11.21.11
Posted in Anything goes, Historical Trivia, History, Playing the Tourist, museums at 11:59 pm by Administrator
Before I get too lazy, I thought I’d start to share some of the pictures we took while at Mexico City. Here’s a pic near our hotel on the Avenue Reforma.
Brian and I were taking a walk to look for a place to exchange currency. The rate we found was 12.15 Mexican pesos to 1 U.S. dollar. The exchange rate was better at the currency exchange along the street than at the hotel or the LAX airport. Oh, one other thing, I found that it could actually get a bit chilly in Mexico City. I never really thought of Mexico being cold.
After exchanging a little cash, Brian and I headed over to the Anthropological Museum. Here’s a pic of the front of the museum.
This museum cost about $5 U.S. or $51 Mexican pesos per person. It was a very good museum, full of artifacts that were well laid out and separated by groups like the Mayans, Aztecs, Olmecs,etc. Here’s an example of part of the Aztec exhibit.
The round stone mounted against the back wall is an Aztec calendar. The cylindrical stone laying between me and the Aztec calendar is believed to be a sort of alter for human sacrifices. The center hole is believed to be where the heart was placed during or after the sacrifice. Yikes! The carvings along the sides of the stone seem to depict the sacrificial ceremony that takes place on that alter.
Here’s Brian next to another carving. If memory serves me correctly, this is part of the exhibit for Teotihuacan. At least I’m pretty sure that right outside to the left of Brian was the miniature layout of the Teotihuacan pyramids.
We took loads of pictures so that we could continue to enjoy them at home. They were also good for art inspiration. I’ve known that colors were used back in those times, but like the Italian villas, I didn’t realize how colorful the original structures were. For instance, here’s a replica of what some of the outer walls looked like. Along the side was a sort of freeze made of ceramic, and the colorful paintings looked like a sort of fresco.
Unfortunately we were only able to spend the last half of the day at the museum. You could easily spend the whole day or more there because it was really loaded with so many artifacts. But the museum closed at 6PM, so we had to get moving. There were lots of vendors just outside of the museum, and also some flying pole men dancers. Here’s a pic of them as they were slowly repelling down.
I believe this dance has something to do with Mayan mythology of the creation of the world. They’re supposed to be birdmen (the diety associated with this dance is a bird), and one of the men plays a flute as they gradually spin around and around until they slowly reach the ground.
That evening Brian and I hopped on a local bus to get back to the hotel. That was much cheaper than taking a taxi. The bus ride only cost $4.5 pesos each compared to us paying about $20 U.S. dollars taking a taxi from the airport to the hotel. Granted that was farther, but still, a taxi would have cost us much more. $4.5 pesos is just under $0.50 U.S.
The next day we joined a tour that took us to The Guadalupe Shrine and the ruins of Teotihuacan. I’ll try to sort through some of those pics and share those later. Aside from being wiped out from traveling and the slight time change (Mexico is two hours ahead of California time), our trip to Mexico was quite nice. Definitely a nice quick get away.
Marlakins
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10.30.11
Posted in Anything goes, Historical Trivia, Playing the Tourist, gardening, hobbies, museums at 9:16 am by Administrator
On Friday my boys and I visited the Getty Villa Museum in Malibu.
Wow, I would love to have a courtyard like that! But alas, only in my dreams, heheheh. Actually, this was my first time back at the Getty Villa since it’s reconstruction. The first time I had gone to the Getty Villa was during my high school days way before the Getty Center opened in Los Angeles. For anyone visiting Los Angeles, this is definitely one of the museums that should be on your list to visit. The Getty Villa was constructed as a replica of the Villa Dei Papiri for the purpose of housing J. Paul Getty’s art collection. The Villa was also intended to give the visitor the feeling of what it was like to walk in the villas back in it’s day and get a feeling of what it must have felt like to be in ancient Italy. It’s really a lovely place to visit full of history and art. Not only is the art collection engaging, but so is the architecture. Our docent told us that the Romans were obsessed with math and right angels and such, so a lot of that is seen in their architecture. This picture is an example.
