A fool's errand

Today is a holiday; it's also pouring down rain outside. Another one of L.A.'s hyped "storm of the year" - only this time, the predictions proved true. The rain started at 2 a.m. and has been pouring down hard since I woke at 6.

Six? Six Aye Em? Yes - I had a doctor's appointment this morning at 8:30. So even though it was a holiday, I got up, allowing myself time for weather-related traffic delays, and ventured out into the storm.

The ocean during a storm is always a dramatic sight. The waves were big and foaming, murky brown with stirred up sand from the beach.

I got to the medical center ten minutes before my appointment - and the office was closed. I called the number and got a voice mail message saying they were closed for the holiday. Well. Did I enter it wrong in my calendar? What a dummy I am.

Nothing to do but head home, back through the rain, back to a warm and cozy house. Put the coffee on and maybe bake some cookies.


I felt so sorry for this guy, walking on the shoulder in the rain. I hope he has a warm place to go to.

Gloves and handbag

Easter Sunday, 1957. My first purse. I'm not sure I get it.

Chocolate for Valentine's Day

A while ago I wrote about my quest to photograph a rare wildflower in the Santa Monica Mountains. I visited the location two weeks ago, and it appeared the flower was just on the verge of bloom. I had commitments that prevented me from visiting the flower again until today, and I worried I'd miss the bloom.

Today, luck was with me. They were in bloom. Please enjoy my photographs.

Since my last visit, we've had some torrential rains and unseasonable cold. Today I went up onto the Fire Road between rainstorms, it was chilly but brilliantly sunny, and huge cumulus clouds were sailing across the sky, fluffy white at their tops, but heavy with rain at their bottoms.

Although the trail wasn't too muddy - thank goodness - you could see gullies and runnels where water had streamed down the face of the mountain onto the path, coursing toward the large corrugated spillways draining below.


The flower I'm stalking is a rare, shy flowering bulb, a member of the lily family called Fritillaria biflora. It's common name is Chocolate Lily. It grows on the eastern side of Topanga Canyon, high off the Fire Road, in a v-shaped gully draining the face of a bulging formation of mauve-red sandstone of the Sespe formation.

There is a small grassy hill of sandy soil, a slide from an earlier year. Beyond this a sheltered place in the rocks supports moss and tiny ferns, low shrubs, delphiniums that will bloom later this spring, and some small succulents called Dudleya cymosa - also an interesting mountain wildflower. Among these plants you can see the leaves of the fritillaria coming up. Their appearance is very similar to the rosettes of the Dudleya, until you look closer. The Dudleyas leaves are thick and meaty, while the Chocolate Lily's leaves are thin and transluscent like lilies or erythroniums.

Here you can see a plant that is just starting to put up a stem with buds. Here in this sheltered place, the plants are in varying stages of maturity.


The ones that are nestled into the northern side of the rocky shelter are not as far along as the ones that are higher on the face of the cliff, exposed to the sunlight.


Chocolate Lilies are not showy flowers. The blooms are small, only about an inch in length. They are modest, nodding little bells of deep purply-brown, shot through with streaks of greeny-gold. They are so subtle a flower that you have to fine-tune your eyes to see them.

This one is up on the hill, nestled in the dead woody twigs of a shrub from last year. Two, maybe three blooms are carried on a single stem that rises up from the central cluster of leaves.

The only way I can get up close to them is to climb up the rocky face of the cliff. The sandstone is solid and rounded, punctuated by bands of rounded aggregate stones cemented into it long ago.

By using the shelf-like ridges shaped by ages of water trickling down this slope, I can climb up to where the fritillaries bloom. I tentatively hold onto the rounded stones sticking out of the rock, but I have to be careful. Some of them detach themselves at the slightest pressure, tumbling down. The solid rock face is also tricky - it looks like solid hard rock, but in some places it's merely molded purple sand that crumbles away when you place your weight on it.

I finally get up to a place where there are three plants above me and two plants below me. I brace myself, and then blindly shove the camera in among the twigs for as many shots as I can take. I can't see my viewfinder, but I just hope the autofocus is working as I snap away.

This is looking down onto the trail from where I'm clinging to the side of the hill. A couple of mountain-bikers rode by and stared at me.


