Category Archives: Around home

A pitch for walking in Tuolumne Meadows

July 27, 2013Around home, California, PhotographySteve Stern

As many times as I have gone to Yosemite, I have only walked through Tuolumne Meadows to get somewhere else. When Richard Taylor suggested we go to Tuolumne Meadows, just to hike the Meadows, I was a little surprised. His pitch was that we could drive up from the Bay Area on Friday, walk down river that afternoon, walk up river on Saturday and be home that night. We would have two days of hiking Yosemite on a two-day mini-vacation.

Our trip started at 8:00 AM and we were at Oakdale in two hours. We got some lunch fixin’s at a Mexican market and got to Tuolumne about 2:45. But first, we stopped at Siesta Lake to stretch our legs and check out the meadow building process, Olmsted Point to check out the view, and Lake Tenaya for lunch. We got to Siesta Lake just before 1:00. The first time I drove by Siesta Lake was probably 1956 but I probably didn’t stop until the 60’s. Now I try to stop every time I drive by. In the 60’s, it was an alpine lake but it is trying to become a meadow and slowly succeeding. As the lake meadowfies, the Park Service civilizes the turnoff. First there was no turn off, then use turned the shoulder to compacted dirt, then the shoulder got paved and signs added. Now, for the first time, I noticed a sign saying Siesta Lake letting me know, again for the first time, what to call it. I don’t think I will live long enough to call it Siesta Meadow.

Tuolumne Meadows is in a glacial valley formed 10,000 years ago (so I’ve been told). Between then and now, it must have been a lake or a series of lakes. Now it is a meadow starting to turn itself into a forest. It is still a series of gentle, sub-alpine, meadows with the Tuolumne River connecting and running through them but the trees are taking hold. It makes for an easy, varied, walk.

On Friday afternoon, our walk was downriver from Highway 120, starting at Pothole Dome.

As we walked around the dome, following the edge, the view of the meadow was intermittent, often hidden by the colonizing trees and then opening up to fields of wildflowers.

Looking back, Unicorn Peak and Cockscomb started rising above the forest. They are classic horns, like the Matterhorn in the Alps (the thinking is that the horns were bit of the mountains sticking up above the glaciers as the glaciers scoured out the rocks below making the valleys).

At this point, the meadow is almost level and the river running through it – the Lyle fork of the Tuolumne – is flat and lazy. The river soon starts dropping over and through a resistant granite layer. At one time, this resistant layer probably backed-up the water creating a lake until the insistent river, on its way to the Pacific cut through it.

At the bottom of the cascades, just before the next meadow area, Richard took a swim

while I wandered around looking at the rocks. The swimming looked suburb and I may have joined Richard if I had my Tevas like Richard , but I didn’t even bring them on the trip and the bottom looked way too rough for me.

Looking at the rocks may not sound as interesting as swimming, on the other hand, we were walking through a glacial valley and – every once in a while – I could see the tracks the glacier left about 10,000 years ago: grinding down the valley, polishing the rock as it went.

After Richard’s swim and my exploring, we wandered back towards the car with no aim except the enjoyment of the sun, the soft air, and the scenery. We watched deer crossing a stream and talked about past trips while watching our old friends, Unicorn Peak and the Cockscomb, come back into view.

Our next stop would be Mono Lake for the night.

Happy Summer

June 26, 2013Around home, Photography, Psychological MusingsSteve Stern

On the Solstice, we went to a lovely party at Beth and Howard Dunaier’s Kenwood home. They asked everybody to bring pictures of summer for a collage. It is a great idea and hard for me because almost all the pictures represent events or happenings of summer, not actual summer. I look at a picture of the beach and I think Going to the Beach or Ahh, Southern California, not Summer. I see a picture of a Fourth of July Parade and I think Fourth of July, not Summer.

I see a picture of cars racing and I think of the cars even though Summer is the prime racing season.

I think that, even though I am a photographer, summer is not about images. For me, anyway. Summer is about feeling. It is about feeling the soft afternoon air while walking across a Sierra meadow still slightly green from the summer snow melt.

It is about the feeling of the cooling fog coming in over the Santa Cruz hills after a hot afternoon.

It is about sleeping with the windows open and the smell of dry grass. It is about golden light.

The Exploratorium with the Grandkids

June 19, 2013Americana, Around homeSteve Stern

^{Photograph of August and Charlotte by Michele}

Recently, Michele and I went to the new Exploratorium with my daughter, Samantha, and the Grandkids, Auggie and Charlotte. The Exploratorium bills itself as an interactive museum of art, science, and human perception based on the philosophy that science should be fun and accessible and was founded by Frank Oppenheimer, the brother of the famed – atleast to my generation – father of the atomic bomb, Robert Oppenheimer.

Right after WWII, Robert Oppenheimer was one of the most famous and revered scientists in American, second only to Albert Einstein, but he fell out of favor during the McCarthy era even having his security clearance revoked. (As the Dude might say, irony abides.) Robert’s brother, Frank Oppenheimer, was blacklisted during the same time because he had once been a member of the Communist Party during the 30’s.

Several years later, after rehabilitation, Frank moved to the Bay Area and founded the Exploratorium. I imagine family re-unions in which, over the years, the family star becomes less Robert and more Frank. I would certainly rather have Founder of the Exploratorium on my tombstone rather than Father of the Worst Killing Machine of All Time (so far).

