Archive for Editorial

Leopards Aren’t Just In The Jungle Any More

by Beverley
March 17th, 2012

This beautiful short video of Cartier Jeweler’s new ad brought back many memories for me. As Cartier’s Leopard tore majestically through the snow of St. Petersburg followed by horses pulling a troika I remembered the 40 miles in deep snow driving from St. Petersburg to the Winter Palace and the incredible world of the past we found there.

And I remembered a rug for the floor in a pawn shop in Shanghai, China in February 1975. It was a large rug, possibly 15 feet by 15 feet, made entirely of magnificent Snow Leopard pelts. I was both sickened at the thought of those beautiful animals being slain only to be walked on and awed by the beauty of the rug. It was lined in deep red velvet and surrounded by a thick border of the same.

The man running the government pawn shop was anxious to get rid of it but there was no way I could have lived with it even if I could have brought it home on the plane and gotten it through U.S. customs. There were amazing items for sale in the pawn shop. Many left by fleeing Europeans in 1949 with the takeover by the Communist government. One thing I did buy was a beautiful Chinese opera headdress made of blue kingfisher feathers.

The Kingfisher Feather headdress I bought in the pawn shop in Shanghai in February 1975

Not knowing anything about my purchase, I sent a photo and query to Arts of Asia magazine and they answered in a future edition with the photo and comment “Mrs. Jackson was very fortunate to get into the pawn shop. A few short months after her visit a law was passed that no westerners could ever purchase from Chinese pawn shops again.” And they still can’t. This is good however since poor peasants will pawn everything they own to buy seeds to plant in spring, even their winter clothes and blankets, and hope that crops will be good and they will be able to get things back again.

Well the magnificent Leopard in the video has so far taken me back to St. Petersburg and old China and he has taken me to Paris as well. Now to present day Leopard business. Leopard prints once again were shown in so many of the Paris collections last week. Will designers never tire of the design?

About five years ago I weakened for a Snow Leopard (fake) purse in the window of a famous French designer’s boutique in the lobby of the Bellagio Hotel in Las Vegas. I was ashamed of spending so much on a purse. But considering I’ve carried it for almost five years and it’s still in style I guess I should give up the guilt!

Fortunately today all these items are made of silk and cotton prints or printed calf skin. In the 1960’s when Leopard coats were all the rage after Jackie Kennedy was photographed wearing one the animals were being slaughtered at a tremendous rate. One furrier admitted in 1967 that as many as eight pelts were needed to make a coat. Fortunately in 1970 U.S. state laws began being passed banning the sale of fur from Leopard, Cheetah, Snow Leopard, Tiger, Jaguar and two small spotted cats (Margay and Ocelot). The U.S. Endangered Species Act of 1973 finally cut off imports by adding the full species of most large and many small spotted cats. And many countries in Europe and elsewhere enacted domestic legislation to cut off the trade it items made of the cat furs. Sadly though illegal killing and trade goes on today in some countries. The use of various parts of the cats for medicinal products is one reason. I had the horrible experience of seeing a blanket spread on the ground in a parking lot where Asian tourists swarmed in late 1970’s in China selling items from endangered species still bleeding — bears paws etc. This prompted me to get involved with World Wildlife and other organizations. But if the demand and money are there the killing will continue. In our grandchildren’s world I am afraid all that will be left of these magnificent Leopards and other great cats will be videos like shown above or animals in cages in a zoo.

Rennie, I told you we weren’t going to show that! Why did you drag it out here?

By The Way
This blog was started to sell my new book and I keep going off on other topics. Please do check out The Beautiful Lady Was A Palace Eunuch at Amazon.com
Acknowledgement:
Kathleen Fetner, Technical Advisor and Friend
Categories Editorial, My Life
Comments (2)

Embroidering The Wings Of Angels With Silver Beads

by Beverley
December 27th, 2011

L’Eglise Saint-Roch was filled with floral tributes from all the important names connected with Paris haute couture. The priest, Rev. Christian Lancrey-Javel said, as he helped lay a black lace shroud on the coffin, “The indefatigable Francois Lesage might be up there now busily embroidering the wings of angels.