Here I am crouching above the plant, reaching below me with the camera pointed up at its face. Isn't it a beautiful, shy little bloom?


Although it isn't showy, there is a nice variation within the Chocolate Lily's range of color. Some are deep mahogany-brown; even purple. Others are lighter and trend more toward green. The lighter streaks and veining is more pronounced in some flowers than in others.

Here the camera has captured the yellow pollen-laden stamens within.

Some plants, when the sun illuminates the petals, glow crimson red.

There's something special about finding a flower like this, growing in the wild. It was worth the trek, and the fact that I had to get down by sliding on the seat of my pants. Tomorrow, we are expecting a heavy rainstorm, and I'm sure the rocky slope around the fritillaries will be drenched with run-off. I hope the little plants weather it well.

Pink Saturday - Valentine macarons

Pink Saturday - Beverly, at the blog "How Sweet the Sound" hosts Pink Saturday. Valentine's Day is the perfect occasion to let the color pink inspire your creativity!

What kind of treats are you giving for Valentine's Day?

Macarons are a traditional French pastry, dating back to the 18th Century. Invented at Versailles by the Dallouya family of bakers, the delicate little cakes were served with jam to the royals. The sandwich version with ganache cream inside was invented in the 1880s by patisserie Laduree.

"Marie Antoinette" photo from the New York Times

The 2006 Sofia Coppola movie "Marie Antoinette" featured macarons and led to their current popularity. Indeed, one story has it that the movie's costumes were inspired by the colors of a box of Laduree macarons that Ms. Coppola gave the designer.


Macarons are made of meringue, or beaten egg whites and sugar, mixed with ground almonds, also called almond meal or almond flour. They are often tinted with delicate colors, and flavored with extracts or nutmeats. The filling can be buttercream frosting, jam, cream cheese or rich chocolate ganache.

If you're an adventurous cook, you can give them a try. This website gives a basic recipe, and helpfully provides links to other online recipes and helpful sites. Success for making the perfectly domed cake depends on the proper handling of the delicate meringue - so look forward to several tries! Perfect or not, they are so luscious you'll enjoy eating your experiments!

The Laduree pastry shop in Paris is said to sell fifteen thousand of them every day. If you can't jet over to Paris in time for Valentine's Day, you can get macarons at several bakeries in Los Angeles.


One of those is Jin Patisserie in Venice. Its proprietor, Kristy Choo, worked as a flight attendant for an international airline, which gave her the opportunity to sample sweets all around the world. She later attended the California Culinary Academy, worked at the Raffles Hotel in Singapore, and eventually opened her shop and cafe on Abbot Kinney Boulevard in Venice.


Here in a tiny shop and garden, serene and simply landscaped, you can sit at outdoor tables and sip tea. Pastries, cookies and tea-sandwiches are served. The macarons are available in traditional European-style flavors, such as vanilla, pistachio, rose and strawberry. For those with more adventurous tastes, there is a macaron with a filling of salt-caramel, and Asian-inpired varieties, such as tea, wasabi, and ume - a Japanese favorite made with sour plum.


There are delicate sponge cakes and mousse and other pastries available at the shop.


If you can't make it to Jin Patisserie in person, you can visit the website and order from the e-shop. There are also exquisitely crafted chocolates made with tea, chrysanthemum, lemongrass, black sesame, ginger, cinnamon, and other exotic flavors. Perfect for your very special Valentine, on this Pink Saturday.

Just a pretty picture

Something soothing. This is Old Tampa Bay, looking west towards Clearwater. This is a good picture for me to look at when the stress of work heightens, when the phone rings too often, when you hear the sirens cry in the streets on a night in the cold rain.

Sunrise. On a tranquil bay in the early morning when the sky is turning pink, the pale color like the inside of a conch shell. The gulls wheel over the causeway, then return to the dock, and each one finds its own perch.

Ancient and not-so-ancient Egypt

I'm enjoying my travels, but this weekend I really felt that I was whisked away on a magic carpet into a different, exotic world. Because in one day I had two experiences that let me visit a make-believe palace of wonders and mystery, and also view a forgotten ancient treasure.

