Music Sunday: A Few Favorites...

No deep analysis today for Music Sunday. No theme. Just a few things I feel like sharing, songs and performances that I particularly like.

First, here's a live version of Summertime, by Janis Joplin, from 1969:



Also, Gram Parsons and Emmylou Harris with their cover of Love Hurts. I think this is the definitive version of this song.



And, finally, The Who, live, from 1975, Behind Blue Eyes (plus bonus Keith Moon):

Research and headaches and thinking too much, oh, my!

So, this is me, complaining.

I'm on the third day of a headache - migraine, sinus, or a combination of the two. Makes it really difficult to get anything accomplished.

Oh, I've gotten a few things done. Wrote some on the novel I've been working on, the one I started for NaNoWriMo last November, that hit a block when I started working on my non-fiction project. It will be interesting to go back and read what I've written the past couple of days and see if it makes any sense when I don't have a headache.

So, that project is going now, but the non-fiction work is still in the water, so to speak, because I've hit a block there. That mostly has to do with ongoing research (I tend to research as I'm writing, a section at a time, rather than doing all the research and all the writing, separately) issues. The local public library system here doesn't seem to have the sciences as a priority, and it is difficult to find up-to-date sources. In something like history, having access to up-to-the-minute work in the field is good but not necessarily imperative. Of course, you want to make sure that there haven't been any recent discoveries of primary documents or anything, but history, by its very nature, doesn't change that much in the retelling, unless you're working in relatively recent times. The bigger problem in history is watching out for sources that claim to be authoritative but are actually revisionist.

In the sciences though, and especially in paleoanthropology, which is what I'm researching currently, new discoveries are made frequently - at least, there have been several discoveries, or, at least, announcements of discoveries, that have the potential to rewrite what we know about human evolution in the past year or two - and if the writer is not aware of them, he or she can look like an idiot when the book comes out. There are periodicals, of course, the science journals where the official announcements and descriptions of new fossils are made, and my library system has a pretty good online source for some of those journals that I can use; otherwise, the online presences of most of the top journals make it prohibitively expensive to do research. You can either subscribe to the online journal for hundreds of dollars per year or you can purchase access to individual articles - sometimes at $20 to $30 or more per article. There is no way I can afford that.

But, books that are up-to-date in the field are rare in the local library system. And, for some reason, they are also rare in the library at the local state university. Added to that is the fact that if I use their resources, I have to use them there. Oh, they have a "community borrower" card for non-students, but that costs, last time I checked, $100 per year, and then you can only check out two or three books at a time. While I understand that students should have first access to the books there, two or three is a ridiculously low maximum. At the private university I attended for my upper division work on my BA, the community borrower card costs something like $25 per year, and the non-students is allowed to check out something like 25 books at a time, despite the fact that it is a much, much smaller library. Unfortunately, their collection of books on paleoanthropology is very small. Now, if I were researching something in history, or in theology or biblical studies, I'd have access to more than enough research materials there.

But a lack of research materials is not the only problem I'm running into presently regarding my non-fiction writing project.

There is, in addition, my blessing/curse of an oversize dose of curiosity and my belief in the principle, stated by John Muir among others, that everything in the universe is attached to everything else. It goes something like this with me, on this project:

I'm writing about archaeology and physical anthropology (hence the current focus on human evolution), and so I'm thinking about beginnings a lot. Part of what archaeology looks at is physical evidence for the beginnings of civilization, and before that, the beginnings of agriculture, and even before that the beginnings of art and other symbolic thought that mark the beginnings of behavioral modernity. But thinking about the beginnings of behavioral modernity in turn leads, at least for me, into thinking about the beginnings of humans. Which leads to thinking about the beginnings of mammals, which leads to thinking about the beginnings of animals, which leads to thinking about the beginnings of life, which leads to thinking about the beginnings of the earth...the solar system...galaxies...so that, pretty soon, I'm wanting to go find things to read about the beginnings of the universe. The questions that topic raises can be all kinds of frustrating, not least because I don't have the mathematics and physics to really understand most of the work on the subject.

What is more immediately frustrating to me is that I've been being very good about staying focused on the topics directly related to the book I'm writing. A long as I've got work to do on it, sources that I can use for research, I've been very good at staying on task, researching a section and then writing it, then starting the cycle over again for the next section. But now that I've got a temporary break due to inadequate sources, my mind is wanting me to go seriously off the reservation and start looking into some of the questions that I have about other kinds of beginnings than just the ones that archaeology and physical anthropology are so key in studying.

I'll be fine when I can get back on track with research sources. I know I will. It's this down time that is driving me crazy.

That, and this damn headache, which is better today - else I wouldn't have had the concentration to write this blog post - but still needs to go completely away.

Eclipse, Part Two...

Most people don't look up at the sky on a regular basis. A lot of people nearly never take time out of their busy days and nights to ever look up and see what's going on in the universe around them.

There's nothing like an eclipse to change that, although even in the midst of yesterday's annular eclipse, I saw people rushing around at the height of the Moon's journey between Earth and the Sun, apparently not paying attention to the wonder in the sky above them. Some of them seemed not to notice the odd cast to the light and the extraordinary blue tint that the sky had taken on.

I have to say that I honestly don't understand how they could just go on with their normal, everyday activities with what was going on above their heads. Even here, not in the path of the most extensive coverage of the Sun's disk by the moon, it was clear that there was something extraordinary going on. I've seen solar eclipses before, but I've never experienced one that so obviously diminished the amount of sunlight that usually makes it to Earth on a clear spring afternoon. You just couldn't not notice if you were anywhere where you could see outside, not here where I am.

And if you weren't in the path of the eclipse, let me just say, I'm sorry. It was spectacular.

Actually, aside from being in a windowless room, it would have been difficult for anyone here where I live to notice even if they were inside. I had been watching the eclipse off and on from the beginning, going outside every half hour or so to check the progress of the moon making its way across the sun with my home-made pinhole camera, but I was inside writing, when I glanced out the window above my desk because it had grown noticeably darker in the room as the height of the event approached.

Of course, I went outside to take a look. With the exception of one man across the street, none of the neighbors were even outside. The twelve-year-old in me wanted to go knocking on doors, to tell people to get outside and see the wonderful show the Sun and the Moon were putting on in the sky. I didn't do that. I've been made fun of before for looking up rather than down an my feet. But some part of me still thinks I should have.

It's not like what is above our heads is some faraway place that has nothing to do with us. The Sun warms our world so that life can exist here, and it makes it possible for plants to make their food to live, to become what feeds us, directly when we eat fruits and vegetables and indirectly when we eat meat that has in turn fed on plants. But those aren't the only connections we have to the stars.

