The Ghost Town of Calico

Just east of Barstow, in the Calico Hills, is a rebuilt old mining town, named Calico.  It is currently operated as a regional park by the County of San Bernardino, but was once a busy silver mining town.

Welcome...TO HISTORY!

The Silver Rush of the late 19th century is less well-known than the Gold Rush of the mid-19th century.  However, the Silver Rush was important in the histories of both Nevada and California (especially southern California).  The town of Calico was founded in 1881 by a group of miners who headed into the local mountains looking for silver.  Within two years, the town had grown to house around 1,200 residents, had 500 mines, and the usual accompaniments of a successful old west town (justice of the peace, post office, hotels, restaurants, numerous brothels, etc.).

Calico...never will you see a more wretched hive of scum and villainy

Before long, Colemanite borate (an ore of Boron that can be purified, and can itself be used for the manufacture of glasses, medicines, cosmetics, as well as for numerous industrial processes).  The town swelled to 3,500 people, with settlers from both Europe and Asia joining the American settlers.

The structures constructed during this time ranged from standard wooden construction, typical of 19th century houses and businesses, to stone structures that integrated the slopes and cliffs into their structure.

And, of course, there was no shortage of mining structures and equipment, including machinery such as a stamp mill.

Remember - it's not an exploitative Hell hole that OSHA would shut down anymore, it's historic!

However, as is so often the story with mining towns, the fall came almost as quickly as the rise.  The Silver Purchase Act of 1890 had the effect of reducing the price of silver.  As the decade wore on, Calico's silver mines became less economically viable, and the town began to depopulate.  By 1898, the post office shut down, followed by the school, and the town was pretty much abandoned by 1900.

In 1915, an attempt was made to recover unclaimed silver from the old mines, using cyanidation (a metallurgical process for the extraction ore using the chemical properties for cyanide).  While this did result in the brief resurgence of silver mining, it did not cause Calico to boom again.

In 1951, Walter Knott, of Knott's Berry Farm, bought Calico and began restoring many of the buildings.  While the purchase of historic buildings by the wealthy is hardly unusual, this was a unique turn in two ways: 1) Walter Knott had, as a young man, been a local homesteader and helped to build the cyanidation facilities, and 2) he turned it into a historic park with restored buildings, repaired or re-built based on old plans and photographs, and donated it to the County of San Bernardino in 1966.  

See, tacky Halloween decorations

While the buildings may have been restored to a close resemblance of their historic grandeur, the town is more tourist attraction than ghost town.  While it does serve to teach a visitor a bit about local history, it also has numerous souvenir shops and chachki stands that don't exactly stand up to historical scrutiny.  Oh, and if you happen to visit in October, as I did, you will witness numerous tacky "spooky" plastic skeletons and ghosts arranged about the place, further removing the historicity of the place.

Nonetheless, if you poke around outside of the central town portion and walk on some of the other paths, you will find the remains of buildings that have not been rebuilt, as well as some that have been rebuilt faithfully in ways that don't romanticize the old west.

The solution to California's high housing costs!

Oh, and if you visit, be sure to check out the cemetery.  It is fascinating both in terms of the tombstones, and of the construction of the graves themselves.  Observe:

Calico Hills, California

So, the new father routine has been keeping me busy and occupying much of the time that I used to use to keep this blog.  However, for now I am away from home and working on projects in the Mojave Desert, based out of Barstow rather than Lancaster, this time.

Contrary to popular opinion, Barstow isn't too bad a place - it's not high on my list of vacation spots, but it is a decent enough place out of which to be based.  It beats the hell out of Taft, at any rate.

We finish our work day a few hours before dark, and so I have been using my late afternoons/early evenings out exploring the area.  Yesterday, I headed out to the Calico Hills, an area of interest to me for a few reasons.

There are claims that the Calico Hills was host to a Ghost Dance movement.  The Ghost Dances were religious movements that had begun amongst the Paiute in Nevada and moved out among Native American groups during the 19th century (the best known being the one that sparked the massacre at Wounded Knee).  They varied considerably from place to place, and were often known by names other than Ghost Dance.  The ritual consisted of an extensive dance, coupled with lifestyle changes towards clean living, which would summon the ancestors (or, in some versions, the spirits worshiped by the ancestors) who would wipe the Europeans and their descendants from the Americas.

Needless to say, as often happens with apocalyptic religious  movements, the members of the Ghost Dance cults were tragically wrong.

I have been unable to confirm whether or not there was a Ghost Dance cult involved in the Calico Hills.  It may very well have, there were groups in the general vicinity who had been influenced by the Ghost Dance, but much of what is readily available about the Calico Hills cult comes from half-wit new age "spiritual investigators" and therefore isn't worth the air that the Wi-Fi on which I read about it penetrates.

