mental_floss Blog » Ransom Riggs

9 Obscure Holidays in December (Besides Christmas)

Ransom Riggs — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 18:36:40 +0000

There are obscure holidays, and then there are really obscure holidays. I used to think Canadian Boxing Day and Three Kings’ Day were weird; in reality, there are so many holidays stuffed into our calendar that you could spend the whole year observing them and still miss a few. Here are a few of my favorite upcoming weird holidays.

December 5: Bathtub Party Day
The online herbalists at wellcat.com copyrighted this holiday in order, I have to assume, to inspire people to buy essential oils and fancy salts to add to their bathwater. I’m not sure what their definition of “party” is, but the way I see it, there’s a 50% chance that Bathtub Party Day is the only holiday on our calendar which advocates having multiple, simultaneous sex partners. (Speaking of bathtubs, December 5 is also repeal day, which celebrates the end of Prohibition and the need to create bathtub gin.)

December 6: St. Nicholas Day
This is weird on two counts: not only does St. Nick have his own day, but it’s also not December 25, the day we normally associate with this most roly-poly of saints. Also known as Nicholas the Wonderworker, he was a Greek bishop whose reputation for selfless gift-giving made him the inspiration for Santa Claus. For his work helping the poor, he’s also the patron saint of pawnbrokers (for those of you who didn’t realize that pawnbrokers needed divine intercession).

December 7: National Cotton Candy Day
Invented in 1897 and originally marketed as “fairy floss,” cotton candy first became popular at the 1904 World’s Fair in St. Louis. It was officially renamed in the 1920s.

December 8: Take it in the Ear Day
I have no idea what this day means, who invented it, or what I’m supposed to do to celebrate. (Or what, exactly, I am meant to be taking into my ear.) There is, however, a nifty tee-shirt you can buy commemorating the event, which makes me suspect that perhaps tee-shirt designers are the ones behind TIITE day.

December 12: Poinsettia Day
Poinsettias have long been associated with the holiday season, but that’s not the reason behind this day. It was created by an act of Congress in 1851 in honor of Joel Roberts Poinsett, a United States ambassador to Mexico, who first brought the plants back from our neighbor to the south. He died on December 12, 1851.

December 21: Forefathers’ Day
If you know your historical dates, you’ll know that December 21, 1620 was the day the Mayflower landed at Plymouth Rock. First celebrated in 1769 in honor of the pilgrims, this was an ill-fated holiday that eventually fell into obscurity in favor of Thanksgiving. (Do we really need to get excited about the pilgrims more than once a year?)

December 21: National Flashlight Day
This sounds like just another random holiday until you realize that December 21 is also the Winter Solstice — the darkest and shortest day of the year. As long as you’re celebrating, here’s some fun flashlight trivia: it was invented in 1898 by Joshua Lionel Cowan, who also invented the Lionel train.

December 23: Festivus (for the rest of us)
Seinfeld fans, of which there are many, will get it right away. Created by staff writer Daniel O’Keefe, it refers to a fake holiday made up by his father Dan in 1966 to celebrate his first date with his future wife.

The holiday includes novel practices such as the “Airing of Grievances”, in which each person tells everyone else all the ways they have disappointed him or her over the past year. Also, after the Festivus meal, the “Feats of Strength” are performed, involving wrestling the head of the household to the floor, with the holiday ending only if the head of the household is actually pinned. These conventions originated with the TV episode. The original holiday featured far more peculiar practices, as detailed in the younger Daniel O’Keefe’s book The Real Festivus, which provides a first-person account of an early version of the Festivus holiday as celebrated by the O’Keefe family, and how O’Keefe amended or replaced details of his father’s invention to create the Seinfeld episode.

December 29: Pepper Pot Day
This real, actual holiday commemorates a thick, spicy soup that was created to feed the Continental Army during the fantastically harsh winter of 1777-78. George Washington’s chef combined scraps of tripe, small bits of meat and some peppercorn with spices to create “the soup that won the war.”

