and everything is calm and quiet again. it says in an AP story that yesterday’s demonstration was “one of the largest demonstrations for any cause in recent U.S. history,” with over 500,000 demonstrators.
and we pretty much missed it. i know the traffic must have been insane. we weren’t here.
ok, before we go out today, here are some highlights of the day before yesterday. we went to disney hall right here in downtown LA, and i took many photos because it’s so cool. it was designed by frank gehry, who designed the guggenheim in bilbao, spain.
we took a self-guided audio tour (narrated by john lithgow) and it was pretty interesting. outside the third level there was a garden, and in it was this giant fountain in the shape of a rose. the blue that you see are lots of pieces of broken delft china. here’s what they say about it on the website:
“It is made up of Royal Delft China vases. The china was specially imported from Holland and hand broken onsite into over 8000 pieces by a team of artists led by architect Tomas Osinski. The team worked over four months, eight hours a day, six days a week to complete the tile rose.”
we talked about how interesting it was to think of all the people working on the rose, as compared to the one man, simon rodia, working on his watts towers.
john lithgow talked about how frank gehry went to lillian disney’s house and saw all the Delft china she had. lots of it was cheap imitation stuff, and lillian told frank that she and walt liked to buy the cheap stuff on their travels. so when he was going to make the fountain, frank asked delft for some cheap china, but they refused, instead giving him only their finest quality china. which was then broken up into little pieces.
and i’m NOT on my cell phone; that’s the hearing thing for the audio tour.
yesterday afternoon we went to santa monica and rode the ferris wheel located at the end of the Santa Monica Pier. here’s me on top of the ferris wheel.
and this is the view from the top:
right now there’s this huge art instillation in the parking lot at the pier. the building itself is made of 152 steel cargo containers. it’s 34-feet high, and a total of 56,000 square feet inside the structure.
so, inside…it’s Ashes and Snow. The website is ashes and snow. inside it’s kind of murky and there’s that eastern kind of music playing and there are huge photos along the passage of people interacting with animals, like a little kid touching the trunk of an elephant. The artist’s name is Gregroy Colbert, and he went to india, egypt, sri lanka, a bunch of places like that to take photos and shoot film.
so, there are all these intersting photos, and then at the end there’s a film, and it’s something like a woman with a muir cat sitting on her head, and the woman is reading some really old-looking book and of course it’s all shot in black and white. and maybe the woman is on some really old-looking boat that’s gliding through the water, and then maybe there’s a bobcat on a boat, gently touching the woman’s head to push off.
it was pretty good, this first film, and it was short – maybe 10 or 15 minutes. but then there’s a giant hall with a big screen an a film of blowing sand and people sitting around with different large cats like leopards and a lynx and maybe some shots of a man underwater swimming around with elephants. and it was interesting, but then it went on…and on…and on. and finally i said to O. (Oscar), do you want to go? and luckily he, too, was ready to leave. i mean, it felt a little..sacreligious…to leave the film but we’d had enough. it went on too long.
as we walked out, there were tons of people standing around, all of them in complete silence, watching the screen. that was a pretty neat moment.
we walked down the second row of photos and out into the clear sky overlooking the ocean. and went on the ferris wheel.
afterwards we went to the Gate of India, which i kept telling O. was the BEST indian food ever…but it was a little disappointing. Gateway of India RIGHT IN SPRINGFIELD ILLINOIS is better, i think. i think the Gate has slipped a little.
so that’s one more reason why there’s no reason to move away from spfld just now, because we have fabulous indian food.
yesterday, more stuff, more photos, and i feel that i’m going to be slipping behind on my travel report, but i have to get out and LIVE right now. randy called and chastised for not updating more often but like i said, i have to go out and have the experiences and take the pictures right now…
ok then,
sunday morning grace.