Fresno and More

We spent a wonderful weekend in Fresno (yes, seriously).  The grandson of a friend of Jerry’s from when they were wee kids got married.  It was a wonderful wedding and fun to see friends from the past (not the grandparents, we get together all the time).

The next day we went into an underground garden.  Baldassare Forestiere, a Sicilian immigrant, came to the US to farm.  Unfortunately he bought land that was mostly hardpan.  A man who doesn’t give up, he dug and dug and planted his trees 25 feet down.  This is a great orange tree.

  Using hand tools, he created a unique garden of tunnels and rooms.  He carved the hardpan into bricks to line the walls.  He designed the woven tunnels so he could see if anyone entered his home.  Our tour of the gardens was great fun as well as a lesson in perseverance.

Now the “more” and a great more it was.  Our son Jeff and grandson Bennett came out for a first visit sans Bennett’s parents.  What fun and what a lot of energy.

Timing was excellent for seeing the goats that “mow” the hillside behind our home.

Bennett went swimming in our communal pool and

he played with a whirligig.

He destroyed us at a memory game and let us win at other games.

He made a new friend.  She is the grand-daughter of a friend of ours and the two children enjoyed the Powerhouse museum in Sacramento.

We saw the play James and the Giant Peach in Nevada City.

The highlight was going to SF to the Exploratorium.  Jeff was the first in our family to go there way back when he a young kid.  The original was in the 1915 Palace of Fine Arts and was quite funky (60ish).  In 2013, it moved to Pier 15 on the waterfront and filled with hundreds of items to really get your hands on.  This is a learning experience filled with fun.

 This piece of "toothpick art" took about 40 years to build and is still a work in progress.

A Flashback to Some Adventures

In June our RV friends Paul and Carol traveled through the area.  We decided to meet up in Richmond, CA.  While Richmond itself is not a travel destination, it has a strong history.  As the US entered WWII, the need for naval ships was paramount.  Richmond was the location for major ship building, both Liberty and Victory ships.  The city was transformed into twenty-four-sevenday per week industry.  With men heading off to war, women entered the work force as did African-Americans who moved from the South.

We toured the Red Oak Victory ship, the last remaining ship of this type, learning about its construction.  The Victory ships replaced the Liberty ships because they were much faster and able to outrun submarines.  They were designed to carry cargo to Europe and the South Pacific and were lightly armed with anti aircraft guns.  

We went deep into the engine room,

seeing both officer and enlisted men’s quarters,

learning about communication between ships and land

and seeing the bridge

After a delicious lunch at Assemble Restaurant , we went to the Rosie the Riveter Museum.

 The displays show what life was like in a town that was dedicated to helping with the war effort.  Henry Kaiser, who had never built a ship, was the chief builder there.  He used any man/woman power he could to build, weld and rivet his ships..  Kaiser got in the hospital business by wanting to treat on-the-job injuries close to where the work was done so workers could quickly return to their jobs.

The highlight of our day was an amazing lecture by Betty Reid Soskin , a ninety-seven-year-old African-American woman who was a clerk in Richmond during the war. 

She presented an excellent lecture on what life was like for African Americans in the Bay Area.  She is a good teacher, a captivating speaker and an inspiration to her audience.

Back Home

As we indicated earlier, we are home but we are not sitting around. There are still many interesting places to visit.  Just last Saturday, we went with a group from our community to tour Rogers Family Coffee, aka San Francisco Bay Coffee.  Before the tour, we had to don our appropriate hair coverings.

Rogers is a third generation, California-based coffee producer with an good story to tell.  First started in San Francisco, expanding to the Bay Area, and, now, located in Lincoln, CA, it was started by a family that didn’t know much about coffee roasting.  Good business sense and a willingness to try and fail led them to become a leading and well-respected, organic coffee producer who makes several delicious brews.

Our tour started with our enjoying coffee while viewing videos about the family’s history of coffee production.  Then Laura, a grand-daughter of the founder, led us through something like 600,000 square feet (the size of five Costcos, their biggest customer) of bean storage, roasting, and packaging.

The barrels contain Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee that is sold for $50.00 for 12 oz.  Jerry wanted some but Anna Lee said no.  BOO.

Laura explained the company’s commitment to finding ever more environmentally-safe and efficient ways of making coffee that was also highly rated for flavor.  This included getting rid of the plastic pods that fit in the current rage of coffee makers in favor of environmentally friendly alternatives.  This machine fills the pods.

