Wet, Wet, Wet

Wettest rainy season in my 5 years in Bali...

How to clean jamur (algae) off your palimanan stone steps, walls, statues, etc.:
1. Don't delay... the minute you buy your statue or build your temple or clad your balé in this lovely milky white sandstone, brush on silicone. You can get this at Cintra Warna on Jalan Imam Bonjol in Denpasar.

2. Okay, so you delayed and it rained. Your block of palimanan is now an ecosystem exploding like the Genisys Project in Star Trek. Don't even THINK of searching for Spock in all that green... just get it scraped off. If it's really bad, brush with dry kitchen/bathroom scrubber. Old toothbrush works great for those carved eyeballs and curley cues.

3. Resist the urge to hose it off. You will merely be feeding the algae. If you must use the water method, blast away with plenty of pressure and immediately follow up with step 4.

4. Mix 5 parts water with 1 part bleach and scrub, scrub, scrub. Don't let one drop of green remain. Leaving stains of black is not necessarily bad as this can add character to the stone, and you won't be able to get rid of those anyway, without actually scraping away parts of the stone itself.

5. Do rain stoppage dance until sun shines and dries palimanan.

6. Immediately coat with silicone and allow to dry.

7. Maintain stone steps by screaming at anyone who treads on them.

8. Maintain statuary by making daily offerings.

9. Move back to Australia or the States or wherever it is you came from, so that you'll never have to go through this nightmare again.

Buying Koi

There's a tale to tell, here, about buying koi fish in Denpasar. I will get to it later because if I sit here in this Sanur internet station and compose it, I will miss dinner at home. More later.

I am sick of being sold sterilized fish in Bali. I always seem to end up with ones that can't fertilize the eggs. So I vowed to go to Bali Koi, the shop near the central market, and ask the Chinese gal there if she can sell me breeders.

Saab Story

Can a car actually be posessed?

I don't know about that, but I have an odd little tale to tell. It will be all over on Tuesday.

It started in the summer of 2004, when I became fed up with using so much money on rental cars. I was going in and out of America, always pouring money into the coffers of Dollar, Alamo, and Enterprise. I figured, I can just buy a car for the price of renting one for a few weeks.

I started searching Craig's List and found a pretty nice deal: A 1989 Saab. Asking price was more than $3,000, and it had nearly 100,000 miles on it, but it was in good shape, had a new top and a spiffy paint job. What was odd was that the woman who was selling it had a very unpleasant personality. She didn't seem to want to really get rid of the car. She only begrudgingly let me test drive it and overreacted if I made comments about the mechanical condition. I had to ask for a lower price (it had some flaws which put it into a lower blue book price range), she reacted as if I'd asked to buy her soul for five bucks, and time and again she was just very unpleasant to deal with. Worst of all, the car failed the smog test so badly that it was in the range of "gross polluter" and needed nearly one grand worth of repairs to get it DMV s*** list. I know why I didn't just walk away... because it is very difficult to make appointments, go see these used cars, make "carfax" searches, and so forth. And really it was a nice car. There's something very nice about the solid slam of a Swedish car door... the top down experience is second to none... it was a nice car.

Well, once the car was mine, I got my husband to fix the loose front seat. For you see the seller was a portly gal and had squashed that seat into a kind of loose position... I was weighing in at 120 lbs and would rock back and forth in the seat. I got the front shoulder joint fixed (sorry about the lay terms), got a new seat belt where her dog had chewed the thing to mere threads, and put on gorgeous new Japanese tyres. I sunk more into it than I'd paid for in the first place.

I did joke that this was my "Schick Disposable Car", rejoicing in the price of a used car, patting myself on the back for buying a used car rather than renting some Detroit detritus. Was I degrading the car? Was I hurting its feelings?

My friend Karen saw me in the car and said "it suits her", with an appreciative laugh, to her husband. But the car just never felt mine. I would continually find the seller's old objects inside the car... a bar of factory-wrapped glycerine soap, an old sock, a pair of scratched sunglasses. It was odd. I babied the car, wouldn't drive it long distances, wouldn't work it, wouldn't 'possess' it. I kept on thinking of that awful, snide woman who sold it to me. You know, I'd asked her if she had a name for it, as some people do. I mean, I used to have "Blue Car" and my brother owns "Zippity Doo-Dah" and Ann owned "Greenie." The woman said, with a kind of whiny voice, "just... 'MY SAAB'" Nuff said.

It didn't take me long to start calling it "the Turbo Tomato", but it just didn't sit well with me. I don't know why. I'd sit there in the driver's seat and realize that I was holding the wheel at arm's length.

I ordered a cool vanity plate from the state... the one with the palm tree and setting sun, with a bold "California" scripted across the top, my text reading, OR BALI. Get it? I had those plates on the car for one week, and then Jay drove me and my dad to a recital in one of Berkeley's nicest neighborhoods. It was September. It was a lovely crisp night. The music was wonderful, the people a delight. We walked back to the car. It was not there. It had been stolen.

Police told me that it was almost certainly a professional job, that even the turbocharger in one of those old Saabs is worth more than the price I paid for the car. It would already be at a chop shop, he told me. I was crushed. I had not insured it for theft.

In the trunk was my notebook of every craftsman who built my house in San Mateo County, the name & price of every fixture, appliance, flooring, and material. I had no other collection of those facts. I also lost a favorite balinese scarf (for when I ride with the top down) and a baseball cap from the diRosa Preserve. I mourned the loss of that notebook most of all.

It took a huge chunk out of the next two months to buy a replacement car. We went for a 1997 Chrysler Sebring convertible. We test drove eight of the things, maybe three mustangs, too, before we found the right one at the right price. It was a good car. We both love the better insulation (the Saab was noisy, even with the top up) and the better position for the driver (just look at how the guy drives his Saab in the film Sideways... the driver's arms fully extended to reach the wheel) and the firmer instruments. Instead of sporty red, our Chrysler is badass black. It is such a baaaaad looking car. Mean. But it's a workhorse. Hardly needed anything. In a few miles it was time for the spark plugs to be replaced, the usual 100K maintenence. But nothing bad after that. We love the car and it's done well.

Then I was in France this last month and my brother shot me an email: the cops called. They found your Saab in San Francisco.

I got back to the States and called the cops. The car was taken in a drug case. The woman driving it claimed that she bought it at a police auction. The cops examining the car found that although most of the VIN numbers had been scraped off, the thieves neglected to erase the easiest placement: on the inside of the door. My old VIN was there. Needless to say, there is possibly a crooked cop in on the case, and the detective who dealt with me was not saying much more. I went to the impound lot to get what was left of the car. 30,000 miles racked up on the odometer and everything inside trashed. The instruments were all loose and abused, the speakers shot, the seats torn. I mean, the car still looked cherry on the outside, but it was as if it were a rape victim... all the damage inside. Maybe worst of all, the nice factory-installed toolbox was gone, the trunk lock broken, and any vestige of my history with it obliterated. Naturally, both plates were gone. The Turbo Tomato had a tattoo, too: one of those incredibly ghastly truck driver "sexy girl" stickers on the rear passenger window. I couldn't peel it off at the lot. I had to drive home with it.

The instruments were so damaged that if I drove over a bump, the left blinker would go on. It stunk. The woman's ice cream wrappers and garbage were all over the place. The EQ was gone. The roof hydraulics shot. A mechanic told me it would be 5 grand to fix everything MECHANICAL that was wrong with it. "Do you love this car?" I could not say that I did. He recommended that I just ditch it. A wrecking yard might pay as much as a few hundred for it. Or give it to charity.

Well, after contemplating giving the thing to my daughter in LA (it's a safer car than the one she drives now, a Dodge that is the Corvair of the new millenium), I realized that I just want this sorry piece of metal OUT of my driveway, out of my life, out of its misery.

I called a world famous charity and they are coming to take it away on Tuesday. It felt very, very right to make that call.

On my mind

The ground has opened up now that it has finally turned warm. And all the trees are budding. The night air makes one pleased with being alive. The body is the package the spirit comes in. Evolpost. At death the body goes down and the spirit, the best, goes up into the sky of our hearts.
- Al Hansen

Back in the 'Zone

Just got back a couple of days ago from the 48th state. Just business roundup and a chance to visit Barbara Rogers and Buddy and Sue.

It was a great visit to the Sonora Desert; I really love those cacti and sunsets. Fortunately, Buddy and Sue like to walk, and we took a morning stroll on the fab Sabino Canyon trail, although this time we were on asphalt almost the whole time... Jay and I are fans of the dirt trail itself, mountain lions be damned.

Did tons of driving and tried a few new roads, too. After Tucson, we made it up to Lone Pine very late one night, hoping to have 2 1/2 days of skiing at Mammoth. Wouldn't you know the whole town was blizzarded-in, and we just turned around, took off the chains, and high-tailed it to Shaver Lake. This is the amazing thing about the Sierras. Half the roads close in winter, first of all, but to get from Bishop-Mammoth Lakes to Sierra Summit in the lakes behind Fresno, it is best to be some kind of hawk. It's thirty miles or so by feathered wings, a whole day's drive by high-combustion Detroit engine.

