Solstice

I awoke today and found the frost perched on the town
It hovered in a frozen sky, then it gobbled summer down
When the sun turns traitor cold
And shivering trees are standing in a naked row
I get the urge for going but I never seem to go

Sharp clear days, bitter nights. Winter has made its entrance. Brown cattails in the marsh, dry stalks rattling in the breeze. Groups of geese and mallards in the lees of the islets, a pair of northern shovelers and a hooded merganser couple working the open water, sculpted ice filming over the shallows. The seasons have finally flipped to cold. The warriors of winter give a cold triumphant shout
And all that stays is dying and all that lives is getting out
See the geese in chevron flight flapping and racing on before the snow
They've got the urge for going, they've got the wings to go

Joni Mitchels’ pean to lost love notwithstanding, winter is a time of subtlety and brief flashes. Gone is summer’s exuberance, its myriad of bright colors clamoring for attention, scraps of orange and bright reds and blues on the wings of butterflies and dragonflies, pure yellows and creams on tucked-away wildflowers. Winter, to me, is when you really get to look—when things you normally wouldn’t see demand you notice them. Blue jays, carrying bits of hot summer sky in their feathers, and cardinals, glowing like banked coals, stand out amidst the grays and browns of the landscape. Red-shouldered hawks change their hunting tactics, moving like cats from branch to branch, hoping to ambush the odd unwary mouse or small bird.

Trees, the garnish of green leaves brown and fallen, stand as living sculptures—oaks with their single column of trunk and elms, branches spreading like upside-down vases, invite inspection and dare you to ID them using only the winter clues. Shy hollys and mountain laurels peek out from the understory, their thick leathery leaves finally noticeable after a seasons worth of blending into the overall green. Berries glow red in the thin winter sunlight, advertising their calories to the birds.

In addition to the skeleton crew of over-wintering locals, migrants have come in from farther north where winter really is a thing of privation and scarcity. Brown creepers, little whiffs of birds fresh from the North Woods, spiral up the trunks of winter-bare trees, gleaning their way up in search of insect eggs and chilled larvae. Nuthatches spiral their ways down those same trunks, finding tidbits over-looked by the upward climbing creepers. Eiders and harlequin ducks, fresh from Greenland and Baffin Island, bob in coastal inlets, while tundra swans have made their long flight from the high arctic to sport in the Potomac and its creeks. For most of these birds, this is about as far south as they get and must seem like a tropical vacation.

A foot and a half of snow changes the equation for everyone. For me it means digging out vehicles and clearing sidewalks and trying to ignore a tiny voice in the back of my head that says “Y’know, your uncle had a heart attack and died while shoveling snow. And you're older than he was.” I pace myself, conscious of my hammering pulse, thankful for a strapping 20-year old son to do the heavy lifting.


Overwintering sparrows work the snow-free ground at the undersides of branches and in thickets, scraping the leaves for tidbits like miniature chickens. Our four species of woodpeckers diligently work the snow-splashed tree trunks. I usually wait to put out my sunflower seed until the first of the year but am seriously rethinking. On the other hand, these are full-time wildlife, adapted to the landscape over the course of millions of years and I am just a part-time bird feeder. I defer to their judgment.


I'll ply the fire with kindling and pull the blankets to my chin
And I'll lock the vagrant winter out and bolt my wandering in
I'd like to call back summertime and have her stay jut another month or so
She's got the urge for going and I guess she'll have to go

And she gets the urge for going when the meadow grass is turning brown
All her empires are falling down
Winter's closing in.

Fall Snapshots

Autumn is meandering along on its way to winter. A few vestiges of summer abide—the chilled tattered late dragonfly and lost-looking turtles. Early winter residents like slate-colored juncos and white-throated sparrows are showing up. Both are sometimes fooled by autumn days—day length is about the same as mid-May, and you can hear the occasional spring peeper call in the swamp. The odd white-throated sparrow as well begins to tune up its song, which sounds like “old Sam Peabody, Peabody, Peabody”, but they rarely get past the “Sam” part—maybe they figure out what is going on and are too embarrassed to continue.

If you keep your eyes open, you can see some of the fall specialties in evidence. A four-point buck, neck swollen from testosterone, picks his way across my backyard, oblivious to everything and everyone but does. (This is the time of year you see road-killed deer whenever you run an errand). Squirrels, their autumn breeding season in full swing, scamper up tree trunks in twos and threes and fours, spiraling their way like long gray scarves. Oak trees are finally releasing their crispy brown leaves to pile up in the gutters. Oaks are the last to let go in fall—I’ve heard Garrison Keeler explain it as vanity, but since they are among the last to leaf out in spring, it all evens out.

A northern harrier (aka marsh hawk) moseys his way across the marsh at Huntley Meadows. Banking and turning at walking speed, he checks out the flocks of mallards, testing for any sign of weakness as they explode off the surface. The harrier, rump showing the bright white diamond of feathers that screams “field mark!” to any birder, milks every erg of energy from the breeze with an ease and efficiency any America’s Cup skipper would sell his soul for. And the harrier does it in three dimensions to boot. He will linger here for a few days before moving on for the winter to the more expansive Potomac River marshes, sharing the area with the night shift of short-eared owls.

Canada geese, too big for the harrier to bother with, are busy harvesting a summer’s worth of marsh sedges. Think of them as feathered sheep, grazing on the swamp grasses, pulling up the stalks to feed on the calorie-rich rootstocks. Bow waves of grass blades form as they swim through the shallow water, past the skulking Virginia rails who have taken up residence in the marsh and pad daintily between the faded brown stalks of cat-tails, long since gone to seed. A pair of hooded mergansers newly arrived from points north, skirts the edges of the marsh, jumpy as cats, while northern shovelers doze in the watery sunlight.

Here and there, almost like after thoughts, or maybe grace notes, American witch hazel is in full bloom, forsythia-yellow blossoms the same color as maple leaves and easily overlooked amid all the riot of color.

The planet is turning, winter closing in, but not just yet. There is still business to be done, still things to do before the cold falls and the hemisphere sleeps.

Peter and Frederick..

This article will appear in the December issue of The Capital Guide, the publication of the Guild of Professional Tour Guides of Washington, D.C.

At first glance, Peter L’Enfant and Frederick Douglass seem unlikely companions—L’Enfant, a slightly built Frenchman whose vision resulted in the city of Washington, D.C. and Douglass, a powerful orator whose calls for the abolition of slavery gave rise to the Emancipation Proclamation and the modern Civil Rights movement. They stand, paired in the lobby at One Judiciary Square, as the District’s contribution to the National Statuary Hall collection in the U.S. Capitol. Visitors need not go through security; the statues are easily viewed from the entrance as well as from outside the building.

