March Theme Day - Glass

Glass in glass, a reflection in a mirror of the semi-circle window inside the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden.
This whole area that has always been lively market as far back as Roman times.

The Opera house has been rebuilt and remodelled several times. The most recent renovations have incorporated what was the floral hall

Click here to view thumbnails for all participants

Skunks and Badgers: Our Outdoor Hour

Our area is inhabited by quite a few striped skunks. In the summer time we frequently see them in the evening hours in our backyard as they dig under the birdfeeder and in the yard. We even had a family of skunks living under our house a few years ago.

Every night that summer we would have the fragrance of skunk to contend with. We sort of became used to smelling it at night but when they would sometimes spray right up under the windows, it would make you feel sick to your stomach.

This time of year we only occasionally see skunks and it is a nice break in our "nature study".


This is a photo from last year and it shows what the skunks come and do at night in our yard. They dig around looking for insects and worms and the holes look like swirls when they are done. This was an especially bad night where I am so grateful they decided to dig in the unlandscaped part of the yard and not a few feet over and into the grassy area. They are very good diggers as you can see. This year we have a dog that sleeps outside in her kennel so we shall see how that goes with the resident skunk population.

On another topic, we did have a special treat this week while we were on our trip to the desert. The Living Desert Museum actually had a badger to view and observe! We had never seen a real badger before and we were surprised at the size and the claws! The badger was busy digging in his enclosure so we stood and watched him for a long time and we can now see how he uses those long claws to dig his burrow.


Skunks are really an ongoing nature study subject for our family since we have them so close at hand. We have learned to live with them and to stay out of their way.

Barb-Harmony Art Mom

Weekend Video

The art of the raconteur is not much in evidence these days, but every once in a while you stumble across a great story teller. I was watching David Letterman last month when his guest was Zach Braff and I thought he was so charming and funny and self-deprecatory that without knowing much about him or having seen his movie or t.v. show, I became a fan based solely on this.

Outdoor Hour Challenge #51 Mammals-Wolf, Fox, and Dog

Once again we are skipping several stories in the Burgess Book of Animals for Children. Please read them when you have time to fit them into your school week.

You are in for a treat with this challenge with an episode from PBS Nature to watch if you choose to do so. I am strongly recommending that you preview this episode. I tried to note what might be objectionable in each part. Even with all these warnings, I truly think this is an amazing episode. There is so much about winter in Yellowstone and so many mammals in their natural setting. The photography of Yellowstone in this episode is fantastic and it made me want to plan a trip to this beautiful spot in the near future.

PBS Nature In the Valley of the Wolves (Set In Yellowstone National Park)

• Part one shows the wolves hunting and then killing an elk-tastefully done but still it might be upsetting to sensitive children. Includes a red fox and coyotes as well. Shows a coyote eating a vole.
  
• Part two is all about breeding season so you will want to preview for appropriateness for your family. There is also a dead elk scene where the coyotes and an eagle are eating.
• Part three has two wolf packs fighting. Dead elk being eaten in this part as well. Wolves chase and eat the coyote....it made me cry. River otters and eagles. Red fox and a coyote are shown hunting and then eating some sort of rodents. Bison being eaten by the wolves and birds.
• Part four has a grizzly bear and cubs. Another elk being hunted and killed by wolves and eaten by the grizzly.Lots of baby animal stories in this part.
• Part five opens up with coyotes eating an elk, blood. Very sad end to the wolf pups...made me tear up. Magnificent elk shots.
  

Outdoor Hour Challenge #51
Mammals: Wolf, Fox, and Dog

1. Read pages 250-260 of the Handbook of Nature Study about the wolf, the fox, and the dog. Studying the dog will help your child get a better understanding of the wolf and the fox. Not many of us will ever study a fox or a wolf up close but we can study the dog with great ease. After reading these pages in the Handbook, have a few ideas to share with your children. Use the dog as your point of comparison when talking about fur, teeth, and paws.

