Why Archaeology is Relevent for Today.




 

Otto Román, a Guatemalan archaeologist, excavating the cache of
 polished axes that were found in 2009. This ritual deposit marked
the beginning of occupation at Ceibal around 1,000 B.C.

     Most of us have seen the movies of the swash-buckling archaeologist Indiana Jones. It offers up a romantic version of what digging up or hunting down ancient artifacts is like. This past semester in my "Principles of Archaeology" class I learned that portrayal is highly inaccurate, but to be fair, those films are a big reason why I want to study Archaeology.

     When the average person thinks of Archaeology they may think of digging up skeletons, artifacts, or restoring ancient ruins. They may also think that it is a way to see how bye-gone cultures and societies worked, and to a large extent that's part of it. We might not realize how Archaeology is so important for world today though, and how it has helped our current civilizations become what they are now.

   
The last question of my final exam asked me to write any essay giving three examples of, Social, Political, and Economic reasons why archaeology is important for today's society, here and abroad. I'd like to share what I answered and possibly expand all three of those points.

Machu Picchu

Social/Cultural Identity
      Peru has practically built their whole county's Identity around the Inca to show that they have something to offer the rest of the world. One of their most famous sites is Machu Picchu, which is pictured to the right. It's just one of the great historical treasures the country has to offer, they are also famous for mummies. Peru, however is not the only country that has done this. More obvious places like Greece with their fantastic ruins, pottery, sculptures and other artifacts have also built up a culture around their history through the use of Archaeology. Italy has followed suit with their wealth of Roman antiquities that spans most of Europe to show that they have much more to offer than pizza and pasta.
Of course, we can't forget Egypt, which has some of the most recognized archaeological artifacts and sites out there still.

Political Relevance
     This maybe one of the most overlooked uses of archaeology that the general public is aware of, but for a lot of indigenous peoples across the world it has played a vital role their individual cultures. For example, after Australia was colonized by Europe the Aborigines had struggled for basic human rights and freedoms to claim their ancestral lands (Sutton, Yohe II 376). Due to laws passed in the 1960s and 70s, archaeologists sense of responibility to involve native peoples, as well as Aboriginal activist groups, the Aborigines were able to provide strong evidence through archaeological finds to win arguments over land ownership.

     Here in the U.S. the Native Americans lost skeletal remains along with important ceremonial objects from their lands, which were excavated without permission or just plain looted, sometimes by archaeologists. Though, In 1990, NAGPRA which stands for Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act was passed in congress, this allowed Native American groups to reclaim those possesions from various museums and universites(Sutton, Yohe II 365). NAGPRA states that if you are excavating on federal land, or if you are using federal funds and you uncover any Native American artifacts, you must stop everything and contact the proper tribal authorites. It is then up to the Native American group to let you keep excavating or not (Sutton, Yohe II 365).

The Elgin Marbles


    Artifacts can also effect diplomatic relations between counties as well. Take for example The Elgin Marbles which were taken out of Greece from the Acropolis of Athens in the early 19th century and brought to England (Williams). To this day Greece and England are fighting over who legally owns them. Greece is also trying to retrieve more of these artifacts from 8 other countries too (Williams).


Dr. Alexei Vranich with his crew that are
Imara Indians in Bolivia

Economic

     Last month a few fellow students and I got a chance to meet and greet Dr. Alexei Vranich. He worked mainly in Bolivia on a pre-Incan site called Tiwanaku. One of the things he talked about was how the funds to excavate the site helped to employ the local Imara indians who basically live in poverty. He also said how the funds that the site generated from tourists, as well as the annual festivals at the site, help the Bolivian economy. Bolivia, like Peru, is also trying to create a cultural Identity from the past and they are wanting to show the world they have something to offer too. The downside Dr. Vranich said, is that he dare not go there when he doesn't have the funds because the local people would be heartbroken if he were to show up without being able to offer them a job. It maybe be like this in other parts of the world to where tourism of archaeological sites, or the funds to excavate them, is a part of a countires economy.

So archaeology isn't just raiding tombs or taking back religious artifacts from Nazis, but it is larger part of the world than you may have once thought. And also....

 

Sources:  
Sutton, Mark Q., and Robert M. Yohe. "Cultural Rescource Management." Archaeology: the Science of the Human past. Boston: Pearson/Allyn and Bacon, 2008. 351-81. Print.

Williams, Sean. "The Elgin Marbles." Web log post. The Elgin Marbles. Heritage Key, 28 May 2009. Web. 09 Dec. 2011. .



                                                                                                                                                                    









EDIT: Aliens built them there pyramid thingies.

A handful of ancient civilizations built pyramid style structures. You know what that means right? Aliens! That's right, tall white beings from the stars told the smaller brown humans how to build them...err...wait, I just realized how that sounded.

The basis for Aliens helping our ancestors was an interesting thing at one time, however now it has evolved into something stupid and borderline racist. Anthropology and Archaeology are ever changing an evolving fields because new finds open up new possibilities we didn't consider before. Mostly it has to do with how we are realizing humans were more developed than we thought and were extremely quick learners, after all, only the strongest survive.

