Weekend update time?  That'd be neat, right? 

         So I'm doing a bunch of reading for Human Biological Variation and Methods and with the combination I'm getting a crash course in the history and defining tenets of human biology and biomedical anthropology.  This is fantastic, because I'd never really been able to pin down exactly what defined the discipline as unique compared to related fields in a cogent and concise way. Even after the readings and conversations I suspect there ISN'T a short answer to the question of what the field is- it is very interconnected and nothing I've run across so far has been majorly enlightening per se, but I still feel like I am being initiated into a community of scholars with a historical tradition in which I can begin to place myself. Honestly, it's kind of how I felt when I first joined the Unitarian Universalist church*, with their "grand tradition of heresy" and monthly potlucks minus all the dogma. There's just something very important to the psyche about belonging and having a history, at least for me, and I have often felt that I was missing that important connection in terms of who I was choosing to be.  The communities defined for me from birth- Italian American, Jersey girl, cultural Catholic, family member- definitely go a long way toward sustaining me and I wouldn't have it any other way.  I am all of those things, deep in my bones, and I always will be. But I've also always known that this wasn't the whole picture, and it has taken me a very long time to fill in the rest.  I am beyond grateful to finally be doing that.






*Where, incidentally, last week's sermon included a half-hour worth of charming stories about part-time Unitarian Charles Darwin and featured a quote of his that I later found in my biological variation textbook.  Small world and all that.