Daily Affirmations from Tilden Park

Sunday trek.

 Sunday Sunday skip the gym, find a new path to get lost in...

 Odd random castles in the park...

 Apparently this is a monument to Moses... Moses was the one who saved the Israelites from the Pharoah.  Why would you build Moses a pyramid?  What would be a better shape for Moses?  Perhaps a tablet... perhaps a giant bread/manna basket...?  hmm??

 Overlooking Oakland...

Instinct.

 This is what a professional hunter looks like... sleek, tuned, successful...


This is what my dog looks like...

When he started pouncing on the hole like this I had to film it.  I know I've seen documentaries with foxes yipping just like this as well.  He actually takes large chunks of the hole and moves it away with his mouth.  Sometimes he will station himself with his nose in the hole, still as can be waiting for his prey to emerge.

There was no kill today but, shockingly, he has been successful with this technique before.

Ok... now I promise to hold off on the dog posts for a while. Thanks for indulging me.

Balloon!

I saw this at the San Diego Wild Animal Park... sometimes the light is just perfect for random photos...

Easter in the Castro

Lately posts have been few... I've been in tech, I've been swimming in a blue mess of my brain... I've been curling up in my own shell. It's not something I reccomend. 

Today was Easter and San Francisco is not to be outdone for any holiday, especially holidays that allow for dress up.

 I though it would be a good idea to see the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence up close and perhaps check out the"Easter bonnet" and "hunky Jesus" competitions.

This is Dolores Park in San Francisco's Castro district;

(Poem store; made me laugh because my best friend and I have a running joke about how people are always trying to sell you bad poetry in SF... I was tempted to buy him a poem today but I'm poor and there was a line)



I found that although I wore an outfit that my Grandmother would have been horrified of (tall black boots with my summer skirt and a black top and cardigan) I grossly underdressed. I would have been much better to have worn bright yellow with blue hair... alas, perhaps next year.
The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence are a tongue in cheek community service group... really think of them as the rotary club, but in neon habits and white face drag make-up. (Really, I just learned about them, their website is lots of fun if you're interested)



I left long before the "hunky Jesus" competition started... which in all honesty sounds like it's in good fun, but perhaps is still a little too disrespectful for my taste, so I'm not sure I would have actually enjoyed it as much as those around me.


I made a few rounds about the park, talked with a sister about how she made her habit (ah yes shop talk), watched a good drag/lip sync act, a girl rock band and then the polka group started...   The slight searing on my un-sunscreened shoulders and my lingering anti-social mood finally got the best of me when confronted with  "oom-pah oom-pah-pah" ... such is the power of polka.  However a day in a sunny park with drag queens and easter bunnies is a good way to cheer up.

Point Lobos pt 1.

Point Lobos national park has a small museum dedicated to the whalers who used to troll the coast to supply lamps and cars and provide us all with energy. If we hadn't discovered crude oil we would have possibly killed off all of the whales and been completely out of oil all together, searching for a different source of energy... hummm

Point Lobos pt.2

At the edge of the cliff is an ocean that calls

in a voice made of rocks and pebbles,

pelicans and gulls,
The trees there lean over to see how the edge of the world might be...
but the sea does not tell, she only hisses through the rocks...
still the trees stand guard gazing out to the horizon, overlooking the kelp beds, 

and calling the sea otters to tell them the secret of the edge of the earth...
The otters laugh, because they've never been and are too busy playing in the current.

Dioramas

On the bottom level of the State Capitol building there are hallways filled with dioramas from every California district. This is actually something I remember from the last time I was there at age 4...
L.A's had a video screen... very representative of the place...
Marin Co's diorama looked like a 70's craft project...
San Bernadino's made me laugh because they made the airport and the mall look Really Exciting!
Riverside Co didn't mention Idyllwild (my hometown) but it was implied through the mountain and the itty bitty tram heading in that direction.

Governors on canvas

Today it was 110 degrees farighenheight (that's about 44C to the rest of the world)... now it is nearly 8pm and it is 103F (39C)... but it was my day off and one of the few that I didn't need to be tending to business in Berkeley or Carmel so I went out and saw the sights in Sacramento anyway. I went to see the state Capitol building, I went to the Crocker Art Museum and barely saw old Sacramento before fearing that I would burst into flames and made my way back to the hotel on a heated walk (or is that wok) that seamed to take three times longer than the way there. More Blogs of my walk today are forthcoming but I thought I would start with the Governor's portraits I saw today in the State Capitol.
It is the tradition for California governors to have their portrait painted as they leave office. For the most part this one of governor George Dukmejian is typical of them. They're realistic portraits of men in suits with conservative lawyer-esque backgrounds or sometimes a simple black scumble. Usually tasteful and very finely crafted, but not really interesting art. I couldn't find any info on the painters so I suppose that is the point.

I did like that Grey Davis had his portrait done with a background of California poppies and the coast line. For those who don't know; he was actually ousted from office because of the State's anger over California's budget woes... no matter what his record as a whole reflects, he was a good environmentalist and therefore not so bad in my book.

Now although I don't have a lot of knowledge about the gammut of California governors... I have a favorite based on his portrait. Governor Edmund "Jerry" Brown was the only governor of the state (that's out of 38 men) to have a non-realistic portrait done. with further research I learned that he also refused to live in the fancy governor's mansion or ride in the governor's limo because of his deep convictions for social equality... Yay Jerry Brown!

...turns out this is the same Jerry Brown who served as in the mayor of Oakland up to 2006 and is currently the Attorney General of California... oh! That Jerry Brown! Yea, he's cool.
Don't you have to like a man (a politician nonetheless) who would get a portrait like this?