Strange Geographies: Village Life in Vanuatu

Ransom Riggs — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 12:00:31 +0000

I’ve written a lot about strange places in the U.S. this year — an airplane graveyard in the desert; a mock Iraqi village in the suburbs of San Diego; a town killed by a modern-day dustbowl two hours north of Los Angeles. But the strangest place I’ve ever been — the strangest and most beautiful, I should say — is a developing nation 1000km northeast of Australia, populated by the friendliest former cannibals you’ll ever meet, called Vanuatu. I wrote about it a little bit back in April, right after I returned from two weeks in country, but I’d had such a whirlwind trip, and taken thousands of pictures I’d hardly even begun to cull, that I needed six months or so to process just how profoundly different life in Vanuatu is.

It’s an archipelago comprised of 84 volcanic islands, each separated by many miles of shark-filled seas and unpredictable weather. Travel between islands is difficult and expensive, and as a result, to many of Vanuatu’s 200,000 citizens “international travel” means going to a nearby island every few years to visit cousins. They’ve had some exposure to foreigners — missionaries starting in the 19th century (some of whom were eaten); American soldiers during World War II, who established a base on the largest island to fend off the Japanese, stationed in the nearby Solomons; some British and French, who co-governed Vanuatu in a bizarre arrangement for many years; and tourists that come to a few of the islands nowadays (mostly from Australia, which is where they all assumed I was from). But even on the largest islands, which are mountainous and covered with tough-to-penetrate jungle, there are remote villages where locals have rarely, if ever, encountered outsiders. I didn’t make it quite that far afield, but I did find myself in a few off-the-beaten villages that were definitely not on the tourist trail, and luckily, I brought my camera.

There’s one main city in Vanutu, Port Vila, which is heavily westernized and caters to tourists who come in on cruise ships, and another large-ish town, Luganville, which is a few dusty streets of Chinese-owned shops, French restaurants and hotels catering mainly to scuba divers. Villages throughout the rest of the country rarely have electricity or running water, and though the people are very poor, they own their own land, and the rich soil and unspoiled seas make farming and fishing easy. Food that tourists consider delicacies, like coconut crab, mangoes, pineapple, and all manner of fish, are everyday dishes for the locals. A fisherman on Oyster Island at dusk:

Families make money by selling what they grow in village gardens at roadside markets like this one:

Cows are everywhere and beef is plentiful. The grass-fed, organic beef raised on Espiritu Santo is considered some of the finest in the world, and is exported to top-tier restaurants in Japan and Australia. What else would you expect from cows that get to hang out on the beach all day? I ran across these ladies while kayaking:

Of course, when a cow is slaughtered, nothing goes to waste. Fresh oxtail, anyone?

Pigs are a big deal on Vanuatu, as well. Pigs are a traditional form of monetary exchange, and the most valuable pigs are the ones with the longest tusks. PIgs whose tusks grow so long that they make a loop that pierces the bottom of the animal’s jaw — gruesome, I know — are especially valuable. Some pig jaws on proud display in an Espiritu Santo meeting hut:

Homes are made from branches and folded palm leaves, which are sturdy enough to keep out the most torrential rain, but tend to blow away during cyclones (which are frequent). Here’s a detail of the underside of a hut roof:

Here are a few views of typical Vanuatu villages, homes and a Catholic church, all woven from grass and leaves:

Christianity came with missionaries in the 19th century, and while churches abound, many villages still practice customary religions and black magic. There are also a number of fascinating cults on Vanuatu — especially on the volcanically active island of Tanna, where tourists come to ogle a lava-spitting mountain they call Old Man Yasur.

You can climb up to the rim of Yasur, which puts on a humbling show after dark.

I was disappointed that I wasn’t able to visit either of Tanna’s cult villages, the best known of which is the Jon Frum cargo cult. A white man known as Jon Frum (possibly “Jon from America”) supposedly visited Tanna sometime before the second world war, predicting that white men would drop from the sky with food and all sorts of goods — which is exactly what happened when the war began. When the Americans and their cargo left, the Jon Frum followers began praying to him, using faux American flags, red cross symbols, and military uniforms, hoping that more cargo from the sky would arrive. It hasn’t come yet, but the Jon Frum cultists continue to worship. (Jesus died 2,000 years ago, they like to remind us, and Christians are still waiting around for him to come back.)

The American military left its mark on Vanuatu in other ways, too. Rusting quonset huts are everywhere on Espiritu Santo, and all the country’s few paved roads were built by the American government. This wide, pothole-filled road, for instance, is the remnant of a WWII airstrip. Calling it “paved,” however, is charitable — It’s in such bad shape that you have to drive in a zigzag pattern just to avoid the axle-breaking holes.

