A Little Bigger Everyday

It looks like summer has finally made it to Southern California. The "June gloom" hung around well into July, but looking ahead at this week's forecast, the gloom is in full retreat and summer is finally here. Like anyone else I prefer sunshine to gloom, but this year the summer heat is arriving just as my pregnant belly is really beginning to make itself felt. As any woman who has ever been pregnant can testify, one of the most common questions asked of you is, "How are you feeling?" Since I'm pretty sure most people I just being polite and really don't want to hear about heartburn, backaches, and my hatred of compression hose, I usually just smile and say, "A little bigger everyday."

And how true it is! I'm not sure exactly when it happened, but sometime in the last week or so my feet disappeared. If I want to see them, I need to lean over my belly. Not that I need any such reminder--this belly makes its presence felt a little more everyday. Each little growth spurt brings with it a few more of those pregnancy aches and pains, and there's no doubt I feel frustrated already at how certain tasks like bending over to tie my shoes are becoming increasingly difficult. In spite of these little frustrations, I'm well aware that this is only the beginning and that soon I'll look back fondly on these latter second trimester days as "the easy time."

At the Villa (24 Weeks).

Letters from Students

I think most people would agree that it is always nice to get thank you notes. One of the most entertaining aspects of my job is getting to read the thank yous that sometimes come in from students I taught during their visit to the museum. Teachers tend to turn the project into an assignment that helps students with their letter writing skills, so many of the thank yous arrive grouped in packets of letters from students. I thought I would share some selected excerpts with you from the most recent packet of letters I received--reproduced here just as the students wrote them.

"Dear Ms. Amber...When we were talking you just told us to be quiet and you didn't get mad at us even a little bit. All of the stuff was cool. I hope I could come again."

"Dear Amber...My favorite thing was the beautiful garden and the pond with the fishes. I learned how to make mummys, and how Hercules restled the tiger and got his skin. The visit to the museum helped me because it reviewed the stuff that we learned in the classroom."

"Dear Amber...Thank you...you took us to see the culpture of the sirens. You showed us the shandalers with Mudusa next and after that you showed us the mummy. Finally you showed us that hallway were you let us sit down. I also learned how Mudusa and how see became that beast. This helped me understand some of my questions like do gods and goddesses have emotions. The answer was yes."

"Dear Ms. Amber...Thank you for helping us out! Thank you for taking the time to read my letter, time being limited and there being so many other letters. Thanks again, and hopefully I'll be back soon!"

This one, I think, is my favorite:

"Dear Ms. Amber...Thank you so much for walking us threw the Getty Villa museum. I enjoyed going their very much. I hope you have a nice life."

126 Days to Go

Today marks my twenty-second week of pregnancy. Up to this point things have gone like gangbusters, but I will say that as my belly expands I'm beginning to get a preview of the rougher road ahead. Aside from feeling like an anorexic (yet ever-swelling) version of the Venus of Willendorf, my only trouble has been with my allergies. Thankfully the sinus and respiratory irritations have been minor compared with what they have been in the past, but I will admit that the accompanying sinus headaches can hit me pretty hard and Tylenol just isn't up to the task. Given the woeful inadequacy of pregnancy-friendly solutions, it looks like my only option is to tough it out. Here's hoping the pollen count doesn't skyrocket and wreak real misery and havoc in the next four months!

Venus of Willendorf (22,000-21,000 BCE)

At work things are shifting into summer gear--a welcome change that means the end of school groups for a few months and, this year, the close of the Aztec Pantheon and the Art of Empire exhibition. As interesting and new as it has been to have Aztec art at the Villa, I am delighted to see it go. The public was especially anxious for tours of this exhibition, and that demand has made for a crazy few months. Plus, as much as I love history of all kinds, my true knowledge base lies in the ancient Mediterranean and that background is what allows me to add the nuance and analysis that takes my teaching to the next level.

As things return to normal at work and downshift into summer mode, I'm hoping for a quiet summer at work and the opportunity to exploit what remains of my second trimester before the fall and all it will bring with it arrives. I plan to get out and make the most of summer and the ability to tie my sneakers by myself as long as I can.

What Do You See?

Even before I started teaching at the Villa, this statue (pictured below) was always one of my favorite artifacts in the museum. Now I don't have any sort of attachment to the Neolithic period, but I do think the glimpses into the distant past that artifacts like this one offer are rather fascinating. It's also somewhat liberating to talk about artifacts from a time for which we have no written records. The lack of sources from these ancient people explaining or offering us insight as to who or what this object represents means there will always be a mystery about it. Given that freedom, I usually kick off my conversation with visitors by inviting them to take a thoughtful look at the piece and ask, "What do you see?" Frankly, I think the answer is pretty obvious--just show this to any junior high kid and see what kind of reaction you get--but in most cases people are shy about discussing sex with a group of strangers. They all want to have their curiosity satisfied, but no one wants to be the one to ask.

So, what do I see? I see a hermaphroditic deity. The museum curators have chosen to identify this figure as a "fertility goddess"--an identification that focuses on the double entendre of breasts and vulva in the center of the statue and the squatting position of the legs. (Way back when, women squatted to give birth. Really, if you think about it, squatting makes much more sense--you want to work with gravity, not against it by laying on your back.) However, the curatorial explanation of the object as well as an academic article I found which specifically discusses this statue completely ignore what I consider to be the patently obvious phallic head and neck of the statue. If you take those features into consideration, I think it's a lot harder to think of this figure as simply female. Just taking into account what we can see, I think it's quite probable this deity was meant to represent both male and female. If it is the case that this statue is meant to represent, not just the creative power of the female, but the combined creative power of male and female, it likely would have made the image a much more potent and effective one from the perspective of its ancient worshipers.

Of course my analysis of this prehistoric object is just as subject to debate as that of the curators, but at least it doesn't ignore the obvious!

Cypriot fertility deity, 3000-2500 BCE

Meet Baby Wells

Today was the mid-pregnancy anatomical ultrasound. The doctor checked out the baby from head to toe, and everything looks great--anatomy, size, and development are spot on for where we are in the pregnancy. The doctor was also able to determine the sex. There's no doubt in her mind, she said--we have a baby boy.

As Sam Beckett would say...Oh, boy!