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pravasichhokro · 3 years

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Schooling Then & Now...

During the closure of schools due to pandemic from March 2020 till date (End Oct 2020), I have heard how classes are being held and attended from home at least in Metros. I am reminded of my school days during1954-66 in Ahmedabad, Gujarat.

My first school was a family run primary school in the residential complex that we lived. I studied there as it was convenient to attend and my elder sister also went to the same school. It was housed in a bungalow with four to five rooms, each housing one standard. It was from 11 am to 5 pm. It was a traditional school with standard syllabus. The school was co-ed and we sat on floor. Our school bag had a book or two and a slate (black stone) and white chalk. We walked to the school. The medium of instruction was Gujarati

Then I went to a special primary school run by Sarabhais (Vikram Sarabhai’s family). The school had four classes, one each for one standard. Each class had 10-12 students only. The school started at 8.30 am and till 4 pm. On arrival all children would be given a glass of milk and then academic lessons would start till lunch at 12 noon. The children brought roti/chapati from home but all else was served by the school-Dal, Rice, Vegetables, Papad, pickles etc. Children from class 4 normally managed the lunch service, though food was cooked by others. School was co-ed and we hardly carried any books or other items in the school bag except a box of roti/chapati. I travelled by the city bus to commute to school. The medium of instruction was Gujarati.

After lunch, the non-academic activities were the main focus. These included music (mainly folk), folk dance (garba/dandiya), painting, carpentry, stitching/tailoring etc. the teachers of high caliber came to teach these special skills or hobby. Our music teacher was an AIR (All India Radio) artiste. We also undertook projects of a long duration. For example, in carpentry class we built Sam’s Cabin on the treetop (the school had a large area). We also staged plays in open air once a year. Each and every student must participate in the play and hence they were selected accordingly. One was “Alibaba and Forty Thieves”, and another was “Gulliver’s travel to pigmy land” (a shadow play).

The school also imparted general knowledge in the most effective way. We once slept in the school so that we could be taken to an observatory at 3 am to see the sky and the stars. We were once taken to the Municipal office to see the model of Nehru Bridge under construction (before1960) followed by a visit to the riverbed to see the construction. Children were encouraged to explore and most of us would sit on the wall (on the riven bank) just watch the Sabarmati river in flood. We were allowed to climb trees and play with our teachers. I found it to be a good place for an all around development.

Then I was admitted to a popular Gujarati medium school which boasted of the large area (I think 300 acres or more) and it followed Gandhian philosophy. Our uniform was from Khadi. The trust was Jain. The school was co-ed and I commuted by city bus or walked the 3 km short route on some days with other students and a teacher. Theschool was from 10.40 am to 5.10 pm with two short breaks. Saturday was half day- 7.30 am to 11 am.

The middle school (std 5 to 7) was in a separate building about 500 meters from either entry. We sat on floor with a wooden stool in front. The school bag had textbooks, notebooks and a pencil box along with a snacks box. In addition to academic classes we had optional selected non-academic courses. Music was compulsory and my weakest subject. One could choose from music, painting, stitching/tailoring or agriculture. I opted for agriculture. I was given a piece of land (5 x 10 ft) and allowed to grow vegetables etc. The vegetables were available for sale and I used to take some home.

The high school (std 8 to 11) was in a larger building near the main gate. The compass box was added to books and notebooks. We used to write with an ink pen.The classes had a bench. Between these buildings was a huge playground for volleyball, kho-kho and kabaddi etc.We had a prayer hall covered but open from sides where all students would gather first thingin the morning and pray. At this gathering, we were also able to enjoy cultural programs based on the festivals and some speeches by leading persons- politicians, writers, thinkers, and ex-students.

During the entire school years, I attended classes regularly and was not permitted to attend any private tuition, In any case private tuition was not so popular then, My father insisted that I asked all my doubts to the teachers in the class or after class in the teachers (staff) room. I hardly recall any parents’ teacher meeting. Strangely I had not spoken to any girl student at my school or class throughout the eleven years, though it was co-ed. I loved outdoor games and in the eight standard I joined a hockey coaching center (outside) run by an ex-India player. This led me to go for state school level hockey tournament and participated in all India school meet in Shillong in Feb,1966.

My daughter went to an international school in Japan and her experience was different than schooling in India. She walked to school everyday for 20 minutes and carried only an umbrella and lunch on some days. She played basketball, hockey, and volleyball. She would go ice skating or on over night trips to gain knowledge not just from textbooks but from experiences. When she came back to study in India, she found the education system hard and competitive and teachers had minimal interest in teaching except for scoring high marks.

I now will attempt to compare the above school life with present day school life in metros before COVID-19 (March 2020). Though I have no first-hand experience of it, I have gathered it from parents of school going kids. Most of these go to a private school and not municipal or govt school in various parts of the globe.

Before COVID-19 struck, the school time was 8 am to 2 pm and probably five days a week. Kids must carry a huge/heavy school bag containing water bottle, books, notebooks, compass box, lunch box (for two breaks). Kids do use ball point pen or gel pen. The school bag weighs a lot and there are complaints of kids, but no solution seems to be in sight. Most kids go to school by school bus or auto-rickshaw or dropped by parents. Hardly anybody walks to school. A lot of focus is on academic work and homework. Most schools lack a playground. Some schools do encourage extra-curricular activities, but most kids take up extra-curricular activities because of the parents or peer pressure. Some govt or municipal schools run two shifts to make maximum use of the infrastructure- school building. Most classes have 50 children in each room.

Many of the schools have annual day and they are a huge burden on parents both in terms of time and expenses. Most items on annual day celebrations lack heritage or folk influence on dance or music or singing. Most kids (also their teachers) do watch tv and are influenced by its content. Many kids have the luxury of travel domestically or internationally with their parents on holidays. I do not see many activities among school going kids in residential complexes. Rural schools might still be following the historical timing (11 am to 5 pm) and the syllabus with almost poor teachers.

After March 22, 2020 the schools were closed, and students and teachers were encouraged to attend online classes. In last six months (till Oct end) the schools are closed and online classes have become the routine.

In metros, many private schools are actively following the online class concept. I understand the online class can be attended provided one has a laptop or a tablet or a smart mobile with adequate data and speed for Wi-Fi connection. The classes are for four hours a day. The homework is also given online and submitted online. In most cases projects given seem to be done by parents and not children which is not the best way to learn. While writing exams adults at home keep prompting the child to ensure high score /marks are achieved. Teaching a child short cuts or to cheat is not beneficial in the long run. Parents forget that getting marks above 90% should not be the only aim for the child.

Many families are facing the shortage of hardware as the parent or parents attend office from home (WFH) and they need the same hardware- laptop or tablet and a strong WiFi connection. If there is more than one child attending class/school from home the shortage of hardware and infrastructure is felt more and is also a financial burden too.

Poor people are finding it hard to attend classes online. My domestic help has three children going to school and that is either municipal or govt school. They also hold classes online. But the poor family has only two mobiles and only one is smart. Her husband is a driver but has lost his job.

I dare not imagine what is happening at rural schools and their classes with no infrastructure like WiFi connectivity or smart mobile at home. Some may not have even electricity at home. I hope that large IT firms instead of running schools in rural India under the name of NGO’s should have ensured a good e-learning system but that seems like a dream. This would have been helpful during these times and need not depend on poor quality teachers.

In all the above activities the major problem is that children have lost physical touch with school, class, and teacher. They surely miss outdoor activities (sports etc.) with their classmates. They also must be missing the cultural activities on the festivals.

The mental stress of being confined to a residence for so long must be very real and parents must be finding it difficult to attend to it among their children and themselves.

Conclusion…….

I do believe that old time classes at school and freedom to mingle/play with classmates and children from neighborhood were great contributors to develop a child’s all faculties. The emphasis was outdoor activities and non-academic interests to be followed. The child was not stressed with pressures from parents, siblings, or peer day in and out.

Prior to lockdown due to pandemic, the metro school going kid was stressed with many issues- get up early, catch the bus or transport or do homework or dress properly with or without makeup for girls, etc. Parents were also stressed to see that their child is not lagging only in academic pursuit but also otherwise.

After lock down the situation has worsened for the child. The child is confined to the four walls of the residence with same family members and has no chance to go outdoors. (recent relaxation may permit going out but many parents do not want to take the risk). Outdoor activities are almost none and 24x7 the child is using handheld devices –Laptop, tablet, or smart phone to do schoolwork and to play games, also to see cartoons or other entertaining content on TV.

I pray for early release of restrictions due to COVID-19 and restoration of schools to normal working in general and in rural areas in particular.

#school #online school

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ten-tenya-iida · 6 years

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Learning to Love Pt3

Warning:There’s mention of past abuse, a bit of cursing (I think)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Why so far? It's a good thing that I packed extra clothes.' "Okay, and where exactly are these 'boys'?" I look around the room, seeing nothing but decorations, Bobby and I.

"We're here" I hear a slightly gruff voice speak out as footsteps fall down the stairs. I stand up to greet the two men who are revealed from the stairway. I walk up to the shorter one and hold my hand out to him. He stood, leaning slightly to the taller man, as if he was ready to protect him if anything happened. He was dressed in a brown button up with a black shirt underneath, dark blue jeans and worn out steel toe boots. Gripping his hand I give a firm shake. "Dean Winchester." He states his name. "Dean Winchester. Has a brother named Sam Winchester, I'm guessing that's you, Mother's name is Mary Winchester, Father is John Winchester. Mother died when you were just a young child, Sam was a infant at the time. Your father took on hunting jobs, left you to take charge of your baby brother. Your father is after the thing that killed your mother. I sincerely apologize. You followed your fathers orders, but dear ol' Sam here, he wanted a normal life, a job as a lawyer, a wife and children. But your father didn't think it was possible after the incident. You both are hunting down your father, who you want to help." I deduct.

They had different reactions. Dean was slightly angered, Sam was shocked.

"Where did you learn that?" Dean pushed the question out at me.

"There was no learning involved. Just a simple deduction, and a few bits and pieces from the other hunters 'round here."

Dean just looked at me and then to Bobby. I narrow my eyes as no words were discussed but I see Bobby nod at them.

