Queen of Wands

Making the Makers: Silicon Valley's Maker Faire

What ever happened to making things? Living in a civilized modern society means more is made for you than made by you. An easy and simple life of great leisure can be wonderful, but I do have reservations when thinking about all the creativity and inventiveness lost by letting others make for you. Are we really better off when we rely on others to know and do? True, it's easier to go to Safeway for a loaf of bread rather than growing the ingredients, kneading it into existence and finally, baking it for hours. A lot of work for a bit of toast. But what people forget is the satisfaction in learning a skill and applying it, growing your intelligence and expanding the boundaries of your abilities. I am definitely more proud of myself staring at the misshapen loaf I just baked than opening a plastic bag of pre-cut slices. Fortunately, there are people who get it and they gather together at the annual Maker Faire in San Mateo, California. For a few days, it's a wonderful world of creative effort and wild imagination, fun for all ages, and there are robots, many robots.

The Maker Faire is not just for geeks or those scientifically-minded people who like to make technical gadgets like robots and computerized light shows. There were many exhibits on that, no doubt why the event has been held in the heart of Silicon Valley since it started in 2006. But the large crowds of people who attended were from all walks of life, reflecting the array of people under the "maker" umbrella--crafters, hobbyists, engineers, scientists, techies, artists, developers, musicians, taking advantage of one, two or three dimensions. One exhibit linked various percussion instruments such as bongos and cymbals to a computer that played them as a human would versus playing the sounds they make. Another craft exhibit was a cityscape made out of rolled up masking tape, while the art area was guarded by a massive metal dragon that shot fire. All hand made, all a concept turned into reality in whatever medium pleased the maker.

One of my favorite things about the Maker Faire is that it's about sharing knowledge and experience interactively, different from a science museum where you tend to passively look at exhibits. Children could play with robots in a robot petting zoo and then go buy an assembly kit to make their own robotic zoo animal. A seed is planted, allowed to grow, far better than plunking down in front of the TV. In an exhibit hall, teenage boys and their fathers were transfixed on figuring out how to make a small motherboard of some sort, the surrounding noise hardly distracting their concentration. Walking through the fair among all the people with eager looks of inquisitiveness, I realized watching learning can be as wonderfully uplifting as the actual effort.

The Maker Faire's exhibits also went far beyond toys and art objects to utilitarian applications, such as flooring that uses the energy from your footsteps to generate power and pint-size wooden Tumbleweed Tiny Houses that you can put together yourself and plop down anywhere the desire strikes you. Imagine the flooring concept taken to a city street where streetlights are powered by the pavement you walk on or a house of your own making tied to living within a small sustainable footprint. It's these people who imagine and allow for others to make that move the world forward. And then there are those who are in it for the sheer fun, like the Whiskey Drome guys who created a velodrome for cycling around in circles, just because centrifugal force and gravity working off each other is kinda neat. True, you could not make a velodrome, but why would you not if you had the desire to figure out how to make it? And that therein is the mindset that propelled all I saw at the fair.

Becoming August: Augusten Burroughs and Self Help

Augusten Burroughs is a fellow I like. Not because his name is over-the-top fake (fantastic). Not because he insists on living in New York City (fabulous). Not because he has a brother with Aspberger's and likely a touch of the syndrome himself (intriguing). Not because he survived one of the most screwed-up family upbringings to become a famous writer of memoirs and a wry humorist (remarkable). I tip my hat to Burroughs because he is one of the few people I have encountered in this world who slings no shit and is all about brutal honesty. So it makes perfect sense that his razor-sharp wit is trained on self help in his new book, This is How: Proven Aid in Overcoming Shyness, Molestation, Fatness, Spinsterhood, Grief, Disease, Lushery, Decrepitude & More. For Young and Old Alike. A long title but a short point--bad things do and will continue to happen yet you have the right to move on unabashedly and un-apologetically and you must if you want to truly free yourself from, well, yourself because in the end recovering from anything is all on you. No support group, no therapist, no friends, no family, no animals, no food, no drugs or alcohol, but you. He makes me want to change my name to Augustine Burroughs.

Born as Christopher Robison in 1965, Burroughs grew up in what can only be described as a completely dysfunctional family, a distant drunk father who divorced his deeply mentally ill narcissistic mother, his first gay relationship in his teens with a man twice his age, ultimately left to be adopted by his mother's psychiatrist into yet another screwed up family until he broke free and moved to New York City at 18. His early years are memorialized in his 2002 book, Running with Scissors, which became a 2006 Hollywood movie. The book and the movie are heartbreaking and hilarious, real and yet so unreal in how he remarkably avoided ending up in a psych ward hugging himself with all the insanity around him. He used to shine pennies to relieve the stress and create order because his messy world had no rules, no guidelines, no way to prevent any mistakes by getting some good parental or adult advice. It was all him and only him. Seeing Burroughs in person at a recent book signing in San Francisco helped me see better into his personality. A very lean city Bohemian with a touch of professor, he is as sharp, intelligent and snarky as he is in his books. He read for a bit before taking questions and then dealt with a crazy long line to sign books. I was one of the last people with a book to sign and yet he was oddly un-wilted and sprightly in the hot room, appreciative when he told me he never got tired of people like me discussing how his book had helped them through some tough times. He even made a point to fix a hard stare at me when he said this, startling in a way because often people don't make continued direct eye contact like he did, pupil to pupil. But I took it as he truly meant it, no platitude, no BS. I wanted to say to him as a joke, This Is How You Interact With People, but alas, I thought of it too late.

August is a month. The word is also an adjective meaning to inspire admiration. I would not be surprised, knowing this, that Burroughs chose that word for his name. A small boy wanted to be impressive when he knew he wasn't. And that's the dichotomy of the man who changed his name and then encourages you to live in truth. But his thoughts on the topic of truth are still valid. People prefer to lie to themselves to feel comfortable, not rock the boat, get by, but ultimately to hide, he says. "The truth is humbling, terrifying, and often exhilarating. It blows the doors off the hinges and fills the world with fresh air. This is why your search for the solution to the problems, issues, and obstacles you're dealing with in your own life must begin with your mouth. Specifically, the lies that come out of it." He goes on to encourage you to "wipe that fucking smile off your face," that cheeriness seemingly a societal mandate in America, and "allow yourself to feel whatever it is you feel and not pretend to feel something you don't" as a "prerequisite" to improving your life. In other words, you have permission to be Christopher or Augusten or even better a completely new person forged from honest inner reflection followed by willed transformation into your true accepted self. Then you focus on the now because the past is meant to be left behind and the future is unknown, time is wasted fussing over either in the present, he says. Or as I like to think of it, we have and always will run with scissors, we just have to admit it and find ways to enjoy this odd thrill that is life just right now.

