Desert Botanical Garden

After the third day of the PeDALS project partners meeting ended, I went with three of my colleagues -- Mark from the Florida State Library and Archives, Matt from the South Carolina Department of Archives and History, and Lynne of the New York State Library -- to the Desert Botanical Garden.

The DBG has cacti and succulents from around the world. We spent most of our time in its exhibits concerning the Sonoran Desert, in which the city of Phoenix is located.

The sun went down while we were there. Watching as the blues and purples of dusk sweep over the saguaros, organ pipes, prickly pears, agaves, and mesquites was a tranquil way to end an intense and eventful day.

Afterward, we stopped for some great Thai food, talked about the differences in outlook between IT and library/archives folks, the challenges of internal and external collaboration, all of the work before us, and travel, movies, TV, and alligators. We then went back to our hotel, wished each other safe journeys, and parted ways.

PeDALS partners meeting: day three

For most of us, the meeting of the PeDALS project partners -- Arizona, Florida, New York, South Carolina and Wisconsin -- ended today at noon. We spent the morning discussing development of a pamphlet and expanded Web site publicizing the project, going over some remaining metadata issues so that our database designer can start working in earnest, and reviewing the project timeline and divvying up responsibility for tasks that need to be finished soon. We also discussed how the partners collaborate -- internally and across state lines -- and started thinking, in a very preliminary way, about what will happen when our grant funding ends.

After we wrapped up, most of the non-technical people (i.e., librarians and archivists) left. However, the IT people at this meeting reconvened this afternoon and will continue working until around noon tomorrow. My colleague Lynne from the New York State Library and I are flying out tomorrow morning, so we sat in on the technical meeting that took place this afternoon.

Until this afternoon, we were meeting at our hotel, but the IT folks traveled to the 1900 Capitol Building, which houses the Arizona Capitol Museum; until a few weeks ago, when Polly Rosenbaum Archives and History Building opened, it was also home to the holdings and staff of the State Library and State Archives.

We met in what was once the courtroom of the Arizona Supreme Court. Miranda v. Arizona was heard in this very room, which has awesome light fixtures. However, we weren't there to discuss constitutional law or interior design: we were busy figuring out how to set up a LOCKSS box and configure Ubuntu operating system software. I was more than a bit out of my depth, but I'm looking forward to learning more.

Polly Rosenbaum Archives and History Building

After the second day of the PeDALS partners meeting ended, we went on a tour of the Polly Rosenbaum Archives and History Building, the new storage, processing, and research facility of the Arizona State Library, Archives and Public Records.

Staff moved into the building last week and are in the midst of doing tons of setup work, so I'm not going to post any photos of the interior. However, the building, which was built specifically to hold cultural heritage materials, is chock-full of great features, including:

• A dedicated isolation area, with blast freezer and humidification chamber, for incoming records transfers
• A secure public reading room that can accommodate tables for 10 researchers and a dedicated area for approximately 10 microfilm/microfiche reader-printers
• Separate processing areas for paper records, photographs, electronic records and audiovisual materials, and artifacts
  
• Seven storage compartments featuring tall (16 feet high) compact shelving
  
• Cold storage for microform masters
• A server room with hard-wired uninterruptible power supply, backup generators, and a backup HVAC system
• A large conservation lab
  
• Four separate HVAC systems, all of which can be monitored remotely, that are designed to remove pollutants and maintain consistent temperature and humidity
  
• Security cameras -- with remote monitoring capability -- in the research room, staff work areas, and storage areas
• Wired and wireless Internet access throughout the building
  

Although the building was designed to accommodate the State Library, Archives, and Public Records' needs for the next 50 years, the architects (one of whom is the man in jeans and a khaki t-shirt in the photograph above) deliberately designed the building to allow for expansion on one side. The architects also listened to staff and designed the building with archival needs and workflows in mind. As a result, my Arizona colleagues have a building that is not only attractive but highly functional. I'm glad for them -- and just a bit envious.

Montezuma Castle

My vacation officially ended yesterday afternoon with a stop at Montezuma Castle National Monument, which is located about 45 minutes south of Flagstaff. This 1,000 year-old cliff dwelling was built by the Sinagua people, who left the area approximately 600 years ago. Why they left is unknown; however, possible reasons include overpopulation, climate change, and intergroup strife. Their final destination is also a mystery, although legends and folkways suggest that the Sinagua joined the Hopi living in the mesas north of the region.

