progeny

How did they know?

Theresa was googling around and stumbled across this article, which sounds suspiciously like what was going on at our house yesterday. 

Sharon Stocker and Jack Davis, "Animal Sacrifice, Archives, and Feasting at the Palace of Nestor", Hesperia, Vol. 73, No. 2, April-June 2004.

Well not so much the archiving part.

OK, OK, so it's about ancient Greece.  Here's the abstract:

The contexts of burned faunal assemblages from Blegen's excavations at the Palace of Nestor are examined in this paper. Special attention is given to a deposit of bones found in a corner of room 7 of the Archives Complex. It is argued that these bones, from at least 10 cattle, probably represent the remains of a single episode of burned animal sacrifice and large-scale feasting that occurred shortly before the palace was destroyed. Feasts of this sort are likely to have played a diacritical role in Mycenaean society. The bones may have been brought to room 7 in order to verify to palace authorities that a sacrifice had been completed.

If anybody wants me, I'll be in room 7 carving the turkey.  And, no, we didn't burn it, thank you very much.  If Blegen wants to come, he can have some turkey too, but no excavating will be allowed!

It's a bright, clear, cold day. The seagulls have returned and are busily fishing up and down thw river.

Give Us Grateful Hearts...

...for all our many blessings, and that includes every member of the clan!

Love,
Bonnie

Fluorescent Pork Chops

I kid you not.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Try this link for a fun greeting from a funky turkey.

http://www.msn.americangreetings.com/view.pd?i=382219626&m=1652&rr=y&sou

Stop Dihydrogen Monoxide Now!

I found this article quite randomly on Wikipedia while looking for something else. It demonstrates extremely well how stupid we humans are capable of being. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dihydrogen_monoxide It makes me want to send a petition around my school against "Dihydrogen monoxide" on April Fools... just to see how many people sign!

P.S. "Idiotness" just kind of seemed like the right word for this...

Russ Ringsak from American Public Media

Link: Russ Ringsak from American Public Media.

Sugarbeets

Growing up I (of course) saw my fair share of tobacco farms. And when I first moved up here, I thought the whole state (okay, the whole Midwest) was covered with corn and beans and beans and corn.

But -- out where Marcus grew up, one of the big crops is sugarbeets. Particularly entertaining to me are the huge sugarbeet piles in the middle of nowhere. (No processing plant, no town, just a pile of beets.)

(That's a normal sized pickup on the far left.)

If you sit there (yes, I did!), you can watch the trucks pull in, get weighed, dump their beets and get weighed again. Marcus says they are paid by the pound.

Now, don't you all feel more educated?

Love,

Laura

P.S. Marcus says you are not educated enough. The beets are left frozen (remember, it's cold up here) in piles until they are needed. Throughout the winter they are dug out by front end loaders and transported to the processing plant where they make sugar. Highly subsidized sugar.

Hallowe'en

Anna's no shrinking Violet and Katie's a cool cat

with claws you can't quite see.

--Theresa