Einsteinian Camembert

The relativity of time is beyond our ken; the concept is too vast. But the subjectivity of time is apprehensible to every child who has ever counted down the days till Christmas.

And it only gets worse as we age. The years lose their character and permanence once we've stopped growing. How is it possible that today begins a new year and yet another decade?

Salvador Dali's The Persistence of Memory has evoked much analysis, including some by the artist himself. Freud and Einstein are noted as influences, but so are Bellini, Chirico, Proust, Adler, masturbation, camembert cheese, and the Spanish Civil War. Every part of this small canvas is scrutinized for meaning: the sand and the hourglass shaped ants, the amorphous mass washed upon the beach which may be a self portrait, the dead olive tree, the plinth and the platform, the sea and the rocks of Port Lligat. But most of all, we look at the watches: three are limp like dead fish, and soft but pointed like tongues; one is closed up like a clam.

It is to Dali's credit, however, that this painting needs no analysis at all. Everyone gets it. The title alone tells us all we need to know: time is not fixed and hard, but mutable and soft. Memory conquers it, but death conquers memory.

So why analyze it? And why disagree? I suppose it's because the artist, that rascally showman and tireless self promoter, wanted us to interpret his symbolism. His aim was to create, in his own words, wonder, astonishment, and enigma.

Dali is nothing if not grand entertainment. So, party on and have a happy new year.


The Persistence of Memory by Salvador Dali; 1931. Click on the picture for a closer look.

The Real Thing

For 33 years, Haddon Sundblom painted advertisements for Coca -Cola that featured Santa Claus. If he didn't create the image of the red-suited, white-bearded, rotund Santa, he certainly fixed it forever in our imaginations.

Sundblom was a highly successful commercial artist and art teacher. In addition to Coke, he drew for Aunt Jemima, Quaker Oats, Cashmere Bouquet, and Playboy, to name a few. He was said to go on two day benders every time he completed a painting, and he was also said to complete them quickly.

Advertising art tends to fade with the snows of yesteryear. But now and then, an image endures, just as certain slogans enter the language and stay. Someone else will have to distinguish fine artists from commercial artists; I can't. Norman Rockwell and N. C. Wyeth were called illustrators in their day, with some condescension. I think we see them as more than that today.

I like Sundblom's Santas, and they're certainly expertly done. So let's add a dram of rum to our Cokes and lift a Christmas bowl to him and to his very fine art.

Coca-Cola Christmas ad from 1951 by Haddon Sundblom (1899-1976). Click on the picture for a closer look.

Bridging

No doubt a watershed moment has been lost. The tax cuts and unemployment benefits compromise, struck by the President with Senate Republican leader McConnell, is at best a long odds gamble, and at worst a capitulation to plutocracy. Even with the nation's attention turned to the need for deficit reduction, Democrats found their voices simply weren't loud enough to denounce Republican advocacy of exceptionalism for the rich.

While the story is far from over, I already feel we're left in a state of equivocalness. True, the trickle down justification for the compromise is nonsense, but also true is the alacrity with which liberals will put the poor in jeopardy. Obama, a man who began his career as a grass roots organizer, is closer to the horrors of deprivation than are most of his critics, and he correctly saw that Republicans were willing to cut off benefits for people who would never vote for them anyway.

True, the President has failed to articulate his core beliefs and demonstrate willingness to fight for them, but also true is the fact that vulnerable Democrats pressed Congressional leadership to postpone voting on the Bush tax cuts until after the election because the polls told them it would hurt their chances of winning. Their timidity and procrastination put time on the side of the GOP.

Let's take a breath. Let's think about going for a stroll along a river where small sailboats glide over the rippled water. Let's not notice the absence of trees or lush greenery on our bank as we gaze at the heavy new iron bridge, built to replace the venerable old one that was destroyed in the Franco-Prussian War. Let's admire its strength: it can support two locomotives crossing on it while they billow soot and steam into the cloudscape. Let's try not to judge this confluence of industry and recreation, of sunlight and smog, of fecundity and barrenness. Let's just look, impress it on our memories, and then pass on.

Claude Monet: Le pont de chemin der fer à Argenteuil, 1873. The painting sold for $41,480,000 in 2008. Do you find it beautiful? Click on the picture for a closer look.

Melting

To some, Hanukkah feels inauthentic, even meretricious. It's a lesser, non-Biblical holiday, that Jews largely ignored for many years. American Jewry, however, has embraced it with such enthusiasm, that it is now the most public of all Jewish observances in the United States.

Why? Certainly, its synchronicity with Christmas.

In Christian-majority America, Jewish children, like myself, used to be obliged to participate in Christmas caroling, tree trimming, and card making, along with yuletide pageants, concerts, and Christmas plays that were rehearsed in class and performed on the school stage. Teachers meant no offense; they simply didn't want the tiny minority of Jews--just three of us in my school--to feel excluded.

