Sunday Morning Out of the Past: Copeland & Combs Land Paris Spotlight ... Garden Bros. Lands "F" Ratting from BBB ... El Jacko's Pedophilia Paradise Exposed ... Kelly Miller Captivates in Video Tease

Remember the Copeland & Combs who once filled our days with Kelly Miller posting?  That was Steve, the tell-all one.  I have marveled over how they went totally under cover, their once thriving blog nearly now in the dirt and sadly fading away.  I walk the dirt of desertion these days.

Whatever happened?  My best guess:  Somebody told Steve, in order to protect their precarious career (we are talking "circus" career), that he had better stay clear of all social media ...  WELL, poking around in news bits from Baraboo (did I spell that right?) I learned they played --- are you ready? --- Cirque d"Hiver (yes, I know I did not spell that right)  last winter ... Mighty impressive!  Glad they are still cobbling together pay dates there and here ...  

Under  punishing North Carolina spotlights, Garden Bros, Circus ranked by the Grenville News "the worst circus." And ain't that a shocker! Like a veteran cockroach in stolen spangles, this creepy caravan just keeps slugging along.  Compared to which, maybe King-Cole, now in its second season (the first having "wrapped" in a week or two) is A OK? I'm hoping Circus Report puts out something on this show before CR goes under come December ...

So many icons and landmarks falling ...  Yes, I know there is a "Renaissance"  of circus arts underway in this country.  And are you referring to artsy stage shows?  Summer youth circuses?  Acro-dance troupes?  Pardon my asking.

Kelly Miller's website shows a performance lineup identical to last year's,  and on a video tease they have produced, the over all sheen and talent range makes me wish I could see this one   Might they be the new Ringling-Barnum?  ... Or would that be Big Apple, the latter a strange animal, apparently straining to find hospitable cities in which to play ... 

Michael Jackson's Neverland, the subject of a brilliantly believable doc now airing on HBO, should land a slew of awards ... A quietly escalating drama of how the singer skillfully charmed and seduced little boys into believing themselves to be in full-blow relationships with their freaky idol.  Blame it on the music, and oh what music it was.   I remember once joking with friends, was that a fake detachable nose he was wearing?   How much was real?...

What people will do, even with their kids the bait, to taste fame and fortune and Hollywood money ... So many love notes floating back and forth, and in clear sight, between Michael and his "lover" (of the year), and Mommy and Daddy did not realize what was going on in the bedroom, often far away from theirs?  The voices of two of the singer's subjects, clear and calm, recounting how wonderful and not coercive it seemed, and that makes the story both challenging and even more bizarre.  Except that, Mr. J was not after long-term love, which marks him as just another very average, horny predator jumping from one xxx to another ... 

First part ends with both boys having been pushed to the sidelines while younger darlings are charmed into the Neverland seduction compound... Can't wait for Part 2, to see what happened to these two fellows as they grew up to face a life without the man who swept them out of their diapers. He, at 34-ish in a private ceremony,  getting married to his latest one true love -- all of seven years old, and ominously close to seven-year-itch rejection ...Oh, whatever happened to monogamous pedophilia?

I'm outta here.  

 

3.19.19 - Ring Stoppers

Sunday Over Light ... Why I love my old Canon -- when it's in the mood ... The Mystsery of Photography Can Surprise

 Walking the streets of Piedmont, gazing at houses and trees sharing space.  Favoring lone objects. Looking up.  Looking down. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

 Okay, I'm not being shy about this lucky snap.  I think it deserves some kind of an award. I love you, Canon!

Train Ride to Sane and Serene

Greeting me at the Culpeper, Virginia train station: Sister Kathy, once employed by Sigmund Travel in Pasadena, niece Debbie, who handled the phones for American Express/travel, and niece Lisa, 20 years a flight attendant at United.

Waking up to a bright golden haze.  We are a million miles from the state of insanity out on the far west, hell bent on denying even nature it’s ways and dictates. Hell bent on rewriting the script of human existence.  The freaks are now running the show in San Francisco.

