La Llorona

It is the time for Halloween, so I thought I would share a few ghost stories.  In Mexico (and for that matter New Mexico) there is an oft-told story about a ghostly woman who lives near water.  Depending on who is telling the story, this phantom is a danger to children, to young men, or to teenagers.

Where did the stories of La Llorona start?  Was it Medea in ancient Greece?  Lorelei in Germany?  Every culture seems to have a story of a woman who lures sailors to their grave.

Or is it an Aztec tale?  In 1502, in the Aztec capital of Tenochtítlan, the goddess Cihuacoatl took the form of a beautiful lady draped in white garments.  Throughout the night she walked the streets crying out in misery, “Oh my children…your destruction has arrived.  Where can I take you?”  Many believe that Cihuacoatl was speaking of the future conquest of Mexico by the Spaniards.

Maybe it’s just a universal desire of mothers to scare their children away from the water.  Whatever the reason, every location has its own version of the story, so I thought I would share a few of them from the southwest.

La Bruja or the Witch

Sofia lived in a small town in Mexico--the kind of place where, if you weren’t married by the age of 15, you were an old maid.  Sofia was already 19 and still single, even though she was beautiful.  Unfortunately, Sofia was also egotistical and selfish and the gossips of the town whispered that she was actually a witch.

Then Sofia met Luís.  He was charming, handsome, and soon the two were lovers.  Within a year, Sofia had a baby boy who was the very image of Luís.  Shortly after the child’s birth, Luís disappeared.  Sofia was heartbroken, but the local people blamed her, saying she had run him off.

 

One afternoon, Sofia overheard two men talking about how they had seen Luís in a nearby town, with another woman.  As they laughed, Sofia grew into a terrible rage.   She ran to the local lake and pushed her struggling infant underwater and held him there until he stopped moving.  When Sofia realized what she had done, she stayed by the lake, wailing and refusing all food until she passed away.   Since Sofia’s death, several small children playing near the lake have vanished without a trace.

La Sirena, the Siren

Laura was an attractive girl from a desperately poor background.  As soon as she could walk, she began working to help her family.  When she was 16, she got a job in a store where she soon met Miguel.  Miguel was everything poor Laura had never known—he was a rich and handsome man who relentlessly pursued her until she agreed to go out with him.  Within a few weeks, he asked her to marry him.  Trembling, Laura said yes, and that very night she made love for the first and only time.

But after that passionate night, Miguel refused to see her again.  Laura soon discovered she was pregnant, and when her parents found out, they threw her out of the house.  She was penniless and her poor poor baby was born premature, weak, and malnourished.  Laura had no other choice; she went to Miguel and begged for his help.  Miguel laughed at her, saying the baby wasn’t his.

Laura walked to a nearby lake and slowly walked into the dark water until both she and the baby disappeared.

A few weeks later, Miguel, too, mysteriously disappeared.  And since then, men who have been out drinking or cheating on their wives have regularly disappeared; all having been last seen following a mysterious woman through the winding streets of the dark city.

La Ramera, the Harlot

Linda grew up in a tough neighborhood, so she had to learn early to use what she had to get what she needed.  A single mother, she worked as a waitress and was desperately tired of her dead-end life.  One night, she met Alejandro, a sexy man with a good paying job.  He was alone and an easy mark for Linda, who easily seduced him.

Within weeks Linda was talking about marriage.  Alejandro said he couldn’t marry her because there were always prying eyes--he didn’t think he could open up to Linda until they had some privacy.  Since Alejandro had always avoided being around the baby, Linda decided to get rid of the obstacle to her happiness.  A week later, the poor baby’s body was found in the river. 

The day after the funeral, Linda told Alejandro that since she had taken care of the problem, now they could be married.  Alejandro was horrified and said he had meant that his mother was always watching the couple.

Linda turned into a crazed animal, screaming and swinging her arms at Alejandro.  Suddenly, she grabbed a knife and fatally stabbed both Alejandro and herself. 

To this day, small children playing near the river hear her cries and run from her screams. 

La Fantasma, The Ghost

Barbara was a school teacher in a small town.  Alone, and desperate for someone to befriend her, she fell in love with the school’s coach.  Strong, confident, and assured, the coach assured Barbara that the most important thing for the school to do was focus on dodge ball. 

Soon, Barbara was neglecting her classroom and the pupils of the school were spending more and more time in the playground.  Barbara was worried, but the coach assured her, that eventually the people of the town would realize how important dodge ball really was to the students.  If the school could beat the dodge ball team from a nearby town, the coach was sure the parents would be appreciative.

But, the parents grew angry.  “Our children can’t read!” the parents screamed.  That very night, the school board fired Barbara.  Barbara turned to the coach for support, but the coach turned his back on her and told the school board, “I tried to tell her, but she wouldn’t listen.”

Barbara ran to the school, and went to the far end of the playground, where the duck pond was located.  To this day, no one has seen her, but occasionally, students playing near the pond still her wailing, “But we could have won at dodge ball!  I know we could have—just one more year!”

While no one else has disappeared yet, we all know they are going to.  It always happens that way.

History of New Mexico—Part 2

Two weeks ago, we left our poor Hunter Gatherers in a precarious condition: they had become farmers.  Unfortunately, early farmers had all of the work and few of the benefits.  Surprisingly, for centuries, farmers didn’t even eat very well. At least the hunter gatherers had a naturally varied diet.  For centuries, our poor malnourished Paleo-agriculturalists subsisted on the ragged edge of failure.

It will take a long time before our farmers acquire the knowledge necessary to become successful, but eventually, we see activity that even today would be recognizable as farming--raised terrace farming using digging sticks.  While most of the crops sound familiar—corn, squash, beans, and peppers---we might have trouble recognizing them.  These are the cultigens (original variety) of the crops we enjoy today.

