Steve Hely's Blog, page 118

McConaughey Story

Study of McConaughey is always rewarding.  The best part of the above video is the first few seconds :12-:36

 

It’s unfortunate that used copies of I Amaze Myself!, McConaughey’s mother’s autobiography, are unreasonably priced.  I’m interested in more stories like this.

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“The messenger of this incredible movement”

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Muhammad leads Abraham, Moses and Jesus in prayer. from medieval Persian manuscript Source: ”The Middle Ages. An Illustrated History” by Barbara Hanawalt (Oxford University Press, 1998). Source. 

is that

a) how Muhammad is described in the Quran

or

b) how Sean Spicer describes President Donald Trump?

Cool

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NYT article about Malia Obama’s secret trip to Bolivia:

The Bolivian media reported that President Obama called President Evo Morales to request his government’s cooperation in ensuring discretion and security for his daughter’s trip. White House officials declined to comment and would not confirm that the two leaders had spoken. Mr. Morales often rails about what he calls American conspiracies to undermine leftist governments, including his own. The two countries have not exchanged ambassadors since 2008.

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La Paz photographed by Helytimes

Very cool.  This is not the vibe projected by the new president’s children:

Ms. Obama was afforded no special treatment during the arduous trek, and performed chores, including cooking, along with her fellow travelers, Mr. Mamani said.

I wonder if she picked up a preserved llama fetus?

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Helytimes photo

Learn more about Bolivia and Evo Morales in this fine volume:

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sent in by reader Woodrow F.

Buy this book on Amazon or at your local indie bookstore:

Kevin Starr

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Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times

A real hero of mine died over the weekend, Kevin Starr, writer of a multivolume history of California.  What a dapper gent!  (Also love when you read an obituary of a guy like this and on top of everything he spent two years as a tank lieutenant in West Germany). Among his books:

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What great covers!  On that alone he’s a contributor and deserves his place in the California Hall Of Fame!  In this great interview with Patt Morrison, Starr says that he never got to the ’60s:

Is this the last “Dream” volume?

I don’t know. My God, I’m 68. I’ve got this [other] beautiful book about Catholic culture coming to a Protestant nation, and I’ll get criticized because I’m emphasizing how nice the Protestants were to us! Someone else will have to write the ’60s, although I can give them the title: That would be “Smoking the Dream.”

The only one of these I’ve tucked into is Coast Of Dreams:

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A big, deep book, but I love how Starr includes cultural and personal details:

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Johanna Boss indeed:

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or this about Hmong immigrants:

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Starr boiled his multivolumes down into this attractive one volume:

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without losing any of the flavor:

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Couple more gems from the interview:

How do you keep all your research organized?

They talk about San Francisco sourdough bread, that the yeast in the bread is alive since 1849. I started a bibliography of California that I have kept alive for over 45 years, every time I come across a reference. I’ll read something by you, and that’s a reference.

It seems like you keep most of it in your head too.

The Irish didn’t read and write for a couple of thousand years, and I think we developed good memories and recall. We have a sense of the revelatory detail. I look for them.

It’s a funny thing — when I go “blah, blah, blah” argumentatively, that’s when my editor cuts me the most. One reviewer said, “Oh, he’s got great description, great narrative, but he doesn’t give us the great explanation.” I try to let the reader get his own explanation. That becomes part of the discourse the book engenders. But if you tie yourself up with a big explanation, it’s dated in six months.

On looking at old yearbooks:

Is there a part of this book you especially liked doing?

For the chapter on my own generation, I went through hundreds and hundreds of yearbooks, from the late ’40s until ’63, ’64. It’s not scientific research; it’s very impressionistic. I always thought the women of my age group got short shrift because the women’s liberation movement came slightly after. You look at the yearbooks and you see the future homemakers of America — hurray for that — but you also see them in the engineers club. You see minority kids as student body presidents at a time when everyone was supposed to be terminally racist. Yearbooks are genres; they’re also folk art, folk documentation.

Style:

You still dress like Harvard, not Hermosa Beach.

When I was a boy, I delivered newspapers to Brooks Brothers. I looked in the windows and saw those things. At Harvard, when my professors came to class, it was showtime. So possibly that was it.

Misconceptions:

What are the canards about California that you hate most?

That everybody’s just sitting around being sloppy and a slacker.

Seventy percent of the population is between San Diego and Marin County, and 70 miles from the coast. That’s an extraordinarily prized and privileged Riviera of universities, homes, etc. It’s got its problems, and it’s not perfect; there’s lots of poverty too.

It’s highly competitive to be here. People don’t come to California to drop out anymore. It’s a very striving place.

