Category Archives: Politics

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.) 

 

 

Harry Reid and fantasy putdowns

Politics

I am sent or bump into crazy stuff about Obama all the time, He is a Socialist, He was born in Kenya, He is anti-American, and on and on. There is no way to argue with this kind of shit, let alone discuss it, so I sort of retreat into the fantasy of saying something equally stupid about Romney. Maybe, He is a polygamist would do it. I never actually do say anything like that because What is the point? I don’t believe it, I am sure that I am not going to convince anybody else, and somebody who thinks Obama was born in Kenya is a little unhinged anyway.

When Romney refused to release most of his back taxes, like alot of people, I wondered what he might be hiding. He seems he must be hiding something that would result in making him look even worse than refusing to release his taxes makes him look. Maybe not, though; maybe he is just stubborn. Maybe he got caught cheating and made a deal, maybe he paid so much he is embarrassed. Nobody really knows and what to say about it never entered my fantasy putdown pantheon.

Then along came Reid and his announcement that Romney paid No taxes during the period that he – Romney – won’t release his returns. Reid says he heard this from an anonymous source at Bain. This is really better than any of my fantasy putdowns.  The Romney camp – Romney, his surrogates, Republican politicians, right-wing pundits – understandably, but foolishly, has gone apoplectic. But there is no way to prove that Reid is lying without releasing Romney’s taxes.

If Reid is lying – and it is still an IF because we don’t really know the truth any more than we know it about Romney’s taxes – he is doing something that I should be condemning as immoral but I can’t help but admire. It is just too brilliant, tactically. First, even if we suspect he is lying, the only people that really know – besides Reid – are on the Romney side and Romney would have to release his taxes to prove that Reid is lying; then it has resulted in Romney being engaged in a fracas with somebody lower – politically – than Obama and that demeans Romney; because Reid is powerful enough to have a national soapbox from which to speak, it keeps the taxes question open and in the headlines; and Reid is in a different branch of government than Obama so Obama can’t, really, be held responsible.

The whole thing is just brilliant. It is no wonder that Reid is Speaker of the Senate.

A thought on the Olympics and Patricia Schroeder

Americana, Politics, Sports


I am not a big fan of women’s gymnastics. I think I was soured when I first saw  Nadia Comăneci. She was just  a child, dressed like an seductive adult and looking at her gave me a JonBenét Ramsey feeling: sort of a cross between feeling slightly perverted and dirty and feeling slightly superior for not feeling even more than slightly perverted. The movie Little Miss Sunshine captures it as well as anything I can think of. It is not that the seductive look is an accident, it is the point.

So, while Michele sat down to watch the  women’s gymnastics, I washed the dishes. Then Michele would say something like Wow, you have to see this, it is incredible. And it was and after a couple of trips back and forth – and the dishes were finished – that I sat down to watch the Women’s Team Gymnastics. To my eye, Gabby Douglas was the best but they were all superhuman. They all did tricks that, if Batman had done them in The Dark Knight Rises, it would have made the movie seem less realistic (I am 95%  sure that there were no Computer-generated imagery [CGI] during the actual Olympic  event).

Gabby Douglas seems older, more womanly, less child-like, than Nadia Comăneci did in 1976. Or, maybe I am just older. Eeither way, it didn’t seem as prurient. In seeing a picture of the awards ceremony, I was struck by how our gymnastics team looked liked what I want to believe America wants to be. It reminded me of a speech I once heard by Representative Patricia Schroeder, an outspoken women’s rights and minority rights advocate.

Schroeder had gone to India on some official business, at this point, I don’t remember what the official business was but because it was official she was provided with an Air Force plane. As she told the story, as a sort of air Force RF, her ground crew was made up of all minorities (counting women in this context as minorities). After she got back from what ever she was doing with her India escort, her plane was serviced and standing tall. Her India escort took one look at the crew and said something along the lines of That is why America is the greatest country in the world, all those different people working together as Americans. No other country in the world can do that. 

I think that Indian was right, what makes us great is our diversity.

 

 

Gordon Parks

Photography, Politics

The New York Times has a slide show of some unusual Gordon Parks photographs that I would like to recommend. To go out on a limb – a little – Gordon Parks was the most important, black, visual, artist of the 1950s and 60s. He became famous – and, therefore, influential – during the disgusting Jim Crow era. It was a time when everything was segregated – at least in the south all the way north to Washington D.C. – everything, not just public schools and parks and public transportation, but restaurants and restrooms. Even drinking fountains.

Black people were kept out of sight and Parks’ photos helped change that. He started out photographing for the the Farm Security Administration where he took the powerful picture above, and eventually became a fashion photographer for Vogue where he published the pictures below. 

But it was his work published in Life Magazine – the premier photo-magazine of the day – where I first saw him and his seemingly naive photographs. They seem so straight forward, and they pack such a powerful punch. Check out the slide show and you will not be disappointed.

 

 

Why some people – at least me (I, ?) – get mad at the government

Americana, Politics

Michele Leohart is an administrator in the DEA and, maybe, she is stoned and that is her excuse for her ridiculous answers. But I doubt it, I think the real reason is the Washington culture that actually prevents honesty and introspection. In this case, thanks to Congressman Jared Polis for doing what our Congresspeople should actually be doing.