Women in Law

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Women’s Museum of California
Liberty Station
San Diego
October 14, 2018

We visited the exhibition on Women in Law at the Women’s Museum of California in Liberty Station, and we learned a great deal we had not known before about the history of women in the legal profession in the United States.

We read about 19th century pioneers like Arabella Mansfield in Iowa (admitted to the bar after Iowa amended the state constitution in 1869 to drop its male gender restriction) and Clara Foltz in California (admitted in 1878). Not only did women face legal barriers to earning their law licenses, even after admitted to the bar they struggled to build practices. The 19th century attitude toward women in the legal profession was exemplified by this quote by Chief Justice C. J. Ryan of the Wisconsin Supreme Court displayed near the entrance:

Nature has tempered women as little for the judicial conflicts of the courtroom as for the physical conflicts of the battlefield. Our profession has essentially to do with all that is selfish and extortionate, knavish and criminal, coarse and brutal, repulsive and obscene in human life. It would be revolting to all female sense of innocence and the sanctity of their sex.

(Ryan made this statement in opposition to admitting Lavinia Goodell to the bar in 1895.)

Closer to our own time, we read that:

  • Only in the 1970’s did the percentage of women in law schools and legal practice exceed the single digits;
  • 80% of women practicing law in 1988 entered the profession after 1980; and
  • An ABA survey conducted in 1983 revealed that 65% of male attorneys had no female colleagues.

That is the context in which Meredith entered the legal profession. She started law school at the University of San Diego in 1983 and was admitted to the California bar in 1987. When she worked as a law clerk at the San Diego office of a major national law firm in 1985, all of the attorneys in that office – more than 65 total – were men.

The museum was running a video on a loop, with short segments featuring women in the legal profession, both current attorneys and retired. Meredith was particularly interested in the video excerpt and papers on display regarding Madge Bradley, the first female judge on the bench in San Diego County. Bradley was appointed to the bench in 1953. Years ago Meredith heard then-retired Judge Bradley give a riveting talk at a luncheon sponsored by Lawyers Club, the local feminist bar association. Judge Bradley reminisced about what law practice was like in the 1940’s and 50’s, when all the lawyers in the county knew one another and there were only about half a dozen women practicing law. During World War II, she remembered, people were supposed to ask themselves before driving anywhere, “Is this trip necessary?” Bradley handled divorces at a time when, as she put it, “you needed grounds for divorce,” and said that mental cruelty was her preferred ground because “mental cruelty, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder.” A portrait of Madge Bradley was hanging as part of the exhibition.

The Women in Law exhibition will close very soon, on October 28.

We also looked through the museum’s permanent exhibit, on the women’s suffrage movement. We have seen it on prior visits to the museum, but this time noticed new artifacts on display.

General admission to the Women’s Museum is $5; students and seniors over 55 are $3; military and children under 12 are free. The museum is open Wednesday through Sunday, 12 noon to 4:00 p.m. Parking is free, and the museum is wheelchair accessible.

We had headed to the museum after church and stopped to enjoy a brunch at the Fig Tree Café before heading over to the museum. The food and service were excellent. Several other Boston fans greeted us, as we walked around Liberty Station in our Red Sox ballcaps. Go Sox!

Cuyamaca Gold

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Cuyamaca Rancho State Park
Stonewall Peak and Mine Museum
Between Descanso and Julian
October 7, 2018

We went hiking with some of Meredith’s rowing teammates in the Cuyamaca mountains. The group met and parked at the Paso Pichaco campground, then climbed up the west side of Stonewall Peak. We walked down the east side of the mountain and around a loop, coming back on the Cold Stream Trail, which runs parallel to State Route 79. The hike took us about 3 hours. The views from the heights were spectacular, and our geologist friend Beth explained the rock formations we saw.

