Thursday, March 27, 2014

Inspiration


Excerpt from the poem "To Be of Use" by Marge Piercy.  Here is the very lovely full poem:

The people I love the best
jump into work head first
without dallying in the shallows
and swim off with sure strokes almost out of sight.
They seem to become natives of that element,
the black sleek heads of seals
bouncing like half-submerged balls.

I love people who harness themselves, an ox to a heavy cart,
who pull like water buffalo, with massive patience,
who strain in the mud and the muck to move things forward,
who do what has to be done, again and again.

I want to be with people who submerge
in the task, who go into the fields to harvest
and work in a row and pass the bags along,
who are not parlor generals and field deserters
but move in a common rhythm
when the food must come in or the fire be put out.

The work of the world is common as mud.
Botched, it smears the hands, crumbles to dust.
But the thing worth doing well done
has a shape that satisfies, clean and evident.
Greek amphoras for wine or oil,
Hopi vases that held corn, are put in museums
but you know they were made to be used.
The pitcher cries for water to carry
and a person for work that is real.


Wednesday, October 16, 2013

Changes . . . .

Time for my yearly post, I guess.  I really must be better about posting, but I've been busy, busy, busy!!

I have been working at the Museum of the Grand Prairie in Mahomet for more than a year, first as an Education Program Specialist, and more recently as Curator.  I am so excited about this move - I love museums, I love *this* museum in particular, and it is an exciting career move, as well.  I still love archaeology and hope to contribute to archaeological programming at the museum in the future, but I am very excited to be in this role as the Museum moves forward with building several new exhibits.

First of all, we are working on creating a mini-exhibit of a glacier to interpret the most recent period of glaciation in our region of Illinois.  Glaciers helped sculpt the landscape throughout Illinois, including changing the course of the ancient Mississippi (!), and we will be interpreting these changes as a prologue to our main gallery exhibit.

And speaking of changes, we will be completely redoing the mail gallery Prairie Stories exhibit.  This, along with our name change from "Early American Museum" to "Museum of the Grand Prairie," is in an effort to more effectively interpret the museum's mission of collecting, preserving, and interpreting the natural and cultural history of Champaign County and East Central Illinois. This will be a HUGE project over the next year, but I am hoping that when we finish it will be every bit as immersive and interactive as our "Champaign County's Lincoln" exhibit downstairs.

We are also working on a gardening exhibit for the temporary exhibit space which will run March through December of next year.  There will be several other updates and changes throughout the museum as well, as we work to make interpretive signage consistent and evaluating how all the aspects of various galleries will fit together with the updated areas upstairs. 

It is an exciting - but BUSY! - time for us all! 

Tuesday, April 23, 2013

How the Time Does Fly . . . !

Reading back over that last post, written more than a year ago as I was finishing my thesis, I can hear the exhaustion in every word.  Now, a year on, I suppose it's time for a few updates.

I submitted my thesis, defended successfully, and graduated in May of last year:


After a brief stint with the Illinois State Archaeological Survey as a seasonal field tech (doing mostly Phase I surveys and lab work), I submitted a volunteer application with the Museum of the Grand Prairie here in Mahomet.  On the day I came in for an initial interview, one of their educators resigned, and I was offered the position.  It sometimes seems like these jobs that I happen to fall into, without having formally applied, are ones that I enjoy much more than positions I've worked hard to get.  I love the group of people I work with, and I'm trying to make the most of the opportunity to learn more about the museum industry.

I've gotten some good feedback about my thesis, and it seems like some folks in Maryland are interested in using it.  I researched Maryland Indian women in the 17th Century, as they were coming into contact with Anglo settlers, and I tried to discern their contributions to creolization and ethnogenesis in the Chesapeake region in part through a subtypological analysis of changes in ceramic production throughout the century.  (If this sounds to you like really exciting reading, you can link to a .pdf version here:  https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/108160211/THESE%20POTS%20DO%20TALK.pdf )

I am hoping to return to this topic at some point, but as I find myself in Illinois for the foreseeable future, I think my research might take a more local focus for the time being.  There is a very interesting tavern site nearby--one of the places Lincoln used to stay on his way through Middletown (the former name of Mahomet) as he rode the 8th Judicial Court circuit--and I have the opportunity to dig there this summer as part of an Archaeology Day Camp I'm leading through the museum.  I doubt I'll make any earth-shaking finds, but it should be good fun, and perhaps the historical research will turn up some interesting tidbits.

