Monthly Archives: June 2011
THE GOODBYE PROJECT: Letting Go is Good, Yo! Episode 6–Archaeology
About The Goodbye Project:
There are so many of us who can’t part with objects because of the sentimental attachment we have to them. You know—the graduation tassels, the barfed-on stuffed animal with the missing eye, the coat your late father bought for you because you begged. So what do you do when it’s time to let go of these beloved items because it’s absolutely necessary?
I’d read someplace that one of the best ways to let go of an object is to know that you have a photo. Sure, you can photograph it before you get rid of it. The Goodbye Project takes the idea a step further: go back and find photos of yourself actually with, using, or wearing that object, and blurb a bit about the memories it invokes.
Why? Everything has a story.
And because of that, the object deserves more than just a hasty trip to the Goodwill or the trash without a second thought.
EPISODE 6: ARCHAEOLOGY
Update: June 27, 2011 Shortly after this post was published, I got a note from my friend Rob, who wanted to adopt the book on the Ramapo because he is doing research for a novel he is writing, as well as any of my books that were heavily highlighted. I was excited about this and am happy to report that both the Ramapo book and the Archaeology book are now part of his collection.
In the Fall of 2002 I was looking for a kick-start with something new. I was enjoying my time volunteering at both the Maritime Aquarium at Norwalk and Mystic Aquarium, in fact, so much that I was considering finishing college for something in the sciences.
I was at the SoNo Arts Festival that August and discovered a booth run by Ernie Wiegand, who runs the Archaeology department at Norwalk Community College.* A couple of weeks later, I signed up for his Archaeology 101. After all, although I loved the marine sciences, I still felt the ages-old pull of geology and volcanology. Archaeology seemed as good a place to start as any. If I didn’t like it, I could always drop out.
Turns out I loved it—I learned how to read layers of dirt, what finding pieces of shells meant. I loved digging in New England in the fall, that smell of leaves, hot coffee, and loam with the bite in the air. I met other students who were walking history books. It didn’t only exceed my expectations, it was magical.
I did well in it, too—although I soon learned I don’t have much of an analytical mind when it comes to solving mysteries. Or maybe I just didn’t have all the knowledge backing me up. At any rate, that semester remains as one of the greatest eras of my life. Being a shovel bum was pretty cool.
I continued to do research after the class was over and had even thought about exploring some areas on my own. But that was nine years ago—I never went further, and it’s time to let go of my books and tools. The hardest to let go is the textbook. I honestly read that thing from cover to cover and highlighted the hell out of it, and believe it or not, had always thought I’d sit down and delve into it again someday.
If you want to read my final Site Report (December 18, 2002) on the Gallows Hill Dig, you can read it here in PDF:
*The current course catalog online at Norwalk Community College’s site doesn’t isolate the Archaeology as an Avocation program in a convenient manner, so here are two screen shots of what that page looks like. To access the full catalog and find out more about registration, please visit: http://www.ncc.commnet.edu/default.asp
And now…on with the story…
THE GOODBYE PROJECT: Letting Go is Good, Yo! Episode 5–The National Geographics
About The Goodbye Project:
There are so many of us who can’t part with objects because of the sentimental attachment we have to them. You know—the graduation tassels, the barfed-on stuffed animal with the missing eye, the coat your late father bought for you because you begged. So what do you do when it’s time to let go of these beloved items because it’s absolutely necessary?
I’d read someplace that one of the best ways to let go of an object is to know that you have a photo. Sure, you can photograph it before you get rid of it. The Goodbye Project takes the idea a step further: go back and find photos of yourself actually with, using, or wearing that object, and blurb a bit about the memories it invokes.
Why? Everything has a story.
And because of that, the object deserves more than just a hasty trip to the Goodwill or the trash without a second thought.
EPISODE 5: OH, NATGEO!
Every Christmas, my Dad got a National Geographic gift subscription from his mother, so a closet in my childhood home museumed NG’s dating to the early 1950s.
When a new journal arrived, it was relegated to the back of the toilet—but each was a passport to new and exciting passions: sharks, volcanoes, highways I’d never traveled (somewhere in my basement there is a photo of me at age four sitting on the toilet “reading” the National Geographic). In some cases, the articles I loved most were compasses for major life decisions: where I went to college, what I was going to be when I grew up, how to process and survive injustices done to me by others.
Dad kept close watch on his inventory, but over the years, I’d absconded with a few of my favorites. These are the five I have left.
I decided I can let go of three. Oh, and by the way, if you are as big a fan of National Geographic as I am, yes, National Geographic is on Facebook! You can find them here: http://www.facebook.com/NGM
VOL. 159, NO. 1: JANUARY 1981
Sunday, May 18, 1980:Mt.St. Helens erupted. The family was packing up for church and then my grandmother’s house. I don’t think we heard the news until later, and then I was upset I wasn’t home alone with the television. To make up for it, Dad let me stay home from school on Monday. This was before the days of 24-hour coverage, so to have news on all day, or even on-and-off during television programming, was a huge deal. I was nine when the mountain blew, but its story made me a regular 5 or 6 o’clock news watcher—at least for awhile.
