At the Getty Center

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The East Pavilion at the Getty Center (Currently Closed for Remodeling)

Every time I visit the Getty Center in Los Angeles, my imagination is rekindled. And, unlike the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), I can visit without spending a small fortune—$26.00 senior admission and almost as much for parking. That comes to almost $50.00 total. I spent a total of seventy cents ($0.70) for the round trip on the MTA 781 bus and the Getty does not charge admission. If you were a senior on a fixed income, which museum would you choose?

For this visit, there was no obvious special exhibition; but I didn’t care because there was always something interesting to see that piqued my curiosity. For instance, I was amazed by a ceramic basin from Italy dated approximately 1600:

Basin with Moses Striking Water from the Rock

Moses in shown in the bottom left of the interior of the basin. According to the Getty website, “Princess Isabella della Rovere (1552-1619), sister of the Duke of Urbino, commissioned this basin as part of a diplomatic gift for Catalina de Zúñiga y Sandoval (1555-1628), wife of the Viceroy of Naples.”

Note the ogre or monster face jutting out from the bottom of the basin. Or is it Satan planning to turn the Israelites escaping Egypt to worshiping a golden calf?

In any case, it is a lovely piece of work

The Getty website provides more details:

The depiction of narrative scenes, known as istoriato in Italian, along with the vivid color palette of the basin are characteristic of ceramics made in Urbino. The city was a major center for the production of tin-glazed earthenware (maiolica) in central Italy during the 15th and 16th centuries. The workshop of Francesco Patanazzi (d. 1616), a member of a renowned ceramicist family, crafted the vessel. Its elegant shape and sculpted decorations, like the satyr-head handles and the base with lion’s paws, attest to the workshop’s virtuosity.

Itineraries: Peru/Chile/Bolivia Trifecta

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Parque Nacional Lauca in Chile

On my kitchen table right where I sit to eat my meals are ten travel guides by Lonely Planet and Moon Travel Guides. Now that I’ve canceled my newspaper subscription, I spend a lot more time fantasizing about possible future trips. Since I am 81 years old and living on a fixed income, am I kidding myself? Maybe, but dreaming about travel is almost as much fun as travel itself.

My latest fantasy itinerary starts in the northernmost seaport in Chile, Arica, known for its surfing. The city used to belong to Bolivia, which at the time had access to the Pacific; however, in the 1880s, there was a bird poo war involving Chile, Bolivia, and Peru. It literally was about access to bird droppings for use as agricultural fertilizer. (It’s amazing sometimes how so much warfare is due to lust for various types of shit.) Peru and Bolivia lost, probably due to naval help for Chile from Britain.

From Arica, I would take a La Paloma bus to the village of Putre, which woulkd take me from sea level to an elevation of 11,060 feet (3,371 meters) within a couple of hours. There I would adjust myself to the altitude by reading a good book for a day or two while I felt slightly ill from soroche (altitude sickness).

I would hire a tour guide in Putre to take me to the Parque Nacional Lauca, which is a region of snowcapped volcanoes and alpine lakes with wild vicunas and alpacas. Nearby are other high-altitude Andean parks.

From Putre, I could take a bus to La Paz, Bolivia, where I could rest a day or two before making my way to the ruins of Tihuanacu and the city of Copacabana on the eastern shore of Lake Titicaca. From there it is a quick bus trip to Puno in Peru, where I spent several days in 2014 on the western shore of Titicaca. If I am so minded, I can easily get from Puno to Cuzco and Machu Picchu and ultimately to Lima.

What To Talk About When Politics Is Too Grim

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In the Age of Trump This Is Becoming a Real Problem

With most of my friends, I tend to avoid any discussion about the current political situation. That becomes a sticky issue when so many people are glued to news programs. In fact, the only person with whom I am comfortable discussing the news is my brother Dan. And that is because we generally agree on most of the issues.

I am a strange kind of hybrid who is at one and the same time a liberal and a fiscal (but not a cultural) conservative. I do not belong to any political party and have even gone so far as to vote for some Republicans for local (but not national) office. As a result, any political discussion with a dyed-in-the-wool Democrat or Republican is likely to end in discord. For example, my dislike of the tent-dwelling homeless in Los Angeles has made me notorious among the woke Liberals of my acquaintance.

When I was a child in Cleveland, I was raised in a family where there were broad political disagreements. My father was a supporter of Alabama Governor George C. Wallace’s campaigns for the presidency. In 1980, my mother voted for John B. Anderson for the top office. Only my brother and I tended to agree. (In 1968, however, I was so disgruntled about choosing between Nixon and Hubert H. Humphrey that I did a write-in for Otto Schlumpf for president.)

So do I watch the news at all? Not really, unless we are talking about the weather. There are so many television channels with news all or most of the time that they really don’t have much to say, so they tend to repeat their “breaking” news ad infinitum ad nauseam. Martine watches the news a lot, but I think her problems with insomnia are attributable to her news habit.

