Jack Cheng, PhD

Happy New Year!

2012-01-04T20:44:00.002-05:00

CommonHealth blogpost

2011-12-01T21:57:00.001-05:00

I conducted a Q&A with a nurse who coordinated a flu clinic for Occupy Boston protestors. The CommonHealth blog at WBUR posted it.

Socks

2011-05-12T10:59:00.000-05:00

I wrote an article in the Newton Tab about how socks helped me feel more a part of this town I live in. Honestly. See?

Stoddard's

2011-04-05T12:52:00.002-05:00

I took a class on knife sharpening at Stoddard's, one of the oldest businesses in Boston (est. 1800). Then I wrote it up for WBUR's Public Radio Kitchen.

Parenting Column

2010-03-28T14:42:00.002-05:00

I occasionally write about the kids for one reason or another and the Globe has published a recent essay on identity and food shopping here.

Keeping Score

2009-10-08T15:05:00.001-05:00

I helped develop a website for the PBS program Keeping Score, specifically for the second season. I did some editing on the sections about three compositions -- Berlioz' Symphonie fantastique, Ives' Holidays Symphony and Shostakovich's Fifth Symphony -- and worked a lot on a map feature that shows classical music milestones of various eras on a Google map based structure. I think it's neat and I think you should look at it.

The programs themselves are excellent and will be airing on local PBS stations this October. Keeping Score was developed by the San Francisco Symphony and features their conductor, Michael Tilson Thomas, who is an excellent ambassador for classical music. I learned a lot from the program about the composers but also about how to listen and what to listen for.

And, I can't recommend it highly enough, check out the program's own page (not on PBS.org) at KeepingScore.org. There are super excellent interactive features. For example, listen to the music and read the score as it scrolls by. Not impressed? How about stop the score and click on a soloist's part to see a little video of the soloist talk about what the part means for that instrument and how it fits in with the rest of the orchestra. And there's more of that -- thoughtful interactivity that makes a point and teaches as it amuses. KeepingScore.org.

Review of the Virtual Museum of Iraq

2009-10-07T09:32:00.003-05:00

Now online is a review I wrote of the Virtual Museum of Iraq. It's a really beautiful, well thought out site but I hate it for reasons that become apparent in the review.

Here's the first paragraph:

The Virtual Museum of Iraq serves as an excellent multimedia introduction to the history and archaeology of Iraq, from prehistoric times through the Islamic period. Users can "turn" objects to see 360-degree views, watch short videos that explain concepts and introduce time periods, and have access to maps and plans of archaeological sites. There is, however, a major problem with the site that is big enough that it colors everything good about the site and makes it impossible for me to give a whole-hearted endorsement of this project.

There is no commenting feature yet at the CSA Newsletter site, but feel free to post comments here.

Article on Sumerian Music

2009-08-13T06:07:00.002-05:00

The Journal of Near Eastern Studies has just published my article on Sumerian music (including singing and iconography). Here's the citation and the first few hundred words:

Jack Cheng, "A Review of Early Dynastic III Music: Man’s Animal Call," Journal of Near Eastern Studies July 2009, Vol. 68, No. 3: 163-178.

A review of the texts, images and actual musical instruments of the Early Dynastic III period leads to new insights into how Sumerians understood their world, and to the fine line they drew between civilization and nature.

Well over half the total number of known depictions of music-making from the third phase of the Early Dynastic (ED III) period of Mesopotamia, ca. 2600-2350 BC, come from artifacts excavated from the Royal Cemetery of Ur; these artifacts provide an extraordinarily rich assemblage of music related evidence. The assemblage includes actual musical instruments excavated by Leonard Woolley—in many cases the only ones of their type whose excavation has been documented—and a variety of images of musical scenes. The data comes from only one segment of the society, however. Only the wealthiest and most powerful Sumerians were buried in the so-called royal graves at Ur, only the wealthiest could afford to commission and keep carved stone plaques, cylinder seals or inlaid mosaics, and only the most powerful wrote or commissioned literary compositions. So the music represented is the music of the elite; furthermore, it is a version of their musical practice that they chose to commemorate in burials, on artwork, and in royal decrees. Although we have a lot of data from this slice of Sumerian society, it should be kept in mind that we do not have much information about Sumerian music as a whole.

Whereas most studies of Mesopotamian music are longitudinal, tracing the sporadic appearances of one type of instrument over millennia, the Royal Cemetery and related Early Dynastic III material provide a lateral platform to consider music as a historical, cultural phenomenon of a localized area. Given this opportunity, the information here is presented in an ethnomusicological model rather than an archaeological one. That is, rather than present individual stone plaques and discussing all the musical elements in their iconography, I have synthesized the information and present ED III musical practice as a coherent whole. In that light, the sections to follow include Musical Contexts (the audience), Musicians, Vocal Music, Musical Instruments, and Decorations on Instruments.

Each of these categories leads to connections between music and the natural world. The association of music with animals in Early Dynastic art was immediately noted by scholars who examined the decorative plaque on the Great Lyre of Ur (U.10556 on fig. 1). The “animal orchestra” is a tradition that continues on through the Neo-Hittite period and into the modern era with the Brothers Grimm’s story of the musicians of Bremen and the Brothers Wilson’s final notes on the album “Pet Sounds.” It is possible the Sumerians, like other cultures, simply analogized the unique timbres of musical instruments with the unique vocalizations of animals. This review of Early Dynastic musical practice will show that this cognitive association was not simple, but rather deeply ingrained in all aspects of that culture. The material suggests a coherent metaphor for music as man’s contribution to the cacophony of the animal world.

Uncling

2009-06-08T08:02:00.001-05:00

After my nephew Harrison came to visit us, I wrote a short essay about being an uncle vs. being a father and it was published in the Boston Globe Sunday Magazine yesterday. Here's the link.

Museum Review

2009-05-04T08:45:00.002-05:00

A review I wrote of "Art and Empire: Treasures from Assyria in the British Museum" has been published in the latest issue of Near Eastern Archaeology (vol. 71 #4, cover dated December 2008).

