persimmons

Last Friday morning, I went into our department kitchen to make myself a coffee, and felt as though I was interrupting an animated discussion between four members of our cleaning staff who were seated there eating their very good smelling burritos.  They were talking about persimmons, and how much they liked them, and one was saying that she had a prolific persimmon tree in her back yard.  Today, when I went back in search of the Nespresso machine once more, there was this very appealing plateful sitting on the table ...

 

mornings in our house

Gramsci is, without any doubt, a Shoulder Cat.  It's almost impossible to do anything without him sitting up there - that includes going upstairs, or trying to get dressed in the morning, or going to the bathroom.  He may be insecure.  He's also very handy as a neck warmer.  

 

back to the spooky 'hood

These may be my favorite Halloween skeletons ever.  They are sitting in the bottom of a little wrought iron funicular: since so many of the houses around here are on steep hillsides, some of them have rack-and-pinion systems from the street up to their front doors to allow groceries and other bags and baggage to be hauled up.  And one of them has a contraption big enough to carry humans - or their skeletons, any way.

By contrast, some other skellingtons are very modest.

And then, of course, there are always scary spiders (with a few ghouls in the background).

 

at the end of a very long week

... for both of us!  Great to go out for dinner at Cha Cha Cha, where spicy pineapple margaritas might have been consumed as well as some excellent Mexican food.  I was too exhausted even to enter the garage today ...

 

it's here!

It's here.  The driver came back, with a friend, and together they trundled four pallets down the road, and unpacked them - leaving us to wonder what's in a lot of the boxes ("books," or "pictures," or "ornaments" still leaves a lot of guesswork).  And who knows the overall amount of damage?  I've so far found a rather delicate side table with two of its legs broken off; the settle with some wood snapped off the top, and so on.  Time to emulate my father's handiwork at furniture mending (because in fact, most of the pieces were bought by him for a few shillings and patched up in the first place) - and also, I guess, to investigate my insurance policy for the shipping.

It's very strange having this stuff here.  It seems much smaller than in Wimbledon (which is good! - otherwise, where will anything go ...?) - and, er, shabbier, and probably there was no need to have imported as much as I have. But it's still full of memories; it's still Stuff From Home.  Gramsci says it smells of Simba, and is therefore weird.

 

empty(er) and waiting ...

This was going to be a before and after shot ... but ...  The last ten days or so have been a small-scale nightmare, ever since the shipping company let me know that the furniture from 20 Hillside would be delivered not on November 6th - the original scheduled date - but this week.  Mon/Tues/Wed weren't possible, because of work - so I paid for an extra day's storage, and for the pallets to be delivered into the garage today - and got to work, clearing and sorting the garage ... (if you've ever known it, this may be unrecognizable).  

Van turns up, around 3 p.m.  Van driver - a single van driver, and not a professional (or even amateur) mover - says we're on a hill, he can't safely park, he can't unload the pallets - eventually, thinks maybe he can unpack the pallets where he's parked, up the road, and bring everything down.  Which, he says, would take five or six hours - and in the dark, too.  He seems hapless; we feel powerless; there's a lot of telephoning.  The upshot, for now - he'll come back tomorrow, with a gaggle of guys hired from the lot at Home Depot, and we'll all try again (that'll be after I do teaching observations, some student meetings, etc etc).  My capacity for calmness and rationality was tried and found, I fear, wanting.

Keep your fingers crossed.

 

up the hill

I'd love to say that I managed a day in the Getty Research Institute library, or that I went to see the Blake exhibition - but it was more like an hour in the library catching up on admin, and then a (very agreeable, apart from the non-stop fire alarm) lunch on departmental business.  All the same, and as ever, it's magical to head up to the Getty: somewhere out there, under some stormy clouds, is - I promise you - the Pacific.

 

a very large inflatable dog

In the latest installment of my institution's absurdity, I bring you ... a very large inflatable dog - by very large, I mean quite definitely taller than me. It seems to be ... advertising student health services?  Providing student mental health services, through offering an image of comforting cheerfulness?  There used to be a rather handsome campus therapy dog (live, not blow-up) called Beau Tirebiter - now, digging around, I find he's been replaced by Rumi Tirebiter (there's a long USC history of dogs called Tirebiter ...) - and this inflatable seems to be based on him.  What is beyond ridiculous is that he seems to be anchored in place by a large, and presumably heavy, simulacrum of a poop bag.

