Welcome to the blog of writer and musician Andrew Martin. Here I'll post original photographs and observations as I encounter the history and culture of the San Fernando Valley, the City of the Angels, Alta California and the far-flung Pacific Rim… but mostly the Valley.
I keep repeating: The California Floristic Province is adapted to fire. Redwoods are specifically adapted for fire. They can and do spring back, and shoot up fresh sproutlings. But…
Human hearts are adapted to being broken. Californians’ hearts are specifically adapted to being cracked by fires. Hearts can and do spring back, and shoot up fresh sproutlings. But…
California’s first state park, 1902. Chris took the family here about ten years ago. It was one of the most thrilling nature walks — and drives home — I’ve ever had. Please, God, may this holy place spring back.
UPDATE 8/25/2020: The San Jose Mercury News reports that the resident naturalists are confident of recovery! Whew. Awesome. I am now fascinated to see what will happen up there in coming months/years as the rains come (please not too much) and as the first fire-sprouters come up.
“While I’m worth my room on this Earth, I will be with you. While the Chief puts SUNSHINE ON LEITH, I’ll thank Him, for His work, and your birth, and my birth.”
— The Proclaimers, Sunshine on Leith
JUNIOR YEAR ABROAD DEPT.
You remember I had a fine heron’s nest up in Milne’s Court atop the Mound, one of the best dorms in Edinburgh (really, look at it) for receiving all kinds of official and unofficial radio, which was much of my (rich) musical life there. The View has somewhat narrowed, but has still mercifully remained unblocked for centuries. This room got the Sunshine on Leith, and it also got great reception.
We don’t hear “Hail to the Chief” very much these days, but in 1984 Ronald Reagan was (RE!)-elected President and everyone heard it all the time. Me, less so, being in Scotland, but I got an earful when I got home. Anyway it is one of the tunes in our first crucial 15 pages or so (meaning, about 30 numbers) in the Great American Songbook — of which so many were old Scottish songs. Anyway this one became so popular and revered in America so early, it is rightly among the first. The Hopkinsons of Philadelphia, for instance, were trying to write just songs like this, the latest theatrical anthem of anti-British sentiment imported from Edinburgh. Was this Scott fellow the new Robert Burns? Patient Sheet Music Buyer, he was. Listen below to the NECESSARY and divine Anne Lorne Gilles, accompanied by the equally divine Rhona Mackay:
“Hail to the chief, who in triumph advances, Honour’d and blessed be the evergreen pine! Long may the tree in his banner that glances, Flourish the shelter and grace of our line. Heaven send it happy dew, Earth lend it sap anew, Gaily to bourgeon and broadly to grow; While every Highland glen, Sends our shout back again “Roderigh Vich Alpine Dhu, ho! i-e-roe!” [Vich Alpine, i.e., MacAlpin]
Ours is no sapling, chance-sown by the fountain, Blooming at Beltane, in winter to fade; When the whirlwind has stript every leaf on the mountain, The more shall Clan Alpine exult in her shade. Moor’d in the lifted rock, Proof to the tempest’s shock, Firmer he roots him, the ruder it blow: Menteith and Breadalbane, then, Echo his praise agen, “Roderigh Vich Alpine Dhu, ho! i-e-roe!”
Row, vassals, row for the pride of the Highlands! Stretch to your oars for the evergreen pine! O, that the rosebud that graces yon islands, Were wreath’d in a garland around him to twine. O, that some seedling gem, Worthy such noble stem, Honour’d and blest in their shadow might grow; Loud should Clan Alpine then, Ring from her deepmost glen, “Roderigh Vich Alpine Dhu, ho! i-e-roe!”
Sir Walter Scott, Hail to the Chief, from “The Lady of the Lake” 1810; set to music for theatrical performance by James Sanderson, 1812. Debuted in Edinburgh and New York, the same year. Then performed in Philadelphia in 1815, in memoriam George Washington, at a celebration of the Signing of the Treaty of Ghent, ending “Mr. Madison’s War.”
The Corries were my BBC Scotland (and Radio North and Radio Forth etc.) radio gods when I tuned them in, up there in Milne’s Court. I missed hearing them live, but I used to hear great Scottish folk singers, almost as thrilling, at “Misty’s On the Mound,” just 100 crunchy wet yards awa’ from the Pend, two or three nights a week. Below the video location looks like Misty’s; the perfect traditional pub, comfortable asa living room, with a blazing fire always.\. Roy WIlliamson and Ronnie Browne give the most tear-jerking version of Loch Lomond you ever heard.
