Views from the shell

So finally, we near the end. So many of the photos appear stark, but there are some incredibly vibrant highlights creeping over adobe walls and hanging from wrought iron gates.


(Flowers, I'm not sure what kind, from the walls at the Museum Larco Herrera)

At last the bus loads at midnight, an uneventful ride during which I simply couldn’t sleep. Twilight was playing in Spanish, an incredibly weird experience. We’d missed the beginning, and they turned it off before the end.

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By Monday, the little journal I was keeping was written with many Spanish words in it. Interesting to see how quickly one starts acclimating, even though I really was no better at Spanish … okay, I shouldn’t say that. I really did get a lot better by the time we left. It just FELT like I wasn't improving.

So the bus is a nice touring bus with curtained windows and reclining seats that even have barca-lounger style foot rests. The driver operates behind locked security glass. There is an attendant on board, and on this ride, an additional security person. We were reminded of the museum and the troubles. This is the kind of thing that emerges from a 20 year guerilla civil war involving gross examples of terrorism. We had seen pictures of bombed out buses in Lima. But this is 2009. The state department says there are bandits on the highways and no one should EVER travel at night. So, of course, our bus departs at 11:15 p.m. for the anticipated 6 hour bus ride to Casma up the northern coast.

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A very, very, very short trip to Peru, but a very long report. We packed a lot in. This is going to take a while :-)... And if this doesn't show up behind a cut, please forgive me ... I worked on it too long trying to make it work and it won't show me a true preview....

( Words and pictures behind the cut... )

Yes, yes, I've been remiss. There was the end of the semester thing, the catching up after the end of the semester, preparing for the  trip to Peru, going to Peru, recovering from Peru, now in class again, getting Mr. 11 ready for the fairs, having him show ... you get the picture.

An example: this weekend was one of the local fairs Mr. 11 shows in. Since he is such a long-range planner, we spent the entire day last Tuesday and Wednesday starting and finishing most of his projects except for the quilt he made with his grandma. This included washing chickens on a cold day that ensured they wouldn't be dry when they arrived at the fair (nor were we). I had to help build a kiln for class (Ancient Technology and Invention), in between helping him bake bread, cake, etc. and pasting up his photo exhibit. The next day, judging started at 8:30, but I had to be at class at 10. I left him to finish showing his birds (two of which did very well), and raced back to find he'd actually handled himself alone pretty well. Each day we drove 12 miles there morning and evening to feed the birds. In between, we had to finish tearing out, rebuilding and plastering a pit kiln, take care of animals at home, go to school, run errands.

July 4th, we spent at the fair, and took Mr. 11 and a friend to the demolition derby and fireworks, then to friends for a bonfire ... we get home to find a possum had attacked one of Mr. 11's backup fair chickens. The hen was still alive, but had a hole on each side of her head (something that chickens, with their limited intellect, don't need). Mr. 11 has been determined to nurse her back to health one syringe full of liquid at a time, but she's not doing so well and her eyes are still swollen shut. She's taking up a lot of time and space and appears to be resisting the urge to thrive. It isn't the first chicken we've lost this summer to predators, about the 7th (a first for us since in the past we've only had troubles with domestic dogs and one hawk). All this had both of us getting to bed about 2 a.m., only for me to awake to the dog whining and barking to go out with a gurgly stomach. It was 4:30 a.m., and half asleep I let him go. And half asleep I retrieved him, slowly coming out of my fog of sleep to realize the dog's neck and face were wet, he was foaming at the mouth, and as we got into the house I suddenly realized why my eyes were burning: he'd rolled a skunk.

July 5th was spent washing the dog 7 times with various solutions, bleaching the foyer where he'd left his stink behind and defumigating much of the house. We also set live traps for the chicken predators. We ended up with one raccoon and one pig. Pig the cat, that is. That, of course, entailed finding someone to take the raccoon. (We kept the cat). Then there was taking the dog to the groomer in hopes a more thorough washing would help (so now my car smells, too). And Mr. 11 has summer school, and I have school ... and now we're trying to get his projects ready for another fair next week. Today was supposed to be a big workday, but since Mr. 11 decided to burn his thumb off with a glue gun during his summer art class, instead we spent half the day going in to immediate care to be sure the burn didn't need special treatment.

