ink_n_imp | (no subject)

So, I am in love with my Intro to Forensic Anthropology class. First day and I'm already like a kid in a huge candy shop, though instead of candy it's human remains. What can I say? I suppose I can blame my father, for always having his medical textbooks of dissected humans lying around, or for always bringing home bones (both real and casts) for refresher courses, or for letting me watch his surgery videos with him whenever he was preping for a surgery the next day ("Daddy, why isn't he bleeding?" "That's cause they are operating on a cadaver." "What's a cadaver?" "A dead body." "Then why are they operating on him?" "For practice." "Oh." *shrug*). So yes...I think I can safely blame a fascination of the human body on my father, the ortheopedic surgeon of the Inserra clan.

Nevermind that I am also in love with our readings for the class: we have this one book, entitled "Dead Men Do Tell Tales". I highly recommend it, and I've only read two chapters. And even if you aren't interested in the methods or down-and-dirty meticulous nature of forensic anthropology, it does offer quite a few snippets and stories that rather make me giggle. For example, the author is described the skeletal collection of a major museum:

But the most fascinationg skeleton in the bunch wasn't a victim of war, or murder, or any violent death. It was the skeleton of one of the curators of the museum, who had bequeathed his bones to the collection...These bones stood out, not for any deep scientific reason, but because they had bits of tinsel still sticking to them.

Tinsel! We were told that this curator's skeleton had been "invited" to many Christmas parties at the museum in the years after his death. We also heard that his bones had been bedecked with Christmas decorations--and the evidence of the tinsel was sparkling, conclusive proof that the rumors were true. I am usually against the lighthearted treatment of human remains, but in the case I suspended judgement. The man in life was loved. He left his bones to the museum where he had spent his happiest days. It was no very great wrong, I think, for his successors to take his bones to Christmas parties he would have enjoyed, alive. And if they saluted his memory with festive cups of eggnog, and decked his bones with tinsel and ornaments, they did so out of sincere respect and affection for a departed scientist. THAT is true comaraderie!

Now, if I could only come up with something interesting about myself to talk about in Italian tomorrow...damn three minute oral autobiographies! Damn them!