The Southsea Alternative Choir & Friends

Douglas Riseborough

I had a strange day last Tuesday. Before I left for the Sierras a friend called and said that he had bought a large cache of modernist paintings from a listed artist with a benefactor and was I interested in buying or marketing the group?

The work was fairly interesting, not the artist's best work but two hundred paintings that might appeal to mid century millennial aficionados that might want blobby abstracts on the cheap. 

The money man agreed to hold them for me until 1:30 on Tuesday afternoon. 

It takes time to properly market an artist, slowly bringing the numbers up, I was thinking of a two year plan with a split with the owner but was prepared to buy the whole group if we could agree on a good wholesale price. 

But it was a definite project, so much of the work in poor condition and pretty mediocre.

Anyway, the work was located about two hours away, in Huntington Beach and I drove up there and met the man at his factory Tuesday afternoon at the appointed hour.

He seemed like a nice enough guy, told me he had sold his last company for forty million and then told me that there was a slight hitch.

He had made a deal with a guy from Laguna on the paintings that very morning. I was a bit taken aback, two hours there meant driving two hours back, empty handed. I told him that I would have never gotten involved if I had known that he was contemplating a bidding war or that he had already made a deal. Why didn't he call me? He apologized and said that the deal was just so sweet he couldn't pass it up. Guess he was too busy to call.

Honestly, after seeing the work, I really didn't want any part of it anyway. Very mediocre and a lot of work to market with little upside. And really, the numbers the new suitor were throwing around were ridiculously high and not something I would have been close to paying. He was smart to jump on the deal.

No biggie, you win some and you lose some. Never trust a rich guy who says it is not about the money, it is always about the money with them. That is how they got rich.

Anyhow, I am leaving, no point stewing over paintings that I didn't even like when I saw this one leaning against a wall.

Modernist, hints of Goya and Roualt. Not necessarily my taste but not too terrible and perhaps created by an African American artist, a genre that is hot right now.

"How much is that one?"

He told me that it was two hundred dollars and not signed. Weird, I could see a signature on the bottom. Oh well. I would go fishing and buy something, hopefully pay for my gas. I handed him the cash.

Now this is the part where I usually tell you that I hit pay dirt and I can't say that yet. But the artist is sort of interesting.

His name is Douglas Riseborough. He was a Canadian American muralist of some repute. 

He painted murals at the UCLA School of Law and at the New York World's Fair. Riseborough had quite the reputation in his time but little auction history.

Now this particular painting is not only signed, it is dated 1949, and it is titled on the back, Blind Boy. 

It was exhibited in 1950 at the Los Angeles County Museum.

And if the label can be believed, the artist lived on most interestingly named Elusive Drive.

I can't find a lot of information on the artist but there is this article. 

Riseborough liked to work big, his World's Fair mural was 125 feet long, and he tended to heavy social and political commentary, in the steps of artists like Siqueros and Orozco. 

I do know that he was born in 1922 and lived in Los Angeles for a long time and can only assume that he has passed or he is a spry 99 today. 

Perhaps I will find a home for it one day or send it to auction. I think it would benefit from a cleaning. 

Maybe I can get a few dollars for my efforts and all my driving.

High Flying Bird

I got a message from Spotify last week that apparently I listen to more Jefferson Airplane music than 98% of the world's population. I guess I am pleased, all a matter of taste I would say.

I do have to wonder about the other 2% who have somehow bested me in this regard. Are they emotionally stable. these fellow antediluvian dinosaurs, caught in the same strange and similar time warp as I evidently have been? 

Lassie, go get help. Timmie is trapped in the well again.

Candy coated Parrish reflections, Mono Lake

 

The Battle Is Over (But The War Goes On)

Dying Swan

The flower of my bromelia balensae is evolving very quickly. 

What once were merely spectacular scarlet pink leaf forms are now morphing into a serious flower spike. 

I took a couple pictures with my cell phone this morning.

It is in shadow but you get the general idea. Brilliant flower.

Ace botanist and fellow ex Del Cerran Jeff Chemnick identified the plant for me. Jeff sells all manner of wonderful flora out of his incredible Santa Barbara ranch, Aloes in Wonderland, a private botanical garden.

I wrote him a letter last week asking him if the presence of the flower would make the mother plant caput and got this rather terse and scientific reply; …all terminal inflorescences in bromeliaceae are monocarpic.

After quickly looking up the definition of monocarpic I let out a small damn. Well, at least I have a beautiful and good sized pup nearby. And last bursts can evidently be so epic.

