I owe a t-shirt tag to maia-arts and pottybaglady but I have to admit, today has been very hard. A dear friend of mine has spent all day in hospital beside her dying husband. I've been sitting at home, waiting by my computer, as she sends us periodical updates... on her... on the children... and of course... on her husband.
 
I am not worried for him. His has been a long illness. I will miss him, though and I feel a great deal of compassion for him at this time because he, truly, is not ready to go. He has fought and struggled and lived long past the time the doctors gave for him. I believe he has only stayed with us this long because he does not accept it is his time and goes unwillingly onto the next stage of his journey. I call it that because I do believe there is something larger, beyond this life, as we know it. I am also firmly convinced he will be absolutely fine, even if he does go into the next life screaming, just as a baby comes into this one, unknowing and screaming.
 
My sadness comes because I know my friends. They were at my wedding. She was pregnant when I was pregnant. They came to the funeral of my eldest child. Our friendship spans decades. They've shared a great deal of my life and I, theirs.
 
I know that he is the love of her life. Marriage is not always easy and they've had their ups and downs. There were times when it looked as though theirs would not survive... but through it all, they had a passion and somehow, they worked things out.
 
When you have friends as good as these, you get the privilege of sharing lives, the good and the bad. Right now, I wait by the phone and the computer, sadly taking this ride with them. It is sad but as I said, it is a privilege.
 
There is a wonderful quote by John Donne. I put it here in the hope that it might comfort others as it comforts me...
 
"No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were. Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee."
 
Goodnight polyfriends. I'll be away a while but I'll be back. Take care of yourselves.

As an anthropologist, there's always an element of uncertainty when you first go into the field. We are dependent on people accepting us and being prepared to include us in their daily lives. If we don't meet anyone who is willing to allow us into their community, who wants to show us the way... then our project is sunk.
 
When my son and I first arrived in the desert, we knew no-one. From reading I had done, I understood that historically, when Aborigines were moving about in the desert and came across another family group with whom they were unfamiliar, they would set themselves up outside the camp of the other family and allow the other group to observe them. They would quietly wait to be approached. This is known as "getting used to your skin" and is a reference to "skin groups" which is the way that kin groups are organized in Aboriginal societies.
 
With that in mind, my son and I set up our caravan a little outside the community and went about our daily lives. Sure enough, people took to driving behind the caravan each morning. Carloads of men and children would detour, on their way out hunting, at various times during the day.
 
After a few weeks, some of the men (watis) would give a little wave, or a small smile and a nod as they looked in on us. We would look up from whatever we were doing and wave back. After a few more weeks, we were rewarded with the odd "Morning!" as they drove by.
 
Slowly the relationship began to develop. The watis seemed to be checking on us. We got the feeling they were making sure we were alright. The drivebys fell into a pattern. A couple of four-wheel-drives would cruise by around dawn, a few would straggle past during the day and a different one would drive through last thing at night.
 
The first people to approach us directly were the children. They would sidle up to the caravan and stand shyly at a safe distance, regarding us for a few minutes before retreating back in the direction of the roadhouse. If we called out to them, they would usually freeze silently or scatter in a sea of giggles.
 
One morning there was a knock at the caravan door. When I opened it I was met by five teenage boys. One boy, about twelve, had a shock of blonde hair very characteristic of central desert children and was more confident and self-possessed than the others. He acted as the spokesman.
 
Holding out his hand, I could see that a small, beautiful finch was lying on his palm, dead. Looking up at me through his white fringe, he explained that the boys had brought it as a gift for my son.
 
Every morning and evening, hundreds of little striped zebra finches would flock around the caravan. We would hear them walking across the roof and twittering in the bushes. They were drawn by the mulga shrubs and the water leaking from the tap connected to the caravan. At first I thought the boys had found the dead bird but I quickly noticed they were all holding shanghais fashioned from rope and the cut up inner tubes of car tyres.
 
We followed the boys outside and before we could say anything, one of them pulled back on the stretchy rubber of his slingshot and a stone was launched that caught a small bird on the fly. The accuracy was breathtaking. My son, raised in an urban western environment, let out a sharp cry of shock as one of the smaller boys ran forward, retrieved the dead bird and offered it silently to him.
 
