Bum Phillips' Autobiography feels like hanging with the great coach as he tells the story of his life

 

Bum Phillips: Coach, Cowboy, Christian – Bum Phillips, w/ Gabe Semenza (2010)

            In Texas, there are two legendary professional football coaches.  One is Tom Landry, a favorite of mine, who was a long-time coach of the Dallas Cowboys (who are NOT a favorite of mine. Boooooo!).  The other, and my own personal favorite NFL coach ever, is Bum Phillips, who coached professionally with the Houston Oilers and the New Orleans Saints and helped create the phenomenon known worldwide as the Luv Ya Blue era of Houston sports.  A true Texan original through and through, in word, deed, and spirit, Bum Phillips brought an energy and mindset to professional football coaching that went directly against the hard-ass, in-your-face, overly-demanding, workaholic, military-asshole “ideal” for football coaches.  In all my years as a fanatic of Bum Phillips, both as a coach and as an awesome human being, I have yet to hear, see, or read of anyone anywhere who has any type of negative comment about the man, including former opponents!  This is a rarity in the world.  My lovely wife knows of my deep admiration for coach Phillips, and surprised me with this book (a signed copy too!).  What a great gift for a football loving book nerd such as myself!

            I normally approach biographies and autobiographies with trepidation, having been burned before by self-aggrandizing, superfluous, and wildly rote works co-authored with ghost writers.  I was very excited about this book, however, because the co-writer aiding Mr. Phillips, Gabe Semenza, is someone who knew Coach Phillips for years.  I was pleasantly surprised to hear Bum Phillips’ voice in my head as I read this book.  Much like Coach Vince Lombardi, another legend of professional football, Bum Phillips’ voice lives on in my head, so when I read this book, I distinctly hear it in Coach Phillips Texan drawl.  Because of this, reading this book was an immense pleasure.  I immediately lost myself in the pages as I heard Bum’s voice inside my head while I read.  Gabe Semenza did a great job putting this book together, not covering up Coach Phillips’ voice, and allowing his natural cadence to exist on the page and propel the story of his life.

            The byline of this work states that Bum Phillips was a coach, a cowboy, and a christian.  Besides family itself, these are the three pillars upon which Coach Phillips built his life.  Coaching came natural to Bum Phillips, and he rose through the ranks of high school, Jr. College, Universities, and professional teams due to his love of the game itself, his ability to learn and apply wisdom gained while working for legendary college football coaches, and his own particular philosophy about how to lead men.  This personal belief stemmed from his experiences as a Marine in the second world war.  The verbally abusive drill sergeants taught Bum that their way was not the correct way to teach and train a grown man.  Yelling insults, demeaning a human being, essentially abusing them until they act as you want, these things seemed patently ridiculous to Bum Philips, and he swore that, if he ever got the chance to lead men, he would do it differently.  To paraphrase Coach Phillips, if you have to yell and cuss at someone to make them learn they will NOT learn.  They will just appease you until you shut up.  It was this core value that, through his professional life, made Bum Phillips stand out and be appreciated by those who worked for him.  He truly cared and loved about his “kids” as he called them.  He treated each one individually, as a human being, and achieved great things because of it, not the least of them being that nearly every single human that ever worked for or was coached by Bum Phillips feel they gained a father-figure, not just a coach.

            One great example of how Bum fostered a family atmosphere around the Houston Oilers was his policy for Saturdays.  Most NFL games are held on Sunday, and Saturday is usually treated as a dress-rehearsal of sorts.  Bum’s mindset was that, after working hard Tuesday through Friday, installing the gameplan for the upcoming Sunday, there was not much that could be changed or added on Saturday without messing everything up.  He treated these men like men, not like overgrown children.  Respect was given AND earned.  On Saturdays, Bum would tell the team, coaches, and staff to bring in their significant others and family to the Saturday practices.  For those players too young to have families, he encouraged they bring their pets!  The team would do a quick, pad-less run-through of the gameplan, then the rest of the day was spent listening to live music (famous country & western stars would come hang out and jam with the players!), playing dominoes, cards, and goofing around, and feasting on Texas barbeque or delicious Mexican or Tex-Mex food that Bum would have catered in.  The footage of these times seems ridiculous in its looseness and carefree nature.  No other team had such conviviality ingrained into their very essence.  This made the Oilers a family, and the City of Houston immediately understood it, loved it, and latched onto it as their defining trait.  Once Bum Phillips drafted the legendary Earl Campbell from the University of Texas, everything coalesced into the collective dream/fantasy we all know as the Luv Ya Blue era in Houston.

            Coach Philips takes us through his life, his efforts to learn more about football, and the endless job-hopping that is required of a sports coach in Texas.  He details his travels as he sought to always find work in the state of Texas.  He was either a head or an assistant coach at so many places, from West Texas State (Now UTEP), to high schools in Nacogdoches, all the way to an assistant coaching position with my alma mater, the University of Houston, where he was fortunate to coach his own son Wade Phillps, himself eventually becoming a respected and Super Bowl winning NFL defensive and head coach.  He discusses how his work life superseded his family life, and even though his children seem to understand and to accept who their father was, it still manages to draw a lot of regret and pain in Coach Phillips.  He understood the conflict that exists when the passion within you helps you succeed at your chosen profession to the detriment of your family life, and time spent with the very people you are working hard to provide for. 

