Philbrook Museum of Art cat cams

see the cute kitties and read the story here

Bali kite festival

In the many hours I have spent at the museum researching the objects from the Pacific Islands, I would occasionally come across something somewhat unrelated that would catch my interest. In my search for symbolism of Balinese wood carvings, I found this photo which looks like a child flying through the air behind two bulls:

I couldn't figure out what it was at first, but that's a kite!

 Since it's nearly July, I thought I'd share what happens in Bali during this month. July is the middle of Bali's dry season, and there is a constant easterly wind, but rice crops are grown year round with the help of irrigation. The reason for flying these monstrous kites is to promote good harvests by sending messages to Hindu gods.  Typical kites flown during the Balinese kite flying season can range 10 to 30 feet! (The rule is no bigger than a two-lane road.) About ten adults are needed to help fly just one kite. Traditional shapes for the kites are fish, birds, and leaves, and colors typically include white, black, and red.

 

Each village, or banjar, helps build and fly the kites. They are constructed from bamboo and plastic or cloth skin and sewn together. Most of the largest kites cannot be dismantled because of this, but are instead walked in a long religious procession to the beach where they are sent up to the sky.

Just think how fun it would be to see these up in the air!

the weekend

This weekend was the Oceanbeach Street Fair & Chili Cookoff. I only participated in the street fair aspect of it because I do not enjoy chili one bit. It was incredibly crowded and it took me 1.5 hours to go the 10 miles from my house to the beach on the trolley and bus. Oceanbeach is known as the "seediest" beach in San Diego. I completely agree, although they've also got a great farmer's market and this festival wasn't so bad either. (As long as you don't walk under the pier, you'll be okay.) It's also one of the more popular surfing spots.

I spent most of my time scoping out surfboards in stores and on the water.

I've made it my mission to find or make a wind chime while I'm in California. There's a store in Old Town that is full of every kind you can imagine:

I happen to think this is pretty great too, though I'm not sure what it would sound like:

At the place I am housesitting this week, there is a giant wind chime made from three-inch-thick cast iron I-beams. Of course with it being so heavy and the lack of anything other than a little breeze, I never heard it and didn't know it was there until I saw it today. I tried it out and it sounds great, and would be perfectly suited for the Kansas winds!

I spent a lot of time in the garden today, pulling weeds and doing turtle inventory. There should be four, I believe. I only found three, and one was lodged between a plant pot and a brick. I thought he had gotten stuck there and died, but he was sleeping apparently, as I found out after tickling his foot.

In the evening, I cooked some miso soup and baked some honey almond cakes, recipe courtesy of my sister. I found these adorable cupcake liners at Ikea for only $1, but while baking there was no cupcake tin to be found, hence the puzzle-piece blob cakes.

                                                          Still, my roommates seemed to like them!

it's officially summer...

...according to both the calendar and the weather. It finally got above 70 degrees here, and combined with the sun, it felt especially nice!

I've been doing much of the same cataloging and researching objects at the museum, except with different collections. After the Oceania collection, I moved on to toy boats-- little clockwork tin model boats from the 1920s to the 1980s. I have to admit they look like fun, especially the submarines. Too bad I can't try them out...

After that came the "medical boxes". I thought museum cataloging couldn't get any worse than arsenic-stuffed taxidermied birds until I opened up one of these and found a Civil War surgery kit, complete with amputation saws. I've seen many of these in museums before, but let me tell you, there is a whole lot of difference when they are safely behind a piece of glass as opposed to just sitting there in front of you. Fail me out of grad school, I don't care, I am not going to take those things out of their box for individual pictures!

I'll skip a picture of that collection and leave you with Robert E. Lee and his pony, Traveller

 Thankfully I have now moved on to lighting. Yes, just lamps and the like: buggy lanterns, whale oil lamps, lighthouse lamps, etc.

old lighthouse lantern

"There is magic in it. Let the most absent-minded of men be plunged  in his deepest reveries-- stand that man on his legs, set his feet a going, and he will infallibly lead you to water, if water there be in that region... Yes as everyone knows, meditation and water are wedded forever." --Moby Dick, Herman Melville

La Jolla Cliffs

sea lions & a sunset

sea lions

  a lovely evening at La Jolla

Little Mogadishu

Just south of my neighborhood in San Diego lies City Heights, an area known for its ethnic diversity. This area includes neighborhoods of Indian, Middle Eastern, Vietnamese, Hispanic, as well as Eastern African people. Approximately 55,000 Somali refugees have come to San Diego legally since 1991 to escape war, and about 20,000 live in what is called "Little Mogadishu", in City Heights.

All Somali refugees that come to San Diego are put on welfare, and it is very difficult for them to move beyond this state. There are several organizations who work with the state department to help the Somalis assimilate to living in the United States. One of those groups is International Rescue Committee, or IRC, who provide services such as immediate attention upon arrival in the U.S. (food, shelter, clothing), and promote self-reliance through community and cultural orientation, education, English-speaking classes and job placement. As you can imagine, it is a difficult struggle to make a living: http://www.bantubeads.com/.

For high school students, there is a program called Students Plus, where volunteers do after-school tutoring. In addition, they've created other programs like sports teams, and currently there is an exhibit, "A Different Life", at the San Diego History Center that focuses on the transition faced by seven high school-aged Somali girls living in San Diego. It was co-curated with the girls themselves working with museum staff, so they were able to provide their own items for the displays, and also, for example, demonstrate how a dress is worn. It was sad to read their stories, especially about one whose grandmother had been killed and whose father had been targeted simply because he worked for the government.

map from the museum showing the girls' routes

Overall, it was noted that these refugee communities live rather isolated lives, so I think public exhibits such as these are incredibly important for acknowledging the different communities that surround us by creating awareness not only about their culture, but how they connect with our own.