Day: March 22, 2021

One Shot for Gold: Developing a Modern Mine in Northern California

Posted on by Shanna Farrell

by OHC Emeritus Historian/Interview Eleanor Herz Swent

 

An account of the creation of a modern, environmentally sensitive mine as told by the people who developed and worked it, from the University of Nevada Press Spring 2021 catalog.

In connection with this, Swent will be presenting her work as part of the American Society for Environmental History’s Environmental History Week. Her panel will be on Earth Day, and more information can be found here.

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As this was written, the Mars Rover Perseverance landed, thanks in part to research conducted at the mine in Napa County that was the subject of this book.

This is a different kind of oral history – not the life of a person, but of a mine – California’s most productive gold mine of the twentieth century. Between 1985 and 2002, the mine produced about 3.4 million ounces of gold, transforming the state’s poorest county and changing the industry around the world.  OHC’s Knoxville/McLaughlin project, the basis for this book, comprised forty-eight interviews conducted over ten years.

In 1965, James William Wilder had a successful earth-moving and hauling business and decided to try mining. His research led him to buy the Manhattan mercury mine in the Knoxville District of Napa County. “We called it One Shot. If we don’t make it on this one, we’re out of the mining business.”

In 1974, Willa Baum, director of what is now the Oral History Center, was  advisor for an Oakland neighborhood history project endowed by the NIH, and Eleanor “Lee” Swent was a volunteer, interviewing residents of the Fruitvale district and Chinatown. When Willa learned that Lee had spent most of her life living in mining towns, and that both her father and husband were mining engineers, it seemed that the time had finally come to document one of the most important aspects of California history – mining. In 1986, with the support of the American Institute of Mining, Metallurgical, and Petroleum Engineers [AIME], the Mining Society of America [MSA], and the Woman’s Auxiliary to the AIME [WAAIME], the oral history series on Western Mining was established, and from then until 2001, Lee conducted 46 full-length oral histories with significant figures in the industry. They were men, with three exceptions: Helen Henshaw, the wife of the president of Homestake Mining Company; Catherine Campbell, geologist, editor, and widow of Ian Campbell, California State Geologist and Director of the California Division of Mines and Geology; and Marian Lane, aka Winnie Ruth Judd, wife of a mine doctor. 

In 1978, a young geologist working for Homestake Mining Company, California’s oldest corporation, explored the One Shot mercury mine. “It was just a joy to look at. It has to be one of the best exposed, zoned gold deposits that ever was. It was just a type example of the mercury-hot-springs-gold association; a classic example.”

It was accessible only from Lake County, at that time, the poorest in the state, with a median household income of $5,266 and a population of 19, 548. By 1989, when the gold mine was in production, the income had about quadrupled, to $21,794, and in 1990 the population was 50,631. With funding support from Homestake, a community college branch was subsidized to train local workers, a hospital expanded its services, telephone and electric utility service was extended, and roads were paved. Many of these improvements were lasting benefits to the county. 

The life of the mine was projected to be about twenty years, and most of the key players were available for interviews. It was a rare opportunity to document the discovery, development, and reclamation of a mine while it was happening. In 1991, the Knoxville District/McLaughlin Mine oral history project was launched.

Between then and 2005, forty-eight interviews, from two to seventeen hours long, were conducted with the owner of the One Shot Mine; Homestake officials and a wide range of employees; supervisors and planners from Napa, Lake, and Yolo counties; the Lake County school superintendent, local historians, mercury miners, merchants, and ranchers, as well as some of the most vocal opponents of the mine. Their voices help to tell the story of the mine and a changed community.  

An engineer from New Zealand was manager for the construction. “This was the biggest nonunion construction project that had ever been done in California. It was thirty-odd miles long and we did 3 million man-hours. We engineered the dickens out of everything.” A rancher’s wife appreciated her job as a mine surveyor.  ”I’ve learned invaluable stuff on the computers that I had never had any experience with before.”

“One Shot for Gold” documents the effort to win public support and to obtain an unprecedented number of 327 permits from the federal, state, regional, and local agencies that had jurisdiction. Homestake engineers tell of their research from Finland to South Africa to develop the method of high-pressure oxidation to recover gold from ore without polluting air or water; it has now been copied around the world.  