"Well now that you know our names, tell us yours." Sam demands. Before I can get a word in, Bobby cuts me off. "(Y/n). (Y/n) (L/n). Jody sent her down here to help out in Kansas. She'll be accompanying you on your trip, and helping you with the hunt." Bobby informs.

~~~~~~~~~~TIME SKIP~~~~~~~~~~~~

We were on our way to Kansas, I was sitting in the backseat as Sam was in the passenger and Dean was driving his 'baby'. Looking out the window, I watch as the scenery passed by. Without meaning to, I drift off into my mind palace.

It was a nice, joyful day. Today was (Y/n)'s birthday, her family was over for the big feast they were upholding in their backyard. (Y/n) was a beautiful lady in her early teens, just turning 15 to be precise. She had a full head of (Y/h/c) and beautiful (Y/e/c). She was hand taught in an assortment of hand-to-hand combat fighting, and she knows how to wield most weapons. (Y/n) was staring thoughtfully at the crystal clear blue sky ahead. "(Y/n)! (Y/n)!" Hearing her little brother yell out her name, she panics. She turns in a full 360 degrees until she spots him over by the festival decorated table, holding all sorts of foods and desserts. (Y/n) breathes a sigh of relief, as her brother giggle childishly. "(Y/n)! Why are you all the way over there? C'om on! Have some fun!" Jake's puppy eyes and pout made it very hard for her to resist. "Alright, fine Jakey. I'm coming." She chuckles. "Don't call me Jakey!!" Jake pouts angrily. "Okay, fine. Whatever you say, Oh wise Jakey~" She had teased one last time. "Anyway, what did you want, Jake? Did you miss me already?" (Y/n) smiles fondly as Jake dug the toe of his shoes on the ground while muttering under his breath, "Yeah, I was..." She grabbed Jake's hand and leads him to their slide that was closer to the fence now. Jake and (Y/n) climb up the stairs and settle down, Jake was in front of (Y/n), her legs carefully holding him in place. There was a gust of wind as they came to a stop at the end of the slightly burning slide. Jake got up and ran to their mom, who had just came out of the kitchen's back slide door. She was dressed in a yellow blouse and a dark teal colored pants. She was carrying a plate slider of chicken wings and in the other was a party plate of vegetables. The mom laughed joyfully as Jacob raced around her, repeating the words; 'The food is done!, The food is done!'.

(Y/n) was torn from her thoughts as Dean pulled into the gas station's parking lot. Getting out of the Impala, she takes her wallet and heads inside the store. A bell rang above her, as she stepped into the air conditioned building. Nodding at the clerk, she walks up and down the isles. Stopping in the candy section, (Y/N) pauses as her hand lands on a package of gummy bears. She remembers how her brother loved them.

Alex and Jake were walking around the store, Jake was tugging on Alex's arm.

"(Y/n)! Can we please get gummy bears?! Please?" Jake bugs (Y/n) as she grabbed the milk from the cool shelf. Laughing, (Y/n) lets Jake pull her to the isle with his beloved bears."Go ahead Jakey. I'll let you get two this time, but, you have to eat your vegetables tonight." (Y/n) sends a pointed look to Jake. Jake just grins up at her. "Okay! I promise!" Jake holds his pinky out to (Y/n) as she hooks them together.

(Y/n) smiles at the memory, wishing she could experience it once again. She placed the bears into her cart, reaching out to grab an item, her hand comes in contact with a lollipop. The kind her mother liked. (Y/n) smiles and continues with gathering the snacks. Paying for the items, (Y/n) walks back to the car, placing said items in the seat. Climbing in, she waits for Dean to start up. Sam turns in his seat and asks, "How long have you been in the business? I-I mean, when did you, y'know, started hunting?" The curiosity was eating at both of the brothers. "I started when I was 13. I hadn't much of a choice then. It just...came to me I guess." When I finished I looked out the window. The sun was sitting on the horizon, a warm breeze drifting through my (H/l).

(Y/n) and Jake were walking back home on a warm, yet windy day. Jake was skipping slightly and (Y/n)was swinging their combined hands beside them. The siblings both had wide smiles and laughter bubbling out of them as Jake told another joke. Rounding the corner to their house, they stopped fully. Fear rose in (Y/n)'s mind, her grip tightening. Ever since their mother died, the father that they knew died alongside her. He started drinking and hitting on the youngest, (Y/n) always interceded his actions. Taking the hits for her baby brother. Today, they were lucky he let them go do whatever, though, (Y/n) knew she'll be paying for it. Kneeling down beside Jake, (Y/n)cupped his face in her hands, tears were sitting in her eyes. "I love you Jakey. So, so much." (Y/n) sniffed. Jakey gave her a wide smile, repeating, "I love you too sissy!" Jake kissed her cheek and gave her a big hug. (Y/n) wrapped her arms around Jake, slightly rocking them back and forth. 'I'll never let him get to you. I want you to stay innocent and pure. I love you Jake.'

Stopping on route 66, they pull over into the parking lot of the motel they would be staying at. They stopped in Salina. Tomorrow they would be heading to Wichita.

They sign into the front desk and head to the room while Dean and Sam started to research more on the monster they were hunting. Momentarily forgetting that she had left her car at Bobby's. Calling Jody up, she asks her to send it down to the sunset motel in Wichita. Ending the call with a curt thanks, (Y/n) gathers the items to take a shower.

Stepping out of the steam filled room, she dries her hair and gets dressed in sweats and a black tank top. Munching on a chimichanga. Once she was done, she threw the wrapper away and brushed her teeth. With minty fresh breath, (Y/n) laid down and scrolled through her accounts. Seeing that Deviantart had a new L reader insert, she clicked and began reading.

Not realizing it, (Y/n) drifted off.

"I am so TIRED of you doing this, everyday nonstop. You WILL learn to obey!" (Y/n) was drug by her hair and into the living room. Her brother was in his room, distracted by the T.V. 'It's better that way' (Y/n) thinks. Throwing her on the floor, Lavode, their dad, stalked to the closet and pulled out his studded belt. Whipping her across her back (Y/n) cried out once, but bit her tongue to keep quiet.

(Y/n) woke up with a start, sweat dripping down her face. Her sheets were anew. She got up and heads over to the bathroom, splashing her face with cold water, she convinces herself that it was just a dream. Going back to bed, she fixes the sheets and lays back down, trying to fall asleep. An hour later, she's already making breakfast for the Winchesters. Finishing up, she starts up with researching.

~~<~~~~~~~~~ Hey! Here is the third part of my Cas X Reader, it’s definitely longer then my other ones, I would continue with more but I was starting to have a writer's block. Have a good day/night! Give a like, comment or don't do anything at all!

#spn #x reader #castiel #dean winchester #sam winchester #cas x reader

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nowtravel · 3 years

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Rejecting the nauseating mix of new age spiritualism and old age religion that defines the Camino de Santiago, Bert Archer embarks on the lesser-known Via de la Plata

The road is just wide enough for a pick-up truck loaded with building supplies to rumble higher up into the hills that overlook Baños de Montemayor, still terraced after 17 or 18 centuries. The road is mostly flagstones, mostly level, with tufts of beaten-down grass poking up between them. But every so often, there’s a stripe of more obviously found stones, rounded and less evenly spaced, laid around the same time the terraces were being carved, that gave the Via de la Plata its name (which, despite sounding like it has something to do with silver, actually comes from the Arabic al balat, which means “cobblestone road”).

Following the pick-up are five men, aged probably 25 to 50, Croatian by the sound of them. Three have wide-brimmed straw hats, the sort that were probably conceived as modest country hats but that stand out these days as the millinery equivalent of the peasant dress; two of them have thick socks under sandals; all have conspicuously large and conspicuously new backpacks: pilgrims, on their way to Santiago de Compostela.

I hate them on sight.

These are the people that make the more popular parts of the so-called Camino de Santiago so intolerable; these are the people I wanted to get away from when I took the Via de la Plata, a lesser known pilgrimage than the Camino.

I like the idea of a structured route with some heritage as much as the next guy, walking in the footsteps of thousands who have walked the same road. I just can’t stand the arch admixture of new age spiritualism with old age religion that infuses the very dust kicked up by every be-sandaled foot that strides the Camino.

Born in the Dark Ages from a myth about the mystical appearance of the clam-encrusted body of St. James, executed by Herod in Jerusalem in 44 AD, the pilgrimage route had slowly fallen into desuetude until the 20th century, when people realized they didn’t have to walk anymore. They still visited the church where the mythical body of the saint mythically rests, but they got there by 20th-century methods: planes, trains, and automobiles.

Then came the 1970s, a decade that has a lot to answer for: the Khmer Rouge, China’s Cultural Revolution, Idi Amin, Allende/Pinochet. To that list may be added a resurgence of pedestrian pilgrims, dedicated souls who cut through the undergrowth to reveal the neglected paths, going back to primary sources, like Pope Calixtinus II’s 12th-century guide to the camino, the Codex Calixtinus, to re-establish the route. There were some faithful in there, certainly, but the fact that the resurgence came at the same time as the international marathon boom is not pure coincidence.

As the line-ups at Machu Picchu and the final approach to Everest’s peak attest, an increasingly leisured and monied Western population has taken rather warmly to artificially reproducing the sorts of physical hardships their ancestors fought so hard to put behind them. Iron Man competitions, extreme sports, and the blooming of a hundred million six-packs all bear witness to a population for whom leisure has become oppressive and regular achievement—stable income, family, housing, a general lack of conflict—is too easy, no longer enough.

Marathoners and Everest climbers are noxious enough, but what makes the Camino so intolerable is the added celestial righteousness. I have no pilgrims in any of my social media networks, but I have read the comments elsewhere: regular reports on how far, how much, how great, with the added bonus of conspicuously quiet—but not silent—averrals of how grounded they feel now, or what inspiring people they met along the way, like the 82-year-old woman who did it barefoot, or the uncle who did it for his cancer-stricken nephew. Ugh.

And those who do not believe they have a friend in the sky, but follow the same route as those who for more than a thousand years did and made the trip in the hopes they’d escape the business end of his supernal hob-nailed boot (though for those who still believe, the route is still, as the Catholics say, “indulgenced”) seem to me disingenuous and possibly deluded, like mindful college kids who think Buddhism is an alternative to organized religion, or people whose third car is electric.

Robert Ward, who wrote two good books on the subject of being a secular pilgrim on the Camino, is neither disingenuous nor deluded. He started out as a guy who just liked walking. Then he heard about the Camino, and something happened to him. In the middle of many good sentences in these books, one about walking parts of the Camino several times over the course of a decade, the other about tracking down as many depictions of the Virgin Mary along it and similar routes, he comes out with ones like “While we’ve all heard it said that life is a pilgrimage, it is also true that a pilgrimage is a life,” and “I was a pilgrim and always had been one. It was something that dawned on me day by day, not a lightning flash on the road to Damascus, but a slow recognition that ‘pilgrim’ is another way of understanding who we are, and that to make a pilgrimage is only to formalize that understanding.” There’s something about walking holy roads that makes you think big, beyond what’s in front of you, that attempts to give it all a meaning that transcends the cafes and the bars, the jamon and the queso, the beer and the fina.

There is one very good thing about the Camino though: It goes through small towns that would otherwise never attract travellers. As the route increases in popularity, however—there were 237,886 pilgrims in 2013, according to the official count—they are becoming more and more like standard tourist towns, albeit catering to a very particular demographic.

The Via de la Plata is different. It’s been around as long, and has been used from time to time over the centuries as an alternative, all-Spanish route to the tomb of St. James (the standard Camino routes begin in France). But it has never been primarily that, and that has made all the difference.

The Via, also known as the Ruta de la Plata, began life as a pre-Roman trade route, first for the transport of tin, then as a way for the Romans to conquer various bits of Iberia, who later, according to Pliny the Elder, used it to trade gold and copper, running as it did between the copper mines of Rio Tinto and the gold mines in Las Medulas.

Practical people built practical settlements, unlike those who, from Charlemagne forward, built basilicas and monuments to saints and martyrs around which towns like Redecilla and Ourense grew. There are churches in Fuente de Cantos and Casar de Caceres on the Via, but they’re not the main attractions and not being on the Camino has meant they’ve been thrown back on their own devices to come up with economic engines to replace the trade no longer being done along the route, which is now the A-66, which, though it pretty much follows the old Via, allows you to efficiently bypass all the towns. (In fact, a drunken holler in a Seville bar asking if anyone had heard of Fuente de Cantos drew a chorus of equally bibulous “No’s,” and one meek response from the kitchen, “I think it’s a town.” Fuente de Cantos is just 37 miles north of Seville, and the A66 is the way you get from there to Madrid.)

When I got to Fuente de Cantos (population: 5,002), the church was shut, so I visited the house of the doctor of the mother of the second most famous Spanish painter of the 17th century. Francisco de Zurbaran lived the first 16 years of his life here, before his father sent him off to Seville to be a painter’s apprentice. Specializing in monks, nuns, royalty, and, in the painting that’s become his most famous, a cup of water, Zurbaran was second only to his friend Velasquez in esteem in their day.

