Daft Musings

I love Arastradero Preserve in Palo Alto, but normally we keep our hikes close to home, especially if we have others joining us. But this week, Neil was at a camp at Stanford, so I figured I’d go on a hike with Kelly while I was there, and invite others willing to make the drive to join us.

As it turned out, two other families with children near Kelly’s age joined us, and we headed out to see the lake and hike up the ridge to Wild Rye Trail together. The lake was probably the favorite part of the hike for most of the children. They could spot fish in the lake and climb the trees.

I thought they might run down the hill the way Neil and Kelly did the last time we were there, but that was taken more cautiously as the parents pointed out the birds in the area.

Kelly’s favorite part of the hike was the chance to fill out a visitors’ journal in the nature center at the park’s headquarters. She even drew a picture to show other visitors the trees and a bird she saw.

Afterwards, she insisted I help her find the journal I’d given her and took to filling that up with her opinions and observations.

Kelly’s been eager to visit Oakland’s Fairyland, which I agreed would be a wonderful place to her. On Wednesday, I took here there, since I was already almost halfway there, having dropped Neil off at Stanford for his Maya camp.

Fairyland is all I could want; and it makes me miss the old Happy Hollow (which is destined to become some twee environmentalism-preaching mess now) ever the more. It was the park Happy Hollow was based on, and I love it for its old-fashioned kiddie-appealing charm. It was built back in the day when children weren’t jaded before their time, and it has no qualms about having a little chapel, or having to acknowledge whatever the new hot licensed phenomenon is.

It has all of four low-key rides, a lot of play areas where children can climb and slide, or look at animals. Like the old Happy Hollow, it had a puppet show which took a folk/fairytale and gave it a little twist (in this case, the evil queen from Snow White remains an old hag). The animals aren’t off in their own zoo area, but put into a fairytale setting, i.e. ducks under Rapunzel’s castle.

Kelly especially loved two unique features of the park. You can get a key for $2, and which it, you can turn on a storybox which will tell or sing you a nursery rhyme or fairytale. Kelly wanted to make sure she got to activate all the storyboxes, and even their stories are told in a sweet old fashioned way. (Though as a nod to multiculturalism, Spanish is offered as a language choice as well as English.)

Also, there was a little house completely filled with children’s books to read. Books! Kelly loves books.

Neil recently reread and introduced Kelly to Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, and I was having a very Alice in Wonderland week, so I particularly enjoyed the park’s related attractions, like the Wonderland carousel

and an Alice in Wonderland tunnel

which includes a funhouse mirror and Cheshire cat oddities and jokes and ends in a card maze.

It’s just a shame Fairyland is so far away in downtown Oakland, or we would want to go there more often.

Last week, Neil went to a full-day camp on the Stanford campus to learn how to do 3D modelling in Maya. He enjoyed the camp, but the week turned out to be an adventure not only about that, but beyond that as well.

For one thing, Neil’s friend Bill Gosper lives near Stanford, and he stopped by each evening with some treats from his favorite restaurants (or once, we went out to eat together.) Then he and Neil would have fun talking about number theory together for a while. For me, it was sort of like being Alice in Wonderland at the Mad Hatter’s tea party, as catered by Dravidian and Mandarin Cheshire cats.

It didn’t get any better when I put out the idea of staying even later on Tuesday to check out the Stanford Math Circle. I got hopelessly disoriented trying to find the math building (so Alice in Wonderland, isn’t it?), but we got there in time. We found Bill Gosper (who naturally knew where the math building was), and shortly thereafter young math and science geeks started showing up and descending upon the puzzles Gosper had brought along just for fun. The regular math circle room was occupied, so the group disassembled and reassembled itself somewhere else in the building, which I also got disoriented in trying to find.

