In response to my friend Mark, who has posted an excellently instructional bean-cookery treatise on his likewise excellent blog Professional Human Being, I offer here one of my favorite recipes for beans from the author Edward Abbey (stolen, as the author would have wanted it, from another blog):

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Victoria McCabe
19 May 1973

Dear Victoria,
Herewith my bit for your cookbook. This recipe is not original but a variation on an old (perhaps ancient) Southwestern dish. It has also been a favorite of mine and was for many years the staple, the sole staple, of my personal nutritional program. (I am six feet three and weigh 190 pounds, sober.)

I call it Hardcase Survival Pinto Bean Sludge.

1. Take one fifty-pound sack Colorado pinto beans. Remove stones, cockleburs, horseshit, ants, lizards, etc. Wash in clear cold crick water. Soak for twenty-four hours in iron kettle or earthenware cooking pot. (DO NOT USE TEFLON, ALUMINUM OR PYREX CONTAINER. THIS WARNING CANNOT BE OVERSTRESSED.)

2. Place kettle or pot with entire fifty lbs. of pinto beans on low fire and simmer for twenty-four hours. (DO NOT POUR OFF WATER IN WHICH BEANS HAVE BEEN IMMERSED. THIS IS IMPORTANT.) Fire must be of juniper, pinyon pine, mesquite or ironwood; other fuels tend to modify the subtle flavor and delicate aroma of Pinto Bean Sludge.

3. DO NOT BOIL.

4. STIR VIGOROUSLY FROM TIME TO TIME WITH WOODEN SPOON OR IRON LADLE. (Do not disregard these instructions.)

5. After simmering on low fire for twenty-four hours, add one gallon green chile peppers. Stir vigorously. Add one quart natural (non-iodized) pure sea salt. Add black pepper. Stir some more and throw in additional flavoring materials, as desired, such as old bacon rinds, corncobs, salt pork, hog jowls, kidney stones, ham hocks, sowbelly, saddle blankets, jungle boots, worn-out tennis shoes, cinch straps, whatnot, use your own judgment. Simmer an additional twenty-four hours.

6. Now ladle as many servings as desired from pot but do not remove pot from fire. Allow to simmer continuously for hours, days or weeks if necessary, until all contents have been thoroughly consumed. Continue to stir vigorously, whenever in vicinity or whenever you think of it.

7. Serve Pinto Bean Sludge on large flat stones or on any convenient fairly level surface. Garnish liberally with parsley flakes. Slather generously with raw ketchup. Sprinkle with endive, anchovy crumbs and boiled cruets and eat hearty.

8. One potful Pinto Bean Sludge, as above specified, will feed one poet for two full weeks at a cost of about $11.45 at current prices. Annual costs less than $300.

9. The philosopher Pythagoras found flatulence incompatible with meditation and therefore urged his followers not to eat beans. I have found, however, that custom and thorough cooking will alleviate this problem.

Yrs, Edward Abbey—Tucson

The other day I got a new video camera! I am incredibly impressed with it, and ran out to shoot video of my front yard using this very nice cine lens, a Cooke Speed Panchro 18mm Ser. III.

I’ll write more about my experiences with this camera in upcoming posts, but for now I’ll just say, ‘wow!’

Relevant details:

From Mackinaw City; taken while chewing a stick a’ Blackjack licorice gum.

Photograph by Marlin Lum

Reflectance Transformation Imaging, or RTI, is a computational photographic technique that produces detailed computer models of surfaces from photographs. Typically, when capturing a sequence of RTI photographs, one places the camera on a stable platform and takes many pictures while moving a light source around the object one wants to model. From these photographs, computer software is able to analyze the subject and generate a topographical model. This model can then be interactively re-lit or manipulated to produce highly detailed images. Oftentimes the RTI model conveys far more information than any single photograph that went into its production. You can think of it as a powerful method of analyzing surfaces; more powerful than any photograph could possibly be.

For many fields of scientific or cultural inquiry, such robust analysis is exciting and meaningful. Think of a painting conservator able to see new detail in brushstrokes on the surface of a canvas; or an archeologist divining new insights into the methods used to produce a petroglyph far out in the field. Such new methods of seeing hold the potential to unlock new knowledge, and greatly facilitate important scholarship.

In the spirit of advancing these methods, the National Museum of the American Indian participated in a grant from the National Center for Preservation Technology and Training to bring the non-profit group Cultural Heritage Imaging to Washington DC for a week of hands-on instruction in RTI.

