#we had this exact exchange about a year(?) ago only then it was ‘archaeologist’

[vinelark]

this morning my fiancée told me my outfit was “so cute, like a librarian” and very appreciatively observed that i’m in my “librarian era” and i know what she means is that i’m dressing like rachel weisz from the mummy

[sharpnothashtag]

The Good Ship CrushWay, Chapter 14

Scene: Conference Room, Picard, KJ, Bev, Geordi, Data, Worf, and DeAnna are all there.

KJ: In the basement, where we can only assume Mayble was hiding when she sent the distress signal, we found extremely concentrated levels of Lyantrium. Picard: Can you be more specific?  What do you mean by “extremely high”? Data: A normal concentration of Lyantirum in well-traveled space is about 100 parts per million.  What we found in that basement was 10,000 parts per million.  It is relatively surprising Commander Janeway and Dr. Crusher were not staring into the face of a Lyantirum wormhole. Picard: I’m grateful they weren’t.  What would cause that kind of Lyantirum buildup? KJ: My theory is a weapon of sorts--one harvests the Lyantirum, calculates the exact coordinates to place the Lyantirum, and then shoots.   Geordi: But the Borg have to know that Lyantirum is a very unstable way of traveling. KJ: My guess is they don’t care.  They must use the Lyantirum wormhole as a means to travel TO somewhere.  Since the Borg never retreat, they do not need an escape route.  The wormhole does not have to be stable for any longer than it takes for them to get from Point A to Point B. Worf: Is there any way to predict where they are going to use it next so that we may have a tactical advantage against them? Geordi: If I am looking at these schematics correctly, no.  We can try to build that weapon ourselves by cleaning up the mess that they left here, but that’s about it. Worf: Why did they come to that basement? Bev: The family would put up the least amount of a struggle if they caught them off guard, but the Borg don’t really care about that, do they? KJ: My crew member, Seven, is the biggest stickler for efficiency and time management I have ever seen.  If there were a way save time, the Borg would take it. Picard: If they came directly to the basement, how did Mayble send the distress signal? KJ: I think she was out playing.  I think they all were outside, and then the Borg came from inside their houses. Worf: The family room was torn apart, but it did not look like a struggle.  It looked like there were intruders that sabotaged everything important to the family. KJ: That brings me to the next point: this is the Borg, but there is something wrong.  These Borg are angry.  Picard: Why do you say that? KJ: I have seen Borg destruction before.  It’s cold...empty.  It served a purpose.  This did not.  The faces of all the families in the pictures were slashed: the portraits torn apart with bare hands. Picard: Data, will you do a bit of research on the families?  Maybe we can find some connection between them and the Borg...maybe find an enemy that could have been assimilated. Data: I have already checked.  The families were all human, and they have a common ancestry. Picard: And that is? Data: They are all French, Captain. DeAnna: Why go after the French, Data? Data: I do not know, Counselor.   DeAnna: What was the purpose of the colony? Data: They were there for archaeological study.  The ruins on Jouret IV have fascinated many for some time now, but this group was the first to decide to actually study them in great detail. Picard: I was looking forward to getting to see them while we were in the vicinity.  These are all confusing findings, but I know we can piece something together.  Commander, you and Data should study all the known Borg attacks--see if there was any other time when the Borg displayed such anger.  Geordi, you should prepare more advanced schematics of this Lyantirum weapon--see if you can find a way to predict where they are going to strike next by digging deeper into how to build this weapon.  Divert any of the necessary crew from Engineering.  Dismissed. (everyone gets up to go except Worf and DeAnna, who exchange glances, nod, and approach Picard.) Worf: Captain, DeAnna and I would like to have a word with you. Picard: Certainly. DeAnna: Don’t you think it’s odd that they HAPPEN to be going after French archaeologists? Picard: I was trying to believe that was a coincidence. Worf: Do not be a fool, Captain.  You are an important man, and the Borg would have a great advantage on the Federation if you were to be assimilated. DeAnna: What Worf really means is...well...we’re worried.  And we want to protect you in the best way we know how. Picard: And that is? Worf: Please allow me to be your personal security detail.  I can stand watch over you at all times. Picard: Worf, you will need to rest occasionally. Worf: I can sleep in your quarters when you sleep. Picard: I certainly appreciate the gesture, but just posting someone at my door is plenty. Worf: Their weapon is precise enough to get into someone’s room; how can we be sure they will not get to you while we are standing watch outside? Picard: Mr. Worf, you may accompany me every second of every day until we have cleared up this mess, but I will not allow you to sleep with me.  That is the end of this discussion. DeAnna: (grabbing Worf’s arm and trying to reassure him that he did try) Thank you, Captain. Picard: Now.  Is there anything else? DeAnna: I did want to ask you one more thing. Picard: Yes? DeAnna: Would you preside over our wedding? Picard: (smiling) Of course. DeAnna: We are still working out the details...I’m not sure there’s ever been a Klingon-Betazoid wedding. Picard: Nor will there ever be again. Worf: What is important is that my heart beats only for this woman (looks lovingly at DeAnna).  And I want the whole universe to know it. Picard: And know it they shall.  Now, I have some studying of my own to do.  DeAnna, go help Kathryn and Data research the Borg attacks.  Worf, I suppose you’re going to stay here with me? Worf: Yes, sir. Picard: DeAnna, you’re dismissed.

