| Submitted by: Evelyn C. LeeperUnited States |
| Submission Date: 14 February 2005 |
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We left early to get to the Arizona State Museum when it opened at 9 AM and arrived at 8:30 AM. So we walked around the University of Arizona at Tucson campus. The palm trees remind me of Stanford, but this is more architecturally coherent, at least the part we saw. It has more of a unity of design than most schools. At the University of Massachusetts, for example, they will erect a 27-story building next to a hundred-year-old chapel, and a concrete slab building just across the way (sort of like 'The Architect's Nightmare' painting). But the University of Arizona at Tucson all fits together.
When the museum opened we went in. I have to give it a mixed review. Some displays, such as the photographic record of pot-making by potter Al Qoyawayma, were excellent, but others were extremely simplistic. Maybe for someone who knows nothing about archaeology they would be a good introduction, but if the museum feels the need to tell people that cavemen did not live at the same time as dinosaurs (and it did have this information in one of the displays), then I worry. On the second floor they did have a slightly more advanced display of Pima and Papago (Tohono O'Odham) culture. Ira Hayes was a Pima. (If you don't recognize the name, Hayes was one of the six men raising the flag over Iwo Jima in that photograph.)
After the museum, we stopped in the Arizona Bookstore. In the window they had a display of books pertaining to the collection: Perot's UNITED WE STAND, Clinton and Gore's PUTTING PEOPLE FIRST, and so on. They didn't have Gore's book on the environment, but they did have Mike Resnick's ALTERNATE PRESIDENTS. On the walls outside were posted a couple of mini-biographies from Her Story (Box 1073, Royal Oak MI 48068), including Emma Lazarus, who will be featured during the upcoming Jewish Heritage Month. (You know: 'Give me your tired,' etc.)
We then bid farewell to Tucson (after driving past the mathematics building at the university). and drove west on I-10. This took us past Picacho Peak which I'm sure has shown up in movies and photos. (Then again, maybe it's just that it looks a little like some of the rocks near Sedona and Monument Valley.) We got off I-10 at exit 211 and went 18 miles north on AZ 87 past fields of cotton to Casa Grande National Monument.
Casa Grande has the distinction of being the first archaeological site protected by the government, in 1892. It is a Hohokam site dating from about 1300. It is unique among the sites in its 'Casa Grande,' or Great House, often called America's first skyscraper. At thirty-five feet tall, it's not what most people think of as a skyscraper, but I guess it qualifies. The site shows a certain Mexican influence, though the construction methods are different. Unfortunately for archaeologists, the Hohokam cremated their dead (with objects) rather than just burying them. However, towards the end they did have some burials, so archaeologists have some information to work from.
The site reminded me of the step pyramid at Sosa in Egypt. It doesn't really look like Sosa, except that it is a large structure in the center of an open compound. Maybe it was the heat. On the other hand, there is a shield over Casa Grande--to protect the site, but it shields the tourists also.
We spent an hour at Casa Grande (11:30 AM to 12:30 PM), then returned to I-10, passing fields of cotton along the way. We then took I-10 into Phoenix and went directly to the Heard Museum. This is the premier museum of Native American art, so it was a must. The AAA discount cut the admission price from $5 each to $2.50 each. We took a guided tour with one of the volunteers which was informative, but because there were about thirty people in the group it was sometimes difficult to see what she was talking about. So we ended up going through the exhibit a second time on our own. It was a very good exhibit, particularly the kachina doll collection donated by Barry Goldwater. Did you know, for example, that kachinas are 'used' (or maybe 'applicable' is a better word) only between the winter solstice and mid-summer? Apparently they do not apply from July or August until December. (I must admit to not quite understanding the role of the kachina, and the explanations I've seen haven't helped. The museums spend a lot of time and space explaining archaeology, but they don't always explain the cultures. The again, most museums don't explain the Catholic religion when they exhibit altarpieces, so I guess maybe I'm expecting too much.)
We saw a video of an Apache girl going through the ceremony of Changing Woman, making her passage to adulthood. This I could understand--it was an Apache bat mitzvah.
Noting the long hair in many of the pictures reminded me of a recent news story in which a Navajo boy was suspended from public school for violating the dress code by having long hair. But the Navajo cut their hair only during periods of mourning. I'll be curious how this turns out--it seems a clear violation of the First Amendment to insist he cut his hair (like insisting Jewish boys not wear yarmulkes), but the courts have been a little weird at times.
There was a performance of a Yaqui Deer Dance which we watched part of. There was a lot of reading that the narrator did, but none of it explained the purpose of the dance, or what it represented. And the dancers themselves seemed uninvolved. One of the musicians was a ten-year-old boy in a dinosaur skate-boarding T-shirt. Popping bubble gum, he looked as if he wished he were anywhere but here. And the deer dancer's headpiece kept slipping off and having to be refastened. On the whole, it was not a quality experience.
