Reactionary

It isn’t about an argument, it’s about things that happen, things that have nothing else in common other than they happened to you. When I left for work early this morning, it was raining and when I got back it looked like it was about to rain. Those two trips bookended such disparate events.

At work, I was put into a room with a misbooked case that was scheduled for two hours if it were what it was booked for, but with the twist of what it actually was, they were still working when I left. Well into the fifth hour, after having tied down four renal veins (normal is one) the vein retractor was holding back a vein big enough to almost fill it and I was looking straight at the bifurcation of the inferior vena cava. Flipping cava. Aorta couldn’t have been far off. It’s not something many people see. It’s not something many people know, how to take down large, abnormal renal veins. What they need before they need it, why. It had been a while since I was in a vascular case and despite being dehydrated by the end, it was worth it getting my way that I wanted to scrub it.

From work, I stayed in that part of town, got a salad and iced coffee, read another chapter in Mexico (Michener is guilty of overwriting and obvious convenience in dialog, isn’t he?), and sent a few text messages. Then, I went to the lecture on Hatshepsut at the museum. This was the selling slug on the online flyer:

Dr. Catharine Roehrig, Curator of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s recent exhibition, “Hatshepsut: From Queen to Pharaoh,” speaks. This program is co-sponsored by the Pennsylvania Chapter of the American Research Center in Egypt (ARCE). $5; $3 for Museum members; free for ARCE-PA members. Reservations recommended: 215/898-4890.

Pictured: Hatshepsut, female king of Egypt, from the early 18th Dynasty (1479-1458 B.C.). Head and lower parts from the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Torso from Rijksmuseum van Oudheden. Photo: Peter Jan Bomhof and Anneke de Kemp.

It filled in some gaps in my knowledge with little, neat nuggets of information centered around the two tombs she built for herself, one as queen and one as female king. The title of “queen” clearly meant wife and mother and nothing to do with rule hence the creation of “female king” since only a king could rule Egypt. I took only a few general notes since peculiarities about length, breadth, materials used don’t interest me much. I like issues not hard facts. Egyptologists seem to discuss artifacts more than they do theories or facts of what happened. I guess I answered my own rumination since being an archaeologist implies a concern with objects and not necessarily with the associated stories. Those would be historians. But I still find it somewhat frustrating because historians don’t give many lectures open to the public. They chiefly expound on their theories in books and articles.

There was one issue Dr. Roehrig did theorize on at the end. This was Thutmosis III’s reasons for destroying his aunt’s name on all the monuments he had built. She believes, since he did it twenty years after her death, it wasn’t because of hatred or revenge, a theory that’s been spread in books and museum plaques. Due to the time lapse, she believes he did it with a political agenda, not personal hatred. Why wait twenty years if he really hated her? And if it was a personal affront, why only erase her name as king and not that as queen? It’s a valid point, but one we will never know the answer to. Perhaps this is why studies like this don’t appeal to many people, there are no definite answers since things said and done thousands of years ago cannot, without a huge discovery, be known.

As i walked back over the bridge that separates this side of the river and that one, I thought of all I’d seen and done today. It’s mind-boggling sometimes, if you stop and think. Streets were full of Center City’s young partygoers out on a damp Friday night that threatens heavy rain and I wondered what they’d seen that day. I wonder if anyone else had the duo of inferior vena cavas and Hatshepsut’s tombs.

Link of the Day: YouTube Under Fire– Wired

Record companies are keen to avoid repeating the mistake they believe they made when Viacom’s MTV was set up 25 years ago — allowing their artists’ music to be aired for free.

Morris in his remarks to investors Tuesday said MTV “built a multibillion-dollar company on our (music) … for virtually nothing. We learned a hard lesson.”

Hard lesson? HARD LESSON? And what kind of hard lesson do wealthy men with houses and expense accounts learn exactly? How to dog the customer more and kill their own industry? This is what I’ve learned– Boycott.

Posted on September 15th, 2006 under General, Life •  Print •  Email • RSS 2.0 feed • Leave a response, or trackback