In the mid-1980’s, Coach Bum Phillips retired from coaching and went back to the original love of his life, ranching and raising cattle.  Houston grew so fast and so big that what used to be a quaint ranch outside the city limits was quickly encroached by civilization.  Bum and his wife found a beautiful ranch property in South Texas and that is where he chose to spend the remaining decades of his life, with his friends, family, and animals.  It was around this time that a fateful phone call from an old Oilers player, Mike Barber, drew coach Phillips to a greater relationship with his spirituality.  Bum Phillips, along with many men of his generation, was a good man who sought to only do good in the world, and who wished no ill on anyone for anything.  However, he was not a “religious” man.  Coach Phillips lived a christian life, a true christian life, and did so because he felt it was right, not because of any religious or dogmatic requirements.  Everything changed when Mike Barber invited him to join him on one of his prison ministry visits.  Mike Barber had ministered to the incarcerated for a long time, and he knew that hearing from someone as respected and loved as Coach Bum Phillips could help start the healing for inmates.  Coach Phillips joined Mike as he visited the maximum security prison in Beeville Texas.  It set the course for the remainder of his life.  Until his dying day, Bum Phillips joined Mike Barber’s ministry and visited countless small and large correctional facilities. 

Coach Phillips truly lived a life of service.  All coaches are teachers, and the very best coaches become family.  Bum Phillips wanted to live life the right way, and through his example he shaped not only countless high school, college, and professional athletes, but also the very essence of Houston Texas, a city much misunderstood by the nation at large.  The City of Houston took on Bum’s persona, and it has never left.  This is still a humongous melting pot, and through good times and bad, the citizens of Houston try to treat each other like human beings.  This state of mind was reinforced by our beloved sports coaches, all of them more concerned with fostering family as a way to win than with winning itself, whether it be Bum Phillips with the legendary Houston Oilers, Rudy Tomjanovich with our beloved Houston Rockets, or DeMeco Ryans with our latest craze, the Houston Texans.  Bum Phillips did more good in the world in his 90-something years trodding the Earth than most people can imagine doing, and his method was human love and honesty.  There is no greater tribute to a man than to say, without any hyperbole, that he was universally loved, admired, and respected.  Sadly, it may seem that there are not many of those men left in our world, but we are out here, seeking to help those we can, support those we can, and attempting to foster brotherhood and community rather than rancor or divisiveness.  There are few true saints in our world, and I am very fortunate to have shared this life with Bum Phillips.  We all are.

(This wonderful book can be purchased used and new here: https://www.abebooks.com/9781935909026/Bum-Phillips-Coach-Cowboy-Christian-1935909029/plp )

Michael B. Kassel takes us back to WKRP In Cincinnati

 

America’s Favorite Radio Station: WKRP In Cincinnati – Michael B. Kassel (1993)

            There are two photographs I keep deep within my wallet.  One is a color photo of my wife Elizabeth when she was a little kid, another is a black and white image of Dr. Johnny Fever at his DJ booth.  Is this significant because these are the two guiding pillars of my life?  No.  Like a talisman, my wife’s photo reminds me of the totality of her, of how she is and always was much more than the person I got to know, of how she carries her inner child with her in all things, and of how fortunate I am that she chose to share her life with me.  Also acting as a talisman, Dr. Johnny Fever’s photo reminds me of my own youth, my love of music, my life-long admiration of anti-establishment figures, and most of all, of WKRP in Cincinnati, one of my favorite television shows ever.

            Because of my admiration for WKRP in Cincinnati, I always seek out any and all information about the show, its creators, writers, and actors.  This has been difficult since the show aired its first-run episodes between 1978 and 1982.  I arrived in the USA in December of 1981, so I missed all the initial screenings.  I discovered WKRP, along with my family, in syndication.  I found the show so funny, the characters so individual and weird, and the topics discussed so alien from the standard 30 minute situation comedies that flood the television landscape, that it soon became one of my favorites, even though I could not have been more than 9-10 years old.  In just four seasons and 90 total shows, WKRP’s creators crafted a television show so fresh, insightful and hilarious that its memory lives on in countless fans such as myself.  Employment at a library affords me access to all the books, so when I searched for and found this specific volume, I freaked.

            Author Michael B. Kassel states it beautifully in his preface, “WKRP in Cincinnati is an example of a program crafted by amazing individuals who were able to transcend the confines of their medium.” Quality stands out among the banal standard fare and desperate copycat shows that flood our television airwaves.  It definitely does so for WKRP.  Starting with the head man, Hugh Wilson, WKRP gathered up a company of people dedicated to creating clever, genuine, honestly funny entertainment mined from Hugh’s experience with working at small market radio stations.  Populated by characters drawn from real life, with all the complexities, beauties, and horrors that come with it, the show was always treated as the bastard son of the MTM (Mary Tyler Moore) production company, leaving the dullard CBS executives to almost ruin WKRP by switching the airtime of the show at least 9 times in 4 seasons.  Ridiculous.  It is a testament to the quality of WKRP that, while suffering such stupid treatment from know-nothing executives, it delivered 90 episodes of comedy gold.