Okay, there, that explains why I spend so much time on LJ right now :-)

Peru report in subsequent posts. Told you there was ketchup coming.
--M

A long but well written article ...

http://www.jhu.edu/jhumag/0609web/farm.html

Engineered corn's vitamin boost

Apparently a tsunami is imminent in the Caribbean, maybe, or it could be later, but there's a big rock that wants to fall ... I hesitate to be skeptical of the urgency, but there WERE to recent warnings about volcanoes that did, indeed, come to pass.


http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/04/090427-tsunami-caribbean-rock.html

FEMA Unveils Nationwide Phone Tree In Case Of Emergency

http://feeds.theonion.com/~r/theonion/weekly/~3/qrgOVke8Jp8/fema_unveils_nationwide

http://www.theonion.com/content/news_briefs/fema_unveils_nationwide?utm_source=onion_rss_daily

WASHINGTON—The Federal Emergency Management Agency on Monday unveiled its new $48.2 million Phone Tree Response System, a program designed...

I remember years ago when World Horror met in Atlanta, paired with a Southern Baptist group. (I always remember the woman with the long southern drawl asking what the world "hoooor" convention was, and the flip reply = we do it for money). We entertained ourselves sitting in the lobby bar and watching all those sensibilities being shaken.

I was intrigued by the pairing in Atlanta of a couple of thousand archaeologists (remember, we do it in the dirt - and often under the influence) with the Junior League of Georgia. I've never seen so many black cocktail dresses and CFM shoes in one place. Watching all those aging (male) archaeologists with their tongues lolling out and their hearts verging on arrest was a thing of utter revulsion amusement. I wasa bit dismayed at one of their big panel displays where, in 6-inch tall letters they extolled the "tra_d_egy" of the public education system.

Flying in to Milwaukee this evening: thunderstorms had just dumped more than an inch of rain. We were coming in over Lake Michigan, which was this deeply dark expanse beneath the grey cloud threads the plane broke through. The heavier rain clouds were above us, cottony and wet, sort of hanging there like cottonballs used to wipe up a mudpuddle. As we came ashore you could see these portside cranes and streaming fog rushing through the gateway they formed, and on either side, marching inland as the temperature rose with the front. You could see it rising, just off shore, tufts, obliterating the flooded fields that were reflecting back that steely light of dusk beneath storm clouds.  The further inland, the more they fog was just little tufts of grey clouds flitting over the landscape, almost as if the patchwork of land was a pond in which puffs of cloud were reflected.

It was an eerie image, like so many stories from the horror movie where some creeping mist or smoke or terror envelops the town. The fog that ate Milwaukee ... as seen from above.

And then we landed, and it was just wet, and dreary, and the fog had misted my windows and mirrors and didn't fade until I'd outrun it.

Coming from a city like Madison, where winter tends to limit such activities as sleeping outdoors and leaving vacant buildings to stand empty, gutted and open to the elements just isn't typical. It's simply too cold for most people and water lines freeze and break, generating huge bills (and fines). I was a bit surprised that just around the corner (literally) from the touristy Peachtree center/convention hotel block downtown and along the three or four block walk to Gladys & Ron's restuarant across from the university hospital, we passed large, multi-story buildings with the windows broken out and people sleeping in the doorways. And I haven't been hit up by panhandlers with such gusto since the Baltimore WFC, more than 10 years ago (where they basically had a gauntlet one had to pass through to get back to the hotel from the waterfront). On a couple of occasions, hotel staff yelled at panhandlers who wandered into the hotel valet area and the mall cop at Peachtree told someone to turn around and leave as they entered the area. Since I decided to leave the pub before the rest of the crew, I was a bit uptight being accosted by four panhandlers in one block, after midnight, by myself. 

Madison would have the panhandlers confined to one block where they would take turns, with police to help enforce it and negotiate the turn taking ... the panhandlers have been known to pull down a decent wage, especially during high school March Madness when all the small town kids are hit up for the first time. Some earn enough to rent rooms. Instead of standing around in the street, homeless people needing a break from the rain  (in Madison from the cold) would hop on a  free city bus and ride it around for a while. There would be no one publicly intoxicated or high in the streets for very long as they would be hauled away to detox right away the moment they became belligerent or began making people feel uncomfortable. There would be no gutted buildings, especially in the downtown, or the owners would be slapped silly with fines and brought up for ridicule at council meetings and in the local paper. Our homeless shelters here are full, especially with working poor and families, and there are people who car camp and a few who eschew the shelters and choose to sleep outside on all but the coldest winter nights: under bridges and in the park shelters. Some of the homeless have organized, and complained about the city rousting them from the parkshelters. They have attracted attorneys and community organizers who have taken on their causes - such that there was even a battle about how it shouldn't be illegal to pee publically, since that targets homeless in the park.

It would probably take the Madison city council only one or two of their typical marathon sessions to "solve" Atlanta's homeless problem.

