Ron's Log

3 Women

A discussion on Metafilter of 3 Women, the Robert Altman film shot in and around Desert Hot Springs in the 1970s. With links to Roger Ebert's 2004 review of the movie and a review by David Sterritt.

Some screengrabs from the movie are here including this one of Shelley Duvall and Sissy Spacek at Coffee's Spa.

IMDB.

World's Oldest Living Neon Found In Clifton's Cafeteria

In the process of renovating historic Clifton's Cafeteria in downtown Los Angeles, workers discovered hidden behind a wall a neon light that was turned on. It has no on/off switch and is hard-wired into the power line. It is estimated the light has been glowing steadily, but unseen, for 70 years. Museum of Neon Art director Kim Koga said it's totally possible for neon to last that long. The light has not been disconnected and is still burning.

Jesus Christ Prince Of Peace In Clinton, Iowa

This story especially caught my eye because I lived in Clinton, Iowa, for three cold years in the late 1970s.

Keaton Fuller, a graduating senior at Jesus Christ Prince Of Peace Catholic School in Clinton, Iowa, was awarded a Matthew Shepard Scholarship. I went to the Matthew Shepard Scholarship website to find out what they are all about. It says:

Iowa's Matthew Shepard Scholarship Program works with highly motivated students who are interested in advice and assistance from adult mentors to accelerate their academic experience and performance, improve their adjustment to professional standards of behavior, goals, ethics and success and out-perform their age group in transitioning to adult leadership roles. Scholarship awards are based on academic aptitude, academic achievement, community service and financial need.

And it says:

Matthew Shepard Scholarships are awarded to students with a reputation for honesty, integrity and community service, who respect themselves and others and who conduct themselves in such a way as to demonstrate moral and ethical leadership in their own lives and inspire others in kind.

And also this:

Applicant Checklist

• Graduating Iowa high school senior.
• GPA of 3.0 or better on a 4.0 scale.
• ACT score of 22 or better.
• High moral and ethical standards and conduct.

Mr. Fuller's high school will not allow the scholarship to be presented to him at the graduation ceremony on May 20 because "We cannot allow any one or any organization which promotes a position that is contrary to the teachings of the Catholic Church to present at a diocesan institution," according to Bishop Amos of Davenport.

I left out two points from the "Applicant Checklist."

• Openly Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual or Transgender.
• Demonstrable LGBT activism and community service.

Mr. Fuller wrote an open letter to the school's body and staff. You can read the whole thing here. I'll give you some excerpts:

Being the lone openly gay student in a small, Catholic school has not always been easy. Upon first realizing I was gay, I suffered a lot of anxiety over wondering how everybody in this school would treat me if I were to tell people the truth about my sexual orientation. When I did begin to tell people, I was pleasantly surprised and touched to find that nearly everybody treated me with the same acceptance and respect as they always had.

I have never felt as invalidated and unaccepted as I have upon hearing the news that the scholarship that I have worked so hard for not just in the application process, but also in my deportment and actions over the years, would not be recognized in the way that it should at the graduation ceremony It is difficult to understand how after I have spent thirteen years at this school and worked hard during all of them, I would be made to feel that my accomplishments are less than everybody else’s. This whole ordeal has been incredibly hurtful, and I am even sadder that this will be one of my last experiences to remember my high school years by.

Here's the website for Prince of Peace parish. It didn't exist when I lived there, but was created by the consolidation of five parishes in the city. The newest of those five churches was built in 1908. At one time, the local Clinton history teaches, the City of Clinton had more millionaires than any other city in America. The wealth was create by the lumber industry, it is said. St. Patrick's (1905) and St. Mary's (1884) were demolished. St. Irenaeus (1864) was sold to the Clinton County Historical Society and is being renovated. Sacred Heart (1891) is part of Prince of Peace's buildings now. And a non-profit has been organized to preserve St. Boniface (1908).

