SFMOMA

If you've never heard of Olafur Eliasson, you should try and remember that name. He is a young Icelandic artist who works with light and colour to create the most amazing art experiences. This is showing at SFMOMA until the end of February and if you're going to be anywhere near there, make an effort to go! He plays with coloured light, prisms, reflection, mist. He's also got a series of photos taken in Iceland, which are amazing and really well framed and arranged. This photo is of his "One way colour tunnel" installation on the turret bridge of SFMOMA.

Update: So, I told you to remember this artist's name, right? An article in the LA Times mentions an art installation he is doing in NYC this summer, near the Brooklyn Bridge. Sounds cool!

Update to the update: And here's a link to a conceptual drawing of what it will look like. Click on 'NYC Waterfalls'.

At the Asian Art Museum

This is a great little museum in San Francisco. My aunt Yvonne (Shen Shen) is a docent there and we went to check out an exhibit on Japanese contemporary fashion presented as sculpture. The clothes are kind of crazy looking if you think of them as clothing, however they are really remarkable as sculpture created out of fabric. Some of them had pleats, some had draping, some had cuts and pleats. The exhibit was conceived by a Japanese artist who had an accompanying exhibit where he showed fossils and ancient artifacts alongside his own assemblages of artifacts with modern items to create something completely new. Both exhibits were really interesting.

Last Day in Boston

We found out Sharon was in town with her family to visit her mother-in-law.  Bea lives in a lovely home with a small indoor lap pool, so D bundled up the kids with their swimming gear and we went to see EYPS and Teo.  The pool is nicely heated and the kids had a blast in the pool.  I haven't seen Sharon in years, so it was great to catch up with her and GP.  Bea had just got a new black lab puppy who is adorable.  

While we were visiting, we got a call from Stephen about the slightly early arrival of Mason O'Sullivan, healthy baby boy!   All in all, a wonderful way to wrap up a great week's visit. 

Turkey Day!

Thanksgiving turned out to be a balmy day, high 50s, low 60s.  Amy, who is Julie's sister, came by with her husband John and daughter Lucia to play with Mari and Austin.  The kids love hanging out together, especially the two girls (as you can see from the photo of them jumping on the bed).  It was so warm out, D and John took the kids to the park, no coats!  

Dinner was at the home of Julie's and Amy's stepsister Catherine Rocchio.  The home was filled with young children.  Dinner was turkey, mashed potatoes (traditional recipe from Julie's maternal grandmother), D's famous brussels sprouts, and roasted sweet potatoes.  Dessert consisted of 5 different pies: chocolate with gingerbread crust, apple, pumpkin, lemon meringue, blueberry.

Exploring Boston

Yesterday D and I went to the new ICA on the waterfront.  The building is designed by Diller Scofidio + Renfro.  There are beautiful views of the water from a glass wall at the gallery level as well as from the theatre, and from a viewing window in the 'mediatheque' which hangs under the main cantilevered gallery space.  They were showing a really interesting design exhibit which had examples of book covers, fashion, industrial design, architecture, etc.  I particularly liked the projects from 'DIY' magazine Make and Readymade.  The ICA is starting to build a permanent collection and among the artists they acquired is Tara Donovan.  One of her pieces is a cube made of straight pins, loosely held together.  According to one of the volunteers, the pins fall off easily and the whole thing needs to be remade regularly.  There is a sense of obsessiveness about her work which I love.  They will have a whole show of her pieces late next year, should be a good one!  

The ICA is right next door to Anthony's Pier 4, which apparently is an old Boston institution.  We had delicious clam chowder and shrimp scampi for lunch.

After lunch, I explored the Boston Public Library and Trinity Church in Copley Square.  Both buildings are filled with beautiful art.  The library has many wonderful murals including a series on the Holy Grail and another by John Singer Sargent.  The church is filled with stained glass, including some beautiful examples by Edward Burne Jones.

Harvard/MIT

I had lunch with Elaine and Alex today. They are Radcliffe fellows this year so I joined them at the Fellows lunch. We chatted with a couple of interesting people, including an artist from LA! The Fellows are from various academic areas and all have their own projects they are working on. After lunch, we took a bus to MIT and walked through the main building (and the infinite corridor) and then to see the new Stata Center. (That's us reflected in part of the building.) This facility was designed by Frank Gehry. It is a typical Gehry building. Before I headed back to D's, I stopped at the MIT Museum. Among the exhibits was a series of kinetic sculptures by Stewart Ganson, basically little sculptures that are driven by a motor and have moving parts. Many of them are quite beautiful and a little odd.

