The Archaeology of De Soto's Route

In 1539, Hernando de Soto landed at Tampa Bay in Florida with about 600 companions an embarked on an epic trek across the U.S. southeast. In May, 1541, the expedition reached the Mississippi River, which de Soto called the Rio Grande de la Florida. The next year de Soto died, probably in central Louisiana; about half of his men made it back to Spanish territory. The accounts of the expedition by de Soto's Secretary, Rodrigo Ranjel, and the King's agent, Luys Hernández de Biedma, are important sources for the Indian tribes and kingdoms of the region.

The exact route taken by de Soto's men remains highly controversial. As you can see from the map above, attempts to equate every feature in the expedition narratives with some spot on a modern map result in convoluted routes, which seem implausible to some historians. In recent years there have been several claims of archaeological evidence for de Soto's men, in the form of 16th-century Spanish artifacts. However, most of these claims are disputed. After all, de Soto traded beads and other goods to Indians along the route, and no doubt his men lost or discarded other objects. The most solid archaeological evidence of the expedition comes from a site in modern Tallahassee that has produced Spanish coins and beads of the right period. De Soto made his first winter camp at the Apalachee village of Anhaica, and some historians think the Tallahassee site is Anhaica.

Another possible site is an Indian village on the Ocmulgee River in Georgia, where finds include nine trade beads of the right period and several small iron objects. Others area a small fort in western North Carolina and a large Indian site in Arkansas.

Now a claim has been made for another site in north Florida, near Orange Lake in Marion County. The finds  here include Spanish coins and blue glass beads (above).

The finding of all these Spanish artifacts, a real needle in a haystack problem, testifies to how much archaeology has now been done in North America, and how many people are fascinated the great problem of working out de Soto's route. According to some interpretations, the expedition may actually have been one of the most important events in North American history. By the 1680s, the Indian population of the southeastern US had fallen by at least 75%, and diseases introduced by de Soto may have been responsible.

A Roman Sarcophagus from the Turkish Sea

Turkish newspaper photo of a pristine Roman sarcophagus, found by an amateur diver, being lifted from the sea floor off western Turkey.

The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum

Although I have been visiting Boston for 30 years now, today was my first trip to the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. I loved it. I went with my sister, an art history professor, and I completely agree with her that it is one of the best museums in the world. It is less a collection of works of art than a work of art itself, a giant collage or scrapbook creating a single thing from many diverse pieces. The individual works are splendid in themselves, but together they are something much more.

The museum's creator was Isabella Stewart Gardner (1840-1924), a wealthy socialite and patron who befriended, among others, John Singer Sargent and James McNeill Whistler. She built the museum specifically to hold her collection, and it shows. The windows, arches, and colonnades in the magnificent central courtyard were all purchased in Europe, brought back, and installed in her creation. The building is plain on the outside, so it is something like a Venetian palazzo turned inside-out.

There are wonderful paintings, yes, but lots of museums have wonderful paintings. What is extraordinary about the Gardner is the way they are assembled in rooms with splendid doors, fabulous fireplaces, astonishing furniture, and brilliant wall coverings. Sargent's El Jaleo is displayed in a room decorated with majolica tiles, pieces of Romanesque churches, and other beautiful, vaguely Spanish things.

Another rooms are devoted to Dutch art, Asian art, and Venetian art (above). But I found that I was so taken with the doors, cabinets, lintels, and random bits of sculpture that I hardly noticed most of the paintings. It was a fabulous afternoon.

Isabella Stewart Gardner by John Singer Sargent.

Weight, in and of itself, Won't Kill You

More evidence that just being overweight leads to no higher risk of death. These researchers found that only severely obese people had a higher death risk during their six-year study, and then only if they also had diabetes or hypertension.

Since being overweight can give you diabetes or hypertension, or at least help you get them, these are not really separate variables. But other studies have shown that people who are overweight because that's the way their bodies are are not in any special danger.

Being overweight is dangerous mainly because it is associated with leading a very sedentary life, eating badly, and psychological factors like depression, anxiety, and severe stress. If you get exercise, eat reasonably, and are happy, your belly will probably not kill you.

