elanya

Fascinating, I know.

I am going to SHA again this year, and I leave... tomorrow! Am I ready? Hello no! When I started my program, I was the kind of person who would have their presentation started months early, and the powerpoint ready to go a week before the conference. Today... I have one slide done. It is the introductory slide and my great accomplishment is that I have *gasp* selected the slide layout I want to use maybe! I'm honestly not done culling all the info I need for the tables that are supposed to be the whole point. I've realized that this isnt ong to happen, so I am just using a selection of them, and accepting that it is a 15 min presentation and this is going to have to be Good Enough. I miss the excited on-the-ball student I used to be, but honestly this is year 6 in this program and year 8 of consecutive gradschool and I'm feeling worn. I need to push through and get out, is what I need to do.

I'm exaggerating slightly on the state of my presentation - Most of the things I need to say are already written, I just need to cull them from the presentation I did this summer for the Bahamas Historical Society. Most of the slides and other stuff is there too, it just needs some rearranging. And I'll have plenty of time to get everything done.

I'm looking forward to the conference on other levels, too - it is always nice to see folks that I don't have as much contact with, and this year there will be a Special Guest Appearance from L7Annie (The Other Lannie) who I haven't seen in... a year or more? I am excited to see her and hear all about her adventures :D I'll see Merc and Brad and some other now-gone A&M folks as well... I've never been to Baltimore either, so it will be neat on that front... oh and of course I'm sure there will be some interesting presentations - there always are :)

Right now I am going out to dinner with some local friends and extended local friends who are passing through town, so hooray! And then I come back and Pack All The Things. I keep threatening to go back to my list-making ways, but maybe I actually will tonight.

I am a little bit stuck with some thinking on my dissertation this week - I'm actually working on in, in the sense that I have been doing a lot of thinking, but I am re-conceiving some of the categories of maritimity that I had come up with. I have had a couple of useful conversations so far, but writing more informally will help me form my thoughts more, and maybe give me more people to talk to.

First of all, I need to keep a few things in mind while I am doing this:
1. The point of my dissertation is to look at the question: can you recognize a maritime culture from its material culture alone, and more specifically from artifactual remains. Also, can you distinguish maritime culture or maritimity within a subset of a broader culture/

2. Maritimity vs. Maritime Culture:
I am defining maritimity as: Identity influenced by a community’s relationship with the maritime environment. Basically - does a group conceive of itself as being strongly tied to the sea/lake/river/whatever.
In earlier writing, now that I am being more critical, I am jumping all over the place talking about maritimity and maritime culture almost interchangeably. This is basically like saying that culture and identity are the same. I need to think this through more, and if I decide I'm okay with it, I need to defend it somehow. If I'm not okay with it, I need to explain that too.

As far as my categories go, they are meant to be broad categories for "examining and identifying the maritimity of a particular culture or group." (quoting myself, so classy ;)

-Is this what I want to achieve with them?
-Are they filling that role?

My original categories were: Locale, Exploitation of Maritime Resources (natural and cultural), Cultural Integration of the Maritime Environment, and Relationship with Maritime Material Culture. I like parts of these categories, but they are, generally speaking, too difficult to disentangle. I want them to be related, and they can have some overlap/be polythetic, but they need to be *identifiable* categories, even if one source of evidence point count for more than one. My third category there is *way* too broad and nebulous, and Locale was also very problematic.

Right now I am thinking of three categories:

Landscape: geographical location, and also use of the environment, and the imbuing of the environment with social meaning as evident in place names and so forth. Maritime Cultural Landscape stuff goes here - however I personally think that 'cultural landscape' is bit redundant.

Material Culture: specialized technology, such as ships and related tools, tools for exploiting maritime resources, clothing signifying group identity. In my original category, I was considering the different kinds of relationships people can have with the material culture - ownership, use, production. I think there is still space for all of this. This overlaps with Landscape because settlements are part of both, as are other man made features such as harbours, docks, wharves slipways, ballast piles, reclaimed land, etc...

