nature

The Archaeology Gazette – Breaking News About What Happened A Long Time Ago!

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Today’s Top Stories in Archaeology:

15,000-Year-Old Fishing Village Discovered

On the count of three, a team of French Archaeologists unearthed a 15,000-year-old fishing village off the coast of Nip, Antarctica, suggesting that early Neolithic fishermen fishing off the coast of Nip were just as cold then as they are now.

The discovery was made by Jacques Pierre Jacques, a leading French Archaeologist who has been carefully sifting through snow looking for telltale signs of a 15,000-year-old fishing village for the last 27 years. 

Last week, his dedication was rewarded when he came across several 15,000-year-old snowballs, and what appeared to be several fishing poles crudely fashioned out of 15,000-year-old snow. 

Further excavation revealed an entire village of snow huts containing snow furniture, snow utensils and even primitive, beaded jewelry made entirely of snow.

Pictured: a 15,000-year-old fishing pole and primitive necklace made entirely of snow

The team of highly-paid, French Archaeologists will be returning to Yoplait, France with their findings where they will be performing further tests on the 15,000-year-old, snow artifacts using the latest in Magnetic Resonance Imaging.  The entire team is working together to keep their fingers crossed to ensure the snow does not melt.

Was the Ice Man Coming or Going?

I think he was on his way home . . .

A Team of French Archeologists have begun a 42-year study of Otzi, the ice man who was discovered under an extremely large pile of snow in the Alps in 1991, and who, prior to that, had been missing for approximately 6,000 years.  

Experts believe that Otzi was from a nearby Neolithic farming village where a rock was recently discovered with 6,000-year-old carvings scrawled onto it.

A team of highly-paid, French Neolithic Scrawl Experts were called  to the scene and after 17 years of research — they were finally able to translate the scrawls as:  a quart of ibex milk, a pound of yak butter and a dozen eggs from any animal that happens to be laying them. 

Using the latest in Magnetic Resonance Imaging, the team of highly-paid, French Archaeologists are hoping that it will take 42 years to determine whether the 6,000 year old ice man was just leaving for the store or was just coming home from the store.

No wait a minute . . . maybe he was just leaving . . .

 

Tooth Marks Thought to Be Those of Leonardo Di Vinci

A Team of French Archaeologists have been debating whether the tooth marks embedded in a 500-year-old chocolate chip cookie found underneath a cushion of an authentic Louis the XIV sofa  (currently belonging to  Jacques Pierre Jacques) are indeed those of Leonardo Di Vinci or those of Jacques Pierre Jacques’s brother-in-law, Pierre Jacques Pierre,  who was visiting last week and complained of hunger pangs.

“Well they could be Leonardo’s teeth marks because Leonardo didn’t like nuts and there are no nuts visible . . .
Using the very latest in Magnetic Resonance Imaging the team of highly-paid, French Archaeologists are hoping to have the answer before the end of the  next century. 

Until next time  . . . I love you

My Retired Race Horse Sedentariat

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From time to time I complain on this blog about the horrible tragedy of my childhood regarding my never having been successful at talking my parents into buying me a horse.

Well, Dear Reader, I am happy to report that this tragedy was finally remedied when I got my first horse at age 50.  Better late than never I always say.

Meet Joey!  My retired racehorse whom I often refer to as Sedentariat:

Ok, this isn’t Joey, it’s my son-in-law, Matt, but I saw it while I was looking for a picture of Joey and just had to post it!  Shhh . . . don’t tell him.

Anyway, here’s the real Joey:

Joey, aka Sedentariat
So yesterday,I went out to the stables where Joey lives to spend a relaxing afternoon with my beloved steed.

First, I pulled Joey away from eating alfalfa, took him out of his stall and tied him up at the tie rail.  Now since it’s been raining, his stall had three deep puddles which I had to bail the water out of using a dustpan (the only thing I could find).

Then since all the open spaces were occupied with other horses and riders, I had to turn him out in a round pen at the top of a big steep hill.

So I trudged up the hill, put Joey in the pen, trudged back down the hill, bailed more water out of his stall, shoveled out a trench outside his stall so the water in the stall would drain better, trudged back up to the top of the hill, got Joey, trudged back down the hill, washed and treated his legs (he has a weird skin condition on his legs that I’m always slathering the latest “cure” on) –then dissolved his antibiotics in some water (for the leg condition), hid the liquified antibiotics in his alfalfa (when he wasn’t looking), bailed more water out of his stall, schlepped in a big bail of shavings, covered his stall floor with shavings, walked him around and let him eat grass while the “slather” on his legs dried, put his blanket on him and, finally — a mere three hours later, returned him to a nice clean, fresh, dry stall where he resumed eating alfalfa.

And there you have it, Dear Readers, my childhood dream come true!

Until next time . . . I love you

Shhh . . . Stop Interrupting and Listen to the Warm!

