Notes From A Museum Trip

The Earth is amazingly old, roughly four thousand six hundred million years old in fact, a slowly cooling molten mass hanging in space that became our own miraculous habitat. Four thousand six hundred million years old! If that's not amazing, then how about this factoid: The oldest rock found on planet Earth is some gneiss (a metamorphic rock) found in the NW Territories of Canada, which is three thousand nine hundred and sixty two years old... Or it might be in Greenland at a slightly older age; it really depends who you believe. Wikipedia or Cardiff Museum?

Apparently, very old stone is hard to find on planet Earth due to the reformation process wherein volcanic and tectonic processes recycle massive amounts of geology. You only get the oldest rocks away from those danger zones, in the shield regions. Supposedly, the oldest rock in Britain only takes us back into forty-per-cent of the Earth's history, and the oldest one in Wales fifteen-per-cent. Do those percentages make sense? Well, I've not worked them through yet, but they're fascinating even if they're wrong.

Aren't museums wonderful? It was nice to spend the time after an OU tutorial today in wandering around Cardiff Museum and examining it all on a superficial basis. The first few visits to the museum contained a lot more scrutiny, but familiarity allows you just to go around semi-randomly, and make notes of interesting things. For some reason, the ages of rocks, and Wales' shortage of geological history popped out this time, as did the term 'submarine landslide'.

If only art galleries could be more interesting. It seems like most are filled with endless and rather uninteresting portraits, with only a few striking and different pieces that pop out. If I ever go to a gallery, I wander around disinterestedly, becoming attached to just one or two pieces, which are never portraits. Never, ever, portraits! Often they're landscapes or impressionistic, except for today when an Augustus John picture called 'May Earp' popped out. It was the most interesting picture in the gallery, except for predictable exceptions like a Monet or two... Art is probably more interesting than I've claimed in the past.

If you have time to spare, and there's a museum, then don't be afraid. There are fascinating things to be found.

O.