Pyramids in Egypt
The first pyramids were carved from bedrock and were tiered, not like the smooth looking pyramids you might think of. The shape of the pyramind is said to represent sunbeams coming down from the heavens which they believed how you got into the afterlife in their solar religion. So, they were tombs, and it was a way to show everyone at that time who was boss (Maitland). To cut the limestone for the later pyramids they used copper tools and a hard marerial called Dolerite, also limestone is soft enough to be cut by stone tools in it's bed, after it is removed and exposed to the sun it dries and hardens (NatGeo). Next, the Pharoh would consult a commitee on where to place the pyramid with the help of astronomers to make sure the axis of the pyramids lined up correctly with the constellations. Then a gigantac workforce of about 20-30 thousand people constructed the pyramids using flotation techniques to get the massive stones out of the quarries and about 20 men to drag or push the stones up ramps to place them (National Geographic). You could think of the ramps as scafolding. Many bakeries around the pyramid sites have been excavated which could have produced thousands of loafs of bread to feed this many people (National Geographic).

Quarry for pyramid stones.

"Alien theorists often say that the pyramids couldn’t have been built by such ‘primitive’ ancient people and it’s strange that the pyramids suddenly just appeared out of nowhere" (Maitland). The archaeolgical evidence is enough on it's own to oppose that claim, plus Egyptologist actually have day-to-day records of the goings-on during pyramid building recorded on papyrus paper (Maitland). Some people have a tendency to think that because these things were built a long time ago that there wasn't enough people on to do it, however that's just ignorance. In anthropological terms ancient Egypt was/is considered a state, which means it had a population of hundereds of thousands with a complex social system etc...Also, the poeple of Egypt at that time had different priorities and since they had only one supreme ruler, the Pharoh, he was able to mobilize a project of that magnitude with no questions asked (Maitland).

Another thing, if aliens built the pyramids then why are the cores of the pyramid constructed very sloppy, I thought aliens had super advanced technology? According to Archaeologist Mark Lehner the builders didn't join the stones of the core very accurately and filled the seems with a bunch of mortar. Do you think aliens would be that sloppy? Further proof that men built the pyramids is the fact that the divisions assigned to buld them actually graffitied their divisions name onto the building  such as ‘Friends of Khufu’ and ‘Drunkards of Menkaure’(Maitland), the second one is my favorite.

Mayan Pyramids
The Mayans built "pyramids", that were also made from limestone, to be closer to the gods. They too like the Egyptians were big into astronomy and incorporated that into a religion. Unlike the Egyptian pyramids, most of the Mayan ones had stairs that led up to a temple which housed important members of their society like priests and nobles. The Mayan pyramids were also built to be used as land marks, as most of them were made high enough to protrude out of the jungle, so that Mayans who used trade routes or perhaps even an army could tell were they were in relation to their position. The Mayans, like the Egyptians, were also good record keepers and alot of the information I'm giving you has been translated for their heiroglyphs. - Most of this was provided by Crystal-links.com, but there is other of information on other websites that shares the same. Plus there is more information readily availible in a local library.

Chinese Pyramids
They're burial mounds and tombs. Enough said.

My Theory
I'm big on how environmental factors played/plays a part in past and present cultures. It's obvious that the people who built these things wanted them to be majestic. The human imagination is often inspired by what they see around them, so what in nature is looks like a pyramid, is majestic and possible close to the gods? A mountain. There have been archaeological finds of how mountains were used for a variety with things, but by making your own mountain you can control what it's used for and where to put it. However that's just my theory and I'm still an undergrad, but it's a possibility.

My rant about this alien crap.
When you say that Aliens built all this stuff, you are basically saying humans aren't or weren't smart enough to do any of it. Also there is this idea in western society that people of another color that aren't European couldn't possibly have done anything like that because they didn't have the technology so they had to have help from aliens, when in fact archaeologists are finding that past cultures had more technology than previously thought. Any archaeologist claiming that aliens help build these things and backs it up with a photo of a slab of ancient text is only showing you part of the picture. That slab most likely came from a larger piece and the archaeologist is using out of context to make a name for himself and get money. Lastly, why in the fudge would aliens only show us how to build stone monuments? Wouldn't they rather teach us something else like gee let's say....Inter-stellar travel, or super advanced technology?

Sources:
Maitland, Margret Ph.D. "The Eloquent Peasant » Blog Archive » Why the Aliens Did NOT Build the Pyramids." The Eloquent Peasant. 24 Aug. 2006. Web. 07 Dec. 2011.  I strongly recommednd reading this article.

National Geographic: Egypt Pyramids--Facts, Photos, Diagrams."National Geographic - Inspiring People to Care About the Planet Since 1888. N.p., n.d. Web. 7 Dec. 2011. 

Debunking "Race" as a Biological Concept

For a while now the mainstream public has been under the assumption people of another culture maybe biologically different than themselves. Some of us remain unaware of the history of how biology and the discovery of different cultures became intertwined. This is helped along by published health studies conducted by the government and health insurance companies that focus specifically on race. Often times we hear on the news that the African American community is more likely to get hyper-tension or diabetes. While the cases of hyper tension have climbed in that community, the actual reasons behind it are being over shadowed by race.