Svetloyar Lake and the Myth of the Sunken City

Across the globe, humans are fascinated by stories of cities disappeared beneath the waves. Atlantis is of course the most famous, followed by the Celtic Ys, but there are many, many other such stories. One is in Russia, where Svetloyar Lake near Nizhny Novgorod has long been rumored to hold the lost town of Kitezh:

Residents of Nizhny Novgorod are sure that the legends of their Kitezh date from the earliest days of Rus’, but the first mention of this sacred city dates back to the modern times. The death of Prince Georgy Vsevolodovich under the walls of Kitezh walls was outlined in the Kitezh Chronicle, which was created by Old Believers in the 1780s. According to the Chronicle, the city was founded by Prince Georgy. The book also mentions a Maliy Kitezh (Small Kitezh) on the banks of the Volga River, but notes that both cities were destroyed during the Mongol invasions. The Chronicle does not mention the disappearance of the city into the lake – just that it disappeared after it was destroyed and all its inhabitants killed.

However, the Old Believers – Russian Orthodox dissenters who never reconciled themselves to the Russian church reform of the 17th century – found much to like in the idea of a hidden city where the righteous live and work in prayer, and where only the chosen ones can enter, and gradually the legend of Kitezh emerged.

There has long been an annual procession from a chapel on Krestovozdvizhensky Hill to a spot on the lake shore where Kitezh was thought to have been. However, earlier archaeological expeditions had failed to find any sign of a sunken city. Then in the summer of 2011 archaeologists returned, this time focusing on their efforts on the site of the procession. They found evidence of a medieval settlement. In the lake nearby they found the sunken wooden walls of a large house. Once again we see that folklore is capable of preserving information, like the location of a town, accurately for centuries.

What I find most interesting about these stories is their appeal. Why are we more fascinated by cities sunken under water than those buried under ground? Is is some primal psychological thing, as a Freudian might argue? Is it the violation of the boundary, so fundamental in our thinking, between land and sea? Is it just weird?

Too Many Scientists

The Post catches on to an issue that the Chronicle has been reporting on for years now, the glut of science Ph.D.s:

Michelle Amaral wanted to be a brain scientist to help cure diseases. She planned a traditional academic science career: PhD, university professorship and, eventually, her own lab.

But three years after earning a doctorate in neuroscience, she gave up trying to find a permanent job in her field. Dropping her dream, she took an administrative position at her university, experiencing firsthand an economic reality that, at first look, is counterintuitive: There are too many laboratory scientists for too few jobs. . . . Although jobs in some high-tech areas, especially computer and petroleum engineering, seem to be booming, the market is much tighter for lab-bound scientists — those seeking new discoveries in biology, chemistry and medicine.

The competition for any sort of prestigious, rewarding work is intense in our world, and no kind of credential guarantees you such a job. The situation has been especially dire in physics for decades, but now that the vast expansion of biological sciences is slowing, the job market for biologists is bad, too.

In the sciences, one reason for the glut of Ph.D.s is that university laboratories use science graduate students as low-paid laborers in the trenches, doing most of the grinding work at the lab bench. The scientist in charge is often mainly an administrator, dealing with grant proposals and papers and rarely getting his or her hands on an actual experiment. It is thus in their interest to take in large pools of graduate students even as the job market stagnates.

The Garden in the Heat.

One hundred degrees (38 C), but my flowers are loving it. These lilies just burst into bloom, and my sunflowers are ten feet (3 m) tall.

Americans Need to Wake Up to the Republican Agenda

Bill Burton and Sean Sweeney are Democratic operatives who founded a SuperPac explicitly modeled on Karl Rove's, to attack Romney the way  Rove is attacking Obama. But they have been having trouble with their message:

Burton and his colleagues spent the early months of 2012 trying out the pitch that Romney was the most far-right presidential candidate since Barry Goldwater. It fell flat. The public did not view Romney as an extremist. For example, when Priorities informed a focus group that Romney supported the Ryan budget plan — and thus championed “ending Medicare as we know it” — while also advocating tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, the respondents simply refused to believe any politician would do such a thing.

I think many Americans who vote for Republicans feel this way. They really don't believe that Republicans would privatize Social Security or Medicare, especially not while cutting taxes on the rich. They either don't know that this is what Republicans have promised, or think they will forget about it when push comes to shove.

I wish I had this confidence. I fear, alas, that Paul Ryan -- a worshiper of Ayn Rand -- and his friends mean exactly what they say. I think that if Americans ever come to understand this, the Republicans will be wiped out of Congress. But if they get into power they could do a lot of damage before that happened.

The Agris Helmet

This splendid Celtic helmet was found in 1980s in a cave in western France. It dates to the fourth century BCE, the style called La Tene. It is made of iron, plated with gold. As you can see, the Celtic art of this period was much influenced by Greek art, but not imitative of it.

