Tallgrass Writing Workshop Field Journal 2020

Field Journal April 17 - 18, 2020

Field Journal, Volume I 2020 Friends of the Plains Emporia, Kansas www.emporia.edu/cgps Graphic Design Susan Brinkman Printed by Emporia State University Copy Center Printing Library of Congress In-Publication Data ISSN: 2694-6432 All text, illustrations, and photographs are copyrighted by the authors and artists and shall not be reproduced in any way without their written permission.

EDITOR Susan Brinkman

COPY EDITORS Katie Donnelly Melissa Emo

EDITORIAL COMITTEE DeWayne Backhus Jason Brinkman John Doan

Friends of the Plains is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization based in Kansas whose mission is to inspire, assist, and support the goals and mission of the

Center for Great Plains Studies at Emporia State University.

Our vision is to grow the influence and capabilities of the Great Plains through studies in the past, present, and future.

FRIENDS OF THE PLAINS TRUSTEES

John Doan, President DeWanye Backhus, Ex Officio Max McCoy, Ex Officio Suzan Barnes LeRoy Boline Michelle Hammond Jim Hoy Rayna Karst Mallory Koci

OUR SPONSORS Pioneer Bluffs Center for Flint Hills Heritage Ranching Matfield Green, Kansas

The Gufler Mansion Bed & Breakfast Event Venue Emporia, Kansas

CENTER FOR GREAT PLAINS STUDIES ADVISORY BOARD

DeWayne Backhus, Chair John Doan, Trustee Liaison Max McCoy, Ex Officio Tyler Curtis Ed Emmer Ellen Hansen Roger Heineken Cheryl Unruh Shari Scribner Bill Sheldon

Friends, What you hold now is an artifact of a time that was not so long ago, but which now feels like a geologic age. The Tallgrass Writing Workshop was canceled, like so many other events in Spring 2020, because of the threat posed by the global coronavirus pandemic. But work on this Field Journal had already been completed by our contributors and its editor, Susan Brinkman. It seems appropriate that we share this work with you now, as a reminder of what was lost-and what might be once again.

The pandemic has taken its toll on our institutions, including the Center for Great Plains Studies. Our hours and staffing have been reduced, from measures to protect the public health and from unavoidable cuts to our budget. We have temporarily ceased publication of our journal, Traverse. Our Friends of the Plains Dinner, our key annual fundraising event, was canceled for the first time.

But now, we are cautiously beginning to resume our normal schedule. We are planning for the future.

We expect there to be a Tallgrass Writing Workshop in 2021 and a Friends of the Plains Dinner. What we cannot get back is the opportunity missed for the 2020 Tallgrass workshop. But, we can give you the Field Journal for that event.

Please take a moment to look over the amount of planning and hard work that was required, not just by our staff but also our contributors, our presenters, and our partners, including Pioneer Bluffs and the folks at the Gufler Mansion.

With luck, we will be together again come spring.

Cheers,

Max McCoy Director

Table of Contets Workshop Schedule. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Keynote Speaker: Wes Jackson . . . . . 9 Workshop Facutly Bios. . . . . . . . . . 10 Observing the Flint Hills Sky: The Legacy of Annie Jump Cannon

by DeWayne Backhus. . . . . . . . . 27 Integrity in Scientific Research and Writing

by Richard Schrock . . . . . . . . . . 35 Controlled Burn by Kevin Rabas. . . . 58 Blacksnake by Elexa Dawson . . . . . . 59 The Alpha Site by Max McCoy. . . . . 61 Field Note Pages. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71

List of Plates Lone Tree: Phillip Finch. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Flint Hills Rainbow: Dave Leiker. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Plains Photo: Scott Bean. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 Annie Jump Cannon: Library of Congress. . . . . . . . . . . 26 Atlas Illustration of Burritt’s Geography of the heavens: Hiram Mattison . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28 Cecelia Payne-Gaposchkin: Smithsonian Archive . . . . . 30 Fence Chautauqua Hills: Susan Brinkman. . . . . . . . . . . 34 Nebula in Orion: Henry Draper. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 Diorama series: Stephen Anderson Story . . . . . . . . . . . . 57 Calves and Prairie Fire: John Morrison. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58 Blacksnake Cover: Emily B Wilson . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59 Steve Arnold: Max McCoy. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60 Harvey Nininger: WikiMedia. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63 Alpha Field Meteorite: Max McCoy. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66 Steve Arnold: Max McCoy. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69 Daisy Fleabane: Smithsonian Archive. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70 Daisy Fleabane: Smithsonian Archive. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83 Giant Red Indian Paintbrush: Smithsonian Archive. . . . 84 Giant Red Indian Paintbrush: Smithsonian Archive. . . . 99

WORKSHOP SCHEDULE

8:30

Friday April 17, 2020 a.m.

Registration

9:00

Welcome

9:30

Keynote: Tina Casagrand, Creating an Autobiography of Place

11:00

Bethany Mowry, Working with a University Press Editor p.m.

12:30

Catered Lunch

1:30

Elexa Dawson, Music that Heals

Lone Tree, Neosho Rapids, Estate of Phillip Finch

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detail, Flint Hills Rainbow, Lyon County, Dave Leiker

2:45

Breakout Sessions

Kevin Rabas, Sense of Place

4:00

Jim Hoy, Writing & Riding in the Flint Hills

Breakout Sessions

Max McCoy,

The Unexpected Journey

John Doan, Collecting Oral History (part 1)

5:30

Barbecue Dinner

6:30

Jam Session and Open Poetry/Prose Mic

8:30

DeWayne Backhus, Flint Hills Night Sky 5

WORKSHOP SCHEDULE Saturday April 18, 2020 a.m.

8:00

Announcements and Gathering

8:15

Lynn Smith, Executive Director Pioneer Bluffs

8:30

Keynote: Wes Jackson, Stories with Digressions

10:00 Break 10:15

Breakout Sessions

Kellen Jenkins, Photojournalism Kelsey Ryan, Introducing The Beacon 11:30

George Frazier, Nature Writing on the Road

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p.m.

12:30

Catered Lunch & Book Signing

12:30

Editor Pitch Sessions

1:30

Julia Fabris McBride, Start Where They Are: Engaging Your Audience in the Writing Process

2:45

Breakout Sessions

John Doan, Collecting Oral History (part 2) Sherman Smith,

Compelling News Stories of Public Interest 4:00

Breakout Sessions

Brent Thomas, Critter Walkabout

Chris Pettit and Alivia Allison, Drone Photography 5:30

Wrap-up Remarks and Evaluations 7

from the Plains Photo Collection, Scott Bean

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WES JACKSON The 2020 TWW Keynote speaker is Wes Jackson, founder and president emeritus of The Land Institute.

