Uncle John’s Presents Mom’s Bathtub Reader (23 page)

___B. Kate Hudson

___C. Frances McDormand

___D. Gretchen Moll

A noted television star, Ms. Duke is fondly remembered for starring as “cousins, identical cousins” in
The Patty Duke Show.
But it was her Oscar-winning portrayal of Helen Keller on the big screen in 1962’s
The Miracle Worker
that eventually landed her her own show on the small screen and lasting fame.

Ms. Duke is also a mother of three sons. Her eldest became famous as a goonie in the early 1980s, but more recently he has drawn raves for his big-screen portrayal of a hobbit in
The Lord of the Rings
trilogy.

Who is the reel son?

___A. Corey Feldman

___B. Heath Ledger

___C. Elijah Wood

___D. Sean Astin

A
NSWERS
:
1. B; 2. C; 3. A; 4. C; 5. B; 6. C; 7. B; 8. D

Cave moms were more fashionable than you might think.

P
ity the poor cave mom. We picture her walking along, draped in smelly animal hides, when her future mate sees her. He bops her on the head, yanks her off by her tangled hair, and deposits her in his cave. There she spends the rest of her life raising little cave people and cooking up whatever her mate drags in. Ugh.

But picture this instead: a woman uses a delicate bone needle to stitch up a linenlike fabric or make a lacy skirt. Now take this mental image of our seamstress and place it during the Upper Paleolithic period, about 27,000 years ago.

Surprised? Modern archaeologists have discovered evidence that cave couture was more sophisticated than we once thought. Move over, Wilma Flintstone! It may be that the concept of life as a prehistoric mom needs a total revision.

One of the scientists changing our view of a prehistoric mom’s life is a mother herself. Professor Olga Soffer, an archaeologist at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, worked for ten years as a fashion promoter before she began her academic career. Now she’s promoting (and proving) the view that cave women were fashionably clever.

Textiles don’t usually survive for 20 centuries, but Dr. Soffer and her colleagues Dr. Adovasio and Dr. Hyland realized that fabric impressions did. When a piece of fabric fell to the mud floor of a hut (yup, cave moms didn’t always live in caves), it would get walked on, pressed into the ground where it made an impression in the clay. After studying thousands of pieces of mud and fired and unfired clay, they’ve found impressions of textiles dating back 27,000 years. The professors could even decipher the knotting patterns in the fabric.

Prehistoric bone and antler objects once thought to be hunting tools have researchers thinking again. These objects could also be battens used in weaving. Professor Soffer believes that prehistoric folk extracted fiber from nettles, then the fibers were woven into nets, cords, and even cloth. Working with plants was usually women’s work, so it was most likely the prehistoric mom who spun the fiber into thread and twine or made cloth.

In addition to the clay impressions, Venus figurines, small, stylized carvings of women fashioned in the ice age, also gave more clues that cave moms were designing women. The various figurines sported woven, plaited hats; lacy, string skirts; sashes; and belts. All these items are representations of intricate fiber clothing—not fur or hides—that likely existed nearly 30 centuries ago. Not only that, but Professor Soffer, fashion maven that she is, points out that the textiles are quite stylish. Cave couture was cool.

But our prehistoric mom was doing more than making brave fashion statements. Once prehistoric mom had twine, it changed her whole life. True, string wasn’t a
refrigerator or a washing machine, but string allowed her to tie things up and haul them from one place to another. Not only that, string allowed women to make nets, which made catching smaller animals for dinner possible. Prehistoric sites show the remains of small animal bones from rabbits and marmots, exactly the kinds of animals that mom could have caught. That meant no one would starve if dad let that woolly mammoth get away. In fact, it may have meant that dad didn’t need to hunt big, dangerous game at all.

So, good-bye to the image of an ice-age woman hunched over a fire in a cave, waiting for her mate to bring home some mammoth bacon. The prehistoric mom was too busy raising children, gathering plants, making creative textiles, and maybe even hunting to have much time to sit around at all. If only one day those researchers find her day planner. It could probably give her modern counterpart some great tips!

Being a goddess is no guarantee of an easy ride!