I would never turn down an invitation to lunch with a very attractive Frenchman so when Francois Lesage invited me to lunch with him at Bistro Gardens in Beverly Hills in 1989 I accepted with great pleasure. And lunch naturally turned into a Santa Barbara News-Press column for me.

Francois Lesage & Beverley Jackson at I. Magnins

Following luncheon I went with him to the I. Magnin‘s department store, now also departed, in Beverly Hills to see the new House of Lesage collection of jewelry being sold there. Well it turned into quite an expensive luncheon because I could not resist a lovely coral and pearl bracelet I spotted.

Lesage coral bracelet

Now sadly I read in London obituaries that Francois Lesage has died at the age of 82 after a long illness. He was a truly charming gentleman with fine sense of humor and he was in a business that absolutely and totally fascinated me. In 1924 Albert and Marie Louise Lesage, his parents, purchased an embroidery firm Michonet which had once been embroiderers to Napoleon III. In 1925 they changed the name and it became the House of Lesage, an embroidery business specializing in a technique that enables a greater range of shades in beads or thread within one color and a wider range of different colors. Their technique was first put to use by the famous designer of the period Madeleine Vionnet.

At the age of 18 Marie Louise and Albert’s son Francoise left Paris and went to Hollywood to learn contemporary costume decoration from the famous studio designers including Edith Head, Irene, Adrian and especially my adored friend the late Jean Louis. One of the most famous dresses in the 20th century was the great gown Jean designed for Marlene Dietrich to wear in one of her Los Vegas performances and that gown was beaded by Lesage in Paris. To see the great Dietrich in this incredible gown, covered on entrance by the most glamorous luxurious white fox coat with train ever made, was a never to be forgotten experience. The beading was done on transparent silk and there was great debate about whether you could really see through it or not. I couldn’t tell when I sat up close for a performance in Las Vegas and Jean never confided the truth to me! He could be a real pixie!

Before Albert Lesage died in 1949 Francoise Lesage did well in Hollywood. He had ultimately opened his own boutique on the Sunset Strip where all the big stars were his customers. But it was goodbye Hollywood and all its glamour when Albert died. Back to Paris to take over the family firm.

However he went back to other stars, Yves Saint Laurent, Balenciaga, Schiaparelli, Balmain, Dior, Givency… The beading that Lesage created for the great haute couture gowns can probably never be accomplished again in the future. The artisans who executed the designs are dying out, although looking ahead Francois set up am embroidery school in 1992 connected with his workshops for young people to learn the great techniques of embroidery and beading past. Chanel who bought the House of Lesage in 2002, following his example, have I understand recently purchased a famous Parisan feathermaker Andre Lemarie so that another ancient art can be passed on to future generations.

The two items I have ever most coveted in western design (we’re not counting imperial Chinese robes here!) were beaded by Lesage. One was a jacket for Saint Laurent solidly beaded on a design of Van Gogh sunflowers. The beading was done in layers to display the thick areas of paint in Van Gogh’s work. And the price of the jacket was in a range with a small Van Gogh painting of the time. And worth it. More than 600 hours of work went into each jacket. Speaking of value of work, the wedding dress Lesage beaded for King Khaled of Saudi Arabia’s daughter is said to have cost 60 million French francs, approximately 11 million U.S. dollars at the time. That’s a lot of beads, sequins and pearls! Or maybe real gems?

Luckily for me one of new things Francois ultimately did was go into a line of jewelry and beaded accessories created by Gerard Tremolet for Lesage in 1987. Lucky for me because I could finally afford Lesage — the bracelet and a pair of earrings!

The other piece I coveted was a Christian Dior ball gown from the collection of 1949. I won’t try to describe it but here is a picture. It was perfection! Several of them were sold. I saw one close up in an exhibition of Dior in New York at the Metropolitan Museum years ago. That gown had been made for Mrs. Byron Foy who had donated it to the museum. The other time I saw it was at the marvelous “Hommage a Christian Dior 1947-1957” exhibition in Paris in 1988. This exhibition also displayed framed “samples” of the great beading used on the gowns which were prepared for designers to chose from. For every collection, spring, fall, winter, summer from 250 to 300 samples were made by Lesage for their customers to chose from. One sample represents 40 to 60 hours of work and about 100,000 stitches. Each year Lesage uses 750 pounds of pearls keeping a lot of oysters busy! And 100 million sequins are used.

