Neil

Home front

I just had a strange epiphany. I have been live streaming my life to you for going on nineteen years. How very strange. What possessed me? What the hell, too late to stop now.

My wife is visiting kin back east. So I have the ranch to myself and a list of various tasks that I have to accomplish to keep the motor running here. Damn, she does a lot. She stayed up until three in the morning the day before she left so I would have clean clothes. Bless her.

I watered the hay line this morning, she had already ran all the other sets, watered the flowers, fed the cats, fed the birds, did everything but clean the catbox, which I hate doing and am saving for last. The best parts.

Marriage is somewhat of a compromise, as we all know. You stop doing things you might enjoy if your partner does not favor them. Due to the cancer drug, I have not had an appetite this week, a quite unfamiliar feeling for me. 

I decided to make myself a couple soft boiled eggs. And I realized that I haven't made hard or soft boiled eggs in over thirty years because my wife doesn't like them. She likes her eggs scrambled.

So I did. Showed my newfound liberation. Didn't do the best cracking job on the eggs but hey, I am out of practice. In a further show of my independence I am going to not shave today. If I can stand it anyway.

I am staying home today, continuing to recharge the battery. 

Want to take a short walk around the place?

I took a little tour of the property this morning and noticed some things. I have several trees that have tried to commit suicide repeatedly over the last thirty something years. But they just keep coming back. 

Like this mimosa tree. 

It has split at least twice in the past but now is getting a classical asian flat top canopy shape.

Same with the Chinese pistachio. 

Survivors.

Has split so many times I can't count but always comes back looking beautiful, although it is not in its most presentable form right now.

Sort of like me.

Ranch is in various states of entropy but holding together and I still really enjoy it.

Leslie does most of the work and our arborist Todd helps.

Not a fashion plate but we aren't trying to impress anybody either.

An old house and an old ranch but it is home and I wouldn't want to be anywhere else.

The lemon tree is a beaut and has a most unusual squat and sprawling shape but man does it bear fruit.

What else?

I stuck these epiphytes on the old butia capitata about thirty five years ago, can't even begin to see the trunk now.

I get quite the incredible cereus flower show throughout the year but man it must be a lot of weight to carry.

A true symbiotic relationship.

Here's an old pic of Leslie standing beneath its boughs.

The plant is getting crowded out below by another plant which I love and my wife can't stand.

"Why does everything you buy to plant have sharp points?"

My bromeliad ballensae.

It is blooming again. 

It is a green plant sitting there minding its own business and then one day it wakes up with a red center and then starts growing this enormous and beautiful center flower spike.

This plant is taking over and it is large, about five or six foot wide. 

It loves my shady habitat, underneath the butia and a fuerte tree with a really nice fruit set right now.

How could I remove something so beautiful?

I was fixated on this one and didn't notice that the plant next to it was even farther along.

The peppermint stripe center flower will continue to grow and it is pretty magnificent.

Anyway we need to make it over to the bird feeders now.

The birds here live a plush existence.

Leslie puts out quite a buffet.

Peanuts for the scrub jays, nijer for the lesser goldfinches, seed for the house finches, grape jelly for the orioles and sunflower seeds for everybody else.

It was quite a day today.

I had the California thrasher stop by with his long beak, very terrestrial, always good to see him. 

A rare sighting for me anyway of a brown headed cowbird, actually a very pretty bird with its blue base.

We have a huge resident covey of quail, they were there. Bushtits, scrubjays, grosbeaks, finches, California towhees, no spotted towhees today but they have been around of late.

All these guys.

We have at least two mature male hooded orioles living in the Washingtonia palm with a female. 

They are always pretty furtive but getting less squeamish than they once were.

Still there is a definite pecking order at the feeder and these small birds know their place and tread lightly.

They wait for the bullies and pigs to eat, the scrub jays and doves.

I was just complaining that we never get bullocks orioles at the feeder although I see them in the wild and an immature male visited this morning.

I just had to ask!

Anyway, that's the tour, going to take a nap, you should too,

Linda Ronstadt plays at a Tennessee prison

S.O.L.