According to our docent, the Romans were very practical, so all of their construction had dual function. That is, nothing was created solely for aesthetics, but also for functionality or special meaning. The gardens were also designed to grow plenty of herbs as was believed was done back in ancient Italy. The garden is impeccable. I even saw the most perfect pomegranate tree there. Other pomegranate trees I’ve seen have usually been unkempt and wild looking. The one in the Getty garden looked perfectly pruned. The picture doesn’t seem to do it justice. I found it to be very striking in person.
As with all museums, there is even a nice little gift shop. I always get sucked into those, heheheh. I found that the Getty Villa also has live stage performances. I’ll have to look into those and see when they do them and how to get in. I’m not sure, but I was under the impression some were performed in the amphitheater just in front of the villa. For anyone who loves art and architecture, you can easily spend the whole day there. Not only are there art works that you’d normally expect like pottery and sculptures, they had other things like this mummy.
I didn’t realize that the Italians did this back as early as the 1400’s (I think that’s about the date of this). I’ve been to Italy years ago and even visited some of their catacombs, but maybe I wasn’t paying attention if they mentioned these. The ritual was changed from the Egyptians, but there are some similarities, but also some differences like the face painting on the head of the mummy. Apparently, that painting was supposed to be what the deceased looked like.
I’m a sucker for art or most any craft, so I love to get ideas in places like this. For instance, one of my interests have been to learn to tole paint, so these murals caught my eye as I would love to learn how to paint these floral curly cues.
I love the floral vines along the column, pedestal, and below the window. Just before I went to the Philippines, I picked up some paint and paint brushes to try to learn how to do these as well as flowers. Have not gotten back to it since I’ve returned, wah. The other hobby that I’ve wanted to dabble in is mosaics. I purchase a book on this as well as checked some out from the library, so the Getty mosaics were also a great interest to me.
I like the idea of the shells as well. I’m thinking maybe I can try a small scale project like a flower pot for starters. The Getty mosaics definitely serve as a source of inspiration if not only for admiration of Italian creativity and skill, but for aspiring artists. We took a lot more pictures (I just love museums that allow picture taking), but there is just too much to share on a small blog like this. Suffice it to say that I highly recommend visiting the Getty Villa. For art lovers, it would definitely make for a very nice day.
Marlakins
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06.12.10
Posted in Playing the Tourist, gardening, hobbies, knitting and crocheting, museums at 8:34 pm by Administrator
Today I was able to make a quick trip down to the Huntington Library in San Marino. I really love that place, so it was a shame that I was only able to spend a couple hours there. Usually whenever I go there I have to visit their cactus garden (they have the best collection that I know of here), but today I didn’t have time. Instead I bee-lined it to the herb garden because they were having a special exhibit which featured natural dyes for yarns. Oh yeah! But first. . . I had to wend my way through their rose garden.
The only other rose garden that I know of that is comparable to this one is the one Brian and I visited during our trip to London. I forget the name right now, but I sure took a lot of pictures there! Maybe some time I’ll upload some of my rose shots.
So not far from here was my intended destination–the herb garden. Towards the back perimeter they had tables and charts set up with dying information, including some samples and a small demonstration.
This woman was very nice and helpful (actually all the women there were!) Not only did she give me lots of information, but I learned something that really made me happy–one doesn’t have to use mordants to dye yarns! Woo hoo! Mordants have been one of the things that have kept me from taking the dying plunge. I didn’t want to use any toxic chemicals, and now learning that I don’t even need to use a mordant and that I can use herbs right from my garden or even kitchen I can feel another hobby coming on. Granted, using a mordant is supposed to help the colors hold fast and fix more brightly, but I’m not that picky. Here’s a chart with samples this woman had on display that her son made back in 1977. The colors, while faded a bit, still held well enough for my taste.