A Civilized Human in a Brutish Age

Jacob Burckhardt was a nineteenth-century Swiss historian best known for big books on the cultural life of ancient Greece and  Renaissance Italy. He used his immersion in the past as a substitute for conventional religion, and for the faith in progress shared by many of his contemporaries. As his student Nietzsche sensed, he was very close to nihilism, but he kept himself out of despair by contemplating the glories and tragedies of our past. He was especially fascinated by characters who kept their minds on art or philosophy as states and societies collapsed around them. When he despaired of his own Europe, he read about men who had created great art or thought amid political and military disaster. Via Andrew Sullivan, this is from an essay that British conservative Michael Oakeshott wrote about Burckhardt in 1954:

If the world were disposed to collapse, ... not belief, but courage was required; courage that exhibits itself first in a very modest view of one’s own importance and of the importance of the present state of the world, and secondly in a determination to enjoy while enjoyment is still possible, to preserve in oneself the remnants of a civilized life, to encourage others to do the same, and to give shelter to what might be allowed to reappear if events in the future took a different turn.

I live in a comparatively prosperous, peaceful, and happy time, but even in our era the cause of civilization suffers defeats. At such times -- such as after 9-11, when Americans went crazy for war and retribution -- I react as Burckhardt did. I remind myself that this, too, will pass, and take solace from contemplating the things that endure. Our civilization has endured far worse crises than anything I have seen in my lifetime, and it goes on. I imagine how much worse it would have been to live through the 1930s, or 1348, or 410. And yet through it all, through pain and grief and loss, we create, we invent, we glorify. People who lived through war, anarchy, plague, pogrom, and collapse built cathedrals, wrote symphonies, and carved marble angels who long outlived their frail organic bodies. They got on with life. And that is what we must do, no matter how made or stupid or bestial the world around us becomes.

The Shah's Clock

Sotheby's just sold this magnificent eighteenth-century clock for $2.5 million to an unnamed Asian collector.  It was made for the Asian market by English clockmaker Peter Torckler and once belonged to Shah Nasar al-Din of Persia (1831-1896).

The magnificent automaton springs to life every third hour, playing music, waving its tail and trunk and flapping its ears.

Japan's Nuclear Crisis, or, the Problem with Getting Along

Back in the 1980s, when westerners fretted that Japan was taking over the world, book after book was written praising the Japanese system. That system is much less adversarial than those of America or Britain; Japanese politics were for decades something of a sham, newspapers usually printed what the government wanted them to, judges generally deferred to police, students were trained to work together instead of trying to stand out, and so on. The idea was that everyone should work together under the guidance of a highly competent elite, which would always look toward the interests of the nation as a whole.

One of the problems with this approach was revealed when the tsunami crashed into the Fukushima Daiichi power plant last year. It turned out that Japan's allegedly wise technocrats were badly prepared for a nuclear disaster, and that they had made their country completely dependent on nuclear power without really insuring that the nuclear plants were safe. Disaster was averted by teams of engineers and workers who returned again and again into the irradiated zone, sacrificing themselves for the good of all.

Now an official commission has issued a scathing report on the disaster, and the authors say the fundamental problem was the same culture of getting along and not speaking out of turn:

The commission also charged that the government, Tepco and nuclear regulators failed to implement basic safety measures despite being aware of risks posed by quakes, tsunamis and other events that might cut off power systems and put nuclear plants at risk. For example, even though the government-appointed Nuclear Safety Commission revised earthquake resistance standards in 2006 and ordered nuclear operators around the country to inspect their reactors, Tepco did not carry out any checks, and regulators did not follow up, the report said. The government also failed to develop evacuation plans for the public, it said.

The report blamed the tepid response on collusion between the company, the government, and regulators — all of whom had “betrayed the nation’s right to safety from nuclear accidents.” Tepco “manipulated its cozy relationship with regulators to take the teeth out of regulations,” the report said.

Perhaps most damningly, the report pointed to a culture in Japan that suppresses dissent and outside opinion, which might have prompted changes to the country’s lax nuclear controls. By assigning widespread censure, however, the report also avoids laying the blame on specific executives or officials. Some critics have demanded that Tepco executives be investigated on charges of criminal negligence.

