The La Brea Tar Pits

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The Lake Pit, Largest of the La Brea Tar Pits

It’s one of those redundant names: brea in Spanish means tar, so the La Brea Tar Pits are literally the Tar Tar pits. (Similarly, Torpenhow Hill in Britain means Hillhillhill Hill.)

Martine and I haven’t visited the tar pits for almost a decade, so we drove down to Hancock Park and took a good look at what the area looked like ten thousand plus years ago. Based on the skeletons that have been fished out of the pits, there were giant sloths, mammoths, lions, camels, sabertooth tigers, and many, many dire wolves.

Skeleton of Columbian Mammoth

The archeological record shows that there were humans living in the area during the Ice Age. It couldn’t have been much fun for them to contend with their primitive weapons against so many gigantic mammals.

Visiting the pits, I am reminded of a famous line in Joseph Conrad’s The Heart of Darkness, when Marlowe points to the shore of the Thames and says: “And this also,” said Marlow suddenly, “has been one of the dark places of the earth.”

The La Brea Tar Pits Museum is a fascinating place to visit. In addition to all the skeletons of giant mammals who perished by drowning in the pits, there is a lab which allows you to watch volunteers cleaning bones recently pulled from the pits. (There are a number of them on the grounds.)

Martine got into the spirit of the occasion by donning a dire wolf headdress:

Martine with Wolfish Smile

My Word!

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Daily writing prompt
What’s your favorite word?
View all responses

Since I am multi-lingual, here are my favorite words in my four languages:

  • Spanish: pendejo, literally “pubic hair,” describing someone you really don’t like.
  • French: débrouillir, literally “de-fog” or “unravel,” how Inspector Maigret solves crimes.
  • Hungarian: lófasz, literally “horse’s dick,” used regularly to describe something insignificant or non-existent.
  • English: septemfluous, literally “flowing in seven streams,” a word with very limited applicability, like medioxumous, rotl, or crwth.

The Musicians’ Brawl

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“The Musicians’ Brawl” by Georges de la Tour (1593-1652)

This afternoon, I dropped in to the Getty Center to refresh my store of images. The one that stuck in my mind the most was a 17th century canvas entitled “The Musicians’ Brawl” by French painter Georges de la Tour.

There’s a lot happening in this picture. There are five figures depicted, all very nearly on the same plane. From left to right, we begin with an old woman who is appalled by the fracas. Moving rightward, we have a bearded blind musician with a knife in one hand and a hurdy-gurdy slung on his shoulder. He is being confronted by another bearded musician with a shawm (a predecessor to the oboe) in his left hand and a wedge of lemon in his right, which he is squeezing in the eyes of the hurdy-gurdy player not entirely believing he is blind.

Continuing to the right, we have two musicians who are spectators. The bearded one is barely paying attention, while his mustachioed companion stares drunkenly out at us while clutching his instrument. That rightmost figure is, to me, the most memorable one in the painting. He is clearly chuckling and looking at us with slightly glazed eyes.

I will never forget that drunken facial expression. It is the painterly version of an earworm.

Rock Schlock and Barrel

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When I was young, we didn’t have a working radio. As a result I didn’t have any fave rock groups as I was growing up. By the time I was introduced to the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, and the Doors, I was well into my twenties.

Even then, I never really liked the whole rock ethos, that whole thing where gaunt hippies pranced onstage while wielding electric guitars. Moreover, I never liked electric guitars. So, in effect, there never was a time when I could say that so and so was the music of my youth. I never had much music of any kind in my youth.

Then, when I was in my thirties, I discovered classical music right around the same time the compact disk (CD) came into being. A few years later, I finally learned to drive at the age of forty and discovered the classical music stations KFAC-FM and KUSC-FM. KFAC switched to Pop Music in 1989; so all I ever listen to on the radio today is KUSC.

Come to think of it, I never listen to Pop Music either. I have never yet heard any Taylor Swift songs. What floats my boat is Mahler, Sibelius, Bruckner, Dvorak, and Wagner.

I guess that makes me rather atypical for my generation. My cohort is busy listening on PBS to Peter, Paul & Mary concerts. Fortunately, I’m okay with that.

Arkady and Boris Strugatsky

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Soviet Writers Arkady (1925-1991) and Boris (1933-2012) Strugatsky

They were by far the greatest science fiction authors who ever lived. The two brothers produced a string of masterpieces (the greatest being Roadside Picnic, or Пикник на обочине) that are unlikely to be surpassed, ever!

I am currently reading two of their novels whose chapters are artfully interleaved. They wrote Ugly Swans (Гадкие лебеди) in 1972; in 1986, they wrote Lame Fate (Хромая судьба) and shuffled the chapters together. Reading it is an amazing experience. I’ve finished about 40% of the nested novels at this point. I haven’t even encountered the science fiction yet, though I feel it is lurking and waiting to pounce.

Among the brothers’ works I have read are:

  • Space Apprentice (1962)
  • Far Rainbow (1963)
  • Hard to Be a God (1964)
  • The Final Circle of Paradise (1965)
  • The Second Invasion from Mars (1967)
  • Prisoners of Power (1969)
  • The Dead Mountaineers’ Hotel (1970)
  • Roadside Picnic (1972)
  • Definitely Maybe (1977)
  • Beetle in the Anthill (1980)
  • The Time Wanderers (1986)

Many of the Strugatskys’ titles have never been translated into English. I think that, ultimately, they will all be. I can think of few Soviet writers working in any genre that have such a large and consistently excellent body of work.

There are only a handful of science fiction writers I admire. After the Strugatsky brothers, there are Stanislaw Lem from Poland and, in the United States, Philip K. Dick and Clifford D. Simak.

Epitaph on the World

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Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)

We know his Walden, even his essay “Civil Disobedience.” But do we know his poetry? Probably not, though some of it is pretty good, such as this short number:

Epitaph on the World

Here lies the body of this world,
Whose soul alas to hell is hurled.
This golden youth long since was past,
Its silver manhood went as fast,
An iron age drew on at last;
’Tis vain its character to tell,
The several fates which it befell,
What year it died, when ’twill arise,
We only know that here it lies.