Butterflies, Piraracu, and an albino alligator

2-16-2011 Butterflies, Pirararacu, and an Albino Alligator.

That morning neither Sala nor I could find our keys to the new Prius . I still haven’t, but her’s were in another purse. So we left Muir Beach, roughly on time at 8:15 AM, headed for Tirien’s house in Berkeley to pick up Amalia for a girls day out in SF. It was Luna’s birthday, and the plan was for both of them to miss school and instead go to either the Exploratorium or the Aquarium, or both if possible, plus perhaps a little shopping trip to Chinatown.
It was a heroic sky of scudding clouds and showers of rain. A warning for wind on the San Rafael bridge was flashing in lights over the 101 Freeway north. Remembering the VW Kombi bus we once had that would move whole lanes from side to side on the windy bridge. This Prius streaks along all windworthy and sleekly aerodynamic, barely shuddering in the crossfire. And so 22 miles later we arrive; Earnesto is waiting to leave to leave for his day of studying, and Amalia is all ready to come with us. Fuji the little dog is coming with us because we won’t be home till late in the evening, and she is barely OK with a few hours alone. She dances around their living room, delirious with joy at the thereness of being included. The happiness of small dogs is infectious, and worth considering.
In the car heading to SF, we three are a car pool, and sweep majestically past in our special lane, marveling at the vast field of slowly moving single occupancy cars. I’ve recently been exploring the joys of public transport, spurred on by obtaining a plastic “Clipper” card marked ‘Senior’ in dignified white on blue, which bleeps me onto any bus train or ferry. And for less than $2 to get from Berkeley to SF where the trip on BART usually costs over $5. On days when I work in Berkeley, I get out on the road by 6 AM in order to hitch a ride with one of the anesthesiologists who live on our street, or perhaps the guy from the street above, or if that fails the engineer next door. They drop me at the bus stop, and I take the 4 commute bus over the Golden Gate to Montgomery in the Financial District, walk a few blocks to BART and then to Berkeley, where I take another one or two busses. It takes close to 2 hours, about twice as long as by car. On the other hand, I can get a lot of reading or just plain gawking done on the public transport. And it does give a smug feeling of at least being a tiny part of the solution, rather than a blatant single driver part of the problem.
This only works during commute hours. Lots of voting commuters live in Marin and in SF, so during those hours bus schedules are great, as long as you are going to right direction. Other times, or the wrong direction, the time required to travel roughly doubles…so it could take as long as 3-4 hours unless you know the schedules.
The cloud cover was at about 3thousand feet, with a wide clear horizontal view of the white horses, the huge cranes on the Oakland waterfront that unload the thousands of containers arriving on ships, and load the smaller number that are heading out. We send trash, scrap metal, and CD’s of Madonna. They send cars and things Made in China, which is everything. Is this what it felt like in Rome?
They are building a new bridge, to the North alongside the old, to handle the anticipated increased volume of traffic. They are not building much more public transport these days. Our priorities are as ill informed as our electorate.
There is a new building, slender as a willow and green with glass, standing next to the Bay Bridge on the SF side. I am sure it’s safer than most of the buildings I live and work in, but it looks quite vulnerable, and wistfully beautiful. Perhaps they might let me go up and look from the higher floors.
Luna and Rachel are having breakfast at a place near the traditional red gated entrance to Chinatown, on Grant. The Prius waits in a yellow zone while Sala goes in to get Luna. Luna is dressed in a pink t shirt and a knitted poncho that looks like a granny afghan, nicely set off with brown western boots. Amalia is wearing a green long sleeved T shirt and jeans, with Keene semi sandal type shoes. Sala is wearing something fashionale in black and grey. My jeans and jacket are an acceptable disguise.
The girls fall into each others arms, and begin to talk more or less continuously with each other, interspersed with clapping hand games or songs.
But first, we ask, what would you like to do? From the discussion it emerges that Luna would prefer the Aquarium to the Exploratorium. Amalia is fine with either, but wants to be sure we are not going to ‘that museum place’ by which she means the de Young (the Orsay collection of Impressionists was what we last took her to). We set the GPS for Academy of Sciences, and are off, flowing, if that is the correct word, with the traffic across SF, up the panhandle, and into Golden Gate Park. No rain at the moment, even a few smiles of sunlight. To assure a quiet place for Fuji, we head for the underground garage, which I still think of as ‘new’ (but then, I think of the Guggenheim as ‘new’). It’s already full; at 10:15 on a Wednesday? We go down to the second level (It’s really a very efficient parking system, sunk many levels below the plaza between the museums) and leave Fuji with the windows cracked. Although she has been reported to howl like a little coyote when we leave her at home, she seems to regard the car as a kind of mobile den, and generally just settles down.