The Russian Front, From The German Viewpoint

While I was away, one of the books I read was Eastern Inferno: The Journals of a German Panzerjäger on the Eastern Front, 1941-43. It's the translation of three journals kept by Hans Roth, a German soldier, during the invasion of Russia. The last entry is dated May 6, 1943. It is likely he kept a fourth journal, but he was reported missing in June 1944 and no fourth journal has ever surfaced. The journals contain his explicit description of battles - the sort of material that he could not write home to his family about.

The journals have been published by Hans Roth's grandson and granddaughter who became aware of their existence in the 1970s when helping her mother move. It is not explained how these three journals made it home to Germany to be preserved, but it seems possible that he would have mailed them with instructions not to read them. The impression one gets from the journal is that his German wife would have obeyed that instruction.

Roth participated in the taking of Kiev and then moved on to fight in the Stalingrad area, but he was not with the Sixth Army and was far from the encirclement that destroyed that army. Much of the book reads like any other soldier's journal might. You could forget you were reading a WW2 German soldier until you are jarred back to reality by a random bit of praise for Hitler. A lot of the book expresses that war is confusing, boring and uncomfortable. A big chunk is the classic "war is hell." But when the Russians (or the "Asiatics", as he sometimes refers to them) finally push back it becomes something more like "war is way worse than any searing hell you could imagine." I felt some sadistic pleasure at his painful descriptions of the Russians' unbelievably vicious assaults as the Germans could only cower, retreat and freeze.

Here's a part that could be written by almost any soldier in any war:

Here on the front, we who proudly bear the name "Frontschweine" have become an inseparable brotherhood of men who have been hardened, who have been welded together by death and blood into a close community. And all that these guys, full of dirt and lice, have to hold on to in order to persevere is one thing: love—the depth of which nobody at home can ever imagine—a boundless love and adoration for everything that says "home." I truly believe that only those who encounter death breathing down their neck every day—be it in hand-to-hand combat or in the heaviest drumfire—are capable of such an unconditional love. Each and every one of us would gladly sacrifice his life for you at home. These are the troops who bear the brunt of it all, who stand at the very front line—this is what we think.

And, like most soldiers, he's patriotic and loyal, mostly accepting what the government tells him without much critical examination. He is convinced that the invasion of Russia was a defensive operation. He never considers the Poles, Russians, or Mongols to be anything better than sub-human (and he doesn't especially like the Italians, either).

Close to the Reds' customs house lies a large mound of fallen Russians, most of them torn to shreds from the shelling. Slaughtered civilians lie in the neighboring house. The horridly disfigured bodies of a young woman and her two small children lie among their shattered personal belongings in another small, cleansed house.

I am compelled to think of you Rosel and Erika, when I witness such horrible images. How wonderful it is that we are able to exterminate these murderous beasts. How good it is that we have pre-empted them; for in the coming weeks these bloodhounds might have been standing on German soil. It is inconceivable what would have happened then!

After the Germans take Kiev, he considers it a fine thing that within 24 hours the SS moves in to begin rounding up Jews. While attacking the city, he views the defensive forces as Russians and "Asiatics." When the city falls, the German army discovers that the entire city is packed with booby traps and remote control explosive devices. He considers these especially horrible and immoral, attributing them not to Russians or "Asiatics," but to the Jews. A couple of times he refers to the politics of the USSR as "Judeo-Bolshevism."

And then one day he is given the opportunity to witness the ultimate conclusion of Nazi thought:

I have a long conversation with a young SS soldiers of this "kill commando." They "freed" all the larger cities which were touched by our advance of the Jewish population. They understand their butcher job well; these boys are experienced killers, I am astonished. We soldiers in the first attack wave have never thought about the stuff that happens behind us in the cities we leave, as we're chasing further after the enemy.

The perspective of the front soldiers is forward, towards the enemy. He tells me about the holocaust of Zhitomir. "At that time we were bloody beginners," says the 19-year-old (with an emphasis on "bloody"). "For two days they had to dig 50-meter-long trenches; each trench was calculated for 250 Jews. We killed a total of 1800 Jews in Zhitomir, 5000 somehow died before.

