Wednesday, December 27, 2006
Blue. Different.
The upside is that I can now easily put a picture, text, a feed from another site, or other things on the righthand side of the blog (more webliterate people might find this basic, but I'm happy). So if you have a pic you think deserves right-hand-column status, send it to me - otherwise we're stuck with Sacvan Bercovitch, so act quickly. We can also start using labels for each post, like tags on flickr, which would be really fun to do. I also like the collapsible archive listings.
The downside is I can't figure out how to make the thing list our aggregate names as it did before - instead it wanted to list only my name, which I didn't like, so I just took it off and now we're authorless. The other downside is I hope you guys can all sign in without needing gmail accounts. I'm not sure how that's going to work. Keep me apprised as to possible problems.
Guess what? Polar bears are in trouble...
and they are SO CUTE! And the White House knows it! They're finally being considered for threatened status, and the admin. admits that they're threatened because of thinning sea ice caused by climate change. It's all very well and good (and quite Christmasy! is this one's name Tiny Tim?) but they still won't officially say that *humans* cause this thinning ice, because then we'd be responsible for changing our daily actions and not having SUVs...which not even a polar bear with its paws tucked under its chest can make us give up. Idea: let's just name an SUV after it, and then we'll be squaresies.
Thursday, December 14, 2006
MediaCommons
Having worked with Flow as well as a host of non-academic web publications, I'm pretty interested in efforts like this. One good thing with web-based things is that it can really cut down on the time drag in academic publishing, which is totally disruptive to things like television studies -- by the time people can publish about shows, they've gone off the air.
Writing in a "mediated environment" sounds fantastic. I'll be interested to see how this plays out. I know I've really valued being able to bring video and images into conference presentations; being able to do that easily with my papers/writings would, I believe, be really advantageous."MediaCommons is a response to the host of systemic problems that afflict academic publishing today. Scholarship -- and particularly scholarship in a field as fast-moving as media studies -- is hindered by the often debilitating time-lag between the completion of a piece of writing and its publication, and by yet more delays between the publication of that text and release of any reviews or responses to it. ...
The combination of such structural problems in academic publishing has resulted in an increasing sense of disconnection among scholars, whose work requires a give-and-take with peers, and yet is produced in greater and greater isolation. These problems are particularly acute for media studies scholars, who need the ability to quote from the multi-mediated materials they write about, and for whom form needs to be able to follow content, allowing not just for writing about mediation but writing in a mediated environment."
Wednesday, December 13, 2006
Rocky's Great Chinese Ancestor
Once again the NYTimes has run an article about the discovery of a new animal complete with action painting. Who are these artists and how did they get into this fantastic line of work?
As for the newly discovered mammal:
"...the scientists say it shows that mammals experimented with aerial life about the same time birds first took to the skies, perhaps even earlier."
Tuesday, December 12, 2006
YouTube - Barack Obama Announces Candidacy for President
I can't figure out how to have the clip up on the website.
Monday, December 11, 2006
Global Jeremiad?
Sunday, December 10, 2006
Dinosaur Comics
Carly. I just started reading them a couple days ago (see how behind the Internet times I am?) and I cannot stop. Here is one that goes right along with my dumb "Jurassic Park" paper. Click on the link to see it in actual readable form. May you all procrastinate as I have procrastinated.
Thursday, December 07, 2006
The usual term is "creative writing"
This has some relation to the current debates over copyright legislation/enforcement, and is of course, interesting due to the types of discussions still happening in the wake of the James Frey scandal and the Kaavya Viswanathan debacle and that whole James T. LeRoy thing. As much as I find Viswanathan's actions dubious, I'm ambivalent about Frey, and pretty nonplussed about LeRoy. How "original" do new works have to be? How exposed should their sources be? And, really, who gets to decide if things in creative works are true?
Wednesday, December 06, 2006
Random postmodernism generator
Against Said
On Salon today, a review of a book by Robert Irwin: _Dangerous Knowledge: Orientalism and Its Discontents_. Salient quote: "Irwin maintains that Said's thesis is false, the arguments he made for it dishonest, distorted and weak, and his theoretical framework self-contradictory and evasive. He charges that Said engaged in a counterfactual rewriting of history, attacking figures from earlier eras because they did not say or do what Said thought they should have. Said's entire project, in his view, is 'a work of malignant charlatanry in which it is difficult to distinguish honest mistakes from wilful misrepresentations.'"
