Patience

Sunday, January 28, 2024

PATIENCE IS A BULLSHIT VIRTUE.

That’s the sign affixed to the door of my home office. Stark bold caps in black on a washed white background. The sign was a present from Cyndi, former colleague, who helped me shut down Left Coast Press 8 years ago, then stayed with my various archaeological projects as editor, proofreader, scanner, and organizer. We tackled a Baluch ethnography, a history volume on Kandahar, and the big archaeology book in sequence. Cyndi has a Ph.D. in something called childhood studies and accomplished these things for me in addition to her many other diverse activities…

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Snow Fall

Wednesday, January 17, 2024

Everything was beautiful, until it wasn’t. The back trail to Lake Enos snakes downhill through the firs and around the lake. It’s a bit steep in a few places, but never difficult. The lake is framed by rows of trees, with thick logs floating in the center. Raptors float overhead. Vines, now covered with filigrees of snow on each leaf, dot each side of the trail.  A couple of low spots had filled with water, now slick ice, but I carefully dodged those. The snow was almost gone after a week of freezing but dry weather. Made it down three…

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The Pop Tart Screen Play

Friday, December 29, 2023

This line of thought started with the morning sports show talking about the Pop Tarts Bowl, held yesterday in (appropriately) Orlando, Florida. The payout to the two teams was somewhat north of $6 million. Congrats, Kansas State! The morning show had massive linemen popping tarts into their mouths. I assume the same was true under the bowl’s previous name, the Cheez-It Bowl.

Back in the day, your only sponsors were various flowers, fruits, or sugar, without C&H moniker attached to the name. OK, I do understand how these sponsorships help colleges: half of $6 million can fund a lot of…

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Country Roads

Monday, November 06, 2023

There was a football game on TV Sunday morning at dawn Pacific time. Not content with filling up the normal US sports watching hours, the NFL has added games played in Frankfurt (and London earlier this fall) to give the dedicated watcher a full 18 hours of weekend gridiron. What grabbed me, though, was not hordes the fans dressed in the colors of the two teams (Kansas City and Miami), but the break between quarters when the loudspeaker system blared out John Denver’s Take Me Home, Country Roads. Everyone was standing. Everyone was singing. Everyone knew the lyrics…in English. Everyone, from…

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Why Publishers Should Not Write Memoirs

Wednesday, June 14, 2023

I haven’t read the book, nor have I seen the movie. There won’t be one. I don’t even know the guy. I’ll be the first to admit to being wildly unfair. But, for the few people who’ve wondered why I don’t write my memoirs, I have a solid answer.

Publishers are boring.

Not as people, many of them are fascinating characters with wide interests. One publisher friend became a novelist. Another doubles as a salsa teacher. They’re always well read, interested in and able to intelligently discuss almost any topic. Most of them write well: they’ve seen more badly written…

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Finding Dirham

Tuesday, November 15, 2022

dirham: a 15th century Mongol low value coin weighing about 1.5 grams

It wasn’t a single dirham we were hoping to find, but almost 400 of them, along with a few chalkois, drachms, and even some fals(es), the ironically-named coinage of 9th century Iran, made from silver, copper, and lead. And we were looking for them in the vastness of the Smithsonian in Washington.

When I began my work in 2016 documenting the archaeological finds from Sistan in southwest Afghanistan, a project that I had been a part of as a puppy in the 1970s, the first big step was…

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The Book That Took 50 Years to Publish

Thursday, November 03, 2022

Bill outlined his vision for our book almost half a century ago as we sat at the foldup dinner table in a domed room of the compound of Hajji Nafaz Khan, ruler of the village Khwaja ‘Ali Sehyaka and our gracious host.  Pigeons filled the crevices of the crumbling mudbrick building by night; bats occupied those same spots during the day. The shift changed at dusk with a cacophony of squeaks and caws amid hundreds of flapping wings. The desert nights had us tightly bundled up. Jackets would be shed the following morning as we trudged a few yards up…

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The Grande Finale

Tuesday, September 27, 2022

It’s the climax of every show. The fat lady singing. The mass song and dance number with the music swirling to a climax. The abrupt silence of a sudden stop with artists’ arms stretched skyward waiting for the applause they know will come. It’s an epiphanal moment for a performer.

Our last Mexican show was in Huejutla, the largest city in Huasteca. It had been a grueling 10 days but this was to be the grande finale. Put our best numbers on stage and ending with a speedy clog number that featured a long a capella stretch where…

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Trouble on the Border

Wednesday, June 29, 2022

I was blessing my good luck when I saw the sign that there was less than a five minute wait at the Peace Arch crossing into British Columbia. Gonna sail right through and be sure to catch my ferry back to Vancouver Island. It was the return from a quick trip down to Palm Springs for a neighbor son’s wedding, then back to finish my month in our quiet hideout in Parksville,  population 10,000.

It was even better than the minimal wait. I rolled right up to the border guard and presented my passport.

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GUEST POST: Traveling Light II

Wednesday, June 22, 2022

This is a guest post by XYZ, a series written about prison life by a long-term friend now incarcerated. It traces his journey from a series of county jails for 3 years while awaiting plea bargaining and sentencing. In this episode, he is travels from a prison waystation at Wasco to the infamous San Quentin Prison, where he is to serve his sentence. Friends of mine might know who XYZ is. Please repost, but retain his anonymity for his safety.

by XYZ

At 2:30 am I am wakened to the sound of tapping at the edge of our metal bunk, whispers…

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