Two floors up by stairs and a reason for the full garage is clear; this is the once a month free entry day. Touring herds of tagged children and elders, traffic jams of strollers and walkers, and groups of people carrying their bedrolls, are in line. But the line moves rapidly (no money to take, courtesy of the Osher Foundation, a small sign declares) and we are in!!
Amalia takes charge and hustles me off, with Luna of course, while Sala goes in search of something breakfasty. The first half hour we dash around, a stuffed golden eagle here, a blue whale skeleton there, and moments of viewing in between. Amalia can’t quite find the entrance to the Rainforest, before her energy has moved her on. But she does find the exit leading out to a lawn where she fell from a sculpted sealion several years ago, breaking her arm. Today, she and Luna ascend their sealions with loins of steel, and Amalia even reaches, once again, the final peaked nose of hers, exorcising the demons of fracture and pain triumphantly.
Than it’s back to the atrium, to comment on the exceptional whiteness of the albino alligator and the large snapping turtles that share the re-created center display that I remember from the old museum. Then downstairs to the Steinhart Aquarium, which does not have the celebrated but un-natural and hard to manage fish wheel that was in the old aquarium, but does have some spectacular exhibits. Top of my list; the rainforest river pool seen from below…Piraracu, Arapaima, and at least two kinds of giant catfish. Oh, memories of the Amazon, actually mostly the Rio Negro above the confluence at Manaus, in 1967; my reward for completing a PhD thesis. A month of amazing interactions with electric eels, two toes sloths, boa steaks, and jaguar kittens and ending in a tropical fever where my temperature hit 106 and I was hauled out of the dugout canoe in which I was unconsciously floating past the research vessel towards the sea.
This is definitely a level 4 or 5 museum. Lots of ‘bling’…bright ocean reef lighting alternating with the gloom of river and mangrove swamp. Specificity without attempting comprehensive coverage. The reef is specifically from the Phillipines, with spectacular fish and a montage of the Phillipina people who make conservation efforts possible. Not much space wasted on labels, and all that are there are legible and written at 8th grade level.
Amalia has slowed down in the restless rush from exhibit to exhibit, and she and Luna discuss the specificities of various fish and other critters on display. They spend some time at the touching pool, discovering the softness and hardnesses of echinoderms, before scampering to the bright jellyfish, and the ancient alligator gars, hanging like galactic battleships in their darkly natural but safe artificial world. I’ve seen them, chased them, even caught them in the borrow canals along Everglade by-ways. Long and accessible nerves in those long noses, you see. Not much for eating, but great for sodium channels.
Sala, using the miracles of modern texting, has gotten to within hailing distance, and we dive back into the aquarium space for the kids to return to a favorite, the little reverse snow dome at the end of a low tunnel designed to welcome short legs and discourage long. The special attraction are garden eels, with their cute stripy little heads protruding from the sand and extending to weave around looking for food, only to withdraw completely at the approach of any larger fish. Plus, Amalia has discovered that there is a major air blower set in the floor, and that by pulling out her T shirt while squatting over it, a delightfully cool stream of air can be directed up along one’s tummy.
Then it’s time for lunch. Sala likes the spring rolls with ebi; the kids want to share a ham and cheese sandwich. The desserts are discovered on our way to the cash register, and after some pleadings, they girls agree to wait until they have eaten their lunch to choose desert.
We eat outside, it’s not raining, and there is a gas heater right overhead. Toasty. No wind. Cloud show. Sala will go out to take Fuji for a walk (and perhaps read her book) and I will do dessert and then more museum.
They choose a chalk white meringue sea foam cookie and a triple chocolate torte; each will have half of each. They carry the desserts out in separate bags, carefully checking each others bag to be sure. Back at a new table, the matter of halving each treat is front and center. I introduce the old Solomonaic method (the one who chooses where to cut gets the second piece) and the kids bravely engage in a social dance that must be among the oldest in human affairs, the fair sharing of food. It is all scrumptious. Amalia finishes first, and wants to go while Luna is still enjoying her sea foam.
I draw a irregular outline on one of the brown paper bags, and then my version of a palm tree. What else would you want on your island?, I ask. Amalia grasps the pen, and an island paradise complete with birds passing over, a dock, a roaring monster and several houses emerges. Then Luna’s bag is ready, and she populates an island with a new version of a dock and a tree, plus some explanatory inscriptions and water waves. Wow, I would want to visit both of these. As I fold them up, both kids think of new items to add, and only after a while do we put the trash back on the tray and head for the exit.
Amalia is interested in reading the museum map, and likes the idea of aligning it with the reality of the place she is standing. And she reads it well, tracing out a route back to the atrium where they hope to get access to a igloo structure that is part of a temporary theme of ‘Winter Wonderland’ This exhibit would probably not go over well in New York this year, but here in California a machine, high up in the glass atrium, spews out artificial snow flakes, or rather bubble fuzz that floats around just like snow.
