In olden times, giants strode the earth. Of these giants, those truly worth their name (“entas” in Anglo Saxon) dwelt in massive castles of wondrous construction.

Los Angeles has always been the Land of the Giants of the film industry. And the city once boasted an almost uncountable number of immense and spectacular movie palaces for them to occupy. Many survive. The devoted fan of film theaters could exhaust a full week traversing the vast L.A. basin without visiting all of them that remain, with occasional stops at a variety of strip malls, parking lots and vacant spaces that once were graced by these amazing structures. If you have an interest in the grandiose theaters of the past, and you’re planning a trip to Los Angeles, you’d do well to consult the website of the Los Angeles Conservancy. CLICK HERE. The Conservancy can help you gain a fundamental orientation to some of the remarkable structures that are still extant. They offer tours, and, during select times of the year, host screenings of classic films in several of the houses in a series named “Last Remaining Seats.”

I had an errand to run that would take me near a part of L.A. named Morningside Park.  Whenever I can, I make the effort to see one more slice of this vast megalopolis that would require multiple lifetimes to fully explore. An important resource is my battered copy of A Guide to Architecture in Los Angeles & Southern California, by David Gebhard and Robert Winter, Peregine Smith, 1977. (I note that Amazon lists one “new” copy for $160, although used copies are available for much, much less. Mine is used.) This staggering work of massive research and profundity details hundreds of structures throughout southern California. It’s illustrated with photos of select sites, for which Julius Shulman, the avatar of L.A. architectural photographers, served as Photographic Consultant (and many of the photos are his). Although scores of the buildings listed in the book have fallen prey to the wrecking ball in the ensuing 35 years since the book’s publication, hundreds still stand. How Gebhard and Winter compiled the book is a mystery to me, because setting out to visit each of the locations once would seem to require a few years of dedicated travel, let alone researching their histories, acquiring photos and amassing them in a single publication. I salute them. (There IS a revised edition, 2003, which is worth investigating. I promise to do so.)

Consulting the Guide, I saw that my errand would take me to the vicinity of The Academy Theater, built in 1939 by Charles Lee, whom Wikipedia lists as “one of the most prolific and distinguished motion picture theater designers on the West Coast.” I could construct a route for my errand that would pass the site without a lot of additional driving. Gebhard and Winter’s description tells us that the Academy is “The  high point of the Streamline Moderne theaters in Southern California.” That’s enough for me. Let’s go! Is it still standing? I made my way to the intersection of Manchester Blvd. and Crenshaw Blvd. 

Manchester drives a long east-west line across the southern edge of south-central L.A. just north of LAX, bisected in the city of Inglewood by Crenshaw Blvd., which runs from north almost from the edge of the Pacific to the base of the Hollywood Hills. The Morningside Park neighborhood is somewhat tattered, far enough inland and distant from the spiffier sections of town to still play host to architectural reminders of the 20s, 30s, 40s and 50s.

I drove there. Here is what I saw (click on photos for larger images).

Still there. Even in ’77, Gebhard and Winter had written, “… now a church, and some remodeling has begun to compromise the original design.” Obviously, the place is not what it once was, but the church has at least retained that remarkable spire with “ACADEMY” spelled out along its height. Those curvilinear shapes that comprise the house are a distinctive touch from the great age of Streamline Moderne.

I can’t speak for the current state of the interior of the building. A Google Image Search reveals tantalizing photos of a stunning interior. I may have to attend church there, just to see.

Keep your eyes open. And keep your camera handy. Ask questions if you find someone who knows anything about what you see. Nothing lasts forever, and change is certain.

If you’re doing a map search, the address of the Academy is 3100 Manchester Blvd., Inglewood, CA.

© 2013 Brad Nixon

It’s late afternoon. You’ve just arrived, unnoticed to all but the keenest observers (and they are always watching) in some far-flung corner of the world: Bangkok, Singapore, or maybe Hong Kong. A vintage Mercedes diesel delivers you to the portico of The Oriental, your home for the next few days (or, if things don’t go well, indefinitely). Whether you’ve just come off a plane or transferred from the brutal two-day coach trip via the land route over the barrier range, only you and the Silent Watchers know. Your taciturn local contact is waiting for you there, ready to escort you to your suite, where he plans to give you a quick summary of the next day’s appointments (not to mention the options for entertaining yourself this evening). You say matter-of-factly, “Here, take my bag and have them put it in the room, unopened, and have a flask of gin and a bottle of tonic on ice for me. I just want to pop ’round the club to see what’s doing in town. I’ll meet you at eight in the bar.”

One simple phrase adroitly delivered in the local dialect (in a manner that indicates that there are to be no questions  asked), directs your driver to your next destination. You’re whisked to a location in the center of the massive, bustling city. You step from the car. The tropical heat of the place engulfs you as you breathe in the exotic perfume of this far-off place, so familiar to you, but always so invigorating: utterly foreign and, yet, unmistakably familiar. Your white linen suit is wrinkled from the recent days  of travel. You grasp the handle of the simple leather-clad valise that’s never out of your sight, and step briskly across the pavement and through the doors, past the subtle nod of recognition from the doorman. Yes, the place is the same as always: quiet, with an underlying thrum of energy and thoughtful cogitation on The State of Things as They Are Now. There’s a hum of conversation from the bar beyond the inner doors. In the vestibule, you make a quick check of your postbox. Nothing that can’t wait for later. You slide the handful of sealed envelopes into the inner pocket of your jacket. You see on the Notices board that Fennally is to deliver another of his endless diatribes on the subject of , “Things That Might Happen in the Central Provinces.” Blighter.

You push through the doors and, now, now you’re home. You step to the bar, place your travel-worn leather valise on a stool beside you, and address that timeless publican, ”Not so much vermouth this time, Petersen, if you please.” You notice Jennings and Lococabeza down at the end of the bar, no doubt Locacabeza is still angling for a publisher for his treatise on educational inequities across the E.U. Must try to avoid catching their attention. Jennings is sure to begin the way he always does, “Say, old chap, have you seen Fotherington? He owes me money.”

Most of you who visit this site are travelers. Admit it or not, I know that we share this fantasy: that wherever we go, there is some recondite, exclusive enclave of fellows awaiting us in even the most exotic locales who recognize and admit us as belonging to an exclusive conclave of common interest; a club, a society, a guild of the worldly-wise, masters of a thousand cities and a hundred countries; knowledgable, experienced, schooled in the ways of a changing and challenging world.