I realised that the entire spectacle had been staged in an effort to impress my son and as I turned I saw that he was unable to conceal his distress at the scene before him. In an attempt to defuse the situation, I thanked the boys and hustled my son back into the caravan. It was evident from the confusion on their faces that whole thing had gone inconceivably wrong and they retired into a huddle some distance from our camp and reviewed the situation.
 
Meanwhile, inside the caravan, I consoled my stricken son. I explained that these boys were hunters and gatherers and were not raised with sentimental feelings about the life cycles of animals. While shooting birds for fun might seem cruel, it was practice for the hand eye co-ordination they would need to develop as adults, if they were to perfect the many different skills they would need to catch food in the desert.
 
My son regarded me with red-rimmed eyes. "But Mummy, I don't want these birds killed on account of me."
 
Our conversation was interrupted by another knock at the door. On opening it, we were met by the boys with handfuls of dead birds. Obviously, surprised by our reaction, they had consulted and arrived at the conclusion that their failure was due to the insufficiency of the offering. They would compensate by overwhelming us with numbers. Pressing the birds into our hands, they ran off, shooting at any bird foolish enough to reveal itself.
 
My son and I soon lost sight of them but they could be easily tracked by the trail of dead birds, mainly striped finches and brightly coloured parrots, that now dotted the desert like a killing field. My son cried out, weeping to the boys.
 
"Please, please," he begged. "I like LIVE birds, not dead ones!"
 
Finally, one of the boys reappeared out of the scrubby undergrowth. "Okay," he said, clearly confused.
 
My son insisted we bury all the dead birds, so we spent the rest of the afternoon retrieving their little bodies and digging their graves. My son said a few heartfelt words over each one and the boys watched us silently, from a distance. Occasionally they would go into a huddle and confer. Eventually, they ran off.
 
A few hours later, there was another knock at the door. It was the boys. This time they presented us with a small live bird. It had a broken wing and was shivering in shock. The explanation was given that sometimes, when they were shooting the birds, the shot would only succeed in stunning, rather than killing it. Would my son like this bird?
 
We thanked the boys and my son gently suggested that we needed "...no more birds, please."
 
He then ran up the road to the police post. The wife of one of the officers had some pet birds and she lent him a small cage. We spent some time nursing the little finch back to health, although it soon became evident that it would never fly again.
 
As the bird grew stronger, we took to putting its cage outside for some part of every day. After a week or so, the boys came by again. When they saw the little bird, they looked shocked.
 
"Why? Why are you keeping it in a cage?"
 
I explained that its wing was so badly damaged that it could not fly and that if we let it go, it would soon be eaten by predators.
 
'But Missus, it's a bird. It should be free. Keeping a free thing in a cage is CRUEL."
 
These boys became very good friends. They made a shanghai for my son and taught him to use it, although they were very amused that he would never shoot at anything that was alive. Their mothers taught me to hunt. I eventually became good enough to be able to catch more than I could eat, so I was able to share. Some of my most treasured memories are of hunting expeditions.
 
Links to field work stories...
 

http://www.polyvore.com/my_fieldwork_outfit/set?id=11505231
http://www.polyvore.com/dedicated_to_sydneystyle_all_who/set?id=12323622
http://www.polyvore.com/when_nothing_is_as_it/set?id=11533695
http://www.polyvore.com/rooster_asking_why_am_here/set?id=11146621
http://www.polyvore.com/monet_limnodynastes_spenceri_spencers_burrowing/set?id=11593613
http://www.polyvore.com/life_as_journey_not_destination/set?id=12107218
http://www.polyvore.com/lollipopj_steampunk_anthropologist/set?id=12326123
http://www.polyvore.com/accommodating_difference/set?id=12489207

Still going! Thanks all!

Trying to build another set. One fave will allow me to clip. Thanks.

One of my field studies was with homeless men in a major urban setting. There are a lot of reasons why people become homeless. Some examples include medical issues that render people unable to work, or reduce their savings to a level where they can no longer afford to maintain reasonable accommodation. Others have difficulty managing the kinds of social relationships that enable them to hold down regular jobs or negotiate the institutions that give them access to accommodation.
 
A few people find the basic requirements of our society too complex. For example, the need to keep records for income tax purposes or the paperwork that will allow them to verify their I.D. may seem unnecessary or too difficult. These people sometimes become homeless as a protest against a society they feel is excessively controlling. Homelessness, for them, becomes a way of making a public statement about values they do not share or perceive as unfair or heartless.
 
