From the Magazine Department

We still use a checkbook, and keep track of the check numbers and amounts that go out in a piece of paper we call "The Ledger". Just like how people used to balance a checkbook, we still keep track as one should. Anyway, Corrie was looking through it and asked me about an entry I'd filled out.

"Oh," I told her, "That's the Archeological Conservancy." She nodded, "Ahh..."

Over winter break and the Decemberween season, because of the magazine's we do get, we were sent all sorts of crazy offers for other magazines, and by and large Corrie said: "Just do it. Who cares. Cass and Camille love them, and Cass does read them...so..."

Before last December, we got Archeology, The Smithsonian, Mad Magazine, and Highlights and High Five, two of the same type of thing for different age groups ( I think my mom sent those). After last December, we've added Ranger Rick, Ranger Rick Jr, The New Yorker, American Archeology, and Ancient Egypt. If we add all of the checks that went out for those magazines, it would still be, like eighty-bucks. Cass loves Egypt, and all the archeology magazines we tend to think of as travel magazines, so... Also, the Ranger Ricks are made by the National Wildlife Federation, and I guess they could use all the money they can get.

Anywho, so far we've gotten just one of the American Archeology magazines (that's the Archeological Conservancy), and I have to say I've been deeply and pleasantly surprised by the stories.

It focuses solely on the US, and among the stories contained within are things I either didn't know, or gained perspective on. To wit:

• The cover story about rising sea levels focuses on many coastal colonial settlements (many in climate-change-denying areas) having been washed away by new coastlines;
• A story about where the original cows that are here now came from. We mostly know that the Spanish brought them, but did you know they're originally from Western Africa?
• It turns out that native tribes were far more advanced in terms of metallurgical knowledge and ability, and had harnessed copper forging around the same time European counterparts did, about eight thousand years ago. It turns out there are so many metal spear points and arrowheads that American scientists used to think European settlers must have been stateside much earlier, because how could natives do this? [See: racism in academia] Also, they found a copper quarry in present day Michigan...it was more like a gouge that had a vein of cooper ore that had been worked for a number of years, but it was thousands of years old.

The Egypt magazine has a picture of hieroglyph on a wall next to a nicely rendered drawing of the same, next to a literal translation, line by line, of the glyphs. It's so serious and cool. The cover article is about the silver pharaohs and all of the gear cast in silver that normally gets ignored because of all the gold.

I expected Cass to enjoy the articles and Camille to enjoy the pictures, but I didn't see having my own understanding of humanity altered. 

Sometimes brief interludes for the brain break up the monotony of the end of times the news cycle (which I actively avoid, so...).