WHO WAS THAT MASKED MAN?

In the late 1950’s when I was an apprenticing architect in Scottsdale, Arizona,. I had just decided not to work with FL Wright at Taliesin West as I couldn't afford the $650 fee he asked for the privilege of pouring concrete in the 120 degree heat. I was care-taking (freeloading) a fabulous mansion in the center of Scottsdale designed by Shwieker & Elting Architects from Chicago. The owner, Upton, a railroad magnate, didn't like the house, once it was finished as it was too rustic for him, all rough concrete walls and redwood inside  and out. It fit me perfectly.

   Meanwhile, Paolo Solari paid me $1 an hour to dig out his first underground house on Doubltree Road,  Then I was able to pay DK Taylor, Architect, $1 an hour to work for him in the evenings & weekends. By this time, I had already had my Degree in Architecture but needed to work in the trades as well as with some really inspiring Architects.

  One day Paolo told me he had a call from a dancer who needed help setting up for a performance in Scottsdale.  No one seemed to know who he was but his organizational abilities were remarkable. I got a friend, Garrison, and DK to assist and we helped this crazy man for a couple of days  setting up a huge tent. He had sent flyers all over Phoenix and had a good crowd for the one performance, which was pretty amazing, given his performances were pretty far out for the Phoenix crowd.  This guy was no amateur, but a seasoned performer and promoter. None of us knew who he was but were all tremendously impressed by his avant garde work. It was really a one man show, the far out music pre-recorded. The next day we helped him take down the tent  and pack up his sets and costumes. Then he was gone. Who was that masked man? we all asked.

  Over the years I had forgotten his name but recently wondered if I could find out his identity.  Fifty years later, I began searching for a far out dancer traveling around in the fifties. Merce Cunningham's picture really did it, as he was kind of a strange looking dude, but a total bundle of energy at all times.  Reading of him and John Cage’s music, which he used, , it couldn't be anyone else. Merce's dancing was as far out as John Cage's music. They made a terrific pair.

DR. FRANKENSTEINS' MONSTER

I recently saw the movie "Frankenstein" the original 1931 movie by the legendary horror master, James Whale. starring Boris Karloff. It's in several short sections, and I was surprised to see how it deviated from Mary Shellys' book. For instance, Mr. Monster doesn't get his made to order bride until the second movie (Bride of Frankenstein). Even more interesting,  it's fun to see how Mel Brooks version (Young Frankenstein) uses so much of the the original story plus ideas from the movie. You may remember when the monster encounters the cute little girl, but in the movie, the monster throws her in the lake and she drowns. Also, the great scene with Gene Hackman, the blind hermit is pretty close but hilarious.

GUILTY

    Do you realize that the TSA "screeners" assume you re 'guilty' until proven innocent (Strip search!)?  We have become the 'cowardly Lion', own and police  the whole world, but we are scared shitless of our shadow.  Pretty soon we'll be searched when we enter the country.

WHAT  AILS THE RAILS?

  Everyone must know that a high speed train from San Francisco to Los Angeles would be a tremendous boon to travelers, don't they? But wait. There are a couple of caveats involved here, like where is the station in SF & LA? Are they near the center of the cities? How will riders get to and from the stations? Once those little details are worked out, how many stops are involved. How long are the stops? European fast trains stop for 5 minutes, period. Can we do that here? Are we able to utilize any existing rail right of ways?

  First of all, no state can afford to fund something like this, it has to be a Federal deal. To build only 29 miles in the middle is shear madness.  Secondly, Environmental Reports will kill any Mega structure here in the  US.  Lawyers are flocking to this project like flies on honey,(or fruit flies in my wine).  I can't believe Gov. Brown is using the analogy of the 'Little train that could’. First of all, that train was pulling freight cars. We can still do that with our current rail system, but we can forget carrying passengers around, we just can't do it properly.  Just try to ride a train from San Diego to Seattle. You'll find yourself shunted off to a siding for hours, waiting for a late freight.  Why can't we keep projections of costs somewhat in line with the estimates?.

   A fast train should be designed from Seattle to San Diego, then somehow get right of ways (Too bad we sold so many of them).  How about getting out of our wars where we're killing thousands of innocent civilians, maybe even cutting back on our manned missions to Mars, use the money to generate jobs here in train construction in lieu of war materials. We could still sell arms to both sides in a rebel societies, couldn't we?

