Seattle Art Museum Reopening May 5

Red Rock Canyon is Otherworldly

Every so often you come across somewhere close to home that's so magnificent it stops you in your tracks, leaving you wide-eyed and slack-jawed.

Red Rock Canyon State Park — where the southernmost tip of the Sierra Nevada meets the El Paso Range and just two hours north of downtown L.A. — is one of those places. The 4,000-acre swath of spectacular desert scenery could easily be a double for the Southwest. Exploration on foot is the main attraction, and camping brings you flush up against the scenery. Here, pleated sandstone cliffs sporting horizontal stripes in hues of pink, orange, tan and dark chocolate soar more than 1,000 feet above a shimmering white-sand basin speckled with Joshua trees, fishhook cactuses and the rare Red Rock tar plant. Volcanic rock six stories high and the gray-black color of weathered asphalt caps the sky-scraping cliffs.

The towering medley of colors and breathtaking rock formations are people magnets. Although there's a well-marked trail that winds from a parking lot up the center of Hagen Canyon, the loveliest in the park, most visitors stray from the path within minutes and hike, scramble or climb up cliffs.

Back in Time: The Wadsworth Chapel

The oldest building on Wilshire Boulevard is a fixerupper duplex of a most unusual sort.

Roundels, lunettes and other late-Victorian details adorn the redwood clapboard siding of Building 20 on the West Los Angeles Veterans Affairs campus. Atop the roof's towers and gables sit four Latin and Celtic crosses, hinting at the activities that once filled the interior with songs and sermons.

Until the 1971 Sylmar earthquake forced its closing, the building, completed in 1900, provided dual sanctuaries separated by a double brick wall that also served to deaden the organ rumblings that emanated from either side. At the north end, old soldiers worshiped in a Catholic chapel; at the south end, they prayed as Protestants.

The arrangement was highly unusual, if not unique. And the Catholic-Protestant chapels quickly emerged as a point of pride for veterans and other residents, according to local news reports of the time.

Since being placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1972, however, the building has deteriorated markedly. Frayed and forlorn, the Wadsworth Chapel — as it is known, in honor of a Civil War officer — needs a restoration that the VA estimates would cost $11.5 million. With the department facing $250 million in deferred maintenance expenses at the expansive campus and unable to foot the bill, preservation advocates have for years scouted for private funding, to little avail.

Gene Autry rode and sang his way across the plains.

IN 1992, when he was 82, Gene Autry was the only show business figure to make Forbes magazine's annual list of the 400 richest Americans. By the time he died, six years later, the magazine estimated his wealth at $320 million, most of it derived from a chain of radio and television stations he had patiently acquired, as well as real estate, oil wells and, of course, his huge catalog of musical copyrights. He still had an aging, dwindling base of nostalgic fans, though he had not performed in public for something like three decades.

Autry deserves to be regarded as an important American figure — certainly a significant one in the history of Los Angeles. A new biography tells the story. Born to a shiftless father and a sickly mother near Tioga, Texas, Autry received a primitive education and became a telegrapher for the St. Louis-San Francisco railroad. It was a job he clung to even as he began warbling and wandering as the "Oklahoma Yodeling Cowboy." Entirely self-taught as a singer and guitar picker, Autry had a pleasant, unpretentious voice and manner, and his records and radio work brought him to the modest hinterlands of fame. The movie business called in 1934, when he made the first of his 92 B-movie westerns. Soon thereafter, he had a network radio show and a relentless schedule of public appearances, mostly with rodeos that he owned.

Here, a certain mystery — which is not entirely solved by Holly George-Warren in her devoted but not very venturesome biography, "Public Cowboy No. 1" — enters our story. Put simply, it is: How in the world did Gene Autry become the richest cowboy in human history?

Software billionaire buys ticket into space

BAIKONUR, KAZAKHSTAN — A Russian rocket carrying Charles Simonyi, an American billionaire who helped develop Microsoft Word, roared into the skies over Kazakhstan on Saturday night, sending him and two cosmonauts into orbit on a two-day journey to the International Space Station.

