I'm a little nervous about offending anyone on the Navajo tribal lands, so I brush up on do's and don'ts. The problem is that there are hundreds so I memorize a few of the most relevant. Most of them seem sensible or whimsical.
The Navajo guide leads us into the otherworldly slot canyon.
If a Coyote crosses your path, turn back and do not continue. If you keep traveling, something terrible will happen to you. You will be in an accident, hurt, or killed.
Don't point at a rainbow with your finger. The rainbow will cut it off or break it.
Don't throw rocks at a whirlwind. It will throw them back and chase you
Don't call whirlwinds a name. Evil Spirits will get you.
Do not roll a rock from a mountain. The holy people put them there and it will be bad luck.
Do not watch a river flowing swiftly, or you will get dizzy and fall in.
Do not run over a snake in your car or you will have a bad life.
Do not talk to dogs or other animals because they might talk back and you will die.
Do not say, "I wish I had some meat" when you have the hiccups or your livestock won't grow.
Do not eat frogs because you will have bad luck or bad breath.
Do not eat the heel of a loaf of bread or you will have lots of children.
Do not bite on roasting corn and then put it back or it will get cold and ruin the rest of your crop. Also, your teeth will fall out.
Do not burn blood from a nosebleed because you will get headaches and your head will split.
Do not have three people comb each other's hair at the same time or they will get stuck.
Do not turn pages backwards or you will go blind.
Do not peel potatoes or apples when you are pregnant or the baby will have a flat face.
Let's talk about death. There are more death euphemisms than there are for body parts or even sex. Jim Morrison, for example, has been dead for 40 years.. We've been to his grave in Paris four times. Jim's headstones are frequently stolen and the graffiti changes often. The last time we visited a bored Paris cop was watching Jim's grave...They have Jim far enough away from Proust, Oscar Wilde, and Heloise and Abelard that those graves don't get much punk vandalism...Oscar's grave featured a lovely angel with a full set of male genitalia. those organs ended up on the desk of the cemetery superintendent and eventually disappeared...
Jim stole an umbrella from a police car in 1963 while he was a student in Tallahassee at Florida State University. He was drunk at the time and got busted for urinating in the wrong place while holding the wrong umbrella. Jim was born, like me, in 1943. I was also arrested in Tallahassee as a student in 1964. I drove my Harley Davidson at speeds over 100 MPH past the Tallahassee police station at 2 AM...I was drunk on 151 rum at the time...The policeman who arrested me was shaking badly...I remember the judge asking me if I was insane...I pleaded out with the simple military serviceman ID card and paid the $110 fine...
Jim was a roommate of my friends, the West brothers. They played "Strange Days" for me on vinyl and told me that Jim had moved out just before I moved in. You would have thought that Jim would have outlasted me based on his feeble law-breaking attempts at umbrella theft and my own high-speed drunken exploits...Instead, here I am 52 years later having a good time...and Jim, at age 27, is in the great Golf course where we all get a hole in one...Taking a dirt nap...Pushing up the daisies ...Passed on...Deceased...At room temperature...Stone-dead ...Demised ... Ceased to be..No more expired ..Gone to meet his maker ..Stiff ..Bereft of life ..Resting in peace ..Off the twig ..Kicked the bucket ..Shuffled off the mortal coil ..Run down the curtain ..Joined the choir invisible ...That good night ..In a better place.. Six feet under ..Crossed over ..crossed the bar. Crossed the River Styx ....Wandering the Elysian Fields ...Paid Charon's fare...Sleeping with the fishes.. belly up ..bloodless...defunct ..departed..done for.. erased .extinct ..gone ..inanimate.. .late.. .lifeless..liquidated ..mortified ..offed ..perished ..in repose ..rubbed out ..snuffed out ..wasted ..lost ..be taken ..bumped off ..bought it ..cashed in..checked out ..conked ..croaked ..Danced the last dance ..ate it ..finished .Kicked off ...Got a one-way ticket ..Popped off ..Snuffed ..Sprouted wings ..Succumbed..No longer with us ..Ashes to ashes, dust to dust ..Returned to the ground ..With the ancestors. Gave up the ghost ..Wacked. Terminated ..Put down.. going to the big ___(whatever) in the sky"...Wormfood ..Fragged.. Bought a pine condo. Gone into the fertilizer business .....Become living-challenged ...tits up
Jim is definitely done dancing....He checked into the Morrison Motel...Jim's eating at the Rotten Skull Cafe...Jim's gone belly up...He's gone to the last roundup...He went past his "sell-by" date...Jim has left the building...Jim's no longer with us...He's on the unable to breathe list...Jim's permanently out of print...The lizard king is six feet under...Jim is sleeping with the fishes...He's wearing a toe tag...He's in the past people plantation...Been assigned to the Hale Bopp project...Become peasant under grass...He's playing harp duets with Hoffa...
