SATURDAY, JANUARY 16, 2010

January is a busy birthday month for the extended Hammon clan: Judy, Rob, Carol Boyles and King.  Judy’s birthday is on the 15^th, which she shares with notables MLK junior and Charo (“kooshee-kooshee”).  Rob’s is on the 17^th which is also Benjamin Franklin’s birthday.  The French loved Franklin.  He was the man who had tamed lightning, dressed like a backwoodsman but was a match for any wit in the world. He was a favorite of the ladies, and a notorious flirt. 

Rob and I decided to celebrate Judy and Rob's birthdays over breakfast at Rick &Ann’s Restaurant in Berkeley.  
Once again we got up too early for our sleepy dogs, forcing them to wolf (no pun intended) their breakfast so we could get on the road to meet Los J&J by 8!  Rob’s Corvette was in the shop so we took our cute Alfa Spider on our birthday outing.  By 6:30 we were varooming along SR99 at 104.607 km/hour. Little did we know how much the Alfa would add to our birthday adventure. 

Here are the doggies watching us drive down the driveway without them.

Birthday Breakfast

          Just as Rob and I were taking off our seat belts, Los J&J pulled into the spot in front of us.  “Hello, Jud and Judy!”  We grabbed our hats and all walked to the restaurant together.  Here we are around the corner from the restaurant.  

The wait for Rick & Ann’s to open was short, we only had two intrepid breakfast Berkeleyites standing stiff backed in front of us ready their newspapers.  I guess people cut in line in Berkeley because they were definitely guarding their turf.  

Soon we were installed in a sunny spot by the window reading the menu; I was excited to see cornmeal pancakes.   That moment was the most exciting thing about our food.  Here we are before we found out the food not a delicious as we had hoped.

Here are the Birthday Kids.  Très adorables, n’est ce pas?  Still looking forward to a yummy breakfast.

Foxes?  In Berkeley?

Rick & Ann's is nestled in a row of eateries on the street just below the picturesque Claremont Hotel. (See the huge, white building in the background?)  The area was originally part of 2 Spanish land grants.

Bill Thornburg, a Kansas farmer who struck it rich in the Gold Rush, purchased 13,000 acres and built a fairytale castle and several stables for his wife who dreamed of living in an English castle.  He hired Cockney grooms to care for his pedigreed hunters and jumper, and raised English foxes for hunting parties.  (NB:  why he thought the Cockney would know anything about horses I don't know.  Cockneys are working class Londoners, mostly from the East End.)  The downside to Mrs. Thornburg's dream was that her daughter married a British Lord.  Soon after their daughter married and moved to England, Mrs. Thornburg dies and Bill sold the property.  Well that didn't turn out to be a happy ending.

In 1901 the home burned down after which the property changed hands several times and long story short the Claremont opened as a grand transient and resident hotel in 1915.  In 1937 one of the long time residents bought the hotel and property for $250,000 and completely redid it. 

Here is a bit of happy trivia that makes up for people dying and houses burning down …State law prohibited the sale of alcohol within a one-mile radius of the University of California and for some reason because the hotel is just on the line between Berkeley and Oakland it was assumed to be within the on-mile radius rule so the Claremont didn’t have a bar.  Well in 1936 an enterprising Berkeley coed, probably a civil engineering student,  and her friends measured the shortest distance between the UCB campus and the front steps of the hotel.  The Claremont was a few feet over the one-mile radius!  The Paragon Bar & Café opened and the coed student responsible was awarded free drinks at the Claremont for the rest of her life!

Interesting Flora

Walking between the restaurant and the cars we passed these trees.  Scary.

 Jud bravely standing close to a thorny tree.

Parasitic plants growing in a tree.

A tree spilling over the sidewalk! Oh, and a cigarette butt.  Yuck!

On to San Francisco and the Palace of the Legion of Honor

It was a beautiful day in Berkeley so if the weather was the same across the bay, the view from the Palace of the Legion of Honor would be spectacular.  We said “ Adiós, Los J y J!” and zoomed off to cross the Bay Bridge to San Francisco. 

