Not Much Simpler Times

It's been a while since I wrote - family, work, the usual.  But something occurred today that has me contemplative.

My sister wrote to me this morning to tell me that one of my childhood bullies, a kid named Sam, grew up to be a 36-year-old man who stands accused of beating a man to death.  While he awaits trial, and as always one should be cautious about referring to someone as a murderer rather than accused murderer until after the trial, it sounds as if the case is open-and-shut.  Sam got into an argument with a man in a bar, this escalated into a fight, the man ended up in the hospital, where he died a few days later.

As a kid, I had thought that my various tormentors would one day meet some sort of justice.  I remember thinking "one of these days, everyone else will see you the way that I do - and I'll be there to laugh."

Now that this day has come, I don't feel like laughing.  I feel like weeping.

Over the years, I have heard occasionally about my childhood bullies. I never asked, but sometimes people would tell me things, or else I would hear a familiar name on the news.  Several became meth addicts and then fell into complete obscurity.  One was arrested for sneaking into a house, undressing, and climbing into bed with a child.  Others have rap sheets that include a range of violent crime and property crimes.  I have no doubt that some of them turned out okay, but I have never heard any more of them, so I simply do not know.

And now, murder.  Looking up his full name and town of residence reveals a long string of crimes, mostly property crimes, committed by someone with his name (I can't confirm that this was him and not someone else with the same name, a distinct possibility, but he is at least of the correct age to have be the person cited in several of the reports).  This before his altercation in the bar.

As a kid, Sam was a shit.  I will not claim otherwise.  This was not some sweet, caring kid who grew up to be a violent man.  This was a violent, bullying child who grew up to be a violent man.

But I can't help but feel that it could have turned out differently.

The community in which I grew up was very much a blue collar neighborhood, and I came to know and respect many of the various mechanics, carpenters, and cannery workers who lived around me.  Most of them were decent people, and to this day I remain convinced that we, as a nation, need to have a better respect for blue collar workers as a result.

But there was also a frequent under-current of anti-elitism, anti-intellectualism, and anti-accomplishment that pervaded much of my neighborhood.  Calling someone "schoolboy" was a grave insult, academic achievement was frowned upon, and anyone who became "to big for their britches" by having aspirations was to be put down by a combination of ridicule and force.  Amongst the kids, and even a small (but active) set of the adults, bullying was the norm, even encouraged.  And I don't mean simple name calling - it was common for me to come home from school covered in bruises and cuts as everything from fists to feet to rocks to broken glass were used on me and anyone else considered "weird".  Add to this that a few of the fathers of some of the neighborhood boys instructed their sons that it was fine to beat up on anyone, and if they couldn't fight back, that was their problem...well, you begin to see what was going on.

The adults who encouraged bullying and violence were few in number.  But that the targets of the bullying were those who didn't quite fit in meant that the other adults, while they might try to stop, were often not trying too hard.  "After all," they often seemed to think, "maybe it would do those weird kids (weird kids being the ones who had interests outside of the norm, not necessarily kids with behavioral problems) some good to get some sense smacked into them!"  And kids who did have behavioral problems?  The general attitude towards "shrinks" was such that these kids would likely never see anyone who could help them.

I don't know whether or not Sam's father encouraged him to beat on the other kids.  But I do know that the environment in which we lived offered only a few checks on his behavior, and those generally ineffective and countered by other factors.

In this environment, where aspiration was often punished, where violence was encouraged, and where the ability to remain calm when faced with conflict was seen as a weakness, it's no surprise that someone emerged who would beat a man to death over a bar room argument.  What's surprising is that this hasn't happened more often.

I don't know that Sam had any underlying psychological problems.  He may have, but he may just as easily not have.  If he did, an environment such as this would have exacerbated his problems.  But even without underlying problems, this environment tended to feet aggression and anger, and tended to frown on people wanting to get out of the environment*.  That most of the kids I grew up with turned out alright (holding down jobs, raising families, and the kid who grew up across the street from me has become a very succesful business owner in a line of work for which he is very talented and skilled) is a testament to how resilient people tend to be.