First, let's look at the history of how this came to be. Early European scholars wanted to classify humans into subspecies/races based on morphology (appearance) and geographical locations (Haviland et al, 134). A man named Carolus Linnaeus classified Europeans as "White", Africans as "black", American Indians as "red", and Asians as "yellow"(134). Years later a German medical doctor named Johann Blumenbach placed those groups into a hierarchy. His reasoning was formed by observing a human skull from the Caucaus Mountains, which had the most perfect symmetry in all of the skulls in his collection. He judged that since that specimen was so perfect, and that it was from a place close to the lands of creation stated in the Bible, that it must have matched God's original design (134). He dropped the European label of "whites", renamed them as "Caucasian", and ranked them as superior. Blumenbach then stated that other races were a result of "degeneration" as they had moved away from their place of origin and they were deemed physically and morally inferior (134).

In the early 20th century these views of racial superiority started to come under much criticism by scientists and anthropologists. These scientists were claiming that different cultures didn't have exclusive possession of specific variants or genes (136). In fact it is a lot more likely that a person has a significant difference in genes with a person in their own culture and geographic location than they would with a different one. A lot of people have learned that chimpanzees share 98% of our genes, as humans, we share 99.6-99.8% with each other (Tishkoff, Kidd 21). So, just because two people have a different skin color that doesn't mean they are a different species of human.

Now getting back to the mis-leading health statistics. Right now in the Native American community there is a diabetes epidemic, but it's not because of a genetic pre-disposition it's because of diet. Many Native Americans are abandoning their cultural diets and adopting a western style diet, which contain high amounts of sugars, preservatives, and other complex carbohydrates. This can be said for any culture that has no history of a disease like this with a traditional diet only to go to a western one. Also, whites have been dealing with heart issues and diabetes for so long that it is not as culturally significant and therefore it does not get as much attention as it would in other cultures. There was a debate about how sickle cell anemia proved that places were biologically different as it only showed up in Africans and African Americans. Upon further investigation however it was found that sickle cell anemia is a mutation of malaria and malaria is mostly found in equatorial regions like much of Africa (Cooper, Kaufman, Ward 1167). So it his not hard to see how it could be passed down through heredity.

There have also been incidents of health studies that use race specific therapies to create medicine or medical devices. In one case ACE (inhibitors) used for preventing heart attacks was were interpreted as being more beneficial to African Americans, but the actual results were inconclusive. It turned out that the drugs used in the trial benefited both blacks and whites equally (Cooper, Kaufman, and Ward). This can show doctors and the public that medicine should be treated on the individual level rather than in a group setting. Another study I found on Kaiser Permanente's website was that Korean women were 13% more likely to get gestational diabetes when they were pregnant than women of another ethnicity. The study was not very clear on why this happened; it didn't discuss diet or cultural stress, or environment, just that they were 13% more likely to get it.

I'm not saying that we aren't different from each other, because culturally we are, but next time you hear about a study where once race is more likely to get a certain condition over the other I want you to think critically and maybe follow up on the research methods that were used. There are also theories and studies on how labeling races through biology has created disparities for some ethnicities than others, but I'm not going to get into that frying pan, however you may want to consider it. I think tackling an issue like this can break down a lot of boundaries that we face socially as well as medically, we all have a responsibility to learn what the real truth is, ignorance is not always bliss.

Cooper, M.D., Richard S., Jay S. Kaufman, Ph.D., and Ryk Ward, Ph.D. "Race and             Genomics." New England Journal of Medicine 348.25 (2003): 2581-582. 1166-1167. Print.

Haviland, William A, et al. “Modern Human Diversity: Race and Racism.” The Essence of             Anthropology. Belmont, CA: Thompson Wadsworth, 2007. 134-136. Print.

Tishkoff, Sarah A., and Kenneth K. Kidd. "Implications of Biogeography of Human         Populations for 'race' and Medicine." Nature Genetics 36.11s (2004): S21. Print.

Dad

This is the eulogy I wrote for my Dad but I like to think of it as more of a tribute.

Dad

When I was in high school I read a really depressing play by Arthur Miller called "Death of a Salesman". It was a bout a guy named Willy Loman who worried a little too much about being well liked by his peers and others. I remember reading that he would have little fantasies about how many people would come to his funeral and exclaim their love for him,. Unfortunately for him it didn't end up like that, and what I took from it was that he couldn't be himself, those fantasies became destructive and he ultimately destroyed himself. I'm not here though to compare my Dad to Willy Loman though, my Dad was the anti Willy Loman. He was always his own person, as far I could tell he was never worried about any of the things Willy was and it enabled him to put God and his family first. He was more worried about being a good husband and provider for his family. He was more concerned with raising his children right and making God the focus of the family in a world where you couldn't put much stock in what other people say. In my opinion he succeeded in that.

My father had a natural compassion for just about everyone and it was evident through his easy going personality and the ministries he belonged to, like the prison out reach or the Open door ministries in Gloucester. Even though he cut a striking figure he always made sure that he opened himself up to the people he thought needed a friend. That quality made me as well as others see him as more of a gentle protector, a peaceful warrior, fighting by your side. That part of his personality too was evident through his smile, you could see the love that he had in his heart, and he smiled a lot.