The area was heavily mined for silver during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.  The town (now ghost town and tourist attraction) of Calico Hills - about which more will be written in a following post - is partially in ruins and has been partially rebuilt.  However, the tunnels for the silver mines are still present, if falling apart, and make for some interesting viewing.

Another interesting aspect of the Calico Hills is the alleged "early man site" - a site that allegedly has artifacts that date to up to 200,000 years old depending on what dates you accept.  Now, I have not handled these alleged artifacts directly, but having seen photos, I am unconvinced.  They do look like they might be artifacts...or they might be geofacts (naturally occurring rocks broken in ways that make them look like artifacts).Given the dearth of any other evidence of humans or pre-human hominids in the Americas prior to 20,000 years ago (the most reliably dated old deposits date to around 12,000 years ago, though that may be beginning to change), and the ambiguous nature of the Calico Hills items, it seems safe to say that they are likely just geofacts.

Many of the supporters of the early man hypothesis like to point out that the legendary Louis Leakey believed these to be genuine artifacts and not geofacts.  However, becoming familiar with the actual work of Louis Leakey (as distinct from the work of his wife Mary or his son, Richard, both of whom have well-earned good reputations among archaeologists and paleoanthropologists) tends to lead one with becoming impressed with his business/fund-raising acumen, and somewhat less impressed with his skills in archaeology.  In fact, Mary Leakey cited his involvement with Calico Hills as being one of the primary causes of her losing respect for him as a researcher, and a contributing factor to the couple separating.

Regardless, the Calico hills have a weird, almost alien, beauty.  And they made for an excellent place to relax and watch the sunset over the playa below and behind the mountains across the valley.

Burritos of London

When I was visiting London a couple of years back, I was surprised by the number of burrito places that I saw.  When I had traveled to the Midwest, the Rockies, or even up the west coast a bit farther north, I had been severely disappointed with the quality of the Mexican food that I usually encountered.  In some places it was simply poor quality or preparation, while in others (especially in Aspen, Co), it was that someone had managed to take very high quality ingredients, and through a particular upper-class form of high skilled preparation, make them into something astoundingly bland and uninteresting.

I had, in short, thought of burritos as a food best eaten in Mexico, California, Arizona, and Texas.

And here I was, in London, noticing a large number of burrito shops.  Not taquerias, as I would see at him, min you, but burrito shops.  In London.  Unlike Aspen, not even on the same continent as Mexico.  What the hell?

Of course, this shouldn't have surprised me.  London is a huge, cosmopolitan city.  People from every nation on Earth have migrated to London, just as has happened with San Francisco, Tokyo, New York, Paris, etc. etc.  So, really, there are Mexicans living in London.  What's more, some of them are likely chefs or cooks, and the presence of Mexican food, and specifically the ever-popular burrito, shouldn't have surprised me.

And yet it did.

I am not someone who demands the "authentic local" dining experience when I go somewhere.  Yes, I will eat the local foods, and usually enjoy them (the food was easily the highlight of my trip to Japan, for example, and I wasn't even eating high quality food there, it was just really tasty), but I am aware that I am am an outsider, and as such, I don't have any illusions that I am living as a local even as I try to see and do what I can.  Nor am I one of those people who adopts the attitude that food prepared far away from it's point of origin must necessarily be bad. I have had excellent Italian food, excellent French food, and excellent Japanese food in places nowhere near any of those countries, so there is no reason why I couldn't get a good burrito in London.

And yet I was afraid to even try.  I can make excused - I was worried that the sauce would be insufficiently spicy, or that the meats would be inappropriately seasoned, or some such thing.  But none of this was true.  The simple fact of the matter is that, somehow, and I cannot put my finger on why, a burrito just seemed horribly out of place in England.  I could accept curry, I could accept tomatoes (which, like burritos, come from the Americas), I could accept Japanese katsu in London, but I could not, for some bizarre reason, accept burritos.

I have no idea why this was.  But it makes me curious.  Is there any food that you, the readers, enjoy, but could not bring yourselves to eat while visiting a particular place?

SAA Memphis Part 3 - Parting is Such Sweet Sorrow

This here is Part 3, you dig?  Part 2 is here, and Part 1 is here.


So, that night I got to bed, fell asleep quickly, and, due to exhaustion, managed to sleep solidly the full night despite the immature pilots of Boeing 747s buzzing my hotel all night long*.  This also despite the fact that the hotel began to fill up with the rather rowdy attendees of a party for 15-year-clean members of Cocaine Anonymous**.

The next morning, I took the shuttle over to the convention center again, knowing that I would only have a partial day in which to see what I could at the conference, as well as to take a quick look around Memphis in the daylight.

So, I started by going to the poster session at the conference.  Posters, for those unaware, are a way for researchers to present their work without getting up and giving a talk.  Although some posters could easily be turned into a 15 or 20 minute talk, most are not quite sufficient material for such a talk, and as a result are better served by the static display of the poster.  A great advantage of posters is that the person who did the research is free to talk about it in a way that the people giving papers are not.  As a result, the poster presenters are often quite busy discussing results and answering questions with the other conference attendees.