It's too late to see the show at Boston's Museum of Fine Arts and the review is not online, but it was a fun assignment because it was the second time I saw the show. The first was over a decade ago at the Met. The Met version was a lot more intellectual and had more scholarly information. The MFA version was incredibly beautiful and aestheticized. What surprised me, as a scholar of Assyrian art, is that I may prefer the MFA version.

The reasons I preferred the new iteration:

exhibitions like this are not for experts; they are to encourage the general public to learn more about specific areas of art,
more information can always be found in the catalogs of shows, and
it was just plain gorgeous and made me appreciate the art I have studied for years in a new way.

Public Humanist

2008-12-08T23:25:00.002-05:00

Another post, this one about the amazing Tara Donovan, a sculptor who has her first one woman show at the ICA Boston.

World History Matters

2008-12-04T20:55:00.000-05:00

My latest publication is as a contributor to World History Matters: A Student Guide to World History Online, a nicely illustrated and well organized guide to scholarly internet sites. Yes, you can cite these in your papers!

Public Humanist

2008-10-22T14:37:00.003-05:00

I have two new posts up at The Public Humanist.

The first is on the traveling British Museum exhibition of Assyrian art, Art and Empire.

The second is on the announcement of the Iraq Heritage Project.

Please comment on both or either. I'm very curious to know what others think about these topics.

Book Review: Babylon's Ark

2008-08-04T19:08:00.002-05:00

Babylon's Ark by Lawrence Anthony is a memoir of a conservationist's trip to Baghdad soon after the invasion of Iraq in 2003 to save the animals at the Baghdad Zoo. After reading a number of books on the topic, mostly on the archaeological looting, but also the excellent Imperial Life in the Emerald City, as well as numerous articles in the New Yorker and elsewhere, I feel like I know the story of the initial invasion (and bungling of the occupation) pretty well. For this reason, I found the first couple of chapters of Anthony's book a little tiresome (he also perpetuates the mistaken belief that since many of the major items looted from the Baghdad Museum were returned, that the looting was minor; it was not). The last chapter is also a bit much, a manifesto on respect for earth's creatures and awareness of our fragility, earth in the balance, blah blah blah.

That said, the middle of the book sucked me in. Anthony is South African, and SA was officially a neutral party in the occupation. The stories of the sidemen, the Department of Defense photographers, or the Afrikaan mercenary/security contractors, as well as the NGOs interested in conservation is pretty compelling. The story of the animals in the Zoo is really sad, although ultimately positive. There are also anecdotes about Uday and his pet lions that are pretty disturbing. In general, the portrait of Third World zoos and treatment of animals seemed pretty accurate based on my experiences. And Anthony is sympathetic to the Iraqis who are looting anything to feed their families, but he also rightly wonders about the psychosis that compelled people to loot things --iron bars from animal cages?-- they couldn't possibly sell. I was also interested to read that Captain William Sumner, who oversaw the Baghdad Museum, was also in charge of putting the Zoo right (it's all Civil Affairs).

At 250 pages or so, the book seemed a bit overlong to me, but there's definitely some good stories in there. An interesting angle through which to lament the war.

Movie Money Charts

2008-08-01T13:40:00.001-05:00

For fans of Edward Tufte or other graphic designers (if you can name one, you are a fan):

Movie box office charts.

Well designed.

Review of Ancient Near Eastern Art in Context

2008-07-13T06:26:00.002-05:00

Aren Maeir has published a review of Ancient Near Eastern Art in Context in the Review of Biblical Literature. As is often the case in reviewing essay collections, much of the article summarizes the contents of the book but Maeir is generally positive. This is the final paragraph:

All told, the varied, provocative, and generally holistic studies that appear in this volume are an extremely fitting tribute to one of the most prominent and well-rounded scholars of the ancient Near East in recent times. The fact that these studies are products of her students, using a worldview clearly borrowed from their teacher, is perhaps the most lasting feature of this tribute!

Catching up with AmEx

2008-06-07T19:49:00.002-05:00

Looking at my blog, I noticed there were a few things I did last year or earlier this year that I did not mention or link to. Two of them are websites for American Experience films:

Oswald's Ghost and Whitman.

Oswald's Ghost is about the impact of the Kennedy assassination on the nation's psyche, the rise of conspiracy theorists and a general increase in paranoia among Americans.

Whitman tells the story of Walt Whitman, considered by many to be America's greatest poet. I didn't know much about Whitman before my research but I found him to be a rather fascinating person and his story reveals a lot about 19th century American society.

Good stuff on both sites (that's praise for the AmEx team, not self-congratulations) and Whitman can be streamed online for free.

Letter editing

2008-06-07T19:29:00.004-05:00

Further adventures in my life as a letter writing crank:

This is from the Boston Globe Sunday Magazine, May 25, 2008, in response to a short piece by Charles Pierce. I'm not sure what Rosie Crocker's problem with it was, but I thought it was a good bit of historical reflection. In fact, this is what I wrote to the author originally:

Hi Charlie (hope you don't mind the familiar, but your voice [written and
spoken] has become as familiar to me as a friend),

I've enjoyed your work in various national magazines, in Altercation and in
the Globe, as well as on Wait Wait and Only a Game. I have to admit that
Pierced is the venue I least prefer--something about the length and
position in the magazine seems to encourage short rants which are amusing,
but trifling.

That said, I quite enjoyed the latest edition of Pierced and wanted to
encourage you to write more about the history of this city and region.
That's the sort of contextualization that is lost in the news (and I write
as someone who never watched televised news--I'm just referring to
newspapers and radio) but which we need more of.

Keep up the good work; I look forward to reading your next missive,

-Jack

(Jack Cheng)

As a proper letter writing crank, I should have written directly to the editor and kept it short. Ah well.

Hollis

2008-05-18T19:56:00.002-05:00

Because I'm a dork, I looked up our book in Hollis, Harvard's online library catalog, and was pleased to find that the University bought three copies! One for the Divinity School library, one for Widener (the main, big general library) and one for the Fine Arts library. In case you're wondering, only the Div School copy is checked out as of today.

Boston Globe piece

2008-05-06T15:51:00.002-05:00

Five years ago this week, I had a small piece about the looting of the Baghdad Museum published in the Ideas section of the Boston Globe.

