where do you come from?

Once upon a time (in the 19th century) there was a small band of people living on a small island named Tristan da Cunha that lies in the south Atlantic, roughly between Africa and South America. This group had been a garrison of the British Marines while Napoleon was held in exile on a northerly island, St Helena, just in case he tried to escape. He did indeed escape, but there's not a lot you can do when the ship traveling to communicate this news is a few thousand miles away. Napoleon was long gone by the time the garrison got the message, and so they were no longer needed.

Some of these people decided they really liked this island, and stayed. This consisted of one man, his wife and their daughters, and some other non-relatives. They remained on this island, built families, and their population grew without a whole lot of outside contribution. Here is that island:

It looks quite lovely, but what do you think about the shape of this island? Yes, in 1961, that very volcano blew its top and all the 240 settlers had to be ordered off and rescued by the British Navy, thus, the end of inhabited Tristan da Cunha, for a little while at least. Eventually, some people returned.

Anthropologists have studied populations like this because of what we call the "founder effect". The biology of populations that grew from an isolated group tends to show some very unique genetic features. For this group, one of the few founders had carried a gene for retinitis pigmentosa, causing blindness, which was found 10 times more often compared to that of Britain, from which the original founders had come.

Another location much closer and more familiar to Americans is with Martha's Vineyard in Massachusetts. Here, hereditary deafness was the common condition, and so much so, that the people developed their own sign language, somewhat different from ASL and officially called MVSL. There have been stories about people in the bars, drinking and chatting as most bar-goers do, but as soon as an out-of-town person would come in, they would become silent and switch to their own code of sign language.

Surprisingly, even though these close-knit groups share many common genetic traits, there were often very low rates of inbreeding. Still, what we learn from this is that it's better to mix things up!

at home...

...in the anthropology museum. That's where I spent my evening-- at the Museum of Man in Balboa Park. It was Tower After Hours, which is the museum's monthly cultural night, and this night was Finland. I went just as much for Finland as I did for the rest of the museum. With admission, they also gave out two tickets for drinks, although I only made it through one glass of wine. The food was amazing, as was the museum.

Mmmm.... and I went back for seconds. And then dessert. And then dessert seconds.

I'm not exactly sure what I ate, but rye bread, eggs, dill, smoked fish and some sort of creamy sauce seemed to make up many of the choices, all in different varieties, and all delicious. I'll have to go hunt down some recipes now.

I'll admit I almost didn't go, but then decided that 9 out of 10 times I do something I'm wary about, I end up enjoying it, and this time was definitely worth it. I thought, not another mummy exhibit, but to my amazement it wasn't your typical King Tut sort. It had mummies from all over, even a hawk mummy found in Arizona. Whoever thought this one up is my hero, and surprisingly, mummies smell good.

lotus oil (lovely), natron salt, cedar oil (also very nice), palm oil, frankincense & myrrh

I loved this little addition to the cultural evolution area:

How cute!

 Also, there was a bone oddity exhibit-- all sorts, from disease to human modifications (think corsets and foot binding). It makes you wonder if certain beauty "modifications" we see today will someday be regarded as plain horrific or maybe we will realize them as detrimental to our health as these sort of things are generally viewed now. I wish I could describe everything I saw, but that's just too difficult! It was everything an anthropology museum should be, and so of course I enjoyed myself very much.

Here is the tower referred to in Tower after Hours

Balboa Park in the evening, with far fewer people

Bon Odori

The Bon festival in Japan occurs during the hottest part of the summer, which is now for most people (large Japanese communities in Argentina and Brazil celebrate during their southern hemisphere summer months). It is a Buddhist festival to honor the deceased, where the "odori" part of this festival basically means "dance", and  it's meant for everyone to take part. Tonight was the Bon Odori festival in San Diego, and it sure was popular.

Everyone was dancing, at least those who knew the dances, which did not include me.

There was a taiko group, drummers, who were really exciting to watch. Even car alarms were going off.

 And there were singers in the center, on a yagura, meaning tower or turret.

(I find the legs coming out of the lanterns kinda funny)

The food was excellent (and cheap!), and it was my first time to try taiyaki, a fish-shaped sort of waffle with red bean paste inside. Amazing! I really want one of the fish-shaped waffle makers they used too...

