Yesterday AK and I found ourselves with the kind of weekend
day we used to have back before she worked an average of six and a half days a
week. We slept till nine. I made blueberry walnut pancakes. We hiked Debs Park,
where we watched the world’s second most energetic dog catch air and practically take flight as he chased a ball thrown by his similarly athletic person. His
person had another dog, a curly mix who was content to walk the trail at a
reasonable pace.
AK did that dog’s voice: “Oh, you know…I just like to read.”
I added on: “Brunch would be nice too.”
We bought DayQuil for AK, who caught my cold this past week,
and antidepressants for me and anti-aging moisturizer for both of us, because
it’s time to find out if that shit works, at Target. Then we went to the
Natural History Museum, which I’m ashamed to say I haven’t been to since it
reopened. I really wanted to see the Becoming L.A. exhibit (although a part of me also mourns the old California hall, with its earth tones and wagons and dioramas of mission life; because I love how museums are museums of themselves, first and foremost).
As someone who grew up loving sepia and bonnets, I’m always
extra thrilled to see old-timey photos of my own people—in this case, Angelenos.
My family has lived in Southern California for four generations (with the
exception of my paternal grandmother, who moved here from England as a kid). I
looked for them in the photos of canneries (mom’s side) and the aviation
industry (dad’s side). AK’s family has been here almost as long. She looked for
her last name on the list of L.A.’s founding families, just in case.
“It would be nice to discover you were heir to some sort of
unclaimed land grant,” I agreed.
![]() |
Gov. Pio Pico and family. No relation to AK, alas. |
There were plenty of women who started having babies at
seventeen or eighteen, but also more than a few who hadn’t had their first
until their late twenties.
“I guess there’s always more variation than you hear about,”
AK said.
I geeked out hard on a room-sized model of Downtown L.A. as
it looked in 1940, honing in on Bunker Hill, still home to a cluster of
Victorian homes that, even then, were dwarfed by the surrounding buildings. I
thought of The Exiles. There were
screens placed on the sides of the model, where you could peruse a digital
version of the map with your fingers and zoom in on certain neighborhoods and
landmarks.
![]() |
Model city. |
The museum closed and we visited our friends Jennifer and
Joel, who are in the process of moving to Ojai and thinking about all the
things in L.A. they’ll miss.
“Like potato tacos at Chano’s,” Jennifer said as we walked past
it. “I know we can come back anytime and go there. But we won’t.”
3 comments:
I love studying the list of the pobladores too--what a journey they took. You've probably seen the obsessive casta paintings by the Spanish? They had all the categories insanely parsed. Thanks for letting us see the exhibit through your eyes. Now go back and check out the Nature Lab and the Dino Hall! Let me know if you want to go to a First Friday event--they start up again in January.
Ratties, here I come! Thanks for the First Fridays invite--I would love to go when they start up.
I've seen various historical racial breakdowns, although I'm not sure if I've seen the Spanish ones in particular (although I just Googled). It is kind of fascinating how, the more mixing there is between races, the more people need to name the differences. And yet the Spanish were pro-intermarriage--as long as it was on their terms, I guess.
Post a Comment