#chateaugrief

[lagaleriapopurri]

Yaqui Gulch by chateaugrief

[sailundertheblack]

"Anchor Bay"

Artwork by chateaugrief

[chateaugrief]

Mission San Juan Capistrano

This is Mission San Juan Capistrano, or ruins thereof, founded in 1776, and consecrated by Franciscan Fermin Lassuen, who looks like he could be someone’s grandfather  that jaw, man. This guy was Junipero Serra’s successor and practically the pope of California. 21 missions in all, and I’m going to paint ‘em all eventually. I’ve got Mission San Luis Rey  (Saint King Louis IX). And two of Mission San Juan Bautista(Saint John the Baptist).

So the obvious question to ask is, who the heck is San Juan Capistrano? Hoo boy, John of Capistrano 1386-1456 was a warrior priest. And by that, I mean he rode into battle on the side of Jesus Christ and Dracula. At age seventy. Triumphantly, I might add. In fact it took the Black Death to take this dude to his heavenly rest. So how did this all happen, well it all seems to center around that super important historical figure that no one talks about John Hunyadi, who had his fingers in more pies than I can keep track of. There was an unbelievable amount of military stuff happening in that era, so I’ll try to just keep it to the Siege of Belgrade.

The Turks were invading Hungary. The Hungarians sent for help, but none was coming. Transylvanian poo bah Hunyadi is even getting raided by the Wallachian throne in allegiance to the Sultan. So Dracula takes off to conquer Wallachia with Hunyadi’s blessing (from Hunyadi’s former puppet, lol) and Capistrano starts preaching in the streets to raise the army. Hunyadi’s got cash so he hires a bunch of mercenaries, but Capistrano starts a freakin peasant crusade. Everyone packs up and thirty thousand guys go to rescue river fortress Belgrade currently being besieged by 160,000 turks with heavy cannon, ships, infantry, cavalry and child-slave Janissaries who were brainwashed and then when adult sent as killers to ensure the continued repression of their own people. Dracula had been handed over by his father as a child hostage to these people. Damn. That’s three brigades. Anyways. The Sultan starts shelling the castle on July 4, 1456.  It takes two weeks for the crusade to walk to Belgrade. Hunyadi takes the mercenaries and immediately sinks a bunch of ships in the Sultan’s flotilla, breaking the naval blockade. They immediately bring food to the starved defenders of the castle. After a week or so of skirmishing, the Sultan breaches the castle with the Janissary corps. Hunyadi gets everyone to start a fire between the mind controlled Janissaries and their support column, rather successfully managing to separate the groups so that he could kill the invaders and repulse the turks still outside the castle walls. The turks take heavy losses, the castle remains in Hungarian hands. Daylight comes, and without consulting any of their military commanders the peasant crusaders seize John Capistrano and tell him that they’re going to push the advantage. 70 year old Capistrano rides out in front of them. The castle defenders charge the enemy camp and the turks are so surprised they scatter in a complete rout. Hunyadi seizes the opportunity to lead a charge out of the fort and captures the Ottoman cannons.  The Sultan and the brainwashed Janissaries try to rally the army but it’s no use and everyone flees across the river. The Sultan takes an ‘arrow in the thigh’ *cough* and is evacuated back to Constantinople. Dracula is victorious in his effort to take the Wallachian throne as well and we all know how that worked out. The peasant crusade has its brief victorious moment, and then Black Death breaks out due to unsanitary camp conditions. Both Hunyadi and Capistrano die of the disease within a few weeks. Dracula held the line against the Turks until his death (and after, some say ), one of his lieutenants in the battle was Stephen the Great, who reclaimed his throne as King of Moldavia as a result of the battle. The pope, Callixtus III, ordered that in celebration of the victory, the church bells should all ring at noon, every day. And so it continues to this day. And that’s what’s up with San Juan Capistrano. Things I didn’t know about history 101 for sure. A wild tale. Battles! Excitement! Glory! Charge, Men! Anyways. I think this is the second or third time John Hunyadi has popped up in stories from my paintings. I wonder where he’ll show up next.  

Meanwhile Xander continues to flash those teeth at everyone like he knows something.  