The Americans also introduced a species of fast-growing vine to Espiritu Santo, in order to cover their installations and hide them from Japanese air surveillance. Those vines covered much of the island in short order:

The locals I talked to weren’t bitter about the American military presence in Vanutu, though. If anything, they seemed grateful: “You are our big strong brother!” one man said to me, flexing a muscle. “You saved us from the Japanese, then gave us our country back!” Which is true, I suppose — whereas the French and British hung around and tried to run Vanuatu for more than a hundred years, the Americans came, established some bases, and left. Still, it was a novel experience, being thanked by someone abroad for something my country’s military did.

Villagers are nothing if not resourceful. Just as they’ll use American airstrips as roads, other goods have multiple uses, too. A baby named Florence enjoys an unusual tire swing:

Once you get away from the beach, getting around the island can be a bit difficult — rivers and tall, volcanic ridges are everywhere. But villagers, lacking concrete or asphalt, make do anyhow. This is a somewhat treacherous bamboo bridge across a river, on the other side of which is a steep ladder up a hill formed by branches.

Later, a villager took me to an amazing, bat-filled cave (too dark to photograph) followed by a great deal of scrambling over boulders in a rushing river — again aided by a number of seemingly death-defying hand-made bridges. (If you look closely, you’ll notice that my guide is wearing a Dora the Explorer floatie around his neck.

Finally, we floated down the river for a half-hour, nipped at by curious fish, walls of rock rising above us. Waterfalls and a riot of vegetation fell down from the cliffs above. It was, in a word, ridiculous, and the cheap waterproof camera I took this picture with does the scene no justice.

Families and kids are everywhere on Vanuatu; the population is very young.

Everywhere you go, kids follow, laughing and having fun.

It was unsettling at first to realize that even the smallest kids carried machetes with them almost everywhere they went. I soon realized that they were invaluable — the fast-growing jungle constantly needs cutting, and machetes can cut down coconuts and open them, and their blunt handles serve as hammers.

These kids were showing me their pet eel, which they’d grown to an enormous size in a small, waterfall-fed freshwater pond in their village. They used to have two but the other one had been stolen; the remaining eel was guarded 24/7 by boys with slingshots (and machetes, naturally).

Kids in Vanuatu, you won’t be surprised to learn, spend a lot of time in the water. Not only is the South Pacific warm year-round, but Vanuatu’s islands are dotted with magical “blue holes” — rain- and river-fed reservoirs of deep, cool, crystal blue water which provide drinking water to nearby villages and swimming holes for its young people.

After a snorkel:

After a scuba dive, I came up to find these boys playing on a rock jetty; they’d been following the divers’ air bubbles. My lens was wet, and the result is sort of impressionistic, but totally captures the feeling of the place.

We found this boy smiling at us from a hole in the jungle. A nearby adult explained that he’d just gone through his circumcision ritual, which meant he had to wear a namba (a huge penis-sheath), mud makeup, and hang out in holes for a week or so (this guy’s English was about as good as our Bislama, so I’m not totally sure on the details).

In short, Vanuatu is one strange and beautiful place, and it’s people couldn’t be friendlier. The South Pacific is a mind-bogglingly huge constellation of little island worlds, and though there are so many more to explore, I’m certain I’ll be back to Vanuatu one day.

You can find more photo essays on my website.

The Late Movies: One-Hit Wonders

Ransom Riggs — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 03:30:01 +0000

They’re the songs you can’t get out of your head, no matter how hard you try. Even though you know every word by heart, you can’t remember the name of the band. Some one-hit wonders are a result of passing fads — Rick Dees’ “Disco Duck,” for instance — while others represent careers cut short by untimely death (Blind Melon’s “No Rain”). Most of the time, however, one-hit wonders are bands that hit the top of the charts once but could never recapture the magic.

Cornershop: “Brim Full of Asha”

Simple, catchy and maddeningly repetitive, this is a song that won’t leave your head for days after you hear it.

Four Non Blondes: “What’s Goin’ On”

Little-known fact: Four Non Blondes founding guitarist Shaunna Hall joined George Clinton and Parliament-Funkadelic in 2007.

Derek and the Dominos: “Layla”

It’s a question of definition: “Layla” is credited to Eric Clapton, but it was released by his band Derek and the Dominos — and it was their only hit. What do you think, does “Layla” count?

