As I’ve mentioned before, we are required to do educational outreach each semester as a part of our graduate program. I rather enjoy it, though I like some forms (teaching a class at San Quentin) better than others (Cal Day). On Friday I had to fill in at the last minute for another [...]
I was looking through Barb Voss’ excellent dissertation on the Presidio, and was struck by a particular footnote:
“I wonder, however, how the Californios – almost none of whom had ever been to Spain, and who rarely met non-clerical Spanish nationals – understood and defined “Spanishness” amongst themselves; I can only assume that it had little [...]
A good tape measure is such a luxury in archaeology. Usually after a couple of weeks in the field they get dirty, don’t retract, get bent, and are generally a hassle to deal with. The best is when you have at least two–one big fat one (my best one ever was “Big Daddy” [...]
First there is the scent of barley
to remember. Barley and rain.
The smooth terrain to recollect and savor.
Unforgiving whiteness of the room.
Ambiguity of linen. Purity.
Mute and still as photographs on the moon.
Everything here must be analyzed.
Catalogued. Studied twice.
A painstaking arrangement, almost vain.
Brandy glass with its one amber eye
on the bedside table. Shirt
draped [...]
Over the summer, a fellow excavator recommended that I pick up a copy of the Museum of London Archaeological Services manual to help me make sense of British idiosyncrasies in excavation. When I asked to purchase it from the good people at the Museum of London, they directed me to a free download source [...]
Nothing here. Rock and fried earth.
Everything destroyed by the fierce light.
Only stones and small fields of
stubborn barley and lentils. No broken
things to repair. Nothing thrown away
or abandoned. If you want a table,
you pay a man to make it. If you find two
feet of barbed wire, you take it home.
You’ll need [...]
Two great 5 minute lectures from the Seattle Ignite series:
Mortality & User Experience
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qiYVLimFJ3w
1. We have a finite amount of time on Earth
2. Life is full of cool things to experience
3. There are things that needlessly take time and energy away from us
4. If you design anything, be mindful of this at all times
5. We [...]
I took this picture in 2006 as I was walking through some back streets in Konya. I liked the side-by-side comparison of the use of mudbrick along with concrete blocks, or “bims”.
I spent most of yesterday researching mudbrick construction and durability as part of an education program that I’m helping out with at the Presidio. [...]
One of my photos made Laughing Squid, then reddit.com. Funny–I just snapped it, not bothering to frame it artistically or anything. Shows how amazing the artwork really is, or at least how much it resonates with a certain internet-oriented audience. It’s over 16k hits now.
I’ve been doing a quick re-read of Barthes [...]
I left early.
I’ll keep this brief, because I do have a few nice things to say. Some of the art was really amazing. The wedding that I went to was completely wonderful, and actually made me less cynical about the whole process. It’s going to be even harder to go to the [...]