So...Jim was a pretty boy, but, actually, I think I was at least as good looking as Jim. Not only that, but my crimes were more exciting...and I appear to be a much better survivor type...C'mon baby light my fire...As far as Jim goes, he's at room temperature...belly-up....bought a pine condo...ceased to bee...danced the last dance...inanimate...no longer running the human race...pushing daisies...paid Charon's fare...stiff...wandering the Elysian fields...gone into the fertilizer business...worm food....resurrection eligible...kicked the oxygen habit...passed his sell-by date...examining the radishes from below...
Mrs. Phred went into Newport, Oregon to get her hair done yesterday. I took the camera downtown to get pictures of all the seafood processing plants and marine mammals.
I liked this T-shirt. It reminded me of certain degenerate English gambler friends...
Today we passed over the mighty Columbia River to an RV park north of Portland in Vancouver, Washington. We want to see Mount Saint Helen's again. It blew in 1980. The last time we went there was 1992. Looking at the recovery after another 20 years should be interesting.
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Laura came to visit Mrs. Phred back on the Siletz River. Mrs. Phred has her own online life with the women's RV Forum...Personally, my own online activities are at "Second Life", where my avatar is extremely attractive and rich...I spend a lot of time in "dance bubbles" with attractive avatars who claim to be female...Probably most of them are unshaven middle-aged fat men from Cincinnati, fingering keyboards while wearing their "wife-beater" T-shirts and drinking Budweisers...
We’re cruising highway 400 West on the way to Dodge City. “Free Bird” is coming in clear on a Wichita FM station. We come around the curve and see a half-mile of tightly packed spinning windmills, whirligigs, and political caricatures made of abandoned farm equipment, old cars and railroad parts. Mrs. Phred swerves the RV to the shoulder and I grab the camera.
This guy is 73 years old and completely outrageous. He’s been writing an insanely clever political blog in solid steel for at least 20 years.
"Evolution is wrong," one display reads, "Only a miracle from the Almighty could have created the moronic dumb asses on the Kansas State Board of Education." Mrs. Phred points out an "intelligent design" totem with the words upside down. The Kansas Board objected to teaching evolution in 2005.
Hillary Clinton is, "Our Jack-Booted Eva Braun,” Mr. and Mrs. Clinton caricatures are labeled, “Pothead” and “Porkadolf”. Mrs. Clinton is done up with swastikas.
He’s got one that equates Waco with Auschwitz. Janet Reno has her head stuffed up her butt. A right wing Republican has his thumb in the same position. Halliburton is represented by a dark pig’s head.
It’s tough to figure out Liggett’s political position. He seems equally pissed by just about everything and everyone, especially politicians.
We passed a town destroyed by a tornado a few miles back. Liggett devotes quite a few displays to FEMA. “Tornados blow, FEMA sucks!” he proclaims.
Lots of the “totems” are devoted to M.T.’s old girlfriends, who he has immortalized in junk. You have to wonder about his relationships with neighbors. My money says he doesn’t much care much what other people think.
The fog hung around all day today. Here on the coast the high was 55 degrees F. I went for a walk on the beach at 6 AM and found it difficult to find the path back to the RV park. The visibility has been about 50 feet all day. This is a picture of the halibut I cooked for Mrs. Phred yesterday.
