California Christmases

Usually, we've left LA for New Mexico by now, but we're waiting for Moth to be seen by her cat dentist again in order to be given (we hope) a travel All Clear.  This means that in other years, we've always missed the local Holiday Block Party on Griffith Park Boulevard (which largely seems to be full of many bouncy castles, and a small tent of people playing jazz, and - well, we were there a bit too late for Santa, or the food and drink, but clearly it's mostly for the under 10s and their parents).  I would love to take that top picture and blow it up - what looks at first glance like a naked man is actually a woman with a handbag and small child looking for all the world like it's 1963.  Then at the bottom - how to re-purpose your small dinghy as a Christmas tree, with a palm tree in the background ...

My first sense that Californian - even American - Christmases were somewhat different from the UK came in around 1963, I should think, with the arrival of a Christmas card from an old Birmingham University friend of my father's, John Lerry - who for some reason moved to the US in 1952, and then in 1960 took up a job as Manager of Construction and Engineering at Stanford (I do not have a phenomenal memory ... his obituary was easy to find online, and it's a marker of the weirdness, to me, of his Christmas card that I remember his name).  On it were his three preternaturally blond children sitting round a Christmas tree, with unwrapped presents - presumably it had been taken the previous year, and banked for this very purpose.  Back then, in the early 60s in England, one simply did not, ever, put a family photo on a Christmas card - this seemed like a quintessentially strange American thing to do.  Little did I think that sixty or so years later I'd be strolling down a street a few blocks away (little did I yet know the term "blocks," of course) and looking at scenes as foreign as these, in a temperature that was still hovering around 70.

 

wreath

I still find it strange to be on the cusp of Christmas and everything to be so green and leafy in many places, including our front yard.  I bought a little evergreen wreath for the front door, but I think I may move this back there from its bush: the door wreath looks too shy and modest,

 

balcony

Seen on my ride home: a second floor balcony Christmas door wreath and bicycle parking, on S. Hoover St.  I'm not sure why I find this so satisfying: the shapes, the evening light?  

 

dappled

 

In some intangible way, this stands in for me today - dessicated in spirit after a long graduate studies directors' meeting, and wondering if the semester will ever end, to the extent that I feel that I may be merging into the building, unable any more to tell the shadow from the substance.

the parsley forest

... as seen from inside the kitchen window.  If there's one thing that grows in the rather shady light of the kitchen windowbox, it's parsley.  There's also more parsley growing on the terrace below.  It's not that we eat large quantities of the stuff, but it grows like mad.  And, whilst on the topic of parsley, I'm wondering why it is that - in the US at least - curly parsley ((Petroselinum crispum) is so rarely seen, when once upon a time (and of course my memory is here stretching back to England), there were little sprigs of the stuff plonked on top of all kinds of dishes as Garnish, and it was ground up in the parsley mincer and stirred into white sauce in order to be served with ham.  I never much cared for ham, but I certainly enjoyed parsley sauce.  I'm sure Italian flat leafed parsley could be substituted and have just about the same flavor ...

 

work isn't going well

Gramsci is, of course, adorable, right down to his little white paws.  But when I am trying to finish off the first triage-ing run through of graduate admissions, and answer a sudden flurry of Hi Professor emails, to have him determinedly lodged between me and the computer, or persistently bringing one of his little mice up onto the desk so that I can throw it for him, is ... exhausting.

 

retirement orchid

Alice's retirement celebrations have meant a wonderful few days: tonight, out to dinner with a very good friend (who made some of the best red cabbage with apple, vinegar etc in the universe).  Here is a wonderful orchid gift from some other dear friends, which greeted Alice to her complete delight when she came back on Thursday evening, and which, having been moved around the house and tried out in various light-filled places, has now taken up residence in the kitchen.  I'm sure the reality of the fact that actual retirement doesn't take place until January 6th (excuse for more dinners! more seeing New Mexican friends) will kick in rather too hard when the grading for her two classes arrives at the end of the week, but the first installment - the end-of-teaching installment - has been pretty fine.

 

elderly tulips

When flowers get a bit too drooping and weary to carry on doing well inside, then we put them in a kind of half-way house, on the table in the front yard.  Here our Thanksgiving tulips are living out their final days in a kind of decorous retirement.  It's also indicative of the fact that yes, we are spoilt by having California sun right into December ...

a geranium placeholder

At breakfast today, the sun was hitting a geranium leaf just so.  And I thought - any other day, I would have bagged that as my p of the d - picture of the day - and have felt content.  But ... I knew what I wanted: a good picture of Alice at her Jubilación dinner - I took her to Musso & Frank, where I'd never been, and it was wonderful.  But could I take a good picture?  No.  Not as bad as yesterday, when I had to crop her out of the group pic because she was munching on a cheese straw, and that just wouldn't have done.  But tonight - I didn't want to make a big deal of it, but to take a quick shot or two, and put my cell phone away, and - well, no.  It just didn't capture the evening, alas.  But the geranium?  That, I guess, encapsulates my long-lasting photo taking maxim: just capture those moments of fleeting beauty or strangeness when you see them.

