They Are Not “Just” Weekends!

JWise Thoughts, Travels

Caroline Wise and John Wise on the California State Line

Late last year and into this one, I had been sharing with people our ambition to take 25 vacations away from Phoenix in 2022. More than one person, on hearing this, asked for details and then said something that left me feeling that they had diminished the idea of vacations: “Oh, so you mean weekends away too.” Well, that’s obviously been nagging at me, hence this blog post.

Getty Villa in Pacific Palisades, California

What I’m doing is sharing one image from each day of those “weekend” trips that, to me, are vacations, albeit mini-vacations. The first photo, from January 7th, is of us crossing into California. The following image was taken at the Getty Villa in Pacific Palisades. After the museum, we headed to a botanical garden we’d never visited and then had a seafood dinner sitting next to the harbor in San Pedro.

La Brea Tar Pits & Museum in Los Angeles, California

We may have had to drive home to Phoenix on this day, but there was still time to tour the La Brea Tar Pits Museum and the Hammer Museum. We even had time to catch lunch (and ice cream!) in Little Persia.

Caroline Wise and John Wise at the Nevada Stateline

Two weeks later, on January 21st, we were on our way out of town again, this time passing through Nevada on our way to Death Valley National Park. Dinner was at the famous Crowbar Saloon in Shoshone, California, and we ended the night with a dip into the hot spring-fed pool near our hotel also in Shoshone, just outside the park.

Racetrack Playa in Death Valley National Park, California

Today, Saturday, was all about the long drive out to Racetrack Playa to see for ourselves the sailing rocks that mysteriously move across a dry lakebed. We’d waited years for this opportunity. We also had time for a stop at Badwater Basin and another one at Ubehebe Crater.

Death Valley National Park, California

If you thought we needed to race back home, seeing it’s Sunday, you’d be wrong. We took a drive on the Twenty Mule Team Canyon Road, and Caroline got her Junior Ranger Badge for Death Valley. We walked out on the salt flat and even had time to visit Salt Creek, where we took our second long walk of the day. A late lunch was had with a bunch of donkeys in Beatty, Nevada.

Caroline Wise and John Wise at the South Rim of Grand Canyon National Park, Arizona

Another two weeks pass, and then, on February 4th, we find ourselves at the South Rim of the Grand Canyon National Park in time for sunset with a luxurious dinner at the El Tovar restaurant.

Caroline Wise at the Grand Canyon National Park, Arizona

Looking into the abyss after our picnic lunch on a remote corner. We walked 11 miles of trails today here at the Canyon, making for a perfect Saturday.

Navajo Point in the Grand Canyon National Park, Arizona

Breakfast at El Tovar, a five-mile walk out to the South Kaibab Trailhead, lunch back at El Tovar, and then we headed for the exit. This view is from Navajo Point at the eastern edge of the Grand Canyon, the last photo taken on this Sunday.

Art Cars in Douglas, Arizona

If it’s February 18th, this must be Douglas, Arizona, down on the Mexican border. After checking into our historic hotel, we went for dinner, and on the way back, not the same way we walked to the restaurant, we stumbled into Art Car World, where, although they had just finished hosting a private event, we were graciously invited in for a quick private tour.

Gadsden Hotel in Douglas, Arizona

It was a tough choice as to which photo I’d share for this Saturday, but the classic beauty of the Gadsden Hotel in Douglas just had to find a spot in this post. After a tour of sightseeing in town, we headed up a dirt road that brought us out to the Leslie Canyon National Wildlife Refuge and a hike to an old mining operation. From there, we mosied over to Whitewater Draw, where we gawked at 10’s of thousands of Sandhill cranes; they were an astonishing sight.

Willcox Playa in Willcox, Arizona

After breakfast at our hotel, we revisited Art Car World to get a closer look at the cars before heading north with the hope of seeing more Sandhill cranes. Our destination was the Willcox Playa, which you see Caroline walking towards. Sadly, this place was bone dry and may not have had a single bird of any kind, but the views out here made it all worthwhile.

Desert Center, California

This brings us to this past weekend, starting on April 1st. You might notice that skipped over our nearly two weeks down in Mexico, but this post is about weekends only. We stopped in the ghost town of Desert Center, California, and learned that it was the place where Kaiser Permanente effectively got its start. We are on our way to Los Angeles.

LACMA - Los Angeles County Museum of Art in Southern California

Saturday started with an amazing breakfast at La Republique on La Brea before we walked over to LACMA for some art browsing. Lunch was at Guelaguetza Oaxacan restaurant, followed by shopping at Mitsuwa Marketplace in Santa Monica, a twilight walk at Venice Beach, ending the night with us witnessing our first Sideshow/Takeover when the intersection in front of our hotel was illegally blocked so a bunch of young people could have a 15-minute party watching muscle cars performing donuts as bystanders jumped from danger and even courted it by gathering in the center of the intersection.

Huntington Library and Garden in San Marino, California

It’s Sunday, April 3rd, and the end of another weekend, but before we go home, we walked across the street from our hotel to the Sun Nong Dan Korean restaurant for breakfast and then drive out to San Marino to visit the Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens. Seeing that we were conveniently located in the north of Los Angeles, it was an easy drive east to Glendora for fresh strawberry donuts from the Donut Man before snagging lunch and coffee for the drive home to Phoenix, Arizona.

Four weekends, fifteen days, and a load of incredible experiences that sure seem to be the ingredients of great vacations in our book.

