Beware of Statue -- Day 5/80

Walk:  GG Park (City Guides Walking Tour), Traders
Distance: 6 miles and home yoga


See the statue?

A few times when she's been in Golden Gate Park Ciwt has attempted to take pictures of the various statues one encounters during walks there.  Mostly she's given up because the statues are so difficult to capture.  So many of them are obscured by trees and bushes and set back from convenient paths.

Today she learned the reason for this.  Yes, it is intentional.  Intention by one man, John McLaren, who presided over Golden Gate Park for 53 years and did his level best to keep the park as natural as possible.  This meant keeping politicians and developers away as well as all the many people who wanted to erect statues in the Park.  For the statue erectors he couldn't head off, McLaren had a private Plan B.  As soon as a new statue was in place, McLaren directed his gardeners to plant sapling trees and small bushes around it, and slowly, imperceptibly for years the greenery grew and grew to the point where a present day park hiker might be startled to encounter a statue deep in the woods.


Can you find the statue in this picture?

Lots of Art --- Day 5/79

Walk: Sundance Kabuki
Distance: 2 miles, home yoga

So in case you are interested in Ciwt's first impression of our new SFMOMA, here's what she emailed a friend:

Still taking it in - after almost 24 hours.  It is A Lot of modern art - much of it quite excellent (Ellsworth Kelly, Agnes Martin, etc), some of it overly predictable (most of those huge, gloomy, corporate German Neo-Expressionists).*

Love the acoustics and think the new addition is very good and pleasant in its vast way.  The only building glitch that bothered me was the "hidden" stairways.  I walked and walked on every floor trying to find a staircase and felt claustrophobic when I couldn't.  Then, when did show up, it was some tiny thing in some unexpected place.

Two museums with many duplicate artists and periods in several different places is very peculiar and difficult/confusing/unsatisfactory for the viewer.  Maybe at some point SFMOMA won't be required to make such a separation between the collections and can blend them.  That will be a very good point, imho.

Right now it's an excellent slog.  An IKEA light, gallery-after-gallery, art-filled slog that already makes a quite wonderful/totally needed contribution to SF and its art scene.  But still a slog.  I think your "dizzy and overwhelmed by too much art" is exactly the necessary and unavoidable response.  I felt the same - probably for slightly different reasons.  Over time I'm sure SFMOMA will make many fine tunes - weed out some things, focus the corridors of galleries a bit more, add art, create viewing breaks, etc,.  And then it will be a truly outstanding and true worldwide modern art center.

So, onward.  I look forward to returning many times.

*
*
 Not SFMOMA, but you get the point.  Ciwt says ISH!

Modern Art Coming Down on Ciwt --- Day 5/78

Walk: SFMOMA
Distance: 2 miles, wee yoga




Seems like acres and acres of modern art coming down on Ciwt after she went to member's preview of our Greatly! expanded Museum of Modern Art.  She'll sleep on the experience.  Wonder what her dreams will be like...Stay tuned!

Tale of One Town --- Day 5/77

Walk: golf driving range, car mechanic, hood
Distance: 2 miles, hit golf balls, work out on those confounding machines




So imagine if you grew up in a lovely bay community. Not particularly wealthy but lots of lovely land, small nice houses and families who had known each other for decades.  And one year a tech company built a headquarters fifty miles away.  Ten years later the tech workers discovered all the wonderful benefits of your little bay community and started moving there.  They were all young and they began texting all their tech friends to come join them.   And the friends did.

Now the small winding roads had gotten very crowded.  There were traffic jams.  And there weren't enough small homey houses for all the young people who had arrived.  But the young people kept coming and looking at all the pretty parks land and getting furious!  "Why does this community have so much open land when We have nowhere to live?!  They need to get rid of the land,  build Up so We can be here!' they ranted.

And a few of the new ranters got articles published in big, far away city newspapers about how unfair the little bay town was being to them. The newspapers who published these newcomer ranters were in the business of selling papers and knew nothing about the realities of the bay community.  The publishers knew nothing about the small roads, the lack of public transportation, the very limited and fragile land, and even more limited water supply.  And they certainly didn't know about the lifestyle of the families who had known each other for decades because those families could not afford to live in their lovely bay community any longer.

Dead Battery --- Day 5/76

Walk: Garage
Distance: 1 mile, sitting around waiting for AAA, sitting around towing company, sitting around calling mechanics and AAA. 




Ciwt had great plans for today.  But, unfortunately, she suspects her car was reading CIWT the other day when she was (foolishly) writing about living without a car.*

*See Day 5/70

Day One --- Day 5/75

Walk: New Club (provisional) x2
Distance: 3.5 miles, stretch asanas



Hit golf balls, eat lunch with new people, go back later for a lecture (on the SF Giants) and eat dinner with other new people, tomorrow play bridge with more new people. Try not to lose things, forget keys, etc. Such is the life of the formerly reclusive Ciwt.

Wind Resistance --- Day 5/74

Walk: Hi Tech Nails 
Distance: 8 blocks, Standing behind web design tech, teeny yoga


"Play golf?  In this wind?  You've got to be kidding. Arf."

Ciwt's thoughts exactly on the eve of her new golf (and other things) club venture.

Primary Matters --- Day 5/73

Walk: Cinema Club (The Innocents), Trader
Distance: 3.8 miles and home yoga