California Poppies

January in California always amazes me.  Right now in most of the rest of the country, any vegetation is brown or grey.  However, in California, the ground responds almost instantly to rain, and we've had a lot of it this year, which means the hillsides are already a beautiful velvet green.  That also means poppies aren't far behind.

There's actually a state poppy preserve, named (appropriately) the Antelope Valley California Poppy State Reserve.  From February through May, the poppies bloom profusely, although some years are better than others.  It is worth a drive from any reasonable distance to visit this place, if you ever get the chance.  Think the poppy fields in the Wizard of Oz (although those aren't the same kind of poppies), and you have an idea of how vast these fields of poppies (and other wildflowers) can be.  One year, when the flowers were particularly profuse, I went twice in a three day period, driving a couple of hours each way, just to look in amazement.  It's both awe-inspiring and a little depressing to look out over these fields of flowers.  Awe-inspiring because of what nature can do.  Depressing to imagine that this  is what the state of California must have looked like from top to bottom, before it was loved to death by waves of searchers, seeking fame and fortune and freedom by coming west.

The Roman Baths in Bath

A cleansing bath for the first Sunday in the New Year, perhaps?  Ed tried to talk his friend into jumping in ("Tried to persuade a friend to jump in by offering to buy him all his drinks the next weekend.  Didn't work.")  Ah, the life of a traveling college student.

The Roman Baths at Bath do look really amazing.  It's ALWAYS tempting to want to jump into baths/pools/fountains at many famous and historical places where you know  it was commonplace to do so in the past.  I think of the fountains at Peterhof Palace outside St. Petersburg, Russia; the Neptune Pool at Hearst Castle in San Simeon, California; the Jardín del Estanque in the Alcazar in Sevilla, Spain.

Whatever  your cleansing ritual for the New Year, jump to it!

The Silver Queen

The Silver Queen hangs in the saloon of the Silver Queen Hotel in Carson City, Nevada.  Carson City is the capitol of the state of Nevada

From the back of the postcard (from 1965):  "Designed by owners Carroll and Ruby Eaton as a tribute to Virginia City's once great Silver Mining Industry - an industry whose production stabilized the Federal treasury during the Civil War and later altered the world's monetary structure.  The Silver Queen's dress contains 3,261 Silver Dollars.  The belt alone contains 28 Twenty Dollar gold pieces.  The picture is fifteen feet high and eight feet wide...."

My grandfather always gave us grandchildren a silver dollar for our birthdays.  He also baked the birthday cake (chocolate angel food) and would put dimes in the batter.  It was terribly exciting to get a piece of cake with a silver dime in it.  I saved those silver dollars, and had a nice collection.  However, at some point they were stolen out of my room when I was away at college.

P.S.  Happy New Year everybody.  Here's to lots of silver in 2011.

Oscar Mayer Weinermobile

Three months ago, I started working at the San Francisco Food Bank, a non-profit organization that distributes over 40 million pounds of food per year to people at risk of hunger in our commumnity.  I never realized that not only would I be helping those in need, I'd also have opportunities I never imagined. 

One of those opportunities appeared in the form of the Oscar Mayer Weinermobile.  We received a call from the "hotdoggers" who drive the Weinermobile around the country asking us what they could do for us - they had a three hour window of opportunity and would be happy to help us raise money or food.  We had them park the Weinermobile at the Castro District Safeway, and put out tweet and Facebook messages that the first 200 people to show up with non-perishable food or money, would receive a Weiner Whistle.  Who wouldn't show up?

Since 1936, the Weinermobile has been the rolling manifestation of a brand, an icon on wheels, an image cemented in our brains (well, in my brain at least) usually in concert with the ubiquitous "Oh, I wish I were an Oscar Mayer Weiner" jingle of the Oscar Mayer commercials from 1963.   And while the event wasn't a huge success food or money-wise (it was a rainy morning and set up very last minute), I have to say it was totally cool hanging out with the Weinermobile and seeing the responses of people who either came deliberately to see it, or stumbled across it. 

