Thinking Globally

INCHING ALONG

2011-05-25T22:44:00.000-07:00

I guess I'm trying to reconcile abstraction and realism. I do what I feel like doing and look at the results. If I don't like it, I change it until something happens that I like.

2011-05-18T09:00:00.000-07:00

Mother and Daughter

2011-05-05T20:10:00.000-07:00

This is the drawing outline of a new work. It will look MUCH neater when done. But I like, preliminarily, to mess up the paper so as to have something to work with and against.

VIVA MARIA! 1965

2011-03-22T10:59:00.000-07:00

The parts of the movie that work, do so brilliantly, like nuggets stuck in dough. Two French women named Marie (Brigitte Bardot and Jeanne Moreau) meet up in South America and become revolutionaries while also working in a traveling circus. The magician’s bird can appear and disappear in wondrous ways, and later delivers bombs, flying in through one window, out the next, followed by the boom! But, for me, Bardot stole the show. Daughter of an Irish revolutionary, she starts out life as his accomplice, and is most accomplished with all manner of weaponry, such as blowing up bridges. Later, in South America, she is also completely sexually unabashed, and chalks up the names of lovers till she runs out of wall space. George Hamilton is a revolutionary peasant leader, who wins Moreau. Changing their names to Maria, the two women create a popular circus act that incorporates the striptease they invent. Although Moreau won a foreign actress award for the film over Bardot, this was for me Bardot’s film. She runs around in men’s clothes and a cap like a little elf. She walks off as if transfixed into a carriage with three waiting men, and returns the next morning with her gown all tore up, with bruises on her arm, declaring to the effect that no experience was ever more glorious. There is virtually no nudity despite the striptease theme, but there is the proposition that women can be extremely sexy and “feminine” while being superior in warfare, and can lead a revolution to boot. I’d recommend it for that and for Bardot’s performance. Louis Malle directs.

CABIN IN THE SKY, 1943

2011-03-16T03:13:00.000-07:00

Cabin in the Sky is a musical film that had its genesis as a Broadway play starring some of the same actors—Ethel Waters as Petunia, for example. The play was choreographed by George Balanchine, which helps to explain the high class of the movie directed by Vincent Minnelli in his directorial debut. Up to this time, there had been no other mainstream Hollywood movie featuring black characters. Minnelli broke new ground. Black life is accorded its recognition as autonomous and independent of mere servitude to whites. There are no white actors. Not totally unlike black communities of today, people, though relatively poor, are in touch with wealth and glamour, since they are not geographically segregated by income level. The main characters—Petunia and husband Little Joe—live in a simple cottage, but they might be seen dressed to the gill at the local nightclub, and there the drapery and valances are immensely elaborate, and gamblers (like “Shine”) earn great sums of money, and are almost worshipped. Black people know how to party, and like to look good. Lena Horne as Georgia Brown, a temptress out to snag Little Joe (Eddie “Rochester” Anderson), never looked lovelier, with her white floral midriff tied under her breasts, her black slinky skirt, and a white flower in her hair. There were two musical performances that I, idiosyncratically, take away from among the jam packed great musical numbers. One is where Horne is lying beguilingly in a hammock singing a duet—“Life is Full of Consequences”—with Little Joe. Her voice is as silky and kittenish as his is gravelly and like a drill sergeant’s—a perfect contrast. The other piece that had me swooning was Duke Ellington’s “Going Up,” performed by his band, where people dance in a Busby Berkeley-choreographed amalgam of a realistic nightclub dance grafted onto a staged performance. Miraculous. The Faustian plot—Joe gets a reprieve from death and Hell in order to prove himself worthy for heaven--was too gooey for my taste, but the screenplay, performances and magnificent visual style more than made up for that. Highly recommended.

KARATE KID, 2010

2011-03-06T12:19:00.000-08:00

This is a feel-good movie, but it’s the best feel-good movie I’ve seen in years. It is well crafted, and kept my attention riveted. Jackie Chan plays an aging janitor with a personal tragedy and a kung fu past. He reluctantly takes on the task of preparing Jaden Smith (Will Smith’s son) to fight in a kung fu tournament as a way to prove himself and earn the respect of bullies at his school in China, where his mom’s job transfer lands him. The film presents the combative China, as well as the merciful one, represented by Chan and a girl schoolmate who likes Jaden. It gets past the romantic, distant, foreign China, to one where we see the ordinary grungy facts of daily life in working-class neighborhoods. Settings include gorgeous brick architecture gone seedy, great perspectives of the Great Wall, throngs of uniform kung fu players. Jaden is the type of snarky, self-indulgent kid I’d want to avoid at all costs, but even he could not destroy the uplifting timbre of the narrative. Despite some hard to believe passages, some too-quick learning by Javed, the movie is kept convincing, largely through Chan’s stellar and unusual performance, as well as the natural way the Chinese kids behave. The access to China is remarkable, and makes the inhabitants seem a lot like us. You may frequently need to wipe away the tears. I did.

Two Movies

2011-02-21T00:16:00.001-08:00

SECONDHAND LIONS, 2003
The lighting is dim and mellow as it plays throughout the shadowy, beautifully disheveled old farm house that two ancient brothers own, and as it illuminates the hard-scrabble vistas of the rural-Texas setting where large 1950s vehicles bounce along dusty dirt roads.. In this coming-of-age saga Haley Joel Osment plays a boy left at the Texas ranch of eccentric uncles (the brothers) Michael Caine and Robert Duvall. Duvall is in his element. Michael Caine less so, The uncles regale Osment with amazing tales of their past, which include adventures in the French Foreign Legion and saving a princess from slave traders and an Arab sheik. Yearning for the old days of adventure, they acquire and intend to shoot for sport an old lion, but the decrepitude of the lion gives them pause, as does the boy’s rapport with her. The movie kept my attention throughout, although the clarity and maturity of the Osment character seemed unlikely.

