Russian Cathedral

One of my favorite places in San Francisco is Holy Virgin Joy of All Who Sorrow Cathedral, out in the western part of the city (26th and Geary).

It is built in traditional Novgorod style, which means that it has five cupolas: a big central one and four smaller at each corner of the high, square box. I happened to have known the iconographer who covered its walls with stuinning fresci - the Archimandrite Kiprian of Jordanville. When I was eighteen, I spent part of a summer at Holy Trinity Monastery, where he was one of three founders, with the rank of archimandrite. He was the overseer of the farm work, and so I basically worked for him. He thought I was very industrious (obviously, Archimandrite Kiprian did not possess the charism of clairvoyance!), because he once caught me disking a field unbidden. He was overjoyed that someone my age would do something that needed doing on his own initiative. Little did he know that I just enjoyed driving the tractor.

Fr. Kiprian spent most of his time, however, painting icons. He was a master muralist, painting them right on the walls of the churches in fresco. The Cathedral of the Holy Trinity in Jordanville (near Herkimer, NY) is a little-known jewel, as is the SF Cathedral. The style is I guess what you would call Russian National (borrowing that term from architecture). It is obviously new, but at the same time it is inspired by medieval Russian iconography (pre-18^th Century). There is a lot of gold and red. And the whole interior of the cathedral is covered with it. It is really quite stunning.

On Saturday night, I fulfilled my obligation “to worship God every Sunday in His Church" by attending the All-night Vigil there. The choir was very good. A high point for me was the Phos hilaron (sv'et'e tikhi) sung in Slavonic but with a dandy Georgian setting in the classic Gurian style, which is so atonal that it sounds 20th C., although it is nearly a thousand years old. Stravinsky said he was influenced by this kind of thing.

In addition to the murals, the interior of the church is a sumptuous as anything to be found in Russia. There are no pews, of course, but benches are provided at the back for the elderly and infirm (such as Yours Truly). Five enormous crystal chandeliers hang under the cupolas. They are turned on and off at various times during the Vigil to indicate cartain parts of the rite. The iconostas is completely gilded, and there are two side chapels ~ each an altar behind its own iconostas, which makes this church what the Russians call a collection or sobor. Many large churches have this feature, and they are all called sobori. This word is conventionally translated as cathedral, and so it is a bit confusing. Not every sobor is a cathedral, in the Western sense.

It is still pre-Lent in the Orthodox Church, and the clergy were arrayed in beautiful light-blue vestments. I got there early, in time for the endless akathist in honnor of the places great patron, St. John Wonderworker of San Francisco. That is Archbishop John Maximovich of Shanghai and San Francisco, who organized the building of the Cathedral. He was a small, apish man, about whom I remember hearing 45 years ago at Jordanville, where everyone already regarded him as a saint. He went around barefoot and carried heavy chains under his habit. As Bp. Kallistos (Ware) once observed, "he was very ascetic, and hardly ever slept, except at diocesan council meetings,." he was also famous for making everyone wait while he got down on the floor to play with the children. Now he rests under a fabulously carved, gilded canopy, in a golden glass-topped casket, where the faithful (and goyim like Yours Truly) may venerate his incorrupt remains. Only his hands are exposed to this adulation, his face is modestly covered with a chalice veil.

Saint John The Wonderworker

Speaking of Bp. Kallistos, he is doing a couple of lectures this weekend at the Greek Cathedral in Oakland, which I intend to attend. Timothy Ware, in the world, was an Oxford don who converted in the 60s and became a monk on Patmos, and then titular bishop of some tiny island now controlled by Turkey. I just learned from Wikipedia that Lord Kallistos is now a metropolitan, the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople having elevated the diocese to the status of a metropolitanate.

Metr. Kallistos (Ware) of Diokleia

Additions to Sermons Blog

I have put some theological reflections on the old blog. More to come, I hope.

Winter in Berkeley

...is pretty nice at the moment. I have really been lucky: it hasn't rained a drop since I got back from PV almost two weeks ago. Up to the 60s and 70s every day. Sunny and cool. Jacket-weather at night. I am not doing much except online work and seeing friends.

One of them has a spare apartment in the Noe Valley area, which I can use as I want. But most of the time I am house-sitting in Berkeley. My old friend Earl has a lovely old craftsman bungalow - redwood and fieldstone, with two fireplaces and a dandy kitchen. His wife, Giselle Shepatin, is a fashion designer (click for 2007 collection) and weight-lifting hall-of-famer,
shown here about to win gold medal at Boulder, 2003. She has turned the house into my ideal 19th Century Turkish joy-house! You should see it. I will add pictures later. They are off at shows until next weekend.

OK here's a video about Earl's Crabbshack:

Vegging-out in Puerto Vallarta

[CLICK ON ANY OF THESE PICTURES TO ENLARGE]

My hotel is one of three neighboring hostelries under the Los Arcos name. The Arcos involved are a series of rock islands way down the beach to the south. They are one of the (few) trademarks of Puerto Vallarta. The others are the cathedral spire, which has a kind of crown on top, and the many, many little domes that everyone who can puts on top of their buildings.

There was a booster named Guilermo Wulff, who got John Huston to come to make Night of the Iguana. He was also an architect, who polulaized a kind of cuola as Puerto Vallarta’s signatue. The typical Varteno dome is covered with pastel stucco and topped with a lantern, which is functional in some cases. The dome is actually over a room, and the cupola gives light. Sometimes, the domes are just stuck on top, apparently without purpose other than decoration. But everybody has them, including quite humble buildings with little pastel yarmulkes.

