Joseph Nigg

psimons@thejournal.canwest.com
© The Edmonton Journal 2008
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(www.omnivoracious.com)
How to Raise and Keep a Dragon: Feedback from Kids


by Jeff VanderMeer on February 08, 2008

My friend Joe Nigg, channeling dragon buyer John Topsell, published a book called How to Raise and Keep a Dragon back in 2006. Joe has written a number of wonderful books about mythological and folkloric creatures, but this one had a particularly interesting story behind it--one that's still unfolding. As Joe explains, "A funny thing happened. The book went from a commissioned adult spoof of animal-raising guides to [being] marketing as an illustrated children's book. The book's surprisingly enthusiastic reception internationally (see matches for John Topsell on Google.com) has shown how fervently many young readers dream of raising their own dragon--and that many adults shared that dream as children, some apparently still believing there are such creatures."

Fueling this impression, Joe says that "Topsell lists fictitious Dragon Suppliers in the back of the book," a resource page that has, in part, led to a lot of correspondence from kids--a veritable outpouring. They run the gamut from literal belief and doubt to imaginary play. Sometimes, Joe says, he responds by writing, "John Topsell's dragons have been in myths and stories worldwide since time immemorial. But there are real animals called 'dragons': the Komodo Dragon of Indonesia (which grows up to 10 scary feet long!), and Chinese Bearded Dragons and Water Dragons, tiny lizards that people raise as pets. What I recommend is that you create your own imaginary Dragon friend. Select its breed, size, and color. Name it, and raise it as you read the book."

Below you'll find some wonderful (uncorrected) excerpts from the many emails and letters received by Joe, which once again show just how imaginative and passionate kids can be about the things they love.
       
I loved the book "How to Raise and Keep a Dragon." I live in California, but my parents are unwilling to drive to Dragon House, Inc. to get a miniature Standard Western Dragon. First of all, is there any way to get a dragon egg shipped here? And, my parents have no belief in dragons whatsoever. I need to find some way to get a dragon, no matter what the cost. In addition, I need to know how much they cost. Thanks! how long wold it take for a dragon to fly from canada to south america?
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I am five years old. I want a Standard Western Dragon. I also want the Mushussu Dragon. I want the Piasa Dragon and the Dragon of India. Where can I get them? Can I have a dragon? That is it.
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dose a baby dragon think your its mom wen it haches?
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I have your book and I had wanted to purchase a mini western dragon so I looked in the resources and found a place to purchase a dragon from, so I looked on the internet to look up the place I wanted to get my dragon from, and when I searched it said:"Nothing matches your search."I obviously knew the place you mentioned in the resources wasn't real.I asked my dad to help me find a place where someone sold real dragons on the internet but my dad insisted they were not real.I NEED YOU TO GET ME A LINK FOR A FEW WHERE THEY SELL REAL DRAGONS ON THE INTERNET!!!
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i saw the thing about mouthrot but how do you see it and kier it.
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I read the book "How to raise and keep a dragon" and I think it's FANTASTIC. But still have questions I would like to ask. Does a dragon exists(I really really really wish it does.)? If so, can you please give me the phone numbers of the dragon suppliers in China (If [you] have them. If not,the addresses will be ok.)and send me a picture of a stanrd western dragon(green,if possible.), too. Thank you!
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How big should a miniture dragons room be, at the smallest?
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I am taking care of a standard western dragon and I am wondering where to buy riding equipment for it.
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Why did you lie to me? I was so upset when I asked my mom where Babyon was, because I wanted to train a Mushussu dragon. She told me about how it was now Iraq and that it no longer exists. I hate you!
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What if my dragon goes Buzerk and gets really mean? (not that it has)
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I am an eleven year old fan of dragons, and I am wondering what you think about them. I must ask, do you truly believe dragons are/were real? Please answer truthfully, I do not like being misguided. I would like to discuss this topic more with you, if you don't mind.
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I would like to know if you really have dragons because I would like to get one and I can't get one if they're not real.
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I have a full grown European Dragon, a mini- European dragon, and a European Dragon egg, but where can I find a home for them in a mountain? (I am an excellent trainer but people keep spotting them and faint, while some call the police!) Please reply A.S.A.P.!!!!!!!!
© Omnivoracious 2008
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(The Swarthmore College Bulletin, July 2008)

The Phoenix Through the Ages: The self-renewing bird is one of our most enduring myths

By Heather Shumaker

Unraveling the legend of the phoenix is trickier than it might seem. The fabled bird is so thoroughly entwined in our culture that most people have heard of it, but no one seems to know much about it—“Oh, yeah, it’s that bird that burns up and rises from the ashes, like in the Harry Potter books.” Snazzy new Web sites and dusty library reference books don’t offer much more. One brief entry even said: “There is so much rich history about the phoenix, its story deserves a book of its own.”