Yet others have substance abuse issues or mental illnesses that complicate their ability to hold down jobs or establish stable homes. Many have suffered significant levels of family breakdown and lack the social networks that might support them through difficult times. Of those people, many find themselves homeless from a very young age and some never develop the social or economic skills that enable them to make the kind of life that many of us take for granted.
 
One of the people who spent some time talking to me was a man in his early thirties we can call Arthur. His relationship with his family was poor. He found himself unable to live with his mother from the time he was a teenager and when I met him, lived in a shed made of packing crate cases which he had inhabited for about ten years. He showered in railway station bathrooms or in homeless shelters and only had access to public toilets.
 
Arthur was quite resourceful. He found a way to make an illegal electricity connection which enabled him to run a television set and a computer inside his packing crate 'house'.
 
He had been diagnosed with a mental disease which included an 'underlying psychosis' and found people hard to deal with. A physically large man, no matter how much he attempted to ingratiate himself with people, or how obsequious he was, he often came across as menacing or made social blunders that people read as aggressive or offensive.
 
Arthur had great difficulties interpreting the social signals made by the people with whom he needed to deal and this reduced his ability to respond in a mutually productive or natural way. He had completely alienated the clerks in the department of housing that he was hoping would secure accommodation for him. He said that "People just seem to take exception to me..." and he found that bureaucrats and people in official capacities were impossible to deal with and "... just cruel".
 
He tried to supplement his income by buying and selling second-hand mobile phones on ebay. He is very handy with electrical things and often found items with minor problems he could correct.
 
One day he purchased a handset which he gave as a gift to a church worker with whom he was friendly. The phone was 'locked'. That is, it only worked with a SIM card provided by one particular carrier.
 
Arthur wanted his friend to be able to use a variety of cards so he went to a shop owned by the company that issued the SIM card and requested they unlock the phone. They refused on the grounds that he wasn't the original owner. He asked to see a copy of the terms and conditions on which they based their refusal but they were unwilling to co-operate. Arthur protested by refusing to leave the shop.
 
Security guards were summoned and informed him that the police had been called. Arthur assessed the situation and decided to concede the point and leave but the guards held a quick discussion and decided to hold him.
 
Feeling that he was now being held a prisoner illegally, Arthur used his own mobile phone to call the police. The guards responded by wrestling him to the ground and handcuffing him. They hauled him to his feet and dragged him into their office to wait.
 
When the police arrived, Arthur requested an ambulance but the officers were far more interested in his 'state of mind' than in his injuries. Arthur found this offensive and when they finally arrived at the hospital, tried to bring his wounds to the attention of the medical staff.
 
The doctor, however, was also more interested in his mental state and refused to examine his injuries. He said "... she was callous" but argued that he did not retaliate by being physically threatening. Instead, he mirrored what he saw as the doctor's rude behaviour, by being rude back. The doctor responded by involuntarily committing him to a mental institution.
 
Links to other field work stories...
 
http://www.polyvore.com/accommodating_difference/set?id=12489207
http://www.polyvore.com/my_fieldwork_outfit/set?id=11505231
http://www.polyvore.com/dedicated_to_sydneystyle_all_who/set?id=12323622
http://www.polyvore.com/when_nothing_is_as_it/set?id=11533695
http://www.polyvore.com/rooster_asking_why_am_here/set?id=11146621
http://www.polyvore.com/monet_limnodynastes_spenceri_spencers_burrowing/set?id=11593613
http://www.polyvore.com/life_as_journey_not_destination/set?id=12107218
http://www.polyvore.com/lollipopj_steampunk_anthropologist/set?id=12326123

About thirty years ago, when I was in Holland, I went to the Rijksmuseum. There was an exhibition of the great Dutch Masters with many famous paintings I had only ever seen in books, or as prints. I was very excited at the prospect of seeing these amazing works in real life.
 
I walked through the gallery which was arranged chronologically from the earlier Masters to the most recent. There were paintings by Vermeer and Franz Hals among others.
 
As I took my tour, I noticed that the colours were very different from the way they'd appeared as reprints. I saw that the guard in the museum was very edgy when anyone got too close to the paintings, particularly the children. I asked him why and he showed me where generations of children, on school excursions had taken their pencils and pressed them surreptitiously into the eyeballs of the figures in the portraits!
 
