Since 2007, I have been writing a blog at http://jamesmcgillis.com. In order to reach more readers, I have selected the best of my blog articles and published them here. I hope that you enjoy...
It’s Utah’s biggest mountain biking event… 24-Hours of Moab.
Not only is it a mountain bike endurance race, but also a gathering of
gear heads, a vibrant tent city among the red rock, party central with
drinks, food and music, and a chance to say goodbye to another summer of
pedaling among Utah’s stunning scenery.
2011 marks the 17th year of the 24-Hours of Moab,
and once again, thousands of racers from around the world put fat tires
to the slickrock and singletrack outside Utah’s mountain biking Mecca in
a remote venue twelve miles south of town. Again in 2011, an expanded
field limit of 550 teams and solo riders will surely ramp-up the
competition a few more notches.
It is all happening again on October 8 & 9, 2011. This year, Moab Live, through its Moab24Live.com
website will feature at least one live webcam during the entire race.
Our webcam position will be in the scoring tent at race-central, Behind
the Rocks near Moab, Utah. Race promoter, Granny Gear Productions, will
feature our live webcam on their Real Time Race Results webpage.
From noon, Saturday, October 8, until noon Sunday,
October 9, 2011, watch as up to 1000 racers check in and out at the end
of each grueling lap. Day and night, we will be there bringing you the
best in Moab Live entertainment. Be sure to join us for the race at Moab24Live.com.
More than any other
decade, the 1970s were fertile times for innovation in the genre known
as rock and roll. A great deal of what we remember as happening in the
1960s actually happened in the early 1970s. The history of 1970s rock
events, especially concert dates and lineups are often incomplete or
garbled. For instance, I remember seeing Linda Ronstadt opening for
Neil Young at the Long Beach Arena in the early 1970s. Although I
Googled each performer and the venue, I could not find definitive documentation regarding that magical night. The best I can say is that it happened sometime between 1970 and 1972.
Arriving late at the
arena that night, Linda Ronstadt had already taken the stage. When I
say that Linda had, “taken the stage”, it was as if she owned it. As we
entered the far end of the arena, a beautiful sound echoed down the
concrete tunnel that led us to our seats. Already, the First Lady of
Rock had captured the house. As she sang "Desperado", her clear voice extended out, reverberating off the back wall and then harmoniously to our ears.
Just as startling and
beautiful as Linda and her voice was the sound of her band. From their
acoustic backing of Linda’s ballads to their all-out rocking solos,
they had the inevitable sound of greatness. Every note and every
backing vocal sounded just right. They knew it and we all knew it.
Later in her set, Linda announced her backing band as, “The Eagles”.
Author's note: In June 2014, I received the following comment from
Ms. JG Wilcox, who also attended one of Linda Ronstadt's Long Beach
Arena concerts in 1972. As you will see, her experience was different
than mine.
Jim - thank you
for your memories! Regarding Linda opening for Neil at the Long Beach
Arena? Am not sure how many nights they were booked, but my memory of
the concert I attended (at age 13) was that Ms. Ronstadt - of whom I
was/am a HUGE fan - was pretty tipsy and got booed off the stage. Then,
Neil Young - of whom I was/am a HUGE fan - came on and the audience was
impossibly rude, shouting out requests even as he played. He got angry,
brought out Crosby and Nash, played Cinnamon Girl, and walked off the
stage! Sounds like your experience was better than mine. I just remember
sitting on the curb outside the Arena waiting for my mom to come and
pick up my friend Sally and me...the parking lot was empty when she
arrived because the concert had been so short! It was the summer of '72.
And not long after that, the Eagles entered my world as well. Thanks
again, Jim!
"Desperado"
That night was the
start of my love for the Eagles unique style, which blends rock,
country rock and folk rock. With a string of hit singles and six
albums, the Eagles songs fit perfectly with my life’s events. Their
breakup paralleled the breakup of my first marriage. From “Life in the Fast Lane” until “After the Thrill Is Gone”, my personal experiences paralleled the lyrics of the Eagles’ songs.
Years later, after buying two of the forty-two million copies of The Eagles Greatest Hits
album sold worldwide, I yearned for new music from a group that broke
up in 1984. Between then and their reunion in 1994, we heard plenty of
solo efforts by various band members, but rarely did those songs
resonate like the Eagles songs of old. When the Eagles resumed recording
and touring in the mid-1990s, I listened again for new songs from the
Eagles.
On December 31, 1999,
I attended the Eagles Millennium Concert at the Staples Center in Los
Angeles, California. In a repeat of my first Eagles experience the
early 1970s, we arrived at our seats after the concert had begun. This
time, a bomb-scare, not traffic, delayed our entry into the arena.
While thousands waited outside, security took their time checking every
ticket and “wanding” every attendee. Once again, Linda Ronstadt was on
stage, her voice often lost in a crowd that was milling around or
trying to find their seats. On any other night, the promoters would have
waited for at least half the audience to be inside before starting the
show. By the time Jackson Browne arrived onstage, things settled down,
but from our $145 seats at the far end of the stadium, most of the
music that night seemed vacant and distant.
When they finally
took the stage, the new Eagles sang just like the old Eagles, but a
chorus of numbskulls sitting behind us insisted on singing along to
every word of every song. As midnight approached, the songs seemed out
of order, and then the music ceased altogether. Inaudible to most of us
in the arena, Glenn Frey gave his Millennium New Year’s Eve salute to
the world on live TV. By the time that the Eagles got back to their
music, but the thrill was gone.