Monday, February 13, 2012

A Few Tired Ramblings . . . .

My first thesis chapter, the data analysis section, is off to my prof for review, with many thanks to my family and the kind people at ShinerBock for getting me through the final push.  I need to keep reminding myself that I did my best, that of course it's going to need a ton of revisions, and that I shouldn't take personally the fact that it will be heavily edited.  This is a learning process, after all, and I have already learned a billion ways NOT to do research.  (First and formost, let my wonderful husband, AKA the King of Excel, build my database from the start so that it's acutally functional!!)

It is somewhat disturbing to me that my "rest" from thesis work consists of reading for my other classes, but it is what it is.  As my husband seems to have appropriated my brand-new Kindle, this is not a bad thing for the moment.

I should also be encouraged that I was able to finish the section draft--which was somehow simultaneously like pulling teeth and trying to cram a huge, expanding blob of amorphous something ("space jelly"?!) into a tiny, tiny little box (one that is not bigger on the inside)--in the face of all the harsh blows that life has dealt my family and friends in the past few weeks.  So, Life, or Karma, or Fate, or Whatever - if you could just hold off for another week or two on all the bad news, I'd really appreciate it.  My complete draft is due by the end of February, so feel free to pencil that in on your calendar.

My kids have started calling me "Dad" sometimes by accident.  This is both funny and a little disturbing, as it used to be him mistakenly called "Mom."  It seems indicative to me of the parent they are spending more time with, and it makes me a little sad.  I suppose I should just be greatful that they still remember what I look like.

I have set myself a couple of incentives for achieving thesis goals.  I think, once the first draft is finished, my husband and I will have a serious conversation about Netflix (assuming that I will once again have a few free hours to watch TV or read for pleasure or something).  I would love, once I graduate, to begin guitar lessons, as I have been so impressed with how well my beautiful girls are doing with their guitar and piano lessons.  Of course, the main incentive in all of this is just to finish so that I don't have to spend any more time researching and writing the damn thing.

That having been said, I should note that I will often stop in my research to observe "that would be a really cool topic for a paper/book/dissertation!"  (Did I really just type that last one?!?!  I can't believe I even thought it!)

A last thing, if anyone out there is interested.  I blogged my entire Jamestown Field School experience from the summer of 2010, with a few later updates.  I used my blog as my field journal for class credit, so it is quite comprehensive, but also written for a general audience.  To be honest, I think I did a good job, and I'm quite proud of it.  I feel as though it reads like a book, with a big dénouement, although you have to page back to May's entries to read it chronologically.  It was a terrific experience, and I find it's still shaping my research and my field methods.  Anyway, it's at:
http://bodkinsscuppetsandsilverhalfgroats.blogspot.com/
Just in case anyone is interested. 

And just to end on a high note - here is my favorite internet meme from this week:



Substitute that Corona with a Shiner or a glass of Bailey's, and it's like screenshots from This is Your Life. 

Thanks for reading.  Off to take the Littlest One to Kindergarten.

Be well.

Friday, February 10, 2012

2012 SHA Paper

Hello, all. Please find below the full text of the paper I recently presented at the Society for Historical Archaeology Conference in Baltimore, MD. I would love to hear comments, questions, and feedback, especially as this paper discusses initial results of my thesis research, which is still ongoing.  In fact, I just added a new data set to my analysis, with some very interesting results!  I will try to get pictures into this blog soon, and I will do my best to blog about my thesis research in the future.

These Pots Do Talk:
Seventeenth-Century Native American Women’s Influence
on Creolization in the Chesapeake Region

Introduction
The archaeological record can often give insights into the past that are not realized in documentary evidence alone. This research proposes the cultural exchange between the Tidewater Indians and European colonists was mutual and critically important in the early colonies, but this exchange is masked or minimized in the historical record. Through a systematic analysis of Tidewater Native American pottery, my research examines how gender constructs and cultural practices of native women may have affected creolization in the early Chesapeake. I have undertaken a detailed examination of historic-period native-produced ceramics to gauge what changes, if any, occurred in the traditional practices of indigenous women potters in Maryland. Native-made ceramic objects contain a “private” unseen space of paste and temper and more “public” exterior of surface treatment and decoration. A subtypological analysis, aimed at identifying subtle changes in pottery creation and treatments, can identify tensions between the private interior attributes and more aesthetic public attributes. My preliminary research shows the exterior or “public” attributes might tend to echo European styles, while interior or “private” attributes maintain cultural traditions throughout the seventeenth century. (SLIDE 2 – John Smith map).