    Can't we do a little research of other trains, like France ?  They somehow understood the problem from the beginning. For instance, They have a train from Paris to Marsielle, NON-STOP.  Or, catch a train in Lille, where the Chunnel train from England stops, and it will stop at DeGaulle Airport, then on to LeMons, not stopping at Paris. That's comparable to going from Sacramento, stopping at SFO Airport only , then continuing down to Anaheim.

  I haven't heard any details related to this mega-project, like how long are the stops? The European TGV stops for FIVE minutes, everyone has to get off and everyone on during that time. Thru one door per two cars. But think about it , we have 24 new stations. If we stop at them all, it will take two hours just for the stops! How do we get to LA - SF in 2.5 hours if we're stopping all the time?

  Which brings up another issue. Our speed train shows giant new stations, all glass roofs for our stops. Why do we have to have mega stations for micro trains?

   Let's do a breakdown of costs involved ;

  1. Buy right of ways.

   2.  build infrastructure (tracks, bridges, tunnels)

   3.  build 24 stations

   4.  have the Japanese build the trains. Are they turbine or electric?

   5.  Set up funding to support it for life. Like the Golden Gate Bridge. As soon as it was paid off, they burdened it with a transit system that increases losses each year.

      What to do?  You can't be all things to all people (contrary to the democratic gridlock). The very fact that the EIR costs will be monumental, with the end result that will hardly change anything. The Sierra Club lawyers are already chewing round the ankles of the project.    It's already gone from 33 billion to 92 billion in a few years?

OOOps! I forgot to add the Design & Engineering costs. Sorry!

JAZZMAN GONE

  He lived and blew a good, long life. Jim Hall, a modern jazz guitarist left his body & his guitar recently.  I met him two or three times in unusual circumstances.  We had dinner in a Sunset Strip joint when his ex-wife and I were up from Laguna Beach to dig the jazz scene for a night. I knew that he had been with Chico Hamilton's Chamber Jazz Quartet prior to getting his own Trio together.  Previously, a few years earlier, I had met him and Chico when I was an apprentice architect in Scottsdale Arizona, supplying the band with cannabis and striving to beat Chico in chess matches long after midnight in a small garage I had renovated for part of the rent. I was always surprised that Hall was so complacent that I had is woman (to hipsters, she was his 'Old  Lady'). I thought I would like to be like him when I grew up. But later, I realized he was really glad I took her off his hands.

TRIP ADVISOR

 

During the last month of our trip to Eurpoe this summer, we rented a small SUV to get around Brittany and Normandy. It came with a GPS which was new for me but I adapted well enough to use it all the time. We generally stayed in a village for about a week,then moved on. I would program the GPS (which came with a British womans' voice) in the morning, and just follow her directions for the rest of the day. Of course, at the same time it showed a map on the screen of exactly where we were. However, every once in a while, for no apparent reason, it would blast out a starting trumpet for the horse race at Churchill Downs. No way to discover why as the directions in the glove compartment were in French. About our last day, going into Nantes, it blasted out and we wondered if it had anything to do with a speed trap, except we rarely ever saw a Gendemerie car of the French State Policia. It was surely the great wonders of the world, that this thing could track us almost to the foot anywhere in the world. I guess we have NASA and the space race to thank for that. She was pretty good most of the time, but occasionally she would drop the ball and tell us to take the third turn-off on a roundabout instead of the second one. This really screwed us up for a while until we could get it all sorted out. I have to give her her due on one of the faue pauxs as we finally determined that the turn-off, an on-ramp to a free way, had been closed and was patched up pretty good. Anyway, everything was good until a month after we returned to the States, we received a four page letter from the Ministry of Finance. In French of course. The envelope had our address scratched out and California written in. It was originally addressed to Sebastopol, CA and it had gone to Canada first. At least it got here eventually. However, it had taken a month to get to us and it appeared that there was a deadline in which to pay our ticket, as we deducted that this is what we were dealing with. Asking around to our friends to see if anyone spoke French, we found that our neighbor, Dan, was fluent. He told us to go to a online place where the whole thing was in English, showing us how to pay the damn thing. We sent them about 60 Euros and it seemed to be the end of that as we were still within the timeframe before it increased 20 Euros.