Right Said Fred: “I’m Too Sexy”

Right Said Fred had another song or two that placed on the dance music charts, but can you name any of them? I think they count. And check out this awesomely cheesy video!

Dee-Lite: “Groove is in the Heart”

I remember this song being passed around as a MIDI file back in the early 90s. Ahh, the early days of music piracy …

Falco: “Rock Me Amadeus”

Falco is the only artist ever to score a #1 hit in the U.S. with a German-language song.

The Vapors: “Turning Japanese”

Rumor has it the song a veiled reference to masturbation, like Cyndi Lauper’s “She Bop.”

The Baha Men: “Who Let the Dogs Out?”

The Baha Men are from the Bahamas, and were honored in 2000 with a Grammy Award AND a Nickelodeon Kids’ Choice Award for their indelible hit:

The Rembrandts: “I’ll Be There for You”

Insipid pop at its most annoying, this song was, famously, also the theme to Friends. I do, however, like the Rickenbackers they play.

The Kingsmen: “Louie, Louie”

Finally, let’s end with a classic. It’s hard to believe now, but “Louie, Louie” was the subject of an FBI investigation into its supposedly subversive and obscene lyrics. (Ultimately, the investigation didn’t result in any action being taken against the Kingsmen.)

Strange Geographies: Portugal’s Bone Chapel

Ransom Riggs — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 17:11:49 +0000

I spent a few weeks in Portugal during the spring of 2006, and one of the most striking things about its many churches and chapels and religious monuments was, well, how dark they were. Not literally — there was plenty of light. But it seemed like every statue of Christ was weeping blood, and every church had a display case of gruesome relics in the foyer; a saint’s pickled eyeballs here, a toe with dessicated skin still clinging to it there. But of all these monuments to pain and death, nothing could match the Capela dos Ossos — the Chapel of the Bones. Located next to the Church of St. Francis in the medieval town of Evora, it’s a large room decorated with the bones of more than 5,000 monks, exhumed from local churchyards to be used as building materials way back in the 16th century.

As you enter, you pass under this doorway. Its inscription, translated from the Portuguese, means ““We bones here, for yours await.” Nice and creepy.

According to legend, the 16th century Franciscan monk who created the chapel did it not to freak people out or scare them, but to prod visitors into a spirit of quiet contemplation. “Life is fleeting!” the bones are meant to imply. “See?!”

On the other side of the doorway, as you exit, is this cheerful little motif, restored in 1810.

The monks who built the chapel got creative with their bones, using them not just to fill wall space, but to create all sorts of decorative patterns. It’s more or less what I imagine a Martha Stewart Halloween special would be like.

Not everyone who visits the chapel is inspired to contemplate the mysteries of death, however, judging from the many graffiti-inscribed skulls that line the walls. Ana Gomes, I hope someone writes on your skull when you’re dead.

As an added bonus, the monks decided to hang two corpses on the wall from a chain — that of a woman and a child. They’ve been there for hundreds of years, and they don’t seem to be going anywhere anytime soon. No one is sure exactly who the unlucky pair are, but rumor has it they were cursed by a powerful man and were refused burial in local cemeteries. (That doesn’t explain how they died, though; methinks it was not of natural causes.)

The strangest part about the Chapel was that it didn’t seem all that creepy. There was something sanitized and touristy about the whole thing, with ropes sectioning off the walls so you couldn’t get too close, and an information kiosk just outside the door. I nearly forgot that I was walking around the house of 5,000 corpses.

You can check out more “Strange Geographies” photo essays on my website.

The Photograph That Isn’t as Romantic as You Might Think

Ransom Riggs — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 19:23:06 +0000

“V-J Day, Times Square, 1945,”
a.k.a. “The Kiss” Alfred Eisenstaedt, 1945

On August 14, 1945, the news of Japan’s surrender was announced in the United States, signaling the end of World War II. Riotous celebrations erupted in the streets, but perhaps none were more relieved than those in uniform. Although many of them had recently returned from victory in Europe, they faced the prospect of having to ship out yet again, this time to the bloody Pacific.

