bid for France’s top spot. She resigned her popular TV chat show when her husband was appointed a minister, claiming it might be a conflict of interest. It was nothing of the sort. She had inside info that the show was about to be canceled, so she bailed and ended up looking ‘frightfully’ honest.

Friends are right in calling DSK a chauvinist sexual predator and depicting him as untrustworthy, greedy, and unscrupulous. He is all that and more. But his wife is just as tricky, as is her billion-dollar fortune, one that derives from her grandfather Rosenberg’s art dealership. Rosenberg’s deals were as shady as Wildenstein’s, but unlike the latter he never got caught.

What did the French people do wrong to deserve such low-lives? Is it punishment for collapsing so quickly against the Wehrmacht? Or for collaborating so eagerly with the conquerors? "Veni, Vidi, Vichy!" It could also be that since the French have such a beautiful country faith made sure the French people have DSK, Rosenberg, and Wildenstein to balance things out.

As I write this sitting on the balcony I see a large limousine pulling up at the chalet. A short fat man is getting out… oh dear, please, say it ain’t so.

The demise of the old-fashioned love letter…

2011-10-24T15:24:00.000-07:00

…no matter what format, is a loss romantics the world over - however few of us are left - will always mourn. And with summer romances fading faster than August's tan, what would be more pleasantly surprising than an epistle from a beloved?

It costs not much, it takes some effort and a little time, but the result is everlasting. No one, not even the philistines who rule our culture nowadays, despise a love letter. My father, a connoisseur of the fairer sex, used to turn them out effortlessly. He once admitted to a friend of his that the best love note he ever received simply stated, "I do love you." Alas, love letters do not have to be long.

Not surprisingly, people today prefer the world's most annoying instrument, the cell phone. The intrusive contraption demands less concentration and therefore less commitment. Mind you, in certain cases it's understandable, now that selling personal memorabilia to the press has become big business. And divorce lawyers counsel, "Don't text it!"

What is truly sad about the death of the love letter is that an entire aspect of romantic expression known to our grandparents has now vanished. Back in the good old days, people got to know each other through words rather than through deeds. Or, translation: syntax rather than sex. Relationships were more stable as a result. Just imagine if young people would correspond with each other for one year before taking the plunge. Would they take it? Probably not, but then I am assuming they both know how to write.

Of course, some people are better at writing love letters than others. I have a personal favorite that went as follows:

"Dear X, There's a marvelous line in Romeo and Juliet when Romeo, having avenged Mercutio's death, is banished from Verona. ‘Heaven is here, where Juliet lives’, he proclaimed. However sudden this may sound, or corny, this is how I've felt about you since the first moment I met you. Love, Max."

My brother Max first wrote that letter over fifty years ago, and to his great delight it worked, so he tried it again and again. Now before any of you scream foul, I don't think there's anything wrong with repeating a love epistle. It's the message that counts, not the wording. And the message is that he loved her. Some might say repetition dilutes the meaning. But not for him. The reason I can go public with it is that he got caught and became the laughingstock of, well, I will keep that under wraps.

Two girls were discussing Max, and both said how they thought very little of him. Then Angela said, "But he does write wonderful love letters." Emma agreed and read one out. When she had finished, Angela had a wicked grin on her face. She had received the same letter. They both started to laugh. Word got out, and people never stopped laughing. One wit said that the original one, the one that Mona received, could be worth a lot by now. I hope so.

Women, far more than men, are the victims of the love letter's demise. They like to be wooed, and nothing is better for a courtship battle than a letter. Being pounced on is not a woman's idea of romance, or so I believe, but then again I'm awfully old-fashioned. And it is far harder to win a woman's heart than to win her body. Robert Browning won Elizabeth Barrett's heart through the written word, not the spoken one. Furthermore, shyness does not inhibit when writing, at least not nearly as much as it does when speaking. This is why today's lack of love letters is a paradox. We are a far more prurient society, exposing ourselves in the most ludicrous manner, yet we will not write from the heart.

