Aiming For The Ledge

JWise Rant

Cliffside Path by Frank Kehren

God damn, I’m angry about America as it appears to be swirling like a turd going down the toilet. Without a collective mind or compass, we are driven by greed propelled by fear, creating the appearance that America is on track to destroy itself. If the people of the United States were pissed enough to elect the man they did as President in 2016, the next election in 2024 is on track to deliver even worse results. My hopes that the last election would nudge us back onto a track of normal are quickly fading as my optimism’s spring runs dry.

I’ll try to tamp down the vitriol and spell out why I have such negative views of the future, though let me be clear: while I anguish over the future of the United States, I still have a favorable outlook for Caroline and me and our ability to enjoy our later years of life.

I’ve lamented time and again my disdain for the mediocrity being cultivated in the culture I’ve mostly grown up in. From my early days in Los Angeles during the 70s and my affinity for rebellion through music, film, literature, and sometimes appearance, and certainly, in my thinking, I’ve rarely relented in being critical of certain aspects of American life. Namely poor education, demands for conformity, intolerance, racism, violence, love of war, vapid celebrity worship, and love of money above all else.

The COVID pandemic slammed on the breaks, skipped the parachute, and crashed our global economy into a vast garbage patch somewhere out in the ocean. Like a plane on September 11, 2001, slamming into a high-rise, consumerism became the victim of a viral attack that is still claiming victims and only appears to grow worse in a cascade of economic terrorism.

For much of 2020 and into 2021, humanity entered stasis where things were in hibernation, maybe not on the political front as the powers to inflict intellectual harm were still hard at work, but economically, everyone worked, studied, ate, and vacationed from home who could afford to do so.

The U.S. Government and banking system immediately understood that 4 in 5 Americans would be placed in a perilous economic situation by the fallout of the pandemic and that an emergency cash infusion was needed to calm what could have become panic. On March 13, the President declared America to be in a National Emergency due to COVID-19, and then only 12 days later, the CARES Act was presented, which the President signed two days later. Rather than suffer the malaise caused by a full stop of spending and face a financial catastrophe with people defaulting en masse on rent and debt payments, the government quickly threw a multi-trillion dollar life jacket to everyone earning under about $120,000 a year. This equates to about 80% of our population that was considered at risk. See reference one below.

This $2800 per household or $1400 for individuals, along with a moratorium on evictions, allowed people to get things in order before they found themselves homeless or in default. Many people moved back home, took on roommates, started living in vehicles, or simply chose homelessness.

Two years later, businesses are clamoring to recover lost income. To that end, seemingly everyone is raising prices to offset the vast reduction in spending that occurred and has still not rebounded. This has been easily apparent just by looking at how many restaurants closed over the past couple of years, and many of the ones that were able to remain open are only seeing a fraction of pre-pandemic traffic.

As recovery started taking place, there’s been an absence of workers that have been blamed on the continuing pandemic, lucrative unemployment deals, laziness, and various other issues. The way I see it, as financial reality struck Americans and they altered consumption and lifestyles, they learned to live with less. During the height of the pandemic, many unemployed service workers turned to the gig economy in the form of food and package delivery. With recovery underway, I believe people thought these laid-off workers would run back to their $12-an-hour jobs, but they’d made too many changes to their personal lives and with the reality that their $1628 monthly take-home pay after taxes of a full-time job wasn’t going to allow them to afford the rent for a one bedroom apartment, electricity, water, trash, sewer, phone, internet, and food, which add up to a minimum expense of over $2000 a month. Of course, they could have taken on a second job as they were doing before things shut down, but now is not then.

Okay, so I’ve addressed low-income earners in those “student” jobs; let’s look at the idea of going to university.

With uncertainty about the future of jobs due to potential other pandemic shutdowns, the absurdity of going to college to incur a 10-year loan that will cost between $500 and $1000 a month for repayment only to get a job that might pay $50,000 makes for a bleak future. But I can hear people saying that $50k is a good wage; oh really? After-tax, that income is only $39k per year or $3,246 per month; now, let’s do the math. Rent for one bedroom is $1500, electricity $100, trash, water, sewer $40, health insurance contribution $140, phone and internet of $75, food for $368, student loan of only $500, transportation to this job of no less than $100 a month plus car insurance of another $60, and the fixed costs are a minimum of $2,883 per month allowing this new college grad to pocket $363 a month to pay for luxuries such as planning on having children, car repairs, saving for a house, dating, going on vacation, retirement, subscribing to Netflix, eating out, or going to the movies. I refuse to believe that $90 a week in disposable income is ever going to accomplish all that.

Inflation is out of control, with some costs such as rent not being adequately represented in the Consumer Price Index (CPI), but with rents moving towards an average of $1500 a month for a one-bedroom apartment in cities that have jobs, we will reach a breaking point where wages will not be able to keep pace with rising costs. It is as though we are operating on a theory that total annihilation must take place in order for a societal collapse to force a reimagining of how we do things. First, though, we’ll need a thorough culling of the seriously angry people who are most at risk from not being able to afford to live in this country; a civil war should propel that nicely.

We as a country cannot ask for sacrifice and investment as our rabid sense of individuality backed by incredible stupidity would never allow people to come together to create a unifying vision, which is exacerbated by the general public’s abysmal level of intellectual capacity. One does not act in one’s own best interest in America; we act precisely against that.

As we lemmings aim for the ledge, what could possibly stop us from tumbling over the side? State rights and the extremism that is currently our norm would halt a federal program to contain the price gouging. Bringing in outside workers would have us up in arms about immigration when Americans need jobs that are currently not filled. Getting people into university to allow us to add to professional jobs is a non-starter due to the costs of simultaneously paying to live in America, taking on more debt, and going to classes, not forgetting to mention that according to the U.S. Department of Education, 54% of adults in the United States have prose literacy below a 6th-grade level. See reference two below. Prose literacy is defined as: “The knowledge and skills needed to understand and use information from texts including editorials, news stories, brochures, and instruction manuals.” This begs the question of how over half of the population of the United States will ever be able to understand a college-level textbook.

