What is that funny noise?
A gentle tapping on the roof.
Could it be? It IS. Those girls lied, because it does, in fact,
rain in Southern California.
We’re slow as – wait for it – tar this morning but we eventually get out the door and on our way
to the world-famous La Brea Tar Pits. If
you’re like me, you’re like my mother, who always thought the tar pits were
some kind of joke (who goes to see pits full of tar?). But in fact, they are completely fascinating and
absolutely worth a visit and that is saying a lot seeing as how approximately
every second grader in the L.A. Unified School District was also there today
which did not enhance the experience.
A long time ago, in a galaxy far far away – no, wait, that
was Monday. A long time ago on planet
Earth, not quite when dinosaurs roamed but close, great pits of tar, or
asphalt, existed in what would someday be downtown Los Angeles,
California. When it rained all those
50,000 years ago, water would collect on top, and it looked like a lake in
which the likes of Mastodons and Saber-Toothed Cats and Giant Sloths could have
a nice wash and a cooling sip. But woe
to these big beasts, because as soon as they stepped in to the goo, they were
caught! And there they died, perhaps
mobbed by packs of Dire Wolves, and their skeletons sank and were preserved for
all time. As you can imagine, this
happened a lot over 50,000 years, so while the asphalt from the pits was used
by native Americans and then colonial settlers for various industrial purposes,
the bones were a kind of widely-known phenomenon, although assumed to just be
errant cows and such. The last private
owner of the land was actually drilling successfully for oil on it, but then
realized that there were fossils in them thar pits, and sensibly donated 23
acres of land to the County for preservation and excavation. These early 20th c. excavations
turned up thousands of fossils, and while work at the site has been intermittent
over the past hundred years, recent construction of a parking lot for the art
museum next door has turned up yet another source of fossil-rich deposits for
researchers to examine.
In the museum you can see the big skeletons which are
reasonably interesting but the coolest thing about the Tar Pits is the pits
themselves. You can see the bubbles
coming up out of the lake (picturesquely planted with alarmed-looking fake Mastodons),
and all around the grounds are little black patches on the glass, with
black-stained traffic cones above them proclaiming PITCH. In one protected pit, a hunk of fossil has
just been left in situ, as the tar sloooooowly bubbles around it. It just keeps coming up, and makes you realize
that you really don’t dominate this planet at all, you’re just along for the
ride and who knows what could bubble up from below at any moment.
Also, there are actual scientists working on small hunks of
deposit, carefully extracting and cleaning and classifying fossils. Verdict on the Tar Pits: no joke!
In this part of L.A. you can go from the primordial ooze to
the modern art in just a few steps because the Los Angeles County Museum of Art
(LACMA) is right next door.[1] This is a large and fascinating art museum
that kind of kills me, as art museums are wont to do, except for that great David
Hockney exhibit of 82 Portraits and 1 Still-Life. My minor melt-down does lead to an intense
family discussion over really good food-truck lunches, about how all of our
vacations are really the same (WHAT?!) and what might be done about that.[2] And here’s the point of the family
vacation: bringing us all together and
finding new levels of closeness. Or new
ways to complain, kind of the same thing.
Then comes the weirdest bit of all, the Museum of Jurassic
Technology. Fitting, you might think,
for after the Tar Pits, except that it really isn’t about stuff that happened
hundreds of millions of years ago. It
is, according to its website “an educational institution dedicated to the
advancement of knowledge and the public appreciation of the Lower
Jurassic.” So, what is the Lower
Jurassic, you ask? We’re still not
sure. It is about the scientific method,
as perhaps understood in the 19th c.
And it is about natural history, and the Muses, and humanism, and weird
collections of “rarities and curios.” It
contains, for example, decaying dice, theories about bees, and some creepy
displays about folk medicine and theories involving things like cauls and
spitting. And a story of an opera singer
who may or may not have existed but died in a town on the Amazon, and some
(actual) miniatures made out of the scales from butterfly wings. There are floral radiographs and
microminiature sculptures in needles’ eyes, and something about the first
astrophysicist in Russia (all true, says Peter, although he acknowledges that
he cannot read the letters that cover the walls). Everything is dark and half-out of focus and
kind of sepia-toned and chimes sound at odd moments. At one point a Russian wolfhound wanders
through, followed by a lady clutching a small child. The museum concludes with a gallery of
portraits of all the dogs the Russians sent into space (more than Laika!) and
what may be a movie about them but it is in Russian so who knows. There is a tea room that has a couple of
women sitting in the corner speaking Russian and a claustrophobic rooftop
garden with too-loud doves.
I could not get out of there fast enough but Bill and the
kids liked it. Freaks.
I don’t really remember a lot about the Santa Monica Pier
which we visited afterwards. But my
equilibrium is restored by dinner at an Andy Reinhardt recommendation, venerable
local chain El Cholo.[3] We are thrilled to be seated in the Louis
Zamperini booth![4] The flan in particular is 100-emoji.
I have to return to Our Fair City for a work-related event
so I’m hopping a red-eye – but not before L.A. leaves me with one gift, a drive
to the airport that is teeth-gnashingly frustrating because it takes about half
an hour to go the last half-mile.
Apparently, everyone leaves L.A. at night. It is fittingly cold when I land, whew.
So this was fun, and we saw all kinds of neat things and
nice people. But you know, we’ve got giant
sloths and Gutenberg bibles and famous people right here in Cambridge,
Massachusetts,[5]
so who needs L.A. and its sun and pools and good food. We don’t have Space Mountain or Dole Whip,
though.
[1]
I’m quickly corrected: this is not primordial ooze, says Peter, it is
asphalt. Right, but primordial ooze is
way more fun to say and the tar is
kind of oozy.
[2]
To hell with you, ungrateful spawn.
We’ll send one to college and the other can go to hockey camp, and we
adults can continue with our exploration of great capitals of the world.
[3]
There is always an Andy Reinhardt recommendation on a trip. Always.
Even in places he’s never been.
[4]
We assumed everyone knew who Louis Zamperini was. Unbroken, ring a bell?
[5]
Bill notes that he saw not one celebrity in L.A., then returned and went to
Star Market and there was Elizabeth Warren.
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