Roses Redux and the Wonderful Weisman Collection

January 3, 2011

Up at 4:45 again today for a closer look at the Rose Parade floats. . . . Our buses leave for Pasadena at 6:15 again today, because at 7 a.m. the gates to the float viewing area are open just for elderly and disabled folk--so they can get a close look at the floats, then leave before they are trampled and stampeded by the general public arriving at 10 a.m..

 

We are amazed by how quickly three hours flies by.  We could have spent twice that long examining and admiring at all the intricate details of float workmanship—exquisite artistry that lasts just a few days before it becomes potpourri (sold to benefit charities), trash and recycled materials.  Even today, some of the flowers on the floats are already wilting and droopy, after spending all of yesterday in the piercing sun and warm temperatures. 

After looking at the surfing dog float from ground level, rather than from bleachers above, we have to admit that the artistry of the undersea murals along the sides of the float is really quite wonderful.  We won’t take back our assessment from yesterday, but at least we can understand how the judges might have come to their decision to give it the Extraordinaire Trophy.

Here are a few more views of the floats up close.  (We have over 500 float pictures between yesterday and today, so this is a just the tiniest sample of our vast archive.)

As we are rushing back to the bus, passing the floats for the last time, we hear a woman ask the classic question while looking at a finely wrought float element--"What is it made of?"  Her friend's response--"I don't care--it's made of magic." 

Well said, and a fine close to our Rose Parade adventure.

Our Road Scholar program is over as soon as the bus drops us back at our hotel, but we have booked an extra night there so that we can visit LA’s secret art museum, the Frederick Weisman Art Foundation.  The museum is in the Weisman home on a residential street in an exclusive neighborhood, where most of the homes are, like the Weismans’, hidden behind tall walls or hedges, protected by remote controlled gates.  The museum is open on weekdays by appointment only for tours at 10:30 and 2:00.  Our 2 p.m. tour had twenty people, which was more than our docent had ever led before.  When our friends Mona and David visited, they were the only ones on their tour. 

The purpose of the museum is to encourage people to live with art, which is why the paintings are not hanging in a museum with labels, but instead remain in the Weisman home.  Imagine having 400 works of 20^th century art by 125 artists in your home!  (And what is hanging there is less than half of their art collection.)   Picasso, Magritte, Miro, Frankenthaler, Warhol, Lichtenstein—come up with a major name, and the Weismans probably have something (or many things) by that person in their collection.  They didn’t buy to invest—they bought things they liked, so they also have art by artists few people have heard of.  

Mostly, we really liked their art, which is saying a lot, since we usually don’t understand modern art, and often skip over it quickly when visiting art museums.  But, the part I don’t get about this place is the Weismans’ decorating sense.  They have exquisite taste in modern art executed in a variety of styles, yet their taste in furniture is dominated by large print floral chintz fabrics.  I can’t reconcile the combination of those two aesthetics in a room, and it made me a little crazy, but I tried to just ignore the furniture and draperies and enjoy the art.   (Too bad no photos are allowed inside, or I could illustrate this jarring phenomenon for you.)

 

Lots of pieces in the collection are memorable, but here is something that really captivated me--Mr. Weisman commissioned Andy Warhol to do a series of four paintings of him in the style of Warhol’s famous series of pictures of Marilyn Monroe.  How many people in this world have been immortalized by Andy Warhol--four times, no less?

Dick took some photographs in the front yard as we were leaving, and they give just the tiniest foreshadowing of the treasures that lie inside.

 This is one of the most unusual and eclectic art museums we have visited—we feel honored to have been guests in the home.  (And, we truly were guests—no admission was charged, no donation requested.)

The Rose Parade!

January 2, 2012

The past four days of programs and activities have been building to this day when we will have the honor of viewing what Dr. Tommy Cairns calls  “a living museum to one of nature’s greatest triumphs—the rose.”  In other words, we are going to the Rose Parade!

We are up at 4:45, and aboard our bus to the parade at 6:15.  We have to leave early, because the traffic is even worse than normal--a million people are wending their way to the parade route, and lots of streets are closed. 

