Hurricane Ike, three years later

This week, while everyone else I knew was preoccupied with the 9/11 anniversary, I found myself thinking back to a different anniversary and a different pile of debris.

Three years ago last night, Hurricane Ike made landfall on the Texas coast- my end of the Texas coast. Home.

I rode out the storm's landfall on a sailboat on a lake on the north end of Houston with my best friend, surrogate big brother, EMS colleague, real-life hero, and partner-in-lunacy, David. We were crazy stupid kids, I guess; one of us mostly grew out of it, and the other died of it.

This week, I keep thinking of the crazy, scary, awesome stormy night I spent on a sailboat with an old friend, and the days afterward doing the most challenging and rewarding work I've ever done, with a group of people (and dogs) I will always be proud to know and to have worked alongside.

I think I'm going to post a series of hurricane-recovery stories here for as long as they last.

Here's a start, reposted from my old LiveJournal- the post I wrote on returning from the one-year anniversary memorial in Crystal Beach, where we spent a few days searching the debris for those still missing after the storm.

"Last Saturday, my SAR teammates and I had the privelege of attending the anniversary memorial service for hurricane victims at Crystal Beach.

We arrived by way of Winnie that afternoon, driving in from a fundraiser for the CHASER foundation in Conroe, to have dinner with a friend of my teammates before the memorial. On arriving, we found a pair of FEMA trailers parked next to a partially-reconstructed home surrounded by a dozen or so relatives and neighbors all working busily. The friend who had kindly invited us emerged from one of the trailers, where she had been cooking for the workers all day-- lunch, she told us, had been seafood enchiladas, and the kitchen table when we entered was piled high with freshly baked cookies. She was clearly tired, but bright and full of enthusiasm and energy, which seemed to be the general attitude.

Everyone was gathering around the table set up out back as we emerged from the trailer, and the friend cheerfully announced us as one of the teams that did SAR work here after the storm. We were greeted with applause and a couple comments along the lines, "Hey, we love you guys!" and all did our professional best not to get all teary-eyed. That had been an emotional enough bit of work for those of us who were there, and that day was in some ways the culmination of it.

We all joined hands for prayer-- a teammate on one side of me, a friendly stranger on the other-- and I snuck a peek or two around and thought to myself that this was the Texas Gulf Coast at its best, this was the spirit of those who survived the storm, and I realized anew how proud I was to have called this place home once and to have come back to serve these people. There was mud everywhere, still smelling as it did after the storm-- pungent and probably contaminated-- and debris still littered all the land in view, but here was determination and togetherness and laughter and a pile of delicious food. Here was life, and I found myself grinning a little at that before the prayer was over.

Dinner was beyond incredible-- softshell crab, boudin, shrimp, and gator-kabobs, the latter two of which had been swimming around that morning. Nothing like fresh-caught seafood to remind you that life is still worth living.

We listened to our friend talk of how high the water had gotten, the damage to homes in the area, the process of rebuilding. We were introduced to one of the neighbors, a smiling elderly lady whose home had been completely taken by the storm; our friend informed us that she'd found only a single fork. Yet there she was, bustling around making sure everyone had napkins, telling fishing stories from her younger days, smiling.

I lost track of who was related to whom and how, but one of the relatives, a man introduced to us as the provider of the gator, had found some bones washed ashore next to the channel and wondered if they might be human. Four people from Bolivar were still missing, and their fate lingers in the constant awareness of the residents and rebuilding crews. "I'm an anthropologist," I said, "Not the best, but I can take a look if you like." I left it to my teammates to volunteer the dogs, and we all piled back into the car-- three people and four dogs-- to follow the relatives down to the channel.

Said channel is really the ICW where it passes between Bolivar Peninsula and Goat Island north of Crystal Beach. Those of us who were there after Ike like to tell people that there are only two houses on Goat Island... and before the storm, there were none. Further Ike-deposited contents of the island included a refrigerator trailer full of something very rotten by the time we got there, dozens of dead cows (which we kept making poor Pete check, to his disgust), and literally tons of debris. It was a miserable day's slog across that place-- someday I'll write about it, there's a helicopter story, even-- and my team leader and I were only too glad to curse that godforsaken piece of real estate from across the water.

The bones-- according a committee consisting of an anthropologist, an animal science M.S., and three HRD dogs-- were not human. We all figured they had most likely been dragged ashore by the alligator the relatives told us hung out nearby. It seemed likely that they'd come from its underwater stash, since the relatives also reported seeing a hole dug out in the bottom at low tide. Personally I don't doubt that there might be some human bits in there somewhere-- if not from this storm, then from some of the hundreds they never found after 1900 or from other individual cases over the years-- but these were none of the above. As with our work there last fall, this was as much about putting people's minds at ease as it was about actually finding the victims, and in that sense we did good solid work.

That little adventure involved a short slog through the mud down to the water and back. I have Gulf Coast mud on my boots again, and somehow I feel better about life with that reminder of who I am and why I'm here.

We all made it to the memorial just in time to sneak in a few minutes late. The event was held, much to the surprise of my team leader and I, in the gym of the elementary school we'd stayed at the previous fall. The generator trucks and the small city of temporary showers and porta-johns was gone, and the handful of vehicles smashed up against the pilings in the parking area below the school had been cleared away. The debris that had covered the field across the street (I remember too well standing on the porch in the evenings, looking across at that wondering if it held the victims we had spent all day searching for) had been cleared away too.

The air conditioner was back up and running full blast as well, in the whole school instead of just the set of rooms we'd occupied a year ago, and as I shivered through the service I thought, "I remember this gym when it was almost too hot to move and we were in here playing kickball with the firefighters!" If one is willing to stretch the definition of kickball to include strining a volleyball net across the gym, pulling out every ball the school owned (at least a hundred) and trying to see how many we could keep in the air at one time. Bonus points for hitting each other.

The service itself was part reminsiscence, part memorial for those lost, and part celebration of survival and rebuilding. I found myself in awe yet again of the spirit and resilience and determination of these people. I'd seen the destruction and understood as well as any outsider could how much they had lost and endured, and their attitude in the face of that along with the progress they had made in a year were truly inspiring. No one here was asking for a handout. No one here was protesting because they hadn't received enough help. They were helping themselves, helping each other, and being thankful for the outside help they had received.

Very thankful, in fact-- we were all stunned speechless to receive a standing ovation when we were introduced as recovery volunteers. Again, we all did our professional best to not get all teary-eyed, with mixed success.

The memorial portion was beautifully done, and in the accepted tradition for those lost at sea, included a bell tolled once for each of the dead and missing as their names were read. I don't handle bells so well since Medic 9's funeral, but with the help of a cuddly border collie I managed to sit through it. Two of the residents had recovered the bell itself from the debris several months ago.

As my teammates and I rode the ferry back to Galveston after the service, we stood at the rail and watched the fireworks over Galveston. There had been no one lost from Galveston, either dead or missing, and their service must have taken on a slightly different tone. I thought about what we had just been given the honor of sharing with the people of Crystal Beach, and I saw the fireworks as a sign of hope.