James Deetz offered one of the first explicit definitions of creolization, which he stated as “the interaction between two or more cultures to produce an integrated mix which is different from its antecedents.” Additionally, transculturation—a “concept of dynamic interaction, alteration, and reformulation”—has been suggested by Deagan to describe mutual cultural exchange. A great deal of recent scholarship has examined these processes of creolization and transculturation along the eastern coast of the United States, although much of the research has focused on exchanges between African and European cultures, leaving the contributions of the indigenous population largely absent from discussion of the resulting creolized society. Similarly, a focus on the archaeology of gender is lacking in most Chesapean scholars’ work detailing transculturation and creolization in the region. In my research, I have undertaken a detailed study of historic-period indigenous ceramic vessels, using subtypological attribute analysis to track changes in temper, surface treatment, and form throughout the 17th Century. I have observed a disconnect between the “public” and “private” attributes of native ceramics that may speak to the social negotiations women were enacting in their daily routines (SLIDE 3 – “Their sitting at meate”).

Gendering
Gender is a social construct negotiated and performed through routine practice. Like other aspects of performed identity, it is fluid and interactive within changing social contexts. Gender can be inferred archaeologically through artifacts associated with traditionally female or male activities, and ethnohistoric evidence shows that in the seventeenth-century Chesapeake, indigenous women were producing pottery, mats, and other items for trade with European settlers. Within this theoretical framework, a majority of the trade items used by European colonists in the early Tidewater can be identified as female-engendered (SLIDE 4 – Yeocomico pot).

If, as in language, cultural traditions follow structures and imbue material culture with implicit meaning, then the attributes of pottery can be “read” and analyzed for the negotiated meanings within. The form, temper, and surface treatment of a pottery vessel were dictated by tradition assumed by present-day researchers to be uniform within tribes; however, subtypological study reveals a large degree of variation below the level of type classifications. Ceramics can be viewed as bundles of social relationships, and any change in the creation of ceramics implies a change in social relationships.

This change potentially represents women’s agency in the creation of the vessels. (SLIDE 5 – Stig Sorensen quote). As Stig Sorensen has noted, material culture plays an interactive role in gender discourse, carrying various meanings within its social context for both the producers and the users of the artifacts. Women as the main producers of Indian pottery, crops, prepared foods, and other highly-valued trade goods likely were brokers of transculturation in their interactions with European settlers. Consumer preferences for native-produced goods on the part of European settlers could have shaped the changes in ceramic attributes that occurred throughout the seventeenth century, as Europeans increasingly settled along the shores of the Chesapeake Bay and traded with local Indians. A comparison between indigenous and European sites should reveal observably different attributes.

Chesapeake Aboriginal Pottery
Documentary and archaeological evidence indicates Indian-produced ceramics were a primary trade item to colonists, often as containers for maize and other provisions. Seventeenth-century public records in Maryland list several trade items identified with the qualifier “Indian,” including bowls, mats, baskets, beads, canoes, pipes, pans, trays, and trenchers. The presence of Indian-made wares on European sites, documented in the public record beginning in 1641, is evidence of interaction between indigenous women producers and European consumers of native ceramics, goods, and foodstuffs. These native-produced vessels became part of the settlers’ quotidian routines as evidenced by the frequency of the terms “Indian bowls” and “Indian pans” in both Maryland’s and Virginia’s colonial-era public records (SLIDE 6 – map of sites/ sites &dates ).

I’ve collected attribute data from 430 sherds from seven sites. The Cumberland site, which is dated to AD1575 +¬130 years, might pre-date John Smith’s arrival in the Patuxent River, or it may have been the site of the native town of Opament on his 1612 map. The Posey site is another indigenous site that was reserved for native groups during the last half of the 17th Century, as was Zekiah Fort. Old Chapel Field was a very early mission settlement established by Jesuit priests. Interesting variations in the data collected from the Old Chapel Field assemblage could be attributed to the all-male settlement; these variations will be investigated in more detail at a later date. Compton, Patuxent Point, and Mattapany were European settlements. Compton and Patuxent Point were occupied by families of somewhat modest means, while Mattapany was the home of Governor Charles Calvert for nearly two decades.