The holodeck, Bev and KJ’s nightly walk.

KJ: (jogging, carrying coats) I’m here!   Bev: It took you long enough. KJ: I’m sorry!  I got caught up--Wolf 359 took a lot of debate on the anger issue. Bev: Fair enough.  What’ll it be tonight, m’lady? KJ: There’s a spot in Finland we haven’t tried yet.  I brought coats so we won’t get too cold. Bev: Great idea.  (pushes the buttons. door opens, Bev gestures.) After you. KJ: (smiles, nods) Thank you. (KJ enters, Bev follows.  The room is transformed into a mountain in Finland where the Northern Lights are out and in full force.  Both are silenced immediately as this natural miracle dances around them. They walk in silence for a moment.) KJ: There’s something about this that just makes everything make sense. Bev: Yeah?  Why are the Borg so angry, then? KJ: (rolls her eyes) That’s not what I mean.  I mean...everything is in its place. Bev: I know what you mean.  These programs are how I survived after Jack died. KJ: How long ago was that? Bev: 11 years.  It was an away mission...Jean-Luc had to tell Wesley that his dad died a hero, but all Wesley heard was that his hero was dead.  He’s 16 now, and he still struggles with it some days. KJ: I lost my father at a young age, too.  Growing up without a father figure is very difficult, and I can understand what he’s going through. Bev: Jack used to say if something ever happened to him that I shouldn’t feel guilty when I moved on. KJ: And how do you feel?  When you do date, that is. Bev: I haven’t dated anyone.  It’s been 11 years, and I am just now getting to the point where I might be able to. (They stop and sit on a rock near the top of the mountain.) You mean the world to me, Kate.  You’re my best friend. KJ: You’re mine, too, Bev. Bev: If you got assimilated, I’m not sure how long I would last. KJ: ...Bev, you’re not talking about-- Bev: I’ve lost a lot in my life, Kate.  My parents, my husband...I couldn’t live if I lost you, too.  (KJ hugs her close.) My grandmother gave me that copy of Frankenstein after my parents died.  I read it then, and I realized that everyone questions why they’re here, and that it’s okay to do that. KJ: You know, when I first read it, I realized that there’s no hurt that can’t be overcome. Bev: How exactly did you come to that? KJ: At the end of the book when the narrator meets the monster for the first time, he is definitely startled at first, but after a minute or two, he collects himself and invites the monster in. In life, I’ve found that if I sit with my demons, they aren’t as scary, and they don’t have as much control over my life. And, sometimes my demons are just as misunderstood as I am. Bev: Promise me something, Kate. KJ: Yeah? Bev: Promise me you’re going to do all you can to help me sit down with my demons.  I’m not usually open about my depression...only Jean-Luc and DeAnna really know. KJ: I’m not going anywhere, Bev.  Nothing can take me away from you.  I love you. (looks at Bev and wipes away a tear from her eye)

Bev takes KJ’s face in her hands and kisses her.  Bev’s tongue strokes the roof of KJ’s mouth slowly.  KJ returns the favor. Bev lays her down on the rock and unbuttons her coat.