The article holds Irwin up as a bonafide scholar in the field (and thus touts the book as a major reimagining): "Irwin teaches at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, has written on Arabic literature and art, and is the Middle East editor of the Times Literary Supplement." Sounds credible, though "written on Arabic literature and art"? That's a little weird. I've written on nudists and forest porn and am no expert in sexuality...Still, the book sounds like it could be important. Anybody else heard anything about it?
Tuesday, December 05, 2006
Oh, now I'm pissed.
Wednesday, November 29, 2006
2 is coincidence, 3 is a trend
Monday, November 27, 2006
On Longing by Susan Stewart...I need it.
Sunday, November 26, 2006
Surely somebody must know this
ISO a book that will explain, delineate, etc, narrative forms in film in the 1920s and 1930s.
Should be easy, right? Anybody out there taken a film theory class? John, maybe there's one on your visual culture list or something?
Thursday, November 09, 2006
Some friend
Tuesday, November 07, 2006
speaking of infections...
and tomorrow noon-4pm at the student services building on dean keaton.
Monday, November 06, 2006
Further Haggard tidbits- the jeremiad never ends!
Sunday, November 05, 2006
Here's a dissertation topic for you...
Friday, November 03, 2006
Can't hide, sinner
So last year, when I wrote that paper about evangelicals who pray for the souls of cities, this man, Ted Haggard, who is the head of the Natl Evangelical Assn, and the founder of New Life Church in Co. Springs (huge megachurch, I think maybe over 10,000 members), was the author of three of my sources.
In some of those books he recounted experiences sitting outside of "adult bookstores" and gay clubs, waiting to ambush people who came out with the force of his pitying prayer. Sometimes, if the people who came out were members of his church, he'd approach them and see if they "needed his help" getting out of the spiritual pit into which they'd dug themselves.
Now a CO man has come forward telling the world that he and Haggard had sex (that would be GAY sex), and that he helped Haggard score meth. The guy's story is pretty credible - he has recordings of some of the conversations he had with Haggard.
I'm not sure whether to be surprised or not. What makes me mad is that this will probably make no difference in the midterm elections, even though it should, because Haggard has had unprecedented access to the White House (he used to talk to the President or Rove like once a week - that phone line has probably been cut off at this point!). Access which he used to push anti-gay and abstinence-only agendas. Ah, the dark, hypocritical miasma at the heart of that whitened smile...
Thursday, November 02, 2006
Sunday, October 29, 2006
What's everyone taking?
Sunday, October 22, 2006
New Edward Abbey book
Postcards From Ed: Dispatches and Salvos From an American Iconoclast.
Also in this article, a quote, from a 1954 Abbey journal, about Texas: "Why pick on Texas? Because it typifies, concentrates and exaggerates most everything that is rotten in America: it's vulgar -- not only cultureless but anti-cultural; it's rich in a brazen, vulgar, graceless way; it combines the bigotry and sheer animal ignorance of the Old South with the aggressive, ruthless, bustling, dollar-crazy brutality of the Yankee East and then attempts to hide this ugliness under a facade of mock-western play clothes stolen from a way of life that was crushed by Texanism over half a century ago. The trouble with Texas: it's ugly, noisy, mean-spirited, mediocre and false."
Damn.
Thursday, October 19, 2006
Didn't they see "Mean Girls"?
God, the NYT cultural reporting section really needs me. In other news, I hate Halloween, and this is part of why.
Tuesday, October 17, 2006
Built to Spill
Monday, October 16, 2006
Um, so, in conclusion, blah blah blah, thus, etc.
best cat
Sunday, October 15, 2006
party time
Thursday, October 12, 2006
Wednesday, October 11, 2006
The immigration debate goes comic
A fun view of recent events. This would be a good resource for any classes we're teaching. Or otherwise.
Monday, October 09, 2006
A rotten Baldwin
Sunday, October 08, 2006
Friday, October 06, 2006
being politically active? what's that?
his basic idea is to try to start a force in academia that's interested in changing american foreign policy - a group that would be unafraid of appearing lefty or crazy or whatever. he writes: "the model for this group is essentially the NRA. Forget about public opinion and focus your attention on campaigns and putting pressure on politicians directly -- if most of the country thinks you're nuts, who cares? If the general population thinks an academic political group is nuts, so what? They think we're nuts anyway. The advantage, though, is that academia is a sprawling social network that's already in place."