The mine was named for Donald Hamilton McLaughlin, chairman emeritus of Homestake and a regent of the University of California. In 1961, his wife, Sylvia Cranmer McLaughlin, founded Save San Francisco Bay, one of the first grassroots environmental organizations, that sparked national awareness and led to the first Earth Day, celebrated in San Francisco in 1974. This movement forced Homestake to incorporate environmental protection into its business model. From the beginning, plans for the mine included reclamation as the Donald and Sylvia Nature Reserve, part of the University of California Natural Reserve System. He died at the age of 93 on December 31, 1984, and Sylvia McLaughlin dedicated the mine to him in a ceremony on Saturday, September 28, 1985. The natural reserve named for them is a fitting coda to the story of a modern mine: extracting one precious resource, gold, and preserving another, the natural environment, its air and water.

In 2001, the mine geologist recalled, “NASA Ames research showed up at the door to look at samples of rock from our hot springs terraces that contained fossilized bacterial remains, evidence for the most primitive live on earth, to think through how landers on Mars would go about sampling and looking for evidence of life.”

“One Shot for Gold” begins with the mercury mine at Knoxville and ends with the Donald and Sylvia McLaughlin Nature Reserve. On February 11, 2021, the director of the reserve wrote, “Since around 2010, we’ve had a team from NASA and biogeochemists from various universities working on understanding the bacteria that live in geologic water deep inside serpentine rock, and how those studies can inform exobiologists where to look for life on other celestial bodies.” 

As this was written, the astrobiology Rover Perseverance landed on Mars, ready to hunt for signs of life like those preserved at the depths of the Mclaughlin mine.

OHC Director’s Column for March 2021 features Guest Contributor Shanna Farrell

Posted on by Shanna Farrell

The Importance of Rapport

by Shanna Farrell, March 2021 Guest Contributor

A smile. A nod. A set of shoulders relaxing. A story seldom told. A handwritten note expressing gratitude. These are all examples of rapport, the genuine human connection forged between an interviewer and a narrator. 

Sometimes, when you’re lucky, it happens naturally. There’s an ease between you and your narrator, a kind of simpatico that makes you feel like you’ve known each other for a long time. But in most cases, rapport needs to be earned, built slowly over time in a myriad of ways. Perhaps you have a shared experience, like growing up around horses. Perhaps you share interests, like a favorite author or movie or hike. Perhaps you went to the same college. Perhaps you have nothing in common, but you listen to each other talk without interrupting. Perhaps you look at each other in the eye, and are always on time, and after a while, you become sympathetic to one another, despite your differences. 

Whenever we talk about oral history interviewing, we talk about rapport. It can come in many shapes and sizes. We discuss how to cultivate it during our Introductory Workshop and Advanced Summer Institute, trying to impress upon those who are there to learn from us how it can impact an oral history. Though there are no magic tricks for creating it with someone―aside from treating them as you’d like to be treated―it’s one of the most important elements of an interview. It affects so many things: the stories told; language used to describe something; the openness a narrator feels; how comfortable an interviewer is asking tough questions; the willingness to shed performative layers; the ability to bear witness to a person’s experiences. 

I’ve been in situations where I have good rapport with a narrator. It’s something I’ve felt innately, through all of those nonverbal cues. It showed up in the interview, too, evident in the honesty of an answer and inclination to dig a little deeper, reflect a bit further. You can hear it in the recording, read it in the transcript, see in the tears that are shed on camera. These are the moments that I love―the ones filled with a common humanity―and keep me engaged in the oral history process.

And then there are times that I don’t have rapport with a narrator. The times I’ve used a word―like “strategy”―that I think is innocuous, but is loaded for them. Times that I’ve expressed that I, too, lived in Brooklyn, but it’s not enough to bridge our gap. The times that no matter how much I smile or make eye contact or nod that I can’t get them to open up, to lower the walls they’ve built to protect themselves. But I never stop trying. These are the moments that make me want to keep going, keep working. 

