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in which i barely see old friends, contend with a gross motel & learn some archaeology to boot
In the following (standard-issue very long) entry, assume that "we" means some combination of me, Susan, Becky, Paul, Fumi, Steve, Grant, Jonathan, Lew, Jamie, Sarah, Kristin, Mark, Ricky, and/or Bill Lipe. (Primarily any of the first ten are involved in a given part of this. Bill Lipe is only noted because he traveled down with us and amazingly, actually knew my name without anyone having formally introduced us before. Names are listed so as to give some idea of the scale of this venture. I had not traveled for any significant length of time with these people before.)
I've been in Tempe the last four days for the Southwest Symposium at ASU. We left Thursday morning in two vans from a region several degrees below zero. One of the vans wouldn't start at first, which delayed us quite a bit. That actually was good for me, since as I was walking to the started van, I slipped on the ice and fell hard on my right knee and required some time to a) fill out a workman's comp form just-in-case and b) discover that I was bleeding a lot and clean and band-aid that.
Drove to Tempe with Susan at the wheel, and several Important Boss-type People in the van. I read 1491, and at some point, others who did not already know about the way I read realized that I had gotten through a considerable amount of pages in a short time, and so I had to stop reading for a bit to answer the perennial questions about that. (The thing about being friends with scientists is that inevitably, they want to test me. :-P)
Got to Tempe with time enough to go to the opening reception and meet a few of the many, many archaeologists attending. We went to dinner at Rula Bula, an Irish pub, where one of the many former Crow Canyon interns met up with us briefly. I was tired, so thankfully he drove us back to the motel*.
Friday, we went to the symposium and listened to papers on the history of the Southwest Symposium (somewhat interesting) and migration (much more interesting). Sev** was there, and I got to talk to him for an extremely brief period of time--but so was Sam Duwe, former museum docent! I also talked to him for only a few minutes before the next paper began. We went to Trader Joe's to stock up instead of staying for the last couple of papers and the poster session. Friday night we went to an Ethiopian restaurant and had fabulous food much like that of the Blue Nile in Ann Arbor (there was another Ethiopian place actually called the Blue Nile, but Steve said we should go to the other one). Went back to the motel and watching the frightening reality of VH1 before bed.
Yesterday was more papers in the morning--including one by Guy McPherson, who was quite fascinating and also more than a little frightening, primarily about fire ecology but also in no small part about the end of humanity as we know it. The morning session was about landscape--we stayed for three papers and then left to go visit Pueblo Grande Museum, which is a small (very small) part of the HUGE Hohokam complex that once existed in Phoenix. That was really cool, and also pretty unnerving--the airport is not far from the site, and planes were taking off constantly. The freeway runs right past it, as well, and there's tons of new construction going up all around. Steve and Jamie had both worked on the site in the past, so it was cool to hear some of their knowledge about what it had been like before Phoenix stretched out its wings a little farther...
The afternoon papers were about connectivity, and were quite interesting--especially the last one, by Steve Lekson, who is...well, very intelligent and popular and interested in things "outside the box" but also, apparently, prone to leaving the details for others to work out. I've never met him before (although he used to be something pretty important at CCAC long before my time), nor heard him speak, so that was a fascinating experience for me--especially when others really went after him when there was time for questions. (Although Randy McGuire did preface it with "We're friends, so I feel I can say this." Heh.)
After a brief stop at the evening reception for cheese and amusement about Steve Lekson, we went to Scottsdale for a panel discussion led by Craig Childs, who is the author of several books about the Southwest and a friend of Susan's. The discussion centered on water in the Phoenix area, and how it's being managed today (and very briefly, how it was managed in the past by the Hohokam). It was both thoroughly interesting and thoroughly frustrating--the people who talked the most were city management type people, and the ecologist barely spoke at all. (Nor did the archaeologist.) The management-type people were very interested in showing off how they've come up with ways to continue Phoenix's current lifestyle and growth by ensuring that new developers demonstrate that they have plenty of contingent water. They were far too blithe about their usage of water from other areas (er, like the COLORADO RIVER), and far too confident that they could sustain growth. Growth as the end-all-be-all of cities and city planning was pretty disgusting to me. Oh--one of the most headshaking moments for me was when they were discussing new technologies and referred to plans to desalinate the ocean. Oh yeah, no problem, we'll just pour tons of energy into desalinating the ocean and then running that water from Cali to Phoenix. Sure. Great. Brilliantly efficient use of natural resources, there. (No mention of how that might impact the local oceanic environment, either.)
