Tag: Yellowstone

Potpourri for Saturday, September 9th

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn Potpourri, writing
  • My stomach infection is about four months old because the GP decided to refer me to a specialist whose first available appointment was two months away. When I complained, the GP did a test, found an infection, and gave me antibiotics. They seemed to be working but the infection came back after they ran their course. I didn’t tell him because by now, I was at the specialist’s practice. She ran an upper GI which came back normal, then sent me back to the lab for the same test the GP ran many weeks ago. I like the specialist, but think the infection would be gone for good if the GP had handled the whole process. I love modern medicine. <g>
  • I guess I’m watching “Yellowstone” because all my regular shows are still off for the summer and/or stalemated by the actors’ and writers’ strikes. The series is gritty and well-written but seems to be composed of all the possible cliches about life in Montana, including large ranchers being evil, the rez being a bad place, and all levels of state and tribal government being corrupt. I hate to say that I’ve become addicted.
  • I liked Jeff Shaara’s historical novel about Teddy Roosevelt called Old Lion. Very readable, and also compelling even for those of us who’ve read TR biographies such as  Mornings on Horseback. Up to now, Shaara’s novels have focussed on wars and battles. I guess he finally ran out of wars to write about. His battlefield novels are always told via the points of view of some of the major players. It took me a while to adjust to an omniscient narrator point of view in a Shaara novel.
  • Years ago, I learned that food poisoning was a “great way” to lose weight. As it turns out, so is a stomach infection. They work faster than all those diet plans advertised on TV.  They’re a no pain, no loss kind of thing.
  • Well, it seems that most of the books I want to read haven’t come down in price yet. So, I’m re-reading many of my Kathy Reichs (Bones) thrillers, including her 1997 novel Déjà Dead. These are well-written and compelling even if you’ve read them before because there’s no way one can remember all the plots and subplots. Since her novels stem from her profession, one learns a lot about dead people and morgues. Like the TV series, the Temperance Brenan in the books likes skipping out of the lab and investigating what the police seem slow to focus on. Déjà Dead is her first novel. If you read enough of these, you’ll become well-versed in Quebecois profanity that you don’t hear in France such as “Tabernac.”
  • Nice to see a little rain today in NW Georgia.

–Malcolm, author of “Conjure Woman’s Cat”

Potpourri, &c., for July 9, 2023

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn Potpourri

If you live in north Georgia, you already know more rain is coming. If you don’t, then it doesn’t matter. More time to read while the grass slowly grows too tall for the riding mower to cut.

  • I’m enjoying Diana Gabaldon’s Go Tell the Bees That I am gone. It’s 888 pages long in trade paperback, not counting the endnotes. I’ve often wondered if Diana or her publisher have considered including a synopsis of the series at the beginning of each novel to orient people who haven’t read prior books. If you started reading Bees without any knowledge of all the earlier books, you’d be completely lost.
  • I don’t know who or what ticked off a skunk late last night, but getting the smell out of the house took a lot of Febreze. I was hoping our indoor/outdoor cat hadn’t “done anything bad” to the skunk and left it on the front porch. The smell’s gone now, so with luck, the skunk is freshening up one of our neighbor’s yards.
  • We have been watching the TV series “1883.” It’s well-written but a bit gritty. Here’s Wikipedia’s synopsis of the overall plot: “The story is chronologically the first of several prequels to Sheridan’s Yellowstone and details how the Duttons came to own the land that would become the Yellowstone Ranch. It is the second installment produced in the Yellowstone franchise. The series consists of ten episodes and concluded on February 27, 2022.” It’s something to watch until”The Crown” resumes later this month.
  • How many of you have seen  “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny”? The reviews have been lukewarm even though the trailer looks good. We’ll probably watch it out of nostalgia regardless of what the critics have to about it. As Wikipedia reports, “Owen Gleiberman of Variety described the film as a ‘dutifully eager but ultimately rather joyless piece of nostalgic hokum minus the thrill… Though it has its quota of ‘relentless’ action, it rarely tries to match (let alone top) the ingeniously staged kinetic bravura of Raiders of the Lost Ark … time travel, in Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, is really an unconscious metaphor, since it’s the movie that wants to go back in time, completing our love affair with the defining action-movie-star role of Harrison Ford. In the abstract, at least, it accomplishes that, right down to the emotional diagram of a touching finale, but only by reminding you that even if you re-stage the action ethos of the past, recapturing the thrill is much harder.'”
  • According to Variety, “‘Bones’ Creator on Potential Revival: ‘Every Once in a While, We Are All Nostalgic Enough to Think Maybe We Should Do It Again’” I hope this doesn’t happen because “they” may change some of the primary stars, and then the show just wouldn’t be the same. If it doesn’t get a reboot, I’m fine with that because the Kathy Reichs series is independent from the TV show.

—Malcolm

The nostalgia of Haynes Guides to Yellowstone

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn National Parks

“Frank Jay Haynes (October 28, 1853 – March 10, 1921), known as F. Jay or the Professor to almost all who knew him, was a professional photographer, publisher, and entrepreneur from Minnesota who played a major role in documenting through photographs the settlement and early history of the great Northwest. He became both the official photographer of the Northern Pacific Railway and of Yellowstone National Park as well as operating early transportation concessions in the park. His photographs were widely published in articles, journals, books and turned into stereographs, and postcards in the late 19th and early 20th century.” – Wikipedia

According to Yellowstone Forever, “In 1884, Haynes opened a photography store and studio at Mammoth Hot Springs. This would be the first of numerous such photo shops to be erected throughout the park. Haynes was, for all intents and purposes, the official photographer of Yellowstone National Park for years to come. His dedication to the park and to photography was carried on by his son, Jack Ellis Haynes. Millions of photographs, postcards, guidebooks, and souvenirs later, the Haynes family came to have a great impact in bringing Yellowstone to the world.”

