Museums and Memories

I went on a half-day trip to Berkeley today for a meeting of informatics folks of the Berkeley Natural History Museums. The meeting was in the Grinnell-Miller library of the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology.

Berkeley is where I grew up and went to school as an undergrad studying zoology. I don’t think I’ve been inside MVZ for almost twenty years. Much, much has changed there, most notably the complete rebuilding of the interior of the Life Sciences Building in the early 1990s. MVZ is now on the third floor in the center of the building, now near the University and Jepson Herbaria and the Museum of Paleontology, the latter having a T. rex skeleton mounted in the building’s exact center.

We had a little tour of MVZ and the herbaria after our meeting. Our guide pulled out all sorts of specimens for us, including resplendently-colored tanagers and, at my request, the long-billed curlews. Much of our knowledge of the California biota has come from work at the MVZ and these herbaria.

My trips to Berkeley now are always very focused and precise. Either to visit family, to visit a store or restaurant, or to pass through on the way to other places in the Bay Area. I know Berkeley well but in no sense do I live there. I note the changing storefronts there, not the events and issues of daily life.

Where the bike path turns south to leave the Arboretum, returning home this evening I heard and saw a western tanager in one of the oaks. Spring migration is underway!