Category Archives: California

On the hanging of former Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s official portrait

Art, California

In the SF Chronicle, this morning, was an article with a second paragraph of All this raises a question about what may be the most anticipated ceremonial event yet to happen: the hanging of former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s official portrait. The  paragraph brought up all sorts of resonating thoughts starting with What? They are hanging Schwarzenegger? Oh, his portrait. and ending with He was a pretty good governor considering the circumstances. In between, among other thoughts such as the National Portrait Gallery being my favorite museum in Washington, I noticed that the paragraph was only one sentence long which I was taught not to do – I don’t know for sure but it must have been before the sixth grade – surly, the Chrony should know better.

Reading the short article – all articles are short in the Chrony – I noticed that Schwarzenegger’s picture was done by Gottfried Helnwein ( I used was because, apparently, the picture is already finished, if not hung, and done because the artist is a photographer and a water color and mixed media painter and I have no idea of the medium of this portrait). Gottfried Helnwein is not an artist that I know, but I feel I should after reading his Selected Collections page which includes the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the J. Paul Getty Museum, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the de Young Museum, the State Russian Museum, and the Smithsonian Institution, among many, many, others. I also read that Schwarzenegger had a picture by Helnwein, in his Governor’s office, of the Mojave and he has a photograph? watercolor? of Death Valley on his website, so I am predisposed to like this guy already.

His portraits – as shown below -look to be even more interesting.

California does have a long – if very narrow – history of interesting Governor’s portraits including this Portrait of Jerry Brown as a Young Man (sorry).

It is possible that I have now joined the legions in Sacramento who agree that the hanging of former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s official portrait is one of the most anticipated ceremonial events yet to happen. OK, that may be overstating it, but I am curious. (Oh, the portrait at the top was done by Andrew Wyeth and Brown’s portrait was by California artist Don Bachardy).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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An east side of the Sierra Nevada detour

California, Photography, Sierras, Travel

On Tuesday morning, Aston and Eileen got up early and drove to San Francisco to go to work and we started a little later to drive to Lee Vining to meet Karen Amy and her friend Chris. The first stint took us along the east shore of Lake Tahoe so we could marvel at its blue gem-likeness set in a granite ring. From there, we picked up Highway 50 to crest the Carson Range at Spooner Summit and drop down into the Great Basin of  Nevada just south of the state capitol, Carson City.

From there, it is Highway 395 all the way south to the backdoor to Yosemite at Lee Vining. We cross back into California at Topaz Lake about 60 – some odd – miles south of coming into Nevada . I was born in San Francisco and have lived in California all my non-Army life. I was brought up to think of myself as a Californian more than as an American. As much as I love Nevada, I think of California as my home and even though we have only been in Nevada for a little over an hour, I get a little coming home tingle as we look down the valley with California in the hazy distance. This border crossing, back into California at Topaz Lake seems so archetypical: we drive through high Nevada – it may be dry enough to be called – desert, cross a long flat pass at about 6,000 feet, and then head down into the Topaz Lake Basin with green fields on the California side.

The Walker River flows into Topaz Lake and we go up river as we head south up a long canyon. About 15 years ago, the Walker River overflowed taking out the road and we had to detour about 50 miles out of our way to get to Death Valley. A year or two later, we drove through the denuded canyon on a new road and marveled at the devastation. Now, going up canyon, I am not sure, even, where the river took out the road.

Our plan is to meet Karen at noon at the Mobil Station cafe but we start to run late because we keep running into unexpected traffic controls. It turns out that we are caught up in construction of Digital 395, a 583-mile fiber network whose motto is Connect on the Wild Side. The project seems to be a public/private partnership with lots of semi-official – but unidentifiable –  sounding names like the Eastern Sierra Connect Regional Broadband Consortium and the California Advanced Services Fund. Among others, it is funded by the California Public Utilities Commission and the Department of Commerce under the Recovery Act. I couldn’t help thinking that alot of the people who moved here to get away from civilization and are now getting broadband would use it to badmouth big government. Our trip through Bridgeport is the worst with twenty minutes waits for a slow, controlled, crawl through town which is having all its roads repaved;

iPhone photo by Michele Stern

meanwhile, Karen has shown up an hour and an half early. We finally show up about 30 minutes late and the four of us have a quick lunch so we can scurry twelve miles back to Conway Summit at 8,138 feet where the Aspens are starting to turn.

