The Real El Dorado

 

                  

 No, not this one, but it is fabulous in a different sense.  We remember the Coronado  Expedition's search through the Southwest for the wealthy Seven Cities of Cibola, and DeSoto's likewise for precious metals to the east in North America.  The persistent legend of El Dorado brought Sir Walter Raleigh to Guiana in South America twice, with, similarly, no results.  In an age when the maps showed many imaginary lands, one of which was supposed to be inhabited by people whose heads protruded from their stomachs, there was a lot more belief than factual knowledge.  Sadly for the ill-fated plunderers, there was truly an El Dorado, but they missed it.  We would get lost, too, as the phrase really means "the golden one," not the name of a place.

It was far away and long ago (as all good stories should begin).  Conquistador Don Gonzalo Jimenez de Quesada, conquerer of New Granada for the Spanish empire in South America, was said to have found so much gold in his searches through the forbidding interior that the pile in his Bogota courtyard was so high it could obscure a horse and rider behind it. But tales themselves grow ever taller with time and distance.

Don Quesada had heard from captured natives of the gold- and jewel- rich kingdom of the Muiscas, where the golden one himself ruled.  In 1536 he took an army of 800 to the plains and valleys of central Columbia to find Tisquesusa, the Zipa of Bagata (only 166 reached the end of the journey alive). The Muisca, speakers of the Chibcha language family, were numerous and advanced (considered one of the four such societies along with the Aztec, Maya and Inca), possessing salt mines, farms, skilled artisans and a thriving trade in gold and emeralds.  The Zipa was killed, his successor was boiled with burning fat, and their Sun Temple at Sogamoso was looted and burned.  Other than the rulers' ornaments and the contents of the temple, however, there was not a whole lot of gold, as most of it was beaten into paper-thin sheets for ceremonial uses.

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                                                      Reconstruction of the Sun Temple

They were successful in finding El Dorado, as it was Tisquesusa himself! Annually, he was covered in gold dust by his people before entering Lake Guatavita just to wash it off as an offering to its goddess.  This became the legend which traveled so far and wide.

                                                           Tisquesusa imagined

"And then you came with sword held high

You did not conquer, only die."

"Just Sayin' " Post No. 400: The Coolest

 

If you plan to motor West...

...You might find yourself at 5871 Hollister Avenue in front of the Mercury Lounge, the coolest bar in Goleta, California.  It's cozy and retro, filled with vintage Midcentury furniture and featuring an extensive beer list and fine local wines.  There's a pool table, live music, a new outdoor patio tucked in the back and even a little parking (that much sought-after amenity in Southern California).

The Mercury began its long run in 1957 as Gus' Cocktail Lounge, said to have been a real dive bar.  In 1995, new owners transformed it, and it's been a hit with nearby University of California Santa Barbara students and faculty ever since.  You're as likely to have a UCSB grad student serving you as an actor would be in Los Angeles.  The local residents are still fans, too, as in Gus' day.

Goleta is both a university town and a solidly small business and working class one.  Although the cachet and elegance of nearby Santa Barbara are lacking, the town exhibits easy charm and funkiness, epitomized by the Mercury.

You can visit, but you probably can't stay.  The median home listing price is around $840,000. How that works for students, cooks and auto parts counter employees, I can't figure.  But the area does have good schools (Katy Perry is an alum).

(Geography factoid: Although its name sounds made up (like "Nolita" or " Tribeca") goleta means schooner in Spanish.   A ship was wrecked at the mouth of the lagoon in the late 18th century, and was still visible for a long while; it even shows up on an 1840 map.)

  

There Is No Cure

 

                                           "I was born this way". --Lady Gaga

We will (half of us, anyway) be puzzled for a long time about what led such a large group of people to storm the Capitol on January 6, trash it, try to assassinate elected officials and cause a half dozen deaths.  This in spite of the fact that everything they were violently riled up about had been proven over and over not to be true. How could those believers in "we support our police" and "law and order" and the Constitution hypocritically make such a savage attack  on the police and try to stop Congress from carrying out its Constitutional duties?

A study in the U.K. showed that the amygdala, the evolutionarily early part of the human brain (also referred to as the reptile or lizard brain) is larger and more active in those with a conservative orientation than a liberal one.  In addition, the anterior cingulate cortex, the region associated with managing information, decision making, ethics and dealing with uncertainty is favored by people with a liberal personality. The left insula area, which is also larger in conservatives, is associated with an emotional sense of disgust or repellence.  One can guess this faculty was pretty essential for our distant ancestors, who had to learn to avoid bad smells caused by dangerous pathogens, and on a larger scale, social threats, such as almost all outsiders.  Counterintuitively, it seems larger amounts of grey matter in some brain areas indicate a less mature brain.  One that can rather easily be manipulated through an unrelenting focus on the negative and playing on the anxiety over perceived scarcity ("they're taking our jobs!") and an obsession with self-protection.  

