Walking Squares: A Warmer-Than-Usual Dublin

It’s been a hectic two days of hard traveling, but now self is almost to her destination, and she only has to get on the bus to Monaghan tomorrow.

Here’s her latest installment for Life of B’s November Squares Challenge: Walking Squares.

Dublin is warm! And sunny! Perfect walking weather. From her Airbnb on Aungier Road, she walked to the Chester Beatty Museum (in Dublin Castle), which is a jewel of a museum, with the most amazing collection of ancient texts, all compiled by one man, Chester Beatty, who deserves to be a household name. She spent about three hours there (10 a.m. to 1 p.m.) today. The museum has a café/restaurant (called, appropriately, The Silk Road), where you can take a break and eat a wide variety of hot food and/or pastries/salads/cakes/coffee.

The Chester Beatty is a small museum (only 1 % of the permanent collection is on display at any one time) but this is the Holy Grail of book collectors. If you can, take a docent tour. They’re 5:30 p.m. on Wednesdays and 11:30 a.m. on Saturdays. There are also excellent downloadable audio tours (free)

Mama Cormier’s Thursday Trios: The Empty Library, Berlin

It’s been a while since self joined this challenge, hosted by Mama Cormier.

Mama Cormier’s trios this week include a fun trio of scarecrows in front of an ice cream store. Self’s is a picture of three young people looking at Israeli artist Micha Ullman’s The Empty Library, an art installation on “one of the many sites of the Nazi book burnings in 1933.” Read more about the memorial in the caption below. The picture was part of an exhibit she saw at the San Francisco Public Library last month.

Water Water Everywhere # 148: Golden Gate Park, Last Summer

Whenever self feels in need of getting away, she goes to Golden Gate Park. It is 30 miles north, but being there always nourishes her spirit. She visits Stow Lake and sees whatever’s on at the de Young.

Last June, when she took these pictures, she dropped by to see the Alice Neel exhibit (fantastic!)

Posting for Jez Braithwaite’s Water Water Everywhere Challenge.

Wordless Wednesday: Burned Book

From a display at the Library of the Catholic University in Leuven, Belgium

Posting for Wordless Wednesday.

CFFC Texture: Carlos Villa

Last summer, San Francisco’s Asian Art Museum featured the work of visionary Filipino-American artist Carlos Villa (born San Francisco, 1936 – died 2013). There is only one word to describe it: stunning.

His medium was paper and pulp, canvas and feathers.

His work is especially fitting for Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge this week: TEXTURE.

In Honor of World Architecture Day: Renzo Piano’s Living Roof at the California Academy of Science

Self was climbing up the walls after a whole year of pandemic lockdown. California Governor Gavin Newsom lifted the lockdown order in March 2021. The following month, self was taking road trips galore (so were her neighbors: 96-year-old Mrs. C went on a road trip to Seattle! Self remembers standing on the sidewalk and waving good-bye as Mrs. C and her sons and daughters drove off in a huge Cadillac!).

In April 2021, self signed up for a tour of the California Academy of Sciences. The tour was led by an in-house naturalist, everyone was still wearing masks, but oh, what joy to be out in the company of others!

It was self’s first time on the living roof. The naturalist explained that what held the roof together were coconut husks (like the ones we use to scrub our floor in the Philippines!). Six inches of soil were deposited on the roof, and then the naturalists left the roof alone to see what grew there.

The California Academy of Sciences runs entirely on solar energy. The round shapes on the roof are solar panels. It’s wild seeing the ferris wheel pop up across a meadow. Highly recommend this tour, if anyone is thinking of going.

Flower of the Day: A Walk in Golden Gate Park

Yesterday, Sunday, self left bright and early for Golden Gate Park. She’d made a reservation to see the Ramses the Great exhibit. While walking from her car to the museum, she passed a stand of gorgeous yellow abutilon and just had to stop and take a picture.

Self has two different kinds of abutilon in her garden: an anemone pink, and a variegated orange. This is the first yellow abutilon she’s ever seen. So pretty!

Posting for Cee Neuner’s Flower of the Day.

Mid-Week Monochrome # 100: Candid at the National Gallery, Trafalgar Square

When self travels, she loves taking candid pictures of complete strangers. She rarely takes pictures of monuments — not unless there are strangers walking in front of them. She is really interested in people-watching, most of all.

Last June, she was at the Raphael exhibit at London’s National Gallery (what a fantastic exhibit). Here are her candids (Thank you, Brashley Photography, for hosting the Mid-Week Monochrome Challenge):

Weekly Prompts Colour Challenge: August Grayish

“I like the muted sounds, the shroud of grey, and the silence that comes with fog! ~ Om Malik.

For this challenge, self decided to focus on GRAYISH skies. These are from her most recent trip to the UK, in the spring:

One Oxford sky, and two rainy Trafalgar Squares (Self was exiting the National Gallery, after seeing a knock-your-socks-off exhibit of Raphael.

Luckily, she left England well before the first of the punishing heat waves that hit over the summer.

Rag Tag Daily Prompt: COLUMNS

Thank you to Ragtag Daily Prompt Thursday for the Prompt: COLUMNS.

Self has been on a kind of nostalgia trip since beginning the Steve Jobs biography by Walter Isaacson. Today, she went back to her old stomping grounds on the Stanford campus and took pictures of anything that could pass for a column. She went to Hoover Tower and saw an exhibit on the Cold War. She photographed the covered walkway in the School of Education. She photographed a skateboard rack. She photographed the Clock Tower, a favorite meeting place for self and her friends.