archeology


Eternal Truths from Pompeii

After Grandmother read me the story of Pompeii, I sniffled over those tortured deaths by volcanic ash. Then I realized that Grandmother would die someday, and sobbed. I never dreamed that Pompeii held yet more shocking truths for me. I first toured Pompeii in 1973, and being a teen, my only clear memory is of a painting kept locked behind a grate to shield the innocence of children. In the painting, a man weighs his mega-member against a heap of gold on a balance scale. Interpretation: a man’s organ is more valuable than wealth. Fifty years later, Pompeii’s 66 acres […]


Discovering Meaning II—Sotol

Mind boggling, the truths archeologists can tease out of an ancient glob. First inhabitants of Seminole Canyon in Texas used bulbs from a yucca-like plant called sotol to cook up portable, storable cakes. Raw sotol bulbs are soapy and painfully gut cleansing. Those problems were overcome by covering them with prickly pear leaves and hot coals to bake, letting them sit for a time before grinding them into meal, adding water and forming them into cakes to be seared on a hot rock. This painstaking process produced a  cake with a dirt/yam fusion flavor. Obviously food options were scarce in the west […]