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A Fond Farewell to Will Rogers SHP

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The Will Rogers Ranch House—Gone Forever

One of my favorite places in the Los Angeles area was the Will Rogers Sate Historical Park in Pacific Palisades. It was the home of Will Rogers for many years. On the grounds was a polo field where in the summer polo games were played. There were also hiking trails and a horse barn.

Now all are gone, burned in the Palisades Fire. Martine and I will no longer be able to relax in the shade of the oak trees in rustic rocking chairs or tour the ranch house to see the western memorabilia of one of my favorite actors.

Will Rogers was a genuinely good person as well as one of the most popular actors of the 1930s. There was not a contentious bone in his body. What the political divided United States needed was another Will Rogers, but alas it is unlikely we will ever find one.

The 5,000 Fingers of Doctor T

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Still from The 5,000 Fingers of Doctor T (1953)

I suppose I could continue to write about the disasters wildfires that savaged Southern California last week, but I decided to take a break from that.

Last night, Martine and I watched The 5,000 Fingers of Doctor T (Columbia) on television last night. I have seen it several times before and regard it as one of the most entertaining movies ever made., mainly because of the creative genius of Doctor Seuss, who designed the production.

The film is about a little boy played by Tommy Rettig who dreams that his piano teacher (played brilliantly by Hans Conreid) has designs on his mother. He is assisted by a friendly plumber to foil Doctor Terwilliger’s megalomaniacal plans of having 500 little boys simultaneously play his compositions on a giant piano.

Particularly good are the scenes in Dr. T’s dungeons, where players of non-standard (i.e., non-piano) instruments are imprisoned and kept in check by hire goons.

Leapfrogging Embers

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Flying Embers Being Carried by Wind Gusts

One of the reasons this week’s Southern California wildfires were so devastating is that the wind gusts were so powerful that flaming embers were being carried up to five miles by the winds. And some of those gusts approached the velocity of a category 2 hurricane (up to 100 miles per hour or 161 km per hour) without benefit of the moisture that usually accompanies a hurricane.

Typically, January is a wet month in Los Angeles. This year, the relative humidity levels were frequently 10% or even less.

One of the reasons the Palisades Fire was so devastating was that the wind gusts would send flaming embers leapfrogging over the hills and valleys and starting new fires. This is what happened along the Pacific Coast Highway (Route 1) where dozens of beachfront homes burned down as the waves of the Pacific Ocean gently lapped over the ruins.

Martine and I remain sick at heart following the news and seeing nothing but devastation everywhere.

Back to … This?

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Still from Jacques Tourneur’s Night of the Demon (1949)

I was in the hospital until a few days ago—and that wasn’t even the worst thing that happened at the start of this inauspicious New Year. What affects me more are the wildfires that are destroying the city of Los Angeles.

One of my best friends has lost his house, his church, and his neighborhood from the Eaton Fire in Altadena. To this point, I have not been affected, but in the nearby city of Santa Monica, just two miles to the northwest, residents are being warned they may have to evacuate.

The hurricane-force winds buffeting the area are sending flaming embers for miles, each one of which is capable of burning down a house, place of business, school, apartment building, or church. I have never experienced such powerful wind gusts in the sixty years that I have lived in Southern California.

First Responders at the Palisades Fire

Over the decades, I have come to love Los Angeles. What is happening to it now is tearing me apart.

The Ghost of New Years Past

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Lucky New Year’s Postcard

I’ve said on many occasions, usually around this time of year, that only a fool celebrates the passing of time. Every January 1, take a picture of yourself in your bathroom mirror and note the thinning and graying of your hair, the mottling of your skin, and the network of spidery lines demarcating the zones of your face. Oh, well, it’s all a natural process.

On a more positive note, let’s see what the youthful Charles Dickens wrote about New Years Day in his first book, Sketches by Boz:

Next to Christmas-day, the most pleasant annual epoch in existence is the advent of the New Year. There are a lachrymose set of people who usher in the New Year with watching and fasting, as if they were bound to attend as chief mourners at the obsequies of the old one. Now, we cannot but think it a great deal more complimentary, both to the old year that has rolled away, and to the New Year that is just beginning to dawn upon us, to see the old fellow out, and the new one in, with gaiety and glee.

There must have been some few occurrences in the past year to which we can look back, with a smile of cheerful recollection, if not with a feeling of heartfelt thankfulness. And we are bound by every rule of justice and equity to give the New Year credit for being a good one, until he proves himself unworthy the confidence we repose in him.

This is our view of the matter; and entertaining it, notwithstanding our respect for the old year, one of the few remaining moments of whose existence passes away with every word we write, here we are, seated by our fireside on this last night of the old year, one thousand eight hundred and thirty-six, penning this article with as jovial a face as if nothing extraordinary had happened, or was about to happen, to
disturb our good humour.