The original ears of corn contained only 5 rows of kernels and were about the same length as today’s okra.  Today, on Facebook, several of my friends are very concerned about genetically modified organisms.   Through thousands of years of selective breeding, all of our crops have been genetically modified.  If you want to only eat non-GMO foods, you are going to have to restrict your diet to water and salt.  I can’t think of anything else in the store you could eat.

There were very few animals on this farm, for very few animals in the new world were domesticated.  A few small dogs were used as food—though technically, the size of the animals violates the dog rule.  To qualify for the dog status, the animal has to be at least 10 pounds.  Under that, and it is called bait.

In all the new world, only a few more animals were domesticated:  turkeys, llamas, alpacas, honey bees, and guinea pigs pretty much round out the list.  And the last animal was used for food, just like the dogs.  Every other animal that we associate with farms came from the old world.  Do you remember the old kindergarten song, Old MacDonald Had a Farm?  If you can sing about the animal in that song, our farmer did not yet have it.  EIEIO.

Did our simple farmers live in harmony with nature?  (You know, kind of like Iron Eyes Cody in the classic Keep America Beautiful public service announcement where after watching people littering along the highway, a single tear forms in his stoic Native American face?  Well, probably not like him, since he was actually Italian and just looked Native American.)  The idea of Indians living in harmony with nature just never seems to die. 

Native Americans exploited their environment to the limits of their technological abilities.  If you remember, a couple of weeks ago, our natives hunted wooly mammoths to extinction.  And if you need more proof, look at ‘Head-Smashed-In-Site’ in Alberta, Canada.  The Indians put up stone markers along a trail for over five miles so they would remember the trail they used to stampede herds of buffalo off a cliff.  Far more animals were killed than were butchered—and the site was used for seven thousand years.

Eventually, our small gathering of farmers will be successful enough at farming that there is time for other activities:  pottery, basketry, and weaving.  Eventually, we see the signs of regional variation and artistic differences.  And sometimes these items are found far from the point of manufacture, meaning that trade between our groups has developed. 

Our natives have almost no metal, no system of writing, no beasts of burdens, hell—these rock-biting and bone-tossing savages don’t even have digital watches.  Obviously, this is a primitive society.  At least you might think so.

Do you know what an epiphany is?  That is the wonderful moment when you are studying—usually alone—and suddenly you understand something.  It is your “Eureka” moment when you have a breakthrough and understand something.  An epiphany is the second best feeling in life—and if you don’t know the best feeling in life, you probably shouldn’t be reading this blog.

My epiphany was when I suddenly understood that everyone on earth, anyplace and at any time had far more in common with me than there were differences.  The more I studied a people, the more I realized they were just like me.  If you could really get inside the heads of our Paleolithic farmers, we would probably realize they worried about their children, their spouses, and they work they had to do.  In short, they were just like us.

Every culture has rituals, taboos, and customs.  There are no primitive cultures, only primitive levels of technology.  And even primitive technology need specialized knowledge.

If you find lumps of copper, they can be hammered into tools, but as you do this, the copper gets brittle.  How do you keep this from happening?  The ashes from which trees cure leather the best?  How do you make soap from cactus?  How do you keep the poisons in acorn flour from killing you?  How do you boil water in a clay pot?

You and I can probably both make fire from two sticks, but only if one of them is a wooden match.  Our Paleolithic farmer knows the answer to all of this, and more.  His life is probably just as complex as yours, just different. 

Our Indians have not yet started making communities, but we will cover that in a few weeks.

Oh yes, heat the copper until it is red hot, and then you can hammer it again.  Oak trees contain tannin, and if you don’t know which ones are the oak trees, just chew bark off of every tree you find.  You’ll know when you find an oak tree even if you have never tasted tannin before.  Blanche the acorn flour with boiling water that you got by adding and removing  hot rocks to the clay pot until you have the temperature you want.  But you knew that.

Just a Po' Dumb Ol' Country Boy

I had lunch today with a very nice Yankee.  Smart, too, since she had the sense to marry a man from North Carolina.  Though the Bible is against the marriage of Southerners and Yankees (see Second Corinthians, Chapter 6, Verse 14), I think it is the only chance the South has of ever understanding these people.

Liz (I’ll call her that, since that’s her name) thinks her husband talks too slow.  According to her, every time she asks him a question, she can count to ten before he answers.  While she thinks that southerners are slow of wit, I think the poor guy is just mentally checking his answer for loopholes and incriminating content.  Yankee or not, Liz is still a wife.

There is a whole building full of fast-talking Yankees where I work at Enema U.  I think we Southerners are outnumbered about as bad as at the Battle of Pittsburg Landing (occasionally called “Shiloh”).  Each and every one of those Yankees seems to think being born in the South is synonymous with mental retardation.  As far as I’m concerned, this is a good thing.   It is simply amazing the things you can get away with by just saying, “Aw shucks.  I’m just a po’ dumb ol’ country boy.”  It doesn’t even matter how many times you use the line, those “po’ dumb ol’ carpetbaggers” are predisposed to believe it.

Funny thing is that, even as the carpetbaggers are poor-mouthing the country folk, little by little, they are picking up our ways.  Take Liz, for example.  A couple of years ago when she came here, she thought black pepper was a spice instead of a garnish, but not that long ago, I saw her eat a stuffed jalapeno—hell, she had even made it.  Even today, she invoked the ‘great southern curse’ while describing her neighbor.  For those of you who don’t know--the great Southern curse is where you can, with a clear conscience, call someone a lowdown chicken thief who cheats at cards and steals from the collection plate--as long you end the sentence with the phrase: “bless his heart.”

Evidently, we Southerners can get away with this foolish country disguise forever, since our new neighbors and friends never seem to learn that we can turn the “country” on and off like a spigot.  Hell, some of my new friends will even read this and still marvel every time I manage to show up with shoes on.