Shaver Lake Hotel was cute & historic, but the walls are as thin as a Seabright beach cabana! The carousing, drunk guy who came into the lodge at 1:44 am our first night ruined my sleep. Ah, well, the slopes for the next two days were piled with powder (not all of it groomed) and we were in heaven.

Roared into Fresno just in time to have dinner with my dad and the head Curator at the Fresno Art Museum. My dad gave a nice talk, with about 24 slides, about his show there. It was a lovely evening and the show looks wonderful in the gallery they chose.

Merry Christmas

Thorpes together again, at last.

Actually, yesterday we had the big Melcherts Christmas dinner at our place. What weather, for a Christmas Eve! We not only offered sparkling Burgundy (bought in a Shell station in Bourgogne) on the deck, but we had to put up our big Italian umbrella to keep at bay the hot sun!

Trad dinner of turkey with all trimmings, plenty of Pinot Noir, and lots of conversation. A few songs by the whole gang (Veni, Veni, Emmanuelle) and nephew Galen joined up with my brothers for Bach piece in Jay's office.

God, I'm exhaustipated! Great to have Evan and Ariel around us, again. Much laughter and crazy gossip, all that youthful energy. Today, Christmas, it rained. Just to remind us all that this is not Bali.

What I Read at my Mother's Memorial Gathering

Mary Ann Melchert was a great explorer. As most of us know, she was born into travel and rarely passed up a chance to go somewhere new. Like any seasoned traveler, she exuded confidence, spirit of adventure, flexibility and organizational skills. She could pick up and go anywhere at the drop of a hat.

She started her travels in a time and place that don’t exist anymore. There is no going back to the world of the British Raj, nor to a third world Japan newly released from occupation. I did not know the significance of my mother’s rootlessness until she gave me a copy of a novelist’s memoirs, Penelope Lively’s Oleander, Jacaranda, about the writer’s own attempt to revisit a childhood home in Egypt. Reading this book, I understood immediately my mom’s lack of a homeland, and that she was always more or less on the road. The book was her way of telling me who she was, where she was from, and what my own children were faced with, growing up in British Hong Kong. After I read the book, my mom told me that when she meets someone who is similarly displaced from their ethnic motherland, she feels instant kinship, in her own words, “It doesn’t matter where they are from, where they were raised, but every time, it’s as if I’ve found my long lost best friend.” This may answer why my mom was so close to the Salvadoran lady who manned the phone at the Honda repair shop, or with birds fallen from their nests, and with any number of displaced people.

Her language abilities were amazing. I saw her winning a heated, rapid-fire argument, in French, with a Geneva hotelier; singing about rice paddies in Tagalog, and charming a Carabiniero directing traffic in Rome.

Travel literature, including maps, was of particular interest to my mother. She had every AAA map to northern California’s regions and cities, just in the way that she had well-worn, self-annotated maps of Istanbul and Rome (view here, a Caravaggio here). She could lead a friend through Rome and take in all the Borromini churches and the best gelateria in one fascinating morning stroll. On the road, she’d have her own exhaustive diary going, plastered colorfully with wine labels, calling cards, and cut up postcards; but she’d also have, packed next to maps and a guide book, something appropriately atmospheric like Washington Irving’s Tales of the Alhambra (for Spain) or Marguerite Duras’ The Lover (for Southeast Asia).

Actually, she was a master at packing, and she loved to reminisce about both packing disasters (her family’s overturned luggage cart in a busy Calcutta road) and packing successes (me as a newborn sleeping in a crate on the floorboards of the Oldsmobile, my brothers’ tricycles on the roof, our great move to California). She was always discovering lightweight suitcases or ingenious pocketbooks, and gave these freely to traveling family and friends.

With the same passion that some women have for getting their hands on the big fall issue of Vogue magazine, Mary Ann treasured the large New York Times annual listing of cargo ships which take on a small number of paying passengers, listed with ports of call for the coming year.

She had extraordinary respect and affection for train conductors, taxi drivers, and travel agents. She once told me of the taxi driver in Chicago in about 1950, who was nice enough to take her suitcase up a flight of stairs. He gave her a tip on the proper handling of a knife or dagger, in case of self defense. (Not like this, but like this; you’ll have more control and maneuverability).

And she knew everything about her driving instructor, a young guy moonlighting in a ragtime band that just got a Europe gig. After her last driving lesson, I watched jealously as she treated him, at our kitchen table, to a succession of fresh pancakes, with the bottle of real maple syrup.

She didn’t learn to drive until she was about forty, but she took to it like a London cabbie, and she’d often say she’d been a truck driver in a past life. She knew which lanes to avoid on the Bay Bridge, and how to hit the green lights on Telegraph.

One morning when I had just stepped off a plane and was driving my rental car to her house, I spotted her in her own little blue Honda, turning right onto the street off which I was turning LEFT. She didn’t see my wave or pay attention to my toot-toot, so, without a house key, I figured I’d just follow her to her destination. What ensued was a circuitous chase through the streets of Berkeley. Was I out of my mind, trying to keep up with her? The Little Old Lady from Pasadena had nothing on her. She avoided streets with 4-way stops and those maddening Berkeley concrete road blocks like a Grand Prix champion. I was sure that she’d taken me for a masher, and that she was trying to shake me. But when we came to a stop near the Berkeley Bowl, and I stumbled out of my car ready with apologies, she greeted me with a cheery, “Hey! Greetings! I was not expecting you until supper time!”

Make no mistake, though, she knew the rules of the road and was a smart and careful driver. She respected alternate merging and rights-of-way. She never, ever, used her horn, even when stuck behind an inconsiderate driver who wouldn’t move into the intersection to make a left turn on a green light. “Oh, get your bucket up there” my mom would say.

She told me, once, about ten years ago, that if fate would require it, she would be most content to be “one of those women who has to live in her car.” I think, actually, that the idea delighted her. In a way, she did live in her car. She could be comfortable wherever she went, something more out of familiarity with travel than from mere domesticity. She groaned amicably if she ever had to tell someone her zodiac sign: “Taurus, the domestic beast.” I am quite certain that her hostessing abilities were not borne of a penchant for the domestic, but rather, she knew so well all of the things that a traveler needs, and, in pure and simple kinship, she happily provided them: a hot meal, a comfortable bed, an appreciation of unexpected beauty, and amiable companionship. All her life, she looked after her fellow travelers. She’s on her way, again, now, a smiling face skipping down a long road.

Mary Ann Melchert: SF Chronicle Article

Mary Ann Melchert -- collage artist, wife of
famed ceramist
Nanette Asimov, Chronicle Staff Writer

A memorial will be held Dec. 11 for
Mary Ann Melchert, who, as wife of
ceramics virtuoso Jim Melchert,
came to know and host some of the
world's most celebrated artists.
Mrs. Melchert died Nov. 13 in
Oakland after a long illness. She
was 78.

"She was a tremendously kind and gentle person," said Harry
Parker, director of the de Young Museum in San Francisco. "She
was a great hostess, cook, and a lovely person in every way.
Totally without pretension and artifice."

Although Mrs. Melchert did not share the fame of her husband,
whose work resides in some of the world's great museums, friends
knew the two as a team.

"They seemed inseparable," said Renny Pritikin, director of the
Nelson Gallery at UC Davis. "They finished each other's
sentences. And they took care of each other."

Pritikin told about a gift he received last year from Jim Melchert,
who had created a ceramic piece for him, about 15 inches square.
It came in a spectacular drawstring bag made of small, rectangular
shapes of cloth, each a different shade of blue.
Mrs. Melchert had made the bag, and her husband's piece fit
perfectly within.

"It was a perfect metaphor," Pritikin said, who hung the piece in his
home -- and the bag right next to it.

"She was the archetypal woman behind the man who made it all
possible," he said.

When Jim Melchert was director of the National Endowment for
the Arts, Visual Art Program, from 1976 to 1980, Mrs. Melchert
brought the art world of Washington, D.C., into their home.
It was she who hosted the artists of Rome a few years later, when
her husband became director of the American Academy of Rome
from 1982 to 1986.

Mrs. Melchert was also an accomplished collage artist. She
enjoyed designing her own Christmas cards, and her yearly
mailings to friends topped 1,100, recalled her husband in a written
account of her life.

Born Mary Ann Hostetler in Illinois in 1927 to Mennonite
missionaries, she and her family soon moved to India.
She attended Mount Hermon boarding school in Darjeeling, taking
its top academic award for girls when she graduated in 1944.
Mrs. Melchert earned a bachelor's degree in sociology in 1948 from
Goshen College in Indiana, where she studied German, Greek and
theology. She intended to follow in her parents' footsteps and went
to Japan to prepare for missionary work.

Jim Melchert happened to be there, too. In a 1991 interview with the
Smithsonian Institution, he recalled their meeting:
"Mary Ann had a song book in which there was a Thomas Morley ...
song for two voices. She liked to sing, but she never found anybody
to do the other part. And I could sight read well, so I provided the
second voice, and we spent a lot of our first month together just
going off and singing, and later climbed Mount Fuji together that
summer."

