I acquired my first metal detector when I was a kid, in 1971. It was a simple affair, as was the hobby back then. Detectorists were a very small group (likely regarded as extremely eccentric by “normal” people) and were primarily interested in searching for lost and buried treasure, such as hordes of Roman coins or Viking burials. That was during my childhood in the UK, of course. I don’t think we have much in the way of Roman or Viking riches in the United States, although at least one sensationalized reality television show might want you to believe otherwise.

During the 1970s my close childhood friend, John Flin, and I became something of an amateur treasure hunting team. We found coins, World War II relics — including plenty of old bullets and cartridges on a disused Royal Air Force base — and occasionally excavated the muck of the River Thames at low tide. Since city dwellers have been throwing, dumping, and accidentally dropping things into Londinuium’s murky waters since before Roman times, the slimy residue exposed when the tide flows out is rich with the discarded relics of multiple centuries.

Metal detectors operate on a fairly simple principle: A control box generates an electromagnetic pulse that is transmitted into the ground through a typically hoop-shaped coil. When that pulse encounters buried metal, the detector registers a disruption in the field and alerts the user via an audio signature, or a visual display, or both. In the old days, that was it. You heard a sound and dug up a target. Modern detectors are a whole lot more sophisticated and can often tell you what type of metal lies beneath your feet (iron, aluminum, or precious metals, for example). Some will even speculate what, precisely, your target could be (a dime, a ring pull from a soda or beer can, foil, etc.) and how deeply it might be buried.

The author in Chile’s Atacama Desert, with one of his favorite metal detectors, while filming Season Two of “Meteorite Men” the TV series

The vast majority of detectors are hand-held units that weigh a few pounds, but some are larger and far more complex. Viewers who have watched my television series Meteorite Men on the Science channel may have seen us employing gigantic metal detectors that are towed behind a truck or ATV. Recent developments in pulse induction (PI) technology have enabled designers to build larger and larger coils, such as those used on the show. An oversize coil will cover more ground on each pass, and will also “see” further into the ground, giving detectorists the ability to recover targets from greater depths than ever before. Since the strength of an electomagnetic pulse decays quickly over distance, the larger the coil, the greater its range. While filming Season Three of Meteorite Men in the forests of western Poland, we found a 75-pound iron meteorite six feet underground. Such a concept would have sounded like science fiction to me as a kid, when the range of an average detector was likely not more that a foot.

As my interest in, and experience with, meteorites and their recovery increased, so did my familiarity with metal detectors. I have used scores of detectors over the past few decades, and worked with equipment from all the leading manufacturers, of which there are quite a number. I have a long-standing professional relationship with Fisher Labs in El Paso, Texas and we used their excellent detectors (notably the F-75) in all three seasons of Meteorite Men. We were even invited to field test prototypes of new models on the show, and that was a great treat for a gearhead like myself. Fisher detectors (and the products of their sister company, Teknetics) are lightweight, highly sensitive, reliable, easy to use, and affordable. As such, they are a popular choice for many experienced detectorists and I have found meteorites on four continents using them.

Every search presents its own challenges and it is important to select the right equipment for the job. One of the most highly respected companies in the metal detector world is Minelab, and their sophisticated and advanced detectors are favored by many of the world’s most experienced relic hunters and gold prospectors. Minelab users have an extraordinary loyalty to the company and it is easy to see why. I am the proud owner of a GPX 5000 and it is easily one of the best pieces of equipment I’ve ever used. Minelab’s higher end detectors are probably second to none in their class, in terms of range and versatility, and the care with which they are manufactured is reflected in the price tag — but you get what you pay for. I’ve heard stories from the most reliable sources about experienced gold hunters returning to sites long considered to be “played out,” only to recover a small fortune in nuggets, due to the increased depth range of the newest Minelab. You might spend thousands of dollars on a Minelab, but you also might make all of that back in one day, and then some. As my co-host of Meteorite Men, Steve Arnold, once remarked: “You can have a really good year, in an afternoon, if you get lucky.”

An assortment of manmade metallic trash excavated during a recent meteorite hunt

The growing popularity of metal detecting, both as a hobby and as a profession, is reflected by this weekend’s second annual Go Minelabbing / National Metal Detecting Day events. Tomorrow, Saturday, May 18, Minelab is sponsoring four day-long events in Santa Barbara, California; Atlantic City, New Jersey; Toronto, Canada and Rio de Janiero, Brazil (we should probably think about changing that to “International Metal Detecting Day” next year!). As we did last year, Steve and I are appearing as featured guests but, this year, the Meteorite Men are straddling the continent. Steve will be at the Atlantic City event, and I’ll be in Santa Barbara, along with Tim and George, hosts of the NatGeo television series Diggers.

