Antiquities from Pompeii.
Now on exhibit at the Getty Villa in Malibu.
Just the photos, ma’am. Nothing else.
Enjoy.
Miscellaneous
We covered the flora and the fauna, not to mention the sculpture. What’s left? The miscellaneous, I guess.
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Goodbye Getty. Hello Gladstones.
“All’s well that ends well.”
Statuary
One of the reasons I love the Getty so much is their emphasis on sculpture. Don’t get me wrong, paintings and textiles and manuscripts and furniture are all fine. But something about 3-D art really appeals to me. Therefore, my unbridled enthusiasm for… statuary. Male or female. Bust or full figure. Clothed or nude (but mostly nude). I love them all. Hope you do too.
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Let’s start off with a bang, shall we? My favorite piece overall. I’m not 100% sure of the title or the subject. It’s probably David or Adam – or Mars or Jupiter – depending on whether you’re secular or religious. But I always think of this one simply as “Buns of Steel.”
The man is “The Juggler,” but to me he looks like “The Waiter.” The woman & child are Venus & Cupid. Who’d you think, Yoko & Julian?
The second guy is called “Pseudo-Seneca.” How to distinguish him from real Seneca is a complete mystery to me. No mystery about the first one, though. It’s titled “Vexed.’ I say it’s a self-portrait of the sculptor after too much coffee!
One of these guys is supposedly “Cicero.” The other one is a Democrat currently campaigning in Iowa. Which one is statuary and which one is doomed to drop out of the race by next week? You make the call!
I saved my favorite sculptor for last. Something about the flow of Rodin’s lines. The demure woman alone is Eve. No doubt she’s reflecting on her apple pie recipe. The two figures emerging from stone are Jesus and Mary Magdalene. If you’re interested, you can read more about the installation here.
Bestiary
As promised in yesterday’s floral post, today it’s fauna: The Getty’s “Book of Beasts” exhibit ended Sunday. That’s good news for us, but bad news for anyone who missed it. The “bestiary” critters ranged from the wildly exotic to the utterly fantastical. If you’re a fan of griffins, unicorns, and centaurs – or even of garden variety owls, pelicans, and frogs – then these shots will be right up your alley. Enjoy, all you animal lovers!
How do you make a unicorn? Find camel skull, insert fake horn, add gold paint. Or if you prefer, find ibex horn (sans skull) and just use your imagination!
The deer, the wolf, and the owl supposedly form some sort of medieval mythological hierarchy. Hoooo me? Yes, Mr. Owl, and hey, nice necklace!
Cool thing about the lion? Either he’s trying to cut down on his smoking habit by vaping, or he spits water through a straw in your fountain: You make the call. As for centaurs, half-horse half-man is a form recognizable the world over, whether it’s Ming Dynasty or Norse folklore. Some things never change!
Overboard
OK. I’m gonna come right out and admit it. I went a little overboard taking pictures @ the Getty Museum today. In fact I was so out of control I drained my battery before we got to the end. In any case, I’m gonna split it up into pieces for you. Stay tuned for other features later in the week, including Bestiary, Statuary, and (my personal favorite) The Fresh Princess of Bel Air. But first, the gardens. AVW, these flower shots are for YOU!
Vegan
Yesterday for lunch Rachel and I visited this frou-frou (her word) vegan restaurant in Venice Beach called “Cafe Gratitude.” The food was excellent. The menu took a little getting used to. Each item comes listed with a one-word “affirmation.” For instance, the Mexican dish with black beans and mushrooms I chose was “Mucho.” The thing with beets and kale Rachel had was “Devoted.” For dessert, the strawberry shortcake was “Divine.”
It’s not that you’re “having” Mucho or Devoted or Divine. You’re not even “doing” whatever-it-is. You ARE it. When I asked for black coffee with dessert, the waitress exclaimed, “Oh, you’re Courageous!” I thought she was complimenting me for taking their brew black. But no. “Courageous” is what it IS. Or, apparently, what _I_ am. Whodathunkit, eh? The real wonder of it all is that they can find wait staff who deliver these lines with a straight face. Maybe easier in Venice Beach than in some other places I could name… but I digress.
