In the center of Los Angeles, next to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) are the La Brea Tar Pits, an active paleontological research site. Over many centuries, animals ventured into the pits and became stuck and their bones have been preserved. There is now a museum on the site displaying a sample of the over 750,000 specimens that have been discovered there. Among the prehistoric species found at the Pits are mammoths, dire wolves, giant sloths and saber-toothed cats.
Museum entranceMammothMammoth skeletonEmma and friendDire wolf skullsDire wolf skulls
The scientists are still uncovering, preserving and studying bones.
Pit 91Preserving sloth bones
Here is the skeleton of a Harlan’s ground sloth.
And here is what it would look like if it was still roaming about today.
Outside Charlottesville, high up on a hill, is Thomas Jefferson’s home, Monticello. The name derives from Italian, meaning “little mountain”. Originally, the property consisted of a 5,000 acre plantation growing tobacco and labored on by slaves. Jefferson designed the home at the age of 26 and the similarities with the University of Virginia (UVA) campus buildings which he also designed is easy to see. Today, the home, along with the UVA campus have been designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Jefferson was very much a renaissance man and you get an idea of his various interests as you walk through the home. There is everything from a mastodon jaw
To Oliver Cromwell’s death mask.
To Elk horns brought back from the Lewis and Clark expedition.
Jefferson even designed a clock hanging in the entrance hall that tells, not only the time of the day, but also the day of the week. If you look at the following photo you can see weights hanging down the side of the wall that worked the clock by gravity. Jefferson realized that the slow falling of the weights as the week progressed could also be used to tell the day. It’s not visible in the photo, but the black stripes on the wall actually have the days of the week, starting from Sunday. Looking at the top weight you can see that we were there on Tuesday morning.
Jefferson loved a gadget. He wrote the Declaration of Independence on a swivel chair of his own design and he used a polygraph which enabled him to make exact copies of everything that he wrote. His use of the machine has been a boon to historians as he kept copies of many letters that he wrote. You can see both the swivel chair and the polygraph in his office in the following photo.
Here is a portrait of the great man. The likeness in this painting was used for his portrait on the United States two dollar bill.
Here are his actual boots. They have aged remarkably well and look rather comfortable.
And here is a map of the United States showing the country when he became President in 1801. Jefferson also had a good nose for a bargain. During his presidency, the size of the country would double with the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, under which the United States acquired 828,000 square miles in the middle of the continent from the French for a mere fifteen million dollars.
After his wife Martha died, Jefferson spent a number of years in France. While there, he noticed that the French would sometimes locate beds in alcoves in the walls of homes to save space. On returning to Monticello he adopted the practice.
The outside of the house is reminiscent of The Rotunda at the University of Virginia, which Jefferson also designed. It is also depicted on the tails side of the United States five cent coin (nickel). Jefferson, himself, is on the heads side.
By the standards of the time, Jefferson lived a long life, dying aptly enough on July 4, 1826 at the age of 83. Coincidentally, his friend and rival, John Adams, the second President of the United States, died later the same day. Jefferson is buried on the grounds under an epitaph that he wrote, “Here was buried Thomas Jefferson, Author of the Declaration of American Independence, of the Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom, and Father of the University of Virginia.”
On a scorching hot Labor Day, we found ourselves In Charlottesville, Virginia, home of the University of Virginia, commonly known as UVA. We headed down to the pedestrian mall, in the historic part of town.
But with most places closed due to the holiday and temperatures soaring into the high nineties there weren’t too many people about (apart from the occasional homeless person trying to keep out of the sun).
With nothing much going on downtown, we headed over to the UVA campus, which was much more lively with students heading between classes, carrying their mandatory backpacks. We tried, unsuccessfully, to remember if backpacks were a thing during our college years. UVA was founded in 1819 by Thomas Jefferson and most of the architecture is unsurprisingly, Jeffersonian, the mix of neo-classicism and neo-palladianism that America’s third president favored. It is a massive campus, taking up 1,135 acres and catering to over 25,000 students.
At the center of the University is its most iconic building, The Rotunda. It was designed by Jefferson, modeled after the Pantheon in Rome and accommodated the University’s library. The campus was unique at the time, as other universities in the English-speaking world surrounded a Church. Thus, to many, The Rotunda, symbolizes Jefferson’s belief in the separation of church and education.
