The end of an era

Forlornly watching fire consume Dutch Annies, Virtual Tombstone AZ in Second Life

Ghost train

In a tight spot

On the porch of the saloon in Black Diamond Hills (Second Life)

I'll be your Huckleberry

Trouble in Tombstone Arizona

Three top-level Tombstone public officials are under investigation by the Cochise County Attorney's Office as to whether they have violated Arizona's open meeting laws. Those implicated in the investigation include Mayor Dusty Escapule, City Attorney Randy Bays and City Clerk Brenda Ikirt.

Cochise County Attorney Edward Rheinheimer launched the investigation after receiving a You Tube video (above) from a Sierra Vista Herald journalist, of an Oct. 13 Tombstone City Council meeting. At that time, city officials booted Mike Carrafa, owner of Six Gun City, from the meeting for making “personal attacks” against the mayor and council.

The County Attorney’s Office reviewed the tape and decided to initiate the investigation. Rheinheimer told a reporter that he was disturbed by the way Carrafa was prevented from addressing the council by the city attorney and the mayor in what would seem to have been a completely appropriate manner.

Reprinted from Jeff Hidalgo's November 5, 2009 Tombstone Epitaph article Top Town Officials Under Investigation

Hit link for full article.

Raiko and the Ground Spider

(See if this story matches with Go World cover depicting the apparation of the ground spider. If so. List the issue Season and No., and Link Kiseido)

Raiko, more formally known as Minamoto no Yorimitsu (948-1021), was a warrior of noble birth around whom gathered many legends celebrating his exploits in ridding the country of a variety of robbers, demons and ogres. One of these demons was known as Tsuchigumo, or The Ground Spider.

Folklorists think the name may denote a real person, possibly a brigand or highwayman who made his headquarters in a cave. In the stories, however, Tsuchigumo is a monstrous arachnid, notorious for luring travelers into the subterranean cavern where he dwells and dining on their blood.

Two of these legends contributed ideas to the theater, and from the theater to woodblock prints connected with go. In one of these legends Raiko and his lieutenant Watanabe no Tsuna are out on the moors investigating the strange apparition of a huge skull in the sky. They come to the hut of Yamamba, a man-eating hag. With her lives a boy known as Kaidomaru, brought up among animals and endowed with superhuman strength (his childhood is the subject of an independent cycle of legends). At the boy's own request Raiko receives him as a retainer and bestows on him the name of Kintoki.

Continuing their search, the small band enters a cavern beneath the hut. They make their way past a threatening host of goblins and at length encounter a mysterious woman of baleful beauty. As Raiko studies her he feels himself becoming enmeshed in a net of cobwebs and realizes that he is being bewitched. He cuts through the net with his sword, wounding the woman. She vanishes, for she was nothing more than an emanation sent out by the spider demon himself. They follow a trail of ichor deeper into the cavern, and at the end they find the horrible Ground Spider, which Raiko kills after a violent battle.

In the other legend, Raiko is suffering from a mysterious debilitating ailment and is sleeping in his own mansion. He is guarded by Watanabe no Tsuna, two other retainers named Urabe no Suetake and Usui Sadamitsu, and by the former Kaidomaru, who is now dignified with the name Sakata no Kintoki and who is always shown in prints (and on the stage) as a burly and choleric warrior with a red face. (These four together were popularly known, in an allusion to Buddhist mythology, as The Four Guardian Kings.)

Two of them pass the time by playing go. A goblin appears, sent by the King of Demons (apparently one of Tsuchigumo's titles) to take advantage of Raiko's weakness and kill him. This creature is usually depicted in prints as having three eyes and a long tongue. In the most famous treatment of the subject, Kuniyoshi's great triptych published around 1843 (see Print 6-4), a whole troop of spooks takes shape as if out of a nightmare. Raiko wakes in the nick of time, however, and cuts off the principal demon's leg (see left panel of Print 6-12), whereupon they all vanish. Again Watanabe and his companions follow a trail of blood deep into a cave where they find a huge spider, Tsuchigumo himself. They manage to kill it, and Raiko quickly recovers.