Photos of Everything and Nothing: The May 20 Solar Eclipse

Photography is a weird thing. I knew witnessing the May 20 partial solar eclipse from my apartment in San Francisco that I wasn't going to get a fantastic clear shot or even a good glimpse with my own eye. Too bright, too dangerous to retinas, my camera can only do so much to focus on such a blaring light source. Or so I thought. Below are the photos I took and then tweaked out via a simple photo program. Beautiful, bizarre, better than a simple blue sky with a sun looking like someone took a bite out of it. No explanation why five dots are prominent nor the half moon, which must be a reflection of the eclipse itself. The colors, of course, are due to the fact that the sun as light is all colors, just apparently waiting for someone like me to decide which one should shine through. My favorite is the bottom photo, which looks to me like an alien face looking down on Earth. Somehow appropriate when thinking about how our little moon can occasionally block out a massive star in just one small solar system in a vast mind-boggling universe, one fleeting 10-minute event shown to just a few people like me in the right pathway and then gone. Significant and insignificant at the same time, something worth photographing, however I can.    

Going the Way of Jean Paul Gaultier: De Young Museum Exhibit of Haute Couture

Tu dances avec moi. Je dance avec toi. Nous dansons pour toujours. Dancing doesn't always have to be a physical thing. Sometimes it can be just in your head. Thoughts tap around in response to a cue from someone else's thoughts, like Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly riffing moves with each other as they glide joyously around a room. Tappity, tap, twirl, tappity, turn, TAP and now your turn! That's what I felt like when I visited From the Sidewalk to the Catwalk, the new John Paul Gaultier exhibit at San Francisco's De Young Museum. Gaultier is a renowned French haute couture designer of the most wild imagination. Through his clothes, he invited me to dance to his beat, twirling to this dress and that bustier over to these shoes and onto the headdresses until I was dizzy, really a joyous celebration of what makes very, very expensive clothes so much fun as wearable artwork.   

The last time I went to the De Young was to see an exhibit on English fashion designer Vivienne Westwood, similar in wackiness to Gaultier and just as revered and expensive. This exhibit was far more expansive in terms of showing the work of fashion’s "enfant terrible" who founded his couture house in 1997 but began designing in the early 1970s. The 140 gorgeous designs on display, created from thousands of hours of work and who knows how many pinpricks, exemplify the designer's main theme of gender-bending and androgyny, touches of strong and soft infused into each garment regardless of who is wearing it. He also highlights or exaggerates male or female cues with a cone bra or cod piece, other times covering a body in sheer fabric like lace or mesh so there is no doubt of what sex you are looking at. There are also videos of runway shows, personal photos, his perfumes, and movies for which he designed the costumes. He has done much with his talent. But even more Gaultier than these displays was the choice to have 30 animated mannequins who sing and talk, something I had never seen before, creepy but genius in terms of bringing life to the exhibit in a new, fun and decidely modern way. Even Gaultier is one of these glowing beings, greeting people seductively on the way in with his thick French accent, discussing his history and love of fashion with exaggerated lip and eyebrow movements. It's almost like he's there, albeit with an incredible ability to stand completely still.

Born in 1952, Gaultier is the quintessential older French man, bawdy, quirky and in love with women, a wink and a nod on the ready as he joyously goes through life. So transfixed he is with the female form despite being gay that when he was young he added cone breasts to his teddy bear, something he likes to mention often as the moment when the designer was born. And so it was. Having no formal training, he landed a job as an assistant to Pierre Cardin in 1970 on sketches alone and released his first collection in 1976. He is most associated with the 1990s, having designed Madonna's famous gold cone corset used in her 1990 Blond Ambition tour, exhibited at the De Young show with definite signs of wear and tear by the Material Girl. Gaultier also is known for putting men in kilts and preferring unusual models over the standard waif, basically mixing up what is considered true beauty, all with an impeccable eye for detail and a wide range of inspiration whether it be Judaic culture, mermaids, boudoir, goth, Mongolian, the Eiffel Tower, to name some. He uses all kinds of fabrics and embellishments such as feathers, knits, metal, beads, ribbon, lace. I couldn't imagine after forty years that he hasn't touched every fabric out there, played in every color, all to bring in strength to his women's designs and a softness to his men's designs. Because when we dance together, don't we become one? Oui, c'est vrai.

San Francisco is Bootylicious

I love San Francisco. I always know that, but it's good to be reminded now and then what makes it charmingly odd. Take the other night. My dive bar group went to the Nite Cap in the Tenderloin District, the worst district for crime and drugs but the best for random experiences. And so it went. The night started off fine, $2 PBRs, a bar stool and good company. I had gone to the bar straight from work and didn't have time to eat dinner. Enter the magic when someone taps me on the shoulder and turning around, I see a squat middle-aged Latino guy holding a plastic-wrapped tamale in my face. At this moment really anything could happen, but I hoped for the best and yes, they were for sale for $2, warm and moist with just the right amount of pork, corn and spiciness. A traveling tamale guy selling homemade out of a bucket. So good and so what I needed at that moment. But oh it did get better when a little while later, a black guy jumped in our group suddenly and started to ramble about drawing, ending with how he was going to draw me, just me. Before any of us could say anything, he moved across the bar to a seat where he drew for a good 20 minutes, quickly taking looks at me and madly scribbling away. Oh boy, this should be good and it was. The art with this post is the result, a caricature part reality as my face does look almost like that coupled with apparently a wildly sexual imagination, possibly encouraged by my largish butt. It was a scam of sorts because he asked for money for it but then accepted the $5 I had, well worth all the laughter and jaw drops in the (mostly male) group at the finished product. It now hangs over my desk at home, a priceless memory of what venturing out in San Francisco can get you--yummy tamales and one bootyliciousness story to tell for less than $10. 

