One of the exhibits which has come and stayed are the Kapla bricks, which are little more than short flat pieces of wood, which the museum visitors use to make the most creative constructions. We saw them as a new exhibit in 2006, when Neil’s imaginative friend Ryan joined us and created a castle with a bridge. Since then, the Kapla bricks have moved next a small maze in a room with the Planetarium, and they’re always a hit with my children:

Neil was also eager to see the choice of puzzles in the museum store, and he ended up buying himself a quite inscrutable Chinese puzzle box.

I am always in awe of the view from the museum, which never fails to amaze:

A few days later, I set the children up with an art lesson about Joan Miro. We all came up with impressive Miro-inspired art, all in our own styles. As a conjunct to it, I planned to show the children two Miro paintings I’d seen at the Stanford art museum.

Unfortunately, when we got there, the Miro paintings had been rotated out of the 20th-century art exhibit. Alas! However, I had had the children do another lesson on Alexander Calder the day before (and we have two stabiles and a mobile to show for it). And as it turned out, the museum had an Alexander Calder mobile on display: you can see “The Chariot” here behind the children:

Kelly was very exited to see an authentic art piece based on what she’d learned. She wasn’t as thrilled with the Robert Arneson heads, though I always find them whimsical.

The downstairs special exhibit often includes an activity, so I took the children there to see if there was one with the current exhibit. But the exhibit was very very delicate calligraphy, with no activity (and honestly, a note which seemed to imply breathing near the calligraphy was seriously discouraged). So we had the most fun in the museum store, which had samples you could play with, and with the soft pink upside down Q in the courtyard. The soft pink Q, by the way, is by the very same artist who created one of our family’s favorite pieces of art, the giant diaper pin.

So this museum visit didn’t have all I expected, but it was good, and the Stanford art museum is always worthwhile, even if it doesn’t always have its Miro on display.

I wondered whether they’d relate as middle schoolers or math geeks. By putting them together in the back of my car on the way to San Francisco, would I be subject to an hour of fart jokes, or power calculation? I very quickly learned middle schooler and math geek are not mutually exclusive. Almost as soon as he got into the car, Julian rolled down his window and the boys proceeded to do wind experiments half way up the peninsula. It wound down to an explanation on the science of kitty litter, at which point I saw my chance to insert a geeky fact, and informed the boys that the Middle Ages really stank. That seemed to calm the boys down for a while. Where’s the math in medieval aromatics? After a few minutes, they changed the subject to theories of what you could do with a really long conveyor belt and RC vehicles.

Finally, we arrived at the Exploratorium. Julian set me up as the straight man for a really geeky math joke involving infinity, but I got him back by telling him I love infinity, because no matter how much you add to it, it’s always the same. And, hey, kid, here’s a quarter-shaped Exploratorium sticker, now go play with the science exhibits, why dontcha?

The place was created for kids like Neil and Julian, by slightly older kids like Neil and Julian, so the boys were content. Kelly, happily enough, has matured so she can enjoy playing with the exhibits, too. Here are all three children checking out the sand disc:

Kelly and I drifted to different exhibits, in no small part because neither Kelly (nor I) were up to trying to figure out the equations for sand drawings.

The Exploratorium has a new (to us, at least) section about circuits, which had a table for making circuits. This was like a more advanced version of Snap Circuits, a toy Neil loved at an early age. When I checked in on the boys, they were creating some sort of ueber-battery, having done troubleshooting work to sort of the defective circuits from the working ones:

I was hungry for lunch, but both the boys were still riding on Exploratorium excitement, so I took Kelly over to the cafe to have a bite to eat, since I wouldn’t be able to eat on the way back home. I opened the lunch I’d packed for myself, (which involved the remnants of an ongoing field trip lunch), and discovered a biology experiment. Biology was last year for us, though, so I threw it away, and ate some of Neil’s lunch instead.

Alas, we had to leave at 3, so I could get the boys to Cupertino in time for Julian’s math club. Neil had accepted an invitation to join him, which is like accepting an invitation for a nightcap from a Russian friend. Here’s an example of one of the problems they do for fun in the math club:

You leave the Exploratorium at 3 pm, and need to be at the Cupertino library at 4 pm. Inexplicable construction requires you to reroute your way home through the Presidio, but through some wonder of space, time, and political perversion, you still end up going down 19th Avenue and have to stop at infinity red lights. There is a 10% probability that any one of the car’s 3 passengers (with a 5% probability for the driver) will throw up, a probability that increases exponentially every 10 minutes, but which will delay your trip by 5 minutes for each incident, assuming you can pull over to the side of the road fast enough (if not, add another 10 minutes). Calculate how late you will be, and which passenger gets sick.

