Tag: balboa park

Natural History Museum’s 150 years Block Party!

The San Diego Natural History Museum celebrated its 150 year anniversary today with a big “block party” in Balboa Park!

Shortly after 9:30, presentations were made on the museum steps by San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria, California’s Senate President pro Tempore Toni G. Atkins, and Judy Gradwohl, President and CEO of the San Diego Natural History Museum. Not to mention a friendly dinosaur! Then everyone watching enjoyed free morning admission to the museum!

Those who ventured into the San Diego Natural History Museum could experience fascinating exhibits and enjoy live entertainment. By heading down into the building’s basement, visitors could see the museum’s amazing new Paleo Center. I did just that, and posted photos of it here!

The big outdoor block party attracted visitors to numerous canopies situated on either side of the museum, which sheltered environmental and educational organizations from throughout San Diego County.

Scientists from the Fleet Science Center were happy to be asked anything! I asked two daunting questions. What is existence? What is consciousness?

The San Diego Air and Space Museum showed kids how to make straw gliders and paper helicopters!

The Coronado Public Library was showing how to made a newspaper pot for plants!

A smile from the Earth Discovery Institute! They are helping with natural habitat restoration and conservation.

A kid uses a stamp to print an image using red ink from ground up cochineal, at the Balboa Art Conservation Center table!

I correctly answered Balboa Park Facts for 500 at the Forever Balboa Park table and won a cool pin!

Inside the San Diego Natural History Museum during their 150 year celebration block party!

Great live music inside the museum.

Back outside, on the north side of the museum, on the lawn near the Moreton Bay Fig and the Natural History Museum’s new nature trail.

The Friends of Famosa Slough in Point Loma were showing award-winning photographs. I need to return to the slough for another bird watching walk.

All sorts of great information was available concerning Mission Trails Regional Park.

Cans4Books recycles cans and bottles and uses the proceeds to provide books for kids!

Reef the Whale is a fun sculpture on a trailer used by Cans4Books to collect recyclables!

A wood plaque shows that Reef the Whale was born in Point Loma this summer!

So many organizations were present for The NAT’s big block party.

Amazing sculpture of a California Red-legged Frog made of unrecyclable plastic collected at the museum. A cool creation of local nonprofit Endangered Concepts.

San Diego Botanic Garden had lots of plants to check out.

A big, wonderful smile!

I learned construction of the San Diego River Park Foundation’s new nature center in Mission Valley is making good progress!

Thank you for helping to maintain our beautiful San Diego River!

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I post new blogs pretty often. If you like discovering new things, bookmark coolsandiegosights.com and swing on by occasionally!

I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or X.

Paleo Center opens at Natural History Museum!

The new Paleo Center had its soft opening today at the San Diego Natural History Museum!

The Tom Deméré Paleontology Center has opened in the museum’s basement, where visitors can view a huge number of fossils behind glass windows and scientists at work in their processing lab! The new Paleo Center is a state-of-the-art facility that provides adequate room for the museum’s extensive fossil collection and frees up space in the museum for other collections and exhibits.

Visitors this morning could enter The NAT for free as the museum celebrated its 150 year anniversary with a “block party” in Balboa Park. (I’ll be posting a blog about the big event shortly!)

I walked down stairs to the Natural History Museum’s basement not knowing what to expect, and look what I discovered!

In addition to the processing lab and fossil storage space, museum volunteers and scientists had assembled several puzzles and displays for both young and old.

The Paleo Center is still being worked on and is scheduled to fully open in Spring 2025. Visitors were asked for suggestions for the center’s name. I suggested The Paleo Vault!

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Thanks for visiting Cool San Diego Sights!

I post new blogs pretty often. If you like discovering new things, bookmark coolsandiegosights.com and swing on by occasionally!

I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or X.

San Diego walkers help those living with dementia.

Hundreds of smiling people participated in the Walk4ALZ 2024 walk this morning in Balboa Park. The annual event is a fundraiser for Alzheimer’s San Diego, a local nonprofit organization that helps many of the approximately 100,000 San Diegans living with dementia. Every dollar that was raised will stay in San Diego County.

I took these photographs as I walked near the group. I saw teams holding signs, many families in support of loved ones who have Alzheimer’s, folks along the route cheering on the walkers, and some fun costumes, too!

If you’d like to learn more about Alzheimer’s San Diego and perhaps support their efforts, or if you know someone with dementia and would like assistance, check out their website by clicking here.

To learn about Alzheimer’s disease, check out their informational web page.

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Thanks for visiting Cool San Diego Sights!

I post new blogs pretty often. If you like discovering new things, bookmark coolsandiegosights.com and swing on by occasionally!

I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or X.

Advocates work for accessibility in Tijuana.

An important presentation was made this evening in San Diego’s Balboa Park. A thoughtful audience, assembled inside the World Design Capital’s Exchange Pavilion, learned how the organization Tijuana Access is working to make Tijuana and Mexico more accessible for the disabled.

