The emperor was bald
Posted on | February 22, 2011 | No Comments
The sight of Libya’s madman-in-chief muttering nonsense from beneath an umbrella brought to mind many images of world leaders wielding other famous parasols, such as this beaut in which aides of Ukrainian Speaker Volodymyr Litvyn used brollies to deflect eggs being hurled at them. Though the umbrella is folded, this is a nice story out of the UK about how Hitler used to mock Neville Chamberlain for his trademark rain shield. This sudden absorption with umbrellas being displacement activity on a deadline day, I leave it to others to postpone some immediate chore by instead looking for file photos of famous umbrella moments. Ah, but not before adding this bit of umbrella Wiki-trivia that “in the sculptures at Nineveh the parasol appears frequently. Austen Henry Layard gives a picture of a bas-relief representing a king in his chariot, with an attendant holding a parasol over his head. It has a curtain hanging down behind, but is otherwise exactly like those in use today. It is reserved exclusively for the monarch (who was bald), and is never carried over any other person.”
An Arabist writes: “Nobody cares, but the scholarly way of spelling his name would be Qadhdhafi. He can speak English but refuses to and takes some kind of perverse pleasure in encouraging weird spellings. BTW the name means something like ‘flinger, kicker, shover, discarder.’ ” This comment came via Facebook, to which I responded: He is well named. I updated the post with your remarks. I regret my flippancy about this because however you spell his name, he’s a monster. I cannot begin to appreciate the pain he has inflicted in Libya. I do remember vividly picking up the phone at the Independent’s feature desk and taking a message for our obit editor from Rita Cadman, mother of Bill Cadman, a talented sound engineer killed on Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie. He has caused many mothers to sound just as anguished. May he rot in hell and take his umbrella with him.
The Dry Garden: Speak now or forever hold your peace
Posted on | February 18, 2011 | 1 Comment
Sprinkler run-off streams down Baldwin Avenue from Los Angeles County Arboretum street plantings past the county's public works office until it is plated into a sewer system that takes it to the Pacific Ocean. This is water from a reserve that is largely imported from the Colorado River and San Francisco Bay tributaries, pumped to Southern California at huge cost to the environment, treated to potability at great expense to us, then sprayed on inappropriate hedges with inappropriate irrigation equipment so that it is quickly turned into a ribbon of polluted urban slobber. And it is the County of Los Angeles doing it in a place where residents are supposed to learn the best garden practices.
Since arriving at the Los Angeles County Arboretum & Botanic Garden more than a year and a half ago, Chief Executive Richard Schulhof has been listening.
The region’s leading horticultural figures have been invited for brainstorming sessions about how to remake the Arcadia garden and its programs. A consultant has been called in to direct discussion. Recently the public was invited to complete an online questionnaire. The arboretum wants anyone with an Internet connection and 10 minutes to spare to suggest improvements for the 127 acres.
Anyone who cares about the future of Southern California should summon up their inner optimist and fill out the form, because the arboretum has the potential to be more than a pretty place where people can recreate. It could set the bar for our region’s horticultural standards and the way Southern California gardens. What we say now could improve our environment for years to come.
Set on land carved from the estate of Elias Jackson “Lucky” Baldwin, the arboretum was formed in the late 1940s as a collaboration between Los Angeles County and the region’s horticultural movers and shakers. By all accounts, a physician named Samuel Ayres Jr. did most to see it formed and then set its agenda. After a trip to Hawaii, Ayres dreamed of exotic flowering trees festooning the more muted California landscape. Among thousands of plants that eventually came into California through the arboretum were coral, floss silk and golden trumpet trees. When Ayres died in 1987, the headline on his Times obituary said, in part: “He Put Color in L.A. Landscape.”
The problem? The color craved by Ayres often came from plants native to the tropics, where rainfall is measured in feet. Rainfall in California’s Mediterranean climate zone is counted in inches, on a good year maybe 15 of them.
To continue reading this week’s column “The Dry Garden” in the Los Angeles Times, click here.
