Good morning.
Kathy and I
spent a few days in southern California (February 12-20), in Los Angeles and
San Diego. There were definite high
points and some low points. A few notes
and places to put on your "to visit" list if you're in the area.
On several
occasions I have drawn a distinction between a trip and a vacation. This distinction may exist only in my mind,
but there it is. A vacation is when you
relax, read, walk, poke around, but have no set itinerary and make no big
plans. A trip is when you travel to
places to see and do as much as your energy and time allows; a trip tends not
to be as relaxing as a vacation. When
Kathy and I have taken a brief break from winter, often to Florida, that is a
vacation. Be warm, see green, do
little. That was the plan for
California. Things did not go according
to plan, primarily because of the weather and because Kathy had never been to
Los Angeles and San Diego (other than to fly through them en route to somewhere
else). So we planned things to do for
most of the trip. To be more accurate,
Kathy planned things to do and I was happy to go along with her plans. So we had more of a trip than a vacation.
On the way from the Los Angeles
airport (LAX) to my second cousin Pam's (who was kind enough to house us in LA),
we stopped in Venice Beach for lunch. An
interesting cultural experience. We ate
on the roof of a beachfront hotel, all of which was set up for drinking and
eating. We were amused that all along
the perimeter as well as the interior were propane gas heaters; there must have
been 50 of them. They must cost a
fortune to maintain and operate, and they struck us as rather silly when there
is a constant breeze off the ocean that surely blows all the heat up and away.
One high
point of the visit was staying with Pam.
I had not seen her for a dozen years or more. She wins one of our infrequent "greatest
host" awards: she was a gracious
host, provided wonderful food (she loves to cook and she's outstanding at it),
and we had fun conversations with her.
Before she retired, Pam was an assistant LA County coroner, and with
prompting from us, she regaled us with some extraordinary stories. We were also pleased to see her siblings and
their spouses and hear what's going on in their lives. What was also a delight was meeting a
(second) cousin (once removed), a guy I looked up after my cousin Mae
died. I collected from Mae's belongings a
number of family photographs, some from the late 19th century, that
were of Mae's family members (Mae and her husband had no children, but Mae had
sisters who did). Rather than throw them
away—the archivist in me wouldn't allow that—I looked up her nieces and nephews
and found a great-nephew who was excited about the photos and letters. He joined us (along with Pam and her siblings
and spouses) for dinner one night and later expressed appreciation for the
chance to meet cousins he had never known existed (including Pam and
siblings—we were all cousins).
The places
we most enjoyed visiting in Los Angeles were the Getty (the new one) and the
Huntington (art museum, library, and gardens).
The Getty collection is marvelous; so is the facility itself, nestled in
the hills. I'm sure it would be a very
pleasant place to visit on a sunny, warm day.
Unfortunately, the day we were there it was windy, overcast, raining,
and cold (for LA). The restaurant offers
superb food (it's pricey).
The single
most interesting episode of the trip was a talk that we stumbled on by
accident. One of the pieces in the
Huntington collection is Gainsborough's "Blue Boy," which even those
who have no interest in painting have certainly seen. The painting is nearly 250 years old and is
undergoing conservation. Part of the
process is public: the conservator had
the painting on an easel and under lights in one of the larger galleries and
was working with Q-tip swabs, her back to us. There is also a set of interactive cases
explaining the process. When the conservator
had completed her work for the day, she gave a talk to those of us in the
gallery (perhaps 20 people). She
described the process she is going through to examine the painting (x-rays,
ultraviolet light, an MRI-equivalent) and to remove varnish and dirt
accumulated over time and from previous efforts at conservation. She uses a high-powered surgical microscope
(a machine about the size of a double-door refrigerator, differently shaped) to
scrutinize the condition of the paint, and explained how she fills in where
paint has fallen away and the different strengths of the varnish removers and
chemicals she uses. The goal is to keep
as much of Gainsborough's original paint as possible (which is most of it), so
in essence she goes over the painting stroke by stroke, flake by flake.
