Bicycle lessons (continued)

When I started this blog last year my original intention was to jot down a few random observations from a year in the life.  Specifically the 64th year of my life.  I even had a title that perfectly captured my state of mind.

When I'm 64:  Pedaling Downhill

"Pedaling downhill" pretty much sums up what we all face by our 60's or earlier -- the downhill arc of our physical lives that we can either embrace, ignore, or resist.  By my 64th birthday I already knew that my days in the construction/remodeling business  were at an end.  My body just couldn't recover fast enough (if at all) from any more drywall hanging or framing or trips up and down ladders to paint and repair.  Ten years or so prior to that, in my mid-50's, I made similar adjustments to my running habit.  Thank you to whoever invented the elliptical trainer.    What I turned to for exercise outside the gym was my bicycle, a horse I could still ride, and without the wear and tear.  The pleasant surprise, once I got accustomed to regular rides, was the discovery that even an old geezer could ride longer and faster, if he stuck with it and didn't try to do too much too soon.

To be honest, the "faster" parts have taken place mostly on the downhills.  That's where I started to push my limits about a year ago, once I had the stamina and confidence, cranking like a banshee to see if I could register 30 mph on the odometer.  This attraction to speed didn't happen all at once.  It took a couple of years for me to succumb to a bit of recklessness and ride "on the edge," as skiers say.  Even though I had always been more interested in endurance than speed, I slowly (irony intended) succumbed to the lure of acceleration.  Riding far is a challenge.  Riding fast is a thrill.  

Pedaling uphill builds strength.  Pedaling downhill, oddly enough, restores dignity.  And nourishes self-confidence, maybe even a little cockiness.  In my case, that cockiness has been tempered by a broken bone and torn muscle, the result of two spills in the past year.  But neither has changed my mind about how I intend to face whatever time remains for me.  If I'm headed "downhill" at this point in my life -- then why not with some pizzaz?  I'm not in any hurry to reach the end, mind you.  But whenever it comes, here's hoping I'm still pedaling like mad -- or at least like mad for my age -- to cover the most ground possible.

Bicycle lessons

Our oldest granddaughter took the training wheels off her bike this past week.  As kids do when they are ready for a new skill, she was riding unassisted within minutes.  The inevitable first big spill came within a week, a spin out in a gravelly alleyway.  A skinned leg and elbow and lots of tears later, she was back on the bike the same day, a band-aid warrior on her trusty steed.

Her mom called last night to brag on her daughter's feat and to fret about its potential for injury.  A tough parental lesson in letting go and allowing your darlings to suffer the consequences.   Every step up the ladder of independence takes your babies closer to soaring but farther from safety.

That's a lesson that applies to us in reverse as we grow older.  My 90-year-old step-mother has lived alone since my dad died over 15 years ago.  She's from the old school, the one that insists on doing for yourself.  In recent years her stubborn independence has given us all a tense moment or two -- climbing a ladder to prune the fruit trees in her back yard, driving at night with her one good eye scanning for pedestrians.  I think of her now in the same protective way my daughter does her children.  After she suffered a recent setback, we all see her settling into an acceptance of her mortality -- but on her terms.  No more meds.  No operations.  Palliative care when needed.  And (thankfully) no more driving or yard work.  She's come down the ladder for the last time.  She has been making arrangements, and others will have to do for her from now until the end of her life.  We all are hopeful that a walker and frequent check-ins by friends and family will help her to live her remaining life in the safe sanctuary of her own home.

Remaining active is the bedrock of my own independence.  About 10 years ago, when the pounding on my feet and joints from running brought on too many aches and pains, I began riding my bicycle a few times a week, weather permitting.   I've ridden off an on for years -- to and from work, on weekend rides training for a couple of triathalons, and as a break from running.  Now, when I get out regularly from late Spring to early Fall, my fitness level rises enough for me to imagine myself signing up for a cross-state ride like Colorado's Ride the Rockies, or Iowa's Ragbrai.  I can comfortably ride 30 miles or more at a time along local bike paths at a respectable pace.  I have even taken on the dressings of the avid biking crowd.  I've broken in several pairs of biking shorts, the kind with the padded fanny, and recently splurged on an authentic biking jersey and jacket --both with pockets along the back for stuffing energy bars and extra gear.  I wear a safety helmet, even though with my long neck and robust noggin, it makes me look like a mushroom.  In short, I feel I deserve to look as fit as I feel.