Went back to the motel and hung out for a while before going to bed. We left from sunny, going-to-be-66* Tempe this morning and drove back to chilly, 30s Cortez. I drove for about three hours and completely left the other van in the proverbial dust. Hee. (Also had probably the longest conversation I've ever had with Ricky--the president and CEO of Crow Canyon--before, too. I may have been inappropriately snarky regarding his seatbelt usage and driving instructions. Oh well.)
*The motel was pretty awful. It was across the street from the burned-out shell of another motel, which was not a great sign to start off with. The first room they gave Susan and I smelled like smoke, although it was supposed to be a non-smoking room. The second room was better, but there were crumbs on Susan's bed and weird stains all over the place. While we were having dinner on Thursday night, Steve (who was an AZ native and went to school at ASU) told us stories (among other things) about how the place used to be a METH DEN and that it was profoundly nasty...anyway. They didn't clean our room yesterday at all, and when we returned in the afternoon there was a cockroach sitting atop Susan's comforter. Iiiiick. America's Best Value Inn =/= America's Best Quality Inn. But you probably could've guessed that from the name.
**Sev was my GSI (er, TA in non-UofM parlance) for two of my freshman anthro classes. He was looking for volunteers to help excavate at Pot Creek Pueblo near Taos in the summer of 2000, and having just been at CCAC in 1999, I was eager to get back to the Southwest and in the dirt again. I had my first beer with him and the crew that July. He was also my mentor-person-whatever for UROP, when I worked on analysis of stuff from Pot Creek. Basically, Sev's the other reason I'm at CCAC besides Mrs. Gimpel (who I may or may not have posted about before...probably not.) He's generally an awesome guy, and I hadn't seen him in four or five years.
I've been in Tempe the last four days for the Southwest Symposium at ASU. We left Thursday morning in two vans from a region several degrees below zero. One of the vans wouldn't start at first, which delayed us quite a bit. That actually was good for me, since as I was walking to the started van, I slipped on the ice and fell hard on my right knee and required some time to a) fill out a workman's comp form just-in-case and b) discover that I was bleeding a lot and clean and band-aid that.
Drove to Tempe with Susan at the wheel, and several Important Boss-type People in the van. I read 1491, and at some point, others who did not already know about the way I read realized that I had gotten through a considerable amount of pages in a short time, and so I had to stop reading for a bit to answer the perennial questions about that. (The thing about being friends with scientists is that inevitably, they want to test me. :-P)
Got to Tempe with time enough to go to the opening reception and meet a few of the many, many archaeologists attending. We went to dinner at Rula Bula, an Irish pub, where one of the many former Crow Canyon interns met up with us briefly. I was tired, so thankfully he drove us back to the motel*.
Friday, we went to the symposium and listened to papers on the history of the Southwest Symposium (somewhat interesting) and migration (much more interesting). Sev** was there, and I got to talk to him for an extremely brief period of time--but so was Sam Duwe, former museum docent! I also talked to him for only a few minutes before the next paper began. We went to Trader Joe's to stock up instead of staying for the last couple of papers and the poster session. Friday night we went to an Ethiopian restaurant and had fabulous food much like that of the Blue Nile in Ann Arbor (there was another Ethiopian place actually called the Blue Nile, but Steve said we should go to the other one). Went back to the motel and watching the frightening reality of VH1 before bed.