This level of illiteracy and inability to learn complex tasks is putting America at risk of having an enormous segment of its population stuck in a dead-end where there is no economic future for them to afford the ability to live in dignity. Stop and think about this: 180 million Americans are operating at a level below a 6th grader. How is an advanced nation supposed to live in a democracy when a majority cannot reason beyond an 11-year-old?

During the past more than a year and a half, we’ve listened to the frustration of parents whose kids haven’t been attending school. They are said to worry about what the children are missing in their education, social skills, and potential for careers after not being able to attend in-person school for so long. Add the circus around supposedly teaching children Critical Race Theory (CRT), feuding about mask and vaccination mandates, and the threat of gun violence on campuses, and parents start to look at the perceived damage to their progeny through the eyes of the voter. Well, the Republicans are the ones who want those kids back in school free of masks, CRT, and vaccine mandates, and with no regard to a pandemic, guns, racism, or even questioning the effectiveness of our fractured, ill-performing excuse for an education they want things to return to something, a thing they likely can’t adequately explain.

With this, parents are admitting some ugly truths about who they are: children potentially contracting lifelong side effects from a new disease is okay, and racism has always been a component of life, so who cares about that? Plus, I don’t want my children calling me out about my own bias. Guns are a fact of life, as the 2nd amendment guarantees us, which means it’s inevitable that some kids will die; the way we live so far away from one another means our children don’t live in proximity to other children to have a social life (not that they foster one with face-to-face contact while they are gaming anyway), medicine has been politicized and we are now so afraid of unknowns that we’ll believe nearly anything else, and masks are a framework for mind control. Basically, we are showing our cards that we are a nation of runaway idiots.

Our problems are not really about what I’ve written above; this is about the parents and grandparents who are fundamentally under-educated for the convulsion moving through society brought on by the advancement of technology, the intellectual demands that arose from that, a system of unrestrained greed fostered in a speculative market surrounding housing, stocks, all things crypto, the changing opportunity found on a planet that became mobile and more global in our lifetimes. Then, add a worldwide stop to all travel, commerce, in-person education, banking, shopping, and medicine except for the most critical, and we have to recognize that culture is in upheaval. This doesn’t even stop to consider the ramifications of what’s on the horizon with the wholesale shift to electric cars, ships, and probably planes, along with energy systems that are rapidly evolving due to climate change. The myriad changes we are facing threaten to buckle the relative stability most of us in the West have grown up with.

Sadly, the wherewithal and knowledge of managing such a momentous global. cultural, economic, and educational change cannot move at the glacial pace we’ve grown accustomed to, but radical change will end up causing a whiplash that some will try to constrain due to their aversion to change. Fortunately, many of the changes are already baked in and will not be turned back, but instead of racing into the next set of challenges, there’s a likelihood that we’ll have to resort to the historical method of wrestling with profound change. In other words, war and mass death.

Education is the first thing that requires a full reset as we here in the United States are not teaching thinking (or reading, for that matter) but instead are squeezing individuality out of the herd that is massaged into a conformity soup where banality rules the day. We witness this every day, month to month, and year to year; it is our norm, and we give it a nod of appreciation as these are the people who are recognized as the most American, the true patriots known as the common man. They love guns, football, baseball, big cars and trucks, and big homes; they dress the same, eat the same, and think the same. Those on the outside of the norm are tattooed, addicted, alternative, LGBTQ, nerds, tree huggers, entrepreneurs, immigrants, and some of the most gifted when it comes to knowledge, acting, music, invention, and other areas that require immense skills that help entertain humanity.

America has long-neglected education in favor of the commodification of a workforce that can be tapped for enlisted military service, underpaid service industry jobs, blind consumerism, and a prison system that currently houses 2 million people but has processed 15 million Americans through its gears creating job security for the financial systems that benefit from that sector including police, courts, transportation, construction, food services, prison guards, prison-related clothing manufacturers, gang and community task forces, energy services, along with news media.

Education is the least likely facet of American life that will change in my lifetime because an abundance of under-performing people has always been the grease lubricating opportunities for wealth in all strata of our society aside from the lowest that ends up carrying the burden of poor education. We will likely remedy the environment first as class differentiation plays deeply into ego gratification because those lucky to benefit from their place in life need to feel something greater than luck has granted them dominion over the masses. We no longer truly believe in god and, as time passes, less in the sciences either, so we cannot look to divine gifts or real learning as having given leaders their positions and wealth, and so it must simply be their greatness that has elevated them. A solid education where logic and real discovery about how to spend a lifetime learning is a remedy to this lopsided current situation, but who among the fortunate want to share the slice of pie they covet?

More important than oil, big houses, and luxury goods, education is the only serious commodity that will allow superpowers to emerge and displace whatever current economic leader might be holding the reins. It is no longer even remotely important who controls bombs and soldiers as using war for meaningful population control would require a conflict that would eliminate 2 to 3 billion people from the surface of our planet, and that cannot be accomplished with bullets, so do we resort to nuclear war?

The war of minds rages on the battlefield of global influence where Squid Games, anime, burritos, Rammstein, luxury cars, authors, game developers, BTS, Fentanyl, the NFL, TikTok, Apple, Pokemon Go, Bitcoin, and the host of other daily salves to ease the pain of existence is consumed by people who will always need a constant resupply of their drugs. Who can best offer access to an alternative to the grind of subservience to a dead future will start to propel humanity, while those who only desire continued enslavement will be moved off the world stage.

While America appears to desire a debased life of drugs, guns, and the associated malaise that has arrived with the crushed opportunities facing a vast swath of its citizens due to a feeble system of hope standing in for proper education, we sit back with a remote control, game controller, or smartphone ignoring the big truths that are all around us. We are failing in spectacular ways while the majority can’t begin to comprehend the abysmal failure of both politics and a population that has abdicated its participation.

