I take a walk every day, my morning constitutional.  And most days it's pretty basic.  Low-key, a nice stroll, On occasion, some days are a bit more lively than others.  Today, I turned the corner and headed to a grocery store a few blocks down.

It wasn't a good day for that car which crashed into the fire hydrant.  
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Now that "Captain Kangaroo" is trending, thanks yesterday to the always-egregious Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL), it gives me a chance to bring up a fond memory that I actually met the Captain himself (Bob Keeshan) at a book expo several years back that I was reporting on, and even got to do him a favor with the WGA.  He was a very nice guy. And I still have the book he signed for me.

The favor was small, but still a treat.

When I was wandering the hall, I happened to spot his booth where he was promoting his new book, and made my way right over.  We got to chatting and he noted that my press badge was from the Writers Guild of America.  He mentioned that he was a Guild member in the WGA East, though because of that he wasn't able to get the Guild's Written By magazine which was quite good, and he'd always wanted to.  I said that I knew the editor and would follow-up on it.

When I returned to Los Angeles, I gave a call to the editor Richard Stayton and explained the situation.  Without a moment's hesitation (not schocking, I know, but still, hey, you never know...) he immediate said with enthusiasm that, of course, he'd be absolutely to add Captain Kangaroo to the mailing list.

It's always nice to be able to do someone a favor.  It's hard to explain how joyous it is to do a favor for Captain Kangaroo.

Around when I was perhaps in the third grade, I remember reading in class about the La Brea Tar Pits in Los Angeles.  It's where prehistoric animals got trapped, and then other of their fellow creatures would see them struggling and easy prey -- and going in to get them, they in turn would get caught.  Only the lucky few got out.  The site was discovered in 1901, with excavations beginning in 1913.  Though I wasn't big dinosaur fanatic as a kid, I was nonetheless seriously impressed.  Even at that age, I thought it was remarkable that one of civilization's great archeological locales was in the middle of the (then) third largest city in the United States.

When I came to Los Angeles for graduate school at UCLA, there was a small handful of places I wanted to see.  Disneyland, of course was one.  A movie studio was another.  I think Catalina Island may have been up there.  And I really couldn't wait to see the La Brea Tar Pits.

Time passes.  Several decades, as it happens.  And during all that time, I never went to the La Brea Tar Pits.  I passed by it a hundred times.  I thought about going regularly.  It's next door to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, which I don't love but I'm a member of and go to periodically.  But for reasons I can't explain, I'd never gone to the La Brea Tar Pits.

Until yesterday!

Whatever the reasons I never had gone before, I finally got fed up and set aside a day, bought my ticket online, and went -- finally.

O huzzah!
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Afterwards, I was talking with a friend who had a somewhat similar situation, and he was extremely disappointed by the experience.  Coming from New York and having seen the Natural History Museum, he found the museum there almost nothing.  I felt differently.  I grew up going to the Field Museum of Natural History there, and it's impressive (though a bit dry) in it's own right, but I still was thrilled to be at the La Brea Tar Pits.  It's not that it's a great museum -- it's not -- but that's not the point.  It's that it's one of the great archeological sites in the world that's located in a major city.  And it was a joy being there.

Actually, the site is divided into two parts -- the George C. Page Museum, which they charge for, and the Tar Pits area with the excavation areas which is free.

The Museum is fairly small and, no, not impressive, but the history of what's their is wonderful, and so is what they display. For instance, I enjoyed stopping by their Fossil Lab where a lot of the research is open to the public, and you get to watch the scientists at work, studying the material unearthed on the grounds.

There were some pleasant displays and short movies, though a lot of it seems more focused on kids.  (They have a longer 3-D movie, but I passed on that.)  However, the reconstruction of prehistoric animals is what stands out.  One of the more surprising skeletons is Harlan's Ground Sloth.  We think of sloths and small, sort of cuddly creatures.  They have have been cuddly, up to a point, but back in prehistoric days, the sloth was anything but small. 

My favorite was the Columbia Mammoth.  The bones are all from fossils discovered on the grounds, though not from the same animals.  The tusks however were added separately.

I wasn't sure what the difference was between a mammoth and mastadon.  It turns out that the latter is small and more compact.