L.A. to Phoenix

JWise Photo of the Day, Travels

Last night, somewhere about an hour after we went to sleep, the sound of a racing car engine woke me first. The squealing tires demanded I jump out of bed, quickly followed by Caroline. Our room on the third floor of the Garden Suite Hotel facing Western Avenue offered us the perfect view of the intersection at 7th Street and Western. What was going on down there took some time to decipher. The smell of burning rubber, a ton of smoke, roaring engines, and the sound of the crowd spilling into our room, but tired brains took a moment to compute that we were witnessing our first-ever sideshow, also known as a takeover.

Then it all starts to come together: someone disabled the street lights, there was a coordinated effort to shut down the streets in such a way that law enforcement wouldn’t easily reach the intersection, enough people showed up to make a sizable audience, and then the mayhem ensues. Get your tires smoking, turn into the circle, and hammer the gas. Passengers were hanging out of windows, and kids were darting into the middle of the street where cars encircled them, pouring smoke over everything. On the edges, other kids were trying to touch the cars when they weren’t jumping out of the way. This lasted nearly 15 minutes before a police helicopter showed up, and maybe 5 minutes after that, we could hear sirens from the approaching police. With the explosion of a large firework right in the intersection, things broke up, the crowd scattered, and cars pulled away in all directions, leaving us astonished at what we’d just seen.

Seven hours later, as we crossed the intersection, the smell of burned rubber was still present, and the idea that we heard, saw, and experienced what we did in the wee hours of last night felt like a dream.

Here we are across the street at Sun Nong Dan Korean restaurant that we visited last night. This is what $30 bought for breakfast compared to yesterday. First up was hot barley tea, followed by the banchan: kimchi (spicy), pickled radish (yummy), pickled onion with jalapeno (okay), garlic chive in sesame oil (oh my god, my mind is blown in amazement), and a side of brown rice (dyed purple with black rice!). Caroline ordered the Tta Roh Guk Bap (beef brisket with dried cabbage Soup), and I went for the Yuk Gae Jang (spicy beef & leek soup). Both had a good amount of spiciness to them; this wasn’t just some mild gochugaru added for coloring.

We were promised a partly sunny day, but all we see is gray, occasionally dark gray hinting at a chance for rain, but that won’t ruin our day as our dispositions are sunny enough. Hmm, I read those last six words and think I need to mash the backspace key and delete that cheese, but there’s a hint of truth there. You see, we always know we might be hit with unfavorable weather when we travel, but what exactly is unfavorable? Is cold, wet, windy, or too hot a negative for successful travel? Maybe this is why so many people think they need to go to Cancun, Hawaii, Ibiza, Tenerife, Miami, or other places at only particular times of the year. Well, that would be a setup for disappointment. All of today’s photos were shot under gray skies, that is, until we reached the Palm Springs area of the Californian desert on our way home when the sun finally emerged.

So now that you know the weather and our attitude towards it, I can share that we are at the Huntington Library and Garden in San Marino, California. In yesterday’s post, I wrote how we got our dates backward for when we were supposed to be here and at LACMA; well, the staff here at the Huntington had no problem exchanging the tickets and letting us enter right away, which was a big relief. Our first stop is at the library and this statue of Commodus (son of Marcus Aurelius and movie villain in the film “Gladiator”) as Hercules holding his son Telephus; I guess it’s kind of like the image of Trump as Rambo but also holding a baby Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Close-up detail of one of the original Gutenberg bibles that still exists. This volume printed on vellum is incomplete just as the majority of the 48 remaining bibles are, but lucky Caroline and I have also seen a complete copy at the Library of Congress in Washington D.C. and the one at the Austrian National Library in Vienna. Next time we are in Germany, I want to make a point of seeing the Frankfurt University Library copy that is also complete, and since I’ve also seen the one in Mainz, Germany, it’ll take me to have been in the presence of 10% of these old bibles from 1455.

An example of cross-writing where back in the days of expensive writing paper, the author would write their letter in the traditional top to bottom fashion and then turn the page 90 degrees to continue writing. This page at the Huntington Library wouldn’t be here if it didn’t hold significant historical importance; it is from Mary Shelley, author of Frankenstein and wife of Percy Bysshe Shelley, written to her friend Marianne Hunt in 1819.

The stacking of coincidence to make for synchronicities isn’t lost on us. First, we go to Mexico City, and Caroline learns that it used to be a city surrounded by a lake. Then, yesterday at LACMA, we visited the Mixpantli exhibit that has a floor map interpreting the phase between Tenochtitlán becoming Mexico City. Now, here at the Huntington, Caroline spotted this map printed in 1524 of Tenochtitlán created as conquistador Hernán Cortés was causing the fall of the Aztec empire.

The various gardens here are part of the attraction for visitors who get to explore 130 of the 207 acres that comprise the grounds.

Couldn’t help but think of Kehinde Wiley’s presidential portrait of Barack Obama with this shot.

Inside the 55,000 square-foot Beaux-Arts mansion that Henry Huntington and his wife Arabella called their winter home. At other times of the year, you might have found them somewhere between mansions in New York or their home in Paris, France. Huntington made his fortune as a railroad magnate.

This is such a big, beautiful room, and normally down there at the end is the famous Blue Boy, a full-length portrait by Thomas Gainsborough painted in 1770, but it’s over in England on display until May 15 at the National Gallery in London. This is the first time the Blue Boy has been back in England in 100 years, and is likely the last time. In its stead is a modern interpretation commissioned by the Huntington of the Blue Boy by artist Kehinde Wiley. Interested in seeing what it looks like? Visit the Huntington; it’s worth your effort.

While there are more than a few paintings from Edward Bird here, it doesn’t seem like the artist ever gained the kind of reputation that would make his work extremely valuable.