"Then, on the third day the trenches are ready, everybody, from baby to oldest senior had to strip naked. The first 250 have to step to the edge of the ditch, the throaty barking of 2 machine guns—the next ones are herded forward, they have to climb into the ditch and position the dead bodies nicely next to each other, no room must be wasted—the larger spaces are nicely fitted with the dead children—forward forward, more than 1500 must fit! Then the machine guns rip the air again, here and there somebody moans, a short re-shooting of the machine guns: next! and this continues through the evening. We have so little time, too many Jews inhabit this country!"

First I cannot speak at all. This young man talks about it as if he was on a casual pheasant hunt.

I cannot believe all this and tell him so. He laughs and says I should have a look.

We are riding our bikes to the outskirts of the city, to a steep gorge. I will cut this short; the food in my stomach is curiously loose. What I see there is terrible, this horrible picture I will never forget in my entire life. At the edge of the gorge there are Jews standing, the machine guns are whipping into them, they fall over the edge, 50 meters.

Whatever stays at the edge is "swept" down. When the one thousand quota is filled, the heap of dead bodies is detonated and closed up.

"Well, isn't that a great idea, the detonation?" asks the blond with the smiling boy-face.

My God, my God. Without a word I turn and run more than walk back to the city. This boy is 19 years old! All this does not only leave traces on the clothes; what will happen when these people return into the homeland, back to their brides and women?

DHS Historical Society Soup Supper - Thursday, April 26

Desert Hot Springs Historical Society Soup Supper
Date: 4/26/12
Time: 6-8 PM

Miracle Springs Resort, Desert Hot Springs, California

RSVP 760-251-4549

Introducing the New Executive Director of Cabot's Pueblo Museum
Ginger Ridgway

Please come and help us welcome the new Executive Director of Cabot's Pueblo Museum, Ginger Ridgway. Her credentials include 14 years as Curator/Director of Programs at Agua Caliente Cultural Museum, and 7 years as Curatorial Assistant of the San Diego Museum of Man.

She will speak on "The Cultural Influence of Local Museums."

Enjoy delicious Soup, Salad, Bread & Desserts

Thursday, April 26, 6:00 PM

Miracle Springs Resort
10625 Palm Drive
DHS, CA

RSVP: 760-251-4549

Cost: $15 donation

National Register Of Historic Places

Having dealt with an important institution like Cabot's Pueblo Museum last week, they got around to adding Fenway Park to the National Register of Historic Places this week.

Yes, there's still an AIDS Quilt

The Names Project continues to do its work to preserve and publicize the AIDS Quilt. Parts of it will go on display in San Francisco this weekend. This will be the largest display of the quilt in San Francisco since 1999. My first boyfriend has, I think, two panels in the quilt.

This one, William H. Shepardson, is absolutely definitely his, and was made by friends in the Bay Area. He was a bear in a wheelchair. He died July 20, 1989, in Berkeley.

This one is very likely his. Shepardson is not a common name, and the odds of there even being two Bill Shepardsons is slim. If this is his, then I expect it was made by his family, who called him "Bill."

I saw both of these when the quilt was displayed in Washington. I found the "William H Shepardson" one first, and didn't know there was a second one, but it was located nearby and I saw it only by chance.

Here's what we looked like in real life. I'm on the left, Bill is on the right. This photo was taken in Davenport, Iowa, in 1978 or 1979. I do not remember ever owning shoes like that.

DHS Historical Society Soup Supper - March 1

You're invited to an evening with Legendary Hollywood and Broadway Producer PAUL GREGORY

Producer of The Naked And The Dead and The Night Of The Hunter (and resident of Desert Hot Springs).

Join us at this rare appearance by Paul Gregory and hear stories of this American Legend's experiences with actors such as Robert Mitchum and Charles Laughton as well as his happy days in their desert hideway with his wife, famous actress Janet Gaynor.