Europeans discovered the ruin in 1874. They erroneously concluded that the area had been settled by Aztecs who had migrated north, so they named it after the legendary Aztec ruler. The name stuck.

As this National Park Service diorama illustrates, Montezuma Castle contained 19 rooms. It was home to 35-50 people, and it was one of a number of pueblo structures built into the cliffs of Arizona's Verde Valley.

The building sits about 100 feet above the valley floor; you can see the remnants of the steps leading up the cliff in the lower right side of the image above.

Archaeologists discovered that another pueblo dwelling sat at the foot of the cliffs several hundred feet away. However, unlike Montezuma Castle, this dwelling was not protected from the elements. Only remnants survive.

It's possible to see Montezuma Castle in about an hour, making it an accessible and interesting stop for those traveling between Flagstaff and Phoenix on I-17. It's also an aesthetically pleasing structure, and the National Park Service's interpretive signs and exhibits are first-rate. It's definitely worth a stop if you're in the area.

If you would like to see more of Montezuma Castle, the National Park Service has placed some historic photographs online.

Meteor Crater

En route to Phoenix yesterday, I opted at the last minute to stop at the Meteor Crater National Landmark. I saw the sign as I was heading west on I-40, and thought, "why the heck not?"

I almost turned back when I discovered that I would have to pay $15.00 to view what is, in essence, a giant hole in the ground. However, how often does one get to see an actual meteor crater? Memories of countless family road trips -- always with an educational component -- were also a factor.

The crater was formed about 50,000 years ago, when a 150-foot meteor slammed into the earth. The resulting crater is about 4,000 feet wide and almost 600 feet deep. The impact was so great that part of the meteor was pulverized on impact and part of it was driven some 3,000 feet below the earth's surface.

The largest surviving fragment of the meteor, the Holsinger meteorite, is on display at the site. It's about the same size as a footlocker and weighs about 1,400 pounds.

The crater is not the largest, the oldest, or the most recent, but it is the best preserved owing to the extreme aridity of the Arizona desert.

The crater was an astronaut training site during the 1960s and 1970s, and the small museum at the crater site has a kitschy -- sometimes in a fun way, sometimes in an annoying way -- Space Age look and feel. Most of the information presented in the museum is also conveyed in the 10-minute film that precedes the hour-long tour of the crater itself.

The crater was interesting, and our tour guide was well-informed and funny in a hokey sort of way, but I'm still not sure it was worth the expense. However, the German geologists who were on the tour with me clearly loved it, and anyone else with an abiding interest in geology, astronomy, or space exploration ought to enjoy it.

Monument Valley

Monument Valley is an iconic American landscape. It's provided the setting for the Westerns of John Ford and other directors. Clark Griswold wandered around and nearly died here in National Lampoon's Vacation. It's provided the backdrop for innumerable print and TV ads for cigarettes, trucks, and other products.

Although parts of Monument Valley are plainly visible from U.S. Route 163, which runs to its north and west, I wanted more than a "drive-by" experience. I didn't want to risk damaging my little rental car on the dirt road of the Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park, so I decided to go on a guided tour. There are numerous tour firms operating in the park, but I did a little research and found that people seemed consistently pleased with the tours offered by Goulding's Lodge.

I secured a place on the 3.5-hour afternoon tour, and joined about 15 other tourists (mostly French and British) on a dusty, bone-rattling, and thoroughly amazing ride through the park.

As is the case with the Grand Canyon, it's pretty hard to take a badly composed photograph of Monument Valley; even the shots I took from the open-air tour van as we went over jolting stretches of road generally turned out well.

The Mittens (only one of which is pictured here) are probably among the most photographed geological features in America--and with good reason.

One of the perks of going on a guided tour of this sort is that you get to see portions of the park that are not open to people traveling on their own.

Had I been driving solo, incredible formations such as Big Hogan would have been off-limits to me; I was actually standing inside the formation when I took this picture!

I wouldn't have gotten to see these pteroglyphs, either. (FYI, the dark streaking that forms the background of these pteroglyphs and is evident on Big Hogan and other formations is desert varnish.)

