This is a travelogue. I managed to turn an ordinary trip out of
Minnesota's winter into far more prose than it deserved. I guess that reflects my writing style: why use 500 words when I can use 5000?
Our hegira to Arizona in January-February (we flew in and
out of Phoenix) included Tucson, Sedona, and Phoenix, in that order. Down, up, down. I had been to Arizona a number of times over
the years; Kathy had not, so the desert landscape was entirely new to her. A few remarks on our experiences.
* * *
Who would think that a freeway sign could elicit memory
of a song that keeps replaying in your head?
Well, I'm a standing on a
corner
in Winslow, Arizona
and such a fine sight to see
It's a girl, my Lord, in a
flatbed Ford
slowin' down to take a look
at me
The Eagles, "Take it
easy" (1972)
No,
we didn't go to Winslow, but we passed an exit sign on Interstate 17 for
Winslow. Kathy and I both immediately
began humming and trying to recall the words to the song. I kept on humming it to myself for the next
several days. I had to go find out why
the Eagles would write lyrics that included Winslow, Arizona.
It
seems that singer/songwriter/musician Jackson Browne had started to compose a
song but got stuck, so didn't finish it.
Browne was a former roommate of Glenn Frey (who died January 18 of this
year), who was the lead singer and one of the founding members of the
Eagles. Frey heard the unfinished song
and urged Browne to finish it—and helped, according to Frey in an interview
many years later, only by adding the line, "It's a girl, my lord, in a
flatbed Ford, slowin' down to take a look at me." That essentially finished the song, and the
Eagles went on to record it (it was their first single and became one of their
signature songs). Frey also reported
that the line about Winslow arose from the day Browne spent a day there with
car trouble on the way to one of his regular visits to Sedona.
The
song does take artistic license, according to Browne. The incident with the girl occurred in
Flagstaff, not Winslow, and she was driving a Toyota pickup, not a flatbed
Ford. Frey changed the vehicle, combined
the two events, and put them in Winslow (which was fine with Browne). It's a song, so the actual facts don't
matter—it isn't claiming to be a history.
Amusingly, several women have stepped forward over the years and
asserted that they were the one driving the pickup. None of the claims have been validated.
Winslow
has a "statue of a guy holding a guitar and a red flatbed Ford at the
curb. They say if you look hard enough, you'll see the girl from the song, too." A large number of people stop in Winslow each
year to go to the corner with the statue—and just stand there, as the song says
you're supposed to do. I guess Kathy and
I missed something by not detouring to Winslow, but it would have been a long
way out of our way.
* * *
About 25 years ago a faculty colleague was lounging in my
office doorway listening to me grouse about having traveled—and gotten sick
promptly after returning home. He
responded that in his experience, the best way to ensure that you'll get sick
is to travel.
Both
Kathy and I got sick (colds) while in Arizona.
I was in bed the last 36 hours we were there, before we had to leave for
the airport, with a nasty virus. (And of
course, that last day in Phoenix, was the nicest day of the trip—75 degrees and
sunny.) It was unusual for us to get
those colds because we'd both had colds within a month or so before we left—and
neither of us gets a cold that often, much less two within weeks.
While in Tucson, we had dinner with former U of Minnesota
president Nils Hasselmo (he and his wife retired there about 10 years
ago). I began working with Nils in 1973,
when he was associate dean of our College of Liberal Arts, and continued to
work with him, off and on, through the end of his presidency in 1997—and we've
stayed in touch ever since. I count him
both as a colleague as well as a good friend, so of course we were going to see
him when we were in Tucson.
After
we got back to Minneapolis, I wrote to Nils and told him we'd both gotten bad
colds after we saw him. He
responded: "I guess some bugs that
are killed by cold weather have a good time here. I have heard that story."
His comment—which made sense to me—set me off on a brief
web search. I found an article on the
WebMD website that linked me to a Proceedings
of the National Academy of Sciences report citing a Yale University School
of Medicine researcher. Since we all get
colds from time to time, it was an interesting read. While the science is not settled, the
research out of Yale suggests that there is indeed reason to believe that colds
occur more often in winter (a proposition that's not been scientifically
confirmed, oddly enough, and I've had colds in the summer). One of the co-authors of the Yale study
pointed out that rhinoviruses—which are what cause colds—appear to replicate faster at about 91 degrees rather than at a
human's internal body temperature of 98-99 degrees. What they discovered, however, is that
rhinovirus can replicate equally well at either temperature; what's different
is that the immune system doesn't function well at the lower temperature. So when we inhale cold air in a Minnesota
winter, the temperature inside our noses, our nasal passages, drops, at least
temporarily—and the immune system can't react to an encounter with
rhinoviruses. So we get a cold. On the other hand, the warmer lung cells
better defend against the virus. She
noted that the study results came from lab work, not actual animal exposure to
cold outdoor air, so additional research would be needed to confirm their
findings.