The First Thanksgiving

We went to visit Plimouth Plantation today. Seemed appropriate considering the time of year. It's divided into a Wampanoag (the original inhabitants of southern Massachusets) and English colonist village. In the Wampanoag village, they are dressed in traditional clothing, however they are not 'playing' people from 1600's so that visitors can ask about modern life as well as what it was like 'back in the day'. The colonists are playing parts, and you could ask them questions about their daily lives and they will answer as people from 1627 Plimouth. The little village had several houses, each with a vegetable garden, a big main building that looked like a meeting house, and a beautiful view of the bay. Austin and I are at what appears to be a bread baking oven. The exhibits in the museum are geared towards teaching visitors that the myths that we learned in school about the first Thanksgiving are not completely accurate. Both the English and the native people were cautious around each other.

Ice skating at the Frog Pond

We drove to Needham to get a set of bunk beds for the kids in the morning. The drive was beautiful as the leaves were still on the trees, so lots of yellows, reds. In the afternoon, we went for a walk through the Public Garden and Boston Common to the Frog Pond for ice skating. It was the first time for the kids and the adults were pretty darn rusty as well. The kids did great! Mari has a really good sense of balance. Austin got to be pretty fast with 2 people holding him and was completely into 'falling' which is good for learning to skate. We refueled with hot chocolate before heading home for a nap.

Boston, Sel de la Terre restaurant

D's birthday

So you'll have to turn your head, I have no idea how to rotate the picture. We had a great birthday dinner at this restaurant my first night in Boston. I had scallops for the 1st course, duck for main course, and a yummy rioja to go with. We shared a chocolate dessert and a maple cheesecake (which was excellent).

Need a publicist?

My friend Amy is a publicist and she has a new website, which I've linked to, it's Tower PR. She's also got an RSS feed of PR tips, in case you need to get your event, info, whatever out to the media. Amy is in my knitting group and my book group. I met her through Gigi, who I've also linked to, that's VitaminGigi. I have a lot of entrepreneurial friends!

So, need a publicist? A cool recycled scarf? I know people!

Slow Dancing

Last night, I went to the Music Center plaza with Joan my ballet teacher, Peggy who takes class with me and Pam, who is one of my designer-knitting-reading friends. We were going to see 'Slow Dancing', the free video installation by David Michalek. He is a photographer, married to NYCB dancer Wendy Whelan, who filmed all different kinds of dancers using a high definition high speed camera, then played it back so the movements were all in super slow motion. The variety of dance forms was remarkable: ballet, modern, krump, tap, capoiera, a whirling dervish, belly dancer, indonesian and indian classical dance. We went down for dinner on the patio and then stayed for 3 hours just watching the videos. I was particularly enthralled with the ballet and modern dancers. Their bodies are so remarkable, and then to see the movements ripple across their muscles, the little adjustments that happen during a turn or jump, it was so beautiful. You could see the way their bodies elongate when they jump and then contract as they land, how they isolate the moving parts from the still parts, and how serene many of their faces were as they moved. This installation was shown in NYC this summer and I think there are plans to tour it. If it ever comes to your neighbourhood, it is well worth a visit. The website has a video excerpt of Herman Cornejo of ABT doing a double tour.

Recommended

I recently went to the Pink Martini show at the Hollywood Bowl. They really put on a great show. They performed songs from all three of their albums. They are a very large group: in addition to the main singer and the piano player, they had a trumpet, trombone, drum set, percussion, 2 violins, cello, guitar, backup singer, and I might have missed someone in the crowd. It was the fireworks finale so the Bowl was packed. They did the fireworks to Bolero, which is perfect because after awhile of hearing that melody over and over, you just need something to look at. They had actual flames shooting up from the stage and the top of the Bowl. Everyone went 'Ooooh!!" when the flames started, just goes to show you how elemental fire is for we humans.

Our latest book group read was "The History of Love" by Nicole Krauss. This was a terrific book, definitely not linear or straight forward. As you get to the end, you realize that things are not as they at first appeared, and there are layers that you completely missed initially. Some really beautiful writing in parts as well, and some great characters. I can't wait for the discussion.

Dancing at home

I've had 3 classes back at my home studio since returning from ballet camp. At the first class, it felt very strange not to have my fellow 3As with me. I feel like I have so much more control over everything I'm doing in class. It makes it so much fun! As with all things dance, I feel like the more I learn and the better I get, the harder it is!!