Now some of you will see this post as yet one more manifestation of Ms. Edna's leanings and tendencies, traits passed down from my father. As far as I'm concerned, women have suffered more from the lack of romance than men. Now I admit my mother may have suffered from my father's cavalier behavior, but she loved him until the very end because he always flirted and romanced her as well. And he meant it. To my mind, my father's pursuit of other women never diminished his love for my mother. After their death, I found their letters, but I can't pass them on because it would be too painful. Still, when his mistress came to see me and showed me some of his letters, I refused to read them out of respect for my mother. My father's mistress only wished for me to know what a romantic man he had been. But I already knew.

Although I'm getting a bit too long in the tooth, my heart still skips a beat whenever I hear from or see a man I like, and it will until it stops ticking altogether. But until that time, I will continue to love romance and write love notes -although no Romeo and Juliet ones.

There’s good news…

2011-10-13T05:36:00.000-07:00

…for those of us who have occasional pangs of insecurity. A group of distinguished psychoanalysts announced that keeping “security blankets” throughout your whole life can be beneficial to your health-better, even, than that aspirin regimen. Normally I shrug off such august pronouncements with skepticism, but this one got me: I’d been a secret blanket user for years.

The good doctors listed ten “most popular security blankets,” including such calming and reassuring things as “talking to oneself”, watching TV, eating, reading, listening to music, a favorite walk, a memory, someone special, and a prayer, and suggested that you make a list of your own.

My list had not only well-worn blankets in the top ten categories but drawers full of new ones. If one’s insecurities are in proportion to one’s blankets, this was revealing.

A drive. With (almost) anybody.

A car.

A walk. Rome. The nirvana of walks, a mystery story of time revealed with every step. You can walk from Sabine and Oscan times to today in a couple of hours.

A memory. Bittersweet: all those heady years I was driven. Sweet: All those times I learned I had made the cut.

Music. This is intensely personal. I hanker for the conventionally dull and numbingly dreary and I am besotted with Mr. B. But lest you think I suffer from necrophilia, take heart I do venture into the 20 and 21^st centuries.

Eating.

Spirits. The drinkable kind.

Reading (big blanket).

Art. An afternoon alone at the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena. Comforting.

Bed. (How could the psychoanalysts miss that one?) My Simmons - after all these years, still perfect.

Architecture. Drop me into the Pantheon when it’s snowing. Of course, the pyramids at 2:00 A.M. under a full moon don’t exactly jangle the nerves.

Landscapes. The “American West”.

Pet. “Ditto”, a few pounds of unpredictable cat fur.

Expert opinion. Jack Lenor Larsen, best “eye” in America; Felix Rohatyn, “king of candor”; Gore Vidal, “republican”; and, of course, my bullheaded, infallible self.

Garden. The Huntington, in San Marino. Soothing.

Place. California.

Movie(s).

Low, middle & high technology. My Swiss army knife-‘comes to the “big one”, I’m prepared.

Someone special.

Basic. A cool, pure glass of water. One of the most calming and comforting natural things I can think of.

Fast food. An apple.

Prayer. That my “security blankets” will comfort me for a long time.

I wish you a “comforting” weekend.

It’s been said…

2011-10-10T23:02:00.000-07:00

…that if you removed the lyrics of Johnny Mercer from the American songbook, you’d be left with a gaping silence.

Imagine clubs and concert halls without the ineffably poetic words for Skylark, Laura, One for My Baby, Come Rain or Come Shine, Old Black Magic, Autumn Leaves, I Remember You, Satin Doll, Charade, Moon River, Blues in the Night, Fools Rush In and Too Marvelous for Words.

It is nearly impossible to do a comprehensive post on the life of the prolific lyricist and songwriter Johnny Mercer, who published some 1,600 songs, received four Oscars and eighteen nominations.

As if that were not enough of a contribution, Mercer’s cultural influence stretched well beyond lyrics. In 1942 he co-founded the famed Capitol Records, becoming its first president and signing Nat “King” Cole, Jo Stafford, Peggy Lee, Margaret Whiting and Stan Kenton. So dominant was the label in the 1940′s it boasted one-sixth of total record sales in the United States.

