THE MAGNIFICENT KAMES OF MOUNT SINAI

 GLACIAL ICE PERFORATION FEATURES ON LONG ISLAND, NY, 

“Those funny conical hills are so steep, they look so different, than others we see on Long Island. Why is that?  What are they?’ ANSWER:  They are 17,000 year old “ kames” or ‘glacial ice perforations features. 

As a result of our last winter’s storms, and its significant snow cover, the topography of our local Long Island area can be so much better discerned and appreciated.

The dense vegetation of summer is gone and, the hills, valleys, high and low places are exposed.  And yes too, sadly, our neighbor’s, untidy back yard is now there to see clearly.  What our unique island has to offer is an almost textbook example of its glacial past.  And one of these is.the well preserved. magnificent kames of Mount Sinai-Miller Place.

At the eastern boundary of the sleepy little north shore village of Mount Sinai, on LI’s north shore,  one can find a wooded tract, along (interestingly named) Pipe Stave Hollow Road.*.  (See Notes) The land is  now a  parkland. But it’s entire extent is comprised of  a cluster of at least  nine conical hills produced by glacial action and known as “kames” or “ice perforation deposits”. The word “kame” is of perhaps Celtic origin meaning the crest of a hill.

These glacial features are beautifully formed, cone shaped hills rising from a glacial drainage channel to a height of about 140  feet above mean sea level (MSL). They are clearly visible if one walks along Pipe Stave Hollow Road, beginning at a point at its intersection with North Country Road (40. 954371 N and -70.014856 W).   At most times of the year these are simply lovely wooded hills, but in the early spring or fall,  or with a carpet of snow the unique conical, structure of each one can be easily seen.

To try and understand how these features were formed one must imagine Long Island of nearly 20,000 years ago when the entire region was covered with a sheet of ice nearly 2000 feet thick. 

About 17,000 years ago the Earth began to warm up (and has continued to do so).  The massive Laurentian Ice Sheet which carpeted much of eastern USA began to melt and retreat.   As it did,  it left behind at its terminal ends two sets of low knobby hills which comprise the “forks” of  Long Island’s north and south shores. But it’s melting left other deposits too. In some places it left features that were actually formed below the thick sheet of ice.  

In the area where the kames were formed a prominent lobe of the ice sheet, part of a bulge of ice occupying Mount Sinai Harbor, advanced south,  along (present day) Pipe Stave Hollow Road during the very last advance of the ice sheet. This  “Pipe Stave Hollow ice lobe” (perhaps as much as 1500 to 2000 feet thick)  flowed  south as far as Millard Road in Miller Place, where it deposited terminal moraine or ice front deposits rising to an elevation of 225 feet above mean sea level.  It was below this lobe that the kames formed.

As the warming period continued the dominant process of this now stagnant or “rotting ice” was melting and releasing the vast quantities of sand, gravel, pebbles and larger rock encased in the ice which the glacier carried.  Also at this stage of ice melting the upper brittle layer of the ice sheet was marked by multiple crevasses, some intersecting to form deep chasms. It was into these deep cracks in the ice where surface melt-waters mixed with sand, pebbles and coarser rock debris drained.     

Kames are features which form below a stagnant glacier.  They occur where glacial melt water carries sand and gravel, as well as coarser rock material down though a crevasse or crevasse complex.  The sand, gravel, pebbles and larger rocks carried by the melt water, pour down through the crevasse like a pebbly waterfall. The flow creates a void where deposits of  sand and gravel accumulate. The result of this “ice perforatin feature” is a deposit  of coarse, water-washed layers of sand, gravel and coarse rock found below the ice at the base of the glacier.  When the glacier melts away, these accumulations of sand and gravel are left behind as unaltered conical hills maintaing much of the shape they had when they formed under the ice.  

Why do they take on a cone shape?  Coarse materials falling from a height, like sand pouring out of a child’s beach bucket, fall to earth and assumes a stable slope depending on the characteristics of the material which make up the deposit ( termed the “angle of repose”).  Dry sand and gravel  assume an angle of repose of about 25 to 30 degrees.  Glacially generated kames have relatively steep slopes since they are composed of materials that have been somewhat sorted and washed of finer materials, and were deposited by flowing water. As a result, they look very different than other glacial features around them.

This was the process which formed those oddly conical hills in Mount Sinai. They are a testament to the Ice Age and to how our unique and beautiful Island was formed. Fascinating!

Note: Pipestave Hollow    A “pipe” is a small wood barrel.  The “stave” is the individual wood components which make up the tight fitting sides. The staves are generally made of white oak (Quercus alba) which today still grows abundantly in the hollow. The tightly fitted staves were bound together by wood or metal barrel hoops. In the 19th Century Mount Sinai was a source of fish and shell fish which were sent off to Connecticut or New York.  In this area pipes of oysters, clams or salted fish were packed and transported by wagon or coastal schooners away from the Harbor. Based on the name of the road, the hollow was likely a good place to collect the white oak wood needed to make the pipe staves for the barrels. 

REDFIELD, W.H.O., AND OCCAM’S RAZOR

 DR REDFORD AND OCCAM’S RAZOR

OCCAM’S RAZOR OR THE LAW OF PARSIMONY

A philosophical and scientific rule of logic that requires one to chose the simplest of competing theories over the more complex.  Or: causes or entities which explain a theory should not be multiplied unnecessarily.  William Hamilton: “cut away extraneous material” 

THE CAUSE OF COVID 19.

The world is still reeling from the effects of the Covid19 pandemic. We are all certain that we never want this to happen again.  But to do accomplish that goal we must make a valid assessment of just how the pandemic started to be able to address the issues that may have contributed to the outbreak, and then the missteps that somehow permitted the disease to spread and become a worldwide pandemic.  

