{'fraction_non_alphanumeric': 0.028506271379703536, 'fraction_numerical': 0.02394526795895097, 'mean_word_length': 4.625, 'pattern_counts': {'":': 0, '<': 0, '<?xml version=': 0, '>': 0, 'https://': 0, 'lorem ipsum': 0, 'www.': 0, 'xml': 0}, 'pii_count': 0, 'substrings_counts': 0, 'word_list_counts': {'cursed_substrings.json': 0, 'profanity_word_list.json': 0, 'sexual_word_list.json': 0, 'zh_pornsignals.json': 0}}
The “Lost” 1907 Pinacate Diary of Godfrey G. Sykes

Godfrey Sykes did not keep a diary while on the 1907 Carnegie Desert Botanical Laboratory expedition to the Pinacate. At least that was what his son Glenton maintained throughout his life (interview by Bill Broyles, November 30, 1984). While Glenton was a skilled storyteller, he was also self-deprecating, never feeling a need to be on center stage in his own tales, so it was not surprising that he would place his father in the same modest light. Glenton speculated that his father deferred to William Hornaday as an author and trip leader, so did not bother with a journal. He noted the absence of entries in Godfrey’s daily diary from November 1 to December 6, and the presence of a smaller, pocket notebook which contained Godfrey’s survey notes on the expedition, but no narrative. Hornaday’s book, the classic Camp-Fires on Desert and Lava, contained that whole story, and that was plenty, as far as Glenton knew. As it turns out, Glenton was wrong. After Godfrey died on December 23, 1948, his two sons, Glenton and younger brother Gilbert, split his possessions, including his many diaries. Both Glenton and Gilbert were busy with their careers and families, and had neither the time nor the emotional energy to read through the thousands of pages of documents their father had created; it was difficult enough just to divide them. In the 1970s, both sons loaned their sets of Godfrey’s diaries to the Huntington Library in San Marino, California, which microfilmed them and returned the originals. Gilbert died in 1983, Glenton in 1986. In 1990, I purchased from the Huntington a copy of one of the microfilm reels of diaries Gilbert had owned, interested in an 1892 diary that it contained.