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Imagining Argentina

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Tango Dancers in La Boca

Tango Dancers in La Boca

Even though I’ll be in Arequipa, Peru, a month from today, I still look back fondly to Argentina, which I visited in 2006 and 2011. In fact, today Martine and I ate dinner at Empanadas Place at Sawtelle and Venice Boulevards in Mar Vista. I had an entraña (skirt steak) sandwich and iced mate cocido, while Martine had two empanadas, one stuffed with spinach and the other chopped beef. It is probably one of our favorite places to eat on L.A.’s West Side; and, according to Martine, the empanadas there were better than what we were served in Argentina. (Of course, the place for empanadas is in Northwest Argentina around Salta and Tucumán.)

In addition to Empanadas Place, there is a very good Argentinean restaurant on Main Street in Culver City: the Grand Casino Bakery & Café. We go there several times a year.

I have come to love drinking yerba mate tea and—very occasionally—sneaking some alfajores cookies filled with dulce de leche. My two visits to the Southern Cone of South America have resulted in a series of cravings I have yet to fill. Although we saw a good part of Patagonia, I have yet to go to Carmen de Patagones, Viedma, San Carlos de Bariloche, and Esquel. (In 2011, there was a major volcanic eruption at Puyehue and Cordon Caulle in the Chilean Andes which covered several whole states of Patagonia with ash—so we went to El Calafate instead to see the glaciers.)

To be sure, when I return from Peru, I will be haunted by my desire for Peruvian food. Fortunately, there are also Peruvian restaurants in L.A.; but I am sure it is but a pale shadow of what I will be eating next month. Plus, I will no doubt miss interacting with the Quechua and Aymara peoples of the Peruvian altiplano.

Is This Necessarily a Good Thing?

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“If It Doesn’t Get All Over the Place, It Doesn’t Belong in Your Face”

“If It Doesn’t Get All Over the Place, It Doesn’t Belong in Your Face”

The motto that serves as the caption to the above photograph comes from the Carls Jr. Restaurant Chain in the 1990s. Ads showed children trying to eat giant burgers that dripped all over the table and their clothes.

I myself am not partial to the idea of unmanageable food. I would rather convey my meal directly from the plate via a fork or spoon into my mouth, and thence to my esophagus. Much to Martine’s dismay, however, there are three things that lead to indelible food stains on my shirtfronts:

  1. When I eat alone, I am always reading a magazine or newspaper;
  2. There is a protuberance that juts out over my belt line that serves to catch whatever falls off my utensils; and
  3. I like Asian and Latino foods that are served with sauces that attack me when I am not super-careful.

I am not going to stop reading when I eat alone: That would be unthinkable. Of course, I could lose eighty pounds, but that’s even more unthinkable. Perhaps my forks or spoons should come equipped with a high-gravity force field that would keep food on it until it is suctioned off by my mouth.

Many times, when I call Martine from work, she complains about stains that she is using various chemical means to eradicate, but with mixed success. I talk about replacing the shirts with new ones, but that just tends to upset her.

A former girlfriend bought a gold lamé bib for me which I think looks slightly effeminate. Perhaps I should wear a poncho or raincoat whenever I eat. At least, it wouldn’t raise any more eyebrows than that damned gold lamé bib.

 

So You Think You Know American History?

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Who Was the First U.S. President?

Who Was the First U.S. President?

That doesn’t look a whole lot like George Washington, does it? George became President in 1789, but the United States was already a going concern (to some extent) by 1781. So what did the country do for the intervening eight years? Did it engage in anarchy?

Not quite. Before the Constitution was adopted, the law of the land of the United States consisted of the Articles of Confederation. As students, we didn’t study that eight-year period in depth, except maybe to note that these same Articles of Confederation were a condign failure.

Yet, there were eight U.S. Presidents of the Continental Congress, and therefore of the More-or-Less-United States, serving one-year terms under those same articles. They were, in order:

  1. John Hanson of Maryland (1781-1782, pictured above), who wanted to resign immediately because he had neither any compensation or power, but he manage to stick it out.
  2. Elias Boudinot of New Jersey (1782-1783) was next.
  3. Thomas Mifflin of Pennsylvania (1783-1784)
  4. Richard Henry Lee of Virginia (1784-1785), who wound up disapproving of the Constitution because it concentrated too much power—an early Tea Partier
  5. John Hancock of Massachusetts (1785-1786)—he’s the one with the oversized signature on the Declaration of Independence
  6. Nathaniel Gorham of Massachusetts (1786-1787)
  7. Arthur St. Clair of Ohio (1787-1788), born in Scotland
  8. Cyrus Griffin of Virginia (1788 only)

Only after Griffin’s presidency did the U.S. Constitution become formally ratified and George Washington elected the “first” President under the new rules.