Eduardo Lopez Ruiz explained how Tijuana Access is raising awareness and lobbying for greater accessibility south of the border. He explained that our neighbors to the south are a bit behind the United States when it comes to making buildings, streets and city facilities more friendly for those who have difficulty functioning in a world full of potential obstacles.

Working to make our world more accessible, Eduardo affirmed, is a matter of compassion. Not only are a significant number of people born with or develop a disability, but most of us become elderly–right?

There are all sorts of ways to make a city more accessible. Automatic doors, ramps, lifts, slip resistant materials and tactile paving can be adapted to enhance mobility. Handrails, rest furniture, properly placed buttons and switches, Braille printing and other changes can make life much easier and safer for many.

The presentation was mostly in Spanish with an interpreter helping us English speakers. I asked how I could link to Tijuana Access with my blog, because readers might like to help in some way. The Tijuana Access Instagram page is here. Their Facebook page is here.

To my readers in Mexico, perhaps this is a cause you’d like to support. Or simply spread the word to help to raise awareness!

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Thanks for visiting Cool San Diego Sights!

I post new blogs pretty often. If you like discovering new things, bookmark coolsandiegosights.com and swing on by occasionally!

I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or X.

Bonita Museum’s Border Blasters in Balboa Park!

On Saturday, the Bonita Museum and Cultural Center brought part of their Border Blasters exhibition to the World Design Capital’s temporary Exchange Pavilion in Balboa Park!

Border Blasters is an exhibition by artists from Mexico and the United States that explores the impact of Tijuana and San Diego radio, television and music in the region. As experienced by those who live on either side of the border, the diverse media coming via the airwaves is seen and heard by many eyes and ears.

The art of Border Blasters celebrates this unique, shared culture.

As I walked through Balboa Park yesterday, the first thing that attracted me to the Exchange Pavilion (the orange structure that stands at the center of the Plaza de Panama) was a gigantic skull! The skull has a name: Francisco!

The colorful sculpture, made of paper mache and other materials, was created by artist Maricruz Alvarado. That’s her above, standing by Francisco!

Francisco is hollow and very light. He can be wheeled around! I stepped inside the big skull and this is what I saw. Images of the band La Cruz!

Next, I noticed what appeared to be rows of seashells arranged inside the Exchange Pavilion. They were created by Endangered Concepts. I learned they are actually composed of compressed unrecyclable plastic!

One of the sculptures I was shown was made to appear like a Pacific Triton Conch. Blowing through it produced a trumpeting sound!

Next, I spied a strange musical invention. It’s called QUADRA. The conceptual art piece is by multi-disciplinary artist and San Diego native Jason Soares. You turn the square dials and different electronic sounds are generated!

Jason was still setting everything up when I took these photos.

As one sign explained, QUADRAs FRONTERAs configures the QUADRA for the first phase of a multi-location quadraphonic autonomous zone that seeks to connect multiple geographic locations together. All I know is the generated sound coming from the speakers was very cool!

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Thanks for visiting Cool San Diego Sights!

I post new blogs pretty often. If you like discovering new things, bookmark coolsandiegosights.com and swing on by occasionally!

I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or X.

A patriotic Massing of the Colors in San Diego.

The 68th Annual Massing of the Colors and Service of Remembrance was held today in San Diego’s Balboa Park. About 40 color guards from around San Diego converged on the Spreckels Organ Pavilion for the patriotic spectacle.

The Massing of the Colors is presented each year by the San Diego Chapter of the Military Order of the World Wars, a patriotic organization that was founded in 1926. Their motto is: It Is Nobler To Serve Than To Be Served.

MOWW promotes Youth Leadership, recognizes Law Enforcement and Fire & Rescue, and promotes love of Country and Flag.

As speaker Lt. Col. David J. Worley explained, at bottom it’s all about upholding the United States Constitution, which was designed to provide Liberty for all Americans. (Of course, this includes Freedom of Speech. As a writer, that’s very important to me.)

The Parade of Colors was followed by an Invocation by Kathleen Winchester, honoring those who’ve sacrificed for our country. Next came the Pledge of Allegiance, and the singing of the National Anthem and God Bless America, led by opera singer Laura Bueno.

Laksita Nandakumar in the Air Force Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps at Mira Mesa High School then read My Name is Old Glory. You can read it, too, here.

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Thanks for visiting Cool San Diego Sights!

I post new blogs pretty often. If you like discovering new things, bookmark coolsandiegosights.com and swing on by occasionally!

I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or X.

Pumpkins launch from San Diego Air and Space Museum!

Lots of pumpkins were chucked off the roof of the San Diego Air and Space Museum today, to the delight of watching children! The event was part of the museum’s annual Halloween-themed Pumpkin Chunkin’ celebration!

