All posts by Steve Stern

Happy Summer

Around home, Photography, Psychological Musings

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On the Solstice, we went to a lovely party at Beth and Howard Dunaier’s Kenwood home. They asked everybody to bring pictures of summer for a collage. It is a great idea and hard for me  because almost all the pictures represent events or happenings of summer, not  actual summer. I look at a picture of the beach and I think Going to the Beach or Ahh, Southern California, not Summer. I see a picture of a Fourth of July Parade and I think Fourth of July, not Summer.

I see a picture of cars racing and I think of the cars even though Summer is the prime racing season.

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I think that, even though I am a photographer, summer is not about images. For me, anyway. Summer is about feeling. It is about feeling the soft afternoon air while walking across a Sierra meadow still slightly green from the summer snow melt.

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It is about the feeling of the cooling fog coming in over the Santa Cruz hills after a hot afternoon.

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It is about sleeping with the windows open and the smell of dry grass. It is about golden light.

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Mad Men and Packard

Television

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First you write for yourself, then you write for others, then you write for money. Somebody famous.

Michele and I watched the last episode of Mad Men -Season 6 – again last night. I like watching movies twice; somehow, I am not as caught up in the moment and it is easier to follow. On TV programs – that sounds so archaic – I have watched parts of Justified more than once but never Mad Men. My loss.

As a car guy, the last scene in the last episode of the season, really struck me. It didn’t jump out so strongly that I saw it the first time around but it did jump out on the second viewing. Don is looking down at his daughter and behind her is an old, seemingly faded, circa 1958, Packard.  It is just perfect. A touch that most people will never notice, a touch that the writer must have written in for himself.

Everything in a movie or a TV Drama is done by somebody for some reason. Everything everybody is saying, everything somebody is wearing, every background, has been planned to say something; about the character, about the situation. In the movies – and I’m including TV here – nobody just pulls a sweater out of the closet in the dark and wears it in a scene, even if the scene is somebody pulling a sweater out of the closet in the dark and putting it on. No director ever said Oh, who cares? Just stand by that wall and I’ll take the shot. So, almost by definition – I guess – everything on the screen has meaning. Including a 1958 Packard. Especially a 1958 Packard.

Packards were great cars – they may have been better than Cadillacs during the early 30’s – but the company went through a slow decline and stopped making cars in 1956 or so. Studebaker, also in decline, bought Packard – or their name – and, for a couple of years, produced a Packard that was just a tarted up Studebaker President with the Packard name pasted on the hood.

That poor, sorry, car behind Don’s daughter, was an almost departed Studebaker, all dressed up and pretending to be a Packard. It makes me want to go back and watch the whole season over again.

Jose Froilan Gonzalez RIP

Cars, Sports

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 Maserati team-mates Jose Froilan Gonzalez and Juan Manuel Fangio , British Grand Prix, Silverstone, July 18, 1953

Against all odds, Jose Froilan Gonzalez died a natural death on June 15th of this year in his home in Argentina. I say against all odds, because Gonzalez, on the left above and known as The Pampas Bull – I wonder why – raced Formula One cars when Formula One drivers were real men. Real men being a nice way to say men doing incredibly stupid things like driving an open car, in a polo shirt, without a seatbelt, wearing polo helmet, in the rain . Some wag said it was a time when drivers were fat and tires were skinny.

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The Exploratorium with the Grandkids

Americana, Around home

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Photograph of August and Charlotte by Michele

 Recently, Michele and I went to the new Exploratorium with my daughter, Samantha, and the Grandkids, Auggie and Charlotte. The Exploratorium bills itself as an interactive museum of art, science, and human perception based on the philosophy that science should be fun and accessible and was founded by Frank Oppenheimer, the brother of the famed – atleast to my generation – father of the atomic bomb, Robert Oppenheimer.

Right after WWII, Robert Oppenheimer was one of the most famous and revered scientists in American, second only to Albert Einstein, but he fell out of favor during the McCarthy era even having his security clearance revoked. (As the Dude might say, irony abides.) Robert’s brother, Frank Oppenheimer, was blacklisted during the same time because he had once been a member of the Communist Party during the 30’s.

Several years later, after rehabilitation, Frank moved to the Bay Area and founded the Exploratorium.  I imagine family re-unions in which, over the years, the family star becomes less Robert and more Frank. I would certainly rather have Founder of the Exploratorium on my tombstone rather than Father of the Worst Killing Machine of All Time (so far).

This Exploratorium is new because it has moved to Pier 15 – on what used to be called the waterfront – from its previous digs in the Palace of Fine Arts. The old Exploratorium was one of my favorite places in San Francisco and I think the new one is already as good, has lots of space to enlarge, and is in an area that is rapidly becoming upscale tourist. Inside are lots of interactive science exhibits posing as games.

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And art posing as science.

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Another nice feature of the new Exploratorium is a new restaurant, Seaglass. It is a sort of free-form cafeteria with an – apparently – changing menu. When we went, there were four basic stations, pizza,  tacos and quesadillas, salads, and sushi. The restaurant also offers natural soft drinks, organic and fair trade coffees and teas, and sparkling house-made drinking vinegar beverages and a bar that showcases artisanal distillers, many organic, and a thoughtfully curated wine and beer list. All this makes it sound much more pretentious than it really is in real life. It somehow seems like a perfect San Francisco kid friendly menu with sushi.

Outside, is a sculpture designed for kids where Michele took the portrait on top of the post, and behind that is a fog making machine because, I guess, San Francisco doesn’t have enough fog.

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We spent several hours at the Exploratorium and I don’t think we even really scratched the surface. Thanks, Mr. Oppenheimer.

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