project for a Temple of Peace and Beauty to be built on the slopes of Mount Timalpais and which should become the seat of World Government of the United Nations.
Do It Yourself
I never emphasize in my notes the fact that all of American life, and all their highly active social life, runs without any service personnel, and that American houses, almost always constructed with great efficiency and enthusiasm, have been painted (the walls, that is), and have had stairs put in, and all the various bits of carpentry, etc., carried out by the owners themselves, because of the non-existence or prohibitive cost of labour for such jobs. Tony O.’s beautiful, elegant house (he’s a professor at Berkeley) was entirely built by himself, both the masonry and the wood, from the foundations to the roof, but he is not the only one to have done so. For many of the well-off, middle-class intellectuals, making yourself a home means literally making it with your own hands.
Europe
The writer N. M. M. 46 is the third of three famous English sisters, who were very beautiful in their day. One was Hitler’s lover, another is the wife of Sir Oswald Mosley, the leader of the English Fascists. This one, who is a Communist, was the wife of Neville Chamberlain’s son, who died fighting with the republicans in Spain: after that she came to America where she is very active in all the democratic, anti-racial committees.
Public relations
The brochure that Mr C., public relations man, has given me about his agency, I only manage to read now, on the bus taking me to his vineyard in Moon Valley (of Jack London memory) where he has invited me to spend Sunday. God, what kind of a host have I ended up with? Here he is photographed with Cardinal Spellman, ‘his good friend’, being congratulated by the cardinal for the mission carried out for the State Department to save Brazil from Communism (thanks to Mr C.’s public relations initiative ‘within a year the tide had turned against the Communists’). Elsewhere the brochure defines public relations (which C.’s staff carry out on behalf of various corporations and occasionally for the State Department): ‘One branch of public relations may deal with creating news and getting it published. Another branch does quite the opposite, to prevent or reduce the impact of unfavorable news.’ We are in the heart of Americanness here: there is a naïvety in the way it presents itself so openly which is paralleled only by certain kinds of naïve Soviet propaganda. I foresee an afternoon of uncomfortable political discussions. But no: in his private life Mr C. is a sensitive, reasonable and discreet person, both in his beautiful house built entirely by himself and full of wonderful Mexican ornaments, and in his vineyard which is maintained without a labour force (there are very few skilled vine-dressers in the area: as is well known, there are no more peasants in America, except in the South; one of his neighbours who has a considerable wine-making firm as a side-line had to get someone over from France to prune the vines), while his vines are nibbled at by deer beneath a fine rain. In one of his books, on Mexico, which he gives me to read, alongside the usual anti-Communist discourse typical of the American press, there are also critical analyses of the Mexican Church which are serious and full of common sense. And the conversation on European and American political issues stays on a level of reasonable liberalism. He too is worried by the Catholic advance (‘And your friend Cardinal Spellman?’ ‘Well, he’s a good guy, but the other priests …’). But he does not dwell on Communism (apart from the inevitable question on the situation of Italian Communism that all Americans ask): public relations also features sensitivity and tact among its characteristics. The cuisine that he and his wife (an architect) prepare directly over the fire is the best that I have tasted in my whole trip.
A Beatnik Party
I am
Do It Yourself
I never emphasize in my notes the fact that all of American life, and all their highly active social life, runs without any service personnel, and that American houses, almost always constructed with great efficiency and enthusiasm, have been painted (the walls, that is), and have had stairs put in, and all the various bits of carpentry, etc., carried out by the owners themselves, because of the non-existence or prohibitive cost of labour for such jobs. Tony O.’s beautiful, elegant house (he’s a professor at Berkeley) was entirely built by himself, both the masonry and the wood, from the foundations to the roof, but he is not the only one to have done so. For many of the well-off, middle-class intellectuals, making yourself a home means literally making it with your own hands.
Europe
The writer N. M. M. 46 is the third of three famous English sisters, who were very beautiful in their day. One was Hitler’s lover, another is the wife of Sir Oswald Mosley, the leader of the English Fascists. This one, who is a Communist, was the wife of Neville Chamberlain’s son, who died fighting with the republicans in Spain: after that she came to America where she is very active in all the democratic, anti-racial committees.
Public relations
The brochure that Mr C., public relations man, has given me about his agency, I only manage to read now, on the bus taking me to his vineyard in Moon Valley (of Jack London memory) where he has invited me to spend Sunday. God, what kind of a host have I ended up with? Here he is photographed with Cardinal Spellman, ‘his good friend’, being congratulated by the cardinal for the mission carried out for the State Department to save Brazil from Communism (thanks to Mr C.’s public relations initiative ‘within a year the tide had turned against the Communists’). Elsewhere the brochure defines public relations (which C.’s staff carry out on behalf of various corporations and occasionally for the State Department): ‘One branch of public relations may deal with creating news and getting it published. Another branch does quite the opposite, to prevent or reduce the impact of unfavorable news.’ We are in the heart of Americanness here: there is a naïvety in the way it presents itself so openly which is paralleled only by certain kinds of naïve Soviet propaganda. I foresee an afternoon of uncomfortable political discussions. But no: in his private life Mr C. is a sensitive, reasonable and discreet person, both in his beautiful house built entirely by himself and full of wonderful Mexican ornaments, and in his vineyard which is maintained without a labour force (there are very few skilled vine-dressers in the area: as is well known, there are no more peasants in America, except in the South; one of his neighbours who has a considerable wine-making firm as a side-line had to get someone over from France to prune the vines), while his vines are nibbled at by deer beneath a fine rain. In one of his books, on Mexico, which he gives me to read, alongside the usual anti-Communist discourse typical of the American press, there are also critical analyses of the Mexican Church which are serious and full of common sense. And the conversation on European and American political issues stays on a level of reasonable liberalism. He too is worried by the Catholic advance (‘And your friend Cardinal Spellman?’ ‘Well, he’s a good guy, but the other priests …’). But he does not dwell on Communism (apart from the inevitable question on the situation of Italian Communism that all Americans ask): public relations also features sensitivity and tact among its characteristics. The cuisine that he and his wife (an architect) prepare directly over the fire is the best that I have tasted in my whole trip.
A Beatnik Party
I am
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