[NMCAVER] WNS please keep it civil
Hey! This is a discussion forum. Nobody's opinion deserves to be called naive or whining. So...be nice, Ray. Let's see if New Mexico's cavers can maintain a civil dialog about a controversial topic. Tossing around insults is the fastest way to squelch what could be a productive exchange. I gave my thoughts on the subject, but am not an expert, and am certainly not qualified to slam anybody else's opinion. I look forward to hearing from biologists and others with enough initials behind their names to know what they're talking about. Lois ___ NMCAVER mailing list nmca...@caver.net http://caver.net/mailman/listinfo/nmcaver_caver.net
[NMCAVER] WNS and NM Convention
I have to agree with those who have suggested that hosting a convention in NM at a time when WNS is decimating bats across the country seems a bit questionable. This in particular because we don't even know if the decontamination procedures being followed by some (not all) cavers makes a bit of difference. Seriously...dousing cave gear in cleaning agents seems like a handy way to feel like you're doing something...but there is no way of measuring efficacy, and not everyone will be as thorough as they should be. If we're talking about a scenario where even one errant spore could destroy a colony, why risk it? In addition: bats aren't the only creatures that inhabit caves, and the times when I've gone caving after treating my gear, reeking of disinfectant, just doesn't seem like low-impact, leave-no-trace caving to me. There are microbes and lots of other little critters that might be seriously affected by all the chemicals we're loading onto our caving gear. What about the rest of the subterranean ecology? My final point is this: anyone who's been to a convention knows the mayhem involved with gear cleaning, drying, borrowing, lending, returning, etc. It's unrealistic to think that ALL the clothing and gear of ALL cavers coming to convention could be adequately inspected and policed for cleanliness. And if it only takes one spore, NM cavers won't know if all their efforts were successful until after convention, when bats start to die. Then it will be too late to put the genie back in the bottle. This entire situation may warrant the NSS re-evaluating how, when, and where it holds conventions for the foreseeable future. Lois Manno ___ NMCAVER mailing list nmca...@caver.net http://caver.net/mailman/listinfo/nmcaver_caver.net
[NMCAVER] San Diego cave rescue riddle
Riddle: what do you get when you combine a 215-pound novice caver with a 10-wide granite fissure? Answer: read the article below. Lois Manno http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/2010/may/04/rescue-team-saves-caver-close-call/ ___ NMCAVER mailing list nmca...@caver.net http://caver.net/mailman/listinfo/nmcaver_caver.net
[NMCAVER] Ojito Wilderness
To Abq. Los Alamos area cavers: Has anyone done ridgewalking in the Ojito Wilderness between Bernalillo and San Yisidro? If you have, maybe we can compare notes. Thanks! Lois ___ NMCAVER mailing list nmca...@caver.net http://caver.net/mailman/listinfo/nmcaver_caver.net
[NMCAVER] ***SPAM*** Carlsbad Caverns book wins top award!
Hello friends, Visions Underground: Carlsbad Caverns through the Artist's Eye just won two prizes at the New Mexico Book Awards: Best Art Book, and Best Book for 2009, the highest award given to the book that ranked top out of 300+ entries this year! I'll be giving a Powerpoint presentation about the Cavern Arts Project and my book on December 5 at the Santa Fe Community College in The Board Room, 1:00. It's hosted by the NM Press Women's Association. I hope you can make it to this free talk. Thanks again to all the artists who contributed to the exhibit and the book. I couldn't have done it without you! Thank you! Lois ___ NMCAVER mailing list nmca...@caver.net http://caver.net/mailman/listinfo/nmcaver_caver.net
[NMCAVER] Caverns book event missing info
Hello all, Sorry to say that my attachment did not make it into the original email. The info about the event is as follows: I'll be giving a Powerpoint presentation about the Cavern Arts Project and my book on December 5 at the Santa Fe Community College in The Board Room, 1:00. It's hosted by the NM Press Women's Association. Thanks again Lois Manno 505.995.8475 ___ NMCAVER mailing list nmca...@caver.net http://caver.net/mailman/listinfo/nmcaver_caver.net
[NMCAVER] Carlsbad Caverns book event
Hello cavers, For those of you who didn't see my talk at the ICS, I'll be giving a Powerpoint presentation on December 5 at the Santa Fe Community College. (see attached flyer) Visions Underground: Carlsbad Caverns through the Artist's Eye just won two prizes at the New Mexico Book Awards: Best Art Book, and Best Book for 2009, the highest award given each year to one book! I hope you can make it to this free talk. Thank you! Lois Manno ___ NMCAVER mailing list nmca...@caver.net http://caver.net/mailman/listinfo/nmcaver_caver.net
[NMCAVER] Bat Boy, the musical