DINNER FOR SCHMUCKS, 2010,

This “screwball comedy” film is the American adaptation of the French film, (The Dinner of Cretins). Steve Carell is extremely convincing as an idiot-savant who is too dim to know that he’s being used as a promotional gimmick for the so-star’s corporate ambitions. He makes wonderful dioramas, with dead mice impersonating characters in famous paintings. Carell miraculously maintains the characterization of his zany but pure-hearted role. Paul Rudd is the corporate guy, and didn’t interest me as much. Perhaps due to its French inspiration, there are sex themes that push the envelope a bit. As much by what it includes as by what it leaves out, the film brings up a question about movies and monogamy. Rudd’s art-curator girlfriend is wooed by an artist with animal magnetism whom she represents. Does one have to end up with the girl, or can they both share her?

THE LOVE PARADE, 1929

2011-02-04T21:29:00.000-08:00

This musical comedy starring Jeanette MacDonald as the Queen of Silvania and Maurice Chevalier as the count whom she marries, plays on the war of the sexes. He is less than thrilled over his marital obligation to be docile, and obedient to the queen. At various moments he displays righteous indignation, charm, tenderness, and trickery. The musical performance, although the first feature film for MacDonald, establishes her in the operetta genre with which she would always be associated. I enjoyed the fragile look of the film--like thin paper stretched over a frame, but starting to crack and fall apart. The sound is similarly crackly and thin. Through age, perhaps, the film glows like a ghost in the night. The music works despite the limitations of Chevalier’s voice. Hollywood of this era was fixated on European royalty, into which it stirs baudy, sexy routines from American vaudeville. It’s entertaining to see how these qualities blend and go toward defining romantic popular music and exuberant musical comedy of later years. The stage sets are astoundingly opulent, and I wonder how much of them were simply painted. Hard to tell. This the first talking picture by director Ernst Lubitsch, and it won some awards, including being nominated for six Oscars.

LOST HORIZON, 1932

2011-02-01T15:33:00.001-08:00

What an unusual movie! Ronald Coleman is a British Foreign Secretary, who gets shanghaied from Shanghai with a party of British types. The plane which carries them crash lands near the legendary, fabled Shangri La, whence a greeting party has meanwhile been dispatched. The physical film, which had been damaged and restored, feels as much a rarified treasure as Shangri La itself. The plot is set in the Himalayas, near Tibet. It is permeated by an intense feeling of cold, isolation and altitude. Shangri La is like an oasis in this hostile environment, its mild weather resulting from high protective mountain ranges. Despite a lack of amenities like public plumbing, its gleaming white buildings resemble something from a World’s Fair. Shangri La turns out to be a stand-in for the liberal tradition of the West. No one struggles. There is no money, only exchange. People can live for centuries. It is polite to give up your wife to someone who wants her badly (of course, seen from a male perspective). It is prescient of modern times, and talks about similar social ills, including greed and environmental destruction, to those which plague us now. Coleman's worldly career happened despite his deep longing for a better world. The books he has written about his utopian dreams have been read by some at Shangri La. They include the girl and the founder, who are convinced that he belongs there. The party from the plane, including Coleman, react in different ways to the possibility of “escape.”

THE MODEL

2011-01-24T09:27:00.001-08:00

R was our model. As I struggled with my makeshift easel, she offered to help me through the door. I said I was fine but thanks, and entered behind her. Her gait seemed wobbly, as though the leg joints were worn down and slid from side to side. She is slender. She appears to live simply, so I can’t attribute the smoked-chicken tone of her body to tanning. Maybe that’s her natural color. Her age was hard to pin down. She looked old and young at one and the same time. The wrinkles on her chiseled face were prominent enough to notice, while not enough to detract from a sense of youthfulness. I’m guessing she’s in her early 60’s, although Sandi thinks she might be older. Her body is wonderful, with firm breasts—only with imagination can one discern hints of incipient sagging. Wrinkles on her abdomen are concentrated in one or two places, and don’t detract from her otherwise tight skin. While she took lovely poses, none of them showed her back. Her bottom might have been wrinkled, but one of two glimpses of it as she got in and out of poses showed nothing that would detract from her overall appeal to average male tastes (well, to men of a certain age). Her hair was bundled roughly on top of her head. It was a sort of khaki colored—dyed, certainly-- that blended with her skin. She let it down for the final pose, the subject of this drawing. Her vulva was surprisingly narrow. The facts of her age, personality and physical appearance made me think of her as someone I could have known well but never seen naked. I prefer to think of her that way.

BOOGIE NIGHTS, 1997

2011-01-24T09:20:00.000-08:00

This movie will take you on a trip and bring you back. Amid swimming pools, nightclubs and booze, it's immersed in a sleazy world, ruled over by LA porn film maker par excellence, Burt Reynolds. The film itself seems trashy, as cheap as the lives around Burt (Jack Horner), but the intermingling disco and classical music and the smooth, slick, hallucinogenic scene changes, are interesting. Enough to compensate for the broken people and the orgy of fuckups? Dunno. The cast is spectacular, including Mark Wahlberg (whose vicissitudes as porn celebrity anchor the story), Julianne Moore, Don Cheadle, William H. Macy and Phillip Seymour Hoffman. So it’s a great cast, and Reynolds was nominated for an Oscar, but I still don’t get it. The film features failure, frustration, ambition, drugs, murder, and a sort of redemption, and was more about these than about porn. While there was a lot of purported porn, the relentless cutting away of anything juicy was bothersome. I think of the trend toward non-simulated sex in mainstream movie—e.g., The brown Bunny and Shortbus. Would this movie be better had it gone that route?

