Travels and Travails

10:22am: Ur entry at Museum blog
I've just put an entry at the Penn Museum Blog about the Ur project, in particular about item number U.72, an apotropaic miniature clay mask. Click here to read it.

12:51pm: Ur Project



Not an official logo, but something I'm working on for our current project. It has the outline of part of the ziggurat and the original writing of the name of the city. The thing that looks a bit like a lighthouse at right is from the early city seals and probably represents a platform temple with the symbol of the moon god, Nana, who was the patron deity of the city. Perhaps I should also put the ASCII binary code for the letters Ur?

2:18pm: Web Work for a Digger

I haven't been in the field in a long time and so haven't had much to blog about. With the unfortunate situation in Syria, we've had to cancel our excavations and it is uncertain whether we will return; at least, it doesn't look like that will happen for the near future.

I miss traveling and excavating, and I miss teaching, but I have been working on a new project at the Museum. It has to do with legacy data from an excavation long ago--making it digitally available. Though it may not be as exciting as traveling the world and digging, I may write a bit about my current work. Some entries will likely be on the Museum Blog, I'll link to those.

On Wednesday I attended THATCamp@Penn, an 'unconference' in Digital Humanities. I didn't know what to expect, but it exceeded my unexpectations(?) A series of THATCamp discussions is sweeping the nation and is even occurring in other countries. They are predicated on the idea that traditional conferences are too expensive, too exclusive and too stressful. I agree, so I went to this one which was free, inclusive, and relaxed. There was no pre-set agenda except that we would discuss technology and the humanities (THAT in THATCamp stands for The Humanities And Technology). It was well run, including t-shirts for all of us, and I learned a great deal.

The morning session was devoted to creating a schedule. Some people had suggested possible topics on the blog beforehand and we as a group of more than 70 people decided which should be placed where. I thought that process would be chaotic, but it went pretty smoothly. Our coordinator, Amanda French, was well versed in the process and the schedule came together nicely (there's a good flickr feed of pictures here).

I had come in wanting mainly to know what programs and/or standards there were on the web for sharing research data and for collaborative scholarly work, so I went to a session on open-source Omeka and learned much about what it could do for me. Next I went to discuss potential digital toolboxes with others who were struggling with similar questions. I found myself moving more into the question of spatial data and how to represent it, while many were more concerned with textual data and with inspiring teachers and students to use the available tools. But it didn't matter if we diverted. We could work on our computers for our own interests, leave the sessions, or start our own session.

I went on to an advanced plugins for Omeka discussion and more specific display of what sort of work some people were doing on the web. Finally, we had lightning talks where people could sign up for 2 minutes of presentation on their project. That goes quickly, but you get a good sense of the variety of projects that are going on. I got great advice from some people, including hearing that a THATCamp specifically for archaeologists is in the works.

All in all, a very productive day, including after-unconference discussions and beers at the Tap Room.

12:26pm: History TV too Sensationalist?

I watched a National Geographic special recently about Ben Franklin's Pirate Fleet. It was an interesting topic, but these programs all seem to follow the same format of sensationalism. I wonder if we really need this in order to get people to watch. I mean, if we didn't have the music designed to increase tension, the voiceover getting deeper and more ominous, or the quick cut shots to potential dangers, would the show be a flop? And in whose eyes, the public's or the television executives'?

It's a similar issue with the program River Monsters. Some of the information on unusual fish is very interesting, but the way it is shot and the way it is voiced over makes at least half the show annoying rather than informative. There are continual cuts to fish flailing in the water, or chomping down on something, and continual references to massive dangers, people reportedly slaughtered by these fish, or any other trite trick to make the audience gasp. It's a mockery of information.

In the Pirate Fleet show, there was no information about real archaeology, and the people involved were commercial divers with no mention of archaeological training. There was no reference to mapping the remains and no image of locational data at the site level. Instead, there was constant reenactment of the purported storyline, a storyline the evidence didn't support (the meager remains of the ship they were uncovering were in the wrong place according to historical records and they had to suggest there was a third, unknown, ship with the two they were looking for). There was a brief mention of conservation, but so brief that there was no real understanding of it. Instead of showing reality, there was a lot of back and forth cut shots to narrators and reenactors--different angles and quick movement to keep the short-attention-span watcher tuned in. Finally, there was heavy voiceover saying things like: 'This may be... the most important... find... OF THE DAY,' putting emphasis on some small thing as if it were the end of the world, when in fact, it could have simply been explained rather than hyped.