Kathy's talking wonder

We drive to Luray, pop: 4, 800, nestled in the Shenandoah Valley, where normal is still in fashion. Oh what a beautiful feeling!   First stop: Kathy's house on Willow Street. In the mornings, we take walks with her little dog Scooter along the Green Way, a lovely river stream winding through downtown. Scooter is a go-to attraction all in himself.  The way he lavishly licks you upon entering.  The way he can look up at you. STARE at you.  At one surreal point, by the sounds of his almost audible grunting, I could swear we were that close to actually conversing!

A few night later, to the world of Lisa, her husband Brian, and son Noah I go.   Their 18 acre spread is  surrounded by farmland — cows to crops.  The glow of barley now covers an open field directly in front of their house, now rented to a nearby farmer.  Howdy, neighbor, howdy seeds!

Riding the Rails of  Bureaucracy 

To get me from here to there, Amtrak’s perky little Cardinal out of Chicago railed through what felt like a living painting of lakes and streams and deep green  mountains rising undisturbed.  I'm calling this my second favorite train ride, second only to the Coast Starlight through Oregon, The Cardinal’s staff is something of a fiefdom unto itself, bending the rules a tad and coming off a little more human -- the perfect fit for treading the uncertainties of a pandemic. This is your down home train. Note the Corona-crimped table plating.  Food is quite tasty, if a bit mashed together.  Amazingly, coach passengers are denied access to it, but stuck at the heartless sodium dispensary (aka: lounge cafe). A shame.  Amtrak's lame excuse: With distancing, we haven't the space to seat them. But, you haven't the room for take out?  This really shocked me.

         Beware the Amtrak  Obstacle Bedroom

Not so down home or comfortable are Amtrak’s super pricey bedrooms.  After sampling them three times now, I am walking, no running back to the more user-friendly little economy compartments, and here’s why:1.  Sound through the walls is louder then in the small units.  2.  The toilet and shower are squeezed into such a small space, it can be an ordeal to maneuver in. And I am skinny. Are you not? Good luck. Compared to this,  the public toilets downstairs are a spacious luxury 3. In the smaller compact economy compartments, you have objects closer at hand to grab if the train throws a curve at you. 5.  When the lower bed in the bedroom is down. you get about five inches between it and a cabinet with sink – and the door to exit.  So, I’d suggest bringing a bridge ladder or be prepared to crawl or high jump over the bed  to reach the door.  A MAJOR design flaw.

Hello, Neighbor, Hello Cow!

Out Lisa and Brian's way, I stayed in the latest addition to their property, actually an old abandoned farm house on the grounds, built c. 1880, which they have magnificently renovated.  At daybreak,  I slip through a door in my bedroom out onto a restful porch. Spotted Lisa dabbling around her two ducks.  The breakfast she served me included lettuce fresh from her baby garden. They are not farmers per say, although Lisa is dabbling in ducks and vegetables and maybe chickens. Corn will soon be on the rise.                         

                  

This old shed is deliciously authentic.

Captain Sky (Brian, who pilots for United, here recovering from surgery) barbecued some great blackened hot dogs and whipped us up strawberry shortbread, served  out on the east deck  of their  large wood house, which they call "the cozy cabin."  This is what sold them on moving up from Florida to Luray.  To get to work, Brian drives back and forth to DC, up to two hours each way.

Curtain up, Japan! 

 

The grill his stage, the utensils his props

One evening we drove to the town Front Royal, to be regaled around the Mikado grill by Chef Anon from Indonesia. He juggles utensils, and taps them against the grill, producing  rare waves of clicking sounds. He paddle-tossed shrimp to open mouths, and managed to land one or two.  The one for me landed on my left lens, and got a laugh.  This is a big event – the most entertaining meal of my life.  What a showman!  And then I was told there are many like him in other eateries, having been trained in a long Japanese tradition.

Not to overlook American soul food, another evening, chef Kathy had us her over for a wonderful spread of roast beef, mashed potatoes, all the fixings, topped off with apple pie. Mmmmm yummy good.

Somewhere in the scramble of action from barnyard to board game, we took in a movie at the Page Theatre, a multi-plex operation still in operation, thanks to the family who bought it and are keeping it on life support.  The film was  Disney’s high voltage Cruello, in its best moments riotously funny. Haven’t laughed that hard in a long while. This town incredibly now has three stages.  What next? The Luray Metropolitan Opera?