Among the overjoyed masses gathered in Times Square that day was one of the most talented photojournalists of the 20th century, a German immigrant named Alfred Eisenstaedt. While snapping pictures of the celebration, he spotted a sailor “running along the street grabbing any and every girl in sight.” He later explained that, “whether she was a grandmother, stout, thin, old, didn’t make any difference.” Of course, a photo of the sailor planting a wet one on a senior citizen wouldn’t have made the cover of Life, but when he locked lips with an attractive nurse, the image was circulated in newspapers across the country. Needless to say, “V-J Day” didn’t capture a highly anticipated embrace by long-lost lovers, but it also wasn’t staged, as many critics have claimed. In any case, the image remains an enduring symbol of America’s exuberance at the end of a long struggle.

This post was excerpted from Ransom Riggs’ article “13 Photographs That Changed the World,” which appeared in a 2007 issue of mental_floss magazine.

The Late Movies: Here Come the Pixies

Ransom Riggs — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 02:13:23 +0000

It has lately come to my attention that some very smart people I know — who otherwise have great taste in music and art and all things cultural — don’t know who the Pixies are. If this is the case with any of our readers, I’m going to fix that today. The Pixies are revered as the indie rockers who started it all, so influential that Kurt Cobain once famously called Nevermind his attempt to “rip off the Pixies.” It’s also the 20th anniversary of the Pixies’ breakthrough album, Doolittle, and I was lucky enough last week to see them perform it live, in order, first track to last. It was such a great time, I thought I’d try and replicate the experience a little bit right here on the blog. Ladies, and gentlemen — this is Dootlittle.

“Debaser”

“Tame”

“Wave of Mutilation”

This was from the concert on the night that I saw it, shot by someone who had a much better place to stand than I did.

“I Bleed”

“Here Comes Your Man”

Frontman Frank Black wrote this song when he was fifteen years old. FIFTEEN.

“Dead”

“Monkey Gone to Heaven”

Classic, classic, classic.

“Mr. Grieves”

And here’s TV on the Radio doing a really interesting a capella cover of “Mr. Grieves.”

“Crackity Jones”

A song about a crazy Puerto Rican roommate Frank Black once had.

“La La Love You”

The only Pixies song sung by drummer David Lovering.

“No. 13 Baby”

“There Goes My Gun”

“Hey”

“Silver”

This song and “Gigantic” were the only ones in the Pixies catalog penned by bassist Kim Deal.

“Gouge Away”

The Lost Art of the Mixtape

Ransom Riggs — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 12:12:08 +0000

The birth of the iPod era was definitely a great day for music lovers everywhere, but the non-linear, random-accessible freedom it gave listeners also brought about the death of something beloved by many — the mixtape. Traded between friends but most often between lovers (and singles pining for it), the act of making and giving a mixtape became a symbol for the awkward affection of a generation. Found magazine co-creator Jason Bitner’s new book, Cassette From My Ex, is a wistful look back at the art and craft of mixtape making — and the stories behind them, as told by a bevy of noted writers, artists and musicians — all, at one time or another, mixtape recipients. I have to admit, I’m a sucker for this kind of thing — I get nostalgic just thinking about all those dusty old tapes in my closet back home. Here’s a clip of Jason explaining how the project came about:

Radar Three – Cassettes From My Ex – Click here for funny video clips

To give you a taste of the stories in the book, here’s one from Claudia Gonson, of the Magnetic Fields, about a tape from her boyfriend, circa 1986. (You can hear the songs on the tape here, by the way.)

John was my boyfriend from age 15-19 or so, ie: my entire high school career. These of course are the years where music leaves a passionate, indelible mark on the core of your being. It’s hard for me to comment on these songs (or some of them, anyway) without wanting to shout “oh my god, this is the most amazing song EVER!!”

Which is why I am so grateful to John. I met John in the summer of 1983. I had just turned 15. A few days later, I introduced him to Stephin, my bandmate and best friend. They were both older than me, and musically precocious. I was a little doe-eyed kid who had only heard of the Beatles. The day they met, they immediately had an argument over which Lindsay Buckingham solo album was the best. I was scared they hated one another, but it turned out this is how some boys show how much they like one another.

The conversation then turned to Yoko Ono, and it went on, for months, years… Who got the latest single from Flying Nun, or Rough Trade, or Cherry Red? Who had the cool newest solo project from David Roback of the Rain Parade? (see the “Clay Allison” track below. They were then renamed Opal, and eventually morphed into Mazzy Star). We got fake IDs in Times Square, and went to see our favorite bands live, including the Bangles, Game Theory, the Chills, and The Three O’Clock.

