Today the House of Norway celebrated their country’s Constitution Day a bit early with a lawn program in Balboa Park!
Norway’s proud history, democratic ideals and culture were showcased at the center of the House of Pacific Relations International Cottages.
There was food (including waffles!), and folk song, and friendly folk in traditional costume, and speeches made by local dignitaries. And beautiful Norwegian crafts, like Hardanger embroidery, wood carving, and knitting. And Norwegian Elkhounds were on hand, too!
I checked out the festive event a couple of times as I walked about Balboa Park and took these photographs…
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I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or Twitter!
You can easily explore Cool San Diego Sights by using the search box on my blog’s sidebar. Or click a tag! There are thousands upon thousands of photos for you to enjoy!
Would you like to make contributions to science? But you’re not a trained scientist?
You can easily become a citizen scientist!
Opportunities are available for ordinary people who’d like to use their passion or particular talents to help broaden our understanding of the natural world.
I discovered several great ideas while visiting the San Diego Natural History Museum recently. Signs spotted around the exhibition Extraordinary Ideas from Ordinary People: A History of Citizen Science provide details.
Most of the following ideas apply not just to San Diego residents, but to anyone anywhere. Here they are:
Become a member of iNaturalist and post photographs you’ve taken of living things in nature. Scientists will identify what you recorded. Nature lovers around the world can discuss your observations. You’ll contribute to our shared understanding of biodiversity. To learn more click here.
Participate in the Audubon Society’s annual Christmas Bird Count or Great Backyard Bird Count. Critically important data collected during these events is used by scientists to study bird populations across the country. To learn more click here.
Participate in the Celebrate Urban Birds project. Spend ten minutes helping scientists understand how common birds are doing in urban settings. More than a quarter of a million ordinary people have already made observations! To learn more click here. (Balboa Park’s own WorldBeat Center has participated in this project. Read about that here!)
Become a summer camper at the San Diego Natural History Museum in Balboa Park. Over the years, people walking around Balboa Park have observed green anole lizards, which aren’t native to San Diego. It was determined by the museum’s young summer campers that the green anoles were the descendants of escapees. These lizards had once been used as food for other animals at the San Diego Zoo! To learn more about attending summer camp at theNAT, click here. (Scholarships are available!)
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I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or Twitter!
Would you like to support San Diego’s beautiful, amazing crown jewel, PLUS get exclusive Balboa Park insider emails, learn about volunteer opportunities, enjoy picnic meet ups, AND get a free Forever Balboa Park enamel pin?
Then become an official advocate of Balboa Park. It’s free!
Or, if you’d like, you can support Balboa Park financially with a sustaining membership.
Your gift allows Forever Balboa Park to grow our robust volunteer corps, including Garden Stewards, Park Ambassadors, Tree Stewards, Info Desk Volunteers…revitalize, restore and enhance Balboa Park’s historic gardens, landscapes and public spaces towards best in class conditions…enables us to provide a world-class visitor experience through creative placemaking, maps, guides, tours, information, and critical amenities in the House of Hospitality…
Several wonderful pieces of Donal Hord art are now on display at the San Diego History Center in Balboa Park. I noticed them last weekend.
Most prominent is the extraordinary sculpture Summer Rain, Donal Hord’s final commission. Originally sculpted in 1946 from the dense wood lignum vitae, Summer Rain was cast in bronze in 1968 by Homer Dana, his assistant, two years after Hord’s death.
Donal Hord is considered San Diego’s greatest sculptor. He achieved international fame by bringing a variety of materials, including very hard stone, to life. Many of his spiritual, symbol-filled sculptures were inspired from a year he spent in Mexico, where he studied traditional Olmec and Zapotec art. Some of his public sculptures have become iconic landmarks or representations of our city.
Summer Rain stands near the center of the History Center’s fine art exhibition Be Here Now. The work of artists who lived or spent a great deal of time in San Diego fill a large gallery, and visitors are asked to consider what the collected artwork might say about our region.
…Hord’s figure dances on a cloud pushing out the rain, with hair swept up like a thundercloud, and a rattlesnake on top to symbolize lightning…The San Diego History Center collections include examples of Hord’s work in bronze, wood, stone, and plaster along with maquettes (or scale models), preliminary drawings, tools and extensive archival material.
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I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or Twitter!
You can easily explore Cool San Diego Sights by using the search box on my blog’s sidebar. Or click a tag! There are thousands upon thousands of photos for you to enjoy!
Kids always have lots of fun at the San Diego Natural History Museum! They can check out cool dinosaurs and even living animals. And they can make silly critters out of recycled materials!
The creative activity takes place inside the NAT’s Nature Lab, which is open on Saturdays from 10 to 2. The Nature Lab also hosts school children during field trips to the museum and Balboa Park. It has a natural history library, too!