My board game, Cant Stop Shopping, created with friend Boyi Yuan, is finally-- maybe -- taking off. With the addition of Act On coupons, players have more options – rolling dice or playing them.  And here am I, once again losing, this time to Debbie, down from Alaska'.  Shame on me! 

Brian, observing  shrewd shopper Noah plotting, dubbed his son a "15-year-old capitalist."   Noah recently landed his very first job, as a guide on weekends at the Luray Caverns, a big tourist draw for the town.  He loves it. Last weekend, the place was swamped with Indians from India.  They do love their caverns, I believe, recalling Forster's A Passage to India.

           Monopoly Lives Again!

Just when I had about given up on ever getting back the fun Monopoly had once given me, a turn of fate and a kid named Noah revived it.  There I sat, about to wipe him off the board, when this cunning little sneak charmed me into selling him for outrageous sums of money— where did he get it all? — property on the cheapest side.  He then  preceded to build off of it an empire of quiet retaliation.  Gotta concede, it was fun being demolished by so sly an opponent.  Next time I face Noah, I am having legal counsel at my side, preferably somebody from the better business bureau. 

I Talk to the Trees

Lisa pointed to “the grove,” and I did not see a grove.  She focused on a lone row of trees in the distance and I still did not see a grove.  Then she walked me over there, and I was soon feeling something , let’s call it transcendental.  At the end of the row of trees,  a few  almost formed a kind of  circle, and in it I almost felt a connection to Waldon Pond – without the pond. I went there again. Perfectly still, tranquil, detached.  So many moods on this plantation.

Lisa and Debbie took the train ride with me, as far as Chicago.  Never have I traveled through a state so thoroughly enveloped in green.  Au Revoir, fun family of Luray!

SUNDAY MORNING OUT OF THE PAST: Bach Be Damned! ... Woke Folk Invade Frisco Concert Hall Scene, Hip Hop From the Top?

UPDATE, 2/21/24. Yesterday, needing to visit the S.F. library near civic center -- I had not been in the downtown area for several years ---I hurried nervously through a day of the living scum, darting past a man smashing items in a sidewalk concession, going around a career bum defiantly laid  out more than half way across the sidewalk,  he of the protected class. No wonder, Macy's is leaving.  No wonder so many others are leaving or want to.  What I encountered over there yesterday was hell on earth.

UPDATE:  Like so many things planning to leave San Francisco, Macy's on Union Square the most recent, add now San Francisco Symphony director Esa-Pekka Salone, who arrived five years ago and is not renewing his contract.  "I have decided not to continue as music director of the San Francisco Symphony, because I do not share the same goals for the future of the institution as the Board of Governors does."  For a quick recap, advance to the last sentence.

Music Review: Throughline: San Francisco Symphony, From Hall to Home, November 14, PBS. Esa-Pekka Salone now rules the baton.

Oh my! And it couldn't happen to a worthier city than San Francisco -- ground zero for the subversion of Western culture.  Over there across the bay, where I was born, I now avoid it like its own plague.  Now, the streets are ghostly, shops boarded up, tourists gone, bums better off than ever before, living it up and shooting up in empty upscale hotels, businesses fleeing, bus rides fraught with freaky nut balls keeping you constantly on edge. How unexpected can unforeseen events change cities overnight. "Baghdad by the Bay" risks being zoomed into an empty metropolis begging for renters on fixed incomes.

And how sorry I feel for Esa-Pekka Salone, the new San Francisco symphony director, a man of world class stature from Finland, who will have to face this urban wasteland.  I marveled at many of the great and wonderful concerts he lead in front of the L.A. Philharmonic. 

Facing a season without a hall to play to during lock-down, PBS broadcast a  weirdly ominous and unsatisfying one-hour preview of what Salone wishes  to accomplish during his tenure.  New sounds.  New voices.  New ideas.  Good enough. All incoming conductors these days say the same thing.  But Salone will need far greater works than those on display during the preview.  

His chosen composer-musicians specialized in a form of straining minimalism, heavy on dissonance, woefully weak on music. And hardly all that new.  Terry Riley was already fostering this counter-culture form over fifty years ago. I still have one of his records. 