There is such a place. I’ve been there. Granted I wasn’t wearing a white linen suit, nor was I whisked there by private car, but it’s a real place. In the heart of central Hong Kong (and a few other spots around the globe), there’s a place named The Foreign Correspondents’ Club.

Here’s a link. Go go to the “About” page to see a photo of the club and read about its history:

http://www.fcchk.org

Founded in 1943, the club has been a gathering place for journalists and politicians who needed a place to gather, have their mail forwarded, and generally use as a base of operations in what was, of course, a much different Asia. In a time before electronic communication, or reliable communication whatsoever, during a global war, it was a haven. That war was succeeded by a steady string of other Asian conflicts, and the club remained an important place for reporters, photographers and others covering those conflicts. Today, it remains a working center for members of the media from around the world, not a mere social club, although there is that aspect of it. As I write this, the club’s website indicates that there will be a gathering to celebrate the O.B.E. (Order of the British Empire) awarded to Sir Anthony Lawrence, former Chief Far East Correspondent for BBC Radio, now retired, who resides in Hong Kong. On the social side, I see that one can gather there to watch the Super Bowl (American football championship), although, due to the time difference, one will be doing that at 6:30 a.m. on a Monday.

One can join the club even if one isn’t a working member of the media, although it’s enormously less expensive to be a working journalist or correspondent.

I was there, briefly, as a guest of a bona fide member, globe-trotting aerial cinematographer, LG. We had about 36 hours to spend in Hong Kong, with an ambitious schedule of video taping, which took us well into our one evening. However, we made good use of our time to capture some excellent footage of that fascinating and picturesque place, even managing to make one crossing of the harbor (harbour, there) on the famous Star Ferry from Kowloon (the mainland side) to Hong Kong Island. Hong Kong is an immensely busy place rich in history and wonderful scenery that warrants many days of exploration. I’d spent twelve days there many years ago, and gotten to see a great deal of the place. The opportunity to visit the FCC, though, was an opportunity to see a quiet, integral part of what it’s like to actually be part of the fabric of the place. I regret that I don’t have photos to share with you, but it was far more enjoyable to pretend for just a short time that I belonged there, rather than to act like a tourist. What a treat. Thanks, LG! I look forward to another trip.

An old saying goes, “Everyone talks about the weather, but no one does anything about it.” The same can’t quite be said about another perennial topic of conversation, and an integral part of life here under these western skies — in Los Angeles, that is — traffic (click on photos for larger images).

There are LOTS of things done about traffic. There is a vast literature and professional discipline about traffic planning, management and maintenance. And, if you’ve ever driven in any major city you know one thing: nothing works particularly well. Traffic congestion is the curse of modern urban life … well, one of them. Let it be said that there is worse traffic in this world than we have here. A recent study showed that residents of Washington, D.C. and the surrounding areas suffer more commute time than Angelenos. The traffic in Delhi and Beijing makes a daily commute in L.A. seem like a vacation by comparison. In Manhattan and London, ordinary humans don’t drive at all; those tasks are performed by highly trained experts imported from other worlds. Other western locales where it’s no fun to drive include greater San Francisco, Phoenix, and the poor souls streaming along I-5 and I-15 into San Diego in the morning, and back out in the evening. There’s no question, though, it’s tough here, and we have earned a justifiable reputation as a miserable place to drive.

That task is exacerbated for visitors by the abysmal state of freeway signage in Los Angeles. Despite a directive from the U.S. federal agency that manages highways, Los Angeles has not complied by instituting a system of numbered freeway exits. In L.A. you cannot get directions that say, “Proceed 5 miles and take exit 112.” Our exits have no numbers. Instead, one might encounter a sign that says, “Long Beach” and a right arrow and “Anaheim” with a left arrow. If you want to go south, but don’t happen to know that Long Beach is north and west of Anaheim, you have only a 50/50 chance of choosing the correct lane that will get you to Disneyland. Remedying your error might require agonized exits and re-entrances. One concludes that there is no one in the administration able to count sequentially from one, to two, then three, and so forth. A quick check of the California and Los Angeles County budgets will confirm that suspicion.

That’s not the issue I’m here to address, but let it stand as fair warning before you come to visit Disneyland (in Anaheim), lest you end up at the Aquarium of the Pacific (Long Beach). The Aquarium is a wonderful place (wait ’til you encounter the sea dragons!), but it ain’t Disneyland.

Instead, I want to address the latest set of ideas generated by whatever bunch of nincompoops are in charge of a traffic “strategy” for Los Angeles.

For many years, Los Angeles, like other cities, has promoted ride sharing by reserving lanes for the exclusive use of carpools of two or more people. In the traffic biz, these are call HOV — High Occupancy Vehicle — lanes. Many cities have them. Washington, D.C. is probably the most aggressive adopter of HOV lanes because they have the severest challenges (and during certain hours you need at least three per car). The culture of the HOV lanes in our nation’s capitol is a fascinating one, and I might write about it some time. In recent years, California completely muddled the objectives of the HOV program with a bozo-minded policy that granted free access to the HOV lanes to low-emission autos like the Toyota Prius (technically a “partial zero emission vehicle,” whatever that is). Thus, a program intended to incent drivers to pool rides and REDUCE the total number of cars on the road suddenly PROMOTED single-driver cars. The result was predictable. The HOV lanes became clogged with single drivers in “partial zero emission vehicles.” Traffic got worse. There was a REWARD for driving by yourself.

Now, though, were enduring another assault on the admirable goal of promoting the pooling of resources. This one is PERFECT for L.A. You’re still able to drive in the HOV lanes as a carpool (though not entirely for free), OR, you can PAY to drive in those HOV lanes by yourself. Salesperson on an expense account making calls? Do it! Already making a million dollars a year importing cheap textiles made in China? What’s a few more bucks? Ordinary schmucks? You lose again, buster.

Even the name of this program reeks of bureaucratic doodah: HOT, or High Occupancy Toll.

OK, OK, so The Counselor and I have acquired a “transponder” and dial it to the appropriate setting and still use the HOT lanes to drive into downtown L.A., although not for free: there’s a $40 fee for owning the transponder, plus a periodic charge for maintenance. Great.

