Bet you didn't know that Piglet was an archaeologist, too!
Then again one of the requisites of being an archaeologist is that you like to roll around in the dirt!

A Selection of

Dan Weiskotten's Favorite Words and Favorite Quotes!

and one of my "scariest images from childhood"
(nope, not flying monkeys)
 

 Last Modified November 8, 2003

"If you can't be a Good Example ... be an Awful Warning"

Favorite Words:

pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis! (it is a pneumoconiosis caused by the inhalation of very fine silicate or quartz dust).

• I suppose if the doctor was confused by it, it would be pseudopneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis, and,
• if it was a mixture of several varieties that he was confused by it, it would be polypseudopneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis, or,
• if he was only partially confused by some of it, then it would be polysemi-pseudopneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis, or, ...

moribund  (at the point of death, fading, dying, slowly sliding out of existence, fatality imminent) (not really to be confused with premortem and perimortem)

Gooslum  This is a word my grandmother used to call us, affectionately, when we were being little rascals.  Despite the context in which it was used we always thought it equivalent to be a not-so-flattering booger.  I guess we wer right in our understanding of the word as a slang dictionary I found gave it as a synonym for goo, slimy, gook, gummy, and goopy.  Stephen King used it to describe one of his other-worldy creatures in one of his books I read a long time ago (sorry, don't know which one).
 

A "savage" Indian described by a "civilized" Frenchman, 1658:

Politeness and propriety have taught us to carry handkerchiefs.  In this matter the Savages charge us with filthiness - because, they say, we place what is unclean in a fine white piece of linen, and put it away in our pockets as something very precious, while they throw it upon the ground.  Hence it happened that, when a Savage saw a Frenchman fold up his handkerchief after wiping his nose, he said to him laughingly, 'If though likest that filth, give me thy handkerchief and I will soon fill it'
(R.G. Thwaites, Jesuit Relations 44:31 1658).

One coffin split while being moved.  We did not open it but the liquid that ran out was far and enough to convince me that there had been total decomposition of all non-skeletal material.  This was also one of the most disgusting experiences of my career as an archaeologist.
(William Moss, June 6, 1995, on ARCH-L internet listservice).

In such investigations, the mind is placed between two antagonist universal powers: a generalization or synthesis, the extreme of which destroys all individuality; and an individualization or analysis, whose extreme equally annihilates all generality: and consequently science cannot exist where either power is in excess, but arises from their mutual equipoise, being the middle term, the harmonizing principal, and performing the same useful office in what are termed the higher mental operations, that common sense discharges in ordinary life.
(Lardner Vanuxem, 1842, Geology of New York, Part II, page 170).

It is now a long time, say the wise ones, since the world has been told all that is new and novel.  But the Reviewers (the cunning wights!) have adopted an ingenious expedient, to give freshness to the most trite idea.  They clothe it in a language so obscure and metaphysical, that the reader is not about to comprehend their pages without some labour.  This is called a great "range of thought;" and not improperly, as I can testify; for, in my own case, I have ranged the universe of ideas, and come back again in as perfect ignorance of their meaning as when I set out.  It is delightful, to see the literati of a circulating library get hold of one of these difficult periods!  Their praise of the performance is exactly commensurate with its obscurity.  Everybody knows that to seem wise is the first requisite in a great man.

You have no right to material comforts without giving back to society the benefits of your honest experience.
(Margaret Sanger, 1938, Margaret Sanger, an Autobiography. Norton)

It was a warm spring day and the body was swarming with some of the largest maggots I have ever seen.  Maggots have a character of their own.  They vary widely in size and ferocity.  They can bunch their bodies up and jump distances far beyond their own length, in some cases as much as several inches.  In the course of my examination, one of the largest of the teeming mass separated from the rest, jumped off the body, cleared the side of the table, and landed audibly on my shoe.  I kicked it across the driveway and kept working.
(Douglas Ubelaker and Henry Scammell, 1992, Bones: A Forensic Detective's Casebook. Harper Collins. New York, NY)

There is yet another way that historical preservation places distance between the house and its owner.  Preserved houses are pieces of material history, and the restorer interprets their physical remains no less than the historian interprets chronological facts.  Both impose private mythologies upon the past.  The myth created for Monticello by its restorers is that Thomas Jefferson was one of the leading architects of his age, that his architectural practice was shaped by Palladianism, and that his house was completed in 1809 much the way it looks today.  All that reinforces this myth has been salvaged and carefully returned to mint condition; all that does not has been allowed noiselessly to disappear.  The difficulty with this myth is that this house was not completed in 1809, when Jefferson returned from Washington and dismissed his workmen.  It was not until 1823 that the principal architectural features of the exterior, the porticoes, were completed, and by this time the condition of the house, like that of its owner, was in serious decline.  Never in Jefferson's lifetime did Monticello appear the way it does today.
(Jack McLaughlin, 1988, Jefferson and Monticello, The Biography of a Builder. H. Holt and Co. New York, NY.)

It was a crisp and spicy morning in early October.  The lilacs and laburnums, lit with the glory-fires of autumn, hung burning and flashing in the upper air, a fairy bridge provided by kind Nature for the wingless wild things that have their homes in the tree-tops and would visit together; the larch and the pomegranate flung their purple and yellow flames in brilliant broad splashes along the slanting sweep of the woodland; the sensuous fragrance of innumerable deciduous flowers rose upon the swooning atmosphere; far in the empty sky a solitary esophagus slept upon motionless wing; everywhere brooded stillness, serenity, and the peace of God.
(Mark Twain [Samuel Clements] A Double-Barreled Detective Story, 1902)

"Where substance is not to be had, shadow must suffice!"
                    (If that doesn't describe history and archaeology, nothing will!)
 

We are all affraid of the flying monkeys in the Wizard of Oz, but here is one other that still has me freaking every time I see it - and I have it hanging on my office wall.  This image, the scariest image of my childhood, is from the Twilight Zone, and was captured from the TV screen by my photographer-brother, Tom Weiskotten.  I have a feeling Tom was as frightened by this as I was and still am, but he would never admit it (why else would he go to the trouble to photograph it directly from the TV back when the show was in it first re-runs).  I have no idea of the context except that it still remains a nightmare to me!