There were also other fiber addicts there demonstrating their talents like this woman spinning yarn.
Another woman was sorting through some fleece. Again, I was able to learn more information about fleece from her, which is good to know since I still have my fleece to work on that I got from my trip to the Isle of Man.
There were also women working on different types of looms. This is a small rectangular loom by which one can make small woven pieces to sew together.
Apparently there are quite a few different shapes used for weaving. I was shown one that I’ve never seen before–a triangular loom.
I do have a more complicated loom that Brian bought me years ago, which I have still never used. . . I guess I just look at all that threading that needs to be done before weaving, and I just can’t seem to get myself to do it. Or maybe it’s really that I’ve been too lazy to figure it all out. But when I saw this knitter’s loom, it looked very simple and something that might be a good starting point for me.
Oh yeah, now that I could see myself dabbling in. This particular loom is called the knitter’s loom by Ashford. The woman explained to me that Japanese kimonos were originally made in strips 14″ wide and then sewn together, thus explaining some of their striped patterns. I could see trying this! Look like fun to me, and yes, I have plenty of scrap yarns to test it all out, too.
By this time I had already spent about 1 1/2 hours here, and still wanted to visit the Chinese garden Matty told me he wanted to see. So off we zoomed back through the garden.
This path lead down to the Japanese garden first.
Then we veered off to the Chinese garden.
And another shot.
Gorgeous! I really love the Huntington Library gardens! I could easily spend the whole day there, but alas I didn’t have time. So not long after strolling through this garden, we had to head back without even a peek at the library museum, bookstore, or cactus garden, wah. . . maybe next time. I thank God that there are some really creative and talented people out there who can create such beautiful, peaceful environments, not to mention the amazing variety of nature that God has given us to tend and cultivate.
Marlakins
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05.22.10
Posted in Historical Trivia, Uncategorized, museums at 1:08 pm by Administrator
A couple weeks ago I tagged along with my oldest son, Andrew, to visit the Wende Museum. His Post War Germany class was taking a field trip to the museum. As a special bonus, the teacher said that their guide was going to open up the vault for additional viewing. Oye! When I heard that, I asked Andrew if I could tag along, heheheh. Fortunately, his teacher didn’t mind, and the icing on the cake was that the curator allowed pictures so long as I didn’t use flash. So. . . here are a few shots I took in their gallery.
Well, I suppose I jumped the gun a bit. I should probably explain what the Wende Museum is. According to their webpage, “The Los Angeles-based Wende Museum is a non-profit organization dedicated to acquiring, preserving, and enabling access to materials of Cold War-era Eastern Europe. The collection encompasses artifacts and archives from all former Warsaw Pact states and emphasizes life in the Soviet Union and East Germany. So while the curator was very informative, my lack of German vocabulary made it such that I had a hard time following along with who was who and what things were called. For instance this is a picture of a type of horn that was played in East Germany. She said that if you popped in the name of this instrument on YouTube there will be some examples of how this instrument sounds. But do I remember the name of this instrument? Sadly, no. . .
Pretty wild looking, huh? But then again, some trumpets and horns do tend to look pretty intricate, anyway.
Then there were statues and busts of people, again, the names of who I didn’t catch. . . (I’m starting to feel like an idiot here, and see that I really need to brush up on my East German history, which was pretty much nil from my school days). As the wall came down and society was being restructured, many icons, statues, and other symbols that represented their government were taken down, such as this statuette.
Okay, so I actually know who this statuette represents. . . Sergi Kirov, a prominent Bolshevik from the Soviet Union. Kirov opposed some of Stalin’s more extreme policies and was eventually shot and killed by a gunman.
The museum was quite small, but was stuffed with lots of items which included paintings, propaganda posters, sports memorabilia, etc. Here’s a picture of a sports locker complete with uniforms, medals and awards, news clippings, etc. Sports events were important in history because they help to place times and dates of events as they tend to be recorded in newspapers and share global connections through competitions.
