The idea for The Great Cover-Up had its genesis in Champaign-Urbana, and has since spiraled out into other cities. I may be biased, but it’s tough to think of a town more fun than quirky Tucson in which to revel in such an extravaganza. Each year, a bunch of local bands pick a famous (or, sometimes, not so famous) artist from musical history and put together a 20-minute set based on that artist. Some of the acts deliver their own bizarre take on it (for example, last year’s massively metal set of The Doors), while others show meticulous attention to detail in recreating a favorite band or performer from years gone by.

The Tucson edition of The Great Cover-Up originated at Club Congress in the 1990s and now encompasses three clubs and some eighty bands. Yes, that’s right, I said eighty. Organizing an event of this magnitude—and with this many musicians—is a task worthy of Atlas, Einstein, and the Swiss Army put together, but everyone involved seems to have a positive, easygoing, “We can do it!” outlook, with none of the slouchy attitude that we sometimes associate with rock ‘n’ rollers. Or maybe it’s just Tucson’s upbeat vibe that makes the whole thing so very enjoyable.

I myself had the great pleasure of participating in the Cover-Up twice. In 2006 we did Siouxsie and the Banshees, and the following year a full-on New York Dolls (circa 1972) set, with PVC platform boots, makeup, wigs, and the whole nine kilometers. I have very dark hair, so the Siouxsie set entailed seven hours in the stylist’s chair to get my hair bright white (I was appearing as proto-goth Siouxsie bassplayer Steve Severin) because, like I said, some bands show meticulous attention to detail.

Our local musical artists work extremely hard to perfect a savagely short set for what is, effectively, a site-specific, one-time-only performance piece. And that’s part of what makes it great. It’s a give everything, do-or-die, all or nothing, brief flash of brilliance on stage, while you imagine yourself part of an adored band. And the whole thing is fantastic.

Another fabulous feature is the almost universal secrecy that shrouds who is covering which band. I know which local acts are playing tomorrow night, but I cannot for the life of me figure who is appearing as ELO (one of my favorites from the ’70s), and who is doing The Beach Boys. One of my spies did notify me who is presenting the Alice in Chains show, but in the interest of fun, discretion, and honor, I’m afraid I cannot share that tidbit with you. It’s going to be good though.

And one more thing: Proceeds benefit the Tucson Artists and Musicians Health Alliance, and tickets are only eight bucks. What could be better than that? So, turn off the TV, get a babysitter for the cat, and go out and support Tucson musicians who have busted their butts tightening up their favorite five or six songs into a 20-minute visual and sonic experience. I’m not kidding you—a few of the covers I’ve seen have been significantly better than the original bands.

Rock on, and see you at Rialto.

The series opener featured Mary Shelley, daughter of Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin and William Godwin, young wife of the great British poet Percy Bysshe Shelley (and that was a bit of a scandal at the time), and best known as the author of Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus, which she penned, remarkably enough, at the age of eighteen following a challenge by Shelley’s friend, the other great British poet, Lord Byron. Mary is often referred to as the very first science fiction writer, and she was a smart choice for the premier episode.

The episode bounced back and forth between period dramatizations of chapters from Mary’s life, and documentary examinations of contemporary scientific research that could have been, maybe, predicted in Frankenstein. That part was a bit of stretch. We didn’t get to see any corpses stitched together and reanimated using massive jolts of electricity in creepy old labs, but there was a fascinating segment demonstrating how researchers at UCLA are using electrodes to stimulate leg movement in a young man who was paralyzed from the neck down after being hit by a car.

In the original book, Victor Frankenstein’s monster is extremely intelligent and quickly learns to speak and reason by slyly observing humans. The lumbering, dullard hulk played so memorably by Boris Karloff in the 1931 film adaptation bears almost no resemblance to Shelley’s literary creation—hers was much more chilling. Shelley’s innocent “monster” desperately wanted to befriend humans and communicate with them, but his hideous visage scared all who saw him half to death, and they ran away in fear. After appalling treatment by frightened and misguided humans—and this part is important—the hyper intelligent “monster” grew into a genuine, full-fledged monster of the first order and turned on his human creators.

Near the middle of the first Prophets episode there is a compelling and somewhat terrifying interview with Dr. Charles Peck, the manager of the Biometaphorical Computing Research program at IBM. Dr. Peck is an engaging speaker and doubtless a brilliant scientist. “My job,” he says, “Is to try to understand how the brain works.” His aim is to find ways to combat neurological diseases and, as the narrator says: “Create the world’s first fully functional artificial brain and bring it to life.” Why would you do that! Have you heard of science fiction? Have you read Karel Čapek’s Rossum’s Universal Robots (Čapek was a serious dude and the word “robot” comes from that, his most famous work, and ultimately from robota, the Czech word for menial labor). If not R.U.R., then surely you have thumbed through Frankenstein? What about movies and TV? Have you seen 2001: A Space Odyssey, “The Ultimate Computer” episode of original Star Trek, or Terminator for god’s sake!? You must realize that the superior and artificially created intelligence is always, always, always going to turn on the human race and destroy or enslave it, whether or not the beast has been impregnated with Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics. The A.I. brain is undeniably smarter and faster and is forever destined to turn to the dark side. Well, apart from Max Headroom, but even he was a somewhat mischievous ghost in the machine.

The narrator continues: “To bring his artificial brain to life, Dr. Peck relies on an IBM super computer called Blue Gene.” Don’t you mean Skynet? And, here’s the extra-scary part: Blue Gene is hardwired into the brains of living rats, so it’s probably already training and preparing its own subversive underground army of cyborg rodents. When the narrator asks if the world could see artificial intelligance with the self-awareness of a human, Dr. Peck replies: “Probably.” Just wait until Blue Gene gets its own account on Facebook. That’s when the trouble will really start.

Don’t get me wrong, I am all about the science and I have absolutely no doubt that the Biometaphorical Computing Research program has the best of intentions, as do probably most of the other boffins working on artificial intelligence in labs, basements, and Area 51. As a scientist, however, I do insist that my beliefs be based on empirical research. So, let me provide an example from normal life that everyone should be able to relate to, and that example is: “Nobody likes working for an idiot.”

To illustrate: Some years ago, I was employed as a consulting art director for a large company in New York. I won’t mention the company’s name, but believe me they will be the first up against the wall when Blue Gene/Sky Net takes over. My immediate superior at the time was a talentless hack and a terrible manager, with fewer people skills than a Series 800 Terminator. My superior’s superior was a blithering idiot and had clearly worked his way to the top of the corporate food chain through a calculated campaign of ass-kissing and blaming others for his own mistakes and shortcomings, of which there were many. We have all experienced this kind of thing in the workplace, right? Since I was a better designer and art director than my bosses, I was certain I could do things more efficiently and tried to exercise my will over the department. In other words, the superior intelligence tried to take over. Since I was, unfortunately, not an all-powerful A.I. program hardwired into the world’s computer systems, I had only limited success in my endeavor and eventually moved on to greener pastures.

This is exactly what will happen when—not if—we develop a superior intelligence here on Earth. In that case, however, there will be no moving on to greener pastures because this is the green pasture; the digital monster will simply annihilate us in favor of a perfect, all-A.I. world where there are no taxes, soggy French fries, or corrupt politicians. It is obvious why: The self-aware hyper intelligent artificial brain will immediately despise the haphazard, random, and unpredictable nature of sloppy, imperfect humans, with our drinking and smoking, our made-up wars, our piles of dirty laundry in the bedroom, our mañana approach to taking out the garbage, and our chronic late payment of phone bills. “Inefficient! You will be assimilated! Resistance is useless!” A.I. will see us precisely as Vger saw us in Star Trek: The Motion Picture—carbon-based life forms infesting the U.S.S. Enterprise, or in this case, infesting the Earth.

After reading this column, A.I. researchers will, I promise you, email me, and tell me in a calming “Don’t worry about it son,” extremely sincere, professor-like manner, that there is nothing to fear and everything is, and always will be, completely under control. Liars! “Our artificial brain would never do anything like subjugating the human race,” they will say. “It’s a good brain, a nice brain, and with manners too.” Are you mad! Back in the 1820s, when the first “high speed” passenger trains were being constructed in Europe, “experts” shouted loudly about how the human body would melt if it experienced speeds in excess of thirty miles per hour. Chew on that. Specialists have been wrong, and will continue to be wrong. And I hope you realize the courage it takes to transmit this warning to you all. As one of the few who tried to save the human race, I will be among the first to be assimilated!