Metal detectorists are my people. It takes skill to operate a detector properly and it takes determination to make significant finds. A good deal of patience is also required in order to become a successful hunter and these qualities are attractive to me. Detectorists are typically intelligent, focused, thoughtful, and slightly whimsical gearheads. There’s also something existentially upbeat about them. You have to function with a certain positive mindset if that coil is going to keep on swinging, hour after hour, propelled by the hope or belief that the next big find could be just over there, under that tree, or on the slope of that hill.

If you’ve ever dreamed of finding buried treasure, join us tomorrow. Minelab will be displaying equipment, presenting organized hunts with purposely buried coins, sponsoring talks, kids’ events, and just about anything else that a seeker of buried treasure could wish for. I’ll be on the beach in front of the Fess Parker Doubletree Santa Barbara all day, reading from my latest book, Rock Star: Adventures of a Meteorite Man, giving a talk, answering questions, displaying meteorires, signing autographs, and generally reveling in the company of my like-minded and slightly but delightfully weird fellow treasure hunters. And if you want to see something really special, ask to take a look at my latest acquisition — a marvelous and recently-recovered piece of the Chelyabinsk meteorite that was part of the city-pummeling Russian fireball of February 15.

More information about National Metal Detecting Day / Go Minelabbing, or follow the hashtag #NMDD on Twitter

If you enjoyed this article, please connect with me on Twitter @geoffnotkin

Photographs by Pablo del Rio Larrain and Suzanne Morrison © Aerolite Meteorites, LLC.
Text © Geoffrey Notkin. All rights reserved. No reproduction without written permission.

One of my happiest holiday childhood memories revolves around chestnuts. As a little boy, growing up in London in the late 1960s, I would look forward, with great anticipation, to the arrival of roast chestnuts. These decidedly December-flavored treats never seemed to be available during the rest of the year and I, therefore, have always associated the tasty nut with Christmas.

My favorite childhood haunt was the British Museum, sitting in all its Greco-Roman splendor on Great Russell Street. Londoners call it “The B.M.,” and its paved forecourt always seemed dizzyingly awash with visiting students and scholars, meeting, laughing, hugging, comparing notes, and poring over guides and floor plans to the museum’s astonishing collection of artistic and archaeological treasures. Around the middle of December, each year, the throngs of budding intellectuals were quietly joined by a solitary, hardworking and — in my mind at least — somewhat melancholy old man hunched, slightly, over an incandescent steel barrel. He was the Chestnut Man. I took him to be a World War II veteran dressed, as he was, in a faded military jacket, with a grey, flat cap, and palm-sized woolen gloves that exposed his fingertips. I found the Chestnut Man fascinating and — aged perhaps six, and clutching my mother’s hand — I would trade him two shillings for a small, white paper bag filled with chestnuts, hot to the touch and freshly plucked from his roasting barrel.

Not to be confused with the horse chestnut — an unpalatable nut common in the United Kingdom and used by school boys in the strange game called “conkers” — the edible or “sweet” chestnut is actually produced by a beech tree of the family Fagaceae. When properly roasted, and once the hard, reddish brown shell has been removed, the sweet chestnut is a heavenly snack: pale yellow in color, with a meaty consistency and a taste similar to macadamia nuts.

And so, each December when Ballet Tucson’s award-winning production of the ever-popular Nutcracker opens with an alluring and solitary dancer, The Chestnut Lady, elegantly serving her wares, it cannot fail to strike a chord of memory and delight in my heart.

Nutcracker was first performed in St. Petersbug, Russia in 1892, based on a story by the German author E.T.A. Hoffman, and choreographed by Lev Ivanov and Franco-Russian ballet dancer Marius Petipa. It was first performed outside Russia in 1919 (Budapest), and in the Twentieth Century went on to enjoy tremendous worldwide popularity, especially in the United States.

Kendra Clyde as Clara in Ballet Tucson’s “Nutcracker.” Photo by Ed Flores

The decidedly cosmopolitan origins of Nutcracker are well reflected by the international flavor of Ballet Tucson’s company: long-time principal male dancer Daniel Precup is of Romanian origin; Kyle Peterson was born in the United Kingdom; Akari Manabe joins the company from Kobe, Japan; while Canadian dancer Kate Kaupas’ home town is Calgary. And Kate’s success story with Ballet Tucson is particularly noteworthy. She joined the company three years ago as an apprentice; in her second year she won the Kim Terry Memorial Scholarship for excellence in dance; and is, this year, a featured soloist as the Dew Drop Fairy. Perhaps one out of every class of young dance students will be fortunate enough to land a job as a professional company dancer, and perhaps one in twenty of those will experience the thrill of performing onstage as a featured soloist, so the Friday premiere of Nutcracker will be a big night for Ms. Kaupas.