People used to cross the choppy waters of the bay in ferryboats, which was a lot slower.  There was discussion of a toll bridge between San Francisco and Oakland as early as the gold rush, but it always seemed like an engineering and financial impossibility.  In 1921 a transbay underwater tube was recommended! In 1928 over 46 million people were ferried across the bay.  It wasn’t until the mass production of automobiles that it was realized that cars were the future of transportation and a bridge was a necessity.

Financed by an independent agency of the US Government during President Herbert Hoover’s administration, ground was broken in 1933.  Construction took three years, and was completed six months ahead of schedule.  The total length of the bridge, including approaches, is 8.4 miles.  The tunnel through Yerba Buena Island is the largest bore tunnel in the world: 76-feet wide x 56-feet high.

The San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge opened for traffic on November 12, 1936 only 6 months before the Golden Gate Bridge.  It originally carried automobile traffic on its upper deck, and trucks and trains on the lower, but the lower deck was converted to road traffic as well some time in the late 1950’s. 

A Real Head-Turner

            As we drove across the Bay Bridge to San Francisco we could just barely 

see the San Francisco skyline but we were having fun driving the Alfa with the big boys.  I love going through the tunnel on Yerba Buena Island.  The weather was beautiful; we were just too low and couldn’t see very much over the side!  We generally know where we are in San Francisco but I like to get the map out and give occasional unsolicited advice.  The 101 dumped us on Octavia; we took a left on Fell Street on the north side of the Panhandle and hummed along admiring the Victoria houses that line the street.   Just 3 short miles from the Legion!  What a wonderful day!

Ha!  Two of the four cylinders stopped popping, the car sputtered, Rob turned onto Central and we coasted into an open parking spot on the corner of Central and Hayes; the only vacant parking spot in a 4-mile radius. 

We spent the next 3 minutes amazed with our parking luck!  Then our predicament registered.  No matter which way you look at it our beautiful little Alfa was not going to run.  The Alfa is a classic car so I can’t say it starts first time, every time, but once it gets going you hum along at a good clip and you feel like the world is your oyster.  We were no longer running at a good clip; the world was no longer our oyster.

 Rob checking out something.

Rob checking out something else.

Okay, okay!  Valerie very bored and took a lot of pictures.

The community around Central and Hayes, Western Addition/NOPA, is very active on a Saturday morning.  There were a lot of dogs being walked, kids in stroller with their dads, people walking by with their lattes, all happy to take a peak under the hood.  In fact quite a few people stop by to give us advice, share experiences or just smile and walk on; she is a real head turner!  Her motor is very clean and she is a very becoming shade of red…not Stanfart read mind you, but a nice warm, friendly red.  And shinny, she is very shiny, and clean inside too!  Everyone admired her.  It was a very nice neighborhood.

After half and hour of neighborhood input and a quart of oil (for the car) we were ready for a break.  The stars were aligned because on the very corner where we were beached was a nice little coffee shop called Central Coffee, Tea & Spice, featuring fair trade, organic coffee.  Wow!  You can’t get better than that.  Friendly people, good coffee and a clean bathroom.

 Here we are enjoying our coffee, wearing hats from other adventures.  By the time we finished our coffee everyone knew we were on our way to the Legion and so we had lots of input on which bus to take and where to pick up the bus.  One fellow told us just take the 58, it goes down the hill to the water!  Hmmm!  Off we went confident in our ability to make it just 3 more miles.

We walked up Hayes, left on Masonic and found a bus stop.  After debating on which way we were going we figure out we were waiting on the wrong street.  Up Masonic we went, right on McAllister and sat for a few minutes.  The bus arrived; we paid our fare (exact change) and chatted up the driver, secure in our abilities to navigate the City.  We were going the wrong direction.  