This Exploratorium is new because it has moved to Pier 15 – on what used to be called the waterfront – from its previous digs in the Palace of Fine Arts. The old Exploratorium was one of my favorite places in San Francisco and I think the new one is already as good, has lots of space to enlarge, and is in an area that is rapidly becoming upscale tourist. Inside are lots of interactive science exhibits posing as games.

And art posing as science.

Another nice feature of the new Exploratorium is a new restaurant, Seaglass. It is a sort of free-form cafeteria with an – apparently – changing menu. When we went, there were four basic stations, pizza, tacos and quesadillas, salads, and sushi. The restaurant also offers natural soft drinks, organic and fair trade coffees and teas, and sparkling house-made drinking vinegar beverages and a bar that showcases artisanal distillers, many organic, and a thoughtfully curated wine and beer list. All this makes it sound much more pretentious than it really is in real life. It somehow seems like a perfect San Francisco kid friendly menu with sushi.

Outside, is a sculpture designed for kids where Michele took the portrait on top of the post, and behind that is a fog making machine because, I guess, San Francisco doesn’t have enough fog.

We spent several hours at the Exploratorium and I don’t think we even really scratched the surface. Thanks, Mr. Oppenheimer.

Friday night at the Oakland Museum

June 2, 2013Around home, Local eventsSteve Stern

Friday night, we went over to the Oakland Museum for the reopening of the refurbished Natural History Gallery. I lived in Oakland from the mid 60’s to the early 70’s, during the time when the Oakland Museum first opened. I loved living in Oakland, I loved the diversity, I loved the Raiders, and I – especially – loved the Oakland Museum. I still love the museum, it was and still is the only Bay Area museum about California and California art.

Even then, the San Francisco museums were trying to become national or world museums, trading in their excellent examples of local artist’s work – such as Nathan Oliveira – for mediocre examples of works by more famous New York artists like Jasper Johns. I like Jasper Johns, but I would much rather see local artists when I go to a local museum; Roy Lichtenstein in New York and Robert Arneson when I go to a California museum. The Arnesons are in storage at SFMOMA and – one of them atleast – are on display in Oakland.

Our night started out in an empty BART car in Daily City that filled as we went through downtown SF.

We got out at Lake Merritt and walked a block to the Museum and a Friday night Food Truck Jamboree. As I understand it, the Food Truck thing is the museum’s idea in an effort to get more people to visit, and – I guess – the City of Oakland has blocked off the nearby space. The museum provides music, sells wine and beer, and has made Friday admission half price. I hope it is working.

Inside, the newly refurbished and reopened Natural History Gallery was packed. And it should be: it is brilliant. But, then, I also liked the old gallery which had the various California econiches in different parts of the room. The problem with the old system is that it was static. Somebody, we have no idea who, decided what was important and we – the museum goer – passively went along. Year after year, it remained the same and, after wandering trough a couple of times, the museum goer – now presumably a better person for being better informed – wandered off to a new place. Hopefully, the new place was one of the actual econiches itself, say Yosemite, but – usually – not. Usually the passive spectator just got bored and quit coming back. I did both.

The new Gallery is much more interactive and the main econiche is Oakland, both – I am guessing – in an effort to build traffic.

There is also an emphasis on the streams and creeks that flow through Oakland from the surrounding hills. Most of these streams and creeks have been buried in pipes and channelized but some are – also – newly reopened and refurbished (reminding me of the refurbished and reopened Los Angeles River that Will Taylor has been talking about on facebook).

Another change that I like and I hope works – but I am not so sure that it is – is adding some California art to the Natural History Gallery in an effort – I presume – to drive traffic to the California Art Gallery upstairs.

But, this Friday, atleast, the art gallery was pretty empty (but it did have an Robert Arneson).

The good news on the art side of things is that the main gallery that had an powerful show of paintings by Hung Liu, the Professor of Painting at nearby Mills College, was packed (no pictures allowed). The other good thing was that Gina Matesic and I were able to get a couple of self portraits reflected in a very nice Larry Bell.

Happy Mother’s Day

May 11, 2013Around home, Current AffairsSteve Stern

Helené Rambow Stern Parsons 1909-1985

It has been over twenty five years since my mom died. She was not my Ideal Mother. In many ways, she was a very unhappy person and that often made her a difficult person to be around. But, I miss her. I miss her sense of style. I miss her sense of humor and her curiosity.

She was born and grew up in Oakland where she went to school until she was 16. Then her family said something along the lines of You are sixteen now, Goodbye (all the more remarkable because her father, my grandfather, considered himself an intellectual).

She became an adult quickly, was married at 17 and divorced soon after, married and divorced again, and married my dad in 1939. Sometime during that period, my mom worked as a model at Ransohoff’s.

I don’t think that life was ever easy for my mom but she always had a sense of style. Happy Mother’s Day!

Steve Stern's Fieldnotes from a Random Walk through Life (with pictures)

Category Archives: Around home

A pitch for walking in Tuolumne Meadows

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Happy Summer

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The Exploratorium with the Grandkids

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Friday night at the Oakland Museum

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Happy Mother’s Day

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