THE NEW FACE OF HOMELESSNESS

2011-01-14T18:19:00.000-08:00

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/01/12/homeless-america_n_808339.html

The new middle class homelessness. While the article focuses on an unfortunate woman, the cover photo shows a possible way out of her predicament, and a possible way out for others in her circumstances.

The photo is of a beautiful RV, lit by bright sun. A well groomed man is attending to his equally presentable son. He had the intelligence and clarity of mind to crease a deck from planks, supporting it on small rocks gathered in the yard. It cost nothing, other than, perhaps, for the planks. It's a nice, sunny space that a child would like. The family has a roof over their head, and they have transportation. While this is the face of poverty in the USA, it is paradise by the living standards of half the world. Between living on the streets and living in a Mc Mansion, there are many viable options still open to us.

LEFT VS. RIGHT

2011-01-11T13:00:00.000-08:00

Events of the past three days make me think once again of our political dilemma. I think the Right is fundamentally wrong, and that the Left is fundamentally right. I do believe, however, in carefully giving this alligator of the Right its due, treating it as a force of nature to be respected, but that must be contained for the benefit of humanity. I believe that the margins between our two camps can be rendered soft and relatively porous. And I'm for working assiduously to bring this about.

There are the famous stories of Tip O’Neil knocking back a few with Reagan at night, and being a fierce partisan by day. This is a good model for legislators (and us) to follow. It can’t hurt to find opportunities for friendship and cooperation.

We have to avoid being overwhelmed with bitterness by our fundamental disagreements, and try our utmost to bridge the chasm without sacrificing our principles. I believe that we should hold fast to our GOALS while negotiating with the Right on TACTICS. The right leans in a direction that brings out the need for creativity. Dems need to embrace this quality, guarding against its tendency to be overly mechanical and cerebral. This means embracing faith-based and market initiatives. It means being able to embrace American exceptionalism. More than anything, it means thinking outside the box, all toward creating a more caring, compassionate and sensible nation.

HEAVENS ABOVE, 1963

2011-01-09T09:41:00.000-08:00

Considered a satirical masterpiece, and ahead of its time, the plot features Peter Sellers as a humble, caring vicar accidentally assigned to a comfortable, snobbish English country village in place of an upper-class cleric with the same name. The black and white picture quality is iridescent, like sand sculpture sprayed silver. The credits, showing the town, convey a feeling for the emerging and exciting pop-art aesthetic of the time. Sellers’ cockney accent and disregard for upper-class norms, as well as his prominent, slightly hooked nose, reminds me of John Lennon, who was ascending with the Beatles during that period. In this immaculately crafted, low budget film, Sellers influences the town’s dowager and chief business scion to give her riches to the poor. But all does not go well. One of her memorable quotes: “There’s a conspiracy to prevent one doing good.” The bewildered archdeacon is amusing, too, as he talks of Sellers’ child-like directness and “quite unjustifiable happiness.” There is outstanding truth of types. The gypsies that the vicar takes in are parasites, but are shown in the round, not as stereotypes. Brock Peters plays the genial West Indian immigrant and garbage collector selected by Sellers to be the vicar’s assistant, causing many to display the racial attitudes of the time.

BRINGING IN THE NEW YEAR

2011-01-01T16:13:00.001-08:00

There is no nicer way to bring in a new year than to watch a Marx Brothers marathon. And that is what TCM presented this New Year’s Eve. Among those I sat through or glimpsed were Animal Crackers, Monkey Business, Horse Feathers, Duck Soup and A Night at the Oper, all from the early 30’s.

Marx Brothers films are like musicals; you can look at them repeatedly and never get tired. Correction: They are musicals. They all include music and dance performances. In Monkey Business, Groucho dances with the hoodlum’s wife. He’s clowning, but he’s really dancing too. They dance on the floor, then dance on the bed, as if it were another dance platform, then dance on the floor again. I think of Astaire’s sofa-stunt choreography--dancing onto and capsizing the sofa--during a dance years later. Groucho’s is like a rough sketch for later, more polished performances. Harpo is a musician, a wonderful, under-appreciated harpist. But the non-stop jokes are timed in a way not unlike musical performances.

There is inspiration in these films too. In Monkey Business, the villain, tall, mean, dangerous, is on the verge of bumping off Groucho, But Groucho shows that you don’t have to respond according to program. He continues being a wiseass even as death hovers over him, and this unlikely behavior actually saves him!

2010-12-29T20:16:00.000-08:00

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

2010-12-24T22:04:00.001-08:00

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

2010-12-22T21:50:00.000-08:00

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?

2010-12-16T21:14:00.000-08:00

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.

2010-12-11T21:48:00.000-08:00

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!

2010-12-07T21:31:00.000-08:00

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

2010-12-05T09:49:00.001-08:00

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

2010-12-05T09:45:00.001-08:00

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

2010-11-29T20:36:00.000-08:00

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?

2010-11-27T13:50:00.000-08:00

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?

2010-11-26T18:17:00.000-08:00

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

2010-11-24T09:33:00.000-08:00

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

2010-11-21T15:13:00.000-08:00

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)

2010-11-15T18:19:00.000-08:00

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

2010-11-11T22:26:00.000-08:00

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.

