English Russia » The War in Afghanistan

As I recall it, someone ran off with the national treasury, be that what it was, destabilizing the whole country. I could imagine it happening elsewhere, again? Probably not, if the UN can stop it or intervene. I wonder did they catch the guy and find the money? At first the 9/11 was thought a money exchange grab, $110 million missing in hard currency run by a Russian businessman. But hey, look there was all the money, the press reported. Many Australians were worried, it supplied real currency to the financial world when needed, mostly not needed there, everything is done in electrons and photons these days. Damn the photon torpedoes…full speed ahead. English Russia » The War in Afghanistan

...and there's fences to mend.

I work in public archaeology, as required by local, state and federal law in the US. That sounds like steady work, but its not. Anyway, every so often a large giant request-for-proposal comes out of the government for say the history and archaeology of the Hudson River (King George's "divide and conquer" gambit) or for a cultural resources inventory of the entire US-Mexico border which came out a few years or so after the Hudson River (400th anniversary next year of Henry Hudson's travail, later put off in a mutiny in a small boat to perish somewhere in Hudson's Bay. He and Champlain had once been within 100 miles of each other, unbeknownst its thought) so I am not surprized that they want to put up a fence or something. But won't somebody just get a taller ladder? Nightvision, which William Shatner on horseback rode along there with doesn't work I read at dawn and dusk so what's the solution? I think cleanup those border roads on the Mexico side and deal with the pollution the Maquiladoras have made and keep up the good work. McClatchy Washington Bureau | 02/25/2008 | Border fence opponents find hope in Texas campaign

International Association for Caribbean Archaeology Congress, 2009, Cuba

"The issue of USA citizens attending is out there. I hope they can resolve it."

A number of years ago the Association of Black Anthropologists, a part of the American Anthropological Association (AAA), met in Cuba for their meeting. I imagine the same stipulations might be required and if needed a prospective participant could contact them about the procedure. That was before, however, before the "war powers" act invocation which ironically, disallows the US Coast Guard from the right to slow down ships in commerce or to set speed limits, particularly cited around a right whale nursery between Campobello and Grand Manan Island and migration route between Florida and the Bay of Fundy in Maine, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. Nearby in Eastport, Maine a refinery was once proposed and fought off in the 1970s, now a liquefied gas terminal has been proposed in the area.

Editorial: Supreme Court chips away right to sue - Topix

I think the Supreme Court, the CJ's wife, from the Bronx neighborhood I write from, whose brother-in-law crashed and died off the Tappan Zee Bridge in a late model Land Rover (why not a case there?) should watch out for the question of Americans rights and politicians they elect. In Myers vs. the USA, the court decided that the postmaster the President had appointed could be fired after appointed because it was purely political and could fire Myers whether he was competent or not. The incompetency actually was in the mistaken appointment if that's the political appointment the President had promised someone else, and upheld the firing of Myers. Maybe it set a precedent for the Court to do whatever a President wants. My faith has been restored in the hearing perhaps to be held over the firing of attorneys over politics, to me similar in nature to the old Myers vs. USA case they heard.

Editorial: Supreme Court chips away right to sue - Topix

Happy Wales in New York Week!

The highlight of the visit will be on Friday 22 February, when the Librarian will give a multimedia presentation at The Arsenal in Central Park, New York on the ‘Treasures of Wales’. The presentation will be the opening event in the first ever ‘Wales in New York’ week. Over 180 persons have already booked their place for the lecture at which the Commissioner of Parks will also present a special commemorative scroll to the Librarian. Llyfrgell Genedlaethol Cymru - National Library of Wales : Library ...

My friend anthro/archaeology classmate and travel companion, Mary FitzHerbert, from Penallt, Wales and Uruguay would be interested in this. I was looking on-line and in Wikipedia, Penallt is where singer/musician Robert Plant owned a place in the 1970s. I didn't know that! I saw him and Led Zeppelin perform in Carnegie Hall with a couple of friends, at the later show, around 1970 I think it was. Jimi Hendrix had just died from an accidental overdose of a sleeping medication, and was to play about two weeks after Led Zeppelin put on their excellent mostly acoustic sort of concert the drummer never hit the big huge gong behind him. I was a fan of "Audience" and for some hypgnostic reason after, later finding out they opened for Led Zeppelin in England before the Carnegie Hall gig.