BAT BOY: THE MUSICAL Directed by Gail Springer Music Direction by Ron Strauss Greer Garson Theatre Center Weckesser Studio Theatre 1600 St. Michael's Drive Santa Fe, NM 87505 Celebrate and support the reopening of the College of Santa Fe Performing Arts Department October 30, 31, November 6, 7 at 8:00pm November 1, 8 at 2:00pm Tickets $12 Call the GGT Box Office 505 473 6511 Director's Notes Like most of America’s current musical mega hits, Bat Boy: The Musical is a highly entertaining piece of contemporary theatre that tells an engaging fantasy story about a misunderstood and tortured protagonist. The scores express the characters’ emotions with catchy tunes and rock rhythms, and the scripts deliver a healthy dose of sex, violence, love and magic. Some, like this play, make satirical comments on contemporary society. Three years ago, the Performing Arts Department produced another successful, and deeply satirical, Off-Broadway to Broadway hit, Urinetown: The Musical. Like Urinetown, Bat Boy is filled with characters starving for love, respect, power, and a sense of security. Fueled by their fear and desperation, these characters transform their hunger into the many faces of human foolishness, including hate and violence. The contradiction between their public and private faces provides a lesson in the evils so often justified in the name of capitalism, religious extremism, or politics. Keythe Farley, Brian Flemming, and Laurence O’Keefe constructed Bat Boy from a deliciously diverse palate of theatrical styles and devices. Theatre lovers will recognize elements of Oedipus, Hamlet, and Pygmalion. Musical déjà vu’s abound including quotes from Sondheim’s Into the Woods, and Elton John’s Lion King. The script and score are filled with the most delightful traditional techniques of satire: humor, wit and exaggeration. Bat Boy tells the story of a struggling community in the mountains of West Virginia. The coal mines have quit producing, and the citizens of Hope Falls are trying to bring their shattered lives together by switching from mining to the predictably unsuccessful business of ranching in the mountains. When a half-boy, half-bat is discovered in a nearby cave, the citizens variously see him as a way out of their miserable misfortunes. For reasons of their own, the local veterinarian and his family take the poor creature into their home, protect him from the town, and give him the love and attention he craves. While Bat Boy thrives in the safety of the Parker home, mistrust and fear build in the community. Driven mad by prejudice and suffering, the townspeople’s hatred is easily fed by Bat Boy’s animal nature: like other cave- dwelling vampire bats, he survives by eating fresh blood. As Bat Boy fights for his life, and the citizens of Hope Falls face the terror of a monster in their midst, no traditional values help them. Neither religion, law, love, family, nor education give them the understanding they need. As the Bat Boy’s humanness grows greater, so does the monstrous inadequacy of the people around him. Ultimately they all are trapped in a cage of their own natures. Fortunately for the audience and the players, Farley, Flemming and O’Keefe maintain their primary interest, to construct a thoroughly enjoyable evening of musical theatre. And yet, when the romp of Bat Boy: The Musical is over, the ensemble turns to the audience to sing the morals of the story: love your neighbor, forgive, keep your vows; let go the fears to which you cling, and don’t deny your beast inside. ___ NMCAVER mailing list nmca...@caver.net http://caver.net/mailman/listinfo/nmcaver_caver.net
[NMCAVER] Carlsbad Caverns comes to Santa Fe this Friday
I'd like to invite all local cavers to an upcoming show this coming Friday, September 11th. The Steve Elmore Indian Art Gallery will be hosting a book signing and exhibit to celebrate the publication of my new book “Visions Underground: Carlsbad Caverns Through the Artist’s Eye” from 5-7pm. The show will continue through September 26th. For more information on the book and the show please visit http://elmoreindianart.com/Events/ . I hope you can join stop by and check out the book and some really interesting speleological art by a collection of New Mexico-based artists, including 1924 paintings by famous Santa Fe artist Will Shuster. Sincerely, Lois Manno 505.995.8475 www.cavernartsproject.org Steve Elmore Indian Art 839 Paseo de Peralta, Suite M Santa Fe, NM 87501 gall...@elmoreindianart.com 505-995-9677 ___ NMCAVER mailing list nmca...@caver.net http://caver.net/mailman/listinfo/nmcaver_caver.net
[NMCAVER] Visions Underground
Hello all,The book is still getting out there, but I know CCGMA has put in an order for copies. They probably have it by now. I'll be signing copies at the ICS as well, so please stop by and say hi!Attached is a PDF with more about the book. Thanks!Lois Manno 1606 Young Street Santa Fe, NM 87505 505.995.8475 loisma...@comcast.net www.loismanno.com Carlsbad-sell-sheet.pdf Description: Adobe PDF document ___ NMCAVER mailing list nmca...@caver.net http://caver.net/mailman/listinfo/nmcaver_caver.net
Re: [NMCAVER] Carlsbad's 8 million 'lost' bats likely never existed
