A Year Of Photos

This morning I went through all my photos from 2013 and decided not to bore anyone with my favorites, or whatever, as a year-end post. I did delete over 500 photos. That is from this year alone! I mean, how many pictures of flying pelicans, oceans, plants, food, bad photos of oneself, etc does one need to leave on the computer?

I ran across this one that I took last week. We were wandering through the colleges, and I was going to show L where I could not find Gabby Giffords' signature, and, low and behold, it popped right out at me. (You can see it right in the middle of the photo.)

So, in lieu of a year-end wrap-up, I will just say - Looking Forward to a New Year!

Martha Redbone: Levitt on the Lawn

Last November I heard a piece on NPR about singer/songwriter Martha Redbone. I was especially intrigued by the way she used poetry by William Blake set to the music of her Appalachian roots. After listening to a few of her songs online, I was so taken with her work that I bought her entire album The Garden of Love on iTunes. I rarely buy an entire album, but I have listened to this one many times already.

So, when I saw a poster at HMC saying that she would be giving a free concert at Scripps, I had to go. The concert was part of the Levitt on the Lawn series sponsored by the Levitt Pavillion in Pasadena. Liz Levitt Hirsch, a Scripps alum, is part of the Mortimer Levitt Foundation which encourages community through music by providing free outdoor concerts.

Along with many other lawn-sitters, I enjoyed the live music from Redbone's album, especially when she added some improvisational sections to the songs I already enjoy. There is something so much better about live music than recordings.

Now that I am aware that Scripps has two of these concerts every year, I will keep them on my radar! 

Gabby Giffords Honored at Scripps

Gabby Giffords was honored at her alma mater, Scripps College, last week as the third recipient of the Ellen Browning Scripps Medal (along with Hillary Rodham Clinton and Justice Sandra Day O'Connor). This medal "is awarded to a woman whose accomplishments have made a significant and positive difference in the possibilities available in women's lives, enabling all women to live more confidently, courageously, and hopefully."

As shown on this news report about this event, Scripps has a graffiti wall which is signed by all graduates. When I walked over to the wall today, I found the class of 1993 with no problem, but I did not find Giffords' signature, although you can see it in the video. I will have to go back sometime with someone who has a better eye than I.

Drill, Part 2

With my folks visiting for the long weekend, I thought they might like to see the third day of the shooter drill yesterday for a something a little different. We walked over to a different vantage point (in front of Honnold), so my photos are a little better than the previous days'. I also knew to expect the rappellers, so I was ready to photograph them.

I found out that the reason the drill lasted for three days was that the various agencies have different shifts of responders, and they wanted to train each group of people. 

Training Drill

Today is the middle day of three for rescue workers to practice drills for shooters on campus. "Expect a lot of police and fire dept. activity around campus this week. ... At least three helicopters will hover above campus. And the drill will involved the sounds of gunshots and screaming victims."

While my friend Judy avoided checking out this drill, I took my camera and long lens and went to Garrison Theater. I was not the only one with a camera. The most exciting thing was to watch two men rappell from a helicopter. You can see one of them near the top of the trees in the second photo on the left wire. That happened so quickly I almost missed getting a shot.

These people watched from Honnold.

Albert Stewart

Last month my friend Carol toured the home of Claremont artist Albert Stewart who used to teach art at Scripps. She was showing me photos of the various sculptures in his home, and I was especially enamored of this owl. What surprised me, though, was that I started recognizing his style and realized that he had done quite a bit of the art at CUCC. 

Years ago there used to be tours every few months of the art in the church, but I never went on one of those tours, so I dug out the old pamphlet that we were given when we joined back in 1987, and as I thumbed through, I was amazed and impressed with the number of great artworks we take for granted in this building - from Millard Sheets to Sam Maloof.

So I went around a took a few photos of my own of the Albert Stewart works.

This is one of the wood panels at the front of the church - The Sower and the Seed.

Here is a sculpture on the north side of the sanctuary.

 This is the lectern with the eagle representing John.

This is the pulpit which is Matthew the Evangelist.

End-of-the-Year Dinner

The Claremont Colleges are in preparation for the end of yet another school year.  Alumni weekend has come and gone with the various performing groups strutting their stuff.  The Claremont Concert Orchestra  performed, along with the Concert Choir, the Brahms Requiem. (You can read my music blog about the concert and my thoughts on Brahms here.)

As per tradition, the choir and orchestra shared a lovely dinner at Scripps' Malott Commons to celebrate yet another great season of music-making.  Community members of the ensembles (aka "the grown-ups") sit together and enjoy a chance to talk about a number of things.

Portabello mushroom

This year our conversation took a silly turn.  One of the forks at the table had a bent tyne, and that somehow led to a discussion about a runcible spoon. Pretty soon a few of us started quoting as much of the Edward Lear poem "The Owl and the Pussycat" by memory as we could.  When we faltered, someone would check their smartphone and get us back on track.  I had not thought about that poem for a long time, and it certainly produced a few giggles at our table.  Bong-trees, anyone?

Maulik Pancholy at Scripps

Taking a question from a student

Thursday night we went to Garrison Theater at Scripps to hear Maulik Pancholy speak about life in the acting world as an Indian. (He called himself an American Indian which is not to be confused with Native American.) We have seen his work on 30 Rock and most recently on the new sitcom Whitney.   He brought clips of his work from his early days, when roles for his race were quite stereotypical spoofs of Indians in turbans (Pancholy does not own one - I guess they didn't sell them in Indiana where he grew up), through his more recent work where his ethnicity is not his prominent trait.

Ben Stein and His Money

For the past six years, the Malott Public Affairs Program at Scripps College has brought a conservative speaker to campus to bring an opportunity for meaningful dialogue in the area of public policy.  Last night's speaker, Ben Stein, was to speak on "Dark Days in America: How to Get to Daybreak."

Here is the basic outline of how Ben Stein said, last night, we get there. We will have smart people, like Steve Jobs, and people like you who are teachers, policemen and military personnel, doing small heroic things turn this country around. (I paraphrase, but don't simplfy.)

Huh?  That's it?  This, after telling us that we have the worst educated society in recent memory (he told many funny anecdotes about people he has spoken with who can't even name five rivers in America, or even people who can't subtract three-digit numbers).  He offered not one suggestion about how to fix education, but did manage to say that money won't do it.  Our schools, apparently don't really need the air conditioning, he said (when moments later he thanked the people backstage for turning on the AC because he was getting warm, and that AC is a better invention than the internet).

Stein is a funny speaker, but in terms of depth of content, I found him utterly lacking.