His prolific output included a yearly Haynes Guide to Yellowstone that, with the later management of his son Jack, was published up until 1966. The heavily illustrated guides included maps, points of interest, and park rules and regulations. You can find a downloadable PDF of the 1916 guide here. These guides come up for sale at online booksellers and eBay from time to time. Many of Haynes’ early popular color photographs were hand-tinted. He also found success with his stereo camera and the resulting stereographs as well as a bulky camera that produced images on 20″ x 24″ glass plate negatives that showed a great deal of detail.

The preface of the 1916 edition shows that Haynes had an extensive vision of what the guides should accomplish: “The purpose of this book is to guide the tourist on his tour of Yellowstone National Park and to make his visit pleasant and interesting. To this end, it names, describes, and pictures all the points of interest in the park and presents in concise and readable form the scientific and historical information necessary to a clear understanding of the various phenomena.”

Haynes served as the official photographer for Yellowstone National Park as well as the Northern Pacific Railway. The railroad, which served the park, had a fair amount of interest in promoting Yellowstone just as the Great Northern Railway was instrumental in the development and promotion of Montana’s Glacier National Park.

Because of his enthusiasm and enormous photographic output, Haynes was well-positioned to provide the stuff of which the park guides were based. Jeff Malcolmson, in “A Photographic Journey to Wonderland” (Montana The Magazine of Western History, Summer 2022) writes that Haynes’ “First journey into Yellowstone would define the trajectory of his career as perhaps the most prominent early photographer of the park.”

In his cutline for the portrait of Haynes, Malcomson says, “Note that he is armed with a revolver and a knife, ready to do battle with any wildlife” Personally, I don’t think either would be very effective against a charging grizzly. I’d rather have bear spray (not pepper spray).

When I was in Yellowstone in 1965, I wish I’d been aware of the guides. I would have purchased a copy of the penultimate edition even if it would be some years before I discovered what a treasure I had.

—Malcolm

Hotels in the National Parks – a sternly worded memo

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn Historic Preservation, National Parks6 Comments
Why we’re out there – NPS Photo

When many of today’s historic hotels in the National Parks first opened, America was a different kind of place, so people appreciated “rustic” and didn’t expect to have all the comforts of the city out in the woods because, well, if they preferred the comforts of the city they would stay in the city.

From time to time, I complain about the inconsiderate people who ruin camping experiences for everyone else by “serenading” the woods with loud music, loud TV sets, video game racket, and various other hobbies that have no place in a wilderness setting. Frankly, I’m there to get away from all that. Those who are addicted to racket can (a) wear earphones or (b) go away.

The same Internet that makes it possible for me to say a few kind words about old hotels gives others an opportunity to say nasty things about those hotels even though old buildings in a restricted environment can’t (and shouldn’t) compete with one’s favorite, modern resort. But, I can’t help but wonder why people complain about the very things they should have expected to find.

People, The Hotels are Really Old

I wonder why we can’t tolerate “rustic” these days as good sports rather than griping on line about things that are, quite frankly, to be expected in a hotel built 100 years ago in an environment that isn’t kind to structures and in a place that cannot be disturbed by the kinds of “improvements” we take for granted in big city hotels that operate year-around with full access to the best transportation, water, power, DSL and everything else anyone could possibly ask for in a hotel.

Old hotels are likely to have smaller rooms, older-style bathrooms, thinner walls, floors/ceilings that creak and groan, balcony doors and windows that might rattle in the wind, no television or hotel-wide WiFi or DSL. We used to call this kind of thing charming because going to a National Park was traditionally considered “roughing it” even if you didn’t sleep in a tent. Light sleepers can take white noise machines. WiFi addicts can: (a) find the designated WiFI areas (if any), (b) consider entering a 12-step program before staying in a historic hotel so that the lack of instant access to the world outside the park won’t be more important than enjoying what is there, (c) Go away.

When staying in a National Register listed hotel, it’s good to remember that preservation of historic structures always trumps restoration, much less renovation.  Buildings are updated to comply with codes. But updating them because people want modern bathrooms, TV sets in rooms with less insulation between rooms, and a five-star, New York City experience in a wilderness setting is not only destructive to the historic building, but down right lousy management. In the preservation business, we often talk about Paul Bunyan’s axe. If you keep using it, you have to tolerate its fragility and construction and chop accordingly; otherwise, when you replace the handle one year and replace the axe head another year, it might look like Paul Bunyan’s axe. But it isn’t. It’s now a replica and no longer a historical treasure.

You Don’t Expect Granny to Dance Like a Teenager

I don’t know, maybe fewer people are tolerating granny these days because she’s old and acts her age and cannot do this or that with the same efficiency and style as a much younger person. Yes, I know, science will probably figure out how to keep replacing granny’s parts so that one day granny will be a teenager again. Of course, she won’t be granny any more either.

Old buildings also act their age, especially when their age=history. We cannot have it both ways. If we want to stay in a historic hotel, then we need to love it for what it is rather than taking away all of its history by modernizing the original building away over time with “improvements.”

In many ways, the National Park Service is the ultimate steward of these properties, because NPS  controls what can be changed and what cannot, how the hotel must function within a pristine environment, and even how much you pay for a room. Suffice it to say, the hotels are old, expensive to maintain and difficult to operate.

We’re there for nature, not pampering; so it would be nice, I think, for some constructive reviews on sites like TripAdvisor rather than listing “faults” that really are the realities of rustic accommodations in century-old hotels.

—Malcolm

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