 

last day of school! Alice's jubilación

Today was Alice's last ever day of teaching.  So I wasn't going to let the day go unmarked, of course ... and gathered a little group who surprised her - really surprised her - jumping out of a classroom at her after she ended the final class, with disco balloons and flowers, and marched her off to the Art History Seminar Room, where champagne and wine and a hastily gathered assortment of snacks from TJs were consumed, and a Spotify playlist of Black Funk Disco put on, and her health drunk.  I discovered yesterday that the Faculty Club would be closed - my original plan had been to go there - but this was much more fun, it turned out.

And jubilación is so much more sun as a word than the ominous Retirement, so I decided to go with the Spanish.

Of course, Alice still has grading to do, and her office to empty, and so on - but this, really, is It.  More celebrations follow ...

 

end of semester, end of an era

Three very hastily snatched photos to commemorate today: our Art History Holiday Party.  In the past, this has been a spectacular event - at the Gamble House, the LA Athletic Club, the Grammy Museum.  But this year - university strict budget rules - we weren't allowed to spend any funds on such an event.  So instead, a faculty-sponsored event in the University Club, which didn't have the same glitz, by any means (though I have to say that the Chipotle Margarita may have been the best drink I've ever had on any of these occasions).  And we weren't huge in numbers, this year, so it was actually very friendly and comfortable.

But what made it so poignant, and indeed awful, is that our two wonderful office admin staff, Beth and Tracey, won't be with us going forwards.  Beth has been given a position running Scheduling and Staffing for all the Humanities - that means lining up classes, faculty, and rooms, and is a logistical fiddly nightmare that makes cat herding look like an orderly procession.  Tracey - as of this moment, inexplicably, and cruelly, nada.  Our Office Manager will be shared with two other departments - and who, but who, will do all the manifold tasks that have to be done that Beth and Tracey have been so good at?  More than that - much more than that - they've been instrumental in making the department one of the friendliest, most cohesive, welcoming, caring, and efficient places that I've ever worked in.  I couldn't have been Chair as much, or DGS, without them.  I feel that the administration's shift to a new, streamlined managerial system (and yes, it comes with much managerial speak) has been carried out in a ruthless and cruel way. with the minimum of consultation of the people it affects the most.  We owe Beth and Tracey so much: they were quietly feted earlier in the day, and I'm so very pleased that they came to celebrate (hold a wake?) with us all this evening.

 

Mothy - recovering well!

For a cat who's been through major dental surgery, Moth is recovering remarkably well - quite possibly better than us.  She had us very worried in the night - sitting in her litter tray - could she pee? could she not?  and by one in the morning, we were stumbling around wondering whether to call the emergency vet, or rush her off there - and then we realized that yes, she had peed ... but the uncertainty remained during the first part of the day, at a time when Alice was still at home, but I was starting the beginning process of navigating the administrative reorganization and chaos that has been dealt us (oh yes, and teaching, and meeting with my honors student, and all the rest of it).  But all's well now.  Gramsci still thinks that she smells very strange, and is wary of her (probably a good thing), and we hope that we'll soon be able to breathe again.

 

Moth's day at the dentist

As many of you know, I've spent an inordinate amount of time over the last decade or so having complicated dental work done.  Today it was Moth's turn to go to a specialty dentist ...

(she had dental resorption, which is basically like a kind of decay from below).

I love my dentists - my main dentist, anyway, and the more sadistic one has done plenty of technically very good work.  But no one has ever written my name both inside and outside the surgery room;

nor prepared a folder for me with my name illuminated (with a drawing of a moth);

nor texted Alice with a picture of my dentistry team, presumably since I don't look quite so cute in the dentist's chair.  (Moth's dentist comes from Manchester, quite bizarrely.  Or not bizarrely - a quick bit of googling tells me he used to be married to Sophie Ward - actor, writer, Simon Ward's daughter - before she got involved with the playwright Rena Brannan.  That's somehow a very LA story, and I don't know whether Moth was aware of all of it).

Our dear cat seems to have made it through ok - she's home, more than a little wobbly, but ravenously hungry.

