until suburbia!

Wind Walk sign at Seal Point Park in San Mateo

See Which Way the Wind Blows, San Mateo’s Seal Point Park

November 18, 2016February 2, 2025Silvia

“When hot air rises, cooler air rushes in to fill the space it leaves, thus making wind at the land’s surface.” This quote is from an educational sign at San Mateo’s Seal Point Park ‘Wind Walk’.

This park is located next to the bay. I started the walk at the top, where you can also park your car.

The first sculpture there is a wind rose with multiple layers that spin. Next to it are three interestingly shaped sculptures.

One looks like two giant cymbals, one an organ and one a tree-like piece.

If you follow the lower path you will walk by three groups of three wind structures. Only one of the nine was moving when I was there. It might be that the wind was not very strong.

This is all built on a landfill. So, I congratulate the city of San Mateo to create a great retreat out of some rubbish. I’m not quite sure the sculptures work as proof of wind, but they are interesting to look at nonetheless.

Do you know of any wind sculptures?

Follow the Spiral/Spiritual Path, Labyrinth

November 11, 2016February 2, 2025Silvia

Walking a labyrinth is a tool for meditation and problem solving. One foot in front of the next in an ever bending path. It is hard to explain but it helps you focus, helps you find the answers within you.

When I explored my first labyrinth, I started with making photos of it. Someone from the church came out, took a look at me and said: “Oh, you are admiring it!” “Yes,” I replied “and I’m gonna walk it too!”

It is both the beauty of the shape as well as a humble, meditative experience. I love that there are so many different labyrinth around, ones with a grassy path, concrete, sand or brick. The labyrinth locator web site can help find one near you.

The Modern Labyrinth Movement was founded at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco. Here are two labyrinths, one inside, one outside, with interesting programs like: yoga in the labyrinth, and candlelit walks.

A copy of the Grace Cathedral labyrinth, which is itself a replica of the Chartres Cathedral labyrinth in Chartres, France, can be found outside of the Grace Lutheran Church in Palo Alto.

So, how do you walk a labyrinth?

There are many ways to walk a labyrinth. Will it be a playful, spiritual, or meditative journey?

For example: Take a few deep breaths, enter with a question. The first step in sets the pace for your walk. When you reach the center, stay there as long as you like; listen intuitively for the answer to your question, then walk out again.

Wikihow

Have you ever walked a labyrinth?

Here are a few labyrinths in Silicon Valley:

Unitarian Universalist Church of Palo Alto
505 East Charleston Rd.
Palo Alto

Grace Lutheran Church
3149 Waverley St
Palo Alto

First Congregational Church
1985 Louis Rd.
Palo Alto

St John’s Lutheran Church
581-583 E. Fremont
Sunnyvale

St Thomas’ Episcopal Church
231 Sunset Avenue
Sunnyvale

Pet the Mayor Dog, Bosco

November 4, 2016February 2, 2025Silvia

In 1984, Sunol California, elected the first dog to be honorary mayor. He defeated two humans as a write in candidate and held the position until his death in 1994.

Sunol erected a bronze statue of Bosco, to honor the Labrador mix with his signature bandana.

Usually his duty as honorary mayor would mean that he headed the Halloween parade. In 1990 a Chinese paper commented on the fact that in the U. S. a dog was elected as a proof of the failure of democracy. This was after the Tiananmen Square protests.

So, Bosco was invited by local Chinese students to participate in a demonstration in front of the San Francisco Chinese embassy.

His favorite hang-out was a local bar. So it makes sense that there is a bar in town called Bosco’s Bones & Brew. Make sure to get a seat by the bar, where they have a stuffed dog “peeing” beer.

While this makes a cute story, please vote!

Have you voted yet?

Soundsuit Up!

October 28, 2016February 2, 2025Silvia

When I saw pictures of the new exhibit at the Anderson Collection at Stanford I was confused. Nick Cave an artist, okay. But these colorful costumes from the man I knew who ‘really didn’t want you to know about a girl’. (Watch Wim Wenders movie Wings of Desire, if you are not sure what I’m talking about or this clip on YouTube)

Of course there are two famous Nick Cave! They even met, at least once, in New York.

Well this Nick Cave is a dancer, a collector and an artist. The suits are whimsical, they contain a lot of things he found in flea markets. But they also hide the person, they are true color-blind.

Nick Cave created his first soundsuit after the Rodney King beating. From twigs he collected in a park, where he tried to reflect on the beating and the riots that followed the police officers acquittal. He made a sculpture that would strike him as a “second skin”. “I started thinking about the role of identity, being racially profiled, feeling devalued, less than, dismissed.”Cave said. While the first one is not wearable, it striked the creator as a form of armor. He liked the sound the twigs made, so he named it Soundsuit.

There are eight Soundsuits and a video installation where people actually dance in the suits, that you can scrutinize at the Anderson until August 2017.

Just to see them is impressive.

What is your costume?

Be Bamboozled, Foothill College Bamboo Garden

October 21, 2016February 2, 2025Silvia

No, it doesn’t have to do with alcohol. I just thought it would be a fun new word for this cool hidden garden.

The Foothill College bamboo garden is with over 70 species one of the largest gardens for bamboos in the United States. You can find it below the Japanese Cultural Center on the Los Altos Hills campus. It is only 2 acre, but because of the layout with hidden pathways, it appears much larger.

