The Gardens at Lake Merritt

Posted on November 7, 2021 by admin

Not far from the Cathedral of Christ the Light in Oakland is Lakeside Park, the lake being Lake Merritt. The afternoon of October 28 was sunny and pleasant in Oakland. Actually a little warm; I should have brought some water.

Nice views of the city from the park.

Paths to follow.

With wildlife to be found. Small examples, at least.

This isn’t a gazebo. No. It’s a bandstand. Quite a bandstand.

A section of the park is given over to the Gardens at Lake Merritt.

“In the late 1950s, a coalition of garden clubs and plant societies developed and built the Oakland-East Bay Garden Center,” says Pacific Horticulture. “Upon completion, the building was donated to the City of Oakland with the understanding that the coalition would be able to use it in perpetuity for meetings and other activities. Later, the various groups took on the task of landscaping the seven-acre site.

“The gardens flourished for many years under the care of 16 city gardeners. However, by the late seventies and eighties, membership in many formal garden groups waned and, little by little, the city’s resources were directed elsewhere. Inevitably, many of the garden plots were neglected, and the appearance and appeal of the Gardens declined.

“With the vision and commitment of Victoria (Tora) Rocha, who was appointed Park Supervisor in 2010, and with renewed interest from garden groups and local residents, the Gardens at Lake Merritt are once again an interesting, enticing, and very attractive group of plantings.”

Sure enough. All sorts of gardens are part of the collection: bonsai, California riparian, Japanese, lily, Mediterranean, pollinator, rhododendron, sensory and urban edible gardens, along with a native bee hotel and native lawn.

The Japanese garden.

I spent the most time in the nearby bonsai garden.

A collection of more species than I would have expected, but that’s just my ignorance of things bonsai.

A Chinese elm.

Ivy, gingko and olive.

Sierra juniper.

Not all the botanic marvels of the park were in the designated gardens. Some striking trees could be found scattered through the park.

Including the impressive whatever-it-is pictured above. A botanist, I’m not.

The Cathedral of Christ the Light, Oakland

Posted on November 4, 2021 by admin

Have you really been to a city if you haven’t taken some form of public transit there? A subway or a bus, if those are available?

Maybe. But I can think of certain exceptions, such as Saigon, whose bus system was described as “user hostile” in a ’90s guidebook I had. Things might be different now, but in 1994 we got around using three-wheeled cyclos, taxis that tended to be Japanese cars, and — going to the airport — a Trabi functioning (barely) as a taxi.

I didn’t rent a car in the Bay Area, partly to cut costs, but also because I didn’t particularly want to drive around San Francisco or Oakland, put off by the prospect of steep hills, carjacking, etc. So I got around by foot, subway and bus. Last Thursday I caught a bus in downtown Oakland and took it to the shores of Lake Merritt. That’s still in the city, and not an especially long ride, but further than I wanted to walk at that moment.

One thing I wanted to see near the lake was the Cathedral of Christ the Light, seat of the Catholic Archdiocese of Oakland and a recent development.

The building was completed in 2008 to replace the Cathedral of Saint Francis de Sales, which was irreparably damaged in the 1989 earthquake and later razed. As modernist churches go, I liked Christ the Light better than the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels in LA.

“Designed by the San Francisco office of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM), with Craig Hartman, FAIA, as the design partner (and Kendall Heaton Associates the architect of record), the glass, wood, and concrete structure reaffirms the power of an abstract Modern form to function as both a spiritual and civic presence,” wrote Suzanne Stephens in Architectural Record not long after the cathedral opened.

“It also evokes the manipulation of light and space memorably demonstrated by the modern religious architecture of Eero Saarinen, Louis Kahn, Jørn Utzon, and Frank Lloyd Wright.”

The manipulation of natural light is especially skillful, I’d say.

“The major surprise comes from encountering the 58-foot-high apparition of Christ, based on a Romanesque sculptural relief (1145–1150) on the Royal Portal of the west facade of Chartres Cathedral,” Stephens notes.

“Rather than erecting a stained-glass window behind the altar, the architectural team took a digital image of the Chartres Christ and created a mammoth artwork with 94,000 laser-cut perforations on 10-by-5-foot anodized-aluminum panels. Light admitted through the translucent frosted film on the glass of the north-facing Omega Window seeps softly through the panels. The process enhances the image’s ethereal quality: The Christ seems to float like a hologram above the circular altar.”

“Atop the structure, a vesica pisces–shaped oculus of dichroic glass admits more light to the sanctuary, albeit filtered by faceted aluminum panels.”