MARY'S GIRDLE

Heres' another case where the Catholic Church needs to get its miracles in order. We spent a week in a village in France, Puy de Notre Dame, with a pretty large 12th century church, built due to the fact they had the girdle of the Virgin. I don't know what miracle is associate with a girdle, but I just came across an article about the Italian revolution about 1500, that the church of Prato (Northern Italy) was built because they had the girdle if Mary. This is the first time I heard of an article of clothing being a sacred object, unlike all the foreskins of Jesus that are spread throughout the world. What happened, did they run out of body parts? There must be a back story here somewhere. Was Mary really that fat? Jeez. A girdle!

NO MORE WAR HERE

Am I to assume that the war with Iraq is over? Did we win? Golly, I hope we got ahold of some of that oil.

Here's a bit of news. The Japs bombed Pearl Harbor because they were of the opinion that we were making a land grab on the area in Indonesia that had the only oil wells of the Japanese. Whoa! That sounds like one of our current scenarios, doesn't it?

How did we do in Vietnam? Did we win? I really never heard much about that. Other than the 50,000 deaths of our young men.

How about Korea? We sure beat the pants off them North Koreans and Chinese, and Russians, didn't we. That only killed about 40,000 of our young men (and a few young women)..

And what is in Afghanistan that we want so badly? They don't have any oil do they? Or is this a continuation of the Jihad Crusades that we (The Christians) lost in the 12th century. Never too late for vengeance, eh King Bush?

BOOK REPORT

'The Untold History of the United States" by Oliver Stone & P. Kuznick

Lots of depressing stuff here. Pretty much takes you on a trip of our claim of Empire by crushing weaker countries, Islands. From the Philippines “Remember the Main!" to our current interest in Iraq & Afghanistan, see how we have become a warrior nation of "Gunboat Diplomacy".

Lots of wonderful quotes like;

Secrets: - “If Manning had committed war crimes instead of exposing them, he would be a free man" and "Charging Julian Assange with conspiracy to commit espionage would be setting a precedent with a charge that more accurately could be characterized as 'Conspiracy to commit journalism'".

They give a unbiased view of most of our recent presidents. Pointing out how Obama is actually perpetuating Bush's policies. He is tightening Security/Surveillance apparatus. Although he turned down public campaign financing (the first) he went to Morgan Stanley, JP Morgan Chase, Goldman Sachs and Big Pharm for his money.

Health Reform; He deleted Drug importation and bulk negotiating, also, no single payer issue, even though it works in most industrial countries. We got expanded coverage but the insurance Companies reaped a windfall. Can you believe 3,300 lobbyists spent 263 million dollars on the Health Bill. Like I said "We have a government by the Lobbyists for the people",

NASCAR

I guess it all began during prohibition, with moonshiners hopping up their old jalopies to outrun the Federales. Now, they use special constructed cars that mimic current auto designs but cost $150,00 each. + an engine = $230,000. But wait, there's more. Each team needs about 10 cars to be able to be a contender. In essence, it costs about 20 million to sponsor a team (per year?). Now can you tell me why the US Army and the Navy each spend all this money to field a racing team to attract young men to die in our quest for dominance of the world? (Called 'Helping countries gain freedom').

BUBBLES?

One of the negative aspects of a small business is that one has to be a one man band. In other words, an architect, a drafter, a bookkeeper, a secretary, a salesman and last but not least, the janitor. I have mastered all the above except the last part, “cleaning man”. My wife is always ragging on me about the toilet in my office and recently she took it into her own hands and gave me a package of "Cleaning Bubbles". I have watched micro-seconds of TV ads about these, and it looks wonderful. My problems are over! these little suckers just get in your toilet bowl and whiz around on their little brushes and presto! Bowl is sparkling clean, clean enough to eat off, I'll bet. However, in reality, it comes with a kind of a fat hypodermic needle without the needle, and you just puff it on in small globs to the side of the bowl. According to the M&%@#$ F^&%^# directions, this miserable little glob of shit will automatically clean you toilet in... it really doesn't say how long.....but let me tell you how long it won't clean it. I've been flushing religiously for days now and believe me when I report that my bowl is still just as disgusting as it was before my magic treatment. How do they get away with this? Isn't there any "Truth in Advertising" code somewhere? Or maybe this is some obscure section of the U.S. government, and has no responsibilities to it's constituents. I have a solution, I'll just ban my wife from the office, or at least make her use the public toilet nearby.