The couple married in 1954 in Tokyo, and they returned to the
United States two years later with two children.
The family moved to the Bay Area in 1959. Mrs. Melchert studied
French at UC Berkeley and earned a teaching certificate. She
taught at Roosevelt Junior High in Oakland in 1972 and 1973.

In addition to her husband, Mrs. Melchert is survived by a brother,
John Jay Hostetler of Green Valley, Ariz.; a sister, Lois Young-
Bjerkestrand of Coeur d'Alene, Idaho; her children Christopher
Melchert of Oxford, England, David Seth Melchert of Oakland and
Renee Melchert Thorpe of Bali, Indonesia; and five grandchildren.

The memorial will be at 3 p.m. Dec. 11 at St. John's Presbyterian
Church and Center, 2727 College Ave., Berkeley.

Merry Old Crappy Weather

Jay and I are in Merrie Aulde Englande right now. While we are about to enjoy an American Thanksgiving dinner in Oxford, I did get in to London the other day. Nice Rousseau show at the Tate Modern, but highlight for me was going to Harrod's. All of Piccadilly was lit up beautifully... Fortnum and Mason's windows also a delight, with vignettes from A Christmas Carol. So disappointing that all of the Plum Puddings use hydrogenated oils... I have tried to give them up since I saw Ariel's documentary on the subject! Anyway, I broke down and bought a pudd' at Fortnum and Mason's, but at Harrod's I got almost a kilo of all the Syrian desserts that we had with Christoph and Diane when we visited them in Damascus. Such a treat to eat after dinner last night!

Big fun the other night when Jay and I went to Christchurch College (known to the Harry Potter movie going world as Hogwart's Academy) for Evensong. Just lovely cathedral and the choir's singing was bright and clear in between the old walls.

Afterwards, we showed up for dinner at Pembroke. If Christoph wanted to, he could eat dinner there every night, but spouses are not allowed (how do you like that... any other guest is welcome).

The whole event was amazing. Talk about tradition! We gather in the Faculty Common Room (looks like a gussied up version of Pat's ballroom) for either orange juice or dry sherry. Chit chat or read the paper, tut-tut; all very cordial and British.

Then a senior faculty makes the first move and we all shuffle in pecking order into the college dining hall, lit like a Rembrandt painting. The students are already inside, seated in long refectory tables, sans food, conversing away like kids in any college dining hall. We find seats on our own raised table at the far end, and Christoph made sure that I was in a position to face the entire hall of students. Crack! goes a gavel hit by the senior prof at the head of the table and everyone falls silent for the prayer. Then it's chow time. I don't recall it, but I imagine that the students received their meals family style at the tables. But elegrantly tassled pink menus on our dais showed the three courses we were in for... white fish with tapenade (served with a lovely German white) followed by venison with cranberry sauce, glace potatoes, and three vegetables (served with a nice Cabernet), and then strawberries & pineapple Romanoff. Well, that was divine!

God knows what glop the students had to ingest, and I did indeed feel amongst the privileged. Say what he will about the needy coffers of noble little Pembroke, Christoph gets a nice perk on the meals. We cracked the gavel again to begin our parade past the students, who all had had to wait for us to finish before they could leave... but off we went to a private hall where lunch is usually served to the faculty. By night, more baroque candlelight, and four decanters of after dinner drinkies. I tried the port this time, and there was fruit and little packaged Pembroke Chocolates, too. Every night these guys can eat this way; it was astonishing. They finished by passing around the snuff box, which I could not resist. It does clear out the sinuses, but it's a tobacco product and you definitely feel the nicotine jolt. Well, that's not the end of dinner, because we finished up at the common room with coffee (or choice of brandy) or sparkling water. Hoo-boy!

It rained hard for 15 minutes as I wrote this email, but now it's brightening outside. A wonderfully fragrant turkey is roasting away in the oven and we will be eating in an hour. So nice to be in from the cold.

In Memorium: Mary Ann Melchert

Mary Ann Melchert, my mother and the wife of my dad, Bay Area artist James “Jim” Melchert, passed away November 13 after a long illness. Her life is distinguished by extensive travels and her energetic commitment to a loving and secure domestic life for her husband and children.

She was born May 10, 1927, in Pontiac, Illinois, to Reverend S. Jay Hostetler and Ida Miller.

At an early age, Mary Ann moved with her family to Madhya Pradesh, India. Her parents served as Mennonite missionaries in a large network which included schools and a leper hospital. Living in the rural mission station during the winter, Mary Ann and her brother and sister boarded at the Mount Hermon School in Darjeeling. She visited the U.S. for one year, at age nine, and returned to India, her parents then starting a mission near Bihar. She graduated from school in 1944, with Mount Hermon’s top academic award for girl students. Her parents’ work interrupted by the war, the family sailed from Bombay aboard a troop transport ship, zigzagging to avoid being torpedoed, down to Melbourne, across to the Panama Canal, and landing in Boston.

Enthusiastically delving into German, Greek, and Theology at Goshen College in Indiana, Mary Ann received a BA in Sociology in 1948. I know she did some post grad work at Eastern Mennonite College, probably in Theology, but she did not get another degree. Three years later, after teaching first grade in Gary, Indiana, she went to Japan to do mission work, starting with language school. In the summer of 1953 she met Jim, who shared her love of singing. Their first date was an ill-prepared climb up Mt. Fuji, in which they had to spend a cold, foggy night before summiting. They were married in 1954 in Tokyo and had their first two children (Christoph 1955 and Davy 1956) while Jim was teaching at the Tohoku Gakuin Schools in Sendai. They returned by ship to the U.S. in 1956, where Jim worked to receive his Master of Fine Arts Degree at the University of Chicago.

Shortly after I was born, Mary Ann and Jim moved to the Bay Area in 1959, following Peter Voulkos, who was shaping a revolution in ceramic sculpture. Jim continued graduate work at UC Berkeley and eventually made his mark there as a popular professor of Art. Life at the Melchert home in Oakland was lively, regularly enhanced by visits from artists and students, with Mary Ann as their energetic and caring hostess. At Berkeley, she studied French and Japanese and received a California Teaching Certificate. She taught remedial reading at Roosevelt Junior High in Oakland in 1972 through 1973. She had a passion for quilting, sewing, and collage, and many of the latter were shown at the San Francisco Art Institute in 1981. She trained in the IRS to become a taxpayer service representative, answering taxpayer's questions phoned in to an 800 number. She stayed in that job for only a few years due to my dad's next move.

Jim’s postings as Visual Arts Director at the National Endowment of the Arts in Washington, D.C. (1976-1980) and Director of the American Academy in Rome (1982-1986) increased Mary Ann’s role as an official hostess. While learning Italian and exploring the region, she also organized the frequent dinners and public events at the Academy’s Villa Aurelia, for a time employing San Francisco chef Deborah Madison. She began keeping travel diaries of trips to other Italian cities, to Tunis, to France, and elsewhere in the Mediterranean. This practice would influence me when I went with her to India in about 1992 and I started my own collaged travel diaries.

Amidst her love of literature and biographies, Mary Ann regularly read several newspapers, and, a resolute pacifist, was outraged by injustices of all kinds. She touched the lives of many: not the least amongst them Jim’s students and colleagues, political leaders and activists, visiting luminaries, and her large extended family. She was capable of great kindnesses, sometimes caring for abandoned animals and injured birds. She is survived by her husband Jim, her brother John Jay Hostetler of Green Valley, Arizona, her sister Lois Young-Bjerkestrand of Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, children Christoph Melchert of Oxford, England, David Seth Melchert of Oakland, and Renée Melchert Thorpe of Bali, Indonesia, and five grandchildren.

Tucson MOCA hours of operation

Museum of Contermpoary Art- Tucson
191 East Toole Avenue, Tucson AZ 85701 Tel: 1 520 6245019E-mail: info@moca-tucson.org www.moca-tucson.orgHours: Tuesday - Sunday 12pm - 5pm, Third Thursdays 12pm - 8pm

Unfortunately the museum's website does not appear to be up and running with flying colors, so we will all have to telephone the museum to find out if the show is still on.

A Love of Ruin

Just in from the Tucson Museum of Art Biennial, but I must warn my readers: I left my notes in a suitcase. Many names and titles are sadly missing, but I will fill those in at a later date.

The major impression: Very interesting to see a thread running through the best works: a fascination with clean, dry death and a kind of crisp aging. This is the most site-specific biennial I've ever witnessed. On a museum map, I jotted down concepts like document, past, ageing, relic, death, and decripitude.

This being the Sonoran desert, there is a very real sense of dessication everywhere you go. Leave something out and it doesn't exactly rot (California forests) or turn to mold (New Jersey farms) or get eaten (Bali alleyways). The deterioration of things in southern Arizona is slowed by the dry climate. Compared to other places I know, it takes a little longer for objects to rust around here, and there isn't the moist devouring process of rains, insects, and bacteria.

So it may really be of no surprise that the works in the Tucson Biennial would exude dryness, a crisply preserved PAST, and unsullied ...may I venture STERILE... death.

