Editor’s note: In this special edition of Sad Trombone, we’re featuring a transcription of the May 9 Episode of the 90 Miles from Needles podcast, hosted by Chris Clarke, produced in collaboration with the Desert Trumpet:

We are going to take a second look at an art fair that we recently covered in a previous episode. After that episode aired, I heard from some folks I trust that we left some things out, so we revisited the topic, and I was expecting to spend a fair amount of this interview talking about problems with the episode, but instead our guests briefly addressed those, and we went on to talk about arts and desert communities in the broader sense, with less reference to the episode, but more to what’s actually going on in the art world and how that reflects what people are trying to do to educate folks about what the deserts need from us — Chris Clarke

The episode, titled S5E15: When Commerce Meets Culture: Art Fairs in the Desert is available for listening on the 90 Miles From Needles website.

Chris Clarke: A couple of episodes ago we had a discussion about the High Desert Art Fair, especially with regard to an article that appeared in the LA Times that provoked some bad feeling among some members in the Morongo Basin community. There was discussion about that. So we talked about that, put the episode to bed, published it, and then I heard from someone whose judgment I trust a great deal that there was a bunch we left out in that episode. So we are revisiting that topic to perhaps add a little bit of nuance to it.

I am joined by Cindy Bernard, who is the friend who reached out. She’s an artist and activist with a conceptually oriented art practice across a variety of media. She’s exhibited internationally and her work is in the collections of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, LA County Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Pompidou, among others.

Her grants and fellowships include Creative Capital, Anonymous Was a Woman, California Community Foundation, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, and the Pollock-Krasner Foundation. She was a National Endowment for the Arts fellow at MacDowell Colony, and her work will be included in Staging California in Early Hollywood at the UCI Langston OCMA this summer. In addition to teaching studio art at colleges and universities across Southern California, she was the founder of SASSAS, where she produced more than 150 concerts and other events in the greater Los Angeles area. She is co-founder and editor in chief of the Desert Trumpet, an invaluable online local news publication covering 29 Palms and the broader Morongo Basin.

We are also joined by Bernard Leibov, who is the founder and director of Boxo Projects, which is a residency and programming initiative based in Joshua Tree. Also co-founder and co-curator of the Joshua Treenial. Before moving to California in 2011, Bernard was deputy director of Judd Foundation in New York and Marfa. He also operated a non-traditional gallery space in New York City which featured artists from regions beyond urban centers, and manages an art gallery for Joshua Tree National Park and is the director of the David McKenzie Estate. He’s also co-founder of Joshua Tree Arts Professionals, an informal association of arts professionals who support artists and the arts in the local community. Bernard has previously served on the board at the Joshua Tree Chamber of Commerce and the organizing committee for the Morongo Basin Strategic Plan for the Arts.

Clearly a couple of dreadnought people to talk to. What did I get wrong in that episode?

Cindy Bernard: Well, I think the word nuance is really the way to approach it. I just felt that the desert needs all sorts of people in order to be the economic place that it is. It’s an environmental place, but it’s also an economic place. It’s been an economic place since the Chemehuevi were using the Oasis of Mara as a trading center. So it’s been going on here for a very long time. And I felt that the episode didn’t fairly acknowledge that.

And you know, yeah, the LA Times article on the High Desert Art Fair—maybe there were a couple of things in there that were questionable, but the Art Fair itself was not the same as the article, and it [the episode] kind of collapsed the two together in a way that I felt was not completely fair. So I thought that maybe it would be useful to get together with Bernard, who participated in the High Desert Art Fair, and have a discussion that added some of that nuance to some of the valid criticisms that were in the prior episode.

Chris Clarke: That sounds very reasonable. Bernard, did you have a particular sense of how our episode may not have really reflected what was actually going on?

Bernard Leibov: Yeah, well, I think there were a number of things in the episode. One of the things that struck me was that there was a confounding of a whole set of issues, some of them related to the Art Fair and most of them not, in a way that kind of just picked up and ran. I think what was important in the Art Fair itself to understand firstly is that they’ve been building that for a number of years. Yes, they got a professional PR agency involved this year and probably got quite a little overboard with that, in a sense. And there were some misstatements. But the reality of the Art Fair was that it’s been in development for a number of years, and the organizers have been particularly generous to local organizations and careful with working with the local art community in the way that they put the fair together and program it.

Bernard Leibov: Almost fully half the fair was free or subsidized spaces for local organizations. My space [in the Pioneertown Motel] was provided to me absolutely free. And then I was treated in every way like a paying client in all the niceties that came with participation there. And I felt incredibly welcome and highlighted. And many other local organizations were treated in the same way. There was also a room devoted solely to fundraising for local nonprofits where artists donated their work.

