In Make Way for Tomorrow (a 1937 depression-era film directed by Leo McCarey), an elderly couple (Victor Moore and Beulah Bondi) are forced to separate when they lose their house and none of their five children will take both parents in. None of their children (or their spouses) want either of them, but some suffer the respective, separated parent grudgingly. At 70, the mother is mentally and spiritually lively, somewhat more hardy than her mate. She sits with knees too wide apart, wears clumsy socks and shoes like coconuts, After a lifetime together, the two are deeply bonded. All they have is each other. We keep hoping that things will go well for them, and the movie gives absolutely no clue how it will end. Finally, they do reunite…for a few hours, and kind strangers give them the time of their lives before he boards the train for California and the daughter who is his last refuge. In a surreal way their world is unraveling while beautiful things are happening. Bittersweet is the glitter of the hotel—they honeymooned there 50 years earlier--where they have been feted by kind hosts as a courtesy. The contrast between the powerfully glamorous and bereavement is heartbreaking—like when a big, powerful train chugs out of Grand Central, with large glass windows through which two helpless old people see each other for the last time.

The King's Speech, 2010

King George IV (played by Colin Firth) was the great monarchal counterpoint to Churchill in mustering up the courage of the British to fight the fearsome Nazis during WWII. He had to overcome a debilitating stammer that would otherwise have crushed his effectiveness, and only the iconoclastic and fearless Lionel Louge (Geoffery Rush), a speech therapist, could help him do that.The King's Speech is double entendre. It is about his speech issues, but also about A speech. The great bulk of the movie is about the king's character, historical circumstances, the struggle against unhelpful customs, the struggle to faithfully discharge the duties that threaten to and unexpectedly do fall to him. Logue weaves together all the facets of the king’s life into a complex and subtle tapestry, that he actually conducts as would an orchestra leader. The film does not glorify George or the British, but shows how, in the end, they transcend their flaws and rise to an epic challenge.

OPEN RANGE

OPEN RANGE, (2003) is directed by Kevin Costner, who also plays the lead (Charley)—a noble soul haunted by his violent past—along with Robert Duvall (“Boss”) a “free-range” cattleman for whom he works. Love and violence complement each other toward an emotional crescendo three-fourths of the way along, and the ensuing anti-climax is disappointing. The violence suits my guy proclivities, without being too visually gory. In the 1880s, Boss, Charley and two others are driving a herd cross country. They come to a town that is controlled by a ruthless land baron, his crony sheriff, and cautious, cowed townspeople. One of the party and a dog are killed and another wounded and left for dead. Boss and Charlie seek revenge, and we feel their utter loneliness, up against incredible odds. The doctor’s sister (Annette Bening as Sue) becomes Charlie’s love interest, and the danger he’s in heightens the appeal of the relationship. When she shows that she sees the goodness in him, a veil is stripped away and tears roll freely down my face. But the soon-to-follow gunfight was a close second for my attention. The fight was filmed from unusual angles. They really worked on this. The little boy in me was thrilled by the thud and the red dust where a bullet exits from the back of a villain, whereupon he falls, like a hunk of beef, close up to the picture plane. But, for me, the film is less convincing from there on.

IDEALISM IN THE MOVIES

I watched Miracle on 34th Street (1947), a bit here, a bit there, piecing it all together as it replays during the Christmas Season. I find it mysterious, in that it never makes clear (although we are constantly pulled to believe) that Kris Kringle (Edmund Gwenn) is really Santa Claus. HE believes he is, and there is a tug-of-war as we see him being perfectly sane and reasonable about everything else, but we don’t see him flying on sleighs and delivering toys to every child on earth in six minutes. Instead, he is a model citizen, full of integrity. Hired by Macy’s to play Santa just after the Parade, he refers buyers to stores where the same or better products can be found more reasonably. And, for this, Macy’s sales boom. Doing well by doing good. His kindness and understanding toward the six-year-old played by Natalie Wood is symbolic of his kindness in general. I wonder whether such idealism in a movie had to do with a buoyancy in the population surrounding triumph in war and the building up of former enemies. But why was the theme repeated in 1959’s The Mating Game, where Paul Douglas plays an unbelievably solid and kind-hearted neighbor and citizen, who refuses to accept from the feds the 14 million dollars his property has accrued through an ancient deed? He has everything he needs to be happy, he declares. In this time of fractious politics and runaway greed, we could learn from the idealistic tenor of such classic movies.

LIKE PAINTING?

Thinking Globally: I use the analogy of painting. For the sake of discussion, a painting is defined as done on a flat, rectangular surface. All elements on that surface must be unified—color, line, texture, composition, (illusionary) space. Finished paintings are usually framed, leaving no doubt as to the scope of the painting.

We can treat the entire planet as a painting. The main difference is that the “painting” here is done on a sphere rather than on a flat rectangle. There are other differences too. The elements of the global painting are either already in place or are different from those in painting. Elements in the global painting include not only what we can see, but also visually moot subjects such as economic and cultural disparity, etc. While there is likely to be a correlation between poverty and visual presence—deforestation, soil erosion, etc.—many factors may have no visual correlates.

Paintings are either abstract or figurative, but the global painting is both. It is reality, and therefore as real as any entity one might paint on a flat surface. But the globe-as-a-whole doesn’t correspond to the normal lexicon of forms—landscape, portrait, still life—used by artists. Global forms can therefore be viewed as abstract as much as figurative. The globe is always changing, unlike the fixed nature of a finished painting. In that respect, it can be grossly compared to performance art. The issues of the globe are very complex, and can comprise the artist’s conception. So the globe can be like conceptual art.

None of this is clear, and clarity about such complexity might never be attained. But there can be some simple advances to treating Earth as a painting. One example would be a forestation project that is so vast and widespread that it can be easily viewed from space as vegetation (green) succeeds aridity (brown/tan). My hypothesis is that, as sustainable land-uses succeed unsustainable ones, a new sense of beauty will arise, and with it, a new appreciation of the planet as a work of collective art.

SINGIN’ IN THE RAIN, ETC.

SINGIN' IN THE RAIN

Singin’ in the Rain (1952, Arthur Freed) belongs to a genre of musicals where the story is a thin excuse for musical performances. The plot in Singin’ is about the transition to sound movies in Hollywood, and the Hollywood angle provides cover for a constant stream of song and dance performances. By ignoring realism it can introduce modernity into a period movie-within-a-movie. At other times the real life of star Gene Kelly is the pretext for the song and dance number: Kelly is happy, and dances while Singin’ in the Rain.

Color in Singin’ adds visual sparkle to the exuberance of the performances. They fit together perfectly. Stars, Donald O’Connor and Gene Kelly (and the general culture), are at war with stodginess or with a black and white world. The priggish speech coach (to promote appropriate diction for the transition to sound movies) is pilloried, and one of his exercises is turned into an irreverent blast. The result is the infectiously rhythmic, “Moses Supposes Erroneously.” Color enhances a cameo performance by Cyd Charisse (partnering with Kelly), where the entire scene is bathed with a red glow. Charisse’s sinewy twists, turns and extensions are nothing short of erotic. Energy and sensuality merge. Debbie Reynolds, with her blue skirt just above the knees performs acrobatic rolls and tumbles, while dancing delightfully, and I ignore Kelly and O’Connor while keeping my eyes on her.

Another movie I saw next day, “Strike up the Band,” 1940 (with Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland), used Rooney’s school band as a pretext for (“unrealistic”) song and dance numbers. But while it was pulsing with energy, it lacked both the formal structure that uplifts black and white movies, while lacking the polish and glamour of later color musicals. The 1950’s is a sensuous splurge, where color adds to the range of sensuous experiences. And Singin’ In The rain, though not my favorite musical, is widely considered as one of the very best of this form.

OH, TO BE ORGANIZED!

It’s nothing new. I am extremely disorganized. Where it perhaps is most disconcerting is in my computer files. In the course of 20 years or so, I’ve filed all sorts of information on my computer, only to lose track of it. It would take a band of angels to clean up my files and make them serviceable. Or to instill in me a clear and permanent sense of how the computer works. But today I’m making a pathetic little gesture against the hopeless weight of confusion and messiness that my ways are heaping down on me. Before it joins the endless piles of saved, indeterminate stuff, I will share some writing that I saved over the past two days in my inbox as something to peruse later.

What Ails You Newsletter (Written by the neighbor of a painter friend) (I respect this work, but don’t know how to make it work for me.)
www.what-ails-you.com

Blue Valentine (Huffington Post article by Dr. Logan Lefkoff) (Hypocracy about sex is one of my pet subjects.)
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-logan-levkoff/blue-valentines-nc-17-a-t_b_792919.html

Everything is Related (Huffington Post article by Se. Gary Hart) (If anyone reads my blogs about governance and simplicity below, they will see my confused efforts to deal with the same issue.)
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/gary-hart/everything-is-related_b_793119.html

Transparency: The New Source of Power: (Huffington Post article By Jeff Jarvis) (I see public nudity as a metaphor for transparency. I’d like to see an option for nude screening at airports, obviating the need for harmful irradiation and obscene pat downs.)
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeff-jarvis/transparency-the-new-sour_b_792213.html

RAFTS

I had the privilege of listening in on Tony Ryder's class today. My attention wondered in and out, so I shouldn't be quoted. It seemed that he was saying how imperfect were the many discreet "swatches" that go to make up a painting or drawing. You almost never capture your subject just right. Each stroke is like a rough log with knobs sticking out from it, perhaps twisted, with or without bark. But we are making a raft, and as we tie these imperfect logs together, a rare thing occurs. The whole crude assortment manages somehow to float.

