Meatpaper is a print magazine of art and ideas about meat. We like metaphors more than marinating tips. We are your journal of meat culture.

In the print version was an analysis of the rules of animal cannibalism in children's books, as when Richard Scarry's pig enjoy bacon for breakfast.

Here is the chapter I believe Peculiar mentioned in his previous post. Couldn't find a translation online, so you'll have to put up with my unpracticed French.

...the aged Utmiutsol is simple, natural, unified--overly unified, sometimes, which is his fault. The young Uremifasolasiututut is singular, brilliant, composed, clever--sometimes too clever, which is perhaps his listener's fault. One has but one overture, beautiful to be sure, but repeated at the beginning of each work; the other more overtures than works, and each might pass for a masterpiece.

Nature led Utmiutsol in Melody's ways; study and experience discovered for Uremifasolasiututut the source of Harmony. Who knew declamation, and who recitative, as the elder did? and who made for us such sprightly ariettas, such voluptuous airs, and symphonies of such character as the youth? Utmiutsol alone understood dialogue. Before Uremifasolasiututut, no one had distinguished the delicate nuances which separate the tender from the voluptuous, the voluptuous from the impassioned, the impassioned from the lascivious....

Major Flash Flooding in Santa Fe!

This was just a couple hours ago, right off the main drag in Santa Fe (St. Francis and E. Alameda, for those keeping score).

You could hear boulders rolling over in the flood and feel the bridge shaking. The SF River was going pretty good, but it was child's play compared to the arroyo (above) draining in from the north, which was easily running 1,000 cfs.

Well, I'm off to run the Grand Canyon for 18 days, and the Colorado won't look much different from the Santa Fe tonight. Hold down the fort, Odious! In the meantime, if you're bored enough, you can entertain yourselves at my photo website. Enjoy!

A Few Tidbits

Three things of fascination from Temperament by Stuart Isacoff:

The era opened with a new musical rage captivating the royal courts: Pantaleon Hebenstreit and his amazing giant hammered dulcimers. An itinerant musician and onetime dancing master, Hebenstreit's career had been going nowhere until he hit on the idea of building his nine-foot instruments with two hundred strings stretched over two sound boards, and of mastering a virtuoso technique for playing htem with two sticks. The effect had audiences spellbound.... When Hebestreit ended a long, contented life in 1750 at the court of Dresden, his salary was almost double that of Johann Sebastian Bach. His fame was so great that the early parlor piano became known as a "pantalon."

Someone really needs to revive those.

Next:

Diderot described Rameau in his wild romp of a novel, The Indiscreet Jewels (in which a magical ring compels the private parts of various women to reveal their secret histories).

Has this been translated? Odious? Feel like brushing up our French?

Finally:

Technology and art continued to progress hand in hand. By the end of the eighteenth century, German scientist Johann Heinrich Lambert would propose an instrument by which people could enjoy music through their teeth, so as not to awake others who are sleeping.

Words fail.

Also irresistible: Rod Dreher on What turns a crunchy housewife on.

Hmmm.... sounds familiar. Though Mrs. P only wishes she were a housewife, alas.

Via John Derbyshire, the irresistable Cantos XIV-XVII of Byron's Don Juan:

The Russians now were ready to attack:
But oh, ye goddesses of war and glory!
How shall I spell the name of each Cossacque
Who were immortal, could one tell their story?
Alas! what to their memory can lack?
Achilles' self was not more grim and gory
Than thousands of this new and polish'd nation,
Whose names want nothing but — pronunciation.

Still I'll record a few, if but to increase
Our euphony: there was Strongenoff, and Strokonoff,
Meknop, Serge Lwow, Arséniew of modern Greece,
And Tschitsshakoff, and Roguenoff, and Chokenoff,
And others of twelve consonants apiece;
And more might be found out, if I could poke enough
Into gazettes; but Fame (capricious strumpet),
It seems, has got an ear as well as trumpet,

And cannot tune those discords of narration,
Which may be names at Moscow, into rhyme;
Yet there were several worth commemoration,
As e'er was virgin of a nuptial chime;
Soft words, too, fitted for the peroration
Of Londonderry drawling against time,
Ending in "ischskin," "ousckin," "iffskchy," "ouski":
Of whom we can insert but Rousamouski,

Scherematoff and Chrematoff, Koklophti,
Koclobski, Kourakin, and Mouskin Pouskin,
All proper men of weapons, as e'er scoff'd high
Against a foe, or ran a sabre through skin:
Little cared they for Mahomet or Mufti,
Unless to make their kettle-drums a new skin
Out of their hides, if parchment had grown dear,
And no more handy substitute been near.