My lament regarding education is a constant refrain in my daily life; I must listen to, talk with, or simply witness the broad spectrum stupidity mindlessly enjoyed by a populace oblivious to their own shortcomings, just as I am too, in some unacknowledged ways. The difference might be that I’m trying to uncover what I don’t know, repair my own bias that was gleefully instilled in me by society at large, and discover what lays ahead, or at least that’s my delusional thinking. Maybe everyone else is incredibly intelligent, and my form of madness has blinded me to their brilliance, with my ego deluding me into believing I’m on a different plane.

I’m terrified at our prospects where so many must remain marginalized and the wealthy, educated minority cannot see the structural problems all around them; of course, seeing this would require them to leave gated communities, venture outside of airports, and truly consider reality. Our political leaders are hiding this by using a complicit media apparatus that is distracting as many as it can with nonsense and entertainment, all backed by a corporate machine that mints super wealth while watching Rome burn.

Reference #1: https://www.cs.mcgill.ca/~rwest/wikispeedia/wpcd/wp/h/Household_income_in_the_United_States.htm

Reference #2: Low Literacy Levels Among U.S. Adults Could Be Costing The Economy $2.2 Trillion A Year (forbes.com)

Image Credit: “Cliffside Path” by Frank Kehren is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Recipe for Burmese Curry Base

JWise Food

Red Onions

Call me the experimental chef as I attempted to prepare Burmese curry base for the first time in years. I had a rough idea about the amount of ingredients I needed to make a batch but it seems I was a bit off. You see, I started with 8 pounds of red onions, 3 bunches of cilantro, and 3/4 cup of paprika, and well, that made 3 quarts or nearly 3 liters of this essential ingredient. It is enough curry base for us to make more than 12 Burmese dishes over the coming months, not that that’s a bad thing.

There are four main dishes for which I’ll be using this: jack fruit curry, pork belly curry, oxtail curry, and mango coconut squash shrimp curry. These dishes were taught to me a dozen years ago by Elizabeth Chan at the Little Rangoon restaurant in Scottsdale, Arizona, before they closed shop. It continues to be a tragedy to this day that the people of Arizona will never know her amazing recipes and the variety of foods she brought to the dining table.

To make the curry base I’d recommend you start with maybe 3 pounds of red onions peeled (instead of 8), cut them in half, and slice them into about 6 large slices. Use only 1 bunch of roughly chopped cilantro and about 1/3 cup of paprika. Cook these ingredients over medium heat for about 90 minutes in 1/2 cup of oil; I prefer corn oil but use what you want. After everything has softened and quite liquidy, either use a wand and puree this mixture or place it in a blender to puree it. You can now freeze it in one-cup portions; I use Ziploc freezer bags.

Childhood Rememberances

JWise Life

Drawing by Caroline Wise née Engelhardt from 1970 in Frankfurt, Germany

Last summer, in late May and early June, I found myself in Germany helping deal with the belongings my mother-in-law Jutta had amassed at home. My job was to sort, make sense of, preserve, recycle, donate, or toss those things that were no longer required by anyone, considering that Jutta had entered assisted living. Among the lifetime belongings of Jutta was a portfolio of close to a hundred drawings from her daughter Caroline Wise née Engelhardt of Frankfurt, Germany. From the time she was two years old, right up until Caroline was 13, Jutta put these drawings into safekeeping. My mother-in-law was pretty meticulous about saving these and dating them as Caroline presented mom with her art. This very first piece was drawn the month before Caroline turned three. I’m finally getting around to posting this now as it sat languishing as a draft for too long, just as they had in a folder for nearly 40 years among Jutta’s things.

Drawing by Caroline Wise née Engelhardt from 1971 in Frankfurt, Germany

Five months later, Caroline was mastering people, realistic hands, castles, and blue skies. This is from April 1971, and Caroline is 40 months old.

Drawing by Caroline Wise née Engelhardt from 1972 in Frankfurt, Germany

At four years old, Caroline was drawing patterns, while over in America, I was probably still eating dirt at nine years old.

Drawing by Caroline Wise née Engelhardt from 1973 in Frankfurt, Germany

By the time Caroline Wise was five, she took a liking to American Indians with horses starting to show up in her imagination.

Drawing by Caroline Wise née Engelhardt from 1974 in Frankfurt, Germany

It’s 1974 when if I had to guess, Caroline drew this image of her mom.

Drawing by Caroline Wise née Engelhardt from 1976 in Frankfurt, Germany

I don’t know what happened in 1975, but there wasn’t a single image from that year, and so here we are jumping right into 1976 and a nine-year-old little girl in love with ponies and Native Americans.

Drawing by Caroline Wise née Engelhardt from 1976 in Frankfurt, Germany

1976 must have been the year Caroline was introduced to watercolors at school, or maybe mom bought her a set?

Drawing by Caroline Wise née Engelhardt from 1976 in Frankfurt, Germany

Caroline wrote down this story in 4th grade (at 9 or 10 years old). Back then, a typical exercise in German class would be that the teacher (Mrs. Hirsch) read a short story to the class, and the children had to “re-narrate” it in their own words. The story titled The Careful Dreamer is about a traveler of the old days who shares a room in an inn with someone else. He took off his clothes and got ready for bed, but before he lay down, he strapped his slippers to his feet. The traveler’s roommate asked him why and got the answer, “I once dreamed that I stepped on broken glass, and it was so painful that I never want to sleep barefoot again!” According to Mrs. Hirsch’s comment, Caroline did a great job.

Drawing by Caroline Wise née Engelhardt from date unknown in Frankfurt, Germany

This was one of a few images without a date, but I was finding her fascination with horses interesting as although I knew she’d read Misty of Chincoteague and Black Beauty, I can’t say she ever shared with me just how deep her love of horses was.

Drawing by Caroline Wise née Engelhardt from 1977 in Frankfurt, Germany

It’s 1977, and the year Caroline will turn ten years old in mid-December; I think her sense for the abstract was something that should have been developed.

