As I write this, on Saturday night, I am cramped into an awkward position on a Boeing 727 on my way back to the San Francisco Airport. I have attended what is likely to be my last meeting for a while of the Society for American Archaeology. As much as I would love to go again, a combination of changes in my life (impending fatherhood, and supporting my fiance financially) puts me into a position where there are other things that I wish to do with my money, while my career path removes much of the motivation (being a CRM archaeologist rather than an academic archaeologist means that I get significantly more out of my regional conference - the Society for California Archaeology annual meeting - than I do out of the SAA's meetings, and for this reason I have only attended two SAA meetings in the last seven years. I wouldn't have gone this year were it not for two factors: 1) my employer fotted the bill, which they had not compelling reason to do, but my company's owners being basically good people who care about their employees, they were willing to; and 2) I was presenting a paper, and while I could have sent it to be read by someone else, I very much wanted to be the one to do so, and for reasons that will become clear later, I am very glad that I did.
The trip started off poorly. I slept poorly the night before due to some unexpected (and unexpectedly late) company, so things were off to a great start. In order to save my employer money (they were good enough to pay my way, I figured that I should be decent enough to use their money with some discretion), I flew out of San Francisco, rather than Fresno. This meant that I had to drive 3 1/2 hours to San Francisco, which on a weekday during mid-morning and early afternoon would normally have been a long, but easy, drive. South of Modesto, a collision earlier in the day had closed off a lane of traffic, and though the vehicle had been cleared and the occupants taken for medical care, the Highway Patrol still had the lane closed down. So, I was concerned about my ability to get to the airport in time. And then I hit a toll bridge that I wasn't expecting, and therefore didn't have the toll for, meaning that I now owe the state $30 to be payed in a few weeks rather than $5 paid then. Argh.
I did, however, manage to arrive only a few minutes behind schedule. However, I quickly discovered that the long term parking lot was completely full. I discovered this not through signage, or anyone standing at the gate to let me know (there were airport parking employees standing at the gate, but they seemed content to allow cars to enter the lot without warning), but when I had traveled all throughout the parking lot and found not a single space available. As I was trying to find my way out of the parking lot - which is in many respects rather maze-like in it's traffic design - I was trailed for a time by an airport buss, which after a bit honked it's horn at me. I stopped, and a middle-aged Asian man with a thick accent left the driver's seat, walked over to me and shouted "The parking lot is full!"
I looked at him, and said the only thing I could think of: "Yes, I had noticed that."
"The parking lot is full!" he shouted at me.
"Yes, we've established this. I am not trying to argue with you."
He looked at me as if I were some sort of half-wit child that he had been burdened with by unkind relatives. "The parking lot is full! You have to leave!"
Now I was getting irritated, and so, getting a bit testy, " said through gritted teeth "Yeah, I know that the damn lot is full, stop shouting that! Where am I supposed to go?"
He glared at me angrily, and shouted "Why didn't you get a flyer from the people at the exit!"
"Because I didn't know that the people from the exit had flyers!"
"Well they do! You have to go get one, now!" He was getting louder and angrier.
Now, I began shouting back "I'll go get a fucking flyer! But maybe you should actually, you know, let people know before YOU start screaming at them!"
He backed towards his van, and shouted "You get the flyer, and go where it tells you to!"
"Yeah, I'm fucking leaving!"
And with that, I headed to the exit, which is right next to the entrance, where the guy standing there who ignored me as I drove in handed me a flyer explaining that I had to go to the alternative lot for parking. I got the the alternative lot, where a very pleasant, calm man explained where the open spaces were. I proceeded to park, get on a shuttle, and get to the terminal.
At the terminal, I quickly discovered that my flight had been delayed. This would not have been a problem, except that to get to my final destination (Memphis, Tennessee), I had to catch a connecting flight in Atlanta, Georgia. The delay meant that I would not catch my connecting flight, and the Airtran, the airline for which I had my tickets, had no further flights from Atlanta to Memphis until the following morning, meaning that (assuming no further delays) I would not only have to pay for a hotel in Atlanta (Airtran made it clear that they weren't going to help), AND I wouldn't arrive in Memphis until 10 AM the next day. The problem is that I was scheduled to speak at 10:45, and it was unlikely in the extreme that I would make it to the conference center on time.
My only option was to buy a ticket on another airline to get where I was headed. But, as described in the first paragraph, I could not afford to buy another airline ticket without taking a financial hit that would hurt me and/or my fiance.
I called one of the owners of my company, explained the situation, and said that I couldn't afford the ticket. To my surprise, his response was "get yourself there, let me worry about the money."
Seriously, I couldn't love my current job any more if it began slipping me ecstasy in the coffee. These are great people to work for.
So, I got online, and quickly discovered that all flights to Memphis, even indirect ones with layovers were sold out. And then, the data on my computer screen shifted, and one was available on US Airways. Someone had cancelled...and the ticket had re-posted.
Things were looking up.
I ran to the US Airways counter - which, it turned out, was about twenty feet from where I was sitting, and I bought the ticket. It was even an emergency exit row, meaning that even my gangly long legs would have sufficient room.
Hell yeah, things were looking very much up.
I got through security (which, incidentally, is getting creepier every time I fly), and got to the gate just a few minutes before boarding began.
On the next plane, the three largest men on the flight were all put together at the exit. On the one hand, this meant we all had plenty of leg room, but it also meant that we were bashing each other with our elbows and shoulders every time that we moved. At first, the biggest of us, a large man from Virginia, made his displeasure at having to share space with other big guys clear. He then put in his headphones and did his best to ignore me and the other guy. The other fellow, who lives in Washington (though his accent marked him as a native New Yorker) and I talked for a bit, and he was quite pleasant. He then used the in-flight Wi-fi to listen to a hockey game on his earphones. I took out my paper and computer, and began making revisions (actually, I substantially re-structured and re-wrote the paper). After I had finished this, the Virginian took out his earphones and asked what I had been working on, so I explained it to him, which led to more questions. We talked on and off for the rest of the flight, but by the end, I had learned a good deal about his business (he is a software engineer who is engaged in work on cloud-based applications), and we had talked about mutual areas of scientific interests. Despite my initial impression, he was a fantastically nice guy, and extremely intelligent and funny.
After we had been in the air for about an hour, we hit a pocket of turbulence. Not too terribly unusual, and I have been through worse, but we were all asked to fasten our seat belts. And then the turbulence got even worse, the worst I have, to date, ever been in. And the flight crew strapped themselves in and announced over the speakers that we were no longer in normal turbulence. This was, in fact, an emergency situation, and we should all remain in our seats and keep calm.
