Sitting in the Garden I visited Green Thumb Nursery in San Marcos today. Green Thumb has suddenly become my go-to local nursery owing to the diversity of products that they offer. My usual favorite nursery is Waterwise Botanicals. They are a very serious nursery that only stocks drought-tolerant plants and a whole array of roses, which are decidedly not doubt-tolerant. In many ways they offer the best quality of a wide variety of plant matter…
The Real Reality TV Hero We all spent the better part of five years dealing with Donald J. Trump, who was, by any rational standards an abject failure as a real estate developer and general businessman. Those of us from New York City (I was there 1976 through 2019), and especially those of us who spent some of those years in the real estate development game, as I did between 2008 and 2017, were always…
Shielding Oneself Yesterday, I wandered over to the far north side of the back hillside, a place at have largely ignored for the past two months as I’ve focused all of my attention on the Hobbit House on the south side of the back hillside. I had seen that one of my metal agave sculptures had been upended by the strong winds we had had earlier in the week. I had also seen Joventino spending…
Oh, Amelia I have mentioned that National Geographic is one of my last vestigial magazine subscriptions. I don’t stack them side-by-side in yellow-spined glory on some dusty basement shelf, as I remember them from my youth. But I do let them linger on the bedside table, the office glass-top table and the bathroom magazine caddy well beyond their otherwise useful life. I actually do glance through and read parts of the hard glossy copy, but…
Of Mice and Men Tonight we are watching John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men that was made in 1992 with Gary Sinise and John Malkovich. Steinbeck wrote this novella (only 107 pages) in 1937 while he was gathering and creating his stories of the Great Depression and the travails of the Dust Bowl and all the soulful stories of real people caught in the backwash of a world gone sideways. Steinbeck was from Salinas, California,…
The Departure of Prosperity Today I spent the day driving Kim, Thomas and me up to Pasadena to see Kim’s family. Before going I went for bagels and cream cheese and to fill up the tank of the car with gas. It’s 107 miles to our nephew’s house in Pasadena, and with the small detour through West Hollywood to see Gary & Oswaldo for a late lunch, we would cover 260 miles. At an average…
Bending Metal When I got the idea from my daughter Carolyn to build a playhouse on my back hillside, I was sent pictures of the Ithaca Children’s Garden structure that gave her the idea in the first place. The small structure had thick stucco or adobe walls, a small rounded door in front and another two on the sides, and a planted green roof that was arched with large eve overhangs that made it look…
When Will You Make an End? In the 1965 epic film, The Agony and the Ecstasy, Rex Harrison as Pope Julius II has commissioned Michelangelo (Charlton Heston) to paint the Sistine Chapel. As we all know, the Sistine Chapel ceiling is the best of the High Renaissance artworks and was finally completed in 1512 after four years of effort by the ornery Michelangelo. In the movie, Pope Julius starts asking Michelangelo regularly, and eventually on…
The Not-So-Great Gatsby I was just reminded that its been 100 years since that summer on West Egg (the North Shore of Long Island) when Nick Carraway and Jay Gatsby dallied with the rich and famous of East Egg. Clearly, 1922 was a carefree moment in U.S. history when the War to end all wars was behind them and the world looked like one big party that would never end. The old money crowd was…
The Hanseatic League My vague awareness of Medieval History reminds me that in the Twelfth Century or thereabouts, the craftsmen of the northern Germanic countries of Europe gathered themselves into a massive and extended guild of sorts to protect their interests as they grew their commercial enterprises. This collective or union was called The Hanseatic League and it existed as a powerful business force in the region for several centuries. This confederation was put together…