KJ: Beverly, are you sure you want this? Bev: (stroking KJ’s hair) More than anything in the entire universe. (Bev unbuttons the coat, and then unbuttons her own.  She lays down with KJ and uses her coat as a blanket.  They hold each other for a while.) KJ: I’m getting kind of cold.  Do you want to take this back to my place? Bev: That’s enough for now.  We both need some rest. KJ: I guess so.  I just thought-- Bev: I know.  And I do want that...just not tonight. (KJ nods, and they share their last kiss for the evening.) I’ll see you tomorrow morning? KJ: Of course.  Sleep well, Bev. Bev: Sleep well, Kate.

[hilaryrakestraw]

Cheerful or not

“ We are all tired of being stuck to this cosmical speck, with its monotonous ocean, leaden sky, and single moon that is useless more than half the time, while its size is so microscopic compared with the universe that we can traverse its great circle in four days. Its possibilities are exhausted; and just as Greece became too small for the civilization of the Greeks, and as reproduction is growth beyond the individual, so it seems to me that the future glory of the human race lies in exploring at least the solar system, without waiting to become shades. ” John Jacob Astor IV,  Journey in Other Worlds: A Romance of the Future, published 1894 (via The New Atlantic)

THE RETURN OF THE SPACE VISIONARIES || THE NEW ATLANTIS

Against the context of the more measured NASA aspirations we’re familiar with — the blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moonwalks, astronauts tinkering in low Earth orbit for decades, and far-reaching but uncrewed planetary probes — O’Neill’s vision may sound like a pie-in-the-sky aberration. That was indeed how it struck many of his post-Apollo-era contemporaries. Asked about the possibility of federal funding for O’Neill’s ideas, Wisconsin Senator William Proxmire famously said, “Not a penny for this nutty fantasy.”

Yet O’Neill’s vision is strikingly similar to the ones being offered by today’s aspiring space tycoons, most notably Elon Musk, founder of Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX), and Jeff Bezos, founder of Blue Origin.  Musk, though focused like a laser on Mars, talks about “Making Humans a Multi-Planetary Species,” as the title of a technical article he published last year put it. Bezos, for his part, doesn’t confine his ambition even to settling other planets. His stated long-term goal is to get millions of people off of Earth, where they can pursue their own dreams, whatever those may be, whether on other planets or in permanent settlements in space itself. This May, he received the Gerard K. O’Neill Memorial Award for Space Settlement Advocacy from the National Space Society. In an interview given just after accepting the award, he expounded on his O’Neillian vision of a trillion people living in the solar system….

Despite some differences in approach, Musk and Bezos together represent a sharp departure from the conventional approach of America’s public space program, which has always been more limited, focused on science and exploration, not human settlement, and has operated on the assumption that only big-government funding and organization could send humans to space. But a look at the history of ideas about space travel, going back much further than O’Neill and Dyson, shows that Musk and Bezos are in fact returning to a longer tradition of dreaming about humanity’s future in space — a tradition that, fittingly, is now coming to fruition in America. Musk and Bezos are on the cusp of fulfilling the dreams many others have had of settling space, and of making space travel commercially viable — neither of which Apollo, much less its middling low-Earth-orbit successors, were able to achieve, despite the tragically failed attempt to do so with the space shuttle. Indeed, Bezos and the foreign-born Musk, combining personal dreams with technical prowess and bold entrepreneurship, are much more thoroughly American in their visions than even America’s own government-run space program.

11:00

LINK

SPACE

INNOVATION

HISTORY

GOVERNMENT

WORLD

ECONOMY

FAVORITE

LINK

WHAT DOES IT TAKE TO KEEP A CLASSIC MAINFRAME ALIVE? || IEEE SPECTRUM

Restoring a decades-old mainframe to working condition is impressive enough, but keeping it running is even more impressive. Back in 2004, the Computer History Museum in Silicon Valley acquired an IBM 1401 mainframe, a workhorse of the 1960s. After years of effort, volunteers triumphed over broken wires and corroded parts to restore the machine, along with a second 1401 acquired in 2008.

IEEE Spectrum covered the restoration back in 2009, but it turns out this was just the beginning of the volunteers’ labors: Maintaining the two mainframes, along with critical peripherals such as the 1403 printer, has proved to be an ongoing saga. Every time something breaks down, the result is typically a fascinating flurry of physical forensics, historical research, and crafty fixes.

Leaked Images Show Kamov’s Advanced Combat Helicopter: a winged coaxial-rotor, twin-turbofan compound helicopter reportedly capable of up to 700 kph (Aviation Week).