I have never been one to need a barf bag. But on this flight, I was beginning to see the wisdom of them. the emergency situation lasted for about an hour, though the worst of the turbulence was gone in about twenty minutes.
Anyway, we eventually landed, the three of us exit row men shook hands and parted ways, and I had time to have dinner before getting onto my next plane.
Boarding the next flight, I discovered that there were only two people in my row: myself, and a fellow wearing a t-shirt and shorts, and carrying a pamphlet of Bible verses. After we were in the air, the crew came by with the drink cart, and I got my usual Diet Coke. The fellow with the Bible pamphlet, however, got a can of Red Bull and several small bottles of Vodka. The flight attendant wanted to stop him at two, but after he assured her that his girlfriend was going to pick him up, and that therefore he would not be driving drunk, he was able to negotiate his way into a few more bottles. And so, on the flight, I worked on my paper further as the guy in the seat next to me proceeded to get hammered while reading Bible verses. even after the bottles had been taken away, I could smell the vodka coming off of this guy as he read the words of Luke.
I can't make crap like this up.
We finally arrived in Memphis just before midnight local time. By this point, I was tired and worn out from traveling, and stressed over the paper that I was increasingly worried about. I called my hotel to find out if they had a shuttle or if I should hire a taxi. I was assured that a shuttle would be there for me soon, but it took over half an hour (the hotel was a five-minute drive away). I finally arrived at the hotel after midnight, and proceeded to try to check in. The man at the desk, a preternaturally patient and professional Indian gentleman, politely informed me that my card had been denied when I tried ot pay for the room.
What the fuck?
I called my bank (thankfully they have 24 hour customer service), and spent most of the next hour on hold while the rep contacted fraud prevention to find out what was going on. Turned out that my card was suspended when it was discovered that charges had been made in two different states on the same day. This looked like either A) my card number had been stolen, or B) I was flying to different fucking airports like I had told my bank I would be doing to prevent this sort of nonsense. Anyway, with that cleared up, I was able to check in to my hotel room. The man at the desk had given me a key, and I proceeded towards the room that he had told me to head to.
Once I reached my door, I slid the key card in, the green light on the door handle shown, and I turned the handle only to discover that the room had been dead-bolted from inside.
I headed back to the elevator, stepped inside, pressed the button for the lobby, the doors closed and...nothing. I hit "Door Open", and the doors opened, I stepped out, let the doors closed, pressed the button, the doors opened, I stepped inside, hit the button for the lobby again, the doors again closed, and...nothing.
I opened the doors again, and went looking for the stairs. The hotel had a courtyard design, with a huge open central space, and the rooms along the sides. The stars were in a shaft that had been designed to look like a support and not a shaft containing a staircase. On the one hand, this gave the hotel a clear, open feeling. On the other hand, it made the stairs difficult to locate for a sleep-deprived conference goer who was already having a frustrating day. Still, I eventually found them went back to the front desk, and explained what had happened. The man at the desk, clearly embarrassed, assigned me another room. I went up to it, tried the key card, and the door wouldn't open. The door wasn't dead-bolted, it felt different than that, but it wouldn't open. I went back to the desk, and the fellow accompanied me back to the room, where we finally got the door open - turned out that the mechanism was getting worn out, and that if you didn't turn it in just the right way, you wouldn't get the door open. Normally, I would have requested another room, but at this point I was simply grateful to be at a hotel room in Memphis, and I went right in.
As tired as I was, before going to bed, I had to check my email. And it's a good thing that I did, because I had a notice informing me that, because I had not been on the outgoing Airtran flight, my return flight might be cancelled. So, I had to call Expedia, through whom I had booked the flight, and spent the next 90 minutes on the phone with them. I called four times - each of these times I was put on hold while the rep contacted their supervisor. And each of the first three times, as I waited on hold, I was hung up on. The fourth time I had to wait an extra long time to talk to a rep because, apparently, 3 am central time is the popular time to call Expedia's customer (dis)service line. Finally, on the fourth call, I spoke with someone who was able to get the mess straightened out, and made sure that my return flight was confirmed.
So, closing in on 4 am, I went to bed. By this time, however, I was so astoundingly stressed out that I couldn't sleep. So, I just lay there for a few hours, and then got up, showered, shaved, got dressed, went to print up my paper, and then went downstairs to head to the conference.
Showing posts with label Frustration. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Frustration. Show all posts
Monday, April 23, 2012
Friday, May 16, 2008
Hating Work, Time to Join a Conspiracy...
A week and a half ago, my boss informed me that a client of ours informed him that the California Energy Commission needed an Application for Certification for a powerplant by Monday the 19th.
So, what did this mean? Well, as the AFC section for archaeology had not been written yet, I had to spend my weekend and several late nights during both last week and this week writing it (and by late nights, I mean 8 am to midnight work days). Mind you, this came on the heels of having been sent out to the desert for two weeks (which also required me working through a weekend prior to going to the desert in order to finish the projects what needed finishing at that time), and as my boss had family matters to take care of last weekend, that left me to do the work. And the project is still not done. So, I get to spend this weekend in the office with my boss trying to get the damn thing done. In the end, I will have had one weekend completely to myself in the last two months.
I am very tired.
And as if that weren't enough, I discover that a friend of mine has been secretly working with the fish to regain piscatorial dominance across the planet! Check it out: http://walkingcatfish.blogspot.com/
...and as if THAT weren't enough, scroll down the page you'll notice that one of the people that she is pimping is none other than my homeboy Brian Fagan. That's right, Fagan's helping the fishy conspiracy. How could he?
Wait a minute, anthropology has led me to high stress, no free time, and alot of frustration. Fish, on the other hand, do nothing but swim, eat, spawn, and plot to take over the world. Maybe Brian's on to something.
HOLD ON CLIFFIE! I'M HEADING TO THE BEACH AND JOINING YA'!
So, what did this mean? Well, as the AFC section for archaeology had not been written yet, I had to spend my weekend and several late nights during both last week and this week writing it (and by late nights, I mean 8 am to midnight work days). Mind you, this came on the heels of having been sent out to the desert for two weeks (which also required me working through a weekend prior to going to the desert in order to finish the projects what needed finishing at that time), and as my boss had family matters to take care of last weekend, that left me to do the work. And the project is still not done. So, I get to spend this weekend in the office with my boss trying to get the damn thing done. In the end, I will have had one weekend completely to myself in the last two months.
I am very tired.
And as if that weren't enough, I discover that a friend of mine has been secretly working with the fish to regain piscatorial dominance across the planet! Check it out: http://walkingcatfish.blogspot.com/
...and as if THAT weren't enough, scroll down the page you'll notice that one of the people that she is pimping is none other than my homeboy Brian Fagan. That's right, Fagan's helping the fishy conspiracy. How could he?
