2002-07-04 - 12:34 a.m.
I can now add the reconstructed first statehouse of Maryland at Historic St. Mary's City to the national register of places I've gotten drunk.
Yesterday was the archaeology field school's annual field trip to St. Mary's City, a backwater on the southernmost peninsula on the Western Shore of Maryland. It's "southernmost" not only geographically, but also it is the most decrepit piece of Maryland I've seen so far. St. Mary's City peaked in the late 17th century, as the capital of Maryland, only to fall into total decline when the capital was moved. It happened in order to shift power from Catholic St. Mary's to more-protestant Annapolis.
Now that both St. Mary's and Annapolis have been revived from decrepitude by historical preservation (although in Annapolis it has spurned a commercial revival, while in St. Mary's historical preservation is an end in itself) the two places both have archaeology field schools, and the two programs each have a day where they host the other, show them their site and then serve food and beer.
The trip through historic, unairconditioned St. Mary's City came during a heat wave that sent temperatures up to 99 degrees, according to one thermometer, and made everyone focus always from the archaeological reconstruction in front of us and towards the nearest patch of shade, or made us contemplate the next trip to an air conditioned car or modern building.
One air-conditioned occasion was lunch at the cafeteria of St. Mary's College, a small, independent Maryland state school adjacent to the historic site. This college's food was good, although we shared the buffet and dining area with hundreds of teeny-boppers from several summer camps, including an Asian camp. "Can we get rid of all these children?" Dr. Leone growled with only-partially-mocking indignation.
The highlight of the day at St. Mary's took place on a dock outside a recreated 17th-century sailing vessel, named after one of the first ships to arrive in Maryland. Our group watched a theatrical performance of the dock side selling of an indentured servant--a rather good performance actually--while a slight breeze came off the water. Afterwards, Dr. Leone deconstructed the performance, suggesting that the tension of the dramatics came from the unsettled nature of the relationship between historic St. Mary's City and St. Mary's college. Can we say, trying too hard? He also made some comments that the characters embodied positions on the cusp of the enlightenment that I thought were on-target. Also, the ass. director noticed that just as the characters were discussing witchcraft, waves caused by a passing yatch in the Chesapeake caused the historic ship behind the performance to rock loudly.
Anyway, the party began after the city closed and the temperature fell into the 80s. A keg was provided at the reconstructed state house, and St. Mary's field school kids tried to get us to play the annual ultimate frisbee game, but as the ass. director had tried to rally us beforehand with tales of the annual humiliation of the Annapolis kids by the St. Mary's kids, so many of us declined to play that we forfeited the game. "We're hippies, we take ultimate very seriously," one person told me. Great.
I sat around with other people from the St. Mary's field school chatting about bullshit, and also with people from ours. Talked about drugs, and someone said that using cocaine and Ritalin cocktails to write papers is big at the University of Maryland.
My ride didn't stay past sunset, but by the time we left I had lost touch with the ground. It was fun. Today I was going to go out to the mall -- that is, the national mall in downtown Washington, but when I turned on fox news they were reporting about the heat with a tone of shock. Perhaps tonight I will simply go to a club.