The Soyuz TMA-10 capsule, trailing a column of smoke and fire, cast an orange glow over the Baikonur cosmodrome and dozens of officials and well-wishers watching from about a mile away.

(From the Associated Press)

"The House on the Hill"

A French American sheepherder wanted a chateau-like home for all his relatives. The mansion, with more than 30 rooms, was completed in 1927 by a French American sheepherder named Sylvester Dupuy. Locals called it "the castle." But the Dupuy family thought that "sounded too pretentious," like a feudal lord to the serfs. "So we called it 'The House on the Hill' or just 'The Hill,' " said Dupuy's grandson, Frank Dupuy, 83, of Altadena.

"My grandfather envisioned us all living together like the 1980s TV program 'Dallas,' " Dupuy said in an interview. And that's just what they did for nearly two decades. "My father helped build it. The women of the family prepared French meals, and everyone pitched in to make wine," the grandson said.

A photo composite depicts an image of Sylvester Dupuy, far left, and his family in 1915 superimposed on a 1927 photo of the estate. Alhambra's storybook fortress on a hill evokes a Pyrenees chateau — which was, in fact, the builder's inspiration. For nearly 80 years, this reinforced concrete castle near Fremont Avenue and Valley Boulevard remained relatively unknown — even after it was purchased by rock 'n' roll producer Phil Spector in 1998. But when actress Lana Clarkson was shot to death in the foyer in February 2003, notoriety replaced anonymity.

(Photo from the Jacques Dupuy family archives)

"Some Enchanted Evening" Lasted for Years

The Richard Rodgers, Oscar Hammerstein musical classic of love and war, South Pacific, unfolded on a lush tropical island swarming with Seabees, nurses, natives and coconut trees on this night in 1949. Actually, it was not a tropical island, but the stage of the Majestic Theatre in New York City.
Ezio Pinza starred as the suave French plantation owner with a shady past and Mary Martin portrayed the bubbly, pretty, but naive Navy nurse. Mary Martin washed her hair a zillion times as she sang, I’m Gonna Wash that Man Right Out of My Hair in 1,925 performances.

1950 Tony Awards went to the show and its producers, performers, director (Joshua Logan) and composers nine statuettes. It also earned a Pulitzer Prize in the same year and in 1958 was made into a movie.

South Pacific caused a lot of Happy Talk and this night, so many years ago, was certainly Some Enchanted Evening.

"Lady Day" sang the Blues

Jazz singer Billie Holiday was born on April 7, 1915, in Baltimore, Maryland. She made her professional singing debut in Harlem nightclubs in 1931, and made her first recordings in 1933. Although she had no formal musical training, she became one of the greatest jazz singers of all time, and her recordings are now regarded as masterpieces.

Holiday's autobiography, Lady Sings the Blues,1 opens with the line: "Mom and Pop were just a couple of kids when they got married; he was 18, she was 16 and I was three." Holiday's given name was Eleanora Fagan, but when she started to perform she chose the stage name Billie after Billie Dove, an early movie star.

The tension of racism was a powerful subtext to Holiday's life story. Because of Jim Crow laws, still in effect through most of her career, she occasionally found herself in the ironic situation of being the featured vocalist in clubs that refused to serve blacks. The liner notes to Immortal Sessions of Billie Holiday describe her 1939 rendition of Lewis Allan's "Strange Fruit," a composition about lynching, is "…the most anguished and harrowing expression of protest against man's inhumanity to man that has ever been made in the form of vocal jazz." 2

Nicknamed "Lady Day" by musician Lester Young, Holiday often wore white gardenias fastened in her hair when performing. She worked with many jazz greats including Count Basie, Benny Goodman, Artie Shaw and, in the film New Orleans, with Louis Armstrong and Kid Orey. She appeared at both small clubs and prestigious venues like Town Hall, Carnegie Hall and the Apollo Theater.