And speaking of propaganda, there were several posters on display that were used as propaganda tools for their masses such as pictures of their “happy workers”. One particular one that was “ironic” was this one, which claimed that the West spent more money on their military than on education.
Heheheh, in light of our current military budget, I’d say that “propaganda” was more fact than otherwise. I know that billions and even trillions of U.S. dollars have been spent on our military. I read an article recently that just for the Iraq war alone the U.S. has spent about 550 billion dollars. That doesn’t include all the other military expenses we have that are likely extremely costly such as research and development, etc. I’m sure there are varying figures, but here’s one example from About.com: US Government Info
Summary of Iraq War Cost Estimates
CBO estimated the following costs for an Iraq war:
- Initial deployment of troops: $9 billion to $13 billion
- Conducting the war: $6 billion to $9 billion per month
- Returning forces to US: $5 billion to $7 billion
- Temporary occupation of Iraq: $1 billion to $4 billion per
month
The US budget for education is about $70 billion for a year. Basically, “one” war, *not* including all the other U.S. military expenses for bases all over the world and research and development, etc., currently costs more than what the U.S. spends on education. The rest of the U.S. military expenses dwarfs what we spend on education. Apparently Soviet propaganda regarding our military vs education expenditures wasn’t too far from the truth. I find that a sad commentary.
Anyway, moving right along we passed the Wende Museum’s library. There were a couple researchers in there, so we didn’t go in and bother them, heh. Instead we headed down to their vault or archive department. I had no idea what to expect, and found that it was quite large and stuffed with more Eastern Bloc artifacts.
There were all sorts of items boxed and organized such as paintings, sculptures, flags, tapestries, books, record albums, uniforms, etc. Here are some of the busts.
Documentation regarding face recognition and passport information.
Files of border forms.
And passport stamps.
Various gift items from different countries. The pearl inlaid, rectangular box in the center of the table was a gift from Gaddafi, if I recall correctly. Or was it Sadat? Oye. . .
There was so much in there, and too many pictures to add here that won’t fit. They also had pieces of the Berlin Wall on their shelves, which I did take pictures of, but since there’s a more complete section of the wall displayed near my house, I thought I’d add that picture here instead.
Okay, so I think that’s all the pics that will fit on this one post. I got a few shots of Brian on the other side of this wall trying to climb over, ha! The side I’m standing on obviously is the side that faced the West. The Eastern facing side didn’t have all the artwork on it. This portion of the wall is currently being displayed right across the street from the LACMA.
For anyone interested in Eastern Bloc history, I recommend checking out the Wende Museum in Culver City.
Marlakins
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06.19.09
Posted in Church Issues and Bible Interpretations, Historical Trivia, Playing the Tourist, Uncategorized, museums at 4:44 pm by Administrator
While writing my post yesterday of our visit to the Pompeii exhibit at the LACMA, it had dawned on me that Pompeii was a town that was contemporary with the Apostles in the Bible. I wish I had thought about that while looking at the artwork because it would have been a nice reference to think that these artifacts were the types of things that was likely commonly seen by the Apostles and even Jesus. Like a dope it only hit me while I was at home typing that Pompeii and the surrounding cities that were buried by the Vesuvius eruption around 79AD was just around the time parts of the NT were written. For instance there was a herm head of Gaius Julias Cesear and Nero, who was likely the emperor of Rome during the days Jesus walked the earth and who Paul appealed to. I believe this is the same Nero who is thought to have later killed both Peter and Paul. So in this light I wanted to continue my blog post from yesterday by putting up a few pictures we took during our trip to Turkey. These select pictures are areas from which I believe the Apostles must have visited at one point in time or at least seen similar sculptures and peoples dressed in this fashion.
Often when I think of “holy land tours,” I think of Israel. But really there are other places that are specifically mentioned in the NT such as the “seven churches of Asia” which is referred to in Revelation. These churches in Asia minor are where we know today as Turkey. One of the most popular sites is Ephesus, the location whereby Paul had written his letter to the church of the Ephesians in the NT. Here’s one of the walkways going towards the Ephesian Library.