Drawing by Caroline Wise née Engelhardt from 1977 in Frankfurt, Germany

More horses, this time from 5th grade.

Drawing by Caroline Wise née Engelhardt from 1978 in Frankfurt, Germany

Maybe this was foreshadowing that Caroline would one day see ponies in the mountains.

Drawing by Caroline Wise née Engelhardt from 1979 in Frankfurt, Germany

During the summer of 1979, the horse and Native American theme continued.

Drawing by Caroline Wise née Engelhardt from date unknown in Frankfurt, Germany

Another image without a date.

Drawing by Caroline Wise née Engelhardt from 1981 in Frankfurt, Germany

Crayons were one of the first things Caroline asked me to get for her from the American PX, a big box of 96 colors. It was probably around this time in 1981 when Caroline had to give up drawing and art to take her studies seriously.

Drawing by Caroline Wise née Engelhardt from date unknown in Frankfurt, Germany

A rich woman throws a coin at a beggar woman with a child. This was the last image in the portfolio and a fitting one as the woman I would meet in 1989 was very aware of injustice, violence, and the social ills that fail so many people.

First Teddy Bear from Caroline Wise née Engelhardt of Frankfurt, Germany

All of these things, including the teddy bear above that belonged to Caroline at one time, are headed to the scrap heap where maybe pieces will be recycled while some of it burned. They were never destined to find their way into a museum, and while it might feel tragic at first glance that they should just be put in the trash, it’s ultimately where everything we own and create ends up. Maybe here on the internet, they’ll last longer than they might have otherwise.

End of The Weekend in L.A.

JWise Photo of the Day, Travels

When embarking on travels, we wish for impactful and deeply experiential moments to fill our days. Well, the adage Be careful what you wish for played out to the letter this weekend. It being Sunday today, we could have opted to have a nice breakfast and maybe make one other brief stop before leaving for Arizona but after incurring the cost of visiting Los Angeles, it would be foolish not to maximize our time here.

Last night, when considering our options, we found that the La Brea Tar Pits opened at 9:30 while another museum we were looking at opened at 11:00, and the garden choices would require us to drive nearly across the breadth of L.A., wasting too much time for the effort. Okay then, first, we’ll head down the street again for breakfast at Huckleberry Cafe and then pay a revisit to a museum of fossils we’d not seen in more than a dozen years. This is where the adage I referred to comes into play as with the greater breadth of experiences, the more photos I’ll take and the more I need to share, so my wishes turn into blogging turmoil because after the mini-vacation I’ll have a good week of work to note it all.

About 50,000 years ago, a tar pit looking much like the one we’re standing next to saw mammoths, wolves, saber-toothed cats, giant sloths, camels, bears, and countless birds step into the waters hiding a thick goo just below the surface that captured them as prisoners destined to call these pits their final resting places. Many of the animal skeletons found here are of now-extinct species that died off as recently as 10,000 years ago.

Move slow with big fat limbs, and you might get stuck in the tar with no ability to pull yourself free; this proved fatal for this giant sloth. Isn’t this a metaphor for modernity, where people with thick, dumb minds get stuck in the tar of stupidity, unable to free themselves from participation in an economy that relies more than ever on intellectual work?

Even fierce beasts must succumb to the end of their time when all that ferocity and ability to project violence will not help free themselves from the trap they blindly walked into. Again, this relates to our current time, where populist would-be dictators appeal to the brute force of those with base powers only able to exercise the threat of might that they offer to bring to the party.

This mammoth is like the majority of a population with a heft that can easily crush the individual trying to do the right thing, but in the end it too will extinct itself as it fails to change with the times and the environment. Oops, my writing brain and indignance for stupidity got stuck in my own tar and have pulled me into a muck that is not this weekend of amazing moments.

Sure, if I was walking down Sunset Boulevard, the last thing I might want to encounter on my way to the movies is a 10-foot-tall beast with massive tusks that could toss me in front of a passing bus, but that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t love knowing these creatures still had a place to wander around. I can’t stand here and not be in disbelief that they are forever gone, which only makes me appreciate more that the La Brea Tar Pits and Museum are here to remind us how fragile and temporary life is.

Skulls are amazing pieces of our skeletons when we stop to think how much of our senses are carried within them, and when they no longer serve that purpose and are but fossils, possibly forgotten within the earth, there is nothing left to know about that creature’s behaviors or, in the case of humans, their personalities. This ancestor of modern condors was nearly twice the weight of California condors and sported a wider wingspan, but for some reason, they went extinct about 10,000 years ago. I wonder what the reasons were for such a die-off because while the megafauna might have left the scene at that time, condors are scavengers, and I find it hard to believe that without cave bears, giant sloths, and mammoths, these large birds should simply die away. Sure, it was the end of the ice age, but my mind isn’t grasping why this change in weather didn’t invite adaptation to the new conditions instead of wiping out so many species. One theory posits that early humans, who arrived on the North American continent at that time, could have been a contributing factor, but estimates calculate that there were only 39,000 people in North America at that time. How could these few people kill off possibly millions of large animals?

This is the skull of the dire wolf that, like everything else on display here, is now extinct. These four skulls are part of a display featuring 404 such specimens, which is only a small part of the 3,600 dire wolf remains that have been excavated here at the La Brea Tar Pits.

How could people, some 10,000 years ago weighing in at about 140 pounds each, take out a pack of dire wolves, each weighing up to 200 pounds? I think the odds were stacked against these bipedal hunters in favor of the oversized canines.

This tar pit was actively excavated until the summer of 2019 and is estimated to still have 5 feet of skeletal remains buried within the tar. A sign tells us that 73 saber-toothed cats, 56 dire wolves, 16 coyotes, 13 western horses, 12 ancient bison, six ground sloths, six giant jaguars, four short-faced bears, two Yesterday’s camels (a.k.a, Western camel), and one American mastodon have been recovered so far.