Technology Teacher

2008-04-30T15:16:00.003-05:00

I wrote an article for the Technology Teacher which should be out about now, although they don't have online access. The article was about Design Squad, an excellent PBS show aimed at the 9 yrs old and above crowd and is reality show where teams compete by building things. Yes, it teaches engineering and science while being fun to watch. Their website also has lots of cool project sheets to download. After Austin expressed interest in a catapult, I got a Dixie cup, paint stirrer and a wooden block and we shot plastic balls into the air with it. And now he knows what a fulcrum is. (Or he did, for a moment.)

Check out the site, and if anyone gets Technology Teacher at their school and wants to comment on the article, please do!

Another Altercation comment

2008-04-22T20:40:00.002-05:00

A comment I made to the blog Altercation was published on Friday. I realize it sounds like it could be sarcastic or cynical, but I'm really curious about what the mission in Afghanistan will be.

More on Moqtada al-Sadr

2008-04-08T18:59:00.003-05:00

Well, turns out people better informed than me also think that Moqtada al-Sadr is one of the central figures in Iraq, marginalized by the Iraqi and American governments (as well as the American media). Here's a post with the last chapter of Patrick Cockburn's new book Muqtada: Muqtada al-Sadr, the Shia Revival, and the Struggle for Iraq.

Victory in Iraq

2008-04-04T12:33:00.002-05:00

Is it just me, or is it clear to everyone who the winner of the war in Iraq is? Is it just a matter of time before he's identified by everyone else?

I'm writing, of course, about Moqtada al-Sadr.

He and his Mahdi army have been powerful forces and power brokers for a long time.

Was violence down in Iraq in 2007? Yep, but not because of the "surge." It's because al-Sadr declared a cease fire.

Is violence suddenly back up in Iraq? Yes, because offshoots from al-Sadr's Mahdi Army are fighting again. And here's the kicker: if they keep fighting, al-Sadr becomes more powerful in the minds of Iraqis; if they stop fighting because al-Sadr commands them to stop, al-Sadr becomes more powerful in the minds of Iraqis.

The trouble with a lot of American news is they set everything up from the point of view of the American military or American politicians. Reading the news with Moqtada al-Sadr in mind, it's easy to see how from an Iraqi point of view, he's becoming more and more powerful.

Frankly, I think he's winning not only the war but the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people. Maybe the US should start negotiating with him.

Introduction from ANE Art in Context, aka Irene Winter Festschrift

2008-04-03T16:02:00.004-05:00

I'm excerpting below the introduction that Marian Feldman and I wrote for Ancient Near Eastern Art in Context : Studies in Honor of Irene J. Winter. I'd meant to do this earlier to help Googlers find articles that are in the book, but it makes sense to do it now, too, because we will be having a session dedicated to Irene at this year's American Society for Oriental Research (ASOR) meeting in Boston. That will happen in November. Sign up for the meetings if you haven't yet!

Okay, from the introduction, skipping all the mushy stuff:

While Irene’s contributions to the field of ancient Near Eastern art
are so numerous that it might seem impossible to make an accurate
accounting of them, arguably one of the most profound has been her
unfailing commitment to contextualization in the widest and richest
sense of the term—from a careful consideration of the art within its
archaeological settings to the ideological, rhetorical, ritual and aesthetic
networks in which these arts existed and participated. It is this total
integration that has inspired the title of this volume and that we hope
to have emulated in the diverse array of articles gathered within it.

To begin, however, we have two articles of a more personal nature
from two of Irene’s first graduate students that put Irene herself into
context. John Russell contributes a scholarly biography, assessing
Irene’s contributions to the academy from his own perspective as a
scholar, teacher and activist. Michelle Marcus writes about Irene’s
role as an educator and mentor as a model for pre-college education,
and she makes the case for the importance of and potential for
studying visual culture even in kindergarten and elementary school
classrooms.

In the rest of the contributions, although we did not solicit specific
topics, we were pleased to find that common themes emerged as we
assembled the finished articles. And these themes, not surprisingly,
intersect with those that Irene has explored in her own work. Thus,
we have grouped the articles in five sections, the title of each having
been drawn from seminal articles in Irene’s corpus.

I. “Seat of Kingship/A Wonder to Behold”: Architectural Contexts

Irene’s work in the early 1980s on the Neo-Assyrian palace of Ashurnasirpal
II pioneered an approach to studying the relationship between
texts, images and architecture as an integrated and coherent program
designed to define or defend a royal ideology. Her students continue
to explore the use of architecture and architectural decoration as
symbol, especially as they convey messages about royal power. In
this section, Irit Ziffer examines a group of Chalcolithic Levantine
copper “crowns” and suggests they reflect palatial forms of an early,
emerging rulership. Ömür Harmansah explores the development of
the orthostat tradition in North Syria, which the Neo-Assyrian rulers
later drew upon for their palaces, and considers how the physical
and structural qualities of the orthostats convey as much meaning
as the images carved on them. Stephanie Reed problematizes the
interpretation of the Neo-Assyrian palace reliefs of Ashurbanipal,
finding traces of emotive affect in the depiction of prisoners of war
that may be indicative of a little-explored aspect of conflicting
Assyrian perceptions of the enemy.

II. “Idols of the King”: Ritual Contexts

In her work on the statues of Gudea in the late 1980s and early
1990s, Irene considered the ways in which ancient monuments operated
within contexts of ritual and in particular how such ritualized
use reinforced royal needs. Monuments are not simply objects to
admire, but rather key participants in social action and thus represent
traces of physical acts and desires played out long ago. A number
of our contributors have taken a similar tack, reconstructing ritual
based on archaeological, representational or architectural evidence
and then contextualizing how those rituals may have served significant
functions in maintaining hegemony. Ann Shafer considers the
peripheral monuments of Assyrian kings—carved stelae and rock
reliefs—not only as marking the borders of conquest, but also as
sites and residues of ritual performance critical to the maintenance
of royal ideology. Tallay Ornan proposes that the Neo-Assyrian king
Sennacherib may have appropriated aspects of the divine in his images,
blurring the lines between god and king and moving toward
a kind of royal deification. Elif Denel demonstrates that areas of
the city of Carchemish, elaborately ornamented with carved reliefs
and exhibiting evidence of offerings, were designed as focal points of
rituals that reinforced the power of the North Syrian rulers. TuÅba
Tanyeri-Erdemir traces the coevolution of temple architecture and
state ideology in the Urartian Empire, arguing that rituals conducted
outside and inside state sponsored sacred sites were critical to the
establishment and perpetuation of an Urartian royal ideology.