“ When it comes to the United States, my opinions are more calcified…. The best M&M: peanut butter. Hands down. Milk chocolate over dark; white is not right, and the only correct way to eat a Kit Kat is to nibble off the enrobed edges and pry the wafer layers apart. Fight me. ”

Mary H.K. Choi, Candy Crush

She is 100% accurate about the only correct way to eat a Kit Kat. I do like dark chocolate, though.

IN JAPAN, THE KIT KAT ISN’T JUST A CHOCOLATE. IT’S AN OBSESSION || NEW YORK TIMES

A Kit Kat is composed of three layers of wafer and two layers of flavored cream filling, enrobed in chocolate to look like a long, skinny ingot. It connects to identical skinny ingots, and you can snap these apart from one another intact, using very little pressure, making practically no crumbs. The Kit Kat is a sweet, cheap, delicately crunchy artifact of the 20th century’s industrial chocolate conglomerate. In the United States, where it has been distributed by Hershey since 1970, it is drugstore candy. In Japan, you might find the Kit Kat at a drugstore, but here the Kit Kat has levels. The Kit Kat has range. It’s found in department stores and luxurious Kit Kat-devoted boutiques that resemble high-end shoe stores, a single ingot to a silky peel-away sheath, stacked in slim boxes and tucked inside ultrasmooth-opening drawers, which a well-dressed, multilingual sales clerk slides open for you as you browse. The Kit Kat, in Japan, pushes at every limit of its form: It is multicolored and multiflavored and sometimes as hard to find as a golden ticket in your foil wrapper. Flavors change constantly, with many appearing as limited-edition runs. They can be esoteric and so carefully tailored for a Japanese audience as to seem untranslatable to a global mass market, but the bars have fans all over the world. Kit Kat fixers buy up boxes and carry them back to devotees in the United States and Europe. All this helps the Kit Kat maintain a singular, cultlike status.

U.S. NATIONAL LABS TEAM UP TO BUILD A QUANTUM NETWORK || IEEE SPECTRUM

Two U.S. national labs plan to build a new quantum network bridging a distance of 48 kilometers (30 miles) between their facilities. The project could advance U.S. efforts in the global race to develop unhackable communication technologies.

The Chicago-area network aims to explore a more reliable way of harnessing quantum entanglement: a phenomenon that allows a pair of entangled particles acting as quantum bits (qubits) to instantaneously share changes in their quantum states even if separated by many miles.

It won’t be the longest quantum network in the world, but the Chicago initiative will pioneer a unique approach by creating qubits through solid-state materials. If successful, the project could pave the way to larger quantum networks that transmit information through solid-state qubits….

Some of the largest quantum networks in China and other countries rely primarily upon qubits based on photons, or particles of light. These varieties often act as mobile “flying qubits” that travel through fiber optic cables. A common scheme in quantum key distribution networks is for entangled photons to serve as messengers that carry secret keys between nodes within the network. But the longer such photons travel, the greater the chance they will either get absorbed or scattered, and fail to reach their destination.

By comparison, the Chicago Quantum Exchange’s project would use the photon “flying qubits” to initiate entanglement between solid-state qubit nodes located at either end of the quantum network. Once the solid-state qubits at either end of the network share entangled quantum states, they could transmit information directly between each other via quantum teleportation.

[Any sufficiently advanced technology, right? All of this read like magic to me, even knowing the history of spooky action at a distance.]

WHAT ANCIENT MAIZE CAN TELL US ABOUT THOUSANDS OF YEARS OF CIVILIZATION IN AMERICA || SMITHSONIAN MAGAZINE

Consider this ancient ear of maize, which Walter Hough pulled out of a New Mexico cave more than a century ago.

Hough worked at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History (the repository of this artifact) from 1886 to 1935. …[I]n September 1905 he spent 12 days in what he called an “interesting cave.” It was in a bluff 150 feet above the Tularosa River, in New Mexico, about 30 miles east of the Arizona border. Because the climate there is extremely dry, virtually nothing in the cave had decayed. Formerly used by early colonists as a donkey corral, the cave was full of “rubbish and the droppings of animals, to a depth of 8 feet,” Hough wrote. Just walking around kicked up a choking cloud of dust that forced researchers to wear goggles and cover their faces.