All this kind of reminds me of the city slicker who went for a drive out in the country in his new Mercedes.  As he went around a long curve, he met a deer standing in the middle of the road. The man frantically swerved the car, missing the deer by only a few inches. Unfortunately, in the process, the car ended up in a ditch, stuck deeply in the mud.

Nearby, the man saw a light from a farmhouse. He walked up the driveway and knocked on the door, which was soon answered by a kindly-looking farmer. The man explained his situation to the farmer, who said, “Don’t worry--I think I can help you.”

The farmer led the man to his barn where he got into his pride and joy--a John Deere 9630 4wd tractor with a deluxe cab, an active seat, and 800/70r38 duals.  After driving to the Mercedes stuck in the ditch, he slowly backed the tractor up to the car, put the emergency brake on the tractor and jumped down with a large heavy chain.  After attaching one end to the pintle hook on the back of the tractor, he began walking towards the luxury car stuck in the mud.

“Wait!” yelled the Yankee.  “You’re not going to tow my $90,000 Mercedes with that tractor, are you?”

The farmer looked at the man for a long ten count, then turned and began walking slowly back to his tractor.  “No,” he said.  “I’m not going to tow your $90,000 car with my $250,000 tractor.”

That ignorant Yankee thought everything in the country was low-class, backwards, and simple.  In so doing, he revealed that it was he that was classless, backwards, and simple-minded--bless his heart!

The History of New Mexico - Part 1

Part 1 -- The Beginning

For a very long time, New Mexico just was.  It was kind of boring.  Actually, it is still rather like that--most of New Mexico is still kind of empty.  There is very little difference between the way the state used to look and the way it looks now, except we used to have grass and more trees.

The state had grass, even though there were a lot of animals that ate our grass--I guess they were on a diet, because they never seemed to eat all of it.  There were a whole lot of camels, horses, giant buffalo, and wooly mammoths.  It is amazing that with all these rather large animals, there still seemed to be lots of grass.

The grass is gone now.  What seemed to be an endless supply of feed for giant elephants was not nearly enough grass for cattle.  The strange thing is that New Mexico is not really even much of a ranching state.  We don't really raise cattle for food--they are more like pets for men who like big hats and even bigger pickups.

And some of the trees are gone.  Many of our mountains used to have trees, but a few of those peaks are bare now.  Lots of trees got cut down by settlers, and as the trees went, so did the thin layer of topsoil.  If we wait long enough, they might come back, (say a couple of thousand years from now).

Yes, most of what New Mexico has now has been here a very long time:  Sand, sun, and a wind that has always seemed to come from the west.  New Mexico is dotted with old volcanoes, and if you look at them, the east, or downwind side always seems to be the bigger side.

Then, all of a sudden, there were little groups of people.  Somewhere about 15-25,000 years ago (unless you ask Dr. Unleashed, anyway) Hunter Gatherer groups began wandering through the state.  During the Wisconsin Glacier Age, so much water was tied up in the form of ice that the level of the oceans dropped dramatically, exposing the land between Siberia and Alaska.  We know this for certain because Sarah Palin saw it from her house.

Anthropologists called this a land bridge, which is a particularly poor choice, since the "bridge" was about 1200 miles wide.  That ain't a bridge, it's just land.  And those Hunter Gatherers never knew they were making a journey to anyplace new, they were just following those wooly mammoths.   The elephants probably knew they were going someplace new, since each of them took a trunk.

Hunter Gatherers had a perfect lifestyle--they hunted when they were hungry, gathered nuts and berries when they found them, and did positively no discernible work when they didn't have to.  Most of the time they sat under a tree and scratched.  Occasionally, more than one kind of itch got scratched.

No houses, no mortgages, no fields to tend--what a life!  When you ran out of food, you grabbed your spear and went hunting for elephant--AND when you killed one it was a giant barbecue!  I'm not sure how long a group of 25--the optimum number for hunter gatherer groups throughout history--could live off an elephant, but I'm sure such a kill dramatically increased the amount of quality scratching time.

We know this happened in New Mexico, because we have found the remains of the hunts, in places like Clovis and Folsom, where spear points have been found.  And the dried bleached bones of a few barbecued elephants have been found, too--a few still bearing the markings of the  stone tools used in the butchering.

This sounds pretty close to perfection to me--my goal in life is to be a hunter gatherer.  According to my wife, I've been one for years.   She may be right, because I have noticed a marked difference in the way we go about acquiring possessions.  Say my wife needs a pair of shoes (evidently, someone has been saying that a lot!).  She goes to  the mall (think of that as a forest) and will try on shoes at every store in the mall before going back to the first store she entered and buying the first pair of shoes she tried on.  Chances are, a week later, she will return to this resource site and acquire another pair of the exact same shoes, only in a different color.  This is a classic example of gathering.

On the other hand, I do things differently.  When I need something, I call ahead to the store to check availability.  This is a scouting report.  Then I drive to the mall, go into the store, locate the item, kill it with a credit card, take it outside and tie it onto my pickup truck, and drive home.   Total time round trip--15 minutes.  This is called hunting.

Almost everything about hunter gatherers is perfect.  A varied diet, plenty of leisure time, and lots of outdoor exercise.  The only small drawback was the piddling little problem that by the time they got to be my age, they had been dead for a quarter century.

Well, there were a few other problems: about 11,000 years ago, the weather changed again.  Even though Al Gore wasn't there to make money out of it, the weather got warmer, the ice melted, the seas rose, and a long dry spell began.   Either the weather or over-hunting meant the end of many species, including the giant wooly mammoth, the saber-toothed non-house cat, and the giant bison.  (Spear Control!  Spear Control!)