Bernard Leibov: So I think there was a lot of balance that was brought to the fair this year and a lot of fairness and then some very interesting programming. There were talks and musical performances of the sorts we don’t usually see, that addressed the kind of cultural and commercial aspects of being an artist or a collector in the desert. These are valuable discussions to have. The art scene here really is lacking professional platforms for exhibition—at Boxo we try to fill that somewhat with the Joshua Treenial and highlight local artists in a professional curated exhibition.

But what’s certainly missing is commercial platforms. There are one or two programmatic galleries, and they do a great job, but most haven’t been able to survive: it’s the economic reality. And this was a wonderful opportunity.

Chris Clarke: And you were quoted in the LA Times article with a couple of things that…I think the concern about affordability was something we mentioned in that episode. But there was also something that you said which has spurred some thought in me, which was that commerce is not always a bad word for people in the arts. I’m paraphrasing here. You know, the idea of the starving artist is sort of a romantic fiction. Not that artists don’t starve, but it’s not an aspirational goal.

Bernard Leibov: Exactly.

Chris Clarke: And clearly if somebody is going to be working on a large sculpture or a painting that takes an incredibly long time to execute in the way the artist wants, it would be nice if they sold it for something that—amortizing the income per hour spent making the piece—turned out to be somewhere around minimum wage or better.

Cindy Bernard: Artists’ labor deserves to be compensated. For working artists, it’s a part of our daily income. It’s not a luxury. And that’s a challenge.

Now, the long history of art fairs is complicated. There’s a quote from [artist] John Baldessari that is very telling about the nature of artists going to art fairs. Something along the lines of: if you accidentally walk into your parents having sex, it’s traumatizing. It’s something you know they do, but you don’t need to see it. And artists going to art fairs and experiencing that kind of commerce in a firsthand way, it’s very similar. You know that that kind of hard sell exists, but you don’t necessarily need to see it.

Cindy Bernard: But the nature of art fairs has really changed. You know, I mean, you have the big international fairs like Frieze and Basel, and those have been going on for some time. This other kind of fair that the High Desert Art Fair participates in—which is an alternative fair that started happening in motels—I think the Chateau Marmont in LA had an alternate fair for a while. There was the Farmer’s Daughter Motel in LA and it [an art fair] was at the Gramercy in New York—kind of funkier alternatives to the big box art fairs.

And the High Desert Art Fair is very much in that line. It was also a great hang, I have to say! It was really fun. And sometimes the other thing that’s positive that comes out of that kind of mixture of commerce and artists and curators being all in the same place is you get to introduce them to each other when they might not know each other previously. And that was definitely happening at that fair. So there are many positive outcomes from something that is commercially oriented and is a commercial enterprise like that.

Cindy Bernard: And I think the other thing that was happening a bit in the podcast is the collapsing together of something like the High Desert Art Fair with something like Desert X. So Desert X also participates in a lineage of events that are associated with contemporary art, and that is the international biennial. And these happen all over the world. They generally happen every two or three years—or in the case of something like Documenta, there’s a longer period of time between them. And these are international exhibitions of artists who are coming to them from many different places in the world and are brought together in one place.

And they are not necessarily commercial enterprises. So, for instance, Desert X is run by the Desert Biennial, which is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit. So it’s categorically different than the High Desert Art Fair, also in scale, and also I believe that Desert X is internationally funded, whereas I’m pretty sure the High Desert Art Fair is more or less locally funded. So they’re categorically different things. So I think that was another nuance that was important to point out—to understand what the difference is between something that’s an international biennial and something that’s a much more locally oriented art fair.

Chris Clarke: Of course, the context in which this is taking place—or part of the context—is that we have a community here that to some degree is reeling from changes that have been happening over the last 15 years in the Joshua Tree area. And there is almost inevitably some resentment about those changes, which usually attaches to things like the burgeoning presence of short-term rentals, Airbnb kind of situations, or things that are almost beyond anybody’s control, like the Perseid meteor viewing apocalypse of a couple of years ago, where everybody in Los Angeles decided to come out to Joshua Tree to see meteors. I think when resentment is allowed to just go on and people are not feeling heard, it will attach to different things, often deservingly so.

But sometimes—and it’s certainly the case for me—sometimes that resentment gets attached to things that might have just been mildly annoying, like an article in the LA Times with a couple of tone-deaf statements that may or may not have actually been made verbatim by the principals of the High Desert Art Fair. And so it’s just interesting to me that that seemed to have been a lightning rod, which is why we did the episode.

One of the problematic statements in the Times article was “we want to make this a destination like Marfa or the Hamptons,” which I don’t usually think of Marfa and the Hamptons as going together, but Bernard, you have some experience working in Marfa. How different is that scene from what we have here? Or is it roughly the same?

Bernard Leibov: No, I mean, that’s exactly it. And I completely agree, and I think that’s a little bit what bothered me about the episode was this redirection of energy that I think we should be somehow organizing and directing to some of its proper targets. I’m sort of a little infamous around here in terms of saying that we couldn’t become Marfa because we’re unincorporated, and Marfa was very much created by a person, and it wasn’t the artist, Donald Judd, but it was a guy called Tim Crowley who came from Houston and built a lot of the assets there that catered to the art world and then brought the art world to Marfa, but very much in concert with the city of Marfa, working together, getting around all sorts of restrictions.

