How to get a Driver's License in USA

alle 8,05 del mattino, andando verso l'ufficio, mi sono fermato al supermercato per comprare un po' di verdure. Uscendo, ho visto l'ufficio della motorizazione la accanto, e mi sono ricordato che dovevo rinnovare la patente. Ho messo le buste in macchina, e mi sono poi incamminato all'ingresso dell'ufficio, e ho visto che aprivano alle 8,30. Dovevo aspettare 15 minuti. Faceva freddo, ma non troppo. Ho aspettato, altre persone sono arrivate e hanno aspettato fuori. Mi sono fatto una chiaccherata con un vigile del fuoco. Hanno aperto, ho preso il mio numero, "01", e ho aspettato 2 minuti. Un cartello diceva che non accettano contanti, ma solo assegni bancari. Meno male che tengo un assegno nel portafoglio, e ho cosi' riempito il modulo per rinnovo e fatto l'assegno per $26. M'hanno poi mandato ad aspettare all'altro angolo dell'ufficio, e 7 minuti dopo, m'hanno chiamato per nome, fatto la foto, fatto controllare che i dati anagrafici e biometrici corrispondevano alla verita', fatto scegliere la foto tra due che m'hanno fatto, e 4 minuti dopo, la patente e' stata prodotta da una macchina e a me consegnata. Sono tornato alla macchina parcheggiata davanti al supermercato, con le buste dentro con finocchio, broccoletti, pomodori. Sono arrivato in ufficio alle 8,48, un po' piu' tardi der solito, ma se po' fa'... Aho, mica male, me so rinnovata 'a patente, manco a farlo apposta.

How to get a Driver's Licence in Italy

Okay we're in the countdown. Today we went into town & got our hairs cut ( I will tell you soon about these 2 delicious waggish ex-Hollywood haircutters who've moved to Rome and understand fine hair and ladies of a certain age not needing to look like battle-axes, but not right now) and then we went to the Etruscan museum for the first time in years. I don't know what it is about Etruscan artifacts, but no matter where you see a real good one it won't be there next time you want to go see it again. For years I've been in love with an odd green bronze object shaped like a duck growing out of another duck on wheels, and I've had to chase it from one museum in one town to two others in another town and now it's gone again. Sigh.
Anyways, that's not what the countdown business was about ---it's about my dreaded driving test. It's scheduled for tomorrow at dawn, and if I don't pass it this time I'll have to pay another 150 euroes for a renewal of my learner's permit, and go on torturing myself with 25-euro lessons until I finally do pass it. We've already spent over 1,000 euroes on this process for the 2 of us. Bob was a sweetie & passed on his first try, but I got stuck on the part where they don't let you back up unless you can swivel your head all the way around backwards ---I swear I could see my opposite ear, but the gorgon who was testing me was never satisfied.
I told you how we discovered that we were tremendously illegal driving around with our American drivers' licenses, and how our insurance would not cover us if we were in an accident, and how we were even liable to get our car impounded etc etc unless we got Italian licenses right away. But did I tell you that there's only one way to get Italian drivers' licenses and that is to pay tons of money to a driving school? We hadn't twigged to that at first, and started out all the wrong way: lengthy humiliating trips to the Motor Vehicles Bureau (which is centralised and inaccessible, shut most of the time, and requires reams of different types of documentation every time you go there ---you're almost always missing an essential form or stamp) and paid a bunch of money but then learned that test inspectors are instructed to automatically flunk people who haven't gone through the driving school system. (I forgot to mention that we cannot simply have our licenses automatically converted like European citizens can; non-Community nationals have to start from scratch.)
Anyways, this summer we met a nice young woman from Kansas whose husband had some sort of (we think shady) connection with the boss at a driving school in Velletri --about 7 miles further down the Via Appia--- where we'd be assured of "good treatment" which seemed to mean they'd zip you through the cumbersome process of paperwork & legwork & assure you of success etc etc, so we teamed up with her & registered. First you have to study the Rules of the Road in a huge unintelligible tome, equipped with mock tests so you'll be ready for the most arcane experience imaginable: the rules are explained and the test questions are posed in intentionally obfuscating language; triple negatives, ambiguous terminology, uninformative illustrations, about 30 exceptions to the simple right-of-way rules, etc. After many weeks of wrestling with this slithery body of demi-knowledge (she'd come over to our house to study together & make brownies etc) you go in for the Theory part of the test, without which you cannot be admitted to the Practice part. This may have been the most humiliating part of the whole process, as the guy administering the test came up to each of the students who had been enrolled in the course and forcibly made us fill in the little boxes like he said, including a couple of glaring errors "so they won't suspect anything". The poor immigrant chumps who had been driving for years back in their home countries & thought this process was on the up & up all flunked. Each step of this odyssey costs a minor fortune.
Needless to say, we passed the theory part & now had to take some actual road-practice lessons, to understand what the inspectors required. Apparently the 3 most important things to remember are [1] whenever you are backing up you must turn your head all the way around and keep it that way until you shift out of reverse, [2] when getting out of the car you must turn your head way around and twist your arms so you are pulling the door latch with your other hand (?) and [3] when held up in traffic or at a red light, never let your car stop on a crosswalk. All these mean instant failure. Well, you're not supposed to run over any children either. Anyways, my second test is Saturday morning, and I'm feeling very vulnerable, as you never know when & which illogical requirement is going to jump out and bite you. I don't know how many times I can flunk the Practice part without having to do the Theory part all over again.
I hope my cute new haircut will help.