What she's
learned was interesting as well. It was
clearly a used canvas; there's a painting of a man on it, underneath the Blue
Boy, which Gainsborough had started but painted over. There was also originally a dog sitting at the
boy's feet, but Gainsborough changed his mind and painted it out of the
picture. (You can see the dog in the
x-ray, above.) The conservator
speculated that he had in mind the use of the Blue Boy as an example of his
portraiture to prospective clients, and they would be less impressed if there
were a dog distracting from the portrait.
(The dog is still there, of course, under the paint, but they will leave
it covered up because that was Gainsborough's intent.)
The entire
process of conservation and restoration of this one painting will take her over
a year. I asked her about the other
paintings in that particular gallery (of which there were 12 or 15 large
portraits dating from the 18th and 19th centuries, to say
nothing of the other galleries in the building and on the grounds): would they need work as well? She laughed and said she would not be bored
(because yes, many of them do). She is
the only conservator at the Huntington; she told us that the Getty and the LA
Museum of Art also have conservators working on their collections.
One of the
members of the crowd asked her what training she had had for the position. She told us it was art, art history, and
chemistry. She recalled that when she
enrolled in the chemistry class, composed almost exclusively of pre-med
students, the instructor had said to her, "honey, you're in the wrong
class if you're an art history major."
Needless to say, she stayed in the class.
Unfortunately,
we ran out of time at the Huntington, after the garden walk and the
conservation talk, but we did get to the library. Amazing volumes on display: a Gutenberg bible, an original of Audubon's
book of bird paintings, a Shakespeare First Folio, and a Beowulf, among many
others. Along with thousands of other
books on shelves. The displayed volumes
included explanations and related books/documents that were interestingly
instructive. I wish we could have stayed
longer.
I have
mixed emotions about both the Getty and the Huntington. Great fortunes built great collections, but
often those fortunes were built on the backs of people who labored for little
while the owners made millions.
Huntington (nephew of Collis Huntington, the railroad baron) made his
money in railroads and real estate; I will give him credit in that he and his
wife set up a trust that donated their entire estate and collections to a
non-profit institution to serve the public.
Although
I'm not that big a fan of natural history museums, the Natural History Museum
of Los Angeles County was well worth the visit, and we only took it in because
Pam's brother-in-law recommended it. We
thanked him later. What was of
particular interest to me was the large collection of gems and minerals the
museum had on display; I had no idea there were so many different minerals and
rocks, many with very strange names.
Given that I just inherited a collection of minerals and rocks from Mae,
I was impressed with how much I did not know about them—and still don't. (The museum also had one of the best-organized
and clearly-explained exhibits of dinosaur skeletons I have ever seen.)
Another
recommendation we were glad we received, from my friend Jane Phillips, was to
visit Birch Aquarium at the Scripps Institute of Oceanography at the University
of California, San Diego. Not a lot to
say about it, but the collection of sea creatures is fascinating and makes the
Aquarium well worth a visit. I wouldn't
usually go out of my way to visit an aquarium, but we very much enjoyed the
time there. Some critters there I never
dreamt existed!
In San
Diego we stayed in an Airbnb near the ocean, although it was cool enough all
the time we were there that the beach held no allure. We had dinner with a first cousin (once
removed) and her husband and their two boys and a nephew living with them, all
three boys about Elliott's age and all three my first cousins (twice
removed). Linda and David were wonderful
hosts, and we spent the next (chilly) day with them and two of the three boys
at the San Diego zoo. The three boys
were amused at me trying to explain how I was related to them. The "cousins removed" concept is
hard to explain!
We enjoyed
the time with Linda and David and the boys, but we've decided we just don't
need to do zoos any longer. The meerkats
were cute, but the big cats were pacing and one of the polar bears was neurotic
(he/she was swimming/diving in the same circle the entire time we were at the
zoo, so much that his/her paws had made marks in the rocks where they
landed). It appeared to us that some of
the quarters for the animals and birds are, by modern zoo standards, too small. Our views are clearly in the minority,
however, as the zoo was packed even on a relatively cool and somewhat overcast
day (at $56 for the day for adults). My
cousin was kind enough to get us free passes, fortunately!