We have used the new system. It works, insofar as it captures a photo of our car’s license plate number and, presumably, of the two of us in the front seat, triggered by the transponder when we drive under the sensors. What one notices, though, particularly on a Saturday, is that the four or five “regular” lanes of Interstate 110, the Harbor Freeway, are clogged to the max with traffic crawling at 15 miles per hour. Many — MANY — of those cars contain two or more occupants but are unable to use the HOT lanes because they lack the transponder, while the HOT lanes (and there are TWO of them) have perhaps one car every few hundred yards (I am NOT exaggerating), breezing along. The HOT solution, as one could easily anticipate, has made things worse. Are you a supposedly cherished tourist to our fine city? Tough. Prepare to enjoy our most prominent attraction: traffic delays!

Amongst all the press, there are two very amusing takes on this circumstance. I encourage you to CLICK HERE to see a little animation created by Los Angeles Metro to introduce their “Loyalty Program,” intended to incent us carpoolers to continue to use the lanes. And, CLICK HERE to read the rant posted by the traffic control industry’s newsletter, which typifies objections to giving deference to the rich for freeway access as “leftist objection to tolls.”

This HOT lane thing is, supposedly, a “pilot program.” Does that mean that the hundreds of millions that L.A. is currently spending on HOV lanes for Interstate 405 might be switched to HOT lanes? When did an immensely expensive public “pilot program” ever declare itself a failure and revert to its former state? I’m prepared for the worst.

I have a better idea.

There, in the current HOV lane or lanes is an underused speck of immensely valuable real estate: the rarest and most precious type of real estate imaginable in a metropolis famed for its expensive space — a traffic lane. Open it up. Just make it another lane (or two, for much of its length) on the 110 freeway. Let everyone drive on it. Traffic won’t get a great deal better, but a little. At least we won’t be promoting the famous notion that, in this city, money talks.

© 2013 Brad Nixon

The late poet, translator and critic, John Ciardi once hosted a program on National Public Radio, “On Words.” The subject was etymology, the origin of words. In each brief audio program, Ciardi would explore the origin of a word or phrase. Sometimes they were unusual words, sometimes very common ones. Each fascinating program revealed that the word originated from an unusual or bizarre and always captivating source one wouldn’t expect. This may not sound like the components of gripping entertainment, but the combination of Ciardi’s gravelly baritone, his deep knowledge of his subject and his acerbic humor made these precious radio moments utterly compelling. I can scarcely believe that it’s been more than a quarter century since he did those broadcasts. I miss that guy.

One message with which Ciardi repeatedly admonished us was that one should not assume it’s possible to just “figure out” the origin of a word or phrase based on its apparent resemblance to similar-sounding or -looking words. He cautioned us that language is an elusive, always-changing medium and not subject to any rule, whether of logic or any other discipline. Etymology requires long, painstaking research. He always took a storytelling approach in his programs that demonstrated just how difficult it is to determine word origins.

Mr. Ciardi’s admonition comes to mind because the subject of the Christian eucharist came up in casual conversation with The Counselor this week, specifically the Latin text of Jesus’ words to his disciples, hoc est corpus meam: “This is my body.” I remarked on what I assumed was something familiar to my highly educated partner, the fact that a corruption of a phrase from that Latin passage, hoc est corpus, became a kind of linguistic in-joke for psuedo-serious prestidigitization of all kinds in the phrase, “hocus pocus.

“Are you certain of that?” she asked, in an honest, straightforward way that I found particularly irritating, in that it questioned something I absolutely knew to be fact. After all, she does not — as do I — have in her curriculum vita two years of hard tutelage under the iron hand of Mabel Corwin in Latin I and II (always use Roman numerals when referring to courses in Latin!). Granted, she has more college degrees than I, including some serious study of Middle English at an institution that — like my school of graduate study — stands among the foremost in both scholarship and Big 10 football. But, really, to be called out on something that I know to be a fact ….

This was, after all, in what’s called in the vernacular, “in my wheelhouse.” This was my turf, and I had gleaned this recondite bit of etymology from the very wellspring of etymological wisdom, during my graduate year studying the origins of the English language. Not only had this bit of word-origin legerdemain been conveyed to me directly from one of the company of scholars who knew, personally, some of the compilers of that ultimate resource of the English language’s origins, the Oxford English Dictionary, but the very soul of that publication resided just a few steps from where I matriculated, in the form of thousands of handwritten citation cards, bequeathed to my current university by the compilers of the OED for their own prosecution of the Middle English Dictionary. In other words, I had it from the source.

Well, I had near at hand the resources to refute her blithe dismissal of my thesis. I strode not without some arrogance to the shelf in the living room, pulled out the Compact Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary and its handy magnifying glass (honestly, I didn’t used to need that), brought it to the table and leafed to “hocus pocus,” directing a look to my brilliant but misled companion that implied, “My dear, I honor and respect your excellent mind, but you are unwise to question me on matters etymological.” She, I must admit, waited with a look of bemused toleration. Dang. There’s nothing much worse than being regarded with bemused toleration by an extremely intelligent, highly educated woman.

There, my friends, I read these daunting lines: “The notion that hocus pocus was a parody of the Latin words used in the eucharist rests merely on a conjecture thrown out by Tillotson: see below.”

What? Are you kidding me?

The OED does document a trend or fad of having a fictional or dramatic character in various works from the 17th Century, appearing variously as a joker, juggler or snake oil salesmen, named “Hocus Pocus.” There is, however, according to the most authoritative historical record of our language, other than that ungrounded assertion of a Reverend Tillotson in 1640, no indication that the phrase “hocus pocus” is any sort of distortion or parody of the text of the Latin mass. Whether the Reverend had some textual evidence now lost, or made it up out of whole sackcloth, we can’t know.

Dang.

Before I looked up from peering through the magnifying glass, reading those words of doom, I composed myself and considered my options.  What would I say? How could I spin this to my advantage? How could I retrieve at least some small victory from this stinging defeat? I thought of the betrayal, the careless attestation of an inaccurate attestation of derivation from someone who … and then it came to me. John Ciardi, himself, would arise, decades after his demise, and salvage my battered psyche.

I explained to her that what I had found shows the danger of amateur linguists thinking they’ve discovered an etymological linkage. “To quote Mr. Ciardi, my dear, ‘etymology is the work of serious scholars’.”

While this sally did nothing to support my now-disproved belief about the origin of “hocus pocus,” it served its purpose and deflected our conversation into remembrances of Ciardi and even led me to plug in my iPod with a recording of Ciardi reading his own translation of Dante’s Inferno.

Hocus Pocus, indeed.

You can find John Ciardi’s works in print in your library, online and via booksellers. You can also find recordings, although I have lost the link to the downloadable recording of Dante. Please let me know if you find it. 