2010-11-08T19:00:00.000-08:00

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

2010-11-03T01:39:00.000-07:00

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

2010-10-25T12:01:00.000-07:00

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

2010-10-22T22:00:00.000-07:00

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

2010-10-19T19:18:00.000-07:00

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

2010-10-12T17:11:00.000-07:00

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

2010-10-06T00:36:00.000-07:00

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

2010-10-06T00:34:00.000-07:00

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

2010-10-06T00:30:00.000-07:00

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

2010-08-17T22:14:00.000-07:00

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

2010-08-17T22:09:00.000-07:00

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

2010-07-28T19:19:00.000-07:00

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

2010-07-26T15:46:00.000-07:00

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

2010-07-19T14:53:00.000-07:00

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

2010-07-19T14:47:00.000-07:00

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

2010-07-13T12:54:00.000-07:00

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

2010-07-06T03:25:00.000-07:00

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

2010-07-06T03:23:00.001-07:00

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.

2010-05-27T22:01:00.000-07:00

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

2010-05-15T10:37:00.000-07:00

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

2010-05-02T12:25:00.000-07:00

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?

2010-04-28T11:27:00.000-07:00

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

2010-04-24T15:38:00.000-07:00

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

Innovation

2010-04-01T17:53:00.000-07:00

Arianna Huffington calls for US innovation http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arianna-huffington/the-imperative-need-for-a_b_519100.html which focuses on the areas of broadband access, green economy and immigration reform. She should have included a larger context to fit them into. For now, I will name that larger context The Global View.

THE GLOBAL VIEW

1) The planet is a seamless orb which does not respect geopolitical boundaries. Emissions generated in the developed world trap the sun's heat inside Earth's atmosphere and warms the entire planet. Dust storms at one end of the globe transmit dust clouds to the other. Ice melts at the poles and sea levels rise thousands of miles away.

2) The seamlessness of Earth's climate is now mirrored by a globalized economy and resulting global interrelationships and interdependencies.

3) Although being challenged from the East, the US is still far and away the dominant world power. It therefore has the responsibility to lead the process of governance that responds to the environmental and socioeconomic interconnectedness of the globe.

The US needs the same kind of make-over that, say, Haiti needs. For instance, we don't have a remotely adequate disaster planning in this country.

Haiti is a good metaphor for the state of the world, which is grossly overcrowded, badly planned, and ill-prepared for disaster. Nowhere is exempt, and even the countries that are better off cannot isolate themselves from disasters in others. The entire world needs an equitable makeover, with the more fortunate pitching in to help the have nots. (It works the other way too.) We need one big push to make over the world toward a minimally improved state of stability and wellbeing, and it needs to be done everywhere and all together.

LOW-END INNOVATION

Innovation doesn't only relate to technology and high-end business. Innovation can apply just as well to the poor and unskilled. Green jobs don't only refer to solar panels and windmills (important though they are). Green also means land uses that foster sustainable lifestyles.

A NETWORK OF TRAILS

One aspect of infrastructure consistent with rethinking America is a network of trails, recommended under the Reagan administration, that ties the country together and encourages pedestrian, bike and animal circulation. (It would be similar in scope to the intercontinental highway system, which was NOT green.) This would almost certainly require Mexican labor, but it would have so many ancillary aspects not strictly tied to labor as to be a bonanza for US jobs as well. The trails network could in part be paired with a network of diversionary canals to lessen the impact of flooding from major rivers throughout the nation. Trees could also be planted along these routes.

This program is consistent with a number off systemically related aspects and affects of governance: economic revitalization, recreation , tourism, animal welfare, national security, disaster planning, environmental improvements, abolishing the war on drugs, legalizing marijuana, reallocation of money from the war on drugs, increasing state coffers through taxes from legal marijuana sales, a Mexican guest-worker program, easing the illegal immigration crisis, etc.

Such a program would go a long way toward making over America, and would provide a good example of the kind of efforts needed everywhere else in the world.

Health Care Suggestions

2010-02-06T12:00:00.000-08:00

"Today's Democratic dilemma with health care reform transcends partisanship: we really need to constrain health care spending lest we bankrupt the country. Expanding coverage without curbing costs and changing the incentive structure of our inflationary, fee-for-service model is a recipe for fiscal irresponsibility that we cannot afford. The Massachusetts senatorial election makes it evident that the electorate has come to this conclusion. The Democrats need a way out of this mess; so does the country."

Charles Kolb (a Republican), President, Committee for Economic DevelopmentPosted: February 4th on Huffingtin Post.

I recently spoke with a Doctor of Oriental Medicine, whose practice includes alternative medicines like acupuncture. She made it clear that our health care system was skewed toward fattening the coffers of the insurance companies. I brought up my idea of drastically changing the paradigm of health care delivery--mobile units replacing fixed, expensive buildings and resultant overhead costs--and she said there were already such services, but extremely limited in distribution obviously. She further mentioned the 1914 outlawing of homeopathic medicine, even though, ironically, homeopathic medicine saved more lives during the contemporary flu pandemic than any other form of remedy. She convinced me, too, (aided by commonsense assessments based on my own medical circumstances and following the news) that we need single payer, universal health care insurance in America, where doctors are paid a salary.

I therefore conclude that we need a truly bi-partisan way to get universal health care that includes homeopathic medicine as the major driver of preventive care.

OVERVIEW

I don't like confrontation...like that between the two aisles of the US Congress. So I propose that the health care debate, which epitomizes this problem, be tackled sideways.
Democrats are perceived as pushing a large government program which a) unacceptably increases the size of government, and b) costs too much.

