Category Archives: Americana

A trip to the Exploratorium

Americana, Bay Area Walks, California, Travel, Uncategorized

Located at the Palace of Fine Arts on the site of the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition, the Exploratorium is one of San Francisco’s best entertainments. It has the added benifit of being in a building designed by architect Bernard Maybeck.  The Exploratorium  bills itself as a museum of science, art, and human perception but it is much more. It is a giant, interactive, toy for anybody who is even a little curious about the world we live in.

A couple of weeks ago, I went there with my grandkids.

When I was in the Army, in Korea, I read Herb Caen, a gossip columnists in the San Francisco Chrony that everybody read. Every time I got a letter, it would have several Caen columns. During that year, one of the things that he was promoting was the restoration of the Palace of Fine Arts which, by then, was the only building left from the world’s fair built to show San Francisco’s Phoenix-like comeback from the 1906 earthquake. Then, like now, I was interested in architecture, and then, like now, I loved Bernard Maybeck. I loved his take on classical architecture at the Palace of Fine Art and sent a couple of bucks to my mom to contribute to the cause. She thought that my contribution was mis-placed and sent the money somewhere else. I have blocked out where.

So I was very happy to see that the restoration took place without my money and, eventually, became the home of the Exploratorium. The Exploratorium, itself, was the brain child of Frank Oppenheimer. Frank was the brother of Robert Oppenheimer, considered the father of the Atomic bomb. In my book, Frank has left the better legacy.

I fell in love with the Exploratorium when I went there as a childless adult, then later, with my daughter Samantha, then my “little brother”, Edwin Peña, and, now, with my grandchildren. Charlotte and August.

 

Any kid, every kid, can find hundreds of fascinating experiments. So can any adult.

 

 

Northwestern Nevada: day three, bailing out

Americana, Camping, Travel, Uncategorized

On our last day, we woke with frost free sleeping bags. The wind was there, the flat light was there, but it was clearing down south and the sun was almost coming out from behind the clouds. That is how the post started and then after about two more hours of work, I hit Save Draft and everything but the pictures disappeared. Shit! I can’t believe it.

Here is the summery: We got up and the weather was bad with wind and clouds. We went for a walk and the weather got worse.  It even rained a few big drops. With the wind, the flat light, and, maybe, rain; we decided to go home early. I was still worried about the car so I took the highway south past the remains of Lake Winnemucka which had been drained in the early 20th century, stopping to take a picture of its old shoreline. I got home in time to watch the sun set over San Bruno Mountain. It was a fun trip and enjoyable to hang out with Peter. Check out Peter’s take on the trip here.

 

 

We bailed out.

 

 

Israel in the West Bank

Americana, Current Affairs, Politics, Uncategorized

Listening to Bibi Netanyahu’s speech – OK, not really listening to it, just listening to stuff about it like Congress fawning over him – just puts me in a rage. I grew up in a family that thought Israel was the greatest. Bringing democracy to the heathens, making the desert bloom, blah, blah, blah. I am not sure when I started to think that Israel was doing evil – maybe it started when I realized that Making the desert bloom. was another way of saying that We are using everybody’s water, including the Palestinians, it was almost certainly by the time I learned that Palestinians children were being killed at a rate of over seven times that of Israeli children1 – but I do now. And I don’t use that term lightly.

For sure, I don’t use that term lightly. Using it opens me up to too many charges. Charges of being a self hating Jew; charges of being an anti-Semite. Because anybody who disagrees with Israel must be an anti-Semite. It puts me in the company of alot of haters that I find abhorrent. But – the bottom line is – what Israel is doing and what they have been doing is evil.

I don’t think that Americans have any idea what is going on with the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and I don’t think we want to know.

It’s not just that the Israelis are building settlements in the west bank, it is – to protect those settlements – that they have to control Palestinian movement and access in the West Bank. Like all occupiers, to stay safe, the Israelis have to completely dominate and control the Palestinians. They have to maintain a full press occupation of the West Bank. Of course that leads to harassment both institutional and ad-hoc.  Alain Salomon and Katia Solomon have a Op Ed in the New York Times that gives a chilling description of going through an Israeli checkpoint near Ramallah. They say As we entered this narrow space I looked at the barbed wire further on. We are Jewish, and began to weep. How was it possible that our own people, who have gone through such suffering, can inflict this ordeal, intended to humiliate and intimidate another people?

Towns like Hebron have been turned into virtual jails.

And – very importantly – what Israel is doing will lead to failure for Israel. Thoughtful Jews like Emily Hauser and Rabbi Brant Rosen know that as do a huge number of Israelis in Israel. It is sad that our Congress doesn’t seem to.

1. According to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Interestingly – but depressingly – the American Press reports those killings at a ratio of about seven times – for the New York Times – to twelve times – for ABC Television -more for the Israeli children so we dobn’t know more Palestinians are being killed. 

A trip to the mountains west of death Valley cont.

Americana, Cactus & Succulents, California, Camping, Death Valley, Photography, Travel, Uncategorized

After driving all day Thursday, we all slept in on Friday.

But it did not take very long before the sun got bright enough and hot enough to wake us. After a quickie breakfast, we packed up


and hurried over to the Eureka Sand Dunes.

The Eureka Dunes are not very large or famous but they are among the highest dunes in the United States at over 650 feet above the valley floor. They look smaller because they are framed by the striped limestone cliffs of the Last Chance Range that rise up 3000 to 4000 feet higher. Sand dunes are caused by wind blowing across the valley floor and picking up fine dust and sand; as the wind hits the higher mountains, it slows down, loses energy, and drops its heavy load. One thing that I find interesting is that the the individual grains of sand are constantly changing but the size and shape of the dunes do not.

As an aside, after getting home I realized that, with four people on our trip, I took alot less pictures than I usually do when I am only with Michele. Among things I didn’t take pictures of were the beauty of the sand dunes. Fortunately, Kirk Moore has some wonderful sand dune pictures over at his website. I highly recommend that you take a look. End aside.

By the time we got to the dunes, it was starting to warm up and the dunes were getting very bright. We hiked up about half way, maybe 350 to 400 feet, on sand that got looser and looser.

About the time that the day starting getting really hot,  heading towards triple digits. We got back in the truck and looked for shade. First it was back to the main road and then over the Last Chance Range into Death Valley itself. As we started over the last pass before Death Valley, we started seeing more plants in bloom. First the Beavertail Cactus, also known as the Pricklypear Cactus and probably known as some other names which is why people who like plants and go looking for them in the wild end up using the botanical name. In this case, Opuntia basilarus.  Just as we got to the pass overlooking upper Death Valley, we came across lots of clumps of Desert Aster, AKA Mojave Aster, or Aster mohavensis.

Then it was down into Death Valley, past Crankshaft Crossing, and on to Scotty’s Castle where we had lunch in the shade.