Episodes of his NPR “On Words” are purportedly available at http://www.npr.org, but I find them very difficult to download. Here is one alternative: http://www.learnoutloud.com/Podcast-Directory/Languages/Vocabulary-Building/NPR-On-Words-with-John-Ciardi-Podcast/18855

© 2013 Brad Nixon

Almost exactly a month ago, we learned that Huell Howser was retiring. My California readers understand the buzz this announcement caused. The rest of you are saying, “Who?”

I immediately set out to write a blog about the inimitable Mr. Howser, both as an appreciation of the man and his work, as well as to introduce a remarkable individual to those of you who aren’t familiar with him. I had just a few more tweaks to make to that blog, and I was going to post it this week.

Then, Monday brought the news that Huell had died early that morning. Now the tone of this blog entry must change somewhat and the tense shift to past perfect, but here we will celebrate the man and not mourn overmuch. As a television producer, interviewer or on-air narrator, Huell matters to me and to anyone with a sense of curiosity and wonder. Anyone who delights in poking around this world for the fascinating stories that lie right down the street or over on the other side of town should celebrate Huell’s dedication to inspiring everyone to do the same.

The Personality

Huell Howser was, well, it’s difficult to give him a title, but let’s say he was a television personality because he had a unique, widely recognized persona, and he was on TV. Since about 1987, Huell  produced and starred in a string of television series that appeared (and still appear in constant rerun) on public television. There were a number of titles for these series including, “Road Trip With Huell Howser,” “Visiting With Huell Howser,” and the longest-running and most widely popular one, “California’s Gold.” All the series have more or less identical formats: Huell goes somewhere in California that he finds interesting, and shows it to viewers, both by live on-camera narration and through interviews with people associated with that place. You’d have to categorize these programs as travelogues, but there’s more to it than that.

Television is replete with travel programs. Chances are, if you’re a regular reader here, you have one or two favorite programs, yourself. Often, these programs are highly researched and assembled by large production teams of researchers, writers, camera crews, travel planners, editors and graphic artists. They take you to the far corners of the world and introduce you to exotic locales and fascinating people.

Huell’s Approach

What distinguished Huell’s approach was the impression he tirelessly pursued that you were just going to go somewhere with him — possibly somewhere in your own town — and see what there is to see. He never let the audience in on any of the planning or preparation he and his very small team did — often, it’s obvious that there was no real prework: they just showed up. Huell would stroll around a state park or a historic town, microphone in hand (only the one mic — he was us, asking the questions, describing what was in front of him). The camera generally stayed wide, letting us see what Huell saw (sometimes aggravating so: often I’ve called out at the screen, “For goodness’ sake, Huell, zoom in for a cutaway shot!”).

You can find Huell’s programs at his archive, CLICK HERE. If you don’t know him, click on one of the shows and watch to get a sense of the man’s gee-whiz enthusiasm and good nature.

Whatever the topic, the spirit that defined every one of the hundreds of programs he created (the New York Times credits him with more than 2,000) was Huell’s unbridled, irrepressible sense of curiosity and wonder. Despite a career that spanned a stint in the Marines and decades of journalistic experience, he still spoke in a broad gangly down-home Tennessee drawl: “Hah! How y’all? Y’all raysidints heahr?” His enthusiastic hail-fellow-well-met eagerness could make viewers unfamiliar with him wonder if he was some yokel who’d never been on camera before.

Everyone who’s watched Huell can parody him without hesitation: he constantly punctuated the remarks of his on-camera subjects with, “Oh, my goodness,” “That’s incredible!” or, “Look at THIS!”

Yes, Huell was easy to make fun of. You’ll find some hilarious parodies of Huell on YouTube, because, well, the guy was so distinctive, he was bound to attract that sort of thing. Even The Simpsons took a cut at him. But that was an essential part of what made him so credible as a guide; you knew he was telling his story straight, and not selling you anything except the fun of learning something new.

His corn pone, aw-shucks manner never varied, but it was genuine, and helped underscore his core message: “I’m just a guy with an insatiable curiosity who delights in finding out new stuff that I can share with my viewers.” Once you understood the pure and focused nature of his mission, though, you were never fooled. That cat was as good a storyteller as there is, all the more so because he got the story from whomever he interviewed, whether they were practiced speakers or just ordinary folks.

His persona was a dramatic and sometimes hilarious contrast to the practiced, well-honed suaveness of Rick Steves or Rudy Maxa. But, he had a mission, and his message was always the same: if you ever wondered what’s back that dirt road or what the scenery in a state park looks like, or what it takes to manufacture a product or grow some sort of crop, then GO LOOK AT IT! GO!

There are plenty of Huell Howsers around the world, covering their locales in more or less similar programming, and they become familiar to loyal audiences. Just one excellent example, from the far side of America, is “Bill Green’s Maine.” For many years, this skilled journalist has been taking Mainers around their state. CLICK HERE to view some of his programs. Now, Bill’s production techniques are a more sophisticated than Huell’s; he shoots more cutaways, he edits his interviews to be more concise, and, although he’s an enthusiastic and tireless supporter of the rich lifestyle and culture of his region, he certainly lacks Huell’s gee-whiz homeboy attitude. The contrast, in fact, demonstrates a lot of what endeared Huell to all of us, who may never have met him, but refer to him by his first name, because we know we’d've gotten along with him if we ever had.

A Legacy of Learning

Every year, a rite of passage for every California 4th-grade student (for you in foreign lands, those are 9 year-olds) is an assignment to report on one of the 21 California Missions established by the Spanish from 1769-1823. Every student. Thousands upon thousands of reports, year after year, for decades. They do research and write reports, build models of their assigned mission, and, ideally, learn something not only about history and culture, but about the mere process of researching and writing reports. Huell shot a series of videos covering all 21 missions, and many California public libraries have purchased that series as one of the key tools these kids rely on to learn about a mission that might be 500 miles away from where they live. That’s one legacy that fits Huell’s mission perfectly.

But a larger legacy is one we all share. We’ll continue to see his programs on TV. When we do, we’ll be in the company of a genial, inquisitive tireless fellow traveler who appeals to the questing soul in all of us; whose charm, energy and curiosity never fail. So, we here salute him as a boon companion and a guide who took joy in something ineffable and aspirational, always seeking what was new under the sun, under western skies.

Thanks, Huell. We’ll miss you, brother.