I feel a need for some strong public project that ties together the limitless number of issues out there which now pass each other like ships in the night. The imperfection of each of our constructs is notable. But what if we could tie them all together? Would they make a raft that could float? Logs, like issues, can manifest in numerous ways, but we are constrained by a single project--to make a raft. We must decide what the raft is that our ragged social issues will comprise.

NORA EPHRON

Nora Ephron was interviewed by Charlie Rose last night. I knew the name, and might have seen it on Huffington Post, where she regularly blogs. It just sunk in that she’s also the screen-writer for movies I’ve seen, like Sleepless in Seattle, and When Sally Met Harry, movies that I considered fluff.

But in the Rose interview, Ephron struck me as very smart, forthright, charming, funny, aloof, stubborn and tough. She was born in New York in 1941 of Jewish literary artists, grew up near Hollywood, and graduated from Wellesley. As I watched, my attention rarely wavered from preoccupation with how she did or didn’t resemble a Jewish woman friend of mine, also born in New York, also of East-Coast-born Jewish parents involved in the arts. And who also attended an arts-oriented high school.

Yes, there was a racial resemblance between the two, both in physical and psychological terms. In Ephron there was the slightest hint of nasality, and her words were intoned with a distinctly New York speech style for women of similar class and intellectual background. But I only know for sure that I recognize it in my Jewish friend as I do in Ephron. Both women are atheists. Both are sexy and politically liberal. But both in their no-nonsense style are walled around with an overlay of social conservatism. Both are wholesome while edgy, and know how to take care of themselves. What I may never be able to decipher is how the style of these women, nurtured in the world’s greatest city, amid the intellectual and artistic ferment that defined the 20th century, reflect that context.

The hard-headed parts of these women would brush such thoughts aside. Still, I can’t separate either from the culture on which I was formed—Hollywood, the New York School of painting, Parsons, Yale. Jews were central both to that cultural milieu as well as to my immersion in it.

CUBA

The rabid dislike of the Cuban government by Cuban-Americans in Miami, as the comments to the following Huffington Post photo article attest to, appears to be intractable.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/11/28/vintage-photos-from-rober_n_788633.html#postComment

Their attitude gets on my very last nerve, and I try to bring in a fresh perspective when I can. I prefer to focus on Cuba as a model sustainable nation, but there is no escaping the political conundrum in which the island finds itself. Cuba is beset by problems that stem from the US embargo against it. At the same time, were it not for the embargo, Cuba would be overrun by power madness, greed, and profligacy coming from the imposition on it of the American way of life.

One comment went as follows: "People live in very cramped quarters, can't afford new clothes or interesting and varied diets, and are often unable to put their excellent educations to use - all the result of restrictions on entrepreneurial activity and free market enterprise. Cuba provides exhibit A for why democratic socialism - the free market tempered by an active welfare state - is the best system."

But Cuba is also very verdant, as anyone flying over it can clearly see. Is Cuba so beautiful and "green" (it has a very small carbon footprint) because it has not been contaminated by advanced capitalism? One writer stated, as though I would be sure to get the point, that several families share a 40-year-old car. Well? Is that a bad thing?

Both the US and Cuba could benefit by a rapprochement, but that is harder to come by from the US side than from Cuba's. Cuba's ingenuity and adherence to core principles are nothing short of miraculous in the world we have today. It is an educated country (97% literacy) with universal health care, and yet it is dirt poor. This is a miracle. We could learn so much from this small nation. It is one of the world's tragedies that we can't come together and take the best that each has to offer.

It would be nice if the embargo were lifted in so thoughtful a way that Cuba wouldn't be consequently overrun by capitalism gone mad. There is the (unavoidable?) danger that the American way could destroy the resourcefulness, the conservation ethic, the egalitarianism, and other positive attributes of the Cuban system, even as it provides the missing qualities of entrepreneurial enterprise and freedom of speech. But we can't control everything. The choice has to be Cuba’s.

I don't wish to live in Cuba. I'm too much of a rebel and individualist to fit in there. I don't wish to live in Iraq either, despite the US presence there. The cards I have been dealt have not relegated me to those places, but I try to be as understanding as possible about those who live there.

WHAT NEXT?

After “attending” the Santa Fe Flash Flood view-from-space art project last week, I experienced a flurry of ideas as to how to ride the coattails of the event in a beneficial way. I wondered: Are we now at a view-from-space era in art?, where thousands of people hold up pigmented materials to make images to be viewed from 100 miles up? This could be a wonderful confluence of classical, modern and conceptual art. Imagine a huge see-from-space Fragonard so subtly hued as to even include the finest “terminators” (a technical term in realist painting describing the light’s termination point where a form bends away from it). I can envisage global messages, such as that from 350.org—advocating the urgent adoption by nations of greenhouse-gas levels no greater than 350 parts per million in the atmosphere. No reason, too, why the 350.org message couldn’t be attached to the Fragonard. That could be even more powerful than to separate them.

So what should I do? Do I want to organize thousands of people to do view-from-space art? No. I think somebody should do it, but not me. It seems that I should do more to excel at the tasks that are currently under my control and that I now deal with inconclusively at best.

I would also like to do banners to be viewed, not only from space, but on the sides of abandoned buildings, in parks, or wherever there is still a public space not yet completely gobbled up by corporate interests. I’m contemplating making a giant sign to advertize the Pojoaque River Art Tour.

It could simply read: POJOAQUERIVERARTTOUR.COM Support Local Art and Crafts

It wouldn’t be visible from space but instead from the highway. The Pojoaque artist community is very much in harmony with the laid-back, tranquility of the area’s rural landscape. So, by supporting the art tour, I’m supporting the land. I’m supporting a tiny local module of Earth’s sustainable landscape. This is not the way to save the planet, but it presents a model that, if followed by people wherever they live on Earth, could help save the planet. There are many millions (I suspect) who are doing the same as I. The collective unconscious is probably at work in this as well.

So I guess that for now I see doing art in my own corner, while writing about how what I do might be relevant to the planet as a whole.

METHOD TO MY MADNESS?

The author of a Huffington Post article, Johann Hari of the Independent, responded to my email. To explain this message and my ultimate response, I’ll trace some aspects of the communication, starting with a quote from his article to which I responded:

The article: http://eros.usgs.gov/imagegallery/collection.php?type=earth_as_art_3

1) J. Hari (from the article): “For example, 2.3 billion years ago, plant life spread incrediblyrapidly, and as it went it inhaled huge amounts of heat-trapping carbon dioxidefrom the atmosphere. This then caused a rapid plunge in temperature thatfroze the planet and triggered a mass extinction."

Trevor (email to J. Hari): "So here's what this suggests to me: If we plant trillions of trees, we can solve the problem of global warming.

2) J. Hari (email to Trevor): “Unfortunately we're doing the opposite - 20 percent of all carbon emissions come from cutting down rainforest at the moment. In any plan to deal with global warming reforestation is quite high up, though it'd have to be at a phenomenal rate to counter our current emissions. It's certainly part of the solution though.”

Trevor (email to J. Hari): “I know how badly it's going, but see no percentage in being pessimistic. Humankind certainly has the ability and creativity to solve the problem, even if it never does. Being a mystic, I believe that my personal resolve and optimism can be part of a spark that ignites the masses, so I persevere. If I'm wrong, there is no harm done. I simply stay optimistic and leave the rest to a higher power.

One comment asked how what I espouse would get done. My response: "If we could get an infrastructure/jobs bill passed (here in the USA), we could make tree planting a part of the project. Plenty of people need work, and plenty of trees need planting. More trees absorb more CO2. More working folks buy more to revive the economy." I put forward a logical proposition, knowing that there are inherent stupidities in the system that work against its implementation. Not my problem. If even one more person gets the vision, I have nudged the ledger forward on the plus side.

On the practical end: I saw where it's being tried to shoot missiles with seedlings from planes--and billions of trees can be propagated through that means. Otherwise, whether it falls on deaf ears or not, I propose that there be a global works program to plant trillions of trees.

I also keep saying that America will only respond to an impossible task--like putting a man on the moon in 10 years. My impossible task: America will have the lowest CO2 footprint among nations by 2020. I know that what I say sounds like madness, but there's method to my madness.

SLOGANS

A recent article in Huffington Post by Robert Kuttner http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-kuttner/post_1307_b_786612.html?show_comment_id=68299530#comment_68299530 generated tons of comments about how We the People can make a change, whether or not the president will comply. Since the media are largely corporate controlled, we thought of creating our own slogans and getting them circulated in novel ways. I am partial to murals, but favor banners that can be quickly installed and removed--in other words, an art movement.

The following blurbs are by Shaun, whose favorite slogan is "race to the bottom.":

1) It's not fair to the American worker that we be asked to compete against businesses that pollute freely, work dangerously and compensate poorly.

2) We can't compete against Corporations that poison their citizens and maim their workers while paying them a pittance, and we shouldn't try.

3) GlobalCorp wants one thing, to undo a century of hard fought progress on workplace safety and environmental protection and they are trying to break the backs and the spirit of the American worker.