Several of the posters were quite good, but two in particular struck me.  The first was from a  graduate student at the University of Washington who was presenting on her work at Dutch colonies in the Spice Islands.  Her work was interesting in its own right, but struck me especially because her findings (roughly - the Dutch were more acculturated by the people that they forced to work on their plantations than the people of the plantations were enculturated by the Dutch, and there was little effort to eliminate or alter the culture of the workers) held some interesting contrasts and parallels to the history of Spanish and later Mexican colonization of California.

The second noteworthy poster was from a young man whose institution I don't remember, but he was presenting on the work he is doing with sling stones.  Sling stones are precisely what they sound like - rocks used in a sling (think of the weapon with which David is said to have killed Goliath).  Slings were used throughout North America, but are rarely discussed by archaeologists, who generally focus on other projectile weapons - mostly arrows, darts, and spears.  What struck me is that one of the sling stones that the presenter had made looked suspiciously like a common bi-conical stone found in Californian sites usually thought to have been a religious item and called a charm stone.  Now, I am not saying that all, or even most, of these items were sling stones, but it is worth noting the similarities, and considering whether or not we may be routinely mistaking one artifact type for another.

After a bit, I went out to wander Memphis just a little bit more.  I wandered over to Beale Street, where I found myself in the middle of a Corvette enthusiast gathering.  It was quite a site to see, but my time was short, and I couldn't dawdle.

I then moved on to get some photographs of the Mississippi River, which is, it must be said, one hell of a river.   It was interesting, it must be said, to look across a river and know that I was seeing Arkansas - there are few places in my home state of California where you can know where one state ends and another begins just by looking at a natural boundary.

Finally, though, I headed back to the shuttle's stop, and got back to the hotel.  I found myself Sitting in the shuttle with the wonderfully named Professor Paine. If only my friend Myrtle shock (aka Dr. Shock, on account of her Ph.D.) were there to meet him.  Once at the hotel, I collected my belongings, and boarded another shuttle for the airport.  However, as I boarded the shuttle back to the airport, I was happy to see that one of the Cocaine Anonymous folks was a dead ringer for Liam Neeson, were Liam Neeson a bearded, long-haired redneck.

Anyway, I got the the airport, and realized that I had not yet purchased a gift for Kaylia, so I got promptly on that, settling on a box of Moon Pies (I have always found them nasty, but Kaylia likes marshmallow more than I do).  While doing this, I encountered a man who kept inadvertently knocking things off of shelves with his backpack.  He and I got to talking, and it turned out that he was a film distributor from San Francisco who had been traveling the country to attend meetings with possible outlets for a film on the history of Timbuktu that had fallen into his company's hands.  He had been in Memphis meeting with people in no way related to archaeology, when he heard that the SAA was there.  However, he had no knowledge of how to reach anyone...and then he ran into an SAA member who also had no idea how to reach anyone at the SAA, so there's irony for you.

One pulled prok sandwich later, I had to move to get onto my plane.  I was delighted to discover that there were only two people in my row - myself, and a fellow who looked for all of the world like John McCain.  As the plane was loading, the honorable senator from Arizona pulled out a large, hardcover sex advice book, and began reading intently, which he continued doing until we touched down in Atlanta (our layover stop).  Unlike the flight out, this one was uneventful, and I was able to finish reading my own book (Devil in a Blue Dress by Walter Mosley - I highly recommend it). 

After we landed, and as we disembarked, it became clear that the former Republican nominee for president had to literally run to catch his connecting flight (perhaps to Wasilla Alaska?).  And so he closed up his sex book and took off running as soon as we were off the plane (it was quite a sight to see, I assure you).  I strolled at a leisurely towards my plane.

On my way to the plane, I was passed by a family of three - a mother and her two children (a boy of about ten years, and a girl in her early teens).  The mother, a very attractive woman with an accent that I have to admit I found quite pleasant, said, rather loudly "well, all of this walking around is making my skirt ride up just ever so much!"  Prompting the teenage daughter to say "Ma!  What have I told you about too much information!"  The son just giggled, whether because he thought it was funny, or out of embarrassment, I could not tell.

You know, it's a shame that sexy John McCain had to take off...I could have introduced the mother to him.

As I kept towards my plane's gate, I also saw a rather corpulent middle-aged white woman being pushed in a wheelchair by a young African American man.  The young man had a bored look on his face, as the woman lectured on about how it is necessary to know your place in order to fit in and be happy.  While the conversation may very well have had nothing to do with race, I must admit that the scene as I saw it seemed to conform to stereotypes.  This, in turn, led me to wonder how often visitors to California see scenes that are not quite what they at first appear, and yet seem to conform to existing stereotypes.