Bahrain World Trade Center, Bahrain

The Bahrain World Trade Center is an extension to the existing Sheraton Hotel complex and comprises two 50-storey sail-shaped commercial office towers, which taper to a height of 240m and support three 29m diameter horizontal-axis wind turbines. The towers are integrated on top of a three-storey podium which accommodates a new boutique shopping centre, fine dining, business centre and car parking.

WIND POWER

"The sail-shaped towers funnel the sea breeze into the three wind turbines."Inspired by Arabian wind towers, the sail-shaped towers funnel the sea breeze into the three wind turbines. They act as aerofoils, funnelling and accelerating the wind velocity between them. The vertical sculpting of the towers also progressively reduces the pressure so that when combined with the rising velocity of the onshore breeze at increasing heights, a near equal regime of wind velocity on each turbine is achieved.

Understanding this phenomenon has been a key factor behind the success of this design. Extensive wind tunnel testing also confirmed how the shapes and spatial relationship of the towers sculpt the airflow, creating an ‘S’ flow. This ensures that within a 45° wind angle either side of the central axis, the centre of the wind stream remains perpendicular to the turbines. In this way, the turbines’ potential to generate power is dramatically increased.

The building overlooks the Arabian Gulf. The sail-shaped towers are inspired by Arabian wind towers.

The entrance to the Bahrain World Trade Center.

New High-rise, Low-rise rising in New York

505 Fifth Avenue is under construction in New York's business district of Manhattan. By New York standards, 505 Fifth Avenue is a low-rise complex, rising 125m over 28 stories.

Masterpiece of Modern Architecture

In October 2005 the Valencia Opera House was officially opened by Queen Sofia of Spain. It is named for the Queen as 'el Palau de les Arts Reina Sofía'. The opera house was designed by the Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava who was actually born in Valencia.

For Calatrava, the completion of the opera house is the culmination of 14 years' work. The architect commented "Because of the time spent, its size and because it involves music, this project is the most intense and the one I've devoted most time on, so far. It represents a correlation between spectator, musician and artist".

The actual building is a masterpiece of modern architecture and descriptions of it have varied from 'a blend of seagoing vessel and spacecraft' to 'some sort of prehistoric trilobite' or a 'giant warrior's helmet'.

"The roof or 'feather plume' consists of two 'shells' which embrace the building on the outside."Whatever the perception of the building there is no doubt it will become a symbol of the city of Valencia just as the Sydney opera house in Australia has.

Hollywood's Capitol Records

Capitol Tower, the home of Capitol Records in Hollywood, CA, was dedicated on this day in 1956. The building was the first circular office tower designed in America. It is 13 stories tall and 92 feet in diameter. At night, a light at the tip of the tower blinks the letters "H-O-L-L-Y-W-O-O-D" in Morse Code.

Lowell Thomas and Lawrence of Arabia

Lowell Thomas, one of America’s most respected newscasters was born in Woodington, Ohio on this day in 1892 and grew up in Colorado. With degrees from the University of Colorado, New York University, and Columbia University, he became one of the best educated newsmen in the business. And he started in the business at the age of 19 as a reporter for the New York Daily News. Thomas gained notoriety when -- as cameraman Harry Chase filmed -- he reported his eye witness account of author T.E. Lawrence’s 1917 escapades. Lawrence was the British military liaison to the Arabs in their revolt against the Turks. Lowell Thomas’ romantic and adventurous tales of the Brit he referred to as “Lawrence of Arabia,” played to audiences throughout the world, making Lawrence a movie star and Thomas a millionaire.

He began his long broadcasting career in 1930, as a replacement for NBC’s Floyd Gibbons. Thomas’ career spanned over five decades and three networks. The first sixteen years were spent at NBC where his broadcasts became so important that the network placed two microphones in front of him ... just in case one failed. Lowell Thomas would scoop the other networks and the newspapers wielding a clout and influence never before heard on the airwaves.