With the loss of large game, our tribe had to adapt, find new methods, and think a little outside the ...cave?  They needed a new approach.  They could hunt smaller game, learn to use snares, perfect fishing, and even depend a little more on gathering.  Probably hunter gatherer groups all over the world were dropping like flies, but a few, (quite a few) figured it out and survived.   For a while, hunter gatherers ate damn near anything in a desperate gamble to survive.  To them, five miles of highway road kill would have looked like a gourmet drive up restaurant.

And a few of them began to engage in proto-agriculture, which is just a fancy way of saying they maximized their resource sites.  Someone might remember that cattails grew along the bank ten miles upstream, so they might want to transplant a few plants downstream.

Let me give you a little proto-agriculture homework.  This fall, go to your local feed store and ask to buy about two pounds of seed corn.  You may have to repeat that request a few times before they believe you, since feed stores are used to selling that commodity by the hundred-weight.   They probably lose more than two pounds a day to crows and rats, so they might just sweep up a couple of handfuls and give it to you.  Thank them politely, and tell them you are working on a science project.  Actually, it won't matter what you say--they're going to think you're a loon.

Divide up your seed corn into 7 piles and start driving around your county.  Stay within 20 miles of your home and find 7 out-of-the-way places to plant your seed corn.  The edge of a golf course, a hundred yards away from the interstate, or the garden of the local library.  Pick seven spots at random for your impromptu farm, then forget they are there until spring.  Then go inspect your crops.  Chances are that at least one of your sites has somehow, miraculously, grown corn.  The other six are probably as dead as that wooly mammoth.

Our hunter gatherers did not want to become farmers.  Farming is hard work, and hunter gatherers had the kind of aversion to hard work that you normally associate with preachers and senators.  But they were going to be forced into it, screaming and fighting all the way.  And it was not their fault, it was population pressure.  Remember all that non-scratching activity under the trees?  Even though it took a long time, one day, our hunter gatherers climbed to the top of the next hill, looked down into the valley and saw a large group of hairy men down there.  Prudence demanded a change of course.

Unfortunately, no matter which way our band went, they found a group blocking their path.  Whatever valley they happened to be in, there was where they had to stay.

Of course, they are going to develop agriculture, but I will talk about that again in two weeks, when we continue with the History of New Mexico.

By the way, there may be hope yet for that furry 'phanty: after a ten thousand year absence, the Wooly Mammoth is considering a come back tour.  Having discovered enough frozen carcasses to provide adequate DNA material, scientists around the world are working on cloning the animals.  And if they are successful, the critters are going to need a whole lot of big empty to live in.  I think I may know a place that might suit them.  Besides, I may want to hunt them.

If You Plant It

I listened to a great lecture this week by one of my colleagues: “The Four Great Chinese Inventions”.  These were gunpowder, the egg roll, paper, and rice wine.  Or something like that—I wasn't really listening all that closely to Dr. Holland--I was just waiting until it was my turn to talk.  I learned this behavior in faculty meetings.

Actually, like my students, I smiled a lot and nodded my head periodically while I let my mind wander out of the classroom door, down the street and out in the fields and pastures that surround Enema U.  We are an ag school, so it isn’t that far to travel—or at least not currently.  If the Board of Regents get its way, we will pave over the last of the fields, build another parking lot, erect a second indoor equestrian center, or throw up a building to house the world’s largest ball of string that some rich—and bat shit crazy—alumnus gave us. 

While I don’t know for sure, I imagine the Dean of Agriculture has nightmares that the Regents will suddenly want him to convert the ag program to ‘virtual farming’.  We could become the University of Farmville. Don’t laugh--I bet you that even as you read this, one of my colleagues is writing a grant proposal to the Department of Agriculture for a manual on how to safely drive the virtual tractor on the virtual farm.  And if he can work the words ‘social justice’ into the title of that grant, the check is as good as written.

No, I wasn't really listening as Dr. Holland droned on about the Tang Dynasty.  (Who knew?  I thought NASA invented that.)  I was wondering why the seed drill wasn't included in that list of great inventions.  For those of you who don’t work at an ag school, a seed drill is a device that plants seeds at a uniform depth in the ground and at a uniform distance between the seeds.  Without a seed drill, the farmer is forced to wander around the field, throwing seeds into the air, plowing the fields a second time, all the while hoping that some of the seeds end up where they more or less should be.  Most of the seeds don’t cooperate—so the farmer has to work twice as hard to produce much less of a yield.

Without a seed drill, the population of China never would have grown so rapidly.  Without an abundance of food, China never would have had large numbers of people turning their attentions away from agriculture to perfecting art or technology.  Without the seed drill, China never would have developed those four great inventions: the paper umbrella, printing, kung fu movies, and the compass.

China invented the seed drill 2200 years ago, and agriculture immediately made a great leap forward.  In Europe, a good working seed drill wasn't perfected until 1701, by Jethro Tull, more than 1900 years later.  While this was an important invention that started the European agricultural revolution, today no one would remember him if he hadn't started a progressive blues band.

In America, we seem to take agriculture for granted.  (Or, possibly, we just don’t care.)  As long as the supermarket shelves are full, where it came from is not important.  While millions in the world go hungry, the average American is so confident of his food supply that he only keeps a three-day supply of food in his house—at most.

Did you recognize the caricature at the top of this post?  Need a hint?  Well, in an era where the Nobel Peace prize is occasionally awarded for dubious political achievements, this man won his (along with his Presidential Medal for Freedom and the Congressional Gold Medal) for saving a billion people from starvation—so far. 

I cannot imagine why every university throughout the world does not have a statue of this man.  Certainly every ag school should have one.  This shy, modest man was Norman Borlaug, who worked extensively in Asia, Africa, and Latin America to develop high-yield and drought-resistant strains of wheat.  Without a doubt, he doubled the yields of farms throughout Asia and Latin America.  Yet, when he died three years ago in Texas, most Americans had never heard of him.