Upon reaching my gate, I realized that I had an hour to kill before boarding.  I was not yet hungry, but I realized that I had a four-to-five hour flight ahead of me, and therefore should probably eat.  I made my way towards a nearby airport sandwich shop, and found myself at a table next to one filled by a group of female undergrad archaeology students, whose conversation was mostly gossip about who was dating who in their department, peppered with talk of good come-on lines for archaeologists. My favorite line: 'I have a recreated Navajo bow for projectile experimentation,would you like to come shoot it?'"

I am ashamed to admit that it took me about an hour before I realized the true potential for "bow job" jokes.

Finally, I got on my plane, and was on my way to San Francisco.  Unlike my previous flights, I had little to report on this one.  I was the only person in my row until the last hour or so of the flight, when a Peruvian archaeologist came over in order to work without being harassed by the person in the seat next to her.  I finally arrived in San Francisco around 11:30, and got easily to my car, and then off to a friend's place for the night, heading back to Fresno in the morning.

And there ended what is likely my last SAA trip for quite a long time.




*It's like they're just 13-year-olds with jet engines.

**No, I'm not making this up.

SAA Memphis Part 2 - It's Gettin' Real at the Convention Center

See Part 1 for the "story up to now..."


Okay, so there I was in Memphis, walking out of the hotel, trying to find the shuttle, only to be informed that the shuttle already left, a little bit early, already full.  Three other archaeologists were already standing there - an older woman, a young professor, and an Albanian graduate student* (sounds like the setup to a joke, I know).  So, the four of us decide to get a taxi.  This worked out well enough, but the cab ride was considerably pricier than any of us expected (topping $30).  Luckily, the professor had an expense account and so he covered it for all of us, which we all very much appreciated.


I got checked in to the conference, and high-tailed it over to my session just before it began.  On the way, I ran into an old friend, Dave Robinson (the fellow for whom I have been doing faunal analysis), and we had a bit of a chat on the way in, and in between papers.  Dave is quite brilliant, and I have always enjoyed talking shop with him.


Anyway, my session began, and, as the other speakers are presenting, I suddenly realize that there are a number of things that need to be changed about my paper.  So, out comes my red pen (yes, I do typically carry one), and I begin re-writing sections on the print-out that I have.  I am becoming increasingly nervous as I go, and realizing that the Powerpoint presentation that I had created and sent to the symposium organizer bears only a vague similarity to the paper as it now exists.  Earlier than I had been scheduled, the organizer announces that one of the papers had been cancelled, and as such I am now up.


I am horribly nervous, panicked, and not wanting to go up.  I look around the room, and it has a number of brilliant archaeologists, almost every colleague who I hold in high esteem: Lynne Gamble, Terry Joslin, Dave Robinson, Jennifer Perry, Amy Gusick, Bill Hildebrandt (who also runs one of my company's main competitors), John Johnson, and my mentor, Michael Glassow.


Shit.


Well, there was nothing else for it.  I began talking.  As I was in the middle of modifying the damn paper when I was called up, I had to fudge a few sections, explaining the concepts and data without having a good script from which to work.  I was able to ease things along by cracking a few jokes about the microscopically small font size on some of my Powerpoint slides, and I was able to make the Powerpoint presentation work with what I had.  I was very unhappy with the paper when I gave it, but I managed to at least get through the presentation without hyperventillating.  As always when I do these talks, I sat down believing that I had blown my credibility with everyone in the room.  I was feeling pretty terrible.


I was the last speaker, so I fully expected to slink out unnoticed.  But then one of the more senior archaeologists accosted me.  He came towards me, and instead of the upbraiding that I was expecting, he enthused "that was great!  Some of what you were talking about is stuff that always bothered me, and I am glad to see that someone else also saw it...and the approach you took was pretty cool!  Here, take my card, I want you to email a copy of that paper to me!"


I was a bit confused, but played along.


John Johnson then spoke with me, and described the research that he would like to do on the subject, while complimenting what I had said.  Now, John is probably the absolute nicest guy in Anthropology (he is at least in the running along with Michael Jochim), so I half-way suspect that he was just being polite, but still, he seemed enthusiastic.


Dave also was enthusiastic, which helped. 


And then I ran into someone who was now with Harvard's Peabody Museum, but who, 30 years ago, had worked in the same region where I did my Masters thesis research.  He told me that he had come to the session because he had read the paper I had published recently, and really wanted to hear what I had to say about this other topic.  So, that was pretty damn cool.  Anyway, he and I spoke about our mutual research interests for a little while.  And then I realized that my boss, who knew the fellow from Harvard, had been in the room during the presentation.  However, she was enthusiastic and seemed to feel that I had done quite well.   


So, all in all, I am going to call this a win. 