The
article also included comments from an epidemiologist with the Centers for
Disease Control. He observed that "determining
the exact reason for a higher cold risk can be tricky" and that it's not
easy to determine why people get colds.
But—astonishing to me—is that adults get colds about three times per
year—and children under 6 may get them twice that often. I had no idea. There are over 100 rhinoviruses, most of
which have mild effects, and the role of cold weather isn't clear. "'[P]ointing to cold weather itself is
not a simple matter. . . . It may be
cold itself. Or it may be that people's
behavior in cold weather changes, and those changes -- such as being more
likely to congregate indoors with other people in smaller spaces -- could put
people at an increased risk, rather than the cold itself.'" He said the Yale study isn't definitive but
certainly worth pursuing.
Of
course I looked up the email address of the Yale researcher who was quoted in
the article. It turns out she has a
distinguished educational pedigree and holds an endowed chair; she's the
Waldemar Von Zedtwitz Professor of Immunobiology and Molecular, Cellular and
Developmental Biology; Professor of Molecular Cellular and Developmental
Biology; Investigator, Howard Hughes Medical Institute. (How do you fit all of that on your business
card?) Her web page at Yale describes
her research: it "focuses on the
mechanisms of immune defense against viruses at the mucosal surfaces. Her laboratory is interested in how innate
recognition of viral infections lead to the generation of adaptive immunity,
and how adaptive immunity mediates protection against subsequent viral
challenge." OK, I'm impressed, so I
wrote to her. (Yeah, I know, most people
wouldn't do that; having spent my life at a research university, it's second
nature to me. But there's really no
reason anyone shouldn't write to a researcher whose work is of interest; I don't
recall that I've ever written to someone and not heard back from them. More often than not they're delighted that
their efforts have caught someone's attention.)
Anyway,
I described getting colds twice within a month within the context of going to
Arizona and relayed Nils's comment about "bugs that are killed by cold
weather have a good time here." His
hypothesis, it seemed, was contrary to what her research suggested. She wrote back promptly. "The reason you and your wife suffered
from a nasty cold in Tucson may have to do with the different strains of cold
virus that [are] circulating. Ones that
you recovered from in Minnesota [are] unlikely to be closely related to the
ones you acquired in Tucson, and therefore you had very little immune response
to the Tucson virus. Of course, this is
simply my guess." She hoped I
recovered quickly. I thanked her and
told her I thought she was doing good and important work. (She added later that it's been a rough year
for colds—if anyone would be paying attention, it would surely be her—and that
her entire family had had colds recently.)
The
simpler explanation, it would seem, is that there are different bugs in
different places. Our immune system
doesn't respond well to new ones. As she
wrote, it was just a guess on her part, but it sure makes sense to me. I passed the exchange of emails to my own
physician, who thought she's probably right.
(I
also passed along to Nils the exchange plus the article citation, to which he
replied, "I hoped I had finally solved the problem of what causes the
common cold! And here I find that it is
the cold noses in Minnesota!")
Shortly
after we returned to Minnesota, Kathy commented that we could never kiss any
more, with our tandem colds. I said the
marriage was indeed headed in the wrong direction, because we couldn't sleep in
the same room any longer, either, what with one or the other of us coughing and
sneezing and blowing our nose.
* * *
The
second topic I asked Nils about was hydrogeology. A number of years ago I had a gabby cabby
while in Tucson for a professional meeting.
He told me that Tucson, unlike the rest of Arizona and the southwest,
didn't have a water problem because it has (an aquifer? something) that is
replenished regularly, so water isn't a problem.
Nils
didn't agree. He told me that there's "a
big aquifer west of Tucson, out under the valley west of the Desert
Museum. Tucson gets some water from
aquifers but their levels are declining although apparently from time to time
(like this year) being replenished."
Water also comes from the Colorado River via a large water project,
perhaps up to half. He concluded that "this
does not suggest to me that Tucson will not eventually have a water
problem. What I hear is that the water
problem will be solved by curtailing the rather massive use for commercial
enterprises like pecan groves, which apparently consume large quantities. I have heard for years that some kind of
water balance will be achieved by 2025."
If they get to a balance by 2025, that would be one of the few good
things I've heard about water in the southwestern U.S. in years.
* * *
I
wrote to Nils about a third matter. I
recalled for him that many years ago (mid-1970s) I visited my friends Bill and
Debby Merriman, who had moved to Phoenix for jobs after they graduated from
college. One of their first pieces of
advice when I arrived was always to check my shoes in the morning (even though
we were inside a house) because you never knew what might have crawled in them
overnight, particularly spiders or scorpions.
They offered the same advice about checking the bedcovers at night, for the
same reason. I asked Nils if that is
advice that anyone follows today or has even heard of.
