Song Kun at the Hammer Museum; Last Day in LA

One last breakfast in San Diego, then we headed back to LA. We moved our quarters to the Holiday Inn Express on Olympic Blvd., a far nicer and more regular place than the Stars Inn, though twice as expensive!

After checking in, Terry and I had a few hours for some art, so we headed over to the Hammer Museum to see Eden’s Edge, a show of 15 LA Artists. It was very interesting; all the artists are far more capable of extreme obsession than am I. I liked some of the work; though not all.

On our way out, we almost missed a small show by emerging Chinese painter Song Kun, who filled a small gallery with 97 daily paintings of her life…fabulous! Her work ranges from part drawn, part painted canvases to fully realized and very well-done representational works to a number of blank canvases. At first, I took one quick pass through the gallery, intending that to be it; then went back and looked at each painting more closely, then went back again, by this time fully drawn into her mesmerizing paintings. This was my favorite art of all that I’ve seen on this coastal trip!

We had dinner again with Terry’s father and Madelaine; it was kind of sad to leave them, though; they are getting pretty frail, and I think they are afraid we may not see them alive again. I feel fairly sure we will, but of course, they are 88 years old…

Crawling Around on Ships in San Diego Harbor

Today we started out with another great breakfast down the street at The Café 222. I had Porky Eggs Benedict and Terry had the Eggs Italia.













Then we headed out for our first stop, the Midway Aircraft Carrier. What an interesting ship! It was enormous -- the flight deck alone is larger than 4 acres! We toured the hanger deck, the below decks, then went up onto the flight deck, where there were many restored fighter planes and wartime-type helicopters on board.

We took a tour of the Pri-Fli (primary flight control), the bridge, the Captain’s quarters, and the Admiral’s Country.

While we were getting a demonstration of the catapult system that shoots the planes off the carrier, there was a slight interruption for a re-enlistment ceremony for a sailor from the Ronald Reagan, a large carrier that was in the port for a few days. Actually, first he received his honorable discharge, and then he re-enlisted. It was kind-of charming to be allowed to witness this sailor’s ceremony, a bit of an honor.

I was actually surprised how interesting it was to tour the Midway. The biggest downside was that it was very hot up there -- especially in the enclosed quarters, but also on deck with the sun beating down on my thick black jeans.

After touring the Midway, we went to a Fish Market restaurant on the coast for a beer and a great lunch of prawn cocktail and shrimp avocado salad. A seagull was hanging out on the deck ledge beside us, and we saw him swoop down into the water and catch a small fish for his own lunch.

After lunch, we shot back up Harbor Blvd. to the Maritime Museum, which is about 5 boats docked there together that you can tour. We started on the HMS Surprise, the small frigate that was used in the movie "Master and Commander." It was a beautiful ship, but had quite a few cheesy displays on-board, mostly about pirates.

Next we boarded the Berkeley Ferry, a very large and quite beautiful ferry, with an ornate top deck complete with plenty of seating, a small stage for a band, a bar and a good-sized dance floor. There was a small sailing yacht moored to it’s side that we also investigated -- beautiful, but not too much more to say about it.

Next, we boarded the Star of India, a Bark type of sailing ship, used for hauling freight around the world. It has three main masts, two of which each have 3 square sails, and various triangular-shaped sails fore and aft.

This really wasn’t a very big ship; it had a lot of sails, but not really a lot of space. There was the cargo hold below (the only place that was supposedly always dry), and some berths for passage of poor immigrants in steerage, plus a couple of tiny cabins for first-class passengers (very, very tiny; and the passengers had to furnish their own cabins, bunks included!).

There was an amazing video playing on board -- shot in 1929 by a Capt. Johnson aboard a similar ship, called the Peking, on a voyage from Germany to Chile, starting in the deadly North Sea and then traveling around Cape Horn and then west 200 miles, before heading back in to Chile. They endured 3 major storms on this voyage, which Johnson shot from atop one of the masts -- an amazing scene of huge waves of ocean water sweeping across the deck, back and forth, completely engulfing it as it swept across. He talked about the nets that were put up on the sides of the ship during these storms to ‘strain’ the sailors from the water as the water washed back overboard.

