Across the Pond

How did women, whom Jesus treated as equals, become second class Christians? Why have they retained this inferior status until today, especially in the Roman Catholic church? When will it change? A book I recently read, Women in Christianity by the Swiss born theologian and Roman Catholic priest Hans Küng, an emeritus professor at the University of Tübingen in Germany, gives some answers — and leaves one big question open. In earliest Christianity gender differences didn't affect life in the church, which back then was nothing but a community of free and equal people. But with the institutionalization of the church hierarchical structures replaced egalitarian relationships. Add to that a devaluation of education especially for women in late antiquity, and we have a perfect storm that reduced women to their biology. Going forth, men dominated in all areas of public life and usually in the home, too. In the Middle Ages, the sexuality-averse teachings of Augustine and Thomas Aqu...

Lights, camera, action! The Hollywood sign, seen from Hollywood Blvd Los Angeles does a lousy job of preserving its heritage, and the district of Hollywood, L.A.'s prime tourist destination, is a perfect example of this failure. Hollywood's dominant feature is a mall at the corner of Hollywood Boulevard and Highland Avenue that was opened in 2001. The shopping and entertainment center dwarfs the Roosevelt Hotel, the El Capitan Theater, Grauman's Chinese Theater — now actually TCL Chinese Theater, after the company that bought it a few months back — and whatever else may be left of the classical Hollywood. In a pile-it-on mixture of styles and forms, the complex boasts postmodern glass fronts, roof tops reminiscent of bunkers from World War II and elephant statues perched upon voluptuous columns. The site has Las Vegas feel to it. But while such eclecticism might amuse me anywhere in Nevada, I find it eerie everywhere else. I don't want L.A. to look like Vegas. Tha...

Years ago, when I was working as a reporter in Austria, I asked the composer Peter Zwetkoff whether he would let me profile him for the newspaper. The man was appalled. He shook his head and gave me a look so intense it scared me. "Bloss keine Spuren," he said, talking as quietly as he always did but with a determination that put an instant halt to further inquiries. Bloss keine Spuren. No traces. Peter Zwetkoff was born in Bulgaria in 1925. He grew up in a village just outside of Innsbruck, Austria. As a teenager, Zwetkoff joined the resistance against Hitler. Gestapo men arrested him repeatedly and tortured him. As of the mid nineteen-fifties Zwetkoff lived in Germany where he worked as a freelance composer for a radio station. Peter Zwetkoff died on May 17, in Baden-Baden, Germany. Searching the web for documentation on Zwetkoff yesterday, I came up almost empty-handed. I found a page on Wikipedia and entries in various music and film databases. But there isn't muc...

On a chilly Sunday night in February two young girls in jeans and light blouses were standing in front of the artists' entrance of one of two local art theaters in Pasadena, California. The pathway beyond the barrier, an iron gate, was barely lit. It stayed empty for a long time while the girls, shifting weight from one foot to the other, chatted and giggled. After a while a figure emerged from the shadows. The girls fell silent but it was the wrong actor. When the right man, Bradley Whitford, finally appeared he was wearing a bicycle helmet pushed way up on his forehead. Whitford is best known for playing Josh Lyman in the TV series  The West Wing   but on that night he had performed in the Pasadena Playhouse's production of Yasmina Reza’s   Art.  The girls stopped the actor, told him about their social studies class and how the teacher would have them watch The West Wing.  Whitford smiled, asked, "Which school is it?" and autographed the two print...

My kindle, my salvation: books in our home The New York Times Magazine recently ran an article by Carina Chocano on us and the electronic age: The Dilemma of Being a Cyborg . Reading it, I learned about a Facebook app offered by the German postal service DHL . The app allows users to convert their Facebook activity into "a handsome book containing all your fondest social-media memories, converted into, and preserved as, commemorative infographics". I can understand why DHL would come up with the application: Facebook books will have to be shipped, which means business for the mailing service. What I don't get is why we would want to use the app. Maybe I am just not a big enough fan of Facebook but to me the one big advantage of digitization is space related. Whatever I have stored virtually takes up as much room as my kindle and my PC plus the back-up system it is connected to. The belongings of me as a cyborg fit into a small carry-on travel bag. Compare t...