Who should be on California’s money?:

If we had our own currency in California, whose faces should be on it?

Josiah Royce, the great Grass Valley-born philosopher who first formulated what California would be about. Isadora Duncan — her grandparents came here in a covered wagon. The young Native American woman stranded on San Nicolas Island, the “Island of the Blue Dolphins” story. Gov. [Jose] Figueroa, who died trying to redistribute land to the Native Americans. There’s all kinds of wonderful people. If we had living people, I’d put Joan Didion there.

His childhood:

You grew up in an orphanage?

My mother had a nervous breakdown, and my parents separated. Roman Catholic Social Services put us [Starr and his brother] in an orphanage for five years. I loved the place. It was a tremendous education, great nurturing. There was a great pool table, a great library, a camp up in the mountains. My experience was very different from some of these horror stories you hear.

From a 2004 profile by Susan Salter Reynolds in the LAT:

Starr is a man who believes in institutions and speaks about them with a kind of lofty, creative reverence. The office of state librarian, for example, “expressed the dignity of the state.” USC is “an ark that lifts all boats.” He talks about being a citizen and about civility with the same almost innocent, 19th century passion.

He is a self-described centrist, a conservative Democrat of the old school. The current election, because it is so divisive, seems to have already slammed a door in Kevin Starr’s face. “We need liberals to point out where power relationships might be going wrong and conservatives to remind us that there are cycles in history,” he says. “I won’t go to either camp.”

A supporter of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, Starr is a firm believer in the importance of business vitality. But he leans toward a liberal social democracy on issues such as day-care for children, healthcare and housing. Democracy depends, Starr warns, on a “de-escalation of the cultural agendas of both parties.”

 

Ways Of Seeing

Reading NYT obit of 90 year old provocative art critic John Berger:

John Peter Berger was born in London on Nov. 5, 1926, and raised in only moderate comfort, with little high culture, in what he described as a working-class home.

questions:

in how much comfort were you raised?

in how much comfort would The New York Times say you were raised?

how much comfort is best for child?

Ended up watching the whole first episode of Ways Of Seeing there on Youtube and thought it was great!

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Best photos I took in 2016

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Vancouver Island

[image error]Joshua Tree[image error]Gaililee, RI

[image error]Death Valley[image error]Tofino[image error]Cambridge

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[image error]New Zealand[image error]Two Harbors[image error]Los Angeles

 

Saucy

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some pretty saucy pics on the website for the Theodore Roosevelt Birthplace.  Should there be a warning for kids?

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source: wiki

Was checking it out because it occurred to me that TR must be the last president before you-know-who who was born in New York City.

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source

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Few have ever ventured

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having a look at my National Geographic map of the Channel Islands

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says the NPS:

The freighter Chickasaw, with its cargo of children’s toys, ran aground on the south side of the island in a heavy storm in 1962. Since the time of this photo, the Chickasaw has further deteriorated leaving very little wreckage visible to visitors.

and from this one, CA Wreck Divers:

The wreck of the Chickasaw remained one of Southern California’s most prominent wrecks as her large hulk stood fast for many years.   However, the exposed site gradually wore down her hull and those that visited her periodically saw her swallowed up the ocean, piece by piece, as her hull disintegrated into the surf line.  Today, nothing remains visible of the ship, except for her smoke stack that lies on the shore.

Given the unprotected location, sharp wreckage and high surf typically found on the site, few have ever ventured to dive the wreck.

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The Northern Part Of The Island by plane777 on wiki

Thurgood’s take, and Yoichi Okamoto

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From Stephen L. Carter’s 2017 predictions, via Tyler Cowen.  (Helytimes is increasingly becoming a Tyler Cowen processing center).

Thurgood:

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source

That photo is by Yoichi Okamoto:

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Looking a bit like Fredrik Wikingsson there, and here are more by Yoichi:

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found at this NYT slideshow of his work from 2013.

Twins Seven Seven

[image error]via Tyler Cowen I learn about Nigerian artist Prince Twins Seven Seven

or more formally Prince Taiwo Olaniyi Wyewale-Toyeje Oyekale Osuntoki.  He received his nickname because he was the only surviving child from seven distinct sets of twins.

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He came to the United States in the late 1980s and settled in the Philadelphia area, although he traveled abroad frequently. His life entered a turbulent period, filled with drinking and gambling, he said. Destitute, he found work as a parking-lot attendant for Material Culture, a large Philadelphia store that sells antiquities, furnishings and carpets.

When the owner learned that Prince Twins Seven-Seven was an artist, he had him decorate the store’s wrapping paper. Later, he was given a small room to use as a studio.

from his obituary

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