Areas of Unrest

16 April 2000 - A Capital Idea

QOTD: "Anything is magic if you don't understand how it happens, and science if you do." - Mark Clifton

Reading: Sarah Dunant, Fatlands

Listening to: the original Broadway cast recording of Carnival

Robert is on break and, as usual, that means he is in the Bay Area supplementing his income. I took advantage of that to fly up and spend a little time with him. We went out to dinner Friday night at a vaguely Middle Eastern restaurant called Pomegranate. Fortunately, both of us like garlic; I suspect that if one didn't, it would have an impact on the rest of the evening. About which I will provide no details but I will comment that I am always amazed at the varied textures of the human body.

He was rather preoccupied with getting his taxes finished and surprisingly puzzled over some of the instructions on the state form. I attempted to offer some help, but I am not sure how much of my advice he used.

Saturday, I escaped to Sacramento for the day. I've felt vaguely guilty for a while that I'd never been to the capital of my own state. And there was a good deal on train fare ($23 round trip if you're a AAA member) so I didn't even have to cope with traffic. I had hoped to be able to meet Jan but she had to go to Reno that day, so I had to settle for her advice instead. It did mean I could arrange lunch with a guy I know from a MUSH I sometimes hang out on.

The train was a good choice, although we were about 40 minutes late since we had to wait for the drawbridge over the Carquinez Strait. I was quite amused by a father taking his daughter on her first train trip and enjoyed eavesdropping as he told her all about past train trips he'd taken.

It's a pretty short walk from the train station to the Capitol. The building is pretty much in standard capitol style. I mean, if you were shown a picture of it and asked what function it served, you would immediately guess it was the Capitol of some state. (The most distinctive of the state capitol buildings that I've been to is the one in Santa Fe, New Mexico, by the way. It is designed to resemble a Native American structure called a kiva. I've heard that Bismarck, North Dakota has a high-rise. But the neo-classical look is far more common.)

I picked up a self-guided tour booklet and meandered through what there was to see. Jan had commented in a recent entry on the unconventional portrait of Jerry Brown and it is certainly noticeable. (And was yet another dreadful decision on the part of a former governor who seemed determined to make California a laughing stock.) The most interesting thing overall was a series of display cases for each county. The Los Angeles County one was rather uninviting, in my opinion, filled with shabby cardboard cutouts of some of the more famous sites. Many of the more rural counties had attractive photos and lists of annual events. I was reminded how much of the state I haven't ever been to. Sad to say, I couldn't immediately place at least half of the counties. (They do have little maps of the state with arrows pointing to the county at the corner of each display case.) Another interesting exhibit had to do with women in California politics. This had brief biographies of several women who had had a major role in the political history of the state, including the first 4 women elected to the assembly.

There's a large park adjacent to the Capitol building and I picked up a brochure that described three walking tours. The park is more or less botanical gardens with a few monuments in between. The most significant monuments include a statue of Junipero Serra (surrounded by plaques depicting the missions he founded), an intriguing war memorial with a photographic surface, and a Vietnam War memorial. I made a point of walking through the rose garden but most of the roses were modern showy but weakly scented ones. The camilla grove was more notable aromatically. Incidentally, the brochure appears to list every single tree in the whole park. That much detail is pretty much lost on somebody like me who can just barely tell a pine from a maple.

Then it was time to meet Mike for lunch. We walked over to Old Sacramento, partly because there are few restaurants near the Capitol that are open for lunch on weekends. Old Sacramento struck me as a typical tourist restoration, with an emphasis on stores selling useless items. (I really must write that urban planning rant some day.) In particular, it seemed like every third place was a candy store. Anyway, we settled on a pseudo-Cajun place, which was pleasant enough. Conversation was a bit awkward, though. It always is when you meet somebody who you know only from net stuff. But the bigger awkwardness is that Mike is deaf. I don't sign, so he had brought a pad and pen for me to write on. But that still slowed things down, particularly as I was trying hard to write legibly. He seemed nice enough, overall, and I felt less uncomfortable that I had feared I might.

After lunch, he had errands to run, so he walked me over to the Golden State Museum and departed. The lobby has an exhibit on anti-Semitism that was interesting, although it didn't tell me anything I didn't already know. In fact, I found myself wondering why it didn't mention certain events - e.g. the massacre at Clifford's Tower in York or the creation of the Venice ghetto (the first one and the origin of the word). Still, I suppose that the intended audience wouldn't know much about Jewish history.

The fixed exhibits cover both natural history and social history of the state. The material on people was, in general, of more interest to me than that on place. But I was glad to see that natural disasters were not ignored in the former. Floods, fires and earthquakes were all given their due, with TV clips, photos, etc.. There was a major section about the damming of Hetch Hetchy to provide water for San Francisco, but less info about the Owens Valley water wars. (Of course, I may have been biased because I've heard Greg's story about William Mulholland and he's told me about his research on the Owens Valley.)

One of the best exhibits is a bus where you sit and listen to the stories of people's journeys to California. The stories of a Vietnamese woman and of a Mexican migrant worker were particularly poignant. Overall, I felt that the museum attempted to give a balanced picture of the population.

I would have liked a little more straight history, though. There wasn't any exhibit that was organized strictly chronologically. There was also a bit of boosterism, but I suppose that is to be expected (and has been true of other state museums I've been to). My single favorite tidbit of the museum visit was hearing of the proposal to put roller coasters on the Golden Gate Bridge and the Bay Bridge. It first came up in the context of one of those grand exhibitions, but the guy whose idea it was pursued it for several years.

I spent about two and a half hours at the museum, leaving just as they were closing. That was almost long enough, but I'd have preferred another half hour or so.

I meandered back to the train station and a pleasant trip back to Berkeley. The train back was a bit more crowded, but was still far from full. I was glad, though, that I'd had lunch late and was waiting until I was back for dinner, since there were very long lines for the dining car. Overall, it was a very enjoyable day trip.

I couldn't leave Berkeley without a bit of a book browse. I found a book at Pegasus that I'd been looking for for a while (The Healer's War by Elizabeth Ann Scarborough) and Black Oak had several items of interest. Between last week's Friends of the Library sale and today's outing, I'm well stocked up on reading matter. Now, all I need is time to read.