Gratitude Monday: Arts and techs

Today I’m grateful that a friend recommended I go to the Allied Arts Guild in Menlo Park, and to the Church of the Nativity, also in MP. She said, “They’re nice places to take pictures.

Well, she was right, of course. The Allied Arts Guild is this enclave about half a mile off the edge of the world, in a residential neighborhood, which you reach by going down a wooded road that you’re convinced is going to end up at a gingerbread cottage. Instead, you turn right, and there you are—houses on the right and artsy place on the left.

Turns out it’s a cluster of buildings housing studios and meeting places, interspersed with gardens and patios. A couple of studios were open when I was there, so I got to talk with the artists in a very relaxed setting. There was some kind of mom-and-me-singing play date in one of the rooms—a lot of high-end strollers parked outside, and “Up-up-up-up-up-down-down-down” wafting out the windows to the tune of “Greensleeves”. I expect there was appropriate movement attendant upon that.

Anyhow, it really was a great find, and right at the back door, so to speak, of Sand Hill Road, which is your basic Via de los Venture Capitalists.

Then off to the Church of the Nativity. I fired up my smartphone to find the address and for the very first time since I got it (in April), I noticed the little microphone jobber in the boot-up screen search box.

And when I tapped on it, ditto, for the first time, the little hint in the search box.

  

Well, “Okay, Google” and “Church of the Nativity” got me the one in Bethlehem, so I tried again: “Church of the Nativity Menlo Park”. And blow me if it didn’t come up!

This is a great thing—so great, I’m almost able to ignore the “Ok” instead of “Okay”, or even “OK”. Would it really have cost them so much to make it two capital letters? Do they not realize that “Ok” is essentially a single syllable sounding kind of like the tree?

No, no—I said I’d let it pass, and I will. But I’m going to have fun searching for just about everything now.

Oh—and the Church of the Nativity was very nice, too.

So I’m grateful for a recommendation that resulted in two new places and a whole new world.