tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-89869855117095866902024-02-19T18:33:23.478-08:00Mojourner TruthUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger464125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8986985511709586690.post-47761922453320329722018-08-29T21:25:00.000-07:002018-08-29T21:27:28.214-07:00Monkey It UP<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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“The <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">last</i></b> thing we need to do is <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">monk</i></b><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">ey</i> this up, by trying to embrace a <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">soc</b>ialist agenda, with <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">huge</i></b>
tax increases and <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">bank</i></b>rupting the state” </div>
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-Florida GOP’s Gubernatorial Candidate.</div>
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If “monkey this up” were a phrase like “monkey business” or “throw
a monkey wrench in it,” he would have some cover, but no. These days, the GOP
is more into whipping it out. False equivalency is so last reich, today’s
racists gotta show it off. Dog whistle? Why not just beat the dog til it does
what you want?</div>
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The white dogs, I mean, the dumbasses who fall into the
racist trap but still end up poor, downtrodden, seeking solace in their god and
their guns. Or their opioids and meth. But the candidate obliterates the class
war angle with his frontal assault on the <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">soc</b>ialist
agenda. </div>
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Or maybe not so much, since he seems to think that increased
revenue will drain government coffers. And he knows good and well the
socialists don’t want to tax the working poor, they aim to reinstate and maybe ratchet
up taxes on the wealthy, who have been getting handouts since Reagan, doing a
little ratcheting of their own along the way.</div>
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The <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">bold</b> words
are the ones he <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">punched</b> as he spoke,
the ones he <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">real</b>ly wanted voters to
key in on. Then he’d throw in an <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">odd</b>
number of lesser syllables ere <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">hit</b>ting
another,…building a <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">cad</b>ence that
sounds right, even when it’s wrong. Fans of the subliminable may find it
interesting that the syllables he really emphasized were “last…monk…huge…bank.”
I mean, we already know republicans loves huge banks, but does this signal an
upcoming assault on catholics, maybe buddhists? Keep an ear out.</div>
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Meanwhile in the now, whistle in his lips and rolled up newspaper
in his hand, the man aims to get his dogs out and voting. For good measure, he’ll
join the president in siccing the dogs on the paper and any other mainstream
media. The failure of which, white people, should concern you. Already, a third
or more of the population are convinced that the only real news is the regime’s
propaganda. And if you mangey-ass dogs ever do figure out you’ve been had, it’ll
be too late. No real news, no real justice, you can find out for yourself
whether that place in the desert is a tent city or a concentration camp where
the big dogs patrol. </div>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7yWEOpmJwkRV_mKIw0nJ2MIK4pkRdYNeJkpb1FWmXWDTHX8ax6ip3niRPExGCKXVWgee5-Tsm_SADm9StqEp-EfbYZiLm08a_SPjvVRlQqjPi6cHoV7Zb_hpLuJIzY1X39wcqw_bPlYoH/s1600/sign+in+action.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7yWEOpmJwkRV_mKIw0nJ2MIK4pkRdYNeJkpb1FWmXWDTHX8ax6ip3niRPExGCKXVWgee5-Tsm_SADm9StqEp-EfbYZiLm08a_SPjvVRlQqjPi6cHoV7Zb_hpLuJIzY1X39wcqw_bPlYoH/s400/sign+in+action.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
Recently, people keep reminding me that the Circle-A symbol is associated with anarchism,...maybe even with Anarchism.<br />
<br />
No shit.<br />
<br />
One woman kindly commented on a post of the above sign to let me know that the anarchist crowd uses that, and she wasn't sure if I did it on purpose.<br />
<br />
Ahh...yup. Thanks.<br />
<br />
A sixty-ish photographer somberly asked me if I knew what that A-in-a-circle meant as he got a shot of my daughter and I at a rally. He looked grim when I confirmed:<br />
<br />
Si, Professor.<br />
<br />
Maybe especially around here, people think anarchist and they envision black bloc ninjas throwing rocks through windows, but there are degrees and species of Anarchy just like there are of any other -ism.<br />
<br />
To begin with, some reject anything but little-a anarchy.<br />
<br />
My anarchy dropped orthodoxymoronic Anarchism years ago. My anarchy fails the purity test (I'm a government worker, for Marx's sake). My anarchy doesn't mind government preventing corporations from poisoning the earth and ripping us off, and it knows damn well that NO government just means the armed and greedy get their way. My anarchy begins in the womb, where no government should be tolerated, and lives in a body and mind that should not be violated.<br />
<br />
My anarchy is old and likes naps, but it ain't dead yet.<br />
<br />
So yeah, I'll continue to march with Womxn and support Planned Parenthood and protect Mother Earth with my "Dads Against the Patriarchy" sign. Lots of people have said they liked it, shot photos, and been very supportive. Lots of them know what the A means, some of them are really supportive, and a few people get uncomfortable.<br />
<br />
Which is good. The Circle-A hasn't lost all its power.</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8986985511709586690.post-83038824500564320352017-01-08T11:00:00.001-08:002017-01-08T11:00:44.070-08:00Scarrogance<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvD0PF4YPNRN7bZ7YwV98beh8I4IBrwWSdbdZnYPycrpv9r-ANF8UjyCKMUt7p_wEy_-18nbyotAwae7Wm9tKoPD5ah6Im9btdkE1bJc1qEra17vsNhdoy526pBnn1Pntu5aePB0oGxqGc/s1600/scarrogance.tiff" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="103" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvD0PF4YPNRN7bZ7YwV98beh8I4IBrwWSdbdZnYPycrpv9r-ANF8UjyCKMUt7p_wEy_-18nbyotAwae7Wm9tKoPD5ah6Im9btdkE1bJc1qEra17vsNhdoy526pBnn1Pntu5aePB0oGxqGc/s400/scarrogance.tiff" width="400" /></a></div>
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noun. Condition combining fear and arrogance, common among powerful individuals and institutions when faced by opposition, typically accompanied by withdrawal and unresponsiveness. </div>
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"In a display of scarrogance, House Speaker Ryan withdrew to his office, locked the doors, and called extra police when Planned Parenthood activists tried to deliver petitions."</div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8986985511709586690.post-37680779194018442072017-01-07T17:40:00.000-08:002017-01-08T21:14:51.216-08:00"Rebel Bureaucrat" (Death of an Oxymoron)<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<br />
<span style="font-family: "tahoma";">It only took a few weeks
for Congress to start elaborating on Trump’s ascendancy to dictatorship. The
guy is not even in office yet, and the GOP is in a headlong over heels rush to
suppress opposition and bring the government under overt, complete control of
Capitalism Gone Wild.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "tahoma";">For reasons no one can rationally
explain, the 1% of the 1% are offended by the presence of a middle class. The
class war we’re living through is not rich against poor—being poor means you
already lost—but oligarchs against a middle class. Maybe because the middle
class enjoys a blend of financial comfort and education, the super rich feel a
threat, resent the money in somebody else’s pocket, or fear that cities full of
college grads may not sign on to the program of extreme social conservatism and
endless upward redistribution of wealth. </span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "tahoma";">Whatever the cause, a major
battlefield in this war is “the government,” by which people mostly mean the
people who work for federal agencies and the places they control. Conservatives
are not so upset by the money government grants or the things government
buys—pork barrel money feeds their districts’ businesses, they like all the
stuff from irrigation systems to tactical police gear that pours in, subsidies
are a major part of most farming, not state funds its own disaster recovery—but
they hate the strings that are attached. Being told not to over-graze, to
protect a stupid little fish, and that you cannot poison the water and air
insults the independence-minded sensibilities of the rank and file, and more
importantly cuts into the oligarch’s profit margin. </span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "tahoma";">The strategy of riling up
the base, buying the politicians, and pursuing de-regulation and down-sizing of
government has proceeded unhindered from Reagan right on through Bush II.
Although Obama’s compromise-oriented approach and inability to overrun the
barricades thrown up by Congressional Republicans fell well short of the
Right’s nightmares—remember how he was going to take all the guns and socialize
the economy?—they apparently feel abused and angry and ready to retaliate. </span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "tahoma";">The once desultory battle
over “the government,” a Cold War of cuts made vs regulations implemented, is
now blowing up; the carnage is about to begin for real. The GOP controls the
elected government and stole the judiciary, and already they’re acting as if
they had 100% backing of the populace.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "tahoma";">This week, the new
Congress, as it does at the beginning of each session, passed its own rules. By
way of inoculating itself against the accusations of corruption sure to come as
they pass a slew of heavily lobbied, pro-corporate legislation, the GOP
included provisions to partisanize and weaken the non-partisan Office of
Congressional Ethics. Progressives garnered immediate grass-roots and
politician outrage and the House Republicans backed down, comforted only by
their belief that government offices are incompetent anyway.</span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "tahoma";">Before the Left could claim
victory, Trump tweeted and ended up getting a large share of the credit. His
base seems satisfied that he is hard at work draining the swamp, when all he
did was see the writing on the wall and throw some colleagues under the bus, as
per his own personal ethics (which he maintains nobody is worthy of
scrutinizing). </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "tahoma";">Meanwhile, the Rules
package also included a much scarier provision, provided by yet another scary Virginia
Congressman. This one revived a 19<sup>th</sup>-Century rule intended to target
corrupt political appointees by allowing Representatives to offer amendments
reducing a person or program’s budget to $1/year. So now when a Representative
disagrees with a program or needs a scapegoat for a news cycle or two, a
party-line vote puts people in the poorhouse. That li’l nugget slipped right on
through with no protest.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "tahoma";">Communities nationwide have
federal workers, and defunding their jobs will hurt local economies everywhere.
Of course it won’t actually have that broad an effect, because no politician
would pull this move in their own district. As a way to eliminate inconvenient
truths, hamstring regulation, and punish a liberal district, however, it’s a
win-win-win (where they get all the wins and you get nothing). That little rule
is starting to look like an effective weapon, isn’t it?</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "tahoma";">Meanwhile back on the
ranch—which happens to be mostly federal ground leased by settlers sons at a
fraction of market rate—government employees face other threats on the
battlefield. Self-proclaimed militias can show up, take over, demand snacks, trash
the place, literally dig shitters through Indian sites, and incite a shootout
all while broadcasting calls to arms and threatening government employees. They
can do all this and they face trial but get off with no conviction.*</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "tahoma";">Which you better believe
has galvanized the conviction of the Bundys and their vehemently
anti-government and pro-gun ilk. These white men fee entitled above immigrants
and minorities (including the tribes whose lands they occupy), but also abused
and angry. Emboldened now by their victory in court, fervent in their belief that the government is an agent of evil, these yahoos put federal workers
in literal danger in some of the very places where land management
costs are paid by the feds and the financial benefits accrue locally.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "tahoma";">Which brings us back to
those federal employees who could suddenly find themselves making $1 a year.
Few of them have the personal wealth to keep working for free, and most of them
would ordinarily be plowing their moderate paychecks back into their local
communities, spending their off time participating in those communities. Being
middle class.</span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "tahoma";">If there are people still
working for the government who think they can continue to be relatively
comfortable, they’d better wise up. Congress has only just begun, and Trump
hasn’t even unleashed actual and imagined executive powers. The Kochs and other
wealthy advocates of concentrating all wealth at the top have plenty more money
and a congress begging to be, ahem, lobbied. They’ll get around to privatizing
public lands—taking care of that part of “the government”—but even quicker
they’ll move against unions, programs that run counter to their ideology,
branches of government that impinge on unfettered capitalism, and so on, using
this Rule and all the other tools at their disposal. The plutocracy is at war,
and the Civil Service has been declared an enemy combatant. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "tahoma";">And so it’s time to resist.
