Cliff House Research Articles

Review: Adolph Sutro: King of the Comstock Lode and Mayor of San Francisco, by William R. Huber

Review: <i>Adolph Sutro: King of the Comstock Lode and Mayor of San Francisco</i>, by William R. Huber

Supporting A National Treasure: Spruce Tree House Alcove Arch Stabilization

Mesa Verse National Park, located in southwestern Colorado, honors the cultural significance of the fantastic cliff dwellings of the Ancestral Pueblo people, who lived in the area from AD 600 to 1300. Originally these native peoples lived on top of the mesa, but began building structures into the cliffside in the first half of the 12th century. This ancient development area includes single-room structures all the way up to larger villages with more than 150 rooms. Spruce Tree House is the third-largest and best-preserved cliff dwelling in the Park. It was constructed about 800 years ago in a naturally formed alcove, cut into the Cliff House Sandstone formation. The Spruce Tree House alcove measures about 216 ft wide by 89 ft deep. The alcove is located across a deep, narrow canyon from the Park museum and is a very popular tourist destination.

Preserved Stratigraphic Architecture and Evolution of A Net-Transgressive Mixed Wave- and Tide-Influenced Coastal System: The Cliff House Sandstone, Northwestern New Mexico, U.S.A.

Abstract: The Cretaceous Cliff House Sandstone comprises a thick (400 m) net-transgressive succession representing a mixed wave- and tide-influenced shallow-marine system that migrated episodically landwards. This study examines the youngest part (middle Campanian) of the Cliff House Sandstone, exposed in Chaco Cultural Natural Historical Park, northwest New Mexico, U.S.A. Detailed mapping of facies architecture between a three-dimensional network of measured sections has allowed the character, geometry, and distribution of key stratigraphic surfaces and stratal units to be reconstructed. Upward-shallowing facies successions (parasequences) are separated by laterally extensive transgressive erosion (ravinement) surfaces cut by both wave and tide processes. Preservation of facies tracts in each parasequence is controlled by the depth of erosion and migration trajectory of the overlying ravinement surfaces. In most parasequences, there is no preservation of the proximal wave-dominated facies tracts (foreshore, upper-shoreface), resulting in thin (4–7 m) top-truncated packages. Four distinct shallow marine tongues (parasequence sets) have been identified, consisting of ten parasequences with a total stratigraphic thickness of ∼ 100 m. Each tongue records an episode of complex shoreline migration history (multiple regressive–transgressive phases) in an overall net-transgressive system. The ravinement surfaces provide a stratigraphic framework in which to understand partitioning of tide- and wave-dominated deposits in a net-transgressive system, and a model is presented to account for the sediment distribution and stratigraphic architecture observed in each parasequence. Despite a complex internal architecture, parasequences exhibit a predictable pattern which can be related to the regressive and transgressive phases of deposition. Preservation of wave-dominated facies tracts is associated with shoreline regression, while tide-dominated facies tracts are interpreted to record sediment accumulation during shoreline transgression that also resulted in significant erosion of the underlying regressive deposits. The interplay between erosion, sediment bypass, and deposition during regression and transgression is shown to ultimately control the preservation and stratigraphic architecture of the larger-scale net-transgressive coastal system. While the Cliff House Sandstone exhibits a facies composition and quantitative stacking patterns (shoreline trajectory) similar to other studied examples, differences in the dip-extent of the wave-dominated sandstone tongue has resulted in a more disconnected architecture between the high-frequency cycles. Understanding the variety of stratal geometries that ravinement surfaces can generate is therefore crucial to predicting the spatial distribution and facies architecture in transgressive systems.

Adolph Sutro and the Ruins of the Sutro Baths

The Sutro Baths (1894-1966) was a glass enclosed natatorium complex comprised of several large swimming pools innovatively engineered with an elaborate pipe system that drew water directly from the ocean. Completed in 1894 and opened officially to the public in 1896, it was also home to an eclectic museum and three restaurants. Adolph Sutro (1830-1899) designed the natatorium as part of a larger entertainment development that included a Bavarian inspired castle known as the Cliff House, a tree-lined park with classical statues, and an amusement parkway. During its first decades, the Sutro Baths was host to elaborate aquatic performances, orchestras, and vaudeville-style entertainments. Located in what was, at the time, the desolate inhospitably foggy area of San Francisco, it was an affordable entertainment for individuals from a wide variety of socio-economic backgrounds, even having its own rail line to take visitors from and back to the more densely populated areas of the city. Since 1966, the ruins of the burned and demolished baths have been left to the devices of nature, except for the occasional painting over of graffiti. This paper presents an iconographical analysis of the Sutro Baths ruins. Drawing directly from Erwin Panofsky's (1892-1968) iconological theory, in addition to Walter Benjamin's (1892-1940) definition of the aura, the following analysis will include an assessment of the ruins' expressive qualities, first through a visit to the site, followed by a brief biographical overview of its creator, Adolph Sutro, and concluding with a summary of the historical context of the site. This analysis will reveal ideas of amusement, cultural edification, and the nineteenth century architectural interest in the containment of nature within artificial environments. In direct contrast to this containment or mastery of nature is posed the paradox of the architectural ruin and the slow steady reclamation of nature.

