It was Marlene Dietrich’s first film in Hollywood, and Gary Cooper’s first co-starring role in a sound film. And the director was none other than Josef von Sternberg, in my opinion one of the greatest filmmakers in the industry. The two co-stars fell in love during the filming, but the relationship between Cooper and von Sternberg was adversarial to say the least.
Nonetheless, Morocco (1930) turned out to be a gem. In its one hour and thirty-two minutes, the unbridled passion between Cooper and Dietrich has few equals in the cinema. Cooper is Private Tom Brown in the French Foreign Legion, and Dietrich is Amy Jolly, a night club singer. Within the first five minutes of the film, the two are obviously entranced with each other.
Poor rich Adolphe Menjou as M. La Bessière tries to hook up with Dietrich, but it’s no go. In the end, the nightclub singer jettisons her high heels in the sand and follows the legionnaires to their next posting along with the camp followers.
This is a story that the naturalist Loren Eiseley (1907-1977) tells in his book The Firmament of Time. I instantly fell in love with it:
There is a story about one of our great atomic physicists—a story for whose authenticity I cannot vouch, and therefore I shall not mention his name. I hope, however, with all my heart that it is true. If it is not, it ought to be, for it illustrates well what I mean by a growing sense of self-awareness, a sense of responsibility about the universe.
This man, one of the chief architects of the atomic bomb, so the story runs, was out wandering in the woods one day with a friend when he came upon a small tortoise. Overcome with pleasurable excitement, he took up the tortoise and started home, thinking to surprise his children with it. After a few steps he paused and surveyed the tortoise doubtfully.
“What’s the matter?” asked his friend.
Without responding, the great scientist slowly retraced his steps as precisely as possible, and gently set the turtle down upon the exact spot from which he had taken him up.
Then he turned solemnly to his friend. “It just struck me,” he said, “that perhaps, for one man, I have tampered enough with the universe.” He turned, and left the turtle to wander on its way.
According to his careful calculations, the world was created on “the entrance of the night preceding the 23rd day of October… the year before Christ 4004.” That would make Earth 4,259 years old. And, of course, it had to be true because one couldn’t question the Bible in any particular. It was just a matter of adding up the years of all the “begats” in Genesis, and adding to it the generations of men in the following books of the Old Testament.
I am reading a fascinating book by Loren Eiseley called The Firmament of Time about how the age of the Earth grew by leaps and bounds after discoveries by geologists, astronomers, and other scientists.
There are still people who believe in the literal truth of every word in the Good Book. The Scopes trial took place in Tennessee exactly a hundred years ago. In some corners of the United States, there has been little or no movement since then.
This afternoon, Martine and I visited the Museum of Flying adjacent to the Santa Monica Airfield. As you can see from the number of cars in the lot, there weren’t many visitors today. Before they moved to the present building on Airport Avenue, they were in much larger quarters on the other side of the airfield. For whatever reason, it seems as if the museum split into parts, with mostly the exhibits relating to Douglas Aircraft moving to the new quarters.
It led me to thinking about how many aircraft and automobile museums are closing down. Many of the aircraft museums depend on flying veterans from the U.S.’s many wars to serve as volunteers. We’ve visited the Palm Springs Aviation Museum; the Pima Air & Space Museum in South Tucson, AZ; the Estrella Warbird Museum in Paso Robles; and Torrance’s Western Museum of Flight. Big or small, they are all fascinating—but I suspect that most of them will be closing their doors once the knowledgeable volunteers start dying out.
World War One Fokker Dr.I Triplane
With all of these museums, once you get tired of looking at the planes, there are usually interesting videos to watch. I saw two of them this afternoon: one on Howard Hughes’s giant “Spruce Goose” seaplane and the other a history of the commercial airplane manufacturing industry focusing on Donald Douglas and William E. Boeing.
Waco Aviation Biplane
I hope to revisit this little museum again. From one year to the next, there is a large scale turnover in the exhibits and videos.
Today’s poem is “Stella’s Birthday” by Jonathan Swift, written either in 1720 or 1721. This is the version from The Penguin Book of Irish Verse. (It seems that Swift wrote several poems commemorating the young lady’s birthday.)
Stella’s Birthday
All travellers at first incline Where’er they see the fairest sign And if they find the chambers neat, And like the liquor and the meat, Will call again, and recommend The Angel Inn to every friend. And though the painting grows decay’d, The house will never lose its trade: Nay, though the treach’rous tapster, Thomas, Hangs a new Angel two doors from us, As fine as daubers’ hands can make it, In hopes that strangers may mistake it, We think it both a shame and sin To quit the true old Angel Inn.
Now this is Stella’s case in fact, An angel’s face a little crack’d. (Could poets or could painters fix How angels look at thirty-six:) This drew us in at first to find In such a form an angel’s mind; And every virtue now supplies The fainting rays of Stella’s eyes. See, at her levee crowding swains, Whom Stella freely entertains With breeding, humour, wit, and sense, And puts them to so small expense; Their minds so plentifully fills, And makes such reasonable bills, So little gets for what she gives, We really wonder how she lives! And had her stock been less, no doubt She must have long ago run out.
Then, who can think we’ll quit the place, When Doll hangs out a newer face? Nail’d to her window full in sight All Christian people to invite. Or stop and light at Chloe’s head, With scraps and leavings to be fed?
