Happy 2012

The New Year is a promising one for Donner Party buffs, with a new movie, books, and an anniversary or two, plus there's some exciting new research coming out. I'll be reviewing and blogging about these as I view, read, or write them up.

Best wishes for a Happy New Year to all.

Eating crow

Ah, the joys of writing! No matter how hard you try, errors inevitably creep into your work. It's dishearteningly easy to make dumb mistakes, and even if you catch them, your edits don't always make it into the published book. My copy of An Archaeology of Desperation has become a correction copy, with penciled notes scattered here and there throughout my contributions to the book. So you dedicated Donner fanatics can make the following changes to your copies:

p. 8, Figure 1.1: The symbol representing Mary Blue, George Donner's first wife, is defined as "female, divorced"; it should be "female, deceased." This error I deny having made -- evidently it's the result of a miscommunication somewhere along the line -- but it's attributed to me, so I'll correct it.
p. 20, Table 1.1: Sarah Keyes should not be listed.
p. 33: The Donner Party "parted from the other emigrants to Fort Bridger to rendezvous with Hastings"; this gibberish should read "parted from the other emigrants to rendezvous with Hastings at Fort Bridger."
p. 39: "Dorothea Wolfinger, about twenty" should be "about twenty-nine."
p. 56: Jacob Donner's family left Springfield "in April 1847" (tch!) should be, of course, "in April 1846."
p. 57: "in utero" should be italicized.
p. 63: the Fourth Relief left the cabins "on April 17, 1847" should be "on April 21, 1847."
p. 299: "the last three months of 1847" should be "the last months of 1847."

There are no doubt more goofs I haven't noticed yet, and I'd change a lot of other things if I could; I had to leave out many details for lack of space, for instance, and admit I could have worded some passages better. In addition, the editorial staff at the U of OK Press did some tinkering with the citations and bibliography that I don't necessarily agree with. It's possible that the other contributors may have corrections, too, I don't know. But hey, the book is out at last; it is what it is.

So there you have it -- I'm taking my lumps in advance of any reviewer's criticisms. Remember, you read it here first!

Donner Party horror flick

Last May I blogged about a new Donner Party movie in the works, a horror film to be called Donner Pass. Well, it's finished and is being shown today at the Eerie Horror Film Festival in Erie, Pa., according to an article in the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. The directory, Elise Robertson, claims,“The script is so rich in character detail – each of our teens has a complex and surprising arc – all adding up to a meaningful commentary about human nature.” Umm-humm.

From the description, it sounds like a typical unsupervised-teens-meet-killer-creature scenario. As in 2010's Necrosis, a group of young people go to the Sierra for a ski trip, get snowed in, and run into a murderous Donner Party revenant. The Arroyo Films press release states, "A legend persists that the Donner Party fell victim to an evil curse, a hunger that remains in those mountains to this day – even that George Donner himself is still out in those woods, still hunting."

If you can't make the screening today, you can watch the trailer at the movie website. The film will appear in wide release in January, and shortly thereafter will be available on DVD.

Radio interview

On Thursday, October 20, Jeffrey Callison interviewed three of the authors of An Archaeology of Desperation on Capital Public Radio (KXJZ) in Sacramento. Book editors Drs. Kelly J. Dixon, co-director of the dig, and Shannon A. Novak, a bioarchaeologist who examined the bone fragments recovered, and I were on the air for about 20 minutes. You can listen to the show here.

Naturally, there was much discussion of cannibalism. A lot of people seem to think that the goal of the Donner Party Archaeology Project was to prove or disprove cannibalism, but it started in 2003 as a brief dig funded by television program; the goal was actually to continue previous work in the area and look for a hearth. The results were so promising that the archaeologists came back the next year.

True to form, the Sacramento Bee's coverage of the program asserts that "cannibalism continues to be an unsettled question," but "many experts... continue to believe it did occur to some extent." Oh, yeah? Find me an expert that says it didn't happen.

Oh, well, perhaps somebody will read (and understand) the book.

The Book!

Yesterday the University of Oklahoma Press officially released the new Donner Party book, An Archaeology of Desperation: Exploring the Donner Party’s Alder Creek Camp. Call me biased, but I think it's quite a contribution to the literature of the Donner Party, with lots of new and interesting perspectives on the entire episode, and I hope that readers will agree.

Naturally, it's too soon for reviewers to have plowed through it yet, but you can get an idea of what the book is like from the galley of the introduction, which is available here. DiscoveryNews ran an article about it last week, and the University of Nevada has also issued a press release, since several people associated with the university worked on the project.

You can order it directly from the publisher or at Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, and other booksellers.

What the -- ?

Okay, so I find a "Donner Party" hit on YouTube and open this "video" by The Donner Party:



Now, I'm not at all au courant with this sort of thing, so would be obliged if some more with-it reader could explain to me what this is all about.

Bill Maher and the Donner Party

Back in November 2008, when the election was over, I blogged about the frequent use of the Donner Party as a metaphor for the parlous state of national politics. Both liberal and conservative commentators have referred to the other side as a Donner Party ruthlessly savaging their companions in a desperate attempt to survive. One entrepreneur had even made up a Donner political party logo, available on t-shirts, canvas bags, mugs, etc., at zazzle.com.

Last week, humorist/political commentator Bill Maher took it up a notch. On August 5's Real Time, inspired by the recent Congressional debt ceiling debate, he proposed that, like the Republican's Tea Party, the Democrats should have their own radical party-within-a-party, the "Donner Party" -- "We will literally eat each other before we give an inch." He had a lot of fun with the concept, and one fan has even proposed himself as the Donner Party candidate for President. The segment has been posted on a variety of websites, including this this complete version, but caveat viewer: Maher's opinions and language will undoubtedly offend some people.

While I can appreciate the humor of the analogy, it's obvious that none of these people have any clue as to what the real Donner Party was actually about.