Saturday, August 19, 2017

Saturday, August 19, 2017

Tonight's picture was taken in August of 2005. Mattie was three years old and we took him to the George C. Page Museum. One of Mattie's favorite places to visit, because it featured dinosaurs and tar pits. The LA tar pits are right outside the museum, and many of the specimens found in the museum were retrieved from these tar pits. As you can see in this photo, I wanted Mattie to pose for a photo! This was not something he really wanted to do at that moment since he was focused on getting to the tar pits ahead!!!


Quote of the day: The only way of finding the limits of the possible is by going beyond them into the impossible. ~ Arthur C. Clarke

In the hallways around the hotel, there were these flip flop stickers on the floors. Basically to direct you to the conference center. Quite clever and perfect for the heat of Palm Springs. 

My mom snapped this photo of Peter and me outside the room where the Town Hall was held this morning. We have participated in other organizations' town halls in the past. But this conference had a completely different format than we are accustomed to! In this town hall, the goal was to get the audience to dialogue about the topic and even cross talk with each other. So the presenters are not presenting anything, but instead serving as guides and moderators of the audience.

After the Town Hall, my mom captured this photo. 

From left to right:
Vicki, Diane (nurse from University of Maryland), Kathy (nurse from Azusa Pacific, California and President of APHON), Kathy (nurse researcher at National Children's Medical Center, Washington, DC), and Peter

After our Town Hall, we drove about five minutes to Downtown Palm Springs. This is what Palm Canyon Drive looks like, which is the main street of the town. 

We had a lovely lunch at Zin American Bistro and you need to understand that it was about 115 degrees outside. How we were able to sit outside was that all the shops and restaurants have misters. Literally a fine mist of water streams down and then they have fans blowing things about. It is an amazing form of air conditioning. Behind my dad and Peter, if you see something hazy, I am trying to show you the misting water trailing down from the ceiling!

Later in the day, we took a Legends and Icons tour. This is bus tour with a private guide. Annette was our tour guide and she spoke to us for about two hours. We learned all sorts of fascinating facts about Palm Springs. The first of which is that the largest land holder in Palm Springs are the Native Americans. 
Archaeological research has shown that the Cahuilla people lived in the area for the past 350–500 years. The Cahuilla name for Palm Springs was "Se-Khi" (boiling water). When the Agua Caliente Reservation was established by the United States government in 1896, the reservation land was composed of alternating sections (640 acres) of land laid out across the desert in a checkerboard pattern. The alternating non-reservation sections were granted to the Southern Pacific Railroad as an incentive to bring rail lines through the open desert.


Presently the Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians is composed of several smaller bands. The Agua Caliente Reservation occupies 32,000 acres, of which 6,700 acres lie within the city limits, making the Agua Caliente band the city's largest landowner. Tribal enrollment is currently estimated at between 296 and 365 people.

Annette told us that Palm Springs as we know it today did not exist. In fact there was instead a body of water where the land now exists. However, since Palm Springs lies over about four different fault lines, an earthquake caused the rising of rocks forming mountains and as a result big boulders can be found all over the area from this initial earthquake. Believe it or not, these boulders are protected by the government, and if you should move one of these boulders you will need a permit and permission. Otherwise be prepared to receive significant fines.  

We saw over 50 homes today that once belongs to Hollywood stars. In fact this movie community started in the 1930s. Stars back then, if they went on vacation, were not allowed to go further than 150 miles away from the studios. Because they needed to be available on call to either reshoot scenes, or start another picture. Which was one of the reasons Palm Springs became the vacationing spot of the Hollywood elite. It was a hair short of 150 miles away from Los Angeles. What stunned me however was that many of these once famous homes have new owners. But many of them do not actually live in these homes. They only come to visit during holiday seasons and certainly NOT in the summer. Yet they will rent out their home to you for $3,000 a night, with a minimum of a three night stay! So picture streets and streets of literally abandoned homes. All well maintained and manicured, but NO tenants. It is almost down right eerie, and unfortunately because of the state of these neighborhoods, many homeless people tend to break in looking for a nice spot to live. What saddens me about going through this once vibrant movie community is that it makes you feel like you are driving through the land that time forgot. Even Annette mentioned that millennials who tour with her, have NO IDEA about the stars she is talking about from the 1930s. So the question I am left with is.... how long can this area be preserved? If people don't know about these stars, if we can't actually tour inside the homes and experience the lives of these bygone era stars, how on earth can such a culture be preserved?



One of the homes we drove passed belongs to Ken Irwin, jr. Since he was a child, Irwin has built giant sculptures of the creatures and places that fill his mind at his father's two-acre home, just around the corner from Frank Sinatra's old estate. To learn more about Irwin, go to this article:
http://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-robo-lights-20151129-story.html

Irwin even transforms his home at Christmas time by lighting up his creations in the yard. Apparently he lets people onto the property to see the lights in December. 

This was Frank Sinatra's home!

In Sinatra's backyard, he had a pool. When the light of the afternoon hit the back of his home, the shadows made it look like a piano, with its keys. Yes this was constructed like this on purpose.

This was Betty Davis's home! In fact she had TWO in Palm Springs. One which she used more regularly than the other. This was the regularly used house. The other house she bought was directly on top of Joan Crawford's house. Meaning that Betty Davis always wanted to prove to Joan Crawford that she was ON TOP (ie, the better star). 

This home belonged to Dean Martin.

This is Carol Burnett's home and apparently still lives here. 

This evening we drove to Palm Desert, which is about 25 minutes away from Palm Springs. We had dinner at Mamma Gina. Which concludes our three night stay in Palm Springs. It was a lovely culinary experience and the beauty of the mountains made it worth the visit.