Boarding School Fictions: schoolgirls' own communities of learning

This article explores the fictional world of the schoolgirl annual in the interwar period and the significance of the imagined girls'-only spaces for their intended readership. The article takes the year 1929, the year of Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own, and focuses on two annuals designed for the 12–15 market: School Friend and Schoolgirls' Own. The annual compendium of stories, a very British invention, drew on characters whose adventures were followed in the weekly schoolgirl comics and was published at Christmas, a time when there was little personal space available as families gathered together. The imaginary world of boarding schools such as Cliff House or Morcove offered readers an escape from the hierarchy of family life and expectations of girls' participation in the home. Using the background of Woolf's feminist polemic and a framework informed by the theoretical framing of space by feminist geographer Linda McDowell, the article teases out the meaning of the multilayered nature of stories created by men with no experience of single-sex girls' school, writing as women.

Arbovirus infection is a major determinant of fitness in House Sparrows (Passer domesticus) that invade Cliff Swallow (Petrochelidon pyrrhonota) colonies

ABSTRACT. Wild birds play a key role in the amplification and transmission of many of the arthropod-borne viruses (arboviruses). Determining the extent to which birds are affected by these viruses is critical in predicting the pathogens' spread or maintenance in vertebrate host populations. Little is known about how arboviruses affect amplifying hosts' fitness, especially in cases where these viruses infect nestling birds. Buggy Creek virus (BCRV; Togaviridae: Alphavirus) is an RNA arbovirus transmitted by the Swallow Bug (Oeciacus vicarius) to Cliff Swallows (Petrochelidon pyrrhonota) and House Sparrows (Passer domesticus) that have recently occupied Cliff Swallow nesting colonies. We examined fitness, as measured by fledging success, of House Sparrows occupying Cliff Swallow nesting colonies in western Nebraska. Most nestlings naturally infected by BCRV at 4–6 days of age died, and even older nestlings, when infected, showed fledging success of <40%. Whether ≥1 nestling in a brood was infected with BCRV...

Discussion on ‘Reactivation of landsliding following partial cliff stabilization at Barton-on-Sea, Hampshire’ by M. E. Barton &amp; P. Garvey Quarterly Journal of Engineering Geology and Hydrogeology , 44, 233–248

We are familiar with the sites mentioned by Barton & Garvey (2011) from site visits and by working through a series of back-analyses of the sections presented in their paper. We wish to bring some observations to the authors’ attention, and seek their views. First, the basal shear surfaces of the Hoskin’s Gap, Hoskin’s Gap West and Central Amenity area slips are all shown in the figures of the paper to have occurred along bedding planes situated in the F and H horizons of the Barton Clay, but at different although closely spaced stratigraphic positions. We have followed the line of this slip surface (notionally in the F bed) where it crops out in the cliffs west of the Cliff House landslide nearly as far as Chewton Bunny, and are confident that it follows only one stratigraphic horizon. Hence, we think it improbable that it follows a variety of beds to the east of the Cliff House landslide. However, this upper slide-prone horizon is admittedly more …

Reply to discussion on ‘Reactivation of landsliding following partial cliff stabilization at Barton-on-Sea, Hampshire’ by M. E. Barton &amp; P. Garvey Quarterly Journal of Engineering Geology and Hydrogeology , 44, 233–248

We thank the discussers for their contribution and the interesting questions they raise regarding our paper (Barton & Garvey 2011). We will divide their comments and questions into four sets and answer each of these in turn. A well-developed bedding plane shear surface is developed at 0.2 m above the ferruginous concretionary layer marking the top of Zone F1 in the cliffs fronting the Naish Farm estate. It forms a very prominent and unmistakable feature in a scarp face in this area, which is well seen to the west of the area being considered in the paper. We note that the discussers have been to see this but they make no comment on the problems encountered when trying to trace this surface eastwards towards the Cliff House Landslide and Barton-on-Sea. The scarp becomes a much less discernible feature, being dissected by a number of mudslides, and the area is extensively covered with talus and scrub vegetation. Exposures become very rare, which is not what one expects when a bedding plane shear surface is controlling the morphology of the undercliffs. By dint of struggling through the mud and scrub, we managed to find an exposure [NGR 423038 093065], which is about 50 m west of ‘Tom’s Garden’ (see fig. 1 of the paper), in the correct part of the stratigraphy but were unable to find either polishing or slickensiding along bedding planes above the concretionary layer. We presume, therefore, that shearing along the F2 surface is not continuous from east to west along this portion of the outcrop. We have commented upon this is our paper (on p. 235) and noted that it is a curious feature and an interesting subject for future research. Movement along the F2 surface is resumed further east and was clearly involved in …