Since then, he’s not fared too well in international circles, though in Spain, he’s still fairly well known. He’s Fuente de Cantos’ favorite son, and since the house he grew up in is still in private hands, the modest museum dedicated to his time here is in the house he was actually born in. It’s a small affair, renovated last year for the 350th anniversary of his death, so actually having any original Zurbarans was out of the question—as the museum-keeper told me, the security expenses will probably never be feasible. So, on the walls there are pictures of his pictures, blown up and framed. There’s also a new touch screen counter where you can flip through a PDF catalogue of his work. It is thoroughly charming, if earnest but underfunded and mostly amateur projects charm you.

Seville, where by some definitions the Via begins, is gorgeous. The Alcazar, recently re-celebrated as the stand-in for Game of Thrones’ Dornish palace, along with its cathedral, its jamon iberico, and many, is as glorious as you’d expect. But Fuente de Cantos, with its single visible bar, where the tapas is still free (even though the bars tend to close pretty early), and its streets lined with white-washed houses populated only by pint-sized Iker Casillases and David Silvas is unexpected, which is where its beauty lies.

The cheese you get a few miles north, in Casar de Caceres, a tiny suburb of the larger Caceres, is slightly more famous than Zurbaran. Torta del Casar is a raw sheep’s milk cheese; soft and either white or pale yellow, it’s most often served as a spread or dip. It’s a designated cheese, which means the sheep have to come from this part of Extremadura, where shepherds began making the torta accidentally, when bunches of the harder, more regular white cheese they were trying to make spoiled during humid spring seasons. Until quite recently the cheeses were given away free with the purchase of one of the more popular hard cheeses. Then an American food writer stumbled on it, praised it to the heavens, and, over the next couple of decades, turned it into one of Spain’s most expensive cheeses.

Every town along the Via has its version of the torta, something unique they’ve cultivated and are waiting for the world to recognize, from the never-quite-finished Gaudi-esque house in Los Santos de Maimona, lovingly constructed over the last three decades by a passionate septuagenarian builder named Francisco González Gragera, to Hervas, with its annual Jewish festival that celebrates the fact that it is one of the only towns in Spain that didn’t tear down its old Jewish quarter with its gentile citizens dressing up in their versions of Jewish costumes and doing little dances they think might also be Jewish.

But my favorite is the parador in Plasencia. A former nunnery, it provides a striking contrast to another one I visited just outside Fuente de Cantos, one of the few bits of evidence, aside from those Croatians, of the seeping influence of the religious pilgrimage into the Via de la Plata. The Albergue Convento Vía de la Plata de Fuente de Cantos was a modest but lovely little former convent turned into an albergue of the sort that dot the Camino de Santiago, cheap, with communal facilities and a cafeteria where you get your daily bread, and not much more, before heading out again.

Except here, it’s the exception rather than the rule, and when I called ahead to say I’d be coming, and that I thought I’d like to write about it, there was enough excitement that the mayor invited me to lunch in the albergue cafeteria, where big aluminum platters of modest food like cheese on toast and slices of jamon were served as we talk about tourism, the fantastic success that other route has made over the past couple of decades, protecting many of its small towns from the financial crisis that’s still going on here, and how she’s trying to get some of that sweet pilgrim cash out her way, to add to the mostly school group business of the Zurbaran house.

I sympathize, but later, as I sit in the vaulted brick cellar of the Plasencia parador and a waiter who knows his gin brings me a gin and tonic, served in a big-bowled stem glass packed with ice, the way they’re doing it in Barcelona and Rotterdam these days, with Fever Tree tonic and garnished with a sprig of basil, I silently hope she fails.

By the time you reach Baños de Montemayor, where I ran into my Croatian pilgrims, it’s almost time to turn off to Madrid. The Via continues, all the way north to Astorga, but this isn’t the Camino. There’s no one, in heaven or earth, tracking your progress or waiting to be impressed with your endurance, self-abnegation and weeping blisters. You can do the rest some other time if you like; the bars are open later in Madrid.

#walking tours

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solivar · 7 years

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Massacre In Deadlock Gorge

A special report by Olivia Colomar of Paranormal New Mexico.

Deadlock Gorge.

It’s a name that catches the imagination almost immediately, harkening back as it does to the days of the Wild West, of handsome cowboys and grizzled old prospectors, wagon trains full of tenderfoot settlers, Pony Express riders and stagecoaches and the black-hatted outlaws who robbed them all. That is, of course, not its only name -- only the most recent, and likely the most famous, for a variety of reasons.

The Ancestral Puebloans left ruins there, as they did in so many other high-walled canyons in the Four Corners, but even now their descendants do not give it a name. In fact, my regular Puebloan cultural experts flatly refused to speak with me about the place at all. The Spanish settlers who made their homes around Albuquerque called it El Cañon del Viento Cortante, the Canyon of the Biting Wind, though its position tends to be rather nomadic on antique maps of the region housed in the University of New Mexico Anthropology Department’s library. The Navajo bands who were its closest neighbors simply called it the Hungry Place and shunned it with astonishing enthusiasm given the presence of readily available water, arable land at its widest point, and the shelter to be found within its network of water-carved sandstone caves. Today it lies entirely inside the boundaries of the expanded Navajo Reservation Annex and is only desultorily patrolled by Navajo Nation police. It came by its present name, of course, thanks to the infamous Deadlock Gang, who used it as their base of operations as they marauded across Native communities and Anglo settlements, prospecting outfits and isolated ranches, before the final bloody confrontation within the canyon’s walls brought an end to their reign of terror.

In fact, Deadlock Gorge appears to have had a rather significant history of violence, stretching back as far into history as I’ve been able to research and very much extending to the present day. It was, as of this writing, only ten years ago that the art colony established there by the Santa Fe Society of Arts and Letters came to a grisly and, to date, unexplained end.

It was just after midnight on October 29th when the call came in to McKinley County 911. Veteran operator Melissa Rosales received that first frantic call for help.

Melissa Rosales is a petite woman who wears her graying brown hair in an asymetrical style that flatters her pixieish face. Her eyes are framed in crow’s feet and the years have gifted her with a generous portion of laugh lines. She is smiling as we sit down together at Cafe Pasqual to talk once she’s done her shift. She still works at the county 911 office, as a supervisor, and she says that, over the years, she has received many calls that have stayed with her: the young family caught in their vehicle in the midst of rising flood waters during a freakishly powerful storm, the two year old bitten by a rattlesnake in her family’s garden, more than one car accident involving drunken college students and long haul transport rigs on the interstate. None of them haunt her like the frantic cries that came from Deadlock Gorge that night in October ten years ago.

“It was almost Halloween, and it was a full moon -- that whole week was crazy, weird calls every day. The night before, someone called to report a chupacabra raiding their compost bin. Can you believe it?” Melissa laughs, shaking her head, but the humor doesn’t quite reach her eyes. “It isn’t always like that on the full moon but that month, it surely was. When the first calls came in, Ms. Colomar, I freely confess that we didn’t know what to believe.”

[Begin Transcript:

911 Call #1 12:07 AM

911 Operator:

911, where is the emergency?

Unidentified Woman:

Help...please help…

911 Operator:

We will certainly do so, ma’am, but I need you to tell me where you are.

Unidentified Woman:

Deadlock...We’re...We’re in Deadlock Gorge, just off 66, the Starry Desert Center For the Arts -- [static] -- ter’s residency at the edge of town. Something --

911 Operator:

Ma’am, could you please tell me the nature of the emergency? Do you need fire and rescue services? Emergency medical services? Police?

Unidentified Woman:

I -- I -- I don’t know I don’t know. I’m at the window, the front window of the writer’s residency parlor and and I see...someone’s lying in the street. They’re not moving, they’re not moving, I think they might be dead, the street lights are out I can’t -- [static]

911 Operator:

Ma’am can you hear me? [pause] Ma’am?

Unidentified Woman:

[whispering] I hear something right outside. I can hear it breathing. I think it can hear me, too. Oh God I think it can hear me too.

Recording Ends

[End Transcript]

“There are all sorts of weird stories about the Gorge -- I sure you’ve heard more than a few of them.” Melissa fiddles with her necklace as she speaks, a delicate silver chain hung with turquoise beads, a strangely nervous gesture for a woman who otherwise comes across as bedrock settled, coolly calm and collected. “That it’s haunted, that it’s cursed, you know how it is. I was half convinced, given how close it was to Halloween, that it could be some kind of stupid prank, college kids with nothing better to do. Then the second call came in.”

[Begin Transcript:

911 Call #2 12:12 AM

911 Operator:

911, where is the emergency?

Anita Colomar (Writer’s Residency Director at Starry Desert Center For the Arts and Sciences):

Starry Desert Center For the Arts and Sciences, 66 Canyon Drive, in Deadlock Gorge. Please send police and emergency medical services.

911 Operator:

Ma’am, can you tell me the nature of the emergency?

Anita Colomar:

I’m...not entirely certain myself. Power is out in the gorge -- I heard an...I don’t want to say an explosion but...it could have been. It was loud -- loud enough to wake me and several of the residents out of a sound sleep and --

[A high-pitched sound cuts across the recording, followed by several seconds of intense static]

911 Operator:

Ma’am? Ma’am, can you hear me?

Anita Colomar:

Yes -- yes, I can hear you. Did you hear that?

911 Operator:

Yes, I did. That was at your end?

Anita Colomar:

It was. I think -- was that coming from outside? Candace, can you see?

[Inaudibly muffled voices from off the line, a sequence of loud bangs, a short scream that terminates abruptly]

Jeff, Candy, push my dresser in front of the door. Hurry. Officer, I think someone may be inside the residency building --

Recording Ends

[End Transcript]

I suppose I should confess, at this point, that my interest in the incident that took place at the Starry Desert Center For the Arts and Sciences -- the so-called Massacre In Deadlock Gorge -- is not entirely one of a neutral observer. My aunt, my father’s younger sister, Anita Colomar, was the director of the writer’s residency at the time and one of the few people to have verifiable contact with emergency services on the night of the incident itself. In fact, the woman sitting across from me was, in all likelihood, one of the last people to ever speak to her.

“I dispatched police as soon as the first call came in.” Melissa says, her tone quiet and apologetic, as though she has something to apologize for. “When the second came in, I also dispatched emergency services. And after that, well…”

My FOIA request to the McKinley County 911 dispatch office for calls related to the incident in Deadlock Gorge yielded eighty-seven individual call records and associated transcripts concentrated in a single twenty-five minute period between 12:07 am and 12:32 am. Most of the calls are no more than a few seconds long and consist almost entirely of static, snatches of loud noises, and incoherent voices. Cellular contact with the Gorge failed entirely by no later than 12:33 am. The first law enforcement responders arrived at the edge of the canyon three minutes later. The motivators and antigrav units in their vehicles failed as they crossed beneath the sandstone arch that marks the entrance to the town proper, forcing them to approach the cluster of darkened structures clinging to the mid-canyon escarpment on foot. What they found once they arrived exceeded the expectations of even the most experienced officers but not those of the dispatchers, whose lines had by then fallen eerily silent.

“I’m sorry that we couldn’t do more that night, though to this day I’m not sure if there was more to do.” Melissa tells me as we step outside into the warm summer evening, ten years removed from the cold and dark of that night. “And I’m sorry for your loss.”

Deadlock Gorge first enters the “modern” historical record in documents dating from the early 1700s, copies of reports written to and by the assorted Spanish colonial governors of Villa de Alburquerque, as the city was known at that time, a strategic military outpost along the Camino Real de Tierra Adentro. It was this military significance, and resultant presence of a fairly hefty armed garrison, that led the rancheros living west of the city -- in what is today McKinley County -- to repeatedly beg the assistance of their governor when it came to keeping marauders out of their flocks. The ranchers mostly raised sheep (for their wool -- early Albuquerque was a major center for the New World textiles trade) and goats (for their meat and milk) and in the autumn of 1711, something was taking a sizeable chunk out of that trade, whole flocks, and whole shepherds, going missing. Evidence suggested that the missing livestock and farmers were disappearing, voluntarily or otherwise, into El Cañon del Viento Cortante, a deep, twisting canyon of red sandstone walls, one end of which formed a natural border between several different ranching concerns.

The wealthy Spanish landowners were losing money hand over fist, they were having trouble retaining trustworthy workers, and they insisted, in a flurry of letters growing gradually shriller as the year wore on, that the governor had to send troops to help rout out the source of their trouble. Frankly, they suspected marauding natives clever enough to cover up the evidence of the depredations. Finally aggravated beyond endurance by all the whining, from sheep ranchers and wool merchants alike, a detachment of soldiers under an experienced native-fighting commander was sent to investigate the situation in El Cañon del Viento Cortante, kill whatever needed to be killed, soothe the ruffled feathers of the locals, and return with proof that the matter was handled.

The detachment never returned.

In fact, nothing of them was ever seen or heard from again. No remains were ever found. No indications of battle -- pitched or otherwise -- were found. No evidence of ambush, either. The local Native bands who came to trade in Albuquerque disclaimed any knowledge of the thefts or the fate of the Spanish soldiers but issued an unusually blunt warning: El Cañon del Viento Cortante was not a good place, was not a safe place, and that was why no member of any band not insane, desperate, or outcast chose to make a home there. It would be best if the Spaniards left it alone, as well.

