Roger H. Werner 1117 Aberdeen Avenue Stockton, California 95209
209 474 7185
http://www.waycool.net is our family web site http://www.backdirt.com is my business web site
I was graduated from Belknap in 1972. I spent the next few years bouncing around various odd jobs/careers (teaching, corrections, law enforcement, retailing, and sales). I was bored to death by work and quite unsure what to do with myself. On a complete lark, I quit my New Jersey state civil service job in July 1974 and came west. It took me over two months to get to San Jose, California, where a friend of mine from Georgetown (Washington, D.C.) was attending law school. California was quite literally the promised land for me and although I never intended to stay I found myself too comfortable to leave. I suppose its the wide open spaces that attracted me: I love the outdoors and California is a place where many people spend a great deal of time in the lovely weather (todays its a balming 106 degrees!). In 1976, I went back to college and in 1977 received a BA in anthropology to compliment by BS degrees in history and geography. I began graduate school in 1977 and received an MA in anthropology in 1982. I started a career in archaeology in 1976 and have been an archaeologist ever since. I've worked all over the west, consulted on projects in the midwest and the Tidewater region, and, was hired to make maps and design databases in the Greece, the Middle East, and the Black Sea region. Its been an interesting life so far; at least I'm never ever bored and not surprisingly, I have never quite grown up. Work has been tough on the body though and I've more broken bones and torn ligaments than I care to count. My passions these days are: My horses and dogs, reading, writing, music, and I rather love my work. I have been married for 25 years, have four children and two grand children. I expect to retire in 4 years but I'm not sure what I want to do with the rest of my life. I suppose I shall just make things up as I go along, which is how I've lived most of my life.
The last time I was in Center Harbor was in spring 1992. I had some business in Cambridge and wanted to take my oldest daughter through New Hampshire and into Quebec, which meant an obligatory stop in Center Harbor. There were some changes to the place and many of the old buildings were gone or boarded. Woodbridge House was a bed and breakfast. We drove out Bean Road to the Center Sandwich Cemetery to visit the Raines’ graves and then drove up the hill to the campus site. Frye Hall had been demolished years before and I knew that but still seeing the empty space where the building once stood with even the basement in filled was not a happy moment. The vestiges of the old Frye Hall and College Road parking lots were barely visible…how many times did I get full of mud walking across the College Road parking lot. The view of Squam Lake from the road to Founder’s Hall remained gorgeous and I recall the peacefulness of that particular day. I walked down the main driveway to the Barn area: Except for being in a state of total disrepair, this area was largely unchanged. I walked through the barn and the rooms looked like the familiar classrooms from twenty years before except all the meteorological gadgets and desks were gone. I went over to the bookstore and found hundreds of key punch cards lying about with the names of books printed on them. I picked up a dozen or so and keep them to this day in my desk.
At the time of my attendance at Belknap, I never cared for New Hampshire per se and for the first two years of so had my doubts about attending the college. Considering how awful my high school grades and SAT scores were I was and remain thankful for having a school to attend rather than a rice paddy in Southeast Asia to walk through. I developed a rhythm for the lifestyle in my third year and by the end of my fourth, I was truly regretful having to leave the place. Nothing in my experience prepared for living in the remoteness of New Hampshire and I found the darkness and the quiet disconcerting, which is perhaps one reason why it took me so long to develop an affinity to the place. I find attitude odd today since I have spent the last 35 years of my life working in places that make Center Harbor seem like Times Square and I have come to relish the dark and the quiet. I thought about my youthful feelings back 1993 and felt feelings of regret; no, pensiveness not regretfulness, and, yes, there was sadness. I honestly cannot recall ever feeling mournful or sad about a place before. I frequently get sentimental about animals and to a lesser extent people but not about place: Standing in the middle of barn area was however oppressively sad and I had to leave. My visit to Center Harbor was thirteen and a half years ago and I still recall my feelings vividly. I thought to myself that the school deserved better and I am sorry that it did not survive: I spent twice almost eight years at my graduate school but do not feel the same degree of attachment…hard to explain…Maybe it was the fact that for me graduate school was so strictly business.
