A couple of industrious young people of our acquaintance are doing something ridiculously ambitious. They are building a home in the wilderness. By hand. Basically they are homesteading. The last people in our family lineage to do something like this were the pioneer first generation that came over in the 1850s.
I wonder what those grim faced, German speaking stoics would think of their descendants using sun powered, magical tools that came from China to clear brush??
Something I ran across recently....
This sign is a bit difficult to read thanks to the attentions of various perching birds. But it reads: FORMER SITE OF CCC CAMP FAIRCHILD COMPANY 1605 1933-1942.
This seems straightforward, but actually isn't.
There is a very helpful 1937 document on the CCC Camps of Wisconsin. It indicates that Company 1605 was organized in June of 1933 at a Camp Fairchild that was roughly ten miles from where this sign is standing. A lengthy description in the Eau Claire Leader from August describes an orderly, military style camp where 190 men lived in tents, operating on a military basis with bugle calls waking them up each morning. The main work was related to the prevention of forest fires, through brush clearing and such, and fighting of same.
The article gives an interesting glimpse of how CCC camps were organized: "Drawn from company personnel is a permanent detail consisting of one company foreman, one company clerk, one supply clerk, two first aid men, one steward, seven cooks, seven group foremen (each in charge of a sub-organization of 24 men), one truck driver, one mail orderly, one athletic director and librarian, two guards and one charge of area."
In November of '33 they moved to the spot shown above, right on the edge of Fairchild. The old camp was presumably abandoned and the name transferred.
Although they arrived fairly late in the year 1605 seems to have been pretty industrious in the "new" Camp Fairchild. Among other things they dammed up the creek behind the camp to make a small lake, and seem to have constructed a number of buildings.
After spending winter and spring on this site 1605 moved to another camp near Gilmonton for a summer of "erosion control work". On their return to Fairchild the first thing they had to do was rebuild the previous wooden dam out of rock and cement. It has held up well, traces of it can be seen in the modern dam that still holds back the Fairchild Mill Pond. As an aside, I can see no visible evidence of a mill anywhere around this site, despite the fact that Fairchild was essentially a company town for a giant lumber mill somewhere nearby.....*
As such things are reckoned I was an early adaptor of The Internet. So I've got decades of experience with Spam email. In general it is a low level annoyance, the equivalent of a single mosquito humming around your ear. You swat it and get on with things.
But occasionally I run across a new species, something that holds my interest long enough to study it. And I'll be honest here, I'm feeling bad for Kate Potter. Maybe you've seen things like this:
Ms. Potter's efforts to book talent and household functionaries are confined to a few small areas in Florida. They can be generic, such as housekeepers, and weirdly specific.....Magicians. And they are all on the behalf of people with identical first and last names.
If you hold the emails up at a safe distance, obviously without opening any links, they purport to be related to something called Bark(dot)com out of London, England.
Kate Potter appears to be an actual social media/communications consultant out of Australia. She is not happy to have her name and reputation sullied in this fashion.
On the other hand, Griggs G. Griggs (I'm just assuming the middle name) is probably very happy. Various real estate sites claim the median price for homes sold in the zip code indicated are $12.75 million. Or 8.5 mill, or 1.195 mill. Hmmmm, I'm almost starting to become suspicious of economic activity in the Miami, FL area.....
Out of curiosity I decided to keep track for the month of May.
My tally for the month: 18 emails, 15 housekeeper, 3 magician.
And who is so fruitlessly seeking this help? Griggs Griggs, G G ,Yvette Yvette, Rita Rita, Vs Vs Emilio Emilio, Janet Janet, Guerline Guerline, Elizabeth Elizabeth and so on. Each and every one with the odd doubled name. What are the odds?
And more seriously, what is the point?
Clearly these emails are being machine generated. It would be the only way to keep churning out this stuff and presumably sending it to millions of potential suckers on a daily basis. I hope the AI spambots still receive a modicum of input from weaselly humans. Said weasels have an idea, a concept. Lets take a job description that is so specific that 99.9% of people will never need it....a Magician. I've never even considered hiring one. Oh, add on Housekeepers too. Locate these hypothetical jobs in a swanky community, and make the potential employers sound totally not fake by botching the names on each of the emails sent out by the millions, once again, making them so implausible that 99.99% of people in Miami will not have names anything like that. Sure....that's the ticket....
To add a final note of weirdness to this saga.....after getting these spam emails every day for a couple of weeks, and sometimes more than once a day, they just stopped. Did Jose Jose finally step up and hire that Housekeeper? Or have the AI Spambots just moved on to some other misconception of what will separate the rubes from the rubles?
