Raven's Roads
Living an interesting life: the travels and musings
of motorcycling author Linda R. Moore

Feb 16, 2007

Oakland Museum of California

Filed in Days Out

15 February 2007

A week or so back Mary said that she had a need to be in the Oakland Museum of California on the 15th, for a lecture on amphibians, and invited along anyone who wanted to come. Thus it was that with some to-ing and fro-ing of emails, I joined her and Joe for a pleasant day out.

We carpooled up from their home in San Lorenzo and immediately went for lunch, since there were mumblings and grumblings of tummies. Mary treated the three of us to lunch and I had a turkey sandwich which, delightfully, came with a layer of caremalized onions for a quite different flavor. Someone had left Hershey’s kisses on the next table over so Joe went and nicked them for us. The cafe is a lovely little place with a view over the carp pond. Later, standing at the pond, the many and varied fishies converged on us, expecting to be fed. The museum has a modern feel, very airy, with split levels, and is dedicated to California history, art and nature.

We had about an hour to pass before the lecture so I picked the California history room. It was really neat, with displays that pulled the history of the state together from the original settlers who came in over the Behring Strait (sp?) between 12,000 and 3,000 years ago. There were a large number of Indian tribes, quite isolated; they had no real need to intermingle because they were self-sustaining. The topography of California is such that it is almost cut off from the rest of the continent and behaves more like an island than anything else. Everything here has, then, developed in a quite unique fashion.

There were sections for the Spanish missionaries, the Gold Rush, the counterculture and environmentalism. Mary found a printing press and, reading it, discovered a typo left there just for her. A set of giant scales set off my Monty Python trigger: “We shall use our LARGEST scales!” And I admired an Arlen Ness motorcycle; apparently he hadn’t had his first bike until he was 27.

I’d learned bits and pieces of California history as I went along, but I’d never seen it pulled together this way into “eras” and it made things click for me. It also helped that Mary is herself very knowledgeable so I got my own tour guide through the museum, an added dimension which was really welcome.

Mary went to the talk and Joe and I wandered up into the art gallery to look at the pictures. There was some neat stuff in there; the whole gamut from modern painting (I’m sorry, but it still looks just like someone flung bits of color at a sheet to me) to old oil landscapes that seemed to draw you in, and some other fascinating pieces like Edweard Muybridge’s first moving picture plates and the “tuff scuffs” by Gaza Bowen. (No need to scrub the floor on hands and knees ever again–dance your way around the kitchen floor!).

Outside were the gardens with everything freshly green and bright. Between concrete decks vegetation had been planted and a number of intriguing sculptures gleamed in the sunlight. There was a grand view of the courthouse which almost became a fatality of the 1989 earthquake. white against a vivid blue sky.

Finally we went to the natural history section where I found a stuffed raven and compared myself in size to a California condor’s wingspan. I’m about half a condor. The population got down to 22 or so in the Eighties and is now up to about 200. Mary joined us there and we poked around the gift shop before heading across to Castro Valley for some coffee. This was my treat as I’d not paid a penny for gas, food or museum entry at this point and it was a good excuse to try Peet’s Coffee for the first time.

(I thought it was yummy, by the way.)