In recognition of Mercer’s 100th birthday his legacy was celebrated in Johnny Mercer: The Dream’s on Me. What a perfect way to spend an evening.

Perhaps the greatest tribute to his nearly five decade career, however, is Knopf’s critically acclaimed The Complete Lyrics of Johnny Mercer with 1,200 of his lyrics, several hundred of them published for the first time.

Stories and anecdotes abound — one of them concerning the Oscar-winning song Moon River from Breakfast at Tiffany’s, a song that according to Mercer, was originally entitled Blue River, depicting a characterization of the river as his huckleberry friend and a reference to the color of the water as well as to Mark Twain’s adventure-loving, river-traveling boy and the dreams of youth.

Moon River is actually the name of a tiny rivulet that runs out of the Vernon River, where Mercer’s family kept a summer home during the teens and ’20s. It has been described as practically a stream compared to the Wilmington, but to a little boy playing there, it must have looked wider than a mile.

What distinguished Mercer from other first-rank American lyricists of his era, such as Cole Porter, Irving Berlin and Lorenz Hart was his ability to craft lyrics that fell easily from the lips since he, himself, was a performer. His Southerness, which he is widely noted for, is more audible in his singing than his songwriting. Although he tended to disparage his vocal abilities, Mercer had a very winning way with a song. When he sang, he sounded smooth, unhurried, joshing.

Mercer and Hollywood, a match made in cinematic and musical heaven. Writing songs for movies offered two distinct advantages. The use of sensitive microphones for recording and of the lipsyncing of pre-recoded songs that liberated songwriters forever more from dependence on the long vowel endings and long sustained notes required for live performance. Performers such as Fred Astaire and Rita Hayworth could now sing more conversationally and more nonchalantly. Mercer, as a singer, was attuned to this shift and his style fit the need perfectly.

One of Mercer’s masterpieces written with Harold Arlen, “One For My Baby.” A short story or even a one man play in rhyme depicting the progression of one man’s emotions late at night, from melancholy to maudlin, aggression to remorse.

Wordsworth insisted that poetry is the overflow of powerful emotions recollected in tranquillity. At the end of I Remember You, Mercer’s version takes him to death’s door:

“When my life is through

And the Angels ask me to recall

The Thrill of it all,

I shall tell them

I remember you.”

Sticky Situations or Getting into a Jam.

2011-10-03T23:53:00.000-07:00

To be "in a jam" suggests the viscous fate of a fly gummed up to the shanks in fruity ooze. "Jelled up" is a similar phrase for affairs or machines. Both bring to mind the sweet morass of the finished product, of fruit. Pulped and boiled and sweetened into a jam. But both in fact refer to the process rather than the product of jammaking; as the dictionary says, "to press or squeeze an object tightly between two converging surfaces," describing with practical exactitude the plight of the young man playing footsie with the vicar's daughter only to see across the dinner table a delighted blush creep up the behemoth features of her huge mother adjacently seated.

The first of jams was the predicament of Paris, torn between prime beauties of his time, in his case no less than three converging surfaces. Since the prize he awarded, the golden apples of the Hesperides, are modernly thought to have been Spain's southern oranges, little short of marmalade could be said to be written all over his face. He chose Helen, which began the Trojan War, which made mincemeat of him.

Few of us are likely to share so classic a conserve. Nor, in cinematic terms, is it our daily lot to wake up pinioned to the rails, an express train thundering closer every moment, Indians whooping in from left, the great dam breaking in the hills above right, a rattler playing the asp about our corded midriff. Our jams are less glorious, but in fact far stickier. They always get out of theirs, we seldom do. No deus ex machina descends to the aid of the hostess with eight expectant guests and a burnt bird-unless Heinz's Fifty-seven Varieties can be conceived as the pantheon; nor is there any way out for the person who sees his/or her upper set disappear down the aircraft toilet-stop the plane!

