Views from the shell

Did I mention that this summer I took a class in Ancient Tech and Invention in which we actually attempted to recreate ancient technologies? It was a summer of "things of the day" as we worked to make and use with stone tools, built a pit kiln and made and fired pottery in it by different methods, created bronze objects using lost wax casting and used a forge built in our instructor's back yard, learned about ancient stone bead making, various metal working, spinning, weaving, tanning, tool making, etc. Thus the source of quite a few of my ToD niblets. My research project was to recreate to better understand gourd fragments found in a 5000-year-old context in northern Peru. They were decorated with a "staff god" which I copied onto the gourd fragment I used.

So thereby a little preamble to some of these things learned entries. When it comes to writerly research, this was a class to die for :-) My classmates' projects (we all helped each other out where we could) included recreating nettle weavings, stone and bone implement construction, the recreation of a Roman shield, furniture carving replication, recreation of a bread oven, comparison of chicha beer making processes, fashioning of arrow tips, a scalpel, tanning and curing of hides, making of stone and shell beads, carding and cleaning of various wool, etc.

One of the "new" things was coming to better understand, in terms of forging and pottery, the ideas of flux, reducing and oxidizing atmospheres and why they are so important. A flux can be any addition to the clay or metal that alters its melting/sintering temperature. For example, the hematite used to create a cobalt blue in a bead completely melted my faience beads, while those who added other fluxes for different colors ended up with a glazed bead at the same temp. Among pigments added include ground lapis, arsenic ores, cinnabar,  etc. It all has to do with the chemical/mineral change and the point at which various carbons, salts, sulfides and carbonates become gas. The amount of oxygen that reaches the pots at various points in the firing will also alter their composition. This occurs at different temperatures for all the different kinds of ceramic effects. Various additions of temper can alter how the pots shrink once dried and fired, affecting their strength, and how thin the walls can be made. We found that pots tempered with chopped straw had some of the least shrinkage and cracking, with various amounts of sand serving a similar purpose. Other tempers include rice husk, crushed shell and grog (broken ground up previously fired pots). Porosity tends to be important in tropical regions because it helps cool the liquids within. Resin was introduced in some pottery to reduce porosity.

About 500 degrees C. you have low-fired pottery, which is mostly solidified and hardened, above these temps, up into the 800s to and above,  high-fired pottery that have almost a glass like property as the quartz minerals melt. While the flux alters the sheen and color and melt-point, it can also be part of the firing process, from the ash blowing across the pots. But to get these effects you need to start with a slow rise in the heat to prevent the pots from blowing up until the water is removed from intercrysalline spaces. Then you have to insulate the pots to maintain the heat. You put slow burning fuel on the bottom of the your kiln, and use plaster and ash to insulate. Some kiln methods involve completely burying the pots in ash and coal and dung. I have a bunch of photos of the kiln we built that I will try to upload soon.

There  were two main styles of ancient kilns were updraft and down draft, where the fire is lit at one end and drawn through the kiln to heat the pots as the heat seeks the chimney out. A tourniere is used to draw the air in to feed the constantly stoked fire. A minimum firing of this type usually lasted about 12-24 hours with a cool down lasting several days. Various dung additions can add to the carbon content of the kiln and the atmosphere that may change the colors of the pots. It's a tentative process getting it to a temperature where it won't melt the pots, nor fail to fire them. I had one pot shatter, another scorch, and a third that came out halfway decent :-)

M

Some words I encounter that I have either never seen before, or never understood. My thing of the day is the term "sintering":

Sintering: usually used in reference to metallurgy in terms of forming a strong bond from powdered metal. But it also functions in pottery in the vitrification process where silica or other minerals melts to become glass-like. Terracotta is only partially vitrified, where porcelain is completely vitrified. The process requires different temperatures and durations of firing depending on which minerals are included.

There ... I think i'm caught up :-)

M

My last post failed to go inside the cut. I will try to manipulate this better because again, it's a little longer (I'm a couple of days behind on my stated course, so catching up to be sure I don't fall out of the habit of reinforcing info.

Thing of the day:
Pottery is often described (notably in childrens "history"  books) as going hand in hand with agriculture and a necessity for the advent of agriculture because of its use for storage of grain and seed surpluses. But it wasn’t.

A little thing of the day:

Sometimes nature knows better despite our best attempts to circumvent it.