I hope and assume that most of our readers are already aware of this, but it's Sea Monster Week at Tetrapod Zoology. Not to be missed!

I speak in fluent pigeonese
and charm the birds right off the trees.

There are certainly things to love about living in Santa Fe. For instance, one can spend the afternoon here, at Nambe Lake in the Pecos Wilderness,

and a couple hours later be enjoying this:

"And just what the **** is that?" Well may you ask, reader! That, in our case, was the U.S. premier, no less, of Kenneth Branagh's film adaption of Mozart's Magic Flute. (Well, strictly speaking it was the other U.S. screening, immediately after the true premier, the true premier being aimed at an audience more easily parted with large sums of money than your host.) The thing's been out in Europe since late 2006, but we New Worlders have hitherto been denied its charms. Pity, because it's quite something. See for yourself: the following highlights reel gives a pretty good taste, though it may be a little spoiler-fraught.

If spoilers don't bother you at all, you can see the opera's climax here, as well as much more on YouTube. Or you can visit the official site (Warning: sound. Lots of sound), which has a ton of ridiculously entertaining Zauberflötery and affiliated nonsense, if you have a fast connection and lots of patience with Flash animation.

It should be evident by now that Branagh did not bowdlerize the opera's sheer harebrained looniness, not in the least. Indeed, he positively delights in it, and puts the might of modern film technique, with quite a bit of CGI, behind driving that looniness. This is the Magic Flute that you imagine when you put on a good recording immediately after seven shots of tequila. (Er, yes, I have taken part in experiments along those lines; indeed my first exposure to the opera, via the Bergman film, was very much in that vein.) Often the effect is wonderful; sometimes it's more than a little obnoxious. But it's a remarkable achievement to have filmed a watchable, English language Zauberflöte while leaving the score whole, entire and in its traditional sequence. Large applause is due to writer Stephen Fry, who adapted the libretto into wonderfully successful, natural and fun English doggerel. That adaptation also included enough cuts and streamlining of the spoken dialogue to tame the piece's running time and allow the musical numbers to flow with uninterrupted momentum.

The biggest stumbling block in any Magic Flute production is, of course, what the heck to do about all the Freemasonry stuff. For all the film's surreality and goofiness, Branagh and company actually hit on a pretty good solution by putting the drama into a World War I-ish setting. Whereas in most productions the Realm of Night seems like a pretty genial sort of fairy kingdom, Tamino finds himself in a bizarre, dark, upside-down and dangerous wartime world (and we get the Queen of the Night in a leather trench coat, moonlit, riding a Mark IV tank: much to like there!). In contrast, Sarastro and his guys are running a hospital for the wounded and shell-shocked and a refuge for the displaced. René Pape gives an excellent performance as Sarastro, portraying him not as the usual moralizing patriarch full of blowhardish occult wisdom, but as a younger and more charming man who learned wisdom from charitable service, who's still capable of playing a joke and flashing a wink. His dedication to "peace and the brotherhood of man" and all that rot therefore comes across as being a lot more practical and honest than we get from most Sarastros. Tamino and Pamina's trials are not just hoops of abstruse symbolism through which they must jump, but are intended to actually achieve some good for a world at war. The result is still plenty hokey, but it's a lot easier to take it seriously and rejoice in the lovers' triumph than it is to respect the cult initiation the is the finale of traditional productions.

For all its virtues, the film does partake of the vices of early 21st Century cinema. For all the possible imaginations that CGI can bring to life, it does have a tendency to take over the show, an inmate in charge of the asylum. Branagh yields to the temptation towards gimcrackery just a little to often, thereby trivializing some passages that needn't be trivial, even in such a bagatelle of a plot. In particular, his treatment of all the Queen of the Night's coloratura passages leaves a lot of inspiration to be desired. But there are some brilliant shots in here too, for instance the passage with the Armed Men in the Act II finale: as the tenors and basses intone their creepy, marmoreal parallel octaves, we see first blackness, then a slow zoom out divulging a human iris spread across the screen. The iris grows to an eye, then two, then three, then many with chanting mouths interspersed, everything else shrouded in sackcloth, until the screen is full of singing anthropomorphic sandbags forming the wall of a trench.

Why do we like The Magic Flute? Seriously, why? It's not an easy liking to justify, particularly to someone who doesn't agree. The plot is sprawling and incoherent, it's undeniably silly, it has genuine continuity problems, and it's loaded to the gills with hideous symbolism which may well have no internal consistency, and even if it does, who cares? The thing's a mess for critics. And yet it endures, eternally popular in a repertoire which has cast off many weightier works, consistently numbered among the four great operas of one of humanity's three or four greatest composers. Why?

