Sunbaked Hero

I admit this picture doesn't look like much until you click to enlarge it. I hadn't planned to post it at all, but after reading yesterday's comments I decided to go ahead. I mentioned the man who dug stairs into the path above Las Flores Canyon. Altadenahiker said, "I've been told the stairs were originally dug by the fire fighters several years ago. But my hat is off to the gentleman who is doing this renovation in the heat of summer. Wonder who he is."

I've often seen L.A. County park rangers on the trails with their maintenance equipment. The area trails I know are well-maintained; it must be a constant project to keep them clean and passable for hikers. Most regular hikers are respectful, but I take a small bag when I hike so I can pick up what trash I see. It's worst after a weekend.

The Sam Merrill Trail, which I was hiking when I took this shot, is across the canyon from the stairs in question. That day, the shoveling man and I were the only ones crazy enough to be out in the infernal heat. I could hear the dig and scrape of his shovel. He was working his way uphill.

Who is he? No park ranger uniform. Just a dark T-shirt. No hat. I hope he was wearing sunscreen.

Summer Colors

These would be fall colors in the Midwest, where I grew up. Here, as seen from the Sam Merrill Trail, browns and golds are summer colors. Bits of gray, green and orange enhance the palette of the scrub's subtle beauty. It's not what I'd call a riot of color but it's hugely varied. Along the many nature trails here you'll also find wildflowers any time of year: red, yellow, even bright purple.

In the background of the photo a path leads uphill through the area that burned almost a year ago. I don't know if the path is new or if it was always there and was revealed by the burn. Lately a man has been out there shoveling in the hot sun, making the path into a stairway. I tried to get a picture but he was far away, and it was crazy enough for me to be there. The scrub is beautiful but not as tall as trees, and it doesn't provide much shade.

Got $7.733 Million?

Pasadena has a Frank Lloyd Wright house. Just one. And it's on the market.

It's called "La Miniatura," and it's considered one of Wright's masterpieces, according to this article. That can be good or bad for me, should I decide to buy it. For instance, I wouldn't want tourists lining up in my driveway and peeking around my fence every day. But the house is tucked away in a ravine above the Arroyo Seco. It looks lovely and quiet from the street, and unless you're willing to trespass, you can only peek onto the grounds. Click the article link above and scroll to the bottom for more photos.

Alice Millard, one of Pasadena's early arbiters of taste, paid $17,000 for the house when it was built for her in 1923. It was an expensive home in its day.

The house is called "La Miniatura," but I think I'll have room for all my stuff in 4,000 square feet. Maybe not. You know how things accumulate.

Colorado Street Bridge At Night

Maybe not my definitive shot, but I do like this one. Taken at the east end of the bridge, July 19th 2008.

Zen Monday: Crime Scene

East end of the Colorado Street Bridge, just off the walkway.

Zen Monday is the day you tell me what the photo's about, rather than me telling you. While on vacation I may not be willing or able to respond quickly to comments.

Chambers' Nighttime Chambers

I took this photo of the Richard H. Chambers U.S. Court of Appeals Building the same day as yesterday's, an hour or two later, while at the annual Colorado Street Bridge party.

I couldn't find much on the web about Richard H. Chambers himself, except that he was the judge whose idea it was to bring a Federal courthouse to Pasadena. There's plenty of information about the building, however. Here's a nice gloss on the place, with photos and information. Even a map.

I'm currently on vacation, so responding to comments may happen in an untimely fashion, which means I may not be quick about it and I'll probably be wearing something that's way out of date.

White Sky

While on the Colorado Street Bridge for the July 19th festival I took this photo of the Richard H. Chambers U.S. Court of Appeals Building, another Pasadena icon everyone loves to photograph. The building originally opened in 1903 as the Vista Del Arroyo Hotel, thus beginning its fascinating history.

I'm not sure if the rooftops in the foreground are of condos or a private home. We called it "Casa de Escher." Click on the shot below to enlarge it and get a better idea of why.

None of this explains the color of the sky.
While on vacation I might not be able to respond to comments as quickly as I'd like to, so please bear with me, or bear without me, or just bear.

Theme Day: Metal

On the first of every month, the City Daily Photo Blog community has a theme day. Today's theme is "metal."

July 19th I showed you a destruction site where a building is being torn down. The thing that most impressed me about the work was that as they tore the building apart they were sorting the materials.