One key reason that parts of the park are off-limits to unaccompanied travelers is that a sizeable number of Navajo people live in it. Our tour includes a stop at the hogan of an elderly Navajo woman who has lived in Monument Valley all her life. She cleaned wool, spun yarn, and demonstrated how she used her loom to weave rugs as our guide, a Navajo herself, explained what the woman was doing. Although our guide subtly emphasized this woman's agency (by, e.g., pointing out that all of her rugs are of her own design) and the importance and value of traditional lifeways, the fact that we tourists were traipsing in and out of this woman's very modest home drove home some hard truths about the disparities of wealth and power that exist in this world.

I anticipated that sunset at Monument Valley would be spectacular, and I was not disappointed.

As the light faded, the orange of the rocks was washed in soft lavenders, blues, and mauves.

After the landscape was dark, the clouds caught fire; unfortunately, compressing this photo so that it's suitable for Web posting dampens the flames a bit.

Go to Monument Valley if you can.

John Wayne slept here

After leaving Kayenta yesterday morning, I headed north. I was initially planning to tour Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park by myself, but I opted against pitting my rental car against the park's unpaved road. At the last moment, I stopped at Goulding's Lodge, which is in Utah just over the state line, and secured a slot on the afternoon tour.

Goulding's Lodge was established in 1921 by Harry and Leone "Mike" Goulding. It was initially a trading post that enabled the Navajo to exchange crops and goods that they produced for items that they needed and provided lodging to the travelers who sporadically visited the area. It is no longer owned by the family, and it has evolved into an international destination hotel, with an RV park and campground, gas station, and grocery store.

However, in the 1920's and 1930's, the lodge consisted of a modest two-story brick structure, which is now a museum chronicling the Gouldings' lives and work.

The upper floor of the building has been restored so that it looks much as it did when the Gouldings lived there. It's an incredibly homey, comfortable space; I can see why the Gouldings' friends and guests loved being there.

Much of the first floor is devoted to the Gouldings' place in film history. During the Great Depression, the Gouldings sought to aid their Navajo neighbors by luring Hollywood film productions to Monument Valley. They were particularly successful in capturing the attention of John Ford, who became a close friend and who used Monument Valley as the setting for many of his Westerns. Ford and his actors and crew stayed at Goulding's when on location in the area; Ford and the stars stayed in small rooms, and everyone else lived in tents.

John Wayne starred in many of Ford's films, and his presence looms large in the museum. One of the walls in the museum's Movie Room is devoted to Wayne himself, other portions of the exhibit concern individual films in which he starred, and She Wore a Yellow Ribbon plays continuously.

Wayne's presence is also manifest in "John Wayne's Cabin," a small building to the rear of the museum that served as the exterior set of Wayne's office in She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, which was the only film ever shot on the property.

Given that I'm mildly fixated upon The Searchers, which may well be the most unsettling exploration of America's racial and sexual obsessions ever placed on film and which led me to Monument Valley in the first place, I'm really glad I made it to Goulding's.

Navajo Cultural Center

The Navajo Cultural Center consists of a small grouping of buildings and artifacts situated between the Hampton Inn and the Burger King. I suspect that it is, in part, designed to lure charter bus traffic to the Burger King (several buses stopped at the BK while I was there, but none of them went to the McDonald’s down the street). However, I’m glad I checked it out. I learned several things:

• Until the early twentieth century, many Navajo living on the reservation had no way to haul goods to market or to bring supplies to their homes. This situation changed when the U.S. government started a program that enabled Navajo to purchase horse-drawn wagons on the installment plan and started giving wagons in lieu of wages to Navajo employees.

• Navajo traditionally lived in hogans, which are small buildings constructed of mud-covered logs. Every hogan has an opening in the roof so that contact is maintained with the sky, and every door faces east so that the inhabitants greet the morning sun.

• There are two types of hogans: "female" and "male." These designations refer only to the style of the building, not the gender of the people who built or resided in them.
  

• The round, “female” hogan was used as a dwelling space and for storage of food and possessions. Most families built several hogans of this sort.