            Michael B. Kassel understands that these characters, and the actors portraying them, are the reason fans tune in.  Because of this Hugh Wilson and the writers all took great care in the initial writing stages, assuring that any new story or joke stayed true to who these fully 3-dimensional people were, without ever relying on the cheap, easy type of formulaic jokes that TV sitcoms continue to foist upon an audience the TV execs consider to be dumber than B-grade dog food. (They only ever care about the commercials).  Kassel mentions how one writer began keeping a WKRP “bible,” detailing any new facts we learned about the characters on WKRP, allowing for easy and efficient continuity from show to show and season to season.  This was a new concept for television sitcoms, something done regularly now, 45 years later.

            Kassel’s best writing comes when he describes the people and the situations that found the amazing cast members hired and working for WKRP.  While I knew many of these stories through my own fandom, my mind exploded at the wealth of new information and details.  One of the tidbits which I understood innately as a child, but which I did not fully grasp until I re-watched WKRP as an adult, was the countless sly and subtle references that Howard Hesseman snuck in concerning his character, Dr. Johnny Fever, and the seemingly constant ingestion of psychedelics and other mood intoxicants, especially of the sticky icky green variety.  As a child the specific details eluded me, but I grokked it all through some sort of superfreak osmosis, and I loved it so much.  I initially also fell in love with both the incredibly vivacious, sexy, smart, and unflappable Loni Anderson, portraying Jennifer Marlowe, the highest paid member of the WKRP staff (a receptionist!), and the effortlessly beautiful, kind, and sweet Jan Smithers, who played the part of Bailey Quarters.  They did not act like the other “women” on TV shows.  They seemed like real people.  Everyone on WKRP did.

            I am now in my early fifties, and it has been nearly 25 years since WKRP aired in regular syndication.  As a TV-watching latch-key kid, I carry a lot of television in my mind, but nothing casts a shadow over my consciousness quite like WKRP in Cincinnati does.  I know all the jokes, all the beats, and I still laugh like a manic child.  I know all the stories, and the heavy shit dealt with in many episodes, and I still get choked up watching these characters navigate through their collective lives.  I still dream of working someplace like WKRP, with a kind and caring boss like Mr. Carlson, someone who truly invests himself in the people around him, or with a supervisor like Andy Travis, an honestly good human being who sees the value in relationships apart from the bottom-line.  I aspire to work with people as cool and complex as Johnny Fever or Venus Flytrap, the nighttime DJ, and with characters as funny and outlandish as Les Nessman or Herb Tarlek. Hell, I wanted to join a work softball team with a cool dude like Bucky Dornster, the station’s engineer who never took no shit from anyone and was a Union man!  Several years ago, I did indeed achieve a life-long dream of being a radio DJ just like Dr. Johnny Fever!  I did a Saturday oldies show called SONIC LIFE on 96.1 FM, Sugar Land TX, from 10am – 1 pm (links to those playlists here).  I played music from the 1950s’ to the 1990’s and always tried to teach the kids about Bo Diddley, because I always remember Johnny Fever crying out to Andy Travis, after being threatened with losing his job, “But who will teach the children about Bo Diddley?”  Hilarious!

            While this is a fairly small book, it took me on a well-needed trip down memory lane.  The second half of this book lists an episode guide, which I found very interesting as well.  Michael B. Kassel did a wonderful job on this book, a true labor of love, and a very real gift to those of us who feel that WKRP may be the very best situation comedy ever.  I put it just a half-notch above Cheers and Seinfeld, but that may be a purely personal matter.  All I know is that I cannot recall my dad, mom, brother, and I ever, EVER, laughing together as hard as we did when we watched WKRP’s “Turkeys Away” episode.  That memory of shared laughter stays with me even after I have forgotten the sound of my father’s voice, but I can remember his face when he laughed.  Great works of art contain the whole of existence within them, and WKRP does so for me.  I highly recommend this to any WKRP fanatic!

            I leave you with the immortal first-episode monologue by Howard Hesseman, as Dr. Johnny Fever switches his radio station’s music in mid-broadcast from “beautiful music” to Rock and Roll!      

“All right, Cincinnati, it is time for this town to get *down*!

Now, you got Johnny... Dr.  Johnny Fever, and I am burnin' up in here! Whoo! Whoo! We all in critical condition, babies, but you can tell me where it hurts, because I got the healing prescription here from the big 'KRP musical medicine cabinet. Now I am talking about your fifty thousand watt intensive care unit, babies! So just sit right down, relax, open your ears real wide and say, "Give it to me straight, Doctor, I can take it!"

            …I almost forgot, fellow babies: "booger!"

(This book can be purchased here: https://www.abebooks.com/9780879725853/Americas-Favorite-Radio-Station-WKRP-0879725850/plp )

Nana Visitor and the Women of Star Trek Take Us on a Beautiful Journey

Star Trek: Open a Channel, A Woman’s Trek – Nana Visitor (2024)

 

            I waited for this book for a while.  Initially, I heard that Nana Visitor, the actor who played the part of Kira Nerys on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, intended to write a book about her experiences on the show.  I caught updates from the publishing industry detailing her efforts to get the book made, and how it grew from a personal account into an exploration of what it means to be a woman in Star Trek, from the OG days of the 1960’s to the most current iterations of the franchise.  Hearing about Visitor’s interviews with many of the women from Star Trek increased my desire to read this book.  Thank Mario for the wonderful Inter-Library Loan program, since it allowed me to get this book sent to me from the University of Oklahoma.  I was ecstatic when I received it and instantly devoured it.