“Like Saturn, the Revolution devours its children.” Jacques Mallet du Pan

While I rarely agree with anything Jonathan Turley says, I think that this column should be read. I echo many of his fears. And this Substack column as well, The Mamdamization of the Democratic party.

I gave up my Democratic party affiliation two years ago, fearing that the Squad and the Democratic Socialists would hold sway. It looks like that is exactly what is happening. And honestly, I abhor these people on the far left as much as I abhor the far right.

I have never been an apologist for Israel and have condemned them for many things. But I do believe that they have a right to exist.  On October 7th, 2023, Hamas perpetrated a massacre on the Israelis that resulted in many children and unarmed innocent people being killed. Many of those young people killed were attending the Nova music festival in the Negev desert.

From Wicki: The attacks began with a barrage of at least 4,300 rockets launched into Israel and vehicle-transported and powered paraglider incursions into Israel.Hamas militants breached the Gaza–Israel barrier, attacking military bases and massacring civilians in 21 communities, including Be'eri, Kfar Aza, Nir Oz, Netiv Haasara, and Alumim. According to an Israel Defense Forces (IDF) report that revised the estimate on the number of attackers, 6,000 Gazans breached the border in 119 locations into Israel, including 3,800 from the elite Nukhba forces and 2,200 civilians and other militants.Additionally, the IDF report estimated 1,000 Gazans fired rockets from the Gaza Strip, bringing the total number of participants on Hamas's side to 7,000.In total, 1,195 people were killed by the attacks:  at least 828 civilians(including 36 children and 71 foreign nationals) and at least 367 members of the security forces. 364 civilians were killed while they were attending the Nova music festival and many more wounded.At least 14 Israeli civilians were killed by the IDF's use of the Hannibal Directive.About 250 Israeli and non-Israeli civilians and soldiers were taken as hostages to the Gaza Strip. Dozens of cases of rape and sexual assault reportedly occurred, but Hamas officials denied the involvement of their fighters.

Israel hit back hard, probably too hard in retrospect but I understand their reaction to the provocation. They were attacked and they were hurting. They protect their own. Many liberals in Israel had been trying to open up the checkpoints in Gaza and improve living conditions during the previous six months and this is what they received for their efforts.

7th Congressional candidate Claire Valdez refuses to condemn the massacre as does Darializa Chevalier, Tlaib, Omar, AOC and many other far left elected officials. Mamdami refuses to condemn the Holocaust. These people want Israel annihilated at all costs and to see the liberation of Palestine, whatever that means. And I think we know what it means. We've seen how that movie ends.

A Texas democratic candidate is calling for pro Israel zionists to be stuck in concentration camps in this country. The far left, like the far right, have become bastions of hate and anti-semitism. DSA leader Carmella Charrington has been recirculating a video amplifying antisemitic conspiracy theories espoused by late Ford Motor Company founder Henry Ford. It is getting ugly.

And you don't have to be pro Israel to become a target, it is enough to wear a six pointed star or wear a kippah. Violence against jews is on the increase both here and globally.

And this left does not merely oppose American aid to Israel. It also views aid to Ukraine with hostility, denounces NATO, wants to reduce American power, distrusts sanctions against Iran, and often sees the enemies of the West as victims of American “imperialism.”

The liberal wing or vanguard of the party is also preaching socialism in our cities. Wherever it has been tried has been an unmitigated disaster. Look at Seattle. Violent crime is rampant and industry is leaving, rather than kowtow to the socialist mayor. Look at Oakland and the East Bay and the failure of those cities prosecutors to punish criminals and try to instead throw money at useless social rehab programs. They have turned the East Bay into a warzone. Socialists truly eat their own. And too many times "screw the man" end up screwing the hard working middle class instead. Eating the rich can only get you so far.

There were many problems in San Francisco when Gascon was D.A. Property crime increased by 49% during his unfortunate tenure. He parleyed the record of ineptitude and being soft on young violent criminals when elected in Los Angeles. Thankfully he lost the last election. People want to feel protected from the wolves.

So where does that leave me, a guy truly in the middle that believes in civil rights, choice, the right of Israel to exist, protecting the environment, being tough on violent criminals and not a believer in socialism?

It leaves me shit out of luck.

I can't vote for anybody right now. I hate both sides now and can't tell which one is worse. 