Enjoy wonderful Soup, Salad, Bread and Desserts - Presented by the DHS Historical Society

When: Thursday, March 1, 6 PM
Where: Miracle Springs Resort, 10625 Palm Drive, Desert Hot Springs
RSVP: 760-251-4540
Cost: $15 donation

George Chaffey - who knew?

I've been reading Southern California: An Island on the Land by Carey McWilliams. Today, while waiting for the MSWD board to come out of closed session, I read the passage below about George Chaffey, whose name McWilliams misspells as "Chaffee." (Wikipedia on George Chaffey). Maybe every southern California school child already knows the story of George Chaffey, but I grew up in Missouri. I've bolded some of his accomplishments in the passage below.

GEORGE CHAFFEE AND THE COLONY SETTLEMENTS

Something of the character of these early settlers, and their characteristic institution "the colony settlement," can be illustrated by brief reference to the career of a remarkable man, George Chaffee. Born in Canada in 1848, Chaffee came to Riverside with his family in 1878. Entirely self-educated, he had shown remarkable engineering talent as a young man, having designed twenty passenger and freight ships for the Great Lakes traffic before coming to California. It was Chaffee who first made irrigation a science in Southern California and who first discovered the remarkable adaptability of the terrain to irrigation. In partnership with his brother, Chaffee purchased a 2,500-acre tract near Riverside in 1881 on which he established his first colony settlement. The colony was called Etiwanda, after an Indian chief of the Great Lakes region. Dividing the land into ten-acre blocks, Chaffee brought water to the tract in cement pipes: the first use of cement pipes in western irrigation. In connection with this same project, Chaffee installed the first dynamo (which he himself designed) for the generation of hydroelectric power in the West. He was also the first engineer in Western America to file a claim on mountain streams for electric current. Bringing this current to the tract, he used it to illuminate a great arc light, or beacon, which he had placed on the roof of his home. This light, which could be seen for miles, was the first electric light to be exhibited in California. An immediate success, Etiwanda has remained a prosperous community through the years.

It was in connection with the Etiwanda project that Chaffee, working in collaboration with L. M. Holt, a local newspaperman, devised a method by which the riparian-rights doctrine could be circumvented in California. The pattern of legal relationships which he worked out, in the form of the mutual water company, has remained a basic pattern for all subsequent irrigation developments in the West. The idea was quite simple. When the Etiwanda tract was acquired, Chaffee formed a water company incorporated under the laws of the state. To this company he then transferred all the water rights which each portion of the land possessed under the riparian-rights doctrine, together with the rights which he had acquired by appropriation. He then transferred one share of stock in the mutual water company to each purchaser. This arrangement had the important consequence of making each landowner in the tract equally interested in the conservation of water and its proper utilization. In most irrigated projects, the owners of the lands nearest the stream head had either monopolized the flow or refused to do their share of work on irrigation laterals and canals. By first severing the water rights from the land and then collectivizing the ownership and control of the water, Chaffee had created a system which automatically insured equality of treatment and service in irrigation projects. Unquestionably the mutual water company represents one of the major social inventions of the West.

Following the success of the Etiwanda project, Chaffee acquired a 6,000-acre tract on which he proceeded to establish his famous Ontario Colony, named after his native province in Canada. From the point of view of social planning, the Ontario Colony of 1882 still remains the classic pattern for irrigation projects. In fact, it set a new standard for rural communities, not only in America, but throughout the world. All the basic improvements were installed before a single parcel of land was sold. The land was carefully divided into economical units; streets were laid out; provision was made for a community center or town to which all portions of the tract had equal access. Through the center of the tract, Chaffee laid out a great highway, eight miles long and two hundred feet wide, running up to the foothills. On each side of the highway, he planted rows of beautiful trees which are today a magnificent sight. In a parkway in the center of the highway, he installed a gravity-propelled tram or trolley car which ran the length of the tract. For the community center, Chaffee set aside 64o acres, one half of which was deeded to trustees for the endowment of the Chaffee Agricultural College (operated today as a junior college). To supplement the water supply, he tunneled under the bed of San Antonio Canyon on the theory that the dry creek-beds marked the pathway of underground streams. This was the first tunnel constructed to tap an underground flow in Southern California. To make sure that the colonists were a thrifty and pious lot, he inserted a provision against the sale of alcoholic liquor in every deed that he issued.

