The Statues Made Me High

Last entry of the official summer period. Not sure where this blog is going to go during the school year, but I'm not looking to quit on it either.

Occassionally, if one opens their eyes, they can find extraordinary places and things right close to them. In my case I found a massive, massive cemetery right outside our neighborhood.

I guess I can say I morbidly enjoy cemeteries, especially really old gothic ones. In ninth grade when I had a morbid curiosity about everything that was morbid, ghosts were foremost. I've never seen an ectoplasmic orb or shimmery figures or anything of the sort, but my imagination does a pretty good job of filling that all in. It's even better in large and impressive graveyards.



It's easily the size of four of five football fields, but you may notice a curious lack of graves in the above picture. As you might expect, that's because it's actually a crematory garden. Here is one of the graves, which you can see is merely a metal plate with a small handle implanted in it; doubtlessly if one pulls on that handle and urn would be revealed somewhere underneath.

Exploring this place took forever. Adding to the grand feel to it were the statues scattered infrequently about the gardens.



And pretty statues they were, but this is definitely not Florence: most if not all of the statues are concrete casts. As such...



...most have not been treated well by age. The reason why her hand is so nubbish is because all of her fingers are gone. I perhaps only saw one statue which wasn't missing any digits.



It wasn't this one, though--I think this statue was missing entire limbs. Actually I spent a few minutes trying to figure out what it was; it was placed right over what seemed to be a family grave, and upon closer inspection it appears to be a normal human boy riding the back of a winged character, probably an angel. Why he got a free ride I don't know.



Standing confusedly among vaguely Greek and Christian symbols was this Buddha, standing near the entrance of a Buddhist funeral home. Half the graves I saw here were Asian in origin; it really reflects the mixed population of this area.



Here's another view of the amazingly pretty day and how it reflected on the pretty cemetery. You'd almost think it was a golf course (now that's interesting...).

After spying this Greek-like statue hiding among some bushes near a dirty fountain, I saw ahead the most grand statue I've seen yet in the gardens.



Yes, it's a massive tomb with a huge statue of the Last Supper standing conspicuously on top of it. Of course it's concrete like all the rest, so it's missing fingers, but it was still pretty impressive. The whole thing reminds me of the White Witch's powers from The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe, specifically the old BBC one with the terrible effects and animal costumes.



Upon close inspection, it seems to me that this group's Jesus is standing up in the standard arms-down-palms-forward style, while the rest of the disciples mutter to themselves. It strikes me as a very odd way of depicting Him. While initially I thought he was looking down at them, he's actually just staring off into space. Like he just stood up and announced something, but no one is listening to him. After musing on this unusual statue for a little while, we followed the path around and continuing behind it.

Following a path lined with trees and intermittent stairs, we came to the final statue I took pictures of, towards the edge of the property.



It's La Pieta, Michelangelo's La Pieta, but it's definitely not made of marble like the original. I think Mary's left hand was entirely fingerless. This statue is unusual for the unmatching proportions of Mary and Jesus. If you imagine both of them standing up, it's clear that Jesus would be a shrimp compared to the giant Mary. Since Michelangelo was such a genius, it's propable that he did this on purpose. For what reason, who knows. It's probably more visually perfect. Those Renaissance Men knew everything.

So that's all for Virginia this time. I'm flying out for Little Rock tomorrow sometime in the afternoon, then I'm going to try to move in and start classes without losing too much sanity. I'll live, somehow...

Rome Round II

Last week we made our second big trip into DC, with more museum madness as our plan. We got it, natch.

Instead of taking the difficult way in by driving, we did our trip on the Metro. DC has a very convenient system of trains and buses (both are called the metro), far more efficient when traveling the capitol than cars. We took the subway, which starts above ground at the East Falls Church Station.



It's very much like the train system in Japan, right down to the way the tickets are purchased, but with less people in the station (especially on the weekend). Above you can see the nearly-empty Falls Church station. Ours is, I believe, the first and only above-ground station. The trip took about 15 minutes of smooth, air-conditioned rumbling, with an influx of passengers as we got closer to Rome.

Last time we went to the Natural History Museum, I mentioned we only explored the first floor. The second floors, with its promises of bones, bugs, and the hope diamond was left for another day. This time we came back there...with a vengeance! Okay, actually just a mild curiosity. Actually I take that back. Did I mention before that I loved dinosaurs? I'm sure I did, so let me go on to say that if there's anything in the world that can make me as happy as dinosaurs, it's insects. There's a big plus to loving insects to, in that they're all still alive, except for those prehistoric four-foot dragonflies.

