Field Notes from a random walk through life

The Napa Valley as a Manufactured Landscape

There is something about manufactured landscapes that I find disturbingly compelling. They are usually striking, often beautiful, and - more often than not - toxic. Almost no matter what was there before; it was healthier before the transformation. Two of my favorite photographers often shoot manufactured landscapes. Edward Burtynsky often - actually, usually - shoots beautiful photographs of awful places:

Richard Misrach rarely shoots a pure landscape, usually his landscapes show the impact left by man. 

 

One of his latest series is (are?) huge - like 60" x 60" - pictures of people on a beach. 

In the mid-60's, there was a movie, Blowup, about a photographer in which the opening scene was all about admiring gorgeous pictures of homeless men. The point was to show the shallowness of the photographer; but it is what photographers try to do - take gorgeous or striking pictures. Pictures with with impact.

The Napa Valley is softer and less toxic than anything either of the masters might photograph; but it's wall to wall manufactured landscape qualifies as striking for me.

The valley floor is vineyards, as far as the eye can see. Punctuated by windmills operating in reverse - using power to move the wind. Protecting the vines from frost just like in the orange groves 50 years ago in Southern California.

 

 

In the background are the mountains (or hills if you prefer) kept at bay. Nature behind the trip wire.

Silverado Golf Course

I am not a big fan of golf and specifically Golf Courses. Golf courses are basically a mono-culture of grass maintained with a lot of chemicals and water. They are a very artificial environment that only looks natural - especially in California which is naturally a dry landscape. There are times, though, - late evening, say - when they can be magical.

Happy Thanksgiving

A State Dinner

I am blown away that today Barrack Obama and Michele Obama, or as it said on the official program - The President & First Lady Michelle Obama - had a State Dinner. It brings tears to my eyes.

Years ago I heard a speech given by Pat Schroeder, then the US Representative from Colorado's First District. In the speech, she talked about taking some sort of government trip to India aboard an Air Force plane. The Air Force, sort as a RF according to Schroeder, sent along a ground crew composed of women and racial minorities. Schroeder talked about how the diversified and hard working (no George Bushes at Yale there) crew impressed the Indians.

The Indians saw the diversity as a strength that only the United States had. It was what, in their eyes (and mine), made this a great country. And now, years later, the Obama Administration's first State Dinner is to honor India and it was a showcase of diversity. Starting at the top!

And, Wow!, did the Obama look like they were having fun.

Dr. Manmohan Singh, the Prime Minister of India and his wife Ms. Gursharan Kaur were there, of course; along with expected guests such as Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Deepak Chopra and his wife Rita Chopra, and Secretary of the Department of Energy Steven Chu and his wife.  

 

Steven Spielberg should be expected, I guess, but Alfre Woodard (I've been in love with Alfre ever since Passion Fish) with a black guy named Blair Underwood is a surprise, and I had to Google Jhumpa Lahiri and Alberto Vourvoulias to find out she is an American Indian author and he, her husband, is the editor of the nation's oldest Spanish language newspaper. Of course, Colin Powell and his wife, Alma Powell were there.

And Katie Couric and Obama's sister, Dr. Maya Soetoro-Ng with her husband, and Mrs. Marian Robinson. Think about that, a white woman who probably helped Obama get elected just by doing her job; a half Indonesian woman teacher; and a black woman from Chicago's south-side. These were people who were invisible when I was growing up.

Maybe the important things aren't the bogged down Healthcare Bill, or Afghanistan, but the fact that Obama is changing what it means to be an American. No wonder the birthers are going nuts.

          

California reigns

OK...rains. California is one of those unusual places (there are others - the Succulent Karoo - isn't that a great name - in South Africa , the Mediterranean Sahara, parts of the Chilean coast to name some I know ) that have winter rains. That means winter is the growing season and summer is the dormant season. Winter is when the hills are green and summer is when they are straw brown or, as we like to say, golden. Having lived here my whole life, it seems normal, but I have been assured that it isn't.

Anyway, we had a huge (5") rain a couple of weeks ago and a light rain yesterday, so, in the grasslands around the Bay Area, all the natives are starting to come back to life. The first thing to show is the grass that is starting to peak through last year's dead grass.


 

I love the summers in California but late in the fall, when and if the rains come, the hills have a vibrancy and lushness - it is a time of coming back to life.

Clothes Don't Make the Woman ~ The Woman Makes the Clothes Department

(I am sure that the following applies to men as well as women; but that is not where my attention naturally focuses, so I will keep this post about the women.)