“What must be admitted, very painfully, is that this was a disaster ‘Made in Japan,’” Mr. Kurokawa said. “Its fundamental causes are to be found in the ingrained conventions of Japanese culture: our reflexive obedience; our reluctance to question authority; our devotion to ‘sticking with the program;’ our groupism; and our insularity.”

The adversarial system of competing parties and competing interest groups can be frustrating and maddeningly wasteful, but it has advantages. When an American politician screws up, he has opponents on hand to call him out; when a corporation tries to skirt environmental or safety rules, environmentalists scream. Things go more smoothly when everybody takes one for the team instead of having a tantrum, Japanese style, but the stuff that gets swept under the rug sometimes comes back to bite us.

Brave

I took three small children and one teenager to see Brave this weekend, and we all liked it. It was very witty and had moments of magic, and the story was ok. If you have little ones, I recommend taking them.

One thing, though. What, you might ask, is the great evil against which the heroine struggles? What power of darkness does she contend against? What terror threatens her life?

Arranged marriage. Yes, the worst, most evil thing that the storytellers at Pixar could come up with for their heroine to fight is a match arranged by her family. And both the children and the teenager in my party thought this was entirely appropriate. I have noticed before, sometimes, appalled looks on the faces of my students when I discuss this in class. In today's world, we think the right to find your own love is perhaps the most fundamental right of all, and there are few things that do more to separate us from our ancestors.

It also occurs to me that even though the movie has a female action hero who is quite likable, the point is weakened, because rather than combating some cosmic menace she is still basically focused on matters of marriage and family.

Anselm Kiefer's Grim Extravagance

German painter and sculptor Anselm Kiefer, born 1945, is perhaps the darkest and most serious of all Europe's prominent artists. I didn't like his stuff  when I first saw it -- it seemed like just so much mud. But I find that the longer I look at some of his works, the more I see in them. They are dark, true, but they also embody possibility. Kiefer is very interested in the Bible, mysticism, and the Kabbalah, and this shows in his work. Ladders, representing the connection between heaven and earth, are one of his constant themes. Above, Seraphim, 1984. 

Untitled, 2007. Here the sense that the spiritual might represent some sort of escape from earth's darkness seems especially clear.

Above, Untitled (Sunflowers) 1996, and Let a Thousand Flowers Bloom. Kiefer has often painted flowers, but always completely drained of color and often of life.

These railroad images, another theme, are Nazi references. Kiefer has been trying for his whole career to get his fellow Germans to think about Nazism and their part in its crimes; his first works that attracted any attention were photographs of himself giving the Nazi salute in front of public buildings in Germany. Above, Lot's Wife, 1989. 

I have seen the Land of the Fog, I have eaten the Heart of the Fog, 1997. 

San Loreto, 2001. Kiefer's spirituality is not the sunny kind; he is attracted to the angriest of the Hebrew prophets, and his angels seem indistinguishable from demons.

From the Beginning, 2002. I like a phrase I read somewhere to describe his work, "grim extravagance." 

Inner Space, 1981. For a mystic, "inner space" has an important meaning; does this drab interior space, but with its large skylight and mysteriously interesting focal point, represent the spiritual mind?

Sliasthorp: a Viking Town in North Germany

Danish Archaeologists are claiming that a Viking town site on Schlei Bay in Germany may be a royal estate of Danish kings in the 9th century. The first Danish king mentioned in a Latin source is Godfred, who fought with Charlemagne in the early 800s. According to the Royal Frankish Annals, he resided at a place called Sliasthorp, the estate on the Schlei. The site on Schlei Bay is in  the right general area to be his capital and dates to the right period, and it is quite large, with more than 200 houses found so far. The site is just north of the great earthwork called the Danevirk and just south of the fortress at Hedeby, which date to the same period.

The first significant discovery from the site was this gold bracelet, found with a metal detector.

These glass beads were imported from southern Gaul.

An ax of the Viking period.

The Wedding Ring

This man forged his and his wife's wedding rings, from a meteorite.

My daughter's comment: "The bar has been set."

Did All Dinosaurs Have Feathers?

Maybe. The latest piece of evidence is this marvelous fossil from Germany. The animal is a young megalosaur of the species Sciurumimus albersdoerferi dating to about 150 million years ago. The tail shows clear feathers of the simple, threadlike sort paleontologists call Type 1. The megalosaurs were not far removed from the ancestors of all meat-eating dinosaurs, so the presence of clear feathers on this specimen suggests that the putative ancestor might have had feathers, too.