* There's a need to clarify whether objection is to perceived government inability to run a large program without stultifying bureaucracy and incompetence, or to something else. Would objection be levied against such government programs as Medicare, Social Security, public schools, or the Postal Service? What if, like the Postal Service, the government delegates the running of health care to a private entity?

* The other problem, and one that I wish to focus on, is the matter of cost. I am convinced that, if we think outside the box, health care can be provided to all at a surprisingly low cost. Here are some outside-the-box thoughts on the subject:

SUGGESTIONS

1) Discard Aesthetics: (I oversimplify for emphasis.) I mean that health care should be administered with only the patients' health in mind, not expensive buildings and infrastructure that don't, by themselves, serve the need of health care.

2) Mobile Health Care: Provide a network of mobile health care units that serve the entire nation. In the construction of the units, discard any expense that has no direct bearing on the dispensing of care. For instance, consider converting old vehicles, like discarded school buses for this purpose. Try to maximize the number of patents that can be treated simultaneously.

3) Focus on Preventive Care: Traditional Western medicine, as practiced today, provides two major services: a) diagnostics, and b) catastrophic-trauma care. It does NOT provide preventive health care. Diagnostics that never address care is a waste of money.

4) Health Care is relevant to International Relations: The US needs an influx of high-level-skill workers. Some of these can bring expertise in alternative medicine. China, for example (which has the potential to be either more of a competitor or more of a collaborator with the US) could be a source of modestly paid but very competent practitioners and educators in Oriental Medicine.

5) Keep Costs Radically Low: Keep universal health care costs within the limits of what some Republicans are willing to spend on it. If costs can be kept sufficiently low, the Republican objections around cost will be ameliorated.

6) Computerization: Digitize patients' records, so that information can be streamlined and appropriately and efficiently shared among health practitioners.

7) Enable Appropriate Programs: Fund groups that are already working in a manner consistent with the above. Help these existing groups take on a major bulk of the new program.

8) Transition funds away from the war on drugs (which is counterproductive) by decriminalizing some drugs while, simultaneously upgrading the level and availability of treatment for drug addiction. The goal should be to decriminalize some narcotics while ensuring that the current rate of addiction and narcotics-related health problems decreases. Funds saved from the war on drugs will go toward the health care program.

A Message to the President

2010-02-05T13:53:00.000-08:00

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-brenner/obamas-tribulation-home-a_b_450926.html

I loved this article, although I think it may bear re-reading and reinterpreting in somewhat simpler prose.

This is the crux of the matter. What we do domestically is morphed with that abroad. I'm grateful to Michael Brenner for explaining it so ably...even though it needs to be repeatedly, and even more simply, explained.

And Haiti's earthquake was a fault line in America's dealing with itself and the world. Given our immense historical involvement with Haiti, and our wealth and proximity, our response was top heavy, mindless and lumbering in the extreme. This, despite the amazing generosity of our people -- a case of American duality, I guess.

The need to re-think Haiti parallels the need to do likewise for America. Political gridlock and polarization, coupled with a failing economy--among the list of ills Michael Brenner describes--have rendered our nation on the brink of catastrophe. Where health care is concerned, for example, we have become a third world nation.

Haiti needs to be tent-city for a while as it transitions, first, into semi-permanent and then permanent living mode. America needs a public option health plan that is administered in tents and mobile units. We need to get down to reality, putting aside false pride and ostentation. Great schools can exist in tents or old school busses or just about anything that is weather appropriate.

When we get down to reality here, we'll have the money to keep our people healthy, and by the same token, able to lay the groundwork for a global shoring up, creating the broad, sketchy outlines for a re-thought planet. Tent cities, basic food and medical supplies are widely needed worldwide. Social and physical infrastructure to offset the increasing damage of global warming must be put in place. Once the "sketch" is made, we need to get the rich countries (very much including China) to help us fill in the details.

The key is to use cheap, "appropriate" means based on sophisticated systems (global) thinking--proper thinking is the main priority--to deal with America and the world. We must deal with America well in order to deal appropriately with the world. We must deal with the world well in order to deal appropriately with America.

I concede that President Obama doesn't get it, can hardly be expected to, given the tiger he's riding. We, the people, need a coherent alternative to the Tea Party to see that he gets this message. The Tea Party folks are organized. Where are the rest of us?

Up from Copenhagen

2010-01-05T19:53:00.000-08:00

Below is my comment to Yale Environment 360 e-magazine. It relates to the article: "Copenhagen: Things Fall Apart and an Uncertain Future Looms," written by Bill McKibben.

His The End of Nature, published in 1989, is regarded as the first book for a general audience on global warming. He is a founder of 350.org, a campaign to spread the goal of reducing atmospheric carbon dioxide to 350 parts per million worldwide. He and 360.org (leading up to the Copenhagen conference) campaigned to spur global compliance for reducing global warming emissions.

MY COMMENT RE: "Copenhagen: Things Fall Apart and an Uncertain Future Looms,"

It's not that I doubt the efficacy of technology fixes for climate-warming emissions, or of countries getting together to make hard-headed restrictions to those emissions. Quite possibly, with more stringent negotiations prior to the Copenhagen climate conference, a better outcome would have resulted. And while Bill Mckibben worked tirelessly to raise awareness of the parts per million of CO2 in the air that the world can live with, something essential is missing. There is more emphasis on the what than on the all-important how.

The model for global agreement is unnecessarily abstract. And I think we would benefit by changing that:

1) Try giving them (future climate-change delegates) something they can feel...or at least that they can SEE!