Hanukkah may have saved American Judaism. It gave Jewish children a festival for which parties, pastries, holiday lights, and gift giving were appropriate. Jews could partake of the holiday spirit without having to convert.

By tradition, the lights of Hanukkah are not to be put to any useful purpose, hence it is appropriate to place the menorah in the window, and maybe even string some blue holiday lights outside, as well.

Anything wrong with this? Not at all, unless one considers Hanukkah's origin as a courageous rebellion against Hellenization brutally imposed by Antiochus, king of the Syrian-Greeks. In ancient times, obliterating languages, religions, and cultures at the point of the sword was common.

So the holiday that marked Jews' defiance of forced assimilation is now the most visible evidence of their desire to be included in the American zeitgeist.


The Revolt of Mattathias by Gustave Dore (1832-1883). Mattathias, a Jewish priest, refused to perform a sacrifice to the Greek gods in Solomon's temple. When an apostate Jew complied with the Seleucid general who had compelled this act of Hellenization, Mattathias killed them both and overturned the idolatrous sculpture. With his son, Judah Maccabee, he thereby started the revolt that culminated in retaking the temple and rededicating it to the worship of the God of Israel. Hanukkah means rededication.

Thanksgiving 2010

A friend wrote the other day that he is filled with gratitude, and I wrote back that I am, too. But so many people I know are facing the exigencies of unemployment, lack of health insurance, and diminished prospects for personal fulfillment.

A headline today says that labor unions are increasingly accepting two tiered systems of compensation. Reading the article, we quickly learn that it is actually a three tiered system: older workers paid at their present rates but with no prospect of ever getting a raise; younger workers paid five to fifteen dollars less per hour and with reduced benefits; and temporary workers paid very low wages with no benefits at all. As time goes on, the first group will phase out, and if things don’t pick up, perhaps the middle group will vanish, as well.

My most unsettling thoughts are of the widening gulf between rich and poor. Conservatives have long and justifiably protested that government should not undertake to redistribute income; but neither should it stack the deck against the poor or in favor of the rich. The name for such tyranny is plutocracy, and I fear its malignant effects on union, justice, tranquility, the general welfare, and liberty.

As Thanksgiving approaches, I feel very grateful to be living peacefully on this lovely mountain. However, the holiday reminds me that gratitude without humility and charity is no better than gloating.


Pilgrim's Grace by Henry Mosler (1841-1920). Note that the food is either covered or off the table, suggesting that the intensity of their prayer is for more than just sustenance. I know little about the artist other than he was a European Jew who emigrated to Cincinnati, and his granddaughter, Audrey Skirball-Kenis, founded the Skirball Center in Los Angeles. Click on the picture for a closer look.

Weighed and Found Wanting

The Deficit Commission report, we are told, is DOA. Opponents of one point will combine with opponents of other points to bury it. We hear conservatives dogmatically denounce changes in the tax code, even while liberals object that those changes would be a net gain for the wealthy. And as for liberals, proposed cuts in Social Security and Medicare are, as usual, non-starters.

This week we saw our leaders again refuse to confront the looming storm. It's been reported that the President is offering the Republicans a deal to extend the Bush tax cuts for all levels of income for another two years. In other words, he is reaching across the aisle in a bargain to do nothing.

Bowles/Simpson is, in its present form, a fifty page Power-Point presentation. It takes only a few minutes to read if you skip the charts. Some of the provisions are obscure, like ending Federal subsidies to states and tribes for abandoned mines. Some are breathtaking, like ending earmarks completely and implementing a biennial budget process. I'm not nearly qualified to evaluate all its provisions or even to accurately position it in the liberal-conservative continuum, but I am glad it's on the table, and hope that our politicians will see that their mission is greater than just fighting to take it off.

Woman Holding a Balance, Johannes Vermeer; 1664. Note that she is pregnant, that there is a painting of the Last Judgment behind her, and that while there are pearls and gold coins spread about, the balance is as yet empty. The present moment is connected to the future and filled with potential, if we evaluate it wisely. Click on the picture for a closer look.

Autumn

Autumn is in full vigor here in the San Bernardino Mountains. It is my favorite season, partly because its apex is the briefest. The leaves outside my window present a rich palette, but the rain predicted for later today and tomorrow may knock them all to the ground, leaving us to contemplate the coming of winter.

Perhaps that contemplation is the meaning of autumn: a time to draw inward and come to terms with inevitabilities. Mary Cassatt painted her beloved sister Lydia, whose health was failing. Lydia's cloak and bonnet bear the colors of the changing leaves and identify her with autumn. Her face, however, is clear, pale, delicate, beautiful, and deep in thought, thereby internalizing the true spirit of the season.

Autumn, by Mary Cassatt; 1880. Click on the picture for a closer look.