A beloved family story recounted by my Grandmother about the events from one cold December day in 1932. The three children mentioned were the first of what would be thirteen children she raised. TL;DR: Your small actions can have a life long positive impact you never know about on another person. Be kind, Be gracious, Be thankful. ~R. Joe The Stranger's Gift Genevieve Brandon, Sterling, Illinois The December day was bleak, just as every day from mid-September on had been that cheerless winter of 1932. The cold weather had settled in early, wiping out the fall crop of vegetables. Over our small village in northwestern Illinois, as over all the nation, there hung an aura of quiet desperation. These were the deepest, darkest days of the Depression. With so many people out of work, there seemed to be little to look forward to this holiday season. My husband and I huddled close to the...
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December 2017, California: Tehachapi Wildland Fire Crew 11 cr ew sleeping after 24hr shift. Photo Credit: Kern County Fire Where there is smoke, there is Wildland Firefighters. Fire, when finally mastered by our ancestors hundreds of thousands of years ago, cast the very light which illuminates the darkest shadows of our shared history. Unlike lithics or ceramics, fire is a capricious tool of mankind; both benevolent and malevolent in what it can do to shape our destiny. From a single errant spark a conflagration can erupt and devastate entire ecosystems. Fire has no pity, no premeditation, no plans, just potential. In our modern era we are fortunate to have those, who as much as is humanly possible, understand fire. Those who think like fire. Those who can try to predict fires ravenous desire for fuel fanned by always fluctuating temperatures, winds, and precipitation. When the call goes out, they are the #WildlandFirefighters and their peers. These professionals do not run blindly at...
Regardless of how the election turns out today it is worth noting that in late October 2018, after the big drop, all of the "gains" from 2018 were effectively wiped out (someone made a profit, and it wasn't most of us!). And while jobs grow continues (*)(a trend started early in the Obama's administration) wages are not rising in any meaningful way (and have yet to top 3% during this entire run). It is also worth noting that while Trump did inherit a steadily recovering economy (unlike the recession Obama inherited) and there has been growth, this growth has not been "free". It is a direct result of the Trump Stimulus Plan. The combination of the massive tax cuts for the wealth and businesses and the massive increases in government spending have now pushed out National debt to over $21,000,000,000,000/21 Trillion dollars (when Trump took over it was $19,000,000,000,000/19 Trillion dollars. So why has...
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Get Your Absentee Ballot In Two Minutes I got mine. Please get yours. It takes two minutes and requires no site registration (tip: you do not need to provide your phone number). http://shovelbums.net/l/get-your-absentee-ballot-here List of all states Absentee Ballot Deadlines: https://www.vote.org/absentee-ballot-deadlines/
ShovelBums turns 19 today. 19! DON'T YOU PEOPLE HAVE HOBBIES? :-) Seriously though, thank you, everyone. Both the companies and institutions that have believed in ShovelBums enough to feel it was worth your resources to spend the time posting positions and the 45,000+ "ShovelBums" who have been the right fit for the jobs advertised, whatever the level: Archaeology Field Technician, Crew Chiefs, Lab Directors, Field Directors, Principal Investigators, TV Shows, University faculty, etc... And there is only one, one very singular, reason any of this has happened. Because of you. Because you, and only you, reading this, have helped to spread the word about Shovelbums "No, really, it is not just for "ShovelBums"(*) Jobs" you would tell your friend with their nose up in the air at such a banal collection of below the bottom of the Shovel Test Unit jobs. From my first announcement to the "Pocket_Grophers" at Uark around 4am on April 25 1999,...
Every Kid in a Park This is a national program for federal parks and properties. If you have a 4th grader (or homeschool equivalent) your fourth grader can take his whole family to Federal Parks until August 31, 2018. You can sign up for the program here: https://www.everykidinapark.gov Please share this information with your children's schools. With reduced funding and opportunities at schools, even entry fee cost can be a barrier to families from exploring these great places on our shared landscape. The best way to build up a generation that respects our cultural and natural environment and wants to help protect and preserve it is through exposure and experience. Details about the Every Kid in a Park Annual 4th Grade Pass Available to U.S. 4th Graders (including home-schooled and free-choice learners 10 years of age). Educators can also be involved! Learn more at the Every Kid in...