• The more elongated “male” hogans were used strictly for ceremonial purposes. They are increasingly rare; owing to changes in Navajo culture, ceremonial observances can now take place in “female” hogans.

• The materials used to construct hogans are good insulators. The interiors of the hogans were substantially cooler than the surrounding area, and in summer Navajo families would cook outdoors in order to keep the hogans cool. In the wintertime, the stove at the center of the hogan keeps the space comfortably warm.

The center also features a small summer shade house that contains exhibits, but it wasn't open when I was there.

I wouldn't travel a great distance to see the Navajo Cultural Center, but anyone venturing to the Kayenta area really ought to check it out.

Stay tuned for more episodes . . . .

I'm having breakfast at the Hampton Inn in Kayenta, Arizona. I'm planning to spend a little time at the Navajo Nation Cultural Center here in town, and then I'll head up to Monument Valley.

I'll be staying at what is known as an "historic property" tonight, and I might not have Internet access until I reach Phoenix late tomorrow afternoon. I'll keep taking photos and writing blog posts tonight, but I might not be able to post them until tomorrow evening.

In the meantime, happy trails . . . .

Navajo history in a Burger King

After I left the Grand Canyon, I drove through the darkness to Kayenta, where I'm staying in the new Hampton Inn on the edge of town. Kayenta is located within the Navajo Nation, which observes Daylight Savings Time. I had forgotten this fact when planning the day's activities, and as a result, I arrived in Kayenta after almost all of the restaurants had closed.

When I scanned the listing of area amenities that the desk clerk handed to me, I noted that the Burger King next to the Hampton Inn was still open and that it had "an excellent display of the famous WWII Code Talkers." How could I not investigate?

Sure enough, the dining area of the restaurant had a small exhibit --consisting chiefly of photographic prints, with some fascimile documents and artifacts -- devoted to the approximately 400 Navajo men who served in the U.S. Marine Corps during the Second World War. These men developed a code, based upon the Navajo language, that was used to transmit information about military operations in the Pacific Theater. Their contribution to the Allied war effort was immeasurable.

My photographs of this modest but affecting exhibit are a bit wanting; I was trying to be considerate of the staff and the other people in the restaurant, so I was dependent upon the restaurant's lighting (I think that the exhibit cases have UV film--I didn't notice any fading) and had to shoot from odd angles.

I wouldn't drive a great distance to view this exhibit, but I enjoyed it and am really impressed that the owner(s) of the Kayenta Burger King saw the value of installing such an exhibit in a public space that is usually devoid of such things. We archivists are always talking about the need to make people aware of the significance of historical records and to build partnerships with non-academics and non-genealogists. Until tonight, the thought of partnering with a fast-food restaurant had never crossed my mind. What other kinds of potential partnerships might we be overlooking?

Update 2008-10-19: according to the guide who led my tour group through Monument Valley, the owner of the Kayenta Burger King is the son or grandson of a code talker.

Grand Canyon: Lipan Point at day's end

Sunsets at the Grand Canyon induce the stillness I mentioned in yesterday's post: there were about thirty other people at Lipan Point this evening, and it was amazing to hear the idle chatter die down as people simply watched the colors change: the orange strata of the canyon became firey as the sun hit them, and then everything was bathed in gentle lavenders and mauves as the sun sank below the horizon.

I took approximately 170 photographs today, but for some reason I'm particularly fond of this one, which best captures the loveliness of the canyon at the end of the day.

Grand Canyon: day two

I took a little time to relax and collect my thoughts this morning, and as a result didn't arrive at Grand Canyon National Park until early afternoon. I decided to check out Grand Canyon Village, where the bulk of the shops, onsite hotels, and studios are located. This was a mistake: the village was teeming with people, and I was a little annoyed and overwhelmed. (Word of advice: if you're looking for solitude at the Grand Canyon, walk the 1.3 mile stretch of the Rim Trail between the ludicrously overcrowded Mather Point and Pipe Creek Vista. I did so yesterday afternoon, and once I got away from Mather Point I saw only a handful of people until I reached Pipe Creek Vista. If you're not up for a 2.6 mile walk, you can make the return trip on one of the free shuttle buses operated by park personnel.)

I then tried going down into the canyon itself on the Bright Angel Trail. The views (see above) were stunning, but my fear of heights kicked in after about ten minutes, and I had to turn back and walk through Grand Canyon Village.