I then headed out, and ran into a friend from graduate school who I had also worked with at my first full-time CRM job.  He and I headed out to lunch, and spent some time talking business, research, and about the academic job market.  It was nice, but we were both eager, after lunch, to get back to the conference.  He went to attend a paper, and I went to attend another session, but was stopped on the way by another old friend who now worked for the Forest Service.  Being as how part of how my company justifies sending us out to these conferences is business networking, and I really just wanted to talk with my friend, I allowed myself to get distracted, and we both made sure to mingle business talk with our catching-up.  We parted company, and I headed up to the book room, where I ran into more old friends, and a couple of former coworkers. 


I then headed out to the lobby, and  had my only bad interaction with another archaeologist at this conference.  I should explain that it is not uncommon for academic archaeologists to look down on CRM.  This is less common than it used to be, as an increasing number of academic archaeologists have become involved in CRM work, but it is still not rare.  This particular fellow told me that he was on the faculty of a university-not-to-be-named, and then looked at my name badge (our name badges bore the names of our employers), sniffed, and said, "oh, well...I see that you're still doing CRM" with a tone that seemed to say "you phony archaeologists are so adorable, but you'll never be in the same league as us grown-ups."  He made a few minor disparaging comments, and I pushed back a bit by asking him questions about how long he'd been unemployed before finally getting his current position, asking about the vicious politics of tenure, asking about the family that I was well aware he both wanted and didn't have because of the way his career had been going, and then brought up my retirement plan.  Yeah, it was petty, I was being an ass, but I have long since grown tired of this attitude.


After that, I headed over towards another talk, only to be waylaid by a former boss who is also tied into a couple of my company's current projects.  I always liked this guy, and I had a good business reason for sitting and talking with him for a bit (in fact, it arguably would have been irresponsible for me to not sit and talk with him), so I did so.  We talked shop a little bit (I was very cautious to avoid saying anything or inquiring about anything above my pay grade, and to not say anything that would have been considered in any way inappropriate by my current boss, so as not to create any trouble for my boss).  We also talked a bit about why I left.  When I left, I had told him that it was for family reasons, and because I was constantly being required to work untenably long hours and be away from home far too often, which was true to an extent.  However, a big part of the reason is that a person had been put in charge of a huge project, about whom the best that I can say is that I would not weep had I discovered that the CIA kidnapped him and used him for experiments involving weaponized ebola.


My former boss then told me that I wasn't alone.  Apparently a number of people jumped ship when this guy was there.  Finally, though, the guy did enough damage, and my former boss had enough.  He put one of the former subordinates in the place of the now ex-project manager, and she has been running the project quite successfully, and from what I have heard, the employees under her have developed alot of respect for her and are quite happy with her as their new supervisor. 


It was oddly satisfying to hear that. 


By the time we finished up, the day's papers were over.  Normally, I would have gone to find some people to have dinner with.  But I was only going to be in Memphis for this night, so I decided to grab my camera and go wandering about. 


Of course, it started raining.  I bought an umbrella, and proceeded to wander Memphis, seeing what I could see.  Yeah, it was cold, yeah, I was wet, yeah, I couldn't use my camera without pulling it out of the case and getting it soaked.  But I didn't care.  I was out, exploring a new city in a new region, and I was having fun. 


I realized around 9:00 that I hadn't yet had dinner, and most of the non-pricey places had closed up, so I ended up going to a fast food chicken place that I had not previously heard of, got some chicken, fried okra (I don't care what anyone else says, I enjoy fried okra, and have ever since my grandmother introduce me to it when I was a kid), and a biscuit, and had my dinner while I waited for the shuttle back to my hotel. 


As I sat at the shuttle stop waiting, I fell into conversation with a very grizzled fellow who, as it turned out, was the State Historic Preservation Officer for Guam (despite being a territory and not a state, Guam's guy is still called a STATE Historic Preservation Officer...go figure).  He and I talked shop for a while, and while it wasn't the most enjoyable conversation I have ever had (he was a remarkably frustrated man, though it sounded as if he had cause to be), it was interesting.

Finally, the shuttle arrived, we got to the hotel, I trundled up to my room, got the malfunctioning door handle to work after a couple of tries, and then went to bed.  I was so astoundingly exhausted that I slept solidly despite the 747s passing overhead causing the building to shake.




*I suddenly felt very awkward, as if this guy would somehow know that whenever I need to pull up some random nationality for a fictional character or an absurdist joke involving cab drivers (as overly-specific as it may sound, I crack these jokes quite often), I always choose "Albanian."  Well, regardless, I ran into him a few more times, and found that I enjoyed his company, so there you go.

SAA Memphis, Part 1 - Getting there is Half the Fun?

