Blue Bead

Sunday, August 14, 2005

It was so good to have OLeif back, and Joe and Rose. OLeif’s account of the week spoke of much growth in most of the kids and Collette was exceedingly proud of Joe and Rose and what they had dealt with and learned over the eight days away. There would be many tales in the days to come of the dealings over that particular week in Chicago.

Saturday afternoon, before they had arrived, Grandma, Mom, and Collette had been hard at work at the archaeological site. After they had been instructed on their grid, the measurements, paperwork, etc., they had worked three hours, shoveling, troweling, sifting, and snipping roots. Almost immediately, Collette found two small pieces of glass and then a clay marble in the sifter. Then Mom found a piece of glass and a piece of what might have been a melted nodule of glass. There was a small piece of pottery, several more glass pieces, and then two square nails coated in beds of rust which Mom unearthed.

Shortly later, after several glasses of ice water, Collette looked down where she sliced through the mud and saw a piece of blue staring up at her. Carefully, she dug it out with her fingernail and pulled to the surface a blue ceramic bead.

It was the perfect way to end the dig session early, for over the horizon had just come a massive storm, piling in the southwest. They had not even noticed, as their eyes had been so intent on the ground. (Later, as the storm pounded through, a quarter of a million people lost their electricity.)

They decided they would most definitely need to return to work on their grid in the coming Saturdays.