Books By The Bay

I had to take at least one shot of the book booths. We got there too late for the first panel I wanted to see and the heat drove us away by the time the last panel came around. Yerba Buena Gardens is a lovely oasis of lawn but it is not air conditioned - for the two days every other year you need a/c in SF.

From inside looking at Books By the Bay (I couldn't get any to come out of the panels. Stupid camera phone.

We actually went behind the waterfall because San Francisco was approximately 92,000 degrees farenheit on Saturday (give or take a few zeros) but I'm glad we did. Behind the panels of waterfalls are excerpts from Martin Luther King Jr's speeches and just reading them made me cry, they were so beautiful. Here's how they describe it on their homepage:

The undeniable centerpiece of Yerba Buena Gardens is the 22-foot-high, 50-foot-wide waterfall that leads to the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial. Behind the waterfall are 12 shimmering glass panels engraved with quotes from Dr. King's writings and speeches, in English with translations in African and Arabic dialects as well as the languages of San Francisco's Sister Cities. The Memorial is anchored with a carved image of Dr. King at one end and an image of San Francisco's community leaders during the 20th anniversary of the March in Golden Gate Park at the other. The Memorial is the first of its kind to truly embrace Dr. King's vision of peace and international unity in the United States. Collaborating artists were sculptor Houston Conwill, poet Estella Majoza and architect Joseph de Pace.


Ran across the street to the SF MOMA - it was close, it was air conditioned and I'm of the belief that if you're ever near any museum - for any reason - you should go in and check it out. I love museums. I just don't appreciate Modern Art. It was kind of cool to see the original self portrait Frida Kahlo painted, and Salavador Dali's paintings (and oh yeah, Diego Rivera). I did like a Matisse of a coffeepot, but that possibly has more to do with my appreciation of all things related to the coffee bean than art.

Sunday I went to the FiberArts market in Oakland - the weather was lovely and it was nice and uncrowded - hopefully not so uncrowded that the vendors didn't do well. I got to meet in person

Lisa's Knitwear & Dyeworks

and hopefully she'll be able to dye me up a batch that will finally meet my standards for that darn Pi With Sleeves shawl except now I want to make Cherly Oberle's Lacy Prarie Shawl instead....

In other (fascinating) news, I started reading this on my brother's recommendation and I am really enjoying it. It's about an archaelogist, Nathan Swift, who gets seduced by his unscrupulous partner's sister and conceives a child with her. The partner uses this to talk him into looting the Golgotha ruins (basically the scene of Jesus's crucifixion) of skeletons and vials of tears and blood (hermetically sealed - in the year zero, by Egyptian methods of those days) after a devastating earthquake.

Anyway, some rich shipping magnate gets a hold of a vial and unleashes a plague. The rest of the story involves cloning, a 19 year old genius in Los Alamos, NM, Nathan's odyssey to find his daughter in a ravaged world after the worst of betrayals ....and luckily for you all, I haven't finished it or I would undoubtedly ruin the ending for you. But I am surreptitiously reading it at my desk.