Jackson earned a bachelor’s degree in biology from Kansas Wesleyan University, Salina; a master’s degree in botany from the University of Kansas, and a doctorate in genetics from North Carolina State University. He established and served as chair of one of the country’s first environmental studies programs at California State University-Sacramento and then returned to his native Kansas to found The Land Institute in 1976. He is the author of several books, including New Roots for Agriculture, Becoming Native to This Place, Consulting the Genius of the Place, and most recently Nature as Measure. Wes is widely recognized as a leader in the international movement for a more sustainable agriculture. He was a Pew Conservation Scholar in 1990, a MacArthur Fellow in 1992, and received the Right Livelihood Award in 2000. Life magazine included him as one of 18 individuals predicted to be among the 100 important Americans of the 20th century.

Smithsonian in 2005 included him as one of “35 Who Made a Difference.”

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ALIVIA ALLISON Alivia Allison is an Assistant Professor of Earth Science in the Physical Sciences Department at Emporia State University. She teaches Earth science and geology courses including Introduction to Earth Science, Rocks and Minerals, Geomorphology, Geoarchaeology, Small-Format Aerial Photography, Environmental Soil Science, and Soil Mechanics. Her current research interests revolve around Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) applications, Archaeology/Geoarchaeology, and Paleoseismology. Her current research project, in collaboration with Dr. Chris Pettit, is the study of a 19th century archaeological site located at ESU’s Ross Natural History Reservation near Americus, Kansas.

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DEWAYNE BACKHUS DeWayne Backhus, PhD, a native Kansan from rural Dickinson County, is an ESU professor emeritus.

He served 44 years in a faculty position teaching courses in his specialty of planetary and space science.

Administrative positions included director of Peterson Planetarium (19 years), chair of the physical sciences (chemistry, earth science and physics, 22 years), and he served as interim dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. He was also active with proposal development and extramural grants administration involving several NASA programs, the NSF, and others. Honors include the Roe R. Cross Distinguished Professorship, and most recently he was recognized as an ESU distinguished alumnus. He also has degrees from Harvard University and the University of Kansas.

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TINA CASAGRAND Tina Casagrand is a writer, publisher, and teacher. Self described as, “obsessed with place,” she grew up on a small Ozark farm with plenty of nature and not a lot of people. Casagrand’s writing is about her love and curiosity for both place and people. Writing adventures have taken her from Costa Rica to California and throughout the Midwest. A graduate of the University of Missouri, she is the publisher of “The New Territory: The Magazine of the Lower Midwest.”

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ELEXA DAWSON Elexa Dawson presents a sultry, spirited performance with original music and a “warm honey mixed with prairie dirt” voice. Her newest album, “Music is Medicine” releases December 6th, 2019.

The founding member of Kansas’ folk homegrown favorite, Weda Skirts (formerly The Skirts), Elexa is a born entertainer and skilled songwriter. Two albums self-produced by The Skirts (Many Moons - 2016, Mother - 2018) present a collection of songs that are influenced by her Potawatomi and Oklahoma heritage, nature, family, love and loss, all with a hopeful and heartfelt tone.Elexa performs solo, with a blue folk trio and with Weda Skirts at private and public events, gatherings, pubs, and campfires.

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JOHN DOAN John was born in Bismarck, North Dakota and lived in Bismarck and at the family’s Black Leg Ranch 24 miles away. Eventually, he moved on from this career looking for new challenges.

A second career spanning almost 20 years began in the ownership, production, and management, including promotion and advertising, of Antique Trade Shows which were held in 12 states (Wisconsin to California).

John embarked upon a third professional career in counseling and psychotherapy which included marriage and family therapy, mental health counseling, clinical hypnotherapy and addiction treatment. He continues to hold a License in Clinical Addiction Counseling in Kansas and an Addictions Counseling License in Texas. He is nationally certified as a Clinical Hypnotherapist. He has degrees from Augustana University in Sioux Falls, South Dakota (Psychology) and South Dakota State University in Brookings, South Dakota (Counseling and Human Resource Development).

John moved to Kansas in 2001. His wife, Becky, was raised in Emporia. He has strong ties to the Great Plains, history and antiques.

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JULIA FABRIS MCBRIDE Julia Fabris McBride is vice president of the Kansas Leadership Center, a certified coach, and co-author with Chris Green of Teaching Leadership: Casein-Point, Case Teaching, and Coaching. At KLC, she oversees teacher and coach development and has created three professional programs for leadership developers, including an International Coach Federation (ICF)-approved Leadership Coach training program, and an Advanced Leadership Development Intensive that has drawn people to Wichita from four continents.

Before joining KLC (and while wrapping up a fun and varied career as an actor in Chicago), Julia taught leadership and management at the University of Chicago, Columbia College - Chicago, University of Massachusetts and the James P. Shannon Leadership Institute.

She holds a certificate in leadership from the University of Chicago’s Graham School of General Studies and completed the Art and Practice of Leadership Development (taught by Marty Linsky, Ron Heifetz and Robert Kegan) at Harvard’s Kennedy School.

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GEORGE FRAZIER Chronicling three years he spent roaming the Sunflower State by car, canoe, and on foot, The Last Wild Places of Kansas (University Press of Kansas, 2017) takes readers to the remaining “wild places” of Kansas; places where nature collides with folklore. From the unexpected wilds of the Kansas City suburbs to the Cimarron National Grassland in the far southwestern corner of the state, Frazier curates an heirloom collection of little-known sites - tenacious stretches of unplowed prairie, centuries old forests, ancient springs, lost Native American landmarks, and other natural gems. Packed with stories and a host of curious characters, it’s the ultimate Kansas wild lands road trip.

Frazier lives in Lawrence, Kansas with his wife and daughter. His work has appeared in Canoe and Kayak, and Wild Earth, among others. The Last Wild Places of Kansas won the Midwest Book Award, Kansas Notable Book Award, Hamlin Garland Prize, and the Ferguson Book Award.

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JIM HOY James F. ( Jim) Hoy is Professor of English at Emporia State University, Emporia, Kansas. Reared on a stock ranch near Cassoday, he has lived in the Flint Hills area all his life, except for graduate school in Missouri and a teaching stint in Idaho.