Oh, wait, I did that problem. Neil and Julian obviously did it, too, and faster than I did, because as soon as I pulled up in front of the library, they exploded out of the car and dashed away, whereupon Kelly threw up.

After the clean up, Kelly and I stuck around in the library, until closing time, when the math club had to close down, too. I got Neil to admit to being mathed out for the day, so we just went home and watched an old Star Trek episode in which Kirk, once again, destroys a computer.

So when Star Trek came to the Tech, I was interested, especially when Neil, even with his very limited knowledge of Star Trek, told me he was interested to go as well.

I thought admittance was pricey. I’ve gotten used to taking my children to museums, and while there’s usually a surcharge for (optional) special exhibits, it’s rare to have to pay more than $10 or $15 for an afternoon’s worth of education and fun. A regular visit at the Tech fits well within this scope, but after having at least two major (and pricey) exhibits which trucked in crowds of paying patrons (Bodyworlds and the Da Vinci Experience), the Tech has learned its special exhibits may be a good way to help fund the regular museum programs. But, still, $25 for me, and another $19 for Neil seemed an awful lot.

That said, Neil and I liked the show. It started with a big room mostly featuring costumes from the different series, and some props from the show. With these was one of the most interesting aspects of the show: how Star Trek inspired modern technology. For instance, cell phones were very much inspired by Star Trek communicators–something that’s not hard to miss, especially when you think of flip phones. Tasers may be thought of as being like the stun setting on Star Trek phasers, since in either real life, or fiction, they work by temporarily paralyzing the muscles with an electronic force. There was a window which mixed real life and fiction by showing historical ships (like Navy cruisers and space shuttles) as somehow evolving into the Star Trek Enterprise space ships.

The next room was a recreation of the ship’s deck, and both Neil and I made sure to have our pictures taken in the captain’s chair. We also got to see ourselves “teleported” in another room which had a teleporter recreation, and see the captain’s quarters as they looked in Star Trek II.

The last and biggest room had more models and an entire wall placing all the major events from all the Star Trek series and movies into a single timeline. I’m not sure I was hard-core enough to appreciate that, since I think of each Star Trek series as something that stands on its own, not as interlocking in a strict sequence. I mean, Star Trek: The Next Generation was a great show, and made rare references to its predecessor, but it was really a different show based on same premise, not a strict sequel. The timeline did remind me how long its been since I watched anything Star Trek. Most of the movies I’d seen when they were in the theater, and that (gasp) goes back almost 30 years. I watched the first two television shows as reruns when I was still in school, but never really got into any of the later iterations, not even Enterprise, even though I really really wanted to like it because it starred Quantum Leap guy Scott Bakula. So, honestly, I don’t really know, or particularly care, about when Captain Jane Away (?) lived, since I can’t name the series she came from either.

Otherwise, we had more costumes, more props, more models, and a quiz game Neil enjoyed and did well at, even given his limited exposure to Star Trek. I vowed to educate my son with the original Star Trek episodes and the good Star Trek movies (II, IV, and maybe VI), but to my surprise, those can’t be gotten at the library, and I have to Netflix them.

I was looking forward to buying a souvenir of our mother-son Star Trek experience, but if I’d thought the show itself was verging on the edge of being overpriced, the pictures certainly were. The only way I could buy any picture of us was to buy a $28 package of 2 or 3 pictures, with an option to add pictures to that at $6 each. I asked if I could just buy a picture of Neil in the captain’s chair for $6, but it wasn’t an option: it was the full package or nothing. Having already spent $42, I couldn’t justify $70 for an hour’s worth of Star Trek fun (even though we were able to add in some fun at the Tech as part of our attendance before we had to go pick up Kelly).

We were the only people attending the exhibit, but to be fair, it we were there on a Monday, the week before Christmas break began. The Da Vinci show cost as much as this exhibit, and that was consistently packed, even though I didn’t consider it that impressive, and it was certainly less fun than Star Trek. So maybe there are more Trekkies/Trekkers out there with more money than I’m willing to part with. As it was, Neil and I had a good time, but I’m glad Peter and Kelly didn’t join us, because it wouldn’t have been worthwile for them.

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.

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.

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.

