First thing's first - the campus here is -amazing-. Most of the buildings are from the early parts of the 20th century - a kind of Neo-Classical Greek style, complete with columns and giant stone facades etc. My favourite building so far is definitely the campanile - a hundred metre tall clock tower, complete with a Carillion (36 bells attached to a keyboard) which chimes on the hour - I love the idea of always being able to see what the time is from almost anywhere on campus - and what a spectacular building!
The other thing worth knowing about Berkeley is that it has a long history of liberalism and political activism. This was the site of a whole lot of key civil rights and free speech debates during the 50s and 60s, and continues to be a place where people aren't afraid to voice their opinions.
The current cause rousing the rabble is a stand of Oak trees near the University's California Memorial Stadium (which, incidentally, was built in the 1920 and holds up to 85,000 people - that's almost as many people as the MCG). The University wants to knock over these trees to build a new athletics centre. But, in a place like Berkeley, cutting down trees is never going to be an easy proposition. Suffice to say that today, almost a year after the whole thing started, we have several tree-sitters, living up in the canopy complete with flag and solar panels (goodness knows the damage they're doing to the oaks - maybe UC is just waiting from the protesters to kill off the trees for them). The tree sitters are accompanied by a ragtage band of sidewalk-sleepers and their colourful, earnest, handpainted signs. Only in Berkeley.
The other incredible thing about this campus is that it's also full of life - there are a number of incredible pine groves with the local waterway (strawberry creek) running through - it adds greatly to the beauty of the campus, and I could imagine that it could be the perfect peaceful spot to sit and study during semester. Plus, they have wildlife! I saw squirrels! I love squirrels.
Today, I made my first trip across the bay to San Francisco proper.
As is my wont, I spent most of the afternoon wandering the streets taking pictures of tall buildings. Starting in the Financial District, I made my way to through Chinatown, past the Trans-America tower (the iconic pyramid of all those photos, postcard, movies etc) and back the the waterfront and the Ferry Building. All in all, while SF is hardly the equal of Manhattan or Chicago in terms of impressive, spectacular skyscrapers, it beats just about any other city in the US for the density, variety and style of its tall buildings.
Well, that's more or less all for this entry in the 'ole blog.
I will keep adding things here as interesting stuff happens, though probably not with the same frequency as I was when I was travelling around - if any of y'all want to ask anything in particular or get in contact, leave a message here, or send an email to cursaeed@gmail.com.
'til next time!
Jono
PS. More photos of squirrels, plus many more photos of tall buildings, can be found in the latest Flickr Gallery
4 comments:
Love the squirrels Jonathan,and to see that Berkeley is upholding its reputation as a bastion of protest. Look forward to seeing more of SFO in the next few months. By the way - Goldman Sachs says prediction for $US exchange is 86c in 3 months time (not much below what it is today - does that mean it will go up and then down again? I don;t know and possibly neither does Goldman Sachs, because their previous prediction was for 96c going into the end of the year) anyhoo- I'm going to exchange now and grit my teeth if it goes up again.
smart move - I might do the same sometime soon. The squirrels are incredibly cute, aren't they?
Hi Jono, I have tried to send comments and they have not arrived at your end of the long string across the Pacific, never the less all the photos are good show us where you are going keep them coming.
Dad
my father doesn't know basic grammar. scary. well the squirrels are cute agreed. Scary thing is the tree sitters were up the trees at the start of 07 when my friend Christie visited the campus. I'm fairly sure they ask passers by to donate any random food you have like an apple, put it in a basket and they pulley it up and eat it. ALso where do they go to the toilet- look out below!!! so maybe there's some kind of roster system for tree sitting...someone self immolated in the plaza at UCSD (yeah i had look up that word)that's pretty impressive! have fun, love you, miss you - Hayley.
Post a Comment