The two larger-than-life bronze statues, each seven feet tall and weighting close to 850 pounds, were commissioned in 2007 by the D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities. An advisory commission of historians and art experts (50 prominent citizens nominated by public ballot) chose local sculptors Gordon Kray and Steven Weitzman to create the statues of L’Enfant and Douglass, respectively.


Each man is shown practicing his profession, tools at hand. L’Enfant stands atop Jenkins Hill, later to become Capital Hill, plans for the Federal City and a pair of dividers in his hands. Douglass, leonine head erect, is depicted giving his 1852 July 4th speech, considered by many historians to be his finest. Weitzman shows Douglass as both orator and writer—a copy of the North Star, Douglass’s abolitionist newspaper clutched in his right hand, his left gripping a lectern on which his pen and inkwell rest.


The Statuary Hall collection in the Capitol displays two statues of historical figures from each state, 100 in all. Since the District is not a state, Eleanor Holmes Norton, the District’s non-voting delegate to Congress, proposed special legislation authorizing Douglass and L’Enfant to join the select group under the Rotunda. Representative Norton’s bill has been languishing in Committee since in 2005, but she plans on reintroducing the legislation in the near future. In the meantime, visitors may see the sculptures in their temporary home at 441 4th St., NW.

Autumn Closing In

Nights are getting crisp, days are filled with changing colors as the trees suck the nutrients back out of their leaves and begin to shut down. Winter’s coming on. We tend to think of autumn and spring as transition periods between the absolutes of heat and ice—parts of the pendulum swing before it hits the top or bottom. In reality, they are seasons of their own with their own milestones, their own comings and goings. Autumn and spring are more subtle, more nuanced than the exuberances of summer or winter’s bleakness. Pat says the autumns in Colorado are blazing with the bright yellow of aspens but lack the reds and oranges that make the East coast a leaf-peeper's Mecca.


If you pay enough attention, you can find the hallmarks of any season. Spring has its massed wildflower displays of ephemeral beauty, autumn, its own flowers and leaves. But here and there, you can still see summer’s children in a final curtain call before the cold stops the show.

A common spreadwing damselfly settles onto a perch, well below the level of the stiff breeze gusting above the tops of the cattails. Clear gossamer wings neither folded over its back nor spread stiffly out, you can almost hear the rustle of crinolines as it adjusts. Weak fliers, keeping out of the greater sky, damselflies prefer to hunt low, gleaning aphids and tiny bugs from leaves.


Autumn Meadow hawks, the last dragonflies of the year, sway in the breeze perched atop cattail leaves, alone or in coupled pairs, glowing red in the thin sunlight.


Orange and black flashes overhead give away migrating Monarch butterflies, riding the winds, looking barely in control as they flutter their way toward Mexico and the groves of fir trees where they will spend their winter.

Other sets of orange and black, a bit smaller, a bit redder give away the monarch’s mimics and doppelgangers, the viceroy butterflies. Viceroys take advantaged of the monarch’s retchingly bad taste to gain immunity from predators. They are often one of the last butterflies on the wing, first letting the monarchs pass by to teach birds not to eat anything orange. Orange isn’t just for breakfast. Trust me on this.

Autumn rains have called forth red-backed salamanders. Leaving their flooded underground lairs, they climb up tree trunks, bushes, and even walls to find some breathing space. Lungless and respiring through damp skin, they are almost never seen during the hot days of summer. The dampness of fall is the perfect time to see them. Coming in one of three flavors, the common redback with its dull red stripe running down its back, intermingles with the less common “leadback” whose red has been replaced with dull gray. A third form, more common elsewhere, is bright orange, mimicking red efts. An unrelated species, the red eft is the juvenile of the eastern newt. Newts live in beaver ponds and when the population reaches critical mass, efts leave in search of new horizons. Trudging across the forest floor, the bright orange efts tell predators to stay away—they are mildly toxic and will sicken anything foolish enough to eat one.

Red-headed woodpeckers work the dead snags at the edges of the beaver pond. White oaks, killed by the rising pond, the wood is rotted and punky enough for a wide variety of insect prey and soft enough for the woodpeckers to hammer in acorns and hickory nuts for future dining. Red-heads are one of the few woodpeckers in North America who store food for winter. Mice, flying squirrels, and gray squirrels do the same and are not above raiding the woodpecker’s pantry when times get lean.

This year, times will be good for all—it’s a mast year for oaks and other nut-bearing trees. Acorns litter the forest floor in abundance—more than enough for the hoarders to gather and bury. Oaks will belch forth a huge crop of acorns every so often and gray squirrels will gather them up and bury a few at a time in scatter hordes. Squirrels forget some spots or are detained by predators. The acorns, having been obligingly planted and away from other species with a taste for nuts, sprout to grow into new forests. Squirrels have spent thousands of years selecting the fattest and tastiest acorns to store, while oaks have spent the same time selecting squirrels to act as gardeners. Who has domesticated who?

You Have to Go Out…

Tucked behind the dune that has protected it for 140 years, the United States Live-Saving Service’s Indian River Station has weathered hurricanes and north-easters. A barn like structure, it has been lovingly restored to its 1905 colors and condition. Photos of old ship wrecks line the walls and portraits of long-dead crew stare out at you, all mustached and unsmilingly formal.


These men were some of the bravest, most foolhardy people the U.S. Government had in its employ. Their job was to find wrecked ships along their section of beach, five miles or so in either direction, and rescue the crews and passengers, no matter what the conditions. They called themselves surfmen and their motto was “You have to go out; you don’t have to come back.” They lived in Spartan conditions, the wood-burning stove in the mess room the only source of heat—in freezing weather, they heated bricks on the stove and wrapped them in flannel to take to their bunks. The open cupola along the roof ridge was manned 24 hours a day, rain or shine, hurricane or blizzard. Like today’s firemen, their job was to put themselves in harm’s way for the safety of others. Failure was always an option, nearly every station lost surfmen to waves or the cold. Not going out was never considered. The rule book stated that a surfman “will not desist from his efforts until by actual trial, the impossibility of effecting a rescue is demonstrated. The statement of the captain that he did not try to use the boat because the sea or surf was too heavy will not be accepted unless attempts to launch were actually made and failed.”