The governor of Albuquerque quietly arranged for the ranchers to be compensated for their losses and urged them to abandon the territory immediately surrounding El Cañon del Viento Cortante. Fragmentary records exist to suggest this may have happened -- or that the ranchers, like their unfortunate herds, employees, and soldiers, also vanished into the hungry maw of the canyon.

Sergeant Andrew Flores of the New Mexico State Police was the first police responder to reach Deadlock Gorge on the night of the incident, followed closely by three black-and-white cruisers rerouted from patrols in nearby communities. He organized the group and led them into town on foot after all their vehicles failed, more or less simultaneously. He recounts the way the night unfolded to me as we sit together in the living room of his trim little cabin outside Chimayó, drinking iced tea and eating a meal he has prepared using the vegetables grown in his own garden. He retired from the State Police three years ago and settled down in this vibrant little town in the foothills of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, to write his memoirs and to raise heirloom produce for sale in the local farmer’s market. He does, in fact, have plenty to write about but, even so, the incident in Deadlock Gorge stands out in his memory as the strangest of many strange experiences.

“It’s a cliche but I guess that’s for a reason,” Former Officer Flores laughs, shaking his head slightly. “‘Twas a dark and stormy night,’ you know? The moon was full -- I recall that vividly -- but it hardly mattered because heavy weather was rolling in from the north and the moon was playing hide and seek with the clouds. One minute it was almost as bright as noon, shining off the canyon walls and the streets and the buildings, and the next it was as dark as the bottom of a well, no lights anywhere except ours, not even battery powered emergency lights.”

The town of Deadlock Gorge is built atop a midlevel escarpment a couple hundred feet down from the rim of the canyon at its extreme northern and narrowest end, straddling a relatively short and dangerously curvy stretch of Historic Route 66 that exits the canyon headed west, into Arizona. That particular stretch of HR 66 was, at one point, a shepherd’s trail, used to usher flocks of sheep and goats between one pasturage and another, and then a wagon trail, used by settlers traveling west, hopefully to California. The original town sprung up to tend to the needs of weary travelers and consisted of a boarding house, a saloon, a dry goods store, a livery stable, and a blacksmith. Of those original buildings, only the boarding house survived the raid that put an end to the Deadlock Gang -- survived it in good enough condition that efforts were made to preserve it by the New Mexico State Historical Society and, when the land was later purchased by the Santa Fe Society of Arts and Letters, it was rehabbed into a part of the Starry Desert Center For Arts and Sciences. Specifically, it was the building used to house the members of the residential writer’s program and its presence, at the edge of town, made it the first structure the investigating officers encountered on their way in.

[Begin Sidebar:

Crime Scene Photo #1:

The structure is longer than it is wide, owing to the relatively narrow slice of land on which the town is built, two stories of clapboard siding painted a slaty blue-gray under a steeply pitched shingled roof, studded with windows flanked in functional shutters, an unenclosed patio/porch extending nearly to the street in front. A sign bolted to the facade over the front door identifies it as the Starry Desert Center Writer’s Residence; a plaque next to the door identifies it as a building on the State Register of Historic Places. The door itself hangs open on one twisted hinge barely clinging to the splintered wood of the frame.

Crime Scene Photos #2, 3, 4, 5 - 13:

The interior of the Writer’s Residence, ground floor. A steep staircase stands just inside the front door, leading to the second floor. To the left of the staircase lies the parlor: a collection of mismatched furniture (a sectional couch, a smaller semi-matching loveseat, a selection of chairs, a coffee table) sits in a rough circle. No holotank or sound system but a high capacity ceramic space heater designed to resemble a 19th century cast iron wood stove occupies the far corner. The signs of a struggle are obvious: an area rug covering the hardwood floor is rucked up; the coffee table lies on its side, glass top smashed, fragments scattered around it; something dark stains both the rug and the floor and more than a few pieces of glass.

To the right lies the dining room, a single long table surrounded by a dozen chairs, one of which, at the far end near the entrance to the kitchen, sits askew from its place. A glass-fronted hutch sits at the far end of the room, containing the residency’s good China, one door marked by a smeared, dark handprint.

In the kitchen, the back door stands open into the breezeway linking it to the fenced-off herb/vegetable garden occupying the next plot over. Pots hang over the prep island, undisturbed, and all of the cabinets are closed. A single piece of cutlery is missing from the knife block sitting on the prep island.

Bedrooms line the second floor hallway, most of them in states of profound disarray, as though the occupants were woken abruptly. At least one was partially barricaded from the inside. The attic lofts, containing quiet study space, appear untouched.

[End Sidebar]

“The initial 911 contact indicated that the caller saw a body lying in the street.” Copies of the crime scene photos taken in the days after that night are spread out on the patio table between us -- we have adjourned outside to enjoy the fine weather as the day fades into evening and the view of the aspen-clad mountains, already beginning their autumnward turn. “We didn’t find a body -- a splotch of blood where a body might have been, and drag marks that led right to the edge of the escarpment, but no body. In fact, we didn’t find any bodies of any kind until we got into the basement of the Center’s admin building, down in the storage rooms.”

[Begin Sidebar:

Crime Scene Photo #14, 15:

A dark pool in the middle of the road, stretched into several smaller, splotchier pools amid obvious drag marks that terminate at the south rim of the escarpment.

The photographer must have leaned uncomfortably far out over the side to get a shot of the canyon floor at the base of the escarpment, a mass of loose scree and brush, also containing no body or bodies.

[End Sidebar]

Most of the Center’s larger buildings -- the writers’ and artists’ residences, the main administrative building, the gallery display space, the shell of what was intended to be a small performance theater, still under construction at the time of the incident, were built hard against the canyon wall. The building that housed studio space for artists and sculptors, the kiln house, the materials storage outbuildings, were constructed closer to the escarpment rim, inside a waist-high guard rail fence further reinforced with decorative iron rods strung with hurricane webbing. Nobody wanted anyone to accidentally stroll off the side.

“By the time we reached the first of the production buildings, another couple black-and-whites and a few more Staties had arrived, so I felt a little more comfortable splitting the group into search parties.” Mr. Flores chuckles and shakes his head. “I...really can’t explain in words how eerie the whole scenario was -- that night was surreal in a way I’ve never experienced, before or since. The wind was howling down the canyon like a living thing -- and not any living thing, a living thing with fangs and claws that hated us all and wanted us to die. Some of the guys swore up and down that night and for days after that they heard voices in it.”

“Did you?” I feel compelled to ask, as I leaf through his personal casefile on the incident -- he’s got more pictures than are available even through FOIA requests, and he will later graciously copy them for me.

“Not...really.” He pauses, takes a sip of his tea, refuses to meet my eyes. “I heard something...but I wouldn’t call it a voice. Not words, at any rate. I split the group into two teams, one under my command, the other under Major Hathaway, and we proceeded deeper into town.”

[Begin Sidebar:

Crime Scene Photos #16 - 20:

The building containing the art studio space is a two-story structure built in a roughly crescent shape along the widest part of the escarpment rim -- a blocky central building containing a foyer scattered with a mismatched assortment of chairs and a lumpy ancient futon, a unisex bathroom setup, and two projecting wings containing studios for traditional media art, digital art, photography, textile art, and sculpture. Most of the studio spaces have enormous windows overlooking the canyon itself.

The glass-fronted door of the studio space is smashed and the door itself hanging open. Traces of blood adhere to the door and create a path up the stairs to one of the sculpture studios on the second floor. The window of that studio is broken from the inside -- glass fell into the narrow strip of land behind the studio and between the safety fence. The break itself is small, as though something were flung through the window with great force.

The blood trail ends completely in the upstairs sculpture studio.

[End Sidebar]

“Major Hathaway’s group took the escarpment side of the town and then circled around the far end toward the spot where they were building the theater. Most of what they found was concentrated in the arts studio -- none of the storage outbuildings were touched, they were all padlocked shut, until they came to the new construction.” He slides a photograph across to me, one I had heard referenced by my contacts among the State and local police forces, but which I have never seen until now. “And that was some weird shit, let me tell you.”

[Begin Sidebar:

Crime Scene Photos #21 - 28:

Multiple views of the semi-complete outdoor theater/amphitheater. What would have been the stage is no more than a skeletal hint of a structure but the seating is more or less complete: low-backed wooden benches sitting on top of elaborately carved sandstone supports in two concentric semi-circles, four rows each, with an aisle between them.

At the end of the aisle, in front of what would have been the stage, is the remains of a large firepit dug several inches into the underlying stone, ringed in more stones, containing the remains of a large bonfire. The stones ringing the firepit are likewise elaborately carved in a style distinctly different from the bench supports: they are jagged, appear to be broken from several larger stones, and are covered in petroglyphs: perfectly executed circles lined inside with triangular forms, inward-turning spirals, concentric bullseye figures surrounded in a dozen smaller circles around the outer edge. Some of them are splashed with a dark semi-liquid substance.

The two rows of benches closest to the fire are covered in upholstered throw cushions and a few throw blankets here and there. Discarded clothing is scattered between them. Half-hidden beneath someone’s sports bra and semi-buried in the sand is a knife, its hilt carved from horn of some sort partially wrapped in leather, its blade roughly leaf-shaped and made of carefully shaped obsidian.

[End Sidebar]

“There were rumors, of course -- had been for years. You can’t put a bunch of artsy-fartsy types out in the middle of nowhere, have minimal interaction with the outside world, and not have rumors. And where there’s rumors, there’s complaints.” Mr. Flores hands over a sheaf of papers: noise complaints, public disturbance complaints, the basic legal nuisances used to make nontraditional communities miserable when there’s no other way to do it. “We investigated, of course, but the Center was, for a pack of allegedly immoral bohemian libertines, pretty hard on the straight and narrow. Minors were not allowed to apply for residency even if they would be legal adults before the residency started. Minimum age of participation in any program was twenty-one. Zero tolerance policy for drug or alcohol abuse or for sexual harassment. Which isn’t to say that they were perfectly squeaky clean. We got called a couple times from inside for domestic disturbances, because they allowed couples to apply together, and residents to bring plus ones if they could pony up for it, and even the best couples sometimes don’t stay that way. But nothing like this.” He shakes his head. “Nothing even close. Certainly nothing to indicate that they directors were actually running a cult.”

[Begin Sidebar:

Crime Scene Photos #29 - 40:

The interior of the artists’ residency in a now-familiar state of disarray: evidence of attempts by the residents to secure themselves in their rooms, apparently to no avail, indicators of a struggle in some instances, including blood spatter on the walls, on the floor, in one case across the ceiling.

Inside the central administration building, the destruction is even more significant. The shelves in the community lending library are reduced to kindling, the books themselves to little more than empty covers lost amid snowdrifts of shredded pages. The main office has been completely destroyed: metal desks twisted apart, their fragments embedded in the walls and the floor. Not a single computer or other piece of technology escapes destruction.

The downstairs storage rooms, where the community stored years of hardcopy records in filing boxes and cabinets, are strangely untouched, though all the doors have been torn off their hinges.

At the far end of the corridor stands one intact door: solid wood, carved with a sequence of glyphs similar to those on the stones outside around the firepit. A second and thematically distinct set of carvings adorns the frame. Inside the room stands a single object: a cage consisting of heavy forged iron bars sunk into eight inch thick wooden railroad ties, slightly more than six feet long and three feet wide, containing a thin pallet, a pillow, and a blanket. All three items are bloody and a pool of the same spreads out from beneath the cage.

The bars of the cage are meticulously carved with glyphs identical to those on the door and the doorframe, as are the railroad ties. Two sets of iron manacles, one attached to the head of the cage by a heavy length of chain, the other to the foot, are similarly marked though in the case of both it seems as though the manacles and the chain were cast in that design. The door of the cage is secured with a heavy padlock of similar manufacture.

The walls, the floor, and even the ceiling are covered in concentric lines of the same visual script, some images repeating from the door to the cage to the rocks around the firepit, some completely different.

In the far corner of the room, the only example of actual human remains recovered in Deadlock Gorge that night: a human hand, roughly severed just above the wrist, ragged ends of bone clearly visible. Nearby lies a second obsidian knife, its blade and handle bloodstained.

[End Sidebar]

