ethical cow

... taken on my way home: part of a large mural on the side, I think, of a branch of PETA - People for the Ethical Treatment on animals.

I may be the only person in LA tonight who's in bed with a hot water bottle.  I had both my Covid Booster and Flu Shot this morning - and right like clockwork, I started to get the chills and shivers twelve hours later.  So that's it, for now ...

 

Not quite at home

... although there was something very reassuringly familiar about meeting a British telephone box, albeit on D Street, in Davis.  It looked, of course, a lot less beaten up than it would have done at home, and lacked the usual array of sex workers cards and general smell of stale pee - not authentic at all.

It was a long drive back ...  I'm not sure that the Guardian's piece on the treacherous nature of the Grapevine - and how it acts as a bell wether for the climate crisis - was quite the thing to read before driving over it, but all was happily uneventful, apart from a notice warning that a mud slide (in dry September?) was blocking one lane, and the usual assortment of crazed drivers in white Teslas.

 

the difficulties of determining irony

Sometimes, it's very hard to tell what's ironic, or satiric - and what isn't.  Object 1: on the TV this morning, an ad for a wall plaque for "Trumpy Trout" - which, I promise you, is a Real Ad.  It's absolutely genius.  It talks - in DT's voice - telling you (for example) "I am the hugely bigliest fish in the pond."  It was advertised on CNN - which most probably means that it's not aimed at pro-Trumpers.  On the other hand, there's something faintly endearing - as well as utterly ridiculous - about the - er - likeness.  So - does it have cross-over appeal?  Doubtless it is a collector's item - a dream kitsch souvenir (but I promise you, I'm not tempted).  It is ironic, surely, isn't it?

And this?  Object 2. It was being worn by a grad student sitting next to me in a conference session this afternoon.  Yes - it's a shirt covered with little corgis who are wearing Union Jacks, doubtless in homage to our own dear late Queen.  But ... how to determine the stance of its owner?  I thought this was going to be easy when she said to me - at the end of that session - "I love your shoes!"  "I love your shirt!" I lied happily, in reply.  "Ooooh, thank you - it's my Victorian conference shirt!"  Somehow, I didn't feel like pushing any further.

 

Davis NAVSA hub

Davis is an extremely beautiful campus - and, after USC, a very empty one (also: no visible campus security measures 😁 ).  It's indeed very welcoming to all ... though I was very sorry that 95 degree heat meant I didn't much fancy my planned walk to the Arboretum and Botanical Gardens ...

We are all Victorians now, Andrew Way Leong argued in one of my favorite (brief) papers of the day, arguing that those of us who eat fish from the Pacific are ingesting the residue from Victorian mercury deposits.

This was part of a shared plenary panel with Seattle - and you can see Victorianists on the screen disappearing into a mise en abyme - differently mirrored each time ...

I hope I sleep tonight - my hotel seems to be rather too close for comfort - 3 houses up - from Tri Delta's Bid Night ...

... and I am pleased to report that the cat - as pictured yesterday - has a canine companion.  I couldn't make him out in the dark.

 

some strange things seen today ...

I 5, between Los Angeles and Davis, was very very long, very full of trucks, and for the most part very boring - or depressing, every time I passed a "Trump/Vance will make Gas and Food Affordable Again" sign, or one reading "Democrats: Highest Inflation for 50 Years."  I stopped at Bravoland (where? you might well ask) where there was a life-sized model stagecoach - and a good enough connection for me to tether my computer to my cellphone and attend a graduate student Work in Progress session.  And then for lunch ... I'd long ago determined I'd experience the complete ridiculousness of Andersen's, in Santa Nella, having driven past its windmill in the past.  Such an interesting story ... the original one was in Buellton and opened in 1924, though apparently closed this summer, just before its 100th birthday.  The Santa Nella establishments only dates from 1976.

As you can see, it's marked by a windmill (suggesting Dutch pea soup) - but the interior was like a Bavarian bar.  Weirdly, the founder was Danish, and his wife Juliette, who created the soup recipe, was from eastern France.  The soup was, indeed, great.  The grilled cheese sandwich - fairly horrible.  The coffee - really horrible.  But I went, because I still love the weirdness of roadside America.

And eventually, eventually, I arrived in Davis - the traffic was so much at a standstill around Stockton that even my car's GPS rolled its eyes and took me off the interstate and round a tour of the back streets.

So far as first impressions go, Davis is a really nice small leafy college town, with a bookstore, an excellent icecream shop (honey, ginger and turmeric counts as a health food, no?) and various little art galleries - one of which has this huge, glorious cat outside.  Its illuminated whiskers change colors in slow but regular succession ...

 

campus security?