The surfboat, an open wood-planked 20-foot affair, weighing 3000 pounds, rested on a carriage with extra large wheels in the ground level boat room. The eight man crew of surfmen dragged the boat to the beach to launch through storm waves often over 20 feet high. These boats were always rowed by the men. Motors were almost never used. As one surfman said, “Motors can quit; men never will.”


If the storm surf was of suicidal fury and attempts at launching were unsuccessful, the surfboat also carried a Lyle gun, a small cannon used to launch a grappling hook-like projectile to the crippled vessel. A thin rope called the shotline was attached to the projectile. Regulations called for the gunner to fire the projectile into the rigging of the stranded ship. Using the shotline, the surfmen hauled larger lines and pulleys to the ship to create a continuous loop with a breeches buoy, a one-man harness, attached. Passenger and crew rode the buoy from the ship to beach one by one.


Six stations ranged along the Delaware shore with another four in Maryland. Surfmen patrolled on foot in two-man shifts, each man walking the beach for five miles north or south of the station. They carried patrol clocks to ensure they patrolled their stretch of beach. They also carried Coston flares to warn ships too close to the beach or to burn at a wreck to alert the station lookout and to let the ship’s crew know they had been located and that help was on the way.

Although Cape Hatteras lays claim to the title “graveyard of the Atlantic”, the mid-Atlantic Delmarva Peninsula has had more shipwrecks. The Indian River Station saw seven major wrecks in its history. Some stations like the one at Bethany Beach, saw none, and others such as the one at Lewes at the entrance to Delaware Bay made nearly fifty rescues. Stations were expected to assist each other when possible and Alexander Graham Bell set up one of the first telephone systems in America so stations to communicate with each other up and down the coast.

Reading the accounts of rescues leaves me in awe of these people. The surfmen at Lewes once went for 72 hours without sleep or hot food during a screaming north-easter in 1889. With the help of the Cape Henlopen and Rehobeth Beach crews, they went from one wreck to another, rowing out with frozen hands and protesting muscles to rescue nearly 100 people from ships which wrecked one after the other over the course of the three-day storm.


In 1891, the Indian River crew attempted a near epic rescue of the schooner Redwing, wrecked down beach across the Inlet. The surfmen dragged their boat two miles to the flooded inlet, and could not cross on the flood tide. They reloaded the heavy boat back on its carriage and dragged it to nearby Rehobeth Bay, packed the carriage into the boat, and relaunched to cross the bay. It took nearly five hours to reach the wreck, and by then, the Redwing was a total loss with all hands. The surfmen spent the next day on the beach finding the bodies of the crew and paid out of their own pockets for graves at the nearby Ocean View Presbyterian Church. You can still see the site today with an added mystery—the schooner’s manifest listed six crewmen and the surfmen collected six bodies from the beach. There are seven graves in the Redwing plot.

Going South

The dog days of August are upon us. Scorching temperatures, humidity you can swim in, and thunderstorms powerful enough to uproot houses. Time for Fall migration. I know what you are thinking, its not Fall. Not even close. Yet for some animals, it is time to head for tropic climes or even farther.

Shorebirds—sandpipers, plovers, and the like always lead the way. Nesting on the tundra, above the Arctic Circle, almost at the edge of the ice, they have reared out their broods and are ready for some fun and sun. They pass through the mid-Atlantic starting in late July and by September are pretty much gone. I saw least sandpipers, small brown and white birdlets, hardly bigger than marshmallow Easter duckys, working over the exposed mud flats at Huntley Meadows park last week. They were joined by a solitary sandpiper, a spotted sandpiper, and several killdeer, all partaking in the bounty of the ooze. The leasties are on their way to Peru, the others go as far as the Argentine pampas and Tierra del Fuego.


Other birds I saw that day are busy putting on fat for their own journeys. The chimney swifts chittering overhead are beginning to feel the call of the rainforests and the osprey circling over the open water of the marsh will be going to coastal Brazil by mid-October. Even the hummingbirds, weighing as much as a paper clip, will be flying the 90 miles of open water nonstop from Florida to Cuba.


What prompts an animal you can hold in the palm of one hand to fly thousands of miles twice a year? Sunlight and food. Consider: every point on the planet averages 12 hours of light and 12 hours of night in a day. The actual hours are lopsided except at the equator. The poles get three month each of endless daylight and stygian night. When spring hits the northern hemisphere, daylight exceeds night with a concomitant acceleration of plant growth. More plant growth equals more insects. More insects equals more protein to feed baby birds. A good number of bird species leave the crowded tropical ecosystems and head to the sparsely populated north. They settle in, raise one, maybe two broods, and return to Central and South America at the end of the season. We think of them as our birds going south for the winter when in reality, it is their birds coming north for the summer.

Something is always migrating. Think of the year as the arc of a pendulum. At the top of each swing, there is an instant when gravity and momentum balance and the swing stops. The migration swing stops for about 10 days in mid-July and again at the other end of the arc in mid-January. For those brief periods, all species have gotten where they were going. Then the process begins anew. Now is the time when the pendulum is moving back down and the birds are beginning to move with it.

Modern Problems

Today’s news reported that Pope Benedict XVI suffered a broken wrist in a fall at his summer palace. Add to this the picture of Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton wearing a sling to support her broken elbow and Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sottomayor on crutches after she broke her ankle in a fall, and a disturbing pattern emerges.

Gravity anomalies—little patches of disturbed gravitational fields have been popping up all over the Earth. Normally these attract no attention; after all, who notices fish floating up out of the water in mid-Pacific or the fact that Mt. Everest has shrunk by a full two inches in the last 5 years? Gravity, a real but little understood universal phenomenon, is under assault. The culprit?—Global warming. As the surface of the planet heats, it becomes less dense relative to the underlying crust. This difference in densities is expressed by localized increases or decreases in micro gravitational fields. The field switches off in small foot-square areas. If a person is unlucky enough to step on that area, the effect is similar to stepping on a banana peel. The corollary, as explained by Sir Isaac Newton’s theory of Conservation of Energy, is localized areas of hyper-gravity—someone stepping there weighs over 800 pounds for a fraction of a second. Injuries to upper extremities come from zero gravity patches, those to ankles and legs from hyper gravity anomalies.