“Of What is Past, or Passing, or To Come”: Recent Yeats Scholarship

“Of What is Past, or Passing, or To Come”: Recent Yeats Scholarship George Bornstein The Tower (1928): Manuscript Materials. W. B. Yeats. Richard J. Finneran, ed., with Jared Curtis and Ann Saddlemyer. Ithaca, NY and London: Cornell University Press, 2007. Pp. liii + 670. $99.95 (cloth). Our Secret Discipline: Yeats and Lyric Form. Helen Vendler. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2007. Pp. xix + 428. $35.00 (cloth). Yeats’s Poetic Codes. Nicholas Grene. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2008. Pp. xi + 247. $99.00 (cloth). The Last Minstrels: Yeats and the Revival of the Bardic Arts. Ronald Schuchard. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2008. Pp. xxvi + 447. $110.00 (cloth). Influence and Confluence. Yeats Annual No. 17: A Special Number. Warwick Gould, ed. Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007. $100.00 (cloth). Yeats famously looked both backward and forward from the present, as his celebrated phrase from “Sailing to Byzantium” suggests. It applies well to the five books under review here. These works by Helen Vendler, Nicholas Grene, Ronald Schuchard, Warwick Gould, and the late Richard J. Finneran stand in different ways as major accomplishments by respected senior scholars in the field of modernist scholarship in general and of Yeats studies in particular. We sometimes forget how recent Yeats studies are in the academy. Sixty years ago those pioneers of the first generation of Yeats scholars Richard Ellmann and Thomas [End Page 609] Parkinson had to legitimate in their graduate programs (at Yale and Berkeley, respectively) the acceptance of a doctoral dissertation on so recent a writer as Yeats. Yet in just over twenty years after their resultant breakthrough books, the critical-biographical Yeats: The Man and the Masks (1948) and more textually-based W. B. Yeats, Self-Critic: A Study of His Early Verse (1951), Yeats would already come under fire from poststructuralist and then cultural critics as politically and sexually retrograde. The books discussed here exemplify the impressive textual, critical, and historical scholarship of the generation that came after Ellmann and Parkinson, and therein lies both their glory and their limit. On the one hand, that they bring such historical, biographical, critical, and textual approaches to disparate culminations makes them worth the attention of any student of modernist poetry and, particularly with Finneran’s edition, opens new avenues for younger scholars and graduate students to explore. On the other hand, methodologically the works display an indifference to changes in literary study for the past three decades that leaves plenty of territory for future scholars to investigate. Richard Finneran’s prize-winning edition of W. B. Yeats’s The Tower (1928): Manuscript Materials (brought to successful conclusion by Jared Curtis and Ann Saddlemyer after Finneran’s untimely death) deserves applause both for its textual accomplishment and for its creation of avenues for future work. The final volume to be published in the poetry series of the Cornell Yeats project (there is a separate, ongoing one for the plays as well), its 670 pages display both photo-facsimiles and facing typographic transcription of all known surviving manuscript drafts of the poems in that major modernist volume, including such major and influential works as “Sailing to Byzantium,” “The Tower,” “Meditations in Time of Civil War,” “Nineteen Hundred and Nineteen,” “Leda and the Swan,” and “Among School Children,” among others. Collecting them was difficult, especially in the pre-internet age of card catalogues, handwritten lists, and often expensive travel to collections. Most of them are now in the great Yeats collection of the National Library of Ireland, much of it formerly in Yeats’s son Michael’s private collection at Cliff House in Dalkey outside Dublin, where Finneran and I among others first consulted them. More documents come from repositories like the Berg Collection of the New York Public Library, the Bodleian at Oxford, the Robert W. Woodruff Library at Emory, and the Beinecke at Yale. Their publication here completes the goal of the Cornell Yeats poetry series to make all known surviving manuscripts of Yeats’s poetry available to libraries and scholars throughout the country and the world. That opens a range of possibilities for textual, critical, and historical investigation to researchers not only...

Selected Short Stories of Weldon Kees ed. by Dana Gioia, and: Vanished Act: The Life and Art of Weldon Kees by James Reidel

