A friend with a car suggested taking a day off and visiting Jack London State Historic Park in Glen Ellen north of Sonoma. Once we got past the intricacies of honor-system self-registration (no personnel available, it goes without saying, this being the impoverished State of California) we found a near-empty parking lot. Decided to have the picnic first, at one of the tree-shaded parking lot picnic tables, and fuel up for exploring a place we had last seen – in each other's company, as it happens – about 30 years ago.
Easter gift box of Joseph Schmidt chocolates, hand-crafted in San Francisco (right on 16th Street, near Sanchez, only two blocks from Spencer Alley) for many years past. But the company recently was sold to a conglomerate, and is now said to be in line for termination.
The Museum is a stone residence called The House of Happy Walls by its owners, Jack and Charmian London. Though a large house in its own right, it was thought of as a guest house or lodge by Jack and Charmian, who were building a much larger neo-romantic palazzo about a mile away, deeper into the indigenous forest of live oak and madrone.
The House of Happy Walls begins to be visible through the thickly growing and gorgeous trees all around it.
The light inside the house did not agree with my modest digital camera, and I came back with only one usable image. Charmian loved having electric light in 1911 out there in the wilderness, and there are naked electric light bulbs at eye level planted along the walls in every room. The effect is lurid. Lots of current days fashion photography uses the same lurid lighting.
Deep window seats in every room, an Arts & Crafts staple. All the better with your own scaled-down Venus de Milo in a blue niche to gaze upon as you recline in your Isadora Duncan draperies (Charmian's wardrobe is on display behind Plexiglas in another part of the house).