            Long-time readers of RXTT’s Book Journey will likely know I am a huge Star Trek fan, especially my single favorite television show of all time, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (DS9).  Nana Visitor is one of the leads on DS9, with her character, Major Kira Nerys, serving as the second-in-command of a large, unwieldy, and chaotic space station. It is through her character that we learn about the horrors suffered by the people of Bajor and how outsiders perceive the United Federation of Planets.  Her character is integral from beginning to end.

            The character of Kira Nerys, alongside that of Captain Benjamin Lafayette Sisko, is critical to understanding the central themes of DS9.  The first theme, and the most prominent throughout the series run, deals with how trauma affects us, how we deal with it, and how we manage to move on and continue living afterwards.  This is evident in Kira, a former freedom fighter/terrorist (depends on who you ask), forced to reckon with a lifetime of degraded living under totalitarian rule and how it affects her and her people during the “peace” that follows.  It, like all trauma, touches every single aspect of her life and being.  The same is true for Capt. Sisko, who we meet just after his wife is killed in a huge space battle, forcing him and his son Jake to escape with their lives.  The repercussions of this loss shape Sisko throughout the series, much like the Cardassian occupation shaped every aspect of Kira Nerys’ character.  It was a groundbreaking role for Visitor, whose career previously found her in steady work playing the girlfriend, the ex-girlfriend, the wife, the bothered secretary, etc., all roles with very little emotional or intellectual heft.

            In an effort to understand the dynamics of being a woman in the world of Star Trek, Nana Visitor explores the original creation of Star Trek, and the ways which the otherwise progressive show existed in a world where casual misogyny, the “casting couch” mentality, and abusive producers still ran the show.  To frame this story, Visitor discusses the person besides Gene Roddenberry most responsible for the very existence of Star Trek, comedy superstar Lucille Ball.  It was her DesiLu studios, which she ran alone after the illness of her husband, that green-lit Star Trek, and it was her efforts to keep it on the air that Visitor explores.  For each series, Visitor devotes a few chapters to exploring the lives and work of the individual actresses, including the most important woman on the original show, Nichelle Nichols.  Nichelle was not only a representational force for African-American women, but for all women.  In a world where women were still expected to serve in very limited and traditional roles, seeing a woman of color serve as the fourth in command of a starship was huge.

            Visitor pulls no punches and allows her subjects the bluntness they need  to describe the uncomfortable and terrifying situations these women endured just to be considered for a television show.  Every single one of them has had to deal with lecherous producers, men forcing themselves on them, sexist writing, overly-familiar co-stars, etc.  Some, with help from their loved ones, navigated these treacherous waters without too much horror, but most did not.  From the endless critiques of your appearance to the implication that if you do not do what is asked of you without questions you would be replaced by another “pretty face,” Hollywood has long been a bastion for asshole men and a trap for many a young woman.  After years of insultingly simplistic roles, the role of Kira Nerys helped Nana Visitor create a very real, very flawed, very human character, a character whose lines and actions do not rely on her femininity to succeed, something which she is rightfully very proud of.

            Visitor not only speaks to the various actresses from Trek, but she also re-watched a lot of the older and current shows.  In doing so she witnessed how, even in an era of feminism and women’s sovereignty, like the late 80’s and early 90’s, strong women characters were still mainly written as tropes.  For example, one of the characters, Keiko Ishikawa, married a minor Next Generation character, Miles O’Brien.  They both subsequently appeared on DS9.  While the character or Keiko was written as a deeply intelligent and forthright botanist, she was rarely, if ever, shown on TNG doing botany.  Instead, she was forced to act out endless “worried wife” or “angry wife” tropes.

On TNG, the Doctor was portrayed by the super-talented Gates McFadden, but whereas the original series’ Doctor McCoy was given license to behave as any doctor does, Dr. Crusher’s character, while initially a groundbreaking representation for women, was often used solely as the "mother” or as a potential love interest of the Captain.  Even in the supposedly progressive shows, the standard misogyny and sexism applied.  This is especially evident in the character of Counselor Troi on Next Generation.  Initially serving as pure eye candy, it took years for the writers room to catch on to what makes the character of Deanna Troi so intriguing.  As detailed by Nana Visitor, once an actress is placed in one of the very few “boxes” allowed for them, it was nearly impossible to escape.  Once a “beauty” always a “beauty.”  Once seen as a plucky and sexless “friend,” it is always thus.  These simplistic tropes continue on television to this day.  Shit don’t change.

While all of this is extremely interesting to me, my favorite parts of this book are where Nana Visitor discusses her own life and career.  She is blunt and honest in describing the many transgressions she endured by either changing herself, altering her mannerisms, or just behaving in the way that male society seemed to expect.  Each time, a little part of her died within her, but she endured it as the costs of the life she chose.  It is impossible to see just how callous and predatory those around you are until you get some distance from it, both emotional and physical.  In one of the most moving and disturbing sections, Nana discusses how she was kidnapped and assaulted sometime between seasons 2 and 3 of DS9, how she forced herself to testify against her attackers even though she was warned that bad publicity would ruin her career, and how it took her over twenty years to come to grips with the events of that horrible night. It is a testament to her willpower and life-force that Nana Visitor rebuilt herself, something many of the women she spoke to have had to do, some more than once. 