Mary FitzHerbert was involved with the archaeology of the huge dam built between Brazil and Uruguay back in the late 1970s by I think mostly Citibank. We had the pleasure of meeting the Fulbright Scholar who conducted further work there in Uruguay, which was also assisted by the Museum of Man in Paris, France while we worked with William H. Adams and others in the wettest summer on record in Mississippi, on the archaeology of a few parts of the Tennessee-Tombigbee Barge Canal which connects the waters of the Tennessee with the Gulf of Mexico in Mobile Alabama, in a series of canals built in the late 1970s early 1980s by the US Army Corps of Engineers. As I recall it was the choice between two projects, the other, which the Congress decided needed more technological development, was a proposed "energy island" for New York City, where electricity would be generated far away from the city out in the New York Bight or bay. Once the sites of disposal dumping, the area was gold isotope-trace (immutable) studied after the mystery beach "wash-ups" in the US Bicentennial year of 1976. The mystery "tar balls" were actually from a recent large pier fire over in New Jersey.

The Maltese Fougasse

I worked in archaeology with a guy who joined Navy Intelligence who crashed onto Hainan Island after the collision with the Chinese fighter jet, killing their pilot, in the early days of the Bush admin's first term. I read this intellsat was the size of a school-bus and this whole failed mission cost $1 billion. Perhaps, though 100 paper airplanes tossed from the ISS would be needed to land on Earth, 70% water on this pale blue planet, the DOD maybe was afraid of a chance of discovery? If it fell in the wrong place? Comment at CBS.com on "U.S. Keeps Close Eye On Satellite Debris: Pentagon: Debris From Destroyed Satellite Being Monitored, Unlikely To Cause Harm On Earth"

Duck Project Symposium at SUNY Southampton

RE: http://www.danshamptons.com/content/danspapers/issue30_2007/10.html

I once accompanied archaeologist Edward Johanneman and Laurie Schroeder as an assistant to look at the Black Duck Lodge site. They had a contract to write and research the archaeological significance of a number of properties to then have been considered or in the future to become public parks in Suffolk County. Their office and lab was in the Graduate Chemistry Building at Stony Brook University, as was the Anthropology Department before it moved to the newly opened Social Sciences Building. They worked also for the State Museums of New York on downstate DOT projects that required archaeological research and testing.

What I recall about our one day reconnaissance of the now Hubbard Park in Flanders, NY (which might get a post office) was that the Black Duck Lodge, now known to have been an E. F. Hutton holding, also has a very old "cellar hole" of the Hubbard's a descendant of whom taught in the Wood Road elementary school, where I attended his fourth and fifth grade classes, a Mr. Hubbard, a Notre Dame graduate from the Hubbard duck farms family of Riverhead. Peking ducks they were, I once had a pair as pets, and later six mallards from Brooklyn, who never learned to fly.

The records of the Black Duck Lodge were interesting. They contained a weather description and temperature recording, for everyday I think in the 19th century, for the location for a stretch of time, something not found generally. The lodge I was told, as shown in the records, replaced the ducks hunted there, to keep a balance of wildlife. I recall two dogs headstones near the marsh, trusty canine retrievers who swam out to retrieve the ducks no doubt. I suppose these were once "sea ducks" hence the name "black duck" which to my knowledge were hunted also on Grand Manan Island in the Bay of Fundy, a decoy of which I have. I also eventually worked on the archaeology survey of the property that once held the Big White Duck store, the proposed development of which caused it to be moved, which I hear recently, it might be moved back from the county park it was moved to.

You might be interested in knowing that Mr. Johanneman, since departed, of Baiting Hollow, who earned a Masters degree at Stony Brook, once related that he had those jobs of working in Suffolk County Parks after addressing the county legislature, which he said allows, the citizenry a time to speak at the end of its meetings, to enter into the public record, what might otherwise not be brought up in procedure and politics. He had asked that they consider the archaeology of Suffolk County. Later he would find a grave robber of the Montaukett, it seems. My cousin and husband are members of the Montauk Club in Brooklyn, which in Venetian architecture commemorates the meetings between Europeans and the Montaukett in its frieze.

Thanks for the interesting article, and I hope others will read it.