Returning to 'Kansas'

Today is our last day and it's so sad. Danile does a final pilates class for us and I feel how much stronger I am than on Sunday. We have one final technique class with Kathy. I'm going to have to skip Pirouettes and Pointe. Last minute pictures are taken with Randall, Stacy (our resident grandmother from Georgia), Shannon, and Lesley. We have a long trip back to Dulles and then on the plane. As we drive to Dulles, all we can talk about is the week, going over our experiences, discussing our fellow campers, the performance. I am determined to come back next year. It's going to be difficult to get back to my real life for the next week or so. I have a hard time concentrating because my mind keeps drifting back to the performance, to things that happened in class, to funny things fellow campers said at dinner, funny images the teachers used to explain things, the beautiful music and the choreography that we learned. We all worked really hard at something we love passionately. We were taught by teachers who are completely dedicated to making us the best dancers that we can be. But that's not the only thing that made the camp special. We also had the best time with each other. In between all of the hard work and learning, we laughed a lot. Real life is definitely going to feel very black and white after this.

Performance Day!

Today was the big day and it went really well, considering we had all of a week to learn everything. I dance the pas de deux with Burr and with John. I just adore this dance. It's over so quickly! Why can't we just keep dancing? Leslie and I decide that we ARE going to do our variation on pointe! We're in this together. The things that were giving me trouble in class are fine, but I miss things that I didn't have trouble with. I'm really nervous, I just hope it doesn't show on my face. Again, over so quickly! We do our bows, do our ballet runs off stage. The repertory piece is last for the 3As and we go through the whole thing smoothly with no major problems. What a relief and feeling of exhilaration when it's over. We'll have to wait until the DVD to see if we did all of the things that Danile and Randall taught us in class about presenting ourselves, like making diamonds with our legs, extending our arms, using our plies, etc. The variation by the advanced classes is unbelievably hard! Wow, makes ours look like a piece of cake. I am finally able to see how some of the other campers that I've gotten to know all week dance and they are all amazing. You can learn a lot by watching other dancers. And the performances by the level 2s reminded me of how far I've come with my own dancing. The advanced group's repertory piece is Serenade and I don't know how Kathy has done it, but they look amazing, with so many dancers moving precisely across the stage. Lars and Heidi dance the solo couple, she's such a beautiful dancer!


The celebration dinner afterwards is back at the hotel. Only about a third of the dancers participates but Heidi joins us, as does Nestor. The young teachers have come in their party dresses. After dinner, Cheryl gets her iPod and Nestor does an impromptu hip hop dance routine for us! Heidi also lets loose and everyone just has a blast. Despite our tiredness and soreness from a week of ballet, we continue dancing the night away! Sadly, goodbyes have already started, as Mary and Cynthia leave early tomorrow morning.

Week's almost over!

I can't believe tomorrow is the performance. We have had 2 variation classes, 4 repertory classes and 2 partnering classes to learn the performance pieces. Yikes! Many of us are freaking out a little bit over all of the things we learned. Today I woke up feeling really quite good. Somehow all of the soreness from the previous days which had been building is gone. In class I was able to put together a few things so that I actually could maintain what little turnout I have while doing steps across the floor. My pirouettes were more controlled than they've ever been. We had character class today and boy, it's so much harder than it looks. There is a lot of coordination with the feet. We learn chugs, mazurkas, polonaises, and harmonica steps. As with so much else in dance, I gain a new appreciation for it the more I know about it.


The previous nights we have gone out with various groups of campers to nearby restaurants for dinner. Tonight, after Suzanne had her photo shoot, we were so exhausted that we decided to order in chinese food. The hotel gives us a menu from a local place and after some confusion with the restaurant folks, we have a delicious meal delivered to the hospitality suite. One thing we have all noticed is how our appetites have all become ravenous towards the end of the week. However our eyes were bigger than our stomachs and we have too much food. Some of the 3B's, Suzanne, Avis and Cheryl, are running thru their pas de deux. Cheryl, who is tall, acts as partner and does a great job! Joyce and I have a good time watching their routine, which is harder than ours. Avis and Cheryl are from Florida and are an anesthesiologist and surgeon, respectively. Amazingly, in addition to her job and raising 3 kids, Cheryl also makes tutus!