Wild Beauty: Peacocks and the Aesthetic Art Movement

I think it would be difficult to be a peacock. Here I am with a mass of beautiful feathers and I can't look at the show I put on for my demure brownish pea hen mate. Since I don't understand mirrors, I would never get a really good look at my iridescent plummage, that vivid green, blue, gold silky halo always just out of sight. But I would take solace in knowing I was the most arty of all birds, admired and depicted in cultures around the world, the unofficial mascot of the gorgeous Aesthetic art movement of the mid- to late 19th century. Sigh. A rough life but I would flap my spray and bear it.
The Aesthetic Movement's use of peacockery is on full display at the San Francisco Legion of Honor's latest exhibit, The Cult of Beauty: The Victorian Avant Garde 1860-1900.  Running until June, it's the first major exhibition to explore the unconventional creativity of the British Aesthetic Movement, tracing its evolution from a small circle of progressive artists and poets to its broad impact on fashion and the middle-class home. The exhibit is simply to die for, every piece of furniture and every painting I wanted to own, so utterly unique and taken over by use of strong colors, decadent gilding and such detailed etchings of flora and fauna, all touched with Asian influences. My favorite in the collection is the Pavonia painting done by Lord Frederick Leighton around 1858. The size of the piece is not that big, but it packs a visual punch with the spray of peacock feathers and the come-hither look of the woman, just gorgeous and lush, a touch of medevial reference with the modern update for which this art movement is known. It amazed me to think this was done just before the Civil War era in America, when beauty was the last thing on people's minds. But then again, this was a British movement focused on the natural world and not politics or social commentary, exported to America after the war was a memory. Apparently, an ocean of space from death and destruction can make a real difference on style and taste.
One of the most famous examples of the Aesthetic Movement and its love of peacocks is the aptly-named Harmony in Blue and Gold: The Peacock Room, which was once the dining room in the London home of Frederick Leyland. It was originally designed by Thomas Jeckyll in the 1870s to display the wealthy British shipowner's prized collection of Chinese porcelain, hence the lattice of faux bamboo shelving. James McNeill Whistler's painting, La Princesse du Pays de la Porcelaine (The Princess from the Land of Porcelain), is located above the fireplace. Whistler also came into play about what to color the room, adding yellow rather than red highlights on the walls to complement his painting. The artist also added a wave pattern to the cornice and wainscotting and used gold leaf with over-glazing for a shiny brilliant effect. The room was bought from the Leyland family in 1904 and transported to Detroit of all places by Charles Lang Freer, an American railroad car magnate (1854-1919) in love with the Aesthetic Movement. He filled the shelves with over 250 ceramics he had acquired from Egypt, Iran, Japan, China, and Korea. It is currently on show at the Smithsonian's Freer Gallery in Washington D.C., which has a wonderfuly panoramic video of the Anglo-Japanese styled room. Would it be too much to ask IKEA to come up with a Peacock Room set so I could do my apartment like this? Ah, one can dream and until then, I can simply play the video over and over until I start to get dizzy from all the color.
While the Aesthetic Movement is over a century gone, the design lovers remain out there thankfully. Take Bay Area-based wallpaper design firm Bradbury and Bradbury. Started in 1979, the company specializes in reproductions of historic patterns from the late 19th century, including the Arts and Crafts and Aesthetic periods with designs similar to those of William Morris, a renowned English textile and wallpaper designer. While not cheap, the designs copy Morris' aesthetic, handdrawn with a focus on the use of flat lines and color. They can appear like a tapestry in the medevial subject matter but differ in their use of the more realistic three dimensions. I could see touches of Morris' Strawberry Thief fabric from 1883 and his Evenlode chintz fabric from 1883, designs shown at his own gallery in England. Cranes, sparrows and swans but alas no peacocks at Bradbury and Bradbury. A good thing because after all, as the peacock shows, art can be beautiful, but it can never be a replacement for the real thing.

Miniature Magic Making at Smallsea

Busy, busy, busy. Little children peeking at sweets, glamourous women checking out hats and jewelry, a young couple getting married in a cathedral, rowdy men watching a burlesque show, drunken men enjoying a pint, a photographer taking pictures of a young woman and her daughter, mustachio'd men discussing world travels. This is Smallsea, a bustling Edwardian metropolis that is home to over 1,500 people and 45 buildings--and all of it fits into just two small rooms. How? Because this magical world circa 1900 exists in 1:12 scale miniature, with a tea cup the size of your finger tip, the people able to sit in the palm of your hand and the buildings barely up to your knee.

Located in Carmel, California, Smallsea is the passion of a wonderfully nice woman named Diane Birnberg who has been collecting since 1996 after a trip to a London dollhouse shop lit the fire of her miniature interest. Hooked from the get-go, she collects from artists around the world, while her husband helps make the buildings she designs. She also happens to have three little cute terriers because once you go mini, you stay in mini. Walking around Smallsea, I could see Diane's deep love of miniatures, not only in the mind-boggling scope of what she has collected but in how she has thought up so many different scenes and meticulously added just the right accessories to make it all so realistic. She told me she loves collecting the accessories more than furniture, like a person scouting flea markets to find that one-of-kind thing. No wonder Diane admits she only sells a few pieces from her collection here and there but would rather hold onto an odd piece until she can fit it somewhere. Such is mini mania.

And I would know since I share Diane's deep love of 1:12 miniatures. It began for me when my paternal grandmother bought me a simple four-room wooden house in the early 1980s. She lived on Cape Cod in Massachusetts where I would visit dollhouse shops with her and pick out a piece or two when I visited in the summer. I loved it so much that my father built a three-story Real Good Toys Batrie Newport house for me, letting me pick out the light yellow color and wallpaper. My early collection of furniture and accessories consisted mainly of cheap pieces peppered with some wonderful artisan minis--a black lacquer rocking chair with gold fruit, a black dining set painted with Chinese accents, a light green chest painted with fishes, pottery pitchers and bowls. Over 25 years later, I still have all of them in mint condition, amazing really but I was that kid who could handle fragile things, happy just to look quietly at colors and designs. I remember lovingly arranging each room and handwashing the plates or waxing the wood against dust. Then high school hit and I forgot all about it until just before my mother passed away in 2007. Near my parent's condo in Massachusetts was a dollhouse shop, catching my eye one day on a break from visiting. Reminding me of my childhood and new creative possibilities now that I had money to invest, my love of minis awoke from its hibernation with a vengeance. I started with collecting a few simples pieces like a plaid couch and a toby mug, then moved to restoring my old dollhouse, followed by rehabing another used house and finally, building my own houses.