B o o k R e v ie w s 2 4 1 In fact, The Singular Mark Twain does not seem a heavily thesis-driven study, but Fred Kaplan does show elements of Clemens’s personality that were present throughout his life: curiosity, energy, poor business judgment, self­ blame, and the blaming of others. His approach naturally leads him to under­ estimate and undervalue the more tormented works of Mark Twain’s final years. Kaplan has been roughed up by Shelley Fisher Fishkin and Kevin Mac Donnell (in The Washington Post and the online Mark Twain Forum, respec­ tively) for making inadequate use of recent scholarship and not appropriately acknowledging the scholarship he does use. For instance, Justin Kaplan, strik­ ingly, is not in the index, though his biography is alluded to in the introduc­ tion. There are many small errors of fact, as noted especially by Mac Donnell, and to this list let me add two geographical blunders: Kaplan transfers San Francisco’s Cliff House to the East Bay and the Turkish City of Izmir, with the nearby ruin of classical Ephesus, to Palestine. Despite its faults, The Singular Mark Twain is accurate in the broad details of Clemens’s life, and Kaplan tells the story in an adequate, often engaging, plain style. He is especially effective in describing Clemens’s long slide into bankruptcy and the sad details of Susy’s and Livy’s illnesses and deaths. The general reader will find the biography entertaining and informative. The Singular Mark Twain is in command of the field for the moment, the only one-volume, full-life biography of Clemens. But, no doubt, other con­ tenders will appear. Selected Short Stories of Weldon Kees. Ed. Dana Gioia. Lin coln : U n iversity o f N ebraska Press, 2002. 168 pages, $12.00. Vanished Act: The Life and Art of Weldon Kees. By James Reidel. L in coln : U n iversity of N ebraska Press, 2003. 418 pages, $35.00. Reviewed by Rod Phillips Jam es M adison C ollege, M ichigan State U niversity Half a century after his death, Nebraska writer Weldon Kees (1914-1955) remains a shadowy figure in postwar American literature. Best known as a poet, Kees also produced a substantial body of short fiction and several unpublished novels before suddenly leaving the world of letters to pursue painting, jazz, photography, and filmmaking. His apparent suicide at the age of forty-one (his car was found abandoned on the Golden Gate Bridge, but his body was never found) only added to the aura of mystery surrounding the artist. Now, two new books from the University of Nebraska Press explore the life and writing of Weldon Kees beyond his career as a poet and offer a clearer picture of this obscure but fascinating artist. Poet and critic Dana Gioia edited Kees’s first posthumous collection of short fiction, The Ceremony and Other Stories, in 1984. The new collection, 2 4 2 W e s t e r n A m e r ic a n L it e r a t u r e S u m m e r 2 0 0 4 Selected Short Stories of Weldon Kees, expands on this earlier volume, pulling together fourteen pieces that represent the best of Kees’s forty-three published stories. Three new pieces have been added: “Three Young Priests” (1940), “The Life of the Mind” (1940), and “Every Year They Came Out” (1943). The works contained in the collection point to Kees as one of the finest short story writers of his generation. Many of the stories set in Weston, Nebraska, a fic­ tionalized small town reminiscent of the Beatrice, Nebraska, of Kees’s youth, evoke the dark and narrow lives of the grotesques in Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio. But there is an overlay of gritty, Depression-era desperation that makes Kees’s characters, and the stories they inhabit, even more power­ ful. With their intentionally flat, understated prose coupled with complex psy­ chological portraits of ordinary characters, Kees’s stories move well beyond a western reworking of Anderson’s Winesburg and often seem more like an early precursor to the fiction of Raymond Carver...

An Ocean Beach Diary?

Ocean Beach (part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area) in San Francisco, California, provides readily available access to the seashore for residents of, and visitors to the city. The seashore is the home to shorebirds, but also an important place for recreation. Rather than environmentalists avoiding the beach as part of a larger effort to lessen the impact of visitor use of the beach, the author suggests that environmentalists can be observers/witnesses to monitor the recreational use of the natural resource. Over the years there have been numerous environmental concerns that have impacted Ocean Beach, including wastewater runoff, erosion, and wildlife disturbance. Concerned citizens can take action by becoming involved with the San Francisco Department of the Environment's Ocean Beach Task Force that works on a number related of issues. An interpretive/naturalist presence at the beach or a popular book about the local natural history could effect visitor behavior there, and therefore mitigate against harmful use of Ocean Beach. Description In San Francisco, California, Ocean Beach lines the western edge of the city, all the way from the famous Cliff House restaurant in the northwest to Fort Funston in the southwest. There are no boardwalks with stores or numerous restaurants along its length. The city, including a few restaurants, is on the other side of the Great Highway that lines the coast in San Francisco. The Pacific Ocean waters are cold, and the surfers wear wetsuits. The waves at Ocean Beach are not very large. The National Park Service, through the Golden Gate National Recreation Area (GGNRA), has oversight and management responsibilities for the area. Ocean Beach is exemplary as a public beach because of the easily available access it provides San Franciscans to the seashore. There are numerous bus and streetcar lines that end close to the shoreline. One can hike for miles along its length. On hot days there is a sense of community while crowds gather to watch the sunset at the end of the day. Need for the Resource The ocean provides a dependable and affordable source of recreation for many. It provides cool weather during the summer; it allows one to think of other places, and different ways. Ocean Beach resides at the end of the Western World. Leneek and Bosker (1999) relay the historical importance the ocean played for the literary Romantics and later generations. They tout the beach as a Paradise on Earth. At Ocean Beach, one can commune with the ocean, the sky, and the night. One can listen to the waves and observe bird life. It is also one of the few places where San Franciscans without cars can visit the ocean. On weekends, Ocean Beach is a popular place for bonfire parties. For some, Ocean Beach has become an essential part of their recreational needs. The proximity of the ocean has also had an impact on the mind frame of the city. In San Francisco's early days, during the mid 1800s, many traveled to San Francisco by ship. San Francisco Bay was port for trade and the interior region that was the site of the Gold Rush. Locals have been so enamored of the sea and the rich local marine resource, that it was possible to create marine reserves in the nearby waters like the Gulf of the Farallones Marine Reserve (which include the Farallon Islands) to the west, the Cordell Bank Marine Reserve to the northwest, and the Monterey Bay Marine Sanctuary to the southwest. There is also a National Park Service Maritime Museum in San Francisco, and communities of ocean singers and surfers. For many locals, the ocean has been an integral part of their lives. Looking out towards the horizon, one is reminded of the bigger world with its foreign ports. Personal Experience as Observations For years I have ventured to Ocean Beach to commune with the ocean, the sky, the night, and to observe shorebirds. One can hike unimpeded for many miles along its length. I present myself as the model for concerned citizen as observer, in contrast to the concerned non-visitor. …

