We spent time with Kay and John Meisch in Acadia California on our way here. Kay is a Keuka graduate, retired high school chemistry teacher and a member of the Keuka Board of Trustees. We visited the La Brea Tar Pits (Page Museum). Molten asphalt trapped the animals and preserved the bones and teeth of extinct mammals such as saber tooth cats, giant ground sloths, mastodons, mammoths and dire wolves. These Tar Pits are located in the middle of downtown Los Angeles! The museum had an interactive exhibit by which you can experience (by trying to pull on a metal rod) the powerful suck on the asphalt. Animals that experienced the suck directly did not recover from the experience but their bones are preserved for us to see and for scientists to study. These specimens allow us to understand extinct large mammals that evolved after most of the familiar dinosaurs disappeared. Plants and smaller animals are also preserved so the ecosystem can be reconstructed. We saw many reassembled skeletons and a pit from which they were still excavating bones! It was particularly interesting to see mastodon and mammoth skeletons side-by-side and see some of the differences; mostly the teeth (shaped differently) and the tusks (longer in mammoths). Did you know that elephants (and mammoths) replace(d) their teeth up to a total of 6 and when the last pair wears out, they can’t eat anymore? I was so enthralled I forgot to take any pictures. I’ve “stolen” a few from the Page Museum web site but unfortunately they don’t have any skeletons.
The same night we went to see a play at the Pasadena Playhouse. The play was entitled Orson’s Shadow. It was about an interaction between the actors Orson Wells, Laurence Olivier, Vivien Leigh and Joan Plowright. I enjoy “old” movies so I know quite a bit about these four people. Even if you are considerably younger than I you may know Vivien Leigh as Scarlett from Gone with the Wind. Anyway the play was mostly about the different personalities and approaches to acting and directing of Wells and Olivier and about Olivier’s relationships with the two women; his first and second wives. I was familiar with two of the actors from TV shows. The actress who played Vivien Leigh very effectively captured the desperation and hypersexuality that often accompanies bipolar disorder. The actor who played Orson Wells was witty; funny in the way that I think Wells probably was himself. The play has had several revisions and my assessment is that it still could use work; particularly because a younger audience would lack the historical background necessary to care about the characters. I’d give her an A+, him and A- and the playwright a C for effort. Just can’t get away from the tendency to evaluate and score even outside my area of expertise.
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