In a very real sense, we come from the stars. Every bit of us, every molecule, every element that our bodies are built from, started out inside a star. When Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young sang that line in "Woodstock", "We are stardust...", they weren't making it up. We really are part of the stars. Not the ones we can see in the sky at night now, if we are lucky enough to be in a dark enough location to see the night sky without the competing lights here on Earth. Instead, we are the product of stars that have already lived and died and exploded, sending the elements created in them as they went supernova and spread those elements out into the universe where they could create planets and plants and people and, well, pretty much everything else in the cosmos.

This is my challenge to you. Wherever you are, take ten minutes to step outside tonight and look up. If you are in a city, try to find a place where the lights in the sky aren't overpowered by the lights on your block, so that you will be able to see as many stars as possible. But, even if you can't find a place with low light levels, just go outside and look up. There are stars up there, and galaxies. And planets, not just here in our solar system, but out there orbiting other stars. At last count, nearly 800 planets have been detected outside our solar system. Even if few of those planets so far discovered are not likely to have life on them, who knows how many might be out there that could have, might have, do have some kind of life. It could be "life as we know it" or it could be life of entirely different kinds. It could be microscopic life, or it could be intelligent life. But none of that matters. What is important is that they're there, part of the grand whole that we call the visible universe.

And if that isn't something to stir the imagination, and the soul, I don't know what is.

Music Sunday - Eclipse Edition

Happy Music Sunday!

Because there is an eclipse of the sun today, I thought I'd just leave you some sunshiny music, so I can go outside and monitor the eclipse when it starts here, at about 2:30 p.m. local time. We won't get the full effect; this part of California is a bit outside the path for that. But, we should get a pretty cool view, anyway.

Here's George Harrison and a few friends, with Here Comes The Sun. An obvious choice.



And John Denver, all by himself, singing Sunshine On My Shoulders.



And then there's Cream's Sunshine Of Your Love



In case you're wondering what all the hoopla about the eclipse is about, here is a little primer from NASA.



And, finally, because this is an annular eclipse, known as a "ring of fire" eclipse, I'll leave this last song for today with you.



That was Johnny Cash, singing "Ring of Fire" on the Grand Ole Opry in 1968.

Music Sunday - Censorship Editon

I suppose that music censorship really started to be a "thing", in that it came to the attention of many people here in the United States, during the 1985 Senate hearing regarding what was labeled "porn rock" after nearly 20 record companies agreed to put labels warning of "Explicit Content" on some records. The agreement by record companies to do this came after a group called the Parents Music Resource Center put pressure on them to do so. And this is probably the thing that comes to mind most often when record or music censorship is brought up...music that has sexual content or so-called obscene words, or that has what censors consider to be references to drug use, all of which some parents might object to their children listening to.

The hearings were interesting, including testimony from Frank Zappa, who called the stickers, and the PMRC campaign "nonsense", and an appearance by John Denver, whom the PMRC expected to support their cause. Instead Denver spoke out against censorship and what he called misinterpretation of songs, including his own "Rocky Mountain High."

This sort of censorship has been going on much longer than since 1985, however. In the 1960s, the popular Sunday night variety show staple, The Ed Sullivan Show, attempted to censor performances by, among others, The Rolling Stones and The Doors for respectively, sexual and drug references, with varying success. Mick Jagger altered the words of "Let's Spend the Night Together" to "let's spend some time together", as requested, but he obviously rolled his eyes at the camera as he did so.



In the case of The Doors' performance of "Light My Fire", Jim Morrison was asked to change the lyric, "girl, we couldn't get much higher" to "girl, we couldn't get much better". During the performance, Morrison sang the lyric as originally written. After the show, the band was told that they wouldn't ever be invited onto the show again, and they weren't, but it didn't seem to bother Morrison or the band very much. They'd already done the show and apparently were not interested in repeating the experience. Both of these incidents took place in 1967.

More interesting to me are the songs that have been censored, or that there have been attempts to censor, on radio or television, based on lyrical content that doesn't consist of "dirty" words. One of my favorites in this category is "Lola", by The Kinks, which was released in 1970. The BBC would not broadcast the song, not because the subject matter of the song included a transvestite, but because the lyric named a product, Coca Cola. Ray Davies had to go back into the studio and replace "Coca Cola" with "cherry cola" before the BBC would play the song on the air. I hear both versions on the radio here in the US, and was puzzled that there were two versions until I read this story a few years ago when I was writing a paper for a college class on music censorship.

Politics have also resulted in music censorship. "Eve of Destruction", most notably recorded by Barry McGuire in 1965, was banned on some US radio stations for its lyrics critical of, among other things, the draft, the war in Vietnam, and the existence and use of nuclear weapons. Earlier, in 1963 and again on The Ed Sullivan Show, a scheduled appearance by Bob Dylan never took place because the song he wanted to sing, "Talkin' John Birch Paranoid Blues", was deemed too politically sensitive to sing. Dylan walked off the show rather than agree to the censorship.



This clip of "Eve of Destruction", from the time tht the song was the #1 hit in the US, is a little strange. I'm not sure what the producers of the show thought the dancers would add to it. At least, it was allowed on the airwaves, which was more than some radio stations would allow at the time.

I could go on and on in detailing incidents in which interest groups or networks or governments themselves have attempted to restrict or completely stop the playing of some music over the airwaves. The BBC appears to have an especially lengthy record of this sort of activity. It once even banned an instrumental piece of music, the theme to the Frank Sinatra film, "The Man With the Golden Arm", in 1956, because it was connected to a film that had drug use as a theme. Doesn't make any sense to me, but then again, most censorship doesn't make much sense to me.

Another book review...of a much better book

This is much, much better.

After taking more than a week to drag myself through the last book I read which, if you saw the review I posted here I didn't like that much, it took me just two days to read Dead Time (Dutton, 2008; 400 pages), by Stephen White.

I hadn't read anything by Mr. White in awhile, and after this installment in the story of Dr. Alan Gregory and his family and friends, I suspect I'm going to be catching up on the volumes that I've missed in the past few years, while my reading attention was elsewhere. Simply, I had forgotten how good a writer Mr. White is, how he can spin an engrossing story, and how he is able to write realistic, multi-dimensional characters that are completely believable. He even makes the info-dump that most novels have to have, to catch the characters (as well as the reader) up on events, entertaining and readable.

For those of you not familiar with this series, Dr. Alan Gregory is a psychologist living in Boulder,, Colorado and who has an unfortunate (well, fortunate for the reader) habit of getting caught up in murder and mayhem. In this case Meredith, his ex-wife, calls on him to find the woman who is carrying her child as a surrogate when the woman disappears under mysterious circumstances. Those circumstances end up having to do with the disappearance of another young woman at the Grand Canyon some years before, in event that involved both the surrogate and Meredith's fiancee, Eric.