Linda Vernon Baby Eating and Whatnot, The Daily Routine, Thrift Store Finds , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Foraging around the falderal at my local thrift store,  (I am starting to feel like they stock it just for me!) I found this wonderful gem:

“Listen to the Warm”  Written and performed by Rod McKuen

On the back of the album is his historic poem, A Cat Name Sloopy — in three parts. It’s a poem Rod Mckuen penned during an unprecedented burst of love for his cat, Sloopy.  And a poem, I might add, that catapulted Rod McKuen to superstar poetic status back in the halcyon days of unflinchingly serious, popular poetry.

Here are some excerpts from that historic poem with a few observations of my own.

“For a while the only earth that Sloopy knew was in her sandbox”

Just a quick heads up, Rod, kitty litter works better.

Every night she’d sit in the window among the avocado plants waiting for me to come home (my arms full of canned liver and love)

Excuse me . . .Rob?  . . . you dropped a whole bunch of love coming up the stairs. (By the way, I hope you didn’t buy avocados, the grove in the window sill is finally producing!)

We talked into the night then, contented but missing something

Uh . . . could it have been Sloopy’s side of the conversation?

She the earth she never knew,  and me the hills I ran while growing bent

Oh that . . . well, I hear calcium can help that.

Sloopy should have been a cowboy’s cat with prairies to run not linoleum

Good call Rod!  And that’s why linoleum should be banned once and for all!

I never told her, but in my mind, I was a midnight cowboy even then. Riding my imaginary horse down Forty-second Street . . .

What?  You love doing that?  Me too! OMG!

Going off with strangers to live an hour-long cowboy’s life but always coming home to Sloopy, who loved me best.

Wait. . . what? . . . hold the phone . . . Rod . . . Rod!  No more beer for you.  Why don’t you go to bed now and see if you can’t sleep it off.  What’s  that?  You can’t sleep because Sloopy keeps slapping her paws walking around on the linoleum?  Well, just listen to the warm . . Rod  . . .that’s right . . .  listen to the warm . . . .

Meanwhile, I’ll see if I can get a call into the president so he can do something about the linoleum.  And tomorrow you can start working on your next album.  What are you going to call it?  What’s that, Rod?  You’re going to call it, Smell the Humidity? 

I love it!

Until next time . . . I love you

The Taffy May Incident

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Hello Dear Readers.  Is it Lazy Friday Rerun Blog Day already?  OK!  Who am I to argue with the calendar!  (except I do think a week should have 8 days and 3 of them should be a three-day weekend –  but apparently my calendar wouldn’t give me the time of day.)  Here’s today’s rerun:

Taffy May I Hardly Knew Ye

When I was a little girl, the pot of gold at the end of my rainbow was a horse.

I had no preference as to style, make or model.  If it had four legs and knew how to gallop, I’d take it!  We lived in a small town smack dab in the middle of an ocean of wheat, so there were lots of girls who had horses and rode them everywhere.  It would rip my heart out to see a gaggle of girls atop their sterling steeds clip clopping all over town.

“Clip clop clip clop clip clop clip . . . etc.”

I really only voiced the question of my getting a horse to my parents a couple of times, knowing full well that the answer would be no, and, as a matter of pride,  I’d ultimately have to run away from home or –at the very least — stage a runaway as in the following true scenario:

“Look at this Janey,” my father remarked to my mother, “I found Linda’s yellow shorty pajamas in this little 45-record case in the bushes just outside her window when I was mowing the lawn.”

Oh I was going to run away alright . . . eventually.

Ok, fine . . . if I wasn’t going to get a horse, at least I could try for a kitten.  This is how I went about it: 

Step 1:  Convince my parents that I was head over heals in love with cats.  To accomplish this,  I colored umpteen pictures of kittens and scotch taped them to my circa 1959 pink wall.

Step 2:  Wasn’t even needed because Step 1 worked like a charm.  Next thing I knew I was picking out my very own gray, long-haired kitten from a batch of five.

In my excitement, I failed to notice that this particular kitten had issues.  It suffered from the world’s lowest kitty IQ.   Maybe that’s why the name I chose, Taffy May, seemed to fit her so well.

Taffy May was the perfect cat for a little girl to bond with.  Being nearly brain-dead, she allowed me to pick her up and carry her around without protest. 

She slept with me all night under the covers which I thought was because she loved me so —  but more likely she just couldn’t figure a way out.

Taffy May had one batch of kittens – if three can be considered a batch.  But being the little dummy that she was, she managed to lie on all three of them during the night and  in the morning the only one left breathing was my beloved, Taffy May.

Perhaps it was Karma (I know there was a car involved) the day Taffy May shuffled off this mortal world.

I was on my way home from school without a care in the world.  When I rounded the corner, there stood our across-the-street neighbor, Mr. Huey, holding a lifeless Taffy May up by the tail.

I don’t know how many times Taffy May had been run over, but judging from the fact that she was literally as flat as a pancake, it would be safe to assume more than once. 

I screamed and ran into the house where I was inconsolable well into the night.  I never got another cat of my very own, out of respect for Taffy May, who will always have a place in my heart . . . about two feet wide and one and one-half inches deep.

Until next time . . . I love you