Bizarrely, though the Page Museum has its own collection that covers over five million artifacts, some of what was on display there the day that I went was part of a traveling exhibition -- from the Field Museum of Chicago!!!  (Not most of what was on display, and not the Columbia Mammoth above.)  The outside grounds are really the historic site.  There's nothing overly majestic about it -- most of the pits, in fact, have been mostly-covered up over time, though you can still see the a bit of the tar still seeping through, with occasional methane bubbles.

(By the way, it's not actually tar.  It's asphalt, which is a natural material.  Tar has additives, but it's the name that stuck over the decades.  Brea means "tar" in Spanish.)

New pits crop up all the time, though.  One area was such that they had to carve out the "tar" and what was caught in it, and then crated.  The crates have been moved to the Project 23 area, which is where the work reclaiming the fossils takes place.
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Currently, the part of the grounds where most of the active excavating is going on is Pit 91.  The bulk of what has been found there is fossils from Sabre-Tooth Cats and what they call ancient horses.

As I said, the La Brea Tar Pits (and its adjoining Page Museum) is most definitely not a great exhibition.  What it is, however, is a historic part of civilization.  And for that reason I had a wonderful time.  I wish there was more, but I was not let down after waiting to get there since I was eight years ago -- and driving by it regularly for decades.  I have no idea why I waited -- in one regard it's like any sites that are famous in a city, but second nature to those who live in their midst because "they're just there" and a part of your daily life -- but I wanted to go.  And continued to want to go.  But didn't.  

Until I did.  Finally.  And was thoroughly glad for it.

I am bursting with pride.  This afternoon, I just received the following notice sent to me here at this website.  What it said in full was --

"We would like to inform that you liked a comment ID:35915743 in a social network , January 9, 2019 at 19:48
This like has been randomly selected to win the seasonal «Like Of The Year» 2019 award! 

Thanks in advance to everyone's good wishes.  This is really quite an honor.  More than you know.  For starters, it's not everyone who can be "randomly selected" for an award about anything, but especially one based totally on just liking something.  If everyone could get such an honor, it wouldn't be random.

But even more to the point making this honor so special, I am never "liked" any comment on social media.  (I avoid such things, because when you do so, the service codes your likes and has a record of it used for targeting ads to you or any other reason they want.)  So, to receive a random award for actually not doing anything is about as good as it gets.

That said, I admit to having been a been uncertain who would give me such an high honor.  So, by using the information left behind in their comment, I did the best I could to track it down.  And it's from what appears to be something like an auto repair service and car dealership based in Kufstein, Austria.

I will modestly suggest that not many other people who have won their own honors for literary achievement -- whether real or non-existent -- to have done so from an international institution of such wide-ranging interests.

​Just more proof that we tries hard here to bring you the very best that we can.

I'm not sure when the awards ceremony is, but in advance I think the fine readers of these pages deserve at least an advance look at my acceptance speech --

"I would like to thank your Auto Dealership Repair Shop and its members who randomly selected me for something I didn't do.  One works hard on social media to be as thoughtful in as few words or actions as possible, while not saying or doing something that will make you subject to storms of hate-filled abuse.  If I knew that I could be so-honored by simply not doing anything, I would have done that long ago.  I hope to live up to your acclaim by doing so as much as possible in the future..  And as such, I will begin right n..."

Mr., Speaker, a point of personal privilege!. I have a small, admittedly-POINTLESS but personal bugaboo. Thank you for the time:

I regularly see the media talking about people waiting for hours to get a "selfie" with Elizabeth Warren, and people on social media posting pictures of their "selfies" with her. I love that she's willing t stay that long to interact with everyone, and admire their patience, as well.  But -- to be clear -- almost NONE of these are "selfies." A "selfie"  is very specifically when you yourself take a photo with yourself in it. When someone else takes a photo of you (most-especially when posing with another person), it's simply...a "photograph."
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And referring to me as a member of the Grammar Police doesn't change that.

​(I'm actually fine when people knowingly play around with language, or even screw up with words by mistake, as I and everyone does.  But not only is accuracy generally considered a positive thing, but there are some words that have a cultural meaning -- in this case, making oneself the active participant in the action, thanks largely to a change in technology ("I took this photo of me!") -- and I think it's good not to lose such valuable things.  And that's pointed as much at the media calling them "selfies" as anyone.  By the way, to be fair, as well, I'm sure this likely began when early on people actually did take real selfies with Sen. Warren. And after it adapted to a more formalized practice, the word stuck, when it shouldn't have.  Because...well, it's taking credit for what someone else did.)