Some pumpkins were frozen, some not. Some pumpkins were hollow, some not. Some had parachutes attached, some not. As they were dropped in pairs, curious onlookers could view and compare the results of each toss!

The pumpkin launching was just one family-friendly activity hosted at the San Diego Air and Space Museum. I photographed several of the outdoor drops during my walk through Balboa Park!

Inside the museum, kids (many wearing costumes) could construct a catapult and parachute to launch and safely land candy pumpkins, use 3D pens to make creepy sculptures, and drive robot ghouls!

Did you know October is Kid’s Free Month at the San Diego Air and Space Museum? It is!

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Thanks for visiting Cool San Diego Sights!

I post new blogs pretty often. If you like discovering new things, bookmark coolsandiegosights.com and swing on by occasionally!

I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or X.

Another Saturday Sing-Along in Balboa Park!

Look who I spotted today in Balboa Park! The “Saturday in the Park Sing-Along” meet up group was having fun singing classic rock in front of the Starlight Bowl!

I saw this group early last year. It appears they are Feelin’ Stronger Every Day! (Get it? Another Chicago rock band reference–like Saturday in the Park!)

The sing-alongs are led by Bill Protzmann. I wrote more about him and his inspired efforts here.

If you’d like to participate on a future Saturday, check out the Saturday in the Park Sing-Along Meetup Group web page here for details!

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Thanks for visiting Cool San Diego Sights!

I post new blogs pretty often. If you like discovering new things, bookmark coolsandiegosights.com and swing on by occasionally!

I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or X.

Wolves ov Odin reenact lives of Danish Vikings!

A lawn program at Balboa Park’s International Cottages today celebrated Norse history and culture. The House of Norway provided food and entertainment, and a visit from Viking explorer Leif Erikson (an actor)!

What I found most interesting, however, was a living history “encampment” on the International Cottages lawn. Costumed members of Wolves ov Odin were showing what Norse life was like in the 8th century!

Perhaps you’ve seen Wolves ov Odin at the annual Viking Festival in Vista, California. They are a group that portrays Danish Vikings that lived in the Jorvik region of present day York, UK.

As you can see, curious people converged on several tables to see and touch history.

Read the photo captions for a bit of what I learned…

Viking chain mail armor on display. I lifted one end and it was heavy! Those steel helmets in the background were heavy, too! Better a sore neck than a hole in the head!

Creating chain mail by interlocking iron rings was a long process undertaken by Viking smiths. Iron was rare and chain mail shirts were relatively rare.

A beautifully engraved but deadly Viking axe. I wish I had learned more about it.

A simple sundial made of wood, which could double as a compass to aid in Viking ocean navigation. An X marks noon–I took this photo a few minutes before the shadow lined up with it!

Making a replica Viking coin, using a length of modern steel tubing for hammering safety.

I got my own, freshly minted pewter Viking Raven Penny of Anlaf Guthfrithson!

Demonstrating a replica Oseberg Sprang Weaving Loom, a loom from the Oseberg ship, a well-preserved Viking ship discovered in 1904 in Norway.

Combing and spinning wool with a hand spindle preceded tablet weaving and making Viking clothing and ship sails!

The spindles were very simple.

It never occurred to me that Viking sails were made by weaving!

Beads were a sign of wealth among Vikings.

A smile and sample of Viking life.

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Thanks for visiting Cool San Diego Sights!

I post new blogs pretty often. If you like discovering new things, bookmark coolsandiegosights.com and swing on by occasionally!

I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or X.

Viking explorer Leif Erikson visits San Diego!

About a thousand years ago, Viking explorer Leif Erikson was the first European to set foot on continental America. He established a Norse settlement in a place he called Vinland. Today he arrived in San Diego, California!

Leif greeted an enthusiastic crowd in Balboa Park. He extended a greeting and read an ancient Norse poem. Then he adjusted his beard, pocketed his phone and smiled for photographs!

Yes, this particular Leif Erikson was an impersonation. Jordan Jacobo, a personality on KPBS, did the honors!

As you might have guessed, the House of Norway hosted their cultural lawn program today in Balboa Park. In addition to meeting Leif, families could gobble authentic Norwegian waffles and Polse i lompe (hot dog in a lompe–I had mine with shrimp, sour cream, mayo, dill and lemon juice) and wash it down with Saft (blueberry juice).

Kids were running wild, enjoying axe throwing, fish toss and other lively competitions. They posed with a Viking longship and could have their names written in runes. At several tables adults could learn about Norse crafts, including rosemaling (decorative folk painting), smøyg (pattern darning), wood carving, Hardanger embroidery and knitting. There was accordion music, too!

A living history encampment showed how life might have been in Norway during the age of the Vikings. I will be blogging about that coming up!

Enjoy some photographs!

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Thanks for visiting Cool San Diego Sights!

I post new blogs pretty often. If you like discovering new things, bookmark coolsandiegosights.com and swing on by occasionally!

I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or X.