“We found the kid downstairs -- we might not have found him at all, but one of the officers in my search group thought she saw something moving at the head of the stairs that led down to the storage area.” Mr. Flores pours himself another glass of iced, drinks, stares out into the deepening twilight for several minutes. “He...was not in a good way -- it was lucky Hathaway had her lockpicking tool on her, because otherwise we’d never have gotten those manacles open. I don’t think Forensics ever actually found the key to the damn things. We had to jimmy all the locks just to get him out and there wasn’t much he could do to help, hurt as he was. The EMTs told me he was lucky to be alive -- one of the stab wounds nicked the abdominal aorta and he was in the process of bleeding to death internally when we found him. The blood on the knife we found was his. The hand belonged to Val Kalloway, the Center’s director of operations, according to the fingerprints.” A humorless smile. “We never did find anyone else.”

In fact, none of the experts brought in to examine Deadlock Gorge after that night found anything else. In the days and weeks that followed, law enforcement officials from Federal, State, and local agencies combed every inch of the town and the canyon beyond for any trace of the missing inhabitants of the Starry Desert Center For Arts and Sciences. There were four writers plus the program director on site for the September through December residency term; there were six artists plus the art residency director. The Director of Operations and six members of the permanent instruction staff plus two administrative personnel lived in a smaller residence behind the main administration building.

Twenty-one people disappeared without a trace that night. Cadaver-sniffing dogs found no evidence of hidden human remains, either in the town or in the canyon. The forensic scientists who processed the scene found copious evidence of habitation by the the people who were supposed to be there but no evidence whatsoever of any invaders, intruders, or involvement by outside individuals. The lone survivor -- a juvenile male listed as John Doe in the official documentation of the incident -- was transported via ambulance to the University Hospital. It is my understanding that he survived, despite the severity of his injuries and his overall condition, which was something other than ideal, and that he gave an official statement to the authorities. Both that statement, and the documents confirming his identity, are sealed by Federal district court order and have never been released to the public. A FOIA request I made in regard to this issue was summarily rejected.

Mr. Flores gifted me a copy of his entire casefile on the incident -- the so-called “Massacre In Deadlock Gorge” -- before I left that night and wished me luck.

“Of all the unsolved cases I’ve had in my time -- and there have been a couple -- that’s the one that’s caused me the most sleepless nights over the years.” He admitted as he walked me to my car. “Because if it could happen there, who’s to say it couldn’t happen somewhere else? Lots of small places where small numbers of people live now, after the Crisis, and we don’t even have official eyes on them all. Someday, it’s going to happen again.”

Daniel Locke was not the sort of person one would reasonably expect to find running a gang of ruthless outlaws out of a bloodsoaked canyon in the desert but, well, he did.

He was the scion of a wealthy Massachusetts family, a step below the true northeastern aristocratic clans of the day but rich enough from their own endeavors that their “lesser” social cachet hardly impeded them. His elder brother, Alexander, graduated from Harvard and served terms in both the Massachusetts State Senate and in the US House of Representatives. His younger sister, Margaret, graduated from Mount Holyoke and married well, repeatedly, further enhancing the family’s fortunes.

Daniel himself attended Dartmouth and evidently graduated with sufficient academic success that his doting parents sent him on a Grand Tour of Europe, a rite of passage beloved by the economic elite of the United States in the years leading up to the Civil War. We know, as a result of his own extensive journals on the topic -- Locke loved to write, particularly about himself -- that his Tour departed from the well-beaten path of posing for portraiture among majestic Roman ruins in Italy rather early in the proceedings. His writings on the topic are erudite and scathing, lambasting the insipidity of it all, scrabbling for meaning amid the pretty wreckage instead of seeking the true legacy of lost knowledge, sparing not even his family, “who seemed to content to profit from the scholarly endeavors of earlier, better generations,” and I quote. At the point in the standard Grand Tour itinerary where the average wealthy American would winter in Geneva, writing odes to the lake and/or the Rhone, sipping chocolate and flirting with beautiful young women (apple-cheeked Swiss milkmaid variety), Daniel Locke abandoned his traveling companions and his guide and continued on. In the last of the journals he wrote in Switzerland, entrusted to a college friend for delivery to his parents, he indicated his intent to seek a hidden school in the mountains of the uttermost (European) East.

And then he vanished.

For more than ten years.

When next he appears in the historical record, it’s on a Wanted poster in the New Mexico Territory. A relatively modest reward is offered for his capture on charges related to a stagecoach robbery on the road between Santa Fe and Albuquerque. That would, over the next handful of years, change rather rapidly: at the time of his putative death, the bounty on his head was over $15000, one of the highest in the history of the Old West, and the charges had grown to include murder and rape as well as a spectacular and brazen series of robberies. His own initial successes as an outlaw attracted to him a band of likeminded confederates and together they terrorized communities on both sides of the New Mexico-Arizona territorial border.

They were called the Deadlock Gang: Daniel “Deadeye” Locke, who claimed that his uncanny skill with a gun was a gift from the hands of the Devil himself, for which he had given his mortal soul; Black Frank O’Rourke, an Irishman who fled New York just ahead of the hangman, having murdered both his wife and her lover; Jefferson “Skinner” Delacour, an infamous former Confederate officer and fugitive slave-hunter; Sarah “Red” Reed, a young woman from a long line of cattle rustlers, horse thieves, bootleggers, and fences. Others came went but they formed the core of the group and, for four bloody years in the late 1870s to the early 1880s, they held sway over a constantly shifting court of rogues and killers from the little town in the canyon that came to be known as Deadlock Gorge. In many ways, they owed their success to the possession of that stronghold: the entrances and exits of the Gorge were natural chokepoints, easy for a relatively small group of defenders to hold, and the twisting, switchback routes along the canyon floor and through the town itself lent a significant advantage to anyone familiar with their tricks. It couldn’t last, of course: each of the gang’s members were wanted individually for crimes ranging from murder to bank robbery to forgery and, together, they represented a significant threat to law and order as well as an almost impossibly huge payday for bounty hunters.

In the end, it was a joint operation of the US Marshals, a detachment of the regular Army, and a posse of personally interested individuals, many of them the friends and kin of the Deadlock Gang’s victims, to finally take them down. Light artillery pieces were involved. So were at least two gatling guns. There are still places along the rim of the canyon where the scars of the battle are visible to this day. By the time the shooting was over, more than half the Marshals, no small number of the soldiers, a goodly portion of the vengeful posse, and the entire Deadlock Gang lay dead. Or, at least, it was presumed that the entire Deadlock Gang was dead. Their bodies were recovered from the bullet-riddled ruins of the saloon/inn that they used as the site of their last stand, as were their personal possessions: an astonishing quantity of ill-gotten lucre, firearms, explosives, and Daniel Locke’s many, many, many journals, which he had never ceased to write and excerpts from which ultimately served to confirm his identity to his horrified family back East. All but one was buried in Fairview Cemetery in Albuquerque -- that one being Daniel Locke himself, whose body disappeared before it could be interred. The Locke family denied any involvement in the matter and, in fact, his name was formally stricken from the family lineage. They refused to take possession of any of his mortal effects, leaving his journals and his allegedly hell-forged six-gun to the authorities to dispose of as they wished. Packed away in an ironbound steamer trunk, they passed through numerous hands over the course of a century before finally landing in the possession of the University of New Mexico Sante Fe Historical Documents Archive where they were promptly deposited in the storage annex and forgotten again for nearly a second century.

They were rediscovered in the early 2050s when the Historical Document Archive began an aggressive program of content digitization for the preservation of at-risk documents. The revelation that the so-called “Deadlock Journals” still existed sent a shockwave through the loose community of historians focused on the Old West -- it was generally assumed that they had been destroyed at some point, surviving only in the occasional excerpt published by the more salacious tabloid newspapers of the day. It’s easy to understand why the discovery was such a sensation: college educated outlaws who can’t stop writing about everything they see, hear, do, and think are rare as hen’s teeth, and Daniel Locke continued to be a particularly witty, insightful, and erudite example of the breed right up to the end of his life. His authorial voice is distinct and precise, with a natural storyteller’s gift for phrase-turning and an artist’s eye for detail. In fact, several of the journals are enlivened with his pen-and-ink drawings and the occasional watercolor rendering of landscapes and his cohorts, as well as duplications of the petroglyph-bearing standing stones that once ringed Deadlock Gorge. A genuine polymath, he spoke and wrote in several languages, including his native English, Spanish, French, modern Italian, Latin, two southern Athabaskan dialects, and Romanian.

The “Romanian Memoirs” are by far the most interesting to me because it is in them, and them alone, that he discusses at any length the ten years he spent in Europe, if only obliquely in many cases. What one can surmise is that he did, indeed, find the school he sought and, after many trials, won entry to it, that he drank deep of the wells of secret knowledge and, contrary to his boasts to the contrary, he was one of the fortunates who left its walls with his soul no more in hock to unholy powers than the cost of his tuition. More importantly, they detail his motives for abandoning a life of wealth and ease among the Yankee upper crust for brutal outlawry on the frontier: something there reached out and called to him almost as soon as he landed at the port of New Orleans and he could no more deny its summons than he could refuse to drink water or breathe air. Something that lay waiting beneath the sands, chained deep within the blood-red stone, something that could not free itself but required willing hands to act as its protector and, eventually, its redeemer. Locke traveled west, across Texas, into the territory of New Mexico, where in the bloody, water-carved canyon that eventually bore a bastardized version of his name, he apparently found what he sought and willingly chose to become its servant, feeding it a bounty of fear and pain and blood. He knew, eventually, that it would have to end -- they were far too bold in their depredations, far too cruel in their savagery to be left to their tasks for very long -- and he evidently prepared for that eventuality. He left his “grimoire” and his tools encased somewhere in the webwork of sandstone caverns woven through the walls of the canyon for his “heirs” to find, a bequest that has, theoretically at least, remained unrecovered.

Daniel Locke, during his time in the west, fathered at least three natural children: his daughters Charity Needless (with Silver City prostitute Katherine Needless) and Amelia Reed (with Ruth Reed, the younger sister of his partner in crime, Sarah Reed) and an unnamed son who was only a few weeks old at the time of Locke’s death. A cursory examination of birth and death records show the descendants of his daughters are scattered all over the southwestern United States. The Reeds relocated to California in the bloody aftermath of the legitimate massacre in Deadlock Gorge. Katherine Needless died of tuberculosis in an asylum in the Arizona Territories -- her daughter became a Ward of the Court, eventually a schoolteacher, and married in due course. If any of them sought the inheritance their father left for them, it has not entered into any historical record that I can access.

The Ancient Ancestors -- at one time called the Anasazi and now known more widely as the Ancestral Puebloans -- left their marks all over the Four Corners region, quite literally, including in what would become known as Deadlock Gorge. At the extreme southern end of the canyon, high off the floor, lies the remains of a small cliff-dwelling, less complete and subsequently less studied than the far more extensive, and famous, examples to be found in Mesa Verde National Park and Chaco Canyon. At one point, I’m told, the entire canyon was ringed in petroglyph-bearing stones, enormous chunks of basalt carved from the El Malpais lava fields, carried overland by unknown means, and set in place around the rim of Deadlock Gorge in antiquity. Today, only a few examples remain -- but those that do are strikingly similar to those found on Urraca Mesa, famous in legend as the site of a world-shaking battle between the Lords of the Outer and Underworlds, a gateway into the realm of evil spirits hostile to humanity, and the place in New Mexico where lightning strikes more than any other. Compasses don’t like to work there and most technology decides you don’t really need to live in the 21st Century anyway.

Ranger Maritza Whitehawk reminds me of this as we sit together at her kitchen table, sipping coffee and reviewing the documents I’ve already compiled as part of my research, including the copy of Sergeant Flores’ casefile. Her family owns a trim little ranch outside Gallup: a two-story cabin, a barn for horses, an enclosure for goats, pasturage. A fire burns in the wood stove in the next room, perfuming the air with piñon and cedar, and the coffee she pours for me is considerably better than the boiled dirt I’ve been drinking for the last few days.

“I wasn’t involved in the initial investigation the night of the incident -- but in the days after? Oh, yes. As many hours as I could reasonably assign myself.” She admits, paging through the casefile thoughtfully. “Wild stuff going on all around the region that night and in the days leading up.”

“The 911 dispatcher I spoke to about the incident said as much.”

