When I was a little girl, Walt Kelly's Pogo was a mainstay comic in our house. Pogo was a lefty environmentalist cartoon, and a healthy trade off from the horrors of Al Capp's righty (whitey, tighty) Lil Abner; both were in the comic section of our local newspaper (back when 'fair and balanced' meant something, I suppose). I think the possom and his pals of the Ofekenokee Swamp were avatars for our Dad, but for whatever reason, I ended up with a lot of Walt Kelly's ideas, words, images and tunes implanted in odd corners of my brain.
For example, here is a 'quote of the week' I put together for Archaeology.about.com:
Looking back, the view always improves. Maybe that's why I became an archaeologist.
Anyway, so today I was spending a snowy day catching up on reading my blogroll (there are far too many good writers in the world and a whole bunch are writing blogs about anthropology or archaeology), and in BoingBoing was a link to a review of Songs of the Pogo, a collection of songs written by Walt Kelly and published in 1956. I can't remember that we had this album, but I do know that we had the sheet music, because I can sing you all the lyrics to several of them, including my favorite, a sad little tune called "A Song Not For Now". Be glad, be very glad, I don't have a microphone close to hand...
Songs of the Pogo
This link on emusic will let you listen to real singers singing each of the 25 songs written by Kelly.
Here's Cary Doctorow's post on the subject.
Here's another link to some of the songs sung by Beverly Mills.
"A song not for now, you need not put stay
A note for the was can be sung for today
The notes for the does not will do for the does
Today you can sing for the will be that was. "
Tuesday, February 13, 2007
Thursday, February 08, 2007
Web 2.0 Explained
I love this video, I ran across it on Lawrence Lessig's blog (where is where the link goes), and he got it from Boing Boing, and originally it came from an anthropology professor at the University of Kansas:
Web 2.0 Explained
This is what geeks like me dreamed of.
Web 2.0 Explained
This is what geeks like me dreamed of.
Monday, January 29, 2007
Squidoo Lens: MegaSudoku
One of my main passions is MegaSudoku, which everybody thinks I'm nuts to do because it looks so hard. But, I was looking for a way to perk my brain up in the middle of a long day of backbreaking labor over letters and grammar, and it turns out that if you play with MegaSudoku, you find it includes a number of tiny little logic puzzles that can be worked on a little at a time.
So, when I heard about Squidoo it seemed like a great place to trot out my theory of MegaSudoku. Here's my new lens:
MegaSudoku for Busy People"
So, when I heard about Squidoo it seemed like a great place to trot out my theory of MegaSudoku. Here's my new lens:
MegaSudoku for Busy People"
Friday, January 26, 2007
Missing Scenes Competition: Oh Susannah!
This is my first entry in the Missing Scenes Competition, which at present is only in the works, but will eventually be on the Wasteflake Site. The rules are to write a scene based on an existing novel, using the characters and implying the situations in the novel. The scene must not exist in the novel, but must be events that are implied in the book, and may have occurred during the action of the novel, or before or after the action of the novel. The scene must include one or more characters in the novel. Additional characters who did not appear in the novel must be a minority; writing yourself in is frowned upon. As soon as Wasteflake gets our act together again, you too can submit a link to your entry, or if you don't have a blog or website, add your story to the Wasteflake wiki.
So, based on Kate Wilhelm's 1980 book Oh, Susannah!
, here's my first entry:
---
On the fourteenth floor of an office building overlooking Central Park, a woman sits at a desk working on the galleys of a manuscript. One pencil is shoved into the untidy knot of her grey hair; with another she taps out a calypso beat on the desktop. She rests her chin in her hand, and peers microscopically at the blue printed words on the shiny fibrous paper in front of her. One expensively decorous shoe dangles off the end of her right toe; the other is lost beneath the desk.
The phone rings, and she snakes out one arm to answer it, dropping the pencil and marking her place with her finger.
"Berryman and Associates, this is Sylvia." she says into the receiver.
"Oh, hi Gavin, yes the galleys came this afternoon. I'm reading them now.... Well, I think he's in the middle of something, but let me check."