He said the men’s clothes were always wet; that the air was mostly water, with a little air in it that one could breathe along with the gulps of water; and how when it rained, the men would catch the rainwater to wash their clothes with, as there wasn’t enough fresh water on board to spare for laundry.

He also talked about how self-sufficient the men on board were; they never wanted to pull into any harbor except to pick up or drop off cargo, so they brought all sorts of repair tools and supplies with them, and spent the time in the Doldrums making repairs. It was a fascinating video with great narration and amazing footage.

After the Star of India, we climbed into the Soviet submarine. Sheesh! It didn’t look too small on the outside, but it was tiny on the inside! They had a crew of 78 or 79, but I counted no more than 18 or 20 tiny bunks, stuffed into every available space around other equipment throughout the sub. We had to climb through 4 very small 'portholes' between sections of the ship. Got out just after the sun set…

For dinner, we chose an Italian place near the hotel called Chianti's, because their menu was in Italian (hence, they 'seemed' more authentic), and they looked like they might have been there awhile and might be staffed by pros. So far, every other restaurant we tried in the Gaslamp district had been staffed by very young, and very inexperienced wait staff. When a cute young man with Sid Vicious-style spiky hair came to wait on us, I thought we were in for it, but he was a stone-cold pro, and the food was the best of all the places we ate in San Diego! We had thick, perfectly cooked steaks with a fabulous mushroom sauce, wonderful crunchy vegetables, and a very nice Chianti (of course).

Balboa Park Museums and Dinner in the Gaslamp District

Today we got up late, and I did some work for TSOS (the E-zine), which gave us an even later start to the day. We finally went to get some breakfast around 11:00 a.m. We went to a little place down Island Street called Café 222. Very Good! Terry had a standard, but tasty American breakfast; I had Eggs Italia, which were scrambled eggs with pesto, goat cheese and fresh tomatoes, served with focaccio bread and rosemary potatoes.

Then we headed up to Balboa Park. The first museum we came to was the Museum of Living Artists, so of course, we had to check that out. They had a show of local artists responding to the Dead Sea Scrolls (which are currently showing at the Museum of Natural History).

Good show, similar in some ways to an AVAA show. For a local show, I was impressed by the number of strong and thoughtful pieces. There were many interesting responses to the Dead Sea Scrolls.

There was a beautiful abstract called Mosaic #6 by Jane Fletcher, the prettiest piece in the show, a very funny piece called "The Dead Sea Squirrels" by Hank Gross, a very interesting torah-photo sculpture by Art Ferber, a thoughtful piece called “What Every Household Needs” by Nanette Newbry, that printed the entire Patriot Act in something like 1pt. type on a metal plate. One woman had created a piece that encompassed all (I think) of the text of Ovid’s Metamorphosis, each line of tiny text cut out and arranged in concentric shapes morphing from a circle of text to a butterfly, each shaped piece about 24” in diameter and encased between sheets of plastic (Cheryl Sorg, piece titled “Bodies I Have in Mind, and How They Can Change to Assume New Shapes"). Another notable piece was called "Scroll and Palimpsest" by Bob Simpson - a 13 panel long mixed media piece on plywood that beautifully incorporated marks that resembled writings with drawing and painting. There was a pretty groovy mixed media piece called "Sheep" by Wendy Kwasny-Bowen and a beautiful large oriental style scroll piece called "Waves in Conversation" by Rosemary Kimball, a nice small piece called "Fish Legend" by Meredith Cummings, and several other very nice or very thoughtful pieces, like "The Scroll That Never Ends" by Robert Collie, a digital piece about all the soldiers we’ve lost in Iraq.

There were also two featured artists with many works on display: Jo-Lind Eckstein and Claire-Lise Matthey Anderegg. They both did work that ranged from small to medium-large, and the work was layered and very richly textured. I loved both of their styles very much.

Next we went to the Museum of Art, and saw a few small rooms of paintings from Ingres to Frantisek Kupka and the surrealists. I really loved the Kupka piece! His work was apparently so avant-garde at the time, even the avant-garde didn’t get it. When asked what his work represented, he responded “Must then a work of art represent something?”

There was also a nice, elaborate show of Impressionist Artists of Giverny - lots of beautiful paintings by some of the apparently 350 artists painting around there at that time, including of course Monet, and also Frieseke, plus many I have never before heard of.

