On the comments....

Ya, so apologies to those of you wanting to make comments but not being sure where to leave them. I guess that sometime while I was making some edits, I accidentally disabled the comments. So vent away! I hope to write something soon that will make you suitably irate in order to inspire you.

Holy Dinah, August is upon us!

I find it rather funny that it has been only 13 days since my last post and yet in the 5-day-work-week/7-days-a-week scheme of things, that is a really long time. I'm pretty sure I am not the only person who experiences days that stretch into weeks and months until a year later, you've somehow accomplished a whole whack of stuff in what seems like no time. But, do we give ourselves credit for it? I think it's easy to say that we do and that we should get over ourselves really, which is what I tend to say from time to time. But then, I also have learnt that there's something to be said for appreciating the small things in life that we might not give ourselves credit for....perhaps changes that we would like to bring about to make ourselves more learned, or more fit, or less cautious, or more kind or whatever. So my question to you is, what are the things you should give yourself credit for and be grateful for?

I guess the reason why I mention this is that the reasons for my lengthy absence from the ether of the internet are that I have been engaged in a lengthy smack up between priorities and the ever-ticking clock. And who always wins? Most often, it's the clock. In my case, I've been absent due to this International Training Programme, and though I love all the curators dearly (despite their random camera attacks where I am suddenly the target of 5-13 cameras intermittently/continually in need of capturing any particular moment), I just kinda need a break. I enjoy being a resource for groups of people who are new to London and want to see all sorts of things and I love making the best of their experiences. But when their experience is 4 weeks long, there needs to be a limit, particularly when I have a lovable but demanding Malian with non-ITP demands wondering where the heck I am with this or that document (bless Claude, who is like a French African papa to me!). Needless to say, a priority today was to put in a requisition for a Palm Pilot because keeping track of 13 people and a good 25+ tiny to extensive projects at a time is not easy.

I find it funny because I give my mom a hard time....she's always running around trying to do 10 million things in a day, especially challenging because she has an aging mother to assist from time to time. Christmas is exceptionally brutal simply because there are so many packages to buy and wrap, so much food to buy and baking to do, all these other side projects and all these functions to attend or misc. things to host. It almost makes xmas unbearable until we can finally get out of the city and breathe, with only the demands we really appreciate put on us, like going out to find our tree, or cook those big meals that the family really values. Those are the times that have meaning, that truly bring us back to what is important in our lives. So I now laugh at myself remembering that yesterday I tell her 'Rome wasn't built in a day!' as she plans for a family reunion next week. And it sounds cheezy and self indulgent but we're not building ourselves in a day either. I think of how difficult the last two weeks were, struggling to get even 1/2 of my workload done. And, I remember being so frustrated and tired in yoga on Thursday that I almost cried because I couldn't do a headstand. That's crazy! Considering I have degenerative disc disease, a remnant spinal/neck injury and really weak arms, I should have been thrilled to have even attempted the headstand!

My point is, sistah should really be taking some of her own advice. And, if I'm in that boat, maybe others are too. Sure we may have goals for what we want to accomplish or have happen in our lives. But, I think I would prefer to enjoy the ride on the way AND I'd like to see the value of even the smallest of accomplishments, even if they're as small as remembering to floss at least 3 days a week or keeping in touch with old friends or trying to hit that goal you've been thinking about for years (I WILL learn Portuguese this year! I am the little choochoo that could!). That kinda thing.

Special thanks to all of you who wrote and were missing my blog over the last couple of weeks. This one is for you AND for me, because it's nice to take time out from the mix to think about all those things that are really important. Thanks a ton!

Lotsa love! ~Laura

Thought of the day:

Can I bring a yellow and red card to work with the intention of using it to politely referee the BS that may or may not be going on at any given moment? I think yellow will of course be the obligatory warning to the red which ever-so-politely means say something else and I may verbalise you within an inch of your ability to control bodily functions. See? The red card is so much better. Instead of being aggro and pulling a Zidane with the office administrator, I can simply raise a polite hand, smile, and walk out the room. See how easy life would be? It's just that simple!

An argument against change? The dynasties of papyrus that sparkles...