The Proclaimers were just as popular on the various (AMAZING) radio stations I had on offer at Milne’s Court. They were the up-to-the-minute-darlings, Scotland’s Great Hope for a number one world act. (America’s reigning entry was Michael Jackson, the King of Pop.) As real troubadors of Scotland, the Proclaimers acquitted themselves brilliantly with this album. I loved hearing them and their songs which were covered even then at pubs and clubs. They are at the very top of contemporary Scottish rock, but it’s no’ sae contemporary now, is it…naw…no’ rilly. But still it’s — bonnie as hell, and I sure was glad I got this at the Eric Liddel gym, not the King of Pop.
Note the lithographer misinterpreted the Pend as a shadow; the first twa raes o’ windies don’t exist.
…Fire, that is, which apparently struck San Gabriel Mission last night, taking out “the roof and much of the interior.” This place was founded in 1771. The story is below. San Gabriel — all the Missions — are world heritage sites to the View, if to nobody else. This is a terrible time for a monument of human civilization, to be in distress. The Missions are pariahs of the state, which is anyway bankrupted by coronavirus. We can expect little from the city of San Gabriel, ditto. Mission history and preservation are of ZERO interest to the Catholic Church. The View is reduced to hoping that, as in France with Notre Dame, as with the first Mission restorations fought for by C.F. Lummis and the Landmarks Club, individual benefactors may be our only hope.
UPDATE: Last year we Viewed the Washington Patent Navel Orange Tree in Riverside.
Recall the (surprisingly elegant) gauzy pavilion that was pitched eight years ago by UC RIverside scientists, as a stop-gap quarantine against the Asian citrus psyllid? Pomona be praised, something works. PROGRESS!
A disease that has devastated Florida citrus and threatens California crops may finally be tamed by a new treatment discovered by scientists at UC Riverside. The disease, known as citrus greening disease, showed up in Southern California eight years ago. It’s caused by a bacterium known as CLas, also called Huanglongbing or HLB, according to the university. It spreads through an insect called the Asian citrus psyllid. When a tree is infected, its growth is stunted, it develops lopsided, green fruits, and eventually it stops producing altogether.There was no cure, so growers often resorted to spraying antibiotics or chemical pesticides to prevent infection. ‘There’s also other methods that are non-chemical, where they actually have to wash these oranges or lemons and remove stems and leaves from the fruit,’ Riverside County Agricultural Commissioner Ruben Arroyo told KPCC/LAist. But the disease was wreaking havoc on crops anyway. The new treatment was discovered by UCR geneticist Hailing Jin. It’s a compound found to occur naturally in a citrus relative known as a New Zealand fingerling lime. Jin traced the genes that give the fingerling lime its natural immunity and discovered that one of these genes produces the compound. After testing, Jin found the trees improved within a few months when they were treated by spraying their leaves or injecting them with the compound. UCR says the treatment is easily manufactured, safe for humans and requires application a few times a year.”
— Website LAist.com reporting July 9, 2020
Public research, conducted at a public university, for public benefit. UCR in fact, was specifically founded because the residents there had a peculiar, but lucrative, local industry unlike any other product produced anywhere else in the United States. Local citizens lobbied the state, saying they needed local scientific support for their unusual crop to flourish:
The lead researcher, Hailing Jin, seems to be a Chinese immigrant to the community of Riverside. Citrus comes from China, and over the years Chinese settlers have brought and cultivated many varieties that have enriched the state immensely.
In the light of yesterday’s post about Universities, and the key role that foreign students play at any enlightened academy; and William Robertson’s distillation of the reciprocal economic role Universities play in the life, wealth and health of their host cities, I read this news with a smile.
I leave apart, for the moment, questions about how or whether the new elixir will be cheaply made available, which would secure the true economic benefit to society, or whether the public will be cheated as the formula is given away to a monopoly, which would then just wrap its dead-claw tightly around the public’s throat. Those are questions voters get to decide every two years. But the University, from the top scientists, to the lab technicians, to the groundskeepers who maintained the white gauze pavilion for eight years, has acquitted itself admirably.
The Valley Village View 