CLICK HERE to read the Los Angeles Times obituary of Huell Howser.

CLICK HERE to read the New York Times obituary.

CLICK HERE to read an excellent brief appreciation of Huell by the LA Times entertainment writer published at the time Huell announced his retirement.

Donations in memoriam can be made to the California’s Gold Scholarship Fund at Chapman University (to which Huell donated his video archives, as well). CLICK HERE for details.

© 2013 Brad Nixon

Photo of Huell Howser used courtesy of Wikipedia Commons Licensing Policy and may not be reused without reference to and compliance with that policy.

You might be driving anywhere in America. It’s the sort of thing one can encounter from Maine to Oregon, Minnesota to Key West. In this case, you’re driving east along Interstate 8 through southern Arizona, heading for the west side of Phoenix. You hop off the freeway at Gila Bend, intending to connect with Route 85 north, then strike eastward again on Interstate 10. And, as happens almost every time one abandons the homogenized world of freeways, you SEE something worth another look.

The Space Age Lodge? Stop the car! Man, this is why one drives great distances instead of taking a one-hour flight from San Diego to Phoenix!

What immediately struck this traveler was the excellent condition of this property. All too often, roadside period pieces such as this are derelict or decaying, abandoned or even not there any more at all, in which case, you missed it by sitting home watching re-runs of “The Rifleman” instead of exploring! Here’s what I mean about the condition of the place:

Absolutely beautiful, well-maintained and thriving. Well, what in the heck IS this joint, anyway?

According to a fine recap on arizonaguide.com, the place was built in 1965, one of five space-themed motels built by a man named Art Stovall. I encourage you to read the fact-packed brief summary, CLICK HERE. I won’t recap all of Arizona Guide’s material, but there’s a great story about a near-tragedy when a neon sign shorted out and almost burnt the place down. The owners put up a sign: “attacked by aliens.” Sadly, the other four establishments, all within an hour’s drive of my home, no longer have their original theming.

I’m sorry to say that we didn’t take more time to look inside the place, which, according to the Guide, is chock full of paintings, murals and decorative details that carry out the space travel theme in full. The exterior suggests some of what must await inside.

Here’s to the interim owners and to Best Western for preserving one of the roadside attractions we find under western skies.

© 2013 Brad Nixon

Thanks to arizonaguide.com for the excellent writeup. Their material is their property and may not be copied or stolen for any commercial purpose.

Every day, the software that runs this blog reports the countries from which we received hits. It’s interesting to glance at the list and wonder what it was that led people in far-away places to click on Under Western Skies. OK, I admit, it’s really not much of a mystery; most of the hits are people looking for photos they can steal from here — I hope they enjoy them and get rich making calendars, T-shirts, mugs and coffee table books with photos of food and travel and send me a check. It hasn’t happened yet, but it could.

Still, I always hope that some number of those people do read the blog.

For the heck of it, I took a look at a summary of all the countries from which hits have come. For some reason, the date from which the software begins counting hits is February 25, 2012. Perhaps that’s when the blog service instituted the tracking. I’m not certain.

Here’s the list of countries and number of hits from each country during those 10 months as of last week:

5,772: United States
288: United Kingdom
190: Canada
114: Australia
113: Germany
91: Netherlands
88: India
83: Brazil, France
67: Italy
55: Spain
50: Romania
46: Singapore
37: Malaysia
36: Russian Federation
35: Turkey
33: Indonesia, Belgium
28: Argentina, Republic of Korea
27: Taiwan
26: Thailand
25: Switzerland
23: Hong Kong, Sweden
22: Hungary
21: Mexico
20: Czech Republic
19: Japan
18: Poland, Peru
16: Ukraine,
15: Norway, Kuwait, Portugal
14: Colombia, Greece
13: South Africa, Austria, Philippines
12: Serbia
11: Egypt
9: Viet Nam, United Arab Emirates
8: Denmark
7: Georgia, Ireland, Chile, Estonia
6: Bosnia and Herzegovina, New Zealand, Finland, Bulgaria
5: Pakistan, Slovakia, Lebanon, Sri Lanka, Ecuador, Jordan
4: Cambodia, Israel, Puerto Rico, Saudi Arabia, Albania
3: Bangladesh, Morocco, Macao
2: Seychelles, Slovenia, Lithuania, United Republic of Tanzania, Tunisia, Moldova,
Croatia, Macedonia, Uganda, Costa Rica, Mongolia, Iraq, Cyprus, Reunion
1: Libya, Venezuela, Paraguay, Armenia, Mauritius, Oman, Lao People’s Democratic Republic
Zimbabwe, Madagascar, Guatemala, Latvia, Kenya, New Caledonia, Luxembourg, Myanmar
Rwanda, Belarus, Paraguay, Guatemala, Armenia, Latvia, Madagascar, Zimbabwe

By my count, that’s 98 countries. There are a lot more countries than that in the world, but it’s a good percentage of the total.

The first 13 countries on the list are places where Romance or Germanic languages — at least somewhat akin to English — are the native language, and in most of those countries, the citizens learn English as part of their core education. Of course, those are also countries with large populations with good access to technology.

Any countries you don’t recognize? Any that you’ve heard of but can’t place on a map of the world? I had to look up two I didn’t recognize. Both proved to be connected to France: New Caledonia (one hit) is a group of islands east of Australia, and Reunion (2 hits), is an island in the Indian Ocean, east of Madagascar.

Of the countries I DON’T see on the list, some are to be expected. The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea? Nope. It’s neither a republic nor democratic, and they don’t let people have food there, much less Internet access. Iran? Uh, no. Neither is Syria there. They have more dire concerns than looking at pictures of life in California. One no-show stands out starkly: China: the People’s Republic of China (distinct from Taiwan, the Republic of China). It’s interesting that New Caledonia, with a quarter million people, generated a hit, but NONE of the PRC’s 1.3 billion souls have visited Under Western Skies. Is it possible that someone there took umbrage at a few somewhat judgmental things I said about a former bloodthirsty, murderous founder of the People’s Republic of China? Too much to hope for. Almost certainly the great and wise administrators of that place simply don’t allow access to blogging sites, because that would provide their citizens an opportunity for freedom of expression from which to post their own comments for the rest of the world. Even more threatening, it would provide uncensored access to what the other billions of humans who occupy their planet are saying and seeing. Think about that the next time you buy something marked, “Made in China.”