Even a great ag school like Enema U (a school wise enough to pay me to drift off during Dr. Holland’s lecture) doesn't have a course on the history of agriculture!

The Jaw Bone of an Ass

Briefly, years ago, I entertained the idea of becoming an archaeologist.  Several things deterred me, such as the inevitable conclusion that while a degree in history might lead to a career involving a deep fat fryer and a lot of potatoes, this was still preferable to living in a VW camper permanently parked in a desert (that being the usual result of a degree in anthropology/archaeology).

Eventually I decided to get both degrees, and sure enough, I do seem to be parked permanently in a desert.  While I was a grad student, I tried to visit as many active archaeology sites as I could.  Eventually, this led to me meeting Dr. Robbie Unleashed.  At least that is what I am going to call the distinguished scholar (it doesn’t seem fair to use his real name since he can’t fight back).  I have no doubt that most archaeologists will figure out who I am talking about, and probably a few of them will want to challenge me to a duel with Marshalltown trowels--the preferred weapon of the true archaeologist.

Don’t get me wrong--I am an admirer of Dr. Unleashed, who had a long and distinguished career, winning awards from the Sherman Wayback Museum, writing several brilliant books, and conducting famous digs in Turkey, China, and New Mexico.   Robbie Unleashed was always controversial, more than a little irascible, and constantly outspoken.  He died in Central America at the age of 82 while visiting Mayan sites.  I want to die like Robbie--peacefully in my sleep--not screaming my head off like the passenger in his car.

When I heard that a famous archaeologist had a project underway about two hours from my home, I immediately began maneuvering for permission to visit the site.  Eventually, one of my professors arranged for me to drive over on a weekend and visit the dig, where I was to get a personal tour by Dr. Unleashed.  I gassed up my 4-wheel drive truck, drove to the motel, and picked up the distinguished scholar.  It was a long drive through the desert to the remote site that Dr. Unleashed was working on, and along the way he explained his theory about some of his controversial discoveries.

Most anthropologists believed that humans migrated to the New World from Siberia about 12-15,000 years ago during the Wisconsin Glacier Age, when so much water was bound up in ice that the level of the world’s seas had dropped dramatically.  This meant that a 1200-mile-wide “bridge” linked the two continents.  A band of hunter-gatherers following game crossed the bridge and inadvertently settled both North and South America.

“Wrong!” said Robbie Unleashed.  “I have proof that man lived in southern New Mexico at least 60,000 years ago.”  Perhaps now would be a good time to mention that Robbie could find a 25,000 year old Coke bottle while attending a backyard barbecue party.  Still, he claimed to have proof at the site, and he was going to show it to me.

After a long drive across the desert, we came to the cliff where Robbie was conducting a dig inside a rock cave he called Pinche Cuevo.  This is Spanish for “Home of the Nice Guy”.  (Or something like that.)  We climbed the ladders to the cave and carefully ducked under the low opening.  While the cave was not very large, the contents were astounding.  I vividly remember looking at straw sandals and the remains of a cooking hearth.  Carbon dating had determined that most of the material from the top layer of stratigraphy dated back between 300 to 500 years, meaning that most likely this cave had been used by the Apache right about the time Columbus was getting lost.

Lower strata contained artifacts dating much earlier--indicating that this cave had been used for at least centuries, and (according to Robbie) millennia upon millennia.  The question was just how old those lower strata were for it was at one of these lower levels that Robbie had discovered his prize.

“Look!” he commanded and pointed toward a fossilized bone.  It was a strange looking fossil, and certainly not one from a deer or any animal that I had ever hunted.  While it was obviously a knuckle bone, it was not from any animal I knew about.

“That is from a camelop.”  Robbie explained.  “And carbon dating says that this camel died over 50,000 years ago—yet we discovered the bone inside this cave.   This is obvious proof of human habitation reaching far earlier than previously proposed.”

For the Education and English majors among you, I should point out that the camelop did indeed live in North America, becoming extinct about 10,000 years ago from the effects of climate change and probable over-hunting by the descendants of those hunter-gatherers who got lost up in the Arctic.  (My wife, The Doc, says the length of that last sentence is proof that a German is perched somewhere in my family tree.)  The camelop was bigger than today’s camels and would indeed have been hunted in southern New Mexico.  You may have heard them called by a more common—and unfortunate—name: the “Wal-Mart Camel” after the fossilized remains of one was found while digging the foundation of a new superstore in Phoenix a few years ago.

Looking back at this incident, I would really like to think that I disagreed with Robbie because I had been taught to always challenge and question my teachers.  (This is something I am still trying to teach my students—just last week I taught my students about the giant wooden rabbit used at the battle of Troy.) An alternate theory is that I challenged Dr. Unleashed because I subconsciously realized that extraordinary claims need extraordinary proof.  Unfortunately, I probably argued with the famed archaeologist because there was more than one irascible pinche man in that cave.

“Yes…that could be.”  I heard myself say.  “Or maybe 500 years ago, an Apache saw a weird bone out in the desert and brought it home with him.”

Boy, it was quiet in that cave for a few seconds.  Then Robbie blew up like a slow moving frog on the interstate. 

“GET OUT OF MY CAVE!” he screamed.  “How dare you?!  Get out!  Get out!  Go away!”

No matter how hard I tried to apologize, Robbie just kept screaming for me to leave.  He was furious, and looking back on it, I was being rude to a man who had gone out of his way to do me the huge favor of guiding me through his site.  I left as fast as I could, and the last I saw of Dr. Unleashed, he was sitting inside that cave.

I wonder how long it took him to remember that I was his ride back to the motel.

Please Don’t Let the Students Read This

A little more than forty years ago, a horrible injustice was done in Houston.  Lee Otis Johnson, a student activist, supposedly gave an undercover policeman a single marijuana cigarette.  Despite the fact that the joint was a gift--an act that Johnson denied had ever occurred--he was arrested for “selling” drugs.  A new district attorney (seeking to further his political career) personally prosecuted a case that normally would have been dealt with by an Assistant District Attorney so fresh out of law school that he hadn't yet learned how to play golf.