Tonight, I can't sleep thinking about all of the pieces we will do tomorrow. In the middle of the night I have this image that we are all currently in Oz and that on Saturday, we are returning to Kansas. The old black and white life is just not going to feel the same.

Partnering

Today we had our first partnering class. It's so much fun! A few young men come to help us out, two of them are from local colleges. I dance mostly with Burr who is a modern dance student. He is very tall and dances beautifully. The other young men are Nestor and Felix. I am also partnered with John, a fellow camper from Michigan. Randall choreographs a piece to music from the movie 'Last Exit to Brooklyn' by Mark Knopfler. It's called 'A Love Idea' and the music and the choreography are so beautiful that, as fellow camper Shannon says, we all look like we're in love when we're dancing. It is such a joy to dance this piece and to dance with Burr who is so much better than I am. He helps me with the steps and with some of the more technical aspects of partnering, but we also have a lot of fun joking around. I realized that you really need to keep your entire core (abs and back muscles) fully engaged when being partnered otherwise it's impossible to maintain balance as the man moves you and you end up looking really wobbly. We only have 2 partnering classes before the performance. Heidi and Randall demonstrate and you can see that when they dance they are completely connected to each other. It's really an amazing feeling dancing with another person, creating this (hopefully) beautiful art together.

Photo shoot day

Today we have Pointe and Pirouette class in addition to Tech and Repertory. In addition to dance classes, the camp also includes stretch classes at the end of the day, and boy, does that ever feel good. Heidi teaches the class today. Another great thing they have is Kinesiology and Physical Therapy classes. At this camp they are both taught by Lisa Shoaf who is also a dancer. She gives us really great information on skeletal and muscular structure to help us understand why our bodies might have trouble with certain positions or movements. She also gives us great stretches to help with trouble spots. This is such a treat, to have access to a resource like this, as a recreational dancer. The other dancers at camp are a diverse lot in age as well as life experience. We've got college girls, young teachers, women raising children, women who are coming back to dance after finishing raising children, and a grandmother who has come with her husband in a camper van. One of the men in camp, Lars, is from Sweden and comes every year, leaving wife and kids at home for a week. There are 3 men at camp this time.


Tonight, I had a session with Chris the photographer, who took professional ballet photos. Several of the campers cheered me on as I posed. I borrowed one of Suzanne's cute skirts and wore my shiny new pointe shoes. Kathy and Heidi helped with poses. I discovered that it is really hard to pose! You have to be at your maximum turnout and hold the position for a long time. On some of the pictures, my face shows the effort, on others you can see it in my neck. I have a new appreciation for this! The photos turned out great and Chris was kind enough to print me out one of them, with some slight retouching!

Photo of Kathy Sawyer demonstrating a pose is by Chris Winton-Stahle.

First full day

Wow, I'm sore in so many places at the end of today! We started out with the group photo in the morning. Our classes are Technique, Variations (for the performance), Repertory (also for the performance) and Jazz. Danile taught Technique this morning and she is teaching us the variation, which is from Paquita. The music is beautiful. I can't recall if I've seen this ballet (or our repertory piece) performed or not. I'm going to have to look for it. We can choose to do this in pointe or flat shoes. I really want to be able to do this in pointe shoes, but we'll see how my feet are on Friday. The piece is quite speedy and there are some backwards piques which tend to be tricky. Also the jete, jete, pas de chat, pas de bourree part is going to mess with us all week. It goes right, left, right left and changing directions is giving us all problems. When we perform the variation, we will do it in small groups, in our case 4 people per group.

The piece for the repertory is from Les Sylphides which has music by Chopin. So far we're 2 for 2 in the great music department. This piece will involve all 8 of the 3A campers who want to perform. We will need to learn how to move together in patterns as well as the steps and the timing, and of course, how to present ourselves so we look like we're sylphs (whatever those are) and not a bunch of women clomping around on stage. Jazz is being taught by Ashley, who was in "So You Think You Can Dance" recently, making it through a couple of rounds. She's a ball of energy. Again, I've never taken jazz. Ashley's style is kind of hip hop-y so we learn a fun routine with some moves called 'yo-yo', 'shakey shakey', shoulder rolls, and of course everything is done in parallel not turned out. However, I just cannot figure out how to 'shakey shakey' and make it look like something purposeful. We have fun music (Justin Timberlake, for example) and some of the younger campers loved that. Sadly, I didn't know what most of the songs were.

