At the Arboretum Garden Festival they had a some very good musical groups.  I was lucky enough to be there when the Taiko Drummers were there.  I took a video and posted it on YouTube.  Be sure to turn you volume up.

Life is Good!

Thanks to Lillian B. for turning us on to this great event.

One of the best flower photos I have taken in a long time.

Click on the photo and look at it full screen you can see the pollen on the bee’s back.

I’d say National Geographic quality.

Life is good!

Lake Avenue is one of the major streets in Pasadena.  Before the revival of Old Pasadena it was also the main shopping district. Today’s question is: How did it come to be called Lake Avenue when a Google map of the area doesn’t show a lake within twenty miles?  A map from the 1920′s answers the question.

The map was made by the Automobile Club when their slogan was “Good Roads.”  Zooming in on the south end of Lake Avenue we find the answer to the puzzle.

At the south end of Lake Avenue down in San Marino is “Mission Lake.”  It is in what is now Lacey Park near the old mill “El Molino.”  It was probably the mill pond for the mill.  For added fun in the Arroyo, on the left hand side of the small map, are “Busch Gardens” and the Cawston Ostrich Farm.  See a more detailed version of the map on Flickr

I was researching an immigration topic and came across this Census Bureau map showing the top ancestry by county in the US.

Two surprises to me were the large portion of the country that is dominated by people of German descent and the category “American” as distinct from “American Indian”  that is prevalent in many parts of the Southeast.

“I always give my future self way to much credit when it comes to remembering passwords”

Every month in The Funny Times there is a column of one liners called Ruminations by Aaron Karos.  I finally took the time to look at his web site which is great.  http://ruminations.com/site/

To entice you to take a look here are few of my favorites with some art photos I took in Carpinteria last week.

“It’s extremely frustrating when you spell a word so incorrectly that even spell check isn’t able to help you out.”

“How is it possible that there is still no way to un-push a button in an elevator?”

I confess.  I really dislike double wide strollers. 

They clog any aisle or sidewalk they enter.  They are a product built for the convenience of a few at a cost to us all.  So I was very pleased to see this sign on the door at one of the exhibits at the Huntington Library:

Note to the Huntington: It is a risk to offend the inconsiderate.  Good Luck.

Note to self:  Maybe someone could invent a stroller that is a “Double Decker”

Note to Hilary Rosen:

A sincere apology never has a “but”!

(Rosen is the Democrat operative who foolishly said Ann Romney had “never worked a day in her life”)

I went on a tour of the County Arboretum in Arcadia with Lilli B.  She is working as a volunteer there helping with the Garden Festival.  The specific purpose of the visit was to see “Grommet” the very unattractive Guinea Fowl that Lilli has unofficially adopted.

Grommet

At the Arboretum peacocks get all of the attention.  With good reason they are very photogenic.

Wowing the hens.

But Grommet the Guinea Fowl has an underdogs charm and a face that only his mother could love.

Oh My!

Watch for: Grommet Stories,  The TV mini-series, the book and of course the stuffed animal.

In the meantime look at this album of other photos from the Arboretum on Flickr

Texture

An excellent graphic sent to me by Rebecca B. that compares the depths of various bodies of water.

Link to the Full Size Chart.

Click on it to make it large enough to read.

No Staring into the Abyss

I’m pleased to reproduce here a thought provoking piece by Lisa Feldman about the 10 plagues.

In our house we don’t do the plagues at Passover because Jack G thinks that they celebrate the wrath of God striking innocent people.  I have always tended to agree.  This is a different interpretation:

The Ten Character Plagues

by Lisa Feldman, Weizmann Day School Head

I recently learned a teaching by the Ishbitzer Rebbe that I thought you might find interesting.  Rabbi Mordechai Yoseph Lainer of Ishbitza lived during the first part of the 19th century in Poland.  He suggests that the 10 plagues do not just commemorate a historic moment, but rather they are character traits that plague us throughout the year.

“Frogs” – Exaggerated Speech

Dam, “blood” is symbolic of anger; Tz’fardea, “frogs” – exaggerated speech; Kinim, “lice”-gossip; Arov, “wild beasts”-wicked thoughts; Dever, “pestilence”-self-centeredness; Sh’heen, “boils”-arrogance; Barad, “hail”-imbalance of life’s priorities; Arbeh, “locusts”-gluttony/tenacity; Hoshekh, “darkness”-boastfulness and Makat B’khorot, “slaying of the first born”-being too proud.

If we’re honest with ourselves, we’ve probably been plagued with many, if not all of these at times throughout the year and it is at this season that we are asked to take a moment to reflect on our past actions  Rosh Hodesh Nissan, the month in which Pesah occurs, was originally the beginning of the New Year.  Although we now celebrate the New Year in the fall with Rosh Hashanah, the holiday of our freedom-Pesah still serves to remind us that we can be free if we do not allow ourselves to be enslaved with negativity and poor choices.  As we relax over the next 10 days I charge us to consider each day a different one of these character traits and to try and purge these behaviors from our daily lives.

Weizmann Day School is located at 1434 N Altadena Dr in Pasadena CA.  Lisa Feldman the Head of the school writes a weekly column for it e-Paper.  I have reproduced her column for this week here.  You can subscribe by following the link to the school.