Summer's Surprising Path

 Sujata Massey

My summer started out with grand plans: cross country travel for a book tour, and a chance to catch up with family and friends in the Midwest and West. But life throws you curveballs, doesn't it? And my shocker was a big fat COVID19 infection that occurred when I flew out of California back to the East. The result has been a blessedly mild, but long-lasting illness.  

In third week of quarantine, I spend most of my time on my Victorian home's two sleeping porches--an architectural feature created as a response to the era's contagious, often lethal, epidemics. I'm grateful that none of the successive homeowners thought to remove these outdoor havens, where I to eat my meals, read books, work on my writing, and log onto PBS to watch Grantchester. But not all the time. The soft focus of nature distracts me toward something better: the young squirrels chasing each other up and down the trees. After I've watched them while having morning coffee, I slip downstairs and out to the garden to do some weeding.  

My attempts to bring my renegade rudbeckia into order remind me of the magical time I had exploring gardens this spring and summer with friends. These green spaces still hold a place in my mind that stands for freedom, imagination, creativity and health. 

One of my favorite places to wander is Mt. Cuba, a historic estate in Delaware owned by a late DuPont heiress and her family and now turned over to a trust. The goal of Mt. Cuba is the development of attractive and sturdy cultivars of local native plants--and sharing with visitors ways to design beautifully with natives. Here's a glimpse of how the native can be elegantly landscaped along a curved walkway.

While visiting Minnesota in both spring and summer, I rambled around Lake of the Isles, which sits between Kenwood and Lowry Hill and Uptown neighborhoods. The path around the lake is just over three miles, completely flat and with separate trails for walkers and bicyclists. The surrounding parkland once was landscaped with the fashionable imported plants of the era; roses and the like. In this century, native plants have slowly grown and stabilized. The water might be cold, but Lake of the Isles is the beating, warm heart of my memories of life a decade ago in Minneapolis.

The Golden State has its own weather zones that have been going haywire in recent years. During my July visit, Southern California was blisteringly hot, and San Francisco was uncharacteristically sunny and pleasant (though its residents still wore down jackets, expecting the usual). My friend Sue drove me to across the East Bay to visit Filoli, a foundation-owned garden and historic house in Woodside. The name was made up to represent these ideas: Fight, Live, Love. Rather intense; could it have been inspired by Great War? 

The grand Italianate mansion was designed by the architect Willis K, Polk starting in 1915 for William and Agnes Bourn. Mrs. Bourn hired a female floral expert to install their gardens--a growing trend in the era of famous professional and private gardeners like Edith Wharton, Gertrude Jekyll, Elizabeth von Arnim and Vita Sackville-West. Bella Worn, who came from an elite local family who'd lost their fortune, had both an instinctive understanding of flowers, and significant experience owning at a floral business with her two sisters. As a garden designer, Bella was reputed to have the toughness and confidence to get her way on plant decisions every time. Bella spent most of the 1920s driving out to Filoli in a chauffeured car once a week, instructing every planting and pruning on the property, and then socializing with the elite in the evening. I picture her as the perfect heroine for a traditional mystery series set amongst the robber barons of California.

In the Roaring Twenties, twelve gardeners reported to Bella Worn. Today, fourteen horticulturists maintain the grounds for visitors' pleasure. Filoli's gardens are laid out in a series of outdoor rooms, a popular design for landed gentry in the early 20th century. As Sue and I explored the many paths, I found myself exclaiming about the gorgeous surprises appearing with each turn we took. Soft drifts of color rolled in waves, creating vistas both abundant and soothing. 

Temperatures were in the high '80s during our visit to Filoli. Despite the heat, I noted elegant frocks and the crisp suiting worn by many visitors. These glamorous young people set out elaborate picnics and posed against the vivid floral backdrops. Truly, the only missing element was a tuxedoed waiter carrying champagne cocktails--and perhaps shrimp cocktail on ice. How quickly I had lost my grasp on reality! 

And that is the value of historic gardens.