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Lest you think I’ve gone totally nuts – not to mention totally frou-frou – I stopped last night at the Dollar General store in Frazier Park to buy camping supplies – sunscreen, bug spray, gas for my stove – and also something easy to prepare and eat after my Mt. Pinos hike today. What I chose was baloney and cheese on Wonder Bread, with a big bag of Doritos on the side – you know, the kind with extra gluten. <Ever wonder why that orange powder on Doritos always makes you eat more than you originally intended?> And for dessert: A box of 8 (count ’em, folks – EIGHT!) Brown Sugar Cinnamon Pop Tarts. I know, I know – none of it’s Devoted or even Courageous. But when you’re out in the woods all by yourself…. who cares!
Besides, I strive for balance in all things. As The Preacher in Ecclesiastes tells us, there’s a time for every purpose under heaven. A time to be born and a time to die. A time to plant and a time to reap. At time for vegan frou-frou, and a time for baloney and cheese. Oh, and let’s not forget, a time for Doritos and Pop Tarts. Yes friends, THOSE…. <wait for it>… are totally Divine!
Fans
At first I thought this story in USAToday Sports – about Ohio State University trying to trademark the word “the” – was just an opportunity for some good-natured ribbing of friends and family currently residing in the Buckeye State. Then after thinking about it for a bit, I realized this sort of thing is not all that uncommon in the hallowed halls of academia. Or at least not in schools with fans who follow big time athletics.
Well, the trademarking part is definitely a little over the top. But consider the University of Miami. Their sports logo is a green and orange “U.” And their pro players all say they played their college ball at “The U.” Then there’s Penn State. Their football fans used to do a call and response across Beaver Stadium: <one side> WE ARE…. <other side> PENN STATE. Now, all the PSU sportswear and trinkets say simply “WE ARE.”
It’s not, as the article slyly suggests, that these fans are especially pretentious, smug, or even insecure. Of course, by the law of averages – and the huge sample size – SOME of them certainly must be, right? But it’s endemic to the very nature of being fans (which after all is shorthand for fanatics) to be a bit myopic – even parochial – when it comes to one’s assumptions and language.
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Still, ya just gotta love it when another school comes along and turns those assumptions and language upside down. That’s what the OTHER Ohio-named institution of higher learning did in response to THE Ohio State University’s trademarking gambit with the following hilarious Tweet.
Good morning from THE first university in the state of Ohio. 
Maybe there’s hope for higher ed in this country after all…
Let’s make it great again, ya dang fanatics!
Tinkers
Wow, has it really been a whole week since Ojibwa? That little etymological gem, along with Scotoma the day before, were nothing much as posts go. But they provoked a veritable fire storm of comments. (Thanks, all!) So, by popular demand, I’m back at it again today with your first ever Phrase of the Day: “Tinkers Dam.” Or “Tinker’s Damn,” if you prefer. <Hey, you asked for it, you got it, Kate. Yeah, yer welcome.>
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Consulting The Phrase Finder, we see the meaning of “Tinker’s Dam(n)” is “something insignificant or worthless.” Quoting at length:
There’s some debate over whether this phrase should be ‘tinker’s dam’ – a small dam to hold solder, used by tinkers when mending pans; or ‘tinker’s damn’ – a tinker’s curse, considered of little significance because tinkers were reputed to swear habitually.
If we go back to 1877, in the Practical Dictionary of Mechanics, Edward Knight puts forward this definition:
“Tinker’s-dam – a wall of dough raised around a place which a plumber desires to flood with a coat of solder. The material can be but once used, being consequently thrown away as worthless.”
That version of events has gone into popular folklore and many people believe it. After all, any definition written as early has 1877 has to be true doesn’t it?
Knight may well have been a fine mechanic but there has to be some doubt about his standing as an etymologist. There is no corroborative evidence for his speculation and he seems to have fallen foul of the curse of folk etymologists – plausibility. If an ingenious story seems to neatly fit the bill then it must be true, right? Well, in this case it isn’t. The Victorian preference of ‘dam’ over ‘damn’ may also owe something to coyness over the use of a profanity in polite conversation…
The problem is that all those accounts ignore an earlier phrase – ‘a tinker’s curse’ (or cuss), which exemplified the reputation tinkers had for habitual use of profanity. This example from John Mactaggart’s The Scottish Gallovidian Encyclopedia, 1824, pre-dates Knight’s version in the popular language:
“A tinkler’s curse she did na care what she did think or say.”