First day of camp

The studios where the camp is held is in the school of the Richmond Ballet. They are gorgeous! The floors are beautiful (very important for a dancer, the floors can't be too slippery or too sticky), there are lots of windows and natural light, and ballet barres in the hallways for in-between class stretching. After registration, introductions and lunch, we had a technique class where Heidi (the director of the camp) has an opportunity to check that you have placed yourself in the appropriate level. I assumed I was a 3A because Joyce said she was, and I think we are fairly comparable. The technique class today was taught by Randall, who will end up teaching us the Repertory piece and the pas de deux for the performance. Kathy taught us Pointe and I realized that I should have spent more time in my pointe shoes before camp because this class is 45 minutes long!! Ouch!

I took my first ever modern class and it was so much fun. Theresa Bautista taught the class, she is also one of the level 4 campers. It was amazing to see how Theresa put the leg movements with the arm movements to create something beautiful. Part of the warm up involved walking and running around the room and she told us we had to look our fellow dancers in the eyes! She has us do a little routine which involved getting down on the floor, very 'modern'. Throwing yourself on the floor is harder than it looks. My butt was sore after this class!

Ballet camp!

I'm off to ballet camp tomorrow. These are my shoes before camp. I wonder what they'll look like in a week. I'm travelling with Joyce, Kelly and Peggy who also take class at Westside, and Suzanne who is a friend of Joyce's living in Orange County.

Kids in summer

I was in the Bay Area over 4th of July to visit friends and family. It was unbelievably hot on the 4th when Mei and Stephen had a cookout in the backyard. They got out the baby pool, blew it up, added water and a bubble machine, and then came the kids. There's something about kids, a hot summer day and water that just feels like freedom. The next day, I met Shawn and Kyra at the Alameda County Fair and the temps that day made Wednesday feel like autumn!

Art in LA

Yesterday, Aunt Yvonne (Shen shen) and Uncle Ralph (Shu shu) were in town with Foster and Harrison to visit some relatives. While the kids went to Disneyland, Shen shen and I went to see some art.

Our first visit was to a gorgeous show at MOCA called Poetics of the Handmade. The show features 5 Latin American artists who use different mostly everyday materials, and shapes or transforms each by hand. The results are beautiful, engaging, and sublime. One artist created a blob like form out of toothpicks and clay which was suspended from the ceiling. A second artist used devalued currency, cutting them into individual flowers, butterflies, trees and fanciful flying machines and then pinning them to the walls of a large room to create a picture showing consumption, creation, and resurrection.

We then went to LACMA to see the work of another artist who used everyday objects-fluourescent light tubes. Dan Flavin arranges tubes of different lengths to create beautiful, minimalist glowing sculptures. He uses different colours, pink, yellow, blue but also cool white and warm white light next to each other. The resulting work is mounted in corners or against walls in such a way as to slightly alter the architecture of the space.

Both of these are well worth a visit.

Darfur

Last week, Don Cheadle and John Prendergast came to the studio and talked to us about the crisis in Darfur. Cheadle became involved as a result of his work on the movie Hotel Rwanda. He went to visit the man he was portraying, and while in Africa, heard about this OTHER crisis, in Sudan. Prendergast has been working on human rights issues in Africa for over 20 years. I didn't really know much about the situation, aside from the little snippets I picked up on NPR (when I was paying attention). It's truly inspiring to hear someone like John speak about this issue. To learn more, check out Enough and International Crisis Group websites for information and how you can help.

When weather comes to LA

We never have thunderstorms in LA. When it does rain, the sky slowly clouds over, it rains for hours and hours, then it slowly peters away. It's all rather vague. Not like a real thunderstorm with the big ol' cumulonimbus clouds, dramatic change in air pressure and winds. Until today. I was sitting at my desk, when I started hearing the window behind me creaking. I'm on the 8th floor, so it creaks often. But this time, the noises were a little too loud and kind of scary. I looked up and the sky was roiling in big, dark grey clouds racing across the sky. The trees down below were swaying wildly and all kinds of loose, lightweight things (leaves, plastic bags) started circling up into the sky. One of the big windows was actually pulsing. Oddly, there was not a lot of rain. And not a lot of thunder actually either.

The local news is going to milk this for hours. They just love being on Storm Watch!

The photo is by Lori Shepler of the LA Times.