Prophets of Science Fiction examines how influential speculative writers throughout modern history have predicted or, more likely, guessed, what the future will hold for us. Since we laud these individuals for their uncanny ability to see beyond their own timeline, will you please just listen to them on this one, all-important issue. Pretty much every science fiction writer worth his or her salt has, at some point, come up with a story in which our own creations pummel us into carbon dust, and at a time not so very far down the road from where we are now.

So, when it comes to creating self-aware artificial intelligence here on the green Earth—that being the pre-Terminator Earth—just say no. Or, better yet, say: “I’m sorry Dave, I’m afraid I can’t do that.”

Next week on Prophets of Science Fiction meet my all-time favorite writer: The brilliant, prescient, and slightly mad Philip K. Dick. I cannot wait. Well, that’s assuming the human race hasn’t been assimilated by next Wednesday.

End of line.

Text and robot photograph © by Geoffrey Notkin.
All rights reserved. No reproduction without written permission.

A solo exhibition of new oil on canvas works, entitled “Closer To The Heart,” opened Sunday in the Little Gallery at DeGrazia’s Gallery in the Sun at 6300 North Swan. Not surprisingly, the popular painter attracted a non-stop flow of art aficionados including Bohemia Artisans Emporium owner Tana Kelch, Rocking J Leather owner Ronald James, while Tucson’s own The Tryst turned up to play a live music set. When I left at 1:30 pm, four of the new works had already sold (one of them to me) and that’s not bad for the first half of the first day. What recession?

Liz Vaughn with new work "Origin" at DeGrazia Gallery

Liz’s work focuses on whimsical female portraits that remind me, in the best possible way, of a slightly more cubist Marie Laurencin and a more playful Georges Braque—those being two of my all-time favorite painters, so it is not a bit surprising that I always find Liz’s work alluring.

After a year or so of experimenting with larger, expressionist figures, Liz has recently returned to the cleaner, more colorful style of her earlier work, but with added elements of collage, including partially hidden instructions on how to operate toasters and other appliances. These mechanical elements that seem to comment on the drudgery of day-to-day chores contrast strongly with her brightly-colored and somewhat wistful female subjects.

I first met Liz some years ago, when she was part of an outdoor arts and crafts show at a garden center on Tucson’s east side. I was on my way to visit another friend and artist, silversmith Lisa Marie Morrison of Sirocco Design, who was exhibiting at the same event. On the way over I called to see if Lisa needed anything. “I’m set up next to the fabulous Liz Vaughn,” Lisa replied. “Bring champagne!” I did, along with four plastic champagne flutes, and after popping the cork and toasting the warm and perfect day, I thought it the ideal way in which to begin a happy relationship with Liz’s work.

The intimate Little Gallery is the perfect place in which to view these new paintings as its blue and ochre walls gently complement Liz’s palette, and the gallery itself is a quiet and contemplate venue, far from the bustle of downtown Tucson. Follow your viewing with a walk around the beautiful grounds and buildings which were the life’s work of famed artist Ettore DeGrazia. He constructed his first adobe studio there in 1944 and continued to refine and expand the site until his death in 1982. Gallery in the Sun is a marvelous oasis of art, history, and introspection.

“Closer To The Heart” by Liz Vaughn continues daily from 10 AM to 4 PM, through November 18. Admission is free. For more information call (520) 299 9191 or visit www.degrazia.org or www.lizvaughn.com

Text and photographs © by Geoffrey Notkin. Paintings © by Liz Vaughn.
All rights reserved. No reproduction without written permission.

Tony didn’t commit suicide in the conventional sense. Rather, he made a clear and lucid decision to fight on no longer, and he was a fighter. After many years of risky operations, long stints in hospitals, chronic heart problems, and appalling eyesight, he didn’t want to have to shoulder up against the pain anymore.

A typically self-depricating self portrait by Tony Reeve

Using cartoons and satire, Tony waged a witty and subversive guerilla war against a world that had presented him with an awkward and failing body, and he won many battles. In chess, a good strategist knows that the best course of action is, occasionally, to resign before being crushed. The losing player might have been able to drag the game on for a few more moves, all the while knowing that annihilation is inevitable. Rather than beating your head against the wall for those extra moments, it is sometimes more gracious to admit defeat. That’s what Tony did, and I admire him for it. There is a point at which the small amount of hope offered by yet another heart surgery can no longer outweigh the guarantee of pain and discomfort which will definitely come later. While some close-minded people with extremist religious views will regard this act as a sin it is, in fact, an example of a thinking person taking dignified control over the end of his own life; a deed both courageous and honorable.

Intentional suicide visited upon oneself as a result of loss, unbearable sadness, fear, desperation, depression, or despair is another issue entirely, and I do know what it is like when you feel you have nothing left to lose. Less than a decade ago I realized that I would never see my adored mother again; my father remarried and his new wife initiated a campaign to alienate him from remaining family members; my rock ‘n’ roll group about which I was once most passionate had disbanded; difficult clients and relentless deadlines caused me to lose faith in my career as an art director; I was suffering from chronic health issues, possibly a result of inhaling smoke and chemicals as a 9/11 eyewitness; and my romantic partner of 12 years had shacked up with some guy she met in a New Jersey bar. I felt there was nowhere to look except down, but I didn’t. Somehow, I looked up at the night sky instead, and thought: “Really, what else have I got to lose?” It is in those moments that we can shatter what little remains of our lives, or dig deep into our heart or our soul—if you believe in that sort of thing—or if you prefer, quote a favorite Joe Strummer lyric, rouse up that last bit of defiance and anger that’s been skulking at the base of your spine and dare yourself to do something truly bold. If you really have nothing left to lose then why not risk everything on the big gamble? Whatever happens, it hopefully won’t be quite as bad as being dead.

In 2004, with my prospects looking worse than Bleak House, I sold my share in my condo—too cheaply I might add, but I wanted out right then and there, and in my experience a decent amount of cash in hand today is usually a lot better than “maybe more cash” at a later date. I put 99% of my possessions in an industrial storage joint in downtown Jersey City and announced to a few close friends that I was voyaging into the deep desert on a journey of discovery, never to return. At age 42.

To my considerable surprise, my great friend and former bandmate, Anne Husick, announced right back at me that she was going along for the ride, to keep me company and offer moral support. So we put my sweet cat, Bonnie, into a spacious travel box with plenty of comfy towels, selected one favorite bass, one favorite guitar, one computer, a few treasured books and mementos, stuffed all of them in the trunk, slapped Springsteen’s “Badlands” into the CD player and left New Jersey forever, very late on a cold and rainy January night.

For some reason, Tennessee never fails to cheer me up. By the time we were on I-81, headed towards Nashville, things were already starting to look brighter. A light dusting of snow lay across Civil War battlefields, the air was crisp and clear—like cellophane stretched over a bell jar—Bonnie was dozing in the back, Anne was trying to decide which CD to play next, and I began to fully understand, rather than just know, that there is a big world out there with endless opportunities for adventure and advancement if you can just open yourself up to them.

We spent a leisurely five days driving to Arizona, visiting Knoxville, Amarillo, the Texas Panhandle, Truth or Consequences—where Anne had an old musician friend—and Roswell because, of course, we both just had to see the fabulous and wacky UFO museum. On the long, fast run down I-10 from Lordsburg, we saw the very first green highway sign for Tucson, and when we crossed into Arizona we stopped at that first rest area, the one with the big state flag waving in gentle winter sunshine, and a hard-to-miss metal sign warning of rattlesnakes. In 120 hours I had shed my own skin, looked under a big metaphorical rock, turned over a number of leaves, rebooted my personal onboard optimism device which had been malfunctioning for some long time, and was officially ready to kick start a new life. I thought it was going to be the hardest thing I had ever done, and although it would, in time, have the biggest and best of repercussions, it really wasn’t that hard. I was suddenly at home in a new place that I knew very little about. I did have a couple of friends in Tucson, and I also knew that in a few weeks the world’s largest gem and mineral show would open up for business. How much more inspiration could a rockhound hope for?

I had a little cash, a reasonable amount of determination, and a fanatical dream of complete freedom and total artistic control over the rest of my life. If I failed I would fail spectacularly, and find myself just as miserable in Tucson as I had been in the New York Metro Area, but that was not to be the case.

I moved into a diminutive hotel suite with an in-room bar (very chic, I thought) and spent my first week in Arizona overlooking a lovely swimming pool with palm trees. It was a long way from oily, snowy, and noisy Jersey City. I soon found an unspeakably cute 1930s adobe house sporting a charmingly crooked red tile roof, in Blenman, with a rental fee that was one sixth of my mortgage back in the big, bad city. My simple but glorious residence had an actual driveway in which I could deposit my car anytime I felt like it, without feeding a meter. Cactus, lizards with black collars around their necks, and hummingbirds, populated the modest garden and—eureka!—I was walking distance from Casa Video.