Enter Joseph Nigg, perhaps the world’s sole phoenix scholar. He’s author of The Book of Fabulous Beasts: A Treasury of Writing from Ancient Times to the Present—and is known as the Joseph Campbell of fantastical animals. Nigg is writing a book about the phoenix and was just finishing chapter 19 of 20 when I called his home.

The Greeks rooted the tale of the phoenix in Western imagination more than 2,500 years ago, but its story began in ancient Egypt and Arabia. The fabled bird is said to live 500 years or more, and when the old bird is tired, it flies from Arabia to land in Heliopolis, Egypt, the “City of the Sun.” There, it gathers cinnamon twigs and resin to build a nest of spices atop the Temple of the Sun. The sun ignites the nest and the old phoenix dies in flames. A new, young phoenix emerges from the ashes and wings back to Arabia to live another life cycle. The bird’s features have changed over the centuries, but most agree it’s an eagle-like bird with shining red, golden, and purple plumes.

The tale may have evolved from the Egyptian Benu, a sacred bird mentioned in the Book of the Dead that is associated with the sun god Ra and looks like a heron in hieroglyphics—or it may have been mistaken for a cousin by Egyptologists overeager to make a connection. The phoenix—a Greek word meaning “reddish-purple”—turns up first in a riddle by Hesiod. Themes of time and longevity suggest the bird was already well known to those trying to solve the riddle.

Although he lived two centuries later, the Greek historian Herodotus is credited with introducing the legend of the phoenix into Western culture after his travels in Egypt. In his famous Histories (fifth century BCE), Herodotus tells of many new, fantastic beasts, including the crocodile, hippopotamus, and phoenix. Herodotus visits Heliopolis and talks to the temple priests: “They have another sacred bird called the phoenix, which I have never seen, except in pictures. Indeed, it is a great rarity, even in Egypt. They tell a story of what this bird does, which does not seem to me to be credible.” This early Greek version of the phoenix has no fire.

Like all legends, details in tales of the phoenix vary. For instance, its long lifespan is sometimes 500 years, 540 years, or even 1,461 years (the Egyptian Sophic year in astronomy). Some tales claim the phoenix has magical healing powers. Another Greek historian, Pliny the Elder, scoffed at doctors who promoted the use of phoenix ashes to heal wounds. “He makes fun of it,” Nigg says, and asks, “‘How can you rely on a cure that is available only every 500 years?’”

Romans loved the phoenix. Their coins showed the emperor’s head on one side and the phoenix on the other. “The phoenix represented Rome itself, the eternal nature of the empire, that it continues to return with each new emperor,” Nigg says.

But even as Rome began its decline, the phoenix flourished in early Christian Europe. Its message of rebirth and eternal life fit Christian themes, and popes like St. Clement (96 AD) used the phoenix to prove Jesus’s resurrection. Monks included phoenixes in the bestiaries of the Middle Ages, making no distinction between God’s wondrous creations—real or imaginary. During the Renaissance, the phoenix was a popular emblem of royals like Elizabeth I and martyrs like Joan of Arc. “This is the greatest period for the phoenix,” according to Nigg. “Why not? With a word like ‘renaissance,’ a time of rebirth and learning, you definitely have his time.”

Despite its strong Christian associations, the phoenix also appears briefly in Jewish tradition. The Talmud tells how the phoenix (Hol) was the only animal allowed to stay in the Garden of Eden, because it refused to eat the forbidden apple. God granted the bird immortality for its obedience.

Legendary birds around the world are often linked to the phoenix, including what Nigg calls “phoenix counterparts” such as the Persian Simurg, Chinese Feng Huang, and Russian firebird (Zhar-ptitsa). These birds arose from their own local folklore. Swarthmore Professor of Russian Sibelan Forrester says Slavic lore hosts two mythical birds, the traditional firebird (star of Stravinsky’s ballet) and Finist the Bright Falcon, whose name is derived from the Greek phoenix.