This is not a new phenomenon—Albert Einstein postulated gravity fluctuations in his Addendum to Special Relativity, published in 1924. Einstein nearly won the Nobel Prize for this, but lost to Max Plank in the swimsuit completion. Human history has been changed for better or worse as a direct result of gravity shifts. One thousand years ago, during what is known as the Medieval Warm Period, a 400 year era of global warming, Europe was saved from conquest when Genghis Kahn died after falling from his horse. This snippet, glossed over by most historians, belies the fact that Genghis was an expert horseman, literally born to the saddle. Falling off one’s horse, even while drunk, was considered by the Mongol hordes to be something of a gross faux pas. If one considers a gravity surge, which caused Genghis to suddenly weigh 600 pounds, making his poor mount collapse, the whole historical mystery comes into focus. Another example, that of the Mary Celeste, an American sailing ship found abandoned and sailing by itself across the Atlantic in 1894, can be explained by its sailing through a zero gravity area, causing the crew to float off the deck and into the water. The disappearances of Amelia Earhart, Jimmy Hoffa, and the Lost Colony have similar explanations.

How do we combat this seemingly inexorable menace? The obvious solution is to end global warming and stabilize the earth’s surface temperature relative to the underlying crust. Failing that, a multi-trillion dollar effort should be initiated by NATO to warm the crust with microwave ovens in order to bring it back into relative balance with the surface. As neither plan is likely, I propose a temporary fix—cats. Cats are well known to have mysterious effects on gravity, and are thought by some observers to possess rudimentary control over their own gravitational fields. Consider: a falling cat always lands on its feet. Long thought to be due to quick reflexes and loose skin, recent experiments using high speed video have demonstrated that a falling cat can cancel out or reduce its immediate gravity field, allowing time to twist into landing position. Consider also the sleeping cat phenomenon. Anyone trying to pick up a sleeping cat will remark “Geeze, this cat weighs a ton.” This is truer than once thought. A sleeping cat concentrates the local micro-gravity field to become several pounds heavier, thus keeping it in safely in place—a useful evolutionary trait for an animal who, in the wild, habitually sleeps on tree branches. Cats’ legendary sense of balance is nothing more than gravity field manipulation.

Obviously, the solution for persons of high societal rank, such as Popes and Supreme Court judges, is to emulate the Prophet Mohamed who always had a cat with him. According to legend, he once cut off the sleeve of a favorite robe so as not to disturb a sleeping cat. This was not entirely due to affection--when one considers that the cat temporarily weighed 150 pounds and Mohamed had a bad back from his early years as a camel driver, the real explanation leaps to mind. My modest proposal is that rather than carrying yappy rat-dogs as do some celebutants, world leaders should be accompanied by official cats. The cats could be carried in decorous accessories, lending statesmen a certain air of gravitas.

Greyfriar’s Bobby

One of the fixtures of Edinburgh is Greyfriar’s Bobby. Bobby was a Skye Terrier belonging to a Mr. John Gray, a night watchman, who died in 1858, and was buried in Greyfriars Kirkyard, the cemetery attached to Greyfriars Church. Mr. Gray and Bobby were inseparable in life and in death. For the next 14 years, Bobby kept vigil at Gray’s graveside, leaving only in bad weather, when he was sheltered in nearby homes and fed at the backdoors of local restaurants. Word of Bobby’s devotion spread and the City Council paid for the renewal of Bobby’s license, making him a ward of the city. Bobby died, old and full of honors, in 1872, and was buried just outside the cemetery proper but within the walls. Bobby’s headstone, dedicated by the Duke of Gloucester, bears the inscription “Let his loyalty and devotion be a lesson to us all.” At the base is a pile of sticks and dog toys left by dog lovers for over a century.


A bronze statue of Bobby stands near the cemetery, just outside Greyfriars Pub. Legend has it that the publican turned the statue 180 degrees, so it no longer faces the cemetery, and any photo of Bobby will also have the pub in the background.

Technology and Nationalism

Scots seem to be of two minds when it comes to Britain. On the one hand, Scots have fought and died for King (or Queen) and Country for nearly 250 years, supplying what is arguably the world’s best infantry to the British Army. The “feathered bonnet” worn by Scottish bagpipe bands traces its ancestry to the tall bearskins worn by Napoleon’s Old Guard. Scots picked up the headgear on battlefields across Europe when the original owners no longer needed it. Similarly, the leopard skin tunics on the bass drummers are from the Sudan where Highland regiments defeated an army of radical Islamists on the outskirts of Khartoum in the late 1800’s.


On the other hand, Scots do not really see themselves as British, Tony Blair (an Edinburgh native) not withstanding. They almost never refer to the English by that name, preferring “our neighbors to the south” or some other euphemism. It reminded me of Harry Potter, where the name of Voldemort is never called out. That actually makes a certain amount of sense, since J.K. Rowling, another native Edinburgher, wrote the early drafts of her first book in a coffee shop by George IV Bridge.


This can go to extremes; around downtown Edinburgh, you can see stickers proclaiming “Scottish not British” with the blue and white flag of St. Andrew.


Alec, who spent a semester at the University of Edinburgh, tells the story of a student-organized Scottish nationalism rally. The organizers xeroxed dozens of copies of the flag and slogan and posted them on campus bulletin boards, with the time and place. Some wag, with his or her own sense of history and nationalism, scrawled across the paper: Cornish, not Scottish—get a color printer. It seems the flag of Cornwall (the cross of St. Piran, patron saint of tin miners) has a white X-shaped cross on a black background.

The Sir Walter Scott Memorial—Drunks at Dawn

During our stay in Edinburgh, I would get up at dawn, grab something to eat, and go exploring. One gray and chill spring morning, I hiked across North Bridge, over what used to be North Loch, now the Waverly Train Station, and wandered into Edinburgh’s New Town. I crossed the bridge, skirting the monument in its center, a statue to some Scottish regiment or other, mustachioed helmeted soldiers brandishing flags and weapons for queen and country in some long ago, half-remembered colonial war on the far side of the world. My plan was to see the Sir Walter Scott Memorial, shoot some photos, and in general, take in the ambiance of what has to be one of the ugliest structures I have ever laid eyes on. I had seen the Memorial from a tour bus and noticed it poking above the eastern skyline, but I wanted to see it up close, what may be the finest example of Victorian wretched excess in the whole of the British Isles.

You really can’t miss the Memorial, standing in Princess Gardens, 200 feet tall, and made of locally quarried shale—a bad choice, given that the oil in the shale has migrated to the outside and bonded with decades of coal smoke, making the entire structure soot black. Author Bill Bryson has described it as “looking like a Victorian gothic rocket ship”. He’s right. If the Brits had had a space program in the early 1800’s, Apollo 11 would have gone up in something resembling this, steam-powered and coal-fired.


I think maybe the only thing missing on the space flight would have been the gargoyles. Two in each corner about half way up, they are a bit unexpected. Then again, given Victorian tastes for jim-cracks and jee-jaws, maybe not. I’m sure the Brits would have figured out how to make them retract on re-entry.