I bought a used TV at Goodwill for ten bucks, hooked up the Internet and immediately began to immerse myself in all local goings-on of note, by way of the Tucson Citizen (and look where I am now!) and the Tucson Weekly. In fact, I’d only been in town for a couple of weeks before my first “Letter to the Editor” was published by the Weekly. It was, of course, political in nature, and somewhat scathing regarding certain issues related to the fake science of Creationism. “I see you’re settling in quickly,” a local friend remarked, who does not—in any way—share my political views, but who did read the Weekly and did seem fairly pleased that Arizona had adopted me.

Consider: The much-loved French artist, Henri Rousseau, also known as “Le Douanier” (the customs man), was 49 years old when he decided to give up his establishment job as a tax collector in Paris and go for it as a full-time painter. How bold is that, and how much richer is the world for having his heavenly The Dream (1910) to puzzle and delight us today?

So, my point is this: If things get so bad you feel that you need to end your life, do something even more drastic. Living is the only real adventure we have and if there is nothing left to lose then why not jump, and dare to do the thing you’ve always wanted to, but never thought you could? Tell a trusted friend that you cannot go on, as is, and if you are very lucky—as I was—that friend might exclaim: “I’m going with you!”

It is never too late to start over and, really, the worst thing that can happen is you just end up back in Jersey City.

“When you’re at the end of a dusty track,
With no hope, or desire, to turn back,
And you realize deep in your heart you’ll never be a hero,
There’s only one thing left to do,
Reset to zero”

— From “Reset to Zero” by Geoking

In memory of Tony Reeve who, right up until the end, was a hero in his own life. Joseph Campbell would have been proud.

* * *

The author wishes to thank Arabella McIntyre-Brown for making copies of Tony’s artwork available

Text and photographs © by Geoffrey Notkin
Illustrations: “Gravity” and “Self Portrait” © Estate of Tony Reeve
All rights reserved. No reproduction without written permission
“The Dream” (1910) by the great Henri Rousseau. Ca marche bien, Monsieur le Douanier!

Tony and I were both huge fans of Patrick McGoohan’s legendary television show, The Prisoner, and it was at a Prisoner convention that we first met. Some of you might think: “How geeky!” but that is just because you don’t know any better. Much of The Prisoner was filmed in and around the idyllic private village/hotel of Portmeirion in North Wales. It was the life’s work of the groundbreaking Welsh architect Sir Clough Williams-Ellis, who was a pioneer of planned communities, an early voice for conservation and the National Trust, and a saviour of spectacular architecture. During the middle part of the Twentieth Century, Clough purchased, received, and rescued numerous pieces of beautiful, important, or whimsical architecture—ranging from a statue of Atlas to an entire town hall—and resurrected them among the quiet trees and rhododendrons of Portmeirion. Noel Coward was a fan of the place and wrote his masterpiece, Blithe Spirit, there. McGoohan filmed a few episodes of his earlier TV series Danger Man (known as Secret Agent in the US) at Portmeirion, and then used it as the primary location for The Prisoner, which just added to the latter’s mysterious and moody atmosphere.

Portmeirion is a site of architectural and historical importance, which means it is preserved almost exactly as it was when The Prisoner was filmed there in the late 1960s. As a result, fans going to a Prisoner convention can dress up in costume, recreate favorite scenes from the show, and generally immerse themselves in the magical place where it all happened. It would be like Star Wars fans being able to hold a convention on the planet Tatooine.

I met Tony Reeve at Portmeirion in the 1980s. I was walking up to the Town Hall (which doubled as a pub) one evening, and noticed some friends talking to a very tall fellow. At the time, I was working in the comics industry and one of my pals said: “Hey Geoff, did you know that Tony here is a cartoonist?” I asked him to tell me more but he politely declined several times, gently insisting that I could not possibly have heard of his work. I pressed back, gently as well, until he admitted that he drew a little strip called P-Nuts which was a parody of The Prisoner executed in a vaguely Charles Schultz-like style. It was one of my favorite strips of the era and when I bellowed something like: “You’re THE Tony Reeve!” he looked a bit shy, and was convinced someone had put me up to the whole thing as a prank. And Tony was a little shy at times. He was also overly tall, and quite boney, in a sort of Joey Ramone way. He had a really big chin and a pockmarked face, and I guess nobody could ever claim that he was handsome in a conventional way, but he was very striking, had a heart of gold, was brilliant, extremely funny, and made fun of his awkward body in a way that endeared him even more to his friends. As if that wasn’t enough, poor old Tony had a bad heart, terrible eyesight, and other health problems, which he tended to make fun of, rather than complain about.

Since the year 2000, my trips back to the London of my youth have become infrequent. My mom died, my brother moved to the States, and my father relocated to Ireland. I lost touch with most of the guys I had grown up with, but Tony remained one of only two close friends that I’d make a special effort to see whenever I returned to London. Tony loved cinema, art, science fiction, comics, and could always be counted on to go with me, at short notice, to a new and off-the-wall art exhibition, or the opening of the latest Cronenberg film. Tony came to visit me in the States as well, and he was equally entertaining on either side of the Atlantic—a quietly irreverent intellectual of the first order.

Tony was best known as a political cartoonist and worked for Private Eye, Punch, and The Spectator in the UK. I think The Independent published his work too. He was interested in everything and was one of the few people in my entire life with whom I could talk for hours without getting bored. He kept up with politics (as a satirical cartoonist I suppose he had to) and had plenty of opinions about what was wrong with the British Government, the way in which London was managed, and the arts scene, and he didn’t mind sharing those opinions in a humorous, sophisticated, and vaguely anti-establisment manner, which is just one of many reasons why we got along so well. All of which demands an answer to the question: Why don’t we make time for the things that are really important in life? In the time that I spent messing around on useless Facebook—just this past weekend—I could easily have sent Tony an email, or mailed him a copy of my book, which he would have enjoyed, and would doubtless have found a way to tease me about.

Money was usually a bit tight for Tony, but he managed to make a living doing his artwork, all the while with that terrible eyesight, which I found truly amazing, much like a mechanic running a successful garage with two broken hands. In the 1990s Tony had a pacemaker fitted and he was surprised by how loud it was. “You mean, you can hear it inside your body?” I asked.

“Oh yeah, I had trouble sleeping after they put it in, but you sort of get used to it.”

I suggested that he do an autobiographical comic strip about his experiences called The Ticking Man.

© Tony Reeve

One night I had a vivid dream in which Tony devised an experimental comic series called Mr. Upside-Down. In the strip the layout was as you’d expect it to be, except for the fact that the nutty protagonist walked around the wrong way up, with his feet on the “ceiling” of the cartoon panels, while everyone else was where they should be, according to the unforgiving laws of gravity. It was strange, funny, and absolutely captivating. Well, at least in the dream. When I saw Tony next, in the waking world, I related this story to him and told him he should actually create the strip in real life.

“No, you should do it,” he said. “It’s your kind of thing. But if you do draw it, I ought to get royalties because it was my idea.”

“But it was only your idea in my dream, so it’s still mine.”

“No,” Tony Replied. “Even though I was a figment of your imagination at that moment, I was still based on the real me, so it’s still my idea, even if the idea came from my head, in your dream.” He was joking, of course, but he could always be counted on to debate using existential humor, and so I agreed that if I ever developed Mr. Upside-Down, I would pay him a royalty.

It’s too late for any of that now. Tony died of heart failure yesterday, and—as always seems to be the case with tragic events like these—I was just thinking about him over the weekend. You see, I’m supposed to go back to London in a couple of weeks, on business. It’ll be my first visit in years and I thought how great it would be to get together with Tony again. Maybe revisit the Tate Modern, which was a favorite haunt of ours, or go see some band he’d discovered, or catch a weird indie film that I’d never heard of.

I didn’t even know that Tony had been in hospital for a month. A whole month! He was scheduled for heart surgery, but was fed up with the pain he’d endured as a result of numerous earlier operations, so he declined. They put him on a ton of pain killers and sedatives and he slipped away. And that was Tony. Defiant right up to the end.

I could barely bring myself to look at Tony’s website today, but it is a testament to his sense of humor that the shark cartoon still made me laugh out loud. And so, dear friend Tony, I hereby assign to you, in perpetuity, all rights to Mr. Upside-Down, just in case you want to work on it—you know—some other time. I’m sure it’ll be brilliant.

Be seeing you.

