NoNewsFromHere: BIBLE BELT TO THE FOODIE BELT

FIRST, THE BIBLE BELT

A megachurch in Little Rock whose pastor visited with the present occupant of the Oval Office

Down Arkansas way, where the churches are often the size of office buildings and more ubiquitous than Chick-Fil-A’s, my host Barbara and I drove north to Arkansas' northwest corner at the border of Missouri and Oklahoma. Bentonville. The hotel we stayed in there was in a kind of office park. I entered my room wherein lay this card:

The Embassy Suites isn't interested in profit, only your happiness. Who knew?

Having a church tie of some kind, even if it's one with a strongly liberal theology, seems to be a connection that carries weight. If you’re going to advocate for the Good, a religious foundation appears to be an asset. (God for the Good?) By the Good, I mean a belief in man-made climate change, recycling, alternative energy, gay marriage, immigration–the whole lot. My host, Barbara, is an exemplar of this kind of advocacy. She got her church to consider solar panels, for example, (and they got them!). Solar panel are a fraught political issue. They apparently represent all that is associated with a liberal ideology. As if having solar panels led to belief in climate change, gay marriage, immigration, and so on. Several people Barbara introduced me to seem equally grounded in liberal advocacy. I salute them. They are working for these ideals in a place where the majority is working against them, or, at the very least, is not particularly supportive; blues in a sea of red. Being openly atheistic here may demand either courage or chutzpah or both.

A sticker on Barbara's car: An example of advocacy plus faith

On the flip side of piety:

It should be noted that this Little Rock concert we attended one night was a fundraiser for the Oxford-American, a literary magazine of southern writing. In addition to pre-concert hors d’oeuvres, free booze was available in the lobby so there was much getting up and heading out for refills during the concert.

I couldn’t help but notice that the audience was 100% white and all the servers were black. That was not unique to the concert.

I went with Barbara to a lecture at her church––a church we in the East would consider a mega-church although it isn’t one in this context; it’s simply big––on the topic of the latest findings concerning the Trump-Russia connection, a lecture given by a local bigwig liberal columnist. From the audience reaction––nods of agreement here and there, hearty applause at the end––I gathered he was preaching to the choir. The message (“Don’t jump to conclusions; could be as much stupidity as conspiracy…”) suggested ‘educating’ to be a better word.

Columnist John Brummett explains the news

Some of us probably have images in our minds of what the Ozarks look like. In fact they look a bit like Vermont, but with different foliage, and many rolling hills that don't rise nearly as high as any of the Appalachians. Brown, mostly, this time of year. Someone commented that the only trees that get color in the fall are the imported ones planted to beautify parks or strip malls.

A photogenic roadside wreck. Maybe purposely arranged. Most homes in the Ozarks don't resemble this at all,
although the general style (long porch in front) is common.

A liberal hot spot in Little Rock is, no surprise, the Clinton Presidential Library. (The Little Rock airport is named after both Hillary and Bill.) A couple of enthusiastic docents at the library told us they are eagerly awaiting, in fact yearning for, Chelsea Clinton's run for President. Seems like a long shot. Everything Clinton is there, including a precise, down to the last detail, replica of the Oval Office as it was during his time in office. It was pretty cool to be able to poke around in what almost feels like the real thing. (No poking around allowed in the real thing, as I found out a year ago.) But I have to say, the gold curtains are as ugly as the gold curtains of the present, uh, occupant.

The Clinton Library. Some might say it looks like a shoebox. Sort of striking though.

The trip to Bentonville, home of Crystal Bridges, is a 3-1/2 hour drive from Little Rock, and took us through part of the Ozarks up near the corner of Missouri and Oklahoma. Thanks to the Walmart (Walton family) fortune, Crystal Bridges is a destination museum. Designed by an international big-deal architect (Moshe Safdie) it has an art collection of great breadth and depth that only a huge fortune could have put together. The accumulation of such art, works often bought from institutions in need of funds, reminds me of the initial outcry when the Getty museum was first opened in Los Angeles with its seemingly unlimited funds for art, poaching art from all over. CB's collection includes an entire Frank Lloyd Wright house, moved from its original site.

[From the top: part of the Moshe Safdie-designed museum buildings; "tree" from the Chihuly glass exhibit; the spider, called "Maman," another cast of the work we saw in Bilbao, Spain; Wright house rear exterior; the oculus.]

I couldn't resist including these lesser works, only because they are (a) creepy and (b) unintentionally funny.

What makes this particulaly unsettling is not just the fact that it is incredibly real looking,
but the fact that it is weirdly larger than an actual person, frighteningly cut off at mid-chest,
and viewable at ordinary human height.

What is there to say about this family foursome?

SECOND, THE FOODIE BELT

What could I say about San Francisco that everyone doesn’t already know?

Sign on a shed in the little town of Pescadero

Tasting, in Napa, with Davey and Andy

Here's where I stayed, a delightful over-the-top Victorian inn, in the Mission district, with roof deck and garden.

Inn San Francisco, on South Van Ness

This trip I visited only the places I hadn’t been before. This meant spending time in the neighborhoods (the Castro, Potrero, Mission, etc.), the parks (Lands End, Golden Gate, etc.) and seeing the other wine valley (Napa) and the coast south of SF.

A visit to the mother ship: Tour of Apple headquarters in Cupertino
The move to new headquarters (the big circle) happens December 8.

In the Castro with Davey and Andy.

And yes, everyone talks about food. (We ate well.) I was always informed about where to find the best restaurants, the best bakeries (everywhere!), best ice cream (a couple of places vie for that distinction), the best way of cooking (sous vide!). I was never starving for more than a single half-hour, and, alas, never hungry after a full meal which limited my intake of all the wonderful extra goodies I could have sampled. I met up with a guy Ken and I had hiked with in Argentina and Chile. We hadn’t met in nearly ten years. What did we end up talking about? Food, of course!

Freshly baked artichoke bread (still warm!) and freshly made goat cheese from a goat farm, both from Pescadero.

On the Pacific Coast Highway north of Santa Cruz: where we ate the artichoke bread and goat cheese.

In the Japanese Garden, SF

North of Santa Rosa, site of the fierce October 2017 fires

We drove to Napa via the areas that burned in October. Everywhere there were lone chimneys and burnt out trucks and cars in driveways of houses that no longer existed. We drove the winding mountain roads the fire had also swept. It was hard to visualize people trying to escape the flames on roads like these, often with tree branches meeting overhead. Crews were busy cutting down trees on both sides to keep charred brittle trunks from falling across the road. I heard that the night of the fire, around 3 AM, firefighters had lined up in great numbers with all their firetrucks along a six-lane highway, ready to stop the fire at what look like a viable perimeter. Then the furious wind blew the fire over the road, over the fire trucks, and began to consume the other side. A lone green tree or intact house here and there demonstrated the fickleness of the fire. Even in Napa Valley the distant hills were blackened.