III. “Legitimization of Authority”: Ideological Contexts

In her work on the seemingly mundane sealings of Ur III bureaucrats,
as well as in her research on royal images, Irene has shown us that
ideological messages are pervasive in the visual culture, the two being
inextricably entwined with the larger socio-political landscape of the
Near East. The three papers in this section explore different ways
in which Near Eastern rulers derived political legitimization through
artistic production. Jülide Aker’s contribution focuses on Ashurbanipal’s
lion hunt reliefs to find the hierarchies of the royal personnel
reflected and affirmed in the quality of the craftsmanship applied to
different subjects. Marian Feldman traces the Mesopotamian, and in
particular Akkadian Empire, lineage of Darius I’s “heroizing” style
and proposes methods of transmission from Mesopotamia to Persia
and from the third millennium to the first. Mehmet-Ali Ataç draws
upon parallels from Classical Greece to explore the description of
divine radiance—melammu in Akkadian—as a heroic quality associated
with Mesopotamian kingship.

IV. “Sex, Rhetoric and the Public Monument”: Gendered Contexts

Given that questions of gender and sexuality must be considered in
any social history and Irene’s commitment to a total understanding
of ancient Mesopotamia, it is not surprising that a part of her work
has focused in this area. In her 1996 study of the Stele of Naram-Sin,
Irene applied theories of gender and masculinity to demonstrate how
Naram-Sin’s physical allure functioned as a key quality in his royal
persona. Attempting to reconstruct the roles of women in Mesopotamian
society, she has written on the Disk of Enheduanna, one of the
very few images of women in the corpus of ancient Near Eastern art.
The three contributions in this section follow suit, exploring diverse
cases of gendered contexts. Claudia Suter identifies representations of
priestesses in the Akkad through Isin-Larsa periods, and in so doing,
brings their socio-economic and ideological roles into focus. Using a
case study of an archive attributed to a wife of Shulgi, Tonia Sharlach
discusses the methodological considerations in studying a “woman’s”
archive—including how to define such a thing. Julia Assante studies
a group of presumably private monuments—pornographic lead inlays—
proposing that the aesthetic treatment of women and foreigners
seen on them, and the ways in which they would have been experienced
by Assyrian courtiers, played a decisive role in bolstering the
royal ideology of Tukulti-Ninurta I.

V. “Opening the Eyes and Opening the Mouth”: Interdisciplinary Contexts

One of Irene’s great talents is to look at familiar objects in a fresh
light and through new “eyes” in order to provide a different perspective
on them. The title of this section is taken from an article from
2000 in which Irene drew upon living rituals observed in India to
gain insight into the ancient practices in which artworks once existed.
The article—like so much of Irene’s work—emphasizes and capitalizes
on the benefits of crossing fields, disciplines, media, time and space.
The contributions in this final section exhibit a similar “breaching”
of traditional boundaries and in the process reveal new aspects of
the ancient Near East. Andrew Cohen discusses how and why barley
became a “key symbol”—an important and pervasive touchstone
that helped define Mesopotamian culture on an economic as well as
ideological level. Abraham Winitzer combines his knowledge of both
Hebrew and Akkadian to parse the Deuteronomic laws regarding the
taking of a neighbor’s fruit and grain. Jack Cheng considers the phenomenon
of objects depicted with representations of themselves as a
message from the past to the future. Amy Gansell, in a nod to Irene’s
ethnoarchaeological explorations of Hindu ceremonies, researches a
modern tradition of Syrian bridal adornment as a way of furthering
our understanding of ancient jewelry. Benjamin Studevent-Hickman
takes a new look at the moment at which cuneiform writing turned
ninety degrees and discusses the variables involved, suggesting that
to insist on a single point in time is to miss the dynamic complexity
of language and writing.

A few additional editorial observations may serve as further testament
to the quality and breadth of Irene’s scholarship. Our authors cited
29 different articles by Irene, dating from 1974 to her more recent
publications in 2004. It is certainly a tribute to her continuing relevance
in the field that Irene has never had a fallow period in her
scholarship and continues to publish groundbreaking work on almost
every period of Mesopotamian art history. This is mirrored in the
wide range of dates and cultures explored by the contributors, from
Ziffer at the beginning of state formation in the fourth millennium
to Feldman at the end of the independent ancient Near East in the
Achaemenid period to Gansell’s ethnographic study of Syria in the
20th century CE. The Neo-Assyrian period—an area in which Irene
has produced such impressive scholarship—is the subject of papers
by Aker, Ornan, Reed and Shafer. Her interest in the first millennium
kingdoms of northern Syria and southeastern Turkey surfaces
in papers by Denel, Harmansah and Tanyeri-Erdemir. Different aspects
of the third millennium are addressed in the papers of Cohen,
Sharlach and Suter. In addition, Irene’s continuing interest in the
relationship between text and image is explored by Studevent-Hickman
and Cheng. Her recent work on aesthetics and affect threads
through many of these papers.

Despite the disruptions and lengthy time in the production of this
volume, we are delighted with the quality and breadth of the essays. In
pitching the idea of this book to our publisher, we made the argument
that Irene’s influence is so broad and deep that her students represent
the next wave of scholarship of the visual culture of the ancient Near
East. For Irene’s sake, we hope that promise has been fulfilled.

The Public Humanist

2007-06-03T15:13:00.001-05:00

I'm now listed as a contributor to The Public Humanist, a site set up by the Massachusetts Foundation for the Humanities with support from The Valley Advocate.

Pretty impressive list of writers there. I'm the, uh, Asian one, I guess. What's going on that it was so hard to find non-whites with a background and passion for the Humanities? Perhaps I need to write a blogpost about that.

