Inauguration Day was a glorious day, which I spent with my daughter and two of her friends from 7:00 in the morning to 6:00 at night
•    getting into downtown Washington on the subway,

•    shuffling along like a penguin in the crowds pouring out of the station,

•    breaching a “secure” area to get onto the Mall,

•    staking out our few square feet of space in front of a Jumbotron, where we stood for hours getting       to know the people around us,

•    finding a warm place after the swearing-in to hang out until crowds thinned at the closest sustation (which they never did), and

•    finally giving up on public transportation and walking 20 blocks to a friend’s house where we waited     for my husband to drive in from the burbs get us.

It was a marvelous, moving, historic day, and I thought of grammar only twice.

First during the oath of office when Chief Justice Roberts moved the adverb “faithfully” from the midst of a compound verb to the end of the sentence, where the word was left barely hanging on to the sentence, ready to be blown away by the chill gusts of the day. How awkward, and how much better as our forefathers wrote the words, with the adverb right there in the middle of the sentence’s predicate: “I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States.”

Afterall, didn’t Captain Kirk of the starship Enterprise not say, “to boldly go where no man has gone before”? There is absolutely nothing wrong in my grammar book with inserting an adverb in the midst of a compound verb.

The second time I had a niggling grammar thought was when President Obama, in his address, referred to the “selflessness of workers who would rather cut their hours than see a friend lose their job.” Oh dear, I thought, there’s that ubiquitous “they.” Why couldn’t he have said “see friends lose their jobs”?

Or maybe I’m the one who needs to change and accept this use of “they” with singular entities, either as a substitute for “his or her” or when referring to an entity comprised of many people. (I believe I heard Daniel Zwerdling on NPR this morning say something along the lines of “Before they took over, the administration planned. .  . .”)

I’ll reserve judgment a while longer on “they” but may just have to give in if someone as well spoken as President Obama has accepted this useage.

—Lesley Rogers

How about that hat!



Some say Aretha Franklin stole the fashion show at the presidential swearing-in with a big, glittery, dove-gray hat, adorned with the biggest bow ever. It’s certainly the talk of the Internet, and the Detroit milliner who made the $179 chapeau is being swamped with requests for a replica.

But this hat was more than a fashion statement.

Playwright Regina Taylor is the author of a musical called Crowns, about the tradition of wearing big, bold, and beautiful hats in the African American church, where such head coverings are indeed referred to as “crowns” and women who have a large collection of them are known as “hat queens.” Hat queens tend to be of an older generation, says Taylor. “But I see more young African American women wearing hats.”

Now, here’s the best. Witnesses fled except one man, who stopped, called an ambulance, and made sure Bobby got to the best hospital. “He saved his life,” his mother, Anne Young, said. Bobby Model, veteran  of many mountaineering expeditions, embarked on the longest expedition of his life. After a month, still in a coma, he was flown to New York City for surgery, then to Denver’s Craig Hospital for rehabilitation.  His family is his center of gravity, of course; his sister says it’s a gift to be there for the person you love. But Bobby’s big heart touched many, and many reached out in return. Schoolchildren in his hometown of Cody, Wyoming, sent cards. A blog for climbers posted a thousand messages. Friends flew in to visit, surrounding him with love.

“Sometimes I have to kick myself when I take my life for granted,” Bobby once wrote. “I’ve been fortunate to witness so many amazing human moments.” Now, Bobby’s drive propels him from one amazing moment to the next. “You see it in his eyes,” his mother said. “He is figuring it out.” He gets around in a wheelchair, talks, and laughs. He snaps with a point-and-shoot in his right hand, and, because his left hand lacks strength, the staff at Craig will rig a bigger, heavier camera on his wheelchair. The expedition continues. There is far to go. “But he is so much with us now,” Anne Young added. “He shows a sense of humor and sweetness that is pure Bobby.”

Recently, he wrote his friends:

OK, everybody you can stop crying for me now. Thanks, though.