So we know that for better or for worse, we live largely in unincorporated areas here, and then the two big cities — or the town and the city. And that whole displacement and affordability question is something we really should constantly be bringing back to [San Bernardino] county. And that’s where the energy should be directed. Many other localities, including the City of Twentynine Palms and Yucca, have taken some action in the face of the vacation rentals, but the county really hasn’t and then is collecting TOT1 money that is not coming back to the community.

We need to constantly stay on that and take this anger that sparks up out of these episodes and bring it back into somewhere where possibly we could take action. And then, as I said, Marfa—you know, there was somebody with a very, very direct strategy there trying to turn it into something and working with the local authorities to do that. And I don’t see the potential for that here.

Chris Clarke: The connection with the Hamptons seems a little bit more tenuous. You’ve been involved in the New York art scene. Is there anything you have to offer about what’s going on in the Hamptons? Is there much dialogue between the Hamptons and the city?

Bernard Leibov: I think that the Hamptons—many of the Hamptons galleries, and there is an art fair that happens out there as well—are satellites of New York City’s scene as well as have a direct tie there. And they’re very successful in capturing people that go out to their summer homes and things like that. But again, the mere economic wherewithal of those towns and the people who go there is so out of scale to what we’re dealing with here that this is not going to happen overnight. And again, working in concert with local authorities who will strategically welcome that kind of activity? We don’t have that here.

Another thing to say about San Bernardino Couny is that the county doesn’t have an office of culture or cultural figures and not a single dollar for culture. And so artists here are more pressed than ever to find commercial outlets for their work. And the Art Fair was a wonderful opportunity for that.

Cindy Bernard: In Twentynine Palms, I mean, it’s a little bit different because we have something that doesn’t exist in Yucca and it doesn’t exist in county, which is we have a Tourism Business Improvement District, which takes control of not all of the TOT, but 1.5%. And then that goes to fund—theoretically—the development of arts events and other kinds of cultural events in the city of Twentynine Palms and has sponsorships that go to support different, smaller events. And so in a way, we’re lucky here to at least have that. And that is probably the only government funding of the arts at this point that exists in the Morongo Basin.

Bernard Leibov: And it’s a really good model. I don’t think anybody is complaining about what’s going on in Twentynine Palms. There’s a strategy, there’s a local authority that cares, and that makes a big difference. But it’s a great model for how this could be done in a managed way in [San Bernardino] county.

Cindy Bernard: Yeah, the model of the income—actually, some of the income being retained within the city itself, which I don’t think Yucca does [have a mechanism for funding the arts], and certainly the county definitely doesn’t do it. So, yeah, we’re a little fortunate to at least have that mechanism here. But yeah, speaking to one of the challenges—I agree with Bernard. I mean, one of the challenges with being an artist out here at the level I work at is there aren’t many places to exhibit the work.

Cindy Bernard: This is a conversation that has to do with elitism and culture that sometimes comes up out here as well, and the tensions between the different kinds of artists that are out here and the different modes of working that are out here. And that’s real. It would be great to have a more expanded support system for all kinds of artists out in the Morongo Basin, and the High Desert Art Fair—that’s maybe the beginning of that to some degree. And we have High Desert Test Sites as a 501(c)(3) that’s going through some changes. And I think we’re going to see that become more community oriented. We have Boxo Projects and we have Compound YV and we…to make a list is kind of impossible, really.

Bernard Leibov: Material Lab.

Cindy Bernard: Yeah, Yucca Valley Material Lab, which is really crucial. And the art ecology out here is improving. And I think it’s important to note that it is also important. Culture is important. Our one movie theater is important.

Bernard Leibov: Two!

Cindy Bernard: We have two movie theaters! Two movie theaters are important. And we shouldn’t look down on those efforts because we need them.

Chris Clarke: I wonder sometimes why the visual arts seem to get a little bit more flak than writing. I mean, my writing has arguably contributed to the wave of tourism that we’re all afflicted with here—or able to take advantage of, or whatever your point of view is on that.

Cindy Bernard: It’s not a concrete form, except when it’s in a book or a magazine. And I think that visual art is generally—not always, but often—it exists in objects. And so there’s actually a physical thing to attach the resentment to. But I was going to say—building on what you just said—in the Lo-Fi Lit Festival that just happened, which used Highway 62 as a backbone—which I personally think is one of the great ways to work with the Morongo Basin because we have such a unique kind of physical infrastructure here that allows the use of this highway as a backbone for different kinds of things.

I mean, the Lo-Fi Lit Festival was also hugely successful and consisted of people, I think, at very different points in their careers getting up and reading and expressing that vulnerability at the mic, you know.

