Archeo and Paleo - you know, those dirt-diggers

When I came here in late April I really had no idea of the difference between archeology and paleontology. I feel kind of stupid to even admit that, but there you are. It also didn’t help, that when I met the guys that head the two departments, I learned that both their names are Bill. I need things mapped out distinctly and having two guys named Bill who dig in the dirt didn’t help to clarify things. They're even often referred to as "the two Bills." I have a bit of a better grasp on things now, but still stepped in it big time a couple of weeks ago when I was being given a tour of the lab and made the amateur’s mistake of using the word archeology when I was looking at paleontology stuff. Don't ever do that.

On my way to do laundry I saw one of the paleo people, Cathy, sawing away on a chunk of dirt encased in plaster. 

Not one to miss an opportunity to see and learn something new, and loving behind-the-scenes activity, I dumped the laundry in the machine and wandered back to see what was what. Cathy is a preparator, someone who cleans up fossils from the matrix (the dirt) surrounding them. What she’s doing here is releasing a specimen from the dirt that it’s been encased in for a couple hundred million years. Seriously. 225 million years.

When the paleontologists find something, they dig outside of what they estimate the margins of the specimen are. Then they pour in plaster to encase the bottom of it. Once it’s dried it’s taken from the ground and the top and sides are enclosed as well, all with the intention of stabilizing the specimen. Cathy has already removed the top and is systematically, slowly, and carefully taking off the plaster, in order not to saw into the fossil. I know nothing but I know this wouldn't be good. 

This is what another jacket looks like before she does any work on it. (By the way, any errors in reporting the process or anything else the paleo people do are mine alone. Cathy knows what she’s talking about and I do not.)

She and the others catch the matrix and dump it in a bucket for later sorting. They can look at a lump of something and identify it as some kind of bone and all I would see is a rock. They don’t teach those kinds of things in library school.

Yeah, they’ll sift through these buckets to find the smallest pieces. It would make me nuts but this is what they do. Below is how small some of the pieces can be, where they can fit into vials like these that she’s labeled to know what part of the piece they’re working on they came from.

Below is a partial view of a jacket in the lab that’s been opened and has had so much matrix removed that bones are visible. Cathy pointed out a skull to me, and specifically its eye socket, which I couldn’t see, so she showed me a composite skull of what it was I was supposed to be looking at.

There was a third plaster jacket being worked on inside the lab, and the specimen was partially exposed. Apparently those are vertebrae, once again obvious to the people who do this every day.

The intern sitting across the table from this jacket is working on mold making, where bones (or other objects, I suppose) are embedded in the modeling compound so when that body part is needed to reconstruct a skeleton, a composite part can be made from the mold. Here’s what she’s doing. Now this I can understand. It’s like doing crafts. The intern likened it to being in kindergarten but that’s too far back for me to remember.

And here’s one last look at the work Cathy is doing outside. She was nice enough to ignore my ignorance about practically everything and pointed out one more item of interest. It’s the bullet-shaped object at near dead center of the photo. It’s a coprolite. Fossilized poop. Now, truly, how cool is that? It's 225 million years old!

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Thought of the day:

It is obvious that we can no more explain a passion to a person who has never experienced it than we can explain light to the blind. (T.S. Eliot)

I just love, no, hate! the Internet

I had a nice post all loaded and ready to go last night and couldn't connect my computer to my hotspot on my nice new phone with what I think is a nice new expensive plan. I also couldn't connect to the park's wifi - again - and after trudging to the post office for one last try, Blogger kept sending out error messages and I couldn't post. Sigh. I just gave up. The internet is like food for me; it can be my best friend and it can be my worst enemy. I shall prevail, though, I just know it, and tonight will see me back in cyberspace.

However, even as a volunteer I'm aware of not being on my own time and right now I'm on government time. Back to work for me (as of yesterday I have scanned and converted about 700 articles, manuscripts, theses, even books, on the Triassic era) because I'm not done yet. In the home stretch on this particular project but not quite there. 

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Thought of the day:

If at first you don't succeed, try, try again. Then quit. There's no point in being a damn fool about it.  (W.C. Fields)

Uncle!

I admit defeat. I have suffered, suffered I tell you, with little to no Internet since the end of April, trying to outlast Sprint, and I've given up. Yesterday I transferred my number to Verizon.

The basic reason I wanted to stay with Sprint was their unlimited data plan. I'm capable of using a lot of data. When I first got a smart phone I thought it would be fun to be able to look up prices online when antiquing or check prices of children's books at a sale or used book store. A mere convenience. It didn't take a month before Sprint was losing money on me. I love my Internets.

First I had to call Sprint to get my account number and they would not tell me. Honest to pete, they kept asking me if I knew they were the only carrier to offer unlimited data (uh, yeah...) and then warned I'd have a cancellation fee, and on and on. When I said all.I.want.is.my.account.number with tight jaws like that, they got huffy and that's when I hung up.