The Los Arcos itself is right on the beach, called for obscure reasons Los Muertos (there are many theories, including pirates and dead fishermen)/ It is the grandest of the three. It echoes its name with arches over all the windows.

Its lobby is really in the patio, which gives onto a series of swimming pools leading to the beach, with restaurant to one side. There is a big pool fior everybody, a small pool for seniors (adults only – quiet please) a footbath for those just in from the beach, and a hot Jacuzzi. My hotel gives me privileges, which I have not yet exercised.

The middle hotel is across the street – suites. Mine is called a boutique hotel, which David tells me means less than fity roomsa and the aim to personalize service. It is charming. Everything is tile and stone. Only four stories high (with an elevator!). The rooms are arranged around the large rectangular patio, which is open all the way up. There is a huge tree growing out of the ground right up to the rooftop, where it shades bathers at the rooftop pool. I really like this feature. It is always monastery-quiet up there, and the view of sunset is terrific.

The staff of Casa Dona Susanna is very nice. One of the counter guys even greeted me out on the street one day. The furniture is all that very heavy, stained, carved wood. Tile floors. Beatiful inlaid basin. And they ALMOST have the plumbing together. I have had only one bathroom disaster so far. The shower is strong and hot. So capacious, in fact, that the drain has a bit of troule handling its output. Unaware of this in my first use, I luxuriated while the water happily cascaded out the door (bathroom is up one step, to accommodate pipes, I think), across the bedroom under the bed and out the big, heavy, carved wooden door into the balcony/entrance hall, and over the side into the air, to water the roots of the big tree below. Soon there were staff knocking and phones ringing, and everyone was very nice, and I learned to shove the bath mat against the bathroom door and not to stand on the shower drain and to turn the water off every now and then during a long shower.

There is not much I want to do in PV except eat. There is, of course, plenty to do (fishing, whale-watching, snorkeling and diving, volley-ball [!], shopping ad infinitum, body-surfing, and the dreaded “canopy tour”. David told me about the latter, which he has done. It involves getting up high in the treetops somehow, and then getting into a harness and precipitating oneself across the fathomless abyss (several abysses, actually, one after the other), from tree to tree. (Under the canopy, you see.) This costs a fair amont of money. Money I will gladly save. (I am too heavy to qualify anyway, thank God). I am with David Foster Wallace, who wondered why anyone would pay anything, not to mention a large sum, to purchase an experience one is just glad to survive.

One genuinely fun thing to do is to get in the car and drive around. On Saturday, David drove me out to his and Tere’s land in the mountains south of town.

The winding road took us along the coast until we got to the funky little fishing village of Boca de Tomatlán. (This is not, as one would expect, the mouth of the Tomatlán, but of some other river. After long and persistent inquiries, D. has concluded that no one knows, nor cares, nor thinks it the least bit odd.) This is the place where some friends of mine learned of a small hotel for sale. Cheap. The reason it is cheap is that the sun never hits it (except in the summertime, when it is the last thing you want in the dreadful, humid heat), and it is accessible only over a narrow, railingless little bridge, which I dubbed the Bridge at San Luis Rey:

I don’t think I will be promoting the acquisition of the property. It is a sweet little fishing village, though. The local restauranteur CATCHES his own fish in the early morning, then prepares it himself to serve to his customers.

Up in El Tuito, the village near D. & T.’s place, someone has had the bright idea of painting all the buildings the same color ~ like in Santa Fe. So most of the stucco is a two-tone of mustard below and white above.

Tuito color code

There are some contrarians, however, who raise an iridescent-plum or cobalt-blue finger in the direction of the organizer, who believes that here scheme will somehow make the town more prosperous. There is a nice big plaza surrounded by those typical long rows of one-storey buildings, which are a couple of rooms deep and then open on big patios in the rear. This is the real thing, found from Tucson south.

Plaza in El Tuito

The countryside up in this high valley is oddly reminiscent of SW Wisconsin (around LaCrosse). The mountains stand in about the same relief to the valley, and there is plenty of water. That is one of the area’s main assets. Unlike most of Mexico, PV and is hinterlands have no shortage of water, nor is there ever likely to be one. The mountains stop enough Pacific weather during the rainy season (June to September) to recharge all the ground water with plenty to spare. PV runs on wells that are always full.

As a result, the mountains are very lush. People call it a jungle, although it is not a rainforest. Lots of oaks and weird pine trees with exotic needles. When NAFTA drove the farmers out of business, those bigger ranchers who could scrambled for alternatives. Now there isn’t very much beef and no corn, but there are some orange-groves and bananas. One guy went into business raising fighting cocks, which is one of the strangest things I have ever seen: 200 little A-frame tepees with a rooster tethered to each one (so they can’t fight before it’s time).

Then there was the big ranch that diversified in a big way. No more cattle or horses, except for a few for show or to serve in their restaurant. They grow much of what they serve. I ate home-grown lamb. They also grow their own chickens, and prickly-pear cactus for nopales, which garnishes their plates, and agave to make their own tequila, and something else called raicilla, which you can only get there.

It seems to be a kind of Everclear or straight 190-proof moonshine. I bought a couple of bottles to bring home. Guide Michelin should know about this place.

It struck me that this might be a fine place to grow wine, although it might be too humid in the summer.

More Pix:

Contented diner at Boca de Tomatlan and his view

SRO at Cathedral Sunday Mass Internet cafe "San Angel"