I was part of a group treated to a private showing of "Tutankhamen: the Golden King and the Great Pharaohs - King Tut Exhibit," at the Atlanta Civic Center in Atlanta, Georgia. We were greeted in the foyer by the recorded voice of Harrison Ford - yes, Indiana Jones himself, narrating the story of Howard Carter's discovery of the tomb of King Tutankhamen in 1922.

Then a pair of massive wooden doors swung open, right on cue, and we entered the dark exhibit hall to mysterious music. Our handheld audio guides provided commentary alternately by Dr. Jones, or in polished English accents, as though delivered by Carter or his patron Lord Carnarvon, or by world-renowned archaeologist, Dr. Zahi Hawass. It was both informative and a little bit hokey, accompanied by choral voices just like in "Raiders of the Lost Ark." We even heard the playback of wind whistling sand storms as we stepped through a replica of the intrepid archeologist's tent.

The antiquities were stunning. First we saw stone carvings of kings, gods, and religious objects, marveling at the craftsmanship - so lifelike and yet so massive - timeless monuments of stone. The faces so smooth and placid, yet with lips and cheeks as curved and smooth you felt you could touch them and they'd be warm, like yours or mine. The torsos in stylistic poses, yet with soft bellies, the shape of nipples, the toenails. The intricate detail of the wigs and braided fibers of the ceremonial beards, the carved pleats in the statues' linen kilts.

As we progressed through the exhibit the artifacts became more human, imbued with the sense that they had been created by people just like me. Floor tiles showed painted papyrus and lotus, with water-fowl flying up from the reeds - you could see the broad brush-strokes. A shard of flagstone bore a half-finished bas-relief of a girl princess, eating a cooked fowl - it was partially carved, colored some with ochre paint, yet parts remained uncarved, roughly sketched in charcoal, erased and redrawn. It was as if the artist had just stepped away momentarily.

The exhibt drew us into each room of the tomb, as if discovering it as Carter did. The walls displayed huge murals of the photos taken at the time, showing some of the items in the cases as they had been found on that day in 1922.

Now the artifacts were more intimate, in human scale, including some of the wooden furnishings left in the tomb for the dead boy king. His wooden bed. His wooden carved chair. His mother's eye-liner.

The exhibit drew us into the rooms of the tomb, as if we were discovering it. We saw the vessels of gold and alabaster that had held the king's internal organs, preserving them separately from his mummy, in case he needed them in the afterlife. There were doll-like figurines, called shabti , to be his servants. A model boat that would magically assume the right size to sail him down the Nile on pleasure cruises. Wooden carvings of gods covered in gilt.

And jewelry; collars made of gold chains strung with carnelian and lapiz lazuli beads; hammered golden breast-plates of hawks with wings outstretched; rings with bright blue stones carved in the shape of scarab beetles.

An animated video showed how the king's preserved body was safely kept in nested coffins - three gilded wooden boxes encasing a stone sarcophagus; the stone enclosing a triple coffin of gold. Within, the mummy, beneath a face mask of gold.

Life-size photos in black and white were displayed behind the objects that Tutankhamen had worn on his body in the grave. Carved amulets of precious stone. Gold jewelry. Each one of his fingers and toes had a covering of gold, shaped and crafted like the real thing. His feet were shod in golden sandals.

Photos aren't allowed at the Tutankhamen Exhibit, so if you want to see these fabulous artifacts, you'll have to come yourself, or see it when it arrives in Dallas later this year.

But if you have a yen for Egyptian decor, there's another place in Atlanta you can find it.


A Fabulous place.

In 1922 when Howard Carter discovered the tomb of King Tut, the world was fascinated, and Egyptian styles and decor became an exotic craze.

In America as in Europe, men who aspired to business success joined together in fraternal organizations to support one another. They identified with early medieval stonemasons, gathering together in mutual aid societies, and devised rituals and traditions that enhanced the ceremonial feel of their meetings. One group of New Yorkers, inspired by some Arabian-style playacting at a meeting in Europe, called their club headquarters the Ancient Arabic Order of the Nobles of the Mystic Shrine.

The idea spread to other American cities, and as the groups grew, they needed larger and more elaborate meeting halls, which were often called Temples, enhancing the mystical and ceremonial nature of the club.


