Gene Joyner’s Unbelievable Acres Botanical Gardens

Gene Joyner build a rain forest in West Palm Beach that few have visited. Called Unbelievable Acres Botanic Gardens, it is open to the public by appointment or on select tour dates. Featuring rare tropical fruits, foliage plants, flowers, trees and a host of other botanical creatures, many of which you have not seen. Running around are a host of  reptiles that love the heat and humidity, in addition to a bountiful supply of bugs. Its a treasure.

This leaf has a name. I cannot remember all Gene taught me. Years ago, he was the botanist for the State of Florida. This garden/rain forest was built from scratch, by him. You have never seen anything like it.

John G Morris, Dead at 100

In 2015, I attended a photo workshop in Paris with Peter Turnley. We went to John Morris’s apartment, looked at his images and books, listened to his stories. Then we went to dinner at a cute place on rue St. Louis. Nobody knew who he was.

Through his work, John G. Morris allowed us to see places and get close to people we would not have otherwise known. In doing this, he taught us to see. Think about all the great photographers he knew: Chim, Cappa, Cartier-Bresson, all the giants.

A debt is owed to all photojournalists, especially the ones who gave their lives to help us understand man’s humanity to man, apologies to those who would find this politically incorrect.

Baby Driver

BABY DRIVER – great summer escape movie, especially if you like Heist movies. I mean great, even for a 70 year old grouch. Good guys, Spacey, Hamm and Foxx, playing bad guys. Terrific car chases: streets, parking garages, highways. Lots of corrupt people die. Romance. Tarantino like diner scenes. Music, music, sounds and fury. AND, for the DEFENSE ATTORNEYS, a heartwarming, though somewhat unbelievable, courtroom/justice scene.
Stay focused until the end.

Never Forget, Don’t Pay To Remember

This statue in Pere Lachaise doesn’t cost a cent to see. It’s haunting memory brings sights and smells of the Holocaust to your senses without charge. To make visits to the shrines of dead jews the equivalent of paying to ride at an amusement park devalues the debt humanity owes the dead.

With all the money in the world spent on campaigns to elect people or to promote international sports or to get people to fritter their money away at gambling casinos, one might think that some things are too deserving of veneration to be commercialized. Not if you are Trumpian.

Charging to see the artifacts of death from Aushwitz and making a profit offends me. No charge to see the memorial in Miami. No charge in Berlin. No charge in Berlin. And, when we went to Stutthoff, a work camp in Poland, we went in free. October, we are going to Terezin. I will let you know.

I don’t do fund raising, but give to the cause of preserving the memories of the dead for all, especially those without the funds. Some of these financially challenged might be dissuaded from turning to killing to earn a living.

DIANA, ACTAEON AND DONALD TRUMP AT THE NORTON MUSEUM IN PALM BEACH

Being museum rats that we are, Sharon Duckman and I went to an Atget show at the Norton Museum. Because of the construction of a new wing (a condition which makes it free), we entered through the main entrance, as opposed to the one near the parking lot, strange and true. As far as we know, Donny and the clan didn’t make a donation.

On each side of the door way, were two Paul Manship sculptures which I had never studied, let alone paid any attention to. You may be familiar with his work, if you ever visited Rockefeller Center and looked at Prometheus. Manship ranks at one of America’s most treasured sculptors on a par with Daniel Chester French.

So, while museum visits are part of our normal stretch, we have increased our visits to cultural sites to drown out the noise on TV and the words in print about our country’s Constitutional Crisis. Everything seems to turn into a discussion about Donald the Romanov and the royal family Trump. Why should this be any different?

The sculpture here features Diana. While bathing in the nude, she was observed by a mortal hunter, Actaeon. Sort of like being groped, eh. She turned him into a stag and let her dogs rip him apart.

I will get the dog’s picture on the next trip.

Raymond Sackler, Dead at 94

Raymond Sackler did the world a lot of favors. He donated art to improve our knowledge of the history of man and built a company which created the drug, oxycontin which threatens to destroy it.

Ironically, he built one of the world’s biggest drug empire based on product which numbs the taker, interfering with physical pain and inhibiting perspicacity, delivering it in measured doses, packaged in hermetically sealed containers, guaranteeing the absence of harmful additives. In most cases, the Government even pays for it.

Just for fun, figure out whether the net balance of his life added or subtracted from the human equation.

PURLIFE

What I really need to do is stick to a fitness plan. When I travel or shoot, I am moving. To keep abreast of the worlds of photography, US Government and art, including movies, books and museums, I sit. While my knowledge grows, my health suffers. Mmmmm.

This guy works at PURLIFE, a gym for the healthy in Del Ray. Too far to drive. 1/2 hour in the car for exercise leads to more sitting, even though NPR or a podcast is on the radio which defeats ignorance. Tough choices. I will go for a walk.

Wagons Ho at Costco

Never buy more than you need or pay too much for it. Here, we need water. Getting too old to push the cart around or fill it with cases of plastic bottles, which when empty are not good for the environment.

Get the car, Sharon. And don’t buy 60 rolls of toilet paper.

ANYBODY HOME

 

 

George Romero died. He taught me to be scared of the dark. Hell, I am old, which means I don’t carry heavy things and I get tired earlier. But age, the early age of television, let me watch Bela Lugosi while my parents were in the other room doing whatever.

Dracula didn’t scare me, because Zacherly was there to intercept them.

But, no one helped me with George. He made me believe in zombies.

“They’re coming to get you, Barbara.”