Miscellaneous
Mother’s Day
Wednesday, May 15th, 2024I was looking forward to the regular Sunday Creek Freak work party at the Restoration and Enhancement project. In addition to the four steady College Corps Fellows–including Kennedy, whom I’d seen in a fine performance of a bizarre play at the Spanos theatre the night before, plus grandson Lucas–two new volunteers had signed up.
Late in the previous week the unfinished tasks of moving tree trunks into position together with Josh and his Skid Steer and starting the contracted maintenance program of weeding the plantings, along with testing the irrigation system, were completed.
Earlier in the week the first field trip along the creek project led by Creek Lands Conservation took place, involving 60 fifth graders bussed in for three hours.
I’d been anxiously working toward these outcomes for months.
April 2 2024
Sunday, April 7th, 2024College Corps Showcase at City Farm SLO
Friday, January 19th, 2024Paris–August 10
Sunday, December 24th, 2023Our intention this morning was to stray from the cliche tourism of the Bateau Mouche and ride a City bus at the quai to the end of the line and back as we’d done in London. We walked a new way toward the river and came upon a tiny corner sculpture park centered on a travertine marble box behind which a large red circle was painted on the blank wall of a building.
A sign indicated that the box was used as a base for temporary art installations, this one entitled “Pandora’s Box.” A young woman walked up to the pedestal and pressed a button causing the plastic assemblage to revolve and look like a discharge of steam. (more…)
Paris–August 8
Monday, December 18th, 2023We began the day with the practical task of doing laundry, which, not surprisingly, turned into a memorable adventure. Morning sunshine reflected from the recently cleaned old buildings turned routine urban activities into paintings.
Ancient architectural monuments adorned the way to the laundromat up the block.
Apartment buildings appeared as architectural marvels. (more…)
Paris–August 7
Wednesday, December 13th, 2023On a walk around the neighborhood, before our scheduled train departure for Paris, we happened upon a building fronting a large square where booths, stages and grandstands left from previous days’ Pride celebrations were being dismantled. It was the Royal Palace of Amsterdam, originally built as a City Hall in 1655, later converted to a Royal Palace by the conqueror Napoleon’s brother Louis Napoleon in 1806 and eventually appropriated by the Dutch Royal Family who retain control of it today.
We arrived at the grandiose Paris Gare du Nord in the early afternoon (more…)
Amsterdam–August 6
Sunday, December 10th, 2023Next morning was rainy, and we decided to return to the Hermitage complex to explore some of the galleries we’d noticed the day before, none requiring reservations or as crowded the Rijksmuseum. The City Museum provided a graphic history of the town which helped make sense of the technological achievement of reclamation of swamp and seawater that started in the thirteenth century. It provided a system of defensive moats, a transportation grid allowing easy movement of goods and people and access to river and ocean trade routes that led to the 17th century Dutch Golden Age. It also made the city, like Venice, an attraction for tourists.
Rather than glorifying the Dutch cultural heritage, most of the exhibits emphasized the brutality and injustice suffered by the victims of empire and their efforts to survive, witness and protest. (more…)
Amsterdam–August 5
Tuesday, November 21st, 2023After breakfast we set out for another major museum, the Hermitage. Located on the bank of the Amstel River, one of the city’s natural major arteries, the morning fog obscured the building’s name and nature, which only partially revealed itself in the course our visit.
Through a basement stairway we entered the old industrial brick compound into a sleek new interior occupied by independent galleries surrounding courtyards and gardens and found the Rembrandt and Contemporaries exhibition visiting from New York. (more…)
Amsterdam-August 4
Monday, November 13th, 2023Amsterdam is known as a city of museums, containing 75 of varying scope and size. We were interested enough to purchase IAmsterdam cards in advance providing free entry and reservations, remembering the summer’s tourist invasion. Our conservative preference for Rembrandt and other early modern Dutch and Flemish masters led us to the Rijksmuseum during the first morning. It wasn’t surprising to see the rainbow flag displayed over the entrance as it was everywhere else celebrating the upcoming climax of this year’s Pride Week (or month).
The building itself, another late nineteenth century combination of Gothic and Renaissance Revival style, opened onto a grand plaza and park, unlike the other compressed spaces of the city, where only the waterways offered open vistas.
On the way to the Rembrandt galleries, I relished the raunchy canvases celebrating peasant delights in drinking and sex (more…)