Wait a minute, anthropology has led me to high stress, no free time, and alot of frustration. Fish, on the other hand, do nothing but swim, eat, spawn, and plot to take over the world. Maybe Brian's on to something.
HOLD ON CLIFFIE! I'M HEADING TO THE BEACH AND JOINING YA'!
Monday, April 14, 2008
My Wild and Wacky Forest Adventure
Part the First: Getting There is Half the Fun
In which I learn that, contrary to popular sentiment, a lack of communication on somebody else's part may, indeed, constitute an emergency on mine.
I wrote the following about ten months ago, a little after the events depicted occured. I wil be heading back out on this project soon, and so it seemed appropriate to post this now, and post the rest of the story as I have a chance to write it.
I returned from the field and wandered in to my hotel room in Napa. I turned on my computer and opened my email. Seeing one from my boss, I opened it and read the following:
"Matt,
I need you to take over a project in the Sierra Nevada.
Come back to the office on Monday.
-T-Bone"
T-Bone is not my boss's real name, which is good, as were that his real name it would suggest that he was a velvet-garbed pimp and my career little but a lie. I wrote back to him:
"T-Bone,
I'll be happy to do the work. Send me maps, crew
roster, and other information so that I can prepare
-Matthew"
The next day, when I returned from the field to my hotel room (in all of its spit-on-the-wall-and-strange-stains-in-the-bathroom glory), after dodging a guy in the parking lot who wanted me to sell him drugs (why he thought I was a dealer is beyond me - I'm often mistaken for a cop, but only twice in my life has someone taken me for a dealer), I recieved the following email:
"Matt,
I'll fill you in on Monday, and give you the information
then.
-T-Bone"
...and with that, I figured things were settled and ready to go. When I returned to the office the following Monday, T-Bone had prepared a box of materials for me to read before going out to the field.
The plan was this: a crew was heading out to the forest the following morning (Tuesday) from our Central Valley office to work a 10-day rotation on an excavation. I would go to join them in the field and work on the excavation until Friday, when that project was slated to finish. Starting Saturday, I would take the crew and we would work on the survey through Thursday of the next week, completing that project and finishing the 10-day rotation. Perfect, save time on both projects by transferring from one to the other...
...except that there had been miscomunication between offices, and the crew was not on a 10-day rotation and available to work. When I called the office of the other field director, I found out that he had headed for the field on that (Monday) morning, indicating that his crew would be working a five-day week (M-F) rather than a 10-day rotation (Tuesday through the following Thursday). I immediately set to work finding a field crew for my project, an effort I kept at until the following day.
On Tuesday afternoon, my boss approached me and announced that a member of the other crew had become sick and had to leave. It was now (allegedly) arranged that I would go out and replace this crew member, and then take over the crew. And with that in mind, I made preparations to leave.
Now, this project was in a fairly remote location, the nearest town with a hotel was a 2-hour drive away (actually, there was a town with a hotel that was closer, but the hotel only allowed people who were in town for weddings to make reservations - no I'm not making this up - so the field crew were persona non-grata). As a result, we had to camp at a site near the excavation project.
So, as the crew would not have been prepared for a full 10-day rotation, I had to go out and buy food for the crew, buy camping supplies that I would need, rent a truck, and make arrangements to get a satellite phone from our client (in case of emergencies) and a GPS unit from our Central Valley office.
Come Wednesday, I had a truck laden with canned goods and camping supplies, and was on my way to our Central Valley office to pick up the GPS unit. I arived, got the unit, and went through a tutorial on how to use it with our GIS guy (good guy, by the way). Then I drove another hour to the office of our client, where I picked up the satellite phone. After one last stop-off for some gear that I had forgotten, I was on my way into the mountains.
The roads wound up steep cliff walls like a snake fleeing from Samuel L. Jackson. The views were beautiful, and I was beginning to feel pretty good about things, though I was still uneasy about the likelyhood that the crew would stay on for my project.
Two hours into the mountains, I took a wrong turn. No big deal, I realized the wrong turn almost immediately, and seeing that the road shoulders were covered in gravel, a quick turn-around seemed relatively easy...until my truck stopped moving and I smelled burning rubber.
You see, the gravel covered the shoulder in a relatively thin layer, under which lay a thick layer of powdery silt, and my truck was stuck and literally burning rubber as I tried to pull out of it.
Okay, I thought to myself, I am a member of the species Homo sapien. I have an upright gait, opposable thumbs, and binocular vision. I am a member of the species who has built cathedrals and skyscrapers, launched men into space, composed symphonies, and produced the Furbie. I am even considered a particularly bright and competent member of this species. Surely, I can get a truck out from this mess!
Oh, how I paid for this hubris.
First I tried rocking the truck out of the silt, driving slightly forward, and then shifting into reverse, trying to build momentum to get out of the hole I had dug for my back tire. While I succeeded in moving forward, every attempt to reverse resulted in the initially small back-tire whole becoming a trench. Okay, this wasn't going to work.
Next, I tried to put all of the food, camping gear, and anything else I had in the bed of the truck in order to place more weight on the back tires, which were the ones that had become stuck. I then pulled the floor mats out of the cab and placed them under the rear tires to provide more traction. I then climbed back into the cab of the truck and began easing on the accelerator in order to try to pull out gently. I looked out the window and down the just in time to see the floor mat under the driver's side tire get shot towards the front of the truck. While admittedly rather cool to watch, this did little to improve my mood.
I opened the door, stepped out again, and looked around.
I saw several small (10 centimeter dimater and smaller) logs lying around, and had an epiphany. I pulled some of the logs to the rear of the truck, propped them under the tire, thinking that this would help provide the traction needed to get me out. After managing to put scorch marks on the logs without ever moving the truck, I got out of the cab again and looked around. I spent about half an hour looking for anything else that I could shove under the tire to provide traction, and pondering any method that I might be able to use to get the truck out. After thirty minutes, I had nothing, and consulted my map. Five miles to the campground...well, I had walked farther under worse circumstances, so this would be okay.
And then I remembered the satellite phone. I opened the box, pulled out the phone, turned it on, and waited for a signal...
...now, some day you may meet someone who will attempt to tell you that satellite phones work fine in steep canyons within coniferous forests. When this person tells this to you, punch them in the face, and tell them that Armstrong sent ya'...
...anyway, the phone would occassionally get a signal just long enough for me to dial the number for the ranger station, only to lose the signal again just as the phone began ringing. I walked the five miles to the campground cursing the Roman god of satellite phones the entire way.