Well, because it's a heck of a lot of fun, and that's a justification that not many opera's can make without qualifications. That and the music, and these things of course go hand in hand. The Magic Flute is a brilliant composer at the very top of his game, a man for whom the barrier between artistic imagination and technical execution has all but dissolved. The music sparkles and flows and leaps and dances from scene to scene, always at the right pace, almost always leaving us craving more (not praise which can be lavished freely on the da Ponte operas). It's Mozart's least repetitive opera, and many of it's finest moments are gone as soon as we begin to feel them. It has the most ensemble singing, always great fun in Mozart's hands. I'd say it's his most rhythmically vigorous opera, probably because it was in German; it has a Teutonic delight and vim that even his best Italian works don't quite match. And above all, it doesn't force us to take it too seriously. I have always maintained that Papageno is the opera's true main character, and Mozart's ability to impart upon a contemptible, petty, trivial buffoon of a birdcatcher music of such good humour, honest humanity and ultimately tenderness and redemption is the great mark of his unique genius. In Mozart, even the most trifling bagatelles are lit with divine sparks.

What truly makes Branagh's movie worthwhile is that he usual stays out of the way of all these virtues of the opera. He keeps the weight of each scene balanced in its correct proportion. He doesn't shy away from the silliness, which would be well-nigh impossible and would destroy the work if it were achieved. He doesn't bother to explain the many (probably unexplainable) inconsistencies in the libretto, but like Mozart he lets them stand because they're beside the point. Like a good stage production, the film doesn't try to wholly redefine the work through some contrivance, but instead gives it a venue in which to shine. I can enjoy the movie without it infecting my imagination of the opera; I will not, God be praised, be imagining tanks and sandbags every time I put on my recording. It adds to my imagination of the piece without subverting it, and that's an achievement in any performance of opera.

Here's hoping it will be available on U.S.-playable DVD soon!

...and some vaguely related good news: interest in backyard chickens is soaring. In Austin, at least. Once again, Mrs. P and I are riding the snout of culture.

Rod Dreher interviews Michael Pollan

I passage I like, which goes well with my last post:

...given the preciousness of arable land, I think we have to take a look at the rules governing the conversion of farmland in the same way that if you want to build on wetlands, you have to meet a very high burden. I know that’s not a conservative idea, but if we reach a population of 10 billion, we will really regret all the houses we are putting up on some of the finest land in the world.

And something I didn't know:

We can only grow animals in this kind of confinement with antibiotics, but when we start using them in these amounts, we’re suddenly breeding lethal microbes. Look at the staph infection that killed 19,000 Americans two years ago—more than died from AIDS that year. That microbe has been traced to pig farms in Europe and Canada. We haven’t traced it to pig farms here because the industry won’t let us study it, but presumably it’s happening here as well because we swap pigs with Canada all the time.

19,000 people?! Seriously? A quick Google search does find that number elsewhere. Where's the media hype over this one? I'm glad we're still working on our Delta, Colorado pig.

Environmentalists, to their surprise, found that timber and mining were easier on the countryside.

"Now that Plum Creek is getting out of the timber business, we're kind of missing the loggers," said Ray Rasker, executive director of Headwaters Economics, a nonprofit that studies land management in the West. "A clear-cut will grow back, but a subdivision of trophy homes, that's going to be that way forever."

Link. Nice to see that some environmentalists are finally noticing. Perhaps tourist economies are not in fact the answer to everything. Who could have guessed?

Sorry for the lack of posts, but this is where I've been for the past month: boating in Dinosaur National Monument. I've got lots of pictures to work on, and only a couple weeks in town before I head to the Grand Canyon, so don't expect much.

It was a great season to spend time in Dinosaur, which is truly the great undiscovered gem of the National Park system, as well as a spectacular and highly underused corner of Utah and Colorado. Perhaps the fact that most of the Monument is accessible only by river has something to do with it; that and the misleading name. Most of Dinosaur's strata are too old to bear any Dinosaurs. The Yampa and Green River canyons and their geology are the reason to go. And after a humdinger winter and a late, cold spring in the West the place was greener and more full of wildflowers than I've ever seen it in over a decade of boating. As Steve mentioned, we did get snowed on, at ~5,000 feet in mid-June! The snow that got us at river level was heavy, sopping, camera-killing stuff, but here's a picture of the first dusting on the rims at 6:30 that morning:

More to come, I hope!

Oh, fine, here are a couple more. The previous two were of Lodore Canyon on the Green; the Yampa deserves at least as much attention. Stormy weather at Harding Hole:

The (somewhat) famous Tiger Wall:

All Lancets.

This site is dedicated to compiling information about the collecting of antique Phlebotomy instruments. The site is growing daily as I begin the process of photographing items from my collection and adding information on the identification and understanding of this unique set of collectibles.