Back in late June, I wrote a rave review here of the absolutely wonderful documentary Maiden that's about the first all-female crew to participate in the Whitbread Around-the-World race in 1989.  The ship's captain, who put the crew together, Tracy Edwards, also founded The Maiden Factor, an organization that works with charities to provide an education for girls who don’t currently have that basic human right.  In doing so, the foundation sails the ship around the world to help raise money.

As I've mentioned here, I occasionally head down to Marina del Rey where my cousin Jim Kaplan has a small motorboat/sailboat, and the two of us tool around the Pacific Ocean.  Yesterday was one of those days.  And as we turned down the basin where his boat is docked and headed towards the main channel, we looked towards what's known as Basin A and what we saw there was --

Oh, huzzah.  Yes, Maiden is currently docked in the Marina Del Rey harbor as part of its ongoing promotional tour for its The Maiden Factor foundation.  The boat will be leaving on September 17 for Valparaiso, Chile.

If anyone in the Los Angeles is interested in a closer look, they are having an Open Day this Saturday (September 14) between 11am and 3pm at the California Yacht Club.  The address is 4469 Admiralty Way, in Marina del Rey,. Public Parking Lot is 5 minute walk to the Yacht Club.

And for those patient enough, the documentary Maiden is being released on DVD in three weeks and will be available on Netflx as of October 1.

By way of reminder, here's the trailer --
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The past week I've had some jaunts around town, so I figured that this was as good a time as any to clean up a bunch of notes.

Last Friday, I drove out to Arcadia -- a town I've never been to before -- that's northeast of here, east of Glendale and then Pasadena.  I went to the Angeles National Forest Headquarters for no reason that makes a particularly good story.  Basically, it was to get a National Park pass, which I could have done by mail.  However, I not only was interested in going to the headquarters (I used to work for the California State Park system so I like such things), but also I noticed that the Los Angeles County Arboretum and Botanic Garden, which was only about two miles away.

As I've written here, I love the Chicago Botanic Garden (which is actually in my hometown of Glencoe), a spectacular place that's rich and vibrant and expansive and beautifully laid out and organized, with an education center, cooking demonstration area, carillon, various lands, islands and more, which I call the Disneyland of Botanic Gardens,  So, I was curious about the Arboretum here.  And as a member of the Chicago garden, I had a reciprocal entry here, which is always a good thing.

(Somewhat nearby the Arboretum to the north and west are the Descanso Gardens.  I went there several years back -- happily, it's also on the reciprocal program! -- and it was expansive and enjoyable, though fairly basic in its grounds.)

I had a pleasant time at the Los Angeles Arboretum, though found it a bit underwhelming.  However, before going any further, it's important to note that this article is brought to you in living color on NBC --
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(Okay, for some people here they won't get that allusion.  Most will -- it's the NBC peacock that they used for years as their logo to promote the network.)

​There was a certain charm to the area which I liked, but it's fairly limited, and not very interestingly laid out, I thought, with little description of what was there and what you were looking at.  The centerpieces of the Arboretum actually have nothing to do with gardens.  One is a big bandshell where they have concerts for the Pasadena Symphony and popular artists -- it's certainly a great venue for that.  And the other is the Queen Anne House built in 1895 by an early owner of the property, which has been used as a movie location.  Unfortunately, it's not open for touring through, but you can only look in from the outside.
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While I was in the area, I also swung over to see the Norton Simon Museum -- but when I got there the parking lot was full.  And when I drove back to Colorado Boulevard to find somewhere else to park, it turned out that the road headed off without any side streets or off-ramp exits for a couple miles, so I couldn't get back to the museum.  And by the time side streets came back in, and I could turn around, I was far enough away that I decided not to turn back and just passed it up for another time.