Organic blend: Chinese garden at the Huntington The Chinese garden at The Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens in San Marino (L.A. county) is a magical place. It blends the man-made and the natural, architecture with trees, straight lines and curves, all in an organic way. Last week, as I was wandering the cobbled paths of the garden I decided to take a closer look at some of the rocks. I got to my knees, admired the shades of white and grey, the undertones of purple, green, and red; I let my hand glide over the limestone's spurs, cracks, and sharp edges, felt the coolness of the rock against my skin, its enduring solidity against my human transience - and decided to look up some facts. Spurs and cracks: 50 Chinese stone workers flew in to carve the stone Transplants in L.A.: 850 tons of rock The limestone rocks in the Huntington's Chinese garden are transplants. They were imported from Lake Tai in the Y...

Showing off in pinks: magnolia tree at the Huntington Gardens Roses, camellias, cacti; sages, jacarandas, and palm trees: last week a friend invited me to spend an afternoon at the  Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens  in San Marino, an affluent suburb of L.A. The Huntington boasts more than 14,000 varieties of plants in 14 principal garden areas and one section or another is always at its best. Right now the magnolias and parts of the cactus garden are showing off in oranges, reds and pinks. Natural habitat, home base: cactus garden As my companion and I were wandering down through the desert garden, into the Australian garden, and, later, through the Chinese garden it struck me how the Huntington is a mirror for life in Los Angeles. Botanical sections adjoin and sometimes blend into each other the way neighborhoods in L.A. do. To the immigrant from Europe some parts of the Huntington such as the Asian areas and the jungle see...

White on white, hard to capture: iceberg roses Mid January, and we just cut the last roses: Icebergs, a burst of fullness but serene and still, white on white, hard to capture in a photograph. Years ago, when I was in high school in Innsbruck, my good friend L. used to give me the last roses from her mother's garden. It was an annual ritual I looked forward to, always reserved for the end of October. Unlike mine, L.'s roses came in colors - red, yellow, a washed out orange. Their stems were  often scraggly, the leaves a little smaller than they might have been two months before, at the height of summer. The memory of the recurring gift includes that of the giver: L.'s green eyes, quick and sharp, the big yet humble smile as she passes the bouquet, three or four flowers, thorny, wrapped in aluminum foil and a damp paper towel. L. was the smartest in our class, an honor student through all grades. After graduation she enrolled in vocational school, to be trained as...

"Their album - it's an excuse." Stamps from Austria Last week I received a packet from Austria. It came with two old fashioned looking petit point stamps. I do not collect stamps and would not recognize a Blue Mauritius if you sent me one but the stamps from Austria caught my interest. As my fingers were running over the stitching I couldn't help but wonder: does anyone still do petit point? Are young people here in L.A. or even back in Europe still acquiring the craft? I learned to stitch, sew, and knit in elementary school in Austria but handiwork was not my forte. On the contrary. Crafts used to be the one subject I loathed - though I believe that my mother still keeps the red and blue pot holder I crocheted in second grade. (It was supposed to be a square but ended up an irregular trapeze.) The other thing I was wondering about when the packet arrived is whether young people still collect stamps. When I was in high school I knew a guy my age with a collec...

"Meal at which all people present share dishes they brought"? Po tluck. Today being Labor Day some families in our neighborhood decided to get together for a potluck: grilled chicken and salmon, home made potato salad; a salad of spinach, blue cheese, and pears; a fruit platter, brownies... I like potlucks, their casual spirit, the egalitarian touch. Very American. Everybody pitches in, no one has to feel bad because one family or even one person had to do all the work. In Austria potlucks are not really common; there is not even a German word for the concept. It could be   Kesselglueck -  literal yet somewhat charming - but that term doesn't exist. On the web I found "Potluck: großes Abendessen, bei dem sich alle Anwesenden selbst mitgebrachte Speisen teilen" (translation from  Reverso ). This describes the idea accurately but it is a bit long. For those of you who don't speak German, here's a re-translation, phrased as an invitation: "P...