Common courtesy. Having fed and watered the animals, I'm headed back to the house when a certain need makes itself known. Mindful of Ed Abbey's maxim, I wander over to a friendly tree, and am well into the matter when up the driveway I see a pickup coming. Behind the wheel is a teenage boy with that particular stretched look that sets in around eighteen, and sitting next to him is a very pretty, and at the moment very red, seventeen year-old girl.

Well. There are, in this situation, two primary sets of vectors. First, there are the physical ones: hydrodynamic pressure is a bit much for any sort of hiatus. Wind velocity is at present to my back, aiding flow. I'd sort of like to keep it that way, since I like these pants, but the second set of vectors (societal) kicks in its share of torque, and I perform a quick volte-face and finish up before they're out of the truck. It's the little thoughtful details that make the host.

It turns out they're the son and daughter of friends of ours, here to get the co-op order which we picked up last night. The boy is Tom, the girl somethingsomethingmumbleVal (blush). I introduce myself, after a moment's thought about becoming our neighbor Bob Du Pont, as [Odious]. Nobody offers to shake hands.

Boxes loaded, they drive off with a wave from Tom. I can see Val's shoulders shaking before they're halfway down the driveway, but she's polite enough to wait until they're out of earshot to start really giggling.

"Honey," I say to my wife once I'm back inside, "we're living too close to town."

Anatomical snuffbox. Bundle of His.

More algae economy, again with the 10% of New Mexico idea. I'm not categorically against this idea, in fact I think it's really worth pursuing. But my concerns about water remain unanswered. This is not the first energy magic bullet I have seen whose advocates blithely neglect hydrological considerations. The oil shale everyone's so fired up about in Utah and Colorado requires substantial amounts of water for processing. Those happy Canadians have a great, big, mostly unallocated river to work with; Utah and Colorado have literally zero water to spare. And one must also consider the water needs of everyone who will move to the area to work on such a project. Perhaps the algae technology can be rigged to conserve its water; but it's an engineering issue which seriously needs to be addressed.

Update: As Jack comments below, apparently the system can work entirely on brackish water. Popular Mechanics lists freshwater usage for the process as zero. Excellent!

Signs you're in Northern New Mexico:

Terry Teachout visits Santa Fe in preparation for the 2009 premier of his opera (well, his libretto). The Letter will be composed by Paul Moravec and is based on a short story by Somerset Maugham. Says Teachout:

If you don't know the plot in any of its various manifestations, take it from me, it's the stuff operas are made of. Lust, betrayal, murder, blackmail...what's not to like? I feel like singing already. Paul and I are shaping it into a very tight structure (ninety minutes, no intermission) that we hope will have the feel of a film noir and the punch of a verismo opera. Think Tosca or Carmen directed by Jacques Tourneur and you'll get the idea.

It's rather gratifying that Moravec refers to Santa Fe as an American Bayreuth. Ongoing progress reports are listed on the right sidebar of Mr. Teachout's web site. This one has a lot of potential. Get tickets early! In fact, 2009 would be a great season to indulge in subscription seats. Besides The Letter, they're doing Gluck's Alceste (more Gluck, please!), Donizetti's L'Elisir d'Amore, Don Giovanni and La Traviata with Natalie Dessay: stellar, and all new productions except the Mozart.

Pretty clever for an online quiz:

I am the sonnet, never quickly thrilled; Not prone to overstated gushing praise Nor yet to seething rants and anger, filled With overstretched opinions to rephrase; But on the other hand, not fond of fools, And thus, not fond of people, on the whole; And holding to the sound and useful rules, Not those that seek unjustified control. I'm balanced, measured, sensible (at least, I think I am, and usually I'm right); And when more ostentatious types have ceased, I'm still around, and doing, still, alright. In short, I'm calm and rational and stable - Or, well, I am, as much as I am able. What Poetry Form Are You?

Things you don't see every day

Since I took the trouble to rant the other day about the spectacular absence of water from New Mexico, of course I immediately go out and find counter examples. Here's a waterfall I visited yesterday, not huge but plenty festive, near El Rito. As good as the waterfall, but much harder to photograph, was the enormous quartzite outcrop that formed the gorge.

But this was decidedly small potatoes compared to the next drainage over. The Rio Ojo Caliente flows southward out of the Tusas range. A southern outrigger of Colorado's San Juan mountains, the Tusas are consistently the snowiest part of New Mexico, and their snowpack this year was off the charts. The gracery store and a church in Chama actually caved in this winter. But warm weather is here, and the Ojo Caliente, normally a modest creek, is going big.

The river is charging like this for miles. These falls were the beginning of a fantastic gorge, full of continuous Class III-IV whitewater, pushy and very fast.