There are some facts we know with certainty.  The Covid 19 disease is caused by a “novel” virus, a corona virus known as SARS Cov-2 (severe acute.respiratory syndrome ). This virus or a very similar one  is known to infect bats which inhabit caves in China’s southwestern Yunnan Province.   The first reported cases of this new disease were detected in the city of Wuhan in Hubei Province in north central China in December 2019. 

How did this new virus, (which is genetically 96% similar to the virus which infects bats in Yunnan caves) move from bats in southwestern Yunnan Province, nearly 1000 miles to infect citizens in Wuhan in north central China?  

We also know that Chinese officials and others were less than transparent and dragged their feet when the disease broke out in Wuhan in December 2019. They let the disease fester a month befor the government reported anything to the WHO.  It took more than six weeks before the Chinese government finally notified the WHO formally.   The WHO organization (burdened as it is with leadership with ties to China) resisted calling the outbreak a pandemic-which would have mobilized world respponse—first terming it an “emergency” on January 30^th 2020, and then finally on March 11 2020 it finally termed the outbreak a pandemic.  Such stalling and foot dragging by the WHO and the nations involved must be addressed in any future circumstances.  

The vicious attacks on some heroic Chinese physicians and scientists who were sanctioned (and jailed) by their government for speaking to news outlets attempting to alert the world to the dangers of the health crisis.  Others Chinese scientists were prevented from publishing their data.

But the ultimate and perhaps most important question is how did the virus move the nearly 1000 miles from one end of China to the other? 

COMPETING HYPOTHESES AND POLITICIZING SCIENCE

One hypothesis is that bats in southern China caves carrying the virus somehow infected other host animals.  Some claim these host animals may have been Pangolins, others suggest Civet cats as potential carriers of the virus. It was during this period of transmission that the virus evolved into one that could infect humans.  These infected animals are then  hypothesized to have been caught and transported live to Wuhan many miles north where they were housed in a ‘wet market” where live animals are kept in cages until purchased for slaughter and prepared for consumption. It was during this period that the virus infected a worker or customer and then passed the virus on to others in Wuhan precipitating the epidemic and then the pandemic.  

The second hypothesis is the following: Scientists at the Wuhan Virology Lab which is only a stones throw from the Wuhan wet market where the outbreak occurred is the source of the virus.  The virologists in the WVL have studied and collected viruses from the Yunnan caves since the 2002-4 SARS outbreak.  Virologists  there have been, under contract, altering viruses genetically to try to understand how they might evolve to infect humans.  It is possible that one of these workers tipped over a vial, contaminated him/herself and unknowing walked across the street for a lunch beak of  civet cat burger and unknowingly infected several people in the wet market, precipitating an epidemic and pandemic.  

DR ROBERT REDFORD’S OPINION 

Dr. Robert Redfield, BS, MD  was the 18 Director of  CDC, and is/was  a medical researcher working in virology, immunology and clinical research. He is co-founder of the Institute of Human Virology, Univ. Maryland, School of Medicine, and is best known for clinical research in HIV, virology, and the AIDS pandemic. Redfield became Director of CDC (Center for Disease Control and Prevention) in January 29, 2020. He left that post in late 2020. 

Recently,  March 26, 2021, in an interview with CNN,  Dr. Redfield stated that his belief was that the most likely hypothesis for the cause of the Covid 19 outbreak was that the SARS Cov-2 virus was accidentally released from the Wuhan Virology lab after genetic  manipulation. 

Dr Redfield, in the face of overwhelming pressure from China to submerge this hypothesis as unlikely, “went with the science” and the logic. Logic and the law of parsimony (Occam’s Razor) posits the simplest explanation over the one with multiples of causes.  The simplest most likely hypothesis is the one that Dr. Redfield supports. 

This does not prove that Redfield's hypothesis is the correct or valid one.  It does not prove it to be true.  All it says is that it is more likely than the other one needing so many ad hoc additions to support its contention.  Though you woud not know that based on the reporting by the media, the Biden government and WHO agencies, and the talking heads who all seem to suggest that the Redfield hypothesis is “not likely”, or has “no basis in fact”, etc. These comments are the  “less scientific” than the one opined by Redford who has followed  logical protocol to reach his opinion.   

Both hypotheses are unproven neither supported by direct observation or experimental evidence.  We do not know which one is true.  Those who support the more complex hypotheses, the one the Chinese support, have a greater burden of proof than Redfield, not the other way around. 

XI JINPING POISED TO MOVE AGAINST WEAK USA, EXPECT IT

 President Xi Jinping of China has plans for world domination.  He would like to make all of Asia and the East Pacific rim his own backyard.  To accomplish this he strengthened his economy, entangled weak nations in Africa and elsewhere into trade dependency and near economic bondage or subjugation, improved his nations infrastructure, and grown his air and navy services into modern formidable forces.  His ground forces are massive.  Chinese  objectives are no secret.  Chairman Xi announces these regularly and openly.  But what we do not know is when he will make his move or where.  Will it be in the South China Sea, to bully the Philippines, or in South Korea?  Will he threaten Austrailia again?  O will it be a military attack on Taiwan? 

It has been in the cataclysmic events of this last year—of pandemic— which has permitted us a glimpse into the mind of the not-so-inscrutable Mr Xi.  Premier XI made his thought process perfectly clear when he banned all domestic flights from plague-ravaged Wuhan province—where the massive deaths from Covid had the crematoria running day and night without stop. But in that clearly critical time when he could have contained the plague and prevented a world pandemic —he did not ban international flights from plague ravaged Wuhan. Was it purposeful?  How else can we interpret it?   No one in Wuhan was permitted to leave to go to China’s capital city Beijing, but there we no limits on flights to LA, or NYC, Paris or Milan. Many Chinese escaped the plague in Wuhan by flying to the west —becoming pandemic vectors. 

In earlier times, such an act, might be considered bio-warfare, and  a causus belli.   But leaders (and the media) of western nations—with a few exceptions—either ignored the facts or made elaborate excuses for the Chinese—who have so many economic tentacles in high places, which effectively discourage realistic assessments of China’s threats.  