page from the book “The Master Touch of Lesage”

Brown Jacket with Lesage beading

Lesage beading does indeed deserve to be framed. Or preserved somehow. A very old Galanos dress that could never fit again but had great Lesage beading found a second life as part of a brown velvet jacket my clever dressmaker and friend Quy created. Quy was fascinated working on it as there was some cutting and piecing needed and the Lesage work was so finely done not one single bead came loose in the process. I found an original design for beaded work in “The Master Touch of  Lesage” by Palmer White that was created originally for Karl Lagerfeld in 1986. Comparing it with my embroidery, Jimmy Galanos might have been influenced by that design for Lagerfeld, eliminating a very elaborate border of a supposed ruby and diamond Cartier necklace and going heavy on tiny yellow, orange, red and white sequins. If  I’d found this earlier in life I could have tried to verified it. Galanos was a close friend of the late Maggie and Jean Louis and we were together at their New Year’s eve parties in Montecito most years. This comes to mind as New Year’s eve is upon us now.

Francois Lesage, working with his skilled beaders and embroiderers, produced great beauty during his lifetime. In my opinion he deserves to be considered a great artist. And as I said originally, a very charming man.

By The Way
This blog was started to sell my new book and I keep going off on other topics. Please do check out The Beautiful Lady Was A Palace Eunuch at Amazon.com
Acknowledgement:
Kathleen Fetner, Technical Advisor and Friend
Categories Editorial, My Life
Comments (2)

A Colorful But Rather Self Indulgent Life

by Beverley
December 14th, 2011

It was bigger news in Paris and London than in Santa Barbara, California but I read with interest the obits in the European papers about the recent death of la Baronne de Cabrol. Born Marguerite d’Harcourt the daughter

of Etienne, Marquis d’Harcourt, she was known throughout her life as Daisy. Reading these obits la Baronne emerges as one of the very last of an era of French aristocratic society who swirled in a seemingly glamorous whirl in living their lives. I met her only once, casually, when a group of us shared a chartered plane to fly from Paris to Bordeaux for a Rothschild wedding in the 1980’s. She was part of a very colorful group of fellow passengers including the wife of the President of France, Mme. Jacques Chirac, designer Pierre Cardin, the glamorous Vicomtesse de Ribe among others. But I’ve read quite a bit about Daisy Cabrol through the years.

It appears her years of marriage to Baron Fred de Cabrol de Moute were happy years, colorful years. Her late husband was a talented amateur artist and interior designer who not only did work for homes and chateaux for many of their group but also for such places as the Hotel George V in Paris. He was particularly known for intriguing scrapbooks he kept of photographs, newspaper clippings and his own delightful water colors that visually documented their world.

Daisy loved parties and society columns were filled with pictures of her during the era of great balls in Paris, during the 1950’s in particular. She especially liked costume balls and hosted many herself. It should be explained that these extravaganza galas were not the parties we call balls in this country which are generally glorified dinner dances. They were great events with the most famous haute couture designers in Paris doing the costumes, entertainment produced by famous name entertainers or the entire troop of the Ballet Russe or the Cuevas Ballet performing, and on occasion complete dramatic temporary buildings were built to stage the galas.

As the obits go the London Telegraph gets into the sexier part of Daisy Cabrol’s life more than the parties. British papers are prone to do that! They bring up the story that in 1945 the British Ambassador to France, Duff Cooper, (the paper calls him the Lothario Ambassador to Paris!) took an interest in Daisy which upset his then mistress Louise de Vilmorin to the point that his wife Lady Diana Cooper had to console de Vilmirin and assure her that Duff really loved her. The British and French are inclined to be more understanding in such situations than Americans. Cooper, in writing about the incident in his fascinating letters now out in book form edited by his son the Viscount Norwich. described her as “sweet but not very clever girl. She is very proud of being the only one in Paris who is faithful to her husband and says she intends to remain so. I really don’t mind.” Fred de Cabrol died in 1997 and I haven’t been able to verify if she kept her word on this!