 

down the hallway

Just in case you thought that it was only the streets of Silver Lake and Los Feliz that were covered with Hallowe'en decorations (not that, in this town of set designers and special effects people that I really thought that you did think that ...) - but just in case, this is what's down the hallway from me, in the office of Academic Innovation and Research Engagement - whatever that may be.  Usually, it seems to have a lot of sofas and very few people. It was great when it was a language lab - one could sneak in and watch the news in something other than English for a bit - but now it has one of those empty institutional titles and no apparent raison-d'être other than to display artificial pumpkins and purple tinsel.

 

another spooky (and the ghosts of unwritten books)

Really, they're easy pickings at this time of year - this one was somewhere above the Silver Lake reservoir, when we decided to take a hiller route than usual this morning.

Because the arrival of The Furniture from England is imminent, I've been trying to clear out space in the garage - the story of my year so far, one garage or another - which has largely meant Sorting Books - many ghosts of my past, including the ghosts of Books of my Own, not, mostly, written, but encouraged/solicited by others ... one on Flaubert and Women (I'd forgotten about that!); an edition of Antony and Cleopatra from the point of view of its staging (really? - but I did do a fair bit of archival work on very over-the-top late Victorian and Edwardian productions, and then gave my notes to someone who did the real, responsible edition); an article on C18th art patronage (I didn't have a clue, at the time, where to start, so didn't, really); a Longman's annotated edition of Jude the Obscure (that never got off the ground at all, though I did do a NHC week-long seminar on it), and of course Italian Art 1890-1939, which I actually wrote, and which was due to be published by Oresko Books, around 1979-80 - and then they went bust.  Do all academics have a graveyard of unwritten opuses rattling around like this??

 

cat among the cactus

I brought our Hallowe'en/Day of the Dead cats back from New Mexico - I bought them in 2000, when Covid confined us there all the way through the fall, but since we're habitually here for Hallowe'en, it seemed only right to do our modest little bit to add to the neighborhood displays.  One's sitting on the large pumpkin by the front gate; two (this one included) are spiked into the ground where they are illuminated, and one appears to be using the kitchen window box as a litter tray.

 

skulls!

"The Monster Mash ... it was a Graveyard Smash."  Things are warming up here by the side of the Silver Lake reservoir.  I love the skulls round the arches ...

dawn (trash can day in Los Feliz)

The trash truck comes very early here (on Thursdays - I get so confused after a while, since it comes on a Monday in both Eldorado and Wimbledon) - but a bonus, today, when putting out that last bag of stuff before the pick-up: dawn rising on another (hot) day.

 

checking on the waterfall

No, I know it doesn't look much like a waterfall, but that's because we've turned the pump off - it (albeit replaced recently) has been making some strange glugging noises, and we became convinced that it has a slow leak.  Maybe, maybe not - I filled up the underground reservoir this morning, and have been keeping a beady eye on it subsequently - the water level doesn't seem to have changed all that much.  "Waterfall" is perhaps an over-ambitious term for a two-foot artificially propelled tumble over rocks, but "water feature" also conjures up rather grandiose expectations ...

 

her last trip to school, and her last drive home

I'll miss her.  Tomorrow morning, at the crack of dawn, a tow truck will come and take away my dearly beloved car, which has done me proud since 2007 - some 140,000 miles ago.  She'll be off to auction, and will benefit our local NPR station, LA-ist (formerly KPCC).  

As some of you know, she's become a Vulnerable Car.  She's still going very strong, but if she's out on the street - well, the catalytic converter thieves come for her (I swear - once one's been hit once, one's an easy mark, because they presume that one's replaced the missing part) - and 2007 Lexus hybrids are, apparently, peculiarly easy of access and so are catnip to local criminals.  So I've been keeping her in the garage, after the second hit.  But ... the furniture etc that I've had shipped from 20 Hillside is arriving at any moment - maybe as early as the end of this week - so I need the garage space, badly.  Alas.  It'll be a very sad parting.