My father was also a very deep man, emotionally, intellectually and spiritually. He may have been seen as a quiet, shy man sometimes on the surface, but his mind was like intricate clock work, the gears were always turning.  Part of his depth was his love of laughter, he loved comedians like Richard Pryor and Robin Williams, and seeing him laugh at one of their jokes was an event all its own. He loved telling jokes, however he could almost never get through a joke because he would laugh so hard half way through it, but that's what made it so funny and his laugh was very contagious. My Dad knew about a lot of different things, on just about every subject you could think of, and if he didn't he would make an educated guess to where it sounded like he knew what he was talking about and usually I took his word for it. He got me interested into so many of the things I love to this day. Things like Science fiction and fantasy, comic book super heroes, Indiana Jones, writing, photography and martial arts via Chuck Norris. My dad loved Chuck Norris, one of the shows he liked was Walker Texas Ranger and I'm pretty sure he saw every episode like 8 times, but he always busted out laughing when a bad guy got unexpectedly kicked in the face by Chuck. But the most important thing he lead me to was to the Lord.

It was his knowledge of the Bible and the way God works that still leaves me dumbfounded to this day. It seemed he had an unshakable trust in God. My Dad was a beacon of God to all those around him, especially to those working with him in the various ministries he was involved with. He never once rubbed it in your face though, he was humble when it came to God, just as it should be. When he spoke about Bible stories  and the holy trinity he had authority in his words and I listened closely and carefully as well as others. As proof I remember a story someone once told me about my Dad. They were witnessing on the streets of Saint Paul and they came across a man who was angered by what they were doing so the guy started chasing after them. As they were running mad dad stopped and turned around and said "Jesus loves you" and them man stopped in his tracks with a puzzled look on his face like it was the first time someone told him that. My dad was also a powerful prayer warrior when it came to the very big and very small things. It's my father's own example I follow, especially now, having a family of my own.

It's funny now remembering my peers in high school and college asking me how did I know that there is a God or even a Heaven. I would try to sound as intellectual as possible and try to give a complicated answer, but now the answer is so easy. I know that there is a God because of my Dad, because he was in my life and because of the things he did for me and my family. And I know that there is a heaven because Heaven was made for people like him.

Etowah Indian Mounds

Today Anna and I visited the Etowah Indian Mounds "digsite" which next to the Etowah river. The sight was inhabited by some of the ancestors of the Creek and Cherokee nations from around 900a.d. to 1550a.d. In 1540 the conquistador De Soto visited this place with 1000 of his soldiers while he was looking for the lost city of gold Cibola. After that the village was almost wiped out by diseases from the Europeans who carried them. Way to go De Soto. The people that fled the village during this time joined with other tribes like the Creek and Cherokee. The re-construction of the home you see in the photo on the left was the typical dwelling within the village(called a wattle, or daub hut) of the native towns-person/family. It was believed to have a wood or rock frame then covered in packed red clay. These homes would have sat crowded on the perimeter of the courtyard/plaza which was below the mounds.

Here is a scale model to illustrate how the village was set up around the mounds. You can see the three main mounds. The tallest mound in the top right hand corner, which is equal to the height of a six story building, was where the temple was also housed the high priest and his family. The mound in the middle would have housed a lesser chief and possibly the council house was located there too. In the top left mound was the burial mound with about 350 graves, some excavated and some found with remote sensing equipment. Mostly all the graves now are found with remote sensing because the descendants hold the grave sites sacred and would be very displeased if they were disturbed. There is now a congressional act to protect that right too.

You can climb up to the top.

me in front of the mound at a distance.

Just to give you a sense of scale of how big the main mound is here are a few pictures above that try to demonstrate it's size.


Now if you're thinking that the village kind of looks like a Mayan one would than you're not the only one. There is a popular theory that some Mayans migrated from Mexico and settled in this area as well as along the Mississippi river valley where other mounds have been found. and if you compare the photos I have given with photos of a Mayan city than you could see a lot of resemblance. One example this theory may be correct is the fact that corn came from Mexico where it had been farmed for thousands of years. Also the inhabitants dug a large defensive ditch all the way around the village until it meet the river with palisades built on it to pick off enemies. Another theory though which still maintains settlers from Mexico, but an intermingling with other Indian Nations and that theory says hey, North American Indians were just as smart as the Mayans, as evidence with some of the art found at this site. Unfortunately I don't have any photos of the artwork, but it's awesome! I tend to think the latter theory maybe the correct one just because of all of the evidence collected, you have Mayan style villages yet have examples of other cultures evident in the art work excavated from the graves. It's hard to tell for sure though because there is still a lot to find at this site and hopefully down the road they will better be able to tell who built the city.

Why I chose Christ

In my last post I talked a lot about magic, or a wizard that does magic. I don't believe in the type of magic that Harry Dresden does in the books nor in the kind that is in Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter. I do however believe in other supernatural things. I believe there is a supernatural realm that we can't physically see and that there are things battling over our souls, but most importantly I believe in God and his son Jesus Christ as my savoir. This post will stating my decision to follow Christ and why I made it and everything that has shaped my faith into what it is today, I promise I will try not to be too preachy in the process.


