Archive for the 'art & fashion' Category

A Day in San Jose with the Jazz Festival

Saturday, August 9th, 2008

When we went downtown to visit Peter and have fun on Friday, Kelly and I got off a different light rail stop to see if it was any different to get to the office. As it turned out, the sidewalks in front of the Tech Museum were being closed off an we had to wander [...]

San Diego’s New Children’s Museum

Friday, August 1st, 2008

San Diego’s children’s museum is only two blocks away from the convention center, and I took Kelly (and later Neil as well) there as an escape from the Comic-Con craziness. I’d been there many years before when Neil was a toddler, so it was a surprise to me that this incarnation of the museum was [...]

Movie Reviews: Kung Fu Panda and Get Smart

Sunday, June 29th, 2008

It had been a long time since I’d gone to see a movie in a movie theatre, so long that the Camera Cinemas discount card (10 movies for $50) I still had had been phased out for a new one (10 movies for $60). But this month, I got back into the habit of seeing [...]

Kelly’s Future Car

Sunday, June 8th, 2008

I don’t like to be a time hog when I take time off for myself, so after already indulging myself in an afternoon of magazine reading, I didn’t think I had time to check out the Zero 1 art festival. But as I was going past the art cars lined up along Plaza de Cesar [...]

San Jose’s Downtown Library: Great Art and Bad Bums

Sunday, June 8th, 2008

There’s a lot to be said about San Jose’s relatively new library downtown, but I’ll focus this on one of the best, and the very worst. Just as context, the 8-story library located on the border between downtown San Jose and San Jose State, is a collaboration that combines both a city library and a [...]

Annie Leibovitz at the Legion of Honor

Sunday, May 11th, 2008

For Mother’s Day, I wanted nothing else than to visit one of my favorite art museums, the Legion of Honor in San Francisco, and see the Annie Leibovitz photography exhibit with my family. With gas prices being has high as they are, a trip to San Francisco is becoming a treat. I’d also upgraded my [...]

Stowe Lake By Boat

Thursday, March 20th, 2008

The Saturday I got back from Germany, I took Neil and Kelly to the De Young Museum in Golden Gate Park. Their Saturday children’s art activity was focused on tromp l’oeil, and Neil just loves that art form. He has tromp l’oeil books and his art last summer was making tromp l’oeil projects. After a [...]

Child Protective Services Threatens to Fine Germany’s “Idol”

Monday, February 4th, 2008

In preparation for my trip to Germany, I’m watching YouTube clips of “Deutschland Sucht ein Superstar,” (DSDS) Germany’s version of “American Idol, and reading Germany’s tabloid newspaper, Das Bild. The two converged recently in a story that puts the nanny into “nanny state.”
Just as context, DSDS is a lot like “American Idol” and the show [...]

Marie Antoinette Makes an Appearance at the Legion of Honor

Saturday, February 2nd, 2008

Today I dragged my children to Lincoln Park to visit the Legion of Honor. It’s one of my favorite museums, and though the current exhibition wasn’t that compelling to me, I haven’t been there in over a year. I’ve been having trouble finding a weekday free enough from other commitments, and when I do take [...]

A Full Day in San Jose

Sunday, January 6th, 2008

Every so often, I take the children to downtown San Jose via light rail and we spend the day there. We have memberships to three museums there, and there’s almost often some event going on, whether it’s Christmas in the Park, activities tying in to the national gymnastics championships, or a Vietnamese moon festival. We’d [...]

by Carolyn Bickford