To be sure, the
Eagles in their 1994-to-present incarnation have written and produced
some great music. In recent concerts, the Eagles pay homage their old
fans by singing some of their early songs. Like the rest of us,
however, the Eagles have moved beyond the ethos and the pathos of the
1970s. Just as they have moved on in their lives and with their music,
they hope that we will move right along with them. With $450 concert tickets now the norm, that is not likely.
That is where the Eagles tribute Band, “The Long Run” comes in. Taking their inspiration from the title track of the Eagles final pre-breakup album, “TLR”
takes us back to yesteryear when country rock ruled top-40 AM radio.
Having attended several of The Long Run’s concerts in recent years,
Carrie and I were thrilled to hear that they would again play live at
the Simi Valley Cultural Arts Center in Southern California.
A former church, the
Cultural Arts Center splits its four hundred seats between the main
floor and a balcony. Having last seen TLR at this intimate theater on a
rainy night in December 2010, we bought our tickets early for their
September 9, 2011 show. Upon arrival, we were pleased with our seats,
which were in the third row of the orchestra. Although TLR did not sell
out their two nights in Simi Valley, the many fans in attendance were
not disappointed with their show.
In an email update a week later, TLR wrote, “First,a special thank you to all who joined us at theSimi Valley Cultural Arts Center this past weekend. Both nights you gave us one of the warmest receptions we'vehad anywhere and we shared an energy that far outweighed the capacity of the theater. Friday night felt like playingat
the Nokia and Saturday night felt like the Greek! We still don't know
what they served y'all at intermission but we're gonna find out and
then stipulate in ourcontract that it's served at every show.”
As The Long Run
played all of our old Eagles favorites, we remembered why we love live
music. It is not so that we can make some corporate ticket agency rich.
It is not because we like fighting crowds and overcoming bomb scares
to watch a show. It is because there are still performers out there
like the members of TLR who love the same music that we do. At the end
of the accompanying “The New Kid in Town” video, you can hear Carrie say, “They’re so good”, and she means it.
In true bootleg tradition, that night I also recorded videos of "Hotel California", “Desperado”
and the Jackson Browne classic, “Take it Easy”. The cheapskates at
Warner Chappell Music must have thought that TLR sounded too much like
the Eagles, so they blocked two my YouTube videos on "copyright
grounds". Although TLR’s big sound overpowered the tiny microphone from
time to time, you can still hear that authentic Eagles sound echo off
the back wall of the Cultural Arts Center. Next time I hear that The
Long Run is playing anywhere near my town, I will purchase tickets as
soon as I can. The Long Run’s version of the “Eagles Experience” is so
good that we hope to be there when they “Take It to the Limit”, one more time.
Interstate I-40 East, From Winslow, Arizona to Gallup, New Mexico
In May 2011, I traveled from Winslow, Arizona to
Gallup, New Mexico. Most of my trip was along Interstate I-40, but I did
detour to parts of Old-66 at Holbrook, the Petrified Forest National Park and Gallup.
Whenever I am in Winslow, I stay at the Homolovi State Park campground. Although close to town, Homolovi itself feels like a place lost in time. From its Ancestral Hopi Indian
ruins to its often-deserted campground, there is plenty of peace and
solitude to go around at Homolovi. Departing at noon that day, I was the
only human visible anywhere in the area.
From
Winslow, east to Gallup, I-40 obliterated much of old Highway US-66.
Side roads to the current interstate highway are the only remnants of
Old-66, the “Mother Road”. Taking advantage of a gradual ascent towards
Holbrook, the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railroad (BNSF) parallels the highway on the south side. Following the gentle gradient of the Little Colorado River,
this transportation corridor takes the shortest and flattest route
available. For those thirty-five miles of travel on I-40, the sagebrush
desert stretches almost unbroken to the horizon.
To break the monotony of this stretch, travelers can
marvel at the advertising signs along the way. For reasons unknown,
most Indian trading post billboards have yellow backgrounds, with hand
painted red lettering. Some of the signs harkened from an era when clean
restrooms were a rarity, and thus a major draw. Other signs tout “cold ice-cream” or “Indian Blankets - $9.99”. Some of the billboards date back to the heyday of old Route 66. A few
billboards were so well built against the wind, if not the weather,
that only a trace of paint hints at their original subject matter.
In several places, the BNSF railroad tracks are
close enough to the interstate highway for motorists to see the action.
Years ago, workers laid a second set of tracks adjacent to the original
east/west line. Rather than waiting on sidings for opposing trains to
pass, this stretch of track is like an expressway, with trains operating
in both directions, and around the clock. Elsewhere in the High
Southwest, you might still see trains pulled by old Santa Fe Railroad
locomotives. Here, however, there is a need for speed. The raw
horsepower required to pull these long trains at 5,000-foot altitudes
dictates the use of newer BNSF engines.
Painted in variations of orange, yellow and black,
the Burlington Northern Santa Fe locomotives look clean when they are
dirty and dirty when they are clean. Even when speckled with their own
diesel exhaust particulates, they always look tailored for business.
With their yellow lettering on a dull orange background, the BNSF
locomotives reminded me of highway billboards advertising, “Chief Joseph
blankets - $9.99”.