We went to the Cape Arago State Park in the morning. At an overlook, we could hear herds of seals and Steller's sea lions arfing up a storm, but the fog obscured the rock that they like to rest on.
The cove at Cape Arago was free of fog. There were tide pools but the animals were not as colorful as the ones we saw yesterday. The sea anemones mostly looked like little mud donuts.
We did see one starfish. We also found a chocolate muffin and some birthday candles for our Skype session with grandchild # 4. Today is his birthday. He is six. We talked him and his little brother into blowing out the candles and they both blew so hard that little globules of spit appeared on the camera lens.
The Gold and Silver Falls State Park was a 40 mile drive into the interior. The temperature went up 20 degrees as we left the coast and hit the one-lane winding roads into the park.
Both falls were about a 1/2 mile hike.
Yesterday I got a haircut by a Vietnamese woman about my age. She told me about her recent five-country, five-week vacation to Asia. She booked the whole thing herself and took her husband. It was strange how many of the same places we had been...Da Nang...Saigon...Qui Nhon...she was a good barber. She didn't like L.A. so she moved to Oregon and met her American husband.
The Gold and Silver Falls State Park would have been hard to find without a GPS...the two falls each require a 1/2 mile hike. Mrs. Phred was ready to strip down to her panties and frolic in the waterfall...
I think our next stop, going North, is Winchester Bay.
On the way to Valdez, we meet a lady in Slana. She is about 75, we guess. Her art is done with bits of elk and moose antlers. Her dogs are all dead and the three log cabin dog houses stand empty. I imagine them chained up in the deep snow and huddled inside on the straw. The rusty chains and straw are still there. A nameplate says that one dog was named Pat. Pat was probably a Husky.
The lady has outlived three husbands and many dogs in this place over a fifty year period. She collects camping fees at the nearby State campground and tries to operate a lodge and RV park by herself. She also operates the Slana Post Office. She makes the beds, mows the lawn, burns the trash and cleans the salmon that she catches in her fish traps. She seems lonely now. Everything is hard. It's a 100 mile trip in to buy gasoline for her generator so she can have electricity.
She no longer has time to sell the art that she makes in the winter since she has no help. We are her only guests. It's a slow summer. She built the lodge with her own hands. There is no Home Depot here, but I see three trailers to haul things in the yard. She talks to strangers like us. Mrs. Phred feels sad for her. I tell Mrs. Phred that there are a million stories here and we can't even change the outcome of our own.
The drive into Valdez is though jagged mountains capped with glaciers that come down to the road. We go fishing for pink salmon and catch eleven that are about four pounds each. We eat one for dinner and freeze the rest. The bay is surrounded by snow-capped mountains. You can see bears in the meadows with binoculars. We see a seal next to the boat catch a salmon for lunch. The fish here are released from a hatchery and have no place to spawn. They just mill around in the bay looking for a stream that doesn’t exist.
We see a purse seine boat catch about 15,000 pounds of salmon in its net. The sea otters and seals on buoys float in front of the oil tankers next to the refinery tanks at the end of the Alaska pipeline.
This morning we will take a water taxi for a two hours ride to kayak under a glacier in the icebergs.
I published this originally as a submission to BBC's quirky site "Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy". I'm transferring it here to my blog which permits a little more latitude in adding pictures, links and new research.
In 1966, as we prepared for a 4.00am local time take off from Wake Island, heading to Guam, the pre-flight revealed that our APN-9 LORAN was broken-note 5. The APN-9 LORAN was perhaps good for 150 miles near an island under ideal conditions, but that can be critical if one is looking for an island from an 8,000 foot altitude. Islands usually pop into sight about 30 miles out. The LORAN is the somewhat inappropriately named 'Long range Over water Aid to Navigation'. In 1966 the 'Long' part of the name was certainly optimistic.
I told the pilot not to worry, since this would be an ideal day for celestial navigation without the APN-9 and both the sun and the moon would be up.
