This mural off the corner of 8th and Howard – Labyrinth Habitat — with its multiple hues and strong, diagrammatic imagery — is reminiscent of a Paul Klee painting.
Despite the trash and grunge of the immediate surroundings, it’s a bright, hopeful image, even if the title might suggest something less so.
Driving past St. Ignatius, my eye was drawn to the ornate column and pilaster details on the facade. Is it just me, or do these corinthian columns look like upright zucchini? The ionic pilasters look particularly swollen, like burgeoning pea pods!
Now, it IS a Classical Revival building, but it looks like the ancient practice of entasis went a bit overboard, here. After all, it was developed to correct the visual illusion of the column appearing *thinner* in the middle section, and meant to result in an appearance of a straight and true column.
Found on an elementary school in the Potrero Hill neighborhood. Pretty inspiring graffiti, not just for the tots, but for us all….
The quote is from the Neil Gaiman comic The Sandman. The complete quote is:
Birds of a thousand colours danced in the sky when I was a boy. They brightened the day with their intricate songs. “We are who we choose to be,” sang the goldfinch, when the sun was high. “I dream about dreams about dreams,” sang the nightingale, under the pale moon.
Master Li, in SANDMAN #74, “The Exile”
As gentrification creeps into the east bank neighborhoods flanking the Willamette River in Portland, views such as this – the grainery silos along Interstate Road -will become rarer.
Is it a bad thing? The demolition of these would be an historic loss–their presence is a nostalgic marker of days gone by–but from the personal experience of visiting my friend Bradley’s metal sculpting studio (situated along the river banks directly downwind from a similar grainery) the airborne chaff will not be missed.
Collision of a giant iceberg (known as B15A) into the Drygalski Ice Tongue (nice name) of Antarctica. The 100-mile-long iceburg cleaved off an approximate 3-square-mile block of the glacier.
(Satellite photo by Associated Press, irreverent illustration by moi. Pass me a lime.)
:::
I’ve driven the stretch of Hwy 101 between San Francisco and San Luis Obispo, oh, a few dozen times, often noting with curiousity the turnoff leading to Pinnacles National Monument. I’d always been on appointment schedule, so never took the bait. A March hiking bulletin announced that several California Condors had recently been released into the Pinnacles, which peaked (pun intended) my interest once again. Enticed by the recent rains and hoping for abundant wildflowers, an impromptu weekend trip was scheduled.
After a leisurely drive through Hollister and south along Hwy 25, we found a campsite just outside of the East Entrance to the park. The lead-in trail along a streambed provided long-range vistas of the sights to come – rolling hills dotted by dramatic upshoots of spires and monoliths. The first day’s hike was a ~9 mile loop around the eastern approach and up into the High Peaks region where, nearing dusk, we saw a fantastic display of wild avian life – many daredevil crows, easily a dozen spiraling turkey vultures, and – I swear – at least one condor in flight. A park service biologist encountered on the route identified the cry of perigrine falcons, as well.
Day two was a steady ascent along the southern approach to High Peaks, with a turn off towards Bear Gulch Reservoir and the adjacent Bear Gulch caves – formed by toppled chunks of the monoliths. Only a portion of the caves was open to hikers (we missed the route by mere days – sections are closed after March 31 to protect the bat population) but even the short route was well worth the slippery scramble through.
Established as a National Monument in 1908, much of the facilities at Pinnacles were built as part of the CCC-era programs of the 1930s.
For more info – Pinnacles National Monument
Located in the primarily agricultural region southwest of Sacramento, Locke was established by Chinese immigrants in 1915, migrating from nearby Walnut Grove after a fire destroyed the Chinatown area. The town of Locke was leased, settled and established by Yeuhai-speaking Chinese, primarily from the Zhongshan region of China. The town was built ‘by the Chinese, for the Chinese’, and hosted a Chinese-language school, general stores and restaurants as well as speakeasys and brothels. The town was purchased in 1977 by a Hong Kong-based developer with plans to convert Locke into a housing development and tourist attraction, but plans have met with resistance from the local residents, now predominantly white.
<source: wikipedia.org & locketown.com >
The saga of Locke and an overview of it’s current residents has been chronicled by Jeff Gillenkirk and James Motlow –
Bitter Melon: Inside America’s Last Rural Chinese Town
Palo Alto Public Art Commission installation of Sun Flowers, by Jeffery Reed and Jennifer Madden, is the first truly functional, educational AND aesthetically pleasing piece I’ve come across in this posh yet sleepy suburb.
Located on California Avenue in front of an organic grocery/deli, the piece is a collection of wind-propelled rotating canopies (resembling poppies more than sunflowers, but why quibble?) each sheltering a solar cell collector which powers the canopy light system after sunset. Lilypad table tops are incorporated into the ‘stems’ of each canopy, providing an al fresco dining opportunity along this otherwise vehicle-dominant streetscape. The curving slate bench/shelter is a nice feature as well, with drought-resistant grasses figuring prominently in the landscaping. Nice.
(originally posted at apertedesign.typepad.com in March 2005)