After the hike a few of the younger hikers headed off to Nickel Beer Company in Julian to rehydrate themselves. The more studious of us, including the geologist, drove a short distance north to the site of the former Stonewall gold mine. The entrance to the mineshaft is visible, along with some rusting machinery, all behind a chain link fence. We visited the small museum, which displays historical photos and explains the history of the mine. It was one of several gold mines in the Julian area. It first opened in the 1870’s and operated, off and on, until the early 20th century. In 1926, just before a planned inspection of the timbers, the main shaft collapsed. Fortunately for the would-be inspectors, they had stopped to eat supper before entering the mine. More information about the history of the mine can be seen here.

Our two groups reconvened at Granny’s Kitchen in Julian for a late lunch. The food was great; this is definitely a place to remember for our next trip to Julian.

Both the hiking trails and the mine museum are within the Cuyamaca Rancho State Park, and visitors must display a pass to park in the lots at the campground and at the museum. Day passes cost $10 per vehicle. Free road parking may (or may not) be available, for those willing to hike in from route 79.

Hurray for Hollywood

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Hollywood Museum
Hollywood
September 2, 2018

We drove up to Hollywood and met up with Meredith‘s sister to tour the Hollywood Museum. We have been there twice before, both times with Margaret, but had not visited in several years.

The building itself is a wonderful thing to explore. The museum is located in the old Max Factor building in the heart of Hollywood, on Highland Avenue at Hollywood Boulevard. The ground floor still sports the beautiful marble lobby with the four parlors in which Max met with his celebrity clients. Each is painted a different color. There are separate rooms for blondes, redheads, brunettes, and “brownettes” (Factor’s term for actresses with light brown hair). The wall color in each room is designed to go with the skin tone which best matched the client’s hair. Since many actresses dyed their hair, Factor would adjust the make up for each, to get the right color to have the complexion match her hair.

The back portion of the building was where the Max Factor cosmetics were manufactured and packaged. Nowadays it is used as museum exhibit space.

The entire museum, which covers four floors, is jam packed with artifacts. There are many costumes from movies and television series, numerous props of various kinds, and many photos. The museum collection spans a century of movie and television production. There are several thematic areas, but the museum as a whole is not overly organized. Display cases are crammed full of things, and the visitor is constantly stumbling across artifacts from an old favorite movie or show.

We went this weekend to see the Batman 66 special exhibition, a collection of costumes and props from the old Batman television show of the 1960’s starring Adam West and Burt Ward. It was fun seeing the old villain costumes and a replica of the Batmobile. We learned that it was built on the frame of a Lincoln Futura concept car, complete with the bubble windshield. Several video screens were running clips from the old show. We were particularly struck by a sequence that had Batman and the Joker surfing side-by-side, apparently in some sort of competition, with board shorts worn over their regular costumes. Several display cases featured related collectible memorabilia from the time: action figures, trading cards, board games, buttons, and a variety of toys.

The old Batman TV show debuted when we were in kindergarten, and it was a sensation. Meredith remembers a “Bat Party” her mother hosted for her and her classmates, to which most of the children wore capes. Party games were Batman themed and prizes and favors were Batman items, like a 45 record with the Batman theme song.

After the museum visit we had lunch next-door at Mel’s Diner. Then Kathleen left, and the two of us walked over to Grauman’s Chinese Theater, to look at the celebrity footprints and handprints in the cement.

Adult admission to the Hollywood Museum is $15, and visitors should plan to pay cash in addition to park nearby in Hollywood. There is a small lot next to the museum and other parking nearby on the weekend at Hollywood High School.

The Nile Comes to LA

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Getty Center
Sepulveda Pass, Los Angeles
August 5, 2018

We headed north, and met up with Meredith’s sister Kathleen at the Getty Center in Los Angeles. We went to see the special exhibition Beyond the Nile: Egypt in the Classical World. The exhibition runs through September 9, and we wanted to be sure not to miss it.