I had finished walking around the base and the gleaming white marble statue of Scott himself at the center when two young men came up. They looked a bit rumpled and with the expression drunks have when they are trying to brazen their way along. “I see you’ve got a camera” the dark haired one slurred, “can you take a picture of me and the lad?” “Sure,” I said, “No worries.” The two posed, looking blearily into the camera. I snapped the shutter, they said thanks, and staggered off, holding each other up, zigzagging down the street like a sailboat tacking in a strong head wind. No address, no e-mail, no bloody idea in hell of who they were or what to do with the picture or where to send it. “Oh well,” came a bemused thought dancing around the edges of my brain, “it should make for a good story.” So, my two inebriated gents, if by chance, you happen to see this blog, let me know who and where you are and I’ll be glad to send you a photographic record of our meeting. Lord knows, you won’t remember it yourselves.

Beach Phantoms

You can forgive most people for not noticing the flicker of movement or not seeing them at all. Sand-colored, no bigger than the palm of your hand, and fast as hell, ghost crabs are denizens of sandy Atlantic beaches from Rhode Island to Brazil.

Active at night, ghost crabs spend most of their daylight hours in L-shaped burrows up to four feet deep. At dawn or dusk or on overcast days, small gouts of sand periodically erupt from burrows scattered along the beach above the high tide line. Holes range from dime to silver dollar-size, depending on the size of the resident crab. Digging crabs cradle a spoonful or so of sand in the crook of their claws and fling it out to the surface from the entrance marked with a fan of damp sand that may extend up to a foot out. This is like a person tossing a snow shovel-full across down the block.

Ghost crabs are marine animals who have almost made the transition to land dwellers. On warm June evenings, egg-carrying females rush to the edge of the surf and release their eggs into the water. All ghost crabs scamper to the wave line on occasion to fill special sacks beside the gills with oxygenated water. Specialized muscles circulate the water over the gills keeping them working. In a pinch, specialized leg hairs can wick up moisture from the damp sand at the bottom of a burrow and fill the gill sacks.

Ghost crabs are predators and scavengers. They hunt smaller mole crabs, beach fleas, and tiny burrowing coquina clams right up to the strand line at night. They also investigate and devour anything that may wash up. They can pick a fish to bones before dawn and the day shift of scavengers wakes up. Any greedy crab caught far from its burrow in day light risks becoming gull food. Crabs lack the ability to look up and gulls know this, dropping like hawks on the unlucky.

Ghost crabs segregate by size. The youngest and smallest crabs burrow in the damper sand nearer the surf line, while older and bigger crabs move up the beach to the foot of the dunes. . Crabs guard their burrows fiercely, engaging in ritualized combat with individuals of a like size and plain tossing out smaller contenders. Crabs allow another crab into their burrow only during emergencies or for romance—there seems to be a secret handshake (clawshake?) involved. The biggest crabs, mainly older females, burrow into the face of the dune itself where they remain safe from storm tides. Location, location, location

When your eye does catch the movement, feel free to chase and try to catch the crab. You won’t succeed. Mounted on short stalks like twin periscopes, the crab’s eyes are as good as yours for following movement. Tracking you by your shape against the skyline, the crab slides along sideways effortlessly over the sand at 10 miles per hour, as quick as any Olympic sprinter. Keep following though, and the crab will shift direction at full tilt. Neat trick for someone with five times the legs as you. Keep on it, and the crab will do one of two things. Either it will disappear down another crab’s hole, any port in a storm, or it will stop dead in its tracks. Your eyes, following the movement and your brain anticipating the next move, will loose it in the sand. Score one for the crab.

If you happen to be at any beach on the Atlantic not swept by municipal trash collectors, on a June evening with no moon and a falling tide, you may be lucky enough to see hundreds of ghost crabs scampering down to the water’s edge to release their eggs. Females carry hundreds in a large cluster under their abdomen and walk on stilted legs at full term. Reaching the water, they carefully wade in until the waves lap at their bellies and release their eggs to the currents. Some females may actually turn over on their backs to get the eggs out; a risky move since a wave may wash them out and surprisingly enough, ghost crabs can’t swim and will drown. Eggs soon hatch and the larvae are swept into the longshore current paralleling the coast. Crabs on your beach may well have been spawned on a beach further south, ensuring constant mixing of genes and regular recolonization of storm wrecked sands.

Once you see one, you’ll begin to notice them on nearly any beach you visit. On an exotic beach, like Rio or Jamaica, it’s like seeing a friend from home.

The Very Model of a Modern Pirate King

Last Saturday, we went down the road to Wolf Trap Park for the Performing Arts to catch the New York Gilbert and Sullivan Players (NYGASP) performing The Pirates of Penzance (or, The Slave to Duty). Pat’s sister, Kay, had seen them in St. Louis earlier this season and loved them. She wrote a review for her blog which David Wammen, aka the Managing Director, aka the Pirate King, added to the company’s web site (http://nygasp.org). He said it made his parents cry (a good thing).

We skipped down the hill past the grass-sitters (I know, awfully snobbish of me) to our seats in Row B—just a row back from the orchestra pit, where the conductor, also a member of the company, sat (never heard of one sitting before). We had a great listen to the unmiked instruments as well as an unparalleled view of the cast, complete with facial expressions.

It’s hard to mess up Gilbert and Sullivan, but when it’s really done well, it can rival most anything by Verdi or Wagner, and a lot shorter to boot. The singing is every bit what you would expect from a troupe of pros. The Pirate King’s baritone and chief ward Mabel’s soprano are wonderful. Mabel (Michele McConnell) has got one fabulous set of pipes. I swear I heard glass breaking in downtown Vienna.

One of the great things about Gilbert and Sullivan is the second-echelon characters. In Pirates, Major-General Stanley gets to show off his erudition as the Very Model of a Model Major-General—there must be some sort of informal contest amongst Major-Generals, present and past, as to who can sing the fastest and still be understood by the audience. Steven Quint must be in the top ten. His old creaky Major-General can barely walk (wears bunny slippers in Act II) but sings at light speed and like the energizer bunny, keeps going and going, refusing to wind up his aria.

“I can read a washing bill in Babylonic cuneiform
And tell you all the details of Caractacus's uniform.”

The “ad lib” asides themselves produce a chuckle—“Then I can hum a fugue of which I've heard the music's din afore…I'll never come up with a rhyme for 'din afore,”
To which the Pirate King, responds: "What, never?” the answer: "Well, hardly ever!", followed by “And whistle all the airs from that infernal nonsense Pinafore.”