Our seats are in bleachers about three miles into the five mile parade route.  We don’t have high expectations for the bands and other performers, figuring that by the time they get to us they will be pretty pooped.  We underestimate them.  The band members are strutting, cheer leaders are tossing each other into the air, and the drill teams are dancing and spinning their flags with gusto and huge smiles. When we see the television coverage later in the day, it doesn’t seem as if they did anything for the cameras that they didn’t do for us.

Our Road Scholar group reserved a large section of the bleachers, and each of our teams who worked on floats together sat together.  As the floats that the different teams worked on passed, we cheered loud and long for “our” floats.    Imagine our excitement when we saw that our Chinese Airline dragon float won the International Trophy for the most beautiful float from outside the United States.

The long anticipated heavily hyped huge float with the surfing dogs was a disappointment, not only because we never saw a dog surf while it was passing, but also because its big tank on top surrounded by plexiglass made for an ugly float. When we watched the parade replay on the big screen during lunch, we saw that the dogs would not surf for the television cameras either.  Dr. Cairns predicted this one would have technical difficulties, and he was right.  He also predicted that it would get a major trophy, and he was right about that, too.  This was the only float where we would disagree with the judges’ judgment.  Paraphrasing Dr. Cairns’ first principle of floats, this is a flower parade, not a dog parade. 

That said, the parade was an extraordinary display of pageantry and beauty. Here are just a few more of our favorite sights from the parade.

The Judge Who Teaches Judges to Judge

January 1, 2012

Our favorite activity today was a presentation by Dr. Tommy Cairns, an internationally renowned rose expert and exhibitor who has earned judging credentials both in Britain and the United States Rose Societies.  He has been a float judge in the past, and currently serves as the parade’s Judge Instructor.  

He gave us a very entertaining and information-packed presentation on the art of judging floats, provided a summary of the criteria for the 24 trophies awarded, highlighted features of exceptional floats from past parades, and previewed some of his favorites that will be in this year’s parade.   

The weighted scoring system is too complicated to get into here, but suffice it to say that for each float there are something like 26 factors for which each of the three judges gives a 1-10 score.  The judges see each float twice—once the day before it is complete and once the day before the parade, when it is complete and all riders are present and animation elements are in motion.  The float designer has an opportunity each time to make a statement to influence their impressions—two minutes at the first viewing and one minute at the second viewing.  The judges all get together over dinner at the end of the final judging day to decide on the trophies, by consensus.   They announce the results at 6 a.m. on parade day.  

Here are some of the principles of float design he shared with us that helped us look at the floats through the eyes of the judges: 

“This is a floral parade, not a seed parade.”  Every single centimeter of the float has to be covered in natural materials.  Seeds and vegetable matter are fine, but they should be used in moderation, to complement the flowers that are the stars of the float.  Most important of all the flowers are roses, since this is the Rose Parade, after all.  The winning floats will have roses in quantity and quality--a range of colors and a creative presentation is a plus. 

The floats have to demonstrate symmetry, but have asymmetrical elements for interest. They have to be decorated equally well on both sides—no fair showing preference to the side where the reviewing stands and television cameras are set up.  The back of the float is a sometimes neglected area—winning floats leave you with a lasting impression from their sign-off, holding your eye until they pass from sight.  Based on everything he said, we have high hopes for our China Airlines Dragon, which seems to demonstrate all his principles and is far more beautiful than any of the other dragons on floats he included in his presentation.

(Preview of coming attractions--this is the China Air float in the parade tomorrow!)

In the afternoon we visited the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) and the La Brea Tar Pits next door . The tar pits trapped and preserved unwitting ice age animals over 15,000 years ago and have continued to collect victims ever since.   We were amazed that the pits still sit there bubbling up gas and smelling of asphalt today.

LACMA is a complex of buildings that are more memorable and exceptional than the works of art inside them.  As Dick observed, the ratio of building size to content volume is perhaps the highest we have seen in an art museum—expansive galleries with lots of empty space between and around their contents is perhaps a style statement illustrating the California contemporary aesthetic, but it seems a waste of space to us Midwesterners.

 Anyway, we loved the bold and beautiful architecture, and sparked to some of the sculptures.  Dick was particularly charmed by this larger than life Jeff Koons balloon animal sculpture.