Then, Chloe, still go on to prate Of thirty-six and thirty-eight; Pursue your trade of scandal-picking, Your hints that Stella is no chicken; Your innuendoes, when you tell us, That Stella loves to talk with fellows: But let me warn you to believe A truth, for which your soul should grieve; That should you live to see the day, When Stella’s locks must all be gray, When age must print a furrow’d trace On every feature of her face; Though you, and all your senseless tribe, Could Art, or Time, or Nature bribe, To make you look like Beauty’s Queen, And hold for ever at fifteen; No bloom of youth can ever blind The cracks and wrinkles of your mind: All men of sense will pass your door, And crowd to Stella’s at four-score.
In the 1920s and 1930s, Mexico suddenly came to the attention of the English. There had been a messy revolution, numerous political assassinations, persecution of the Catholic Church, and the nationalization of the country’s petroleum assets. English writers seemed to want to understand Mexico, even if it meant an investment of several weeks to do so.
The results were pretty much a hodge-podge. Probably the most interesting works were by Graham Greene in his novel The Power and the Glory (1940) about the religious persecution in Tabasco and Chiapas and The Lawless Roads (1939), a travel book in which the author admits to loathing Mexico. “No hope anywhere. I have never been in a country where you are more aware all the time of hate,” this after he broke his glasses while on the road.
Also interesting is Aldous Huxley (1894-1963) with his tour of Mexico and Central America published in 1934 called Beyond the Mexique Bay.
D. H. Lawrence was hot and cold on the subject of Mexico. His Mornings in Mexico (1927) shows that he knew how to appreciate Mexico, whereas The Plumed Serpent (1926) is a weird and unconvincing novel.
Worst of the books was Evelyn Waugh’s Robbery Under Law: The Mexican Object-Lesson (1939), in which it is apparent that he is in a permanent snit on the subject of Mexico, and his sources were all obviously fascistic jackals. I read the first half of the book with its endless complaints of Lazaro Cardenas’s nationalization of the petroleum industry (was he possibly a disappointed investor?) and the United States’s hamfisted interventions during the Mexican Revolution. At no point did I feel that Waugh was seeing with his own eyes. (And yet, he was such a brilliant novelist. Go figure!)
Three of the 200+ Waterfalls at Iguazu National Park
I was exhilarated by the two days I spent viewing the falls at Iguazu. There were trails leading off in all directions, as the falls were in an area several kilometers long.
My only regret is that I was not able to see the falls from the Brazilian side. Although the falls were in Argentina, the best long-distance view was from the city of Foz de Iguaçu. At the time I was there, in 2015, I would have had to pay a heavy fee to cross the border into Brazil.
The Panoramic View of the Falls from Brazil
It is not always possible to see all the sights, and I was content to view the falls from the Argentinean side—close up. Particularly impressive was the most powerful of the falls, the Garganta del Diablo, or Devil’s Throat. Here is a video from YouTube:
If you ever manage to fly the 6,000 miles to Argentina, I highly recommend spending several days at the falls. On the Argentinean side, Puerto Iguazu has excellent tourist amenities.
Indeed I do: It was Dr. Seuss’s The King’s Stilts. My mother had to translate it into Hungarian for me because I was not yet able to speak English fluently. I vividly remember the illustrations.
I had good reason to celebrate: I had just survived a hamfisted pick-pocketing attempt as I was walking to the Retiro Bus Terminal in Buenos Aires with over 2,000 Argentinean pesos in my wallet. I finally made it to my all-night bus to Puerto Iguazu, where the borders of Argentina, Brazil, and Paraguay meet. I was there to see the falls, which were spectacular (more about that tomorrow).
At Puerto Iguazu, I was in the jungle, right by the massive falls of the Rio Iguazu—all 275 of them. This was my first visit to what I call a monkey jungle. There were monkeys aplenty, as well as coatimundis and picturesque birds.
Colorful Bird at the Local Aviary
I had always been afraid of the jungle because I hate mosquitoes. Curiously, I did not encounter any, though I spent two days viewing multiple falls in the area. I did encounter a lot of coatimundis, but numerous posted signs warned against feeding them: They have a tendency to get aggressive and go on the attack.
Iguazu National Park Seal
Argentina is a country with numerous national parks. I have visited both the northernmost (Iguazu) and the southernmost (Tierra del Fuego on the Beagle Channel). It is a pity that so few Americans have had the opportunity to visit any of them.
Sunday was a typical hot-and-cold day with a heavy marine layer and forecasts of rain in the eastern mountains and deserts. In other words, it was Mexican Monsoon season. Rather than break into a sweat in our apartment, I proposed we spend some hours at Chace Park in the Marina, maybe picking up a picnic lunch at the supermarket on the way.
I grabbed a book (George Mackay Brown’s Rockpools and Daffodils) and headed out with Martine to the Marina. She picked up a ready-made chicken sandwich at Ralph’s and saved bits of the crust to feed to the local squirrels and crows.
The park has a large number of scrawny squirrels who, I think, feed mostly on the leavings of picnickers. It was funny to see her approach the squirrels and try to convince them that they should take advantage of the crust she was offering them. Occasionally they did; but then, they decided to give it a pass. Martine turned away disgusted. But it was not in vain: The crows landed and grabbed the crumbs refused by the squirrels.
There was a pleasant breeze at Chace Park, and I enjoyed taking a walk that took in the statue of the helmsman at the tip of the peninsula in which the park is situated.
Statue of the Helmsman at Chace Park
The sun didn’t come out, but in sunny California that is no tragedy. We got fed, the crows and squirrels got fed, and I read a goodly chunk of George Mackay Brown, which is always a good thing.
Tarnmoor 
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