Landslide...(Attempts to ruin a young girl's archaeological dreams)

(Pre-script: This post is meant to be viewed as the song "Landslide" by the Dixie Chicks plays...go down to the playlist and click it on, then come back and commence reading...I'll wait...)

(...waiting...)

If you ever wish to destroy a young girls archaeological dreams, here are a few tricks you can try:

1.) Tell her that archaeologists just dig up old bones, so she must really like old bones...Um, yeah, WHAT-EVAH.

2.)When taking elementary age kids on a field trip to see some really old house or building, make sure that the whole thing has been restored and rebuilt to look like how it would have looked back in the day...and then keep the not-yet-restored-still-in-it's-original-state-part off limits. Yeah, that will for sure discourage the archaeologist heart of a young girl. Once, our class was in an old "original" house that had to be rebuilt for structural issues, (again, WHAT-evah.) But the CEILING was still the original ceiling, so what did I do? I just stared at the ceiling the entire time we were there.

3.)When teaching Archaeology at, say, Junior College, make sure to come up with something so dull it might not even be archaeology. Y'all, can you just picture with me for a minute my excitement at the thought of a taking a class on a topic I had been dreaming about my entire life? Of course what I imagined we would study was Ancient Eygpt, Mesopotamia, The Discovery of the Actual Walls of Jericho, The Discovery of Noah's Arc, in other words, actual archaeological things. Instead, this particular class was taught by a woman who thought we should study Californian archaeology. Folks, isn't that an oxymoron? To quote myself from two posts ago, "California isn't exactly known for it's ruins." What we "learned" in her class is that there are rocks that have been found that are shaped in such a way as to indicate that they could have possibly been used as tools by ancient Native Americans. I'm not even talking about arrowheads or spears. I'm talking about common rocks. Y'all, if I had a passion for rocks, I would have signed up for Geology class.

Fortunately this is not the end of the story. Though all of the above cruel tricks were employed on me at some tender young age or other, and though I yes, did, find them discouraging, my love for archaeology will always, shall we say, Stand The Test Of Time. That is my own little archaeology joke. You can rest assured that I will be laughing about it for the rest of the day.

-XOXO,

P.S. If you ever want to become a person who enjoys country music, concider the Dixie Chicks version of "Landslide" as your gateway country song. A lot of artists have covered this particular song, but I find the Dixie Chicks version to be particularly pretty...I don't embrace the entire genre of country music, because some of it is just plain dumb (there, I said it) but there are certain country songs that are jewels, and I will sing them all day long, and very loudly.

Dreaming Archaeological Dreams

(Pre-script: To get the most out of this post, go down to the playlist and click on the song "A Thousand Winters Melting" By the Myriad. Then come back and read it as the song plays...I'll wait...)
Have I mentioned my great love of archaeology? Because archaeology has been one of my great life loves ever since I was a child. Yes, as young as I can remember, I would rather have watched a documentary about a newly discovered and unearthed prehistoric city than anything else on T.V. I remember telling my friend Lorraine in 6th grade that I wanted to be an archaeologist when I grew up. That, or a Lawyer. I never really wanted to be a lawyer, though, I just said that because all the girls in 6th grade said they wanted to be lawyers. (I think it's because the mom in the Sweet Valley book series that were all the rage was a lawyer, and she got to wear suits and carry a brief case and everything.) "What's an archaeologist?" Lorraine asked me. Her mom took the liberty of answering before I could, and she said "It's someone who digs up bones. So you must like bones." The very idea was unappealing and boring to both Lorraine and her mother, and I could never quite think of a way to make them understand that they were WAY off. It's not so much the bones I was interested in, it was (and is) the context in which I might find the bones. Like in an urn in an unearthed pre-historic city, or stacked along the walls of catacombs underneath the Coliseum in Rome.
I stopped wanting to be an archaeologist when I realized that most of the time, the things that archaeologists actually do are quite tedious, slow, and boring. I don't have any desire to spend hours sifting through dirt and trying to figure out the date of something. I want to see it after someone else has put in all the hard work to carefully dig it up and figured out what exactly it is. Or was.
My dream vacation would be to go to Italy and take walking tours of ancient Rome. I want the tour guide to pay special attention to point out everything ancient, and don't skimp on the catacombs, please, or the tiny hole in the ground that once served as a prison to Paul. When we get hungry, we can stop for some gelato or pasta, and then keep walking. (We would not gain any weight because we would just be walking all day.)
After Ancient Rome, I want to go to Pompeii. I want to see all of the petrified people, the petrified food that was on their tables, everything. (Hopefully they have gelato and pasta there, too.)
Before coming home, I'd also love to visit The Holy Land. I want to see everything biblical. Or maybe we'd skip the Holy Land part due to fear of religious and political uprising, or suicide bombers. I don't know. Maybe it's perfectly safe there, and I'm just mashing up the entirety of Middle Eastern Countries. Forgive me!
You'll also have to forgive me in advance for this next statement, but I'm going to say it anyway. Y'all, I have no idea if I'll ever get to visit any actual archaeological sites in my lifetime. California isn't exactly known for it's ruins. But maybe when I die, right before my soul goes on to Heaven, God will allow my spirit to soar through those ruins, just to see them one time...and no one would even see me... Or maybe not; I'm pretty sure that the bible says that you are immediately in Heaven with the LORD when you die. Oh, forget I said anything. It was just a crazy thought.

-XOXO,