In Atlanta, the Shriners called themselves the Yaarab Temple. They bought a parcel of land on Peachtree Street, and in 1927 comissioned architects Marye, Alger and Vinour to build a temple. Naturally, the decor was to be Moorish in style, with Egyptian details inspired by the discovery of King Tut's tomb.


Unfortunately, as construction began and the economy worsened, the Shriners realized they were woefully underfunded. They made a deal with movie mogul William Fox, who was looking to establish his chain of theatres in the southeast. If he would help them complete the building, he could lease the auditorium to show movies.

The building included an auditorium intended both for movies and live shows, grand ballroom, several meeting rooms, and offices for the Shriners.

The huge auditorium, with 4678 seats, was designed to look like an Arabian courtyard, open to a night sky, twinkling with stars, a smooth plaster ceiling lit with blue lights and projectors that played images of clouds slowly moving across it. The balcony was overhung by a giant Bedouin canopy, which was actually a device to enhance the hall's acoustics. This illusion of an open sky was a popular style of theatre architecture known as "atmospheric theatres" created by an architect named John Eberson, but by the time the Fox was built, it was widely copied.


The auditorium was also furnished with a magnificent Moller pipe organ, dubbed the "Mighty Mo," which could accompany the then-silent films with a custom soundtrack.

The ballroom mimicked the temple of Rameses II at Karnak, with soaring lotus-topped pillars and scarab beetle stele.


The second-floor ladies' room features chairs that were replicas of Tut's throne, and make-up tables with golden sphinxes.

The Fox Theatre opened on Christmas Day, 1929, just two months after the Stock Market crashed. Although at first the theatre's business suffered, it eventually became one of the best-loved and most popular places to go in Atlanta. It was known for its glamor and elegance. The usher corps wore snappy uniforms. Debutantes' balls were held in the Grand Ballroom. First run movies premiered in the vast auditorium.

The docent who guided our tour, a lovely lady in her sixties, remembered attending Saturday matinees as a child. She said it was a thrilling experience to sit in the dark watching "Abbot and Costello meet The Mummy,"


and then fearfully visit the ladies' room with its Egyptian murals and furnishings, wondering if The Mummy was lurking behind the stalls.

In the 1970's Southern Pacific Bell was poised to demolish the Fox Theatre to build a high-rise and parking lot, but the citizens of Atlanta undertook a successful campaign to save the theatre. Today it's one of the most successful entertainment venues in the country, presenting first-run films, Broadway shows, and concerts by a wide range of artists. If you happen to visit Atlanta, it's worth a visit.

People here call it the Fabulous Fox. Click on the link to visit their website, and see more.

A rant - about arts education

I'm at a business conference for professionals in the field of performing arts. One of the sessions was about building future audiences, and a panel of college students were asked about what would attract them to an arts event or venue. That led to a discussion about their background and education in the arts.

So today we had a round-table session where one of the topics was arts education and outreach - what are our organizations' educational efforts to attract young audiences, especially students and children.

Many participants described creative, in-school programs their organizations are doing, putting performers in the classroom. One nationally prominent leader of a major classical music organization described a wonderful program that provided kids a fascinating glimpse behind the scenes.

The discussion among the attendees, most of whom are my age, so-called "baby-boomers," went something like this:

• We have to reach out to schools to bring kids to our symphonies, operas, drama productions and ballets.
• It's a challenge because there are no longer arts programs in schools, so kids don't know anything about performing arts.
• What can we do to educate kids and make them learn to appreciate the performing arts that are presented in our venues?
  

This topic really hit a nerve in the group, because even after we moved on to something else, people kept circling back to this. As I stood holding the mic, waiting for my turn to speak on Topic Number Two, I waited until a back-and-forth ad hoc exchange about arts education had concluded. Then I finally had the floor.

When I opened my mouth, I forgot about the other topic. Because a rant had been building up in me. Here it is:

"Everyone here in this room is trying to do wonderful things to reach out to young audiences. But as I listen I can't help but feeling we are making an erroneous assumption that the problem is that young people don't know anything about performing arts.