It is also a testament to Nana Visitor that, in the decades following the airing of Deep Space Nine, she has become something of a den-mother, or a loving aunt, to many Star Trek fanatics.  This is something that mirrors the character Kira Nerys’ arc on the show.  At the end of DS9, we see Kira Nerys and Jake Sisko staring out of a window at the wormhole outside.  She is left in charge of the station, and life goes on. In the DS9 documentary, What You Leave Behind, the writers posit a future where Kira Nerys grows wiser and becomes a spiritual leader for the Bajoran people, Nana Visitor also grew wiser and became an emotional and spiritual leader for us Trek fanatics.  It is a beautiful thing and I sincerely hope that Nana grasps the amount of care and love people have for her, and for the character she brought to life.  Her care for us, as fans, is evident in this amazing book. 

There is nothing easy about being a woman in this world, which makes it all the more admirable that Nana, and all the women she interviews, created characters and stories which honestly and permanently affected the audience.  Countless women went into science because they saw Lt. Uhura kicking ass on the bridge of the Enterprise.  Countless women saw Dr. Crusher as a great example of how to be a success and a great mother, without sacrificing her ideals.  Countless women saw the strength, resiliency and leadership inherent in Kira Nerys and found a role model for survival.  Even more women saw Captain Janeway lead a crew into and out of the wilderness, and felt inspired by her confidence and capability.  Representation matters.  We believe what we see.  For all the faults a TV show like Star Trek can and does have, the merits are beyond measure.  In 1966, Star Trek showed us a post-cold-war world where Russians and Chinese shared in the adventure, where women served alongside men, where people of color were portrayed as Admirals!  It was and remains one of the finest bits of television out there, showing the world that our shared humanity is a far greater thing than our perceived differences.  Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations.  IDIC is the prevailing theme of all Star Trek, and I am very glad that Nana Visitor took the time and effort to craft this great tribute to the women of Star Trek and the characters they brought to life.  It is a beautiful book.

(This book can be purchased here: https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Star-Trek-Open-a-Channel-A-Womans-Trek/Nana-Visitor/Star-Trek/9798886633016 )

Marilyn Bridges Shares a Bird's-Eye View of Sacred Landscapes in Beautiful B+W Photography

 

Markings: Aerial Views of Sacred Landscapes – Marilyn Bridges (1986)

            What a gorgeous photography book!  The “Library Angels” were kind once again, guiding this amazing book into my hands.  Reader of the Book Journey will note my long-standing interest in ancient megaliths, earthworks, and the civilizations that created them.  Marilyn Bridges, an outstanding photographer, took it upon herself to take to the skies over Peru in the 1970’s to better experience the “Nazca Lines” her indigenous guides described.  The sense of awe engendered by what she saw led her to seek more opportunities to fly and photograph the ancient works of humanity.  Facing her fears, Marilyn Bridges learned to fly small airplanes, allowing her to dictate exactly how she would photograph the overwhelmingly complex lines, images, and ruins left behind by our ancestors.

            In the classic documentarian style of photography, Bridges utilizes stark black and white film, all shot from far above, to showcase the ruins and burial sites better seen from the sky.  This is the “view of the gods” as she describes it.  Her impeccable eye for detail, lighting, framing, and composition make each single image a work of art, regardless of the subject matter. 

            This book begins with an informative and poetic preface by one Haven O’More, detailing  Marilyn Bridge’s methods and the magic she creates.  O’More describes to us to the four sections of this book, each with an engrossing introduction.  The first section details Bridges’ photography of the famous Nazca lines and geoglyphs, some of the first images to draw the attention of the world at large to perhaps the most mysterious and massive earthworks and drawings ever created by our human species.  The stark images perfectly capture the inherent emptiness of the Nazca landscape, contrasted by the almost overwhelming amount of lines and drawings and shapes left behind by the creators, a people we call “Nazca” but of whom we know almost nothing, not even the name they chose to call themselves.   They communicate with us and for all time through their artworks.

            The second section of this book explores the remnants of the greatest non-European, non-Asian, non-African civilization in our human history, the Mayan Empire of Central America, which the book states encompasses “…what is now Guatemala, Belize, western Honduras, El Salvador, and the southern Mexican states of Yucatan, Campeche, Quintana Roo, Tabasco, and eastern Chiapas.”  Going back to 2,000 BCE, and existing until around 900 CE, the Maya culture flourished in the middle of some of the harshest tropical forest climates around.  In the 1840’s, a traveler and writer named John Lloyd Stephens explored the area and his two seminal books were integral in bringing the knowledge of the Maya empire to the wider world.  Marilyn Bridges’ photographs capture both excavated buildings and cities and completely overgrown pyramids and temples alike, lending the images an otherworldly quality, as if the jungle was erasing our human history, which it most certainly does cover up!  The Mayan language, the only complete written language ever created in the New World, is still nearly indecipherable.  Because of this, and because the fucking ignorant and psychopathic religious fervor of Spanish Roman Catholic priests “forced” them to burn every Maya text they found, much of Maya culture remains decipherable solely through their earthworks and architecture.  Such a pity.  I firmly believe the world would be a far better place today if every single Bible in existence had been burned up around 400 CE, but I digress.