I like 2 and 3 better. But what's GlobalCorp? Just a madeup term? Anyway, these terms should be critiqued--the concept as well as the particular blurb.

Another person said this:

A New Deal for a New Century

FLASH FLOOD ART, SANTA FE, 11/20/10

I arrived just as a thousand participants were leaving. The event was listed in my email from organizers@350.org as lasting from 9:30 – 11:30 AM. I glanced at it and saw only 11:30.

The parking attendant, a teenager, didn’t know the name of the event, but he was encouraging. “You got here, that’s the main thing.” Nice kid. A kind, energetic woman confirmed that the event was over, but pointed to where I could go and sign in. I would be sent photos of the event taken from space, she said. It felt odd to be going in the opposite direction to absolutely everyone else, but I tried not to look too sheepish.

The only noticeably Hispanic I saw was the table attendant, who seemed to be well known by many in the crowd. It was a very white, overwhelmingly middle-aged crowd, with a sprinkling of youth and infants. Everyone wore jeans, and something blue or gray or muted on top. They blended in with the landscape. They had held blue-painted sheets of cardboard over their heads and undulated them from the plain cardboard side (the dry riverbed) to the blue (the flash flood). Their clothes seemed like a blend of the flood and the land.

The mail person I flagged down for directions to San Ysidro Crossing—the site of the event-- gave excellent directions. The crossing is a solid sunken road that has an arched opening underneath where water can pass through, while its sunken formation allows for water to flow over it in case of floods. Unfortunately, its construction is almost never challenged. The river bed is usually dry.

I hope to redeem myself by doing artwork on the several sheets of blue-decorated cardboard I retrieved from the great pile left behind by the participants.

KINGSTON, 3/13/02 (My notes as I waited for the bus)

KINGSTON, 3/13/02 (My notes as I waited for the bus)

Slow deliberately metered music while I wait for the minibus to leave. I got a taxi at 6:30 AM, sure that I would get an early start for my ride to the country, but I must have just missed the early bus, and the one I was to take waited for hours till it was jam packed. So I tried to make the best of the wait in this old-train-station depot, observing with interest such features as the part-circular, partly paved-over rail turnaround point.

“Oh, you sweet man,” somebody said. To me? I don’t recall. People in downtown Kingston are starved for a polite gesture, and I might have made one to a woman on the bus.

Kingston early in the morning. I leave the house at 6:30 AM. Johnny, the taxi driver, is a friend of Stonewall. Lives near the stadium. At the bus depot, there is ganja everywhere. Are even the drivers smoking? The toilet was opened at seven. Before it opened, I came across a man taking a pee in a superbly private courtyard. He and I exchanged a pleasant greeting. I buy 20 “peanut brittles” from a boy.

American T-shirt, Wrigley’s gum, pepper mint, icy mint, reggae, orange juice. Strong rhythms out of sound systems, sunglasses, reading glasses. Vendors come by in five-minute intervals.. The minibus radio is on. KLAS. Mugabe has been returned to office in Zimbabwe. Pushcarts, revival music on the sound system. Or has revival music been co-opted by popular music?

Doughnuts, washrags, towels, a woman with a large facial scar. A knife wouind? Anthony B’s powerful rhythms. Orange juice, spring water. This is convenient short and long term shopping for country travelers. The pen I write with was given to me by a female attendant of the men’s restroom. A vendor in harness from which scores of vertically arranged belts and other items are suspended.

We’re well on our way. The beauty of the green before and after Flat Bridge. The rocks look precious. A metaphor for the beauty and preciousness of life

TOWARD SIMPLICITY

TOWARD SIMPLICITY

A number of progressive groups recently put out a plea for support. If people voted to make them the most highly supported, they would win a total of $600,000 from the Pepsi company. The groups involved in the effort are Center for Progressive Leadership, the White House Project, Young People For, ProgressOhio Education, Campus Progress, Elementz, and the American Constitution Society.

This group reads like mom and apple pie, and not to support it feels almost criminal. But yet I demure. I've been letting the request to vote every morning to support this consortium settle in my mind, and, for the moment, I have decided that there are higher priorities for my woefully underproductive and disorganized brain.

The problem I see is the incessant "chatter" of the Internet. Everybody has a good cause and needs help, but there is very little strategy or measurable progress on any front. The dolphins are saved in one place only to be gobbled up by an accelerated consumerist culture elsewhere. Economic growth, aligned to population explosion, is BY NATURE, destructive to the planet.

On speaking with realist artist Tony Ryder today, I felt a sense of corroboration. Tony is one of the nation's leading draftsmen, and is featured on the cover of the latest "The American Artist Drawing" magazine. He believes that "within mundane visual reality dwells the holy, transcendent presence of God." It is not typical artist talk. And with this big truth he is firmly rooted in his practice of making light, and nothing else, dictate the outcome of his drawing. He is not moved by fashion and the buzzwords of the art world. He is dedicated to celebrating--in his teaching and his own practice--the miracle of light

My big truth is the land. It is similarly dependent on the acknowledgement of a great moral truth. Like light in its totality of scope, land, including the seas and the rivers, is the unified whole that defines the marble in space called Earth. Just as Tony will not be distracted by this, that and the other fashion--seductive as they might be--I am unimpressed with any movement that does not rest on the acceptance of the unified field of Earth's landscape.

What I advocate is an artist-led program to promote ORDER. All the fractured efforts out there need to coalesce into an orderly, coherent and systematic whole. I'd like to get behind a national infrastructure program that addresses all the million issues that scatter about like space junk. An infrastructure program connects one place to another in an orderly way. It also connects issues. Infrastructure is at once quantitative and qualitative.

The unity--the common landscape--should come BEFORE fractious groups get to play on it The unified-landscape determinism is totally different (and takes place at a different level) from the fields of endeavor taking place on it. If a benevolent, all-powerful dictator were to prescribe this unity, then various groups would have to think about something they don't begin to consider now. I think it would change the status quo. If it is clear that what happens in one corner affects what happens in the opposite end, the dolphins saved in one place won't be gobbled up elsewhere. I throw out a sprinkling of issues--infinitely preliminary, like an "envelop" in which a drawing, with all its details, will later be contained. Below, are a few areas of activism that could be subsumed and synchronized under an ambitious infrastructure program.:

Energy: an intra-national circulation system, promoting walking and bike trails, and maybe some rail, would get people moving around more where they live and depending less on driving or flying to distant places. (While I don't support big-grid energy distribution, I can compromise around it as an infrastructure issue.)

Animal Welfare: See a huge system of highway and road underpasses for animals, to drastically reduce road kill and enable animals to migrate as they need in order to survive and thrive in the wild.

Environment: Billions of trees are planted along circulation paths and elsewhere, absorbing CO 2, preventing erosion, etc., etc.

Education: See kids researching the ecology along trails.

Jobs: Every individual who doesn't mind breaking a sweat gets work.

Immigration: If the vision behind the infrastructure is grand enough--like the interstate highway project of the 1950's--the horrible bigotry against a guest worker program to help
build it might be (politically) neutralized.

I could continue, but won't bore the reader further. This is only meant to point the way to discussion and thought.

DIXON ART TOUR 2010
By Trevor Burrowes
trevoroche@aol.com

The heart of Dixon is a sloping main road bordered by old adobe buildings that have been doctored up to fit various architectural fashions. There are vast amounts of land at the backs. Even with a crowd it is peaceful.

As always, Sandi and I try to keep our studio visits to the minimum. The first stop is always the community center, and buying a meal prepared by elderly volunteers. The building is old and basic, curiously plain despite the white-painted ceiling vegas that fit in staggered formation over large beams.

We started the tour with nearby Marie Coburn of Floramania. Someone says that her work had been exhibited at the Smithsonian, and it was easy to see why. Her life-size flower figures were extraordinary--sculptural renditions of c. 1600 Italian paintings of fruit and vegetable arranged to portray people. She had someone else deal with the visitors while she stood on the porch making a large wreath, clipping the dried plants and sticking them into place by means of a glue pot. In front of the porch was her garden, a wild place, bisected by a walkway, that had gone to seed for the fall. The garden continued, terraced, on either side of the steps leading down to the street.

Walking up the road from Floramania, cars pass by with inches to spare, the shoulders being lined with parked vehicles. We crossed the road to see Robert Brenden’s stone carvings, abstract sculpture and pencil drawings.. One gets the sense that his oeuvre--stone capitals and pillars, etc.-- is meant to be applied to expensive architecture. Although his studio was small, his work had a quality of grand scale. His stone carvings appear to be based on classical forms, while his assemblages are boldly abstract.

Backtracking, we casually meandered off the main down a dirt road that led to Al Terrell’s graceful, clean pottery forms. Pots with lids, often. Al partnered with Sarah O’s "Studio Examino, painting and sensing workshops to cultivate mindfulness." She paints on paper modularly put together and affixed to cardboard panels on which is absorbed the excess paint. The first impression is of delicate horror vacui imagery, almost a sort of doodling. On later examination, one sees monstrous scenes that somehow don’t horrify. (In that way they remind me of Henri {le douanier}Rousseau. Amazingly, she does not sell these fine works, but uses them as teaching tools for her workshops.

After Sarah O, I was basically through. It would be hard to top that experience. But we did swing by the museum (gallery?), where an assortment of tempera, watercolors, and woven throws and vests were displayed. My favorites were two tempera landscapes with Mexican workers by Eli Levin. I call Levin a modern old master, so deeply immersed in the art of the masters is he. The later works, one each from 2004 and 2005, were fresh and filled with light.