We started our second-floor observation in the least interesting sector, that of the rocks and minerals collection. It's a long corridor filled with normal rocks, moon rocks, sword rocks, gemstone rocks, those rocks that are really pretty when you split them open, and rocks with really weird names like Augen Gneiss.

The whole place culminates in two rooms; the first is lined with carefully lit glass cases filled with famous gems from all over the world. Of course everybody was steaming the glass with their faces, so I didn't have much chance or motivation to get up close and see what the big deal was. The second room contained the hope diamond, which I had kinda hoped was one of those baseball-sized deals, but it's actually just a little guy on a brooch which probably has some kind of story behind it. I don't know it, so accusations of me being an uncultured philistine are called for. The rest of the museum that wasn't looking at dinosaurs or bugs were all crammed into the hope diamond room, but I don't see see what's so interesting about something that doesn't have fangs or mandibles.

I like to save the best for last, so next we entered the skeleton exhibit. This is a massive show of the bones of animals from all over, basically it's the undead version of the downstairs' mammal area. This one contains fish and birds too, though.



L-R: A group of skeleton mammals; an exemplary sun bear; a whale skeleton; a tree inhabited by bony birds. I was really hoping to find a narwhal skeleton in there somewhere, because Narwhals are amazing. No narwhals were to be found, but animal skeletons are nearly as interesting as the animals themselves, which is very interesting, so we enjoyed this exhibit.

After passing by some reptiles and other things which some people think are gross, we reached the insects.



Evidently the insect exhibit was celebrating its 30th anniversary. As such,



Everyone was there. Perhaps because it was all I could do to squeeze my way in just to see various (living) insect exhibits, it seems I only took one picture of anything in the whole place, that being one of some particularly huge grasshoppers. Throughout the first hall there was this girl, probably age 14 or 15, who would add facts to my expressions of wonder as I gazed at chinese stick insects or praying mantises. Actually I think she knew more about bugs than I do, which I think is saying quite a bit, especially for a 15-year-old girl. Anyway she disappeared into the shifting crowds by the time I reached that termite skyscraper you see in the above picture.

I guess there isn't much else to say about the bug exhibit. The last time we were there (ten years ago or so), there was a bug-exhibit-worker-guy who inviting people to let tarantulas and giant cockroaches crawl on them. I was hoping to see him again, to prove I have a DC golden age square jaw when it comes to insects, but sadly he was gone, probably out making himself a bee beard or something.

We had planned to make a goodly visit to the Air and Space Museum after that, but unfortunately it was 30 minutes until it closed, so we were only able to give it a general surface scan before they kicked everyone out. We used the rest of the time to explore the Hersshorn's totally bizarre sculpture garden!

Now, let me clarify to you that even having two years worth of art education doesn't give me the kind of clairvoyance necessary to understand modern art. As such, here is my take on only four of the garden's many extravagent members:



I believe this man's name seemed to indicate that he was a clam farmer. What that has to do with his hamburger meat-like appearance, I do not know. What I do know is that if I met this guy while I was out clamming, I'd probably quit clamming for the rest of my life. Is that a word? Clamming?



Now, witness the power of this fully operational battle station!




This is a lesson for all you time travelers: RESEARCH. If a window is going to be in the place where you jump 500 years into the past, you better know that ahead of time. A word of note: This man's left hand doesn't match up with the rest of his body on the other side of the window. As a matter of fact, there's a dog's head coming out of where his arm should be, and the arm is flailing out in the opposite direction.



If Peter Paul Rubens' paintings came to life, they would probably look like this. I'm very glad it's only a sculpture.

Before leaving DC again, we walked past the magnificent Smithsonian Castle and the closeby gardens. I took a couple more pictures of those:



DC still has a ton more to offer that I haven't visited or covered, and probably won't have a chance to before going back to school. But, I shall return!

The Interloper

I'm planning on making several entries this week, possibly even every day of this week, so I'm starting out with a shorter one.

I'll start by saying that my family always stays up way past the normal bedtime for U.S. families. We're usually still up at 1 or 2, and last night I was up until at least 4. Sometimes this lets us see things which normally we wouldn't be able to see. The large bin where we keep our dog Stefie's food is right outside the door on the deck, and our dining room table is stationed where we can all see out the window facing the deck. Our friend Methuselah doesn't know that.