“Now there’s a job I’d never want to do.” She chuckles, but it’s the last laugh for a while. Seven months before the disappearance of the Center’s population, her own eldest son, Marcus Whitehawk, vanished in the hills southwest of Deadlock Gorge. Neither he nor any indication of his whereabouts were ever discovered, despite an intensive search. The loss has been one of the driving forces of her life since: she has compiled an amazingly complete and comprehensive dossier of missing persons (solved and unsolved), unexplained disappearances, and horrible, tragic deaths associated with Deadlock Gorge and environs within the last century.

It’s...a lot. The hardcopy for the last century alone is three solid feet thick. Fortunately, the digital version fits neatly on a microdrive, which she shares with me for mutual research purposes. It’s while combing through it while writing the outline of this article that I discovered it, tucked in among the details related to the October 29th incident at the Center.

[Begin Sidebar:

A grainy still photo lifted from the camera roll of a media drone with moderately competent imaging equipment: a hover-gurney ringed in EMTs and mobile life support equipment, carrying a single patient who seems to be unconscious and severely wounded, no more than teenaged despite his height.

[End Sidebar]

Jesse McCree. That was the name appended to the image file. There are several other pieces of documentation. A missing persons report, anonymously filed. An official Have You Seen This Child/at risk notification from the authorities in Gallup. A copy of his admission and treatment records from the University of New Mexico Hospital at Santa Fe, which is an impressive and dubiously legal bit of records request chicanery that I’m going to have to find out how she managed. Several more information requests, including her own request for a copy of his sealed testimony before a Federal circuit court judge, also denied.

Jesse Nathaniel McCree is an oddity. Publicly accessible records for him exist but not the sort of records you might expect. Adoption records, and there’s a birth certificate on file with the State of New Mexico, the information related to his biological parents either blank or redacted. He was apparently home schooled, except for one brief stint at public school in Gallup, via the Schools For Isolated and Distance Education, a special needs online education outfit that operates in several countries around the world, including the United States. They issued him diploma-equivalent educational certs on a nonstandard completion curve -- he missed a whole year and a half of school following whatever he experienced that night in Deadlock Gorge but still graduated at the highest levels of academic proficiency. He sat collegiate admission exams slightly later than average but came away with scores sufficient to earn a slot at the school of his choice: he chose the University of New Mexico, where he dual-majored in History and Anthropology with a concentration in Ethnology. Upon graduation, he pursued employment with the National Park Service and further education in the UNM Anthropology Masters program, specializing in folklore and cultural anthropology. (His Master’s thesis is available through the UNM bookstore in dead tree and ebook formats and makes for fascinating reading. I heartily recommend it.) He is pursuing his doctorate in those fields, occasionally guest lectures at UNM, and serves as the Ranger In Residence at the Los Cerrillos National Monument.

He has no social media presence to speak of and the primary means of contacting him seems to be through the NPS website’s links. I’ve used them. He turns up occasionally in tourist photos and on undergrad social media threads from UNM students that attend his lectures. I’m not entirely surprised: he is a strikingly good-looking man, tall and lean and, well, rangy, all dark hair and eyes and, listening to his drawl on recordings, I can see why he ties Freshman knickers in knots. At the same time, there’s something just a little bit off about him, something not quite right that might come across more clearly in recordings than it does in person. I can’t entirely put my finger on what it is.

He has, thus far, declined to grant an interview. If this changes, you will be the first to know. Until then, both he and Deadlock Gorge continue to guard their secrets.

-- Olivia Colomar, Paranormal New Mexico, reporting.

#Massacre In Deadlock Gorge #Olivia Colomar reporting #Tumblr gets it first

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rhetoricandlogic · 7 years

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WoK Reread (or ReadAlong) - Chapters 38 - End

Chapter 38-39

Chapter 40-41

Chapter 42-43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Chapter 50-51

Interludes 7-9

Chapter 52

Chapter 53-54

Chapter 55

Chapter 56, 57, 58, 59

Chapter 60-61

Chapter 62-63

Chapter 64-65

Chapter 66-67

Chapter 68 and 69

Chapter 70-71

Chapter 72-73

Chapter 74-75

Epilogue

At this point, Brandon Sanderson answered questions. I’ll copy the complete section here, because it’s really interesting - I’ll put them under a cut, because this post is long enough as it is.

The most compelling question, tho: we have seen worldhoppers from Roshar on other shards? Seriously? Who? I completely missed out on that one.

1) From Michael Pye:

One thing I’ve noticed around the release of Words of Radiance was you pointing out that The Stormlight Archive is really two series of 5 books each. Was that something you wanted to make clear so as not to be daunting to perspective readers or just more about how the story has developed since you began?

It’s a mixture of both, honestly. I do want to be wary of not being too daunting to readers who are jumping into this thing and have been reading The Wheel of Time. They might think, “The Wheel of Time was ‘promised’ to be six books and it ended up at fourteen. If you promise six, how long is this one going to be?”

But it’s also because I want to start preparing readers for the break that’s going to happen at book five. I’m going to stop writing the series for a few years, and then the “back five” (as I’m calling it) will focus on some different characters than the front five. So I have a lot of good reasons to be preparing people for what’s going to happen there. Our expectations are a very big part of our enjoyment of all different kinds of entertainment mediums.

2) From JeremyG:

How is Kaladin able to consistently recognize Syl, even when she’s in different forms?

This has to do with their bond.

3) From Underbelly:

As a man of many projects, you seem very good about compartmentalizing your workload to be able to complete or advance a project independently while midway through even larger commitments. That being said, even authors such as Stephen King have viewed a certain project as their ‘life work’. Would you consider The Stormlight Archive to be this to you (or at least your early life’s work—being as young as you are) or rather does your ability to compartmentalize extend to your accomplishments as well as your workload in that you can view your achievements independently?

I consider the Cosmere sequence to be my life work—of which the Stormlight Archive is a major part, but it’s not the only part. Compartmentalizing projects is the nature of how I work, to keep myself fresh, but the interconnection of the Cosmere means it’s not entirely compartmentalized.

4) From cyddenid:

How well do Elhokar and Jasnah get on?

Fine, I would say. This is a bit of a spoiler for the end of Words of Radiance, but you will eventually see that they’re the sort of siblings who are both used to doing their own thing and getting their own way. They’ve both learned to stay out of one another’s business. That said, Elhokar is also used to being surrounded by domineering people of various sorts. So having a domineering sister is really nothing different to him.

5) From thanners:

Dalinar can’t hear his wife’s name (or at least it seems to be magically censored to him, anyway), nor can he recall anything about her. But what happens if another woman with the same name is mentioned. Can he not hear her name? Or will he instead be unable to retain the fact that that name is the same as his wife’s name?

It would be more the second.

6) From shdwfeather:

One of my favourite parts about Roshar is the diverse set of cultures that exist in the world. Could you talk about some of the inspirations for the complicated cultures such as the Alethi?

Building Roshar, I wanted to make sure that I was doing a little extra worldbuilding work. I don’t want to say that for something like Mistborn I’m not doing worldbuilding work, but my focus was in other areas. I wanted Mistborn to be accessible, so I made it an Earth analogue.

I consider Roshar my showpiece for worldbuilding, and as such I wanted everything about it to display some of the best of what science fiction and fantasy is capable of: new ecologies, new cultures, cultures that feel real but that at the same time are not just earth analogues. Because of that, I’ve done a lot of work to individualize and distinctify a lot of the various cultures on Roshar.

Now, that said, creativity is really the recombination of things you’ve seen before. We as human beings, by our very nature, can’t imagine something we’ve never seen. What we can do is take different things we’ve seen and combine them in new ways. That’s the soul of creativity. It’s the unicorn idea—we’ve seen things with horns, and we’ve seen horses. We put the two together and create something new, a unicorn.

Because of that, I don’t know if it’s possible to create a culture in a fantasy book that isn’t inspired in some way by various earth cultures. I’m trying not to be as overt about it as The Wheel of Time was, because one of the cool things about The Wheel of Time was its twisting and turning of Earth cultures into Randland cultures.

That’s a big preface. What are my inspirations for the Alethi, for all of the different cultures? There’s definitely some Korean in there. There’s some Semitic cultures in there. The magic system table, the double eye, is based on the idea of the Sefer and the Tree of Life from the Jewish Kabbalah. That’s where I can trace the original inspiration of that. I can trace the original inspiration of the safehand to Koreans not showing people the bottom of their feet because they felt that that is an insult—that’s not something you do. I can trace the Alethi apparel to various different clothing influences. I’m hoping that a lot of where I get the cultures is based off the interplay between the setting, the histories, the idea of the highstorms, and the metaphor of the desolations. My influences come from all over the place.

7) From MRC Halifax:

To what extent has the economy of the world been planned out? Obviously, there’s a refreshingly fair amount of economic activity happening in the novels, often times helping to move along the story. But to what extent do you have it planned out already vs. “I’ll come up with it when I need it.”

That is to say do you know that place A sells to place B, but place B has nothing to sell to place A and so sells to place C, which sells to place A, influencing the trade patterns of ships. And what the price of a horse is in A vs. B vs. C., or the price of an inn for the night, or the price of a pair of well made boots. Have you worked out how people are taxed and tithed, how the trade routes flow, how comparatively wealthy people are around the world, etc?

For a lot of these things I’ve done some of it, and for others I decide what to do when I need it. One trick in worldbuilding is to focus your attention on the things that are going to be a source of conflict or passion to the characters. It would be very easy to spend twenty years worldbuilding and never writing. So there is a fair bit of both, but most of what I focus my attention on is where is the conflict. Trade deals are a source of conflict, and so where it’s a source of conflict to the cultures I have spent more time dealing with it.

8) From Neuralnet:

The characters eat all of these crustaceans… do they have some sort of butter to dip into—even without cows, although maybe they have cows in shinovar? (I can’t be the only one who envisions himself on Roshar eating dinner every time I eat crab or lobster)

Their milk products are much lesser used, but they do get cream and whatnot from sow’s milk. The pigs on Roshar produce more milk from years of natural genetic modification—breeding and whatnot—in the same way that humans have bred cows over the centuries. So they do have milk products. Some of their curries will have different types of cream. Whether they’re dipping the crustaceans depends on the culture. For instance, Horneaters have teeth that break claws. Their back molars are different from standard human molars. To a lesser extent, the Herdazians have the same thing going for them. For those two cultures, they’ll chew the shells and eat them. For the Alethi, they’re probably dipping the meat in a curry, or just preparing the curry with the crustacean meat in it. There are other cultures where they’ll sauté it or have a sow’s milk dipping sauce or things like that.

9) From Jasuni:

When Szeth walked through an area he had lashed in Interlude-9, could he have decided to let himself be affected by his own full lashing? How does this extend to other surgebinders?

Using a full lashing to stick yourself to something is inherently inferior to changing the gravitational pull and being able to move on that plane instead. So I see very rare instances where you would want to. But it is within the scope of the powers to be affected by it if he wanted to be. It will still affect other Surgebinders, and they will not be able to not be affected, unless there is a specific ability or item that is preventing it.

10) From Phantrosity:

In The Way of Kings, we see a lot of worldhoppers on Roshar. Have you already seeded worldhoppers FROM Roshar in your other works?

Yes. You’ve met several.

11) From EMTrevor:

Would an Awakener be able to awaken a corpse that was soulcast into stone more easily because it used to be living, thereby being able to create lifeless similar to Kalad’s Phantoms without having bones in the framework?

Yes. That would definitely work.

12) ESSH and Isilel both wanted to know:

What are the mechanics of rising or falling in dahn/nahn rank? Isilel provided these examples:

Let’s say somebody from a very low nahn, who is basically a serf, right? I mean, they don’t have the freedom of movement. So, what if a man like that rises to a sergeant and serves 25 years with distinction, does he go back to being a serf when/if he retires from the military? Would he be required to return to his village/town of origin? Can something like this be properly controlled, even? I mean, do they check travelling people’s papers?