In my ongoing campaign to put "Strange Fish" geocaches out into the world I have had to concentrate on certain species. The nature of the project pretty much requires shore fishing, and some reasonable access by foot. So, its a lot of fishing rivers and streams, and that limits you a bit.
One species I've been trying to add to the portfolio is shown above. May I introduce Catostomus commersonii. I guess most people would call this a White Sucker. Eh, in the age of NSFW internet searches that might not be the best name. And besides.......
Way back in the early days of what is now Wisconsin there was a tiny corner down in the southwest part that had an early mining boom. There was a little bit of trade in lead with the natives in the 1700's, and when the land was opened up for exploitation in the 1820's a rush of miners turned up.
Some of these miners wintered over. They just took the shallow pits they had excavated and put a roof on them. As they were living in their burrows they came to be nicknamed "Badgers". This moniker was extended to cover all denizens of what is still The Badger State.
Ah, but what of those faint of heart, those delicate flowers from (mostly) Illinois who ran up the river in the spring and back down in the fall? As this replicates the behaviour of our friend Catostomus, the term "Suckers" was applied to them. I can report that the term is no longer used here to describe residents of Illinois. They are usually called something worse.
Anyway, I was happy to catch the little guy shown above. And will this lead to a Strange Fish Catostomus Geocache?
Why yes indeed. And if I may say so, the technique has continued to evolve such that the representation is more accurate. Thank goodness I won't have to try anything really challenging like a flounder!
This cute little fella is a logperch. It's been on my "try to catch one" list for a while now. I was out in early May trying to find places for Strange Fish geocaches. I was actually trying to catch something else but this over achiever kept hitting a worm/hook combo that was bigger than he was. I downsized it a bit and got him on the second cast.
It takes some work to catch logperch. They favor fast moving streams so people out casually drowning worms to catch panfish won't encounter them.
And yes, the catch did result in a cache. Specifically: Strange Fish #7.
With geocaches you can either go boring or high maintenance.
For boring you use one of several standard geocache containers. Things like film canisters, ammo boxes, or one of several commercially available waterproof containers. And you put them somewhere predictable and sheltered. Roadside signs in our part of the world are often supported by wooden 4 by 4 posts. These posts have holes to, I suppose, deal with temp related expansion and contraction. Film canisters fit neatly, but how boring.
I like to make custom containers and hide them in odd places. Hence the Strange Fish series. With considerable effort I've managed to catch enough weird, unloved fish to place ten geocaches. One of which is Strange Fish 3 - Silver Redhorse.
If you've never caught one, Silver Redhorse are a sort of sucker. Not much good to eat but fun to catch and an indicator of good water quality.
They are kinda dopey looking, mostly because of the vacuum cleaner mouth, but have variable degrees of red color in their fins that makes them jaunty.
Here's container three below, underneath what I consider to be a much better version 4.0. I even figured out a way to have surface texture similar to scales!
When I'm off on archaeology digs I have a pretty good "eye" that lets me trowel away at a brisk clip and still detect changes in soil color, texture or the presence of small artifacts. The problem is, I can never turn it off. So on my daily walks with Hank the Dog I'm always seeing things.
Here a worm did not make it off the sidewalk when the sun got hot. Farewell, Worm Number Five.
When I see worms struggling across sidewalks and streets I always - in the interest of Karma - pick them up and toss them to safety. Of course I can't save them all.
No trip to England would be complete without my needing to puzzle over/marvel at various signs I run across.
And finally from Chillingham a far more practical safety notice:
Because my photographer friend Pete and I only overlapped for a week plus a day on either end, the number of odd photos of each other is reduced in number this year. We tried to make up for it in quality. Because as we go through life, no opportunity for a silly photo should ever go to waste....
Pete sporting a "Hairy Buffalo Ear" at the Hexham Boot Sale:
Many people have difficulty in the matter of accumulating "stuff". It's fun to buy things, cool to own them, but getting rid of them? Nah. It of course can lead to becoming a Hoarder. Usually there is some limiting factor. I've not watched the various TV programs on this matter but in general you can only fit so much "stuff" into a double wide trailer or, for the more fortunate hoarder, a barn. But what if you have an entire castle to fill? Things could get interesting.
The current Lord, Sir Humphrey Wakefield, would be another matter. He's done a lot of things. Been a cavalry officer, a mountaineer who has climbed Everest, been married several times....and served as a director for various Antique firms. He even worked for Sotheby's for a while. Here's a guy who had access to an entire universe of "stuff". And he's filled Chillingham up with it.
You are off to a good start when you walk through the front gate and have a WWI vintage machine gun aimed at you.
You should think of archaeology not as a story of how things were, but of how things change. Today's sheep meadow was once a fort under siege, or a peaceful market, or a lonely ruin that the superstitious locals avoided after the Romans had marched away.