This is someone else's taiyaki. I did not take a photo of mine.

Then I had fun in the resale shop. I found some lovely orange ceramic ochawan (tea/rice cups) and two little sake glasses, since I love sake!

I figured $8 was worth all of this, not to mention the money was going to help with the tsunami troubles in Japan.
 
 We were also able to go inside the temple. It was beautiful. It was set on fire during WWII, and part of the altar was burned.

Bali kite festival

In the many hours I have spent at the museum researching the objects from the Pacific Islands, I would occasionally come across something somewhat unrelated that would catch my interest. In my search for symbolism of Balinese wood carvings, I found this photo which looks like a child flying through the air behind two bulls:

I couldn't figure out what it was at first, but that's a kite!

 Since it's nearly July, I thought I'd share what happens in Bali during this month. July is the middle of Bali's dry season, and there is a constant easterly wind, but rice crops are grown year round with the help of irrigation. The reason for flying these monstrous kites is to promote good harvests by sending messages to Hindu gods.  Typical kites flown during the Balinese kite flying season can range 10 to 30 feet! (The rule is no bigger than a two-lane road.) About ten adults are needed to help fly just one kite. Traditional shapes for the kites are fish, birds, and leaves, and colors typically include white, black, and red.

 

Each village, or banjar, helps build and fly the kites. They are constructed from bamboo and plastic or cloth skin and sewn together. Most of the largest kites cannot be dismantled because of this, but are instead walked in a long religious procession to the beach where they are sent up to the sky.

Just think how fun it would be to see these up in the air!

Little Mogadishu

Just south of my neighborhood in San Diego lies City Heights, an area known for its ethnic diversity. This area includes neighborhoods of Indian, Middle Eastern, Vietnamese, Hispanic, as well as Eastern African people. Approximately 55,000 Somali refugees have come to San Diego legally since 1991 to escape war, and about 20,000 live in what is called "Little Mogadishu", in City Heights.

All Somali refugees that come to San Diego are put on welfare, and it is very difficult for them to move beyond this state. There are several organizations who work with the state department to help the Somalis assimilate to living in the United States. One of those groups is International Rescue Committee, or IRC, who provide services such as immediate attention upon arrival in the U.S. (food, shelter, clothing), and promote self-reliance through community and cultural orientation, education, English-speaking classes and job placement. As you can imagine, it is a difficult struggle to make a living: http://www.bantubeads.com/.

For high school students, there is a program called Students Plus, where volunteers do after-school tutoring. In addition, they've created other programs like sports teams, and currently there is an exhibit, "A Different Life", at the San Diego History Center that focuses on the transition faced by seven high school-aged Somali girls living in San Diego. It was co-curated with the girls themselves working with museum staff, so they were able to provide their own items for the displays, and also, for example, demonstrate how a dress is worn. It was sad to read their stories, especially about one whose grandmother had been killed and whose father had been targeted simply because he worked for the government.

map from the museum showing the girls' routes

Overall, it was noted that these refugee communities live rather isolated lives, so I think public exhibits such as these are incredibly important for acknowledging the different communities that surround us by creating awareness not only about their culture, but how they connect with our own.

Teletubbies in Tibet: the importance of preserving audio & video archives

Yes, there really are Teletubbies videos in Tibet. Who knew! (But no, those are not the kind of resources I am advocating for preservation.) This past week, I saw the film "Tibet in Song", directed by Ngawang Choephel (who was actually at the screening for a discussion afterward), a documentary concerning the effects of Chinese occupation on traditional Tibetan music. While it is the cause for much of the disintegration of Tibetan culture, I do not want to get too much into the political aspect of the situation. Instead, I feel it is important to consider the benefits of documentation and access to resources on audio or video.

There are no laws in place prohibiting traditional Tibetan music as there once were, but it is still highly discouraged and Chinese music is instead blasted over loudspeakers around some Tibetan towns. As a result, many younger people no longer know real Tibetan music. However, there exists an archive library and museum in Dharamsala, India founded by the Dalai Lama that houses much of this forgotten music, the Library of Tibetan Works and Archives.