Resource Exploitation: this includes both natural and cultural resources, so let's break it down that way.
Natural: food resources (fish, shell fish, seaweed), raw material. This involves ecological knowledge, and control of that knowledge. I think that the element of knowledge can fit into this somehow, but I am still working on the details in my mind.
Cultural resources: there are cultural elements that can be reaped from the sea directly - salvage is the easiest example, and also piracy (^-^), but I think that the there are other kinds of cultural resources provided by the maritime environment - transportation is an element - it facilitates/enables trade, for one. There are other kinds of culture to be drawn from the sea as well - beliefs about the nature of the sea and its influences, ritual and magic, mythology.
Both kinds of resources are related to specialize Material Culture, and cultural knowledge will affect/be affected by Landscape as well.

I think my last category there is the shakiest, currently, but I generally like how all three are interrelated and yet separable. I can make a nice circular diagram!

So, I took my computer in today to be looked at. They charge $65/hour for a 'rush' job, which means in the next 2-4 days, as opposed to 7-10.... and he told me they are busy atm so it would probably be closer to 10 :p he could have been full of lies, but even seven is a long time for me!

Anyway, since I already checked the lcd inverter, that should narrow it down a bit, I hope. I think it is a bad connection somewhere, really, and I am hoping that it will be really obvious to them -_-

So anyway, I am really only going to be online from work or school (where I am now) until it gets fixed. so, I may go a little crazy. I am in theory here to do work, but I have mostly been catching up on internet things :p

I am opening files now, though, so that may result in productivity....we can only hope ;p

Man, I really did not need another day like.... Monday? I think it was Monday. Maybe Tuesday?

Today was just an odd one from the get-go. I've been waking up at 5-5;30 almost all week, and this time I never really got back to proper sleep.... and yet somehow the next time I looked at the clock properly it was almost 7:40. Which is almost the time I call to see if Jola is going for her regular playdate. So I jumped into some clothes and took her out, and got back in the house literally just as the phone rang. Phew! Although usually I am the one who calls.

I rushed out of the house because I knew I had a voicemail from the dentist, and I was hoping that I was going to be able to get in today, but kinda worried that it would be super early. And I was right! I got to school at 8:50, and the appointment they had open was at 9:15! So I hustled my butt over there, only to realize that my walkman batter was dying :(

This was distressing, because I go to the gym with tethys123 on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and usually the gym music is awful. anyway, I got back to school around ten, as they just had to grind down one of my fillings to fix my bite so that my jaw will (hopefully) stop hurting. It is still sore to chew on that side, but they told me that it is possibly bruised because I waited so long/it took so long :p
Anyway, that left me a little over an hour before I was supposed to go to the gym! So I did manage to get a little work done..... but very little :/

Went to the gym, and that went fine, and from there directly to a brown bag lecture that my friend Brad was giving on a project he worked on this summer (when he wasn't in the hospital with a Mystery Infection of Doom). It was a cool talk! He had an animated gif-thingy of the burning of Washington (It is a related War of 1812 ship) ^-^

Anyway, that ended at 1;30 or so, which left half an hour before my usual lunch-with-the-library-crowd. Again, did a few minor bits of work, but not a whole lot :p

Lunch was good, though I forgot my thread and didn't get much more than a few stitches done. After lunch, i had to zip up to the rec center - i volunteered to help with the Amazing Aggie Art Race - put on my the Stark galleries on campus. it is inspired by the Amazing Race, only with more of a ficus on Art. Later I will tell you about the challenge I was working with, because.... the race got interrupted :p We got a Code AAMaroon that there was a possible Shooter on campus (there wasn't actually, in case you haven't heard. It was someone with a replica rifle, though I don't have any details that I believe on that yet). So, everything got locked down, and I got stuck there until 5:45 when the all-clear was given -_- because I was working a University event, I couldn't leave, and neither could the people at my station, so......) I did have my sewing at least.