But there were quite a few who are lost.  I do not claim that they are not responsible for their own actions.  However, it takes a special kind of ignorant fool to assert that our actions take place in a vacuum, without context, and are not influenced by where we come from and how we learned to live there.  Sam has no excuse for his actions, but that does not mean that his actions don't have an explanation.





*For example, when I left for college, a large number of the people with whom I had grown up either stopped talking to me, or else would only talk to me in order to be condescending and insulting towards me. They made it very clear that anyone who was leaving for college was not someone that they wanted to have anything to do with.

Oh, Baby!

So, as noted in my last post, I have not posted for about two weeks due to much of those two weeks being taken up with the birth of my daughter and her first week of life.  I am working on a few entries on archaeology, and will hopefully have those up soon.  In the meantime, I am going to do the blog equivalent of showing you boring family photos by showing you family photos on my blog.

I know, you are so excited.

Little Ella Marie was born on Thursday, September 20th, and 7:27 PM, and weighed in at a whopping 9 lbs, 3 oz (outweighing my baby weight by 1 oz, and her mom's by 2 oz).

She had some rough patches in the first five days, with trouble feeding, but we seem to have turned the corner on that, and she is gaining weight and energy every day.  It's true that every baby has some sort of problem, and feeding problems are among the most common, and these do not prevent the child from turning out just fine...

...and I know all of this, which kept me from going into total panic.  Nonetheless, when it's your baby, you have a hard time seeing this for the typical set of issues that it is, and instead worry about the dire potential of the situation.

As a result, the last week has been a worrying one, but now that she is feeding more regularly and seems to be getting stronger and healthier, both Kaylia and I are breathing easier.

Over the last few days, she had two modes: hungry and asleep (well, truth be told, hungry would sometimes grade into frustrated/angry).  However, she has now added brief episodes of "awake and curious" to the mix.

It is too early to tell what her eye color will be, but there are some indications that it may be green like mine (though, in truth, they could very well turn brown like her mother's).  She has ears that match Kaylia's, but she has her dad's cleft chin (statistically speaking, an unusual trait for a girl).

At any rate, I am finding a great deal of satisfaction in simply holding her and having her look up at me.  And I have even taken to reading to her from Doctor Seuss books in the evening - she may not understand anything being said, but she gets to have her dad talk to her, and she seems to like the sing-song timbre of the books.

Okay, I'll get back to archaeology soon, but I felt inclined to share.

New Arrival

So, my daughter, Ella Marie Metcalfe-Armstrong was born last Thursday at 7:27 PM.  She was 9 lbs, 3 oz. at birth, and her mother was in labor for 51 hours.  So, it should be no surprise that I wrote nothing at all on this blog last week.

I hope to be back up and blogging soon.  In the meantime, I am going to enjoy being a dad.

Another Distraction

So, one part of the reason that my posts have been a bit sporadic as of late is that I have been int he field alot, and there were the holidays.  However, it looks like this sporadic posting may continue for a while because we have recently discovered that my partner, Kaylia, is pregnant (which we planned, so we're both pretty happy about this).  So, my attention is likely to be on other things more often from here on out.  I will continue to update, and I will try to get back to my old 3-times-a-week schedule, but we will see how it goes.

And, for anyone offended, the title of this post is intended as a joke. 

Why I Stay in Archaeology

I have had mixed feelings about my line of work. I have written previously about the annoying schism between resource management archaeologists such as myself and academic archaeologists. I have written about frustrations with a few (thankfully, very few) clients and projects, as well as frustrations with some agencies.

And yet I stay in this profession. I would even go so far as to say that, despite my occasional angst, I enjoy this profession. Why?

