Taliesan West

Frank Lloyd Wright chose a remote location, which was at that time 15 miles from Scottsdale (population 200 then), for his winter home. He bought 600 acres of land, mostly chosen because of the rocks available to build his house and a fault line he discovered, where he could drill for water. 

Most walls are rock and concrete as picture 1 shows. The roofs are canvas, some of which can be rolled back. And the house originally had no windows—open to the outdoors. Mrs. Wright, however, insisted on windows, when she found bobcats and other “critters” taking up residence when she returned one winter. 

The “front” of the house is shown in Picture 2. When AZ put in power lines and disrupted his view in the late 40s (Picture 3), the “front” became the “back” and walls were built in living and dining rooms so he didn’t have to look at the power lines. Wright called the governor and told him to bury them. The governor replied that he had no money for this. So Wright called Harry Truman, who politely told him that he had more important things to think about. 

The other side of the house is shown in Picture 4. The pergola shades the dining room and apprentices’ studio. The apprentice program, which started in the late 30s, continues today as an accredited Masters Degree program. The program was started because the Wrights’ had no money, having spent it all on Oriental art and cars. Wright had 85 cars in his lifetime, all painted a particular shade of red. He was a horrible driver and felt that stop signs and speed limits were suggestions. In a short period of time he had 30 accidents and, thereafter, Mrs. Wright drove.

Picture 5 is the living room. All chairs, benches, tables and stools were projects for apprentices and none of the seating was very comfortable. What you can’t see are the 2 chairs Mrs. Wright purchased for comfort. 

When windows were installed, a problem in the living room was encountered. Wright had 2 pots that he placed on narrow shelves and they became problematic because the curvature hung over the shelves and he refused to widen the shelves and moved the pots. He challenged his apprentices and the solution is shown in Figure 6.

Pictures 7 and 8 show Wright’s bedroom and bathroom. The brushed aluminum walls in the bathroom were found on the side of the road and recycled. The unusual divided bed in the bedroom had a special purpose. Wright only slept 2-3 hours per night, but often took 15-minute “power” naps during the day. Apprentices were allowed to visit him in his bedroom and used a window opposite the bed to determine if it was OK to visit. The far side of the bed was used for his “big” sleeps of 2-3 hours and if an apprentice looked in the window and saw him there, they would not disturb him. If he was on the near side of the bed it was a 15-minute nap and they were welcome to disturb him.

Finally, Picture 9 shows one of the apprentice lodgings. All apprentices lived away from the main house in very rustic conditions, i.e., tents. Some apprentices, however, used the experience to develop architecturally and developed more substantial accommodations. Unique lodgings are sprinkled throughout the desert away from the main house.

Wright is an interesting man. We didn’t always like him, but you can’t deny the genius.

Big Cat Rescue

Big Cat Rescue is one of those marvelous places where animals, which have been poorly treated, are now given a home with plenty of space, healthy diets and good care. They cannot be released in the wild because of the conditions under which they have been raised. They have been “pets”, they have been part of road-side circuses, they have been inbred to create unique, exotic animals.

The 2 animals below are Cameron, the male lion, and Zabu, the white tiger. They were discovered sharing a habitat in a roadside circus. The had been put in the same habitat with hopes they would breed and produce a white lion—which hasn’t been done. White tigers do not exist in the wild. They are born when 2 tigers with a specific gene that produces the white color are bred. These animals are always born with medical issues. In this case, Zabu has a cleft palate and has difficulty eating. 

This cat is JoJo, the result of breeding 2 species of cats: a serval and a caracal. This was done by an owner who wanted a truly unique exotic animal. Thousands of dollars were spent to correct birth defects.

 Little White Dove and Running Bear are 2 bobcats who have formed an unusual bond. White Dove was rescued from a “fur farm” and could have ended up as a fur coat. When both arrived at the Rescue, they became friends and decided they wanted to be “roommates”—few cats want to share the same habitat, but these did.

Tis next cat is Sabre, a black leopard, also called a black panther (which has not been considered politically correct since the 60s….). He’s 22 years old—10 years older than the average life span in the wild. If you look closely, you’ll see his leopard spots through his “blackness”. His skin is a dark brownish color, instead of the tan color of most leopards. In the shade it looks black. Sabre’s original owner asked the Rescue to take him temporarily, but then left town and did not leave a forwarding address.

The cats are housed in individual habitats that are large—often several circular or rectangular areas connected. They have enrichment activities, grass and leaves to lay in (instead of concrete cages). There are trees to climb and covered area for when they want to be alone or the weather is bad. The enclosures are not as large as the miles of natural area they roam in the wild. The Rescue has developed 2 areas for the small and large cats that they call “vacations” that are several acres each. Each cat spends 2 weeks twice a year on vacation, where they can roam and approximate what it would be to live in the wild. 

The following are pictures of some of the other animals that show the breadth of animals served.

Lots of tigers.

Several leopards, including Armani, who has been used in photo shoots (think Glamour), until the Rescue decided this encouraged people to have pets like this.