The story, this time, opens out from Boulder and stretches to New York City and Los Angeles, where Dr. Gregory manages to get himself in over his head on more than one front. I really hesitate to say anything more about the story, because I don't want to spoil it for those who haven't yet read it. I will say that there are family complications along the way for the doctor, in the form of a new adopted son and as his current wife, Lauren, sets out for Holland to find the child she had given up for adoption before she knew the doctor.

That is one of the things I appreciate about Mr. White's books. He is able to juggle the main plot and side plots in a way that makes them seem like one whole, rather than a story with an "Oh, by the way" or two cobbled on in order to make the world creates for the reader more like real life, where there are usually five different, and mostly unrelated, things going on at the same time. This ability makes his books more than just a straight line from one event in the story to the next, again like real life. As there are few straight lines in nature, there are very few in real life.

And that was one of the problems with Natural Selection, the previous novel I read and reviewed. It was one straight line, jumping from one event to the next, with very little respite, and very little believability. And, by the way, info-dumps that were excruciating to read. I didn't realize how little believability, in fact, until I had the reading, so close in time, of Dead Time to compare it to.

I like the books I read to make me feel like I have fallen into the world the author has invented for the book, whether it is the "real" world or a close facsimile thereof, or a completely invented world. And I like to feel like I have been on a journey, rather than on a sprint to the finish line.

Dead Time is a good book, and a an excellent reading experience. I wish I could find more novels with so much texture to them.

I read it, but I didn't necessarily love it...

I grumbled all the way through, but I finally finished reading Natural Selection (Hyperion, 2006), by Dave Freedman, after posting recently about how I wasn't sure I really wanted to finish it.

I think reading it probably wasn't a waste of time, since I believe I learned some things about how not to write a novel as I read along. I did nearly throw it across the room in the last 50 or 100 pages, when there were some things said or implied about evolution were unclear and didn't seem to jibe with what I've learned about how evolution works. Or, maybe the author just left things out that would have made that part of the story make more sense. There was also the fact that Mr. Freedman included one of those "I never mentioned it but..." scenes as he was wrapping up the story. I hate it when a writer does that, especially when it contradicts things that were established earlier in the story.

That said, what was going on within the story managed, in the end, to keep me turning the pages, and I ended up reading much later into the night last night than I should have done to finish the book. It was a near thing the whole time, but my need to know what happened outweighed the things I found frustrating and irritating about the book and about Mr. Freedman's writing.

I never did really warm up to any of the characters. I didn't like how Mr. Freedman handled the chapters and parts of chapters that were written from the creature's point of view. I don't know that I can say I liked the book as a whole.

On the positive side, that makes fourteen books I've read so far this year, and takes my total pages read (aside from reading for research for my current writing project when I haven't read a whole book through) this year so far to 5788 pages. With not even half the year over, I'm more than halfway to my pages read goal (10,000 pages) even though I'm still six books shy of the half-way mark to my goal of 40 books read this year, up from the 31 books I read last year. I know I should probably be reading at least a book a week, but with writing and, now, job-hunting, my reading time is more limited than I would like at the moment.

You have to ask the right questions...

Hat tip to Neil de Grasse Tyson for tweeting this video.

The context of the video is the vote today in North Carolina to decide the fate of Amendment One, the implications of which go far beyond just which personal relationships will be recognized by the government there and which will not. This message is applicable far beyond that, however; it is relevant socially, historically and, most especially for us in the United States, constitutionally.

So, I'll shut up and let the message speak for itself.

Music Sunday - Early Beatles edition

Today is Music Sunday. I was going to write a nice post about guilty pleasures...those songs people like in their heart of hearts, but won't admit to liking because the songs or the artists are not "cool enough". I've got them, you've got them...everybody's got them.

I'll admit to some of mine. Not all of them, but some of them. But that will have to wait for another day. Plans change, and things come up, and it's cleaning day around here. And since I was up until 4 am, there will probably be a nap in there somewhere, and fairly soon.

Never fear, however, there will still be Music Sunday.

One of the things I did while I couldn't sleep last night, was that I watched Help, the Beatles second film. It's a fun movie. Silly, but good silly, and with lots of good music. It isn't the classic that A Hard Day's NIght is, but then again, few movies are. I love A Hard Day's Night, while I merely like Help a whole lot.

So, what I'm going to do is leave the title song of Help here for you to enjoy, along with a little Beatle silliness. I'm not sure where this performance is from, but it just goes to show the sort of thing that pop artists had to put up with in the Sixties. Even the Beatles.



And then, I found this gem, part of an appearance by The Beatles on the BBC on December 7, 1963, not long before they came to the United States for the first time. Here you can see how advanced Beatlemania had become even before it spread here to the States.



By next week, I hope, the insomnia will be gone, and we can get down to discussing those guilty pleasures that music provides.

Choices, choices, choices...

This is my problem...and a decidedly first-world problem it is, of no consequence whatsoever in the universal scheme of things. But it is a problem for me, and it's bothering me for some reason.

I'm reading a novel, Natural Selection (Hyperion, 2006), by Dave Freedman. It's, oh, I don't know, call it science fiction, call it techno-thriller. There is a crew of scientists in search of an elusive new species of ray that is carnivorous and very, very smart. Think of them like velociraptors under the sea. Except that some of them are learning to fly, have evolved the capacity to breathe air...and they are very very hungry. At this point in the narrative (I'm 186 pages in), they've already eaten one person, a pod of dolphins (is that the correct term? A pod? Or is that just whales?) and a whole lot of seagulls.

The scientists have yet to see a live one of these creatures, but they've dissected the one dead specimen they've found, and it is all mouth, teeth and stomach...as part of their necropsy (autopsy on a non-human specimen), they pulled 56 dead but undigested gulls out of its stomach.

It's an interesting concept for a book. That's not my problem.

My problem is, I don't like any of the characters, I'm running out of patience with the chapters told from the rays' point of view. And the author, probably because this is his first novel, has a tendency to info-dump more than he really needs to.

In ordinary circumstances, I would have given this book 50 pages, 75 at the outside, and then put it down in frustration. But, I find myself wanting to see where the story goes, how the author solves the problems he's setting up for the characters, and how he solves the problem he set up for himself as a writer in seeing the story through to the end.

This, even though at least once a chapter I get an almost-overwhelming urge to throw the book against a wall.

Part of me wants to keep reading, for the reasons stated above, as well as just that I'm nearly halfway through the thing and it seems stupid to put it down now. On the other hand, well, the frustration just keeps building. And it isn't like I don't have anything else to read. My to-read pile is huge. Plus, I should be spending more time on my writing and less time reading a novel I'm pretty sure I don't even like that much.

