| Submitted by: Evelyn C. LeeperUnited States |
| Submission Date: 14 February 2005 |
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) One company wrote to someone requesting a catalog: 'We have sent over a hundred catalogs to your address. We don't know what you are doing with them, but we are not sending any more.'
We spent two hours at the museum, finishing about 2:15 PM. We drove around Los Alamos a bit, but none of the buildings (except Fuller Lodge) seemed to date from before the 1950s. The Los Alamos County Historical Museum was in Fuller Lodge, one of the buildings from the Ranch School that occupied Los Alamos before the government evicted them in January 1943. (The reason the government picked New Mexico is reflected in Saberhagen's observation as cited on page 8.) Among the its graduates the school numbers Gore Vidal and Bill Veeck. The museum covered more of the history of the area than just the atomic bomb project, though that figured heavily in the exhibits and indeed in the area. For example, they had sample Burma Shave signs that said, 'We don't know / How to split an atom / But as for whiskers / Let us at 'em.' There was also a lot of wartime memorabilia: ration books and such. And they had the letter Oppenheimer's secretary wrote asking for a nail for him to hang his hat on, and the followup letter thanking them for the nice coat rack but saying 'Oppie' still wanted his nail.
This took about an hour, then we returned to Santa Fe, mostly in the rain. But when it cleared we could see that what had been rain in Santa Fe was snow up in the mountains, the first snow of the year.
We stopped by Mail Boxes, Etc., to ship home most of the books we had bought. Alas, this only encouraged us to buy more. In fact, we immediately went into a Hastings in the same shopping center and bought a book of Western writing. Hastings is one of a new breed of store that carries books, music (cassettes and CDs), and videos--a sort of all-purpose entertainment store. We had dinner at the Red Cloud Cafe; I had vegetarian tamales. Back home you usually can't get tamales and if you do, they're always beef. Here, you have a whole variety.
Mileage today: 124 miles.
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After the usual J.B.'s breakfast we drove in to the Plaza area of Santa Fe, arriving way too early for most of what we wanted to do. It was 8:30 AM and the museums opened at 10 AM, so we walked around the area. The Loretto Church with its 'miraculous staircase' was open, but now it's run by Best Western and charges $1 admission. The story is that after the church was finished, they discovered that they hadn't built a stairway to the choir loft. An itinerant carpenter showed up and with only rudimentary tools built a spiral staircase that goes through two 360-degree turns with no center support and wooden pegs instead of nails.
About 9 AM some of the stores around the Plaza opened so we had a chance to go in instead of just looking at high-priced merchandise through the windows. There were also vendors setting up in front of the Palace of the Governors (the historical museum). This is a somewhat controversial program. The museum licenses the vendors and insists their goods be highquality and made by them personally, including hand-grinding of the paints for the pottery. The controversial point is that they also insist the vendors be American Indians, and there have been (and probably still are) court cases about whether it is legal for the museum to make this restriction.
There is a monument in the Plaza commemorating the various battles in New Mexico. One side commemorates battles against 'savage Indians,' but the word 'savage' has been chiseled out.
The Palace of the Governors opened at 10 AM. We got the $6 combination ticket good for all four state museums for two days, rather than the $3.50 single admission. There was a guided tour at 10:30 AM, so we spent a half hour looking at the exhibits before it started. They had a portrait of Father Lamy, whom Willa Cather wrote about in DEATH COMES FOR THE ARCHBISHOP. His main achievement seems to be his making the Church in New Mexico more European and less Southwestern by rebuilding churches in the European style and importing European priests. This reminded me of the missionaries in James Michener's Hawaii. One of them has asked for more missionaries to be sent and was told that the idea had never been to keep supplying missionaries and ministers from the United States, but rather to start ordaining Hawaiians. The missionary recoiled in shock at the idea that Hawaiians would ever be ordained as ministers, and the impression the museum gives is that Father Lamy might have reacted in a similar fashion. If so, I'm not sure why he's honored for this.
One of the things on display was a bilingual ballot. New Mexico requires all ballots be printed in both English and Spanish, and one also hears more Spanish on the radio and television and sees more bilingual labels in museums. On the whole, New Mexico seems like a state that handles diversity well.
We also saw a small New Mexico flag that had been on the moon with the Apollo 11 astronauts. Since I don't think either of them was from New Mexico, I guess they took up all fifty state flags.
One peculiar item was a large copy of the state seal made entirely out of goods from a hardware store: spoons, keys, knives, etc. It was made by the owner of a major hardware store right after statehood and presented to the museum.