            The third section details the many prehistoric geoglyphs and burial mounds found throughout North America.  From 500-year old figures carved out of the Mojave desert in California, to the ceremonial centers of the Mississippian people, to the effigy mounds of the Adena people who lived in what is now Ohio between 1000 BCE and 30 BCE, North America is littered with evidence of ancient culture and people, far removed from the lies told by white colonists of a barren, history-less landscape given to them by their white god.  What these ignorant assholes called “Indians” and “savages” were a people with culture, cities, agriculture, temples, burial sites, and an involved society.  Marilyn Bridges’ photographs help us remember this fact.

            The final section describes the truly ancient earthworks, henges, and artificial hills created by the ancient people of what is now England.  The most famous of these is Stonehenge, and rightfully so, but my favorite is the Cerne Abbas Giant, a figure created by removing the sod and topsoil above a chalk hill in Dorset.  A 180 foot tall figure, with a massive 30 foot long erect dong, represents either the Celtic god Helith, or his Roman counterpart Hercules.  Either way, the dude is an obvious ass-kicker with his massive war-club held high overhead.  Not discussed much is the fact that in England exists a human built earth pyramid rivaling the size of the pyramids in Egypt, but created maybe one thousand years before.  INSANE!  Silbury Hill , as it is called, was first constructed around 2500 BCE and remains the largest man-made hill in all of Europe.  Our ancestors were mighty, inventive, intelligent bad-asses of the highest caliber!

            Books like this fill me with awe, with a feeling of overwhelming unity and love for my fellow man, and for all our ancestors trying to make sense of a seemingly random and violent world.  Humans understand pattern better than almost any other creature on Earth.  Because of this, through careful, extended observation, our ancient forebears realized that the seeming permanence of the night sky, along with the solar and lunar cycles, allowed us to experience the passage of time without fear, for we could predict when the rains would come, when an eclipse happened, when the winter solstice came, etc. In all parts of our world, different humans looked at the same skies and came up with the same realizations, creating calendars, observatories, and other tools to measure our world and the passage of time.  To know that this was mostly done by people with no means of writing, no alphabets or glyphs to record information, humbles me greatly.  We stand on the shoulders of every single human that came before us, and every human after us will stand on our shoulders.  This is a responsibility that most of us ignore.  I am deeply thankful our ancestors did not, and that people like Marilyn Bridges, through her insight and emotion, saw the importance of capturing these images and sharing them with the world at large.  I am eternally grateful, as we all should be.

(This amazing book can be purchased used here: https://www.abebooks.com/9780893814236/Marilyn-Bridges-Markings-Sacred-Landscapes-0893814237/plp )

Michael Benson Shares The Awesome Beauty We Create When Art and Science Meet

 

Cosmigraphics: Picturing Space Through Time – Michael Benson (2014)

            Rarely do I come across a book such as this, one that brings together two of my greatest loves and creates something fabulous.  Author Michael Benson shows us how the worlds of Art and Astronomy are, and have always been, connected and complimentary, and the way he does so is so beautiful, informative, and clever that I am left in awe.  I love this book!

            The objects in our sky, the gorgeous night with its twinkling stars, shiny planets, comets, and meteors, and the beaming sky of day with the Sun and sometimes the Moon visible, have been our companions throughout the whole existence of life on our planet.  Ancient man not only saw, but understood, that the view afforded from Earth allows us to see the passage of time, and the cycles described by the motions of the heavens.  Using just plain, careful, repeated observation, and before the invention of written language, humanity catalogued stars and constellations, predicted eclipses, and calculated the Moon’s cycles.  We also created art to help us describe what we saw, from cave paintings to petroglyphs to carved or molded sculptures.  This is how we know that ancient man understood the cosmos in a deep and meaningful way, something which has been sadly lost to much of our modern human population.

            Cosmigraphics collects some of the most amazing images and artwork created by us to describe the heavens above and our Earth below.  This book captures the artistic legacy of the visual explorations of our cosmos, and provides wonderfully descriptive and informative text with each image.  This book is divided into sections exploring the idea of Creation, our Earth, the Moon, the Sun, the structure of the Universe, etc.  Each chapter is so gorgeous and so indicative of the immense genius required to not only grasp infinitely complex ideas but to also portray them in a visual manner, that they allow for the dissemination of information and the spread of wisdom.  These images tell a million stories.  They are beautiful in their own right, and worthy of the appreciation we rightfully lay upon masterpieces by the likes of Michelangelo or Picasso.

            We marvel at the heavens, and have always done so.  As our scientific knowledge grew, our ideas of the universe grew.  Whereas ancient man had deduced that the Earth is spherical, it was accepted doctrine that the Earth was the center of all creation (Bible bias, always), and that, according to early Greek philosophers, what we see in the sky corresponds to sequential “shells” with each carrying different denizens of the sky.  It was accepted belief that the Moon rotated around the Earth in its own sphere, then the Sun, then each known planet.  At the time, this was Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn.  Beyond the planetary “spheres” was a celestial sphere containing the stars in heaven, all fixed and immovable.  It took centuries of human observation, and the perfection of lenses and the telescope, for us to understand that there are no “shells”, that the heavens do move, that our Sun is the center of our solar system, that the planets all rotate around the Sun and not Earth, and that the stars themselves are ridiculously far away from our personal solar system.  Even so, it was assumed that the whole of existence fit within our galaxy, a self-contained universe we refer to as the Milky Way.