Hoy holds a B.S. degree (1961) from Kansas State University, Manhattan, Kansas; an M.A. (1965) from Emporia State University; and a Ph.D. (1970) from the University of Missouri-Columbia. After a couple of years of itinerancy following undergraduate school, he taught two years at El Dorado (Kansas) Junior High (1963-65) before moving into college teaching. He served as Chair of English at ESU for ten years, returning happily to the ranks of full-time teaching and research in 1990.

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KELLEN JENKINS An FAA certified drone operator, Kellen Jenkins, previously worked as a visual journalist for The Wichita Business Journal and now manages marketing and communications for Habitat for Humanity of Kansas City.

Previously, he worked as a camera operator and editor for Berkeley Square Media, a commercial and event video production company. The company filmed “Tough Grit,� a rural competition reality show for RFD-TV, available on DISH Network and DIRECTV. The series was nominated for a Regional Emmy.

Jenkins was a photographer for The Emporia Gazette and the multimedia editor for his college newspaper, The Bulletin, in Emporia, Kan., from 2008 to 2011. He interned at The Topeka Capital-Journal in the summer of 2008 and worked for The Joplin Globe in Joplin, Mo., from 2011 to 2012, covering the devastating tornado that destroyed about one-third of the city.

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MAX MCCOY Max McCoy, the Director of the Center for Great Plains Studies, is an award-winning journalist and author.

He has won awards for his reporting on unsolved murders, serial killers, and hate groups. He is Professor of Journalism at Emporia State University where he specializes in investigative reporting and nonfiction narrative. His most recent book is Elevations: A Personal Exploration of the Arkansas River, from the University Press of Kansas.

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BETHANY MOWRY Bethany R. Mowry is the acquisitions editor for Western history, Native American and Indigenous studies, environmental studies, American studies, and Kansas and regional studies at the University Press of Kansas. She is completing her doctorate in history at the University of Oklahoma, where she previously worked in the acquisitions department of the OU Press.

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CHRIS PETTIT Chris Pettit is an Associate Professor of Physics in the Physical Sciences Department at Emporia State University. He teaches physics and engineering courses including Introductory Physics I and II, Engineering Statics, Engineering Dynamics, Electric Circuit Analysis, Engineering Graphics, Small-Format Aerial Photography, and Introduction to Robotics. His current research interests revolve around Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) technology and their applications. His current research project, along with Dr. Alivia Allison, is the study of a 19th century archaeological site situated on ESU’s Ross Natural History Reservation.

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KEVIN RABAS Past Poet Laureate of Kansas (2017-2019) Kevin Rabas leads the poetry and playwriting tracks and chairs the Department of English, Modern Languages, and Journalism at Emporia State University. He has twelve books, including Lisa’s Flying Electric Piano, a Kansas Notable Book and Nelson Poetry Book Award winner; All That Jazz; and Everyone Just Wants to Drum. He is a Roe R. Cross Professor and is the recipient of the Emporia State President’s and Liberal Arts and Sciences awards for Research and Creativity. He is also the winner of the Langston Hughes Award and the Salina New Voice Award for poetry.

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KELSEY RYAN Kelsey is an investigative journalist. Before founding The Beacon, she worked at The Kansas City Star and was on the investigative team that was named a 2018 Pulitzer Prize finalist in Public Service for its series on government transparency in Kansas.

Ryan currently serves as an outreach manager for the National Freedom of Information Coalition, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization that advocates for government transparency and press freedom.

She began her career at The Joplin (Mo.) Globe a day after an EF-5 tornado devastated the city. She later worked at The Wichita (Kan.) Eagle, covering health care and later covering city government and investigations.

Ryan grew up in Newton, Kan., and graduated from Emporia State University where she was editor of her college paper, The Bulletin. She is a member of Investigative Reporters & Editors, a board member on the Kansas Sunshine Coalition for Open Government, and frequently lectures at universities across Kansas and Missouri.

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SHERMAN SMITH Sherman Smith is the managing editor of The Topeka Capital-Journal, and a Statehouse reporter who writes compelling news stories of public interest for affiliated newspapers in Kansas, and sometimes beyond.

His award-winning investigative stories have examined misconduct by state officials, the instability of the state foster-care system, and the sexual abuse of inmates at the Topeka Correctional Facility. Smith clings to the old journalism adage: We comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.

Past duties at The Capital-Journal, following graduation in 2004 from Emporia State University, include working on the copy desk, an alternative storytelling team, and overseeing digital operations. Smith holds a degree in English with a minor in journalism.

His first professional experience involved covering Legion baseball for the Emporia Gazette. No 12run lead was safe, the old men in the pressbox worshipped triple-nutter peanuts as good luck charms, and screeches from the zoo were sure to spook an unsuspecting center fielder at an opportune time.

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BRENT THOMAS Brent Thomas is the Dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at ESU. His course offerings at ESU have included Introduction to Human Anatomy & Physiology, Research Design & Analysis, Natural History of Vertebrates, Animal Behavior, and Herpetology.

Thomas’ research interests include Behavioral and Evolutionary Ecology, Conservation Biology, and Natural History. His published research projects have involved freshwater turtles. Recent projects on slider turtles have involved male alternative mating tactics, characteristics of the foreclaw display behaviors of females, overland movements between aquatic habitats, and various aspects of their basking behaviors. Thomas has served as an associate editor for Herpetological Review and as a member of the World Conservation Union/Species Survival Commission’s Tortoise and Freshwater Turtle Specialist Group.

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Annie Jump Cannon, December 31, 1921

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OBSERVING THE FLINT HILLS SKY: THE LEGACY OF ANNIE JUMP CANNON

by DeWayne Backhus Our ancestors sought solace—inner peace or comfort—by looking up. Sometimes the look was purely spiritual, the desire to commune with something “larger” than the individual. And other times it was surely to reflect on “what is out there, and our relationship to that larger context.”

Meaning and our relationship to the realm “beyond” came in a number of forms. One form was the stories that were told as the viewer imagined patterns of stars in the sky based on familiar objects. Ah, constellations. And these patterns often generated stories, mythology. Mythology even served as explanations for what was observed of the “out there,” of our understanding of the larger context of the universe.

