Tag Archives: quilts

Lemon Grove Outing

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Main Street Murals
Parsonage Museum
Lemon Grove
March 12, 2022


While Meredith was visiting her Dad in March, Bob went exploring. He was in search of some new history murals being painted in Lemon Grove, about a half-hour’s drive from home. Bob had read about those new murals in the San Diego Union-Tribune in February, and the story caught his eye. One feature that interested him was the inclusion of images telling the story of the Lemon Grove school desegregation case from the 1930s. As a history teacher, Bob knew of this incident, and he had shared with his classes many times over the years the story as told in a television program produced by the local PBS station, KPBS. The Lemon Grove Incident relates the events of the 1930s surrounding an attempt to segregate Mexican and Mexican-American children into a separate elementary school. It is told using re-creations and interviews with surviving children who experienced the event and participated in the lawsuit that ended the segregation. In the end, Bob did not find that mural this time—another search for another trip. But he did see other murals.

Bob searched online to see if there was any new information about the location of the murals and found “murals” mentioned on one website. He set out. He found murals that depicted the history of the town and city of Lemon Grove on the side of a commercial building on Pacific Avenue at the corner of Main Street, just south of the city’s famous landmark. “Those paintings — 65-feet wide by 18 feet tall, filled with art depicting the Kumeyaay people, the 15th and 16th century Spanish Conquest, 1800s Mexican heritage, 19th century buildings and a current look at Lemon Grove — were created over an eight-year span, starting in 2005.” [SD Union-Tribune, 18 April 2018]



Still not seeing the murals he was looking for, Bob wandered south towards Treganza Heritage Park (formerly Civic Center Park), which he had noticed when parking his car. On the east side of the park is the headquarters of the Lemon Grove Historical Society. At that location the Historical Society maintains the Parsonage Museum. (It is the firm belief of our youngest child, commented on many times, that her parents can find a little, out-of-the-way museum anywhere!) The building started life as the Atherton Chapel, the community’s first church, and was repurposed to house the clergyman’s family when a later church was built. The parsonage was moved to its current location.

Bob happened to be visiting on a Saturday and the museum was open. (It is open on Saturdays from 11 am to 2 pm.) A friendly docent told him a little bit about the history of the building and then left him free to wander. There are several rooms downstairs that are typical of such museums, housing collections of period clothing, artifacts, furniture, etc. Of interest were the items on display that told the history of the eponymous industry of the town including lemon size sorters, graders, shipping boxes, and photographs. There is a larger room that is used for exhibits that change periodically. The house had the standard display of a period kitchen with rooms upstairs that showed bedroom, children’s room, office, and bathroom. Poking around in the house was a very interesting and pleasant way to spend the better part of an hour. Admission is free; donations requested. (Please be generous!)

Epilogue: Bob heard from a teacher colleague that she had seen the completed murals he had originally set out to find. Now he has a good reason to revisit Lemon Grove.

Where the West Is Fun

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San Diego County Fair
Del Mar Fairgrounds
June 4, 2017

We headed to the San Diego County Fair on its opening weekend. We always enjoyed going to fairs when we were children. Meredith remembers going with her father to the Barnstable County Fair in Massachusetts and with her grandparents to county fairs in Maine. Bob visited fairs in western Massachusetts, including the Three County Fair in Northampton, the Cummington Fair, and the Eastern States Exposition. When our children were small we took them to the sprawling Los Angeles County Fair in Pomona, a splendid and overwhelming experience. Meredith’s mother Margaret entered items in the LA fair a couple of times, winning a blue ribbon for her Seminole jacket back in the 1980’s.

This time we started with the Old West theme exhibit near the entrance, then headed to the infield. We watched the Turkey Stampede, a fun and silly set of turkey races. We strolled through the model farm vegetable beds, then toured the “pollinator” area with a sample bee hive (safely under glass) and a butterfly enclosure. We really enjoyed going in and looking at the butterflies close up!

We opted for our usual (high calorie) fair favorites for lunch: Roxy’s garlic batter fried artichokes and Navajo fry bead, washed down with craft beer in the Paddock area. While we ate, we enjoyed listening to several bluegrass groups performing on the Paddock Stage, particularly a quartet called the Virtual Strangers.