This is a small overview of the very crowded Japanese garden. I know it doesn’t look that crowded, but I waited to get this photo with so few people in it, and like I said, it’s a small corner of it.

Next we headed to the new Chinese garden that was still under construction when we visited last. This place is perfect.

I might now be wishing for blue skies and sun, but I’d like to think that we’ll return here again and maybe on that day I can get a shot of this view in full glorious sunlight or maybe we’ll really get lucky and come back for a summer twilight visit

Part of the transition zone between the Chinese and Japanese gardens, I believe.

For Caroline.

Back at the Japanese garden, though, we are just skirting it on the way to the Australian corner of the Huntington.

Last time we were here, the bonsais were chained down as something pricey had been stolen; looking around now there are enough surveillance cameras to dissuade potential thieves, I hope. This bonsai is an elm tree.

Almost missed this plant and flower as it’s kind of away from the trail. Caroline first noticed the peculiar gray metallic leaves, and then, on our approach, there were maybe half a dozen blooms distributed between two of these giant Australian plants.

The squirrels seen across the grounds are fluffy, fat, and cute, but they are not the only wildlife.

Initially, I wanted to avoid the desert plants as I feel we see enough of them where we live, but obviously, we don’t live in all desert areas and my memory didn’t remind me of the opulent beauty on display here.

Are these edible?

There are thousands of impressions, if not millions more, here at the Huntington, but I can’t share them all. It was a toss-up if we’d even visit this garden as there’s also the nearby Descanso Gardens just 10 miles away in La Cañada Flintridge that we would like to return to. We are scheduled to return to Los Angeles in July, but it’s awfully hot here, so maybe we’ll swap an October trip to Chinle, Arizona, with that one?

Okay, time to go; we are both getting hungry here shortly before 2:00 p.m.

Yes, we bought fresh strawberry donuts from the world-famous Donut Man in Glendora, but we didn’t tuck into those right way; we are way more reasonable than that. After collecting dessert, we headed over to El Gallo Giro in Fontana, where we thought of stopping on Friday night before visiting the Northwoods Inn. In this case, our memories were far greater than the food we found today at this popular Mexican fast-food restaurant. On the other hand, the donuts were everything we’d hoped for and more.

We pulled off the freeway at Desert Center to find a brass plaque that noted the role of the town in the founding of Kaiser Permanente, but couldn’t find it. Now, at home writing this, I found an article from 2014 that already spoke of the theft of that sign. While we couldn’t find what we were looking for, we had this opportunity to look back west at a terrific sunset before continuing our way east to Phoenix as we continued to nibble on donuts and finish our coffees.

Day in Los Angeles

JWise Photo of the Day, Travels

Breakfast at Republique in Los Angeles, California

You thought gas was expensive in L.A.? You should try breakfast. We are at La Republique on La Brea in a historic building erected by Charlie Chaplin back in 1929, seriously nice digs. Our first stroke of luck was finding parking; next, we were early enough on this Saturday not to get stuck in a long line. Caroline opted for nostalgia, ordering the shakshouka, which is what we had on our first visit here back in August 2019 with the Braverman’s. That was a special moment as it was our first meeting with their new son, Liam. Lucky for Republique, we won’t be camping out here for 3 hours today as we did then as we have an appointment coming up at 10:00 a.m. As for my meal on this visit, a lobster and gruyere omelet with arugula. So what took the bill to $100, well we also had coffee. Just kidding, though we did have coffee, we also ordered three pastries to go; yep, that’ll do it.

Walking in Los Angeles, California

Well, how’d we mess this up? It’s Saturday, we thought we were supposed to be at LACMA (Los Angeles County Museum of Art), but it turns out our reservations are for Sunday, and we planned on being at the Huntington Library and Gardens over in San Marino today. Not sure the garden is going to honor today’s tickets tomorrow but we were not going to race an hour across the L.A. basin to try to get there when both entries were scheduled for the same time. The worst outcome will be that we have to pay for our entries tomorrow without credit for today, but I suppose it supports a good cause.

So far, so good, as the person at the ticket office for LACMA simply refunded our tickets for tomorrow and then charged us for entry this morning.

Otto Dix at LACMA - Los Angeles County Museum of Art in Southern California

Started up on the third floor by taking the outside escalator up into the void. There’s a moment on the ride up, where high over the ground below, it appears the escalator doesn’t connect to the open walkway. With that bit of nerve-wracking out of the way, we started our truncated tour of the museum. Truncated because a large part of LACMA is gone as they are building a massive new structure spanning Wilshire Boulevard that won’t open until 2024.

Once in the gallery, I’m confronted nearly immediately by one of my favorite artists, Otto Dix. The piece is called Leda, and it depicts a swan raping a woman. It is not the depiction of Zeus’s avatar, the swan, raping Leda that draws me to the piece or to Dix’s work; though most of his work depicts a cruel and violent world, it is his authentic depiction of a people enthralled with the gore they so fondly adore. I fully understand that “most” people will feign disgust at images of violence, but the reality, in my view, is that our population needs blood sacrifice to nourish some primordial love of brutality. I happen to appreciate mine in the unflinching, cold, authentic voice of art.

LACMA - Los Angeles County Museum of Art in Southern California

I have an unwavering appreciation for the art of the last 19th and early 20th centuries. From Kandinsky, pictured here, to Chagall, Klimt, Delvaux, Miró, Klee, Ernst, Dix (above), and the inheritor of these schools of art, Francis Bacon.