As I write this, on Saturday night, I am cramped into an awkward position on a Boeing 727 on my way back to the San Francisco Airport.  I have attended what is likely to be my last meeting for a while of the Society for American Archaeology.  As much as I would love to go again, a combination of changes in my life (impending fatherhood, and supporting my fiance financially) puts me into a position where there are other things that I wish to do with my money, while my career path removes much of the motivation (being a CRM archaeologist rather than an academic archaeologist means that I get significantly more out of my regional conference - the Society for California Archaeology annual meeting - than I do out of the SAA's meetings, and for this reason I have only attended two SAA meetings in the last seven years.  I wouldn't have gone this year were it not for two factors: 1) my employer fotted the bill, which they had not compelling reason to do, but my company's owners being basically good people who care about their employees, they were willing to; and 2) I was presenting a paper, and while I could have sent it to be read by someone else, I very much wanted to be the one to do so, and for reasons that will become clear later, I am very glad that I did.


The trip started off poorly.  I slept poorly the night before due to some unexpected (and unexpectedly late) company, so things were off to a great start.  In order to save my employer money (they were good enough to pay my way, I figured that I should be decent enough to use their money with some discretion), I flew out of San Francisco, rather than Fresno.  This meant that I had to drive 3 1/2 hours to San Francisco, which on a weekday during mid-morning and early afternoon would normally have been a long, but easy, drive.  South of Modesto, a collision earlier in the day had closed off a lane of traffic, and though the vehicle had been cleared and the occupants taken for medical care, the Highway Patrol still had the lane closed down.  So, I was concerned about my ability to get to the airport in time.  And then I hit a toll bridge that I wasn't expecting, and therefore didn't have the toll for, meaning that I now owe the state $30 to be payed in a few weeks rather than $5 paid then.  Argh.


I did, however, manage to arrive only a few minutes behind schedule.  However, I quickly discovered that the long term parking lot was completely full.  I discovered this not through signage, or anyone standing at the gate to let me know (there were airport parking employees standing at the gate, but they seemed content to allow cars to enter the lot without warning), but when I had traveled all throughout the parking lot and found not a single space available.  As I was trying to find my way out of the parking lot - which is in many respects rather maze-like in it's traffic design - I was trailed for a time by an airport buss, which after a bit honked it's horn at me.  I stopped, and a middle-aged Asian man with a thick accent left the driver's seat, walked over to me and shouted "The parking lot is full!"


I looked at him, and said the only thing I could think of: "Yes, I had noticed that."


"The parking lot is full!" he shouted at me.


"Yes, we've established this.  I am not trying to argue with you."


He looked at me as if I were some sort of half-wit child that he had been burdened with by unkind relatives.  "The parking lot is full!  You have to leave!"


Now I was getting irritated, and so, getting a bit testy, " said through gritted teeth "Yeah, I know that the damn lot is full, stop shouting that!   Where am I supposed to go?"


He glared at me angrily, and shouted "Why didn't you get a flyer from the people at the exit!"


"Because I didn't know that the people from the exit had flyers!"


"Well they do!  You have to go get one, now!"  He was getting louder and angrier.


Now, I began shouting back "I'll go get a fucking flyer!  But maybe you should actually, you know, let people know before YOU start screaming at them!"


He backed towards his van, and shouted "You get the flyer, and go where it tells you to!"


"Yeah, I'm fucking leaving!"


And with that, I headed to the exit, which is right next to the entrance, where the guy standing there who ignored me as I drove in handed me a flyer explaining that I had to go to the alternative lot for parking.  I got the the alternative lot, where a very pleasant, calm man explained where the open spaces were.  I proceeded to park, get on a shuttle, and get to the terminal.


At the terminal, I quickly discovered that my flight had been delayed.  This would not have been a problem, except that to get to my final destination (Memphis, Tennessee), I had to catch a connecting flight in Atlanta, Georgia.  The delay meant that I would not catch my connecting flight, and the Airtran, the airline for which I had my tickets, had no further flights from Atlanta to Memphis until the following morning, meaning that (assuming no further delays) I would not only have to pay for a hotel in Atlanta (Airtran made it clear that they weren't going to help), AND I wouldn't arrive in Memphis until 10 AM the next day.  The problem is that I was scheduled to speak at 10:45, and it was unlikely in the extreme that I would make it to the conference center on time. 


My only option was to buy a ticket on another airline to get where I was headed.  But, as described in the first paragraph, I could not afford to buy another airline ticket without taking a financial hit that would hurt me and/or my fiance.


I called one of the owners of my company, explained the situation, and said that I couldn't afford the ticket.  To my surprise, his response was "get yourself there, let me worry about the money."


Seriously, I couldn't love my current job any more if it began slipping me ecstasy in the coffee.  These are great people to work for.


So, I got online, and quickly discovered that all flights to Memphis, even indirect ones with layovers were sold out.  And then, the data on my computer screen shifted, and one was available on US Airways.  Someone had cancelled...and the ticket had re-posted.


Things were looking up.


I ran to the US Airways counter - which, it turned out, was about twenty feet from where I was sitting, and I bought the ticket.  It was even an emergency exit row, meaning that even my gangly long legs would have sufficient room. 


