Autographs — Klune

 
After a two-year pandemic absence, The LATimes Festival of Books returned yesterday. I managed to hear at least parts of five panels, and I bought two books. I chose this one because Klune spoke about how pleased he was to include a "happy gay" character. I have not read any of his work yet.

(Index to autographs)

Autographs — Sandra Tsing Loh

 

Sandra Tsing Loh spoke at Occidental today, and was happy to sign this book. Now I have to read it! When I saw that she was coming to Oxy, I bought this, hoping to get her autograph.

I have read some of her essays, and before I retired, I often heard her short "The Loh Down on Science" pieces on the radio while commuting. Today, her talk was "The Loh Down on Writing". As expected, she was informative and entertaining.

(Index to autographs)

Atlanta — March 2022

Link to more photos. (View the photos individually to see the captions.)

This tour took us to Atlanta and vicinity. I chose this because although I have been through the Atlanta airport many times, I had never stayed to visit. 

I originally booked this for Spring 2020; COVID moved it first to 2021, then to 2022. During this delay, CNN stopped giving tours, and that was dropped from the itinerary.

We were to face further disappointments: Because of a winter storm in mid-March, the cherry blossoms were delayed.  This tour had been carefully timed to include Macon's International Cherry Blossom Festival:

but the entire festival was postponed a week. Instead of seeing multitudes of cherry blossoms, we saw very few. 

Also, when we visited the Martin Luther King, Jr. National Historic Park, the grounds were open, but the buildings, including the Visitor Center, were closed due to COVID. Of course, they re-opened the very next week.

Finally, when we visited Stone Mountain Park, the Summit Skyride was closed due to wind.

Despite all that, the trip was pretty good. The weather was mostly mild, with only a bit of rain one day and some strong winds on our last day. 

We did not choose the group air travel, but we did connect with the group when they arrived at the Atlanta airport, so we joined them for the bus to dinner and the hotel.

Monday, the first full tour day, included the Georgia State Capitol, a bit of the Atlanta Beltline, the World of Coca-Cola, and MLK Park. At the Coke headquarters, I finally was able to buy a couple of products I have been vaguely searching for: Coke Zero Starlight and Vanilla Coke Zero with Coffee. They were pricey — $2.50 and $3.50, respectively. I drank them later in the week; they were nothing special.

Tuesday, we went to Marietta for the Gone With the Wind Museum, and Kennesaw Mountain National Battlefield Park, then returned to the city for the Atlanta History Center, including Swan House and the Cyclorama. While on the bus, our tour guide showed us Gone With The Wind. I had not seen it in more than fifty years; now it seemed way too melodramatic, and Scarlett O'Hara was simply stupid.

Wednesday we were in Macon. A step-on guide showed us many historic Macon homes (we toured one, Hay House), and regaled us with stories of famous Macon musicians.

On Thursday, we went to FDR's Little White House in Warm Springs. On the bus traveling there, our guide showed us the movie Warm Springs, with Kenneth Branagh as FDR, which was quite good. I liked the displays at the park, but after the movie, I was disappointed that we didn't see pools full of spring water, just empty pools with one small bubbling water trough where we could touch the spring water. Later, we stopped at Callaway Gardens (more of a large forested park than a garden) and the included birds of prey program and Butterfly Center.

Friday was the last day with the tour group. We hit the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library and Museum and Stone Mountain Park, including its Historic Square of relocated period houses.

Victor and I stayed for one more day on our own. After considering many possibilities, we walked to Piedmont Park, where we stumbled upon the Atlanta Science Festival.

I was worried that Victor would not get much out of this trip, but he says he did enjoy it, even if he didn't know most of the history involved, including the U.S. Civil War!

And, repeating: Link to more photos. (View the photos individually to see the captions.)

Maps

(See five photo links below.)

I'm another map freak. I have hundreds of maps. Printed maps. Even in this digital age when all maps are available online, I still like printed maps. 

Many are from AAA and National Geographic. But some are from more obscure map-makers. And, from my father, some are older than I am. And, from my father's workplace as they were being discarded, a handful pre-date him!

The photo albums linked below show just a few of my maps. Each album begins with a description of the maps shown. Click on any image to see it larger.