I would suggest that 350.org partner with Google Earth, NASA and others to bring compelling, understandable, strategic global mapping to everyone with a computer, to every student everywhere in the world. Future climate delegates should DO something, based on the information gleaned from this visual program. The program should look at various nations' and regions' CO2 emissions, climate fitness (see Gaia Vince), wildlife protection, energy resources, conservation strategies, etc.

2) Think outside the box.

Nothing should be simpler to comprehend than that the "surface" of the planet--land, atmosphere and water--forms a seamless whole. When countries get together to resolve the climate crisis, they should be focused less on what happens within their own geopolitical boundaries, and more on relationships between such units of governance and neighboring ones. In other words, political leaders should be required to think outside the box.

3) Always keep the whole in mind.

Climate change cannot be affected without an inclusive, cooperative strategy that is seamless, not only geographically, but also socially and economically. No issue of governance can be excluded, and no geopolitical boundary can be allowed to obscure the seamless flow of issues and ecologies. So can large global planning projects, such as the G8 and G20 summits be brought more in line with climate planning?

4) Focus on the edges.

In order to arrive at a paradigm of seamless-earth thinking, border ecologies should be emphasized. The land must come first. And since people depend upon the health of the land for sustenance, the health of the land is also a human-rights issue. For instance, how does a border fence between the USA and Mexico affect the border ecology between these countries? What are the human rights implications for the state of the Rio Grande as it leaves the US and enters Mexico? How does the war on drugs affect the above?

5) Start with a rough preliminary assessment.

What I think should come first is a very rough assessment of the state of places--geopolitical units--around the world. Google Earth and NASA earth mapping could help provide a baseline of which areas produce what emissions, which countries are suffering the most from warming, etc. Then let's see, in the future, what social, economic and environmental pushes and pulls between places might effect a better outcome.

6) Do charettes.

Future conference delegates should not have to sit and listen to dry speeches. Instead, they should be looking at pictures of places. They should split up into regional groups and do charettes. (A charette is a collaborative session in which a group of designers drafts a solution to a design problem.) If, for instance, a group that included Mexican and US delegates sat down and designed their hoped for outcomes vis a vis the Rio Grande, which both nations share, a dry Rio Grande reaching Mexico would not be acceptable to either party.

7) Bring in the heads of state (preferably, after first getting their buy-in to begin the planning process).

These delegates would arrive at proposals to enable more health to the river (above), and these proposals would be taken to the respective heads of state. Later climate conferences would determine how effectively governments have been implementing similar strategies proposed by their delegates.

8) Accentuate the positive, eliminate the negative...

There is a plethora of dysfunctional clutter in the way of doing the right things, however. Since the US Congress is stymied, we should not pin all our hopes on what they can deliver. Let's focus instead on worldwide success stories where appropriate actions are independently being taken. There are many US states and cities that are already legislating lower CO2 emissions and cooperating toward regional sustainability, not to mention the achievements of other countries such as Denmark. Let's highlight these achievements and encourage more. Let us do this within the context of a seamless-earth strategy that is concrete rather than abstract.

9) To the future of 350.org

350.org is a fine organization for coordinating such a program worldwide. It is already doing something similar, but it must continue on a more ambitious scale, acting more as an organizational catalyst. While world governments must be pressured to act responsibly, we should be taking separate action to make irresistible their buy-in to global coordination. We should all be looking at the same picture(s). The big picture. What any country does, climate-wise, within its boundaries is everybody's business. By all visually perusing nations' climate issues, we can arrive at a measure of transparency that helps us to keep governments accountable.

The Pojoaque River Art Tour

2009-09-08T19:22:00.000-07:00

SCRATCHING THE SURFACE OF POJOAQUE; Reflections on the Pojoaque River Art Tour.

By Trevor Burrowes, July, 2008

“Explore our loca lartists' nests in the Pojoaque River Valley, an eclectic and beautiful old farming community off Hwy 84/285 and Los Alamos Highway 502 north of Santa Fe, with a side flight into Pojoaque Pueblo and Nambé. Both native and introduced species enjoy its proximity to Santa Fe as well as the beauty and solitude it affords”. (Excerted from the Pojoaque River Art Tour web site.)

Pojoaque promises to be the next big thing on Santa Fe’s rural horizon. Although a land-conservation ethic pervades among its artists, as is the case elsewhere in New Mexico, the difference in Pojoaque is how this land ethic butts up against the monumental urbanizing thrusts within the Pojoaque Pueblo territory. Casinos, hotels, restaurants, some as part of the Southwest’s largest resort (Buffalo Thunder), are springing up without necessarily displacing the traditional produce-growing and animal husbandry here.

According to the New Mexico Tourism Department, “Buffalo Thunder is comprised of a Las Vegas-styled casino, state of the art conference center with 66,000 square feet of meeting, pre-function and event space, luxury themed spa, outdoor tennis facility, and Hale Irwin designed golf at Towa Golf Course (already open), Homewood Suites by Hilton (already open) and the Hilton. The Resort will feature seven fabulous restaurants, bars and lounges, including the Red Sage Restaurant by renowned Chef Mark Miller.”

But there’s a lot more to Pojoaque than this. Centered on the artist and farming communities, it is the world of the Pojoaque River Art Tour.