2. This week’s challenge includes two opportunities for observation:
*Spend 10-15 minutes outdoors on a nature walk. If you have snow or mud, look for animal tracks. Use this time to discuss why mammals, especially the wolf, fox, and dog have fur or hair. Look for any signs of animals as you walk around your own yard or down your own street. Ask your children where they think they might see a mammal. Don’t forget that you can also observe other mammals such as cats and squirrels if you have the opportunity. A dog’s tracks are easily recognizable and once you know what to look for, you will start to see them everywhere.

*If you have a pet dog, use the activities on pages 258-260 to learn more about your own dog. Many of the activities assume you have access to a cat to compare to the dog but you can skip to number 6 if you do not have a cat to study alongside the dog.

3. Supplemental reading: The Burgess Animal Book for Children: Read Story 27 and 28. Use the illustrations on pages 164, 170, and 177 to prompt some simple narrations from your child about the wolf, the fox, and the dog.

4. For your nature journal you can sketch the parts of the dog that you studied during your observation time. The teeth, the ears, and the paws make great subjects for the nature journal. If you did not study a dog, you can complete a notebook page for any or all of the challenges subjects: the wolf, the fox, or the dog. See the additional resources below for information and photos. Another suggestion is to make several entries for different breeds of dogs that you know or are interested in learning about for this challenge.


Additional resources for this challenge:
Dog notebook pages from Enchanted Learning

Fox mini book printable
Fox coloring page
Fox coloring page
Red fox information
Gray fox information

Wolf information page
Red Wolf-more information
Gray wolf notebook page
Another page on wolves
Awesome Red Wolf coloring pages!

Barb-Harmony Art Mom

Thanks to Tina at Jetihoja Academy for the special mammal challenge notebook page. You can find it along with all the other notebook pages here:
Outdoor Hour Challenge Notebooking pages
Thanks Tina!

Further career successes have been reported by the artists and writers published in the Aesthetica Creative Works Annual this week.

Aesthetica’s 2008 Competition was judged by Cherie Federico, Creative Writing lecturer Dr Kate North, and journalist David Martin. Cherie Federico says: “Artists and writers around the world really made the Annual project so worthwhile by presenting us with some truly amazing works. It was wonderful to discover new artists and writers throughout the judging process but it proved to be a real deliberation for Kate, David and myself because of the quality and talent involved.”

The high standard of works published has continued to build the reputations of artists and writers around the world. “It’s great to see that we’ve made successful choices as a number of Borders stores have had to put in orders for replenished stocks because their copies of the 2009 Annual have sold out two months early. Meanwhile, we’ve been hearing some fantastic updates from the finalists from our 2008 competition, with a number of exhibitions and commissions arranged. I’m very excited to see how things go for 2009.”

Mark Wagstaff’s new novel, In Sparta, is due out from Matador in March. Details can be found
here

Helen Kaminsky will be featuring in Catch by the Eye, Save in the Heart in Covent Garden, London in June. For further details please visit the website

Natalie Scott’s success has been featured in the Middlesborough Gazette. Check out her comments on the Aesthetica Creative Works Competition here

With its second year in publication, the Aesthetica Annual Creative Works Competition is now well established for burgeoning talents around the world, and the perfect compliment to the bi-monthly Aesthetica Magazine.

Cherie is now looking ahead in anticipation to the new entries: “I can’t wait to get our 2009 Creative Works Competition up and rolling. I’ve always loved finding new writers and learning about new artists so the competition has been a real eye-opener. Furthermore our 2008 competition proved to be a major springboard for many of the finalists involved so I’m hoping to nurture some new careers in 2009.”

Skywatch Friday - Postcard from NZ

A local told me these were horses tails, indicating rain. Sure enough an hour later heavy rain fell.

Visit other skywatchers around the globe

Bats: Helpful Mammals

We have bats in our backyard. My daughter Amanda hates it when we are out in the evening and we start to hear the squeaking of the bats. Sometimes if we are out and the yard is dark, they will come very close to our heads as they swoop to eat the insects. Many times they are flying over the pool if we are taking a night swim and that is a little creepy.


On the local walking trail there is an old train tunnel and apparently there was a bat colony that wanted to roost there. (Note this photo is from last year during the warmer months...hence the short pants.)


A group of people got together and made a bat house for them and as far as I know, there has never been any bats in the structure. Amanda has to walk fast through the tunnel because she knows there is a chance of there being bats in there. I have yet to see the bats.