For the last few years, we’ve been lucky to have a friend coming along with us,whether it was his friend Ryan from school, or Ethan, the son of a friend. But this time, we went up on a week day, to beat the crowds, even though the Lawrence Hall of Science is rarely crowded.

Honestly, I think the next time we go, we’ll go on a weekend again, because as I discovered, several things are closed on weekdays, like the biology room where you can see and pet animals, and the planetarium show. Nontheless, we had fun. Neil was mostly there to play with the Kapla blocks, and he made several constuctions larger than himself, like this:

And I never get tired of the spectacular view over the Bay from the Lawrence Hall of Science’s outdoor earth science exhibit area. Here is the view looking out over the Bay Bridge and to the fog-shrouded Golden Gate Bridge:

Kelly was finally old and mature enough to try some of the math games in the downstairs and to try the amazing maze herself. The special Grossology exhibit, however

didn’t appeal to either Neil or Kelly. However, I know some children (like the Ethan mentioned above) for whom the exhibit would have been just the thing.

Neil wanted to buy himself some Kapla bricks because he enjoys them so much, but as I’d remembered, they were still prohibitively expensive. So we’ll just have to go back.

The last time we were there, both Neil and Kelly loved it: imagine nothing but nature, and little to do except maybe watch a video or pet some dogs. Now Neil’s more of a computer guy, and, well, rural internet connections don’t compare to urban DSL. His high-tech moment of the day was testing out this solar hat, as he did on our short midday hike:

Two small solar panels on either side got a fan going whenever it was in sunlight. It really did work, creating a little cold breeze above your head on a cold day, but Neil was more focused on its whirring noise and whether the blades could injure. Neil also wasn’t very happy that the wildlife we were going out to look for might include rattlesnakes as well as rabbits.

The big surprise was Dave, and how he had come into his own in his own homestead in a remote area I think of now as Sunshine Gulch. In our semi-urban neighborhood, he’d always been too modest and reserved to come out to neighborhood barbecues, but if any one needed help, he’d be the first person on the scene. Out here, nearly a mile away from any neighbor, he and his wife knew everyone in the entire area, even if getting to their place required a 4-wheel drive with enough oomph to scurry up a gravelly mountain and cross small rivers. A small restaurant near the junction of three counties functions as the community center and post office. The folks who farm or grow produce share their extras with those they know well, and Dave and BJ can it, smoke or cure it and put it away to consume at leisure.

Most of all, Dave had become interested and involved in conservation, which I wouldn’t have imagined about him before. But in context, it made sense. He’d always loved to go out camping in the large public park lands, and now he is actually conserving rural land himself–by having bought it for himself and his family to protect. Now he’s trying to make others aware of the importance of conserving the natural resources in any one particular area, and taking advantage of the native environment. His ideas were similar to those my environmentalist-minded homeschoolers have mentioned, such as having maximum insulation on a house to minimize heating and cooling costs; implementing solar power in sunny regions, like Dave’s region of California; and planting native and drought-resistant plants instead of a lawn with heavy watering requirements.

I’d taken their daughter Liz (who doesn’t drive) over to visit them on Tuesday, and when I went back on Saturday to pick her up, I asked Dave for a recommendation for a solar-powered shed light. He gave me a whole catalog of solar-powered devices: it’s impressive how many devices can be run with solar power (or other alternative power sources) from water pumps to air conditioners. Unfortunately, they’re also all very expensive, but when you’re miles away from the electrical power grid, or the California ISO has to ration power, solar’s more reliable.

That said, it’s a suprisingly long drive to get there, even though their home is close as far as the crow flies. To get to their homestead involves lots of switchbacks over at least two mountains, plus unpaved road, unlocking a gate and then driving in for a distance through a gravelled dirt road. Luckily, my new car can handle it better than my previous one, which almost slid off the hill last time. Both Neil and Kelly suffered from carsickness, and out of respect for Neil, at least once I took the long (but pretty) way home. It was straighter, but it was more than twice the milage. On the other hand, Kelly loved the doggies, and they (as well as the low-key homey atmosphere) had her not missing the company of zillions of other girls any more.

So we’ll probably return to Sunshire Gulch some time, even if Neil will have to make do with less-than-lightning-speed internet.

I made sure to get there early, because I expected it would only get more crowded over time. Outside the store, several booths were set up with activities and information for preschoolers, and Kelly planted a cucumber seed in a small cup.

When we got inside, an exercise class had already begun in the children’s area, with a princess, Prince Charming, Carmen Miranda, and Scooby Doo as part of the background exercise team:

I’m jealous: Scooby-Doo never comes to my exercise classes. Kelly happily hopped around, trying to follow the instructions, and even did The Macarena for the first of what will undoubtedly be many times in her life.