The museum also had some modern Hispanic art. The best pieces (in my opinion) were the three dimensional pieces by Luis Tapia, including 'Carreta de la Muerte' and the very colorful 'Chimayo Dashboard Altar.' There were also some hands-on displays (make your own cord animal, beat a drum along with an audio-visual program, etc.).
After browsing the museum shop (beautiful stuff, but for more than I want to spend), we drove to Mesa and got a room at the Motel 6. Then we called Mark's sister-in-law Susan and arranged to get together for dinner that night. We also got some idea of how spread-out everything is: even though Mesa and Scottsdale are adjacent towns, it took almost forty-five minutes to get to their house in the latter.
Mark's brother's family moved to Arizona in July, and this was our first chance to see their new house. It's somewhat smaller than Versailles, but not much. The master bathroom, for example, is the size of our living room. And the ceilings are all fifteen to twenty feet high.
For dinner we went to the Moroccan restaurant in Scottsdale. It was authentic in eating style--you sit on the floor and eat with your hands--and the food was good. A full five-course meal is $17.50, not bad when you consider that entertainment in the form of a belly dancer is also included. It's a pity that David (Mark's brother) couldn't have joined us, but he was in Chicago on business.
Mileage today: 212 miles.
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We drove around for at least a half hour looking for someplace interesting to have breakfast and finally settled on the Waffle House--right across from the motel. It was okay, but with an extremely limited menu. They had two kinds of waffles, plain and pecan, and a few other items.
We got to the Champlin Fighter Museum early, so we were able to start promptly when they opened at 10 AM. The $6 per person admission was cut in half with our AAA discount. Enough traveling and you could pay for your membership with discounts alone. (This is an unsolicited plug.) In addition to the fighter planes, the museum had a huge collection of armaments, including a machine gun that had been used as a prop in a lot of movies, a German gun with a curved barrel (purpose unknown), and so forth. It also had two videos running: 'Out of the Sun' (an ad for the F-16) and 'Aircraft Gunnery.' In the former they interviewed a lot of aces, including Douglas Bader who, if I heard it right, lost both his legs in an accident in 1931 and went on to become a World War II ace. It's possible they said 1941, however, and that he became an ace during the Battle of Britain. The videos were thirty minutes each and what with the guns and the planes (most of the older ones were reconstructions, which is apparently okay to the cognoscenti in this field, but a bit disappointing to the outsider), we were there until 12:30 PM.
We had originally planned to spend part of the day at the Desert Botanical Garden, but decided we were probably getting enough desert elsewhere. (It's probably great for people not traveling much outside Phoenix.) So we decided to go to the Arizona Museum of Science and Technology instead. This is right off the Civic Plaza, dubbed the 'Anvil of God' by science fiction fans in 1978 when the World Science Fiction Convention was held here over Labor Day and people had to cross the blockwide plaza to get from the hotel to the Civic Center and back. They talked of roofing it over, but apparently decided against it, as it was still open.
Parking should have been easy, but there was some festival going on (Rosary Day) so there was no on-street parking left. The parking garages still had plenty of room, though, especially near the museum as that was further from the festival.
The museum itself is like a mini-Exploratorium--very mini. Almost all the exhibits are the hands-on sort, but with only four rooms there wasn't very much. Even doing all the interactive things, we got through in only an hour--not much for the $3.50 admission charge ($3 with the AAA discount). Is it my imagination, or are science museums in general over-priced? Most of them seem to charge considerably more than art museums of the same size. Yes, the science museum has upkeep costs, but the initial expense is probably less.
So it was still only 2:30 PM. What should we do? After an ice cream cone at Swensen's, we decided on Pueblo Grande, an archaeology museum that was also on the way back to our motel. This turned out to be a good choice. The museum part itself is somewhat limited, but I did learn that team sports originated in the Western Hemisphere (a fact I don't think I knew before). All the exhibits here, by the way, are captioned in Braille as well as in print. The museum is a city project, although it was initially constructed by the WPA in the 1930s. And that work included preserving Pueblo Grande, which is the large site the museum building is an adjunct to. This is, as the name suggests, one of the largest sites of the Hohokam in the Phoenix area (and there are many along the canals they constructed). The site, as is true of most sites in this area, is self-guiding, with plaques along the trail pointing out features or giving background information. And this is a bargain at fifty cents each. If you don't want to haul your buns all over Arizona to see ancient sites, here's one right in Phoenix you can get to easily.
Going back to the motel, I picked the wrong road to go down: it went right by the Arizona State University stadium just as a football game was letting out. What a traffic jam! Though to be honest, it wasn't as bad as traffic jams back east.
After resting, we went for dinner to the Siamese Cat, a Thai restaurant recommended by IDRAB@ASUACAD.BITNET which happened to be only about three miles from our motel. |
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