In Snowflake, Arizona, my friend Kathy Hemenway
has a Route 66 vintage trailer stored in her yard. Outfitted to shield
sensitive individuals from aberrant radio-frequency waves, its classic
single-axle chassis belies its stainless steel interior. From its lonely
perch along a High Southwest ridge, the little trailer appears ready to
hit the road to high adventure. Although I would not relish sleeping on
cold stainless steel, Kathy's trailer might convert well to a mobile
kitchen.
Exiting I-40 East at Holbrook,
I stopped for supplies at the local Safeway market. While waiting for
service in the deli department, I spoke with an old-timer about the
petrified wood trade around town. Although just a handful of shops and
yards seemed to have the whole business tied up, he assured me that
“almost everyone in town” had crates full of the scarce rocks in their
garages. If I wanted a bargain on some rocks that had once been trees,
he would have been happy to oblige.
Leaving
Holbrook, I traveled eighteen miles southeast on US Highway 180. As I
turned to pick up the highway to the Petrified Forest National Park, I
glimpsed an industrial-sized yard full of petrified wood for sale. To
the rear were the manufacturing and sales buildings. Well into the
twentieth century, locals and opportunists often ignored bans against
harvesting petrified wood from government land. Today, with legal
collection of petrified wood from public lands long gone, I wondered who
had gathered so many large chunks of our nation’s heritage and placed
them in private hands. With so much petrified wood scavenged from the
land, would there be any remaining for me to see at the Petrified Forest
National Park?
Having turned sixty-three years old a few weeks
earlier, I was intent upon buying my “Golden Age Passport” at the first
national park I visited. After rolling up to the booth at the park
entrance, I paid my ten dollars and received what the National Park
Service now calls a "Senior Pass". As it turned out, I had been eligible
for the pass since the day I turned sixty-two. With
my lifetime pass, I can now gain entrance to any national park in the
U.S., free of additional charge. As a reward for all of the federal
taxes I have paid in this lifetime, I am happy to accept this federal
government largess.
The young woman at the entrance booth reminded me
that it was illegal to collect or transport any found item from the
park, especially petrified wood. I assured her that I had no interest in
collecting anything at all. In fact, it looked like the locals from
times past had removed almost all of it anyway. She said that illicit
collectors often develop remorse and return their ill-gotten rocks to
the park headquarters. Although the park will accept such “donations”,
they cannot return them to their natural place in the park since no one
knows exactly where that place might be. Once taken from their original
place of rest, these rocks become vagabonds within the mineral world,
with no home of their own.
To
a new visitor, most of the Petrified Forest National Park looks just
like the surrounding desert. When we think of a forest, we think of
trees standing upright, whether they are petrified
or not. Actually, the Petrified Forest was a place where millions of
years ago, large tree trunks washed into ravines, and then became
covered with silt. Over the millennia, iron and other minerals
infiltrated the cellular tissue of the logs, replacing cellulose and
wood fiber with stone.
From about 12,000 BCE until 1300 CE, three distinct
prehistoric cultures (Anasazi, Mogollon and Sinagua) occupied various
parts of the park. As is true with almost all of the Southwestern United
States, the climate today is drier and less hospitable than it was
during the days of early human habitation. This land was not immune to
the Great Disappearance of early tribes around 1300 CE.
Looking for evidence of running water in the park, I
stopped at the confluence of Dead Wash and Ninemile Wash. Here, near
the Puerco Indian Ruins, a confluence of two meager streams forms the Rio Puerco,
which in turn flows into the Little Colorado River. The Puerco River,
here flowing under the roadway in a culvert, looks more like a drainage
ditch than a river. Although it still flowed sluggishly in May, I doubt
that one would find running water here in late summer or fall.
After traveling almost half way through the park, I
found the first petrified wood visible from the road. Stopping my rig, I
confirmed that there was still some petrified wood left at Petrified
Forest National Park. Until I saw tree rings in stone for myself, I had
my doubts as to the authenticity of the whole enterprise. Until then, I
wondered if the entire national park was perhaps an elaborate hoax.
To document the authenticity of the place, I got both of my Kokopelli and Coney
(the traffic cone) out of my travel trailer. Posing them on one of the
large petrified specimens, I took their picture as documentary evidence
that the place still exists, and so too, do they. Reflecting my own
stubbornness, sometimes they are hard to convince. In the second photo
of my superhero friends, I unwittingly captured a picture of the Other, casting his shadow across the hard stone. It was late afternoon and I still had many miles to go before camping at Chaco Canyon, New Mexico. I ensconced all of my little friends in the cab of my truck and headed for the eastern exit of the park
After passing under I-40, I found myself stopping to
stare at The Painted Desert. As a child, I grew up watching old Walt
Disney documentaries about the desert, but I never imagined how
realistic the Disney artists’ recreation really was. From each turnout, I
could see a different view of a pastel colored desert, with subtle hues
reflected in late afternoon sunlight. When architect Frank Lloyd Wright designed the Grady Gammage Auditorium at Arizona
State University, in Tempe, critics cried foul at its pastel color
scheme. Its exterior seemed to glow, with a pastel pink tone often
predominating. Those who claimed that Wright’s colors were not true to
any real desert should visit The Painted Desert. There they shall find
proof of Wright’s veracity. His vision presaged the contemporary trend
toward natural color schemes for Southwest houses.