There's a folk singer from Fort Worth named Brian Burns, and he wrote a song about the 1900 storm that I had stuck in my head for most of hurricane callout last year. As we drove home Saturday night, I caught myself humming it again:

"I came here to bury the lost souls who perished that day
When the ocean rose twenty miles onto the prairie
And washed it all into the Bay.

And nothing that stood could escape the concussion
Of an angry wave riding on a hurricane wind..." "

The Gravestone Project- First Attempt

I dragged my poor husband out to Sharp Cemetery after work on Wednesday to attempt my first set of data for The Gravestone Project.

I chose that location over Killeen City Cemetery because Sharp Cemetery is smaller and more remote, which means there were likely to be fewer people to be offended by and/or ask awkward questions about what those two crazy people were doing to the gravestones with all those weird instruments.

The "new" GPS (actually a fifteen-year-old Magellan GPS 2000 in suprisingly good condition, which is very basic but does what I need it to do) works pretty well if you give it a minute or to to pick up enough satellites. I knew this already because I spent Wednesday morning at work playing with it, and I now have a partial GPS plot of the funeral home to show for it. Locations were easy enough as a result.

Determining the direction the gravestones were facing was also pleasantly simple despite the fact that I forgot to bring a compass (no excuse since I own three or four) thanks to the fact that Sharp Cemetery is coveniently laid out on pretty close to exact east-west lines (who needs a compass when you have a beautiful sunset because you put off the trip until too late in the day?) so all of the graves are facing either due east or due west, and it's not hard to tell those two apart, especially in the late evening.

Measurements were slightly more problematic. I had acquired a nice set of digital calipers on Amazon.com, and except for one afternoon of enthusiastic fiddling with them, I hadn't really spent as much time practicing measurements as I should have before actually going to the cemetery. I quickly discovered that the digital calipers were technically easier to read than the analog ones I had used back in grad school, but slightly trickier; I must have measured the same spot on one particular marker five or six times, because I kept getting different readings on my calipers.

Determining ground level- which is important in the placement of the measurements, and which also has to be recorded if you're measuring a gravestone on a pedestal, which most of the marble ones at Sharp Cemetery seem to be- was also a little tricky thanks to uneven ground and thick tufts of dried grass. I had forgotten something vital about field work of any sort, in any discipline- it's never as cut-and-dried or neat as the plan says it should be.

By the time we had to leave, after less than an hour of working time- we were late to our planned dinner anyway- we only had one set of measurements which I didn't quite trust, and I was grumpy, frustrated, and disappointed. My remarkably patient husband chalked it up to a learning experience and made a few helpful suggestions, mostly centered on practice, instruction-reading, and a few more items of equipment, like a small level.

With that in mind, I'm hoping to make another attempt this weekend, hopefully with better and more useful results.

Brief moment on the soapbox

I dislike bringing politics into anything at all, though I grudgingly recognize its necessity from time to time.

This will probably cost me what few readers I have, but I feel compelled to respond to the American Anthropological Association's recent decision to boycott Arizona and Georgia as potential conference locations because of their legislative action to combat illegal entry into the United States. I realize that the AAA doesn't care what I have to say, because professionally and academically I am essentially nobody, but the benefit of having my own blog is that I'm going to say it anyway and maybe someone, somewhere, will at least notice for a moment.

Absolutely nothing in an anthropologically-informed worldview compels denial of a nation's right to enforce its own laws or to define and subsequently protect its own borders. Rather, the historical perspective that should accompany a background in anthropology (remembering that the holistic perspective is temporal as well) should reinforce the validity of those rights. As an anthropologist, I find it frustrating that so many of my colleagues overlook this.

There is also nothing in an anthropologically-informed worldview that should compel and individual to feel that access to social services in a country one has entered illegally, from a government to whom one contributes no taxes, are a basic human right. The social contract works in two directions- government's end of the deal involves maintaining order, peace, and essential security; the people's end of the deal involves abiding by the laws passed by their representatives, working within the system to change them as needed, and paying for certain services by way of taxation. If the social contract has been breached by one party- someone who chooses to disregard this country's laws and enter it illegally, continue to reside here illegally, and pay no taxes- then there is no obligation on the part of the government at any level to uphold its end of the contract for that individual, up to an including permitting them to remain in the country.

I object to one anthropologist's (whose work I respect greatly but who I disagree with on this matter) characterization of Arizona's laws as "draconian." As a lifelong border-state resident, I have had ample opportunity to observe the worsening effects of the rise in illegal immigration, in the form of increased crime rates, drastic overburdening of social services, and increased competition for already-scarce employment; having seen and experienced the realities of the situation, I applaud Arizona for acting in its citizens' interest. How many of the AAA's board members have descended from the ivory tower recently to conduct some honest, open-minded participant observation, especially in the border states, to gain a more informed understanding of the cultural, social, economic, and political realities on the ground before passing their resolutions? If the answer is less than "all of us," then the AAA board acted very irresponsibly and not at all like thoughtful, serious anthropologists.

By the way, any and all members of the AAA have an open invitation to visit my husband and I once we complete our PCS move to El Paso (where, by the way, many members of my husband's unit are not taking their spouses and children because they consider the crime rate and risks of Mexico's overflowing drug war too great) to conduct such observation.

Neither Georgia nor Arizona nor the overwhelming majority of those speaking out against ILLEGAL immigration is seeking to close this country's borders entirely to LEGAL entry, ban or repress Hispanic culture, etc. The issue here isn't one of racism or cultural sensitivity; it's a simple matter of not permitting, rewarding, and encouraging violation of this country's laws, and of not tolerating people who want to reap the benefits of a system they aren't willing to contribute to and whose rules they aren't willing to abide by (where I grew up we called that freeloading). Anthropologists, and any other enlightened and decent people, have an ethical and moral obligation to oppose cultural oppression, racial discrimination or subjugation, and other social injustices- but treating people who break our country's law like people who have broken a law instead of like honored guests is none of those things.

Dogs, and a Great Book

Lately I have been reading Inside of a Dog: What Dogs See, Smell, and Know, by Alexandra Horowitz.

It's an incredible book- insightful, well-researched, and beautifully and engagingly written. I have been reading it slowly, a little at a time, giving myself plenty of time to think and digest, and frequently as I read I find myself looking up from the page and over at Duke, who is usually nearby when I'm at home, and blurting out something like "Wow, really?" I'm seeing my own dog, much loved but somewhat taken for granted, from a new and amazing perspective.

As an anthropologist, I'm especially fascinated by the idea that the evolutionary divergence between dogs and wolves was almost solely the result of the introduction of a new species into their ancestors' environment- humans. All the deliberate breeding of dogs into wildly varied forms and functions since is not half so incredible as the idea that our mere presence inadvertently turned one ancestral species into two new ones.