LACMA - Los Angeles County Museum of Art in Southern California

Growing up, I loved the experimental nature of what I was seeing from David Hockney, but as he took L.A. by storm, I started growing weary of his work. It seemed to me that his movement stopped and that his themes were uncomplicated pieces that would sell to an adoring crowd of aficionados who needed an art celebrity friend in their midst. So, if I don’t really enjoy his work, why am I including one? When I was younger, my fascination with Hockney’s work likely arose from my discovering the world of art around me, and now today, I look at this piece and wonder if I’m simply not able to find appreciation because I lack the sophistication to understand how to see it.

LACMA - Los Angeles County Museum of Art in Southern California

It is in the arts of writing and painting that I find respect for Marxist ideology. Diego Rivera and his wife, Frida Kahlo, are two of those creators who likely were given more credit due to their thinking I felt stood behind their work compared to how my disdain of the status quo drove my derision of the mainstream.

LACMA - Los Angeles County Museum of Art in Southern California

Maybe the most famous work on exhibit right now here at LACMA, or at least the most recognizable to many, is The Treachery of Images by René Magritte. A contemporary of Delvaux’s and fellow Belgian certainly places him in the realm of interesting artists, along with being one of the first artists to work in Surrealism. All the same, I never found a spot for him in my aesthetic sense of appreciation.

LACMA - Los Angeles County Museum of Art in Southern California

Michael C. McMillen’s Central Meridian (The Garage) is one of my favorite installations ever. The Garage took me right out of LACMA and Los Angeles and deposited me somewhere out on the road in the middle of America after being granted access to a long-abandoned garage that hadn’t been ransacked.

LACMA - Los Angeles County Museum of Art in Southern California

Hailing from Chile, artist Roberto Sebastián Antonio Matta Echaurren, better known as Roberto Matta, created this piece as a reflection of the violence of the Vietnam War and the Watts Riots in Los Angeles. This piece is called Burn, Baby, Burn.

Caroline Wise at LACMA - Los Angeles County Museum of Art in Southern California

It was difficult to truly demonstrate the size of the biggest elevator Caroline or I have ever been in. I’m in the opposing corner, but this shot really would have benefited from using my 10mm lens (left at home) instead of the 17mm I tried squeezing this into.

LACMA - Los Angeles County Museum of Art in Southern California

We are not typically ones for modern contemporary art, but the work of 77-year-old take-no-prisoners Barbara Kruger kicks modernity square in the crotch of superficiality and lays bare the empty social media-driven society of the pathetic that we are. I’d never heard of this hard-hitting force of truth before, and it wasn’t long until she captured my emotions as she reassured me that people older than myself also see the shit of what we’ve become.

LACMA - Los Angeles County Museum of Art in Southern California

Adjacent to this was another sign that read, “I Love Myself. And You Hate Me For It.” The dichotomy is poignant as the artist shows us the profoundly ugly state of being that exists in order to make someone feel better at the expense of the other. This resonates with me regarding our relationship between rich and poor, success and simply surviving, winning and losing. When you understand our simplistic positioning of perspective between the two poles of love and hate, maybe you can see what a sad and sorry bunch of idiots we really are.

LACMA - Los Angeles County Museum of Art in Southern California

The war is about identity and cultural differences. Society, by and large, hates individuality.

LACMA - Los Angeles County Museum of Art in Southern California

“You. You know that women have served all of these centuries as looking glasses possessing the magic and delicious power of reflecting the figure of man at twice its natural size,” from Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own. On the floor, it says, “If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face – forever!” This last quote is from 1984 by George Orwell.

LACMA - Los Angeles County Museum of Art in Southern California

Five hundred years ago, Tenochtitlán fell, and the Aztec culture was crushed by the European invaders. Mexico City rose from the ashes of that Aztec capital, and this exhibit at LACMA titled Mixpantli: Space, Time, and the Indigenous Origins of Mexico subverts that narrative and looks at how artists from the merged cultures created the world anew. The Nahua people describe Mixpantli as the “Banner of clouds,” referring to “The first omen of the conquest, depicting this omen as both a Mexica battle standard and a Euro-Christian column enveloped in clouds.”

On the ground in the main part of this exhibit lies a room-sized etching showing the map of Tenochtitlán/Mexico City during the time of colonization that still features human life and the activities that are part of that instead of the sterility of a map that only demonstrates territory. The artist who created this is Mariana Castillo Deball from Mexico City, who studied there and in Maastricht, Netherlands; she now lives in Berlin.

I’m pointing out the Berlin connection because of the fact that currently, many artists live in Germany due to Germans generally supporting the arts. But I have to wonder as the heart of Europe moves to invest more money into the military after years of believing that trade and culture were the most important part of keeping the peace on that continent. Now, with Putin in Ukraine, like Spain in Tenochtitlán, are we witnessing a change in priorities that, for at least some period of time, will disenfranchise so many international artists who count on the power of Germany to help create new ideas?

LACMA - Los Angeles County Museum of Art in Southern California

Sandy Rodriquez of Los Angeles created this work that is a lot bigger than this little corner I’m sharing here. The piece is called, “You will not be forgotten, Mapa for the children killed in custody of US Customs and Border Protection.”

LACMA - Los Angeles County Museum of Art in Southern California

This scene titled Gare Saint-Lazare by Claude Monet ties into something similar to the works of Paul Delvaux I appreciate and that is depictions of trains and their stations. This station in Paris servicing the Normandy area has been in operation since 1837. This painting is on exhibit as part of City of Cinema: Paris 1850–1907, going on at LACMA through July of this year.

