Calling Dante from the burning California

Posted on September 1, 2009 by Michele

Every summer, we somehow expect to see Red looking out our windows in Southern California…Only Dante can describe this Inferno…

The world witnesses Angelinos running away from wildfires one more time with the very similar images being (again) broadcast all over the world; my friends call me from everywhere to make sure that I am not one of the “evacuees”.

Every year’s fire seems more dangerous and more capricious; the picture above is taken from west Los Angeles with the fire mushrooming in the background (the red building on the right is the Die Hard building).

Just look at the downtown above…

You somehow never get used to the fire’s anger and unpredictability; after 30 summers in california, they still scare the hell out of me!

My eyes have been burning from the ashes and smoke all day and I am not even near the fires but my green mood is turning into red because of the wild fires.

Are we ever going to learn how to prepare for inevitable disasters and calamities?…

And of course we blissfully close our eyes to the fire dangers for another year and act surprised the following summer when it comes back; if you don’t believe me, read my posts on the subject for the last two years:

This is my post from two years ago.

This one is from last year. I still believe on what I wrote then: Southern California fires are pretty democratic, they hit the mansions and trailer parks and everything in between with the same cruelty… The current definition of a Californian is still “did or did not escape the fires?”

My green movement

Posted on August 25, 2009 by Michele

Abundant in nature, the color Green is Life and it represents peace, growth, renewal, health and serenity to me.

Dewing’s women are sublime in this chartreuse mist…

I like all shades of green: lime, emerald, mint, sage, etc…Here are some fresh strawberry leaves in my backyard,

the elegant magnolia tree in my street,

the green shadow of this fuschia flower,

tired shoes on a shawl,

my green room,

two fish on this 11th century Persian ceramic,

and two naughty fish hiding under the water lilies:

and one fish on this green door,

a mean tequila shot with some limes:

a way gentler one,

I like the green man thinking,

and these beautiful women holding lights:

Shakespeare smiling behind a green fountain,

the lonely bike waiting,

my favorite tree (sycamore) leaves,

and least favorite, succulent plants.

How about these smart water plants who lure the beetles with food inside at 8 pm and eat them at 12 am?

Even coffee tastes better in a green atmosphere as Starbucks understood long ago:

A green bottle with a red soul:

I have more pictures of trees than anything else in my archives; there is a quiet majesty about a tree that has always stopped me in my daily hustle; this one is looking in the mirror:

a green Buddha,

an exquisite Delahaye ,

Green luck,

green food,

beautiful narcissus,

last but not least, green hope…

“من چه سبزم امروز و چه اندازه تنم هشیار است…”

“How green am I today
And how alert is my body”

“Que je suis verdoyant,
Et qu’il est alerte mon corps”

Sohrab Sepehri

p.s. all pictures but the last one are from my personal archives.

This is a small clip I made of these images with the beautiful “THIS” song of Brian Eno:

From Mies to Kahn, I love my architects

Posted on August 12, 2009 by Michele

I still remember the outrage in the voice of my friend, Lino Bottaro, trying to defend his native city, Venice, against the Las Vegas Venetian hotel: “how dare you suggest that they did an ok job in Vegas? Haven’t you heard of great architects like Palladio or Brunelleschi?”

Of course I have heard of those two great Italians but I have a weakness for the 20th century STARchitects like the great Mies van der Rohe above, who’s more known for his Barcelona chair than his great buildings! Mies’ visionary architecture has ushered in the glass-and-steel skyscraper era.

I fell in love with Louis Kahn’s work after watching the movie, My Architect.

A density of purpose, a phenomenal sense of place and an intense spirituality define his works. There is a silence about his buildings, they have a sense of quiet…

Knowing Oscar Niemeyer was a beautiful surprise from an article in NY Times; he’s 101 years old and still working!

Just look at this enchanting blue staircase in Brasilia…

Cutting-edge buildings designed by globe-trotting architects have changed the face of today’s cities and there is no monopoly of architecture, a sensuous and intellectual art, like in the time of Frank Lloyd Wright or Mies:

Of all of today’s self-indulgent “star architects”, I still have a soft spot for Frank Gehry’s curves; you have to be in one of his buildings to see the frozen poetry in Bilbao, Prague, Los Angeles, etc…

His Bilbao museum is the 20th century’s iconic architecture according to the architecture critic, Ada Louise Huxtable.

Last but not least, Rem Koolhaas’ unconventional designs are a force to reckon with:

I shouldn’t even get into the Diva, Zaha Hadid or Jean Nouvel, Herzog and de Meuron or Tadao Ando (the great light and water architect)…Those will be for another post, another day. Richard Meier, Taniguchi and the phenomenal Charles Gwathmey have to wait their turn too. As you can see I am passionate about architecture…

“Less is more.” Mies van der Rohe

“The mother art is architecture. Without an architecture of our own we have no soul of our own civilization.” Frank Lloyd Wright

p.s. Renzo Piano is missing from my list because I have not forgiven him for his wild Pompidou Center design and his Broad Contemporary Art Museum in Los Angeles has not helped his case!

the photos of Prague, Bilbao, Venice and Seattle are from my own archives.

The truth is multiple

Posted on August 3, 2009 by Michele

The truth is multiple but a is not bigger than b…

“A good society must recognize that reasonable human beings will always hold irreconcilable views.” Isaiah Berlin

Maybe the Truth is plural (I am not talking about scientific truth); what would it be like, if, freed from the pressure to be right, we were able to listen to each other ?

“What would it be like if we had enough confidence in the truth we possess to actually hear the truth of another human being?” Robin Ressler

The most beautiful Persian woman

Posted on July 27, 2009 by Michele

I always thought that a woman out of a Persian Miniature will be known as the Iranian Marianne—maybe something like this dreamy painting by Farah Ossouli:

or the ageless super model, Yasmin Parvaneh (picture on the left) or her daughter Amber Le Bon (on the right):

It could have been one of the young beautiful movie stars or myriads of miscellaneous beauty queens or even one of these two who represent the separate worlds of today’s Iranian women:

Little did we know that an unknown young woman, Neda Agha Soltan, killed ruthlessly in the Iranian election protests last month would be the face of the Persian woman to the world…

Neda was a “casualty” of the conflict; she gave a face to the faceless victims. May she not have been killed in vain…

I am sure Melvin Sokolsky doesn’t mind the great Reza being inspired by him in making the Neda masks.

How Enrico Fermi killed all the Aliens

Posted on July 21, 2009 by Michele

An expression that can mean anything means nothing; when you want to please everybody, you please nobody.

Enrico Fermi, the great Italian physicist, killed all the aliens in 1950 by asking this simple/innocent question: “if extra-terrestrials exist, where are they?” This question has become the Fermi Paradox.

Even though I am a science fiction fan I do agree with the skeptics that, Houston, we have a problem:

a) the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) program to detect radio transmissions from other civilizations has been a failure.

b) the question of the Great Silence remains unsolved; if life is common, why don’t we detect their radio transmissions?

Today is the 40th anniversary of the first moon landing (July 20, 1969).

I remember the thrill of hearing about it on a hot summer day in Iran; the moon has not looked the same since!

Unlike my father, I am a lousy philatelist (postage stamp collector) but I was able to find the above page I bought in 1994—on the 25th anniversary of “the big step”—among my loose leaves.

The Drake Equation—an attempt to estimate the number of extraterrestrial civilizations in the Milky Way with which we might come into contact— is still fascinating to me but I see its light getting dimmer with every “silent year”…

N = R_ × f_p × n_E × f_l × f_i × f_c × L*

This once serious equation looks more and more like this cartoon from this very funny site :

To commemorate the 40th anniversary of Neil Armstrong’s historic walk on the moon, Google is offering Internet users a virtual trip to the moon.

I empathize with Fermi’s passion for clarity. I am simply unable to let things be foggy. The Drake equation is literally meaningless because “an expression that can mean anything means nothing.”

Related and Suggested Posts and Resources:

Carl Sagan explaining the Drake Equation.

Google earth lands on the moon.

Other Life not likely to be intelligent.

The new Drake Equation by Susan Blackmore.

The SETI Institute.

Scarlet, crimson, red

Posted on July 13, 2009 by Michele

Red—no matter what other name you call it by— is the color of passion, anger, courage, sacrifice, warning, fire, sin, revolution, love, power, etc…

red is my favorite color and these are some samples of my reds; let’s start with a red heart or a scarlet letter:

red tomatoes,

red fish,

red Persian rug,

red literature,

a red fountain pen,

and a red pencil,

red lips,

a hot red car,

another hot red car,

an aspiring red rose,

and a real red rose,

lovelorn poppies,

red peppers,

high calorie red,

a small red door,

and a slightly bigger one!

the fabulous Miss Wendy:

Los Angeles’ red light district,

red beads,

wine is one of my favorite reds,

red steps in Prague,

and red steps in Buenos Aires,

a disobedient red strawberry shortcake,

and a red blog…

and this is the end of my Red post.

Tea from the Land of the Morning Calm

Posted on July 5, 2009 by Michele

The worst thing for a tea drinker is having to dip a teabag into tepid water! The number of times that I have been served some warm water with a sachet of Earl Grey; that’s not what you do to a cup of humanity…

For me, Stakan Chai (a glass of tea in Russian—and Persian) is how tea (or chai) should be served: in a small transparent glass, no milk and definitely no lemon. Tea is, after water, the second most widely-consumed beverage in the world.

I was invited by Yoon Hee Kim to a Korean tea ceremony and here are some of the pictures:

“The chief element of the Korean tea ceremony is the ease and elegance of enjoying tea within an easy formal setting.” Here, Yoon Hee is preparing a green tea with amazing grace:

The ceremony was slow and tasteful (so unlike the rushed teas I prepare for myself) and the tea masters had beautiful fairies to help them,

and plenty of people to serve:

As interesting as the actual ceremony was the parade of beautiful traditional Korean gowns or Hanboks:

My friend, Ock Ju explained that the different colors and styles indicated the wearer’s social status; some of the embroideries were breathtakingly beautiful.

I love this 19th century painting I found in “The Book of Tea” about Persian women gathering around a samovar (samaavar):

To see some fabulous pictures of tea in different cultures, visit Yoon Hee’s site.

Michael Jackson’s untimely death

Posted on June 25, 2009 by Michele

Michael Jackson dies five minutes away from me at UCLA medical center. He was fifty and his death may be a godsend gift to the Iranian government.

The world would be focusing on his death and in spite of him flashing the V sign and wearing a surgical mask (like the Iranian protesters do), his death may be the hardest blow to the people’s revolt in Iran. The media circus will continue to take the attention away from Iran and that would be the real tragedy.

Not knowing the cause of it, I’ve been annoyed by helicopters hovering over my house all afternoon; I am saddened by his death.

In spite of all his recent problems, after the Beatles and Elvis, Michael Jackson defined the popular music of the 20th century. Monumentally talented but fragile and …weird.

I will never forget his most amazing performance of Billy Jean in 1983 (Motown 25 celebration). It’s like Fred Astaire’s dance: you never get tired of watching it.

“He was more like a beauty queen from a movie scene”…May he now rest in peace.

Fatherhood in an Age of Insanity—by guest blogger Dr. Ali Nasseh

Posted on June 21, 2009 by Michele

A wise man once said: Father’s Day should be nine months before Mothers’ Day and in some crazy way, this statement makes sense! For men, fatherhood is a byproduct of sex. At least, that’s what evolutionary psychologists tell us. Through the millennia, Children of men have been caused by our sexual instincts as a species and not through rational analysis of the concept of fatherhood. The same goes for other animals. Whether an organism has a one day lifespan like the mayfly or if it lives for a couple of centuries like the bowhead whale , the life of all organisms appears focused on survival, finding a mate, and producing offspring.

And quite frankly, if I were a mayfly with a single day to live, I’d also put mating at the very top of my list! Once that first item is checked off, we humans preoccupy ourselves with the arts, culture, and entertainment in order to fill the remaining hours of the day. Voila! But let’s not get off the subject. Father’s Day is the day we celebrate Fathers. And since I just became a father a month ago and am still a freshman on the subject, I would like to salute those fathers who came before me.

But what are the merits of fatherhood? Other than our biological instinct for sex that results into children, do we have any rational reasons for this act? The project involves so much work and sacrifice that one may wonder what’s the utility of the whole thing. It starts with dirty diapers and ends with a lifetime of anxiety over safety, health, and happiness of our child. An old, Persian expression says, “Children are hard, only for the first one hundred years!”

Yet, when a child smiles, learns, and grows, and especially when she pays her parents back with emotional pride, all those sleepless nights and anxieties melt away and the entire ordeal appears worthwhile. Or does it?

I want to pose these questions to the fathers and others out there, and to those who consciously or unconsciously chose this path. I’d like to ask you to make your case for or against fatherhood in today’s world of dynamic change and uncertain future. Are we leaving a better place for our children, or has our greed and recklessness destroyed our economy and environment irreparably? Is it still a responsible act to bring children into this world given the future challenges?

Dr. Ali Allen Nasseh

Michele Roohani

“Life is short, art is long, opportunity fleeting, experiment treacherous, judgment difficult.”

Calling Dante from the burning California

My green movement

From Mies to Kahn, I love my architects

The truth is multiple

The most beautiful Persian woman

How Enrico Fermi killed all the Aliens

N = R_ × f_p × n_E × f_l × f_i × f_c × L*

Scarlet, crimson, red

Tea from the Land of the Morning Calm

Michael Jackson’s untimely death

Fatherhood in an Age of Insanity—by guest blogger Dr. Ali Nasseh

N = R* × fp × nE × fl × fi × fc × L

N = R_ × f_p × n_E × f_l × f_i × f_c × L*