Why would a district attorney prosecute such a small case?  Did I mention that the defendant was black?  Hell, he was a Black Panther.  And worse, he had been a voice for civil rights at Texas Southern University!

The district attorney pulled out all the stops and passionately demanded that the jury give Johnson 15 years in jail.  The jury, equally impassioned, gave Lee Otis Johnson 30 years.    Thirty years for a single marijuana cigarette—even after more than forty years, this stings to even think about.  

Naturally, this became a cause among the students.  “Free Lee Otis” became the rallying cry on campuses in many towns in Texas.  There were bumper stickers, signs, and a lot of chanting at protest marches.  We students wanted Johnson freed!  We wanted civil rights!  We wanted an end to irrational drug laws.  It turned out that it didn’t matter what we wanted: what we got was a harsh education in reality.

Governor Preston Smith came to the University of Houston and gave a speech.  For the life of me, I can’t remember what he talked about.  Probably omething about hosing the homeless and two legs being better than four—it was an election year.  Not that any of the students were listening--we were too busy shouting.   “FREE LEE OTIS!”  “FREE LEE OTIS!”  “FREE LEE OTIS!”  God, it felt so good to be young and involved.  I can’t remember, but we were either passionately brilliant or brilliantly passionate.

Then Governor Smith put his hand over the microphone, turned to his aide and asked—loud enough for all of us to hear through the public address system—“Why are they yelling ‘frijoles’?”

That crowd got as quiet as a funeral—aptly, it turned out—as a lot of young idealism died right there.  The shouts stopped as wide-eyed and freshly-matured students began slowly leaving the auditorium.  We had peeked into the back room of the political butcher shop and caught a glimpse of how sausage was really made. The process was ugly and quite a few of us became social vegetarians.

The conviction was eventually overturned and Lee Otis Johnson got out of jail after serving four years.  He lived a rather quiet life and passed away ten years ago.  Very few attended his funeral.  On hearing of Johnson’s death, the former district attorney told reporters:  "Times have changed so much that the sentence he received would not make sense in accordance with today,"   It is nice to see that one thing has not changed: the district attorney is still a jackass—that thirty year sentence makes no sense in any age.

It has been an interesting week at Enema U, a week that has frequently reminded me of my sudden disillusionment at the hands of Governor Smith.  Increasingly, the faculty seems angry, but it is a little difficult to understand exactly why.  Is it the sudden realization that after years of neglect, the state pension fund has a wealth of empty promises and not nearly enough assets?  Or is it the gloomy acknowledgement that this may be another hard money year when it comes to raises?   Or maybe everyone is just tired of the administration of Moose and Squirrel being about as organized as a soup sandwich?  Whatever the cause, you can see all the evidence you want on the faculty email listserv.

A listserv is a group mailing list where any member can mail a message to the email server and every member gets a copy of the message.  Then any of the recipients can respond.  Run properly, it is a great tool for communication; it is a public bulletin board where anyone can voice his opinion.  This same tool, when given to faculty members turns a few of them into angry children with magic markers scrawling graffiti on a public restroom wall.  Thank God only the faculty can read these messages.

I think it would be safe to generalize that the vast majority of the messages come from the same tiny handful of people, say a dozen people out of a total faculty of almost a thousand.  If each member were restricted to only a single comment a month, it would improve the quality of the postings immensely.  

What would happen if our students could read these postings?  Would they suddenly question why so much time and money was spent on learning from people who cannot even hold civil conversations among themselves?  Would they suddenly silently stand and slowly walk out of our classrooms?  I can just imagine the students whispering among themselves; “With so many important issues out there, why are they talking about frijoles?”

Packing It In

My one true talent is falling asleep.  I have no musical ability, no artistic talent, and few out of the ordinary capabilities.  But I can fall asleep on a concrete floor within minutes.  And in a bed, when I say goodnight to The Doc, if she doesn’t answer me quickly, I won’t be awake to hear her answer.

I don’t think I would trade this skill for the ability to play the piano like Van Cliburn.   Hell, even Van Cliburn has to sleep, and I have a CD of him playing the piano.

Tonight, I feel generous and will share the secret with you—why not?  It’s free, and so far, I have shared the method with dozens of people over the years, and not one of them has ever tried using it.  I sincerely doubt that you will, either.

Forty years ago, I was working my way through college as a night watchman at the Shamrock Hilton Hotel in Houston.  It was a great job for a student with few job skills, I could study in solitude and all I was expected to do was stay in a guard shack and keep an eye on the alley.  I did this job so well, that even now, years later, though the hotel is completely gone, that alley is still there and in perfect shape.

One of the problems with working the ‘graveyard shift’ is that your biological clock needs constant rewinding.  It is hard to sleep when the sun is out and everyone else is up and making noise.  (And it is impossible to find a restaurant that will serve you dinner while everyone else is eating breakfast, but that is a different story.)  Worse, when you have a couple of days off, the tendency is to stay up all day and sleep at night like everyone else, thus re-breaking your own sleep cycle.

One of my co-workers was an elderly man who had been working the front desk for decades and seemed to have no problem with this weird sleep cycle.  And when I asked him how he did this, he told me it was a form of self-hypnosis.  At this, I almost stopped listening.  Hypnosis was, and still is, mostly the kind of bullshit that is relegated to infomercials and quacks too stupid to pass the test to be a chiropractor. 