Despite the terrible conditions, the researchers made an impressive haul: dried turkey cadavers, mammal bones, broken crockery, a brush made from grass, incense pipes, stones for grinding, cigarettes made from reeds, yucca-leaf sandals—and about a dozen maize cobs, some with kernels intact. (Archaeologists typically call the grain “maize,” rather than “corn,” because multicolored indigenous maize, usually eaten after drying and grinding, is strikingly unlike the large, sweet yellow-kernel cobs conjured up by the word “corn.”) Hough was working before archaeologists had the tools to accurately date artifacts, or even, pre-GPS, to note their exact location. He simply recorded the locale of his finds and carried them back to Washington, D.C.

SO WHAT IS YOUR NEXT BOOK ABOUT? || VIRGINIA POSTREL

The short answer is that it’s called

The Fabric of Civilization

and is about the history of textiles, technology, and trade or, as I sometimes put it, the history of textiles as the history of technology and trade….

The story of technology is the story of textiles. From the most ancient times to the present, so too is the story of economic development and global exchange. The origins of chemistry lie in the coloring and finishing of cloth, the beginning of binary code—and perhaps mathematics itself—in weaving. The belt drive came from silk production. So did microbiology….

“The spindle was the first wheel,” Elizabeth Wayland Barber tells me, gesturing to demonstrate. “It wasn’t yet load-bearing, but the principle of rotation is there.” A linguist by training and weaver by avocation, in the 1970s Barber started noticing footnotes about textiles scattered through the archaeological literature. She thought she’d spend nine months pulling together what was known. Her little project turned into a decades-long exploration that helped to turn textile archaeology into a full-blown field. Textile production, Barber writes, “is older than pottery or metallurgy and perhaps even than agriculture and stock-breeding.”

The ancient Greeks worshiped Athena as the goddess of technē, the artifice of civilization. The word derives from the Indo-European word teks, meaning “to weave.” The Greeks used the same word for two of their most important technologies, calling both the loom and the ship’s mast histós. From the same root, they dubbed sails histía, literally the product of the loom. Athena was the giver and protector of both ships and weaving.

To weave is to devise, to invent—to contrive function and beauty from the simplest of elements. In The Odyssey, when Athena and Odysseus scheme, they “weave a plan.” Fabric and fabricate share a common Latin root, fabrica: “something skillfully produced.” Text and textile are similarly related, from the verb texere, to weave. Order comes from the Latin word for setting warp threads, ordior, as does the French word for computer, ordinateur. The French word métier, meaning a trade or craft, is also the word for loom.The Chinese word jī, which now means “machine,” was the ancient word for loom; the word zuzhi, meaning “organization” or “arrange,” is the word for weave, while chengji, meaning “achievement” or “result,” originally meant twisting fibers together.

Cloth-making is a creative act, analogous to other creative acts. It is a sign of mastery and refinement, a mark of civilization. “Can we expect, that a government will be well modelled by a people, who know not how to make a spinning-wheel, or to employ a loom to advantage?” wrote the philosopher David Hume in 1742.

To Hume, the connection was obvious. The same creative ferment stimulating the period’s great works of politics, philosophy, and literature was advancing textile technology. The year Hume’s essay appeared, the first water-powered cotton-spinning mill opened in Northampton, its roller technology anticipating the refinements that would soon launch the Industrial Revolution. Before railroads or steel mills or automobiles, fortunes were made in textile technology.

Voyage of the Moons (taken by Cassini, NASA/JPL-Caltech/SSI/CICLOPS; animated by Kevin M. Gill)

11:00

VIDEO

SPACE

NATURE

WE HAVE SATELLITES ORBITING OTHER PLANETS!!!

NASA

VIDEO

ROME'S HEROES AND AMERICA'S FOUNDING FATHERS || JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION

Throughout the course of history, the ancient civilization of Rome has been widely discussed, praised, and emulated by writers, statesmen, and philosophers alike. Rome has no shortage of admirers, and arguably some of its most enthusiastic supporters were the American Founding Fathers who were enamoured of the Roman past largely because of Rome’s unique form of government,which had supposedly preserved liberty for hundreds of years. The Founders lavished praise upon the Roman republican heroes who defended their government from tyranny in the turbulent final days of the Republic.

… The American Revolution further intensified interest in the Roman world. By anchoring those arguments for freedom to ancient precedent, Revolutionary American authors aimed to demonstrate that their arguments were timeless and firmly embedded in history….