In any event, my academic experiences at Belknap remained unvalidated until I went back to school in 1976. I was never a totally serious student at Belknap but I did reasonably well if for no other reason than I had to maintain decent grades to avoid the draft (in 1972, ironically, I failed my military physical). I attended a California public university and found that what was required academically paled to what was required at Belkanp and I completed a supplemental undergraduate degree, a master degree, and several years of relatedcourse work. Indeed, my Belkanp experiences prepared me well for graduate school (there is a difference between an East vesus a West Coast education) and I had a much easier time academically than the folks who graduated from public colleges and universities in California. I am convinced what made Belknap such a special place to learn was the genuinely intimate association between many professors (and instructors) and students. Anyone who feels a lecture room with 500 or more students is an ideal learning environment has never experienced true learning in a small setting. I have also come to appreciate the true New England liberal education, where the goal is/was personal enlightenment and learning. I confess disappointment that after graduation I was untrained for a career and it took some time before I figured out what best suited by interests and abilities. No question however that Belknap was a great place to learn.
When I left for California I had no clear notion of what to do with my life. I was absolutely certain that my life would never consist of suffering in quiet desperation at an intolerable job (I did learn something from my parents) and I was fairly certain I would not live very long. By the time I was 24, I began to live life (excuse the cliche) "on the edge." I bought myself a hot sports car and later a motorcycle but managed to survive in spite of myself (thanks to some very special friends). I nearly killed myself three times on my cycle and in the third accident almost lost my right foot; the accident left me with a permanent injury (six surgeries over 25 years). Just about every step I have taken since April 1979 has been painful but I never let up for a moment. I broke my left leg in 1990, toe my left knee up in 1995, and trashed my back in 1998. I made it to 30, got married at 31, had 4 children by the time I was 37, and found myself age 40, and then 50. I am approaching 60 and remain convinced that is probably the top end for me so I still live every day as if it is my last. I no longer ride motercycles; horses are not any less dangerous than cycles but at least they move more slowly!
Establishing oneself in the field of archaeology requires years of diligent effort. It took ten years before I made a living wage (fortunately, I married a patient woman). It took another 10 years to establish my reputation (such as it may be). The 1990s brought some very interesting work: Israel during the summers of 1992 and 1993 making maps of a national park in Lower Galilee: I have added some photographs from that trip (they are labeled). In fall 1992, I had some minor consulting work in Athen regarding the (then) pending underground metro. The Greek government was anticipating discoverying many archaeological finds in the city and they had no idea how to manage these data, use them to create predictive models for other parts of the city, or to incoporate graphic, geographic, and tabular data into a coherent useable whole. We were one of the first private concerns to take an off the shelf product and use it for archaeological data management and manipulation, and, the Greek government wanted to pick our brains (I was hoping to get a long term consulting project but that never materialized--Becthel was the prime and they had other ideas). Between 1994 and 1996 I spent much of the summers in Crimea on the Black Sea again making maps of a Greco-Roman city for the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences. I have written about my first trip on our web site waycool.net for anyone interested in finding out what the place was like. I have posted a few photographs of the trip here. I loved Crimea and the people everywhere in the former Soviet Union. What I learned was not easy to accept at first: The Russian people were used by their leaders in much the same way that our leaders use us. Further, our government is far more adept at manipulating public opinion then the Communists ever were (they were obvious and clumsy and they could not even fool their own people). I spent quite a bit of time in Europe between 1992 and 1997 (a couple of trips every year to UK, France, Austria, Belgiu, Netherlands, Germany, Denmark, Romania, Bulgaria, and several former Russian republics) and I ended up feeling more at home there than in my native country. I had a couple of very interesting projects in Oregon between 1993 and 1996. One job required or making a map of an island located in the middle of the Columbia River. The Columbia River Gorge wanted every tree, rock outcrop, Indian rock art and archaeological site, and anything else that existed mapped. We ended up precisely measuring shoreline erosion over 50 years using sets of aerial photographs and then ended up helping the FBI map extensive looting at an archaeological site. At another job, the Forest Service required that we develop a method for comparing the effects of natural blow down of trees by wind to the effects caused by helicopter logging (I would have sworn the helicopter logging effects would have been much worse but the opposite was true).