Before leaving the Petrified Forest National Park, I
came across the Painted Desert Inn. In 1947, Fred Harvey brought his
famous "Harvey Girls" to the Painted Desert Inn, operating it as a hotel
and restaurant for many years. In 2006, the National Park Service
completed a major refurbishment of the original buildings, which are
open for food service and souvenir shopping today. Gone now, are the
only overnight accommodations anywhere in the park. I would not be
surprised to find that this is the only national park to close its gates
at sundown, reopening again after sunrise each day.
As
I exited the park, the ranger on duty at the booth asked if I had
collected anything during my visit. I answered, “No, I don’t believe in
it”. Carrying with me a copy of Craig Childs' new book, “Finders Keepers
– A Tale of Archaeological Plunder and
Obsession”, I had lost all desire to collect artifacts or natural
objects from any public land. OK, I do admit to bringing one souvenir
piece of Redrock home each time I drive to Moab. If each of us collects
only a few rare items, soon there will be no natural or ancient
artifacts for humans to find and contemplate.
Now, when I find a potsherd in the desert, I observe it, photograph it
and then return it to its place of origin. Unburied by my boot heel, it
shall lay there until it welcomes its next visitor. If the next
"finder" is also a "keeper", it shall be, "Goodbye, in-situ potsherd".
With the fragility of desert environments, it is best to conduct one's
search along established trails or in dry-washed arroyos. There, your boot can do no further damage. And if you do
find a piece of hard-baked white ware, with indigo lines painted on to
its white glaze, you will know its beauty immediately. Once removed from
its rightful place, its value is nil. It may have taken eleven hundred
years for our potsherd to make it from its original camp to a floodplain in the desert. I believe that each artifact is imbued with the Spirit of the Ancients.
With that knowledge, one can see that the spirit accompanying that
potsherd chose to bake there in that wash. Until the keeper found it,
the spirit of the potsherd waited patiently for The Flood
to carry it further on its journey. Having that potsherd in one's
dresser drawer does not further the cause. Simply put, humans should not
abscond with ancient potsherds, nor pieces of petrified wood, for that
matter.
After seventy-two more miles of driving on I-40 East, I arrived in Gallup, New Mexico. Gallup is a regional center for Indian Country,
with a business district that speaks to its long history. Pawnshops,
Indian art galleries and trading posts occupy many of the old brick
buildings in town. Drawn out over Old-66,
the town appears larger than it is. If one drives only a mile north or
south from the highway, there is more desert to see than there is city.
Still, with Old-66, newer I-40, plus the BNSF rail line all running
through town, Gallup is the largest transportation and lodging center
between Flagstaff, Arizona and Albuquerque, New Mexico.
As I drove through town late that May afternoon,
there were vehicles everywhere. On either side of the old highway and
along the center median, I saw huge wicker baskets resting in truck beds
and on trailers. Although there was not a hot air balloon in sight, it
was obviously a rallying point for hot air balloonists. As if it were a
normal occurrence, many balloonists were testing their propane gas jets
right in the middle of the highway. Within a few blocks, I had passed
the balloon-less balloonists and once again had the road almost to
myself.
With
sunset about an hour away, the light was low as I pulled away from the
corner of Highway 66 and Second Street. On my right was a long block of
gritty buildings. To my left, I saw an Amtrak train stopped at the
Gallup Amtrak Station. Originally built as the El Navajo Hotel in 1918,
the train station now shows a more contemporary front to motorists.
After stopping for fuel, I headed east on I-40. With Chaco Culture
National Historical Park as my targeted resting place, I hoped for a
long dusk to light my way.
From August 14 – 19, 2011 I was in my favorite town of Moab, Utah. With several of eight local Moablive.com webcams
in need of service and one new webcam to install, I had a busy week in
Moab. Other than two brief thunderstorms, it was either warm or hot
during my entire visit. When I left Moab at 3:00 AM on Friday morning,
it was 76 degrees. Each day, downtown temperatures topped one hundred
degrees . At the Moab Rim Campark, away from all of the concrete and asphalt, it was a bit cooler .
On Tuesday, I visited Andy Nettell, proprietor at
the back of the Back of Beyond Bookstore. A month earlier, our bookstore
webcam server had failed. Luckily,
the spare unit that I sent to Andy via UPS plugged right in and has
worked flawlessly ever since. Next time you visit the bookstore, visit
Andy’s antiquarian section at the back of the store. There you will see a
red light flashing on our live webcam.
Next, I headed twelve miles north of town on U.S. Highway 191. My destination was Canyonlands Field, also known as the Moab Airport. There, at Redtail Aviation,
we have a live webcam pointing out the window of their hanger. Its
field of view includes the arrival/departure area for Great Lakes
Airlines, as well as the parking area for visiting private jets. Mr. Chris Bracken,
pilot and mechanic for Redtail Aviation was working in the hanger that
afternoon. He offered moral support as I taped the webcam back on to its
designated window. Using different types of tape, we are still baffled
by why the camera will not stay firmly attached to the hanger window.
Chris believes it is a combination of cool air from their swamp cooler
and high heat on the outside of the window glass. After I left town, the
camera fell from the window, but Chris got it back in business the next
day.
Thursday, August 18 was my last day in Moab, and I had one new webcam to install.
An associate broker at Arches Realty in Downtown Moab had asked me to
come in. After quickly deciding on the best view, I began installation
of their new webcam. Six hours later, I had the webcam tested and
showing a great image of Moab and the Redrocks from their first story
window. Alas, a year later, the company asked me to remove their webcam. The image below is the last surviving image from that webcam.
