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The History of Procrastination

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Today’s post comes from forever sophomore Bubby Spamden, poster boy for the campaign against social promotion at Wendell Wilkie High School.

Hey Mr. C.,

Well, they stopped canceling school every other day just because it’s cold, so Mr. Boozenporn said he won’t let us move the deadline for our History Projects again – they’re due on Monday.

He calls it the “Monuments” assignment – all about how people through time built things like buildings and stuff to leave their mark on the Earth. We’re supposed to research something like the Parthenon or the pyramids or the Palace at Versailles and write at least 1,000 words about it.

AND we have to make a replica to show the class, using common materials found at home.

What’s worse, he only just told us about this in September, which is so unfair! The school year was starting then and we were excited about other things and January 31 (the original due date) seemed really, really far away.

That means I’ll have to spend the weekend doing some quick reading and writing and building a scale model of something from history.

At least it won’t get in the way of the Super Bowl.

But I don’t know how he can expect us to get interested in this super-old stuff, especially so close to Valentine’s Day when we’re all feeling kind of in bloom and full of young-person thoughts all about love and living and fun and the future, not about dead guys and their buildings and bridges and graveyards.

Is that fair? I don’t think so.

Plus, he said nobody is allowed to pick Indian mound builders, which was totally what I was going to do! I already had the Earth and everything!

So anyway I’m wondering if you and your blog people have any ideas of some old building or construction thing that isn’t too hard to understand that I can make a quick copy of using stuff I’ve got at home. I know you’re all pretty old so you probably have even made some of the original things that would qualify – if only you can remember what they are! (Just Kidding).

Your friend who just lost his whole weekend,
Bubby

I told Bubby when I was a sophomore I did a similar assignment on Machu Piccu using egg cartons, Easter grass and Neptune’s Castle from the bottom of my dad’s aquarium that he kept in the living room all lit up and bubbling even though the fish had died about ten years before. My model turned out a little slimy, which really enhanced the look even though it didn’t do much for the smell. I managed to get a B.

What’s the oldest man-made thing you’ve ever seen?

48 thoughts on “The History of Procrastination”

  1. If you can’t count things like Indian mounds, does that mean you can’t count Stonehenge either? Or the Danish kæmpegrave? (Sorry, I don’t know the English word for them, but here’s a link to a picture of one: http://www.fortidsmindeguide.dk/Bondestenalder.40.0.html) I’m no archeologist, and remembering when something was built, give or take a couple of thousand years, isn’t my strong suit, but I’m pretty sure the Great Wall in China must rank right up there with the oldest man-made structures I’ve seen.

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  2. I’ll have to think about the oldest, but here’s one of the newest – Iceberg Skating Palace – built for the Sochi Olympics – today on Bing: http://www.bing.com/
    Very impressive, pretty – they say it “will host figure skating and short-track speed skating during the Games… Organizers have suggested that after the Olympics end, the Skating Palace may be converted into a velodrome for cycling.”

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      1. There is a website that shows abandoned buildings.Most common they show are factories and state hospitals, then schools and malls. But lately they have shown a lot of abandoned Olympic buildings and sled runs, etc.

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  3. Oldest man-made thing? Hmm, probably some ancient Chinese pottery or other knickknack from about 5000 BC in the Art Institute of Chicago. Or some such thing like that. Haven’t been to a museum in a while though.

    Chris in Owatonna

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    1. Yeah, mine would be something like that. We saw some very old artifacts at the Museum of Asian Art (or some name like that) in Seattle last fall. It has the prettiest setting for a museum I know of. If you want a building it would the various cliff dwellings, etc. in the SW. Never been out of the YS and central Canada.

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  4. old stuff is interesting.ive seen some ruins in mexico and some others in china, stonehenge was cool, the pyramids are on my bucket list. the stuff at the art museums didnt use to have much impact , little pots and dishes and peices of bronze or marble from castings or sculptures. now it makes you think about how the essence of people and the things that appeal are kind of universal and timeless. simple ideas that you know you are not the first to have give you a feeling of camaraderie with history.

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  5. The buildings at Teotihuacan are really old and impressive. The builders must have had really small feet, since the steps to the top are really shallow.

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  6. The oldest man-made thing I’ve seen is Stonehenge. And I recommend that to Bubby if he needs to make a model of something really old. I think Bubby usually shoots for a C. He can get one if his mom makes a cake and covers it with green icing. Bubby then can get a photo of Stonehenge, duplicating it with a bunch of Three Musketeers candy bars for the rocks. To get the right look, Bubby will need to nibble a few of the rocks. If he wants a B on the project he can add a few Druids. Peeps will serve for that, especially if he gives them little Druid outfits. To research that topic, Bubby can do his research on a YouTube clip of the famous Stonehenge song in “This is Spinal Tap.” And if he wants an A, he can buy a cookie that looks like the sun and position it on the outer edge of the cake where it would be spotted by someone in Stonehenge looking through the right rocks. This stuff is all over the internet, and Bubby could lock up his A with a little nibbling and no more than a dozen minutes of placing the candy bars.

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  8. Anybody know the oldest thing in Minnesota? It is probably one of the buildings in the Fort Snelling complex. That thing dates to 1820.

    I’m often impressed with how little there is of American history. My dad was friends with several Civil War vets.