[legendarylandscapes]

Sculptured Beach by chateaugrief

[sailundertheblack]

"Carmel Beach"

Artwork by chateaugrief

[sailundertheblack]

"Jalama Beach"

Artwork by chateaugrief

[chateaugrief]

This is Bonfante Gardens, which I guess is now called Gilroy Gardens. It used to be the employees-only retreat of one of the most employee-centric employers I’ve ever heard about: the Rayley’s supermarket chain Nob Hill Foods (are there any of these stores outside California?). The Bonfante family were (and still are) very keen on giving their employees access to a culture and club of their own…so I believe the Bonfantes started their own union to negotiate against themselves on behalf of their employees, they built a couple of huge indoor swimming pools for them, a gymnasium, baseball fields, events center, parks, a private athletic club, basketball courts, spa, and of course, their own theme park. There’s about 14,000 Rayley’s workers today, and I believe the majority of these listed amenities are still private-access for them. However the theme park proved to be kind of difficult to keep a handle on and the Bonfantes sold it to the City of Gilroy in 2008, hence the name change.   The crown jewel of the Gardens are the world-famous Circus Trees - which is what you get if Dr. Frankenstein had been a botanist instead of a surgeon. And by ‘Doctor Frankenstein’ I mean his name was ‘Axel Erlandson’. “See the World’s Strangest Trees” he advertised when it was a street sideshow in Scott’s Valley in the 1940’s. Trees with their trunks interwoven like a checkerboard, or two trees growing together as one in an arch, trees with their trunks doing loop-the-loops in swirly designs. This took the art of topiary to a whole different level. There’s a telephone booth tree:  a weird swirly tree: arch tree and square knot tree:  (that’s not actually a square knot he tied it wrong) basket tree:  this kind of nonsense: and what I like to call the ‘what were you thinking tree’:   He was a man with a unique vision, and once he died, other champions arose to protect the freaky trees from getting bulldozed. They needed to be moved from their location…and who better to take on the challenge than the Bonfantes, who were operating the largest plant nursery in the area at the time. The greengrocers with the green thumbs. Here they are: www.bonfantespecimentrees.com/ Xander’s family has a history in Santa Cruz that intersects with the circus trees. That is not at all relevant, but there it is.  

[chateaugrief]

Salton Sea

This is the Salton Sea in Southern California, one of the several huge salt sinks in the western United States. I thought I knew the story, right? Crazy engineer guy wants to up water irrigation of both California and Mexico sides of the valley, international fights over who owns what portion of the Colorado River, some ill-thought-out canals that silted up and overtopped and boom! You have the Salton Sea, all of the sudden. Fast forward past the 50’s where it became a beach resort and you’ve got this toxic salt soup that no fish can live in that’s just sitting there, evaporating slowly and poisoning everything around it. Not quite. Here’s some things I didn’t know:  

Wasn’t the first time a sea formed in the Salton Sink, and the largest flood-in was 28 times bigger than the 1905 flooding.  

Wasn’t even the first time the Colorado was diverted into canals to support valley agriculture, that honor belongs to the Cahuilla Indian tribes way back a thousand years ago.

The canal didn’t fail in 1905, it was deliberately opened up to divert around a silted portion to make repairs.  

The mass die offs of fish and birds from the 90s stopped when the Salton Sea underwent a massive cleanup and restoration project and now that the lake is managed, both levels and wildlife have stabilized.  

Far from not being able to eat the fish, Tilapia from the Salton sea provide a huge tonnage of meat for consumption every year and it’s commercially fished. (Good old tilapia can live literally anywhere I guess)

saltonseaauthority.org/get-inf…

There’s still lots of fish skeletons around the lake though. I didn’t paint them in. Instead I painted in one of those wonders of the desert: a Haboob. Apparently they’ve got dust issues down at Salton Sea, just like practically every other desert and big old storms roll through when thunderheads collapse further away across the plain. It’s truly awe inspiring and not a little bit terrifying to watch a haboob roll over you. Phoenix tends to get hit with one at least once or twice a year. The wonders of nature never cease.  

And the party on Eynhallow is going strong.