The entire persona of the Weinermobile is fun, a bit silly and very pun-filled.  Even the Wiki about the Weinermobile feels like it is written with a small amount of tongue in cheek, including a list of mishaps the Weinermobile  has experienced.  It has had run ins with the police (an alleged stolen license plate "YUMMY"), criticism from the Outdoor Circle (environmental group in Hawaii who enforce strict anti-billboard standards and considered the Weinermobile a rolling billboard), and more than a few minor accidents.

The drivers, called "hotdoggers", are recruited their senior year of college for a one year term.  Our hotdoggers were cheerful and friendly, and I think looking forward to a much needed two week holiday break.  I imagine it can get a bit tiring answering the same questions over and over and over and over again. 

It's new year's eve day 2010.  One of my new year's resolutions is to get back to posting postcards more regularly.  I hope you'll keep reading!  Here's to a happy, healthy and prosperous 2011 for us all.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Today, we celebrate that most American of holidays - Thanksgiving. 

While much of the day is filled with consuming - food, football and fine wines - many of us do stop and take a moment to think about what we are grateful for.

I'm grateful for my family, from husband & sons, to brothers & sisters, mom and mother-in-laws, and my cousins and "like family" friends.

I'm grateful to have a job.  I'm grateful for my garden - the broccoli is getting bigger by the day. 

I'm grateful for music and art and laughter.  I'm grateful that you've chosen to spend a minute reading my blog!

What are you grateful for?

Tin How Temple (joss house)

Tin How Temple is "the oldest Taoist temple in the United States.... It was built in 1852 and is dedicated to Mazu."  Not surprisingly, it is located in San Francisco.

Mazu "is the indigenous goddess of the sea who is said to protect fishermen and sailors, and is invoked as the patron saint of all Southern Chinese and East Asian persons. Worship of Mazu began around the Ming Dynasty, when many temples dedicated to her were erected all across Mainland China, later spreading to other countries with Southern Chinese inhabitants".

The temple is also referred to as  "Joss House".  Per the wiki, "'Joss' is a corrupted version of the Portuguese word for 'god', deus. 'Joss house' was in common use in English in western North America during frontier times, when joss houses were a common feature of Chinatowns. The name 'joss house' describes the environment of worship. Joss sticks, a kind of incense, are burned inside and outside of the house."   I  have no idea if "Joss House" is a derogatory term, or an accepted alternative for "temple".

While this postcard was received this year (probably sent by the Mystery Sender, although it is not signed "peace" on the back), it is a linen postcard.  From the wiki, "The "linen card" era lasted from about 1931 to the early 1950s, when cards were primarily printed on papers with a textured surface similar to linen cloth."

Ring of Kerry

The Ring of Kerry is a tourist trail in County Kerry, southwestern Ireland.  My friends, Jack & Lorry, went to Ireland for a friend's 60th birthday party, and did a bit of touristing while they were there. 

Bucket list alert - not necessarily the Ring of Kerry, but Ireland somewhere. 

Even Cowgirls Get the Blues

The back of this card says:  "Rodeo Cowgirl Helen Bonham was selected to be Miss Wyoming at Cheyenne Frontier Days Silver Anniversary in 1917.  "If it is for Wyoming, I'll do it gladly.," she said."

What do you bet the cowboys loved her.

US Mule

 

Every year, my friend Carol goes on a backpacking trip with a group of women, to honor one of the women's sister who is a breast cancer survivor.  This year they hiked in Yosemite National Park. 

The hike resulted in a first for my collection - a postcard that was packed out by mule from May Lake (see postcard, upper left corner) while they were still camping, and mailed from the valley floor.  I believe the stamp on the postcard refers to it as "US Mule", as opposed to "US Mail". Cool!

Stonehenge II

Newsflash!  A second mystery sender, albeit probably just a flash in the pan.

Long time readers know I have been the lucky recipient of postcards from a Mystery Sender.  This Mystery Sender sent me postcards on an almost daily basis, at least through my year of posting daily, and has continued to do so intermittently since then, signing all postcards with the signature "Peace".  Very occasionally, the Mystery Sender will post a comment, always under "anonymous".  S/he is capable of encouragement, taunting, melancholy and humor, and I find myself missing the more frequent postcards.  [Note:  for new readers, you can find some of the Mystery Sender cards here (a Mystery Sender comment), here (an informational card in the "Food Series"), here  (the original Mystery Sender post), here (in which I attempt to decipher the Mystery Sender code and (as informed in a later postcard), failed miserably), and here (the taunting).  If you search "Mystery Sender" on my blog, you can  find several more.]

