Back in DC

I was in DC for a NRC sub-committee meeting. Got to visit two of my favorite buildings!

921 O st. NW; we stayed here while on sabbatical

The building museum!

Where I went for lunch

Art and Dancing

Anne and Ack went to a fantastic sculpture garden, run by a visionary artist, Tom Every, also known as Dr. Evermore. He uses scrap materials to build huge and small sculptures. His most famous and largest piece is the Forevertron, a fantastical type of space ship. The creation shown here is of a giant insect; the eyes are made of geolocation markers and the body is part of the lunar module. Not sure why NASA ever got rid of that, but it is here for all to see.

After visiting Dr. Evermore, we went dancing at the Chateau in beautiful Devil's Lake State Park. The Hal Edwards Orchestra was playing some great big band numbers but the pace was too slow too often. The night was hot so Anne went swimming in the lake after the dance.

Santa Fe

Ack is in Santa Fe at a NASA planning meeting about a future satellite mission. I took a longer lunch and visited the New Mexico Museum of Art. One art work I found very interesting was The Springtime Rainbow by Jozef G. Bakos. It captures the regional weather accurately and pictorially. Yesterday, late afternoon, several of us stood outside the meeting room drinking coffee under the sun. The conversation was interpreted by the roar of thunder and to our left was a dark sky and bolts of lightning. This is seen the painting. To the upper left is a storm cloud, but part of the landscape is illuminated by the sun. Rays of sunlight slash trough the canvas like the scattered showers of this region. While we didn’t see a rainbow this day, I suspect rainbows are common in this area as the sky is big and showers scattered providing opportune conditions to view a rainbow. I actually saw a full sky rainbow after a short shower during dinner.

Having left the museum I entered the city Plaza and window-shopped. This is a tourist trap: many stores and many tourists and much fake Native American art. Fake pottery, fake carvings, fake spices, fake jewelry, fake everything. I suspect there were some quality stores but I got a bit depressed and decided to head back to the hotel, reflecting on the price of our newly painted ceiling. I passed through a public park and suddenly became aware of lots of public art – real art, real sculptures. Our hotel in infused with sculptures in the gardens and pathways. They were visually appealing and mentally relaxing. It was nice to have this feeling given the recent painting of our house. Real painting. Expensive, yes – perhaps too much, but should we not surround ourselves with artwork and color, and the positive visual stimulation that it has?

More San Fran...

We spent Saturday -- the four of us along with Mark and Sisi's family (Max, Nila, Eli) -- in the museum of the California Academy of Sciences in beautiful Golden Gate Park. Nice exhibits on fish, Galapagos Islands and a white alligator. Mark then took us for a 'car tour' around the city which included some very colorful stairways. We had a very nice dinner at Plouf. Mike and Ev head back home on Sunday morning.