Monthly Archives: February 2025

Posted in travel

A Most Unusual and Brilliant Desert Denizen

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by Bob Sparrow

The Willows – back in the day

It’s no secret that I’ve spent a good deal of the first quarter of every year since 1992 in the southern California desert, Palm Desert to be exact.  In fact, as you’re reading this, I’m in the desert this week.  And, of course, I’m always looking for something new and different to write about.  We all know that stars like Frank Sinatra, Elvis, Bob Hope, Dinah Shore, Marilyn Monroe and many others spent lots of time in the desert, but I had no idea that the greatest scientist of all time, Albert Einstein was also a ‘desert rat’.

In 1933 Einstein and his second wife, Elsa came to Palm Springs as he was fleeing from Nazi Germany and Adolph Hitler.  They stayed briefly at the ‘Willows’, which hosted many Hollywood and Wall Street stars; it was the elegant home of attorney and “Hitler’s Bitterest Foe”, Samual Untermeyer.  At the time, LA Magazine said, “Staying at the Willows is like getting the keys to a well–off friend’s country estate.”  The Willows has entertained such guests as Clark Gable and Carole Lombard, Joseph P. Kennedy, Marion Davies, Shirley Temple, and many more.  After a short stay, the Einsteins were lured away from the Willows by Warren Pinney, the big boss at the neighboring El Mirador Hotel, which was just down the street and had entertained a few Hollywood types of its own, like Paulette Goddard, soon to be the third wife of Charlie Chaplin, and a young B-movie actress who would go on to captivate the television world decades later in a program called “I Love Lucy” – Lucille Ball.  The hotel also played a role as a hospital during World War II.

Phony Photo of Albert & Marilyn?

And while we’re mixing Hollywood stars and Einstein, you may not be familiar with a quote from Marilyn Monroe about him.  She said, “We could have a baby together.  He would come out beautiful like me and smart like you,” to which Einstein replied, and I paraphrase, “What if he came out with my beauty and your intelligence?” Which sounds like a self-deprecating statement about his not-so-handsome looks, as well as a dig at Marilyn being a dumb blonde.  However, the joke was on him, Monroe’s IQ was measured at 165, about 5 points higher than Einsteins’!!!  The photo at the right is probably a phony, as there is no evidence that Einstein and Monroe ever met, despite rumors of an affair, although he might have been smart enough to hide such a thing.

Tony Burke, ‘Realtor to the Stars’ and publicist for the El Mirador Hotel and Palm Springs in general, made sure the Einsteins had a wonderful time AND that most of the world heard about it.   Who knew that when in the desert, Einstein loved sunbathing, so when sitting on his veranda at the Willows and the El Mirador, he would often take off his shirt (unheard of at that time) – in fact, sometimes he would even take off his pants!  It seems clear he had a secret desire to be in ‘show’ business.

El Mirador Hotel – back in the day

As a matter of fact, Einstein’s personal life fit right in with the Hollywood set in the desert, as he was, by all accounts, a ‘ladies’ man’ and he found his first wife, Mileva Marić, as a student of his and an accomplished physicist and mathematician in her own right, with whom he had a child before they were married.  He married his second wife, Elsa, with whom he had about a seven-year affair, three months after his divorce from Mileva.  Oh yeah, and Elsa was his first cousin! 

Both hotels are still in business, you can get a room at the El Mirador Hotel for as little as $200 a night. ‘The Willows’ is now called ‘The Willows Historic Palm Springs Inn’, and only has 17 rooms, which run between $500-$700 a night.  Today you can stay in the ‘Einstein Room’ at The Willows for about $650 a night – I’m guessing there’s a ‘smart’ TV in that room! 

While in the desert this week, I will see if I can visit either or both of these historic hotels – although they may not let someone like me, not a star and definitely not a genius, on the property.

Posted in opinion

I CAN’T SEE!

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By Suzanne Sparrow Watson

My glasses, hiding in plain sight

The other day I was struggling to read the fine print on a label in the grocery store. Don’t even get me started on why the print has to be so small – what are they hiding? I have often said that the most frustrating part of aging has been the steady deterioration of my vision. I had to wear reading glasses beginning at the age of 12 and it’s been a downhill journey ever since. Over the years I’ve made many attempts to improve my vision, including Lasik surgery in 1999. The surgery was a great success, resulting in 20/20 vision for distance but as I aged, I needed reading glasses for anything up close. Fast forward to 2023, when I complained to my ophthalmologist that my distance vision was deteriorating. And as is so often the case these days, he started with the dreaded, “Well, at your age…”. Turns out Lasik doesn’t last forever, and he suggested progressive lenses. My house is now littered with glasses: four sets of progressive, two single vision sets for computer and piano distances, and two sets of progressive sunglasses. And I still have drawers full of “cheaters” that I pull out when one of my prescription glasses are not within arm’s reach. I’m looking into cataract surgery later this year, in yet another attempt to see clearly. I’ve often wondered, as I’m reading that fine print at the grocery store, how did people survive before the invention of glasses. Turns out, hundreds of years ago people were equally frustrated by blurry vision and as is often the case, came up with some rather ingenious inventions.