Tim Hawkinson

Tim Hawkinson is a local LA artist. Last year, he had a retrospective at LACMA, which is where I discovered this amazing, crazy, wonderful artist. The pieces on display at LACMA included works in almost every possible medium (and some you didn't think possible). Currently he has an exhibit of new works at the Getty Center. This show is much, much smaller than the LACMA show, but includes some great pieces. Hawkinson's work is hard to categorize, but you could say it tends to be of two types. The first type is where he uses photos of his own body to create a piece. In the Getty show, the octopus is an example of this. I love the fact that the 'suckers' on the tentacle are actually his mouth. The second type is where he uses everyday objects to make a piece of art. Here, the bat is an example, using Radio Shack plastic bags and twist ties. The things that he will use to create art are really rather amazing. There is a level at which you can appreciate the art just for the technical details. Then, if you choose, you can go deeper to find meaning in that process. And above all, I feel a sense of joy in the works, even if they are not all 'happy' works.

Movin' on up

I was promoted to Manager.

Top Ten Books

On Amazon, they've been doing top ten book lists. I think I'm in the world's best book group (based on what I hear about other people's book groups) and we read our share of books from both ends of the quality spectrum. These are my favourites from the selections we have read. They're in no particular order, and these are all fiction. This list is also somewhat dependent on my mood, although there are a handful here that would be faves under any circumstances.

Life Of Pi, Yann Martel
Middlesex, Jeffrey EugenidesPeace Like A River, Leif Engler
The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night Time, Mark Haddon
The Hours, Michael Cunningham
The Known World, Edward P. Jones
The Time Traveler's Wife, Audrey Niffeneger
Wicked, Gregory Maguire
Girl In Hyacinth Blue, Susan Vreeland
The brief history of the dead, Kevin Brockmeier

Magritte

This weekend I went to check out the Magritte show at LACMA with a friend from out of town. We both got the audio tour and I was really glad I did. The show was designed by artist John Baldessari and it definitely had a unique look. He put cloud patterned carpet on the floor and tiled a picture of freeways on the ceiling. There were other little touches that he did that related to the art in the show. Magritte is most well known for his man with the bowler hat. The show juxtaposed his work with other artists who were directly inspired by him as well as artists who worked in similar themes (such as using text and playing with scale). The audio tour included commentary by several contemporary artists whose work was included in the show. Interestingly, some of them deny being influenced by Magritte's work. I noticed that several of the pieces shown in the exhibit were from the private collections of contemporary artists.

My Podcasts

Last year I got into a few podcasts that I try and listen to regularly. I don't have an iPod, I listen to them on my Palm T/X. My regular podcast menu comes from KCRW, the local public radio station. They have amazing music podcasts, but I listen to a variety of commentary and interview shows. This is what's on my list:
Art Talk by Edward Goldman, a weekly 5 minute commentary on what's happening on the Los Angeles art scene. He has a very strong Russian accent, but that just adds to the ambience.
DnA (Design & Architecture), a monthly half-hour show on Los Angeles' design and architecture community. That covers a lot of territory, given how vibrant that community is.
The Business, a half hour weekly show about the business of show business. Claude Brodesser-Ackner talks to and about people who work on movies as well as the people who work to make movies happen.
Studio 360, an hour long show by Kurt Anderson covering all kinds of cultural topics. My favourite episodes are from the American Icon series.

Rose Parade 2007

I've lived in LA almost 20 years and for the first time, I went to the Rose Parade this year. Elaine and Alex invited a few people over for New Year's Eve and we made it a slumber party. We all got up at 5a for hot chocolate and coffee and started the walk to the start of the parade. When we got about half way up Orange Grove, the floats were lined up getting ready for their moment in the sun. The detail on them is really remarkable. There was a large crowd when we finally found a spot near the start of the parade. It really is a very different experience seeing this live. The crowd's excitement is infectious and everyone cheers for all of the bands, all of the floats, all of the horses. The highlight for me was George Lucas as Grand Marshall, the Storm Trooper battalion, the Star Wars band and Chewbacca. This photo is a detail of one of the sea themed floats. There was a strong citrus aroma wafting from this fish.

Neve visits Hollywood

Shortly after Christmas, my sister came down to visit with her husband and daughter. We took Neve to the LA Zoo to see some of the animals, giraffes, zebras, elephant, orangutans. There was a baby orangutan who was swinging around near the viewing window, and Neve and the other kids just loved watching it. We then went to Griffith Observatory where Neve had a nap while we adults took in the new exhibits and the great views. They did a wonderful job on the new spaces. The day we were there, you could see a solar flare from the live sun telescope. The view of the Hollywood sign from here is amazing. It's the little white strip on the hill to the left of us.