Field Trip to San Francisco -Tuesday, September 10, 2002

12:25   Meet at the Escondido turnaround outside Stern dining hall

Lunch in the van as we drive into the city.

First stop:  Palace of the Legion of Honor, at "lands end" near the Golden Gate Bridge.  Here's what one of the pages of their Website (click on the link on our class Website) says about the history of this grand museum and what it memorializes:

High on a headland above the Golden Gate--where the Pacific Ocean spills into San Francisco Bay -- stands the California Palace of the Legion of Honor, the gift of Alma de Bretteville Spreckels to the city of San Francisco. Located in Lincoln Park, this unique art museum is one of the greatest treasures in a city that boasts many riches. The museum's

spectacular setting is made even more dramatic by the imposing French neoclassical building.

In 1915 Mrs. Spreckels fell in love with the French Pavilion at San Francisco's Panama

Pacific International Exposition. This pavilion was a replica of the Palais de la LŽgion

d'Honneur in Paris, one of the distinguished eighteenth-century landmarks on the left bank of the Seine. The H™tel de Salm, as it was first called, was designed by Pierre Rousseau in 1782 for the Prince de Salm-Kyrbourg. Completed in 1788, it was not destined to serve long as a royal residence; the German prince, whose fortunes fell with the French Revolution, lived there only one year. Madame de Sta‘l owned it briefly before Napoleon took it over in 1804 as the home of his newly established LŽgion d'Honneur, the order he created as a reward or civil and military merit.

Alma Spreckels persuaded her husband, Adolph B. Spreckels, the sugar magnate, to recapture the beauty of the pavilion as a new art museum for San Francisco. At the close of the 1915 exposition, the French government granted them permission to construct a permanent replica, but World War I delayed the groundbreaking for this ambitious project until 1921.  Constructed on a remote site known as Land's End--one of the most beautiful settings imaginable for any museum--the California Palace of the Legion of Honor was completed in 1924, and on Armistice Day of that year its doors opened to the public. In keeping with the wishes of the donors, to "honor the dead while serving the living," it was accepted by the city of San Francisco as a museum of fine arts dedicated to the memory of the 3,600 California men who had lost their lives on the battlefields of

France during World War I.  http://www.thinker.org/legion/

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            Tuesday appears to be "free" day at the Museum, thanks to the Ford Company, but there is still a charge for the main new exhibit on Egypt.  Check out the Website for other exhibits and think about what you'd most like to see (and SoCo will pay all the fees).  We'll have nearly an hour to explore.

Second stop:  National Aids Memorial Grove, in the Golden Gate Park's de Laveaga Dell.  Please check out the Website (linked to our own course Website).  Here's a bit of information about what we'll be experiencing, taken from the Grove's official Website.

The National AIDS Memorial Grove (NAMG) was conceived in 1989 by a small group of San Francisco residents representing a community devastated by the AIDS epidemic, but with no positive way to express their collective grief. As news of the Grove initiative grew, so did support and interest. What they envisioned was a serene place where people

would come in groups to hold memorial services or individually to remember among the rhododendrons and redwoods, in a place dedicated to all lives touched by AIDS.

The dedicated group selected de Laveaga Dell in world-renowned Golden Gate Park, near the park's tennis courts, as the site for the Grove. Due to park budget cuts and lack of funding, the Dell was in a state of disrepair, overgrown and unusable by the public. A team of prominent architects, landscape architects, and designers volunteered countless hours to create a landscape plan that would be fitting as a timeless living memorial.

On October 1996, a historic milestone was reached when Congress and the President of the United States approved the National AIDS Memorial Grove Act. This official designation as the National AIDS Memorial Grove, a status comparable to that of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, Mount Rushmore, and the USS Arizona at Pearl Harbor, proclaims to the world that there is now a dedicated space in the national public landscape where anyone who has been touched by AIDS can grieve openly without being stigmatized, find comfort among others whose lives have been affected by AIDS and HIV, and experience the feelings of renewal and hope inherent in nature. As the AIDS pandemic continues to invade humanity in unprecedented numbers, the establishment of the Grove as the national gathering place for healing, hope, and remembrance also serves as an important marker in the history of this dreadful disease.  http://www.aidsmemorial.org/

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Again, we'll have 30 to 45 minutes to explore this site, so give some thought to how you want to use your time.

Third stop:  City Lights Book Store.  Can a bookstore be a memorial?  If it's City Lights, it certainly can!  This store is a living, breathing reminder of the Beat Generation of poets and artists as well as of an important legal case regarding censorship.  As you know, the store was opened by Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and the official City Lights Website has this to say about him:

Ferlinghetti was born in Yonkers in 1919. Following his undergraduate years at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, he saw service in the U.S. Navy in World War II as a ship's commander, took part in the Normandy Invasion and arrived in Nagasaki just weeks after the Bomb was dropped. He received a Master's degree from Columbia University in 1947 and a Doctorate de l'UniversitŽ de Paris (Sorbonne) in 1950. From 1951 to 1953, when he settled in San Francisco, he taught French in an adult education program, painted, and wrote art criticism. In 1953 he founded City Lights Bookstore, the first all-paperbound bookshop in the country, with Peter D. Martin. By 1955 had he launched the City  Lights publishing house.

 The bookstore has served for forty-eight years as a meeting place for writers, artists, and intellectuals. City Lights Publishers began with the Pocket Poets Series, through which Ferlinghetti aimed to create an international, dissident ferment. His publication of Allen Ginsberg's Howl in 1956 led to his arrest on obscenity charges, and the trial that followed drew national attention to San Francisco Renaissance and Beat movement writers. (He was overwhelmingly supported by prestigious literary and academic figures, and was acquitted.) This landmark First Amendment case established a legal precedent for the publication of controversial work with redeeming social importance. <http://www.citylights.com/>

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If you've never read "Howl," check it out at http://168.16.169.58/allen_ginsburgs_howl.htm.  We'll have about 45 minutes to browse among the stacks of books and soak up the atmosphere.

Fourth stop:  Musee Mecanique.  As the Musee Website says, "The MusŽe MŽcanique collection includes hundreds of musical and mechanical pleasures that bewitch the eye with their beauty and skill; some are over a century old, and some so cleverly restored they seem to be ageless.  Daniel Galland Zelinsky, a 5th generation San Franciscan and a 2^nd generation collectorÉoversees the exhibit rotations and is a primary force in

its expansion."  While not an official memorial, this museum is home to legions of childhood memories, which we will get to look at and play with.  Bring quarters, since many of these toys require them!  For more information, see the Musee Website at <http://museemecanique.citysearch.com/1.html>-- you can click on it from our Website.

Last stop:  Cliff House Restaurant, the 1909 eatery on Point Lobos overlooking the Pacific.  This is one of San Francisco's historic restaurants, scheduled for complete renovation this fall.  It's next door to the Musee Mecanique, so we'll simply walk from one to the other.  We should arrive at the Cliff House by 6:45 at the latest and the van will pick us up to return to campus around 8:30 or 8:45. http://www.cliffhouse.com/

I'm looking forward to this day of media and memory!