The breed we were hatching has a notoriously high fail rate for some reason. Of the 20 eggs we set in the incubator to hatch all had signs of life near the end of incubation. In four eggs the little ones inside could be heard pecking, but they never broke through and died in the shell. Six more of the eggs, the chicks broke through the surface with initial peck holes, but seemed unable to break free from the shell. One had broken the shell completely apart, but couldn’t break through the membrane and died.

 

Thinking I could help, I tried to assist the remaining five by peeling some of the thick shells away and widening the papery outer membrane. Of these, one more immediately died, just failing to get the rest of the way out. Two more at last broke out, partly from being trampled by the other chicks in the incubator. But both were small. And one, after much assistance from me broke out of the shell only to be determined to have some form of muscle or bone malformation, possibly due to the way it developed in the shell. It couldn’t balance, had a head tipped to one side and one leg failed to work the way it should. “Kink” eventually died two days later after heroic efforts to rehabilitate his muscles and teach him to balance (maybe little chick crutches would have helped).

 

I don’t agree that we should never intervene: especially with domesticated species that’s part of what we have to do because we’ve made domestic animals (and plants) dependent on us for survival. But sometimes, our merciful feelings toward helpless things like baby chicks countermand something nature knew better: they simply were not equipped to survive and it may just be more merciful to let nature have its way.

 

I was sucked in to a whole bunch of time wasting things -- like school, a paper, a farm, parenting and playing online multiplayer games with my kid (okay, so the last was the REAL time sink) -- and thus I've been remiss. I had actually thought of something that I really wanted to post, something that was to me really a big deal this summer: I have always had a mission of learning something every day, and this summer I came very close to accomplishing it. Sure, some of the things aren't all that important in the great scheme of things, but they are things that if I commit them to phosphors may be a reminder of all that one does not know (all of which could be committed to writing!).

So, under Thing-of-the-Day tags, I think I shall share some of these. There are so many in backlog! Some I'm sure other people know, they must know ... but hey, here we go.

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We've spent the last week trying to get ready for the county fair. This is largely because Mr. 11 wouldn't know a plan if it bit him on his backside. Everything is last minute, later, after this, after that. So we spent the weekend getting pictures TAKEN, not to mention printed and mounted for his photography exhibit, and an "International" project exhibit on how geography affects the way people live in Peru. Then there was his quilt, which was finished a long time ago, but which he simply had to write a short intro about that required a production and grand proclamations about how tortured a soul he has for being forced to discuss it. There were chickens to be washed, fluffed, oiled, coiffed and finally transplanted into cages that were properly dressed. There were the flowers he had to hunt in my garden and claim were part of his project (they were pretty beat up so not so much). On Friday he shot in an archery tournament he hadn't practiced for. On Monday he made four dishes for a foods review he'd failed to practice for. Today he showed chickens, including showmanship, which he studied, oh, maybe 10 minutes last night and 10 minutes this morning.

I'm "pleased" he got third in archery. That teaches the lesson. Practice. His shots were great early in the competition, but they have to shoot 60 arrows and by the end he was tired and he didn't do well. He also only got a second and a third on the flowers because they were beat up and grabbed from the garden as an afterthought. But the photography? Two of them were firsts, we haven't seen the result of the third which included photos of an event shot over the weekend. And the Peru poster (put together on Sunday) was a first. And so was the quilt as part of his folk art presentation. Sends something of a mixed message about effort. He also did well in cooking: with top honors in baking for a yeast dinner roll, another first for a main dish (pasta primavera), and seconds for his banana bread and apple crisp. How much effort he put into baking before Monday? Not much. Says more about Mom's recipe box :-) He did earn three top honors for his chickens, with one earning "champion" in her breed, and the other "reserve champion" in her breed. Plus he had two other firsts, a second and two thirds, which we rather expected since a couple of the birds weren't in good shape. We don't know how he did in showmanship yet, though he was still "cramming" from the chicken breed guide as he was being called for judging.

Then there was keeping his attention on why we were there, since an old "flame" he met at last year's fair (his first kiss, no less!) suddenly popped out of the woodwork and wanted to hang on him. She's a foot taller, a year older, and not even a pinch wiser :-(  She called tonight three times already. Nothing like playing hard to get.

Four more days of two trips to town a day to feed and water. I don't know why we do this. It's supposed to be fun, right? I remember it that way as a kid, and now have new appreciation for what it meant to my parents :-)
--M

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