We ended up stopping by the two sites along the highway toward home: At site 2, Lou Malche showed digital, snapshot-like photographs while Kay Weiner, an obvious professional, showed work that was truly “fine sculptural jewelry” in silver, gold and stones. She lives on at least 10 acres of idyllic grassland with huge trees, right up against the Rio Grande. One fenced acre or so of flat low-cut grass was dedicated to a brown-black horse, intent on grazing. A stout, old brown dog slept soundly in a corner outside the studio.

The last stop was at Steve Ebben’s studio, sandwiched between the highway and the Rio Grande. Steve looked like a sophisticated cowboy, very trim and neat, his chiseled face crowned by a brown hat, his teeth pearly white. He advertises himself as artist/blacksmith, displaying sculpture, hardware, copper fish and mobiles. I asked him if he was influenced by Calder--some of his mobiles could have been Calder replicas-- and was surprised when he demurred, favoring Miro and Klee instead. I couldn’t quite connect with his exhibition. His yard sculpture was so magnificent, with so much gravity and presence, that I could hardly bear to leave. Meanwhile, near the studio, were myriad small, shiny replicated pieces, the copper fish series most prominently, most of which hung as mobiles. It was hard to understand how the creator of those spare, elegant rusty-metal yard sculptures could adjust to producing such obviously commercial objects —“I have to make what people will buy,” he said. The aesthetic wonder that I saw in the rusty yard sculpture was cut off from everything else in his studio environment.

JAMES CASTLE IN ARTFORUM

JAMES CASTLE IN ARTFORUM

One of my landlords is an established artist (as opposed to “emerging” ones like me) and hugely knowledgeable about the contemporary art scene. He bequeathed me a number of thick, slick Artforum magazines, and I’ve just recently begun to read bits and pieces of them. Tonight, unable to sleep, I read about James Castle’s retrospective at the Philadelphia Museum of Art in 2009.

James Castle was born deaf in 1899 in the Boise region of Idaho. He was illiterate, and never learned to speak, read lips or sign. He was, however a prolific producer of art.

Reviewing the exhibition, Lynne Cooke, chief curator and deputy director of Museo Nacional, Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid, had this to say about his oeuvre: “…(it) includes intimate tonal drawings of the farmland and the homestead where he grew up; sculptures of human figures, animals, and objects made by stitching together pieces of paper and cardboard; hand-sewn books containing alphabets, syllabaries, calendrical schemes, and other data laid out in grids; and myriad copies, on fragments of used paper, of texts and images culled from illustrated magazines and commercial packaging.”

Like the other articles I’ve read in Artforum, the scholarship is awesome, the language is high-tone, and words are bandied about that I don’t know the meaning of. I concluded my reading without being at all clear what the author is trying to say. I’m left only with a deep feeling of kinship with Castle’s work.

He makes tonal drawings that blur the distinction between drawing and painting, using charcoal and spit. These works have a dark sepia tone, and are both dreamlike and a bit melancholy. The headline picture shows a group of people, all dressed alike, perhaps children, standing in a row, the tallest grading to the shortest. Slightly apart stand a couple who are dressed differently. The faces are rectangular and surrounded by a neat, reverse-u border of hair. While this image is schematic, he also draws architectural scenes like porches that are deeply satisfying in composition and in the loose but convincing use of perspective.

His sculptures/objects are full of the pleasure of found materials ingeniously cobbled together with twine. A crib has rectangular wheels, just as the faces in drawings are rectangular. His books have a grid layout which orders and beautifies the distressed paper , collage-like, that make up the pages. The gentle geometry mixed with the ecstatically understood (“seen”)makeshift materials that could be any scrap of paper others would burn or discard is very close to my heart. One figure made from cardboard boxes fitted with a green dress of printed paper looked exactly like something I have been dreaming of constructing myself.

JOBS

http://www­.thomhartm­ann.com/bl­og/2009/08­/cash-geez­ers-lower-­retirement­-age-55-no­w

The overriding theme of the link you included is that we need to tighten the labor market to drive wages up, which drives up the economy as a whole. Below are three ideas for doing that—tightening the labor market by legalization of labor, and taking older Americans out of the workforce:

1) An employment-related issue that should have been expanded on further is immigration. Having allowed our own to atrophy, America needs an infusion of physical muscle. This should come from Mexico. There are about 12 million undocumented Mexicans who should be legalized and made to pay into Social Security (SS). Beyond this, a guest worker program would also ensure order, higher wages, and increased SS coffers.

2) We could experiment. The government could leases land conveniently juxtaposed to public transportation. People over 50 are given an option. In exchange for full medical insurance coverage and a stipend, they forfeit regular SS benefits through age 70. During that 20-year window, they can live for free on the government-leased property and produce their own food while also planting trees (or something similar).

3) Create a jobs core for youth that could work pretty much along the lines of article 2).

TENT ROCK

The tent rock landscape, seemingly about a square mile of mostly cliffs, is biscuit colored. Parts of it that we walked close to were like bread with crunchy, nutty stuff (small rocks in this case) added to the crust. Rounded larger rocks darker and sometimes bluish in color stuck out here and there from the cliffs like accents.

Countless volcanic layers are separated by bands of hardened dust. This landscape must have been underwater for eons, since the winding forms are smoothed out and serpentine. It’s called tent rock because of bountiful pyramidal shapes that have the curious feature of round mounds atop them—like ice cream cones turned upside down with the scoop attached to their apexes.

We walked upwards through a canyon that is often very narrow. Large trees have fallen across the top in a few places, like beams, and boulders get wedged into it. The largest bolder I saw was about the size of the largest whales.

Since the canyon was formed by nature it doesn’t necessarily go along the ideal route of a trail, and so boulders might have been artificially located to create rugged steps that lead upward in a predetermined manner.

As so often these days, poor sleep made walking a strain, but I managed to not lag far behind Sandi. As usual, I improve when I get thoroughly warmed up. We got almost to the top, then hearing from a downward trekker that there wasn’t a loop to take us back down on the other side, we started back the way we came.

Three-quarter of the way down we came across a party: a young, good looking couple with the woman holding a baby, and an ancient couple standing in the shade. Before I took time to audit my words, I blurted out: “You can do it. I’m in my seventies, and I went all the way!” To which the old man responded, turning to his smiling wife, “Seventies? What about (something I didn’t hear)?” It could have been eighties, or maybe even nineties. They were very old, and did well to get that far. At the rate I’m going, I wouldn’t be able to make it there at their age. It was stupid of me.

WEEDS

Mary-Louise Parker is a very sexy actress. She’s around 46 but looks 36. My interest in the TV series, “Weeds,” now in its sixth season, is centered on her.

She plays Nancy Botwin, a seemingly Jewish suburbanite who, who, after the death of her husband, turns to marijuana dealing as a way to support her two sons. Although the show has many strange turns over its long history, I am going only on what I saw in a single evening—around four episodes during a marathon airing. Without knowing details of the evolving drama, what I saw presented a huge, self-sufficient narrative of its own. Of course, this narrative has as much to do with me as with the show itself.

Being from Jamaica, and quite familiar with the intricacies of the marijuana culture, I am on familiar ground. I’m also preoccupied with class and race—another bi-product of Jamaican heritage. And this show, while its ads feature all white people, the episodes I saw speak strongly to the melting-pot aspect of America. True, the staple characters are Botwin’s brother-in-law; a male city-council ally; her two sons; and a female part-nemesis whose story seems slightly detached from and parallel to the main one. But I was fascinated by non-white characters who might well not be part of the long-run of the series.

A Hispanic drug dealer is an unwelcome ally for Botwin; her wholesale dealers are an African-American mother and son, Conrad, an infatuated young worker in the bakery she owns is East Indian. The men, in their various fashions, are magnetized by her sensual allure, her classiness, her intelligence, her spunk. While the official descriptions of the series don’t mention this, her sexual proclivities, her openness to sex with men of any background—as in a very steamy sex scene with the Hispanic man--are very central to my take of the show’s meaning. This woman is a devoted mother. She doesn’t consume weed herself. The edginess of her world gets her into endless difficulties. She is also highly sensual, and can more easily engage sexually with someone for whom she has no tender feelings than with someone dear.

The themes I take away from my brush with the show is how hot it is. It’s a maelstrom of evolving cultural patterns in which class, race, sex, gender, drugs are seen from a perspective of change. And Parker as Botwin is the nexus of these changes.

ABIQUIU STUDIO TOUR, 2010

ABIQUIU STUDIO TOUR, 2010

Driving north on Highway 84, you jog left on Fairview Drive in Espanola, which, at the first stop light, reconnects your with 84 north. Keep straight on 84 till you reach Abiquiu, the former homestead of the legendary Georgia O’Keefe.

On 84, you pass through a funky landscape of mobile homes, abandoned vehicles, and the churn of owner modified construction, unique with each home, that give a sense of joy and utility. This scenery is replaced by more open landscape as you near Abiquiu.

My wife and I took the drive today, intent merely to skim the surface, visiting the few sites that resonated favorably from the tour brochure. At the local inn and tour headquarters, we had delicious brunch, perused the store, and checked out the backyard shaded with large cottonwoods and which led across a stone bridge to site #16. From there, we headed to our clear favorite, the site (#30) of Armando Adrian Lopez.