Hell yeah, things were looking very much up.


I got through security (which, incidentally, is getting creepier every time I fly), and got to the gate just a few minutes before boarding began. 


On the next plane, the three largest men on the flight were all put together at the exit.  On the one hand, this meant we all had plenty of leg room, but it also meant that we were bashing each other with our elbows and shoulders every time that we moved.  At first, the biggest of us, a large man from Virginia, made his displeasure at having to share space with other big guys clear.  He then put in his headphones and did his best to ignore me and the other guy.  The other fellow, who lives in Washington (though his accent marked him as a native New Yorker) and I talked for a bit, and he was quite pleasant.  He then used the in-flight Wi-fi to listen to a hockey game on his earphones.  I took out my paper and computer, and began making revisions (actually, I substantially re-structured and re-wrote the paper).  After I had finished this, the Virginian took out his earphones and asked what I had been working on, so I explained it to him, which led to more questions.  We talked on and off for the rest of the flight, but by the end, I had learned a good deal about his business (he is a software engineer who is engaged in work on cloud-based applications), and we had talked about mutual areas of scientific interests.  Despite my initial impression, he was a fantastically nice guy, and extremely intelligent and funny.


After we had been in the air for about an hour, we hit a pocket of turbulence.  Not too terribly unusual, and I have been through worse, but we were all asked to fasten our seat belts.  And then the turbulence got even worse, the worst I have, to date, ever been in.  And the flight crew strapped themselves in and announced over the speakers that we were no longer in normal turbulence.  This was, in fact, an emergency situation, and we should all remain in our seats and keep calm.


I have never been one to need a barf bag.  But on this flight, I was beginning to see the wisdom of them.  the emergency situation lasted for about an hour, though the worst of the turbulence was gone in about twenty minutes. 


Anyway, we eventually landed, the three of us exit row men shook hands and parted ways, and I had time to have dinner before getting onto my next plane. 


Boarding the next flight, I discovered that there were only two people in my row: myself, and a fellow wearing a t-shirt and shorts, and carrying a pamphlet of Bible verses.  After we were in the air, the crew came by with the drink cart, and I got my usual Diet Coke.  The fellow with the Bible pamphlet, however, got a can of Red Bull and several small bottles of Vodka.  The flight attendant wanted to stop him at two, but after he assured her that his girlfriend was going to pick him up, and that therefore he would not be driving drunk, he was able to negotiate his way into a few more bottles.  And so, on the flight, I worked on my paper further as the guy in the seat next to me proceeded to get hammered while reading Bible verses.  even after the bottles had been taken away, I could smell the vodka coming off of this guy as he read the words of Luke.


I can't make crap like this up.


We finally arrived in Memphis just before midnight local time.  By this point, I was tired and worn out from traveling, and stressed over the paper that I was increasingly worried about.  I called my hotel to find out if they had a shuttle or if I should hire a taxi.  I was assured that a shuttle would be there for me soon, but it took over half an hour (the hotel was a five-minute drive away).  I finally arrived at the hotel after midnight, and proceeded to try to check in.  The man at the desk, a preternaturally patient and professional Indian gentleman, politely informed me that my card had been denied when I tried ot pay for the room.


What the fuck?


I called my bank (thankfully they have 24 hour customer service), and spent most of the next hour on hold while the rep contacted fraud prevention to find out what was going on.  Turned out that my card was suspended when it was discovered that charges had been made in two different states on the same day.  This looked like either A) my card number had been stolen, or B) I was flying to different fucking airports like I had told my bank I would be doing to prevent this sort of nonsense.  Anyway, with that cleared up, I was able to check in to my hotel room.  The man at the desk had given me a key, and I proceeded towards the room that he had told me to head to.


Once I reached my door, I slid the key card in, the green light on the door handle shown, and I turned the handle only to discover that the room had been dead-bolted from inside.


I headed back to the elevator, stepped inside, pressed the button for the lobby, the doors closed and...nothing.  I hit "Door Open", and the doors opened, I stepped out, let the doors closed, pressed the button, the doors opened, I stepped inside, hit the button for the lobby again, the doors again closed, and...nothing.


I opened the doors again, and went looking for the stairs.  The hotel had a courtyard design, with a huge open central space, and the rooms along the sides.  The stars were in a shaft that had been designed to look like a support and not a shaft containing a staircase.  On the one hand, this gave the hotel a clear, open feeling.  On the other hand, it made the stairs difficult to locate for a sleep-deprived conference goer who was already having a frustrating day.  Still, I eventually found them went back to the front desk, and explained what had happened.  The man at the desk, clearly embarrassed, assigned me another room.  I went up to it, tried the key card, and the door wouldn't open.  The door wasn't dead-bolted, it felt different than that, but it wouldn't open.  I went back to the desk, and the fellow accompanied me back to the room, where we finally got the door open - turned out that the mechanism was getting worn out, and that if you didn't turn it in just the right way, you wouldn't get the door open.  Normally, I would have requested another room, but at this point I was simply grateful to be at a hotel room in Memphis, and I went right in.