David Auzier, the dance captain and Sergeant of Police (“When the Foeman Bares His Steel”), is the other secondary character, who also pretty much steals the show, or at least the second act. His hang-dog expression and loose limbed, Monty Python Ministry of Silly Walks physical acting compliments the choreography of his none-too-eager policemen, one of whom dances all his moves, Sufi-like, in complete opposition to the rest of the line. That’s got to be hard to pull off and be funny. He does and it is.

As with most Gilbert and Sullivan, the plot proceeds at break-neck pace until everyone—romantic leads, pirates, policemen, etc., have seemingly been painted into the tightest of corners when, in the (ta-da!) nick of time, all is miraculously resolved with happy endings galore, including a Chorus Line-style kick line of pirates, police, and wards, complete with glittery top hats and spirit fingers. I could have sat through the whole thing again—it was that much fun.

Afterwards we hung around the stage entrance until the conductor let us in; we found the Pirate King and handed him Kay's note in which she asked for a autograph for her and her sister (Pat) since they "were both orpans" something the pirates couldn't resist. “Oh!” he said, “you know Kay! I put her review on our web site.” He signed our programs and wished us and you all the best. He had to cut our conversation short, since he is a local boy (Gonzaga High School) and his grandma was waiting to see him. Made it even better…local boy makes good.

The (Other) British Museum

To a dinosaur geek, the British Museum of Natural History is paradise. Low and hulking, the yellow sandstone building covers an entire city block with terra cotta saber-tooth tigers lined up along the roof like ladies in the windows of an Amsterdam cathouse. Sculptured coelacanths and pterodactyls sport in the window bays promising untold pleasures within.


It starts at the entrance—you walk into the toothy grin of “Dippy”, the 100 foot long skeleton of a Diplodocus (Brontosaurus to the rest of us), stretching all the way back to the foot of the grand staircase. Head cocked to one side, seeming to say “and how are you this fine morning?”


The dinosaur gallery walks you through the history of what were the rulers of the planet for nearly 100 million years, showing what was replaced at either end and by whom. The gallery shows how the dinosaurs jump-started their reign when something big happened at the end of the Permian, about 250 million years ago and how they vanished without a trace when something equally big closed down the Cretaceous.


Subdued lighting casting sharp silhouettes along the walls heightens the sense of a lost world. High ceilings allow the beasts to stand to their full height while an imaginative steel catwalk brings you up to eye level. There is nothing like standing face-to face- with a Tyrannosaurus rex to really appreciate the size and bulk of the thing. It’s one thing to read about a twenty-foot tall creature with teeth like steak knives, and quite another to actually look down into a barrel-sized cuisinart looking back at you.


The museum devotes special attention to Tyrannosaurus rex, everybody’s favorite nightmare. As soon as the scientific world heard about this monster, the Brits sent expedition after expedition to the American west to find, buy, or flat out steal specimens. A hundred years of pouring over the best collection of T. rex skeletons (about 50 total) in the world has provided some astonishing insights and wonderful speculations.


The museum’s curators, using detailed microscopic bone analysis techniques, have shown that Tyrannosaurus life spans were on the order of a human’s. Growth was slow until the animal nearly doubled in size during its teen years. I can just imagine the young T. rex coming home after a hard day on the savannah and clearing out the fridge. The museum has taken advantage of this fact, constructing a life size animated model of a young T. rex, all teen hormones and angst, just hitting its growth spurt and polishing off an after-school snack of Triceratops to the delighted shrieks of school kids.


Not only about fang and claw; the gallery displays fossil and reconstructed eggs and even nests showing dinosaurs to have been attentive and caring parents. They had to be—any number of predators lurked in the Mesozoic brush, eager to convert one species into another. Still, there is an undeniable cuteness in the sight of a clutch of baby parrot beaks just breaking out of the shell as a parent dozes nearby.

The Stone of Destiny

Christmas Day, 1950. Four Scottish college students creep through the early morning murk to Westminster Abbey. In a daring display of subterfuge, worthy of any number of secret agent movies, they break into the Abbey. Keeping to the shadows, they make their way towards the wooden Coronation Chair, seat of British monarchs since 1300. And break the chair. Not the political statement it may seem; the Chair was collateral damage to the real objective. The Chair was built around the Stone of Scone, known to all Scots, including our intrepid students, as the Stone of Destiny.

But of course, as with all stories of theft and skullduggery, more information is required to flesh out the details leading to such a seemingly heinous crime.

I heard the story of the Stone on Destiny on a bus out of Edinburgh, a tour called Highlands, Waterfalls. and Distilleries. Our guide, Mac MacKenzie, kept us regaled between stops with stories of Scottish history and folklore. Outside of Perth, he pointed out Dunsinane Castle of MacBeth fame, near Birnham Wood. And in the midst of hills, glens, and sheep, Mac began to tell us the story of Scotland’s most famous artifact.

Kept on display with the Scottish Crown Jewels deep within the dank walls of Edinburgh Castle, rests the Stone of Destiny. The premier symbol of Scottish nationalism, the Stone, in addition to being called the Stone of Scone (pronounced “Scoon”), is also called the Coronation Stone, and Lial Fail in Scottish Gaelic, has by custom and by tradition been used in the coronations of Scottish kings since Kenneth MacAlpine, the first Scots king in 847. Legend has it the stone was transported through Spain and Ireland from the Holy Land where it was the pillow used by the prophet Jacob when he dreamt of a visitation by God. Jacob awoke and turned the stone to its side as an altar to Jehovah, the first one.

The Stone actually doesn’t look like anything special—an oblong block of chiseled reddish sandstone, a small cross, and iron handles at each end. Two feet long, a foot thick, and one foot wide and weighing about 350 pounds, it’s just a big rock and far more modest than its name might suggest. It was kept for centuries in the abbey of Scone, near Perth.

In 1296, the Stone was captured (stolen, depending on your point of view) by King Edward I of England as part of his never-ending campaign to subdue Scotland. Edward, “the hammer of the Scots”, took Edinburgh and announced he was marching on Perth to capture the Stone. Logic had it that whoever possessed the Stone was the rightful King of Scotland and Edward Plantagenet, every bit the homicidal megalomaniac so aptly portrayed by Patrick McGoohan in Brave Heart, was bound and determined to add Scotland to his collection of conquests.

Edward and his army took a month to march the 50 or so miles from Edinburgh to Perth, fighting every inch of the way. When they arrived, Edward burned the Abbey, slaughtered the monks, and took the Stone to London. He had a special chair constructed, placing the Stone on a low platform below the seat. The chair became the Coronation Chair, used by every British monarch since 1300.