Which is a kind of unsettling because whether they are mentally ill, addicted or a victim of the economy, we can SEE Atlanta's homeless to rock the sensibilities of the small town folk and make them feel just a little nervous and uncomfortable, and make them think about why. Madison's homeless are almost invisible, almost corporate, as if they really weren't there at all. They are, but we don't see them. 

-M

Hotels that charge $170 a night, plus 11% tax, charge $8.6 for a glass of wine and $7.50 for a glass of beer, have a lot of nerve offering wireless internet at $0.25 per minute. I have dutifully schlepped my laptop from the Marriott to Caribou to gain access (and the coffee around the corner was $1.50 instead of the $3 being charged by the hotel's Starbucks.)

When one is already feeling a bit vertically challenged from the vertigo perspective, flying through thunderstorms is really no help. While others briefly shrieked when the plane bucked like a mechanical bull without warning, my annoyance was, great, it'll take another 10 minutes to get undizzy.

Conferences that helpfully tell you that something is only a "20 minute ride" on the Marta, need to let those attendees know that there is a maze on either end that one must negotiate while hauling bags and bundles and wearing the coat that was needed in Wisconsin, but certainly not in Georgia. The people who create these mazes need to helpfully post signage like "Marriott" with an arrow, to indicate that you must take four 90-degree turns to end up there. What, I'm here?

People with vertigo should not look behind them down steep escalators hauling them four-stories up from a train station ... not unless they are intensely interested in falling back down the stairs.

It would be so nice if food courts would offer at least a couple of restaurants that don't assume people want every food group deep fried. Deep fried salad must be a southern delicacy? What?

--M

This is kind of cool, think of the possibilities (not just of inane tweets, but communication for those who have physical challenges).  And hoping this "cut" works since it kept trying to post it outside of the cut ...
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Okay, so it's been 12 weeks since my last confession ... but I finally completed my qualifying exams today (8 hours of regurgitation of timed answers to blind questions based on quite literally more than 500 books and research papers -- most of which I tried to cram into my head in the last couple of weeks). So sometime in the next two weeks I may hear that I'll get my MA. Hoo boy. And only how many more decades before the PhD? I'm also still waiting to hear if I'll be funded next year. I'm becoming VERY impatient.

...and I come back in and LJ it looks like FB (which has also been a timesink) and it's very scary here because people of cyrilic (sp) have "friended" me and I see no way of unfriending them and I'm quite sure they aren't REALLY friends.

So my apologies. I've caught up with a lot of people on Facebook, but some here aren't there and I feel very bad (though some of you, like DI should be advised I've posted a photo of you!)

--M

Has it really been since November? My apologies. I've had a few nudges, but never quite made it here ... and then there was this awkward timing of two computers going down at the same time, followed by the need to buy a third while the others were being repaired and thus the need to set up software and find missing email and, well, you know the drill.

I ended the semester on a whimper ... as in, there was no clean break since I have my quals this semester, plus 10 credits, but I'm not teaching this time. I really enjoy teaching, and that's probably my downfall. I end up spending more time working with students and doing class prep than I should. Last semester was probably the most rewarding and challenging of the semesters to teach as I was teaching cultural anthropology, biological anthropology and archaeology all neatly wrapped up into one course. I had to pretty much learn some of the biological material before I could teach it :-) ... But the archaeology professor really wasn't interested in having much to do with class prep. He didn't meet with us and gave us only  broad guidance (like teach the origins of agriculture this week) without telling us what he was planning to teach. By default I more or less ended up being the main link with him to bring back to the rest what we were supposed to do. It was a bit more work than expected, but good in having the opportunity to gain more experience building lesson plans. Sure :-)

I have finally decided what I want to be when I grow up ... sort of. At least I have settled on my geographic region and the basic subject matter of my research. I kept waffling between Northern Europe, North America and the Andes. I've settled on the Andes (my adviser is nudging me toward the Titicaca basin of Peru). My topical interests are then the transition to agriculture (go figure) and the consequent (or not ) changes to material representations of ideology. There, much better than "ummmm ..." when people asked me what I'm going to do with archaeology. It pulls in my interests in agriculture, in hunter-gatherer/forager communities, in subsistence and environment  AND religion and iconography, all neatly wrapped up in one little concept. Now if I can just find the kind of data necessary to support some sort of thesis on the subject ...

