Robert Desmarais is no ordinary caretaker, living as he does in a ghost town 8200 feet above sea level. He is also an historian, story teller, geologist, chemist and licensed blaster. He speaks of the people who inhabited this place as if he’d known them all personally, which due to the eerie nature of this town, he might well have. Robert is in the process of putting together a book on the history of the town. Hopefully it will be available before long, as just the few stories he told us made me want to learn more.
On a late April day, snow still thick on the high peaks, I joined the Eastern Sierra 4X4 Club for a trip up the rugged, steep dirt road to Cerro Gordo. We drove south out of Bishop, known as the “Little Town with a Big Back Yard,” and headed south to Lone Pine, where we picked up the 136, the road over to Death Valley. Just past the fading town of Keeler, we turned left and abandoned the highway for a dirt road that wound up eight miles to this historic mining town. Bishop indeed has a very big back yard.
It was clear, long before reaching our destination, that my two wheel drive car wouldn’t have made it, particularly on a steep section with loose rock. A good SUV with fairly high clearance would do just fine in dry weather. A four wheel vehicle could continue on the White Mountain Talc Road, which runs along the ridge and is supposed to return to the 395 at some distance north, but don’t take my word on that before heading out.
Cerro Gordo was considered
In the summer of 1854, London was coming out as one of the most modern cities in the world. With nearly 2.4 million people living in the area at the time, the city’s infrastructure itself was having a hard time providing for the basic needs of its residents. The biggest problem existing within the city at that time was its waste removal system, or for better terms, its lack of one. Human waste was piling up everywhere, from people houses to the rivers and drinking water. This situation was the perfect breeding conditions for a number of diseases, and towards the end of that summer, one of the most deadly of them all took over. It took the work of both a physician and a local minister in order to discover the mysterious cause of the
Dr. Gabor Mate, a Hungarian born Canadian physician, who is also a neurologist, psychiatrist, and psychologist, but who specializes in the study and treatment of addiction, reveals revolutionary evidence pertaining to addiction. In Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, Dr. Mate worked with patients suffering chronic drug addiction for 12 years. With 20 years of experience as a family practitioner, Dr. Mate is a renowned speaker and teacher throughout North America; sharing his extensive knowledge with diverse audiences including health care professionals and educators (Mate, About Dr. Mate, 2016). The Realm of Hungry Ghosts, Dr. Mate’s most recent best-selling book, illuminates the origins and causes of addiction. As Co-founder of Compassion for Addiction (a non-profit organization), Dr. Gabor Mate encourages a greater understanding; “addiction is the attempt of affected human beings to escape a profound discomfort with themselves and their world” (Mate, Compassion4Addiction, 2015). Drawing on cutting-edge science, Dr. Mate presents the world with a shocking discovery: “The source of addiction is not to be found in genes, but in the early childhood environment.” Therefore, Dr. Mate simply “calls for a more compassionate approach toward the addict.” (Mate, 2016) As cutting-edge science concludes addiction to be a mental health issue, rather than criminal behavior, the American legal system demonstrates a devastating disservice to its own society.
In my world, there is a dichotomy between the comfort of my hometown and the excitement of the unknown. Flat and uninterrupted, the Nebraskan landscape is as uniform as the political and religious attitudes of those who occupy it. I know that when I step
“Robert Smalls was an enslaved African American who, during and after the American Civil War, gained freedom and became a ship’s pilot, sea-captain, and politician.” (Wikipedia). People wonder whether Wikipedia is actually a reliable source or not. Others just assume it is because there is a lot of information about the topic they looked up. The Wikipedia article on Robert Smalls is one example of explaining whether it is a reliable source of information or not, and why. Also, this research helps understand what exactly is a reliable source of information.
The Ghost Map by Steven Johnson reflects on a widespread disease that began in London in 1854. The story focuses on the cholera disease and the origin of where the disease might have began. Dr. John Snow and Reverend Henry Whitehead play a huge role in trying to prevent the disease from spreading and having a second cholera epidemic.
The summer of 2016, my family decided to shake up our annual summer vacation by heading out west, and chose to go to Sedona, Arizona. Let me tell you, this place radiates beauty. If you've never heard of Sedona, I’ll give you some background real quick. The city IS a desert city. Everywhere you look there's just dirt or sand on the ground and lots of cacti. But the trait that distinguishes the city IS that it sits within a valley in the red rock. All around you stand mountains made of this fiery earth. During our stay there we hiked along many trails through the red rock to almost every tourist spot, some of which gave you a panoramic view of the mountains. The views appeared surreal and took my breath away. Yes, I could go on and on about the beauty of this city, but that's not quite what this story IS about. On this trip, my family and I got up close and personal with some areas of Sedona that one wouldn't call “tourist hotspots.” The town of Jerome is an old mining town built at the base of a mountain, that now has lots of shops and restaurants, and we decided to make this our next destination. So my dad plugged the town into his iPhone GPS (first mistake) and we headed out to reach our destination. Blue sky and deserted land rolled by as I stared out the window. Time seemed to slowly trail by and we did not see signs of the town anywhere. Then suddenly, the smooth asphalt turned to gravel, and immediately something seemed off. “Are you sure we’re going the right way??”