Pick your poison.

Martha and the Vandellas

 

 

Amazing band, Jamerson, Joe Sample, Wah Wah Watson, Dennis Coffey, Doc Kupka, King Erisson, Jim Keltner, Ollie Brown, Emilio Castillo. Clydie King, Maxine Willard Waters and Carolyn Willis. We forget how great Martha was, this is awesome.

Old and in the way

I was messing with a younger middle aged guy at the donut shop last week for a minor infraction and he got seriously aggrieved. I tried to tell him that it was play but he wasn't having it. Steve wondered if it would come to fisticuffs and he says to me, "Does he know that you are a senior citizen?"

I looked at him and it was like a thunder clap. Senior citizen, what the fuck is he talking about? Then it hit me. I will be sixty nine in November, does that mean that I am now old? I guess it does. I was shaken, not by the pouty dickface, who I would still punch in the mouth if necessary no matter how old I might be, but by the realization that shit, I am old.

You see, as a married guy with no kids and two cats I have basically been able to remain an emotional infant for most of my life or at least not succumb to those dark forces that subtly turn you in to your parents. In my head I am still twenty. I have basically been able to live my life on my terms, according to my script and in many ways, at least in my business, I am one of the last ones standing.

But, sobering as it was, after a quick self assessment, what he was saying was really not too far off the mark. I am old. Everything is starting to hurt. I had two people this week tell me that I was limping, something I had not realized I was doing.

My left knee has been bone on bone and seriously arthritic since 1979, when I had the anterior cruciate, medial collateral and meniscus meltdown.  It hurts to walk, let alone go up and down my stairway. I am seriously overweight, yesterday Ray asked me, "Who made your shirts, Omar the tentmaker?"

The cardiologist called last week, or her N.P. anyway and tried to talk to me about all sorts of things that would prolong my due date on terra firma. Statins, and this and that, did I know my ventricle was abnormally thick, yadda yadda ya? And I said, call me in a month, I can't deal right now, I have a little chemo issue with my bladder, one crisis at a time and hung up on him.

They really do care more than I do. I have always felt that I wanted a full life and not necessarily a long life and I have had one. Been living on borrowed time and extra credits since I was fourteen and they first gave me the three days to live. Ha, fooled you.

*

The blast is in its 18th year or is it the 19th? I will have to look at the side panel and count.

Ridiculous number of views and ridiculous number of posts, well over 14,000. As Wagman said yesterday, the equivalent of about 500 books. I was toying with the idea of doing a hardbound coffee table book of my people shots from Long Beach Flea Market. I pulled about 400 pictures out of lightroom and stuck them in a new catalogue yesterday. Some great ones. Thought about adding antique show portraits too but don't think so. Wonder if people would buy the book?

Might try to self publish, who knows? Or forget about it.

 One of the analytic tools on the blast lets me see what people are reading. This week they are going back to 2010, a nifty little number called From the Railbird's perch, handicapping the gubernatorial election.

I decided to re-read it and thought, damn that was pretty good.  And wondered for a moment if I had lost a literary step on my fastball? And honestly, I don't think so. 2010 I was what, 53?

But what has changed from those early days is the spirited feedback I got from you guys, frankly that has gone to hell. I miss Window Dancer, and KJ, who kept things spicy by making stuff up and throwing an occasional bomb, Helen, Grumpy, as pain in the ass as he was, conservative commenters like MMWB and Bloodthirsty liberal who kept things legit, my late Uncle Norm, E, Roy Cohen, a lot of people who made the comments section a very lively place.

What happened? People got old, moved away, died, lost interest, who knows? The blogger format has been pre-empted about a million ways since I started, you are reading a real dinosaur. Maybe you all left for Instagram?

But I think the main thing was that I stopped letting anonymous assholes tee off on me and I started vetting my comments. It shut things down pretty tight and now I get to hear my voice echo in the cave. 

I wistfully think that if I had gone the youtube video route and became an influencer I would be rolling in dough right now, like Meidas Touch or somebody like that. But it would have got real boring, no food, no music, just horrible divisive politics 24/7 and we probably all would have lost interest. 