The point of the blog is to engage in public dialogues about how the humanities frame, affect and are affected by our public, American lives. It's early on, and as I wrote, I'm listed as a contributor but have not yet contributed, but it looks to be a good discussion. Join in!

It's here! For order

2007-04-18T19:29:00.000-05:00

Ancient Near Eastern Art in Context: Studies in Honor of Irene J. Winter

edited by Jack Cheng and Marian H. Feldman, published by Brill, 2007.

More details as we get closer to the actual physical book.

Award

2006-11-02T16:17:00.000-05:00

I just got this nice e-mail:

"We are writing with the very nice news that World History Matters (the combined rubric for World History Sources and Women and World History--at http://worldhistorymatters.org) has been awarded the James Harvey Robinson Prize of the American Historical Association for its for “outstanding contribution to the teaching and learning of history.” The award will be made at the Annual Meeting of the AHA in January."

Excellent!

My contributions can be found here.

And here.

Archaeological Blog review

2006-05-02T10:10:00.000-05:00

The Newsletter of the Center for the Study of Architecture/Archaeology has just published my review of the Gath Project Blo g in the Spring 2006 issue.

Blogging has come to the trenches! The Gath blog is worth checking out because it is both archaeologically sound (i.e. lots of good information about digging for students) and fun (i.e. lots of fun information about digging). The tone has the silly/losing our sanity vibe that digs tend to inspire.

The Boy in the Bubble

2006-04-11T10:45:00.000-05:00

Embarassingly, I forgot to post before the actual show, but PBS affiliates may be repeating the latest American Experience program this week. The show is on The Boy in the Bubble and I wrote the content for the accompanying website. I will write more later, but suffice it to say for the moment that I found this story one of the most heartbreaking in the series.

Dawes

2006-04-06T15:42:00.000-05:00

This is a bit tangential to anything, but it's almost Patriot's Day when we remember Paul Revere and once again forget William Dawes, the other guy who went to warn Sam Adams in Concord of the Redcoats.

I just heard this amazing story by Don Was about a song composed by Charles Dawes, a descendent of William's and Calvin Coolidge's Vice President. Dawes' melody was a hit midcentury and then acquired lyrics and became even more popular. Barry Manilow is the latest to cover the song, and Was played clips of Elton John and others singing it.

The whole thing is so weird that I suspected it was an April Fool's prank. Check it out.

Book Review: Positively Fifth Street

2006-02-17T17:14:00.000-05:00

by James McManus
Okay, so I'm a little late getting into the poker phenomenon. (Or was I early? I did buy that poker table with Pete, although we tend to play dumb games that favor luck and not the new "official" poker game, no-limit hold 'em.)

When I was working on the American Experience Las Vegas site, one of my more enjoyable tasks was to read through Michelle Ferrari (with Stephen Ives)'s book, Las Vegas: An Unconventional History. I asked to excerpt a few passages from the book and had to get permission from the authors, one of whom was James McManus on the History of Poker. Seems I dealt with Good Jim because he was quite gracious even though I hacked great swaths of wordsmithing from his essay so that a) it would fit the pea sized brain of a web surfer and b) leave lots of juicy morsels to be found with said web surfer found either the Las Vegas book or McManus' own.

So what's with the Good Jim? And is there a Bad Jim? Apparently there is both of him(s). This was the one device that didn't quite click with me at first -- he traces his Good side to one set of grandparents, god-fearing and good people, and the Bad side to Grandpa Jim, the boozing, gambling, cheating on his wife grandpa. I wasn't crazy about this, but it actually grew on me as I read.

There's also a lot of words about the trial of Sandra Murphy and Rick Tabish, accused of murdering Murphy's lover (and Tabish's friend) Ted Binion, heir to the Binion fortune and part of the family that runs Binion's Horseshoe casino in Vegas and puts on the World Series of Poker annually. The Murphy Tabish stuff is vaguely interesting but that's not why I picked up the book.

What I wanted to read about was McManus playing poker. He gets an assignment from Harper's Magazine to cover the World Series, specifically on the increased number of women competing for (and with a legitimate shot at) the championship. But then he takes his advance/expense money, bets it in a poker game and wins $10,000 -- the fee to join the actual World Series itself. And then he does remarkably well in the tournament.

Along the way there are histories of poker and of cards, discussions of poker histories and strategy books, profiles of major poker players and analyses of various literary figures. There's even an excerpt from a David Sedaris writing project (McManus was a writing teacher of Sedaris' at the Art Institute of Chicago's school).

I have to admit, I've only seen televised poker a few times (we don't have cable) but despite this lack, McManus describes the lingo and strategy so thoroughly that the description of his games are very easy to follow and more exciting than any card game has any right to be. And, just when I start to understand how he's strategizing and someone makes a brilliant move, luck rears its randomly ugly head and takes someone out unexpectedly.

For anyone interested in poker, this book has to be read. For those interested in contemporary Las Vegas, this is also high on the list of required reading. And if anyone is wondering why people get obsessive about poker, this book will explain it to you.

Book Review: Moon Dust

2006-01-19T09:11:00.000-05:00

Andrew Smith is a British magazine writer. Naturally, his writing is self-deprecating and full of pop cultures references. He was also born in New York and grew up in California in the 1960s and got caught up in the space race, especially the Apollo program.

His non-fiction book Moon Dust has a terrific premise. After hearing that Pete Conrad has died, Smith realizes that there are only nine men left alive who have ever walked on the moon. And they are all in their seventies (more or less). He sets out to interview each of them, ask them about Apollo ("was it worth it?") and their experience ("how did it change you?").

If, like me, you have an interest in Apollo for the characters (and although these are real live guys, they were definitely characters) as well as the history, this is excellent. After vaguely hearing about Buzz Aldrin being kind of crazy, I want to hear about him now. And what's Alan Bean like now that he's traded aerospace for fine art (albeit focusing on painting moonscapes)? What's up with John Young? And where the hell has Neil Armstrong gone?