Yesterday was another interesting day with the curatorial trainees that are currently visiting the Museum. As I work in the Africa section, most of the conservation for our objects is done by the Organics and by the Ceramics section. We also have a range of work for the Metals section, like the Benin brasses, some bronzes and some gold, so with visiting groups in the past, we've pretty much stuck to visiting Metals, Ceramics and Organics. But since these visiting curators come from all over the World, working with all kinds of objects, we're going to all the Conservation departments; yesterday's stop being at "Western Art on Paper" (as opposed to the studio that does the Asian prints, etc...) and an Organics studio that does a lot of work with Egyptian collections.

Anyhow, among many cool things seen yesterday, the coolest thing of note was hearing from the papyrus specialist in Western Art on Paper, also cool because I knew this woman from Wednesday yoga at the Museum but had never known what she did there. She is the one conservator who deals primarily with papyrus; paper scrolls or sections buried thousands and thousands of years ago. And, as they end up crumbling, her job brings the idea of puzzle building to the level of Zen master patience, with a whole ton of science and creative thinking tossed in.

Besides trying to put manuscripts or other pieces into some kind of coherent order for analysis, she also does scientific analysis of the pigments used on the papyrus. The Egyptians often used to use this yellow colour, discovered to be arsenic sulphide. However, one thing they've noticed is that after putting the scrolls on display, the pigment fades and turns to glitter. So, instead of - say - a yellow painted Egyptian woman, you walk by and see that she is sparkling. But, despite her looking pretty cool, any significance of her persona should not be attributed to being shiny but to the yellow originally applied to the surface. The reason for this change is that the light in the galleries is reacting with the sulphide and eventually creates arsenic oxide.

But, the question remains: should these objects be on display? Is it better to know that these objects exist, see them and study them, despite the side effects? Or, should some buried treasure remain hidden?

FACE_WSLOT
Woman See Lot of Things: Female ex-child combatants in Sierra Leone

I went to the Brunei Gallery at SOAS with Vuyani and Bongeka today. SOAS (School of Oriental & African Studies) is part of the University of London campus and is barely a block north of the British Museum and covers tons of ground like African and Asian language studies, arts & culture, political science and economic studies, and many other things Africa/Asia.

Anyhow, today was the opening of Woman See Lot of Things, an interdisciplinary art installation that touches on the lives of three women's experiences during the war in Sierra Leone & Liberia. So you walk into the basement of this gallery, through a burlap curtain and into a low, deep room. The ground inside the exhibition is covered in sand but the perimeter is surrounded by an electric fence. Though I doubt UK Health & Safety laws will allow they to electrify the fence, it still feels really prohibitive. And more perplexing are the clear long tubes filled with a clear burgundy liquid - 3 of them - linked to a large tin bucket in the middle of the sandy floor. I stand there, observing bits of video that come up on two burlap screens, but I really have no idea what this red tube snaking around the floor signifies. The first video is of a woman talking about ways to lead your troupe in the jungle, being quiet, talking with your eyes and arms, and not getting dead. Things like sleeping tied together are the strategy because then you all stay together: no one gets dragged off. Check. This isn't stealth bomber warfare. This is sit for days, unfed, try not to go crazy, get dead, captured, and if you're a woman, not raped, impregnated, or both.

I move on to the literature which describes the situations in Sierra Leone during the war, this installation specifically covering three different women from different areas of Sierra Leone & Liberia with very different stories. One woman, Anita (who was there tonight), was raped by several men when she was 17, after her father and another family member were murdered. She became pregnant, running from town to town over massive distances in only a couple of months as cities started getting ransacked. The baby died at 6 months but afterwards, Anita kept finding abandoned babies and adopted them. She eventually became a nurse but was heavily involved in the war until it's end.

The other two woman also have brutal stories, being child combatants, one being raped in her school when she was six. Many of these women become pregnant, sometimes not even knowing the father, and forced into violent, polygamous marriages. One woman named Chris (the one raped very young) was forced by her "husband", an army leader, to guess the sex of pregnant women's babies and then forced to slice open their stomachs, pull out the child and announce the sex. One of the women also talks about many of the men being totally crazed on drugs and the fear of not knowing what they would do...that they could rape other women at any time.

