The Eagle Rock

I freely admit that the first time I saw the Eagle Rock I thought it got its name because it's shaped like the head of an eagle.

It doesn't take long to find out that the Eagle Rock is named for the shadow cast by the formation in the upper center of the rock, which looks like an eagle with outspread wings. (I still think the rock looks like an eagle head but that either makes me crazy or makes the name doubly appropriate.)

Eagle Rock is also the name of the Los Angeles neighborhood that shares part of Pasadena's western border. To get there, all we have to do is drive or bike west on Colorado Blvd. for a few minutes. Eagle Rock was once its own municipality, incorporated into LA in 1923. The pre-incorporation City Hall and Library still stand on Colorado Blvd.

It's a funky area, with mostly independent businesses—coffee shops, clothing stores, restaurants, and the president's Alma Mater. I'll head over for a new installment in the Coffee Shop Quest one of these days.

Wikipedia's article about Eagle Rock has a photo taken from almost the same spot where I took this one. Their pic shows a deer in the bushes (it'll give you some scale) and a lot of dirt in the foreground, where now there's a lot of asphalt.

Jeopardy

The answer is: Kids, babies, dads and dog butts.

The question is: What is a neighborhood when moms aren't around?

Ah, but the real question is: Who dressed herself today?

If I had her wardrobe I'd have chosen the same combo. Fortunately for my neighbors, there's no risk of that.

Theme Day: Yellow

The first of the month is theme day for City Daily Photo bloggers (of which there are now a whopping 933). As soon as I heard the theme was "yellow," I began seeing more yellow cars, signs and neon than I'd ever noticed before.

You'd think such a broad theme would be simple, but cars, signs and neon are too easy. But when J. and I visited the Norton Simon Museum on my birthday, I caught a glimpse of this man in his yellow jacket and knew I had my shot. I was an April fool, however. The painting behind him isn't yellow. It's called Buffalo Blue, by Norman Zammitt.

Click here to view thumbnails for all participants in today's theme.

Hometown Pasadena

John and I fell in love with Pasadena at first sight. For our first Christmas here I found the perfect gift for him at Vroman's: a book called Hometown Pasadena. Editor Colleen Dunn Bates had gathered some of the best talent in town to help put a lot of information into a small, friendly volume. It was a guide to entertainment, restaurants, sports, surrounding communities, architecture, schools--pretty much everything going on in the San Gabriel Valley. It even contained a section entitled "Cemeteries We Love."

John was thrilled when he opened his gift that Christmas morning--almost as thrilled as I was when I opened mine and found the copy of Hometown Pasadena he'd bought for me. We kept them both.

One of the advantages to living in Pasadena is it's possible to cross paths with locals you admire. So you can bet I was delighted when I met Colleen Dunn Bates this past January. She's interesting and fun, like her books. She's also got what John calls "about twenty brains." You'd need them, to do what she does. Besides Hometown Pasadena (now available in the new 2009-10 edition), she's also editor and publisher at Prospect Park Books, which has eight books in its stable so far. Colleen also heads up Hometown Pasadena's website, which debuted its new look yesterday. I have no idea how she packs so much information into a site that's classy, well-organized, and constantly updated.

I'm very excited that Hometown Pasadena is currently featuring an interview with me. I've just gotta toot that horn because it's such an honor. In a way I feel like I've come full circle. Life has many circles, I suppose, and I'm grateful for this one. So I'd like to thank Colleen and send you all over to Hometown Pasadena to click, comment, and enjoy.

(Photo: a view of Macy's on Lake Avenue.)

Zen Monday: #42

Zen Monday is the day you experience the photo and give us your thoughts rather than me telling you what the photo's about.

As I post each new Zen photo, I'll add a label to last week's to identify it if necessary (and if I know what it is).

Bloggers Rock

Yesterday's San Gabriel Valley Blogger potluck was a success! Not that I'm the least bit surprised, considering the people involved.

Organized by Timothy Rutt of Altadenablog, Karin Bugge the Altadenahiker, Susan C. of Open Mouth, Insert Fork and Cancer Banter, and Debi of Altadena Daily Photo and Altadena Above It All, the potluck attracted many interesting dishes, including this giant cookie contributed by Michelle Mills, a.k.a. Mickie, who blogs at Diary of a Doo Dah Queen and Mickie's Zoo. Here, Mickie and her cookie pose with Timothy.

Mickie said she had to spell the word "blogger" for the cookie decorator, who had never heard of a blogger.

Kelly of West Coast Grrlie Blather wondered aloud if any of us had encountered, uh, disrespectful reactions when people found out we were bloggers. If I've gotten those reactions I was ignorant of them (blissfully so). And speaking of ignorance, someone who disdains people because they blog surely doesn't understand what blogging is in the first place.