And now, since my quals are coming up in April, I  spent the break, and weekly hereafter, going over the 13 courses I've had in archaeology in recent years trying to remember ALL of the literature, plus reading the pile of archaeology and anthropology journals that have been collecting unread since last year because they have been known to spring "new discoveries" questions on our qualifying exams. I speed read through about 25 journals, flaggin about 15 articles that are actually going to be useful. Spent most of break entering details from past courses and these new readings into End Note. I'd completely forgotten some of this stuff. Plus I have a directed study this semester in Andean archaeology seeing as I'll have an area question on my quals on the subject, and I'm pretty sure I don't know enough. There's also a geography course in environment and subsistence I'll be taking, and Wisconsin archaeology which I should be somewhat familiar with as I my field school was in WisArch, and I did a research paper on Wisconsin rock art.

I meant to cough up some fall photos a while back, which I may still do because they are colorful and everything is so drab and nasty now. But I have to get my computer -- with all its new filtering technologies designed to keep the bad guys out -- to let me upload them.

I'm sorry for all the missed birthdays, news and other things I've failed to comment on over the last 8 weeks. Really, I will try to do better, though, of course, I can't guarantee it. But I'm hoping the part where I'm not teaching this semester will give me a few extra hours to work with a week.

Happy New Year! Happy MLK Day! And looking forward to a glorious Obama day tomorrow!

--M
 

From:
http://marriedtothesea.com/

Pfff .... it's dusty in here!

Please forgive the lengthy silence (what, you didn't notice?), and how far behind I am on flist (which I KNOW I'll never catch up on) but I've been weathering a perfect storm of grading 84 essay exams and 84 term papers while carrying 9 credits, each credit of which demanded it get every last minute of my priority even while six of them were asking me to take simultaneous exams and six of them were demanding near-weekly papers and ... well, three of them have been excised and all the essays and term papers have been graded and received with horror by way more students than should have done so poorly, and so now I'm simply procrastinating the business I have with the other six credits. Of course, the class I dumped was probably the only interesting class I had this semester (Greek Classical Archaeology) but it also wasn't a required class that involves research pertinent to my qualifying exams so off went its head.

It has been a busy month or two. I have a new barn and new fencing to enclose it. I had to suffer through three weeks of Mr. 11 being grounded from video games (really, he has NO IDEA how much I suffered for him ... I had to listen to the whining). The grounding occurred because Mr. 11 apparently doesn't take after his mother when it comes to paying attention to the finer points of actually turning in one's homework. IT took him three weeks to figure out how to do it so that his grade could come up into the range where one is allowed access to video games. Since Mr. 11 also managed to get himself elected to an office in his 4-H club (treasurer), and I managed to be appointed to a leadership position in same said club, I have managed to burn way too many hours managing his office and mine. Too many numbers. Too many details. Too many people think volunteers should work harder, faster, and cater more to others' schedules. Of course they do.

I have read something like 200 pages per week for classes taken and taught. Though I can't for the life of me remember what they are about. I had to teach a segment of biological anthropology, which was interesting in that I kind of had to learn it first (what fun, population genetics and cell biology, primate cranial morphology, hominid evolutionary morphology ... the thingamijiggy connects to the what's it ...). Fortunately I'd had a little background in the primate/homind evolution material and a class that focused on bone analysis for archaeologists, but not at a level that made me feel qualified to teach it.

There's that whole business of having to find time to meet with the school to discuss the little issue of Mr. 11 and his failure to turn in homework (it's STOOOPID, I know how to do it why SHOULD I!) Oi. And meeting with the school over that little bit of a temper he has (he's for McCain, Mom, I had to take him down!). And meeting with the school over that whole organizational thing (I can't find my math book! It's in your back pack. Oh THAT math book). And talking with the school about his hormones (but she's HOT, Mom, you really don't understand. She's SO HOT!). Uh, yeah.

Then there was answering 15 robocalls a day and the wallpapering project with the 5 "terrorists will eat you for breakfast" flyers received each day. That seems to have a wearing down effect you don't realize until the silence settles after the storm. There are the little medical maladies that have been dogging me all month (like the evil disease that snagged me for two weeks and some weird thing where my immune system keeps launching assaults on body parts I'm still using (like my left eye and my knee)).

Unbelievably, there are only five weeks left of the semester and I feel like it has only just begun. The WORST part of it is next semester it's quals and I KNOW the tensions will only be increasing. No, I'm really not having fun yet.

So, apologies to anyone who may have been offended if I didn't comment on news or items of interest ... I feel like I've been living inside a vacuum cleaner bag, with the vacuum cleaner in the perpetually "on" position ... and someone just decided to clean the floor boards of their family minivan ...

--M
 

"Ex beauty queen's got a gun" sung to "Homecoming queen's got a gun" had me laughing out loud this morning.

http://digg.com/2008_us_elections/Palin_tribute_song_The_Ex_Beauty_Queens_Got_A_Gun

Your own copy  can be downloaded here ...

http://www.juliebrown.com/