Re: Opium Bottles Query

"China For America: Export Porcelain of the 18th and 19th Centuries" (1980) by Herbert, Peter and Nancy Schiffer has a very good introduction to the trade in opium and other goods in "Early Chinese-American commerce with porcelain" the first chapter, pages 15-20 (it also involved opium trade with Turkey and India). The "Experiment" one of the early American ships to sail to China (1786- 1787) built in the Albany, NY area, which sailed with a small crew (ten?) I recall, one a free African-American, was successful. I heard at a National Maritime Historical Society meeting a number of years ago a replica was proposed to be built and sailed back to China to commemorate the historical event. (On Histarch - it didn't, it came in cans)

Blogger: Pressing Issues - Post a Comment

I wonder was that in Buffalo, NY where Mr. Russert is from. Then there was the Harvey and Corkie productions (did they become the Weinsteins?) that used to hold the concerts that I recall. An anthropology grad student I met was "booking" Jim Croce there then, but unfortunately two weeks before he was to appear in a movie theater house there, he perished in an airplane crash. The NY State law school opened around then in Amherst, NY where the subway was supposed to go. (Feb. 14)

Blogger: Pressing Issues - Post a Comment

Early computer graphics (first CAD was for sewers in Puerto Rico, IBM)

Back in the 1980s I started in computer graphics for archaeology even got to 3D photogrammetry with Rollei for awhile until about 1994 everything went out of kilter I guess, working in HAZMAT sites. The boss went on to work in LIDAR and some other quick recording technologies being developed, laser imaging "clouds" of points. There was a shootout between Rollei method and the Lidar in the Center For the Study of Architecture (http://csanet.org/) or something at Bryn Mawr and the recently knighted (in Holland) director of "Starship Troopers" had tried the Rollei but the digitized "caves" let some of the monsters lose their feet in the walls so he then went to Lidar to digitize the cave interiors. Rollei is used in accident investigations or other even geological recordation like petroglyphs of natives in Canada perhaps with Sitting Bull at Bighorn in Moosejaw? Don't know. One was a weird standing wind carved column that had spiral engraving "writings" around it that was found out in the desert out west (Canada or US I don't know). The company was from Canada working in it for awhile as they were an AutoCad partner as it went back then, Autodesk buying ideas and procedures perhaps. I really enjoyed AutoCad on a 48" GTCO tablet and the 8x10 photos for digitizing 3D with a multi-button magnifier "puck" after registering the photos and digitizing the "reseau" crosses (maybe you've seen some of those from space, little crosses in the photo help keep the documentation of the lens (aberrations, distortion, parallax perspective etc.) and the measure form the drawing distances in the field of view. Like he said they should have run in front of the lens on the Moon saying "scary monsters...scary monsters" and there might have been more interest! (from the Eddy Izzard routine).

Pressing Issues: McCain made his own 'ugly' crack about Chelsea

Maybe it was a reaction to the "joke" I thought up when the man crashed a small plane on the White House grounds underneath her window. "She has to stop dating older men." She was 16 at the time and the press reported they were not at home at the time. I was working on the archaeology of the lot that Spielberg's "Batteries Not Included" had been filmed in Alphabet City, NYC when Bette Midler started saving pocket "parks". Pressing Issues: McCain made his own 'ugly' crack about Chelsea

Old Orchard Tea Room

Since a former First Lady is running for President of the United States in the primaries in New York today, I thought I'd link this interesting, now "archaeology" site in Coram, New York, on Long Island. I once visited it when it had a red tin roof and was in need of "repair" that is had a hand-pump in the kitchen and all floors were a-kilter. It has an interesting story. My brother and his friends rented the place, prone to flooding, across the road from the grass airfield, once next door to a brick building that once served as a small courtroom and post office, and did not know other than it was old what it had been. The bricks in the house next door were made from clay mined across the street where the airfield had been. Coram, NY is where then General Washington in the American Revolution was pleased to hear all the hay that had been stockpiled there by the British Army, taken from the locals, had been successfully burned. Some historians wonder if the stockpile had self-ignited in spontaneous combustion as large quantities of hay might (or horse manure, for that matter, some manure has burned out in the American West for weeks) in the large pile it was said to be. "Old Orchard Tea Room".