Smith addresses all of these questions. Bean is a particularly compelling character, even more so now, I think, for being so content. And of course we have to know, was he really the model for Jack Nicholson's character in Terms of Endearment? (Yeah, also, strange as it may seem, for Bill Paxton's protrayal of Bean's colleague Fred Haise in Apollo 13.) Aldrin is the opposite, full of nervous energy, with a phobia for writing, even though he's written some science fiction novels (he draws graphs for what happens and his collaborators flesh it out). And though Smith focuses on the nine moonwalkers, he also contacts other astronauts -- including some of my personal favorites, William Anders and Michael Collins. He lets Scott Carpenter tell his side of the feud with Chris Kraft (although he says nothing that really contradicts Kraft's memoir he comes across as more sympathetic than the Director of Flight portrays him).

This is great stuff!

Unfortunately, there's some not as great stuff to slog through to get to the gems. There's a lot about Smith growing up and wanting to be an astronaut. We get to hear about how sexy his fourth grade teacher was. He reminds us that the Vietnam was going on and that 1968 was a hellish year. He tells us what was playing on the radio and t.v. All this may be important context for anyone under 30 who picks up the book without any prior knowledge of NASA before the space shuttle, but not so interesting to anyone who has glanced at a history book.

The other annoying tic is the referencing of pop culture. Now anyone who knows me knows that I like pop culture as much as anyone, but maybe not as much as the average Brit. (Remember the 1990s? I read in NME or Melody Maker that almost everyone in England -- grandfathers and pre-teen girls knew all the words to Oasis' big hits and would sing along to pub jukeboxes. Can you imagine that happening in America?) Anyway, my point is, it gets gratuitous. Do you need to know what Wayne Coyne thought of Apollo? (Actually, I was kind of curious until I read the rambling, riffing paragraph that sounded like a stoned college sophomore.) Or here, how about what Smith has to say about Jim Lovell's famous statement, "Houston, we've had a problem"?:

"With hindsight, the only good thing about the situation was Lovell's response, expressed with an understatement and timing which the combined writers of Friends, The Simpsons and Six Feet Under would have struggeled to better." (p. 207)

Huh? I'm sorry, was Lovell trying to make a joke? Is Friends the epitome of understated dialogue? Have you seen Joey?! (But then he makes up for this with another pop culture fact: Apollo 13 was a screwup. Period. until Al Reinart wrote that the mission was "NASA's finest hour" in his 1995 screenplay, no one else thought so.)

The last stylistic device that was a little odd was Smith's tendency to write about writing. He tells us what he wears to the interviews with the astronauts, and the interviews are presented as faux transcripts with Smith's chuckles of embarassment or humor, odd insights and frustrations all part of the package. In a sense, if you want to know what it's like to be a magazine writer, here's a good place to start.

These annoyances were easy to skip, however, and I did find myself breezing through the pages about young Andrew riding his bike through the streets of Orinda. And overall, it was probably worth it for the interviews. How strange is John Young? And how cool is Rene Carpenter, writing her own Life Magazine stories (edited by Loudon Wainwright, father of LW III and grandpa of Rufus), mocking the media circus, meeting Jackie Kennedy and later (after divorcing Scott) campaigning for RFK and present in Indianapolis when Bobby addressed the crowd following MLK's death?

Actually, all the wives seem pretty cool, even the second, third and fourth wives.

Aside from the individual stories, Smith does connect a few interesting dots. He realizes that all the moonwalkers were eldest sons. Moreover he finds that while the commanders of the moon missions all stayed pretty straight and narrow:

(11) Armstrong returned to Ohio to teach, does not like to be recognized as special for having stepped on the moon first;
(12) Conrad and (14) Shepherd both deceased ([13]Lovell never landed);
(15) David Scott, more reclusive than Armstrong, wrote a bookwith cosmonaut Alexei Leonov;
(16) John Young still works for NASA; and
(17) Gene Cernan still promotes space exploration and was at GW Bush's side when the president announced his Mars initiative (that went nowhere)

the lunar module pilots all diverged:

(11) Buzz Aldrin went through alcoholism, depression and is considered a little nuts (but in a "lovable ol' crazy uncle Edwin" way);
(12) Alan Bean became a successful painter;
(14) Ed Mitchell founded ION and studies ESP and other paraphenomenon;
(15) Jim Irwin (deceased) heard the voice of God on the moon and threw himself into the church upon his return;
(16) Charles Duke, with the help of his wife, also found God; and
(17) Harrison "Jack" Schmitt served in the US Senate.

Smith surmises that the LM pilots were less experienced and had fewer responsibilities for the mission and perhaps more time to contemplate their surroundings. It may also be that after the strict (even stricter than Mercury) second wave of recruitment that brought most of the commanders to NASA, more humanistically oriented men were brought in. Smith also suggests that perhaps Deke Slayton of the astronaut office (whose ghost shadows every man in the book) chose hardcore leftbrain men who would not be distracted to command the missions.

So now you don't have to read the book. No really, if you know nothing of Apollo, this is not a bad place to start (although Chaikin's Man on the Moon is the best), and if you want some sort of follow up on where they all are now, this is the place to find it.

A Real Live Archaeologist

2005-10-28T10:24:00.000-05:00

This Wednesday I was the guest speaker at Joey Schotland's World History class. Joey teaches at Another Course to College, a charter school in Brighton. In fact, it's located at 20 Warren Street, about 150 yards from the house where I lived with Kelly and Gavin (104 Warren) and across the street from St Elizabeth's Hospital.

Joey asked me to come in and talk about archaeology and give his students a chance to ask a "real archaeologist" questions about my experience.

I agreed to teach three one-hour classes beginning at 8am. I was sure that the first class would be the worst (with sleepy students), the second I would peak, and that by the third I would be too tired to give a good class. I was wrong.

Every class was terrific and gave me more energy as the morning progressed. And the first one might have been the best because the students had so many excellent questions.

My prepared talk consisted of telling them how I became an archaeologist, and how a number of different disciplines (art history, anthropology, geology, Classics, botany, etc.) all feed into a dig team. Then I told them where I dug (focusing mostly on Tell Brak because I brought slides of that site), and how a mound is formed and something about how we try to dig stratigraphically. My slides showed what Tell Brak looked like, workmen doing various jobs, and some of the finds from the site, including a headless legless horse figurine, some pots, and the bead horde.