Facies architecture and geometry of landward‐stepping shoreface tongues: the Upper Cretaceous Cliff House Sandstone (Mancos Canyon, south‐west Colorado)

The Campanian Cliff House Formation represents a series of individually progradational shoreface tongues preserved in an overall landward‐stepping system. In the Mancos Canyon area, the formation consists of four, 50‐ to 55‐m‐thick and 10‐ to 20‐km‐wide sandstone tongues, which pinch out landwards into lower coastal plain and lagoonal deposits of the Upper Menefee Formation and seawards into offshore shales of the Lewis Shale Formation. Photogrammetric mapping of lithofacies along the steep and well‐exposed canyon walls was combined with sedimentary facies analysis and mapping of the detailed facies architecture. Two major facies associations have been identified, one comprising the mostly muddy and organic‐rich facies of lagoonal and lower coastal plain origin and one comprising the sandstone‐dominated facies of shoreface origin. Key stratigraphic surfaces were identified by combining the mapped geometry of the lithofacies units with the interpretation of depositional processes. The stratigraphic surfaces (master ravinement surface, shoreface/coastal plain contact, transgressive surface, maximum flooding surface and the sequence boundary) allow each major sandstone tongue to be divided into a simple sequence, consisting of a basal transgressive system tract (TST) overlain by a highstand system tract (HST). Within each sandstone tongue, a higher frequency cyclicity is evident. The high‐frequency cycles show a complex stacking pattern development and are commonly truncated in the downdip direction by surfaces of regressive marine erosion. The complexities of the Cliff House sandstone tongues are believed to reflect changes in the rate of sea‐level rise combined with the responses of the depositional system to these changes. Synsedimentary compaction, causing a thickness increase in the sandstone tongues above intervals of previously uncompacted lagoonal/coastal plain sediments, also played a role. This study of the facies architecture, geometry and sequence stratigraphy of the Cliff House Formation highlights the fact that there may be some problems in applying conventional sequence stratigraphical methods to landward‐stepping systems in general. These difficulties stem from the fact that no single stratigraphic surface can easily be identified and followed from the non‐marine to the fully marine realm (i.e. from the landward to the basinward pinch‐out of the sandstone tongues). In addition, the effects of synsedimentary compaction and changes in the shoreface dynamics are not easily recognized in limited data sets such as from the subsurface.

