Back from Boston!

[melannen]

Went to Boston for a week to celebrate stellar_dust becoming a Master of Archaeology.

In that week I:

--went through airport security three times. Was 'randomly selected' for the backscatter scanner three times. (also got one bonus patdown and luggage rifling.)

--Spent two hours staring through an airplane window open-mouthed with wonder. Had flights delayed and/or cancelled twice.

--Walked over about 12 miles of the greater Boston area.

--Went to three graduation ceremonies. Got sunburned. Tried to decide if getting a PHD is worth it just for the majestic robes.

--Ate clam chowder for the first time at the Barking Crab right on the harbor. (I used to avoid all seafood due to food sensitivity issues; later decided I only needed to avoid shellfish; have recently come to the conclusion that I only need to avoid crustaceans. Hence: trying clam chowder. ...it tasted like cream-of-potato soup with weird chewy bits in it.) Also ordered ginger beer; I think it was Fentiman's but don't quote me on that. It was very, very, very gingery and and that's about it; we unanimously decided that it would make a great mixer but not much else.

--Was told I cannot ever become an archaeologist if I don't like the taste of beer.

--Was forced to go to Brattle Books and buy 15 books off their $1 racks. The coloring book was possibly the best find. :D

--Went to see Cave of Forgotten Dreams in 3D, the movie about how somebody let Werner Herzog film the 30,000 year old drawings at Chauvet. It was... okay? I'd certainly recommend it if you're interested in either European prehistory or caves, and you can handle that much (slow-motion) 3D. It was the longest 3D film I've ever seen, and it did add to the experience in this case, because caves really are about 3D space, but it also really pointed up the limits of the technology. (I have other, less positive Thoughts about a) Herzog's directorial choices and b) gender in prehistoric archeology, but they can wait.)

--Attempted to read three pieces of writing by Ian Hodder. Spent a lot of time trying to get over my reflexive reaction of NO U IAN HODDER to everything he says. (crap I almost used the word 'dialectic' in that sentence unironically, help.)

--Met up with fictionalaspect and stultiloquentia for an evening of fangirlness and falafel! It was great, and I don't even think I made too much of a fool of myself. I mean, except for when I did. Also stultiloquentia brought awesome cookies, and I tried a can of Vimto (which tastes almost exactly like Cheerwine, except slightly less sweet and more botanical. Thumbs up!)

--Relaxed in a hot tub overlooking Boston Harbor. Listened to people discuss things like wood preservation in saturated soil layers and why Munsells are stupid and all the very, very dysfunctional things apparently happening in the Icelandic archaeological community.

--Went to the Boston Museum of Fine Art in an attempt to do something a bit more touristy. The MFA is... huge. I would say it's about as large as all the art museums on the National Mall put together. Safe to say, we did not see all of it. We saw the Chihuly exhibit - to which my reaction is basically, "Pretty, but--"; and about half each of the American Art and the Ancient Mediterranean Art sections before we lost steam. And we had lunch in this pretty little courtyard area that was overrun with sparrows and really, really need its own cats.

--Were almost on a T train that hit somebody. Instead we got off a stop early to meet stellar_dust and ended up walking to a different station, and stopping at Job Lots on the way. They had a whole shelf of Bob's Red Mill grains and things; if only I hadn't been flying back...

--Got to hang around an active archaeological dig for a morning. And watch them excavate a mid-20th-century concrete pad and some PVC pipes! It was fascinating.

Comments

[sara]

Was told I cannot ever become an archaeologist if I don't like the taste of beer.

Well, sure you can. It's just much, much easier to be an archaeologist if you can consistently drink people under the table, and after a long day in the sunshine, you'll be less hungover if you use beer as the chemical with which you score your social points. ;>

(Actually, although a lot of archaeologists are hard-drinking, including sometimes myself, I know quite a few who abstain entirely and nobody who's not, um, fresh out of grad school gives them any shit about it.)

Do you really want Bob's Red Mill grains? We stop by their big store in Milwaukie (the other Milwaukie) a couple of times a year, and indeed once had breakfast there in the company of Actual Bob, his wife, and their dog.

[bessemerprocess]

The beer thing is totally true. I was really surprised at how *sober* historians were compared to archaeologists. Also, archaeologists every where are highly dysfunctional. It's like a requirement to get into a grad program :)

[melannen]

It is eventually going to turn out that Marion Ravenwood's drinking ability is the most archaeologically accurate part of the Indiana Jones movies, isn't it?

I'm not into Bob's Red Mill in particular, it's just that I have a thing for different kinds of dried grains as staple, and Bob's Red Mill is frequently the only easy way to get some of the more unusual ones in my area (like, say, strange foreign foodstuffs such as corn grits.)

[holyschist]

--Was told I cannot ever become an archaeologist if I don't like the taste of beer.