I think coming with that concrete object very often is a lot of capital, and it does often require more than $50 to buy an artwork. And I think there’s some resentment around that. It would be a lie to say there’s not a relationship between the world of contemporary art and large sums of money, but it’s not everybody, and it’s certainly not here very much.

Cindy Bernard: I mean, I think that some of that capital does exist around Desert X, but that’s a whole—like I said before, it’s a whole other thing than what we’re talking about up here in the Morongo Basin. And certainly the lower desert is not in the lowest quartile of the [California] Healthy Places Index. And parts of Twentynine Palms are in literally the 8th percentile out of 100 points in the Healthy Places Index, which maps economic and educational and social coherence within given communities in California. We’re talking about art and culture existing in quite a different place when we talk about the Morongo Basin, as opposed to, say, the lower desert, where Desert X takes place.

Bernard Leibov: Something to be said about deserts as well. And I think one of the things that all the negativity often doesn’t really allow for is just a bit of compassion in terms of people spending time in the desert and learning. I’ve only been here 14 years, and I’m constantly learning—learning how to deal with the environment, deal with the social aspects here. Desert X did arrive originally as sort of an approach of the desert is a blank canvas. But they learned very quickly from that reaction and in the last edition actually referred to the “Reading the Landscape” guidelines, which were created between High Desert Test Sites, Joshua Treenial , Rebecca Lowry and the Mojave Desert Land Trust as guidelines for artists working on the land. They did refer to that. They are sharing that with their artists.

It takes time sometimes for people to settle down. The Art Fair has only been going here for four years. You learn from all these waves of reaction, you know, and adapt. The black houses [referred to in the prior episode] are being built by people who really just don’t understand. But they’ll learn and they’ll repaint or they’ll do something.

Chris Clarke: Black paint is easily correctable.

Bernard Leibov: Yes. Let’s just allow people some grace. Oh, another thing—really good for all of us to remember: we’re not original settlers of this land. We are all trespassing in a sense.

The Desert Trumpet runs out of operating funds on July 1, help us provide the coverage you depend on and also experience a unique concert at Spirit Wind. Purchase tickets for our May 14 fundraiser today.

Chris Clarke: Absolutely. I’ve been hearing a lot of people that I meet randomly complaining about black houses in the desert. And it seems to have just gotten to be—maybe not critical mass of awareness, but definitely people have been more sensitized. I mean, a paint color is about as superficial as you can get in architectural criticism. I mean, literally superficial. But just the idea of what that says—

Bernard Leibov: —it’s emblematic of a lack of understanding of context. It’s not just the black paint. It’s also a lot of these houses have huge windows facing west or east to get the views, not understanding about the solar gain. But I think people will learn over time. And there’s a dereliction of regulation. This has always been our dilemma out here—again, except for Twentynine Palms and Yucca. We like a sense of freedom and want local government but are lacking levels of being able to express political will — we’re just too small to make a difference. That’s something we have to live with and to fight when we can. And we do. And it’s an ongoing conversation.

Cindy Bernard: Well, I don’t think that the cities are paradises of planning. It’s true, at least you can go say something. The number of people complaining about dark sky violations in Twentynine Palms and the lack of enforcement is legion in this town.2 Not to mention recent builds that are entirely black here. So the Reset Hotel did so many things that were right, I’m not going to knock them for being primarily black painted, but certainly the city didn’t comment on the color, let’s just put it that way. I don’t know if we want people saying, your house can be black, your house can be white, your house can be pink or whatever? I don’t think we want that being dictated to us necessarily.

Bernard Leibov: Something the authorities could do a better job of is at least educating. So the guidelines—like the “Reading the Landscape” guidelines—whenever they were implemented at the Joshua Treenial, the Land Trust would come and meet with the artist and educate them about the environment, not tell them what they can or couldn’t do. People will very naturally understand not to do this and not to do that. So if there were an educational effort or some such, applying to painting a house black, we could at least say, that’s going to be a five-degree gain.

Chris Clarke: I get the sense that there are some folks—and I have occasionally been included in this number—that when we think of art in the desert landscape, people like Michael Heizer come to mind. I don’t really feel qualified to have an opinion on the validity of his work. But it is not environmentally benign.

Cindy Bernard: Oh, no, it’s not.

Chris Clarke: You know, I admire the vision of some of it. City is a spectacle for sure, but could have been maybe built on somebody’s old, retired alfalfa field or something like that. And I’m not saying that all art in the desert needs to necessarily be reflective of environmental sensibilities about desert situations, desert living, that kind of thing. People can move to the desert and write novels about people living in small apartments in Brooklyn if they want. It’s part of why we’re here. But it’s interesting to me just to see the degree to which spending time in the desert does affect artists and does kind of, I guess, soften some of the urban edges.