Lopez , a native of Mexico, works in the tradition of such Mexican greats, all women, as Frida Kahlo, Remedios Varo and Leonora Carrington. But there is a more inventive, materials-focused slant to Lopez. His approach to sculpture is experimental, informal, and ever evolving. He often uses found materials, combining industrial stuff like wire with organic substances like corn husks to make fantastic, delicate figures which suspend from above. These forms emerge only from his creative process, and not from pre-design. There is a feminine aspect to his work, and his fine paintings that organize the picture plane with sophistication and enchant with imaginative and sensitive imagery often feature androgynous figures.

Gabriel Cisneros at site 24 promised (from the brochure picture) to have a similar kind of enchantment to Lopez, but turned out to lack his creative fire and power. The land around his house was worth the excursion, however; it featured a powerful little waterfall that led into an acequia system. Beside the waterfall were Basquiet-like paintings that drew us up to an open air exhibition. These were the works of Isaac AlaridPease, who also did painted sculpture of naïve, folksy vehicles— childlike alligators, fish and other images carved out of wood and fitted with functional wooden wheels he also made. http://picasaweb.google.com/alaridpease/RocketBirdArt?authkey=q5cZb-dOJVg#

We ended up at the Purple Adobe Lavender Farm (#13). The central feature here is the store, where one can buy all sorts of lavender-enhanced products—cookies, drinks, soap, etc. I stayed outside, enjoying the wooden deck chairs under the largest cottonwood trees I’ve ever seen. We later looked inside the wooden playhouse, and, as we left the premises, commented on the lavender-colored flags sticking up from lavender-painted irrigation fixtures lining the driveway.

OUR SQUIRREL FAMILY

I’m starting to appreciate better the squirrel family that lives under the shed. Only one individual comes out to eat. Or, lets say that I’ve only seen, or seen evidence of, one in recent days.

We had been disheartened by the nibbled cantaloupe near the front door. Such a waste, we thought. Why just nibble into one, leave it to spoil, then nibble into another? Recently, however, the cavity in the fruit was clearly being further deepened each day. (Apparently, a partly eaten fruit can still ripen more.) So it must have become more enjoyable with time. Yesterday I noted that the cantaloupe was gone altogether. Maybe it was a treat for the kids. Or maybe it had to be dislodged from among the other remnants of spoiled melons and squash that I had been putting beside it.

The family is large enough that it could devour or compromise all my fledgling melons, but yet it hasn’t. It must have a diverse source of food, and be pretty discriminating about how to manage it.

MY ANIMAL DAY

On two occasions I went out the front door, only to see a squirrel, mostly tail along the cement walkway, scurrying away.

I am trying to decide which, the squirrels or the rabbits, are most destructive to my garden. But I will give the prize to rabbits. Squirrels eat what’s on the surface, and, we hope, mostly what is plainly visible to the eye. I’ve seen a squirrel sitting upright, hands to mouth, eating a flower just the way a human would. Rabbits are completely different, burrowing under the earth and eating the roots of edible plants.

I struggled to establish my squash plants and, rabbits having decimated two early starts, I was down to one incredible zucchini squash. It grew to be the hallelujah chorus of zucchini plants, a thing of glory. Two days ago I went outside only to see these unbelievably thriving leaves all wilting. Only today after cutting away dead leaves did I see the mound of earth from rabbit burrowing entangled with the base of the plant. Similar things have happened with my cantaloupes.

Rabbits appear to be drugged, standing still when a normal prey animal should run away, and definitely not taking no for an answer. The concept of it being my garden and not rabbits’ garden is surely not computing.

The peculiar thing is that squirrels eat the fruit of the very plants of which the rabbits eat the roots, therefore destroying the fruits. You'd think that critters would at least cooperate among themselves.

ANIMAL FARM

We’re beset by squirrels. At first I thought there was only one living under the Morgan shed, mostly out of sight and out of mind. But with my clearing out a lot of junk to hang a show, the squirrels are scurrying around trying to decide what happened to their hiding and feeding--because they seem to eat old cardboard and even plastic bags full of trash—places.

I am wary of them, inconsistent person that I am. I have a dearly held vision of humans living in glorified cages (quite comfortably) while other creatures take over all the remaining free space, with no walls to hinder their migration. So here I am shooing squirrels away when they get too close. I’m afraid they’ll bite somebody, or march into the house and take over. An old, emaciated coyote also seems to be taking a shine to the place. By storing all manner of junk in arrangements that resemble animal settings--wild—I invite wild critters to hang around. My gardening style is pretty wild also.

But my St. Francis complex is being challenged by simple fear.

The squirrels don’t so much resemble cute little animals as a bunch of naughty children who run riot on the substitute teacher. They climb on everything, crawl wherever they can, decimate my food plants by eating their roots. There’s got to be some order here! What do I do???

CAROUSEL, 1956

Carousel was produced in 1956, the year I first came to the United States. The wonderful music from the movie is deeply engrained among my early musical memories. It stars Gordon McRae as Billy, a carousel barker around the turn of the 20th century.

When I took voice lessons in high school, McRae was a model for light-classical singing. His voice ranges from smooth, mellow high notes that quiver to meaty, chesty lower ones. I was struck by the female actors, Shirley Jones (as the main lead, Julie) and Barbara Ruick, her good friend. I confess to liking the stereotypic femininity of their roles despite my consistent advocacy that women not be limited to this.

The first song by Ruick, “When I Marry Mr. Snow,” my favorite, is like a long-forgotten love. Shortly after comes Jones’s version of “If I Loved You,” a duet with McRae. Hearing the way she holds the notes, it strikes me that often just holding a note for one bar longer can make it into sensual, black, jazz. Although inferior to McRae's, Jones's and Ruick's oh so satisfying voices do that better than McRae. Then I think of the incredible wonder of cultural “miscegenation,” how white women have imperceptibly broken down racial barriers. But it may be that I fantasize. Sex and race are my favorite themes in movies.

I love Oscar Hammerstein; let there be no mistake. But I’ve struggled to overcome my ambivalence about what I perceived as a strain of over-simplicity and heaviness when compared to the wit and sophistication of Lorenz Hart, Rodger’s former lyricist. I particularly dislike “When You Walk Though a Storm,” which not only ends the movie but is also featured before that to show staunch faith in overcoming adversity. Hammerstein’s directness has broad appeal but I prefer greater subtlety. The solution is simple. I take the musical for what it is. Carousel may be the best example of its kind. It was one of the most serious Rodgers and Hammerstein story lines.

MY WALK YESTERDAY

Soon after I began walking, strolling really, it struck me that the narrative for the walk was the sky above me. To the north and south, the clouds were like cotton balls, whereas the clouds above me resembled roughly separated wads from a roll of cotton. My clouds, mostly gray, had a dull, soft silver lining, which became very intense where the sun hid behind it.

On the power line which traversed the land sat a bird so tiny as to be mistaken for an insect. I am hypersensitive to the merest hint of lightning. I heard rumbling, but saw no lightning, and I took courage from the bird’s presence to keep on walking. Every now and then, the sun would shine through but quickly hide again.

I identified deeply with the sky directly above me. The clouds to the north and south were light (in both senses). They were pleasant enough, but they were not my clouds. My clouds were generous, grand and clean, not without a sense of mischief or danger. When the bird flew away, I immediately ended my walk, as if given a sign that it was no longer safe to continue.

FAYE KANE'S BLOG POST

FAYE'S (unedited) COMMENT AT AN ANGRY PATRIOTIC VET'S SITE


So the VA doesn't have the money to pay for all the expensive medications the big drug corporations are making a fortune from?

But the VA... isn't that, like, THE GOVERNMENT??

Maybe next time you won't vote for the candidate who:

1) lets big drug companies sell the same medicine for three times as much in America as they do in foreign countries,

2) passes a law against buying your medicine from Canada (which the police wisely do not enforce)

3) cuts taxes so "big gummint" won't have enough money to pay the VA for the overpriced miracle drugs which would cure you.

Instead, you get mad when the other candidate wins and tries to extend medicaid to everyone so you could get your medicine. They have their mouthpieces call it "communism".

No, "communism" is where everyone lives in squalor under a military dictatorship. "Communism" is red china and north korea. What they call "communism" is the medical system which every other civilized country has.

Everyone (even conservatives) agrees that this would cut health care cost in half. That's why they shout "communism" instead of saying "it would cost more": because it costs LESS.

Think it costs less because it provides less care?

Nope. It provides MORE, and everyone agrees with that too. That's why you hear lies about "death panels" instead of "you'll get less medical care if this "communism" is passed".


Your medicine costs twice as much because the drug and insurance company execs pocket your insurance premium to by another Lexus. They DO give some of it to their "in network" doctors--including paying yours a BONUS for denying you medical care. (Part of their pay is called a "bonus", and it gets smaller with every prescription they write and procedure they authorize).

Yeah, your taxes would go up, but only by half as much as your medical insurance costs you now. But you wouldn't have to buy medical insurance anymore.

Too good to be true? Ask your friend in Canada. They ALL think Americans are crazy for paying twice as much for WAAAY crappier medical care.

See, the rich people fooled y'all. "Rich people" means the large corporations and their mouthpieces like Fox news, who calls medicine for your kids "communism" and lied to you about "death panels". Beck and Limbaugh are both MULTI MILLIONAIRES.