I've already voiced plenty of scepticism about the amount of money that USC is spending on turning our campus into a fortress ... and here's sure proof that it's not working.  I arrived at the campus carpark that I use this morning ... and the elevator doors are clearly gang-tagged (of course, given the radio piece about gangs within LAPD that I was listening to on my drive in, it could always be an inside job ...). But if taggers can get in - well, so can anyone.

 

cardinal and gold ... reimagined

I have absolutely no idea what the occasion for this might have been - I can't quite make out the writing in the frame, which itself is nestling on a base of cardinal and gold paper streamers - but it's one of the very best interpretations of USC's colors that I've ever encountered ...

 

Indigo Girls (and banned books)

 

To the Greek, tonight, to see the Indigo Girls, for the three millionth time (though the last time at the Greek was, rather shockingly, a whole ten years ago, when they appeared with Joan Baez) - with a startlingly large array of guitars and banjos - and a very striking backdrop (as befits one English major and one English and Theology major) of books on shelves.  Banned books, in fact - books that have been banned some place or the other in the US.  Oh, and there were voter registration people out and presumably doing sign-ups ... with a great roar of approval and applause when they were called out by name.  I've always admired the IGs activism, and as ever they didn't disappoint on that front.  Ten years ago, I see that I commented here that it must have been twenty years since I first heard an Indigo Girls song: I guess that makes it thirty, now ...

 

autumn equinox

Autumn mightn't be spectacular in Southern California, but it certainly happens.  And some leaves are indeed turning and dropping.  What's more mysterious are the webs that are enveloping parts of the Asian Pear.  They don't have the regular, fairy-tale design that signal the presence of Orb Spiders - and it's a bit early for them, in any case.  But I definitely could see the occasional golden-colored spider inside there - these aren't those heavy sticky webs made by certain moth caterpillars.  And it's a bit early for Hallowe'en...

 

How?

How, indeed?  Or maybe the question should be - why?  In any case, this is one of the most baffling trash can installations that I've ever seen.

catalina island

It was worth getting up at dawn - not just for dawn itself, but for a trip to Catalina Island, to USC's Wrigley Field Station there.  A small group of us were being shown round, getting some pictures into our minds about what it would be like to bring students there and to use it as a study base - anything from a day trip to a 4-week Maymester (it's not that I have something specifically in mind, but I did want to see Catalina, and also the work being done at the Wrigley ....)

Water in tanks ...

View down to the landing harbor;

If you do experiments involving a lot of seawater splashing around, your filing cabinets get really rusty ...

And here's a beautiful rock formation.  It was all so quiet andpeaceful - I would happily have stayed for a month.   

 

 

not a vacation

although this, admittedly, is the rather fine view from my hotel room in San Pedro.  I have to get up at some ungodly hour to catch a boat to Catalina Island, and rather than get up even earlier, I decided to spend the night down here - it's very quiet, even allowing for planes heading in and out of LAX, occasionally, and Cabrillo State Beach feels like the back of beyond,

and not remotely like Los Angeles.

Oh, wait a minute - I spy cameras, and a sound boom ...

In any case, it was a particularly enjoyable drive down here (I came down S. Normandie, not the 10 - almost a straight shot from USC) because I was listening to Ohtani's stellar Dodgers game all the way.

 

LA outlook

I took a good friend to a post-op check-up this morning (new knee doing just fine!) - and this was the view from the window where the initial weighing and measuring and such like was done.  For a downtown vista (on Wilshire) it's a piece of surreal tropicana: the palm trees are real, but everything else looks as though it's been generated by AI.  Indeed, I've just made my own crazy cat lady addition (courtesy of ordinary Photoshop cut and paste) ... (off the ledge the republican elephant goes) ...

 

someone bit into the moon

I was very glad that I remembered to go outside this evening and catch the partial eclipse of the full moon.  It's not been the best of days for being certain about where I am in the week.  Although I got crucial stuff straight (dissertation prospectus defense, graduate studies directors' meeting, meeting with grad student, etc), I was convinced, completely convinced when I got home that it was Wednesday, and scurried around frenetically gathering up old vegetables, bags of used kitty litter, empty and collapsed cardboard boxes, etc - all the average stuff that one might think of leaving outside J. D. Vance's office - taking them out to the trash, pulling out trash bins ... Do you think the lunar pull and tug worked on my brain?

 

a very gloomy fountain

To be sure, it's hard knowing what decor works in a hospital.  Too cheerful - like the children dancing in rings at the RWJ hospital in New Brunswick - and you run the risk of being mockingly optimistic.  Too gloomy - well, this double-sided fountain at Keck Hospital of USC, which has variegated textures with water running down each slab, seems positively funereal.  I don't even remember seeing it before, which is strange, but today it looked like a memorial wall, a dripping tomb-slab.  Luckily it didn't match my mood by the end of the day (all clear in various tests, unless you count the chunks of skin frozen off my cheek and scalp, but that was better than my last derm visit) - and indeed all medical staff that I saw were super upbeat - but this would depress me if I worked there, let alone if I was facing something personally grim.  What looks like color is, of course, a reflection of USC's ubiquitous cardinal and gold.  Even that is seriously muted.