To be polite, I kept listening, and it didn’t take too long before I was interested.  I’m not sure this is even hypnosis; I think it might be nothing more than developing a habit.  What my friend did was simple—when he shut his eyes and tried to go to sleep, he started thinking about his next spring garden.  He would imagine getting the tiller out of the garage, turning the soil, and planting the vegetables.   He would imagine deciding how many rows of corn, where to plant the tomatoes, and how to fertilize his crop.  He would keep this up until he finally drifted off to sleep.

According to my friend, he had no measureable success for weeks, then for months it didn’t work very well, but before long, as soon as he started to mentally work on that garden, he fell asleep.

I was way too young to think about a garden, that sounded like something that would interest some ancient person-say about 30.  While I wasn’t interested in tomatoes, I was interested in traveling.  I longed to travel through South America, Europe, or damn near anywhere but the all-expense paid tour of Southeast Asia my government was planning if I flunked out of school.  And flunking out was a real possibility if I didn’t start getting more sleep some place outside of my freshman English class.  (Though I have to admit, that even today I wonder about some classes at Enema U.  If they don’t want students to fall asleep, why do they let a jackass drone through a lecture?  Sleep is a very objective student evaluation about the quality of teaching.)

So, every time I went to bed, I would plan how to pack a suitcase.  I would imagine that I was about to go to Paris for a month—what should I pack?  How many shirts should I take?  Should I wear my cowboy boots on the plane and pack the tennis shoes?  Mentally, I would carefully stuff that suitcase. 

I didn’t always go to Paris; I mentally packed for trips all over the world.  Sometimes, I was packing for a hunting trip, or a hiking trip through the Grand Canyon.  The destination didn’t matter, and I didn’t think about the destination much, I just mentally made a list of the things I would take and imagined packing the bag.

For a very long time, it didn’t work.  Some nights, I packed that bag several times while I tossed and turned in bed.  I was beginning to think it was an absolutely idiotic idea and probably only kept it up because I was stubborn.  

Then suddenly, it started working.  And it worked very well.  I rarely get that bag anymore.  Hell, most of the time I have mentally placed the suitcase on top of the bed and I’m just opening it up when….Zzzzzzzzzz.  And the alarm clock goes off.

This really pisses my wife, The Doc, off.  First, she has a horrible time going to sleep.  Now The Doc is a great person with the patience of a saint.  There is not a mean bone in her body and she has an alabaster conscience.  By comparison, my conscience was misplaced in the dark and hasn’t yet been located.  (See last week’s blog for an example.)  In spite of this, most nights she has a horrible time falling asleep while I snore blissfully beside her. 

Secondly, as it turns out, there is a side benefit.  It takes The Doc roughly two days to pack for a weekend trip.  Invariably, she ends up packing enough bags so that we resemble an African safari.  Unfortunately I’m the only bearer.  It takes me about 30 minutes to pack my one soft-sided suitcase for a two week trip to Europe.  It usually takes longer to get the cat out of the open suitcase than it does to pack.

The Doc spends half the night before the trip finishing packing.  I fall asleep.

Man Vs. Nature, Part 2

Hardly a week goes by without reading a story about someone doing something incredibly stupid with deadly animals.  This week, an idiot in Alaska was killed and partially eaten after getting more than 10 times closer to a full grown grizzly bear than was allowed.  When he received his permit from the park officials, he indicated that he had 30 years hiking experience.  Still, he went through the mandatory bear avoidance course that mandates a minimum distance of a quarter mile from bears.  Then our “expert” hiker got within 40 yards of the bear and took a couple of dozen photographs; the last few show a bear looking directly at the hiker with what could probably be labeled as ursine annoyance.

If the hiker had been using a video camera, I’m willing to bet that last photo would include the photographer saying something like, “Oh, Shit!”

So far, this is okay with me.  The photographer was a grown man and if he wanted to become part of a balanced diet for a bear, I think he had the right.  Unfortunately, at this point the story turns tragic.  Park Rangers shot and killed the bear.  Evidently for the crime of being and acting like--a bear. 

It wasn’t that many months ago that we heard the shocking story that a man had been killed while swimming with a killer whale.  He broke into the amusement park, voluntarily jumped into a tank and swam with a killer whale.  Evidently, the name was not a sufficient clue.  Hell, I’m not swimming with anything that big and with that many teeth--even if it were called a Happy Smiley Bunny Whale. 

But the best story of the summer, hands down, is about the Pentecostal snake-handling preacher who, during a religious service, was killed by his co-preacher, a timber rattlesnake.  And it wasn’t like the preacher didn’t have an advance warning-- just a few years ago the man watched his father die in exactly the same way.  I wonder if it was the same snake.   I hope they didn’t shoot the snake--that preacher may have had a son who wants to follow in the family business, and ordained snakes are hard to find.

I believe that everyone has a right to be eaten by bears and whales, bitten by snakes, or even buy tickets to a Will Ferrell movie.  The first freedom that we allow someone is the freedom to make mistakes.  Even massive ones.  Survivors are seldom burned the same way twice.  And sometimes, you can make a conscious decision to take a large risk because of the reward.

While I was in high school, I dated a girl that I’m going to call Melinda.  Why not, that was her name and I haven’t seen or heard from her in over 40 years.  Last time I saw her, she was furious, and there is no particular reason to change her mind now.

Melinda and I went to movies, ate pizza, and occasionally went with friends to the lake.  I owned a car, but had very little money.  I can distinctly remember one night where we parked at our high school and I got the jerry can out of the trunk and poured a puddle of gasoline on the sidewalk.  Then, we sat on the hood of my car looking at the pretty colors the moon made in gasoline.  I am beginning to understand why I haven’t heard from her in 40 years.