China’s sinister plans worked to that nation’s  advantage.   The pandemic undermined the economy of the west. It  caused massive disruptions in employment, in economics, military preparedness, and turned all eyes inward to deal with face masks, food and toilet tissue shortages, death and disease.  But it strengthened the position of the Communist Chinese state in relationship to the USA and the west.  The pandemic worked for them. They moved closer to reaching their goals. 

China’s political goal for the USA was to get rid of Mr. Trump whom they despised and feared. Their hope was to replace him with a President who would be more amenable to China’s long range agenda .  Mr. Biden was the Chinese choice  The two men have known each other a long time, and the Biden family has long-term business ties and investments for many years with China. The massive spy network the Chinese maintain in the USA, no doubt diligently operated to manifest these preferences in any way they could to weaken one candidate and support the other. 

So is Xi ready to make his move for world domination now?  The Pentagon planners think that Premier Xi’s  move is a few years away.  That seems wishful thinking. 

I think they are wrong. The time is now.  

China sees the USA as poorly led and in political disarray.  They view the USA  economic situation as compromised by the pandemic. and its militarily readiness threatened by a leadership that has spent $4 trillion in its first two months in office on questionable domestic issues. This spending is designed to pander to its domestic base of supporters. The massive outlay of funds practically precludes any further spending, such as on the military.  It is clear that any further expenditures—needed perhaps to sustain a war—would only further compromise a weakened economy.   

China views America’s  leadership as weak, inexperienced and divided.  They see a massive chink in the armor of the USA, a nation led by the oldest man in US history to hold that position. This “alter furz”. leader—unlike Xi in China— is clearly suffering from the normal frailties of advanced years. His lack of energy, confusion, short-fuse temper, limited periods of mental  concentration, limited work day, low energy, and resistance to change are all weaknesses to take advantage of.   They see the US President surrounded by advisors  which are inexperienced, or are advocates of far left fringe political positions that are unpopular at home—another source of political frailty to the Chinese advantage.   The US nation is —unlike China— divided against itself , with the left obsessed with issues of race, gender, and sexual orientation, and non—issues of  “me tooism”, “inclusivity” and “diversity”, and as well with revisionist history and additions to the lexicon of prohibited words.  But the open disdain and often outright hatred of the media and left politicians for more than half of the “other”, the so called “neanderthals” of its citizenry has the impact of an Israeli wall of separation.  

 

These phenomena are all so ‘old style Communist’ you would think that Xi would admire them  But Premier Xi experienced himself the evils and abject failures of the Communist Cultural Revolution and abandoned that terrible idea many years ago.  He must be so amused to see a communist style phony cultural revolution crop up here  in the USA. Amused he may be but, he is also willing to use this stupidity as another weakness of he USA to turn to China’s advantage. 

Unlike in China, the USA  is obsessed with feminizing, transexualizing, and racially “balancing” its military forces and military. leadership.  The Chinese must have noted that the Pentagon itself has been charged with making critical appointment positions—not based on merit alone—but on attempts to balance some vague, undefined racial, gender or transexual quotas. 

They—as practical Chinese— know that such decisions may improve what they consider meaningless issues of “inclusivity  and diversity”  but do not make for a robust and effective fighting force.  The Chinese care little of what a solider looks like, only how well that soldier will fight and win for them. 

So the Chinese see the USA as a weakened nation that will be unwilling and unable to respond fiercely and decisively to  Mr. Xi’s  planned new aggressive and militarily-assertive China.  China is now on the move to establish its hegemony in Asia. Perhaps this very day it is planning a military takeover of Taiwan, or complete abrogation of the 1995 Hong Kong agreement. They see a weak USA that they can push aside with impunity and acheive their goals of hegemony in the far east. 

Xi Jinping is poised to make his move.  Expect it! 

CHINA KICKS THE USA AROUND IN ANCHORAGE. AK

The Chinese took off their velvet gloves revealing  their brass knuckles in Anchorage, Alaska  at the Biden Administration’s first meeting with the Asian economic behemoth on March 17, 2021. The meeting, to which the US team brought their Robert’s Rules of Order and the Chinese carried a set of kali sticks was supposed to reset the US China relationship back to the cozy affair where Joe and Hunter Biden had it prior to Mr. Trump’s intervention.  

But that never happened. The Chinese smelled blood and were looking for a reset of their own—one in which only they decide the rules.They know now they face a weakened nation, torn by dissension, led by a weak old man, and a novice team of desperate left-wingers, all infected with some form of autoimmune disease which drives leadership to self hate and to undermine and demean the nation they lead.  

The Chinese side’s stinging opening remarks vilifying, demeaning and belittling the USA was to  Blinkin and Sullivan just so much normal Democrat party and allied media talking points.  They thought they had just tuned in to  Tapper at CNN or Maddow on MSNBC.  Having no responses to defend their nation, they sat mute and dumbfounded during the tirade. 

Watchng these two uncertain “engineers” hoisted on their own petard might seems poetic justice, but does no service for our maligned and now poorly served nation.   

But when a nation’s misguided  ruling classes, its deep state, its media and elites routinely demean, vilify, falsify and undermine the culture, accomplishments and glorious history of their own nation—it has international consequences.  It weakens us.  It destroys credibility. It is dangerous.  It invites insults and attacks by enemies who have obviously taken particular notice of what the ruling classes think and say and are now using it against  us.

What was that word we once used for those who falsely and intemperately bad-mouth their own country?—“traitor”. 

 

  

SOAPSTONE POTS, 3000 YEARS AGO ON LONG ISLAND

Ceramic cookware was produced in Japan about 15, 000 years ago.  ( it was used to prepare nutritious fish soup)  Here in North America where humans arrived much later, it took another 12,000 years before our hunter gatheres would enjoy the luxury of making a nutritious soup.   

