Wilderness for the people

One of the good things which came out of the devastating 1910 forest fire described in The Big Burn is the public realizing no one is taking care of our wilderness.  Disasters will happen and no one is responsible for preventing them or taking charge during them.

Roosevelt used the fire as a wake up call to voters and congress.  He felt it was important that lands be set aside and protected for the American public.   An avid outdoors person, he recognized the need for people to be able to get away from civilization and enjoy the beauty and peace of the wilderness.  Forests, mountains, empty land was being bought up and exploited without control.  He saw this was a time to put the brakes on and set some land aside before it was all gone.

I was surprised to discover John Muir was so involved in the “national” conservation movement.  When visiting New York, Egan describes Muir as an influential man “whose company was sought by everyone from Ralph Waldo Emerson to New York Police Commissioner Teddy Roosevelt.  He had just started the Sierra Club in 1892.

I wonder if he had to box and wrestle with Roosevelt, too.

Looking forward to the movie!

The Hare with the Amber Eyes would make a great movie.

Imagine all the locations Japan, Russia, Paris, Vienna, England and back to Japan.

In some ways perhaps the story is too complex for just a two
hour movie. Not only do you have the netsuke moving around from city to city you’d have to tell the story of the owners and their relationships. People coming together, people loosing one another. The most complicated story being Viktor and Emmy in Vienna.

A screenwriter might even start the story in 1880's Japan to explain how the hare becomes part of the collection…all down just visually under the beginning credits.

Perhaps it’s too big for a movie. It should be an opera. Imagine the wonderful music representing cities, history with the constant theme of the netsuke connecting it all.

It could be a cycle. Not the Ring Cycle but the Hare of the Netsuke.

I’ll have to send this idea off to Peter Gelb at the Metropolitan
Opera before someone else does. Quick get me his address…

The Nazi’s win again.
Our April book is “In the Garden of the Beasts” by Eric Larson.

Appropriate. I think Hitler’s birthday is in April. If only he had been accepted to art school…the world might have been a different place.

the further adventures of the netsuke...

Back to our story...In Vienna the netsuke are rescued from the Nazi’s by the Ephrussi’s loyal maid, Anna, who stuffs them into her mattress. Soldiers storm through the Ephrussi Palais stripping the walls of paintings and emptying the cabinets of silver and porcelain but they do not steal the netsuke.

Phew! they're safe. It is perhaps the one small thing Anna can save to pass on to the Ephrussi children.

After the war when the daughter, Elizabeth, visits Vienna, Anna returns the netsuke to her. A welcome gift bringing back happy childhood memories. After returning to England,
her new home, she shares them with her brother, Iggie.

At this point Iggie has been offered jobs in Japan or another country. The netsuke seem to persuade him to pick Japan. He wants to take them back to their home.

It is a good decision. Although Japan is a mess after WWII, he enjoys the country, meets his life partner, Jiro, and becomes a successful banker, like his father.

Our author, Edmund De Waal, visits Iggie in Japan and is first introduced to the family's netsuke collection. Iggie has begun research to discover who has made these small carved figures.

“This is when the netsuke carvers regain their names and start to become people with families, craftsmen in a particular landscape.”

He has catalogued the collection and it is “surprisingly valuable.” Several pieces where made by well known and respected artists.

After Iggie’s death De Waal inherits the collection. As an artist he appreciates their unique "beauty". In England, another new home, they are enjoyed by his children and family.

But once again the netsuke cannot sit quiet or peacefully in their glass display case. For De Waal the netsuke propel him on this journey to discover his family history and write the book, The Hare With Amber Eyes.

Perhaps we should just call them Japanese "action figures" since they do seem to prod their owners to "act".

Why objects are handed on....

Before starting our book I usually check out a few reviews just
to get my mind primed for the read ahead.

I’m recommending Object Lessons, a review by Tanya Harrod
and published in The Times Literary Supplement.
It’s beautifully written and it has really helped me appreciate some of the finer points of our book.

Harrod explains that the netsuke collection was available
for sale in 1880 Paris because the objects had lost their purpose in Japan.

