Saturday, December 6, 2014

The Golden Pear


Night View from the Yacht Club 


Most of these photographs in this first group were taken last Spring, though there’s four from last Winter, two early and two late.  The Full Moon was shot through the electric lines on Page Street just above that lovely Julia Morgan building that now houses the Zen Center.  The Japanese Quince Blossoms were purchased at the Farmer’s Market from a Japanese Farmer named Glen for the Lunar New Year (when my friend, Fumi, was a teenager, she and another Japanese Farmer’s daughter, Grace, were rivals for Glen’s affection; he played one against the other and wound up with neither one nor the other.)  The Yacht Club was not particularly fancy but just enough for my taste and I was there for a small party following an official Reception for a large Mural and Light Project designed by friends, Laura and Tom, called Bay View Rising.  The steel and glass Translucent Pianos were being hoisted into place to decorate the Eleventh Street side of a new steel and glass building on Market Street.













The Golden Pear
One of my favorite Fairy Tales, in both Grimm and Pushkin versions, can be called either the Golden Bird or the Golden Cockerel.  Rimsky Korsakov based an Opera on Aleksandr Pushkin’s tale.   I suppose I prefer the German version because it is more complex:  The King has a Pear Tree with a Golden Pear, and every night a Golden Bird comes to steal the Fruit.  Only the youngest and least honored of his sons figures out how to catch it.  As a result, under the guidance of a talking Fox, he is able to end an old Curse and wed a good and beautiful noblewoman, the Fox’s sister.










No comments:

Post a Comment