Many of the educated American Revolutionaries not only read about the Romans as a scholarly pursuit, some actively tried to emulate their behaviour and virtues. Above all else, Plutarch’s Parallel Lives and Livy’s History of Rome provided many models of virtuous and hardy Roman citizens and counter examples of licentious and indulgent tyrants.Among the former were Cicero and Cato, two of the most famous paragons of Roman virtue. These men, who defended the ailing Republic until their deaths, became moral exemplars for the founding generation.

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[hottytoddynews]

The Chickasaws plan to build a heritage center in Tupelo as part of a quest to reconnect with their homeland.

A white bus with “The Chickasaw Nation” printed in purple on one side scoots through a Tupelo neighborhood and pulls up next to Pierce Street Elementary school.

This is where the Chickasaws fought the French Army in the 1736 Battle of Ackia, and this bus is filled with nine supervisors and managers of the Chickasaw Nation’s Department of Culture and Humanities, craning their heads to look down a ridge and imagine what it must have looked like when French soldiers and Choctaws massed to attack.

Once a Chickasaw village, Ackia became the place where the tribe would ultimately change the course of American history by defeating French Governor Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne, Sieur de Bienville and his army, thwarting French plans to destroy the Chickasaw and limit British influence in the region. Today, a historical marker with details of the battle is the only sign of the climactic struggle that took place here almost 300 years ago.

“One thing you have to do when you’re in the Homeland is kind of use your imagination,” William Brekeen, a cultural interpreter for the tribe, warned as the tour began.

After all, a city of nearly 40,000 people was built on this land, and it has been almost 200 years since the mighty Chickasaw Nation called it home.

Yet, Tupelo is littered with artifacts, burial sites, and ridges once occupied by Chickasaws past. It is the epicenter of the tribe’s Homeland, which stretches through the Blackland Prairie in Mississippi and parts of Alabama, Tennessee and Kentucky.

To the Chickasaw, this is sacred ground.

David Correll, left, tribal greenhouse supervisor in Oklahoma, and Brian Hatton fell in love with the flora and fauna of North Mississippi.

This is why the Chickasaw Nation selected Tupelo as the perfect spot for the Smithsonian-quality heritage center they plan to build near the Natchez Trace to trumpet their culture and history. It is why the tribe buses its people here, 500 miles from Oklahoma, to reconnect with their past. And it is why the tribe has staffed a special homeland affairs office here.

In a very real sense, the Chickasaw are back, and they are here to stay.

“A lot of Chickasaw tribal history and identity was forged here in the homelands,” said Brad Lieb, the Mississippi-based Tribal Archaeologist for the Chickasaw Nation’s Department of Homeland Affairs.

“Governor (Bill) Anoatubby knows the importance of keeping in touch with Chickasaw heritage and to maintaining that living connection with the traditional homeland for Chickasaw people. He is creating opportunities for Chickasaw people to travel that long, 500-mile distance back from Oklahoma to North Mississippi, and Tupelo specifically, to reconnect with their ancestral heritage,” Lieb said.

Candice Blevins and David Correll walk along the Chissa’Talla’ Preserve.

The heritage center will become an additional resource for tribal members to reconnect through. Meanwhile, the bus tours – taking Chickasaws throughout Tupelo, Amory, Lee County, Pontotoc County, and more – will have to do.

The tour bus rolled by many sites important to Chickasaw heritage, including the remains of a Chickasaw village site on the Natchez Trace Parkway, the Chissa’Talla’ Preserve – a nature and cultural preserve on the Coonewah ridge – Tishomingo’s home site, and Moundville, Alabama.

The group made a melancholy last stop in Memphis for one last look at the picturesque Chickasaw bluffs then drove on, back to Oklahoma.

Midway through the first day of the tour, the bus rolled down a wooded road with old, decrepit houses, some of which looked as if they were about to fall in on themselves. Past a vast grassy meadow littered with trees, a large, gray, two-story cabin sat on a hilltop overlooking the Coonewah Creek Valley below.

The nine tribal employees made their way out of the bus and to the other side of the cabin, which looked down onto farmland. They stood surrounded by wildflowers dancing in the breeze, mesmerized at the natural beauty and wealth of exploration opportunities before them. It wasn’t long until they began exploring, peeking into the windows of the cabin and examining some rubble nearby.