I've found the San Gabriel Valley blogging community to be fascinating, diverse and welcoming. I've found the global blogging community to be all of the above as well. Blogging has opened up my world in ways I never knew possible. What are your thoughts about blogging?

Here's Kathy's post about the potluck at the KCHblog. I'll add more links as I find them.
Tim posted a video, apparently shot while I was in the bathroom.
A lot of fun shots at Cafe Pasadena, including Boz's glamor pic.
Altadena Hiker has added another photo.
This just in: Pasadena PIO's post.

Join Us

Tonight we celebrate Earth Hour from 8:30-9:30 pm. The World Wildlife Fund is asking everyone on the planet to turn off their lights for one hour as a show of our commitment to finding solutions to climate change.

John and I wondered what we'd do with a whole hour away from our computers. Then we thought of something.

One little hour seems a small amount of time to show support for the entire future of our planet. I hope you'll join us. I mean that figuratively. Don't come over. Do something at your house.

But you could join us this afternoon at the San Gabriel Valley Bloggers' Potluck. Bloggers, friends, families, fans and lurkers are all invited. It would be lovely to see you there!

Home Shopping on San Rafael Avenue

As the brochure says, "there is simply no address quite like it in Pasadena..." A South San Rafael Avenue address is an exclusive address. Yesterday I got to take a look at a property for sale at 500 South San Rafael avenue for an unheard of $3,500,000. Does that sound expensive to you? Nah. According to the agent, my friend Jeremy Hardy of Craig Estates and Fine Properties, many properties along that street are worth $6 million or more, even in this economy.

I'm standing on the second floor balcony. You're looking at the pool house, which has a kitchen and bathroom, and can serve as a private guest house. The home itself was built in 1904 by an adventurer named Frederick Burnham, who later served as president of what was then the Southwest Museum, now the Southwest Museum of the American Indian. Mrs. Alice Campbell-Johnston altered the house significantly when she lived there from 1927 to 1942. It doesn't look like a 1904 house at all. (Alice must have been related to Frances Ellen Campbell-Johnston, who built the Church of the Angels nearby.)

I enjoy visiting houses like this and felt lucky I got to see this one. It's a fantastic lot--more than 55,000 square feet. And it's mostly flat, which is unusual for a lot so close to the Arroyo. The back yard is almost completely taken up by a tennis court. When I move in I'm going to take that out and just plant stuff.

Jeremy said the house doesn't have a website. But Redfin has already picked up the MLS listing and there are several pictures. Take a look and you'll get an idea of the place. Here's Jeremy, standing below the balcony where I stood when I shot the pool house pic.
Say hi to my pal!

AKA Monkey Balls

The tree is called Liquid Amber, or liquidambar styraciflua if Wikipedia's got it right. The pod is everywhere in so-Cal this time of year. You don't want your soft, bare foot to meet up with it. Boz navigates around these, carefully avoiding them with his delicate peds.

I saw a young woman gathering them the other day, and it triggered a memory from when I first moved here; I collected a batch and put them in a colorful bowl on the table in my apartment. To someone newly transplanted from Chicago, they were a fanciful arrangement in the sunny month of March.

Little Guy's Adventure

Boz and I found this little guy out gallivanting on Los Robles Boulevard. Literally. A nice little guy. Cute, too. His name? Hard to tell--no nametag, no phone number. He did have a Pasadena dog license, but the city license is only a 4-digit number. It didn't tell me much, and it was after hours. City offices were closed.

I can't leave an innocent dog hanging out in traffic if he'll come to me, and Little Guy came. He was well-mannered, clean and well-fed. He hadn't strayed far from home. My neighbor Brenden had a few minutes to drive over and bring me a leash. (Thank you for being a hero, Brenden!) Little Guy, Boz and I walked up and down knocking on doors for a while but no one recognized LG.

By the time we got to my house, Little Guy wasn't having fun anymore. He was scared. I tied him on the porch and gave him some water, leaving the door open while I fed Boz his dinner inside. Then I sat with my laptop to see if I could save myself a trip to the Pasadena Humane Society & SPCA. If I couldn't, that was Little Guy's next stop.

Luckily, the PHS & SPCA was able to tell me where LG lived based on his Pasadena city license number. Luckily for the dog, that is. For me, let me just put it this way: my feet wouldn't hurt so much and I'd be a lot less irritated if Little Guy had been wearing a tag with his name and phone number on it. You can order them online from the Humane Society for $6.95. How hard can that be?