However, as a SAR volunteer who works mostly with search dogs, the detailed discussion of the canine nose and its scenting capabilities was even more personally relevant and interesting, as was this note on one aspect of dog behavior:

"Not only do dogs not typically hunt to feed themselves- whether encouraged to or not- but what hunting technique they have is, it has been noted, 'sloppy'. A wolf makes a calm, steady track toward his prey, without any frivolous moves; untrained dogs' hunting walks are herky-jerky, meandering back and forth, speeding and slowing. Worse, they may get waylaid by distracting sounds or a sudden urge to playfully pursue a falling leaf. Wolves' tracks reveal their intent. Dogs have lost this intent; we have replaced it with ourselves." -p. 57

As I read this, I was reminded of an observation from my husband during our least search callout with the canine team. We were driving to our assigned search area during one of our rare moments together on that mission- the dearth of flankers means that he and I do not see each other much in the field- and he commented on how cool it was watching the search dogs move through their areas with such purpose and focus once their search command had been given. He compared this focus to the way our unemployed border collie would run through the same area; Duke would, as my husband noted, have been all over the place, interested in and distracted by everything, but the search dogs- while not immune to a momentary distraction- gave most things only a brief sniff or turn of the head; they remained focused on their intent, the scent they had just been told to look for.

Insights like that are one of several reasons that I enjoy Greg's involvement with the SAR team: he sees these dogs and their capabilities with fresh eyes. After four years and nearly twenty searches (I think I'm getting old; I kept forgetting missions when I tried to count them just now), the abilities, limitations, and nature of search dogs have become an accepted and normal part of my world, and I find myself taking these things for granted; my husband's questions and observations help me, too, see these dogs and our work in general with a fresh perspective and a renewed sense of wonder.

Even so, sometimes they amaze me even at my most jaded.

On Sunday morning of our last search, we found ourselves working an area whose main features were a dirt roadway- really just a cleared strip with tire tracks in the grass bordered on one side by trees that opened into the field we had searched parts of earlier in the day, and on the other by a steep-sided creek bed, mostly empty with just a few shallow pools of stagnant water. My team leader's two border collies were working mostly down in the creek bed, but when they decided that there was nothing there, I expected them both to backtrack to a point where the walls of the creekbed were lower and more sloped and bore less resemblance to a ravine. Instead, the younger of the pair took a running leap from the bottom of the sheer wall about ten feet to the top; she hit with her forelegs above the edge on flat ground and the rest of her body still hanging over the wall, hindlegs scrambling for purchase. It took less time for me to move toward her than it did for visions of a fall and a badly injured dog to flash through my mind, and it took even less time than that for her push and claw her way to the top and look at me like I was crazy for worrying.

I probably was; my team leader agreed firmly with the dog's point. That was probably a normal dog thing and no great feat, but technically everything that any search dog does in the field is just a "normal dog thing" in the sense that none of them is using any top-secret alien genetically enhanced superpowers. That in itself is amazing. The canine nose, with its incredible sensitivity, is an evolutionary marvel, though it is a marvel that even the household pet snoozing beside me as I write this possesses. The difference, and the truly extraordinary thing about search dogs, is the drive and the hours and hours of training which produce the focus and intent that so amazed my husband in the field.

Introducing Reality Literature

The word "nonfiction" bothers me.

It starts with the premise that fiction is the primary, base category, and that anything else is defined in relation to fiction and therefore subordinate to it. I like fiction immensely and read more of it than is probably healthy, but I still think that's a flawed premise.

Nonfiction isn't the absence of fiction in the way that cold is the absence of heat or dark is the absence of light; it's simply something, the presence of itself rather than the absence of fiction. Besides, even for things which are defined as the absence of other things, we use actual words rather than awkward Orwellian-sounding prefix constructions; it's cold instead of nonheat and dark instead of nonlight.

The question, of course, is which word would work better? "Fact" is not entirely accurate, and it's also a bit limiting; it fits technical reports nicely, assuming they're honest and accurate, but for more analytical pieces or personal narratives, you'd be stretching the definition of "fact" a bit; facts are cold, concrete things, and not all of what we call "nonfiction" fits that. "Truth" also might not be wholly accurate, nor is it a good way to distinguish between fiction and not, as I've observed before.

I wonder how difficult it would be to get people to start calling it "Reality Literature".

No, not really. That would be awful. I need better ideas.

(cross-posted from my personal blog, One Day at a Time)

The Richness of the Quest

I took a break midway through writing this post, and when I glanced at my Facebook news feed, it contained this quote from Joseph Campbell: "[I]f you follow your bliss, you'll have your bliss whether you have money or not. If you follow money, you may lose the money, and then you don't have even that. The secure way is really the insecure way and the way in which the richness of the quest accumulates is the right way." (courtesy of the Joseph Campbell Foundation).

Thanks for the words of wisdom from beyond the grave, Dr. Campbell. You, sir, are my hero. I'm stealing a bit of your quote for a post title.

A few days ago, Dr. Jon F. Wilkins announced his intention to start up the Ronin Institute, a non-profit research institute for independent scholars. I was immediately very excited by this idea, so I sent him an email asking if there might be a way for me to get involved. He replied positively and inquired about my current status, goals, and plans. What follows is a modified and greatly expanded version of my response, which contains more of my personal backstory than I thought Dr. Wilkins would want to have dumped in his inbox.

I have a B.A. in anthropology from a major university with a respectable department, but at present, I am working as the office girl at a local funeral home (following a miserable stint in college admissions at said university and an enjoyable and rewarding but exhausting stint as an EMS dispatcher, also at said university), and I have been out of graduate school since 2009.

I was already contemplating my escape, in the form of either a semester off or a change of degree program, for a variety of reasons; the singleminded, all-or-nothing focus of the academic department was already wearing thin for me, as I had begun graduate school with two jobs and volunteer commitments as a trainee recovery diver, a SAR technician, and an EMS dispatcher, all of which were either necessary (the jobs) or valued and important (the volunteer gigs) parts of my life, and none of which I was willing to give up to fit in with the all-nautical-archaeology, all-the-time, and-nothing-else-matters culture of my department.

I was, and am, deeply interested in the history of seafaring and captivated by the idea of the physical connection to it offered by archaeology (which, incidentally, I just read a great article about today), but I increasingly balked at the idea of defining my life and my worldview by that and restricting my interests to nothing else.

It also, to be brutally honest, became quite hard to take seriously as a life's work; my classmates' and professors' single-minded focus began to seem sheltered and elitist, especially on the days when I stumbled into class after being up all night sending ambulances to deathly ill or injured people or out all night/weekend/both searching for a missing child who more often than not turned up dead if at all; I could still hear the panicked voices on the other end of the phone, see the bodies floating the in lake and the worried, distraught families huddled at Incident Command- that was the real world, and my classmates knew only their ivory tower, and I began to think of them as naive. I began to see that branch of archaeology as fascinating and fun, something I would like to pursue avocationally, but not something I could dedicate my life to in a serious way after those experiences.

I considered taking a semester off in the fall of 2008 to complete a paramedic's license, having taken the EMT-Basic course concurrent with the end of the spring 2007 semester and the subsequent summer, but I debated and wavered until I ended up sticking with graduate school for another semester. I missed a lot of class (and a lot of my paying job) in the fall of 2008, first putting in long exhausting shifts at EMS helping dispatch ambulances to unload medical evacuees from Houston in advance of first Hurricane Gustav and then Hurricane Ike and ferry them from the DMAT shelter to the local hospitals as needed, and then after Hurricane Ike, out in the field with my SAR team at Bridge City, Crystal Beach, and Anahuac, scrambling over debris and demolished houses searching for the remains of the missing.