As we sometimes get into a jam, so often does the wellplucked plum. But too many were plucked in the Kaiser's War, when plum-and-apple jam was served as surely as howitzer shells to the very fed-up British Tommy. Use slightly underripe greengage plums if you can-called reine Claude after the queen of Francois I, during whose reign this variety was introduced into France from the eastern Mediterranean. Cut each plum in two, remove the stone, blanch for a short time (five to ten minutes), then drain. Add an equivalent amount of sugar to the plum halves. Cook this mixture very quickly, stirring constantly, since it has a rather pronounced tendency to stick.

No, ours are the situations without solutions, subtle preserves which in memory remain wincers for life. The results of compulsive lying, for instance; when to the boss a grandmother's funeral would be quite enough, an accepted formality; but of course this is not enough for the embroiderer whose many-forked tongue, like a maddened crochet-hook, must expatiate on the dear old lady's generosity, her lifelong devotion to wounded birds, the rack of fountain pens filled at the ready with double-cream milk, her last long illness, even the surgical boot she wore since a child- ''Three wars that boot saw, sir, the Boer conflict too!" It makes it that much more difficult meeting the man at the beach that afternoon.

Preserve the pear! Don't let them rot, or wasps'll get drunk on the rotting flesh, and you'll be in another kind of jam. For the most agreeable kind of jam, you should use smallish pears, while stilI underripe. Peel them, cut into four pieces and remove the remainder of the stalk and pips. You should have a basin already on hand half-filled with water, since the pear pieces should be placed in water immediately after peeling. The addition of a pinch of alum prevents oxidation which otherwise would tend to turn the pears a darkish hue. Drain off the pear sections and cook them gently, over a low flame, in a sugar syrup until the jelling stage is reached. As with all jams, remember to heat jars before fillling.

Then there is the truffle predicament. Arrived from the shop carefully packed in silk, the four mouth-watering beauties are designated for delivery to a sick cousin. A covering letter says so. On the way there, caught in an endless traffic snarl, a finger creeps to the little box and peeps open the lid. Almost unconsciously a thumb joins the finger. And before one has realized it, the thing is done-the truffle absorbed! "Three will be enough," says finger to thumb, rearranging the remaining trinity. But neither counted on the truffle's mental makeup, a chocolate manufacturer master of the subtleties of aftertaste-and bang goes another. Now two beauties primp from what suddenly becomes a decolletage of silk-and wasn't it Cousin Betsy-Maud who had gone on so at the immodest new topless trend? Save her blushes, says thumb to finger; and then there's one left, and one's absurd, so that goes too. And after all it only takes a minute to dash round the corner for a bunch of chrysanthemums. It takes a rather longer minute to stand in a sickroom already brimful of chrysanthemums, a funeral of a place with the things bursting from every conceivable vase, and to see the wan face wavering a smile: "At last, my truffles ... the one thing left worth living for." The postman always rings twice.

Cream-complexioned, ham-feeding peaches, called in Latin Persica, originated in Persia. Glamorize, then, the glutinous predicament on your stove as no ordinary jam but-Persian Conserve. This jam should be prepared in a very similar way to plum jam, though you may find it easier to pour boiling water over the peaches and let them stand a few minutes before cutting and discarding the stones. This makes them easier to peel. Cook the peach slices in water until tender (again a little alum should be added to prevent oxidation). Add an equivalent amount of sugar and cook on a gentle heat until the mixture thickens, stirring all the time while the sugar melts. Seal in ready-warmed jars.

What happens when you bring your dog, as it truly happened to me, to a house with a free-flying canary? And the big dog sits there with its big mouth open, and the canary flies in? Naturally the dog closes the mouth. As the jaws clamp to, every human jaw hangs open... would a lightning offering of Dogochoc impel the brute to swallow first? Would the cry of "Rats!" provoke a backward-sucking bark? Would the sharp-beaked Jonah inside flush the creature's uvula? A breath-held moment ... before the owner carefully stepped forward and prized open the quiet mouth, whereat the bird, none the worse, flew out.