New Sources of Music from Spain and Colonial Mexico at the Sutro Library

The recent discovery of an anthology in manuscript of 124 late-seventeenth- and early-eighteenth-century Spanish theater songs imported to Mexico and three late-eighteenth- and early-nineteenth-century Mexican music manuscripts of theatrical, dance, and salon music enlarges and enhances our knowledge of the secular-music repertory performed in Mexico. The discovery of the anthology of Spanish theater music not only significantly expands the known repertory of baroque Spanish accompanied solo theatrical song but also points to the practice in colonial Mexico of importing and performing theatrical songs by such Madrid court and theater composers as Juan Hidalgo, Juan de Navas, and Juan de Serqueira. The three Mexican manuscripts preserve many of the popular and classical instrumental music genres performed in the aristocratic, ecclesiastical, and upper- and middle-class salons and performance spaces, as well as in the public dance venues, academies, and theaters of the time. A wide range of music is represented: ballet music, performed at the Coliseo in Mexico City; arrangements of Italian opera overtures and arias; various kinds of European and Mexican dance music; and classic-period forms. These manuscripts also reflect an interest among Mexican musicians in earlier music styles and confirm that Mexicans knew and performed the music current in London, Paris, Madrid, Vienna, and elsewhere in Europe. I fortuitously discovered these manuscript collections when I visited the Sutro Library (part of the California State Library) in San Francisco, California, while in search of Mexican music imprints and publications relating to music in Mexico in the extensive Sutro Library collection of Mexican pamphlets. The Sutro Library houses more than eight thousand Mexican governmental and ecclesiastical imprints and other publications, which were inventoried as a Works Progress Administration (WPA) project of the United States government in the 1930s. An extensive descriptive catalog was published by the WPA.(1) The Mexican imprints that relate to music are indeed of interest; however, the four manuscript collections described here are of special importance. The manuscript music at the Sutro Library has never before been studied, and only some of the several hundred other nonmusical Mexican manuscripts in the Sutro Library have been examined in depth by Mexican and North American scholars. The printed and manuscript Mexican materials now in the Sutro Library were purchased by the wealthy San Francisco book collector Adolph Sutro (1830-1898)(2) from the important Mexico City bookseller and publisher Francisco Abadiano and his son Eufemio in 1885 and 18897 Adolph Sutro, born in Alsace, arrived in San Francisco in 1850 at the height of the Gold Rush and established a lucrative career as a cigar importer. Great wealth came to him when he successfully planned and engineered the Sutro Tunnel to drain the Comstock Lode silver mine in Nevada, which at the time was flooded by water and generally inoperative. Influenced by social movements of the era, Sutro became a philanthropist: he built the Sutro Baths (a huge indoor swimming pool) and the famous Cliff House in San Francisco, created the Sutro Forest on San Francisco's highest hill, served as mayor from 1895 to 1896, and laid plans to establish a public library in the city. With the future library in mind, Sutro became a large-scale collector of manuscripts, rare books, and other materials, using the services of agents to buy entire collections in Europe and elsewhere. Before long, his collection included Hebrew, Egyptian, and medieval European manuscripts, and first editions of Shakespeare. To escape an understandably irate wife who had just found out about the mistress he had hidden away in Sutro, Nevada (the town he established near the entrance to the Sutro Tunnel, near Virginia City), Sutro traveled by train from San Francisco to Mexico City, where he encountered Francisco Abadiano's bookstore, one of the city's leading bookshops, which contained an eclectic array of manuscript and printed items. …

Figuring Woolf

Figuring Woolf Ellen Carol Jones (bio) Pity they can't see themselves. . . . Mutoscope pictures in Capel Street: for men only. Peeping Tom. —James Joyce, Ulysses 13: 792-794 I. Mutoscope Pictures "To be happy see what every married woman must not avoid" urges the sign on the mutoscope displayed in the "mechanical museum" downstairs at the San Francisco restaurant, Cliff House. The mutoscope was all the rage at the turn of the century, although, as Leopold Bloom reflects in the Nausicaa episode of Ulysses, its history was part of the larger history of the specularization of women. Using pictures taken by a mutograph, the mutoscope, invented in 1895 by W. K. L. Dickson, is a viewing machine, manufactured by the American Mutoscope Company, beginning in 1895, which created the illusion of movement by employing the "flicker book" principle. The apparatus contained a series of continuous photographs arranged on a horizontal axis. When a customer dropped a coin into a slot, he was able to operate a hand crank, leafing rapidly through the pictures to create the illusion of movement. [End Page 1] Mutoscope Parlors sprang up all over America in the late 1890s. For many years the machines remained in operation in peep show galleries and some are still around in the older establishments. (Katz 844) Objects in this particular mutoscope that every married woman must not avoid and that can be viewed for a dime are piles of laundry and ironing growing ever larger. Thus the objects of household drudgery comically deflate—even as they themselves swell—the aroused expectations of the viewer, coded as male. The oval photograph on the sign, placed between "Married Woman" and "Must Not Avoid" and encircled by aqua clouds that repeat the color of the mutoscope frame, is the famous 1902 G. C. Beresford photograph of twenty-year old Virginia Stephen. What is the "beautiful daughter of the beautiful Julia Jackson Duckworth Stephen" (to quote Brenda Silver) doing on a mutoscope that well may have resided in a less than respectable abode before landing in a mechanical museum in the basement of a San Francisco restaurant? Why does her photograph grace an advertisement imploring us to "See What Every Married Woman Must Not Avoid" in order "TO BE HAPPY"? And why does an upper-middle class Virginia Stephen preside over ever swelling loads of laundry? Of course the photograph could have been placed on the mutoscope sign at any time during the ninety-year span between 1902 and 1992. Indeed, its provenance on the sign probably owes more to the status of Virginia Woolf as camp cultural icon than it does to her status as sexual object, even if Sammy, in Hanif Kureishi's 1987 film Sammy and Rosie Get Laid, does answer his wife's query about who he'd rather sleep with, George Eliot or Virginia Woolf: "On looks alone, I'd go for Virginia." Rosie's question may well play off the 1980s advertisement picturing both Shakespeare and Woolf in the New York Review of Books that exhorts readers: "Here is your chance to sport your literary preferences." But a male sporting a sexual preference for Woolf, going for Virginia on her looks alone, may not solicit quite the desired response from her: surely the joke of her photograph on a mutoscope that promises a peep show of what every married woman must not avoid in order to be happy is Virginia Woolf's "frigidity." Read from a heterosexual perspective, Woolf is found wanting in the sexual department. But as Sammy is well aware, looks alone are what a male heterosexual can fetishize in a lesbian Virginia Woolf.1 The photograph of Woolf that figures so prominently in Sammy [End Page 2] and Rosie Get Laid, taken by Lenare in 1929 at Vita Sackville-West's request, also figures prominently in photographs of her lover's own writing desk at Sissinghurst Castle. An earlier contest, in a 1937 cover article in Time magazine, pits Woolf against Margaret Mitchell and advises that for literary brokers Woolf is the preferred option for a long-term investment in the literary stock market. In the excellent article that opens this special issue, "What's...