I have made five dollhouses so far, all Vermont-made Real Good Toys models because they are top quality, not unbreakable but certainly sturdy plywood. I design them around themes so I have a red and blue antique store for my Asian minis, a green peacock-colored antique store, a brown and raspberry international school yet done inside, a red and brown gentleman's club for my Egyptian, Native American and ethnic minis, and a blue and purple art gallery where I display my collection of mini paintings. Some I played with stucco, others with shingles, some with tiling and wooden floors, others get a faux sky ceiling or stained glass treatment, with my color choices more on the jewel or dirty side, wherever my creativity feels like taking me. The most fun part of construction for me is picking out the wallpaper since there are some amazing designs out there, with my favorite being Spain's Les Chinoiseries, which specializes in historic and sophisticated reproduction prints with new designs issued each season. One fellow builder I love is Robin Carey who does amazing houses with this wallpaper. I was so enamored with Robin's skills that I bought a Tudor-style cottage from her so I could study her work. And that's how I taught myself, looking closely at what other dollhouse builders like Diane and Robin do and mimicking them until I was confident enough to add my own twist.

Besides letting creativity go into high gear, dollhouse building teaches patience and planning. Kits are not for the faint of heart, so many pieces and so many steps to take in sequential order to get it done right. Mistakes can be made, but they can be costly--badly applied wallpaper can peel, badly connected electric tape can mean only half the house lights, crooked wood can mean two walls won't join together, something cement glued won't come off. Over the years, I have had many moments of wanting to bang my head against the wall in frustration, soon followed by smiling deliriously because I found a way to resolve a problem. And like clockwork, the roller coaster ride ends with a deep sense of pride in the weeks and weeks of effort that went into creating my own beautiful mini world. It's no longer child's play, but it sure is still fun.

Seeing the Dragon: Chinese New Year in San Francisco

The Lunar New Year is a big deal in San Francisco. Every year there's a parade around the city's Chinatown district and Union Square with thousands lined up at night fall to watch the gloriously colored floats pass by, themed after one of the 12 Chinese Zodiac animals. 2012 is the year of the dragon so the parade's centerpiece will be a 250-foot handcrafted golden dragon puppet carried by more than 100 people who ensure its head bobs up and down and its tail swishes. With the new year officially starting on January 23, the city decided to display the dragon at 1 Kearny Street until it will be used in the February 11 parade. I was excited to see it up close so I could take some detailed pictures since that's nearly impossible during the mass chaos of the parade. But my excitement quickly deflated when I found the location and realized the puppet was inexplicably put behind dirty glass. Adding in the glare from the paned glass, I had to squint up close just to see it, packed into a small space that really didn't do justice to its size. But then a thought entered my mind. Take photos regardless and see what appears, tweak them when you get home, there's something beautiful here even though there will be no perfect shot. And sure enough, my photos turned out a little odd with the reflections, but I liked them, full of manic color detailing the little shiny bits added for effect, the massive head hovering in the shot quite still but somehow very alive. The photos showed me not to presume you can't turn things around. You can see the beauty if you want to see it. Indeed, good thoughts to start the new year.

Besides the dragon, the Chinese zodiac animals include the rabbit, rooster, rat, dog, monkey, horse, ox, snake, goat, pig, and my favorite because it's my sign, the passionate and unpredictable, generous and impatient tiger. Covering such years as 1976, 1988, and 2000, the year of the dragon is considered the luckiest of all years and will reflect the mystical animal's intense power.  So auspicious is the sign, Chinese mothers hope to have a dragon year child. Chinese astrology also factors in five elements--water, earth, fire, wood and metal--that cycle every five years and temper the personality of the sign. 2012 is a Water Dragon year, which comes every 60 years and reflects optimism and growth with a calming effect on the sign's fearless nature.  Basically, it should be a helluva year. As I was walking home to my apartment, I passed a graffitied wall appropriately festooned with the Chinese zodiac animals, reminding me to "love your city." Indeed I do because I choose to see it as beautiful, whether dirty or clean. Happy New Year!

Devil's View: The Bay Area's Mount Diablo

I was stuck. I had climbed the rock at Mount Diablo about 30 miles outside San Francisco for a photo opportunity, stepping in a small hole and resting my feet on a thin ledge, all excited about the fresh air and sun. I hadn't realized, however, that I had put myself in a position so that I couldn't turn around without losing my footing and toppling down a good eight feet to a craggy area below, maybe breaking an ankle, maybe smashing my head, certainly scratching myself on the sandstone. My body felt the danger before my brain did, with a touch of panic hitting me as I moved myself slightly to pose for the shot. How appropriate that I was in a devil of a situation in a park named after the devil. Now what to do? My first thoughts were on moving this or that way, none of which would help me avoid falling. I realized with a sigh that I needed help, something relatively foreign to an independent person like myself, raised to do for yourself as a hearty New Englander. But sometimes we have to ask for help and have faith that the goodness of the world will respond. And so it did that day in the form of the woman taking my photo, a mother appropriately, who agreed to hold my legs as I maneuvered myself safely off the rock, an angel in the park of the devil.

A beautiful moment at a beautiful place. Mount Diablo is a must-go for people who want to see the Bay Area, literally all of the Bay Area, laid out like a brownish yellow and dark green quilt. At a relatively diminutive elevation of 3,849 feet, the peak offers a 360-degree view, including the Golden Gate Bridge and downtown San Francisco at sea level, south to Mount Loma Prieta in the Santa Cruz Mountains at 3,791 feet, north to Mount Saint Helena in the Coast Range at 4,344 feet, still farther north to Mount Lassen in the Cascades at 10,466 feet and finally, to the east the crest of the Sierra Nevada mountains. Over 40,000 square miles can be seen, a seemingly endless view of almost 200 miles on a good day. Visitors can drive up to Summit Peak where a small parking lot is ringed by viewing platforms and a small museum built in the 1930s that details the geologic history of Mount Diablo and the wildlife that is there. Created in 1921, Mount Diablo state park is beloved by the locals with scads of hikers, picnickers and mountain bikers enjoying what was once a volcanic island jutting up out of the ocean millions of years ago. Created from the uplift of teutonic plates that cause the Bay Area's famous earthquakes, the mountain still grows from three to five millimeters each year. Next time I go to climb rocks at Diablo, I'll make sure to keep that in mind.