Good thing this ground sloth isn’t able to eat, although if it was alive right now and not extinct, it would have been an herbivore; otherwise, I think my wife’s head might have been a snack instead of her friend offering a hug.

I probably should have taken a video of this, as Caroline’s curiosity took her right to these spinnable chairs. I helped her spin around, and after her first pangs of anxiety about falling out passed, she giggled like a little girl. She got the hang of it a lot quicker than trying to use a hula-hoop, though. In the gift shop, I tried convincing her that for only $885, she could have one for work, but she couldn’t be sold on the idea [I would have said yes for the low-low price of $499, though – Caroline].

I should also share that we are now at the Hammer Museum further down Wilshire Boulevard. Moving through the tar pits didn’t take very long, so instead of lingering or taking an early lunch, we opted for this museum that we’d never been to before.

A placard next to the entrance after entering this gallery reads: “In 1992, the Jamaican scholar and theorist Sylvia Wynter penned a critical text titled “‘No Humans Involved’: An Open Letter to My Colleagues.” The title refers to an internal code that was used by the Los Angeles Police Department, usually in relation to cases that disproportionately involved Black and Brown Angelenos who were often identified as sex workers, gang members, or drug traffickers. The code became public knowledge in 1992, shortly after the trial and ultimate acquittal of the four police officers charged with the use of excessive force in the brutal beating of Rodney King. In her open letter, written to her colleagues as a call to action, Wynter argues that the origins of Western humanism, steeped in imperial pursuits and colonial violence, determine contemporary constructs of race, gender, class, sexuality, and other categories that continue to shape our lived experience and justify or deny our humanity. She asks, “How did they come to conceive of what it means to be both human and North American in the kinds of terms (i.e., to be White, of Euro-American culture and descent, middle-class, college-educated and suburban) within whose logic the jobless and usually school drop-out/push-out category of young Black males can be perceived, and therefore behaved towards, only as the Lack of the human, the Conceptual Other to being North American?”

“The exhibition, No Humans Involved, showcases the work of Eddie Aparicio, Tau Lewis, Las Nietas de Nono, Sondra Perry, SANGREE, WangShui, and Wilmer Wilson IV, whose practices disrupts and interrogate Western ideals of humanism. Through conceptual and material explorations, these artists and collectives across the diverse regions of the diasporic Americas consider the systems, institutions, lineages, and cultural objects that uphold our sense of being via sculpture, textiles, performance, installation, and multimedia interventions. By centering the nonhuman or anti-human as a point of departure, highlighting ancient technologies, and utilizing artificial intelligence software, No Humans Involved attempts to provide a contemporary response to Wynter’s original call to action.”

Yeast and light.

Cloth and fabric become art.

Sculpture and form.

My first inclination was to offer up some biographical information about the man behind this museum, but then second thoughts crept into my head after reading about his communist father, his illegal campaign donations to President Nixon, and his great-grandson, an actor who might have cannibalistic tendencies. So, this is from the private art collection of a wealthy oil tycoon who is now dead and gone.

This was probably my favorite piece in the collection; it’s from Gustave Moreau and is titled Salomé Dancing before Herod.

Looking at the details, it’s obvious why Moreau required seven years to finish this work.

The dark, brooding, almost despairing look of the subject is appealing to my senses and is apparently quite contrary to what this artist would normally paint, which was fruit and flowers. This piece from Henri Fantin-Latour is titled Portrait of Miss Edith Crowe. I can’t say I’ve consciously ever seen his work before, but I did learn that he’s mentioned in In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust with the following:

“Many young women’s hands would be incapable of doing what I see there,” said the Prince, pointing to Mme de Villeparisis’s unfinished watercolors. And he asked her whether she had seen the flower painting by Fantin-Latour which had recently been exhibited. (From – The Guermantes Way)

Detail from Grape Pickers at Lunch by Renoir.

Wow, I wasn’t expecting a Van Gogh here. There’s no good reason one shouldn’t be here, but they do seem rare. Maybe it’s because after visiting the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam back in the 20th century and seeing so many in one place, nothing compares. This particular work is titled Hospital at Saint-Rémy.

The hospital referenced is in Provence, France, and its full name is Saint-Paul de Mausole. Van Gogh spent a year at this asylum back in 1889 when his mental health was failing him. Apparently, his creative skills were still intact as he painted a number of works during his stay. While it should be obvious, I’ll point it out anyway: this is a close-up detail from the painting above it.

From the Hammer website:

Witch Hunt presents the work of 16 mid-career women artists from 13 countries who use feminist, queer, and decolonial strategies to investigate current and historical political events, social conditions, and overlooked or suppressed artistic legacies. The artists have demonstrated decades-long commitments to feminist creative practice as a subversive, expansive, and oftentimes collaborative methodology. Together, their works provide an opportunity to examine ideas, expand awareness, and encourage dialogue about urgent contemporary issues, such as the body and its vulnerabilities; women’s rights and representation, the erasure of women’s contributions to critical movements and histories, the impact of technologies of surveillance; environmental justice; the queering of political discourse; the imperative for feminist practice to be inclusive and intersectional; and the power of collective action.

This enormous multi-panel weaving is from Otobong Nkanga, originally from Nigeria but now living in Antwerp, Belgium. Caroline and I both noticed that a lot of the artists featured here at the Hammer Museum are living in Europe, could it have something to do with how Europe supports artists?

Teresa Margolles was the other artist in this exhibit who struck a chord with me as she depicts a reality of life that I know, that I’ve seen, and doesn’t shy away from offering a look into the world that is contrary to the nonsense we share as our hoped for fantasy.

From the Hammer, it’s a short walk to Tehrangeles, a.k.a. Little Persia, where we went right over to the Attari Grill to try the lamb-brain-and-tongue sandwich only to learn they were already out of brain [a common complaint these days, it seems – Caroline], so tongue alone will have to be it. Sadly, this didn’t photograph well, and if I can cut a photo here and there, then I have less writing I need to deal with. Just across the street from lunch was the Saffron and Rose Ice Cream shop. Diabetes be damned, Persian ice cream is well worth the cheat.