In the time before COVID-19, it was much easier to read these situations. When I was in the same room as the person whom I was interviewing, I could usually tell if something was or wasn’t working, our interactions not flattened by a screen. But now that we’re a year into the pandemic, cultivating rapport is more difficult. When we’re so physically distant from our narrators. We might meet them first over email or the phone, maybe even through a letter. Our first opportunity to smile at them may come right before the interview begins as we’re double checking the settings on our computers. Or we may never have that chance, particularly when the interview is done over the phone. Silences may be misinterpreted, nods go unnoticed, cues from our bodies unheeded. 

remote interviewing

To be clear, I think it’s important to keep interviewing during this time. We need to document our experiences and keep reflecting on our lives. It’s also necessary that the minutiae of the current moment be mirrored in the archives, as our relationship with technology and distance change, and that we carry on with this work using the tools we have to get through these difficult times in the best way we know how. To illustrate how oral history and interview dynamics has evolved and adapted, what’s been lost and gained. 

I’ve learned to lean more heavily on my pre-interviews, the conversations that I have with narrators in advance of the oral history sessions. These are generally meant to go over logistics, inform someone of their rights, go over topics and themes to address in the interview, and schedule sessions. While all of these usual rules still apply, I have become more sensitive to how this initial contact with them can build rapport from afar. I try to laugh more if I find something funny because they might not be able to see me smile. I’m more forthcoming about myself and the things we have in common because they might not be able to see me nod. I give them space to talk, still careful not to interrupt or cut them off, because they might not understand why I’m silent for a few beats during the interview. Above all, I don’t rush these calls. I talk my time getting to know them, answering their questions, and looking for ways to connect. I mail paperwork or email interview outlines when I say I will, using the little things I can control to build trust. 

Remote interviewing may never be the same as sitting down face to face with someone, but rapport remains equally important. It’s in the relationships we build with our narrators that allow us to best honor their lives, making sure their legacy lives on long after they do, in their own words. Human connection means more now than ever before. 

Shanna Farrell will be teaching about rapport and interviewing during our Advanced Oral History Institute, August 9–13. As last year, this year’s interactive institute is remote and draws attendees from all over the world.

New Oral History: “Bruce N. Ames: The Marriage of Biochemistry and Genetics at Caltech, the NIH, UC Berkeley, and CHORI, 1954–2018”

Posted on by Paul Burnett
scientist sitting at desk, 1976
Bruce N. Ames in his office at UC Berkeley, 1976

I realize that the title of this new oral history, “Bruce N. Ames: The Marriage of Biochemistry and Genetics at Caltech, the NIH, UC Berkeley, and CHORI, 1954–2018,” can give the impression of a sequence of institutional histories framed by the life of one researcher; it’s really more about a certain type of scientific inquiry that manifests itself as a career that is both varied and foundational to the work done at each of these places. Dr. Ames studied with H.K. Mitchell at the California Institute of Technology at the beginning of the revolution in molecular biology, which was the coming together of genetics, or the study of inheritance and development, and biochemistry, or the study of the chemical processes that underlie cellular processes. A key part of this revolution of course is the discovery of the helical structure of DNA by James Watson, Rosalind Franklin, and Francis Crick at Cambridge University. But to boil it all down, it became possible to see biochemical processes functioning not only as reactions to changing environments but also as the expressions of a genetic code that could be “switched on” or repressed experimentally. At Caltech, Ames displayed the kind of curiosity that endeared him to scientists like Max Delbrück, whose “phage group” was beginning to look at these biochemical mechanisms of genetics.

There was just a handful of sites in the early 1950s where this new work was being undertaken. Although Ames did his graduate training in biochemistry, he was always “hopping the fence” to look at what was going on in other disciplines, especially genetics. He joined the National Institutes of Health in 1953 as a fellow, and rose to become the Chief of the Microbial Genetics section in 1962. During his time at the NIH, Ames split a fellowship year at Crick’s laboratory at Cambridge and another at Francois Jacob and Jacques Monod’s laboratory at the Pasteur Institute. Historians of science have recorded their suspicions of some of these famous scientists, who learned of Ames’ idea that the biosynthetic pathways of histidine were achieved through the activation of several coordinated genes, which led to Jacob and Monod’s theory of the operon—which is a cluster of genes expressed by a common promoter—without attribution to Ames. Asked about it decades later, Ames seemed surprised that historians of science had documented this observation. But these research programs in which Ames participated laid the foundations of the molecular understanding of life: in 1961, Sydney Brenner (Crick Laboratory) and Monod published the discovery of messenger RNA, or mRNA—a copy of DNA that initiates cellular processes—which is the foundation of the new vaccines developed to protect against COVID-19.