There’s not much historical evidence explaining how our prehistoric ancestors fared in the absence of visual aids, so historians have used a combination of deduction and common sense to determine how, say, a sight-impaired individual would keep up with the pack in a group of hunter-gatherers. A person with imperfect vision could still be useful to a group simply because sharp eyesight (needed to read signs or Google Maps) wasn’t necessary in prehistoric times. And they didn’t have to deal with those pesky grocery store labels. As civilization progressed, those with visual impairments could even find their condition produced certain advantages. A myopic (nearsighted) person, for example, could find themselves steered toward a craftsman role for their ability to focus on detail.

Somewhere in the vicinity of Pisa, Italy, around 1286, an unknown craftsman fastened two glass lenses to a frame likely made of wood or bone to create the first eyeglasses. Thus, the modern notion of vision aids was invented. But there were incremental improvements for the vision-impaired even before that. Archaeological digs in the eastern Mediterranean area have uncovered the existence of plano-convex lenses (flat on one side and rounded on the other) made of glass and rock crystal that date back to the Bronze Age! While it’s unknown what these lenses were used for, some of them magnify objects between seven and nine times, rendering them useful for work on items in close quarters.  After that there came water stones, mirrors and even emeralds, which didn’t really improve vision but were thought to reduce glare. A major development in the area of visual tools came with the invention of reading stones. The concept of using curved glass to magnify print was discussed at length by an Arab mathematician in 1021. Typically made from quartz, rock crystal, and especially beryl, reading stones were fashioned in a plano-convex shape, with the flat side against the page of a book and the rounded top providing a clear view of the lettering below. Initially used to assist the elderly with faltering vision, the stones became popular among younger readers as well, especially as beryl was said to possess magic and healing powers.

I still use one of these
Visby lenses as a necklace

One surviving example of reading stones are the 11th- to 12th-century Visby lenses discovered in Gotland, Sweden, in 1999. Along with providing excellent magnification of tiny text, many of these quartz lenses are mounted in silver, suggesting a decorative purpose as well. It’s unknown if the Visby lenses were the work of a local professional or somehow made their way from Muslim regions where other reading stones first appeared. Regardless, the quality of the images generated by these artifacts, and the craftsmanship that went into their creation, underscores how people were seeking help for their vision woes long before LensCrafters went into business.

Somehow, it’s comforting to know that people struggled with vision issues from time immemorial. One can only imagine the cave people saying, “Darn it, Harriet, I can’t see the damn hieroglyphics on that wall anymore!”

Posted in opinion

A Story, the Dollars, and the Numbers of a Not-So-Super Super Bowl

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by Bob Sparrow

If you thought Sunday’s rather boring game was about football, you’ve got another think coming. The game should be called Super Buck instead of Super Bowl.  Super Bore might be a better name for Sunday’s game. The ads and who’s in the stands and maybe the halftime show were more entertaining than the game. So lets talk about the money, who’s watching, and then a story about a long-forgotten Super Bowl hero.

Show Me the Money

  • The lowest Super Bowl ticket was priced at $4,750 and the most expensive at $17,842, NOT INCLUDING FEES!
  • The last ten 30 second ads average $7m sold by Fox, and reached a record $8,000,000. 
  • With last year’s Super Bowl going into overtime, it was estimated that CBS earned $695 million in ad revenue for that one game!
  • Tom Brady, who never fails to mention that he played in 10 Super Bowls, won 7, and this year appeared in his first as an announcer, has a 10-year contract worth $375 million!  He’s way overpaid, in my opinion.
  • By hosting the Super Bowl, New Orleans received an economic boost of over $500 million
  • Each winning team member will take home $164,000, the losers will have to get by for the day on $89,000
  • According to SB Nation, the league finally gave up its tax-exempt status in 2015, after over 70 years of being on the books as a “nonprofit.” Really??!!!

Why do people watch the game?