I’m standing off to the right with with a black top, and my left hand on one of the stone carvings. Further down this path will be the Ephesus Library.
Here’s a view of what is left of the Ephesus Library.
I believe Ephesus and Alexandria were the more popular intellectual centers during their time. The Ephesians were known to be intellectuals, and the first recorded librarian was Zenodotus (284 to 260 BC) of Ephesus. However, he was librarian at the Library of Alexandria about 250 years before Jesus and the Apostles came onto the scene. I’m sure Paul must have been here at the Library at Ephesus before and walked through these roads and buildings. Here’s the sign that was posted off to the left of the Library.
I took a lot of pictures at Ephesus, but have too many to put on the blog. However, I really liked this picture of Aaron sitting at the steps of the Library at Ephesus. We were there in 2006 May, and it’s funny to see how young he looks here compared to now and it’s only been three years ago. He was about 12 in this picture and now he’s 15. What a difference three years makes on a child!
Another area we visited that was mentioned in the Bible was Colossae. In the NT Paul wrote to the church of Colosse in his epistle to the Colossians. We stayed at the Colossae Thermal Hotel and visited their hot springs at Pamukkale. The warm water apparently has a high level of calcium and thus creates their “cotton castle.” More pictures of Pamukkale can be seen at Wiki. People are allowed to walk through the hot springs as the water trickles down. We found that this is a popular vacation site for Germans and there were lots of German gals running around in the bikinis here, heheh. I didn’t wear a bikini, but I did take a walk along the springs. Here’s a pic of me with my pants slightly rolled up. All the white is the calcium deposits, and my shoes are off because there’s water streaming down which might be hard to see in this picture.
Pamukkale is very close to Colossae, so I wouldn’t be surprised if Paul had visited this place. I have no idea if it was like this back then, but who knows?
Another place Paul visited along with Barnabas was Perge or Perga as mentioned in Acts. Here’s a picture of what the ruins look like now.
The path up ahead has grooves in the walkway which is believed to have been for the chariot wheels as they passed through Perge. Many of the sculptures and statues have been removed and are now displayed in the Antalya Museum, which I’ll attach some pictures from there as well. They allowed unlimited photography, which I think is so neat. Anyway, back to Perge, they also had bath houses there. Here’s a pic of me sitting in one of the bath house areas. It can be barely seen in this picture, but I’m holding a red poppy. They were all over the place in Turkey, and I just loved them!
Okay so here’s a picture from the Antalya Museum where the sculptures from Perge were taken and are now on display. Funny how my skirt matched the wall paint, heheh. I had no idea it was going to be that color in there. . .
These were the kinds of statues that were in Perge, and what the Apostle Paul and Barnabas might have seen while walking through there. I tried to look up what the name is for those Roman skirts, and according to Hadrians.com those skirts are also known as “kilts.” Hmm. And here I thought those only referred to the Celtic kilts.
Here’s another shot of more Roman statues wearing kilts.
Out of curiosity I looked up “Roman underwear.” Just curious to know what they wore under those kilts. According to Hadrians.com they often didn’t wear underwear, yikes! Well, that’s not to say that they never wore anything underneath as Hadrians.com states that:
“The closest article of clothing to modern underwear was a pair of shorts or loincloth called a subligaculum.
“Both men and women wore the subligaculum or subligar, at least some of the time”
Well, I think I’d better start working on dinner, so will quit here for now. Come to think of it, I still have more pictures of places in Asia Minor that was mentioned in the Bible such as Pergamum. So I’ll try to continue on another post with those.
In case I don’t get back online this weekend, hope everyone has a Happy Father’s Day!