Well, a part of it is that it feels good to protect something for the sake of other people. It is a rare thing that I recommend protection of a site and then am able to do research-related work on it myself. Rarer still are the sites that I recommend protection for that I am able to visit for non-research or management purposes later. When I do recommend protection, I usually recommend the least impactful thing possible, which means that I recommend against archaeological investigation if at all possible, so I don't make any additional money off of the site, either. What this means is that the site is preserved for interested parties (Native Americans in the case of prehistoric and some historic sites, descendants or members of the interested public for other historic-era sites) and for research archaeologists, who will be armed with the tools and methodology to do a better job than the constraints of my job sometimes allow. The point is, I don't usually benefit from this, but I feel good knowing that someone else will.

Another significant reason that I stay is, for lack of a better way of putting it, I have been developing a sense of adventure. Now, archaeology is not an Indiana Jones-esque enterprise in which we risk life and limb on a regular basis (in fact, if our safety protocols have been well developed and executed, we should be in considerably less risk of harm than the average construction worker). However, we go places that most people don't, and we see things that most people can't on a regular basis. On any given work day, I am as likely to be in the field as in the office, and while much field work is enjoyable but unexciting, there are many days when I will be walking along a ridgeline looking down into the agricultural valleys of southern California, or I'll be hugging a cliff side in the Sierra Nevadas, or I'll be opening up a 1,000-year-old grave in the Napa Valley. Also, I am the only person I know who is not in the military who, in the course of a single week, has used as transportation all of the following: a helicopter, a 4-wheel drive truck, a boat (mutha'fucka'), and my ol' trusty hiking boots. I have been caught in freak snowstorms (twice), walked through Kern County's oil fields in 110+ degree temperatures (while carrying 30 pounds of equipment strapped to me), hiked for three hours carrying all of my camping and excavation equipment on my back, and stayed in 4-star casino hotels for meetings in which I would be accused of all manner of evil-doing by county planners. I have learned to speak diplomatically to armed ranchers who are worried about trespassers, to chase off packs of dogs using nothing but my voice, and how to deal calmly with the nut-jobs that one sometimes finds in isolated places. My job is often frustrating, sometimes unpleasant, but it is rarely boring. Considering that just a few years ago I considered spending a few days away from home an annoying disruption of my routine, I would say that the fact that I have come to appreciate, and even crave, these sorts of events indicates definite personal growth.

Related to the last point, another reason that I stay in archaeology is that I have the best work-related stories. Seriously. Most of my friends have work stories about what a tool their boss is or what wacky things their co-worker did with the photocopier, or more seriously, what they are doing to work their way through their employer's advancement process. These stories are entertaining, often hysterically so, or interesting, but they are of a different flavor altogether from my experiences. My stories involve hiking down a mountain hoping to escape a snowstorm, or being trailed by large animals in the wilderness, or a county coroner forcing me to use my Ford Escort as a transport for human remains*, or having to walk around with gas detection badges to let me know if death or injury via hydrogen sulfide is imminent. They are not inherently any more interesting than the stories that my friends have, but they are more unusual and therefore telling them once always results in my friends insisting that I tell them again when I am introduced to someone new.

The joy of discovery should also not be ignored. Most of my projects are relatively cut-and-dry. I go out to a place where some sort of construction project is proposed, I look for archaeological sites. If I find them, they are usually of standard types that I see routinely, and I record them. Sometimes I have to engage in small scale excavations to determine if a site is eligible for federal or state historic registers (they usually aren't). I then write a report and send it to the client, and my work is done. But sometimes things are a bit different. I have found weird and unexplained earthworks in the hills of eastern California; I have recorded sites covered in so much spectacular rock art that I spent weeks on end staring in amazement; I have excavated sites that were in the wrong location for the type of sites that they were, and contained the wrong kinds of materials for their region, meaning that something interesting was happening there that defies all of our models of prehistoric human behavior; and I have input data into a spreadsheet, run some statistical tests, and discovered that a set of data requires revision of my assumptions about the way that humans interact with their world. These are great moments, and they are not only intellectually rewarding, but I find myself in a state of physical euphoria when they occur.