*

I was thinking about the beautiful things that flame up in our lives, the people whose light shines the brightest. The twenty seven club, Morrison, Hendrix, Joplin, Beardsley, Caravaggio, Bellows, etc. The brightest stars always seem to burn out, they don't tend to sit around and rust. Even in the plant world, I suppose. Why is that?

There is a changing line in the I Ching,  豐 Fêng / Abundance, that goes something like, do not be sad, be like the sun at midday. I think about it sometimes, blessed as I have been.

*

I am a cancer survivor, if there is such a thing. I was talking to another man this morning who has also had cancer and we agreed on one thing, when someone tells you that they have beat cancer, you have to chuckle. 

Because you may have won a temporary sortie but the war is never over, you are always looking over your shoulder, awaiting the next battle.  Shit never ends and you can never let your guard down. 

For me the cancer progression was 1985 to 1990, then 2010, then 2020. Innumerable surgeries, loss of a kidney. I managed to keep my bladder and prostate this last go round but just barely after stage four cancer in the wall and against much medical advice.

I had my quarterly checkup cystoscopy yesterday. There is a strange looking bump in the diverticuli of the bladder, a different color than the other two, more reddish in nature. Now it may be cancer and it may not be cancer but I need to get a biopsy scheduled stat and figure it out for sure. I would be lying if I said that I wasn't nervous. But still, perhaps it is nothing?

This will put off the maintenance BCG immunotherapy I was supposed to start. Hopefully if it is cancer, I will undergo a similar regimen to the one I underwent last year that seemed to work pretty well. Bought me another year anyway.

I'm bummed but it is the hand I have been dealt. You want the shit to be over and it's never over. Doctor told me not to worry so perhaps she is not worried or maybe worrying just won't do me any good. But I wonder if I will be able to do any or all of the five antique shows I have scheduled in the next two months? 

I just threw up the bitter antibiotic I take after these procedures, a high percentage of the time I get an infection of my urinary tract. I hate when they don't coat the pills but made a mistake trying to down the large bitter lozenge with coffee.

Pants, keyboard and important papers all soaked.

*

After my operation I took Washington west to Pacific Highway. If you take that route, look to the north side of the road to the devastation that the Phoenix Canariensis have undergone. These Canary Island palms have been there since I was a kid. 

Now they are dead, the invading beetle has exploded their tops like a roman candle. Haven't seen it up here in Fallbrook yet but it sounds like it is inevitable in time.

I drove over to Walter Anderson Nursery for some retail therapy. 

My friend Tom's sister Linda works there, a real sweetheart. It is one of the oldest nurseries in San Diego and a good one. 

Been around since 1928. Longevity is a good thing in nurseries and businesses. You have time to recover and learn from your mistakes. People too I guess.

I bought a Fascicularia bicolor there, a similar look to the bromelia balensae, that had been recommended by Jeff. 

Here is a picture in bloom I lifted off the internet.

I also bought this iochroma cyanea plant which is purportedly toxic or hallucinogenic, according to who you talk to.

It is related to the brugsmansia, dies off similarly in the frost and I have a perfect spot for it behind the house. 

Gorgeous cobalt/purple tubular blooms.

It will look great next to the new Queensland Frangipani tree.

Bought a few other things too. 

Then I said, what the hell, my day and emotional state are blown, why not go over to Hunter's Nursery in Lemon Grove and see what they have got?

Hunter's is the oldest nursery in San Diego, established in 1919. 

Located on Sweetwater Rd., they always have a great selection of roses.

Now run by the fourth generation of the Hunter family.

I bought a Frida Kahlo floribunda rose to climb over my wagon wheel in the front yard.

Should be pretty.

Need to take a day this week to plant and tend. 

I drove across Laurel into the park waiting for my procedure yesterday. 

The yucca rostratas are blooming near the Museum of Man as well as a lot of other things. Worth checking out, they are spectacular.

The blooms are so big in relation to the plant. Here is mine this morning.

Have a great weekend.

Insanity of the insanity defense

Tylee and JJ

Lori Vallow Daybell and her husband Chad Daybell are accused of various crimes, including first-degree murder, for the deaths of Chad’s first wife, Tammy Daybell and also Lori's two children, 16-year-old Tylee Ryan and 7-year-old Joshua “JJ” Vallow. 

Authorities in Arizona are also investigating the shooting death of Lori's former husband, Charles Vallow. Lori, religious and spacey as she appeared to be, may have been out for a fat insurance policy on that one.

She has confided that she didn't really kill her kids because their bodies were actually inhabited by zombies.