Edward never did complete his conquest of Scotland, dying in Edinburgh and cursing the Scots with his final breath. His son, after a bloody defeat on the battlefield at the hands of Robert the Bruce, thought better of the whole thing and went home.

The official story is that in 1996, after 700 years of political wrangling, the Stone was transported back to Scotland where it remains to this day. “End of story” said Mac. “Or is it?”

Enter our intrepid four led by Ian Hamilton, all students at Oxford and all members of a Scottish Nationalist Society. Having cased the joint, and determining that the best time to enter would be the small hours of Christmas morning when security would be dozing, the four lifted the stone and spirited it away. Not quite. While carrying it out of the Abbey, someone lost their grip on an iron ring and dropped the stone. And broke it. Scotland’s most sacred symbol was lying in two pieces on the marble floor of Westminster Abbey. It had survived centuries of transport in sailing ships and oxcarts, gone through sieges and warfare, only to be broken by four kids in what was essentially a prank. Worse, it had fallen on the foot of one of the would-be hijackers, breaking two toes and making him pretty much useless in helping to move the bits.

Somehow the students got the Stone outside and into a waiting car. They hid the Stone in various places for the next several weeks while a Nation-wide search commenced. They drove it across the border, getting past police roadblocks, with the Stone covered with a blanket and disguised as the back seat of their car.

When they made it to Scotland, they contacted a sympathetic Scottish politician who took the stone to a master mason for repair. The mason repaired the Stone and left it on the remains of the altar stone in the ruins of Arbroath Abbey near Perth. The mason assumed the Church of Scotland would protect the Stone, but police soon retrieved it and the Stone was returned to London and to a presumably fixed Coronation Chair.

Hamilton and his three accomplices turned themselves in and were promptly arrested. Within a week, all charges were dropped and the matter laid to rest. Under British law, the Crown would have had to prove rightful ownership. Since the Stone had been stolen to begin with, the powers that be decided to pretend the whole thing never happened. Ian Hamilton went to law school, become a prosecutor, and his friends went on to distinguished careers of their own. A happy ending to the story…or is it?

Mac had more tidbits to add. He had once worked with James Hamilton, Ian’s son who told him that when the students dropped the Stone, it actually broke into three pieces, not two. The third piece was small enough for Ian to slip into his pocket and forget about. Later, he had the fragment made into a necklace and gave it to his bride as a wedding present. Happy ending number two.

After the Stone was recovered, rumors began to fly that the mason had not only repaired the Stone itself, but had also made an exact copy. The copy he left at Abroath Abbey for the police to find. The real Stone, labeled a replica, is on display at the abbey—the Stone of Destiny is in Scotland. Happy ending number three.

Mac then mentioned that medieval chroniclers described the original stone as round, black, and polished, with symbols inset with silver. It may have been a fragment of meteorite. As best as can be determined, the Stone on display at Edinburgh Castle is common Perthshire sandstone.

“Imagine” said Mac, “that you are the abbot of Scone and learn that the most bloodthirsty ruler in Europe has announced that he is headed your way to steal the very symbol of your people. You have maybe a month to do something. What do you do? You hide it and come up with a substitute.” According to Scottish fable, the stone Edward took to London, the stone that British monarchs have been crowned over for 700 years, is actually the stone cap of the abbey cesspit. British coronations have taken place in pomp and pageantry over what is essentially a toilet seat lid. When all is said and done, it appears that the Stone of Destiny, object of desire, theft, national identity, and fierce pride is a copy of a fake.

Which begs the question: where is the real Stone? Mac ended his story with the tale of two kids, playing on a hillside near Dunsinane Castle after a rainstorm. They slipped down a mudslide into an underground chamber, injuring one of them. Within the chamber they claimed to have seen a smooth rock, round and black with silver symbols, half buried in the dirt. After getting to safety and a doctor, the boys came back with their fathers. They found the chamber but it was empty. The real stone remains hidden from mortal view, which is probably as it should be.

Collections

The late Hunter S. Thompson once said “once you get locked into a serious collection, there is a tendency to push it as far as you can.” Of course, he was talking about firearms and drugs, but the principal is the same. Sir John Soane and Hunter would have hit it off famously.

Born in 1753, the son of a bricklayer, Soane was a wealthy architect (he designed the Bank of England) and Royal Academy Member who also collected art and antiquities. His home was one of the finest private museums in London and was open it to anyone (“amateurs and students”) who wanted to see it.

When his wife died in 1815, Soane puttered about the house for another twelve years, adding to and rearranging his collections. After a falling out with his sons, both of whom he considered ne’er-do-wells, Soane pulled some strings and had an Act of Parliament passed to preserve his house and collections for all time. When he died in 1837, he left his house to the City of London with the stipulation that it be kept just as he left it, and be made a free, public museum.

My sister, who had visited a couple of years ago, told me about the place with a “you have GOT to see this”. So one afternoon we found ourselves on a quiet residential street in Westminster. Number 13 Lincoln Inn Fields is a nondescript town house with Corinthian columns in front and a small knot of people waiting to go in. We had no idea what to expect. What we found was a house jam-packed with treasure. The place just overwhelms you from the moment you check your bags in the front foyer. You sometimes read about eccentric older people who keep everything and have to maneuver around stack of newspapers piled to the ceiling. Soane had to maneuver around stacks of the stuff that dreams are made of.

Every room is crammed full of wonderful items. Sir John collected everything he could get his hands on in true Enlightenment style. The walls are covered with art, including paintings by Hogarth, Canaletto, a couple of very fine Turners, and a Watteau. A rare portrait of Napoleon as a young man hangs over the dining room sideboard. There are Greek sculptures, Roman busts, and Renaissance marbles all jumbled together, some on ceiling joists in the walk-in closets. If you don’t have a catalog or you don’t have advanced degrees in art history, you can’t tell if you’re looking at a real Greco-Roman bust or a copy from the neoclassical period. That’s not including the Asian art mixed in as well. Sir John had a high boredom threshold and something different competes for your attention wherever you look. What little wall space not covered by art is taken up by bits of classical architecture—a foot-long piece of the Parthenon pediment or a bit of intricately carved limestone from a Roman villa, circa 0 AD.