I highly recommend seeing the film, or at least the trailer: http://www.tibetinsong.com/

Director of the film, Ngawang Choephel, on right

Digitization of collections like are quickly becoming high-priority projects for many archival and cultural institutions. They are expensive, very time consuming, and tedious work because of the fragile condition of many of the films, photos, and objects. Yesterday, I visited the American Jazz Museum in Kansas City with a few other grad students. The museum has recently opened a new area, the John Baker Film Collection, where at this point only about ten percent of the old "soundies" and other clips, mostly from the 1920's to the 1940's, are available for viewing. It's a large undertaking to inspect each film, slide by slide by slide, often stopping to repair a crack in the film, and then allowing the film to play one last time, hoping it stays together well enough to gather what is left.

Anna Mae Windburn, singer, with director William Alexander

secrets of the silk road

Mummies just might be the number one object that comes to mind when one thinks about museums, and especially those from Egypt. But what about the others? Say, from western China? Up until last week, a traveling exhibit titled Secrets of the Silk Road was the only way to see these mummies, naturally preserved I might add, outside of China. But now, at the request of the Chinese government, they are back home, with their last museum stop cut short just days before its grand opening.

Since last summer, the exhibit had already traveled from the University of Southern California to the Houston Museum of Natural Science and was just ready for opening at the Penn Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology when the museum was unexpectedly notified that it could not display the objects and instead would have to ship them back. The museum apparently complied with this and as a replacement opened the exhibit with photographs of the objects. In addition, the museum re-created "dummy mummies" of paper mache-- a 14-year-old visitor could not tell the difference between it and the "real thing". They also kept the live camels out as part of the opening. Hmm. So why were the objects (supposedly) sent home? The museum will not explicitly say.

One reason is that through the DNA testing that is usually conducted on archaeological finds, these mummified humans were found to not be ethnically Chinese. On top of that, they come from the separatist Uighur region in western China, Xinjiang, and some speculate that the Chinese did not want bad press or extra support for Uighur claims of autonomy.

Whatever the reason, it is quite an unfortunate situation for the Penn Museum who spent about 2 million dollars to bring in this exhibit, and who had to refund $50,000 of pre-purchased tickets to visitors.

early St Lucia's Day

So I'm still going through Ikea withdrawal, especially after getting an email about their "Swedish Holiday Smorgasbord". Because of that, I decided to make Lussekater, or Saint Lucia buns! I always remember St. Lucia's from reading American Girl books when I was little. St. Lucia's Day is a Swedish holiday celebrated on December 13th. It was around before Lucia was even a saint (as in, before Christianity), and was traditionally the day of the winter solstice (I suppose before they realized it actually wasn't?). In the book I read when I was little, the Swedish-American was Kirsten, and she wore a wreath with candles on her head and gave her parents breakfast on the morning of St Lucia's Day, which happened to include St. Lucia buns, all because she was the oldest daughter. Plus she had two looped braids hanging from the side of her head, which were awesome. See?

And here they are:

They are AMAZING! And you should try them, so here is the recipe, from the cookbook "The Swedish Table".

Lussekater
16 rolls

1 T sugar
1/4 c warm water
1 pkg. dry yeast (2 1/4 tsp)
1/2 c butter
3/4 c milk
1 t saffron
3 c all purpose flour
1/4 c sugar
2 egg yolks, beaten with 1 T water
raisins

In a bowl, combine 1 T sugar, warm water, and yeast. Let sit 10 minutes or until yeast begins to bubble.

In a saucepan, combine butter, milk, and saffron. Heat until warm and the butter is melted, but do not boil. Let sit until temperature falls below 110 degrees F.  Add milk mixture to yeast in the bowl. Add flour and 1/2 c sugar and stir until combined and the dough is smooth and workable. If necessary, add more flour, up to 3 T.

Turn dough out onto a lightly floured surface and knead for 1 minute. Transfer dough to a lightly oiled (or buttered) bowl, cover loosely with plastic wrap, and let rise in a warm place for 45 minutes to 1 hour.

Divide into 16 pieces. Roll into 1" X 6" lengths. Coil ends in opposite directions, forming tightly curved S-shapes. Let rise for 1 more hour.

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. Brush buns with egg yolk and place raisins in center of curls (two for each bun). Bake 10-15 minutes, but don't let the raisins burn!

Evidently they freeze well too. I kind of feel like making a whole bunch and sharing them with everyone, because they are that good!