The official math puzzler for the group that day was called Quad, the strategy for which solving it is (and you know I’m quoting here) isomorphic to Lagrange’s algorithm for the reduction of binary quadratic forms with integral coefficients.  Hordes of children grabbed multi-colored rectangular shapes to solve the problems in many different ways, and the place took on the air of a chaotic, happy, nerdy party. I decided I’d be better off socializing with the other parents.

The next day, after dropping off Neil, I took Kelly to Oakland to the very charming Fairyland, which has its own blog entry here. It has its own set of Alice in Wonderland themed attractions, like an Alice in Wonderland carousel and an Alice in Wonderland maze.

Neil was excited about his Maya project, and we all popped up to Stanford together to see it at the camp’s official commencement, which included a celebration of the students coming out for a family accolade for their project premieres:

Neil did really well in the course, and his instructor complimented him on his hard work. His animation is too big for my blog, but here he is showing off the spaceship model which was part of his project:

After Neil gave us a full demo, all of us (including Bill Gosper) went over to the student union to have some celebratory ice cream. Kelly, wanting to be part of the fun, brought along a paper star from the dorm in which Neil had had his classes, and showed it to Bill Gosper: “Look it’s a star!”

“Do you know what else it is?” he told her. “It’s a pentagram.”

“No, it’s not!” she declared. “It’s a star, Bill Gosper, and I mean it!” (She’s never going to live that story down.)

I’d say that was the end of my Alice in Wonderland week, but the next day, on Saturday, we were splashing in the pool after lunch time. I had gone in to the kitchen to get something for Peter when the doorbell rang. I had been expecting Shiaw-Ling who said she’d come by around that time, so I simply opened the door in my bathing suit. It was a completely different Asian friend, Junko, whom I haven’t seen in 5 years, and who’d just decided to drop by while she was in the area. She hadn’t brought a bathing suit, so we had to promise to get together later, and Shiaw-Ling didn’t show up until many hours later.

I’m looking forward to a week I can understand.

This is my third year gardening, and my initial amusement that the tomatoes are knaves and the pumpkins are kings still stands. I’ve also improved tremendously, which I can only attribute to the blessings of my neighbor “Demeter.” In fact, my pumpkins were so tremendous last year that they were the terror of the neighborhood, and when I offered some seedlings to Demeter, she declined because they do so much better with me than with her.

My tomatoes have also been a runaway success this year. I gave up on the cages, because there’s really no point for plants that are all of about 2 feet. But some of the tomatoes I planted this year really like me, and had started sprawling all over the garden. Demeter offered me some “sticks” to stake the tomatoes. I can take a hint: if Demeter tells me my tomatoes need to be staked, I should stake those tomatoes.

It turned out the stakes she was offering were geniunely sticks and other tall thick objects to which tomatoes could be tied, but they work every bit as well (maybe even better) than commercial stakes.

I felt like a horrible dominatrix tying up on the tomatoes. I tried very very hard not to hurt them, but I’m sure a section or two was broken in the process. Surprisingly, the tomatoes look happy, and the plants they were sprawling over (like a sad little jalapeno pepper plant) have a chance to see the sun again.

On the other hand, a pumpkin plant has already started sprawling and taking over my deck, in a way the tomatoes wouldn’t even think of doing…

Kelly likes to watch a TV station called Sprout, and told me there was a contest to meet “Chica” in Philadelphia. It required downloading and coloring a paper “Mr. Mailman” and being photographed with him in various places, a la a travelling gnome or Flat Stanley.

So Kelly and Neil took Mr. Mailman out for fun this Friday. Neil played at a friend’s house in the morning, but Mr. Mailman went with Kelly and enjoyed storytime at the library:

Then we picked up Neil and went downtown, where Peter treated us all (including Mr. Mailman) to some Starbucks:

Afterwards, we went to the Children’s Discovery Museum. Along the way, Mr. Mailman took a break to play in the flowers:

At the Children’s Discovery Museum, in the Circle exhibit, Neil gave Mr. Mailman a thrill by putting him on a spinning circle:

I think Mr. Mailman was relieved to go back to Kelly and help her sort letters in the museum’s postal history portion:

I think Mr. Mailman had a great time in San Jose.

