Getty Center Museum

Sat - Dec. 18th

Today we went to the Getty Museum for contemporary art. It rained all day and the fog was so thick, we couldn't even see the gardens or courtyards. But the inside was incredible and huge. We were there for almost seven hours.

I thought these two different artist's interpretations of David after he slew Goliath were interesting. I would have never pictured him like this one.

There were tapestries, porcelains, sculptures, photos, books, furniture, etc.

These people were living a totally opposite life style from what we are.

This describes the clock in the above photo. There were lots of wall clocks for the bedroom, that didn't chime at night, but had cords you could pull in the night to make it chime if you wanted to know what time it was.

This Turkish bed would have been placed against the wall with a canopy, that is now missing. The body of the bed pulled out on wheels, leaving the back attached to the wall, allowing the bed to be more easily made up by the servants.

Here's another pretty cool bed. I'll bet when the drapes are closed around it, it seems just like the little cubby hole we sleep in.

"La Promenade" 1870

by Pierre-Auguste Renoir

"Irises" 1889 painted by Vincent Van Gogh in the garden of an asylum while he was recuperating from a severe attack of mental illness.

"The Holy Family" about 1820

The Virgin Mary and her mother, Anne, holding the Christ Child while her father and husband quietly observe.

My Mom arrives tomorrow, Hilary's family on Wednesday, John's sister on Thursday and Dawn on Friday, so we are getting pretty excited. I hope it quits raining by the time they all get here.

Tarra

Christmas Boat Parade at Newport Beach

Thur - Dec. 16th

Watching these little guys at Newport Beach was fun. Everytime the tide goes out they follow it out. Then they run back in ahead of it everytime it comes back in. John figured they must be burning more calories than they could possibly be taking in.






Aah, young love! Nobody drew hearts on the beach for me.




















A few views along the Balboa Pennisula.



















I thought this tree was cool, the way it was trained to grow along the house.








I thought these were also neat.










Bird of Paradise.










Flowers along the beach boardwalk at dusk.


















Wrapped in a blankie on Balboa Pennisula, looking toward Balboa Island, watching the Christmas Boat Parade at Newport Beach.

The lamp from my favorite Christmas movie, "Christmas Story". Gotta love it.

As we sat on a park bench at the jetty enjoying the parade, a local couple joined us. We had a nice visit and told them how much we were enjoying California. The parade was over, we had said our goodbyes and were starting to leave when the guy says, "Try not to foul up the state before you leave". What an odd thing to say.

Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night!

Tarra

Farmer's Market & The Grove

Wed - Dec. 15th

We headed into L.A. to CBS Studios. We parked at the Farmer's Market which is just a block south of CBS just for the parking. It turned out to be a fun place to explore and have lunch. Not only were they selling fruits and veggies, but also fresh meats and seafood of all kinds, baked goods, candies, all kinds of nuts and dried fruits, granola, fancy caramel apples, every kind of popcorn and fudge, trinkets and clothes, and anything else you could think of. There was a maize of outdoor restaurants including Italian, Mexican, New Orleans Cajun, Korean, Japanese, Vietnamese, Ethiopian, American and more.



As we walked further in, we discovered "The Grove", which is a fabulous, somewhat up-scale shopping mall. This trolley did a little two block loop from the entrance to Santa's house where the kiddies and pets were lined up to have their Christmas pictures taken with Santa.


You can see Santa and his reindeer flying in the air in the background. We went into Barnes and Nobles which was three stories and the third story extended over to the third floor of the store next to it.

As we walked past Santa's house we came to the movie theater where we saw Mario Lopez. They were filming there all week for his TV show "Extra". Not far from there we spotted a young man, who we were quite sure plays Zack on "Bones".

After cruising around the mall for a while, we decided to go for a stroll in the park across the street just to kill time until our show at CBS got started. As we were walking, we came upon this Jewish Memorial at the Martz Family Building.

Each panel gave a history of what took place each year from 1933 thru 1945. We were amazed by everything we stumbled across today just because of the parking lot we chose.

At 2:00 pm we headed for CBS where we stood in line for about an hour to see "The Late, Late Show" with Craig Ferguson. While in line, we visited with a young woman who was hoping to get a free t-shirt at the show. She said, "But you know they always give it to the gay guy." Soooo... you guessed it. They gave it to John. Hmmm. I'm not sure what to think about that. The show was very good. They had a warm-up comic to get us all warmed up and in the mood to laugh. There were 105 seats in the audience and he wanted to make sure we sounded like 106.

Tarra

P.S.

Someone made a comment on my Getty Villa blog about Getty's Nazi activities and associations. It's quite interesting, in case anyone is interested in going back to read it.

U.S. Historical Summary

The Christmas exhibit at the Reagan Library included a Christmas Tree and historical highlights for each decade of our nation. I have posted the histories here for those who might like to refresh their memories of the events that got us where we are today.

Wishing you all a very Happy Next Decade!

Tarra