The golden age of human occupation on Long Island may have occurred during the Archaic and Late Archaic from about 10,000 to 3000 before present (BP) when big game nomadic hunter gatherers exploited herds of moose, elk and deer.  The survival strategy of these  specialized hunters depended on exploiting large wild animals which provided all all of their nutritional needs, the skins provided their clothing, bedding  and footwear, and other parts of the animal were sources for many other essential items. These nomads lived well off big game.

When human  populations were small and game herds were  abundant, hunting provided the most nutritious and easily exploitable food source. These specialized hunters were probably tall and healthy, they enjoyed an egalitarian society,  encountered  little conflict, lived in harmony with nature, suffered little from disease, and had plenty of time for leisure. Life was good on Long Island!

However, beginning about 3000 years ago condition began to change.. Human populations were expanding (due to immigration or reproduction). In nature, while the carrying capacity for game animals of a terrane is static, human populations are not.  Thus as natural population growth occurred on Long Island, increased hunting reduced game populations, hunting success of native Americas decreased.  Recurrent periods  of food stress and hunger were the result.  To adapt to these circumstances of food scarcity , early Long Islanders were driven to exploit more diverse food resources. These, often less nutritious foods, were available only seasonally, were widely dispersed requiring greater effort to collect,  had to be  processed  for consumption, and were often mildly toxic or unpalatable than good red meat on the hoof.  The new strategy required major changes in lifestyle and difficult adjustments. 

More diverse foods required longer cooking, more processing to remove toxins and increase nutritional availability, improve palatability and edibility. But the typical methods used by hunters for food preparation remained simple, consisting of “hot rock” boiling, baking in “earth ovens”, and “charcoal broiling”. Such methods were not effective for the more diverse less nutritious foods. 

A  common means of cooking was “hot rock” boiling. With no containers liquids could only be brought to boiling temperature by transferring heat indirectly to the liquid by heating rocks in a near-by fire, then transferring them to the liquid. The problem of a “basin” or “pot” was solved by draping a skin into a hole dug in the soil. The skin was filled with liquid (perhaps water and some tough pieces of meat or bone)  and red hit rocks added to heat the mixture.  In this way a form of “cook pot” was created.   In this way soups  and perhaps stews may have been prepared.   A similar pattern was used in water-tight baskets of bark or other materials    Heat transfer using hot rocks limits the time and volume of foods one is able to prepare. Products which require long slow cooking for tenderization or to remove toxins could not be processed easily in a “skin pot” or bark basket.

So in the Late Archaic the hungry people of Long Island were faced with food shortages and in need of a more effective way to cook less nutritious foods they were being driven to exploit. They were primed for the introduction of a new and radical food preparation technology.  The stone cook pot!!! 

HOW SOAPSTONE POTS MAY HAVE. COME ABOUT.  (An imagined scenario) 

   

A little more than 3000 years ago  in the highlands of what would one day become  Barkhamstead, Connecticut. a small group of Late Archaic Amerindian hunters were returning home from a successful hunt. They climbed along a little used trail which carried them over the top of what is now known as Ratlum Moiuntain.  In single file these men followed a trail through open  forest and then along a prominent ridge line formed by outcropping rocks.  Two of them carried the carcass of a fresh killed deer,  while the others, armed with atlatal throwing sticks and darts as well as bows and arrows, followed behind. 

With the setting sun obscuring the trail blazes the followed, combined with fatigue and the prospect of a long way to go, they stopped to make a temporary camp in the shelter of an overhanging cliff.  The greenish gray rocks of the overhang offered shelter from wind and rain. A grassy sward scattered here and there with slabs and rounded cobbles of the outcrop stone —a  talc-schist —now known as steatite or soapstone— lay where they had fallen from the cliff face. 

The hunters, placed their game in the shade of the outcrop and began collecting fallen dry wood to set up a camp.  They used the greasy-feeling soft greenish rock to form a fire pit, arranging these in such a way as to contain and control the air flow of the fire.  They chose a large flat rock to  prop up as a wind baffle at the back of the pit and to reflect heat toward the base of the the cliff and overhang.   

Darkness descended on the small group as they huddled around the red and orange crackling  flames of the  fire. The flickering light cast long, angled shadows of the men onto the cliff as they skinned part of the deer and cut away portions for their meal.  

They huddled together waiting for the flames to die down to coals, so they could cook their portions of meat directly on the hot ashes.  One of the hunters,  perhaps too impatient for this to happen, aware that the gray-green, fire pit  rocks  absorbed heat and became very hot when close to the fire.  Using a stick to protect his hand, he tipped the flat reflector rock forward and down into the flames,  and instead of dropping his portion of meat directly on the coals and ashes, he placed it on the hot surface of the flat greenstone. 

The meat sizzled and browned as wisps of fragrant meat smoke curled up to disappear among the hot air and  sparks swirling upward into the darkness.  The other hunters followed suit.  They watched, and swallowed hard with anticipation as their pieces  of meat and glistening fat cooked. The rendered fat mixed with caramelized meat juices which oozed out from under the sizzling meat to form a pool of glistening brown liquid that collected around the base of the sizzling morsels. This liquid was a rare treat, for it was often wasted by dripping onto hot ashes when cooking on the coals of an open fire. The hungry hunters, using sharp quartz flakes or sharp, hafted flint blades  cut the cooked deer meat into smaller portions.  As they ate, they repeatedly dipped the cut potions back into the hot puddle of flavorful, slightly salty juices which on steamed the flat, green-colored stone.  

The next morning as the hunters gathered  up the remains of the deer carcass and their weapons to return to their main encampment, one of the men returned  to the still smouldering fire pit.  There he took a hand-full of dry grass and wiped off the greasy slab of green stoneand placing it under his arm he carried it away.  