Y
ou would think that being a goddess would be a pretty sweet deal—immortality, beauty, people worshipping you. But no mom has it easy—even if she’s a goddess!

The great mother goddess of ancient Egypt, Isis was also a queen and the consort of the god-king Osiris. Unfortunately, all that power didn’t keep her from having a life like those afternoon soap operas. Just when she got it all together—wham! It fell apart again.

To start, Isis’s husband, Osiris, was murdered by his jealous brother, Set, who dismembered and hid Osiris’s body. The flooding of the Nile was said to come from Isis’s teardrops as she wandered its banks, collecting every part of Osiris’s corpse. She then used her powerful magic to bring Osiris back to life and the couple conceived their son, Horus. Alas, their reunion (and hanky-panky) was short-lived. Osiris was forced to return to the land of the dead and Isis was again a single mom.

Fearing Set would kill her son, Isis and Horus hid out in the reeds—without so much as a pup tent. Isis watched over Horus night and day, but Set was able to take advantage
of Isis’s single-mom isolation. One day while she looked for food, he disguised himself as a scorpion and gave nephew Horus a lethal sting. When Isis found Horus dying, she was so distraught, all her magic powers of healing deserted her.

Good thing she could scream hysterically. Her cries reached the other gods, who helped Isis heal her son. From then on Isis was more careful until Horus came of age, killed his wicked uncle, and became the new god-king of Egypt. Let’s hope he thanked his mom.

Rhea was a Greek goddess lucky enough to be married to the king and lord of everything, Chronos. Unfortunately, her status was no guarantee against winding up in a dysfunctional family. Chronos had heard predictions that he would be knocked off his throne—or simply knocked off—by one of his kids, who was destined to be greater than dad. Choosing power over papahood, Chronos simply swallowed all his offspring. Guess he figured being lord of all he surveyed was worth a little indigestion.

Rhea, on the other hand, was miserable. After watching all five of her precious infants go down Chronos’s greedy gullet, Rhea decided enough was enough. She hid her sixth son, Zeus, in a cave and tricked her husband into swallowing a rock wrapped in swaddling clothes. The ruse worked and Rhea got to raise her boy. The grown-up Zeus forced his father to disgorge his two brothers and three sisters, who were able to overpower their papa, just as he had feared. Zeus and his siblings then became the Olympian gods, all thanks to Rhea’s motherly ingenuity.

When even your mom thinks you’re ugly, you know you’re ugly. The Welsh goddess Ceridwen had a son who was no great beauty and was, in fact, quite a great ugly. Despite being the goddess of fertility, death, regeneration, and wisdom, Ceridwen could not cure her son’s serious case of the uglies. She worried about him getting along in the world.

Since beauty is only skin deep, Ceridwen knew her son could get by with his bad looks as long as he possessed great wisdom. Ceridwen possessed the Cauldron of Inspiration, which allowed her to cook up a magical brew to give her son the smarts he needed to overcome his aesthetic shortcomings. One drop of this potion and the boy would possess all the knowledge of the world.

The brew required a year and a day of stirring. She hired a boy named Gwion to help her with the task. On the 366th day, Gwion stirred in the last three ingredients and accidently burned his finger on the potion. He stuck his burned finger in his mouth and instantly gained supreme knowledge from the tiny taste he had. Ceridwen returned, realized what had happened, and had a goddess-sized fit. If Gwion had all the knowledge, then there was none left to help her son.

Gwion wisely fled, but Ceridwen chased after him. With his new powers, Gwion became a hare and tried to elude her. But she turned into a dog and continued the chase. Gwion became a fish; Ceridwen became an otter. He flew off as a bird, so she went after him as a hawk. Finally Gwion flew to the threshing floor and hid himself as a grain of wheat. Not so smart since Ceridwen became a hen and promptly ate him up.

After eating the wheat, Ceridwen found herself pregnant (these things happen in myths). A smart cookie
herself, she figured that the baby would be Gwion and planned to finish him off after he was born. But the baby was so beautiful that she let him live, and he became the greatest bard of Wales. And the poor ugly son? He had to earn his own wisdom and do it with a face that only a mother could love.