A great gift!

Thanks Don and Elaine for the very special French wine!

Jim at the Huxley conference

Jim responding to a comment...George DiCaprio seems quite interested! I thought I'd take a couple of little videos of Jim talking about literature. After all, it's what he's been doing all his life! I always regret not having photos of the most ordinary things.

Back home again

We arrived back home Saturday to rain, fresh west coast air and numerous rainbows while we were at Katy and David's 25 Wedding Anniversary celebration. It was really fun to see everyone and so glad we could make the party and that Richard could as well. We had a good visit.

Santa Fe was wonderful but a little too hot and stormy. I would like to return in the Spring and we may have an opportunity to do a house exchange in Albuquerque with a Huxley colleague who lives and teaches there. We had lunch with them in their wonderful house close to the Rio Grande River. Santa Fe is just an hour away and there are lots of places I'd like to explore in New Mexico...loads of painting subjects.

I was having problems uploading to YouTube on the road so here's one video I took of the music and dancing on the plaza in Santa Fe. It was so much fun watching the people because of the variety of ages and everyone was having such a great time.

Congratulations Katy and David!

Wow...when the children of your friends celebrate their 25th Wedding Anniversary, you know you're getting old! All the best to you both and your families on this very special day.

Here's some super 8 footage I took that Richard put up for me on YouTube of the wedding rehearsal and the wedding. Richard was 5 years old and was the ring bearer. Did we ever think then we'd be watching this on something called YouTube!

Taos Pueblo

We really enjoyed seeing the Taos Pueblo...lots of subjects for painting all over New Mexico!

A great day in Taos

It was a very scenic drive up to Taos and we saw some of this wonderful scenery that inspired Ansel Adams and O'Keefe. We pulled off to this charming winery called Vivac that had this fabulous rock facing it..wow!

Then up to the D. H. Lawrence Ranch...a pretty rocky road but we were the only ones there so got a feeling for the isolation he craved and saw the fabulous "Lawrence Tree" that ended up to be such a famous painting of O'Keefe's...she sold it for half a million in 1979. Saw Lady Dorothy Brett's cabin...she was here as a guest but actually ended up living for many years in the Lawrence Homestead cabin. She was a painter and a very wealthy individual but obviously enjoyed this isolated and alternate lifestyle. Huxley wrote in a letter that Jim published in his recent edition that "If only Lord Esher (her father) could see her now with her 10 gallon hat and chaps..."

Then off to Taos Pueblo...photos to come later and then we had the great fortune to see 9 of the banned (because of obscenity) Lawrence paintings that a hotel in Taos has because the owner was a drinking buddy of Frieda Lawrence's husband after D.H. died and he bought them. Very tame by our standards but was quite an incredible court case in London at the time. In fact, these paintings can still never be shown on British soil.

Back to the plaza tonight for more music and dinner on a lovely terrace...life is tough in New Mexico!





Fabulous rock across from the winery.



Our wine pourer at Vivac.






On the road to Taos.






On the way to the Lawrence Ranch.






Lady Brett cabin.



Lawrence Homestead cabin.



The famous Lawrence tree.



A print of O'Keefe's rendition of it.

Another wonderful day in Santa Fe

Yesterday we started off with the Georgia O'Keefe museum and it was wonderful. They have quite a collection of her work but don't show the permanent collection rather they have exhibitions which include their collection and others so it's always changing. The exhibition this time was with photographs of Ansel Adams that he took of similar areas that O'Keefe painted.

I know Adams is a wonderful photographer but what I love about O'Keefe are the wonderful colours she uses and the abstraction. So, here we have black and white realistic photos. Well, the photos stood up to the paintings so Adams was brilliant really in his photography. A most fascinating exhibit.

We had a great lunch at The Compound restaurant...another famous fine dining place on Canyon Road where many art galleries are. So we wandered around there a bit then to Museum Hill which is a wonderful complex of 3 museums and fabulously done. We went through the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture...great stuff.

Every evening in the Plaza there is live music and there was a great band last night and people were having a wonderful time dancing. I got a neat little video but YouTub seems very slow these days so might have to wait until we're home. Off to Taos today but will post a few photos.

* I tried a time saving trick and it ended up replacing the Santa Fe photos with ones from Vancouver so I've deleted them...I won't do that again!

Santa Fe, mon amour....

Santa Fe lives up to all the billing! A very easy drive in and a colleague from the conference and who turned out to be a companion on the plane gave us some wonderful restaurant recommendations so we tried one out last night...the 315 Restaurant. According to Gourmet magazine one of the best in the country. I started with seared foie gras and Jim with roasted quail. You can see the glass of sauterne waiting for the foie gras. Then onto a very creative "surf-turf"...king salmon with a green onion colis and sweetbreads. Fantastic meal!

We wondered if we would make the opera tonight as incredible thunder and lightning but died down so made our buffet dinner and the opera...all quite an experience. Lots of photos to come but didn't want to use the computer during the storm.





A few photos of our hotel:

The Norton Simon Museum

This is the most amazing art gallery. A fabulous collection that must be worth a couple of billion at least. One of the things Norton Simon made his money on was Hunt's...guess there's lots of dough in tomato sauce!


This is a wonderful Henry Moore and there is a sculpture garden with loads of stuff including many Rodin.


These are two of 5 Van Goghs



More to come but Blogger is being weird at the moment.

One degree of separation...

Leonardo DiCaprio's father, George, was at the Huxley conference. He is apparently very interested in Huxley and I guess that's why he is producing the film of Brave New World with his son starring in it. He went to quite a few of the presentations and was very gracious from what I hear. Most people didn't know who he was.



He's the one in the middle with the long black hair...doesn't look old enough to be DiCaprio's father does he?



Jim preparing his notes at the Huntington.

The Huntington is just such a great place...fabulous gardens, research library, amazing art gallery. Great place for a conference.








Here are some photos of the Huntington's newest garden just recently opened so I hadn't seen it. This is a Chinese garden...of course, they also have a wonderful Japanese garden.

And now some Pasadena photos

We went to the conference "warming" last night and it was fun to see people we hadn't seen for a while and meet some new people. California Lutheran University is partnering with the Huntington and the Huxley society and they put on a super evening last night with dinner and an old Huxley film called "A Woman's Revenge" based on Huxley's novel "The Giaconda Smile". It featured a very young Jessica Tandy who was looking very beautiful and bore an amazing likeness to Kate Soles.

California Lutheran is pretty amazing in that they offered free accommodation for people in their residences which made it so much more possible for students and other people on a budget to attend.

Jim gave his paper today. I haven't talked to him yet. I slept in and also wandered around old town Pasadena and generally lazed about.

Old town Pasadena:



























And now for something completely different...just as we were leaving Santa Monica we went for a last walk along the beach and saw these little fellows...groundhogs I guess: