Umbrellas
On yesterday’s New Day Cafe samanthab commented on FoundingFatherDAR’s mention that she had seen Christo’s Umbrella outdoor art project. I had seen it as well, and it reminded me that I had written a diary about Christo’s earlier project, Running Fence. That was a heartfelt story, because that fence led directly to our move from Marin to Sonoma County. I noticed two things about that diary; first, it was from 2013. Wow, I’ve been doing KTK for a long time. Second, I mentioned in that diary that I would save The Umbrellas for a future KTK.
After our strong reaction to Running Fence, when we heard that Christo was doing another, we were determined to see that as well. The plan was to have giant yellow umbrellas on both sides of California’s major north-south highway, Interstate 5. Simultaneously blue umbrellas would be installed in Ibaraki, Japan. This area climbs a pass with a huge ranch ownership, called Tejon Ranch. Huge is right, it is 422 square miles, or 270,000 acres. Although we had lived in California for years we had never driven this and were unfamiliar with the term The Grapevine, which is what the canyon is called.
I had just purchased Dire Strait's latest album, called On Every Street, and recorded it on a cassette (remember those?) . As we ascended, the highway was crowded, as always. When the first umbrella came into view I played the title song, which was perfect, and evermore when I hear it I will be right back there, seeing the magical random clusters of yellow, up on tall posts.
We drove up to the top and stopped at a small bar, called Okie Girl, which was selling beer in bottles with The Umbrellas on the label. It was surprisingly good. Then we turned around and enjoyed the scene all the way back down. We took lots of photos but they are all on a camera card somewhere.
The experience was lovely, but perhaps we were jaded a bit from Running Fence, it didn’t quite measure up to the original Christo experience.
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A recap of my Lamb Shanks project, which I cooked as a response to cool weather and a bottle of high end Tempranillo. I browned 4 shanks, then heated chopped onion and garlic for 10 minutes. Then I added 3 cups of good red wine and 2 cups of chicken broth. Once boiling I added the shanks and turned heat to simmer. I gradually added tomato paste, celery, carrots, potatoes, parsnips, and finally a lot of quartered onions. Four hours later I removed everything to a warm oven and boiled the liquid furiously while constantly stirring. The resulting thick gravy was all I expected and more. We enjoyed this for three meals, along with the exquisite wine.