Curse of the Atocha, Part 1: In Rem, Ad Nauseam
26 Apr 2007 1 Comment
in Vivat Wrecks
This is me in 1994 with treasure hunter Mel Fisher, who salvaged the wreck of the Spanish treasure ship Nuestra Senora de Atocha. Mrs. Fisher customarily took pictures like these whenever a visitor to their Treasure Museum (now the Mel Fisher Maritime Heritage Museum) in Key West* bought a gold 8-reale coin (“piece of eight”) from the ship’s haul while she and Mel happened to be in town. That was what I’d just done; that’s my “I’ve been SCUBA diving all morning, wandering around in the sun all afternoon, and now I just spent a pretty big (for me) wad of cash” slightly poleaxed smile. That’s also one of the Atocha‘s gold chains around my neck (just for the picture); who knew the Spaniards of 1622 blinged themselves out like the rappers of 1985?
Not until ten years later, in law school, did I learn that this shipwreck was the centerpiece of a litigation train-wreck. There were too many lawsuits to describe in even one of my awfully-long posts, so I’m having to serialize. In stories, sunken and buried treasures are often cursed (I mean “with bad mojo,” not “by people trying unsuccessfully to find them”). But the usual curse symptoms are violent death, or insanity, or something similarly speedy and dramatic. Upon reflection, though, “a long, tangled string of lawsuits on whomsoever disturbs this place” is a pretty good curse.
And, like someone seeing a train wreck, I couldn’t look away.
Truth or Scare? Old Lawyers’ Tales
20 Apr 2007 Leave a Comment
Stories handed down orally are a form of cultural property that international organizations like WIPO and even the WTO are working on protecting. I’ll go into that some more in later posts. Today, it’s the slab of concrete on which I’ll set up a small soapbox (which I promise not to do very often).
Professions have subcultures of their own. My former profession, engineering, didn’t have much folklore (aside from the occasional hero or trickster legend) back when I started. Since the advent of Dilbert, it has developed a fairly large body of humor that is often self-deprecating. See also User Friendly. When I changed careers to law later, I was fascinated to learn that the American legal culture is very rich in folklore. . . but my fascination took on morbid overtones when I realized that most of the folklore was of a very specialized kind.
A Clash of Symbols: Commodification of Cultural and Religious Images
17 Apr 2007 2 Comments
in Craven Images, Splitting Heritage
Appropriation of minority religious or other cultural images by outsiders – often, though not always, as a status symbol or fashion statement – is a sharpening point of controversy in some parts of the world. People from the originating cultures are upset for any or all of a number of reasons:
- Some images are traditionally classified “eyes only” for certain individuals or subgroups under certain circumstances.
- The right to display some images traditionally had to be earned rather than bought.
- Outsiders displaying the images often do not know or care about their meanings or the traditional rules for how they are to be displayed.
- Some images are traditionally not intended for fixation in some types of media, or for any type of permanent fixation at all.
- Even if none of the above objections apply and the image may be embodied in a commodity and sold, people who believe they should be entitled to a share of the proceeds aren’t getting any.
Baby Naming Laws: Grin and “Bjorn” It?
10 Apr 2007 5 Comments
Well, OK, I’ve already broken my rule about spending more than 4 hours on a post. I set out to write about something told to me orally by a usually reliable source, but despite Googling my fingers to the bone I can’t seem to verify it anywhere – at least not online, for free, in a language I can read. However, in my science life I found that we often learn more from a failed experiment than a successful one, and maybe that will happen here too. Readers, please help me if you can!
Established: In some countries – reputedly “free” countries at that - you can’t name your baby just anything you want. You have to choose from an approved list or get an authority, such as a court or a church, to grant an exception. (Some in the U.S., where celebrities have counted on giving their babies weird names as a source of free publicity since the late, celebrated musician Frank Zappa named his first two children “Dweezil” and “Moon Unit,” are appalled by the existence of these laws, possibly because it creates a trade deficit in weird-baby-name jokes).
In question: Whether Norway has recently dropped some extremely traditional names, such as “Bjorn” (which means “bear”) from the approved list. Can anyone tell me whether this is or isn’t true (and preferably supply a reference)?
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Landraces: On the “verge” of becoming crops
03 Apr 2007 Leave a Comment
in Distressed Genes, Tales of "Terroir"
Road verges. Windbreaks. The vicinities of abandoned fields, market grounds, and storage sheds. When most people think of biodiversity conservation, these are not the places that come to mind. Much more familiar are wild-land conservation areas – rainforests, wetlands, tundra, even tidepools and undersea canyons – places virtually untouched by human occupation. However, the smaller, humbler areas around traditional farming communities are sources of agricultural biodiversity (“agro-biodiversity”). Agro-biodiversity hasn’t had as much global press as wild-land biodiversity – it’s less photogenic, for one thing – but it affects the security of the food supply in agricultural societies. As climates, soil compositions, and local dominant wild species (both crop-eating pests and competing weeds) change, a crop is only as resilient as its gene pool is deep.
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For April Fools’ Day: Whither the Wanabi?*
01 Apr 2007 1 Comment
Everywhere they go in Indian country, the Wanabi are despised and ridiculed. They seem to get everything wrong. They never take advantage of a good opportunity to shut up. They ask stupid questions and then hear what they want to hear, no matter what the answer is. They have no dress sense. They call the regalia “costumes.” Many of them can’t dance, and the ones who can insist on doing the wrong steps, which might really screw up the weather one of these days.
On what is plausibly “their” day, let me play the white/black/yellow/brown devil’s advocate for a moment.