“Performing with Ballet Tucson is one of the most inspiring experiences of my professional dance career,” Kaupas said. “I feel very privileged to be cast in such an important role and I look forward to bringing Dew Drop Fairy to life this weekend at Centennial Hall.”

Kate Kaupas performs as the Dew Drop Fairy this weekend in Ballet Tucson’s “Nutcracker.” Photo by Geoff Notkin

And it’s not just the dreams of professional dancers that will manifest themselves this weekend. Ballet Tucson is committed to sharing the uplifting experience of Nutcracker throughout our community. “We give 1,000 free Nutcracker tickets to underserved children and their families, and to social service agencies in our community,” said Operations Manager Cynthia Hansen. “The Board of Directors goes out and raises money to support this program. We travel to Tucson’s most needy schools to teach dance with our ‘Put Your Best Foot Forward with Ballet Tucson’ educational outreach. In addition Assistant Artisitic Director Chieko Imada and her team of Ballet Tucson dancers teach five classes per week to elementary students in some of Tucson’s most impoverished areas.”

As I have said in this column before, it is one thing to talk about supporting the arts and another to actually do it. Ballet Tucson brings excellent classical and contemporary ballet to Tucson, while reaching out to underprivileged communities to foster an appreciation of the arts at a grassroots level. That is more than supporting the arts; it is building an artistic community from the ground up. And, perhaps most important of all, Founder and Artistic Director Mary Beth Cabana’s Ballet Arts School is training the next generation of professional dancers. Her students have gone on to win scholarships and/or perform professionally with New York City Ballet, American Ballet Theater, San Francisco Ballet, Pacific Northwest Ballet (PNB), The Kirov Academy and many other world-class companies. That is quite a remarkable accomplishment for a school in our small city. You have to start somewhere, and many of Ms. Cabana’s youngest students will be appearing in this weekend’s Nutcracker, some of them in their first-ever public performance.

Operations Manager, Cynthia Hansen, says it perfectly: “We believe the arts have the power to transform lives and we do our part by introducing children to the discipline and wonderful world of dance.”

Jenna Johnson as Sugar Plum Fairy and Stuart Lauer as Her Cavalier. Photo by Ed Flores

So, if the Chestnut Lady, the feisty Mouse King, the Fairies, the Snow Queen, and the Snowflakes are still not quite enough excitement for you, bear in mind that this production of Nutcracker may just introduce some of the great dancers of tomorrow. One of the mice children making his or her debut this weekend could be soloing at American Ballet Theater ten years from now. That is the stuff of Christmas dreams.

A few days ago, and to my considerable amazement, I discovered a small stash of fresh, sweet chestnuts at the supermarket.”What are these?” the lady at checkout asked, wrinking her nose and holding them up close, then peering, quizzically, at their dark and streamlined shapes. Unroasted, and still cased in tough, sanguine shells, the pretty chestnuts looked nearly identical to the ones a little boy used to wolf down during cold winter evenings on Great Russell Street.

I’ll be roasting them tomorrow afternoon, so if you see happen to see a TucsonCitizen.com blogger and dance enthusiast outside Centennial Hall this weekend, with a smile on a face and a little white bag of chestnuts in his hands, that’ll be me.

Ballet Tucson performs Nutcracker this weekend at Centennial Hall. Show times are Friday, December 21 at 7:30 pm; Saturday, December 22 at 2:00 pm and 7:30 pm; Sunday, December 23 at 1:00 pm and 5:00 pm. Ticket prices range from $17 to $56 and are available through the Centennial Hall Ticket Office.

Text © by Geoffrey Notkin. Photographs © Ed Flores and Geoffrey Notkin, as noted above.
All rights reserved. No reproduction without written permission.

If I were to tell you that one of my best friends died yesterday I would feel I was exaggerating somewhat, because the sad truth is I had not been in touch with Tony for some years. We never had any kind of a fight, or a falling out, but I tend to get wrapped up in the things that are right in front of my face, such as making a television show, writing blogs, conducting business, and publishing books. The squeaky wheel gets the oil, you might say. Or that could just be a lame excuse for not taking care of the things that truly matter, such as sending an occasional email to an old friend whom I knew to be, at times, a bit lonely.

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.