I wonder: do we as a modern watching public need sensationalism in order to get any kind of history or information into our heads? And how much history and information is beign sacrificed to place that kind of Hollywood hype into our supposedly informative shows?

 

9:50pm: Singing Spiderman. Really?

When I was a kid, I loved Marvel comic books. Then came rock and roll. Finally came the theatre. But I never thought of them as a good combination.

Sure, superheroes go pretty naturally with rock and roll. But theatre? That was something more mature, something dignified dealing with serious subjects. Or so I thought.

I’ve just seen Spiderman Turn Off the Dark on Broadway: It’s about a Marvel superhero, check; music is by U2’s Bono and The Edge, arguably rock and roll, check; and Broadway, how much more theatre can you get. Check, and mate?
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10:16am: Found Art Project

My mother knitted some tiny sweaters for an art project that aims to raise awareness about homelessness. The sweaters are to be placed in public areas so that they can be found, and each has a tag asking the finder to donate whatever they can to the National Coalition for the Homeless in DC.

I placed a sweater here on the Penn campus a little while back. I post a photo here (the sweater is in the E of the LOVE scuplture). Other photos and what I wrote about why I placed it where I did can be seen on the original project website:

http://artivention.wordpress.com/2011/01/23/sweater-163/

Though my words are there, the site still incorrectly lists me as teaching at Penn State, but that's a minor quibble. The idea behind the project is a great one and I hope others will join in, perhaps knitting or placing sweaters themselves. If you know any potentially interested knitters, have them email the artist (maggieleininger AT hotmail DOT com) and she will send the pattern and tags for the finished product. She only asks that you send her a picture of the final, placed piece, and a brief statement of why you placed it where you did.

 

5:22pm: teaching and creating

Back to teaching, but only one course this term. It doesn't foot the bills, but it gives me time to pursue other interests, so I'm writing a short story and am back to submitting stories for possible publication. I have to get used to rejections and keep putting stories out there until they find a home. And I have to keep writing. I printed out Heinlein's five rules of writing and put them on my wall for inspiration. The first is, of course, WRITE. If you don't write, you can't be successful as a writer, so I'm at 3500 words on a new story and trying to push it at least 500 words a day closer to completion.

I'd procrastinated a bit on getting started; I knew that my goal for this term was to create things, but I didn't do much in the space between returning from Florida and starting teaching. Now that the term is underway, I'm managing my time much more efficiently. Of course, I've also got things archaeological underway. There's a potential grant in the air, it's been there for a year and the project itself has been around much longer, so it's not that new, but if the grant comes through, it means I'll need to dedicate more time to research. That's good, of course, but I also want to keep my creative side up, so I'll have to manage my time even more efficiently to do it all.

While I was in Florida, I pushed a bit of my creative envelope as well. I attempted some art photography. My mother's art studio is always a fun place to explore and since she works in glass sculpture, it means she has a lot of scrap glass around. I was fascinated by these pieces, different colors and shapes, so I decided to backlight them and take some photos.

 

( Read more and see my art photos... )

11:06am: more recap

After St. Maarten, we spent two days at sea. The first day, the seas got pretty rough and even though it's a very large ship, we rocked around and I felt rather odd. Guess I wouldn't have made much of a pirate back in the day. No sea legs. Eventually we found that the most stable place on the boat was about the center, and guess what was located there? The casino. I think the ship line knows exactly what they're doing. You can feel less sick so long as you're gambling.

Next day was better and we were able to do more things than just gamble. Throughout the trip we played a lot of trivia; they had two organized games each day and my mother and I played most of them. We won five times, always getting a fish-shaped keychain as a prize. We made a chain of them and hung it in the room.

We also went to the ship's organized murder mystery dinner. Here we were seated at a table of 8 people and given a packet of information on our characters. I like this kind of mystery better than the dinner theater variety where actors portray the roles and you try to figure it out. Here, we played characters. The mystery was not all that good, but it was fun. I wonder when it was written since it involved KGB agents and such. I had that figured from the start even though the info didn't come out till round 3. They had given us a dispatch the ship had supposedly received, and some random words were highlighted. The first letter of a series of them spelled KGB, and some contact info when decoded. Obvious, but no one else caught it. Then again, I was a chair-borne ranger in the cold war, so I should be able to spot such things.