Well, after all that high-power dreading, I'm afraid my success, welcome as it was, suffered somehow from the intervention of Divine Injustice. I guess I shouldn't be surprised; after all these are people who've been brought up by people who were brought up by people, back into the mists of time, believing in an Angry Old Man as a deity --which is bad enough-- and a corrupt, double-talking church as His Agency here on Earth. The instructions are not at all BE GOOD, nor even OBEY ME, but basically boil down to SEEM TO OBEY ME, and it makes for terrible citizenship. So I was only mildly appalled by the driving instructor's reassurances that nobody cared if I drove like this once out on the road, but I HAD to drive like this for the test. In other words, they were not teaching me to drive properly; they were teaching me to pass the driving test.
In the event there wasn't really much of a test at all; not at all like the first time round: we were summoned for 9am to wait in a chilly drafty storefront, which we did for over an hour before I made bold to enquire about the prognosis and was told that the inspector's car had broken down and that someone had been dispatched to fetch him from Rome and that the proceedings would not begin before eleven. There were three people behind the desks who knew this, and ten anxious blue-fingered candidates milling about who hadn't been told. Of course me & Bob repaired to the nearest bar for the comforts of a hot cappuccino and sticky bun. There was a specialty delicatessen next door to the bar where I found a rare & thrilling kind of cheese I'd been looking for for years, so things were looking up & by the time we were all piled into little red cars & set off to the proving grounds (at this point Bob went home to warm up) I was feeling somewhat better about life. Particularly after the instructor told us that the inspector was in a hurry to get back to town to see about his car, and would probably not be too thorough with our tests.
Then followed that endless hurry-up-and-wait business, as one by one the candidates were whisked away to drive summarily around the block (more or less) and most of them passed. A curious bit of logistics was employed: as each candidate drove off with the instructor & the inspector in the car, the remaining candidates followed in two other cars driven by people from the school. It was a silly procession, round & round more or less the same route, one less of us each time.
I was the last on the list, it was lunchtime, but the scrawny teenager with shaved eyebrows and earrings all over his face, one place ahead of me, turned out to have something wrong with his papers and this created quite an upheaval: it seems his learner's permit had been stolen and the police report of the theft was missing the all-important stamp-seal that authenticates it. The boy went into TILT. He was in the car with me and the boss-lady. She tried to reassure him that he could simply get the thing stamped next week and take the next scheduled test, which would be in 15 days' time. Fifteen whole days! It was supposed to be today! He hurled himself into a hysterical tantrum, tearing his clothes and howling that he was the most unfortunate star-crossed man on earth; the fates had shafted him, why him; nothing this bad had ever happened to anyone before; his grandmother had died the day before and he was missing the funeral for his driving test and now wasn't going to be able to do the test either; he treated us to some truly rococo swearing involving not only the standard Holy-Mother-crossed-with-various-barnyard-animals stuff, but ranging far beyond that into lots of refreshing anatomy mixtures and one particularly juicy one involving Eve herself! Then he had the brilliant idea of calling up his mother at the