I spent some time in the side chapels as well, which sport older religious artwork.
Such as in the Chapel of the Suffering Christ.

In the Chapel of All Saints.

In the Chapel of the Holy Family.

I was glad to see Joseph holding Jesus. I might be wrong, but I don’t think that’s depicted as much as Mary holding Jesus.

Jack London Square

Posted on November 3, 2021 by admin

Not too many authors have their names attached to places, but Jack London does, at least until someone points out loudly enough that he was an enthusiastic supporter of eugenics. But for now, if you cross under I-980/I-880 from downtown Oakland — part of whose underside is an informal neighborhood —

— you will arrive before long at Jack London Square, which is part of the larger Jack London District. Formerly a warehouse and port district, the rise of container vessels mostly made the area obsolete as an industrial zone. Various rehab projects began in the late 20th century, but I understand that adaptive reuse really got underway around 2000, with residential redevelopment especially pushed by former mayor Jerry Brown.

The sign on site says JACK LONDON SQ.

I understand the area was a good deal rougher when Jack London himself lived around there, but these days it’s an entertainment district, with shops, restaurants, hotels and a movie theater, as well as a marina where you can catch a ferry to San Francisco.

There’s also London in bronze by Cedric Wentworth, a Bay Area artist.

Not far away is a non-bronze, “Golden Stomper,” by one Jeff Meadows. It’s an Oakland A’s thing, and I can’t get that excited about it.

London lived in a cabin in the Klondike during his gold-seeking period. On the North Fork of Henderson Creek, to be more specific. Much later (1968) half of the cabin was brought to Oakland and a replica created using those and newer materials at the behest of a wealthy Jack London enthusiast. The other half went to Dawson City, where another replica was created. So now there are two London cabins, one much easier to reach than the other.

And what would a Jack London cabin be without a nearby bronze of White Fang?

Or maybe that’s supposed to be the dog in The Call of the Wild. No sign is attached to say which. I couldn’t hazard a guess, since I never did get around to reading either of those books, though I did read the Classics Illustrated version of The Call of the Wild.

Downtown Oakland

Posted on November 2, 2021 by admin

Last Thursday I spent much of the day on foot in downtown Oakland, though I also took a couple of bus rides to further reaches of the city.

Seems like every city now has to have a mural like this.

For a business day, the streets of downtown Oakland were relatively deserted.

That included Oakland City Center, an example of urban renewal from decades ago, and home to offices and retail these days.

I suppose the lingering pandemic is keeping people from their offices, which affects the retailers as well. On the other hand, maybe downtown Oakland hasn’t been quite the same since the 1960s anyway, like the downtowns of such cities as Cleveland, Buffalo or St. Louis.

My hotel was downtown. About a block away was the Oakland Tribune Tower. The view from (roughly) southeast of the building along 13th St.

Go northwest of the building (roughly) and it towers over a shorter structure on Broadway. The tower was a 1923 addition to the original Tribune building, which had been a furniture showroom before the newspaper moved in. The building hasn’t been home to a news organization since the 2000s.

Though the sidewalks were mostly empty, someone is in downtown Oakland, patronizing the various restaurants and living in the residential redevelopments. A nice job, this one.

Oakland has its own flatiron building — the First National Bank Building, dating back to 1908.

Even flatter is the Cathedral Building, vintage 1914.

The Fox Oakland. Wish it had been open.

Oakland City Hall, also 1914.

A magnificent Beaux-Arts designed by New York-based architecture firm Palmer & Hornbostel. I probably saw some of Henry Hornbostel’s buildings in Pittsburgh without realizing they were his.

City Hall was closed when I got there (on a separate walk on Saturday), but the just as magnificent Rotunda Building was open. Good thing, too, since most of its magnificence is on the inside.

It started its existence as a department store in 1912 (Kahn’s Department Store). Wow, how far that species of retail has fallen.

Among the older tall structures of downtown Oakland are newer details, including social justice messages.

Or just regular graffiti.

You might call that one a TCM graffito.

Cal-Tex ’21

Posted on November 1, 2021 by admin

My recent visit to Texas was old-fashioned in at least one way. Not in how I got there, namely a series of two airplanes, one to Houston and then another for the short hop to Austin.

Nor in how I got around: driven by a friend or driving a car rented for a few days, along with some long walks after the sun was low or down, since even for central Texas, the late October days this year proved quite warm. Nor even in my eating and drinking habits. I’m glad to report that the restaurants and (I assume) bars of central Texas seem fully open and attracting paying customers.