I have found one incidence of her not being very clever. That is when she attended a 1951 ball with theme of costumes of 1900, hosted by Vicomtesse Marie-Laure de Noailles, dressed as an armless and legless woman! This in my mind brought the theatrical self indulgent way of life for many in her group to a new low. La Baronne’s life wasn’t really a life that contributed much to her fellow man but it has given those of us who are ancient enough to remember and/or read books about the European world following WWII some amusing reading. Speaking of which I’m deep into a new British book West End Front by Matthew Sweet on what went on during World War II in London’s grand Hotels such as the Ritz, Dorchester, and Claridge’s where many of the famous and infamous took refuge during the Nazi bombings of London. Fascinating to read of leading political figures, movie stars, courtesans, Nazi spies, sharing limited space in underground shelters beneath the hotels during bombing raids and living down the halls from each other on a full time basis. And most interesting to me I’m reading incidents involving people I actually knew, in a few cases quite well. So there is bound to be a blog forthcoming on this book eventually!

By The Way
This blog was started to sell my new book and I keep going off on other topics. Please do check out The Beautiful Lady Was A Palace Eunuch at Amazon.com
Acknowledgement:
Kathleen Fetner, Technical Advisor and Friend
Categories Editorial, My Life
Comments (5)

What Svetlana Stalin and I had in Common

by Beverley
December 5th, 2011

A friend asked me, “Did you ever know Svetlana Stalin Peters who just died?” And my answer was “No, but I read her first book and I did have a one-evening indirect contact with her. “That indirect contact with her was I had her ex-husband, the late William Wesley Peters, as my dinner partner at Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesin West on one occasion. His widow Olgivanna Lloyd Wright, a former Serb Montenegrin dancer, had learned my beau Dwight Hart was in Phoenix, Arizona where Taliesin West is located. Mrs. Wright had been quite attracted to Dwight during her stays at the Clift Hotel in San Francisco which he ran for Bob Odell who owned the Clift and the Santa Barbara Biltmore. So upon hearing he was visiting near her Taliesin West she immediately called and invited him to dine. Dwight informed her he could come if he was able to bring the friend he was traveling with and she said he could bring the friend.

Mrs. Wright, having expected a male friend was amazingly rude to me the entire evening. After being introduced she immediately turned me over to architect Wes Peters who had been married for 20 months to the daughter of Josef Stalin. A wedding Mrs. Wright had arranged. The handover to Peters was fine with me. Wes Peters proved to be a charming, very intelligent and amusing gentleman. He showed me some of the more hidden fascinating areas of Taliesin West before we went in to dine. Not surprisingly he turned out to be my dinner partner with my date Dwight far away at the end of the very long table next to the hostess. Dinner was good though uninspired. What surprised me was we were waited on by young men who were students at Taliesin West. All wore expensive perfectly fitted evening clothes. Dwight had been informed that dinner was black tie and fortunately I had packed a very pretty long gown for another event in Phoenix. I was told that the young future architects serving us paid at least $50,000 a year to study at Taliesin West in those days, study and wait table for Mrs. Wright! That was a great deal of money in the 1970’s! The other dinner guests were all male, basically the top men at Taliesin West. After Frank Lloyd Wright’s death it obviously was a male operation run by a matriarch.

Wes made a fascinating dinner partner. I plied him with questions about Falling Waters in Mill Run, PA, one of Wright’s most famous commissions, as well as the Guggenheim Museum in New York City which Wes also worked on. And I told him the saga of my mother deciding when I was about eight that I had a speaking voice that needed improving. I mumbled! She found a retired British Shakespearean actor named Guy Bates Post and once a week I was deposited at a fascinating Frank Lloyd Wright home in the Los Feliz area where he rented a room for teaching. The fascinating luxury home had been reduced to a sort of Frank Lloyd Wright boarding house! It wasn’t the huge Ennis House on the hill recently purchased by Ron Burkle, nor Wright’s famous Hollyhock House, but a small residence on Franklin Avenue basically unknown today in the shadow of the other two. To me it was rather Persian more than Mayan in concept and once inside there was a long narrow courtyard surrounded by the long narrow house. And there was a long narrow pool with water lilies just inside the courtyard. I remember it well because once I wasn’t paying attention and I fell into it. I don’t remember a lot about Mr. Post except he was very dramatic and smelled of alcohol most of the time. But I guess he did his job because my mother was very satisfied with my speaking voice when the lessons concluded, no more mumbling, and I ended up winning lots of debating contests in high school. I sometimes thought however that these were based more upon my speaking voice than my logic!!