She punches a button on the phone, putting the caller on hold, and leans over behind her in what she has come to think of as the Rosemary Woods stretch, blindly finding an intercom button and pressing it down. She listens intently.
In another room, no corresponding buzz is made on the similar intercom, because the receiving button is being held in place with Roget's thesaurus for just such an occasion. Sylvia can hear a soft snore through the connection.
"Sorry Gavin, he's pretty busy right now, I'll have him call you back in about, oh 20 minutes or so. Okay, talk to you then."
As Sylvia hangs up the phone she catches the eye of the other occupant of her office; an orange cat, perched regally in the sunshine on a broad windowsill of the penthouse. The cat's ancient Egyptian demeanor is spoiled, somewhat, by the brown ruff of fur standing out awkwardly from its neck and the ninety degree crook in its tail. The cat stares at Sylvia, then jumps from the window sill and walks toward the door. The cat seats himself about two feet from the doorway and closely examines first the doorknob and then the faint light from the hall which glimmers beneath the door.
The phone rings again as Sylvia slews around in her chair and pushes the intercom open. "Mike, they're here!"
So, based on Kate Wilhelm's 1980 book Oh, Susannah!
, here's my first entry:---
On the fourteenth floor of an office building overlooking Central Park, a woman sits at a desk working on the galleys of a manuscript. One pencil is shoved into the untidy knot of her grey hair; with another she taps out a calypso beat on the desktop. She rests her chin in her hand, and peers microscopically at the blue printed words on the shiny fibrous paper in front of her. One expensively decorous shoe dangles off the end of her right toe; the other is lost beneath the desk.
The phone rings, and she snakes out one arm to answer it, dropping the pencil and marking her place with her finger.
"Berryman and Associates, this is Sylvia." she says into the receiver.
"Oh, hi Gavin, yes the galleys came this afternoon. I'm reading them now.... Well, I think he's in the middle of something, but let me check."
She punches a button on the phone, putting the caller on hold, and leans over behind her in what she has come to think of as the Rosemary Woods stretch, blindly finding an intercom button and pressing it down. She listens intently.
In another room, no corresponding buzz is made on the similar intercom, because the receiving button is being held in place with Roget's thesaurus for just such an occasion. Sylvia can hear a soft snore through the connection.
"Sorry Gavin, he's pretty busy right now, I'll have him call you back in about, oh 20 minutes or so. Okay, talk to you then."
As Sylvia hangs up the phone she catches the eye of the other occupant of her office; an orange cat, perched regally in the sunshine on a broad windowsill of the penthouse. The cat's ancient Egyptian demeanor is spoiled, somewhat, by the brown ruff of fur standing out awkwardly from its neck and the ninety degree crook in its tail. The cat stares at Sylvia, then jumps from the window sill and walks toward the door. The cat seats himself about two feet from the doorway and closely examines first the doorknob and then the faint light from the hall which glimmers beneath the door.
The phone rings again as Sylvia slews around in her chair and pushes the intercom open. "Mike, they're here!"
Thursday, January 25, 2007
There was this old man who came to see me
I have a very dear friend who is 94. And today I told her this story, and she wondered why I hadn't written it down. So here is the story, for Gusti.
Last summer I was approached by a young woman whose uncle had written a book. I do manuscript editing on the side now and then, to make ends meet, and the young woman said her uncle's book was a collection of Native American tales and he was interested in getting it published as a historical adventure novel 'some day' and would I meet them for coffee. I said sure, and when I got to the coffee shop, there they were, a young woman in her late 20s with a squirmy three year old and her 75 year old uncle, an old bachelor farmer who lives on his farm in one of the rural corners of my state. Lovingly, he passed over a copy of his manuscript. 450 pages long, it was, but on a CD Rom (not so bulky that way).
When I read this manuscript, or at least began reading this tome, at first I was horrified, because it was so far from what I know to be true about Native American history as to be laughable. On so many levels, this man got it so, so wrong. His book has the glacier retreating and the white men appearing in the space of a single generation (not 10,000 years apart as science tells us). He has Native Americans sitting around a campfire, swapping stories of the mammoth they killed that day and drinking corn whiskey while the women make porcelain tea cups. No. Sorry, no that's very very wrong. But the writing isn't bad, in fact it's quite engaging. And the stories, while not of any Native Americans I've ever known or heard of, and in some respects rather insulting of the true histories of Native Americans, are still stories written based on his life, on his fantastic melding of stories from his own experience and stories he created, whole cloth, out of his imagination.