Like my granddaughter, though, I've had my band-aid moments.  Over a year ago in the Spring, I took a spill while attempting a sharp turn, when I couldn't get my feet out of my pedal clips and tore the rotator cuff muscle in my left shoulder when I stuck out my arm to absorb the fall. Very painful.  I've rehabbed it to be flexible and strong enough to swing a golf club, but no heavy lifting or overhead work in my future, according to the orthopedist.  He'll replace the whole shoulder someday when the pain outweighs the risks of surgery.  On the day I fell, I still had a five mile ride home and no one to call for a lift (my wife was out of town).  So, I hopped on the saddle and steered myself home with one wing hanging by my side -- the kind of stupid victory you expect from a teenager.

Less than six months later, a second spill on a misty August morning could have made the highlight reel.  The wheels came out from under me on another sharp turn when I stood up on the bike to generate extra push at the bottom of a steep hill.  I had the slow motion sensation people report in auto accidents and other catastrophes.  I can still picture the bike in the air, wheels parallel with the ground, suspended for a moment before rider and machine hit the pavement.  I absorbed most of the fall on my (already sore) left shoulder, head (helmet on, thank goodness), and side of my left knee.  When I regained consciousness after what felt like a few seconds, another cyclist was helping me up and a passerby stopped to call an ambulance.  My collar bone was broken (even more painful).

And, by some cosmic coincidence, my wife was once again out of town for the week.  When I first came to after the spill, I couldn't remember her name and so couldn't tell the good Samaritan who stopped to help whom he might call.  When I finally recovered my senses and called her from the hospital in a morphine fog, I could picture her shaking her head.  I spent the week alone, wearing the same pair of shorts and nylon shirt since I couldn't raise my arm to dress myself and it didn't seem right to call in the neighbors.  On waking the second morning, I discovered I had twisted my sore shoulder around while sleeping (under the influence of oxycodene) and was unable to return to a non-painful posture that would allow me to get out of bed.  Every attempt to move brought on the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, so I just lay there for several hours staring, Hamlet-like, at the ceiling.

Six weeks later -- the minimum period of rest and recuperation prescribed by the doctor -- I was back on the bike.  I have a permanent bump where my clavicle healed askew.  A friend who has done several multi-day biking events and who has broken her collarbone told me that clavicle bumps are badges of honor for cyclists.  Sort of like swordsmen's scars, I suppose.  I also suppose there are lessons to be learned from my spills and other biking adventures, or maybe just from the simple pleasure of getting on a self-propelled machine for a couple hours at a time.  But, I need another day or two to think of what they might be.

Baseball pilgrims at Marlin's Park

Marlins Park marks the thirty-seventh Major League baseball stadium in which I have seen a professional game.

For the most part, it's a record that I share with my good friend, Tim, although we both have seen parks separately that no longer exist (like Tiger Stadium Candlestick Park, and Forbes Field).  He and I set out on the buddy ballpark circuit eleven years ago.  The goal at the time:  to visit every Major League baseball stadium.  Thirty teams.  Thirty parks.

We weren't so foolish as to think we should do it in 30 days, or in some "Great Race" around the map.  This wasn't about record books or our names in the paper.  We like baseball.  A day at the ballpark beats a day just about anywhere else.  And, we looked forward to spending time in cities that we'd never visited or only passed through.  Just like a baseball game, we weren't on the clock.  If the pursuit went into extra innings (which it did, more on that below) then so be it.

The parks and seeing a game were the objective.  The first season we took in games on two separate trips in seven different locations:  Sun Life (Marlins), Tropicana Field (Rays), Yankee Stadium, Shea Stadium (Mets), Fenway Park (Red Sox), Veterans Field (Phillies), and Camden Yards (Orioles).  Travel plans focused on attending as many games as we could in a concentrated area over a week to ten-day stretch, then booking the trains and planes and tickets to get us to the stadiums.  We would see a single game, check the park off our list, and then head to the next.