Well while I’m on this subject… A few years ago I was in Los Angeles with some time to spare and went exploring the Los Felix area where I grew up. And I swung by the Wright house where I learned not to mumble. The exterior looked the same. Some men were hauling out furniture that had been used inside for a just concluded photo shoot. I asked one of them if there was anyone in charge inside and he said the property manager. I went in and the very nice gentleman showed me around. Not much was changed except no sign of the pool. He told me that investigators had been curious about the house because the main suspect for the Black Dahlia murders, a doctor, had rented rooms there at one time. He told me it was suspected there might be other bodies buried somewhere. At that point I said had anyone checked where the original pool was. “What pool?” Well I’ve never heard if they checked but the Philip Marlow in me says that’s where the bodies are!!!

Now back to Taliesin West: Following dinner we all piled into golf carts to go from the dining room to the theatre for a movie. Dwight was whisked off first with our hostess and I went in another one with Wes. And Dwight and I were further separated by all possible distance in the theatre. However I couldn’t have been sent into Siberia for a total evening with a more delightful partner than the late William Wesley Peters, sadly known mainly for having been married for 20 months to dreaded dictator Josef Stalin’s daughter who has just died at the age of 85.

Incidentally what film did we see that night? Expecting something intellectual I was most surprised when the Beatles came on in “A Hard Day’s Night”. Dwight slept through the film to Mrs. Wright’s very obvious annoyance.

In one of the obits I’ve read Lana Peters, as Stalin’s daughter chose to be called in America, had one comment for the press when she divorced Wes Peters and left Taliesin West: “I came away less than glowingly impressed by the matriach and management of Taliesin.” So while I never met Stalin’s daughter, we really did have something in common!

And while I’m into to things Russian, the great Danish ballet dancer David Hallberg, who recently left New York Ballet to become a principle dancer in Moscow to dance with the famed Bolshoi company and particularly to partner Natalia Osipova, hasn’t gotten off to such a great start as you might or might not have read. Before they could dance together Osipova accepted a too tempting to turn down invitation to join the Mikhailovsky Theater in St. Petersburg. And even worse, although his opening night reviews at the Bolshoi dancing Sleeping Beauty were greatest raves possible, it turns out he sprained his ankle near the very beginning of the performance. But the show of perfection went on! Interviewed a few days later he confessed he told no one of his accident until the performance was over. “Russians love that kind of drama in the theater. It would have been really dramatic, but nothing would have been accomplished. When stress sets in and pressure, I focus. Had it (sprained ankle) happened two days before it would have been a catastrophe because now I can’t dance. I can barely walk right now.”

Well from now on every time I wake up in the morning with aches and pains instead of complaining I’ll think of David Hallberg and the show going on achieving greatness in the world of dance.

Darci Kistler and Beverley Jackson

Darci Kistler and Beverley Jackson at USCB Faculty Club. The interesting wood paneling behind us was part of a ceiling purchased for UCSB Faculty Club from William Randolph Hearst’s San Simeon.

Speaking of great ballet dancers, beautiful sweet magnificent dancer Darci Kistler, now retired at age 47 from the New York City Ballet, was in Santa Barbara several weeks ago. And I had the great fortune to be one of a very small group invited to watch a Master Class she conducted with ballet students at University of California Santa Barbara. It was quite wonderful to watch her turn shy, frightened or untalented or both, students into glowing performers. Her kind encouraging words were there for all. “Beautiful!” she exclaimed when a step was finally performed correctly after some very bad mistakes. Again and again she instilled if not confidence at least momentary pride. Not all Master Classes are conducted so graciously.

