My plan was to take the self guided Cal Berkeley campus sustainability tour. This tour snakes through campus visiting sites devoted to water recycling, bike repair, waste reuse, and a pollinator garden. Unfortunately, many sights are on the first floor of the student union which is only open to students.
On Expedition 13, I investigated the Blue Book vending machine there and I believe the building was open to the public (unless I somehow snuck in). Not sure why that changed. The old art gallery, which used to have lovely mosaics on the outside, is now covered up during its conversion to an electrical switch station. But it looks like the mosaics are gone. 🙁 Bechtel Hall’s green roof is also obscured by construction fences. Strawberry Creek may now have native fish in it!
Some sights really aren’t sights. Jacobs Hall has a solar array on the roof. That’s great. A new heating and cooling plant will be built underground. Super. Nothing to see here. The pollinator garden seems a bit shabby, but at this time of year most plants are dormant or certainly not flowering. There’s a rain cistern that overflows into a rain garden. Is this is? Who knows?
I strive to undertake an expedition once a week, but I don’t always. Sometimes I’m out of town or the weather isn’t cooperating. But, sometimes, what I have planned just doesn’t pan out. It’s not very interesting, or not photogenic enough. So I just skip that week.
Since the tour lead me right past it, I decided to go up in the Campanile and that saved this expedition from oblivion. On the back of the building is a bust of Lincoln, a copy of one sculpted by Gutzon Borglum, who’s famous for creating the sculptures on Mount Rushmore. Lincoln signed the Morrill Land Grant College Act of 1862, which set aside federal lands to create colleges to “benefit the agricultural and mechanical arts.” A parcel of this land became the University of California at Berkeley in 1868.
Inside, you can see one of the four machines that move the clock’s hands, and watch the gears turn once a minute. The blue and pink lighted machinery is part of the elevator. Employees couldn’t tell me why it’s disco colored. The view is terrific, even on an overcast day. This shot looks toward San Francisco and the Golden Gate Bridge. At 307 feet, this is the second-tallest bell-and-clock-tower in the world!
The original bells are over 100 years old. More were added over time. I’ll have to return sometime for a carillon concert. Short ones are played three times a day. I did hear the bells strike four o’clock. The sound is audible all over campus but it was not deafening inside the campanile.
Once I visited the campanile in the spring when the peregrine falcons were nesting on the roof. Of course, you can’t see them, but the elevator operator had a laptop open showing the live feed. In the spring of 2023, the big screen on the side of the Berkeley Art Museum was live casting the newborn fuzzballs and their parents. Pretty cool to watch!