You see, he'd collected artifacts since he was a little boy, looking for arrowheads and ground stone axes and telling himself stories about them; stories about Indian princesses and tragic love stories and great heroes and noble sacrifices. Except for the time he spent in France during WWII, he'd never left home, never really been far away from the farm on which he now lived, and his stories are deeply ingrained into him, part of the leathery skin and permanent dirty tan of an old farmer. I tried to tell him, gently, that his book was completely wrong in terms of science. But he would have none of it--this is a work of history, he says, and just because I have a fancy degree and work as an archaeologist doesn't make me an expert.
So, I could just say, I'm sorry, I want nothing to do with this error, this set of blunders you want to perpetrate on the public. Except that--the stories are wonderfully flavored elements of his own history, fantasies built of the stories his parents and grandparents told him, stories of his own experiences in France, and the stories that he told himself based on the artifacts he found at home on his farm. It's interesting writing, it's just... not science.
So what is a science-loving archaeo-writer to do? Stall and hope for an inspired solution.
Last summer I was approached by a young woman whose uncle had written a book. I do manuscript editing on the side now and then, to make ends meet, and the young woman said her uncle's book was a collection of Native American tales and he was interested in getting it published as a historical adventure novel 'some day' and would I meet them for coffee. I said sure, and when I got to the coffee shop, there they were, a young woman in her late 20s with a squirmy three year old and her 75 year old uncle, an old bachelor farmer who lives on his farm in one of the rural corners of my state. Lovingly, he passed over a copy of his manuscript. 450 pages long, it was, but on a CD Rom (not so bulky that way).
When I read this manuscript, or at least began reading this tome, at first I was horrified, because it was so far from what I know to be true about Native American history as to be laughable. On so many levels, this man got it so, so wrong. His book has the glacier retreating and the white men appearing in the space of a single generation (not 10,000 years apart as science tells us). He has Native Americans sitting around a campfire, swapping stories of the mammoth they killed that day and drinking corn whiskey while the women make porcelain tea cups. No. Sorry, no that's very very wrong. But the writing isn't bad, in fact it's quite engaging. And the stories, while not of any Native Americans I've ever known or heard of, and in some respects rather insulting of the true histories of Native Americans, are still stories written based on his life, on his fantastic melding of stories from his own experience and stories he created, whole cloth, out of his imagination.
You see, he'd collected artifacts since he was a little boy, looking for arrowheads and ground stone axes and telling himself stories about them; stories about Indian princesses and tragic love stories and great heroes and noble sacrifices. Except for the time he spent in France during WWII, he'd never left home, never really been far away from the farm on which he now lived, and his stories are deeply ingrained into him, part of the leathery skin and permanent dirty tan of an old farmer. I tried to tell him, gently, that his book was completely wrong in terms of science. But he would have none of it--this is a work of history, he says, and just because I have a fancy degree and work as an archaeologist doesn't make me an expert.
So, I could just say, I'm sorry, I want nothing to do with this error, this set of blunders you want to perpetrate on the public. Except that--the stories are wonderfully flavored elements of his own history, fantasies built of the stories his parents and grandparents told him, stories of his own experiences in France, and the stories that he told himself based on the artifacts he found at home on his farm. It's interesting writing, it's just... not science.
So what is a science-loving archaeo-writer to do? Stall and hope for an inspired solution.
Monday, January 22, 2007
The End of Mr. Y
This is really a terrific book, written by Scarlett Thomas and published in 2006 by Harcourt Press. I can't remember the last time I read a book that drew me in so securely I didn't want to stop reading. The plot is about a graduate student in Oxbridge named Ariel Mantu (except that's a pseudonym), working on a comparative lit doctoral dissertation, partly on an obscure science writer from the 19th century named Thomas Lumas. Lumas's last book was called The End of Mr. Y, and it disappeared shortly after being published. Lumas himself died the day it was published, and all of the people associated with the publication died shortly thereafter.