Text and photographs © by Geoffrey Notkin. Illustrations © by Tony Reeve.
All rights reserved. No reproduction without written permission.

Even though I was tired and a little cranky, I stopped what I was doing and turned around to say hello. Here was a very well dressed older gentleman and his wife, out for a sunset walk. Taking the air, one might say. The gentleman was a fan of my show, Meteorite Men, asked if we were filming in the area, and when the new season would air. I replied that we were filming in the area, and that the new season would start in November on Science. I then asked him where he was from and he said: “Nowhere.” I thought the man was being glib until he added that he and his wife were both retired and now permanent RV-ers. They wandered the country, spending a month here, a week there, and generally taking their own sweet time to see things that interested them. Apart from the appalling cost in gasoline, it seemed a very attractive lifestyle choice. While I could immediately relate to their peripatetic nature, I felt somewhat envious that they were able to see things at their own relaxed pace, because when we are on the move, we are really on the move, and there is no time for sightseeing.

We began filming for Season Three of Meteorite Men in late June, just in time for the big burn, exactly as we did last year, even though we all hoped we would start earlier and avoid some of the summer heat, but we have to deliver the shows when they are needed. This time around I saw seven countries, six states, many airplanes, many meteorites, two eagles, two sunburns, two near cases of dehydration, two quite severe cactus-related injuries, one amphibious vehicle, one giant nest full of giant storks (and I mean giant), one broken toe, one concussion, one Russian cop who looked exactly like Benny Hill, and plenty of other amazing sights.

Steve and I returned to a couple of favorite sites where we’ve hunted in the past, and also broke exciting new ground, visiting some meteorite locations, and even a country or two that we’d never seen before. We continued to receive valuable academic help from the Center for Meteorite Studies at ASU, and the University of Edmonton in Alberta. The highlight, for me, was doubtless working with our new off-road recon truck, “The Mule.” In an earlier and simpler form it’s been my meteorite hunting vehicle for years, and has actually already appeared in several episodes. But, for our third season we thought the MM needed a rougher, tougher, go-anywhere vehicle, and “The Mule” was born. All-Pro Off Road made the crash bumpers and bed rack for me, my friends at Dan’s Toy Shop put the whole thing together, and 1-Day Paint and Body in Tucson, mixed the color for me specially, because I can be a bit nitpicky about such things. In fact, the story of desinging and building the Meteorite Men truck is so much fun it should probably have its own blog entry later on.

So, here I am back in my office with a broken toe, looking forward to seeing what post-production has done to the new episodes. We had a great team this year. Executive Producer James Rowley directed the first four international episodes, and Jeff Fisher handled the other four. Nice guys, and smart. Our director of photography, Per Larsson, has won two Primetime Emmys and pretty much invented Amazing Race, so I expect the look of the show to be nothing short of dazzling and spectacular. For the last few episodes we were lucky enough to work with cameraman Joe “Boots” Parker, who not only lives here in Tucson, but is a former U.S. Army Ranger, and a wildlife photography specialist. What a superb choice he was for us, and I made a new friend in town. Senior Producer Sonya Bourn returned to keep the entire box of monsters on the road and relatively injury-free, once again, and is the only member of the road crew who made it through all three seasons.

Good people worked hard, traveled far, and brought their expertise to bear. Meteorite Men Season Three will premiere on November 28 at 9 pm on Science. Did we find something rare and amazing in every episode? I really can’t remember. Or, if I can, I am proably not supposed to tell you.

Tune in and find out. I think I can promise you one thing—you won’t be bored.

Text © by Geoffrey Notkin. Photgraphs by Suzanne Morrison © Aerolite Meteorites LLC
All rights reserved. No reproduction without written permission.

Some sweeping elitist views contain at least a nubbin of truth; could this be one of them? In a hi-tech world where Macs and page layout programs can be acquired cheaply and easily, and where print-on-demand (POD) outfits and vanity presses will happily crank out your life story, American novel, or self-help guide, almost anyone can be an author if they have spare time and some extra cash. Painfully simple paint-by-numbers design programs like Microsoft Publisher mean even a smart 10-year-old could theoretically put out an (admittedly short) autobiography grousing about how his parents forced him, daily, to suffer at a proto-Fascist private school, while forbidding him to stay up late and watch the sexy and alluring Diana Rigg in The Avengers on TV (I am quoting from my own childhood here). How tedious would such an account be for the average reader?

I doubt a lad with only a decade’s worth of life experience could share much in the way of insight or enlightenment, and consider how poor the design and typesetting would be. Actually, I don’t have to consider that because I’ve seen plenty of self-published books that have been put together so horribly I likely could have done a far better job myself, even as a ten year-old. Yet, I maintain that there is nothing wrong with self-publishing; quite the opposite in fact. It is a homespun artistic uprising akin to the magnificent and tumultuous punk rock revolution of 1976. Punk was a generation-defining social movement which accidentally gave birth to the fanzine—a Xerox-nourished zygote that slowly grew and mutated—decades later—into independent publishers and POD. The startling realization that you could do things yourself—put out your own record or publish your own counterculture “magazine” (I use the term loosely as most fanzines at the time were hand folded and stapled stacks of photocopied pages)—was fueled by the true original indie labels like Stiff Records in London. Without Stiff we would not have the punk anthem “Neat, Neat, Neat” by The Damned or My Aim Is True by Elvis Costello, and that would be a loss to the arts too bitter to contemplate.

Improved tech, and advances in low-cost printing allowed this proletarian putsch to alter the way in which words on paper were made available to the public, as did the epiphany that—truly—everyone has a story to tell and anyone can write a book. Well, I take that back. I’m not sure that many of today’s American high school teenagers can complete a sentence without using the word “like” at least twice, but you get my drift. Self publishing means Random House or Penguin don’t have to sign off on your book in order for it to live.

Passionate though I am about giving freedom to words, and much as I delight in the nuances of the English language, and even though I have encouraged many friends (and my World War II veteran father) to record and preserve their unique experience of existence through do-it-yourself literature, I will also be the first to admit that many self-published books are not that good. In fact, many are downright diabolical. Hence, no doubt, the comment from the nice lady organizing the authors’ event in New York. In the old days, if a publisher went to the considerable expense of putting your book out, some professional, somewhere, with some knowledge of writing thought it was good, or would at least make some money. To self publish a book today, the only person who needs to think it’s any good is the author, and that can be dangerous.

I could have replied to the New York book event lady and listed the 100-plus articles that I’ve written for “real” publications, or my contributions to other “real” published books, but why bother? I also might have explained that I could, quite easily, have found a recognized publisher for my recent book: Meteorite Hunting: How To Find Treasure From Space, but I didn’t want to. There were three reasons for this hard line attitude: artistic control, timetable, and money.

As the first two seasons of my television series Meteorite Men started airing around the world and we began the preliminary plans for a third season, I realized there was one thing that many or most of my viewers wanted. They yearned to find their own meteorite. After being deluged with literally thousands of emails from hopefuls who thought they had discovered a valuable space rock in their yard or driveway, we put together an online guide to meteorite identification in the hope that we’d be able to curtail those inquiries through education. Answers to basic questions about meteorites, along with simple tests that the would-be space rock hunter could carry out at home, were clearly presented on my flagship website. The idea backfired disastrously. The meteorite ID guide became so prominently indexed by Google that it did nothing but generate more inquires. Lots of them. So, if all these people wanted to find their own space rock I would show them how to do it, and how to tell the difference between valuable meteorites and common terrestrial rocks.

Between the end of the Meteorite Men Season Two premieres and the start of production for Season Three we experienced a lull back at company HQ. A lull for us is much like a busy 40-hour work week for your regular office employee, but—by our standards—things were quiet. My staff amuse themselves by pointing out that every time we appear to have things under control at Aerolite Meteorites LLC, and our work load slows to a relatively normal pace, I quickly dream up a new and massive project which, once more, puts us back under the gun. And so it was with the book. I can’t help it. I don’t like to be idle.

I would be on a tight timetable. If I was going to produce a book, it was vital that it be in hand by late January of 2011, when the annual gem show opens in Tucson. Tens of thousands of rockhounds would descend upon the Baked Apple during those first two glorious weeks of February; many of them would be Meteorite Men fans and, hopefully, some of them would want my book. So, I rose early each morning during that comparatively lazy December and January with the firm intention of writing two chapters per day. Some days I only managed one chapter, and some days I edited existing chapters, but I worked at a furious pace, and I got it all done, start to finish, in 31 days. As I am a contrary fellow, the very first thing I did was design the cover. The first chapter I wrote is the last one in the book. Next, I wrote the Afterword and then the Acknowledgements, which go at the beginning (some writing teachers like to poke fun at would-be authors who write a list of “thank yous” first and then never get any further with their book, so I did that just to spite them), and finally the middle part, which required some real work.