A big rapid. Those two V-waves are much bigger than they look in the photo.

Spring wildflowers on a river bench.

This is not an everyday sight in New Mexico. I have heard native New Mexican children exclaim in great excitement, "Look! The water's almost four inches deep!" This has been a very good year for the north.
Incidentally, the headwaters of this river host a truly classic New Mexican village. As I drove in, six cows were crossing Main Street (about eight feet wide) to ransack a garden. I was chased by dogs all the way through town. Splendid place!

The river canyon had no trail and as I was crossing one of many talus slopes a boulder rolled under my feet. After scrabbling a second trying to regain balance, I keeled over onto my right hand, which emitted a very audible snap, like a popsicle stick breaking. I lifted up my hand to see my ring finger pointing a good sixty degrees right of normal, clearly dislocated at the proximal joint. Thankfully, the pain was much less than I would have expected. But the "Holy Shit" factor was high, seeing a body part so far from its wonted environs, and the fight-or-flight response was very strong. I wanted to move, now, to be somewhere else right away. Also, since I wasn't thinking too clearly, I was not quite sure whether the thing was just dislocated or actually snapped through. An initial attempt to pull some traction and put it back in line was not satisfactory. Can I hike out like this? Bad idea. Fortunately, the cerebrum engaged: "You've got to deal with this now, before the adrenaline wears off." All right, brain. I staggered to stabler ground.

It's just dislocated, or it would hurt a lot more, right? Right. I hooked the finger through a loop on my camera bag to achieve a solider purchase, and pulled. Traction in line, then move it smoothly back into position, just like the WFR instructors say. Second time worked like a charm. Next step: extract first aid kit, swallow ten ibuprofen, splint it to the neighboring digit. It's nice to see wilderness medicine theory work in practice, gives you some confidence that they don't just make it all up so your rescuers have something to do while you die, like CPR in the field.

My one regret, a serious regret, is that I didn't stop to take a gruesome picture. At the time I was worried that it would be frivolous and irresponsible; now I feel differently, with posterity to consider. But it looked very much like this, except on the ring finger:

For more New Mexico whitewater, check out the first raft descent of Rio Embudo, just a couple weeks ago. Who says New Mexico has no decent boating?

Who is buried in Friedrich Schiller's tomb?

Lots of people other than Schiller.

Seems like a situation of which he would have approved.

Sketch of
The Analytical Engine
Invented by Charles Babbage
By L. F. MENABREA
of Turin, Officer of the Military Engineers
from the Bibliothèque Universelle de Genève, October, 1842, No. 82

With notes upon the Memoir by the Translator
ADA AUGUSTA, COUNTESS OF LOVELACE

...is well worth your time, if you are the sort of person who said to themselves, 'Ooo! Analytical engine!' when you read that. (ht)

"...we could grow all the fuel the United States needs using 1/10th of the land space of New Mexico..."

By covering that 10% into fancy algae incubators. It might not be the worst use for a tenth of New Mexico, provided it's the right tenth. I'd definitely nominate Roswell, Artesia and environs, which have no discernible charm to lose by being converted into algae. I'm sure the stuff also smells better than Artesia does currently.

Seriously, though, I assume the chappy in the link was using New Mexico largely just as a land-area comparison. While southwestern states possess certain recommendations for such a project, viz. lots of sunlight and available open space, they have one major negative: there's no water. None. It's all spoken for. One commenter to the linked post asks, "I wonder what portion of the total area of the state of New Mexico is currently dedicated to growing corn for ethanol. 50%? 75%? 100%? More?" Actually, the state's entire harvested cropland represents only about 1.1% of New Mexico's acreage; irrigated cropland about 0.8% (figures from 2002; these numbers are trending significantly downward, I expect because agricultural water rights are being diverted to residential development). These aren't typos, easterners; we are not Iowa. People from other parts of the country really can't imagine how little water we have around here. The video doesn't address whether the water in these algae tanks can be conserved and reused, but if not, that's a deal-breaker in most of the West. Lots of brilliant ideas for using our open spaces and unexplored resources seem not to consider this inconvenient reality.

Some nights ago I was indulging in a nip of red wine and a bite or two of chocolate, when I heard a small voice. "Ahem. I contain ze sulfites." Turned my head, looked around. Assessed the level of the bottle.

"I beg your pardon?" I asked.

"I contain ze sulfites," said the wine. "You should be aware of zis."

"And why is that, o bottle?"

"Well, I am sure I do not know. But if you did need to know, I 'ave done my duty."

"Ah." I poured another glass. The wine muttered a long phrase sotto voce. "What was that?" I said sharply.