Ariel finds the book, of course. The rest of the plot is so unusual, mixing time travel and evolution and deconstructionism, and fantasy and all kinds of good and bad surprises with images from several. Lots of fun for fans of Jacques Derrida and Samuel Butler; and an interesting introduction to the ideas. There is a pun in the title, in fact there are puns and hints about what is going on throughout the book, and The End of Mr. Y is simply a fascinating puzzle that is thoroughly enjoyable.
, Scarlett Thomas, Harcourt Press. 2006.
science fiction, scarlett thomas, books, jacques derrida, samuel butler
Ariel finds the book, of course. The rest of the plot is so unusual, mixing time travel and evolution and deconstructionism, and fantasy and all kinds of good and bad surprises with images from several. Lots of fun for fans of Jacques Derrida and Samuel Butler; and an interesting introduction to the ideas. There is a pun in the title, in fact there are puns and hints about what is going on throughout the book, and The End of Mr. Y is simply a fascinating puzzle that is thoroughly enjoyable.
, Scarlett Thomas, Harcourt Press. 2006.
science fiction, scarlett thomas, books, jacques derrida, samuel butler
Saturday, August 26, 2006
An Uncontrollable Urge to Dance
I have taken on an impossible task. Details don't really matter, but it's an amazing bit of egocentric bravado that I agreed to do it, in fact volunteered to do it.
Not that I can't or won't do it, it's just good for me to write 'this is impossible' so that I can avoid working on it for a few moments.
The Word-A-Day is one of my private passions, and yesterday's word was Tarantism, which Anu Garg defines as "an uncontrollable urge to dance." Oddly enough, this strange word related both to tarantella and tarantula more or less sums up my present state of mind: being bit by the spider of ego and dancing until I drop dead to meet the challenge.
Tarantism
Not that I can't or won't do it, it's just good for me to write 'this is impossible' so that I can avoid working on it for a few moments.
The Word-A-Day is one of my private passions, and yesterday's word was Tarantism, which Anu Garg defines as "an uncontrollable urge to dance." Oddly enough, this strange word related both to tarantella and tarantula more or less sums up my present state of mind: being bit by the spider of ego and dancing until I drop dead to meet the challenge.
Tarantism
Tuesday, August 22, 2006
Science Writing and the Scientist
I've taken a bit of a respite here, although I've been blogging like mad on my About site. I guess, I've been trying to figure out what kind of science writer I really am. I discovered (if you'll pardon a bit of navel-gazing) that I don't do very well as a standard science writer for a number of reasons.
First, the process is too slow for me. To get an article into Science or any other traditional venue for that matter, one must pitch a story, and then wait for an editor's okay to proceed. My science writer pals (lucky me, I get to say that now) assure me that only a chump starts a story without a paycheck in the offing. So, I wait a couple of days for the okay, then I start reading, making phone calls and mulling it over in my little brain. My oeuvre of choice is 500-800 words, that's where I'm most comfortable, but Science really only wants 250, so I whittle and whittle and whittle and then submit, and the editor says "I don't really understand" so I send them the long version and then they edit it down to 250 words that no longer express the story, so it's back and forth for awhile until everybody hates everybody else.
Now, if I post on my own website, I hear about the story and get right to work, it can be as long as I like and I can go with the comments I can get. Not as much status (I write for Science! makes for good bragging), and working with an editor is a great pleasure and a relief to share the burden I have to admit; but you know what, I've been spoiled by my About gig.
Secondly, I don't think I'm detached enough from archaeology to write well as a standard science writer. Which is definitely counter-intuitive, don't ya think? Science writing is all about putting things in the simplest format, in the shortest, punchiest format, and because I'm an archaeologist, I don't think the majority of archaeology does really well in a sound byte. In fact, that's why I got interested in doing this, because I'm sick of sound-byte archaeology stories.
It's as if you're doing a crossword puzzle, zipping right along, and then there's that one clue that's in your field of expertise, like 'artifact' for me, and there are so many possible answers you have to fill in all the adjacent spots before you get to the one simple five-letter word that the puzzle master had in mind: sherd.