That was a pivotal experience in my life, and to this day it's the thing I'm most proud of- not my Cum Laude degree from Texas A&M, not my admission to graduate school, not my involvement in projects while there, but those few weeks in the fall of 2008 when I worked my ass off, walked through hell with a few good friends and colleagues, and made a difference.

I felt a need to make a real difference, not an indirect theoretical greater-good-of-humanity difference but a real, conrete, direct difference in the lives of actual individuals, as I said a few months ago in my response to my SAR team leader's blog post about our reasons for doing SAR work. After Hurricane Ike and a few more missions, my mind was made up; I wanted to do forensics, specifically human remains detection, but I still had hopes of combining it with Nautical Archaeology to work on submerged remains, with the most likely application being POW/MIA recovery (which is also a cause I have long had a soft spot for).

Unfortunately, early in the spring semester of 2009, a very close friend, who I usually describe(d) as my brother, died in a car wreck; the loss and my failure to cope well with it left me too distracted, depressed, and generally useless to finish out the semester, though I muddled through an unsuccessful attempt because I wasn't sure what else to do and wasn't thinking clearly enough to consider it.

I never even formally left. "Oops" might be an understatement.

At present, my intention is to return to school for an eventual doctorate in physical anthropology, but both finances and geography are a challenge; my husband is in the Army, so we don't get much choice about our location, and committing to a traditional academic program at this point would be highly impractical even if we could afford it. My hope is that within the next few years we can some financial issues sorted out and perhaps even get stationed somewhere near a university with a suitable program, and then I can work quickly enough to complete a degree before we get sent elsewhere again. In the meantime, I find that I miss the academic community and involvement in research and the exchange of ideas, even more than I expected that I would. Once I get this graduate school thing sorted out, I hope and intend and plan and want to work in my actual field; I would enjoy working for JPAC, maybe, or an ME's office wherever we end up, but I do not forsee an academic career in my future- I'm not willing enough to sacrifice the rest of my interests and goals for it- but I do forsee and hope for continued involvement in research.

Where and how I see myself in terms of goals, ambitious, and interests has come into focus in a much more useful way in the past few months, so that I have a good idea of what I want to be doing, and who I want to be, in the short term, on the way to my return to school, and how I would like that to fit into the transition back into a degree program and the shape I would like my career to take afterward. I am beginning to finally take to heart the advice my father once gave me when he said that I shouldn't try to make a career out of every passing interest- but I'm mingling that with my own recent discovery that inability to make a career out of an interest doesn't make it any less a valid and important part of my life, my work, and my identity. I'm a happier person, and a more productive one (in whatever sense you want to define "productive", which I'm learning is also a highly variable word) for that combined realization.

It really is about what Joseph Campbell called "the richness of the quest," and productive endeavors are endeavors that contribute to that for me, whether or they're professional, paid, and/or institutionally supported.

SAR will always be one of those productive endeavors for me. I enjoy the occasional adventure, the fieldwork, the camaraderie, and the dogs; I thrive on the sense of purpose. It's what I live for and an essential part of who I am.

Another of those endeavors, which suffered somewhat during my time in graduate school and which I am only recently returning to in any serious way, is writing. I have wanted to be a writer since third grade; I remember almost the exact moment when I discovered writing was fun, and I have been obsessed with telling stories and shaping words ever since. I need the creative outlet, and I find that I am happier and feel better about myself on days when I get a substantial amount of writing done; only recently have I figured out that I have to let myself see this as a valid productive activity so I can give myself the time for it and feel good about getting it done and proud of the results.

Blogging is sort of an extension of that; it's a different kind of outlet, which lets me tell slightly different stories- true ones- in more appropriate ways; it also gives me a place to vent, a place to put ideas that aren't fully developed enough for other venues and may never be, and a way to stay at least somewhat connected with an intellectual and academic community.

I do miss that sort of connection, and I miss involvement in interesting research. My research interests are somewhat scattered, but my primary interest, the one I hope to focus on in my eventual career, is human remains / clandestine grave detection. This is primarily an outgrowth of my volunteer work, as several years of observations and experiences in the field have both given me theoretical curiosity about these things, and emphasized the need for answers to certain questions and improvements in certain methods and procedures. I can easily see a life's work in finding the missing, bringing closure if not comfort to the bereaved, and maybe even bringing the bad guys to justice.

I have a secondary set of research interests, which I mostly intend to be avocational, in mortuary iconography, gravestone and historic cemetery documentation and preservation, and historic grave detection and documentation. At the moment I'm finding an outlet for that through Find-A-Grave and my related blog Last Words; this is also a much easier area to pursue independent research in than forensics,
so I am currently working on a couple of independent projects on changes in iconography patterns across time and region.

None of that alters or replaces the basic fact that I have to earn a living, and that my husband and I both would like to be living a bit more comfortably than we presently are, so as much as I might like to, I can't abandon all monetary concerns and become a self-unemployed bliss-following writer/researcher/emergency responder/philosopher. That does sound like a lovely retirement plan, but in the meantime, I've come to some realizations about work, as well. First, I can be essentially content with my life, if not my work hours, doing even the relatively unfulfilling, degree-irrelevant sorts of work that Liberal Arts and Humanities BA's often get stuck with, so long as I have those other productive, fulfilling aspects of my life to give me a sense of identity, progress, involvement, purpose, and self-worth.

Second, it's easier than I originally thought to find interesting and/or fulfilling work now that pays decently, even if it doesn't directly bear on either my current or future degree; that's where having a diverse set of interests helps. My job at the funeral home, for instance, has its challenges, but it's not the sort of thing anyone needs a degree of any sort for, and it's solidly below the level of responsibility that I'm technically qualified for- but it's interesting work, and it's deeply fulfilling to go home at the end of the day knowing that I have helped someone, even if only in a small way, at a moment when they badly needed it, so I am content; this is a good place to be for now, on my way to another eventual destination.

In A Pirate Looks at Fifty, Jimmy Buffett commented that when he was a child, a frustrated adult demanded to know what he wanted to do with his life; the young Buffett replied that he wanted to live a damned interesting one.

Me too.

Looking for some body...

Mission callouts from my SAR team leader all seem to take the same shape these days; the phone rings, and he asks, as usual, "What are you doing this weekend?"

I reply, as usual, "I don't know, but I have the feeling you're about to tell me." I also have the feeling it's going to involve dogs and probably at least one dead person (missing people who might be alive typically won't wait for a weekend; those happen on their schedule, not ours). As usual, I was right on all counts.

I don't get to see my SAR teammates nearly enough since I moved out here with Greg last year; it was a very sudden transition from seeing them all at least twice a week, often more, to maybe once every couple of months if time and gas money fell into place. These people, and most of the dogs, too, are like an adopted family to me, and I miss them, and part of me feels a little guilty about leaving. If this PCS move to El Paso goes through, it may be several more months before I can work with them at all, so when I got the call from my team leader the other day, there was the usual drive to find the missing, solve the mystery, help the family, but also a much more personal and sentimental reaction to getting to spend a weekend in the field with my team again.

As soon as I hung up the phone, I realized I had just done something slightly stupid; the medication for my Crohn's-related iritis dilates my pupil and makes me painfully and ridiculously photosenstive, to the extent that I can't tolerate sunlight even with two pairs of sunglasses on. The only solution, since I wasn't willing to miss the search, was skipping my medication for a couple of days. That went tremendously better than I honestly expected, though not without some moderate discomfort.