For each class I focused on different topics, just so I wouldn't go on auto-pilot -- absolute dating, approaching a new mound, the specialists on digs.

What made the classes great were the questions.

Every class was interested in how we got paid [we don't--shock and disbelief]. Did we get paid by the find (Joey had given them a summary of Woolley's excellent Digging Up the Past from back when workmen got baksheesh -- bonuses -- for good finds)? [No more baksheesh] Who funds a dig and what do they get out of it? [Universities, museums, NEH, NSF and they get prestige]

Also: Who gets to keep the material? [The local country except for maybe some bones or other samples] How do you get permission to dig at a given mound? [Ask the local country's antiquities dept] What happens if you don't find anything? [We always find something -- even a wall -- but finding "nothing" would be worth reporting] Can't you use radar or something to see into the earth? [Yes]

Some question for me specifically: What's the first thing you found? [A wall at Sardis] What's the most valuable thing you found? [the bead horde, although I tried to play up the importance of the carnelian as a sign of trade rather than pure monetary value]

And some stumpers: How much of what you find is about religion? [Me: If you say grace before you eat, is your plate religious? It's interpretation] Why did people use the same kind of pots all the time and then why did they switch? [That could be your dissertation, kid]

I think what surprised them the most in the pictures were how green the mound was in springtime, how many sherds are littered on the ground (Tell Brak is kind of extreme that way) and how shabby our living conditions were (Tell Brak is kind of extreme that way, too). Those're the things that probably surprised me the most the first time I visited, too!

An enjoyable visit and I look forward to coming back next year. I didn't even get a chance to talk about Bevel Rimmed Bowls!

Race to the Moon

2005-10-18T14:33:00.000-05:00

The latest web site I wrote for American Experience is for the film "Race to the Moon" about the Apollo 8 mission that was the first to send me out of earth's orbit and around the moon. The film premieres on Halloween, Monday October 31, 2005 and is really good.

Here's a photo taken by Bill Anders on that mission, December 1968 (Image courtesy of the Image Science & Analysis Laboratory, NASA Johnson Space Center).

It's a great story, and it's been really fun getting immersed in Apollo history and trivia. I'm also really psyched about the return to the moon and learning about the Chinese space program.

Of the many books I read (or skimmed) for this project, two stand out.

The first is Flight: My Life in Mission Control by Chris Kraft. Kraft was the flight director (called "Flight") for the Mercury missions and was promoted to Director of Flight Operations during Gemini. Flight ran the big room with the rows of desks all facing the big screen at one end. When he needed to know how much fuel was left, he got an answer from Retro immediately. When he needed to know how much oxygen was left, he got the answer from Surgeon immediately. He didn't speak to the astronauts directly (with one exception) but he told Capcom (manned by an astronaut) what to tell them.

Mission Control, remember, was where at least half the flying was done. For the Mercury missions, the guys were not exactly "Spam in a can" but they weren't exactly steering the thing, either. They were shot out of a cannon and had to manipulate some tiny rockets to make corrections. Similarly, for Apollo, you wouldn't want to trust getting into Lunar orbit, 3 days and a quarter million miles away, based on eyeballing the destination. So Mission Control "flew" the spacecraft as much as the astronauts.

Kraft had a front seat to all of these missions and he tells a great story. What sets this apart from the other memoirs I looked at is both the scope--Mercury to Apollo, with a lot of information on the importance of Gemini--and the attitude. It's clear from other books and interviews that everyone was half-scared of Kraft but also respected the heck out of him. And you can see why. He's opinionated and when he's right he presses the issue hard. Most of the time he was right.

He also criticizes some astronauts. He's not overly fond of John Glenn (this seems mostly a clash of personalities), but he saves his vitriol for Scott Carpenter. Carpenter, according to Kraft, lacked skill, experience and discipline. He nearly ran out of fuel on this one Mercury flight because he was playing around and then blamed the close call on the engineers. Kraft made sure Carpenter never flew again.

The other side of Kraft is his warmth and generosity to his friends. Deke Slayton, the Mercury recruit who ran the astronaut's office, got along famously with Kraft and their bond comes across. And to top it off, Kraft donated all the proceeds from his book to a scholarship fund for NASA employees' children.

Man on the Moon by Andrew Chaikin is by far the best secondary source on the Apollo missions. The amount of research and number of interviews are apparent. The history is here, and filled out with silly or harrowing side anecdotes. Technical issues are explained clearly. Most of all, the astronauts come across as fully realized individuals, each with their own stories, perspectives on the space program, and voice intact. Chaikin says that he wanted the book to be a collaborative history of the astronauts and that's how it comes across. If you're going to read one book on Apollo (and it's a big one), this is it.

Chaikin's book is also the basis of From Earth to the Moon an HBO series now available on DVD. The same actors play the same individuals through all 12 hours, and each hour focuses on one Apollo mission. I watched them all over a period of a couple of weeks, and was really immersed in that world. The show is pretty historically accurate, and I noticed only a couple times where words were placed in another person's mouth and I could see why, dramatically it was necessary and why it didn't really matter (although, as a historian, it still ruffles my feathers a bit--I mean, the parts are already cast, the sets built).

The actors are uniformly good. There are some familiar names and faces, including Cary Elwes, Dave Foley, the doctor who lost his arm on ER, the guy from Wings, Tom Hanks and his wife, the mom from That 70s Show, and on and on. What's great is how some of them are cast against type. The dad from Malcolm in the Middle plays Buzz Aldrin and he gets across Aldrin's overthought anxiety and ambition. My favorite actor may have been the guy who played Frank Borman (or maybe it's just because Borman has become one of my favorite astronauts), not a face I recognized except insofar as he looked just like Frank Borman! Good job, Central Casting! But he's great, intense, patriotic, a husband who shows his love in the smallest gestures while at work.

The problem, though, is how do you differentiate Apollo 14 from Apollo 16? Anyone? Ferris? What happens is that, aside from the episodes on Apollo 1 and 8, the shows take on various issues or perspectives. One is told like that classic MASH where we see through the eyes of a documentary film unit. One shows the progression of science journalism to celebrity tabloid TV. Another barely shows the mission but tells the story of the astronauts' wives. My favorite might be Apollo 14, which focuses on the comraderie of Pete Conrad, Dick Gordon and Alan Bean--they're having as much fun as three guys in a spaceship can.