Most archaeology issues are too complicated to express in 250 words. At least I think.
Anyway, enough navel-gazing. Back to work!
Tags:
archaeology, science, writing, science writing
First, the process is too slow for me. To get an article into Science or any other traditional venue for that matter, one must pitch a story, and then wait for an editor's okay to proceed. My science writer pals (lucky me, I get to say that now) assure me that only a chump starts a story without a paycheck in the offing. So, I wait a couple of days for the okay, then I start reading, making phone calls and mulling it over in my little brain. My oeuvre of choice is 500-800 words, that's where I'm most comfortable, but Science really only wants 250, so I whittle and whittle and whittle and then submit, and the editor says "I don't really understand" so I send them the long version and then they edit it down to 250 words that no longer express the story, so it's back and forth for awhile until everybody hates everybody else.
Now, if I post on my own website, I hear about the story and get right to work, it can be as long as I like and I can go with the comments I can get. Not as much status (I write for Science! makes for good bragging), and working with an editor is a great pleasure and a relief to share the burden I have to admit; but you know what, I've been spoiled by my About gig.
Secondly, I don't think I'm detached enough from archaeology to write well as a standard science writer. Which is definitely counter-intuitive, don't ya think? Science writing is all about putting things in the simplest format, in the shortest, punchiest format, and because I'm an archaeologist, I don't think the majority of archaeology does really well in a sound byte. In fact, that's why I got interested in doing this, because I'm sick of sound-byte archaeology stories.
It's as if you're doing a crossword puzzle, zipping right along, and then there's that one clue that's in your field of expertise, like 'artifact' for me, and there are so many possible answers you have to fill in all the adjacent spots before you get to the one simple five-letter word that the puzzle master had in mind: sherd.
Most archaeology issues are too complicated to express in 250 words. At least I think.
Anyway, enough navel-gazing. Back to work!
Tags:
archaeology, science, writing, science writing
Friday, April 14, 2006
Tornadoes in Iowa City
As I sit in my basement office this morning I can hear the helicopters overhead, news reporters overlooking the damage to my beloved home city of Iowa City. My husband and I suffered neither loss of roof nor electricity, but about 8:30 last night we heard the freight train pass by about a mile away from us as it tore the roof off the local Menard's. My husband is crushed at the news of damage to his home-away-from-home. Some amount of hail fell in the region; we got about 3/4 inch-sized (safely stowed in the freezer for future generations of... well, what are we supposed to do with it?), although the local news included images of pale hands half-hidden by round white icy soft balls.
Also lost in the storm was old St. Pat's church; I was there last for Grady's funeral (a personal loss of years gone by that I feel compelled to mention, a gentle man and barkeep). And the Alpha Chi Omega sorority house, once an annual source of rush week entertainment when I lived across the street some thirty years ago; and the Dairy Queen on Riverside where we often developed brain freeze.
The valiant local Public Access TV ditched all of their programming to bring phoned-in status reports and video coverage of the damage, despite the fact that announcer Brad Laborman knew his apartment had been damaged. The video coverage was truly amazing, both of the storm itself and the aftermath, when thousands of students wandered downtown gawping at the wreckage.
The town is battered, a little, but we're going to be alright. About twenty people ended up (at least temporarily) in the hospital, a state of emergency has been declared in the city, and some of our landmarks have been damaged or destroyed, but by and large, we are okay.
The Press-Citizen has some photos, and PATV has some of their remarkable video uploaded.
Tornadoes, Iowa City, Public Access Television.
Also lost in the storm was old St. Pat's church; I was there last for Grady's funeral (a personal loss of years gone by that I feel compelled to mention, a gentle man and barkeep). And the Alpha Chi Omega sorority house, once an annual source of rush week entertainment when I lived across the street some thirty years ago; and the Dairy Queen on Riverside where we often developed brain freeze.
The valiant local Public Access TV ditched all of their programming to bring phoned-in status reports and video coverage of the damage, despite the fact that announcer Brad Laborman knew his apartment had been damaged. The video coverage was truly amazing, both of the storm itself and the aftermath, when thousands of students wandered downtown gawping at the wreckage.