Various pieces of fine and decorative arts are displayed in the special exhibition pavilion. They span nearly two millennia, and the galleries are arranged in chronological order. The theme is cultural exchange in the Mediterranean world, that is how Egypt and the other civilizations around the Mediterranean traded with one another and how their interactions influenced their respective art. The first room displays the oldest pieces, including objects traded between the Egyptians and the Mycenaeans and other items from the Bronze Age. Among the early pieces is a wooden model of a river boat; this piece had been placed in a tomb. Meredith liked seeing a boat full of rowers, although she thought one rower on the port side was leaning back too far relative to the rest of his crew.

The next room shows Egyptian and classical Greek pieces. The gallery which follows features works from the Ptolemaic period. The last several rooms contain Egyptian and Roman pieces, including some from Pompeii and others from Hadrian‘s villa.

The three of us took a docent led tour, which lasted about an hour and was quite informative. After lunch in the museum café, we went back through the Egypt exhibit on our own. We were all interested by two separate ancient papyri with medicinal recipes and magic healing spells. Although the documents are thousands of years old, large parts remain intact and the writing is clearly visible. We saw numerous statues, busts, and other sculpture. One we particularly liked was a basalt sarcophagus made around 600 BC, on loan from the Rijksmuseum. The person entombed in it was a Greek who attained high office in the Egyptian government, so someone who exemplifies the multicultural theme.

We saw several other things at the center. We caught the end of Pathways to Paradise: Medieval India and Europe. There were some truly splendid illuminated religious manuscripts on display. Although that particular exhibit closed after the weekend of our visit, the Getty has an extensive collection of illuminated manuscripts and often rotates them through special exhibitions like this one. There are some ancient Roman and Greek sculptures on loan from the Santa Barbara Museum of Art. We found them in the south hall of the South Pavilion. The Santa Barbara museum is undergoing extensive multi-year renovation, and these works are on loan while that work is going on. The Lansdowne Hermes was particularly impressive.

Admission to the museum is free, but parking costs $15. A tram runs up the hill from the parking garage. Handicap access is good. The café offers a selection of cuisines, in a food court type arrangement. Food is good, prices are a little high, as is typical with most museum restaurants.

Alaska Museums

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Klondike Gold Rush National Historical Park
Skagway Museum
Sheldon Jackson Museum
June 23 and June 26, 2018
Skagway, Alaska
Sitka, Alaska

The National Park Service has several museum buildings in Skagway, right near the cruise ship landing. We watched a 25 minute video about the Klondike gold rush of 1896-1899 at the visitor center. Skagway and the nearby (now deserted) town of Dyea were jumping off points for “stampeders” who came by ship then went overland on the Chilkoot Trail from Dyea or the longer but less steep White Pass Trail from Skagway. They endured great hardships because they had to traverse the trails many times, hauling food and gear sufficient to last through the winter, a requirement imposed by Canadian Mounties as a condition of entering their country.

The historic district is about twelve blocks long and two blocks wide. The National Park Service maintains several museum buildings: the visitor center, the Mascot Saloon, a junior ranger center, and the Moore Homestead. Skagway boasts many gold rush era wooden buildings, and we enjoyed strolling up and down its main street, stopping to enjoy some spruce tip blonde ale.

We visited the Skagway city museum and learned about local Native American cultures as well as more about the gold rush era.

There was also a sobering display about the wreck of the S.S. Princess Sophia in 1918, which sank with no survivors after it hit the Vanderbilt Reef on the way from Skagway to Seattle. Although the ship remained on the rocks for about 40 hours, and other ships were nearby, the weather was too severe to allow for putting off lifeboats. At least 343 lives were lost. Reading about it made us slightly nervous to be sailing the same waters by ship, but of course navigational equipment has improved, and we enjoyed better weather.

In the town of Sitka we found an excellent museum devoted to native Alaskan peoples, the Sheldon Jackson museum. Meredith’s mother Margaret would have really loved it! There were many fine pieces on display – baskets, tools, clothing, kayaks and canoes, and a number of other items.