The Early Years.
Let me start off by saying that I don't have some super dramatic conversion story, it all came about more subtle than that. My parents had already been going to church for a while before I was born, in fact that is where they first met, so I was pretty much brought up in the teachings of Christianity. When I was a child church to me was where I would meet up with my friends and sing, learn a little about God, but eventually run around and play. For the most part it was fun except for the fact that we had to go on Wednesday nights, that was the last place I wanted to be after going to school all day. Also I wasn't allowed believe in Santa Claus or watch some cartoon shows like  The Care Bear, The Smurfs, and He-man because they used magic. But that was the eighties church I guess and things were a lot more legalistic back then and looking back on it I don't think I missed out on much on those cartoons, except for maybe the care bears. When I was eight, I'm not sure if it was an Easter Sunday or what, but the pastor did an altar call for people to come up and get saved. I thought it was a good idea and I thought my parents might like it so me and some friends when up and got saved. At eight years old I pretty much knew the basics, if you get saved, you get into heaven where all your loved ones are. Also, Jesus died for our sins so we could get in to heaven.

When I was ten my family was a attending a different church that was a little more laid back. I could go out trick or treating finally and dress up, I could watch most cartoons an most importantly, power rangers. Ten was also the age when I got baptized and I remember it was a pretty good experience. I observed and studied the reasons for baptism and it all made sense to me, basically it meant washing your old life away and cleansing your spirit to live a new life for Christ.

Teenage Years...
Twelve and Thirteen were some pretty awkward years for me and I remember being a huge brat. My parents enrolled me into a private Lutheran school because they thought it would be better than a public school..... I made it through though and then in high school I ended up going to a public school anyway. I was never to concerned with God in the beginning of high school because I was more worried about trying to fit in. Eventually I found my niche with the theater crowd  towards my junior year I also started attending an early morning prayer group with a handful of other students in the high school, I started to understand the bible a little more and I was getting closer to God. My senior year trying to figure out my faith was interesting to say the least because I did stupid things to represent what I believed in and I stupidly dumped my girlfriend who did nothing but support me. There is this thing that I like to call "New believer Fever" where people who find their faith in God or rediscover their faith tend to start telling what their friends believe is evil....There is a right way to witness to people and there is a wrong way to witness to people, you're never going to win someone over with a threat, let's just put it that way. All of it pretty much flew out the window after high school though.

After High School and my early-ish 20's
The September after I graduated I had been back with my girlfriend for a few month and I was on the fence about school. My parents announced they would be moving to Massachusetts and I of course was not cool with that because I had established my life in Minnesota. My parents worked out a deal where if me and my brother paid the mortgage like rent than we could stay in the house, so that's what we did. It was going good for a while, my girlfriend and I were going to a church called Woodland Hills and it was awesome. It was probably the first time where I had a pastor that challenged us to believe that God actually wants us to think in Church. Challenged us not to just take someone's word on something but to really get down to the nitty gritty of how God works and works through us and all sorts of intellectual ideas.

The deal with the mortgage crashed though and my parents had to sell the house after 9 months of us trying to pay it. In June I moved to my friends house where his parents said I could stay until I found a place, well tow months passed with no luck and I was feeling the pressure to get out of there. I admitted defeat and moved out to Massachusetts to live with my parents. At that point I went into a depression and I was pretty mad at God for the way things had turned out and I again pretty much put him at the back of my mind again. Some times the discussion of faith was brought up and I would say yeah I'm a Christian, but I didn't live the life of one.

Living the life of a Christian? What does that actually mean?

There is the stereotype of the Christian person, someone life

Ned Flanders, or a Bible Thumping evangelical and don't get me wrong

those people exist, but I view it differently. To me when God calls us

to lead a different life he is asking us to leave things behind that

we already knew weren't very good for us in the first place and

other things that might be considered destructive to an individual.

I got a job and then I enrolled in a community college. I started hanging out with some people at work who I didn't fit in with very well but hey it was something to do, I also started drinking a lot. In college, or I should say in that college I made some pretty good friends but I also participated in some very questionable behavior and things got messed up for a little bit. Then I moved to Salem and I was going to try and do school and live with some roommates, but we just ended up partying and spending our money at the bars and doing other stupid stuff. It was a confusing time, very confusing time and God was pretty much no where to be seen. Then I met a girl who offered something different and I moved away from that kind of life especially when I found out I knocked her up. Having Ethan changed things, but even though I thanked God everyday for Ethan things for 3 years between his mother and I were not that great for a variety of reasons. There were times when I was just so angry with where I was in life that I would yell at God in my head. His mother and I split up and I moved back to MA and at this point I didn't know what to do, here I was 26 years old living at my parents place with a child that lives out of the state and no job to support him.

