Museums and More

 

November 6, 2012 – Museums and More

Road Scholar keeps you so busy that there’s hardly time to catch your breath, let alone write.  There are 23 students in our group, from all over the U.S.  Elliott and I are up between 6 and 6:30 a.m. everyday and have class right after breakfast.  Our instructor has been giving us a fascinating history lesson (called If Saguaros Could Talk), going back to 12000 BC and continuing up through modern times.  I bet even long-time Tucson residents would learn a lot from his lectures.  I use my laptop for note-taking, which helps me focus and stay awake when I can’t be moving around.  Honestly, I don’t know how students manage to stay awake in class, even when it’s interesting.   Here’s a tiny sampling of what I learned from Monday and Tuesday mornings’ lectures:

• Over a thousand years ago, the Hohokam Indians (who lived where Tucson is located today) built an extensive network of canals that they used for irrigation.
• The Diné (Navajo) came to the Southwest around 500 years ago from Canada.
• Don Hugo O’Conor is called the Father of Tucson.  He was one of many sons of Irish lords who became mercenary soldiers in the Spanish army in Mexico in the 1700s.
• A large percentage of the Spanish who came to Mexico and South America in the 1500s were actually Basques.  In the early 1700s they settled in the area of today’s Arizona.
• In 1860, the population of Tucson was about 75% Hispanic.  By 1880, when the railroad came to Tucson, the population had grown and was about 70% Anglo. 
• The farthest west battle in the Civil War took place at Picacho Peak about 40 miles southwest of Tucson.  By the way, picacho means peak in Spanish. 

But it isn’t all sitting in class.  On Monday afternoon, we boarded a bus for visits to two museums in downtown Tucson.  I wasn’t really excited about either one, but I quickly changed my mind.  At the Arizona Historical Society, we got an idea of how people traveled in earlier times.  Before the days of covered wagons, settlers moved west in uncovered wagons drawn by a team of oxen.  And we peered into a stagecoach which would have packed about 8-10 people into its very cramped compartment.  It couldn't have been much worse than economy seating on today’s airplanes. 

But the most memorable exhibit at the Historical Society was 100 Years, 100 Quilts, part of Arizona’s Centennial celebration.  The exhibit showcased the extraordinary creativity and talent of quilt artists from across the state.  Here is just one example:

At the nearby Arizona State Museum, on the campus of the University of Arizona, I discovered a wealth of treasures.  This is an anthropology museum with a significant collection of Native American pottery and baskets.  In addition, their permanent Paths of Life exhibit showcases ten different cultures of the Southwest in great detail.  I was especially interested in “Gale’s Indians,” the Yaqui. (She lives on Yaqui Place.)  In addition, I found out that the Hopi, who live in northeastern Arizona, are the only group of Native Americans that didn’t adopt Christianity.  Our visit to this museum was much too brief.  However, it included a stop in their well-stocked gift shop where I picked up a couple of books and copied this quotation from William Butler Yeats that decorated one wall:  Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.  

We had class again after Monday’s dinner.  The subject of the lecture was the film industry in Tucson.  Actually, I had heard from Elliott about the filming of Red River because he served as an extra in the film in 1947.  Now I know that over 1000 movies were made in southern Arizona.  The area is ideal for westerns.  It offers mountains, cactus, trees, rolling plains, sand dunes, and almost every landform other than beaches.  Many westerns were shot in Old Tucson, a replica of a Wild West town that was built in 1939. 

But enough for now.  I’m exhausted after a long day on the trail.  I’m going to take off these dusty shoes and go to bed.  Amazingly, Elliott is keeping up with the intense pace.  I’m sure he’s not pain-free, but he has managed to focus on the activities and maintain his positive attitude.