Cody Reynolds, a Chickasaw Nation employee, soaks up the Chissa’Talla’ Preserve.

This site was picked over extensively by collectors of Chickasaw relics throughout the 1970s and ‘80s. Eventually, most of one man’s collection made it back to the Chickasaw Nation for preservation. Now, they’ve purchased the land, once a Chickasaw village.

It is impossible to overestimate the power of the homelands to the tribe, seeing and touching it, becoming part of its history, after only hearing tales of it.

To many, the homelands bring an inner peace. For others, seeing the cast aside or obscure nature of some of the most important Chickasaw heritage sites brings back the pain of the Indian Removal Act of 1830, which led to the Trail of Tears and the establishment of the Chickasaw Nation in Oklahoma.

For example, the ancient grave of Piominko, one of the Chickasaws’ most important leaders, is believed to lie beneath a rental house in a Tupelo neighborhood. The site of Ogoula Tchetoka, the first battle against the French, sprawls atop a grassy ridge next to a customer service center off Interstate 22. At the Long Town settlement area, 20 Chickasaw people are reburied near where they lay for centuries until disturbed by hospital construction. In a hidden glade, an impressive stone monument marks the spot in a space between trees. Fifteen yards away is a busy street.

“People ride by this every day and don’t realize the history here,” Brekeen said.

“It’s just sad. Sad we had to leave. We lost so much land here,” said Dixie Brewer, performing arts manager and member of the Chickasaw dance troupe. This was not Brewer’s first time to the homelands. She has danced at a number of sites throughout the area.

The connection to the homelands runs deep for David Correll, greenhouse supervisor for the tribe’s department of history and culture in Oklahoma. After his first visit two years ago, he fell in love with the flora and fauna of North Mississippi.

As he walked through the Chissa’Talla’ site at Coonewah Ridge, Correll kept his eyes peeled for interesting plants.

“Hey what’s this?” he said to Brekeen.

“American Columbo. They used to call it Indian Lettuce. Very astringent.”

Correll immediately plunged into the brush to photograph it.

In fact, at almost every site, medicinal plants could be found. From the multi-use Self Heal, to Echinacea, and purple, spiny thistles. While many people consider some of these plants invasive weeds, the Chickasaw had a purpose for each.

After leaving the preserve, Correll planned to return and bag up several plants to take to his greenhouse. In exchange, he will bring some native plants he’s been cultivating in Oklahoma to leave in their place.

Oklahoma, while it is the home for the Chickasaw nation, lacks something, Correll said. “I feel like it’s home but something is missing. Here, it feels normal… The land is like a pharmacy, like our hospital,” he said.

Correll’s first visit two years ago left him with a vivid vision of what life would have been like for his ancestors on the fertile land near the Coonewah Ridge.

“It was sleeting and ice was sticking to my clothes,” Correll said. “I was sitting down there in the sleet and I could suddenly see our people in the flat fields below the village. The water from the rivers was coming up and covering the fields but our gardens were green and flourishing on the mounds. Our Three Sisters gardens were there… I could see our history come to life. I could see our village full of our people… It felt like home.”

The Chickasaw Nation pre-removal was centered in Tupelo, according to Lieb, so much so that French maps from the 1700s accurately depict how the tribe’s villages consolidated in Tupelo for self-protection.

Archaeological and historical studies since the 1930s have compiled compelling evidence that the city was the site of many Chickasaw towns, battles, and important interactions.

The tribe’s Chissa’Talla’ Preserve on the edge of Tupelo

“The Chickasaw people have stories and oral tradition about all this, but being removed for 180 years to Indian Territory in Oklahoma, everybody has forgotten where some of these actual places were,” Lieb said. “It was up to archaeology to relocate the exact sites, and that’s an ongoing process, but it’s more than half done. That’s why we’re confident about setting up the Chickasaw Heritage Center at Tupelo, establishing other preserves, and commemorating village sites as well.”

The heritage center will be a hub not only for visiting Chickasaws but also for other people interested in learning about the Native American experience.

Tupelo attorney Brad Prewitt is an executive officer for the tribe and director of the Inkana Foundation, which is working to establish a stronger connection to the area. A large chunk of Chickasaw history and culture has its origins in the homeland, and Prewitt said even the Chickasaw language derives its contextual meaning from the distinctive southeastern natural environment which the tribe once called home. The heritage center will seek to explain the nexus between the cultural, the historical, and the natural.