We docked back at Port Canaveral on Christmas day and drove to Lakeland where we met up with extended family members for an exchange of gifts. All in all, it wasn't a bad christmas. The weather was pretty good (though pretty cold for Florida standards) and the food was good.

 

5:25pm: Continued

We arrived in St. Maarten the next morning. It might have been nice to go diving, but I wanted to get some of the history of the island since it is in the relatively odd position of being half Dutch and half French. So, we booked a trip leaving from Phillipsburg (Dutch) going through Marigot (French) and then taking an underwater tour in a semi-submersible before coming back to Phillipsburg.

The island itself felt much more Caribbean to me than St. Thomas had. Not sure why except perhaps because I didn't really see much of St. Thomas. Oddly enough, the people drove on the left on St. Thomas (US Virgin Islands) and on the right on St. Maarten. It was also odd that in St. Thomas ship time was an hour behind island time but then they told us to move our clocks up before we got to St. Maarten. Why not just change ship time before we arrived in St. Thomas?

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10:36am: Break continued

The next day we drove to Port Canaveral and climbed aboard the Norwegian Sun, a cruise ship bound for the Virgin Islands. We arrived in Nassau, Bahamas the following day and toured the city on our own, ending up at the Pirate Museum. It was relatively commercial, but fun. Mostly Nassau is about shopping and it's amazing to see the kind of people who go on cruises just to shop and eat. It's a very different style of traveling to what I'm used to, but as I get older, I'm getting to like it a bit more. A cruise is more about the trip and less about the destination. All my travel is about the trip in a way, but focused on discovery in new places, usually discovery about myself through the eyes and experiences of another world. But here the trip is about movement; being at sea you might be able to explore your thoughts, but not really on a cruise ship. So the trip is about going to the buffet and then waiting for the next one, about listening to lounge singers in floating bars, about drinking too much to think about anything. Of course, I'm being harsh here when it isn't completely warranted. I like cruising, but too long at sea can be deadly dull and you begin to rely too heavily on the cruise line for entertainment.

 

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10:43am: Recap of Xmas Break

I've been largely away from the internet, something that is virtually impossible these days, but I managed it. In the middle of December, just after grading final portfolios for class but before calculating final grades, I got on a train bound for Orlando, Florida. It's a 20 hour ride and on the way I went through all the scores but then had no way to upload them. Amtrak keeps promising to put wifi on their trains, but I think they've only done it on Acela. I like to go back over the grades anyway, so I recalculated and reconsidered later before finally posting them after xmas.

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7:33am: Quality of Experience

The semester is over and I've headed south for the winter, or at least for the xmas break. At the end of class, I talked with my students about the quality of life versus the quality of experience. It's all linked to 'value' and thus to the meaning of money, as my course is titled. In quality of life, one has all that is needed and more--not just food, clothing and shelter, but nice food, good clothing, and fancy housing. Those things are good, but is the goal of life to have the fanciest house, the biggest screen TV? Perhaps it is, at least for some.

On the other hand, in quality of experience, one gets the most out of a situation they can. That person may not have the biggest TV or even a TV at all, but experiences things by thinking about what these things mean. I try to live this way and so I'm biased, perhaps. I don't have much in the way of material things and I tend to spend my money on travel. But not travel in the way most people envision it with 5 star hotels and 4 star restaurants. I travel on the cheap and try to experience the country/situation/culture I'm in. So am I missing out? Or are the quality of lifers missing out? Maybe we're both missing out on a little of something. Comfort is a good thing, and as I get older, I begin to need to stay in more comfortable places, but I hope I never lose sight of the experience end.

It all comes back to that old guy, Socrates. Near the end of his life, at least according to Plato, he said, "The unexamined life is not worth living." It's been a guiding principle for me and will continue to be. By understanding myself and my surroundings, I increase my experience. I can't understand everything, but I try, and in that effort is meaning.