Following a raffle ticket giveaway, we went to another area for a storytime featuring The Belly Book, and snacks. I think the latter got more attention than the book!  There was a short interlude to instruct parents on how to read to their children, but after 10 years of experience in the same, and with 2 children who can read independently, I think I can skip it. I followed Kelly to yet another area, where she got a recipe book, and made her own trail mix.

I reward her for her schoolwork with books, and Kelly was due for one, so we took a break to go book shopping. Kelly wanted to read all the books, but eventually settled on a Mo Willems book, Don’t Let the Pigeon Ride the Bus.

But then we distracted by the concert that was just beginning. The Papa Hugs Band put on a full kiddie concert with silly songs. For almost every song, there was a character or some zany action. For instance, here’s the Stinkbug from the Stingbug song:

On cue, the bug would spray the audience, and Kelly held her nose firmly closed.

while those who weren’t doing the same cried “Euuwwww!”

At one point, Papa Hugs encouraged his audience to toot along by handing out kazoos, and later, he got a bubble machine going which got all the children (including Kelly whose stretched up hands are near the front) to rush the stage:

By this time, I’d had enough exitement, especially considering that I was planning on bringing Kelly to another storytime later that day. But Kelly wanted to stick around, so we went to see Elina Wong give a presentation on her book about child-friendly activities in the Bay Area. The book was appropriate to the occassion: it was all about things to do when you get off the couch, and it looked appealing and well done. However, talking about your book in the slot right after a concert at which kazoos were distributed was clearly not ideal. Kelly saw enough to know she wants to go strawberry picking at Gizdich Ranch, but eventually she came around to my feeling that it was time to leave this big party scene for others.

All in all, at least for the 2-1/2 hours we were there, it was fun, zany time. The staff seemed slightly surprised at the robust attendance, but I wasn’t.

We went there the day after the free day (the first Wednesday of the month) which seems to be an excellent day to go, because it’s fairly sparsely visited. Neil not only got to test heat-sensitive chemicals with a docent, but was able to ask questions and do multiple tests.

Kelly was old enough to actually enjoy the exhibits (especially since Neil took a hand in encouraging her to check them out). This was particularly lucky, since the area that had formerly been set aside for toddlers had been remodelled into a magic and sense mysteries section. Kelly loved the new aspect, however, and was completely mystified by a new card game of “horseshoe”. How did the docent know what her special card was? Kelly guessed it could only be magic, which at the Exploratorium we know magic is just another version of science with a curious angle to it.

No matter how many people are at the Exploratorium, it never feels crowded because there are SO many exhibits of equal interest. Whereas at the Academy of Sciences, where people are 5 and 6 rows deep to look at the penguins, but almost totally missing at the sanctimonious Climate Change area, you’ll always find an open science exploration station at the Exploratorium. Once you start exploring, others will pop in to check it out, too, and you can move on. If by any chance that should fail, you can always step back and groove on the science as art vibe of the entire place.

I personally was charmed by my interaction with an exhibit builder. He was fixing a broken exhibit, and I quizzed him. Apparently, the Exploratorium builds exhibits not only for itself (though built-for-the-Exploratorium exhbits do deliberately tend to look funky and artsy) but also for science museums all over the nation. Apparently, the city has decided it doesn’t want to lease a 1910s airplane hanger any more, so the Exploratorium may move to the North Beach area instead. I’m sad, but only because the transitions of the Academy of Sciences and Happy Hollow Park have resulted in twee shadows of their former selves, with eco-religion at their core. (The De Young Museum was truly an upgrade, and I hope that is not an exception). And yes, being an exhibit builder for the Exploratorium is really one of the coolest jobs you can ever hope for, if you love science and modelling.

The Palace of Fine Arts, which I have loved for so many years, ever since (when I had just moved here) my friend Andy showed me how to climb up on the pedastals (which were later surrounded by plants just to discourage such a thing) was closed for construction. Nooo! You can’t tear down the pedastals, it would be so wrong!

Kelly did some art, twirled gigglingly in a tent with twin girls,  invited a tourist girl for a playdate (which her parents gently excused her from), found a baby to coo over, so it was good for her too. I left with good feelings for the Exploratorium, which did everything right that the Academy of Sciences did so wrong. We’ll certainly be back, and I can only hope its move will be for the better and not for the worst.