funeral and ordering her in pretty rough terms to instruct his uncle the carabiniere (who was also there at the funeral) to rush over to the motor vehicle inspection yard (where we were headed) with his official stamp-seal (which he brings with him to funerals?) immediately and set things right. And damned if we didn't find them all lined up when we arrived at the yard, ready to spring into action. As this remarkably cohesive family was involved in a bout of barking & paper-ruffling, the inspector motioned wearily for me to get in the car. He was clearly not in the mood, and put me through a few desultory paces, driving up the via Appia and back, a mere ten minutes with no occasion to shift into reverse, and pronounced me fit to drive. Oh sure, he managed to get in a few scornful cracks about how ugly Atlanta is (his son is at Georgia Tech) and how all Americans drive automatic shift cars etc, but he clearly didn't have the stomach for any of the high-level sadism that goes with his office, and handed me my new license as if it were sticky & smelly. As the boss-lady and I drove off it looked like the pincushion boy was going to get his test after all.
On the ride back we reflected on the implications for society of a generation of young people with no frustration threshhold at all; no sense of proportion; no capacity for relativising; no recognition of cause & effect; accountability. Instant gratification or else. This kid hadn't cared enough about his grandmother (or her bereaved offspring) to postpone his driving test in order to attend the funeral; he hadn't enough respect for his parents' grieving to abstain from calling on them to drop what they were doing to service his needs (who leaves their cellphone on at a funeral, anyways?) and he simply could not stand to imagine waiting another two weeks to take his test. All right; we don't know what the real situation was; maybe the grandmother was a detestable dragon & they were all happier & better off without her. Maybe he desperately needed that license right away to be able to take his quadripeligic brother to the rehabilitation clinic on Monday or he loses his place. Or he's just landed a job that depends on his motor-mobility to be able to keep it. Whatever the truth of it, me and the boss-lady didn't feel we wanted to drive on the same road as this kid. Beginning with his feeling free to let loose with that elaborate heavy-duty swearing in front of two old ladies he didn't know from Adam. "That's the kind of brat who bludgeons his mother to death with a hammer because she won't give him the money for a phone card ---and she deserves it for bringing him up that way", muttered the boss-lady. Either way, the inspector seemed to feel bludgeoned enough to wave us through.
Maybe this is an extreme example, but I can't help feeling it has tarnished my triumph. One would like to feel that one has met the challenge oneself; that one has studied hard, and learned the stuff, and been judged on the merits of one's performance. But that's not always possible, and I am relieved at least that I got my drivers license, whatever the process. Sigh.
That evening we met some local friends at a concert and when I described my morning's experience to them, they nodded with great empathy and understanding: "I know; I know; these things depend on the phases of the moon; the color of your shoes; everything except what they should depend on." Which brings us back to Mother Church, but I've already treated you to that one.
Actually who am I to say that pre-Christian pagan life was any more rational?
As the immediate past recedes ---and after all I did go home with what I'd come for--- I find I don't really care all that much any more. Except for a residual hankering for a little more consideration for cause & effect.