So it looks like our political bent derives more from  DNA than from our environment.  Take a look at the life of the person pictured above, Eileen Garrett (1893 - 1970).  Her parents committed suicide when she was an infant, and her angry, unloving, abusive aunt had to take her in.  At age four Eileen, disassociating and escaping into her own world in order to survive, developed three imaginary companions who she said taught her to observe adults' tones and cadences of speech and interpret facial expressions.

 Things did not get better for her after a miserable childhood, unfortunately, as she had three marriages and lost three of her four children.   Later in life she became known as a psychic who channeled four distinct exotic personalities, speaking in their voices during a trance state.  Studied by several psychologists in the 1930s, Eileen came to realize these did not have an objective existence but rather came from her subconscious, and that her supposedly psychic predictions were no more accurate than guessing.  The point is that Mrs. Garrett, despite everything,  did not shatter and undergo a psychotic break like the January 6 mob, but had a saving balance between the higher-functioning right side of the brain (intuition, imagination and inspiration) and the complementary left side (reading, writing and arithmetic).  Had she been driven by a predisposition for the primitive reptilian brain area instead, Eileen would probably have become a serial killer rather than the successful writer, publisher and executive that she did.

But, "If you're dumb enough to fall for a conspiracy theory, you're dumb enough to fall for another."  -- Mark Evanier

                                       

We Aren't Going to Make This Easy

 

About one-third of those people waiting for their $600 stimulus payment have not received it, due to an error wherein it was sent to a temporary account set up by their last year's tax preparer (TurboTax, H&R Block, for example) and then bounced back to the IRS.  Actually, an error or two is understandable given the very short time they had to get the program out.  What is not understandable is the answer people got upon visiting the IRS website to find out what was going on (the foregoing information not being available):  "Payment Status #2 -- Not Available."  What that was, of course, was not defined.  (It means " when your $600 is returned to us by the old tax preparer, you must claim a Recovery Rebate Credit on your 2020 tax return to be filed after the end of January 2021").  Even if you understood that's what "Payment Status #2" meant, which you would not, how would the average person preparing their own return know to claim that to finally receive their stimulus,  sometime in the Spring after they had gone bankrupt from unpaid bills ?

Bad design, in the software programming/web design world or of physical things is design that doesn't work for normal people, doesn't make sense and is not clear or intuitive.   Is that too much to ask, and why must things be so frustrating, so Byzantine, for no good reason? 

 Compare the current-day car dashboard, if it can be called that, with the one just above.  A study showed that most people only use six of the information screen's hundreds of functions hidden behind one menu after another.  Heaven has forbidden, it seems,  that words or understandable abbreviations be used instead of obscure and silly icons. 

The digital speed display is much more clear and easy to read quickly than an old-fashioned analog dial.  However, while looking at the information screen which is not directly in front of you for five seconds, at 65 miles per hour, means you have gone 475 feet with your eyes off the road.  "Danger, Will Robinson!"  

Now I will freely admit to being Old School, and we all prefer what we're familiar with, past days being so much better and all that.  But I'm not reactionary, afraid of change or unimpressed by the rapid positive advances we encounter each year, like solar power, electric vehicles, better medicine or even those potentially life-saving home security or auto backup cameras.  And quick home delivery of practically anything we might want or need?  Yes, please. 

But things do not have to be done so badly!

 

What Are Belgians Doing In The Amargosa Desert?

                                                     There's something eerie about ghost towns
 

We did country reports for a few years in school, and mine for 6th grade was about Belgium.  I figured because it is a small country, it could be covered fairly well without leaving too much un-reported on.  The cover sported a hand painted national flag in shiny enamel and the title carefully lettered in white (it was only seven letters; glad I didn't pick Turkmenistan!).  Inside were postage stamps, a Belgian coin or two, and a recipe for brioche along with as much entertaining data as would fit -- my first multimedia production, considering the limited resources available at the time.

So it was quite a thrill for a much older former 6th grader to visit this jewel of a country a few years ago; the absolute highlight being a few days in the small medieval city of Bruges where the people were as mannerly, helpful and obviously intelligent as one could hope for.   We would gladly just have stayed and not come back at all.  However, Charles Albert Szukalski, a sculptor, did leave this green and delightful nation to go to what seems the unlikeliest place possible: the ghost town of Rhyolite in the vast Nevada desert (the town was named after an igneous rock, but a 1904 gold discovery was its reason for being out there). And Charles Albert's reason to be there?