And with that, we were on our way out of L.A. on a beautiful day after a beautiful weekend filled with beautiful moments.

Before long, it would be dark with hundreds of miles left until we reached home, but the investment of intention paid off once again and allowed us to start 2022 with incredible riches of experience.

Busy Day in Los Angeles

JWise Photo of the Day, Travels

Santa Monica, California

Maybe it is a luxury of familiarity to guiltlessly use it as an excuse for sleeping in, or are we just lazy? I prefer blaming it on growing older, but then again, admitting that age might be playing a role could convince me that the passage of time is indeed occurring while I try to maintain the illusion that it’s waiting on me. In some sense, time is waiting on my arrival, ready to place me in its past after my run is over.

Fortunately, this morning was not yet my moment to find the exit, and so, without further ado, Caroline and I jumped in the car and drove toward the ocean. Too early for breakfast, which begins at 8:00, we parked in front of the café of our dreams and walked a mile to the sea looming in the distance. I snapped this photo of the mother of St. Augustine of Hippo, a.k.a. Santa Monica, to note the start of our day in Southern California, and then we made our way back up Wilshire Boulevard.

Huckleberry Cafe in Santa Monica, California

Everything about this visit to the Los Angeles area is a luxury; no matter how low cost we try to keep things, there’s no being cheap here. Believe it or not, our motel is on the inexpensive side at $165 a night. Breakfast, on the other hand, doesn’t allow for skimping: although alternatives exist, we were not going to miss eating at Huckleberry Cafe even though we spent $81 for the first meal of the day.

Whoa, I hope that was for more than a pastry and cup of coffee, John? Well, as a matter of fact, we each had the Huckleberry signature breakfast of bacon and eggs with avocado, potatoes, and the most amazing homemade English muffin ever, in addition to a pastry each and a lemon scone that Caroline ordered to go. Mind you, the food charge was only $68 with a 20% tip of $13, bringing the grand total to the aforementioned sum.

Maybe I did this backward, talking about the price before explaining why we return to this café again and again. We love everything about this place, the incredible quality with extraordinary attention to detail that creates an experience worth indulging in as often as we can.

Caroline Wise in the surf in Santa Monica, California

While the idea of a nap was calling, beckoning, pleading, for us to return to whatever residual warmth might have remained in the bed we left 90 minutes earlier, we were not giving in because the vastness and gravity of the Pacific Ocean were tugging at our senses.

The only fixed appointment on the itinerary for this visit from Arizona was a 10:00 reservation at the Getty Villa in Pacific Palisades, down the road from Malibu. With time to spare, we pulled up to the ocean for a walk on the beach. Not only was Caroline able to play in the surf barefoot, but we also saw a few cormorants holding out their wings to dry while at least one seal hung out on a distant rock.

Getty Villa in Pacific Palisades, California

Here we are at the Getty Villa in Pacific Palisades for our second visit ever. As of this writing, I can’t say when the last one was as I couldn’t find a record of that trip on my blog, but that doesn’t mean we haven’t been here; it only implies that I can be sloppy in my vigilance of always sharing everything. Then again, this isn’t a blog of the erotic, so that’s not here either, though as you scroll down, there had been an ancient wine bowl featuring a copulating couple, but in my effort to reduce the number of images from 65 down to 35 out of the 376 photos I shot over the course of the entire day meant that one was one that fell to the ax.

J. Paul Getty, upon building his Spanish-style ranch overlooking the Pacific Ocean, may have not yet known that his art collection would outgrow his home. His former residence today serves as a museum library, but the rest of the grounds were developed to house part of his collection. I say a “part of his collection” because even more of his stuff is over at The Getty, which is only about 8 miles away.

Getty Villa in Pacific Palisades, California

After walking along the pool and fountains and admiring the lush gardens, the first piece that greeted us indoors was this sculpture from the Cycladic period, estimated to be about 5,000 years old. The artist is obviously unknown, but I can’t help but be impressed by the idea that I will likely never create something so enduring with such a fine hand and eye interpreting the essence of a moment out of my own contemporary history. Just as the well-worn marble of this sculpture conveys its own story, I’ll use my page to once again share my own well-worn story about the disdain for all those humans around me who are happy to do much of nothing aside from consuming the banal culture of television, video games, and celebrity.

Art by Peter Paul Rubens at the Getty Villa in Pacific Palisades, California

Around 1620, Peter Paul Rubens painted this work titled A Satyr Holding a Basket of Grapes and Quinces with a Nymph. If anyone cares, I believe this satyr is a proto-hipster who has been defining men’s appearance for the past ten years.

Art by Peter Paul Rubens at the Getty Villa in Pacific Palisades, California

This enchanting work is also from Rubens. There’s so much going on, and in some ways, it is quite psychedelic. Titled The Discovery of the Infant Erichthonius, it features an infant with serpent legs, but it is the depiction of Diana of Ephesus in the top right that really captured my attention. Caroline informed me that Diana has often been depicted with dozens of breasts, so maybe Rubens, only including five of them, is denying us viewers the truth. Caroline couldn’t have cared less about the boobs; she wanted to know what that blond, mulleted man was doing with his left hand. [After revisiting the story of Erichthonius, I must concede that mullet-man is actually the third daughter of Cecrops; hips don’t lie after all. – Caroline]

Art by Peter Paul Rubens at the Getty Villa in Pacific Palisades, California

This is the last piece from Rubens I’ll feature here; it is titled Death of Seneca. According to the placard that accompanies this painting, containing some things I should have been taught in school: Seneca was a tutor of Emperor Nero, and the idea behind this work is that Seneca has been sentenced to commit suicide and is being slowly bled out into the tub.