So, lo and behold, a couple of weeks ago the above postcard appears in the mail, with the message "A mysterious monument from a mystery sender!  I just came across your blog and thought you might like a postcard sent out of the blue......"   I'm pretty sure this is not the Mystery Sender in disguise.  I have no idea if this Mystery Sender II is aware of the original Mystery Sender or not. 

All I do know is I like it!

P.S.  Today is my cousin Locke's birthday.  Happy Birthday, cuz!

Stonehenge I

Gotta love the irregularly shaped postcards.  This one of Stonehenge comes from my son, during his stint at Oxford last summer.

Archaeologists have mostly determined that Stonehenge was used more as an ancient burial ground as opposed to serving as a astronomical calculator and/or observatory, although it may have had some significance to the winter solstice.

No matter the science, 20,000 people showed up for the summer solstice in 2005, and  it's much more romantic to think about this organized pile of rocks as a place of ancient worship and Druid ritual.   From the Wiki:

Throughout the twentieth century, Stonehenge began to be revived as a place of religious significance, this time by adherents of Neopagan and New Age beliefs, particularly the Neo-druids: the historian Ronald Hutton would later remark that "it was a great, and potentially uncomfortable, irony that modern Druids had arrived at Stonehenge just as archaeologists were evicting the ancient Druids from it." The first such Neo-druidic group to make use of the megalithic monument was the Ancient Order of Druids, who performed a mass initiation ceremony there in August 1905, in which they admitted 259 new members into their organisation. This assembly was largely ridiculed in the press, who mocked the fact that the Neo-druids were dressed up in costumes comprising of white robes and fake beards.

From 1972 until 1984, Stonehenge was the setting for a free music festival, until the "Battle of the Beanfield" in 1985.  This infamous battle was "waged" between new age travelers and the local police.  I particularly like the headline from the BBC on that day about the incident:  Hippies clash with police at Stonehenge.  As always, one man's clash is another man's battle. 

Kauai

Speaking of Kauai, I'd like to be swimming in the waters off this beach right now. 

Postcard Cafe

The Postcard Cafe is located in Hanalei on the island of Kauai, Hawaii.  The menu on its website sounds pretty darn tasty.

I haven't been to Kauai for 30+ years, and never visited this cafe.  However, I have received this postcard twice, from two completely unconnected friends.  I love that my friends send me postcards, and imagine it gave them a small pleasure to find one so appropriate to send me!

Atomic Testing Museum

Now that the Liberace Museum has closed, what's a thinking person to do when visiting Las Vegas?

Well, how about the Atomic Testing Museum?  As described in Frommer's:

From 1951 until 1992, the Nevada Test Site was this country's primary location for testing nuclear weapons. Aboveground blasts in the early days were visible to the tourists and residents of Las Vegas. This well-executed museum, library, and gallery space (a Smithsonian affiliate) offers visitors a fascinating glance at the test site from ancient days through modern times, with memorabilia, displays, official documents, videos, interactive displays, motion-simulator theaters (such as sitting in a bunker, watching a blast), and emotional testimony from the people who worked there. It respectfully treads that tricky line between honoring the work done at the site and understanding its terrible implications. Not to be missed, even if it's only because of the Albert Einstein action figure in the gift shop. Visitors should plan on spending at least an hour.

I'm adding an Albert Einstein action figure to my Christmas list. 

College Series - Evergreen State College

One man's "experimental and innovative" is another man's "environmental terrorists and homos".  What a great card.  And while it isn't exactly OF Evergreen State College, it is a response TO the presence of the college and it seemed to fit in the series.

On another note, I've missed the almost daily postcards from "The Mystery Sender", and lo and behold, s/he seems to have missed sending them.  I appreciate the nudge, port fueled or not, to get back at it. (See "anonymous" comment on previous post.)  I'm not ready to make a time commitment (like, every day) yet, but am re-energized to get back at it (posting, that is) more often.  Thanks, M.S.