That's just not true. Right this minute, kids are singing, dancing and performing, and we don't know anything about it. Instead of trying to teach them about our symphonies and operas and ballets, we need to go see what they are doing. We need to learn about their music and dance, their performance and spoken word, so that we can appreciate it, put that on our stages, and give them more of it. That's what will bring them into our venues.

For us to assume that they don't know anything and we're the ones who should teach them is, frankly, a little arrogant of us. We need to learn from them, if we want them to be our future audiences."

- end of rant -

When I was done I felt a little trembly and sat back down, worried I might have offended someone. Plus, who am I to lecture them? After all, I'm not an arts educator, and my organization doesn't even do arts education directly - at least, not yet.

All of these arts professionals love their chosen fields with a passion. No one can deny that. But as they talked, everyone seemed to be missing something.

When I think about teaching kids to appreciate classical art forms, I remember something I experienced when my son was little.

I am a passionate gardener. I love gardening, flowers, the intricacies of nature; the beauty of the plant and insect world, the exquisite textures, colors, shapes and smells of plants. I used to bring my toddler son into the garden and say, "Look - see the beautiful flower, look how it's shaped. Look at the shoot coming out of the soil, look at the sprout rising up from the split avocado seed."

He was totally uninterested.

It hurt, I admit. I had so looked forward to teaching my child about the natural world I loved so much. How could my child be so incurious, so unobservant?

But then I stood back a little and watched what he was doing in the garden.

The hose trickled onto the sloping walkway as I dug in bedding plants. Water ran down the concrete, the stream forked and ridged as it met grains of sand and pebbles, obstacles that changed its route. It pooled in place until the surface tension overflowed the piled debris that bound the puddle, carrying leaves and bits of chaf with it.

For him, that was fascinating. He watched a twig travel in the water. He dammed the stream, until it burst free. He touched his finger to the concrete and felt the water flow around it. The power of water, the forces of gravity, the affects of geology - that was what caught his imagination.

He's 20 years old now, and has his own interests, many that he doesn't share with me. But I can see that there are things he loves, things that drive him and fascinate him. Just like gardens and flowers fascinate me.

In arts education, we can't build future audiences by only showing them what we love and asking them to love it too. We have to watch them, see what kind of art they make, and love, and consume. And then we have to help them seek the best of it, and hunger for it, and demand it.

If we are the ones they demand it from, then we will have achieved success.

PROMPTuesday

Sandiegomomma has today's PROMPTuesday, an exercise designed to spur creative writing.

Today she asks us to think about the importance of music in our lives. The prompt is: I want to know about your songs. What brings you back to a pivotal moment? Or an everyday moment you’ll remember forever? Tell me a drop of your life as crystallized by a Top 40 hit, a Broadway number, a dirge.

I'm at a business conference in a distant city today, and one of the things my colleagues and I are discussing is music, the performing arts, and what it means to the community - especially now in hard times. How can music and the arts become a part of the lives of Americans, and, especially young Americans in today's economy? I'm re-posting an earlier post about how music - one song in particular - was a part of my life when I was young.


Last night for some unknown reason, while I was loading the dishwasher, I started singing the melody of the popular Holiday concert band piece, "Sleigh Ride." (click on the link to hear it)

I was not thinking about it, I just started singing it. [The Man I Love] came into the kitchen, and he started singing along. Also without thinking.

We both sang the syncopated melody absolutely perfectly, and suddenly started laughing. Of course we both knew it. We share a common American experience - we were both in high school band.

"Sleigh Ride" was written by American composer Leroy Anderson in 1946, and has been a popular holiday tune ever since.

Anderson was the son of Swedish immigrants, born in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1908, and attended the New England Conservatory of Music and Harvard. In the 1930's he began arranging music for Arthur Fiedler director of the famed Boston Pops Orchestra. Anderson had a long career as a composer, musical director, and teacher, but "Sleigh Ride" is among his best known works.

[The Man I Love] and I did not attend the same high school - he was in rural Florida, and I was in suburban Ohio. He played the string bass and tuba. I played percussion.

I played keyboard percussion instruments - xylophone, marimba, vibraphone and chimes. Musicologists group percussion instruments into two major classifications - membranophones and idiophones.

A membranophone is an instrument that makes sound by the vibration of a membrane, like a stretched skin on the top of a drum. Timpani, snare drums, bass drums - they're all membranophones.