For an interesting discussion of these eight presidents, who have become more or less lost to history, click here.

 

Funny Peculiar

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Poet Mark Ford

Poet Mark Ford

I cracked up yesterday at lunch while I was reading a New York Review of Books article about British poet Mark Ford. In it was a poem called “Funny Peculiar” which I present for your enjoyment:

I sit down here drinking hemlock
While terrible things go on
   upstairs.

Sweat creeps like moss outward to
   the palms,
And time itself seems a strange,
   gauze-like medium.

Sleep will leave still newer scars
   each night, or,
Infuriatingly, is a curtain that
   refuses to close.

On the horizon, bizarre
   consolations make themselves
Known—a full fridge, a silent
   telephone.

The television quiet in its corner
Everything and nothing have
   become a circular

Geometrical figure, seamlessly
   joined,
To be wrestled innocently
   this way and that

Into the most peculiar almost
   whimsical shapes.

In the meantime, do enjoy your bizarre consolations!

Gliese 832c

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Could It Be the Closest Inhabitable Exoplanet?

Could It Be the Closest Inhabitable Exoplanet?

From NASA comes a photo comparing Earth with the planet Gliese 832c. According to the Astronomy Picture of the Day website:

This planet is only 16 light years away—could it harbor life? Recently discovered exoplanet Gliese 832c has been found in a close orbit around a star that is less bright than our Sun. An interesting coincidence, however, is that Gliese 832c receives just about the same average flux from its parent star as does the Earth. Since the planet was discovered only by a slight wobble in its parent star’s motion, the above illustration is just an artistic guess of the planet’s appearance—much remains unknown about Gliese 832c’s true mass, size, and atmosphere. If Gliese 832c has an atmosphere like Earth, it may be a super-Earth undergoing strong seasons but capable of supporting life. Alternatively, if Gliese 832c has a thick atmosphere like Venus, it may be a super-Venus and so unlikely to support life as we know it. The close 16-light year distance makes the Gliese 832 planetary system currently the nearest to Earth that could potentially support life. The proximity of the Gliese 832 system therefore lends itself to more detailed future examination and, in the most spectacularly optimistic scenario, actual communication—were intelligent life found there.

Since Neil deGrasse Tyson very effectively demonstrated that none of the other planets or planetoids in our solar system is inhabitable, I guess I’ll have to cancel my vacation plans for the Big Red Spot on Jupiter. (You really should see the video clip that comes with this link: He’s really quite good.)

By the way, you’ll notice in the above quote that NASA fudged a bit on the “photo” of Gliese 832c. If you’ll look closely you’ll see Spain, France, and North Africa through the clouds. I guess the point was to make Gliese 832c a more welcoming destination than, say, Syria, Pakistan, the Gaza Strip, or anywhere Ken Ham chooses to call home.

Historical Shoe Shine

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Paris 1838: Do You See the Man at the Lower Left?

Paris 1838: Do You See the Man at the Lower Left?

This is one of my favorite firsts: In 1838, Louis Daguerre photographed a man getting a shoeshine on the Boulevard du Temple. Is it strange that no one else is around? Actually, the street is crowded with vehicles and pedestrians; but because they’re all in motion, the long exposure time (ten minutes) required for the first daguerrotypes didn’t pick them up. The man at the lower left getting a shoeshine, on the other hand, is standing still. Because the shoe shiner’s arms are in motion, they don’t show up in the image, making him look armless, like a fire hydrant. Neither person has ever been identified.

Below is a close-up of the man getting his shoeshine:

The Red Arrow is Pointing at the First Man Photographed

The Red Arrow is Pointing at the First Human Being Ever To Be Photographed

See PetaPixel, my source for this posting.

Beyond the Master Forger’s Ability

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Giovanni Bellini’s “The Transfiguration” (1480)

Giovanni Bellini’s “The Transfiguration” (1480)

Yesterday, I was drawn to the television by a segment on “Sixty Minutes” about the noted German art forger, Wolfgang Beltracchi. When Bob Simon of CBS asked him what painters he couldn’t forge, Beltracchi, without hesitation, answered Bellini. I took him to mean Giovanni Bellini (1430-1516) and not his brother Gentile (they were both brothers-in-law of the great Andrea Mantegna). The only time I remember ever seeing or original Giovanni Bellini was at the Frick Collection in New York City, which has a superb “St. Francis in Ecstasy” also painted in 1480. I have included an image below.

There is such an incredible sense of detail in a Bellini oil that I feel as if I could pick a background segment (say 1/64th of the total) and enlarge it to full size without losing anything. And the detail would be almost as fascinating as the foreground. Look at that fence following the upward path in “The Transfiguration” (above), and note the minor variations from post to post.Look at that dead tree at the lower left, or that couple meeting in the upper right near the tree.