See him there? He comes just about every night and gorges himself on delicious Iams mix. Personally, I don't know what he like so much about processed dog food, but he's determined enough that so far he's breezed through my dad's various security measures against him. In fact, it seems we've engaged in a kind of friendly rivalry.

The first trap was our dory's anchor on top of the bin. It's not terribly heavy, and wasn't heavy enough that Methuselah couldn't muscle it right off. A loud thump later, and he was feasting. The next attempt involved tying the anchor to the banister of the deck, so even if he moved it around it would still hang there and block his entry. Methuselah countered that by pushing it just enough out of the way to open the lid and squeeze himself inside of the bin (poking his nose out every so often for a breath). The latest maneuver involved putting the bin inside our dory (which is a kind of boat). No news yet if Methuselah has found it up there.

The best thing about all this is watching him. It's rare that you get to watch a wild animal doing its thing, unless you're Steve Erwin or that guy from Grizzly Man, and Methuselah won't let anything stand between him and his dog food, not even a human peering out at him from 3 feet away behind a window. Which is what I did.

Next entry: some more stuff from Rome! Or maybe the crematory gardens, whichever I feel like.

Bonus picture: Ford Escort with a Spoiler!



You know, just in case it goes so fast that it needs extra help to keep it from flying! Sigh...

Dinosaurs? Yes, Dinosaurs!!

This is a testament to how profound the Summer Laziness runs in my veins: the events in this entry occured one week ago. A whole week, and I've got nothing to cover my shame with except for the fact that the internet was repeatedly and without warning giving out. I'm glad that's over, at least it seems to be.

So. Dinosaurs.

I guess I should start at the beginning. The events which occured one week ago were my first foray into the District of Columbia since our move here. OH MAN. I LOVE IT.

First of all, you should stop thinking of Washington DC as just Washington DC and instead think of it as Modern-Day Rome. Rome, folks. What other city in America has stuff like this. No city. Not even Nashville. DC is Rome. In 500 years, long after America has been sacked by Visigoths or Canadians, people are going to fantasize about walking the streets of DC and visiting the Lincoln Memorial or the Capitol building when they were still standing. I don't have to fantasize, though. I can just go. Anyway as we drove to Rome (we should have taken the metro, probably) we of course passed that one huge monument, and after some difficulty and frustration in finding a place to park (there also aren't too many cities in the US which are so obviously biased against cars), we stopped in a small parking lot in view of a riverside temple. Sorry. I mean the Jefferson Memorial.

It wasn't too far of a walk to our destination of choice for the day, the Smithsonian, but it's very hot in Virginia so it felt long. Along the way we passed by a huge seafood market underneath a highway overpass. We ended up on a wide stone street leading straight to the Smithsonian, a street designed by the city planner Pierre Charles L'Enfant. I had been to the Smithsonian before, but hadn't really remembered what it was like. This is why I was surprised to see before me...



...a genuine Castle. If I was in, say, Britain, this wouldn't be too surprising. Mundane, even. But this is America. We don't have castles. Nevertheless, here is the original Smithsonian Institute building, which even goes as far as to call itself "The Castle." Which is pretty accurate, since the only other Castle I can think of in America is that fake one in Orlando. Here are some more pictures of the gorgeous Castle and the surrounding gardens:



While The Castle is the original building in the Smithsonian complex, now it isn't much more than a Visitor Center for tourists to check out cool 3D maps of DC or just enjoy the air conditioning. The adjacent building is also castlelike, I think it was the museum of science and technology, but it was closed for renovations. We continued past the Castle, out onto the National Mall.

If you don't know, the National Mall is a very looong strip of (theoretically) green grass, which is heavily used by picnickers and whatever else, and looks it. When we crossed the Mall, to the left we could see the Washington Monument to the left, and the Capitol to the right. Straight ahead was this, which a helpful map told us was the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History. This imposing Temple of Knowledge is quite a big deal huger than The Castle, and is definitely a No Fooling Around Museum. Reason You Should Visit Modern Rome #8: Smithsonian museums are all totally absolutely 100% free. Paid for by the Government. At least our tax money is going somewhere useful.