Idiophones are instruments that make sounds by vibrating their entire body - when you hit a triangle, a bell, a wood block, or the aluminum key of a glockenspiel with a mallet, its entire body resonates.

I think glockenspiel players welcome the holiday season, because it marks the end of marching band season. Marching with a glockenspiel is a pain. You have to wear a harness to hold the lyre-mounted keyboard in front of you. Then there's the music. Not all marching band scores have written glockenspiel parts. The glockenspiel is tuned to middle C, so you can play Oboe parts. But often marching band arrangements don't have Oboe parts, either, so you end up with a Flute part - written so high above the bars its hard to read.

Another hazard is cold weather. In the cold, metal keys contract and go out of tune. I remember a November parade in freezing rain where the entire glockenspiel section mimed playing, because we were half a key sharp from the rest of the band.

So, after ten weeks of practicing pinwheels in the parking lot, a glockenspiel player looks forward to the holidays, when you can hang out with the drummers and count rests. And practice your mallet skills for "Sleigh Ride."

There are some challenges for players in "Sleigh Ride." I had a mad crush on the trumpet player who had to make the horse neigh sound - when he messed it up during one concert, you could see his ears blush pink, all the way from the percussion section at the back of the stage.

For percussionists, there are many critical moments. In the bridge, there's a whip-crack made by slapping a hinged wooden flapper. Many a high school percussionist chokes from the pressure, missing the beat. (Ask me how I know!) The glockenspiel is featured in one long, syncopated phrase at the end of the chorus that runs the length of the keyboard. If you screw it up everyone knows!

Years and years of playing - or hearing - a piece of music tends to imprint it into your brain and your body. Which is why two people of the same generation, educated in American schools of the 1960s and 70s, could spontaneously and unconsciously burst into tune with perfect harmony.

"Come on, it's lovely weather for a sleigh ride together with you!"

Pink Saturday - vintage pink

Pink Saturday - Beverly, at the blog "How Sweet the Sound" hosts Pink Saturday. Let the color pink inspire your creativity!

I was at a vintage fashion exhibit show recently, and one booth was displaying this fantastic magenta velvet coat.

It dates from the 1920s, and the style was known as a "cocoon coat" because of the way it envelops the wearer from head to toe and tapers in at the feet - like a cocoon.

Coats like these were designed by the French designer Paul Poiret. Poiret is known for revolutionizing women's attire at the turn of the century, freeing them from structured and pieced garments that required heavy bony and corsets, and dressing them in clothes they could relax in. He was so shocking and so successful that he became known as "The King of Fashion."

In 2007, the Metropolitan Museum of Art exhibited photos and sketches of his work. If you click on this link, you can view a gallery of his fashions.

Influenced by Asian clothing and the clothes of dancers, Poiret crafted his clothes by draping fabric directly on the body, rather than by intricate tailoring. His clothes were often made of fabric with vivid, unusual, and bold patterns, echoing some of the works of the artists who called themselves Fauve, or wild, and Primitive. His wife Denise was his model, and her slim build helped inspire simple, modern clothes that were totally unlike anything that had come before.

Poiret was also revolutionary in his overall approach to fashion - not only did he create gowns and coats, but also hats, accessories, perfume, and interior design - making one of the first "lifestyle" designers.

Poiret's work in French couture was interrupted by World War I, when he worked for the government to supply uniforms. When the war ended, fashion had changed - women loved the chic, well-made fashions created by Coco Chanel that were not only comfortable but easy to move in - Poiret's "hobble skirt" had actually been so narrow at the hemline that women were unable to walk.


This coat was probably made in America, a knock-off inspired by Poiret. It's made in velvet brocade damask, with a solid cherry velvet shawl collar, and lined in violet silk.

If you like coats like this - and wouldn't a warm coat be a lovely thing on a cold weekend like this ? - you could search vintage shops and shows, or you could make one yourself. This pattern company, Birch Street Clothing, has a selection of Poiret-inspired patterns. Cocoon coats, with their unstructured lines and flowing fabric, should be relatively easy to sew.

This Pink Saturday I'm traveling for business and also trying to recover from an annoying cold. I'll visit your posts later in the weekend.