1918 map (date circled in red)

Map Album 1: Some of my oldest maps (1900-1921)

Map Album 2: Topographic maps

Map Album 3: Thematic maps

Map Album 4: Trend maps

Map Album 5: Miscellaneous maps

Autographs — Peter Alsop

 

My only composer autograph. I only recently remembered that I had an LP with an autograph. The album is from 1977. I don't recall the circumstances, but I think it might have been at USC. Here is his website.

(Index to autographs)

Rubik's Cube

Link to more photos. 

I have a collection of Rubik's Cubes and similar objects, about 20 of them (See the photo album.)

When I first read about it, in a fourth-generation copy of an article in a German magazine, I couldn't see how it was possible —  how a cube of smaller cubes could possibly rotate slices in all three dimensions. 

At the time, they were only available in Europe, not in the U.S. My Occidental math faculty colleague Don Goldberg managed to get one from abroad, and I borrowed it for a day. In that time, I did learn how to fix one side, but that's all I could reliably do.

Sometime later, the May Co. department store was the first place in town to have Rubik's Cube to sell. As a promotion, they advertised that, for one day, they would be giving $50 gift certificates to anyone who could solve one side in three minutes.

I went there on that day as soon as they opened, and I was one of the first set of three people who were given a chance. Of course, I won a $50 gift certificate. As the day went on, more and more Oxy students were showing up and winning. They quickly cut back to one group of three contestants every hour instead of every thirty minutes, and long before the day was done, they stopped the promotion altogether. Oxy students who never got a chance protested, and there was even some TV coverage of it all.

In his 1981 book, Notes on Rubik's Magic Cube, David Singmaster writes, "A Los Angeles department store offered $50 to anyone who could put one face right in three minutes.  They lost $600 to a group of Don Goldberg's students at Occidental College."

For years afterwards, I bought and received as gifts many variations of the cube. I also participated in the Cube-Lovers email group (now long gone).

Anti-vaxxers

Weeks ago, my cousin Mark Weiss posted this on Facebook:

Vaccine mandates are leading teachers who don't believe in science to quit, nurses who don't believe in medicine to quit, and cops who don't believe in public safety to quit. I don't really see a downside to this.

I like that a lot, and I quoted it to others. Later, I decided I should send it as a letter to the editor of the LATimes. I first asked Mark whether it was his own or whether he was quoting someone else. He said, "I’d seen a couple of things out there that resonated with me, and that was my amalgamation of what I’d seen, though it may have been closer to one or another. That may not be a big help, but frankly, I don’t recall it in detail."

So I sent it to the Times, prefaced with "Recently seen on Facebook:" They didn't print it.

Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta — October 2021

 

Link to more photos.

In 2019, I signed up for a Road Scholar trip to the 2020 Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta. Due to COVID, that was canceled, and I then signed up for 2021.

We had a very good time. The weather was always my big concern for this trip, but it was mild, and no rain interfered!

The first day included no balloons. We walked to Albuquerque's Old Town, where I tripped, banged my knee, and limped back to the hotel. After dinner, there was a presentation on ballooning that was better than I expected.

I limped most of the rest of the trip, improving a bit each day.

The next two days, we left the hotel at 4:30 am (!) to avoid worse traffic and get to the balloons before they went up. In all, we went to the balloon fiesta three times, two mornings and once at dusk. One morning, we were at the Balloon Museum on a slight hill overlooking the balloon field. That evening, we were there again; fireworks were included. The next morning, we had breakfast at the Balloon Chasers Club and then we were on the field, along with thousands of other spectators, walking among the hundreds of balloons as they inflated and went up.

One day, after the morning balloons, we visited the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center. Another day, because the Coronado Historic Site was closed, we went instead to El Pinto restaurant.

As we departed Albuquerque, we could see balloons in the sky while we were in the shuttle and at the airport.

Canyonlands, Arches, Mesa Verde and more — Sept. 2021

 

Delicate Arch (on the left) in Arches National Park

Link to more photos. (View the photos individually to see the captions.)

