IHSS HMNS visit

We went to the Houston Museum of Natural Science to view an exhibit on tribal life in the Amazon rainforest. It was definitely an interesting experience, as I knew next to nothing about it. I was extremely tired during the exhibit, so I had not retained much, but what I did remember was extremely interesting. It was mainly interesting to see an artistic style so very different from our own.
Here are some of the artifacts I saw:

 We had talked quite a bit about their diet, which consisted of mostly normal things for hunter-gatherer societies, but what I found interesting was they they were able to prepare a poisonous relative of the yucca so that it would be safe for consumption. These kinds of things always interest me because I have no idea how they managed to find out precisely what made it poisonous and devise a strategy to remove the toxin. It is similar to the awe I feel whenever edible pufferfish is mentioned because you really have to wonder how they had enough know-how to do this without an intimate knowledge of toxicology and chemistry.

Shrunken heads, while a staple in pop culture when speaking of uncontacted tribes, is actually extremely rare, only being practiced in about four to five tribes out of many hundreds. These tribes have also not practiced the collection and creation of shrunken heads for a long time, cutting back on it significantly after contact with Europe. The practice is almost entirely dead as of today. These tribes might have gotten the heads through battles or by murder. There were tales of some tribesmen a long time ago being attacked and beheaded for this practice. The process consists of removal of the skull and various organs in the head, including salivary glands and tonsils. The process continued with the removal of muscle and fat tissue and ending with a long soak in a solution. The reason they did this was because a person’s spirit and power was believed to be in his head and this power would help a warrior in battle. A warrior with two shrunken heads was considered nigh invincible.

This was a strange thing to focus on in the exhibit, but I was intrigued by the exhibit’s italicization on the tribe’s names. Mainly, I found their use of umlauts rather strange. An umlaut increases stress on a vowel and is indicated by two dots above a letter. This accent mark is common in many Germanic languages that aren't English and Uralic languages that use the Latin alphabet like Finnish or Hungarian. It is used to indicate a different, more stressed pronunciation from another vowel form. For instance, the “a” in “hat” is the same letter as the “a” in “almost” in English, but with proper use of umlauts, “hat” becomes “hät”. An umlaut is usually seen over an a, o, or u (an umlauted u in Finnish is replaced with a standard y, the sound for y in English is indicated by a j in Finnish). The exhibit had the pronunciations for the tribes’ names in standard form, with some accent marks, but their use of umlauts was strange, as when the tribes’ names were stated, there was not a need for the umlaut in the position as the vowels with umlauts were the standard forms of the vowel.

The Odyssey blog 2

On his journey, Telemachus received hospitality from Menelaus, the red haired King. His hospitality was nothing short of grand. They were bathed, clothed and given a grand feast by the king, despite the fact that there was a wedding party beforehand. The king obviously wasted no time in providing the best for his guests, even when short on supplies. If we use Menelaus’ hospitality for comparison, the hospitality of Nausicaa and Alcinous completely blew Menelaus out of the water. Odysseus was bathed clothed, given multiple feasts, had a divine bard sing at his meals, was given quarters, an opportunity to witness a sports tournament and the Phaeacian king even offered his daughter’s hand in marriage. Menelaus was extremely kind, he allowed the travelers to eat and stay at his home despite not knowing who they were, but  Nausicaa and Alcinous, having more power than Menelaus, had more to offer.

The Odyssey 1

The first sentence already makes it extremely obvious what the book will discuss. “The cunning hero, The wanderer, blown off course time and again After he plundered Troy’s sacred heights.” immediately allows the reader, provided that they are somewhat well versed in Greek mythology, to grasp who the “cunning hero” is. Odysseus, after “plundering Troy’s sacred heights”, was taken off course multiple times. First, he landed on the island of the cyclops Polyphemus, Poseidon’s son, and after some trickery and planning, made it off the island and left behind a very angry cyclops. Poseidon, in an act of revenge, caused Odysseus’ ship to once again land far away from Ithaca. Next, when the proem speaks about the fact that his men didn’t make it back, it is referring to the men who were eaten or turned into swine that Odysseus could not help. The longer that it goes on, the more it is apparent that it speaks of Odysseus. Also the title is the “Odyssey” so there’s that piece of evidence, too.

Frederick Douglass final

Frederick Douglass, upon becoming a free, married man, decided to heed warnings about America from his peers and left to Ireland. While there, he noticed that he was never judged as a person, he felt like an individual, like a human. This is no different from how it is now in Europe. With the exception of some extreme racists, personal character and appearance are not as analyzed or characterized as they are in the states. At least with my experience, Europe has allowed people to be themselves and the people there don’t seem to look through a social lens. Here, assumptions and preemptive personality checks are rather common. One thing always seems to lead to another, for example something that has annoyed me a lot would be this chain of assumptions: long hair means he’s effeminate which means he is submissive and therefore he likes other men. Despite the fact all of this chain is untrue bar the physical trait exhibited, this train of thought through various untruths and miniscule amounts of correlation is unfortunately more common than expected. My experience in Europe has been quite the opposite, allowing me to not be judged and to be simply a unique individual.