FANTASTIC!

Just a half mile down the block from us, on El Camino Real, is the

I’d been told that in the lobby of that building was an absolutely fantastic chandelier, absolutely worth seeing!

So one day I scootered down there, with camera, to see what this was all about. The fact that it was right across the street from a Baskin Robbins ice cream store might have had something to do with it. (No, no, not basking robins -- that’s a house joke, Willie.)

It took a bit of figuring out how to get into the building, but when I did, I found myself on the second floor lobby, known as the

More about that shortly.

And here is what I saw!














There is an information desk near the entrance, so I scootered over to ask if it was all right to take photographs. “Oh, by all means,” I was told.












Did I know that there was a second chandelier one flight up? No, I didn’t.















Now the Dowd Pavilion, it turns out, is three stories deep, so I went down to the first floor to get a shot looking up.














The literature I was given says, in part, “This two-tiered sculpture was a gift to the Camino Division of the Palo Alto Medical Foundation from a grateful patient, Mr. Edward M. Dowd."











"The sculpture is comprised of a total of 442 individually crafted pieces, weighing a total of 1600 pounds. It was created in the Dale Chihuly studios, lauded for revolutionizing the Studio Glass movement. Chihuly’s work is marked by intense, vibrant color.”


Ed Dowd made his fortune in investment real estate. Fourteen years ago he was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. He was most grateful to the Palo Alto Medical Clinic for the treatment and care they gave him, that when the current building was built just a few years ago, he donated the $4.1 sculpture that opened in 2007.



You can get an idea of the size of this sculpture by noting the people in the background.













And finally, the third floor chandelier gets a lot of natural light.









From glorious art to something funny:

HIGHER POWER
A Sunday school teacher said to her children, "We have
been learning how powerful kings and queens were in
bible times. But, there is a higher power. Can anybody
tell me what it is?" One child blurted out, "Aces!"