My first sun/moon fix about three hours after takeoff placed us 75 nautical miles off track. After the first electric shock of confused panic subsided, I checked the drift meter and saw none of the whitecaps which might have indicated a strong but unanticipated typhoon force crosswind. There was no evidence of a compass malfunction because both the autopilot's gyroscopic compass and whiskey compass still agreed, so I concluded that there must be a gross error in my celestial LOPs from the sun and moon.
We continued to 'dead reckon' and head in the original planned direction.
All of my frantically rechecked measurements and caculations for the next four hours showed us being about 75 miles off course. I decided to ignore them. Eventually we saw the island, exactly dead ahead and about 20 miles out, rather than open ocean.
I remembered much later that day after privately reviewing my manuals that the moon is so close to the Earth that it needs a special correction called the parallax correction. On this day, the parallax correction made for a 75 nautical mile mistake. Am I the only one who ever made this stupid blunder?
Human 'Depth Perception'
Parallax allows us to estimate the distance of objects that we can see. Hold up a finger approximately three inches in front of your nose and look at it closely. Then close first your left eye and then your right. Repeat this rapidly. Notice how your finger rapidly moves (or appears to move) from right to left, depending on which eye you use to observe the finger. Our brains deftly integrate information received from the parallax of our two eyes, and this allows us to estimate distances to objects. Parallax is therefore very useful in surviving on the motorway, picking fruit, playing games involving balls and in numerous other ways.
Stellar Parallax
Stellar parallax is another use of parallax and was an early method of estimating the distance of nearby stars. In this case, the angles for a nearby star are measured six months apart while the Earth is on opposite sides of its orbit. This parallax error defines a parsec, which is one second of arc and a little over three light years-note 2. This method of measuring stellar distances is useful for up to about 11 parsecs.
Photographic Parallax Errors
Here parallax begins to reveal its darker side. We find that what the observer views through the eyepiece may not exactly correspond to the size and dimension of the image that will end up travelling though the lens and falling upon the camera's film. This type of parallax error may be most noticeable on close-up photography when the viewfinder and lens of the cameras are on different lines of sight. Better cameras provide help with parallax correction features, which may be as simple as a visual box in the viewfinder indicating the size and shape of the eventual photographic image.
Geocentric Parallax Errors
Geocentric parallax can have fatal consequences for the unwary traveller. An adjustment is required to compensate for a false apparent angle between a celestial body and a human observer. The moon's observed altitude angle is usually misleading due to parallax because the moon is very close to the Earth. The sun and the stars do not require a correction because they are so far away that the parallax error approaches total insignificance. Failing to apply the parallax correction to celestial navigation observations can result in a really bad sun/moon fix or just a wildly incorrect speed-line or course-line from the moon alone-note 3.
The amount of the celestial parallax error is at a minimum when the moon passes through the meridian and is also directly overhead (ie, on the same latitude as the observer). The amount of the parallax error can be as much as much as 60 minutes (60 nautical miles or about 69.046767 English miles) when the moon is near the observer's horizon.
A 60-mile error on the moon observation can become a much greater error in determining your position on the Earth if the moon and a second body being observed have lines of position that cross at other than a 90-degree angle, which is almost always the case.
To get a picture of how it works, think of an observer on the equator, and the sun and the moon both circling about the equator on one of the equinox days. The moon rises exactly in the east and passes directly overhead to set in the west. The sun follows the same path. We will ignore the sun's insignificant parallax, due to its greater distance from the Earth. However, the moon can have an error in the observed altitude angle of approximately one degree (60 nautical miles) on the horizon. There is no geocentric parallax error at all when the moon is directly overhead and the observer is on a direct line between the moon and the Earth's centre.
The need for the parallax correction arises because navigation tables compute the altitude angle of the moon based on an angle between the celestial body and the exact centre of the Earth. The navigator/observer is hopefully somewhere else and on (or above) the surface of the Earth, so there will always be an 'error' in the observed angle of nearby bodies (ie, the moon) unless the body is conveniently passing exactly over the observer's head. The amount of the error can be computed from a table which is provided to all navigators who have not yet transitioned to the use of the infinitely more convenient and inexpensive handheld GPS devices.
