Today we got up late, and I did some work for TSOS (the E-zine), which gave us an even later start to the day. We finally went to get some breakfast around 11:00 a.m. We went to a little place down Island Street called Café 222. Very Good! Terry had a standard, but tasty American breakfast; I had Eggs Italia, which were scrambled eggs with pesto, goat cheese and fresh tomatoes, served with focaccio bread and rosemary potatoes.

Then we headed up to Balboa Park. The first museum we came to was the Museum of Living Artists, so of course, we had to check that out. They had a show of local artists responding to the Dead Sea Scrolls (which are currently showing at the Museum of Natural History).

Good show, similar in some ways to an AVAA show. For a local show, I was impressed by the number of strong and thoughtful pieces. There were many interesting responses to the Dead Sea Scrolls. There was a beautiful abstract called Mosaic #6 by Jane Fletcher, the prettiest piece in the show, a very funny piece called "The Dead Sea Squirrels" by Hank Gross, a very interesting torah-photo sculpture by Art Ferber, a thoughtful piece called “What Every Household Needs” by Nanette Newbry, that printed the entire Patriot Act in something like 1pt. type on a metal plate. One woman had created a piece that encompassed all (I think) of the text of Ovid’s Metamorphosis, each line of tiny text cut out and arranged in concentric shapes morphing from a circle of text to a butterfly, each shaped piece about 24” in diameter and encased between sheets of plastic (Cheryl Sorg, piece titled “Bodies I Have in Mind, and How They Can Change to Assume New Shapes"). Another notable piece was called "Scroll and Palimpsest" by Bob Simpson - a 13 panel long mixed media piece on plywood that beautifully incorporated marks that resembled writings with drawing and painting. There was a pretty groovy mixed media piece called "Sheep" by Wendy Kwasny-Bowen and a beautiful large oriental style scroll piece called "Waves in Conversation" by Rosemary Kimball, a nice small piece called "Fish Legend" by Meredith Cummings, and several other very nice or very thoughtful pieces, like "The Scroll That Never Ends" by Robert Collie, a digital piece about all the soldiers we’ve lost in Iraq.

There were also two featured artists with many works on display: Jo-Lind Eckstein and Claire-Lise Matthey Anderegg. They both did work that ranged from small to medium-large, and the work was layered and very richly textured. I loved both of their styles very much.

Sculpture in Balboa Park Cafe

;Next we went to the Museum of Art, and saw a few small rooms of paintings from Ingres to Frantisek Kupka and the surrealists. I really loved the Kupka piece! His work was apparently so avant-garde at the time, even the avant-garde didn’t get it. When asked what his work represented, he responded “Must then a work of art represent something?”

There was also a nice, elaborate show of Impressionist Artists of Giverny - lots of beautiful paintings by some of the apparently 350 artists painting around there at that time, including of course Monet, and also Frieseke, plus many I have never before heard of.

After the Art museum, we went to the Museum of Natural History. The first thing we saw was a large Foucault’s pendulum-very cool! We stood watching it for some time, hoping to see the pendulum knock over one of the many pieces of wood set up at the ends of the pendulum's arc of motion. I looked away once, and one got knocked over (!). The next one kept getting turned aside, and after 5-10 minutes of watching and waiting in anticipation, we finally gave up and moved on.

Lots of dinosaur displays throughout the floor we were on. . .

There was a very large globe displaying an animation in the round of the movement of the world’s landmasses caused by plate tectonics from 750 million years ago through today. Another animated display not only showed the shift in plate tectonics in the past, but also forward 250 million years into the future. Other than that, pretty standard stuff at this museum.

After the museums, we headed back to the hotel for a cold beer, a little reading on the balcony, and then a short nap before dinner. For dinner, we went to a Chinese place called “Blue Ginger.” Terry ordered some tasty trio of beef, chicken and shrimp, and I had the crispy scallops, which were huge, very juicy, very crispy, and absolutely delicious! Maybe the best scallops I've ever had at Chinese food place, and that is saying something! The only downside to this meal was that the computer went down just before we could take care of our tab , and the young waiter left us waiting for at least 15-20 minutes for it to revive, which it never did. Finally, Terry talked to the manager, who instructed the young man to add up our tab manually. Terry said to the manager, “when the computer goes down, the brains go away.” He laughed.

View photos from this day of our trip below or on this gallery page.