Music to Chill By

Stressed out with the new school year? Work getting you down? Headlines making you want to pull your hair out and hide under the bed? There is nothing worse than being bald, stuck under a bed. Don't do it! I say you need an excuse to cut out early, mute the phone and go for a joyride with some relaxing tunes.

It's time for another installment of Laurie's Friday Playlist!

As usual, you can find all of these songs on iTunes, Amazon and most other MP3 sites. (What I really need is a Glimpses Playlist App! I'll put that on my to-do list...) Also, I tend toward musical multiple personality disorder and have no problem following electronica with Willie Nelson.

Ready? Okay! Today I bring you...

Laurie's Answer to a Chill Pill -- a Playlist for Stressful Times:

Let's start out with a nice mellow groove Love is Here to Stay performed by Harry Sweets Edison and his orchestra. It's my very favorite rendition of the oft-recorded song, and a timeless way to calm down and feel better about the world.

Nice, right? We'll keep the relaxing vibe with a great B-side from U2, circa 1985: Love Comes Tumbling. I actually met U2 in 1989 and tried to impress Bono by discussing the hidden messages in this song. He wasn't impressed. (Hint: there are no hidden messages in this song.) I love the trance progression and dreamlike quality and I just swear there is something subversive in those lyrics somewhere.

Feeling relaxed? Good. Let's move into another ethereal song. This is a cover of Kanye West's Stronger performed live on BBC Live Lounge by 30 Seconds to Mars. I still can't believe anyone turned a hip hop dance song into deep, space-rock anthem. You've just got to love the Led Zeppelin-like angst in Jared Leto's plaintive falsetto at the end.

Did someone mention Led Zeppelin? (Petrea Burchard, I'm looking at you.) Everything on Laurie's Playlist need not be obscure. There is nothing better than Ramble On for a Friday drive.

There now, aren't we feeling like our problems are about a zillion light years away? Stay with me as we revisit a 90s band I wish had not broken up. Here is Blue, by The Verve from my favorite of their albums: A Storm in Heaven.

While lingering in the 90s, I can't resist adding Inertia Creeps by Massive Attack from their pivotal album Mezzanine. I love the Middle Eastern beat and dark undercurrents of this track. (The entire album is a mindblower, including samples from artists like Isaac Hayes and Zeppelin.)

Let's have a little world beat with I Ka Barra by Habib Koité and Bamada. If you like Paul Simon's Graceland/Rhythm of the Saints period, you'll love this. (Incidentally, I discovered this track free in my Windows Vista music folder. Who knew Microsoft could be so hip?)

Moving from Senegal all the way to Latin America, I give you Louie Cruz Beltran performing Esperando. I first heard Beltran when he played last month at the South Pasadena Concert Series in Garfield Park. (I apologize for the short song sample on this link. Just trust me and download the entire song.)

Speaking of South Pasadena, Civilians by Joe Henry was recorded at the Garfield House in 2007. The album features guest musicians Loudon Wainwright III, Greg Leisz, Van Dyke Parks and another name South Pas locals recognize: Bill Frisell.

Let's finish up with our mellow mix with a song that is particularly special for Jon and me. (This one's for you, groom.) Nobody can feel blue or misunderstood or worked up with a song this hopeful. Here's I'll Be Your Mirror by The Velvet Underground featuring Nico.

Happy listening!

South Pasadena Family Tree

Ever wonder about the history of the majestic Moreton Bay fig tree outside the South Pasadena Public Library? It certainly seems primordial -- like a remnant of our earth's distant past. Little Bit once said that she thought the tree surely must have been around when dinosaurs roamed the earth.

Even though I could imagine generations of pterodactyls making nests in that beautiful tree, I knew it wasn't that ancient. But I was genuinely surprised when it was revealed last year that the tree is barely 100 years old.

For years, nobody knew the story behind the beloved tree. I've heard all kinds of rumors, though. One guy told me it had been a sacred worship spot for the Gabriolino/Tongva tribes. I always liked that idea, and could imagine remnants of pottery resting just underneath those gnarled roots.

But that guy was wrong.

I also heard that it was the tree chosen to gather and declare the incorporation of South Pasadena as an independent city. I liked that story, too. Can't you just see a bunch of Victorians celebrating their new town at the dawn of the 20th Century beneath those branches?

Nope. That story is completely wrong, too.

As it turns out, lifetime South Pasadena resident Bill Kloezeman cleared up the mystery last year. The tree was planted in 1930 by Bill's father Willem Garret Andries Kloezeman (also known as Bill) when South Pasadena's Carnegie Library was being moved from Diamond Street to the center of town. City Librarian Steve Fjeldsted wrote about it on the library website:

"Many years ago while driving around town, the elder Bill Kloezeman used to tell his son about all the work he’d done around town, including his planting of the Moreton Bay Fig. Another well-known project of Kloezeman was the annual placement of a lighted star on the top of the water storage tower atop Bilicke Hill in the Altos de Monterey.