He stopped the bus, gave us explicit directions, let us off, and waited to make sure we went to the correct corner as he gesticulated towards the bus stop across the street.  With an unsure glance at us as we stood at the correct corner, the bus continued on his route.  As we waited for yet another bus, we discussed how friendliness of bus drivers.  As Hannibal said “I love it when a plan comes together.”  That is Hannibal from The A-Team.  Come to think of it he always had a Plan B.

The next bus came; I paid my fare (we were fast running out of exact change) while the driver tried to explain that I obviously had already paid because I was holding a transfer in my other hand!  Sheepishly I sat down in the back of the bus disregarding my advice to Emily, “Never sit in the back of the bus.  Stay in the front even if you have to stand!” 

Eventually we moved to the front of the bus to chat up the driver who happily told us he was here to help out the tourists.  No really “tourists”! He probably noticed our camera.  I didn’t tell him I was a native, born just a couple of miles away.

     Our bus drove Route 5 back up McAllister, took a quick left, then a quick right and drove all the way down Fulton Street to the ocean; then a right on Point Lobos Avenue where we got off on the corner of Cabrillo.   At the ocean we got off the bus walked a half block to wait for bus 18 which would take us to the Palace of the Legion of Honor!

That is Rob standing on La Play near the corner of Cabrillo; see the Dutch Windmill in the background?  

I can’t help it, it is a sickness…

Once upon a time before our lovely Golden Gate Park, at the turn of the 20^th century, the coast of San Francisco was barren except for sand dunes and the few plants that could survive the wind and the shifting sand.  When plans to build the park started to go forward, there was one seemingly insurmountable problem.  Isn’t there always?  What was it?  Water!  How would the developers of the park provide the enormous amount of water needed to transform the dunes into the beautiful and lush, cold paradise it is today?

Initially, the Spring Valley Water Company supplied water but it was very expensive and limited, so the city had to find an alternative.  In the 1870’s wells had been drilled indicating that there was fresh water very near the ocean, so a proposal was made to build a windmill right on the dunes and to use the wind to pump water into the park.  Skepticism, doubt, concern for the amount of power needed….well things moved forward anyway and construction began in 1902.  A number of commissioners including Adolph B. Spreckels, the sugar baron, were appointed to oversee construction for a cost not to exceed $14,000.  The Fulton Engineering Company (Fulton!) won the bid for the ironwork and the Dutch Windmill, as it is known, was completed within the year for a cost of $16,000, $2K over budget.  Okay, not much changes.  It worked like a charm and Spreckels Lake (Hello!) was built as an additional reservoir.  

A brick cottage (the Dutch Cottage) was built next to the windmill so the mill could be constantly monitored and adjusted according to the weather.  Golden Gate Park was the largest botanical garden in the world at that time and without the windmill its over 2 million trees would not have survived.  It worked so well that a second windmill was planned.

Well, in 1913, electricity was all the rage, and motorized pumps were able to move many times the amount of water that the windmill did.  So electric pumps were installed in the park; the windmill was now obsolete and left to decay.  Powerful winter storms, fire, vandalism, the internal mechanisms being gutter for the war effort in World War II and years of neglect took their toll.  In 1950 the park commission ordered that the most dangerous parts be removed. 

 Happy Part:

In 1966 Mrs. Eleanor Crabtree was appointed chairwoman of the Windmill Restoration Project.  For Mrs. Crabtree it was a true labor of love and for the next 20 years she poured all her energy into restoration.  In 1981 restoration was complete and there was a huge celebration.  Mrs. Crabtree died five years later.

            But she died happy, so this is a happy story.

           

We arrive at the Palace of the Legion of Honor

We made it!  That is the California Palace of the Legion of Honor behind us.  Built on what was then a remote site known as Land's End, the California Palace was dedicated to the memory of the 3,600 California men who had lost their lives on the battlefields of France during World War I.