"I said," it replied with exaggerated care, "zat I should not be consumed by ze women who are or may be pregnant."

"What?"

"Ze Surgeons General thought it was important. Zey are smart fellows, you should listen to zem."

Giving up for the moment on the wine, I turned to the chocolate. "Do you have anything to say for yourself?" I asked.

"I'm chock full of antioxidants!" it chirruped. "Ask me about my health benefits!"

"You two," I said, "are getting worse than my breakfast cereal."

"Unfair!" said the wine.

"True," I said, considering. "Nobody is worse than the breakfast cereal. Just sitting there on the table, mumbling to itself like Rain Man. 'Vitamin A 25%. Vitamin C 2%, Riboflavin, definitely 35%.' You know, it's talk like this that makes my work a living hell. People are so flipped out about eating well that they're avoiding things for no reason. I had one person--neither coeliac nor intolerant--ask me if it was okay to eat gluten. She didn't even know what it was, and she was worried about it."

"I'm gluten-free!" said the chocolate, before the wine and I shushed it.

"And what is ze gluten?"

"It is an," I enunciated, "ergastic amorphous protein."

"Ah."

"Quite. Real food doesn't even have ingredients! It's just, 'bacon'. Or 'milk'. Or 'bread'. Maybe 'bread with things in it'. But look at you. They've got you spouting off about sulfites and birth defects. O tempora, o vino."

I looked to the bottle, but as it was empty, it had nothing left to say.

Camel demand soars in India...

...in response to high gas prices, apparently. Once again, your genial host Peculiar proves to be on the cutting edge of history: I've been demanding a camel for quite a while. No dromedaries, please. I need a big, shaggy two-humper that can deal with deep snow. A pair would be ideal.

Nobody thinks clearly, no matter what they pretend. Thinking's a dizzy business, a matter of catching as many of those foggy glimpses as you can and fitting them together the best you can. That's why people hang on so tight to their beliefs and opinions; because, compared to the haphazard way in which they're arrived at, even the goofiest opinion seems wonderfully clear, sane, and self-evident. And if you let it get away from you, then you've got to dive back into that foggy muddle to wangle yourself another to take its place.

--the Dain Curse, Dashiell Hammett

We visited this ruin last weekend, in a very out-of-the-way corner of northern New Mexico. People live around here their entire lives and never pass through this area. The cliff house above was located about 800 feet up the side of a heavily forested canyon. There was running water in the bottom, but it had just snowed the night before, so I don't know whether the stream is perennial. Here's the ruin with a little more context:

It's a pretty lush spot by New Mexican standards: in addition to the usual ponderosa, Doug fir and scrub oak, there were also spruce and true firs.
We only found one little pictograph panel, but I like it:

Detail:

Despite their enthusiasm for painting birds, these people, the Gallina, were not a culture you wanted to be part of:

...scarcely more than a hundred Gallina remains have ever been found, said Tony Largaespada, an archaeologist with the U.S. Forest Service who made the discovery in 2005.

"Almost all of [the Gallina ever found] were murdered," he said. "[Someone] was just killing them, case after case, every single time."

..........

"Why these [victims] were outside the house is kind of a mystery," Largaespada said. "Usually [attackers] threw [Gallina victims] in their houses and burned the houses on top of them. That's the case with 90 percent of them.

"But in this particular case they were thrown in a pile outside the house. … More than likely there are others [nearby]."

More, with photos, here.

Like the six other bodies found at the site—all members of a now vanished culture called the Gallina—Stargazer met a brutal end. Her neck had been broken, with her head snapped back so far that her skull rested between her shoulder blades.

"Her head was forced back so hard that it pushed a piece of [a] vertebra into the back of her skull," Largaespada said. "That was a pretty violent death."

..........

The murder scene is grimly consistent with the few other Gallina sites that have previously been excavated, Nelson added.

"[In] most of what we're finding, someone came through and killed them," he said. "If you find a Gallina site and there's skeletons in it, they were killed."

Also interesting: '"Probably the most famous thing about the Gallina is the towers they made," said Tony Largaespada, a U.S. Forest Service archaeologist. "[People] call them Gallina towers, and they almost looked like medieval European castles."'

Though there were no such towers at the location we visited, the site's defensive aspects were pretty unmistakable, with two separate structures set away from the main alcove, commanding views of the canyon. Here's a rather lousy photo of the upper one:

It also seems noteworthy that no modern Puebloans claim any ancestral connections with the Gallina. The Jemez, for instance, seem remarkably vehement on the subject.

To add one final, even more Lovecraftian touch, the site contained several deep holes that reached horizontally back into the sandstone. The largest was remarkably deep, perhaps 25 feet. It seemed as though it extended even further, but was blocked with a large stone that looked for all the world like it was deliberately placed. Another such crevice was similarly blocked. For all the progress in Southwestern archaeology, there's still a lot of room for play of imagination.

