Although I'm not usually inclined to post in advance announcements of future works, I feel sure enough that I'm going to follow through with this that I'm using this blog to make such an announcement. I am working on a novel with the Channeled Scablands as a backdrop, and it should be a real departure from anything else I've done.

I recently completed reading the complete fiction of HP Lovecraft, the epitome of early 20th century horror writers, and throughout my reading I was struck by how  much the setting of each of his stories and novels played a part in the overall mood and feelings of dread produced by the author.

How appropriate, I thought, for the scabland topography and atmosphere to loom largely over a tale of horror and dread. And so I have set out to use this iconic setting to produce a work of horror. My estimate for completion is less than a year - but we shall see!

Someone informed me a few days ago that ten years had passed since I published my first book, Live from Death Valley. I honestly had to look at a calendar to believe that was true. I remain grateful that my agent, Laurie Abkemeier and my first publisher, Sasquatch Books, were so taken by that title and worked hard to get it out to the public.

A few years ago, the book was reprinted in paperback form by The Mountaineers, and I am also grateful for their interest, so the public can continue to buy this book, which serves as a great introduction to Death Valley for those who have never been there, and a reminder of the wonderful things to be experienced there - for those who are already familiar with the national park.

I encourage anybody who hasn't seen the book to purchase a copy and see what my first book was all about. I assure you that other books are in the works and will appear in the coming years. So, stay tuned!

John

To start, a disclaimer. I am not some boring dullard with no sense of humor. I smile when watching an old episode of Frasier. I chuckle at the comments by the two robots on Mystery Science Theater. I laugh out loud at Fry and Laurie. But I still think humor has its place.

For example – why have all the places we visit and actions we take while using the internet been given sophomoric, silly names? We don’t do research, we “surf.” We don’t discuss matters with other people, we “chat.” The names of places we go to do research have inane monikers like “Google” and “Yahoo.” And the places where we go to talk to other people have names like “Twitter” and “Facebook,” “Flickr” and “MySpace.”

Am I the only one who thinks it is beneath people such as senators and congressmen, journalists and the president to send a “tweet?” Why do we use such infantile names to describe the things we do online? For that matter, why do we feel we need to do things like “chat” and “tweet,” “like” and “unfriend,” “tag” and “blog” and “poke?” Am I the only one who feels silly just typing these words, let alone using them in conversation?

Maybe it’s a family thing – this embarrassment factor when it comes to silly names and titles. I can still remember my sister deciding not to order something she really wanted at a Howard Johnson’s Restaurant back when we were both kids. Why? Because she was embarrassed to say the words “Patty Melt.” I agree that it sounds something like the name of a hamburger cartoon character. Maybe a friend of Sponge Bob’s. The point is that once we are adults, shouldn’t it really be beneath us to utter phrases that sound like they were written in a junior high school annual?

Of course, it’s not just the Internet. We do it the real world, too. A place to have your hair cut these days can’t just be Bob’s Style Shop. No, it has to be “A Cut Above” or “Sunny and Shears” or even “Hair and Beyond.” Does a supposedly clever business title actually cause people to anticipate a better hair cut?

Restaurants, as mentioned earlier, represent another environment where cuteness rules. The Fresh and Fruity Rooty Tooty (or whatever it’s called) is a good example at Denny’s. Eggs Over My Hammy is another oh too clever meal name. Are the menu writers at Denny’s simply frustrated novelists, or do they actually think people will go to their restaurant because their menu items sound like something out of a kindergarten rhyming game?

Advertisers do their best to portray the people who buy their products as cute and sassy and full of sophomoric wit. Ever see those beer ads where they show full-grown men performing stupid pre-play ritualistic activities in a superstitious attempt to cause a touchdown or tackle to take place? How about that guy who takes Crestor and has a room in his house filled with placards and pennants and other materials celebrating his choice of pharmaceuticals?

Of course, as people will tell me, the ads and the restaurant names, and the internet abbreviations and clever monikers are clearly exaggerations, purposefully designed to let people make fun of themselves in this oh-too-serious world. If that were the case, however, we would chuckle at an ad, or the name of a menu item, then go back to our serious, or at least purposeful lives. But, all too often, I fear, we see all around us that life imitates art. Too many times we see that the strange football rituals depicted in beer ads, the juvenile actions of grown men and women in car commercials, and the banter among fictional customers at fast food restaurants, are actually pretty much right on the money in terms of how many people really do act and talk in public.

