March 2006

Sunday evenings are always interesting. My wife works almost every Sunday night so television is often a blur of Power Rangers, Monkeys with super powers, kids that change into space aliens because of a bracelet, and a whole host of other things. Last night we watched a Miyazaki flick on Cartoon Network. If you don’t know the name, you probably know the excellent fantasy and acclaimed spirituality of Spirited Away. When I first heard of Spirited Away, I was up in Seattle doing some consulting work and a few colleagues had mentioned it. I got back and could not see it for awhile but then I got to the theater here in Union City and I was completely taken in by it. Perhaps charmed, shocked, in wonder are better terms.

What does all that have to do with a Sunday night you may ask? Well, besides wanting to have something better than the Powerpuff Girls or this or that, I strive to make the kids watch something good on television instead of the crud. On the Western Channel tonite I got to watch Geronimo: An American Legend. The scenery was breaktaking and reminded me so much of other places. I thought Wes Studi made an excellent choice for the man. His character had that yin and yang in it that make watching the older classic Native American yarns troubling for me. Yahoo says

Seems no matter how much I set a priority writing a blogpost most every day, I just cannot summon up the wherewithall to get it done.  Many times I’ve considered a post about a thing and I start to write it out in an offline sort of way; but events at work, home, life, kids all conspire against me actually writing something.  I won’t end that sentence with “worthwhile”.  Probably most of the things I write and commit to blogdom could be arguably less than worthwhile.  The blog has become just my way of linking thoughts together and I’ve lost touch with whether people read what I write; although I have gotten some nice and even challenging comments from some posts I did about anthropological topics.  Anthropology is always there for me and most of the things that transpire in my life, I somehow place into a perspective.  When I did archeology, I got used to an idea that months of each year, I would be tromping the deserts, the mountains, foothills, valleys and it would be good.  I would feel good, have friends that mattered, find pursuits that I wanted.  I learned flintknapping thanks to a class I attended plus some rather interesting knappers I had met here and there.  Then I got interested in how prehistoric hearths may have been used in a most unusual fashion. 

At a show on mojave desert prehistory, we were all talking about the act of building a fire.  The interest for me came after more than a few beers when a notable archeologist proclaimed that a fire is an additive and subtractive process both combined.  I looked at the firepit we used and there within the bigger pit were smaller arrangements of pits.  It was a semi-circular type thing where I could just make out those older firepits in the ashes of our current fires.  It got me!

You ever had one of those truly capturing moments where it occurs to you that a simple behavior such as building a fire is linked somehow to events now and then and that people behave in a set way around fires. I really wanted to get back to Edwards AFB and test out my theories and hypotheses with some other archeologists like RWR and Rick.  I really wanted permission from the USAF to dig up hearths and see if by careful recording, I could look at how many fires may have been built, whether hearths were used in the same ways as our cooking and enjoyment fires.  Would I see patterning within them?  Would there be smaller rings of fires that grew and more stones were just added to the outside and gradually over the years the firepit grew in dimension?  Would I find interesting paleobotanical evidence of what was fired there?  Food samples?  Old bone?  It was a defining moment for me in a life of defining moments. Suffice to say, I found hearths to be immensely complex and internally structured and I wrote a paper a few times on my findings on Edwards AFB.

If I would have had a blog then, I would have had this blog fodder for days, weeks, months.  Archeology fuels the inner passion and one can add so many ideas, approaches, and definitions.

Now I’m here and I have new goals and desires and thoughts about how things should be.  I have new friends, a new/old work environment, things I can see I want to do.  But those old days, even with no blog, stay with me.  I remember how those things looked and how excited I felt.  It was worth this blogpost to only remember those feelings and also see the newer ones which are just as challenging.

In another week and a half, I’m off to Boston for the first time to attend Linuxworld there.  I’ve never done that show; but I have been to New York a few times.  Its gonna be interesting because all the shows are. I’ll not build any hearths that people can see; but I’ll remember the sense of discovery of those summers out in the middle of the mighty Mojave.