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A Glance Back at Christmas

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Christmas at the Grier Musser Museum

Christmas at the Grier Musser Museum

Today, Martine and I finished up our Christmas by seeing the holiday-oriented antiques and special collections on view at the Grier Musser Museum near downtown Los Angeles. Susan and Ray Tejada have the most incredible collection of memorabilia related to the different holiday seasons. We have seen their displays for Halloween, Christmas, and Valentine’s Day—and I understand they have other displays for Chinese New Year, Presidents Day, St. Patrick’s Day, and Independence Day—to name just a few. Below, for instance, is Susan Tejada holding a recently purchased George Washington commemorative plate:

Susan Tejada of the Gier Musser Museum

Susan Tejada of the Gier Musser Museum

At a time when so many of our Christmas observances have been nipped in the bud by recession-related budget cuts, it’s nice to know that one can get a real feeling for the Yuletide season by seeing a collection of music boxes, dolls and statues, old Christmas cards and wrapping paper—all relating to the season.

Although Huell Howser has done two shows that I know of featuring the museum, I feel that more people should know about it. Most spectacular are the occasional Sunday openings preceding the major holidays, with such extras as punch and cookies and an occasional film or slide show in the basement theater. If you are interested in visiting, you have to make a reservation by calling toward the end of the week at (213) 413-1814. The museum is open on Saturday afternoons, by appointment, and on selected Sundays.

The building in which the museum is located used to be a maternity hospital connected with Susan’s family. Her father, Martin L. Krieger, was not only a physician, but the author of several stories about the sea which he co-authored with Fleming MacLeish.

 

Phoenix dactylifera

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Deglet Noor Dates

Deglet Noor Dates

During the relatively fruitless months that stretch between October and February (when the first fresh strawberries become available) is a good time to appreciate the fruit of the date palm, or Phoenix dactylifera.

Approximately 95% of the dates sold in the United States are grown in California’s Coachella Valley near Indio. While we were in the Palm Springs area, Martine and I spent the afternoon preceding Christmas Eve visiting two date gardens, the Oasis Date Gardens in Thermal and the Shields Date Gardens in Indio.

There are a number of different varieties of dates, ranging from the large and hypersweet Medjools to the Deglet Noors (my favorites), Zahidis, Barhis, and Khadrawies, to name just a few. When one buys relatively recently harvested dates in the Coachella Valley, they tend to be more moist. Supermarket dates just don’t cut it. Sometimes I will buy dates from our local farmer’s market in Santa Monica, because the dealer there drives in all the way from Mecca near the Salton Sea.

Below is a photo I took at the Shields Date Gardens:

Date Palms at Indio’s Shields Date Gardens

Date Palms at Indio’s Shields Date Gardens

Note the ladders dangling from the top of some of the trees. During the harvest, they are joined to other ladders so that the dates could be hand-picked. There is, insofar as I know, no mechanization possible that would maintain the quality of the crop. The trees are relatively bare now: As October approaches, the bunches of dates are covered with a cone-shaped paper wrap to prevent rain and predators from damaging the crop.

Most Americans tend to be relatively unfamiliar with dates, which comes as something of a surprise to me because they are sweet, loaded with vitamins and minerals, and relatively inexpensive. But then, I have been buying them from the Coachella Valley for over forty years.

 

B-17 Walkthrough

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Martine with Boeing B-17 in Background

Martine with Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress in Background

Aviation museums run the gamut from “gearhead” airplane body shops to extensive collections of aircraft and exhibits. In this latter category is the Palm Springs Air Museum, adjacent to the Palm Springs Airport on Gene Autry Trail. We allotted four hours to seeing this museum, and—to Martine’s point of view anyway—it was about four hours too short.

Apparently, the Coachella Valley is home to many aviation veterans of the Second World War. The museum was crowded with volunteers who knew the planes intimately and were willing to answer questions.

Near the little café in one of the hangars was a huge Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress that was being restored by aficionados. For a five dollar donation, we could walk through the plane from the cockpit to the rear door. It was a tempting challenge, though I knew it would be a tight squeeze for my portly frame. So we ponied up the ten bucks and did it.

B-17 Cockpit

B-17 Cockpit

For starters, the highly analog cockpit controls (see above) were a revelation to a digital denizen such as myself. We barely managed to make it up the ladder to squeeze in the space behind the cockpit. The B-17’s crew of ten must have been immune to claustrophobia, especially the tail gunner and the gunner in the 360-degree rotating gun position under the aircraft. The former was totally cut off from the rest of the aircraft by the rear bomb bay.