Anything else you want to know about pets, check out the Humane Society's great website. They've got all kinds of services: behavior classes, volunteer opportunities, books, and free and/or cheap spaying, neutering and microchipping. Do it! All of it! For the love and safety of your pet! For the goodwill of your neighbors!

On the website they also have photos and videos of beautiful, sweet, wonderful animals just waiting for you to take them home. With a nametag.

When you get them there, please make sure the fence is secure.

Norton Simon Museum

I had a wonderful birthday yesterday. Many of you sent birthday greetings, and I thank you. We had lunch with friends, after which John took me to Pasadena's Norton Simon Museum. I didn't want to have to organize anything, and John took care of the arrangements.

Norton Simon was apparently a smart man. He was certainly wealthy, and the Wikipedia article about him says he was good at making deals and managing his money. From the collection at the museum I'd say he made mostly excellent art deals. There are a few clunkers, noticeable because the museum is small. But the great stuff is so great that the clunkers don't matter. And one person's clunker is another person's masterpiece.

The Asian art collection is impressive. So is the Degas. Picasso is well represented. Brancusi. Rembrandt. Rubens. El Greco. Folks you've heard of, you know? There's an obsessive Canaletto I like to visit; a gorgeous "Reclining Nude" I'd never seen or heard of, by Watteau, whom I've also never seen, but I've heard of, of course. The one Modigliani they have is delectable. (Not for sale, though, and the guards didn't think that was funny.) We wandered the sculpture garden; a Henry Moore work called "King and Queen" charmed me. The Norton Simon also holds surprises, like portraits so fine you feel like you're in communion with the subject.

I'd link you to each piece, but on the Norton Simon's website you can search by collection or artist, so have at it and find your favorites!

I know how lucky I am that I got to do exactly what I wanted to do yesterday. Thank you for granting my birthday wish, sweetie. You're the best husband ever. Mushy mushy.

Zen Monday: #41

Zen Monday is the day you experience the photo and give us your thoughts rather than me telling you what the photo's about.

As I post each new Zen photo, I'll add a label to last week's to identify it if necessary (and if I know what it is).

Update 3/30/09: A few days after posting, a "for sale" sign was hung on the wheelchair. As of this date, the chair is still there.

Euclidean

I haven't been inside the giant white structure just east of the Civic Center on Euclid. I've Googled, but no luck.

Help me out here. Is it part of the Civic Center? Part of the Sheraton? Or just its own mystical self?

Update: Helen gave us our answer. It's the Civic Center's Temporary Exhibit Space.

Haze

I took a picture of the haze.

Thursday it was thicker than I've seen it in years - not just in Pasadena but in Glendale and Hollywood, too. It was bayad. Fun for photo experiments, though. I expect the Hound of the Baskervilles to appear on that path at any moment.

New Purpose

Today we depart Caltech's Henry M. Robinson Laboratory of Astrophysics, just as the astrophysicists themselves are in the process of doing. A new group of scientists will soon be moving in.

Pictured here is another of the building's fanciful light fixtures. This one, in the vestibule, is made to represent an armillary sphere. It follows the fashion of the library's fixtures, with signs of the Zodiac whirling around an inner sun.

Upon renovation, the building will become the Ronald and Maxine Linde Center for Global Environmental Science. Their website says the Center was founded "to address the complex issue of global climate change from a wide range of disciplines." To do so, they will draw upon the Caltech faculty.

Yesterday's great minds housed themselves in the Robinson Lab while applying their excellent brains to the science of astrophysics. I think it's appropriate to repurpose this building (it will of course be LEED certified) for use by Caltech's current and future great minds while applying their excellent brains to the environmental problems we face. Who better to tackle this monumental, planet-wide dilemma than Caltech, where science reigns over ideology?

It is befitting that the "sun" inside this armillary sphere is a CFL bulb.

Reverence Library

Yesterday I promised you a look inside the library at Caltech's Henry M. Robinson Laboratory of Astrophysics. Because the building's being readied for renovation, not much remains in the way of books. Yet, when I visited, other things were still there, like this bust of George Ellery Hale. Besides founding the Mount Wilson Observatory and many other things, Hale was instrumental in creating the California Institute of Technology out of Throop Polytechnic Institute.

I don't know if the bust will stay but the light fixtures will. This one's decorated with Roman symbols.

I revere libraries. A truly ancient one can bring me to tears. This one is merely old, and it's about to undergo big changes. Once again, I refer to Romy Wyllie's book, Caltech's Architectural Heritage. Part of the construction of the Robinson Laboratory building includes what Wyllie refers to as a "rectangular well." The well used to contain a 75 foot spectrograph, according to Wyllie. I've also heard it referred to as a solar telescope. (I sense updates and corrections coming in comments today.)