It’s time to stand your ground, re-unite with your union, and prepare for
battle. The Right feels aggrieved by the fact that you might earn a pension,
outraged at how much you waste on social programs for the unworthy, tyrannized
by your rules and regulations, fed up with your elitist “rationality,” and just
all-round pissed about other government sins imagined and real. They are coming
for you, starting with the easy targets but not stopping until the bureaucratic
machinery that helps maintain free and open society is broken or repurposed to
something useful, like prospecting for oil or running detention centers. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "tahoma";">As recently as a couple of
months ago, I could have imagined this was not going to happen. I could have
continued being comfortable in my government job, disappointed that my salary
doesn’t keep up with the cost of living, but not worried that I’d be out on the
street. I could act as if being a state employee rather than a federal one, as
a union member rather than “exempt,” my head is not on the chopping block at
the moment. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "tahoma";">Now, I cannot afford to sit
back. Now, I can no longer think that “rebel bureaucrat” is an oxymoron. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: "tahoma";">* If they’re white. Indians
protecting land at Standing Rock have been brutally attacked with tear gas,
rubber bullets, percussion grenades, water cannons (in sub-freezing weather),
sonic warfare, and whatever a police force with para-military toys bestowed by
the feds can muster.</span></span></div>
</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8986985511709586690.post-32737412200599096492016-12-20T19:55:00.001-08:002017-01-07T17:35:16.697-08:00Streaming Fascism<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPj62GZ37zPlkloKZHmpZblEbfx-f4PHlqjaMxoCzyJAUy3USNt1UgSRAXDRwT0S51hOdlNdnESZfbMtwANZTUEO4C9xAN5r2_ew2Mq9nKWokFO49l42tQDvK8LKLbBQj1DCx9mg0KONQ_/s1600/google+and+alexa.tiff" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="265" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPj62GZ37zPlkloKZHmpZblEbfx-f4PHlqjaMxoCzyJAUy3USNt1UgSRAXDRwT0S51hOdlNdnESZfbMtwANZTUEO4C9xAN5r2_ew2Mq9nKWokFO49l42tQDvK8LKLbBQj1DCx9mg0KONQ_/s400/google+and+alexa.tiff" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Police State appliances for your home.</td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
Being a liberal, lately I've been inundated with warnings and calls to action, boycotts and protests, petitions and pleas to click and agree,...all of them in response to the election of Trump, who shows the most overt signs yet of being our first flull-blown fascist president. (Yes, Cheney fit the bill, but technically he was only VP.)<br />
<br />
Being an American, lately I've been inundated with adds for Amazon's Alexa and some Googly thingy that can sit in my house awaiting orders. They will do amazing things like change the thermostat so that I can have indoor snowmen, or order tape so that I won't have to seal Christmas gifts with band-aids. These are the whimsical examples that tech giants are using to sneak into our homes.<br />
<br />
And Americans could care less.<br />
<br />
Not that we shouldn't be wary of Drumpf's scapegoating tendencies, his lashing out at the press, his promises to sue any critics and jail the opposition. We should fight that crap tooth and nail.<br />
<br />
But we should also resist the urge to invite mega-corporations into our homes, relinquishing increasing power month after month under the guise of convenience. Sure, in aspirational, duped-by-the-dream America, it's common to wish that you are one of the wealthy, that you have a butler, and these devices play right into that. Never mind that to actually get the right kind of tape, you'll need to answer a bunch of questions that not only take up time but inevitably lead you to Amazon check-out.<br />
<br />
Checking out on such mundane household chores as setting the thermostat or thinking ahead and buying groceries is not without cost, and ultimately without loss of your autonomy and freedom. Amazon and Google aren't altruistically taking over your chores--they're insinuating themselves into your life, harvesting data, tayloring their marketing until you're captured. We put up with these intrusions because they're "consumer oriented." You <i>can</i> play with settings still to maintain the illusion of control, but once our homes are linked into a system roamed by artificial intelligences whose goal is to sell us stuff, we've just a flipped the switch to a level of of spying that the Stasi only dreamed of, of monitoring and coercion more thorough than Orwell nightmared of.<br />
<br />
Some of you may suspect where I'm headed with this: that such a tool in the hands of a dictator would be ominous. But actually, I think it's bad enough as is. Entities whose only goal is profit are invited to spy on us. Not only do they not pay to collect data, they get us to pay for the data-collection device, they get us to sign up for the services that will deliver our data back to us, processed into gleamingly ads rendered irresistable by virtue that they were borne of our own behavior.<br />
<br />
Don't buy this crap. Don't buy the device, and don't buy the message. Be sovereign, un-plug, and read a book. </div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8986985511709586690.post-12997019658264375222016-11-20T10:22:00.002-08:002016-11-20T11:56:56.417-08:00Your Local National Leaders<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3ypcDnkEhpDT1ZqUittqoakC8sWA_yhwjEyNR4DBCWf1NOZGP0o4eK0JgOKQfqNeSyOmIoBMUmUotmk0CPqYLuxoXYW7t8e4qUaEgDJVQLiNiCdIKAFVG1ZL-giPVtBRpS0eVpullbGgj/s400/cladoosbysoin2.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="400" /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Brian Cladoosby*</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
America has elected its Drumpf, just as Weimar elected its Schicklgruber,** leaving many of us in a bind: Do we abide by the process? Do we accept a haranguer who hastens our descent from international beacon of freedom to a dumb mob? Or, do we break the laws and smash the pipelines by whatever means necessary, risking another kind of dumb mob?<br />
<br />
Maybe the answer, or at least an answer, to escaping the mobs is to look to the tribes.<br />
<br />
Most Americans are unaware that they live on ground ceded or sold (or just stolen) from tribes that still exist. More than 550 tribes are sovereign nations, many with treaties that just happen to be supreme law of the land in the US. They are not subject to other states or even some kinds of interference from the federal government. Their own councils decide their own laws.<br />
<br />
It's not that tribes offer some sort of arcane legal end run, or that they are some sort of haven where we could seek asylum. It's not that tribes have so much casino money that they've got political power over the rest of us, and I have no pretexts that tribes bludgeoned by our nation for centuries are all in peak condition, utterly unaffected by generations of enforced poverty and assimilation. It's not that tribal governments are always wise and never corrupt any more than tribal people are noble savages.<br />
<br />
But it is that tribes, at least where I live and in many places I read about, are emerging as nations with talented leaders and strong visions for the future. Fawn Sharp (below), chair of the Quinault Nation on the Olympic Coast, is a national leader in addressing climate change. Beginning at home, she has worked hard to save the environment and look at how humanity as a whole can deal with climate change.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMZHggPHGBs9CbnkpXK_6oUCmi2gmE1DVr2115DR8TFH5Iq9uU4Ng8NHObnBmxk1HCsIm0cbMRAQS3BoipMjRPROtO8hnqG4wJqdUtCQ8u773mku_iIEfwAZIWDmRh9k5V5jp_paqf69U4/s1600/6a01156f5f4ba1970b01b8d19e8ee1970c-550wi.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="331" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMZHggPHGBs9CbnkpXK_6oUCmi2gmE1DVr2115DR8TFH5Iq9uU4Ng8NHObnBmxk1HCsIm0cbMRAQS3BoipMjRPROtO8hnqG4wJqdUtCQ8u773mku_iIEfwAZIWDmRh9k5V5jp_paqf69U4/s400/6a01156f5f4ba1970b01b8d19e8ee1970c-550wi.png" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Billy Frank Jr. with Fawn Sharp</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Where I live, the Squaxin, Nisqually, and Chehalis Tribes are my closest neighbors; the first two ceded the land where I live in the Treaty of Medicine Creek. All three tribes and dozens of others in what is now Washington State are active in funding projects that keep the salmon viable for all fishermen, environmental restoration projects that benefit the entire public, and public health programs that reach beyond the rez.<br />
<br />
More fundamentally, tribes are places where the leadership has ties to the land and people that have never existed in US politics. When you serve on a council responsible for governing the small remnant of land where 500 generations of your ancestors lived, you may not feel so free to shift with the latest political winds. When your constituents include an extended family made not just of cousins and aunties, but salmon and eagles, you tend to look at the health of the whole instead of the profit of an individual. When you serve a nation that measures in the hundreds or thousands, accountability is much more immediate--it's hard to have elites who never touch the earth, who can escape the angry auntie forever.<br />
<br />
Brian Cladoosby, pictured at the sop of this post, has risen as a leader of the Swinomish Indian Tribal Community, of Puget Sound tribes, and for a few years now as President of the National Congress of American Indians. But he still participates in his community. He fought the dentists lobby to bring free dental care to his tribe. He's opposing petro-trains that pollute Swinomish lands and waters and cut the community off from the rescue squad. And he's working with a broad coalition of tribes to address pollution and climate change on national and global scales.<br />
<br />
At Standing Rock, a less formally governed tribal super-nation has emerged. Hundreds of tribes have converged to join with the Great Sioux Nation to try and stop an oil pipeline, a great black snake that many of them have known for generations would get out of control and poison the water. Maybe because it's rooted in a particular piece of land, this encampment is more focused and ultimately more powerful than the Occupy camps of a few years ago. Maybe it's because the environmental struggle, and specifically the fight to keep oil and coal in the ground, is at once globally imperative and locally relevant. The Water Protectors are leading a non-violent and deeply revolutionary movement, and this time it's not the white career environmentalists calling the shots.<br />
<br />
Meanwhile, back on what's left of the Reservation, Councils are mulling over what the Trump Presidency could mean. He fought dirty with certain tribes when trying to protect his Atlantic City casino interests, and he may well have animosity toward Native Americans in general for their apparent congeniality with Obama, Bernie, and Hillary. The GOP congress is inclined to cut spending, so the already watered-down federal gravy train will likely deliver even less in the future.<br />
<br />
But then again, the Republican hatred of big government and desire for local control could result in tribes having a greater say on federal lands, especially where they neighbor reservations. Sure, the Right would prefer to just privatize everything, but tribes have long histories and deep experience with land disputes and federal courts, where they are sometimes astoundingly successful (even if it takes decades to translate into real life benefits). Many tribes have already been working with federal land managers on cooperative management of everything from huckleberry patches to wildfire response. So even if President Trump wishes to dismantle the US, tribal precedents and politicking and organization may just cut him off at the pass.<br />
<br />
Wherever you are, find your local tribe. Learn whose land you're on, and whose descendants are protecting it. Get to know them, and what they do in your community. Visit their community, and support it. Work together to protect your part of the earth as they always have, with an eye toward generations yet unborn. Join your local sovereign nation in spirit, and our American Nation will benefit. <br />
<br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">* My apologies to Swinomish Tribal Chairman for placing his photo next
to my rant, but as a public figure this kind of thing will happen from
time to time, and he's not the kind of guy to unleash a 3AM tweet-war
against me, so here goes.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: x-small;">** Adolf Hitler's dad changed the family surname from Schicklgruber. The Donald's grand-dad anglicized Drumpf to Trump.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><br /></span>
</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8986985511709586690.post-57995266145616221272015-04-20T21:27:00.000-07:002015-04-20T22:41:48.617-07:00Spring & KAOS in the Air<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxI6eSqWUpYsrAWp6zWe6hBIpMAHjPqWUg3iBqYyUsixkh4yM9hXgZFS5la5Gln_3DHk82d6SrfvC6r9ZhEeRVJOvqX3yOhty93116txIzVtrJt_AV_pv-DJT0zzo5ciMToRx6M0XZ2FET/s1600/IMG_6576+-+Version+3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxI6eSqWUpYsrAWp6zWe6hBIpMAHjPqWUg3iBqYyUsixkh4yM9hXgZFS5la5Gln_3DHk82d6SrfvC6r9ZhEeRVJOvqX3yOhty93116txIzVtrJt_AV_pv-DJT0zzo5ciMToRx6M0XZ2FET/s1600/IMG_6576+-+Version+3.jpg" height="208" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">KAOS is in the air, and probably the water.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
At last, I can breathe a sigh of relief. Exhaling the last of that nagging feeling (I'm not religious enough to feel Guilty) and inhaling relief, relief that I am right with KAOS once again.<br />
<br />
