Seen at Berkeley on a Friday afternoon…

28 August 2009

I'm really at home on the Berkeley campus and I've long realized that it is a wonderful place to study and to work. Blogging here and posting photos on TrekEarth have pushed me to see the campus with new eyes. It's fun!



New-student orientations took place this past Monday. Wednesday was the first day of classes for the Fall 2009 semester. After typically cool conditions early in the week, a high pressure system set up and today was steamy warm. The temperature in my south-facing office climbed into the low 80s. In the late afternoon, it became tough to concentrate at my desk and so I decided to spend a bit of time wandering around campus with my camera to check out the scene.

I don't know the total number, but UC Berkeley has a surprisingly large collection of sculptures scattered about the campus. Some, like this one of "The Last Dryad" are tucked away in pretty obscure locations and so don't get much attention.

Football season is just about to begin and hope springs eternal. The statue shown at right commemorates Pappy Waldorf, the coach of Cal's football team that most recently went to the Rose Bowl — in 1951!

Maybe it fits well with the stark contrasts that one finds in Berkeley: the "The Last Dryad" and Pappy Waldorf's statue are situated in the same area, the "Faculty Glade," about 100 m apart. In fact, Pappy is positioned so he looks in her direction.

Yes, this is Berkeley, capital of the left coast. Home of the free-speech movement. The place where no assumption goes unquestioned. In Berkeley, it is always fair to ask, as this guy did, "How's capitalism working for you these days?" I saw him crossing Sproul Plaza after returning from an afternoon of tabling somewhere in the neighborhood.



Berkeley is also a place where a few hundred students can gather on Sproul Plaza, in front of the main administration building, for afternoon practice as part of a jazz hiphop club.



The final photo shows Davis Hall. The windows of my office can be seen here: look to the second row of windows from the top. On the left, there is a set of six windows in a group. My office is behind the three windows on the right side of this left-hand group.

The photos at the top and the bottom of this post were taken from the balcony of the 10th floor of Evans Hall, the math building. The tricky part is that windows reach up about nine feet from the floor of the balcony, so to shoot the photos without reflection, I had to stand on a chair and hold the camera up over my head!

California Golden Bears

20 August 2009

The new semester begins next week. I set out at lunch today to photograph some of the bear monuments on the campus. Here are some of the results. These door handles are on the Student Union building on Sproul Plaza.

The tiniest bear on campus -- maybe only 6 inches tall -- sits in a small architectural feature on South Hall, which is the oldest extant building on campus, dating from 1873. (But the bear looks like it can't possibly be that old.) I had heard about this bear a few years ago. I pass by South Hall often and would regularly try to find this little fella, but without luck. Finally, I did a google image search on "bear South Hall Berkeley" and found an image that pointed to where the bear was. With that information, I could find it. It's about 20 feet above the ground, which makes it hard to find and hard to photograph.



The Beckum bears, shown above, sit in the plaza between Bechtel and McLaughlin Halls. Here is a bit about their history, quoted from an article on the campus web site: "Bronze Russian black bear sculptures ... were created originally by beaux-arts sculptor Edmund Schultz Beckum about 1915, commissioned by a Russian insurance company and installed first at the company's U.S. headquarters in Connecticut. When the headquarters were demolished, a UC Berkeley alumnus acquired the bears and donated them to the campus in 1987."



These two roly-poly bears sit in the Haas School of Business. They are the youngest of the bears in this post, having been created in 1991 by Dan Ostermiller. The sculpture is called Les Bears.

Finally, the bear below was a gift of the Class of 1929. It sits perched on a tower high above Lower Sproul Plaza.

Redwood Regional Park, Oakland

9 August 2009

"… put your camera around your neck along with putting on your shoes, and there it is, an appendage of the body that shares your life with you." - Dorothea Lange

Along the ridge of the East Bay Hills is open land managed as part of the East Bay Regional Parks district. The district was formed 75 years ago, mainly for the purpose of acquiring excess land from the local water utility and preserving it as open space for recreational use. The first such acquisition, in 1939, was Redwood Park. In the mid 1800s, this area was used for logging of giant redwood trees. The park covers 1800 acres (about 3 square miles) with an extensive set of trails. The terrain is steep with two ridges running north to south along the west and east edge and a ravine with a small seasonal stream that runs down the middle.

I've probably visited the park more than a hundred times. Years ago, it was one of my favorite trail running locations. This afternoon, Alexis and I went for a leisurely walk along the West Ridge trail, down Tres Sendas, down along the Stream Trail, then up to the East Ridge and back to the Redwood Gate. We picked late afternoon so that it would be cooler. Even midday, the ravine is dimly lit. This afternoon, the hush was visible with just an occasional sunbeam breaking through to disturb the silence.

Russian River Ramble

8 August 2009

Alexis is freshly back from a year in Germany, having just arrived home on Tuesday. Today she and I took our bikes up to Occidental, in Sonoma County, for a ride that Ingrid and I had done three times when Daniela was in high school. Daniela was in the choir, and each year a retreat was held at the CYO Camp on the Bohemian Highway, just a few miles south of Occidental. Ingrid and I served as parent chaperones and took our bikes up each year to enjoy this route.

Before the ride, we stopped at the coffee shop of the Union Hotel. They have the absolute best apricot and raspberry turnovers and coupled with a nice coffee, that really got us going.

The ride follows a quiet country street, Coleman Valley Road, for about ten miles out to the Sonoma Coast. Then, we head north for about eight miles along the Pacific Coast Highway. The third leg, about seven miles, is on Highway 116 that parallels the Russian River. Finally, we ride the last seven miles along the Bohemian Highway back to Occidental.



The route is varied and can be rather stunningly beautiful. Today it was hazy and too warm, and -- being a summer weekend -- the traffic on the second and third legs was a bit unpleasant. Still, it was very nice.

Carrying a camera with the goal of taking some good pictures forces me to see things I might not otherwise notice. This time, I was struck by how much along the route is old, at least for California. It looks like this area really flourished in the 1870s. Some things, like the Union Hotel, are still thriving. But much is in various states of decay and disrepair, such as old wagon-wheel carts and barns.

After the ride, we drove through the small town of Freestone, which has a terrific (and very popular) bakery, the Wildflour. In addition to two loaves of freshly baked bread, we bought one of their excellent "sticky buns," which I'm nibbling as I write this post.

Summer hike on Mount Diablo

2 August 2009

One of my absolute favorite local places is Mount Diablo State Park. What is a bit odd is that I didn't discover how much I liked the park until about five years ago. The discovery came about when I first tried hiking on the north slopes. They offer variety, challenge (if one climbs to the summit), and beauty.



Summer is probably my least favorite time to hike there. Spring flowers are spectacular. Fall color is nice. Winter is magical with streams flowing (but if it has rained too much recently, the trails get quite muddy.)


Today, I started from the Regency Drive gate in Clayton and climbed a bit over 2000 feet (just a bit over halfway up) toward the summit. The total distance was 9.4 miles. I started in the mid afternoon, so I was treated to late afternoon shadows. The contrast between the dark green oaks and the silvery gold grasses were splendid.

The rampant poison oak was already turning fall colors. On the way down, I encountered this very big snake -- easily three feet long -- stretched across the trail. After taking his picture, I had to poke him several times with a stick to get him to move off the trail!

The photo at the top shows the view to the south, toward the peaks, from near the trailhead. The photo at the bottom shows the view to the north from near the high point of today's hike.