A few days later,  some other early Pequots returned to the same rock overhang and removed a few other slabs of the soft greasy-feeling stone, which did not crack or shatter in a fire, but held the heat and expanded and contracted little.  When used as a “cook-stone” it had the advantage of holding heat and keeping food hot as well as preventing the loss of the nutritious and delicious meat juices which were possibly the first servings of au jus of the Late Archaic. 

In a short number of years the soapstone outcrop site —now a quarry—was used regularly as a source for the “flat rock” cooking stones.  There, the soapstone, which was so easy to shape in place, was purposely removed in shaped sections.   Not far away, an outcrop of quartzite lay exposed. This rock produced sharp edged hand-tools which could be used to cut and shape the nearby soapstone before removal. In short order several enterprising individuals began manufacturing these and other soapstone objects.

In time, perhaps it was a female member of the ancestor  Pequot tribe, who  while in possession of a particularly thick soapstone cooking slab may have realized that she could alter the shape of her griddle by simply gouging down the cooking surface with a sharpe edged scraper  to form an edged “cooking pan” which could hold even more nutritious liquids  

In this modified form she was able to place the “cooking pan” on top of hot  coals, add water and a few  small pieces of tough,  inedible meat, or cracked deer bones, combined with a handful of hard to digest goosefoot, lambsquarters, amaranth, curley dock or chickweed, seeds and permit the concoction to boil.  Her cooking pan relieved her of the tiresome, difficult and dangerous chore of having to transfer hot rocks from a fire into an “earth pot”.   The improved cooking slab —or “soapstone pan”—was immediately in great demand. The  result was a rush on the soapstone quarry site to produce these new items. 

THE STONE COOKING POT —SHAPED LIKE A TURTLE CARAPACE

It did not take long for someone else to create an actual “cooking pot” which could hold several liters of liquid and would completely eliminate the need for  messy, inefficient “hot rock” cooking forever. 

Perhaps, the over-turned carapace of a box turtle or tortoise was the mental template for the eventual shape of the steatite “pot”.  Native Americans commonly exploited box turtles, terrapins, tortoises and other turtles for food and their empty carapaces may have been used in this manner at an earlier time. 

At this stage, the quarry site at the outcrop was actively in use much of the year to manufacture soapstone cooking slabs, pots and pans.  The quarry workers set up a small camp just below the soapstone quarry and each day they would work the face of the outcrop to manufacture items for their own use and for trade. 

THE PROCESS

The quarry workers picked a section of the outcrop with homogeneous material, without obvious variations in color, mineral content or fractures. 

The process of a pot manufacture  would begin by the worker  inscribing an oval outline in the soapstone outcrop. The deep incision perhaps 12 inches long and six inches at it widest point was cut in the form of an oval with short extensions on each end where “hand lugs” would later be carved.  

Working with flint or local quartz scrapers the artisan would roughly sculpt the base into a rounded oval knob, somewhat like the carapace of an inverted turtle. This rough ‘turtle back’ was then  smoothed with finer shaping and smoothing strokes, perhaps using wood or rubbing stones to effect this process. . 

When the shape was complete, the quarry-worker returned to the original inscribed outline and began the “cutting away process” in which the blank soapstone pot would be removed from the outcrop. Working from the inscribed outline the carver would dig inward.removing material parallel to the outcrop surface to form an oval “turtle back” shaped knob sculpted in relief, but which remained attached to the outcrop only by a small “stem” of soapstone. 

At this stage the worker may have used a wood pry to break the preformed pot away or actually cut it away using longer, perhaps hafted stone tipped tools or sharp wooden sticks. 

Once the pot was free it was removed to another location where the final shaping involved gouging out and smoothing the interior, thinning the sides and bottom to reduce weight, and carving out the side handles or lugs which were used to pick up and move the pot. 

The soapstone pot was now ready for use or trade. 

With the advent of the soapstone pot so ended the age of the nomadic hunter of Long Island. It was an essential element of their slow adaptation to a new survival strategy.  To adapt to the exigency of food stress and famine, the people were forced to diversify their food resource base. Sometime after about 3000BP the people began to occupy  larger, more permanent  encampments, closer to the coast (and to trade networks) , in more diverse biomes where they could exploit a wide variety of foods.  Oak, Chestnut and hickory mast, shellfish, fish, small game, green plants, roots, seeds all became of greater importance and proportion in their diets. These often less palatable, lower nutritional value foods, some even mildly toxic foods, needed longer periods of cooking, more complex preparations to make edible or palatable—-it was the stone pot that made that possible.

WHATEVER HAPPENED TO SIMPLE FUN OUTDOORS?

 On my daily walk yesterday I saw three perfectly good bicycles —though of an older style—put out for the waste collector.  I was sorely tempted to save them from becoming land fill.  What a waste!  

I surmised that the owners must have simply abandoned these out-of-style items, after having fallen prey to marketers hawking the more modern specialized bicycle styles, perhaps the one with very thin tires, or with very wide knobby ones, or even the new (an abomination) motorized variety.  Then again, these folks may have turned to the most recent marketing craze—the stationary bike which keeps the rider indoors, in one place, staring at a huge TV screen with scenes of the outdoors—a virtual nature abandoned for the real thing.  This hypercomplex system combines, a big screen TV, wifi and motivational programs, with physiological analysis—and more. 

What we are missing today is the simple.  In every human endeavor we are required to first purchase expensive special clothing, shoes, head gear, wrist-wear, electronics, reflectors, and tons of equipment before we can even begin to enjoy nature, exercise our cramped limbs, or experience a refreshing new and simpler life style for a short period in our often too complex lives..  After all isn’t that the objective of recreation and sports...getting out doors, away from our technologically dominated lives and down to basics?

But today even the simplest  activity—walking—requires special shoes, clothing, and even wristwear. But If one prefers to move just a little bit faster than a walk— jogging or running—then it is de rigueur to wear tight fitting, air-streamed leggings and upper body wear.  Your footwear must no longer be the simple sneaker of old—but a technological  engineering marvel of exotic rubber and canvas which will cost upward of what a good bicycle would cost in my youth.  