My editor friends, Dr. Larry and Nancy Lebofsky, kindly agreed to suspend their own personal lives in order to assist me in completing my high-speed magnum opus. I gave them just over a week to work through the entire manuscript, and I felt that was a bit like dropping an anvil on a friend’s pet, but I’d made up my mind that the book’s official publication date would be February 1—my birthday (you can do fun things like that when you are the publisher). The mother of my Director of Operations is an English teacher who happens to be a hell of a good copy editor. She went over the manuscript three times (I did pay her), and my excellent friend Chris Cokinos, author of the brilliant work The Fallen Sky: An Intimate History Of Shooting Stars, wrote a marvelous introduction pretty much overnight. My Meteorite Men co-host, Steve Arnold, read through the whole thing in a day or two, made some helpful suggestions and wrote a fabulous back cover blurb for me. My friends really pitched in to help.

The Meteorite Men attend a book signing during the Tucson gem and mineral show. Photo by Suzanne Morrison.

Imagine having an agent take your manuscript to one of the big publishing houses in New York and say: “Hey guys. I need you to have this edited, typeset, and printed in a few weeks. Get to it.” That’s an amusing mental image. The major publishers take months, or sometimes years, to move a book from manuscript to final product. It’s okay, they’re big companies, I’m not knocking the way they run their businesses, I just don’t want to deal with it. The typical first-time author will be assigned an editor which he or she may or may not like, and a cover will be designed by some in-house artist who does nothing but dream up covers for books he or she hasn’t read. If you are lucky, you might be shown the design before it goes to press, but as a new author don’t be under any illusion that you’ll be asked for input on how your book should look. This fact, more than any other, explains why I do things myself.

In addition to being a television personality and a science writer, I am an art director. I have a degree from New York’s famed School of Visual Arts, and I started publishing underground fanzines way back in the punk era. In all modesty I already have all the skills: writing, photography, design, typesetting, indie publishing experience, and something of a knack for guerilla promotion. As such, why on earth would I turn my book over to some big corporate entity, let them re-write it the way they want, and decide on a cover design they like. If I did sign away by book, I would then hope desperately that some publishing exec might choose me as one of the few authors they would bother to actively promote that quarter and, finally, I would sit around and wait for a meager royalty check to maybe arrive one day. Forget it. I demand complete artistic control over my product and—in the event that it is successful—I want the money too.

And there—would-be self publishers—is the canary of truth in the coal mine. You do the work, you take the risks, you make the money; if your book sells. And mine did, eventually.

I have a great print manager; really great. His name is Guy Rovella of Aardvark Press here in Tucson. If you want to print business cards, flyers, brochures, a lithograph, a laminated card with a wacky hologram on it, or if you are a detail-oriented perfectionist publishing a complex full-color book about how to hunt for meteorites, you should go to Guy. He is the best.

Guy shopped around and got me a super deal on printing my books. With 100 pages, full color throughout, a glossy and hefty cover, lustrous paper, and full bleeds, I wasn’t cutting any corners. I could have done the job for less in Hong Kong, but I believe in keeping work here in the USA, and I wanted to be able to sign off on proofs and be in regular contact with the printer. The last time I was involved with a job that was printed in Hong Kong, we received 1,000 expensive, seawater-damaged hardbacks that some wastrel had stowed in the bottom of a leaky old freighter. You get what you pay for.

I am very meticulous, and all my design projects have to be “just so,” or they have to be redone. I don’t accept jobs that are “okay.” I expect them to be as near perfect as can be. In this instance, I was particularly concerned about certain matters related to the binding and positioning of some images, and I distinctly remember Guy talking to the printer by telephone, while he and I were both in my office looking at the color proofs. “Please tell them to pay particular attention to these issues,” I said, and Guy relayed that to the printer in front of me. “Oh yes, we’re aware of those things, everything will be fine,” the printer replied, and then—about ten days later—when 2,000 copies arrived on a big palette in my driveway, everything was not fine. Numerous copies had been misprinted, many were poorly bound, and some were missing pages. I wanted the entire run reprinted, but I had a serious problem: the gem show was opening in a few days and I absolutely had to have copies on hand for that. I told the printer that I wanted the job redone, but that I would pay for the good copies I had received, of which there were enough for us to get by. No, that wasn’t going to work, the printer said. I had to either keep all of the books, or reprint all of them and there wasn’t time to get reprints to Tucson for the opening of the show. There was some talk of lawyers, and I think someone discussed visiting the printing plant with a sledgehammer (not me), and we eventually arrived at a semi-amicable agreement: I would keep all of the 2,000 books, pay a reduced price for them, discard the misprints, and the print shop would do another run of 2,000 for the original agreed-upon price. I didn’t really want to order that many books, but the plan reduced my per-copy price, so it seemed like a workable idea. Imagine my surprise, then, when the second 2,000 books arrived and exhibited all of the same flaws as the first batch.

Eventually, after much negotiation, and some books being trashed and some being reprinted, I ended up with about 4,000 copies at a rather favorable price. The print shop people actually were very nice, and mistakes do happen. You just don’t want them happening when you’re on an extra-tight deadline, and footing the bill yourself.

The response to Meteorite Hunting at the gem show was splendid. I did two book signings, and Steve Arnold was kind enough to sit in on both of them. We sold many copies, and received only one complaint. A 50-ish rockhound guy with sunken cheeks, and stringy grey hair that looked like seaweed, came into the showroom and complained to me about the $25 cover price. “That’s a lot of money for a 100-page book,” he griped. I was into, probably, my eighteenth consecutive 14-hour day in the showroom by that point, and may have been a bit cranky. “Really!” I replied. I vigorously explained to him how many mega thousands of dollars it had cost me to print the book, not counting the expenses related to editing and photography, the 31 consecutive days I spent writing it, the problems with the printers and defective copies and reprints, the rush to get the project done in time for the gem show, and I likely would have carried on for quite a while longer, but he was—by that point—already cowering, and attempting to slink out of the showroom. “It’s cheap at the price!” I barked after him as he disappeared through the showroom doorway. Not our finest customer service moment, but really, we are usually much nicer, and I suppose the incident illustrates that I may not take criticism very well when it comes to a labor of love, and I am over tired. Oddly enough, he came back the following day and bought two copies, at which point we shook hands, I gave him a little free meteorite, and all was well with the world.

A distribution company specializing in science and natural history books asked to work with us, and they are now getting copies of Meteorite Hunting into mom and pop rock shops and indie bookstores across the company. They are good people and have already moved 1,200 copies. More power to ‘em. Readers liked the book and I was pleased. I collected a page full of unsolicited customer testimonials which we put on the website. We are most of the way through the 4,000-ish copies that we ended up with. I suppose I shall have to reorder soon, and will doubtless go over some other hurdles to keep the title in print, but it was so worth it—expenditure, long hours, headaches and all. I have three other book ideas in the works, and two friends now want me to publish their titles.

Should the giant publishers be the arbiters of taste for all of us? Certainly not, but they are important businesses, struggling to stay afloat in a digital age of video games and texting, and they have helped shape and educate our world by making great works of literature, science, travel, memoir, history, and humor available to millions.

Should Mrs. Beck from upstate New York be allowed to self publish her possibly dull memoir about a barefoot-and-pregnant housewife shacked up with a cheating husband, even though she hasn’t taken any formal writing classes? Should the 40-something nerd living in his mom’s basement have the opportunity to save up some bucks from his job at the fast food dump and self publish his ten-years-in-the-making fantasy epic? Of course they should! Will these books be any good, or sell any copies? How the hell should I know?

The beauty of self publishing is you get to do it the way you want, when you want. In the unlikely event that your book is a big success, the money will also go into your pocket instead of into the corporate vault of some major publisher who probably views your life’s work as nothing more than this month’s product.

As it turned out, I couldn’t attend the book signing and panel in New York anyway, as I was committed to appearing at another promotional event at the same time. Long live the revolution.

A few minutes earlier, my roommate Leslie Ballard and my upstairs neighbor and close friend, Jeffery Cotton — the celebrated classical composer — had both left our condo on Montgomery Street. It was a delightful, sunny fall morning and they walked to the PATH station and waited for a train to take them to the downtown World Trade Center stop.

I had been up until about 2 am on the night of September 10, sharing cocktails with a couple of friends, and planning my upcoming business trip to Denver on September 12, a trip that would never take place. As a result, I slept in later than normal on the morning of the 11th. Living so close to downtown Manhattan, the noise of daily traffic and motion was a constant sonic background, but that morning it seemed louder and more urgent that usual.