orienteering, geocaching, hashing

I'm contacting you because GC.com gave me your name with a list of geocachers that also run. I'm writing an article for trail running and would love to ask you a few questions, possibly even include one of your favorite geocaching trail runs.

I noticed that you wrote about running trails and that you are involved with a club in PA. Please let me know if you can help and how to contact you via email.

---
yes, I run with the Pittsburgh hash house harriers, kind of a mistery run where runners follow marks on the ground made with white baking flour by someone else previously (usually earlier in the day, or one day before...). the purpose of the HHH run is to find a case of beer, usually stashed in a hidden area in the woods, and then socialize as all runners reach it, collect, and it so becomes a nice place and time to chat with the "usual suspects" that join this weekly event. the Pittsburgh HHH website is www.pgh-h3.com. Many of the "beer stop" locations that I have aquainted myself by running with them, I have used the same locations for geocache placement.
another activity I do is "Orienteering", a land navigation sport using map and compass that is popular in scandinavian countries. Similar to geocaching, participants use traditional tools (and not a GPS) such as map and compass to locate flags in the woods.
I have merged all three activities, geocaching, hash house harriers, and orienteering, in creating my own event, called "Hash-O", in a park near where I live, Frick Park.
In that event, I had 13 locations in the park that were marked with red and white ribbons (the colors of Orienteering, BTW). Location 8 and 13 were also "beer stops", meaning there was a cache of cold beer and snacks at those locations. Each participant (a runner) was given a topographic map with marked on it the current (starting) position, marked as a triangle, and two target (destination) positions, each marked as a circle. Unknown to the participant is that of the two target positions, only one is valid ("True"). The invalid one ("False") will have the ribbons (usually tied to a tree branch) marked with a "F" on it. The valid one ("True") will have a topographic map on the ground below the ribbon and a pen, and the finders would have to copy on their personal map the next two target positions (two circles) that are drawn on the map found on the ground. They don't take the map found on the ground - they leave that to the next participant that follows [a variation would have been to have 50 or so maps at each location in all of the 13 locations, but with the cost of color printing, it was going to be too expensive, so I resorted with the method of having each runner use the pen or marker to mark on their PERSONAL map the next two target locations learned from viewing the GROUND map. Each map found on the ground also had glued on it the GPS coordinates of the two target positions. So, while most of the participants followed traditional Orienteering sport techniques of map & compass to locate the next two target locations, some instead used their portable GPS devices to key-in the coordinates of the next two locations, and used the GPS to locate them. From a geocaching perspective, this was very much like a "Multi-Stage" cache, with cold beer caches at stage 8 and 13.
the maps found on the ground at each stage, and the participant map given out at start time are viewable at
http://pgh-hash.blogspot.com/2007/07/orienteering-hash.html
The original instructions, as explained to the runners of the Hash House Harriers running club are at
http://pgh-hash.blogspot.com/2007/07/orienteering-hash-instructions.html.

reporter:
Thanks for all the info. Your events look crazy and fun. I'm hoping you can answer some questions for my article. I don't know that I can include the beer events, but maybe you run and cache quite a bit in addition to those things. Check out the questions below and see if it's a fit. Please feel free to elaborate anywhere...or be brief if you don't have much time. I look forward to your input.
Bio Stuff
-Name, address, phone (so my editor knows you're a real person). Also your gc.com user nickname?

nickname: "Sherpes"

History of Trail Running
-First started and why?

Started trail running because is never boring. At the turn of every bend, there is new scenery, the terrain varies, one must constantly adjust and improvvise. Started running on trails regularly in Colorado Springs in 1998.

-Your particular thing...i.e. races, solitude, fitness?

Fitness, mostly. Enjoy going with other people, when I can find someone that has the free time and common interests.

-Did you use a GPS for running...tracking distance/speed, keeping pace, making bread crumb trail...before you started geocaching?

No, in the past I just looked at topographics maps. Now I use Gmap Pedometer online.

-Are you connected with a local trail running club?

yes, the Pittsburgh Hash House Harriers

History of Geocaching
-First started and why and why you love it?

It was by accident. I was running the trail running club Pittsburgh Hash House Harriers on a trail set by the hare Death Marchall. Then, while walking along a creek in the woods, saw some debris and trash, and after inspection, realized it was a geocache that had been vandalized and thrown on the ground. In trying to identifying its owner, I got aquainted with the activity of geocaching, and since then, got hooked. That cache is " Dead Man's Tower Cache " (GCJ9NA)

-First cache, any interesting stats, etc.?

Dead Man's Tower Cache (GCJ9NA), near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

-Are you connected with a local geocaching club?

There is a unmanaged club of sorts where I live to which the local geocaching community "feels they belong to", sort of. It is called Three Rivers Geocaching Organization, or TRiGO in short.

History of Running while Caching
-Why did you connected the two, which came first...running or caching?

Running came first, because geocaching is relatively a new thing in general. Then, while vising a large park with a friend for a run, we decided we were both going to be hunting the three geocaches that were in the park and started the run together. We each had our own GPS, and it was funny as we got closer and closer to a cache on how each of us independently veered off slightly from each other, almost as a reflection of stubborn individuality.

-Are you avid, addicted, etc? How often run/cache?

No. Not addicted. Now, I run in my local park for my regular jog, follow a trail in the woods, and as I recognize the locations, I remember of a geocache placed there (geocache that I've previously found already), and I stop and check its existence. These caches are more like reference points in my run.

-Why do you love doing both together?

It's like a scavenger hunt. Walking is boring. Running is quick and fast.

Relevance to Trail Running(the big question the readers want to know)
-Why should a trail runner geocache? Feel free to comment on any...or add your own. Motivation? New places? Workout (stop-go)? Fun? Social?