The building’s octagonal structure allows for maximum display room, with cases on the exterior walls, a ring of tall cases inside that, and then another ring of chest-high cases with displays on top and drawers that can be pulled out to see additional items. In the very center were several totem poles. Everything was well organized and labeled.

Exploring Alaska

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We joined seven other family members in June for a cruise on the Oceania ship Regatta from Seattle to Alaska and back via Victoria, B.C. The scenery was spectacular!

Bob landed a king salmon in Ketchikan, as did our oldest daughter and our niece.

We kayaked on Mendenhall Lake with two of our daughters, seeing both the Mendenhall Glacier and Nugget Falls.

In Skagway we biked through the forest, including the site of what was once the town of Dyea and the beginning of the Chilkoot Trail.

At Icy Strait Point we took a tram through the forest, then hiked a short nature walk.

The ship sailed on north from Icy Strait Point to the Hubbard Glacier, stopping just a mile short of it. The glacier is six miles wide and approximately 300 feet tall. We saw several “calvings,” that is ice breaking off the face of the glacier, where it meets the sea. The whole experience was breathtaking.

On the way back south, we stopped in Sitka. We and our niece hiked with a guided group through the rain forest.

In Victoria we took it a bit easier and hired a van and driver to give us a guided drive through the city. One of our stops was at the largest one-log free-standing totem pole in the world.

PMCA’s Last Hurrah

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Pasadena Museum of California Art
Pasadena

We learned from an article in the Los Angeles Times that the Pasadena Museum of California Art will be closing.

As the name suggests, this museum features California art. Specifically, its mission is “to present the breadth of California art and design through exhibitions that explore the cultural dynamics and influences that are unique to California.” It is unusual in not having any collection of its own. Rather, it showcases special exhibitions, three at a time. The museum lacks an endowment and has largely been supported by a pair of donors, the founders Bob and Arlene Oltman. It fills its niche well, but its unusual structure has proven to be unsustainable. In June, the board voted to close on October 7 when the current exhibitions finish.

The current exhibitions include: works by painter and graphic designer Grafton Tyler Brown, the first known African American artist to work in California; another featuring feminist artist Judy Chicago; and the third displaying sculptures by contemporary Los Angeles artist Brody Albert.

We visited the museum once, on a get-away weekend in Pasadena a few months before we started this blog. We did not take photos there, but our “PMCA” stickers can be see in this selfie taken outside the Gamble House.

While there we saw an exhibition featuring paintings by Alfredo Ramos Martínez produced in the 1930’s and 40’s, another displaying several dozen silk screened political posters from the 1970’s on, and the third compromised of studies done by Flora Kao of cabins in the Mojave Desert.

We enjoyed our visit and are sad to see PMCA close.

Pacific Standard Memories

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San Diego Museum of Art and Mingei International Museum
Balboa Park
January-February 2018
LACMA
Hancock Park
March 18, 2018

Over the winter we attended several exhibitions, now gone by, in the Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA series. Life got away from us, so we did not write them up here at the time. We did enjoy getting in touch with Latin American art spanning many centuries and revisiting some museums we had not been to in a while.

The first Pacific Standard Time series celebrated mid-twentieth century Southern California arts; it ran from October 2011 to April 2012. We took Meredith’s mother Margaret to six or more exhibitions in that first series. It was fun discovering small venues and offbeat subjects. Margaret was very taken by a vintage Studebaker Avanti on display at LACMA (the Los Angeles County Museum of Art) and joked about driving off in it while the guard was looking the other way. The thought of Margaret leaping out of her wheelchair and hotwiring a collector car still brings a smile. That first series of Pacific Standard Time visits took place before we started our blog.

The newer LA/LA series explored artistic connections between Latin America and Southern California (mainly Los Angeles) and ran from September 2017 to early 2018. Both PST series were organized by the Getty Museum, which brought together dozens of So Cal museums, each with their own special focus exhibit.