In 1984, he installed "The Last Supper," a group of white, ghostly figures made of plaster, fabric and fiberglass arranged as in the daVinci fresco.  Szukalski purchased almost eight acres of land to establish the Goldwell Open Air Museum and then  recruited three other Belgian sculptors to add their inspirations.  As he created two more works, the spooky bicyclist "Ghost Rider" and "Desert Flower" (made of car parts), they contributed:

"Lady Desert" - Hugo Heyrman

"Icara" - Andre Peeters

"Tribute to Shorty Harris" - Fred Beruoets. (Shorty was the prospector who made the gold discovery)

"Sit Here!" by Solie Siegmann was moved from a Las Vegas museum to join the quirky outdoor gallery.

   

In 2000, after the founder's passing, an artists' work space, gallery and visitors' center was established in a new red barn-like building. 

 After watching "Breaking Bad" or the movie "Casino," we always say, "Nothing good happens in the desert!"  But sometimes, something good does.  

  

Headroom

 

                                        Our old friend Max

A few years ago, an organization called TreeVitalize planted trees along one side of 10th Street in the next town to the north, and it was quite an improvement for that light industrial/retail strip which before did not have much to brag about aesthetically.  But...they were planted on the side with the power lines.  They have since grown, as one would expect them to, right up through the telephone cables on their way up to the electrical ones at the top.  In a few more years, the trimming trucks and crews will be at work chopping them down to size (that is, mutilating them).  Trees need headroom, as do people and even businesses

Businesses usually have to grow and evolve to survive, sometimes becoming very different in the process -- Toyota began with making looms! Harley Davidson just introduced a line of electric bicycles, seeing a growing market where their traditional one is shrinking.  The railroads, faced with a major change in freight movement with the advent of the Interstate system, forgot they were in the transport, not just rail, business for a while but eventually learned to move cargo containers and even the trailers from semi trucks on their flat cars.   Others just can't adapt. The formerly premier auto brand Packard sold a few of their last model in 1956 then sadly left the stage.  They did have new product ideas, but not soon enough, and lacked the capital to implement them in any case.   No headroom, like the trees. 

Humans can start life with opportunities or make them for themselves. They can be limited to little growth by their economic or social situation, the latter often being a matter of religious or political restraints throughout their environment wherein everything is prepackaged; further exploration or thinking not being encouraged or even tolerated.  A few, regardless of where they came from, like daVinci, Alexander the Great, Michael Jordan or even entrepreneurs Musk and Branson, are phenomena, seemingly never running out of headroom.  Wildly successful artists like Picasso, the Beatles or Zane Grey (90 still-popular books to his credit) sought out new experiences, forms of expression and life experiences in order to keep growing and remain vital, brushing limitations aside.  All of them had a rough beginning in poverty and/or rejection, but saw the blue sky above them, and not a ceiling.

 

 

The Tontine

I found, a few years ago, a life insurance certificate showing a $1000 policy taken out on my mother by hers in the early 1930s.  The practice back then was for an agent to stop weekly and collect 25 cents or so.  I guess it was allowed to lapse, because the successor company had no record of it (the result I expected).  The certificate was fancy enough to keep, it seems.

We might think of personal security plans such as retirement funds, life insurance and annuities as rather modern, but various forms have been developed over hundreds of years.  Benevolent societies have provided security in the form of burial insurance and old-age homes before Social Security, and those of more substantial means have had access to trusts, inheritances and such devices as the Tontine.

What?  That word sounds like it refers to a local church officer, like a beadle or sexton.  It is, however, a strange stew of lottery, insurance and annuity, and has been around since before Lorenzo Tonti (now we get the name) proposed it to the royal government of France in 1653 as a fund raising idea (Louis XIV spent huge sums on continental wars and was always in search of cash)  It was officially offered to the public in the Netherlands in 1670 and in France in 1689, unfortunately for Lorenzo, after he had died.

The idea is that subscribers contribute an amount to build the fund and the government paid out regular interest as with the Treasury bonds we are familiar with.  Due to growth of investments, the annuity increases as participants pass away and are paid no more.  The macabre end of the scheme is that the last surviving subscriber takes everything remaining.  That this process might induce some to bump others off before them was actually the storyline of a 1996 Simpsons episode, in which Mr. Burns attempts to do exactly that to Grandpa Abe.

Tontines were quite popular for a century and a half, but as people learned how to game the system they fell out of favor.  The plan is still legal and in use today, and there is talk of broadly reviving it.  It was also widely used later on to fund building projects such as hotels and the Tontine Coffee House on New York City's Wall Street (1792) -- the first home of the NYSE, believe it or not.

                                             

                              Original home of the NY Stock Exchange

Some people are grasshoppers, living day to day, and some are ants, always planning ahead.  It's generally better for you the more the ant type you are, but as they say, people plan and the gods just laugh.