Diary: 15 June 2014

Thomas Heinser and George Homsey.

Yesterday, my wife and I drove out to West Marin to have lunch with the photographer Thomas Heinser, the graphic designer Madeleine Corson, his wife, and our mutual friend, the architect George Homsey. I've known George for 43 years, I thought just now, remembering how he used to play opera on the radio when I worked in his office for six weeks in 1971. One morning when we were both there early, a woman sang especially memorably. We spontaneously shared our admiration, a moment that has stayed with me as the probable origin of our friendship. 

Our lunch, European in quality and pace, took place on the terrace of an elongated, New England-white farmhouse. The surroundings would be heaven to a landscape painter, with long views of hilly pastureland. Being close to the sea, the terrain isn't as parched as places not very far to the east. 

The main course: grass-fed beef brisket.

Driving George back to the city, I found that, as always, he's completely up to date, asking my opinion of buildings here and in Europe. For a long time, I've felt that George deserves his own monograph. He won the Maybeck Award, but he needs a book. Two friends, Helen Degenhardt and Noreen Hughes, have put together an oral history, I understand, which could inform the text. I've tried to interest EHDD in getting behind the project, but it hasn't happened. 

In the car, I mentioned to George that I twice interviewed Allan Temko, the late critic and art historian, late in his life. He was a Chekhovian figure at that point, I said. A memorable one, too, prone to telling jokes. In the first interview, I asked him if it bothered him to make enemies. I was remembering an episode I witnessed of a prominent local architect trying and failing to freeze him out at lunch, when Temko dropped in to see how the first "beauty contest" of the San Francisco Downtown Plan was going. It didn't bother him, Temko said, because "only third-raters hold grudges." Now there's a good rule for life!