Following the event Darci, Annette Caleel, Dilling Yang (wife of UCSB Chancellor Henry Yang) and several others and I enjoyed luncheon together in the Faculty Club. Darci confessed that when she was young she wanted to be a singer but she had no voice so she turned to dance. Good choice! And now her 15 year old daughter wants to sing. And she has a fine voice. Well two great dancers in a family are really enough. Darci is married to Peter Martins, Ballet Master in Chief of New York City Ballet where he danced from 1967 until he retired 1983. Maybe it is time for a singer in the Martins family…

By The Way
This blog was started to sell my new book and I keep going off on other topics. Please do check out The Beautiful Lady Was A Palace Eunuch at Amazon.com
Acknowledgement:
Kathleen Fetner, Technical Advisor and Friend
Categories Editorial, My Life
Comments (2)

Il Teatro Alla Moda Comes To Beverly Hills

by Beverley
November 14th, 2011

People who love beautiful costumes, appreciate textile creativity and superb workmanship, should head straight to this special exhibition (Theater in Fashion translated from the Italian). Wallis Annenberg has brought the exhibition to Beverly Hills in connection with the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts in the historic Italianate style 1933 Beverly Hills Post Office currently being restored. The Center won’t be ready for opening until the fall of 2013, but that didn’t stop Wallis. She found a wonderful site on North Beverly Drive where the exhibition has been installed. It was scheduled to be in Beverly Hills for only one month, then back to Italy to a museum in Venice but it has just been announced it will be staying in Beverly Hills until December 15th now.

This perfectly spectacular exhibition consists of costumes designed by the greatest Italian haute couture designers for opera, ballet and concert soloists. It has previously been shown in Rome and Milan, and as I mentioned above heads back to Italy and the city of canals and gondolas from California. The curator of this exhibition, Massimiliano Capella, has assembled the most colorful assortment of costumes that explore the relationship between the performing arts and the great Italian designers. Those designers are Armani, Capucci, Coveri, Ferretti, Fendi, Gigli, Marras, Missoni, Ungaro, Valentino and Versace.

There is one exception to Italians in this exhibition, French Coco Chanel. She does show up everywhere doesn’t she. Another new book about her, films, documentaries. And now she’s found her way into an all Italian exhibition! But she really deserves to be there for the important part she had in Serge Diaghilev’s Ballet Russe production of Jean Cocteau‘s Le Tren Bleu in 1924. This production took place at the Theatre of the Champs-Elysees which has special meaning for me. The theatre was built by the late Madame Ganna Walska whom I had the honor of having a correspondence with for some years and meeting just once. It was a very emotional meeting at her famous Santa Barbara Lotusland gardens and home. But that is a very special story I’ll share with you all one day. Fortunately my good friend Hania Tallmadge, Madame’s niece, was there with a camera and there is a photograph to document the momentous meeting with tiny Madame in her nineties and me hugging and crying. About the Theatre, after singing not too successfully in an opera she produced in the fine theatre she’d built, Madame gave the theatre to the City of Paris.

Oh dear, there I go straying again! Back to Coco! Her representation in the Italian exhibition is a marvelous bathing suit made of jersey, a fabric previously only worn by the working class in France. Over it was a striking Japanese style white kimono printed in black that I truly coveted. The curator has found a drawing of one of the other bathing suits for Le Tren Bleu which is pictured here. One highlight of this great ballet in 1924 Wallis wasn’t able to bring over was the famous curtain Pablo Picasso designed for the Theatre de Champs Elysee. The curtain stretches to over 34 feet by 38 feet. Serge Diaghilev always did think big! After spending most of last 80 years in storage it was taken out and shown at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London in the autumn of 2010.

Now let’s look at some pictures of the costumes in the exhibition: I was particularly delighted by Gianni Versace’s Bavarian costumes for the 1989 production of Doktor Faustus. Spectacular in black and white basically, but one with a Mondrian like design in color on one side. Here you see front and side view plus one of the original designs by Versace. Another of the Bavarian costumes in all black and white that really caught the eye is also pictured.

One of most striking gowns in the exhibition was a red georgette Capucci design with cascading double ruffles made for Katia Riccarelli to wear for a Paris concert. And since we usually associate the opera Salome with seven veils and things like that Gianni Versace’s design for Helga Dernesch to wear playing Herodias in Salome comes as a major surprise! It’s very up to date black silk crepe de chine, pleated and draped with a sensational black velvet skirt. A design for this gown is also shown here.