One of my homeschooler groups organized beach days, but so far, most of the people involved have wussed out on going to the beach unless it’s truly hot. But this Tuesday, I was going to go to the beach, rain or shine, with or without anyone else.

So we ended up being the only people to go from our group, and even a friend of Neil’s cancelled at the last minute. However, if you’re lucky, you can always find some beach buddies, and near us were a bunch of boys who also had sturdy shovels and were willing to help Neil with his favorite beach project: excavation.

The seaweed was thick and heavy both on the beach and in the ocean, which made wading kind of treacherous. Imagine long stringy weeds wrapping themselves around your knees and ankles and trying to pull you in whenever the waves retreat. It didn’t stop Kelly, of course.

At one point, Neil was creating a moat to tease the ocean, and the ocean didn’t like it. It sent out a huge wave which swallowed Neil’s shovel just as he was jumping back to avoid getting wet. It looked like that shovel was lost for good: we couldn’t see it anywhere. Neil and I walked up and down the shore, hoping to see it washed ashore, or bobbing in the waves, but it was no where to be seen. So we ate our lunch and I wondered how I’d be able to replace that shovel, which was a very nice one which one of the homeschoolers had given me just because her child had been touching our plastic dollar store shovel when it disintegrated.

I mentally apologized to the ocean, and the next thing I knew, I saw the shovel, washing up almost at my feet. I grabbed it, to the cheers of my children and the group they’d been playing with. Then we decided not to push our luck any further, and we went home, with a stop for beach ice cream (a Peter-founded tradition) on the way home.

Last Saturday, I went to one of the state parks that’s been threatened (whether genuinely or in the latest round of stupid politician kabuki theatre) with closure, Henry Coe Park. I’d wanted to hike up to Frog Lake for years: it’s a popular fishing hole, according to lore, especially since it’s the lake closest to the park entrance.

At first, I thought about making it a “school” hike, but as soon as I announced it to my hiking buddies with young children, I rethought it. The lake itself is only a mile and half from the entrance, but the loop to go there and back is 4.5 miles, with some steep portions. Kelly’s a trooper, but she still needs to sit and rest on longer hikes, and this one (especially if we had the other parents’ chipper-but-also-limited-by-size) 3 year olds along, it could take all day, instead of just a morning. So instead, I did it myself.

Henry Coe is a huge park and if you get on the western side of it and look out, it’s all undeveloped land, from the state park over to a privately owned undeveloped site and into the county-owned Grant Park. In essence, you’re seeing local California how it would look if no one lived here.

The flowers and wildlife were remarkable. I saw butterflies, a wild turkey, and lots of native plants, and the trail (even on a Saturday) was surprisingly lightly travelled (even though the park’s parking lot was nearly full.) I ran across what looked like a group of college students, a backpacking couple, and a small family; otherwise, I think most of the visitors had already started on a weekend-long backpacking trip out to the park’s furthest edges.

Frog Lake was a surprise. It had no fishermen, even though I saw a small fish. The lake itself was tiny, but lake standards: if it was an acre, I’d be surprised. And yes, these are the actual colors of the nature around it:

While I was sitting by the lake, I heard a rustling behind me. I turned around, expecting to see a large urban rat, which is what city wildlife contains. I suppose what I saw was a rodent, too, but it was a prettier squirrel. The squirrel ran away when I tried to get a picture, but I lured her back out with a cracker.

I don’t think she was completely spoiled by humans stupidly feeding the wildlife, because she ran away after she ate the one cracker, instead of descending upon me like human-fed birds (and rats) do.

The longer trail back to the headquarters was narrower though high stalks of grass. One thing I will miss about state parks is their excellent signage, like this:

Most other types of parks have sign posts, if anything at all, and a compass and map are always a good idea to have along.

