crew of pagan invaders when suddenly there appears amongst the besieging horde: CalafÃa, Queen of California. California, for its part, turns out to be an island âon the right hand of the Indiesâ and âvery near the terrestrial paradise,â inhabited by a race of Amazonian warriors whose weapons are of purest gold, âfor in all the island there is no other metalââall of which must have sounded pretty intriguing from the conquistadorial point of view. On the other hand, in California, according to RodrÃguez, there were also âmany griffins on account of the great ruggedness of the countryâ; when the griffins weresmall, âthe women went out with traps to take them to their caves, and brought them up there. And being themselves quite a match for the griffins, they fed them with the men whom they took prisoners, and with the boys to whom they gave birth.â So it was a mixed bag.
In 1542, exactly fifty years after Columbusâs first landfall in the Caribbean, Juan RodrÃguez Cabrillo led a fairly ragtag band aboard two small, leaky vessels well up the coast of Alta California, anchoring variously at San Diego, Catalina Island, San Pedro Harbor, which he called the Bay of Smokes (
BahÃa de los Fumos
) on account of the many Indian campfires along its shore, and then in Santa Monicaânot half a dozen miles from where David and I now sat wolfing down our pekoras and sweet lahsisâbefore heading up the coast toward Santa Barbara and San Miguel Island. A bit over thirty-five years later, in 1579, Sir Francis Drake came streaking by in his
Golden Hind
from the other direction, out of Point Reyes up north, heading down toward Cape Horn and then home, leading only the second expedition ever to circumnavigate the globe (and becoming the first captain of such an expedition to make it home alive, Magellan having died in the attempt). Once back in England, Drake lived on until 1596, when the Elder Tradescant would have been about twenty years old and certainly familiar with the legendary privateerâs exploits. Years later, Tradescantâs collection would include not only a portrait of Drake but also a âTrunionâ from his ship.
Sitting there at the picnic table outside the Indian market, gazing west down Venice Boulevard, David and Ifancied how, but for the smog, we could almost have made out the galleon traffic coursing by. At length we returned our trays and headed back to the museum, though entering this time from the rear, into Davidâs workroom, which was brimming over with the half-completed vitrines of his next show, set to open in just a few weeks.
âTell the Bees â¦: Belief, Knowledge and Hypersymbolic Cognition,â a coproduction, according to its advance literature, of the MJT and the Society for the Restitution of Decayed Intelligence, had been in the works for years and was clearly going to be one of Wilsonâs most elaborate ventures to date. By way of introduction he suggested I don a pair of earphones and listen to the audio portion of the slide show that was going to accompany the exhibit while he continued to tinker with some of the vitrines. Once again, the production qualities of the tape were first-rate, blending subtle music, crisp sound effects, and a solid-seeming narration. The Voice of Institutional Authority started out by recounting the tale behind Alexander Flemingâs 1929 discovery of penicillin; presently we were given what purported to be Flemingâs own voice, or anyway a Scottish voice of raspy, wire-recorder quality, recalling how at the climactic moment of the accidental experiment, âIt was found that broth in which the mold had been grown, like the mold-broth remedies commonly applied to infections by the country people, had acquired marked inhibitory, bactericidal, and bacteriolytic properties to many of the more common pathogenic bacteria.â The wire was rewound and the phrase
In 1542, exactly fifty years after Columbusâs first landfall in the Caribbean, Juan RodrÃguez Cabrillo led a fairly ragtag band aboard two small, leaky vessels well up the coast of Alta California, anchoring variously at San Diego, Catalina Island, San Pedro Harbor, which he called the Bay of Smokes (
BahÃa de los Fumos
) on account of the many Indian campfires along its shore, and then in Santa Monicaânot half a dozen miles from where David and I now sat wolfing down our pekoras and sweet lahsisâbefore heading up the coast toward Santa Barbara and San Miguel Island. A bit over thirty-five years later, in 1579, Sir Francis Drake came streaking by in his
Golden Hind
from the other direction, out of Point Reyes up north, heading down toward Cape Horn and then home, leading only the second expedition ever to circumnavigate the globe (and becoming the first captain of such an expedition to make it home alive, Magellan having died in the attempt). Once back in England, Drake lived on until 1596, when the Elder Tradescant would have been about twenty years old and certainly familiar with the legendary privateerâs exploits. Years later, Tradescantâs collection would include not only a portrait of Drake but also a âTrunionâ from his ship.
Sitting there at the picnic table outside the Indian market, gazing west down Venice Boulevard, David and Ifancied how, but for the smog, we could almost have made out the galleon traffic coursing by. At length we returned our trays and headed back to the museum, though entering this time from the rear, into Davidâs workroom, which was brimming over with the half-completed vitrines of his next show, set to open in just a few weeks.
âTell the Bees â¦: Belief, Knowledge and Hypersymbolic Cognition,â a coproduction, according to its advance literature, of the MJT and the Society for the Restitution of Decayed Intelligence, had been in the works for years and was clearly going to be one of Wilsonâs most elaborate ventures to date. By way of introduction he suggested I don a pair of earphones and listen to the audio portion of the slide show that was going to accompany the exhibit while he continued to tinker with some of the vitrines. Once again, the production qualities of the tape were first-rate, blending subtle music, crisp sound effects, and a solid-seeming narration. The Voice of Institutional Authority started out by recounting the tale behind Alexander Flemingâs 1929 discovery of penicillin; presently we were given what purported to be Flemingâs own voice, or anyway a Scottish voice of raspy, wire-recorder quality, recalling how at the climactic moment of the accidental experiment, âIt was found that broth in which the mold had been grown, like the mold-broth remedies commonly applied to infections by the country people, had acquired marked inhibitory, bactericidal, and bacteriolytic properties to many of the more common pathogenic bacteria.â The wire was rewound and the phrase
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