Getty Villa in Pacific Palisades, California

Hello Jupiter, tell me how yer doing. That’s right when I think of sculptures of gods named after planets, the summer of 1990 jumps into my conscious with the lyrics of Dr. Alban singing from Sweden about his motherland Nigeria and Africa. If you weren’t listening to Euro-pop back in the early 90s, you probably have no idea what I’m referencing by Jove. Would you know about the Roman King of the Gods, either?

Getty Villa in Pacific Palisades, California

Fragment of a sarcophagus with a visualization of the story from the Myth of Endymion, the shepherd prince.

Getty Villa in Pacific Palisades, California

Bear with me for a second on this one. This bronze, nearly 2,000-year-old eagle statue might have been the iPhone or Tesla of its day. What I mean to say is that if you were a foreign visitor arriving in Rome a couple of thousand years ago and you’d never seen such bronze works, this would have been the height of technological and artistic creativity. We humans, in my opinion, appear to believe that the era we are living in is the most complex and advanced society that has yet existed, but why should we begin to think that every preceding culture wasn’t experiencing the exact same sentiment? I can only imagine the sense of awe that other Neanderthals must have felt more than 60,000 years ago when one of them, after carving four holes in a young cave bear’s thigh bone, blew air through this early flute and those present fell into astonishment that they had come so far.

Getty Villa in Pacific Palisades, California

Earlier, I wrote of J. Paul Getty’s home and of the grounds where his art is housed well; this museum is an inspired replica of the Villa dei Papiri (Villa of Papyruses) in Naples, Italy, that was buried by Mount Vesuvius in A.D. 79, preserving much of what lay hidden for centuries. This fresco is but one small section taken during excavation when treasures would simply be taken and sold with little regard to preserving artifacts in situ.

Getty Villa in Pacific Palisades, California

Meet the feet of the Mummy of Herakleides. Why would an Egyptian burial process be featured in a museum that seems to be focusing on all things Roman Empire? You can look at an old map of that empire and either refresh or memory or learn that a large part of Egypt fell under the Roman Empire. This burial happened just before Christianity put an end to the process of mummification, or so that’s the way I understand it.

Getty Villa in Pacific Palisades, California

History sure opens doors in my mind as this statue that is possibly that of Tiberius of Star Trek fame…you know, James T. Kirk? Oh my, I think I just heard my wife groan as she proofreads this in the near future. Okay, Emperor Tiberius, prior to acquiring his title, suppressed rebels in Dalmatia (modern Croatia), where this statue was found not far from the ruins of Solana (near present-day Split).

Getty Villa in Pacific Palisades, California

I don’t own a silver drinking horn, but if I did, I tend to think I’d prefer one with a hybrid praying mantis crossed with a scorpion locked in an embrace with the eagle in the photo above. Considering this, I realize I don’t even own a single thing that’s 2,000 years old or even 200 years old, though I do own a copy of a book printed in 1959, which is not really a good foundation for building my own museum.

Getty Villa in Pacific Palisades, California

Balsamarium in the form of a boxer’s head, a balsamarium is a vessel containing oil. This bronze container is approximately 2,000 years old, triggering the idea that the golden age of Rome must have been about 400 years before its fall.

Getty Villa in Pacific Palisades, California

Various Roman bronze dishes from 1 – 79 AD.

Getty Villa in Pacific Palisades, California

Orpheus and the Sirens floating out of the underworld.

Getty Villa in Pacific Palisades, California

We look upon this Volute Krater (vessel for mixing wine and water) featuring Apollo and Artemis from 2,500 years ago, and we immediately understand its historic and artistic value, but if I were to break out my terracotta-vase-making kit and paint a naked me on it along with Caroline working her sprang loom while our cat (now deceased) looked on with curiosity, I don’t believe anyone would find artistic merit to it; such is art. I should point out that my painting skills amount to poor outline drawings, maybe half a step beyond stick people, so I would obviously have to accept rejection.

Getty Villa in Pacific Palisades, California

Excuse me, ladies, might you be the Sirens? If so, please dash my brain upon the rocks at the shore as this thing in my head that chose to share so many images from this day is approaching a state of dysfunction and betrayal.

Getty Villa in Pacific Palisades, California

These instructions for the underworld inscribed on a gold tablet from about 300 BC reads:

(Initiate) I am parched with thirst and perishing!

(Spring) Then come drink of me, the Ever-Flowing Spring, on the right–a white cypress is there. Who are you? Where are you from?

(Initiate) I am the son of Earth and Starry Heaven. But my race is heavenly.

Getty Villa in Pacific Palisades, California

To put it simply, this is being shared as a reminder to my wife how much she liked the plump little fat rolls that added a sense of realism for her.

Ancient Assyrian reliefs at the Getty Villa in Pacific Palisades, California

The Royal Lion Hunt is the name given to this Assyrian relief sculpture that is approaching its 3,000th birthday. This and the following pieces are on loan from the British Museum, London.

Ancient Assyrian reliefs at the Getty Villa in Pacific Palisades, California

Protective Spirits.

Ancient Assyrian reliefs at the Getty Villa in Pacific Palisades, California

Detail from the above panel stems from Nineveh and is believed to have been created during the reign of Ashurbanipal, the last great king of Assyria.

Ancient Assyrian reliefs at the Getty Villa in Pacific Palisades, California

Blending man, beast, and bird, the artists of what was then the largest empire on earth had no shortage of imagination or skills needed to create such beautiful, long-lasting works that only hint at their worldview. After taking in just about every square inch of the Getty Villa, it was time for a break to rest our now-aching feet. We found a table on the terrace of the Museum Café where I was able to write, and Caroline knitted while we shared a coffee and sparkling water in a fancy blue bottle. When we left, it was too late for lunch and too early for dinner, so we decided to squeeze in a new-to-us destination.