It is more to motivate a run. Running and simply running can be boring. Running with a purpose is more fun. The sport of Orienteering, popular in Scandinavian countries and Eastern Europe, merges running with a scavenger hunt-like activity, where participants must locate flags hidden in the woods in the least amount of time. Similarly, a fit geocacher can use a GPS to locate multiple geocaches in the woods, and do that while running. Depending on the terrain and trails encountered, the direct route may not be necessarily the quickest way, and a runner may circle the area where the cache is reportedly located, if that area has a thick underbrush, before finding the best approach to get to the cache. Doing it in pairs or other people is more fun. Your partner may be approaching the cache from a slightly different side, and yelling to each other so that acoustically we know of each other's current location makes the scavenger hunt more fun.
Doesn't have to be running either, but could be while biking. On a 20-mile bicycle trip along the Allegheny Passage "rails-to-trails" bicycle trail on the Maryland-Pennsylvania border, we stopped multiple times looking for a geocaches placed right along the path. It kind of breaks the monotony a bit, and makes the day more interesting.

Great Trail Run
-I'm looking for a total of 5 great trail runs to cache on around the country. If there's one you think should be highlighted in your area, send me the trail name, location (include park name or national forest, etc.), distance, details, geocache(s), and any race, club, guidebook, website that might be connected to it.
Advice
-Any advice for a trail runner on how to get started in geocaching?

running for geocaches is very similar to Orienteering in the mental aspect. I would contact a local Orienteering club and participate in their local meets.

-I'm particularly curious about how you carry your GPS? Do you carry other things with you when run/caching?

Nothing fancy: I hold it in my hand.

-How do you make it a good run/cache experience? Do you pick a new run and find out if a cache exists nearby...or do you find a new cache you want to visit and just run?

actually, a bit of both. Sometimes I find out of a park nearby and want to go for a run, and then later investigate if the park has any geocaches as well. Other times, I look for any geocaches in the area, and then later discover when reading the topographic map of the area, that the area is well suited for a good run.

-Any advice on equipment? Best GPS for run/caching? Small/light?

the best equipment is your shoes. They are the primary contact material between your body and the ground. The other best advice is, keep alert and stay away from danger. Tripping on a log and falling face-down and getting injured while being alone in the woods is a recipe for a very dangerous situation.

Popularity of Run/Cache
-How popular do you think trail running combined with geocaching is?

Not popular. Geocaching is very much an activity of either people going solo walking in the woods, or by families with children.

-Do you know of other people that do it?

Two people, John Hartman, with whom we also share the activity of Orienteering, and "Nellsnake", a fit trail runner who has been very active in geocaching.

-Any clubs/groups/events involving running while caching?
Memory/story
-I'm hoping you might have time to do a quick paragraph on a recent run-cache memory. Where you went/trail, when, who with, why, what you left and what you found, cache name, something particular to this cache/area/trail...like that.

Once a year, in mid-June, about four hundred people walk/run in a single day the entire length of a 34-mile trail called the Rachel Carson Trail. The trail is located in Allegheny county, north of the city of Pittsburgh. To break a bit the monotony of walking the trail, my hiking/running partner and I looked for three geocaches along the way that were located in the proximity of the trail. It was nice to find the hidden cache, read its log, and share a moment with another human being and its traces left behind by them for us to share, right there in the woods, next to a babbling creek under the thick covers of an evergreen.

geocaches as simulacra, or spontaneous shrines

Geocache, a box or container, placed on a location and hidden from public view. Similar to letterboxing, the finders look for it using hand-held GPS, using coordinates found online on the web. The container has a logbook for finders to sign and write a brief note, and small items and trinkets to exchange.

Some geocaches are placed in memory of people that have died on that location.

In this case, the geocache is a form of memorial, or spontaneous shrine.

western PA

1944 plane crash

Sherri Memorial

memorial cache

Flight 93 memorial

Simulacra definition

Similar to roadside crosses found along a road after an accident, or in a dark alley after a crime has occurred. There is a book on spontaneous memorial shrines, it describes the location as acting as conduit to pass messages from one person to another. Some become actors in mass grieving.