The CEO of your company doesn't work as hard as you and your friends. In fact, he doesn't really "work" at all. He DOES take two-hour drink-lunches, plays golf during work hours, and hires his incompetent, stupid son-in-law as your boss.

Oh, and he also has much, MUCH better medical coverage than you. Ask HR.

This "gummint takeover of health care" you're told to be afraid of is nothing more than giving both the CEO and you the same medical insurance. For him, it means he doesn't get a private hospital room and restaurant food (though he can still buy it if he wants to pay for it).

But for you, your family, and the guys you work with, it means your daughter gets a flu shot like the CEO's daughter does, and that your son gets the knee surgery your health insurance won't pay for now

...IF YOU HAVE HEALTH INSURANCE AT ALL. None of the homeless do, and most of the male ones are vets. I'm a female one, and I'm going to die of Hep C at 34 because the cure, which is sitting on a shelf patiently waiting for its expiration date, costs $2,500 even though it costs the same to make as aspirin.

The CEO's wife, however, can get cured of that and many other diseases which YOUR wife can't. And unless grandpa was a CEO too, forget about high-quality medical care for grandma!
The real "death panels" are the conference rooms at the top floor of State Farm and Allstate.

Every time they get another tax cut giving you $80 and THEM literally millions of dollars each, they laugh at what a sucker you are and light their $40 cee-gar with a $10 bill.

Wanderingvet, THAT'S the $50 which should have paid for your VA medicine, and the medicine for all the other noble guys I know who willingly risked the ultimate sacrifice for a country run BY the wealthy, FOR the wealthy. Kerry was in 'Nam fighting REAL communism. Bush and Cheney were both DRAFT DODGERS.

They fooled you. See it now.

Only smart people ever change their mind and WISE UP ween they're being ripped off. Stupid people send their money to Nigerian bankers, wonder how they got swindled, and believe whatever they're told by their tee-vee set.

IN 2012, IF YOU'RE STUPID, WHICH THEY COUNT ON, YOU'RE GOING TO VOTE THEM BACK INTO POWER **AGAIN**.

You think that the saying "I'm from the government and I'm here to help you" is a joke? Tell it to the brave, proud vets I know from the homeless shelter who need that help, and see if they think it's funny. The stories they tell of how they "used to be proud but you can't be proud when you're sick" made me want to cry.

And tell it to your mom while she "spends down" your inheritance at $5,000 a month, until she's in abject poverty and "the gummint" is allowed to pay for her nursing home.

And tell it to me in an angry reply to this

...while my guitar gently weeps.

Faye Kane
Homeless Bumstress

SWEET AND LOWDOWN, 1999

Written and directed by Woody Allen, this film tells the story of a fictional arrogant, obnoxious, alcoholic jazz guitarist named Emmett Ray (played by Sean Penn) who regards himself as perhaps the best guitarist in the world, or second best, after his idol, Django Reinhardt.

Penn as Emmett carries the film in an Oscar-nomination performance. The lead female role seems secondary to me, although young Samantha Morton as Hattie also won an Oscar nomination.

Emmett is a victim of poor parenting, a complex and tragic character, with whom I identify. Separated early from both parents, and spending three years in a bordello under the guardianship of the madam, a friend of his mother, he grows up cynical and unable to commit to women.

Cruising the boardwalk with a pal to pick up women, he encounters Hattie, a mute, who turns out as faithful and loving as a dog. When she makes him a birthday card in which she declares her love, he skips out in the wee small hours without telling her.

His drinking and smoking are very pointed. That and gambling (he claims to be one of the six best pool players in the country), plus shooting rats at the dump, watching trains go by, and keeping lowlife company, all condition his fate. He’s trapped.

In a wonderful play of the imagination Woody, Nat Hentoff and others appear as themselves. In cameo performances, they set up the narrative as if it were a documentary about a real person.

A performance in which Emmett plans to descend onto a stage on a large, gilded crescent moon is a metaphor for the mess of his life. It doesn't work. Drunk as a skunk, his climb onto it is a bizarre struggle. It descends in odd jerks, as if it too were drunk. Near the ground he falls off his perch. The moon starts to rise, then comes crashing down in pieces behind him.

The film is personal. I think of the Hatties in my life, and I can understand the need and the repulsion that war within him. And the eternal nagging pathos of her fate. I also relate to his great, unrealized talent and lost opportunities due to his character flaws.

THE WIND AND THE LION 1975

Sean Connery, five years after his last Bond role, is the star. Loosely based on a true story, he is a desert leader (Raisuli) fighting for his people’s honor. Set in c.1905, as Teddy Roosevelt ascends to the presidency, the movie was written and directed by John Milius.

At first, and for the most part, the movies seems like a disparaging reflection on the West, which is portrayed as predatory, cold and mechanical as opposed to the soulful Muslims they are up against, and who trust only in Allah. Raisuli kidnaps an American family of three to embarrass his corrupt brother, whose equally corrupt nephew is the sultan of Morocco.

Slowly, the spirited woman, Eden (played by Candace Bergen), and her children grow to like and admire Connery. While he deals harshly with his enemies, he does not kill women and children. When they try to run away, he follows them and single-handedly saves them from slimy desert bandits. He’s alone when we need to see his bravery and nobility. He’s with a band of thousands when we need to see his power as a leader of men. We never see his wives, who are only mentioned when, bemused at having to take counsel from Eden, he complains that she isn’t even one of his wives.

Roosevelt sends in the marines to rescue the Americans, and Connery delivers them at great risk to himself. He is betrayed into the custody of contending European forces and is, in return, rescued by the American family, aided by the marines and the remnants of his band, in a situation that inevitably brings tears to one’s eyes.

MY FAVORITE WIFE, 1940

MY FAVORITE WIFE, 1940

Directed by Garson Kanin, the film stars Irene Dunn and Cary Grant as Ellen and Nick Arden , Gail Patrick as Bianca Bates, and Randolph Scott as Stephen Burkett.

The core of this movie for me is the unjust treatment of a woman in the name of monogamy. It is a comedy of sex with a serious underbelly that no one was intended to consider.

Dunn and Scott are shipwrecked on an uninhabited island for seven years. Although the plot is less specific about what transpired there than in the movie remake with Doris Day and Rock Hudson, we are told that the answer is ”nothing.”

Meanwhile, husband Cary Grant, who has brought up their two children, marries anew on the very day that his supposedly dead wife resurfaces.

In keeping with the cultural norms of the period, and even today, one of these “wives” must go. We needn’t guess who. The answer is clear, although the resolution of the dilemma comes nearly at the end, after a highly comedic courtroom skit to legally resolve the case.

My beef with the movie and with our culture is in how new wife, Patrick, must suffer rejection although she has done nothing wrong. As Grant gives all manner of excuses not to consummate their marriage while she waits crying and wondering what about her repels him, I keep saying out loud, “This is wrong!”

Our moral ideas haven’t changed much in the 70 years since that movie, but we can at least now ask: why monogamy? And I’m not just being a male chauvinist either, wishing that Grant had kept both wives (which I do), I have contempt for the story of Dunn’s chastity during seven years on the island with a handsome jock (Scott), thinking only of returning to her husband.

I’m upset that we are supposed to leave the film smiling and content (yes, I know, it was only a comedy), with not a thought for the expendable wife (not the favorite). True, she didn’t have the understanding and rapport with the kids that Dunn had, but she didn’t deserve to be discarded like a piece of trash either.

The Strip, 1951

The Strip, 1951, is a black and white sausage incorporating popular themes of the time. There is crime, entertainment, echoes of military service, and of course the girl. It is a typical vehicle for Mickey Rooney of c. 1950.

Apart from Rooney, (who had been in a war, plays drums, and gets mixed up with a mobster), Louis Armstrong, and, vaguely, Jack Teagarden, I was not familiar with the cast.

Louis Armstrong was the highest paid black star of the time and featured in 11 movies during the 50s. In The Strip, as in other movies, his performance exemplifies bliss.

Armstrong plays himself, and as with his other movie performances, he is used to lift the movie but not to be a featured actor. There is an interesting hinging together of the main story, which is “noir,” and the feel-good appearances of the musicians.

Armstrong was a major force for breaking down racial barriers in the movies and elsewhere. He was the first black musician to feature in films. His personality and fame allowed him to soften the racial divide. I didn’t have to wince through his performance, as I regularly did through black performances of the period.

Sally Forrest sang and danced, often doing the same numbers as Armstrong. “Give Me A Kiss To Build A Dream On,” a popular hit from my youth, was the most played.

Mickey Rooney as jazz drummer Sam Maxton sometimes plays with Armstrong’s band. How well he plays was an enormous surprise to me.

Exhibition Notes

FROM TURNER TO CEZANNE (The Albuquerque Museum)

The paintings displayed were selected from the collection amassed by sisters Margaret and Gwendoline Davies, now the property of the National Museum of Wales, which organized the exhibition in concert with the American Federation of Arts.

Romanticism tinges the earlier works, while stylistic formalism creeps in after Cezanne. Painterliness becomes a theme. Vlamink copies Cezanne’s brushstrokes without regard to his capture of nature’s essence. Van Gogh, before that, turns painterly brushstrokes into hieroglyphics.

