Hearst Castle

I have to start with my favorite room. The indoor pool. There is an alcove to the right and to the left, good for a bed and a kitchen table.
Top of a mountain near the ocean...
are all these people dressed up for Hearst's cocktail party, it's the 1930's.I wanna be part of the party!!!

The pool, a little over the top but I give this man and his designer, Julia Morgan a lot of credit for being so over the top, why not?

Venice Beach

I just bought this hat in Venice Beach...now I'm ready for Hollywood.
Katie O'Brien, now Quintas. Her hot tub. An old friend from McGraw-Hill days.But first, Lily and I are going to get us some surfer boys...
Venice Beach entertainment-a guy on t.v....
Katie and Sil's adorable son, Brian, and Lily.
I have no idea what he was into but he played guitar sometimes...

Katie and Pearl.

Driving in California

Driving for one day in California gives you mountains...
Rocky shores...
Rolling grassy hills...
Cactus...
Roadside memorials to horses...(had to sketch it)
Pine trees (good for poking)...

making sculptures on the beach from sea fans and coral

...
And some land is VERY FLAT.

San Francisco Street scenes

This proves I'm in SF. Taken with the cell phone. It was the best pic we got due to fog that came in after this and stayed.
Stela driving Lily over the Golden Gate. In 4 days, the fog covered it 3.

Taking the Larkspur ferry from Stela's house to SF.
In Haight Ashbury...
So hard to get a schtick in this town...
We ate in Chinatown, meal same as NYC, but a bit more than twice the price.

Yosemite

As lucky as we are, no fee this week! It's National "National Park Week".

The Brooklyn in me got indignant "Who let their dog off the leash?" Then we realized...it's a coyote! Smaller than a German Shepard, taller than a Spaniel.

The Wawona Hotel. Bathrooms down the hall, showers in another building. We found out on the day we were leaving that there is also a shower in our bldg (above). The check out lady was sorry we didn't know so April and I each received a Christmas ornament in the shape of the hotel.

Loved this guy-sang show tunes each night while we sat and had a glass of wine. At 5,000 feet April and I shared one glass of wine. This is cheap-date territory. One night he showed slides of visitors from the 1800's and played the sheet music he found from that era. People had been singing about Yosemite for a while.

Weather in Yosemite is like this, rain, sun, hot, damp, hail, sun...this is all in 10 minutes.

April, from Art & Design drove over and we met at a 1900 hotel 5,000 feet up in the mountains. Not a typical day for either of us.
We meet up with a real ranger.

Asian Art Museum in San Francisco

The Asian History Museum is one of the best in the country...if you go 2 things you must see. The Money tree, and the bronzes. Here's what you need to know about bronzes, which were largely ceremonial but held food for ancestors in tombs.

1. They are 3,000 yrs old.

2. Someone had to mine the tin, and someone else had to mine the copper.

3. Someone had to cut down tons of trees to smelt and mix the metals together to make bronze.

4. Someone had to make the designs and molds.

5. Someone else had to feed all these workers.

This is indicative of a highly organized society. I am awed by these, you should be too.

The tripod above has many think, "mushrooms" on top. Perhaps for hallucinogenic purposes.

STELA!!!

A quick study of "compare and contrast". Below, Stela at my Sweet 16, and above, now.

I met Stela in Junior High Art Club. We went to Art & Design together, traveling by subway everyday. We have been in and out of each other's lives but always maintained contact.

Good to know we can still do a 2 hour morning hike in California hills.

Julia (Stela's daughter)Stela me and Lily at the Legion of Honor museum to see the "Pulp Fashion" exhibit. This artist takes paper, paints it, cuts it etc. and recreates clothes from famous paintings, hundreds of years of fashion design from paper. I see it as a statement about ephemera (paper) a short lived media, coupled with fashion, also a short lived art form. Not to kvell too much BUT both our daughters were sketching in the museum.

We also went to the deYoung of Fine arts to see the Balenciaga exhibit. Time ran out to see the California Impressionists, have to figure out how to get back there tomorrow...this is not a subway or bus kind of town.

Having shrimp for lunch in a Japanese restaurant.