Portrait by Michele Stern 

After we wandered around the Conway Summit area, going to Virginia Lake and then back down to the view overlooking Mono Lake and, way in the distance, the Sierra Nevada Mountains, south of Mammoth.

By now, Michele and I were in full tour guide mode, wanting to go down to the edge of Mono Lake to better show it off.

Mono Lake is, of course,  not a lake but a dead sea and it is the major rookery for Seagulls on the west coast. Still, it is always a shock to see them here, hundreds of miles – by road, at least – from the sea (which is, after all part of their name). But, here they are, chowing down on Alkali Flies and Brine Shrimp. Somehow, they seem both tamer – as in less frenzied – and wilder – as in less dependant on humans – than on the coast. As we watched the Seagulls, I ended up watching the soft waves, lapping the shore, and marveling at how different these waves are from the waves at Virginia Lake, 45 minutes and 3,200 vertical feet away.

By now it was getting close to our 4 o’clock cut off time, so we took a quick peek down the June Lake loop, looking for fall color, and then headed back over the hill. Karen and Chris to Yosemite Valley and Michele and myself to Portola Valley. At 8600 feet, it was already winter at Tuolumne Meadows.

 

 

Michele, my dad, and me at Lake Tahoe

California, Politics

Michele and I went to  Ed Z’berg Sugar Pine Point State park today. It was a longer drive than we wanted, but we were looking for a place to take a walk along the lake, and it is one of the ugly facts about Lake Tahoe that it is hard to take a long walk along the water. Along the shoreline, it is almost wall to wall private property.

Driving south on the lake-shore highway, we passed miles of private homes – most of them gated to keep us from getting to their private, backyard, waterfront – interspersed with resorts and small open spaces, usually private beaches, giving us views across the lake. Along California’s Coast, it is less troublesome to get to the water because of what some would call the Socialist Coastal Access Act but Tahoe doesn’t have an equivalent act leaving the shoreline pretty much access proof.

My dad had been Chairman of the California State Park Commission under Governor Pat Brown when the Isaias Hellman1 estate at Sugar Pine Point came on the market. It was a major stretch of private water front and, today, would be a prime candidate for an hyper-expensive, gated, still private, development (most likely based on a golf course….uggg!).  But the 60’s were a different time and the state bought it and turned it into a Sugar Pine Point State Park. Among other things, the park provided, for the first time, a long stretch of Tahoe shoreline accessible to regular people.

Thinking about that, as we drove down Highway 89, brought back memories of Daddy – as my sister and I still call him – and how influential he was in getting this property and how proud he was that the state did get it (and how much he enjoyed the perk of spending the night at the mansion including being entertained at a a special dinner in the dining room). It brought back memories of how much Daddy was a democrat – with a small “d” – as well as a Democrat. Memories that included the California of the 50’s and 60’s when Governor Pat Brown’s motto was Make no little plans and California was a boomtown – uh? boomstate? – with all the good and bad that involved.

When we got to the Park, the first thing I noticed was the entry Gatehouse built by the state 1n 1965. It was lovingly designed and built to match the existing mansion including diagonal muntins separating diamond shaped panes of glass over the double-hung windows and featured a native stone base.

I had forgotten Daddy’s love of architecture and how much he knew about it but, now, I remember his taking me to hear Frank Lloyd Wright give a lecture when I was eight (and, years later, while in the Army, making a special trip to see Wright’s Imperial Hotel in Tokyo that was a direct result of that lecture). I remembered how surprised I was, when first discovering the Farnsworth House in an architecture class, finding out that Daddy already knew about it.