My questions to you, dear readers, are two. First of all, should I keep reading or give it up and go on to something else? And two, do you ever run into problems like this when reading a book, where you want to put it down and not pick it back up but can't quite convince yourself to just cut your losses before it sucks any more time away from you?

Drop a comment if you have any advice, experiences or just think I'm making a mountain out of a molehill.

In which, again, I just don't understand some people...

I don't know what's in the air around here, but my allergies are kicking my butt the past two or three days. Feeling, most of the time, like someone has bashed me in the middle of the face with a baseball bat, which is how my allergies tend to manifest, has put me in a surly mood. In addition, I've had a headache that I'm not that sure is completely related to the allergies, although they are probably a contribution factor.

Consequently, in the crappy mood I've been in, I've been trying to avoid anything that will make me angry. Oh, like the news. Me cranky and angry at the same time is not a good combination.

However, surfing around the Internet, it's well nigh impossible to avoid the news entirely. And so, I've heard about the preacher in North Carolina who told the fathers in his congregation that if their sons start to act "effeminate" (his word), the fathers should punch the kids.

Excuse me? Completely aside from the question of what the Old Testament has to say about social issues in general or homosexuality (which is, of course, what the preacher was referring to) in particular, and whether the verses those who believe God does not like homosexuality really mean what they think they mean, which is a different post altogether, HOW IS ADVOCATING PUNCHING SOMEONE BECAUSE YOU DON'T LIKE HOW THEY ACT IN ANY WAY CHRISTLIKE?

Sorry for screaming, but really? Was this guy, who will remain nameless because I don't want to give him a name-check, even in this blog that not that many people read, saying that fathers should beat the gay, or what they perceive as the gay, out of their sons? Is this really something that Christ would have advocated, based on his reported attitudes in the New Testament? Having read the gospels, and huge portions of the rest of the New Testament, I would say that, no, this is not something Christ would have been okay with.

Now, since the video tape of this preacher saying these things has been all over the Internet and all over the other media, he has backpedaled furiously...so furiously that he's dug himself a deeper hole. His explanation/apology? He didn't mean it. It was a joke.

I suspect that all this as to do with the fact that North Carolina is about to vote on whether to define marriage as between one man and one woman. It's an issue that tends to get the religious right all riled up and saying things that they really shouldn't be saying, things that tend to get them in hot water one way or another. But, again, that's beside the point. He shouldn't have said what he did, no matter what the provocation.

So, who is going to volunteer to sit this guy down and explain to him that suggesting that fathers beat their sons because they think their sons might be behaving "effeminately" is not very funny. That it is, in fact, child abuse.

I'm on the other side of the country, so I'm not a good candidate for the job. And even if I was in shouting distance, he's probably not the sort of person who would be amenable to listening to a mere woman. Basically there's not a snowball's chance in hell that I would be able to convince him. I know there's no way he'd be able to convince me of his position, either that punching kids - for any reason - is a good idea, or that it is something to joke about.

But, hey...if you're in his neighborhood, and if you want to give convincing him that he is wrongheaded on this issue a try, please, let me know how it goes.

Musc Sunday, but just barely...Singers edition

I got so interested in Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 Greatest Songs of all time when I was looking at it last week that I decided to look at some of the other music lists they've compiled through the years, so I took a tour through their list of the 100 Greatest Singers. Interesting stuff, but probably also the stuff of many disagreements among music fans.

Aretha Franklin is the number one rated singer on the list., followed by Ray Charles at number two, Elvis Presley at number 3, Sam Cooke at number 4, and John Lennon at number five. As you'll see if you read on, I'm not thrilled with all those placings. But if you have to make a ranked list, Ms. Franklin is a good choice for the top spot.



I guess when it comes to rating singers...or songs, or music, or any art form...a lot of what goes into the consideration of who or what is better than the other is mostly subjective. There are technical considerations, of course, and those are beyond me when it comes to music. I played clarinet for three years, and used to be able to plunk out a melody on a piano after I'd heard it a few times. But none of that is really musical training.

Still, I know what I like, and what moves me, when it comes to music, and I had a number of "what the hell?!" moments when I was looking through Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 100 Greatest Singers this morning. For example, I kept wondering as I progressed through the list, where B. B. King was. Found him, finally, at number 96.

Ninety-six? That's just nuts. Well, I guess he's known more for his guitar playing than his singing - he's at number 6 on the magazine's list of Greatest Guitarists - but still, when "The Thrill Is Gone" came out when I was in junior high, the first time I heard it, I knew that was some singing right there.

But, surprises aside - and there were some good ones, too, from my point of view - it is an interesting list. I've seen six of the artists on the list perform live at one point or another: Prince (#30), Bono (#32), Neil Young (#37), Elton John (#38), Bjork (#60), and Karen Carpenter (#94). I can see why all of them made the list from my experience in hearing them live, although I've developed more of an appreciation for Bjork's singing from hearing her recorded work since the night I heard her play with the Sugarcubes, who were opening for U2 when I went to see them in Oakland, California. She isn't a conventional singer, but what she does with her voice is interesting and original. I don't know if she should be on the list of the 100 greatest singers, but she's got as much right to be on the list as some of those who are on it, I think.

As people will do, I would argue with some of the rankings on the list. Janis Joplin not there until number 28? Jim Morrison at only number 47? And, most surprisingly for me, in a good way, is Steve Perry at number 76?

I understand that the fact Steve Perry sang for Journey for so many years counted against him among some of the people compiling the list; it isn't a popular thing in some circles to even admit that you ever listened to the band. And, to be truthful, I was surprised that he made the list at all, given that handicap. But, that voice. There are a number of singers above him on the list who don't have his vocal range. The man just has a beautiful voice, and he knows how to use it.

The other pleasant surprise, although I think he should have come in higher, is Don Henley, at number 87. One word: Desperado. That might be the most achingly beautiful song I've ever heard, and it's his voice on the lead vocal that makes it that way.

The biggest names or places that I would argue with? Well - and I know there are people who will throw things at me for saying this - I really don't understand Elvis Presley's placement at number 3. Really? Yes, he always had that cult following. But his voice never did anything for me. (Not that that really means anything. A lot of people hate, and I mean purely hate Geddy Lee's singing voice, and I agree that it isn't the most beautiful voice in the world and I'm not sure I would place him in this list at all. But I enjoy listening to it.)

Also, as much as I love John Lennon's work, I would not rate him as the fifth greatest singer ever. And Mick Jagger at number 16? Yeah, no. Here again, I suspect that cult following had more to do with their placement on the list that their ability, to either sing or to move people with their phrasing or vocal technique. Lennon, I think should be on the list. Not so sure about Jagger although, again, I love some of his singing.

Another quibble, this time with Freddy Mercury, at number 18. I'd put him in the top ten, if not the top five.