But To Be Free: Monarch Butterflies Wintering in Pacific Grove

Traveling is about the journey, people like to say, but it is also about the destination, really about the complete cycle of going to and coming from with everything experienced along the way. So it is for the Monarch, the beautiful North American butterfly that appears en masse  every year to the eucalyptus trees on California's Central Coast. In the Monarch Grove Sanctuary in Pacific Grove near Monterey, they hug the mossy branches of the trees in massive clusters, looking like dead leaves until hit by the sun, when they open their wings and flash some orange brilliance, some taking flight for a minute or two once warm. Monarchs (danaus plexippus) rightfully enjoy their rest after starting in August a migration of thousands of miles to escape freezing winter temperatures in the Rocky Mountains. This species is like others that seasonally travel with one big exception--the butterflies resting peacefully in Pacific Grove aren't the ones that wintered there the year before. Rather, these butterflies are special, the ones who travel the farthest and live the longest at 6-9 months, compared to the spring and summer generations that typically live less than two months as they travel back to the Rockies. Several generations are born before the winter migrating ones begin their journey in late summer.

Nobody knows how Monarch butterflies know where earlier generations rested for the winter, possibly sun positioning or a magnetic pull, always surprising each year when they appear in the thousands in their orange and black finery, loving the micro-climate of fog and wind protection in the trees as they rest from November through February. How they survive traveling all that distance is helped along by their love of milkweed, a plant poisonous to birds and other predators. Otherwise, the Monarch's success in migration is close to a miracle given how fragile they are. It would be interesting to tag one of the butterflies like scientists do with whales or the like to see where it goes on its journey, what it sees and experiences, the full cycle of their existence for a brief time on Earth. Maybe along the way we would understand how these fragile things know where to return. For now, we'll have to just wait and appreciate the flittering masses when they arrive next November.

Go Nuts for Donuts!: The Bay Area's Psycho Donuts

Plain donuts. For some a perfect accompaniment with a cup of coffee in the morning, for those at Psycho Donuts with locations in San Jose and Cupertino, California, merely a canvas for some whacked out creativity and I do mean whacked. Take the Dead Elvis donut with bananas, bacon, peanut butter and jelly, Cereal Killer with Cap'n Crunchberries on top, the Headbanger with head trauma in the form of raspberry jelly, or the Jasonut with a powdered sugar hockey mask of Friday the 13th's Jason on top of a chocolate cake. Then there are what I like to call the "normies" or the donuts with more identifiable names like the Rocky Road complete with peanuts and mini marshmallows, the Key Lime Pie with graham cracker crumbs and lime glaze, and the Feng Shui with green tea icing and chunks of dark chocolate. As if this diverse collection wasn't enough, Psycho Donuts takes it to a new level over that old standby Dunkin' Donuts by offering a 14-inch donut pizza with four of your favorite toppings.
Psycho Donuts is simply heaven for those like me who love donuts and more so, seeing creative minds at work that is really play by paying a mere $2 a piece for that pleasure. It also doesn't hurt that I grew up in America during the 1980s when sugar was considered a food group so these meet my nutritional requirements as I understand them. I can get just about one of Psycho Donuts' creations down before I start to feel diabetes set in. Alright, two and then two more later in the day--the bacon and maple glazed Canadian Morning Squeal Meal followed by Grandma's Revenge in the form of a dead reindeer stuffed with raspberry and then the S'mores and Mellow Submarine with Rice Krispy treats on it. But it's the holiday times right now so I had to go for it or dare I say, go nuts for them donuts. Feel free to take me away to the psych ward at any time.

Grandly Done Staircase: The 16th Avenue Mosaic Project

I like to go up. There's something about ascent that is so much more appealing than descent. Think of  a staircase, so much harder but more rewarding to climb up and reach a peak than clomp your way down unchallenged to a thud at the bottom. It's possibly why we say people move up when they succeed and fall down when they fail, why heaven is above and hell is below, so we have no question about what direction we need to go. In the far-flung Sunset District of San Francisco at Moraga Street between 15th and 16th Avenues, there is a great staircase that rewards you for taking the effort to go up and see what's there.

With the idea started in 2003, the 16th Avenue Tiled Steps Project finished in 2005 was an effort to cover the staircase's 163 steps with mosaic tiles, using inspiration from the Santa Teresa steps in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil and the effort of hundreds of neighbors who chipped in money and tile-cracking time. The colorful scenes start with oceans full of fishes and seaweed flowing in currents, progressing up to the moon and the sun, mimicking the scene behind as you look from the Pacific Ocean to the western horizon. So many tiles cut and placed just so, absolutely beautiful shimmering in the sun. There was real love put into this project, so typical of San Franciscans who love to beautify mundane, hidden-away things for the fun and pleasure of it.

The steps lead up to the petite Grand View Park, aptly named because it provides 360-degree views of San Francisco, including the wide expanse of the Pacific Ocean, the Marin Headlands with the rust orange Golden Gate Bridge and the downtown of the city. I literally could see for miles on the cloudless sunny day I went, albeit wildly wind swept atop the one-acre park in a grove of Monterey cypress about 650 feet above sea level. The smell was fantastic, clean and clear. Completely worth the tough climb up the 16th Avenue steps but isn't that always the case?

Descubrimiento del Artista: San Francisco's Diego Rivera Mural

Mexican artist Diego Rivera was not someone who did anything small. A decidely portly man with a lust for women and a loud voice for communism and atheism, he was world renowned for his often controversial political murals by the time of his death at age 70 in 1957. He was an artist from the start, educated at schools in Mexico and Europe followed by a productive career as a muralist and a tumultuous relationship with fellow painter Frida Kahlo, who married Rivera twice, first at just age 22 to Rivera's 42. His work now hangs in major museums such as the National Gallery in Washington D.C. and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, among a long global list of protected locations.   