 We thought that a small exhibit of four Monet paintings of Rouen Cathedral and four Lichtenstein “manufactured Monets” (his words) based on the Monet paintings was a great example of the mediocrity of guys like Lichtenstein and Warhol, compared to their Impressionist predecessors.  We know this was not the intended take-away from this exhibit, based on the interpretive labeling, but we beg to differ.

In honor of the mountains that surround us wherever we go here, I close with the words of Chinese Song Dynasty painter Han Zhou.  “In painting landscapes, colors should reflect the four seasons:  spring mountains should be as sensual as a smile, summer mountains as green as  dewdrops, autumn mountains as bright and clean as washing, and winter mountains as somber and quiet as sleep.”  The mountains we see from our window reflect all these seasons as the sun rises and sets, and as we admire them in the brilliant sun.  Today the air is so clear that they are “as bright and clean as washing.”

Long Live the Queen/Strike Up the Band/Happy New Year

Saturday, December 31, 2011

Here are the highlights of this action-packed day: 

1988 Rose Queen Julie King, still perky and pretty after all these years, gave an anecdote-filled presentation on the life of a Rose Queen and her court.  In her day the queen and her court were issued 26 piece wardrobes and notebooks with spreadsheets listing all their appearances and which items from their wardrobe they were to wear for each event.  On parade day they hopped into the official limo at 2 a.m., with their hair freshly washed, wrapped in a towel.  They were then whisked off for hours of hair and make-up and sitting around waiting for the parade to start, wearing warm slippers beneath their flowing gowns, and only changing into their heels when  they descended back to earth at the end of the parade and had to make the rounds of post-parade VIP events.   

Her parade Grand Marshal was Gregory Peck, who was as gracious and thoughtful as we would imagine him to be in the role of Atticus Finch.  He and his wife sent a limosine bearing a huge tower of roses to her house to congratulate her on her high school graduation.

We watched a DVD about what it takes for a high school band to make it to the Rose Bowl Parade, then attended Bandfest, a spectacular presentation by six Marching Bands that will be in this year’s Rose Parade.  Their musical ability was outstanding, but we were blown away by the precision, the intricacy and the originality of their marching routines, including a whole lot of dancing, flag spinning, baton twirling, and gun tossing talents of exhibited by their girls’ squads.  

But, most impressive of all were the numbers of kids in each of the bands who were high performers academically as well as instrumentally—each band proudly cited statistics accomplishments like 90% of band members on the honor roll, a majority of Band Seniors in National Honor Society, many members with perfect 4.0 or higher grade point averages, and so on.

The temperature hit the 80s, there wasn’t a cloud in the sky, the entertainment was phenomenal, and we even had a little gelato snack break.  What a wonderful way to spend our last day of 2011.

Our final special event of this very busy last day of 2011 was, of course, a New Year’s Eve Party.  All 300 of Rose Parade Road Scholars gathered in our hotel’s Grand Ballroom to celebrate the occasion in classic style—with a fancy dinner consumed while wearing silly New Year’s hats and watching the festivities on Times Square, which were projected on a huge screen in the front of the ballroom.  As the ball dropped in New York, we all tooted our horns, tossed our streamers, exchanged champagne toasts and kissed our loved ones.  By celebrating the New Year on Eastern Standard Time while actually being in the Pacific Time Zone, we managed to get to bed at a reasonable hour without feeling like we missed anything--yet another thing to love about this place!

P.S. When we visited New York City this summer, we had the opportunity to write messages on small squares of tissue paper that we were promised would be released as confetti when the ball dropped, sending our wishes out to welcome the year (and land on some unsuspecting person below with an anonymous cosmic message).  So, we were very excited to see all the confetti flying around Times Square at midnight, knowing that our wishes were being sent out into the universe.

Roses, Roses, Roses!

December 30, 2011
Our Road Scholar Tournament of Roses Parade adventure officially began with dinner and introductions last night, but the real kick-off to greatness was today, when we spent a whole day working on floats that will be in the parade.  Actually, we didn’t literally work on the floats themselves, but we worked on the flowers that will go on the floats.

The roses that are applied to floats are first inserted into water-filled vials that have a pointed tip which is punched into foam on the float surface.  I can proudly say that I put roses into over a thousand vials. 