Now, an Underground Ocean for Titan

Saturn's moon Titan, the only moon in our solar system with a dense atmosphere, may have an ocean as well.

The conclusion is far from certain, but the argument goes like this. Titan has an elliptical orbit around Saturn, so the tidal forces to which it is subject vary over the course of its orbit. The Cassini spacecraft has flown past Titan dozens of times during its mission, providing extremely precise data on Titan's gravity and thus its size and shape. Those data show that the moon is quite flexible, more flexible than you would expect if it were rock all the way through. The most likely explanation, say the authors of the new study, is that it has an ocean of liquid water under an icy crust about 100 km (60 miles) thick.

Titan thus joins Enceladus as a good candidate for a sub-surface ocean and therefore another place to look for alien life.

The Higgs Boson is Not a God Particle

Just let me say, in advance of what will be an interesting scientific announcement, that the Higgs boson is not a uniquely important entity that somehow controls the universe. Advance gossip says that CERN has confirmed the existence of the particle, which confirms the "standard model" of sub-atomic physics. That is fairly important. But it will in no way change the world. Whoever dubbed the thing the "God particle" was engaging in lunatic hyperbole. Journalists who keep repeating the phrase don't understand physics and don't care how ridiculous they sound as long as they get readers.

The simplest version of the standard model gives everything a mass of zero, and the Higgs field and the Higgs boson were hypothesized as the mechanism that gives some things mass. If the Higgs does exist and does what the theory predicts, that would be a powerful sign that the standard model depicts the universe pretty well. More, it suggests that the logic behind the standard model is the right sort of logic for understanding the sub-atomic world.

Unfortunately, physicists have hit a dead end in trying to expand the standard model to gravity, which is why they have gotten into string theory and other arcane approaches. Many of us were hoping that the Higgs would not be found, since that would point to a flaw in the standard model and possibly suggest a way forward for physics. But if the Higgs is real, then the standard model holds, and we are still left with two beautiful and powerful but unreconcilable theories: the standard model for the sub-atomic world and general relativity for the world of big things whose interactions are controlled by gravity.

So kudos to the people at CERN if they have really pinpointed the Higgs, and shame on all the hucksters who have made this discovery out to be something bigger than the discovery of the proton or the electron.

Now That's Hail

Crazy video of storm chasers in a hail storm that cracked their windshield with stones like this one.

An Elephant Amidst Birds

By Antero Topp, from National Geographic. The birds are red-billed queleas, perhaps the most numerous bird species in the world and a bane of African farmers, who liken them to locusts.

Cut Nuclear Weapons

At the moment, the US has 1,737 "deployed" nuclear weapons, that is, either mounted on missiles or fitted out as bombs. And we have them because? Next time terrorists attack us, are we going to nuke their training camps in Waziristan, or their safe houses in Hamburg?

I ask this because the Obama administration is in the midst of a rethink of our nuclear policy, and "sources" tell the Post that he is thinking of reducing our stockpile to around 1,000 weapons. It seems his security experts presented him with a range of options, and he is leaning toward the one in the middle, since that is the   safe, responsible, adult thing to do. Just as predictably, the usual Republican hawks have denounced this, even though the reductions would save billions every year. Rep. Trent Franks of Arizona:

I just want to go on record as saying that there are many of us that are going to do everything we possibly can to make sure that this preposterous notion does not gain any real traction. 

Maybe he thinks the unused warheads will keep out illegal immigrants?

Most of the military is perfectly fine with cuts to the nuclear arsenal, since they can think of lots of better ways to spend the money:

James Cartwright, the retired Marine Corps general who commanded U.S. nuclear forces from 2004-07, thinks the U.S. should acknowledge that a large nuclear force is of limited value in deterring today’s major threats. “No sensible argument has been put forward for using nuclear weapons to solve any of the major 21st century problems we face,” including threats posed by rogue states, terrorism, cyber warfare or climate change.

Cartwright himself is perhaps extreme in wanting to completely eliminate nuclear weapons, but most officers would rather have more missiles, drones, armored humvees, and golf courses than nukes.

If our long-term budget deficit is, as Republicans like to say, an existential crisis, why keep spending money on weapons that we never intend to use?

Andy Goldsworthy: Sticks

Creations from my favorite contemporary artist, all made with plain sticks or lengths of bamboo. Partial digital catalog of his work here.

And this marvelous photograph, "Throwing Hazel Sticks."