And there's no chance of a new car until the sale of 20 H lumbers to its conclusion - this looks likely for mid November, now - so unless any of you LA people have a spare car sitting around needing exercise, I'll be seeing a lot of local buses in the next month.

 

(last) morning walk

We just made time for a walk this morning, before scampering down (i.e. me putting my foot to the pedal of the rental car, and driving at 80) to Albuquerque to catch our flight back to LA.  It was a glorious quiet still morning - LA is, as ever, quite a re-entry shock, even though we've only been away five nights.  It's a good job that this was the picture that I posted ... it's trash collection day, and although we expected it to have been picked up way before we left, it wasn't ... so this came as a very timely reminder to text the neighbors and ask them to rescue the errant bin ...

 

a Large Green Grasshopper

A Large Green Grasshopper - that is, indeed, her official name: Schistocerca shoshone, if you're being technical.  She flew in as we were winterizing the back yard this afternoon - bringing in the geraniums and the more vulnerable pots and the terracotta suns and the bags of potting soil (so that the mice don't nest in them).  I'll do one last watering in the morning, and then bring in the hoses and put little insulating socks round the outside faucets. It's been the quickest of fall breaks - but nonetheless, great to breathe in some fresh air, after LA.

 

marigold season

Marigold season at the Farmers' Market - which I so love at this time of the year.  I wish you could taste the tomatoes (I'm looking forward to some freshly dug potatoes tomorrow).

And yes - there was an eclipse, but alas we were driving back from town at that point.  And, um, having momentarily forgotten that eclipses cause certain effects, I remarked of our rental car - as we turned onto I-25 - "there's one thing that I really don't like about this car - the front windshield is really tinted."  The dimming obscurity was, of course, quite separate from the vehicle ...

 

evening flowers

Not, alas, our own ... but outside Izanami (at Ten Thousand Waves) tonight.  Alas - I started to look for a tub to book too late in the day (that is, one has to jump on it 45 days in advance, and I was - oh, I don't know, at 44 3/4.  Admittedly, it's Balloon Festival Week down in Albuquerque, and fall break for lots of people - including, of course, us).  But we were so pleased to be up there ...

 

surely the very last of the season

I was truly surprised to see a Morning Glory this morning - a late-growing, late-blooming, valiant effort on the part of Grandpa Ott, looking (together with the pot rim) like a purple and blue shooting star.  We have a frost warning tonight (and have excavated a large duvet for the bed).

 

chamisa

Yellow chamisa, blue sky .. what I can't show you is the air, which is so extraordinarily fresh and clean that it really brings home how filthy and polluted Los Angeles is.  This mound of fall color is outside our garage door ... We may, though, have arrived with the last of the summer weather, and it's a good thing that we have a heating boiler appointment scheduled for tomorrow morning ...

 

checking the instructions

We're off to Santa Fe for fall break ... and it's too short a trip to drive.  So Moth is checking the instructions - and labels - that we're leaving for the cat sitter, very carefully indeed.  (PSA, cat people: if you don't know Churu, it's like kitty crack - guaranteed to make any cat unreasonably happy.  Goodness knows what's in it - back in England, my parents used to swear by Primula cheese spread, and would have us smuggle tubes of the stuff back to the US as treats for the felines.  But Churu - that's in an addictive league all of its own).

 

rose hips

The Wedgwood Rose, which has been so pretty close to the front door all summer, has morphed into very autumnal rose hips.  I think I should gather them and make tea from them - rose hip tea has all kinds of anti-oxidant, anti-inflammatory properties - but they are much too attractive to sacrifice right now.

 

monumental Detroit

Time for one last morning walking - in downtown Detroit (with the Guardian Building gleaming in the sun) and down to the river: the Detroit River is only about 28 miles long, running between Lake St Clair and Lake Erie, with Michigan one side, and - well, Canada the other.  There was something faintly exciting (to me, anyway) about there being tunnels and bridges labeled To Canada - a sense of borderlands, however misplaced.

