Background Check…WAY Back

Though I have not written in a while, it is but the slightest blink of an eye compared to the 30,000 years that have passed since the paintings in the Chauvet cave in southern France were made. I saw them in the new Werner Herzog movie “Cave of Forgotten Dreams” yesterday as part of a small observance of another trip around the sun. It is amazing to see and consider the creations by our long-off elders in 3D; it’s really one of the best uses of 3D projection I’ve ever seen. There is still that voice in the back of my mind that harks from my early days when I wanted to be an archaeologist and teach swimming lessons when I grew up. If I were working right now, I would also fork over the bucks to the National Geographic Genographic Project to see what my own DNA could reveal about where all my constituent ancestors hailed from across the globe.

In part due to reflection upon the movie and my own past and current circumstances, particularly pertaining to employment, it really makes the stress fall off contemplating how many folks have lived their lives since the painters of Chauvet. It certainly demonstrates how finding something to do that you love is what is really important. Most things fade and disappear with enough time, so make the most of it while your time lasts. If that means changing paths somewhere along the way, then so be it. One archaeologist researching there in France said he’d originally worked in a circus, so there you go!

Apropos to both the solar voyage observance and investigation into the past, this also marked the thirtieth year since “Raiders of the Lost Ark” was first released. How many times have I watched that cinematic masterpiece?

The summer here is well underway. The temperatures and winds have been evident, and humidity has tagged along like usual. Thistle hunts out in the pastures have been held by some, though some properties (unfortunately upwind of ours) appear to have been neglected as usual. The one major thing lacking here thus far is the sound of cicadas, which is THE sound of summer, as far as I’m concerned.

Marion: You're not the man I knew ten years ago.
Indiana: It's not the years, honey, it's the mileage.
~Raiders of the Lost Ark

Show Me

I had the pleasure of a little road trip to the Show Me State (and just beyond) last week, and saw some cool stuff and some family members I hadn’t caught up with since getting home. Most of the time was spent in and around St. Louis, which I had never really gotten a chance to get to know, other than on I-70 at speed. Downtown held the famous Arch and the old courthouse where the Dred Scott case was tried.


Directly adjacent to the Arch is the Mississippi River, which was at a pretty elevated level. The Lewis and Clark statue was barely visible, though I think “George W. Bush Emerging from the Waters” would be a more apt name, at least with what was visible.

Off to the west a bit I visited Laumeier Sculpture Park, which had some interesting installation. One was a real eye full…


Across the river in Illinois, we visited the Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site. There you can see the remains of a culture that built numerous earthen mounds, including the huge Monks Mound. They did a pretty impressive job for folks without the wheel or the horse. A big city of 20,000 people here north of Mexico definitely jars with the preconceptions a lot of us probably have grown up with. National Geographic had a good article on Cahokia back in their January 2011 issue.


Going and coming, I got to drive with my lovely grandmother, which was fun. It’s quite something having a conversation with somebody who still remembers when Lindbergh flew across the Atlantic the first time.

I also saw the movie "THOR" and continued to be unemployed, neither of which are all that exciting.

“A round man cannot be expected to fit in a square hole right away. He must have time to modify his shape.”
~Mark Twain

Hurdles

Well, the long overdue death of OBL has yet to wreak miraculous turnarounds on the job market (not that I expected it to). My particular field just seems to keep being whittled smaller and smaller, with fewer opportunities apparently available at all levels. Don’t believe me?

Take a look here

And here

And here

And finally here, across the pond

So, one starts to consider alternate paths that might take greater or lesser departures from previous plans. One also considers their fallback option(s) to try and wait out the situation in order to just keep money coming into the coffers. There is nobody to be angry at for the world being like this. It is just too big and impersonal a set of commingling forces, and unfortunately for some folks it is happening at an especially bad time (or, time and time again) in their brief, mortal lives. One just has to keep trying, and eventually find some happy medium. It still stinks, though.

On the up side, there have been a lot of avian arrivals in the yard here in the last couple days. I’ve seen gold finches, a brown thrasher, a Baltimore oriole, and a hummingbird. There must be several mockingbirds in the area, too, because the number of bird calls sometimes seems way beyond the variety of birds visible. Nature could not care less about the plight of any economy, which is reassuring in its own way.

Also a positive is that I didn't have to fight at Gallipoli in World War I. Here's a belated ANZAC Day remembrance from a damn Yank, for what it's worth.

