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About Medford mail tribune. (Medford, Or.) 1909-1989 | View Entire Issue (Feb. 27, 1961)
fTV) Small Worlds Around V t w lie V P Waikini (Register & Tribune Syndicate, 1961) The Gull Had Passed . 'The Word'-But How? Three miles away from the i nearest seashore, in a wide ' open field, we deposited half , a hundred large fresh water snails, taking particular care to drop the mollusks when there were no seagulls visible In the sky, knowing that from time to time one or more of the birds flew over the area. We didn't have long to wait. From high in the sky a cruis ing gull located the snails and sailed down to investigate. The bird picked up the mollusk in its beak, shook it violently and flug it to the ground. The shell broke. The bird quickly grabbed the soft body and swallowed it. Hav ing tasted the feast and find ing it good, the gull ate three more snails. It wiped its bill on the ground, gave a little jump forward and took to the air. Scanned the Sky With binoculars we scanned the sky in the direction the lone gull had taken when it flew. We had not long to wait. An even dozen seagulls sud denly came in sight. They slanted down and came to rest on the field within a few feet of the snails. These birds took no time to survey the situation, but began breaking up the snail shells, and gob bling up the soft bodies. The feast was short-lived. Within a few minutes all the snails had been eaten. Then at some silent signal they leaped into the air and disappeared in the direction of the beach. we wanea ana waicnea, wondering if there woud be another delegation arriving only to find the table empty, the food gone and the guests departed. We waited over an hour, but no gulls showed. Evidently those out there on the beach must have known the table was empty, but we wondered, for we knew there were hundreds of the birds and they would all be hungry, but none came. Evidently the word had been passed. Learned What? We attempted to analyze what we had learned, wonder ing at the same time if we had really learned anything, or were we just spectators to a regular occurrence? Was the arrival of a dozen gulls only an accident? Why not half a hundred? We were not even sure that the gull mean Pe k . ' -Jjj - tj ' r ' Members of the Union Pacific freight team have a tradition to live up to that of provid ing unsurpassed performance. It is reflected in our desire to please ... to handle every shipment "just so". . . to make deliveries when and as promised. Got anything going our way? We'll do the right thing by it. L. J. Ziesmer, Gen. Traf. Agt. 1307 W. Main, Medford SP 3-538E UNION PACIFICa MASTERPIECE "A Harbor at Sunset", painted by Claude Lorrain in 1639, a mas terpiece included in the exhibition of French art, entitled "The Splendid Cen tury." Claude for the first time among land that discovered the snails had returned with the even dozen. Probably he had not. Intrigued with what we had discovered, we repeated the experiment a few days later. The result was identical, this time we were careful to study the gull that discovered the snails - he did not come back with the flock. Obviuosly he had had his fill, and he shared the information with his friends who were glad to come and feast at the table. Perhaps it's stupid of us to wonder, but just how did the original gull, the one that first discovered the snails tell his friends about it, and at the same time give them the exact direction and location? It must be a silent but well under stood language - that of the wild and the free. Salem Chordsmen Barbershop Champs Forest Grove -(LTD- A Salem group, The Capital Chords men, won the All-Northwest Barber Shop Quartet singing contest here Saturday night. The contest was the high light of the city's annual Gay Nineties Celebration. The Chordsmen won in the finals over the Four-Do-Matics of Seattle. The original field was 19 quartets. The Salem group, was com posed of Dick Roth, Al Smith, Dick McClintic and Lloyd Griffiths. i Union Pacific ' '' also means Unsurpassed rfx r m a n MEDFORD scape painters, took his palette into the great outdoors. He was also first to paint the sun, head-on. The work is on loan from the Louvre museum in Paris. OF SMITH & MEN Bv Jac k Smith (cl 1960 Times-Mirror Syndicate Now that the average per son allegedly has a swimming pool, a psychiatrist, a girl's school and a gardener, the automobile is supposed to have lost its status as a status symbol. That's not so. We have a new car at last and we feel that it has given us some sta tus. The trouble is, we don't know what status. We finally bought a large white compact with red in sides. Our youngest son wanted us to buy a smaller compact on the grounds that it was more compact, and it could be had with red insides, if necessary. Our oldest son thought we ought to buy an Imperial. He said I had worked very hard for many years and deserved something superior. My wife wanted us to keep the 1951 yellow Ford convertible as a symbol of our modest circum stances and general frugality. She pointed out that the pay ments would be smaller. She also said that it was an airy car, since the top had been stuck for a year and 14 months, and air is good for children. Besides, she said she had lost an opal earring in it somewhere. We sold it finally to MAIL TRIBUNE, MEDFORD, w , v fV young man who works at the toD shnn and hns fnnr nliilHrnn and agreed to sell us the ear ring if it turns up. were getting this Lanc er," I explained to him, "so we have to move the Ford. You're getting a good deal." "Well, vnn