A meme (or two)

I don't usually post memes on this blog, but I was tagged by Katrina for these two memes, and I'm procrastinating, so here goes:

Meme the first:

Pick up the nearest book to you, turn to page 56, and post the 2nd-5th sentences.

So I actually have a book open from a paper I'm working on: Women’s Work: The first 20,000 years by Elizabeth Wayland Barber. It's on textile production and is useful.


(In this area, the Neolithic, or New Stone Age, last shortly from after 6000 BC to the introduction of metal, around 3000 BC.) We have such statuettes from various parts of Ukraine and the Balkans (fig. 2.5 b-d). In Denmark and northern Germany, moreover, in addition to figurines, we have the remains of string skirts on the bodies of young women buried in log coffins during the Bronze Age, late in the second millennium B.C. One of these skirts (fig. 2.6), made of woolen cords stained a rich brown by the acidic groundwater that preserved it, is complete; we can inspect its mode of manufacture.

I guess this is not so exciting to the average person. And I'm too lazy to scan in the figures.

Meme the second: State 7 facts about yourself, and then tag other people and link to them and leave a comment in their blog saying they've been tagged.

1. I've visited Israel 9 times in my life.

2. I currently have an artifact (or three) on display at the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology. Granted, they are hidden way in the back of the 4th floor in the teaching gallery, but they are definitely there.

3. When I was younger, when I ate tri-colored pasta, I would first eat the green noodles, then the orange ones, and then the white ones. Occasionally I still do this.

4. I've spun wool from an alpaca I actually got to meet.

5. I'm addicted to Lindt's Lindor truffles. Particularly the dark chocolate ones. And I like the little square ones better than the big spherical ones, because the texture is slightly different. Though really, I like them all. Unfortunately Lindt is not hekshered in the U.S. (I'm pretty sure they're kosher in Switzerland). But it's one of those unhekshered things I will eat.

6. I've never actually owned a pair of gloves that fit. (I've been meaning to finally knit myself a pair, but this has not yet happened. I still have to make mittens first, since they're easier and would be good practice. Also, I'd have to modify whatever pattern I'd be using, so it's a bit intimidating.)

7. When I was in middle school, my best friend and I invented an alphabet which we used to write each other notes. We both became fluent in writing and reading it. Years later I taught it to another close friend, who still has it memorized (I don't think I could recreate it if I tried.) Becoming fluent in this alphabet was probably the only useful thing I did in middle school.

I don't much believe in tagging, so whoever wants to do this meme can do it.

And to those who celebrate it, Happy New Year!