Toast

Lots of changes going on right now, and toast is the ultimate comfort food in times of transition.  Well, toast and cookies and chicken rice casserole.

I've had this postcard for years and always thought is was a reproduction of a print or a painting.  On closer inspection, the piece, by artist Dawn Fryling (about whom I can find very little, except for a few random references in a variety of articles) is made up of actual toast in wooden boxes.  Kind of cool.

The post card came from my friend and former colleague, Jane.  We worked together at an ad agency and that agency held an annual auction, to raise money for a variety of charities.  It became the tradition for Jane to "donate" an Italian dinner at her beautiful home, and a group of us would get together and bid for it.  The auction was always raucous and booze saturated (have to get those bids high!).  Our dinner, while perhaps a bit less raucous, featured delicious food and plenty of red wine.

College Series - Georgetown

Regular readers and friends know that one of my sons attends Georgetown University.   He fell in love with the school within minutes of visiting the campus.

The postcard above shows one of the reasons why:  it's an absolutely beautiful campus with old brick and stone buildings (described by Wiki as collegiate Gothic and Georgian brick architecture) sitting on a hilltop above the Potomac River In Washington, DC and overlooking the Washington Monument.  It's small enough that you can get to know every corner of the campus.  One of the most famous corners is the "Exorcist Steps".  Several scenes in the movie "The Exorcist" were shot on campus, including the one in which the priest falls down the stairs. 

Georgetown is the oldest Catholic university (Jesuit) in the United States, and was also the first to bring on a full-time rabbi (1968) and full-time imam (1999).   At the time of its founding, Catholics were not admitted to most American universities, and the founder, John Carroll, had a vision for a university that was "to be open to 'every class of citizens'and students of 'every religious profession.'"

Part of the attraction of Georgetown is its location in Washington, DC.  My son attended the inauguration of Barack Obama, the concert on the mall a couple of days before the inauguration, and has a goal of visiting every free museum in Washington before  he graduates.  There are 17 Smithsonian Institution museums in Washington, DC, including the American Indian Museum, the Portrait Gallery, the Air & Space Museum, the Postal Museum, and the Natural History Museum.  ALL offer free admission.

Side note:  My son is a football player at Georgetown and the football team's record is 2-1 after coming off two miserables seasons.  Yesterday, they lost to Yale in the last play of the game.  Considering Yale is in the higher level Ivy League (D-1) and Georgetown is in the Patriot League (D-1AAA), this is actually reason for celebration!

College Series - Dartmouth

What a beautiful campus Dartmouth is.  I've only been there once, really just driving through, but it was fall, and the big open "green" was surrounded by trees losing their yellow, orange and red leaves and filled with students scurrying to and fro in colder weather clothes, providing a glimpse of the quintessential New England college experience, at least per the stereotype of my west coast perspective.

Established in 1769, Dartmouth is the smallest school in the Ivy League and is one of the nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution. 

It is perhaps most famous for the movie "Animal House", which although filmed at the University of Oregon in Eugene, was actually based on the experiences of one of the coauthors from his days in a fraternity at Dartmouth.   Just visiting the Wiki and reading the list of cast members is enough to get me giggling, all over again.  It's hard for me to pick a favorite scene from this movie, but Belushi (Bluto) sneaking into one of the buildings on campus, when he jumps from side to side looking to see who is watching, is probably my favorite.

College Series - California Institute of Technology

My first job out of college was as a technical typist at Caltech, formally known as California Institute of Technology, in Pasadena, California.  I was working there and living at my parent's house to save money to go traveling in Latin America. The campus is beautiful - a mix of modern and less modern, often Spanish style, buildings, and a wide variety of vegetation. In the courtyards of more than one of the Spanish buildings are orange trees, and when they bloom in the early spring, the sweet fragrance wafts over the entire campus. Baxter Hall, which is the building in the postcard above, is the building where I worked.

Caltech is the west coast MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), with super smart, math and science oriented students, who are proud of their nerd orientation.  One of the great traditions of the school is senior ditch day, described by the Wiki as follows:

On Ditch Day, the seniors ditch school, leaving behind elaborately designed tasks and traps at the doors of their rooms to prevent underclassmen from entering. Over the years this has evolved to the point where many seniors spend months designing mechanical, electrical, and software obstacles to confound the underclassmen. Each group of seniors designs a "stack" to be solved by a handful of underclassmen. The faculty have been drawn into the event as well, and cancel all classes on Ditch Day.

