Honey tours the San Francisco Presidio
NOTES FROM ABOVE GROUND
By Honey van Blossom
(Honey is a Belgian Marxist former strip-tease artiste)
Juan Bautista de Anza (1736-1788) proposed the site of the San Francisco Presidio on March 28, 1776 at what is today a point near the entrance to the Golden Gate Bridge, near Fort Point.
This is about the location seen in Alfred Hitchcock’s 1957 film Vertigo, when Scottie saves Madeleine from the icy waters of the San Francisco Bay.
One hundred and eighty one years before Hitchcock made the film, Anza wrote: “I went to the narrowest opening made by the mouth of the port, where nobody had been before. There I set up a cross, and at its foot I buried under the ground a notice of what I have seen…”[1]
The Anza expedition’s diarist Father Pedro Font wrote in his short diary: “Ascending a small hill, we at once entered upon a very bare mesa of great extent, smooth, and inclining a little toward the port. It must be about half a league wide and somewhat longer, and it keeps getting narrower until it ends right at the white cliff. This mesa affords a most delightful view. Indeed, from it one can see a large part of the harbor, its islands, the mouth of the port, and the sea as far as the eye can reach, even beyond the farallones. The commander selected this mesa as the site of the new settlement and fort which was to be established at this port, for, being elevated, it is so commanding that from it the entrance to the mouth of the port can be defended with musket shots…”[2] Read more
“China Girls”
By Katherine Hisako Glascock
[Katherine Hisako Fukami Glascock (August 31, 1940-October 15, 2017) was a musician, artist, and was best known as a landscape designer. She was married to Baylis Glascock, who we have featured previously on this website, for more than 50 years. In a May 22, 2003, article on her work in the Los Angeles Times, the paper’s garden specialist Emily Green wrote:
[“Katherine Glascock creates gardens that express the true nature of the land and the people who live there. No two are alike, but all bring together strength and elegance.”
[Baylis has made available to us two samples of Katherine’s writing. The first, “Finding Bambi,” written in the late 1990s, we featured in our October 1, 2018, postings. This month we are publishing her essay “China Girls,” written on May 15, 2013.]
* * *
The following is from the program notes of a Los Angeles Filmforum presentation, titled “China Girls”, May 12, 2013, Spielberg Theatre at the Egyptian.
“The various faces of the ‘China girl’, sometimes called a ‘China doll’ or ‘girl head’, have appeared in more films than any actress, though she is almost never seen, save for the fleeting glimpses an audience might catch at the end of a film reel. These images of a woman, positioned next to color swatches, have appeared on the leader of every commercial manufactured film since the late 1920s and continue in limited use today. The China girl image is instrumental in determining exposure, image density, and color balance, forming a kind of cinematic unconscious. Her essential but often overlooked role in film history has also made her a compelling subject for experimental filmmakers variously examining issues of celluloid materiality, the behind-the-scenes workings of the film industry, and the often marginal role of women. In some cases, the China girl is no less than the enigmatic icon of a vanishing medium.”
–Genevieve Yue Read more
Finding Bambi
By Kathering Hisako Glascock
[Katherine Hisako Fukami Glascock (August 31, 1940-October 15, 2017) was a musician, artist, and was best known as a landscape designer. She was married to Baylis Glascock, who we have featured previously on this website, for more than 50 years. In a May 22, 2003, article on her work in the Los Angeles Times, the paper’s garden specialist Emily Green wrote:
[“Katherine Glascock creates gardens that express the true nature of the land and the people who live there. No two are alike, but all bring together strength and elegance.”
[Baylis Glascock has offered us two of her writings, dating from the late 1990s. We have added notes in square brackets on a few of the people she mentions.]