Ocelots: 

Canada Lynx: 

Sabah and Sarawak, Eastern Malaysia

We stopped twice in the Borneo part of Malaysia. What struck us is that it hasn't been that long since this part of the world was full of jungles and head hunters. The best part of the visit was a trip to the cultural village, Mari Mari. Though these are often touristy, this one gave you a great look at four tribes and their way of life. There may still be villages living like this in the mountains, but very few.

Tribes typically lived in long houses, like the one shown below:

This one is relatively small. They were often 100 meters long and home to 30 families. Inside there was a common area and one private room for each family, like the picture below:

Head hunting was outlawed by the British in the 1930s. Our guide told us, however, that his father talked about one occurrence in the 1950s. Heads, like the one below, were hung outdoors to scare off enemies. 

If a young man was ready for marriage, he had to have at least one head to his credit. No one would want him without one. Men often had bands tattooed on their fingers for each head. 

These people grew and hunted their own food. They were not cannibals. They used bamboo for cooking, putting a casserole-like mixture into the bamboo and cooking over an open fire. The results looked like this:

They did like their sweets. Using a coconut with holes poked into it, they created their own "fried dough", like the example shown here:

To sweeten things, they used honey. They used bamboo with some honey at the entrance to attract the bees. Once full, they would split the bamboo and dig the honey out with their hands. Their bees aren't like ours, however. The next picture shows a bee about ready to enter the hive:

It's hard to imagine this life, but our guide wishes they could go back to it. Great cultural lesson!

Brunei

Today's number is 92. That's the number of euros (almost dollars too!) the Sultan of Brunai earns per second! That's a bit over $3billion per year for spending money! His home is the largest royal residence in the world with over 1700 rooms. The garage in the basement holds 1000 of his cars. The residence is shown in Picture 1. 

The Sultan was coronated in 1967, using the chariot shown below. 

In 1992 he celebrated 25 years on the throne, built the Royal Regalia Museum which houses the chariot and the gifts he receives and built the royal mosque shown below.

The mosque has 29 domes to represent the 29 sultans who have ruled for the last 600 years or so. Another view of the opulence of the mosque:

Meanwhile, his citizens love him because he provides, housing, schools and jobs. And how does he pay for this? He sits on a huge reserve of oil. He has signed a deal with Shell, where they bring it up, refine it and sell it and the government gets half the profits. Shell owns all the gas stations in the country. 

Last year the Sultan declared that the country would follow Sharia law, whether you were a Muslim or not. Our guide told us that Sultan can overrule this, however. Seems like he has a brother that's a bit of a playboy and needs bailing out occasionally. Hmmm....

It's an interesting place to visit. Don't think we'd like to stay!

The Rest of the Philippines

Sailing among the Philippine Islands is amazingly beautiful. Cities become smaller and the scenery can be breathtaking. We made 4 stops outside of Manila, mostly beaches. Since the Hubers aren’t “beachy” people, we just enjoyed the scenery!

Tagaytay is a resort area 60 km from Manila in the hills, where it’s cooler. Unfortunately, Manila’s pollution has reached there and it’s a constant haze. Picture 1 is a picture of Lake Taal, which is a volcano within a lake within a dormant crater. Since 1572 there have been more than 30 eruptions, the most recent in 1976, when lava reached Manila. Picture 2 is a close-up of the volcano in the lake. During eruptions of the original crater, seawater entered the crater and later eruptions created a lake, which has sea critters that have adapted to fresh water. It’s a really unique place.

Pictures 3 and 4 are from Coron, southwest of the main island of Luzon, although we saw fishing villages on stilts in other places too. The motorized outrigger canoe, shown in the forefront in Picture 3 is the main mode of water transport, although non-motorized canoes are also used, like the one used by the family in Picture 5.

Many of the islands have steep cliffs that tumble into the sea. Pictures 6 and 7 show examples we found leaving Boracay. If you turn up your zoom, you find that hidden at the bases of these remote cliffs are small private beaches, like the one shown in Picture 8.

Our final stop was in Puerto Princessa on Palawan Island. We wandered around the city and found Immaculate Conception Cathedral, shown in Picture 9. Like most public buildings, large louvers left it open to the outdoors to allow fresh air to circulate. Outside of Manila, we found little air conditioning.

Across the street from the Cathedral we found a grim reminder of WWII in Plaza Cuartel. There were tunnels built here for air raids. When the Japanese took over the island, they would send POWs into the tunnels, along with gasoline and toss in a grenade. Picture 10 is the monument describing what occurred and identifying the few who survived the conflagration. Picture 11 is a haunting statue that shows a skeletal man, wrapped in barbed wire, with flames forming below him.

Ending on a happier note, we found this lady rocking her 2 babies, a toddler on the right and a small baby on the left. A rope stretched horizontally near the ceiling and by gently pulling on the sling around one baby, she could rock both, who were contentedly asleep.