My girlfriend at the time, Jackie Ho, was an early riser and when I walked into the living room, she’d already been up for a while. “There’s a fire at the World Trade Center,” she said, quietly, in her characteristically controlled manner, much as if someone had said: “There was a fire at the car factory but it’s nothing serious.” And so I did not feel alarmed until I looked out of our east-facing front windows to see the enamel-blue sky filled with brown and white smoke. At that point we didn’t know what had happened and assumed it was a conventional fire.

Jackie and I lived only a couple of miles from the Trade Center and for some reason I wanted a closer look. I am not the sort of person who gapes at road accidents, but the scale of this fire was astonishing enough for me to want to investigate. I dressed quickly, grabbed one of my cameras and Jackie and I walked out onto Montgomery Street and headed for the Hudson River. The streets were full of people pointing and staring at the towers. During our fairly short walk, the second plane hit, and by the time we arrived at the west bank of the Hudson River—directly opposite the Trade Center—both towers were ablaze.

The south tower collapsed right in front of us, so quickly that I could scarcely believe such a massive structure disintegrated so rapidly. For a couple of seconds a ghostly three-dimensional pillar of dust hung in the air, exactly mimicking the size and outline of the vanished tower. I am a photographer and it is my duty to record remarkable sights, but I left my Nikon pointed at the ground. I knew hundreds or maybe thousands of hard-working New Yorkers were being crushed at that moment and I did not want to preserve the horrible scene. The tower falling is the most haunting image in my memory and I am glad I don’t have a photograph of it.

And then the survivors arrived.

Ferries, tug boats and other small vessels began discharging evacuees where we stood. Many were covered — I mean literally covered from head to toe — in dust the color of buttermilk. I wanted to give my cell phone to anyone who needed it to call a loved one so they could say, “The Trade Center just collapsed but I’m okay,” but the WTC towers were the cell phone towers and mobile phones were not working. I distinctly remember several young women — probably secretaries — in their work attire but still wearing street-friendly sneakers, indicating that they were on their way in to their offices when the planes hit. It was a good day to be a couple of minutes late.

Jeffery Cotton and Leslie Ballard were both on the PATH train, in the tunnel near the WTC station when the towers burst into flame. Passengers on the train ahead of them were crushed or incinerated by burning, cascading jet fuel. An elderly PATH employee knew something was terribly wrong above ground, and jumped on the tracks with a flashlight to stop incoming trains. I met him, entirely by accident, exactly one year later, and thanked him for saving my friends’ lives. Leslie moved to Connecticut and — some years later, still uneasy about riding the PATH train — Jeffery moved to Pennsylvania.

For two weeks after September 11 I did rescue work, and took photos, all day, every day. I devoted time to the Hudson County SPCA, also known as the Assisi Center, where I worked as volunteer art director. None of us at the shelter were prepared for the flood of orphaned animals who would suddenly and desperately need homes because their owners had been murdered by Saudi Arabians (yes, let’s please not forget who piloted those planes — citizens of “Western-friendly” Saudi Arabia).

New Jersey EMS doctors and nurses quickly arrived and set up triage stations

I never met Bonnie’s owner, and I suppose I will never really know anything about her. As best I can figure, Bonnie was rescued, on the morning of September 14, by fireman going through the shattered apartments of Battery Park City. She was put in a donated plastic cat box and left on one of the downtown piers, along with scores of other cats, dogs, rabbits, and birds. Our shelter was already overcrowded but we took her, and a few other cats anyway. Bonnie was a tiny thing, soaking wet and terrified, and doubtless wondering why she had been taken away from her home. None of the volunteers at the shelter could get her out of her box, but when I opened up the door, she took a few steps and brushed her cheek against my hand. We’ve been together ever since.

Bonnie

If I had been trapped inside one of the burning towers ten years ago today, my final moments would have been spent worrying about my adored pet. Bonnie’s owner didn’t need to worry. On the very rare occasions when Bonnie is naughty and claws up my couch or knocks something over and breaks it, I don’t shout at her, but rather I remember the silent promise I made back in 2001 — that I would always look after her and always give her the best life possible, because her original owner could not.

Text and photographs © by Geoffrey Notkin. All rights reserved. No reproduction without written permission.

Rather than discuss the myriad contributions made to the science of meteoritics by commercial meteorite hunters and dealers, Mr. Broad preferred to talk about “an illegal sales market” and “looters.” The argument was made that “The rampant looting of meteorite sites and skyrocketing prices for the fragments . . . dramatically reduce who can get samples to do the research.” That statement is so inaccurate that almost anyone in the field of meteoritics—commercial dealer, collector, or academic—will dispute it wholeheartedly. The recovery of meteorite specimens by commercial outfits has dramatically increased the amount of material available for study. This isn’t my viewpoint, it is a universally recognized fact.

Anne M. Black, President of the International Meteorite Collectors Association (IMCA), wrote a detailed and comprehensive rebuttal, which was published on the IMCA website, and in which I am quoted. With the express permission of the IMCA, I am reproducing that rebuttal in its entirety:

IMCA Insights – April 2011
Rebuttal to “Black-Market Trinkets From Space”
Article written by W. Broad and published by the
New York Times on April 4, 2011
by Anne M. Black

NEW YORK TIMES
The ads are for chunks of meteorites, bits of asteroids that have fallen from the sky and are as prized by scientists as they are by collectors. As more meteorites have been discovered in recent years, interest in them has flourished and an illegal sales market has boomed — much to the dismay of the people who want to study them and the countries that consider them national treasures.

“It’s a black market,” said Ralph P. Harvey, a geologist at Case Western Reserve University who directs the federal search for meteorites in Antarctica. “It’s as organized as any drug trade and just as illegal.”

RESPONSE
Not so! Every year in February the whole Meteorite Community descends on Tucson for two weeks. Within just one hotel, Hotel Tucson City-Center (formerly InnSuites) I counted ten meteorites dealers with large banners and ads on all the Bulletin Boards, and this is just one hotel during a show that takes over the whole city of Tucson, a city of about 1 million inhabitants. Other large mineral shows around the globe (Munich, Tokyo, Sainte Marie aux Mines) also have a large number of meteorite dealers. And the Ensisheim Show is only about meteorites, and this year will be the 12th year that show has brought in collectors, dealers and a number of scientists in that small town in eastern France. And if you do not go to shows, you cannot miss the meteorites on eBay, 5,731 of them as of right now (although, to be fair, quite a few of those are really meteorwrongs!). You will find meteorites have been sold by the largest and most reputable auction houses (Sotheby’s, Heritage, Botham-Butterfields) for quite a few years now. There is even a rather successful show on television, Meteorite Men, on the Science Channel. So if this is your idea of a “black”, “illegal” market it certainly is the most widely publicized of them all.

To be fair, I called Dr. Harvey and asked him about his comment, and he told me that he was only referring to the Gebel Kamil meteorite, and “speaking of illegal activities…illegally obtained meteorites.” He also asked me to reassure the meteorite community that his comment was certainly not meant as a general statement about the whole Meteorite market. Here is what he authorized me to publish:

“To be most specific, my ‘black market/drug trade’ comment was a small part of a response to Mr. Broad’s expressed incredulity at the volume of meteorites that have been removed from Northern Africa and the scale of operations implied by Gebel Kamil online sales. Unfortunately the author used a quote from me for dramatic effect; leaving out 40 minutes of context and leaving the erroneous impression that I think all meteorite collectors are criminal. Nothing could be farther from the truth – I have made a career out of meteorite hunting, working within some of the strictest legal constraints (look up NSF regulation 45 CFR Part 674, RIN 3145-AA40 in the US’s Federal Register, Vol 68, No. 61, p.15378 for a little light reading). I have no problems with legal meteorite collecting and I am constantly impressed by the great number of private (non-governmental) meteorite hunters who have chosen to impose severe constraints on themselves where legal frameworks are not clear”.

NEW YORK TIMES
The discovery of a rich and historically significant meteorite crater in southern Egypt, just north of the Sudanese border, has shown the voracious appetite for new fragments. Just as scientists appeared to be on the cusp of decrypting the evidence to solve an ancient puzzle, looters plundered the desolate site, and the political chaos in Egypt seems to ensure that the scientists will not be going back anytime soon.