The well shaft is currently closed but the renovation will open it, meaning sunlight will be admitted into the basements and to this lovely little library.
Take a look at the Caltech Nobel Site. A load of physicists populates the list of Caltech Nobel Laureates (and I must beg a tour of the chemistry building one of these days). Now think of the brilliant scholars of yesterday and today who have sat at this table and pored over these books. Some of them have literally changed how we see the world. Some of them have stayed at Caltech to teach the next generation of mind-bogglers.

The scholars of tomorrow will sit in a modern building across the street. That building looks ugly to some people, though not to all. In the grand scheme of things, it doesn't matter. I'm certain that 75 years from now some googly-eyed fan will ogle those glass and chrome rooms with reverence.

Robinson Laboratory of Astrophysics

We're looking down the hallway (facing south, I believe) inside Caltech's Henry M. Robinson Laboratory of Astrophysics. As I mentioned yesterday, its denizens are packing for their move to the new Cahill Center for Astronomy and Astrophysics.

The Robinson Laboratory was built in 1930 thanks to an endowment provided by Henry Robinson, an early trustee of Throop Polytechnic, the institution that became Caltech. This building was part of a trio that included a Machine Shop and an Optical Shop. At the time, this was all about building the world's largest telescope at Mt. Palomar, the mirror for which was ground and polished at the Optical Shop. The Machine Shop was torn down in 1969 but the Optical Shop remains, now used for offices of the physics faculty.

I fell in love with the Robinson Astrophysics Lab. It has several charming appointments, including the interior and exterior custom light fixtures. My photo below isn't the greatest--well, neither of these are, frankly, but this was not a tripod tour--but you can pick out the little Saturn shapes on the fixture. I'd love to have it in my house.

Unlike its companion the Machine Shop, this building is not going to be torn down. In fact Barbara, who led me on my Caltech tour, was enthusiastic about plans to repurpose it as the Ronald and Maxine Linde Center for Global Environmental Science. More on that tomorrow when we visit the library at the end of the hall.

For historical information about the buildings I'm indebted to Romy Wyllie's gorgeous book, Caltech's Architectural Heritage, and to Barbara for loaning it to me.

Under the Engelmann Oak

I want to thank my friend Barbara who works at Caltech. She doesn't want me to use her last name, but I'd still like to embarrass her a little. She offered a tour of the Caltech campus for the sake of Pasadena Daily Photo, and I took her up on it one day last week. It turned out to be more than just a campus tour. It was an afternoon full of fascinating history and stories. Barbara's a fountain of information about the California Institute of Technology, and she has continued to answer my questions in emails throughout the week.

This item, though, is a bit of a mystery even to Barbara. Perhaps it's a birdbath, though there was no water in it the day we visited. Barbara said no one was quite sure where it came from (Europe?) - or when (we can narrow it down to the first half of the 20th century, surely pre-WWII). Maybe you know and can shed some light.

Update, 3/19/09: please see the comments for further discussion of the birdbath and its origins.

The birdbath stands beneath a rare Engelmann Oak in the courtyard of Caltech's Henry M. Robinson Laboratory of Astrophysics. The building's occupants are in the process of packing up and moving across California Blvd. to the Cahill Center for Astronomy and Astrophysics.

If I had to make that move my heart would break, and not because the Cahill is controversial. The Robinson Laboratory of Astrophysics is a special place. I'll attempt to demonstrate why in this week's posts.

Zen Monday: #40

Zen Monday is the day you experience the photo and give us your thoughts rather than me telling you what the photo's about.
There's no right or wrong. If the photo evokes something in you, that's all it is.

As I post each new Zen photo, I'll add a label to last week's to identify it if necessary (and if I know what it is).

Art Night, Art Future

We Pasadenish are a gentle people. We're polite, well-mannered and friendly. We smile and say thank you. We're willing to give way.

Except, apparently, when it comes to public art. We loves us some art and we're passionate enough to fight about it.

You may recall our January discussion regarding the installation of art on the plaza in front of the Pasadena Civic Center. Here at Pasadena Daily Photo comments remained relatively civilized compared to how things heated up in brick-and-mortar real live town.

I've since sworn off local politics on the blog. By its very nature, a daily blog gives me insufficient time to research complicated issues. However, if you want to get involved in Pasadena's art future, specifically at the Civic Center a.k.a. Convention Center, you may want to free up the evening of March 18th to attend a public meeting and voice your opinions.

You might be just the one who can help turn war-like Pasadenamaniacs back into the gentle, peace-loving Pasadenamanians we were all meant to be.

(The photo was taken at the outstanding Pasadena Museum of California Art on Art Night, 3/13/09. Extra Art Night shots on Overdog.)