Lies! I manage to be a geologist and not lie beer. Well, sort of a geologist.

Being a teetotalling archaeologist might be trickier. :-P

all the very, very dysfunctional things apparently happening in the Icelandic archaeological community.

*strangely fascinated*

I am hoping to see Cave of Forgotten Dreams this weekend (I have to go 6 hours away, blah); I will be very curious to see your thoughts.

[melannen]

The program stellar_dust graduated from seems to be strangely non-dysfunctional. Many of the individuals in it are... non-normative in their own ways, but they all seem to actually work together and cooperate well with a minimum of time wasted on sniping at or sabotaging each other even when they disagree or are in competition.

Of course, this may be because I just haven't ever met or heard about the ones that her advisor is feuding with. :D

[melannen]

I am sort of a geologist too! Believe me, archaeologists are way more into the alcohol.

I shall not share the details of the gossip since I'm fairly sure it was not intended for publication, but suffice it to say that's a lot of grudges for such a small island.

[sara]

Her drinking ability and her driving ability, honestly.

Is it really that hard to find grits in your part of the world?

[holyschist]

Believe me, archaeologists are way more into the alcohol.

I am not sure that is possible, categorically. (I can believe there are geologist subcultures less boozy than the geologists I hung out with, though.)

suffice it to say that's a lot of grudges for such a small island.

Or perhaps because it's such a small island!

[melannen]

You can get hominy grits pretty easily; corn grits are of course different. And you are starting to be able to get corn grits sold in small quantities as "polenta" at the rich-white-people groceries for a substantially higher markup than even Bob's Red Mill at the organic market.

[bessemerprocess]

Bwhaha... that sounds about right.

[melannen]

Ah, well, the geologists I learned from drank, but they didn't have a drinking culture as part of their base identity the way many archaeologists I know do.

[holyschist]

Oh man, really? That's so strange.

The big geo conference had a "geology and beer" session for about three years in a row. My undergrad department was extremely strange in banning beer on field trips (I think the only reason they did it was Bad Past Experiences). There is a huge drinking culture in geology.

(I get by because I like cider, and enough geologists are beer snobs that they tend to prefer pubs. :-P)

[ellen_fremedon]

Heh. When I was in grad school for linguistics, we always had to make sure to invite the archaeologists to our parties. (Or the philosophers. Or, in a pinch, the biochemists, whom we socialized with for complicated friend-of-friend reasons.) Because when it was just the linguists, we would all end up sitting cross-legged on the floor in a circle, drinking water and talking shop. All night.

[stultiloquentia]

I had such a nice time. Either you didn't make a fool of yourself, or we are foolish in the same ways, and therefore I didn't notice.

I came away thinking about all the things I wish I'd asked about everybody's theses, even though, "So, what are you working on? Please summarize using small words!" has got to be a horribly boring question by now. Apparently, I need more scientists in my life, as well as more local fangirls.

[syntheid]

Because when it was just the linguists, we would all end up sitting cross-legged on the floor in a circle, drinking water and talking shop. All night.

Ahaha, that sounds like my kind of party. (Also this is interesting. I didn't realize there even could be correlations between party habits and majors. Possibly because I don't party.)

[melannen]

Well, I never did make it past undergrad - maybe they were just really careful to keep all that away from the undergrads? (Not that undergrads didn't drink, but administration had hypervigilance issues about underage drinking.)

[holyschist]

It's possible; my institution had an unusually vigilant geology department wrt that compared to some I've heard about, although we also had departmental pub nights, and no one pretended they didn't love beer.

[melannen]

That sounds like my kind of party too! Somehow I am not surprised that philosophers and biochemists also drink like fish.

I sometimes regret that my school's anthropology department was so unappealing, or I might have ended up a linguist. (I took the basic "Cultural and Linguistic Anthropology" course that was a required prerequisite, and it consisted of the professor telling the same three stories about his time in the Peace Corps over and over again, the TA trying desperately to actually teach us stuff in the discussion section despite him making her show a video every week, and about one week's worth of actual linguistics.)

[melannen]

I am always sure I have made a fool of myself when I meet knew people, but I had such a nice time too! I hope you manage to meet more Boston fans because RL fannishness every once in a while is such a breath of fresh air.

...I understand that it is always welcome to ask about somebody's thesis, because one is usually resisting the temptation to talk about nothing else all the time. (Actually we had the thesis discussion before you got there. :D stellar_dust is working on analyzing differences in depth of volcanic tephra layers between settlements in Medieval Iceland and why, fictionalaspect is analyzing plant fragments found in 17-18th century soils excavated from under Faneuil Hall to reveal changes in land use and resource exploitation as Colonial Boston expanded. They are both fascinating without needing small words!)

[lady_ganesh]

We got stuck at BWI for two hours, and went up on the observation deck. That was kind of fun! They had a students/kids' art exhibit and bits of planes to look at.