Finally, I arrived at the campground. The crew greeted me, and then told me that another employee of my company had been out to the site earlier in the day to inform them that I was coming, which left them confused as they had more than enough people to perform the task at hand.
"Well, I was told that you would be joining me for a survey starting on Saturday."
"Really?" asked the crew supervisor, "who told you that?"
"T-Bone."
"Well, none of us are available. We have all been assigned to different projects for next week. You should have taken some initiative and called me." The supervisor folded his arms, looking satisfied.
"I did call. You weren't answering your phone."
"oh, well, yeah, that's a problem, I'll give you that."
At about this moment, one of the field technicians, who I will call Ed, simply because I can't think of a better psuedonym for him, began laughing. He walked up, clapped me on the shoulder, looked me in the eye, and in between guffaws said "man, you got the T-Bone special! Thing about the T-Bone special is that it's like blue cheese - you might eventually get to where you like the flavor, but it's a shock the first time you have it."
The other field tech, who I will call Bender because I am having even more difficulty coming up with a psuedonym for him than I was for Ed, shook his head in sympathy. "Where's your truck?" he asked.
I told them the story of how the gods of roadside problems proved to me that I was but a mortal man. Without another word, the crew piled into a truck, got me in, and we headed out to where the truck was stuck.
Once at the site of the roadside travesty, we tried placing the logs under the tires again, but this time the field techs all got into the bed of the truck and sat directly over the stuck wheel. With this added weight, I managed to get the truck out. And with that, we headed back to camp.
Once we returned, Bender opened up a cooler and pulled out a large piece of fresh salmon. "Hey, Matt, you like salmon?"
I responded in the affirmative.
"Well, this piece probably needs to be eaten tonight, and you've had a tough day. Give it a try."
With that, he handed it over. I coated the salmon in a bit of salt and pepper, wrapped it in aluminum foil, and placed it on a grill immediately over the camp fire. About thirty minutes later, I had one of the best pieces of salmon that I have ever consumed.
I then sat near the campfire inflating my air mattress, with my breath as I had neglected to get the air pump that would have made this matter so much easier. In between jokes about me having experience with this due to my long line of inflatable girlfriends, the mattress began to take shape, and I could see a symbol of a decent night's sleep on the ground in front of me.
Now, here's the thing about field work in remote locations - how good or bad it is depends on who you are working with. If you are with people who annoy you, it's a bad scene. I was lucky this night, these three were good folks. They were clearly trying to enjoy themselves, and were more than happy to allow a fellow such as myself to be involved or be aloof as I saw fit. If they were doing something, they didn't insist that I join them, but they made it known that I was welcome. In other words, these three really were a class act, and after the day I had been having, their company was especially welcome.
After dinner, we sat about the fire, trading stories, talking about projects we had worked on, and generally just relaxing. After the sun had gone down, Ed said "I think it's time for the entertainment."
"The entertainment?" Bender looked at him, trying to figure out what the hell Ed was talking about.
"Yeah, the entertainment." And with that, Ed disappeared into his tent and emerged a few minutes later with a miniature disco ball and a small light mounted on a headband. He hung the disco ball from the branch of a nearby tree. He then put the headband-mounted light on, turned it on, and shone it on the disco ball while turning the ball with his hand and singing Bee-Gee's songs. Before long, we were all joining in a rousing chorus of "Stayin' Alive" (no, I had not previously known that it could be sung in a rousing manner either).
"It's kind of like television" Bender called out, "only less stupid and with fewer episodes of Survivor."
After a time, even the vast entertainment value of the disco ball was exhausted, and we all began to turn in to bed. I crawled into my sleeping bag, lay down on my air mattress, and lay back waiting for insomnia to take its hold.
I checked my watch on occassion, and I lay there for about an hour and a half before I finally started to drift off. No sooner had this happened than a loud buzzing noise began to eminate from nearby, and the walls of my tent shook. Ed was snoring. No, Ed wasn't snoring, Ed was SNORING LIKE A FUCKING BUZZSAW!
Now, don't get me wrong, I am fully convinced that Ed is a great guy, I'm glad to have met him and had a chance to work with him, but I will never share a hotel room with the guy. His snoring could be harnassed and used as a weapon of mass destruction.
I lay there for a while, thinking to myself "okay, he's got to turn over or shift position eventually, and then the snoring will probably stop." But he never moved and the snoring kept going. Then I thought to myself "okay, after a little while, this will become white noise, you'll be able to ignore it, and you'll get to sleep."
After waiting for two hours for the snoring to become white noise, I climbed out of my tent and went to my truck. I climbed in the cab, reclined the chair, and settled in to get some sleep. I began to doze off after about fourty-five minutes, but something, I don't know what, caused me to jerk awake, and I wasn't able to so much as doze for the next hour. After a time, I figured I should just go back to the tent, surely Ed must have moved by now. He may still be snoring, but not as badly as he had been.
If anything, his volume had increased.
I stood there for a few minutes, pondering what to do. Finally, it dawned on me. I pulled my air mattress out of the tent, went back to the truck, moved all of the assorted food and equipment to one side of the bed of the truck, put my air mattress inside, put on my jacket and secured the hood around my head (tempuratures were getting down into the 30's at night around there), climbed onto the mattress, pulled my sleeping bag on, and, around 4 am, finally drifted off to sleep.
Coming soon, Part the Second, in which our hero's descent into true madness begins! Stay Tuned!
In which I learn that, contrary to popular sentiment, a lack of communication on somebody else's part may, indeed, constitute an emergency on mine.
I wrote the following about ten months ago, a little after the events depicted occured. I wil be heading back out on this project soon, and so it seemed appropriate to post this now, and post the rest of the story as I have a chance to write it.
I returned from the field and wandered in to my hotel room in Napa. I turned on my computer and opened my email. Seeing one from my boss, I opened it and read the following:
"Matt,
I need you to take over a project in the Sierra Nevada.
Come back to the office on Monday.
-T-Bone"
T-Bone is not my boss's real name, which is good, as were that his real name it would suggest that he was a velvet-garbed pimp and my career little but a lie. I wrote back to him:
"T-Bone,
I'll be happy to do the work. Send me maps, crew
roster, and other information so that I can prepare
-Matthew"
The next day, when I returned from the field to my hotel room (in all of its spit-on-the-wall-and-strange-stains-in-the-bathroom glory), after dodging a guy in the parking lot who wanted me to sell him drugs (why he thought I was a dealer is beyond me - I'm often mistaken for a cop, but only twice in my life has someone taken me for a dealer), I recieved the following email:
"Matt,
I'll fill you in on Monday, and give you the information
then.
-T-Bone"
...and with that, I figured things were settled and ready to go. When I returned to the office the following Monday, T-Bone had prepared a box of materials for me to read before going out to the field.