 

lemons in the fog

It's not exactly thick fog - more like damp cloud.  It was certainly lightly precipitating when we went for a walk early this morning, and everything was gently blurred, as though one had developed cataracts overnight.  These lemons, on the next street, look as though this wasn't exactly what they'd bargained for.

 

a leaf

and a very fine leaf it is, too: a morning glory leaf outside our front door, with some strange lines and coloration and fading.  Sometimes I think one just doesn't look at individual leaves enough.  

 

a dandelion portrait

If I hadn't written a chapter on dandelions, I would never have learned what wonderful, resilient, beneficial plants they are: long roots that take moisture way into the ground (moisture that collects on those long leaves that have a gutter down their center for rain and dew and the residue from garden sprinklers to run down); early to bloom (although I'm not sure that applies in Southern California) so they're an early source of food for pollinators; invaluable as a biomonitor since they will flourish almost anywhere but those hardy roots will tell you how much heavy metal pollution there is in the soil.  And the leaves are edible, and are effective diuretics, and and and. And they're cheerful.  So don't dig them up, please.

 

the pièce de résistance

though the turkey was pretty good, too.

This tasted delicious: pumpkin cheesecake on a ginger snap/pecan base.  But I had all kinds of dreams for the top ... I painstakingly cut out a kind of large paper snowflake/star that fitted the cheesecake top, and gently gently pulsated icing sugar - that's confectioner's sugar, in the US - down over the pretty pattern, thinking I'd end up with a wonderfully designed top.  I carefully lifted off the stencil - and the sugar promptly dissolved into the cake, forming a thin transparent glaze.  I won't try that again: so much for misplaced culinary design ambition. So here's a smear of ricotta, some frozen raspberry crumbs, and a clementine slice.  

 

'twas the day before Thanksgiving

"A turkey? An Organic Turkey? An Organic HERITAGE turkey?  For ME?"  Well, not exactly, Gramsci.  We didn't go and stand in line outside McCalls for a turkey that we ordered back on November 2nd (!) just for you.  Indeed, we're not sure how much you like turkey.  However, we're looking forward to this, and to the pumpkin cheesecake that I carefully baked this afternoon ...

 

Tiles, continued

I mean, I'm just full of regret that they aren't opening a Mexican restaurant - or at the very least a teuila bar - next door: that would be very convenient ... 

 

next door has a make-over

The house next door has changed out its grass (good!) and rather nonedescript assortment of trees and bushes for some lavender, and other purple plants, and rose bushes, and some large blue pots, and a lot - a very large lot - of multicolored tiles.  This pic doesn't even show how they stretch down the front wall, and climb up the front steps, and round the windows: I'll save that for another time.  It's ... colorful.  Unmissable, even.  I thought that I was giving pride of place to golden sunlight falling on the mountains, but the apricot glow looks decidedly thickened by pollution.

 

homily of the day

This is an odd one, stenciled on the side of a transformer box overlooking the reservoir.  It's not, so far as I know, an obvious suicide spot: no tall buildings or bridges or cliffs, and if one was to clamber over the chain mesh fencing round the reservoir, then I'd have thought one would have to work fairly hard to drown oneself in the green and brackish still water.  Nor is it an obvious place for the depressed and despondent to be walking, anyway.  I did once, and tragically, see a heron that had been hit by a car on that part of the roadway - but it's not as though one could easily head off wandering into freeway traffic around here.  So I guess it's a generalist statement, and of course one agrees with its sentiments - but somehow it's not very uplifting or consolatory.

 

Los Angeles, Saturday

A sun-bleached hanging lobster (complete with plastic seaweed) might be a standard sight outside a seaside crab shack, say, but it was a little surprising on Pico.  Inevitably, it reminded me how mad I was at my mother for throwing out my own plastic lobster, begged from a fishmonger in Oxford Market, and taken by me on a pale blue ribbon to a Decadence party (I was, of course, Gerard de Nerval: yet another manifestation of my love of fancy dress parties ...).  Today was a day of catching up and running errands - such as taking the broken vacuum cleaner to the menders that was next door to the lobster.  May we also recommend John O'Groats of Pico, quite nearby, which is a cheerful and delicious traditional diner?

And then, coming back on Fountain, this extraordinary - almost Northern European - painted side to a ... a house, a small apartment block, some offices?

 

an energetic evening out

since it included much dancing, and indeed much yelling because of the music: but it was much fun (once we'd found our way in: the top pic is from our wandering entry through the car park.  The event was at Geffen Contemporary to celebrate the 25th anniversary of Cathy Opie's Dyke Deck - deck of cards, that is, not nautical.  Alice posed as a golfer for the first set - but I never managed to snag the image of her coming round in circulation on the screen.  Still, here's the group of original subjects being photographed on stage,

and here's Alice and Connie in front of one of the many poker tables.  We didn't play - I had a dim memory one of my grandmothers had taught me, but I think that was bridge.