Marlakins
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06.18.09
Posted in History, Uncategorized, museums at 8:14 pm by Administrator
It’s been a while since I’ve visited the LACMA (Los Angeles County Museum of Art), but since they are currently holding a Pompeii exhibit, we decided to go take a peek. There seems to be constant construction somewhere on the LACMA grounds. Funny how in the midst of a recession, the museum seems to be “growing.” Here’s a picture of one of their new buildings. Not sure what’s in there, yet, but maybe I’ll head back there and check it out.
The Pompeii exhibit was not housed in the above building, but rather across the way. Here’s a pic of the “other” parts of the LACMA. The Pompeii exhibit was housed in the white building in the center behind the palm trees .
For anyone who hasn’t visited the LACMA, this is what part of the entrance looks like.
I found the exhibit very nice and enlightening, however, was disappointed that they did not allow photography in this exhibit. So like my post on the Terra Cotta Army exhibit at the Bowers, the few shots I was able to get were the murals of the Pompeii archaelogical sites such as these.
And this.
Like many others, I’ve always found the story of Pompeii fascinating. I remember the stories my history teacher spoke of regarding how during the excavation they found “holes” in the ground and didn’t know why they were there or what they were for. So they decided to pour plaster down the holes, which they later dug up after the plaster hardened. What they found was that the holes were where people had been buried in the ash from the Vesuvius eruption. Apparently, the people died there and then got covered in ash. Later as their bodies decomposed, cavities in the earth were left in the shapes of their bodies. When years later the achaeologists poured plaster down into those holes, the plaster filled those spaces and reformed the shapes of the bodies of the fallen. Wiki has some pictures of these plaster casts under their “rediscovery” section. Knowing that I might never visit the “real” Pompeii, I really looked forward to visiting this exhibit. This tour included an audio tour, which I thought was a nice touch. Aaron snuck a picture of me here at the very end of the tour just before I returned the headsets.
Fortunately, the boys seemed to enjoy this exhibit, too. The exhibit consisted of many sculptures, paintings, frescos, some jewelry, home furnishings like miniature figurines and ribbon glass (a type of mosaic glass). They also had many herm-heads on display including one of Gaius Julius Cesar and Nero. I always find it a treat to be able to “see” what these people may have looked like. I realize that these sculptures aren’t always very accurate to real life, but some do give their likeness. And so I found it interesting to see Nero’s herm-head, which was kinda chunckier than I had imagined he might have really been like. Well, I never thought what he might have really looked like, but still it was interesting. There was a fresco depiciting food, which my boys all noticed. I think they got a kick seeing the seafood array which included “squid.” I think that caught their eye because it showed them that squid isn’t just a Filipino food, heheheh. The placard read that the Greeks and Romans liked seafoods so they raised their own right in their villas. Some of their figurines are believed to have come from visiting other cities and used to decorated their houses much like we decorate our houses today with vacation souvenirs. It’s such a shame that they didn’t allow photography to share. That’s one thing I liked about Turkey and the London Museum–they allowed lots of photography.
Evidently, after Vesuvius erupted, Pompeii was one of the cities that got completely buried under the ash. It is believed that the city was buried about 60 feet under ash and due to that, many relics were well preserved. It’s amazing to me to think that Pompeii was buried and forgotten for about 1700 years until it was accidentally re-discovered. Fortunately, writings from people like Pliny the Elder and Pliny the Younger document much information on Pompeii and the Vesuvius eruption. Thus it is recorded that the Vesuvius eruption occurred around 79AD. That made me think of the Bible and how the NT was written around that time. Welll, actually it’s believed that the NT writings were written around 70AD, so the Vesuvuis eruption would have occurred about 10 years afterwards. But even so, that made me think that much of their living conditions would have been something the Apostles were familiar with. The people of Pompeii may have been contemporaries of the Apostles. Just that thought makes it a double shame that no pictures were allowed. . . wah. BUT now that I think of it, I do have some pictures I took in Turkey of some places where the Apostles likely visited, including Ephesus where Paul definitely walked the roads. Hmmmm. I’ll try to dig up some of my Turkey trip pictures and post that in my next post. . .