Bernard Leibov: I could pick up on the Michael Heizer thing just because I did work for the Donald Judd Foundation. Heizer is of a generation of kind of macho male artist who created work that dominates the land, but that has really gone through a lot of eco-feminist critique. I used to give a tour of the Noah Purifoy Foundation and there’s a wonderful piece there where you can go in—Aurora Borealis—and you can see broken mirror on the ground and the outside of that has these black sculptures. And there’s a piece called Land where he’s dug into the land.

And these were conversations with artists—Heizer and Smithson and other people like that — who were doing this kind of work out in the land. It’s a real educational tool for what not to do now and how not to do it. And I don’t think we really see that sort of approach, particularly here anymore. I had an artist come from Switzerland who wanted to do a rock sculpture with mirrors on it, and I educated him about the potential for bothering neighbors and fire.

Cindy Bernard: There’s also, just to broaden that land art discussion a little bit—you had the Michael Heizers and other artists, not all male, who would dig into the landscape, but there’s also a realm of land art that did not do that or created more subtle alterations, like Richard Long, you know, basically just lining up rocks and then photographing that, or bringing mud from one location into the gallery and using it to make a drawing on a gallery wall. Or Agnes Denes—D-E-N-E-S. She planted this massive wheat field on a piece of property in Manhattan. So that’s a different kind of landscape alteration.

So I think there’s some of the guys that made these works—and I’ve experienced one of them in person, the Lightning Field. It’s completely worth it for that square mile. It’s an amazing experience to watch the light bounce off of those metal rods and causes perhaps a consciousness about light, environment and space that is useful, even though clearly that part of the New Mexico desert was pretty disturbed to put those poles in. So, yeah, there are tradeoffs as well.

Chris Clarke: There was a discussion at a symposium I was at a couple of months ago in Ajo, Arizona. It was the Trinational Sonoran Desert Symposium. And it’s a wonderful event. You learn so much about what all the different researchers are doing and what the activists are doing. And the border wall, as you might expect, looms very large in the minds of people that are working in the Sonoran Desert. There was a conversation, one workshop, and then some subsidiary conversation about what to do with the wall.

And the idea that really caught me and made me think that maybe it’s the best possible thing to do, given the destruction that’s already occurred to put that wall in, is to modify it enough so that it’s no longer a barrier to wildlife or people crossing through, and then declare it a memorial work of art—sort of like a combination of the death camps from World War II still being open to the public and preserved and Christo’s Running Fence along the border. And it just seemed to me like such an out-of-the-box approach to it. And possibly the most environmentally benign way of dealing with the wall being there is just to kind of leave it there. Don’t engage in another massive construction project, but just neutralize the wall, leave it there. Let it fall down of its own accord, because it’s a Trump construction, and it’ll probably fall down in the next eight years.

Cindy Bernard: It’s a marker of its moment in time. To completely get rid of it would be just as destructive. But it’s also an erasure of a marker in history that has some significance.

Bernard Leibov: And artists have already been addressing that. Down in San Diego on the Tijuana border, there’s an artist who painted on the Tijuana side a seascape and the beach so it could just disappear.

Cindy Bernard: Creative solutions.

Chris Clarke: This has been a really fascinating conversation, and I am grateful for the corrective. Folks can look in the show notes for links to things like Boxo Projects and the Desert Trumpet, which I have found indispensable in understanding where I live. And we are also going to be putting the transcript of this interview in Desert Trumpet, so I will retroactively link to that as soon as that’s ready to be linked. Cindy Bernard and Bernard Leibov, thank you so much for taking the time to set us a little straighter than we were.

Bernard Leibov: Thank you. And thank you for taking the time. And I think we didn’t necessarily mean it as a corrective, but an expansion.

Cindy Bernard: Yeah, an expansion—that works. Thank you so much, Chris.

Chris Clarke: Thanks again to Cindy Bernard and Bernard Leibov for taking the time to come and talk to us about their impressions of how we missed the mark on that previous episode, as well as talking about a bunch of other stuff that was just really fascinating to me. You know, we’re always taking stands. We’re certainly not going to give oil companies or data centers equal time to object to things that we said in episodes.

But you know, when we’re basically all on the same side, it’s really important to be even handed. When it’s people that you respect who are working with you to make the world a better place, obviously reflecting that multiplicity of voices is really important. So thanks again to Cindy and Bernard for chatting with me.

Now I recognize that the audio is a little crunchy in some places, so the transcript is going to come in really handy. You can check our website at 90milesfromneedles.com or go to the Desert Trumpet, which is a wonderful publication talking about hyper-local news in the Morongo Basin.

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Here’s what I want you to know before I tell you anything about basketball: the WNBA (Women’s National Basketball Association) is one of the most important professional sports leagues in America — not just for social justice, though it has a record there that will stop you cold — but for what it represents about labor, visibility, race, queerness, and who gets to be seen as extraordinary. If you have ever cared about any of those things, this league is for you. It will not be for everyone. But it will be for more people than currently know it.