Love, Bobby

Photo: Rich Clarkson

  A golden Thracian wreath excavated from the Mogilanska mound in Vratsa, Bulgaria in the 1960s. Photo by James Stanfield.

The gold of ancient cultures is a blessing and a curse. It stirs the public imagination yet spawns neglect of good science and encourages crime.

Ancient gold is so fascinating to the general public that it steals the media spotlight from other important archaeological findings. Excavations with no gold compete for media attention with gold-rich ones and the vast majority of gold-poor excavations never make it into popular print or TV. This is a shame, but if it were not for the occasional gold find, many archaeological efforts would not get prominent media attention. I would argue that some attention, even if it leans on gold, is better than none. 

Gold fever sells magazines, books, and TV shows, but it also leads to plundering of archaeological sites. This looting results in the loss of context for gold and other artifacts and sometimes leads to destruction of a site. This is a worldwide problem, but two areas where the problem is severe are Bulgaria and Ukraine.

In Bulgaria there has been an archaeological gold rush. In the last decade, Thracian tombs, in particular, have been excavated legally and illegally on an unprecedented scale. Archaeologists compete with people who raid sites for treasure, usually at night. Sometimes these raiders are armed and organized. Bulgaria is one of Europe's poorest countries, a major factor fueling the thefts. Illegal trafficking in antiquities is now big business for Bulgarian organized crime. There is no sign of a recession.

Big profits can also be made from antiquities trafficking in Ukraine. This newly independent  country is getting a reputation as a haven for "Black Archaeology"—the looting of archaeological sites, often with organized crime backing.

While a government-led anti-looting effort could go a long way toward stopping illegal digging for artifacts in Ukraine, such an effort is apparently a long way off. President Viktor Yuschenko is a well known collector. According to an informative article written by a senior researcher of the Institute for Ukrainian History and published in ArtNews in December 2007, Mr. Yushchenko is genuinely interested in Ukrainian heritage and promoting national identity, but may not be overly concerned about whether the items he collects are from black archaeology or white. In this same article the director of the Institute for Ukrainian History, Dr. Petro Tolochko, suggests that the president "...obviously doesn't understand that his participation in this illegal business legitimizes it." A report from Transitions Online in 2005 suggests "Yushchenko's private passion for the past is, it seems, shared by many of Ukraine's new rich. They have proved ready and willing to pay good money to decorate dachas and even local restaurants with archeological rarities, and the number of buyers has grown thanks to Ukraine's economic recovery over the past five years."

Both Ukraine and Bulgaria are using archaeology, including glamorous golden objects, to help establish a strong national identity. Countries like these have every reason to be proud of their heritage. But this pride should also be based on knowledge gleaned not just from the gold, but from dirty, unglamorous archaeological work that can tell us much more about our past than golden objects can. And if looting is allowed to continue, these countries might as well forget about national identity. A few trinkets of their past will be sold to the highest bidder. The rest will have been destroyed by looters and there will be nothing left from which future generations can learn.

What do you think about the role of ancient gold?

Read "The Real Price of Gold" from the January 2009 issue of National Geographic.

Happy January!

Everyone knows January is the first month of the year. And in the dim recesses of our brains, we might even recall learning—in what was it, fourth grade?—that the month is named for Janus (below), the two-headed Roman god. Janus could look backward and forward at the same time, making him the perfect figurehead for a month that ushers in a new year, marks the change from days growing shorter to days growing longer, heralds a farewell to one American president and the inauguration of another, and starts the new season of American Idol, with a supercool fourth judge added to the tiresome old mix!

Perhaps you hit the eggnog a little too hard at the party last night. Or maybe champagne did you in, and now you're cursing that "friend" who kept filling your glass.

No matter how it happened, though, you now have a hangover and will do just about anything to get rid of it. Doctors advise drinking copious amounts of water and taking vitamins and aspirin. Some people swear by grease--burgers and fried eggs are popular antidotes in America. Others, like the Japanese, follow a more virtuous regimen of fruits and green tea. In this month's magazine and on our website, we take a look at some international suggestions for how to cope with the effects of one too many.