Earlier this year, we saw: (1) Modern Masters from Latin America: The Pérez Simón Collection at the San Diego Museum of Art; (2) Art of the Americas: Mesoamerican, Pre-Columbian Art from Mingei’s Permanent Collection at the Mingei Museum; and (3) Painted in Mexico, 1700–1790: Pinxit Mexici at LACMA.

In January, we saw the Pérez Simón Collection show at the San Diego Museum of Art in Balboa Park. It brought together art (mostly paintings) from eight different Latin American countries, spanning a little over a century, from the late 1800’s to now. We particularly liked the landscape scenes and portrayals of people in their daily lives. The abstract pieces interested us less. After we finished seeing the Perez Simon collection, we stopped in to see a visiting Monet painting, which was on loan from the Denver art museum and has since been returned.

The next month we headed to the Mingei Museum, also in Balboa Park. We had not been there in years, and it was fun to get reacquainted. The term “mingei” means “everyone’s art,” and this museum features objects from around the world made for everyday use. Although some are very beautiful, none were made purely to be decorative. Their Pacific Standard Time exhibition displayed an extensive collection of objects, particularly ceramics, from a variety of pre-Columbian cultures in Mexico, Central America, and South America. We particularly liked seeing the Mayan textile fragments – so fragile they were shown under dim lighting.

While in the Mingei we also strolled through a display of Native American weaving from the American Southwest. There were some strikingly handsome pieces on display, and the curator’s explanatory signs were very thorough. Two thumbs up on the Mingei visit; we will definitely come back.

Early this year we purchased a Balboa Park Explorer one year family pass, and we used the pass for both the SDMA and Mingei visit.

In March, we met up with Meredith’s sister Kathleen to see Painted in Mexico, 1700-1790: Pinxit Mexici at LACMA. This was an exhibition of Mexican painting during the 18th century. Over 120 works were on display, many of which had never been shown publicly before, and some were specially restored for this exhibition. Religious paintings predominated, but there were secular themed paintings as well. The works displayed were high quality, sophisticated pieces; this New World art can definitely take its place alongside the best of the Old World. We saw the exhibition on its final weekend in Los Angeles; it went on the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, where it will be on display through July 22.

We looked through several other LACMA areas. Outside we were amused by a sculpture that looks like a balloon animal. A little hard to take seriously, but hey, we took a picture, didn’t we?

Walkabout Australia

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San Diego Zoo Safari Park
Escondido
May 26, 2018

We headed to the Safari Park (formerly known as the Wild Animal Park) early Saturday morning, for the opening weekend of the new exhibit, Walkabout Australia. A lot of care has gone into the layout and decoration of the exhibit. Part of it, particularly the building with a snack bar and gift shop, is designed to look like a sheep station in the Australian outback. We were amused by the fake sheep statues in one grassy area near that building.

We enjoyed strolling through the exhibit, particularly the Marsupial Walk. Visitors can stroll along the pathway through a grassy area where kangaroos and wallabies hop around, sometimes crossing the path.

We learned some of the differences between kangaroos and wallabies, which look much alike. Kangaroos are bigger for one thing. Both are called “macropods,” because of their big feet. One detail at the park makes it easy to spot the difference; a docent told us that their kangaroos have tags in their ears while the wallabies do not. Several native Australian birds live in the same Marsupial Walk area, magpie geese and radjah shelducks. Visitors can also look into the Marsupial Walk area without entering it. Entry is through double doors, like the aviary entries. During busy times the number of visitors allowed in with the kangaroos and wallabies may be limited, but we had no wait to get in.

After we left that area we stopped to listen to a zoo educator who told a group of us about the kookaburra she had perched on her hand. We learned those birds are a type of kingfisher, and she coaxed the bird into making the distinctive “laughing kookaburra” call.

In an adjacent area we saw a tree kangaroo, native to New Guinea. They are seriously endangered, and the zoo participates in a captive breeding program to try to maintain the species. Near him was another enclosure where we saw a cassowary, a very large ostrich-like bird with a blue head.

The Union Tribune ran a thorough article about the new exhibit on the Thursday before our visit; it was a good preview for us.