Something changed though, my sister who has always been a big Jesus freak had recommended a book by Brennan Manning called "Ruthless Trust" all about trusting God and how freaking hard it was to do so. It was about half way through where I realized that hey, maybe I should actually listen to God  and once I did that, one I made that decision, things went from night to day almost immediately. Sure things were still a little tough, but I had gotten a job and was able to support my son and I also met my wife during this time period. Eventually I moved down to Georgia to be with her and we built our relationship using God as a foundation and he's proven to be solid. I enrolled in school again and that is going exceptionally well because I have is support. Just because I follow Christ doesn't mean I'm always going to be happy, it doesn't mean I'm always going to be successful, in fact God says in the Bible that "In this life you will have trouble". Going from 8 to 28 my thoughts about heaven and hell and life and death have totally evolved and I'm sure they will continue to evolve. In the end I chose to Christ because he has always been there for me, no matter how far away I got he was always there to say hello again. I'm sure in the future there will be things I struggle with about God, but that's normal, as humans we are suppose to do that, it means we are learning to understand him better, the very name Israel means "To wrestle with God". He'll always be there though if you let him.

Harry Dresden: Damned if he does, damned if he doesn't.

Discovery.

Where to start when talking about one of my most favorite literary character's of "The Dresden Files"? From the beginning I suppose. I was first introduced to the wizard a little late in the game when several of the novels had been out already. The Syfy channel (then Sci-Fi, and good...) bought the rights to make it into a television series. The advertisements had peaked my interest because they showed this guy who happened to be a wizard in modern Chicago and I wasn't aware of the sub-genre of urban fantasy yet. Anyways, it looked like a promising program. My first clue that it was going to be a bad series should have been when I saw in the opening credits that Nicolas Cage was a producer, but I didn't know any better then yet. The acting wasn't bad though, they cast a British guy Paul Blackthorne to play Harry, and let's face it British actors are superior. However there was something missing in the show and it was in the writing. They didn't seem to treat the source material seriously and it reflected in the scripts. Also the made his wizard's staff a hockey stick which I thought was dumb even though I like hockey enough. Like any show with crappy writing the show only lasted one semi-season of 12 disappointing episodes. Needless to say the show left a bad taste in my mouth and I thought if the show was that bad than books might not be that great either, obviously I didn't know much about Hollywood then and their history of bastardizing works of literature.

Re-discovery.

I forgot about The Dresden Files for along time after that, I think for about 2 or 3 years actually until I hit the internet one night. I was reading some article on one of the Twilight films at one of the forums I frequent and I decided to let loose a reasonable argument of why Edward Cullen was not a true gentleman, and stupid, in the comments section. However I was beat to the punch by somebody else and she said a better example of a gentleman was Harry Dresden, a man who was so chivalrous that it often was what got him in serious trouble. I thought to myself that I should try to give the books another chance especially if someone was using them to bash Twilight. Twilight stinks. Again though I forgot about the books for a while and instead I read the Watchmen which I got as a gift. Then I read a pretty good Christian book called Ruthless Trust, but after those two I read the official sequel to Dracula which stunk to the high heavens. After that I was yearning for a good book and finally I picked up the first novel in the Dresden Files series called Storm Front and I could not put it down, thus started my obsession. I read all of the published 13 books in about nine months.

Harry.

What I like about Harry is that he doesn't compromise on his values. That quality also is what gets him in trouble though. Being a wizard private detective dealing with the supernatural sometimes you might need to find a gray area, but not in Harry's case. With his sense of integrity he has burned a lot of bridges between beings he could have had a reasonable relationship with, even if had meant looking the other way on things he didn't like, but he doesn't have a problem with those burnt bridges. His black and white viewpoints also have alienated the wizarding council he belongs to. The council prefers to keep a bureaucratic and sometimes blind eye approach to diplomacy, where as Harry would just rather do the right thing. He would rather do the right thing so much that one of his most powerful enemies, mocking him, made Harry a headstone that reads "Here lies Harry Dresden: He died doing the right thing". Harry's sense of integrity has also built up a lot of strong and loyal friendships like Karen Murphy, a Chicago police detective, and some truly unlikely allies in within the supernatural world of the books, like his own army of magical sprites who call him The "Za Lord" due to his payment of pizza's to them and the "Knights of the Cross" who are like holy warriors who brandish special swords supposedly sent from God.

Another thing about Harry is that he has absolutely no idea just how powerful he actually is. With every book he does things more and more powerful than the last, which is normal obviously for story progression reasons, but they all have so much substance and yet simplicity to them. I think a lot of the other wizards know how strong he is though, especially on the council and they dare not reveal it to him because I think they are scared of him or what he could do if he every realized it. He can cast huge spells yes, but that's not where all his power lies, he is also smart as a whip and a great improviser. With one of his most powerful spells he pretty much started a war with the vampires and with one of his most powerful ideas he ended the war. His steadfast loyalty to his friends also give him power and it gives them power in return he is constantly risking his life to saves the ones he loves.