I’m delighted to have some hits from the former hermit state, Albania, and a number of other places that have already or are emerging from isolation. Of the former Soviet Union, we have Russia itself, as well as Armenia, Belarus, Estonia, Georgia, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova and Ukraine. Missing are the “stans:” Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan. Well, if you can’t stan the heat, stay out of the kitchen debate.

I’ve been blessed with the opportunity, the means and the freedom to travel more than many people have. Still, I’ve only been to a dozen or so of these countries, That includes China, by the way. Here’s my favorite shot from that trip: at the Summer Palace in Beijing, walking with a group of schoolkids who were dying to try out their English: “Hello. Are you from America?” “Yes, where are you from?” “China.” “You’re from CHINA!!! Oh my gosh.” That got the laughter you see here.

I’ll never see most of these countries, nor even meet someone from a lot of them. I’m glad to be able to make some contact with the rest of you. If you’re a visitor from a distant land, drop me a comment and say hello. I wish you all a happy new year — and in those places where your culture puts New Year at a different time, a happy turn of the calendar to you. Distance, language, culture and ideologies seem to divide us. But one of our inherent gifts as humans is that we can bridge the gaps. My wish is that we all — all — make use of our opportunities to share what we know about this world of ours.

Reach out.

© 2013 Brad Nixon

Photograph courtesy of Shannon Wickliffe, all rights reserved.

Here in the U.S. the major mainstream holiday is the just-completed Christmas. I know the fact that Christmas neatly corresponds with the winter solstice hasn’t escaped your attention. Whether or not this conjunction of ancient pagan and Christian holidays represents some intentional or causal relationship is not clear at all, and is hotly debated by ecclesiastical scholars. This holiday season offers an equal opportunity for revelers saturnalian and Christian to rejoice. Its conjunction with the turn of the Western calendar year adds more weight to the emotional import of this time of year. The cycle of birth, death and renewal that is inherent in human life is never nearer to our thoughts than it is now. We look ahead to the uncertainties and hope of a new year, and we reflect on what’s been done or not done; we reach out to people we miss but haven’t communicated with, and we think of those we miss and will never see again in this life.

I always think of one person at both the winter and summer solstice: a friend I met in college. Warren was a fellow English major, and, if I didn’t meet him on my first day there, I certainly met him in the initial week; you couldn’t be there long without encountering this force of nature. It was the very end of the ’60s: a time of change in society and in behavior, and no one embodied the advent of new attitudes and behaviors better than Warren. The product of a small northeastern Ohio city, Warren was ready for change: imaginative, well-read, intellectually curious and a born seeker. If our class had an Oscar Wilde, a Thoreau, a Whitman, it was Warren, singing the student body electric. He read, wrote, drew, painted, and, like eager young undergraduates the world ’round, sought his avenue to change the world.

His transformation into an avatar of late-sixties freedom of expression didn’t occur all at once, but, from my first acquaintance with him, Warren was an avid pursuer of The New. Here he is in a faded 35mm slide at the end of our sophomore year, wearing his trademark motley jeans. I regret that I have no photo of him in his navy blue winter cape!

Warren Fessler, June 1971

Warren and I maintained our friendship through our college days. We graduated. He returned to northeastern Ohio and I to my home town in the southeastern part of the state. The years rolled along. We corresponded intermittently, although when we wrote, it was at length. I still have some 7- and 9-page typewritten letters he sent me, full of news about what he was writing, drawing, painting, as well as about fishing and even the fortunes of his beloved Cleveland Browns football team. Warren found a way to put his writing to work — sometimes freelancing, sometimes on the staff of a string of ad agencies — earning his bread. It was demanding work, and not particularly well-paid. After a few years, I started making my living as a writer in the corporate communications biz. We’d both achieved our goal of being writers, though not in the way we’d imagined it during those undergraduate years. Warren continued to draw, paint and write creatively, always with the goal that his art would one day pay the bills, and not an agency.

I saw Warren once a year or so. Sometimes I made the drive to Cleveland. More often, I’d see him at the time of the summer solstice, when he’d pass through my town on his way back from an annual solstice gathering put on by old school friends of his from our alma mater, not far from where I lived. The summer solstice, with its thematic overtones of rebirth and renewal was an excellent time to reconnect with my fellow student of the mythic past.

The winter solstice was Warren’s beat, too. Every year, he’d send a holiday greeting of his own design. Each annual installment involved a combination of graphics and text, cleverly designed to reveal an unexpected message as you unfolded the card he’d made. Unfailingly inventive, Warren’s solstice greetings were sometimes outright hilarious, sometimes seriously thoughtful. They all conveyed the same wish: peace.

More years passed, and I relocated to California. The advent of email made it easier to stay in touch at one level, but five, six, then eight years elapsed when it wasn’t possible to sit in the same room with my old college pal.

On a morning in January of 2001, I received an email from Warren’s girlfriend, whom I’d never met, but knew of from his letters.

Warren was dead.

I didn’t go back to Ohio for the memorial. I knew none of Warren’s connections. He and I shared a single thread. His parents were deceased, and his sole sibling, a sister, was someone I didn’t know. My only mutual friend of his was The Counselor, so we grieved together. The connection was cut, and this world offers no alternatives.

I still have many letters and some writing from Warren, and all his inventive, witty solstice cards. I’d like to share one of his greetings with you. I regret that Warren’s spirit, embodied in all his art and writing, now sits unknown — so far as I know — in a worn folder in my memorabilia file. For one day, I’d like to use this season of remembrance to let it live again.

Here’s the card — from 1985 — as it would have emerged from its envelope. The text reads, “Doors which divide people.” (click on photos to enlarge).

The “doors” fold open left and right to reveal the message — a typical transformation of the sort that nearly all of Warren’s cards featured. The full text is revealed to read “Doors which divide people … imply portals to peace.”

The sun rises and sets. The face of the moon changes with every rising. Our tiny blue planet spins in its circle, tilting toward the sun that moves across its face. Each solstice brings a time of change and renewal. The turning of the year is our season to look forward. It’s also the time to reflect on the year that is past and passing and the year to come. We are here for a short season and then we leave only the works of our hands and minds. We remember the ones we miss, whether they are separated from us by space, or by a gulf that we can never bridge except in memory.

On behalf of Warren, and from The Counselor and me, peace to all of you.

© 2012 Brad Nixon

Card design © 2012 Warren A. Fessler. No use of any kind without express permission is allowed. 