We concluded with videos on the Rogers family’s commitment to improve the life of their growers who live in Guatemala, Panama, Mexico and Rwanda.  Then we bought a flavor that was new to us. Looking forward to remembering a nice morning while sipping our coffee.

Family Time

Bennett enjoyed having friends over during the weekend

trying out a special birthday gift

 and painting the bird house that each of the children received at his party.

 Cheryl and Dave host a grill night about once a month during the summer and we enjoyed being a part of it.  The children have fun playing while the adults get into some intense conversations, it is DC after all.

In the “it’s a small world” category, Tom, nephew of a friend of ours at home, is at the grill night and sends his hello to his aunt.

On one of our first trips to DC back in the ‘90s, we toured the Holocaust Museum.  This time we went for a specific exhibit, “What Did Americans Know?”  This powerful exhibit tells of the authoritative people in Washington who knew and tried to hide Hitler and Germany’s slaughter of Jews.  It also tells of people like Rabbi Stephen Wise, who repeatedly sent factual reports to the Roosevelt administration pleading with them to allow more Jews to enter the US and for the military to take action to try to deal with the concentration camps.

On display are thousands of articles telling of the holocaust. These were collected by students and the general public from newspapers throughout the country.

The tiles on the Children’s Wall are created by children who have had guided tours of the museum and have been given an opportunity to share their reaction.  They have been most graphic in showing the impact of their visit.

A presentation of late 1930s and early 1940s movies shows how films were used as propaganda for support for the US in the war, but, untold, was what was happening to the Jews.  One person whose call for help we were unaware of was Charlie Chaplin.  In his 1940 film “The Great Dictator,” he plays both a Jewish barber and stand-in for Hitler.  In his speech, Chaplin condemns what is happening and calls for unity in a decent world.   Later in life, when he learned of the great horrors perpetrated, his expressed regret for a movie that seems satirical.



Brag time, Cheryl posed for us with a copy of Curator, the Museum Journal of which she was guest editor for the issue on the destructive uses of ivory.

We ended our time in DC with eating, game playing and book reading, three of our favorite activities.

Family and a Museum

Anna Lee is fortunate to have two cousins living in the general DC area.  We drove to Philadelphia to visit with Barbara and Bob.  While the men and Cheryl headed over to Night Kitchen, a fantastic bakery, Barbara and Anna Lee caught up on lives, books and politics.

 They also compared common Costco purchases.  If you want to know more, ask.  After a delicious crabcake dinner, we planned for getting together on our next trip East.

A couple of days later, we headed to Virginia to enjoy lunch and family talk with Conne and Mark.  Conne is an excellent videographer and showed us the videos of her talented family.

 We also got to see some of their grandson’s bar mitzvah.  Again, we made plans for getting together later in the year.

About the museum.  PBS had an excellent documentary about Jews in the US military called GI Jews.   The Natl. Museum of American Jewish Military History is small but interesting.

The head of the museum was the source for much of the information in the PBS show.  The issue of the banning and discrimination faced by Jews who want to serve their country is presented along with examples of the service given by many new immigrants to America.  There are displays of many personal effects from Jewish veteran vets.  A wall is filled with medals and information about those honored for their heroism including several who received the Congressional Medal of Honor.

This ark was made by a Chinese soldier who saved the life of Chaplain Morris Gordon.  Gordon  used it in Burma during WWII.

This camouflage yarmelka was used for High Holiday services in Da Nang.

The Chapel is small but has beautiful stained glass windows.

This portable ark and altar fit in a medical department foot locker that belonged to Chaplain Martin Weitz who used it in the South Pacific during WWII.  The back is covered by a silk parachute from a Japanese pilot.  The Ten Commandments are from an aluminum remnant from a Japanese Zero.  Japanese and American 105 mm shells are used to make the candlesticks. 

Birthday Days

Hard to believe that Bennett is six.  He and Zadie began the party preparations by filling the pinata.

Bennett decided it would be a costume-welcome party and went as his alter ego, Spiderman.

Friends and family came to the park to play

learn to make special pictures,

to wish happy birthday

enjoy luscious cake, beat the pinata.

and collect candy

On Tuesday, Bennett celebrated his actual birthday.  He certainly got a lot of wonderful gifts.
Some for pure play,

some for intellectual challenge

some to wear

and this one to improve his ball skills.