Oh! And how was the actual trip?
Let’s begin with the symposium.
We attended the all-day workshop on Maya glyphs on Friday, looked around the New Orleans Museum of Art, and then found our new hotel and, after a bit of a rest, went to Parkway Bakery and Tavern for a Po-Boy. (recounted here)
We had planned to attend the keynote of the symposium, and I was looking forward to it, having read part of the presenter’s most recent book on the encounter between Cortes and Montezuma. But M was coming down with a cold and not feeling great – and was really not feeling an hour+ talk after wrestling with glyphs all day – so I just let it go. I mean, it wasn’t my weekend, was it?
Saturday we ended up at four talks all together, split by a visit to the Audubon Zoo, a past favorite. (See one of the reasons why – their two-headed snake in action – on my Instagram.)
The theme of the symposium was Maya warfare. I mentioned in a previous post that I’m very interested in historiography (the study of the study of history) and, more specifically, the upending of accepted narratives and conventional wisdom, and in that regard, what I heard delivered.
I didn’t know this, but for much of the modern era of Maya studies – perhaps until the late 60’s and 70’s – it had been believed that war was not an important part of Maya life in the period of the culture’s flourishing (hundreds of years before Europeans showed up). It seems odd and even a little bit crazy, considering the pervasiveness of violence in human history and the fact that the Maya seemed perfectly capable of engaging the Spanish, but apparently that was the case. One presenter projected a lengthy description of the Maya from a work from the 1940’s in this regard and then said that what has happened in Maya studies is essentially the excision of the word “not” from this quote – as in, older conventional wisdom had held the Maya not bellicose in any way, not shaped by patterns of conquest…and so on.
And why was this? I don’t know enough to do anything but guess, but what I picked up from the talks was that it was because of the lack of physical evidence – no armaments, no battle gear left – and the challenges in translating the glyphs. I think one of the turning points was the discovery of the Bonampak Murals in Chiapas (on someone’s bucket list….). That, along with growing understanding of the written (carved) record as well as the discoveries, via traditional archaeology and LidAR, of what are being understood as defensive constructions, is pulling together a clearer picture of the role of warfare among the ancient Maya – hence the topic of the symposium.
The 13-year old was engaged by most of what he heard, some more than others. One fellow in particular – John Chuckiack of Missouri State – offered a fast-moving presentation that had him absolutely absorbed and his pen racing across the page of his notebook. The guy talking about his studies correlating accounts of battle with the seasons? Not so much. But all of that gave me a chance to help him see how scholarly work is done: Dr. W researches some incredibly minute aspect of meteorology, Dr. X with her graduate students crunches numbers in another area, Dr. Y pours over hundreds of manuscripts in archives from Madrid to Mexico City, and Dr. Z spends decades puzzling over this one stubborn set of glyphs no one can seem to crack. And for a couple of months every year, everybody seems to find time to cut through Central American jungle and puzzle out what’s under the mound they just discovered last year.
I also pointed out – as I have done frequently to both of the boys in these Homeschooling Years – how facile and superficial what is presented in elementary and high school history texts is. It’s a narrative of black and white and one of absolute certainty, when our understanding of the past hardly ever rests on solid ground. It’s good for getting the basic flow of events and conflict – which we all should have – but beyond that, the shape of the past, the motivations of its actors and the consequences of their choices – are much more ambiguous than we like to let on.
So, I don’t know if the interest will last, but at this point, he wants to keep journeying in that direction. The appeal is strong: the more you learn about this field of study, the more you see how little we know. There’s a lot hidden in that jungle, and for someone with an adventurous spirit and a yearning to discover, it just might be the perfect place to be.
When I wasn’t mentally straining to absorb all of this new information about Maya battle tactics and climate and fortifications and such, I had moments here and there to consider the strangeness of the scene. It was one of those many times in life in which we might say, If you’d told me five years ago…ten…fifteen….that I’d be in this place doing this, I would have either said you were crazy or wondered what would have happened to me.
It was just a little odd, sitting there listening to these people talk about places like Tikal and Aguateka and see images of them and recognize the structures, and come into the room after using the restroom, seeing an image of a modern town in the middle of a lake on the screen and whispering to my son, Is that Flores? and him nodding, and well, yes, if you’d told me two years ago that I’d recognize the lay of the land around Flores, Guatemala, I’d have wondered what weird thing had happened in my life to make that so.
