Tag: women

Exhibition in San Diego celebrates Women in STEM.

An inspirational exhibition celebrating women in STEM opened a couple days ago in Balboa Park. San Diego STEM Women: Creativity and Curiosity can be experienced in the Women’s Museum of California‘s new, dedicated gallery, which is found inside the San Diego History Center.

The exhibition details how women in San Diego history, from the 19th century to the present, have excelled in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics, leading to important contributions in different fields.

There’s a special emphasis on young women pursuing career paths in STEM today. Various organizations are highlighted that can help those with STEM aspirations.

Young people, upon seeing this exhibition, will understand that pursuits in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics can do more than make a world a better place, but can be personally very rewarding.

Examples of what visitors will find…

ECOLOGIK was launched at Cabrillo National Monument in 2017. The free program engages children and young adults in Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics. There is an emphasis on ecology and environmental sciences.
Girls Who Code has reached over 760,000 students through virtual and in-person programming. The organization helps to spark an interest in transformative technology.
Dr. Charlotte Baker was San Diego’s first practicing female physician. She moved to San Diego in 1888 and ten years later she became the first female president of the San Diego County Medical Society.
During World War II, many women helped with military manufacturing in San Diego. In the aircraft industry, women made up to 65% of the workforce in 1943.
Dr. Janese Swanson, graduate of SDSU, was a pioneer at the dawn of the digital age. At Broderbund Software, she helped develop the popular game Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?
Dr. Ellen Ochoa grew up in La Mesa. An engineer and astronaut, she was the first Latina astronaut in NASA history. She would log nearly 1,000 hours in space!

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The League of Wives Memorial Statue in Coronado.

A little over two years ago I posted a blog about a project that was being undertaken in Coronado. A bronze statue was to be created by artists Chris Slatoff and Elisabeth Pollnow that honors military spouses.

Yesterday, as I walked into Star Park for the Coronado Memorial Day Service, I was excited to see the finished League of Wives Memorial Statue!

The beautiful sculpture was surrounded by chairs for the Memorial Day ceremony and a few people were already sitting nearby, so I self-consciously, very quickly took only three photographs.

You can learn more about the project by revisiting my old blog post here. It includes the statue’s plaque verbiage.

Here’s from March 2023, when money was being raised for the project:

And here’s the finished sculpture, from yesterday:

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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.

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Take a free Balboa Park Women’s History Tour!

There’s a special once-a-month free tour in Balboa Park that I learned about today. The Balboa Park Women’s History Tour commemorates the women who’ve contributed to Balboa Park and San Diego history.

The inspiring tour begins every 3rd Saturday by the Bea Evenson Fountain (between the San Diego Natural History Museum and Fleet Science Center) at 10 am. The walking tour lasts for one hour.

I’ll have to take this tour at some point in the future!

What I’ve found out is the Balboa Park Women’s History Tour is presented by Forever Balboa Park. The historical substance is provided by the Women’s Museum of California, which makes its home inside the San Diego History Center in Balboa Park’s Casa de Balboa.

Learn more about the tour by clicking here!

You might remember how years ago the Women’s Museum of California made its home at Liberty Station in Point Loma. Well, soon they will have their own permanent gallery inside the San Diego History Center! Their first exhibit will concern Women in STEM. Watch for it!

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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.

Feel free to share!

Veterans Day program in Balboa Park.

A special Veterans Day program was held this afternoon at Balboa Park’s International Cottages. The annual event was brought to San Diego by the House of USA.

I arrived a bit late. Guest speaker R. Ann Bush, University of San Diego professor and author of WAVES on the Potomac, was talking about the numerous contributions of women during World War II. Over 400,000 women helped the war effort in a wide variety of important ways.

Highlights of the Veterans Day program included a Dance Tribute of Vietnam, and a Fan Dance Tribute of Korea. Special tribute music was provided by Oceanna, a San Diego singer and songwriter. She sang “Be Strong, O Brother of Mine” in honor of the Veterans of WWII Bataan Death March and their families.

I took a few photos during this emotionally moving event.

R. Ann Bush speaks about the sacrifices made by women during World War II.

A beautiful Vietnamese cultural dance concerns American sailors.

Sons of the American Revolution was present for the Veterans Day event.

