As of late, weekends have taken on a slightly odd character. Since August, my wife has had a Saturday morning class (from 8am to around 1:30pm usually). This meant we were in bed early on Friday. In terms of our Saturday, we ended up reordering our day so that I would often meet her someplace after her class, we'd eat lunch out, and then engage in various fun activities. We'd come home around suppertime, and spend the evenings cracking at our various projects.
So, that was different. But OK. Now shit is really weird. In the last few weeks, she has had to go into *work* on Saturday, after her class. This means she goes up north, then comes back down to Hyde Park to work, and then comes home around 3-4pm. Functionally, it also means that she doensn't really feel like dragging herself back up north for fun and excitement. So, now, we have all our fun on *Sunday* afternoon, after we clean the house.
On that note, yesterday we hauled ourselves to The Field Museum to check out the new exhibit on Pompeii. This was, perhaps, one of the most *affecting* museum displays I've ever seen, especially at a natural history museum.
The exhibit itself is fantastic - lots of wonderful pieces from the victims of the volcanic eruption. There are many gold necklaces, bracelets, coins, and so on. This is in part because Pompeii, while also a producer of oil and wine, was actually, essentially, a *resort* town. The gold items survive so well beccause gold is a really stable element, so it tends not to rot. Other salvaged items included things like silver mirrors, small statues of deities, spoons, a soldier's weapons & equipment, and two separate medical kits.
What makes the exhibit so powerful is how frightenly *normal* it all is. For instance, the objects saved - earrings and rings especially - are not so far removed from what people might wear today (not a surprise, given the influence of Greco-Roman culture on modern culture, not to mention the numerous Greco-Roman revivals throughout the centuries).
But more powerful than the aesthetic connection is the *behavioral* one. People did things like grab items of value, coins that represented their life savings, or family heirlooms. Bodies were found under stairwells, or (what would have been) the top of collapsed roofs. Bodies were found clutching heavy roof tiles - the escapees attempted to use the tiles to shield their heads from debris, before succumbing to the poisonous fumes that killed them.
Several of the exhibits are casts made from impressions of bodies left in the ash. There is something powerful and disturbing about seeing a woman leaning on a pair of steps, collapsed as she tried to escape. Another cast was of 30-some people, who ran into an arched arcade for safety and died there. The skeletons seem frozen in terror, flung about in panic. Sure, the mouths probably fell open after they were dead ... But the impression is one of people screaming.
I don't consider myself to be cold hearted, but I'm also not sentimental. But the whole exhibit was really disturbing to me. Generally, when we are faced with this kind of mass death, there is something *alien* about it. I don't relate to the mummies of pharoahs - they were treated as gods. I relate to slaves and wealthy business ownders huddling and trying to escape a natural disaster.
Even displays of human cruelty - concentration camps, war, and slavery - are *different* from this. Those conditions, no matter how "typical" they are of human history, seem very alien. While there is always war somewhere, and someplaces seem in perpetual conflict, there is a sense that such intense, wide-spread violence is an *aberration* of normal time. Further, there is a sense that we could learn from these mistakes and prevent them in the future. This exhibit on Pompeii doesn't have that same feeling at all ... This feels like normal time, disrupted by something totally unforseen. This feels like people going about life, and having it ripped away. This feels like it could happen. It was immediate in a way that many other disasters just are not.
This is not to play down the terror of things that people do to one another, or to say that volcanoes are worse than wars or anything. Just something about how *average* it all was really hit me in the gut. It was really powerful stuff.
So, that was different. But OK. Now shit is really weird. In the last few weeks, she has had to go into *work* on Saturday, after her class. This means she goes up north, then comes back down to Hyde Park to work, and then comes home around 3-4pm. Functionally, it also means that she doensn't really feel like dragging herself back up north for fun and excitement. So, now, we have all our fun on *Sunday* afternoon, after we clean the house.
On that note, yesterday we hauled ourselves to The Field Museum to check out the new exhibit on Pompeii. This was, perhaps, one of the most *affecting* museum displays I've ever seen, especially at a natural history museum.
The exhibit itself is fantastic - lots of wonderful pieces from the victims of the volcanic eruption. There are many gold necklaces, bracelets, coins, and so on. This is in part because Pompeii, while also a producer of oil and wine, was actually, essentially, a *resort* town. The gold items survive so well beccause gold is a really stable element, so it tends not to rot. Other salvaged items included things like silver mirrors, small statues of deities, spoons, a soldier's weapons & equipment, and two separate medical kits.
What makes the exhibit so powerful is how frightenly *normal* it all is. For instance, the objects saved - earrings and rings especially - are not so far removed from what people might wear today (not a surprise, given the influence of Greco-Roman culture on modern culture, not to mention the numerous Greco-Roman revivals throughout the centuries).
But more powerful than the aesthetic connection is the *behavioral* one. People did things like grab items of value, coins that represented their life savings, or family heirlooms. Bodies were found under stairwells, or (what would have been) the top of collapsed roofs. Bodies were found clutching heavy roof tiles - the escapees attempted to use the tiles to shield their heads from debris, before succumbing to the poisonous fumes that killed them.
Several of the exhibits are casts made from impressions of bodies left in the ash. There is something powerful and disturbing about seeing a woman leaning on a pair of steps, collapsed as she tried to escape. Another cast was of 30-some people, who ran into an arched arcade for safety and died there. The skeletons seem frozen in terror, flung about in panic. Sure, the mouths probably fell open after they were dead ... But the impression is one of people screaming.
I don't consider myself to be cold hearted, but I'm also not sentimental. But the whole exhibit was really disturbing to me. Generally, when we are faced with this kind of mass death, there is something *alien* about it. I don't relate to the mummies of pharoahs - they were treated as gods. I relate to slaves and wealthy business ownders huddling and trying to escape a natural disaster.
Even displays of human cruelty - concentration camps, war, and slavery - are *different* from this. Those conditions, no matter how "typical" they are of human history, seem very alien. While there is always war somewhere, and someplaces seem in perpetual conflict, there is a sense that such intense, wide-spread violence is an *aberration* of normal time. Further, there is a sense that we could learn from these mistakes and prevent them in the future. This exhibit on Pompeii doesn't have that same feeling at all ... This feels like normal time, disrupted by something totally unforseen. This feels like people going about life, and having it ripped away. This feels like it could happen. It was immediate in a way that many other disasters just are not.
This is not to play down the terror of things that people do to one another, or to say that volcanoes are worse than wars or anything. Just something about how *average* it all was really hit me in the gut. It was really powerful stuff.
shard:
Sounds profound. I try and remember that any day could be my last. It helps me to avoid things that are meaningless. When peple complain at work, I ask them, "would you say that if you knew it were your last day on earth?" It gets people to stop and think. I hope it doesn't make me look like I have a morbid fascination.
obd:
have you ever been to the holocaust museum in DC?