Spolia from The Great Depression

It has been a very good spring for extended walks, in part because we are not allowed to do much else.  On one such I visited a spot that featured in a very early entry for Detritus of Empire.   It was looking at reuse of older stones in a newer wall, a practice that in archaeology is called "spolia".  Spolia means spoils.  In excavations the big pile of debris that has been dug up is called the spoil heap and has all manner of random - if hopefully carefully screened - stuff on it.  Even before archaeologists came along inhabitants of ancient sites found nice convenient building stones just sitting around they naturally grabbed them and incorporated them into newer structures.  

In any case the original post dealt with use of older tombstones in a more modern flood control wall alongside Duncan creek in downtown Chippewa Falls Wisconsin.  On my revisit I found some new clues.

I've speculated that the stones came from a company that went out of business, and they were just handy when this project was undertaken.  I had read that it was a monument company, and indeed some of these are partially finished tombstones.  But I think there are enough plain blocks there that they might have been doing other work as well.  In a small town you only have so many "customers" for tombstones in any given year and being able to help trim assorted stores and homes around town would be a sensible business solution.

As to the date of the wall I was fortunate enough to spot this:

Absent a bit of most inappropriate stone robbing I am left to speculate.  It looks like a tombstone but other interpretations are possible.  If it is a memorial the individual would seem to have a name ending in R (although what's that little _ doing there after it?), and to have died in 1934.  The E. is enigmatic.  Many local worthies were members of a fraternal lodge called the Benevolent Protective Order of Elks, and their notation B.P.O.E. is sometimes seen on tombstones.  But shouldn't that be centered rather than off to the right side?  Unfortunately the local historical society is not open for in person visits just now and the online archives of the local paper do not cover this year.  I expect to have more substantial theories down the road a bit.

And of course there is always this one:

August 16, 1895.  Nothing more.  So many questions.  Did the carver make a mistake? I'd expect you would carve the name first.  Did somebody not pay their bill?  And if so what was the procedure for this?  A finished tombstone would be of no value to the carver nor would its absence be much noted by the deceased!  You can lean on the family of course but maybe this was a mean old cuss that nobody liked in real life.

Questions, questions.  At least I can more accurately date the age of the wall, which I'm sure was one of many successive efforts to control floods along this unruly creek.  It can't be before 1934.  Probably it was a Depression era project, possibly a W.P.A. effort?  And a business failure in a company that likely needed both funeral and commercial customers to make ends meet would make sense.  Time to clean out the warehouse.  Hey, you can even toss in that old stone we were using as a doorstop....

The Parking Lot Hoard

Withdrawal symptoms are not pretty.

Today I am supposed to be in sunny England, happily troweling away at a Britano-Roman site.  I should be intently watching each careful scrape looking for both the spectacular and the mundane, as each can contribute to our understanding of the past.

But no, for the first time in 13 years there is no spring archaeology trip.

I never entirely turn off the "radar" that makes me a good excavator.  I'm always scanning my surroundings, looking for things that don't quite fit and might be hints of something atypical.  It's probably why I was a better than average diagnostician back in my medical career.  Maybe I even stayed a step or two ahead of my teen aged kids and whatever they were up to.  At least for a while.

I try to walk every day.  It's harder during the winter, but as soon as I can delude myself that spring is coming I am tromping about town.  And of course, scanning my surroundings.

I run across a lot of lost coins, and into my pocket they go.  At home they go into a jar.  When our bank stopped happily accepting batches of coins they started accumulating, so the sizable hoard I set out to clean recently was at least two years worth.

So what can be learned from a frankly random collection that comes from so many sources?  Do the presumably rowdy patrons of the Sunbeam Tavern and those of the now quarantined Burger King and the hormonally  distracted denizens of the High School parking lot have enough points in common to describe our community?

Lets find out.  Here's a small view of the batch before cleaning.

I'll try to do a semi-professional job of analyzing these finds, with notes for future scholars....

Here's the hoard after several days of lackadaisical cleaning efforts.  Not bad actually.

It adds up to 34 quarters, 54 dimes, 26 nickles and 198 pennies.  Oh, plus the following foreign issues, which likely ended up coming home from overseas travels. Sometimes they were coins I found on walks over there:

- an old UK 20 pence, a 10 pence "New Pence" from 1992 and a 2008 UK penny.
- a 2002 10 euro cent piece
- 6 Canadian pennies and one quarter.

If dates interest you the oldest coins were a pair of 1964 pennies.  The newest finds were from 2019.

About half the quarters were commemoratives.  None were from Wisconsin or adjacent states.

The biggest batch of course were the pennies.  You drop one and you can hardly be bothered to look for it.  Note the huge difference in quality between old and new.

Newer US coins, other than the nickles, all have base metal cores and a thin wash of something that at least tries to look like the copper and silver of bygone times.  This makes them easily damaged especially in places where a snow plow goes back and forth repeatedly.