The B-17 was featured in a number of war films including Memphis Belle (both versions: 1944 and 1990), Flying Fortress (1942), Air Force (1943), 12 O’Clock High (1949), and Tora! Tora! Tora! (1970).

If you ever find yourself in Palm Springs, and if you are as much of a history nut as I am, you could do worse than spend a whole day at the Palm Springs Air Museum. (I had to promise Martine that we would return so that she could finish viewing all the exhibits.)

 

 

A Family Christmas

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Lori, Hilary, Danny, Jennifer, and Dan

Lori, Hilary, Danny, Jennifer, and Dan

I just returned from Palm Springs about an hour or two ago after spending one of the best Christmases in my adult life. My brother and sister-in-law rented a house in PS’s “Movie Colony” neighborhood.

Present were Dan and Lori, my brother and sister-in-law; Hilary, just returned from Guatemala by way of her home in Seattle; Danny, from L.A.’s South Bay; Jennifer, from San Diego; and Martine and me from West Los Angeles.

As you know, I tend to be something of a Grinch; but the events of the last five days have melted the residual ice that encased my heart. It was great fun talking with my nephew and nieces, and spending the days touring the Coachella Valley with Martine while the kids were involved in hiking, swimming in hot pools, and such like.

Martine and I got to visit the Living Desert Zoo and Botanical Gardens in Palm Desert, which we’ve seen two or three times before; the Palm Springs Air Museum, a labor of love by WW2 veterans; the Oasis Date Gardens in Thermal, California; and the Shields Date Gardens in Indio, California. (Yes, I guess I really do enjoy eating dates.)

In the days to come, I will post blogs about the first two places above, which I think are world-class tourist destinations. And I will try to write something about the Coachella Valley’s date palms.

In the meantime, I hope all of you had a Merry Christmas!

 

Tuscany on the Pacific

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Erin Hill’s Painting of Montalcino in Tuscany

Erin Hill’s Painting of Montalcino in Tuscany

When I first moved to Los Angeles during the last Ice Age, everything that was classy had a French name: The restaurants, the big real estate developments, and so on. Sometime over the last twenty years, suddenly Tuscany became the measure of all things ritzy. Although it is still filled with empty storefronts with “For Lease” signs, I can see the developers trying to turn it into a little Tuscany.

I can’t think of Italian food in Southern California as being so rarefied if for no other reason than it tends to be pretty mediocre. Take meatballs, for instance: If one is a gourmet chef, one doesn’t make meatballs that are nothing but differently-shaped hamburger patties. It is necessary to mince onion, garlic, parsley, and perhaps a few herbs into the ground meat mixture first. Even my Hungarian Mom knew that when she made hamburgers. But in L.A. that never happens.

I remember a huge meatball at a Buca di Beppo in the San Fernando Valley that was nothing but a large hamburger hockey puck.

So I don’t take Los Angeles’s Tuscan dreams with anything but a grain of salt, and perhaps some minced onion, garlic, parsley, and perhaps a few herbs.

The painting above is from the Erin Hill studio website. It’s quite pretty and a steal at $220.00. Maybe my hijacking the JPG file will make you want to buy the painting.

Through the Streets of Los Angeles

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Endeavour Makes Its Way Through 12 Miles of L.A. Traffic

Los Angeles is not a city that has a great sense of community. It is spread out in all four directions, encompassing mountain ranges and flood plains, dense urban concentrations with deserts whose only inhabitants are Joshua Trees. Yet in October, it came together for the most unaccountable of reasons: The space shuttle Endeavour was going to take two to three days to gingerly make its way through twelve miles of L.A. streets beginning at LAX Airport and ending at the California Science Center in Exposition Park.

At first, the impact was negative. Several hundred trees along the route were going to have to be cut down so as not to damage the huge wingspan of the shuttle as it passed by. The City Fathers promised to plant two or more trees for every one that was cut down, but it still left a bad taste in the mouths of many Angelenos.

But that all changed with the majestic progress of the shuttle through the streets. Crowds gathered and cheered while teams of engineers maneuvered the gigantic space vessel past a minefield of trees, wires, buildings, and other potential dangers.

It didn’t all come home to me until I saw a video in stop motion of the Endeavour making its way through Los Angeles and being met with a cheering throng both day and night. The video, on Astronomy Picture of the Day, is well worth watching. Among other things, it showed me a picture of a city celebrating the era of space exploration as one, something that doesn’t happen very often in this sun-drenched clime.