Chandra Clarke

Award-winning entrepreneur. Author. Professional Optimist.

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The grass is always greener

September 11, 2018 By Chandra Clarke 1 Comment

I just finished reading, through bleary eyes in between the 2 a.m. and 3 a.m. teething child fusses, a book called The Quality of Life Report by Meghan Daum. It’s a story about a 30ish New York TV journalist who falls in love with “the simple life” in a small city in the American Midwest while on assignment. Thinking that she’ll become a better person, she follows a crazy impulse and moves there. Naturally she soon discovers that life is no simpler in the “country” than it is in the big city.

It was an interesting read, but it got me thinking: why is it we keep believing that somewhere out there is a ‘simple life’ or even that there once was a ‘good old days?’ This seems to be a persistent theme in our history, going right back to the cave days:

ARGH: Dis life in cave thing not easy. You gots to clean it regular and check it for bears.
MUGG: You said it brudder.
ARGH: Plus you gots to tend the fire or it go out. Then the bears check the cave for yous.
MUGG: Which is no fun.
ARGH: And da risk of getting runned over by mammoths!
MUGG: Don’t even get me started. Life was better in da trees.
ARGH: I hear ya. I hear ya.

The Greeks didn’t have it much better:

ACASTUS: By Zeus, there just aren’t enough hours in the day!
ENDRE: Slave management got you down?
ACASTUS: Yes! If it isn’t one of them needing a flogging it’s the other.
ENDRE: Don’t look at me for sympathy. I’m up to my gyros in this election. Democracy is one heck of a lot of work.
ACASTUS: And then there’s this whole Trojan War thing.
ENDRE: Yeah, that Helen. What a WMD!
ACASTUS: Pardon?
ENDRE: Woman of Mass Distraction.
ACASTUS: Ah.

Or consider revolutionary France:

PIERRE: Did you see the paper today?
ROBES: Now what?
PIERRE: Marie said that if we don’t have any bread, we should eat cake!
ROBES: And which side is she on again?
PIERRE: Sacre bleu! Not ours, you nummy!
ROBES: Sorry. It’s just that it’s all so complicated now, this revolution and all. How I wish for the simpler days when kings were kings, and we peasants knew our place.
PIERRE: Serf’s up, Robes. Get with le program.

The truth is, there never really has been a simpler time. It only seems simpler because it’s all just so much history now, and we know how the story ends. This is like saying “I knew that!” when the identity of the murderer is revealed, and you’ve already had a sneak peek at the end of the mystery novel.

So what about a good ol’ days? Was there ever a golden time, when things were better, easier, more carefree? Of course there was: it’s called your childhood. Life seemed much nicer back then because while you were off playing toy trains with your cousin Eddie, your parents were sweating the details of putting dinner on the table (meatloaf or mac and cheese?), arranging for a mortgage (variable or fixed?) and dealing with office politics (do I call Bob a weenie now or wait ’til the office party?).

Plus, we tend to have selective memories of our childhoods. We remember the cool train set, but not the time cousin Eddie whacked us on the head with the caboose. Or maybe we do and that’s why we’re contemplating calling Bob a weenie, because he reminds us too much of cousin Eddie.

Whatever. The point is that, like the movie said, the grass is usually only greener… over the septic tank.

Image by Free-Photos from Pixabay

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Volunteer for the Smithsonian, at Home

July 4, 2017 By Chandra Clarke Leave a Comment

smithsonian

Project: Smithsonian Digital Volunteers

Few names conjure up such instant respect in the scientific community as Smithsonian. The Smithsonian Institution has been a cornerstone of preservation and research in the United States for over 150 years. Surely, working for them must be a very exclusive opportunity, right? What if I told you that there was a way that you, as a citizen scientist, could contribute to making their collections more useful to the public? That’s exactly what you can do as a transcriptionist with the Smithsonian Digital Volunteers program.

The Smithsonian’s 19 museums obviously have extensive archives and special collections. However, many of those historical documents are handwritten. While these original primary documents are obviously precious from a historian’s perspective, they aren’t very functional from a practical standpoint. By transcribing photographs of these documents into a digital record, you’d be contributing to a massive effort to make these field notes, diaries, ledgers, log books, manuscripts, specimen labels, etc. more accessible. This project has five primary areas of focus:

Discovery: Transcription turns handwritten and typed documents into searchable and machine-readable resources

Humanities Research: Digitized and fully transcribed documents are an incredibly valuable asset for art, history, & literary researchers across the globe.

Scientific Research: Transcription of handwritten collection labels will create millions of specimen data points available to the scientific community for research and discovery.

Education: From high school to graduate studies, transcription allows students to engage with primary source materials – a key part of the learning experience.

Readability: Transcription preserves these historic documents for future generations as practices like cursive handwriting are less emphasized in in school.