The nice young guy at Verizon who looked like he was 14, really, but was actually 21, called the same number I called for Sprint and went through the same pick-a-number list of choices. When he talked to a human all he said was, "This is Nick from Verizon. I have a customer who needs her account number so she can transfer service to us, but you all are giving her a hard time," and they gave it to him. He could have been the Boston Strangler and they just passed over my info like it was yesterday's newspaper.

Today I have a shiny new carrier and a shiny new phone, and under ideal circumstances I would have 4G/LTE, but living where I am, the best I can get is 3G. And that's only when it feels like showing up. Already it's like deja vu to the dial-up era, but it's still better than the nothing I got from Sprint. I started with the 2 gigabyte plan and considering the amount of time I've been online today, for example since waking up, I think I might need to up the bytes.

It's not been all wasted time. While I've been waiting and waiting - and waiting - for pages to load, I've had plenty of time to watch this storm gathering in the north:

Note the white van to put the size of the cloud in perspective.

 
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Thought of the day:

The Internet is a great way to get on the net. (Bob Dole)

Bone building exercise, or is it character? Can't decide.

The past few days have seen me wearing a different hat. It's the same, favorite Tilley (highly recommended, BTW) but it's been sheltering a head working in the Arizona sun.

My boss asked if I would help her plant some flowers in a couple of places in the plaza area of the Visitor Center at the north end of the park. Heck, yeah! I used to have about an acre I gardened, a long time ago, and I like grubbing around in the dirt. She showed me what she wanted and left me to it. 

One spot is boxes on a balcony in the Administration building. Piece of cake. I haven't actually planted them yet but when I get to it, they'll be easy. And then there was this:

And what it looked like from a distance:

Now tell me that "tree" doesn't look like it came right out of The Lorax. (It, incidentally, is an agave that bloomed, now has seed pods formed, and is dying. It gave its all. It was amazing to watch as the stalk grew like Jack and the Beanstalk.)

To my mind, the mess in the raised bed had to be cleaned out before anything could be put in. But what to do with the agave I was digging out? Well, it could go in this bed:

Didn't it have to be cleaned out before I could plant the agave?  Nah; just find a non-weed area and stick a plant in the ground:

But wasn't I raised better than this? Wasn't I taught not to do half a job? Of course! So this is what happened to the two beds against this wall. See the happy little soldiers all lined up, as far as the eye can see, almost? OK, OK, a couple are not quite in formation, but I'm a volunteer.

But I had more plants. They multiplied like Tribbles. Now what? Where to put them? How about here?

No half job here either. My dear mother may no longer be with us, but I know she's watching. This is what the back part of the bed looked like at 6:30 this morning, after I'd dug out a couple of those stinkin' pretty weeds. There is no pulling them sweetly from the ground. They have a tap root and have to be dug out. I discovered I am a left-footed shoveler; my right foot doesn't hit the shovel right and I have the bruise on my instep to prove it.

And this is the same bed at 8:30 this morning. Yes, 8:30. This child of the 60s did the work in two hours. Yes, I'm bragging.

At about 11:30 I called it quits, having drunk enough water to float a boat and accumulated enough dirt on myself to plant a totally separate bed. Before I left for the day, though, I had the idea of sticking in a flag at each plant. Some of the transplants are just babies and I had a hard time finding them to water, and was also stepping all over them, so I borrowed some Danger! Pesticide! flags and saluted each little agave with one. Here they are, drooping in the calm air:

And also here. See them drooping too, all the way to the back?

You might think I've made good progress. I thought so, too, until I took another look at the bed I'm supposed to be cleaning out and it doesn't look like I've made a dent at all. Not really. I'm going to need some help.

I used to tell my kids, when faced with hard work like this, that it taught them the value of a good education. But wait a minute; I have a good education!

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Thought of the day:
If a man is called to be a streetsweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven played music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, here lived a great streetsweeper who did his job well. (Martin Luther King)

Oh, so THIS is what they mean by monsoons

That bit of rain I wrote about last week or whenever it was? That drizzle in a bucket? Those weak-sister flickers of lightning? That little purr of thunder? It was child’s play, it was the second string, it was not ready for prime time. It was nothing.

Last night I went out for a walk when the clouds were gigantic white puffs against an Arizona blue sky,

and turned around at the two-mile point to watch the sky darken in the west like someone flipped off the light and turned on the spigots. (I am not making these pictures up.)

When the wind began to whip I began to hustle and made it home about 15 minutes before the sky went as black as midnight and the deluge began. I have never been in a storm like this one and can’t wait for another. I turned off all the lights and sat crunched up against the dashboard so I could watch the show. The pretty little trees at the front of the RV parking spots, that in the 109 degree heat of two weeks ago I wished gave some actual shade, I now wished were the size of shrubs so they wouldn't block the view.