Santuario del Divino Amore, about 15 km south east of Rome, Italy (not far from the Via Appia). This church is also visible in the end of Federico Fellini's film "The Nights of Cabiria". The most important "shrine" in this sanctuary are the earphones of the radioman of the airship "Italia", that crashed in the artic sea in 1936. The wood panel has carvings depicting the various episodes of the drama. Eventually, a Soviet icebreaker reached and rescued the survivors, including its leader, Generale Nobile. During the ordeal, the radioman prayed and pledged that should he survive, he would make an offering to this sactuary, a pledge which he followed up.

Santuario del Divino Amore. Many expressions of thanks are by survivors of horrific traffic accidents, as shown with pictures and newspaper clippings.

The stone plaques of "grazia ricevuta" as Thank-You notes, placed on the walls of the sanctuary.






In a street of San Marzano sul Sarno, provincia di Salerno, near Naples, Italy. A small memorial in memory of a deceases in a traffic accident (most likely someone on a moped or small motorbike).



Via Fani, Rome, Italy. Location where former prime minister Aldo Moro was kidnapped by the terrorist group Brigate Rosse. All the seven members of his security detail were killed.


Small marble plaque ("lapide", from "lapis", which means stone in Latin) in honor of a judge that was killed by political terrorists in the late '70s or early '80s. Trionfale neighborhood of Rome, Italy.

Spontaneous shrine in memory of a teenager that was killed in a motorbike accident. Via Garibaldi, Trasterevere neighborhood in Rome, Italy. The red and yellow colored memorabilia reflects the fact that the memorialized was a fan of the soccer club A.S. Roma.




In a back alley siding the railroad tracks near the Via Tuscolana, southeast of Rome, Italy, a small shrine in memory of a young "Carabiniere" police officer, who probably died in the line of duty, probably killed in a fire-arm exchange with drug dealers at a night-time security check. Because of the improvised quality of the memorial, this "lapide" was probably placed by the family of the deceased (and not by an institutional governmental body).


Plaque in the Tiburtina train station, Rome, Italy, in memory of the deported to Nazi concentration camps. Placed on location fifty years after the event occurred.

Burial location and grave site of pets, probably dog or cat, made by a homeless person living in the "tufo" caverns in the Parco della Caffarella, Rome, Italy.


A staple of catholic countries, a form of saying thanks for a miracle is to place a note of "grazia ricevuta", or G.R. Sometimes these plaques are accompaigned by objects, such as crutches (person walks again), eye-glasses (person sees again), or photographs and/or newspaper clippings describing a horrific traffic accident.





book description
"Once again, editor Jack Santino shows his gift for seeing the extraordinary in the ordinary. Spontaneous Shrines and the Public Memorialization of Death
reveals an emerging, globalizing language of loss and memory that can deal with the unassimilable fact of unjust, untimely death. The new traditions documented here are moving, powerful and potentially subversive."--Susan Davis, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
“It is a sad fact of our times that we should have so many reasons to mourn collectively. Wherever that may be (Madrid, Buenos Aires, Oklahoma, Derry, New York, Pouch Cove), for whatever reason (a car crash, assassination, terrorist attack, natural disaster, genocide), grief materializes itself in public in the most extraordinary ways. Just how that happens--and what it tells about who we are--is the subject of this life-affirming book, which examines spontaneous and self-organizing forms of mourning. These grassroots expressions offer an important alternative--and sometimes even resistance--to the formalities of church, funeral home, and civic commemoration. Ephemeral, tactical, and interstitial in the ways they locate themselves in public space, the spontaneous shrines examined in this book are worthy of the careful documentation and analysis provided by this important book.”--Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, author of Destination Culture: Tourism, Museums, and Heritage

“This volume fills the need for sustained attention to the ethnographic and aesthetic details of spontaneous shrines, and situates these observations within a broader theoretical framework for understanding public memorialization of death. Readers will be moved by integrity of those who mourn and provoked by the implications of public acts of mourning we often overlook.”--Peter Tokofsky, Education Specialist at the J. Paul Getty Museum and Adjunct Associate Professor of World Arts and Cultures at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA)

Praise for Jack Santino's Signs of War and Peace:

"Santino shows great evenhandedness in treating the sides in the conflict, and his study is informative, thoughtful, and thought-provoking."--Choice