“Keep an Even Mind”

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Horace and Virgil with Maecenas

Sometimes I think that philosophy has not progressed substantially since the days of the ancient Greeks and Romans. Here is an excerpt from Horace’s Epistles. Orcus is a god of the underworld, and Charon the boatman who ferries souls across the River Styx.

Book 2 Epistle 3: One Ending

When things are troublesome, always remember,
keep an even mind, and in prosperity
be careful of too much happiness:
since my Dellius, you’re destined to die,

whether you live a life that’s always sad,
or reclining, privately, on distant lawns,
in one long holiday, take delight
in drinking your vintage Falernian.

Why do tall pines, and white poplars, love to merge
their branches in the hospitable shadows?
Why do the rushing waters labour
to hurry along down the winding rivers?

Tell them to bring us the wine, and the perfume,
and all-too-brief petals of lovely roses,
while the world, and the years, and the dark
threads of the three fatal sisters allow.

You’ll leave behind all those meadows you purchased,
your house, your estate, yellow Tiber washes,
you’ll leave them behind, your heir will own
those towering riches you’ve piled so high.

Whether you’re rich, of old Inachus’s line,
or live beneath the sky, a pauper, blessed with
humble birth, it makes no difference:
you’ll be pitiless Orcus’s victim.

We’re all being driven to a single end,
all our lots are tossed in the urn, and, sooner
or later, they’ll emerge, and seat us
in Charon’s boat for eternal exile.

Is This Spring, Really?

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Commemorating the First Day of Spring

Spring in Southern California is not as distinctive a season as it is back east, where it is associated with an end to snow and slush. All this week, the temperature has been near 100° Fahrenheit (37° Celsius), even near the beach. Further inland, heat records were broken with dismaying regularity.

The one distinctive spring weather pattern is associated with the terms “Marine Layer” and ”June Gloom.” The wind comes from the ocean and blows clouds inland. Tourists visiting Southern California in the spring always say that they always heard the sun is always shining here. In fact it is, but between the sun and the ground there are clouds and the weather tends to be cool.

I say “tends” because over the past few years, the pattern has been changing. There have been tropical heat waves in the winter, rain falling earlier and later than usual, and even an occasional cold snap. I have no idea where the weather is tending, whether California will become even more desert-like, or whether the rainy season will result in a wetter climate.

It’s always quite beautiful when we’ve had a good rainy season. The California Poppy Preserve in the Antelope Valley becomes full of wildfires. Even the Mohave Desert can appear to be carpeted with tiny, but utterly lovely wildflowers.

But then, all these climactic weather megatrends will not be clear until long after I am gone. All I know is that the weather is very different from when I first moved here in 1966. Will the San Andreas or Cascadia fault result in massive earthquakes? Will the Central Valley be flooded? Or will water become increasingly scarce and make the big cities of California unlivable? (My bet is on the latter.)

Letting It All Hang Out

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Sea Lions at Marina Del Rey’s Chace Park

Today at Marina Del Rey’s Chace Park I was able to escape the heat for a couple of hours. The weatherman said that there would be the beginnings of an onshore flow (sea breeze), and he was right. It was utterly delightful, except that the coolness attracted a lot of young men who were loudly attesting to their street cred, making it difficult for me to read.

That’s all right, I walked to a bench in the shade at Stone Point, where the cool breeze that has not been present all week during the current heat wave cooled my head. Funny thing, as I returned to my parked car, I felt the wind die down and the temperature rise every hundred feet (30 meters). By the time I sat in my car, I felt I was in a sauna.

When the weather is unrelievedly hot, the thing to do is make like a lizard. But, since we are at the edge of the sea, make like a sea lion. I watched the sea lions for a few minutes, trying to determine whether they were in fact harbor seals. As soon as I heard one of them make the characteristic barking sound, I knew that they were in fact sea lions. The other identification is to check whether they have visible ears, but I wasn’t close enough to be 100% certain.

In any case, these sea lions were doing the right thing on a hot day.

Victor Hugo on the Patience of the People

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A Drawing by Victor Hugo

The following poem by Victor Hugo is relevant to today’s political situation with President Trump attempting to test:

The Patience of the People

How often have the people said: “What’s power?”
Who reigns soon is dethroned? each fleeting hour
Has onward borne, as in a fevered dream,
Such quick reverses, like a judge supreme—
Austere but just, they contemplate the end
To which the current of events must tend.
Self-confidence has taught them to forbear,
And in the vastness of their strength, they spare.
Armed with impunity, for one in vain
Resists a nation, they let others reign.

A Half Century of Proust

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French Novelist Marcel Proust (1871-1922)

There are a handful of writers who have been a major influence in my life. They include William Shakespeare, Jorge Luis Borges, Honoré de Balzac, and G. K. Chesterton. Also Marcel Proust, whose seven-volume In Search of Lost Time I am reading for the third time. God grant that I may have a fourth go at Proust’s masterpiece.