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Sujata has two rescheduled book talks. She'll be at Browseabout Books in Rehoboth, DE 2-4 p.m. on Wednesday August 23. After that, she will visit Headhouse Books in Philadelphia at 6 p.m. on Thursday, August 24.

The Golden State

Sujata Massey

Naomi Hirahara and me in a Japanese garden in Little Tokyo

The Golden State was the port of entry for me as a very young immigrant from Great Britain. Although my family's stint in California only totaled three years of my childhood, it has always held a mythic place in my heart. Palo Alto is where I remember collecting snails in the garden during a rainy winter and my parents getting their first car. Berkeley is where I spent a mostly ecstatic eighth grade year during in which I bought my first album (The Commodores) and had an awkward first kiss (Laurence).

The beloved house that we rented in the Berkeley Hills was destroyed to a wildfire that raged up from Tilden Park in the 1980s. So I know that fire is both shocking and a fact of life in California.

It has been terrible to follow the news of the devastating fires of Fall 2018 currently raging through residential areas in both Northern and Southern California. These fires--more than 7600--are the most destructive in California's history. There are reportedly more than 14,000 people fighting fires, including a number of volunteers and prison inmates.

Arguments abound about whose fault these fires are and whether global warming is a factor. I have no argument with global warming and the increasing dryness of California has been well-documented. This article in Slate gives a great explanation of many factors, including the dangerous conditions caused by building very close to wilderness. In some areas, like the town of Paradise, the fire jumped from building to building, and trees were actually left standing.

A vintage academic building at Occidental College

A few days ago, I flew with my teenaged son to Los Angeles County for college visits planned several months ago. I was almost certain that CalArts, the school we were visiting near Santa Clarita, would have been evacuated. It turned out the flames hadn't come that close, and the campus was open for visiting.

Historic student housing at Occidental College

It felt surreal to drive along the typical crowded highways visiting schools during the three day period. The sky was hazy sometimes, and there was something in the air that gave me slight cough, now and again--but it was manageable. Yet probably twenty or thirty miles away, everything was burned black. The reports from Northern California were even worse; one of my friends has to wear a mask when she goes outside, the air is so filled with particulate matter. And people are living with the knowledge that hundreds are likely dead, and thousands displaced with no chance of rebuilding their homes.

Most California citizens and officials have worked hard not to speed up global warming by regulating energy, cars, and potential sources of pollution. On the trip, we saw electric charging stations for cars everywhere, and my son was surprised to be billed 15 cents for a bag when he was buying sundries at a gas station. The colleges all had well-identified recycling stations and served food in compostable containers. But still--a lot of people want to live in California. And developers and towns have allowed buildings to go up very close to areas with a lot of dry brush.

Rebuilding existing cities takes on new meaning. It was heartening to see reuse of old buildings in many areas we visited. Inside Los Angeles's Little Tokyo, the crime writer Naomi Hirahara took me to an oasis tucked within city buildings--a Japanese garden that honored the neighborhood's population and was filled with lush California and non-native plants. I visited writer Jerrilyn Farmer at her beautiful 1920s Spanish home located within a completely urban district in Glendale.

At the University of Southern California, my son and  sat in a former sound stage that had been turned into a performing arts theater. The CalArts tour guide was proud to show us what may be the country's last modular theater. As I walked around Occidental College, I was taken by many lovely 1920s buildings that spoke of a nostalgic era. And just like in my day--not all the dorms had air conditioning!

The Mayfair Hotel in downtown Los Angeles

The hotel we stayed in was a recycle, too. The Mayfair was once one of the largest hotels West of the Mississippi. This 14-floor hotel was built in 1927 in what was once the heart of Los Angeles, but now is a little bit lonely.  The hotel's claim to fame is that American crime writer Raymond Chandler lived here in the 1930s. Chandler references in the beautiful renovated hotel were frequent, from Eve's American Bistro to cocktails named "Windemere" and "Farewell My Lovely." It made me smile to see 1920s design cliches like potted palms and clamshell motifs and curvy velvet conversation settees in the lobbies. And because today's creative needs are quite different from that of the 1920s, there are some interesting innovations: a soundproofed podcast studio for guest use just off the bar, and a beautiful writers room on the main floor with many seats around a long, high table. I was the only one writing there at 7 AM on a Sunday morning, but I could imagine a team of television writers breaking story there at a much later hour.