The quality of the rural landscape has attracted prominent residents – poet Arthur Sze and writer Sheri Tepper, for instance. Mrs. Tepper is a famous science-fiction writer, but Rancho Jacona, the property and horticultural oasis that she and husband Gene created and manage, also is renowned. I later found the Teppers to be gracious hosts, and Rancho Jacona full of stories. It was once the home of the McCulluch Chainsaw Co. and, earlier, part of the Roybal property that extended from Jacona to Agua Fria in Santa Fe. Its exotic farm animals -- goats, sheep, rabbits, peacocks -- fertilize the luxuriant plantings with “cool” compost. And I wish I had asked the significance of giving animal names to the “Twelve Rental Vacation Houses…set in a 35 acre oasis of gardens, trees and acequias.“

My introduction to Pojoaque artists (referred to in the tour guide as “nesting species”) came through Marianne Hornbuckle She is the soul of the Pojoaque River Art Tour, which she co-founded fifteen years ago. A tall, plainspoken Texas native, she and husband Bill Preston have lived for 25 years on what is now County Road 84.

Marianne’s own home was my first visit, and there I met husband Bill, a retiring man and sumi-e painter. He wore a T-shirt decorated with praying manti images that he had painted. He paints cactus flowers, one of which I saw and loved. It was dashing and assured. Marianne sculpts lovely little clay nudes, but her abstract paintings are of precise rectangular forms that contain and are surrounded by painterly atmospherics. Art is her job, and they both display work in Artistas de Santa Fe, a cooperative gallery in Santa Fe.

The front wall of their property has an Aztec feeling – adobe brick walls with rectangular cut-out openings. The front yard slopes gently down, past a cattle grate and massive, graceful Honey Locus and Rosa Rugosa trees, to their house. All around the house is their no-fuss, low-maintenance garden, despite which, the whitest ever iceberg roses bloom near a fence. Behind the back yard, an old apple orchard was cleared and is, it seems, a de facto part of their property. The house is 125 years old, and, they keep it going through ingenuity and an ethic of radical conservation that goes something like this: if it ain’t broke, don’t mess with it.

Marianne also facilitated my meeting with tour artist T.C. Williams, an exuberant ex-Marine who is extremely knowledgeable about the international art world. He refers to some of his large canvasses as “political cartoon murals.” Got Water appropriates a popular milk advertisement. Under the large letters of the title is a skeleton wearing a dunce cap and holding out an empty tumbler. Beside that figure is a giggling cactus. Large red and white drops of liquid rain down without having destination or utility. An historic landmark on the property is the quaint “Old Roybal Shop.”

THE OTHER POJOAQUE

While the art tour rightly celebrates its rural heritage, there is as yet no effort to weave together the urban aspects of the Pojoaque Pueblo developments with the tranquil heritage of the “traditional communities.” Many people I have talked with seem nonplussed. These developments fall outside their purview, rendering them helpless. But there may be potential for dialog between the two communities.

Pojoaque Pueblo (Background)

Pojoaque Pueblo is one of six Tewa-speaking villages in the northern Rio Grande Valley whose inhabitants date back to A.D. 900. It has continually been a nucleus of Indian settlement and a Pueblo center. Disruptions from Spanish, Mexican and other incursions, as well as from disease, caused repeated diminution and dispersal of the population. After a period of disorganization between 1912 and 1932, the Commissioner of Indian Affairs issued a call, based on the Indian Reorganization Act, for all tribal members to return to the reservation. In 1936, the Pueblo became a federally recognized Indian reservation encompassing 11,603 acres. Its comparatively small population is growing rapidly.

The Pojoaque Business District

The Pojoaque Business District is virtually a town which the main north/south corridor (Highway 84/285) runs through. I was struck with disbelief at what first appeared as an insensitive spread of pavement at odds with the rural beauty around it. This Pueblo-territory development which contains Cities of Gold Casino and Hotel and a sizable number of other businesses – a supermarket, banks, a police station, restaurants, two clinics, for instance -- bears no trace of Native American culture or of the region’s predominantly rural character.

Well, there is one conspicuous exception.

With landscape elements such as a rounded adobe tower, gigantic rock slabs, sculptures and other culture-specific iconography, the Poeh Cultural Center and Museum. is as exaggeratedly “cultural” as the rest of the business district is the opposite. The museum exhibits, which are quite elaborate, err on the side of caricature. But driving by the Pojoaque Business District one night, I saw the connection between the museum/center and its more drab surroundings. It struck me that the model for the nightscape of the business district might be Las Vegas, Nevada. Thus the plethora of night lights to produce a not-quite-successful glitziness. And so, caricature, Disney-fication, seems to lie at the heart of the park landscape, especially in the quality of the Poeh Museum.

The Business District could use a landscaping overhaul. Roads are too wide, traffic flow confusing, trees insufficient, asphalt paving excessive. Existing buildings would look better in a greener setting, and small renovations here and there might help. Rounding off the top edge of the supermarket would soften and calm it. And, among many doable interventions that might improve the area, there could be planted islands between narrower roadbeds, and roundabouts instead of stop-signs. Night lights could be shielded. Much asphalt could be removed to allow for the planting of drought-tolerant trees and shrubs and recharging of the aquifer. And these interventions are all aspects of the rural environment that encompasses the art tour. Maybe such improvements to the business district, softening its rough edges, could be the focus of a future art tour!

The Wellness Center

Revenue from tribal developments have also created a state-of-the-art community hub known as “The Wellness Center.” Located on a hill that seems impossibly out of the way, it’s like many good things in this area, somewhat shrouded in secrecy. This hub contains a public library, a Senior Center, an athletic track and sports field, a trail uniting the center with the Business District, a Boys and Girl’s (B&G) Club – one regularly sees about 20 brand new vans emblazoned with B&G Club insignia – and a pool.

The generosity of the tribal community, providing needed services for the general public, is at odds with the planning impasse between it and the non-Pueblo community. There are issues over water rights, mining and rural character that have yet to be resolved.