Anyhow, I decided to enter the exhibition, as some of the other visitors had done. Behind one of the screens is a small living space with a bucket and tube, sucking the liquid in and back out again. On another part of the sand is a shanty with one of the tubes entering inside, leading to another tub. I look inside and see the fetus of the baby in it. And this is a large baby...like maybe just under 7 months. Not what I expected. The shanty is of corrugated metal, the room cold despite the heat, with quiet radios playing static and the random sound bits that can get through. I could not imagine being in that hovel, for however many days, having had a stillborn or aborted baby, probably grown from a man who raped me and left me in a position where I was hiding in the woods fearing I would be shot, raped or killed.

Now I get the blood.

Behind the other screen is the third tub, also filled with blood but to my relief, no baby. There is also a poster on woman combatants from Liberia, as though it were saying, "Yeahhhh. Get your guns ladies. Things need shooting. We can do it", as though it were a Rosie the Riveter poster. But at this point, I realise more what this is all about. I exit the enclosure, avoiding the electric fence, walking past the comment books that cover things like abortion or FGM or violence. Looking at this whole thing I am not sure what to say about these three women; strangers who faced some of the worst things humanity has to offer. They don't now appear to be sisters or friends with a new bond that links them. The tubes through the sand signify something much more jarring, like their flesh tying their experiences, their blood carrying the scars, waste and purity, death and rebirth of their lives.

It's jarring. It doesn't make you sick necessarily. But, it does make you wonder how you would ever survive being in that situation, in the end feeling only a tiny fraction of the incredible stories that these women intimately share like they were giving you their blood. It's humbling.

The exhibition is named after Majorie, whose name in her language means "woman see lots of things." She is the 8th child of a woman who continually gave birth to children who were stillborn or died shortly thereafter. After finally surviving, her mother abandoned her, and she said it was because her mother wanted her to hurt. So, Majorie thinks the significance of her name is appropriate for women's experiences.

It was interesting though because the directing artist of the exhibition was pregnant. So it's interesting to see both pain, death and the mess that the world has to offer and yet be around something so common and yet beautiful and a new life. She may not have planned it that way but her own body was a quiet counterpoint to these three other women. It was nice.

If you are interested in FACE_WSLOT Woman See Lot of Things, check out the bodylab art foundation.

A Prince, World Curators and a really cool woman named Mona

2 Chinese, 3 Sudanese, 4 Egyptians, 2 South Africans, 2 Iraqis and 2 (eventual) Ethiopians visit for the BM ITP (pictures to follow)

So today was the first official day of the International Training Programme at the British Museum. 15 curators from institutions throughout Africa, the Middle East and Asia will be participating in a month-long training programme, covering things like exhibitions, conservation, education and so forth. But also, it's just really cool to meet all these new interesting people from very diverse backgrounds who have rather randomly been thrown together for this common purpose.

Especially cool people met today were (proper spellings to be edited) Mona, Ibrahim, el-Sayed and Vuyani. Vuyani is one of my cool African compatriots whom I will be spending a lot of time with. We're going to Norwich, Brighton and Kent, plus I plan on visiting him and Bongeka in Lincoln, and I can tell already that we are going to have a ton of fun. Vuyani is very cool and has some very interesting things about South Africa.

el-Sayed is a really nice, very grateful guy from Egypt who is working on his English but can't stop taking about how glad he is to be in London. I love meeting people like that because their enthusiasm is so valuable and so ethereal...reminds me to be grateful.

Also really cool was Ibrahim with whom I talked about Iraq. This man and his colleague work in the main Iraqi Museum in Baghdad and man, he has stories. It is so amazing to meant this interesting guy who has experienced so much with the war and the looting of his museum, and it is especially important to see what they have done to stem the tide of objects being looted from their site. At the same time, it is brutal to hear about all the other museums around the country that are completely destroyed by the carnage and totally open for looting. But still, he has these stories about day-to-day life in Baghdad that are so cool, like stories about the pen and watch shop he still owns and runs with his brother. People are so resilient: it's really amazing. More on Ibrahim to follow.

