This, that and the other thing.

The hawks are getting that gleam in their eye, they are starting to look more and more mature. Although they still can appear quite goofy when they wish.

The other day it was my turn to feel goofy.

I was talking to my lovely wife Leslie on the phone and she mentioned seeing a beautiful hawk with a red breast earlier in the day.

"Uh, honey, there's no hawk around here with a red breast. You saw a red tailed with a copper breast," I confided, quite authoritatively.

That night driving home I looked up at the phone wire and there was indeed there, a raptor with a breast indeed red, a kestrel. Oops. Wish I could have snapped a pic.

Here is another pic of the neighborhood Cooper's hawk. A pretty bird.

*

R&L are soaking up the rays on the Big Island, lucky friends, I need Hawaii bad. She send pictures of a Monkeypod view, and a couple views from the lava trail.

Must be very nice indeed.

Norman Black sends over a beautiful travel video from Video. Antarctic exploration.

*

When I was touring the theater district of Los Angeles I was most interested in the wonderful murals downstairs at the Los Angeles Theater nursery or children's playroom. 

Lovely paintings of a circus troupe, in very poor repair. 

I should have taken the time and shot it properly but I had neither time or equipment and mostly grabbed images for reference to jar future memory. Which pretty much suck.

The building is so amazing. Like to go back and get proper shots. I would like to see the poor murals restored. Hopefully soon.

I finally looked for information on the artist today. Anthony Heinsbergen, the foremost designer of North American movie theatre interiors, in his own hand, no less. A man who caught the attention of Alexander Pantages and the rest, as they say, is history.

From Wiki:

Anthony Heinsbergen (December 13, 1894 - June 14, 1981) was an American muralist considered the foremost designer of North American movie theatre interiors.

Born Antoon Heinsbergen in Haarlem (the Netherlands), he emigrated with his family to the United States in 1906 where they settled in Los Angeles. Heinsbergen began painting while still a boy; and, as a young man he worked as an apprentice painter and was one of the first students to take formal training from Mrs. Nelbert Chouinard at her Chouinard Art Institute in Los Angeles. His area of interest in which he developed a renowned expertise was the painting of murals and in 1922 he went into business for himself. He was successful in obtaining a few commissions out of which he earned considerable recognition that led to a number of major contracts in and around Los Angeles most notably with the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel, the Beverly-Wilshire Hotel and in 1928 a municipal government contract for the new Los Angeles City Hall. During this time, his work came to the attention of theatre mogul Alexander Pantages who hired him to work on one of his buildings. The praise he received for this work opened the doors to jobs at more than twenty Pantages theatres and helped Heinsbergen become a major national contractor for theatre murals.

Heinsbergen's company grew to employ more than one hundred and eighty decorative painters involved with a wide variety of wall and ceiling murals for corporate offices, churches, synagogues, civic auditoriums, libraries and other ornate structures of the era. However, the Heinsbergen name is mainly linked to his theatre murals as a result of the more than seven hundred and fifty he created throughout North America during the theatre industry's period of rapid growth. High profile work of this type includes murals for the Wiltern Theatre, the Oakland Paramount Theater, the Warner Grand Theatre in San Pedro, California, and the United Artists flagship theatre in downtown Los Angeles, plus the vaulted ceiling of the city's Park Plaza Hotel which can be seen in the opening sequences of the 1990 David Lynch film Wild at Heart.

Anthony Heinsbergen built a home in the Los Angeles district of Pacific Palisades on the south slope in the Santa Monica Mountains. Semi-retired by the 1970s when his son Anthony, Jr. (1929–2004), took over the day-to-day management of the company, the elderly Anthony Heinsbergen nonetheless remained active as a frequent consultant for theatre restoration projects until his death in 1981, in Los Angeles, at the age of eighty-six.

Here is a picture of how the room looked in the theater's heyday.

Went to the brewery to watch the Belmont this afternoon. Turns out I was only a week early.