Here is the story...In 1895 the de Young Museum in Golden Gate Park opened, funded by M.H. de Young.  Adolph Spreckels and de Young were rivals, in fact at one time Spreckels even shot de Young because of an editorial that de Young wrote in the Chronicle.  ( yes, I do know why Speckels shot de Young, but you have been skimming through the narrative so you will have to wait for another narrative) Adolph’s wife, Mrs. Alma de Bretteville Spreckels , was quite a Francophile, she believed her family came from French royalty, and not wanting to be outdone by her husband’s rival, she gifted the people of San Francisco with the California Palace of the Legion of Honor, which is a replica of the Palais de la Légion d'Honneur in Paris.

Alma Spreckels regarded this museum as her mission in life and felt it was her responsibility to bring art within the reach of the public. In addition to providing the building, she formed the museum's early collection, including a group of sculptures by Auguste Rodin.  The museum was completed in 1924, and on Armistice Day of that year its doors opened to the public.  If you stand near the statue of the horseman (see top right of photo above) there is an unforgettable view of the Pacific Ocean, Golden Gate Bridge and most of the City.  Just inside the central arch in the photograph is the Court of Honor which houses Rodin’s Thinker (see photo below).

“There Is Nothing That Brightens You Up Like A Few Diamonds!”

Rob and I went to the Legion specifically to view the exhibit Cartier and America, which is at the museum until April 18th.  The exhibit is a dazzling display of excess right out of the times of Bill Thornburg and Alma Spreckles.  The first 10 tiaras were amazing, after that I was bored.  The mystery clocks, a type of clock with a transparent dial and so named because their works are hidden, were interesting but after the first 3 or 4 of those, I was bored.  Rob was fascinated.  I liked the brooches made to resemble animals.  Often the women would wear a tiara, earrings, a broach, bracelets, a necklace, and a stomacher brooch meant to adorn the bodice; all of diamonds.  I think that is really what put me over the edge on this exhibit because really I would love to have any of the pieces, but I wouldn’t wear them all at once.  I would wear them with my jeans and cowboy boots though, because, well, why not.

American millionaires of the Gilded Age had the money and Cartier had diamonds and that is still true today.  Cartier’s pieces were exquisitely crafted and his designs were creative and often ingenious which made Cartier the “King of Jewelers”, a perfect fit for the American rich who dreamed they were royalty.   The Cartier Company has a long and distinguished history of serving royalty, as well as stars and celebrities so you would probably recognize many of the names of those who loaned pieces from their private jewelry boxes. 

I don’t think Rob will be telling me “I am bringing you box from Cartier” for my birthday.  Though if I had enough boxes from Cartier I could always do what one matron did, she put all her jewelry in her bank vault and the money she saved from insurance she used for opening a soup kitchen. 

Below is a photo of Rob in front of the bus that would take us back to our Alfa.

Swine of the Times

            We ran to catch our new mode of transportation, waved to the bus driver smoking by the pines, hoped on the bus and grabbed the seats in the front.  After a moment a voice from behind us said, “Those seats are for Senior Citizens”! 

We turned to see Gayle and Steve Roscelli grinning at us.  What a kick!  The Roscelli’s were in the city for the weekend also riding around on the Muni.  While we were at the Cartier exhibit they were visiting Iret-net-Hor-irw (a.k.a. "the mummy").  The mummy was return to the Legion in August 2009 after being on loan to the Haggin Museum in Stockton for 65 years; I guess Steve and Gayle missed him.  From the museum the Roscelli’s were on their way to The Tipsy Pig, a “gastrotavern”, and asked if we wanted to tag along.  Gayle was prepared with bus directions, so we signed on.  

 Here is Gayle with her map and directions, Steve and Rob looking pleased that they are with the person with the map who knows how to find a good bar.

After 3 buses, 2 transfers and a scenic ride by the Golden Gate Bridge we arrived at Chestnut Street and The Tipsy Pig.  Gayle told us The Tipsy Pig is named after the fall tradition of pigs getting drunk from eating fermented apples, not after their clientele.  An upscale place!