He
wrote back that it is indeed necessary to look out for scorpions. He related
that he's been bitten three times "and it is no fun!" In the garage, in the bed, and in the
yard. "From time to time we find
living and dead scorpions and tarantulas in the house! Tarantulas are harmless, apparently."
I
retroactively paled when I read this message, even though in Minnesota we must
be at least 500 miles from the closest scorpion. I had even told Kathy the story of the
Merrimans' advice before we went to Arizona.
Of course it slipped completely from memory until we returned. While there, we routinely slipped on shoes
and climbed into bed with nary a thought about nasty critters.
* * *
One
of the highlights of trip to Tucson for Kathy was a visit to the gem show, the
largest show of its kind in the United States.
One must have credentials to be admitted (in her case, a sales tax
license as one who makes and sells jewelry).
The show is scattered across multiple buildings in the city, all
football-field-sized enclosed tents. One
is dazzled by the number of beads, gems, and other items used to make jewelry
and other decorative pieces. I bet there
were 20-30 million pieces (maybe there were 100 million), across all the
vendors; there must be a sizeable number of manufacturers (probably mostly in
under-developed countries) who make all this stuff. In any event, the prices are extremely low
and Kathy purchased enough supplies and jewelry pieces to last her for some
time. She didn't even plan on going to
the show when we first planned the trip, but I told her that since it was the
holy grail of people in the gem and jewelry business, she should get admission
papers. So she did, we went, and I
browsed beads, gems, and my cell phone for four hours.
We
also went to the Mission San Xavier, the only intact mission in Arizona and a
working parish, founded in 1692. It was
highly touted on websites as a marvelous site, "the finest example of
Mexican Baroque architecture in the United States." I think our visit here came temporally too
close to our visit to Italy; San Xavier was pretty pathetic compared to St.
Peter's, the Duomo in Florence, the Santa Maria Nascente in Milan, and even to the smaller churches
scattered throughout Italian cities. No
fault of the locals; they were limited by available materials and
resources. But the church was rather
threadbare and the art wasn't even close to the same league as that in Italian
churches and cathedrals.
We both enjoyed the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum, 97 acres of desert,
displays, plants, animals, birds, and walking paths. Anyone who gets to Tucson should go
here. The Tucson Botanical Gardens would
be a distinct second choice.
* * *
After
Tucson we wound our way up to Sedona. I'd
been to Phoenix and Tucson a number of times in the past but never to
Sedona. I had either known and
forgotten, or never knew at all—and I'm bothered that I don't know which—about
the red landscape that surrounds the town.
The scenery is surely among the most spectacular on the planet.
Our
lodging experiences were different from what we'd encountered in earlier
travels: we stayed in casitas in all
three cities. The OED doesn't recognize "casita"
as a word. Merriam-Webster simply
translates it directly from the Spanish:
a small house. Dictionary.com,
drawing on the 2017 Random House dictionary, is more expansive. The term casita appears to have appeared
first in the 1920s and has two quite different meanings. One, "a small crude dwelling forming
part of a shantytown inhabited by Mexican laborers in the southwestern U.S.,"
and two, "a luxurious bungalow serving as private guest accommodations at
a resort hotel, especially in the southwestern U.S. or Mexico."
We
certainly didn't stay in any "small crude dwelling" in a shantytown,
but if a requirement for a casita is that it is luxurious, we perhaps stayed in
only one of those. I guess it depends on
how you define "luxurious."
The Random House definition also seems not to have kept up with modern
usage, 2017 or not: none of our casitas
were linked to a resort hotel; they were privately owned. In essence, a casita has a bedroom (ours
ranged from quite large to modest), kitchen facilities (a small area in two of
the places, a separate room in another), and a bathroom/shower. The casita in Tucson had a patio with a
marvelous view overlooking the city and the sunset and was part of a large
gated community that had homes and apartments and casitas, tucked up in the
hills north of the city. The casita in
Sedona had no view except of the owner's patio.
The casita in Phoenix is the only one that might be considered "luxurious"
in that it also had a living/dining area.
It was also in a posh part of the city, Paradise Valley, a bit away from
central Phoenix north of Scottsdale; I would guess that the sale price of some
of the homes in that neighborhood is in seven digits. Again, we had a patio as part of the owner's
(much larger) patio. We arrived in
Phoenix on Friday evening; I spent my time from shortly after arrival at the
casita to departure for the airport on Sunday morning horizontal in the bedroom
of this casita coughing and blowing my nose.
It
occurred to me that if Kathy and I really wanted to downsize, a place like the
Phoenix casita, with only a slight modification of the floor plan, could be our
permanent house. Would we ever want to
live in 400 square feet?