Not the best approach, for a number of reasons.  The very first park we visited, Sun Life Stadium in Miami, the game was interrupted by a two-and-a-half hour rain delay.   No wonder the "Fish" (as fans and opponents call the Marlins, and an appropriate name at that) could only draw 6,000 fans on average to a game.  Who wants to drive to an ugly ballpark -- which was actually a converted football field -- and sit for hours watching it rain in hopes that maybe the game would be played?  Since we only had tickets for a single game and needed to drive back to Tampa to see a game there the next day, we spent a couple of hours wondering if we'd have to come back to officially tick Sun Life off the baseball park checklist.  After all, it was about seeing a game in a ballpark, not just showing up to take a tour in the offseason.  About four beers into the delay, we didn't really care.

Tim saved us from future moments like this.  He suggested we follow our hometown Rockies, to watch them play, and that we book a series rather than a single game.  Much better.  So, the pattern settled us into a fan's dream.  Check the schedule.  Find a cheap airfare to a city we had not yet visited and see a couple of series away every spring and summer.

In 2010 we cheered on the Rockies to a series sweep in Great American Ballpark in Cincinnati, which completed our tour.   It wasn't intentional, but saving the Reds for last seemed appropriate, since they were the first professional team in American baseball, and thus the oldest baseball franchise in the Major Leagues.

What sent us into extra innings was a flurry of new stadiums built post-2001.  Our wives heaved a premature sigh of relief when we came home from Cincinnati.  But, we weren't really finished.  Tim and I knew we'd have to see the new ballparks.  And that's what we've been doing as they appear, much to our wive's dismay.  The Phillies, Tigers, Nationals, Twins, Padres, Cardinals, Mets, Yankees, and Marlins all built new parks after we had seen their old ones.  We've now seen all but the two new New York ballparks.  The most recent was Marlins Park earlier this week, eleven years after our last trip to Miami, that memorable near rainout at Sun Life Field.

What a difference a decade makes.  The Fish opened their new park this season and the combination of a good team plus new facility is drawing something like 25,000 fans per game.  Marlins Park has a retractable roof to deal with the unpredictable weather (which came in handy since a storm the second day in town flooded areas in Doral, where we were staying).  There is also a bank of enormous windows behind the leftfield concourse that frame an impressive view of the Miami skyline and can be opened when the weather allows.  The groundskeepers are wrestling with the natural turf, which is still a work in progress.  They are trying to find a balance between grass varieties and the limitations of Miami weather -- rain and wind and heat -- which have made it hard to keep the roof open long enough to nourish any growing thing.  I'm certain that's why the grass looked pale and on the verge of giving up the ghost before season's end.

But overall, Marlins Park is right up there with the best of the new stadiums.  I would vote for the concourse as an especially fan-friendly feature.  It's wide and allows you to walk around the park and see the field from any location.  Seats are also wide to accommodate fan's spreading behinds.  We sat down the 3rd and 1st base lines for two games, field level, and enjoyed great views.  Felt like we were a part of the game.  We also sat for one game in right field, but couldn't see the Jumbotron scoreboard, high above center field, which is a minus.  Twice the shame, because it's also one of the best in the majors -- programmed with all the relevant stats for pitchers and hitters, with graphics in high resolution.

The Red Grooms "homerun feature" in center field gives the field a funky vibe.  In a naming contest, fans dubbed it the Marlinator.  Like all of Groom's art, color and whimsy predominate.  He squeezes a fantasitical kingdom into the 75 ft. tall sculpture -- dolphins and seagulls and flamingos, palm tress and sunshine and waves --most with moving parts and laser lights that go berserk when a Marlin's ballplayer hits a home run.  I'm with the fans who think it captures the spirit of Miami -- tropical, garish, post-modern.   Its $2.5 million cost set off some laser lights with taxpayers, and batters complained that it interfered with sight lines from the left side of the plate.  But, the complainers have been shouted down and adjustments made, so that everyone is happy for now.

