Posted March 26, 2020 There’s a joking bargain that farriers often offer to novice horse owners: They’ll shoe all four feet starting at one penny for the first nail and simply doubling the cost for the next nail at 2 cents, the next at four cents, and so on. Total the fee for each nail and that’s…
Posted March 20, 2020 When I was quite young, about first-grade age, I remember our family having dessert every evening after supper. It seemed one night we would have lemon meringue pie–my very favorite–next chocolate, then my father’s favorite, apple pie, and so on. And, Jello, we had it with supper as part of a…
Posted March 1, 2020 Thinking about Culture Change: Frontiersman Daniel Boone once lived in the Yadkin River Valley of North Carolina not far from my boyhood home, and I began reading Boone biographies in middle school. At the time, I was also finding Native American “arrowheads” and “spearheads.” And, I imagined them having been left…
Posted February 17, 2020 Esther Mae Brigman Ferguson May 16, 1909 – February 17, 1995 My mother was largely responsible for my becoming an archaeologist. When I was a child, she encouraged my roaming the woods and fields by paying attention to all the things I brought back—from arrowheads to dead crows. In response to my…
February 14, 2020 Woods walk today with birding friends Steve McInnis and John Ebert. Highlights of the day were beautifully sunlit views of two soaring Red-tailed Hawks, Cedar Waxwings, and a Blue-headed Vireo. Overall we reported 33 species and 161 individuals to Cornell University’s ebird database. So far, the life-time list for our place, Horse…
Posted February 9, 2020 Midsummer 1953, my friend Tommy and I knew farmers were hiring kids to work in tobacco, so we made a plan. We’d see Crosby, and ask for jobs. Bright-eyed and cheerful, Crosby was one of the rare adults that we children called by his first name. He was a regular at our Methodist…
February 7, 2020 In 2016 Rachel Waters published a critical article on the use of DNA tests to establish Native American identity with emphasis on the Lumbee Tribe. Her article, “Bloody Lies: The Dangerous Frontier of Genetic Ancestry in the Battle to Prove Indigenous Identity.” The article was originally published at www.facebook.com, and was written as…
February 3, 2020 Aline gave me a 23&Me test kit for Christmas and here are the results: 95.2% European (mostly Scotland and Ireland); 3.8% Sub-Saharan (West and West Central) Africa; 2% Broadly East Asian and Native American; .1% Broadly Western Asian & North African; .7% Unassigned. To place this in perspective, on average we share 50%…
January 9, 2020. I have told this story of systemic racism many times, to many people. This is the first I’ve written it*: In the summer of 1960 between high school and college, I worked on a construction crew for R. J. Reynolds Tobacco, Co. in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. A paternalistic, non-union, company, Reynolds hired students…
January 8, 2020. Our early morning hunt was not successful, we had no deer to pull out, skin and dress. We were simply father and son, enjoying the mid-morning warmth and gazing over Mr. Shaw’s withered garden. Daddy talked quietly as I eyed engraving on the L. C. Smith double-barrel cradled in the crook of his arm. Shifting…