Travel

Highways often overlay two-lane roads, which in turn overlay old horse and foot trails. This might explain why Pojoaque has always been a Pueblo center, since the main north/south artery runs through it. This spine of Pojoaque Valley is the well-maintained, uncrowded Highway 84/285. Bordered to the south by Tesuque, Pojoaque Valley comprises the traditional communities and Pueblos of Cuyamungue, Pojoaque, Jacona, Jaconita, Nambe and El Rancho that took root by Nambe and Pojoaque river banks.

Like many local residents, I travel frequently to Santa Fe to work or to shop, and so this very lovely route has become part of my broader community.

Heading north from Santa Fe, hilly, shrub-dotted desert lands are interspersed with craggy, earthy cliffs. These are scenes out of a Western. The Sangre de Cristo and Jemez mountains, to the east and west respectively, form distant backdrops to this scenery. Tesuque, to the immediate north of Santa Fe, provides a five-acre-lot residential haven from California-style sprawl. Tesuque, through its exemplary land stewardship, has buffered Pojoaque Valley to its north. Its many expensive houses tend to blend into the undulating, muscular terrain. Tribally owned lands to the north of residential Tesuque and beyond as yet enjoy quasi protection against over-development.

Before leaving Tesuque you pass Camel Rock casino, fairly downplayed as casinos go. Then, boom, you get to Buffalo Thunder, located in the Cuyamunge area. This might be the largest resort of its kind in the nation. Applying my rose-colored lenses, I see it less as a set of gigantic buildings and more as artificial hills and cliffs. The adobe-colored Hilton Hotel pitted with dark arched openings, almost reminds me of Bandelier. I may be alone in this fantasy, however.

Pojoaque Business District comes soon after. It is the hub of the traditional communities of Jacona, Pojoaque, Jaconita, El Rancho and Nambe. East of 84/285, along with the traditional community of Lower Nambe, are tribal lands of the Pojoaque and Nambe Pueblos. The art tour, however, is an affair of the Pojoaque river course, which flows from east to west. and incorporates all the above communities except Nambe.

Pojoaque is about equidistant from Santa Fe and Los Alamos with nearby Bandelier National Monument. The High Road to Taos is one of the classic scenic drives in northern New Mexico and takes off from Pojoaque via SR 503 on the north side of town.
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Conclusion

The tour is the backbone of community identity and empowerment. There may not be another place in New Mexico with more potential to harmonize powerful urban, rural and wilderness landscape qualities that are immediately juxtaposed, and interconnected. One tool for this harmonization of landscape styles is the Pojoaque Community Strategic Plan that falls under the rubric of Santa Fe County Planning Department.

From the Tour website :
“The 16th annual POJOAQUE RIVER ART TOUR takes place On September 19 and 20,2009 Saturday and Sunday, from 10 am to 5 pm, eighteen studios located 16 miles north of Santa Fe in the pueblo of Pojoaque and along County Road 84 (parallels Hwy 502 to Los Alamos) through the traditional communities of Pojoaque, Jacona, Jaconita, and El Rancho.”

How To Do Everything

2009-03-03T19:10:00.000-08:00

One block at a time; one neighborhood at a time; one city, town or village at a time; one county, parish or district at a time; one nation at a time; one planet, everyone rowing in the same direction.

© Trevor Burrowes

1) Being the de facto head of world governance, the US president is concerned with the entire scope of major world issues.

2) There is a way to wrap world governance issues up into a ball and address them systematically.

3) The world governance ball of issues is the physical planet.

4) Our cultural traditions have taught us to see the world as fractured little fiefdoms, and not as a unified, physical whole. This needs to change.

5) Humanity must evolve to take in the whole planet as a single sphere of governance.

6) Climate change is the best catalyst for this evolution, since it is no respecter of geopolitical boundaries. More than any other issue, climate change affects all living beings in the world.

7) The discipline of planning (as in urban planning and city General Plans, which involve comprehensive land-based planning) is one through which the president can wrap his mind around the globe’s major challenges and opportunities.

8) Every square inch of the planet falls firmly or loosely under some planning jurisdiction or other. In the US, planning jurisdictions can be cities, counties, states, federal government, tribal governments, and overlapping jurisdictions like national parks, rivers, oceans, bioregions, metropolitan districts, etc..

9) Plans are also supposed to be internally consistent, so that one element of a plan, like open space, can be consistent with another, like community health, if open space encourages people to walk more.

10) We need an overarching policy from the federal government requiring that a) various plans lead to common sustainability goals, and that b) all plans within the nation be consistent with each other. Barring this, individual plans are largely ineffective in fostering big picture change.

11) Stimulus funding should apply to projects that are consistent with sustainable planning (economically and environmentally) in any given area.

12) Foreign aid and intervention should help direct international planning toward internal consistency and sustainability on a global level.

13) A survey of plans nationwide and globally is needed. The aim should be to assess the effects, benefits, deficits, gaps, and possibilities for international planning for global sustainability.

IMAGES:

Image 1: The world is a work of art in progress. It is like painting a picture on a grid. Each square of the grid represents a geopolitical area. For each geopolitical area there is a plan. But the image being “painted” comprises all the squares and all the plans, which must coordinate with each other to convincingly render the overall image.

Image 2: While the overall image of the picture is brushed in broadly, there are various other kinds of intervention such as details within squares, or glosses that cover many squares. It is the same with planning. The fine-detail level of a plan could be as small as a street block in scale, while an internationally agreed-to “gloss” could extend planet-wide.