I make the comment on every search, and it always applies: "Why am I never following this guy and his border collie through anything pleasant?" Despite being nominally "in town," our search area this weekend was composed partially undeveloped and partially abandoned areas, full of brush and undergrowth as only Texas can do it; Greg came home with an inexplicable spot of poison ivy on the inside of elbow (seriously, how do you get poison ivy there?) and I managed to garb hold of a thorny vine this morning, so I spent a few minutes cussing and bleeding- but honestly, I live for this shit; the messier and harder the better. I'll take my adventures where I find them.

Heat was a major challenge this weekend; it limits the working time of both dogs and people, but the limits heat places on the dogs are narrower and less negotiable. Even an eager, willing dog cannot do scent work effectively in extreme heat, because the act of panting affects airflow through the nasal passages in ways that bypass most of the important bits for serious scenting, and because the heat changes the extent to which the scent itself emanates from the remains and the way those molecules behave. Our work was limited to half days, which meant early mornings, several hours of searching, and then lazy recuperative afternoons. That turns out to be a really pleasant combination; being clean and cool and lounging around with a good book and a glass of sweet tea is something you never really understand how much you fail to appreciate properly until you're doing it after a morning of sweat and dirt and soreness, and the tiredness itself is that vaguely pleasant kind that comes from having done something fulfilling.

The case itself was too interesting to pass up, and as we worked this weekend, we increasingly found that much about the situation and the information we had were difficult to make sense of (hence my comment on Twitter, during a break at base, that every case is different but some are more different than others). We spent some time at dinner last night comparing notes, exchanging ideas, and debating theories and fragments of theories; our informal version of debriefs, those discussions, especially when we're all loopy and giddy from exhaustion and heat, are always one of my favorite parts of the mission.

I'm really glad, as always, that my husband Greg is willing to do this work with me. Search and Rescue / Recovery is demanding work mentally, physically, and emotionally, and requires a commitment of time and resources that few people are willing or able to make; without understanding and supportive family members, it would be impossible to do what we do. I had hoped for and expected that support, but I'm continually amazed by and grateful for Greg's willingness to be actively involved with the team himself.

His training and competence are tremendous assets in the field. Just today, he ended up running communications at base (at least partially because he was mildly frustrated with civilian radio practices; this was when I learned that the word "repeat" in military radio protocol means "shoot it again" which is not something that comes up a lot in civilian applications). My teammates are like my family, and I don't lightly trust anyone to watch out for them, but I know I can count on Greg.


Besides, my teammates are like my family mostly because of the nature of this work. The hours together, the shared challenges and experiences, the moments of silliness and stress and triumph, and the emotional nature of what we do all form a bond that you sort of have to experience to understand. I'm glad that Greg and I get to share that too.

(cross-posted on my personal blog, One Day at a Time)

The Gravestone Project

All that nonsense about not doing any more cemetery stuff until the weather gets cooler pretty much went out the window last week when I discovered The Gravestone Project, courtesy of EarthTrek (although I'd like to point out that I did admit that decisionw ould probably only last until I saw something irresistibly interesting).

For the record, I'm an enthusiastic, if recent, fan of "citizen science" programs in general, partly because they're a clever and cost-effective way for researchers to gather certain kinds of basic but important data, partly because they're a really great hands-on public relations and educational tool, and partly because they're a nice combination of fun, worthwhile, and interesting (I'm working on a whole other blog post about the social and cultural implications of programs like EarthTrek, sites like Find-A-Grave, and other sites and programs that link online presence with offline task completion).

The Gravestone Project aims to plot global patterns in the severity of "acid rain" based on erosion of marble, which is particularly susceptible to its effects. This is accomplished by measuring marble gravestones and comparing their thickness at the base (which is less exposed to rain), the sides about midway up (which are slightly more exposed to rain) and the top (which is the most exposed), and comparing the difference in thickness (the amount of erosion, in other words). That difference, based on the age of the gravestone, lets the researchers calculate the extent of acid rain erosion during that time period in that location.

It seems like a worthwhile project, and I expect that seeking out marble gravestones and taking the measurements will give me something additional to do on cemetery outings, along with Find-A-Grave requests and my own iconography studies. If anyone is already involved in Find-A-Grave, this might be something worth considering.

I got a nice shiny set of digital calipers on Amazon (for about ten dollars including shipping); they just arrived in the mail today, so I'm all set to get started. I'm excited; I haven't measured things in the field since graduate school.

(cross-posted on my personal blog, One Day at a Time, and my gravestone and cemetery blog, Last Words)

Cool Note About Peat Bogs and Local Crafts

Cross-posted on my personal blog, One Day at a Time.

A recent post about bog bodies on Bones Don't Lie reminded me how awesome and interesting peat bogs are. The part of me that will always think of myself of an archaeologist is fascinated by their preservation potential.

On his way home for R&R just before our wedding last year, Greg's flight stopped in Ireland, and he brought home this gorgeous carving.

It was made by these people by kiln-firing and carving bog turf that's several thousand years old- older than some of the finds in that post I linked. My inner archaeologist had a "Squeee!" moment over that, and locally-crafted products are something else I'm a fan of.

I had a professor in college whose home office was decorated entirely with souvenirs his students had brought him over the years from their trips abroad; someday I imagine us having a similar room full of things Greg has brought back from these "business trips" the Army keeps sending him on.

This is EXACTLY What I Mean! Smurfs and Gender Identity

This is exactly what I meant in my previous rant about gender biases in children's media.

Philip N. Cohen posted a great article on Family Inequality about Smurfette.

I'm told that there are valid backstory reasons for having only one female Smurf (if you actually want to talk about validity and backstories and canon in reference to The Smurfs), and honestly it just struck me as the kind of careless world-design you can get away with in cartoons for very small children- look at the original Transformers cartoons for another good example of that. I never gave the Smurfs much thought beyond that bit of silliness; they didn't seem worth it, especially since children's culture really isn't my cup of tea and I'm much busier being a Transformers fangirl-in-training. As an interesting note about how Internet browsing works, I followed a link from Powered by Osteons on Twitter to an interesting article about hilariously misinterpreted demographic data, and from that I followed the link to the Smurfette article.

Dr. Cohen posted an image of the poster being used to advertise the Smurfs Happy Meals (yes, I love my gender-biased messages with a side order of grease and fat).

"This one likes to cook, this one is smart, this one is athletic, and this one is a girl. That's who she is and what she does." That's the message here.

This seems to be a recurring theme in children's toys and media; one gender gets to define itself in ways not tied to a gender identity- interests, hobbies, goals, skills- and the other is continually encouraged to define itself solely based on its gender identity.

Jonesville Cemetery (Photography by Dunerat)

Reposted from One Day at a Time.

This is the blog post I've been looking forward to writing all week!

Since we were on vacation in the Atlanta area last week, I couldn't resist the lure of some of the area's great historical cemeteries. We had a ton of sightseeing planned already, and the primary focus of the trip was visiting family, so I knew I couldn't actually spend the entire week dragging my poor husband around a bunch of cemeteries, no matter how excited I was about them, which meant I needed to pick one I that was really excited about.