ARCHITECT'S FAILURES

  Each trip to Europe I like to visit some past architect's failure and this year was no different. Joy & I took a day trip from Paris by train to see what remains of the tallest cathedral in France.  The cathedral of Beauvais is the one that defined how high one could build these monuments in the 1300's.  the sketches on the right show Beavais , with it's 450' high nave, about half of which is still standing, albiet with some help with a lot of heavy timber bracing. You see the little ant in the middle? That's a person.  The cathedral on the left is Amiens, built in 1220, which is one of the more successful churches and all still standing.

 

 They have been able to do some restoration on the main entry, which is really on the side of the transept.
All of the building to the left of this has collapsed a couple of times. No mention of how many miserable lives were lost.

On the left you see some timber bracing that was installed in the 20th century.

WINE SHOPPING

I do my wine buying at "Ye Olde Wine Shop" in Graton. It's a bustling little place taking up about an entire city block. One has to be careful not to get run over by the forklifts running around but the place smells good.  One of the perks of working in wine country is the accessability of of places like this. I have done design work for the winery over the years so I get an employee discount. Therefore, every couple of months I have to pick up a few cases of cabernet & Zinfandel, maybe a few Reisling from the Mosel Valley during our hot summers. I made my own wine for 25 years but it got to the point where I could buy really good wine for less than it cost me to make. But that's not the point, right? One must learn to be self sufficient, right?  I am proud that over the years I have taught about 15 people how to make wine. Some of them (Like Dodson) even won " best of Show" of the amatuer group (non-commercial).

ARTISTE IN MONTMARTE
You will occasionally find me at a sidewalk cafe in Paris sketching the inhabitants and environs.
However, I'm gearing up for a Tuscany Spring , one of my favorite haunts.

SOCIALIZED MEDICINE
   With all the brauhau about the cost of medicare & such, I would like to relate some of my experiences with medical emergencies in Europe.  A few years ago we visited a medievil town in France called Danard.  We had a nice lunch at a Pizza place on the terrace but our waitress had a bad case of the snuffles & we didn't like the sight of that. Anyway, we traveled on and found ourselves in Brugge, Belgium and I wasn't feeling so great. We had a room on the 3rd floor of a small hotel just a block from the main Kirk (Church) and square. But I developed such a profound coughing fit that I began to see large bruises on the outside of my stomach. Here we were, in a small hotel with restuarant & bar with 26 local Belgian  beers on tap!! and I was too ill to drink any of them. Time to get professional help. Our concierge reccommended a doctor who I called and was able to see us  that afternoon.  We walked over about two blocks , found the doctor's office and waited for about one half an hour before she could see us. Joy was having similar problems, but fortunately less.  There was a waiting room, an examining room & probably a small office. She looked younger than my daughters but did a quick examination of us both, gave us about five different prescriptions , different for each of us.  When finished, we asked how to pay for all this, and she said she could charge it, but it would cost a lot of paperwork, but if we paid cash , it would cost 30 Euros each.  Really!! We laid 60 E on her and boogied to the farmacia, next door to our hotel.  We loaded up on all these drugs, paid about 40 E. each, and began our treatments. In a few days, we both were feeling fine & able to search out Belgian chocalats, Belgian waffles (hard to find) and began tasting some Belgian beers, even visiting/tramping around in  a 300 year old brewery. Viva la Belgique!

EUROPE MUSINGS

MYSTERY BRIDGES
OK, so your confronted with this apparation and wonder how in hell does this thing work? We think it's a bridge. We finally find a elephone number to call and within minutes, this whole damn thing rocks and lifts the roadway up over our heads so we can pass under it. 

 The next one was just as weird. When closed, the pendulums are straight up in the air. The photo shows it starting to open by pivoting on the pylons. when open, all are horizontal. I never did find out how it started to open, as the roadway had to have some gismo that lifted it up a couple of feet first.

 

The next bridge was just as daunting and it blocked our access to our mooring for the night. We found a number to call the Port Kommandant, who ran out of his boat, across the bridge , and pushed the right button to raise it. This one had two large steel tubes across the top, that when turned, coiled the steel cable up and raised the pedestrian deck.

Brugge pedestrian bridge

I was accosted on the streets of Ghent by a small group of videoites who wanted to know if I could identify any European countries. I did pretty good, even started in on the Balkans. Good thing she didn't want me to identify any North-East States in US.

We picked up our boat in Niewport, Belgium, stayed a day to shop for supplies )Foof & wine).
Here you see Joy & Medina enjoying dinner in the mess hall.