Her beautiful kids' bodies were dug up in a shallow grave on her property. You can read a grisly recount of the story here. But you don't have to, it will make your stomach turn. 

What kind of awful person murders their own children?

Anyway, not to dwell but she has been ruled crazy and incompetent for trial.  The court believes that she can use some "restorative treatment." 

"The completed assessment determined that at this time the defendant is not competent to proceed, and recommends restorative treatment," Judge Steven Boyce wrote in his order to stay the case.

This is, in my mind, the worst possible scenario. Because the way it usually works is that down the line, when an equally crazy shrink decides that she is now well and restored, she gets out of the sanitarium and walks, scott free. And presumably will kill again because pardon me, but she just seems like the type.

People like Lori Vallow are a big reason I am a firm believer in capital punishment. Cold and calculating, I don't believe her shtick for a second. But I guess the judge does.

Her children, as well as Tammy and Charles, deserve better.

The Strangeloves - I Want Candy

Old house, Bodie

 

The Big Finish

So I will try to wrap this up. I got to bed on Friday night about one after the mediocre milky way attempt. I remember looking at the bedside clock in the motel at 4:08 in the morning and drove myself back to the beach as soon as I could groggily throw my clothes on. So you can do the math, I am operating on three hours sleep.

I was the first one to my destination, soon to be joined by an over talkative chap from Colorado who felt the need to recount every shot he had taken in the last week like a laundry list. He also kept going on and on about shooting in the "blue light" which I assume is a paean to Galen Rowell but might instead be a religious thing.

I set up on the beach and took a couple shots that were not too terribly interesting. I waited for some more light to come.

There were not a lot of clouds so things were not too promising but I can't think of too many other places where I would rather see the sun come up.

I saw a group of photographers arrive on the hill and start making their way down to the South Tufa Beach. 

The sun finally started to cast its light on the mountains and the unique carbonate landforms called tufas.

It was about this time that things went temporarily sideways. A Frenchman and his wife had wandered into the picture. Literally. We photographers have very few rules of etiquette but one thing we try to do is respect each other's sight line. First come, first served.

But the Frenchman set his tripod up right in my field of view.

I gently called out to Mr. Clueless and asked him to get out of my shot.

He started sputtering, said I would be somewhere else if I was smart but he eventually begrudgingly cleared his gear out of my picture frame.

It is a funny thing. I have been taking pictures for over fifty years. And almost invariably, the people sporting the most expensive gear, your Hasseblad and Leica photographers, seem to take the crappiest pictures.

I know it is an unfair generalization and my dad shot Hasseblad and he was fairly competent and I do wish I had a medium format Leica but I am serious. 

Not sure why but you don't see a lot of workhorse photographers shooting those cameras, they mostly look good on bookshelves. Short of in the fashion studio, I guess. 

People evidently think that expensive gear will make them better photographers. 

And also these sorts tend to think that they are artistes and god's gift to photography. I am indulging in gross generalizations here, remember. No offense intended KP.

I always had crummy gear growing up, Topcons and Konicas mostly, but I learned to get the most out of them, if I can say that humbly.

Anyway the few decent minutes of light were soon over and I was sitting there amiably chatting with a couple of nice photographers from Santa Fe and Santa Rosa when Frenchy, still sore at my upbraiding him publicly, says, with the most petulant sneer,"If you guys would stop talking and move I could take my pictures."

Zoot alors! I pretty much lost it, I honestly can't remember going off like this before during a shoot.

"Did you just say, if we stopped talking and moved, you could take a picture?"

My fuse was lit. I was ready to fire. After his previous poor behavior he was now trying to save face by being a total dick. 

I suggested that my gallic friend commit a physically impossible sexual act with himself and I said it at the highest of possible decibels. The Frenchman scurried off in surrender, toting his precious Hasseblad with him. Amscré!

I apologized to my newfound cronies and they laughed and said that they were with me on this one. I drove back to the Lakeview and checked out, had a great and filling breakfast before I left, something I tried to do every day of this trip.

I headed for the Tioga Pass which was just opened back up May 27th. 

It was so beautiful through there.

I showed the Ranger my Senior Pass and they checked my reservation and I entered Tuolomne Meadows and the park. Just incredibly pretty.

I got to Yosemite and it was another story.

Even with the attendance restrictions thee place was mobbed, mostly by people from India. They seemed to want to get selfies of themselves in front of every conceivable rock and sign. Lots of posing. 

Pretty girls but my vacation in nature and solitude was clearly over.