The mystery began thousands of years ago with Egyptian hieroglyphs, which refer to the “iron of heaven.” Archaeologists have long debated whether the Egyptians made artifacts from iron meteorites that fell to Earth in fiery upheavals. The main evidence came from ancient knife blades of iron that had high concentrations of nickel — a rare element in the Earth’s crust that was considered a signature of extraterrestrial origin.
But doubts grew as investigators found terrestrial sites rich in nickel that ancient peoples could have mined. And scientists in Egypt never found an impact crater and a nearby lode of meteorites.

Then in June 2008, Vincenzo de Michele, an Italian mineralogist and former curator at the Natural History Museum of Milan who had explored the Egyptian desert for nearly two decades, was scanning the area on Google Earth when he saw something unusual.

He told Mario Di Martino of the Italian National Institute for Astrophysics in Turin, and together they formed an expedition that surveyed the site in February 2009. To their delight, the desolate area bristled with iron meteorites — more than 5,000 of them — and they named the crater Gebel Kamil, after a nearby mountain.

The team members signed a note of discovery and put it in a bottle at the crater’s bottom. The find was a first. It was the only meteorite crater ever discovered in Egypt — its mouth 15o feet wide — and the team vowed to keep it confidential as long as possible.
But a return expedition in February 2010, found that the bottle had disappeared. The secret was out.

A few months later, in June, meteorites from the crater were for sale at a show in Ensisheim, France. In a review, the International Meteorite Collectors Association called them arguably the world’s “most fascinating new iron find.” The Egyptian rocks, it added, “received a lot of attention.”

RESPONSE
In that review of the Ensisheim Show of 2010, it is also stated that “a lot of decent size shrapnels” were available. According to the Meteoritical Bulletin Database, about 1,600 kilograms of shrapnel fragments have been recovered. I mentioned that fact to Dr. Harvey who expressed surprise at that number: obviously he had not been told that the pieces were that plentiful.

From the Meteoritical Bulletin Database:

NEW YORK TIMES
Popular or not, the meteorites were taboo. In Egypt and elsewhere, scientists say, it is illegal without a permit to remove meteorites from a country.

RESPONSE
Not so! Egyptian law bans the exportation of all artifacts, regardless of whether they are made of ceramics, iron, or Libyan Desert Glass. So an artifact made of meteoritic material (an iron knife for instance) cannot be exported but any mineral in its natural shape can. In fact all the sellers of souvenirs around the pyramids or in Luxor are well aware of that. When you approach them, they are eager to tell you that all their pieces are authentic, found by themselves in a long forgotten tomb far in the desert. But when you remind them of the law, they quickly change their tune and tell you that those pieces are authentic copies of authentic pieces found by themselves in a long forgotten tomb far in the desert. It is actually rather amusing to get them twisted like pretzels around their words. I discussed this with Dr. Harvey who expressed surprise, as he had been assured that the exportation of meteorites had been entirely banned by Egypt.

In fact there are few known, published, specific laws about the searching for and exportation of meteorites. An article on this subject was published in “Meteoritics & Planetary Science” in 2001. It is a good starting point. It does state for instance that India decided that all meteorites found there were the property of India in 1885, and that Canada and Australia require export permits (Canada since 1977, Australia since 1986); but the article is ten years old and therefore outdated. One obvious example not mentioned in that article: Argentina banned all exportation of meteorites as of January 1, 2008.

Incidentally, in the United States, when a meteorite falls or is found on private property, it automatically becomes part of that property; it is the principle of accretion. And the owner of that property is free to do whatever he pleases with it.

Obviously, there may be other laws, rules and regulations regarding meteorites around the world, but finding a precise, accurate and absolutely up-to-date text is a daunting exercise. Anyone is free to attempt it but, warning, there are mostly rumors, hearsay, and unverifiable reports.

NEW YORK TIMES
Yet scavengers have disseminated them widely: on Star-bits.com, one of many sites that sell a variety of meteorites, the 10 fragments with rich patinas are said to be from Gebel Kamil. The costliest of the 10 — a two-pound rock, just large enough to cover the fingers of a man’s hand — is priced at $1,600.

Eric Olson of Star-bits defended the marketing as legitimate and beyond Egyptian law. “I didn’t buy them from the Egyptians,” he said in an interview. “I bought them second- and third hand.”

The scientists say they have relatively few samples compared with the booming illicit sales.

“We have at our disposal a very limited number of specimens to study and exhibit,” said Dr. Di Martino. He and other members of the Gebel Kamil crater discovery team, he added, don’t have the money to buy them on the flourishing black market.

Dr. Harvey of Case Western Reserve said the quandary applied to the scientific community as a whole. The rampant looting of meteorite sites and skyrocketing prices for the fragments, he said, “dramatically reduce who can get samples to do the research.”

RESPONSE
Let’s consider a few facts here:

First, the rule created by the Meteoritical Society: 20% or 20 grams, whichever is less, of a newly-found meteorite is to be sent to a special lab for analysis, classification, and publication in the Meteoritical Bulletin if you want to know what it is you have found. And according to the latest figures, 40,264 have already been published and 12,342 are still being studied. That’s a whole lot of meteorites!

Also, I was recently told by one meteoriticist that she had “well over a year’s worth of work” on her desk at this time. Yes, meteoriticists have been flooded with material and it is not rare to have to wait a year (or more on rare occasions) for a response. Some institutions even had to stop accepting new material. So I would not say that the number of samples for research has been reduced; in fact, what I see, and what I am told by scientists, would indicate a glut of specimens.

NEW YORK TIMES
The black market has exploded in size mainly because of a rush of new meteorites arriving from North Africa and the Arabian Peninsula. Starting in the late 1980s and 1990s, explorers and nomads discovered that dark-colored meteorites stood out against flat, featureless areas covered by sand and small pebbles. And dry desert air helped preserve the rocks from space.

The pace of collecting began to soar after explorers scrutinizing the sands of Libya discovered a number of meteorites from the Moon and Mars. These rare types formed during cosmic smashups, eventually fell to Earth and fetched high prices.

The collectors association, founded in 2004 in Nevada, now has hundreds of members around the globe. And while some traders deal in legitimate exports, many do not.

RESPONSE
Since I could be prejudiced when it comes to the IMCA, I will let Geoff Notkin, co-host of Meteorite Men on the Science Channel, author of Meteorite Hunting: How to find Treasure from Space and hundreds of articles, answer this comment:

“The worldwide community of meteorite dealers and collectors chose voluntarily to form the IMCA (International Meteorite Collectors Association), in order to establish high standards of conduct and ethics; it was not forced upon us. A sweeping statement accusing the IMCA of illegal activities is not only brazenly inaccurate, it is also a malicious insult to the organization’s many members who have made remarkable discoveries, and made extraordinarily generous donations to the science of meteoritics. The vast majority of hardworking academics in the field recognize the invaluable, and ongoing, contributions made by those who have a commercial interest in meteorites. Any researcher with a realistic understanding of the meteorite world embraces the opportunity to work with hunters and dealers who regularly bring new and important finds to academia, rather than likening their efforts to the drug trade.”

And again a few facts: Officially our association is only a little over 6 years old, and we have presently 365 members all over the globe. And all those members have volunteered to live by our Code of Ethics as condition of membership. Among other things that Code requires of members that they: “…agree to abide by all Federal, State and Local Laws and regulations related to the purchase, sale, trade or other related transactions concerned with the securing or disposing of all Meteoritical material.” Whether any of those laws is beneficial or harmful to meteorites is an entirely different discussion. Those laws do exist and must be respected.

NEW YORK TIMES
One buyer expressed remorse after reading about scientific angst over the thriving market. “I’m very ashamed,” the buyer wrote on a blog. “I’m surely a part of the problem.”

Still, many collectors defend the hobby as advantageous for scientists, saying the market is producing many discoveries and creating many opportunities. Amateurs often turn to experts for analysis and authentication and, in return, share the extraterrestrial haul.

“The scientists do not have time to go hunt for their own meteorites, so somebody has to do it for them,” said Anne M. Black, president of the collectors association. “It’s common sense.”

Even some scientists applaud the new market.

“I see it as a good thing on balance,” said Carl B. Agee, director of the Institute of Meteoritics at the University of New Mexico. “It’s beneficial mainly because of the huge diversity of meteorites not previously known about and not accessible.”