(he also points out that it's disgusting how the torture bill's outcome got shoved aside by all this foley stuff. which is true.)
it's all true enough. the question is, what would we do? i think it's even more interesting to think of how we, as AMS people, would understand our own responsibility to integrate our positions on foreign policy into our work. anybody interested in talking about this more?
Tuesday, October 03, 2006
Saturday, September 30, 2006
I freaking love y'all
Thursday, September 28, 2006
Tuesday, September 26, 2006
Friday, September 22, 2006
Exploring the unexplored
Thursday, September 21, 2006
total undergraduate moment
i was just minutes ago walking across the main courtyard-courtcrete area in front of the tower when and where i witnessed an undergraduate moment. in a space between the bushes, at the edge of one of the grassy patches, a young couple was lying on the ground. the boy had his head resting on a football; the girl had hers on his shoulder, but was lying sideways as she still had her backpack on. they appeared to be fascinated by something in the sky, pointing and chatting, but when i looked up i could see nothing for the floodlights all around. perhaps they were admiring the tower and talking with pride about how great it is to be longhorns... unclear.
Wednesday, September 20, 2006
Building a case, one grumpy old white man at a time
Samuel King, school superintendent of Portland, OR, about written examinations (quoted in the 1870s):
"System, order, dispatch, and promptness have characterized the examinations and exerted a helpful influence over the pupils by stimulating them to be thoroughly prepared to meet their appointments and engagements. Next to a New England climate, these examinations necessitate industry, foster promptness, and encourage pupils to do the right thing at the right time."
See? That is why I am so industrious, prompt, and apt. New England climate.
"I don't think I'll sell."
Please, please, please. Do yourselves a favor. Check out these Youtubes of the Kids in the Hall Gavin skits.
Tuesday, September 19, 2006
A question of immunity
Oh yeah, today is Talk Like A Pirate Day.
Thursday, September 14, 2006
The American undergrad immortalized in verse
The green shell of his backpack makes him lean
into wave after wave of responsibility,
and he swings his stiff arms and cupped hands,
paddling ahead. He has extended his neck
to its full length, and his chin, hard as a beak,
breaks the cold surf. He's got his baseball cap on
backward as up he crawls, out of the froth
of a hangover and onto the sand of the future,
and lumbers, heavy with hope, into the library.
-Ted Kooser
Is this poem: Utopian? Deluded? Stupid? Discuss.
RIP Ann Richards
They just did an obit on NPR and interviewed Molly Ivins, who told a story that went somewhat like this (but is way better with accents, so you gotta go to the link):
Richards was in Scholz's, and she was chatting with an African-American state employee (I think this was in the 1970s). A good-old-boy judge came up to the two, and when the employee stuck out his hand to shake, and said "I'm John Miles," the judge kind of touched it with one finger and said "How's it going, boy." Then he turned to Richards and said "And who is this lovely little lady?" And Richards said "I am Mrs. Miles." (Only in the Ivins accent it was more like "Ah'm Mrs. Mahles," said like sugar wouldn't melt in her mouth.) I love it.
Tuesday, September 12, 2006
Speak for yourself, Wooderson
--Matthew McConaughey, before Saturday's Buckeyes-Longhorns game. We all know what happened.
Sunday, September 10, 2006
Saturday, September 09, 2006
cooking like a peasant
in this case).
The Wire
Big Cable is holding the new season of "The Wire" hostage from me, demanding that I pay them or they won't release the prisoner. Said prisoner was just described by Virginia Heffernan of the NYT this morning as "incandescent," "the best season yet," and other infuriatingly positive adjectives. Is anybody else - anybody who has cable - as into this show as I am, and does this person want to host me every Sunday night to watch it? I make a mean...food.
Thursday, September 07, 2006
Mickey v. Clinton
So by now, I'm sure y'all have heard about the new ABC miniseries that points the blame at Clinton for 9/11. From what I hear the miniseries actually reenacts Osama being cornered by the CIA, the CIA officer calling the Clinton White House, followed by the Clinton administration doing a big fat zero. Additionally, while Albright and Clinton have requested advanced copies (which were denied), rightwing bloggers were given early copies and a promise that despite some edits the overall anti-Clinton message would still make the final cut. DailyKos is blowing up with the info.
