Los Angeles

I'm back and, as Delta is my witness, I will NEVER take a red-eye flight again. I left LA at 11:55 pm and arrived in Atlanta at 7:30 am. And no, that doesn't mean that I had 7 1/2 hours of sleep. It means I had 4 1/2 hours of constantly interrupted light sleep, and I still feel drugged. Blechhhh...

But we did have a great time, and we had sort of a whirlwind tour of sights. The most unusual was this huge rock at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. It was paid for by donations and cost about 10 million dollars. I'm not sure how a museum gets patrons to donate for a rock but donate they did and this is the result. It's fun to stand under it....really! But we had a 2.2 earthquake our first day in LA and I did wonder a little how this rock would fare in a large earthquake. It's considered by the sculptor to be an art installation. That is accurate, I suppose. We, art critics that we are, decided that it doesn't qualify as sculpture since the only part carved away was on the bottom in order to make one side of it fit squarely on the brace. A very strong brace, I hope.
I love the palm trees, all planted in a row.
And the collection of old street lights, all installed in rows.
A strange shoe in a shop window.
Oil bubbling up on land near the La Brea tarpits.
Oil near the tarpits that has somehow formed a cone.
The heat shield from one of the re-entry capsules; all of the streaks are from the extreme heat experienced during re-entry through the earth's atmosphere.

This is the Gamble House, designed and built in 1908 by Charles and Henry Greene, famous during the American Arts and Crafts period. It is spectacular. The house, both inside and out, is almost entirely wood. The heir who was the last of the Gambles to own the house put it on the market in the 60's, but when she heard prospective buyers discuss painting the entire interior white in order to make the house brighter, she changed her mind and donated it to Pasadena and USC.

Below is a part of the Berlin Wall. It is covered with art, both official and the usual LA street art.
We also went to the Huntington Library, which is so much more than the library I had expected. It comprises an art museum, over 125 acres of gardens, a library (we saw an original Gutenberg Bible), and a research facility. It merits a return trip because in the time we had, we could only see a small portion of what is there. (So watch out, Sarah and Ben!)

But of course, the best part of the trip was spending time with Sarah and Ben. They were enthusiastic and generous hosts. I did whine a bit about not getting to the ocean, but Good Golly Miss Molly, we saw almost everything else...and...we'll be back.

Now, I just need to get them to visit here so I can return the great hospitality.

And Now For Something Completely Different

Last year when I went to LA to visit younger daughter, I had a list of things I wanted to do and see. At the top of the list, of course, was to go to the ocean. I am always happiest at the edge of a large body of salt water. Sigh…..

The second thing on my list was to see the La Brea tarpits. I imagined black, goopy tar, as far as the eye could see. My daughter, when I once asked her if she had seen them, said that she had passed them on her way to a job site. I thought that she must have gone very far from downtown LA to have passed the huge tarpits.

So here are the La Brea tarpits.
Yup. That’s them…
That’s all she wrote.

A very small pond with sculptures of a mastodon family about to go to their doom, sinking into the tar. Sniff…sniff….so sad. And note the soda can on the ground. Tourists chuck all sorts of things over the fence, apparently hoping to see them sink into the tar. Nice...

There is a museum next to the tar pond. Inside is a history of the discovery/exploration of the tarpits, and hundreds – really hundreds - of skeletons of animals, some now extinct, found in the tarpits.
The tarpits used to be huge, but now most of it is covered by Los Angeles itself. Los Angeles is built over the tarpits. I wouldn’t have thought that was possible; how do they keep buildings, really heavy buildings, from sinking in the tar? I don’t know, but apparently the architects and engineers do. My daughter says that in some parking lots that are beneath the buildings, tar seeps up through the concrete.

The funny thing (to me – I have a weird sense of humor) was the glass wall through which we observed archaeologists/scientists at work. They sit, facing the tourists, at tables right against the glass wall, and work at scraping/studying/reassembling the bones of the animals. In front of each person is a sign stating his title and what he does. I expected a Please Do Not Tap on the Glass sign. (There wasn’t one.)

So that’s it, the great La Brea tarpits. Next time you’re in LA, go check them out. Just don’t tap on the glass..... or try to feed the scientists.