Missoni costumes for a production of Lucia di Lammermoor performed in Milan’s Teatro all Scala are also a major surprise. This opera was the second opera I ever saw when I was very young and my memories are of Lily Pons in something chiffony swirling around her, not Scottish plaids and kilt. But Missoni saw kilt in tartans of orange and blue. He dressed Luciano Pavarotti singing the role of Sir Edgardo di Ravenswood in pants of big tartan geometric pattern of blue, burgundy and black with burgundy leather cloak and gray wool tam with pom pom. I’d love to have seen that! Sadly I don’t even have a photo to show, only a description. But we can use our imaginations can’t we!

By The Way
This blog was started to sell my new book and I keep going off on other topics. Please do check out The Beautiful Lady Was A Palace Eunuch at Amazon.com
Acknowledgement:
Kathleen Fetner, Technical Advisor and Friend
Categories Editorial
Comments (0)

Some Moan and Groan, Some Try to Do Something  About Problems

by Beverley
October 24th, 2011

I write a lot about yesterdays. And maybe I imply yesterday was better. It probably was if only because I was younger and more able to cope. Sometimes coping takes a tremendous amount of control and sometimes imagination. For instance yesterday when I was approaching emotional liftoff after more than half an hour of pushing numbers which a robot voice on United Air phone line kept dictating I push, as well as  listening to George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue, United Air version, for at least thousandth time. Suddenly I got inventive. How would I be conducting this Gershwin treasure if I were Alan Gilbert as compared to how the late Leopold Stokowski might have conducted it. The telephone receiver became Gilbert’s violin. Yes I was on my old fashioned landline. I live in an area where power outages are frequent and we need one. My pen became Stokowski’s baton. A little small but I was improvising.   I tossed my hair wildly as Leopold got into full motion, my baton slashing the air with tremendous force. You know the part — da, da, DAH, da…. Luckily I was clutching Alan’s violin near my ear with my left hand when unbelievably a live person announced herself on his violin, well, my landline receiver, and asked most serenely if she could assist me — that was just before she disconnected us.

But this is leading somewhere. To a very interesting article in Sunday October 23rd New York Times Art & Leisure section. The Worlds Poor: Rescued by Design by Michael Kimmelman to be exact. Mr. Kimmelman writes about an exhibition in the United Nations visitor’s lobby organized by the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum.

The exhibition is all about simple ideas to help the poorest people in the world. Tackling the problem of schools for children of frequently moving migrant construction workers in the booming area of Pune, Indian school buses, but not the usual ones, proved an ideal solution. These are schools in buses — buses equipped with classrooms for 25 children who are picked  up where they live. And when parents must move to another location they are connected with school room buses in their new area. This system is now fortunately being brought into the frighteningly crowded slum areas of Mumbai, New Delhi and other cities.  Hopefully this is just the beginning of a project that will spread throughout India.

In Kibera, Naurobi, Kenya someone designed a huge square “stove” with areas for many cooking pots heated by a central unit fueled by refuse the women collect as payment for using the community stove. Brilliant idea. Rural Chinese should have similar to eliminate all the small coal stoves spewing toxic fumes into their tiny huts.

The statistics are frightening in Mr. Kimmelman’s article. Over a billon people live in horrifying slums today. I’ve seen the favelas in Rio myself, one area mentioned. What is really frightening however is the prediction that by 2050 One in three people on the planet will be living in favelas or chapros in Nepal or barrios in Ecuador etc. And we have areas in this country too that are nothing to be proud of.

The seemingly small creative projects featured in this exhibition become big when you look at them as a beginning in solving momentous problems. A beginning indicates moving forward not just ignoring and accepting. More power to the creative minds moving us forward.

By The Way
This blog was started to sell my new book and I keep going off on other topics. Please do check out The Beautiful Lady Was A Palace Eunuch at Amazon.com
Acknowledgement:
Kathleen Fetner, Technical Advisor and Friend
Categories Editorial
Comments (1)

20 Ton Giants Against the Tiny Snowy Plover

by Beverley
October 14th, 2011

Western Snowy Plover. Public domain. Photo Credit: U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service.

It doesn’t sound quite logical does it, but the cute little shore bird with short legs and a short neck actually might be winning a battle against 20 ton giant statues of an Egyptian king. You see it may be tiny but its got one big thing going for it, the Snowy Plover is on the U.S. endangered species list. So those little birds are standing strong against four 20 ton statues of Pharaoh Ramses among other giants.