A bit of political pontification: The United States as it currently exists is strange to me as I am sickened by what I see passing for culture and leadership. The year 1980 was a major crossroads and collectively we Americans followed the wrong path. Except as far as my own life is concerned I have always tried to be optimistic but I see very little cause for optimism today. That a generation with roots in the highly optimistic 1960s could have let this country end up in its current predictament...well, let me just say that the irony is delicious. As I approach retirement, I have asked myself where can one retreat to avoid the idiocy of reality televsion, Walmartization, out sourcing and globalization, crappy roads and schools, poor health care, bad water and air, corrupt government, a budget deficent in the stratisphere, and a trade deficit close behind (not to mention global warming, which of course we are told by our brilliant leaders does not really exist)--it is a long list of problems and I honestly cannot think of a single place to hide; not even foreign countries are immune to such problems. I have had economic success far greater than I deserve and now I wonder what will happen to my children and grandchildren. I guess the idea today is that those families with plenty of money will leave it to their children and those that have nothing...tough luck--work at Walmart and live in a shelter or a car (they do that in my city).
If anyone has traveled to Europe or the Middle East I would love to hear about your trip(s). I never take tours and usually travel alone so I end up in all sorts of crazy situations some of which I discuss on my family web site. My trips are usually very tiring but always very memorable.
Now for some pictures
First some photographs from my Israel trips
The first is of me standing at the bottom step of a mikva or ritual bath located in a first century AD Jewish city that was destroyed by the Romans in 67 AD. The battle was described by Flavius Josephus and the Israel Antiquities Authority requested that we map the double seige ramp, identify the placement of Roman artillery using trajory analysis of excavated ballista shot. We ended up mapping an enture 1 square kilometer national park over two summers.
Of course our efforts in Israel was not all work. Wee often took weekends off and traveled about the country. A favority place for R&R was Akko on the coast. I am sitting on the left. The best beer in Israel is Macabbe.
The best food in Israel is Arabic and the best simple food can be found at what may be the equivelent of Israeli fast food. That's me in front of my favority falafel.schwarma stand in Akko.
The mots common artifact in Israel is pottery and that is me inside of a pottery lab. All the sherds look pretty similar.
In 1994, we changed countries and ended up on the Black Sea coast of Ukraine. We spent three summers there. The first picture is one of me with the harbor of Sevastopol in the background. In 1994, we were the first American group to visit the city since the Russian Revolution in 1917. We were quite a story and were swamped with well wishers everywhere we walked about. This photograph was taken at a great barandeatery overlooking the waterfront. The port below is the base for the Russian Black Sea Feet and in 1995 I got to tour an attack submarine (the tour being led by an ex-KGB intellignce officer). This photograph shows me in what the people on the expedition called mt "Ernest Hemingway persona." I spent a lot of time drinking vodka and watching people.
After a long six weeks in the field we invariably ended up at Odesa (our flights to Vienna were from the airport at this city). Odesa is 20 hours by bus from Sevastopol. This photograph is of me with two friends horsing around. Affectionados of Russian cinema may recognize the scene as the Odesa steps made famous by the famous Eisenstat movie Battleship Potemkin. Obviously, I'm i nthe middle with two friends and co-workers (And students) on either side of me.
On the 1995 visit we met a contingent of US Marines at a cafe and ended up drinking shots of vodka and beer chasers. The marines were on shore leave from an amphibous assult ship (Guadalcanal I seem to recall) and we got a tour the next day.
I shall post more pictures of my trips when I get around to scanning them.
I do not travel as much as I did in the 1990s. I took a sabatical from my career and tried some other things and then hurt my back and ended up on various nasty prescription medications and tethered to my doctor for about 5 years. I grew out of physical condition and lost interest in a lot of things. I had back surgery and ended up in a pain clinic where I essential got back my life. I could not call this a medical miracle but the result was rather miraculous for me. I have been an outdoor person my entire life and being hurt and on various medications kept me largely incapacitated and so I remained indoors much of the time. Once I recovered I wanted to get outdoors but was not able to do all that I was once able to do so easily. On a complete whim, I bought a horse and then another one. The second horse I bought was pregnant and so now I have three! I have to say that like certain prescription medications, horses are habituating! I often ride three or four days a week but spend a couple of hours every day with my critters. I also have two dogs and end up spending more time with my animals than I do with people. Two weeks ago I drove to a nearby recreation area and rode for almost seven hours. I expect to make another somewhat lengthy ride in about two weeks.