It was a pretty good hike, and I’m glad I opted against making it a kiddie hike.

I was pleasantly surprised to find out, on a recent trip to the farmer’s market downtown, that one of the little theatres was going to be putting on A Midsummer Night’s Dream. It’s been fun to insert Shakespeare plays into our history education, but the result has been hit or miss. The 1953 movie version of Julius Caesar was perfect when we were studying the fall of the Roman Republic: it was grand, it was exciting, and it had lots and lots of interesting history. But Anthony and Cleopatra, which we could only get as a filmed stage production, was dreadful; I though Macbeth would be great for the medieval times, but Neil greatly preferred the written play over the dry film version; and we both bailed on the over-rated film version of The Taming of the Shrew, which anyway, Neil had already watched in fourth grade.

A live stage performance is really the way the play should be seen, and tickets are usually only $15 or $20 a seat at local theatres. I get a lot more pleasure seeing our local theatre geeks, who are sociable and talented, and whom I might even cross paths with locally, than paying $60 a ticket to see a B-list celebrity who runs off to sulk about being in San Jose as soon as the show ends. But I digress.

I’d been waffling on and off about getting tickets, until yesterday afternoon, when I decided to just drop in on the opening show with Neil.

We went downtown, where Peter planned to take Kelly off for another adventure, and since the play wasn’t scheduled to begin until 8, we all went to the park near Peter’s office to see the band. Peter thought it was a Journey cover band, but it turned out he’d misread the schedule. The scheduled band was the Sierra Leone Refugee All-Stars, but they hadn’t started yet. Instead, there was a crowd grooving to another band on stage. I never found out who they were, but they were raggae-esque in a foreign language.

Their music was catching, even if I didn’t understand the lyrics, and Kelly and I danced along with the happy hippies, including this hippie wizard:

Peter bought some pizza at a pizza stand in the park, and then we moseyed over to the theatre over in nearby San Pedro Square (where there are free movies on Wednesdays, and the farmer’s market on Fridays). I had no trouble getting tickets, and even better, the tickets were free. Or actually, it was pay what you can day, which meant give the theatre a donation.

It turned out the theatre was in a former comedy club, where Peter and I had seen shows many years ago. It was set up slightly differently (better) for a theatre production, and the drinks and snacks at the bar were a lot cheaper. I took a look at our fellow theatre goers and was delighted to see one Nick Bottom was going to see the show as another performed in it:

He’s all blurry because of the magic. Ok, actually, I just turned my flash off. Seriously, I love theatrical theatre fans! Sometimes I’m one of them too.

This version of A Midsummer Night’s Dream was set in Mexico with Mayan mythology. I wish I could have taken pictures, because the costumes for the ushmal (Mayan fairies) were fantastic, and the production photos don’t show the costumes. The ushmals wore bodysuits with colorful patterns topped with manes and crowns of feathers, and Cobweb sported a set of Wolverine-like claws. The ushmals did native dances, and the humans Mexican folk dances, and other than that, it was true to the original script.

Neil, who I think hasn’t ever seen a full-length Shakespeare play on stage before, loved it. There was the unrecreatable spirit of being in an audience, laughing along at the jokes, and the charming little imperfections, like King Oberon’s feathered crown, which kept slipping until he finally tossed it off stage dramatically. And the rudeness of the very bad Showgirls-good production of Pyramus and Thisbee, featuring a wall with its chink in an awkward location. We laughed and laughed, and after the play we laughed some more. Neil said it was far better than the stiff and serious movie productions, and (natually) more lively and imaginative than the play just as written. So hopefully we’ll get a chance to see some more Shakespeare comedies in the area this summer.

Paul and Mary are visiting. Before they came, they told Peter Paul had reconnected with one of his college track team buddies who happened to own an organic farm in Marin, and that they planned to take a day to visit him. I turned it into a field trip for Charybdis and Scylla. Farms are educational! Besides, I still have fond memories of our visit to Green Gulch Farms a few years earlier.