So it is odd in a way that you can see a major work by Rivera in a decidely non-museum setting--the City College of San Francisco--where one of his murals hangs in a theater tucked away on its Ocean Avenue campus. Entitled "The Marriage of the Artistic Expression of the North and of the South on this Continent," Rivera's mural was created for the 1940 season of the Golden Gate International Exposition for which prominent artists of the day were asked to demonstrate their craft to the public. With the help of assistants, Rivera took six months to finish it in December of that year. After the end of the exposition, it was stored until 1961 when it was installed in the theater. Covering almost 1,800 square feet, the mural consists of ten steel frames put together, with the two lower panels on the left and right being individual scenes and the top five panels making up one continuous scene. Each scene is full of colorful imagery, depicting such people as Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, Adolph Hitler, Frank Lloyd Wright and even Rivera himself and Kahlo. People all over the mural are shown doing an array of activities such as gold mining, carving totems, sewing samplers, worshipping old Mayan gods, swimming, and fighting war. Taken together, Rivera's intent was to convey the similarity between the artistic impulse of pre-Colombian Mexicans with the technological innovation of the modern industrial era, uniting these societies as well as making a clear political statement about his dislike of U.S. reluctance at the time to enter World War II.     



Almost encompassed by the massive mural in such a tight space, I was taken by Rivera's creativity in the images he portrayed, sometimes literal but often symbolic, his rendering simply done with eye-catching colors. I almost expected to find Waldo tucked into a scene somewhere, how closely I looked at each corner. But really it is a mural best appreciated from afar, some say the equal distance of its width. Hopefully sometime in the future, it will be put in a space for this kind of appreciation, for now one of those little wonderful hidden places in San Francisco.

Westward Ho: The Early Years of Mark Twain in Virginia City, Nevada

Manifest Destiny, whatever happened to you? Gone the way of the dodo, extinct for a century now that we no longer have any undiscovered places to explore in America. It's all been found, all been turned into a town, a city, a farm, a park, a tourist attraction. We can all go, but we aren't the first or the last. It definitely takes some of the thrill out, leaving me to imagine what it must have been like back in the 19th century when people really had no idea what was over the horizon, whether it was good or bad, but they packed up anyways and headed due West. Only some people experienced glory back then, but all of them had guts. Samuel Clemens, or Mark Twain as he's more commonly known, lived his life in these heady times and may have said it best about his generation: "Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover."

And so Mark Twain did. Born in 1835 in Missouri, it didn't take him long to head out into the world. After spending his early teens as a typesetter and occasional writer for a local newspaper owned by his brother, the famous author of such tales as Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer set out at 18 to New York City and other cities back East to work as a printer before heading in the 1860s to Virginia City, Nevada, a bustling mining town near Reno. After failing as a miner, he worked as a reporter for the local newspaper, the Territorial Enterprise, where he first used his pen name in 1863. He used his knowledge of the locals to write "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County," the highly popular story of the perils of betting and bragging that broke him nationally in 1865, and thus began his famous upward trajectory to become one of America's most read and beloved novelists. Although he subsequently moved back East and died in the decidedly settled state of Connecticut in 1910, Twain retained in his writing a sense of the Wild West, with his trademark humor well intact as well as the journalist's underlying commentary on society. He wouldn't have been able to become an American icon had he not taken that first step west as a chronicler of the times.

As Twain left for bigger fortune, so did many in Virginia City, Nevada, which caved in as the massive Comstock Lode silver ran out in the late 1800s after millions of dollars were earned from the rocky mountainous area. Nowadays at 1,000 residents from its peak of over 30,000, the petite town is a tourist attraction with barely standing original buildings housing tacky souvenir shops and divey bars with mini casinos, a quirky little museum of mining history, and a rundown 1860 mansion owned by "King of the Comstock" John Mackay that has an alarm system to protect all the solid silver lighting fixtures. Oh, how the mighty have fallen here. The upside is that the brick Territorial Enterprise building is still there, well beaten and home to inexplicably a shop full of tacky dolls. The cavernous cool basement, however, was wisely preserved as a museum of the old printing presses used by the newspaper. A massive, thoroughly abused wood desk sits in a corner, boasting that this is where Twain wrote his stories. Whether or not that is true didn't really matter because it was just entertaining to imagine the energy of the news room back then, with major ore discoveries being reported, millionaires riding into town, outlaws shooting each other, people from all over the world flocking to Nevada to reinvent themselves. As a reporter like Twain, I could imagine this being a fantastic time to work in news, the dawning of a new time in American history, where destiny was truly manifesting itself, every day around you in so many ways. Such excitement in knowing something was out there in the distance, waiting for you to come and meet it.

Dance With Me: The Bliss Dance Statue on Treasure Island

I'm not a dancer. There's just something about the way I hear music that I can't keep a beat for any extended period of time. Fast or slow music, my brain spins out of concentration, a whirling dervish coming to a graceless dead stop of uncertainty. Damn, I think, and in the middle of a dance floor.  But that's not to say I don't appreciate people who can dance and the ability to turn your body into beautiful freedom.  The greatest artwork captures that sense of movement and so it is with a 40-foot statue of a naked woman ecstatically dancing on the windy Treasure Island in San Francisco Bay.

Called "Bliss Dance", the statue was created originally by sculptor Marco Cochrane for Burning Man, which for those few in a cave who have never heard of it is a massive hedonistic festival in the Nevada desert. It's an annual event beloved by San Franciscans who go to dance to thumping tunes despite the heat and sand, all day and night until they are told to go home, always reluctantly. Instead of the statue just being rolled out every August for that event, the genius idea was created to install it from May-October 2011 on Treasure Island, allowing her to dance in full site of the Golden Gate Bridge, the East Bay Bridge and downtown San Francisco. People can walk right up to her 7,000-pound form, made up of 55,000 individual welds and comprised of geodesic struts covered with stainless steel mesh. The statue shimmers in the sun and 1,000 LEDs transform her at night into a revolution of colors manipulated by mobile app. In short, she is stunning and not because she's naked, as would be the obvious conclusion for those a touch shocked by her boldness. Getting beyond the prudish giggle of public nudity, she is the epitome of someone in the moment, truly blissful and free. San Francisco's mayor is considering keeping Bliss Dance permanently on Treasure Island to underscore the need to support the city's artists and to have more public art. I hope so if only to encourage more from Cochrane. At the unveiling ceremony, he quipped, "Follow your bliss and it will open doors where you didn't know doors existed.”  Absolutely true, making me even more excited to see his next work, another statue called "Truth and Beauty" which will again be a nude woman but this time stretching her arms 55 feet into the sky, following her bliss to her own beat no doubt. 

