Want to join in the fun?
Every month, Becky at The Life of B announces a new Squares Challenge. The challenge for April is BRIGHT.
Stay safe, dear blog readers. Stay safe.
April 21 BRIGHT SQUARES: Kahlo and Calder at the de Young Museum
April 21, 2021 at 2:21 am (Artists and Writers, Links, postaday)
Tags: art, exhibits, museum, San Francisco
Posting Early Again! April 20 BRIGHT SQUARES
April 20, 2021 at 4:07 am (Artists and Writers, destinations, Links, Places, postaday, Recommended, Traveling)
Tags: Mondays, museums, art, Sacramento, spring
Tomorrow morning, early, self is headed to the de Young to see the Frida Kahlo exhibit. Finally, finally.
Because she’ll probably be out the whole day, she’s posting tomorrow’s Bright Square early. Thank you to Becky at The Life of B for hosting this challenge!
More pictures from the Crocker Museum in Sacramento! The huge painting is Landscape with an Archer, by David Ligare (American, born 1945)
Stay safe, dear blog readers. Stay safe.
Friday Fun Challenge: Colours
April 19, 2021 at 9:43 pm (destinations, Holidays, Links, postaday, Surprises, Traveling)
Tags: London, Mondays, Sacramento
The host of the Friday Fun Challenge is aroused. Her theme for the week is COLOURS.
Self’s gallery are mostly reds, and one blue:
- 2 from London (a Beltane van and a close-up of the London Eye, May 2019)
- 2 from Sacramento (the camera and the street sign)
Stay safe, dear blog readers. Stay safe.
A Bit Early: April 19 BRIGHT SQUARES
April 19, 2021 at 5:28 am (destinations, Food and Drink, Links, Places, postaday, Sundays, Surprises, Traveling)
Tags: restaurants, Sacramento, weekends
Becky’s post on BRIGHT SQUARES (She’s the host of this challenge, which is truly a lot of fun) is something really BRIGHT and really SPARKLY and it’s something Becky saw in the British Museum. Feel free to gape.
Self spent the weekend in Sacramento. It’s a city she’s always felt at home in, not sure why. Sometimes it feels like Bacolod (in the central Philippines), sometimes it feels like San Luis Obispo. Kids come whizzing down the street on skateboards, and they all go to the same boba place, which as luck would have it is on the same block as her Airbnb.
Her host acquired this 1920s building that used to be a FAMILY LAUNDRY and the neon sign is protected by the City as a historical landmark (though only the bottom half is lit).
Across the street is a Mexican restaurant (the street is otherwise mostly Asian) that’s open 24 hours. Sorry for the blur, self didn’t have a place to rest her elbow for the shot, which took long exposure. Next to the Mexican restaurant is a martial arts school.
Sacramento is an old city, but in the neighborhood she’s in, everyone is young. Not like back home, where you’re either old or pushing a stroller. Or driving a humongous SUV.
Her car is parked directly across the street. A handful of times in the last few hours, someone’s car alarm has been going off. At first, self wondered if it was her car. But it wasn’t.
Back home, she’s just started seeing, around the library, the teens wearing all-black: black T-s, black baggy pants. They were a regular sight before. Then, the library shut down and these teens seemed to disappear. A sure sign that we’re opening again is that self spotted a pair of these black-wearing teens, walking along Middlefield. What did they do with themselves when everything was shut down? Here they are again; feels like old times.
Stay safe, dear blog readers. Stay safe.
April 18 BRIGHT SQUARES
April 18, 2021 at 9:27 pm (Artists and Writers, Conversations, destinations, Food and Drink, Links, Lists, Movies, Places, postaday, Recommended, Sundays, Surprises, Traveling)
Tags: adaptations, art, exhibits, lunch, museums, Oscars, Sacramento
For today’s BRIGHT SQUARES Challenge, self took pictures at the Crocker Museum of Art in Sacramento! Which is just as fabulous as she remembered it being, all those years ago (Then, she was lucky enough to catch a Norman Rockwell retrospective)
(Left to Right):
- Dale Chihuly (almost identical to the one that hangs in the lobby of London’s V & A)
- Portrait of the playwright, screenwriter and diarist Christopher Isherwood, by Don Bachardy, American (born 1934). Isherwood wrote the 1964 novel A Simple Man; the movie adaptation won Colin Firth an Oscar.
- Pacific Ocean, a painting by Jennifer Bartlett, American (born 1941)
What a great museum. Self is so happy she returned to Sacramento for this brief visit. If only the café had been open, she’d happily have lingered the whole day.
For lunch, she stopped at this small pop-up on 16th. The metal chairs had been baking in the sun, which she did not think mattered until she actually sat down. A lady who was sitting at the same table smirked and said, “That’s why I avoided sitting on those.” I took a chair that was sitting in the shade, a bit closer to the lady, and she immediately said, “I’ve had my two shots, don’t worry.”
The lady also told self that there was a “Chinse supermarket” not half a block from where we were sitting, and self got very excited at the thought of loading up on goodies for back home.
In addition to tacos, the pop-up also sold, somewhat improbably, mac’n cheese, and since it’s been forever since she’s had mac’n cheese, she decided to try it. It was good!
Stay safe, dear blog readers. Stay safe.
Just One Person from Around the World: San Mateo Farmers Market
April 18, 2021 at 6:27 pm (Books, Links, postaday, Sundays, Surprises, Women Writers)
Tags: Elizabeth Warren, farmers markets, favorites, memories, novel, The Hunger Games
The Just One Person from Around the World Photo Challenge is hosted by ThatTravelLadyInHerShoes. Read more about the challenge, think about participating, and look at the wonderful contributions.
During the California primaries, early last year, self campaigned for Elizabeth Warren. While she was tabling for Warren at the San Mateo Farmers Market, a young girl stopped by the table to chat. She was carrying a book, one of self’s favorites. Self just had to take her picture.
Stay safe, dear blog readers. Stay safe.
April 17 BRIGHT SQUARES
April 17, 2021 at 11:17 pm (destinations, Links, Places, postaday, Recommended, Traveling)
Tags: inspiration, museums, Sacramento, Saturday, weekends
Self hasn’t missed a day yet! Yesterday, she had this BRIGHT IDEA.
Here’s her entry for The Life of B’s April BrightSquare challenge.
Airbnb, Restored 1920s Chinese Laundry, Sacramento:
Drove here to see the Crocker Museum, which just re-opened.
Stay safe, dear blog readers. Stay safe.
Flower of the Day (FOTD): Clematis Montana
April 17, 2021 at 1:35 am (Flowers, Links, postaday, Surprises)
Tags: California, Cee Neuner, clematis, Garden, spring
Flower of the Day is the mighty clematis montana rubens. Self has had this plant 20 years. Never has it flowered the way it is flowering now. Guess all it needed was company.
Thank you to Cee Neuner for hosting this wonderful photo challenge.
Stay safe, dear blog readers. Stay safe.
April 16 BRIGHT SQUARES
April 16, 2021 at 7:31 pm (Artists and Writers, destinations, Links, Places, plans, postaday, Recommended, Surprises, Weather)
Tags: art, exhibits, Golden Gate Park, happiness, museums, San Francisco
This is today’s BRIGHT SQUARE. Thanks to Becky at The Life of B for the challenge!
A few days ago, self met her friend Caroline at the de Young in Golden Gate Park. What a BRIGHT BRIGHT DAY. Museums are open again!
Lots of squares in the lines of the building, and on the pavement. The ferris wheel is a new thing. Wasn’t here last year! She likes it.
So HAPPYYYYYY!
Stay safe, dear blog readers. Stay safe.
The New Jersey City University (NJCU) Center for the Arts Presents
April 15, 2021 at 9:57 pm (Artists and Writers, Books, Conversations, Links, Memoirs, Personal Bookshelf, Recommended, Women Writers)
Tags: Black writers, essays, Events
A Conversation with Emily Bernard
Author of Black Is the Body: Stories from My Grandmother’s Time, My Mother’s Time, and Mine
Moderated by Edvige Giunta and Meilli Ellis-Tingle
Tuesday, April 20, 6 p.m.
Emily Bernard is the author of Black is the Body: Stories from My Mother’s Time and Mine, which was named one of the best books of 2019 by Kirkus Reviews and National Public Radio. Black is the Body won the 2020 Los Angeles Times Christopher Isherwood Prize for autobiographical prose. Emily’s previous works include: Remember Me to Harlem: The Letters of Langston Hughes and Carl Van Vechten, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year; and Some of My Best Friends: Writings on Interracial Friendship, which was chosen by the New York Public Library as a Book for the Teen Age; and, with Deborah Willis, Michelle Obama: The First Lady in Photographs, which received a 2010 NAACP Image Award. Her work has appeared in: O the Oprah Magazine, Harper’s, The New Republic, newyorker.com, Best American Essays, Best African American Essays, and Best of Creative Nonfiction. She has received fellowships from the Alphonse A. Fletcher Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the MacDowell Colony, the Vermont Arts Council, and the W. E. B. DuBois Institute at Harvard University. Emily was the James Weldon Johnson Senior Research Fellow in African American Studies at Yale University. She is the Julian Lindsay Green and Gold Professor of English at the University of Vermont, and a 2020 Andrew Carnegie Fellow. Emily lives in South Burlington, Vermont with her husband and twin daughters.
Free with RSVP.