Mayfair's stylish lobby

The Mayfair's podcast room

Rain is supposed to be falling on California the day that this blogpost goes to print. I hope that it lasts long enough to give the firefighters an extra hand in quenching the fires and saving the Golden State.

How Paradise Deals With Garbage.

By Mark Cross

I just finished driving along the Northern California coast—from up above Bodega Bay (where Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds was filmed) to Carmel-By-The Sea (where Clint Eastwood of RNC fame was mayor).   I must say, those Californians have their &^%$ together.  Or, more accurately, that they have it carefully collected, stored, and out of sight. 

I was amazed at how little litter there was to be found along that stunning coastline.  In Greece (as well as many other Mediterranean destinations I find enchanting), garbage literally decorates far too much of the landscape.  Whether or not the situation in Greece rises to the level of a national disgrace I am not qualified to say, but garbage is certainly the hottest subject of citizen ire on Mykonos.

One story stands out in my mind.  A couple years back, on a stunning, virtually empty southern Mykonos beach directly across the sea from the neighboring island of Naxos, a woman who’d been sunbathing nude walked to the edge of the water carrying a plastic garbage bag.   She proceeded to empty the contents into the sea followed by dropping the bag.  An American couple nearby yelled, “Hey, what are you doing?” 

The woman screamed back, “Don’t you foreigners tell us how to live on our island!  The currents will carry it all to Naxos.”

What can one do with some one like that?  Okay, this is real life not a murder mystery, so what else can one do with such a person?  To set the record straight, I know the woman and, though Greek, she is not Mykonian and lives on the island only during tourist season.  Nor is she is like most Greeks, who would not bath nude or so brazenly pollute their waters.  But she does exemplify a ready willingness on the part of many to litter.

Garbage collection and disposal on Mykonos is a mega-problem, one of seeming concern to virtually every resident of the island except those government officials charged with actually doing something about it.  Officials claim the problem stems from a five-fold and more increase in population during tourist season, but California too has a massive tourist population to contend with…and its crisis fiscal situation is often compared to Greece’s. 

Omiros Evangelinos

Many say the root of Mykonos’ problem is public indifference toward an “I can do as I wish” attitude that has left much of the wildest parts of the island accessorized in wind-blown blue plastic shopping bags and cast aside water bottles.  But there are those who speak out and others willing to do more than just speak.  One is Omiros Evangelinos, co-owner of perhaps the chicest and best-known nightspot on Mykonos, Astra. 

Omiros organized a group to clean up one of the island’s windiest beaches and filmed the process.  Then he submitted his work to an international film festival. Here’s a link to the video, titled MYKONOS BLUES.  It’s subtitled in English, except for a forty-five second piece beginning at the 7:00 minute mark where some American writer is interviewed and the subtitles are in Greek.

Mykonos Blues opening shot.

The video was shot during the last campaign for mayor of Mykonos and so appropriate concern for the environment was expressed by electioneering government officials who showed up at the cleanup site for some camera face time.  A particularly interesting example of the political byplay on Mykonos today is the four minute or so give and take with the mayor (starting at the 8:00 minute mark).

To Omiros’ credit the filming did not stop at the cleanup site.  He took his camera to find out what happened to the garbage collected by the volunteers that was “picked up by the city” for disposal.  To me, this was the film’s most poignant, tragic example of a local government mindset that haunts the island as an insidious threat to paradise. 

As Omiros points out (beginning at the 12:35 minute mark), what was supposed to end up in Mykonos’ new sanitary landfill, never made it there.  Instead, the bags were dropped by the side of the road at the old illegal burn site, left to break open and be re-distributed across the island by the winds.  Or burned, and God knows what distributed then.

Maybe the woman at the beach was not as out of line with local mores as she seemed?  After all, there is the old adage, “A fish smells from his head.”   Never more so than in the case of garbage.

Jeff—Saturday