At the time of the planting the Moreton Bay Fig was a young potted tree and about 6 inches in diameter. When he planted it, the senior Kloezeman was working for the City’s Street Department. Bill (Sr.) worked for the City of South Pasadena from 1926 until he retired in 1972, a remarkable stretch of more than 45 years. While working for the Street Department in the 20’s and 30’s, Kloezeman planted many other large trees in town that are still around as well. Later he also worked for the Fire Department in the 40’s and the Water Department in the 50’s, 60’s, and early 70’s, until he retired as a Water Service Foreman on January 15, 1972. Willem “Bill” Kloezeman passed away on September 7, 1981."

It might not have a history of pterodactyls, tribal rituals or city incorporation, but who cares? At merely 100 years young, that just means our beautiful fig tree will be around even longer for us to make more memories, and maybe even come up with a few more mysterious stories about it.

Now What Was I Saying?

This happy scene made me start singing Three Coins in the Fountain. Except I was singing it to the tune of Red Sails in the Sunset.

Next time I throw a coin, I'm wishing for a better memory.

Simple Truth

"There is no blue without yellow."

--Vincent Van Gogh

Musings for a New School Year

It's back to school time. Most of South Pasadena's kids are putting their noses to the grindstone in SPUSD's public schools. Others are attending private progressive schools like Waverly, Waldorf and Sequoyah or the highly academic Polytechnic. Some are in charter schools. A few are homeschooling. A few are even unschooling. But each child is preparing for a future we all hope is bright, happy and prosperous.

There's a tendency to ask every young person the same question: "What do you want to be when you grow up?" Adults start in with this as soon as a kid starts crawling out of the crib and reaching for stuff.

"What do you want to be when you grow up?" We ask when a kid reaches for a baseball. "Are you going to be a ball player?"

"What do you want to be when you grow up?" We ask when a kid reaches for a paintbrush. "Are you going to be an artist?"

"What do you want to be when you grow up?" We ask when a kid reaches for his dad's computer. "Are you going to be an engineer like your father?"

It's natural, I suppose. After all, each of us had to pick something to be at some point. But wouldn't it be nice if we didn't try to put our kids into neatly labeled boxes before they've even had a chance to reach for enough stuff to know what they really want?

The current public school educational model is built around one principal: teach to the standardized test. While this paradigm certainly evolved from the good intention of making sure all kids could read and write, it has devolved into a system that tries to cram kids with varying talents and capabilities into one-size-fits-all.

Don't get me wrong ... I know that there are many things that just have to be memorized. From multiplication tables to French verb conjugation, education involves the consumption and retention of a lot of facts. But with a focus on memorizing the "right" answer, we've forgotten about all the wonderful discussion and reasoning it takes to find that answer -- not to mention the beautiful dissent of alternative answers. Teaching to the test requires all kids to be at the same place on the same map at the same time. But if we all march in lockstep, following the same map, is there any room left for trailblazers? How about those who might uncover something remarkable by spending extra time before moving along?

We have, in a way, removed a lot of the stuff that our kids can reach for, so that when we ask what they want to be when they grow up, the answer has to fit within one of the four possible answers on the test form.

I remember when I was in second grade and I told my teacher that I wanted to be an actress, a writer, an astronaut, a ballerina, a veterinarian and the Queen of England when I grew up. I went to elementary school in the 1970s when the popular educational model stressed freethinking and an open classroom. My second grade teacher didn't steer me toward a more realistic, productive way of thinking when I told her my plans. Nope. She just clapped really loud and said, "Right on, Laurie!" Lucky for me, that was also an era when my expansive daydreaming was called "creative" instead of ADHD.

But as I got older I remember being worried that I wouldn't make the "right" choices for my future. The Violent Femmes summed up all four years of my high school angst with one line: "I hope you know that this will go down on your permanent record!"

Our kids are getting this kind of stress earlier and earlier. I recently heard a group of parents talking about how they were worried that their kindergartners weren't being challenged enough by the academics at their school.

"My son should be reading at a first grade level," one dad said. "He's capable of it. I expect more."

I couldn't help but remember my own kindergarten, where my biggest challenges were nap time, the sand box and paste.

My drama teacher once asked me something that resonates with me to this day. She had lived through the Holocaust, traveled the world and seemed to have fit four or five lifetimes into one.

"It's not what you want to be that matters," she said. "The bigger question is who do you want to be when you grow up? Do you want to be yourself? Or do you want to be a character that someone else told you to be?"

