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Alabama Hills
Getting out for a climb is a challenge in this heat, especially if you don’t have time to wind your way up high into the mountains. After hiding in the house during the day Saturday, we decided to see how the Alabama Hills felt. We left about 5:30pm, pulled into Lone Pine around 6:45, and…
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HOT
It’s been toasty here in the shady backyard of our shack in the Mojave. This causes some worry that it will just be too much for some our guests at our wedding in Joshua Tree. It’s also hopeful though, because heat waves like this are often followed by cooler spells. Ann asked me as we…
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Movie: Scent of Green Papaya
This movie has great cinematography, and that keeps it going for a while. But the slow pace, combined with some poor acting, storylines that don’t go anywhere, and a lack of much historical feel (of 1951 and 1961 Saigon) eventually flatten it.
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Granite Knob
It was one of those trips where we pack up the car, take off, and then decide to go somewhere else. We were headed for Alabama Hills, but I just couldn’t let the turnoff up 9-mile Canyon go by. So we went to Granite Knob, a somewhat remote, lush, meadowy spot in the northern Domelands.…
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Ankle Recovery?
I have rested my ankle for three weeks without getting too unraveled. Yesterday Dr. Horn examined it and gave me the OK to start using it again. It’s a relief, but still a worry. The tendon really does have a noticable little snap when I move in certain ways – he said the lay sports…
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Good Life
I was poking around a bit looking for pages on the Moon Goddess Arete, which Ted hiked to the base of over the weekend and is eager to climb, when I found this simple homepage, which struck me as an example of life lived well.
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Movie: Bull Durham
The ankle injury is finally paying off with some movie reviews. This is a baseball movie that features Kevin Costner. Despite those two strikes against it, it recovers marvelously. Tim Robbins wears garters and breathes through his eyelids while he pitches, sings of wooly women, and survives nights tied up in Susan Sarandon’s bed while…
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Movie: Patton
Probably the best portrait-film I’ve seen. It deftly catches so many facets of the character’s personality, many completely contradictory, that I soon gave in to a sort of overwhelmed oscillation between awe and revulsion. There are great quotes throughout the dialog, lots of maps, convincing battle scenes, poetry, and historical soliloquoies. Definitely a perspective on…
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weekend encounters
So far, resting the ankle has not made life dull. On the contrary, it’s brought some rewarding and unexpected experiences. This weekend’s encounters included new and strange wildflowers, a bear, and a sort of underground superhero.
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Movie: Liam
Well done, but came across to me as a dramatization of stereotypes of depression-era Catholic schools and fascist movements. To this Yankee, the setting in 1930’s Liverpool was totally convincing, more interesting to me than the contrived plot. amazon.com entry