Joseph Mallord William Turner: Only the watercolors make you see how delicate and precise a draftsman Turner was. Living in big-sky country, I appreciate more than ever the huge, turbulent skies of Turner . In his watercolors, he uses blotting and scratching-out to help attain his effects.

Daumier was a decent painter as well as a master illustrator. I observed beautiful, consciously formed negative spaces in one of his paintings. Millet was even better. In a storm scene, a tree is at the point of being uprooted. Water gurgles in the foreground. Everything is bent by the wind.
Manet snow scene: The roof of the church is missing, not because it isn’t there, but because, it being covered with snow, he does nothing to distinguish it from the white scene behind. It is startling even today for the looseness and minimalism of the rendering. Monet’s painting of Charing Cross Bridge at morning—one of many he did--evoked the sounds, the grind of wheels, the bells, the smells, the cries of London as the sun is rising through a reddish haze. Berthe Morisot spins a fine web of light as a woman and child sit among tall grasses.

A Cezanne from the 1870s was hard even to glance at, whereas I went, “Wow!” on seeing his Provencal Landscape from 10 years later. It hit me in the gut. There was no symbolism of nature, no leaves, no bark, no grass. It was a parallel universe, a gestalt of nature, made entirely out of paint; its placement and optical qualities.

If there is one image I take away from the rest of the museum’s permanent collection (a very impressive one, by the way), it is the Model T Speedster of 1912 in the museum’s history section. It is red. It is modern. Crank-started, a free-standing circle of glass for a windscreen, it is an example of form which follows function.

Movie Notes

ACROSS THE PACIFIC, 1942, directed by John Huston and Vincent Sherman.

Set at the eve of Pearl Harbor, Across the Pacific is a spy film starring: Humphrey Bogart as Richard (Rick) Leland, a disgraced navy captain turned patriot; Mary Astor as Alberta Marlow; and Sydney Greenstreet as Dr. Lorenz, a sociology professor loyal to the Japanese. Each with a different agenda, Marlow, Lorenz and Rick board a Japanese ship from Canada en route to China via the Panama Canal. The ship stops in New York, where Rick gives a military intelligence officer information about Lorenz. It is subsequently detained in Panama.
I preferred the sub-plots to the largely incomprehensible main plot, however.
Nefarious, oily and seemingly invincible, Greenstreet reprises his Maltese Falcon role. Likewise for Bogart who is again stoic, hard-working, and hard-talking. He exemplifies gritty humor when, sickened after too many drinks, he tells Astor, “Close the door when you leave.” “I want to die alone without a friend.” He is a philosopher for the little guy.

The film is sexy. Bogart and Astor waste no time in getting chummy. He often remarks on her scanty attire. When Greenstreet walks in on him searching Astor's belongings Bogart brushes it off by saying, “You’d be surprised how little girls wear these days.” Afterwards, Astor, suffering sunburn, has removed the shoulder straps of her swimsuit and covers her breasts only by clutching the garment over them. When she and Bogart kiss and the scene changes to a later time, the stark dichotomy is revealed between the explicitness of modern films and the understatement of classic ones like this.

The outstanding art direction makes me forget that the filming happens in a single Hollywood studio. When Bogart and Astor disembark in New York, black-coated people move at a New York pace. The pier is cold, hard and straight-edged, exemplified by the diagonally aligned magazines of a news kiosk. In one scene, light shining through venetian blinds falls diagonally on a wall as in an Edward Hopper interior.

Later, the Pan American Hotel in Panama has high ceilings, shaded interiors and arched doorways. As ice cubes tinkle, the shadows of swirling fans are seen on the walls.
When sinister goons come after Bogart, poetry takes precedence over realism as a pure ballet of action unfolds. Men in white suits and white hats shoot guns and throw knives against a backdrop of strongly contrasting light and shadow. Bogart (or his stunt man) pirouettes from rooftops like Jackie Chan, escaping attack while taking down the bad guys, all as if in a dance.

TONY RYDER

Anthony (Tony) Ryder teaches art at his studio in Santa Fe, and is an internationally prominent realist painter and teacher. He talks like a writer in that he makes his points through analogy like good descriptive writers.

Today he’s critiquing Tina and talking about “posters,” little light studies done with oil paint preliminary to the final painting: “You have to take a ‘snapshot’ of Trevor and match it with your poster.” Or, “You can take a snapshot of your poster and compare it with a snapshot of Trevor. The two must look pretty much alike.” His exposition is so clear that I can visualize what he wants the poster to look like.

The brush must be just hard enough not to smoosh the paint around. The paint must be applied in well organized chunks. Highlights must be put on, with just the right value and hue, over “form light.” The forehead slants toward the light, and is more strongly lit than its first cousin, the cheeks, which slant a little toward the light, but not as much. The average of the values in the beard is closer than you might think to that of the cheeks, although the hue is different. Somewhat like a vase, the nose goes from broad at the nostrils to narrow at the bridge where is flanges into a base above the eyes. The highlight on its tip is brighter than the one on the bridge. But the average of the nose’s values and hues is not unlike the cheeks’.

Tony is more at peace, more fluid, more lucid than any of the hundreds of art teachers I’ve come across. He is as gentle as Josef Albers was sadistic. “A good teacher is a sadist,” Albers would say, and his disciple Sy Sillman strove mightily to emulate the master; many a student left his class in tears. On the other hand, Tony’s students come from all over the world, and never want to leave.

JOHN REGER

My first impression of John’s painting-in-progress was one of clarity. I looked at it the day before the end of term, and my take then was that it resembled a carving out of stone or marble. Some brush strokes were still exploratory, with hard edges that might have made me think of stone fragments. The brushstrokes in the blue backdrop, the white fabric and the floor – those section would not be finished -- had the look of chisel marks in rock.

As I thought then, the figure and surroundings resembled a rock quarry strongly lit by the sun. The drawing is so rigorously correct that it appears to have been chiseled out of a rock, where, like the figures of Michelangelo, it had “preexisted” in perfect form. Muscles flow most convincingly and as if smoothed out with a chisel. The model finds symbiosis with the lighting. His white skin glows like a lamp The clarity of the light is further accentuated by the contrasting softness and shadowiness of the face and shoulder area. The strength of the body that the muscles depict matches perfectly the strength of the rendering.

Then John emailed me the final work, which I saw differently. The figure appeared softer, more warmly colored, and more like flesh. My earlier sense of a rock quarry had largely, but not entirely, to do with the white fabric behind Adam and the white patches on the floor.

I’ve always been impressed by John’s feeling for human anatomy, a bit reminiscent of the passionate, “near sighted” nude explorations of Phillip Perlstein (especially in regard to the warm and cool “jingle” of color in the legs, in this case). Unlike Perlstein, however, John is a classical realist, despite how much of the thoroughness and tactility in his personality gets conveyed in his paintings.

BIRD

Bird is her name, and I have yet to discover the reason why. Is she named Bird after Charlie Parker? Does she like to chase birds? I’ll try to find out before my work stint is over.

Bird is a boxer mix, honey-brown, with short hair. She’s powerfully built, but with surprisingly narrow hips. She walks stiff-legged and not fast. You’d think she’d want to show off those strong muscles doing athletic things, but she’s very laid back instead.

Her right arm below the knee is pure white, while the left is white only on the toes. Her underside looks as if somebody poured milk on it from front to back so that puddles oozed out to the sides. From her eyes to her nose, however, is very dark…like those people who trim their beards close to the skin, while leaving the dark stubble.

She wanders around the studio, seemingly bored. She’s what Caesar Milan would term calm and submissive. She’s almost somnolent calm.

I gave her a tiny piece of pizza once, and she came up to the podium where I sat, hoping in vain for more. Today, she came up again, smelling my lunch, which contained nothing savory, and was mostly fruit. When asked if she ate papaya, her owner confirmed that “she doesn’t do fruit.” So what the heck?

Bird knows that she’s not permitted to lie on the couch, which is behind the artists. Only I see her ease into it smooth like butter. When I smile at the spectacle, she’s quickly and effortlessly dispatched by her human, Jacob.

A DREAM OF OBAMA

A DREAM OF OBAMA (PART I)

I had a dream about Obama. Until very recently, when he won the presidency, we were living as part of an extended family within the same house. Now he’s here again, but not with any sort of presidential pomp. He’s just like a family member visiting. He’s here for dinner, and I’m somehow accountable for having things go smoothly.

He’s wearing short sleeves, and at one point I clutch the smooth brown skin of his elbow, earnestly congratulating him on his amazing accomplishment. But either then, or later, I get a strong feeling that I badly overstepped my bounds.

The scene changes, and I’m vaguely presenting to children, as during my substitute teaching days. The children get too unruly and I shout at them. I do that only due to desperation that I am making a bad impression at a bad time. I’m quite aware in my dream that I have learned the hard way how to control a group of kids if I choose to. (Had I been more interested in the task, I would have been properly prepared and the kids well behaved. The problem was that I didn’t consider teaching kids to be important for me to do. It couldn’t make a difference on the scale, or with the urgency, that I considered worthy of my involvement.)

Obama is not impressed. It seems that he considers teaching any group of kids under any circumstances to be a sacred duty that should take precedence over others. I consider him frighteningly priggish, cold and remote.