Consider the following. On a typical summer night, barring the obscuring light of a gibbous or full moon, we see the “brush of light” that we call the Milky Way. Today we think that we understand that brush of light as a myriad of stars whose individual light blends with its neighboring star’s light and thus produces a diffuse, milky appearance. It 27

Atlas designed to illustrate Burritt’s Geography of the heavens, Hiram Mattison, 1856

is as though we are in the midst of a vast, flat, disclike arrangement of stars. We interpret the blend of starlight as the result of being near the edge of the disc of visible stars and viewing toward the center of the plane of the disc—toward the center 28

of the vast array of stars known as the Milky Way galaxy. Humankind has transitioned from the smug perspective of being at the center of the universe to acceptance of the evidence that we are inhabitants of this special, solitary “rock,” the Earth, that is one of several orbiting the life-giving energy source of a special star, the Sun. But our ancestors, those tending livestock on the open plains under a starry canopy akin to the Flint Hills, had their explanation(s) of their understanding of this brush of light. How so? Low above the summer southern horizon at the base of the Milky Way is a pattern of stars that was visualized as a teapot. Ah, when heated, teapots produce steam.

The steam rising from the imaginary teapot (the constellation Sagittarius) might be the brush of light—a milky, diffuse feature—that we know as the Milky Way. In that way mythology provided for the ancient observer an explanation of a feature in the larger realm of one’s existence. That conception provided an apparent understanding and acceptable level of peace and comfort.

As a youngster growing up on a farm in north-central Kansas I would sometimes do field work under a hot, July night sky. One of the tractors may have had lights, but I would often turn off the lights, marvel at the red glow of the exhaust manifold of 29

the tractor, or simply gaze up at the heavens above.

Little did I know at the time about “what’s up?”

But I was intrigued, and pondered. Later, when my path in life far transcended the farm, I found my enduring academic interest while in my first graduate school stint—at Harvard.

I came to understand more about “what’s up?” in the realms of planetary and space science. And at Cecelia Payne-Gaposchkin, Harvard a nexus with the c.1930. Smithsonian Archive legacies of Annie Jump Cannon (1863-1941), Cecelia Payne-Gaposchkin (1900-1979) and other stalwarts of astroniomy would occur.

Cannon’s pioneering work with the classification of spectrograph images of stars culminated with the Harvard system of stellar classification, which was subsequently adopted by the International Astronomical Union in 1922.

Now we commune under virtually the same giant canopy that Cannon and her Harvard associates would have known as they provided the foundations for the advancement of our understanding of stellar spectra and stellar life cycles codified simply with the letters O, B, A, F, G, K, and M. For example, in 30

a relative sense after their formations as stars, O and B stars are higher mass, M stars are lower (which determines virtually all of a star’s subsequent characteristics and history); O and B stars are hotter and M stars are cooler; O and B stars radiate energy at shorter wavelengths and will thus appear bluish in

Photograph of the Nebula in Orion.

Taken by Professor Henry Draper in 1882.

color, whereas M stars will appear reddish because they radiate light at longer wavelengths; and following their births O and B stars convert their nuclear fuel to light energy more rapidly and will thus have predictably shorter lifetimes as stars in contrast to 31

M stars. The work of Cannon provided a useful classification scheme. The dissertation of Payne-Gaposchkin (characterized by O. Struve and V. Zeberg in 1962 as “the most brilliant PhD thesis ever written in astronomy”) provided understanding of the underlying foundations for variations in spectra and stellar life cycles.

Given the objectives of the Tallgrass Writing Workshop—to inspire writing with a breadth of objectives—consider the following. Virtually the only message from remote celestial objects, particularly stars (luminous objects), is that carried by light. So our understanding of these remote objects depend on our capability to analyze light. Cannon, Payne-Gaposchkin and associates elucidated that capability. But light, metaphorically, has played a large role for the spiritual realm, the arts and humanities. So while we address the technical aspects as we observe the night sky, there is the broader, humanistic side of these stalwarts of science.

In these days of great trouble and unrest, it is good to have something outside our own planet, something fine and distant and comforting for troubled minds. Let people look to the stars for comfort and find solace as others have. ~Annie Jump Cannon

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Cannon’s scientific insights may seem dwarfed next to the poignancy of this quotation attributable to her: “In these days of great trouble and unrest, it is good to have something outside our own planet, something fine and distant and comforting for troubled minds. Let people look to the stars for comfort and find solace as others have.”

What a marvelous sentiment from the same voice that ultimately gave us enduring insight to the nature of stars—relationships among their relative masses, temperatures, and a myriad of associated variables that let us deduce the life histories of individual stars based on the position and number of dark lines in the spectrum of each, and the interpretation and fundamental meaning thereof.

NOTE: Adapted from Backhus, DeW. Under the Flint Hills Sky: Reflections on the Legacy of Annie Jump Cannon. 2019 Symphony in the Flint Hills Field Journal. Vol XI, pp. 21-26.

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Condensed and reprinted with permission from The Kansas School Naturalist, Vol. 58 No.1 Spring 2012 Department of Biological Sciences, Emporia State University.

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INTEGRITY IN SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH AND WRITING

By Richard Schrock No human enterprise has been more successful than science. The difference between modern life and the struggle for survival in the Stone Age is due to science discoveries. However, these discoveries would have little effect if they were not communicated at large. A personal discovery kept to oneself dies with the discoverer. Therefore the dissemination of science knowledge is necessary and is an integral step in the advancement of our science knowledge.

How is Scientific Research Different?

Science is “playing upon the surface of the real” –that is to say: science is restricted to the examination and explanation of natural phenomena. These phenomena are universal—gravity does not work differently in Europe than in the United States. And science assumes cause-and-effect relationships exist that can eventually be explained. This means that if a current science explanation is not quite correct, future research in time will correct the error.

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How is Scientific Writing Unique?

Unlike literature, science writing uses precisely-defined terms and is careful in generalizing beyond the limits of the experimental results.

Science journals often use a traditional, human-invented convention of structuring the scientific paper into sections: introduction and previous work, hypothesis or proposal, materials and methods, results devoid of interpretation, and a concluding discussion.

Examination of articles in a target journal provides a writer with a sense of the conventions that contemporary scientists expect in that subdiscipline. And the nature of science always constrains us to use precise language.

Why Are References Important?