We parked the car and walked by the public beach. Watching the people on the public beach – the people’s beach – enjoying the water and the sun, brought tears to my eyes. Tears of love and admiration mixed with the sorrow of how little I knew my father – how distant he was – and how much, on a day like this, here, I miss him.

(I also thought of how many of people enjoying the beach, with their boats tied up nearby, wouldn’t vote for a Democrat because they didn’t want “big” government.)

We had a picnic lunch under a gazebo with a view of the mansion which was designed by San Francisco architect, Walter Bliss, wandered around the outside of the building – both of us were most taken with the Sugar Pine porch columns with the bark still on and then we went for our long walk in the trees overlooking Lake Tahoe.

1. Isaias Hellman was a very interesting guy. (The following is from The Web, to save you the trouble.) A Jewish immigrant from Germany, he came to California when he was 16 in 1859. By the time he died, he had effectively transformed Los Angeles into a modern metropolis. He became California’s premier financier of the late 19th and early 20th century by founding LA’s Farmers and Merchants Bank, LA’s first successful bank and then transforming Wells Fargo into one of the West’s biggest financial institutions. Hellman invested with Henry Huntington to build trolley lines, lent Edward Doheney the funds to discover California’s huge oil reserves, and assisted Harrison Gary Otis in acquiring full ownership of the Los Angeles Times.  He controlled the California wine industry1.1 for almost twenty years and, after San Francisco’s devastating 1906 earthquake and fire, Hellman calmed the financial markets alowing San Francisco . Oh, he also had exquisite taste in architecture.  

1.1 A group calling themselves Wine Beserkers recently tried a 1875 Cucamonga Vineyard Angelica Wine Isaias W. Hellman Private Stock saying Bricked medium cranberry red color with clear meniscus; fascinating, VA, coffee liqueur, chocolate, raisinette nose; tasty, rich, chocolate, orange, raspberry, coffee liqueur, raspberry syrup palate with good acidity; long finish (bottled from wood in 1921; reminiscent of both a mature Port, but with greater color — no doubt due to the 46 years in wood before bottling — and a mid-1800s vintage Madeira Bastardo, i.e., vintage Madeira from a red grape, with the acidity of a Terrantez or Verdelho) (97 pts.) 

 

 

A nice walk on a spectacular day

Around home, California, Travel

After hanging around Michele’s family cabin all morning, soaking up the sunshine and what I always think of as Eastern Sierra air – a distinct dry earth and pine smell; strong, warm, sun, cool air in the shade – we went out for a burger in Truckee.

Aside by Michele: BurgerMe is a wonderful find, with very tasty grass-fed burgers. End aside.

Then, while driving to Lake Tahoe the long way around, we got waylaid at Martis Creek where we took an  afternoon walk.

Eastern Sierra meadows – maybe any high altitude meadows – are among my favorite places to walk. Especially in the late afternoon. With their familiar smells and sounds, they are one of my spiritual homes. Warm, somehow-how-soft feeling, it brings back distant memories of the end of the day after a hard hike or climb. Today, the hard hike was getting a burger in Truckee but the meadow is still glorious.

Mojave National Preserve: a couple of sand dune shots

California, Camping, Photography

A funny thing happened when Ed and I went on our morning walk, my knee kept getting sorer and stiffer. It got worse as we were hanging out after the walk. It took me a while to figure out that I had an attack of gout. While we were walking, I thought my knee was just getting tired, but, by the time we got to the sand dunes, I could barely bend it enough to get in and out of Ed’s truck. So, what I had thought would be an afternoon of frolic in the dunes, turned out to be an afternoon of dragging my leg around near the truck.  Still, the dunes were at their best in the fading light and I did get a couple of shots.