Well, the weird that happened is simply other people. Ancient MesoAmericans and Central American travel are certainly not top interests to me, but they intersect enough with what does interest me on a fundamental level – the varieties of human experience past and present – that I can be up for exploring it more, if that’s where I, as driver and bank, am invited to go. Just as I can rustle up interest in football or movies or the law or whatever else the people in my life are into. I have my limits, of course, and I might be more of a critic or naysayer than you’d like at times, but I will do my best to be there with you in whatever weird little part of life you happen to find interesting: to learn, to try to understand, and to grow.
Saturday night, after returning to the hotel and resting for a bit, we set out for downtown. My intention was to grab the St. Charles streetcar on the way, but one never did pass us, so we walked the entire way – it was only a mile and half, so not a big deal.
We ended up at Mr. B’s Bistro. I had check reservations before we left, and there were none available until close to 10, but walking in and asking for a table worked, too. We only had to wait about twenty minutes for a table. My son got the restaurant’s signature Barbecue Shrimp, which I shared a bit of, along with the crab cake appetizer.
Spendy, but good – it was the one major meal of the weekend, so I didn’t mind.
New Orleans is such a party town, it goes without saying, but it’s hard to really grasp it until you’re there – and this isn’t even Mardi Gras or Sugar Bowl season. It’s as if our human desire to celebrate something with someone – anyone – flows down the river and gets dumped out right there, in that spot, and it’s messy, and amusing and anxious, hopeful and worn-out, sincere and contrived all at the same time, in the same raucous moment.
We walked back to the hotel, past the empty column where Robert E. Lee used to stand, past a jazzy wedding procession, past the homeless encampments under the bridges, past the IV-treatment for your hangover place, past a rat scampering into the bushes, past one more group of spray-tanned women, in microminis, their necks draped with layers of beads, their matching rabbit ears flashing in the dark.
Sunday morning, I checked one more time: Are you sure you’re done? It’s okay? He nodded. He was ready to get back home, and so was I. We checked out of the hotel, then drove a few blocks to St. Patrick’s for the Latin High Mass.
I’d been there before, and had been impressed. Impressed not just with the liturgy and the music, but with the fact that in this beautiful, yet rather ordinary downtown diocesan parish, going Full High Latin was not a big deal. There were maybe a few more suits and veils than you’d see in your parish (although I don’t know about mine…no, there aren’t a lot of suits, but the veils are definitely on the ascendant), but there was no stuffiness or stiffness. It was just a Catholic parish, diverse and varied, with lots of babies squeaking and squawking.
The music was very nice and the homily – given by the startlingly young Fr. Ian Bozant was simply excellent.
You know, we sometimes carry this image of the Tridentine Latin High Mass as this endless experience of repetitious, complicated mysterious actions, but (in my limited experience), it seems to me that done right, it’s very, very efficient (when you have layers of actions going on, instead of just one thing at a time that everyone has to watch….until the next thing can happen, which we all watch…), and the cumulative symbolic power very strong and the call to participate in a deep way unmistakable.
My son has given up sweets for Lent, and so beignets were on the menu for Sunday morning – despite my attempts on the previous days to argue that a sweet food at breakfast isn’t in the same category as, say, a cookie. But he stayed strong in his convictions, and so after Mass, off we went. I first thought we’d go to the Café du Monde that’s in the Riverwalk, but there was so much traffic and activity related to the cruise ships I decided that going to the French Quarter might actually be less hassle. Well, it was less hassle in that I found close parking very easily, but the line to get inside was, not surprisingly, out of sight down the block, so we opted for the take-out line, which was still long, but not as bad. He got his beignets and café au lait, and he consumed it all in sight of the Cathedral while clouds loomed.
These same clouds broke open in just a few minutes, pouring down rain as we scrambled to our last stop before home: picking up some muffalattas at the Central Grocery – a half for him to eat on the way home, and then a whole to drop off with my daughter in Tuscaloosa on the way back.
Mission accomplished, we were out of the city by 1, back home by 5:30.
Charlotte was Both 