Finally, especially awesome was Mona who is this super cool and bubbly young woman from Luxor who graduated from Archaeology training in Cairo and has now been working as an inspector at the Karnak Temple. How cool is that?! But equally interesting to me is her life living in Egypt, most particularity her views on marriage. We had been chatting for a while when she asked the question (which I commonly get from visiting women curators/museum professionals) if I had children and I said hell no. She reciprocated with a laugh, saying that she too had no wish to currently get married and have children. I thought it was cool how she remarked upon the marriage offers she has received, the pressure she gets from her family, but her focus on her career. And, I was really impressed by her focus to follow her interests but treat that aspect of her life much differently, preferring a connection with someone that to follow many of her friends in family and marry for business, procreation and duty. I have a feeling that Mona believes in love at first sight and though I am not sure I do, I love that she has no worries about not finding what she's looking for, namely because she's not really looking for it in the first place. From a young woman coming from an culture that looks at marriage very differently, I am definitely impressed.

Oh ya, and also, Prince Charles was at the Museum. I didn't see the man but there was a definite tripling (or more) of security. But overall, it was kinda cool to see the man's sleeeek Jag parked out front, impeccably polished with personnel scattered around, alert and yet appropriately relaxed. But mostly, I love how cute their sniffer dogs are, running around the forecourt, particularity since instead of the German Sheppard variety they use cute, floppy eared dogs looking more like country Spaniels (apologies for my deficiency in knowing breed names).

Either way, Prince or no, it was a definitely interesting day.

Laura’s Spam Busted - old content, new news...

Found this in the files but still find this idea of external blacklisting a little interesting....

I recently [from 2004] received an anti-spam email. Apparently, a general party invite I sent to my friend Thomas was text-flagged by his anti-spam software. Apparently using the word “party” in a subject heading is grounds for your email to be business or porn related spam. Excellent.
Even better was that this spam-blocker basically threatened to blacklist my email unless I replied to their “FYI, we blocked your spam” email, I would basically be blacklisted if used by their other clients. Double excellent, even it is only applicable to clients of this software.
So, I thought that there could be a chance that Thomas has a virus that’s sending these emails out in an attempt to gather email addresses. I would have been more cautious if I didn’t know that Thomas has a Mac, computers which are much less likely to get icky viruses than our much hated PCs. Plus, this email was clearly not by composed with some scamming idiot who knew appropriate corporate/legal jargon in order to buy my reply vote. Needless to say, I replied, rationalizing that not only do I not want to be blacklisted but that if this person/s is/are so smart to send an email like this via Thomas’ computer, they’re smart enough to get all the goods they need on me anyways. But, if I would have been blacklisted, is this really the price of compliance, or non-compliance for that matter?

Email Bust:
From: "Charlie MailScanner" Subject: Unsolicited commercial email rejected
Our UCE (spam) detectors have been triggered by a message you sent:
Subject: Party, party, party!!! Date: Sat May 29 02:48:19 2004
We are very sorry but this message has been rejected by our filter server Charlie. We know that sometimes this is an error. The people who send out junk mail are constantly trying to disguise porn or advertisements as legitimate email. Sometimes our filters accidentally see legitimate messages as spam, especially if it is sent using "HTML" format. If you have received this message, please do one of the following: EITHER 1> CLICK REPLY to this email letting us know that you received this bounce message in error, and we will immediately add you to our list of people who can send anything through our system without interference, and we will also find the original message in quarantine and speed it on its way. OR 2> Resend your message using "Plain Text", making sure not to include words that could trigger the porn section of the filters - you know the ones. We know plain text doesn't have pretty colored fonts and fancy underlines, but good old plain text almost never produces a false positive filter score unless you talk a lot about intimate body parts or have an email address with a word like "hotdeals" in it.
If you are a spammer, you will need to go back to the drawing board and find a new way to spell v.i.a.g.r.a or m0rtgage or a new way to hide the wording for phony college degrees or to bilk people out of their money on get rich schemes. Perhaps a new line of work would be in order. Maybe you could take some of your own advice, and work from home earning millions of dollars every day, or better yet, just cancel your debts completely and never repay them. Sit back with a secured platinum credit card, while you live on Cialis and love, losing weight and listening to opportunity knocking. In any case we are glad your message has been blocked - the world is a better place without your crap. If you are not a spammer, we sincerely apologize for having delayed passage of your message, and if you (politely?) let us know, we will take action immediately. Thank you for your patience.
Second Email:
From: "Norm Woodward"
Subject: RE: Unsolicited commercial email rejected
We are unable to find a message from you in our quarantine. If you will reply to the original bounce message including the information it contains we will be better able to assist you. The original message sent to you by our system contains tracing information we need. Sorry. .. Norm
-----Original Message-----To: spam@mmwa.ca Subject: Re: Unsolicited commercial email rejected
I am not a spammer. This client of yours is an associate of mine and I would prefer not to be blacklisted for an invitation email, thanks!