 Here is our "Le Boat" moored behind he Opera house in Ghent, within walking distance of old town center.

 

TRY OUT

If you find the following stuff strangely writen, it wasn't me. I just downloaded DRAGON, a voice recognition program. I can't get the punctuation & paragraphs yet & sometimes it gets weird. I was talking about penneys which it read as “panties”. Dirty Mind!

TOO BUSY?

The burning question of the hour is: was Socrates literate? after all he didn't seem to write anything. Wasn't it all the stuff that Aristotle wrote after Socrates was dead?

THOUGHT

Another thought; You don't have to fill up the space all around you with words. For it's already filled up with nothing.

JUST ONE MORE THING THE US IS LAGGING IN!

The US is the most developed country still hanging onto credit and debit cards with those silver magnetic stripes. The rest of the world has switched to smart chip-based cards. You might as well write the credit info on a postcard as everything on it can be easily copied . As it is, it costs us billions each year.

This smarty card can't be copied as they contain a microchip that can only be unlocked with the right key, also that cannot be duplicated. Don't despair, there are moves to swap cards in a few years maybe in 2015.

What is what is it about us that we can't keep up with the rest of the world are payment industry is locked up in a chicken and egg quandary stores have little incentive to install new readers for smart cards if banks above viable banks don't issue them and banks won't issue them because stores will accept them. Stop

well so much for getting the job done in protecting the consumer since we're on the subject of dysfunctional that may rant a bit about our money problems most of us have never seen are one dollar coin. I see that the Canadians have finally done it do they call it the loony. Surprise! We have two. As a matter of fact, we have 2.4 billion of them stored in giant bunkers. Your legislators can't understand what the problem is. I mean we've tried Susan B Anthony, Sacajawea, John Adams, but golly, we just don't like carrying around a heavy coin. Never mind that the entire Europe has had no problem with it (no and gladly use a one dollar coin of course there seems to be one small caveat here, these coins weigh about as much as a nickel which. Our nickel is not made of metal coating made of different metals and using a computer generation design. I just about lost it when we came out with our new line of quarters, each new one had a different crappy design for another state on the back. I'm sure the American (read bad taste) public was really exited excited about all the bra-ha about it,

but I'm sure the vending machine, laundromat operators, don't think it is such a great advantage in our monetary policy. Let's get rid of a few things, like It costs two cents to make a penny and $.11 for each nickel. Sounds like langworthy economics . When it gets to a point where I won’t pick up a coin on the street, it’s time to rethink some policy here. About now, I have to think a while before I pick up a nickel.

OLYMPIC GAMES

They finally did the unthinkable. They dropped one of the four original events, wrestling.

Even the marathon is seen only at the beginning and finish in the Stadium. Look how popular the stupid sport of couples ice dancing is. Next thing you know they'll have the new hide and seek games. These can take place in the Stadium as long as you can erect some good hiding places like trees, old sheds, etc.

THE STEEL RAINBOW

Remember Chernobyl? 25 years ago they frantically cobbled together a sarcophagus to contain the wreckage to contain the danger. We haven't heard much recently but a French construction company is building a huge steel rainbow to cover the whole mess for the next 100 years, funded by a consortium of 29 ANSI countries to the tune of 2.1 billion. It will be the largest movable structure ever built, put together of prefabricated sections off to the side and it will be jacked 300 meters sideways to cover the mass, then using built-in robots they will dismantle the reactor, & hope to finish in 2014.

ONE EYED JACKS

I always wondered about the title of Brando's movie “ One Eyed Jacks”, one of my favorites. Someone said it's a card game, but I like the idea that it's from the kids game of jacks. If you play the game with one eye closed it is more difficult to pick up the jacks between the ball bounces. To further my research, it seems to be an ancient game of Greek or Roman origin, not only that but it was called “ knuckle bones” as it was from a sheep ankle bone around1200 BC.

THIS JUST IN

They finally have a TV station for dogs. dog TV will only cost your dog five dollars a month but you will feel better about leaving him all day without some entertainment. I say just get reruns of American Idol that would put him about on the same brain level as humans.

E pluribus unum plumber

Next time you see your plumber make sure he understands that the name is Roman plumbum. As they ran water to those Romans in all those lead water pipes around, it eventually poisoned and killed off the Roman Empire. Nowadays. Plumbers try to kill you with their billing.