More than 30,000 teachers in the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) went on strike this week. LAUSD serves 640,000 students and is the second biggest school district in the country. The mean annual wage for LAUSD teachers is $75,000. In the local reporting I’m seeing on the strike, teachers and union reps are unanimous in saying that they’re striking for the benefit of the schoolchildren. I’m reminded of something Albert Shanker — former president of the United Federation of Teachers (1964-1984) and the American Federation of Teachers (1974-1997) — used to say: When schoolchildren start paying union dues, that’s when I’ll start representing the interests of schoolchildren. I can’t say for certain that the LA union reps are being disingenuous but it does make sense that they’d be representing the interests of the people who are paying them. Read more →
EppsNet Archive: Los Angeles County Museum of Art
A Visit to LACMA: Picasso, Rivera, Modern Art, Renaissance and Reformation
Here are some photos from a recent trip to LACMA . . . We started at the Picasso and Rivera: Conversations Across Time exhibit: From there, we visited a modern art exhibit — The Serial Impulse at Gemini G.E.L — a celebration of the renowned Los Angeles print workshop Gemini G.E.L founded 50 years ago in 1966. For example, here are some black rectangles by Richard Serra: Josef Albers also painted a bunch of rectangles (squares, actually) but took things a step further by using different colors: Ellsworth Kelly really pushed the envelope by using not only different colors but different four-sided shapes (e.g., trapezoids and parallelograms). I had a couple of thoughts on the Gemini G.E.L. exhibit juxtaposed with Picasso and Rivera: Some people need to get serious. Some people should be ashamed of themselves. Rather than end on that note, here are are a couple of pieces from… Read more →
What is Love?
My wife tells me that LACMA has free admission today for Presidents’ Day, and if I want to go, she’ll come along as my arm candy. I enjoy art museums; my wife doesn’t. If she had clammed up about the free admission, I would never have known about it. That’s what love is . . . Read more →
Twitter: 2009-10-05
RT @LACMA: The 5 must-see historic L.A. houses as selected by our Decorative Arts & Design Department Head: http://bit.ly/3yxuG3 # RT @GettyMuseum: Natural works of art @KCET28’s Flickr group of SoCal state parks http://bit.ly/KGSRn # Read more →
The Finer Things in Life
One thing you can’t help noticing in spending a day at LACMA, what with the proximity to West Hollywood and all, is that gay guys really like art. I mentioned that to my son and his response was “Case in point: you,” which wasn’t very nice. He’s not much of an art lover . . . I admit that I occasionally drag him along to an art museum, because I feel like he should know at least a little bit about it whether he likes it or not. On our way back to Orange County — in keeping with my mission of introducing the boy to the finer things in life — we stopped off at the original Tommy’s stand at Beverly and Rampart, not only an L.A. landmark, but a favorite of USC students for decades, where you can still get — as the boy did — a double… Read more →