So how do you join the 6500 other volunteers who have already transcribed over 178,297 pages of archived material into digitally-accessible information? The process is super simple and surprisingly unintimidating (I mean, this is the Smithsonian!). You can browse projects that are available for transcription, and just choose the most recently added, or filter by institution–which is cool, because you can find one that’s a good fit with your interests. The Transcription Center provides a tips page with instructions on how to approach each type of document, as well as general guidelines for transcribing primary sources. You are encouraged to create an account, but you do not have to–you can transcribe anonymously, if you’d like, or with a username.

Keep in mind that this is a peer-reviewed process (as all good science is, right?): so anything you transcribe will be read, and possibly flagged for editing, by other volunteers. You can also volunteer to review others’ work–when you choose a project, you’ll see “start transcribing” or “start reviewing.” Just choose which role you’d like to fill. This ensures that everything that is ultimately submitted is of high quality, and hopefully gives you peace of mind that you don’t have to be a total expert to participate in this project. Everyone works together!

You don’t have to commit transcribing an entire project, or to a set number of words. You can jump from project to project, or if you only have a few minutes to spare, jump on and review a few paragraphs, making this a really flexible program. Be sure to check out Smithsonian Digital Volunteers if you’ve got a knack for citizen history, as well as science!

Photo Credit: Pixabay

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How to Become an Archeologist

September 14, 2014 By Chandra Clarke

"20091105 Belfort (0013)" by Donar Reiskoffer - Own work. Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons
“20091105 Belfort (0013)” by Donar Reiskoffer – via Wikimedia Commons

Even before the Indiana Jones movies came out, archeology had broad popular appeal. The tools of the trade seemed simple, and the possibilities it held out (Maybe I’ll find a fortune in treasure! Maybe I will make a famous discovery!) were seductive. Add to the mix the allure of exotic destinations, and you have a hard-to-resist package. I am sure that archeology departments worldwide were inundated with calls from Jones wannabes after that first movie hit the silver screen.

Of course, in this now Internet-connected day and age, we (should) know that the reality is a lot different. Genuine archeology involves a lot of slow, painstaking work, and it is far more likely to yield potsherds than it is gold and gems. That said, archeology remains fascinating because it involves the discovery and telling of our favourite story: our own.

So, if you’ve always been interested in archeology, there are several ways you can get involved, even if you haven’t yet been formally trained.

Learn about archeology

A site called Archeology Expert is a great place to start. A good, concise, all-around resource on the field, it explains the history and types of archeology, and has a section on theory and terminology. There is even has a section on how to get into archeology as a hobby.

Meanwhile, Coursera is offering a MOOC on archeology called Archaeology’s Dirty Little Secrets, which talks about the field, what’s involved, and dispels some myths. And this portal lists a number of other free archeology courses, some broad, some very specific.

If you really want to get serious about your archeology education, there are a number of accredited distance learning options available. The Council for British Archeology lists several options here.

Believe it or not, there are actually quite a few popular magazines solely devoted to archeology. There’s Archeology Magazine, World Archeology, Popular Archeology, British Archeology, and even one for kids called Dig Magazine.

In the US, there’s an organization called the American Society for Amateur Archeologists, which offers a journal in which you could be published, occasional expeditions for fieldwork, and several books of interest laymen scholars. You can even get amateur certification via a National Park Service program.

Go on an archeology dig

Once you’ve worked your way through the material above, it might be time to participate in real expeditions as a volunteer.  For example, the Archaeological Fieldwork Opportunities Bulletin (AFOB)  is one of the largest fieldwork resources in the world, and has hundreds of listings for archaeological projects.

Of course, amateur archeology is not for the faint of heart or the arachnophobe, as digging often means disturbing large and possibly venomous creatures, as this post suggests. If you would prefer to contribute to the field without getting bitten or dirty, you might consider some of the history related Zooniverse projects like Ancient Lives.

 

 

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The arrow of time: visualized

May 31, 2012 By Chandra Clarke Leave a Comment

ChronoZoom site screenshot
Fly through time with ChronoZoom

Certain things, because they are beyond our day-to-day experience, can be difficult to imagine. Astronomical distances are like this, and so are time scales beyond a few aeons. A new tool called ChronoZoom wants to help you wrap your brain around billions of years.

Inspired by Roland Saekow’s fascination with “big history” and timelines, and put together by the University of California, Moscow State University, and Microsoft Research, ChronoZoom aims to do for time scales what Google Earth does for geography. By clicking various areas of the time scale, you can zip around history and dip in and out of various multimedia presentations. For example, there’s material on the Big Bang, a section on the planets and the stars, and the origins of the modern world. The tool shows the relative difference between the age of the cosmos, Earth, life on Earth, human prehistory, and humanity.

Be warned that you’ll need a thoroughly modern web browser to access the tool, and a decent bit of RAM in your computer. Navigating the interface is a bit tricky at first, especially if you’re trying to find the tiny slivers of time humanity has been around when still at the cosmological level. Once you get the hang of it though, you’ll have a lot of fun exploring.

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