Pretty cool. Researchers at Chichen Itza and on the Internet have found many of the missing pieces of the feathered serpent columns atop the Temple of Kukulcan/El Castillo. It's like doing a jigsaw puzzle when someone has thrown some of the pieces outside.

Happened to stumble across this clipping from 1959 of a proposed national "Indian Day." No idea what ever became of this effort. I found this because a person I'm currently writing about, Vernon Jackson of the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs (Ore.), was on the committee.

I'm falling behind on my current literature because I only just found out Maya Blue by Dean Arnold had come out in December! amzn.to/4mzNbdm I interviewed Dr. Arnold about his groundbreaking Maya blue research in 2008 for my book on Chichen Itza, but never used it. Maybe my next book!

Parution : Maya dioramas to cut and assemble amoxcalli.hypotheses.org/77488

As a Commonwealth transplant going on forty years, let me be the first to welcome this gaiju migrant to Massachusetts. Gojira-san, yōkoso!

Heading to the equinox celebration at Chichen Itza? Here's my 10-year-old video. Still holds up. youtu.be/N1ySXrmPrsU

1/ I usually post my Chichen Itza-related stuff over at X, but as long as this is here, a few comments. John Rohde, who is to Disney theme park imagineering what Dave Filoni is to Star Wars, is consulting on Disney's new Tropical Americas exhibit with Maya Art-influenced attractions. a thread...

“...a couple began to dance. They held each other like in High School dances in the fifties; I recalled when I worked in the woods and the bars of Madras, Oregon. That short-haired joy and roughness— America—your stupidity. I could almost love you again.” Gary Snyder #poetry

Eagles & jaguar carvings on the Platform of the Eagles & Jaguars at the Maya archaeological site of Chichen Itza in the Yucatan of Mexico. #Archaeology #culture #Maya

The indigenous people of today's Central Oregon carved hundreds of pictographs on local geology. Much of the art is intact, but occasionally some joker decides to deface it. This vandal scratched "Popeye" over a petroglyph. Popeye enters the public domain Jan. 1; the pictograph was before copyrights

How Christmas is celebrated at Chichen Itza!

Spending the holiday writing Central Oregon history. Here's a Christmas greeting that anyone who has spent time in the area will recognize even though this card is more than a century old.

This started by the town of Homun, a few kilometers outside Merida, Yucatan, fighting a pig farm. I can't believe development interests in Yucatan will not fight this lawsuit considering how widespread cenotes are throughout the state. Best of luck to the plaintiffs.

<today's research> I'm writing about police procedures in the 1950s, so looking for best practices of the period. Here's a Google Books excerpt from the auxiliary officers manual in the Washington State Highway Patrol. Number three--what to do when you encounter an atomic bomb--is solid advice.

<today's research> I'm writing about police procedures in the 1950s, so looking for best practices of the period. Here's a Google Books excerpt from the auxiliary officers manual in the Washington State Highway Patrol. Number three--what to do when you encounter an atomic bomb--is solid advice.

Chichen Itza's Temple of Kukulcan pyramid adorns a stained glass window in a desanctified Latter Day Saints church in Washington DC.

Just connected on this platform with an old Wikipedia/social media colleague, @infrogmation.bsky.social . In his honor, here's one of his mom's photos of #ChichenItza from 1973 that really caught my attention. This tunnel into El Castillo was dug in 1931! Incredible it was open 42 years later!

<today's research> I love these stories. Here a WWII vet in 1952 who embezzles $17K (~$200,000 today) "for a woman." Five years later he does it again at a potato firm in Central Oregon. After he gets out of prison, he returns to his hometown where he does accounting/taxes for 30 years. Small towns!

<today's research> I love these stories. Here a WWII vet in 1952 who embezzles $17K (~$200,000 today) "for a woman." Five years later he does it again at a potato firm in Central Oregon. After he gets out of prison, he returns to his hometown where he does accounting/taxes for 30 years. Small towns!

Big fan of Teobert Maler's 19th century photographs of Maya archaeology, not so much a fan of the man. The latest special issue of Arqueologia Mexicana has a big spread, lots of photos, with text by Afredo Barrera Rubio (in Spanish). Only $5 US for digital version.

Big fan of Teobert Maler's 19th century photographs of Maya archaeology, not so much a fan of the man. The latest special issue of Arqueologia Mexicana has a big spread, lots of photos, with text by Afredo Barrera Rubio (in Spanish). Only $5 US for digital version.

<today's research> History of the insanity plea in Oregon, specifically 1961's Senate Bill 96 that the Legislature approved and would have changed the definition from not being able to distinguish right from wrong to an inability to conform to societal norms. Gov. Mark Hatfield vetoed it.

<today's research> Interviewed an 83-year-old-man, a witness in a murder investigation who was never called testify. When I called him he was on a 15-foot-ladder AND REFUSED TO HANG UP. Did I have any potential liability if he fell?

<today's research> I skipped this book when it came out because of its too-trendy subtitle, fearing it was revisionism. Today I'm writing about Franz Boas because he threw #ChichenItza archaeologist Sylvanus Morley under the bus for being a spy so I pulled it out. It was amazing! amzn.to/3CCAaxZ

<today's research> Getting ready to interview an 80-plus-year-old woman who was a witness in a murder trial held more than sixty years ago. There's a very good chance she is the last one alive who attended.

<today's research> The 1954 Democratic Party (a half century the underdog in the state of Oregon) staged a "Blue wave." The state elected Richard Neuberger and Edith Green (Senate, House respectively) and made gains in both chambers of the Legislature, How? This man www.politico.com/story/2017/0...

