The wonderful Palm Springs Convention Centre

They've just done a wonderful job with maximizing the setting of this structure.



I love this sculpture outside the Centre.




And this is a neat sculpture across from the Convention Centre


Found Art Sculpture
"The Family"
Kenny Irwin Jr. - Palm Springs Artist

Modernism Week Exhibit

We enjoyed wandering around looking at the vendors. First up is a "poodle magazine rack".

Jim's amazing purchase

Ok...now did anyone guess what Jim might have bought other than a book? I would have never guessed if I hadn't been there!



Yes...frames of all things. He'll get some reading lenses put in. I think they're rather cool.



The guy who sold them was wearing these shoes.

Elvis is alive and living in PS...

We were driving to the library and this guy was behind us. I guess he's an Elvis impersonator. I wonder if the caddy did belong to Elvis. I love the sunvisors in the shape of guitars with "Priscella" on them.

My first painting of 2008

"View from Palm Royale 'back 9' at sunset
6 x 10 acrylic on paper

Claire's birthday got me inspired to paint this on a large card. We often play this golf course together in the late afternoon...sometimes the last hole in the dark.

Don't seem to get much painting done here. Perhaps I'll do more in Texas when Jim will be buried in the library for 5 weeks.

I got a hole in one today!

It was a real thrill to get a hole in one...Jim has been playing golf since he was 12 and has NEVER got a hole in one so needless to say I'm rubbing it in. It was on a 145 yard Par 3 and I used a driver. We were playing golf with Tom and Claire at the time. It was pretty exciting for all of us. And amazingly (because holes in one aren't very common) a fellow got a hole in one on another hole. Jim just happened to be watching and commented what a great shot it then watched it disappear into the hole.

Modernism Week : Home Page

We're looking forward to taking in some of these events. We've booked the Double Decker Bus Architecture Tour and the retro film screening of "Smoke Tree Ranch: A Way of Life". And then there's the free event on Wednesday night with a classic car festival and local high school jazz bands providing the entertainment...should be fun!

We went to the exhibition yesterday and saw all sorts of neat stuff vendors were selling. I bought a couple of books and Jim (the ultimate non-consumer) actually bought something other than a book. Photos coming soon.

Modernism Week : Home Page

Clouds and sky

The other day as we were coming home there were some great skies. These photos were taken outside our front door. This was the day before this weird low pressure front that blew in with a vengeance. There was even snow reported falling in north Palm Springs...melted before it landed but all the same! Back to our lovely weather now. Looks like a fabulous day today.

The Petting Zoo

We had a lot of fun at the Petting Zoo at the Living Desert. Jim made friends with this goat.

The Opposum at the Living Desert

Roger making his fabulous brunch

The Amazing Serval

Happy Valentine's Day!

You wouldn't believe what a big deal they make out of Valentine's Day down here. It's almost like a national holiday along with the various presidents' days this past week and next. We made the mistake of trying to go out for dinner once...never again. Jim will cook me up some Angus beef filets and we have some great looking smoked salmon for an appy.

Revised weather forecast...

It was supposed to be sunny and 71 degrees today. We've had rain, hail, and it's 51 degrees....yikes! Jim's lit the fireplace and pouring the Calvados as we speak. Good thing we found some at Bristol Farms yesterday.

Pity the poor weather man in the desert...

5 day forecast

Thursday Mostly sunny
Friday Plenty of sunshine
Saturday Sunny and delightful
Sunday Mostly sunny and beautiful
Monday Sunny and pleasant

I think the guy could use a thesaurus...

Juno

Can a story about teenage pregnancy be anything but dopey? Well...obviously it can because the film "Juno" was excellent. We were very pleasantly surprised. Ellen Page is brilliant as the lead and she should beat out Julie Christie but who can foretell the wiley ways of Hollywood. Canadians should be proud...Page is from Halifax and the director, Jason Reitman, is Canuck as well. And it was filmed in Vancouver...we thought those houses looked Vancouver-like! I got a kick out of the fact that the screenwriter was a stripper.

In the Desert Sun newspaper today, Reitman said there wouldn't be a sequel. Good for him. He's not keen on the idea of "Juno 2: Knocked Up Again and Still Using the Hamburger Phone".

A must see.