We sat in the back in the library at the TP; I was so hungry I could have eaten the books off the shelves.   Over wine/beer/martini/hot dog/fries we discussed many world issues and solved a few national problems.  Great fun!  By 5 Rob and I thought we should continue on our way.  We said goodbye to Steve and Gayle, grabbed a cab and were back to our little car before dark.

Friday, January 08, 2010 King Tut Day

Toot Uncommon Day at the Park

Breakfast anyone?

We started our day in the Stockton fog.  The dogs didn’t want to go out into at 6:30AM but we pushed them out for their morning stroll.  Anami was pretty annoyed at the changes in our morning routine.  Rob usually throws the ball for her to cut the sting of being put outside to do her morning business.  Then I throw the ball for her while I put the doggie breakfast together.  Well this morning we just got up, took a shower, threw the dogs out into the cold, dark, foggy morning while I put their bowls together.  We didn’t even throw the ball once.  The doggie B&B has gone to hell in a hand basket!   

At 7:25AM we were rolling down the drive!  We had breakfast at the Rockridge Café on College Avenue in the Rockridge area of Oakland.  Breakfast was not memorable but we watched the clerks at Pave Jewelry next door put out their display.  Next time we visit the area we will have to visit when they are open.   

Golden Gate Park

 By 9:30 we were on the road again and arrived at Golden Gate Park at about 10:15.  We parked on the road behind the Academy of Science and took our time walking to the de Young Museum.  The Academy and the de Young are situated across from each other with the Music Concourse between them.

Here is Rob on the Academy side of the concourse with the Bandshell in the background.   The Music Concourse was built in 1900, when the people of San Francisco were given The Temple of Music (commonly called the Bandshell) by their sugar daddy Claus Spreckels.  

Hundreds of trees were planted in a grid pattern in the concourse bowl to provide shade for the concert-goers.  Benches were put in, staircases leading down to the concourse on each side, wide paths, streets in front of the de Young and Academy, pedestrian tunnels, fountains and the monuments completed a truly lovely addition to the park.

Recently during the construction of the much needed parking garage under the concourse, some trees and tunnels were lost or destroyed but have since been or are scheduled t be replaced.  The major elements of the original design - including the tunnels, benches, fountains and monuments - all survive, preserved as they were a hundred years ago.  The photo with the fountain in the foreground was taken with the Bandshell at my back.

Walking across the Concourse we passed a man and his dog doing Tai Chi; the dog had Tai Chied himself around the tree.  The Music Concourse is a lovely place and we look forward to visiting in the summer time.

The New de Young Museum

Founded originally in 1895, the New de Young Museum reopened in October 2005.  After the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, assessments of the existing building determined that it was vulnerable to future tremors.  Some changes to the building were done, but safety concerns remained and Federal insurance was withheld.  As a result travelling exhibits frequently were hesitant to consider De Young as a possible venue. In 1998, the museum’s Board agreed to rebuild the museum as a state of the art facility.  The new building has a 37% smaller footprint than the old building and returns more than two acres of space to Golden Gate Park.  An underground parking garage was created for 800 cars by digging a tunnel beneath 10th Avenue from Fulton Street. The parking garage is shared with its neighbor the new California Academy of Sciences. This decreased the amount of on-street parking, which was in effect taken underground to ease congestion.

The architects were tasked to design a plan to integrate the museum with the park surrounding it, which they did.  The museum has a very modern design made of steel and glass.  The façade, the largest of its kind in the world, is made of perforated copper plates. The plates will eventually oxidize and take on a greenish tone; the façade’s color and distinct texture are meant to harmonize with the nearby eucalyptus trees.  The museum itself has an open and light-filled environment which is very pleasant for viewing and helps extend the inside out. 

