28 Our Araby 



is the age of barbed wire, and even the desert cannot 

 hope to escape it. 



Coming now to the more specific forms of amuse- 

 ment, we have, for those who must be up to date, 

 "the movies": not the commonplace side of the 

 great modern pastime, the sitting in a "palace" and 

 watching the reeling off of pictures on a screen, 

 but the more exciting first-hand experience of seeing 

 them made, the thrill of the real thing, flesh and 

 blood (with paint and powder thrown in.) In the 

 last few years Palm Springs has become head- 

 quarters, so to speak, for Algeria, Egypt, Arabia, 

 Palestine, India, Mexico, a good deal of Turkey, 

 Australia, South America, and sundry other parts 

 of the globe. Wondrous are the sights and sounds 

 the dwellers in Palm Springs are privileged to see 

 and hear when "the movies are in town": wondrous 

 the "stars" that then shine in broad daylight on us; 

 wondrous the cowboys, cavalcades, and caballeros, 

 the tragedies, the feats of daring, the rescues and 

 escapes, for which our dunes and canons provide 

 the setting. The quiet village becomes in fact a 

 movie studio for the time, and the visitor whose 

 ideal is "Something doing every minute" has then 

 little reason to pine away with ennui. 



Moving pictures remind one of the other and, as 

 a rule, less spectacular kind. Our Araby, with its 

 marvelous display of lone and color — lone the 

 most elusive, color the most unearthly and ethereal 

 — is a land of enchantment to the painter, and its 

 fame has spread from one to another until, now. 