The plan was this: a crew was heading out to the forest the following morning (Tuesday) from our Central Valley office to work a 10-day rotation on an excavation. I would go to join them in the field and work on the excavation until Friday, when that project was slated to finish. Starting Saturday, I would take the crew and we would work on the survey through Thursday of the next week, completing that project and finishing the 10-day rotation. Perfect, save time on both projects by transferring from one to the other...
...except that there had been miscomunication between offices, and the crew was not on a 10-day rotation and available to work. When I called the office of the other field director, I found out that he had headed for the field on that (Monday) morning, indicating that his crew would be working a five-day week (M-F) rather than a 10-day rotation (Tuesday through the following Thursday). I immediately set to work finding a field crew for my project, an effort I kept at until the following day.
On Tuesday afternoon, my boss approached me and announced that a member of the other crew had become sick and had to leave. It was now (allegedly) arranged that I would go out and replace this crew member, and then take over the crew. And with that in mind, I made preparations to leave.
Now, this project was in a fairly remote location, the nearest town with a hotel was a 2-hour drive away (actually, there was a town with a hotel that was closer, but the hotel only allowed people who were in town for weddings to make reservations - no I'm not making this up - so the field crew were persona non-grata). As a result, we had to camp at a site near the excavation project.
So, as the crew would not have been prepared for a full 10-day rotation, I had to go out and buy food for the crew, buy camping supplies that I would need, rent a truck, and make arrangements to get a satellite phone from our client (in case of emergencies) and a GPS unit from our Central Valley office.
Come Wednesday, I had a truck laden with canned goods and camping supplies, and was on my way to our Central Valley office to pick up the GPS unit. I arived, got the unit, and went through a tutorial on how to use it with our GIS guy (good guy, by the way). Then I drove another hour to the office of our client, where I picked up the satellite phone. After one last stop-off for some gear that I had forgotten, I was on my way into the mountains.
The roads wound up steep cliff walls like a snake fleeing from Samuel L. Jackson. The views were beautiful, and I was beginning to feel pretty good about things, though I was still uneasy about the likelyhood that the crew would stay on for my project.
Two hours into the mountains, I took a wrong turn. No big deal, I realized the wrong turn almost immediately, and seeing that the road shoulders were covered in gravel, a quick turn-around seemed relatively easy...until my truck stopped moving and I smelled burning rubber.
You see, the gravel covered the shoulder in a relatively thin layer, under which lay a thick layer of powdery silt, and my truck was stuck and literally burning rubber as I tried to pull out of it.
Okay, I thought to myself, I am a member of the species Homo sapien. I have an upright gait, opposable thumbs, and binocular vision. I am a member of the species who has built cathedrals and skyscrapers, launched men into space, composed symphonies, and produced the Furbie. I am even considered a particularly bright and competent member of this species. Surely, I can get a truck out from this mess!
Oh, how I paid for this hubris.
First I tried rocking the truck out of the silt, driving slightly forward, and then shifting into reverse, trying to build momentum to get out of the hole I had dug for my back tire. While I succeeded in moving forward, every attempt to reverse resulted in the initially small back-tire whole becoming a trench. Okay, this wasn't going to work.
Next, I tried to put all of the food, camping gear, and anything else I had in the bed of the truck in order to place more weight on the back tires, which were the ones that had become stuck. I then pulled the floor mats out of the cab and placed them under the rear tires to provide more traction. I then climbed back into the cab of the truck and began easing on the accelerator in order to try to pull out gently. I looked out the window and down the just in time to see the floor mat under the driver's side tire get shot towards the front of the truck. While admittedly rather cool to watch, this did little to improve my mood.
I opened the door, stepped out again, and looked around.
I saw several small (10 centimeter dimater and smaller) logs lying around, and had an epiphany. I pulled some of the logs to the rear of the truck, propped them under the tire, thinking that this would help provide the traction needed to get me out. After managing to put scorch marks on the logs without ever moving the truck, I got out of the cab again and looked around. I spent about half an hour looking for anything else that I could shove under the tire to provide traction, and pondering any method that I might be able to use to get the truck out. After thirty minutes, I had nothing, and consulted my map. Five miles to the campground...well, I had walked farther under worse circumstances, so this would be okay.
And then I remembered the satellite phone. I opened the box, pulled out the phone, turned it on, and waited for a signal...
...now, some day you may meet someone who will attempt to tell you that satellite phones work fine in steep canyons within coniferous forests. When this person tells this to you, punch them in the face, and tell them that Armstrong sent ya'...
...anyway, the phone would occassionally get a signal just long enough for me to dial the number for the ranger station, only to lose the signal again just as the phone began ringing. I walked the five miles to the campground cursing the Roman god of satellite phones the entire way.
Finally, I arrived at the campground. The crew greeted me, and then told me that another employee of my company had been out to the site earlier in the day to inform them that I was coming, which left them confused as they had more than enough people to perform the task at hand.
"Well, I was told that you would be joining me for a survey starting on Saturday."
"Really?" asked the crew supervisor, "who told you that?"
"T-Bone."
"Well, none of us are available. We have all been assigned to different projects for next week. You should have taken some initiative and called me." The supervisor folded his arms, looking satisfied.
"I did call. You weren't answering your phone."
"oh, well, yeah, that's a problem, I'll give you that."
At about this moment, one of the field technicians, who I will call Ed, simply because I can't think of a better psuedonym for him, began laughing. He walked up, clapped me on the shoulder, looked me in the eye, and in between guffaws said "man, you got the T-Bone special! Thing about the T-Bone special is that it's like blue cheese - you might eventually get to where you like the flavor, but it's a shock the first time you have it."
The other field tech, who I will call Bender because I am having even more difficulty coming up with a psuedonym for him than I was for Ed, shook his head in sympathy. "Where's your truck?" he asked.
I told them the story of how the gods of roadside problems proved to me that I was but a mortal man. Without another word, the crew piled into a truck, got me in, and we headed out to where the truck was stuck.
Once at the site of the roadside travesty, we tried placing the logs under the tires again, but this time the field techs all got into the bed of the truck and sat directly over the stuck wheel. With this added weight, I managed to get the truck out. And with that, we headed back to camp.
Once we returned, Bender opened up a cooler and pulled out a large piece of fresh salmon. "Hey, Matt, you like salmon?"
I responded in the affirmative.
"Well, this piece probably needs to be eaten tonight, and you've had a tough day. Give it a try."
With that, he handed it over. I coated the salmon in a bit of salt and pepper, wrapped it in aluminum foil, and placed it on a grill immediately over the camp fire. About thirty minutes later, I had one of the best pieces of salmon that I have ever consumed.