But while driving back through Glendale to Eagle Rock, I finally got to stop at a restaurant for an early dinner that I've had recommended by several people -- Casa Bianca, which was highly-regarded pizza here.  I've never eaten at the place because they're not open for lunch, and driving through rush hour traffic to get to the distant place was of no interest to me, though a friend of mine does that on occasion.  I liked their pizza, it was very good -- but I didn't think it was "Great," or at least great enough to even consider driving this far for it, unless I'm already in the area like this time.
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And then yesterday I took again ocean trip with my cousin Jim Kaplan, who I've written about here previously.  He's worked in the marine industry for years, and has a small sailboat out in the marina, and every once in a while I'll join him.  As my article noted, it's often a great time and and misadventure.  The last trip, for instance, there was a squall.  This time, the motor went out as we headed through the marina out to the ocean.  I asked him if he'd every docked his boat using the sails only.  No, he said.  Do you think you'll be able to, I asked?  He laughed, "We'll find out!!"

The sailing though was very enjoyable.  Great weather, and though there were choppy waves, it was still a fairly smooth ride.  That's Santa Monica Piere off in the distance, as I briefly took the helm.

The good news is that we got the motor running after we re-entered the marina and turned into the channel for his dock.  So, we made it back in one piece.  And he told me today that he thinks he discovered the problem with the motor -- that it got clogged -- and he cleaned it out, and the thing seems to be running better than it has in a long while.

When we got back to his house, it turns out that one of his neighbors is the actor Matthew Modine -- who is running for president of the Screen Actors Guild.  The election is next week or soon after.  He came across as a very nice guy, and Jim is trying to get him to join us on an ocean voyage.  I don't know enough about the SAG issues, though Matthew filled me in some of them.  Obviously he's biased in his observations, but I know enough about Guild politics and issues to get a sense where things sit.  And from that and a short, very pleasant conversation -- hardly the basis for forming a deeply-informed opinion -- I hope he wins.

(As a side benefit, I also got to ask Matthew about a running joke in the Out and About with Jiminy Glick videos that I post here and something I've always been curious about, where Jiminy often refers to his four boys -- Morgan, Mason, Matthew and Modine.  The short version is that he's friends with Martin Short who plays Jiminy, and just came up with that one day and threw it in without asking permission first.  And Matthew finds it hilarious.  The other reference is to another friend, the son of actor James Mason, named Morgan Mason.)

Next time, Admiral Kaplan and I head out in search of the white whale...

When I was back in Chicago the other week, staying in Evanston to be nearby relatives, I drove a few times through Glencoe where I grew up.  And as I passed the Village of Glencoe sign that welcomes one to town, I noticed that it said -- "Established 1869."  Which meant that this year, it's 150 years old.  So, I figured that that deserves at least some recognition.  It's not a shabby achievement.
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I'm not sure of the population, but it's always been around 10,500, so we'll go with that.  If you want to see about the town's festivities, you can check it out here.  But I'm going to keep this fairly simple and dive in here on my own.

I thought that when a town hits 150 years, especially if you grew up there, it's entitled to fairly good-sized photographic presentation.  So here are a dozen or so to help commemorate the occasion.  Most of these come from about 40 years back when I wandered around town and took some pictures.  To be fair to the town, Glencoe isn't always covered with snow -- it actually can get lush green from the late Spring through the Summer, with brilliant colors in the Fall -- but that's when I chose to walk around and take the photos. 

That's the old library on the left, which is probably my favorite building in town, as much for the outside (it just looks like a library is supposed to) as what's inside -- especially the wonderfully magical downstairs shelves that felt like you were in a hidden cloister -- although the train station is a very close second.

Behind the library, this is the town hall, which I always like for its old world, colonial style, though I still think of as one of the more "modern" of the significant buildings since it's only about 60 years old or so.
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​And this the turn-of-the century train station.  A few years ago I rented the movie Flag of Our Fathers, that Clint Eastwood directed, about the six soldiers who raised the flag at Iwo Jima.  At one point in the film, the soldiers have returned to the U.S. and go on a cross-country tour to raise money for the war effort and are in Chicago.  Eastwood needed a venue that looked out of the 1940s, and when the scene came up I though, "Gee, that looks like the Glencoe station.  Afterwards I did some reserach -- and it was..

​I've always loved this photo, not so much for the visual imaging of it -- though I do like that -- but almost entirely for the sign with states which is significantly the obvious.