Caltech is famous not only for their brilliant scientists, multiple Nobel prize winning professors,  and Einstein's time on campus, but also for their pranks.  Many of the pranks are directed toward MIT, but their two most famous pranks involved the Rose Bowl, which is also located in Pasadena.  Per the Wiki:

The two most famous in recent history are the changing of the Hollywood Sign to read "Caltech", by judiciously covering up certain parts of the letters, and the changing of the Rose Bowl scoreboard to an imaginary game where Caltech beat MIT 99-0. But the most famous of all occurred during the 1961 Rose Bowl Game, where Caltech students altered the flip-cards that were raised by the stadium attendees to display "Caltech", and several other "unintended" messages. This event is now referred to as the Great Rose Bowl Hoax.

My job was working for several professors in the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences.  All this was pre word processing and computers, and as most of the professors were engaged in some form of econometric modeling (the economists) or voter choice behavior (the political scientists), all the papers I typed involved complicated equations, complete with a variety of numbers and symbols.   I was really good at this, both because I have always been a speedy typist and also because I took a fair amount of calculus in college and actually knew the symbols involved.

As first jobs out of college go, it was a great one.  The departmental politics were astounding.  The dalliances that went on were surprising.  I was lucky enough to get invited most Fridays to the faculty/grad student lounge, and sit at tables with brilliant scientists and grad students, drinking beer, listening to fascinating discussions, observing heated debates, and watching the huge variety of shenanigans that went on.  It was a blast.

Perhaps the most surprising time was when what I had thought was yet another Caltech "urban legend" turned out to be real.  I had heard rumors of a radio scientist who dressed like Robin Hood, a brilliant man who was perhaps a bit off, at least relative to your average man on the street.  I didn't believe this until one day, leaving work, a man walked right by me, complete with tunic, tights, pointed shoes and a felt Robin Hood hat.   Just one of many "only at Caltech" types of moments.

P.S.  It's Postcard Friendship Friday.  Check it out.

College Series - Harvard University

Harvard University is the oldest "institute of higher learning" in the U.S., and, interestingly, the first chartered corporation.  Located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, it is considered one of the top universities in the both the country and the world.  This year, the university admitted less than 7% of the applicants for the 2014 graduating class.

Here's a couple random tidbits about Harvard you might not be aware of:

1. Harvard has the largest financial endowment of any university in the world:  25.6 BILLION US dollars.

2. Harvard was not officially co-ed until 1977, although before 1977 women at Radcliffe were allowed to take classes at Harvard.  From the Wiki:

"During World War II, Harvard and Radcliffe signed an agreement which allowed women to attend classes at Harvard for the first time, officially beginning joint instruction in 1943. From 1963, Radcliffe students received Harvard diplomas signed by the presidents of Radcliffe and Harvard, and joint commencement exercises began in 1970. The same year, several Harvard and Radcliffe dormitories began swapping students experimentally, and in 1972 full co-residence was instituted. The schools' departments of athletics merged shortly thereafter."

3.  Harvard is considered a liberal institution.  Over the years, there have been some memorable references by conservative pundits and presidents.  From the Wiki:

"Conservative author William F. Buckley, Jr. quipped that he would rather be governed by the first 2000 names in the Boston phone book than by the Harvard faculty,  Richard Nixon famously referred to Harvard as the "Kremlin on the Charles" around 1970, and Vice President George H.W. Bush disparaged what he saw to be Harvard's liberalism during the 1988 presidential election."

4.  It wasn't until 2002 that the little known "Secret Court of 1920" was "outed".  The Secret Court refers to a committee which was formed to investigate charges of homosexual activity among the student population in May and June of 1920.  More than 30 interviews were conducted  behind closed doors and eight students, a recent graduate, and an assistant professor were expelled or had their association with the university severed.

Let's face it - if your kid gets into Harvard, it would be difficult not to be tempted to slip this information into a conversation, any chance you get.  

P.S.  A shout out to my friend Sasha, a sophomore at Harvard, for sending me this card!