One of the tin candle sconces on display had a Star of David design on it, which tied in with a recent article in a Santa Fe paper about the number of people in Santa Fe with a secret Jewish background. It seems that many conversos left Spain for the relative freedom of the New World (or at least distance from the Inquisition). But they retained many of their old customs and passed these on and it is only the current generation that realizes why their family puts a fresh tablecloth on the table on Friday nights, or carves four-sided tops with a letter on each side, or dresses up on Saturday.
After the Palace of the Governors, we dropped into the Museum of Fine Arts next door but spent very little time. Three of the galleries were closed, and what remained was not the sort of art that appeals to us. There was only one Georgia O'Keeffe on display, 'Bear Lake' (1931). For someone who's practically the official state artist, she's awfully hard to find outside of books and appointment calendars.
We drove to the Museum of International Folk Art by way of the state capitol, built in the shape of the Zia sun symbol that is also the state's symbol: a circle with short rays coming out at north, south, east, and west. The capitol is just one of the many things that sets Santa Fe apart. It's the oldest state capital, established in 1610 as a provincial capital. It's the highest state capital, at 7000 feet. It's the only state capital with neither commercial jet nor train service. And it has its 1957 Historical Zoning Ordinance, which requires that all new buildings in Santa Fe follow strict regulations to make them look like traditional pueblo structures. The result is that no building in Santa Fe is higher than three stories and there are few of these, so Santa Fe has no skyline.
The Museum of International Folk Art is the third of the New Mexico state museums we visited. Its core collection is the Girard Collection of international folk art and toys, a collection so huge that it intimidates the would-be viewer. It's impossible to take it all in, as there are literally thousands of pieces. For example, there are a half dozen miniature towns, each with buildings, vehicles, objects, and population. Any one of them would take a while to appreciate fully, yet there is so much more that beckons. Eventually we had to give up on trying to see it all. They also had a temporary exhibit on folk art from Turkey and another of Hispanic folk art.
We spent about an hour and a half in this museum, then at 2 PM walked across the parking lot to the last of the New Mexico state museums, the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture. This was a good museum, but by now we had seen so many similar museums and displays that it was hard to find this one interesting. We stopped at the snack bar for some authentic food (pretty good, actually) and spent some time talking to the volunteer in the Living Traditions center, a sort of 'hands-on' area mostly for children, but with things for adults as well.
At 3 PM we left Santa Fe and started for Albuquerque. Rather than take the interstate we decided to follow the 'Turquoise Trail,' a more scenic route. This is actually NM 14, which passes east of the Sandia Mountains (the interstate passes west). On the east side are scenic hills and 'ghost towns.' One example of the latter is Madrid (pronounced MAH-drid), which used to be a real ghost town until lots of artists moved in and set up shops and galleries. There are still some of the old houses abandoned at the edges of town, and the town is picturesque, but it's not a real ghost town.
About 30 miles south of Santa Fe, the Turquoise Trail turned off NM 14 onto NM 536, which climbed and wound its way up the Sandia Mountains. After about 10 miles we came to a fork in the road. The left road continued up to Sandia Crest; the right traveled down the west side to Placitas. While it might have been nice to drive to the top, there were several considerations against it. One, the road to Placitas included 8 miles of steep, winding dirt road. Two, it was another 10 miles of winding road up and then back down to this same point, as there is no road to the Crest on the west side. Three, it was almost dusk, and while that's supposed to be very beautiful from the top, driving back down these roads in the dark didn't appeal to me. The only way to avoid the dirt road would be to backtrack down to NM 14 and that would get us to Albuquerque very late. (As it was, we got the last room at the motel we wanted.) So we decided to skip the Crest this time around. (If you want to see dusk from the Crest, taking the tram up is probably a lot safer!)
So we started down the dirt road, full of potholes and ruts and scenery I couldn't really appreciate without risking becoming part of it. We did stop (briefly!) to get a picture, but the road was so curvy it wasn't possible to stop for very long. There were cars going in the other direction, reassuring us that we weren't headed for a dead end and also that, if we had a breakdown, someone would probably come along. It was sort of the grand finale to all our driving, because the remainder will be city driving in Albuquerque.
We checked into the Monterey Motel on Central Avenue (which used to be Route 66). This was the nicest place we stayed the whole trip and only about $40 a night.
Since it was so late we went to Little Anita's, a nearby chain. We should have picked this over Tortilla Flats in Santa Fe--it was much better.
Mileage today: 103 miles.