Rather, I took an old-fashioned approach in taking pictures and sharing them with others. I took almost none. I participated in no social media, including — what’s it called now, Meta? (derisive snort). The trip was a time to visit old friends in person in Austin, meet a new family member in person in that town as well, and visit family in person in San Antonio. There’s no substitute for in person.

Still, last Monday Jay and I happened to be passing through Seguin, Texas, and happened to see a sign pointing the way to the grave of Juan Seguin. I wasn’t about to pass that up. Or not take pictures. To post here, which barely counts as any kind of media, social or otherwise.

The grave itself. He was reinterred on the spot in 1976, some 86 years after his death.

My tourist activities picked up quite a bit during the three days I spent in the Bay Area, as a kind of appendix to the trip to Texas. Originally I planned to spend a day each in Oakland, Sacramento and San Francisco, but when the time came to catch a bus to spend the day in Sacramento, I decided I was too tired for it, and spent that morning doing nothing. Such is advancing age. So the trip ended up being about a day in Oakland and a day and a half in San Francisco, staying at a hotel in downtown Oakland.

Why there? It’s been more than 30 years since my last visit to San Francisco (and even longer since my first), and while I passed through Oakland in 1990, I’d never really seen that city. It isn’t the most charming city North America has to offer, and always exists in the shadow of San Francisco, but Oakland has its interests. These are two sights I happened upon in that city.

Ah, California.

SoCal Snaps From An Age Ago

Posted on February 21, 2021 by admin

Slightly warmer this weekend, but not enough to melt much snow. That may start happening this week, though I expect the last traces of February snow to linger well into March.

It’s been a year since I went anywhere by airplane. Much of the nation can probably say the same. A year ago, I went to southern California and Texas. Seems like an age ago.

At the apex of the Los Angeles Central Library, there’s a small sculpture depicting a handheld torch. That’s the light of knowledge, I’ve read. Guess knowledge can be a flickering thing, rather than a steady shine. The one on top of the building now is a replacement for the original, which is in an alcove in the Cook Rotunda.

From one exit of the Bradbury Building in downtown Los Angeles, you can see a sizable mural of Anthony Quinn.

Artist Eloy Torrez did the work, known as the “Pope of Broadway,” in 1985 and restored it a few years ago.

Grand Park in downtown LA, looking toward City Hall. When we visited the area in 2001, we got closer to the building, but its observation deck was closed.

A Wells Fargo bank in Azusa, California.

In Palm Springs, the “Agua Caliente Women” sculptures, created by Doug Hyde in 1994.

The Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians have had a long history in the area, very much down to the present. The tribe and its members currently represent the largest single land owner in Palm Springs, according to the tribe’s web site.

12 Pix 20

Posted on December 22, 2020 by admin

Back to publishing on January 3, 2021, or so. Who knows, there might be snow by then.

Twelve pictures to wrap up the year, as I have in 2016 and 2017and 2018 and 2019, though this time around I won’t bother with a rigid, one-picture-for-each-month structure. They will be roughly chronological.

Chicago
Los Angeles

Azusa, California

Schaumburg, IllinoisWest Dundee, Illinois

Schaumburg, Illinois

Baraboo, WisconsinBeverly Shores, Indiana

Carbondale, IllinoisSchaumburg, IllinoisChicago

One bad apple

Merry Christmas & Happy New Year to all.

Piggly Wiggly Sewing Kit

Posted on April 9, 2020 by admin

Something new on the Weather Underground forecast page for my area this Maundy Thursday morning. A screen shot:

Obviously a day to stay in if you can, for a number of reasons. Back to posting on Easter Monday. A good Easter to all.

There are many oddities around the house. Why have it any other way? Such as a Piggly Wiggly sewing kit, or you could call it a needle kit. Scanned here open, with the back on the left and the front on the right. Or reverse and observe.

Inside the kit. Some needles still in place. A threader, too.My guess is that my grandmother picked it up at a San Antonio Piggly Wiggly in the 1950s, early ’60s at the latest. Most of the time I believe she shopped at the nearby Handy-Andy in Alamo Heights, but she must have occasionally patronized Piggly Wiggly, which existed in South Texas at the time (but no more: HEB is king in that part of the country).

At some point, maybe after grandma died, my mother removed it to her house; and now that’s what I’ve done. I can date it with some certainty to that decade because of a few details. Green Stamps don’t narrow it down that much, since they were around from the 1930s to the ’80s, but I smile at the mention of them anyway.