This city is fully steeped in darkness, from the looks of the place. It wouldn’t surprise me if the sun doesn’t even end up rising. Everything around me is withered and wasted, even the trees in this park, which no one bothers to tend to anymore. This place is no better than Galicia, which is practically a lost cause now.
Despair sometimes becomes the basis of inspiration in which we live out our lives. The "City of One: A Memoir" by Francine Cournos is a testament to this notion by basing her desire to study medicine and psychoanalytic as a result of her wanting to understand her mother’s death. "City of One: A Memoir" is a story of triumph and inspiration through the notion that while an individual’s life may be difficult there is always something greater to live for. Francine Cournos life gives insight into how vicious separation within the attachment cycle can be and while early attachment theorists may say one thing about how it can affect the way we function later in life there is always a chance to stand against it.
The third chapter, “Landscape of Profits,” looks at the effects of new industry in the borderlands in the late 1800s with the arrival of the railroad and more capitalist ideals. In this era, real changes took place as more people began to
Mainly, Johnson wrote this book to prove that one week in 1954 was one of the defining moments in what people today know as modern life. First, he proved that the first fateful week of September ultimately influenced the way cities organized themselves. Second, he proved that the events of the Broad Street Outbreak changed how disease was studied and viewed. Third, he proved that urban intelligence could come to understand a massive health crisis of which most people refused to see the truth.
In Washington Death City it is not a happy place. Everyone living in the Quadrants has a job corresponding to their Quadrant. There is 10 Quadrants. In Quadrant 2 the is a living named Ramen. He is a 26 year old male and is a scientist. He is trying to invent things to make his fellow livings lives better. He does not have a very personal life. When he goes home he talks to his grandpa and his nephew. “Hi everyone” Ramen announces as he walks through the door. “Guess what I made at work” Both Joe, his grandpa and John, his nephew respond limply “what”
I found myself five miles outside of Zion National Park in Utah early last summer. Pure energy coursed through my veins at 5:30am to hit the trail as I shook my dad awake. I fantasized of sitting on the top of the landing and looking down at the valley distant and peaceful below. The knife’s edge ridge stands nearly 1,500 feet above the valley, only accessible via miles of trail and dozens of switchbacks. Sandstone rock crawls up both sides and suddenly creates a narrow top, to which only the bravest travellers to this Mormon “place of peace” may tread.
Italo Calvino’s extraordinary story, Invisible Cities is a literary accomplishment. Invisible Cities contains of an impressive display of discussions between Marco Polo, the legendary Venetian explorer, and Kublai Khan, the famous Conqueror. The two settled in Kublai Khan’s garden and Marco Polo details, or for all one knows invents, depictions of several wonderful cities. Considering these cities are not ever actually seen, yet only recounted, they are unnoticeable to the emperor. In consideration of the fact that they might not actually exist, they may be truly obscure to all but the reader, who is captivated by the dazzling, foreboding input of Marco Polo. “If I tell you that the city toward which my journey tends is discontinuous in space and time now scattered, now more condensed, you must not believe the search for it can stop. Perhaps while we speak, it is rising, scattered, within the confines of your empire…” (164). The main topic is Marco Polo and the cities he has traveled, or one city in several structures. These expeditions involve cities of memory, trading cities, cities of desire, thin cities, continuous cities and of the sky. The outcome is an intensely intriguing achievement of literature that urges surpassing the borders of the fictional book. Between these enlightening depictions of unfamiliar settings, Calvino allows his readers to indulge in the discussion between two men, one in the middle of his career, the other in
In the short story Ghosts written by Edwidge Danticat a young man named Pascal and his family (mother, father, and a brother once a police officer, immigrated to Canada) live in an underprivileged area of Haiti called Bel Air. His parents once pigeon breeders, now own a restaurant in the neighborhood. The eatery caters to the working-class citizens as well as the local gang members. When Pascal is not working at the restaurant he is either attending computer programming school or working at the local radio station as a news writer. Pascal has the desire to have a program on the radio station, that he will use as a platform to discuss and alleviate the numerous issues within his community with guest such as; gang members, community leaders,
There 's that look people get told they have, where they look like they 've seen a ghost. I want to know what it means to have that feeling but knowing you 're the ghost. It had been too long since I stepped foot anywhere near these parts of the city. After I turned and changed into who I am now, I never wanted to risk getting seen by any members of the family that runs this part. That is actually a good reason they have never been able to extend their territory any further. It 's kind of easy to hear when a gang war is about to break out for someone to gain new ground. And for me, it 's all too easy to join the defending family and help kill men you were once friends with to make sure you had the room to run fucking wild. I 'm made a few good friends, nah I made a few bad acquaintances by doing that. The men that run other parts of this city know me by who I am now, only one knows me by who I was. Maybe it 's for the best he knows Big Mac is against him, less likely that it 's me behind the mask then. God, in those days, before I grew up and found out doing everything I was getting told to do, without being told to do them was so much better, Claire not counting, she just above another voice in my head. But the freedom I have, may not seem like a good thing for the city and its people, but I love being me and only this me.