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We had a very Southwestern breakfast--a fried egg over beans with chile over that and a tortilla on the side. This was at a small place called Garcia's just down the road from the motel.
We began with the New Mexico Museum of Natural History, just a few blocks from the motel. A combination museum/Dynamax ticket is normally $7.35; with the AAA discount it's $6.30. (I think the museum alone is about $4.20.) This is one of the newest of the major natural history museums and had to cope with not having a lot of specimens. They solved the problem by using their imagination--and yours.
Most of the displays are in a timeline: Origins; Age of Giants; New Mexico's Seacoast; Age of Volcanos; Evolving Grasslands; Cave; New Mexico's Ice Age; and Arid Lands, Sacred Waters. Origins is about the creation of the universe, the Earth, and life, told mostly through words and pictures with some light displays to augment them. Age of Giants has a few real dinosaur bones, but is mostly artificial skeletons. New Mexico's Seacoast is one of the most elaborate displays, a full-scale model of a small section of the seacoast as it existed in New Mexico seventy million years ago or so. (The most popular unit of measure for time in these exhibits is M.Y.A.-- millions of years ago. It saves having to decide whether to label things B.C. or B.C.E.) In addition to the model (complete with the sounds one might hear), there were several interactive parts to involve the visitor. There was a sort of evolutionary pachinko, in which you track a ball through a choice tree with decision points such as 'Do you stay on land or learn to fly?' At the end you find out what animal you've become. There were also a 'bee mask' and a 'parasaurolophus mask' where you could look through the eye pieces and see what they saw, in the sense of seeing the world as a left side and a right side, with basically no forward vision or binocular vision. There was also a laser animation sequence. First you saw a (real) fossil of a small dinosaur in stone. Then a laser light drew the outline of the dinosaur, which got up, ran around, was chased by a larger dinosaur, and eventually collapsed and died, forming the shape of the fossil which then re-appeared.
Between the seacoast and the volcano was the 'Evolator.' This is a time machine which carries you through millions of years of evolution with stops along the way to look out through a viewscreen and see what the area looked like, complete with dinosaurs and early mammals. The floor moved up and down slightly to give you a feeling of motion and the whole thing seemed at least partly inspired by Dr. Who and the Tardis, including some of the special visual effects. Science fiction fans will love it!
For the Age of Volcanos, you walk through a fake volcano and see pictures and films of what it would be like in a real volcano, complete with fake steam coming from cracks in the walls. Evolving Grasslands was the least interesting, being primarily a mural showing the evolution of the horse. Cave is sort of a substitute for Carlsbad Caverns for those who can't see the real thing--probably good, but it didn't do much for us. (It is bigger than the cave at the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum: in this one you walk through, while in the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum you crawl.) New Mexico's Ice Age had more models, now of mammoths and camels and sabre-tooth tigers. There was an interactive exhibit about tooth shapes, but it was broken. The tree ring puzzle (where you figure out when a particular tree slice was cut by matching the rings against a labeled set) was fun. The final part (Arid Lands, Sacred Waters) seemed more about water conservation than natural history in the usual sense and was similar to part of the exhibit in the Arizona Museum of Science and Technology.
The Dynamax show was delayed while they fixed some problem with the theater. We were supposed to see the 10 AM show, but ended up seeing it at 11 AM instead. It was about Niagara Falls ('Niagara Falls: Man, Myth, and Magic,' I think) and had a bit too much of the myth and magic part, with legends about Indian maidens jumping in and being caught by the gods. It did cover some of the history, including the first person to go over the Falls in a barrel and survive (Annie Taylor and her cat Henry). If you've never heard of her, don't be surprised; though she hoped to achieve lasting fame by her feat, it didn't work very well. The last person to survive the Falls was a young boy whose family was boating on the Upper Niagara River when their motor failed. The father died (I believe), but the mother was pulled out above the Falls, and the boy survived because the life vest he was wearing buoyed him up enough to carry him over the rocks instead of onto them. (The fact that he was a boy rather than a full-grown adult helped as well.) There are two lessons to be learned from this: always wear a lifevest when boating, and don't go boating on the Upper Niagara River.
There were also a couple of notices in the museum that I didn't quite understand, which said something like, 'Out of respect for our Indian visitors, we want to tell you that there is the skeleton of a horned owl in this exhibit' or, 'Out of respect for our Indian visitors, we want to tell you that there are two horned owls in this exhibit.' I assume the horned owl has some sort of taboo associated with it; I'm sure someone will tell me if I'm wrong.