Think of people you have seen throughout any typical day. The guys hanging around the copy machine talking sports; the women at a five-hour clothing store sale; the high-school kids at lunch time. Even if you can’t hear every word of their conversations, think about the gestures they make. Let’s face it; we all know people who high five everything that happens all day long. Hear your favorite song on the radio? High Five! The mustard you like is on sale at the grocery store? High Five! You successfully nailed a piece of plywood to a standing row of two-by-fours? High Five!

Must we really react to every event in our lives with some inane slapping of hands? Do we need to almost ritually throw out phrases like “Woo-hoo,” “that’s what I’m talking about!” or “Bring It!” anytime something happens around us?  

I’ve been known to cheer at a football game. I’ve congratulated someone for finishing a particularly hard task. I’ve even chuckled to myself at a landscaping firm called “Lawn and Order” or a coffee kiosk called “Deja Brew.”  But there should be a time and a place when the cuteness must stop, when we get serious about life for a few minutes, anyway. I hope everyone who reads this will take a moment to look at his of her own actions and consider whether they might be just a little too cutesy in their speech and actions. Especially if you happen to be anywhere over the age of 13.

Come on now everyone, let’s take a look at our own actions and think about being a bit more sophisticated and bit less concerned with popular culture and social standing. Let’s all give it a try okay? That’s the way! High Five!

Too Much of a Good Thing

A few years ago, my wife and I got rid of cable; partly to cut expenses (starving artist and all that) but partly because we just didn’t watch enough cable programs to justify having it. Sometime later, our daughter convinced us to try Roku, one of those boxes that connects to your television and receives signals from your computer. The result is a host of wonderful classic movies, TV shows old and new, documentaries, news channels, and special interest shows and features. Except for some channels you wish to pay a small amount for (such as a great weather site that’s just $1.99 for life), you really never have to pay anything after buying a Roku box.

One of the first things we discovered was that a few channels offered slick, high-definition tours of beautiful places around the world. Some come with commentary, others with music, and some with simply the accompanying sounds of nature. What better way could there be to relax, we thought, after working in the yard or on some household project, than to curl up and travel to some place we had never been, or to a location we loved and would like to visit again. After watching several of these impressive videos, however, I was forced to come to a sad conclusion. What these short travel vignettes remind me of is those very popular large format “coffee table” books that we all used to buy, often for friends who had specific interests. If someone liked to go to Hawaii, you bought them this huge book filled with sharp, full-color photos taken all over the Hawaiian Islands. If they liked old cars, you found a book filled with photos of all sorts of antique automobiles representing a variety of makes and models. What set these books apart from others were their incredibly sharp photography, and the sort of lighting and color manipulation that could only be mastered by professional photographers with 4 by 5 cameras and a huge assortment of lenses and filters.

Anyway, the video tours available on Roku are very much in the same vein, but as much as I marvel at their crispness and spectacular beauty, I realized after a short while that something was missing. In these videos, every less-than-desirable aspect of a location had been removed. I love desert landscapes and immersing myself in the sensory elements found in desert regions. But when I watched the short videos on Death Valley, Zion, and Joshua Tree National Parks, for example, I missed some of the things that are very much part of the authentic experience. Things like the intense sun beating down on my body, the sweat running down my neck, the fly buzzing around my face. I missed the aching feet, the dust blowing in my eyes and the sudden pain in my knees when scraping them against a sharp-edged outcropping of rock.

In other words, the video versions of the places I love had been sanitized, rid of everything that makes them real, compelling and in some cases, dangerous. Just as we can watch a movie and be safely immersed in the life of a spy, the gun fight of a cowboy, or the terror-filled environment of a zombie chaser, we are protected from the realities of outdoor experiences by the high-definition, brilliantly choreographed, and near-perfect video versions of real places. True, they remain places that are open to real visitation by real people, but are now available to be safely viewed at home in your multi-purpose entertainment room, kitchen or den.

For people who will never leave their homes to traipse across some of these outdoor locales, these videos serve a useful purpose. But just as I shake my heads to know how many tens of thousands of people stay indoors all day and immerse themselves in the incredibly “real” looking environments of modern computer games, I feel sorry for those who will never know what an authentic, unsanitized outdoor experience is like, as opposed to one with so many missing sensory experiences, and one that can be frozen, backed up and fast-forwarded at a seconds notice.