I've been a card-carrying KAOS member for years, and for the past couple or so, I've joined up the kids as well--they breathe that same KAOS-infused air, and I want them to learn about supporting community. The community of hosts, doers-of-things, and engineers (all volunteers) that makes up KAOS serves up news and music un-constrainted by corporate orthodoxy or the increasingly dullardly <a href="http://mojourner.blogspot.com/2013/03/npr-edited-my-15-seconds-of-fame.html" target="_blank">NPR strictures</a> (I want the kids to grow up in a place where the <a href="http://mojourner.blogspot.com/2012/04/something-in-air-kaos.html" target="_blank">airwaves</a> are free, and the chaos is locally grown), and for myself I want KAOS in the air, even if I'm not tuned in. <br />
<br />
So when the credit union was hacked any my credit card changed, shutting off one of the trickle-ups of money that keeps KAOS independent, I meant to give them a call and hook up the new card.<br />
<br />
But I procrastinated.<br />
<br />
And felt off-kilter. A couple or three months went by, and still I hadn't re-coupled my financial hook-up to dear sweet KAOS. I didn't miss KAOS caressing my ears--because I didn't stop listening to this FREE station, but felt dangerously close to Guilt, and about half-past Hypocritical, having extolled and exhorted on behalf of <a href="http://mojourner.blogspot.com/search/label/radio" target="_blank">radio</a>--particularly <a href="http://mojourner.blogspot.com/2011/12/card-carrying-member-of-kaos.html" target="_blank">community</a> <a href="http://mojourner.blogspot.com/2013/02/world-radio-day.html" target="_blank">radio</a>--so often on this blog.<br />
<br />
But now I've made the call, and gotten right with KAOS once again. I just stepped outside, and the air was sweet with what most people would recognize as some Spring flower, but in which I could catch a whiff of KAOS Community Radio.</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8986985511709586690.post-71723977943300958492015-02-24T12:00:00.000-08:002015-02-24T22:06:44.603-08:00Pancakes<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Every few weeks, school starts late, and I have the joy of an extra couple of hours with my youngest kid. For a while now, we've been using that time to head downtown to Darby's for breakfast; it's happened enough that we could call it a Tradition if we wanted. It's a luxury, having this extra time, and being able to spend it sharing coffee (she mostly warms her hands with it, but usually also sneaks a sip) and eating pancakes is a treasure I will not trade for anything. <br />
<br />
Sometimes on weekends, we pry her older sister out of bed and head downtown to the diner. Or maybe it's not until afternoon, but that's no problem, because like any real diner, you can order breakfast all day. One time, the music was some rap about pancakes, and we could hear the cooks talking about pancakes (sorry to be repetitive about pancakes, but me and the girls tend to be selective with our terms, and cannot abide flapjacks, hotcakes, and especially flannel-cakes). One of them said, "I guess I eat a pancake about every damn day!" We cracked up, and repeat that phrase often, if not every damn day. Beneath the laughter, we all recognize a purity in the boast: the guy really enjoys having a pancake every day. A humble pancake sticking to your ribs gives you strength to face whatever the day throws at you.<br />
<br />
Even a short stack can be too much for a kid, and sometimes there are leftovers. She works her way through methodically, cutting enough to eat and saving the rest of the disk, so there will be a substantial something instead of a pile of syrupy pieces. Usually, the dog is the beneficiary. Only recently, DNA analysis showed that a key difference between domesticated dogs and their wolfy cousins is that dogs can digest carbohydrates, and our hound excels. She gets a stale pancake and prances around for a while, showing off to those crows who sometimes taunt her that she has a delicious pancake, before settling down and gobbling it up.<br />
<br />
Sometimes, I cook the pancakes. After years of messing with recipes and bisquick versions, I found a local pancake mix that does the trick best. These days, the youngest daughter mixes it, then I come along to knock out a few more lumps, and we let the batter rest while the skillet heats up. Cast iron is the only acceptable surface for me. Some of my earliest memories are of the thin blue smoke that my grand-dad let rise before flipping. Then watching my dad, him teaching me that watching the bubbles pop led to browned perfection without grand-dads carbonized edging. Dad cooked on an 11.25-inch Griswold skillet that family lore (or at least my recollection) says was given to him when he went away to grad school. With this classic American iron, he could cook anything the lone male physics student was apt to eat (all three meals). I have that skillet now, and continue to cook all kinds of stuff in it, sometimes to the chagrin of my kids...except when it's a pancake day.<br />
<br />
For some reason, my recollections (not yet lore) of Dad's last few days focus on pancakes missed. He had a terminal illness--refusing to knuckle under to the "terminal" label for a couple years already--and was having such a hard time we'd scheduled a doctor visit. After some listening to lungs and flipping through charts, the doctor sat down with Dad, Mom, and me, and explained that Dad needed to be admitted to the hospital. I knew, and I think Dad did too, that the unspoken end of that sentence was "to die."<br />
<br />
It was mid-morning now, and Dad said he was hungry. Stupidly, I sought permission go out to eat before going in to the hospital. I should have just taken him. But the message from the nurse was something like, "Now, you know we can't let you do that." That special gentle condescension that transforms dead men walking into incompetent children had already kicked in. I should have nodded, walked him out, turned the other way, and escaped to a stack of pancakes, but Mom was also worried about what might happen and still believing that after a day or two of hospitalization, we'd go out for breakfast. I didn't want to take that from her, and besides Dad probably wanted to believe in that too. <br />
<br />
Instead of dropping dead over pancakes, he died in a bed surrounded by machines, stuck full of tubes. My aunt did smuggle in one of his favorite meals before the end, but we never got that last moment of freedom, that last stack of pancakes.That that's my big regret is a blessing, but I still wish I'd whisked my parents away and met my sister for a Last Breakfast. <br />
<br />
So, on those late-start days, I'll be sitting at a table with my kid, looking out at the street-scape shenanigans of making silverware sculptures while was await the pancakes. Falling behind a little on work doesn't matter. Eating carbs I don't need is not as unhealthy as missing time with my kids. Following hospital protocol but subverting a dying man's wish was a shame. Pancakes are life, and even if you cannot have one every damn day, it's worth sharing a stack with someone you love. </div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8986985511709586690.post-7656190251711401342015-02-08T23:08:00.001-08:002015-02-11T19:15:23.090-08:00Guns at the Capitol<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgQPHAAt0JUEx-_5GHAt7ANmj-oD3CDHpi0UoVSVFGTGlDvq2MA7MiD2vof4D8AajL6fEgJMOZdEdEPnG2NDi3K5b0CLA9bNasuPwtqrQsQdhUe7Jx9wt8YXKngYsSGY5eImk9hajooUeK/s1600/Not+a+Panther.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgQPHAAt0JUEx-_5GHAt7ANmj-oD3CDHpi0UoVSVFGTGlDvq2MA7MiD2vof4D8AajL6fEgJMOZdEdEPnG2NDi3K5b0CLA9bNasuPwtqrQsQdhUe7Jx9wt8YXKngYsSGY5eImk9hajooUeK/s1600/Not+a+Panther.jpg" height="256" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Some guy from Alabama running his mouth on the Washington State Capitol steps.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
This past Saturday, our local paper <a href="http://www.theolympian.com/2015/02/07/3566110_gun-rights-advocates-rally-at.html?rh=1" target="_blank">reports</a>, about 50 people showed up to protest what they see as infringement on their right to carry arms. A couple of legislators showed up to support them, and nobody was arrested. Washington state, characterized in the media as a liberal haven of pot-smokers and same-sex-marriers, turns out to also be one of the few states that does not outlaw carrying guns into its capitol building.<br />
<br />
Still, the good voters of this state did vote last November to require background checks on all gun sales. You can still buy guns, a bunch of 'em, all kinds,...the voting public here is pretty tolerant of gun owners, but We the People decided it's reasonable to try and limit gun ownership by violent criminals and the mentally ill.<br />
<br />
And it really pisses off a few people. Maybe the dude in the colonial outfit worries he'll be deemed as crazy as he looks. Maybe the guys covered head to foot in "tactical" paramilitary costumes genuinely believe that a background check is tantamount to tyranny.<br />
<br />
But of course, it wasn't the legislators that passed the background check referendum. It was the neighbors of the protestors. Initiative 594 was not the work of some liberal cabal, but the result of a popular vote. Think about it for even a second, and you have to realize that many of the people who voted for the measure actually own guns themselves. No, this was not a top-down clampdown.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAv85xGEvvDypd_5sWmvKqKdBQeiXPu8jDWtKFt1odMpwzR0DXiGcFyL5Obo2ECeN4g-gHm7hxTpfKC4xwJO48K0MKxxsFzz5MZoawKT-FTgwQo1UyJri6ziq0y2bJxB7696z0R7td6N5j/s1600/Panthers+at+the+Capitol.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAv85xGEvvDypd_5sWmvKqKdBQeiXPu8jDWtKFt1odMpwzR0DXiGcFyL5Obo2ECeN4g-gHm7hxTpfKC4xwJO48K0MKxxsFzz5MZoawKT-FTgwQo1UyJri6ziq0y2bJxB7696z0R7td6N5j/s1600/Panthers+at+the+Capitol.jpg" height="285" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Some guys from Seattle standing in ordered dignity.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
Not that there's not some precedent for the legislature curtailing the right to bear arms. In 1969, another protest occurred in Olympia, also making its way to the Capitol steps. That time, though, it was the Black Panthers. And that time, they were protesting a bill in the Legislature that aimed to outlaw the public display of firearms, echoing the California Legislature's act, one that was squarely aimed at the Black Panther Party. The Seattle Black Panthers stood silently on the capitol steps, rifles and shotguns aimed at the sky. When the State Patrol asked that they unload and put down their weapons, the Panthers did so, and after about an hour, they left. [<a href="http://depts.washington.edu/civilr/display.cgi?image=bpp/news/PI_Mar4-69-p2.jpg%22" target="_blank">Here's the firsthand account</a>, so you don't have to take my word for it.]<br />
<br />
To reiterate, faced with legislative action directly aimed at a political party to whom 2nd Amendment rights were a core principle, that party protested peacefully. They did not attempt to enter the Capitol building (as recent gun rights protestors have), and even allowed their weapons to be unloaded by State Troopers (as contemporary gun rights protestors swear they would never allow).<br />
<br />
In 1969 (as in 2015, sadly) young black men were shot by policemen for minor alleged offenses. The Black Panther Party included people who had directly experienced repression by The State. Not minorly incovenienced by a referendum-passed background check, but subjected to full-on harrassment and injury at the hands of law enforcement. Break-ins, frame-ups and shootings perpetrated by local, state and federal governments, not to mention the lack of enforcement when amateurs stepped in with murders and lynchings. Thus the Panthers' belief that they needed to police the police and to arm themselves for self-protection. Thus the February 1969 protest here in Olympia.<br />
<br />
The crowd this past Saturday did not include any black people that I could see in the available photos. They were prevented from entering the actual legislative chambers with their arsenals of handguns and assault weapons, but no legislation was passed that targeted them, or even gun owners in general. Yet their statements and signs show that these modern protesters feel that they have been grievously wronged, and are being oppressed.<br />
<br />
If the Black Panthers had showed up with military assault weapons, would they have been treated as civilly? The 1969 photos show a bunch of guys in berets and jackets holding rifles and shotguns, hands visible and not on triggers, not handgun in sight, no paramilitary "tactical" gear at all. Had the Seattle protesters insisted that the State Patrol could unload Panther rifles once they had--in the words of Heston and any number of white NRA advocates--"pried it from my cold dead fingers," the Panthers may well have been obliged. I mean this not as a statement about the Washington State Patrol, who in fact seem to have been equally adept at diffusing tense situations then and now, but about the relative value of black and white lives then and now.<br />
<br />
The local paper <a href="http://www.theolympian.com/2015/02/07/3566110_gun-rights-advocates-rally-at.html?rh=1" target="_blank">also reports</a> that protesters this past Saturday expected to be arrested (read, "martyred") and were selling hats to cover bail that said "Fight Tyranny--Shoot Back." I'm not sure they had Michael Brown or Eric Garner in mind, but what if black men did just that? We don't have to speculate about the answer, because history provides it: those black men would be jailed, beaten, shot. In my own lifetime, I remember rowhouses in Philadephia being fire-bombed--with men, women, and children inside--because they were black nationalists. Now that's oppression. That's being Tread Upon by the iron heel of The State.<br />
<br />
But background checks? Get real, your rights are in no danger. <br />