Hackney-coaches and carriages keep rattling up the street and down the street in rapid succession, conveying, doubtless, smartly-dressed coachfuls to crowded parties; loud and repeated double knocks at the house with green blinds, opposite, announce to the whole neighbourhood that there’s one large party in the street at all events; and we saw through the window, and through the fog too, till it grew so thick that we rung for candles, and drew our curtains, pastry-cooks’ men with green boxes on their heads, and rout-furniture-warehouse-carts, with cane seats and French lamps, hurrying to the numerous houses where an annual festival is held in honour of the occasion.

We can fancy one of these parties, we think, as well as if we were duly dress-coated and pumped, and had just been announced at the drawing-room door.

Looking Past Uayeb

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The Mayan Glyph for Uayeb

In the Mayan Haab calendar, there are eighteen months of twenty days each. Being extraordinary astronomers, the Mayans saw that they were five days short of a full year. They made up for it by adding a nineteenth month consisting of only five days. This period they called uayeb or wayeb.

According to La Vaca Independiente, this short month had some interesting features:

Despite the fact that these days share the calendar with 18 other periods lasting 20 days each, the Uayeb had a bad reputation among the Maya people. According to writings found during the colonial period, these days were considered black periods in which the universe had released dark forces and therefore they didn’t share in the blessings of time.

In the Songs of Dzibalche, a codex found in 1942, a series of allusions to the Uayeb were discovered. These expressed the discomfort the days caused the Maya people:

The days of weeping, the days of evil/ The devil is loose, hell is open/ There is no goodness, only evil… the month of nameless days has come/ Days of pain, days of evil, the black days.

Several theories describe how the Maya passed through such dark times. Some specialists maintain that during these periods they stayed in their homes and washed their hair. Others claim they undertook great processions in thanks for what they’d experienced during the year. One thing that’s certain is that the word Uayeb could be translated as “bewitched staircase.”

Of course, the ancient Mayan uayeb occurred during the summer, around July or August. But because our calendar year ends on December 31, I’ve moved it to the period between Christmas and New Years Eve, where it seeme to make more sense.

I don’t know how you plan to celebrate it, but for myself, I’m going to wash my hair while I still have some left.

13 Principles for 2025

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I don’t usually post to this blog from e-mails I have received. Today is an exception. The e-mail is from Ragnar Tómas Hallgrimsson, a journalist writing for The Iceland Review. In it, he writes:

The end of the year is a time to reflect: to weigh what went well over the past 12 months – and what went poorly, and to revise one’s rules for life. In the spirit of the season, here is an updated list of my principles. (In case you need ideas.)

What are your principles?

1 Begin each day with the thought: “What if this was the last time …?”

A cliché to be sure, but the additional caveat from thinker Sam Harris: “because one day it will be,” adds a measure of urgency. What if this really was your final ride down the stream of consciousness (with the people whom you love most?) How would you spend it?

2 You can work on a problem – but you cannot worry about it.

Worrying is the most useless “implement” in the toolbox of man. When confronted with a difficult problem, break it down into small, manageable steps – and then schedule those steps for tomorrow.

3 Every misfortune must be conceived of as an opportunity.

Arguably the hardest principle to follow. How in the world is one supposed to reframe an unexpected traffic jam as a brilliantly disguised opportunity?

4 Keep a record of your days and thoughts with a diary.

Even the mind, with all its stubborn complacency, will be forced to reckon with its mistakes and bad habits when confronted with them daily in written form.

5 If something upsets you, set a stopwatch for 24 hours.

Negative thoughts are like trains: once they start rolling, they’re harder and harder to stop – even if they have no basis in reality. One becomes irritated by a person, starts justifying that irritation, and keeps layering on arguments. If one makes the mistake of voicing these thoughts while the narrative train is at full speed, one usually regrets it.

6 Exercise every day, or, at least every other day.

Good physical health provides a solid foundation for good mental health. Negative emotions are like unfaltering assassins – but a moving target is hard to hit.

7 Put your stamp on all things.

People only remember the things you did YOUR way.

8 Music, every day.

Nothing teases out the important emotions like music, which is stoicism’s twin sibling. Stoicism mitigates and reframes difficult but unwanted emotions; music strengthens desired but muted emotions.

9 Be slow to anger, quick to forgive.

Being upset with people who behave irrationally or inconsiderately is futile. Their behaviour harms them most of all. If people were capable of better behaviour, they’d act better.

10 Be honest, speak plainly, and, for God’s sake – avoid emojis.

Emojis are the hieroglyphics of a civilisation in decline.

11 Restore balance to that which you offset.

Strive to leave the world in a better place than you found it. No matter which corner of the world you currently occupy.

12 There is but one law: be better than you were yesterday.

In the immortal words of Barack Obama: “Better is good,” and you can’t judge better without measurement (“if you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it”). Work hard.