Back
to Sedona. Our first night there we met
a cousin of mine and her husband for dinner, Linda and David. I have a photo from 1997 that I took that
includes them and their two boys; I had sent her a copy in August of 2016. We were in San Diego at one of my
professional meetings in 1997; Pat and the kids came along. While there, we met up with cousins for
dinner. I remember the event at which
the picture was taken, but none of us could remember meeting each other. So it was like a first meeting. (Obviously Kathy wasn't there in 1997.) They were great fun to meet and talk
with. (Technically, Linda is my first
cousin once removed; her mother Donna was my first cousin. Donna was the cousin who was murdered by her
grandson in December 2015; the grandson also murdered Linda's brother. Linda and David told us about the fallout
from those tragic events that they'd been having to cope with ever since.)
The
next afternoon the four of us went on a "Pink Jeep" tour into the
countryside; let's just say that it was a wild and wonderful experience even
though the jeep went places I did not believe any vehicle should be able to go,
up and down rocks and at angles that seemed to defy the laws of physics. At one point we were on top of a rock formation
careening around the edge; I covered my eyes because if we went over, it was at
least a 50-foot drop to more rocks. The guide was not only good-humored but
also knowledgeable about the flora and fauna and the geology of the Sedona
area. We learned a lot. I'd certainly recommend the outfit if you're
in Sedona, although you do have to hang on for dear life during parts of the
ride.
Walnut
Canyon outside Sedona contains the remains of cliff dweller homes that were
abandoned 700 years ago. In the winter
especially it's sort of a white-knuckle drive; Sedona's elevation is about 4300'
while Walnut Canyon is about 7000', so it's up hill, on a two-lane highway with
a lot of switchbacks, and occasionally icy (in winter). I drove up; Kathy drove down; I didn't want
to do that twice in one day. We walked
all 273 steps down and back up to the ranger station, and while down could walk
the path to see the remains. Several
places on the 4-foot-wide walking path had no railings—and a nearly-sheer drop
of a couple of hundred feet down into the canyon. Apparently OSHA regulations don't apply in
national parks. It was a little scary
for someone whose stomach gets upset at unguarded heights; one slip and it
would have been "good night, Irene."
What also surprised me was seeing prickly pears and succulents nestled
in snow—I never thought that cacti and snow went together.
We
did the cliff-dwelling-remains tour again the next day, at "Montezuma's
Castle" and "Montezuma's Well."
The former is the remnants of a cliff-dwelling culture widespread in the
area, about 1100 – 1400, then abandoned.
It is not clear why the dwellings were abandoned—possibilities include
disease, climate change, no more resources left, etc. It would have been a hard-scrabble life in
that climate and landscape, and the residences were high on the cliff so people
climbed up and down a lot of ladders. I
would guess they spent much of their time growing and gathering food.
The
thought that crosses my mind when I see these (by our standards) primitive
dwellings is, "why the difference between them and the people who were
completing Notre Dame or Westminster Abbey (or numerous structures in Asia or
the rest of Europe) at the same time or even earlier?" There isn't a clear answer to that question.
"Montezuma's
Well" is a sinkhole fed by 1.5 million gallons of water daily from
underground springs, a major source of water for centuries for those who have
lived in the area.
One
mystery is why the name Montezuma remains attached to either the "castle"
or the "well." The National
Park Service signs forthrightly acknowledge that they were named at a time when
early discoverers thought they had some connection to the Aztecs and their
emperor Montezuma. But there's no such
connection; Montezuma was born after the castle had been abandoned and no one
has discovered any connection between these civilizations and the Aztecs. And it wasn't a "castle," it was
more like a high-rise apartment complex.
There are native names for the sites; why doesn't the Park Service just
take the lead and give them proper nomenclature?
In
our tour of the area that day, we also stopped in Clarkdale at the Copper Art
Museum. It's an amazing little place,
housed in what used to be the Clarkdale High School (and still, to a minor
extent, a work in progress). The
labeling is extensive and excellent and the varieties of the uses of copper
(including in bronze and brass) are represented in hundreds, probably
thousands, of different items from all periods of human history. It wasn't crowded; Clarkdale isn't exactly on
the way to anywhere. The guy who runs it
chatted briefly with us. I asked him where all the pieces came from; he said
there was a core collection that they have expanded enormously by buying at
auctions all over the world. What I
found intriguing is that it's not a tax-exempt organization and its website is
a .com. Somebody is spending a lot of
money in a labor of love, because at $16 for admission for the two of us, it
sure isn't making a lot of money from the traffic.
The
only other highlight of the trip was a visit to Taliesen West, Frank Lloyd
Wright's residence/shop/school complex just outside of Phoenix. What I found amazing is that he purchased the
land and started on the building project when he was 70 years old. Inasmuch as he lived until he was 90, he did
get considerable use out of it. A
lovely place. We'd seen Taliesen East in
Spring Green, Wisconsin, a couple of years ago.
If forced to live in one of them, Kathy would pick East and I West.
No comments:
Post a Comment