Madame Secretary: Hillary at State

Of all the possible outcomes of the Obama-Clinton primary battle, one that I'm sure hardly anyone expected was that Hillary would end up as one of the most highly regarded Secretaries of State in US history. Foreign Policy has a big feature on her tenure this week, focusing on the quiet way she arranged for the US to shelter Chinese dissident Chen Guangcheng without upsetting US-China relations. According to FP, the professionals at State love her, and I just heard the same from an old acquaintance of mine, a Republican who has worked his whole career in Foggy Bottom and says Hillary is the best Secretary in 25 years. She has meanwhile achieved a new sort of media celebrity, appearing on numerous magazine covers, being followed by obsessive bloggers, and being the focus of a brief twitter craze. She is clearly a remarkable woman, and a remarkably hard worker.

I suspect, though, that Secretary of State is a better job for her than President would have been. She is not a natural politician like her husband, nor an orator like Obama, and her public pronouncements often leave people scratching their heads. While running for Senate in New York she said she had always been a Yankees fan, and this led to a chorus of disbelieving hoots, even though it is true: she has always been a Yankees fan. A better politician would have told this story in a way that helped rather than hurt her campaign. She also seems to lack the whatever-it-is (gravitas? stature? megalomania?) required to pose convincingly as leader of the free world.

If not for her fatal error in letting George W. Bush intimidate her into voting for his Iraq war, she probably would have been President. To me, though, that was no small slip. She never had a good explanation for the vote, leaving everyone to think that she was just hoping the war would be a quick success, thus avoiding any blemish on her career. It smacked of wanting someone else to take the hard decisions, or of being too worried about any taint of feminine weakness to do the really strong thing by standing up to stupid militarism.

But how many people would make good Presidents? Vanishingly few, it seems. At State Hillary has found a job that uses her strengths, and I cheer her success.

A Clear Electoral Choice in Health Care

Pressed to say what Republicans might do to help the 30 million people that the Affordable Care Act is expected to provide with health insurance, should they actually repeal the bill, Sen. Mitch McConnell said, "That's not the issue."

And if you follow what he, Mitt Romney, and other Republicans have said about health care over the past two years, you see that this is no aberration. They don't think that people without health insurance is or ought to be a political issue.

The various Democratic approaches to health care reform all assume that the government should be helping all Americans to get health insurance, so they can get the care they need. (And so the burden of caring for sick people is shared more equitably.)

Republicans do not agree. They think the government's job is only to do such tinkering as might help the health insurance marketplace work more smoothly, and then get out of the way. Whether poor people get health care, they argue, is not the government's problem. People without health insurance should work harder, save money, and buy their own plans. That this is effectively impossible for people with pre-existing conditions is not the government's problem either; those people, I guess, should get the sort of jobs that provide care to all employees.

So there you have it. If you think all Americans should be able to get health insurance, even the poor and sick, vote Obama. If you think that is not the government's business, and whether people get health care ought to be up to them, vote Romney.

One Weird Fish

The scorpionfish Pteroidichthys amboinensis, native to the reefs of Indonesia.

And a lovely newly discovered species of fairy basslet, Pseudanthias mica, one of twenty-five recently announced new fish species from Indonesia.

After the Storm

Well, Friday night I finally got the storm I had been longing for, and thanks to the sympathetic magic of all those storm pictures I posted, it was a monster. The lightning was like a strobe for half an hour, constant flashing in every direction. Then the rain came, and with it a killer wind that leveled trees all across the state. (Technically this event was a "derecho." More here.) My teenage children went out and danced in the first drops, which were deliciously cool.

Then the power went out. In my neighborhood it was like a hurricane had come through, with no power anywhere, and lots of streets blocked. So we struggled through yesterday without even a fan. The pool was closed because they had no power, either. And it was 99 degrees (37 C). According to the authorities, this was one of the worst power outages in Maryland history, worse than most hurricanes. Our power came back on tonight, after being out for about 44 hours, but tens of thousands of people are still waiting.

The only good part of the day was that my children, deprived of TV, video games, and the internet, played dungeons and dragons with me.

Saturday morning, with no television, my little kids were bored and restless, so we all took the dog for a walk through the woods. They looked like this all the way through, the ground covered with branches blown down in the storm.

The first of five places the trail was blocked by downed limbs. I thought my kids might enjoy helping me clear these limbs away. They did not.

Another blockage in the trail, this one too big for me to cope with.

The beech and oak tree mostly came through unscathed, but the soft-wooded, fast-growing tulip poplars were ripped to shreds.