On the inside it says: Frank Kraus, Los Angeles 36, which puts it before zip codes and during postal zones (1943-63). Since the kit was made in West Germany, that puts it after the war, in fact after the formation of the BRD in 1949. Must have been a product of the postwar recovery, when West German industry was making whatever they could for whomever they could, just as Japanese industry did at the time.

As for Frank Kraus, I’d guess he was the importer. Possibly, but only possibly, this fellow. Or him, though he left California at some point. A little looking around, such as at Esty, reveals that Frank Kraus, whoever he was and wherever he rests now, had his name on other small sewing kits from West Germany.

Strange Days Indeed

Posted on March 19, 2020 by admin

For the equinox today, rain. Also, robins. A lot of birds, actually, to judge by the volume of birdsong I hear when I’m outside. Only outside briefly today, anyway. Lots to do inside. Sometimes, though, I can hear mourning doves doing their whoo-whoo while I’m inside, if it’s quiet enough.

Speaking of animals, file this picture under the category of Good Luck With That.

Was this only about a month ago?

That’s a short clip I made at the Grand Central Market in Downtown Los Angeles on February 22. I’d planned to leave a few minutes before, but it was raining, so I used the idle moments to take pictures and the single clip.

Ah, those carefree days… of yore? How long ago does yore get to be? Longer than a month, usually, but these are unusual times.

Or usual? So far the 21st century seems to have gone off the rails every 10 years or so.

Late last year, I watched the short series Good Omens, which was amusing, especially for its main characters, and noted that the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, who make an appearance, had a substitution. Instead of War, Pestilence, Famine and Death, they were War, Pollution, Famine and Death (and they rode motorcycles, but never mind).

The thinking, I suppose, was that Pestilence had abated enough to give Pollution a slot. Events have overtaken that notion. Seems that Pestilence won’t be denied its place in mankind’s woes.

California Leftovers

Posted on March 12, 2020 by admin

I drove by Randy’s Donuts near LAX, but didn’t stop to buy any. The first place I did go in Los Angeles, practically right off the plane on February 21, was Roscoe’s House of Chicken and Waffles on W. Manchester Blvd. Mm, good. Almost as good as Maxine’s in Indianapolis, which is high praise.

After I ate chicken and waffles there — a late lunch — I determined that I didn’t have time to go all the way to Venice and stroll around the canals before I had to be back in Ladera Heights to check into my short-term residence. So Venice, California, remains an unfulfilled ambition. Like Venice, Italy.

Instead I drove over to Holy Cross Catholic Cemetery, which is on the edge of Culver City. It has everything it needs to be an aesthetic cemetery — land contour, trees and other greenery — except upright stones or much funerary art.

Still, I found Jimmy Durante. That’s something. Inka Dinka Doo.

I had lunch my first full day in Los Angeles at Grand Central Market downtown. Once a market, now it’s mostly a food hall. A popular place. The likes of which will be largely empty for a while now? This pic is status quo ante.

A large selection of eats. With some good neon.Overpriced, though. While I was eating, rain started to fall outside. Heavy for about half an hour. That was the only rain during my visit.

Saw all too many of these on the sidewalks of LA.
I even saw a man kick one hard in disgust.

I was within sight of the Santa Monica Pier when in Santa Monica, but I didn’t have the energy to actually visit the pier. Didn’t want to put up with the crowds, either.
I did see this.
That would be the opposite of the sign in downtown Chicago.

The East Garden at the Getty Villa includes this fountain.
“The enchanting central wall fountain represents a replica of a mosaic and shell fountain from the House of the Large Fountain in Pompeii,” Alice’s Garden Travel Buzz says. I’ll take Alice’s word for it.

On my return from Texas on March 1, I had a fine view of Chicago as we flew in. First to the south of O’Hare, which was visible as a whole, then across the city and over downtown — I didn’t know that was allowed — and out over Lake Michigan, where we turned. The flight back to O’Hare crossed over the North Side of Chicago, so I got a sky-high view of Wrigley Field, and then lower and lower over the suburbs near O’Hare. I recognized some of the larger roads. Some intersections. A building or two. Wait, what’s that pyramid-shaped building?

The guy next to me on my flight home from Texas rubbed his hands with sanitizer three or four times over two hours. After touching the seatback tray table, I think. If one impact of the novel coronavirus is to encourage people to wash (or clean) their hands more, that’s a good thing.

Been There, Seen That

By Dees Stribling

Category Archives: US: California