Attending the Santa Rosalia Italian Festival in Monterey, Calfornia with Juilliard Graduate Florence Paget and Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Attending the Santa Rosalia Italian Festival in Monterey, California with Juilliard Graduate Florence Paget and Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Summertime means festivals on Fishermans’ Wharf in Monterey, California.  My favorite festivals when I lived in Monterey were the Turkish, Greek, and Italian ones.

My husband Laurent and I took our daughter Florence to all of them to get doner kebab, Greek desserts, and pasta.  Florence learned the words to many of Dean Martin’s songs and especially liked going to the Santa Rosalia or Italian Festival.

I had to move to Monterey with its large Sicilian community to participate in an Italian festival despite having traveled to Italy several times.

Monterey’s Santa Rosalia Festival commemorates this saint’s saving the Sicilian city of Palermo from the bubonic plague in 1624 when she appeared to a young Matteo Bonello.  She told him to go to her hermit’s cave and dig up her bones so he could scatter them in every corner of the city, which ended the plague.

In Palermo, they still parade Rosalia’s image to thank her for succor.  In Monterey, her image is paraded down Alvarado Street from the San Carlos Cathedral to the Wharf where a mass is said to bless the fishing fleet.

Before the procession arrives, there is plenty to do at the Santa Rosalia Festival.  Bocce ball players roll baseball-sized, leaden balls towards a ping-pong sized ball at the end of a lane as long as a bowling alley.  A player makes a good shot when his ball gets very close to the white ball.

A player makes an excellent shot if he (it is invariably a ‘he’ who plays) can get his ball to the white ball while knocking one of his opponent’s balls away from the white one.  There are no scorecards, but obviously a predetermined number of times you can roll your balls, because the players change ends of the lane a few times.

I just enjoyed listening to the aficionados cheer as I sipped Moretti dark beer.  (Italy’s northeastern corner was Austrian at one time and has a beer-drinking heritage.)

The food offerings at the Santa Rosalia Festival feature the foods of southern Italy.  I like penne puttanesca, which appears to be Roman.  Penne are short, hollow tubes cut at an angle that are good at catching sauce.  Puttanesca sauce gets it savor from capers, garlic, anchovies, olives, and tomatoes fried in olive oil and topped off with parsley and basil.

At our first of many Santa Rosalia Festivals, we ate and drank as the procession from San Carlos Cathedral paraded past our table in the sunshine.  A high school marching band did their steps double time, which garnered applause from the presto lovers in the audience.

Then came a phalanx of spit-polished 1970s convertibles crowned with two or three teenaged beauties, wearing white gowns with their hair up in buns that were topped off with diadems.  They played the part of beauty queen well, waving to the crowd with some of them blowing kisses.

Finally, the float with Santa Rosalia’s statue came down the Wharf.  Little girls wearing blue angel outfits, who were too shy to move, graced the float.

“That’s my granddaughter to the right of Santa Rosalia,” one of the ladies said to another one at our table.

“I made her costume,” she sweetly boasted.

“She’s adorable,” I said.

“I know! I know!  Thank you,” came grandma’s proud reply.

A boat float with little boys on it passed by signaling the end of the parade.

I loved being part of the pageantry and settled back to listen to more Dean Martin music and dance the chicken dance with Florence each time it was announced, so we could have some silly fun.

By Ruth Paget - Author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

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Condor Country - Monterey County (California) by Ruth Paget

Studying the Habitat of Monterey County (California) Condors with Juilliard Graduate Florence Paget and Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

My daughter Florence went on a whale and dolphin watching boat trip with her Californian Waldorf School and had become a zealous nature lover.  To encourage this interest in nature, I took her to see the exhibit “Bringing the Condors Home” at the Pacific Grove Museum of Natural History.

The exhibit room’s walls were decorated with aerial shots of what a condor can see at high altitudes.  A stuffed condor with outstretched wings easily held Florence and me within its six-foot span.

I knew condors made noise flying and told Florence, “The Native Americans call condors thunderbirds.”

We both were distressed when we learned that in 1985 there were only 22 condors left in existence.  The Ventana Wilderness Society was given the task of breeding and reintroducing the condors into the Big Sur Wilderness in 1997, because they had a track record of success with reintroducing the bald eagle to the same area.  In 2003, at the time of the exhibit, they had a baseline flock of 22 birds to manage.

The Ventana Wilderness Society uses video cameras and a bar code data entry system to monitor bird behavior according to the Terra Focus brochure that was at the exhibit.  Terra Focus, a Silicon Valley firm from Los Altos, provided the Condor Cam at the exhibit that showed how cameras work in condor habitats.

I looked through the Condor Cam and agreed with the Terra Focus brochure that “[r]esearchers, students, and the general public anywhere in the world can watch these animals without having to actually be in the field.”

I fully supported Florence’s school trips “in the field,” but thought it would be interesting for students to study condors and polar bears with this technology.  I wished the exhibit were not a temporary one.

Five years later after visiting this exhibit I went to what was then the Pinnacles National Monument before it became a national park as Monterey County’s Youth Services Librarian (MLIS, San José State University).  The Pinnacles area is a condor-release site in addition to Big Sur, California.