This extraordinary ethnographic work sheds a fresh light on the capacity of popular tradition to create public space, and collectively fashioned art-driven by passion and intellect-to articulate what is unsayable in politics. Santino's superbly written work illuminates the range of ways in which popular artistic traditions in Northern Ireland make visible what is too often hidden from the view of politics: the personal impacts of political decisions.--Mary Hufford, American Folklife Center, Library of Congress

Santino provides a rarely available perspective on violence. He presents the perspectives of the people of Northern Ireland through their creative uses of traditional forms of expression. Responding to the threat and reality of death, present in their neighborhoods at all times, they respond with efforts to maintain their humanity and identities with shrines that memorialize specific individuals yet also serve to draw attention to the consequences of the conflict. Understanding the tragic consequences of violence for other human beings offers an alternative to the frustrations of diplomacy. Perhaps such an approach could prove to be a more fruitful route to peaceful solutions.--Beverly Stoeltje, Indiana University

Signs of War and Peace offers a fascinating excursion into the politics of popular art in an embattled land, where two incompatible versions of history coexist. In refreshingly readable prose, Jack Santino shows how public displays like drum-beating, litter-can rattling, handshaking, flag flying, and curbstone and mural painting operate symbolically to perpetuate a state of war. By so doing, he teaches us not only about the anguished inhabitants of Northern Ireland but also about ourselves.--Stanley Brandes, University of California at Berkeley

Signs of War and Peace is an impressive look at the range of display events associated with the war in Northern Ireland. As far as I know, there has been no other work on this particular side to the conflicts in Northern Ireland. Santino is an established scholar who has devoted a great deal of his time in the last several years to fieldwork in Ireland, and the manuscript that he has produced as a result is filled with important ethnographic data and revealing interviews with many people in Northern Ireland who have participated in the display events he seeks to analyze. I truly enjoyed reading this manuscript.--Meg Brady, University of Utah

Book Description
Spontaneous shrines have emerged, both in the United States and internationally, as a way to mourn those who have died a sudden or shocking death, and to acknowledge the circumstances of the deaths. The contributors to Spontaneous Shrines and the Public Memorialization of Death address events such as the Texas Aamp;M bonfire collapse, the Pentagon and New York City after 9-11, roadside crosses, a memorial wall in Philadelphia, and the use of Day of the Dead altars to bring attention to deceased undocumented immigrants. The first comprehensive work to examine and theorize the phenomenon as a whole, this book explores the origins, types, uses, and meanings of these shrines.

careful on when you trade with this geocache

There is a geocache at the Flight 93 memorial, and one must be careful when trading items. Others watching may be irked in seeing you "taking" items away from the improptu spontaneous shrine the place has become.

---
Date: 12/21/2006 12:51
Subject: question on objects left at Vietnam Memorial
I’ve read your website, and I have this question:

What happens if a visitor picks up an item left at the Wall by another visitor, and pockets it ? is there a law that prohibits someone from taking an object left by someone else ?

Reason I ask is because there was a complaint recently at the Flight 93 memorial future site in Pennsylvania. Visitors at that location have left hats, stuffed bears, coins. Other visitors may have picked items left by others or “traded” with other items.

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Thanks for your email. Property left at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial (VVM) is considered abandoned property and is reclaimable for 30 days under our property laws. It is picked up nightly by the Park Rangers and after 30 days, it is entered into our museum property system. It is not illegal to pick things up at the Memorial, we just hope if people pick things up, that they put them back. We know of many things left at the Memorial that have never made it out here to our museum storage facility.

In the beginning, many people left things at the Memorial thinking they would be picked up by others or didn't really think about their final disposition. Throughout the years, visitors have heard about the collection and now leave mementos for that specific purpose. The NPS only accept things that are physically left at the Memorial which means we don't take things through the mail. Sometimes we are notified by the donor if the object is valuable and the rangers either pick it up or watch it.

I am very familiar with Flight 93 and began working with their curator shortly after 9/11. They began working on the collection using our VVM guidance and technical processes but have refined them to meet the needs of the Flight 93 collections. The same is true of Oklahoma City and Columbine, as well as many other similar memorials.

These types of memorials are very fluid. In the case of VVM, which is a memorial to promote healing, a person taking something left at the Memorial may assist in that persons healing process. Granted, their will be some people who that take objects for monetary or other reasons. The most important thing about Memorials like this is the communication and interaction between the Memorial and the visitors. Without that interaction, there would be no objects, no collection. The collection helps tell the story of the Memorial and the event that it commemorates, honors, is in tribute to, etc. It is not the main story itself.

