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A professor of Meso-American Studies at Columbia happened to marry an attorney who lived in Tampa, FL, - and now you know how Dr. Evelyn Kessler became “a “Kessler” and how a professor with an endowed chair at Columbia University came to be teaching a course on Meso-American Archeology in the intellectual backwater known as University of South Florida(USF).

This was before USF became notorious for having Sammi Al-Arien on faculty and a ‘colleague’ of Al_arien left the World Islamic Studies Whatever and appeared in the land of the Palisimian as leader of Palisimian Jihad.

Unlike some faculty, such as a Professor in the Wymon’s Studies Department who authored the famous “Male Lesbian” article, Dr. Kessler was what one used to expect of a first line academic.

I took the course as a source of data because a friend was having docks installed in Central America and as he put it, “half the time a bucket comes up, it has artifacts in it”.

Naturally, I was curious as to what those artifacts might signify. When I mentioned this to Dr. Kessler, she remarked that warehouses of artifacts existed. What was needed was not more such artifacts, but someone capable of understanding what the culture was that created them.

She was quite certain that well developed trade and ceremonial centers were to be found in Central America, probably about the distance a boat could travel in a day or two.

Oh, before I stop reminiscing, an old, white haired pilot was flying from Honduras to Miami, during a September when no hurricane had occurred and the water had visibility exceeding 130 feet. Over the Bay of Honduras he said he saw a pyramid top in the water and estimated the depth as in excess of 100 feet.

Lots of things were built by entire cultures which flourished and vanished with no record.

That is a warning regarding the durability of the American Republic - defend it or wind up in the dust bin of history.