The town is battered, a little, but we're going to be alright. About twenty people ended up (at least temporarily) in the hospital, a state of emergency has been declared in the city, and some of our landmarks have been damaged or destroyed, but by and large, we are okay.
The Press-Citizen has some photos, and PATV has some of their remarkable video uploaded.
Tornadoes, Iowa City, Public Access Television.
Monday, April 10, 2006
Athlete in the Family
This is a photograph of my marathon-runner sister, the very first member of our family who can honestly claim to be an athlete. The rest of us are poky fat old bookworms and computer nerds that have to push the cobwebs away from our doors if we want to go outside. Way to go, sis!
Tags: Athletes, Running
Tuesday, April 04, 2006
Readings: Archaeology at Strangways Springs Sheep Station
Readings: Archaeology at Strangways Springs Sheep Station
This article is on archaeological investigations at a sheep station (basically a ranch) in the central Australian outback. The original article was written by Alistair Paterson and published in Historical Archaeology, and he was kind enough to let me use the photographs from his excavations. I've never been to the outback, but his report brought the life of sheep herders (black and white) in the late 19th century to life.
Tags: Archaeology, Australia, Farming
Newswise | It's An Exciting Time to be a Journalist - Even With the Challenges
Newswise | It's An Exciting Time to be a Journalist - Even With the Challenges
Or so says the Dean of Journalism at the University of Maryland in this interview. Journalists must be 'willing to embrace new technology'. For me, it is an exciting time to morph from an archaeologist into a journalist; terrifying even if I'm not in a war or poking into some congressional or presidential wrongdoing. Which stories do you follow? How do you keep your objectivity? And, that perennial favorite--what was wrong with having a full time job?
Science writing, Journalism
Or so says the Dean of Journalism at the University of Maryland in this interview. Journalists must be 'willing to embrace new technology'. For me, it is an exciting time to morph from an archaeologist into a journalist; terrifying even if I'm not in a war or poking into some congressional or presidential wrongdoing. Which stories do you follow? How do you keep your objectivity? And, that perennial favorite--what was wrong with having a full time job?
Science writing, Journalism
Saturday, April 01, 2006
ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive Project Blog: Media: Ralph Bakshi's Phone Doodles
ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive Project Blog: Media: Ralph Bakshi's Phone Doodles
Ralph Backshi is one of my heroes; when I was in college his 'Lord of the Rings' was flat-out amazing animation. Blogger A-Haa has a stash of Ralph Bakshi phone doodles. What a hoot!
Oops - forgot to say this is via Boing Boing, fast becoming my favorite blog site.
Ralph Backshi is one of my heroes; when I was in college his 'Lord of the Rings' was flat-out amazing animation. Blogger A-Haa has a stash of Ralph Bakshi phone doodles. What a hoot!
Oops - forgot to say this is via Boing Boing, fast becoming my favorite blog site.
Wednesday, March 22, 2006
The Irritable Heart: Increased Risk of Physical and Psychological Effects of Trauma in Civil War Veterans
The Irritable Heart: Increased Risk of Physical and Psychological Effects of Trauma in Civil War Veterans
The Irritable Heart is based on work that used American Civil War records to track mental and physical problems of veterans. Doctors of the time noticed that there was a problem experienced by veterans resulting from their traumatic experiences, they called it 'irritable heart'. Researchers led by Roxane Cohen Silver at Irvine used the federally-funded database called Early Indicators of Later Work Levels, Disease, and Death Project, which is free and available to anybody who wants to poke around in it.
This article came about because I'm trying to become a 'real' science writer. The article is based on a report in the Archives of General Psychiatry, and no I don't normally read that journal, but I do get announcements of papers to be published. That's part of being a 'science writer' (although I have to giggle nervously when I refer to myself as such, which is what I did when I said I was an 'archaeologist' so that's only fittin').
Anyway I got the announcement of this paper and wheedled Science magazine's Random Samples column editor into letting me write a piece for that, which was published last month. I ended up writing a much longer piece than was needed for Science, and wanted to publish it someplace. Of course, it's not really archaeology, so the psychology guide at About was kind enough to let me publish it on her site. And voila!