            Astronomers and other scientists improved on the initial telescopes, and with the new-found clarity of vision, were able to discern that many of the objects in our night sky were not nebulas internal to the Milky Way, but actually their own island universes, located an inconceivable distance from our own galaxy.  Each new discovery shrunk the old world dictated by religious dogma and human make-em-up, and increased the scope of vision allowed to a human being.  As our knowledge of the universe, its galaxies, and the overall structure of it grew, the idea that humanity was the single reason for everything to exist also dissipated, much to the chagrin of every deluded, brain-dead, dogmatically religious idiot whose entire world-view is based in blind belief and obedience to thousand-year old make-believe. 

            With every new discovery, with every new tool we create to explore our universe, we find more wonder and weirdness than we could ever have imagined. There used to be just one Sun.  Now we know that our galaxy, the cloudy band of light in our night sky called the Milky Way, is composed of billions of individual stars.  We know that outside of our galaxy lie countless trillions of other galaxies, each with their infinity of suns and planets. Hell we even know that everything we can see in the sky above is just a small part of the entire universe.  Estimates now posit our Universe is on the order of 13-15 billion years old, and nearly unimaginably vast, but we can only observe about 36 billion light years distance in any direction.  In its early stages, spacetime itself expanded faster than light, causing much of the Universe to remain occulted from our vantage point.  Any observer on a planet over 36 billion light years away from us would not be able to see Earth either.  It is these type of realities that, while factually and verifiably true, crash against our ideas of “common sense.”  Common sense stated that, if the Earth were actually rotating, all plants, animals, and water would be flung off the planet! (They did not know about gravitation, just as humans in the 1800’s did not know about radiation.  Who knows what all-encompassing truths of the Universe we remain ignorant of today in 2026!)

            Many of my intellectual heroes utilized both Art and Science in their work.  Leonardo da Vinci fused art, science, and engineering in ways we are still coming to grips with today.  Even Richard Feynman, physicist extraordinaire, created a visual and artistic way of describing particle interactions with diagrams named after him still used today to explain quantum processes.  Galileo’s observations of Jupiter and his discovery of its visible moons would not have had the impact they had without his daily drawings of the gas giant and it’s satellites.  These beautiful drawings are included in Cosmigraphics.  An image is truly worth a thousand words and Galileo’s drawings helped to simplify the results from exceedingly complex visual observations, allowing the rest of us to grasp his discoveries. 

            Science, the scientific method specifically, is how we understand the basic truths of our existence.  Art is how we communicate those found truths, whether personal or universal.  In Cosmigraphics, Michael Benson catalogues and examines the confluence of Science and Art, and expands our collective minds in doing so successfully.  This is a masterpiece of artistic and scientific exposition, and I hope someday to find a copy for my own collection.  Almost nothing that we humans do is isolated.  Every field of human endeavor touches every other field, and we are better off for it.  The specialization of humanity’s explorations have led to amazing discoveries, but it is the space between the specialists, the diffuse and vague areas between concrete ideas, where the true synergy of life occurs.  We would all be better off if we recognized this fact and lived our lives accordingly.  If you know of anyone interested in science, art, or the history of humanity’s exploration of our universe, this is the book for them.  It is highly recommended.

(This amazing book can be purchased here: https://www.abebooks.com/book-search/title/cosmigraphics/author/michael-benson/ )

David Hockney Shines a Light on the True Methods of Master Painters

 

Secret Knowledge: Rediscovering the Lost Techniques of the Old Masters – David Hockney (2001)

 

            Sometimes it takes an artist to understand another artist.  Oftentimes, it takes an artist with an inquisitive mind to penetrate another artist’s methods and techniques.  As an artist myself, I know how other artists view art.  We look at the work itself but we are also deeply concerned with how the work was created.  This is similar to how normal people can appreciate a beautiful car, but it takes a trained mechanic to understand the beauty inherent in the interior workings of the vehicle, something not evident to the casual fan.  David Hockney, a world-famous artist, and one of the few modern creators still obsessed with drawing, used his artist’s eye to penetrate the obscurities and purposeful deflections of master painters, realizing, after careful study, that the revered classic painters, figures such as Ingres, Vermeer, and Caravaggio, among many others, were not drawing their subjects free-hand.  Instead, it was plain to Hockney’s modern eye that these magnificent draughtsmen utilized mechanical aids such as lenses, mirrors, and the camera obscura, to perfect their paintings and drawings. Once this idea entered Hockney’s mind it would not leave, sending him on a years-long course of research, practice, and study.  The fruition of the idea is this amazing book.

            Hockney understands that an artist lives within the means allowed during the times they happen to live in.  For Hockney, this means that he has color reproductions, printers, and material readily available.  It is this availability that allowed him to compile his amazing “wall,” a collection of images sorted chronologically on a long studio wall, which allowed him to first “see” the enormous influence exerted by the technologies of the looking glass, the mirror, and the camera obscura on the great master painters.  This is critical to understanding how Hockney arrived at his idea, and it leads into the first section of the book, showcasing the visual evidence he gathered over a decade, helping to illuminate his thesis.