When we were done here we decided not to bother with the various museums on the University of New Mexico campus; we were getting museumed out. Instead we went to a movie: 1492: THE CONQUEST OF PARADISE. It was a big disappointment, but it at least kept us from getting too far behind in seeing the major film releases. We also stopped into a Bookstar, a Barnes & Noble superstore with a very good selection, but luckily we (okay, I) bought only one book.
For dinner we went to Mr. Powdrell's Barbecue (a.k.a. Powdrell's Barbecue), which came highly recommended but Mark thought only average. Still, even average barbecue is better than no barbecue.
Mileage today: 33 miles.
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This is our last real vacation day, since our flight tomorrow is at 9 AM (and it's a good thing I called to reconfirm, because the time had changed).
We had breakfast at the Village Inn and got to the Albuquerque Museum at 9 AM. This was also very near our motel, and practically across the street from the Museum of Natural History. The East Gallery of the Museum was closed, as they were changing exhibits there, but there was still plenty to see.
The main exhibit is 'Four Centuries of History' which covers (not surprisingly) the four centuries of Albuquerque's history since the Spanish arrived. This gives somewhat short shrift to the area's pre-Columbian inhabitants, but the town itself is only four centuries old, so maybe they can be forgiven. They do cover the native inhabitants as well as the Spanish and Anglo settlers, so it is not one-sided.
The art section is not a permanent exhibit, but changes from time to time. This time one of the artists featured was Luis Tapia, whose work I had liked so much in the Heard Museum.
As we left the museum (about 10:30 AM) and drove towards our next stop, we could see the tops of the Sandias shrouded in clouds. The day was on the whole fairly overcast, with drizzle on and off.
Our next stop--and final 'official' activity--was the National Atomic Museum on Kirtland Air Force Base. This was there due to the proximity of Sandia Labs, no doubt. The lobby had a temporary exhibit honoring Stanislaw Ulam, author of ADVENTURES OF A MATHEMATICIAN and inventor of the Monte Carlo technique for betting. Inside, the main display is the 'Nuclear Weapons History Display,' which covers Oak Ridge and other locations in addition to Los Alamos. We saw this in three parts, since we stopped at 11 AM to watch 'Ten Seconds That Shook the World' (and were reminded of the quote signaling Fermi's success in a controlled nuclear reaction: 'The Italian navigator has landed in the New World,' which fit it well with yesterday's film). One interesting tidbit was the fact that Los Alamos and other locations hired only illiterate janitors so there was no chance of them reading something in the trash. They talked about how destroying the German heavy-water plants set back the German effort, but it turned out that Germany had decided to go with V-2 rockets instead of working on atomic bombs; the heavy-water plants would not have helped them build an atomic bomb in any case. And here they quoted Oppenheimer as saying: 'I am become Death, shatterer of worlds' (rather than 'I am become Shiva, destroyer of worlds'); I wonder which is right. The film, being from 1963, was somewhat dated. In fact, it's 50% older now than the atomic bomb was when the film was made.
We also saw another short film about the B-52, not nearly as interesting. (This was the other break in seeing the display.)
While we were here we met another couple. The husband has a company that designs museum exhibits and was on a working visit to the area to help update some of the exhibits here and at some other museums. And the wife's family is from Hiroshima, though they lived on the far side of the mountain and so weren't killed by the bomb.
And finally we walked around the outdoor exhibits (planes and rockets); by now the rain had pretty much stopped.
Since it was only 2 PM, we did what Leepers always do when they have spare time--we went to some bookstores and then another movie! (BOB ROBERTS, which I liked more than Mark did.)
Dinner was at the Monte Vista Fire House (it used to be a fire house; now it's a restaurant). I had Grilled Salmon with Wasabi Beurre Sauce and Wild Rice and Mushroom Pancakes; Mark had Honey-Glazed Duck.
All that was left now were the dregs of the trip: the final fill-up of the gas tank, checking out of the motel (as the office wouldn't be open when we left the next morning), etc.
Mileage today: 22 miles.
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True to form, we had problems. All we had to do was find the airport, but the road the map showed to the airport was closed and we ended up on the interstate past the airport. Eventually we got off, turned around, and stumbled around on side roads until we found the way. (What town doesn't have directional signs to the airport?!)
We returned the car, with 4433 miles on it (it had 10 when we started), and caught our plane with no problems. We made our connection in St. Louis and got to Newark, where our friends picked us up. And then we got home.
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| Copyright © - "Evelyn C. Leeper" |
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