Biographies of individuals who’ve been awarded the Medal of Honor.

Heroes remembered.

Veterans of Foreign Wars, District 1, Department of California was on hand. To those who’ve fought for Freedom, thank you for your service.

VFW poppy pins.

Three members of organization Military Women Across the Nation. Thank you for your service.

I learned you can find these female military figurines, including Rosie the Riveter in her classic pose, on Amazon.

Learn about San Diego’s own Roberta “Randy” Tidmore, one of the original Rosey Riveters and World War II Veteran, by clicking 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.

Votes For Women at San Diego History Center.

The Women’s Museum of California has made its home inside the San Diego History Center in Balboa Park. Visitors who walk into the history center can now view a museum exhibit concerning the struggle by women to obtain the right to vote in the United States.

Votes For Women: A Portrait of Persistence follows the efforts of suffragists to amend the U.S. Constitution and change state election laws by lobbying in their community and in the halls of Congress. As one display explains, the suffragists wrote articles, circulated petitions, gave speeches, organized marches, and were sometimes imprisoned for their protests. Over time these tactics won support for woman suffrage that led to the ratification of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in 1920.

Visitors will learn how the fight for women’s right to vote lasted more than 80 years. Even after the ratification of the 19th Amendment, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was required to eliminate the suppression of voting by women.

In addition to many interesting posters, there are garments on display that suffragists might have worn, including a bloomer costume, named for writer and women’s rights advocate Amelia Bloomer.

Kids can also enjoy fun activities. There’s a San Diego History Center image scavenger hunt and the opportunity to take selfies with a suffragist sash and protest signs!

After you check out the Votes For Woman exhibit, take a stroll around the rest of the San Diego History Center. There’s a lot of history to see!

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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.

Summer of Sports at San Diego History Center.

Are you a lover of sports or history? Planning a visit to Balboa Park? If you’ve answered Yes and Yes, make sure you head over to the free San Diego History Center in Balboa Park!

Their current Inside/Out exhibit is titled Summer of Sports. A large display case contains fascinating sports artifacts and ephemera from the San Diego History Center Collections.

The Olympic Games return this summer, and the display takes this into account. But it mostly focuses on local sports and San Diego history.

There’s also a great video that you can watch concerning San Diego’s own skateboarding legend Tony Hawk!

The Inside/Out display case contains all sorts of San Diego sports pins and patches. Do you recognize some of these?

Alice “Lefty” Hohlmayer was a Hall of Fame player in the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League. In her later life she resided in San Diego.

The next photo is from an old ZLAC program. ZLAC was founded in San Diego in 1892 and is the oldest continuously operating women’s rowing club in the world.

One part of this historical sports exhibit concerns Palisade Gardens, a skating rink that opened in 1946 on University Avenue in North Park. It was the first post-World War II commercial structure completed in San Diego. It closed in July 1985.

The steel and leather roller skates are circa 1930s.

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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.

Betty Boop arrives in San Diego!

Betty Boop has arrived in San Diego! The iconic cartoon character is now making her home at the Comic-Con Museum in Balboa Park!

Last week the one-of-a-kind exhibition Becoming Betty Boop opened at the Comic-Con Museum. Thanks to a collaboration with Fleischer Studios, museum visitors can explore a large gallery filled with historic artwork and cultural artifacts found nowhere else.

Visitors can learn about the evolution of strongly independent and flirty, jazzy flapper Betty Boop, from her debut in the cartoon Dizzy Dishes in 1930 to modern characterizations. After nearly a century it seems her popularity has only grown. BOOP! The Musical will debut on Broadway in 2025!

Those who are curious about the history of cartoons will see how animators created the Betty Boop short films using a rotoscope, which had been invented by the Fleischer brothers using an old film projector, car parts and a wooden plank! They’ll learn that in the early 1930s, the creation of a six or seven minute cartoon involved about 90 artists and took about two months!

Visitors will also learn how Betty Boop was voiced by half a dozen women over the years, and that Lillian Friedman, who worked at Fleischer Studios, was the very first American female commercial animator.

Exhibition visitors can watch several fun cartoons in the museum auditorium, and those with a creative urge can learn how to draw Betty Boop!

Boop–oop–a–doop!

If you plan to attend Comic-Con this year, make time to check out Becoming Betty Boop, one of many great exhibitions now showing at the Comic-Con Museum!