I have always felt that one of the things that makes fiction great is that the main characters are able to change within the course of the work. For example, in Hamlet, we see the Danish prince resolve to revenge his father’s death. This is followed by Hamlet waffling and even leaving the country. When he returns, he fights a duel that becomes a massacre as summarized by the song “That’s Entertainment!” from the 1953 MGM musical The Bandwagon:

Some great Shakespearean scene
Where a ghost and a prince meet
And everyone ends in mincemeat.

In Search of Lost Time is about a boy named Marcel (last name not given) who fantasizes endlessly about young women, most particularly about Oriane, Duchesse de Guermantes, whose family were originally based in the village of Combray, where Marcel spends his first years. Over seven volumes, we see Marcel pursue first Gilberte, then Albertine, then Mlle de Stermaria, and even the Duchesse de Guermantes.

In The Guermantes Way, the third novel in the series, Proust ponders the strange disconnect between desire and reality:

Thus did the blank spaces of my memory gradually fill with names that, as they arranged and composed themselves in relation to one another, and as the connections between them became more and more numerous, resembled those perfected works of art in which there is not a single brush stroke that does not contribute to the whole, and in which every element in turn receives from the rest a justification it confers on them in turn.

I never said that Proust is an easy read, In fact, his work is among the most difficult ever written. That does not deter me from reading and re-reading his work. It’s no picnic, but the rewards are great. For me, the rewards have been coming over the decades since 1976, when I first started reading him.

No, Not Tonight, I Have a Headache

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#OscarsSoPolitical

Usually around the time of the Academy Awards, I write a negative appraisal of the Oscars, if not of all award shows. Here are just some of my negatory yawps in no particular order:

This year I will refrain from casting aspersions on the awards except to say that I have no idea who won what this year, nor do I care.

Instead, I will say that I have not seen any current movies this last year. I am tired of paying an inordinate amount of money to see a bunch of young actors making faces at one another in a vehicle that is devoid of story or cinematic value. The filmmakers I worshiped are all gone: John Ford, Alfred Hitchcock, Howard Hawks, Jean-Luc Godard, Kenji Mizoguchi, Yasujiro Ozu, Akira Kurosawa, Federico Fellini, Ingmar Bergman, Carl Theodor Dreyer, and Luis Buñuel among others. They have been replaced by people from television, video games, and TikTok.

When people watch films on smart phones and other small screens, it’s pretty much game over.

Perhaps this marks me as an old-timer, but I don’t give a damn. I will continue to watch the great films that have meant so much to me, and to boycott the current product unless it shows signs of genius. So far, there haven’t been many films worth watching.

Fairbanks Hall

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Fairbanks Hall As It Is Today

In the picture above, the left half of the building shown was added some time after I graduated from Dartmouth College in 1966. To see the Fairbanks Hall that I knew and loved, put your hand over the left half of the picture.

When I was a freshman at Dartmouth, I paid a visit to Fairbanks Hall in its old location just north of Baker Library. I heard that Dartmouth Films, which occupied the building, was showing free films. One day, I wondered into the small auditorium and saw Carl Theodor Dreyer’s 1943 masterpiece Day of Wrath (Vredens Dag) about witchcraft in the 17th century. The Danish film electrified me. I had seen a handful of foreign films back in Cleveland, but nothing this good.

That year, the Hopkins Center for the Arts had its grand opening, and the Dartmouth Film Society was able to screen films in the center’s large and fancy auditorium. At the time, I was planning on being an English major; but suddenly new possibilities opened up. The Film Society inaugurated the Hopkins Center auditorium with the world premier of John Huston’s Freud.

In my sophomore year, the college lifted Fairbanks Hall from its north campus location and plunked it down in the middle of the parking lot between Massachusetts Hall and the Hanover, New Hampshire cemetery. I started hanging out there, having long conversations with Blair Watson, who headed up Dartmouth Films, and David Stewart Hull, his assistant.

By my junior year, I was an active member of the Dartmouth Film Society; and the next year, I was its assistant director. By that time, my pituitary tumor was causing intense pain, usually in the form of frontal headaches which started just before noon and (for some reason) ended around midnight. In between those hours, I figured I could screen films for myself on the 16mm projector. I dropped in daily to see what films had been received for screening in classes around campus and threaded the projector if any of them looked interesting. There was a small screening booth I could use for the purpose.

Among the highlights of the films I saw that year were the Frank Capra Why We Fight films made to show Americans why we were fighting in the Second World War; Nelly Kaplan’s great documentary about the films of Abel Gance; René Clair’s French musicals Sous les toits de Paris and Le million; and a whole host of other highly miscellaneous films.

While in Fairbanks, I usually ran into my friend Peter, who was busy editing one of the films he had shot. Today, he lives some twenty-five miles south of me.

Fairbanks Hall had a major influence on my choice of graduate school. I had received a citation for excellence in a class on film history; and I decided to apply to the UCLA film school for an advanced degree in motion picture history and criticism.