Information was collected predominantly from body sherds, and all sherds were selected from feature contexts with the notable exception of those from Zekiah Fort. The Zekiah Fort assemblage derives from plowzone contexts. Extensive testing has not yet occurred at the site, thus assessments of features is premature; however, the site was only occupied between 1680-1692.

Typological analysis revealed that most of the 430 sherds analyzed remained unidentified at the type level by previous researchers. On average, between 80-90% of sampled sherd assemblages from individual sites remained unidentified; the notable exceptions being the Compton site, where almost 90% of sherds sampled for this research were identified as Potomac Creek ware, and Zekiah Fort, where five different ware types—including Yeocomico, Potomac Creek, Camden, Moyaone, and possible Colonoware sherds—were identified. Typological analysis alone paints a single picture, but attribute analysis below the type-level allows the researcher to see finer grained associations of contrasts over very short spans of time. (SLIDE 7 – sherd photos).

Subtypological Analysis
Attribute analysis identifies characteristics that cross-cut types, and these widely-shared characteristics can show interactions not identifiable with typological analyses, such as temporal change or shared stylistic preferences. Subtle trends can be detected through nonparametric multivariate statistical analyses of the interactions of variables to identify variation patterns (or covariation patterns) in attributes. Attributes analyzed in my research include context, exterior surface treatment, interior surface treatment, temper, inclusions, paste texture including temper size and distribution, paste color, maximum thickness of the sherd, smudging, and sooting. Despite the relatively low number of sites and sherd sample size, a high degree of variability was apparent, with little obvious correlation or dissimilarity apparent among any of the various attributes. To better detect patterns in this complex dataset, I used the nonparametric analysis of Correspondence Analysis.

Correspondence analysis is an ordination technique used to restructure multivariate data by creating a two-dimensional graph plotting the relationships between individual data points. (SLIDE 8 - PAST graph) The graph shows paste color is an outlier, likely because of its high variability due to temperature fluctuations during firing. Exterior surface treatment, inclusions, smudging, and sooting were also outliers in this data set. For this presentation, I will concentrate on a few attributes included in the tight central cluster: interior surface treatment, temper, paste texture, and maximum thickness. Drawing convex hulls around the data sets shows that some chronological trend existed, but colonial sites were not distinct from indigenous ones. (SLIDE 9 – [ext surf treatment by site]).

An analysis of exterior surface treatments across sites shows a high degree of variability. 21 different exterior surface treatments are represented across the seven sites; however, the smoothed surface treatment is the only category to be represented on every site. Interestingly, the percentage of sherds with smoothed exteriors more than doubles over time, from an average of approximately 30% on earlier sites to over 70% on the Mattapany and Zekiah Fort sites. The Indian town site of Cumberland has 11 surface treatments represented in a pre-contact environment, while the number of treatment variations drops to 9 at the Posey reservation site. Zekiah Fort, another reservation site established more than 20 years later, shows only 6 surface treatment variations, with smoothed exteriors representing over 80% of the sample. (SLIDE 10 – temper).

However, a detailed examination of “private” attributes including temper, paste texture, and inclusions shows increased variability during the course of the 17th-century. A grit- or a shell/grit-mixture appears to predominate temper on a few sites, although several tempering agents are used through the end of the seventeenth century. The variation in types of inclusions jumps from a maximum of four at earlier sites to seven different types at Zekiah Fort. This is perhaps indicative of the need to go further afield or trade for source material. These “private” attributes, hidden from the public eye, support the hypothesis that sub-surface attributes maintained inherent cultural qualities through the choices and creative practices of female potters.

In other words, even as indigenous women changed exterior or “public” attributes of their ceramics to more closely align with European ceramics, they privately maintained cultural practices including the selection and mixing of tempers. This implies the value the women potters placed on social relationships and the maintenance of cultural tradition in the face of European encroachment. Whether or not aesthetic changes were made to influence Anglo settlers’ choices in purchasing pottery or foodstuffs, the women’s adherence to cultural practices surely influenced interactions with the nearby settlers (SLIDE 11 – pot and sketch).

Discussion
It would appear that indigenous women, during a time of intense contact and interaction with European immigrants to Maryland, maintained key practices of cultural traditions throughout most of the 17th century. This resilience in traditional practices is evidenced by the high degree in variation of surface treatments which would have been passed from matrilineal kin to young potters. However, the frequency of smoothed exterior surfaces almost doubles by the end of the 17th century, which may indicate changing preferences among younger generations of potters who matured into a creolized society that included many European trade goods. Preliminary data from the Zekiah Fort excavations indicates that European ceramics made up approximately 20-30% of the ceramic assemblage, a strong contrast to the Posey site where European ceramics comprised approximately 3% of the ceramic assemblage.