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    2. When you get to be as old as some of us are, there aren’t many jokes we haven’t heard before. Luckily, we have forgotten most of them. With newer jokes, chances are good that I won’t get them.

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    3. The Jeffers Petroglyphs date back to 7000 to 5000 BCE, so I think they probably win for oldest human-made thing in the state.

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  9. Good morning. If we can count stonehenge, I have seen that. The Romans are probably responsible for building the oldest things, other than stonehenge, that I have visited. I have visited the Roman baths in Bath, England and the Roman Theatre in Plovdiv, Bulgaria. The cliff dwellings that I saw in the Southwest are very old. i think the Roman baths and theatre are older.

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  10. “Pueblo Bonito the largest and best known Great House in Chaco Culture National Historical Park, northern New Mexico, was built by ancestral Pueblo people and occupied between AD 828 and 1126.” Wikipedia

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    1. Wikipedia tells me that the Roman theatre in Plovdiv, Bulgaria that I saw was built at about the same time as Pueblo Bonito. I suppose that isn’t the earliest Roman building that one can visit. I haven’t seen other ones that are older.

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        1. If my research is right, the Roman theater in Plovdiv predates Pueblo Bpnito by more than 700 years. Where did you get your dates, Jim?

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  11. Probably some old ruins of buildings we saw on Hawaii’s big island, probably back to AD 700 or so. (Wish I could remember exactly where these were.) Also St. Augustine, FL, where the Castillo de San Marcos – began construction 1672 – which is the “oldest masonry fort in the continental United States” according to Wiki.

    I keep wanting to go and see the petroglyphs near Pipestone , wonder how old they are… anybody been there?

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    1. Wikipedia: The exact age of the petroglyphs is not known, but the earliest petroglyphs are estimated to be from 9000 to 7000 years ago (7000 to 5000 BCE).[3] but some atlatl symbols at Jeffers are a close match with similar symbols at Indian Knoll in Kentucky, which have been dated to 3000 BCE during the Late Archaic Period.
      Did not realize they were that old. So that’s my oldest.
      Barb, I assume you mean the Jeffers Petroglyphs. Mot by Pipestone.

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    2. i went to see the ones up near ely this sumer with my son on our camplng and the petroglyphs there were cool and made us feel like we put in a good day trip

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      1. These are a little disappointing, especially compared to those, tim. They are on the ground, hard to see very well (old and weathered). But I love the way they sit on the rock ridge, at one of the highest points in Southern MN. My grand kids were there last summer and really liked them. I was surprised by that.

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  12. I used to assign a major project (group presentation) during the first week of school that was due the second week in January. About 10-15% of the kids had an excuse for why they needed to go last (we drew for order) to finish getting prepared. I had a few incidents with this, kids who threw it together and then got angry when I gave them a low grade, as if I could not tell what was thrown together. One boy’s mother came in and applauded me for making him face reality, but the separated father went to the school board about it. I had a few meetings with kids and parents in the principal’s office (who always fully backed me). When he started asking the kids direct questions about what they had done when to prepare, their stories always crumpled, not that the parents necessarily did. It got worse over the years. I had decided to drop the project the next year, but I left the classroom at the end of that year. The woman who replaced me had three children do it for me, so she did it the next year but never after that.
    I was in a restaurant for breakfast last week. In the booth I was facing were a father and college age son who had met for breakfast. The student kept telling his father about this weird professor he had (he used the word weird about 6-7 times) who expected students to be in class (weird) and expected the students to work hard (very weird). The kid could see it was maybe good for them to work hard, but it was weird, and going to class all the time was weird. Maybe he would drop the class, it was weird. The father was in his highway patrol uniform. His back was to me and I could not see his reaction.

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  13. Bubby, your weekend may be saved. British scientists just announced the discovery of the earliest evidence of human life in northern Europe. 800,000 to 1,000,000 years old, footprints left in ancient estuary mud in eastern England. Maybe you could sell your teacher on a couple of footprints in some modeling medium. After all, those footprints are made by humans.

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  14. I wouldn’t discount the Native American mounds, despite what Bubby’s teacher says. Some of them were sophisticated and very complex. In the mid-nineteenth century, E. G. Squier and Edwin Davis completed a survey of ancient monuments of the Mississippi Valley. It formed a significant part of volume one of Smithsonian Institution’s Contributions to knowledge. Here’s one of the earthworks from Ohio:

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  16. I haven’t been to any locations where old structures exist; not very old, anyway. There is the structure in which I live, which is almost 130 years old. It is old for Minnesota, but a youngster by the standards of most of the world.

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  17. OT – Just came home from the opening concert at Orchestra Hall. What a night. As we were entering the skyway leading from the parking ramp to Orchestra Hall, everyone was handed a shamrock green “homer hankie” and told to wave it when the orchestra came on stage. And we did, enthusiastically. When 90 year Stanislaw Skrowaczewski stepped on stage a roar went up and the audience rose to its feet. He led the orchestra in a rousing rendition of the Star Spangled Banner with wonderful audience participation. It was a great program in the beautifully renovated hall, a real love fest. At the end of the concert, the standing ovation lasted a very long time, people reluctant to let their beloved orchestra and Skrowaczewski go. After that they served champagne in the lobby and atrium. As we exited the lobby everyone was handed a copy of the Minnsota Orchestra’s Grammy winning CD of Sibelius conducted by Osmo Venska. Truly a memorable evening.

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