Dust, dead horses, gravesites and the human mark are shown in various media but all in suspended decay. Just like a dry horse skeleton one might come upon in the desert.

The desert itself is a kind of display case if not merely a pedestal. Those hiking in the desert are treated to remains of all kinds, suspended in the heat and dryness, offering a kind of dry beachcombing. Picking one's way thru the Tucson Biennial was like that!

The massive photo portrait of gleeful, wrinkled retirees by their suburban swimming pool (water nearly unseen) was one captivating work exemplifying this sense of dessication. It was not just a parody of the life-giving desert oasis, but it was a glorification of preservation by drying.

There was an interactive piece, possibly by Lucy Petrovich, quite ambitiously employing 3D glasses and a joystick type of control, which leads the viewer through a graveyard. It's quite fun to virtually move through a tree or go along a brick wall, but the rigid white crosses and seemingly plastic flowers were perpetual reminders of the site's purpose. Never realistic in terms of texture or rendering, the graphics made me feel like I was in another dimension, a kind of half life. Is this what the dead see? In line with resident retirees and the desert's radioactive materials storage areas, I was struck with a sense of the desert being used for the purpose of storing death itself.

But therein lies also the twist of artificial landscape, which is more easily noticed in a place like Tucson than in other cities. The desert is massive, impossible to ignore. Whether you drive or fly into Tucson, you are fully aware of the forbidding natural landscape, and of its almost miraculous human civilization. Arizona has some of the world's most artificial habitations. Lawns and pools are changing Phoenix' climate, and threaten to do the same to Tucson. Artists like the photographer above and Petrovich understand this sense of the artificial.

Artists who chose to portray bodies almost always went for artifice, in either the sense of preservation or depersonalization. I noted to myself that Rembrandt Quiballo's work impressed me, but I am not sure if he is the artist whose photo representations of the body as image only, without spirit or life, was a highlight in my tour of the exhibit. I think these were two different artists, for Quiballo, it seems, works in oils. Would that I remembered the name of the other artist!

Recording dust balls was the subject of one photographic piece, also interactive (the images were displayed in book form, so that the viewers can turn pages). Again, an intimate if not fully loving presentation of the dried up dregs of a place (in this case, the museum galleries themselves).

Do we map things just to claim them or to preserve them? Man has charted, mapped, cataloged, and labeled this earth to an obsessive extent. Hard to tell if the hard-ass Arizona claim staker has a sense of humor about this, but many of the artists took a light-hearted glimpse at the matter.

Lora Alaniz gave a memorable cart-ography video, footage of a shopping cart that sometimes anthropomorphed as a suffering, wandering individual. Sometimes the subject just seemed to be a tool under punishing use, grinding along in the aching physical realm. Dig, Tucson has plenty of derelict types because it's cheap to live there. But this wonderful piece made me conceptualize territory, a huge issue in Arizonans powerful and ordinary. Staking claims, mapping, blazing trails, putting on a label... it's pure WEST sensibility. Kay Emig has a piece called Four East Mesa Trailheads that blew me away. I noted "seed beads" next to her name, and I do recall an amazing work that used this vernacular medium to excellent effect. Also noteworthy: Peter Happel Christian's Brief Notes on Existence and Will Sanders, who understands depth.

Out here in the desert, it's a game of the dichotomies of ruin and preservation, life and death, unclaimed and charted, the past and the now. This brilliant collection speaks to these matters, reads the desert, charts a slow passage of time... in soft, clear voices as plain as a dry creek bed.

Get Back, Jojo!

I've been doing the famous Beatles' lyrics backwards... I've left California grass for Tucson, Arizona.

Am ensconced in a house that can only be called gorgeous. ...Using same meaning as when style guru Made Wijaya says, Bali has the world's most gorgeous culture. More on that in a moment.

Finally managed, in this crazed real estate market, to find two properties which have a decent cash flow on rentals. One is a bit of a fixer-upper and the other is nearly perfect as-is. But it took me four months to find these and a few hard lessons in the Arizona market, to know to jump, puma-style, on these offers. More on those when I close escrow.

For the moment, though, I have moved out of the usual Ramada circuit, and moved into the Foothills home of artist and arts educator Barbara Rogers. Barbara is a gracious hostess and hardworking painter. She has a great circle of friends, some of whom I met at her place at a party on Saturday night. Kimberly Lund is moving to the middle east to teach painting, and we all celebrated her send-off. Fantastic middle eastern dishes came from myriad guests, and Barbara's secretary belly danced her way around the room like a juicy tinkerbell. What a night! Artists, bassists, curators, DA's, educators, the creme de la creme.

Meanwhile, I line up insurance quotes and edit the perfect commercial lease, starting my day with a stroll through Desert Shadows in blissfully cool weather (all the Tucsonians can't believe the temperatures and sprinkles of afternoon rain). Bunny rabbits with perfect white tails and delightfully tall ears scatter across Barbara's driveway. Lizards and quail families dash by like cartoon characters. The neighbor's gardening detritus has enough agave pups to start a new hedgerow in Montara. Yes, I thought ahead and brought an extra suitcase.

Now, about that word gorgeous. What is different about gorgeous, compared with beautiful, pretty, and handsome?

Gorgeous is a type of beautiful, but it denotes boldness and drama. Pretty is a type of beautiful that is plainer, more delicate, and closer to a natural, unembellished beauty. Handsome is about quality and good lines and simplicity; a beauty that is not usuallyh natural but is mindful of the limits of interference. Gorgeous is the aesthetics of interference, of clashes, of extremes. Barbara's house is all about gorgeousness. Her gold and richly layered paintings are everywhere. And if these are the ones that didn't sell in galleries, then what must those in other homes and museums look like?

Barbara's home is a showcase for her many collections... platform shoes are displayed like works of art, an oak table is a repository of desert artifacts, and museum-quality Buddhas stand watch over everything. There are lush curtains, oversize plants, massive armoires, and the lustre of metal, here and there, shining out from under a tiny layer of perfect tarnish. There are curves, ovals, flaws, and ridges. A red bathroom, a bronze bedspread, and a black lacquered grand piano (which got a workout Saturday night).

It's all so gorgeous.

adopt your own virtual pet!

The ONLY Internet Cafe in Phoenix

It seems that greater Phoenix made the leap from Stone Age to WiFi without anything in between. Oh, to find an internet cafe in this valley!

Well, thanks to some recent writer's conference at ASU (I love writers, they WRITE, for God's sake), there was an obscure posting of internet places near the campus. Two of the places were those kind of mom-and-pop Kinko's type outfits (Alphagraphics... apparently gone bust because I never found either shop), and the other was eJoy Cafe.

eJoy Cafe sits on Seventh Street at Mill, just opposite the big old Borders Books in Tempe.

It is loaded with terminals in a cool, high-tech setting (but comfortable and the coffee is good). There's a room in the back filled with kids on terminals under black light... is that the x-rated area? I don't know, but I am satisfied with the connections and refreshments, and I always have enough space to put my big binders at easy reach while I work on real estate deals.

eJoy, you saved Phoenix for laptop-deprived moi!

And did you know that, even though Tempe is the most WIRED town in Phoenix, no one else (not Scottsdale, not Phoenix) so far offers the humble user a terminal for rent. I mean, Tempe could have been the ones to assume we all have a laptop and take a snobbish attitude, but NO, they went the extra mile (or, at least the Asian guy who runs this joint went the extra mile) to be nice to the laptopless ones.

Thanks, eJoy!

Extreme Normal

I happened upon Never Been Thawed in, of all places, Tempe Arizona, in May of this year.

I cannot help but associate Tempe with the LDS Church, because in 1976 I went on a school chorale tour which took many of us into the Tempe homes of Mormon student hosts. It was an interesting experience for our little group of hippies from Berkeley. With two other girls, I stayed one night in the home of a girl our age, also in her Tempe high school choir, who looked like she was modeling her looks on Farrah Fawcett's. Tempe was flat, white bread suburbia. We ate dinner at Pizza and Pipes. Tempe became, in my mind, synonymous with Middle American tastes and culture.

That experience actually threads quite well into the realm of Never Been Thawed, which I saw in a cute little art house theatre (spiffiest, cleanest art house between the Hudson and LA) in downtown Tempe. NBT is about the far reaches of suburban dweebiness. It identifies the strange moment when white bread-ism becomes so intense in its own right that it is in itself radical. The characters are fanatics for FROZEN MEALS and they collect them the way my brother did comic books. There are many tasty subplots and plenty of laughs along the way. (Cast/crew candid shot -- hey, their damn website uses Flash, so I can't kife photos)... give 'em a visit at neverbeenthawed.com .

Oh, and about Tempe? This is the most mind-blowingly clean town I have ever visited. For having the big Arizona State University right there like a battleship in dry dock, Tempe manages to be cute, fun, and friendly. We had steak at Monti's historical adobe hacienda, listened to a reggae concert in the park, and took in NBT, which, incidentally, was followed by a concert given by the director and his band, The Christers. The appearing cast members' in-character demeanor was utterly brilliant, to the point that audience members clearly did not totally believe we were seeing actors.