Unfortunately for Greg, he can't resist my jumping-up-and-down excitement any more than I can resist his, which is not at all.

I borrowed my father-in-law's computer to hop on Find-A-Grave (which launched some interesting conversations because he is a genealogy enthusiast himself) and searched for photo requests in the area. There were several open, and I picked out a few likely prospects from among the cemeteries listed; my particular interest is older graves. The iconography fascinates me, as it has since I first read about it as an example for applying a battleship curve to typological seriation back in my undergraduate archaeology classes (. I'm perfectly happy to fulfill photo requests for more recent interments, of course, but I get especially excited about historical ones.

The notes on the Find-A-Grave page for Jonesville Cemetery grabbed my attention. "This cemetery was recently uncovered. It contains the graves of freed slaves. The Mt Sinai Baptist Church is clearing the land for the cemetery." The page listed only four interments in the cemetery, none of which had photos. I was instantly thrilled by the prospect of tackling this project- a very historically interesting, mostly undocumented cemetery belonging to an often-overlooked segment of the population. As an added bonus, it sounded small enough to make a manageable morning outing, which was a selling point in presenting the idea to my husband.

A quick Google search turned up a couple of local news articles which provided some further information and heightened my interest. The cemetery is located on Dobbins Air Reserve Base, not far inside the gate.

The helpful duty staffer at Dobbins gave us good, clear directions, and despite his insistence that the cemetery was "pretty hard to find," we walked right to it and wondered what on earth he was talking about when he said that. It was a bit secluded, but the fenceline was readily visible from the path we had been directed to, and the gate was standing open when we arrived, giving us our first glimpse of a sparse handful of gravestones half-hidden among brush and overgrowth.


We were both surprised at the sheer amount of overgrowth in the cemetery, given the enthusiastic news articles about clearing, cleanup, and more planned work days. Only the northern portion of the cemetery was clear enough to walk through. The southern end of the fenced property was still too densely overgrown to penetrate at all, or to glimpse any gravestones in, if any were there. I haven't yet spoken to anyone at Mt. Sinai Baptist Church to find out what stage their cleanup effort is in and what activity has taken place since the first round of news articles in early 2011, but my best guess is that their efforts this past winter focused on the northern end of the cemetery for one reason or another, and that those efforts could not prevent spring and summer's growth of dense foliage.

The cemetery was alive with swarms of mosquitoes and yellowjackets, and within minutes I was regretting having packed only my favorite pair fo flip-flops for our entire trip; I had itchy feet the whole way home. Even my usually bug-immune husband was swatting at mosquitoes and went home with a few itchy bites, though thankfully we avoided any repeats of the yellowjacket incident at our wedding- not for lack of recklessly stomping where I pleased without regard to where the silly things were buzzing around. The whole experience definitely felt more like a crazy wilderness adventure than the sedate stroll through a historical cemetery that I had been expecting earlier in the week. Fortunately, I like that kind of thing.

In the accessible northern section of the cemetery, the plant growth was still daunting, and we found ourselves wading through tall weeds and occasional thorns and burrs to make our way from grave to grave, and getting a photograph of most of the markers meant clearing away varying amounts of foliage first; we made sure to get before- and after-clearing images, partially because, thanks to having been an archaeology student in a former life, I believe in documenting any changes made to the site, and partially just to illustrate the overgrown state of the cemetery.

The photo request that drew us to Jonesville Cemetery in the first place was for Rebecca Bedford (1865-1908) whose children touchingly memorialized her as simply "OUR MOTHER." Sadly, we found her marker lying under a tree, broken and lying on its own base.


Mrs. Bedford's marker was in otherwise in good condition, only slightly weatherworn; the clasped-hands engraving was still clearly visible, and the epitaph was legible (except for the last line being partially obscured by the stone's breakage).


Mrs. Bedford's gravestone was one of the last we found, though; we found ten interments during our morning's exploration, including the double-interment of L.B. and Rosa Moore. Their double headstone was lying flat on the ground, though it did not appear damaged; it was almost totally obscured by weeds and underbush when we noticed it after the pair of footstones bearing the initials L.B.M. and R.M. caught our attention.


Upon clearing, only the surname "MOORE" was visible in capital letters. Lifting the marker to see if anything was engraved on the other side wasn't really an option with just the two of us there, so we were left with only a pair of initials and no birthdates, deathdates, epitaphs, or other information about the couple interred there.


Only later, when we found a small gravestone mostly hidden by a bush, did we have any clue to the Moores' identity. Hidden among the leaves of the bush growing wild next to the mostly cleared grave of Annie Roberson (1823-1892), Greg spotted a tiny bright glimpse of stone.


With the foliage carefully cleared away, we discovered a small gravestone with a lamb engraved above the epitaph- traditionally, but not always (as I learned at McBryde Cemetery earlier this week) an indicator of a child's grave. We had found the grave of little Janie Moore (1891-1893), whose epitaph identifies her as the "DAU. OF L.B. AND ROSA MOORE." We suddenly had names and a family connection for the Moores.


The verse reads:

"Asleep in Jesus
Oh, how sweet.
To be with such a
blessing meet."

This seems to be a modified version of an excerpt from the hymn "Asleep in Jesus":

"Asleep in Jesus!
O how sweet
To be with such a slumber meet."

Some interesting background and theological commentary on this hymn can be found here.

It is unclear why Janie Moore was buried separately from her parents, alongside Annie Roberson. Perhaps she was some relation.

In trying to find further information on the burials at Jonesville, the best source my internet research turned up was a publication by the Cobb County Genealogical Society which purported to include a listing of burials in several cemeteries including Jonesville. According to the Cobb County Library, which is very kindly sending me scans of the relevant pages, the list contains 27 marked burials.

According to an official of the Cobb Cemetery Commission, cited in this article in the Marietta Daily Journal, "at least 36 graves" were located during cleanup efforts in February 2011; the article notes that "Most are unmarked, but a few have headstones or fieldstones [...]." We did notice numerous orange marker flags placed in the ground throughout the cemetery during our visit, which we supposed to be indicators of important features such as burials or section markers (only in retrospect did I realize they must all be marker burials), but we did not think to count them at the time.


In the absence of markers, I'm curious about how the volunteers identified burial locations. Most of the orange flags we noticed were either obviously associated with a marker, or placed in or near a depression in the ground, which is a characteristic visual indicator of a possible burial but not definite proof. Ground-penetrating radar is a common tool for locating unmarked burials, but it doesn't seem likely that the Jonesville volunteers would have used that; I say this partially because the effort didn't seem well-funded enough to have access to that kind of resource, but mostly because none of the media reports mentioned it, and shiny technology usually makes such good copy that it draws most of the focus, so the odds of its omission are pretty small.

That's a question I'm planning to ask Mt. Sinai and the Cemetery Commission.

We did notice several unengraved fieldstones, like this one, several of which had orange flags nearby. I made a mistake in assuming at the time that they were section or lot markers, since other cemeteries do use similar stones for the purpose.


For the gravestones that we were able to locate, the iconography of Jonesville Cemetery is an interesting but not especially unusual assemblage. 3 of the 10 gravestones featured a clasping-hands motif. Henry Middlebrooks (d. 1917)'s gravestone features this motif in the form of a pair of clasping hands in the foreground over a heart in the background.