LACMA - Los Angeles County Museum of Art in Southern California

We ended our time at the museum right here at the Black American Portraits exhibit, which is over in two weeks. The centerpieces in this exhibit are from Kehinde Wiley, who created the piece here in the middle of other worthy artists and one behind me also from Kehinde of artist Mickalene Thomas. Tragically, we missed seeing the Obama portraits that were on display here at the museum back in January when we were in L.A.

Guelaguetza Oaxacan restaurant in Los Angeles, California

After leaving LACMA, we pointed the car in the direction of Olympic Boulevard to revisit Guelaguetza Oaxacan restaurant. We had our first encounter with chapulines back in November 2018 with our daughter Jessica. (I was referencing grasshoppers if you were wondering what chapulines are.) As for the daughter reference for those who know Caroline and me but not Jessica, I was previously married. Today, we are going to try Huitlacoche, or corn fungus, to spell it out simply. Also on the menu was a tlayuda guelaguetza with chorizo, dried beef tasajo, and grilled marinated pork cecina. In case you are not sure what a tlayuda is, it’s a toasted large tortilla something akin to lavash.

Now that we totally have Mal de Puerco (thanks, Gabriela, for this one; it literally means “Disease of the pig,” but could also be considered a food coma), we wandered aimlessly down Pico, just trying to drive slow and straight. Caroline stopped in a small Oaxacan grocery looking for hot chocolate powder because, again, Gabriela, we now need some of that Mayan hot chocolate we fell in love with at Cocao Nativa in San Cristóbal de las Casas, Mexico, a couple of weeks ago. Came up empty-handed there. So we just kept going.

Looking for something to do on this unplanned part of the day, Caroline found a Kinokuniya Japanese bookstore in Santa Monica that should have only required a single left turn, but the Mal de Puerco was working hard on us, so we had some turns and such before we arrived at the Mitsuwa Marketplace on Centinela Avenue where the bookstore is located. The selection of colored pens is extraordinary and it requires some serious willpower to not grab one of each for the drawing I’ll never get to.

Too bad we are stuffed as the ramen here is right on. Again, I can’t help but think, as I did in San Cristóbal, why can’t we have nice things in Phoenix? As a matter of fact, as I write this, I’m at another non-descript strip mall of an anonymous intersection here in the desert we live in; from here at Starbucks, I peer out the windows at a Five Guys, Walmart, Petco, Rubios, a mattress shop, TitleMax, GNC, and some other corporate franchised businesses that lack any character, flavor, or uniqueness. But this is not supposed to be a lament post, just a celebration of the things that draw us into travel and out of our generic and mundane corner of America.

I waffled a minute but then decided that the Hello Kitty Moleskine notebook, even at $30, was mine. Monday is my birthday, so I’ll just consider this notebook as my 59th birthday gift to myself.

We were just about a block from Venice Beach, where I was certain I wouldn’t find a hint of parking, although we did find a Starbucks that has 30 minutes of parking out back. To fight back the food coma, we are sucking down a coffee at 7:00 p.m. and doing some writing; well, Caroline was reading, but then it was time for more meandering as our time allowed for parking was quickly coming to an end.

Only a few blocks away, I found that parking spot I thought would be difficult to spot, and it was a cheap $5.00. A walk on the beach is the perfect punctuation to a perfect day; it may be late and gray, but still, we are walking in the sand along the Pacific.

Koreatown in Los Angeles, California

At our hotel back in Korea Town by 8:30, it’s just too early to give in to the heavy eyes we’re carrying with us, and so, out into the night, we go. The idea when I made these plans was to see whatever Korean movie was playing just up the street, but it turns out there’s nothing currently playing that was made in Korea. There was The Batman subtitled in Korean, but we passed on that. The Korean corndog and weird sandwich shop we’d visited before closed already, and the plaza where these places are was not as lively as it was a few years ago. I’d like to say, “Funny how the pandemic changed things,” but none of it is really funny.

Caroline Wise at a taco stand in Koreatown Los Angeles, California

So we continued a short walk around the neighborhood, looking for something light to eat. One place, called Sun Nong Dan, looked seriously promising as it was packed with nothing but younger Koreans, but they were serving giant portions. Their sign out front also noted they serve breakfast; asking the host near the door what time they open, he said they are open 24/7. Galbi Jjim (beef short ribs) covered in cheese might just be on the breakfast menu for the two of us in the morning, though we were also considering a pastrami and chili burrito at Oki Dog; we’ll see.

Off To Los Angeles – Trip 6

JWise Photo of the Day, Travels

Caroline Wise and John Wise leaving Phoenix, Arizona

Hello Friday, April 1st, 2022. Since our return from Mexico on March 16th, I’ve been busy writing up some seriously lengthy entries that more than a lot of words, were packed with a ton of images. Well, that grueling, though very satisfying, writing exercise and extension of immersion was accomplished just this past Tuesday morning. After working over a few other posts (all of them rants), I’m ready to post a couple, but I’m waiting for Caroline to give them the once over and, if need be, pull me back from the cliff of embarrassment.

But today’s post is not about the past yet; it’s about today, tomorrow, and the day after. We are heading to Los Angeles for the weekend. I’ve already raced through the things that are important to leaving, odds and ends kinds of things regarding cleaning and the sort. Now I’m parked at Starbucks trying to fluff this blog post as travel days are typically light on sharing experiences when the majority of the time is in the car before arriving at the destination looking to check in to our hotel (boring) and then go get something to eat (tired), and so there’s that. Maybe we should mix things up, try to get out even earlier and race over to the ocean for some sunset shots of us walking on the beach.