It was clear to me that I needed lessons: “what’s the difference between the Rain Parade, The Raincoats, and Rainy Day”? These two men infused me with more information in a month than I could have gotten in years by myself. John would buy the first three Bee Gees albums and then make me a mix-tape of the best songs. All I think I discovered for him during our years together was the Smiths and REM.

Anyway, I am grateful beyond words for John and his mix tapes (and Stephin too of course). I am certain I would not be the person I am today had I not had this orthodox musical education. I’d probably be a banker or something.

John also showed me how to listen to production. He sat me down on the bed one day and put on the Archies “Sugar Sugar”. “Listen,” he said, “to the first verse. What instruments do you hear? Do you hear that tambourine coming in on the second verse? That tambourine on the second verse is the first rule of classic bubblegum production!”

Like many mix-tape artists, John worked hard to time out each song so that the tape wouldn’t have any remaining space at the end. He also began and ended the A-side of this particular tape with a song featuring the chimes of Big Ben (the Chills and Cheap Trick).

So many of these songs have stories and memories connected to them, I could write a story for each (in fact, John sent me a marvelous email in which he did just that). And, while I don’t want to sound like that person… but what the hell, I will- some of these songs are the BEST SONGS ON EARTH. EVER EVER EVER.

The Late Movies: Video Contest Winners

Ransom Riggs — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 03:00:53 +0000

Ever since YouTube crashed onto the scene a few years ago, companies have been holding video contests, and anywhere from several hundred to several thousand video-makers have been entering each one. Now, such contests have become so popular that there are at least a dozen running at any one time, and veteran commercial directors are beginning to gripe about losing work to the great unwashed masses. So what are these contests, and which videos are winning them? I did a little legwork, and came up with this sampler of contest winners.

Doritos “Crash the Superbowl” Contest

This spot was shown during last year’s superbowl — quite an honor.

Turbotax Rap Video Contest

They even hired Vanilla Ice to be the judge. Here’s the rap Vanilla liked best:

Sketchies II YouTube Sketch Comedy Contest

For two years in a row, YouTube has gone looking for the best amateur sketch comedy troupes out there, via the videos they submit. This year’s winner has a special place in my heart, since it’s about Sherlock Holmes. (Shameless plug: check out my book!)

Radiohead Video Contest

AniBOOM hosted a contest for animators, who were invited to make videos for some of Radiohead’s new songs from In Rainbows. This mesmerizing entry for the song “Reckoner” took the prize.

Doritos “Guru” Conest Winner

The winner of this Doritos contest got to name a new flavor of chip. Find out why they call it “Scream Cheese” —

On the Lot Filmmaker Attacked by Aliens

Remember the ill-fated reality show On the Lot from back in 2007? It was kind of the ultimate video contest — the winners got to appear on the reality show, and then every week’s episode was a new video contest, the final winner of which got a development deal at Dreamworks. (Kind of a weird prize — the writer/director who wins gets to become a producer. Okay … ) Anyway, this was the video submission which earned filmmaker Zack Lipovsky a spot on the show.

Bjork “Innocence” Video Contest

Crowd-sourcing music videos seems to be catching on. Here’s a weird winner for a weird song by Bjork.

Strange Geographies: the Forgotten High School of Goldfield, Nevada

Ransom Riggs — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 11:28:10 +0000

At the turn of the last century, Goldfield was a mining boomtown — prospectors were pulling millions of dollars worth of ore out of the ground each year, and with a population that ballooned to more than 30,000 by 1904, it was the largest town in the state of Nevada. It was a classic Old West success story: gun-slinging heroes like Wyatt Earp trod its wooden sidewalks, and in a society where the real measure of a town’s worth was its bar-and-whorehouse scene, Goldfield had the rest beat: Tex Rickard’s Northern Saloon had a bar so long it required 80 bartenders to run it. Of course, I wouldn’t be writing about Goldfield if everything had kept going like gangbusters. By 1920s, the gold mines had started to peter out, and in 1923 a moonshine still exploded and started a fire that took most of the town’s wooden buildings with it. Today about 400 people remain in Goldfield, a semi-ghost town set among the barren wastes of Nevada’s high desert, surrounded by ghost stories and empty buildings — many of which are impressive stone and brick structures that survived the 1923 fire.

