We Are Family

In the Prehistoric Necropolis

Human burial remains in Gurgy, France, c. 4700 BCE

The pressmen slept at the presses who had not heard from the top, where the executive editor received no word from the managing editor, who’d failed to confer with the copy editor, who received no copy from the writer, who forgot. To write.

In my case, as I choose to fashion it, success is all a lonely scribe’s, but failure has many fathers.

So now you know. I spent the day yesterday casting my riches, as it were, onto the sands of Submittable (where, for those who do not know, most creative writing gets submitted online these days to journals that will take six months to yea or mostly nay it), reading poetry aloud in public spaces, and barely cognizant that it was Sunday, meaning today would be Monday and a paid post due for publication.

I grovel in the dust, my bald pate laid bare to the pelting rain in penance.

Fear not! Among my riches (as it were) is an account long funded by a store of my finds collected chasing the rabbit knowledge. To wit theses newses regarding prehistoric family systems deciphered from burial grounds in the Russian steppe and outside of Paris by teams of paleontologists and archaeologists. They offer fascinating insights into social and family organization and practice far enough back in time to raise questions about current and ongoing debates regarding nature and social construction in human relationships and roles.