Every floor is crammed to bursting with beautiful things, including pantry holding shelves of small Greek, Roman, and Egyptian figures that originally were scattered about the house. I assume they have all been gathered together under lock and key because they would be too tempting and too easy to scoop into a pocket. At the bottom of the circular stair to the basement sits the sarcophagus of Pharoah Setti I. The size of a small sports car, carved from a single piece of alabaster, thin enough to let the light through and covered with hieroglyphs. Soane got it for a song when the British Museum turned it down. Shelves full of Egyptian pottery and figurines reach to the ceilings and don’t over look the mummy cases on the floor.

The museum is astonishing in its own right, but thing that kept bumping my thoughts is that this was this fellow’s house. Visitors were allowed in only during business hours and only in nice weather—this kept out people who just wanted to get in out of the rain. Every morning he would wake up in his bedroom under the watchful eye of a portrait by some old master, dress himself, and have breakfast amidst the treasures of empires. I can imagine him telling his butler, “Jeeves, I shall have my tea with the bust of Caesar this morning, and perhaps lunch in the sarcophagus.”

I always thought of myself as something of a packrat, but Sir John Soane’s house is in an entirely different league. I stand awed and humbled. I want to live there.

Aqua Sulis

The stone buildings stood, a stream threw up heat
in wide surge; the wall enclosed all
in its bright bosom, where the baths were,
hot in the heart.
--The Ruin
8th Century English Poem


One of the things that kept crowding into my consciousness was how old a country England is. We tend to think of US history as starting around 1776, but that seems just the day before yesterday in England. Our hotel in London was on Egeware Street, one of the old Roman roads into the city, and you could still find bits of the old Roman city wall if you knew where to look.


We had signed up for a bus tour of Bath and Stonehenge with a dinner stop at the village of Lacock in a pub dating from 1361, a hundred years before the War of the Roses. On the drive out of London, our guide kept up a running commentary, pointing out buildings and sights to visit when we got back as well as general chatter. “Prices for a flat in this part of London are less expensive than in the West End and by the way, that Tudor style building on the corner survived the Great Fire in 1666 and continues to be a home.” We wound our way through Chelsea, past churches and factories recycled into trendy restaurants, and past the Famous Three Kings pub (James I, Henry VIII, and Elvis).

Once we were out of the city, we passed canary-yellow fields of flowering canola, grown for oil seed, and pastures of spring lambs. Green hills falling away in ordered rectangles bounded by hedgerows. Villages and market towns, each with its Norman or older church, flashed past.


The city of Bath, a world heritage site since 1987, sits on low hills in the valley of the Avon River. The site of Britain’s only hot spring, it has been a place to go to ever since some achy bone-weary Celt flopped down in a warm boggy pool and discovered his aches and pains went away. The Celts built a temple to their Goddess Sulis, and basked happily in the warm mineral-rich water until the Romans happened upon the place shortly after they invaded. By 60 AD, the Romans had built a spa and a temple to Minerva. Minerva, the Roman version of Athena, became associated with Sulis and the whole complex was named Aqua Sulis. Clever chaps, those Romans, they kept the shrine, adding to it and making it more grand over 300 years. They just changed the god being worshipped; expediting the conversion of the Celts from their savage pagan ways to more enlightened Roman pagan ways. The lesson was not lost on early Christians either, many of the old churches and cathedrals in the countryside are centered in a grove of yew trees, sacred to the barbarians. Same church, different god, makes Sundays easier to tolerate, at least everyone knew where to go.

Bath has drawn travelers and tourists since the hot springs were rediscovered in Elizabethan times. Jane Austen lived in Bath for several years, locating Persuasion in and near the city. Ironically, she actively disliked the city, claiming it stifled her muse. Dickens was a regular visitor, and Bath is a locale in several works. To accommodate the crowds of tourists (today over three million a year), the town fathers rebuilt most of the inner part of the city in the mid 1700’s. Downtown is a confection of a city in buff colored limestone. A curious mixture of classical and Georgian, narrow streets wind past three-story row houses, each level sporting a different style of column—Ionic at ground level, Doric on the second floor, Corinthian at the third. Busts of Minerva and other deities adorn the front porches.


Buses disgorge tourists and day trippers in front of Bath Cathedral. Technically it’s an abbey since no Bishop resides in Bath, but who’s counting. Built from the same buff stone as the rest of the downtown, the cathedral features stone ladders carved into either side of the doorway. Angels climb upwards, taking care to hold their robes aside (tricky things, robes) so as not to trip themselves up. The presumed goal, a full choir of angels, adorns the wall above the rose window. I’m not entirely sure what the allegory is here, at least one angel on each ladder is headed down. While the abbey needs some serious restoration, you can still sense the whimsy.



The buildings around the actual Roman baths are replicas; nothing remains but the bath itself complete with the original Roman-installed lead lining. The hot spring, rainwater that fell centuries ago and percolated deep in the earth over many miles, still flows through a Roman-built tunnel system and into the main bath. Signs warn visitors not to swim in, drink, or otherwise touch the water. The official reason being it is not treated-that’s as may be, but the warm water also harbors a population of amoebas with the nasty habit of occasionally entering body openings or scratches of hapless tourists and eventually eating their brains.


We entered the main bath plaza through a well-kept museum. Statues and altars dedicated by rich people to Minerva-Sulis show how busy this place must have been. An entire Roman Legion chipped in for a life-size statue of their unit emblem, a wild boar, in thanks for victory over the barbarian hordes in some forgotten battle. Small stone and clay figurines of Minerva fill a case. They were manufactured by the locals and sold to visitors to leave as offerings. The locals gathered them up periodically and resold them. The figures were probably recycled dozens of times.


The museum has heaps of coins spanning nearly 400 years of Roman rule recovered when the main bath was drained in the 1800’s. Along with the coins the workmen found curse tablets, folded lead sheets about the size of a Post-it Note. Requests for Minerva to strike down one’s enemies, they were tossed into the water to be read and presumably acted upon by the goddess. The best one displayed is from a disgruntled bather asking Minerva to bring down hell-fire on whoever stole his clothes while he was swimming.

One museum case has fifty or more ring signets, each slightly smaller than a dime, made of amber, topaz, or other semi-precious stone and exquisitely carved with dolphins, horses, birds, or people. One theory is that these were offerings, but a second school of thought and the one that sounds right, is that they were the ring stones, held in their settings with wax. Bathe in a geothermal hot spring, the wax melts, and oh damn! I’ve lost my signet.

I think it was the curse tablets and the lost ring stones that brought the place to life for me. Real people came here, swam and soaked in the warm waters, bought souvenirs, ate their lunch. The spring still flows, the warmth still rises.



I dropped a quarter in a corner of the pool. For Minerva.