The Chinese phoenix Feng Huang (Ho-o in Japan) is a completely separate bird dating back at least 7,000 years. This celestial fowl became entwined with the Western phoenix through Scottish sinologist James Legge, who translated Chinese classics in the 1800s. His word choice persists, even though the Eastern bird has no fire, never dies (so is never reborn), and looks like a pheasant. Its very name represents the union of yin-yang, with “feng” being male and “huang” female. When paired with a dragon, the phoenix represents the empress and the dragon the emperor. This auspicious pairing also symbolizes good luck and harmony between husband and wife.

Both the Eastern and Western phoenix legends begin in the murky days of prehistory. Some say the Chinese tale comes from distant memories of the extinct Asian ostrich. In Egypt, a prehistoric flamingo may have inspired the tale, because heat waves rose from the hot salt flats where it laid its eggs, perhaps suggesting a nest of fire.

But like its legend, the phoenix enjoys a modern rebirth as a mascot, logo, and fairytale. Swarthmore is not alone in seeking a symbol of renewed life and hope after devastating fire. Cities including Atlanta; San Francisco; London; and institutions in Chicago and Coventry, England, have each adopted the phoenix. Its namesake, Phoenix, Ariz., reminds modern Americans that the city stands on the same site as a vanished Native American civilization.

Why is phoenix lore so enduring? “It’s because of renewal,” Nigg says; “it’s hope for rebirth. I think it deals with hope.”

Before becoming a freelance writer two years ago, Heather Shumaker ’91 was a conservationist working for a nonprofit land trust in Michigan. Mother of two young boys, she has written for Parenting, Organic Gardening, and Pregnancy magazines; the Wisconsin Natural Resources Journal; and Traverse. Inspired by her research for her current Bulletin article, she says, her most recent Halloween costume was a phoenix.
 
Copyright 2008, Swarthmore College Bulletin, Swarthmore College.
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(Atlanta's The Sunday Paper, August 24, 2008)

Con artists and cryptomorphs: A case for believing in Bigfoot, Nessie, and all their weird kin

By Stephanie Ramage

Clayton County Police Chief Jeffrey Turner didn’t mince words last week when asked about the employment status of Matt Whitton.

“As of today he is a former police officer. He has been terminated,” Turner told The Sunday Paper on Aug. 19.

Whitton and his friend Rick Dyer had appeared on national television just days before, claiming to have the corpse of a “Bigfoot” they’d found in the North Georgia mountains. On the evening of Aug. 18, however, under pressure from the scientific community to produce the body for inspection, the two admitted that what they really had was a Halloween costume they’d waterlogged in a faulty freezer and then photographed. It was all a hoax.

Whitton had been on medical leave following an injury he sustained in the line of duty. When Turner saw the initial television reports in which Whitton claimed to have a specimen of the legendary creature, the chief did not immediately jump to conclusions.

“I kept an open mind. I said, ‘Let’s wait and see if it’s real.’ But the minute it turned out to be a hoax, he lost his credibility and integrity,” Turner said. “To be a police officer, you have to have both. How can you arrest someone and go into court before a judge if you do not have credibility amd integrity? Therefore he is useless and an embarrassment to this police department.”

A national embarrassment, at that. As if Clayton County didn’t have enough to deal with, hundreds of e-mails poured into the sheriff’s department from all over the country, nearly all asking how Whitton could still be a sworn peace officer and what Clayton County planned to do about an employee who had willfully lied to the world.

When Turner spoke with SP, he was audibly disgusted with his former employee.
“He swore on national television that he had Bigfoot,” he said, and added, “If it had been real, it wouldn’t have been an issue.”

Wait a minute. “If it had been real”?

How could it be real? This is Bigfoot—prom date of Nessie the Loch Ness Monster, drinking buddy of the Yeti, fraternity brother of the Chupacabra and cousin to a whole pantheon of mysterious, never-really-
verified entities collectively known as cryptomorphs.

“Crypto” comes from the Greek word “kryptos,” which means “secret or hidden.” The second part of the word, “morph,” refers to “form.” When these hidden forms are said to be part of the animal kingdom, they become fodder for cryptozoologists—folks who study mysterious or mythical animals.

But why is anyone studying them? Why was Whitton and Dyer’s tale an item worthy of international news coverage? Why are blogs devoted to the topic chock full of postings? Why have there been at least 22 reports of just “Bigfoots”—never mind reports of Mothmen and Swamp Monsters—in Georgia alone? Why, in short, do seemingly normal folks persist in believing in the existence of this bizarre menagerie of beings?