A more unusual segment took place out in the open air, where a hip-hop artist and a dancing woman wearing a sweatshirt lettered BLM cavorted.  Yes, really.  But concert hall audiences still favor larger, more melodically expansive works. Surely Esa-Pekka must know this. Only a few years ago as guest conductor with the symphony, he piloted the orchestra through a thrilling performance of  Stravinsky's The Fire Bird and nearly brought the house down.

Inexplicably missing were more Asian faces.  They don't exactly excel in Da Hood, but they do in symphony halls around the world.  And in symphonic composition. Asian culture passionately embraces classical music.  Why not market to them? Knock knock!  They are a big part of your future. 

When, finally, Esa-Peka Salone takes the podium with a full audience behind him, will he be wearing a sweatshirt  prominently lettered BLM? 

Early retirement already in the works, Maestro?

First posted 9.2020  (circa)

The Morning Midway: When Animals Learn to Talk Back – How Science May One Day Defeat PETA’s Grip Against Prancing Poodles and Pole-Vaulting Pigs

The Cristianis, c. 1940s

Times move on and change, people’s attitudes, too.  We learn more about life and adjust forward — or backward. Sometimes, yesterday turns out to be better than we thought it was, then or since.

Now, people around the world are talking to their animals, as they always have, but the animals are starting to talk back.  Thanks for, among a growing number of communication gadgets, buttons placed on a pad.  Buttons there for a paw to push. Buttons that say things like “Go out” “Hungry” Even, yes, “I love you.”

Merle Evans leading the band, as dogs enter for their cue

“Tired of talking with people in your family? Try the dog,” writes Cordilia James in The Wall Street Journal.  A fascinating report of this emerging phenomena.  The button titles can be tailor made.  One Alex Devine of Tacoma, Wash, went public on TikTok, telling about her dog Bunny putting paw to the point.  Her favorite button poke from Bunny.   “Love you, Mom.”  She now has 2.7 million followers.  And, yes, I know of the many wonderful animal trainers out there who know so much more about communicating with animals and have had to endure relentless attacks on their good work.                     

A speech pathologist, Christina Hunger, talking up the validity of this.   She’s been adapting some of her methods used with patients to give animals more options in communicating, and testing them on her dog, Stella.

They May be Monitoring Your Conduct

Kendra Baker’s possessive cat. Billi pushes “mad” when she feels affection-deprived. Once, when she witnessed her matron kissing a boyfriend, she hightailed it to the button mat and pressed “Later!  Mad!  Pets!” 

Not just dogs and cats.  Across the barnyard, other critters are beginning to wake up and mouth off.  Karlijn in the Netherlands has her dog Silke talking, and is now bestowing the same skills on her guinea pigs.

Oh gosh, and I don’t even own a pet.  I am so so behind. But I would love to own my own button mat, a discrete option to offer shy guests. Heck, perhaps one day they will be sold to estranged spouses.

A show stopper at Big Apple Circus, 2004.
photo by Bertrand Guay

Should we be at all surprised? After all, if you have ever spoken to a circus trainer, chances are they likened the early stages of teaching to the same thing a parent goes through with a toddler.  I have it on good authority: Russia cat trainer Svetlana Shamsheeva, above, quoted in my book Fall of the Big Top. That dog in your care who keeps you in the dark may have been deprived of a proper dogyhood.

When Home Pets Seem Less Unlike Circus Stars

They may be able to ban the animal from the circus – for a time – but they can’t ban the circus from the animal. To degrees universal, it still flourishes around the world.  This bodes well for a future return of animal acts under whatever then might be left of our bartered big tops.  If the public can be offered transparent evidence of animals being trained in decently respectful manners, that combined with their own expanding knowledge of human to animal communication in the home may give them pause to reconsider.  Pause to appreciate what marvelous things animals can be taught to do.

Baby Opal, trained by Peggy and Mac McDonald, Polack Bros. Circus, 1955

Of course, there is still a large public out there waiting to be entertained at least by dogs and the cats, as witness the latter lighting up the stages of America’s Got Talent. Those judges are clearly on the side of real circus. 

So, how did that make you feel?  Okay, then go ask your dog what he thinks.  And hope he does not push the “bored, do not disturb” button.

Taking my Canon for a Walk on the Street Where I Cautiously Live ...