But not misplaced to those who had escaped enslavement, and who were waiting to cross the river ... there's an impressive memorial by Ed Dwight on the water's edge, looking out towards Canada.  I hadn't known much about Dwight - only that he's a Black sculptor who's executed a lot of heroic sculptures, very many of them of lesser-known figures.  I certainly hadn't known that he'd been a test pilot, and was training alongside other potential astronauts, and if it hadn't been for racism, would very likely have been the first Black person in space (when not selected, he soon afterwards left the military, and in his mid 40s, embarked on formal art training).

It's a monument that gives due weight to the participation of local Indigenous people in helping those who'd traveled on the Underground Railroad to cross the river - Detroit was a major hub for crossing over to Canada.

There is, apparently, another monument on the other side, but seeing that will have to wait until next time.

 

more Detroit

Downtown Detroit has its very own neo-Venetian Gothic, complete with lions!  Met Alice off the bus from Ann Arbor, and we wandered around some, admiring the architecture ... (and being turned out of the Art Deco Penobscot building, since No Tourists Allowed). Then over to Belle Isle, where it was freezing cold, and we took temporary refuge in the Aquarium - which opened in 1904, and was like something from the British seaside.  Here's a sturgeon, and then other fishies ...

The conservatories are being restored, so closed ...

but we really wanted to see the Piet Oudolf garden - the real motivation for heading over there - which was looking suitably autumnal.

Then we tried to go to the African American museum - but it was closed for it annual fundraising gala, alas.

Tried to go to the Scarab club, to see its Arts and Crafts decoration - but it was closed for a wedding.

And finally out to dinner - to Selden Standard, which had quite wonderful food, but was unbearably, bone-shakingly noisy - impossible to have any kind of conversation.  So all in all - a day of some beauty, but many frustrations.

 

Detroit and art

I feel sated after a day of - well, I could call this work, since it was work, in part - but there is so much to look at in Detroit (probably helped by it being a mild, sunny early fall day, and with the center being unexpectedly easy to walk around, although public transport turned out to be much like LA - coming back from the DIA, someone collapsed completely on the bus floor (fentanyl?) and we all got off and walked while they called the EMS ... ).  But here is the Guardian Building's interior - quite the poshest B of A I've ever been in;

the Fox theatre, which looked to be in fine and vibrant form (having absorbed much Detroit ruin porn over the years, I've been expecting all theatres and movie houses to be derelict structures - instead of which there's been much city rehabbing - even the Book Depository, I see, is just reopening as part of the Ford Mobility Center, although I'll always think of the symbolism of trees poking their way through stacks of moldering school books).

Here are some fine felines outside the Detroit Tigers stadium - you'll see that all the adorable big cats along the side of the building have baseballs stuck in their mouths.

And here's the picture that, above all, I wanted to see: William Egley's The Talking Tree - based on Tennyson's weird poem of that name.  In the poem, the girl's human lover, Walter, has carved her name, Olivia, in the trunk - I wanted to check that Egley hadn't been faithful to the poem's narrative, here - it didn't look in any of the reproductions that he had, but I wanted to be sure.  Maybe, the bark is formed in a heart-like shape where she's looking (sign of the tree's passionate attachment to her?) - but I don't think there's any incision.

On the other hand, I did find a peacock butterfly on the trunk I'd not noticed before - a token of the soul, and resurrection (like acorns?) - or just a butterfly?

And then - almost next to it - the strangest picture, William Frederick Yeames' Staunch Friends (1859).  Surely this is deeply, deeply Darwinian?  A very humanized monkey, in 1859?  

But holding an apple?  Can one paint an apple without invoking Eve, in the mid C19th?  And those ... hands?  Paws?

At least I knew where I was with some John Brett seaweed - a detail of a painting that seems to have a seaweed gatherer in a far corner.

Though soon one was back with trees doing very strange things.

And cats hiding in furniture.

For decades, I've wanted to see the Diego Rivera murals - and they were every bit as magnificent as I'd hoped, or more so.

I have taken so many pictures of images that I didn't know at all - both the whole painting, and details - and then met some old friends (like Millais' Leisure Hours, and, yes, Whistler's Nocturne in Blue and Gold - Falling Rocket) - and seen other terrific stuff, like a whole ranges of paintings by the Peales, and the Edmonia Lewis busts ... I'm sated, and yet very far from having exhausted even the art on show here.