When I was a youngster, fishing was one of my most pleasurable pass times and recreations.  I could walk off in my street clothes to my favorite  fishing.hole.  In my pocket I carried  a  length of fishline wrapped around a piece of cedar shingle. A lead weight and few fish hooks were tucked into the wrapped line. Those days of simple enjoyment are long gone. Fishing is now complicated. One can not leave home without  all manner of poles of enormous complexity and size. Tangle prone, monofilament lines, which when lost overboard never decay, along with a plethora of special hooks, lines and  lures, and overly complex mechanisms required to reel in and cast out these  these “birdnest” prone lines make this form of recreation  more an engineering exercise than fun.  

I will not even mention what has happened to camping, Gear for a camping trip of old would begin by simply collecting  dad’s short axe from the work shed, a box of strike anywhere matches, momma’s old fry pan and  your own olive drab army surplus blanket pulled from your bed. Then one would roll it all into the waterproof  tarpaulin you rescued from the wood pile. A few cans of beans and a slab of bacon tucked into the ends of the roll made it complete.   Now that was simple!. 

I do not imagine us ever going back to the circumstances of my youth. But we may all profit from a new trend—simplicity.  Today we have all fallen prey to the American industrialists, marketers, and retailers, who in collusion with Chinese manufacturers conspire to sell us clothes, footwear, electronics, and all manner of hardware for our recreation all of which- perhaps intentionally—seems so quickly to fall out of style or favor. All of these items use up scarce resources, and in the end become land fill—or worse, unsightly roadside deposits.  

Perhaps we would all be better off keeping it simple when we want to relax, re-create ourselves, exercise or commune with nature. 

ARCHEULEAN HAND AXE ON LOAN

 Many years ago a student in my geology class brought me an authentic Acheulean  hand axe.  He seemed perfectly willing to donate it to the professor of his favorite subject—geology. 

I questioned where he got it.

 “My dad brought it back from a trip to South Africa, years ago.

“Well you better ask you Dad, if you can give it away,“ was my response. 

“That’s  not possible since “he” is no longer living with us.”

“What about your mom?” 

“She was black begging anything that belonged to my dad. I picked ithi out of the dust bin, thinking you would like it” was the response.

I took possession of the hand axe with the proviso that if circumstances changed, the student must return and retrieve it. 

These ancient stone tools, in a characteristic en forme de poire were first discovered in 1859 France, at Saint Acheul in the Somme River valley near Amiens, about fifty miles from the Channel. They were discovered in association with fossils of extinct animals and surmised to be the work of the ancients. They remained an enigma for many years, but finally were determined to be stone tools of our extinct human ancestors.  Other examples of this type (eventually termed “Achuelean” were discovered in a wide swath of Eurasia and Africa, including sites in England, Spain , France, Africa and parts of Asia. They are sometimes found associated with human fossils identified most often as those of Homo erectus, but also with Homo heidelbergensis, and Neanderthals as well and date from 1.76 to 130,000 years ago.

I could not resist the offer and I placed the handsome artifact in a prominent place on my desk.  I looked at it often, thinking of the person who must have made it so many years ago and how it may have been used.  It was knapped (chipped) from a cobble of rhyolite (the fine grained equivalent of granite)  perhaps some as much as 1.8 MYA. Worked on both sides, it was formed into somewhat of a pear shape.  One end was somewhat rounded and the other had been percussion flaked into a sharp point. It was heavy, weighing a bit more than three 3 pounds (@1.4 kg).  I wondered just how it may have been used in the lower Paleolithic by its probable Homo erectus owner.  

It could have been useful as an actual ‘hand axe’ ( as it is termed). When held in one hand, the mass of the rock driven with force would generate a great deal of penetrative force at the point end. Where the force of the blow would be concentrated at the tip of the sharp end. It could easily penetrate some depth into a piece of wood. It would be “handy” if one were attempting to remove a large joint from a fallen game animal or —more likely— the temporarily abandoned carcass of a kill made by a large predator.  The hand axe could easily penetrate skin and flesh and then be useful to dissociate the tendons and other tissues to dislodge a section of the carcass, suitable to carry the morsel away to a safer place for consumption.  It could also be conceivably  useful in digging in the soil, perhaps for roots or tubers. 

The typical pear shape “hand axe”  is most common and perhaps the oldest style, but smaller versions occur in the same contexts. Some are more oval in shape, while others are formed with a more pointed fore-end.  The variation suggests that these stone tools may have been a form of “multi tool’. Perhaps the various “styles” pear shaped, “oval” and “pointy”  are related functionally.  The typical larger “hand axe” may have not only served as a actual functional too. tool but might have served as a source of sharp chips or flakes—or a “core”.  These might have been chipped off the larger hand axe when the need arose, perhaps to shape a piece of wood or skin a small game animal or as a fine cutting tool for some other purpose.  Eventually the large hand axe might begin to take on the shape of an “oval” hand axe and even later the “pointy variety. 

I treasured this artifact for a good three or four weeks. Often thinking about the ancient fellow ( more likely than a female) who had made it and used it perhaps more than a million years ago in far off South Africa  

By the end of the semester my student returned to my office.  Happily for him, his family crisis had ended and his fathers had returned home.   

The two million year old  Achuelean hand axe, passed on again to another admirer its modern day owner. . 

BIDEN ADMINISTRATION: THE WHEELS ARE FALLING OFF ALREADY?

BIDEN ADMINISTRATION: THE WHEELS ARE FALLING OFF ALREADY?

President Biden has been in office less than sixty days and the wheels of his Air Hawk Power Chair are falling off of his less than “experienced” administration all ready. The signs are everywhere.   We don’t feel confident that adults are in charge of the nation out here in the hustings.