I was at the Pinnacles to participate in the 100^th anniversary of the region’s being declared a national monument along with Muir Woods and the Grand Canyon by President Teddy Roosevelt (1858 – 1919) in January 1908.

A ranger had dressed up as Teddy Roosevelt and greeted guests for the ceremony, which included a nice lunch.  I had helped the Pinnacles organize an essay contest about the park, which is home to bats, frogs, 400 species of bees, and rare chaparral vegetation.

I told the park rangers I was seated with how much my daughter and I liked going to Mount Lassen and brainstormed ideas with them on how to get classes and families to the Pinnacles for hiking trips.  The Pinnacles is a 30-mile wide volcanic area with craggy peaks, giving the park its name as the Pinnacles.

Before I left, the rangers took me to the bookstore and donated books to the library for children.  There were seventeen branches in the library system where I worked, and I ordered many copies of the books, because I knew they were scientifically accurate.  I absolutely loved it that the children of Monterey County had access to the Pinnacles through the Soledad entrance to the park.

Today the Pinnacles is America’s newest national park.  The condor count has gone up from 22 to 400.  They are still rare to see.  I think condor cams or films at the Visitor’s Center might give park visitors an idea of what condor life is like before they hike.  A condor habitat scavenger hunt sheet might be a good way to give children a condor souvenir from the park.

Park rangers offer hikes on the following themes for classes: geology, wildflowers, botany/vegetation, caves, bats, and condors and cultural history.  Campground facilities are available.

The Pinnacles field trip scheduling is very organized on their website and requires a 60-day advance registration.  They also give options for continuing the Pinnacles Experience on their website for service learning projects such as making environmental posters, organizing trash pick-up days, and sharing knowledge at park-organized events.

Learning about condors and how efforts to reintroduce species into the wild can succeed make Monterey County an interesting vacation destination.

By Ruth Paget - Author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

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Visiting New Mexico and Arizona with Juilliard Graduate Florence Paget and Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Visting the New Mexico Natural History Museum (Albuquerque) and the Grand Canyon (Arizona) with Juilliard Graduate Florence Paget and Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

From Taos we drove to Albuquerque, New Mexico.  Once at the hotel, my husband Laurent and I walked to Old Town Albuquerque, which has adobes all around it with arcades.

The outside of the San Felip de Neri Church had luminarias (paper bags with sand a candle in them put out on Christmas Eve) around it.  The docents inside the church said the luminarias were called farrolitos in Spanish.  I bought postcards and the ladies of the church walked Laurent and me around the church pointing out saints and artwork.  The white marble alter looked beautiful with poinsettias on it.

We walked around the around the arcades and looked through Western shops.  Laurent looked at cowboy hats in a nearby store.  I bought a book called Tradiciones Nuevomexicanos: Hispano Arts and Culture of New Mexico by Mary Montaño.  The book talks about luminarias, retablos (devotional paintings), sacred statues and so on.  It even talks about ristras, hanging bunches of dried red pepper.  We had seen many ristras during our drive into town.

We went to dinner at the La Placita Restaurant on the Plaza.  During the day, the restaurant lets craftsman sell their wares along the front of the restaurant under the adobe arcade.  The restaurant dates from 1706.  The room we sat in had a beautiful Christmas tree that was decorated all over with dried, red chiles.

The next day we went to the New Mexico Museum of Natural History.  It was a great tourism choice.  We saw real dinosaur bones – talk about fossils!

We walked through reproductions of volcanoes, a cave, and a seascape of what New Mexico looked like millions of years ago.  I was fascinated to learn how sandstone is made – compaction by pressure and wind over time.  We went to the planetarium show after visiting the museum.  We were laughing with vertigo when the planetarium turned a giant Mobius Strip into a roller coaster ride.

The next day we drove from Albuquerque to Flagstaff, Arizona.  We went to bed early so we could get up early and see the Grand Canyon.

When we woke up, it was threatening to snow.  We viewed the Grand Canyon at Mother Overlook.  Florence had fun throwing snowballs at us when it started to snow.  Because she was so nice, we bought her a dream catcher at the gift shop.

After the gift shop, we went to see the Grand Canyon film at the Imax Theatre in Tusayin.  The aerial shots were great, but what I really liked were shots of rafts going through white water rapids.  It looked fun, but would probably frighten me if I were to go on a rafting trip.

On the way home, we passed cross country skiers, kids sledding, and snowmen.  I wished every kid in the world could do a trip to the Grand Canyon and Albuquerque, New Mexico.

By Ruth Paget, Author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

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Visiting Taos (New Mexico) for Hispanic Christmas Celebrations with Juilliard Graduate Florence Paget and Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Visiting Taos (New Mexico) for Hispanic Christmas Celebrations with Juilliard Graduate Florence Paget and Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

One year after Christmas my family took a vacation to New Mexico with my mother.

It took us a day to drive down California where we turned left at Needles to head towards New Mexico.  We saw Joshua Trees in Arizona.  The eroded rock on the way there clearly shows layers or strata.  I wanted to be a geologist and look for fossils in some of it.  Mt. Humphrey in Flagstaff, Arizona had snow on it.