The Rotunda
The Rotunda looks over a large lawn that is framed on two sides by The Range, which includes rooms for a select group of 54 fourth-year undergraduate students. Each room includes its own rocking chairs. The rooms were included in Jefferson’s original design and have housed many famous Americans, including President Woodrow Wilson and writer Edgar Allan Poe. In fact, Poe’s room has been preserved. Fittingly, for a writer who specialized in horror, it is number 13.
Here are a couple of other Jeffersonian buildings that we passed on campus.
There is a memorial to the over 4,000 enslaved laborers who built and maintained the University. Completed in 2020, its beautiful simplicity reminded us of the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington DC.
We visited the Brandywine Museum of Art with our good friends, Dale and Joe. It is a beautiful museum in a bucolic location, housed in a converted nineteenth-century mill on the banks of the Brandywine Creek.
There was an exhibit of works by the Italian-American artist, Joseph Stella (1877-1945). Stella is best known for his futurist works, especially his paintings of the Brooklyn Bridge. However, this exhibit contained works which were decidedly more whimsical and included many floral and religious paintings.
The main reason that people come to the museum is to see the works of N.C. Wyeth (1882-1945) and his talented offspring. N.C. had moved to the Brandywine Valley to study with the illustrator, Howard Pyle, and eventually settled in Chadds Ford in a home near to the museum. He went on to become one of America’s best known illustrators and the museum has a number of his most famous illustrations, as well as some of his beautiful paintings. The illustrations, in particular, looked decidedly modern and would have fit nicely into a contemporary comic or graphic novel.
Particularly poignant was this painting of a local farmer and his daughter. The daughter is looking back to the solitary lit window of the farmhouse where her mother lies on her deathbed.
N.C . and his wife Carolyn had a number of talented children and grandchildren whose works are also exhibited in the museum. We liked this self portrait by their daughter, Henriette.
And this portrait by their grandson, Jamie.
But the main attraction is Andrew, N.C. and Carolyn’s youngest child, who grew up to become one of America’s best-known twentieth-century artists.
Near to the museum is an old school house that N.C. had purchased to use as a studio. In 1940, Andrew and his wife Betsy moved into the house where they lived until the 1960s. After they moved out, Andrew continued to use it as a studio up until just before his death in 2009. It has been lovingly preserved by the Brandywine Museum of Art to resemble how it looked when the family lived there. It still houses the furnishings, library and collections acquired by the artist, as well as examples of the art materials he used throughout his career.
There was just enough time to fortify ourselves at the nearby Centreville Cafe and enjoy the view of the massive Stars and Stripes hanging on the house across the road before heading back to DC.
With temperatures hovering around 100 degrees farenheit (38 degree celsius), we decided to head out of the city and find a quiet spot to go for a swim. So along with our good friend, Kelly, we drove out along River Road to Poolesville. Along the way we passed by Bretton Woods Country Club, where Mal had spent many happy childhood days swimming in the club pool while his dad played golf. But we were heading for a more natural spot to have a dip, Seneca Creek.
We parked next to The Seneca Store which first opened its doors in 1901. It has been run by the Poole family since the 1960s and now sells, farm, equestrian and hunting goods.
Sitting next to the store is The Upton Darby House that was constructed in 1855 by John Darby who operated nearby mills and is named for his son.
Just a short walk through the woods from the store and you come to Seneca Creek, and an idyllic spot to go swimming. On a scorching hot day, it was very pleasant sitting in the shade of the trees and the creek was cool enough to be refreshing but not too cold. It is a perfect place to take children as the creek is fairly shallow with a gentle current. We were practically alone with only a handful of other people enjoying a swim, although we expect it would be more crowded during the weekend.
Our good friend Michele and her daughter Marian guided us around their favorite walking spot, Brookside Gardens. Opened to the public in 1969, the gardens are extensive, with 54 acres of lawns, woods, ponds, sculptures and flowers. The garden grounds were originally part of a landscaping and garden center on a small farm owned by Stadler Nurseries. Perhaps, not surprisingly then, the idea behind the gardens, is that all of the plants and flowers should grow well in the metropolitan area. So if you live in the area and are looking for some ideas for your own garden, be sure to check out Brookside.