I could go on for quite a while longer, dissecting the list and rearranging it according to my own tastes. Certainly, I would rate Levon Helm (at #91) higher on the list than he was placed. I think Bruce Springsteen (at #36) is about where he belongs. And I have to say that I'm not really sure why Mariah Carey (at #79) is on the list at all.

But again, all of this is really down to subjective issues, and my takes on the list, while right and valid for me, don't have anything to do with how other people see it.

Life according to Keith Richards

There's a great video on You Tube that I stumbled on the other day, in which Rolling Stone magazine contributing editor Anthony DeCurtis interviews Keith Richards. DeCurtis starts out the interview by mentioning that, in an earlier interview Richards had answered a question about how he thought things had changed since the Rolling Stones had first started out by observing that "nobody reads anymore". DeCurtis then asks Richards to talk a little bit about what books and libraries have meant to him. Richards says that libraries are the "center of things", and that this is the way it should be.

And then Richards says that when he was growing up, libraries were the only place he "willingly obeyed the rules".

Reading Richards' autobiography, Life (Little, Brown and Company, 2010; 564 pages), written with James Fox, there is a continuing sense that this must be the truth. Richards, it seems, has broken just about every rule there is, in all aspects of life, and managed to come out the other side with intelligence and wit intact.

Richards makes no apologies for the things he's done, not about the drugs, not about relationships, not about anything. His philosophy seems to be that, yes, he'd done some stupid things, and some dangerous things, and that no one should try to emulate him in doing them, but that, hey, that's life, what can you do. And, in the end, it doesn't seem like all that bad a philosophy to have. Far too few of us can forgive ourselves for the things we've done, and Richards' ability to forgive himself for his transgressions is probably healthier in the long run.

Of course, he talks about the drugs. And there were a lot of drugs, including years of addiction to heroin despite many attemtps to clean up. This has been documented endlessly. But, he feels compelled to point out that, despite the reputation as a junkie that still follows him around, he's been clean of heroin for over thirty years, finally kicking it after an ultimatum from his manager. He admits that he loved heroin but that enough was, finally, enough. And, at one point, lest any of his fans think that they might like to try to emulate their hero's drug habits, he blatantly warns, "Don't try this at home" (p. 262).

But he also talks about the music, and about his long and rocky relationship with Mick Jagger, saying that from his point of view, Jagger makes it hard to be friends with him, but that they're brothers and that he would be there in an instant if Jagger really needed him and that he believes Jagger would be there for him in time of crisis. Richards documents, in fact, the times Jagger was there for him when he really needed him. This does not mean that Richards didn’t also point out what he sees as Jagger’s personality flaws.

The only time the book dragged for me, as a reader, was when Richards wrote about the technical side of his guitar-playing, about his discover and use of alternative tunings and so forth. It was interesting, but I don't play guitar, and so the discussion was too technical for me to really understand.

There is a lot in this book, stories of the road, stories of friends, those lost and those who have remained for decades. He talks particularly fondly about his relationship with Gram Parsons, who didn't manage to make it out the other side from drug addiction. He writes about meeting some of his own musical heroes, who didn't always live up to expectations as people, but who mostly met and exceeded expectations as musicians. And he talks about the women in his life, both those he had long relationships with and those who came into his life briefly while he was on the road with the Stones. In his case, at least, he claims that there wasn't nearly as much sex going on as one might assume.

Well, you can believe him or not about that, but in the end it all seems beside the point.
I've read a lot of books about rock and roll music and those who make it, and this is one of the best. It is written as if, as I commented to someone while I was reading it, someone put Richards before a tape recorder, turned it on, and said "Go!", and then edited it just enough to put events in a roughly chronological order. Richards' voice comes thorugh loud and clear, telling the story of his life as he sees it.

And an interesting life it has been, and continues to be.

As I time-travel without ever leaving my desk...

I spent a good chunk of the day yesterday playing in the past. In 1940, to be precise.

I found my family there, both sides, and some information about them that I didn't know before, or at least that I didn't realize. Stuff like the fact that none of my grandparents had more than an 8th grade education. And like that most of my mother's family was still living in Arkansas or Oklahoma in 1935...I had never realized that when they took the 1940 census, they asked everyone where they had been living five years earlier. And like that my mother was the only one of her siblings born in Oklahoma, while the rest were born in Arkansas. This goes along with a fact I already knew: my mom was the only one of her siblings born in a hospital. Which could explain a lot. But that's another story.

There were also a few mysteries. The 1940 census records claim that my mother was in 6th grade in 1940. However, I know that she graduated high school in 1945 - she is of that generation that lived pretty much their entire high school lives during World War II. All I can figure is that the census-taker wrote down the wrong grade level for my mother one of her sisters, who were in the same grade despite being about a year apart in age (actually about a year and a half). You see, when my mother's family moved to California from Arkansas (Bates, so the records say), my mother was held back a year in school because she had missed so much school in Arkansas. "Sick headaches" kept her out, my mother always said. Well, at least the move to California fixed that; she said she never had another one once they got here.

There were not quite so many surprises from my father's side of the family. I discovered that my great-grandmother Frei was already dead in 1940, which I didn't know. And that at the time of the census my great-grandfather Frei was 69 years old. Which means he was about 70 when he left the US not long afterward, to go back to Germany, where he was born, as the war was breaking out. He left by ship for Japan, then traveled across Russia to get to Germany. Family lore says that he left after the family had a falling out over the fact that he was a supporter of Adolf Hitler, which the rest of the family was most certainly not. This whole episode, which I didn't know about until a couple of years ago, always makes me queasy when I think about it. I knew that I had other relatives in Germany during the war, and that some of them probably had to fight for their country, whether they liked it or not (and I have no idea where they stood on the matter). But there is something, I don't know, unsettling, to say the least, about knowing that a direct blood relative of mine fled toward the Nazi regime willingly, because they supported it. It's like when I watch those genealogy shows on TV and people find out that their ancestors were slaveholders. You just kind of wish that you didn't have that in your family's past.

One of the delightful surprises was finding my great-great Uncle Jacob and my great-great aunt Catherine on the census rolls. I don't know why that surprised me. I knew they had to have been there, right alongside my father's immediate family and my great-grandfather. But I was surprised and delighted to see them there. I don't remember Uncle Jake. He died in June of the same year I was born in August, at the age of about 93 or 94, still doing farm work as he could, according to family stories. Certainly, he was still listed as working as a farmer at age 78 in 1940. But I do remember great-aunt Catherine, vaguely. I seem to recall being slightly afraid of her because she was so old (she would have been around 83 or 84 when I was born). I remember her mostly at family holiday dinners, but I must have been around her more than that, since she lived right next door to my grandmother. But, I couldn't have been more than about three years old when she died, so I suppose it is understandable that I don't remember her more vividly.