“They functioned, modestly, as a toggle, threaded with cord
tightened with a bead, from which hung useful objects such as tobacco pouches, sake flasks and boxes containing seals or medicines. But when Japanese elites began to Westernize intellectually, industrially and sartorially, a great many objects lost their purpose – most obviously Samurai armour and swords and sword fittings, but also elaborate brocade robes and sashes and the whole world of sagemonon or “hanging things”, suspended chatelaine – like and secured by netsuke.”

Charles Ephrussi enjoys his netsuke collection for awhile
but then sends them on to Vienna, Austria as a wedding gift to his nephew, Viktor and bride Emmy. They are handed on because;

“as small tactile objects…they stood for a fashionable
collecting mania and also, for a love affair.”

Charles had collected and shared the netsuke with a mistress
who has moved on. He is also changing the decorating style of his fashionable home. Japanese objects were new and popular in the 1880’s but in 1899 they were “yesterday” so the netsuke had lost their “purpose” in Paris.

At one point Edmund De Waal, our storyteller, describes each netsuke as a storyteller of Old Edo, Japan;

“…the barrel-maker framed by the arc of his half-finished
barrel; the street-wrestlers in a sweaty, tumbling embrace of dark chestnut wood; the old, drunk monk with robes awry; the servant girl cleaning the floor; the rat-catcher with his basket open.”

These characters are working people, others are animals. Definitely out of place in a wealthy woman’s Viennese dressing room.

The children are allowed to take them out of the virtine and play with them. They are toys and characters in their stories. A new use for the netsuke.

So where will the story take them next?

So who is really big brother?

In 1984 when the Macintosh computer was released Steve Jobs
authorized an amazing televison commercial based on the George Orwell book “1984”.

If you haven’t see it recently, take a look: 1984 Macintosh TV Commercial

It was directed by Ridley Scott fresh from filming the science fiction story, “Blade Runner”.

At this time Jobs is in competition with IBM’s PC and he
knows he is loosing the numbers game.

The ad paints IBM as the big monolith who is sucking our
brains and turning us into robots. Theywant total control.

The reality I have learned after reading the Steve Jobs
biography is that he is the total control freak.

He made the engineers building the Macintosh design new
screws so no one from the outside could get “under the hood” and change anything inside. At this time lots of computer users were still hobbyists who loved to open the box to see how it works and personalize it.

Businesses needed to have an open architecture so they could add more memory or application programs.

By making the Macintosh so closed Jobs limited the sales. It was the computer he created…but not the computer all his customers might have wanted.

A great commercial, a doomed computer.

A computer is just a “bicycle for the mind”

During his Lost Interview in 1990 Steve Jobs describes a
computer as a “bicycle for the mind” because it could make a person more efficient and more effective.

This is such a good metaphor but I'm afraid I still operate at a
walking pace. I don’t use the computer everyday. I still read real books and write checks to pay bills. Perhaps there just isn’t enough of that “insanely great stuff” which needs to be sped along.

Perhaps I put up these speed bumps on purpose…something to think about.

It did occur to me so what is I did treat the computer as a “blank,
white canvas” to see what I come up with.

More to follow…

Steve Jobs...what if?

Reading about Steve Job’s younger life there were so many pieces that could have been different and changed the whole story.

What if the first couple had not decided they wanted a baby girl instead of a boy.

What if the Jobs family had stayed in SF rather than taking job in Palo Alto and moving to the Peninsula, also known as Silicon Valley. Steve was able to join the Hewlett Packard Explorers club where he met working engineers who gave talks on current technology like lasers, holography and desktop computers.

What if he had had another father. Paul Jobs, worked on cars in his garage and was a perfectionist. He had an appreciation for clean design and detailing. A real can-do kind of guy he would buy junk cars, fix them up and sell them for a healthy profit. The money would be used to send Steve to Reed College.

What if he hadn’t gone to Homestead High School where he took an electronics class. It was there he met an older graduate, Stephen Wozniak. They both loved the same music, playing pranks and electronics. Their first collaboration was building Blue Boxes so students can make long distance calls illegally. From there they …well Woz designed and built Apple I…and the rest is history.

So what was Steve Job’s most creative idea and what was his dumbest idea?