A short film of some very old school rockclimbing. Today's climbers will find it pretty primitive, but even I learned to climb with a bowline around the waist and belaying around the body. However, this is one of those occasions in which progress really does represent improvement. I must say, these folks' technique looks dubious even by 1938 standards. Also, clearly television's catering to the idiots in the audience is no recent phenomenon.

A new one for the sidebar: Nature Lyrics, the blog of a very fine wildlife and macro photographer in India. For a quick taste, check out his vultures and snakes. Browse the galleries too; among much else there are some excellent sloth bears to be had.

A victory for the anti-mining faction in Crested Butte. Some background here. As I said in the earlier post, I have mixed feelings about this; however, I can't say I'm unhappy about the news.

Masai warriors will run the London Marathon. I cannot tell you how much joy this gives me. (ht)

It's Christopher Smart's birthday! Or it was, yesterday, when I meant to post this. Most people know For I Will Consider My Cat Jeoffry, which is excellent. I will confess that always closest to my heart is the following couplet:

Of all Spring's blossoms I like best
My sunlit wife, herself sun-dressed.

England's thatching crisis.

It sounds truly aggravating: a combination of perverse agricultural policies combining with drastically over-zealous preservation efforts to kill an ancient tradition.

Via Cronaca.

Almost missed this one: John Derbyshire reviews a collection of nature writing, and gives a very nice tip of the hat to Steve, who is not included:

The [political] Left survives and flourishes because, as well as there being plenty of people whose satisfaction in life is to boss others around, there are even more who are willing to be bossed. Those who are not so willing — persons of a prickly-libertarian temperament — often head out to the wild places, to end up as lovers of the raw creation. There is, too, that aspect of the conservative temperament that abhors sentimentality and wishful thinking, and greets with happy recognition the cycles of death and mayhem that comprise most of the natural world's activity. I am thinking here, in both cases, of the Western writer Stephen J. Bodio, whose 1998 memoir On the Edge of the Wild offers an eloquent hunter's perspective on nature.

The Left undoubtedly has the best of it, though. They certainly have the best of this volume, which contains nothing of Stephen Bodio's at all — nothing at all sympathetic to hunting, except as carried out by American Indians.

The review finishes, unexpectedly, as a positive one. I note with amusement and approval that he prefers unknown writers, "writers I had never heard of, but whom I am glad to have encountered," among whom he numbers Ed Abbey. And though I agree with his assessment of two samples which he rightly mocks as purple prose, I disagree about his Eliot Porter quote:

In the winding canyon dark and light reflections replace one another in slow succession. The gentle wake of the boat breaks these images into undulating spots and patches, each wave for a moment holding a fragment of sky mixed with golden globules of sunlit rock.

I suppose Mr. Porter may be justly accused here of having failed to convey the moment to a distant audience, but the moments here described are a very large part of why I squandered years of time and set myself far behind my peers financially working as a ne'er-do-well river guide. Sunny canyon reflections on shaded water, broken by concentric ripples from my quietly dripping oars: it was worth everything for that alone.

Also worth noting is Mr. Derbyshire's mention of the decline in outdoor recreation:

While reading America's Earth I came upon a report just issued by the Nature Conservancy, telling us that people are spending less time in the Great Outdoors than ever before. Activity in this zone has been declining for twenty years, the researchers tell us. The annual per capita rates of decline have been from one percent to one and a quarter, depending on the type of activity measured — camping, backpacking, fishing, hiking, hunting, or trips to national and state parks and forests.

I hear this a lot, and it's probably true, but it's often hard to believe. It seems to be an instance of Yogi Berra's "No one goes there anymore. It's too crowded." So many places are positively infested with recreationists (as Mr. Derbyshire may recall from his hike to Inspiration Point in Grand Teton, where he missed the Peculiars by only a couple days). Even Nevada is becoming a destination, while REI, EMS and their ilk seemingly continue to flourish. I know people (assholes, I might add) who use Delicate Arch as a Frisbee golf hole. I suppose it's true though. Outdoor activities are now dominated by gearheads and destination vacationists, while locals who use their public land backyards on a regular basis do seem to be on the wane. The economic demographics of outdoor recreation are also unencouraging. My river company, which is actually a non-profit organization ostensibly dedicated to exposing the voting public to wilderness, recently raised prices on trips because people seemed to assume that our low cost reflected low quality. Bookings went up and honest working clientele continue to decline.

Still, though many places are overrun, a great many aren't. They can have Grand Teton and the Maroon Bells. There are areas right next door where I can still be confident of not seeing a soul.