I continued on my way, luxuriously feasting on the works when unexpectedly, as I rounded a corner, I came, unannounced, upon my first Rembrandt. Shocked, I was frozen.
 
I did not and do not, consider myself an art expert in any way but when I saw Rembrandt... I got it.
 
I believe that art and academia have something in common. They are both dialogues that survive long past the time when their authors have moved on.
 
Academics write papers that are published and placed into the public arena. These papers are critiqued and if they have any merit, they add to the body of understanding about a topic. In a similar way, artists speak to their audiences and each other, as long as a record of their work exists. These dialogues speak of observations, comments, problems and solutions.
 
Artists and academics engage in these conversations across languages, cultures and time. To anyone who has not been lucky enough to view a good piece of original art, I would strongly urge you to make the effort if you get the opportunity.
 
When I saw that Rembrandt, I realised that those Dutch Masters had been involved in a long and complex argument and Rembrandt had found an answer. I won't spoil it for you. You'll have to go see for yourself :)

Not all of my fieldwork has been with Australian Aborigines. In my undergraduate days I was fortunate enough to participate in a small field trip to the Pacific Islands.
 
From the main island, we booked passage aboard a cargo liner and steamed overnight to a distant location. Our tickets were inky stamps, printed onto our inner arms. They also entitled us to 'first class' travel. This meant we had enough room to lie down on the floor when we were tired, instead of sitting bolt upright in our seats or attempting to find a quiet spot outside on the crowded deck.
 
Within a few hours of setting out, the first class toilet became blocked and overflowed. Everything was made worse by the fact that the weather was wild and many of the passengers were hideously seasick. The stench in first class was overwhelming. I could only imagine the conditions in steerage where the majority of the passengers were accommodated.
 
The trip was rough. Several times during the night I woke to discover that the ship had listed onto its side and I had slid from the floor to the wall... the new floor.
 
Under the circumstances I found it difficult to sleep and took a tour of the deck. I met some of the crew sitting outside around a bucket of kava, a narcotic beverage widely consumed in the Islands. They were singing and playing guitar. I asked after the captain and was informed that he was asleep. Seeing so many of the crew were on the deck, I enquired who was looking after the ship and one of the crew, a friendly Fijian with an outgoing manner offered to show me the helm.
 
We went forward to the wheelhouse and I was introduced to a lone sailor. He was a young Fijian boy and still a teenager. I asked him about his job and he told me that all he did was watch the radar screen and if he saw another ship or evidence of a particularly nasty storm cell, he was under instructions to wake the captain. He tiptoed to the Captain's cabin and softly opened the door to reveal the Captain gently snoring on his relatively sumptuous bunk. I'll admit to a pang of jealousy as the boy quickly closed the door.
 
The boy told me that he was a 'simple farm boy from a remote village' who had been seduced to sign up for three years on the promise of an above average pay. He told me that he had only been at sea a few weeks and he was terribly homesick for his village. He missed his family and the breadfruit trees and was counting the weeks, months and years until he had fulfilled his contractual obligations and could return.
 
Altogether, he was a very unhappy boy, alone on watch, in charge of a large cargo ship on a nasty ocean a long way from home. I asked him about his qualifications for being in charge of the ship and he showed me a large whale tooth, framed and mounted on the wall.
 
"I am not afraid, miss" he told me. "Whenever a ship from our country is launched, it must have one of these. The whales are our guardians and as long as we have this on board, we cannot sink."
 
Links to other fieldwork stories...
http://www.polyvore.com/my_fieldwork_outfit/set?id=11505231
http://www.polyvore.com/dedicated_to_sydneystyle_all_who/set?id=12323622
http://www.polyvore.com/when_nothing_is_as_it/set?id=11533695
http://www.polyvore.com/rooster_asking_why_am_here/set?id=11146621
http://www.polyvore.com/monet_limnodynastes_spenceri_spencers_burrowing/set?id=11593613
http://www.polyvore.com/life_as_journey_not_destination/set?id=12107218
http://www.polyvore.com/lollipopj_steampunk_anthropologist/set?id=12326123

This story is for Thea...
 
Death and mourning are an all too frequent part of life in the Central Desert of Australia. Funerary customs vary from region to region but in the community where I was privileged to live, death is marked by a series of rituals in which all the indigenous people have a role.
 