I then sat near the campfire inflating my air mattress, with my breath as I had neglected to get the air pump that would have made this matter so much easier. In between jokes about me having experience with this due to my long line of inflatable girlfriends, the mattress began to take shape, and I could see a symbol of a decent night's sleep on the ground in front of me.
Now, here's the thing about field work in remote locations - how good or bad it is depends on who you are working with. If you are with people who annoy you, it's a bad scene. I was lucky this night, these three were good folks. They were clearly trying to enjoy themselves, and were more than happy to allow a fellow such as myself to be involved or be aloof as I saw fit. If they were doing something, they didn't insist that I join them, but they made it known that I was welcome. In other words, these three really were a class act, and after the day I had been having, their company was especially welcome.
After dinner, we sat about the fire, trading stories, talking about projects we had worked on, and generally just relaxing. After the sun had gone down, Ed said "I think it's time for the entertainment."
"The entertainment?" Bender looked at him, trying to figure out what the hell Ed was talking about.
"Yeah, the entertainment." And with that, Ed disappeared into his tent and emerged a few minutes later with a miniature disco ball and a small light mounted on a headband. He hung the disco ball from the branch of a nearby tree. He then put the headband-mounted light on, turned it on, and shone it on the disco ball while turning the ball with his hand and singing Bee-Gee's songs. Before long, we were all joining in a rousing chorus of "Stayin' Alive" (no, I had not previously known that it could be sung in a rousing manner either).
"It's kind of like television" Bender called out, "only less stupid and with fewer episodes of Survivor."
After a time, even the vast entertainment value of the disco ball was exhausted, and we all began to turn in to bed. I crawled into my sleeping bag, lay down on my air mattress, and lay back waiting for insomnia to take its hold.
I checked my watch on occassion, and I lay there for about an hour and a half before I finally started to drift off. No sooner had this happened than a loud buzzing noise began to eminate from nearby, and the walls of my tent shook. Ed was snoring. No, Ed wasn't snoring, Ed was SNORING LIKE A FUCKING BUZZSAW!
Now, don't get me wrong, I am fully convinced that Ed is a great guy, I'm glad to have met him and had a chance to work with him, but I will never share a hotel room with the guy. His snoring could be harnassed and used as a weapon of mass destruction.
I lay there for a while, thinking to myself "okay, he's got to turn over or shift position eventually, and then the snoring will probably stop." But he never moved and the snoring kept going. Then I thought to myself "okay, after a little while, this will become white noise, you'll be able to ignore it, and you'll get to sleep."
After waiting for two hours for the snoring to become white noise, I climbed out of my tent and went to my truck. I climbed in the cab, reclined the chair, and settled in to get some sleep. I began to doze off after about fourty-five minutes, but something, I don't know what, caused me to jerk awake, and I wasn't able to so much as doze for the next hour. After a time, I figured I should just go back to the tent, surely Ed must have moved by now. He may still be snoring, but not as badly as he had been.
If anything, his volume had increased.
I stood there for a few minutes, pondering what to do. Finally, it dawned on me. I pulled my air mattress out of the tent, went back to the truck, moved all of the assorted food and equipment to one side of the bed of the truck, put my air mattress inside, put on my jacket and secured the hood around my head (tempuratures were getting down into the 30's at night around there), climbed onto the mattress, pulled my sleeping bag on, and, around 4 am, finally drifted off to sleep.
Coming soon, Part the Second, in which our hero's descent into true madness begins! Stay Tuned!
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
From the Government and Here to Help
I have a livelihood because archaeological work is required by a set of federal, state, and local laws when construction is going to be performed in areas considered archaeologically sensitive. It is the responsibility of the agency issuing the permits to determine the parameters of archaeological work to be done, and to tell applicants what those parameters are so that the applicant can produce an application that meets the agency’s standards and regulations.
That seems pretty straightforward, right? The agency knows the rules, they tell the applicant the rules, and the applicant complies.
But what happens when the agency doesn’t tell the applicants the rules?
Case in point - I have a project that requires permits from a particular government agency. We were asked to perform a survey of a right-of-way (ROW) for transmission lines, and we needed to know how large an area the agency required be surveyed (the Calfiornia Energy Commission, for example, requires that a corridor made up of the ROW plus 50 feet on either side of the ROW be surveyed). I went to look up the agency’s regulations, and could not find them anywhere. So, I called the agency to ask, and found myself speaking with the head of their environmental office.
Me: "Hi. I’m an archaeologist who is working on project such-and-such, and I am trying to work out the survey plan. How wide a corridor do you require?"
Her: "Well, it depends on the project’s ROW size. A larger ROW requires a larger survey."
Me: "Yes, I’m aware of that. But how do you determine that? The CEC requires 50 feet on either side of the right-of-way, do you have a similar method of determination?"
Her: "No."
Me: "So, how do you work it out?"
Her: "Well, we know the width of the ROW for different projects, and we base it on that."
Me: "Okay. Well, for project such-and-such, do you know how large a corridor you want to see surveyed?"
Her: "I can’t answer that."
Me: "Why not?"
Her: "Well, if I tell you that I want a survey corridor of X-width, then you’ll survey X-width."
Me: "Well, yes, that’s the point."
Her: "Well, if we decide afterwards that we would rather have a wider corridor, then you can hold us to our original determination."
Me: "Why not specify a wide corridor to begin with?"
Her: "That’s not our role."
Me: "But you’re the lead agency. Defining terms for licensing is both your role and your responsibility."
Her: "We decided that we no longer want that role."
Me: "So, is someone else the lead agency now?"
Her: "No, we’re legally required to be the lead agency."
Me: "Then it’s still your role and responsibility to define the terms of the license."
Her: "We choose to wait until the applicant has completed the studies before we define those terms."
Me: "But those terms define the parameters of the studies."
Her: "That’s not our problem."
At this point, I decided to change tactics.
Me: "Okay, it’s a 100-foot wide ROW. What if we survey a 200-foot wide corridor. That would be in keeping with the CEC regulations, would that also satisfy your agency?"
Her: "Unofficially, I think that that sounds reasonable."
Me: "And officially?"
Her: "Officially, I have no comment, we do not determine the parameters of the studies until after we have received the application."
Me: "But the law requires that the study results be included as part of the application."
Her: "Yes."
Me: "How are we supposed to conduct studies to include the results as part of the application if you will not define the parameters of the study until after the application?"
Here: "That’s not our problem."
And Lather, rinse, repeat. Lather, Rinse, Repeat....
And then there’s the joy of dealing with the folks at county planning offices. I just had a frustrating conversation with a fellow at one of the local counties. They have been referring land developers to us, and they have been telling the developers "you need an archaeological report."