I know what you're saying. "but it's a fantasy book". I realize that a lot of people these days might not take fantasy to seriously, but the author Jim Butcher really has built up a solid and strong character as well as a world within these books. Jim Butcher also spent a lot of time researching old fairy tales and myths of several cultures to incorporate into the books and uses them smartly. He is also geek friendly, he was inspired by a lot of the values JRR Tolkien wrote about in The Lord of the Rings, and he has a background playing D&D, but he doesn't really use that kind of writing style, that is to say he doesn't say things like "and then gorgoth summoned flimboz of the eternal flame to smite his enemies!". In fact he makes light of that kind of thing in one book which where he is confronting a billy goat gruff (yes that's what I said)

"Would thou likest Jelly upon they donut?"

"Nay, prithee sprinkles 'pon it, and frosting of white."

Anyways there are a lot of times when I find myself laughing out loud, or saying what the fudge, and even tearing up a little. If you have ever flirted with the idea of reading fantasy or urban fantasy than I strongly recommend you start with The Dresden Files.

My Top Six Favorite Superheros!

These are in no particular order, my 6 favorite superheros, like it or not.

#1. Spider-Man
In the comics, the science nerd Peter Parker, was bitten by a radio active spider giving him super powers. Those powers include; Super strength, super agility, spidey-sense and corrected vision. The spider also passed to Peter the knowledge of certain chemicals and enzymes that create webbing which he utilizes with web cartridges in his web shooters. What I like about Spidey is that he uses his intelligence that he already had. Also he is quirky and has a great sense of humor and constantly belts out great one-liners. He represents all geeks and nerds and defies stereotypes almost on the same level Frodo did in LOTR.

#2. Thor

Marvel comics adapted the mythical Norse god of thunder and transformed him into their own hero. He wields the mighty hammer Mjolnir which harness the powers of a storm and good for just plain bashing the bodies of bad guys. There have been several background stories for Thor throughout the years, but the one I'm most familiar is that he was so arrogant that his Father Odin banished him to our Realm. The way Odin did it was storing Thor's memories and spiritual body into a disabled medical student named Donald Blake. I can't remember what else happens but I know that through this Thor learns humility and Wisdom and later on he gets restored back to his original self. Thor is also a founding member of The Avengers and there will be a film version of that coming out next year.

#3. Bea Arthur

Her powers are "Keepin' it real" and telling it like it is! You go girl!

Ma, ma ma, Maud!

#4. Batman

I think we're all pretty familiar with this guy. Billionaire Bruce Wayne dedicated his life to fighting crime after witnessing the death of his parents right in front of him. This guy doesn't have super powers but he does have a genius level I.Q. and tons of money to create the gadgets he uses to fight crime. He has also mastered the art of hand to hand combat which many of his enemies have come to learn the hard way. Batman was also one of the founding members of the Justice League. The Justice League is a now large network of DC comic's superheros that look after the protection of Earth from domestic or intergalactic threats. He pretty much represents normal humans among the people with superpowers and keeps them in check. He is said to have extensive files on all of the JL members. Quite the cynic.

#5. Green Arrow

With Batman being a huge hit during "The Golden Age" of comics, DC comics wanted another hero like him. Enter Green Arrow, just like Bruce Wayne, Oliver Queen was another Billionaire who fought crime. Obviously he was inspired by Robin Hood, with the way his costume is and he too is also an Archer with a variety of special arrows, mostly non-lethal. DC comics did pair him and Batman up in a few issues along with their dorky side-kicks "Speedy" and "Robin", but later on they paired Green Arrow up with Green Lantern and gave them their own comic series. Batman recruited Green Arrow to the Justice League to help keep it real.

#6. Superman

Of course he's on here, I can't leave Supes out, he's the most Iconic superhero out there. Born Kal-El on the planet Krypton his parents stuck him in a space ship as a baby and sent him to Earth just before their planet exploded. John and Martha Kent found his crashed ship and raised him as their own, Clark Kent. His powers include; near invincibility, super speed, flight, laser vision, x-ray vision, cold freaking breath, and super outrageous strength. He has three downfalls though; he is powerless under a red sun and his two weaknesses are Kryptonite(radioactive shards of his home planet) and Lois Lane, but she's also a part of his strength too. He is awesome because he fights for Truth, Justice, and the American way!

Honorable mentions include; Wolverine, Green Lantern, Silver Surfer and Captain America

Photos by Me

Occasionally I know how to take a great photograph and so I'll be posting several of the ones I like the most and I'll be giving short descriptions underneath them.

This photo above is at Stage Fort Park in Gloucester, MA. Stage Fort was utilized during the war of 1812 against the British. It had a great strategic location being on the side of the harbor, also across the other side of the harbor was another Fort but unfortunately that one was not well preserved. What I like about this photo is the color contrast between the sky and earth and also that I took the picture right as the schooner on the water passed in front of the canon.

These two photos I took in the desert outside of Las Vegas in a national park called The Valley of Fire. It was April around the time I went and as you can see spring was just starting in the desert and it was very beautiful. If you every get the chance to see the desert in the spring, I recommend it.

This picture might not be the best in quality but I love it because of the movements that it captures. This picture of the boys Smoke Dance was taken in 2005 at the 6 Nations Pow Wow in Salamanca, NY. Like I said in my Facebook description it was the first real pow wow that I've been to. It's called the 6 Nation Pow Wow because of the six Indian nations that made up the Iroquois Confederacy which are; Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, Seneca, and Tuscarora.