South Coast Botanical Garden at the Palos Verdes Estates, California

Welcome to the South Coast Botanical Garden on the Palos Verdes Peninsula. This is no ordinary garden, though; in many ways, that’s exactly what it looks like. We are standing atop a former mine that was sold in 1956 to Los Angeles County, which used it as a landfill until 1961. April of that year saw the first planting of trees that would become an integral part of this botanical garden which now plays host to more than 200,000 plants and has had Prince Charles visit to learn about the reclamation efforts invested here. Today, it’s John and Caroline who will walk these grounds hoping to discover some toy or soup can working its way through the earth for us to find.

South Coast Botanical Garden at the Palos Verdes Estates, California

This is a Paperbark Tree originally from Australia

South Coast Botanical Garden at the Palos Verdes Estates, California

The next tree to capture my attention is this White Floss Silk Tree native to Peru and Argentina. I can’t admit to understanding its name and feel it would make more sense if it were called Fat Elephant Limbs With Fuck-Off Spikes.

South Coast Botanical Garden at the Palos Verdes Estates, California

That Fat Elephant tree has some nice-looking flowers, though.

South Coast Botanical Garden at the Palos Verdes Estates, California

No, this tree is not called Tree With Poop Pods; it is the Lace Bark Tree.

South Coast Botanical Garden at the Palos Verdes Estates, California

This is Angel’s Trumpet and is from the Datura family, meaning it should never be consumed because if it doesn’t kill you, you might wish you were dead instead of suffering the disturbing hallucinations it’s said to have.

As an experiment in reclamation, the South Coast Botanical Garden is an amazing example, but as far as Southern California gardens go, we’ll stick with the Descanso and Huntington Gardens. Barely 10 miles away is our dinner destination, and after missing lunch, we’re plenty hungry as the garden is closing here at 5:00. [While John makes it sound as if the South Coast Botanical Garden is “less than,” one should keep in mind that not only is Winter not exactly the best time to visit a botanical garden in the Northern Hemisphere, we were also here in the hour before sunset which didn’t really help its appearance. In addition, several garden sections were closed off because of “Glow,” which features creative lighting arrangements between the trees and shrubs and other nighttime entertainment. Unfortunately, we hadn’t been aware of Glow, and while we were somewhat tempted to hide between the shrubs to avoid having to leave and get new tickets for the event, our hungry stomachs told us differently. – Caroline]

Caroline Wise at San Pedro Fish Market, California

San Pedro Fish Market is a hopping lively place, even in a pandemic. Not an inexpensive affair but worth every penny for the price of entry. You are looking at $96 of shrimp fajitas with peppers, onion, and potatoes, garlic bread, lemons, corn, shrimp cocktail, and a michelada. While we barely touched the garlic bread, nearly everything else disappeared because this restaurant on the harbor never disappoints. Another point worth noting, we ordered the “cheap plate” as it was just the two of us. Had we added a whole fish, a small lobster, and a few crab legs, we could have easily spent a few hundred dollars feasting here, and it is serious feasting at its best.

Elvis impersonator at San Pedro Fish Market, California

All of our previous visits had been early in the day, just as they opened, to avoid the worst of the crowds. Well, that turned out to be a flaw in our planning because, at least on Saturday nights, they feature karaoke, including this guy rocking a solid Elvis impersonation. A kid no older than about ten did a mean Montell Jordan as he stomped between the tables with a mic in hand, telling us This Is How We Do It.

From the San Pedro Fish Market, California at night

This view of the harbor is our departing shot as we look back at Terminal Island, enchanted that we have experienced a perfect day.

1st Trip of 2022 – Los Angeles

JWise Photo of the Day, Travels

Arizona desert off Highway 10

While parts of America shiver with the onset of winter and others recover from the holidays, Caroline and I are off taking our first trip of 2022. We are traveling west across the Arizona desert to an old, familiar place.

Caroline Wise and John Wise on the California State Line

Yep, right into California we drove, and what a long drive it’ll be, or so it felt. It was 3:45 p.m., just moments before this selfie, and though we just shaved an hour off our time because entering the Pacific Time Zone jumped us back to 2:45, it would be nearly 9:00 p.m. before reaching our lodging over near Santa Monica.

California desert off Highway 10

Like the romance of yore, we travel west into the sunset after a quick stop for a snack at Popeye’s Louisiana Kitchen in Blythe, along with coffees from Starbucks, as the convenience of modern adventures should be fully indulgent. For those who know about our reading books while we head down the highway, Caroline continued with a blog from someone who’s summarizing Marcel Proust’s In Search Of Lost Time to ensure that we are getting all we can from this reading of such a long book. It’s unlikely we’ll be able to afford a second reading of this 1.2-million-word tome. After catching up with the summary to the end of book 1, we returned to the novel, of which there are still six more volumes to go.

Caroline Wise at Mix Bowl in Pomona, California

I’ll have to don my hypocrite hat for this admission. Coming from “Mr. Contradiction,” who is forever telling anyone who’ll listen to my ad nauseam repetitions of do-as-I-say advice, here we are stopping at Mix Bowl off Indian Hill Blvd in Pomona, California, which, according to a 2019 report, is only one of 29,560 restaurants in the greater Los Angeles area. But we keep going back; why, though? It’ll hurt my fingers to admit this as I type it out: nostalgia plays a large role. Some 25 years ago, we stumbled upon this place when it was named Big Bowl (legal problems forced the name change); well, we loved it so much we returned on subsequent visits and now seem to need to stop at least once on the way in or out of Southern California. We did “Mix” it up this visit, though, by ordering two new dishes out of three.

Wilshire Motel in Los Angeles

This is our little bungalow motel on Wilshire Blvd we’ve stayed at maybe a dozen prior visits to the area. We are only 3.5 miles from the Santa Monica Pier on the Pacific Ocean, and while we’d be smart to head right down, we’re tired after the 400-mile drive on a Friday afternoon that included a fair amount of traffic, the longest line we’ve ever seen at an In-N-Out Burger up the street from Mix Bowl, that snack-and-coffee break I mentioned, and of course, a stop for gas. With nothing left to share, we’ll turn this down and head to sleep so we might get an early start with the rising sun come morning.