Please let me know if you have any other questions.

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Thank you for asking these questions and contacting VVM curator. She is the right person to ask! She has been a tremendous help to the Flight 93 National Memorial in guiding our decisions about taking care of the many tributes that have been left near the crash site from the very beginning...actually within hours of the crash.

We also consider anything left by visitors at the temporary memorial to be abandoned property. However, we made a decision within just a few weeks after September 11, 2001 to leave these items in the place they were left for as long as weather would allow, taking them in only when they were in danger of being destroyed. Therefore, some tributes have been left for weeks, months or in some cases, years. Part of the healing process for our many visitors is the chance to see what others have written, what they feel about this event or related events since 9-11, and how those thoughts and feelings are expressed in words or by the type of object that they leave.
Visitors spend a great deal of time looking at all the messages and incredible objects that have heartfelt meaning to the one who left it.

We have, upon occasion, noticed some items missing, but so far only patches that were tacked to a 4' x 8' sheet of plywood on the fence placed there for that particular reason. However, it is the within the practice of police, fire and emergency responders to trade patches as a sign of comradery and friendship, so we don't know if that is the reason why we sometimes see them missing. Other than those items, we have not really noticed anything else taken. People are very respectful of what has been left. I have noticed countless parents who gently pull their children back from the fence and explain that the items are not to be touched (although we would welcome that if people just wanted to see them better). We hope these tributes bring some comfort to those that are struggling to understand why September 11th happened. And it is precisely that reason why this collection is preserved for future generations to know how Americans and our many international visitors responded to this world changing event.

We appreciate your concern and if you have any other questions, please contact me.

Geocache

Interesting plaque found at the site:

United Flight #93

We will never forget when the call came.
For a trip that would return us never the same.

The journey though anzious, was filled with much dread.
For none of really knew what lay ahead.

In a remote part of a small little town.
In an old strip-mine a plane had gone down.

Oh, we knew the enemies, they thought they had scored.
But they hadn't planned for the heroes on board.

The refused to give in, and they gave it their best,
And there on that ground, the plane laid to rest.

So we made our way to this small patch of land,
And gathered our rakes and sifted through sand.

We walked miles and miles around ponds and lakes,
Searching for anything someone could take.

Something, anything, small we could find,
to give some sort of closure and provide peace of mind.

It became a mission by the end of the day,
to find a small token, a watch, or a chain,
That someone could look at and place with a name.

In the center of this, one thing stood true,
Old Glory kept waving her red, white, and blue.

We would look up at her often with tears in our eyes
and remember with reverence those who had died.

We all were connected to those on that plane,
we helf wallets, or purses bearing their name.

And our wish as we pray, some quietly, some loud,
was that we hope we did well and that we made you proud.

Sandra Greene
Knoxville FBI
Evidence Response Team

Rogaine medal

Rogaine is a long-distance endurance orienteering event, usually lasting 8, 12, or 24 hours. The medal pictured below reflects the 24hour-ness of the event by showing both daylight and nighttime.



Latvian Rogaining

some advice: wear a helmet, and ... choose your neighbors well

A successful Fox Chapel resident rode a bike near his home without a helmet, and was found unconscious on the pavement. It is assumed he fell and hit his head. He died four days later. He was not wearing a helment.
Post-Gazette news article.

He was a strong bicycle rider. Obituary

Five months later, in an effort to help the widow and her three children, obviously in emotional distressed, the next-door neighbors purchased their home for the sum of One Million Dollars, a nice number with lots of zeros. Sounds like a nice fairy tale, the kind you find on the Disney Channel, but this one is true.

Dirt Rag 2007 Punk Bike Enduro

The annual Dirt Rag punk bike enduro took place as usual in the area surrounding the Dorseyville Fire Hall. About 140 people showed up, despite a consistent cold rain. There was one rider dressed in a Superman costume, one in a "best man wedding" light-blue suit. On the last descent of stage 1, spectators were watching as riders where descending the steep trail. One rider fell over the handle bars and required some light first aid (he was able to continue riding). At stage 2, the Derby took place, in the parking lot of a school.



Stage 1:


Stage 4:


stage 6, first half:


stage 6, second half:


classic photo of 2005 enduro