This tour took us to Canyonlands, Arches, and Mesa Verde National Parks, a narrow gauge railway ride, New Mexico's Ghost Ranch and the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum. It was supposed to include Taos Pueblo, but that is still closed.

We began with our first flight since COVID and an overnight stay in Salt Lake City. Our first stop the next day was Dead Horse Point State Park, followed by Canyonlands National Park, where the Green River joins the Colorado River. We took the Island in the Sky scenic drive to Grand View Point.

We continued to Moab and began early the next day lining up for nearby Arches National Park.  The park has plenty of spectacular scenery. We stopped at Balanced Rock, Delicate Arch (the symbol of Utah), Landscape Arch (the longest arch in the park), and the Windows. See the photos (link above).

We left Moab via the Million Dollar Highway and, in the afternoon, the 19th-century Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad. At a top speed of 18 miles per hour, this was a 3.5-hour, 45 mile bum-rattling jouncy ride along the Animas River with beautiful scenery.

The next morning, we went to Mesa Verde National Park. I remember visiting it as a child. We viewed several cliff dwellings from across canyons, and also heard a presentation at the Pithouse Archeological Site.

Unable to visit Taos, we lunched at Ghost Ranch, and stopped at the sanctuary in Chimayo on our way to Santa Fe. I have visited Santa Fe several times, but decades ago. The highlight of our stay there was the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum. 

Oddly, and in a first for me, this tour did not end in the city of our return flight. The tour ended after breakfast in our Santa Fe hotel, but we then needed to get to Albuquerque on our own to fly home. We took the train from Santa Fe to Albuquerque. Next to the Santa Fe Railyard, the Jean Cocteau Cinema is owned by Game Of Thrones author George R.R. Martin. He commissioned this trompe l’oeil mural, Beauty in the Beast by John Pugh, for the back wall of the building. Click here to see its details and a better, complete picture (the last photo on the page). 

Yosemite & Eastern Sierras — Aug-Sept 2021

Half Dome, Yosemite National Park

Link to more photos (Click on the photos to read their captions.)

Travel is not yet back to normal. I first booked this trip in January 2020 for later that year. Covid canceled that, and I then re-booked in May of this year for August, by which time I thought everything would be fine. Nope. The mask mandates still due to Covid were no problem. It was the Caldor wildfire that really messed things up!

The tour, by Good Times Travel, was to include Mammoth, Mono Lake, two nights at South Lake Tahoe, and Yosemite. Three days before departure (!), it was clear that we would not be able to go to Tahoe, and GTT announced that instead of two nights at Tahoe, we would spend one extra night at Mammoth and one extra night at Yosemite. New activities would include Lee Vining and a ride on the Yosemite Mountain Sugar Pine Railroad. (I would have preferred visiting Manzanar and Devils Postpile.)

But the hits kept coming! On Tuesday night, while we were at Yosemite, the US Forest Service closed all National Forests in California due to continuing wildfire threats. The train trip was instantly impossible. GTT, scrambling to adapt, added a new activity for Thursday, but Wednesday became an open day of no group activities other than meals. 

So what did we finally get? On Sunday, the Museum of Western Film History in Lone Pine and a tour of some of the film sites in the Alabama Hills. On Monday, a gondola ride to the top of Mammoth Mountain, a tour of the June Lake Loop, the Old School House Museum and Upside-Down House in Lee Vining, and a visit to Mono Lake. See the photos (link above).

At our hotel for Sunday and Monday, our "room" was enormous! Instead of a room with two beds, we had a suite with two bedrooms, two baths, a sitting room, dining area, and full kitchen. Three TVs: one in the large room and one for each bedroom. And one bathroom was gigantic, apparently to accommodate wheelchairs throughout, including in the shower.

We spent all day Tuesday in Yosemite National Park, with a number of sightseeing stops, including completely dry waterfalls, and a bit of hiking. See the photos (link above).

I saw that our hotel offered a nature hike at 10 am every morning, but when I asked about it Wednesday morning, it had been cancelled due to the overnight forest closures. So Victor and I did a short little hike around the hotel area.

On our way back home, we stopped at the Forestiere Underground Gardens.

The weather was mild throughout. I'm very sorry we couldn't get to Lake Tahoe, but there was nothing anyone could do about that.