After the Art museum, we went to the Museum of Natural History. The first thing we saw was a large Foucault’s pendulum-very cool! We stood watching it for some time, hoping to see the pendulum knock over one of the many pieces of wood set up at the ends of the pendulum's arc of motion. I looked away once, and one got knocked over (!). The next one kept getting turned aside, and after 5-10 minutes of watching and waiting in anticipation, we finally gave up and moved on.

Lots of dinosaur displays throughout the floor we were on. . .

There was a very large globe displaying an animation in the round of the movement of the world’s landmasses caused by plate tectonics from 750 million years ago through today. Another animated display not only showed the shift in plate tectonics in the past, but also forward 250 million years into the future. Other than that, pretty standard stuff at this museum.

After the museums, we headed back to the hotel for a cold beer, a little reading on the balcony, and then a short nap before dinner. For dinner, we went to a Chinese place called “Blue Ginger.” Terry ordered some tasty trio of beef, chicken and shrimp, and I had the crispy scallops, which were huge, very juicy, very crispy, and absolutely delicious! Maybe the best scallops I've ever had at Chinese food place, and that is saying something! The only downside to this meal was that the computer went down just before we could take care of our tab , and the young waiter left us waiting for at least 15-20 minutes for it to revive, which it never did. Finally, Terry talked to the manager, who instructed the young man to add up our tab manually. Terry said to the manager, “when the computer goes down, the brains go away.” He laughed.

First Day in San Diego

Started with a great breakfast around the corner from Pat’s downtown apartment, then we packed up and headed for San Diego. Like all of our drives on this trip so far, we encountered no traffic issues! Miraculous - our last trip was nothing BUT traffic issues!

Got to the Horton Grand Hotel right at check-in time, and we were given a very lovely 3rd floor room with a pretty solid view of a large treetop from the little adjoining balcony. It’s a very pleasant place to sit and read.

However, we were starving, so we scoured several blocks of the Gaslamp District around the hotel area to see what was available, and frankly, you couldn’t throw a stone in any direction without hitting an Irish Pub, Italian Restaurant or other fine dining establishment, and maybe a nightclub or two. We opted for fish and chips and a couple of Smithwick’s at the closest Irish Pub; the beer was great, but the fish was awful - dry, tough, and overcooked!

Later in the evening, we ate a great dinner at a Latin Fusion restaurant very close to the Hotel. The food was great -- there was a beautiful Russian girl hawking the restaurant right by the outdoor area where we were sitting. We chatted with her for a bit; I asked what part of Russia she was from, and when she replied, Terry asked if that was near Georgia. She got all huffy, saying Georgia is not a state, and then went on and on about something! I had told her I’d been to Moscow and St. Petersberg, and had loved them, and had then taken a train into Lithuania to visit my relatives, at which point she got all huffy again. “Lithuania is part of the EU, and we don’t need to be -- we don’t want to be! We're doing just fine!” (basically, we don’t need no stinking EU, thank you very much!). Such a proud little nationalist!

While enjoying our great food, from the pub across the street, we overheard some young men who were getting drunker by the minute, it seems, saying, “…and later, we’re all getting tatoos!” What a hoot! Like, "and in the morning, I'm making waffles!"

The Gaslamp area reminds me very much of 6th Street in Austin, only perhaps more full of young drunks.

Tim Hawkinson's Floopsia and Uberorgan at The Getty Museum

We packed up and checked out of the Stars Inn, then headed back to the Coffee Bean to check email, and have some coffee while waiting for Pat to join us. Then the three of us headed out up the 405 to the Getty Museum -- though we had some trouble locating the museum, and then finding parking spaces was a bit of a challenge (hint: drive all the way to the end, there were many spaces there).

We rode the tram to the museum proper, and immediately headed for the Uberorgan by Tim Hawkinson in the main hall. We didn’t have long to wait for it’s hourly musical performance…it was pretty groovy. Then we went to see his other pieces - Zoopsia -- which were just the ones they showed on the website, so….hmmm. I mean, they were very cool, but there wasn’t much to see we hadn’t already seen on the website. It was great to see them in person; just wish there had been more!

Then we checked out the exhibition of Manet's A Bar at the Folies-Bergère -- very much more interesting than I had ever realized before. We also looked at the European Drawings on view.