Hope you'll get to see this wacky film!

Tell the Cook!

That soup recipe looks great. Mental note to self. Pardon me. No one reads this blog, anyway.

Inflight Hell

Visit by clicking:
Passenger in seat 29E



This hilarious file is making the email rounds, and for good reason.

It must have been leaked from some employee of the airline, a soul with a sense of humor greater than his corporate devotion.

I must say, I do sympathize with the poor chap in the ill-conceived seat 29E, BUT he's complaining about a -what- 3 hour flight between Houston and San Diego? Try the EWR-SIN sixteen hour backpacker and expat marathon! Not that I've been condemned to sit next to the toilet on that record-breaking astronaut run, but if I didn't love this writer, I'd say, LIVE with it, pal! Anyway, a fabulous piece of comic writing.

Flash Craig: the Google Biography

Never mind the endlessly fascinating things
that come up when you google your own name, just try finding a friend.

Now, I'm trying to get info on Flash Craig, christened Francis P Craig, known to many as Frank. Flash Craig on google just gets me snared into a lot of software, but to google Frank Craig is to hit a vein of exquisite gems. My husband's lifelong pal Frank Craig apparently led an amazing life. For one, the good doctor himself founded a hospital treating indigent tubercular men:




A truly dedicated caregiver, the man contracted the disease some years later.
Just look at this mega hospital that bears his name today, somewhere in Colorado...

I always knew that Frank had a talent for a fine technical artistry, but look at this illustration attributed to him:

Perhaps the painting was a bit of a break from his long boxing career. Frank "The Harlem Coffee Cooler" Craig had a distinguished run as a pugilist, first in America and then in Britain. A souvenir silk just sold at auction for $2.5K!

Must've really sustained some injuries, because the military didn't want him later on. He was 4F'd out of WWII:

Looking good, there, Flash!
That shot was snapped in pre-mohawk days, I guess.

And if it wasn't amazing enough to find out that Flash was a saintly Medical Doctor, I also stumbled upon this phrase: Dr Frank Craig, CEO of Smart Holograms. Dude, all this time multi-tasking like a fiend.

Look, you had me when you built the movie theatre in your backyard. We loved you for rewiring the Jag. We admire your dutiful care of your ailing dad.

Selling Organs on eBay Didn't Work

Tried to sell two antique reed organs on eBay and it just didn't fly. Dozens of "watchers" (people who tag the item on their own eBay personalized pages for observation), one bidder, but no takers.

Hey, I'm sorry if you expected this entry to be about body parts, but I LOVE that title and I couldn't pass it up! Since the Supreme Court doesn't recognize me as a bona fide journalist, I can't be accused of yellow journalism.

Grey day on the coast of Northern California, here. Paying bills before I head home to the jungle.

Saw Rize last night at the world's foggiest movie theatre, the Century 21 Daly City. Four times, I had to actually restrain my uncoordinated white ass from jumping up from my seat and dancing. It was the most infectious film about dance, EVER! An incredible visual spectacle, a heart-wrenching story, the best screen entertainment this summer!


Tommy the Clown and Larry:

Willy Wonka Too Creepy

Am I the only person who thinks Johnny Depp's portrayal of Willy Wonka is creepy? I think they've got false teeth on top of Depp's chompers, and, with his smooth skin and Dutch Boy haircut, the look is just plain sinister. What'd the makeup department do to Depp?

The overwrought beauty treatment reminded me of...

Michael Jackson.

Look, I know my man Michael just got acquitted from the accusations of a manipulative, dishonest southern California mom, but, let's face it, he looks kinda creepy and he spends way too much time playing with kids.

In previews currently showing in cinemas here in the States, Willy Wonka is seen doing some stuff that no one else I know does. Except Michael Jackson. Neverland? The Chocolate Factory, babe!

You saw it here first, but I have a feeling there are others who share my thoughts....

She's ba-aaack

I'd love to put a humorous spin on reasons why I have been such a dilletante blogger.

Fact is, it is not easy to keep up with a blog when I don't own a laptop and I am travelling back and forth.

I had several interesting little incidents and blog-worthy destinations since I left Bali in October, but the moment I'd survived one bizarre battle, I was already involved in the next. I have barely even written emails. Christmas cards? Don't make me laugh! Valentine missives? HAH! This writer has put into her novel exactly seven new pages. Life's just too filled with stuff to do and things to see, for me to update the blog in a timely manner.

In brief:

I returned to America in time to discover that all of my possessions being stored next door in the garage ...were covered in mold and mildew. Nonstop bleaching in the driveway.

Contractor Bill did a bang-up job on Architect Patricia's house. He finished in time (juuuust in time) for the Melchert Family (and Moss-covered Three-handled Gredunza) to descend upon the Jay n Renee campsite for Thanksgiving dinner. I mean, I was still moving furniture into the new house the night before Thanksgiving.

Bought a car to replace my cherry-cherry 1989 Saab Turbo convertible that was stolen in September, its California palm tree and sunset vanity plates reading "OR BALI" gone with the professional thief who did the dirty deed. New car is delightfully baddass black 97 Chrysler Sebring convertible, found in a San Jose used car lot. Vehicle ID check revealed it had a long history as a leased vehicle, explaining its amazingly good mechanical shape. Now, I never, ever, park this baby without locking the Club anti-theft device to the steering wheel. San Jose's autumn has never been so beautiful. Leaves on the trees rivalling those of the east coast. Amidst such color, we are delighted to make the drive to Sunnyvale as we shorten our list of viable used cars.

Thanksgiving was awesome; a Melchert quorum save for Oxford-based big bro Christoph. What did we have... fourteen people at the two Thorpe tables? Our college kids opted for a kids' table and an adult table. Guess which table had more laughs. But our old fogey table got the Green and Red label Napa Zinfandel (http://www.backroomwines.com/wine-newsletter-spring03.htm or just search for it on bevmo.com) and the Nautilus New Zealand Pinot Noir... God, how I love Beverages and More for their discount prices. I am so sick and tired of buying a bottle of Yellow Tail Shiraz at Bali's Delta Dewata Supermarket for about three times the price Cost Plus advertises back in the States. America's a fine place to shop!

My parents stopped by the very next day for a little visit, bringing grandson Galen. We all went out for Mexican food and Regnier told his funny story of why his father knows The Birds scene-by-scene, but has never heard a word of its dialog.

Brief respite before Christmas, going back up to my ears in dust and bleach, readying the house for another assault of family. I do manage to sneak up to the Sierras for a day of skiing via the Bay Area Ski Bus to Sugarbowl. Soggy snow (nine feet of it) makes for a day of green-rated slopes, even for many of the seasoned veterans. I felt like a klutz, but so did everyone else, it turns out. Homey ski lodge nothing like the slick and globally-savvy Mammoth ski area or the New Yorker infested Wyndham in the Catskills. I really realized how spoiled I was, remembering the last place I'd skiied: Vail... in its powdery magnificence. Bleary-eyed, I manage to get home and collapse.

Jay met up with me in New York, and we had a low key Christmas at Heathcote, the Cooperstown home of his sister and a perrennial Thorpe holiday hangout. No Christmas Eve party. No William Spain. But we managed. News of the Indian Ocean / Aceh tsunami hit me as I sat in the parking lot of the Catholic church on Boxing Day, waiting to pick up Dr. Thorpe and Barbara. Reports were sketchy, but when I heard that Phuket had been hit, I could only imagine our three delightful trips to that part of Thailand... PhiPhi Don, which in 1991 was little more than a crowded backpacker magnet; PhiPhi Lei, pristine one year and overfished the next... pre-Leonardo di Caprio, I might add. But enough bragging. The horrific clips of home video footage and eyewitness stories was to assault me every morning when I got back to California and CNN.

We had a nice Melchert Christmas celebration on December 30, again at the "green house" by the sea. Jay will never let me forget my panic in the middle of the previous night, when I thought I was realizing that the ham I'd bought to cook for the big dinner was not indeed already smoked. Whew. All was well.

Housesitter and blogger extraordinaire Renee Blodgett moved in to house sit on about January 2. Then I left on January 4. Seven hectic weeks in Bali, but, in the end, magical for me and Jay in the knowledge that our time there, together, is so precious.

Back to New Jersey with a cold shock at the end of February, just in time for several inches of snow to descend upon the Navasink peninsula or whatever you call it.

Great visit with son Evan at Princeton. Of course, he is in his senior year, which is the most stressful time for kids at that particular Ivy League institute. He was not exactly his jolly old self. Will write about the lectures and alumni events I went to (later) but highlight was surely the two hockey games... the semi final victory over Penn and Princeton club team's brilliant come-from-behind defeat of Staten Island's scary-looking Wagner College Seahawks. Now there's a school that takes its hockey a little too seriously.

One more big storm, leaving ten gorgeous inches of snow in coastal New Jersey. Flew back to San Francisco, taking a lovely overview of Mono Lake and, before I knew it, Mount Diablo... so low that I spotted my parents' house. The entire Bay Area gorgeously green after weeks of rain.