Ontario was instantly a huge success. A model of the colony was exhibited at the St. Louis World's Fair in 1904. People came from all over the world to study Chaffee's methods of colonization. By 1907 the annual value of agricultural products raised on the Ontario tract had risen to $2,500,000. It should be emphasized that Ontario was a pioneer experiment in rural planning, one of the first experiments of its kind in Western America. It was the model imitated by the other colony projects. While none of the other colonies were quite as successful as Ontario, they did succeed, by studying the model, in avoiding the usual mistakes of frontier settlement.

On the invitation of a royal commission, Chaffee later established a number of colonies in Australia. In 1884 he founded the Los Angeles Electric Company, making it possible for Los Angeles to boast that it was the first city in the United States to be entirely lighted by electricity. Returning from Australia after the turn of the century, Chaffee developed the remarkable irrigation plan by which water was brought to Imperial Valley, a plan that converted 500,000 acres of desert land into one of the great truck gardens of the world. To this early generation of settlers, of which North, Chaffee, and the Smiley twins may be taken as outstanding examples, Southern California owes an enormous debt. Men of wealth and ability, they came west not to retire but to build a new land. All visitors to the region between 1880 and 1900 were impressed by its progressive, enterprising, venturesome spirit. It is impossible to detect in these impressions even an echo of the idea, so current in our time, that Southern California is peopled by idlers, oldsters, playboys, and crackpots.

Later he founded the town of Manzanar in the Owens Valley.

For more detail on his involvement in the development of Imperial Valley I went to the book A Century Of Service, published by the Imperial Irrigation District.

It was not until 1900, when George Chaffey became associated with the CDC [California Development Company], which was already in serious distress, that work began in earnest on the canal-building project that started at Pilot Knob, extended into and out of Mexico and eventually wended its way to Cameron Lake, the settlement that would later become Calexico.

The deal he struck with Rockwood and the other officers of the corporation gave Chaffey five years in which to finish the necessary infrastructure and divert water from the Colorado River to the Imperial Valley. Within two years, though, he had completed the task, delivering the first water to the fledgling community of Imperial on June 20, 1901.

With the means to deliver water from the Colorado now in place on both sides of the border, what followed should have been a period of relative calm for the development company.

Instead, everyone involved began to file lawsuits, mainly against Chaffey, who had sought to protect his investment by consolidating his position and influence in the corporation, much to the chagrin of his partners. He would sell his interest in the company to Rockwood and the others in 1902 for securities that were valued at $300,000 (but when redeemed netted him less than $100,000).

Even so, Chaffey, who reportedly lost millions in the exchange, must have considered himself fortunate to have gotten out when he did. If he needed any further proof, though, it came with the flood years of 1905–1907, when the swollen Colorado River suddenly changed course, sweeping away the original headworks at Hanlon Heading and sending its entire flow not to the Gulf of Mexico, but to the Imperial Valley.

This timeline says Chaffey formed the Imperial Land Company in 1902. Wikipedia says it was founded in 1900. In any case, Chaffey founded it and that company laid out the towns of Calexico, Heber, Imperial, Brawley and Mexicali.

Las Vegan might try to visit Kansas City one of these days

In this Press-Enterprise report on the traveling World War I exhibit at March Field Air Museum some visitors expressed a cautious desire to visit Kansas City, home of the National World War I Museum. "I'm going to try to do that one of these days," said Mike Myatt of Las Vegas.

The Liberty Memorial at the National World War I Museum in Kansas City