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<br /></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8986985511709586690.post-79971970783886259912015-01-02T21:59:00.000-08:002015-01-02T21:59:56.437-08:00Re-emerged<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0xxNcDqgaqf4yaOaVtFkANPNKNdgstCTbwhVIrk_mS0de4SE5TRmdRJv1e4ZhOpw8ULfuS-yEVBiDHq-Vmd_qMNB4_wHfVr_6KQftyBW75EijvXnbwhR5D_SB0-vQMXfOzILmgUWbXVjb/s1600/IMG_5576.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0xxNcDqgaqf4yaOaVtFkANPNKNdgstCTbwhVIrk_mS0de4SE5TRmdRJv1e4ZhOpw8ULfuS-yEVBiDHq-Vmd_qMNB4_wHfVr_6KQftyBW75EijvXnbwhR5D_SB0-vQMXfOzILmgUWbXVjb/s1600/IMG_5576.JPG" height="300" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>First there is a building, then there is no building, then there is</i>* -Donovan (If he'd been an archaeologist)</td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td></tr>
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<br />
The ebb and flow of humans on the land fascinates me. Most people see the forest and figure it's always been there, big trees out beyond civilization's paved domain, wild lands untouched, or at least not covered with buildings. Even for those who recognize second or third growth and know that there's not really any "pristine" anymore, stumbling onto the wrack of some past society's highest tide comes as a surprise.<br />
<br />
But I should let that tidal metaphor alone, because a lot of the stuff left behind by retreating humans in this part of the world comes not from moderate daily motion, regular as the moon and achieving balance over time. True, people have walked all over this landscape since time immemorial, but until the past century or two they just didn't create that much trash for archaeologists to find. Twentieth Century <i>Homo sapiens</i>, though, they created a splash, a flood that reached just about everywhere in the blink of an archaeologist's eye. For enough generations that we don't even think of it anymore, this has been because of cars and the places we need to go in them (including trailheads and campgrounds tucked in the wilds), but the underlying source of this inundation of landscapes by metal and concrete lies in the resource extraction economy that the Territories and then the States relied on so heavily.<br />
<br />
I don't have to get metaphorical or writerly about it, because the language is right there. Men seeking minerals and timber experience boom and bust; only to someone with a drawn out sense of time does it look like an ebb and flow. Discover gold, and there's a Rush.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhiQl_SYBxebQjF1TNTsrHKEzz6rd8jjC1Nx6R2cmS21XVaFEZ9U_2uAQBYxVlVJ4CcvZgE8ISdFMIZS4dLAw31HZhg6C4i1qfTcuSivhQN9GgFPRtBZi61kL6Wkesp6hK2VA1PZQpUjTnn/s1600/IMG_5578.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhiQl_SYBxebQjF1TNTsrHKEzz6rd8jjC1Nx6R2cmS21XVaFEZ9U_2uAQBYxVlVJ4CcvZgE8ISdFMIZS4dLAw31HZhg6C4i1qfTcuSivhQN9GgFPRtBZi61kL6Wkesp6hK2VA1PZQpUjTnn/s1600/IMG_5578.JPG" height="300" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Hidden in the forest was a lumber mill.</td></tr>
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By the same token, when the trees are cut or the ore peters out--or larger economic forces make the investment unwise or untenable--people tend to walk away without delay. Often quite suddenly, but usually not before removing whatever's useful, to the point of prying up the rails and ties and loading them onto the last train out. Scavengers continue to pick at it for a while, but the forest eventually cloaks even big mill buildings and then takes it's sweet time devouring what's left. A place where hundreds of people lived and worked populated by animals, train whistles replaced by bird calls. <br />
<br />
That is, until the trees get big enough to harvest. Then it may turn out that that mill is a historic site, or at least an archaeological ruin, and someone like me gets called in to be the ironic bureaucrat. A plan to cut down trees may be complicated by the presence of an archaeological site composed of the remains of: a timber mill. The place where thousands of acres of clear-cut were sawed into boards and shingles may have, in the years since falling silent, have developed a patina of historic significance that merits its protection from: a timber harvest. Yep.<br />
<br />
Or maybe not. Not all old stuff is meaningful. Archaeologically speaking, the place I've pictured above does not have much potential, especially considering that you can go back into archival sources and get orders of magnitude more information about what happened there than you can from the few artifacts left behind. People only lived there for a decade or so, their household trash was hauled somewhere other than the place where the trees were cut, and much of the area was tidied up with heavy machinery after abandonment. Other than agreeing not to knock the building down unless it becomes clear that there's imminent risk of it falling down (maybe on a litigious history buff), the landowner didn't have to alter his plans much.<br />
<br />
As long as the mill walls stand with no trees around, the mill lends scale to the few other remains of this former town: a few houses along the road, the concrete bank vault sitting alone in someone's yard, and the building down the road that used to be the school. Trees are more likely to grow back than this particular town, but for the time being you can drive by and marvel at the vine-covered walls. Just don't go crawling around too close, because it might fall on you, or you might drop into one of the deep concrete caverns. <br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: x-small;">* I wrote about this place previously in a post called "<a href="http://mojourner.blogspot.com/2014/06/swallowed.html" target="_blank">Swallowed</a>." You're welcome for me not calling this one "Regurgitated."</span><br />
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<br /></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8986985511709586690.post-42077178905437444022014-12-28T14:27:00.000-08:002014-12-28T14:27:32.934-08:00Yon Rock Art Rock Art<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEicdBwZhEc-jnox4Qm5yPlIteneZgE_yCD-VS7gzdOUp8jLsheg8LwGHUHJeP2HHZ9Z1mJ8XWkuF7IuY6uot1w6YwBwpvaFH8aiOO-KddfjtYcTYCKcHfFVGPjFWlms6ggFYuLhKXRT3S0L/s1600/IMG_3845.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEicdBwZhEc-jnox4Qm5yPlIteneZgE_yCD-VS7gzdOUp8jLsheg8LwGHUHJeP2HHZ9Z1mJ8XWkuF7IuY6uot1w6YwBwpvaFH8aiOO-KddfjtYcTYCKcHfFVGPjFWlms6ggFYuLhKXRT3S0L/s1600/IMG_3845.JPG" height="300" width="400" /></a></div>
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Do archaeology long enough, and you'll fill your bucket with tales of people who come to you with Important Discoveries. Often as not, they have found some really significant Rock Art that may Change History. Often as not, the rock is virginally free of human touch, or has been violated by a bulldozer, its scars mistaken for petroglyphs.<br />
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On the other hand, it shouldn't take too many years of doing archaeology to recognize that people do make bona fide Discoveries. Like the guy who took his kid fishing, wasn't having much luck, and noticed what looked like carving on a boulder. <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8IV2sCdMPL8i2cI9x4GwOKv_DpMTOhXbbTm8xxRaYoiSJBFbJXmtCMvvAOk1sy22oiGSdkaP4ReDAQrzgdWni6A9dYsHzwY8JIg_dZ-qxXPMRrw2JCLSY31v_jDh3kp3JS4DUtcdAr-a4/s1600/IMG_5377.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8IV2sCdMPL8i2cI9x4GwOKv_DpMTOhXbbTm8xxRaYoiSJBFbJXmtCMvvAOk1sy22oiGSdkaP4ReDAQrzgdWni6A9dYsHzwY8JIg_dZ-qxXPMRrw2JCLSY31v_jDh3kp3JS4DUtcdAr-a4/s1600/IMG_5377.JPG" height="300" width="400" /></a></div>
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The fisherman contacted the Tribe of that River, as well as some archaeologists for the state. The river rose over the boulder, and fell again. The machinery of state moved slowly, then quickly. The Tribe and the archaeologists agreed that this was a singular boulder, carved with a depiction of K'wati the Transformer, slaying Xa?lax the Lizard. It turns out that the Quileute have an oral tradition about these two, and places their fight about 200 meters up-river from where the boulder was found.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkinhlWumD_AsCozv_gHfwsRpceJi1_GvxbNfm9gAZj6qz0I4637Hc_iFKcklvi0UVBfTb9GRcL0UqDZVqpezUSrZ5f_5m80P5od2Pnac9iTddebDmVpuUkbDJg76QPnRGp7li3TprDCLP/s1600/IMG_5406.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkinhlWumD_AsCozv_gHfwsRpceJi1_GvxbNfm9gAZj6qz0I4637Hc_iFKcklvi0UVBfTb9GRcL0UqDZVqpezUSrZ5f_5m80P5od2Pnac9iTddebDmVpuUkbDJg76QPnRGp7li3TprDCLP/s1600/IMG_5406.JPG" height="300" width="400" /></a></div>
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Do archaeology for a very long time, and you see that rarely does Tribal history mesh so well, so specifically. Do archaeology for not very long at all and you'll already notice that there's rarely much Art in artifacts. Mostly, we look at rubbish and broken old tools. Sometimes they're well made, even masterly, but the Calawah boulder represents something more, an artistic vision that wraps through (at least) three dimensions and weaves carving onto a net of red veins in the stone, transforming them into Kwati's comb and tongue, and a cranky red lizard. <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0v6wIsVFgkLjr8QNk1QAXZx0vqDf86RiCCOVzU-K8UTHYC7-FGBFcbDgDdodmxmG7Rj5vxlueVD1VwyY-d0LCSDR5Pwjy1CuU4splYuadWPSCLM2tFBF3C5KvLJlOlXD636wORA1gBy6V/s1600/IMG_5354.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0v6wIsVFgkLjr8QNk1QAXZx0vqDf86RiCCOVzU-K8UTHYC7-FGBFcbDgDdodmxmG7Rj5vxlueVD1VwyY-d0LCSDR5Pwjy1CuU4splYuadWPSCLM2tFBF3C5KvLJlOlXD636wORA1gBy6V/s1600/IMG_5354.JPG" height="300" width="400" /></a></div>
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Do archaeology long enough, and you witness enough looting that it's inspiring to see a case like this where the guy who found it told the Tribe instead of taking it himself or selling it. Do archaeology long enough, and it gets easier to cynically write off your profession as the production of rarely read reports and unexamined artifacts locked in boxes, so it's good to be part of a discovery destined to be adored by a People.<br />
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Be an archaeocrat long enough, and you know that it can be hard to achieve consensus around doing the right thing (not just legally speaking) with different agencies and sovereign governments involved. But in this case a Plan was devised, a Council Resolution passed, and a Permit issued in the course of a couple of days. The boulder was pulled from the River and brought downstream to La Push, where it sits safe and sound, protected by the Quileute Nation. For the discovery, for the mere existence of this multi-dimensional work of art, and for all the right steps along the way, I am thankful. <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxZSMnIzwnkboevAUxK1eVSOvu7WuEUTM2C3bdxW_0oaqKk6aA3Kc2g1wWYUEXEbSMbjODAN9fZg_6X2FhkG_Qq2gBe6gb4D-5MJO8IfN9hr5iRqm3_sWQr9eB_yAhGiGGm2tibSVLmY1k/s1600/IMG_3836.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxZSMnIzwnkboevAUxK1eVSOvu7WuEUTM2C3bdxW_0oaqKk6aA3Kc2g1wWYUEXEbSMbjODAN9fZg_6X2FhkG_Qq2gBe6gb4D-5MJO8IfN9hr5iRqm3_sWQr9eB_yAhGiGGm2tibSVLmY1k/s1600/IMG_3836.JPG" height="300" width="400" /></a></div>
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On the dimension of gratefulness, the boulder resonates further. My colleague shown here retired recently, but got to document and protect this petroglyph as the final act of this long career. Years of recording can scatters, isolated chert flakes, and other near-meaningless junk--not to mention all those days of finding nothing--and he was rewarded with this. It may not sound as scientific as people want archaeologists to be, but I really feel like the land thanked him for decades of his care and work. If you do archaeology long enough, and do it for the good of the sites, your good karma bucket gets pretty full and things like this happen.<br />
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8986985511709586690.post-54491458153427868032014-12-07T21:28:00.000-08:002014-12-07T21:49:45.916-08:00Admint Calendar<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">So crazy it just might work.</td></tr>
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<br />
Being both a mint junkie and a anti-garbage saver of containers, I have on hand a bag full of little plastic disks that once contained mints. I've used some now and then for seeds, but consumption has out-paced re-use for a while now. This fall, however, inspiration struck my younger daughter and I, and we vowed to invent the Admint Calendar.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTF8IZLbch37snMmUEz1KbiGIyEzvHI3UJXfvjHyfpvprox54IK2TbsbUz4tiUUsyz_sHLwCTbFkoVkJRT5TQkyuqvGMTWUbkfMDk4hA3p5rhhSd9wq5ux0j-_E4iX8IA9N-UWfkyHTK_R/s1600/IMG_6298.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTF8IZLbch37snMmUEz1KbiGIyEzvHI3UJXfvjHyfpvprox54IK2TbsbUz4tiUUsyz_sHLwCTbFkoVkJRT5TQkyuqvGMTWUbkfMDk4hA3p5rhhSd9wq5ux0j-_E4iX8IA9N-UWfkyHTK_R/s1600/IMG_6298.JPG" height="300" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Decorating the tree. Painting and layout by the child genius.</td></tr>
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After some discussion, we settled on cutting out a Christmas tree shape from a scrap of 1/4-inch plywood, painting it green, and attaching the mint containers. She determined the shape by laying out the containers to fit on the board we had; beginning a single one at the apex, her formula for subsequent rows was "add two, then substract one, then repeat." Making the tree took a few minutes, followed by an hour under a fan to dry it enough to do the next step.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8OKPBGFaQRSehcIxRBpz1w1U_FteJmncy3LxlLAbo_GZ4t6yAdqqDyYakRfEHJ9i6a-wHT8s-FzcNoQgls0pEzwW0a3sKnHNR7NxJFRMnvVqJfqV7CwnaR87ta7nlr6EGmXPu-YQ6uqWW/s1600/IMG_6299.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8OKPBGFaQRSehcIxRBpz1w1U_FteJmncy3LxlLAbo_GZ4t6yAdqqDyYakRfEHJ9i6a-wHT8s-FzcNoQgls0pEzwW0a3sKnHNR7NxJFRMnvVqJfqV7CwnaR87ta7nlr6EGmXPu-YQ6uqWW/s1600/IMG_6299.jpg" height="300" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Attaching the containers: over-engineering by the dad. (Not pictured: fat ring o' glue)</td></tr>