Life is slower outside of Manila, the skies are bluer and the scenery is gorgeous. But the only job opportunities are farming and fishing, so people are flocking to Manila, much to its detriment. There are 100 million people in the Philippines, spread over more than 7000 islands. 50 million people are on the island of Luzon, where Manila, with a population of 20 million, is located. While Filipinos are leaving these islands, however, tourists are discovering their beauty, especially in and under the water. One hopes this provides employment for the local people, without destroying the environment. Unfortunately, history shows that will probably not be the case….

Manila

We spent 2 days in Manila and feel like we have a good understanding of what goes on there.  Like so many other large cities in Southeast Asia, the city is overflowing with people and traffic. They build roads on top of roads in an attempt to alleviate traffic problems, but so far it’s not working.  Population control does not seem to be a consideration in this devoutly Catholic country.

The Philippines were a Spanish colony until the Spanish-American War in 1898. Following that they became America’s first colony. But American didn’t really want to have colonies, so we helped build the country up, promising independence in 1945. The Japanese occupied the Philippines in WWII. (Note—WWII is actually called the Japanese-American war by a lot of the people here. They had little or no contact with what was going on in the remainder of the world.) Following WWII, American once more built the country up and gave them independence in 1946.

Our first stop was an interesting one. At St. Joseph’s Parish Church in a Manila suburb we found the bamboo organ, shown in Picture 1. Not only is its case bamboo, but the pipes are too. Picture 2 shows some of the pipes in the rear.  It was built in 1824, outfitted with an electric air source (instead of hand operated bellows) in 1932, fell into disrepair, was sent to Germany in 1973 for a 2-year restoration and is now fully operational. In some of the larger bamboo pipes they added a metal insert, but otherwise, it’s all bamboo. It sounds pretty good.

We visited the Manila American Cemetery and Memorial, which is shown in Picture 3, against the modern Manila skyline. It’s beautiful and a grim reminder of what happened in the Asia/Pacific Theater of WWII. In the arched galleries on either side of the memorial tower are mosaic maps of the battles that occurred in Asia and the Pacific—from India and Burma in the west to the Pacific Islands in the East. Our guide told us that he had read the books and seen the movies about the atrocities that occurred in Europe, but he reminded us that the Japanese committed terrible atrocities too and we often forget that.  Over the course of the next few days we visited a couple sites that emphasized this—more later.

We have met a man on the ship, who is 94 and served as a WWII Army Air Corp pilot in the Pacific, flying bombing missions from the island of Tinian to Japan—12-14 hour missions. When we asked if that was the island from which the Enola Gay took off, he told us yes, it was parked two planes over from his. A truly great man and, if we live to be 94, may we be as sharp, healthy and gracious as he is.

The remainder of the 152-acre site is filled with rows upon rows of crosses and stars of David, like the portion shown in picture 4. This reminds us of the cost of wars. We must only choose honorable and just causes.

Picture 5 shows the site of one of the WWII atrocities mentioned above. This is Fort Santiago, originally built by the Spanish. The fort was used as a prison during Spanish and American periods. During the Japanese occupation, the Japanese held prisoners of war here. For Filipinos, the Japanese killed 300 a day by beheading. They would bring someone out, toss a coin and that would tell whether the person lived and went back to prison or was beheaded. For Americans, they were placed in dungeons below sea level. At high tide, the dungeons were flooded and the bodies brought out at low tide.

The Cathedral is new and pretty uninteresting, but the church in Picture 6 is on the UNESCO list of World Heritage sites.  It is the oldest structure in the Philippines, built between 1587 and 1607. It’s baroque and noted for its Trompe l’oeil painting that makes the decoration look like carving, rather than painting (Picture 7).

We also visited the park honoring Jose Rizal, the national hero. The monument to him is shown in Picture 8. He wrote encouraging Philippine independence from Spain, was arrested for treason and executed by firing squad. Statues showing the execution (Picture 9) mark the spot where it actually occurred.

Of course we also had a few slices of life in Manila. Our guide managed to show us the “good” spots, but occasionally the poverty of the people came through, like in Picture 10. Part of Manila is new and shiny, but if you look down the side streets, the problems quickly appear.

Picture 11 shows 2 Manila institutions. The vehicle, the Jitney is the common mode of transportation for local people. For about 20 cents you can get anywhere in Manila in a cramped, open vehicle. Originally based on old Jeep chassis left behind by Americans, there are now chassis from other companies. The second institution is the Jollibee fast food restaurant chain. As we understand, the company is owned by Tony Tan, who applied for a McDonalds franchise, but was turned down and decided to start his own company. Today, wherever you found a McDonalds or Burger King, a Jollibee will be less than a block away. Filipinos love hamburgers, but prefer them with a mixture of beef and pork. Jollibee has met that need and is wildly successful, enabling the owner to branch into other kinds of fast food.

Finally, the Filipinos were delighted that we stopped in the Philippines (5 stops in all). As we left Manila, Picture 12 shows the young people, playing musical instruments and dancing, who performed for us as we sailed form Manila.