I can almost imagine Bellini in an ecstasy such as St. Francis in the painting below.

 

St. Francis in Ecstasy (1480) at the Frick Collection

St. Francis in Ecstasy (1480) at the Frick Collection

Some people I know are put off by the Christian religious themes of Renaissance painting. The great ones would be great even if they were depicting a shoelace or a dirty dish. It’s almost as if the subject were irrelevant.

 

My Brother Sets Me Straight

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Now I Know What I’m Going to See There!

Now I Know What I’m Going to See There in Peru!

Last night, my brother left the following comment on my status on reading Nigel Davies’s book The Incas on Facebook: “How about The Dinky Incas”? That set me back for a minute. Who in blue blazes were the Dinky Incas? Well, there was only one way to find out: I Googled it. Then it all came back to me. There was an animated television series around 1959-1960 called “Clutch Cargo,” starring a ruggedly good-looking hero with an enormous jaw named Clutch Cargo who flew to strange locales with a small freckle-faced boy named Spinner and a dachshund named Paddlefoot. They engaged in the type of exotic adventures I recall from reading Carl Barks’s Uncle Scrooge comic books.

By the time my brother was of an age to enjoy the limited animation adventures of “Clutch Cargo,” I was already a teenager who was much too sophisticated for that type of stuff. Dan, on the other hand, was eight or nine years old and watched every episode.

Now You, Too, Can Follow Their Adventures

Now You, Too, Can Follow Their Adventures

The series on the “Dinky Incas” was about a missing archaeologist who was on a dig in Peru which resembled, more than anything else, a Mayan pyramid in the jungle. (The real Incas didn’t build pyramids and they preferred the higher-elevation altiplano to the jungles of the Amazon.) Clutch, Spinner, and Paddlefoot run into two unsavory characters who try to do away with them, because, of course, they’re after all the gold and jewels. But Clutch and his sidekicks take care of them right quick, as you can see for yourself if you have twenty minutes to watch the whole series, which is available by clicking here.

Sweating at Pepperdine

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The Malibu Campus of Pepperdine University

The Malibu Campus of Pepperdine University

Because I forgot to bring my camera today, I’m using one of my old Minolta pictures of the Pepperdine University Campus in Malibu. Martine likes to walk around the hilly campus, and it’s great exercise. Today, however, we’ve been hit by the northern edge of another Mexican monsoon. The result was incredibly muggy and sweaty weather that felt like Florida this time of year. At several points during the walk, I just wanted to lie down on the grass and take a nap … but we pressed on.

As California is in the middle of a heinous drought, the campus looks much browner today than the above photo. Usually, we would see several groups of deer wandering between the buildings and feeding on the grasses. Today, we saw only two of them from a distance.

It’s strange to consider that (1) we are in a drought, but (2) we can’t just wring all the moisture out of the air so that it drains into the ground.

It will be a month or two before get the really dry Santa Ana winds that make the skin around our fingernails peel painfully. By then, I will be in Peru, high in the Andes, trying to keep from freezing my butt off.

 

 

A Week of Very Very Bad News

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Omigosh, Where Do I Begin?

Omigosh, Where Do I Begin?

Every once in a while, all the bad news seems to clump up at one time. If you spend a lot of time following this news, you will feel very very bad and have to take some pharmaceutical products that are unlikely to do you any good. For those of you who have been consulting a sage on some remote mountaintop over the last seven days, here’s a brief summary of what has been clogging the pipes:

  • That Malaysian plane that was shot down by the Russkis or their BFFs is still in the middle of a battle zone, and investigators have been told the area is now mined. How’s that for hiding evidence?
  • Somebody did something to some Israelis or Hamas members, so the Israelis went and killed a couple thousand Arabs while Hamas still lobs cherry bombs and hammerheads into Israel.
  • Ebola is spreading like wildfire. For the sake of justice, we are bringing some afflicted Americans back to the States, where Donald Trump will be emptying their bedpans and giving them sponge baths.
  • Immigration? Congress does a bunk and gives Boehner another reason for a very public faceplant. Wait a sec, we’re paying those clowns to take apart the Legislative Branch of the U.S. Gummint?
  • Drought-stricken California is in even worse shape, now that the UCLA campus was flooded by several million gallons of water after a water main break. Is there any certainty that USC was not involved?
  • The stock market has taken a giant dump while we still consider investing in such ad-driven media as Facebook, Twitter, and SnapChat. Wait, don’t advertising budgets suffer first when the economy goes south?

You can laugh at anything—provided that you concentrate on cultivating your garden rather than bearing the world’s unsolvable ills on your back.