Last summer one of our cats actually caught a bat and tried to bring it into the house. It sounded like a mouse squeaking but when I got up close to shoo her away from the door, I realized it was a bat. She eventually let go of the bat and it flew away. I was amazed that she was able to catch a bat. I talked to our vet about it and she said that since the cats are vaccinated and the bat didn't bite the cat that we should be fine. I was pretty concerned but she has never captured another bat as far as I know. We bring our cats in for the night because we do have so many critters that could cause trouble...skunks, raccoons, bats, foxes, and who knows what else is out there at night.


We studied bats a few years ago when we were interested in learning about different kinds of flying creatures.

"Although the bat's wings are very different from those of the bird, yet it is a rapid and agile flier. It flies in the dusk and catches great numbers of mosquitoes and other troublesome insects, upon which it feeds."
Handbook of Nature Study, page 243

If you ever get a chance to watch a bat fly, you will be amazed at their flying ability.

Barb-Harmony Art Mom
Who is trying hard to catch up on our Outdoor Hour Challenges and Winter Wednesdays

Running aground in Haiti and in cyberspace

The Wellcome Library has just acquired a monograph by the late Paul C. Appleton, Resurrecting Dr. Moss [1]. It is a biography of a short-lived Dublin-born naval surgeon Edward Lawton Moss (1843-1880), who spent much of his brief career in foreign waters—Atlantic, Pacific, and Mediterranean, with a period on land running the Esquimalt hospital on Vancouver Island, British Columbia (1872-1875). Moss was the medic on the British Arctic expedition of 1875-6, which was cut short by scurvy, and about which Moss wrote and illustrated Shores of the Polar sea (1878: currently the firm of Henry Sotheran is offering a copy of this book for £3,500). In 1878 Moss was in the Dardanelles on the fringes of the Russo-Turkish war of the time. In 1880 he was one of 280 men on HMS Atalanta who disappeared without trace off Bermuda.

In addition to telling the story of Moss's life through his letters (in British Columbia archives) and paintings (still with his descendants), Mr Appleton has clarified an early episode in Moss's career and thereby explained a hitherto puzzling document in the Wellcome Library. This episode is called the Bulldog Affair, and the document is a painting by Moss.

HMS Bulldog was Moss's first ship. In 1865 it was patrolling the seas around Haiti, trying gunboat diplomacy on the rebels warring against the Haitian government of the day. The commander noticed that a British merchant steamer RMS Jamaica Packet was being harried by an armed warship controlled by the rebels, and went towards the coast to protect it. Unfortunately Bulldog then itself ran aground on a coral reef. Unable to move, it was a sitting target for the rebels. The Bulldog crew lived up to the name of their ship and defended themselves vigorously with the artillery available. A bitter battle ensued. Edward Lawton Moss, aged 22, was the surgeon on board: he had to perform two amputations on the day of the battle. Four of his patients died after surgery, and a further five men were injured. The surviving Bulldog crew eventually made for the boats, in order to row along the coast to a part of the island under the government's control. On leaving the ship at 11.30 pm on 23 October 1865, the captain lit a fuse, and a few minutes later Bulldog was blown out of the water. On their return to London the commander and navigator of the Bulldog were submitted to a court-martial and reprimanded. Appleton found evidence that the Jamaica Packet was not as innocent as the officer claimed, as it was gun-running for the government.

The Wellcome Library has a painting of HMS Bulldog by Edward L. Moss (Wellcome Library no. 44658i, reproduced below).

It is a tiny watercolour (6 x 11 cm.), on the mount of which is inscribed "The surgery, H.M.S. Bulldog. Cape Haitien 23rd Oct 1865. E.L. Moss M.D. R.N. ". Its provenance is currently unknown, but it has been in the Wellcome Library at least since the 1930s, and it was at one time in Liverpool (it is framed and the backing sheet bears the frame-maker's label of Richard Jeffreys, 88 Bold Street, Liverpool, tel. 5231 Royal).