I think I can still make a huge file copy of the blast. Remind me to give it to one of you so that it can be recreated if I were ever to slip on a banana peel and check out. Would be a shame to see it completely vaporize, wouldn't it.

Many of you have been with me here the whole time, thank you friends.

Etta James

Salts of the Earth

Leviticus 2:13 - Season all your grain offerings with salt. Do not leave the salt of the covenant of your God out of your grain offerings; add salt to all your offerings.

For some reason I have been thinking and reading a lot about salt of late. When I was a kid in school I remember an old story that told us that salt was once as valuable as gold. While not entirely accurate, it was incredibly valuable and did trade for the price of gold for a time in the sixth century sub saharan Africa.

Why?

Because before the advent of refrigeration, salt could cure some food and meat and protect it from perishing. It prevented harmful bacteria in food and helped general human health. Gold can't do that.

From Wicki:

Some of the earliest evidence of salt processing dates to around 6000 BC, when people living in the area of present-day Romania boiled spring water to extract salts; a salt works in China dates to approximately the same period. Salt was prized by the ancient Hebrews, Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, Hittites, Egyptians, and Indians. Salt became an important article of trade and was transported by boat across the Mediterranean Sea, along specially built salt roads, and across the Sahara on camel caravans. The scarcity and universal need for salt have led nations to go to war over it and use it to raise tax revenues, for instance triggering the El Paso Salt War which took place in El Paso in the late 1860s. Salt is used in religious ceremonies and has other cultural and traditional significance.

A salt war? Jeez.

It has been used in both religious rites and in war.

An ancient practice in time of war was salting the earth: scattering salt around in a defeated city to symbolically prevent plant growth. The Bible tells the story of King Abimelech who was ordered by God to do this at Shechem. Texts claim that the Roman general Scipio Aemilianus Africanus ploughed over and sowed the city of Carthage with salt after it was defeated in the Third Punic War (146 BC), although this story is now considered to be entirely apocryphal.

A few years ago I was able to visit the three Salinas or salt pueblos of southeastern New Mexico. Abbo, Qurai and Gran Quivera.

Populated by various Tiwa and Tompiro tribes back to about the thirteenth century, these pueblo indians mined the dry lakes of the region and traded the vital commodity of salt with a variety of tribes, including indians of the plains region.

The three most eastern pueblos, which were abandoned mid 16th century, made their livelihood by selling salt to many other tribes from the east including the Comanches and other plains Indians.

Zuni Pueblo was supposed to have the best and whitest salt the Spanish conquerors had ever seen.

In 1540, when Francisco Vásquez de Coronado’s expedition attacked and occupied the Zuni village of Hawikku, the colonizers “found what [they] had more need of that gold silver,” as one account put it, “that is, a great quantity of corn, beans, [. . .] and the best and whitest salt I have seen in my whole life.” The invaders soon found the salt’s source, the Zuni Salt Lake. Coronado himself felt the lake—and its superior salt—worthy enough to bring to New Spain’s first viceroy Antonio de Mendoza’s attention. After seizing control of the pueblo, Coronado wrote to the viceroy of the Zuni’s “finest order and cleanliness” in their preparation of food and the “excellent granular salt that they bring from a lake one day’s journey” from the village. 

In any case I have been doing my own salt exploration. You see, we are getting more and more different salts at home and I was interested in what my friends were eating or using or if we were an anomaly? If you are strictly morton's well then god bless you.

So what do we have in our kitchen?

The salt we use the most, or at least I do, is Trader Joe's Fine Sea Salt, which is supposedly of Mediterranean origin. 

I didn't think it was kosher but I guess it is. 

But what exactly does that mean, kosher salt? 

Good question and I am not exactly sure of the answer. 

But I believe that sea salt comes from evaporated sea water and kosher salt may come from salt deposits. 

Kosher salt contains no iodine or caking agents and is typically courser.

There is no great reason I use this, I could just as well be using Morton's but it is cheap and good in a pinch. (salt humor) I use it a lot when I am baking.

Not a particularly noteworthy salt.

After baking is when the subject starts to get good, or spicy, that is when we get to finishing salts.

A tiny spritz after the cooking is done and the ordinary may become sublime.

Leslie's favorite right now is black Hawaiian lava salt. 