Sometimes who we want to be involves switching the what around a few times to find the best fit. And those standardized tests don't always have the answers we want to choose. Sometimes the answer is "Other." Sometimes it's "None of the Above." Sometimes the answers change as the times change. After all, today's brilliant career choice is tomorrow's outdated job description.

When we get older and look back at our lives, we often realize that the test answers didn't give us our direction and purpose in life, anyway. What really mattered were our own questions we dreamed up while doodling in the margins.

Here's to a new school year.

Cool Art

Want a great spot to escape the August heat? Head on over to San Marino to The Huntington Library and Art Collections. Last week I ducked out of the 100 degree blast and into the cool, comforting European Art gallery. (Gainsborough portraits! French marquetry pieces! Really icy air conditioning!!!)

Figurative art lovers, be sure to check out the latest exhibit of 16th and 17th century drawings: Royals, Courtiers, and Confidants: Early English Portrait Drawings on display until October 29th.

Chugga Chugga Chugga Chugga

The Gold Line tracks sweeping underneath the Oaklawn bridge traverse the same terrain as a bygone Southern California railway. Posting this picture is a great excuse to link to a wonderful collection of photographs from an era when Los Angeles boasted the largest interurban electric passenger rail service in the entire world. Check out the Pacific Electric Railway Historical Society.

to look up at the second-floor balcony

He went back into his own apartment, sauntered in as if he weren't damning luck. If he'd bumped into her on his return from the box, he could have bungled at his doorway for the key, discovered which apartment she entered. He walked inside, slamming the door after him. It had been years since he'd seen a girl who could set him jumping. The redhead was it. He went out to the kitchen and although he didn't want a drink, he poured a double jigger of rye and drank it neat. The slug calmed him but he wandered back into the front room, wanting an excuse to slip out into the patio, to look up at the second-floor balcony.

--Dorothy B. Hughes, In a Lonely Place

Exploring the Medium

Sometimes you really have to experience the artwork from a different perspective. This kid has the right idea ... literally joining the exhibit of botanical mobiles created by other children at this summer's SPACE Art Camp.

A Twilight Tune

Accompaniment for an approaching night sky...

When a Staircase is More Than Just a Staircase...

"Mommy, I promise nobody will mind if I explore up there..."

"Sweetie, we have no business up there. People are working in offices up there and we have to go home."

"Maybe they want me to say hello."

"Saying hello is lovely, but we have to go now."

"Maybe somebody is really, really, REALLY having a bad day and they need a hug."

"That may be true, but we still have to go now."

"Mommy, I don't mean to be rude but I think you're being selfish. Don't you want to go help those people?"

"Help WHAT people???"

"The poor, sad people upstairs."

"Why do you think those people are poor and sad?"

"Okay. Maybe they're not poor and sad. Maybe they just have some really cool stuff up there and we're missing it. Mommy, we're missing it!"

I didn't move.

She didn't move either.

"Okay," she said. "I'll go with you because you said so. But I hope when I grow up I still have a sense of adventure."

Protest Picture

Ours is an age of high resolution, Photoshop and 16 megapixel cameras with automatic settings and high ISO noise reduction. We can preview, delete, edit, sharpen edges and correct noise. We can airbrush every single picture of ourselves we post in social media. We can even shoot a major motion picture on an iPhone, and edit it on an iPad.

Don't get me wrong, I love all this stuff. I'm a big techie geek and a voracious early adopter of most things digital. But, I'm beginning to wonder where the fun is in something that has become so easy. Even the free-spirited, shoot-from-the-hip lomography movement of a few years ago has transformed into a club with rules, and an excuse to overcharge for analog photography equipment. Anyway, with Instagram's ubiquitous hipster retro filters, everybody is a lomographer.

I recently saw a T-shirt that said "Digital Cameras are Democratic."

Far be it from me to be anti-democratic.

I guess I'm just suffering from high def overload. I don't always want my camera to correct my mistakes. I don't want to edit out all the blemishes of life. It's bad enough that magazine covers have begun turning women into digital robot people. My actual world isn't blemish-free and tack sharp. I'm also weary of artificial nostalgia approximated with Polaroid overlays and 10% added grain.

I guess I'm tired of pictures that are too controlled. Sometimes the best memories are the ones where we couldn't control anything and made mistakes.

So here's a big mistake. I don't even know what the subject in this picture was, much less how it ended up in my camera. It showed up in my photo file like a lovely little artistic poltergeist reminding me that an image is never reality, and it certainly isn't hyperreality. Sometimes it's just the representation of a feeling.

My feeling about this? Kinda like I just got away with something. A little rebellious. And what's a democracy without a few rebellions?