Scientists and hairy people
To a certain extent, we believe in such things because science is always turning up something new, so Bigfoot might not be as crazy a concept as one might think.

Jeff Meldrum, an associate professor of anatomy and anthropology at Idaho State University, thinks it’s important not to rule out anything prematurely, especially when it comes to how primates—whether apes or hominids (human-like life-forms)—might have evolved.

“I was hopeful that they had found something,” Meldrum says of Dyer and Whitton’s fake Bigfoot. “As a student of the evolution of how bipedalism [two-footed locomotion] came to be, for me the prospect of a non-human biped is an important one. I am interested in knowing what selection pressures gave rise to bipedalism. Was it that we needed to be able to look over our shoulders? Was it for defense?”

His interest, however, has put him at odds with creationists.

“They think I am looking for the missing link,” he says. “But I don’t think the Sasquatch is a hominid. I believe that, if it does exist, it is an ape. Even if it were a hominid—and that would be fascinating, but all of this rests on the question of whether it exists—why should this idea strike people with such contempt? Why is there such rejection of even a possibility? Finding something like that shouldn’t threaten human beings’ place in any kind of divine order.”

Meldrum’s interest has also put him at odds with his fellow faculty members. In the summer of 2006, a petition signed by 30 of his colleagues criticized Idaho State’s administration for hosting a Bigfoot conference at which Meldrum was the keynote speaker. One of the petitioners, Martin Hackworth, a senior lecturer in the physics department, told Fox News in November of that year, “Do I cringe when I see the Discovery Channel and I see 'Idaho State University, Jeff Meldrum?’ Yes, I do. He believes he's taken up the cause of people who have been shut out by the scientific community. He's lionized there. He's worshipped. He walks on water. It's embarrassing.”

But Meldrum’s boss, John Kijinski, dean of arts and sciences, defended Meldrum to the news channel, saying, “He provides a form of open discussion and dissenting viewpoints that may not be popular with the scientific community, but that's what academics are all about.”

Meldrum, of course, agrees. “The spirit of exploration is what science is all about,” he says. “There’s an unanswered question, and as a scientist, my job is to find an answer.”

In searching for that answer, he’s come to believe that perhaps humans evolved less linearly than we previously thought. He thinks that rather than one group of hominids giving way to another in an orderly fashion—starting with the very apelike Australo- pithecus ramidis, leading to Australopithecus africanus and Australopithecus robustus, then on to Homo habilis and then homo erectus and homo sapiens neanderthalensis (the slope-browed Neanderthal that looked a bit like some modern-day athletes) and so forth—there may have been much more simultaneous existence.

And he thinks that what was true for hominids could certainly be true for early apes. Maybe Bigfoot is a leftover from a very diverse period in primate history. Who says that we’re the only creatures who get to walk upright in any given era? More and more scientists are in agreement with Meldrum. Take the mysterious case of the Flores hominid, Homo floresiensis, for example. 

In 2003, a group of scientists found some skeletal remains of what appeared to be a tiny full-grown human on the remote Indonesian island of Flores. The skeleton was about three feet tall, with a grapefruit-sized skull. Tiny, crude stone tools were found nearby. Almost immediately, science geeks started bickering over the creature they fondly referred to as “the hobbit.” Later, other similar skeletons were found in the area. Some said they were humans who suffered from microencephaly—the condition of having a disproportionately small skull—while others argued that the “hobbits” were a previously undiscovered hominid species.

In September 2007, the prestigious journal Science published a paper stating that the skeletons were those of a distinct and formerly unknown species of something human-ish, not just deformed members of our own species.

The British newspaper the Guardian, in reporting on the journal article under the headline “Yes, it’s a Hobbit,” quoted Matthew Tocheri of the Smithsonian Institution, lead author of the Science paper, as saying, “What we are beginning to realize is that our recent evolutionary history is much more diverse than we realized. It's a little shot to our over-inflated modern human egos.”

Indonesians, Meldrum points out, had talked about hairy little people living in the forests for centuries, but no one took them seriously. In the early 1800s, chronicler William Marsden wrote in his “History of Sumatra” about a tribe of hairy people who lived deep in the interior, but no one took him seriously, either. The problem with hairy, ape-like people is that wherever there have been apes and people, the line between them has become blurred in legend.