* * *
At the garden on the Malibu coast I saw him in the distance with his friend. As I recognized him they both looked my way. She was tall and graceful; they were a handsome couple. The light from the ocean and the overhead blue outlined them standing in a green wave of gently lilting fine grasses. Seeing them at that distance across the garden, so beautiful, having stopped in the midst of some conversation, both their heads turned toward me like a pair of deer, alert: a sense of formality, a kind of separateness came over me. And I hesitated to go toward them. And to this day I regret having missed the opportunity. How often I have imagined myself stepping through the long sweeps of grasses, greeting them with confidence and a smile, and all of it turning out differently. Read more
MY FRONT YARD CARUSO VILLAGE GALA PARTY
By Bob Vickrey
Last Thursday evening I discovered that Palisades Village developer Rick Caruso is a very accommodating guy. He must have known that I’ve become somewhat of a hermit in recent years and rarely travel east of Bundy Drive, so he decided to have his Grand Opening Gala in my front yard—which is only a slight exaggeration.
My house on Monument Street sits near the intersection of Swarthmore Avenue, which has become the new retail nexus of our town—and judging by the recent Wall Street Journal profile of Caruso, the retail shopping and entertainment model of the future.
Last Thursday’s special occasion honored members of the project team who planned and built the new shopping complex. The Wolfgang Puck-catered dinner was also held to introduce the new tenants who are opening shops and restaurants in the village center. Several city dignitaries attended, but more to the point; what would a grand opening in L.A. be without a bevy of celebrity guests for such an august occasion?
When members of my party arrived on the red carpet walkway—sans entourage and the obligatory black Escalade—I immediately spotted actresses Charlize Theron and Kate Beckinsale, as well as Palisades Honorary Mayors Janice and Billy Crystal. This auspicious scene naturally begged the obvious question: What the heck was I doing here? Read more
Pacifist/Socialist Leader David McReynolds dead at 88
David McReynolds in 2014. Photo by Ed Hedemann
BY MARY REINHOLZ
The first version appeared in The Villager, a downtown Manhattan weekly.
For nearly 40 years, the late pacifist and democratic socialist David McReynolds traveled the world as field secretary for the War Resisters League on missions of peace and social justice. He burned his draft card in Union Square during a 1965 protest against the war in Vietnam when it was a felony to do so. He later became the first openly gay candidate for president when he ran twice on the Socialist Party USA ticket in 1980 and 2000.
But this courteous and kindly man, a native son of Los Angeles who had planned his own memorial, beginning with blues by Bessie Smith and ending with Beethoven’s Ninth, did not go gentle into that good night.
On the evening of Wed., Aug. 15, friends discovered him lying on the floor unconscious with a “gash to his head” inside his first-floor railroad flat in Manhattan’s East Village, his beloved Siamese cat Shaman nearby. He had apparently fallen. His friends called the police, whose officers gained entry to the unit by going into the basement, and then to the back of the building, finding an open window. Read more
The Girl in the Sousaphone Box
New London, Missouri, High School band, 1954. Baylis Glascock is in the front row, last on the right. Click to enlarge.
Baylis Glascock
It was the first year our rural school district had a band. The basketball coach had a brand new ’54 Buick and I had a new cornet. The inside of the cornet case was incredibly plush and reeked of pungent newness. The excitement of possessing this splendid thing was almost as overwhelming as the disappointment at not being able to make a musical sound the first time I tried to play it.
The notion of having a school band was a grand and heady one. It had always seemed that other schools had a band but not us, and now we would have one. The Band Mothers was formed to raise money for uniforms. They held bake sales in the front window of Thomas’s Hardware store. They held a chili supper in the Vocational Ag shop space and they asked for donations. And finally, after great effort, they were able to buy some other school’s cast-off used uniforms. The uniforms had the smell of aged wool and evaporated sweat; buttonholes were frayed, and little hooks that held the coats closed at the collar needed repair. But we forgave all imperfections. The uniforms seemed the very essence of splendor and importance. Read more
Honey and the mystery of El Portezuelo
NOTES FROM ABOVE GROUND
By Honey van Blossom
(Honey is a Belgian Marxist former strip-tease artiste)
[In order to see the detail of the maps and some of the larger photos, you can click on them to see the full size.]
This is an untitled picture, but labeled by the Bancroft library as “a valley near Los Angeles.” It is dated circa 1870. Bancroft Library, the Robert Honeyman, Jr. Collection of Early Californian Art and Western Americana.
