After two months of presenting, travelling and doing fieldwork in various locations, I have a 2-month long 3-in-1 report for the site. On March 26th, I presented a paper entitled Submerged Tribal Memory: the Case of the Winnemem Wintu at the 2009 American Association of Geographers conference. Despite some minor technical difficulties, the presentation went well. Check that off the list!

On the way back from Vegas, I stopped at the abandoned Rock-a Hoola Water park in the Mojave Desert smack dab in between Las Vegas and Los Angeles for a little bit of UE with sYnOnYx, a Las Vegas explorer. The park closed down in 2004 and is an eerie explore despite the recent removal of the slides form the park in recent years. Before the removal of the slides, the park was on an episode of MTV’s Rob and Big where they skate it:

With slightly less daring, I returned with my own photos:

So, with that little post, we are nowhere near up to date! I will play more catch up soon!

Yesterday I went for an explore with four from London. Our destination was the West Park Asylum, part of a ring of asylums around London which were at one time run by the NHS (National Health System I think). Apparently Margaret Thatcher decided these places were better off either

1. Shut down or

2. Privatized

As a result, many of the workers and patients walked away from these places leaving everything in perfect order, just as it was when the asylum was up and running. What happened next, some of the explores tell me, many of these places are not seen as worth preserving because either

1. They are two ‘new’ to be of historic value or

2. The land is simply needed for something else on this little island

Because of this, the explorers take it upon themselves to record this history, and the slow decay of these places with their cameras. Despite this, many are seen as criminals, ‘trespassing’ on this recently privatized land.

When we arrived at West Park, we quietly walked in over a broken fence, and walked around the bushes keeping an eye out for the single security guard that patrols the area. Not seeing him, we proceeded to slip into the service shaft under the building. Unfortunately, our man magically appears after only one of the four of us get in and we are escorted out.

On to plan B. We headed over the St. Ebba’s and strangely, given what had just taken place, parked in the parking lot and walked in. Although part of this hospital is still ‘live’ (meaning patients still roam the grounds) they did not seem to mind, nor did the nurses who probably had personal histories in the derelict buildings on the property and were quite aware that we were going in the archive them, in a sense.

Turns out, it was a good thing we arrived when we did because demolition has begun and half of this beautiful derelict hospital in now gone.

On to the next explore…

Just got back from a strange weekend at the 2008 CHAT (Contemporary and Historical Archaeology in Theory) conference. Nothing about the conference was strange – it was brilliantly done actually – but I came down with a stomach virus the day before the conference and missed 2/3 of it.

Rather disappointing missing most of the conference as I have been waiting 2 years to go to one, but prospects for next year look bright.

One of the issues raised at the conference was that the website was not getting a decent google ranking. I came home and tried to verify this and actually could not find an ‘official’ CHAT website. If anyone knows where it lives, can you send me a link?