Eventually, reporting on the event taxied to a halt. I was desperate to explore further, but there wasn’t much material available (for those of you who are younger, there was a time when no one had Internet and there weren’t such things as Amazon when you could get books on anything you wanted—you were restricted to whatever was on the shelf at Bradlee’s or Caldor). So when this issue arrived a few months later I was thrilled. At last, I was going to get the inside scoop.
At the time, our babysitter was Dawn Nagle. She bought me an oil lamp crafted fromMt.St. Helensash. To this day it is one of my most treasured possessions, and I still light it once in awhile.
Here’s an excellent website which looks back at the Pulitzer Prize-winning coverage provided by The Longview Daily News (out ofLongview,Washington, which isn’t too far from the mountain).
http://www.tdn.com/app/helens/
VOL. 1, NO. 5: MAY 1984
Before I read the text of “The Dead Do Tell Tales at Vesuvius,” I studied the photos and their captions. I recall being very disturbed by one photo of an empty cradle; from its caption: “Blow on a dead man’s embers and a live flame will start.” The thought, expressed by poet Robert Graves, holds true for Herculaneum…Fragile, too, was the life of a baby whose skeleton was found in the charred crib (right), rocking today as it did 1,900 years ago.”
At the time, my heroes were scientists: marine biologists, geologists, or volcanologists. I wanted to grow up to be one of those, but hadn’t decided yet. The first scientist depicted in the article wasUniversityofRhode Islandvolcanologist Haraldur Sigurdsson.
After I came across his photo I read the whole article to learn more about what he had to say.
Wow, I thought, I would sure love to take a class with that guy. I will definitely apply to go to school there.
Sure enough, in 1989 I did. Those of you who know me know that I embarked on my higher education at URI.
Years later—in 1998—I completed my first novel (it was terrible and it will never see the light of day, have no fear). It was a ghost story (of sorts) and was, perhaps, the first time I ever flirted with applying Poe’s triggers and the nature of haunting. I needed ghosts—but I wanted ghosts of a specific nature.
I wanted a common element among the ghosts—they needed to be burned, specifically, in their physical lives. I already knew I’d wanted to use Pompeii, and so I started digging through my massive Pompeii collection (more on that in a future episode) and read just about every book, but couldn’t get this article out of my head, because of its connection to where I eventually went to college and the book’s setting. I re-read it, and it became the map for a whole plot thread.
Now, I’d said the book will never see the light of day. And I meant it. But just for fun, here is the chapter that was inspired by the article. It’s a PDF. (Hey Dan Pearlman and Jerry Rivard—I cannot believe I used to be this “as-you-know-Bob.” Enjoy.)
VOL. 162, NO. 6: DECEMBER 1982
This one comes second in the sequence because it was the May 1984 issue which led me to it—“The Dead Do Tell Tales at Vesuvius” made reference to “Buried Roman Town Gives Up Its Dead.” I descended to Dad’s archives and pulled it out.
This article would also serve as fodder for the 1998 novel, but when I was reading it back when I was 13, I kept envisioning piles of people huddled in the boat bays. According to the story, they were instantly incinerated. The thought of that haunted me for weeks.
KEEPERS
VOL. 133, NO. 2: FEBRUARY 1968
I was 11 when I found this one in Dad’s collection, and the shark was so mean-looking I was sold—that old principle of being fascinated by things that we fear. I was done—sharks were the new love of my life. The copy I have isn’t my father’s original; it’s one I bought about 15 years ago at a tag sale. The original I cut up so I could tape the pictures all over the walls of my secret under-bunk-bed hideout (I am SO GLAD my father did NOT find out about that).
Years later, I was watching the movie Jaws, and there is a scene in which Roy Scheider is flipping through a book about sharks. Many of the photos from this article are in that book.
VOL. 182, NO. 6: DECEMBER 1992
I was home from URI for Christmas weekend, mostly because I needed to recover from a really screwed up pseudo-relationship with a person who basically had no relationship skills—I was confused by all the head games this person played, and really had no way to process it, let alone forgive it. Christmas weekend that year was a much-needed respite around normal people.
Enter the article “The Hard Ride of Route 93.” The characters who lived and traversed that desolate highway in Nevadawere romantic, intense, damaged, and off—just like the person I’d been dealing with. I read the article several times, took the issue back to Rhode Island with me, holed up between December 27 and 30 (yes, it only took me four days) and wrote the play Stranded on 93, which was produced at URI in April of 1993.
By the time it was all over, I hadn’t forgiven the person—but at least I could understand the problem wasn’t mine and could move on (and something tells me that person hasn’t changed at all, because people like that usually don’t).
So what am I doing with the three that I’m letting go? Well, I’m committing a sin: I’m ripping out the cover and the significant article. The two articles on Pompeii will go into the one Pompeii book I kept. The one on Mt. Saint Helens will go into my childhood save box (I’m allowing myself one tub of special keepsakes).
As for the other two, I can say I will never leave those behind.