Research builds upon what is already known, even if our conclusions challenge the present understanding. But we never come to a problem with an empty mind. At this time in history, there is already something known about nearly all natural phenomena. Usually, we cannot begin to ask a question or form a hypothesis without knowing what is already 36

known. We are nearly always starting our research where others have stopped. The prior knowledge we bring to our research constitutes an “intellectual debt.” When we describe how we are setting up our inquiry, we describe the source of each important contributing idea by citing prior research in the text and listing the full reference at the end of our manuscript.

Must Every Concept Be Referenced?

No. Classical major themes that will be recognized need not be cited. For instance, every time you mention “evolution,” it is not necessary to cite “(Darwin, 1859)” in the text and list the Origin of Species in the references. All modern biologists recognize this major concept and no one is going to credit you with its discovery.

However, literature covering the distinct lineage of discoveries leading to your research should be cited.

Major omissions of critical references may indicate your research is premature or naïve, and may justify an editor or peer reviewer rejecting a paper for publication (Kochen, 1989).

References also direct a reader to further related research. Comprehensive references provide an 37

excellent method for a beginning student to expand his or her knowledge of a field.

What is “Priority?”

A unique thrill in science is the privilege of being the first to discover a new phenomena or concept.

The first time a new species is described, that name has a priority. And the first person to describe a new concept should have priority. The recognition of priority is important and is reflected in future references that acknowledge the origin of ideas.

What is Language Imperialism?

Sometimes a researcher makes a discovery and publishes it in a foreign language journal that few researchers read. Another researcher making the same discovery much later publishes in an English language journal—and gets the credit. This is called “language imperialism.” In serious research, a thorough search of the literature should have been made, including other major languages. The recent trend to drop foreign language requirements in doctoral programs perpetuates language imperialism (Schrock, 1987).

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Are References Bibliographies?

No. Most journals use “References” or “Literature Cited” strictly for those items cited in text. All text citations should be referenced and all references should be cited.

A “bibliography” is a list of all relevant publications.

This may occur in a review article that is summarizing the state of the field of study at this time.

“Further reading” merely provides a list of related articles and is rarely used in primary science literature.

What is “Primary Literature?”

Articles that appear in science journals and are first reports of original research are primary sources. In modern times, primary sources are also peer reviewed. Review articles and textbooks that summarize the current state of a field may reference these primary sources. Textbooks, news releases, and popular magazine and newspaper accounts of research, no matter how current, are not primary literature.

What is “Significance” in Science?

When non-scientists observe that something 39

appears “significant,” they usually mean that it stands out as somehow important. To a scientists, a “significant” result is a result that is mathematically unlikely to be random.

When research depends on mathematical analysis, it is important that a researcher use appropriate statistics.

Gordon R. Sherman in Honor in Science states this best: “…when It is not sufficient for the sciusing computing entist to admit that all human equipment, researchactivity, including research, is ers certainly should liable to involve errors; he or personally be able to she has a moral obligation to carry out in concept minimize the possibility of error the computations by checking and rechecking the that the computer validity of the data and the conclusions that are drawn from produces or be workthe data. ing with a colleague Honor In Science, 2000. p.3 who can. They should really understand the algorithms they use. It would be healthy for all researchers to develop automatic skepticism that a software package actually performs the algorithms as the researcher understands them. They should really understand what computations are carried out inside the machines they use.”

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It is also possible for experimental results to show a relationship by chance, especially if the number of test subjects is low. For instance, similar to flipping a coin where the coin comes up heads four times in a row, it is possible that a test being run four times could show a change compared to the control group if the number of trials is too low. Therefore, for some research, knowing the number of replications needed to get mathematically significant results is very important.

What is “Trimming”?

Outlying data points can be more than pesky. They can ruin a perfectly good curve. Consider a biology class where a teacher wants to demonstrate the clustering of human body temperature, taken underthe-tongue. Each student is issued a thermometer with appropriate hygienic procedures and reports his or her data point to the teacher who is building a narrow distribution curve around an average of 98.6˚ F. Then one student reports 37˚!

To incorporate such an outlier into the data would skew the average human body temperature to a hypothermic 92˚ F. Should the teacher throw out the data point? If the thermometer is working correctly, this student should be dead!

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Upon inspection, it is found that the student received a centigrade thermometer. The converted reading is nicely equivalent to normal.

Experimental procedures and equipment require oversight and care. Students should not be allowed to discard data without good reason. Monitoring of experiments and checking of equipment is also part of a science teacher’s responsibility.

Sometimes outliers will be genuine data points that may reveal valuable exceptions, pose additional questions, and be the starting point for more research.

What is “Cooking”?

Sometimes data can resemble a random scatter of points. But if we apply some math manipulations, we might force it into the approximation of a line.

There are many ways to “massage the data.” But unless there is a legitimate reason for performing the statistical manipulation, such as “cooking” should not be done.

Legitimate procedures including squaring a difference from a mean and then taking the square root of the sums in order to determine standard deviation.

This is legitimate since we are interested in how 42

much our data vary from the mean regardless of whether the variation is above or below the mean, and the squaring-square root procedure keeps the values from “cancelling out.”

But no such mathematical procedure should be used if the researcher does not understand why it is done.

This is why, even though complex math calculations are rapidly done with a computer, it is important to learn to do the math calculation by hand in order to understand the concept. Then when a computer program is utilized, there should be some general recognition of whether the resulting answer “makes sense.”

One good method to validate a computer program is to also run a data set for which the outcome is known, to ensure that the computer analysis is not accepted on blind faith.

What Is Science Fraud?

From time to time, a case of science fraud appears in the news. The fact that this gains much attention indicates that it is a fairly rare, and an unusual activity among scientists.

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Fraud is the outright making up of data. One famous case involved the editor of a prestigious British journal who published a study of the IQ of a small set of identical twins reared apart. His conclusion was that IQ was 80 percent inherited.

Such cases are obviously rare. But small numbers do not make a strong argument for “mathematical significance.�

He eventually published larger data sets although the statistics for variation were identical, a highly unlikely occurrence. After his death, an examination of his notes revealed that he had merely scaled up his original data and there was no larger group of twins reared apart. Over the years, his conclusion about IQ has continued to be confirmed; without the access to his notes, it is unlikely the fraud would have been exposed.

Another notorious case involved a researcher at University of California at San Diego. When it was discovered that he published research that required far more experimental animals than he had, SDSU rightly required all co-authors to re-defend the research and print retractions if results were not confirmed.