One of those buildings is Goldfield High School, built during the boom years in 1907. It graduated its last class in 1952, and has stood proud but shuttered ever since, impressive on the outside, decaying within. Over the past few years, a small team of dedicated volunteers has begun trying to save the high school, but restoring it to its former glory is a gargantuan task. Vandals and the elements have had their way with the building for many years, and it will take many more to lift it from the beautiful state of decay it’s in today.

The first thing you notice is a fascinating jumble of layers and textures — peeled paint, fallen-away plaster, warped and weathered boards and the wooden guts of walls that were never meant to be exposed, all creating this insane, ancient-looking pattern of wear.

The second-floor hallway, and one of many open or broken windows. Anything with wings or a ladder can get inside.

Chalk for a long-gone chalkboard.

Other classrooms still have parts of their chalkboards in tact — a jumble of original classroom writing from the 50s (yes, really) and graffiti.

The teacher’s writing on this board is still readable. Looks like a pop quiz: 5. What is the most important country in the Western hemisphere? Anyone care to take a guess?

The floor is beginning to buckle in this classroom.

Volunteers have started working to replace the floor in another classroom. As you can see, they have their work cut out for them.

The only time I was ever allowed in the girls’ bathroom — and wouldn’t you know it, it’s empty.

A science classroom. How many dissected frogs haunt this room, we may never know.

The school’s main staircase is probably its most impressive feature. Creaking and lacking a few crucial banisters, its a little scary — but beautiful nonetheless.

The staircase from the ground floor, a dizzying maze of angles and textures.

The yellow glow in the picture above is one of the worklights the volunteers have strung around the school. I don’t believe in ghosts, and yet I sincerely hope the volunteers don’t hang around this place at night.

Forty-year-old graffiti.

“Class of 1942,” penciled in a doorjamb.

A teacher’s desk.

A teacher’s chair.

Bars of light in an empty room. The silence in this high school — generally the last place you expect to be able to hear yourself think — was almost unsettling.

Anyone interested in helping out the Goldfield High School volunteers — with work, donations, or anything else — can email them here or leave a message at 775-485-3788.

If you’d like a print of one of these photos — or any of my Strange Geographies photos — they’re available here.

You can check out more photo essays on my website.

The Sherlock Holmes Handbook: How to Outwit a Criminal Mastermind

Ransom Riggs — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 15:13:14 +0000

It’s been well over a century since the first Sherlock Holmes adventure was published, and yet the master detective remains as popular as ever; witness the upcoming release of Holmes, starring Robert Downey, Jr., the Holmes-inspired television phenomenon that is House, M.D., and countless adaptations over the years. But what is it about this 19th century detective that we still find so compelling today? Why do modern-day detectives still study his methods and techniques? What can we still learn from Sherlock Holmes? I set out to answer those questions, and the result is my new book, The Sherlock Holmes Handbook: the Methods and Mysteries of the World’s Greatest Detective. All week I’ve been posting excerpts from it, which is available at Amazon and at bookstores everywhere. Hope you’ve enjoyed this little preview!

How to Outwit a Criminal Mastermind
“He is the Napoleon of crime, Watson. He is the organizer of half that is evil and of nearly all that is undetected in this great city. He is a genius, a philosopher, an abstract thinker. He has a brain of the first order.” —Sherlock Holmes describing Professor Moriarty in “The Final Problem”

Powerful minds are not always drawn to the pursuit of good; there are those whose genius is tainted with criminality and who, as Holmes believed of his arch-nemesis Professor Moriarty, possess “hereditary tendencies of the most diabolical kind.” Like Holmes, you may discover that the crimes committed in your city are not the random work of unrelated thieves and killers but are connected—though subtly—in a giant web, at the center of which is a mastermind like Moriarty, controlling all from a seemingly untouchable remove. Until you can find proof admissible in a court of law that such is the case, however, your day-to-day casework will remain an unending, Sisyphean task; unless you can outwit the mastermind, your crime-solving efforts will address only the branches of evil, not the root. By undertaking the following methods, you may be able to take the fight to him.