Coin hoards are used to gain insight into times past.  Was there inflation?  Were times rich or poor?  Even modern coin accumulations have been studied.  There are all sorts of factors that go into what is found.  How many of each type were made?  What was saved by collectors?  What denominations stayed in use for things like vending machines and bus fares?

With the insidious growth of electronic transactions I am pretty sure that coinage as we've known it for several millenia will vanish in the next generation.  And far future archaeologists will likely have a hard time figuring out this now unfamiliar technology.

So here, Far Future Archaeologists, let me make your job easier.

Little known fact.  Abraham Lincoln slowly turned into a zombie.  

It started in 1997.....

And the horrifying process was complete by 2008.

Abe Lincoln. Zombie.  Start writing your  Doctoral theses Future Peeps....

The Covid Economy - Micro and Macro Views

Out and about on May 8th I noticed this:

I don't think yard sales are legal under any reasonable interpretation of current emergency regulations.  And while I am generally loathe to report upon law breaking - lest I aid and abet same - I'm making an exception today.

Now it must be said that there could be a loophole here somewhere.  There was no overt sales activity going on at the house I think this was pointing towards....although there was an array of stuff lined up in the garage and yard.  Maybe it is like a Speakeasy where you have to approach to within six feet and say "Big Tony sent me*".  Or, maybe the potential proprietors put this sign up and are waiting a while to officially open the sale.  You know, to see if the SWAT team starts cruising the neighborhood or anything.

In that sense you could regard this as something akin to a movie trailer.  Or tossing a bucket of chum in the water before you start fishing.  Just something to get a little interest going you know.  Nothing illegal about just putting up a sign, is there?  I mean in the immortal words of archie the cockroach (when discussing Prohibition with a parched, beer craving mummy on display in a museum)

 divine drouth

says i

imperial fritter

continue to think

there is no law against

that in this country

old salt codfish

if you keep quiet about it

not yet

We shall see.  Thrift sales in small town America are a fundamental institution, and if this bit of bargain basement civil disobedience goes unchecked I suspect we will see a bunch of signs pop up in the week ahead.  People in a community with very low covid rates are going to evaluate their risks and make decisions.

Of course there are harder questions on the macro scale, and with far greater consequences.

Disney is a gigantic corporation with many "product lines".  Some of them are very susceptible to problems in the Current Unpleasantness.  Theme parks, movie theaters, cruise ships.....these legitimately should be closed, at least for a while.  Much of their rather profitable licensed merch is made in China, that too could be a problem.  But I guess they also make money off things like streaming services which should be doing well.  

Last week Disney announced a 91% drop in profits for the quarter just ended.

I suppose on some level I could shrug and say "so what?".  I have not been a fan of most of their movies in recent years....a bit too much bludgeoning of plots to follow the latest political correctness and/or to appeal to overseas markets.  But hey, that's just their evaluation of market conditions.  They win or lose by the accuracy of their projections same as any other business.  But I have an ulterior motive in this one.

It's the robots.  Last year Disney - specifically their Star Wars franchise - was the major sponsor for FIRST Robotics.  They kicked in major cash and got their name/themes on some aspects of the competition in return.  With the FIRST season being cut short they might not have gotten their advertising money's worth, perhaps that's why they are again the Big Sponsor for the 2021 FIRST Season....if it happens.

I don't worry much about Disney.  The Mouse has been through economic hard times before and has always pulled through.  But how many quarters like the one just passed before they can't afford to sponsor things like FIRST robotics?  And how many other potential sponsors (at the FIRST organization level and at the local team level) have pockets less deep than Micky?  Uh.....most of them.

oddly no pockets visible.  Big ol' buttons though...

It is hard discussing the pros and cons of opening up America.  You'll be castigated for not caring about old people, even if you are one.  But at some point the current lock down begins to blight the futures of the young.  How many kids will not launch careers in STEM if FIRST goes under?  (Unlikely but not impossible should a second wave hit in the fall).  It's not a traditional engineering problem, but what might the equations look like? If you loosen restrictions you will presumably have more lives lost, primarily elderly folks who might not have had that many years ahead of them.  On the other side of the equation you have the diminishing of futures for much larger groups and with more years ahead than behind.  Students, young families, small business owners.  It has been said that all lives are priceless.  Emotionally that's true for your loved ones**.  But practically, for an entire society..... there has to be a conversion factor.

But I don't see anyone brave enough to step up to the blackboard and start doing the math.
-------------------------
* I doubt that Governor Tony Evers would approve at all, but I think it makes a good Secret Password.

** Emotions don't translate to calculations well, but consider how many grandparents would be willing to accept a degree of personal risk to be with their grand children.  And are in fact doing so right now, guidelines be damned.

Dubious Infection Control

Perhaps one of the less useful public health measures during the Covid Crisis.  And an obstacle on my morning walk.

Nobody on the inside is at risk to either transmit or receive the disease.  And anyway, by definition they are all six feet away even if you are indelicate enough to stand right on them.

I suppose a charitable explanation would be that it would be bad if there was a death in one of the big families that live in our area.  It would not look good to have a hundred people gathered around a gravesite ceremony.  This naturally ignores several key concepts.