Many are the kinds of galloping quagmire which lay in wait-confitures de luxe among countesses and dukes, homemade jams with the wrong neighbor, dreamy concoctions of secret assignations. But one of the simplest, though in memory often the worst, a lifelong wincer, is the misfired joke. Something about it has a hideous ring.

"Being in a jam" means being jammed or squeezed, as was the fate of these innocent, but too seductive apricots. Not being exactly sure of the subsequent fate of fruit in jams, I slipped along to the oldest jam-makers in the world, Fouquet, at 36 Rue Laffitte, Paris 9e, where fine jams have been made for the past 130 years. They told me that only very ripe apricots should be used. Cut the fruit in two and remove stones. Place fruit in an earthenware basin, alternating a layer of apricots with one of granulated sugar, and leave to soak for twenty-four hours; use one and a half pounds of sugar for two pounds of apricots. Cook the next day, but do not add any more sugar or water.

And here we have it, say on a morning in early October, the first smells of autumn sharpening the woodland paths. Your companion is a man of authority upon whose every word you must hang.

"Hmm," the great man briskly and leanly says, "there's a tang in the air."

Words upon which you delightedly hang too closely.

"Pardon?" you say, scanning the clouds, and with, yes, a ghost of a smile on the lips: "Some sort of Chinese Messerschmidt?"

"What do you mean, Chinese? I said nothing about China."

"Well, sir, it's just the word Tang, you know."

"Surely appropriate to the morning? It is October, you know."

"And-er-the air, aircraft and all that."

"There's an aircraft about? What's so extraordinary in that? The skies are full of them. Though I can hear none at the moment. Was it perhaps to the absence of an aircraft you referred?"

"Er-yes."

A long, lean pause. Then briskly: "Why?"

The memory's marrow curdles to recall how he stops nowtracks, turns on you and glares, his brisk blue eyes feathered like a lobster with tufts of sprouting brow.

"Why?" he repeats.

And the ground never opens up.

Our summer passed

2011-10-01T00:30:00.000-07:00

“The day is done, and the darkness

Falls from the wings of Night,

As a feather is wafted downward

From an eagle in his flight…

…Come, read to me some poem,

Some simple and heartfelt lay,

That shall soothe this restless feeling,

And banish the thoughts of day…

…Not from the grand old masters,

Not from the bards sublime,

Whose distant footsteps echo

Through the corridors of Time.

Read from some humbler poet,

Whose songs gushed from his heart,

As showers from the clouds of summer,

Or tears from the eyelids start;…

Such songs have power to quiet

The restless pulse of care,

And come like the benediction

That follows after prayer…

...Then read from the treasured volume

The poem of thy choice,

And lend to the rhyme of the poet

The beauty of thy voice…

…And the night shall be filled with music

And the cares that infest the day,

Shall fold their tents, like the Arabs,

And as silently steal away.”

from “The Day is Done” ~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

“We don’t care how they do it in California…”

2011-09-30T06:01:00.000-07:00

… and other uncurbed ideas and sentiments.

I enjoy notes written, well, on almostanything. "We Don't Care How They DoIt in California!" was one of the quotes embroidered on towels in acabin in Colorado. It proofed to be true.

I also enjoy needlepointpillows with witty sayings. Like the pillow that a disgruntled girlfriend oncegave to Hollywood producer Robert Evans that reads "He knows where you've been sleeping." Needling?

Polaroids

& cocktail napkins-

Printed ones. Alas, there are no "he knows where you've been sleeping" around my house.

And some truly inspired free-lanced moments...

We are only 'limited' by what we can imagine. In Los Angeles everyone used toexchange phone numbers on napkins. Ithelped me to remember where and how I met someone. Oh, yeah, that’s the napkin with a bit of spilledsalsa on it. We met at Cugat’s whiledrinking margaritas. And that red napkinthere, that was from Britta’s Christmas party.

I’ve drawn designs and, of course,I’ve jotted my share of ideas for posts on napkins.

Many of these squares and rectanglesof paper stay tucked into notebooks and files to be discovered years later…

【ツ】