Our favorite activity, (well, one of them) was to go down to the piddly little 9 hole local golf course and sneak through a break in the fence so we could go skinny-dipping in the water hazard on the 8^th fairway.  In the night, that pond was magical, and it was our own special world.  We went as often as the weather would allow.  Even now, when I hear that song from the Broadway show Cats, I think of Melinda.  I don’t remember the name of the song, but the words go something like this:  “Mammaries… All Alone In the Moonlight…”

Months later, the father of a friend of mine decided to teach us the rudiments of the game of golf.  So, for the first time, I got to see what that golf course looked like in the daytime.  I discovered that golf (or pasture pool as we say in Texas) is a lot of fun, as long as you don’t take it too seriously.   And I was anxious to get to the 8^th fairway to see what “our” pond was like in the daylight—but when I got there, I was horrified.  That water hazard was infested with water moccasins.

For the Yankees among you, water moccasins are not the newest type of boat shoe.  The cottonmouth, stump-tailed viper, or Texas moccasin is a nasty, mean-looking poisonous snake that is about as evil as Darth Vader with hemorrhoids.  These snakes can swim, they are territorial, and their bite is as painful as it is deadly.  And Melinda and I had been swimming with them for months.  I have no idea how we survived the experience.  Hell, the damn things even scare Pentecostal preachers!

The very next night, I had a date with Melinda.  We went to Shakey’s Pizza and listened to Cozy Powell on the jukebox.  When we finished eating and I asked her what she wanted to do next, she gave me a little smile with a mischievous glint in her eye and suggested that we go swimming.

I thought about those snakes, the risk, the danger…for at least ten seconds.  Then we drove to the golf course.  I never did tell her about those snakes.  I think that any man that doesn’t want it bad enough to swim with snakes…just doesn’t want it.

Man Vs. Nature, Part 1

Every so often, a news story just grabs you and runs through your head like an ear worm. (If you don't know what an ear worm is, that is one of those inane songs you can't stop humming until your brain rots.  Sandy, a colleague of mine at Enema U, claims to possess the perfect cure for ear worms—she is adamant that singing The Girl From Ipanema will work like antivenin.  This doesn't explain why she started screaming when I began singing the old Doris Day theme song, Que Sera', Sera'.)

The news story that caught my attention was the story about the West Nile Virus in Dallas.  From the news, this is the biggest disaster to hit Dallas since November, 1963.   Personally, I think the town is overreacting to a rather mild problem.  While I don't want to catch West Nile, Dallas has gone a little nuts.  West Nile won’t kill half the people this year that will pile up in deadly car crashes trying to negotiate a screwed up freeway system that has been under construction since my father built highways for the CCC.

My Dad always told me to be careful about Dallas---he said it was full of Yankees and Wanna-be-Texans.  According to him, if Fort Worth was where the West begins, then, by definition, Dallas is where the East peters out.

First of all, West Nile is not exactly Ebola.  The flu kills a lot more people every year than West Nile; over 80% of the people who catch the disease never even know they have it.  Most of the rest have relatively mild, flu-like symptoms.  While even one death is too many, this still doesn't explain the reaction in Dallas.  A problem does not sell newspapers or grab our attention on the evening news, but a panic will.

Dallas County has decided to use crop dusters to spray the suburbs with insecticide.  I have this sneaky feeling that the spray may be more of a problem than the mosquitoes.  I can confidently say this for two reasons:  First, I wouldn't trust the officials of Dallas with anything more deadly than a potato gun.  Second, insecticide is only effective against adult mosquitoes.  If you want to stop the spread of the disease, you need to kill the larvae.

And it seems that Dallas is having a little problem with the spraying.  They have sprayed some neighborhoods without warning, missed others, and worst of all...the devil has interfered with the weather.  Clay Jenkins, a Dallas County judge, recently told reporters, "I am asking all faith-based communities to please pray for no rain and light winds from 8:30 to 1 Sunday."  Evidently, God runs the weather (when the devil doesn't interfere) like a Swiss train.  Still, I can't help wondering why the judge doesn't just ask the faith-based community to pray for God to stop the epidemic.

When exactly did Dallas become a "faith-based community"?  Was it before or after the Caddo Indians were forcibly moved out of North Texas?  Was it just before the Civil War, when a fire broke out in the community of 700 and was blamed on the roughly 100 slaves--three of whom were lynched and the rest whipped?  The Klan showed up almost immediately after the war--did the night riders bring faith with them?  I could go on, but if you are looking for the golden age of enlightenment for Dallas--it hasn't happened yet.  As far as I am concerned, if God were going to give Texas an enema, he should shove the hose into Dealey Plaza.

Still I sympathize with the people of Dallas---killing bugs is tough, even if they aren't the disease-carrying Culex mosquito.  Years ago, a guy almost got himself lynched in the area when he advertised a device that could "kill every insect within two blocks."  Hundreds of people sent money and in due time--about a week after the salesman had fled—each received a device that would do exactly as promised.  It was two short pieces of 2x4 joined together with a rusty hinge, and---if you could get a bug to stand still while you slammed one end of the contraption shut---it would indeed kill any bug between the two blocks.

Years later, in my own modest fashion, I followed the example of that salesman myself.  While I was at college, I took a temporary job during the summer at a hardware store down on the Houston ship channel.  The store sold industrial items to large corporations on the docks.  I was assigned to handle the needs of Armco Steel.  Their purchasing agent routinely gave me a very hard time, usually referring to me as the 'Fuckin' College Kid' or worse.  No matter what I did, he gave me a rough time.  On my last day before the fall classes were going to start, I got the usual daily call from him.

"Hey, College Boy," he said.  "Send over something that will kill roaches.  And it sure as hell better work."

It was my last day, so I filled out the charge slip, and had the driver make a special delivery.  I never heard how it worked out, but I'm pretty sure that twelve pound sledge hammer was effective.

Hey, Judge Jenkins, here's an idea for you: Make another special prayer request to the faith-based community.    I can just picture the results now: all of Dallas armed with sledge hammers and blocks of wood.  The mosquitoes won't stand a chance.  Judge, if you can promise to deliver this, you've got my prayer.