Next, the long table is being set for dinner. Michelle is involved with straightening up the mess. At least one chair is missing, making for possible elimination of one of the kids. I ask Michelle why her husband has not taken a seat but appears to be scrutinizing objects on the wall instead. “He’s very sensitive,” she replies. I conclude that he’s not sitting because he wants everybody else to be seated first. Unbeknownst to me, he’s been quietly taking in the mayhem (including the lack of oranges that are required for desert). Again, I’ve let myself down in front of this pillar of virtue.


A DREAM OF OBAMA (PART II)

Aubrey was my brother-in-law, the younger brother of my ex-wife, who was exactly my age. Through ups and downs, recrimination and divorce he remained my steadfast and loyal friend. He was, arguably, the best adult friend I ever had. About seven years ago, he suffered a massive stroke and subsequent complications that ended his life. In life he was thin and reedy, not unlike Obama in complexion and stature, though less tall.

In one scene of my dream, Obama instantly solves a computational problem in his head, the answer he gives being one three-hundredth, which we all take to be gospel. Aubrey, who was a math genius in life, appears in the dream, and I hope he can rescue my tarnished reputation by also solving the problem, showing that my close buddy has equal computational skills to Obama. Aubrey, who had always been light-hearted and good nature, is, however, completely silent. He runs toward a river or pond or lake, smiling like a happy, goofy child.

When I awake, it seems that the one three-hundredth answer was absurd, that Aubrey was perhaps demonstrating the pointlessness of the subject, and that a river and grass, shrubs and trees in the bright sunlight were much better things to focus on than trying to impress people, who didn't know what they were saying anyway.

Nations in the Global Eara

During the heady late ‘60s, I was convinced that the “system” was about to crumble. Within two years, I and other rebels thought. Time went by. The ‘70s coopted the ‘60s. Then Reagan came, swallowed the two decades, and chucked up morning in America, faux 1950s.

So we got the timing wrong. But 40 years later, (and 20 years after the fall of the Berlin wall and the end of Apartheid showed that unbelievable change could occur). there was a meltdown in the economic system of the corporate beast. And that meltdown shows that the system is unstable.

So what about nationalism? There IS nationalism, and I don’t pretend to know when or how completely it will go away. But there are some unprecedented portends of change:

1) An unimaginably large population (tripled in growth since 1950, and the result of the dominant economic system) that is projected to level off around 10 billion
2) It will require 4 Earth-type planets to sustain the above projected population living the lifestyle determined by civilization . Believing that some new technology will preclude this is fantasy.
3) Climate change, already well advanced, will worsen as scenario 2 unfolds.
4) The sense of otherness, that rich nations can exploit poor ones with impunity has come home to roost in the form of international terrorism.

Where does great-nationhood fit into this picture? We have evolved into a global species.

5) There is no great nation, which doesn’t address the global phenomenon of climate change.
6) There is no great nation, which doesn’t address the need for international equity.
7) There will no doubt be powerful forces advocating draconian, unjust means for dealing with environmental, economic and social global crises, but those are not the mark of great nations, only stupid ones.
8) For a nation in the global era to assert its self interest at the expense of “less great” ones is like an organ of the body aggregating health unto itself at the expense of other organs.
9) The only viable goal of “greatness” is global wholeness.
10) The notion of great nationhood as history has bequeathed it is inconsistent with the reality of a newly globalized species facing the crises that it does.
11) The only reasonable course for a great nation is to remove the particularity that separates (and alienates) it from common purpose with every other nation.
12) Removing the particularity, and recognizing common purpose with every other nation, can be summed up by the metaphor that a great nation would be invisible, if it could be said to “exist” at all.

WASTING TIME?

A lot of smart people like President Obama. I do too. But I differ with them when they imply that we can afford to sit back and let the White House figure out how to solve the nation’s and the world’s problems by themselves.

Instead, I spend an inordinate of time commenting to blog posts. A haunting feeling that I’m wasting my time, which could be better spent doing concrete immediate tasks, is not enough to deter me. I suspect that I’m addicted to blogging. Recently, I’ve been commenting on what the White House and we the people must do together to make a better world.

The most recent issue of my discussions has been the decline of America.

If I may be permitted an intuitive take on this, I'd say that America has been on a trajectory of decline in influence and confidence since the Vietnam war, with a great worsening of that trend since Reagan. While most liberals view the Clinton presidency as a good time in America, I don’t. To me, he merely expanded the corporatist trend Reagan started, and expanded it to the rest of the world.

The breakdown of the Iron Curtain only seemed to make things worse, since it strengthened the role of corporatism and expanded it to the former USSR as well. At the same time, the correlated aspect of abuse and destruction of Earth's environmental capital mushroomed. That FELT bad. So-called freedom was only freedom to exploit poor countries and the environment, while spreading a tyrannical system of unsustainable development on an ever wider scale (read, China, the Amazon, India, etc.).

Earth's environmental capital is said to be in excess of a trillion dollars, did we have to pay for it instead of get it for free. The people who are conserving this capital best are Earth's aborigines and other self-sufficient third world peoples (who don't use or over use fossil fuels or need IMF loans). While we can't and need not return to the aboriginal state ourselves, we can learn from these societies and renew our charter to foster their kind of self-sufficiency (obviating the need to fight wars over oil, or be everywhere at all times). What I'm talking about is radical change. Will we rise to the occasion? I certainly don't know. My job is to tell it like I see it, and let the chips fall where they may.

MOVIES AND DREAMS

A (STRANGE) DREAM

Early this morning I dreamt that I, Kris (my recently deceased mother-in-law), and perhaps some family members whom I couldn't distinguish, were breaking into a joint to steal money. The door was locked, and Kirk Douglas stepped \in to prove that he wasn't too old to break a lock (something he used to do and still had the knack for). The door handle was one you swing down, like the doors between subway cars, and Kirk had to somehow calibrate the timing of his actions so that with a single, forceful downswoop the door opened. Thereafter, the only person I recall is Kris. For some reason, I had to xerox a form (which I didn't think was important) as part of the money acquisition, and I made two copies, one without the title paragraph on top, and one with it, But since the latter was crooked, with type too close to the edges, I gave Kris the other one. As she, however, wanted that title paragraph, I switched forms with her. More than that I can't remember.

NOTE: Kris was honest to a fault. Stealing money was the least likely thing she could ever do.

ALL THROUGH THE NIGHT, 1941

Director: George, Stevens; starring Humphrey Bogart, with supporting roles by Phil Silvers, Jackie Gleason and other fine performers.

Bogey is trying to escape a false murder rap. In the process, he gets entangled with a bunch of American Nazis and a girl who helps him at first. With delicious tough-guy dialog tinged with subtle undertones of rye humor, he foils the bad guys. In addition to that, however, are hilarious small roles by his hench men. One guy has his hat on backwards and walks around with an axe over his shoulder. He is a wildly humorous spectacle, and at times the movie feels like a Marx Brothers film.

The movie is beautiful, and had me reflecting on film’s relationship to art. There’s an implicit collaboration between the urban scene of New York, the art of Hopper, and movies like this. Cornices and string courses abound. So do street lights, sidewalks and stoops. Edward Hopper used these props to create fixed, monumental scenes. The movie scenes flash by like liquid. Hopper couldn’t do that. Neither could he as effectively capture the shimmer of reflecting water on the streets.

EASTER PARADE

I've never much liked Easter Parade (1948), with Fred Astaire, Judy Garland and Peter Lawford, and Irvin Berlin's music), but I forced myself to watch a little snippet of it yesterday. As luck would have it, this snippet included two of the show's greatest numbers: Steppin' Out with My Baby and A Couple of Swells, which came close to each other.

I was hugely impressed by Steppin' Out, which I consider the best Fred Astaire movie dance routine of all. He's 49, and transitioning to the exclusively balletic phase of his later years. But here he still mixes in tap. Grace is wedded to crispness and precision. His varied partners for this number are unknowns, who, while very good, don't get in the way of Fred's spotlight. Yellow suit, red vest, white shoes...the guy is sharp! I was not that crazy about the slow motion sequence within that act, however.

But A Couple of Swells, with Fred and Judy as hobos, is absolute perfection. They're as unlikely as a couple of sparrows, which they resemble, to be invited to the Vanderbilts for tea, which they claim. But I was so struck by the performance, a vaudeville skit, that I applauded the end just as if I'd witnessed a live performance. I consider it the crowning achievement of cinematic musical comedy. As they "walk" UP the avenue, the flimsy looking Fifth avenue backdrop wobbles slightly, while a floor conveyer belt glides them forward, depending on the narrative..

I'm nostalgic for Fifth Avenue, where my mother once worked. But that's not all.

I enjoy it as pantomime, and I enjoy it as dance. The music, a work of comic genius, alternates between the querulous verses, and the counterpoint, declarative refrain, whose last lines vary to rhyme with those of verse just before it.

We would ride on a trolley car but we haven't got the fare (last line of the verse)
So we'll walk up the Avenue
Yes, we'll walk up the Avenue
Yes, we'll walk up the Avenue till we're there

We would ride on a bicycle, but we haven't got a bike (last line of the verse)
So we'll walk up the Avenue
Yes, we'll walk up the Avenue
And to walk up the Avenue's what we like

We would swim up the Avenue but we haven't any lake (last line of the verse)
So we'll walk up the Avenue
Yes, we'll walk up the Avenue
Yes, a walk up the Avenue's what we'll take

Maybe, though, this performance can't be analyzed, and just has to be enjoyed.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LkAJFk-U9wY&NR=1