Despite the discomforts, uncertainties and potential danger, real outdoor experiences will always outshine those depicted, however high-definition they may be, in video travel adventures available for consumption on your home TV set.

Some of the earliest incidents that tickled Bretz’s funny bone involved members of his own family. Back in the late 1880s, for example, Bretz’s mother had been washing curtains in the home one day using a solution of Naphtha – which is a solvent made from petroleum or coal tar, and was used in those days to get spots out of fabrics. When she was finished with that chore, she carefully took the remainder of the dirty solution out to the backyard outhouse and threw it down the hole. A short time later, Grandpa Bretz wandered out to the privy, sat down, took out his pipe, lit it and threw the match down the hole.

Have I mentioned the extreme flammability of naphtha?

After the explosion, everyone in the family ran out to find grandpa lying in a pile of debris that once was the wooden shell of the outhouse.

“My God!” everyone screamed, “what happened, Grandpa?

Standing up and brushing himself off, the old gentleman said, “I don’t exactly know. Must’ve been something I et.”

 J Harlen Bretz had originally planned to get his degree in biology and he always had a warm spot in his heart for reptiles—especially snakes. One of Bretz’s best snake stories just gets better and better as it is told.

Bretz had his entire class with him on a visit to Gibraltar Rock, near Devil’s Lake. Working their way up a narrow canyon where Bretz was showing his students a number of geological and biological features, a fat, six-foot snake was basking in the sun on a ledge above them. Disturbed by the sudden appearance of all these people, the snake tried to slither away but, instead, it fell off the ledge and landed right in the middle of the group. Needless to say, most of the students scattered in all directions. One of them shouted “rattlesnake!” Another boy attempted to demonstrate his bravery in front of the girls by heaving a ten pound rock at the snake.

Unfortunately, the rock missed the snake and instead bounced off an outcropping of rock then hit Bretz in the shins. This caused him to jump around on one foot before falling over and landing face to face with the snake. In typical Bretz fashion, however, as he lay there in pain just inches from the coiled reptile, Bretz suddenly announced that this was no rattlesnake, but it was either a bull snake or a pine snake.

Never one to miss an educational opportunity, Bretz announced that when they went into town later that day, they would look through some books at the local library and see if they could identify the snake they had found. And so, with a handful of exuberant, mud-stained boys in tow, Bretz entered the library and they all tromped over to the biology section and started looking for photos that depicted the snake they had found in the canyon.

While this was going on, the librarian silently glided over to remind them in a whisper that this was a library and they would need to keep their voices down. About this time, she also couldn’t help but notice the six-foot snake coiled around the neck of one of Bretz’s students. Violating her own rules of library decorum, the librarian let out a shriek at the top of her lungs and the Bretz group quickly exited the library in what Bretz described as “a hasty retreat.”

Now, as nice a story as this is, it doesn’t end here—Bretz kept the snake in the camp throughout the length of his Devil’s Lake course that year, and on the last night before heading home, Bretz and his son Rudolf spent the night at the Warren House Hotel, with the snake safely coiled in a cardboard box. Unfortunately, it escaped sometime during the night and despite a lengthy search by Bretz and Rudolf, They couldn’t find it anywhere.

Because he was running late to catch a train, Bretz headed for the front desk, where he planned to warn the owner that their pet snake had escaped—but that it was harmless. Unfortunately, he found only a small boy behind the counter and Bretz was unable to make him understand his message about the snake.

For the next few summers, conversations often gravitated toward that snake and everyone wondered what might have happened to it. Then—a few years later at a regional art exhibit, Bretz’s wife saw a painting called “Danger on the Stairs.” Depicted in the painting was a big snake coiled at the top of a long flight of stairs. The stairway was clearly the main set of steps at the Warren House Hotel.  

Some of Bretz’s funniest stories involve experiences he had while traveling around the country with his wife, Fanny, and his two children, Rudolf and Rhoda. But in later years, it was his own grandchildren who recalled some of the more outrageous experiences they had with their grandfather.

Bretz’s grandson Peter Bretz recalls seeing his grandfather in action when he was visiting as a boy. As they strolled through the back yard, Bretz was calmly remarking that he would like to show Peter a piece of erratic rock he had brought back from the scablands.

“He stopped in mid-sentence,” recalls Peter, “leaped for the tool shed and came out with rifle in hand. I looked and I saw a shape, low to the ground. BLAM! Doc missed and the neighbor’s cat ran away.”