And you don’t have to take my word for it. Walk into local spots like Tiny Pony or 29 Palms Beer Co on the right night and look up at the televisions. There’s a good chance you’ll see women’s basketball. That’s not a fluke — it’s happening in bars and living rooms across the country. A Portland bar called The Sports Bra, founded by chef and former basketball player Jenny Nguyen, shows only women’s sports and made history as the first women’s sports bar of its kind when it opened in 2022. With backing from Alexis Ohanian — Reddit co-founder, husband of tennis legend Serena Williams — it’s now franchising to Boston, Indianapolis, Las Vegas, and St. Louis, with more cities likely to follow.

To understand why any of that matters, you have to know where this league came from — and what it has been carrying the whole time.

A Brief History — and Why It Was Never Brief

The league was founded in 1996 and played its first season in 1997 — four teams, a summer schedule tucked in around the NBA calendar like an afterthought. From the beginning, the criticism was familiar: not enough scoring, not enough speed, not enough dunks (or men).

What the critics missed — what they always miss — is that these same women were simultaneously the most dominant force in international basketball. The U.S. women’s national team, powered entirely by WNBA players, won eight consecutive Olympic gold medals from 1996 through 2024, becoming the first team in any sport in Olympic history to accomplish that feat. Eight straight. They haven’t lost an Olympic game since 1992. They came home from Paris with gold, then came back to play in arenas that were often half-empty, in front of cameras that were often not there, for salaries that didn’t come close to reflecting what they were worth. They did it anyway. Every summer. For nearly thirty years.

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Note: We are also making this edition of Sad Trombone available in Spanish!
Read El amor es más poderoso que el odio — Lo que el espectáculo de medio tiempo de Bad Bunny hizo por mí

A little more than a week ago, the NFL crowned the Seattle Seahawks its 2025-26 Super Bowl champions. The usual nightmarish news churn resumed, but Bad Bunny’s Apple Music halftime show kept sticking with me. I cried — not as a political gesture or performative move, just sudden, real emotion. I’m Mexican American; I grew up switching between two languages and two worlds. Watching Bad Bunny sing in Spanish on that enormous stage felt like someone had flipped on a light in a dark room. It was visibility in a space that rarely centers us, and it landed as joy.

If you didn’t see the show: Bad Bunny — Puerto Rican, American citizen, musician and entertainer — used a massive live platform to repeat a simple line: “The only thing more powerful than hate is love.” He performed his set in Spanish. For many of us, that language choice felt like direct recognition. For others it triggered a defensive backlash that revealed how tightly language, belonging and national identity are policed in public life.

Singing in Spanish on a national broadcast didn’t just change the lyrics — it changed the frame. It signaled that Latinx culture, speech and emotion belong in mainstream American spaces, not only in niche markets. Pushback isn’t usually about the music; it’s about who gets to be centered, whose grief or joy counts, and which bodies are assumed to be “inside” the nation. That’s why this performance landed politically for many of us: representation lives in small choices.

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The blistering cold of winter has finally arrived in the Hi Desert and with it comes the face-chapping murder winds. To the mid-westerners who have chosen to visit us around this time of year, this is considered warm. But for me, these temperatures are the kind of chill that sinks deep into one’s bones, especially when walking our dog Lola at 7 am in the morning. My lizard brain has kicked in with the primary goal of staying cozy.

One way I’m doing this is by indulging my dark and supernatural gothic side with a re-reading of Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë. This was something I had been wanting to do since I learned that another feature film adaptation of this novel was going to be released in theaters on Valentine’s Day, 2026. This will be the fifth feature film adaption of Brontë’s masterpiece. It stars Margot Robbie as Catherine Earnshaw, Jacob Elordi as Heathcliff, and is directed by Emerald Fennell, who also directed Saltburn and Promising Young Woman. The soundtrack features a full-length album by Charlie XCX, who’s first released track “House” featuring John Cale has already become a viral sensation. The Fennell-directed movie has a couple of theatrical trailers, which look spectacular on the big screen, and capture the essence of Brontë’s masterpiece, with brooding score, bleak weather, and lustful looks from the actors.

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Where my procrastinators at? Just like many of you, I am feeling the holiday rush as the countdown to Christmas, Kwanzaa and New Year’s Eve is swiftly ticking along. Not to mention that we are already half-way into Hanukkah! And with the holiday parties piling up, I’m feeling the festive frenzy. That all said, the gifting ghoul has surfaced, and I’m gearing up for last-minute shopping. I’m way past the after-Thanksgiving sales and CyberMonday deals, and to be honest, I used most of those “online savings” on things for myself. And as enticing as shopping while sitting on the sofa wearing pajamas may seem, the reality of shipping rates and delivery dates have now made any internet purchases implausible.