Before I left her office, an associate broker invited me to review all of the MoabLive.com webcams
on her computer screen. On the screen we could see a thunderstorm
raging at Canyonlands Field, about fifteen files north of our location. A
quick glance at our several Spanish Valley webcams showed increased weather activity all around. The Slickrock had clouds, thunder storms cloaked the La Sal Range and the flag flew almost straight up near the Moab Rim. From our vantage
point at the computer, we could see thunder storms coming and thunder
storms blowing away. Looking at that spectacular sight, we were awed by
the breadth and power of nature in and around Moab.
Approaching as it did, from the north; the storm
first hit Canyonlands Field, and then moved on towards Moab. As the
airport-thunderstorm collapsed, it sent a torrent of cold air south,
along the Moab Rim and down the U.S. Highway 191 canyon. There, the venturi effect created by narrow canyon walls accelerated the wind. At the Potash Road, the canyon widens again, thus allowing the wind to fan out over the top and sides of the Moab UMTRA site. The rounded shape of the Moab Pile allowed a low pressure zone to develop over
its top. Behaving like a giant airplane wing, wind gusts entering that
low pressure zone launched tons of radioactive and toxic soils into the
air.
The
heavier particles (and presumably the heavier radio-nucleotides)
quickly fell back to earth. With the UMTRA's direct adjacency to the
Colorado River, I am sad to report that the river received a heavy dose
of radioactive dust and chemical toxins, as released by the ensuing dust
storm. It is always good to remember our downstream neighbors. In this
case fourteen million American and Mexican citizens living downstream
rely on the Colorado River for drinking water, manufacturing and crop
irrigation. As sad as these facts may be, The Dust Storm of August 19,
2011 did not end there.
Writing later to a Moab friend, I said, “By the time
I got to a gas station on the south side of town, a gale of dust and
trash swept over me. When I arrived home at the Moab Rim RV Campark, farther south, I went down to the rail fence and took some pictures. From there, I could see wind ravaging the Moab Pile and sending tons of radioactive dust toward Downtown Moab.
From the pictures I took, it is obvious that the UMTRA site is highly vulnerable to winds streaming down-canyon past the Arches National Park
entrance. Near that location, the canyon both narrows and deepens. The
resultant squeezing of the air creates a venturi effect that is focused
on to the northwest side of the pile. Since the UMTRA removal efforts expose more raw soil daily, it easily went airborne and precipitated out as dust throughout the City of Moab and the Spanish Valley.
Simultaneously, a similar, but larger dust storm was
tearing up the land in Phoenix, Arizona and all of Maricopa County. Was
that mere coincidence, or is there a definable connection between those
two dust storms? Only if the DOE and the National Weather Service (NWS) cooperate and share data on such events
will we begin to predict their occurrence. In this case, I suspect a
weather front that stretched from Canyon Country, Utah to Tucson,
Arizona. Perhaps someone of knowledge could check and correlate the
timing of regional dust storms throughout the Four Corners Region.
Despite
the absence of region-wide information sharing, any actions taken at
the Moab UMTRA project on August 18, 2011 were inadequate. Transporting the Moab Pile by rail to Brendel and Crescent Junction, Utah appeared to be their focus. A distant second in importance is the physical integrity of the pile,
as it exists today. A local resident told me that telephone complaints
about UMTRA's dust bring a canned response from the contractor’s public
relations office. Callers, who may be choking on UMTRA’s toxic dust, are
told that ‘wind over a certain speed results in immediate suspension of
grading and hauling at the site’.”
Even without coordinated dust storm alerts, UMTRA
contractors can now monitor nine public webcams situated around Moab and
the Spanish Valley. If they were to monitor only one screen provided me
as the Moab Live Public Service Webcam Page, UMTRA contractors could
see a windstorm coming long before they felt it. Greater Moab has many micro-environments and each has its own unique micro-weather. If Uranium King, Charles (Charlie) Steen (1919-2006) had foreseen the long-term threat that his company created, I doubt that he would have situated his Atlas Uranium Mill (now UMTRA) at its current location. With the ongoing threat from flooding and wind storms, old Cold War fears still haunt the area around his creation.
The drill rig shown abandoned below the Moab Rim is
of the type borrowed by Charlie Steen to make his Mi Vida Mine
discovery. In fact it may be the exact same rig. In those days, and for
many years thereafter, mining trucks and equipment were often abandoned
around Moab. Those who brought this piece of Moab memorabilia to its
current location carefully jacked it up on to several railroad ties,
removed the wheels and drove away. Now, forty or more years after its
derelict arrival, the machine slowly rusts away. At the rate of current
decomposition, I estimate its half-life to be about 704 million years,
which coincides nicely with the half-life of uranium-235 which it was
used to discover.
I
have not read the Department of Energy’s (DOE) charter of the UMTRA
Moab Project, but there must be something in there about using every
reasonable and cost-effective method of protecting the Moab Pile from
flooding downstream or blowing away in the wind. We know from previous
studies that deep beneath the Moab Pile there is a large reservoir of
contaminated water. In fact, the center of the pile is so wet that the
latest Google Earth view of the UMTRA site shows a recently uncovered stream bed.
Water beneath the Moab Pile has only two places it can go. If allowed to, it will migrate downstream towards the Colorado River. In fact, a well-field along the riverside attempts to extract contaminated ground water and spread it atop the
pile. As the water slowly dries on undisturbed parts of the pile, it
forms a tough crust. With so much of the site under recent excavation,
very little of the ground stays undisturbed for long. As a result, much
of the UMTRA site is unprotected from another big “blow off”.