The sign and its helpful notification aside, here's a better look at Lake Michigan, and the lovely shores of the Glencoe public beach. Fun fact:  it's more sandy in the Summer.

In fairness, no, the snow wasn't this high, nor were the drifts.  From the plows clearing the streets downtown, this was the result.  By the way, Weinecke's was a beloved hardware store, in town for probably half a century.  The building is still there and -- as a landmark and to keep the tradition, so is the sign -- but it's now a high-end restaurant.

(This was taken during the early afternoon, but the glare off the snow was SO bright that the camera auto-compensated and made it look darker...)

That was then, this is now.  This is Weinecke's today -- now the Guildhall restaurant.  And no, this is not one of my photographs.

Here's a much better, full view of my fave, the venerable old Glencoe Public Library.  Since the vegetation is lush and green, that's the first hint I didn't take the photo.

I've written often here about the acclaimed Writers Theatre in Glencoe, which began life in the back of the bookstore, Books on Vernon, just down the street from Weinicke's, with about 50 seats -- but still got critics from the Chicago Tribune and the Sun-Times to review of their productions, and even on occasion the New York Times.  It then moved to the far-more special Women's Club a few blocks away, which had a theater space designed for about 120 seats.  (This is where I saw the Harnick and Bock musical She Loves Me I've written about here often that I set up to attend along with Harnick and my aunt, who was his childhood friend and Northwestern classmate, and which starred Jessie Mueller before she went to Broadway and won a Tony Award as Best Actresses.)  A few years back the Wall Street Journal (which has sent critics to review plays here) named it the top regional theater in the country.  The company built up such a following that a few years ago, they did a major fundraising project and built a new, major structure on the spot.  

Grand as it is, they still kept the theaters intimate.  The main stage still only seats around 125 people, and the small stage holds only about 70.  It's further designed so that hey can also convert the lobby into a theater if needed.  Side note: last year I saw the world premiere of an interesting little play called Witch on the small stage, and in a few months the excellent Geffen Theatre in Los Angeles is presenting the play.  When some friends who attend a lot of the Geffen productions asked if I was thinking of going to see the play, I was able to tell them I already had...  And said it was quite good.

This is how far it's come from the back of a book store in a little over 25 years.  For the record, their photographer makes it look far better than I ever could.

Happily, I do have a few photos that I took during the summertime, so I think I should include at least one that shows how lush the forest is in Glencoe, as opposed to all the snow scenes.  This is the Turnbull Woods, part of the Cook County Forest Preserves, which I could reach a very short walk from our house, and where sat the Double Killer Cave my friend and I named and explored as kids.

I've written occasionally of the spectacular Chicago Botanic Garden, which I call the Disneyland of botanic gardens because it's set up into different "lands" and is so expansive that it has trolley tours and a miniature children's train set-up during the Summer.  But though it has "Chicago" in its name, it's actually located in Glencoe.  No single picture can do its magnificence justice, but here are two that I took that gives at least a hint of an idea.

And what the heck, we'll end on a picture of the homestead where I grew up.  That was my brother and my room on the left until we got old enough that he got his own room in the back, and I kept this one.

In many ways, this also served as Elisberg Stadium.  My brother and I played what we called "Fastball Tennis Ball in the driveway against the garage (our version of two-man baseball).  There was a basketball hoop on the garage rather than a standalone backboard -- this was fine, with one caveat: many of the houses in the neighborhood like ours were designed by the Keck firm, who were disciples of Frank Lloyd Wright (who designed some houses in Glencoe.  That meant that the rooftops were flat -- so if a shot went way-wild and landed on the roof, it didn't roll off.  You had to get the ladder to climb up.  However, this help train you to take as good shots as possible and not just fling the ball up in hopeful prayer.  Finally, the front yard served as our football field -- though the tree in the center of the yard made it a wee bit of an obstacle, however if you built it into your strategy it worked well as a high-end blocker.
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Happy 150.

As I always have tried to do on my more recent trips to Chicago -- since I now stay with relatives who live in Evanston, just blocks from the beloved Northwestern University -- I like to walk through the campus which has retained its charm on the shores of Lake Michigan, but added serious construction over the past couple decades.  A bit too built up in some areas, in my taste, but with incredibly impressive additions in other areas.  (Particularly in the theaters arts and music areas with new stages and performance halls, and also in athletic facilities on the landfill.)