It is also possible that changes in ceramic production techniques reflect the mixed heritage of the women creating the pottery. Documentary evidence suggests that European colonists at Jamestown began intermarrying with indigenous women before the highly-publicized union of Pocahontas with John Rolfe. Archaeological evidence indicates that Tidewater Indian women were likely living at Jamestown within the first five years of settlement, and public records in Maryland and Virginia show that Indian-European sexual relations and marriages were common throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. These inter-cultural liaisons produced children that likely combined aspects of both parents’ heritages in their routine practice. As Tidewater Indian societies were matrilineal, native women who married European settlers—whether they remained on indigenous sites or relocated to colonial sites—would have passed on their cultural traditions, including ceramic production techniques, to their daughters. These daughters likely incorporated both indigenous and European traditions in the material culture they produced, melding cultural practices in the creation of a new American society. (SLIDE 12 –future research).

My analysis is still in preliminary stages, but results so far would indicate multiple lines of investigation, including consideration of the role of gender in contact-period interactions, play a valuable role in interpreting the material culture of indigenous-Anglo relations in the Chesapeake region. Additionally, subtypological analysis has proven an important tool in the identification of tensions between “public” or overt attribute choices and more covert, “private” choices that would not have been evident at the ware-type level. I suggest future research employing both methodologies, coupled with a more extensive regional survey of historic-period native ceramics, to more fully understand the role indigenous women played in the formation of a creolized early-American society in the Chesapeake region. (SLIDE 13 – acknowledgements).

Tuesday, September 20, 2011

Things I Wish I'd Known A Year Ago.

Annotated bibliographies ROCK.

A year ago I was one month into my graduate schooling, and I'd given barely any thought to my thesis. It certainly wasn't looming large on the horizon like a juggernaut of doom the way it is at present! And if I could somehow send back a message to my First Year Graduate Self it would be: Keep an annotated biblio on EVERYTHING you read! It will save oodles of time that could actually be writing time, instead of searching futilely through book after book for a citation or quote by . . . wait, which author was that? Or was it an article that I have digitally? Oh, frick.

And then I'd smack my First-Year Self in the head and tell her, "No, really." Because I've realized that I got the same piece of advice from a mentor and friend in Maryland a few years ago, when I was just getting interested in the field. I asked his advice and he told me: "Read a lot. And take notes on everything you read." Which I did, for a while, and I'm certain it's why I flew through my Historical Archaeology class as though I'd actually gotten a degree in archaeology or anthropology as an undergrad.

You'd better believe I'm taking notes on everything I read now (and I'm telling all the new First Years who will listen to do the same)! It's already come in handy in class, and I'm sure when the actual thesis-research-and-writing phase kicks into full gear I will waste much less time frantically searching for a vague quote that was somewhere about mid-page on the verso side of a page about a third of the way into the chapter . . . .


I think my other good advice to myself would be get more sleep, and I think I'll take that advice right now. More to follow.

Sunday, September 11, 2011

10 years ago today . . .

. . . Steve and I had just returned from a trip to Jersey City to visit friends. I spent a large portion of Sunday morning, before everyone else woke up, marveling at the New York skyline. Their apartment was just across the river from lower Manhattan, and I just never got tired of looking at the two buildings towering and dwarfing everything else in sight. I remember turning around in my seat as we started the drive home, for one last lingering look at the Towers in the skyline.

Two days later, they were gone, and the skyline was changed forever.

What can I say that hasn't been said a thousand times before? We were in shock, we grieved, we screamed, we cried. It seems it is easiest to filter the memories through the facts: where were you when it happened? We seem to play this game with every disaster that affects us as a community of Americans. Where were you when Kennedy was shot? When the Challenger blew up? When the bombing happened in Oklahoma City? When the Towers fell?

I was at work. The day was every bit as clear, the sky as blue and beautiful in central PA as it was in NYC. I think we were clearing away breakfast at the day care in which I worked when a parent, dropping off her daughter, got a call from her husband. "Oh, my God," she said into the phone, then turned to us. "A plane just hit the World Trade Center."