This brings up the idea that social media only shares the side of us we want seen, the side that reflects a kind of skewed perfection. While that may be mostly true, I don’t think anyone reading this could believe that things weren’t pretty good here on our 6th trip together in the first quarter of the year. And that is after 33 years together! Oh god, then I have to go and think of those young social influencers Tom and Alexis Sharkey (or did I mean Gaby Petito and Brian Laundrie?) who died in a murder/suicide situation, and though I’ve never seen or watched their social media lives, I understood they only portrayed things as perfect.

With my coffee done, the music pummeling me with insipid Broadway show tunes, and, well, nothing much else to say, I’m going to wrap things up here, head home, and pester Caroline to leave even earlier (she’ll not budge as she’s doing that work thing that pays for all this Dolce Vita). My next words will arrive from another state, California.

We are sitting in a Starbucks in Palm Desert, California, after pulling off the I-10 Freeway because we were warned that 30 miles ahead there’s an hour delay due to an accident. With the option of sitting amidst the aggression of people who can’t go anywhere or pulling up a chair for a coffee, some ice water, the always-appreciated toilet, wifi to do exactly what I’m doing at this moment, we’ll opt for this chill moment. The photos below are definitely not Palm Desert.

Desert Center, California

It’s already 6:00 p.m. with about two hours left before reaching our hotel, but before we get to that, we stopped at Desert Center for some roadside relief for Caroline about an hour prior to this stop at Starbucks, which should tell you how urgent that need was because we swore off ever stopping at this exit again, forever and ever kind of swore off. You see, we stopped here a dozen or more years ago when the gas station was still operating and determined that this corner of our travels was likely one of the creepiest we’d yet seen. Well, other than the post office, everything here is toast, including the couple parked in front of the broken pumps just smoking a joint, taking in the ambiance

Desert Center, California

The burger joint is boarded up.

Desert Center, California

The cafe and garage are no longer in business…

Desert Center, California

…though somehow the cafe has avoided being ransacked. As I was looking for info on when the cafe shut down, 2012 was the year I found a brilliant article detailing the auctioning off of much of what belonged to the family that once owned the town. Check it out at Never Quite Lost; it features some terrific photos.

Desert Center, California

What remains of the old market after the roof caved in?

Desert Center, California

This might have been an old-school facility, but we couldn’t be sure, and we weren’t very interested in exploring buildings that might offer us ticks, bed bugs, black widow spiders, collapsing floors, or skeletons.

Desert Center, California

As we were getting ready to drive away, I asked Caroline to look up the history of Desert Center, and that’s when things got even more interesting. Once upon a time, long ago a man by the name of Sidney R. Garfield set up shop in this town to care for injuries happening to the men working on the Colorado River Aqueduct nearby. Nearly bankrupt, he was visited by Henry J. Kaiser, head of Kaiser Steel, one of the companies involved with the Aqueduct project, who convinced Garfield to head with him to the Grand Coulee Dam where instead of treating 5,000 men, he’d be dealing with 50,000 which would be far more financially viable. From this partnership, Kaiser Permanente was born. Now, if you don’t know about this California company and the nine states it services, this will probably mean nothing to you. For us, though, this is as cool as passing through Ft. Thomas, Arizona, where the founder of the Lions Club, Melvin Jones, was born, or learning of Hi Jolly (Hadji Ali) and his Camel Corps in Quartzsite, Arizona.

Desert Center, California

Not sure if people used to stay here or were murdered here. Enough of Desert Center, we return to Starbucks over in Palm Desert.

After maybe 30 minutes, it appeared the heavy traffic on the freeway was clearing up, so we got back on the road. It’ll be 8:00 before we reach our dinner location at El Gallo Giro in Fontana. It’s been years since we’ve been there, and it turns out that it might still be years to come as, at the last minute, we opted to drop in on the Northwoods Inn in Covina we’ve not visited in a few years at least.

Clearman's Northwoods Inn in Covina, California

We arrived at 8:45; they close at 9:30. Seated by 9:10, our order was made in 2 seconds as there was no need to think about what we were going to have. Now, if only our hotel room was upstairs, we wouldn’t have had this 40-minute drive through traffic mayhem to Korea Town. It’s 11:30 as I write this, and I’m as tired as can be, but that’s okay; we are on a much-needed mini-vacation after hanging out in Phoenix for 15 days straight. Don’t pity us, though; we are trying to do the best we can now that we’re so ancient…heck we’re so old that when I wrote that, I had the beat in my head from KLF’s Justified and Ancient with Tammy Wynette, yep, we’re that old.

From Mexico to America

JWise Photo of the Day, Travels

Approaching Tuxtla Gutiérrez, Mexico

Nearly 22,000 words and almost 400 photos lay behind me as we move down the road on our way to Tuxtla Gutiérrez.

Approaching Tuxtla Gutiérrez, Mexico

Under those clouds, we’ll return from the Highlands of Chiapas to an airport that will whisk us away from one of the most meaningful experiences I’ll have had during my 50s. There’s no real way to encapsulate the impressions that sparked the lengthy writing about the previous week, nor will the photos offer you a glimpse into my depths that saw what can only be known with a firsthand investigation into something so far away from what would be my normal.

Leaving Tuxtla Gutiérrez, Mexico

We leave the surface of the earth to put distance between us and an unimaginable experience that feels alien and not our own. The privilege of accessing such a tiny corner of our planet is nothing if not astonishing. The incredible fortune of granting ourselves these moments can be difficult to contextualize as to who among us has the tools to decipher things we hardly understand.

Over Mexico

We fly over a world on fire, literally here over the mountains of Mexico and an ocean and continent away in Ukraine, but down in the crevices of nearly forgotten lands and people, life sustains itself.