And not all change runs on a long time scale.
I've been excavating along Hadrian's Wall for 16 years now. In that time I've seen the general area transform from a scruffy farming community recovering from the Mad Cow debacle to a fairly upscale "destination". The charming, seedy backpacker's hostel that was once our diggers HQ is now a posh gastropub with its own brewery and stargazing observatory. Rather than a cheerful greeting when we'd saunter in dusty and thirsty, more recent forays have had us eyed with a bit of suspicion and asked if we have a reservation for dinner. Oh well.
This year there was a significant twist for me, one that made decisions harder. The Trust that runs the digs at Vindolanda opened up a second site about seven miles away. Vindolanda and Magna site digs were going on at the same time, but offset by a week.
I was offered a guaranteed spot at Magna through the "Veteran's draw", a random out of the hat chance to avoid the perils and pressures of lighting fast mouse work when the general lot of excavation slots goes live. What a change.....16 years ago I only found out about Vindolanda in December and was able to book a slot in January. Now, if you don't have quick reflexes and a viable internet connection you are out of luck about 30 seconds after the spots go live on a morning in early November.
So....a guaranteed spot at Magna, albeit without many of my usual digging mates, versus the whims and foibles of the internet. I gave Magna a try.
It is in many ways a more modern archaeological dig. Lots more environmental sampling. It's only in recent years that it became possible to figure out what pollen was blowing around in the air; what grains they were grinding for food, where a set of human remains originated according to isotopes in bone and tooth. This is good stuff, although of course it lacks the immediacy of finding an object or a structure last seen 1800 years ago. And the 3D modeling of everything is a remarkable new ability.
But it was a different experience, and after years at Vindolanda you can't avoid making comparisons.
At Vindolanda there is a strong sense of both the distant and recent past. You are standing among walls and floors built by the Romans and exposed by volunteer excavators. There....that's where the skeleton of the young girl tragically murdered was found. There....that's where the enigmatic name RIACUS was carved in the sub Roman era. There....that's where we found that broken crowbar. There....that's where the graphically insulting SECUNDINUS inscription came up.
Between the distant and recent memories, and the constant stream of visitors who want to talk, Vindolanda is a busy place.
Magna, at least the section we were on, feels lonely.
Current trenches are outside the fort proper, up in an area beyond the defensive ditches. But inside the scope of the nearby Hadrianic wall. What were people doing there before The Wall? While it was in place? After the Romans left? It's early days, but the relative lack of features and finds indicates this was a quiet area. Adding to that we have no standing walls around us and only a few intrepid visitors walk through the sheep droppings to lean over the fence.
Finds, Features, Weather, Company, general vibes....all these contribute to whether an excavation is fun. That's not the same as opining on whether it provides useful archaeological information, as of course even negative results are results.
And so the 2024 excavation season is, for me, over. In times past you could sign up for multiple two week sessions. Generally this was impractical for me as an international traveler, now you simply can't have more than one session.
And for 2025? Well, I'll be watching the progress on both excavations and conferring with my digging pals. We shall see....
In the meantime a few pictures of Magna. They prefer we not speculate too freely, and anything really interesting is verboten to discuss, but a few images of the site to convey the gestalt of it. Oh, and things found in the preliminary excavations LAST YEAR can now be discussed.
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As we say at our end of session drinks. "Tools down, glasses up". Until next year. Hopefully.
On a day off of the excavations we went over to Corbridge. It was once the most northerly town in the Roman Empire. Its history since then has been up and down. The borderlands between Scotland and England have always been a "rough neighborhood" so it has been sacked, razed and generally obliterated several times. This makes it a little tricky to figure out some aspects of its history.
Should you visit - with peaceful intent of course - in the modern era, you'll find a nicely excavated Roman fort with a very good museum. And a quaint little town that has become very posh. High end shops, beauty salons, that sort of thing.
But should you stray to the edge of the upscale High Street, down to The Wheatsheaf pub on St. Helen's street, and peek behind it, you'll see something interesting......
There, up above the dumpsters ( of course they are "skips" in UK ).
You may note that the head looks a bit wrong; just a bit too small. This is actually a point in favor of authenticity as Roman statues were often designed to have changeable heads. One suspects this was especially useful for depictions of some of the dodgier, short reign Emperors....
As to the building, down the way and over the trash cans (sorry, bins) we see this:
Near our mystery goddess, and being pointed out by a known goddess, we see these guys...
Given the presence of nearby Roman stuff I'd rate it as highly probable that the people who lived here just went over and nicked a few items. Perhaps at the time of the initial 1695 build or at a later refurb. It's not easy to tell a 200 year old niche from a 300 year old one. The two faced corner stone in particular looks out of place and my money is on it being a later addition.