It was a shock, a tragedy, but at that point, it was still just a terrible accident. And we went on with the normal tasks of every day--until other reports started to filter in. Another plane. Another call from a parent, to say that a plane hit the Pentagon where her father worked, and she would be at home watching the news coverage if we needed to reach her. Then, the assistant director came to the door to tell us the Twin Towers had fallen.

I responded stupidly. "But I was just there." I couldn't fathom the reality of that skyline, forever changed. Then the fear set in. My friend, the one we'd visited just two days before, worked in lower Manhattan just a few blocks from the WTC. Where was he? His wife was temping downtown--was she ok?

Somewhere, I still have the post-it note from the facility's secretary. "Your husband called. Everyone is ok." That was all I knew for a long time, but it was enough.

What strikes me most looking back is the feeling of absolute helplessness. We didn't know what was going on, couldn't really talk about it because we wanted to stay calm for the sake of the young children in our care, couldn't see the images that the rest of the world was watching. We had to comfort parents who came in to pick up their children, understanding their need to hold them, but warning against saying too much in front of them. We tried hard to retain some sense of normalcy that day, some sense of routine. I don't know if any of the kids in our care have memories of that day, but if we did our jobs well, they don't.

In those first few hours, no one seemed to know for sure what was happening. I remember a coworker telling me a plane was flying up the Potomac (up? I don't know where we imagined it was heading). It wasn't until much later that we heard about the plane near Shanksville,only 100 miles or so from State College, and the extraordinary courage of the people aboard. I read recently that had the plane been in the air just two more seconds, it would have come down on the local elementary school. I was not a parent at the time, but looking back now, as a mother of two, I can't imagine the gut-clenching fear, the absolute terror that those parents must have experienced until they knew their children were safe.

I left work early that day, headed to physical therapy for a back injury. I saw the first images in the doctor's office, and can't for the life of me remember what they were. I remember having a conversation with my therapist about the horror of the day, but can't remember what we said. I listened to NPR on the way home, and broke down for the first time as they talked about the crushed firetrucks under the rubble. My dad and my sister were both volunteer firefighters, so for me, the images of the first responders and their shattered equipment provoked a visceral response. My dad told me later that what really got to him was, after the Towers came down, hearing the motion detectors on the firemen's gear going off, indicating someone down, someone not moving. I hurt still to think about it.

I watched TV all night, until my husband--who had watched events unfold at his office--begged me to change the channel. He didn't understand that I needed to see it, trying to believe and make sense of it all. As if any of us could make sense of such a horrific act.

Later, we learned that my friend had gotten off the subway at the WTC stop just moments before the first plane hit. He thinks it happened when he was in the elevator in his building, because when they reached his office, all he could see were the papers flying everywhere. His building faced away from the Towers. They evacuated into the street, were standing a few blocks away watching as the first Tower fell. He was one of the heroes of the day, grabbing a young woman immobilized by shock and helping her get to the ferry. They watched from the ferry, from the middle of the Hudson, as the second Tower came down. He and his wife sheltered the young lady overnight, until she could get back into Manhattan.

We went to visit our Jersey friends again the following February. We went to Ground Zero, although we couldn't see anything past the fences. Flyers for missing people were still up, papers and dust still coated the ground in some areas. My aunt gave my holy hell when she found out I was there--I had just told my family I was expecting a baby in September, and she felt I had risked my health and the baby's just by being there. (Of course, this was well before anyone knew the full consequences that working "the pile" would have on first responders. In many fire and police stations across New York City, the attacks are still claiming lives.)

And now my baby, my oldest daughter, just turned 9. She has a vague awareness of the events 10 years ago, and tonight she told me she only had one question. "Why did those men do it?" How do you answer a question like that? I gave her the only answer I could--that it was hard to understand, that we would probably never understand, because an act of evil that unfathomable can not be understood. We can't understand because we can't know the hate, the fanaticism, that those men felt. We can't understand, because we understand other things, like the beauty of human differences, the freedom of choice, and the value of human life.

I don't know if those words were enough. She cried, and said she was afraid, and Steve and I both tried to explain how important it was to remember, to never forget, but also how important it was to go on with life. To live each day as a celebration of freedom, and joy, and love, and beauty. To live not in fear, but in sunshine and light.

Words aren't enough. But these words needed to come out tonight. I have been aching for some sort of catharsis all day. These words were not enough, but they helped. Thanks for listening . . .