            Seemingly overnight, sometime in the 15^th century, the images change.  Gone are the flat, carefully observed, painterly images of the old masters such as Poussin or Reubens. Instead, we have Van Eyck’s incredibly rich and detailed Arnolfini Wedding, or Caravaggio’s Judith and Holofernes, works so detailed and seemingly exact, as to feel ultra-realistic, as close to an exact reproduction as art could get until the advent of chemical photography.  The only way this could be achieved would be through the use of a camera obscura, originally just a darkened room with a pinhole on one wall, allowing the bright sunlight from outside to enter the room and shine on the opposing wall, showing a reversed and upside-down image of whatever was outside the room. This was as close to magic as humans ever got!  They were able to see the full range of color and light, as well as seeing the motion of the scene in question.  Imagine it, in a world where images were few and far between, where a master artist worked for years to learn to capture likeness, shape and form, to have a simple contraption display a magical light show must have seemed pure fantasy. 

            Hockney’s suggestion that the old master painters utilized such mechanical aids shook the art and art history worlds.  The art dogma proclaimed loudly that the true genius of artists such as Vermeer lay in their uncanny ability to capture likeness without anything as pedantic and common as a lens, mirror, or other such device.  To imagine their use of a camera obscura would only detract from their esteem.  This is a deeply rooted fallacy, which Hockney points out exists solely because most art historians are not creators of art.  In the intervening quarter-century since David Hockney released this book, his observations have gained much traction, especially among his fellow artists.

As Hockney states several times, the paint does not apply itself.  The marks created by a painter using a camera obscura serve as points of departure, allowing an artist to achieve very close likenesses of a human sitter, for example.  Free-hand drawing, what artists call “eyeballing,” is a process whereby the hand of the artist seeks the proper contours and spatial relations of the scene he is painting.  X-ray photography of such works can show how an artist moved an element of the painting, adjusted a position, or completely removed an aspect of the image.  These markings and underdrawings are not found in the highly detailed images from Vermeer, Ingres, Caravaggio, or any of the other artists using a camera obscura device.  Instead, there are basic scrapings or markings, detailing the main points of a figure, or the relation of the nose to the face in a portrait.  This makes the finished work seem as if it was created whole out of thin air, with little to no preparation!  This was only possible with the use of a mechanical aid.

The first section of this book details the visual evidence discovered by Hockney.  From spatial distortions, only producible by the use of a lens, to issues of relative size between the heads of sitters and their bodies, to the flatness created by such projections, which became a stylized flatness in the works of the major artists, Hockney points out countless examples of each, in vivid color, and invites us to make our own observations.  As an artist myself, once seen, these examples cannot be unseen. 

Hockney describes the progress of the mechanical aids and how, using a lens and mirror, the camera obscura allowed for more complex paintings.  For example, in Hans Holbein’s masterpieces, Hockney shows how each section, exquisitely detailed, was composed individually, using the tolls mentioned above.  This gives the paintings a cohesive, focused nature very pleasing to the eye, but close reading by a trained eye can see the perspective shifts, and the diverted angles which come from such technique.  Another “sign” of the camera obscura is the rise of chiaroscuro, or the treatment of bright light and deep shadow within paintings.  Before the use of the devices, paintings did not use shadow to mold the shape of the subjects, instead using color and line.  In fact, most pre-1400’s European painting matched what we see in Indian or Chinese paintings, a focus on form and color, with no shadows portrayed whatsoever.  It is these shadows that Hockney intuited arose from the bright light (essentially full sunlight) needed for the proper functioning of a camera obscura.  Painters were now obsessed with light and shadow, and capturing near-perfect likenesses of people and nature.  It was not until hundreds of years later, when the chemical photograph managed to capture light and form for posterity, that the painting world retreated from pure representation, moving into wild new fields such as Fauvism, Cubism, and Abstract Expressionism, attempting to do with paint what could not be done with the camera.

The second part of this book deals with the textual evidence gathered by David Hockney to support his claims.  The older examples can be a bit vague, for each artist and craftsman was deeply suspicious of others and would never share the secrets of their trade with anyone for fear it would be stolen or used erroneously.  Roger Bacon, artist and scientist extraordinaire, wrote in Of Art and Nature that,

“The cause of…concealment among all wise men is the contempt and neglect of the secrets of wisdom [sic] by the vulgar sort that knoweth not how to use these things which are most excellent.” 

This is as true now as it was in the 13^th century when Bacon wrote it.

The third part prints out much of the correspondence between David Hockney and fellow artists, historians, etc., all discussing the ideas found in this book, from conception to publication.  It gives a great timeline, and allows the reader to travel along with Hockney as he gains certainty and wisdom concerning his idea.  It is a great coda to this amazing book.  Hockney also shares an extensive bibliography, perfect for people like me, seeking more reading material.

This may be the single greatest art history book I have ever read.  It reads like a mystery and the images are perfectly chosen to elucidate Hockney’s writing.  Perhaps we need to return to a time when art history was written by actual artists, instead of historians.  The insights found by David Hockney may only be the tip of the proverbial iceberg.  Once our preconceived ideas about how “artistic genius” functions are discarded, we can better see how these magnificently creative artists captured our world in their art.  To demean an artist for using a tool says more about the person laying judgment than it does about the creative individual.  No mechanical aid can teach how to lay down paint, or how to draw, or how to create mood and feeling in an artwork.  Those things come directly from the artist themselves, their hard work, and their imagination.  David Hockney has done all artists a great service.  This book should be required reading for anyone studying art or art history. 

(This book can be purchased here: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/secret-knowledge-david-hockney/1112571044 )