Today’s tale is about the impressive power of the Internet as we know it, but it has a long back story. It’s not easy to know where to begin. I’ll start with a fact, and see where it takes us:

I once knew someone who had met Ezra Pound.

This is not the point of my story, but a place from which to begin.

All English majors and many students and fans of literature recognize the name: Ezra Weston Loomis Pound (1885 – 1972) was born in the United States, in the Idaho Territory (Idaho became a state in 1890), but he spent most of his life in England, France and Italy. Many people, in fact, don’t know he was an American at all, and merely associate him with the gang of international writers and artists who coalesced in Paris after the turn of the last century, described by Gertrude Stein as ”that Lost Generation.” Pound had significant impact on the literary scene over many decades. Yet, despite his undisputed seat among the pantheon of the 20th Century’s most influential writers, he isn’t as widely read as many of his contemporaries, and I’m willing to bet that few of even the most dedicated students of literature have read his work to any great extent. Every English major can quote his best known poem, “In a Station of the Metro” by heart, as I will do now:

The apparition of these faces in the crowd;

Petals on a wet, black bough.

(Okay, I had to look it up to determine that a semicolon ends the first line. But you get my point.)

One poem is certainly not enough to establish Pound as one of the prime movers of 20th-Century literature, yet that poem (over which he labored for a year, according to sources), is unquestionably his most widely anthologized and most familiar piece of work. (Make no mistake, my friends; one can reap a great deal of literary wheat while possessing only a handful of chaff. I’ve just done it, as can any second-year undergraduate in the better schools – especially those short poems.)

Pound was a prodigiously productive author, and one of the avatars of the modernist literary movement. During his long career, he composed massive works of great erudition (Hugh Selwyn Mauberley, The Cantos) that drew upon both his powerful imagination and his deep reading in many languages. These works, however, one must admit, are daunting at best, impenetrable at worst to the ordinary reader (including me). He also established himself as a brilliant editor and publisher, championing the work of some of the 20th Century’s foremost writers, including T.S. Eliot, Ernest Hemingway, Robert Frost, James Joyce and Ford Madox Ford among many others. He earned a reputation as one of the leading influencers of early 20th Century literature.

During my graduate student days, one of my professors told us the story of how he, as a younger man, had sought out the elderly Pound, who was at that time retired in his villa in Rapallo, on the Ligurian coast of Italy. It’s a classic tale of the itinerant young scholar barging in to sit at the feet of one of the masters of the craft. It actually wasn’t a very interesting story, so I won’t bore you with it. But it was interesting to know someone who met the great poet.

I spent my undergraduate days at another school. In those ancient times (and perhaps it still is so), the English Department had a modest budget (called “the popcorn fund”) to defray the cost for professors to entertain (presumably) senior students for evenings of academic study and discussion in more intimate settings outside the classroom. The Counselor and I were present at a number of these highbrow bull sessions hosted by a few of the professors whose classes we attended. (Probably “popcorn” dated from an earlier, more innocent era, because one of the primary ingredients of the sessions I recall was dry sherry and whatever cheese one could acquire in the wilds of southwestern Ohio: stimulating ingredients in any recipe intended to evoke scholarly discourse.) On a couple of occasions, we were treated with one of the marvels of modern technology that a university library made accessible to knowledgeable faculty members: audio recordings of literary works read by the authors who had composed them.

Friends, please picture us there, seated cross-legged on the worn carpet in some professor’s rented house, bending our ears to the stereo phonograph, on which spun a vinyl record reproducing an actual poet’s voice reading his or her work. In a day before computers or iPods, before MP3 players or CDs, technology brought those voices to us, just the same.

On one of those halcyon evenings (no, I can’t recall in which teacher’s home it was), we listened to Ezra Pound read some of his own work. Pound, at that time, was either still alive or just deceased. He was one of the icons of modern poetry, though probably none of us knew his major work very well (nor, to this day, have I read — nor may I ever read — the Cantos). There, though, we heard that thin, high-pitched American voice with diction reminiscent of old recordings from our grandparents’ era, layered over with Pound’s pretentious “artistry.” And from that evening, more than forty years ago, I’ve always remembered those lines. I have a better than average memory for songs and poems, but even that’s unusual: remembering (most of) a poem I only heard once, forty years ago. The reason, without a doubt, was Pound’s over-the-top delivery. He was playing the role to the hilt; here was The Great Poet, reading His Work. His stylized and affected manner is meant to convey clearly that THIS is Great Art. Whether it is or not, only the listener can judge, but it certainly was memorable. It’s worth saying that Pound had read widely and translated work from the ancient oral tradition of Anglo-Saxon, so it’s fair to imagine that he saw himself in the long line of succession from the ancient bards.

Here is what I’ve remembered of the poem:

The thought of what America would be like

If the Classics had a wide circulation

Troubles my sleep.

The thought of what America,
The thought of what America,
The thought of what America would be like
If the Classics had a wide circulation
Troubles my sleep.

Although I’ve never forgotten the lines or the impression they made on me, the fact that I didn’t know the title of the poem, and given the immense volume of Pound’s work, I’ve never been able to figure out where they came from or find them in print.

NOW comes the point of my story: the impressive power of the Internet.

This week, I typed into my browser, “The thought of what America would be like if the classics had a wide circulation.”

It was just that easy. There it was: the entirety of the poem, with a link to the recording Ezra Pound made, probably in 1958, and which I heard about a dozen years after that. It’s titled, “Cantico del Sole,” (Canticle to the Sun), 1926.

Astounding.

After many years, I can hear old Ezra’s voice again. If you’re curious, you can listen to this poem read by the author. I encourage you to do it, just for the sheer joy of hearing the old showoff strut his stuff:

CLICK HERE to listen

And here, rediscovered now, is “Cantico del Sole:”

The thought of what America would be like

If the Classics had a wide circulation
Troubles my sleep,
The thought of what America,
The thought of what America,
The thought of what America would be like
If the Classics had a wide circulation
Troubles my sleep.
Nunc dimittis, now lettest thou thy servant,
Now lettest thou thy servant
Depart in peace.
The thought of what America,
The thought of what America,
The thought of what America would be like
If the Classics had a wide circulation…
Oh well!
It troubles my sleep.

The Internet is a fascinating and awesome place, and this is one case I’m glad to have it. I can never sit in that room again with all those long-ago colleagues (except for The Counselor, thank goodness), but I’ve recovered a piece of the moment.

© 2012 Brad Nixon.