Peaceful Eruption: The Blue Glass of Crater Lake

Nature can be so quiet. It's remarkable really given all of what is happening out there. Looking across the 20-square mile expanse that is Crater Lake in south-central Oregon, I almost thought I had gone deaf. No birds, no lapping of waves, no rocks rattling down, nothing but an occasional soft whoosh of a breeze as I stared at the stunning turquoise-blue water and circle of steep craggy 1,000-foot walls. My god, I wondered, why do I live in a city? Why have I learned to tolerate ambulances, people partying, homeless people screaming, horns honking, music blaring from my neighbor? Why would I do this when I could sit here and listen instead for absolutely nothing to hit my ears? I could feel my brain reset into a relaxed mode, allowing me to only process this jaw-droppingly beautiful vista. I refused to anticipate the next noisy interruption. I was at peace, oddly enough at a place formed from total very loud destruction.
The deepest lake on average in the Western Hemisphere at 1,148 feet and the third deepest in the world, Crater Lake is a caldera lake, formed by the explosion of the volcano Mount Mazama a mere 8,000 years ago. Since then, rain and snow melt has been filling it up at an elevation of around 8,000 feet above sea level. Hard to miss yet hidden in many ways by the surrounding dense forests, the natural wonder wasn't known outside of Native American culture until 1853 when gold prospectors discovered it. One can only imagine what they thought when they topped the rim, but apparently the gobsmacking effect didn't take root in someone until William Gladstone Steel, who successfully petitioned U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt to turn it into a national park in 1902. Perched on the rim is the 71-room wood-and-rock Crater Lake Lodge finished in 1915. The only hotel on the crater and one of two lodges in the entire park, I had the immense good fortune to stay there and see the sunset color rocks purple and red and the even more impressive sunrise create a rainbow effect along a mountain ridge. The lodge, now renovated with a swanky dining room but retaining its rustic flair with a grand stone fireplace, was followed by the Rim Drive in 1918, allowing people to drive around almost the entire lake so closely to steep drops that it's a touch nerve-wracking if not exhilarating. Signs caution people to stay well away from the edge lest they want to take a very rocky ride down the longest slide ever, so steep and high up that it gave me a sense of vertigo.
As if the view wasn't magical enough to remind you of how fantastic nature is, I had the pleasure as I meandered along the rim to find the little things tucked away, little moments when activity picked up, just for a brief moment in all that quiet. Amid all the scratchy pumice stones scattered about, these remarkable petite purple flowers with the most delicate fuzzy leaves somehow found enough from the parched earth to grow. Chubby baby chipmunks ventured out of a hole, only to freeze in terror being out in the huge world, double-thinking the idea of leaving their mother. And finally, one of the most bizarre moments I have ever had traveling, a dustdevil spun into life just a few feet from me, yawned up about 30 feet in the air, hovering in a rotation as it looked like it touched the sun. Flecks of sand hit my face it was so close, and then it was gone with a snap of sand scattering. It happened so fast I could barely back up and snap a photo as it circled in front of me, not moving across the area as I had seen dust devils in Death Valley do. Right moment at the right time, something tells me I would have missed it in the city, making me wonder what else I miss when I choose not to listen, look and learn.

Meant to Be Bodie: Old Abandoned Mining Town in the High California Sierras

 Some things are just not meant to be. It's a sad truth. Things come and go, live and die, rise up and fall down, a blip on the screen of the great universe. So it can be said of Bodie, California, a ghost town nestled in the Sierra Nevada mountains at about 8,300 feet. The town was for a moment a bustling mining center where Waterman S. Body found gold in 1859 and by 1879 a total of $15 million had been pulled out of the surrounding hills. He had come with many others during the Gold Rush, fanning out en masse across the stark high desert after the massively successful Comstock Lode was discovered nearby in Virginia City, Nevada. From one man, Bodie grew into a bustling town of 10,000 people, complete with a long main street, endless brothels and saloons, a church, a school and an area for all the Chinese immigrant workers to live. Stifling summers, freezing winters, middle of nowhere, the town was known far and wide as lawless, wicked and plain deadly. Either the mine, the men or the weather would get you. But it was apparently worth all this hardship to just to hold a golden nugget in your hand, confirming the American Dream that you could truly come from nothin' to somethin'.   
What destroyed Bodie in the end was what created it--gold. When the local mines stopped giving out, the town collapsed on itself like a dying star, with the population by 1910 at around 700 people and the last official breathe in 1942 when the post office closed. In 1962, the town became a California historic park, with its buildings kept standing all these years by a maintenance regime of "arrested decay," meaning things are allowed to weather but are propped up with boards or replaced with old wood and nails to ensure people can get a feel of how J.S. Cain lived at the corner of Green and Park Streets. There are not many buildings left in Bodie after fires took out many in the early 1900s but what is left shows a sense of decorum and civilization, with tidy construction of butterscotch-colored nicely cut wood. Inside, various pieces of furniture like a bed or a pool table are left, barely upright and almost dust yet still reminders that there was much life here at one time. It's a creepy place made more so by the dead quiet of the little valley. Nobody is home, nobody is here, but the buildings continue to silently hold watch in hopes one day someone might come back and make that damn bed.  
Just up the hill from downtown is Bodie's cemetery, home of around 80 souls who found their final resting place here. Some are young, some are old, some were born in Bodie and many more came from all over the country and even the world, their stories untold from the headstones other than a few simple details about being a wife, a beloved child, a New Yorker. The place isn't particularly unique for cemeteries, no fancy marble monuments, many above ground due to the hard rock below, and some markers long past seeing the names etched on them. However simple, they're nevertheless a reminder of time passing just as the houses are, of what was and wasn't meant to be for very long. But then again, it could be said that they are a testament to the American spirit that spurred people to settle these rough, hard-biting places on confidence sprinkled with can-do optimism, a bit of California and the golden dream of possibilities that still rests in people's spirits out here. Bodie wasn't meant to be but what is a place really if not the spirit of the people who create it, something far more endless and lasting than an old shoe.