At first sight it looks like a depiction of a couple of tents in the open air. However, in the light of Appleton's narrative, one can see that it is Moss's operating room below deck on HMS Bulldog. On the right is a ladder leading up to the hatch, through which light floods down from the deck above. On the left is the operating table, with supports at either end to secure the patients whose limbs Moss had amputated. On the floor is a ghastly quantity of blood. On the ground on the right are three cannon-balls, and a fourth is in the foreground. Moss can hardly have painted this in the thick of battle: he must have done so while waiting nervously for the "Abandon ship", in the knowledge that, a few hours later, the site he was recording would be blown to smithereens.

What a pity that the late Paul Appleton never knew about this painting, which he surely would have used had he known about it. If he ever used Google or similar search-engines, they would not have helped him, for they cannot search databases. There is a vast amount of data needed by researchers that is inaccessible in the "hidden web". That information includes the entire contents of Wellcome Library's web-catalogue –-over 600,000 records, one of which is for this painting.

Thanks to the network of publishers and booksellers, Mr Appleton's analog book has done a better job of making Moss's story known to the Wellcome Library in London than the Wellcome Library's digital catalogue has done of making the London painting known to Mr Appleton and his publishers and editor in Calgary. We can only look forward to the day when, for the benefit of Mr Appleton's successors, that relationship is levelled. Blogs such as this one are already helping. Meanwhile the book is highly recommended; apart from its content, its attractive design makes it a pleasure to peruse.

[1] Paul C. Appleton, Resurrecting Dr. Moss: the life and letters of a Royal Navy surgeon, Edward Lawton Moss MD, RN, 1843-1880, edited by William Barr. Calgary: University of Calgary Press and Arctic Institute of North America, 2008. Designer: Melina Cusano.

Winter Wednesday-Our Winter Insect Study

Our second buttercup of the season....more to come I'm sure!

We have had our eye out for insects the past few weeks.

Yesterday we actually saw two very small butterflies as we took our afternoon walk. We are going to try to take our butterfly net today and see if we can catch one to identify.

Added after today's walk: We actually caught one of what we thought were butterflies and now I think they are moths.

Here is the best photo I could get inside the net. They are orange on the backsides of the wings. This is the first time that I have tried to actually catch a butterfly with a net and I am really glad that my son did not have a video camera. It was hilarious....I sort of felt like a tennis player, swatting at the air. Let's just say that I got a lot of exercise. :)


We saw this on a bunch of leaves and we brought one home to investigate. We decided it is some sort of leaf miner that has been at work.

We found a whole section (pages 329-332) in the Handbook of Nature Study on leaf-miners!

"To most children, it seems quite incredible that there is anything between the upper and lower surfaces of a leaf, and this lesson should hinge on the fact that in every leaf, however thin, there are rows of cells containing the living substance of the leaf, with a wall above and a wall below to protect them.......The serpent-like markings and the blister-like blotches which we often see on leaves are made by the larvae of insects which complete their growth by feeding upon the inner living substance of the leaf."
Handbook of Nature Study, pages 329 and 331

Here are a few more photos from our walk today.


So these little fungi caught our eye today on this piece of bark. They looked like little mini hamburger buns.


The manzanita is starting to bloom and the shape of the blossoms are so pretty and delicate.

I feel like we are finally starting to catch up on our Winter Wednesdays and our Outdoor Hour Challenges. We have been so busy and the weather so wet that it really distracted us from our time outdoors. It feels good to be back in the routine again.

Barb-Harmony Art Mom

Postcard from L.A.

A quick trip to Los Angeles began by meeting up with my friend Tom Adler. Our plan was to meet for lunch at The Getty - I was coming from Long Beach airport, he was driving down from Santa Barbara - and amazingly we both pulled up to the Getty front gate at exactly the same time! So the premonition was for a good day and the Getty did not disappoint with a delicious lunch in the cafeteria (I highly recommend their fresh taco plate) and two excellent photography shows.

The first - a small show titled "In Focus: The Portrait" - covers a wide range of photographic portraits from the 19th Century to the end of the 20th including formal portraits, "intimate" pictures, and documentary photographs. It was an excellent and provocative selection, but annoyingly The Getty does not allow you to take pictures (and have very few on their website) so most of the pictures you see here were snapped surreptitiously before different guards asked me to stop. Nevertheless it added a touch of excitement to the experience!