13 Work is a means of coping – nothing more.

Life’s about coexisting with problems: doing just enough each day to keep them at bay. The game is lost when you start dwelling on problems, letting them distract you from the grandeur of life. (An American banker famously didn’t take a single day off from work, only to lose everything in the 1873 financial crash. A few days off wouldn’t have prevented the crash – but they might have changed his life.

The above principles make a hell of a lot more sense than most New Years’ resolutions. By the way, if you are ever interested in visiting Iceland, I highly recommend The Iceland Review. It is an attractive quarterly magazine with outstanding articles and photography, and, yes, it is written in English.

A Dying Art?

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When I first came to Southern California in 1966, it was with the intention of becoming a college professor specializing in motion picture history and criticism. Now I have to admit that, in the last year, I visited a movie theater to see a current feature only once, and that was a Marvel film that I hated, namely Deadpool and Wolverine.

And yet, over the last seven years, I have seen some 960 films, mostly on television or streamed. I still love the medium, but now I recognize that it is in the act of becoming a dying art form. I don’t think it will disappear altogether. After all, one can still attend operas. There are still examples of hand-carved woodworking, lace-making, hand-written letters, and marquetry. But, as the years pass, so will many art forms.

As much as I love movies, there are fewer American movies I want to see. Part of the problem is that I am on the elderly side, and movies that appeal to the most desired demographic—young males—are, to me, “greasy kid stuff.” Superheroes that wear their colorful Underoos outdoors in public and engage in loads of computer-graphics-enhanced action. Yuck!

Who is to blame? I guess that when an art form is based on a certain technology, it is subject to the prevalence of that technology over time. But old technologies are constantly being replaced. Just in the film world, look at the various delivery systems: nitrate film, safety film, videotape (Betamax and VHS), DVD, and streaming. What’s next? Notched molecules?

I know that many of you reading this are thinking that, no, film is still a viable art form. There are numerous people intent on conserving the medium. Still, I believe it is on the road to nowhere.

All you have to do is look at what was produced in the 1950s, then in the 1960s, then in the 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, 2000s, 2010s, and now. Both statistically and artistically, the movies are dying a slow death.

Nine Christmas Movies

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Ralphie (with Glasses) and the Kids from A Christmas Story

Following is a list of the nine Christmas movies I am committed to seeing again and again during the Yule season. It is highly individual and does not contain many of the usual “heartwarming” titles that clog so many lists like atherosclerosis.

They are listed in order of preference:

A Christmas Story (1983)

It is as if this film were deliberately made with me in mind. The opening scenes shot on Cleveland’s Public Square, featuring the toy display at Higbee’s Department Store, were part of my past. And Ralphie’s school resembles Harvey Rice Elementary School, where I spent kindergarten and part of first grade trying to come to terms with the English language.

A Christmas Carol (1951)

This is by far my favorite version, starring Alastair Sim as Ebenezer Scrooge. I never tire of the story, and this is the most complete telling of Dickens’s tale.

Lady in the Lake (1947)

Robert Montgomery as detective Phillip Marlowe attempting to track down the missing wife of a magazine publisher during Christmas. The love story between Marlowe and Publishing Exec Adrienne Fromsett (played by Audrey Totter) is actually believable.

The remaining titles are in random order and are, to my mind, not quite so good as the top three above:

It’s a Wonderful Life (1946) with Jimmy Stewart
The Shop Around the Corner (1940) also with Jimmy Stewart
The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993) – Stop motion animation from Tim Burton
The March of the Wooden Soldiers (1934) with Laurel & Hardy, a childhood favorite
The Curse of the Cat People (1944) by Val Lewton with Simone Simon singing a lovely French carol
The Bishop’s Wife (1947) with Cary Grant

I’m sure that most people’s reaction to this list is, “What about X, Y, and Z?” They might be on your list, but didn’t make it to mine.

Christmas Cheer

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Christmas Display at the Grier Musser Museum

This afternoon, Martine and I visited our friends Rey and Susan Tejada at the Grier Musser Museum near downtown L.A. The Victorian house is being dwarfed by a four-story apartment building under construction just north of them, but the Spirit of Christmas is very much evident in the holiday-related antiques on display.

I forgot to bring my camera along, so the picture above is from our 2019 visit at Christmas time.

As Christmas Day gets closer, I have pretty much surrendered to the good feelings that supposedly prevail at this time. Martine is listening to the Classic Christmas Music channel on Music Choice, and I no longer grit my teeth—unless they decide to play “The Little Drummer Boy,” in which case I feel it incumbent on me to leave the room. Pah-RUP-pup-PUM.

I just want to make Martine happy this time of year. On Monday, I will cook up one of her favorite dishes, a beef stew from a recipe in the New York Times. And we already have a couple of bottles of her favorite wine, Egri Bikavér (Bull’s Blood of Eger) from Hungary.

If Martine is happy, I will be happy.