Have you ever poked your nose into this cool Nature Lab, which is located on the first level of the museum? I did last Saturday!
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I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or Twitter!
Tired of living much of your life virtually for the last couple of years? Would you like an awe-inspiring, exhilarating first-hand experience of fine art?
At the San Diego Museum of Art in Balboa Park, numerous Impressionist masterpieces now await your eyes!
All I know is that I visited the museum yesterday and found myself drifting into dreamlike worlds through frames hung on gallery walls. Scenes composed with mere glimpses of light, color and form somehow became real–more than real.
It isn’t often eyes are privileged to absorb artwork this historically important, and excellent.
Artists I noticed include Monet, Pissarro, Cezanne, Matisse, Gauguin, Degas and Picasso. If you’ve never had the opportunity to view original artwork by some of the world’s greatest artists, now is your chance!
Just a few different examples…
Boats on the Beach at Etretat, Claude Monet, 1883. Oil on canvas.The Jockey, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, 1899. Gouache and lithograph.Almond Trees in Flower, Paul Signac, 1902-1904. Oil on canvas.Portrait of Angel Fernandez del Soto, Pablo Picasso, 1903. Pastel.View of Antibes, Henri Matisse, 1925. Oil on canvas.
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I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or Twitter!
If you love art–glass art in particular–you must absolutely head over to Balboa Park this weekend to check out a spectacular show and sale in Spanish Village Art Center!
The big Art Glass Guild’s Spring Patio Show features numerous skilled glass artists and their amazingly creative and beautiful pieces. Some of the glass is functional, other works are purely decorative. All are for sale!
You can see in my photos how extraordinary this annual show is. Even if you have no plans to purchase art, you’ll pause repeatedly to admire all the glasswork, and wonder how some of the more unusual or exquisite pieces were made!
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I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or Twitter!
Did these two giant Flat-tailed Horned Lizards escape from the San Diego Natural History Museum in Balboa Park? At first glance, one might think so!
On second glance, it’s apparent this great chalk art, below the steps of the Natural History Museum’s south entrance, is a rather realistic depiction of Phrynosoma mcallii, and is super cool!
I learned that this artwork was created several weeks ago during the big EarthFair event in the park. It has survived quite well so far!
The two immense reptiles, which I spotted by chance today, were the production of @sidewalk_chalk_dad. I’ve seen his great chalk art in Balboa Park during other past events.
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I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or Twitter!
This evening I headed to Balboa Park to watch The Sky Tonight at the Fleet Science Center’s giant domed IMAX theater.
Every first Wednesday of the month, the Fleet’s eye-popping, jaw-dropping The Sky Tonight astronomy presentation coincides with Stars in the Park, a fun, educational outdoor event hosted by the San Diego Astronomy Association.
When I stepped out of the theater, with a sense of renewed wonder at the immensity and beauty of the universe, night had fallen, and I gazed through several telescopes at the distant stars themselves.
But prior to all this, well before the sun set, I saw other stars all around the park…
Two brightly smiling members of the Belegarth Medieval Combat Society’s Realm of Andor. They usually hang out on Sunday afternoons at Balboa Park’s Morley Field.Indy is a shining Balboa Park star on a fine Wednesday evening.Look! Another musical star!Like planets orbiting the sun, kids were running around the Bea Evenson Fountain.Another star poses and smiles on El Prado!Options For All, an organization that serves adults with disabilities, welcomes those arriving for a special movie screening in Balboa Park.
A short film titled Climb premiered this evening at the Museum of Photographic Arts in Balboa Park.
According to its description, the film is based on a day in the life of the adaptive team, which consists of four rock climbers with disabilities at the Mesa Rim Climbing Center. Learn more at the Options For All organization’s Facebook page here!
One of the film’s stars smiles by the Climb movie poster. That’s her climbing in the upper left corner of the graphic!Stars that are light-years distant from Balboa Park would become visible after nightfall. Members of the San Diego Astronomy Association set up a powerful telescope for public observation of the sky after dark!
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I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or Twitter!
The world’s longest running IMAX film projector is on display in San Diego’s Balboa Park. That’s because this venerable old projector operated for 48 years at the Reuben H. Fleet Science Center!
Tonight I headed over to the Fleet Science Center to watch The Sky Tonight, a once-a-month astronomy presentation on the giant space-like IMAX dome. As I waited in the theater lobby for the show to begin seating, I noticed the historic projector on display to one side, behind an open curtain.
A gentleman briefly explained the projector’s history. The very durable, then state-of-the-art projector was originally installed in 1973. It was the second IMAX projector made. Apparently nobody knows what became of the first!
When I got home, I found this link to a great article concerning the projector, and its replacement last year with a new, improved IMAX Laser digital video projector.
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I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or Twitter!
Cool San Diego Sights! 