Amelia Earhart and Parallax
Amelia's navigator, Fred Noonan , should have been relying on sun/moon celestial 'fixes' during the last hours of the 2,556 statute mile flight to (or toward) Howland Island on 2 July, 1937.
Amelia and Fred had been flying though the night toward dawn -note 7. Fred should have had good celestial observations from stars and later the sun and moon -note 8.
The sun rose near Howland 6.10am local time (Howland had an 11.5 hour time difference from GMT), about two hours before Amelia was due at (and still about 300 miles away from) Howland. The last quarter-moon rose at 12.18am. The moon transited overhead and about 20 degrees to the south at 7.01am and set at 12.43pm local time. Fred would certainly have used both the sun and moon -note 9. Both celestial bodies were available, it was an historic flight, the first of its type, and Fred would not have ignored the moon in the early daylight morning hours almost directly overhead (and to the south) or the sun rising in the east nearly dead ahead while making the final three-hour run into Howland. Fred probably got a several final fixes that morning using both bodies.
As Fred and Amelia approached Howland island after a gruelling 21-hour flight from Lae City in New Guinea, her last words indicated that she was at 1,000 feet (one explanation for flying that low would be to get under the scattered cumulus clouds while searching for a small island) -note 10 and running on a line (157-337) north and south.
This researcher's theory is that Fred, clouds permitting, would have had a shot at the sun in the east and the moon in the south and would have been able to get a set of perfectly crossed lines of position any time after sunrise from those two bodies. However, Fred would have been relying on the moon for the course line and parallax error could have caused him to veer off course enough to miss the island by a fairly large margin.
It is certain that, as Fred approached where he thought Howland should be, heading east, he failed to see the island appear where his sun/moon observation and dead reckoning indicated that it should be. Fred must have logically assumed that they had missed the island to the north or south. Amelia then began her run on a line 'north and south' hoping Howland would come into view.
The Electra used by Amelia had a speed of about 150 MPH and an endurance about 24 hours -note 11. The flight from Lae to Howland was 2,556 miles. In this researcher's view, it is totally improbable that Amelia would have agreed to add over six hours to the flight by diverting to over-fly Truk to make clandestine photographs of Japanese military installations for the American military, as some conspiracy theory enthusiasts have suggested -note 13.
While she was alive, she was celebrated for what she accomplished and for what her example meant to women and aviation. Once she was presumed missing, Amelia Earhart the role model for women was increasingly replaced by Amelia Earhart the lost aviator, and attention was shifted away from her strongly articulated feminism to speculation about the circumstances of her fateful last flight.- Susan Ware, Amelia Earhart and the Search for Modern Feminism, 1993, p206
Earhart's Electra had a new radio direction finder but Amelia was not trained on the use of the new RDF and failed to use it effectively. Her additional inability to receive voice messages may have been caused by damage on takeoff. Here is a link to a takeoff video, which may show the belly mounted voice antenna breaking off on takeoff. These critical problems, combined with the scattered cloud cover, low cloud bases, very small island, sun in the eyes, possibly inaccurate charts, lack of an alternate landing site, crew exhaustion, a possible hangover -note 14, an inadequate fuel reserve, and Fred's possible parallax correction error, certainly resulted in enough cumulative issues to kill the crew several times over.
1 The Executive Director of TIGHAR, which has expended great energy on this investigation, states: "That parallax was a causal, or at least contributing, factor in the Earhart disappearance is an interesting but, unfortunately, untestable hypothesis. The same could be said for any number of theories about observational or computational errors that Noonan could have made. The indisputable fact would seem to be that an error or errors of some kind were made."
2 A parsec is a unit of astronomical length based on the distance from Earth at which stellar parallax is one second of arc and equal to 3.258 light-years, 30,860,000,000,000 kilometres, or 19,180,000,000,000 miles. Assuming that a highly modified Pontiac is good for 100,000 miles of travel, it will require about 200 million Pontiacs to drive one parsec and the driver will still be a light year short of the nearest star.