 

White roses, red roses, yellow roses, peachy roses and pink—the batches kept coming, and our team of Road Scholars trimmed their long stems to little four inch stubs and stuck them into the rubber-topped vials with precision.  The rose blooms had to be flush with the top of the vial—no stem sticking above the cap—and the cut end of the stem had to be near the bottom of the vial but not touching it, to maximize the time that it could keep sucking up water to stay fresh.  Getting it just right was harder than it sounds.  Also, thorns presented a constant hazard, and none of us emerged from the experience unscathed—or undelighted.

By the time we were done, we and the other volunteers crowded around our long work table had filled over 60,000 vials with beautiful roses. 

We also had a brief stint cutting the tops off daisy-like chrysanthemums and daintily applying tacky glue in a circle around the underside of the petals.  Thousands of those white flower heads we prepared were applied to the huge helmet on the Wisconsin team float.

The roses were destined for the five floats in our warehouse—the Wisconsin and Oregon team floats,

 the lead float for the parade,

a huge dragon sponsored by China Airlines, and a Power Rangers float.  

During breaks in our flower processing action, we had time to wander around the warehouse and watch the volunteers decorating floats.  Those of us who had a hard time putting tinsel on the Christmas tree one strand at a time could never qualify to do float decorating work, which often involves tasks like gluing tiny leaves one at a time in a complex pattern, or outlining the entire perimeter of a 50 foot float with a single line of black beans.  We watched one woman using a curling iron on corn husks, curling them one at a time.  It was a seemingly endless task, since it appeared that over a thousand would be needed to cover the long neck of the dragon.

One woman who has been volunteering at this warehouse for 23 years showed us how she pulverizes straw flowers and statice in a blender to make flakes of yellow and blue colors respectively.  She was using burgundy cranberry seeds and tan raspberry seeds on medallions she was preparing, and she showed us multiple variations on black—shiny black seaweed, matte black onion seeds, peppercorns.  Surprisingly, the warehouse was not fragrant with the aroma of roses, but instead it smelled like coconut, which was used in flakes and ground fine in abundance.  

One of our favorite surprises during our time there was the arrival of a team of Power Rangers, who practiced their very impressive choreographed kicking and flipping ninja moves in front of their float and did features with local news anchors.  The music blaring from their float during a very long sound system check and optimization was very energizing and fun after a long day of poking flowers into tubes.

What a grand and wondrous adventure!

But the day was not over . . . after dinner a group of riders from the Southern California Peruvian Paso Horse Club came to talk to us and show us their traditional handmade tack, including this exquisite hand-tooled saddle. 

According to our speakers, the Peruvian Paso Horse has three legs on the ground at all times, resulting in such a smooth gait that when the rider is viewed from the shoulders up, he or she appears to glide on an even plane, with no bouncing up and down involved.  One of our presenters has had multiple back surgeries, and claims the hardest part of the ride is getting into and out of the saddle—otherwise he can, and does, ride for hours in total comfort.  This sounds like my kind of horse.  I will be watching carefully at the parade to see if the evidence bears out their claims.

And, of course, we will be watching for the five special floats that bear our roses—hope you will be watching for them too!

We Do One for the Gipper

December 29,  2011

Today’s big event was our visit to the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum, an awesome 100,000 square foot temple where the Party faithful come to worship the Great Communicator (known in prior incarnations as the great Gipper and the Great Governor).  The library’s lofty site—100 mountaintop acres with spectacular panoramic views--represents the “shining city on the hill” that the President so often invoked. 

Our President’s temple has many rooms – 24 to be exact – and each gallery has a burnished golden tablet expressing gratitude and praising the works of the wealthy and influential friends whose generous contributions made this flashy place possible. Boone Pickens funded the world’s most beautiful airplane hangar and relocated Irish Pub, where Airforce One is now parked and accepting visitors.  Merv Griffen funded the reproduction of the White House Rose Garden out back.  

We hardly know what to say about the place.  We were struck by how much the country’s travails at the start of his presidency paralleled our current state of affairs – an economy in the dumps, people disillusioned with government, troubles in the middle east.   The story according to Reagan is that he solved all these problems, plus single-handedly conquered Communism and made the world safe for democracy.  Boy, could we use another dose of Reagan now!  