Everyone is related out there, so when anyone dies most people are plunged into some degree of grief. When news comes to a community that someone has passed away, a number of events are set in motion. Close kin immediately go into mourning. The women set up a gut wrenching keening that can be heard right through the community. Very close relatives roughly cut their hair very short. Sisters, mothers and daughters fall into the dirt on their knees and gouge handfuls of soil out of the desert, flinging it left and right. Older women often rip their clothes and smear white ochre through their hair and over their breasts. Sometimes people strike themselves with rocks and sticks. It's a very sad and piteous sight.
 
People of the opposite moiety (in-laws) must clean any areas where the deceased lived and socialised. This is done both physically and spiritually. The house is cleaned and all possessions of the departed are destroyed. Special tree branches are selected and set alight. All members of the community will follow and bear witness as the smoke is wafted through the houses and along the tracks where the deceased walked. The smoking rituals go on for a considerable period of time, until there is consensus that the area is 'cleansed'.
 
Once a person passes away, their name is taboo, as is any word that sounds similar. If someone named Mel has died, anyone named Mel, Dell or even Kelly must find a new name. Furthermore, any rhyming noun must be replaced with another word. Thus, 'bell' would become 'chime' and 'well' might become 'pool' or 'shaft' or something similar.
 
This is done because saying the name of the dead person would attract their spirit, which may be disoriented or even malevolent. Also, surviving relatives are saddened and their grief is prolonged when they hear the names of their departed loved ones.
 
Immediate relatives vacate their homes to a place in the desert where the dead person did not frequent. This is designated a "sorry camp". People live in this location until the funeral. Over the weeks leading up to the ceremony, relatives come from the surrounding lands and make individual camps at the sorry site. By the time of the funeral, there may be over a hundred people living there, especially if the person who passed away was a senior elder.
 
While I was away in town, news came of a car accident in which a middle-aged man who had grown up in our community was killed. As soon as I returned, I found where the sorry camp was located and my son, then aged 11, and I drove out to see the relatives.
 
As soon as we pulled up we saw the man's sister and her husband sitting in the dirt around a small campfire. We approached respectfully and offered our hands in a sombre handshake according to custom. Then we sat quietly around the fire for a short time.
 
The camp had been established for the best part of a week when we turned up and several other relatives had arrived and lit their fires in various proximities to the sister and her husband. The distance depended loosely on the degree of relationship to the dead man and his family. Children ran heedlessly between the campfires and dogs scavenged for leftovers among the rapidly accumulating detritus.
 
The bereaved were gracious and we sat, sadly but companionably. Suddenly, the atmosphere was broken by a heartrending, high-pitched wail from a nearby bough shelter (wiltja).
 
Looking up, I saw one of the 'aunties' and realised that the mother of the dead man had arrived. She was seated on the ground in front of the wiltja and is very elderly and senior. My son and I had become extremely fond of her during our time in the desert and forgetting decorum, we leapt up and I fell into her arms. Together we sobbed and rocked. I could feel the welts on her back and shoulders where she had beaten herself in her grief. I could see the mis-shapen bumps on her head.
 
The intensity of her pain immersed me in relentless waves and I cannot recall how long we sat like that, in the desert, under the infinite starry sky, welded together in the wash of her heartache.
 
The other aunties looked on wordlessly, their wise eyes taking in their sister and her inconsolable grief. Eventually, her sobs subsided and giving her a last hug, I stood up and went back to her daughter. Her last surviving child of, originally, six siblings.
 
"How would you feel" I began nervously, "if we came out here and camped with you?"
 
I was afraid of imposing but felt moved by the moment to make the offer. Any doubts I had were dispelled by the big smile which broke her face. It was agreed I would bring my swag to the camp after work on the Friday and set up my camp.
 
During the week, word got around that I would be moving into the sorry camp on the weekend. A number of discussions arose as to where exactly I should camp and I was approached by a woman who stood as a "classificatory sister" to me. She sweetly offered for us to camp with her.
 
On the Friday, I drove up to the sorry camp and the brother-in-law of the dead man, a very respected elder, came out to greet me. With great dignity, he ushered my 4wd through the camp and indicated that I should park my car at their shelter. It became obvious that he intended that I should camp with them, the central family.
 
Feeling surprised and somewhat self-conscious, I jumped from the driver's seat and dragged my swag off the roof of the car. The sister of the dead man made me roll out my sleeping roll on the ground next to her bed and then we sat and drank hot tea by the fire.
 