- If literally staring death in the face does not persuade you to take precautions, nothing will.

- funeral directors and clergyfolk  do have some discretion, and don't have to schedule such a service.

- those families, and if you are local you know 'em, would probably have a big Wake the night before.  With alcohol.  In an enclosed space.  

The vehicle gate on the other end of the cemetery was naturally open so this the sort of response to the Current Unpleasantness that grates because it is ineffectual as well as petty and lazy.

Cheech and Chong take up Gardening. Or maybe Sailing...

Because I'm just sure this is all about hemp in the sense of using the fiber to make rope.  Yes, that's it....

Another aspect to no overseas archaeology trip this year is that I'll have plenty of time to take out my frustrations on our community garden plot.  In a normal year I turn it over to about a 12 inch depth.  This time I might hit bedrock.

The garden supply catalogs of course arrived a couple of months ago.  And this year I noticed something new.  A nice two page spread that exhorted us to:

"...give HEMP a go!"

Naturally I assumed they meant that the many useful qualities of industrial fiber production could now be furthered by community gardeners.  Oh, and I'm putting this image up front and center not really knowing what Facebook would make of some direct images from the catalog...  

With that out of the way...

Boy, there's a lot going on with this page.  Let's take a closer look.

Do growing plants really need a total blackout cover?  Or is this to keep your neighbors from seeing the eerie blue light coming out of your basement and calling "The Man"?

Yes.  Because it's really all about that industrial fiber, isn't it.

Absent from this order form and from the company's actual website is any place to buy, well, seeds.  I half expected there to be an order form that said "You're really from Colorado, right?  wink, wink".

I don't mind having a bit of fun with this but  it does reflect the new reality that in some states Hemp (errr. marijuana) is legal.  For medicinal purposes only.  wink, wink.

It does not interest me particularly but I do feel a bit of vindication.  The local garden club for years had a profitable fund raiser in the form of a big plant sale.  I simply advised them to get out ahead of the curve and be ready - once Wisconsin goes to pot - to sell, errr, "medicinal hemp" plants.  They'd make money there, sure.

But these gals were a bunch of seriously good cooks and bakers.  I'm thinking the Munchies bake sale items that happened to be for sale right next to the "medicinal hemp" plants would be the real gold mine!

To Absent Friends

I think the tradition goes back about 11 years, to a time when my brother and I both came over to dig at Vindolanda.  I'd gotten to know folks in my prior visits and proposed that the "American" contingent would host drinks at the Twice Brewed Inn.  I said we'd be tired after a long, long day of travel and the name Jet Lag Drinks Hour came to be.

We've had good ones over the years.  Anyone who is digging that session is invited as are locals we've gotten to know.

But if archaeology teaches you anything it is that things change.  Empires rise and fall.  Usurpers become Emperors and then sometimes shuffle off as exiles.  Sheep nibble on grass that covers once important communities.

And this year....Vindolanda had to cancel Spring excavations because of the corona virus epidemic.  It was actually a bit academic by then as travel bans had made it nigh impossible to get to the UK without a paddle.

So I've timed this post to 7pm local time in England.  It's when we should have been congregating.  Tales of past digs would have been repeated, tales of off season doings told for the first time.  For a while we had a peculiar fellow who was very anti-monarchy so we've never done "The Loyal Toast" to the reigning sovereign.  But Royal Navy toasts are always good.

There's actually a traditional one for Thursdays that goes "A Bloody War or a Sickly Season", which seems pretty ruthless until you realize that deaths of the officers above you was the quickest route to promotion.

But no, our little gang has plenty of seniority already, no need to be reminded of hard times or to wish ill for our elders.

But there is the traditional toast for Sundays that is always offered.  As the member with the most (visible) grey hairs I usually offer it up.  And I shall do so now virtually for lack of a better option.

Raising a glass towards the Netherlands for Pierre and Sasha, towards the UK for Anthea, Pete and Sandy, towards the West for Scott from L.A. and in no particular direction towards the realms of whimsy where Sue lives I say warmly if sadly:

"To Absent Friends"

 

Alas and Alack

It's rare for current events to creep into an etymology posting.  But in a recent email I used the phrase "Alas and alack" and then realized that I did not know where it came from.

Well.  In each case the "a" is the equivalent of a sigh.  So think of it as (sigh)las and (sigh)lack.

Las comes from the Latin lassus meaning weary or tired. The underused word "lassitude" for laziness, comes directly from the Latin source. Lack is fairly self explanatory, it is a Middle English word meaning "loss, failure, fault, reproach, shame".   

So Alas and Alack means you are tired, weary and feeling a bit short changed.

Related words are surprisingly few.  You'd think there would be other expressions that would be amplified by a preceding (sigh).  There is a rare word "alackaday" that means regret of a day.   And of course from it, "lackadaisical" which is a satiric derivation of same.  Evidently at some point in the 1600's the use of the phrase alackaday became associated with over emoting on a Shatnerian scale.