Now I'm in Florida, having taken a long train from Philadelphia. It's a 20 hour ride to Orlando so I had lots of time to think about the experience. During much of the trip I was trying to get some sleep, but I did do a good deal of thinking as well. I mainly went over plots for potential stories I want to write. Next term, I'm only teaching one course and will use the extra time to write and write some more. For now, I'm visiting my mother and we'll be heading to the Virgin Islands soon. I've never been to either St. Thomas or St. Maarten, so I'm looking forward to yet another experience.

3:22pm: Round the World 2010, Leg 8
Like midterms, finals are taking all my time now and I've rarely come back to update LJ. I'm down to the last two days of the trip, though, so I'll finish it up now. Then, over the xmas break, I'm going to the Virgin Islands.


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7:48pm: Round the World 2010, Leg 7.7
Just had a great Thanksgiving with kylecassidy  and trillian_stars , eating great food and working on top secret photo project. But I realized I still haven't completed my travelogue, though I'm in the last days of travel there. So here's a bit of wrap-up on Australia:

Steve and I explore Sydney some more, finding great coffee and pastries as well as some excellent Vietnamese hoagies. We take a ferry to Manly Beach in order to be manly, but we just don't have the pecs for it. We were thinking about a harbor dive, but that water is cold. I wade in looking for shells and such and nearly freeze. A 7mm wet suit would help, but we decide against it and instead spend time watching people crazy enough to take surfing lessons.
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3:45pm: Round the World 2010, Leg 7.6
Tired but still envigorated by being in Australia, we begin with a walk around parts of Sydney. At our hotel I use the internet to check on things to do, uppermost on possibilities being to look into walking the bridge over the harbor. I've heard that it is an a amazing experience to be harnessed to the rails and actually climb the cables, getting a terrific view. It does indeed look to be an exciting possibility, but it runs about $200 and you can't take your own photos. In fact, they make you take out everything from your pockets and wear a kind of prison jumpsuit. The expense just doesn't stack up for me and Steve, so we decide instead to see the harbor on our own.

We want to do a harbor dive as well and that runs about half the cost of the bridge climb, so it is a possibility. It's cold, though, and we don't have a lot of time to arrange it. Most of the companies don't have many people who want to dive this time of year, so you have to special arrange it. We might be able to, but we'll have to decide as we go along.

( Read more and see another pic... )

8:09pm: Round the World 2010, Leg 7.5
We see more of Melbourne and meet up with Karen, yet another of the writers I met at Odyssey last year. We had a fairly large contingent of Australians and/or people associated with Australia that year. We chat over lunch and then Steve and I say goodbye to Kaalii and Andrew and head into town to meet up with Meg again. We carry our gear to Southern Cross Station to store it for a while before catching our train (or bus for the first part of the journey) out later that evening. Then we go to Koko Black, a place that serves amazing chocolate. Then we catch the film museum (Centre for the Moving Image) where there’s a Tim Burton exhibit but also some great interactive exhibits.

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1:52pm: Round the World 2010, Leg 7.4
Next morning we wake again and have coffee in the spacious kitchen. The paper headline is 'Dead Heat' since the Labor and Liberal parties have both come up with the same votes. Looks like there may have to be some sort of coalition, as happened in England not long ago.
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5:53pm: Round the World 2010, Leg 7.3

 

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12:30pm: Round the World 2010, Leg 7.2

I’ve been back from my travels now for too long, but I still want to finish up and not slight Australia since it was a great culmination to the international portion of my trip. It was election time when I was there, and since we’ve just had an election here, it makes an interesting comparison. Still, teaching has made me delay posts and midterms have swamped me of late. I’ll continue in the present tense as if I’m still there, since I’m recapping directly from my notes in my journal as I traveled:

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9:57am: Round the World 2010, Leg 7.1

Back at Singapore’s airport, we retrieve our gear and I start going through to lighten my load. I throw away a pair of trousers, two shirts, the box the underwater camera came in and many things that simply seemed unnecessary at this point. It was good to get rid of the weight, but of course, we’re now heading below the equator into wintery Melbourne. I have a jacket that I’d pushed to the bottom of the bag and I’m keeping that. Let’s hope it’s enough.