LATE BREAKING AS I GO TO POST:  Helicopters are rumbling over head.  Last night, CVS here on Piedmont Avenue, which had been boarded tightly up, was broken into and emptied out. Don't tell me these hoodlums and thugs aren't professionals.  Small stores on the Avenue, some seen here,  are also now boarded up.

*********************************************************************************

Here are photos taken by a camera I have fallen back in love with --- my 10-year-old Canon SD780 IS, which I took to China in 2010. Last Saturday morning, I  walked up and down Piedmont Avenue, to snap images of the devastating impact of Corona on a number of small businesses, the "mom and pop" shops that give the Avenue rich personalized color and culture.

The most crushing blow of all, the closing of Issues, owned by two lovely people, Joe, and Noella.   They stocked magazines and books from all over the world.  And the customer base was, surprisingly, predominately younger.

Unable to get any loans to carry on, Noella, seen here, issued a touching farewell on their Facebook page:   "We never wanted to make this announcement. We wanted ISSUES to be a special place in the community forever. We poured our hearts and our souls into ISSUES and Oakland for thirteen years and it was our baby. Again, we are devastated and heartbroken. Thank you for making these years so amazing for us. We never could have done this without all of you. Please take care.With all our hearts, Noella & Joe"

I counted around six to 8  shops on the Avenue that appear to be either closed or on the verge of it

Only a block  down from Issues, Gaylord's now stands empty, too.  It came out of the early 1970s, fostering a funky youthful atmosphere, very laid back.  You'd order at the register, and you could hang out there for hours. Local paintings on the walls, excellent salads and sandwiches. I never thought this place would go dark. 

I went to the Piedmont Grocery over the weekend, the first time in around 10 weeks, just to get fresh Salmon.

At Pete's Coffee. People are very good about honoring each other's six feet.  Virtually everyone wears a mask.

 

Remember newspapers, and how they once fought for space in the racks?  We are getting closer to  the cold, alienating intersection at MacArthur Boulevard.  

And there it is, the long winding boulevard whose name conjures up the worst images of Oakland.  This is where the wonderful  neighborly look and feel of Piedmont Avenue abruptly ends. Cross the street, and that world is gone.

I hope he's not gone.  My barbershop, with a note on the door stating "temporarily closed". A good sign -- hold that thought, I tell myself.  Recently out of desperation, I raised a pair of scissors to my face in the mirror, and was able to clip away some of the hair around my ears.  I am thinking of asking Van, assuming he returns, to give me a very quick two or three minutes in the chair, just for the essentials, at full price.

Lonely settled morning.  I know that man with the dog, the latter a delight when he wears his little bright red vest and skips on air. And here they are, closeup.

We talked about the closing of Gaylord's.  He said that it seemed to be going downhill the last couple of years, and thinks that we may witness more closings. He is  like many people you pass over the years, to whom you never quite come to introducing yourself.

A picture before and after all viruses

Back to camera talk

Enamored of the sharper detail from my first iPhone, purchased four years ago, I saw no need to carry the Canon with me, hastily letting go of it.

But of  late, four years after I deserted it, I have begun wondering if a camera can be so overloaded with "pixels" as to create impressive images that exceed in detail what the eye actually sees?  That is, if they produce their own dazzling creations, ever more microscopic, rather than honest reproductions? Are the images produced by my Canon more impressionistic?  Or might they also be closer to the truth?  Looking back through the scrapbooks I keep, I marvel at the photos it had produced for me, such as those in China.

Take a close look at the photo, above, of a painting by my grandfather, Carl August Heliodor Hammarstrom, snapped by my Canon.   Notice the faint white streaks above the sun drifting left and upwards? I snapped the same picture on my iPhone SE, which makes the streak more distinctly pronounced, and the sun a little brighter, something I do not see when I stand before the actual painting on the wall. 

And thus, I can say with reason that what I considered might be driven by my sentimental loyalty to things that last and work well, is more than that. And I am left with a re-found respect for this little camera.  How could I disrespect a camera that so accurately captures the subtleties of my grandfather's brush? It feels good to be back with an old friend in my hand.