Therefore I highly recommend shopping local. Not only will your money go to support small business, but you can handpick from a highly curated selection of unique items. And nothing beats word-of-mouth recommendations from trusted people in your community. For this week’s column I enlisted some of my friends and colleagues, who live in the hi desert, to share some of their local picks that will hopefully assist you in finding something special in real life.

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The season of the witch is upon us. Generally connected to autumn and before Halloween (or Samhaim), this phrase has roots in the ancient Celtic customs. It is related to the autumn equinox, known as Mabon, and marks the transition into a darker part of the year. In witchcraft terms, it embraces themes of the “Crone” or the “dark goddesses”.

When I was recently in Ireland, we were told that the Jack-o-Lantern was originally a turnip, not a pumpkin. This carved turnip head was a tradition that began in the 19th century in Ireland and other Celtic nations. These chiseled turnips had ghoul-like features that warded off evil-spirts as well as the evil spells of witches. Today in the states, we use pumpkins. That switch came due to the abundance of pumpkins over turnips and the ease of carving rather than chiseling. As we move through another season of the witch, let me share other modern activities you can do to celebrate this darker half of the year.

1. Watch a Spooky Movie Marathon - With the multitude of streaming services available, one is sure to find a curated selection of spooky, campy, or cult style horror movies to assist you in creating the perfect night of terror. A couple of standouts for me are TCM’s Creepy Cinema, hosted by Ben Mankiewicz and Mario Cantone. Each week they pick a creepy movie double-feature and have a conversation about it before and after the viewing. Some of the highlights for me was when they paired 1945’s stylish thriller “Leave Her to Heaven” starring Gene Tierney, directed by John M. Stahl with 1954’s murder mystery “Black Widow”, also starring Gene Tierney and directed by Nunnally Johnson.

   The second standout streamer for curated chilling cinema is the Criterion Channel. For this “halloween” season, a selection of horror genre movies are curated into pods you can stream at your convenience. The modern horror movies I’d recommend can be found in the “2000s Horror” capsule. That’s where you can view “What Lies Beneath” starring Michelle Pfeiffer and Harrison Ford. This underrated thriller has some terrific jumpscares that make me scream every time I watch it.

   And if streaming movies is not your thing, head to your local library, where you can find a wide-range of movies on DVD that you can check out and make your own horror-movie night. For this I’d recommend classics like “Rosemary’s Baby” starring Mia Farrow and directed by Roman Polanski or Val Newton’s “Cat People”. Sticking with any of the Universal Pictures monster movies, such as Frankenstein or Dracula, is always a solid creepy classic.

   

2. Slow Cooking - Now is the perfect time for roasting, braising, soups and bringing out the trusty crockpot. There’s nothing more comforting than the delicious aromas of a slow cooking roast in the oven or a crockpot stew cooking on the counter. I use the crockpot year-round to make homemade bone broth for our dog Lola. And although it does take up a good amount of counter real-estate, I highly encourage busting out the crockpot for a slow-cooked supper. Here is a link for “The Best Slow Cooker Recipes” from The New York Times Cooking section. And here’s my favorite slow-roast chicken recipe, “Slow-Roasted Oregano Chicken with Buttered Tomatoes” by Alison Roman. This last one is a crowd pleaser and makes for excellent leftovers, especially with toast or on some sort of grain.

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   Another bonus was getting my CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) box bursting with a bounty of different squashes and other autumnal fruits and veggies. I was most excited for the squash variety because I love the sweetness from oven-roasting these veggies, as well as the soups made of these seasonal gourds. I was most excited for the Kabocha squash that I will roast and store in the refrigerator to use in a salad or as a side. The Acorn squash was another one in the box and I’m going to make a delicious soup from this New York Time’s Cooking recipe.

3. Remembering the Dead - This past weekend I bumped into a friend that had an armful of freshly cut marigolds he picked up from the Joshua Tree Farmer’s Market flower merchant. The colors were vibrant and they gave off a delightful fragrance. It was a reminder to start putting together my altar for Dia De Los Muertos. The Marigold flower is an integral part of the altar because it is said that the vibrant color and musky scent helps to guide the souls of the dead back to their families. Marigolds also date back to Aztec times and were part of their rituals to honor gods and ancestors. These flowers are part of the Ofrenda or offerings used to decorate the altars.

   In addition to marigolds, items such as photos of the deceased, candles to light the way for the spirits, food and drink to quench and nourish the traveling soul and sugar skulls to represent the sweetness of life, are added to welcome the deceased back to their loved ones. I recall it also being said that when you create an altar for Dia De Los Muertos, you are honoring the dead by remembering them and keeping their spirit alive. This tradition to celebrate life on Dia De Los Muertos takes place on November 1st and 2nd in the United States.