We squealed when we saw the snow, because we had been living by the ocean in Monterey, California for several years.  We stayed overnight in Flagstaff and played in the snow.  Flagstaff is ski territory that sits 7,000 feet above sea level.  The pressure going up the mountains caused all my pens to leak ink in my purse.

On the way to Albuquerque, I suggested that we go to Taos, which is considered to be a great arts center.  The road there was very scenic.  It was narrow and squeezed between the Rio Grande River and huge mountains.  Sometimes you could see three ranges of mountains at a time.  The Rio Grande River even carved a valley in some places that looked like a miniature Grand Canyon.

We passed many roadside crosses with flowers, indicating where people had died in accidents.  All through Arizona and New Mexico, there were signs that read, “Don’t Drink and Drive.”

Taos was a treat.  I love peach-colored adobe buildings.  There was a lot of traffic getting into the central plaza area.  The locals must have hated the traffic I thought.

I was making a groupie pilgrimage to Taos.  Two of my favorite writing inspirational teachers had homes there: Nathalie Goldberg and Julia Cameron.  I had fun working through their books alone and with my first writing group.

Taos galleries sell a variety of things such as Navajo blankets, pottery, and jewelry.  I found the gallery that sells Nathalie Goldberg’s artwork and had my photo taken outside of it.  I like French provincial style for decorating, but I saw a glass-topped coffee table that I liked with a Wild West theme.  It was held up by bronze horse heads with flying manes at each end.

The plaza in Taos was all done in wood and adobe.  The adobe was restored and painted.  We went to some souvenir shops where I bought Florence a brown, lacquer cross.  Laurent bought a bolo tie with a buffalo on it.

All around the plaza were brown paper bags with sand in the bottom in them with a candle inside each bag that had been burned.  Later in the day, I learned that these are called luminarias and are usually placed outside on Christmas Eve.

We ate lunch at a charming, touristy place above the central plaza in Taos.  We had a window table where we could look out on the plaza and admire the luminarias that the restaurant had set up on its balcony.

We all ate chicken in some form.  I ate chicken mole.  Mole is a savory and spicy chocolate sauce with no sugar added to it.  The restaurant’s version of mole had more cinnamon in it than in the versions I had eaten previously.

We left Taos while the sun was still shining to drive down the curving road through Santa Fe.  We no doubt crossed the Santa Fe Trail, which pioneers followed on their way west.  We found no parking in Santa Fe and had to call it a day for any more tourism.

By Ruth Paget - Author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

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Going on Nature Walks in Pacific Grove (California) with Juilliard Graduate Florence Paget and Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Going on Nature Walks in Pacific Grove (California) with Juilliard Graduate Florence Paget and Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

A few blocks up from the Monterey Bay Aquarium, you can do three nice, nature outings in Pacific Grove, California – the Pacific Grove Museum of Natural History, the Monarch Butterfly Sanctuary, and the walking path at Asilomar Beach.  All three can be reached from Lighthouse Avenue, which has several restaurants along it.

Whenever I took my daughter Florence to the Pacific Grove Museum of Natural History, we would begin our visit of the permanent collection by watching a film about how a caterpillar becomes a butterfly.  The chrysalis developmental stage is crucial for a butterfly even though it resembles a sticky mess when a butterfly eventually emerges from it.

“Pacific Grove is called Butterfly Town, because orange and blacked colored butterflies called Monarchs fly through it from Canada on the way to Mexico,” I told Florence. 

After the film, we looked at all the stuffed birds on display including the brown pelicans and cormorants that we often saw flying along the beach.  We had fun putting our hands in the mystery drawers exhibit to see what we could come up with – feathers, shells, bones, and so on.  It was gross, great fun.

We admired the baskets woven by Native Americans that were on display.  Florence learned how to weave baskets at her Waldorf School.  We both liked the Pomo Indian baskets that are roundish with shells and feathers threaded into their weaving.  The baskets were functional and beautiful at the same time.  Many were used for cooking by dropping hot stones into baskets with hot water in them.

From the Museum, we then went to the Monarch Butterfly Sanctuary.  It is a quiet place that is perfect for a fleeting butterfly kiss.  Pine is the natural tree that Monarch butterflies go to, but there are many eucalyptus trees in the sanctuary as well.

A tour docent explained to Florence and me that eucalyptus trees were imported from Australia for wood, but Americans discovered that you cannot cut these trees when they are young.  The eucalyptus trees were used as wind breaks on farms as those in the Sanctuary once did.

The docent said the black line on the chrysalis makes it a male.  The docent also said that the black dots on the butterfly show that it is a male.

“What are the black dots?” I asked.

“Pheromone cells for attracting female butterflies,” he replied.

Florence played amongst the trees with the warning not to touch the butterflies, so they would not get hurt or killed.

Our last stop was the walking path at Asilomar Beach.  Native plants line the walking path.  A field guide is a good book to have here to identify the plants.  The coast here is rocky with waves crashing.  It is a great photo opportunity.

The sunsets are magnificent from Asilomar; they are worth the walk any time of the year.

By Ruth Paget - Author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

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