The Getty (like the Met) also has wonderfully lucid wall texts and one in particular seemed worth sharing - a quote from Richard Avedon which accompanied his diptych portrait of Francis Bacon: "A photographic portrait is a picture of someone who knows he's being photographed and what he does with this knowledge is as much a part of the photograph as what he's wearing or how he looks. He's implicated in what's happening and he has a certain real power over the result." Very Avedonian!

I've purposefully left the top picture without a caption because it may surprise some of you. You'll find the answer at the bottom of this post.*

A Young Girl in Ennis, Ireland, Dorothea Lange, 1954

Marlene Dietrich. Cecil Beaton. 1930s.

The second and larger show at The Getty was "Dialogue among Giants: Carleton Watkins and the Rise of Photography in California". Weston Naef's final show as the museum's director of photography, it's a thorough and exhilarating survey that includes Watkins' mammoth plate camera (about the size of a car) and many if not all of my favorite Watkins photographs. Unfortunately it's only up through March 1.

Yosemite Valley from the "Best General View, 1866" No. 2

Cypress Tree at Point Lobos, Monterey County, 1883 - 1885

An atypical, but one of my favorite Watkins pictures - "Late George Cling Peaches, Kern County, 1889".

*And the answer to the top picture: Georgia O'Keeffe by Alfred Stieglitz!

Winter Weather Report (part of challenge 50)

We completed our winter weather study today. We had a break in the rain so we could go outside and gather some first hand information.

Yesterday we had a full rainbow out our back window. I don't know if you can see it because it is so faint but maybe if you click the photo it will show up.

My son completed his winter weather activity....with his own style. He drew the clouds and the view out the window in the big box and a winter scene in the top box.

I realized that maybe we should be doing the seasonal observations on the first day of the season. That means we will need to complete the spring observation in a few weeks.

If you read my blog with any frequency, you will remember that we had quite a bit of snow and very cold weather a few weeks ago. For now, our surroundings seem to be heading quickly towards spring.

Here are some signs that we found today.


My bulbs are pushing up into the sunshine.


Our indoor forsythia is blooming.


Our twig from our tree that we brought inside a few weeks ago is really starting to have leaf buds.


We saw the buckeye starting to leaf out.


The daffodils are blooming.


The plum tree is blossoming this week.

Look's like spring is coming doesn't it?

Barb-Harmony Art Mom

Winter Wednesday-Birds

Winter Wednesday
Week 8 Winter Birds

1. Read chapter eight in Discover Nature in Winter. If you do not already have a birdfeeder in your yard, you should pay extra attention to the pages showing how to make your own birdfeeders and the differences between the variety of seeds available.

2. Our family is going to complete the exploration suggestions on page 162. Since we already have a birdfeeder and a birdbath, we will be continuing our observation and identification of birds that visit each day. In addition, we will each pick one bird to study more in depth by finding a book at the library to glean information from for our particular bird.

3. After you complete your winter nature study activity this week, make sure to complete a blog entry and then share it on Mr. Linky.

For families wanting to participate that do not have the Discover Winter in Nature book, I will list a few simple nature study ideas that you can try with your family.
1. Hang a birdfeeder and observe the birds that visit over the period of a week.
2. Keep a tally of the different kinds of birds in your feeder.
3. Observe one species of bird for a week and then record in your nature journal the unique behaviors of that bird. For example: only eats seed from the ground, pecks at the seeds, perches and fluffs his feathers each time, chases other birds out of the feeder, only comes to feed in the early morning.

Light and Shadows

I was walking down a little street at the back of Euston Station and just loved the way the light and shadows turned this very ordinary wall into a visually interesting wall. The reflections in the car windscreen just added to the picture.

Wellcome Film channel on YouTube

Wellcome Film has launched its YouTube channel, with more videos to be added soon. Watch, rate and comment on the Wellcome Library's Moving Image and Sound Collection's fascinating selection of archive films, or subscribe to the channel to get regular updates. Watch the videos here.