Today the weather was outstanding. Hot and sunny. My Bali-fied extremities are thawing. The badass car's top was down and I was a happy lass.

The Gates

Just wanted to say a word about Christo's installation in NYC this winter...

Yes, the color of the gates' cloth was a wonderful warm orange, evocative of monks' robes and orange fruit. It brought people out, it made people talk to each other, it jarred people from the routine.

Look at this lovely picture by an anonymous photographer. Very much captures the sense of the piece from afar. But you won't see too many photos of the suitable-for-bridges support structures. The grace and lightness of the cloth was almost negated by the rather ugly, squat supports.

From a distance, they were so inviting. Come and walk under! But once I was into the path of swaying orange, it all seemed so far above me. I could not reach the cloth, and all I saw around me were the I-beam supports. Get the idea of affixing your diamond earrings with gaffer's tape. Imagine wearing a white silk evening gown and slipping your feet into hiking boots. Ghastly.

I wanted the gates to feel like Japanese torii. Seeing the preliminary sketches, I thought that Christo's project would generate the same magic as the gates in Kyoto and elsewhere in Japan. To walk beneath a row of brilliant torii... now there's wonder, delicacy, and grace.

After an hour squinting with the gates, I got back on the train in time to hop in my car and drive to another Princeton Club Hockey game in Vineland, NJ. Did they beat Wagner College that day? I believe so.

What was good about the lunch at Maya

Nury kept things light and funny (even, at times, hilarious). He's a bright wit and dedicated writer, and the fact that he's been blacklisted in the Hong Kong press means that he must really be onto some hot stuff.

But the luncheon was about all things light and fun, and it was especially nice to have a chance to chat with Chris Sylvester, who has no small hand in running all the museums in Darwin. I made sure to haul her over to meet Ubud's champion of women's art, Gallery Seniwati owner Mary Northmore. Here's hoping some wonderful exhibition or cultural exchange comes out of their meeting.

Enjoyed another chat at the lunch with the tall photojournalist Irina Kalishnikova. And what a name! Really, all we needed that day was her ability to document the proceedings, but someone brought in a truckload of Balinese paparazzi, who snapped shots of the food, the celebs, the garden. Just a tad surreal after Sunday's beautifully subdued opening party, elegant for its lack of shutterbugs running around like hunchbacks.

So that was the literary lunch. One wit, one know-it-all. Veg or non-veg? Red wine or white?

Hitched a ride back to the Indus on the festival purple van. I had already missed Diana Darling and Jean Couteau speaking of Exiles, Expats, Diaspora. But I happened in on Tony, Ryan, and Bill's Guide to Bali. The fellas were able to fess up to their personal favorite spots in Bali, most interesting Bill Dalton's Pabean, where indeed my more interesting friends have gone for true relaxation. Oh, I may be misspelling Pabean.

Next up: that afternoon's surprisingly interesting look at contemporary Filipino literature.

GET THE HOOK!

The day: Thursday, the place: Ubud. The event: Literary Lunch with Hong Kong's Nury Vittachi and Australia's George Negus.

Because I knew I would want to do a little drinking, I rode in to the luscious hotel Maya Ubud in a festival vehicle. I joined in with a gaggle of stylish Australian women who mostly had not met until this festival.

They all know TV journalist George Negus from their home country. I do believe I've seen his show on ABCTV via satellite here in Bali. If I'm not mistaken, this was Negus. If I am mistaken, I apologise. The odd thing is, the particular interview which I viewed happened to be a chat with a gynecologist. The two men were speaking about menopause with utter seriousness, dragging their drawling Okker Aussie accents through an in depth view of Hormone Replacement Therapy and possible alternatives. It was as surreal as a Saturday Night Live sketch. Hey, good on them for tackling the subject, but what a scene! Once in a while, if we are surfing with the remote control, I say to my husband, "do you think we might be able to watch macho menopause again?"

Well, perhaps that introduction is unfair. But let me say that the moment we ladies slammed the doors and headed off to the Maya, the car came alive with titters about George's fauxes pas of the day before. Apparently shoved into a session about Islamic literature at the last minute, George had seized the opportunity to show his great knowledge of Islam and the Arab world. I have no quotations to support or deny the truth of this, but the opinions around me were that he dominated the discussion, concentrated on Arab Islam, and potentially insulted every muslim in the room. To be sure, he has written a book called The World of Islam, but I don't believe this makes him an expert. Alas, George would present himself throughout the festival as a man blessed with the gift of gab, glibness being what gets you through live television and, perhaps, uncomfortable moments under the limelight. I sympathise that he was drafted for a panel at the last minute. But read on.

George and Nury took to the stage just as we finished our main course. The Maya Ubud is such an elegant place, in sumptuous gardens, with amazingly refreshing breezes wafting in from the ravine. Nury didn't have a glass of wine at hand, but George did. And why not, for the food and wine and atmosphere were so seductive and relaxing. They bantered about Nury's muliticultural awarenesses and background. Nury joked about the ridiculously bland names of buildings in Hong Kong. George got things steered around to religion, sex, and politics, self consciously & humorously pointing out the problems of doing so. Well, here's where George repeated himself. I myself got to hear Negus in a panel on Monday, remarking that there needs to be a new religion which, right off the bat, reveals to all its followers that nothing is known, nothing is claimed, and there aren't any rules. He said it at the Maya again. In a way, he was paraphrasing something Michael Vatikiotis had said about urging Moderates of the World to unite, but I do believe that George was on his own when he said the UN needs to meet to discuss the problem that extremist views have on the world. And there was no mistake that this was about religion. Oy! Not nice.

More later, am dining with an author now. This was really the only black spot in a fine festival.

This Planet Ain't Lonely

Ryan van Berkmoes, latest Lonely Planet plant in Bali, presented to a packed room at the Indus the venerable trendsetting guidebook writers Tony Wheeler and Bill Dalton.

Tony is a quiet fellow from Australia, but he's on the ball and quick-witted, making it easy to see that he could start an empire of travel guiding. Tony has a Clark Kent - ish everyman quality, undoubtedly an asset to the one who must spy for a living. I could indeed envision him traipsing through Asia in the closest thing to anonymity any bulé / farang / gweilo / gaijin could hope for.

Bill Dalton is a wiry raconteur with down-east Yankee resourcefulness and energy. If Tony embodies the Australian's penchant for the walkabout, Bill embodies the American pioneer spirit of independence and exploration.

The two men related with vivid memories how they first crossed paths in the backpacker neighborhood of Kings Cross, Sydney, 1972.

On wits, willingness to connect with others, and pennies in the pocket, each figured out how to print up their tips on travel in Southeast Asia. Bill's area of concentration was Indonesia and may I add that his Moon Pubs Indonesia Handbook was what guided Jay and me through our 4 week honeymoon in 1979 ...second edition, that is. Although Bill's book beat Tony's Southeast Asia on the Cheap to the press by three weeks, Lonely Planet has become a mega business.

In Singapore in 1975, they bumped into each other again, at a time when Bill wanted to sit down and do some writing. Tony was able to tip off Bill which room in which hotel was conducive to productive writing; he'd just been there himself!! Room number two, but I missed the hotel name. Watch this space. Below that room, those many years ago, was a motorbike repair shop. (Bill went down to sit with the boys there to watch a Mohammed Ali match... who would that have been... Foreman rematch?) It was lovely to see these two guys reminisce on the old days... travelers' tales are a rich source of entertainment and even literature. Think of Somerset Maugham and Joseph Conrad...

Tony and Bill asserted that guidebooks have perhaps outlived their usefulness, and remark that we are close to a change in travel guiding, but neither man is sure he can see it exactly. Bill concedes that someone will and will start a new trend, just the way the Lonely Planet took over from old type Froemer's, Fodor's, and Fielding's guides from earlier decades. He pointed out that the traveling world is going to be changing its very STYLE of travel.

Look no further, fellas, because Paul Otteson has written that new guide book. The World Awaits (ISBN 1566912431) rides the wave of the future in travel writing. His advice for travel is like a platen for application to a multitude of destinations. And, interestingly enough, his take on the real pleasures of travel is that the destination is not what travel's all about. Otteson's book outlines suggestions for getting the most out of any journey, using the most refreshing concept in travel today: a pace and itinerary called threading. Otteson points out that paying attention to the actual roads and places between destinations is as rewarding as the arrival at a known landmark. Stop sleeping on trains from Point A to Point B. Stop using airports. Walk. Talk to locals. Camp out, perhaps. All suggestions; Otteson is no preacher. But he supports his style of travel with great appeal.

Let's thread on back to Ubud.

