Ecology

6098_lg.jpgI’ve never actually studied flower arranging... I’ve kind of learned it as I’ve gone along, over the course of about 25 years... For me it’s what painting is for many other people...a way of relaxing, a way of listening to programs on the radio or to music without fidgeting, a way of showing affection to people I care about.., a way of centering myself...especially for me if it involves certain fragrances.... roses, stock, freesia, lily of the valley, peaches, nectarines,  honeysuckle. 

It’s like cooking. There’s no one way to do it right. You can start with what flowers are available at any given moment, as if they were ingredients, and improvise on those; or start with an idea, and see what ingredients would bring it into focus; or choose a container and think about various ways it could be shown to its best advantage. Or, most likely, use some combination of all these approaches.

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I spent the morning in Chinatown, the afternoon in Altadena (don't ask me where Altadena is; having just gone there, I still don't know) and I had to get to Venice by evening. It's a good thing I drive a hybrid or my carbon foot print would be out of control. With two hours to kill before my rehearsal in Venice I came up with the fabulous idea to hit up the Robertson car wash. 

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You can imagine my dismay when it started raining literally the second I got my keys back. Not only was my car no longer clean, but there was bumper to bumper traffic since LA drivers immediately forget how to drive the second even one drop of rain falls from the sky.

That's when I realized I that I hadn't eaten in over six hours (which for me is just enough time to come close to death by starvation). To make matters worse I was in that no man's land part of west LA and I was sort of late to rehearsal. That's when I found it.

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smlibrary.jpglaraine_newman_cameo.jpg After allowing my 13 year old daughter Hannah to sit on the couch all summer and watch TV, while surfing the net for days on end, my guilt that nothing worthwhile was filling that pretty little head of hers was mounting.  I started looking for things to do in this wonderful town of ours. I definitely wanted to go to the Lautner exhibit at the Armand Hammer Museum and Hannah saw a picture of one of his houses and was actually interested too, but then I saw something on Daily Candy talking about an event at the Santa Monica Library and thought “Aha! This’ll be the thing I do. This’ll be the antidote to all those episodes of The Suite Life of Zack and Cody. I was going to take Hannah to a symposium on Food and Climate Change.”

The Santa Monica Library reminds me of the NRDC (National Resources Defense Council) building on 2nd street.  Its obvious that the entire building is green and a tremendous amount of thought was put into every detail. It’s modern lines and materials are beautiful and give me a sense of hope as I see more and more buildings like it.

The hors d’oeuvres and treats were supplied by the Co-Op and I gotta say “yeccchh!”  When it comes to trying to approximate a chocolate cookie without chocolate, sugar, wheat and dairy you might as well just f*#k off.  Hannah made the mistake of trying one and the look on her face as she tried to masticate this dust bomb was pitiful. 

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close-up-cots-web.jpg A few years ago I noticed that a tree was growing in the tiny side area between my house and my neighbor’s.  By the time I took notice of it the tree was 4 feet tall.  Apparently I had been ignoring that side of the house. I don’t know a lot about trees but it looked like it might be some kind of fruit tree.  So I waited and asked my gardener.  Sure enough, it turned out to be an apricot tree.  Since the window above my kitchen sink is right above where the tree has taken root I figured that I must have spit an apricot seed out of the louvers. 

Yeah, it was a barbarian move, what can I say?  But it was a Blenheim pit, so I decided to let the tree stay even though I was told that since it wasn’t a “grafted” tree and without a strong rootstock it probably woudn’t bear fruit.  And for 5 years it didn’t, except for a few lonely guys who would appear each year on one branch.  They were the few, the brave, and the delicious.  Meanwhile, one year the tree trunk split nearly down to the ground.  We shored it up and figured that there would be attrition, but no, the tree thrived. 

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unnamedlake.jpg Checks and balances.  Have you ever thought about how amazing those two words are?   In the simplest sense, writing checks and figuring out how much money you have left after you’ve written them.  In the larger sense, if something is depleted or out of whack, something comes along to reestablish order.

Which brings me to AANWR....

On the northern edge of our continent, stretching from the peaks of the Brooks Range across a vast expanse of tundra to the Beaufort Sea, lies Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. An American Serengeti, the Arctic Refuge continues to pulse with million-year-old ecological rhythms. It is the greatest living reminder that conserving nature in its wild state is a core American value.
                    (National Resources Defense Council)

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