Here's the question, can I still take my baby brother(2) and sister(4) to Disneyworld without feeling really terrible about myself?
Wednesday, September 06, 2006
NYT peeks into our world
Tuesday, September 05, 2006
Jonesey's Two Cents: Movies
So I just watched "Searching for the Wrong-Eyed Jesus" and was quite mesmerized. The film centers on a quasi-quest, quasi-documentary narrative that sees folk singer Jim White traverse the highways and byways of Southern Louisiana and Florida. It's beautifully shot, has a great soundtrack and comes highly recommended.
I'd say more, but I'd ruin it for you. To the top of your Netflix queues, folks!
Monday, September 04, 2006
Laboring Day
Thursday, August 31, 2006
Cross-cohort consorting
"saturday night, if you rookies aren't too psyched out by the weighty syllabi gestating in your brand-new binders, we were thinking maybe we could have a cohort-to-cohort hangout sesh at some local watering hole tbd (is lovejoy's still around? lisa?) what do y'all think?"
Warren Jeffs gets nabbed
Weren't we just talking about Warren Jeffs on Saturday at Pokemon's? It's as though our collective psychic energy, directed toward him, actually caused his capture. Next Saturday: we find Osama bin Laden. (This is the pic the Times ran of the Jeffs compound...adorable.)
Monday, August 28, 2006
James and ghosts
Review of a new book about William James and the Society for Psychical Research, in Salon. I would recommend it to whoever it was I was trying to convince of the awesomeness of the nineteenth century, on Saturday night (Eric maybe?) You have to watch a site pass to see the article, but the nineteenth century is totally worth it.
Tuesday, August 22, 2006
The Onion nails it, yet again
I realise the Onion is a little hackneyed, but anyone who lives in my neck of East Austin will nod sagely/cackle/weep at this...
Hook 'em hard
Friday, July 28, 2006
ASA
Hey gang,
So I'd feel guity about not posting/reading the blog, but it's summer and it doesn't look like I missed much. I was just wondering who is planning on going to ASA. If it's a lot of us and it looks like we'll all be staying at the hotel, instead of at our medicinal marijuana smoking friends' house, maybe we should try to plan a block of rooms.
See y'all soon
Friday, July 14, 2006
The lawn is over
You see, I am not the only one in the world who thinks that the American lawn is an environmental travesty! (And contrary to popular belief, it's not just because I am too lazy to mow.)
Thursday, June 22, 2006
Dempsey busts one
Check out this guy. He's from Texas! He raps! He scored a goal today against Ghana! I'm trying hard to be posi.
Thursday, June 08, 2006
Football! Football! Football!
I'll be heading off to Fado (on 4th/Colorado) at around 7:45am to catch England vs. Paraguay. Much as it pains me to say it, I will be cheering England on despite the rampant jingoism now prevalent across England (the St. George's cross sort of offends me). It's all about the home nations. Do come and join me if you can- Fado will be full of beered-up expatriates shouting merrily at the screen., and I guarantee merriment.
Monday, May 29, 2006
conference nagging
just a reminder to send in your abstracts and bios for the conference by 30 june (sooner always works too (= ). we need to have 'em to put panels together and to publish in the conference program. somebody yelp if we need to send out the cfp again.
thank you muchly!
Saturday, May 27, 2006
dog puncher in the yukon
"The theaters [in the Yukon during the Gold Rush] were good, bad, and indifferent. We had a troupe that was wintering there, and they gave a series of old plays that were really very well done. Of course 'Uncle Tom's Cabin' had to be given. I had seen this several times in my life, but I never saw the parts of Eliza and Simon Legree so well done. I can't say as much for the pack of bloodhounds. They were represented by a Malamute puppy, drawn across the stage in a sitting position by an invisible wire and yelling his full displeasure to the gods. The ice was represented by newspapers. Eliza acted her part exceptionally well on the newspapers, having seen people actually cross floating ice."
Tuesday, May 23, 2006
is anchorage the world's most depressing city?
public "art" outside my red roof inn.
commentary on the sad mixed up state of modern america.
my nightlife options. note: picture taken at 10:30 pm.
i'm off to homer tomorrow. thank GOD.
Monday, May 22, 2006
Monday, May 15, 2006
What would be helpful?