To be clear, this body of water is not an inlet from Lake Michigan but a lagoon they built on campus a while back.  You can make out Lake Michigan right behind the trees.  But this lagoon plays a fun part in family history.  

Back when I was going to NU in the School of Speech (now Communications), I took a Communication Studies course, and for reasons I don't remember, one day the professor took the whole class down to the lagoon to practice projection.  (It wasn't a performance class, so I really don't recall at this point why we were doing this, perhaps to expand our awareness of the use of the voice or...oh, I don't know.)  But half the class stood on one side of the lagoon and the rest on the other shore.  And for decades after, my father who still be bemused by this and said, "So, just to be clear, I was paying tuition so that you could learn to yell across a lake..."  For what it's worth, I thought it was sort of silly at the time, too, though I enjoyed the rest of the class.  But that didn't matter.  It was always "That class where you yelled across the lake."

But hey, as long as we're down by the waterfront, I thought I might was well also include of my buddies who joined me for part of the walk.

Anyway, I bring up my walk for another reason entirely, for a reason that will likely mean absolutely nothing to most people, but it was a big deal to me.

Over the past few years, as I mentioned, I take this walk through the Northwestern campus.  And each time, there's one place I always make sure to stop at -- there is a museum on campus, and I always want to see it.  I don't mean I "always want to see it again", I mean quite literally...I always want to see it.  At least once.  But every single time I've been on campus, the Block Museum has been closed.  Either that was the one day it wasn't open, or they were closed for lunch, or they were closed for renovation, or they were closed to put in a new exhibition.  Whatever the reason, it's always been closed.  Always.  So, I've never seen it, and it looks very nice, and has a good reputation for a small museum on a college campus.  

But this year  ...are you ready? -- it was OPEN!!!  O joy!  I told the receptionist how thrilled I was to finally get in, and explained why.  She laughed and said, "Yes, we do seem to close a lot" -- but really, she was just being polite.  They don't close that often, just often enough when I'm there.

Alas, they only had one exhibit, but when I rolled my eyes at my timing again, she said, "Oh, no, it's a good one."  And it was.  "Caravans of Gold, Fragments in Time:  Art, Culture and Exchange across Medieval Saharan Africa."  It look at the Trans-Saharan trade culture from the days of antiquity, how the gold and even salt were such major factors in the area, and how historians and archaeologists have been able to put the past in perspective, often from only fragments. 

It wasn't a deeply-extensive exhibit, but respectably comprehensive, and very well presented, along with interesting video interviews of archaeologists talking about the area and this exhibit.  It will be traveling to the Aga Khan Museum in Toronto this Fall -- and to any folks reading this in Washington, D.C. (and yes, this means you Nell Minow, who I know not only lives in the area, but even went to the beloved NU briefly, and we had a class together -- but she transferred to be with her longtime boyfriend who is now her longtime husband.  But I digress...), the exhibit will be there in the Spring of 2020 at the National Museum of African Art which a part of the Smithsonian Institution.

The exhibit got a lot of funding, but notably some came from the Buffett Institute for Global Studies.  Yes, it's that Buffet, but only in being the same family.  Not Warren Buffet, but his sister Rebecca Buffett Elliott who went to Northwestern and about two years ago gave the university a massive donation for that Global Studies institute.  And when I say "massive," that's not hyperbole.  It was $101 mlilion.  Mainly, I love the extra "$1 million" so that it wasn't just a flat, dull $100 million...

Anyway, I finally made it to the Block Museum on the Northwestern Campus.  All is well...

And huzzah again!  We have the other of the short videos from yesterday's rehearsal of the Grant Park Orchestra for their free concert today.  I'll have the post the other, wonderful but much longer video from the rehearsal when I return from Chicago, because the Internet connection is unfortunately much too slow to get it to upload properly.

The orchestra is largely made up of members of the Lyric Opera of Chicago orchestra, and the baritone is John Orduña, who (among his other credentials) has sung with the Lyric Opera, performing a very nice rendition of Irving Berlin's "God Bless America."  The conductor is Christopher Bell.  Keep in mind that this is a rehearsal, so I think they stop a few times, but I've used the Pause button well-enough I think so that it should flow pretty well.
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