I come, the census information I found emphasizes, from the working class on both sides of the family. I had known that, of course, and have always been proud of that, but seeing it there on the page makes it a little more real and vivid...Grandpa Frei lived on a farm and worked as a packing boss at a citrus packing house. Uncle Jacob was a farmer. Most of the male relatives on my mother's side of the family were classified as some sort of farm laborer (they were Okies, after all) in the 1940 census; those who weren't working on a farm were doing some kind of labor as opposed to working in a store or an office. On the other hand, my Grandpa Minor held a number of jobs throughout his life. When my mother was born, he was a streetcar conductor in Muskogee, Oklahoma. He was, at one time a coal miner. He sharecropped in Arkansas for awhile. Then, after the family came to California, besides working on farms, he was a clerk in a grocery store and then, later on, night watchman at a packing house. A citrus house, actually. With both grandfathers working in some capacity around citrus houses, I guess it was inevitable that I love oranges and lemons.

Not all of this information, of course, came from the census rolls I spent time looking at yesterday. But just doing that brought to mind so many family stories, good and bad. It was like spending a day with family.

If you had relatives in the US in 1940, and you want to spend some time with them, I highly recommend going to the 1940 census site in the Internet. If you know where your family lived that year, it's relatively simple to find them. Although I will warn you, some of the census takers the government hired to go knock on everyone's door, on or about April 1, 1940, didn't have the best handwriting in the world. And you'll probably have to search page after page of census sheets to find them, because there is no way to search by name, but just by where your family lived. The upside of the deal is that you don't have to register or pay to use the site.

That was my big frustration yesterday in trying to find my mother's immediate family. They all lived in the same town, and I found most of them without really even trying. But it turned out - and I should have known this from family stories and knowing which grammar school my mother graduated from - that my mother's immediate family was still living out in the country, while the rest of the family were all living, with their various spouses and children, in town even though some of them still worked on farms.

Still, the effort, and the achy eyes at the end of the day, were worth it.

Now, how old do you feel?...

I don't know why I listen to "classic rock" radio. It's just an invitation to feel old, engraved in gold and served up on a silver platter.

They just finished playing (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction. Rolling Stones, of course. I can't say I've ever been a huge Stones fan, but whenever that song comes up, the volume gets cranked up. Good song. Rocks, even all these years later.



Yeah, all these years later. That's the key here. I did a little figuring, and now I feel like one of those fossils I've been reading about for the writing I'm doing now. Satisfaction was released in the US in June 1965. 47 years ago. I was just finishing up the third grade. Lyndon Johnson was President, for Pete's sake. Completely different world, really.

Of course, me being me, I see more in the song besides just a rocking good sound. If you've read this blog much, you know I tend to over-think things from time to time. Still, it has been my opinion for a long time that Mick Jagger wrote some insightful sociological commentary into this song, even if he didn't mean to.

No, really.

Consider the line, "...but he can't be a man 'cause he doesn't smoke the same cigarettes as me."

How does that not capture the essential tribalism human beings still hang on to, all these millennia since we became supposedly "civilized"? We get into arguments with people who don't support the same teams we do. We marginalize people who don't come from the same culture we do. I once knew a woman, a friend of my mother's, who thought that people from the town she grew up and lived in should only marry people from that same small town. "Marry a good Sanger boy," she told me one time. As if. That woman had done that, and ended up in a loveless, abusive marriage.

Of course, rock and roll is just as tribal as anything else. You've got your rock fans and your pop fans, who often look at each other like they're crazy. You've got people who have bumper stickers on their cars that say, "There's two kinds of music: Country and Western". There are jazz purists, and blues purists, and bluegrass purists, and on and on and on.

But, in that song, with its snide comments about the commercialism that was rampant when it was written and is even worse today, you have that line that can be taken either as a straightforward statement of how it is, or as a finger-pointing statement of how stupid it is to judge someone else's manhood by what brand of cigarette they smoke.

As far as I'm concerned, it doesn't matter which way Jagger meant it. What matters is that the observation was made and presented for our consideration.

Music Sunday...

Occasionally, I will tell people that the closest thing I've ever had to a spiritual experience is the night in February, 1964, when I saw the Beatles for the first time, the first time they were on The Ed Sullivan Show.

The thing they sometimes don't really get is that I'm only half joking when I say that. It really was a major turning point in my life. At seven years old, hiding behind the piano to watch because I was supposed to be in bed asleep, I got turned on to music. I had been in bed, but I heard that wonderful noise coming from the TV and I had to get up and see what it was. Forget the fact that the next morning was a school day, and I had to be up early. I just had a sense that this was something important, something I had to get in on.

And, really, it was. Not just the fact that the Beatles changed the world. Well, yeah, they had help, but they're the ones who really started the change in what music meant to the world and could accomplish in it. But also the fact that they...their music...changed my life that night. From then on, really from nearly the next day, while my second grade friends were running home after school to watch cartoons, I was running home to watch the local afternoon music shows, L.A.' weekday-afternoon clones of American Bandstand. I'd say it took me less than a week to discover them after that Sunday night.

Some people don't believe me when I tell this story. I was just a little kid, they say, and young kids that little don't get music in the same way that older kids and adults do. But, I was a precocious kid in other ways, too. By that time, I was reading books out of the adult section of the library, and not only reading them but understanding them. So, I don't really think it was unusual that I responded to the Beatles and their music the way I did, when I did.

What brings all this up is that I stumbled onto Rolling Stone magazine's list of the "500 Greatest Songs of All Time" yesterday, while I was looking for something else on the Internet. That's one of the things I love about the Internet. You go looking for one thing and, completely serendipitously, come across something you didn't know you were looking for. Something wonderful. I only got through reading the first 50 titles on the list before I had to go off and do other things, but even that first fifty brought back memories, including,, at number sixteen on Rolling Stone's list, "I Want to Hold Your Hand", which The Beatles played that night in 1964.



Several of my all-time personal favorite songs are also in the top 50 of Rolling Stone's list. At number 21 is Bruce Springsteen's "Born to Run", from 1975. Number 26 is "(Sittin' on) The Dock of the Bay", by Otis Redding, which is from 1968 and didn't come out until after Redding was killed in a plane crash. At number 29 is another Beatles song, "Help", from 1965 and was the title song for their second film. U2's beautiful "One", which came out in 1991, is at number 36. And "Hotel California," by the Eagles, from 1976, is the 49th song on the Rolling Stone list.

There are seven Beatles' songs in those first 50 plus, at number 3, "Imagine", by John Lennon, from 1974. Those seven include, along with "I Want To Hold Your Hand" and "Help", which I've already mentioned, "Hey Jude" (at number 8), "Yesterday" (at number 13), "Let It Be" (at number 20), "In My Life" (at number 23), and "A Day in the Life" (at number 28).