In virtually every culture, cryptomorphs—and not just the hairy kind—romp in rural imaginations to this day. Bigfoot and Nessie, Scotland’s Loch Ness monster, have similar kin throughout the world. Some descriptions of Bigfoot fit the Algonquin monster the Wendigo, a creature who was supposed to have been human until it resorted to cannibalism, which changed it into something half-animal and all evil. 

The ethnographer Wayne Suttles, who studied Native American lore from the '50s until his death in 2005, wrote that Sasquatch is only one of a whole class of monsters the natives of British Columbia call slalakums, “which are said to be everywhere, haunting every nook and cranny of the world.” Nessie has a cousin here in Georgia: The Cherokee believed in a huge, antlered and venomous water serpent called the uctena, which might have been an imaginatively amplified version of the deadly water moccasin, a creature with which they were intimately familiar. 

Fantasy and hucksters
When Joe Nigg ran an Internet search on “Bigfoot,” Google returned more than 743,000 matches. That’s a startling number, but Nigg, author of the wildly successful book “How to Raise and Keep a Dragon” (under the nom de plume of John Topsell), was not shocked.

“We want to believe. Even very rational people want to believe,” says Nigg, whose dragon manual was intended to be a spoof on various pet books that would appeal to adults, but has instead become a children’s favorite. “About a year ago, a friend of mine who had retired after 30-some years of teaching geology called me on the phone and, he was very excited, said ‘Joe, they’ve found fossilized remains of a dragon in an ice cave in Romania.’ I think it was on a show on Animal Planet. Then he called back a few minutes later and said ‘Joe, it’s a hoax. It’s just fantasy.’”

His friend, says Nigg, was sincerely disappointed, although one would think that a geologist, of all people, would have known better.

“We need fantasy. It’s a great distraction from politics, wars, high gas prices, the economy,” says Nigg. “We must have needed it or we would not have created it. It’s interesting that fantastic animals were believed in up until the rise of science. Then, people started asking, ‘Have you ever actually seen a gryphon? A dragon? A manticore?’ Now, we want them back.”

And sometimes we want them back so much that we become easy prey for unscrupulous characters like Whitton and Dyer. Such hucksters are nothing new. In the mid-1800s legendary circus pimp P.T. Barnum huckersterized mermaids in the form of the “Fiji mermaid,” a taxidermy job that slapped orangutan remains onto a fish tail. 

But the biggest hoax of them all was one that changed the course of science for 40 years. We still don’t know who to blame for the famous “Piltdown Man,” but most experts suspect the guy who reported the find, a collector named Charles Dawson. Dawson claimed that a workman at a gravel pit gave him parts of a prehistoric skull around 1912. Shortly thereafter, Dawson passed the fossils off to Smith Woodward, who was keeper of the geological department at the British Museum and a fan of Charles Darwin. Woodward apparently believed that Dawson had turned up Darwin’s evolutionary “missing link.” That link turned out to be modified parts of a modern human skull stuck to parts of an orangutan skull with chimpanzee teeth. But the hoax wasn’t revealed until 1953.

Georgia’s own Whitton and Dyer took to the airwaves once again on Aug. 21, this time telling local television station WSB that their Bigfoot adventure was only a joke and no reason to fire anybody.
“I don’t think it does affect my credibility at all,” Whitton said, explaining that the gag had all started as some YouTube videos and a Web site. “This is Bigfoot. It would be different if I came out and said I had something that was tangible and real, but right now, as far as I’m concerned, there is no real Bigfoot.”

Dyer chimed in, “We told 10 different stories. Every- one knew we were lying.”

Streetwise:
Do you think it’s possible that Bigfoot exists?
DANNY UMALI
AGE: 32
Senior manager, Perimeter
“I want to think that he’s out there somewhere.”

KEVIN SCHINELLI
AGE: 18
Student, Dunwoody
“With all the stuff they’re discovering now, I’m sure he’s out there.”

CANDI KELLEY
AGE: 27
General manager, Bremen
“No, I don’t think it could have lived for so long or reproduced without [someone discovering] proof.”


© The Sunday Paper 2008
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Coming Soon

• "Hatching Dragon Eggs," by Heather Shumaker

• "How to Raise and Keep an Imagination: Joseph Nigg and the Power of Fantasy," by Jeff VanderMeer, Realms of Fantasy magazine