There’s a lot of parts to this. Rising within nahns and dahns happens more easily in Roshar than rising in social status did in most societies that had similar things in our world—for instance India, or even England. To an extent, it is very easy to buy yourself up a rank. What you’ve got to remember is the very high ranks are harder to attain. By nature, the children of someone of a very high rank sometimes are shuffled down to a lower rank—until they hit a stable rank. There are certain ranks that are stable in that the children born to parents of that rank always have that rank at as well. Your example of the soldier who serves with distinction could very easily be granted a rank up. In fact, it would be very rare for a soldier to not get a level of promotion if they were a very low rank—to not be ranked up immediately. The social structure pushes people toward these stable ranks. For the serf level, if you’re able to escape your life of serfdom and go to a city, often getting a job and that sort of thing does require some measure of paperwork listing where you’re from and the like. But if you were a serf who was educated, that would be pretty easy to fake. What’s keeping most people as serfs is the fact that breaking out of it is hard, and there are much fewer of those ranks than you might assume. The right of travel is kind of an assumed thing. To be lower ranked than that, something has to have gone wrong for your ancestors and that sort of thing. There are many fewer people of that rank than there are of the slightly higher ranks that have the right of travel. It’s a natural check and balance against the nobility built into the system. There are a lot of things going on here. Movement between ranks is not as hard as you might expect.

Ditto with the lighteyes—does exemplary service raise one’s dahn?

It’s much harder for a lighteyes, but the king and the highprinces can raise someone’s dahn if they want to. But it is much harder. In the lower dahns, you can buy yourself up in rank. Or you can be appointed. For instance, if you’re appointed as a citylord, that is going to convey a certain dahn, and you could jump two or three dahns just by getting that appointment. Now, if you serve poorly, if a lot of the people who have the right of travel leave—which this doesn’t happen very often—if your town gets smaller and you’re left with this struggling city, you would be demoted a dahn, most likely. If a lot of the citizens got up and left, that would be a sign. They could take away your set status by leaving. That’s something that’s built into the right of travel. So these things happen.

If parents have different nahns/dahn’s, how is child’s position calculated? For instance, if Shallan had married 10-dahner Kabsal, what dahn would their children belong to?

The highest dahn determines the dahn of the child, though that may not match the dahn of the highest parent. For instance, there are certain dahns that aren’t conveyed to anyone except for your direct heir. The other children are a rank below. I believe that third dahn is one of the stable ranks. If you’re the king, you’re first dahn. Your kid inherits. If you have another kid who doesn’t marry a highprince, and is not a highprince, then they’re going to be third dahn, not second, because that’s the stable rank that they would slip down to, along with highlords and the children of highprinces.

Or, and another thing—what happens if a lighteyed child is born to darkeyes or even slaves? Which should happen often enough, given that male nobles seem rather promiscous. Anyway, are such people automatically of tenth dahn?

The situation is very much taken into account in these sorts of cases. Normally—if there is such a thing as normal with this—one question that’s going to come up is are they heterochromatic. Because you can end up with one eye of each color, both eyes light, or both eyes dark. That’s going to influence it a lot, what happens here. Do you have any heirs? Was your child born lighteyed? This sort of thing is treated the same way that a lot of societies treated illegitimate children. The question of, do I need this person as an heir? Are they born darkeyed? Can I shuffle them off somewhere? Set them up, declare them to be this certain rank. Are you high enough rank to do that? Are you tenth dahn yourself? What happens with all of these things? There’s no single answer to that. The most common thing that’s probably going to happen is that they are born heterochromatic. Then you’re in this weird place where you’re probably declared to be tenth dahn, but you may have way more power and authority than that if one parent is of a very high dahn, just as a bastard child in a royal line would be treated in our world.

#Stormlight Archive #Brandon Sanderson #sa

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travelingtheusa · 5 years

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NEW MEXICO

16 June 2019 (Sun) – We left Kirtland AFB at 9:45 a.m., after a short stop at the PX and commissary (neither had birthday cards). We stopped at a Travel Center for lunch, and reached our destination at 1:30 p.m. We are staying at the Elks Lodge 1172 in Tumucari. The camping area is behind the lodge and consists of four pull-thru sites. If no one puts their slides out, they could fit eight RVs back here. As it is, there is no one else camped here.

Once set up, we drove into town to refuel and look for a birthday card for our grandson. We found a Dollar Store that had what we wanted. We then drove around the town. They have seen better times. Once a major destination along the historic Route 66, Tumucari is now a forgotten town with little industry. They have not managed to make this a tourist destination like Williams has.

We returned to the lodge and went in to pay for our site. While there, we had a drink. The bartender tried to give us suggestions of things to see in town. The two big attractions are only open Tuesday thru Saturday. Since we’re only here for one night, we miss it all.

15 June 2019 (Sat) – We drove one hour north to Acoma, the Sky City. It is an ancient Puebloan village up on a mesa. We had to pay money to buy a permit to take pictures. We took a tour bus that rode up onto the mesa where there were 500-600 houses, some that have been there for more than 1,000 years. About 12 families still live full time in the village. Families come up to the village twice a year: first, on September 2 for St. Stephen’s Day; and the second during the four days of Christmas (December 25-28). It was fascinating to see that there was a village full of thriving families living and working up there for hundreds of years. There was quite a mix of old and new facilities. Some of the buildings have just been allowed to crumble and fall apart. Some have been restored with new adobe and trim. A few have new additions – a steel screen door, colorful paint, a new lock on the door. The streets are dirt and rock. You need an ATV to drive up there yet there were a couple of cars there. How did they get up there without being knocked apart?

We drove back to Albuquerque and had a late lunch at the Standard Diner. We ate there five years ago at the recommendation of Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives. The food was still very good.

After we got back to the campground, we watched a little TV then took a walk around the neighborhood. They have a group of prairie dogs starting a colony. Poor little things. They’ll poison them soon when their numbers get too great.

14 June 2019 (Fri) – We packed up and left Holbrook, AZ, at 8 a.m. It was a long drive – 5-1/2 hours to Albuquerque, New Mexico. We stopped twice at rest stops and then a half hour for lunch at Cracker Barrel. We were so disappointed with our dining experience. Cracker Barrel has been slowly sliding into deterioration. The service was very slow. Another waitress filled one coffee cup but not the other. Our regular waitress came through with a coffee pot but didn’t stop at our table. Paul asked for regular milk for his coffee and the waitress brought skim milk. When we asked for whole milk, she said they charged for that but not skim milk. Why? It costs the same in the store. My grits were tepid. The plates looked empty. It was just an overall unsatisfactory experience.

We arrived at Kirtland AFB FamCamp at 2:30 p.m. We went through a time zone change so we are one hour ahead now in Mountain Standard Time. The campground is large with plenty of trees and space. We had to pull a tree limb away from the RV and tie it off in the tree. But we didn’t cut anything!

After set up, we went to the commissary to pick up a few groceries. We were both tired and turned in early.

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runawaybill · 5 years

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“Run-A-Way Bill” “Pic of the Moment” ... Route 66 “Milk Bottle Grocery” may be a tiny building, but is BIG quirky attraction along Historic Route 66 #RunAwayBill #DUSA2019 #Route66 #Route66RunAwayBill #HistoricRoute66 #USroute66 #MotherRoad #MainStreetOfAmerica #route66classic #rab66Route66_2019 #rabRoute66 #rabQuirky #QuirkyUSA #KeepUSAweird #rabKeepUSAweird Sunday/06.08.19 (at Milk Bottle Grocery) https://www.instagram.com/p/Byh-WdSFqrf/?igshid=udgt2g1hdnpv

#runawaybill #dusa2019 #route66 #route66runawaybill #historicroute66 #usroute66 #motherroad #mainstreetofamerica #route66classic #rab66route66_2019 #rabroute66 #rabquirky #quirkyusa #keepusaweird #rabkeepusaweird

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mrsmoose54 · 1 year

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Route 66 - Manage your Expectations

Route 66 – Manage your Expectations

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#Arcadia #Arcadia Pops #Cherokee Trading Post #El Reno #Milk Bottle Building #Oklahoma #Oklahoma City #Route 66 #Route 66 Robot #Tower Theater

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brandonsniderphoto · 5 years

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The Milk Bottle is a iconic structure in OKC. The building was erected in 1930 and the milk bottle was added in 1948 to draw attention to the building. It also served as an advertisement to the dairy industry. The building set on the historic Route 66 during that time. . . 📸 Brandon Snider . . #milkbottle #historicsite #OKClandmark #motion #photography #streetphotos #colorphotography #scenicphotography #route66 #brandon_snider_photo https://www.instagram.com/brandon_snider_photo/p/Bw5lAZ1B8Zd/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=9zshvt5qegsa

#milkbottle #historicsite #okclandmark #motion #photography #streetphotos #colorphotography #scenicphotography #route66 #brandon_snider_photo

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sistecratibad · 5 years

Text

Why study Computer Science & Engineering at SISTec?

SISTec offers rigorous learning’s in Computer Science and Engineering. SISTec is acknowledged as central India’s top engineering institute by MP Govt.

Snap 1: Dr. Jyoti Deshmukh(Principal, SISTec-R) and Mr. Rahul Mishra (GM, SISTec-R)

Receiving award on behalf of SISTec Group for most innovative college for consecutive second year.

SISTec faculties are curious in knowing students potential and let them explore and earn skills accordingly. We groom you to face various demands of corporate. We promote/motivate students to be an entrepreneur and contribute in national growth.

THE CAMPUS OF SISTEC:

Our 66 acres lush green campus, located on the main road (also called the Sehore bypass) is well connected by bus and is on the route for the proposed metro rail. We are surrounded by many academic and research institutions like CSIIR Bhopal, RGPV Technical University, Military School, and are minutes away from the Rajabhoj Airport, and major shopping areas like Lalghati, Bairagarh. Bhopal is also the nearest railway station.

SISTEC CAMPUS LIFE:

A large number of technical activities and extracurricular activities held around the year in the SISTec Campus, where students actively participate.

SISTec Tech-Fest is well designed with versatile dimensions which help students to prove their earned skills and showcase them in working applications, that’s why it is very popular among the students from other institutes also. Besides this, students also avail other avenues of bonding with their colleagues and the faculty members. Students are also made in-charge of academic committees supervised by faculty member. Each student of SISTec gets the support of faculty members as their full time teacher/guardian. The teacher guardian help student in overcoming all sorts of problems including the academics. SISTec is known for its vibrant work culture where all the festivals like Diwali, Holi etc are celebrated in the campus. Various sporting events and sport competitions are hosted by SISTec. In this context SISTec is acting as leader as many of our students secured winning positions in National and International sports competitions.

ACADEMICS:

SISTec takes academics very seriously in result our students entitled to university level chancellor awards and showcased splendid yearly results in the region. Our tightly coupled policies motivate students to attend classes regularly with interest and passion.

FACULTY:

All the faculty members of the college are prepared with student oriented framework. There is a clear understanding between students and professors. All the professors have postgraduate or doctorate degree. All the faculty members are available for clearing the doubts of every student. Students can directly view his attendance MIDSEM, PUT marks through ‘ERP Online system’ specially designed for students by SISTec.

INTERNSHIP OPPORTUNITIES:

Internships provide CSE majors with the opportunity to apply their learning in job situations in industry, software start-ups, corporations, and mission of organizations. Our interns generally get great reviews from employers who cite their technical knowledge, interpersonal skills, and sense of responsibility. Many interns are told a position is available for them upon graduation, if they choose so.

PROJECTS:

All CSE students work on real-world projects in groups. It is crucial for students to learn how to work in groups, because that is how work is done in the real world. We prepare you to handle problems with people and technology.

TECH TALK:

Every month department of Computer Science organizes the TECH TALK. In this event, department invites an industry personnel to interact with computer science students so that student could understand the recent trends and technologies on which industries are working as well as advance knowledge on various technologies.

IN HOUSE SUMMER TRAINING:

Summer training programs provide great opportunity for engineering students to utilize their summer vacation in the right way. You can develop hands-on learning experience by building several projects as part of these programs. The summer training programs are designed to give you a very good practical learning experience and develop skills that will be very useful for your career. With ever changing technologies & methodologies, the competition today is much greater than ever before. The industrial scenario needs constant technical enhancements to cater to the rapid demands. SISTec well understood the importance of Summer Training because it is the best way to acquire and clear your concepts about your respective fields. That’s why SISTec specially designed Summer Training Program on Programming Techniques using ‘C’, PHP, VHDL, Data Structure using C Language, Core Java, J2EE – Hibernate with Spring Framework, J2EE – Struts with Hibernate Framework, Android, ASP.NET With C#, , ARM, Linux Administration with Scripting, Networking concepts with security.

ENGLISH SPEAKING CLASSES:

At SISTec the Department of English is committed to providing English Language skills with a structured English language learning pathway that will support every student in the process of reaching his or her full potential in a stimulating and safe environment. Apart from the routine classroom teaching sessions the Department of English organizes multiple events to proliferate students’ literary and communication skills. Some of them are as follows. These classes are held for the students who come from Hindi medium background. A special attention is paid to developing spoken language skills.