The gardens are also home to a lot of wildlife. During the walk, we spotted a wide variety of birds, including Canadian geese, cardinals, and swallows. We could hear owls calling from the trees. In the ponds we saw fish, turtles, and even a snake. There were lots of frogs and toads who loudly serenaded us as the sun slowly sank.
One of Brookside’s main attractions is its tea house. It is a beautiful spot to sit, relax and enjoy the view as swallows dart about.
A must see in Memphis is the National Civil Rights Museum. It is a particularly poignant place, as it is attached to the Lorraine Motel, where Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated. Make sure you give yourself plenty of time because there is a lot to see. The endless tales of courage in the face of brutal racism are both inspiring and overwhelming.
The wreath marks the spot where Dr. King was shot.
Here is a photo of Dr. King standing in the exact spot, the day before his assassination. He is second from the right.
And here is the famous photograph taken shortly after the assassination, with bystanders pointing to where the shots had come from.
The room where Dr. King stayed on his last night has been kept just as it was on the morning of the assassination.
From the sublime to the ridiculous, we visited one of Memphis’s lesser known tourist attractions, the massive Bass Pro Shops Outdoor World. We think that it may be the only outdoor goods store built inside a pyramid, and certainly the only one with live alligators.
Arriving in Memphis in the early afternoon, having driven up from Clarksdale, we booked into our hotel and walked a few blocks down to Beale Street in search of a late lunch. Officially recognized as “The Home of the Blues” by an Act of Congress, Beale Street includes a two block stretch of restaurants and bars that is now a big tourist attraction. The streets heyday was from the 1920s through the 1940s, when it regularly attracted some of the country’s biggest blues and jazz musicians. Unfortunately, in the 1970s and 1980s, a disastrous urban renewal program razed blocks of buildings in the surrounding neighborhood, as well as on the street itself. Even now, the surrounding area is nothing to write home about. Finding food that was not either barbecued or fried appeared impossible, so we headed into a bar for a lunch that made up in quantity for what it lacked in quality.
Although we didn’t catch any blues of jazz in the Beale Street clubs, we did enjoy a live jazz show while we were in town. Because, in the evening we took a picnic dinner and joined the throngs at Overton Park for a Big Band concert. It was a beautiful evening, and a great way to end up the day.
We spent the morning walking around Clarksdale, where we were once again struck by how many great murals there are throughout the town.
One of the town’s main draws is the Ground Zero Blues Club that is co-owned by Morgan Freeman, the famous actor. It gets its name from the fact that Clarksdale has, historically, been referred to as “Ground Zero” for the blues. While we were in Clarksdale, it was celebrating its twenty second anniversary so we decided to drop in and enjoy some southern cooking with a side of blues. We were pleased to see the New Zealand flag hanging in a prominent position.
Then it was back to the AirBnB to get dressed for the main event, Joe and Alena’s wedding. We settled in with a drink and waited for the festivities to begin, while Joe and Jake, who was one of the groomsmen, looked over the waiting crowd from a balcony.
But soon, Joe was being led down the aisle by his two very proud moms.
Followed closely by Alena and her equally proud parents.
After a beautiful ceremony and some heartfelt vows, the couple danced back up the aisle toward what we hope will be a long happy life together.
Before the party, there was just enough time to take some family photos.
And then on to the party and a slightly less posed family photo.
And thus ended our interesting and fun time in Clarksdale. Thanks Abbe, Sally, Joe and Alena for including our family in this joyful event. We love you guys!
None of us had ever been to Arkansas, so we decided to take a drive across the Mississippi to nearby Helena. We thought that we would find it hard to find a town more down on its luck than Clarksdale, but we were wrong. Many of Helena’s buildings were shuttered and dilapidated. There were only a handful of restaurants and stores left. Oddly enough, one of the stores still open was a high end furnishings store. We couldn’t imagine how it managed to survive.
We dropped by the Delta Cultural Center. Like Clarksdale, Helena is steeped in the Blues. In fact, it is the home of King Biscuit Time, not only the longest-running blues radio program in the United States, but also the longest-running daily radio broadcast, period. Its first broadcast was on November 21, 1941 and featured blues legend, Sonny Boy Williams. Today, it is broadcast each weekday from KFFA and its studio is in the Cultural Center. We had a chat with the DJ and then sat back to enjoy some of the show.
Mal and Lauren 