Stuff

jar

When I first met Kate I remember having this long conversation about mantelpieces and what gets put on them. So that, and looking at Kate’s collections, has prompted me to show some mantelpiece stuff.

I got this Navajo pot from the stunningly beautiful Pyramid Lake in Nevada, which is the ancestral home of the People of the Cut-throat Shark (Cui-ui Eaters). Our half hour there with Ben, in the little town of (would you believe it) Nixon, taught me more about indigenous people and water rights than hours of reading would have done.

Although I sometimes leave CD cases on the mantelpiece, or use it to display my birthday card on, it’s not cluttered with gas bills or lip-salve and other stuff. For me, the kitchen’s the place for that stuff.

Over on Blogtrax, there’s the next stage of working through the autoethnography that Julia and I are doing. One of the things this has brought to light is how online publishing can alter the research process – particularly the relationship between researcher, participant and user-group. If you’re reading this, you’re probably in one category or another, so you could go there and leave a comment. Alternatively you could leave a comment about commenting, here or on Dr Joolz.