The valley was jammed. I drove up to Glacier Point and there were so many people there all three parking lots were full. I could have stuck around but it is a sacred spot to me because of my father and my history there and I decided to leave instead. 

I did stop at the next viewpoint and grabbed a shot of Half Dome. But my vacation was officially over, with one more day to drive home.

It was a great and much needed road trip. First real trip since Covid hit. I discovered a lot and had a lot of fun, saw a lot of beautiful sights.

What am I?

 

I have this most amazing plant growing in my yard. Have had it for years but it has never done this before. Beautiful pink orange center. I don't know what it is or when I got it but I think it was about seven years ago. Absolutely striking, have never seen anything like it.

Each frond is about three feet long so it is approximately six feet wide. 

There is a pup offshoot that is quite large with no interior color. I have a nice location to plant the offspring so don't even ask...

Renée thought it might be a puya at first and then a hechtia. I do not know. I have seen hechtias with pink flowers but not pink stalks. 

It resembles both an agave, an aloe and a bromeliad. Totally not my field of expertise.

Anybody have a clue?

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

postscript - the brilliant Jeff Chemnick had no problems figuring this one out, took less than a minute - Bromelia balansae aka "heart of flame"- thank you! I guess I have a flower stalk to look forward to!

*

I would also like to boast about the Cape Chestnut tree outside my store, just rounding into peak bloom. Do trees get much prettier than this?

Lush

 

Tweedy - Flowering

Down the road

After visiting Crowley and Convict Lakes on the beautiful second morning, I decided to cruise through Mammoth. 

I thought about hiking back to Rainbow Falls again but it was awful hot and the memory of hiking with all of my equipment in the heat with Ken made me give up the idea.

Besides, Devil's Postpile was closed and I was not sure that the trails were even open to Rainbow.

I tooled around with the windows down, enjoying the beautiful clean mountain air and gentle breezes, eventually taking the scenic loop.

I had never been to Inyo Craters before and decided to hike up to them. 

The trail was not very well marked but I eventually found them after backtracking and visited two of them, one beautiful turquoise, one rather dingy dark green.

I talked to various people including three birders who were happy to have spotted an olive warbler in the trees and spent a brief moment discussing native woodpeckers with me.

Beautiful morning in the mountains. I wonder how many Mammoth skiers ever even see the place in the late spring or summer?

I walked back to the trailhead and returned over the rough dirt road to the pavement. 

My car is behaving so admirably but I think the next tire change I will go all terrain and it will be even better. I do a lot of driving on the dirt.

I casually drove on up the road, no real plans or itinerary except stopping and shooting nearly every lake and pretty mountain ridge I came across.

This might be June Lake, I don't rightly remember but I believe so.

Too much beauty, I might have lake overload. Need to visit a few sleazy ghettos, stat.

I drove up the long and fairly gnarly road to the Parker Lake Trailhead. I think Los Angeles owns and gets some of its water from this lake. Make sure you have a high clearance vehicle on this road. 

I was pretty tired and didn't walk to the lake. Crowded with people and I wanted my space.

You do get a nice view of Mono Lake from up there.

I drove up to Bridgeport and went to the market to get a sandwich. It was a long wait, the affable girl behind the counter said it took about six minutes to make one, her record was five and there were thre ahead of me. 

She suggested I walk around town, visit the tackle shop or something. I quickly lost interest, an emotion evidently shared by the surly older woman at the register with the ugly and somewhat butch tattoos on her forearm.

Afterwards I had a decision to make, Walker, Bodie or Twin Lakes. I called a friend and he texted me, definitely the latter. Very pretty up there for sure.

I drove back towards my hotel, the pretty nice Lakeview Lodge in Lee Vining. The I saw the sign for Bodie. What the hell, why not? I have a definite need to want to find out what is around the next corner.

I drove back to the motel, blown away at my good fortune in shooting the couple, all of us simultaneously traveling back and forth in time.

Took a nap and then eventually left to grab the sunset at Mono Lake from the South Tufa beach. You really never know what you will get at the lake, unfortunately, the light and clouds never came together for us this evening.

I would be bummed but I can't be as I have nailed it there before and will nail it again there one day, I do believe.

Did my best with what I had to work with.

I went back to the hotel and had dinner, then took a nap. Got up about 10:30 and decided to see if I could get a good milky way pic from the overlook. I couldn't with my 24 -70mm. Didn't dial in the focus properly, squibbed it. Here it is, warts and all.

Pros never show their failures. So this either confirms my amateur status or shows my zen like emotional detachment. I'm cool either way.

More tomorrow.