The quiet before the storm

This was a relatively quiet week for us. Don't get me wrong--we had a lot going on, but less compared to the next few weeks, with the myriad of meetings and other events we are scheduled for... The picture above was taken at a class singing performance by the first grader's at Kenny's school. They had a number of patriotic songs, timed (presumably) to roughly coincide with election day. Unlike his kindergarten recital, he didn't have an active part, just one of the chorus:

but he put his all into it, and we enjoyed the effort.

We also attended a local archeology society chapter meeting in Hamburg, a small city about a half-hour south of Monticello. As local chapter president, I was called upon to run the meeting, which largely meant I introduced the speakers and acted as a host. This meeting was held in the home town of a couple now deceased members of the society--Ed and Patsy White. The Whites were actually founding members of this chapter, and they had been heavily involved as amateur archeologists in the region for more than 4 decades. Their knowledge of prehistoric Indians probably exceeded many professional archeologists, and their personal collections of artifacts was astounding. I got to know them briefly for a couple years before they died early in 2007, and I visited their house once. It was full of eclectic items, and their artifacts' value is probably in the many thousands of dollars. Here are a couple pictures of a tiny part of their collection:

These beautiful pots were discovered largely intact, mostly associated with burials. Given that I've gotten accustomed to finding only broken sherds, and never enough for a complete plot, I looked at them in amazement. The other stones shown in this picture are various tools, including hammers, anvils, nutting stones, etc. Stones like this may not seem unusual in many parts of the country, but down here we rarely see natural stones larger than a golf ball, so large rocks are pretty good evidence of prehistoric human habitation.

Fortunately, the beautiful pots seen above will not go onto the open market to be buried in some collector's private stash. The Whites' son Ron plans to keep them in their family, and will probably put them in some kind of public display--the Whites also ran the Ashley County Historical Museum in Hamburg, and this public service runs in their children's blood as well.