Weeknotes: 4/ 7/24-4/13/24

This Week:

• In MUST204, we started on our final group collections project, developing and implementing the cataloging procedure for the archaeological materials excavated from Hartwick Seminary.
• We hosted Hawhenadies Neal Powless, an internationally ranked lacrosse player and renowned coach, as well as a member of an important traditional family of leadership among the Onondaga Indigenous Nation. Neal’s talk was inspiring, insightful and funny, and I’m glad we moved it from the Museum to a larger venue–we had over 100 people in attendance!
• I finished reading Robert Jackson Bennett’s novel “Foundryside”. The Minister of Intrigue gave it to me a while ago, but I didn’t tackle it because I had read his earlier “City of Stairs” and hadn’t really enjoyed it. I was worried that this book would give me the same feeling, and I am delighted to be wrong. It was well written, exciting, and compelling, in its exploration of class inequality, urban life, and the way the past haunts the present.
• Dominic and I finished reading “Sideways stories from Wayside school” by Louis Sachar. I remember this book from when I was a kid and it is weird, funny, occasionally creepy, and unusual in all the best ways.
• We got as good of a view of the eclipse as one was likely to get in New York, by hiking it up to Oswego. The clouds were out, but we were in the path of totality, and got to have the ethereal and strange experience of seeing darkness surrounded by light.