Some of the children sat on my swag and we taught them to do sudoku puzzles. Occasionally, one of the camp dogs would try to lie on my bedroll and the women, knowing that I was "fussy" about the dogs being on my swag, would chase the unfortunate animals off with sticks. People watched over us with benevolent patience and care even as they struggled to deal with their own tumultuous feelings.
 
Often the nights were punctuated by the long, high keening which would start in one or other corner of the camp and spread in grasshopper like jumps, from campfire to campfire through the desert. One night, at about 3am when the sobbing had been welling and ebbing for over an hour, I felt my son shaking on the bedroll beside me. Fearing that I had exposed him to too much raw emotion at such a tender age I asked him if he was alright.
 
"Yes" he replied and stared up at the inky sky and the wheeling stars. "It's just that it's heartwrenching."
 
Links to other fieldwork stories...
 
http://www.polyvore.com/my_fieldwork_outfit/set?id=11505231
http://www.polyvore.com/dedicated_to_sydneystyle_all_who/set?id=12323622
http://www.polyvore.com/when_nothing_is_as_it/set?id=11533695
http://www.polyvore.com/rooster_asking_why_am_here/set?id=11146621
http://www.polyvore.com/monet_limnodynastes_spenceri_spencers_burrowing/set?id=11593613
http://www.polyvore.com/life_as_journey_not_destination/set?id=12107218

When I was living in the desert, there were three very old women who were highly respected. They were called "law women", or perhaps "lore women" because they knew traditional law and all the old stories.
 
The law women had walked about together in the desert as girls. They called each other 'sister'. They got married to their husbands and raised their children, roaming and foraging for food together and now, after eighty years, with their husbands dead and their children grown up and gone, they still roamed together in the desert. These days, in a concession to a new era, they travel in SUVs instead of by foot.

The old women came to our community and camped under a big old tree. They set up their campfire and slept under the stars in their blankets. Each day, I would bring them a hot meal. They called me Napurrurla, which is a skin name that defines their relationship to me. They called me niece, so I called them 'aunty'.
 
Over a period of time, we became quite close. They didn't speak English and my skills in their language were very limited but somehow, we got by. They told me stories about when they were girls. One of them was a very powerful and influential marpan (sort of like a witchdoctor but I'm not very fond of that word because it implies things like primitive and ignorant and that is misleading).

The old aunties often used to ask me to drive them around and one evening, they asked if I would come early the next day and drive them to another community for a funeral. I agreed and about 6am the next morning I drove my car up to their camping spot to pick them up. When I got there, they were gone. Another woman who was there told me that they had got a lift with another mitjitji (white woman) but they had left me a message. The message was "They said, tell her we can get there alright but we can't get back. Tell her that we'll need her to come this afternoon and pick us up!" Having faithfully relayed the message to me, in the third person, the woman turned back to tending the campfire.

I was confused. I knew the mitjitji who had driven them to the funeral. She was reliable and I knew there was no way she would just drop them in a distant community and leave them, so I wasn't sure what to do. I didn't fancy the idea of driving a few hundred kilometres and finding they'd gone. I thought and agonised about it all day but in the end I knew I'd feel guilty if I didn't go, so I packed up the 4wd and set off over the sandy desert roads.

As I came into the isolated community, I saw a Land Rover pulled over to the side of the road. Slowing down, I saw the aunties get out of the vehicle and calmly cross over the road, to my side. As I pulled over, they wordlessly opened my doors and got in, as if they knew I would come and my timing could not have been better.

The mitjitji came over to me with a friendly but surprised expression. "What are you doing here?" she said.

"The old ladies left a message for me this morning," I told her. "They said you were taking them in but they would have no way to get back unless I came to pick them up."

"How could they know that?" the mitjitji puzzled. "I've only just this minute broken down!"
 
Links to other tales from the desert...
http://www.polyvore.com/my_fieldwork_outfit/set?id=11505231
http://www.polyvore.com/when_nothing_is_as_it/set?id=11533695
http://www.polyvore.com/monet_limnodynastes_spenceri_spencers_burrowing/set?id=11593613
http://www.polyvore.com/rooster_asking_why_am_here/set?id=11146621
http://www.polyvore.com/life_as_journey_not_destination/set?id=12107218
http://www.polyvore.com/lollipopj_steampunk_anthropologist/set?id=12326123