WHAT HAPPENED, MISS SIMONE?
What
happened was that Nina Simone was in the
middle of the Black Revolution, writing songs that reflected the terrible times
around her. “Strange Fruit” (black boys hanging on trees), four little girls
killed in a church,” Mississippi, Goddamn !!” etc. In those days, they couldn’t
sell her record because you couldn’t swear on a record cover. Her early days of classical piano segued into
a most interesting Jazz vocalist/Musician. She always wanted to play in
Carnegie Hall (Bach/Mozart) but finally played there as a foremost Jazz Lady. I
had always loved her work but didn’t know until the movie that most of her songs were drawn from her actual life. She did some wonderful songs in French later
as she lived there for many years after a few years in Liberia, the small
country in West Africa that was established for the blacks ‘to come home to’.
That didn’t work.
LE TOILET
I’ve
been studying the history of the toilet (to be more specific, the Water
Closet) which led me to the Japanese company that is the leader of
innovation in such matters, Toto.
As an architect we have to research all aspects of our work. And also, I
am a consultant to the Graton Sewer Plant, my building, Atelier One, being one
of the larger depositors of the system. I’ve always noticed that women seem to use too
much TP. Also, Japanese females flush about three times while taking a leak.
(Or leaving one). (Sqeemish readers can skip the rest of this paragraph). And
why do they do this? They want to cover up the noise they are making! Now on the other end of these things, that is
3 times the amount of water we have to process in order to make it drinkable,
which is called Tertiary Treatment, the current California standard for Sewage
Treatment Plants, although it’s against the law to drink it. But let’s not go
there. When Toto found that out (It took years of research!) the added an audio
to the toilet that is a sound of water running , I never did find out what. Also, some public
restrooms now have a noisy water fountain in them as an Art Object. My next
question is: Do American women do “cover up flushes” also? Those of us on the
other end of this flow need to know these things in order to get up a campaign
of education to alleviate the high cost of processing this water.
UNALASKA In the hey-day of my Modular building
days, (1970), I traveled to Fairbanks, Alaska
to talk to a group of Eskimos who were
interested in buying my modulars for housing in Kodiak, on the Island of
Unalaska, about 1500 miles East of Alaska. In those days, a huge ship would tie
up at the quai, hire hundreds of Esquimos to process the fish that was brought
there. I met the group at a dinner at one of the better restaurants in
Fairbanks. One of their group was a young woman, very beautiful, except
she was had a deformed finger, probably from an accident that didn’t get her to
a doctor in order to get it straightened. I was unable to find out why it happened. I
didn’t know they made them that beautiful, though. I had investigated shipping to them by sea before the meeting, and had revised my system from a 3 D to a panel type in order to fit into a
container, which were just beginning to become in use. They needed some decent housing as there were
a lot of jobs for workers on the large ships that were used as floating
factories., tied up more or less permanently. Before I got too far in the negotiations,
though, our partner, Ford Motor Co. opted to get out of the modular housing
industry.
CHOCOLATE
After a frustrating search in Belgium, we finally found Waterloo, where Napoleon
final met it. Across from our hotel we spied a Greek looking store called “Leonidas”
and found it to be a Chocolate Shop. We bought a few pieces and afterward,
always looked for the same name. We did find one near Harry’s Bar in Paris,
Medina bought a full box of one of each type of candy. I was too embarrassed by
that and bought at least two pieces of each type. Chocolate didn’t appear in Europe until
about 1500 (Let’s give Columbus credit for something, for God’s sake!). It was a far cry from what you & I eat but in 1815, a Dutch chemist Van
Houten introduced Alkaline salts into the mix which made it cheaper to make.
Later, in1879, Rudolphe Lindt (Swiss) invented a Conching machine, this made
the chocolate finer and able to cast into bars. It was used as a drink prior to
that. Interestingly, animals can’t eat
it ( as it contains Theobromine) and is toxic to them. So that’s why you look
for Belgian or Swiss chocolateers.
Meanwhile,
Leonidas Kestekides, a Greek-American,
founded the largest chocolate company in Europe in 1916. Beginning in
Brussels, there are hundreds of shops all over now. His logo is a Sparten Greek God. (He should
have used the dollar symbol $$$).
COCAINE PROBLEM
Whenever this comes up, someone
says , “Well, Coca Cola got it’s name from the Cocaine that was in it.”. In a way, true. In 1884 the original recipe for it did contain
some of the drug, but by 1906 the Food & Drug folks managed to get that out
of the hands of little old ladies who were consuming it by the case, Joy’s
aunt, for one. However, that kind of put the brakes on Pope Leo 13, who carried
a hip-flask of Mariani Wine , awarded a Gold Medal to Angelo Mariani, the owner
of Mariani Wines, which contained enough cocaine to be commendable and award
winning, and make Catholic dogma palatable to the brother. (And to think
drinkers now-a-days complain about a little sulfates!).
AN OPEN LETTER TO ALL YOU CATTLE
Ever since I found the plethora
of padlocks on the ARTISTS’ BRIDGE in Paris, I have been ranting to you about
the mindless effort the hordes of thousands or misguided lovers who believe
that if they buy a padlock and throw away the key (Into the Seine, can you
imagine the thousands of keys under the bridge?), your love will be
everlasting. Listen up, idiots! Love is not connected in any way with your
overloading the most beautiful bridge in
Paris with a heavy padlock that has gotten to be such a big problem that the guardrails were
collapsing, even endangering the whole bridge, as you can imagine( only if you
have a functioning brain) the huge weight that is endangering the structure. Fortunately, someone in the gigantic beaurocracy
of Paris ordered all this hardware cut off before the entire bridge collapsed. This
malignancy of Love has spread to other venues of tourist areas , for example ,
to the balcony mentioned in Shakespeares’ Romeo & Juliet. We visited (under duress, mind you) the site
last year and found every possible place around this had been maligned with a
Love Lock. Aaaagh! Naturally, this disease was conceived by some simple minded
American Tourist in Paris a few years ago. We’re at a point where we tell folks
we are Canadians if they ask if we are American. It’s sooo embarrassing.
THIS CALL IS MONITERED
“Talk about things I hate”! Look,
as I tell the operator whenever I hear this phrase,” I don’t give a rats’ ass
if this call is monitored. By who, the NSA? It means I am wasting a few
precious seconds, trying to struggle through this fucking maze to find someone
to talk to because I have a problem.