Written: Friday, May 28th, 2004

The use of urban public space and the lines between alienated intimacy and repressed perversion

PART 1: Want to be touched?

Imagine a hot weekday morning on a packed bus, traveling towards the city centre shortly after 8. And, imagine you are like many of the women on this packed bus [be as liberal as you like with this visualisation – though some of you may be a bit more creative than others if you are not typically a) a woman, or b) ever visualise yourself being one]: you are sandaled and skirted, sweat dripping down your legs as you exhale with every gust of windowed wind that stalls the heat of your fellow (packed) commuters. As you are standing, the person sitting behind you facing opposite is so squished, his knee rests against your leg. You, from experience half consciously acknowledge this as a familiar situation of urban public commuting – that is – until you realize that it is not his knee/leg touching your leg/ass but a very stealthily placed hand.

The worst (and strangely, funniest) part – however – has not yet passed because just as you think this limb-to-ass freedom fighter is disembarking with the anonymous compatriot to his right and you go to take said compatriot’s seat bringing the nice adjacent standee next to you, the freedom fighter informs the nice standee that he is in fact not leaving and has sat down beside you in a position that basically has you wedged between him, some hardcore plexiglass and a wall holding an articulated groove. Excellent. Nothing like being a limb-to-anything freedom fighter’s first catch of the day on a Monday morning.

Now, to spare you the excessive detailadge – basically, this guy moves with microscopic and barely noticeable slowness while you distractedly ipod yourself out the window. His objective: to lift your skirt incredibly slowly while looking down your shirt and hiding any evidence of desired effect *ahem* with a stealthily placed lunch bag atop his lap. To do this, even to a perceptive though tired/distracted woman takes skill and a great deal of patience, particularly if all skirt-related movement is attempted with a single pinkie and possible thumb as weapons.

Anyhow, this was my Monday morning commute.

Now, luckily I am a comfortable person and not easily intimidated by stupidity (unless drunken or dangerously unpredictable, which this was not). At first, I thought he just bumped me but when I started paying attention realised that this guy was the connoisseur of the most improbable and least effective of seductions. This guy takes undressing to the level of attempting to solve Einstein’s Theory of Relativity on a morning bus ride. He expends so much effort that if he were to actually get someone naked, he would probably pass out at the boredom of it, as though he had gone from doing some of the World’s most complicated math(s – the ‘s’ is for the Brits), and then downgrading to single digit addition. So, when I eventually turned to the guy – who was basically attempting to orchestrate public-nudity-by-stealth of a stranger – and I was like, “WTF mate?!” how bizarre was it to get a pleading look in return, like, “Please lady stranger. Please take off your clothes on this bus for me.” I almost would have laughed were it not for the disturbing insanity of it….which shortly brings me to Part 2, but not before this final though…

Though he disembarked shortly thereafter and I did not move to verbalise him, I realized that I should have taken his picture with my phone: not because he was good looking (although, to be honest, were he not a total psycho, he didn’t look half bad) but because I could have shown it to the police. I realized that if this guy is going to be so bold as to do this once, he’ll be it twice – maybe in a less public space – maybe to another skirted stranger who is less able to stake their boundaries or find help when they need it.

So, now you have some advice for the next time you meet a limb-to-ass-or-anywhere freedom fighter. And, if you yourself are a limb-to-ass-or-anywhere freedom fighter, please – for the children – and for your fellow commuters – please make sure that the ass or anything else in question is not only in dire need of liberation, but that its owner fully votes in favor for your role in such emancipation. If not, send them Mr. Pregnant… (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=im7IorDZ9uY&eurl=)

This has been a public service announcement from the Grabbed Ass Transit Riders Association (GATRA), local 29 – Camden Town.