What becomes apparent reading Bruce Ames’ oral history is that he himself functioned as a kind of synthesizer. A restless mind began a research track, produced results, but then became distracted by an active curiosity with respect to research in other areas of biology, or even in social sciences or political philosophy. In the labs he ran at NIH, UC Berkeley, or the Children’s Hospital of Oakland Research Institute, Ames generated interest among colleagues, post-docs, technicians, graduate students—even among undergraduate students or amateur activists—to undertake research in a new direction. Once the program was off the ground, Ames was often already thinking about new areas of research.

Such was not always an easy path, as the expected institutional rigidity and disciplinary boundaries sometimes made for cool receptions when Ames attempted to enter a new field. In the mid-1960s, just before he moved from the NIH to take up a professorship in biochemistry at UC Berkeley, Ames became interested in the chemical preservatives in potato chips. This was the beginning of a long research trajectory in genetic toxicology, or the impact of toxins on DNA, at a time when the relationship between DNA damage and diseases such as cancer was poorly understood. Out of this research, Ames developed a simple inexpensive bacterial test for the mutagenicity of chemical substances, what became known as the Ames Test, which cut dramatically the time and money it took to determine the degree to which chemicals caused cancer using the standard method, animal trials. In the wake of this success, Ames was also frustrated by what he saw as the institutional inertia and the misunderstanding of critics of science and industry. To advocate for a more balanced view of modernity, Ames applied his test to the plants humans eat every day, and found mutagenic chemicals that are produced by the plants themselves in far higher doses than the trace amounts of pesticide residues that accompany them.

In 2000, Ames retired from UC Berkeley and became a senior research scientist at the Children’s Hospital of Oakland Research Institute until his retirement in 2018. During this time, Ames followed the logic of his inquiries into plant toxicity to examine nutrition, specifically the micronutrients that protect our DNA from these mutagenic chemicals or processes. He then embarked on a third career — or fourth or fifth, depending on what we count — of research on micronutrients. With over 550 publications, he is among the top hundred most highly cited scientists across all disciplines. But perhaps more interesting than the story of a peripatetic and pioneering mind is Ames’ frequently proclaimed reliance on the talents of other researchers and technicians, whose widely varying backgrounds and skills, including those of his wife and fellow UC Berkeley scientist Giovanna Ferro-Luzzi Ames, complemented his talents and made the research possible. From oral histories of top scientists, we can easily conclude that science is about leadership, but the skill of leadership is revealed over and over to be the identification, nurturing, and coordination of diverse talents. That will surely be another of Dr. Ames’ lasting contributions to science.

PhiloBiblon 2021 n. 2 (marzo): Subastas y literatura castellana medieval. Una Crónica de Enrique IV manuscrita y tres impresos del s. XVI

Posted on by Charles Faulhaber

Aunque no sea algo que nos ocupe de manera exhaustiva, sí suele ser frecuente que los miembros del proyecto PhiloBiblon indaguemos en los catálogos de las casas de subastas más conocidas. Es obvio que nuestro interés dista mucho de los coleccionistas que acuden a estas citas para engalanar sus bibliotecas privadas con diversas joyas literarias… ¡ya nos gustaría participar en la compra de alguna de ellas, pero nuestro presupuesto, individual y colectivo, no nos da para tanto!

Como es más que evidente, nuestro único propósito es el de incorporar los datos de nuevas fuentes que hasta ahora no tengamos registradas, a pesar del riesgo que ello supone porque, en cuestión de días, si la subasta sale bien para el vendedor, el objeto puede pasar a manos privadas, donde podría ser más difícil seguirle la pista. Aun así, vamos a repasar algunas sorpresas emanadas de estas modernas almonedas, como se las conocía en la Edad Media.