THE GOODBYE PROJECT: Letting Go is Good, Yo! Episode 4–The Nancy Drew Collection
About The Goodbye Project:
There are so many of us who can’t part with objects because of the sentimental attachment we have to them. You know—the graduation tassels, the barfed-on stuffed animal with the missing eye, the coat your late father bought for you because you begged. So what do you do when it’s time to let go of these beloved items because it’s absolutely necessary?
I’d read someplace that one of the best ways to let go of an object is to know that you have a photo. Sure, you can photograph it before you get rid of it. The Goodbye Project takes the idea a step further: go back and find photos of yourself actually with, using, or wearing that object, and blurb a bit about the memories it invokes.
Why? Everything has a story.
And because of that, the object deserves more than just a hasty trip to the Goodwill or the trash without a second thought.
EPISODE 4: NANCY DREW
As a kid, I was a great escapist. I had two favorite methods: reading, and role-playing as my favorite television heroine or hero.
Nancy Drew was an exception: she was the only heroine of mine from books that I imitated (apparently frequently; Bill Buckbee recalls our entire third grade year recesses with me as Nancy Drew and he and Kevin Fuller as Frank and Joe Hardy). I’d get a new book and rip through it in less than a day or so most of the time.
One birthday, in fact—1981, the most magical birthday I ever had, because I got the Battlestar Galactica game and not one, but TWO Nancy Drew books—my parents were angry because two days later I asked them if we could buy another Nancy Drew book.
“Your father and I just bought you two,” my mother said.
“I finished them.”
She turned and looked at me. “Kristin Mary, you did not. You just opened those.”
“I did too, I’m a fast reader,” I repeated.
“Well.” She shrugged. “Read them again.”
Ah! A woman who didn’t understand anything about flaming passion. “Mom, you can’t read them again right away. There’s no surprise.”
“Too bad,” she said. “They’re expensive.”
Expensive. Bradlees and Caldor had them for $1.99.
But you didn’t argue with Mom. And that’s how, at 10 years old, I discovered the shelves in my father’s den.
I read things entirely inappropriate for my age: Irving Wallace’s The Word, in which I learned that if you failed at your career you became an alcoholic and slept with lots of people in far away cities; Jaws, in which I got a clue about what goes into grass and gazpacho soup, how married people have affairs (it’s usually with someone from your past and you have to do it in shitty motels and shower after so you don’t smell like sex, whatever THAT meant), and erections. I remember wondering if my parents had ever smoked grass, or if they’d ever had affairs. I remember feeling really uncomfortable and kind of dirty after I’d read it. I was haunted by the sentence: “Ellen started to giggle again, imagining the sight of Hooper lying by the side of the road, stiff as a flagpole, and herself lying next to him, her dress bunched up around her waist and her vagina yawing open, glistening wet, for the world to see.” (That’s on page 170 of my Dad’s copy, which was from Bantam Books’ 18th printing, June, 1975).
I finally was able to get another Nancy Drew book a few weeks later, but found I couldn’t respect her. I was suddenly aware that she and Ned should be having a full-on sexual relationship instead of this namby-pamby flirting thing, that at their ages they should at least smoke a cigarette or two and drink beer, and that she should get pissed off at someone at least once in awhile and preferably use a curse word.
And so, for lack of $1.99 two days after my birthday in 1981, Nancy Drew was buried under a pile of adult books: Catch 22, Ghost Boat, The Bermuda Triangle, The Ghost of Flight 401, All the President’s Men, The Anthrax Mutation, The Amityville Horror—whatever crappy paperbacks my Dad had laying around. I read them so fast he never even knew they were missing before they were back on the shelf.
But I kept my original Drew collection, took them wherever I went. Over the years, I’d let go of one or two that didn’t have any specific memory attached to them. Eventually, I got down to my last seven, because they were the ones that invoke a special time or place.
Today, I let six of them go.
The only one I kept was my first, The Secret of the Old Clock. And that’s just because my parents wrote “To Kristi, Love Mom & Dad, 12/25/79” in the front cover.
They had no idea what they were getting me into, I’m sure.
The books will be donated to a library sale.
If you’re a Nancy Drew fan, there is a LIVELY Facebook fan page called Nancy Drew!! here: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Nancy-Drew/363747038826?sk=wall
…oh, and if you want to know who my other childhood heroines/heroes were, here’s the list:
1. Princess (from Battle of the Planets)
2. H.M. Murdock (from The A-Team)
3. Kaye Morgan (senior biologist, Jaws 3)
4. Ellen Brody (Jaws)
5. Maid Marian (Robin Hood — the Disney cartoon version first; later, the Costner flick)
6. Lady J (from G.I. Joe)
7. Amy Allen (“AAA” from The A-team)
8. DeeDee McCall (from Hunter)
9. Penelope Pitstop
10. Nancy Drew
11. Daphne (from the original Scooby Doo cartoon series)
12. Lisa (from the original Robotech, Series 1)
13. Jennette (from Treme)
14. Dana Scully (from The X-Files)
15. April (from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles)