Thursday, June 02, 2005

Paul just found a dead hummingbird. She got into the new room through an open window (there were several) and couldn't get out again. He has put the screens up. The primaries on her wing are almost transparent. I am wondering about putting the body in borax powder, like dried flowers.

Deep sigh.

I am about to go finish off my weaving project. It is long and the margins are a work in progress. But definitely progress, as opposed to disaster. Toward the end I began to feel a rhythm, which is a good sign. I was having trouble learning not to need to look at my feet with every treadle.

Yesterday was archaeology lab. I and the intern did our second week in a row of Photoshopping our little eyes out, changing
Image hosted by Photobucket.com and this (the other side of the little messy tool)
Image hosted by Photobucket.com to this:
Image hosted by Photobucket.com, which will eventually be part of a searchable database. I feel like Moses: I may not see the Promised Land. But I am adding data to it.

I learned from SCRAP Matt, who is now the secretary to the NH Archaeology Society, that some people are leaving this site and visiting the NHAS site. Although I am, God help them, on the NHAS board, I do most of my digging life with NH SCRAP, which there is a sidebar (it looks like Dick's hat) link to. I must say SCRAP's web page, although text-overrich, is more interesting than the NHAS one. Now that Matt is the NHAS webmaster, I hope we will have more content. The NHAS exists partly to house collections made in the olden days of relic-hunting -- now when someone finds a fluted point, or even a less sexy arrowhead or other artifact, we would REALLY like you to call the State Archaeologist's office (
603-271-3483 or 271-3558) -- and partly to hold twice-yearly meeting with actually interest talk-and-slide presentations of sites in the state, the next one of which will be on October 29th in Exeter. We also publish a yearly journal, yearly. Or almost yearly, yearly. Sometimes it's biannual-yearly.

SCRAP is a wholly-owned creature of the state government (although it has a sort of interlocking-directorate thing going with the NHAS), existing to train lay ('avocational,' although for some of it is a vocation, it's just not our day job) archaeologists, ordinary people who have some grasp of the means and ends of historic and prehistoric preservation. You can do the field school for college credit (we have high school students, too) or just for your own satisfaction.

1 comment:

Liz said...

My ornithologist friend puts his bird finds in the freezer, much to the consternation of his wife. We enjoy seeing his frozen birds whenever we go for a visit. Kind of eccentric, but we like him that way.