There is, of course, a sense of mystery inherent in some of this work (though, it should be said, that this is a rather small portion of the work). Most of the time it is just a job, but every now and again, I get this feeling, like a chill running down the back of my neck. I'll be excavating a pit, and will pick up a spear point, and realize that I am the first human in two thousand years to see or touch it. On other occasions, I'll look at a landscape, and will see it not as it is now, but as it was centuries ago, and realize that even in a large crowd, I am the only person present who is seeing what I see. At times like this, I feel as if I am seeing something that is hidden, that has been locked away from humanity, but of which I now have the privilege of getting just a fleeting glimpse. It is maddening, but also thrilling, and while it doesn't happen very often, I always want more.

And finally I have to admit that a part (though an increasingly small part) of the reason that I stay in is the fact that I have invested so much time and energy into this career path - between time spent on the job and time, energy, and money spent getting the training and the Bachelor's and Master's degrees - that I am loathe to leave it. Several years back, when I had not yet grown accustomed to the crazy lifestyle that archaeology imposes on you, I was unhappy but stayed with the job because I didn't want all of that energy to have been spent for nought. Now, however, I find myself increasingly enjoying the job, and I am glad that I stayed with it.








*Seriously, this happened.

Wrapping Up

So, as stated before, I am leaving my current job to go to another one. I will still be involved in archaeology, and in fact will be doing essentially the same job, just with a different company in a different city.

It's a strange feeling. when I came to work with my current employer, I had intended to stay there for a good many years and get re-entrenched into the Monterrey Bay area, a location that I love. I had felt that I was returning home (I grew up in the Central Valley, in Stanislaus County specifically, but moved to Santa Cruz when I was 20 and adopted it as my home), and had anticipated building a life here. If the job went away - as sometimes happens, then I would find another in the area - by that time I figured that I would have enough skills and contacts to be able to find work with another company or with an agency within the general area.

I didn't anticipate what happened, or that it would happen within 3 and a half years. My company's main projects have gradually moved farther south, and the intensity of the fieldwork has increased, meaning that I spend much more time away from home than at home these days. At the same time, several family obligations have appeared which require me to be at home. So, I have given notice at one job and accepted another in Fresno.

I am genuinely excited about the company, I have worked for them int he past and they are fantastic, but it is difficult to return to the central valley 15 years after having left it. Returning to the valley after having escaped is hard - this is something that my friends from the bay area and Southern California have a hard time understanding, but those who are from the Central Valley all understand without me having to articulate it.

The Central Valley was always a decent place to live. Those of us who grew up there simply developed a bit of an inferiority complex because of all of the attention payed to the Bay Area and Los Angeles. When I was younger, it must be said that the Central Valley was a place of limited opportunities and social rigidity. But people have moved around, economic forces have changed the map, and the Central Valley is now quite different.

The valley has changed in the last 15 years, becoming a more vibrant and dynamic place than it had been during my childhood and early adulthood. I have also changed - I am more independent, less timid, and I have learned that you can make something interesting happen and that the place where your bed is located doesn't have to limit your options or life. What's more, I am returning to the Central Valley to take a career-track job that requires an advanced degree and considerable experience, not because I failed and have to head back home.

So, here we go. I am finishing up my projects this week, and packign up my apartment.

Moving On, Again...

So, as stated several times lately, I have been slammed with work in Southern California. This has been keeping me from taking care of family duties, and has also put strain on my personal relationships. So, that means that I have to make a change.

I will be moving back to the Central Valley in order to be able to do fieldwork closer to home and to be near my sisters and their children. I will be moving over the course of the next month, so my updating schedule will continue to be sporadic. However, once I have moved, I should be able to update three or more times a week, so that will be groovy.