At one point, Tony talked about someone he knew who recently used an old edition of Europe on $5 a Day simply to see what's still feasible, what's survived of the beaten tourist and backpacker path. How fun, and I wholeheartedly agree with this revival of old guidebooks! Certainly, on my Spain trip in 2001 I had with me old guidebooks, and the one from the late 50's on the Prado Museum in Madrid was priceless. Even Washington Irving's Tales of the Alhambra was the most useful guide book in my posession, when we walked through that fascinating architectural treasure.
Bill likes to bring literature with him on trips... Somerset Maugham (also a favorite of mine), for example. And Tony spoke of "parachuting" writers into any number of destinations for Lonely Planet updates... no language, no clues, no help... the tips garnered by these intrepid travelers would prove better than those from a researcher armed with every sort of brochure and book and lesson. And I tell you, in a time when the world is virtually all "discovered" and there's even a map of Baghdad in a Sarasota 7-11 (seen with my own eyes), a person is well advised to encounter a foreign country on wits alone, just to invoke that unbeatable traveler's high of being a stranger in a strange land.

Bill stressed that the Lonely Planet and his books offered a certain style of travel. And this is indeed the style to which a place like Ubud caters. For better or for worse, the town (just like a hundred other backpacker ghettos in this world) has a plethora of desks for booking a last minute, cheap tour or air ticket. An Ubud banana pancake can also be had in Sri Lanka, Cairo, Puerto Princessa, and Cairns. The same sarong you bargain for in the Ubud market is also available in Boracay, Wellington, Bora-Bora, and Cairo. The backpacker profile shops the world, and don't think the crafty tour guides and taxi drivers don't know it. I'm guilty of having done the ten-dollar-spa-scrub tour of Asia, as blindly as a hippie in Rajahstan making a pilgrimmage to every cheap hostel in the backpacker grapevine. I see a pattern here.

I took the microphone to ask the writers if they had ever printed anything which was a regrettable mistake. Bill mentioned a shortcut to Lake Toba that had been supplied by a flakey woman (and the readers trying this route became lost in the deep Sumatran rainforest for 6 weeks, not the published day and a half).

Time and again, during this festival, various people reminded me of the second remark I made to Bill, Tony, and Ryan about how to find a certain East Bali beach. Ryan had mentioned that he put Pasir Putih in the latest LP Bali because it was too beautiful to leave out. From the audience, during the Q&A session, I said that I supported him in this because it's a nice place and people who like to snorkel should enjoy it. Apparently, there is a backpacker undercurrent of secrecy, but I certainly feel that Bali has been well and truly discovered and there's no real reason to hide a good beach from visitors. The worst threat to that beach, I feel, are the local guys who bring cyanide to stun fish for the aquarium trade. Always better in the long run to have a working dive shop around, which becomes a force in curbing such destruction.

Amounts of money to be reaped from tourism are usually higher than money from poaching.

There was an earthquake at 11:09 that morning, and I must have been off in my room getting changed for the lunch. I totally did not feel it, and it was epicentered just south of Denpasar!

Why pay RP250,000 for lunch at the Maya Ubud? First of all, the food, next, the atmosphere. But really, truly, it was to hear Nury Vittachi, an old friend from Hong Kong, speak about whatever came into his head. No, it's not a lonely planet anymore. I have dear friends all over it.

Thursday, October 14, first installment

There is a lot to say about Thursday, but I will just begin with a teaser.

The theme for the day was "The Long Road Home."

This was the day for travel writing, expat lit, exile lit, and other Southeast Asian voices.

It was a good day and a strange day.

But as I write this, magic time is beginning in Ubud. A salt water pool beckons from the Honeymoon Guest House. Big shindig at the Amandari tonight. Have to shake off today's wines. Have to make myself presentable when I crash the Amandari.

Next installment soon.

My Wednesday

On Wednesday, October 13, I got up at dawn and grabbed a few more flowers from the market and from the Jalan Raya Peliatan. Beautiful watermelon colored heliconias and bags of petals.

I zoomed into the Regency of Karangasem and dialled my friend Fran the Croupier, who lives in Padangbai. Her two day headache was a thing of the past, and, yes, she would help me host the big writer lunch at Tanjung Sakti. I made the detour into Padangbai, the bustling port. I bought ice and boxes of tissue - decorated with reef fish, go figure - and turned up at her gate. She hopped into the car and we drove to Seraya.

My handphone rings.

It's Wayan, my cook.

Yude has called me from Casa Luna... the party is off due to lack of interest. Four people showed up for the bus ride to east bali salt and sugar plants and they all wanted to leave the event early... oh, dear. So that was that. No lunch at my place.

I drove into my parking area and sighed. All of my staff were dressed in their special polo shirts with Tanjung Sakti badges. Very sharp. but it would be lunch for two. Ah, it's okay. I spent awhile getting flowers into pots and the place, oh, the place looked stunning. Pool's never been cleaner, the penjors looked wonderful in the steady sea breeze, and a bottle of Margaret River wine was chilling in the fridge.

I gave Cakra two envelopes of consolation pay to give to the two guys who were booked to come and play Gerentang. That's the bamboo instruments, tuned slightly off from each other to resonate well. They were to provide a little ambient music for the visitors.

Oh, well, so Fran and I had a good chat and I worked on some poetry and prose texts to bring to the festival. It was actually a restful day. The writers missed out on a gorgeous east Bali afternoon, but there's an upside to all this... the event was staged as a diversion for our author visitors. The fact that almost no one wanted to go to east Bali shows that the festival was just so much fun, who could bear to leave it, even for half a day?

Fran left for John's house at sunset, and I spent the night at home in my own bed.

Next morning, after pineapple and coffee, I got right back into the gold Toyota Kijang and blasted off to Ubud. Yeah, that was Wednesday.

Sorry to have missed some of the events back at the festival, but on the bright side the lack of interest in Janet's east Bali tour means one thing. NO ONE WANTED TO LEAVE UBUD. The writers all were having such a marvelous time at the festival... they didn't need a distraction like a trip to east Bali. A very good indicator of the festival's success.

So no hard feelings at all. Glad to be of service to the fest.

Tuesday night at the Festival

Tuesday night I had a nice little dinner fixed by my cook, Wayan. Then I zoomed off in the car to Ubud in time to catch the English language Wayang Kulit by dalang Wayan Wija in Ubud's Wantilan.

Okay, what is it with Wayan Wija? Is my memory colored and blurred? Didn't I see him perform shadow puppetry in English a couple of years ago at Ubud's SaiSai Bar? Wasn't he a sexy young guy with long hair to whom all of the white girls flocked after the performance? Tuesday at the Ubud Wantilan, the dalang was a serious but heavily talented fellow with short hair and no groupies. Ach, maybe it is just that Ubud is not currently attracting so many hot young gals who pick up extra pay as artists' models. Maybe our amazing Wayan has matured. Maybe he just got a haircut.

ANY WAY...

The Wayang Kulit Tuesday night was wonderful. The truncated team of musicians and puppet master was off to a late start and I am ashamed to admit that I left sometime between the obligatory fight scene and the moment when balance was restored in the forest and in earth itself. I was dog tired and wanted to collapse in my lovely room at the Honeymoon Guest House.

But let me say this, Wayan Wija is a master... his chorus of frogs and his mastery of character voices are the product of genius. My hat is off.

October 15, afterthoughts

This was to be the most magical day of the festival.

I'm at an international literary festival and the hottest ticket is "Children of the Gods"?

Well, Ubud is no stodgy, oppressive gathering place, after all. The visitor to Ubud will probably fall under the influence of good magic. As a tree bends gently to offer shade, a silent protective spell is cast upon those who come here to rest.

You feel like a child again. When everything is new, when people smile at you for no apparent reason, when fantasy seems possible.

The Heavy Stuff

Alright, so Blogger lost my post from yesterday.

I was reeling from a day with a two star general, a Russian photographer, and a Balinese environmentalist. I was also reeling from at least 3 hefty Caipraihnas (how on earth is it spelled) consumed at the opening of Jill Gocher's photographs of Nepal at Ary's Warung.

The festival covered the tough-as-nails/won't-go-away issue of the 2002 bomb in Kuta. It was a senseless act that killed 202 people, more than 80 of which were Indonesians. I believe 21 countries lost citizens in that terrorist crime.

In the beautiful setting of Indus, there were panels on journalistic ethics, police work, and the notion of Bali as spoilt paradise... so much to chew on!

When I wasn't scarfing gourmet food at Indus, I was listening to some of Southeast Asia's published and polished. Most interesting people were George Negus (Aus) and Goenawan Mohamed. There were far too many cliches Monday, so maybe that's out of the system and we can move on for the rest of the week.

Because I am hosting a lunch for the writers tomorrow (in conjunction with Casa Luna), I spent most of my day preparing for that. Cheap wine glasses at Ubud's brand spanking new Bintang Supermarket, painting toilet-this-way signs, and picking up white chairs for the overflow tomorrow.

Had to miss my dear friend Nury Vittachi, whose Tuesday presentation was entitled, How to Write a Novel in 20 Minutes. Nury's Feng Shui Detective books are great fun and catching on in Australia, but he's paid his literary dues. I am indebted to him for editing and publishing about a quarter of my own published works.

Just so it's noted... Woke up to another subtle Ubud dawn, in the gloriously low key Honeymoon guest house. Hit the pasar in time to get several bags full of flowers... cempaka, jepun (that's frangipani), parigata (bougainvillea), and marigolds. Nice breakfast, ran right off to East Bali. Seraya's beaches are looking extra dramatic today after the horizontal lines of rice fields.