The problem is that everything we do involves an archaeological report. Do they need monitoring? Do they need survey? Do they need significance testing? Do they need data recovery?
I told the fellow at the county that we needed for them to tell the applicants what kind of report they needed (I should add that I have been trying to contact this fellow for a few weeks, and the fellow only got around to returning a phone call today, so calling the county for clarification appears to not be an option). His response: "we do tell them. We tell them that they need a report!"
Me: "Well, that’s pretty vague. Everything we do results in a report."
Him: "Well, I don’t know much about archaeology, so I don’t think that I can answer the question."
Me: "I’m not asking you a question about archaeology, I’m asking you to explain the county regulations, which you are supposed to be an expert on, to the applicants so that they will know what kind of work the county needs."
Him: "Well, the county regulations are online."
Me: "Yes, and they require that I know which county planning zone a project falls into, but you folks don’t make that information public, so I can’t determine what the client needs based on that."
Him: "Well, it’s going to vary based on the area that they are in."
Me: "Yes, but you have requirements for each area, and you issue permits, and that indicates that you know what you are looking for for each area."
Him: "Well, we have to look through the databases, and all of that, to figure out what they need."
Me: "Yeah, but you know what they need so that you can issue the permits. Can you just tell the applicants specifically what they need?"
Him: "It’s not that simple."
Me: "Why not?"
Him: "Well, we have to go through the databases..."
Me: "Yes, yes, I know, but you have requirements, which indicates that you know what those requirements are, which indicates that you can tell them what those requirements are so that they can tell us."
Him: "Well, it’s not that simple, you see, the database..."
Me: "You have requirements for permits?"
Him: "Yes."
Me: "You know what those requirements are when the permits are requested?"
Him: "Yes."
Me: "You know whether that includes survey or monitoring for a specific project?"
Him: "Yes."
Me: "Then you can tell the applicant what you need them to submit."
Him: "Well, I don’t know anything about archaeology."
Me: "I’m not asking you about archaeology, I’m asking you what the county requires for permits."
Who’s on first? What’s on second? And so on, ad nauseum...
That seems pretty straightforward, right? The agency knows the rules, they tell the applicant the rules, and the applicant complies.
But what happens when the agency doesn’t tell the applicants the rules?
Case in point - I have a project that requires permits from a particular government agency. We were asked to perform a survey of a right-of-way (ROW) for transmission lines, and we needed to know how large an area the agency required be surveyed (the Calfiornia Energy Commission, for example, requires that a corridor made up of the ROW plus 50 feet on either side of the ROW be surveyed). I went to look up the agency’s regulations, and could not find them anywhere. So, I called the agency to ask, and found myself speaking with the head of their environmental office.
Me: "Hi. I’m an archaeologist who is working on project such-and-such, and I am trying to work out the survey plan. How wide a corridor do you require?"
Her: "Well, it depends on the project’s ROW size. A larger ROW requires a larger survey."
Me: "Yes, I’m aware of that. But how do you determine that? The CEC requires 50 feet on either side of the right-of-way, do you have a similar method of determination?"
Her: "No."
Me: "So, how do you work it out?"
Her: "Well, we know the width of the ROW for different projects, and we base it on that."
Me: "Okay. Well, for project such-and-such, do you know how large a corridor you want to see surveyed?"
Her: "I can’t answer that."
Me: "Why not?"
Her: "Well, if I tell you that I want a survey corridor of X-width, then you’ll survey X-width."
Me: "Well, yes, that’s the point."
Her: "Well, if we decide afterwards that we would rather have a wider corridor, then you can hold us to our original determination."
Me: "Why not specify a wide corridor to begin with?"
Her: "That’s not our role."
Me: "But you’re the lead agency. Defining terms for licensing is both your role and your responsibility."
Her: "We decided that we no longer want that role."
Me: "So, is someone else the lead agency now?"
Her: "No, we’re legally required to be the lead agency."
Me: "Then it’s still your role and responsibility to define the terms of the license."
Her: "We choose to wait until the applicant has completed the studies before we define those terms."
Me: "But those terms define the parameters of the studies."
Her: "That’s not our problem."
At this point, I decided to change tactics.
Me: "Okay, it’s a 100-foot wide ROW. What if we survey a 200-foot wide corridor. That would be in keeping with the CEC regulations, would that also satisfy your agency?"
Her: "Unofficially, I think that that sounds reasonable."
Me: "And officially?"
Her: "Officially, I have no comment, we do not determine the parameters of the studies until after we have received the application."
Me: "But the law requires that the study results be included as part of the application."
Her: "Yes."
Me: "How are we supposed to conduct studies to include the results as part of the application if you will not define the parameters of the study until after the application?"
Here: "That’s not our problem."
And Lather, rinse, repeat. Lather, Rinse, Repeat....
And then there’s the joy of dealing with the folks at county planning offices. I just had a frustrating conversation with a fellow at one of the local counties. They have been referring land developers to us, and they have been telling the developers "you need an archaeological report."
The problem is that everything we do involves an archaeological report. Do they need monitoring? Do they need survey? Do they need significance testing? Do they need data recovery?
I told the fellow at the county that we needed for them to tell the applicants what kind of report they needed (I should add that I have been trying to contact this fellow for a few weeks, and the fellow only got around to returning a phone call today, so calling the county for clarification appears to not be an option). His response: "we do tell them. We tell them that they need a report!"
Me: "Well, that’s pretty vague. Everything we do results in a report."
Him: "Well, I don’t know much about archaeology, so I don’t think that I can answer the question."
Me: "I’m not asking you a question about archaeology, I’m asking you to explain the county regulations, which you are supposed to be an expert on, to the applicants so that they will know what kind of work the county needs."
Him: "Well, the county regulations are online."
Me: "Yes, and they require that I know which county planning zone a project falls into, but you folks don’t make that information public, so I can’t determine what the client needs based on that."
Him: "Well, it’s going to vary based on the area that they are in."
Me: "Yes, but you have requirements for each area, and you issue permits, and that indicates that you know what you are looking for for each area."
Him: "Well, we have to look through the databases, and all of that, to figure out what they need."
Me: "Yeah, but you know what they need so that you can issue the permits. Can you just tell the applicants specifically what they need?"
Him: "It’s not that simple."
Me: "Why not?"
Him: "Well, we have to go through the databases..."
Me: "Yes, yes, I know, but you have requirements, which indicates that you know what those requirements are, which indicates that you can tell them what those requirements are so that they can tell us."
Him: "Well, it’s not that simple, you see, the database..."
Me: "You have requirements for permits?"
Him: "Yes."