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We have a genetic predisposition to build things to last, perhaps at odds with the surficial preoccupation of some crafters, and so we attached the containers with a glob-ring of gorilla glue and staples slammed deep into the board. Conveniently, the tops of the containers can be pulled off to allow the staple gun to do its thing.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0N2ZAlQIMOMAcKODLuhJ-fw65KtTe4vpKdD8EsMgOGMwQU6aWNOSHoQxp775j9x1zMJVNHl_nUuaKfe0bpgErQIQU_Ee4f8hZ-npv_yFw2xQqXgJzOdVDSZrJcDGEeago6K0RnazAKdQw/s1600/IMG_6301.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0N2ZAlQIMOMAcKODLuhJ-fw65KtTe4vpKdD8EsMgOGMwQU6aWNOSHoQxp775j9x1zMJVNHl_nUuaKfe0bpgErQIQU_Ee4f8hZ-npv_yFw2xQqXgJzOdVDSZrJcDGEeago6K0RnazAKdQw/s1600/IMG_6301.JPG" height="300" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Stashing the candy. Goodbye 'til Christmas day, Eggnog Chocolate.</td></tr>
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All that remained was to snap on the lids and install the treats. Maybe the best thing about making your own Adventskalendar is that you get to put good candy in it. Not stuff that was made years ago. No opening up the door to disappointment. It turns out that Seattle Chocolates fit perfectly, and we happen to love them.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgnWUezCiw9cf94BUJYA-WFZELk0EUAokOs_Q0_Upoat7-KAU1mwn28w0y0E0sMe-0_r492uVMSIHz-7i0KQe2OKtUc5wU7ZNgqk7LdLpqXqTeI0O5oUiUpGO0GkqNP1Xbr4LW7oYII5_R7/s1600/IMG_6303.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgnWUezCiw9cf94BUJYA-WFZELk0EUAokOs_Q0_Upoat7-KAU1mwn28w0y0E0sMe-0_r492uVMSIHz-7i0KQe2OKtUc5wU7ZNgqk7LdLpqXqTeI0O5oUiUpGO0GkqNP1Xbr4LW7oYII5_R7/s1600/IMG_6303.JPG" height="400" width="300" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">No product endorsement intended, but thanks for the glittery labels, whichever corporation markets this stuff.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
So, there you have it. The Admint Calendar. The only one of its kind. </div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8986985511709586690.post-68797797680683094732014-12-07T20:50:00.000-08:002014-12-07T20:50:25.900-08:00Cavalier Attitudes Redux<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
A few days ago, I posted about the cavalier attitude towards rape at UVA frats and their breathern elsewhere. I was among the thousands of bloggers and hundreds of news media outlets that picked up on the story. <br />
<br />
Now, it turns out that the <i>Rolling Stone</i> article that triggered the uproar itself took a cavalier attitude with the truth and verification.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/u-va-fraternity-to-rebut-claims-of-gang-rape-in-rolling-stone/2014/12/05/5fa5f7d2-7c91-11e4-84d4-7c896b90abdc_story.html" target="_blank">Some digging</a> by reporters at the <i>Washington Post</i>, among others, found that "Jackie," the victim spotlighted in the original article, had said some things that are not verifiable, and others that appear to be outright false. Predictably, thousands of bloggers and hiundreds of news media outlets have picked up on this story.<br />
<br />
Part of the response is to point at <i>Rolling Stone</i> and accuse the magazine and its reporter of sloppy journalism. True enough, it appears, although I myself have done zero actual reporting on this and don't believe that most of the critics have, either. I see the bandwagon, but won't jump on.<br />
<br />
But another common element in reactions is to jump on Jackie. Another girl with regrets or some other problem claiming rape. I see this bandwagon, and would like to stop it, or at least give it a flat.<br />
<br />
The Post story--which does show evidence of thorough reporting and includes interviews with Jackie, her friends, and others at UVA--does not say she was not raped, though there are inconsistencies and doubts about the details. The frat accused in the original article turns out not to have had an official even on the date in question, the "main" rapist is not a brother in that frat, and they deny having a policy of including rape as part of pledging (no kidding). Instead of being vaginally gang-raped and beaten, her friends say she was orally gang-raped by maybe 5 guys, not 7. <br />
<br />
Merely forced to perform oral sex while being held in a frat bedroom. You comfortable with blaming her now?<br />
<br />
Not me.<br />
<br />
The frat, with the benefit of money, lawyers, and status, has launched a counter-attack on Jackie, as you would expect whether they had a role to play or not. Money and power have a way of walking away free, particularly in an institution so steeped in tradition and white male privilege. Even is it were no different than other universities, UVA has the added defense of the enclave; campuses have their own law more often than not. This was a main point of the article (for which Jackie was the misfortunate poster child), that UVA and many other institutions of higher learning steer rape victims toward options other than prosecution of their attackers. Out in the real world, rapists have no such options.<br />
<br />
The Post's follow-up and fact-checking does not lead them to the conclusion that the entire story is fabricated. They don't refute at all the bigger points of Rolling Stone's article, that UVA has a culture that glorifies frat boys and winks at rape, and presents victims with a range of options that systematically result in non-prosecution of rapists. Not just winks, but shuts its eyes, as evidenced by the lack of student dismissals for sexual assault while staunchly guarding its reputation by dismissing violators of the academic honor code. <br />
<br />
Nonetheless, fratboys and their supporters in news and social media attack Jackie. I feel incredibly sorry for her, having to endure this second wave of assault. </div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8986985511709586690.post-36540742934709441452014-12-04T20:59:00.000-08:002014-12-04T20:59:30.561-08:00Loosies, Not the Sky of Diamonds<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZHGVX2D-jh3s4TIBzF-UV_s4c-onY9cSSufdXox-Qp6kyId9O40NA5vM_XRXr4kWS-wVeKzJldTMMuCH4OJyUw4dYwkPT309M9dJikAVdJx-MzJ4JCEQDVgH3asuebE4Ssl2XJbyv4IRt/s1600/eric-garner.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZHGVX2D-jh3s4TIBzF-UV_s4c-onY9cSSufdXox-Qp6kyId9O40NA5vM_XRXr4kWS-wVeKzJldTMMuCH4OJyUw4dYwkPT309M9dJikAVdJx-MzJ4JCEQDVgH3asuebE4Ssl2XJbyv4IRt/s1600/eric-garner.jpg" height="196" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
Plenty of people are posting about racism in law enforcement, as they should. Black and brown men have reasons to worry that don't really affect a white guy like me.<br />
<br />
"Like me," including Middle Classness, and it's class and money that I want to speak about, to add to the conversation. Plenty of poor white people also have reason to worry about law being selectively enforced, and force selectively applied, but this post is not about saying white people suffer too.<br />
<br />
No, I just want to ask why Mike Brown (alleged cigar thief) and Eric Garner (alleged seller of single cigarettes, or "loosies") met with deadly force in the course of their alleged crimes. Even assuming that the one guy was stealing smokes and the other selling them, it's hard to imagine that these were the most serious crimes of the moment, much less offences so heinous that the perpetrators needed to be shot multiple times or choked to death.<br />
<br />
At the same instant when Eric Garner was executed extrajudicially in a part of New York where selling single cigarettes is a survival strategy, in another part of town men who stole billions of dollars, crashed the economy to an extent where selling loosies is a thing, and then extorted the US government for bailouts walk free. Not just free, but assured that they not only will not be stopped and frisked (or, in the 1%-er analogy, forensically audited), but that were a cop to ever lay a hostile hand on them, massive lawsuit-induced windfalls would follow. <br />
<br />
Racism is real, even if race is not. White cops using superior numbers or firepower to overwhelm brown suspects is a shame and a problem; ultimately, it's a threat to democracy. <br />
<br />
But so is the fact that police attention is strangely affixed on petty crimes. Call in four cops to take down one alleged cigarette seller, but leave the corporate executives alone. Hell, offer the oligarchs any out conceivable: from paying fines with shareholder money, to bankorruptcy protections, to failing to convene a grand jury identify individuals for indictment. They have diamonds on the soles of their shoes, so the criminal justice system shall not touch them; the sky's the limit for them. <br />
<br />
Meanwhile, in the mud beneath the lowest societal rungs, poor people die at the hands of the police. <br />
</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8986985511709586690.post-80438839123993989332014-11-25T22:33:00.000-08:002014-11-25T22:33:16.168-08:00Cavalier Attitudes<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjt4lGxoc7dsWS1ffqHYyYN26-g9q3YLGXEkWZD1XMM3W6ohUVb-1QtEr4diOU2fYHI9yn3wzS0K_BlHgM8tVw-qWtzansOV2qzglVBLDQ1NkBXJXT_8P4XAEGH2zdfdZjb6BIy_W_bJZ5n/s1600/VirginiaCavaliers.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjt4lGxoc7dsWS1ffqHYyYN26-g9q3YLGXEkWZD1XMM3W6ohUVb-1QtEr4diOU2fYHI9yn3wzS0K_BlHgM8tVw-qWtzansOV2qzglVBLDQ1NkBXJXT_8P4XAEGH2zdfdZjb6BIy_W_bJZ5n/s1600/VirginiaCavaliers.jpg" height="332" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Shut up and take it, b****</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">[To my one steadfast reader, who has noticed some Virginia-bashing here, I regret to inform you that it's happening again. Click elsewhere and come back next week, knowing that there are Virginians I love and admire, including you, sister. Likewise, good people who happen to be associated with University of Virginia, sorry you have to be connected with the subject of this post.]</span><br />
<br />
Once again the Old Dominion has hit the news in a most sinister way. This time, it's the <i>Rolling Stone</i> article calling out University of Virginia for its utter failure to tamp down the rape impulse throbbing on Rugby Road, Frat Row to what is arguably Virginia's most prestigious institute of higher learning.<br />
<br />
I never made such an argument. Being a smart kid in a suburban Richmond high school, I was of course encouraged to seek admission to UVA, but balked at the idea, much to the bafflement of certain counselors and teachers. Partially, this stemmed from a budding rebelliousness; fuck if I was gonna go where all the uber-preppies went, worship the old dead white guys, and give in to The System. After my knee-jerking settled down, though, there were other reasons to avoid UVA: people I knew who were most enthralled with it tended to be assholes who genuinely believed that "nice" clothes equate to civilization, a founder who fucked his 14 year old slave and sold off some of their progeny didn't inspire the same reverence in me as it did in the spawn of Virginia's finer families, wearing ties and swilling cocktails didn't strike me as recreation, going to college less than an hour away didn't seem like much of a horizon expansion,...and so on.<br />
<br />
The <i>Rolling Stone</i> article scratches the surface but does not draw blood from the beast that is the Entitled Rich White Boy. He whose dad was a Wahoo, and whose son will be. Maybe he earned the grades to deserve entry, maybe he's even smart at something. But he's gonna sow his wild oats for a few years before moving on to daddy's firm. And those girls better comply. The article failed to name any of these rapists, and won't send any of them to jail.<br />
<br />
In addition to the inexplicable "Wahoo," the UVA teams are known as the "Cavaliers," which is illustrative. Originally, Cavaliers were the royalists who opposed Cromwell's rebellion. It doesn't take a Cromwell apologist to suspect that Cavaliers were the vicious dandies who supported the old elite order. In the Crown's Virginia Colony, the influx of cavaliers came when the Roundheads were winning, and the self-proclaimed noble fighters took off rather than nobly face the music. Somehow, this dubious legacy became a swashbuckling logo.<br />
<br />
Echoing this history, UVA has in my lifetime (and I suspect at least back through my William & Mary and Mary Washington educated grandparent's matriculations) been a refuge for elites and elitists. Sure, others make it there, but the aura of one of our nation's "Public Ivies" has long been one of wealthy entitlement. Graduate from there, and people acknowledge your academic achievement as well as suspect your birthright, even if you didn't, ahem, "earn" it by being born rich.<br />
<br />
Even as "The" University's admissions policy has slipped into allowing non-<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Families_of_Virginia" target="_blank">FFV</a>'s, women, and black people to attend, UVA fraternities have proudly flown the Cav flag and maintained sanctuaries for Entitled Rich White Boys.<br />
<br />
Women stepping foot into one of these refugia along Rugby Road risk rape. Sadly, women in any college stand a greater chance of being raped than women in general. Unsurprisingly, women walking into a frat house on any campus stand a greater chance of being raped than college women in general. Understandably, both fraternities and universities have a vested interest in protecting their reputations, and tend to deal with the spoilsport women who object to being raped through means other than law enforcement. <br />
<br />