We’re in for an initial shock, however. Something I suppose we should have known, but seemed so counterintuitive that we never suspected--we are required to have a visa to get into Australia. Because visas are typically reciprocal (one country charges another country’s citizens, so the other direction is also true) I assumed Americans wouldn’t need a visa to visit Australia (as far as I know, the US does not charge Australian citizens to visit). Plus, Americans don’t need a visa to visit Great Britain and I suppose I thought of Australia in a similar manner. At any rate, when they told us we needed a visa we thought we were pretty much screwed; they also said we couldn’t buy it when we landed. But we could buy it here in Singapore at the Qantas counter. Seventy Singapore Dollars later, we had our electronic visas (they don’t even give you a stamp in your passport).

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1:50pm: Round the World 2010, Leg 6.9

Kuala Lumpur was not bad, though some things were a little expensive. Still, Singapore is much more expensive. Six dollar coffees and twelve dollar pastries are the norm. Lunch at most places is 15-25 dollars and the Singapore dollar is not much off the US dollar. So, basically prices are marked the same as those in Malaysia, but the currency is three times stronger than the Malaysian ringgit.

One thing I noticed right away as we arrived in Malaysia and that continues here in Singapore is that the electrical outlets are on the British standard. I’m not sure why that surprised me, I suppose I expected them to be Australian. But the British influence on this peninsula was strong for a very long time so it shouldn’t be surprising that plugs match those in England.

 

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9:43pm: Round the World 2010, Leg 6.8

Back from the Batu Caves, we still want to see the Petronas Towers. We know that we probably won’t be able to get tickets to go inside to the observation deck between the towers, since they only issue about 1300 a day and those are typically exhausted by 10am, but we want to see this 452-meter building up close anyway.

We head downtown, and as evening begins to descend, we observe the hulking, yet graceful masses of the two towers. Of course, the tickets are gone for the day, so I shoot some pictures from down below and manage to get some pretty good ones. Our train doesn’t leave until midnight, so Steve and I go to local markets and big malls in the area, just looking around at the available wares and taking in the splendor that is this extremely modern, yet charmingly Asian, city.

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4:08pm: Round the World 2010, Leg 6.7

Steve and I will catch a train late tonight that will take us to Sinagpore, arriving tomorrow morning. So we have the day in KL but we first take our gear to Sentral Station to store it in a locker. Then we hop on a train to the Batu Caves.

The cave system is enormous and built within it is a Hindu temple. This sits inside a cave that is 100 meters tall and 400 meters long. Plus, there are 272 steps you have to climb up just to get to the entrance. It’s truly spectacular. At the base of the stairs is an enormous statue of the Hindu deity, Murugan, shining gold against the light blue sky and dark vegetation clinging to the mountains around the cave.

 

( Read more and see more monkey photos... )

 

9:45am: Round the World 2010, Leg 6.6

Next day we head out from Penang on a bus bound for Kuala Lumpur. We decide we want to stay at a hotel at the old train station, so we get a bus that will drop us off there. All of the different companies at the bus station are trying to get us to take their service, but I’ve looked on the internet and know that the company called Nice is one of the few that will drop us where we want to be, so we find their booth and ask about the next bus. The next one leaving is the Nice Plus Plus, the extra special service. We don’t really know what that means, but it’s not much more expensive than the next class down, so we get tickets.

The bus pulls up and it looks like most of the air conditioned buses around, but when we get on, we’re greeted by a woman who is very much like a flight attendant. She seats us and then brings us a juice drink. There’s a lot of leg room here, a video screen, a plug for my laptop, and there’s no one else aboard. Steve and I end up with a personal ride of about five hours to the middle of Malaysia. Our attendant brought us a meal and it was much like being on a plane.

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11:04am: Round the World 2010, Leg 6.5

We get to Lembu and do our rolls off the side of the skiff. There are two divemasters with us but we all go together as a group, keeping the rocks on our right. It’s a set of jutting rocks that barely top the surface, but around them is a reef and a lot of funnel-shaped corral. The visibility isn’t all that good and I’m a bit disappointed since I thought this area of the world would produce some great diving. There’s a lot of particulate matter in the water, not all that many types of fish, and not a great reef. Plus, my camera starts to act up. The auto-off feature is set too short perhaps since it keeps turning itself off and then I have to set the white balance again while still keeping up with the group. I fall behind a lot, trying to get pictures. Then I catch up again. I can’t let them get too far ahead since visibility isn’t great, so the whole thing turns into an exercise. Of course, Steve keeps me in sight since he’s my dive buddy. I hand him the camera sometimes so he can get shots too.

( Read more and see photos... )