Lucerne at Dusk

Photo by Konrad Busslinger

Wagenbachbrunnen in Lucerne

Photo by Konrad Busslinger

I wonder if this painter kept his job ??

. . . and how about this guy ??

Digital Artwork that is Striking

Extraordinary Images by Chris Hetlage

Starved Rock: A Legend or a Myth ??

Starved Rock State Park is an Illinois state park located in Utica, Illinois, in rural LaSalle County, Illinois, about 75 miles (120 km) west-southwest of downtown Chicago. The park is 2,630 acres (10 km²)in size and includes 13 miles (21 km) of hiking trails, numerous waterfalls (icefalls in winter) and other landforms. The park contains 18 sandstone canyons carved over the last 12,000 years by a combination of surface water runoff and groundwater outflow. Starved Rock itself is a large eroded butte overlooking the Illinois River. French explorers built a fort called Fort St. Louis atop the rock in 1682 but had abandoned it by the early 1700s.

The rock derives its name from a story that a band of Illiniwek was trapped in the 1760s on the rock by a band of Potawatomi trying to avenge the death of the Ottawa Chief Pontiac. The Illiniwek then scrambled to the top of the rock, where the Ottawa and allied Potawatomi laid siege until the Illiniwek starved to death. However, the authenticity of the story has never been verified, and the story is now considered to be more legend than truth.

The Awesome Power and Destruction of Katrina

When Insults Had Class

"He has all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire." - Winston Churchill

"A modest little person, with much to be modest about." - Winston Churchill

"I have never killed a man, but I have read many obituaries with great pleasure." - Clarence Darrow

"He has never been known to use a word that might send a reader to the dictionary." - William Faulkner (about Ernest Hemingway)

"Poor Faulkner. Does he really think big emotions come from big words?" - Ernest Hemingway (about William Faulkner)

"Thank you for sending me a copy of your book; I'll waste no time reading it." - Moses Hadas

"He can compress the most words into the smallest idea of any man I know." - Abraham Lincoln

"I didn't attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I approved of it." - Mark Twain

"He has no enemies, but is intensely disliked by his friends." - Oscar Wilde

"I am enclosing two tickets to the first night of my new play; bring a friend.... if you have one." - George Bernard Shaw to Winston Churchill

"Cannot possibly attend first night, will attend second... if there is one." - Winston Churchill, in response.

"I feel so miserable without you; it's almost like having you here." - Stephen Bishop

"He is a self-made man and worships his creator." - John Bright

"I've just learned about his illness. Let's hope it's nothing trivial." - Irvin S. Cobb

"He is not only dull himself, he is the cause of dullness in others." - Samuel Johnson

"He is simply a shiver looking for a spine to run up." - Paul Keating

"He had delusions of adequacy." - Walter Kerr

"There's nothing wrong with you that reincarnation won't cure." - Jack E. Leonard

"He has the attention span of a lightning bolt." - Robert Redford

"They never open their mouths without subtracting from the sum of human knowledge." - Thomas Brackett Reed

"In order to avoid being called a flirt, she always yielded easily." - Charles, Count Talleyrand

"He loves nature in spite of what it did to him." - Forrest Tucker

"Why do you sit there looking like an envelope without any address on it?" - Mark Twain

"His mother should have thrown him away and kept the stork." - Mae West

"Some cause happiness wherever they go; others, whenever they go." - Oscar Wilde

"He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lamp-posts... for support rather than illumination." - Andrew Lang (1844-1912)

"He has Van Gogh's ear for music." - Billy Wilder

"I've had a perfectly wonderful evening. But this wasn't it." - Groucho Marx

The Death of the Red Baron

Death of Baron von Richthofen (the Red Baron), by A. Henry Fullwood -- Scholars are still debating the facts surrounding the Red Baron's death in 1918.

Movie Art from Great Movies

An important part of great movies like Casablanca was great photography.