Irked as I was by the crowds, I'm glad I got to see the Lookout Studio, Bright Angel Lodge, El Tovar, and Hopi House (above), all of which were designed by Mary Colter. Colter, who was professionally active during the first half of the twentieth century, enjoyed a lengthy and distinguished career at a time when female architects were few and far between; however, given that Julia Morgan was also working at roughly the same time, perhaps the West afforded women architects opportunities that simply didn't exist elsewhere. Her buildings at Grand Canyon National Park were inspired by the vernacular architecture of the region, and they are stunning.

Once I got out of Grand Canyon Village and retrieved my car, I headed west on Desert View Drive. I stopped at a couple of overlooks and viewpoints and at the Tusayan Ruins. About eight hundred years ago, approximately 15-20 people lived in this small pueblo village. They lived in five small rooms, kept food and supplies in small storage rooms (see above), held religious ceremonies in kivas built for that purpose, and raised crops nearby. What happened to this community is a mystery.

Adjacent to the Tusayan Ruins is a tiny museum housing some artifacts relating to the Native Americans who lived in this region. The highlight of the collection is pictured above: these small twig figurines, which were found in caves in the canyon, are 2,000-4,000 years old. Owing to the darkness of the caves and the aridity of the climate, they are in astonishingly good condition.

I then drove to the Desert View viewpoint, which is home to the Watchtower, another stunning Colter building. Colter was inspired by the watchtowers built by the Anasazi, but her design differs in many respects from the original. Some critics regard this structure as Colter's masterpiece.

The paintings inside the Watchtower were done by Hopi artist Fred Kaboti, who drew inspiration from traditional Hopi iconography and pteroglyphs found in the surrounding area.

Like Grand Canyon Village, the Watchtower is a hustling, bustling place. I had to wait several minutes in order to capture this shot of from the ground floor of the building; people kept running in and out of the shot.

So what is there to see from the Watchtower? Oh, not much, just more staggering beauty. Note the Colorado River --which is chiefly responsible for the Grand Canyon's existence -- wending its way through the canyon. For the most part, you can't see the river itself from the top of the South Rim.

I ended the day at Lipan Point, but I'll deal with that in a separate post.

Grand Canyon

I'm so tired that I can barely keep my eyes open, so this post is going to be short and isn't even going to begin to do justice to today's events.

I spent the day at Grand Canyon National Park. The size of the Grand Canyon beggars description. So does its beauty.

Taking a badly composed photograph of it may be well nigh impossible, but no photograph can ever do it justice. I tried nonetheless; I took over 200 pictures today.

Throughout the day, the Grand Canyon forced me to ponder the smallness of human existence and human concerns. We spend our lives consumed by our passions, our hatreds, and our desires, all of which amount to nothing in the larger scheme of things. The canyon was formed long before walked this earth, and it may continue to exist long after humans have ceased to walk the face of the earth.

Strange as it may seem, I find this realization both instructive and comforting. Personally and professionally, 2008 has been chaotic and difficult, and I've had a really hard time letting go of my rage at and resentment of some of the things that have happened this year. Now that I've been confronted with the fact of my own insignificance and the insignificance of my concerns, I'm starting to feel a rather blissful sense of detachment from it all.

I also feel still. The sheer size and the staggering beauty of the Grand Canyon simply force people to be quiet at times. There were a lot of other tourists running around the park today, and there was plenty of laughter, joking, parents reprimanding children, etc. However, while walking the Rim Trail today, I noticed several times that other people who were walking the trail together would go around a bend in the trail and stop talking in mid-sentence -- the vistas before them simply shut them up. I walked alone, allowing my mind to wander as I navigated the trail, and found that the views stopped me in mid-thought. I quit thinking and just experienced what was before me. I seem to have carried that stillness with me, and I hope to keep it with me in the days that come.

Getting my kicks

Williams, Arizona, will be my basecamp until tomorrow morning. Williams is a small town situated on the iconic former U.S. Route 66, and it was apparently the last town on Route 66 to be bypassed by the Interstate Highway System.