I finally got home around 6:15 or so.... or maybe a little later. Fortunately, my computer part has arrived!

However, it has not fixed the problem, so excessive typos are due to the fact that I still have only the TV as a monitor. It was fine until I closed and opened the screen. I don't know what the problem is - maybe it is time to take it to a shop. *cries*

Thanks everyone for the song recs though :)

Man, my brain is work-fried today.

I am conserving some shoes that are in a very very sad state. Also one of them has a ridiculous number of rusty nails in the heel. By which I mean over 30. Oh gods, shoot me now.

Anyway, the thing to do is treat the leather first, so that is it a little more stable when I need to take out the nails (can you hear me crying yet?) and replace them, one at a time. D:

The way we treat most organic type stuff at the lab is to use silicone oil. If you've seen any of the Bodyworks displays with the plastinated corpses... that is the same thing. You impregnate whatever with the oil + a crosslinker (often under vacuum), then expose to a catalyst, and the oil turns to a solid plastic-y type material which has a shelf life of about 250 years.

So, silicone oil does weird things to leather - it reacts with certain natural amino acids, which polymerize the oil. And under vacuum, weirder things happen, and globs of yellow oil-impregnated goo (amino acid + oil + ???) gets pulled out of the leather, and polymerizes on the surface of the leather in little round balls.

So, then, I have to pick off all those tiny little weird yellow balls that have escaped from the pores of the leather... with a scalpel.... for hours...

So, my brain is work fried. This is unfortunate as I have crap I need to do tonight.

Perhaps a shower will help :x

So.... with my paper half written, I an changing its focus. This isn't going to require a lot of changes - mostly it will better reflect how things have been coming out already. Instead of focusing n race/class/gender, i am going to look at the performance of identity more broadly, and focus mostly on The Shadow. Could this be because I'm 12 pages in and havent finished talking about the title character? Yes, yes it just might ;p

Anyway, I need to:

Load the dishwasher
Go pick up some groceries (cat littler, breakfast, something to get me through lunch and dinner)
Write like a fiend!
'Class' tonight @_@
decide if I'm going in to work at all tmorrow and let Catherine know :x

Good times!

Off to the store.

I just got back from the AIA lecture given by John hale on Viking ships. It wasn't anything I didn't already know, really, but he is a very engaging speaker and it was nice to her it again

Anyway, As a tribute, I am going to post the, uh, tribute poem to the Gokstad ship I found a few years ago when I was prepping for a class presentation:



The Gokstadt ship - Paisley Redkal

I can imagine you on it. The museum placard
declares it able fit for dozens
with a keel spine longer than these other boats
combined. Under sail, its oar holes could be snapped
closed, sealed by sliding flags of oak.
I can imagine us both on it.It's black.
Night hooded from time or swabbings of tar, thick fillips
of dark wax? We are both on it,
We are both watching ourselves make love on it.
The clench nails as thick as men's thumbs, one
for each inch of plank. No embellishments
besides the enormous scything upwards stempost,
parrel-clipped mast-staff ensconced in rings;
whale-bellied, purse-sleek, only the slightest fin-
like boss to suggest the boat, beached in concrete, could sail.
You push me up against its rails. I push you on your back. I lied:
there are embellishments: one rudder steeled
with recessed heads, a dragon headed hasp.
This was not a pleasure craft. The entire thing
was built for death; here's the burial chamber raised
like a bed on deck. My skirt falls. You part my legs
With your mouth. I can feel your teeth
And breath. For 24 hours, the crew both rowed
and bailed, operated sail and leechlines and steered.
There is no evidence food was cooked on board. You tug
my hair in one white fist. You move too fast. I think I smell her
woven into your neck, the sweat of your back.
The yarn-spun sail, unfurled, let the craft reach twelve knots.
It would have ben enormous. Of all the things
I've listed, I don't think I've said how large
this ship is, how it scrapes out the entire
pale grey gallery, how its darkness, its heft
and incongruity, force observers
to press themselves to the walls.
I hope I smell her. I want to smell her
just as, later, I want her to smell me.
The museum guard says he hears the ship groan
whenever a hard wind seethes outside this place.
He says this in English for me, doesn't repeat it
in Norwegian for the children.
Perhaps he wants to believe this is an English
dream, an English fantasy. You say
you'll take me to your home. I say I'll take you to mine.
On the boat, they found posts filigreed
with yawning gapes, a hundred
wood screams. This was a special find.
not like the others with their thwarts
so shattered the spines are little more
than shrouds of millipedes, propped
on a multitude of iron spikes. I know
the way you fuck me now is how, later
you'll hate me. There are no embellishments.
The museum guard watches me as I pass the ship.
I think he sees how close I lean
to see the wood breathe, to stroke its fading scent of rot.
I think he wants to know why this book is so red in my hands.
I think he wants to find what I'm waiting for in here
and watch, when I turn in the powdered gallery light,
how carefully I pinch closed my thin shirt
all the way to the top.