Mae Questel (voice actress) and Max Fleischer (animator), with characters Betty Boop and Bimbo!

Mae Questel has the voice most associated with Betty Boop. She also provided voices for cartoon characters Olive Oyl, Casper the Friendly Ghost–and even Popeye! She voiced Betty Boop in the 1988 film Who Framed Roger Rabbit.

Betty Boop for President, 1932.

Lillian Friedman made history as the very first female professional animator.

A more modern take on Betty Boop. These two dresses were designed by global fashion designer Zac Posen. Pantone has officially designated Betty Boop Red.

Sparkly costume worn by actress Jasmine Amy Rogers, playing Betty Boop in the musical BOOP! at Chicago’s CIBC Theatre.

An Evening with Betty, by Myron Waldman.

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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.

Incarcerated women and Voices on the Inside.

A new exhibit is being readied at the San Diego Central Library. Voices on the Inside presents the written words of women who’ve been incarcerated.

The exhibit is created by Poetic Justice, an organization that provides writing workshops for women serving time in prisons and jails, including the Las Colinas Detention Facility in San Diego.

As their website explains: Poetic Justice’s in-person writing workshops are typically offered for 6-10 week sessions…the participants explore therapeutic writing prompts and community building activities. At the end of a session, the participants graduate and receive an anthology of their writing and a graduation certificate.

Many of the women share their innermost thoughts, filled with humanity and new wisdom and hope that otherwise might be ignored or dismissed. The exhibit will be filled with examples of what they’ve written.

The opening reception for Voices on the Inside will be held at San Diego Central Library on Sunday, May 5, 2024 at 2 pm. Learn more by visiting the Instagram page @capoeticjustice.

To see this new exhibit, simply walk into the Central Library and turn right when you reach the main elevators. Many faces and words await you.

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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 (formerly known as Twitter)!

Women’s History Month celebrated in Balboa Park!

It’s March, Women’s History Month!

Several walls inside the San Diego History Center in Balboa Park now feature an exhibit that chronicles the fight for women’s equality, highlighting successes by women in music, entertainment, art, and society at large. The exhibit makes use of informative displays that originally appeared in 2015 at the Women’s Museum of California.

Stories of trailblazers in the popular culture are told. In the 1960s and 70s, Helen Ready, Aretha Franklin, Joan Baez, Joni Mitchell, Carole King and others filled the airwaves with music that related the experience of women and furthered their empowerment. In television, the advancement of women could be followed in shows like That Girl and The Mary Tyler Moore Show. With the 1968 television show Julia, Diahann Carroll become the first African-American leading actor on a sitcom.

As one sign explains: During the resurgence of the larger women’s movement in the 1960s and 70s, women artists, writers, choreographers, actors, filmmakers and playwrights sought to create a new dialogue between the viewer and their art through the inclusion of women’s perspective.

Other displays in the History Center concern the historic struggle for equal rights, including the women’s right to vote, as you can see in my photographs.

A couple years ago the Women’s Museum of California moved their archives and administrative offices from their old museum at Liberty Station into the San Diego History Center. Their presence has been online.

I’m told that in the future, a special gallery inside the History Center will be set aside for Women’s Museum of California exhibits.

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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 (formerly known as Twitter)!

Excitement before Women’s Gold Cup Final!

The Fan Zone outside Snapdragon Stadium was alive with excitement before the start of today’s Women’s Gold Cup Final. The winner of the game would be historic first champion of the CONCACAF W Gold Cup!

Which team would prevail? USA or Brazil?

Soccer fans from around the United States and the world were arriving in droves, streaming in from parking lots and the Stadium trolley station. I saw flag capes, crazy hats, colorful scarfs, enthusiastic fans holding handmade signs, and many smiles. A lot of red, white and blue was visible. Some yellow and green, too!

Inside the Gold Cup Fan Zone, families took part in many activities. Kids dribbled soccer balls, tried to score a goal. Fans posed for pictures with the Gold Cup. San Diego’s own soccer teams–San Diego FC and San Diego Wave FC–had booths and greeted everyone.

Fans were pumped!

Who would win?

Who would win? USA!

Guess who scored the winning goal?

Lindsey Horan!

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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 (formerly known as Twitter)!