Oreana, Nevada in 1867.
O’Sullivan worked for Matthew Brady and Alexander Gardner during the Civil War and took many classic images of that conflict. After the war he traveled with various government-sponsored expeditions into the far West, recording the American frontier just as the Transcontinental Railroad was poised to open it up for expanded settlement and exploitation.
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Sensacional!
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No civilized home should be without this stunning Blu-ray edition of The Seachers and the means to play it on a large-screen television. It’s as close as you will probably ever get, these days, to seeing a pristine Technicolor print projected in a theater — which is to say as close as you will probably ever get to one of the greatest works of art created in America and one of the greatest performances (by Wayne) ever committed to film.
Bill, Paul and Adrienne outside Commander’s Palace in New Orleans, just a couple of blocks from where Bill and Adrienne live. A visit to this legendary restaurant, where you find the apotheosis of creole cooking, should be a life goal for anyone who has not experienced it.
Let’s step inside and have a cocktail before ordering . . .
Now, after the meal, we can pass through the kitchen on our way out — traversing sacred territory . . .
How fine it was, a meal to remember, as always at Commander’s Palace.
If you’ve been following the tales of the Saturni, you know that they will stop at nothing. Here an infected libido proceeds from sly, delirious arousal to full-on erotic nightmare. The Saturni can make your wildest dreams come true, then turn on you — posses and consume you in absolute horror. If Poe had written this story, he would have burned it. A. P. Bowman has no such scruples.
You can buy the story for 99 cents here — Devil’s Trumpet
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My mom and dad at the start of their marriage. They eventually had five kids, only three of which are previewed here.
I know not where His islands lift
Their fronded palms in air;
I only know I cannot drift
Beyond His love and care.
On Friday, the first day of the Jazz Fest, we headed straight for The Gospel Tent. Adrienne, Bill, Paul and I were going to meet up there with Corinne, Cotty and J. B., in from Los Angeles for the festivities. The Gospel Tent was chosen because one of Corinne’s favorite acts, encountered on earlier trips to the Fest, The Electrifying Crown Seekers, was starting off the day’s program at the venue.
The Crown Seekers were indeed electrifying and The Gospel Tent became a favorite refuge throughout our subsequent days at the festival. The music was invariably thrilling — soul-stirring, you might say — the tent had shade and chairs on which to rest one’s weary bones . . . and of course there was the good news:
On this day in 1963, Dylan released his second album. As John Lennon once said in discussing The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, which reached the Beatles in their Paris hotel almost eight months after it came out, “I think it was the first time I ever heard Dylan at all . . . And for the rest of our three weeks in Paris, we didn’t stop playing it.”
[With thanks to Paul Pearson]
Joan Didion wrote:
A Kinkade painting typically featured a cottage or a house of such insistent coziness as to seem actually sinister, suggestive of a trap designed to attract Hansel and Gretel. Every window was lit, to lurid effect, as if the interior of the structure might be on fire.
I myself don’t feel a sinister aura in Kinkade’s work — the home pictured above seems like a cheerful and inviting place — but Didion at least identifies a kind of power in his images.
It’s interesting, too, that no homey refuges like the ones he depicted were accessible to Kinkade in real life. He suffered from depression, over money, over the reception of his work by critics and over a painful divorce. He struggled with alcohol addiction, had had a relapse just before he died, and the cause of his death was an accidental overdose of anti-anxiety medication and drink.
His images of well-lit, inviting homes are usually pictured from the outside, often with paths through the winter snow leading towards the warmth inside. He saw himself apparently as forever stalled on the path, like the deer in the image above, on the outside, dreaming of a comfort that would always be just beyond his reach.
Kinkade rarely created explicitly surreal images, but look at this one:
It’s not terribly compelling as a painting but it may well represent a deeply-felt self-portrait. It’s called Pathway To Paradise — a pathway the artist, in the person of a sad clown, feels he will never walk, is perhaps not worthy to walk.
[You can read some earlier thoughts on Kinkade, with interesting comments, here — Light.]
Sure — just not right now, thanks.
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