More Tibet

...without (much) commentary from me. It all gets increasingly convulted; judge for yourself.

Here's an interesting perspective from a mountaineer who's been in Lhasa (scroll down to post by Corax towards bottom). The poster is a serious Swedish climber, and his observations are not to be lightly dismissed. To be fair, though, I had not had the impression from the international media that the Tibet protests were peaceful or harmless.

Meanwhile, here's another assessment of the state of Chinese and international media. Here's an account of alleged Chinese cyber attacks on Tibet activists, Uighurs and Falun Gong. And here's a report that China may ban live broadcasts from Tiananmen square during the Olympics.

Today is the birthday of Benito Pablo Juárez García, about whom I'm ashamed to admit I knew nothing. On a whim, I looked him up on Wikipedia, and found him to be, at least on the surface, an admirable fellow.

Juárez was born in the small village of San Pablo Guelatao, Oaxaca, located in the mountain range now known as the "Sierra Juárez." His parents, Marcelino Juárez and Brígida García were peasants who died when he was three years old. He described his parents as "Amerindians of the primitive race of the country." He worked in the corn fields and as a shepherd until the age of 12. On December 17, 1818, he walked to the city of Oaxaca looking to educate himself and find a better life. At the time he was illiterate and could not speak Spanish, only Zapotec.

In the city he had a sister who worked as a cook and there, he took a job as a domestic servant and eagerly made up for his lack of education. A lay Franciscan, Antonio Salanueva, was impressed with young Benito's intelligence and thirst for learning, and arranged for his placement at the city's seminary. He studied there but decided to pursue law rather than the priesthood. He graduated from the seminary in 1827 and went on to gain a degree in law.

Aside from seizing Church properties, he seemed to have been industrious, honorable, and dedicated.

Chas found it first and the Atomic Nerds personalized it, so in the interest of continuing Barbie ethnography, I'll offer some more easily overlooked specimens. Santa Fe has any number of them, of course, but particularly noteably to this blog's readership is

St. John's College [Santa Fe] Barbie: Available in a wide variety of hairstyles and body types, this Barbie's accessories include a bong and hardcover copies of Plato's Republic and the Fagles Iliad. Optional conversion kit to Eastern Orthodoxy available.

Española Barbie, Alternative Model: Includes long flowing robes and turban. Most commonly used with Santa Fe Whole Foods Market playset. Ken includes a dagger and a security business.

Truchas Barbie: Commonly mistaken for Española Barbie, Trucheña Barbie's accessories include an elk rifle, several yard appliances, stray livestock, and a kit to sabotage Santa Fe and Taos Barbies' vehicles when parked at local trailheads.

Steve is hereby challenged to offer up Catron County Barbie. Anyone else? I'd say glaring omissions include Tierra Amarilla, Roswell and Gallup Barbies.

Things I did not know about Alcibiades, part one: he had a lisp.

Probably not the kind you are thinking of, but the kind that, when you bweak into somebody's pawty dwunk and stawt chatting up the guests and pwaising Socwates, make evewyone say, "Awwwww..."

The kind of thing that makes the most beautiful person in existence (and also the quickest thinker, and the best rhetorician, and the greatest general--undefeated for life on whatever side he chose--and the best charioteer and a triple-medalist in the Olympic Games and a seriously impious fellow one way or t'other) just that much cuter.

He reminds me of Zhuge Liang; they were both dicks.

Running post; you have been warned. I ran the Shamrock 8km on Sunday (bad Episcopalian!) in 35:07. Not bad, but not great either. Some thoughts: I can go faster. If I'd known the distance better I could have cut 2 minutes off my time by not starting too slowly. I ran the first mile in 8:41 and the last in 6:17--and had enough left for a really stupid 200 yard burst at the finish. Next time I won't save up like that. Also, running with a big group of people is a blast! There was always someone going my pace, and even when I got boxed in, the course was wide enough that it didn't last long. I'm going to do this sort of thing again.

Tardigrades!

Update for posterity, in case the link should ever die:

I want a bonny tardigrade to serve me for a steed.
I'd harness him with watercress and provend him with mead.
We'd leave the hillock for the plain, forth to the desert wend;
from each bright globule of his brow a dock leaf I'd prepend.
His limbs, gone leathery with thirst, would lose their lustrous sheen,
and then I would rehydrate him with pulls from my canteen.
His feet would clasp the dunes beneath, his snout survey the sky,
while I, upon his back, sought out our caravanserai.
Unendingly we'd course the earth, our fortune never fixed --
the West Wind gee, the East Wind haw, and him and me betwixt.
My Octopod Bucephalus, my ally and my charge!
I'd do it all, were he less small, or I less sodding large.