Me: "You know what those requirements are when the permits are requested?"
Him: "Yes."
Me: "You know whether that includes survey or monitoring for a specific project?"
Him: "Yes."
Me: "Then you can tell the applicant what you need them to submit."
Him: "Well, I don’t know anything about archaeology."
Me: "I’m not asking you about archaeology, I’m asking you what the county requires for permits."
Who’s on first? What’s on second? And so on, ad nauseum...
Spirituality?
I really dislike the word "spiritual." It is one of those squishy, fuzzy words that everyone means something different by, and yet everyone continues to use it as if they mean the same thing. The only thing that everyone seems to agree on is that it is a good thing to be spiritual. This leads to bizarre arguments where people argue over who is spiritual, and yet it is clear to anyone who is not enamored with the word that what they are actually arguing about is the definition of the word itself.
Off the top of my head, I can think of the word being used to mean all of the following at different times:
1. Adherence to a particular religion (I recall, as a child, seeing some televangelist or another talk about how all non-Christians live "in spiritual poverty", for example).
2. Adherence to no particular religion, but a belief in some sort of divine force (which can range from a fuzzy feel-good sort of notion to a fairly clear and definite belief in a particular divine force, entity, or entities).
3. Abandonment of religions, but embracing of the idea of a largely undefined and mysterious divine force.
4. A sense of wonder about the universe (this definition is often used by atheists who wish to be considered spiritual).
5. Embracing of mysticism, which, depending on the individual, can range anywhere from a deep commitment to a mystical ideal to a superficial adoption of the trappings of mysticism.
...and, really, the list could go on for some time. While I wrote those, I came up with another ten possible definitions I have heard, plus each of those definitions can be further divided into more (deep commitment vs. superficial adoptions, formalized ritual vs. "free-form" exercise, etc.).
The point is, there are many different ways that the word is used, and many of these usages directly conflict with other usages. As a result, when someone is using it, unless you have them explain what they mean in detail, you'll really have little clue as to what they are saying. So, I consider the word to be useless. Actually, I consider it to be typically misleading, which is worse than useless.
This is different from a word such as "theory" which may be mis-used in many different ways, but comes from a particular place (in this case, science) where it has a specific meaning, and therefore can be guided back to the word's actual meaning. "Spiritual" has been a part of the general vocabulary for centuries, is not a specialized technical term, and as such can not be guided back to its "true" meaning, if it ever really had one to begin with.
To make matters more annoying, everyone insists on applying their definition of the term to everyone else. So, for example, I have always thought of the term as implying some sort of connection to the divine (as this is a common feature of all definitions that I have come across, save #4 above). So, when someone asks me if I am spiritual, I say "no." I don't believe that there is a divine force, and therefore I don't feel any connection to it.
However, this usually results in someone turning around and saying "yes you are! you're curious and always asking questions, that means that you're spiritual because you are seeking knowledge!"
Well, if the person has defined "spiritual" to mean "curious", then why not just use "curious" and do away with the ambiguity? Likewise, it is bizarre to watch those who hold to beliefs in the divine, spirits, etc. accuse members of more orthodox religions of being non-spiritual because they hold to traditions and old rituals, and to watch the members of orthodox religions accuse those who hold to the unorthodox beliefs of being non-spiritual because they don't hold to traditions and old rituals.
It seems to me that if we are going to insist on having a public dialogue about the "spiritual", we need to develop a vocabulary that is something other than a verbal Rorschach test. I suspect that the first step towards this is simply acknowledging that we all mean something different by this.
But I doubt that this will ever happen. The reality is that most folks don't even realize that they are arguing over definitions, and those who do seem to be more concerned with continuing the use of the term for their own purposes (because it has acquired positive social baggage despite the fact that it is a worse than useless term), than with actually communicating what they mean.
Off the top of my head, I can think of the word being used to mean all of the following at different times:
1. Adherence to a particular religion (I recall, as a child, seeing some televangelist or another talk about how all non-Christians live "in spiritual poverty", for example).
2. Adherence to no particular religion, but a belief in some sort of divine force (which can range from a fuzzy feel-good sort of notion to a fairly clear and definite belief in a particular divine force, entity, or entities).
3. Abandonment of religions, but embracing of the idea of a largely undefined and mysterious divine force.
4. A sense of wonder about the universe (this definition is often used by atheists who wish to be considered spiritual).
5. Embracing of mysticism, which, depending on the individual, can range anywhere from a deep commitment to a mystical ideal to a superficial adoption of the trappings of mysticism.
...and, really, the list could go on for some time. While I wrote those, I came up with another ten possible definitions I have heard, plus each of those definitions can be further divided into more (deep commitment vs. superficial adoptions, formalized ritual vs. "free-form" exercise, etc.).
The point is, there are many different ways that the word is used, and many of these usages directly conflict with other usages. As a result, when someone is using it, unless you have them explain what they mean in detail, you'll really have little clue as to what they are saying. So, I consider the word to be useless. Actually, I consider it to be typically misleading, which is worse than useless.
This is different from a word such as "theory" which may be mis-used in many different ways, but comes from a particular place (in this case, science) where it has a specific meaning, and therefore can be guided back to the word's actual meaning. "Spiritual" has been a part of the general vocabulary for centuries, is not a specialized technical term, and as such can not be guided back to its "true" meaning, if it ever really had one to begin with.
To make matters more annoying, everyone insists on applying their definition of the term to everyone else. So, for example, I have always thought of the term as implying some sort of connection to the divine (as this is a common feature of all definitions that I have come across, save #4 above). So, when someone asks me if I am spiritual, I say "no." I don't believe that there is a divine force, and therefore I don't feel any connection to it.
However, this usually results in someone turning around and saying "yes you are! you're curious and always asking questions, that means that you're spiritual because you are seeking knowledge!"
Well, if the person has defined "spiritual" to mean "curious", then why not just use "curious" and do away with the ambiguity? Likewise, it is bizarre to watch those who hold to beliefs in the divine, spirits, etc. accuse members of more orthodox religions of being non-spiritual because they hold to traditions and old rituals, and to watch the members of orthodox religions accuse those who hold to the unorthodox beliefs of being non-spiritual because they don't hold to traditions and old rituals.
It seems to me that if we are going to insist on having a public dialogue about the "spiritual", we need to develop a vocabulary that is something other than a verbal Rorschach test. I suspect that the first step towards this is simply acknowledging that we all mean something different by this.
But I doubt that this will ever happen. The reality is that most folks don't even realize that they are arguing over definitions, and those who do seem to be more concerned with continuing the use of the term for their own purposes (because it has acquired positive social baggage despite the fact that it is a worse than useless term), than with actually communicating what they mean.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)