Okay, Andrew and I have a program to watch, so I’ll hunt those pictures down later and make another blog post to continue my thoughts on some areas that the Apostles must have seen during their lives here on earth. Thank God the museums in Turkey were generous enough to allow unlimited photography. . . at least I can share those.
So toodles for now.
Marlakins
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06.01.09
Posted in Historical Trivia, Uncategorized, museums at 7:22 pm by Administrator
While I’ve lived here in Los Angeles for most of my life, there’s still quite a lot that I haven’t seen here. For instance, on MOTA Day we visited, for the first time, the Southwest Museum. What a surprise it was to learn that it was actually the first museum here in Los Angeles, and I never knew. . . On the same day we also visited the Lummis House for the first time. I didn’t even know it existed until we visited Heritage Square back in March (which I still haven’t posted those pictures. . .) It was easy to know that Heritage Square existed because I would often see it from the freeway heading towards Pasadena. For a long time I had wanted to visit it and even heard of their candlelight tours during Halloween, but still took me “years” to finally visit.
Anyway, for this post I thought I’d share some of the pictures I took of the Lummis House. Oh, I guess it would help to know what the heck is the Lummis House? Well, evidently, the stone house was built and owned by Charles Fletcher Lummis back in the late 1800s. He apparently was well-connected and entertained many prominent people there. One such guest was Theodore Roosevelt who was actually one of his classmates while he attended Harvard. I found it difficult to get a good shot of the whole house, but think this is the best shot I got from the outside.
Another angle of the house can been viewed at Wikipedia. The Lummis House is also known as El Alisal.
Charles Lummis was an interesting guy. He was born in Massachusetts, somehow ended up in Ohio, then “walked” from Ohio to California where he intended to take a job with the Los Angeles Times. During that walk it is said that he learned to love the natural beauty and the cultural diversity of the Southwest. As I mentioned in my post regarding the Southwest Museum, it was Charles Lummis who founded that museum and also encouraged the restoration of the mission and adobe architecture in this area.
Charles Lummis became involved in quite a few things such as journalism, photography, and, poetry. He was not only involved with preserving the architectural landmarks in the Arroyo Seco area, but also was an Indian activist, author, and librarian. I just looked it up and found that my local library has one of his books called, Tramp Across the Continent. So I’ve got that one on hold, and hopefully I can finish reading my others books, too! I just checked out Heart of Darkness, and Fist Full of Diamonds, so we’ll see how far I get. . .
So back to the Lummis House. Inside one of the first things I liked was his piano.
Not sure if that’s a life-sized photo of him, but judging from the size of his “doors,” I am left with the impression that he wasn’t very big. I only got a chance to wander around one half of the house because the other side looked kinda crowded, and I was pressed for time. But I was impressed by his doors because they all looked different, but were all quite narrow, well, except this one.
Considering this entrance is a “double door” entrance, yeah, that is still pretty narrow.
But check out these other doors.
And this one.
And this one.
And this one. . . I asked Andrew to stand by this for a better size comparison. The other doors were comparable to this size.
Not sure why the doors were all so small and narrow, but I liked the way they were all different, and they looked like they were well-built. I liked Lummis’s style.
There was a tiny little fireplace which I would have taken had the table not been blocking a good shot of it. Plus there were lots of people milling about, so I had to take quick shots. But here’s another example of the cool stuff in the Lummis House.
Now that I’m writing this I’m thinking I should go back to see what was on the “other” side of the house!
We did take a walk around the garden. There were a lot of succulents there as well as a lot more people milling around outside. Behind there were more little sheds including a small water fountain. I can image what it was like there when he entertained, as there was quite a bit of space to walk around. Tucked away in the garden we found a nice lady working on some paper mache. She was preparing for a puppet play for the kids. We didn’t have time to stay and watch the play, but the gal was nice enough to show us some of her props and explain a little more about Charles Lummis. Here she is with one of her props of Theodore Roosevelt.