For a brief time I live in Jamestown, NY and apparently their claim to fame is being the place where Lucille Ball was born, that's right, I Love Lucy. Anyways this photo was taken in an alley way between third and fourth street, it looks rad in black and white, glad I chose that film.

Speaking of Black and Whites, here are two more of my favorite. The top one is of the stairs going up to the top of the Lynn T-stop in Lynn, MA. I posted it on some contest site once and the people said that no center of frame or focus but I blew them off because I like the contrast between light and shadow. I had another Gloriously awesome photo of the outside of the Lynn stop that I took with a black and white disposable camera, can you believe it? It was unsanctumoniusly deleted from my parents computer! But I digress. The bottom photo was when I was just starting out with black and white photography in my senior year of high school. It's a playground at Eastside Park in Oakdale, MN. On the top right hand corner I needed to "dodge & burn" but for the most part I like it, again because out the light and shadow play.

Well that's it for now I guess, until I come across more.

I hope you enjoy them as much as I do.

Chest Shaving Panzies

That's right Jerry, you did do something stupid! To borrow a phrase from Family Guy "It really grinds my gears" whenever I hear about some dude shaving his chest or see it on TV. I mean come on! Chances are if you have a hairy chest that it's that way for a reason. Granted there are some men that don't grow chest hair and have little facial hair and that's ok because it's genetic, you can't help it. But if you can help it, take a page from Tom Selleck's life and embrace your hairiness, it never stopped his success, did it? No! And I'll tell you what, if a woman can not accept you for the way God made you, than she isn't worth your time.

That leads me to another arguement that might be brought up. You might hear "Well if women have to shave than why can't men?" You know what I have to say about that? Shut up! First of all, we shave our faces so we don't scratch women's faces off when we kiss them, unless they're rebels, some men just are, like guys who own motorcycles or mountain men, you can't tame them. Secondly genetically women grow less hair on their bodies than men except on the legs or if they live by a power plant. So why not just get the rest of it out of the way? You can't argue with that logic can you? Because I just blew your mind. Your welcome. Thirdly, it may take only 10 minutes for women to shave their legs, but dudes have alot of hair! Do you know how long that would take? We could spend that time doing other important things like lifting heavy things or building awesome structures of awesome-ness. We could even be helping our spouses around the house with chores (keep dreaming ladies).

Lastly, what I'm trying to say is, real men don't shave their chest, they embrace their hair! They find a mate that hold their chest hair in glorius wonder! And they share these values with their offspring so they too know that real men don't shave their chest!

Tom Selleck!

Yesterday as I was surfing netflix for something to watch I stumbled upon a movie I haven't seen in maybe ten plus years called Mr. Baseball. The film starred Tom Selleck as a struggling major leager who gets traded to a team in Japan. The fact that his film contained two things I love, Asian culture and Baseball, was a bonus but what hooked me was Tom freaking Selleck. I can't believe how awesome that master of moustaches is
As I recall from my youth my first experience with Tom Selleck was through watching Magnum P.I. with my grandparents. In the show he played a cool, suave, yet tough as nails private detective who lives in Hawaii and drives a red Ferrari, who would love a show like that? Plus the show had a freaking sweet theme song, check it out.


Magnum P.I. really showcased how versatile of an actor he is, he can be serious, funny, tough, a ladies man and so on. But television could not contain him for too long. The next thing I remembering seeing was an awesome flick called Quigley Down Under. In that film he played a "cowboy" from the U.S. who was hired by an Austrailian land owner (Alan Rickman, also awesome). Quigley's speciality was shooting stuff far away with an awesome feaking rifle.



Selleck is the most BA cowboy ever. But this next scene really proves it.



See. What'd I tell ya?

Ok, he is seriously BA, but he can also be really funny and he is confident enough in himself to be able to make fun of himself and his legendary moustaches. As evidence here is a clip from the Conan O'brian show he did a while back.


Genius! I strongly recommend checking out all of the stuff that he has been in, you won't be disappointed!

Commentaries Lost

There use to be a day when a film buff/geek, such as myself, could rent or buy a DVD and and listen to the Crew or Cast commentary that went along with the film. It was a great source of information and dare I say education of how films are made or the process an actor goes through to prepare for a role. Today it seems that Commentaries are dwindling if not all together disappearing. I started to notice this trend over the past year or so through renting movies I had hope to have commentaries on. No such luck. I don't think there was one film that a commentary or a behind the scenes special that last for more than five minutes. What gives?
Are film-makers just not caring about what they do anymore? Or is it the studios that don't want to shell out the extra cash to add a commentary? Either way it takes a lot away from the experience of watching a movie that inspired us or a story that we care about. I at least thought that the DVD versions of films coming out these days would still have them, we all know that blu-ray fails epically at offering any special features but it seems they are following suit. I for one think it's a mistake. Sure maybe not as many people followed the commentaries as the studios would have like but at least some did and I can garauntee that those people appreciated it. If Hollywood or the major studios want to regain some credit back with the general public I think this would be a good way to start. We are not after all not mindless consumers, we take the time out of our schedules to stop and watch their films, it's the least they could do.