Fire Effects and Fire History of Mesa Verde National Park

Mesa Verde consists of a series of mesas in a north to south trend. The mesa tops are narrow strips, cut by numerous canyons of varying depth. Mesa Verde sandstones, particularly the Cliff House Formation, form the canyon slopes. Long Mesa, an area of focus in this study, has an elevation 2180 m at the south to 2517 m at the north end. Long Canyon cuts down to an elevation of 2133 m. The vegetation on Long Mesa is a mosaic of mature pinon-juniper woodlands and mountain shrub associations. Shrub associations range from Gambels oak, (Quercus gambelii), and serviceberry, (Amelancheir utahensis), to Black Sagebrush, Artemesia nova), and Bitterbrush, (Purshia tridentata). Although there is a body of information concerned with the effect of fire on pinon-juniper woodlands, there are no adequate studies of the shrub-rich pinon-juniper ecosystem of Colorado. Succession following fire was documented by Erdman (1970) in Mesa Verde National Park. He reported that annuals dominate initially, then perennial grasses and forbs, followed by shrub invasion. The open shrub stage becomes a "thicket" approximately 100 years after the fire. The shrubs, he suggests, are outcompeted by pinon and juniper trees, which dominate by about 300 years. Fire and its relationship to resource management in Mesa Verde Park has been outlined by Omi and Emrick (1980). Focus was given to succession (cover and frequency of grass and shrub elements) following the 1873, 1934, and 1972 fires, and models predict the possibilities of control over moderate and severe fires in various vegetation classes within the Park. The study was concerned primarily with the nature of fire behavior and various fire-related management tools for use by Resource Management personnel.

Depositional History of the Cretaceous Cliff House Sandstone, San Juan Basin, New Mexico

The basal portion of the Cliff House Sandstone (A, B, and C benches and lowermost La Ventana) in northwestern New Mexico records a major regional transgression (third order sea-level fluctuation). Retrogradational parasequence stacking reflects this overall transgression. Parasequence development during an overall transgression is probably due to fourth order sea-level fluctuations. A measured section through benches A and B (lowermost Cliff House) contains two complete parasequences. Part of a third parasequence is observed before reaching the end of the section. At the base, a flooding surface separates fluvial deposits from a complete regressive shoreface sequence. A second flooding surface precedes deposition of a coarsening-upward parasequence consisting of marine shale, inner shelf transition strata, and finally lower shoreface strata. A flooding event again precedes deposition of a shelfal marine shale/inner shelf transition deposit. The next overlying sandstone unit is found translated at least 16 km, and up to 50 km landward of the previously described section. This unit consists of the C bench and its correlative, the lowermost portion of the La Ventana encounters the following succession: a flooding surface separates fluvial deposits from 8 m of overlying back-barrier strata. Above the back-barrier strata is a 9 in. transgressive lag depositedmore » by marine ravinement processes. Above the transgressive lag is a coarsening-upward succession of inner shelf transition strata overlain by lower shoreface sands. Finally, a flooding surface separates the lower shoreface sands from inner shelf transition strata.« less

Fire Effects and Fire History of Mesa Verde National Park

Mesa Verde consists of a series of mesas in a north to south trend. The mesa tops are narrow strips, cut by numerous canyons of varying depth. Mesa Verde sandstones, particularly the Cliff House Formation, form the canyon slopes. Long Mesa, an area of focus in this study, has an elevation 2180 m at the south to 2517 m at the north end. Long Canyon cuts down to an elevation of 2133 m. The vegetation on Long Mesa is a mosaic of mature pinon-juniper woodlands and mountain shrub associations. Shrub associations range from Gambels oak, (Quercus gambelii), and serviceberry, (Amelancheir utahensis), to Black Sagebrush, (Artemesia nova), and Bitterbrush, (Purshia tridentata). Although there is a body of information concerned with the effect of fire on pinon-juniper woodlands, there are no adequate studies of the shrub-rich pinon­juniper ecosystem of Colorado. Succession following fire was documented by Erdman (1970) in Mesa Verde National Park. He reported that annuals dominate initially, then perennial grasses and forbs, followed by shrub invasion. The open shrub stage becomes a "thicket" approximately 100 years after the fire. The shrubs, he suggests, are outcompeted by pinon (Pinus edulis) and juniper trees (Juniperus osteosperma), which dominate by about 300 years.