The town's economy has been tourist-driven for a long time. A good many of the restaurants, hotels, and shops that were built to accommodate the masses who discovered the joy of auto travel during the postwar era are still standing and have been renovated. It's now a destination for present-day tourists who seek to re-experience Route 66's glory days en route to the Grand Canyon, Lake Mead, the Kainab National Forest, and other area attractions.


It's a cute little town. However, looking around, I can't help but think of an earlier generation of Route 66 travelers: the Dust Bowl farm families who sought better lives in California and who, as John Steinbeck eloquently chronicled in The Grapes of Wrath, all too often found their misery compounded. No one is particularly nostalgic for this aspect of Route 66's history, so there's not much evidence of it on public display.

Postscript re: last night's motel confusion: in my sleep-deprived haze, I missed the small sign regarding overnight service at the motel at which I made reservations, and the manager on duty this morning was aghast when I told him that I ended up staying at another motel. He offered to work something out, but I told him not to worry about it; I failed to see the sign, and he let me move my stuff in first thing this morning, so I've had more than one day's use of the room.

On the road (and in the air) again

I’m writing this entry in the Au Bon Pain in Concourse C of EWR, where I have a long layover between ALB and PHX, with the intention of posting it once I get Internet access. I’m heading to Phoenix for a meeting of the Persistent Digital Archives and Library System (PeDALS) project partners, but I’m taking a few days’ vacation before the meeting and heading up to the Grand Canyon, Monument Valley, and perhaps Canyon de Chelly or the Petrified Forest.

I always approach vacations with a mixture of anticipation and guilt. I look forward to novel experiences and the opportunity to recharge, but at the same time I stress about the preparations and tell myself that I really don’t deserve time off; if I were a good person, I would quit shirking and get back to the work at hand. I suspect that these sentiments are in some respects a legacy of my decade in graduate school, when I had neither the time nor the money to go on vacation. Delusions of indispensability are probably at play as well.

Fortunately, once I’m on the road, I usually relax and get into the experience. At this moment, I’m feeling an almost Zen-like calm. It’s kind of surprising, really. I woke up with a nasty migraine this morning, and managed to break both a floor lamp and my vacuum cleaner before leaving my house today. I was also a bit short with my colleague, Michael, who really is indispensable and who needed to call me and clarify something before I left; he’s definitely getting an apologetic e-mail later tonight and something nice from Arizona when I get back!

I didn’t get the chance to eat before I left, and was famished when the plane touched down. So I stopped at the Au Bon Pain and got a lovely mozzarella and tomato salad, a fresh and staggeringly good piece of bread, and a heady cup of dark roast coffee. One of my friends has made it a habit to say “thank you for being sacred” to each morsel of food that she eats. It’s a good practice, I think: food of the sort I just ate really is, in a humble and humdrum way, a blessing, and we should take the time to appreciate the goodness in our lives.

I still have miles to go before I sleep: I’m going to be at ERJ for another 2.5 hours, and my plane won’t land in Phoenix until about 9:00 CST (midnight EDT). I will then have to drive about 2.5 hours before I reach my hotel. I’m pretty good at sleeping on planes, so I should be fine.

Tomorrow, if all goes according to plan, I’ll post my first pictures of the Grand Canyon.

POSTSCRIPT: My flight was supposed to leave EWR at 6:00 PM EDT, but we sat on the ground awaiting permission to take off until 7:40 PM. No one was happy about this state of affairs, and and it was particularly hard on my seatmates -- a sweet but very tired 16 month-old girl and her extremely capable mother. We got to Phoenix about an hour after we were supposed to arrive, and getting my rental car took a lot longer than anticipated. I finally got to Williams, where I'll be staying for the next couple of days, at around 1:30 AM CST (AZ doesn't observe Daylight Savings Time), only to find that the registration desk of the motel at which I made reservations closes at 11:00 PM. So I'm paying for two hotel rooms tonight -- the one I reserved and one I'm actually occupying.

At least the motel I'm staying at has free wifi. My body is telling me that it's 5:00 AM, and I'm sitting here blogging and eating a garden salad I bought at EWR so that I could eating dinner on the plane; however, there was no way I was going to attempt to eat a massive salad while sitting inches away from a wriggling and increasingly unhappy toddler.

I don't know why, but I'm still in a relatively good mood.