Home Office

So, my office is closing down. Don't worry, I still have a job. But, my office is closing down. When I am in town, I'll be working from home, and when I am out of town, I'll be spending my time down in Los Angeles County working on a large transmission line project.

So, I still have a paycheck, I still have health insurance, and I still have a job. I just won't have an office after the end of this month. There are some up-sides to this. On the one hand, working from home will be pleasant in that I will be able to have my workspace as I wish, without concerns about disturbing coworkers. It'll also be nice to not have to get up, get dressed, and drive to work - starting the day by walking down the hall in my pajamas is a nice idea. On the downside, I do like the structure of having a place to go, and a set number of hours a day when I am supposed to be there. I genuinely like associating with my coworkers, and so to not have daily interaction with them will be a loss. And I tend to be given to over-working anyway, so having the necessity of going home removed may increase my tendency to overwork*. So, it's got it's up-side and it's downside.

The biggest thing about this for me, though, is the fact that over the last three and a half years, I have spent more time in my office than in my home (see the comment about overworking above). To see it going away is, frankly, weird. It would be one thing if it was going away because it was being replaced with a different office, or if it was staying here but I was going on to a different job. But the office is simply going away, and those of us associated with it are becoming independent in our own personal home offices. It's sort of a lonely feeling.

So, anyway, I'm still working, and all is well on that front. It's just a weird feeling to see what has become part of my home going away.






*For example, several years back, a friend of mine needed to get hold of me at 10 PM on a Friday night. Before they called my cell phone or my home phone number, they tried my office, and I answered. When I asked why they called that number first - pointing out that it was, after all, 10:00 on a Friday night - they said that, based on past experience, they felt fairly certain that I was more likely to be at my office than anywhere else at that time.

The Social Dance of Grief

Comforting grieving people is a tricky business. In part it's tricky because dealing with anybody in any highly emotional state is a tricky business. But grief is made more difficult by the fact that those things that might be comforting to you may further aggravate the emotions of the person who you are trying to help.

Three years ago, my step-grandmother died. She had been deteriorating for several years due to Alzheimer's, and, as is often the case, was truly gone well before death. At her funeral and after her death, I was present for family members, and tried to be helpful. However, I know that I was not as comforting as many of the other people present for the simple reason that I never said nor agreed to anyone's assertion that we would see my grandmother again in Heaven. Most of my family members didn't notice that I wasn't joining in the after-life chorus, but a few did, and they were, not displeased as such, but clearly felt that I was not as helpful as I could have been.

Still, I felt, and still feel, that it was better that I not say anything that the person would likely find out that I didn't believe. That feels like a betrayal of the person's trust that could re-open wounds when the griever discovers that I lied, and is not something that I think is appropriate. It seems better to do what I can without lying, thought I know that int he short term this will not help as much as I wish.

On the flip-side, I often also find myself in odd and uncomfortable places when other people try to comfort me. Because I don't believe in an after-life, I often find myself frustrated when people try to assure me that I will see someone again in such a place. Of course, I realize that people saying such things shows a legitimate concern and effort to help on their part, and so I try not to be rude to them when they say such things. Nonetheless, it adds an additional frustration to the emotional burden of grief - and the more simplistic the notion of the after-life, the more infuriating it is*. These sorts of things may help soothe the pain of many people, but they simply leave me feeling as if I am being condescended to.

Just as I may not be helping to lift the burden from someone who does believe when I comfort them, when someone tries to tell me of the after-life they are adding an additional burden on my shoulders.

All of this creates this weird dance around grief. We wish to help, but those who are aware have to try to not condescend to or insult the grieving while also helping to share some of the burden of grief. Those who are unaware often make the plight of the grieving worse while trying to help.






*And the next person to spout that juvenile "Rainbow Bridge" claptrap to me is getting tazered!

S.C.A. - Part 1

Three letters should not rule your world. Nonetheless, I should have seen this coming, after all, the initials of my father, the man from whom I received half of my DNA, are S.C.A. For most of my life, these three letters had no significance to me other than that they were my father’s initials.