Someone please explain why my "Follow" feed doesn't include the folks I'm following that I want to see, but my "Discover" feed has them, usually right at the top. Isn't "Discover" for people I DON'T follow?

Very sorry to hear of the passing of archaeologist William Ringle. This article made a strong impression when I read it early in my research on #ChichenItza. www.jstor.org/stable/26308...

<today's research> How many knew that in 1922 catching Yellow Fever makes you hallucinate that the ruins of Chichen Itza are in a mountainous region? From World's Work magazine.

<today's research> How did Pelton Dam, on the Deschutes River in Central Oregon, get its name? I did a lot of digging and came up with my theory, that it was named for the man who designed an early water turbine. The Oregon Geographic Names book, truly a wonderful resource, says I'm wrong.

Building my literary pipeline for 2025. I'm shopping three book proposals and a non-fiction novel (or is it "literary non-fiction?") plus several magazine articles. Yesterday my former agent declined to rep one of the book proposals, so I'm reworking to send to the next agent prospect in the queue.🤞

Today's research: The secret history of Oregon's Pelton Dam. This project went all the way to the US Supreme Court. And my dad, the district attorney in the county where the dam was proposed, played a role (including a clandestine meeting with Oregon's governor).

Here's a story I wrote for my local newspaper in 1993 celebrating my Cape Cod hometown's most famous citizen, the FIRST president elected to non-consecutive terms, Grover Cleveland. This is a tale of a scandal that almost was.

Five years ago ESPN blitzed the airways claiming American football hit the 150-year mark. Complete crap. The real Century-Plus-Fifty date is today, when Harvard played McGill in Cambridge, Mass in 1874. THAT was the first modern football game, not the Princeton-Rutgers soccer match of 1869.

This biography of Emmett J. Scott, Booker T. Washington's righthand man and power broker in his own right, came out last year with nary a review or whisper. What a shame. A half century in the making, according to the editor who finished it for late author Maceo Dailey. amzn.to/4a5hIcB

#HistoryOutOfContext Baltimore American, 16 May 1892

Yesterday I needed to know the name of the editor of the Harvard Graduates Magazine in 1895. All issues for that year are online, but with no masthead or even Table of Contents. Fortunately I had purchased a lot of old Harvard mags on eBay 20 years ago. Voila! But why did copiers omit those pages?

#EndNoteFodder Today I learned that Harvard students for s**ts and giggles held "ram riots" in 1902 to protest mutton in the dining hall. Whenever 🐑🐑🐑 was served (often, apparently), students protested by making farm animal noises. By nefarious politicking student Harry Kirtland got the mgr fired.

#ENDNOTEFODDER Another example of great stuff turned up during research that has nothing to do with my biographical subject. Still, I'll try my best to stick it in an endnote. Theodore Roosevelt: “For heaven’s sake don’t give that man [Philip B. Stewart] the impression I want to knife a grizzly!”

Still figuring out what to do with this BlueSky account. Not enough critical mass of users who research/write about subjects I'm pursuing. Might be a great place to put the history I find that ends up on the cutting room floor. Coming up in the next few days a story of unsolved murder from Boston.

1/ While researching Boston African American lawyer William H. Lewis (1868-1949), came across this: In 1944 he defended a man accused with 17 others of bookmaking. While reading through newspaper clippings, I suddenly saw Lewis' client defended by "William H. White." Who the heck is William White?

If you write history there is nothing more painful then finding an amazing anecdote and then realizing you shouldn't use it. Today's tantalizing gem: In 1948 someone(s) plant explosives in the field at Harvard Stadium, planning to detonate them during the sold-out Harvard Yale game. A "prank!"

Black History Month: On Halloween 1891 two predominantly white colleges had three African American football players named William--W.H. Lewis and W. Tecumseh Sherman Jackson of Amherst College plus Massachusetts Institute of Technology's W.A. Johnson--on the field at the same time! Amherst won 24-14

1/ Went down a fun little rabbit hole last night. While looking for something else I came across a 1978 speech Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall gave at Howard Law School. He mentioned that when he was a student he witnessed William H. Lewis present a case before the Supreme Court. What case?

There are certain topics that come up in my research that I consider third rails and any writer would be wise to avoid. One is HP Lovecraft and anything to do with the Cthulhu Mythos. But darn it, here I am trying to fit it into a chapter. It's only six graphs, but I'm already breaking into a sweat.

An article worth your valuable time. I wish I was inclined to write a book about women Mesoamericanists. Zelia Nuttall, Anne Morris, Adela Breton, Tatiana Proskourikoff, Linda Schele, Alice Le Plongeon--all fascinating individuals. www.smithsonianmag.com/history/zeli...

Nailed it. www.nytimes.com/2023/10/10/m...

RESEARCH OUT OF CONTEXT. Alfred Maudslay pulls out his pen to send Nature a few choice corrections to William Henry Holmes' chapter on Chichen Itza in Archaeological Studies among the Ancient Cities of Mexico (1895). If you own a copy like I do, print these and add them as an errata.

If you love Time Team, the UK archaeology series, you'll be happy to know that it has returned on YouTube. In the latest episode, they bring back former regulars Tony Robinson, Carenza Lewis, Stuart Ainsworth, and John Gater, as well as a few others. youtu.be/f_RRt6B-dxY

RESEARCH OUT OF CONTEXT. Found this copy of a lantern slide in a U. of Notre Dame architecture archive with almost zero provenance. An unknown artist's early 20th century recreation of, I presume, the facade of Las Monjas at Chichen Itza. It's a mash-up of various 19th century illustrations.