lrnnu, Vie. colrl "its only for a second car. I nave a Corvair for a regular car." I have always figured that when you sell your old car to somebody you are gaining sta tus. It means they can't afford as good a car as you're getting and have to buy your old car. But if they already have a car and are buying your old car as their old car, it changes everything. It looks as if they can not only afford their ree- ular car but can also buy your old car for a second car but you can't afford a regular car without selling your old regu lar car. to maKe matters worse Gribble turned up with a new Oldsmobile. Every time I make a move he turns up with a new Oldsmobile, and always with a radio and heater. I think he was afraid I wouldn't notice it. He phoned the other morning and asked if I would mind moving our new car because it was in the way when he tried to drive in his garage. I have this new Olds, you it's know," he said, "and longer." I don't know If he meant his new car was longer than my new car or longer than his old car, or longer than our old car, with the earring. I ve decided to compromise and not drive our new car. I'll let my wife drive it and sit in the back. This way it will look as if it's not our reg ular car but only our second, or female, car. Everybody will assume our other car is getting a grease job. Whenever anybody asks me about the new car I won't have to defend it or argue about the horsepower or the transmission. I can just say, "Oh, that's the wife's." If they want to know where my own personal car is I'll tell them about my peripheral vision. It's been dimming on me. The doctor says I m lucky at my age that I'm only los ing my peripheral vision. He says many men lose their dec ibels. He says that instead of get ting a new car for a status symbol I ought to get a mon ocle. I wonder how Gribble would like that? Last Lecture Series Planned Ashland - Dr. Richard Byrns, associate professor of English, Southern Oregon col lege, will be the first speaker in the SOC Last Lecture series to begin Wednesday, March 1, at 7:30 p.m., at Britt hall. Room 116. The series, sponsored by the SOC Canterbury club under the direction of the Rev. Duane S. Alvord of Trinity Episcopal church, will con tinue weekly until Easter. Each Wednesday lecture will be by a SOC faculty mem ber to be followed by a gen eral discussion and coffee hour. Other speakers include Dr. Arthur Taylor. Dr. Elliott MacCracken. Dr. Arthur Kreisman, Wayne Hood, and Dr. Elvin Fellers. Each will emphasize what he feels to be most important in his life. It was explained that the lec tures may or may not be focused on the speakers' edu cational field or toward Chris tianity. Interested students, faculty members and residents are In vited to attend. ORE. THE SHAPE OF THINGS The Splendid Century: Paints Sun, Moods of By RICHARD HIRSCH Director Allenlown Art Museum Court art and royal acade mies have come to suggest pompous boredom to the peo ple of our time. Even those of us with the most conservative tastes have been brought, somehow, to believe that art can only flourish in total anarchy. For a century or so our artists have demanded their "freedom", insisting that un less they were encouraged in absolute irresponsibility their creativeness would wither and die. Whether we like or dis approve of the artists who scream these slogans it is sur prising to note that these claims arc, now, generally and universally, accepted. We have been successfully brain washed. An exhibition which refutes the art - for - anarchy's sake philosophy is currently star tling a significant segment of our museum public. The reve lation has been provided by the collection of French 17th century art entitled "The Splendid Century." It has been visited by huge crowds at Washington's Na tional Gallery and at the Toledo Museum of Art. New Yorkers and tourists will see it early March at the Metro politan. Not Reach Audience One must regret that "The Splendid Century" will not reach an even greater audi ence, coast to coast. One con solation is that our art periodi cals have taken considerable note of the event and have thus broadened its public. The Splendid Century of France lasted 115 years, clos ing only with the death of Louis XIV. He it was, the Sun King, who gave the century its grandeur, encouraged its arts as no one had before him, set its goals and, by his wisdom and his follies, made it unique in the history of Western man. In that century French be came the great international language, when only Latin had served the purpose be fore. French writing and French thought set new standards of clarity, eloquence and reason within and with out the borders which Louis XIV expanded and stabilized. Academies were establish ed, to purify the language from medieval obscurity, to find rules for the arts, to en courage the sciences. Dominated The Arts Le Brun, the King's painter, dominated the arts, dictated a new style. He organized the craftsmen of France into royal manufactories, armies, regi ments, battalions, whose pro duction, under his influence, was collossal, from tapestries to doorknobs and from book titles to palace ceilings. Le Brun's creativeness was stag gering; his gift of organiza tion was practically infallible. Louis XIV remembered the terrors of his youth when his widowed mother, Marie de Medicis, had had to smuggle him out of Paris because the nobles of the renlm were wag ing a civil war. He never gave them such a chance again. He bound them with gilded chains to the court where rumor and whispers made major intrigue and conspiracy