3 American Captain Thomas H Sumner invented the concept of a celestial line of position, while bobbing about in intermittent fog and very rough seas in the St George channel between Ireland and Wales in 1837. The new concept conveniently occurred to him in a flash of genius and allowed him to head into port in terrible conditions. Some experts wonder why it took so long for humans to discover this simple trick and put it to work.
4 The nautical mile is a result of the size of the Earth. By convention, the Earth is divided into 180 degrees from pole to pole. Each degree is divided into 60 minutes and a minute is a nautical mile.
5 LORAN was invented by British boffins. The APN-9 was introduced into American B-29 bombers during the war. The APN-9 was still being used on some older USAF cargo aircraft in 1966 during the Vietnam conflict.
6 Mary S Lovell, the Sound of Wings (1989, p272) indicates that Fred was an almost pedantic navigator who planned the Lae takeoff at 00:00 GMT for ease of celestial calculations. However, some believe that the 00.00 GMT takeoff only a coincidence since it had been rescheduled several times due to an inability to get an accurate time check. Lovell states that Fred three chronometers on the flight. However, Lae maintenance records indicate that there might only have been one (three seconds slow upon time check).
7 The Lockheed Electra model 10E departed Lae at precisely 10.00am local on 2 July, 1937. It crossed the international dateline and made its last transmission two time zones and one day earlier at 8.42am, also on 2 July, 1937. If they had been heading East to West, 2 July would never have happened for them on many levels, in this researcher's opinion.
8 Reports from Howland Island indicate that there were fairly normal weather conditions. Scattered cumulus with bases at about 2,300 feet. The Itasca Commander wrote the following summary of radio log transmissions from Amelia at 2.45am local: '...cloudy and overcast.' Again at 3.45am: '..Earhart to Itasca, overcast.' However, the actual radio logs do not indicate the word overcast.
9 This Researcher's 1938 edition of Bowditch's American Practical Navigator states that 'Many times during daylight a position line with the moon makes an excellent cut with the sun' (p. 212). Page 384 contains the parallax correction tables. Did Fred refer to them?
10 The Itasca's Captain to concluded that Amelia would have seen Baker Island if she was off to the southeast so he began his search to the northwest of Howland.
11 The TIGHAR Executive Director states: 'Earhart flight-planned the airplane at 150 mph and its expected endurance with the 1,100 US gallon fuel load it had upon departure from Lae was a little over 24 hours (computed according to Lockheed Report No. 487 "Range Study of Lockheed Electra Bimotor Airplane" by C.L. Johnson and W.C. Nelson, dated June 4, 1936).'..
12 The total distance From Lae City to Truk to Howland island is 3,250 statute miles, compared with 2,556 statute miles when flying direct from Lae.
13 Randall Brink, Lost Star: The Search for Amelia Earhart, 1994, suggests that Amelia's Electra was heavily modified by Clarence L (Kelly) Johnson in the Lockheed 'skunkworks' to add speed, altitude and range. (The Lockheed 'skunkworks' is generally credited with producing numerous high-performance aircraft, including the U-2, the SR-71 'Blackbird' and F 117 stealth fighter.) He suggests that Amelia was captured by the Japanese and became one of the voices of Tokyo Rose, a rumour which circulated among Pacific theatre Gls in 1943. A disturbing picture in his book shows an emaciated woman who appears to be Amelia. Brink claims the photograph was taken by a Saipan native in 1937. He also quotes workmen at Lockheed who claim to have installed high-resolution military cameras on the Electra.
14 Mary S Lovell, The Sound of Wings, 1989, p270, describes a petulant drinking binge by Fred in Lae. However, the Executive Director of TIGHAR states that there is no historical evidence to support Fred drinking on Lae or elsewhere. He believes that Lovell's comments are based on a single interview decades later.
15 Amelia was able to leave her seat during the long flight but sometimes passed notes to Fred using an improvised bamboo fishing rod when he was in the rear navigator's compartment. The Electra had an autopilot and Fred was also a pilot who spent much of his time in the copilots chair. They were both able to climb over interior fuel tanks to reach a rear lavatory, in case you were wondering.