The DOE should require the contractor to take
immediate action to design and deploy a far larger array of sprinklers
at the site. Ideally, an onsite reservoir would feed the sprinkler
system, which could quickly cover the entire pile. With better weather
monitoring and forecasting, the contractor could start deploying
large volumes of sprinkled water ahead of the next dust storm, rather
than afterwards, or as on August 18, 2011, “not at all”. Whoever
monitors the weather and calls for future halts in work at the site
should be an employee of the NWS, not the DOE or the contractor. When
danger lurks for the Moab Pile, no one should second-guess an early
weather-shutdown, rather than a late one. In the current situation,
shutting down “on time” is often too late.
Many in Moab grew up with or within the nuclear industry. Despite the toll it took on mine workers and processors, Moab is tolerant to the point of nostalgia
about its ranching and mining past. That familiarity may breed
complacency, which Moab can ill afford. Even if many residents consider a
nuclear dust-bath to be an acceptable occurrence in town, most tourists
and visitors do not. The only way to assure the safety of all in Moab
is to take immediate measures to change the Moab UMTRA charter, making
environmental protection at least as important as removal and transportation of contaminated material.
On Monday, August 1, 2011 a U.S. congressional
mandate to allow the world to go on spinning was still one day away. If
agreement on raising the artificially contrived federal debt ceiling
could not be reached by the following day, the sky would fall and the
world would revert to being flat. That prospect seemed like a big
setback to most conscious humans.
However, sixty or seventy Flat-Earthers
recently elected to the U.S. House of Representatives seemed to relish
in their power to send us all back to the economic Dark Ages. Like
petulant children playing with a new chemistry set, “So what”, they
said, “If we explode society as we know it?” “Not our fault”, they
assured us. “This has been going on for years…” Since I began writing
this story, the Dow Jones Industrial Average tanked by over 500 points
and then rose by an unreassuring sixty-points the following day.
That evening, rather than dwelling on such morose potentials, I clicked on an unpublicized webpage, which commands a simultaneous view of all nine Moablive.com
Utah webcams. Viewing the scene across my own personal energy bridge, I
found myself looking through the front office window at the Moab Rim Campark.
Suspended there, over Moab's Slickrock Trail I saw a webcam image of a
double-rainbow. Looking in turn at each of five webcams in the Spanish Valley,
I could see different slices of the scene. Stitching it together in my
mind, I watched a summer storm hit Moab and then dissipate on the slopes
of the La Sal Range.
If we are to believe what the mainstream media tell us about our world, it is a sad and dangerous place. If we believe our own eyes, we know that our world is a wild and wondrous place,
almost begging for our attention. As heat and drought imperil crops and
lives throughout the middle section of the U.S. this summer, Moab
has recorded several substantial rainstorms. Airflow from the northwest
has vied for position with a strong monsoonal flow from the south.
During July 2011, storms from the south followed storms from the
northwest. The combination kept rivers running high and replenished the
local water table.
In this world, one Moab was located in ancient Syria, near the Dead Sea. The other, manifested more recently in Southeastern Utah. The name “Moab” means “the far country”,
and each Moab qualifies for that title. When we are not there to
witness events firsthand, forgotten is the beauty of those wild places.
On this page I compiled a slideshow of webcam images
captured that evening. Even if our economy grinds to a halt, we can
live in hope that such beautiful weather events will continue to sweep
through the far country each summer, and forever.
Another Costantino Proietto Painting of the Amalfi Coast is Revealed.
We recently discovered that the signature on our oil painting of the Amalfi Coast
is “C.Proietto”. Since then, I have been on a quest to find out more
about, “The Man from Amalfi”, Signore Costantino Proietto (1910 - 1979).
Soon after posting my original article
on that subject, Ms. Marion Grayson of Belton, Texas sent me an image
of her own C.Proietto. It is yet another Amalfi Coast masterpiece.
Although
foreground objects differ, and the field of view varies, each painting
was of the same place, by the same artist. On the terrace of the hotel
from which he often painted, only the potted plants had changed. Even
before seeing his signature, my heart leapt. Here was yet another window
in time, created by the master in residence, Costantino Proietto.
Soon after we published images of the Grayson C.Proietto painting,
Mr. Darold Bennett of Las Vegas, Nevada emailed three images of his own
C.Proietto. Displayed by his in-laws in their home of sixty years, the
family treasure hangs now in Bennett’s home. Remarkably, the Bennett
CProietto depicts the same Amalfi Coast location as the previous two. As
usual, the artist depicts the Amalfi Coast, with a view to the sea. Of
his own Costantino Proietto painting, Darold wrote, “I had a hard time
trying figuring out the name too, but it finally came to me that it is
‘C.Proietto’, not ‘C.Preietto’. My in-laws had this painting about 60
years. Are [C.Proietto’s] paintings worth anything?”
The
quick answer to Darold’s question is; historically no, but in the
future, perhaps. From the limited biography available for the artist,
only postwar tourists to Italy purchased his paintings from their
source. Since initial purchases were in the 1940’s and 1950’s, many C
Proietto paintings are now passing from one generation to the next. In
our case, we are third-generation owners of our painting.
In most cases, C.Proietto provenance is hard find.
