Oy

This morning I made a total rookie mistake--I managed to entirely forget that it is Saturday, that the trains run on a different schedule, and thus that my 9:38 train (which would get me to the Penn Museum on time for my first tour at 10:30) wasn't running. The next train would have gotten me there late, so I ran home in a panicky fashion, hopped in the car, and then, lo and behold, discovered that what should have been a 20-minute drive took double the time, because there was only one lane open on a two-lane highway for about three miles. Of course, my luck was such that it was the three miles leading up to the specific exit I needed! It was so infuriating to sit there, inching along, all the while being able to actually SEE the museum's parking garage. Luckily, I made it there five minutes before the tour was scheduled to start, which is decent, but I felt bad for repeatedly instructing the students to be there ten or fifteen minutes early. Actually, I shouldn't feel bad, because it's not like they listened anyway--people found there way onto the tour fifteen, twenty minutes late, and my second group had four people who missed their scheduled time (one of them because he'd actually gotten into a fender-bender on the way. At least I didn't have his luck).

Anyway, the tours weren't bad, although I'm always disappointed by how few cultural or historical references these students can pick up on. Only one kid was familiar with Charlton Heston and the Ten Commandments, for example (it was relevant: we were looking at a colossal head of Ramses II, who according to historians is the mostly likely candidate for being the pharaoh of ten-plague fame). They were also really surprised when I pointed out a swastika on a Greek vase of the Geometric period, though in that case, I expect that the story of its co-option as a symbol by the Nazis is something a lot of Americans are not aware of. The most excitement was generated when I pointed out the room with the mummies, but it quickly died when I said they would have to go gawk at the desiccated corpses on their own time. A couple of them actually grumbled at that. Yes, how they suffer! Forced to come to a museum, repository of humankind's collective history and culture, on a Saturday morning--oh, the pain.

Mostly I try to make analogies or references that they'll be familiar with; when we were looking at white-ground lekythoi, for example, a type of Greek vase used almost exclusively for commemorative offerings of oil, I likened the to flower arrangements sent to a funeral, some big and showy, some modest but heartfelt. One of the lekythoi was large in size but actually had a false bottom, so the amount of oil actually offered was nowhere near the amount implied by the size of the container--which, I explained, would be like sending a really elaborate bouquet of flowers that are secretly silk.

I like pointing out instances like this one, ones that show the craftiness or sneakiness of people in past cultures; I feel that an easy way to break down the sense of distance is to remind the students that whatever crazy scheme or trick you've thought of, the Greeks or the Romans or the ancient Chinese got there way before you. In a slightly different vein, I considered, but ultimately chose not to make the analogy between the Roman practice of using a vomitorium between courses at a banquet, and our own (venerable?) tradition of the "puke-n-rally." There's all such a thing as too close, I suppose, and I don't want anyone coming away from the class with the mistaken idea that Romans were alcoholics.