<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8"></head><body dir="auto"><div dir="auto">I just bought a paperback copy of "The Dawn of Everything" from Graeber and Wengrow. One thing I don't like is that the authors have apparently a political agenda, since Graber was a founder of the Occupy movement. On the other hand there is no book so bad that it does not contain something interesting, as Cervantes says. It does contain some interesting ideas about Teotihuacan and the Maya. But I have not read it completely yet. It is 500 pages long.</div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">-J.</div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div><br></div><div align="left" dir="auto" style="font-size:100%;color:#000000"><div>-------- Original message --------</div><div>From: Steve Smith <sasmyth@swcp.com> </div><div>Date: 6/4/22 11:24 (GMT+01:00) </div><div>To: friam@redfish.com </div><div>Subject: Re: [FRIAM] EU travel </div><div><br></div></div>
<p>Regarding my diatribe below my logistics:</p>
<p>I've been (re) reading Graeber's "Dawn of Everything" and would
be interested to hear other's thoughts who might have read him as
well.</p>
<p>My own read is that he is even snarkier about "establishment
scientists" in his domain of interest than he was in "Debt" but I
do appreciate his thorough fact-gathering and (alternative)
analysis. His conclusions are often a bit hard to swallow
(especially in the shadow of his criticism of others), but not
without merit in many cases.</p>
<p>- Steve<br>
</p>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 6/4/22 10:17 AM, Steve Smith wrote:<br>
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<div class="moz-cite-prefix">Jochen -<br>
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<div dir="auto">I get "mail delivery failed" errors if I try to
reply to you directly Steve :-( Maybe the mailbox is full? </div>
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<div dir="auto">-J.</div>
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<div dir="auto">Oh, you are making a tour through Europe? Nice.
Do you plan to visit Berlin or Germany too?</div>
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<div dir="auto">-J. <br>
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<p>Yes, we are on a long visit/tour anchored by the month of June
at Jenny Quillien's place in Weesp, NL. She is on her own
"walkabout" in Northmost North America ( Alaska) and has gifted
a few of us under-traveled Americans the opportunity to settle
at her place for a long visit to Europe as COVID has lifted and
Putin has not launched WWIII (yet).</p>
<p>The previous guests were delayed most of a week for their
return to Santa Fe due to a false-positive COVID test, but are
on their way now and we arrive there on the 8th, only 1 week
behind schedule.</p>
<p>I don't know of other (regularly posting?) members of FriAM
living in Europe besides yourself. I am sure there are some...
Jenny is nominally a FriAM member and many of you know her
in-person but we do not hear from her online often. I always
like to put a face with a name when I can and meet colleagues
and correspondents in person.<br>
</p>
<p>I missed SteveG's son Miles by only a few hours (by
coincidence) as we flew in through Reykjavik. I haven't seen
Miles since he was about 15 or 16... I believe he is living in
Estonia part-time and traveling the Baltics this summer. I
don't think we will get that far from Amsterdam, though I have
always wanted to visit Vilnius and the district of Uzupis. Too
close to the wounded Russian Bear right now?</p>
<p>This is likely our last transcontinental trip based on climate
impacts, etc. It feels terribly self-indulgent to burn so much
jet fuel for "simple leisure". This kind of travel feeds and
informs Mary's travel and I'm using it to inform my continued
study of Collective Emergent Human Consciousness in some sense
and trying to understand the differences between 1st World
Europe and 1st World USA, especially in terms of the
adaptability that the Dutch, in particular, have undergone.
Being in villages that were occupied by Napolean and then the
Russians pushing him back followed by the devastaion of WWI to
be rebuilt and then re-devastated by WWII is fascinating... and
these villages include in some cases 0AD Roman ruins and
cathedrals built up to 1000 years ago and still in use. This
kind of deep-time parallax is beyond the experience of *most*
Americans. The Native American Pueblo I live inside was
"granted" it's existence by the King of Spain in 1623 but
probably didn't exist until after the Chacoan collapse a few
centuries earlier. NM is home to Clovis of the famous "Clovis
Points" and Clovis culture that runs back a few more thousands
of years, but Europe's legacy of Homo Sapiens going back to
early holocene and Neanderthalis 100,000 years earlier is mind
boggling to my foreshortened sense of human history American
Style.</p>
<p>- Steve</p>
<p>try my other e-mails (<a href="mailto:sas@lava3d.com" class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated
moz-txt-link-freetext">sas@lava3d.com</a> and <a href="mailto:sas.lava3d@gmail.com" class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated moz-txt-link-freetext">sas.lava3d@gmail.com</a>
or even 001 505 920 0252 by phone or whatsapp).<br>
</p>
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