“No Human Contact Required” ... A Darkening Media Circus Shadows Us All

I ask myself: Were I still in the workplace, how would I cope?  I would be horrified. I would be shaken to the core, humbled — wondering if I too would lose my job, and then how would I make my way through a decimated landscape?  I think of all the people suddenly without a pay check,  especially those with children.

This more intimate fear came to me from an aerial view on the nightly news of long long, evenly spaced lines in Dallas – well dressed people waiting patiently for hours for a box of food — a box of food — bringing dry tears to my eyes.  Millions of proud, hard-working Ameriacans thrown into chaos and disarray. 

Perhaps the one single factor that joins the nation is a shared preoccupation with “the curve.” When will it really flatten and stay flat?  And when will it slide down?  What I see is a line near a crest, stubbornly refusing to cooperate.

I am defaulting into food by delivery.  Safeway came yesterday morning.  And for lunch, I finally tried Door Dash, and ordered a Turkey meal from Boston Market.  Delivery a clean efficient pleasure.

Nobody knows how long it will take for this lonely plague to pass,  or how long it may take for the nation to fully recover. (The roaring twenties followed the 19l8 Spanish flu epidemic)  The most promising  news is that scientists are starting to find that far more people than originally assumed have already had the virus. This means, thus, that a much much smaller percent of those who die from Corona may only equal the annual flu rate, at around 0.1%.  

But then, the media hysteria can’t let go, (gleefully?) reporting that Corona will likely return come fall, and with greater vengeance.  Can you see them licking their chops over every new dark detail spelling more of the same?  ABC’s David Muir, who has always struck me if to be  riding a galloping horse while breathlessly delivering the news, must be deliriously charged.

Strangely, right and left wing are joining forces, louder and louder, behind one issue: We won’t take it anymore!  Even here, in blue blue Oakland, I see  people out on the sidewalks not wearing the now mandated mask.  Particularly dog owners and their dogs.  Can you blame anyone for wanting to get back to normal and to work?  I can’t.  They, too, must be respected.

To better understand a degree of the fear driving the anger, yesterday while walking to Piedmont Grocery, which I skipped -- the lines too long -- I ambled up the avenue, crossed the street to pass a  comforting landmark founded in the 1970s, Gaylord’s,  A funky coffee house that caters to students and creative types, at easy prices.  I spent many nights there in younger years, either with pen and paper or laptop.  Hold on ...

Ominously Dark. Ominously Empty.  All the furniture gone. The inside, a gloomy shell of a great  place thriving only weeks ago.  It can’t be.  This can’t have happened!  Not a single sign in the window.  The walls blank.  Nothing there. For a time, they had been offering front of the store take out.  I called their number, and got a recording --- the voice of the owner, I assumed:
  .
Gaylord's has closed it doors. Thanks to everyone who has walked through the doors throughout the years.

These are the kind of small businesses having a hell of a time getting some of the money congress passed with fanfare, supposedly to help  them through.. Remember Mom & Pop, you DC scoundrels?  Too much, if not most, of your fake compassion ended up, in stead, in the coffers of regional and national chains.  So am I to take it that  “small” means anybody who is not a Facebook or a Google? 
  
Yes, I can better understand — and appreciate —  the rising anger of Americans aching for the status quo, demanding an end to shelter-in.  The lives of millions are at stake.  I now have a better idea of how it feels  to be regulated into a mind set of caution and restraint, and how it it can turn you afraid of your own shadow. How it might be under a totally different form of government. Have they gone to far? Or am I?

The still-functioning Piedmont Café, years ago good an old-fashioned American restaurant with wood booths, still —  without the wood separators —   offers the same sizzling fare --- bacon and eggs and toast leading the parade. Ironically, it’s been owned for many years by a lovely group of Vietnamese.  Sunday mornings can rock with crowds lined up for a sit down at this non-glamorous  but cozy space.  It bubbles.  And they are still hanging on, it would appear, for take out.  I went in this morning to take out a large croissant, and I handed the woman a bigger bill to keep, telling her how glad I was they were still there.  Her smile was bigger than her mask.

The loss of Gaylord's is a blow to Piedmont avenue, as would be the loss of the Piedmont Café and so many other homed-grown stores — another  blow to the binding social fabric of locally owned, served, understood, affirmed.   

No human contact required.