PLACEMENTS:

The Training and Placement Cell (TPC) at SISTec is established to prepare its students for the large competitive world. The Training and Placement Cell consists of a team that combines the academic power of SISTec with the vitality and ambition of the students. The Training and Placement Cell networks with the best companies in IT, Telecommunications, Placements are awesome in our college. The average package is Rs. 3-6 LPA. Some of the big companies like Netlink, Zenpact, TCS iON, Zensar, Amazon, Caresoft, BYJU’s, Hexaware etc. visited the campus and recruit students. Our college provides one-year training to all students to make them ready for the interview. This year about 90% of the students got placed in big companies. Our placement cell gives information and updates about the companies profile and their recruitment drives with intensive analysis of current corporate demands

INFRASTRUCTURE:

LABS:

The Institute has well-equipped, air-conditioned computer laboratories allocated batch-wise to the students. They contain the latest hardware and software. The average PC-to-student ratio is 1:2. All computers are part of an intranet (1Gbps Backbone), which connects all buildings, including the hostels round the clock. Students have 24 hours access to the computational facilities.

LIBRARY:

The Library has a large collection of computer science Reference Books, Text Books, Technical reports, Standards, Literature books and CD. The Library is being managed with fully integrated multi-user Library Management Software. Using this software, cataloguing and circulation services are being automated. The library of SISTec is one of the most high-tech libraries in MP, which having at least ten thousand books and providing 24X7 services, can accommodate up to 100 students at a time.

HOSTELS:

The SISTec is equipped with fully furnished separate hostel facilities for boys and girls. The hostels are specially designed with two primary objectives of safety and comfort. It has round-the-clock security, with stringent security procedures and comfortable apartments that our students enjoy living in. The hostels have state-of-the-art washrooms (toilet and bathing cells). Cleanliness is maintained by the staff on duty. Each hostel room provides an amiable atmosphere and pollution-free environment, conducive to the mental, physical and spiritual development of the students and helps them become self-reliant. Each Hostel (separate for boys and girls) in the SISTec is self-contained with amenities such as a reading room, an indoor games room, a lounge and a dining hall with mess. The deliberations of the Hostel are governed by the Hostel Committees which includes student representatives under the office of Chief Warden. Working through this responsible body, the committee members lay down appropriate norms of behavior to suit different situations and social occasions in the hostels including the norms for dining hall. All the hostel rooms are networked and internet enabled. B.Tech.first year students are provided double seated rooms in the hostel. Two hostels for the men and one for the ladies have a total of about 100 rooms. The ladies hostel has attached bathrooms in each of the rooms.

DINING FACILITIES:

Spacious and modern kitchens with steam cooking cater to healthy and nutritious food. Hygienic conditions are maintained. Campus has only one vegetarian mess. There is also a canteen which serves snacks, vegetarian food and general fast foods. A couple of cafeteria serves juices, milk products, sprouts and snacks.

TRANSPORT FACILITIES:

SISTec provides transport facility to its day scholars on nominal charges through its self- owned comfortable buses. The buses ply on different routes of the Bhopal to pick and drop the students from various areas. The students are spared the difficulty of commuting to the SISTec campus by public transport. This also contributes to inculcating an element of punctuality among the students. Keeping in mind the fact that SISTec is situated at 10 KM from main city away from modern amenities, the SISTec provides bus facility to every weakened to its students and staff to visit Bhopal.

SPORTS ACTIVITIES:

Sports play a pivotal role in shaping one’s personality and maintaining good health. We’ve specially developed a sports environment that matches international standards and gives a truly global experience to all our students. All of which is provided to them on the campus.

Outdoor and Indoor Sports Facilities: Every student is encouraged to take active part in at least one outdoor activity. SISTec has set up facilities/grounds for Cricket, Football, Basketball, Volleyball, Table-Tennis, Badminton, Chess, Carom, etc., and league matches are encouraged. We organized inter-college sports tournaments to develop a spirit of healthy competition.

Special Coaching: We are proud to have quite a few states-level players who have played in the Nationals. One of our students was selected for the heats of a 200 meter race in the state level games. Another student has represented under 19 India cricket team. We arrange special coaching for them so that they make our nation proud.

While games, sports and athletics directly contribute to physical development of students, other co-curricular activities also indirectly contribute to it. These activities provide a useful channel for the growth and development of the body.

OTHER:

SISTec management is always concerned about student well fair and supports them to achieve their goals. In this context SISTec offers various scholarships/awards/aids to young talents and financially weak students. If the students passed 12th standard with 80% in PCM will get admission in TFW (Tuition Fee waiver) Scheme and performance based scholarship given by our management to topper students of 1st year, 2nd year, 3rdyear and final year in cash with Rs. 15000/- in annual festival of our college.

By:

Prof. Anidra Katiyar and Prof. Dharmendra Jha

Computer Science and Engineering Department

Sagar Group of Institutions | SISTec | Best Engineering Colleges In Bhopal MP | Top Private Engineering Colleges In MP

#Best Engineering Colleges In Bhopal MP #Top Engineering Colleges In Bhopal MP #Best Private Engineering Colleges In Bhopal MP #Top Private Engineering Colleges In Bhopal MP #Private Engineering Colleges In Bhopal MP #Top 10 Engineering Colleges In Bhopal MP #Engineering Colleges In Bhopal MP #Colleges In Bhopal MP #Sagar College #Sagar Institute

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sagargroupofinstitutionssistec · 5 years

Text

Why study Computer Science & Engineering at SISTec?

SISTec offers rigorous learning’s in Computer Science and Engineering. SISTec is acknowledged as central India’s top engineering institute by MP Govt.

Snap 1: Dr. Jyoti Deshmukh(Principal, SISTec-R) and Mr. Rahul Mishra (GM, SISTec-R)

Receiving award on behalf of SISTec Group for most innovative college for consecutive second year.

THE CAMPUS OF SISTEC:

SISTEC CAMPUS LIFE:

A large number of technical activities and extracurricular activities held around the year in the SISTec Campus, where students actively participate.

ACADEMICS:

FACULTY:

INTERNSHIP OPPORTUNITIES:

PROJECTS:

TECH TALK:

IN HOUSE SUMMER TRAINING:

ENGLISH SPEAKING CLASSES:

PLACEMENTS:

INFRASTRUCTURE:

LABS:

LIBRARY:

HOSTELS:

DINING FACILITIES:

TRANSPORT FACILITIES:

SPORTS ACTIVITIES:

OTHER:

By:

Prof. Anidra Katiyar and Prof. Dharmendra Jha

Computer Science and Engineering Department

Sagar Group of Institutions | SISTec | Best Engineering Colleges In Bhopal MP | Top Private Engineering Colleges In MP

0 notes

solivar · 7 years

Text

WIP: Massacre In Deadlock Gorge

An investigative report by Olivia Colomar of Paranormal New Mexico.

Deadlock Gorge.

The Ancestral Puebloans left ruins there, as they did in so many other high-walled canyons in the Four Corners, but even now their descendants do not give it a name. In fact, my regular Puebloan cultural experts flatly refused to speak with me about the place at all. The Spanish settlers who made their homes around Albuquerque called it El Cañon del Viento Cortante, the Canyon of the Biting Wind, though its position tends to be rather nomadic on antique maps of the region housed in the University of New Mexico Anthropology Department’s library. The Navajo bands who were its closest neighbors simply called it the Hungry Place and shunned it with astonishing enthusiasm given the presence of readily available water, arable land at its widest point, and the shelter to be found within its network of water-carved sandstone caves. Today it lies entirely inside the boundaries of the expanded Navajo Reservation Annex and is only desultorily patrolled by Reservation police. It came by its present name, of course, thanks to the infamous Deadlock Gang, who used it as their base of operations as they marauded across Native communities and Anglo settlements, prospecting outfits and isolated ranches, before the final bloody confrontation within the canyon’s walls brought an end to their reign of terror.

It was just after midnight on October 29th when the call came in to McKinley County 911. Veteran operator Melissa Rosales received that first frantic call for help.

[Begin Transcript:

911 Call #1 12:07 AM

911 Operator:

911, where is the emergency?

Unidentified Woman:

Help...please help…

911 Operator:

We will certainly do so, ma’am, but I need you to tell me where you are.

Unidentified Woman:

Deadlock...We’re...We’re in Deadlock Gorge, just off 66, the Starry Desert Center For the Arts -- [static] -- ter’s residency at the edge of town. Something --

911 Operator:

Ma’am, could you please tell me the nature of the emergency? Do you need fire and rescue services? Emergency medical services? Police?

Unidentified Woman:

911 Operator:

Ma’am can you hear me? [pause] Ma’am?

Unidentified Woman:

[whispering] I hear something right outside. I can hear it breathing. I think it can hear me, too. Oh God I think it can hear me too.

Recording Ends

[End Transcript]

[Begin Transcript:

911 Call #2 12:12 AM

911 Operator:

911, where is the emergency?

Anita Colomar (Writer’s Residency Director at Starry Desert Center For the Arts and Sciences):

Starry Desert Center For the Arts and Sciences, 66 Canyon Drive, in Deadlock Gorge. Please send police and emergency medical services.

911 Operator:

Ma’am, can you tell me the nature of the emergency?

Anita Colomar:

[A high-pitched sound cuts across the recording, followed by several seconds of intense static]

911 Operator:

Ma’am? Ma’am, can you hear me?

Anita Colomar:

Yes -- yes, I can hear you. Did you hear that?

911 Operator:

Yes, I did. That was at your end?

Anita Colomar:

It was. I think -- was that coming from outside? Candace, can you see?

[Inaudibly muffled voices from off the line, a sequence of loud bangs, a short scream that terminates abruptly]

Jeff, Candy, push my dresser in front of the door. Hurry. Officer, I think someone may be inside the residency building --

Recording Ends

[End Transcript]

The detachment never returned.

[Begin Sidebar:

Crime Scene Photo #1:

Crime Scene Photos #2, 3, 4, 5 - 13:

[End Sidebar]

[Begin Sidebar:

Crime Scene Photo #14, 15:

A dark pool in the middle of the road, stretched into several smaller, splotchier pools amid obvious drag marks that terminate at the south rim of the escarpment.

End Sidebar]

[Begin Sidebar:

Crime Scene Photos #16 - 20

The blood trail ends completely in the upstairs sculpture studio.

[End Sidebar]

[Begin Sidebar:

Crime Scene Photos #21 - 28:

[End Sidebar]

[Begin Sidebar:

Crime Scene Photos #29 - 40:

The downstairs storage rooms, where the community stored years of hardcopy records in filing boxes and cabinets, are strangely untouched, though all the doors have been torn off their hinges.

[End Sidebar]

“We found the kid downstairs -- we might not have found him at all, but one of the officers in my search group thought she saw something moving at the head of the stairs that led down to the storage area.” Mr. Flores pours himself another glass of iced, drinks, stares out into the deepening twilight for several minutes. “He...was not in a good way -- it was lucky Hathaway had her lockpicking tool on her, because otherwise we’d never have gotten those manacles open. I don’t think Forensics ever actually found the key to the damn things. We had to jimmy all the locks just to get him out and there wasn’t much he could do to help, hurt as he was. The EMTs told me he was lucky to be alive -- one of the stab wounds knicked the abdominal aorta and he was in the process of bleeding to death internally when we found him. The blood on the knife we found was his. The hand belonged to Val Kalloway, the Center’s director of operations, according to the fingerprints.” A humorless smile. “We never did find anyone else.”

Mr. Flores gifted me a copy of his entire casefile on the incident -- the so-called “Massacre In Deadlock Gorge” -- before I left that night and wished me luck.

Daniel Locke was not the sort of person one would reasonably expect to find running a gang of ruthless outlaws out of a bloodsoaked canyon in the desert but, well, he did.

And then he vanished.

For more than ten years.

In the end, it was a joint operation of the US Marshals, a detachment of the regular Army, and a posse of personally interested individuals, many of them the friends and kin of the Deadlock Gang’s many victims, to finally take them down. Light artillery pieces were involved. So were at least two gatling guns. There are still places along the rim of the canyon where the scars of the battle are visible to this day. By the time the shooting was over, more than half the Marshals, no small number of the soldiers, a goodly portion of the vengeful posse, and the entire Deadlock Gang lay dead. Or, at least, it was presumed that the entire Deadlock Gang was dead. Their bodies were recovered from the bullet-riddled ruins of the saloon/inn that they used as the site of their last stand, as were their personal possessions: an astonishing quantity of ill-gotten lucre, firearms, explosives, and Daniel Locke’s many, many, many journals, which he had never ceased to write and excerpts from which ultimately served to confirm his identity to his horrified family back East. All but one was buried in Fairview Cemetery in Albuquerque -- that one being Daniel Locke himself, whose body disappeared before it could be interred. The Locke family denied any involvement in the matter and, in fact, his name was formally stricken from the family lineage. They refused to take possession of any of his mortal effects, leaving his journals and his allegedly hell-forged six-gun to the authorities to dispose of as they wished. Packed away in an ironbound steamer trunk, they passed through numerous hands over the course of a century before finally landing in the possession of the University of New Mexico Sante Fe Historical Documents Archive where they were promptly deposited in the storage annex and forgotten again for nearly a second century.

#WIP Massacre In Deadlock Gorge #I'll fix the formatting later

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