There was also a nice large show of Weston photos, and some very large current photos by Luc Delahaye.



We finished our day at the Getty with lunch at the museum café, then left for Pat’s in Pasadena.

Brandon was there, and we chatted with him for awhile; later I ‘supervised’ little Kevin at the drawing board. I was impressed by his drawing skills at the ripe young age of 20 months -- he was very intent on making very specific marks, and did so rather successfully. It was great to see Pat, and how happy she is being a mom…more than any of my friends, it seems she was meant for this!

The MOCA in LA...

We breakfasted at the Coffee Bean - a coffee shop on the corner of Beverly Glen and Santa Monica Blvd., got caught up on email and some small work over coffee and a pastry, found out that the painter I so much wanted to see at the ACE Gallery, David Amico, was not in fact showing there, and made a new plan to go to the MOCA downtown.

As it happened, they were installing a new show, so they only had a couple of rooms of art to view. Not bad, though. They had these fabulous sculptures and drawings by LA artist Matthew Monahan. His sculptures are conglomerations of all sorts of materials, including sheetrock and wax, but we really enjoyed the heads he so beautifully drew and then folded into head shapes, sort of like origami -- very beautifully done!

We passed by the gorgeous Disney Concert Hall on our way back, but had no time to go inside.






Terry and I spent the afternoon chatting with his father and Madelaine again, then Madelaine’s nephew, Doug, and his sweetheart came over, and we headed out for another fabulous Italian dinner at Il Moro.

Arriving in LA - 8 Hours Late!

***

We finally arrived in L.A. Union Station around 6:10 p.m., ten minutes after the Hertz Car Rental place was supposed to close -- we had already called them to cancel our (now second) reservation for a car. But what luck! -- as we threaded our way towards the baggage claim, we saw that the Hertz guy was still at the desk helping someone else. Terry dropped his bags and raced over to the counter, and the young man was so very nice to stay and help us get the very last car available at the last possible minute. Then after picking up our bags and spending some time getting directions to the Westwood area, we carried our bags downstairs to pick up our car -- which was completely blocked in by other parked cars! Terry ran back to the Hertz counter, and thank goodness, the guy was still there, and came to help us extricate our car!

It took us awhile to make our way across town to the motel where we had booked a room -- the Stars Inn in the Century City area, just blocks from Terry‘s father‘s place. The Chinese guy who checked us in gave us not the room we thought we had booked for $60.00 a night, but he took it upon himself to move us up to an end room for $90.00 a night. Probably the right thing to do, though, since the rest of the hotel clientele we saw didn’t look too well-heeled or trustworthy…The hotel was very pretty on the outside - beautiful courtyard and bougainvillea growing over the entrance -- but kind of funky on the inside, with ugly mismatched furnishings, though it turned out to be perfectly serviceable and comfortable.

We finally made it to Terry’s father’s an hour late for our dinner reservations, and Madelaine greeted me with many kisses on the lips (!); then they whisked us out to Pastini's, a great little Italian restaurant not too far away, where I had a fantastic seafood and pasta dish, and Terry and I shared the most amazing chocolate souffle dessert. Afterwards we went back to the house to hear his father's stories about Terry as a boy. But we were quite tired, and I had to beg off to go back to the hotel to sleep long before Terry's father was ready to let us go.

West Coast Trip 2007

I have probably never before been quite as prepared for a trip as I managed to get for this one. I was even ready to leave the house before Terry! Well, except that neither one of us had managed to get a wink of sleep since getting up Wednesday morning…

We left the house about 3:15 a.m. to drive to San Antonio to catch the Sunset Limited Amtrak train. We arrived at the train station around 4:45 a.m.

Terry left to park the car in a city lot a few blocks away, at which point, one of the few other waiting passengers let me know the train was going to be delayed -- from a scheduled departure at 5:40 a.m. to the train not even expected to arrive at the station until maybe 8:30a.m.!

The reason? As we heard it at the time, a car had pulled into the path of the train at a crossing, and the train had not been able to prevent colliding with the car -- and there was a fatality. Later in the morning, another waiting passenger said a man had taken his 2 daughters and put the three of them in the path of the train! Suicide, plus killing his children! My, my, that had people talking for quite a while. “How horrifying! How could he do that to his children? And his action inconvenienced hundreds of people waiting for the train and those working on the train!”