[A first part of this study appeared in this column on July 1, titled “Honey’s Search for El Portezuela.”]
A young sailor kept a diary of his voyage on the brig Pilgrim, published as a book in 1840 as Two Years Before the Mast.
The sailor – Richard Henry Dana – arrived in Alta California when it was a province of Mexico, and no longer a Spanish colony. He visited the small city of Los Angeles in 1835.
In his chapter “California and Its Inhabitants,” he wrote, “In the hands of an enterprising people, what a country this might be!”
Dana wrote what most people in the U.S. that had time to think about it believed: the United States should take the Mexican land in Alta California, and eventually, the United States did succeed.
The United States coveted California, even before gold was discovered at Sutter’s Mill. The term “Manifest Destiny,” coined in 1845, expressed an already existing philosophy that drove 19th century U.S. territorial expansion – the United States was destined by God to expand its dominion and spread democracy and capitalism across the entire North American continent. Read more
Dunga Brook Diary: Catch Me If You Can
May 2011, Albany to LA, SW Flight #4938
Vicki Whicker
The morning sky is orange and pink and purple, the ground is a lush patchwork of greens and blues.
I’m on my way back to the relentless sun and baked neutrals of Southern California.
I already miss central New York.
I pick up my pen and open my journal…but how to describe the first taste of my future?
This Mother’s Day weekend trip, from Los Angeles to central New York, was my first visit to my new-old house.
Back in April, I bought the house, sight unseen, from a post on Facebook. My soon to be New York neighbor (a former LA acquaintance), Jim, is responsible for this purchase. He posted a photo of a forlorn little house for sale and asked, “Who wants to be my neighbor?” And, there it was, my little house, in a field of mud and snow… Read more
Dershowitz dishes on not impeaching Trump
Alan Dershowitz in his Twitter photo.
BY MARY REINHOLZ
Another version of this article first appeared in The Villager, a downtown Manhattan weekly.
Alan Dershowitz, famed criminal defense lawyer and professor emeritus at Harvard Law School, has been taking heat from fellow liberals for criticizing Special Counsel Robert Mueller and defending the civil liberties of right-wing Republican President Donald Trump, the subject of Dershowitz’s latest book, “The Case Against Impeaching Trump.”
But last Wednesday evening, the lifelong Democrat and contrarian who is nearly 80 and best known for representing notorious clients like O.J. Simpson and Claus von Bulow over five decades of courtroom combats, received a warm welcome on the fourth floor of Barnes & Noble at Union Square in downtown Manhattan. There he was interviewed by Josh Barro, a senior editor of Business Insider. Read more
Honey on the road to San Francisco with some of the Spanish explorers
NOTES FROM ABOVE GROUND
By Honey van Blossom
(Honey is a Belgian Marxist former strip-tease artiste)
"Cities of the Golden Gate," Raymond Dabb Yelland, 1893. Most illustrations can be enlarged by clicking on them.
Prologue to the story of the Spanish exploration and settlement of California
Seasonal migrations of animals now extinct in California probably created the roads the native people used before the Spanish land exploration of California. “The heyday of giant mammals in North America was the middle and late Pleistocene, an epoch that started 2.6 million years ago and ended 11,700 years ago, around the time the Earth was thawing out from the Ice Age. The gigantic beasts, which migrated from Asia across a now-vanished land bridge called Beringia, are known as Rancholabrean megafauna, after the famous La Brea tar pits in downtown Los Angeles — the graveyard of thousands of saber-toothed tigers, giant bison and other extinct animals.”[1]
The seasonal migrations of the large mammals may have created the substantial roads used by the indigenous people after their arrival.[2]
Paul S. Martin and Richard G. Klein argue that Paleoindian over-hunting led to the extinction of the megafauna.[3] Others argue that climate change was responsible for mammoth and mastodon extinctions. As the last major glaciation ended around 12,000 years ago, climate warmed too quickly for the megafauna to adapt.