El catálogo 213 de la madrileña casa de subastas El Remate, en el que se describen los objetos subastados el pasado día 18 de marzo de 2021, presenta varios hallazgos destacables. El más importante es un códice de la Crónica de Enrique IV en una de sus dos versiones, la falsamente atribuida a Alonso de Palencia (BETA texid 1812), que es en realidad una mezcla de otras crónicas, incluyendo traducciones del original latino de Palencia. De esta versión, la del pseudo-Palencia, conocíamos hasta ahora 88 manuscritos; si sumamos esta cantidad a los 171 de la versión más extendida, a cargo de Diego Enríquez del Castillo (BETA texid 1485), obtendremos un resultado total de 259, lo que convierte a la Crónica de Enrique IV en la obra de la literatura medieval escrita en castellano que cuenta con un mayor número de fuentes primarias. Sin embargo, hay que notar que casi todas ellas son muy posteriores a la fecha de composición, tal como ejemplifica el códice que nos ocupa. En efecto, la presentación del catálogo de El Remate (nº 261, p. 31) reproduce una fotografía con el folio inicial, numerado como 1 en la esquina superior derecha. Inmediatamente se percibe la presencia en el lado derecho de algunas manchas debidas a la humedad, que han causado algún pequeño deterioro en las esquinas superior e inferior de ese mismo lado, pues presentan una mínima pérdida de texto a pesar de que el folio ha sido restaurado. También puede verse con claridad que se trata de una letra de hacia 1650.

Crónica de Enrique IV – Ejemplar subastado por El Remate. Cat. 213, p. 31, nº 261

Desde la perspectiva de nuestra base de datos, lo más interesante es que el examen del contenido de este manuscrito nos ha servido para identificarlo con uno de nuestros registros, BETA manid 6089, que hasta ahora se encuadraba en la categoría de “Desconocido”. ¿Cómo hemos podido emparejarlos? Porque, además de la crónica enriqueña, la pieza de la casa de subastas también contiene otra obra, la Vida de Juan Rodríguez del Padrón (BETA texid 4007), el conocido poeta gallego cuyas composiciones se encuentran en diversos cancioneros cuatrocentistas. Este texto a veces se ha considerado una invención del s. XIX (como hizo Keith Whinnom), aunque en otras ocasiones sí se ha querido ver cierto resabio medieval en él, o cuando menos renacentista (en opinión de Michel García). Pero dejando al margen el complejo asunto de la fecha de composición, nos interesa más destacar que el primer editor moderno de esta obra, Pedro José Pidal, marqués de Pidal, dijo haber tomado el texto “de un ejemplar de la Crónica M. S. de Enrique IV, de Alonso de Palencia, de letra como del siglo XVI, que tengo entre mis libros” (p. 17, n.). Y, como se lee en el catálogo de El Remate (nº 261, p. 31), el códice que se ofrece en subasta lleva el ex-libris de la biblioteca del marqués de Pidal, lo que certifica con toda seguridad que es ese mismo manuscrito que hasta hoy se consideraba perdido. Así pues, tenemos localizada una nueva fuente primaria de la Vida de Juan Rodríguez del Padrón, que se suma a las ya conocidas de la BNE (BETA manid 5661), que fue manejada por el hispanista Michel García; la de la Hispanic Society de Nueva York (BETA manid 3866), descrita por Charles Faulhaber; y la del Archivo de la Catedral de Palencia (BETA manid 6088), descubierta por Álvaro Bustos.

Una segunda obra subastada es un impreso al que el catálogo (nº 307, p. 37) describe como un fragmento de la traducción del Llibre de les dones, de Francesc Eximenis, vertido del catalán al castellano por el Padre Carmona (según Clausell Nácher) y que se imprimió en las prensas vallisoletanas de Juan de Villaquirán en el año 1542 con el título de Carro de las donas (BETA texid 10663).

Portada del ejemplar de la BNE perteneciente a la colección Usoz (U/791) (BETA copid 4006)

Por la descripción se deduce que se trata tan solo de la última parte, el Libro V, pues el título que se copia no es el que puede leerse en la imagen superior (el de la portada de toda la obra), sino el que se lee en la imagen inferior, que es únicamente el del “Libro quinto del libro llamado carro de las donas […] que tracta del aparejo que los christianos han de hazer para la muerte”. El catálogo también indica que lleva portada propia “arquitectónica de 4 maderas” y que el códice, aunque está cosido, no tiene encuadernación, probablemente porque el impreso original se fragmentó por deterioro. Así pues, este impreso parcial (BETA copid 9237) se une a los otros 19 ejemplares que nos consta conservados de esta edición (BETA manid 5564).