The Taylor Swift Effect
  • 43% say the game is the most important part
  • 19% say the halftime show is most important
  • 17% say the TV ads are most important

The Taylor Swift Effect

          Last year, 58.8 million women watched Super Bowl LVIII, which was a record high. This was 47.5% of the total audience, also a record high.  It’s informally called ‘The Taylor Swift Effect’.

OK, enough of the numbers, the next story is, in my opinion, one of the most memorable of all Super Bowl stories, and it happened in the very first Super Bowl.

The first Super Bowl was in 1967 between the Green Bay Packers and, who else, the Kansas City Chiefs, in the Los Angeles Coliseum.  The night before the game, two Packer players known to have a cocktail or two, Paul Hornung and Max McGee, broke curfew and went ‘out on the town’ with two flight attendants.  Hornung had a pinched nerve in his neck and knew he would not play in tomorrow’s game.  McGee, a veteran player in the last season of his career, was a backup receiver who had only caught four balls all season and would retire after the game.  Max rolled in on the morning of the Super Bowl at 6:30 and ran into quarterback Bart Starr in the hotel hall, who remarked about Max being an early riser!  Before the game, in which Max planned to sit on the bench and nurse his hangover, he told the starting receiver, Boyd Dowler, “You better not get hurt, because I’m in no shape to play.”

Max McGee – hungover hero of Super Bowl I

As fate would have it, Dowler got hurt early in the first quarter of the game, so Max McGee grabbed the nearest helmet, which happened to be a lineman’s helmet with a fairly large cage on it, and entered the game.  He makes a one-handed catch for the Super Bowl’s first-ever touchdown and ends up making seven catches for 138 yards for two touchdowns. The Packers handily beat the Chiefs 35-10. Seems similar to this years’ game.

Hope you had as good a time as Max McGee did, both the night before the game and during the game!

Posted in Holiday observations • opinion

SEALED WITH A KISS

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By Suzanne Sparrow Watson

For those of you who celebrate Valentine’s Day, consider this your public service announcement: You have 11 days to buy roses, obtain a significant piece of jewelry, or at the very least, pore over the Valentine’s Day cards at Walgreens and choose something appropriately mushy/sweet/funny. My favorite story about buying cards is the one about the couple who go into Walgreen’s, each selects a card they feel best expresses their sentiment, hands it to their spouse to read, and then puts it back on the rack and walks out of the store. Gets the message across and saves ten bucks!

Many people choose to sign Valentine’s Day cards, and all other forms of communication, with an “XO” near their signature. I recently read an article on the genesis of this habit that I thought was interesting, or at least appropriate for this holiday. The origins of “X” being associated with a kiss can be traced back to the Middle Ages. In an era when literacy rates were low and formal education was a rare privilege, people who couldn’t write would sign documents with an “X” instead of their name. When people signed with an “X,” it wasn’t merely a mark; it was a symbol that carried the weight of an oath. To validate their intentions and their “signature,” people were also known to kiss the “X”. How the letter “X” transitioned from a kiss in the name of sincerity to a kiss of romance or affection isn’t clear. Theories on its initial use range from a British naturalist to Winston Churchill. But the most likely explanation comes from Marcel Danesi, a professor of linguistics anthropology and author of The History of the Kiss! The Birth of Popular Culture. He wrote that as the Renaissance era saw an increase of secularism, and with the 18th-century rise of the concept of romantic love, the symbolic “X” gradually expanded beyond its initial utilitarian function to become a gesture of affection.

An easier explanation could simply be the shape of the letter — that it looks like a pair of puckered lips, assuming, of course, that the sender has not had an overabundance of filler. And as for the “O” that often accompanies the “X”, even less is known about its origins as a symbol for a hug. It’s been suggested that the letter simply looks like a pair of arms wrapped around someone else; however, as with “X,” there are other theories as well. Whatever their origins, I hope you have plenty of X’s and O’s coming your way this Valentine’s Day.

Before I close, I would be remiss in not mentioning the recent loss of one of our most dedicated and long-tenured subscribers, Pam Landon, who passed away unexpectedly last Monday. I met Pam in 1999 and despite many personal setbacks in recent years, she remained one of the most kind, funny and positive people I knew. Each week without fail she commented on Bob’s and my posts, usually with humor or a story about her own experiences. She especially loved being an armchair traveler with Bob. In her last comment to me on my post encouraging people to eat junk food she said, “I discretely nibbled on a chocolate chip cookie as I enjoyed this blog. Thanks, as always, for brightening my day.” Rest in peace, Pam. I know that you are brightening everyone’s day now and hopefully still nibbling on a cookie.