My other favorite feature is the Bobblehead Museum, a glass-enclosed display of cheesy figurines representing ballplayers from every team and era.  Again, this seems something in tune with the Miami vibe -- kitschy and shallow, but who cares, when the sun in shining and the alligators are napping.  When they put in a feature that celebrates invasive species and over-development, the circle will be complete.

A last feature of the ballpark that deserves comment is its location.  Marlins Park rose from the rubble of the Orange Bowl, smack dab in the middle of Little Havana.  The neighborhood surrounding the park looks rough at first glance, and it certainly won't win any awards for architecture or public spaces.  Poor urban residential pretty much sums up what I saw.

But Little Havana is also known for its street life, outstanding restaurants, cultural activities, and mom and pop businesses.  So, although I  didn't see the surge in restaurants and bars that have grown up around new ballparks like Coors Field in Denver. those kinds of trendy new developments may not be necessary here.  The key is getting folks to arrive early and hang around after a game.   As fans become more comfortable with how to get to and from games, they may also budget some time to spend outside the park, enjoying what the locals have to offer, like cuisine from every Spanish-speaking country in the universe.  Right now, about the only offering is from enterprising homeowners in the immediate vicinity around the stadium, who were out with cardboard signs advertising $20 in and out parking on lawns and driveways on the days we were there.

So I hope the ballpark not only pulls in more fans but spreads them out into the surrounding neighborhoods.  The public continues to subsidize billionaire owners of sports franchises by building new arenas and fields on the taxpayer's dime.  Always these handouts come with the promise of rejuvenation of areas surrounding a sports facility and jobs for locals.  Wouldn't it be great to finally see something like that happen in Little Havana?

Recycling

I'm just back from visiting my daughter's family in Canada, where I made the comment that Calgary's neighborhoods seemed more clean and orderly than most.  Almost no graffiti.  Very little in the way of roadside trash.  I guessed that our northern neighbors must have a better attitude about littering and lots of incentives for recycling.

Turns out the facts support some of this opinion.  My son-in-law explained Canada's program for returning bottles, cans, and even  boxed beverages containers--a comprehensive attempt to encourage folks to reuse and repurpose materials.  Such programs are also becoming more common in the U. S. Oregon and California, Hawaii and a number of other states charge bottle deposits and give return credit.  A no-brainer, really, although I'm sure that somewhere an Ayn Rand devotee is foaming at the mouth as I write this, purple with offense.  Equally sensible are strictures on plastic grocery bags--now outlawed in Hawaii and several California locales, as well as in many European countries, although not yet in Canada.  

Plastic grocery bags make my jaws clench.  Ever since my first visit to Nicaragua in 2005, I have found them especially offensive.  Riding the bus north out of Managua, I passed several miles of open fields strewn with plastic trash.  The barbed wire fences at the edge of the highway were covered with the flimsy bags, flapping in the breeze like prayer flags in hell.  The Nicaraguans have a habit of tossing wrappers, cigarettes, newspapers, old clothes, food scraps, just about anything really out of bus and car windows.  The canals in Managua are little more than trash receptacles.  The government has recently launched a campaign to encourage citizens to recycle and place trash in garbage cans, but a businessman I met my last trip said there is still a long way to go.  Later that afternoon, watching our driver chuck candy wrappers out the window confirmed that bad habits die hard.

Who are the people responsible for trashing the highways and byways?  Having traveled extensively in developing countries, I know that in smaller, especially rural communities local markets and subsistence farmers rarely deal with packaging of any kind.  They carry their own carts and baskets to shop, choosing from produce that has not been packaged or processed, thus nipping the potential for littering at the bud.  The meanest of shacks I have visited are almost always swept clean and neatly arranged inside.  That's not to say that there is no garbage lying about.  Rural folks toss garbage into jungles and farmyards, depending on natural decay and scavengers to clean up after them.  The problem is that population density creates an imbalance.  Too many people in one place create too much garbage and the toss-to-clean-up ratio tips towards trash.  It's easy to understand how the waves of poor that have flocked to cities worldwide bring their habits with them, resulting in accumulated garbage that cannot be wiped away by any passive process.