“Chickasaw Nation Governor Anoatubby is very energized about this, and obviously, we’re energized about it, too, as this represents an historic opportunity for the tribe to officially come home in a substantial, exceptionally transformative way,” Prewitt said.

Much like the Chickasaw Nation’s elaborate cultural center in Oklahoma, the heritage center will be a multimodal, active facility with opportunities to experience Chickasaw culture and arts. The site will include interpretations of how life would have been in the homeland. There are plans to restore the land nearby to a prairie-like state, just as the Chickasaws would have burned off the grass around their villages for protection. Nature trails will surround the area,allowing visitors to immerse themselves in the ecology of the Chickasaw ancestral lands.

“With partnerships underpinning our foundation efforts, at the center we’ll explore that theme even historically, by telling a story not only of the Chickasaw people, but connecting them to the greater Southeastern Indian experience through time and place. The center will add meaning to all of it,” Prewitt said.

After its construction within about five years, according to Prewitt, the heritage center will be a unique addition to existing attractions such as the Natchez Trace Parkway and the Mississippi Mound Trail.

“I think that Chickasaw Nation’s reverence for this place marries well with Mississippi’s affection for our roots and our awareness of being a people on an ever-moving historical and cultural journey,” Prewitt said. “I think that there’s a common language of love for the place that can be shared by both people.”

Tupelo has already embraced one of America’s greatest allies within the Chickasaw tribe: Piominko. He is immortalized in statue form in Tupelo’s Fair Park in front of City Hall, or as Mayor Jason Shelton calls it, “Tupelo’s front porch,” just a stone’s throw from a statue of another American legend – Elvis Presley.

Piominko was the Chickasaw equivalent to George Washington. In fact, they were great friends. Washington even bestowed a presidential peace medal on Piominko. His likeness, sculpted by renowned Mississippi artist William “Bill” Beckwith of Taylor, stands stoic in bronze, carrying a long rifle, the peace medal dangling from his neck. He is wearing a Washington-style coat, which would have been blue with gold buttons.

When the tour bus stopped at the rental house where Piominko’s grave is believed to lie, Correll’s eyes grew wide. “We need to buy it,” he said. “It’s important.”

Shelton said Tupelo’s relationship with the Chickasaws is beneficial to both tribe and town, as their history and culture is synonymous with Tupelo’s history.

“This is the native homeland of the Chickasaw Nation and that history is not lost upon us,” Shelton said. “We want to work with them in any way possible to develop that relationship and tell the story of this area. It [the Chickasaw Heritage Center] will have a very significant historical, cultural, economic, and tourism related impact on our area.”

Joe Thomas, who drove the tour bus, said the homeland experience is much like reliving what it means to be a Chickasaw.

“I feel like I’m time traveling each time I come back home,” he said while examining arrow points in a museum inside the Pontotoc post office.

The town of Pontotoc owes its very existence to the Chickasaw because that’s where the land office was set up to handle white settlers’ purchase of Chickasaw lands after the tribe’s removal to Oklahoma.

Moments before, as the bus approached its late afternoon stop there, Thomas took the bus into a parking lot from the wrong direction.

“You’re going the wrong way!” someone yelled, good-naturedly.

“Tourist!” another added.

“No,” Thomas said, smiling softly. “We’re home.”

By Zoe McDonald. Photography by Ariel Cobbert.

LEFT TO RIGHT: Ariel Cobbert, Mrudvi Bakshi, Taylor Bennett, Lana Ferguson, SECOND ROW: Tori Olker, Josie Slaughter, Kate Harris, Zoe McDonald, Anna McCollum, THIRD ROW: Bill Rose, Chi Kalu, Slade Rand, Mitchell Dowden, Will Crockett. Not pictured: Tori Hosey PHOTO BY THOMAS GRANING

The Meek School faculty and students published “Unconquered and Unconquerable” online on August 19, 2016, to tell stories of the people and culture of the Chickasaw. The publication is the result of Bill Rose’s depth reporting class taught in the spring. Emily Bowen-Moore, Instructor of Media Design, designed the magazine.

“The reason we did this was because we discovered that many of them had no clue about the rich Indian history of Mississippi,” said Rose. “It was an eye-opening experience for the students. They found out a lot of stuff that Mississippians will be surprised about.”

Print copies will be available October 2016.

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