The Beatles aren't the only act to have more than one song in the top 50. The Rolling Stones placed three songs there, "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction", (at number 2), "Sympathy for the Devil" (at number 32), and "Gimme Shelter" (at number 38). And there are two songs each from Bob Dylan, Ray Charles, Chuck Berry, the Beach Boys, and Elvis Presley. Actually, Dylan has three if you include, at number 47, The Jimi Hendrix Experience's version of "All Along the Watchtower", which Dylan wrote.

There is just one song in that first 50 that I don't know at all, The Kinks' "Waterloo Sunset", which is at number 42 and came out in 1968. I'll be checking that one out. I'm not sure how I missed it. I was in seventh grade in 1968 and listened to the radio constantly.

I'll also be going back to the list, to see what the other 450 songs included are, and to see what other memories those titles bring back. It's a neat list. Almost like a time machine.

Or like a service in the First Church of Musical Greatness.

Celebrating the life and work of Levon Helm...

Sometimes you get bad news after the fact. And sometimes you find out before the fact that something bad is soon to happen. And that's the case this week, with the announcement that musician and actor Levon Helm is "in the last stages" of his longtime fight with cancer. The announcement was made by his family on his website yesterday.

This is a sad, sad thing. Not only has he had a hand in making some of the best music of the last half of the 20th century with The Band, Levon Helm is also an actor of immense likability. Lots of people have been posting examples of his musical performances, for good reason. But, today, I'd like to share one of my favorites of his performances as an actor. This scene from The Right Stuff features Levon Helm as Jack Ridley alongside Sam Shepard as Chuck Yeager. Helm also provides the narration.

Is there really anyone - aside from bullies - who think bullying is a good thing?

I thought long and hard about writing this blog post. I don't want anyone to get the impression that I am anti-Christian or anti-religion. Because I am not. Finally, I decided that I had to go ahead and write it, because I don't recognize what is going on as having anything to do with the Christianity I was brought up with.

In reading an article that appeared earlier this month on Huffington Post's website that was brought to my attention on Twitter, I discovered that certain organizations on the religious right, including the national group Focus on the Family, are agitating against anti-bullying legislation and activities, claiming that these are really part of an agenda to "promote homosexuality and transgenderism", as the author of the article characterizes their position.

Additionally, the article points out that a group called the Center for Arizona Policy lobbied to kill anti-bullying legislation even though the legislation did not specifically mention sexual orientation, while last year legislation was passed that specifically allowed bullying to continue if it was based on "a sincerely held religious belief or moral conviction", although that clause was removed after lawmakers and the parents of the teenager whose suicide after being bullied inspired the legislation protested the clause that allowed religious bullying.

All I can think when I read about this is What. The. Heck? Well, my reaction was actually a little stronger than that, but I'm trying to be respectful here and not go over the top in my reaction.

What are these so-called Christians thinking? While I do not currently attend any church, I did attend a Christian university and grew up going to church (Methodist, Baptist and LDS, primarily). I've read the New Testament, and I'm pretty familiar with the things that Jesus taught. I don't recall anything about it being okay to bully anyone, ever, under any circumstances. Jesus did, however, teach that Christians are to love their neighbors.

Jesus didn't say that, according to the Bible, just once. He said it three times in the Gospel of Matthew (5:44; 19:19; 22:39). He also said it in the Gospel of Mark (12:31) and in the Gospel of Luke (10:21). Additionally, the Apostle Paul, in his Letter to the Romans (13:10) said, "Love does no harm to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfillment of the law." Bullying does harm. Clearly, then, bullying is not a Christian thing to do.

I understand, I really do, that the Great Commission, which Jesus delivered in Matthew 28:16-20, asks Christians to go out and convert the world. I sincerely doubt that Jesus meant that as a license to bully anyone who will not acquiesce and conform to the one particular version of Christianity that the religious right promotes. And I understand that there were times in the history of Christianity when that sort of force was tolerated. I would hope that we have become more civilized in the 21st century, especially in light of the fact that not every Christian denomination agrees with Focus on the Family's reading of social issues.

The real problem is not that Focus on the Family advocates the positions they do. I certainly do not agree with them, but I believe that followers of that organization have the right to believe whatever they want, and even to say that is what they believe. I'm kind of a First Amendment purist in that regard. The Free Speech clause was meant to protect speech that not everyone agrees with, not just the stuff that nobody has an issue with. The problem comes when organizations such as Focus on the Family start believing that they have the right to force their interpretation of Christianity on those who do not share that interpretation.

And that is where their stand on bullying comes in. They think they have the right to intimidate people into following their program. That's what bullying is: Intimidation. And intimidation is never acceptable. Not even in the name of one's religion.

And think about this: They aren't likely to stop with issues surrounding sexual orientation. With the flurry of legislation regarding reproductive rights from lawmakers on the religious right, it is fairly obvious that their goal is to make anything they don't think conforms to their particular interpretation of Christianity illegal for everyone. They won't stop until they can regulate what books you can read, what you can listen to on the radio, and what you can watch at the movies and on television, and everything else about your life.

Fashion? Meh...

I don't get fashion.

Anyone who knows me will tell you it's true. I hate "dressing up", and I hate the whole "dress for success" cult (I've always thought that if you can do the job, it doesn't really matter how you're dressed, as long as everything essential, according to our culture, is covered). And I really hate the idea that there are people who get paid to tell us how we should want to dress.

Give me shirts and jeans, and occasionally a longish, full, swishy skirt, and shoes that will keep my feet cool in the summer and warm in the winter, and I'll be perfectly happy.

The closest I come to really having any desire to pay attention to what I wear is when we're talking SCA (the Society for Creative Anachronism; those of us who like to go out of a weekend and pretend we're living in the Middle Ages). That's fun, although some of those dresses weren't very comfortable, and multiple layers aren't fun in the middle of a San Joaquin Valley summer afternoon.

But, ordinarily, clothes are just boring to me. I appreciate them for their service in covering up the private bits and whatever other body parts I'm not happy with (usually most of them). But I don't like thinking about them, and I don't like shopping for them. Occasionally, I enjoy looking through Vogue magazine, because some of the couture they feature is weird enough, and the photography is good enough, that looking at it is interesting sometimes. Other than that, I really just don't care.

So, why I am I writing about this, if it bores me so?

Well, I got started thinking about the whole issue while I was reading an essay on the Japanese designer Rei Kawakubo in film director John Waters's book of essays, Role Models (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2010; 304 pages). I'm enjoying Waters's writing tremendously, but it was tough to get through the thirty-page essay because I couldn't work up much interest in an an anti-fashion fashion designer, whose clothes incorporate features that make them look old, or stained or misshapen on purpose, or in the associated issues that Waters brought up in the course of the essay. It wasn't a bad essay, by any means. It just wasn't interesting to me.