Oh, and the dress was supposedly nineties themed.  OK for Alice, since she could wear the tee shirt she had on twenty five years ago: I was reduced to a floppy part-velvet skirt and heavy boots, and had horrible flash backs to going out to parties in, yes, the nineties.

 

graffiti on the way to work

A grey and gloomy day in Los Angeles, full of grading, teaching and admin.  Now it's raining.  So I give you some local graffiti, jusr for local color.

 

view from the dentist's

or the view from one of my dentists, at least, and I'm seriously hoping that this was the sign-off visit that it's been heralded as being, and that I never see it again, despite its magnificence.  This particular dentist is the surgeon who's been painstakingly replacing the implants that I had done over twenty years ago, and which mostly failed as a result of what was once state of the art surgery - well, not being state of the art any longer.  It has been long, and painful, and although this man's actual surgery is impeccable, his manner of treating my mouth has been like having someone rather roughly constructing an IKEA cabinet inside it.  But after much prodding, and tapping, and scanning, and X-raying today (and being inadvertently jabbed in the roof of my mouth by one of his assistants wielding a very sharp instrument, which Bled a Good Deal) - we have, in his words, reached the end of the road, in a good sense. So it's back to my wonderful regular dentist for the rest.  This called for some soft, gentle lunch: may I recommend the true ambrosia that is an Erewhon rice pudding?

I'll miss the view, though ...

 

heading home

This was the view when I left Taper Hall on campus this evening: I love the downtown skyscrapers just visible against the pink clouds.  It was a long, long day, of teaching but also of trying to give support to our office staff as they navigate the current tough situation (some of you will know all too well what I mean).  Then I picked up some mid-terms to grade: the kind of exam where you immediately read "This painting is Thomas Anshutz's Ironworkers Noontime from 1880 when slavery was in full force."  I mean - have their ears and eyes been shut for the whole semester?  So I was grateful for the beauty of the sky.

 

looking green

A gap in the rain! and you can see how green, already, everything is looking.  That's so different from this time last year, thank goodness - indeed, apparently it's been LA's wettest November on record.  I think we've had the last downpour of the day, but it looks as though there may be another round on Thursday.  And thank goodness, too, that the slope didn't wash away.  I threw down masses of poppy seeds for the spring before I left, so it'll be interesting to see where they ended up.

And for anyone following the subject matter of the last couple of days: yes, those square pale yellow boxes on the upper left are, indeed, beehives.  They belong to some neighbors, and I've never seen anyone tending to them - on the other hand, there are usually a very satisfactory number of bees buzzing around them.

 

National Gallery bees, and more

Of course, I did head off and look at pesticides and bees in the nineteenth century, and immediately found remedies to keep bees out of ripe fruit ...

and then, in the National Gallery today (reopened!  yay!) I found these, in a painting by Joseph Decker.

It was so wonderful to be able to take some details ready for class on Tuesday - like Church's Niagara, 

and from his El Río de Luz

and here's Elton John in 1851.

I'd never noticed the brass band in Homer's Home Sweet Home before.

A very smoky chimney in Whistler's Wapping,

and a Landseer in which some St Bernards are trying to lick a man back to life, his furry glove looking just like a paw.

Back in LA, now, and it's late ...

 

other people's bees

The paper that I gave today at the NAVSA conference was about bees and beehives - nineteenth century ones, but read through Wolfgang Buttress's The Hive and his Liverpool exhibition last year (I was so glad that I took as many pictures as I did).  It was a condensed version of my book's conclusion: having been asked some good questions, I can see that the conclusion itself may very well expand a little ... Earlier, much earlier in the day, what's more, I heard a paper about the children's nature writer Arabella Buckley, which included this double page on bees, and this gave me another source that I hadn't looked at - I'd wanted an example of bees in nature illustrations as attractive as this, and here, happily, it appeared - not in time for me to get it into my paper, but I was very grateful. So: bzzzzzzzz.

 

conference still life

Believe me, I've been very grateful for the fruit plate that was delivered to my room the first evening!  The grapes (there are even fewer now) were particularly good.  Conferences can be very busy!!  At least I've had time to finish my power point for tomorrow ... So many people to talk to!  Etc.  Exhausting, but NAVSA always has been one of my very favorite conferences: I just wish there weren't always so many papers that I want to hear overlapping each other ...