Some of our favorite parts of the visit:  a very good lunch out on the terrace overlooking rolling rural hillsides dotted with orchards, and the ocean in the distance; a portrait of Reagan made from 10,000 jelly beans (very much out of keeping with the decorum of the rest of the museum); a walk through Air Force One;  an exhibit of some of the extremely ornate belt buckles the President was given as gifts (he got 372 in total);  

a case full of 3x5 cards covered with aphorisms, adages , and anecdotes that Reagan wrote in very tiny writing and filed away for future reference (his writing was so tiny we couldn’t read much, but the sheer volume was impressive).  Standing behind the presidential podium looking at the teleprompters, Reagan's optimism must have really inspired Dick, because he had a very strange visiion that if only he had Reagan's hairline he could have been President!

More than any other presidential library we have visited, this one portrayed everything about the President, from his boyhood to his passing, in the most highly positive light.  It isn’t hard to see why people like President Reagan—he was a nice handsome person with a positive and upbeat demeanor, a great sense of humor and a big friendly smile.  And, a lot of things did get better during his administration, although perhaps not solely due to his efforts.  

In these troubling political times, when the Republican Party is struggling to find a viable--if not likeable--candidate for President, Reagan is very much on the minds of our populace.  When we arrived half an hour after the museum opened the parking lot was 90% full, and when we left mid-afternoon visitors’ parked cars lined both sides of the street for over a mile down the hill leading to the museum.  Many were the pilgrims visiting the shrine to Reagan this holiday season.  

California Dreaming Is Becoming A Reality

January 29
Los Angeles and Woodland Hills
We are on our way to experience the Tournament of Roses Parade live and in living color, broadly and deeply, behind the scenes and in the bleachers.  But first, we will add an installment to our Presidential Library tour sequel with a stop at the Ronald Reagan Library.  Then, after all the Parade festivities are over, we will drive up the coast for another week of California adventures.
 
Our flights from Savannah to LAX were unremarkable, save for the dramatic contrast between our quiet, sleepy, empty intimate-sized airport and the crowded confusing hectic impersonal urban transport jungles of Atlanta and Los Angeles.    

As if to emphasize the point that Los Angeles is operating in a different universe from  sweet Savannah, we spotted this building straight out of "The Jetsons" as our shuttle drove us toward the rental car outpost.  (Amazing that I got this picture through the tinted window of the shuttle while it was moving, eh?) We almost expected to see George Jetson land his hovercraft on the roof.   

A little online research revealed that this place, known as the “Theme Building,” was completed in 1961 as part of a Los Angeles Jet Age Terminal Project, and is now designated a City Cultural and Historical Monument.  Those 135 foot high parabolic arches supporting the structure were a big design first in their day.  The building houses a restaurant now.   

On the way to our hotel in Woodland Hills, we passed another notable example of curvilinear architecture that caught our eye, due to the 32 foot diameter donut on its roof.  (The photo is from Randy's website--I couldn't snap it from the rapidly moving car.)  This architectural gem dates back to 1953 .  We were so intent on getting to our hotel after hours on the plane that we didn’t even exit the freeway to sample a donut.  That is just so unlike us! 

Chalk it up to freeway madness.  I know I got my share of cardio fitness today through all my heart palpitations experienced as Dick masterfully drove and dodged in the densely packed quickly moving herds of cars dashing home during rush hour.  The need to concentrate was so intense that we could not adequately ogle the many expensive cars zooming about us—a couple Ferraris, assorted Porsches, lots of big black Cadillac Escalades, and so on.  

Nonetheless, we made it to our hotel, got the car parked safely, were assigned a fabulous room with a panoramic view of the mountains, and were off to dinner without incident.  

Our notable discovery of the evening was that there must be some law here requiring restaurants with fixed menus to divulge the calorie content of their offerings.  This information is very disconcerting.  After seeing how many calories were in stuff I would normally order, I navigated to the less exciting (and very small) section of the menu featuring meals under 600 calories.  We came here to learn about the Rose Parade, and I fear I may get some unwanted nutrition lessons in the bargain.