I managed to get all of my list stuff done, but then it was 9, and my night stalled out early, so I watched the end(!!!) or Utena with curtana, and it was all awesome bt in a way that really I can't figure out how to explain. Its a really powerful story about friendship and love, and the line (circle?) between slefishness and selflessness, and the power of our own memories over ourselves. Anyway, it is awesome. An no one turns into a race car, but boys do get their pictures taken on one shirtless. because photography = preserving a moment = preseving memoy and/opr preserving youth and sexy vitality. Or somethin. Anyway.

Then I did some writing for a game, and now I am going to bed! My body is both moaning from yesterday's workout and begging for more, so maybe I will do some pushups to keep it satisfied. For the record, front squats are awesome.

Sleeeep!

Oh no wait I got derailed talking about utena and didn't talk about any of the stuff I'd intended.

hem.

I need to find some more stuff for my display on Saturday afternoon. I have.... a pot? I'd like some other 'artifacts' that kids can handle. I also have a groundstone axe I made, I guess I could use that :x but I need moooooar stuuuuuf! So I need to sort that tomorrow. i am thinking about taking a half day to do that and also work on artifacts tomorrow afternoon, and also catch the AIA lecture about Viking longships :D 'cause it is at 5:30, and if i leave at the normal time I'll miss it :/

Okay, now sleeeeeep!

My department is seriously considering a name change from the Department of Anthropology o the Department of Anthropology and Archaeology.

I am not especially fond of the idea, (not that I have any real input into the matter), and I am trying to decide if I am just being resistant to change or if I just disagree with their reasons. Unfortunately, this is only semi-coherent, as I don't have the time to put together something more organized. I have actual work to do, strangely enough! But this is important enough to be to take a half-assed stab at, at least.

The main arguments *for* it are, as far as I can determine...

1. We have a disproportionately high number of archaeologists on staff (mostly because of the Nautical program), and the new name would therefore reflect that difference.

We actually just got sent a chart one of the faculty prepared, that shows that compared to 91 other institutions (I don't know all which, though), we have one of the highest ratios of archaeologists to other anthropologists (see what I did there) in the country, at 54%. We also have one of the higher ratios of combined archaeologists and biological anthropologists to other anthropologists in the country, at 69%. I have no idea how exactly this is supposed to be relevant, as bioarch is *not* archaeology, but considered one of the four fields all on its own. Also - we don't have any linguistic anthropologists that I'm aware of, so what his is really saying is that we still have 31% of the faculty who are cultural, and only 15% are bioarch. Really, my problem with this argument boils down to the question of why having a large number of archaeologists magically separates the sub-discipline from its parent. Get enough of them together, and archaeologists are somehow not anthropologists anymore?