The most popular video so far is Childbirth as an Athletic Feat (1939), a delightful film showing a class of expectant mothers performing antenatal exercises.



Author: Lucy Smee

Disney/Whitney/Ford (Patrick) and Buena Vista

Jerry Beck at Cartoon Brew has recently explored the fascinating topic of non-Disney features distributed by Buena Vista during the fifties. Various commentors have added detail since the post went up. This information Jerry's gathered might be better known if more of the films were in circulation today. As it is, most are MIA and likely to remain so. I’ve wondered for years what The Big Fisherman might be like, being a Super Panavision 70mm release that Disney handled (but had no producing involvement with) in 1959. Buena Vista’s commitment to distribution for other than in-house product was short-lived. They’d taken on outside features to keep offices busy between Disney releases. Expensive set-ups for traffiking prints are just that much more so when there’s so little to fan out, and Buena Vista incurred overhead same as bigger companies handling far more output. Disney’s was thus a boutique studio with a distribution arm crying out for volume. BV salesmen said give us more merchandise. Enter Cornelius Vanderbilt Whitney. His family was among those rich beyond the dreams of Midas. C.V. Whitney dabbled in everything big money could buy, thriving at most all his ventures, including business interests, polo ponies, and art patronage. He wrote a number of books and was a major philanthropist. A fascination with motion pictures led to investment in the Technicolor Corporation and Selznick’s Gone With The Wind. Whitney gets a bad rap from writers who’ve characterized him as a dilettante. John Ford regarded him as such, but was happy taking his money to make The Searchers, which would be the first of a proposed "American" trilogy Whitney envisioned. I think the public wants to see this great country in perspective, he said, pledging to avoid those screen subjects that over-emphasized sordid aspects of the present day. Whatever his motives, The Searchers would not have come to term without Whitney, as it was his dollars that pushed the go button on that classic western. Where other millionaires sponsored painters and orchestras, his wealth was sufficient to enable big-budget features with top personnel, and Whitney intended for them to avoid faddism and well-worn paths of crime, violence, and sex. The Searchers was a big success, but Whitney got sticker shock over cost and backed off a proposed follow-up with Ford, The Valiant Virginians, which spent several years in preparation but came to nothing. Whitney’s association with John Ford continued by way of the director’s son, Patrick Ford, being hired to produce a modestly priced Americana subject, The Missouri Traveler, which was filmed at Warners during late Spring 1957. Pat was thirty-six years old and knocking about in his father’s shadow for most of these. The old man treated him badly and made no secret of ongoing disappointment where his son was concerned (Maureen O’Hara remembered him often referring to Pat as a capon --- or "castrated cock") . Pat had tried over and over to prove himself worthy of the Ford name. Toward that end, he’d written screenplays, done stuntwork, and served as John Ford’s "executive assistant." He even received an associate producer credit on The Searchers, and by all accounts acquitted himself well on the job. Still, his father never seemed satisfied. It was Whitney who would now give him real opportunity as vice-president in charge of production for C.V. Whitney Pictures, Inc.

Pat’s industry view not unexpectedly mirrored that of his employer. Both he and Whitney saw The Missouri Traveler as an answer to a fashionable formula that has been selling America short. Together they would combat false impressions by substituting correct ones. Pat sounded off for trade reporters thus: Lots of American pictures, including many of the westerns, give the impression abroad that a typical American community, from cow town to modern metropolis, is made up of one strong man who dominates a population too meek to stand up to him. What was he thinking of here? Probably happy enough to be getting such press after years on industry margins, but I suspect Pat was addressing much in his remarks to High Noon, a western disdained by Hollywood’s conservative element. Fed on a picture diet of this kind, it’s no wonder people in other countries get the idea the body of the American population is made up of softies, he said. Such quotes weren’t likely to increase Pat’s credibility around town. Nor was the daily presence of his father on The Missouri’s Traveler’s set and interference attendant upon that. Rumors persisted into June 1957 that The Valiant Virginians (now retitled The Young Virginians) was on again, and would go into production the following April at a budget of four million, with John Ford directing and Pat producing. The reality meanwhile was something else. Whitney was getting fed up with Warners and had decided to take his company elsewhere. Since Walt Disney was looking for producing partners for Buena Vista, why not go there? The Missouri Traveler would become the first domestically produced, non-Disney feature to be distributed by Buena Vista. It was near completion when the deal was announced in early June. As Disney and Whitney were both viewed as apostles of a positive American image, their teaming set a trade press upon wings of praise. The accent on wholesomeness that is basic policy of both the producer and the distributor will prove or disprove the fundamental trade truism that the theatrical motion picture is the world’s best family entertainment, said The Motion Picture Herald, but were families still the bulwark supporting movies by 1957? --- and even if they were, how many cared to look at a picture so laden with righteous doses of correct impressions?