Inicio del Libro V del Carro de las donas, ejemplar de la BNE, colección Usoz (U/791)  (BETA copid 4006)

Otro de los libros subastados que hemos incorporado es un ejemplar de la Crónica ocampiana (BETA texid 1141), en concreto un ejemplar de la segunda edición (manid 6336), impresa en Zamora en 1543 por Juan Picardo, con la financiación de Juan Pedro Mussetti (copid 9244), tal como se lee en la p. 39, nº 324, del catálogo de El Remate. Su refundidor, Florián de Ocampo (BETA biod 2396), destaca por haber sido de los que simpatizó con la causa comunera en la guerra de las Comunidades (1520-1521), como indicó Bataillon. La presencia de sus obras en BETA, a pesar de que muchas de ellas exceden nuestro habitual año de corte cronológico (que es 1520), se debe sobre todo, a la compleja relación que sus escritos cronísticos tienen con la historiografía alfonsí, tal como ha estudiado María del Mar de Bustos.

Portada de la Crónica ocampiana (1543), ejemplar subastado por El Remate (BETA copid 9244)

Asimismo, la descripción del catálogo nº 370 (p. 44) se refiere a otro libro interesante y que prueba la popularidad de la que gozaban todavía a finales del Quinientos las obras jurídicas medievales. Se trata de Las Siete Partidas de Alfonso X el Sabio (BETA texid 1029), con la glosa del licenciado Gregorio López, impresas por Domingo de Portonariis Ursino en Salamanca durante el año 1576 (manid 6335). Se trata de una edición de diez tomos, corregida y aumentada con respecto a la anterior, de este mismo impresor, en el año 1565 (Palau 7092 y 7093), que contiene además un laberinto de adiciones de otros comentaristas, índices y tablas. Con la reproducción de la imagen de la portada de este impreso (copid 9240) terminamos nuestro primer excursus sobre subastas y literatura medieval castellana.

Portada del ejemplar de Las Siete Partidas con la glosa de Gregorio López (Salamanca, Domingo de Portonariis Ursino, 1576) (El Remate. Cat. 213, p. 44, nº 370; BETA copid 9240)

Óscar Perea Rodríguez
(PhiloBiblon BETA – University of San Francisco)

Obras citadas

Bataillon, Marcel, “Sur Florian Docampo”, Bulletin Hispanique, 25 (1923), pp. 33-55.

Bustos, Álvaro, “Poetas de cancionero (s. XV) y personajes literarios (s. XVI): un nuevo testimonio de la Historia de Juan Rodríguez”, en Poesía, poéticas y cultura literaria, eds. Andrea Zinato y Paola Bellomi, Como-Pavía, Ibis, 2018, pp. 41-55.

Bustos, María del Mar de, “La crónica de Ocampo y la tradición alfonsí en el siglo XVI”, en Alfonso X el Sabio y las crónicas de España, ed. Inés Fernández Ordóñez, Valladolid, Universidad de Valladolid, 2000, pp. 187-217.

Clausell Nácher, Carmen, Carro de las donas (Valladolid, 1542). Estudio preliminar y edición anotada, tesis doctoral dirigida por Alberto Blecua y Xavier Renedo, Barcelona, Universitat Autónoma, 2004.

El Remate subastas. Libros y manuscritos. Subasta 213, 18 de marzo de 2021.

García, Michel, “Vida de Juan Rodríguez del Padrón”, en Actas del IX Congreso de la Asociación Internacional de Hispanistas, ed. Sebastián Neumestier, Frankfurt, Vervuert, 1985, I, pp. 205-213.

Palau y Dulcet, Antonio, Manual del librero hispano-americano, Barcelona, Librería Antiquaria, 1923-1927, 7 vols.

Pidal, Pedro José, “Vida del trovador Juan Rodríguez del Padrón”, Revista de Madrid, 2 (1839), pp. 15-31.

Whinnom, Keith, “The Marquis of Pidal Vindicated: The Fictional Biography of Juan Rodríguez del Padrón”, La Corónica, 13 (1984), pp. 142-144.