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Early practice in making up data, and the attitude that it is okay to do so, may originate in our school laboratories. Far too many students confess that they have at some time in their schoolwork fabricated lab data. This may occur when the lab instructor takes too much time explaining the lab and does not leave time to finish the experiment. When an experiment requires data be taken every ten minutes, and eight data points are to be recorded, it will require a minimum of 80 minutes. But when the instructor blabs away about procedures and leaves only 50 minutes, students cannot complete the full graph on time. Yet, when the curve becomes evident, and the clock is running out, it is far too common for students to submit a lab report including the last three points on the probable curve. This procedure, often called “dry labbing,� is far too common. It is another name for recording fraudulent data. The instructor who accepts it, indeed was culpable in causing it, has encouraged the student in fraud.

This does not mean that every case of science fraud traces back to a lazy teacher or that a researcher cannot discover a method to commit fraud themselves. But the atmosphere of absolute integrity and honesty in science should be seamlessly present from the earliest science class onward through post-graduate work.

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What Is “Replication”?

The “methods and materials” section of a research paper is very important. The procedures used must be described in enough detail that another researcher can conduct the experiment again, and presumably get similar results and reach a similar conclusion.

In fact, replication of a research does not regularly occur. But in an area such as medical research where concepts rapidly build, a failure to be able to “take the next step” based on prior research may lead researchers to go back and replicate the prior research.

If the results do not match, the original report may have experimental mistakes, misinterpretations, or the results may be intentionally fraudulent.

Some disciplines of science move rapidly and erroneous research is soon detected. Other areas may take decades or a century to replicate and correct.

There are however areas of research where the studies cannot be repeated. Evolutionary events cannot be re-run. Some high-cost physics experiments are too costly. And some field ecology may involve too many unknowns to ever be exactly replicable.

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Replication of research makes science “self-correcting.”

Are Negative Results Published?

It depends. The master’s thesis is an important first experience in the early education of young researchers. It is common for some experiments to yield results that fail to support the hypothesis. Journals are hesitant to publish negative results. Such theses often sit on university shelves and are never published in journals.

But some negative results are important. In the first years of the AIDS epidemic, before the causative HIV agent was discovered, the reason or suppression of the immune system was unknown. Due to the prevalence of AIDS in male homosexuals, experiments were conducted injecting semen into the rectum of rats; the results were negative, there was no suppression of the immune system. But this was important to publish so research could proceed in other directions.

What is Peer Review?

When a science journal editor receives a manuscript, the editor sends it to several peer reviewers or referees. TO get expert opinion on whether the article 47

should be published, the editor selects reviewers who are experts on the research topic; sometimes they may be authors cited in the references in the research paper.

The job of peer reviewers is to judge the quality of the manuscript. Is the research valuable and does it add to current knowledge in the field? Are the methods used and the math analyses appropriate?

Do the results justify the conclusions? Are there big gaps in the references indicating that the research is naïve or has not considered the full range of previous related work? And since journals often serve narrow sub-disciplines, even if the research is solid and well-written, perhaps it belongs in another journal.

While peer review may detect problems such as numbers to low to produce significant results, etc., peer review is unlikely to detect fraudulent results.

What is “Open Peer Review”?

Under normal peer review, the reviewers are selected by the journal editor and they usually choose to remain anonymous. “Open-peer review” includes reviewers’ names on the peer review reports, and when/if the research article is published, the reviews 48

are made available online along with the final version of the article. A “pre-publication history” lists the prior versions of the article along with the signed reviews and the author’s response to the reviewers. Early experiments with open peer review were conducted by Nature and PubMed Central.

There are varying concerns with open peer review across various science disciplines and the use of open peer review remains limited.

What is “Double Publishing”?

Sometimes called “self plagiarism,” double publishing occurs when a researcher publishes essentially identical research in different journals. “Double publishing” is a preferable term since the author is not representing other’s work as his/her own.

This causes several problems. Publishing is an expensive procedure both in cost and manpower for editing and review. Journals nearly always state up front that they only publish original research that has not been published before. Therefore the author is breaking this agreement by submitting work multiple times. Some journals now require an author to sign a document attesting to the fact that they have not published it previously elsewhere.

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In addition, if the work involves clinical trials, double publishing can give the false impression that a drug or procedure has undergone more testing than has actually occurred.

Double publication is more likely to be caught as more editors utilize plagiarism-detection software that also exposes this “copying from oneself.”

What is a “Least Publishable Unit”?

Also called a smallest or minimum publishable unit, this is the smallest amount of information necessary to be accepted for publication in a peer-reviewed journal.

A thesis or dissertation may genuinely consist of several discrete experiments and conclusions.

However, because the number of publications or promotion by supervisors who do not understand the research work, it has become more common for researchers to break up their results into smaller papers to be published separately to drive up their publication count. This is sometimes referred to as a “baloney approach” of slicing the results into thinner and thinner results.

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What is a “Hedge”?

It is important to cite another scientist’s conclusions with careful attention to the limitations, or “hedges,” the scientist puts on those conclusions. For instance, research may show that a drug is forty percent effective reducing certain types of lung tumors. A student reporting on this may quote or paraphrase it as “being effective against lung tumors,” failing to include the limitations to “forty percent” or to just “certain types.”

Horn (2001) describes this problem: “When scientists cite and paraphrase the conclusions of past research, they often change the hedges that describe the uncertainty of the conclusions, which in turn can change the uncertainty of past results.”

What is “Indirect Citation”?

A student or researcher may locate an idea expressed in a book that in turn has been cited from another book. In writing the new paper, the writer simply lifts the words or ideas from the book, repeating the citation, without going back to the original cited source to check the original wording and context.

This is a common practice and does not technically 51

violate any rules or codes of conduct. But such a line of serial quotation going back through many authors, each of whom have used the quote in their own context, has the danger of distorting or drifting away from the meaning intended by the original source.

At the least, it is laziness by the current writer. At the worst, it may be unknowing misuse that is now completely inappropriate, and provide weak or unjustified support for the present conclusions.

Using a clever method for tracking repeating citation errors, Simkin and Roychowdhury (2002) estimate that “…only about 20 percent of citers read the original.”

Why Are Articles “Retracted”?

Honest scientists can make mistakes. Equipment can malfunction. Small data sets may not represent the wider natural phenomena. Additional work may expose methodological weaknesses and alter prior conclusions. In these cases, it is necessary to “set the record straight” so future researchers are not misled and resources and time are not wasted.