The Missouri Traveler sat on Buena Vista’s shelf for the remainder of 1957. In the meantime, C.V. Whitney engaged another offspring member of John Ford’s stock company, this time on a seven-year acting contract. Patrick Wayne (son of John) had worked occasionally in films with his father and for Ford. Now he would star in Whitney’s third independent venture. The Young Land might have been called I Was A Teenage Sheriff for youthful Wayne’s role as beleaguered lawman set against malcontent Dennis Hopper, with Yvonne Craig supplying ingenue love interest. Again Pat Ford was producing, and trade reports referred to he and Pat Wayne as perhaps the most successful of Hollywood’s second generation of motion picture personalities (shown here). That Autumn of 1957 looked good for C.V. Whitney Pictures, Inc. Buena Vista was gearing up an aggressive campaign for The Missouri Traveler (trade ad here) with plans for an early 1958 release. A $250,000 advertising and promotional effort would precede the January 29 opening set for two hundred theatres in seventeen heartland states (later bumped to February 19). Pat Ford’s seeming rise within the creative community was meanwhile halted by the termination of his contract with Whitney. He was out just as The Missouri Traveler prepared to open and as The Young Land was being edited. It was a sudden parting (trade ads up to this point had emphasized his leadership role with the company) and likely as not Pat’s personal demons played a large part. He’d been weighed down by the same burden of alcohol that hobbled both parents and his sister, and relations between father and son deteriorated further. As startling demonstration of how fleeting Hollywood "success" can be, Pat found himself by 1964 working as a garage mechanic (he’d later be hired by the city of Los Angeles in their probation department). What a remarkable up and down life. I think I’d rather read a biography of Patrick Ford than yet another about his father. As for C.V. Whitney, the business of producing movies and finishing that American trilogy proved perhaps more troublesome than it was worth. His financial advisors recommended backing off (too much risk, not enough return after others had siphoned off theirs). The Missouri Traveler was a disappointment for both he and Disney, as Buena Vista’s release failed to crack Variety’s million-dollar rentals list for 1958. The agreement that contemplated a second Whitney production for BV release was abandoned, despite trade ads promising The Young Land along with others from that distributor for the 1958-59 season. Columbia would finally release it in May 1959, well over a year after The Young Land had been completed. By that time, C.V. Whitney was done with pictures , though he’d continue in other enterprise and live to a ripe age of 93 (he died in 1992, and as far as I’m aware, was never interviewed about his sojourn as a film producer). Both The Missouri Traveler and The Young Land are accessible on small label DVD, which would imply they’re in the public domain, a status I question, as one would assume the Whitney estate still owns these negatives. Columbia syndicated The Young Land to television from 1964, and The Missouri Traveler played on Canadian stations into the seventies. I’d like to know where the original elements reside at this point, as neither film seems to be available in a quality (and preferred widescreen) presentation.

Get Back!

Sometimes themes just present themselves. A bevy of backs began with an e-mail from the photographer David Schoerner informing me he had recently started working on a series of photographs inspired by the 1988 painting "Betty" by Gerhard Richter. (That's Schoerner above and Richter below.) Then the next thing you know back views are popping up everywhere!

This from Stuart O'Sullivan:

A trio of fashionable backs from The Sartorialist:

A pair of images showing what it takes to work at French Vogue from Tommy Ton of Jak and Jil:

These from Casia Bromberg, an interesting photographer from Sweden:

And lastly, if just the back of a head can count, this old favorite "Lloyd's Head", 1944, by Barbara Morgan: