Jesse McKinley

You are currently browsing articles tagged Jesse McKinley.

“Death Valley National Park Doesn’t Need A Lot Of Help Being Spooky”

October 30, 2011 in Excerpts, Urban Studies | Permalink

Who doesn’t need, sometimes, to be where the streets have no name? An excerpt from Jesse McKinley’s survey of Death Valley in the New York Times:

“IT’S just before midnight on the edge of Death Valley and I’m standing in a dark room in the Amargosa Opera House and Hotel with five people who are certain that we’re talking to ghosts.

‘There’s something going on,’ said one ghost hunter who is holding a device meant to find electromagnetic fields. Sure enough, it’s going wild. And while I don’t believe in ghosts, I have goose bumps.

Death Valley National Park doesn’t need a lot of help being spooky. One of the lowest, most arid places on earth, the valley has more ghost towns than actual ones: dried-up spots like Leadfield, Chloride City and Skidoo, whose last residents skedaddled as soon as the gold, or rumor thereof, was gone.

Even the places that survive have foreboding names like Furnace Creek or haunted reputations like Death Valley Junction, just outside the park’s eastern gate, where paranormal fans convene to hunt the spirits of miners, mistresses and other metaphysical outliers. Then there are anomalies like the park’s Racetrack Playa, where rocks seemingly slide across sand under their own power.

Death Valley’s mysteries and its extremes have always intrigued me.”

Tags:

The Final Frontier: California To Preserve Space Urinals

January 30, 2010 in Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Cherish my space pee, California!

An interesting article by Jesse McKinley in the New York Times examines the fate of several tons of garbage left behind by the Apollo 11 mission. Seven states, including California, seek to stake a claim to this trash and protect it from potential moon landings by other countries and the development of a space tourist industry. An excerpt from the article:

“In one small step for preservation and one giant leap of logic, the official historical commission of California voted Friday to protect two small urine collection devices, four space-sickness bags and dozens of other pieces of detritus, all currently residing nearly a quarter of a million miles from the state…

Milford Wayne Donaldson, the state historic preservation officer, said the reasoning behind the first-of-its-kind designation was simple: Scores of California companies worked on the Apollo mission, and much of their handiwork remains of major historical value to the state, regardless of where it is now or what it was for used for then.

‘It has a significance that goes way further than whether it came from a quarter million miles away or not,’ Mr. Donaldson said. ‘They are all parts of the event.’”

Tags: ,