And when fraudulent science is discovered, co-au52

thors have a responsibility to likewise retract the erroneous article. However, a retraction at a later date may not be read by researchers who only saw the earlier original work. A retraction is a weak solution to problematic science. It is far better that the weak or fraudulent science had never been published.

Who Gets Credit?

In some disciplines Appropriate recognition means of science, researchers what it says. We are not ordiwork in teams. One narily required to acknowledge may have written the in print the services provided big grant proposal, by our typists, lab assistants or another managed the equipment suppliers, but those laboratory facilities, whose careers and reputations depend, like our own, on intelanother performed lectual qualities and scientific the experiments, ability deserve recognition. Not another cared for the to give it is dishonest. animals, and another Honor In Science, 2000 conducted the math analysis. So who gets the credit on the author line? Because the importance of these roles varies by research project, that judgment must be made on the extent of contribution and its importance to the science reported.

It is widely acknowledged that there are often more 53

authors on papers than is justified. Much of the blame for this rests with university and government administrators who have no understanding of the value of research in evaluating a scientist, aside from counting the numbers of papers published. This has led to inclusion of too many authors.

The question of who deserves to be listed among the authors is well-described by Broad and Wade (1982): “First, all people named as authors should have made a definably major contribution to the work reported. Any minor contribution should be explicitly acknowledged in the text of the article.

Second, all authors of a paper should be prepared to take responsibility for its contents in precisely the same measure as they stand to take credit.”

Simply stated, any individual listed under authorship should be able to defend the integrity of their portion of the paper.

What Are “Acknowledgements”?

“Acknowledgements” is an underused final section of a research paper where credit can be given to those who provided minor assistance such as supplying specimens, advice, editing or proofreading, etc. It is also important to recognize the sources of 54

funding for the research and this is the place for that.

This section also provides an opportunity to spell out the individual distinct contributions of authors, although this is rarely done.

Individuals listed under “acknowledgments� only are generally not responsible for speaking to the integrity of the paper.

References Cited Broad, William and Nicholas Wade. 1982. Betrayers of the Truth. Simon and Schuster; New York.

Davis, Stephen F. 1995. Cheating in High School is for Grades, Cheat in College is for Career: Academic Dishonesty in the 1990s. Kansas Biology Teacher 6(2): 79-81.

Dellavalle, R.P., E.J. Hester, Lauren F. Heilig, A.L. Drake, J.W. Kuntzman, M. Gaber and L.M. Schilling 2003.

Going, Going, Gone: Lost Internet References.

Science 302: 787-788.

Horn, Kelly. 2001. The Consequences of Citing Hedged Statements in Scientific Research Articles. BioScience 51(2): 1080-1093.

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Jackson, C. Ian. 2000. Honor in Science. Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Society; Research Triangle Park, NC. 41 pages.

Kochen, Manfred. 1989. How Well Do We Acknowledge Intellectual Debts? Current Contents 25: 7-14.

Schrock, John Richard. 1987. Language Imperialism in Science. ASC Newsletter 15:8-9.

Schrock, J.R. and Eric Yixin Yang. 2007. The Growing Problem of Plagiarism and the Correct Use of Scientific Citation. Shengwuxue Jiaoxue 32(7): 14-17 [in Chinese].

Simkin, M.V. and V.P. Roychowdury. 2002. Read Before You Cite! Condensed Matter website: http://www.arxiv.org/abs/cond-mat/0212043 [accessed on February 10, 2012] Wilmott, Chris J. R. and Tim H. Harrison. 2003. An Exercise to Teach Bioscience Students AboutPlagiarism. Journal of Biological Education 37(3): 139-140.

Wren, Jonathan D. 2008. URL Decay in MEDLINE—A 4-year Follow-up Study. Bioinformatics 24(11):13811385.

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Series: Diorama, Stephen Anderson Story from the 2008 Plains Photo Project.

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[Controlled Burn] A ragged line of white and yelllow, like an overfull fountain pen makes, that line of fire at night over the prairie grasses.

By Kevin Rabas

Calves and Prairie Fire, Calves and Prairie

Fire, Chase County,

Kansas. April 2005. John Morrison from the Plains Photo Project

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Mother, 2018 Album cover art by Emily B. Wilson

Blacksnake Mama they said it’s a felony to stand up for the water that we drink. So, i put my body in the way of the machine that was digging up those graves. Well, they dug up the place where my grandmama lays, now they wanna put me in jail. All these uneven ways keep my people as slaves. Let me say, your blacksnake will fail.

Well, the old ones say there are two different ways, go with the gold or go with the green. It’s gonna take a change in our ways and all our prayers for the water to be clean.

Oh, the water.

By Elexa Dawson 59

Steve Arnold, photo by Max McCoy

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The Alpha Site

By Max McCoy Editor’s Note: The following is an excerpt from Strangely Heavy, a book-length work-in-progress about meteorites.

As Steve Arnold steps down into the moist earth to put the log chain around the meteorite, I hold my breath. The rock weighs as much as an engine block, maybe more, and I imagine it shifting in the muck and crushing his foot within the high-topped laced boot.

The rock is shaped like the skull of a mule, at once bulbous and angular, and clotted with soil that is, in places, stained with rust. It sits on a plinth of dirt in the middle of a hand-dug pit that is about a yard across, and the pit is in the middle of a hay field that is just now an expanse of dun-colored stubble, wet with lingering dew.

It is deep winter in Kansas, but for the past two weeks the daytime temperatures have steadily climbed above freezing, thawing at least the top few inches of topsoil. It is one of the few times per 61

year that meteorite hunting on a commercial scale is possible here, when the ground is soft enough to dig and the search coil, a forty-by-twenty foot rectangle of PVC and wire pulled behind a four-wheel-drive vehicle and feeding signals to a pulse induction metal detector mounted in the cab, isn’t damaging cash crops such as wheat or soybeans.

Arnold is an amiable man in his early 40s. He is falsely modest and smarter, perhaps, than most people who meet him might realize. He is also social, ambitious, and driven in a way that has alienated some members of the small, passionate, and decidedly quirky community of mostly amateur meteorite collectors.

When Arnold found the world’s largest pallasite meteorite in a wheat field in western Kansas in 2005, the headlines and breathless speculation about its worth—$1 million? $6 million?—made him overnight the most famous meteorite hunter in the world, a kind of Indiana Jones for science nerds.

And it was an image he cultivated. Arnold bought a bright yellow Hummer as his signature work vehicle. He gave scores of interviews to reporters ranging from the Hays Daily News to Wired magazine to the LA Times.