A fabulous few days in PS

We've had 80 plus degree weather these last few days and it's just been great lounging by the pool and playing golf. Jim hurt his back a bit so missed the last golf game yesterday with Tom and Claire at the Royal Palm Country Club. Tom shot a 33 on the back nine...wow! This is a super 18 hole par 3 course with wonderful views of the Santa Rosa Mountains. I must remember my camera next time! Jim joined us for dinner at a rather funky middle eastern place where we got quite an amazingly good lamb couscous. The lamb was a charboiled kebab...excellent. And lots of other interesting tastes on their appetizer plate.

Pretty much a pool day today and lounging in the pool on the airmattress seemed to help Jim's back a lot. Hope we'll be able to play on Wednesday.

Fabulous weather ahead

Roger and Kerry left this morning and we all had a great time. Yesterday we went to the Palm Springs Art Museum...always interesting and also the special sculpture exhibit of Moore to Picasso was excellent. Then the Thursday night market and Las Casuelas for a Mexican dinner. I can never resist taking lots of photos of The Living Desert so here goes. I also have some little videos but that will take a little longer to get organized.





Female cheetah...we also got a wonderful view of the male but didn't get a photo.

More photos...

Palm Desert Mountains...Santa Rosas I think.

Good times with old friends

We've been having a great time with Roger and Kerry and they are really enjoying the desert. We went to The Living Desert yesterday and it's always so much fun to see the animals and the scenery there. We've been having lots of laughs and enjoying wonderful food mainly compliments of Trader Joe's. Rog bar-b-q the steaks the other night and they were heavenly and today he treated us to his famous brunch...individual and perfectly rolled omlettes, fried potatoes, tomatoes, mushrooms, bacon, waffles...did I forget something?

We off to Palm Desert today and will stroll El Paseo and meet Tom and Claire for lunch. Claire knows Roger from her obstetrician days. The a swim, sun, and hottub. We'll head downtown Palm Springs to take in the Art Gallery, dinner at our favourite Mexican restaurant, and a look round the Thursday night market.



Jim and Kerry at breakfast



Roger cooking his famous brunch.



All of us at The Living Desert






Kerry in relax mode.

Jim in the TC Monitor today

We were pleased to see this article in the Monitor of the Times-Colonist today. Jim was worried that the photo would be particularly dopey since he was very tired and after endless flashbulbs and the photographer wanting him to look like he was being buried under Huxley material. I've copied the article here so the photo probably won't show up. The TC is picky about people having subscriptions to pick up their stuff online so the link probably won't work unless you have an account.

`Camosun professor hunts down Aldous Huxley
James Sexton knows the famed author better than most folk know their family
SARAH PETRESCUTimes Colonist
spetrescu@tc.canwest.com
Selected Letters of Aldous Huxley

Edited and with an introduction by James Sexton; Ivan R. Dee; 512 pages; $35

Jim Sexton starts his show-andtell of Aldous Huxley documents with a copy of the author’s “lost play,”which he found rummaging through material at the University of Texas in Austin in 1994.

Before long, the Camosun College professor’s dining room table is covered with stacks of books, anthologies, manuscripts and photos. “He was an immensely prolific writer,” Sexton says, pulling out a thick hardcover book that is Huxley’s bibliography. “There’s a lot that is not in here.”

He should know. Sexton went full-throttle into searching for Huxley’s lost or unpublished writings almost 15 years ago and has dug up masses of letters and writings since. In addition to the play, he has edited and published Huxley’s Hearst Essays, co-edited a six-volume collection of essays and is a contributing editor in the Huxley Annual. His latest cache of unpublished Huxley works is newly released in the book he edited, Selected Letters of Aldous Huxley.

Huxley, began his writing career in Britain and died in Beverly Hills on Nov. 22, 1963, (the same day John F. Kennedy was assassinated and British author C.S. Lewis died). He is known for the utopian and dystopian imaginings in such books as Brave New World and his experimentation with LSD.

Huxley’s psychedelic drug experiences are documented in the book Doors of Perception (which is believed to have inspired the name of the band, the Doors). Huxley’s dying request was to have his wife inject him with LSD.

Sexton says this collection of Huxley’s letters reveals more about the man beyond the hard-working writer, satirist and philosopher.

“Some of his letters to Mary Hutchinson are the stuff of a textbook, lovesick Romeo,” Sexton says. Hutchinson was part of Huxley’s social circle and a lover to both him and his first wife, Maria Nys. In a 1925 letter to Hutchinson (who was married with children), after her rendezvous in Paris with the Huxleys, he writes, “… there are three beds in the cabin: One is unoccupied.”