Silky Sea Sausages: Harbor Seals of California

California is one of those magical places where you're often reminded of how diverse and beautiful the natural world is if you just look ever so slightly to your left and right. I was reminded of this when I visited Fitzgerald's Marine Reserve in Moss Beach, just south along Highway One from San Francisco. It's a tiny beach of just a few miles, carved out of rough slate hillside slammed by the great Pacific Ocean. Unlike most beaches made for laying out in the sun, Fitzgerald is about checking out marine pools to spy sea urchins, starfishs and sea anemones.

The sunny July weekend I visited, the Fitzgerald Reserve was at high tide, leaving an ever-shrinking beach swept by winds and the marine pools I was hoping to check out well under water. I had expected to sit for a bit and move on until I saw a park ranger standing next to a bunch of cones blocking off a good bit of the beach. The woman was keeping away the public while patiently watching a group of California harbor seals which had beached with their pups. From a distance, the group looked like a bunch of silky sausages until a head would pop up, stare towards the group of photographers, and go back to bed with a jiggle. Occasionally, a pup would venture into the water and swim about, curiously floating in the waves and watching the goings on. Cute little blubber balls protected from the Great White sharks off the coast by the sharp marine rocks that in low tide make up the tidal pools.

 While harbor seals are fairly common around the globe and number in the millions, the California subspecies is just tens of thousands up and down the state's coastline. They have their babies between April and May, meaning the pups I saw were past getting fed their mother's rich milk and had graduated to the herring, anchovy, and other small fish in the area. They still liked to stay close to momma, however, while they ballooned up to the hundreds of pounds they would reach as an adult. While I watched the seals bask in the sun, I wondered how long the park ranger would stand and watch these seals do their thing. While one may say a boring task, I couldn't imagine a better job, getting to observe the natural world that we often forget to stop and appreciate. I will remember this moment at the Fitzgerald Reserve when I stare at a computer screen in my cubicle and wonder why the heck I didn't opt for a career as a park ranger.

Papier a la Mode: The Costumery of Isabelle de Borchgrave

I have never thought of paper really as anything more than a way to convey the written word. Maybe also wrapping things in when I move. That is until I visited Isabelle de Borchgrave's Pulp Fashion exhibit at the Legion of Honor museum in San Francisco. First and foremost, the title doesn't do Borchgrave justice nor did I do her any in thinking so little of paper. An astounding, jaw-dropping master artist in recreating historic couture out of just paper, simple acrylic paint, some wire, photos of period artwork and a serious desire to create patiently.

The Belgium-born Borchgrave realized in the 1970s that she had a penchant for patterns and design and began to handpaint clothing. But it struck her while visiting New York City in the 1990s to take her skills in a truly unique direction by creating paper clothing collections that span the bejeweled dresses of Elizabethan times all the way to the much quieter suits of Coco Chanel. For the Legion of Honor exhibit, she chose two artworks in the museum and copied the dresses, the best being a peasant girl in a fantastically-detailed vest, a bright red apron and a rooster with each feather carefully painted. The show also included dresses made a few years back, including her Medici line of royal women each wearing volumes of what appeared trompe l'oeil to be satin, lace and velvet, covered in vibrant jewelry befitting the golden riche style of the 16th and 17th Renaissance centuries.

Looking at Borchgrave's work up close, I was stunned by the meticulous detail, down to the intricate and handcut lace around necks, the velveteen treatment or an old gold buckle created from different translucent paper, the perfect pleat, tuck or drape. All this attention made the overall look from afar even more impressive when I realized the amount of concentrated work that must have gone into these women. I could also see up close Borchgrave's freer artistic spirit with the coloring and patterning, brush strokes not quite exact but still perfectly mimicking a satin print over an embroidery design. While I simply appreciate the work of this very special artist, I also tip my hat to Borchgrave for allowing me the rare opportunity to see into the opulent lives of these women and children in three dimensions, what it was like to be encased in volumes of fabric, unable to sit not to mention move much, expressing your power in cloth form punctuated with colorful personalized emblems like crosses. Very interesting times, very interesting clothing and a very interesting lady. 

Big Wheels Keep on Turnin': Bring Your Own Big Wheel in San Francisco

One of the secrets to happiness, they say, is to stay young at heart. San Franciscans believe this wholeheartedly, with so many events that would be only for kids to enjoy in other places created by adults for adults. It is a city in love with the joie de vivre that is youth. Take for example a brilliant idea born a decade ago to close a city street for five hours and ride Big Wheels down it, just for the giggle of it, the Indy 500 of Toys R Us solely for the parents. Watching from a hay bale on the sideline of the Bring Your Own Big Wheel event on a sunny day, I alternated between laughing hysterically and cursing the gods that I didn't bring my own cheapo plastic hell on wheels. 

The free BYOBW event is held on Vermont Street at 20th Street in the sleepy residential Potrero District. The street is like San Francisco's famous Lombard Street but tucked away and with sharper curves, running for about a quarter mile. Groups of bikers line up at top and they send heats of people down, gaining such speed that falling off or crashing into a hay bale is almost a guarantee, not to mention getting read-ended, front-ended and side-ended. And those are the lucky few, with most popping a wheel off or ripping off a bottom, forcing a run down the slope with the beaten bike to great cheers. And on and on it goes all day, the riders never getting enough. According to the event's website, they don't promote it to avoid massive crowds, having been booted off of Lombard in 2008 due to the sheer quantity of people who would show up, choking the tourist attraction to the chagrin of its high-brow residents. Even without this promotion,Vermont was packed with spectators and over 100 riders at least, most dressed up like it was Halloween, many with well-worn and arty rides, all having fun and hoping to enter warp speed without biting it on a curve. Riding Big Wheels down a hill was the brainchild of Jon Brumit, not because he had a kid with a need for speed. He just had an idea and the support of a city and its young at heart people who wanted to keep it going. It was a call out to those like him, which included even my 40ish landlord who was the one who told me about the event (he's in the top picture with the owl on his shirt). If he was going, I had to go, lest I be old at heart, perish the thought.