Sometimes I feel like the luckiest dame in the world.
The photograph is of wounded soldiers being tended in the field after the Battle of Chancellorsville near Fredericksburg, Va., May 2, 1863, negative number 111-B-349, and available with a raft of others at the National Archives website.
Tags: Civil War, Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome, Psychology, History, Archaeology, Writing
Saturday, March 18, 2006
Salon.com Books | Remembering Octavia Butler
Salon.com Books | Remembering Octavia Butler
Science fiction writer Karen Joy Fowler discusses Octavia Butler and her fiction in an article on Salon this week. Fowler describes several of her favorite Butler stories, and discusses what they meant to her. Part of her discussion implies (and the posted comments explicitly consider) how intimately you should know and think about the writer when reading a piece of fiction. I dunno; I'm sort of split on it. One of the reasons I bolted the study of literature as a career was because I felt there was too much emphasis on dissecting pieces of work using bits of the author's biography. In the 1970s when I was in school, we were supposed to use an author's bio to seek out meaningful references in the work--even if (maybe especially if) the author wasn't aware of the meanings. This kind of a one-upmanship of a hard-working writer creeped me out badly. So I bailed.
But on the other hand, one of the reasons I loved Octavia Butler is that she was a female African American science fiction writer (and a lesbian, although I wasn't aware of that until after her death). I thought Butler had some interesting things to say that the largely white male scifi establishment didn't (said with loving respect, however, to Arthur C. Clarke, Asimov, Bradbury and that stinker Harlan Ellison, among many others).
So, maybe there's a happy medium. We can take pleasure in an author's difference without dissecting his or her work. I vote for that; or at least I'm going to be doing that, thank you very much.
Tags: Octavia Butler, Science Fiction, Archaeology, Literature, Gender
Science fiction writer Karen Joy Fowler discusses Octavia Butler and her fiction in an article on Salon this week. Fowler describes several of her favorite Butler stories, and discusses what they meant to her. Part of her discussion implies (and the posted comments explicitly consider) how intimately you should know and think about the writer when reading a piece of fiction. I dunno; I'm sort of split on it. One of the reasons I bolted the study of literature as a career was because I felt there was too much emphasis on dissecting pieces of work using bits of the author's biography. In the 1970s when I was in school, we were supposed to use an author's bio to seek out meaningful references in the work--even if (maybe especially if) the author wasn't aware of the meanings. This kind of a one-upmanship of a hard-working writer creeped me out badly. So I bailed.
But on the other hand, one of the reasons I loved Octavia Butler is that she was a female African American science fiction writer (and a lesbian, although I wasn't aware of that until after her death). I thought Butler had some interesting things to say that the largely white male scifi establishment didn't (said with loving respect, however, to Arthur C. Clarke, Asimov, Bradbury and that stinker Harlan Ellison, among many others).
So, maybe there's a happy medium. We can take pleasure in an author's difference without dissecting his or her work. I vote for that; or at least I'm going to be doing that, thank you very much.
Tags: Octavia Butler, Science Fiction, Archaeology, Literature, Gender
Thursday, March 16, 2006
ARTNATOMY
ARTNATOMY
This is just for fun, nothing to do with archaeology whatsover, except in the broader, anthropology-linguistics, evolutionary sense of the word. Basically, it's a Flash-enabled way to play with the human face, and learn about muscle combinations.
Via Boing Boing
Anthropology, Linguistics, Physical Anthropology
This is just for fun, nothing to do with archaeology whatsover, except in the broader, anthropology-linguistics, evolutionary sense of the word. Basically, it's a Flash-enabled way to play with the human face, and learn about muscle combinations.
Via Boing Boing
Anthropology, Linguistics, Physical Anthropology
Monday, March 13, 2006
The Viridian Design Movement
The Viridian Design Movement
This is the text of a very-recent speech by Bruce Sterling, science fiction writer and thoughtful kind of a guy. He introduced me (not personally, of course) to the concept of "dead media" and he always seems to have some insight into what the future might hold.
Snagged from Boing Boing.