Overall, there's only one dud. (The Apollo 13 ep isn't great, but that's because they didn't want to compete with the movie, i.e. the movie fills in the story for that one.) The dud is a weird mishmash that intersperses the last moon mission with the making of a film by Georges Melies. The Melies film is funny and interesting if you get a chance to see it, but this last episode comes across as Hollywood in love with movies, Bob Loblaw...

Worth watching.

Also: The New Yorker recently reviewed a biography of Neil Armstrong here.

Viva Las Vegas

2005-10-09T00:34:00.000-05:00

"Las Vegas: An Unconventional History" is an American Experience 2-part film premiering on PBS November 14 and 15, 2005. Here's the site.

It's a fun story about a place that seems like a shallow joke. But the beauty of the film is that while there is plenty of goofy kitsch--Rat Pack, 1970s tourism commercials--these segments immediately swoop into serious history--Boulder Dam, Bugsy Siegel--or a combination of the two--above ground atomic testing (yes, this can be kitschy when casinos sell postcards of mushroom clouds, have Miss Atomic contests and ring bells at dawn to usher their patrons outside for a viewing of a scheduled test).

There are also these wonderful contemporary stories of "ordinary" people that the filmmakers called LVMs (Las Vegas Monologues). In them you hear why Las Vegas has grown so much in the last century and why people continue to move to the desert from California and elsewhere. Easy to find a well paid job with a high school education; housing is affordable--it sounds like the promised land. But then you hear from the guy who is in Gamblers Anonymous and waiting to be sentenced for a hold-up and the school superintendent who worries that so many of her kids have changed schools during the year and you see the flipside of rapid growth based on one industry. One great vignette shows a guy whose ranch has been around a long time get on his horse and ride out of the pen and instantly he's on a suburban street that looks like Anytown, USA. Weird.

I wrote a couple parts of the site (one about architecture has my byline) but for this one I functioned as Editorial Producer. This is usually Maria Daniel's job but she was on maternity leave this summer. So, I got to spend a couple days a week at WGBH to coordinate the site. It was eye-opening.

First of all, the people I worked with were great. Super dedicated and really clever. I said something like, Hey, we should have a slot machine on the site, and a week later Joe Bunik had created a prototype with excellent graphics by Li Wei. And then they just kept improving on it, making the wheels look better and even making the results more randomized.

Second, the work was really fun. I got to work more on the Special Features and advise on the Gallery and other parts of the site that usually I barely contribute to (unless I submit a running list of trivia, like for The Fight, say).

Third, it was hard. I mean, I was working half time and it took a lot to make a site for one film; Maria does a few at a time, even as she writes grants for other new media projects and participates in management meetings and more. She's amazing.

A couple more thoughts. The filmmakers have a companion book about Vegas. The highlights of the film are in there and also some great essays by different contributors (my favorites were excerpted on the website here). I was particularly excited about the Rat Pack piece because it was written by Max Rudin, publisher of the Library of America. They put out the excellent looking and definitive editions of, say, the complete Saul Bellow. Because I needed permission to excerpt, I had a chance to e-mail Max and thank him for contributing books each year to the graduation ceremony of the Clemente Course at Codman Square in Dorchester, where I usually teach (more on this in another post). A great gesture by Max that is perfect for a class on the Humanities.

The DVD can be bought at Amazon but there was talk before I left about having a contest where a couple random DVDs would have a "golden poker chip" that could be cashed in for a free weekend in Vegas. This led to a conversation where the Marketing Person intimated that Canada had silly regulations requiring some sort of math question. I mentioned that I grew up in Canada and remembered all those silly questions and that it made the contest a test of "skill" rather than a free lottery. Lesson: There are Canadians all around you!

Iraq book review

2005-10-06T18:32:00.000-05:00

A number of recent books have been published about the history and culture of Iraq, in large part a response to the 2003 invasion and current military situation there.

Here's the link to my review in the Nov/Dec 2005 Archaeology Magazine.

I had limited space so was unable to give more props to perhaps my favorite of the books, American Hostage. (You can buy the book from Amazon here.) It's the story of Micah Garen and Marie-Helene Carlton, two journalists writing about archaeological looting in Iraq. Garen and his translator are kidnapped in Iraq and Carlton and her network of grad school and journalist friends does everything in their power to affect the outcome.

The tale itself is gripping, romantic and a thriller (with a happy ending--obvious from the book's authorship), but what I really enjoyed was how the cutlural confusion between Americans and Iraqis comes up all the time. On the one hand, yes, the Iraqis are good family people, incredibley warm and friendly (arguably friendlier than the average American), but Garen does not shy away from pointing out how different they are as well. Most of the time this works to his advantage, as when his translator "reveals" facts about them that Garen would rather keep quiet--the kidnappers eventually find out the truth as the translator knows, and being honest from the start is, in hindsight, the right thing to do.

Another telling episode happens later in the book when Garen is forced to make his second videotaped "confession." He worries about how he should read the words, where to cast his gaze, how to convey a message to his anxious family. When the video airs on CNN, Carlton's Iraqi American friend is immediately overjoyed--she has recognized that the backdrop has curtains, a sign that Garen is a guest in a home and will therefore be treated well. This is the kind of subtlety that cannot easily be taught. Even fluent Arabic speakers without the cultural background would not understand this. (Although it's possible that well-travelled individuals who don't ahve the language facility would.)

American Hostage is extremely readable and even explains the looting situation at Iraqi archaeological sites. On a personal note, I love that the "MacGuffin" that drives the plot is a security measure requisitioned by my friend and teacher John Russell.

UPDATE: Micah Garen and Marie-Helene Carlton were interviewed on WBUR's Here and Now. Listen here.

New Blog

2005-10-06T15:29:00.000-05:00

So,

The point of this blog is to create links to various professional works of mine.

As I have time, I'll also being posting stuff that I'd written before and is floating out there. The justification of this blog is that when people ask me what I "do" I can point them here and then point them elsewhere from here. So it's sort of an online c.v.

Hope you find something interesting to read.

-Jack