A major concern is the obvious lack of direction in regard to the border crisis. Yes terms of description do matter...calling it a challenge does not change the facts. By any other name rotting fish still stinks.  Regarding this issue the administration reminds me of an ant hill that has been knocked over.  The ants are running every which way in apparent disarray. 

By upending all of the sensible border decisions made by the previous administration—without consultation with Congress or even thinking logically about consequences , Biden has created a border disaster that is blowing up in his face and that he will not easily extract himself from. More than 70% of our citizenry  according to recent polls are unhappy with the “open border” policy Biden has adopted, And doing so with no real electoral mandate is also very unpopular..  Let’s not forget that 73 million  voted for his opponent.   Biden has been governing  as if he won in a landslide victory and not a “squeaker” based on the results from a few states with questionable election practices. This is so serious because it is so obviously a “Biden made catastrophe’. Will he continue to manufacture his own disasters...we have enough enemies abroad, we don’t need one in the Oval Office too. 

Then there are his gaffs  On a recent TV interview with Democrat ally and fawning supporter  George Stephanopoulus, Biden was unable to resist being egged on by George to call Russian President Vladimir Putin  “a killer”.  Most of us would have that little voice inside saying, “wait don’t say that, it’s dumb”, but that switch in the president’s brain may be gummed up with plaque.  So he said it. “Umm ahh yes, he’s a killer”.

Biden’s handlers try to keep him far away from actual journalists who might ask probing questions, but they must have felt confident that Mr Stephanopoulus  would keep questions in “snow ball” category, like “Mr. President how do you like the new carpeting in the Oval Office?” But Joe even at his mental best was prone to shooting off his mouth thoughtlessly.  The result of the “Putin is a killer” is unsettling for it underscores the seeming weakness to suggestion of our President and questions his mental capacity. How will he react when he is faced with a serious question?  

The comment other than harm to Mr. Biden, caused no massive harm to international peace,  but it understandably enraged Mr. Putin, who responded with a remark suggesting the President’s mental health must have been compromised, and added a promise of “consequences” as well as the nearly unprecedented decision to recall his ambassador.

The Biden team, with its unsteady infirm coach,  seems at this early stage, a “not ready for prime time” team. The Administration gives the impression that its policies have been torn from the yellowing pages of discarded, refuted tracts by Che Guevara, Fidel Castro, Stokley Carmichael  and Gus Hall,  by young, “just out of college”, “still wet behind the ears” junior staff who have been placed in charge well beyond their abilities or experience. This situation of “kids in the Oval Office” making decisions is the result of the absence of leadership at the White House by a geriatric, little seen or heard,  stealth president, who has yet to hold an open, free press conference.  

Let’s hope some real adults take charge—and soon.  

  

 

SENTIMENTALISM VS SENSE AT THE SOUTHERN BORDER 2021

Or Bad Results From Good Intentions. 

The Biden Administration has foolishly replaced realism with maudlin sentimentalism at the southern border. This policy driven by a dangerous human emotion helps no one, drains population from the Hispanic triangle nations,  magnifies the problem of Covid 19, an unemployment here, and fills the coffers of the coyotes and cartels which profit from illegal human trafficking.  In truth,  the Biden administration is the silent and unknowingly complicit partner of the gang drug cartels. They both act to increase illegal human trafficking. The Biden Administration’s good intentions —its sentimentalism—have generated very bad results. 

What is wrong with “sentimentalism” ? The word is originally from the Latin ‘sentire’: “to experience”, and then modified later to Medieval Latin “sentimentum”, meaning: “feelings, experience, opinion”.  It has lately come to mean an exaggeration of these self-indulgent, emotional responses to events  I use it here in this context to refer to the  over-dependence upon “feeling”, “emotion” over  logical, rational thought.  It may be thought of as the dominance of the “basement brain” (the Limbic System) where emotions hold sway,  over the functions of the “upstairs” brain—the  prefrontal lobe, the site of human  logic and rational thought.  Sentimentalists favor emotional self-gratification, “tenderness”, the desire to “feel good” over making rational, logical decisions. Their limbic system is in control not their prefrontal cortex. It’s ironic since this is the party that a is constantly calling for us to “follow the science” but science is definitely not associated with the basement part of the brain. 

We all have emotional responses that encourage us to act humanely. We all want succor for those who need help.  But these responses are more complex than simply acting in response to these emotions. We may want to desperately pull that accident victim from the car crash site , but or higher intellect warns us that precipitous action may grievously harm the victim-perhaps paralyzing them for life —more than the immediate pain he or she is suffering. To be truly helpful and humane in these circumstances we must  modulate our emotional response and listen to our higher brain.  

The fact is that the practitioner of sentimentalism acts  to assuaged internal (selfish) feelings,  that give the sentimentalist  immediate self-gratification—they “feel good” . These acts benefit the “sentimentalist” and not necessarily the beneficiary— the “victim”  of their actions. .They exacerbate the situation making things worse than before they intervened. 

A recent case of parent “sentimentalists” comes to mind.  These folks tend to make emotional decisions for their children. 

“Oh, how sad it is!” say Johnny’s parents, “Johnny and his friends have suffered so much denial and isolation due to the Covid 19 pandemic. Let’s open the house for them. A class  party would help make up for all they have missed this semester.. We can let Johnny invite just a few friends, and have a keg of beer and some snacks for them!”  

Such behaviors make some parents “feel good”. But was it good for their children or the school population? Not when one of the house guests is a Covid carrier and infects the whole party.  The bad result from good intentions is that twenty students had to be quarantined and could not attend graduation. Here again bad results from good but illogical intentions.    

In the news reports from our southern border today was the picture of a three year old Hispanic boy who was picked all alone up by the Border Patrol. He was on his way to a detention facility. He looked so frightened,  so sad, so confused.  Where were his parents? Where did he come from? He was dressed well....someone was once caring for him.  It is possible this little one was simply whisked away from his caring home by determined ‘’asylum” seekers who, needed a minor to aid in their plan to seek asylum.  Upon reaching their goal did they simply abandoned this child of three?  The poor little tyke what will happen to him?  Will he find a home? Will he be cared for? Will he ever be reunited with his family? 