2. Because the new name would better reflect the reality of the department, we would attract more undergrads. We need to attract more undergrads because of the financial crunch and related budget crunch.

First of all, this only works if you assume that kids applying for college know what archaeology *is*, and don't know how to find the relevant department otherwise. Which seems a little silly to me, as the rest of us archaeology types throughout the years seem to have figured it out. The real cynic in me expects that we're going to get a lot more 'so when do we get to the dinosaurs' type questions if we take *this* attitude :p Anyone interested in anthropology has to take one of the many many intro courses anyway, all of which at least briefly discuss the four fields... So anyone considering the department as a major will have already encountered us in that sense. Anyone who googles 'tamu archaeology' is also going to find us - it really is not that hard. Do we have any evidence that kids who are interested in archaeology have trouble finding us? Maybe I'm just not understanding the argument here. maybe they are tying to argue that kids have a better idea of what archaeology is than anthropology, and might be more willing to check out the department.... and, you know, the intro to *anthropology* courses.... because of it? You don't think they're going to go 'where are the into to archaeology courses'? It just seems tricksy. Luring them in is going to create expectations that we're not exactly prepped to handle, because some of our archaeology faculty DON'T TEACH UNDERGRADS! EVER! My program specifically has very slim undergrad course-to-faculty ratio :p and not all the courses taught are even really directly relevant to archaeology, in name or content, and sometimes both. If you are just looking at the undergrad offerings, then our department's distribution is a lot less clearly weighted towards archaeology. In fact.... looking at the catalog of courses offered since 2008, archaeological focused ones only make up around 10% of the undergraduate offerings. Bah.

Obviously the name change is not relevant to attracting students at the graduate level in the same way. At that point, it becomes a completely different and much more internally (to the discipline) political issue, which I haven't seen considered at all.

3. Other reasons
There are some other reasons given, but those are the main onces I've seen pushed. One of the others was that Nautical arch is really not explicitly anthropological, so the general department name is not reflective of what we do. Which really just makes me cringe, because, of course, we *OUGHT* to be *more* anthropological, in my mind. Another is that no one really knows what the department does. And this is just going to send the message that what we do is 'archaeology', which is not anthropology. So, yeah...'hi, did you dig up any dinosaurs lately? Did you find any gold?' The name change is not going to promote any understanding of the department or what we do - it is just going to create more separation in the mind of the public between archaeology and anthropology :p Again, I don't see how this is going to potentially protect us from budget or program cuts. Another is that other universities have split their departments or deal with archaeology separately. As I referenced in regards to attracting graduate students, this is a disciplinary/political issue that no one is *apparently* talking about. Bah. Hello elephant, how are you and how did you get into the room?

I am more or less okay with the four fields approach, though really I think there should be more integration within the discipline (or more recognition of existing overlap, in some cases), not less (and I am going to reference a great blog article for a bigger discussion of the issue, though it focuses on linguistic anthropology, over at Glossographia). The separation is acceptable *within* anthropology, but the idea of defining archaeology as separate from anthropology bothers me. I really am not convinced by any of the arguments presented, as you can see. So... there is the 2cents I currently have time for :p

Now I need to do some real work.

This is mostly for me, but hey, maybe someone else out there cares as well ;)

I think I know what I want to do my paper on in my communication class. I think I will look at the different portrayals of gender and minorities in the a sample of the pulps, radio, serial (and comics, if I can get more than the one story I have) for The Shadow, with consideration of the different mediums and audiences. I want to focus on the relationship with/role of Margot "You Stupid Woman" Lane, and possibly focus on the Chinese as a minority group, if I can find enough/any relevant radio broadcasts. Mostly because they are so dominant in the serial, and because Showan Khan is one of the most prominent Pulp villains, but also because then I can talk about Orientalism :)

Man, I should re-buy my account, so I can have my Shadow icon back :/ I think it will be seeing a lot more use in the near future!