Beniamino "Benny" Bufano

This past Wednesday was a sunny and warm end-of-summer morning for our Walking on Wednesdays group. Sixteen walkers, thirteen human and three K-9, enjoyed the walk and time together.

This week we tried something a little different. As you know, we have the objective of eventually walking every Piedmont street and we wanted to see the streets above Hampton Park. I was a little concern that the distance from the Exedra to these streets might be a little long, especially since some of the walk included the steep, uphill portion of Hampton Avenue. We decided to continue to meet at the Exedra at 10:30, so that anyone new to the group could meet us there, but if regular walkers wanted to have a shorter walk, they could meet us at Crocker Park at Crocker and Hampton at 11 :00. From there we would continue to walk up Hampton Avenue together. It was an experiment, and it turned out most of us assembled at the Exedra, but it did provide a good option for the group.

We paused at Crocker Park to assemble everyone, and pose for a group photo with the beautiful bear statue by California-based Italian American sculptor, Beniamino "Benny" Bufano, who, as you may know, is best known for his large-scale monuments that represent peace. His modernist work often features smoothly rounded animals and relatively simple shapes, and the bear in our Crocker Park is a wonderful example of his style.

From Crocker Park we walked to Hampton Park, where we inspected its beautiful new field, and then continued on up Hampton Avenue to Sandringham, Cambrian, St. James, LaSalle, Indian, Wildwood, Sheridan, Highland Avenues, and back to the Exedra. Along the way, a resident on one of the streets recognized us as " the Wednesday Walkers." We are getting famous!

We were especially pleased to welcome first time walker Angelica McClurkan on Wednesday. Angelica, her husband, and two middle school children moved this spring to Piedmont from Atlanta. They checked out San Francisco, Palo Alto, and other Bay Area cities before being told about Piedmont from a friend, and quickly decided that our city was the place for them. We are

happy to have them. We were also happy to have Barbara Widmer's new family addition, Tanner, join us. Tanner is a terrier-mix rescue dog, who was previously not well cared for, but is now getting lots of love from Barbara. Tanner was excited to be with us and the other dogs.

It was another enjoyable Walking on Wednesdays walk, exploring the streets

of our beautiful city. Hope you can be with us next Wednesday!