At UVA, the ability to avoid having the cops come in and arrest violent felons is enhanced by wealth and tradition. I don't have empirical evidence (such as that available to prove all of the previous paragraph's assertions) to prove this, but the <i>Rolling Stone</i> article makes a pretty good case, and my experience as a Virginian and American certainly fits. Rich guys avoid imprisonment pretty well. Reinforced by the aura of a centuries-old institution founded by a Founding Father, consistently rated highly as an academic institution, posessed of many traditions and a well-heeled sense of Decorum (whatever that is), UVA is not easily dragged through the mud. Not that long ago, one of it's drunken preppie athletes murdered his girlfriend, and yet the <i>Rolling Stone</i> article is still presented by many as an anomaly, an affront, maybe some sort of deviant leftist (or feminazi) plot. <br />
<br />
Where Power is worshipped and Money talks loudly while it's partner Tradition silences dissent, people get raped. </div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8986985511709586690.post-35764568688241653422014-11-16T22:52:00.000-08:002014-11-16T22:52:09.421-08:00How I Lost My Hearing<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwe2Rba_rZAJ8gm9v8OdYlq1y6ZoXygulB9BAmBdnSRhfMnWAmL8bsg-19nnb6r_DtI7anokxIWkftqMd218Icg7qv-nvA5JQuz0tC21S2a63EkaUss_cd9aEUjaC-j1RHyKcbfgz7zCT2/s1600/-.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwe2Rba_rZAJ8gm9v8OdYlq1y6ZoXygulB9BAmBdnSRhfMnWAmL8bsg-19nnb6r_DtI7anokxIWkftqMd218Icg7qv-nvA5JQuz0tC21S2a63EkaUss_cd9aEUjaC-j1RHyKcbfgz7zCT2/s1600/-.jpg" height="400" width="390" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">That's me in the striped shirt, appropriated from grand-dad 30 years before McLemore made it cool to do that.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
So yeah, I was a punk. Back in the early to mid-1980s. Then the migraines got too intense, or I fell in with some deadheads, or I got married to a non-punk, or I just didn't have the time and money to goto punk shows anymore.<br />
<br />
Today, I went to the Olympia Film Festival to see "Salad Days," a documentary about the punk scene in DC, the harDCore scene of which I was a brief and inconspicuous part (1982-1985, more or less). The movie, which is apparently one of several returning to what are now days of yore, covered a lot of ground, but didn't seem to tell much of a story.<br />
<br />
And neither did my experience. I was never in a band, and I ended up being a government archaeologist.<br />
<br />
But I also got a sense of what it meant to be free, to just go do what you were interested in. I was not interested in releasing a record, but in the years since I've gone ahead and written academic papers, facilitated outlaw land actions, carved wood, written innumerable unedited essays, and preserved landscapes because I felt like it, and would not accept experts telling me I couldn't. <br />
<br />
Being a punk made me deaf to the many "NO's" kids and young adults will hear, and I'm thankful for that.<br />
<br />
Being a punk also made me deaf to sounds. Mom may not have been right about the value of joining the church youth group (dominated by drunkards and stoners at a time when I was straight edge), but she sure as hell had a point about loud music ruining my hearing. There's a video to prove it.<br />
<br />
Look <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_6hAunLwSIQ" target="_blank">here</a>, and you'll see me at age 18, right in front of the stage at a White Cross concert in Richmond, VA. White Cross was the local headliner punk band at the time, and were reknowned for being extremely fucking LOUD. The last band was already loud? No problem, just crank it up higher. Even if they'd never used a distortion pedal, their sound turned eardrums into tattered curtains whipped by hurricanes.<br />
<br />
You can hear it in the video, which turns out to be better quality than some of the stuff in Salad Days. It sounds so rough because it was, because it was so loud that the microphone sould not cope. From about 2:35-3:40, you'll see me in front of the stage, shirtless and sweaty, singing along, commencing in a close-up of my mesomorphic self that makes me shudder to realize how much I looked like an actual--rather than mockingly ironic as intended--skinhead. By 7:50-8:24, I was on stage, crouched and resting, carrying on a conversation while the band raged a few feet away. At 9:00, and especially 9:33-9:37, you see me in front of the PA system, my left (now almost totally deaf) ear a few inches away from a 15 inch woofer.<br />
<br />
<br /></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8986985511709586690.post-8725046746282123692014-11-11T20:03:00.000-08:002014-11-13T23:26:10.820-08:00The Hipster Effect and other Models<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdOIljD3qG7uD4axdTJAR8PB_h14wpxrfPRuyRaMOQfUAyuReyKFFPMOzclslRX77xkJF_ZLEIj2Fmxr6KGCWgA8GR2JYxgbpgDLMXyPuNbSqn9t_94y-grtNrCZeECvjfeqGdjYqM7hD0/s1600/uncle+m.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="326" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdOIljD3qG7uD4axdTJAR8PB_h14wpxrfPRuyRaMOQfUAyuReyKFFPMOzclslRX77xkJF_ZLEIj2Fmxr6KGCWgA8GR2JYxgbpgDLMXyPuNbSqn9t_94y-grtNrCZeECvjfeqGdjYqM7hD0/s400/uncle+m.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Image by Getty, Fair Use by This Guy's Nephew</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
A mathematician recently posted an article (<a href="http://arxiv.org/abs/1410.8001" target="_blank">available at arXiv</a> as a pre-print, to be published in a refereed journal soon) called "The Hipster Effect: When anticonformists all look the same." I'm too slack to learn the math, which apparently helps explain why so many people who reject the mainstream still end up conforming, just to something else. It has to do with the delay between a mainstream trend existing and the non-conformists realizing it and rejecting it, and looks like this:<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6ih5ef0_br2u7TEeadzuLjVyb4Pz4-5JgFogZ8fSYH0ArHTuuNWkmZiaUIDYFS_n2Iy1n1cKC5f_JIlPotS3qhjeNjslwNpkVmtXmASbqMcz7BDXzAwfiGZ6kUHXj2VLowrArNGVi26KC/s1600/hipster+effect+visuals+by+Touboul.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="346" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6ih5ef0_br2u7TEeadzuLjVyb4Pz4-5JgFogZ8fSYH0ArHTuuNWkmZiaUIDYFS_n2Iy1n1cKC5f_JIlPotS3qhjeNjslwNpkVmtXmASbqMcz7BDXzAwfiGZ6kUHXj2VLowrArNGVi26KC/s400/hipster+effect+visuals+by+Touboul.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
As an anthropologist, I have some non-mathematical ideas about how and why hipsters end up sharing so many traits. As a human, I tend reject simplifications of our behavior to mathematical functions. But Touboul is clear that his model is just a model, and not an explanation of culture or even something that can encompass all hipsters, so it's fine for what it is. Also, the fact that some image sprange to your mind when I said "hipster" proves that he does have a point. Facial hair, clunky black glasses,...<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinQVSwFcryu0_LTA4k_FFD1oCZ9AaL8rydowxiT89w-rjRuvqGhRTizFdKhgIXrPZAxim5H4V-MnF8wpsYn5Jx4dhWNmwUI1fteuwnTbWZ8kksXuFo1y-2AJ9nw8wZGN3SpU-KGaBqcOzg/s1600/sifter-hipster.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="247" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinQVSwFcryu0_LTA4k_FFD1oCZ9AaL8rydowxiT89w-rjRuvqGhRTizFdKhgIXrPZAxim5H4V-MnF8wpsYn5Jx4dhWNmwUI1fteuwnTbWZ8kksXuFo1y-2AJ9nw8wZGN3SpU-KGaBqcOzg/s400/sifter-hipster.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">This guy read the Hipster Effect article before I did, and was already appearing in blogposts about it days ago.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
As if to prove Touboul's point, there has been a delay, and then a bunch of hipsters blogged about it (huh, blogging, it's so old-school, so they must be posting ironically) along with all the other non-conformists. I'm too late to be a hipster, having learned of the article in the Washington Post (online, at least, and not on some dead tree).<br />
<br />
And yet, I exhibit signs of being a hipster. I'm in phase with them as far as clunky black glasses, facial hair, brewing ale with hops I grew, and so on. As I write, I am listening to the local, listener-supported, volunteer-powered community radio station called <a href="http://kaosradio.org/" target="_blank">KAOS</a>. I am in phase with a fair number of hipsters.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUGbg_kYbB8QgV_qZjseGEIWiXZ2iBFKsFPgOi7NBwc-JYu32fWkWqBKcdckUpj9EJA53vPHcyi7HQFAa-lv3KR_2kdvS8_L6PrVbL3bAG0op4iRpD_pPe4rEbzsODhYA-J5dYX9NHU5dF/s1600/IMG_2057.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUGbg_kYbB8QgV_qZjseGEIWiXZ2iBFKsFPgOi7NBwc-JYu32fWkWqBKcdckUpj9EJA53vPHcyi7HQFAa-lv3KR_2kdvS8_L6PrVbL3bAG0op4iRpD_pPe4rEbzsODhYA-J5dYX9NHU5dF/s400/IMG_2057.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Partial View of an apparent Hipster, Courtesy of some Model</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
But is it because I react with similar intent and mathematics to the others? In some ways, no. Hipsters' oscillations are much more rapid than mine, and I was wearing this kind of glasses and growing a beard decades ago (and not in a "I did it before you did" hipster kind of way). I just hate to shave, and always wanted glasses that came from that era when all men wore the same kind of glasses. Like my uncle in the first photo. He was not a hipster, but he was an enigma, a guy who wore "normal" clothes, but to a degree (khaki pants and white oxford shirts for decades on end) that was decidedly atypical. He served in the military for a little while, got a job, and raised a family, a model citizen. But also one who was deeply subversive in some ways, whose thoughts boggled minds and defied models.<br />
<br />
Were I in the data set being compared to Touboul's model today, I might well become empirical support for mathematical supposition. But I represent a much longer oscillation if I represent one at all, and the "why" of my seeming hipsterism may be a lot different than that of people who know enough about contemporary mainstream culture react against it. </div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8986985511709586690.post-7088577462214234712014-11-09T23:59:00.000-08:002014-11-09T23:59:10.207-08:00Woodpecker D Adze<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihxWemehg2Ue_O5kYS02txWsyY61EWSywogw8P_W-AHGNO_rW5tnhfGCaxzVQ_FHuwoioiBYWDbQfmT3r_o8koceAlGgL7WPHeFkD4a8M5CoFDRYvO1-9kBoZ_xaam1HwKpbZnZypDfhY9/s1600/IMG_5980.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihxWemehg2Ue_O5kYS02txWsyY61EWSywogw8P_W-AHGNO_rW5tnhfGCaxzVQ_FHuwoioiBYWDbQfmT3r_o8koceAlGgL7WPHeFkD4a8M5CoFDRYvO1-9kBoZ_xaam1HwKpbZnZypDfhY9/s1600/IMG_5980.jpg" height="300" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
This is an adze that I made in more or less traditional Salish style, what anthropologists call the "D-adze" because of the handle shape.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUOhV4s-NL2ryczNsagbz9uhD_Q5E4XIAZ5bKQIgY7Nk2Azkf5WPGl4kR34QceDaFmpw0yfvDURZBw6O8Ojkm9tGfGVzYM2wQuPj5sQwazwWxP2J7PPX2R7vTExj9Ftrj9uYcwxvuxJ_Tm/s1600/IMG_5994.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUOhV4s-NL2ryczNsagbz9uhD_Q5E4XIAZ5bKQIgY7Nk2Azkf5WPGl4kR34QceDaFmpw0yfvDURZBw6O8Ojkm9tGfGVzYM2wQuPj5sQwazwWxP2J7PPX2R7vTExj9Ftrj9uYcwxvuxJ_Tm/s1600/IMG_5994.jpg" height="300" width="400" /></a></div>
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The blade was made from a chunk of serpentine I picked up from a road cut on Cypress Island, ground down by rubbing it on concrete. Lashing is split cedar root over pine sap. The wood is the only non-local material, being from a black walnut board my dad bought decades ago in Ohio (which has been dragged to Virginia and now Washington, awaiting the time when I'd figure out what to do with it).<br />
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<br />
Salish adzes were sometimes adorned, and I chose to put a woodpecker head on this one. At first, it was because I wanted to stick with a fairly literal image (woodpeckers being carvers, like adzes), since I don't know enough about the person or Tribe I was making it for to choose something for its cultural significance or meaning. On the night before I gave it, though, I ran across a story of Dokwibatl, who came across a man who was trying to chop down a tree by banging his head on it, and transformed the poor human into a woodpecker. My intent with this gift was to honor a man who helped in my transformation from ignorant outsider to reasonably competent Northwest archaeologist, and so the woodpecker seems apt.<br />
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The wood that became this adze handle came from the same board that I carved into a sturgeon years ago, and which I gave to the Chair of Lower Elwha. The adze went to the Chair of Swinomish (who is also president of NCAI these days), with a special thanks to the THPO of that tribe. In between, another sturgeon went to Nisqually, a big halibut serving tray to Suquamish, and a stone fish club to a young Skokomish fisherman.<br />
<br />
I'm not a talented carver, but not a horrible one either, and I still have all my fingers. I have not even attempted to match the Native Northwest formline style, and may never feel adequate to do so. I've never sold a piece, but I enjoy giving them away, and feel like I've been paid more than enough by having the chance to give them to host Tribes and have them be accepted. It's a lucky life. </div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8986985511709586690.post-70426215526972250432014-11-04T20:41:00.002-08:002014-11-04T20:41:40.112-08:00Control<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Republicans gain control of the Senate!<br />
<br />
Um. I think that happened years ago. Seriously, did the Democratic senators do anything for the past six years?</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8986985511709586690.post-37746093539169365712014-10-30T22:07:00.000-07:002014-10-30T22:07:16.774-07:00"I Feel Your Pain," and Similarly Presumptuous, Phony Bullshit<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Someone's scorched earth. Avert your eyes.</td></tr>
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<br />
A week ago, a kid shot his friends, and then himself. I can tell you no more than that, even though I may 'know' more about the situation than you do. This one happened closer to where I live than usual, and when I spoke with family elsewhere, they mentioned it and expressed regret, but did not dwell on it and did not pretend to make sense of it.<br />