I remember reading about different conceptions of going places, of maps. That societies oriented to walking tend to draw maps of how to get there, with relevant turns and not to geometric scale, whereas people living in city quadrants tend to draw maps of blocks and intersections. But there is no time for musings, active Grandparenting is required to stand in line. Amalia and Luna play tag until stopped by a museum attendant. Bad Grandfather!!, I think, but there is no implied criticism, just a request for them to go outside if they want to run.
The domed ‘igloo’ is actually a projection room, and the 6 minute feature is about the aurora borealis, shown planetarium style. And I learn a lot, since the last time I checked in on this subject, there were no pictures from space.
Now there are; in fact, satellites have mapped the locations of the aurorae, and it’s now clear that the lights are the reaction of gas moleules to the impact of the solar winds, deflected by the magnetosphere, but sucked down into the polar regions. How satisfying to learn!! And of course, beautiful. I’ve seen them several times flying over the pole, and once in Minnesota, years ago.
The kids are doing beautifully. They’ve settled into a comfortable jog trot of museum viewing. And now Amalia wants to go to the Rainforest. Luna doesn’t, but when we get there, on a mediated trial, it turns out that she was thinking of another exhibit that she didn’t want to see; the rainforest is fine. They swing, quite conservatively, on the metal bars along the exhibit entrance ramp, acting out a maritime fantasy of dangerous water and sharks, which I am immune to. Then we pass into the airlock that is the entrance, and into the huge spherical world that encloses a small but accurately detailed rainforest.
And it’s this exhibit, or perhaps the exhibit plus the calming effect of all the previous experiences, or perhaps the triple chocolate torte, who knows, that really captivates the kids. They play “I spy” at each separate enclosure of rain forest animals, vying gently for who can find the concealed reptiles or amphibians. They lean, but not dangerously, over the rails to look at the giant Amazonian fish, now seen from above with the people in the aquarium below, a fantastical image sobering in it’s allegory of human intrusion.
I saw a wild Piraracu once, from a bank over the tea coloredwaters of the Rio Negro rather than a railing in SF, but it’s the same ‘that fish is REALLY big’ reaction. Indeed, at least at that time half a century ago, families set baited lines and found it worth waiting beside them for up to several weeks, because one fish, properly butchered, smoked, and dried, would yield a years worth of meat. Now…well, I don’t even want to know, really.
The butterflies, another high point. Most of the butterfly exhibits I have seen are small translucent tunnels, cobbled into the sides of the museums that offer them. But this one, three stories high of open space, with bright tropical birds streaking across the space, and the canopies of living trees all around, is perfect. The blue and black iridescent Morpho butterflies flap and glide, the tiny black and white flitter, and the yellows and greens and oranges are flittering fluttering all around. Yes, they try to land on Luna, perhaps because of the pink of her shirt. Green shirted Amalia borrows Luna’s knit poncho in the hopes of attracting her own butterfly. Sala rejoins us, also marveling at the flittering crowds. Mist sprays out above, re-creating the required humidity. Again, the museum has used specificity and eschewed any attempt at comprehensivity. The second level is specific for Madagascar, with an exhibit of indigenous fish should attract icths from far and wide. Again, it’s the combination of general attraction and specificity enough for the expert that makes this great. And, of course, the butterflies.
Once during my trip in 1967, the bos’n of the S/S Alpha Helix, the research vessel that was out base thousands of miles up the Rio Negro from Manaus, put down his cigar, picked up a net, and announced his determination to ‘catch one of those damm things’, which regularly would set off on the mile long journey across the river, flittering only a few feet off the water. The mate volunteered to help, and together they lowered the launch and set off.
Through binoculars, we watched them in a comedic hunt. The bos’n up on the very bow, staggering and almost falling over and over, as the mate zigged and zagged the boat in pursuit. Wild sweeps of the net. From the distance we weren’t sure of their result. Soon they were back, butterfly-less, and giggling. But by then the humor of it had gripped them as well. We all had a beer and watched the abrupt green tinged termination of the equatorial day.
We take the elevator down, the approved way of exiting the Rainforest dome. Back out to the wide gracious entrance, to the view of the deYoung looking a little like a discarded tropical fruit from this angle, and back to rescue the little dog. Yes, and we went on to Chinatown, and the girls found surprisingly expensive but very cute and trendy dolls called Kimmi or suchlike, and then we went back through the homeless in St Marys park, and thence back across the city and eventually back over the bridge under the questioning sky and back to our old neighborhood where we stopped at the old Chinese takeout place and eventually, full of all the good things that museums can bring, to the birthday dinner at Rachels’. And the full moon sailed away behind the clouds.
Alan