opens Christmas Day in 1904, and whose guests according to this site included Teddy Roosevelt, Lord Baden-Powell, Lord and Lady Cranworth, the Baron and Baroness von Blixen and the Earl of Warwick, the latter presumably the 5th Earl whose wife, Daisy Greville Countess of Warwick, was mistress to Edward VII among others.



The Jacaranda are in bloom again, such a strange and wonderful flower.  Here seen on Wilshire Blvd at Norton.

If you search "Jacaranda + 1904" you get the Norfolk, which is down the street from the Jacaranda Hotel and apparently you can see these lovely trees in bloom in Kenya as well as southern California.  Lilac and hyacinth in color and when the flowers fall they end up smelling like cat piss.  Don't park under one...

With so many of you flung to the four corners of the earth, as it were, it's hard to know where to begin, there's so much to tell.   It's gotten very warm again, for one thing, which I know everyone prefers to the unseasonable June gloom, except for me.  At my social club last night I got caught up on all the local news: Xtopher is recovering nicely from surgery and reading The Beautiful Fall about St. Laurent and Lagerfeld in the 70s ("Men wore makeup, students rioted..." as one review described the era), whereas ARH recommended the memoir "Life Itself!" by Elaine Dundy who wrote "Dud Avocado."  ARH knew both Elaine and her sister Shirley Clarke; their father invented the Phillips screwdriver.  Then H. who has dual citizenship announced she was moving to Ireland because her partner of 14 years who does not have the same staus H. enjoys has now exhausted her visitor's and other sundry permits, and H. said it isn't worth the fight anymore for them to stay. 

It always gives me the funniest queerest feeling when I hear people talking about having to leave the country.  Like the first time I heard of American citizens seeking political asylum (in Canada, but of course they've disappeared now).  Earlier in the day we'd been talking to Bernard in Paris and we asked when he was coming to visit, and he said it was "trop difficile" these days to obtain the permit to come as apparently the US still puts the French through their paces to visit.  Or it may simply be that Bernard who lives in "la plus belle ville du monde" as he likes to remind us, has no burning desire to leave.  I guess, however, really what I'm put in mind of are the stories of people trying to escape (or failing to get out) of wherever it is they happen to be as the situation deteriorates -- say like, you know, Saigon or Berlin or Shanghai or yes, even Paris once upon a time.

I asked R. the other day where he thought I should try to go if things got really bad.  Provided, of course, that I could still get out of L.A.  "Higher," he replied.

"You mean higher as in North?" I asked, thinking Canada.  I had thought of trying to get to Canada, in fact.

"A Higher Plane of Consciousness," he clarified. 

"Oh," I said.

He seemed a little annoyed I hadn't yet figured out that geographically speaking, no where is truly safe these days.  Even T. said, calling from Japan, that it seems so odd, everyone being patriotic and nationalistic when the truth is, the "disaster capitalist complex" (that elite group of corporations who profit off disaster and war, the arms dealers, the gun-runners, the private security/mercenary army firms) have allegiance only to themselves and move their headquarters to places like Dubai when the questions cut too close.  Don't Americans understand that? he asked.  Don't they see they're being duped?

I meant to ask him if there are jacaranda trees in Japan, but then I forgot.  Still, not to end on a sad note, look!  Brisbane is another place to see the beautiful jacaranda.  At the opposite time of year, of course.  If you can get there.