Come to find out, hours after hearing this version of the story, the ‘real’ story was that three teenagers had pulled out of traffic waiting at a train crossing, pulled around the gate, and had tried to outrace the train…and they lost. Guess they’d never seen one of those shows on trains explaining how it takes about a mile for the train to stop -- after the engineer sees the obstruction! Even though the engineer did all he could to stop the train, he smashed into their car, which apparently exploded on impact, was dragged 2000 feet, got caught under the engine and burned, and of course, all three kids lost their lives in that single impetuous act.

Back at the station, 8:30 came and went. Then we were told it would be 9:30 when the train would arrive. 9:30 came and went. Then 10:00; then 10:30. Finally, around 11:00 a.m., our train arrived, with a badly scorched, but apparently still functional engine.

Here's a link to the horrific story of the poor teens who tried to beat the train: teens killed.

***

This is the first time I have traveled in a sleeper car in America…well, it’s actually more appropriately called a ‘roommette.’ And it’s great! Though the room is not much larger than a closet (and smaller than most 21st C. walk-in closets), it’s so well-designed and engineered that it works great for two compatible folks. We have comfy seats facing each other, which fold down to make up one of the two beds. The other one is parked above the window in an unobtrusive way, and folds down for either daytime or nighttime sleeping.

The door slides shut and is lockable from the inside, and has a curtain that velcroes together with another curtain on a hallway side window for complete privacy. The room is also equipped with a mirror, folding coat hooks, a couple of hangers on a rod/handle, a couple of shelves that also serve as steps up to the upper berth, a deep well of narrow storage, more storage under each seat, a small fold-out table-top, washcloths, A/C, a 120v plug, room and reading lights, and a little trash bin.

There are also double-size and larger sleepers available, but the cost is a lot more. As of this writing, the small roomette is only slightly more expensive than flying, and if you consider that they feed you three full good meals a day, plus the cost of a hotel room, then really, it’s a great bargain.

Of course, traveling by train is not for folks who are in a huge hurry; though over the last several years, I discovered that flying, while usually faster than a train, is no longer quite the time-saver it used to be, since you have to get to the airport so early to be searched. Airplanes are also frequently delayed - I‘ve been delayed by as much as 27 hours due to bad weather and missed connections. If you happen to be flying standby, flying can take days longer, in those instances when you can’t make it onto the flight you wanted. Often, when we flew standby, whatever money we saved by using buddy passes was offset or even exceeded by extra days of hotel and food costs.

When you add to that how tiny the airplane seats have become, the lack of any amenities, such as food or drinks, the limitations on what and how much of what you are allowed to bring with you, and the rudeness of having to be treated like a potential terrorist every time you fly, traveling by train really starts looking more attractive. And, if you care about the carbon footprint of your mode of travel, then a train is by far the more environmental choice (about 10 times more efficient).

[Here's a great story about traveling by rail in Canada; it sums up a lot of ideas about today's modes of travel pretty well: New Era for Train Travel?]

On a train, you see the land you’re traveling across -- the mountains, deserts, farms, small American towns, and parts of the larger cities….up close and (almost) personal. Traveling by train is actually ‘traveling,’ while flying is more like a very expensive way of getting people from one place to another, with not much of anything but unpleasantness in-between.

On the train, we sometimes share dinner tables with fellow travelers, and everyone we’ve met so far has an interesting story to tell. Some have a lot of interesting stories!

Several people we’ve talked to on this train have just traveled through New Orleans and other parts of the south that had been devastated by Hurricane Katrina 2 years ago. They said that much of the area is still in complete ruins.

One guy went to work in Biloxi, where the money the government has taken from us to use for the post-hurricane rebuilding is being used to build new Casinos, while the people are still living in trailers and have begun to rebuild their houses themselves without the government aid that was promised. Meanwhile, a few blocks away, graveyards that were torn up by the hurricane are still in complete disarray, with the crypts that were broken open and strewn around by the storm still left in the shambles they were in two years ago. This man was so upset seeing the destroyed graveyard every day through the windows of the Casino he was working in, that he quit that job.