And then came graduate school.

Like most archaeologists working in California, I joined the Society for California Archaeology as a graduate student. It was a simple affair – I filled out the application, sent in my membership dues, selected my interest categories, participated in the ritual blood-letting and candle-lit orgy in honor of A. L. Kroeber, and I was part of the tribe. It was another S.C.A. with which I had become associated, but that was fine – the pattern had not yet revealed itself.

The Society for California Archaeology provided me with all manner of opportunities for self-abuse and over-burdening. It was here that I began my current habit of public speaking as a professional archaeologist. I began with a paper delivered at the annual meeting, held in Sacramento in 2005. In 2006, the meeting was in Ventura, and I presented two papers. In 2007, in San Jose, I not only presented a paper, but was also co-chair of a symposium that has now turned into an upcoming book for which I have written a chapter. All in all, this S.C.A. was good for my career and bad for my blood-pressure.

My next S.C.A. experience came a year later, when I was recruited for an internship at Vandenberg Air Force Base through the Student Conservation Association. On the whole, it was a positive experience – I learned a good deal about how federal facilities and agencies handle their obligations under the National Historic Preservation Act, I had numerous opportunities to interact with elders and monitors from the Santa Ynez Chumash Reservation, and I was placed in a group that worked for (no I am not making this up) the Air Force’s Space Command (I even met a Sgt. James T. Kirk who worked for Space Command – no I’m not making that up either – I could never figure out why he hadn’t been promoted to captain).

Vandenberg has amazing cultural resources. My job was part paper-pushing (dealing with the basic bureaucracy of managing a large number of cultural resources on a large piece of land) and partially field-based (I used to spend half a day each week visiting endangered sites to see what condition they were in and whether they would need further protection or excavation to prevent the loss of archaeological information to erosion). I also monitored construction work to ensure that archaeological sites were not damaged – one time I even had to monitor construction done by a convict work gang – an odd experience by anyone’s standard.

I went to do the internship on the Air Force Base at the same time that the Air Force Academy was being investigated for aggressive and hostile proselytization of non-Evangelical Christians. The Air Force concluded that the behavior at the academy was inappropriate, but not worthy of extensive action. I cannot speak for the Air Force Academy, but if my base was any indication, then I suspect that those investigating may have been foxes sent to watch the hen house. I never had anyone actively try to recruit me, but the displeasure with non-Protestants was often made known.

For example – every meeting with military officers began with a prayer. And not just any prayer, but one that was clearly Christian, and of a born-again variety. I sat through presentations given by high-ranking officers in which they explained that “we have to tolerate ‘non-Christians’” which included Muslims, Hindus, Jews, Pagans, atheists, and so on, naturally. But the definition of “non-Christian” used by these officers bizarrely included such clearly Christian groups as Catholics, Seventh-Day Adventists, Mormons (yes, they are Christian, most of what you heard is likely distorted or urban legend), and members of the Eastern Orthodox Church. The nature of the presentations made it clear that the officers always thought that they were speaking solely to a particular brand of right-wing Protestant and nobody else, even while the statistics they gave clearly indicated that many other types of folks were always in the audience.

Also, it was official policy that politics and religion were not to be discussed in the work place. It was also well known that this policy was ignored provided that the religion being advocated was Christianity and that the politics being embraced were those of the Republican Party.

So, on the whole, the experience was valuable, but in large part valuable by shaping my views of the disturbing nature of mixing religion with government. Remember, these folks loved Book of Revelation-themed literature such as “Left Behind” and often spoke about how they looked forward to the “End of Days” – and these people have access to nuclear weapons.

Also, I moved to Lompoc to facilitate the internship. And once I had moved to Lompoc, I was introduced to the next S.C.A.: The Society for Creative Anachronism. That is a story for Part 2.

Or you can be a slacker-ass and go to .Part 3.