Current owners often know who first owned the painting, yet few details
of purchase remain. Although an artist of note could counterfeit his
works, recent auctions value an original C.Proietto at or below $1000.
Short of forensic analysis, C.Proietto’s unique signature is the best test of authenticity. I cannot imagine anyone copying that multifaceted signature
and making it look right. In an effort to strengthen their provenance,
some later C.Proietto paintings had wax seals and other documentation
attached.
Bennett’s
is the third C Proietto Amalfi Coast painting to surface on the
internet in the past month. With such rapid additions to the artist’s
known body of work, we wonder how many more examples may exist. We
picture many a living room graced by an attractive oil painting depicting a classical Italian scene. Is that the new owner, staring at an enigmatic signature, executed with blue paint so dark that it looks black?
At least one letter in each of the artist’s
signatures will be enigmatic, if not indiscernible. Over time, each
owner of a C.Proietto painting shall decipher the signature code,
conduct a Google search and find that he or she is among friends. If
each who discovers their own C.Proietto masterpiece provides us with
information on their painting, I shall publish it here.
In
Ancient Egypt, Pharaohs appeared as a blend of human and deity,
manifested here on Earth. If their god-side was to penetrate eternity,
so too must Pharaoh's image. Even today, viewing one of their funerary
masks “in person” can send a chill up your spine. In that moment of
mutual recognition, we validate another Pharaoh’s quest for eternal
life.
On what date Costantino Proietto lifted his final
canvas from its easel and sold it to a tourist for a few hundred
dollars, we do not know. All we know is that sometime in the second half
of the twentieth century, C.Proietto painted his final masterpiece.
Each unrecognized painting waits for its owner to decipher to its
signature. Like the mask of an ancient Pharaoh looking back at us
through time, each locked Costantino Proietto signature awaits its key.
In fact, human consciousness is the key to All that Is.
UCLA Student Rampage of 1966 Shuts Down the San Diego Freeway (I-405 Northbound)
News Items for November 22, 1966Rose Bowl, I-405,San Diego Freeway,1966,
As luminescent debris from Comet Tempel-Tuttle rains down on Earth, the Leonids Meteor Shower ends its first intense display in sixty-six years.
The Rose Bowl snub in favor of USC. Twice, students marched onto the freeway and briefly stopped northbound traffic. On
that Tuesday, only days after backup quarterback Norman Dow (in his
first and only start) led the Bruins to an upset of USC at the Coliseum,
The Times reported, obscenity-shouting protesters “left a trail of
shocked and bewildered spectators.”
The
year 1966 was my first at UCLA and watching our underdog Bruins
vanquish Troy was epic. To Bruin fans, the L.A. Coliseum felt like its
counterpart in ancient Rome. After the victory, we left the Coliseum
chanting “Rose Bowl, Rose Bowl”.
Despite
the UCLA win and otherwise equal records that season, a technicality
bequeathed the Pac-8 title and a coveted berth in the Rose Bowl that
year. Later the Pac-8 became the more familiar Pac-10. More recently,
the conference morphed into an ambiguous NCAA entity known as the Pac-12.
If the original Pac-8, then known as the Pacific Coast Conference had
at least something to do with geography, the Pac-12 can make no such
claim. Since many saw Arizona as another politically conservative suburb
of Los Angeles, it was easy enough to rationalize stretching the
Pacific Ocean into the Desert Southwest. However, even the most brazen
sports fan would have a hard time making the case for the Pacific Ocean
being anywhere near Utah or Colorado, where the 2011 conference
additions dwell.
Major Leonids
Meteor Showers occur in thirty-three year cycles. Major closings of the
I-405 are rarer still, with this one happening forty-six years later.
Since 1998, the Rose Bowl has vaporized like a comet into the
mind-numbing Bowl Championship Series (BCS). In January 2011, the TCU
Horned Frogs played the Wisconsin Badgers at the Rose Bowl. Only the
teams, their diehard fans and inveterate sports bettors know who won
that game. Rather than being about geography, history and proud
tradition, the Rose Bowl somehow morphed into a financial institution.
Whether it is in support of sports betting or cold cash for the
Tournament of Roses, it is all about the money now. Still, motorists on
the I-405 can rest easy about a recurrence of the “UCLA Rampage” of
1966. Thanks to the BCS, it is unlikely that a victory in any future
UCLA vs. USC game will affect commuters as they trundle up Sepulveda
Pass toward The Valley. Will anyone in that line of cars chant, "Go
Horned Frogs, go".
On
the afternoon of November 22, 1966, word got out on campus that UCLA
“had been robbed” of their Rose Bowl berth. Almost immediately,
spontaneous demonstrations started on campus. Using tiredness as my
excuse, I declined my friend Leonard’s fervent invitation to join the
demonstrations. Instead, I studied for a while and then fell asleep on
an unmade bed in my dorm room.
In
that time of increasing political tension and sporadic campus violence,
UCLA students were restive. Still, our campus had not yet experienced
any organized protests, as had happened up north at Berkeley. From the
drumbeat of Sgt. Barry Sadler’s Number one hit of 1966, “Ballad of the
Green Berets”, we knew that an American war raged on in Vietnam. Still
contested among LA riot aficionados is whether the 1996 UCLA Rampage was
larger than the summer of 1966 Sunset Strip Curfew Riots. Those riots,
associated with the closing of the nefarious Pandora's Box nightclub
became world famous in 1967 when Steven Stills and the rock group
Buffalo Springfield released their song, “For What it’s Worth”. In the
late fall of 1966, group consciousness on campus was looking for any
excuse to get out of hand. An unfair ruling by a commission of unnamed
sports officials became the flash point for mob action.