My current favorite gravestone iconography resource, Stories in Stone by Douglas Keister, notes that clasped hands are traditionally a matrimonial symbol, especially if the sleeve attached to one hand appears to belong to a woman's clothing and the other to a man's; otherwise, the symbolism "can represent a heavenly welcome or an earthly farewell" (p. 108). The sleeves on both hands in Mr. Middlebrooks' engraving appear very similar and therefore probably belong to the same gender's clothing, or else the engraving is insufficiently preserved to reveal any details to the contrary. However, Keister also notes that the heart is a common matrimonial symbol in "modern tombstones," so it is difficult to draw a firm conclusion.

He was a Christian and a worthy mem
ber of the Marietta Law
and Order League.
W.M. Pack
Archon

I haven't yet succeeded in finding any information about the Marietta Law and Order League.

Like Henry Middlebrooks, Rebecca Bedford's 1908 clasped hands, the earliest of the three, bear no clear indicators of their gender, potentially due to weathering of the stone.


Ophelia Jackson (1845-1930) also has a pair of clasping hands on her gravestone, shown below a blank scroll (I have to wonder whether it was ever meant to have anything inscribed in that blank space); these are clearly a man's hand and a woman's hand; the sleeve of the hand on the viewer's left appears distinctly feminine.


The male-female pairing in this engraving may indicate matrimony or it may be a personal touch on the imagery of her farewell to a mortal loved one or her greeting by God. There is no way to be sure of either possibility, but the inscription below the dates of her birth and death reads "Faithful unto death."

OPHELIA
JACKSON
BORN JAN. 1845
DIED AT COTTAGE HILL
MARIETTA, GA.
APR. !7, 1930
"Faithful unto death"

Two of the ten Jonesville stones- Alice Bunyon (1874-1910) and Mollie Owens (1860-1902) feature images of a hand pointing upward, a symbol of the soul's ascension heavenward (Keister p. 108).


Interestingly, both images feature the same scalloped border in the circle around the hands, and the stones themselves are also remarkably similar, indicating that they may have come from the same manufacturer, eight years apart (which may have interesting implications regarding the overall business of gravestone production in the area, and on a smaller scale, may reveal something about at least one business in the community of Jonesville).


Mollie Owens's stone is very weathered, and both the image and the epitaph are very faint:

IN MEMORY TO MY
DEAR MOTHER
MOLLIE OWENS
DIED
FEB. 17, 1902
AGE 42 YRS.

Alice Bunyon's stone is much clearer:

IN MEMORY TO MY
DEAR WIFE
ALICE BUNYON

DIED
JUNE 29, 1910
AGE 36 YRS.

Given the formal similarities of the epitaphs, I'm inclined to wonder whether that's the result of the gravestones coming from the same manufacturer, or whether Mrs. Owens and Mrs. Bunyon were part of the same family.

Janie Moore's marker features the lamb iconography already discussed. Beside her, Annie Roberson's gravestone is decorated with a floral motif which is now somewhat faint.

"Write, blessed are the dead
which die in the Lord, from
henceforth, they do rest
from their labors and their
works do follow them."
Good and faithful Servant,
of Zion's travelers.

Annie Roberson's epitaph is from the instruction to John in Revelation 14:13, King James Version.

Of the remaining gravestone, L.B. and Rosa Moore's shared headstone cannot be seen on one side, and A. Beach (1834-1909) bears no iconography and a very simple epitaph.

A. BEACH
DIED
JAN. 22, 1909
AGE 75 YRS.

My husband very good-naturedly came along on this trip as my photographer; he is much more serious about photography as a hobby than I am, and as a result he's also much more experienced and knowledgeable, and thus simply better at it. Still, this was both of our first real attempt at photographing gravestones in particular, and the combination of worn and faded gravestones with dappled sunlight and shadow from overhanging trees presented an interesting challenge. Several of our pictures were taken with me looming at some awkward angle over the gravestone to shadow it evenly while Greg took the picture, sometimes standing at an awkward angle himself or shooting between my legs or under my arm to get the correct perspective for the shot.

Overall, it was a much more challenging, but much more interesting, exciting, and rewarding experience than I had planned for, and Greg was wonderfully patient about the project turning out to be larger and more involved than I had briefed him for. He's awesome like that.

So far, I've already contributed some significant documentation and a nice pile of photos to the Find-A-Grave record, which will hopefully help some genealogical researcher with his own project. I am hoping for a chance to revisit the site in December to take some measurements for a proper scale map of the cemetery; hopefully access the southern half of the property once the summer foliage has died off for the winter; pay more attention to those unmarked fieldstones; and make rubbings of the markers, once I have a few months of practice to work with. In the meantime, I have that burial listing on the way from the Cobb County Library, which will hopefully give me some more data to add to the records on Find-A-rave and my own notes; I'm also planning to contact the church and the Cemetery Commission next week for information on what work is still being done at the cemetery, what methods were used for identifying unmarked burials, and any available background information about the community.

Followup thoughts on gender

Reposted from One Day at a Time.

As soon as I finished my last post, the resulting discussion with my husband (who is much more thorough and detail-oriented than I am, and who therefore read all the comments on that Edmonton Journal article I linked) led me to find the link to this article in the sidebar. It features another Canadian couple who, beginning in the early 1990s, made a decision to that of Storm's parents to keep the sexes of their two children (both daughters, both now in their late teens) a private matter.

I rather sadly wish that I had found it before I published that last post, and I've spent the last few minutes debating whether to go back and revise.

Despite the fact that I am sitting in the emergency room at the moment, waiting for my accident-prone-Army-wife friend to get herself X-rayed (yes, the ER on post has wireless internet; I can't decide whether to be quietly grateful for this fact or alarmed that I've been here enough to know it), this article made me want to hop out of my chair and do a happy-dance.

Highlights:

"The couple also made other decisions to keep gender stereotypes out of their household while the kids were growing up. Gender-specific toys, such as Barbie dolls, were not found in the girls' toy box.

"That came more naturally, since our priority was to provide them with toys that encouraged creativity and thought (and) stereotypical toys tend not to," he said. 'In dressing them . . . the goal was not to be somehow generic, but to put them into sensible and attractive clothing in the colours we (and later they) wanted, which meant picking such clothes off whatever rack we happened to find them on.'"

Yes!

Toward the end of the article, an American psychologist named Judith Rich Harris saying "Their philosophy seems to be based on the idea that male and female are artificial categories imposed by society."

Well... exactly, in a certain sense. Denying biological gender difference, including some evolutionarily programmed behavioral tendencies, would be ludicrous, but the cultural roles we define as "male" and "female" are largely (albeit not entirely) artificial creations, and I see little point in imposing them as if they were biologically unavoidable.

Some thoughts on gender.

Reposted from One Day at a Time.

I am not as prolific a reader of blogs as many of my fellow-bloggers seem to be, which seems a little hypocritical, but I am picky about what I read and somewhat inconsistent about keeping up with things even when I mean to; my blog reading, much like my comic reading, tends to happen in fits and spurts of long neglect and catch-up marathons. Now that I think of it, that also characterizes my writing habits, so maybe it is not so hypocritical after all. Despite that, though, Powered by Osteons is a regular favorite of mine, and I was delighted today (while looking for something to do with the last hour or so of my afternoon at work now that all the work to do is done and my Dean Koontz novel is finished, much to my dismay) to find this post.