TL:DR Hackers compromised 143,000,000 Americans (and some foreign) accounts at Equifax with important personal info like SSN, address, etc... You have to dig through a few links on their statement page to find the page where you can check if your accounts might have been compromised (and if so, get free credit monitoring - they give you a "call back" date for registering with no reminders, how nice of them) Here is the page where you can start the process to see if you were compromised (you can verify the link below from Equifax homepage): https://www.equifaxsecurity2017.com/potential-impact/ Read More: https://gizmodo.com/hackers-steal-personal-information-of-143-million-ameri-1802136954 Equifax statement: https://www.equifaxsecurity2017.com You can find a link to the statement and the potential impact page via the Equifax homepage to verify them if you want: https://www.equifax.com/personal/
{Eclipse 2017} Feel free to share! But see the audio note below. Watch in HD if able, it does look appreciably better :-) I haven't posted many pictures of our trip to see the eclipse in Kentucky yet because I first wanted to try and help crystalize my families memories of the experience in my mind by putting together a quick video. Note: Quick & Video do not go together in the same sentence! LOL! The end result is not what I was hoping for and I feel it needs some refinement. But it does give an idea of what our day with the eclipse was like (minus the traffic home!). I will use this video as a spring board to make the kids a better version this fall. There is a typo I need to correct, a few scenes didn't transition quite right, and I need to get the audio synced all the way through....
Celebrate the life of Prince with the ShovelBums tribute drink: Purple Rain!
"To honor Prince's legacy in Minnesota and beyond, the Purple Rain suit in our collections will be on view at Minnesota History Center starting tomorrow (April 23, 2016). Visitors can view the suit for free during normal museum hours, which begin at 10 am tomorrow. There will also be a space for remembrances. Extra kudos and thanks to all our staff who worked so hard to prepare the suit for viewing by the public!" MHC on Facebook For you #Prince junkies this is pretty sweet. This is the original live recording of Purple Rain at a benefit show from 1983 of which a lot of it made it to the album. And kind of like VH1 Pop Up Videos (that dates one a bit!) it has interesting info in the caption bar.
A few months ago, after the last mass shooting, I saw the estimated intervals between mass shootings in the US in a Mother Jones article. I counted ahead from that date and made a note on my calendar that according to their estimates there would be another by December 4th... Mother Jone's article Inside The Race to Stop the Next Mass Shooter by Mark Follman
Koko - The gorilla almost any practicing anthropologist alive today feels a kinship with received kittens for her 44th birthday. Watch this great video:
Totally true and hard science here folks. This weekend Mars will be as big as Your own Full Moon and Uranus (depending on your viewing distance). As for Mars being viewed from earth and appearing as big as the moon, it is never, ever, going to happen.
VIA Jezebel - Thanks for the heads up Lucy! Key & Peele's Pirate Chantey Is the Feminist Anthem of the Summer 77,557 91 Madeleine Davies Filed to: COMEDY 7/09/15 5:50pm “I once met a lass so fine. She was dunk on barley wine. I’d been at sea for months a three. I knew I could make her mine. And the lass was past consent! So it was off with her we went,” growls pirate Jordan Peele. Don’t despair, though. There’s a twist! Sing it with me! “A woman has a right to a drink or two without worrying about what you will do! We’d say ‘YO HO,’ but we don’t say ‘ho,’ ‘cause ‘ho’ is disrespectful, yo!”
Note: This is iOS only right now. It will be coming to other platforms soon. This is great news! Facebook has introduced a way to actually prioritize who you see on your news feed (though it caps at 30 unfortunately). It has also simplified who you are friends with (anyone have crazy uninformed friends on their list? lol!) that you choose not to follow (or want to refollow). It is very easy to access: 1: Go to the facebook App and click "More" in the lower right corner: 2: Scroll down until you see "News Feed Preferences" under Settings: 3: Viola! There you go. Prioritize away! But keep in mind Facebook inserts a star into your news feed so you can see who you have prioritized...but so can your friend/relative looking over your shoulder!
Have a safe 4th everyone! And remember the lesson my friend Arnie showed me when I found him on a country road in Texas or Arkansas. Don't Drink & Drive.
Justice Roberts references the Aztecs, Kalahari Bushmen, the Han Chinese and the Carthaginians in his dissenting opinion on the right of Gay Marriage: The majority’s decision is an act of will, not legal judg- ment. The right it announces has no basis in the Consti- tution or this Court’s precedent. The majority expressly disclaims judicial “caution” and omits even a pretense of humility, openly relying on its desire to remake society according to its own “new insight” into the “nature of injustice.” Ante, at 11, 23. As a result, the Court invali- dates the marriage laws of more than half the States and orders the transformation of a social institution that has formed the basis of human society for millennia, for the Kalahari Bushmen and the Han Chinese, the Carthagin- ians and the Aztecs. Just who do we think we are? I find that to be a strange dissent for obvious reasons: ...
As an anthropologist at heart if makes me very happy to see a large company take a public stance on supporting diversity with such a positive LGBTQ friendly commercial. So what if it is ultimately about marketing? This company is using their resources to make a loud, powerful and public statement on television and other media that most groups could never hope to have the resources to reach. They currently have about 3,000 views on their youtube extended version. It is well worth watching and sharing.