But the mountains of trash that threaten to bury the earth and create islands of garbage in the sea come predominantly from the well-to-do.  They just do a better job of hiding most of it in landfills and waterways, abandoned mine shafts and open ocean.  By an odd twist, in urban areas at least, the desperately poor are more likely to see trash as a treasure.  That is definitely true in Managua, where a large community of about 1700 poor people glean trash from La Chureca, the main dump in Managua, hoping to find something of value to sell or reuse.  I went there with a donor group I was part of a couple of years ago.  We hired a driver to take us through the dump in the early morning.  Families live in tin shacks along the road leading to the smoldering mountains of trash.  My impression from the minute we entered this area was of people scurrying everywhere.   Everyone seemed busy loading or unloading, sorting through mounds of collected items, intent on making a living performing what they may not have realized was a laudable task--recycling what was useful, giving garbage a second or third or fourth life.

The pictures I have posted here give a sense of La Chureca's nightmarish commotion.  Fires smolder day and night, obscuring the sun and filling the lungs.  Buzzards perch in random clumps, lurching about in their cocky assurance of a hearty meal.  Children work beside adults, dodging bulldozers and horse-drawn carts.  The carts are stacked with giant sacks of reclaimed garbage, bound for resale or recycling.

The morning we drove through La Chureca in 2010, I was unaware of plans by the government to relocate the families who lived around the dump.  A visit by the Spanish vice-president in 2007 prompted Spain to commit $30 million to covering the dump, building a recycling facility, and providing jobs and housing for the people in the area.  Work on that project has begun (see: video).   Locals are evidently being assisted in finding new employment.  But if areas of the dump had in fact been sealed off before our visit, we did not see them.  And the numbers of persons still gleaning items seemed undiminished.  The fact is that many residents remain skeptical of being relocated and retrained.  One woman we spoke with by the side of the road questioned where she and others like her would go if the dump is closed.  I imagine she was voicing a common fear:  that what little the people living around La Chureca possess--rudimentary shelter and a difficult livelihood-- is being taken from them without recompense.

People make messes, rich people more than poor ones.  Our market-driven world is a paragon of wastefulness.  As more countries hop on the consumerism bandwagon, it would be best if new wealth did not also bring environmental and social destruction--pollution of the air and water, disintegration of customs, a worship of self-gratification and denigration of collective effort.  Prosperity for some creates misery for others, those left behind to fend for themselves.

But occasionally communities tackle the consequences of prosperity with braod-minded solutions.  Ideas as simple as "Adopt-a-Highway" clean-up brigades enlist responsible citizens to fight the good fight against trash.  Clothing, shopping bags, furniture, building materials, and even art made from recycled materials are now commonplace, a boon to both the people who use them second time around and to the environment that does not have to suffocate under their disposal.  (I'm thinking of a purse my wife bought in Europe that is made from recycled trucking tarps.)  I recently read of a sidewalk that generates power with every pedestrian footstep--a clever way to put us all to work and guarantee that no unharnessed energy is wasted.  Of course, these changes do not guarantee that every reusable item or potentially usable effort finds a second life.  We still thoughtlessly consume, waste, and discard too much.

My daughter laughed when I  said that Canadians seemed to take better care of their neighborhoods.  When her family first moved to Calgary in January, she said that every snowbank was littered with discarded cigarette packs and paper coffee cups, along with whatever else had either blown in or been dropped from a car window over the winter.  Her husband said that shortly after they arrived, he took two large garbage bags with him on a walk with the kids to a nearby neighborhood park.  They picked up garbage on their way to and from the park, completely filling one bag and most of the second.