She was so friendly and pleasant that I wish we could have stayed and watched her play. She was explaining how the Lummis House actually has Charles Lummis’s ashes there. So the play was going to start out that way and tell about his life’s story. The other side of the picture of Teddy she’s holding is the shape of a “rock.” As she introduces each character, she would place the rock on a frame, so by the end of the play she would have constructed a little replica of the Lummis House. I thought that was such a clever idea.
Well that’s all for now. If I ever do go back to check out the other side of the house, I’ll try to post those pictures then. It’s kind of a funny thought to think of how many people’s houses are now open as museums. Who would have ever thought that one day hundreds of people would be traipsing through your house?
Marlakins
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05.28.09
Posted in Historical Trivia, Uncategorized, museums at 10:14 pm by Administrator
A couple weeks ago was MOTA Day (museums of the arroyo day 2009). MOTA consists of The Gamble House, Heritage Square Museum, The Los Angeles Police Historical Museum, Lummis Home and Garden, Pasadena Museum of History,and Autry’s Southwest Museum of the American Indian. My boys and I took advantage of that day and jumped in the bat mobile to finally go back and visit the Southwest Museum. For anyone who might be following along with this blog may remember we tried to visit this museum before, but it was closed. However, I did manage to post our experience of that day, which can be read here. This time, the Southwest Museum was not closed. BUT, when we got there, this is what we found. . .
And this. . .
Eh, what the. . . where’s the. . . what’s going on? Since the museum was open this time, we poked around a bit to see if there was anything to see anywhere. Nada, zip. Then we saw the sign that there was to be a tour of the Caracol Tower. Oh. . . what’s that? Let’s join the tour. . .
Okay, for an empty museum, it did turn out to be informative anyway. What our guide explained to us was that the museum was damaged in the Northridge earthquake, so had to be closed down. “But that was about 15 years ago!,” I interjected. “Yes,” replied our tour guide. The museum consisted of over 250,000 artifacts, which had to be removed one by one before any repair would could commence. Just moving the artifacts alone took about four “years!” “So, when will the museum be open so that we can see the displays?,” I asked. “Oh, about four or five more years from now. . .” Ack! What the. . .where’s the. . . what’s going on? LOL Well, yes, apparently the repair work is now almost finished. It’s only a matter of weeks, now, but remember, it took them about four years to take all the artifacts/displays out. So it only makes sense that it will now take another four years to put them all back in! What a bummer. . . BUT all is not lost. Apparently, the Southwest Museum has provided an online viewing of their artifacts which can be viewed from this link.
Another nice thing about visiting this empty museum was that the guide was informative. We learned that the Southwest Museum was the first museum in Los Angeles. It was founded by Charles Lummis in 1907. Who’s Charles Lummis? Well, he’s the handsome guy featured in black and white. . .
I’ll write more about Charles Lummis in another post. We did manage to visit the lummis House, too, but didn’t have enough time to visit the other museums. We had actually visited Heritage Square a while back during it’s open hours, but I still haven’t gotten around to uploading those pics and writing about it. Anyway, back to the Southwest Museum.
The architectural design of the museum replicated the old mission styles. Around 1895 Charles Lummis founded the Landmark Club which helped to revive the old adobe and mission style buildings.
While there were no artifacts to see, we at least were given a tour up their Caracol Tower. Evidently, it’s called the caracol tower because of the snail spiral the tower makes. Here’s a view looking down from midway up the tower.
Again at the top, the room was empty. There were scaffolding around the windows and the view looked like this from one of the windows.
Since there wasn’t much more to see up there, we headed back down and hopped back into the bat mobile and visited Charles Lummis’s house. I’ll post a little more on that on another post. So, just a reminder for anyone thinking of visiting the Southwest Museum, . . there aren’t any artifacts on display. . . There won’t be for another four or five years from now. Just thought I’d give you the heads up. . .
Marlakins
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