It's very interesting to use historic records for comparison to modern- day conditions. Sometimes they got it wrong, as in V.C. Allison's case, but sometimes there's great value in looking up old information. I just purchased from National Geographic Magazine's stock archives a photograph of the Dome Room in Carlsbad Caverns. It ran in the Sept., 1925 issue and is the first color underground photograph ever made. In it, the formations in the chamber are colorful, with rich golds and red-browns. I believe the colors are fairly true, because the color of the human model in the photograph is not saturated. Today the Dome Room is very bleached, almost like an old bone. It appears that Carlsbad Caverns was much more colorful when it was first discovered. I expect that the increased air flow caused by the elevator shafts (before airlocks were installed) did a lot of the damage, especially when combined with regional drought patterns. The Dome Room is very close to the elevators. Lois Manno On Jan 25, 2009, at 7:21 PM, Minton, Mark wrote: Interesting application of modern science to an old rumor about how many bats there were in Carlsbad Cavern: http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/40178/title/Carlsbads_8_million_lost_bats_likely_never_existed . Mark Minton Carlsbad's 8 million 'lost' bats likely never existed Thermal imaging and algorithms challenge famous estimate By Susan Milius Web edition : Friday, January 23rd, 2009 Eight million is a lot of bats to lose, and now a new study may explain what happened to the possibly lost bats of Carlsbad Cavern. Short answer: According to a Boston University team, the famous 8 million bats never existed in the first place. From spring to fall, the cave Carlsbad Cavern in New Mexico’s Carlsbad Caverns National Park still hosts hundreds of thousands of migratory Brazilian free-tailed bats that thrill visitors by boiling out of the cave at dusk for a night’s foraging. All the bats roosting in the cave emerge in a dense plume that streams on and on and on, sometimes for an hour or three. As with many wildlife spectacles these days, always present is the disturbing possibility that today’s show is a mere wisp compared to the great Carlsbad bat clouds of yore. In 1937 V.C. Allison published an estimate of the Brazilian free- tailed bat numbers based on timing an emergence (14 minutes at great density; four minutes at half that) and eyeballing the speed and size of the stream. About 8.7 million bats roost in the cavern, he reported. Since then, methods and numbers have varied, but estimates haven’t topped a million. Consequently, conservationists have raised alarms about perils to bats. Or maybe Allison’s eyeballs played tricks on him, or the great emergence flights really have shrunk drastically. Starting in 2005, bat scientist Thomas Kunz of Boston University and colleagues brought new technology to Carlsbad Cavern to count and observe the animals. Parts of the cave where bats roost are closed to visitors to prevent disturbances to the animals. But to improve the census and studies, the park allowed Kunz’s team to venture into these portions of the caves. One of the first field biology groups to use military-derived thermal imaging, Kunz’s team attracted the U.S. Park Service’s interest by pointing out that the researchers didn’t need to shine any lights, even at infrared wavelengths, on the bats; the cameras detect heat directly. “Surreal” and “disgusting, yet absolutely amazing” is how Nickolay Hristov, now at Brown University in Providence, R.I., describes the roosting sites. “Imagine standing on a 20- to 30-foot cushion of bat poop covered with a constantly moving carpet of dermestid beetles and their larvae,” he says. “As you move around you are being rained on by bat urine,” Hristov says. Bat excretions don’t have the same odor as human equivalents, he says, but “the smell of ammonia is so strong that your eyes burn.” A single bat barely makes any noise that humans can hear but tens of thousands of them together get “quite loud,” he says. ”I would grab the camera and go back in a heartbeat.” To count the bats emerging, the researchers set up cameras around the cavern mouth to get a clear view of the stream. Magrit Betke of Boston University’s computer science department developed algorithms for analyzing the camera’s recordings. Her work basically allowed a computer to pinpoint bats as spots in a camera frame and then track the spots across enough frames to confirm the dots were indeed bats. The analysis ends up with a count of each spot in the vast stream. In a series of counts in 2005, numbers varied from a low of not quite 70,000 as bats started to arrive from their southern winter caves, to a peak about 10 times higher weeks later as migrating bats on their way elsewhere took shelter. Even at the peak, counts
[NMCAVER] Carlsbad Caverns formation for sale on Ebay
Hello all, For the second time, this individual has listed a 250-pound chunk of speleothem material on Ebay for sale. He claims it's from a privately-owned section of Carlsbad Caverns. I doubt it's actually from the caverns, more likely it's a piece from Cottonwood or someplace similar. I have notified the NPS, but they are so slow to react, I hoped that some pressure might be put on this person by the caving community to get this item removed from Ebay. Perhaps informing him that the FCRPA makes it a crime to sell what he claims to be selling would do the trick. Thank you for your help. Lois Manno eBay sent this message to Lois Manno (speleoartist). Your registered name is included to show this message originated from eBay. Learn more. Good news. You've got another chance to win item Massive Carlsbad Caverns Calcite Stalactite 125lbs Hi Lois, Your watched item has been relisted. Don't let it slip away this time. Massive Carlsbad Caverns Calcite Stalactite 125lbs Current price: $399.99 End time: Jun-08-08 19:51:16 PDT Go to My eBay | View all watched items Don't let it get away ___ NMCAVER mailing list nmca...@caver.net http://caver.net/mailman/listinfo/nmcaver_caver.net
