May to Grace - anthropologist & statistician

 

We've been calling this style *Jordan* and there have been some variations. This is back to the original. I hope it is not too simple for Grace. For my taste - it's balanced and  (brace yourselves for this next comment) I actually don't see anything that bothers me. Maybe I should stick to my minimalist point of view. Somehow, it seems like taking risks and trying wacko stuff is what keeps people interested. No worries - lots of wacko stuff coming up.

***

From time to time, I get very interesting emails from exchangers. When I was writing about the origin of tools, like saws - Mary wrote this:

Concerning the saw, your information from the internet is as accurate as it can be. I have a major in Anthropology and worked at excavations in college (which feels about archeological these days), and nailing down (pardon the pun) dates on tools is complicated. It's mostly based on archeological record, so tools that didn't survive time don't get counted. It's all guess work. Necessity is the mother of invention.  I'm guessing saws were not far behind axes which are one of the very first tools. 

First of all: it's so much fun to find out a few things about people who exchange. I did not ask Mary if I could reprint this - because we've chit chatted enough for me to guess that she is fine with me sharing this information. It has me launching a 3 day topic that is (to me) not so ridiculous that I wish I could come up with something else.

If Mary prefers to be anonymous, I will be happy to remove your name and just call you *an exchanger.* But maybe there are other archeologists in the exchange who are delighted to find a colleague. 

***

And this just in - again - I didn't ask Amy if she wanted to be mentioned by name - so she can let me know if she wants me to edit this.

I'm just curious -- is there anyone who has kept all of their exchange envelopes and keeps them filed by the sender? Or kept all of them and has a different filing system? Please let me know - at ptenvelopes[at]aol[dot]com

Amy is making a spreadsheet that tallies the people who have been on the same lists. We decided to do this when she found someone on her June list whose work she had seen on the blog - but she'd never had on her list. So now - I will be able to see if there are any more examples of pairs who have never found themselves on the same list. Amy and I share some kind of gene or chromosome that likes to tally things. Although she has the aptitude to do it - I only have the curiosity.