The classic Noh play Tsuchigumo, based on these legends, is divided into two scenes. In the first, the spider, disguised as a sympathetic monk, visits the ailing Raiko. When it begins to spin a web Raiko realizes its true nature and slashes the creature with his sword, whereupon it vanishes. In the second scene, his retainers follow the trail to the spider's cave and destroy it.

This play was adapted as a dance drama for the kabuki stage by the great playwright Kawatake Mokuami in 1881, under the same title, and this is the version familiar to most theatergoers today. A popular moment in the staging of both the Noh drama and the kabuki play occurs when the disguised Tsuchigumo flings out long coils of paper that unravel all over the stage, very dramatically entrapping everyone in a tangled web.

Earlier plays that made use of the spider-as-beautiful-woman theme include the dance-drama Waga Seko no Koi no Aizuchi (Responding to the Siren's Call), by Sakurada Jisuke, staged at the Nakamura Theater in Edo in 1781, and a history play, Yama Mata Yama Oyozume-Banashi (The Tale of a Noble Guardman), by Segawa Joko II, staged at the Tamagawa Theater in Edo in 1818 (see Print 6-1).

Apparition of the Spider Princess

Print 6-11, Kiseido Publishing; Tokyo Japan

Oban diptych by Yoshitoshi Tsukioka, published by Kobayashi Tetsujiro in1886.

Sakata no Kintoki, one of Raiko's retainers, has been dozing with his head on the go board. He suspiciously opens his eyes as a seductive woman -- actually an apparition created by the Ground Spider -- glides by on her errand of mischief. An unusual conception showing Yoshitoshi's fresh approach to traditional themes.

Crystal Palace saloon fire

StevieG (wearin suspenders) keepin his distance from the conflagration in virtual Tombstone Arizona, Second Life.

Tombstone Arizona is InWorld and out of this world

Tombstone AZ in Second Life. StevieG in foreground wearing suspenders

During my college days, I wrote news and feature articles for the local edition of the Tombstone Epitaph. The newspaper made the University of Arizona Journalism department one of the best in the country--we wrote and designed a paper for a real town with permanent residents. And Tombstone's storied history provided added cache that drew visitors from all over the world.

Dinosaur bones, nearby ghost towns, local beauty pageants, and contemporary town power brokers provided a wide palette for reporters. Today you can follow the goings-on in Tombstone at the online version of the Epitaph, still published by the U of A Journalism department.

Inspired by Casey Olbermann's Epitaph article (Culture Section), "Many travel to Tombstone's virtual world," I recently went through the preliminaries (see above graphic) to enter the virtual world of Tombstone Arizona on Second Life. I will post my experiences there from time to time. SG

Go story and poem

Graphic art from Go World magazine, No. 81

Chinese legends abound of people who had chance meetings in the mountains with immortals. The legend of Wang Chih, a woodcutter, has survived the ages.

From Go World magazine, No. 69, Kiseido Pubishing

Wang Chih was a hardy young fellow who used to venture deep into the mountains to find suitable wood for his axe. One day he went farther than usual and became lost. He wandered for a while and eventually came upon two strange old men who were playing go, their board resting on a rock between them. Wang Chih was fascinated. He put down his axe and began to watch. One of the players gave him something like a date to chew on, so that he felt neither hunger nor thirst. As he continued to watch he fell into a sort of trance for what seemed like an hour or two. When he awoke, however, the two old men were no longer there. He found that his axe handle had rotted to dust and he had grown a long beard. When he got back to his native village he discovered that his family had disappeared and that no one even remembered his name.

Inspired by the legend, Ki no Tomonori, a Japanese poet and court official, returned to his home capital from a distant land circa A.D. 900 and wrote:

I've come back home/
There is no friend to play go with/
That place far away/
where an axe handle turned to dust--/
how dear to me it has become!