Safely in Boston. Pledge drive continues.

View 762 Wednesday, February 13, 2013

I am in Boston for Boskone. It has been a very long day and I admit to being tired.

Of course my computer still thinks I am in Los Angeles and on Los Angeles time…

I was reading about pre-Columbian history in North America, and one theory is that the North American tribes used fire to thin the forests and clear land for orchards and maize fields. Lewis and Clarke wrote about deliberate burnings of prairie grasses. There are a number of references to Indians carrying bags of flints which they used to start fires.

One author assumes this had gone on a long time, hundreds to thousands of years. This seems impossible: when you start a fire with flint and steel, the actual spark comes from the steel. Flints don’t start fires, it’s what you strike the flint with, which so far as I know has to be steel although I presume softer iron would do – but surely North Americans did not have even a scrap of iron to put in that bag of flints? So how did they start the fires? Of course it can be done with a bow and wood friction, but having done it, I assure you it takes time, energy, and determination to get that first flame. Much easier with flint and steel.

Obviously if  intentional burning of selected forest areas is an important part of one’s strategy of land management, ways o start fires will be found.  It’s possible that in pre-Columbian days fires were preserved as slow burning frames for travel. We know that in the Greek Bronze Age one Spartan was shamed and no on would give him fire, so fire preservation was probably important until the flint and steel ignition method was developed in both Old and New Worlds, but it could not be discovered in the New World until iron was available. We know that iron axes were bought by most tribal traders. Flint and steel would come not long after the first time someone say a European use it. And prior to the Europeans they didn’t carry the bags of flints that Lewis and Clarke noticed,

Hardly a burning question, but it got me thinking on the airplane. My flight was supposed to be non-stop but it went through Houston, possibly rerouted because of the snow storms last weekend. Weather here is fine, bit cold, but no problems and I am in my hotel room and about to go to bed. First Boskone event is tomorrow evening.

I remind you that the pledge drive continues all week. This is the week I get to bug you about subscribing. You know you want to subscribe. You’ve been meaning to subscribe.  Now it’s time to do it. We have great response from our subscribers and a high renewal rate – there are some of you who can make it higher, you know who you are – but we need new subscribers, too. You won’t find something yuu like or think important here every day, but you pay a lot more for less elsewhere. We get to lots of topics others don’t address and some that no one has thought of. Subscribe today if you haven’t already, and if you wonder when the last time you renewed was, it’s time to renew again!  And good night.