The Cliff House Sandstone, San Juan Basin, New Mexico: Model for the Stacking of 'Transgressive' Barrier Complexes

ABSTRACT The Upper Cretaceous Cliff House Sandstone in the San Juan Basin, New Mexico is characterized by en-echelon, NW-SE elongated linear sandstone complexes representing successive phases of coastal sedimentation along the western margin of the Cretaceous Seaway. Detailed analysis of the lithofacies, spatial facies relations, and geometry of the stratigraphically highest Cliff House Sandstone complex in the southern part of the basin indicates a storm-dominated, tidal linear barrier island coast as the depositional environment. The complex consists of four stacked sandstone bodies; each body is bounded above and below by a sharp erosion surface. Offsets of the stacked sandstone bodies along the erosion surfaces mark minor transgressive and regressive shifts of the Cliff House coast. The Cliff House Sandstone is generally known as a transgressive sequence; accumulation of barrier sands, however, took place during the regressive intervals. In subsequent transgressive intervals, part of the accumulated sediment was eroded, and only topographicall low-lying parts of the barrier, e.g., shoreface, tidal-inlets, and lagoonal sediment were preserved.

Potential for Economic Coal Development in Upper Coal Member of Menefee Formation, Torreon Wash Area, Sandoval County, New Mexico: ABSTRACT

In the southeastern part of the San Juan basin, the transgressive La Ventana member of the Cliff House Sandstone represents a near-vertical buildup of barrier-beach sands during a period when sediment supply was in approximate balance with subsidence and shore-marginal environments migrated landward/seaward over a limited horizontal distance. Recognition of these conditions leads to speculation regarding a corresponding back-barrier accumulation of coal-bearing strata. Using logs from both the project-sponsored drill holes and commercial oil and gas tests, the workers have compiled an 8.5-mi stratigraphic cross section oriented normal to the depositional strike. This cross section illustrates the laterally changing relationships between the La Ventana and the upper Menefee. At the north (seaward) end, the interval is principally sandstone with thin tongues of coal-bearing shale and siltstone. Southward the barrier beach sand units split, thin, and give way to increasing numbers of coal-bearing intervals. Five major La Ventana sandstone tongues and a corresponding number of upper Menefee tongues alternate through an interval of about 650 ft. The number of individual coal beds ranges from 3 to 18, and thicknesses range from about 1 to 8 ft.

Stacked Shoreline and Shelf Sandstone of La Ventena Tongue (Campanian), Northwestern New Mexico

The coastal sandstones of the La Ventana Tongue in the San Juan basin, New Mexico, were deposited along the western margin of the Cretaceous Western Interior seaway and form the thickest bench of the Cliff House Sandstone (Mesaverde Group). The Cliff House Sandstone represents the transgressive phase of the Clagget cycle sandstones of the thick (up to 800 ft, 240 m) La Ventana Tongue stacked within a narrow zone due to a gross balance among basin subsidence, eustatic sea level changes, and sediment supply rates. Regional net-sandstone distribution, determined from 920 electric logs, highlights the elongate geometry and depositional strike (N50°W) of the unit. Examination of 760 of the logs from a part of the study area allowed the delineation, correlation, and net- andstone mapping of eight genetic sandstone packages (subunits) within the La Ventana Tongue. Distinctive geometries of sandstone subunits and previous outcrop studies indicate deposition of La Ventana Tongue sediments in wave-dominated deltas and associated strand plain-coastal barrier systems, as well as shelf sandbar systems. Subdued, dip-oriented bulges in shoreline deposits represent deltaic headlands. Shoreline areas between headlands are considered to be strand plains or coastal barriers. Relatively isolated, elongate sandstones in offshore positions represent shelf sandbar systems. Depositional processes inferred to have been important during deposition of the La Ventana Tongue include: (1) delta switching and abandonment, (2) transport of coast-parallel plumes of sand downdrift from deltaic headlands by coastal currents, (3) formation of shelf sandbar systems by def ection of coastal currents from the headlands, and (4) reworking of deltaic sands into thin sand sheets during local or regional transgressions. Inferred sedimentary facies and depositional processes are believed to be similar to those of the modern Nile delta. Wave-dominated systems have been inferred for several other Upper Cretaceous sandstones; differences in gross sandstone geometry are due to imbalances among subsidence, sea-level changes, and sediment supply.