After San Diego's Museum of Man, I turned my sights eastward to Explore Maya archives housed in the Palace of the Governors, Santa Fe New Mexico, MARI archives at Tulane University at New Orleans, and The Museum of Anthropology in Philadelphia Pennsylvania. All contain thousands of unpublished documents and photos of Maya monuments from the latter part of the 19th Century and the beginning of the 20th Century.

I took the time to drive out to Santa Fe from California with my partner in glyphs Mary from Australia. She had never experienced the vast deserts of the Great Basin and the high snows and alpine forests of the Rocky Mountains. So it was a delight to share these natural wonders with her. To reach the remaining archives I flew by plane. In every cache of documents, I found details of inscriptions that have since been eroded away and that are related to Classic Maya Era Day activities- they are small details but ones that help me verify or discredit elements of past drawings and to make new ones that I hope will advance the field in the area of Era Day mythic history.

When I start to examine any archive, my mind inhabits another zone completely where time, hunger, and daily concerns just disappear. Its like gold fever in a way. Twelve hours can pass and it feels like I have only been there only two hours! Every photo, every document holds the potential for new discovery and revelation into the ancient mythic mind of the scribe. The pursuit of knowledge for knowledge's sake is still a noble task in my book. Yet once I wake from that trance and the work is over, I suddenly feel the hunger pains in my stomach, and my aching back.

With this note, I post just a few photos. The first is courtesy of the MARI Archives at Tulane depicting a girl at the site of Quirigua standing beside two altars. I hope it gives you a feel for many of the early photos I examined. Another is of me on the Penn campus debating with one of my great heroes of all time Ben Franklin (eventhough he is just a statue).

OK Now its off to Mexico to explore some key Maya sites and monuments South of the border.