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I, too, wanted an interview.

Geoff Notkin sent me a cordial reply to my email requesting an interview, along with links to several articles and television programs that had featured the pair, including the premiere episode of Wired TV on PBS. Then Arnold called, said he was in the area, and asked for directions. A few hours later, Arnold appeared at the door of my university office,

Harvey Nininger, WikiMedia Fair Use

a brash and eager man who looked like he had just gotten off work from a local manufacturing plant.

He wore a green stocking cap, a green plaid shirt with dried paint on the tails, dirty jeans and a jeans jacket, and a gray tee with a screen printing of a yellow Humvee across the chest. His dark brown hair was wild and long, but his Van Dyke beard was 63

neatly trimmed. He was pudgy, but not fat, and his defining feature was his enthusiasm.

“There was something I ran across in my research that made me realize there was some more at the Brenham site,” Arnold told me, referring to the place where he found the Big Rock in 2005. Then, conspiratorially: “I’ve never told anybody that.”

He was a treasure hunter, he said, following in the footsteps of another native Kansan, Harvey Nininger, who had created the modern science of meteoritics while finding—and selling—thousands of pounds of space rocks. You have to understand the science, Arnold said, in order to correctly identify meteorites from the cinders and slag and a hundred other terrestrial substances that are often mistaken for meteorites. But early on, he said, he realized historic data about meteorite falls and finds were the key to commercial success.

“Oh my God,” he said, remembering the first time he had looked at hundred-year-old sketches of meteorite strewn fields. “These are treasure maps.”

The data led Arnold to typically lonely places where, a long time ago, rocks fell from the sky. Many of the sites are in the western United States, but he 64

has traveled a good part of the world in his quest for meteorites. Favorite sites are deserts, from North Africa to South America to Australia, where dark-colored meteorites contrast nicely against the sand. Arnold refers to some of the locations by code names, to confuse rival meteorite hunters, and much of his attention has been centered here on the “Alpha Site,” a six-mile strip of farmland in east central Kansas near the Santa Fe Trail where farmers dull their plows on stones from an ancient fall.

On this day in January 2009, while Arnold works to put the log chain around the meteorite at the Alpha site, he is on the cusp of marking a new trajectory in his career: reality television star. A production company has shot a pilot with him and his longtime rock-hunting partner Notkin, playing up the contrast between Arnold’s persona as an easygoing good-old-boy who would be at home in any Nascar crowd and Notkin’s British and somewhat prissy reserve. “Meteorite Men,” as the series will be called, is scheduled to air in May on the Science Channel.

But there are no cameras crews here, not yet.

The sky is midwinter blue, flecked with clouds, but the air is brisk and Arnold is wearing a high-visibility orange jacket. It is still firearms deer season.

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Under the high-vis jacket he’s wearing jeans and a green camouflage tee-shirt, and boots that lace up to his knees. The jacket is unzipped, because Arnold has been sweating; he and a helper have dug the pit by hand.

I shouldn’t have worried about Arnold’s feet.

The rock does not shift—it has not, in fact, moved in millennia—and in a few moments Arnold has the

Alpha Field Meteorite, photo by Max McCoy

chain secure. The other end of the chain is looped around the trailer hitch of a very battered red pickup with Arkansas plates. The pickup has a cracked windshield, three dented fenders, headlights held in place with baling wire and duct tape, and—improb66

ably so—a GPS antenna sprouting from atop the cab like a plastic mushroom.

Arnold scrambles out of the pit, gets behind the wheel of the pickup, and puts it in drive. He eases the truck forward, taking the slack out of the chain.

Then he guns it, wheels spinning on the wet sod, and the rock lurches up the side of the pit and digs a shallow furrow in the hay field.

Now fully exposed, the rock no longer resembles the skull of a mule. It is bigger than it seemed, and flatter, with three alien-looking lobes. The dirt has fallen away from a hollow near one of the lobes, which reveals a pocket of shining green crystal.

When Arnold weighs the rock on a truck scale at a nearby grain elevator, it will come in at 431 pounds.

It is the main mass of this meteorite-strewn field, the largest piece yet found. The weight of this rock alone exceeds by several hundred pounds all that have been previously gathered here since the find was first reported in 1881.

Once Arnold and his helper get the rock loaded onto the bed of the low trailer, he pauses so that a snapshot can be made with him and the rock and the farm widow who owns the piece of land. “Now, 67

tell me how you know it fell from the sky?” she asks. Months ago, Arnold had signed a lease with her allowing him to prospect for meteorites on the property. If and when any profit is made, the agreement calls for her to receive 25 percent.

“I’d like to find a piece of the doomsday rock,” Arnold had said to me before stepping down into the hole. “Meteorites are worthless in themselves.

What you have to ask yourself is, is anybody better because of this? What’s the most important thing when that big rock comes hurtling toward us? Then this becomes important science.”

But science isn’t driving Arnold on this winter day in east central Kansas, in this hay field from where you can see the wagon ruts of the old Santa Fe Trail a couple of hills over. The meteorite Arnold has the log chain around is a pallasite, a mixture of stone and iron like the famous one he found in 2005, and it contains thousands of carats of a green gemstone called peridot. His intent for these Alpha Site meteorites, as he describes it, is to use an acid bath to “harvest the crystal out of the metal matrix.”

In other words, he’s going to dissolve them to get the gems out, in order to make jewelry to sell. While peridot is a common gemstone on earth, this stuff is 68

extraterrestrial, and Arnold is betting there’s a market for it. He may or may not dissolve this particular meteorite, the main mass; it depends, he says, on how many carats he gets out of the other meteorites he has found here, and how big the market is.

He would be slow to dissolve it, to be sure, he says, because it would be difficult to undissolve it. But nobody should really object to his dissolving the meteorites, he says, because the Alpha specimens— which are found in a county in the rainy eastern third of the state—are notoriously difficult to preserve. In fact, he said, the iron-rich meteorite was rusting away to nothing in the ground. In a few hundred years, he says, nothing would have been left anyway.

Steve Arnold, photo by Max McCoy

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Daisy Fleabane (Erigeron strigosus). Smithsonian Archive.

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Daisy Fleabane (Erigeron strigosus). Smithsonian Archive.

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Giant Red Indian Paintbrush (Castilleja miniata).

Smithsonian Archive.

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Giant Red Indian Paintbrush (Castilleja miniata).

Smithsonian Archive.

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