[meteorite-list] New York Times Correction

From: Ron Baalke <baalke_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Thu Apr 22 09:54:04 2004
Message-ID: <200202141640.IAA06088_at_zagami.jpl.nasa.gov>

>
>
> There is a short article in The New York Times that reviews the recent
> Willamette meteorite saga.
>
> In the article it refers to the Macovich Collection as the largest private
> collection of meteorites in the world.
>
> Of course, this is not accurate, and upon seeing the story on NYTIMES.COM a
> short while ago, I immediately advised the reporter/writer of the same.
> (While the Macovich Collection is the preeminent collection of aesthetic
> irons, there are several private collections that are much larger in overall
> scope...value...etc.)
>

Here is that article:

http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0213sacredstone-ON.html

Uproar over a sacred Oregon meteorite
New York Times
February 13, 2002

When the American Museum of Natural History opened its gleaming new
planetarium two years ago, it gave its highest place of honor to the
Willamette meteorite, the pitted, 15.5-ton boulder that fell to Earth more
than 10 millennia ago.

But unknown to most of its admirers - or until recently to the Oregon tribe
that considers it sacred - the meteorite has a flat spot at the top, created
by museum curators in 1998 when they cut off a 28-pound chunk and traded it
to a private collector for half an ounce of Mars.

On Sunday, the collector, Darryl Pitt of New York City, sold a 6-inch,
3.4-ounce slice off that chunk for $11,000 at an auction. A second, smaller
piece of a meteorite he obtained in a trade with the Natural History Museum
in London a couple of months ago sold for $3,300.

"This is not anything that is unusual," said Pitt, whose Macovich Collection
is the largest private collection of meteorites in the world.

But the auction dismayed descendants of the Clackamas Indians of Oregon who
regard the meteorite as a spiritual union of earth, sky and water.

"Would someone want to auction off a crucifix, one of the holy statues out
of the Catholic Church or something like that?" asked Kathryn Harrison,
former chairwoman of the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde, which includes
the Clackamas.

The Oregonian, the state's largest newspaper, took up the cause, accusing
the American museum in an editorial on Saturday of showing "disgraceful
stewardship" of the meteorite. "If we had our way, it would be heading back
on the next westbound freight train," the newspaper said.

Dr. David Wheeler, a chiropractic physician in West Linn, Ore., who bought
the smaller thumbnail-size piece that weighs a third of an ounce, said he
wanted to discuss with the tribal members how he might share his new
purchase with them.

"I did it, because I wanted to bring a small part of the meteor back to
Oregon," Wheeler said. "I may end up donating it to them."

Matt Morgan, a meteorite trader in Colorado who runs the Internet site Mile
High Meteorites, bought the larger piece "because it's a historic American
meteorite and one which I don't have," he said. "It's one of the things you
always read about in the books."

Morgan said he and two other investors would cut that piece into six or
seven smaller pieces, keeping some for themselves and selling the others.
"We'd like to recoup some of the investment we made," he said.

The Willamette meteorite, the largest meteorite ever found in the United
States, is believed to have originally landed in Canada, and then was pushed
by glaciers to Oregon's Willamette Valley thousands of years ago. The
American Museum of Natural History bought it in 1906.

Two years ago, after the opening of the museum's Rose Center, the tribes
demanded that the meteorite be returned.

The tribes and the museum settled their dispute with an agreement in which
the meteorite remains in New York and tribal members can conduct a private
ceremony once a year at the center.

But dozens of pieces of the Willamette meteorite were removed over the years
and scattered to institutions around the world.

Meteorite collectors trade pieces of space rock the way boys once traded
baseball cards: a slice of Mars for a chip of carbonaceous chondrite, a moon
rock for a new meteorite find from the Sahara.

Unlike curators of art or fossils, where great value is placed on the
integrity of objects, meteorite curators at major museums participate in the
trading game, giving samples of their collection to private collectors in
exchange for newly discovered rocks.

"In meteoritics, it's long been a tradition to trade pieces of specimens,"
said Dr. Michael J. Novacek, provost of science at the American Museum of
Natural History. Scientists routinely cut meteorites apart for scientific
study exchange and send pieces back and forth for different laboratories to
analyze.

Trading pieces of the museum's meteorites with private collectors allows the
museum to acquire new, rare meteorites, Novacek said. "It ultimately had a
scientific purpose," he said.

In exchange for the 28-pound piece of the Willamette meteorite, Pitt gave a
part of the Governador Valadares meteorite, which landed in Brazil in 1958,
one of a few known to have come from Mars.
Received on Thu 14 Feb 2002 11:40:04 AM PST