The Museum of Natural History lets you know it's not fooling around by flagrantly displaying an elephant, profoundly raised several feet above everyone's heads, in the main atrium. Dead and stuffed he may be, but that elephant is there to tell you that here there be monsters, baby, and I'm not talking about boring latin-named monsters that somebody named Poindexter probably writes about.

I'm talking about real monsters.

They aren't alive, of course, but they are nevertheless here. Knowing this fact, and knowing that I wasn't ready to encounter these monsters just yet, I steered us towards the Mammal Area first. I love to see real animals, even if they are filled with plaster-of-paris, which is what the museum's Mammal section has to offer. A LOT of stuffed animals. Taxidermied animals are in a way actually less depressing than animals in a zoo, because we don't have to imagine how miserable they are, living in captivity, or be sad because we missed their daily performance. Anyway, there are a ton more animals on display than I took pictures of, but along the way we definitely saw a walrus, a
maned wolf (I've seen one of these in real life, they're very graceful), a giraffe, a pangolin, another pangolin (I love pangolins) and a deadly man-eating hippo.

After passing through India and the Lewis and Clark expidition (my dad loved that one), we started to hit some fossils.



Mammoths, mastodons, and saber-toothed cats are those animals which really, really want to be part of the dinosaur scene. They're even huge and crazy enough to almost be there. But they aren't quite dinosaurs. Nevertheless, the long, long corridor of post-dinosaur-huge/weird animals is almost as exciting as the terrible lizards themselves. I didn't take too many pictures of it, but I guarantee that there were no shortages of giant sloths, giant ostriches, shovel-tusked elephants, tiny horses and neanderthals.

By the way, did you know that those giant sloths, they are seriously giant. I mean, like just a little bit smaller than a modern elephant. That's why those old saber-toothed cats needed their sword teeth, just so they could stab far enough through the neck fat of a giant sloth to do any kind of damage whatsoever.

Oh, and in prehistoric times, chocobos existed.




This sofa-sized dimetrodon (one of my favorites) invited us warmly into the dinosaur area. I wasn't ready yet, so we made a short stop at the nearby Fossil Cafe, a too-expensive little deal which sold $4 cookies in the shape of dinosaurs, among other things. We got some drinks, sat down at the little tables with paleontology data inside them, and I mentally prepared myself for THE MONSTERS.

It didn't take Godzilla, Stephen Spielberg, or Ray Harryhausen to make me love dinosaurs. As far as I know, by the time two cells came together and decided they were going to grow into a human being named Luke Jones, they had already decided they would love dinosaurs. Some kids are born with a silver spoon in their mouth, I was born with one of those little fossil-duster brush things. I wish I could say I can name every species and subspecies of dinosaur and post-dinosaur exctinct animals, but unfortunately even reading all kinds of dinosaur literature as a child (gotta pick that back up again) hasn't kept me well-informed. Even so, I know a diploducus from a brachiosaur, and I can definitely tell a T-Rex from a lowly allosaurus. I was ready to see some Dinos. This boneyard delivered on those accounts. To save you from my gushing on each individual monster, I'll just go forward with the gallery thing:



From left to right: T-Rex, view from the back leg; big Rex's face; triceratops' huge head; diploducus' superb neck; a wire frame from where a small dinosaur was displayed (THEY LIVE!); another small dinosaur of the same species; T-Rex's pencil-length teeth; the dinosaur boneyard view from the balcony; a HUGE pterosaur flying overhead; some squid in an ancient reef display; what seems to be an ancestor of the dolphin; an enormous and downright diabolical prehistoric whale (take a look at those teeth!). You can bet I was pretty happy with all this. It had been far too long since I'd seen a dinosaur, let alone this kind of banquet. I didn't show you all of them in there, either. You know, I think my one big wish when I get to heaven is just to see some of these prehistoric monsters in action. Not even fighting or running or chasing or whatever they do in movies, I mean just being. Standing there. Breathing. Sigh.



Yeah. Death by T-Rex. Seems a likely way for me to go, huh.



I'll close out here by mentioning another thing that I noticed sets Japan way apart from America: lack of statues. If someone somewhere did something moderately important in America's history, they probably have a statue, or at least a bust, or at the very least a tree or street dedicated to them somewhere in DC. Japan, not so much. The way I see it, their culture is so much more group-based, that someone standing out like that is more frowned upon. Personally, I like statues. John Paul Jones wasn't nearly that tall, though.

I went to DC again today (remember, the stuff you just read happened a week ago), not so much to report this time but it'll be showing up soon.