Some ideas:
EndNote training
PCL database overview
Center for American History
HRC
Blanton Art Museum
Hogg Foundation Library
Benson Latin American Center
Obviously, it is not feasible to do all of these things in a day or two, but if there is enough interest, I can probably arrange meetings throughout the first month or so that people are here to get this stuff done.
Sunday, May 14, 2006
nerd heaven
"Once a book has been integrated into the new expanded library by means of this linking, its text will no longer be separate from the text in other books. For instance, today a serious nonfiction book will usually have a bibliography and some kind of footnotes. When books are deeply linked, you'll be able to click on the title in any bibliography or any footnote and find the actual book referred to in the footnote. The books referenced in that book's bibliography will themselves be available, and so you can hop through the library in the same way we hop through Web links, traveling from footnote to footnote to footnote until you reach the bottom of things."
omigod, omigod, omigod!
Tuesday, May 09, 2006
Off Home
If anyone wants anything bringing back from the old world, drop me a line.
Last dance
Weds is better for me, but I could probably do either in the end. What do you say?
Monday, May 08, 2006
I just passed in my last paper...
Sunday, May 07, 2006
suzan-lori parks
Friday, May 05, 2006
Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo
Koalas: Losers
Via Mannahatta, a very convincing essay about koalas, written by an eighth-grader. Do we think it's a fake? Who cares? It's hilarious. No Joni Mitchell footnotes in this one. Excerpt:
"If a koala goes in the water it won't be able to breathe
with its little short ass. It'd fucking drown soon aas it take
one step into the water. While they at the river trying to get
something to drink a bear could just come to him and snatch its
ass up. It doesn't know protection because they don't have
protection. What they little ass going to do? It can't scratch
him. The bear will beat his fucking ass."
Thursday, May 04, 2006
I am reaching my nadir
For any of you wanting a pop culture reference for discussions of Silent Spring look no further than the second verse:
"Hey farmer, farmer
Put away that DDT now
Give me spots on my apples
But LEAVE me the birds and the bees
Please!"
Wednesday, May 03, 2006
On non-cognates
This just across my desk via the austinist listserv: Lance Armstrong movie being filmed; Matt Damon (?) in the lead. Directed by Frank Marshall, whose other credits include Arachnophobia and Eight Below. It's gonna be very. As somebody on the list pointed out, wouldn't it be awesome if Affleck played Sheryl Crow, and just as visually appropriate?
Monday, May 01, 2006
Sunday, April 30, 2006
Procrastination
peace cat
thinking about texas
Saturday, April 29, 2006
Field Trip
So, I friend of mine just told me about the Hogg Foundation for Mental Health - what does this have to do with us, aside from the mental health counseling we will perhaps all need after end-of-semester paper writing? Apparently they have a library/database/librarians who work on finding people grant money. That's right there is actually a physical space where people are paid to help people like us find some cash.
I thought this would be a great place to take the new cohort as part of their orientation, but I also thought it would be worth testing out (by which I mean, find my own money before sharing the potential bounty with strangers). Anyone up for a little field trip?
Thursday, April 27, 2006
partial liberation
U.S. Grant
It's his birthday. Has anybody ever read his memoirs? Apparently Mark Twain published them, on a subscription basis, and he had ex-Union soldiers go door-to-door in uniform to try to sell people on the idea. Marketing genius! Made tons of money.
Why have I never heard of this/had to read them in class?
This is reinforcing, once again, my perception that I need to be forced—bodily, if necessary—to take a hardcore intro-to-American History seminar.
Wednesday, April 26, 2006
Tell me again?
Shameless
Why not just build a secret underground tunnel between Fox News and the White House and be done with it?
Tuesday, April 25, 2006
Monday, April 24, 2006
Invitations
Sunday, April 23, 2006
Update: Yikes! EndNote has turned against me
Friday, April 21, 2006
My opinion on Chilean movies
Now I must work again, or Becky will chastise me.
knitting can save the world!
if anyone had any doubts....
knitters are suiting up penguins for oil spill recovery.
http://www.smh.com.au/news/National/Knitters-save-endangered-penguins-lives/2006/04/07/1143916701251.html
Thursday, April 20, 2006
13 Ways of Seeing Nature in LA
The piece addresses many of what I see as extremely pertinent questions for those who would be environmentalists and writers/historians: namely, what kind of "nature" is it that we choose to write about? If we really want others to examine/refine their relationship to the environment, shouldn't we talk about/prize the nature that most people see and work with every day, instead of canyons and hawks and dolphins?
