You Cannot Judge the Past by Today’s Standards

Did you find any fingerprints?” Patrick asked as I climbed the steps of his stone front porch. I was returning the two Native American pots he had allowed me to borrow to photograph, sketch and really just hold. He must have known, while I studied the pots, I would also be looking for such impressions, evidence of the one who made these Late Woodlands vessels, perhaps 1,000 years old.

Three Years Earlier

Vibrant intense color burst forth as I came over a gentle hill driving one of Michigan’s two-lane blacktops, cutting through rural farm lands. In the front yard of a 150-year-old white clapboard farm house, tie-dyed shirts, bed sheets, pants and pillow cases hung from tree branches, lines strung