Yesterday was more papers in the morning--including one by Guy McPherson, who was quite fascinating and also more than a little frightening, primarily about fire ecology but also in no small part about the end of humanity as we know it. The morning session was about landscape--we stayed for three papers and then left to go visit Pueblo Grande Museum, which is a small (very small) part of the HUGE Hohokam complex that once existed in Phoenix. That was really cool, and also pretty unnerving--the airport is not far from the site, and planes were taking off constantly. The freeway runs right past it, as well, and there's tons of new construction going up all around. Steve and Jamie had both worked on the site in the past, so it was cool to hear some of their knowledge about what it had been like before Phoenix stretched out its wings a little farther...
The afternoon papers were about connectivity, and were quite interesting--especially the last one, by Steve Lekson, who is...well, very intelligent and popular and interested in things "outside the box" but also, apparently, prone to leaving the details for others to work out. I've never met him before (although he used to be something pretty important at CCAC long before my time), nor heard him speak, so that was a fascinating experience for me--especially when others really went after him when there was time for questions. (Although Randy McGuire did preface it with "We're friends, so I feel I can say this." Heh.)
After a brief stop at the evening reception for cheese and amusement about Steve Lekson, we went to Scottsdale for a panel discussion led by Craig Childs, who is the author of several books about the Southwest and a friend of Susan's. The discussion centered on water in the Phoenix area, and how it's being managed today (and very briefly, how it was managed in the past by the Hohokam). It was both thoroughly interesting and thoroughly frustrating--the people who talked the most were city management type people, and the ecologist barely spoke at all. (Nor did the archaeologist.) The management-type people were very interested in showing off how they've come up with ways to continue Phoenix's current lifestyle and growth by ensuring that new developers demonstrate that they have plenty of contingent water. They were far too blithe about their usage of water from other areas (er, like the COLORADO RIVER), and far too confident that they could sustain growth. Growth as the end-all-be-all of cities and city planning was pretty disgusting to me. Oh--one of the most headshaking moments for me was when they were discussing new technologies and referred to plans to desalinate the ocean. Oh yeah, no problem, we'll just pour tons of energy into desalinating the ocean and then running that water from Cali to Phoenix. Sure. Great. Brilliantly efficient use of natural resources, there. (No mention of how that might impact the local oceanic environment, either.)
Went back to the motel and hung out for a while before going to bed. We left from sunny, going-to-be-66* Tempe this morning and drove back to chilly, 30s Cortez. I drove for about three hours and completely left the other van in the proverbial dust. Hee. (Also had probably the longest conversation I've ever had with Ricky--the president and CEO of Crow Canyon--before, too. I may have been inappropriately snarky regarding his seatbelt usage and driving instructions. Oh well.)
*The motel was pretty awful. It was across the street from the burned-out shell of another motel, which was not a great sign to start off with. The first room they gave Susan and I smelled like smoke, although it was supposed to be a non-smoking room. The second room was better, but there were crumbs on Susan's bed and weird stains all over the place. While we were having dinner on Thursday night, Steve (who was an AZ native and went to school at ASU) told us stories (among other things) about how the place used to be a METH DEN and that it was profoundly nasty...anyway. They didn't clean our room yesterday at all, and when we returned in the afternoon there was a cockroach sitting atop Susan's comforter. Iiiiick. America's Best Value Inn =/= America's Best Quality Inn. But you probably could've guessed that from the name.
**Sev was my GSI (er, TA in non-UofM parlance) for two of my freshman anthro classes. He was looking for volunteers to help excavate at Pot Creek Pueblo near Taos in the summer of 2000, and having just been at CCAC in 1999, I was eager to get back to the Southwest and in the dirt again. I had my first beer with him and the crew that July. He was also my mentor-person-whatever for UROP, when I worked on analysis of stuff from Pot Creek. Basically, Sev's the other reason I'm at CCAC besides Mrs. Gimpel (who I may or may not have posted about before...probably not.) He's generally an awesome guy, and I hadn't seen him in four or five years.