Luxembourg is real: It just seems like a fairy tale

The Grand Duchy of Luxembourg (Luxembourgish: Groussherzogtum Lëtzebuerg, French: Grand-Duché de Luxembourg, German: Großherzogtum Luxemburg), archaically Luxemburg, is a small landlocked country in western Europe, bordered by Belgium, France, and Germany. Luxembourg has a population of under half a million people in an area of approximately 2,585 square kilometres (998 sq mi), which is slightly smaller than the American state of Rhode Island.

Luxembourg is a parliamentary representative democracy with a constitutional monarchy, ruled by a Grand Duke. It is the world's only sovereign Grand Duchy. The country has a highly-developed economy, with the highest Gross Domestic Product per capita in the world. Luxembourg is a founding member of the European Union, NATO, the United Nations, Benelux, and the Western European Union, reflecting the political consensus in favour of economic, political, and military integration. The city of Luxembourg, the capital and largest city, is the seat of several institutions and agencies of the European Union.
Luxembourg lies on the cultural divide between Romance Europe and Germanic Europe, borrowing customs from each of the distinct traditions. While French and Luxembourgish are the predominant languages in daily life and on the streets, Luxembourg remains a trilingual country; French, German, and Luxembourgish are official languages. Although a secular state, Luxembourg is predominantly Roman Catholic.

Glenn Miller Enriched Our Lives

Alton Glenn Miller (March 1, 1904 — presumably December 15, 1944), was an American jazz musician and bandleader in the swing era. He was one of the best-selling recording artists from 1939 to 1942, leading one of the best known "Big Bands." During World War II, while traveling to entertain U.S. troops in France, his plane disappeared in bad weather. His body was never found.

Miller's signature recordings — including, among others, "In the Mood", "Tuxedo Junction", "Chattanooga Choo Choo", "Moonlight Serenade", "Sun Valley Jump", "String of Pearls", "Little Brown Jug", "Pennsylvania 6-5000" (named for the phone number of his New York hotel residence) — are still familiar refrains, even to generations born decades after Miller disappeared.

First Movie Theater Opens in 1902

1902 : First movie theater opens

The first American theater devoted solely to movies opens in Los Angeles on this day in 1902. Housed in a circus tent, the venue was dubbed "The Electric Theater." Its earliest pictures included "New York in a Blizzard." Admission cost about 10 cents for a one-hour show.

Inventors in Europe and the United States, including Thomas Edison, had been developing film cameras since the late 1880s. Early films were shown in individual viewing devices called Kinetoscopes. By the late 1890s, audiences could attend public demonstrations of movies, and several movie "factories" (as the earliest production studios were called) had been formed. In 1896, the Edison Company inaugurated the era of commercial movies, showing a collection of moving images as a minor act in a vaudeville show that also included live acts, among which were a Russian clown, an "eccentric dancer," and a "gymnastic comedian." The film, shown at Koster and Bial's Music Hall in New York City, featured images of dancers, ocean waves, and gondolas.

Short films, usually less than a minute long, became a regular part of vaudeville shows at the turn of the century but were often shown at the very end of the performance, as "chasers," while the audience left the theater. A vaudeville performers' strike in 1901, however, left theaters scrambling for acts, and movies became the main event. In the earliest years, vaudeville theater owners had to purchase films from factories via mail order, rather than renting them, which made it expensive to change shows frequently. Starting in 1902, Henry Miles of San Francisco began renting films to theaters, forming the basis of today's distribution system. After the opening of the first movie theater, in Los Angeles in 1902, amusement arcades began opening small storefront theaters called Nickelodeans (so called because admission cost 5 cents), which showed short silent films, usually less than 15 minutes, accompanied by a live pianist. By 1907, some 2 million Americans had visited a Nickelodean.