In
the early afternoon, a call to action swept through campus, with
students yelling, “To the freeway. Shut it down”. After the I-405
freeway closure, bonfires had flared into the night at campus
demonstrations against the oh-so-important Rose Bowl berth. Near
midnight on November 22, 1966, Leonard came crashing into my room, still
red-cheeked and sweaty from a long run uphill to the dorm. Today,
Leonard is a distinguished college math instructor and a published author. That night, as I listened to his story, I wondered whether he had been one of the provocateurs.
Interstate
405 is located over a mile from the UCLA campus, but undeterred by that
distance; the demonstrators began their unruly march. Down Westwood
Blvd. they surged, and then west along Wilshire Blvd. to the freeway.
Once there, the mob scrambled straight up steep banks, or marched up the
on-ramps and off-ramps to the San Diego Freeway.
In
the glare of afternoon sun, startled northbound motorists saw hundreds
of young people chanting along the side of the freeway. Soon after their
arrival, demonstrators began flagging down anyone who would stop. In
the interest of safety, traffic slowed, and then one driver came to a
halt in the slow lane. Lane, by lane, the budding anarchists proceeded,
until all four northbound lanes of the I-405 freeway came to a complete
stop. Soon, highway patrol and LA Police arrived, threatening to arrest
anyone who did not disperse. Like a school of fish, the crowds
dispersed, and then reformed and retook the freeway. As more LAPD
reinforcements arrived, officers with bull horns herded the crowd back
to Wilshire Blvd. and then followed them on their long walk home.
In
my dorm room that night, Leonard was exultant. Mobs could rule.
People had power. He had been part of something bigger than himself,
even if it was an anarchistic mob. In an act of benevolent avoidance,
my higher self had gently put me to sleep for the duration of events.
In that early version of what we now call a “flash mob”, there were no
arrests or criminal charges filed. With impending wide scale protests
against the Vietnam War, future demonstrations across the country were
often less peaceful.
With
the benefit of forty-seven years of reflection, I believe that
something important happened at both the UCLA Rampage and the more
recent I-405 Carmageddon closures. Despite the divergent reasons for the
closures, in each a bridge captured the public imagination. In 2011,
California spent millions to topple half of a bridge, simply to add a
carpool lane to the northbound side. In 1966, students discovered an energy bridge to their own future. Did stardust energy from Comet Tempel-Tuttle assist them in their peaceful, if raucous closing of the I-405?
Dec. 4, 2012 - Reader Tom Conerly's comment:
Thanks for posting the I-405 freeway photo from 1966.
I searched for it to show my son in law. However, you might want to
expand your blog...it was not just student unrest. After the
announcement picking USC for the Rose Bowl, a bunch of us from Trojan Hall decided to do a victory lap, along UCLA's fraternity row.
I was in the back seat of my roommate's Chevy Malibu SS 396
holding a speaker out the window, blasting the USC fight song. Behind
us were at least 20 cars full of USC red and gold. As we made our
second lap, hundreds of guys flooded out of the fraternities and chased
us down Wilshire Boulevard. I remember running at least two red lights
and barely escaping.
Later after being radicalized, I did my best to "burn down USC", and
married a UCLA girl, but that day in Westwood still stands out. All I
mean from “burn down” was that I quickly lost any rah rah feelings for
USC. I spent a lot of time at UCLA (Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee on the Janss Steps at noon for free) and always liked it there.
See if you can find a pic of another of my seared memories-the 500 cop cars parked on the hill by the dorms in 1970.
Dec. 4, 2012 - Jim McGillis' Response:
Perhaps you are referring to the afternoon that
fire alarms sounded almost simultaneously at Dykstra, Sproul, Rieber
and Hedrick residence halls. Every police cruiser and fire truck
in West Los Angeles headed for the dorms. There was so much apparatus
on the streets that they created their own traffic jam. When first
responders arrived, nothing was amiss, except for the sabotaged fire
alarms.
If we both recall the same episode, I wrote about that in my eBook. To keep the riff-raff out, I charge $.99 for the book. If you are not completely satisfied, the book has a 101% money-back guarantee. Ha!
Although I will not disclose my sources, I knew both of the
fire-alarm commandos. Although no one asked me to participate, I did
little to discourage those who did. When four alarms sounded, the
dispatchers at police and fire headquarters gave us everything that
they had. Their heroic, yet futile response left me with an
uncomfortable feeling in the pit of my stomach.
Today, we might refer to such an act as domestic terrorism. Had the
plot unraveled, there would have been several expulsions from UCLA that
year, perhaps including me. How long is the statute of limitations on a
crime like that?
During the Radical 1960’s, many of us perpetrated antisocial acts
against the institutions around us, sometimes even our schools.
Looking back on it, there is no excuse for such antisocial activities.
Email James McGillis
That is where the 
In
my dorm room that night, Leonard was exultant. Mobs could rule.
People had power. He had been part of something bigger than himself,
even if it was an anarchistic mob. In an act of benevolent avoidance,
my higher self had gently put me to sleep for the duration of events.
In that early version of what we now call a “flash mob”, there were no
arrests or criminal charges filed. With impending wide scale protests
against the Vietnam War, future demonstrations across the country were
often less peaceful.