As tired as I was, before going to bed, I had to check my email.  And it's a good thing that I did, because I had a notice informing me that, because I had not been on the outgoing Airtran flight, my return flight might be cancelled.  So, I had to call Expedia, through whom I had booked the flight, and spent the next 90 minutes on the phone with them.  I called four times - each of these times I was put on hold while the rep contacted their supervisor.  And each of the first three times, as I waited on hold, I was hung up on.  The fourth time I had to wait an extra long time to talk to a rep because, apparently, 3 am central time is the popular time to call Expedia's customer (dis)service line.  Finally, on the fourth call, I spoke with someone who was able to get the mess straightened out, and made sure that my return flight was confirmed. 


So, closing in on 4 am, I went to bed.  By this time, however, I was so astoundingly stressed out that I couldn't sleep.  So, I just lay there for a few hours, and then got up, showered, shaved, got dressed, went to print up my paper, and then went downstairs to head to the conference.

Kotoku-in, Japan

I spoke too soon - between the Thanksgiving Holiday, a friend visiting from Korea, a niece being born, and my own birthday...well, it's been busier than I had anticipated when last I said that I was going to start keeping the blog routinely. Hopefully this coming week will be less eventful.

In the meantime, another photo blog of a historic site, this one is in the city of Kamakura, Japan.

Located to the south of Tokyo, on a bay, the city of Kamakura is gorgeous. It's a popular tourist destination within Japan, and I can vouch from personal experience that the place bears a strong physical resemblance to Santa Barbara, California.



Kamakura has a fascinating role in Japanese history, but I would like to focus on a specific place, the Kotoku-in, and more specifically the Great Buddha within the temple grounds.



The Kotoku-in is a Buddhist shrine/temple located a 20-minute walk from the beach. The Great Buddha within it is an Amida Buddha, the principle Buddha of the Pure Land sect.





This statue was built around 1252, to replace a wooden statue that had been built in the 1240s but had been damaged in 1248. The bronze statue that now stands was expensive, but funds were raised, and the statue built.

The statue was originally covered in gold plating, but that has long since gone. It remains an impressive statue, though, standing 13.35 meters (approximately 40 feet) in height. And, interestingly, you can enter the statue.



However, you have to move through the statue quickly, and photos don't come out so well when you're using a cheap point-and-click camera.



I loved the irony of the atheist (me) and the western Pagan (Kay) walking through a giant statue of an eastern divinity.

Though the statue is the main draw, the rest of the grounds are quite impressive as well.




The statue is one of the better-known symbols of Japan, and it was an impressive site to see.

Abney Park Cemetery

Okay, finally done with most of the moving, and I finished edits to a paper so that it is prepared for publication (I'll update when it finally gets published). So, I'll soon be back on my normal bloggy schedule (three times a week, as time allows).

However, in the meantime, here's some more photos of a historic/archaeological spot. This one is Abney Park Cemetery in London.



Abney Park was laid out in the first half of the 18th century by Lady Mary Abney from lands that she held in the Stoke Newington area. The area was the home of Dr. Isaac Watts, a well-known writer of English hymns.

Grave of Isaac Watts

During the early 19th century, the park became the location of a Quaker school for girls. During the 1840s, it became the location of a non-denominational garden cemetery, allowing the burial of a larger swath of London's citizens than the sectarian cemeteries. It also contained an impressive arboretum, unsurprising given the popularity of botany during the 19th century.



The cemetery also contained a non-sectarian chapel, allowing anyone who wished to come worship, a radical idea in the 19th century. The chapel stood as a monument to religious tolerance, also a radical idea in the 19th century, but today is decaying and looks more like the set of a horror movie.








The trust cemetery was sold to a private company in 1880, who continued to run the cemetery until the company became insolvent in 1978. During this time, burials were packed tight in the cemetery, in it is clear from a casual stroll through the grounds that graves had begun to overlap each other.




This aspect, that material from one time is plopped right on top of and even mixed in with that from another, is one of the things that I find most fascinating about this place. It is what archaeologists refer to as a palimpsest* - a place where material from a wide range of time is deposited in one place, resulting in something that looks like a simple site but which is really a complex amalgam of many different uses of the same location over a long period of time.





In some cases, this includes finding new uses for old items.




Today, the park is preserved as an open space, and is a quiet, peaceful place to visit. Unfortunately, many visitors are not as good as they should be about taking their trash with them when they leave. However, this adds yet another layer to the palimpsest site that is the park.



*The term comes from medieval scholarship, where the term palimpsest referred to a scroll that had been written, the ink scraped away, and new writing placed on it. Sometimes the original writing could still be seen via depressions on the material where the pen had made its mark.