Their friend’s farm, Star Route Farms, was located beyond Green Gulch Farms, just past Stinson Beach, in the reportedly reclusive little town of Bolinas. His farm was right next to a charming little school, which we got to see because Neil had had a rough journey over Mt. Tam and needed to use the bathroom. I was reminded how rural (deliberately or not) Marin can be: between this school in Bolinas and its sister campus in Stinson Beach, the enrollment was all of 102.

As it turns out Star Route Farms was not just your ordinary organic farm. Warren Weber, former Cornell track star, started local organic farming before organic farming became trendy. Star Route Farms is the oldest organic farm in California, and now it’s where many of those upscale restaurants promoting fresh California cuisine buy their produce from.

Warren (or Dr. Weber, if you’re not related to someone he went to school with) gave us a tour of the farm, which included a glimpse of a wild deer along a small creek.)

In between sharing anecdotes about what collegiate sports used to be like back in the day with Paul, he told us about the farm. I was expected to see more bugs, but apparently if you grow the crops that are right for a climate and don’t stress them (say, by planing them too close to one another), they grow quickly enough that pests aren’t a problem: and if they are, you can introduce a bacteria (not chemicals) that’ll take care of things.

Most of his clientele is still upscale Bay Area restaurants, and they usually work so closely with him, so if a chef wants to add a new kind of green to his menu, he calls up Warren to grow it for him. As for weeds, he takes a similar approach as my neighbor Demeter: plow ‘em under, let ‘em grow if they aren’t impacting the other plants, and best of all, eat ‘em. I wasn’t suprised to see him growing dandelion greens, but he also had wild nettles, which local chefs also buyin now to put in soups and add to polenta. I have holistic recipes that call for nettles, but they don’t grow wild in my garden! They do grow in Bolinas, and now that chefs are asking for nettles, he just has to open up a field to let them grow. Now if he’d gone on an all-out war against weeds, he might not have had any nettles to grow today.

In a way, his method of working the land wasn’t all that different from my homesteader friend Dave’s conservationist philosophy. Know the land, and let the land and nature do what it wants to make it work for you. That way, there’s less work, and less impact on the environment altogether.

After we saw some of the farm, we walked back to Warren’s house for lunch, where Neil cut some lemons, thus getting some practice at what working at an organic farm might be like.

Then we had a fabulous fresh lunch, and met Warren’s wife Amy, who showed Kelly where the toys were. We had to return home before Bay Area traffic got to bad, but Kelly (seeing Stinson Beach twice from up above on the road to and from Bolinas) made me promise to take her back.

Every year, our neighborhood has its own parade for Memorial Day, and I looke forward to it. It’s a small event, but it’s a chance to remember the holiday in the right way and see our neighbors. For the first few years, Neil participated as a cub scout, and one year Kelly dressed up for the costume competition. But last year and this year, we just go to watch the parade and visit the festival.

The parade seemed smaller this year, but it also didn’t involve a costume competition. We still had some of the classic cars (one of them with our local beauty queens–the daughters of the car owner and their friends), the San Jose Sharks firetruck, Sharky, the JROTC and a marching band. We met our neighbor Gus sitting along the parade route and saw the children from the neighborhood schools on their regular boat float.

As usual, the festival involved honoring the armed forces, represented by people from our neighborhood in uniform, and a flag ceremony by the JROTC, as well as the singing of patriotic songs. Peter and Neil just bought themselves lunch and went home, but I stayed with Kelly so she could play the games and slide down the massive slide:

When she’d spent all our tickets, the Hawaiian dancers came up, and we watched them briefly, but Kelly wasn’t particularly interested since she couldn’t understand the Hawaiian lyrics.

So we went home, but it’s always the best Memorial Day celebration I could want.