Hiwa Kai.  This stuff is really expensive.

I saw $54. I hope my wife isn't paying that much but somehow I doubt it.

I cook a lot of beef and like the maldon salt with its large crystals for both the pre cook rest period and the finish.

Maldon is pretty, tasty and hard to beat.

Love the big, course flakes.

We have also been heavy users of various pink and Himalayan salts.

I like the one with spicy garlic as we are heavy garlic users in our home.

One of those weird finds at Marshalls...

What else do we have hanging around?

Well, a bunch of stuff, er salt.

Hatch chili, lemon...

I opened the hatch chili the other night, smells surprisingly sweet.

You could say we are salt obsessed but Lena has way more than we do, I think she actually belongs to a salt club.

She turned us on to these samples.

These are three that she gave us that I am aching to try, the last Sel Gris Brut de Guerande being her personal favorite and one of the most prized salts in the world.

This is a lot like the Camargue salt that comes with our favorite butter, Belgium's Les Pres Sales.

And she showed us some of the other salts in her larder as well as some outrageous peppercorn from Cambodia.

I thought that Leslie and I were an anomaly in our salt craziness but I guess not. 

Melissa is the finest cook that we know and I asked her what salt she favored? She also liked the French salt but sent me this article, the 26 best sea salts in the world. You can see that there are many places in europe that produce wonderful salt. Portugal is referenced a lot.

Lena read somewhere that the best salt came from one of two places with the cleanest water in the world but can't find the citation. She sent me this article on Japanese sea salts and one on Celtic sea salt from Brittany.

So you see, I thought that I knew a little something on the subject and once again find out how much I have to learn. 😁

By the way, in my short research, this book came up several times as a good read, Salt: a world history by Mark Kurlansky.

I just ordered some of the blue Persian salt, it looks very interesting as well as beautiful.  Not sure if I should eat it or snort it.

You folks eating any special tasty salt that I should know about?

Janis

Medical report

So, as I said a while back, I have started a new drug regimen for my bladder cancer. I have been waiting for this new drug for about a year. There were twenty nine people in the initial drug study, it was reported that twelve and a half percent had serious side effects of one kind or another. I was the second person to get the drug after the study group, the first left the office about ten minutes before I got there.

Yesterday was my third once a week infusion. The first one was relatively trouble free, but I noticed some serious differences with the BCG I have been taking all these years. They put a clamp on your penis, apply lidocane and then through a long tube pass my severely enlarged prostate and inject the medication into my bladder. If I am lucky I don't get a UTI. Lucky so far.

Last week was terrible. With BCG I expelled the agent in a couple hours. This stuff is a gel that never leaves. I believe that it was absorbed into my gastrointestinal tract and has since caused me serious difficulty. 

I had a four o'clock meeting last Thursday, the day after the application and I was seriously thinking about checking into the hospital at 3:36. I am not going to get into the minutia but it was extremely painful. I ended up throwing up in my trash can at work for about an hour.

When I got to the doctor yesterday I told her about the problems and she offered to stop the drug but I told her that we needed to try it another week at least. After forty two years with bladder cancer, I would like to think or hope that one day I can get off this cancer roller coaster. Who knows?

I altered some of my behavior or customary practice yesterday per the doctor's instruction and things went relatively easily. Hematuria but not much else.

Today however, was different. At about noon, the nausea and malaise set in and I had to go home and lay down. Bought some ginger ale. Felt whipped.

It is typical for me, the effects of these long sequences of chemotherapy or immunotherapy are cumulative. In three weeks I should be a total basket case, that is if I can make it through the rest of the scheduled visits.

I blind opened the I ching, or Taoist book of wisdom this morning before work. My eyes fixed on a second line, I didn't even read or notice the particular hexagram.

Severely wounded, you need to rest.

I'm going to pay attention.

*

On the bright side, I have registered as a volunteer at a cancer resource center in Temecula called Michelle's Place. I told them that I want to do phone work and mentor new cancer patients. I think I have a lot to share with my long experience. We will see what happens.

You know, you know

Norman Birger

I received a call from a man in Florida a few months ago who told me that his late grandfather was a painter who had traveled to the southwest in the mid twentieth century and painted with a lot of local artists, many associated with Bettina Steinke and the Blair Gallery in Santa Fe. 