virtually impossible. As a result, the Splendid Century Is that of the com moner, whom Louis XIV un derstood, admired, encour aged. His prime minister, Col bert, doing the work of ten ministers, was the son of a cloth merchant and his closest friend. Loved Common Seme The King loved the common sense of his commoners and they thrived upon his ap proval. The Splendid Century upon which he left his regal stamp made us heirs to the great plays of Molicre, Racine and Corneille, to the philoso phy of that honorary Missouri an, Descartes, who encour aged belief only if its grounds could be proved, and to the mathematics and religious fervor of Pascal. In the arts the Splendid Century, paradoxic ally, sought the rules of reason to govern in all things and yet encouraged the greatest di versities of personal genius. We despise the Academy be cause we think of it as im posing rules. We forget that, at least in the Splendid Cen tury, the Academy was an exciting enterprise devoted to research. Strongest Influence It's first function was to seek out the philosophic basic for such rules as it might, la ter, seek to define and, even tually, to impose. We forget this, remembering only the abuses of Its later dictator ship. In the splendid century it was not yet dictating. It was searching. .Poussin, though living In R,.me, had had the strongest influence in creating this trend. His persistent assump tion was that a painting-and every detail in it-should be justified by reason before brush touched canvas. His per sonal success in this philo sophic approach made Paris and the young Academy for get the lush color of Rubens and much of the baroque fantasy of his riotous inven tions. The "Rubenists" lost fa vor. Even while many of them painted like Rubens, they talked like Poussin. Someone who talked hardly at all and wrote even less (be cause he never quite mastered the art of spelling his own name) is another Frenchman who also worked in Rome. Claude Gellee, called the Lor rain because of his birthplace, or simply Claude, painted the sun. Before him no one had much courage nor such spe cific talent to carry it out. Only Turner and Van Gogh Would have it again. But Claude Lorrain was no wild romantic, sunstruck and emotional. He was a man of his splendidly reasonable cen tury. He started out as a pas try cook, and was fortunate, after traveling to Rome from his war - impoverished prov ince, to work for a painter whose best fame is that he taught the youngster how to use a brush. Some other things no one NEW C cfttlr l f " Bedroom "f fi MEASURE jg 'X-'C-'V- Carp taurine's FLOORCOVERING 520 S. Riverside (Next Door to Ore. Food Store) SP 3-5182 could teach Claude Lorrain. First of all the great land scape painters, Claude took his palette out into the open air. This he did in a world where painting had always been a studio activity. Claude mixed his paints out of doors and then ran back io his canvas and painted the sun, painted light and shadow, light on the water and light in the trees, as no one had ever painted before him. He created fanciful palaces and dreamed-of seaports. In the manner of his time he illustrated the myths of antiquity, tiny figures lost in NOT Bargain AUTOMOBILE INSURANCE with BIG safe driver SAVINGS from THE TRAVELERS, 1-, J.,, TATrT7iMTl?n ..4. Available local Don Stathos, insiiror THE MALl-1005 rrinNAi V , . pROfC'3 At LAURINE'S Hotels, Apartments, Motels and Homes, TOP VALUES IN SOUTHERN OREGON 3 Rooivas Carpeted Wall to Wall including waffle padding and expert tackles 100 NYLON Continuous Filament 501 Nylon by Guaranteed (Written) $315 NO CASH $11.00 per up to 35 yds. installed complete 100 WOOL $22750 NO MONEY $2.50 a up to 35 yds. installed complete Here is a really fantastic offerl Now you can carpet three rooms in luxury at an irresisibly low price, with easy credit terms besides. You get enough perma nently mothproofed, soil-resistant, high quality car peting to cover an average-size foyer, living room and bedroom wall-to-wall. We measure it ... . we cut it . . . then we give you expert tackless instalaltionl We lust received several new rolls of carpot solids, stripes, tweeds and baikweavos. COME IN TOMORROW! ' II i i tm its NT 4mJVtT'W MONDAY, FEBRUARY 27, Lorrain Mature surrounding nature. In this way did Claude justify his deep dedication to catching the moods of nature. He be came wealthy, though never losing the humility of his be ginning. With Poussin, the Norman peasant, and Le Brun, the commoner, Claude of Lorrain along with the sculptors, the architects and the inspired gardeners, left his unique seal on-the French 17th century. It was a century of vigorous, serious and prodigiously la borious personalities the most splendid of which was the Sun King himself. - Counter Coverage ... now to Oregon motorists from indevendent Travelers Agent: E. Mai SP 3 AMP 50-oz. installation DuPont DOWN month DOWN week rV I . i.' f f9 1981 It was the age not of en lightenment but of reason, searching out the "why" of all things, certain that all things, including man and his works, were or should be gov erned by reason. Poussin, the most reason able of painters, wrote, how ever, that "the purpose of painting is delight." And Claude Lorrain, the classicist, standing in the fields of Rome, painted, ecstatically, the sun. (Copyright 1961, General Features Corp.) TAX WORK MADE EASY Rent or Lease Adding Machine Typewriter Calculator VOIGHT'S 8th & Grape SP 2-4100 Easy Parking Green Stamps your 'JfbfltJtllt 'AGENT Phone lltvoint - 6658 WE INSTALL IT! WE measure s we . sew f$ WE SfgS PAD