I remember the Berenstain Bears fondly from my own childhood; they were favorites whose characters were almost like friends, and remained so well after my reading level progressed past picture books. Looking back as an adult, particularly as an adult with an anthropology degree and decidedly liberal humanist ideas about gender roles and identity, I can definitely see and agree with Dr. Killgrove's point. Examined critically enough, the fact the characters are named by their roles in adult and child version of a gender dichotomy- Mama/Papa, Brother/Sister- instead of with actual names seems a little creepy.

That might be a little too critical, though. I was an avid reader of the Berenstain Bears as a child, and if there was a gender-polarized message in the books or their characters, I think anyone who knows me today would attest that I apparently missed it even on a subconscious level. I grew up with Sister Bear and her frilly pink overalls and Mama Bear and her constant long dresses- but I also grew up with me in my shorts and t-shirts and Mom in similar attire, and looking back, I think that I interpreted the Bears as what they were- fiction. Real people didn't dress that way on a regular basis any more than real anthropomorphic bears wore clothes at all or went to school (everyone knows that anthropomorphic bears are naked and illiterate). It didn't impact my worldview on any level.

If I were a parent, I would definitely be concerned about the lessons learned from, and the behaviors and norms modeled by, the Berenstain Bears and other heavily gendered children's media. I respect and admire- and would like to think that I would, if ever forced into such a situation, emulate- Dr. Killgrove's approach to dealing with those concerns. Censorship of ideas is more dangerous and more reprehensible than the ideas themselves in any case, and merely hiding children's eyes from things only leaves them naive and sheltered, rather than teaching and equipping them to evaluate ideas with their own reasoning minds. Her decision to share the books with her daughter but engage the child in critical discussion of its contents is, in my mind, brilliant and responsible.

Children's books may contain less gender-stereotyping than their toys, however. A while back, I read this article by Crystal Smith on the gendered use of vocabulary in toy advertisements. Some concerns were raised by several commenters about the author's methodology in collecting and structuring her data, and I have some concerns about her classification system, but personally, I found the study's subjective observations far more compelling than its quantitative aspects anyway.

The author notes that toys clearly marketed at boys- toys with primarily or solely boys in their commercials, for instance- tend to be related to non-domestic work roles (dump trucks, construction and tool playsets), driving, or fighting (action figures, toy guns), while toys clearly marketed toward girls- toys with primarily or solely girls in their commercials, for instance- tend to be related to domestic work roles (toy vacuums, kitchen playsets), fashion and cosmetics, or nurturing (baby dolls). Smith, author of The Achilles Effect (which, as a disclaimer, I have not read), writes from the perspective of concern that this sort of marketing is harmful because it promotes aggression to young boys, so she touches only lightly on its effect on girls.

The issue for me is that most of what she classifies as "fighting" toys are either linked to TV shows or movies with actual storylines and at least somewhat developed characters, meant to be used in active play (chasing each other around with Nerf guns, for instance), or both. The girls' toys, in contrast, are mostly sedentary (vacuuming notwithstanding) and seldom linked to a familiar plot or developed characters. Boys, therefore, gain some things from their conventionally encouraged forms of play that girls are being steered away from.

Smith's reply to a comment on her article accurately observes that "The characteristics of these toys, which are masculinised by names and pronouns, also hew to stereotypes—they are about fighting and working (although the Big Rigs do sing and dance, which are not actions one would expect from a big bulky truck.) Compare the “purpose” of these toys with that of the girls’ toys who are predominantly female and designed to be accessorized or cuddled, but not much else. Most do not have jobs and they don’t fight."

The stereotype at work here seems to extend into adult life. In the workplace, women have achieved approximate parity with men in general, with exceptions in specific fields which are changing as we speaking- yet in nearly every television sitcom I have seen recently (more than I care to admit- see below) I have noticed that the female leads are more likely to be stay-at-home moms with working husbands, usually in couples who don't appear to actually share any hobbies or common interests outside of the children (in whom the husband is usually mostly disinterested). In fact, in most of these fictional families, the man is the only one who has apparent outside interests or is able to pursue them.

Women are generally stereotyped as being uninterested in sports, video games, comics, cars, etc.- essentially, in anything not about hair, makeup, housework, babies, or feelings. In my own life, I am frequently met with surprise when a new acquaintance learns that I am a female gamer / sci-fi fan / comic reader / firearms enthusiast (although several recent studies indicate that I am not that unusual in regard to gaming, and Felicia Day is giving us all a kickass example). It still seems that the societal expectation, perpetuated by our toys, is that while both boys and girls can work, in our off time, the boys get to have hobbies and the girls are supposed to be interested only in looking pretty and being nurturing. That's a terrifying thought, as it seems to encourage girls to be less than full-developed, well-rounded people. One of the comments on Smith's article says, "Adventure and imaginative play are where it’s at. I think that’s really what any child wants, regardless of gender." Amen.

All in all, I think the general message here is that society may be pushing gender roles, especially in terms of interests and likes or dislikes, on children much too early. We tend to leave the TV in the funeral home office on during the day for background noise. As a result, I've seen full runs of three or four TV sitcoms in the last year which I otherwise would have ignored totally if left to my own devices (see above). Thus, I have twice viewed an episode of Yes, Dear in which the main character's mother upbraids her daughter-in-law because the main character's infant daughter is dressed "like a boy." She insists on taking the child out to buy some girlier clothes so that total strangers can look at her and tell that she is female. Although the mother-in-law character is meant to be obnoxious and overbearing, like her stereotypical counterparts, I still find the episode to be the philosophical equivalent of nails on a chalkboard.

For one thing, the kid is still in a stroller. I realize that gender identification is a big part of how we humans navigate social interaction, but when dealing with a child who is still stumbling across the threshold from infant to toddler, is it really that important to know if the child is a boy or a girl? Will it really affect how an adult interacts with the child? More importantly, should it? I find the idea either absurd or troubling, depending on the answers to those questions.

Besides, I personally viewed the child's clothing as gender-neutral, which perhaps raises a whole other set of issues. I can walk around town in most of my husband's clothes, and though I might look a little frumpy since they're mostly all a little baggy on me, I'm not going to look exceptionally odd, and probably no one is going to declare me a cross-dresser; if he were to walk around in a random selection of my clothes, though, he's got about a fifty percent chance of standing out in most people's perception as crossing a clear gender boundary, regardless of whether those people approve or disapprove of that action. "Masculine" styles are more frequently seen as potentially unisex or neutral, but overtly "feminine" styles are more clearly gender-polarized.

It was after viewing that episode of Yes, Dear that I heard about the Stocker-Witterick household in Canada who recently made the apparently controversial decision to keep their newborn child's sex a secret from everyone outside its immediate family, to shield the kid from the sorts of pressures and biases I have just been going on about. Dr. Killgrove's blog post includes a link to a statement on the matter by Mrs. Witterick herself; interestingly, her five-year-old son raised the initial question that led to the family's decision. I'm not sure I would do it myself, but I honestly think it's a pretty cool idea and I'm curious to see where it leads.