After we left the Walkabout Australia area, we wandered through the World Gardens, an extensive set of trails with a variety of plants, all of them adapted to dry climates and including many succulents. We went on from there to Condor Ridge, where we were fortunate to see the condors flying short distances within their enclosure.

From there we walked the Tiger Trail area. The day of our visit was the 20th birthday of the senior female, Delta, and her keepers had given her a birthday “cake.” The cake consisted of a block of ice with a large meaty bone embedded in it. In a separate enclosure we saw two young male tigers. We had apparently just missed some play tussle between them. When we came along they were just lazing under a tree.

We walked around a bit and saw some other enclosures, then decided to go. The nice thing about being members of the San Diego Zoo is that we can enjoy part of the zoo in Balboa Park or the Safari Park in North County without feeling obliged to see the whole place in a single visit. The Safari Park offers a great deal more to see than what we saw on this visit. On past visits we have enjoyed taking the monorail out to see the African Plains and Asian Savannah areas. It is a rare sight, to observe the herds of animals roaming freely across a big area.

Just before leaving, we stopped at the education area near the main entrance and listened to another park educator show and talk about first a pancake tortoise, and then a ball python.

Earth Day in the Park

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Museum of Man
Timken Museum
Balboa Park, San Diego
April 22, 2018

We used our Explorer passes and visited Balboa Park. As part of the Explorer program we receive a monthly email bulletin telling us what is new in the park. We had picked out three things to see, but in the end saw just two of them.

We parked in Hillcrest and walked across the Laurel Street bridge, stopping in at the Museum of Man. We went there to see its new Post Secret exhibit. Post Secret is an ongoing project, created by artist Frank Warren. On his website new cards are posted weekly.

The museum website describes the exhibit, which displays a selection of cards submitted over the years:

Would you share your secrets with a stranger? Secrets are the currency of intimacy. They reflect our darkest thoughts, brightest hopes, and every emotion in between. They’re deeply personal, but extremely relatable. They allow us to feel alone, together. For over a decade, millions of people from all over the world have been anonymously sharing their secrets with Frank Warren, founder of the community art project, PostSecret. Each postcard submission is a unique work of art handmade by people who needed to share and release their secret into the world.

These submissions range from the trivial to the profound, sometimes funny and other times very sad. Some writers struggle with suicidal thoughts, and Warren worked for a time as a volunteer on a crisis hotline. The exhibit and his website both give links to suicide prevention resources.

It was Earth Day, so the park was hosting the annual fair. We saw many booths set up along the way we walked, from the Museum of Man to the Plaza de Panama. (And we understand there were other booths, scattered throughout the park.) There were many food tents set up on the plaza.

We tried to get in to the Museum of Art to see a new exhibition, but that museum was closed. We thought that was a little curious, thinking that Earth Day would been a good outreach opportunity for the museum. Stymied in that attempt and needing to kill some time before the Timken Museum opened at noon, we bought some pierogis and beignets from the food tents and sat by the koi pond to eat an early lunch.

The Timken Museum – possibly our favorite museum in the entire Southland – was hosting an exhibit entitled The Romantic Impulse in the American Landscape Tradition in its special exhibit space. (This exhibition runs through June 3, 2018.) There were about a dozen works, mostly oil paintings. They included Thomas Moran’s Opus 24, Rome from the Campagna and Albert Bierstadt’s Weser River, Minden Germany. We particularly like Bierstadt’s use of light in his painting. Nearby we saw William Keith’s painting In the Santa Cruz Mountains, a beautiful depiction of a waterfall. Most of the works displayed were from the 19th century, but there were several more recent works. We enjoyed the background music, a half hour loop “soundscape” of Romantic music, including Respighi’s Pines of Rome. Admission to the Timken is always free, and they have a very good permanent collection. Do be sure to drop a contribution into the box at the entrance, though.

After we were done we dropped by our favorite Hillcrest watering hole, the Brew Project, and enjoyed some tasty beers.