Or, as Jennifer Price would put it far better than I just summarized:
"If L.A. symbolizes 'the end of nature' (to use Bill McKibben’s dangerously catchy phrase), it actually has more than enough real fodder for such tales, if you want to write about the sunset on Broad Beach in Malibu or the hawks soaring in Temescal Canyon or the dolphins leaping just offshore or how your heart soars like a hawk or leaps like a dolphin as you watch the sun set offshore from atop the trail in Temescal Canyon.
But there are so many more kinds of nature stories to tell here. I head for L.A.’s wild spots when I can, and delight in hawks, dolphins, and sunsets as much as the next nature lover. I have a special soft spot for ducks. But the anthologies ignore about 90 percent of the nature in L.A. and all the other places we live, as well as most of people’s encounters with nature on Earth. What the crisis of nature writing amounts to, in a few words, is that Thoreau really, really needs to Get on the Bus.
And my own list of favorite representative topics for a more comprehensive, on the bus nature writing in Los Angeles would have to include mango body whips, the social geography of air, Zu-Zu the murdered Chihuahua, and Mapleton Drive near Bel Air. And, of course, the L.A. River, where all the possible kinds of nature stories in L.A. converge."
Wednesday, April 19, 2006
Dogs and bears and horses
Y'all, please come to the roundtable I'm moderating on Saturday. It's at 1:15 pm, in the Governor's Room, in the TX Union.
Don't miss the opportunity to hear the story of Balto the wonder dog, who appears here lovingly cast in bronze and immortalized in Anchorage! The tale will be told and then deconstructed, ams-style! Frozen men of the North will make multiple appearances, only to be chastised for their paternalistic attitude toward "Esquimeaux"!
Also, two other people from my class are presenting - so you'll also get to hear about grizzly bears and racehorses. What the hell else are you going to do of a Saturday?
Monday, April 17, 2006
Next semester classes
Anyone know when we're "supposed" to take our 3 credit Master report section? I figured it would be good to know before meeting with Steve tomorrow.
bun run
i'm gonna do it, but it will be more like a bun walk, as the only
running i've been doing lately is to pcl to get some book before
the circulation desk closes.
www.bunrun.com
addendum:
for those with aversion to the word "bun," there is a 5k called the "ashdash" on saturday.
Sunday, April 16, 2006
Great Spirit, help me to be strong
Friday, April 14, 2006
crazy cat lady
it's going to take a lot to earn the title "crazy cat lady" after this.
i do like that the statesman named the article file "meow.html"
(and yes, i edited the title... as much as i tried to get over it, both who and whom
bugged me, for their own reasons)
Ruination Day
Oh, it's April 14! It's the anniversary of A. Lincoln's assassination, and of Black Sunday (when a big windstorm hit the Dust Bowl in '35), and of the sinking of the Titanic.
Should we all stay home to forestall disaster? Or to write our papers? Or both?
On the upside, Steinbeck published _The Grapes of Wrath_ on April 14, too, in 1939. And Gillian Welch got what I think are a couple good, melancholy songs out of the events of the date.
But I guess maybe if you don't like her music, that just adds to the disaster for you.
Thursday, April 13, 2006
Collyer disease
Tuesday, April 11, 2006
american psycho
"Why look at fish?"
You mean besides the fact that they're awesome? Here's that aquarium article from the Believer that John was talking about today in class.
Monday, April 10, 2006
Boy Scout movie
AMS 394 Final Paper
so, for all who have the time/inclination, let's bring some snacks to class tomorrow. anything is fine, bag of chips, whatever. i have been sitting in the dark and desperately need to go somewhere to purchase a lightbulb, so i will plan to get some trail mix bars while i am at the store.
except for those who have their own strong inclination to do so, we'll skip the mass going to showdown after. perhaps in may....
Sunday, April 09, 2006
Frank Hamilton Cushing
The supp. article this week calls him an "oddball," so I googled him. The dude was born in 1857 and was the curator of the ethnological dept at the National Museum in DC by the time he was nineteen. He went on an expedition with John Wesley Powell to New Mexico in 1879 and then just up and moved in with the Zunis. He initially pissed them off because he was so inquisitive, and then they accepted him and made him part of the Priesthood of the Bow. After all that, he died in 1900 after choking on a fishbone in Maine. I love these weirdos!