The sentimentalists  in Washington are responsible for creating and encouraging this sad situation.  They have can glibly stated they want a more “humane” system,  but by encouraging the poor, the needy and the mostly economic migrants to come to the USA border, they are creating a humanitarian crisis on the corner. Their good intentions may make them. Feel good, but have awful, inhumane consequences. Think of what this poor child has now experienced. Is this a more humane response? Is this child better off being ripped from a caring home and now to be confined in a detention center or  placed in unknown, unvetted, foster care? 

Sentimentality has created a southern border crisis of huge proportions. It’s time for a more sensible, realistic and —truly humane policy—humane for both the Biden “sit at home, hand- wringing sentimentalists”  as  well as the sad and displaced young victims of their actions  

 

IGNORING HISTORY: WE NEED A TRAILING ANCHOR RODE

A trailing anchor rode like history helps us keep a true course. 

The deluge of modern events seem to overwhelm us in these last days of “annus  horribilus” the year of Covid. We seem hell bent on ignoring the past, but at our very great peril. The philosophers tell us we learn from our past mistakes and even if we have no better ideas, that past knowledge will at least prevent us from repeating the grievous errors of our predessors.

Somehow that thought reminded me of kinder simpler days.  Years ago  when sailing alone in our 20 foot sloop “Swallow” in Great Peconic Bay, I would habitually trail a fifty foot length of anchor rode.  If somehow, all alone out there,  I fell overboard,  I would still have a chance of grabbing that fifty foot line to pull myself back aboard.

 It served other purposes too. Looking back, over the stern I could always see, how I was proceeding. Was I on a straight course?  Did the self stirring Benji cord i rigged for the  the tiller need an adjustment?  Looking back on the trailing fifty foot life line gave me an assurance of where I had been and where I was going.  And it provided assurance too, that I was going someplace—I wasn’t sailing in a circle.  

We seem to have lost that view in modern life.  Everyone’s  eyes today are directed only over the bow spirit.  No one is looking at the compass, or at our life line trailing in our wake.  

COVID ORIGIN IN WUHAN—-NO REPORT FROM WHO

The World Health Organization  (WHO ) was finally permitted to go to China to study the origins of the world pandemic caused by Covid 19.  Sadly, that organization had to wait more than a year after the discovery of the disease, its world wide transmission and the deaths of more than two million people to make the trip.  Though the WHO claimed they had  cooperation from the Chinese, the promised  interim  report which has to be agreed to by both the Chinese government and the WHO has been “delayed”. We can assume that there are “problems”.  The delay stirred up a response from concerned western scientist.  

An open letter of 26 western scientists complained that due to the constraints placed on scientists by the Chinese, it was “all but impossible “ for the WHO “Wuhan Mission” (January-February 2021)  to conduct a full investigation of the origins of the worldwide plague  and they feared it would  be fatally compromised by “political considerations” since both China and the WHO had to agree to any conclusions.  ( This reminds me of Galileo’s painful pact with the 17th Century RC church inquisition  regarding the centrality of the sun in the solar system).   

A soft pedaling, non-controversial report by “Nature” ( Feb 26,  2021 “Where did covid come from? Five mysteries that remain.” by Smitei Mallapaty) based on interviews with four of the actual lead investigators tries to hew to a “don’t anger the Chinese” line,  but it’s reporting seems to have raised many more questions than it answers. The critical information essential for preventing a repeat of this world wide human and economic disaster such as  “where, how and why”  remain according to the “Nature”article “unresolved mysteries”. 

But we do know a great deal already.  Let’s summarize the non controversial findings. Most scientists agree that the virus originated in bats. As I blogged months back, bats viruses probably evolved in caves where they were transmitted  by airborne means like measles, tuberculosis and small pox. The bats which harbor this species of virus do not occur in Wuhan, but are found much further south inhabiting caves in southern China.  It is likely that another animal species may have been infected by the virus.Badger-ferrets, and pangolins have been implicated as animals which may have been infected by the bat virus. 

These wild animals are used as traditional foods by Chinese. They are  traditionally trapped in the wild in southern China (or raised in cages ) and then transported north to Wuhan where they were sold as wild meats in a Chinese “wet market”. There, the animals were often kept alive in cages until purchased for food at which point they were slaughtered and sold. 

It is these circumstances which appear to be the most likely way in which the virus passed from animal to human host. Furthermore,   it was in Wuhan were the first case of the virus was detected in early December of 2019.  

A Chinese Virology lab where Chinese scientists study and collect samples of bat viruses is also located in Wuhan. It is not a far away from the Wuhan wet market. Most scientists seem to agree that the lab was not the likely source of the outbreak. 

Another fact that is undisputed is that Chinese scientists and physicians in Wuhan who early in the outbreak raised the alarm of human to human transmission of the virus were summarily silenced and forced to publish retractions then they were  punished by the Chinese government in Beijing.   

Another fact is that the Chinese were less than transparent about these late 2019 cases than they should have been. The NY Times and other western media noted at the time that suspicions of purposeful under-reporting were justified in the Covid 19 pandemic, since China had a history of “slow walking” such reports which were damaging to Beijing’s reputation ,  (See “SARS epidemic: China virus badly underreported in Beijing”,   NY Times April 17, 2003). 

The WHO was also complicit in this matter dragging its feet in   a declaration  to officially call the Wuhan outbreak a “ pandemic” until well after the virus had spread world wide. 

Another undisputed fact is that Wuhan, a large city with excellent transportation facilities and well served by regular Chinese international flights was closed down during the outbreak of the virus in that city. Movement of Wuhan inhabitants to other parts of China were interdicted.   Flights to other parts of China were prohibited,   But the Chinese government in Beijing, permitted international flights to California, Milano, and elsewhere.