Leaving Mexico City, Mexico

We are already leaving Mexico City for the last leg of our journey home and wondering when we might return.

Leaving Mexico City, Mexico

Until next time, Mexico, bye.

Over Mexico

The radiant rainbow eye of the universe guides our plane home.

Over Mexico

The moon reminds us of the pyramid at the top of the Avenue of the Dead at Teotihuacán and that someday we too will fade from existence like all things do, but until then, we’ll be embracing all that life has to offer and counting our lucky stars.

Last Wandering of San Cristóbal

JWise Photo of the Day, Travels

Caroline Wise and a weaver in San Cristóbal de las Casas, Mexico

Our last full day in San Cristóbal only had two things on the agenda: a COVID test for those who needed one to return to the United States and dinner this evening with the group. The rest of the day was ours to explore the town. In the courtyard of our hotel, three vendors invited by Norma were on hand: Francesca from Amatenango selling embroidered blouses and huipiles; Gabriela’s friend Jessica brought coffee and pinole, which is made from roasted ground corn mixed with cocoa, agave, cinnamon, chia seeds, vanilla, and other spices, and finally, the third table was filled with pottery and other beautiful artifacts. We picked up another blouse, the last one of this adventure, and a pound of coffee grown in a cloud forest. COVID test and shopping done, we headed into town for a final round of sightseeing.

San Cristóbal de las Casas, Mexico

Iglesia de Mexicanos was the first church that caught our eye in the distance on our attempt to wander the historic area of the city.

San Cristóbal de las Casas, Mexico

I’ll never see sunflowers in a church the same again, reminders of Zinacantan.

Mural in San Cristóbal de las Casas, Mexico

We are out on the streets for nothing more than greater familiarity with San Cris. After the previous days of profound cultural immersion, it’s nice to have nothing more to do than check out the amazing murals of this city.

San Cristóbal de las Casas, Mexico

With dinner scheduled for 6:00, we needed to get lunch out of the way in order to have an appetite later.

San Cristóbal de las Casas, Mexico

We dipped into La Lupe restaurant, hoping that the darker clouds flirting overhead wouldn’t rain on as we took our seats outside, but this musician moved in shortly afterward, showering us with music. Notice his bag? It’s the same kind Caroline bought three of, small, medium, and large, a kind of Matryoshka purse.

Mural in San Cristóbal de las Casas, Mexico

I don’t want to believe that all this street art is from the same person or group, though I have to then wonder if the crazy eyes are just some serendipitous characteristic popular in San Cris or why so many murals feature them.

San Cristóbal de las Casas, Mexico

I wonder how many people in the U.S. think about the name burrito and recognize that it translates to “small donkey?” Then, as I ponder the Donki Burritos N Bowls I slip down the whole “donkey little donkey,” imagining “big burro little burro” and switching images of the animals and wrapped foodstuff. It starts to become a chicken/egg situation.

San Cristóbal de las Casas, Mexico

Had we never visited a Mayan cemetery, I wouldn’t have had an inkling of an idea what these targets with an empty center were used for.

Mural in San Cristóbal de las Casas, Mexico

The eyes have captured me; I’m seriously enjoying these murals. Then, I finally noticed the tag TERAZ. Thanks to the magic of search engines, entering San Cristóbal Teraz Murals, I’m delivered to the Instagram page of Teraz E.T. The mystery is solved: this is not by chance; it’s the imagination of this person working to entertain us with his psychedelic creations that are seemingly everywhere here in town.

Mural in San Cristóbal de las Casas, Mexico

This is but one head of three painted on the front of this building. Should you want to see the rest, I can highly recommend that you really should visit San Cris.

San Cristóbal de las Casas, Mexico

Iglesia de Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe is the church up another hill, though not to the tune of 23 flights of stairs that were required to scale the heights to Iglesia de San Cristóbalito.

San Cristóbal de las Casas, Mexico

This is a first for me: an altar featuring neon lighting.

San Cristóbal de las Casas, Mexico

Not wanting to simply turn around and head back through the center of town, we left the hill the church was on via its opposite side. A small road led down the hill and back around to the right, offering us this view of some plots of land reminiscent of an overlook we took in while on Kauai, Hawaii.

Mural in San Cristóbal de las Casas, Mexico

Viva Chiapas…a solid sentiment.

Mural in San Cristóbal de las Casas, Mexico

This is obviously not done by Teraz, but the eyes certainly seem inspired by his work.

Mural in San Cristóbal de las Casas, Mexico

There’s no doubt who created this and that I have a soft spot for the style.

Mural in San Cristóbal de las Casas, Mexico

Some cosmic, multi-cultural, multi-dimensional mural art going on here. It wasn’t until I got home that I noticed the swastika, but as it’s not turned 45 degrees, I’m going with it as being related to Hinduism, not fascism.

Mural in San Cristóbal de las Casas, Mexico

Maybe had we looked for a map that details the murals of San Cris, we’d have found one, but if such a thing doesn’t exist, it should.

Mural in San Cristóbal de las Casas, Mexico

Oh, this one is all about me. Hear all the evil, see all the evil, and scream about evil. Obviously, there’s more to this mural than just that, as I think the monkey on the left is a Zapatista and the one on the right a follower of Che Guevara, but what is the reference of the one in the middle? [To me, all three depict Zapatistas – Caroline]

San Cristóbal de las Casas, Mexico

Monkeys are everywhere but don’t confuse the plantains with bananas. This truck, with its loudspeaker blaring into the neighborhood about the availability of plantains, is not something I’ve ever seen in America.