Where the little birds have the giants is their breeding season is protected along the beaches of Guadalupe, California and other areas of Pacific coastline and no one can trespass in their nesting territory from March through September.

My interest in the giants and thus the Snowy Plover began when I first heard about Cecil B. DeMille‘s “Lost City in the Dunes” in Guadalupe, California. Guadalupe is a small town about 150 miles north of Los Angeles that you usually pass right through quickly on your way to San Francisco. But one thing they have is an area of towering sand dune the locals call “the dune that never moves.” All the shifting sands, winds, waves, mini tsunamis, nothing changes that particular area of sand dunes.

The reason the dunes don’t move is the sands are controlled by the remains of Cecil B. DeMille’s gigantic sets/props for his 1923 silent film “The Ten Commandments“. DeMille always did things on a big scale. Whereas the remake of this film in 1956 with Charlton Heston was made in Egypt, DeMille built Egypt outside Guadalupe, California. Over 1,000 workers labored in this area to recreate the City of the Pharaohs. The wall surrounding the temple rose 110 feet out of the sand. In addition to the four 20 ton statues of Pharaoh Ramses there were 21 mammoth sphinxes. There were 300 chariots to cart around the 3,500 actors on the film and over 5,000 animals used for various scenes. Statistics show these animals consumed 20,000 pounds of hay a day. Don’t know what they fed the lions assuming they had lions. I did learn the crew or some of the animals consumed 2,500 apples a day and 2,500 oranges a day. But lions wouldn’t eat those.

Okay, where do my cute little birds come in. Well to lead into that I have to tell you that for over 20 years filmmaker Peter Brosnan has been trying to create a major documentary “The Lost City of DeMille” telling about this City of Pharaohs movie set buried in the sand in Guadalupe. It’s been a long hard struggle for Mr. Brosnan since he was given DeMille’s autobiography in 1982 which described the building and burying of the set. The saga of following clues and locating the area and then of getting funding is so involved I won’t bore you with it. I’ll just pick up in 1988 when the site passed into the hands of The Nature Conservancy who backed the project to save the set. Then Hollywood Heritage organization offered nonprofit sponsorship and in 1990 Bank of America got into the act because their founder, the late A.P.Giannini was involved with funding DeMille’s original film on the site. Anyways, they now had money to hire an archeological survey that using ground penetrating radar found portions of the set recoverable and in good shape.

Still heading towards my little birds story so stay with me. January 2011 with $300,000 in hand Peter Brosnan received a permit exemption from the Planning and Development Department for his salvage operation at the protected archeological site. Eight highly qualified archeologists were set to get to serious work October 5th. Already using brushes and hand trowels they had come up with small material related to the 1923 film.

Then tragedy strikes. The little birds, NO! The Planning and Development Department claimed they made a mistake in giving the okay to proceed and 72 hours before work was to begin it was stopped. It was something about the Planning and Development people saying a grading permit was not necessary but the Coastal Development Department required a film permit.

Don’t try to figure this out. Just ask anyone who has tried to build in Santa Barbara about dealing with Coastal Development. According to newspaper reports Glenn Russell, director of Planning and Development feels badly about the situation and is quoted as saying “This is a project that is obviously good for the county and the community of Guadalupe and we want to make sure they get it done. We feel obligated to process those permits at no cost.”

Actually not a great deal of earth moving is involved. It is believed most of the artifacts are fairly near the surface of the dune. The archeologist have told the county that a family building a sand castle on the beach would move more sand and do more environmental damage than their project would.

Now the birds! Their nesting season starts March 1, 2012 through September 30th. That would mean no excavating for the Lost City until all those baby Snowy Plovers are hatched and ready to face the world on their own. This delays the project until October 2012. That’s why I say the tiny birds are really holding their own against the giant Pharaohs.

By The Way
This blog was started to sell my new book and I keep going off on other topics. Please do check out The Beautiful Lady Was A Palace Eunuch at Amazon.com
Acknowledgement:
Kathleen Fetner, Technical Advisor and Friend
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Beverley Jackson
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