He had amassed a nice collection of paintings, many from a well known group of Denver artists who had moved to New Mexico.

He told me that his family was not particularly interested in the artwork and he had noticed that I had sold many of the same artists at the Blue Heron Gallery in the past, would I be interested in selling the collection?

I said that I certainly would and have received some wonderful work from him painted by his artist friends that I am in the process of cataloguing and putting on line for sale. Works by Steinke, Ned Jacob, Dane Clark, Ramon Kelley, John Encinias, Roy Swenson and many others.

But what really intrigued me was the work of his own grandfather, Norman Birger. Frankly, it was exceptional. 

Like this incredible oil crayon drawing of the sanctuary at Chimayo. I love this. Reminds me of Leon Gaspard.

I asked his grandson, just who was this man? Obviously an artist who slipped through the cracks of time and was unknown to the art world at large, regardless of his considerable talent. I have found that this happens more often than you think in this world, regardless of talent. People have to make a living and sometimes they have to make choices.

It was obvious that this man was a talented artist in a variety of mediums, as well as a remarkable draftsman and renderer.

I started doing some research.

Born to a prosperous family in Minsk, Belarus on October 2, 1901, Norman Birger was a classically trained artist who studied at the University of Kiev, succeeded by studies in both Prague and Vienna.

This was a pivotal and exciting time in Austria, the Vienna Secessionists were in vogue. 

And understand that you did not leave a University art school like Kiev or St. Petersburg without having acquired considerable artistic chops.

After the Bolshevik revolution, he moved to New York in 1921.

In 1921, Birger and his brother were attending college in Vienna, and the buzz was that fortunes were being made in the United States.

"So I decided to go to America and become a millionaire," Birger says.

"My brother decided to go back and be with my mother in Russia." Birger's mother died during the German invasion in World War II, and his brother ended up in a refugee camp. 

In 1922, Birger married his high school sweetheart Rose, who he had lost touch with and had independently moved to New York herself. Within a few years they had two children, Larry of Miami and Nina, who lived in California. To support his family, Birger worked as a trolley driver, factory worker and radiator repairman. 

Birger also was an artist who was obviously enchanted by the southwest and traveled by car through the region, doing portraits and landscapes. 

But he knew that he could not make a living during hard times.

"During the Depression, an artist couldn't earn enough money to buy a ham sandwich," he said.

In 1936, living in New Jersey, Birger fixed a neighbor’s broken lock, found out that he had a knack and became a self taught master locksmith. 

In 1945 he and his wife moved to Miami and carried on with his new career. 

Birger retired in 1970 and evidently went back to his true passion, art, a vocation he had always worked at on the side at a master’s level.

I have a lot of unanswered questions about Norman Birger. He was obviously a friend and admirer of the great Russian artist and teacher Nicolai Fechin (1881-1955). Fechin was from Kazan, Russia and he emigrated to America in 1923, eventually teaching at the New York Academy of Art before a bout of tuberculosis sent him to New Mexico, where he settled in Taos under the watchful eye of Mabel Dodge Luhan.

There are two Birger drawings of Fechin in the collection I received, both executed posthumously in 1969 and one of Alexandra Belkovitch “Tinka” Fechin, the wife Fechin had divorced in 1933.

The master’s influence is quite clear. 

And it leads me to believe that Birger was acquainted with the family back in New York, if not Russia or the Ukraine.

I also received a remarkable Fechin charcoal study of Ramon Miraball in the first group, a painting of which later graced a page of Arizona Highways in 1952. 

Was Birger also a one time or past student of Fechin? 

Quite possibly. 

The family informs that Birger maintained relations through the years with Fechin's wife and his daughter, Eya.

The influence is quite clear in the work, like this piece Carmelita which won the 1976 American Heritage Show first place award.

Or this lovely drawing of the Russian emigre singer Yulia Zapolskaya Whitney (1919-1965), who I assume was a friend or associate.

I look forward to discovering more information about this talented artist. 

I would also like to locate other and pictures or examples of earlier work if it exists.

If you are able to fill in any blanks, please let me know.

after William Sharer