On June 8-11, 2009 I joined Mark Christal (Multimedia Co-ordinator for the NMAI), a group of conservators from our museum and the Museum Conservation Institute, and the staff of C-H-I to learn the techniques involved in capturing a good RTI sequence.

Cultural Heritage Imaging is a 501(c)3 non-profit based in California whose mission is to advance the use of advanced digital imaging techniques in the field of cultural preservation. C-H-I travels the world training archeologists, museum professionals, and material cultural documentation experts in RTI and other imaging techniques.

By the end of our week together, we had generated quite a few excellent RTI sequences which I hope to post to my website soon. Part of the NMAI’s role in the grant was to help generate educational materials for the C-H-I website, in order to facilitate future training. Mark and I spent the last day of training with C-H-I staff shooting video clips of the RTI process for the site. It is our hope that future students of RTI will be able to use the clips to better learn the technique.

K’atepan is a second ruin site in close proximity to San Mateo Ixtata; it is directly across the valey from Wajxaklajunh, and in fact is visible from the top! When we arrived, around mid-day, an elementary school had just let out nearby, and about 100 kids streamed into the small courtyard of the ruin to play! Each kid had a little cup filled with a corn drink; Elias told us the that the mothers of the students take turns preparing it during the week. It was really funny watching these kids run around the ancient site: they were particularly fond of bouncing soccer balls off the stone walls of K’atepan.

Thursdays and Sundays are market days in San Mateo. Hundreds of Guatemalans come to the narrow streets of this small community to buy and sell food, textiles and essentials.

Click through either image to see my new set of images.

My first big set of images is finally up at my Flickr site, click the image above to visit!

I hope to send up a new big set every weekend or so. Since returning from Guatemala, I’ve been inundated with work: I have hit the ground running in my new role as videographer for the exhibition media department. Things in the new role have been great so far, but extremely busy. This week I’m working at the National Museum of the American Indian, on the National Mall (my office is still at the Cultural Resources Center in Maryland, however.) I love being able to step outside into the throngs of visitors and Washingtonians strolling along ‘America’s Back Yard.’

So I have returned safely home from Guatemala, to find myself up to my ears in work. I am trying desperately to find time to sort through my photos, and will have a nice set of images up soon.

In the meantime, here is a nice picture from Tikal, of Temple III taken along the Tozzer Causeway.

As of this post, I am on vacation. Here’s the view from the roof of our hotel, in the spectacular colonial town of Antigua. That volcano is called ‘Volcán de Agua,” and at one point in antiquity it cascaded a ruinous flood of stones, mud and water that destroyed this former Spanish capital. Following this disaster, the Spaniards relocated their capital to the present day location, Guatemala City.

Here we are doing laundry at Elias and Beth Alonzo’s house (on Sunday.) In San Mateo, everyone uses these concrete wash basins, and does it by hand. When you finish washing an item, it goes up onto the roof. Everywhere you look in San Mateo you see colorful laundry drying on lines, roofs, and hilltops. Personally, I could think of no nicer way to spend my Sunday…

Today I am relaxing in the home of Elias and Becky Alonzo; and enjoying their internet! Thank you guys!

Yesterday we hiked up a ravine in the valley and took lunch at this incredible waterfall. Elias tells me that very few people ever see it, so our group felt extremely lucky to bask in the sun and soak up the view. It was a tough scramble off-trail to find it, down the forested nearly-sheer side of the mountain.

In response to questions I have been receiving, I’d like to say that our work here is going extraordinarily well. The kids here are incredible, taking up the challenge of documenting their culture with a voracious appetite for learning new things and mastering difficult technologies. Based on our experiences with them, we all feel strongly that when we leave they will have a greater interest in their own culture, and more confidence to utilize technology. One of the students has even expressed a strong interest in pursuing journalism!

I have truly fallen in love with the humble mountain community of San Mateo. Today we washed our clothes by hand in a concrete wash basin (that’s right Mom!) It was a great way to spend a warm Sunday afternoon; meditating on the simple, efficient technologies we in North America have left somewhere in the past. There is definitely a great pleasure in stepping outside life as you know it for awhile, and learning different ways of life.

We will leave here Wednesday, making the long voyage back to Guatemala City, where I will  meet up with Mai and head towards the town of Flores and the ruins of Tikal.