Thunder is an interesting thing. It’s deeper-voiced than James Earl Jones; it’s a giant sledge hammer breaking giant boulders; it’s a bowling ball crashing into pins; it’s ice cubes being levered loose in an old aluminum tray (raise your hand if you remember these); it’s a jet taking off; it’s the growl of the neighbor’s mean dog; it’s sky booms. Its partner, lightning, flashes indistinctly and indiscriminately across entire miles of sky; it’s so blindingly bright it leaves an after image on my eyes; it illuminates, not for split seconds but for multiple seconds. On Sunday I watched another storm from a distance and saw purple lightning. Purple! Last night, as the storm hung directly over Grace for about 10 minutes there was no time to count one Mississippi, two Mississippi; blinding lightning was immediately followed, in less than a split second, by crashing thunder that made me jump and vibrated the floor of the van.

Even after it moved on, lightning continued to light the sky with broad swaths of illumination, supernaturally bright. As the sound of thunder faded away, I found myself saying, do it again, God!

On Sunday I came in the south entrance of the park from visiting friends and had a ringside seat to another magnificent storm on the horizon. These pictures are from Sunday. I could hardly believe my eyes, looking at what was happening in the wide expanse of sky.

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Thought of the day:

The best thing one can do when it's raining is to let it rain. (Henry Wadsworth Longfellow)

Guess where I am!!

I'm back at the post office! Yes, just when I thought I was done with the nightly trek down the road, my internet connection at the van has gone haywire. Maybe someone can 'splain this to me: the computer shows it's connected but at the same time says there's no internet access. One of those things that doesn't make sense, like fat free ice cream. It's against everything that's good and holy.

But on to something more interesting. There's a group of kids here, toiling like mad under the noonday sun, building a 1.1 mile trail from the visitor center to one of the turnouts on the road to the Painted Desert Inn. The group is part of an organization called the YCC, the Youth Conservation Corps, and let me say how happy I am I don't have to work as hard as they do.

When I say they're building a trail, I mean they're hacking out brush, digging a foundation, and laying a trail base that won't wash away in the monsoons or blow away in the dry season. 

I walked the partially completed trail at the end of my morning walk today and took a few pictures. 

This looks back toward the Visitor Center, out of the frame to the right, and shows the initial work done to dig the foundation.

There was an employee meeting yesterday and the Superintendent singled out this team for recognition. The youngest just turned 15. Another member had heart surgery one Friday and was back at work on Monday. A friend who sat with me at the meeting worked with the crew for a week and had nothing but good things to say about each of them. 

Rabbits must like the new easy trail through the prairie. There were tracks everywhere in the soft soil.

They're picked up in town in the morning and spend the entire day in the field.

Fortunately they don't have to do all the work by hand.

Now this is what I call a real Port-a-Loo.

When you hear someone bad-mouthing today's kids, remember the ones who are working here. I don't know how much they're paid, if anything, but it would take a lot of money to make me work as hard as they do, under the conditions they're working in day after day.


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Thought of the day:

Children are likely to live up to what you believe of them. (Lady Bird Johnson)

Monsoons, baby!

We have arrived in the rainy season, finally. Finally, for a lot of reasons: it's been so dry, which is saying a lot in a part of the country that gets maybe 9" of precipitation a year; it's been so brutally hot and even the little rain we've had so far is a respite, despite the humidity it brings; and just because I love a good storm. I missed some rain when I was in Tucson last week but it made a curtain call today. And it was awesome!

I sit with my back to a wall of windows when I'm on the computer, which is always these days, except when I'm standing at the copier. I live a scintillating life. But this afternoon, as I swung around to put another article to bed in a box (yay!) I looked out and across Interstate 40 to a full-out pounding rain on the horizon. Within a couple of minutes it had crossed the freeway. Raindrops so fat I thought they were hail. Rumbling thunder. Black, evil skies. Trees tossing and whipping with the wind. Rain blowing like a wave across the pavement. Then it was over, leaving a sheen of wet and the most marvelous organic smell behind. Not just wet earth, but a blend of earth and vegetation and fresh.

This is the beginning of the monsoons, which I thought was pretty funny when I heard the word in context with a short-grass prairie, but that's what they're called. I finished work, went home to Grace and got out the camera. The rain was done, at least for a while, but the sky kept taking bows.

A faint rainbow hugged the bottom edge of a brooding cloud in the northeast while rain poured down all around it.

This is one of the weird things that I've noticed about the rain here, that you can be in the dry center of a circular curtain of rain. People are doing rain dances, praying for rain right.here but it usually seems like it's over there.

One of the things I love about storms like these is the strange, glowing light.

Ragged clouds kept forming and dissipating, a never-ending show.

This session has dripped a little more rain this evening but I'm waiting for the next powerhouse. There's nothing like a good thunderstorm.

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Thought of the day:

Let the rain kiss you. Let the rain beat upon your head with silver liquid drops. Let the rain sing you a lullaby. (Langston Hughes)