We took the
cable car ride in and over the zoo. My
stomach does not like cable cars. I look
up and see my life hanging on one steel cable that could, at any time,
snap. And surely it will snap when I am
in one of the cable cars. So I try to
look pleasant and take in the scenery while my stomach is doing flip-flops and all
the while I'm trying to figure out where I'd land when the cable snaps. Of course nothing happened—although we did
read in the news the next day that a cable car system at SeaWorld (in San
Diego) had mechanical failure and some patrons were in the cars for five hours;
they had to be lifted out by cherry picker.
A place to
put on your list in San Diego is Balboa Park.
It's a wonderful collection of museums and gardens and, like the Getty,
had an excellent restaurant besides. A
list, which you can skim: Mingei
International Museum, Museum of Photographic Arts, San Diego Air & Space
Museum, San Diego Automotive Museum, San Diego History Center, San Diego
Mineral and Gem Society, San Diego Model Railroad Museum, San Diego Museum of
Man, San Diego Natural History Museum, The San Diego Museum of Art, and Timken
Museum of Art. There's also a large
zoological building with a lot of plants, which we visited. The park is spacious, well-designed (with a
different vista around every corner), and the buildings date mostly from
expositions in 1915-16 and 1935-36. It's
more than a day's visit, but that's all we had.
The Timken is a small art museum, the only free one on the grounds
(admission to the park and all but one of the gardens is free); it has a nifty
little collection (maybe 50 oils?) for people who want to glance at (mostly
European) art of the last four centuries—and not see any more. If you want more art, you either buy the
1-day pass to all the museums or pay whatever the charge is for the San Diego
Museum of Art. We wished we had more
time there; we didn't get to many of the museums.
Also part
of the park is an area where local artists of many different media do and sell
their work. Of course we purchased a few
things; Kathy bought a necklace (we won't talk about carrying coals to
Newcastle) but, more important, we got two small flamingo prints! Those who have visited our house know the
significance of that purchase. (We also
got wonderful photos of flamingos at the San Diego Zoo, but Kathy's not as
excited about printing and hanging them as she is about the artist's prints.)
The low
points of our trip were, simply put, traffic and weather. As for the first, I could never live in LA
because I am allergic to traffic congestion.
There is much of it in LA. When
added to the fact that the metro area is so spread out, getting from one place
to another means a lot of time looking through your windshield. When we had dinner at Pam's sister's place,
we had gone first to the Getty (which took over an hour), then an hour from the
Getty to dinner, and then (only) 35 minutes to get back to Pam's. The two other cousins at that dinner each had
an hour drive home. Likewise when we
went to Griffith Park and Griffith Observatory, it was over an hour drive to
get there and an hour and 45 minutes to get back (in a traffic jam on the
freeway). Worst, we spent four hours
driving to and from Malibu and Topanga State Park; the freeways had
stop-and-start traffic on a Saturday. We
spent 2 ½ hours at lunch and walking in the park versus 4 hours of
driving. That is a bad ratio.
I spent
more time driving in LA in 5 days than I've spent in the preceding 5
months. Maybe that's an exaggeration,
but not by much. With all due respect to
my friends and relatives in LA, I will take our weather over their traffic.
I have to
confess, too, that I'm just not comfortable driving on a freeway with 7-8 lanes
in each direction and (when it's not congested) cars going 65-70 MPH and not far
apart from one another. It's the
"small-town" bumpkin in me, I guess. I tended to leave a lot more space between me
and the car ahead of me—which simply provided an opportunity for other drivers
to dart in.
As for the
second, the weather, one can hardly blame it on anyone, but it did not give us
a warm winter break from Minnesota. I am
not sure the temperature ever got to 60° and much of the time it was windy and
overcast and drizzling or raining. We
had a few period of sun, or at least part sun, so we did get to walk in the
Huntington gardens and the days at the zoo and Balboa Park were fine (albeit
cool). There were several times,
however, when I was colder in southern California than I would have been at
home in the snow and cold. Even when I
had four layers on—undershirt, shirt, fleece, and windbreaker—I was
chilly. On several occasions I put the
liner back in my windbreaker, making it the winter jacket I wear when it's
10-20 degrees (and the one I wore to the airport when we left). It was mostly when I had the lining in that I
was not cold. So there's no guarantee of
a warm winter break in southern California this early in the year.
That's it.
Warmly (now that I'm home),
Gary
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