[Leica] IMG: A busy afternoon

[kanner at acm.org (Herbert Kanner)]

Having read in the newspaper about an exhibit of wild-life photos, I 
typically waited until the last day to have a look. It was at a place I 
hadn?t really visited before: something called, I think, ?The Allied Arts 
Guild? in Menlo Park. It is an impressively large and beautiful tract of 
real estate with many small buildings on it, one of which housed the exhibit 
I was after.

It turns out that sixteen artists have exclusive access to this particular 
gallery which is in it?s own little building. Each one agrees to do the duty 
twice a month, so it was one of the artists who greeted us on entry. After 
some looking, we found the photographs in question, something between eight 
and a dozen, and worth seeing, ranging from a bob cat to bears. I didn?t not 
the name of the photographer. 

Ultimately, we got into conservation with the artist, and it really struck a 
chord, me being an ex-physicist who went wrong and went into computer 
software, and my wife being an ex-biochemist who went I dunno what and ended 
up teaching math. The artist, it turned out had a Ph.D. in solid state 
physics, worked 25 years for HP until her activity was exported to China and 
she had, as she said, the choice of retiring or being fired. 

Having dabbled with art all her life, she decided to concentrate on it. Her 
father, by the way, had been on the U.C. Berkeley faculty and during WWI was 
the expert for that portion of the Manhattan Project on the effects of 
radiation on people, hence important re setting standards and precautions 
for the research workers. This also struck a chord, since I was for four 
years on the Chicago end of the Manhattan Project. 

I did take her picture.
http://gallery.leica-users.org/v/herbk1/L1003707.jpg.html

After that, I wanted to show Lee another piece of art work: a statue of a 
horse made of many materials, of which I could identify iron, aluminum, 
wood, and a couple of rocks. There was a geocache hidden in the structure, 
one of those magnetic key containers. It is the best I have ever seen of 
that genre: art objects made of unexpected assorted materials.
http://gallery.leica-users.org/v/herbk1/L1003709_001.jpg.html







Herbert Kanner
kanner at acm.org
650-326-8204

Question authority and the authorities will question you.