Additionally, from Waters's description, the designer doesn't sound like a very pleasant person. She comes across as dictatorial, and she is quoted early in the essay as saying that the thing that makes her laugh, something she apparently doesn't do very often, is "People falling down" (p. 96).

But then, a lot of designers seem to come off as awfully humorless and not very nice people when you think about it. There was the male designer, for example, whose name I can't remember right now and who I don't care to publicize by name anyway, who criticized singer Adele recently regarding her weight (he thought she was too fat). Most of them seem to design for a size that most women just aren't. They probably do that for men, too, but I don't know anything about the designing of men's clothes, so I can't really say for sure.

Which brings me to what is probably the root cause for my disinterest in fashion. I've never walked in to a store to buy clothes and found anything that will really fit me correctly. Of course, the designers would say that it's my fault because I'm not what you'd call thin. I've got a big butt and breasts that are too big for a B cup but too small for a C cup. I know there are other women who have this shape to their body. I know it.

Not that the designers are interested in acknowledging my shape. If I buy a shirt or dress that fits my top, it's too tight for my hips. If I buy a shirt or dress that fits my hips, it's two or three sizes too big on top. It's just ridiculous. And it's no use saying that I should just make my own. Even if I was a much better seamstress than I am (I make SCA garb when I have to, and then only with lots of help; sewing is something that I don't love to do), garment patterns aren't shaped any differently for the DIY seamstress than they are for store-bought clothing, as far as I've ever been able to tell.

Why would I enjoy shopping for clothes when nothing ever fits, and nothing ever would even if I lost weight, since the first place I lose in in my boobs and the last place I lose in in my hips. Losing weight just makes the problem worse, not better, to be honest. It's just an exercise in frustration all around.

I suppose I could join a nudist colony. I understand that all shapes and sizes of people engage in that sort of thing. And all the best to them, if that's what they want to do. At least, they escape the tyranny of the fashion industry. But, you know, that's just not for me. I'm kind of modest about that sort of thing. When I lived in a dorm that had a communal shower one semester, I took my showers at three in the morning rather than have to get naked in front of other people. I'm not against nudity in principle, but I'm definitely against it for myself.

So, I suppose, since my body grows and shrinks in its own special pattern, and since I have a difficult time losing weight anyway, thanks to stunt dieting when I was in high school that screwed up my metabolism on a permanent basis, I guess I'll just keep dressing in the things that fit me best, although they are not anywhere close to what anyone calls fashionable.

And, most likely, I'll remain pretty much completely uninterested in fashion.

Fossils, not cookies, or, what I've been thinking about lately...

Oreopithecus bamboli.

Yeah, no. I'm not writing about creme-filled cookies here. Instead, I'm talking fossils.

Here lately, I've been all about fossils, because I'm writing a book about physical (or biological) anthropology and archaeology, and fossils are a big part of physical anthropology. It's all fascinating. It's also very difficult to write about, especially when you're writing for beginning, who more than likely don't have a great grounding in science and might not have much of a grasp on anything having to do with human evolution, who might even have religious or philosophical issues with any kind of evolutionary theory, much less the idea that modern humans evolved through a series of forms before we got to who we are today.

As an example, there is Oreopithecus bamboli. O. bamboli is a Miocene ape, fossils of which have been found in Tuscany and Sardinia in Italy. This species lived 7 to 9 million years ago and has been touted as evidence that bipedalism didn't just evolve in hominids (that was David Pilbeam, or Harvard University).

In the 1950s, Johannes Hurzeler found fossils representing this species and proposed, based on indications that it could walk upright, that it was a human ancestor. His conclusion was widely criticized, with some other researchers saying that any resemblance to hominids was strictly coincidental, a case of convergent evolution. Others didn't even see a resemblance to any creature on the line to humans.

Case closed, right?

Well, this is paleontology, the study of fossils and closely related to paleoanthropology, the study of the human fossil record, so, no. Paleontologists and paleoanthropologists argue about most things related to their field most of the time, or so it seems.

In the 1990s, Meike Kohler and Salvador Moya-Sola, both from the Miquel Crusafont Catalan Institute of Paleontology in Spain, took it upon themselves to reanalyze the Oreopithecus collection in a Swiss museum. After their research, the two concluded, as had most before them, that the fossils represent an ape and is not on the line that led to modern humans. But they also said that the spine and lower body show a resemblance to the australopithecines and to modern humans, and that its hands were capable of a precision grip.

One exception to the general conclusion that Oreopithecus' lower anatomy is hominid-like is that its big toe diverges 90 degrees from its other toes. Then again, several of the proposed earliest ancestors to humans also have divergent big toes. Just something else to speculate about and argue about; how close does a hominid foot have to resemble a modern human foot for that hominid to have walked bipedally enough like a human being to be considered to be a relative of modern humans, directly or indicrectly?

Kohler's and Moya-Sola's explanation for Oreopithecus' traits, which were characterized as intermediate between apes and australopithecines, was that the specimens they looked at had lived on a swampy island, were threatened by no predators, and thus could spend a lot of time on the ground, which led to its development of the ability to walk for short distances on two feet.

Again, others have said they do not see the hominid-like traits Kohler and Moya-Sola reported, and one researcher, Randall Susman, from Stony Brook University in New York, pointed out that these fossils are difficult to evaluate in any case, because they are poorly preserved.

Which leaves us where? Writing in The Last Human (Yale University Press, 2007), Esteban Sarmiento, a research associate at the American Museum of Natural History, said that "Oreopitheucs suggests that features, such as the shape of the pelvis, lower back length, a knee joint with a carrying angle, a skull with a downward directed opening for the spinal cord, and non-interlocking canines, all of which have been used to classify fossils as hominids, are probably shared by the common human-African-ape ancestor, and do not distinguish a human lineage exclusive of African apes."

And this is why it is so difficult to write about human evolution. All we are left with is bones, some of them very old, very poorly preserved, and very difficult to evaluate accurately. Not only that, but most of the time there is no complete skeleton of an individual, and sometimes not even complete bones. We can't see what these fossils species looked like dressed in their skin, and we can't see how they behaved. This makes figuring out who evolved into whom a guessing game.

A game of educated guesses, to be sure, but a guessing game nonetheless.

Which, I hasten to add, does not mean that evolution did not happen. It simply means that the story of how that evolution proceeded is very hard to discern and that paleoanthropologists and biological anthropologists will be putting together the clues for a long time to come.

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Some of the information about Oreopithecus bamboli in this post comes from online reports appearing in Science News and Smithsonian Magazine.