The most fun is the twisting nine-storey (144 foot) observation tower, housing the arts education programs, which is accessible to the public via elevator to the top. The tower rises above the Park's treetops providing views of the city skyline, much of Golden Gate Park's Music Concourse, the Golden Gate and Marin Headlands. And of course it the building is a product of state-of-the-art seismic engineering. The museum is surrounded by a sculpture garden that includes open the Sphinxes, palm trees and Pool of Enchantment that were part of the original complex.  

 The King Tutankhamun Exhibit

          We had tickets for the 11 AM tour of The Tut "Golden Age" exhibit and we werevery excited.  In 1979 we saw the much smaller “Treasures of Tutankhamun" tour at the old de Young, which was fabulous.  I read somewhere that returning to San Francisco after 30 years has a special significance because in ancient Egypt they held what is called a Sed Festival.  After a king had ruled for 30 years, they have a set to rejuvenate the king and build up his powers.  We should have a Sed for Rob; he will be 60 on January 17^th!

        A much larger exhibit toured in 2005 and in August of that year Rob, Collen and I drove to see “Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs” exhibit at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA).   All the visitors had tickets for a specific time and were held in large groups in an outdoor tent to wait in long lines, which snaked around the tent.  In small batches were let out of the tent, passed through a security section, Collen had his sketch pad and pencil taken away from him, and then into the museum.  Once in the museum we had to stay with our group; it was very reminiscent of the Pentagon tour.  Right off the bat the experience was more stifling than uplifting.  The Artifacts for the 2005 exhibit came from the tombs of 18th-dynasty pharaoh Tutankhamun as well as others buried in the Valley of the Kings, but it was disappointing maybe because it was larger with a smaller percentage of sparkles (no famous, gold Funerary mask), or just because our expectations were so high.   

We knew the Funerary Mask of Tutankhamun, a centerpiece of the '79 show would not be included this time. In the ‘80’s the Egyptian government declared it a national treasure and too fragile to travel so it will never leave Egypt again, so we will have to go to the future Grand Egyptian Museum in Giza to see it again. Anyway we were very excited. We rented the audio tour which was very good; Omar Sharif is the voice of the guide and I could listen to him read the phonebook as they say. I love audio tours because they tell you the basics and I often can’t read the signs. Besides the audio moves you from one major artifact to next major artifact and for me it reduces the stress factor which comes from zooming around to read and see everything. We also bought the official book that accompanies the exhibit so if we forget anything we can refer to the book. We bought the book in 2005 but Collen has it and we haven’t thought about it in …. well, since August 2005. But still it is nice to have on the coffee table.

      This show documents the life, times of the "boy king" who died, at age 18 or 19, in 1323 B.C., nine years into his reign, and highlights some of the magnificent treasures found in his tomb, which were meant to ensure his divine immortality and his comfort in the afterlife.  Many objects belonging to the young king—exquisite personal items used in his daily life are included; one was a beautiful child-size chair. Prominent pieces include a gold crown found on the head of his mummy, a lavish bejeweled pectoral inscribed with the hieroglyphic for infinity and many other pieces of jewelry.  Most interesting, or at unexpected, was a pair of coffinettes (little coffins) that contain the fetuses of what may have been the king's children.  

Tut was the last pharaoh of the 18^th dynasty and the exhibit places him in context of his very famous predecessors in addition to telling us about family members like his possible great-grandparents, Tjuyu and Yuya. Lady Tjuya and her husband Yuya were one of the rare non-royal couple given permission to be buried in the Valley of the Kings. Although not royal, the couple were not ordinary Egyptians but were thought to be the parents of a Queen Tiya and in-laws to Pharaoh Amenhotep III. If they were, they would have been Tutankhamun's great-grandparents.   What is special about this tomb, and what made it the most famous tomb in Egypt prior to the discovery of the Tomb of Tutankhamun, is that it contained a great cache of funerary equipment in remarkable condition.  One piece from their tomb I especially like was the chair of Princess Sitamun.

In addition to the artifacts there are 30 or so photographic prints by Harry Burton who accompanied British archaeologist Howard Carter's expedition and documented the discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb in 1922. 