Bretz then proceeded to forget all about erratic rocks and tell Peter a series of horror stories about “cats and birds and feces.”

Remembering a visit to Boulderstrewn when she was about 17 years old, Bretz’s granddaughter Bonnie was shocked to discover a headstone in the yard reading “Sacred to the Memory of…” followed by a list of all the creatures Bretz had killed while they were in the act of trespassing on his property and vandalizing Fanny’s gardens. Among the dearly departed were cats, squirrels, opossums, raccoons, black birds, sparrows and rabbits.

Granddaughter Wendy Bretz recalls visiting her grandfather during Christmas vacation and as they all sat down for dinner, the doorbell rang. Bretz left the table and went to the door. As those at the table sat and listened, Bretz’s conversation with a stranger at the door became louder and louder until they finally heard him shout, “And stay off my property!” before slamming the door and stomping back to the dining room.

“Can you believe that guy?” Bretz said loudly. “He comes to my door, interrupts my dinner, begins reading passages from the Bible then starts trying to convert me. And on Christmas Day of all times!”

People often tell me that in order for him to have been so serious a field geologist and so dedicated a researcher, J Harlen Bretz must have been a very serious and probably unfunny individual. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Here are a few incidents from Bretz's past to illustrate the sort of humor he had.

Bretz’s suburban home was situated on two thirds of an acre and was landscaped with thousands of rocks that had been hauled home from many of Bretz’s field outings around the country. Bretz dubbed the home “Boulderstrewn” and regularly invited students for parties and geological training sessions.

Bretz had perhaps the most unusually adorned basement that any of his students had ever seen. All around the walls and ceiling of the room were signs with messages that Bretz had found especially memorable or funny. Most of these had been pilfered from field trips sites around the country, and their number grew as the years went on. Among the signs most likely to get laughs out of the students who came to socialize, were the following:

“Men naked above the belt will not be served here” from a drug store soda fountain in Missouri;

“Drunk Again?” from an unknown donor;

“Bring back the Axe’ from a girl scout camp;

“Fisherman’s Liars License” from an unknown source;

“Flush it. We Pay for the water” from a restaurant in Tennessee;

and “Old Cowboys Never Die – They Just Smell That Way” from somewhere in Wyoming.

Also found in the Boulderstrewn basement were a variety of animal skulls, “all but one of them jawless herbivores” wrote Bretz, except “the polar bear I shot in Greenland. Bretz had wired Christmas lights to glow in the eye sockets of these skeletal masks. “An eerie lighting system,” acknowledged Bretz, “but one that has won enthusiastic approval time after time.”

Parties occasionally got out of hand at Boulderstrewn. Former Bretz student Don Bloss recalls a student throwing a knife which struck a wall right between two students having a conversation. All the knives in the house were collected and set aside after that episode.

At another party, an Australian student named Larry had a bit too much to drink and wandered outside for fresh air. Finding him missing and fearful that the boy might have fallen into the garden pond, Bretz ran outside to find the boy fast asleep on the lawn. Another boy named Bob had also over consumed that night and when he saw Larry lying on the ground, he lay down on top of him and cried, “Speak to me Larry, speak to me!” Another partygoer leaned over and whispered to Bretz, “Won’t you save one of the litter for me?”

On yet another occasion, excessive drinking led to a mass dunking of students and Bretz in the garden pond, much to the probably disgust of Bretz’s neighbors.

Aside from the parties at Boulderstrewn, some of Bretz’s own bizarre behavior patterns probably concerned his neighbors as much as drunken reveling. First, there was Bretz’s habit in winter months of following his cold water basement showers with what he called a snow-rubdown. This was basically a nude junket into his backyard, where he would scoop up big handfuls of snow and rub himself all over with it.

Then there was Bretz’s one-man battle with neighborhood pets – mostly cats. The Bretz yard was set up as a bird sanctuary and feeders and nesting places were found in abundance. All other creatures, however, were advised to stay out of the yard, especially cats, who were routinely the focus of thrown rocks and shotgun blasts.

Bretz ended up in court due to the shots he took at one big tom cat. But after he agreed to abandon the gun in favor of humane cat traps, he found out that he had some fans in the neighborhood. An anonymous card from the fictitious “Homewood Cat and Gun Club” arrived at the Bretz household with the simple message of “Good Hunting!”