Please assume that Mr. Pound’s estate or some publisher(s) owns the rights to the written and recorded versions and that they may not be distributed for any commercial purpose without express consent.

I was in a slump. My blogging was going nowhere. Instead of blazing blogs, hot blogs, bodacious blogs, I had bland blogs, blah blogs or, on the worst days of all, no blogs. Zilch. Nada. Zip. I had doggy, soggy blogs. I needed … something. What to do? I did the only thing I could think of: I went to see my sawbones, Dr. Marx.

He was running late, as always. Fortunately, his lovely assistant kept me occupied, checking my pulse, my blood pressure, my temperature, the balance in my bank account. All standard procedure. She managed to elevate my pulse and raise my blood pressure, but she had the opposite effect on the ol’ bank balance. It’s cash in advance at Dr. Marx’s place, but at least you can get an appointment. Finally, he breezed in, wearing the same grubby white coat as always.

“Well, well, my lad, what’s troubling you? Or if there’s nothing troubling you, maybe you’d like to hear about what’s troubling me. I’ve got the time, since you’ve already paid. You DID pay, didn’t you?”

“Yes, Doctor, your lovely assistant took care of everything.”

“She did, did she? Everything?” He shot me a suspicious glance. “That’s a first. If this keeps up, I may have to start paying her. She check your pulse?”

“Check.”

“What was it?”

“I can’t say.”

“You can’t say?

“No, I can’t say.”

“Oh, you can’t say! Or, you WON’T say? I hope you know that withholding information from your doctor is a serious breach of trust. What was your pulse when you last saw it and what direction was it heading? Did it have any distinguishing marks?

“She didn’t tell me.”

“And you didn’t think to ask?”

“No, I, uh figured she’d tell you.”

“Oh, you assumed she’d tell me, eh? Then she’d probably assume I’d pay her, too. Well, that’s rich. What about your temperature?”

“What about it?”

“Don’t crack wise with me, mister, I didn’t go through six weeks of medical school to get into some vaudeville routine with you. Did she tell you if you have a temperature?”

“No.”

“Well, let’s assume you have one. Do you feel particularly hot?”

“No.”

“Well, you don’t look so hot, either. I don’t suppose you know anything about your blood pressure, either?”

“It’s in my left arm, is all I know.”

“So she just checked the one arm?”

“Check.”

“Well, don’t expect a discount just because we didn’t perform the full bilateral sphygmomanomination. It’s still ten bucks, cash.”

“Check.”

“No, cash.”

“I said, ‘check’ as in ‘ok’.”

“This is getting us nowhere. Okay, you look to me like you’re breathing, and you can certainly speak, even if you’re not making any sense. Is there some reason you’re here, or were you just lonely? If so, there may be a surcharge.”

“What’s the surcharge?”

“A lot. Those knighthoods don’t come cheap. So, what’s your problem? And make it snappy. There are three very sick people I have to see on the first tee at the country club .”

I laid it on him, “I’ve got blog block.”

The doctor stared blankly at me, shook his head, and said, “Funny I thought I heard you say something like, ‘blog block’.”

“Right. Blog block.”

“Well, that’s a relief. I can do this all day. You make up things that I’ve never heard of and I’ll make up a treatment that doesn’t exist, and I’ll be out of here in time to treat some other sick people at the driving range.”

“No, I mean, I’m getting nowhere with my blog. I don’t have any new ideas, my writing sounds the same, day after day, and it’s all just boring.”

“”Well, I’ve read your blog and I thought that was the effect you were going for.”

“Oh, very funny.”

“Really, I thought it was a fantastic achievement. No one’s been that boring since Reagan. Or maybe it was Eisenhower. I always get ‘em confused. You mean that wasn’t intentional? Say, don’t you think you’d be better off consulting with some of your old writing teachers instead of a doctor?”

“They have real doctorate degrees, and they charge a lot more than you do.”

“Yeah? Where did they get their degrees?”

“Oh, you know, the usual places: Columbia, Princeton, Yale, Penn.”

“You’ve got to be kidding. None of those places have a football team that even shows up on ESPNU. My six weeks at Notre Dame have them beat hands-down.”

“Notre Dame doesn’t even have a school of medicine!”

“Yeah, well they’ve been in business for a hundred sixty years handing out degrees for football, and they’re on national TV nearly every Saturday. I never see those Yalies on TV.

“I don’t know what it is, Doc, I just feel sort of funny.”

“Well, you look funny. But you certainly haven’t said anything particularly funny yet. I’m doing all the work here. Say, why don’t you write about dogs and cats? Everyone loves dogs and cats.”

“There’s already seven million blogs about dogs and cats. Besides, I don’t know anything about dogs.”

“I don’t know, every time I read your blog I felt like lying on the floor and panting. Well, if you don’t want my advice, why did you come here? Okay, why not write about food? Almost everyone likes food.”

“I have written about it. Every time I write about food, it ends up being a chili recipe.”

“That doesn’t seem so bad. A hundred generations of ancient Americans ate chili. Why should you be different? You’re pretty ancient, yourself.”

“You’re not being very sympathetic.”

“Excuse me,” he said and suddenly dashed out into the hallway, then quickly came back. “I just looked at the sign on the door and it still says ‘examination room.’ I was afraid I’d been moved to the counseling department. I’d've needed another week to get my psychiatric degree, but they said I was already mental enough.”

Okay, what about horse racing? You know something about horse racing don’t you? I figure you have to, since you’re always nagging your readers.”

“I don’t know about that, but I am getting an idea!”

“Good, now we’re making progress. What’s your idea?”

“I’m thinking about a bird blog, because I’m already hearing a quack.”

“Very funny. Then you could write about chickens, too. That’ll help you beat that cooped-up feeling. Hang on a minute while I check something.”

Here the doc went to a bookshelf, pulled out a thick volume and began leafing through it, “Let’s see … ‘blocked arteries,’ no, ‘blocked intestine,’ nope, ‘blocking and tackling,’ oops, that’s an old study guide from med school, ah! Here we go. ‘Blog Block!”

“What’s it say, Doc?”

“Sez, ‘Usually occurs when writers are lazy, incompetent or undereducated. Make suggestion they give up serious subjects and write comedy sketches. Hmm…. So, as your doctor, I advise you to write comedy sketches. That ought to keep you busy.”

And the doctor slammed the book shut and dashed from the room saying, “Nurse, nurse, get me my stethoscope and my four-iron. I’ve got a critical case waiting!”

I went home, thinking about ducks. Why a duck?