Welcome to the Hotel Transylvania

We celebrated Halloween this year at the Old Parktonian Sports Club in the Bordeaux section of Randburg. (Actually it was Mishief Night, not Halloween. But if Halloween is a foreign concept in South Africa that is only now slowly gaining favor, Mischief Night would be an even tougher sell.)














Costumes, candy and an outdoor showing of Hotel Transylvania.

A Haunted Valley Lodge!

We decorated Valley Lodge a little ... even though we had zero chance of trick-or-treaters on Halloween!

masquerade!

But that didn't stop us from dressing up. I like costumes that are high concept with minimal effort.

Inspiration for this year's costumes ...

Alice the Corpse Flower

For me, Chicago Botanical Garden's Alice the Corpse Flower ... without the hideous smell!











 

Homo naledi rocks!

For Vince, Homo naledi ...

Canus naledi

For Lou & Serge, the much less-celebrated (and faux) discovery of Canus naledi.

 

We bought that beaded skeleton mask from this street vendor!

We skipped out on the movie and headed to Parkhurst for dinner at dog-friendly Coobs.

Happy Halloween from Valley Lodge!

Good news ... when we got home, there were no smashed pumpkins or egged cars at Valley Lodge. No signs of mischief whatsoever. I guess that's a good thing and yet it still makes me kinda sad :(

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times

Jane, Chris and I @ 44 Stanley in the Joburg CBD

We have been entertaining some American visitors since Thursday. Chris and Jane stayed on in Sandton over the weekend after a two week trip through South Africa and a jaunt up to Victoria Falls. They picked the best time and the worst time to visit Sandton and see more of Joburg.

Joburg rolled out the purple carpet for our guests!

Firstly, the Jacarandas are in full bloom. We took them to the Four Seasons Hotel The Westcliff to take advantage of its fabulous view overlooking the Jacarandas of the Parks and Joburg below.

And for their sundowners of course - or in this case, clouddowners.

Sterkfontein Cave

And the Homo naledi exhibition - which was originally scheduled to close on October 11 - was serendipitously extended until October 18 which allowed Chris and Jane to experience this other incredibly ephemeral opportunity. These two circumstances made it the best of times.

They were there!

In one of her previous lives, Chris ran a consulting company back in the USA which helped plan educational exhibits for museums. We introduced Chris to the Rising Star Expedition's Lindsay Hunter who is in charge of designing the National Geographic visual lab experiences for Homo naledi at Maropeng.

But it was also the worst time to visit Sandton. Their visit landed right smack dab in the middle of the EcoMobility World Festival in the Sandton CBD and Jane and Chris stayed right smack dab in the middle of EcoMageddon Ground Zero, the Protea Balalaika Hotel. We had to drive in and out of Ground Zero several times over the long weekend and with all the road closures, detours and restrictions, it was very painful. The worst.

How do we know Chris? Chris was Vince's High School Senior Class English teacher! She was a huge influence on his life and he has seen her and kept in touch with her all these years. She recognized his writing ability amongst the football jocks in the back row and according to Vince, "mercilessly edited and critiqued his work." Two published books as well as several chapters written for other authors' works, countless papers, magazine and journal articles, speeches and talks later, he is in Cape Town right now being interviewed for an upcoming TED Talk documentary on cognitive computing. (see the finished product below!) Thanks Chris!

I wonder if they read A Tale of Two Cities that year. It would have been prophetic. "It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; ... " - Sydney Carton in A Tale of Two Cities

 

Dinner at Home with Family

Vince and I had a once-in-a-lifetime family dinner last night with Professor Lee Berger and our celebrated ancestor Homo naledi in the Cradle of Humankind. Home.

We started with a gourmet meal at Maropeng Museum's Tumulus Restaurant to celebrate the uniqueness of the find and the wonder of this amazing discovery.

Over dessert, Dr. Berger spoke about how the discovery unfolded and its importance to science. I have heard Dr. Berger speak before on the radio and on television but his enthusiasm is truly exciting to experience in person. It was infectious!

Afterwards, we were led downstairs for a private viewing of the fossils with Dr. Berger, with an explanation of some the puzzling and astonishing features of our distant ancestor.

Dr. Berger opened the floor to questions which added a further dimension to understanding Naledi's place in paleontology and anthropology.

Homo naledi will be returning to the University of the Witwatersrand after October 18 for further study and analysis.

Thank you Maropeng Museum and Dr. Berger for this very special evening at home.

Homo Naledi is a Star!

For a self-proclaimed anthropolgy / archaeology nerd like me, Africa is the place to be!










Not only did I get to visit Oldupai Gorge last month when we were in Tanzania, but I came back to South Africa just in time to hear the announcement of the research results from the Rising Star expedition in South Africa's Cradle of Humankind.

In a press conference from the Maropeng Museum on Thursday, September 10, National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence, Explorers Club Member, Wits University Professor and Rising Star Expedition leader Lee Berger - who happens to have been born in the USA - announced ...

... a new species of hominin discovered in the caves outside of Johannesburg had been identified  - Homo naledi! (If you haven't heard the news, then you must be living in a cave yourself! It was splashed all over the international media for days.)

The unique combination of character in Homo naledi skulls and skeletons means that it is unlike any other hominin species and therefore has been classified as a distinct species.  

The word "naledi" means "star" in the Sotho language and Naledi has been assigned to the genus Homo. It shares some features with australopiths (like Sediba, Lucy, Mrs. Ples and the Taung child), some features with Homo (the genus that includes Humans, Neanderthals and some other extinct species such as H. erectus), and shows some features that are entirely unique to Naledi.

Vince and I went to Maropeng in the Cradle of Humankind to meet Naledi in the flesh ... well you know what I mean!















The exhibit was very well presented. Along with an actual fossilized Homo naledi skeleton, there were 3D reconstructions of individual skulls, hands and feet presented next to their respective 3D counterparts of Australopithecus sediba, Homo erectus and Homo sapien. This really helped to show the distinct differences between the species.











The exhibit also included placards with typical questions a visitor might have. How do you know that this is a new species? How do you know it belongs in the genus Homo? Where does Home naledi fit within the human lineage? This is complicated stuff! And yet the answers were very clear, concise and understandable to the lay visitor.

And just in case you wanted more detail, there were a couple of  representatives from the Rising Star team available to answer questions and expand upon the placard explanations.

This was very lucky indeed! One of the excavators, Lindsay Hunter will also be in charge of the design of a future educational exhibit for the museum. We have a friend visiting us in October who is a museum education consultant out of Kansas City. We will definitely be getting these two together!

cover art by paleoartist John Gurche

Naledi will continue to be on display at Maropeng only until October 11. For those of you who can't make it to the Cradle of Humankind before then, you can read about the discovery in the October issue of National Geographic magazine with Naledi on the cover. I've already got my copy!