This is an amazing place to escape and find some quiet time.

Thanks to Gerhard Bock’s blog you can look up the diffferent varieties on his site: http://www.succulentsandmore.com/2012/05/foothill-college-bamboo-garden-part-1.html

http://www.succulentsandmore.com/2012/05/foothill-college-bamboo-garden-part-2.html

The Azumaya, a Japanese garden pavilion was fenced off when I was there. But hopefully they will open it up again, since it seems a great gathering place for the students and visitors.

Have you been bamboozled lately?

Celebrate One Less Wall, Part of the Berlin Wall

October 14, 2016February 2, 2025Silvia

The Berlin Wall was almost 28 years a divider between East German Berlin and West Berlin. An 87 mile separation between a city and it’s people.

The fall of the wall on November 9th, 1989, was one of the most amazing and greatest historical incidences of my lifetime. After the peaceful revolution, an inner movement for freedom, the border to the West was opened and almost a year later the German Reunification was concluded.

Today, probably the best use of it, makes up the East Side Gallery, in Berlin, the longest open air gallery in the world.

But if you don’t have time and/or means to go to Germany, you can view part of the Berlin Wall in Mountain View in front of the public library. Generously donated by the Golzen Family.

Can you remember where you were when the wall came down?

Food Shopping is Like Taking a Vacation

October 7, 2016February 2, 2025Silvia

I love food shopping, especially a store I’ve never been to. Here in Silicon Valley, there are Indian, Japanese, Middle Eastern, and a ton of other fascinating grocery stores.

Sometimes you step into a place and knowing the smells you can easily be transported to their homelands for a while.

Being German, if I ever felt like Rollmops, a German hang-over treatment (herring rolled up with pickle and onions), I’d know exactly where to go! (JL Produce, Mountain View). The German butcher Dittmer’s also has, besides meat, a lot of other German specialty items. The Milk Pail, while not an international market, has a great selection of cheeses.

The other day I discovered Mollie Stone’s Market. This is more your traditional/organic market with a great Jewish product selection. I came in and thought jeez, they have their own song? Yes, and turning the corner I saw the puppets that sang it. Entertainment for your little ones while you shop.

What is your favorite international grocery store in the Bay Area?

What foods are you missing from your home country?

*Like always, no affiliations with anyone, unless otherwise noted.

Let’s Not Forget the Rosie’s, Rosie the Riveter Museum

September 30, 2016February 2, 2025Silvia

We can do it! The image of the woman in a blue worker outfit, flexing her biceps, was for me always a symbol for equal rights in the workforce.

Little did I know that this was a propaganda poster in World War II to get the women in to substitute for the men and outproduce war materials. About six million women would prove that they could do what was considered men’s work, like welding and riveting.

The Rosie the Riveter Museum in Richmond does a great job remembering the Rosies, their accomplishments in welding and other jobs, it also mentions new achievements like day care. But they also talk about some lesser popular subjects like race inequality and the housing crisis.

Richmond got chosen to be the National Park Memorial for Rosie the Riveter because of the large Kaiser shipyards building warships, where a lot of Rosie’s worked.

On Fridays you can see some Rosies (and a Roger) gladly explaining what it was like for them.

Do you know any Rosie’s?

Play Piano in the Park

September 23, 2016February 2, 2025Silvia

I’m always on the lookout for some unexpected. A grand piano at the park, now that’s what I call unexpected!

For the third year the Santa Clara County Parks together with Sunset Piano and DC Pianos have released five pianos into five parks. They will reside in the parks until October 5th.

What a beautiful idea to combine the outdoors with music.

Here are the locations:

Vasona Lake by the boat rental area
Historic Casa Grande/New Almaden Quicksilver Mining Museum on the patio deck
Uvas Canyon near the waterfalls at the outdoor amphitheater
Coyote Lake-Harvey Bear Ranch’s Anglers picnic area
Joseph D. Grant near the historic Grant house and rose garden

Unfortunately I don’t play. And when I visited some of the pianos no one was playing, in fact they were covered up.

If you are like me but you still want to experience the music head out to Vasona Lake on October 2, from 4 to 6 Sunset Piano will perform Classical, Jazz, and pop selections.

Or encourage your piano playing friends to come out.

Anyone up for picnic, park and piano?

Learn How to Fly, Hiller Museum of Aviation

September 16, 2016February 2, 2025Silvia

Another inventor, who started in a garage in Berkeley, was Wunderkind Stanley Hiller Jr. He was only 15, but already accepted at Berkeley University when he build his Hiller-copter.

Hiller, at age 8, the inventor, build a motorized buggy with the engine of his mother’s washing machine, at age 10, the aviator, he learned to fly, and by 12, the businessman, he had a $100.000 a year business.

The Hiller Museum of Aviation in San Carlos shows a lot of his prototypes. The volunteers who know so many great stories of all the helicopters and planes that are surround you, bring it alive. Some of the stories are about people that made aviation history, like General Valérie André, the first woman to have piloted a helicopter in a combat zone.

They do a tribute to women aviators with short descriptions about them. Did you know that there were two Amelia Earhart’s (not related) that made flight history?

This is a great museum for kids of all ages. Lots of exhibits that allow you to climb in. On the weekends they teach you how to fly a drone or you can try to operate a plane in a flight simulator.

Are you a flight buff?