Ugly Duckling Day

Denmark’s most famous author, Hans Christian Andersen, was born on this day in 1805. His life was a true tale of the boy who went from rags to riches. He was born to a poor family; his father, a shoemaker, died when Hans was 11 years old. When he was just 14, Hans left his hometown of Odense, Denmark and traveled to Copenhagen where he, literally, became a starving artist (actor, singer, dancer). It was there that he met the man who became his lifelong friend and benefactor, Jonas Collin. With Collin’s help, Andersen received a royal scholarship and completed his education.
By his 25th birthday, Hans was on his way to a writing career that would make him one of the most widely-read authors in the world. His first recognition came for his many plays and novels. Five years later, he penned his first of 168 fairy tales. Maybe you recognize a few ...

The folk tales: The Tinder-Box, Little Claus and Big Claus; tales that made fun of human faults: The Emperor’s New Suit (also known as The Emperor’s New Clothes), The Princess and the Pea; tales based on his life: The Ugly Duckling, She was Good for Nothing, and others, some philosophical, some with sly humor and some with serious moral messages: The Snow Queen, The Red Shoes, The Little Mermaid, Thumbelina, The Marsh King’s Daughter.

As Andersen’s popularity rose in the 1840s, he found himself rubbing shoulders with kings and queens, famous composers, poets and novelists. He became wealthy enough to visit throughout Europe, writing about his experiences as he traveled. In Sweden is often considered his best travel book. The sensitive writer also wrote his own story in 1855, The Fairy Tale of My Life. Hans Christian Anderson died a lonely man on August 4, 1875, but his stories and fairy tales live on, entertaining children and adults, inspiring new writers.

In fact, the Hans Christian Andersen Award is presented every other year to an author and an illustrator of children’s books. The ‘Little Nobel Prize’, as it is often called, is the highest international recognition bestowed on an author (since 1956) and to an illustrator (since 1966). It is presented by the International Board on Books for Young People (IBBY).

The Ugly Duckling would be proud.

The perfect thing . . .

Desperate Times Warrant Desperate Measures

Risky Conversation

Chronicles of the Wright Brothers

The online presentation of The Wilbur and Orville Wright Papers at the Library of Congress, comprising about 10,121 library items or approximately 49,084 digital images, documents the lives of Wilbur and Orville Wright and highlights their pioneering work which led to the world's first powered, controlled and sustained flight. Included in the collection are correspondence, diaries and notebooks, scrapbooks, drawings, printed matter, and other documents, as well as the Wrights' collection of glass-plate photographic negatives. The Wright brothers' letters to aviation pioneer and mentor Octave Chanute, from the Octave Chanute Papers, were also selected for this online collection. The Wright Papers span the years 1881 to 1952 but largely cover 1900 to 1940. This online presentation includes the famous glass-plate negative of the "First Flight" at Kitty Hawk on December 17, 1903, as well as diaries and letters in which Wilbur and Orville Wright recount their work that led to that day.

The Beginning of Our "National Pastime" and the unwritten "color line"

Americans began playing baseball on informal teams, using local rules, in the early 1800s. By the 1860s, the sport, unrivaled in popularity, was being described as America's "national pastime."

Baseball rules and teams were gradually formalized during the mid and late 1800s.

1845: Alexander Cartwright published a set of baseball rules for the Knickerbocker Club of New York, and his rules were widely adopted.

1869: The Cincinnati Red Stockings (shown above) became the first openly-salaried team and are thus considered the first professional team.

1871: The first professional baseball league, the National Association of Professional Base Ball Players, was established.

1876: The first major league, the National League, was formed.

African Americans played baseball throughout the 1800s. By the 1860s notable black amateur teams, such as the Colored Union Club in Brooklyn, New York, and the Pythian Club, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, had formed. All-black professional teams began in the 1880s, among them the St. Louis Black Stockings and the Cuban Giants (of New York). Reflecting American society in general, amateur and professional baseball remained largely segregated.