What do we know about simplicity? Figs from our tree. Figs. The taste of summer, the taste of home; my immigrant home. Our backyard tree is heavy with fruit. In the mornings I go out to pick what is ripe; figs for breakfast, a treat straight from the tree; flesh and seeds, refreshing and sweet, grainy resistance and softness at the same time. Figs, the color of their skin, purple with blotches of green or white stripes where they have cracked. The reds and browns inside bring up memories: a summer spent in Normandy, France, with my parents, my brother, and my maternal grandmother. Life was about food in its basic, original form, about mussels and figs and cheese; it was about the ocean and its tides, gigantic but predictable, and about history. We visited Bayeux to see  the tapestry which tells the story of William the Conqueror and the Battle of Hastings;  we spent a day or a half at  Arromanches,  saw a documentary on D-Day and the landing ...

If I had a chicken farm... Wild hen or rooster on Kauai. So your kid goes out with a basket ball and breaks the neighbor's window. You groan but you pay for the replacement of the window; you also let your child know that it will be responsible for the cost if it breaks another window. Next week your child goes out with its ball and - more broken glass. You do what? Bail him or her out again? The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) is going to buy 40 million Dollars worth of chicken from the poultry industry and donate the birds to federal food assistance programs. It's the bail out of the chicken farmers  because they are having a hard year. The price of chicken food and the production of chickens have increased while consumption of chickens and thus their market price have dropped. Sounds like a horrible situation, farmers squeezed from both sides, the classical double whammy. Alas, this is not he first time we are bailing out the chicken industry. According to ...

Paper or plastic? Bag from South Africa. My friend recently came back from a trip to South Africa and brought me a reusable grocery bag. It is from Woolworths, one of the largest retail chains in South Africa; it is made by a community project and serves as a symbol of the company's commitment to sustainability and social development. I will think of this whenever I use my new bag. Thank you, dear friend! The Woolworths bag is not my first reusable bag. I carry two baggies which fold up into packs smaller than a deck of cards in my purse and a bunch of bigger ones in the trunk of my car. To me this feels like an easy way of making a difference environmentally. Others seem to have a harder time. When the county of Los Angeles recently introduced a ban on plastic bags for its unincorporated areas the new ordinance was met with resistance. Shops bemoan that paper is more expensive than plastic. They charge customers ten cents for every paper bag. Shoppers complain about ...

Romantic getaway? Poster in a thrift store in Bakersfield. Want to spend a weekend for two in California? Your options are many. You probably know them: Yosemite, Napa, La Jolla, San Francisco, Big Sur, Mendocino... My husband and I, for a romantic getaway in July, picked - Bakersfield. What? my friends asked, Bakersfield? Did the hotel have a pool? (It did not.) For those of you who are not from California, Bakersfield is a hot place. In July which is the warmest month highs average 96.9 °F (36.06 °C). Then again, Bakersfield is not what you'd call a hot spot. The apparently once beautiful historical town center was almost entirely destroyed in an earthquake in 1952 (actually an aftershock to a shaker a month earlier); bland looking buildings replaced the ruined heritage (though some are rather colorful); malls and marts went up on the outskirts and drained the inner city of life (a fate Bakersfield shares with many cities in the U.S.). According to the...

"A foul disease called social prejudice." Mud wagon used in Stagecoach. In 1939 director John Ford squeezed seven people into a stagecoach and gave them a rough ride across the desert. The group encountered Apaches; had to deal with the premature labor of a traveling woman; needed to figure out how to cross the river after Lee's Ferry had been burned down. Sounds hard enough. But what makes matters really bad - and the movie a classic - are the group of seven, their personalities and biographies, and "a foul disease called social prejudice" (words of Josiah Boone, an alcoholic doctor). The seven are: a prostitute, a dishonest banker, a pregnant cavalry officer's wife, a Confederate gambler, a whiskey salesman, the doctor, and a fugitive outlaw. Tensions between these characters run high from the beginning but as life goes - or is it just Hollywood? - they are softened towards the end. Stagecoach* is one of my favorite movies. On a recent trip to...