 

sunset

To the beach for dinner this evening, with friends - a spectacular sunset (hazy enough to make me wonder if some of the smoke from the wildfires was finding its way east rather than west), with the sun itself looking like some pale golden beach volleyball.

 

Out of Site - at the Autry

Another Pacific Standard Time, Art and Science Collide show, this time at the Autry (so wonderfully close by): Out of Site: Survey Science and the Hidden West.  This - like the Huntington Exhibition, is beautifully curated, and a wonderful mix of nineteenth century materials (some familiar, some not at all so), twentieth century, and contemporary work - much of which blurred the line between survey and surveillance.  I really appreciated the juxtapositions - not just the Mark Klett etc rephotography, but - above - the Timothy O'Sullivan water holes and ponds with the Remington Fight for the Water Hole painting - I'd never previously seen it close up, and appreciated how much action is taking place in the background.

The early rooms were dark - but not just for conservation reasons: mining was so central here to the theme of subterranean observation that one felt as though one was, indeed, down a pit.  And I was so grateful for all the attention given to Flash -

including Harold Edgerton's Mirror Sphere (this felt like an old friend!).

Organized by the VSRI/LACMA photo research group, this was an excellent Saturday morning with colleagues and students, and Britt Salvesen and Amy Scott - from LACMA and the Autry respecively - were understandably the best of guides - from gold mines through to nuclear explosions and some great contemporary photography by John Divola (of an abandoned army base near Victorville) and Bremner Benedict - beautiful images of sites near the southern border that are, in fact, subject to all kinds of environmental degradation.  And as Amy and Britt brought out, so many of the images belonged in sets, or series, and so the whole show was very much about the temporal, as well.

 

our yard sign

Admittedly, this sign would be better plural - "ladies" not "lady" - but it gets the message across pretty well.  I thought it would never arrived - I ordered it just a couple of days after the Harris candidacy, and after the resurfacing of JDV's anti-feline remark - and of course it was printed and made in China, I subsequently realized, and and and - but it turned up in Santa Fe the morning we left, and now adorns our doorstep.  Three other Harris or Harris/Walz signs visible in our small street, already - although given the neighborhood, that mightn't come as anything of a surprise.  

 

Storm Cloud

To The Huntington this evening, for the reception/opening of the Storm Cloud: Picturing the Origins of Our Climate Crisis exhibition - a show that's been four years in the making, and that's absolutely stunning. So many treats, very carefully and thoughtfully curated.  Even though I've been involved with it from the start, and have known what was going to be there (and what wasn't - organizing an exhibition is such a balancing act between one's wishes, the practicalities of what's to hand, and the availability and portability of objects) - even though I had a good idea of what individual images would be visible, the groupings and juxtapositions and wall panels - helpful without being didactic - were superb.  

So go and see - for example - some Ruskin drawings and daguerreotypes;

these ferns in William Henry Millais's (brother of the more famous ...) Hayes Common;

Andrew Melrose's Westward the Star of Empire - here's a detail - and I know it's normally just down the road at the Autry, but it's terribly hung and one can't see it properly -

and a taxidermied bird-hat.

 

campus security

Campus has grown a lot more railings - forests of them - forcing one onto the main pathways (together with electric scooters, skateboards, and tables and booths from the careers fair).  Given that we're also currently being told about the university's financial crisis (Exhibit A - the fact that All Library Purchases are - well, canceled.  The purchasing budget has been set at 0%.  Yes, I know this is a university), please could someone tell us how much this is costing??? - ditto the new elaborate gateways where we have to have our ID checked as we come and go.  I suppose the railings may come in handy for chaining ourselves to them, in protest.

 

A fiery drive home

It was a dramatic drive back to LA today.  The smoke from the Line fire, above San Bernadino, was visible from ways out, settling low over the ground and in the little valleys all the way after we started the long, long descent after the climb up from Needles.  But this - which was the Bridge fire exploding this afternoon (from 4,000 or so acres to around 34,000) became apparent as soon as we turned onto the 15, and the skies became ... apocalyptic was the only word.  Alice was valiantly driving at this point; I was taking pictures - and yes, it really was that weird orange (like Trump, later.  I'd have given anything for a Trump election sign, at this point).

And then we turned onto the 210, and the fire was behind us - but no less spectacular and terrifying (this is all about 45 miles from home, but it's so huge, billowing up into the sky, that it feels closer ...)