La Antigua – Galería de Arte & Café in San Cristóbal de las Casas, Mexico

Who could have imagined that our afternoon wandering would bring us into so many monkey-themed moments? Up until the moment we saw the sign for La Antigua – Galería de Arte & Café, we had no idea what street we were on and if we’d been on it before. But this was where we first saw the work of Tex from ArTex Centro Cultural Independiente and the incredible huipiles of Alberto López Gómez of K’uxul Pok.

La Antigua – Galería de Arte & Café in San Cristóbal de las Casas, Mexico

This chance re-encounter would be fortuitous as I’d wished that I’d taken more photos in the gallery as maybe we’d be interested in buying a piece after we returned to the States. So, I got busy taking photos of the works I was most interested in and that I’d failed to capture a few days ago.

La Antigua – Galería de Arte & Café in San Cristóbal de las Casas, Mexico

I also finally got the nerve to ask about the price of these, knowing that if you have to ask, you probably can’t afford it. Oh, that’s all? Jeez, I think we can afford that. But we don’t have a free centimeter left in our bags; there is NO way we can squeeze even a stamp into those suitcases… “We can ship it to you!”

Buying a piece of art from Tex of ArTex at La Antigua – Galería de Arte & Café in San Cristóbal de las Casas, Mexico

Caroline and I agree that this is our favorite from the three in contention, and it was taken off the wall as it was about to become ours, proudly held up by Victor. There are other mentions of the Monkey Men in a previous post or two, so I’ll leave that there; plus, I’m trying to keep this entry short as I’ve been writing non-stop for a week now, and I’m ready to move on. As of this writing, the painting hasn’t arrived, but I did receive a shipping notification.

San Cristóbal de las Casas, Mexico

What is this, John? It’s polished stones of the well-worn sidewalks we’ve been traveling on. Not an outrageously beautiful photo but an important memory.

San Cristóbal de las Casas, Mexico

There are no amount of photos I can snap off that will leave me with the impression that I’ve saved what I need to feed a memory wanting to hold on to the essence of this place. Then again, I have no idea yet what the essence of San Cris is, which is great as it implies we’ve visited an enigma compared to a city like New Orleans that holds no allure after our encounters that had me feeling I knew enough.

San Cristóbal de las Casas, Mexico

Iglesia de Santa Lucia, completed in 1892, is still being repaired following the massive earthquake of 2017, I’m hoping they repaint the turquoise highlights that used to grace this church.

San Cristóbal de las Casas, Mexico

And we just keep walking…

San Cristóbal de las Casas, Mexico

…until we reach the next church, this one is the Iglesia de San Francisco. Back in 1577, there was also a convent here, but it’s now long gone. The current church was built in the 18th century.

Caroline Wise at Cocao Nativa in San Cristóbal de las Casas, Mexico

Our last photo of the day is from Cacao Nativa definitely a happy place. A perfect ending to a perfect trip.

If you are astute, you’ll notice that earlier, I spoke of a farewell dinner this night at 6:00, well that happened but not without some self-inflicted drama that I’m going to share. Caroline will wish I didn’t offer the thoughts I’d written that night, but I can live with my embarrassment as it’s not the worst I’ve done, and I still feel that with a week between then and now, my tension is worth remembering.

Here we are at our farewell dinner that I inexcusably shot in the head after leveling a “fuck you” at one of the other guests. What a mortifying embarrassment that I gave in so easily to their baiting. Eleven others in this group of 12 had already shared their trip observations, and I was last. I might have gotten 60 seconds in before this other person mumbled some unintelligible words under their breath toward me and my comments.

I knew this was coming due to the snipes that had already been offered by this person, and still, I wasn’t prepared for how quickly it arrived. So, what words triggered this? I objected to characterizations of some of the people we were visiting as being dirty in their poverty; I listened acutely to the conversations behind and around me. I followed this up with my dislike for the undercurrent of disparaging the local men. This was from tired, repetitive questions asking where the men were; obviously, they were doing labor as we saw it all the time. Questions of male alcohol abuse, violence, and taking the wages of the women were a near-constant refrain. Not only did we see the men of the community, but it had also been pointed out multiple times that they were out working or had left for the United States to work there and support their families here.

It was then that the mumbled interjection took place. With my untouched dinner still in front of me, my time at this dinner came to an abrupt end when I shamed myself, embarrassed my wife, created the spectacle of the evening, and then I walked out in a huff. Then, here I was standing outside, the sad asshole who couldn’t contain himself playing right into this guest’s wish that I wasn’t there; she won; I took the low road.

A sad stain on an otherwise perfect adventure resonating in my own way with my fellow human beings that are more fully realized than many others I’ve encountered in travels in America and a few on this particular journey. But John, you’ve known this bias against those that our dominant culture considers “other” for nearly 50 years of my conscious mind. These fellow citizens are tools used to keep humans apart. You can’t comment about they and them, trash-strewn environments, and personal hygiene while anonymizing people in hostile categorizations. The people we were meeting are part of us, and we them.

We were gifted a moment to share intimacy in the homes and dreams of people who allowed us in, assuming we were human too, but behind their backs, we are a culturally impoverished bunch of cruel yet privileged troglodytes.

Maybe I can discover some way to meaningfully apologize for what we’ve burdened ourselves with so people surviving in the corners of this corrosive isolation might come to understand our abhorrent ignorance. But that would require we find a fraction of the love I’ve seen in abundance here in the ancestral lands of the Maya.

I’d also pointed out in my 60-second missive that I sensed that the Maya we’d visited were wealthier than the majority of people at the table, who all had an abundance of cash, while the Maya, on the other hand, had a cosmological love that I felt is lacking in our country and is the true measure of riches.