Springtime and warmer weather seem to have lessened the trash on the streets in their suburban neighborhood.  So maybe it's about weather-related moods, depressing winters that suck the will out of the best-intentioned.  There may be other factors, but in the end, it always comes down to human choices and behavior.  I laud those, like the people behind the Spanish-sponsored project in Nicaragua, who not only seek a way to solve the problem of commercial waste, but also address the waste of lives thrown on the trash heap by greed, neglect, inequality, and lack of opportunity.  Recycling is, in a sense, rebirth.  And there are far too many people, as well as things, that need a second chance.  That broad vision is what responsible recycling should be about.

Grandkids

I just returned from meeting Adelaide Rose, our newest grandchild.  Or Addie Rose, as she's already being called.  It sounds like a name picked out of a stovepipe hat, something from the 19th or early 20th century.  But names like hers seem to be popular with young parents these days.  Perhaps it is of a piece with their preference for older homes with "character," something we've seen with the influx of young families into our early 20th century north Denver neighborhood.  I'm guessing it also has something to do with a connection to what they think are less complicated times, to continuity and tradition.  Whatever the motivation, it is a beautiful name.

And she is -- I am, of course,  totally biased -- a beautiful child.  She seems to have a calmer disposition than her siblings and parents.  That may be in part due to the circumstances of her birth.

Midwives and home delivery are commonly selected options in the Canadian healthcare system.  That's what Addie's parents chose.  Thankfully.  She decided to arrive, more than a week past her due date, in the middle of a snowy night.  So, rather than mom hauling herself shivering into the cold night and dad panicking on the drive through a typical Calgary winter storm, it was the midwife who hopped in her car to arrive in plenty of time to supervise a quick and (speaking from the male perspective) easy delivery.

When her older sister and brother awoke, they could take a few steps down the hall in their pajamas to meet their new sister.  Our daughter said the whole experience made birth seem like a normal, everyday experience rather than a disruption in everyone's lives.

Addie's paternal grandmother was on hand to help watch the kids and run the household while the new mom took a few deep breaths and napped her way back to something approaching full strength.  Her maternal grandma, my wife, had taken 10 days off from work to be there when the baby arrived, which she refused to do until grandma was back home.  So, I finally -- for our seventh grandchild -- beat out grandma and got to be the first grandparent from our family to hold a new grandkid.

By the time I arrived, Addie was celebrating her two month birthday, starting to coo and smile and attend to whoever or whatever was close by.  She spent considerable time windmilling her arms and feet, kicking and punching out in every direction, a jitterbug of joy.

Everyone seems settled in with, perhaps, the exception of big brother, aged 4.  When I talked to him about his new sister, he often responded with, "The baby came out of Mommy's tummy."  A mystery still to be solved.  While his mom was pregnant, he was in the habit of announcing that, "I have a monkey in my tummy."  As a parent, I would have been starting a therapy fund, but as as grandparent I know that he'll figure things out in his own time.

And, who knows, the mystery may evolve into a movie or symphony or epic poem.  I hope I'm still around for the premiere.

Written in Bone

"Do you watch CSI or Bones or any of those forensic dramas on TV?"

I posed that question to one of the FBI lab technicians who was demonstrating investigative techniques in a small room at the far end of a current exhibit called Written in Bone at the National Museum of Natural History (NMNH).

The young woman and her colleague exchanged a knowing glance and a sympathetic shaking of the head, like they had heard the question a thousand times before.  "It's never that easy," she said.

The five women and one young man from the FBI were available to explain how some of the forensic techniques used in putting together the Written in Bone exhibit are the same as those used in criminal investigative field and lab work.  They represented FBI divisions concerned with evidence provided by human remains, manufactured materials, and geologic traces in crime and terrorism cases.

The two technicians from the Forensic Geology division caught my attention first, since my wife taught for years at a mining engineering university.  Standing behind a table with a tray of soil and rock samples, their earnest gazes made me think of Dr. Jack Hodgins on Bones, the TV show--a weekly must-see for my wife, in or out of season.

"What is it that attracts women to this work? And why five women here and only one man?" I asked the one male Geo tech.

"He's just lucky," asserted his female colleague, before he could answer.  "Actually most divisions have primarily women, except for explosives," she smiled.  Her colleague had been trained as an environmental scientist, but had found the work routine.  His answer approximated what most of the other techs said as well.  One young woman from Puetro Rico had actually earned an undergraduate degree in forensic science and had interned at the FBI, but she was the exception.  The others had started out elsewhere, but had been drawn to criminal investigation.  That was even the case with one young lady who had an undergrad degree in biology and a masters in anti-terrorism/national security from Rochester Institute of Technology (the degree is no longer offered).   All agreed that although it was not anything as intense or dramatic as in a television series, investigating cases at the FBI was still very interesting work.

I asked the woman in Forensic Geology what her most interesting case to that point had been.

"My second week on the job Timothy McVeigh's truck was brought into the lab, ironically in a rented Ryder truck."  Because she was new to the work, she mostly took notes while other technicians combed the vehicle for soil evidence that could place it at sites associated with the Oklahoma City bombing suspects.  The thrill of working on such a high profile crime hooked her on forensic work, which she, too, admitted was mostly a far cry from TV dramas.

"Although one time I did do some interesting field work on the Centennial Bomber case."  That case involved a bomb which killed one person and injured more than 100 others at Centennial Park in Atlanta during the 1996 Summer Olympics.  FBI investigators found a trowel which the bomber, Eric Rudolph, had used to bury explosives while developing and testing them.  To link the trowel to places Rudolph had been known to frequent, "they kept sending back samples that I knew were from unlikely sites, so I asked to be sent down South to help lead the search.  With my background in geology I could look at an area and know immediately that it was impossible for the soil on the trowel to have come from there."  She smiled.  "It saved the FBI a lot of time and trouble in the end."

The chance to talk with working forensic scientists amplifies what the Written in Bone exhibit so ably demonstrates--that careful investigation of post-mortem evidence can reveal many things about the dead.  Like the character Dr. Temperance Brennan demonstrates in the Bones series, forensic work is a part of solving both current and long-standing mysteries.  In the case of the exhibit, those mysteries reside in skeletal remains discovered at Jamestown, Virginia, and St. Mary's City, Maryland, colonial sites first settled in the early 1600's.

NMNH scientists, led by Dr. Douglas Owsley, have been sifting through physical remains from both sites, trying to piece together what occurred many years ago.  In the case of Jamestown, examinations of skeletal evidence suggest that one young settler, who was probably about 14-15 years old, may have died from an arrow wound to the thigh.  An arrowhead discovered near his humerus (see small white object near the skeleton's left leg bone in the image above) most likely was still embedded in his thigh muscle when he was buried.  But further examination revealed that he would likely have died even if he had not been the victim of an attack.

The lad had evidence of severe abscesses caused by two broken front teeth in his lower jaw.  Since the teeth had not been capped or treated--medical treatment at the time was both primitive and unavailable to these adventurers--they had become infected to the point that the boy was certainly in severe pain.  He also would have been breathing in the infection, poisoning his lungs as well.  The attacker's arrow merely hastened his death.

In other instances, forensic scientists have been able to match diary notes and corroborating information with burial evidence, as in the case of two men who died on the same day and whose skeletal remains were discovered in a single grave.  They were determined to be males of European ancestry based on bone analysis related to ethnic and sexual features, as well as bone growth patterns related to diet.  The fact that only Native American pottery shards and no artifacts from after the early decades of the 17th century were discovered at the grave level pinpoints the deceased as among the first Jamestown settlers.  A diary entry from one of the original Jamestown settlers names two men--Edward Harrington and George Walker--as dying and being buried on the same day.  Thus, a positive ID to these two skeletons, all thanks to a combination of archaeological, historical, and forensic information.

I recommend a visit to this exhibit, but don't rush through.  The first rooms detail how bones tell tales and the kinds of tools forensic scientists have at their disposal to help them discover the story of those who lived long ago.  Although these tools are not as fantastical as those amazing computer-generated graphics available to lab tech Angela Montenegro on Bones, they still provide for sophisticated investigation into our past and into the solution of contemporary crimes.

View a video, narrated by Dr. Owsley, Head of Physical Anthropology at NMNH, introducing the Written in Bone exhibit at http://www.anthropology.si.edu/writteninbone