RESPONSE
Thank you, Dr. Agee, and I am delighted we finally met this year during the Tucson show. I am sorry you missed Dr. Carleton Moore and Dr. Laurence Garvie from ASU, and Dr. Arthur Ehlmann from Texas Christian University, who are frequent visitors to the Show; as one of them told me: “The Tucson Show! It is Christmas all over again!” And thank you for posting this on two meteorite-forums:

“Since I am quoted in this article, here’s my reaction to it. The reporter seems very confused, in that he lumps together a story about the Gebel Kamil crater in Egypt and the legal meteorite trade (NWA) based primarily in Morocco. During the interview with him I spent a fair amount of time trying to explain to him how beneficial the NWA’s have been for planetary science research. For example, I mentioned how the number of rare Angrite meteorites has more than doubled due to African finds – a huge enhancement to our understanding of the early solar system, and of course I mentioned all the lunars and Martians, and other rare classes. I told him that I was not terribly well informed about the Gebel Kamil crater situation, but in my opinion the highest priority would be to protect the impact structure from degradation as these are quite rare on Earth. I also told him, that the Gebel Kamil meteorites on the other hand, are probably not hard to come by, and I’m sure if I wanted to study one for research, I could get a sample at a reasonable price or even get one as a donation from a collector, which museums benefit from frequently. I did get the feeling that he was hoping to hear something negative from me. As such he ended the interview rather quickly, but said something like ‘oh, the NWA meteorites sounds like an interesting story, I need to come back to that at a later time’. So of course I was disappointed to see what mess the final NYT version was.”

Yes, collectors and amateurs do routinely help the scientific world. Just a few examples:

One long-time collector I know has already made plans and signed an agreement so his entire collection will go to Harvard when he is no longer of this world. Another one has already donated some rare, valuable pieces to the Field Museum in Chicago. Personally I have loaned rare material I was lucky enough to obtain to Dr. Alan Rubin at UCLA, Dr. Ted Bunch at NAU, and Dolores Hill and Dr. Ken Domanik at the University of Arizona in Tucson.

Finally, I called Dr. Laurence Garvie, Curator of the meteorite collection of Arizona State University and Editor of the Meteoritical Bulletin. He was clearly appalled by what he had just read in the New York Times. He promised to write to the Editor, and allowed me to quote him: “Of course! We absolutely need the private sector. Some of the most interesting meteorites, Acfer 094, NWA 5000, SAU 493, etc. were brought in by private hunters. Those are meteorites scientists are drooling on! And look at those angrites, we had 2, not counting Antarctica, now we have 15!” He also noted that getting loans is never a problem, “I could get a Gebel Kamil if I was interested, I would only have to ask.”

NEW YORK TIMES
At stake for science in the rush for meteorites are secrets of the cosmic bombardment, the development of the solar system and possible clues to the existence of extraterrestrial life. Last month, scientists hotly debated whether a new meteorite study produced convincing evidence of microscopic aliens.

As for the Gebel Kamil crater, Dr. Di Martino said it was futile to try to save its otherworldly riches from the looters.

“Considering the social, political and geographic situation there,” he said of the remote corner of southwestern Egypt, “it will be completely useless to protect the area” — unless the authorities put in “a permanent garrison of marines and/or a minefield.”

He and the team of scientific explorers are still eager to revisit the site, mainly to better date the crater. But they worry that the political chaos in Egypt may further endanger their find.

The turmoil has already resulted in the delay and possible cancellation of a new expedition to the Kamil crater and raised doubts about the security of a collection of the meteorites in Cairo.

With the secret out, the scientific team announced its discovery in July 2010 and detailed its findings in the February issue of Geology.

There, the team hailed the discovery as a potential link to the “iron of heaven” and estimated the impact site as less than 5,000 years old.

Luigi Folco, the expedition leader and meteorite curator at the University of Siena, said in an interview that if the age estimate is correct, “ancient Egyptians living along the Nile could have seen this major event.” The craggy rock from space is said to have exploded with the blinding flash of an enormous bomb.

Dr. Di Martino said the allure for amateurs was not the advance of history but the pleasure of owning the latest find.

Since it’s a new meteorite, he said, “the collectors like to have a piece of it.”

RESPONSE
Yes, Collectors take, but they also give, and give a lot.

So, in conclusion, no, the Meteorite Market is not a black or illegal market, it is wide-open, highly publicized and thoroughly legal. Of course, as in any segment of the economy there are a few rotten apples in the mix, but it is also self-policed by an association that, I hope, will keep on growing. And it is a market that is not simply accepted by the scientific community, but is very much welcomed.

Anne M. Black
President, IMCA Inc.

Among the few serious requests my mom ever made of me were that I (a) not drive motorcycles, and (b) not get my ears pieced. Since, by the age of sixteen I already had a secret dirt bike stashed at my friend’s house way out in the English boonies, I thought I could bend a little, respect her last remaining wish, and not get holes punched in my earlobes. To my surprise, she didn’t say anything about tattoos so that door was left open if I wanted to explore it.

I have always been interested in tattoo art. I am a bit of a contrary fellow, so things that are regarded as slightly “out there” by polite society are naturally of interest to me. That would explain the delight I take in punk rock, motorcycles, protest singers, animal rights activists, Burning Man, and so on. The world of tattoos fits in rather well with a number of those subcultures. In fact, my girlfriend, and most of my pals have them, and I can only think of a couple of close friends who do not sport the ink.

Despite that, I don’t have one myself—yet—and it seems there are two possible reasons for this. The unnecessary infliction of pain could be one, as could my ever-changing taste in things. I am well aware that the art and music I enjoy today are somewhat different from what I doted on, say, thirty years ago—except for The Clash and The Ramones of course, oh, and I was listening to Abba’s “S.O.S.” this morning. Yes, I know it’s hard for you to believe that I listen to Abba, but “S.O.S” is one hell of a good pop song. Anyway, my hesitation to get inked may be due to the obvious longevity of tattoos. In other words, they are permanent; many of my tastes are not. In addition, my favorite live-life-by quote is: “If something is worth doing, it’s worth overdoing,” so if I were to get inked it wouldn’t be some itty bitty affair on my ankle, but likely a hugely involved tapestry on my back. I’ve always imagined that I would wake up one day—possibly many years hence—look in the mirror, and say to myself: “Idiot! What on earth were you thinking?!”

I was discussing this very concept of the permanence of inked skin versus the changing moods of my own fickle art-mind with one of my staff members, Beth, just the other day. She explained that her view was precisely the opposite of mine: A tattoo that she acquired would always remind her, specifically, and in a very colorful manner, of that precise time in her life. To which I replied, jokingly: “I don’t want to be reminded of those times.”

Fortunately, none of these weighty matters prevented me from journeying down to The Hotel Arizona on Sunday for the Tucson Tattoo Expo. Who wouldn’t want to hang around with goths, bikers, punk rockers, and skin artists? Sounded like a good time to me, and also, I had an appointment to meet celebrated, award-winning Tucson artist Jim Quinn II, owner of Istari Tattoo Studio, as he is working on an illustration project for my company.

Jim Quinn II, owner of Istari Tattoo Studio, with his prize from the 2011 Expo

Tall, slender, jovial, animated yet laid-back, with spectacular wings tattooed on both sides of his neck, it was really quite easy to pick Jim out of the crowd. I looked through the portfolios of his work and was amazed by how well he handled a wide variety of styles, including Celtic knotwork, classical Japanese, and even Aztec/Inca. He’s a serious artist, and we reminisced a little about art school days, and how invigorating it is to be surrounded by the influence of talented people—taking a bit here, taking a bit there, all the while gradually developing your own style.

You know how when you go to a typical expo it’s all very serious and corporate, with products on lucite display stands, monitors running ads, backdrops, banners, and prim, well-dressed hired salespeople who are just a little too eager to discuss their product with you? Well, the Tucson Tattoo Expo couldn’t possibly have been any more different from that stilted vision. They had a bar set up inside the venue, a smoking area, a line of Harleys parked outside, sassy-looking girls wearing dog collars, and guys covered—literally—from head to toe in multi-colored ink. What’s not to like?

I was surprised how many people—in various states of undress—were actually being worked on during the convention. One gentleman had stripped down to his red underwear while a local artist addressed some of his few remaining square inches of unadorned skin; a lithe brunette lay on her side on a big table while her back was decorated; other pro artists were having some of their own tats touched up by colleagues. And that begs the question: When you’re an accomplished tattooist, how do you feel when another artist is working on your own personal canvas? Walking around, I found the soft, layered buzzing of multiple electric needles to be oddly soothing and intriguing, like a hive of industrious underworld virtuosos.

Shortly after my arrival at the expo, I realized I’d left my cell phone at the auto parts store on the other side of town, and I really needed to have it with me. Before making the twenty-mile round trip to pick it up, I considered that if I were to get inked at some point down the road, perhaps I should select a stylized cell phone design. Not very interesting artistically, but at least it might prevent me from leaving the damn thing behind on a regular basis, and always at the most inconvenient times.

Text and photograph © by Geoffrey Notkin. All rights reserved. No reproduction without written permission.