So, we can forget about plumbing. The earlier phrase simply migrated the short distance from ‘curse’ to ‘damn’ to give us the proper spelling of the phrase – tinker’s damn.
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There you have it, etymology buffs. If you give a dam. Or a damn.
Whatever.
However you slice it, it’s just a throw-away phrase in either case.
Ojibwa
It’s not every day you get a Word of the Day derived from the Ojibwa language. But “totem” is exactly that. It comes to us from a tongue spoken by native folk once living all around Lake Superior. The word’s most basic form, ote, comes from the Ojibwa ototeman, meaning “his totem.” We English-speakers appropriated the term and still use it today. It refers to an emblematic depiction of an animal or plant that gives a family clan its identity. Used more broadly, it refers to persons or things having particular symbolic importance.
The Ojibwe lived mainly in the upper Midwest and southern Canada. They spoke a form of Algonquian closely related to languages of neighboring Ottawa and Potawatomi tribes. Ojibwe belonged to one of seven sub-groups whose totems are loon, crane, fish, bird, bear, marten, and deer. Clans were instrumental in traditional occupations, inter-tribal relations, and marriages. More Wikipedia-ese on clan structure is here.
Scotoma
Response to yesterday’s celestial Mt. Pinos post was so favorable I’m throwing caution to the wind and giving you a followup today that’s even more challenging. I may live to regret it. But I figure if you can swallow a hefty dose of Biblical Hebrew, you might also be able to stand a little something from the Annals of Ophthalmology. Am I right? Only time will tell…. Today’s Word of the Day is “scotoma.” This refers to the blind spot each of us have in the center of our visual field. It’s anatomically related to the place on our retinas at the back of each eyeball where optic nerve and blood vessels enter and leave the orbit. As such, there’s a small spot back there that’s devoid of sensory rods and cones. This makes us actually blind when looking at something directly in front of us. Usually it’s only detectable in an ophthalmologic exam. But sometimes it has more practical consequences – like last weekend as I watched shooting stars on Mt. Pinos.
Shooting stars are actually meteorites burning up in Earth’s atmosphere. When enough of them occur at one time, we call it a meteor shower. I’m not sure if what I observed on the mountaintop last weekend was a meteor shower or not. But on average I saw about one meteorite per minute. In my book, that constitutes a shower, regardless of what the experts say.
But here’s the thing: Once you see the first shooting star, your impulse is to stare at the spot where you saw the last one, anticipating the next. Given the fact of our central scotoma though, that’s exactly the wrong place to be looking. In fact, the best place to fix your gaze if you want to catch sight of a shooting star is near the horizon, where you’ll rarely see one directly. Then you catch a glimpse of one overhead, literally “out of the corner of your eye.” Funny how these things work, eh? Funny, but true.
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I don’t know what the ancients thought of shooting stars. My guess is, “meteorite” is not a term with direct antecedents in most languages. My further guess is, given our wildly recombinant human story-telling DNA, something more outlandish and/or colorful would be a better bet. Anyone with a background in anthropology or linguistics, feel free to jump in here, add to my limited understanding. Hey, I’m an empty vessel, waiting to be filled.
But one thing I do know is this: The central scotoma has a direct correlative in human psychology. What I mean by that is as follows: Often, solutions to many of life’s seemingly insoluble dilemmas can be found when we stop staring so hard at the problem. Better to look away for a bit, take a short break. Then, with a gaze that’s no longer so rigidly fixed, adding in tincture of time, we’ll often see an answer come to us literally “out of the blue.” Or “out of the corner of one’s eye?” You can probably think of your own examples. I know I can.
As to “why?” I say, don’t bother asking. It’s enough to know that something exists. We can adapt ourselves to it without knowing all the answers. Stare at any problem too long, too hard, or too straight on? You’ll likely miss out on much of life’s magic. Remember the shooting star. And the central scotoma. That’s my story and I’m sticking with it.
In the meantime…