Tags: chance of rain > Emily Green > Los Angeles County Arboretum and Botanic Garden > Los Angeles Times
Trademark this
Posted on | February 18, 2011 | No Comments
LA Observed is the latest to pick up on a spat between a Pasadena family seeking to trademark the term “urban homestead” and the rest of the kitchen gardening world. According to Santa Monica organizers, said family even sent a cease and desist letter to the Santa Monica Public Library/Farmers Market over using the term for a panel discussion last week. There’s now a Facebook page dedicated to shaming the family. Readers, note well: It’s not just wordplay at stake. You may wake up to find your own name trademarked. A designer of spill proof placemats had the temerity to trademark my name some years ago. Given her emphasis on childish appurtenances, it’s a safe guess that I was publicly and commercially using the name long before some toddler knocked over a cup in her presence. Yet taking a patent on a byline never occurred to me. My niece is among the thousands of young women currently using the same name. To the Pasadenans seeking to own a term that was in the ether before they went back to the land, and to the arriviste and grabby Emily Green (TM), you are both doing positively darling things, and you are both wrong with your trademarks. Some things can’t be owned and the world is a better place for it.
Postscript: Emily Green (TM), a salutary note. Shortly after posting I recalled a story that should give anyone pause before trademarking a common name. For many years a couth man named David Mellor was a pillar of the British Craft Council, one of England’s premier cutlery designers and owner of a top shelf kitchen supply business. Then the Thatcher/Major years gave us David Mellor, privy councilor, treasury secretary and subject of a tabloid sting. Today the name David Mellor brings to mind not the best crafted knives and forks of Sheffield, but the “Minister of Fun” who, according to his mistress, donned rugby colors for intimate acts. There are a lot of Emily Greens out there and we may not all be PG.
Meet ‘Dekopon’
Posted on | February 17, 2011 | No Comments
“I still remember the first time I tasted the legendary fruit the Dekopon. Think of a huge mandarin, easy to peel and seedless, with firm flesh that melts in the mouth, an intense sweetness balanced by refreshing acidity, and a complex, lingering mandarin orange aroma. I’ve tasted more than 1,000 varieties of citrus, and to me the Dekopon is the most delicious,” writes UC Riverside pomologist David Karp in today’s Los Angeles Times.
I have no way of knowing what else Karp has tasted in his many years traveling the country visiting orchards and writing about fruit for his weekly column in the Los Angeles Times and former columns in the New York Times and Gourmet, but I do know that the Dekopon is extraordinary, like a perfect sorbet, except made by a tree instead of a chef. David, pictured above holding a Dekopon, happened to be visiting a farmers’ market near my home and brought several over last weekend, so I had a sneak preview. To keep reading about this marvelous new fruit, a citrus that upon further experimentation even had a friend’s picky toddler crying out for more, click here.
‘Fracking’ update
Posted on | February 16, 2011 | 2 Comments
USGS map of the Monterey Shale formation doctored by an energy website "OilShaleGas.com." Click on the map to see if you live in "an area of mutual interest."
It’s been an interesting couple of weeks to do with “fracking” or the mining technique more properly called hydraulic fracturing. The Los Angeles Times reports that the oil and gas industry has written the Academy of Motion Pictures attacking the Oscar-nominated documentary “Gasland” as riddled with inaccuracies. T. Boone Pickens appeared on the Daily Show claiming, “I have fracked 3,000 wells in my life” and that “they always say that it contaminates the aquifer. I’ve never seen that happen.” Meanwhile, though the gas industry agreed to discontinue the use of diesel in fracking fluids in 2004, a congressional investigation reported late last month that more than 32 million gallons of it was used anyway. AP reports that fracking is a coming technique to open up not just gas but also oil exploration in Wyoming, Colorado, Nebraska, Kansas, New Mexico, Texas and California. The Monterey, California blog BigSurKate offers a respectful report of a familiar and chilling spectacle — Bureau of Land Management officials introducing energy companies to locals, who may or may not appreciate the ease and enormity of the slippage that can happen when federal land managers get together with good buddies from the energy industry, coke and sex parties or no. Finally, EPA administrator Lisa Jackson recently announced a federal re-review of the safety of fracking following a dubious agency blessing of the technique under the Bush administration. An update of fracking stories with links follows after the jump. For a detailed review of articles on fracking published last summer going back through the Bush administration along with links to federal reports, click here.
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