1. Gather evidence of the mastermind’s crimes. This first step is the most difficult, for as Holmes said of Moriarty, “so aloof is he from general suspicion . . . so admirable in his management and self-effacement” that finding proof of his criminal ties may seem impossible. Holmes’s method was comprehensive: He surreptitiously searched Moriarty’s house on three occasions (and found “absolutely nothing”), peeked into the mastermind’s finances (“I made it my business to hunt down some of Moriarty’s checks”), and tracked the doings of Moriarty’s criminal associates. Most importantly, he took every precaution to conduct his investigations without the mastermind’s knowledge; unfortunately, Holmes reports in “The Final Problem,” Moriarty was “too wily for that.” If you too are found out, proceed to the next step.

2. Thwart his attempts to assassinate you. “The only conceivable escape for him,” said Holmes of his archenemy, “lay in silencing my tongue.” Yet it’s not from the mastermind himself that the blow likely will fall, but from one of his many agents, and it’s in their interest to kill you quickly and quietly. That can only mean one thing: snipers. Holmes’s prodigious paranoia of assassins wielding silent-but-deadly air guns in “The Final Problem” likely saves his life, as does his insistence on keeping clear of windows and closing all shutters. Do likewise, and in addition make yourself as difficult as possible to track, keeping to alleys and by-ways rather than main thoroughfares and using rear windows and garden walls to access buildings. Keep a revolver close at hand, but use it only if absolutely necessary, else you might end up in the dock for murder, rather than your enemy.

3. Make yourself scarce. Once your damning evidence has been assembled and the machinations of the mastermind’s ruin are in motion, he will be at his most dangerous. Desperate, the mastermind will do anything to destroy you before the net of justice closes around him completely; it’s prudent, therefore, to get as far away as possible until the game is won. Don a disguise, as Holmes did when Moriarty came after him in “The Final Problem,” and hop the next train out of town. Tell no one save your most trusted confidant of your plans, for your enemy has spies everywhere. Travel light but leave nothing behind that you cannot live without—a lesson that Holmes and Watson learned the hard way when Moriarty’s henchmen set fire to their famed Baker Street rooms as they fled.

4. Resist the temptation to have the mastermind arrested prematurely. Certainly the mastermind’s desperate, last-minute attempts to assault you will involve a few arrestable offenses, but these are petty crimes compared to the vast network of felonies in which he has had a hand. Bide your time or risk watching him tried for an offense against which his powerful lawyers can easily defend while his henchmen go free, swearing vengeance against you. Or, as Holmes explained the dilemma to Watson, “We should get the big fish, but the smaller would dart right and left out of the net.”

5. Don’t let down your guard. He will eventually find you, of that you can be certain; all you can do is delay the inevitable showdown. Lest he should take you by surprise, adopt an attitude of hyper-vigilance, as Watson describes Holmes doing: “I could tell by his quick glancing eyes and his sharp scrutiny of every face that passed us, he was well convinced that, walk where we would, we could not walk ourselves clear of the danger that was dogging our footsteps.”

6. Prepare for the final assault. The mastermind will attack when he thinks you’re most vulnerable. You must let him do it, but be ready. In “The Final Problem,” Holmes and Watson flee London for the tiny Swiss hamlet of Meiringen and are trekking to see the fearful Reichenbach Falls when a messenger boy arrives with an urgent plea for Dr.Watson: A woman is dying at the hotel and needs Watson’s attention. Though it’s clear to Holmes that the boy is in Moriarty’s employ and his plea is nothing but a thinly veiled scheme to get Holmes alone in a dangerous locale, Holmes goes along with it; the showdown must happen, and he is ready.

7. Fake your own death. This step assumes that you have succeeded in besting the mastermind in the previous step, as Holmes did Moriarty at Reichenbach Falls. After using martial artistry to send Moriarty plunging to his death, Holmes finds himself confronted by a unique problem: He has succeeded in ridding the world of a criminal mastermind, yet his own life is in more danger than ever. Moriarty’s henchmen remain free, and they will surely seek revenge. To return to London would mean facing assassination at their hands, and traveling under his own name would mean pursuit by those same would-be assassins. He’s forced to choose between facing death or feigning death and so opts for the latter, traveling far and wide for three years under an invented identity.

Other excerpts from The Sherlock Holmes Handbook:

How to Disguise Yourself
Opium Dens and Narcotics in the Victorian Era
How to Fake Your Own Death
How to Keep Your Mind Sharp
The “Real” Sherlock Holmes