Yup. Recycling. Heavy machinery delicately plucked huge pieces of iron and placed them in the "huge pieces of iron" pile, as opposed to the "curly pieces of metal" pile. Shovels piled corrugated metal upon corrugated metal instead of throwing it all into muddled heaps of rubble.

I don't know if they were doing this due to any regulations, but I do know Pasadena City Council voted in 2006 to require that (among other things) all new construction meet LEED standards. Pasadena wants to be a Green City, and it's not just talk.

Many other blogs in the City Daily Photo Blog community are participating in today's theme day. Click here to view thumbnails for all participants.

Outward Route

The Colorado Street Bridge has been photographed by everyone with a camera who ever came within view of it. I'm no different. I've photographed it from all angles, searching for my definitive shot. Ben's, for example, is his banner, and it's a beauty. I haven't gotten my definitive shot yet.

Tomorrow is Theme day on the City Daily Photo blogs. After that, while I'm on vacation for a few days, I'll be sharing a few shots I took while on the bridge during the annual Pasadena Heritage Colorado Street Bridge celebration July 19th. I'll tell you a little about the bridge and respond to comments when I can. Zen Monday will occur as scheduled. (Could Zen Monday not occur?)

In the meantime, have a wonderful weekend!
I'll be at my high school reunion.
Eau. My. Gawd.

Water Use

It was still hot at around 6:00 Sunday evening when John and I arrived at Paseo Colorado to catch dinner and a movie. These kids were loving the heat.

There are two fountains at the Paseo. I don't shop there often, but it seems every time I'm there I find children enjoying this one. That's a fine use of resources.

The Real Thing

The Huntington. If you live around here you've probably been there—dragged through the galleries on a school trip as a kid or minding your manners in the tea room as an adult. If you're like me you go as often as you can to enjoy the gardens, galleries and exhibits. When blogger Katie of Katiefornia visited last week, our first stop was the Huntington. She and I both love to take photos, so I can promise you more to come.

We have Henry E. Huntington, Arabella Huntington and I suppose even Collis Huntington to thank for it all, as well as those who've come after them to manage the institution. It's only as far as San Marino, the community bordering Pasadena to the south. Yet the Huntington feels to me like a taste of Europe, Asia, the wide world. It's not the real thing, only a reproduction, but a day there feeds my wanderlust, if only briefly.

The Japanese Garden, pictured above, was used in a scene in Memoirs of a Geisha. You have to be as big as a movie studio to use the Huntington for your event. As perfect as it would be they don't hold weddings or private parties there. They'd be doing it all the time, wouldn't they? No, no, no. The Huntington is for the people.

Except the library. If you want to get an up-close look at a First Folio of Shakespeare or perhaps Benjamin Franklin's autograph autobiography, you must be a "qualified scholar." But there's always a library exhibit, so the unqualified scholars among us can occasionally view these treasures through glass. I've seen Galileo's handwriting only inches from my face. Not a reproduction. No, no, no. The real thing.

Zen Monday: Salon Seating

The rear part of Beyond Hair on Green Street.


Zen Monday is the day I ask you to tell me what the photo's about, rather than me telling you. Very basically, a Zen student learns from meditation or experience as opposed to a class or lecture. (For a brief definition of Zen, see the second paragraph of Wikipedia's article.)

One Hobbit Marathon

Followers of this blog know I'm behind in my reading of the 200 page manual that came with my camera. (It came on disk but I printed it out because otherwise I would never read it.) Night photography is a project I'm embarking on slowly. One reason for that is with the little digital cameras you need a tripod at night and it's awkward to carry to restaurants and theatres. Another reason is I don't get out much.

Last night our good friends Ed and Linda took us to the delicious Sushi Roku at One Colorado. After dinner we stepped out onto the plaza to discover upturned faces of all ages gazing at the wall above Crate & Barrel. They were enraptured with the beginnings of an all-night marathon of Peter Jackson's the Lord of the Rings Trilogy. The showing began at 8:30 with plans to go all night followed by a "sunrise Hobbit breakfast," all free. My first thought when I heard that was they could offer breakfast free because most of the crowd wouldn't make it all night. But people had brought pillows and sleeping bags, and those are three excellent movies.

Night photography with these little digital cameras means the shutter stays open for a long time. I'll learn how to control that myself but right now I'm learning the automatic settings. I like the ghosty feet in the foreground of this shot. But if you click on the photo to enlarge it, you can tell the people watching the film stayed pretty still.

Fresh

It's Saturday, time to head out to the Farmer's Market at Victory Park, more specifically in the parking lot at Pasadena High School.