The Muezzin has called the faithful to prayer in this mixed city of Amlapura. It is hot, hot, dusty, and hot.

Tonight I zoom back to the festival in time for the English language Wayang Kulit.

The Festival Begins!

Quick report before I run off to this morning's keynote speech by Goenawan Mohamed.

The very first Ubud Writers and Readers Festival began on the 10th of October amidst a palpable buzz, mucho polisi presence, and true elegance.

Sound a bit schiz-y? Well, yes... expatriate life can seem a bit like having multiple personalities, so why not multiple viewpoints and multiple writing styles...

I checked into the restful Honeymoon Guest House and sent obligatory email to family members. Ubud is bedecked with pink and white banners welcoming all to the festival. The core of the event, the Casa Luna restaurant, is a hive of activity... tourists, locals, writers, and expats converge to get their tickets to the various workshops, luncheons, and events. I receive my volunteer's tee shirt and pass, and I'm raring to go.

The royal palace is THE place, magic hour is the time. Crowds of the curious gather outside as those of us lucky to be invited are searched by the police before entering. The very best dancers of Ubud perform a delightful welcoming dance, and we get a few speeches, each blissfully short. The Consul of Australia to Indonesia is there, the local prince, literati, and amazingly no true glitterati. That is significant. This event is all about the word, the story, the creation of literature and literacy. No fluff, and even the volunteer paparazzi are so mesmerized by the atmosphere of altruism, that few shots are snapped.

Of note, Tony Wheeler (Southeast Asia on a Shoestring got his legend going), Rucina Ballinger (hula and Balinese dance expert), Michael Vatikiotis (Hong Kong's most caring journalist/editor), Sarita Newson (her graphic and publishing work has set the mood for the festival... and doesn't she look wonderful with her grownup kids ...all in impeccable pakaian adat).

Organizers Heather Curnow and Janet deNeefe keep a dignified low profile, but their names are invoked again and again, in gratitude for their efforts.

The red wine is excellent.... and did you try the asparagus wrapped in smoked salmon?

I join Murni and Jonathan Copeland and Mary Northmore (Ubud's expert dealer in women's art) for a lovely dinner in the utterly magical setting of Murni's Warung.

I fall into bed, under mosquito mesh, exhausted and thrilled to be here.

Magic Hour, definition

At about 3:30 in the afternoon, when the sun falls off the center of the sky and there is a hint of a drop in temperature, a person in Bali perceives a slight cooling. It is possible to stand under the sun without baking like a potato.

This is the hint, the preamble, a welcome end to midday. Siang is ending, soré will begin soon. Borders are subtle in Bali. There is a melting and blending of time, a lack of precision in the sense of clockwork or the four temperate seasons.

Sometime around 4:30, there is a new shimmer to the sun's light. It begins to hit the leaves of every tree at an angle, just so. It is lovely to drive at this time, but it can mean a pre-mandi rush... when the Balinese hurry off to take a bath. It may be a bath in a stream or road ditch, it may be a shower in a modern home. Tradition remains; late afternoon is time for a well-earned immersion in water.

Drive through any village backroad between 4:45 and 5:15. Lovely girls walk contentedly with the newly washed household laundry in a bucket. Usually, still, on their heads. Fresh clothing covers their refreshed bodies. They've been bathing together in whatever area is designated for females. Alas, men were upstream (or perhaps clinging to a bridge, enjoying that uniquely Balinese voyeurism... checking out the women's bathing pool). But look at the girls now, strolling with brushed, freshly washed hair. Having an aversion to hair dryers and a lazy sense of hairstyle, I do love to see so many heads of wet hair.

It is the unabashed love of bathing. It is the glorification of water on skin. It is one of the charms of Bali. It is the beginning of magic time.

Get home, quick. Run to the kitchen to make a gin and tonic or a cup of tea, and march it out to where the sun can be seen, ready to set. Who's got a guitar? Anyone got a drum or claves? This is magic time at Tanjung Sakti, when Jay practices riffs from the "fake books" for a couple of hours. And I get to sing along.

But what's happening all around us is the rapid ripening of the sky. Blue becomes yellow and pink, violet, gold, anything goes and it goes quickly. The last straggling egrets have left for the roost and we are amazed to see a few swallows or swifts, darting around for bugs to eat. Soon, a gecko will call from a roof eave, and a bat will take over where the swallows left off. In the jungle, the cliche goes, night falls like a bullet. Too true. Suddenly, magic time is over.

I will be eating my dinner in darkness when I begin to hear the music of Pak Sukarsa, the farmer next door. Jay plays his guitar at magic hour, but Sukarsa waits until nightfall to bang away on his bamboo invention, or to play flute. Or host a cackling storyteller.

So She's Going Back to Bali

Ach! Yet another extemporaneous entry.

Time to get on a plane again. I am leaving a house construction project that is nearly finished. I have the bathrooom I want, the fireplace I want, the friggin' door knobs I want, and yet I leave it all behind for ten or twelve days.

I will be taking this trip for several reasons.

The first reason: A theory... I have traveled so much and so often in the last 16 years, I tend to mark the passage of time in terms of trips taken. I had to book a flight. Back in June, I could not think about the future without a flight itinerary acting as a kind of softly glowing beacon demarking the limits of my time in California.

The second reason: the girl can't pass up a bargain. In the month of June only, Cathay Pacific Airways (nice seats, pleasant crew, good routes, terrrrrrrible food) was offering US$600 round trip flights (economy class) from SFO, LAX, EWR, or JFK, to Denpasar. How can you beat that?

The third reason: I miss my loving husband, who will be in residence at the Bali house, having just returned from a business trip down under. My marriage vows did not say, "for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, separated by the world's largest ocean..." It's high time we renew our reciprocal slavery. Truly, I could have booked the mini-break for 3 weeks ago, and it would have been just fine, but back in June I thought my will power was stronger, I guess.

The fourth reason: My dear friend Ann S., sound engineer and video editor at ABC News in LA, is already there in Bali. It'll be great to see her (even though she lives in Manhatten Beach and I have spent most of this year in the Bay Area) and it's too wonderful that she and a friend have planned this holiday in my Asian stomping ground. Actually, I don't seem capable of socializing unless I get out of the Bay Area. I have gone out to dinner with exactly one friend this whole summer. Jetting to Bali to host a dinner party for my Canadian pals does not seem so bizarre when I think of my local duties to my ailing mother and the house. These are enormous pulls on my attention, and I have to really get out to loosen their hold on me.

There may be other reasons, but I know when I am getting boring.

What is so great about Bali?

The weather, the color of the sea and the fishes that inhabit it, Wayan's cooking, the greenstone pool, the feel of my own mattress. It's home.

There is a big volcano that looms over much of Bali... the 10,000 foot Gunung Agung. It erupted in, what - 1963?, blowing a perfect apex and making everyone realize that he wasn't dormant after all. Agung is visible from our property when I cut behind the dining balé to turn on the hose there. That's a very powerful geographical marker for me.

There is nothing better than hopping into the car to go to the waterfall or to snorkel the Liberty Wreck or to go have dinner someplace fabulous like the Serai (woops, renamed the Alila Manggis).

We love to take in a shadow puppet show, a Kecak trance dance, or something unique to the island, whenever we want a dose of foreign culture. We love to hire the local dancers of our village, too, whenever we have a big dinner party. The girls have an audience, they become better performers, and they earn some very valuable pocket money. Also, there is a real charge to be had from moving about in a place where the culture is colorful and high profile. To drive the byways of Bali is to suddenly come upon beautiful ceremonies and processions along the side of the road. The architecture is continually fascinating. Parts of the countryside are wonderful, just wonderful.

The expats, though a varied lot, have many within their ranks who are so much fun to be around. Knowledgable and talented, or intrepid and entreprenurial... it's a great little scene in the intense global realm of explorers. There are plenty of flakes cluelessly using Bali as a way to find their way in the New Age, but there are also people who have a quest and stick with it. There are helpful people, concerned people, compassionate people. There are those with a real sense of adventure and style. There are some truly wonderful people at work in this little pocket of the world.

There is my crazy, loveable neighbor, Michael C., whose heart is in the right place even if he sometimes does the totally wrong thing. He has a way of garnering enemies, but I have to say that my husband and I can't get enough of the guy. He is bright, creative, energetic, and funny. He is never at a loss for words, nor for a new project or idea. He is mercurial but somehow genuine. When I tell them my C. stories, my friends beg me to write them down... to get a book together a la Colin McPhee's A House in Bali. I don't know about that, but I will say that having Mr. C next door is a lot like being able to tune in to some really great comedy show on TV... like Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In or The Simpsons... you don't know what the plot is going to be this week, but you know it's going to be great!

What else about Bali? The sunlight glinting way down from just above the western horizon... the cast of the light at magic hour. When my husband J walks outside to the banana leaf chair, guitar in one hand, music book in the other. The day is almost over, and its light flames out in a climactic spectacle.

I can't wait to get back to all that.