The exhibit gift shop had lots of fun souvenirs, the least of which was a paper cutout of King Tut’s funerary mask.  The de Young gift shop had a jackal faced statue (Anubis?) for $799 and a King Tut chair for $1,099; both replicas of course.

After King Tut we dropped our treasures back at the car and had hotdogs at Keethe’s Hot Dog and Pretzel stand in the concourse; a ¬¬¬¬¬ establishment.

The California Academy of Sciences

The California Academy of Sciences, found in 1853, is one of the largest museum of natural history in the world.  The new Academy was 10 years in the making, reopend in September 2008 and it is fabulous.  Since its first year of existence the Academy encourage womens’ involvement of women in science, passing a resolution that the members "highly approve of the aid of females in every department of natural science, and invite their cooperation" This led to several female botanists, entomologists and others finding work at the Academy during the 19th century, when opportunities for women in the sciences were limited, and often restricted to menial cataloguing and calculation work.

Like the de Young the goal in design was to belnd seamlessly into the park’s natural setting.  Now, I would say blend in as in camouflage, but it is indeed a masterpiece in sustainalbe architecture; they even used recylced denim as insulation.  Construction reflects reduced carbon footprint, energy efficiency and 90% of all demolition materials were recycled.  The building consums 30% less energy than federal code requirements; Rob’s mantra. 

The entrance to the Academy has floor to ceiling windows that allow you to see the de Young across the Music Concourse.  The windows also  allow the interior offices to use 90% , natural lighting; a plus is that in the office windows can be opened and closed providing fresh air and cooling. 

Probably the best know thing about the Academy is the roof.  It has a 2.5 acre living roof with 1.7 million native plants planted on seven mounds.  One-sixth of all electriciy consumed in the United States goes to cool building.  More 

typical roofs made of tar or asphalt lead to a phenomenon called “Heat Island”.  Between the rooftops and the pavement heat is trapped causing cities to be 6 ro 10 degrees warmer than outlying green areas.  The Academy room keep the interior an average of 10 degrees cooler than the a standard roof would .  Plus the plants transform carbon dioxide into oxygen, capture rainwater.  The skylights on the mounds work with the weather station on the rooftop to inform the automated passive ventilation system thereby reducing energy needs for cooling and heating.  At some point in the future the roof will hopfuly be a habitat for some endanged local butteflies.

The Academy is made up the Kimball Natural History Museum, the Steinhart Aquarium and Morrison Planetarium.  Many of the old exhibits remain included the blue whale skeleton, the T-Rex and the crocodile at the entrance.  All were wonderful but Emily loves giraffes so here are the giraffes.A Visit with Collen and Zipper

            After the Academy we drove across town to visit Collen in the Excelsior.  Collen had a student earlier so Zipper had not had his daily walkies and was very excited to see us.  He was also excited to look out the windows at the passers by, bark at other dogs, run after the cats and jump on my lap.  He had a wonderful time.  Here are Rob and Collen holding him tight for a photograph. 

            We had an excellent cup of coffee, used the loo and started on our long drive home.  The drive home turned out to be pretty good for 5 o’clock on a Friday afternoon. 

What a great outing we had.  I can’t wait to go back perhaps in the summer to see the Conservatory of Flowers or sit in the concourse at a concert.

A Visit with Colllen and Zipper

            After the Academy we drove across town to visit Collen in the Excelsior.  Collen had a student earlier so Zipper had not had his daily walkies and was very excited to see us.  He was also excited to look out the windows at the passers by, bark at other dogs, run after the cats and jump on my lap.  He had a wonderful time.  Here are Rob and Collen holding him tight for a photograph. 

            We had an excellent cup of coffee, used the loo and started on our long drive home.  The drive home turned out to be pretty good for 5 o’clock on a Friday afternoon. 

What a great outing we had.  I can’t wait to go back perhaps in the summer to see the Conservatory of Flowers or sit in the concourse at a concert.