Where ever I have been, there are striking, spectacular women. And in every case I can think of, the women knew it. It is not that these women are more beautiful - they aren't - but they are more attractive. In some strange way, they are more attractive because they are willing to be more attractive. Willing to be seen. Willing to strut. In some places, like Rome, all the women seem to fall into that category, in other places, like China, most don't.

It is not what they wear, it is how they wear it. I remember watching a beautiful Norteamericana, in Guatemala, try on a huipil that was worn by a striking, young Guatemalan woman. The Norteamericana looked ridiculous but I know why she wanted to try on the huipil - it looked so great on the Guatemalan.

 
But knowing all of this did not prepare me for the photo essay by Hans Silvester of the Surma and Mursi people in Ethiopia. Using mud, leaves, seed pods, and other natural adornments, the women look like they should be on a catwalk.

 

The slide show, below, shows both men and women (or, boys and girls) and it is hard to always tell which is which. The show starts slow but by image 14, or so, I was hooked.  As Joe Bob used to say "Check it out."Tribus de L'OMO / Hans Silvester

The Assassination of Kennedy, Mad Men, Embers, and a Gratuitous Picture of Spike

We watched the last episode of Mad Men the other night and re-watched it last night. I was in my early 20's, in the early 60's, the setting for the program and, like all my contemporaries, I remember where I was when I first heard President Kennedy was shot. But, unlike most of them, I missed the drama and shock as it unfolded on TV. I was in the Army at Fort Bliss, without a TV, and we soon spent most of our time packing our HAWK surface to air missile system - thinking we were going to be sent to Cuba to provide air defense for the 101st Airborne.

Seeing the assassination for the first time on TV was powerful and moving and, yes, shocking. Like so much of Mad Men, it was both very familiar and a different world. It seems very real and very alien. It was a time when the country was poorer than today - much poorer - not poorer as in destitute but poorer as in less opulent. We have slowly but steadily become astoundingly  rich since the 1960's and it is easy to forget what it was like to live in a world without air-conditioning, or cell-phones, or color TV.

Mad Men seems to pride itself on being visually accurate. In the program, the suitcases are smaller - except for the very rich, people had less to put in them. In the 60's, even fires were smaller. When camping, we were told to build an Indian fire: a small fire that we would sit close to for warmth. At home, the holiday fire would burn down to embers and we would sit around it in sweaters. Now we keep throwing more wood on so that even the cat doesn't have to get close.

       

The Farmers Market

Farmers Markets have to be one of the best retro ideas I can think of.  

Because I am California centric (Californiaophile?), I tend to think of Farmers Markets as being particularly California. Of course they aren't and, I suspect, some of the best Farmer's Markets are in places like the Mississippi Delta. But here, at least, they came out of the whole healthy food revolution movement that started in Berkeley. In many ways, the Berkeley free-speech, hippie, 60's revolution has evolved or devolved (depending on your point of view) into much better food. Watching Mario Savio and other participants in the Free Speech Movement at Cal in the fall of 1964; nobody would have predicted that it would, through a long and circuitous path, lead to heritage tomatoes.

Or, during the early 60's while watching supermarkets drive the corner grocery out of business, nobody thought the corner grocery would come back; let alone, that the farmers would come back into town with their trucks of produce (in the olden days, they were called Truck Farmers). And most surprising of all, that this return to old values would be driven by liberals.

And, in some strange way, the Farmers Market in Menlo Park - where the farmers are  expanding their repertoire - is starting to morph into the City Market in Yangshuo, China.

But still a far cry from a Farmers Market in India

Science lesson for the day: a water drop

A break from the carnage at Ft. Hood

When I heard about the shootings at Ft. Hood, my first reaction was "I hope the shooter is not a Muslim". This is sort of a different take on my usual first reaction when I read about some jerk running a Ponzi Scheme, scamming people on Wall Street - "I hope he is not Jewish."

In most cases, the shooter or con-man lives down to the expectations of the bigots among us (including me). I am afraid that, in the popular imagination, Timothy McVeigh was a lone wolf mass murderer but Nidal Malik Hasan was a Muslim...on a mission. But, just like most Christians aren't lone wolf assholes neither are most Muslims. And, just like there are lots of very funny Christians, there are lots of very funny Muslims. Here is one of them: Kumail Nanjiani, a very funny Pakistani.