You know the bread guy? He's got some black netting around his booth to keep the hot sun off the freshly-baked breads. He's a joker. I hear him while I wait in line for fresh fish. He tells the little kids there's magic in the cookies. He tells the ladies that, too, but I don't think he means the same thing.

Andrews' Italian Cousin

Despite the striking tower (pictured yesterday), my favorite architectural feature of Saint Andrews Catholic Church is this rounded projection which (since I've never been inside) I presume to be at the back of the nave behind the chancel, where the altar might be. (Here's a church diagram.)

Sure enough, the Roman church said to have inspired this one has a feature very much like it. Not only does Santa Sabina have the same arched windows, but the stone is also of a similar hue. (Click on the Santa Sabina link to see a photo of the Roman basilica. The photo below is of the Pasadena church.) The Roman basilica, built in 432 AD, has some nice pock marks that ours doesn't have. I'd like to stay around a few hundred years and see ours do some graceful aging.

The only unfortunate thing about the local building I can see, architecturally speaking, is that the rear of it is crowded against the funeral home. You can't get a good look at the back. But I suppose that has a convenience all its own.

Saint Andrews Catholic Church: the Tower

The tower of Saint Andrews Catholic Church, built in 1927, is one of Pasadena's most-photographed landmarks. Ben has a very cool shot of it, which I hesitated to link to because I mentioned in the comments I thought it was part of the funeral home next door. Well, that was back in the days when I wasn't perfect.

Wikipedia's article about Saint Andrews says "The architect, Robert Montgomery, and the church's pastor, Msgr. McCarthy, both traveled to Italy studying early Byzantine architecture to find inspiration for the new church." They found inspiration in Saint Sabina's basilica in Rome, which was built in 432 A.D. A photo I'll show you tomorrow bears a good resemblance.

Looking Up

In yesterday's comments about smog, Lily Hydrangea said "when you are in it, you don't see it." Here's an example of the truth of that statement: a photo taken just south of the corner of Walnut and Hudson a few days ago.

Congratulations to Lily on her recent good press for Long Island Daily Photo!

Smog

A few days ago in the comments I bragged about Pasadena's natural beauty. Life Observer cautioned me not to be too proud, saying "we up here on the street are having a harder time seeing the mountains from Colorado Blvd., the last couple of yrs."

I took this photo from near the corner of Paloma and Sierra Madre Boulevards last Saturday. I've seen the smog worse lately, with the mountains barely visible from the same spot. I'd like to make excuses, like "it's the marine layer," or "stuff gets backed up against the mountains." The latter may even be true. But should that stuff be in our air in the first place?

We share air space with Los Angeles, after all. And, as Wikipedia says, "strict regulations by the Californian government have reduced the number of Stage 1 smog alerts from several hundred annually to just a few annually." When I moved to southern California twenty years ago it was two weeks before I realized I had a view of the mountains from the window of my studio apartment. Our air is much improved since then.

Obviously we still have smog, we're not perfect yet. I'll keep my bragging to a minimum and post an unattractive picture every once in a while.

Zen Monday: MacWoman

Mesmerized at the Apple store.

Bridge Night

One night each year, Pasadena Heritage invites everyone in town over for bridge. Colorado Street Bridge, that is. They shut down traffic and from dusk 'til long after dark, Pasadena parties all across its favorite icon.

There's food, entertainment, more food...John and I first walked from one end of the bridge to the other (as did many people) to case the joint first and see what our choices were. We settled on beer from the Craftsman Brewing Company, which was so delicious that—well, let's just say "settled" is absolutely the wrong word; and barbecued pork sandwiches from Big Mama's Rib Shack, which were so delicious that—well, let's just say now I know why Mama is so big.

Various local organizations were there to show off not only what they do but what they contribute to Pasadena. We visited the Pasadena Heritage booth to thank them for the party. They've been instrumental in helping to preserve much of Pasadena's heritage, including important structures such as the Herkimer Arms and the very bridge on which we were standing. We even stopped by to visit our favorite heroes at the Altadena Mountain Rescue Team booth, which was being personned by the very team member who experienced her first rappel while I photographed it July 10th.

I'm not sure who worked harder last night: the barbecue servers or the guys pouring the beer or the security guards or the musicians or the volunteers from various organizations. But they all made it a great evening for those of us who didn't do a darned thing but enjoy it.

Hey! There's a new blog in town. Check out Laurie Allee's Glimpses of South Pasadena. A beautiful addition to the SGV blog family.