The home arts building was our next stop, and we concentrated on the second floor. Meredith loves the handmade quilts, and it is fun to see what people chose to collect and share. In the fondant cake section we were amused to see a cake with a Star Wars theme, and Meredith sent a photo to her sister, who also loves Star Wars. The polymer bead club had a display table set up and was encouraging passers-by to make beads, which Meredith did.

We went on to the Swifty Swine pig races, which are a must-see for both of us. But who doesn’t love watching piglets run around a track to win an Oreo cookie? Absolutely ridiculous! On the way we wandered through the livestock barns and watched a couple of 4H competitions. After that we walked back to the garden exhibits near the main gate, including both the exterior garden landscapes and the cut flowers displayed inside.

We finished our fair visit listening to Tom Griesgraber playing the Chapman stick on the O’Brien Stage. We first discovered Tom at the fair several years ago, and always try to catch his act if we can.

The fair runs through July 4 this year. We used free offsite parking at the Horse Park, just east of the fairgrounds, and took the shuttle bus to the fair gate. Buses run frequently and get to use a back gate, so that is probably not only the thriftiest but possibly the quickest way to get to the fair. Full price admission is $18 for adults, $11 for seniors and children 6 and over; children 5 and under are free. Several discount deals are available, and the fair website has further information. Handicap access is good; most of the fairgrounds are at ground level, and there are elevators within the buildings.

LACMA

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Los Angeles County Museum of Art
October 12, 2014
“Miracle Mile” Wilshire Boulevard

We took Margaret to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) to see a special exhibition, “Haunted Screens: German Cinema in the 1920s.” The exhibition featured over 150 drawings and set photos from German movies of the 1920s, both silent and early sound era. There were also several screens showing clips from the movies featured in the exhibit, and a number of contemporary movie posters were displayed on the wall. We first heard about the exhibition through an article we saw in the Los Angeles Times. The set design drawings were quite evocative. Meredith was struck by the skill and artistry of some of the watercolors. Bob was amused by the directions written on some of them including the word “achtung.”

LACMA haunted-screens

We next went to see another special exhibition, “Big Quilts in Small Sizes: Children’s Historical Bedcovers.” The museum has drawn on some of its reserve collection and displayed a dozen quilts, mostly from the 19th century and a few from the 20th century, all handmade and small in size. This was the exhibit Margaret liked best. She has been quite adept at handwork of all sorts and particularly likes quilting. She admired the careful work on several of the pieces displayed. After seeing the quilts we strolled through some of the permanent collection in the Art of the America’s building, stopping to admire a gigantic mirror that once adorned a mansion in Menlo Park, then served as a Hollywood prop for decades, before finally joining the museum collection in the 1990s. On our way out of the museum complex we went through the Japanese art building and stopped to browse through the special exhibition of modern kimonos. We particularly liked the ones that illustrated abstract flowing water designs, especially one that had dragonflies on it.

The museum complex is quite large and encompasses nine different buildings. It has an impressive collection spanning many countries and eras. One could certainly spend a full day there and still not see everything. The museum is located at the west end of Hancock Park; the Page Museum, better known as the La Brea tar pits museum, is at the east end of the park. The park is a fun place to stroll, and features the novel sight of various tar pits large and small interspersed throughout the lawn area that makes up the park. The aroma of liquid tar may not be to everyone’s taste, however!

We parked at the east end of Hancock Park, in the lot that is actually associated with the Page Museum. That lot cost $9 – the weekend rate – and put us closer to our favorite area restaurant, Johnnie’s New York Pizzeria. (There is also parking in a garage at the west end of the museum, which costs a little more.)

We met up with our youngest daughter and her boyfriend for lunch at Johnnie’s before going over to the museum. Margaret surprised us by choosing something other than her regular dish, turkey panini. This time she had what Johnny’s calls its Italian quesadilla – thin pizza dough with melted mozzarella and pesto sauce. It was quite good. The young people had other plans so did not join us at LACMA. Discussion over lunch of our visit to the Torrey Pines reserve prompted Margaret to recall a very large white pine which grew in the yard at the Dresden Avenue home where she grew up, in Gardiner, Maine.

Admission to LACMA is $15 for adults, $10 for seniors. Bank of America customers who visit on the first full weekend of the month can get in free by showing a B of A debit or credit card. Wheelchair accessibility is good, although one sometimes has to hunt for the ramps and interconnecting bridges between buildings.