"You never saw a dog here." Looking into 6th Street. Pershing Square is one of my favorite places in L.A. downtown. No. That's not quite accurate: it is not the square that I like but the view that it offers. Palm trees and high rises against the blue sky. So L.A.! The square itself? That one block in the heart of downtown? I'm not so sure: concrete blocks, spheres, a tower, all in the brightest colors, yellow, purple, and more concrete for the ground. The yellow clashes with the brown of the Biltmore Hotel behind it; the trees are few and small. Bottom line, I have never felt the urge to linger in Pershing Square. It was a place I noticed in passing, on my way to somewhere else. Like a train station. "No graffiti, no gangs." Concrete blocks, spheres on Pershing Square. The other day I decided to look more closely, to maybe find a different perspective. It was a weekday, around noon, the space almost empty. I saw a security guard in front of the ...

Chins and cheeks from catalogs: exhibition brochure Flawed chin? Albrecht Dürer, Venetian* Receding hair line? Albrecht Dürer, Male* Were Albrecht Dürer's models happy with their looks? Did the guy in green fret about his receding hair line? Did he find his nose too large? Did the Venetian woman long for a more prominent chin? If the two lived today: would they opt for plastic surgery? Simultaneous exhibitions on two continents inspired me to think about faces, honesty, beauty, and ideals; about how we deal with what is different - in us and in others. The one show, Dürer, Cranbach, Holbein - The German Portrait Around 1500, is on view at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna  and will later travel to Munich; the other, Beautyculture, opened at the Annenberg Space for Photography in Los Angeles  in May. I saw the portrait exhibition a few weeks ago, during a visit to Vienna, and was especially taken with Dürer's art, with the honesty in hi...

The rest stays the same.  Café  Prückel, Vienna It's been almost a year since we returned to L.A. from our two-year stint in Vienna, Austria. It was time to go back - albeit only for a visit: to see friends and family; to hang out at favorite cafés; to eat the food that tastes of home (Wienerschnitzel! Apfelstrudel!); to browse book stores, flea markets, and museums and to walk the streets of Vienna, hike in the mountains around Innsbruck. It was time and we went. We had a great two and a half weeks but guess what? Vienna hasn't changed since we left there last August. Neither has Innsbruck. In one year? Duh?! How would a city change as fast as that? You're right. I know. And yet. Here's what it feels like, here's the theory of relativity, as learned by emigrants and expats: when we leave one country for another everything is all of a sudden different. Language, culture, landscape, humor, daily routines, the job, the friends, the food. Everything around us c...

So L.A.'s much announced Carmageddon didn't happen; the closure of a ten mile stretch of the 405 freeway from Friday night until mid Sunday did not bring gridlock and mayhem to this city of ten million car addicts. Instead, those who were out and about found streets and highways more empty than usual. L.A. officially thanked its residents for being cooperative and keeping the car parked. As of lunch time on Sunday the electronic signs along the freeways which had been warning drivers to expect big delays during the weekend showed a new message: "405 open. Thank you Los Angeles". Very nice. You're welcome. The Carmageddon that wasn't reminded me of Y2K, another catastrophe averted. Both not-events show that preparation is key. The blow we can see coming will not throw us for a loop as easily as the one which takes us by surprise. In Los Angeles, proof of this is one major earth quake away. As far as the addiction goes - does the fact that we can leave ou...

I have lived in L.A. more than ten years and still things amaze me which others who were raised in the U.S. take for granted. The way religion, politics, public life, and pop culture meld is one such area. I was recently reminded of this when I came upon pictures of Jeremy Scott's Enjoy God fashion line in the LA Times Magazine and again as I was browsing some photos I had taken in Hawaii in April. "Amen". License plates in a burger restaurant...   ...and van with banners (both in Lahaina, Hawaii)  Where I come from, in Austria, faith and religion are omnipresent too - but in a different way. In my home state, Tirol, Catholic shrines and crucifixes line country lanes; chapels stand at crossroads out in the fields; and many a church is tucked away in a hamlet up on a mountain. These structures are part of the alpine landscape and they have been for hundreds of years - though their meaning is lost to many. (The days when children were taught to make the sign o...