Bonus: Diane Keaton 1946 - 2025. Earlier this month Academy Award winning actor Diane Keaton died at the age of 79. It was a passing that was collectively mourned on and off social media. Keaton’s career spanned six decades, she was nominated for three Academy Awards and won an Oscar for her most memorable character Annie in 1977’s Annie Hall . In addition to her movie career, she was also known as a style icon, introducing her effortless and androgynous “Keaton Style” in “Annie Hall” and again in the 1981 movie “Reds”. In addition to her acting career, Keaton’s second act was as a “house flipper”. During her lifetime she bought, renovated and designed nearly 50 homes. Keaton leaves a legacy that has shaped the world both on and off the screen.

I posted my top five movies for a viewing marathon and it was like this:

5. “Something’s Gotta Give”, 2003

4. “The First Wives Club”, 1996

3. “The Family Stone”, 2005

2. “Baby Boom”, 1987

1. “Annie Hall”, 1977

Leave your Diane Keaton movie favorites in the comments.

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Have you also been feeling the chilly mornings and cooler evenings during this transitional period I like to call the “fake fall” in the desert? Dare I say, it may be time to start pulling out the sweaters and long sleeves from the back of the closets. The afternoons stay cooler, farmers markets have a larger variety of apples and pears, and the desert nights are crispy. In this sweet spot of the season we start to prepare for shorter days and cozier accommodations. Let’s slip into our collective cardigans and fall into five things to preview for some autumnal aspiration.

1. Tea for Two. I’m not much of a tea drinker, but I am a big fan of a tea party. I love traditional bone china tea sets designed with a floral pattern laid out on linens and surrounded by spoons and tins of loose leaf teas. There is also such a pleasant floral aroma when brewing that adds to the visual delight. Plus, the promise of miniature foods, such as tiny sandwiches, scones with cream and delicate cakes elevates the experience. And if you're feeling a bit decadent, you can add a sparkling wine or a bourbon punch as part of the beverage offerings. There is something very chic and cozy about drinking tea with friends.

   

2. Decked Out. From drinking tea to reading tea leaves, divination is a practice that

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Summer continues into the triple-digit temperatures and (sometimes) monsoon-style humidity. A good number of desert dwellers take this time to find temporary relief by going on trips to the beach or the surrounding lakes and forests. I have a friend, a resident of 29 Palms, who used her two-week vacation for a solo roadtrip, driving up through Utah, to Soda Springs, Idaho, stopping at as many natural springs, watering holes and breweries she could visit along the way. Summers in the desert inspire outings to cooler and wetter destinations.

My family plans a long vacation in late-September, so we hunker down at home, admiring others' mini-vacations until we can eventually take ours. If you, like me, are not able to beat the heat with a mini-trip out of the desert, I’ve created a mini-list that will help you find solace for this season of sweating.

1. Go to the movies. A movie theater is a perfect place to sit in a temperature controlled environment, while snacking on popcorn and watching a film in the dark. Here in Yucca Valley, the Paradigm Theater reopened, and it is cool (temperature-wise), clean and shows a variety of new releases. It reminds me of the movie theaters of my youth, nothing fancy, but gets the job done. I recently went to see the new The Naked Gun movie one early-evening, and it was a really enjoyable experience.

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Sad Trombone is the first in a monthly series for paid subscribers. Every month it will cover offbeat arts and culture.

With the daily onslaught of the current news cycle and the crush of rising summer temperatures, now is as a good time as any to hibernate indoors and focus on maintaining physical, mental and emotional well-being. Resting not only reclaims your humanity, it can also be seen a form of resistance. According to Tricia Hersey, the Nap Bishop of the Nap Ministry, “rest is anything that connects your mind and body,” and she reframes Rest not as a luxury, but as a vital act of rebellion.

With that in mind, I’m dying to share a list of “beyond the nap” activities that I’m loving, and currently attempting, that may also help you to self-care your way through another cruel summer.

1. Read a thick book. All year I’ve been staying clear of big books. Anything over 300 pages… no thank you! But now I’m all in for an epic summer read. The New Yorker recently published a list of Mega-Reads worth the plunge, and some of the usual suspects were in there, including Moby-Dick and The Tale of the Genji. I don’t know if I can go that big, but here are some of my recommendations to ease yourself into a thick read: The Secret History by Donna Tartt, The Custom of the Country by Edith Wharton, and My Name is Barbra by Barbra Streisand.

2. Start a Series. With more than 300 streaming services, you are bound to have missed a good series to sink your teeth into. I recently started Season 1 of The Gilded Age, streaming on HBOMax, and have fallen in love with it. This American historical drama was created by Julian Fellowes, who was also behind Downton Abbey. He has now created this series based on American history in the early 1900s, a period of rapid industrialization, economic growth and conflicts within the social strata of “new money” versus “old money.” The costumes and sets are eye-candy and the storylines mix fictitious characters with real-life families of that time.

If period pieces aren’t your thing, I’d also recommend Andor, streaming on Disney Plus. This series stars Diego Luna as a reluctant hero of a revolution and takes place in the universe created by the Star Wars franchise. And although this series is science fiction, the storyline feels contemporary and brave. I was pleasantly surprised by Andor.

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