<br />
On the other hand, another friend who had not been in touch for a while emailed a message fraught with 'concern' for how my own high school daughter dealt with it, seemed to fish for inside info, and mentioned how a mutual acquaintance sorta kinda knew (OK, recognized) the guy who has been arrested in a notorious murder in her part of the world. <br />
<br />
How the hell would I know what happened with that kid, even if I knew him? Why would I speculate if I didn't know him? Why would having fewer degrees of separation from the anguish of several families and tribes make me an 'expert'?<br />
<br />
Many people in our society play a sick sick game in the aftermath of murders and suicides. News media try to find out why, and adopt variously sensitive approaches to their prying into victims' and relatives' feelings, often as not posting interviews with people the killers and the killed would never have thought would speak for them. People with no real connection concoct one. The unaffected try on trauma to see how it befits them. 'Sensitive' people affect a variety of emotional effects, and in so doing display an appalling insensitivity to what is for someone (but not them) a tragedy.<br />
<br />
It disgusts me and pisses me off, for reasons I won't tell you. You don't know how the killers and the killed felt, and if you are not an immediate relative or friend, or maybe a member of the same tribe, you never will. You should shut up and leave them alone until they ask you to say something.<br />
<br />
Suicide is the ickiest paragraph of this sick commentary. Like whe Robin Williams killed himself, and every Tom, Dick, and Henry Rollins* needed to express their personal feelings about it. Aside from a handful of humans, nobody had the authority to speak to this, yet we were all besieged by co-workers, family members, reporters, media-friendly psychiatrists, and publicity hungry celebrities telling us why, or angstily telling us they didn't recognize the signs, or some other brand of bullshit. He might not even have seen it coming until it was too late. The people ostensibly bemoaning his loss did nothing productive, saved nobody, and displayed their own self-centeredness by treating tragedy as opportunity.<br />
<br />
Mourn the dead if you knew them. Feel sad even if you didn't. But stop acting like death(s) you heard of on TV or the internet or the radio are personal to you. They are not, and it is an insult to the dead and their loved ones to make it personal to you. If some killing moves you to become an activist against guns or whatever, OK, but don't appropriate the souls of the dead to your cause. "He would have wanted..." is one of the all-time most presumptuous, bullshit-infused opening clauses in the English language. If you are just using someone else's tragedy to act sensitive, or publicly wring your hands, then you are full of crap.<br />
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Some people go beyond the show of mournfulness and try to figure out why. They won't know, and should cut it out. Killers and self-killers don't necessarily know why, so who is some outsider to waltz in and speculate? <br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">*Former punk rocker and current media whore, who published an essay about how he no longer respected Williams, and was rightly excoriated for saying so. </span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8986985511709586690.post-2648672751983812142014-10-22T19:41:00.000-07:002014-10-22T19:41:06.215-07:00The Autumnal Reader Surge<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">In the foreground coffeeshop, someone is reading (probably about tattoos). </td></tr>
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I don't know about the rest of the internet, but here at MT* readership goes up in the Fall. There must be many reasons why, but I always imagine it's because that's the time of year when people go back indoors.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Bricxellated image.</td></tr>
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Part of MT's annual autumnal surge comes from people searching for information about heatilators, the passive airflow heaters installed with some masonry fireplaces. For a while, the <a href="http://mojourner.blogspot.com/2010/11/heatilator.html" target="_blank">heatilator</a> <a href="http://mojourner.blogspot.com/2011/01/you-searched-heatilator.html" target="_blank">posts</a> were the biggest ones by far, as Recession-pinched households sought warmth and found that I was one of the only people in internet that produced heatilator content. I don't have a heatilator anymore, and cannot tell you for sure it's safe to put a TV above one. Besides, heatilator purveyors have pushed me aside on internet, dominating search results and burying me so far down that not even my ego can maintain interest.<br />
<br />
The other Fall readers are people who hate leaf blowers, coming for my subtly titled <a href="http://mojourner.blogspot.com/2009/11/new-all-purpose-policy.html" target="_blank">"Kill the Leaf Blowers"</a> post. Sounds gonzo, but beneath the bluster, it's a pretty sensible policy with benefits for public and environmental health, education, and even national security. The only downsides are for crappy motor factories and cut-throat landscaping contractors. I won't repeat that rant here. <a href="http://www.rootsimple.com/?s=leaf+blowers&submit.x=0&submit.y=0" target="_blank">Root Simple</a> already did, which led to a bump on my stats this October. More than blog hits, getting rid of leaf blowers would make me happy.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"></span><br />
<br />
An infinitesimal mote of earth's human population reads this blog, but at this hour there are millions of people reading something, many of them settled down in Autumnal night with eyes on a page, flipping screens or leafs. More than people reading this, knowing that people still read makes me happy. <br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">*I'm gonna stop calling the blog <b>Mojourner Truth</b> whenever I turn reflexive or meta. For one thing, there's a fine line...no, there's <i>no</i> one line between a riff and a ripoff, and there have to be a lot of people out there who'd be pissed off at some middle-age middle-class white guy even sidling up to the likes of Sojourner Truth, much less swapping out a letter for his own benefit. My apologies, but I'm not trying to make money or affiliate myself with Ms. Truth.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: x-small;">l aim for multi-dimensional titles, being such a fan of <a href="http://kapakulture.wordpress.com/2013/06/26/hawaiian-word-of-the-day-kaona/" target="_blank">kaona</a>, homophony, and so on, and her historic personage was one level of many. MT works because it could stand for many things, is too short to look like a government acronym,and will garner me a certain number of lost Montana googlers. I'm sure I'll think of more, retroactively imbuing the name with meanings. Plus, just say it. "M T,...MT,...Empty." Ha! Perfect. Self-deprecation is a good dimenzen for any title to have.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: x-small;">Hopefully, though, I won't have the meta reflex for another year or so. I wonder if I'll remember to call the blog MT?</span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8986985511709586690.post-7206389310192574822014-10-20T00:23:00.002-07:002014-10-20T21:04:01.812-07:00The Communality Garden<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">It's that kind of garden.</td></tr>
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In college, one of my first anthro classes had a focus on community gardens in DC. I was pretty weak on the fieldwork project, not good at walking up to strangers and asking them questions, but the idea of a community garden seemed pretty cool. In Honolulu, I joined a community garden, eventually sponsored by the city but initially a guerilla garden wrought by a nonagenarian local Chinese woman who'd tended it through the years, walking up Punchbowl hill with a bag of scraps from her job at the UH cafeteria. The suburbs comprising the erstwhile GOP powerhouse Eric Cantor's district, where I next lived, were not fertile ground for anything smacking of community, food sovereignty, or any other potentially anti-corporate crap, so I gardened my own quarter acre more or lessa alone. Moving to Olympia may have been my best chance to join a 'normal' community garden.<br />
<br />
But instead, I chose one that defies the usual model of assigning each member a small rectangle within which to grow a tiny individual garden. Sprouted by <a href="http://www.sustainablesouthsound.org/">Sustainable South Sound</a>, this garden is a plot to grow food in the neighborhood where it will be consumed. And instead of a grid of little gardens, it's two big gardens, dozens of beds that everyone works on together. We all chip in to buy seed and supplies, spend Saturday mornings weeding and planting, and harvest the results, which are distributed equally. Whatever division of labor that exists is self-sorting, and although some may work a bit more than others, nobody lazily skates by.<br />
<br />
Which is what makes me wonder, "Are we being communists?" I mean, "From each according to her abilities, to each according to her share" is how we operate; isn't that a mere paraphrase away from Marxism? I've only ever gotten one garden member to cop to anything left of Socialism, but I have to wonder.<br />
<br />
But then I also have to think, "So What?" We're not Stalinists, there's no distant committee committing us to 5-year plans, and the garden has no gulag. We're more like the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dOOTKA0aGI0" target="_blank">autonomous collective</a> (not really an anarcho-syndicalist commune, as some would have you believe) in Monty Python's Holy Grail. Everything we do has a mandate from the masses, there's even an Occupy-style blocking mechanism to assure consensus. Far from a Utopian pipe-dream--because I know that's what some of you suspect this amounts to--this system works.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1pLnskEkXCTQ2qLn6XfmwgYHhNV3M_2pPj1Bp-LsqxCQdJxOBFPqEc0rXaXl-f84JmlA3hKEG4cMHaIWdW2K2jgpx47ctgd3VXQL9lqQhjo12yXs_vLLkM4JaYObFunNGdykQ7nJPTNd-/s1600/Me+and+Leah+WBG.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1pLnskEkXCTQ2qLn6XfmwgYHhNV3M_2pPj1Bp-LsqxCQdJxOBFPqEc0rXaXl-f84JmlA3hKEG4cMHaIWdW2K2jgpx47ctgd3VXQL9lqQhjo12yXs_vLLkM4JaYObFunNGdykQ7nJPTNd-/s1600/Me+and+Leah+WBG.jpg" height="300" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Indoctrinating the unsuspecting youth with corn, oats, squash, and beans.</td></tr>
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<br />
I'm not much of a joiner, and subjugating my opinions to group-will (especially when it comes to gardening) is not always easy. But the end results are worth it: plenty of good food, cameradrie, and the sort of smug satisfaction that only bountiful locavore collectivism can justify. In Honolulu, I rose to the Presidency of the community garden, and I loved that land the way I do any place where I have time to plant roots, but it was a collection of fiefdoms, and not a communal effort. A 'president' was required to make peace between the cat-feeders and gardeners, Tongans who cooked a dog and the Chinese woman grossed out by the thought, a bi-polar woman with a point about the mission of community gardens and the man growing sesame and chiles for sale, the guy who brought in barrels of toxic adhesive for "irrigation, or something" and everyone who didn't want cancer,...that kind of stuff. "Community" gardens can sprout plots that grow weeds, cat-piss, and strife.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj25U5Wgs-6l1ZzljonmJK3d8_5eKHIh2c6z2BUcYzgS2264zLqblYsHOVqBKwp6q6vSpOl9CxdyA_HKxJ-mecGbuvtZhDXlxGIyiADI-ybc7ZDZVJafHRnLHZ0OifqL4Coy5Ci-45NksA4/s1600/IMG_5629.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj25U5Wgs-6l1ZzljonmJK3d8_5eKHIh2c6z2BUcYzgS2264zLqblYsHOVqBKwp6q6vSpOl9CxdyA_HKxJ-mecGbuvtZhDXlxGIyiADI-ybc7ZDZVJafHRnLHZ0OifqL4Coy5Ci-45NksA4/s1600/IMG_5629.JPG" height="300" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Many Leaves, One Head</td></tr>
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<br />
So, I am happy to be a part of this communalist garden, or whatever it is called. As we plan for the coming year, uncertain that this piece of land will be available beyond that, it's good to know that this experiment worked for so many years. If this garden cannot remain, it's not because of the people. we'll pop up elsewhere if and when this land becomes something else. Or maybe not. Whatever happens, I am glad that this garden happened, and can walk away knowing that the soil is better than it was when I arrived. For me, that's just fine.</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8986985511709586690.post-43322459874043071332014-10-13T22:44:00.000-07:002014-10-16T07:03:47.073-07:00Posing Mantis<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiD-pAb7gI9KyK-5tcTt1evhVYuSBabIFFHrNHar6HFm22T8LDUXN9rLExcoW63DNqVu7BAWb497my7QXz0jMTIYEsbDqvMHQlNI1yhwryGcnGoWL_3nHbR-GtrwlPdSwfPyYonLRVWCZZF/s1600/IMG_4521.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiD-pAb7gI9KyK-5tcTt1evhVYuSBabIFFHrNHar6HFm22T8LDUXN9rLExcoW63DNqVu7BAWb497my7QXz0jMTIYEsbDqvMHQlNI1yhwryGcnGoWL_3nHbR-GtrwlPdSwfPyYonLRVWCZZF/s1600/IMG_4521.jpg" height="400" width="300" /></a></div>
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First, I just saw flitter-flying, like a faerie from Pan's Labyrinth, sunlight on long wings. When it landed, I saw a praying mantis. Not preying as far as I could tell. Just posing.</div>
Mohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06303401964874026149noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8986985511709586690.post-21603126465814980122014-10-13T00:04:00.000-07:002014-10-13T00:04:12.441-07:00Trails and Fires<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMzdBqZpCKNr-NRYz7AqB_gX2dBrMXd64S1xavVI1rFLJ-rK6t01McaBcgxgW4QDNZUchE-vsOZFUaL1wTmxjyPO_Sb21p3R8tnZGtTKvU6eSucnr_b-CEhlIFYnrSHef43WsnzWgTAtt4/s1600/IMG_4551.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMzdBqZpCKNr-NRYz7AqB_gX2dBrMXd64S1xavVI1rFLJ-rK6t01McaBcgxgW4QDNZUchE-vsOZFUaL1wTmxjyPO_Sb21p3R8tnZGtTKvU6eSucnr_b-CEhlIFYnrSHef43WsnzWgTAtt4/s1600/IMG_4551.jpg" height="300" width="400" /></a></div>
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Lately, there's a lot more going on at the <a href="http://anthrowback.tumblr.com/">photo blog</a> than here, and the dominant subject has been fire. This shot, for instance, appeared <a href="http://anthrowback.tumblr.com/tagged/wildfire-aftermath">there</a>. But tumblr's not the place to get into too much depth, and it ends up with a bunch of pretty pictures, scrolled through too fast to tell a story.<br />
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Like in the shot above. The dark line up the middle? It's a single rut, a foot or two wide and stretching across the meadow, where a controlled burn consumed an obscuring mantle of grass. Tomorrow, I head back to the office, where I'll see whether this rut matches up with a trail mapped in the 19th Century, which pretty much matches up with the route that Wenatchi people have always followed. Of course, the rut might be more modern, or just used by elk, or a meltwater channel. None of which, it should be noted, is mutually exclusive of a horse trail, and before that, horseless human trail; culture and nature meander and mingle.<br />
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At some point, I'll post about the (f)utility of post-fire archaeological survey in terms of finding artifacts, but for now just let me say that fire sure lights up larger features like trails. The above tree is obviously odd, growing gnarlier than a Ponderosa pine should. But in a lot of situations, foliage obscures the the blazed bark or modified trunks that mark historic and ancient trails. After a fire, the unusual trees stick out a much greater distances, and survey becomes easier. If you're really on a trail, you can often see the next marker. If you're really on a trail, you should not be seeing a bunch of similar tree-forms off to the sides. Last week, I followed what seemed to be a trail marked by a series of big stumps that survived the fire. <br />
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Many stumps do survive wildfires, and one of the most eye-opening things about doing survey in fire's wake is that the intensity can vary so much. Entire trees up in ash here, forests reduced to black spars there, but somewhere else the fire skipped along lightly. Like in this shot, where a grassy slope has islets of burnt bushes and spot fires, but the game trails where vegetation is tramped down failed to burn. Or the next shot, which shows vehicle tracks running through another controlled burn area.<br />
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Archaeologically, these glimpses snatched from the flames inspire and depress. We can see so much, but it will be hidden again in months, dragged back into obscurity in a few growing seasons. Though the weather will wash away down hill some of the traces, though creatures will stir things up, yet still will traces of trails remain sandwiched in soil. Today, I can discern cowpaths among a lace of deer trails. Today, I can tell where the engine trucks were deployed, where the pick-ups parked, and where the ATVs ranged during a controlled prairie burn. Tomorrow (in archaeological time), it will be impossible or insanely expensive to dig up that kind of information.<br />
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Meanwhile, I'll scope out what I can of fires both intentional and wild, looking for trails and the places they went to. Probaby the most common sights are bottles, cans, and campfire rings, all of which prefer to hide under plants and leaf litter. Sure, a lot of these sit right next to roads still travelled, but keep in mind that some of those roads follow older trails. The empty beer bottles in the fire pit along a road long abandoned can give you a good idea of when the road was in use. The obvious glint of glass might also lead to less visible but highly informative artifacts, objects that pinpoint the period or tell tale of activity beyond drinking and hunting. There is almost never anything that a non-archaeologist would value in any way, but camp-trash can help trace trails, especially when fire intervenes to lift the veil. <br />
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When under that veil lies a trail, I feel like I've found something worthwhile. Archaeology, learning about how people have lived on the land (rather than the treasures they accumulated that may be more interesting on a photo blog or National Geographic), benefits from mapping where they traveled. And fire helps archaeologists salvage from the devastation more than they normally could. </div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8986985511709586690.post-78402076269656073622014-10-06T22:37:00.000-07:002014-10-07T08:21:45.955-07:00Unwritten Rules of Archaeology. Version M.0<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
This summer, the blog Archaeology In Tennessee posted an invitation for archaeologists to submit the "<a href="http://contextintn.wordpress.com/2014/08/06/unwritten-rules-in-professional-archaeology-part-2/">Unwritten Rules</a>" of the profession. I not only procrastinated posting anything, I also failed to follow up and see what Rules were published until linking them just now. Instead, I pecked out a list of my own, and didn't even post anything myself until now. This post is going to be long as hell, and there are no images to delight and distract, but it's about Rules, so what did you expect?<br />
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<b><u>Unwritten Rules of Archaeology</u></b> </div>
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<b>Who They Think You Are...</b><br />
Most people think you dig for dinosaurs or gold. You can educate them, maybe. You will chuckle or sneer about them with other archaeologists, later. But try not to be mean to them, for they know not what they do. <br />
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In the real world, there are usually people with far less education than you who know a lot more about a particular place, or how people used to live there. Learn from them before you go telling them about their past.<br />
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<b>Who You Think You Are...</b><br />
We belong to what the social anthros call affinal kinship groups (or used to, before several jargon changes), and can trace our lineages back through crew chiefs and academic descent; we recognize families accreted around certain projects of yore.<br />
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<li><i>Corollary 1:</i> Be careful when dissing the founder of a school of thought, for the person you're speaking to may belong to that lineage.</li>
<li><i>Corollary 2:</i> Be careful when exalting an archaeological ancestor above all others, for it makes you come off like a zealot.</li>
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Unless you are in a field school or surrounded by people with little experience, limit yourself to a single field school story within any given work group. Mostly, these stories show how little you've experienced, and they become tiresome. If you participated in multiple field schools, best keep mum, lest you be branded Dolt or a Dilettante.<br />
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As in all anthropological endeavors, listen first and talk later, especially when there are experienced elders involved.<br />
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Archaeologists can be real backbiting bastards, but as far as I know that strategy proves maladaptive outside of the shrinking niche of tenured academia, and maybe won't even work there. Criticize all you want, with the understanding that you must either pledge fealty to a strong camp or risk not getting work in your area.<br />
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Join your state or regional archaeological society, attend its conferences, and give papers. Archaeology is not the same everywhere, and you'll learn more that is of practical value by meeting and listening to your local/regional peers than you will in several years of national conferences; it's also beneficial to your job prospects, from shovel bum on up to principal investigator. Once you've given a few papers, people think you're an expert, or at least aware enough to be more desirable than the person with a fancy degree but no local reputation.<br />
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<b>Gear...</b><br />
If you are a young archaeologist enamored with the latest technology, try not to dismiss archaic fieldcraft. When the satellites don't cooperate or the batteries go dead, tech savvy gets you nowhere. Besides, sometimes the old tech works best, which is why the best maps in Hawai`i are still made with plane tables and alidades.<br />
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The digital camera may be the greatest technological innovation in modern fieldwork. Take lots of photos to remind yourself of what you did all day. Shoot overviews, mid-range, and details. Take a shot of your GPS screen (see Redundancy). Get photos of flora and fauna for reference, and of anything that will look cool on your archaeology blog.<br />
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"Write in Rain" fieldbooks have their limits. Among these: too much rain, rainless but very high humidity weather, the inks of certain pens, and of course those ink-impervious clay smears on the paper. For pencil devotees, remember that after an erasure or two, you may not have full functionality.<br />
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The tool you buy needs to be modified. Unsharpened shovels and trowels are are the mark of an oaf. Grab a sharpie and draw a scale on your fieldbook, McGyver up a tool from things you can afford on perdiem (bamboo skewers have no equal in some situations, and stand in just fine for a handful of others). Watch and listen to the vets, but don't assume that they figured out all the best hacks.</div>
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<b>Fieldwork...</b></div>
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Redundancy is your friend, and its value increases in proportion to the distance of the project area from your office. I know that the GPS unit stores coordinates, but writing them down in your field notebook will one day save you the pain and humiliation induced by lost or malfunctioning GPS units, not to mention software glitches, sunspots, EM-pulse warfare, whatever.<br />
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You will find things where you least expect them sometimes, but you never know which times. So stop whining and finish the transect. <br />
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After a long day of survey, or at the end of a project, be prepared to find something while walking back to the truck. If at all possible, plan on a half day on the last day, to allow time to record this find. The worst case scenario is that you find nothing and have enough time for a few beers or maybe even a shower.<br />
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<b>Write-up...</b><br />
Don't pretend to be more precise than your data merits. I cut my teeth (shins, really) on dry masonry field stone features, and measuring these to the nearest centimeter is not only more effort than it's worth, but is fakery. 10 cm increments are fine. Most of the time, think millimeters for artifacts, centimeters for depths, meters for site areas, …</div>
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<li><i>Corollary:</i> Larger increments (rounding off to 5s or 10s, for example) can alert readers to uncertainty or imprecision they should be aware of in an honest report.</li>
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Unless you are a historic archaeologist working in a Commonwealth, use the metric system. (In the US, this trick mystifies the general public and our stature as scientists is enhanced.) Be ready to be conversant in feet and tenths thereof when the engineers and project manages show up, though. Also, be aware that when they talk about "1:100," it's inches:feet, which is 1:1200 in like units (this is a trick engineers use to confuse and cow the populace).<br />
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The observation so obvious you didn't need to write it down will be the one you forget. (I phrase this truth thusly because the brilliant wording of my initial realization was not written down.)<br />
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When writing reports, stick to the facts for the most part, and relegate interpretation to a short section near the end. </div>
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<li><i>Corollary 1:</i> However, you should speculate frequently and in depth while in the field, drinking beers when the day is done, and drinking more beers at the local archaeological conference. This can help you discard the ridiculous and discover the creative, although it can end up the other way around if the drinking goes on too long.</li>
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<li><i>Corollary 2:</i> Be extremely careful when speculating with non-archaeologists. Off-hand and joking interpretations may be later repeated as facts by people who put a bit too much stock in archaeologist's words.</li>
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And Finally,<br />
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<b><u>The Written Rule of Archaeology</u></b></div>
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It's spelled with two A's. Archaeology, not archeology. Don't be an idiot.</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1