“Why is a crooked letter and can’t be made straight… never mind why, just get up, pus-head! Get up! The day’s young!”
~Cort, “The Gunslinger” by Stephen King

Ich hab nichts…

Spring is springing here, though it is a bit cool today. It has been nice getting to see a majority of my relatives in the last couple weeks, and I hope to get to see the rest at some point before I get whisked off to go work somewhere doing something. However, in the last few weeks there have really been no major progresses made in my current search for meaning in my life…I mean, gainful and engaging employment. Of course, timing plays such a huge role in life. It is a lesson that is being reinforced again and again as I go through another quest for hire.

Over the weekend my family went to see a circus. One act had “Du Hast” by Rammstein played over the PA system as accompaniment. That totally reminded me of the Polish guys that worked at Glacier NP in the same lodge that I did, and would spend lots of their time off in their room below me in the dorm getting blotto with vodka and blasting Rammstein songs on their stereo. Good times (unless you’ve got to work the early shift tomorrow morning)! The pairing of the music with a child-dense audience seemed an interesting contrast.

“They were conquerors, and for that you want only brute force-nothing to boast of, when you have it, since your strength is just an accident arising from the weakness of others.”
~Marlow, “Heart of Darkness” by Joseph Conrad

As if I'd need an excuse!

Well, 3/25 is Tolkien Reading Day, which should be pretty self-explanatory. A little J.R.R.T. can brighten up most any day, and honoring the man/author by reading his works seems highly appropriate.

Totally inappropriate is the design of the Dodge Caliber, which I had reason to drive as a rental car recently. I don't know if I've driven a car with worse visibility all around as that unfortunate vehicle. Not only was the rear obstructed by thick, opaque structures, but the front pillars also seemed to be perfectly placed to obscure important swaths of view. It also handled awkwardly, and the automatic transmission wasn't smooth at all at low speeds. Anyhow, I survived my brush with lackluster design, and will certainly never subject myself to such a vehicle again if I can at all help it.

I may have encountered another one of those places that I'm going to have to visit sometime in my life. I was reading back issues of a certain magazine (Backpacker), and I read an article about hiking the length of Offa's Dyke that essentially runs the length of the Wales-England border. It was built way back when during more hostile times than these. It looks like a lot of fun, like something that could likely be found in Middle Earth, and has certainly caught in my mind. When I have these sorts of ideas take up residence between my ears I end up doing things like going to Antarctica, sailing to Easter Island, endeavoring to become and astronaut, etc. Life is fun, and I'm thankful for the opportunities I've had.

I'm also thankful I'm not a resident of northern Honshu, or Japan in general right now. Talk about a trio of nastiness to deal with...

Anyhow, this is getting long. I'm still in limbo on the employment front, blah-blah-blah.

“You will never do anything in this world without courage. It is the greatest quality of the mind next to honor.”
~Aristotle

Carry on then, carry on.

Well, there has not been much in the way of excitement since my last post. I’m still trying to figure out where life will take me next. Nothing is happening very quickly, but that’s nothing new. In the meantime I’ve been doing the usual errands and helping out around the homestead. Today I raked a bunch of gravel on our lane road, which was quite enjoyable. No kidding! It was a beautiful day today, though our temperatures have really been on a roller coaster in the last week or two. But, there is some green out there now, with grass and wheat just beginning to grow. Spring will get here eventually, but we continental dwellers-far from the ocean’s moderation-know there could be plenty of snow and winter yet to come. In the meantime, I’ll carry on as required.

“Step by step walk the thousand-mile road.”
~Miyamoto Musashi

Waiting Game…The Sequel

The usual process of job search, application, and rejection is in full effect here once again. Granted, that has been interrupted quite a bit in the last few days with lots of snow shoveling, since we here in central Kansas have gotten a thick blanket of the white stuff from the last big winter storm. I think this last one deposited 15-17” here, and did it quickly enough at times that the driveway and patio areas we’d started shoveling were already covered again by the time we finished the whole thing.

Anyhow, what comes next is still very much in the works, though without quite the sharpness of angst about the future that was felt 2 years ago when I was in the same position. I guess it’s a good lesson to have learned so thoroughly, given the state of the global economy. It is a good fight, so I will certainly keep fighting it.

“A successful person is one who can lay a firm foundation with the bricks that others throw at him or her.”
~David Brinkley