Tags: Science writing,Bruce Sterling, Internet
This is the text of a very-recent speech by Bruce Sterling, science fiction writer and thoughtful kind of a guy. He introduced me (not personally, of course) to the concept of "dead media" and he always seems to have some insight into what the future might hold.
Snagged from Boing Boing.
Tags: Science writing,Bruce Sterling, Internet
Sunday, March 12, 2006
The Master Plan: Himmler's Scholars and the Holocaust - a Book Review
The Master Plan: Himmler's Scholars and the Holocaust - a Book Review
I never understood the fascination with Adolph Hitler and the Holocaust. Oh sure, I've seen Schindler's List, and I've even been to a Holocaust museum or two in my time, but ... seriously, it seemed almost prurient to me to need to know what when on. But, I've read Heather Pringle's books before (she wrote The Mummy Congress), and I really admire her writing, so when her publisher wrote and asked if I wanted a review copy, I agreed. But my god! It was so hard to read this book. To have to face the fact that a segment of the scientific community in Germany was conducting research and experiments to support Hitler's gaga concept of Aryan supremacy was very hard for me. But I'm glad I did.
Tags: Archaeology, Book Reviews, Hitler, Ahnenerbe, Science writing, Himmler
Wednesday, March 08, 2006
Death and Commemoration
This link goes to an article abstract and general yammer on a recent article in the Industrial Archaeology Review by Sarah Tarlow. Here's how my doing this came about. I have a stack of stuff to read; I'm (normally) a voracious reader, and visit my local university library once a quarter, to see what's in the journals, get some ideas for articles on my own website, and feel like I'm in the loop when it comes to archaeology around the world. Then I bring around 25 or 30 of them home, read 'em and file away all these tasty little bits of articles, mostly never to be seen again. This quarter has been rough, though; and three months later the stack is still sitting unread next to my desk. There are interesting things in there, but I get so caught up in other things to be done that I never get back. Well, fie on that! I've decided to combine both blogging and reading. And maybe somebody will benefit.
So, here is the first of the articles I went and retrieved the first of January (ack! it's nearly April), abstracted for your reading pleasure. The author Sarah Tarlow is a pal of mine, who writes some truly interesting archaeology, instilling human life into the field, which is, if you ask me, one of the real tricks in archaeology. Of course, I didn't ask her if publishing her abstract would be a good thing to do until after I'd posted, and I haven't heard from her yet, so I promise to report back here if she shrieks at me from across the big pond that segregates us.
Still. Lots of good stuff to come.
This photo, by the way, is from plumbum, and pretty cool image for a gravestone, if you ask me.
Tags: Archaeology, Cemeteries, History
Monday, March 06, 2006
The Geoglyphic Art of Chile's Atacama Desert
The Geoglyphic Art of Chile's Atacama Desert
This report with a few pictures of the geoglyphs (including the famous Atacama Giant seen in the picture) comes from an upcoming issue of Antiquity, one of my favorite journals. Antiquity is not afraid to be directed to the general public, even though its articles are primarily reports of investigations: I think that's very cool.
Anyway, Luis Briones' paper in Antiquity is a summary of thirty years of research on the geoglyphs in the Atacama Desert, some 800 kilometers south of the Nasca lines in Peru, and although the Chilean geoglyphs were started about 600 years later than Nasca, they cover a much larger area. Also unlike the Nasca lines, these glyphs are, according to Briones, part of a transportation network, sort of a combination set of sign posts and story telling for travellers in llama caravans between the big civilizations of Tiwanaku and Inca and their outlying colonies and food and commodity sources.
I'll tell ya the truth; this kind of paper is why I got into science reporting at all. It takes a (fairly) well known subject and puts a science spin on it. No need to futz with space aliens here, just a good interesting story that feeds into people's imaginations and reminds us of our humanity.
The photograph is the Atacama Giant, and comes from the article in Antiquity (c) 2006 Luis Briones and is used here with permission.
My report on Briones' paper, called The Geoglyphic Art of Chile's Atacama Desert is on my About Archaeology site.
Tags:
Archaeology, Chile, Geoglyphs, Rock Art, Antiquity
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