One of the few black players on an integrated professional league team was Moses Fleetwood "Fleet" Walker, a catcher for the minor league Toledo Blue Stockings. In 1883, the Chicago White Stockings, led by star player Adrian "Cap" Anson, refused to take the field against the Blue Stockings because of Walker's presence. The Blue Stockings manager insisted that the game be played, and Anson relented. When the Blue Stockings joined the American Association in 1884, Walker became the first African-American major leaguer. In July of 1887, the International League banned future contracts with black players, although it allowed black players already under contract to stay on its teams. These are but two of the events that shaped the unwritten "color line," which segregated professional baseball until the 1940s.

Ansel Adams portrayed courage and determination at Manzanar

In 1943, Ansel Adams (1902-1984), America's best-known photographer, documented the Manzanar War Relocation Center in California (shown above)and the Japanese Americans interned there during World War II. Adams's Manzanar work is a departure from his signature style of landscape photography. Although a majority of the photographs are portraits, the images also include views of daily life, agricultural scenes, and sports and leisure activities. When he offered the collection to the Library in 1965, Adams wrote, "The purpose of my work was to show how these people, suffering under a great injustice, and loss of property, businesses and professions, had overcome the sense of defeat and dispair [sic] by building for themselves a vital community in an arid (but magnificent) environment…All in all, I think this Manzanar Collection is an important historical document, and I trust it can be put to good use."

Letters Between Ernest Hemingway and Marlene Dietrich Made Public

BOSTON — Ernest Hemingway (shown above in 1918), the self-appointed "Papa" of the literary world, liked calling his women friends "daughter," among them Marlene Dietrich, a bond documented in letters as steadfast, passionate and likely platonic.

The correspondence between the icons, who met aboard an ocean liner in 1934, details a complex, flirtatious relationship that offers no new evidence they were lovers.

Thirty letters that Hemingway wrote between 1949 and 1953 to the German-born actress and singer, whom Hemingway also called "My little Kraut," were made available to the public for the first time Thursday at the Ernest Hemingway Collection at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum.

In a letter dated June 19, 1950, at 4 a.m., the Nobel Prize-winning author wrote: "You are getting so beautiful they will have to make passport pictures of you 9 feet tall. What do you really want to do for a life work? Break everybody's heart for a dime? You could always break mine for a nickel and I'd bring the nickel."

"Beloved Papa," Dietrich began a 1951 letter, "I think it is high time to tell you that I think of you constantly. I read your letters over and over and speak of you with a few chosen men. I have moved your photograph to my bedroom and mostly look at it rather helplessly."

Hemingway was 50 and Dietrich was 47 when their letter writing began. He described the relationship to his friend, writer A.E. Hotchner, by saying they fell in love when they met aboard the Ile de France but "we've never been to bed. Amazing but true. Victims of un-synchronized passion. Those times when I was out of love, the Kraut was deep in some romantic tribulation, and on those occasions when Dietrich was on the surface and swimming about with those marvelously seeking eyes, I was submerged."

The letters were donated to the library in 2003 by Dietrich's daughter, Maria Riva, on the condition that they be kept private until now.

Marlene Dietrich

Putting a Premium on Inefficiency

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. - The Purdue University Society of Professional Engineers put the squeeze on the competition Saturday (Feb. 24) and took top honors during the 24th annual Rube Goldberg Regional Machine Contest by finding a new - and more inefficient - way to make orange juice.

It is the third year in a row that the professional engineers' team has won Purdue's regional competition and the second consecutive year the team claimed the People's Choice Award, voted on by the more than 1,500 people who attended the event. The team's machine used 134 steps to squeeze the juice from an orange and then pour the juice into a glass.

The annual competition, which took place on the Purdue campus, rewards machines that most effectively combine creativity with inefficiency and complexity. Shown below is one of the entries.

Las Vegas' NASCAR Grand Prix

Carzilla looms over the NASCAR Café at the Sahara Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas. According to the Sahara, the hulking Carzilla — a Pontiac Grand Prix — weighs 3 tons. The city's first Grand Prix will be held April 6-8.
(Luis Sinco, Los Angeles Times)