Sexton says it was the racier bits in the letters that prevented their publication years earlier. “There was an embargo on the love letters to Mary,” Sexton says. “My guess is that they might have upset the descendants of Mary Hutchinson that were still around.”

Sexton received the shipment of around 1,000 letters from the University of Texas more than four years ago. Other highlights include Huxley’s letters to Lady Ottoline Morrell of Garsington Manor, of whom the young writer was considered a protègé and regular house guest.

Huxley offended Morrell in 1921 with his first novel, Crome Yellow, which bore characters and a setting too close to the lady’s own life. It would be years before they’d make up, due largely to the mediation of Huxley’s wife, Maria, despite this spirited apology he sent soon after:

“Your letter bewildered me. I cannot understand how anyone could suppose that this little marionette performance of mine [ Crome Yellow] was the picture of a real milieu. … My error, I admit, was to use some of Garsington’s architectural details. I ought to have laid the scene in China.”

The most interesting part of Selected Letters follows the author’s intellectual journey from an innocent seven-year-old and punning teen through his Asian travels, in which he satirizes colonialism, and his personal and professional turmoils in America.

Sexton was given full access to many of Huxley’s documents by his widow, Laura, whom he visited last spring at the home the couple shared in Beverly Hills. Laura Huxley died Dec. 13, peacefully in her home. She was 96.

“Her house is right under the big “D” of the Hollywood sign,” Sexton says, flipping through a stack of pictures of himself, his wife, Janice, and Laura Huxley, referring to her as “a great old lady.”

Sexton says his appetite to discover more about Huxley is far from sated. He has travelled the U.S., Britain and France in search of Huxley’s writings, financed in part by federal grants. “I love the detective work,” Sexton says. “It’s a hobby and a life passion.”

His interest began as a high school student in Vancouver. When he won a writing contest and was awarded a book of choice, Sexton asked for Brave New World. He was given a “less controversial” non-fiction commentary on the novel and his intrigue took off from there.

Working as a half-time faculty member and a research fellow allows Sexton part of the year to dig and write. His wife, Janice, has taken up painting to keep herself occupied while along on their travels. Their home is filled with folk art scenes from the area Huxley lived in the south of France.

“There’s an awful lot of journalism and drama reviews Huxley wrote that have never been published,” Sexton says. He estimates Huxley wrote about 10,000 letters in his lifetime. Only 500 of these appear in Selected Letters.

**We received this email of congratulation from Don and Elaine today...had a real laugh!

Dear Janice and that other guy,

So there I was quietly perusing my morning paper whilst lying in my warm bed this beautiful Sunday morning. All of a sudden I was turning the page when I was suddenly seized with the uncontrollable urge to vomite.Cramping immediately occurred and my vision went blurry.

Never had anything like this happened to me before .After a few minutes – and several passes of gas- I was able to see clearly enough to figure out what had caused this painful moment. Low and behold it was the book section and there was a ¼ page picture of James and an article on his Huxley book.

A great article but there should have been a warning on the front page.

Actually it is a super article and you and James should be proud.

Cheers

Don & Elaine

Donna and Neil's photos from Antarctica

Here are a few photos of their super trip to Antartica, Chile, Argentina, the Falklands, etc.

* Seem to be having problems with slow networks today...will post more another time *


Antarctica



Antarctica...I wonder what make the ice blue...



Penguins in the Falklands.

Huxley letters and the Great Detective

Just around Christmas time Jim was reading a masters thesis written in 1949 that mentioned some Huxley letters about the sources to Brave New World. He hadn't heard of these letters before and they weren't documented so it occured to him that the author of the thesis had written Huxley and these were her personal letters from him. He managed to track her down to Florida and she very kindly sent the copies of the letters. Her supervisor at the time was horrified she wrote to Huxley but he wrote back once on her original letter and then sent another letter. So like Huxley.

Jim had an interesting conversation with her and exchanged some emails. He sent her a copy of the Selected Letters of Aldous Huxley he just published and she was thrilled. I'm sure she's dining out for weeks on the story of being contacted by a scholar about her thesis of 60 years ago!

Mountain Snow

There's lots of snow on the mountains this year...last year the locals were complaining that the mountains weren't pretty because they didn't have their winter snow. I love them regardless.

Huge rainbow after the windstorm

Jim saw a huge rainbow when he was out in that windstorm. This is a photo from the Desert Sun.