October update
October
It’s October, the best month—and if you don’t believe me, just ask Tchaikovsky or Fanny Mendelssohn-Hansel.
September’s big event was Christina’s successful completion of “Rim to Rim”—hiking across the Grand Canyon—in a single day. That’s something like 25 miles as the crow flies, and crows have an easier time of it because they don’t have to climb down one side and back up the other. This was an ordeal she’d been training for for several months, and she came through splendidly. Check out her Instagram account for some great photos. She took the Bright Angel Trail down and the North Kaibab Trail up. The Bright Angel is named for the Bright Angel Creek, which in turn was given its name by the Powell Expedition because it was clear and full of fish, whereas the Dirty Devil River they’d encountered earlier was full of mud and stank.
Hong Kong, ballot-box taxes, and other legal matters
My latest book review for The Objective Standard looks at the final book by my late friend Bruce Herschnensohn. It’s about Hong Kong, a city he loved and which, sadly, he saw being taken over by the People’s Republic in the weeks leading up to his death.
Also, my colleague Matt Beienburg and I wrote in National Review Online about the Arizona lawsuit challenging the legality of the ballot-box tax Proposition 208 in the Arizona Supreme Court. That case is still proceeding in the trial court after a victory in the state Supreme Court a few weeks ago.
The case I’m working on that I’m most interested in at the moment is the Brackeen case about the Indian Child Welfare Act. All four parties to the case asked the Supreme Court to take it up, and you can read more about that here.
I spoke with Mary Reichard and Jenny Rough of the podcast Legal Docket recently about the Supreme Court’s decision in AFP v. Bonta, the case about whether the state can force nonprofit organizations to turn over to the government the names, addresses, and other personal information about their donors. The Supreme Court said no, and I discuss the implications of the decision here.
Also, in a recent discussion with George Will about his new book, Hugh Hewitt made some kind comments about my work—notably, referring to me as a “pain in the neck”—and you can check that out here.
Frank Lloyd Wright
I’ve lately been reviving my love of Frank Lloyd Wright, having recently finished the biographies by Meryle Secrest and Brendan Gill as well as Fallingwater Rising by Franklin Toker. Of the three, I think I liked the Toker book best, although all three had their strengths. Wright was a strange man, half Howard Roark and half P.T. Barnum—and he had a tendency toward fabulism and exaggeration that stand as a real obstacle to anyone trying to write about him. For example, the often-told tale about how Wright designed Fallingwater in just the few hours that it took Edgar Kaufmann to drive from Milwaukee to Taliesin is almost certainly not true—yet it has become such impenetrable legend that it’s hard to say what exactly did happen. Artists, I suppose, must have a certain quality of myth-making about them, and I think a case could be made that Wright was the greatest of all American artists. It is perhaps inevitable that that would come along with a good deal of balderdash. I’m now reading his Autobiography, which certainly has a good deal of that.
But then when you see one of his buildings, all of that fades away and you’re left in the presence of true genius. I’ve actually only visited a handful of his works in person: Taliesin, Taliesin West, the Biltmore, Price Tower, Monona Terrace, First Christian Church, Hollyhock House, and the little-known (and, frankly, ugly) Anderton Court Shops in Beverly Hills.
These last two are in California, and Wright actually designed a surprisingly large number of buildings in California. I recommend a fine little documentary (alas, available only on DVD) about Wright’s California structures, called Romanza: you can only get it here. It includes the really quite moving story of the Berger House, built by Robert Berger and his wife Gloria entirely by their own four hands, and which is perhaps most famous for Eddie’s House, the only doghouse ever designed by Frank Lloyd Wright.
Nostalgia 77
My latest musical discovery is a jazz/funk/etc. “group” called Nostalgia 77, which is really just one person, Ben Lamdin, who collaborates with various other artists on his albums. Consequently, there’s a real eclecticism to his music. But I’m particularly enamored of “Little Steps” (featuring Lizzy Parks), “Quiet Dawn” (featuring Beth Rowley), and his cover (with Alice Russell) of “Seven Nation Army.”
Jean Kreiling
The latest issue of Think brought to my attention the poet Jean Kreiling, whose book Arts & Letters & Love I’ve been reading. It’s a collection of ekphrastic poems, written in a smooth, readable style and in sometimes tough-to-write forms, such as the rondeau. Here’s a good example: