 Hello and welcome to Ask an Archaeologist. I'm Nico Tripsovich, the host of today's show. Ask an Archaeologist is a series of live streamed interviews co-hosted by the Archaeological Research Facility and the Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology at UC Berkeley. In this series, UC Berkeley archaeologists and others who work with archaeological materials discuss their research and answer audience questions. For those of you joining us today live, you can post your questions in the live chat box you'll find adjacent to the YouTube video. Today, we are delighted to be speaking to Professor Bill White and his spouse, Clarity White. Bill, thank you, Bill and Clarity, thank you for joining us. Yeah, no problem. Professor William White grew up in Boise, Idaho and has been working as a professional archaeologist since 2004. He earned an MA from the University of Idaho and a PhD from the University of Arizona. He joined the faculty at UC Berkeley in the Anthropology Department in 2017. Bill is a founding member of the Society for Black Archaeologists and a long time blogger and podcaster as well. You can read more about Bill's biography and research in the YouTube description below. Clarity White is a human resources supervisor at UC Berkeley who has been working in higher education since 2004. She has a master's in human resources which she earned from the University of Groningen in the Netherlands. So before we start, I wanna note at the outset the context of today's show. We're well into our third month of coronavirus quarantine and this week around the country, there have been enormous demonstrations against police violence targeting black Americans. Now, when we scheduled this talk weeks ago, Bill mentioned that rather than talking about his research today, he would like to talk about hashtag archeology life and living and quarantining with family as an archeologist. However, given the circumstances and your expertise as a historical archeologist, perhaps you can make some comments on the current events and in particular the history of social movements in our country. So Bill and Clarity, thank you for joining us. Thank you. Yeah, thanks for the introduction. You know, when we start the slide show, I do have a slide that kind of states what folks can do to help but right now when we're recording the third of June, 2020, there are crazy history-making events that are happening all around us. And in addition to the unprecedented shelter-in-place order that was across our country that's now slowly being lifted, we're now faced with racial strife that's caused by the mistreatment of African-American folks at the hands of law enforcement. And then as I read the news, I just hear about more and more individuals who have been injured and victims of violence by the police recently. This is actually nothing new in the United States. So rather than talking about the entire history of black anti-police uprisings, I'd rather just focus on what's going on right now and that we're still at a point where this stuff is still happening, unfortunately. And we still live in a country where the response from the government is very similar to what it's been for the last 50 years or even longer. And I see now as the riots which I'm not an advocate of violence at all but the riots are starting to slow down but we haven't really seen any concrete change coming from our government or law enforcement. We don't really see anything happen more than now they are able to absorb this kind of uprising and they expect it from us and they're able to weather the storm and just move on without really changing your agenda. And so in that kind of world with that kind of stuff going on, we have to take a new approach. And I really feel like each individual working together with folks that are close to them and working on them own self, that's really the solution because it's pretty clear that the business community, the government, the change is not going to come from outside. It's going to have to come from inside. Yeah, if anything else, if anything, we're seeing more militarization of the police and it's, but it would be helpful to know if you have comments about what we can do as archeologists and as allies. Yeah, so as archeologists, we're working with communities and with other people's heritage. So, step one is definitely be mindful of where we are getting this information and what we're doing with it and what the impacts are on the communities that we work. And especially folks like me that are working close with non-white communities that have had their histories marginalized, definitely involving those folks and doing whatever we can to try and allow them to insert whatever they need to say to the rest of the world into our work. That's definitely something that can happen. But then other folks who are working more distant on climate change or artifacts, artifact analysis or curation, things that are not necessarily connected to communities, be mindful of how our work can actually help those communities that are going to be affected because coastal communities, communities in other countries that don't have the same economic resources, they're going to be impacted by climate change. And so if we're not producing the kind of stuff that's going to help folks, it's only really for us. We're only serving our own self. So try to create the kind of stuff that can make change. Well, yeah, it's an important time to think about these things. I mean, one thing I've really seen is a lot of sort of rewriting of history in the media about how social movements happened and the more polite times of the past. But when you look into it, there was actually quite a bit of property destruction, 50, even 100 years ago, the suffragettes were early making a big impact. So it's nothing new. Not anything new, unfortunately. So would you like to, do you have a presentation you'd like to? Yeah, I do. I'm ready with this as well. Okay, well, maybe we'll have questions later. We can come back to contemporary events as well. Sure, no problem. Do you want to, yeah, there you go. Okay, you can see, the first slide here is talking about, it's a direct address to what's going on. If you are sick of what is happening in this world and you want to see something change, you can always start with yourself and you can always start with the number one thing that you have control over your own thoughts. The way that you can't control a lot of the things that happen in the world, but you can definitely change your mind and think about, or you can change the way you think about what's happening. I think that if you are an advocate or you're sick of violence or you're sick of this stuff coming back again, you really need to think about becoming an anti-racism advocate. And I put some links to some good resources, but as a lot of folks that are looking at this, there are PhDs, there are professors, the website, tolerance.org has a lot of information about teaching tolerance and adding tolerance to the classroom at all different levels. So if you're an educator, you definitely have a disproportionate way to impact others. But if you're just an individual and you're trying to figure out what you can do for your own self, your own business and family, another website, racialequity.org or racialequitytools.org, they've got a lot of resources, including PDFs that will talk about case studies and other things where community groups and churches and other organizations have worked together to become anti-racism advocates. Because once again, you change your own mind, that's gonna guide your actions, but becoming an anti-racism advocate means that your actions are more likely moving towards the direction of equity, diversity, and breaking down the structures that support racism. So when you become an anti-racism advocate, you're really taking this upon your own self to change the way that you act, the way you vote, the way you purchase things and how you behave in public towards a stance that does not leave space for structural racism. I don't want that to take away from the whole presentation, but I do think that more people becoming anti-racism advocates is the pathway towards preventing this kind of stuff from happening more and more in the future. That's right, okay. Okay, so talking about this living with an archeologist, I asked my wife to come along because she's, I was an archeologist before I met her, but she definitely has put up with quite a bit of archeology for quite a few years now. And if there was anyone who knows what it's like to live with an archeologist and try to live an American dream life of raising kids and having a home and all that stuff with an archeologist, I think this fine young lady, she has firsthand experience with it. So if I say something that's not really the way it was, she'll set us all straight for the record. Okay, so this thing is really focused on us and our experience. I know my experience better than anyone else, but everybody who has lived with a spouse or a child or a sibling to an archeologist, they'll have a different take on this, but those of you out there who are interested in becoming archeologists, there's definitely some commonalities between being an archeologist, especially someone who worked in cultural resource management like I did. I always wanted to become an archeologist from an early age. And it was my dream job and now the dream is actually my job. And so I think a lot of these things that are in the talk here, they kind of parallel that fact that for years and years and years, it was my dream to be an archeologist. And now for a few years, actually more and more almost 20 years, it's actually my job as well. So I've been doing archeology since 2001 and I met my wife in 2004 and we've dated for a long time and then we've made marriage to each other. So she has watched me through more than a decade of doing cultural resource management and academic archeology. And also I'm a parent, I'm a husband and I'm trying to raise a family and do the right thing and everything by using archeology as my profession. So one of the things is that my family can't really escape archeology. So I'm just looking at the count, the years here. So it looks like you maybe studied it as an undergrad, did some CRM and then went and got a masters. And then continued and did consulting in graduate school through your PhD, right? Yeah, that's exactly right. So I, you know, as an undergrad, I wanted to do it. Well, I started off in marketing because everybody told me that that was a good profession and you could have a good job and a career and everything, but I couldn't stand business classes. Actually, that's interesting because my wife has a BA in business. Yeah, I find that interesting too because I studied both for undergrad, I did both business management and German. And so I've always told people that it was my study of language that helped me to get through business school because I too didn't particularly love business school. And so I've always found it interesting that, you know, Bill does archeology and cultural resource management. And I have a real affinity for learning about cultures. I've traveled and lived abroad. I speak a couple other languages. I got my grad degree abroad and I do human resource management, right? So it's like, there's these two sides of not to say they're the identical coin because it is very different work, but I find it really interesting that there are times when Bill and I have conversations at home that are looking at something that he's grappling with or something that I'm grappling with from a real different angle, but they do shed light on each other, right? Because we're still working with people and for me, it's like live people in their workplace and for Bill, it's more in a historical context and maybe not always tied to specific people, but a place, a time, a culture. But it is interesting to see how those different fields can complement each other. That's right. I mean, in business is a huge part of consulting and managing teams as well. That's a critical part. So it makes sense that you guys both have those backgrounds. Yeah, while we're on this slide, I'll add that things worked out well for us also in part because I was working in higher ed. So there have been several times that we've moved from state to state. And for me, because I already was working in higher ed, I was able to say, okay, Bill, as long as you find a job in a city that has a university, I'll find work and I'll find work that I enjoy because it wasn't always doing human resources, but I was predominantly working for a university. And so that has been a real, I guess, blessing, right? Because if I had a very niche, for example, the first job I had in higher ed, I was a study abroad advisor. Needless to say, I wasn't able to say, we're gonna move and I only want a job as a study abroad advisor because that would have been equally on par as equally difficult to land a job in a specific town. Many people that work in international ed have to move for the job, just like many archeologists do. So the fact that I was able to work in lots of different types of roles at different universities and then finally landing in my home of what I had studied of HR, made it that much easier for us together to stick together and move together. Yeah, definitely. So you did that in Arizona as well, Clarity? Yeah, yeah, so we moved to Arizona led by, again, just like I said, we were in Seattle and I said, you know, as long as there's somewhere with the university, I'll find work and that'll be fine. And then, yeah, we went there for him for work and then it just, again, worked out great because then I was employed there at the University of Arizona for nearly 10 years and it was a great place for building his PhD and we didn't have to uproot by then we had a family already. And so we were able to stay in that same city. I continued with my job. We began raising a family and Bill began being a PhD student. And I don't know if we'll get to this but there were a lot of long nights of him reading or writing, sitting outside a small child's bedroom door because they wouldn't go to sleep without, you know, dad hereby. Yeah, and you also had a, did you run a business, a consulting business through grad school, Bill? No, I tried but it didn't quite work out. Yeah, it's a lot of... Yeah, it's a lot of things to do. It's a lot to be a student, have a family and everything and run a business. But working for businesses, that wasn't as hard. So, yeah, you know, as a PhD student, and also as a master's student, I did CRM and it ends up being crazy. You know, as a master's student, I was on a long-term project with the Idaho Transportation Department where I worked Friday through Sunday, 10-hour days and then Monday through Thursday was a TA. And so, I mean, yeah, sometimes I would just basically sleep in my clothes. I wouldn't be able to, you know, not even really change. Sometimes we'd be out there for the whole weekend. I remember grading papers and stuff on my laptop at campsites so that I could get my work done at night after dating all day. And it was, you know, as a PhD student, going out on projects, you know, I'll talk about it in a few seconds, going out on projects in between having classes and coursework and stuff and having to write technical reports at the same time that I'm writing my dissertation. So, it wasn't easy. Yeah, I'm kidding. Yeah, I'll go on to the next slide. Okay, yeah, it seems like you finished pretty quickly as I recall, right? You started, yeah. Emily definitely motivates you. Yeah, you know, I put five things to know just to really keep this in a short time period, but kind of like a warning for folks whose children are thinking about becoming archeologists or you're dating archeologists, you're thinking about marrying her. I mean, yeah, there's some stuff you need to know. So, I boiled it down to just five things that, you know, we've found are common in our life. And I know, you, Nico, as a parent, you know, as a family guy, many of these things are actually very similar and they parallel the lifestyle of a lot of folks who do archeology. So, one of the things here, the work-life separation, like I was saying, there kind of is not one because you, if you wanted to be an archeologist, you spend your whole life dreaming about becoming an archeologist and then you finally get that job and you just keep doing it until it's not what you want to do anymore. So, everyone who's wanted to be an archeologist, there was years and years from the time they decided they wanted to do it until they actually started getting paid to do it, that they, it was all just, you know, and they're a goal that, you know, it didn't actually exist. And then when you actually get into it, because you've invested so much of your life into that, you're thinking about the past a lot. You're thinking about archeology and history and prehistory and human cultures and stuff all the time. So when you're interacting with your family and stuff, you're basically like still thinking about, you know, archeology by it, but I'm going to embarrass my kids here. I had, you know, this is going to be up for a thousand years and they're all- Desperation Ranch, huh? That's great. That's great. That's great. So, what do you have to bring your family with you, right? So on this side, I'm kind of suppressing laughter because you can see we've been talking about dates a little bit. 2004 was when Bill and I met. And this was in September of 2014. So it took exactly 10 years for me to join Dell. Yeah, she did not let it go. So I had a lovely experience, a rare opportunity when I was an undergrad student at University of Idaho, that when I took Anthropology 101, there was a real live dig going on on the campus, which as you, you know, it's a rare opportunity. It was an old dorm that had burnt down in the past. And so the archaeology faculty were doing, you know, some excavation there before a new building went in. And as it was presented by the professor, I thought, yeah, wow, you know, totally rare opportunity. I don't know anything about archaeology and this will be cool. So I went to volunteer at the site and I don't remember if I had a designated shift of a couple of hours or something, but very quickly, probably less than an hour or so to work, I realized that all they were finding or searching for was crumbs of wood and I was pretty much out. So I know that's probably the last of us to the rest of you here, but it's what it was, right? For me at the time. And so I'm interested in Bill's conversations, but this is case in point. Like it took me 10 years before we wound up going out together in the field. Yeah, and for very good reason too. You know, the separation of work life, my wife, since I started working in the Virgin Islands was really interested in, you know, coming to see what it's like and she wanted to go to the beach and hang out and everything. And yeah, you know, on St. Croix, there are definitely our beaches. And so for our anniversary, I said, yeah, come on and have a trip. You can come with me to the Virgin Islands. But if you want to get to the beach, got a big shovel probes. I think this might be one of the worst decisions of mixing work and life together that I've ever made, but it ended up happening. This is your anniversary trip? Yeah, my Gartania anniversary. There have been several moments that I've referred to as a bait and switch. And this one definitely was. Because he painted one picture and it did not include the sweat and the shovel. But the reality was, you know, I was out there and, you know, I didn't really have anything to do all day while he was working. So it felt like the right thing to do to help. Digging will definitely give you something to do. That's right. All right, so one of the other things too, that's, you know, a reality of being an archeologist, especially working in cultural resources, you're going to have to travel. And so, you know, every single one of these projects that are shown here was a time when I had to leave my family and go work somewhere. Most of the time I couldn't even come home at night. So, you know, wanderlust is definitely a part of the whole thing for, you know, our family and, you know, my own personal identity and everything. But it is rough when you have a family and you have, you know, other things that you're missing, kids' birthdays and a whole bunch of other stuff. Because you're out doing some projects somewhere else. You know, I missed probably, you know, nine months of my son's first year of life doing CRM projects and being out of town. And that's definitely something that, you know, I can't, I can't get back, but it's definitely something that you need to think about. Yeah, because some projects are those four 10s and that's in a way nice, but other times it might even be like 10 days on and then a week or whatever off. But that also was really, it created a really interesting dynamic for the family, especially when our kids were as little as they were, because there was this whole like adjustment over those, you know, four days that he'd be gone of like, okay, it's just me and the kids. And then another adjustment when he came home. And so we were constantly in this flux of him being gone for four days and then home for three days. And as Bill's saying, that went on for a good long chunk of time. And those are busy three days home, during laundry and recovering. So let me I'm in all the fun with your kids, but you didn't get to have for the week too, right? Yeah. So let me just remind our viewers that there's a live chat box. If they'd like to send questions in, they can type them into that chat box and I'll read them to Bill and clarity. Another interesting side effect that ends up happening because you'd spend so much time traveling is that your vacation is also ironically traveling. So the, you know, we mentioned before that we already liked traveling and experiencing new things, but that just ends up being part of the lifestyle of our family too. So our kids are, you know, they're pretty good travelers. In fact, you know, my daughter just asked for her seventh birthday. She wanted a spinning suitcase. That was what she wanted most of all since she went on trips, right? And since they were young, we've been going all over the place, you know, all these photos are from us on vacation, but whenever we get a chance to go somewhere, we definitely, you know, make the effort. Yeah. Well, it's probably a real change for them than being stuck at home. They're used to traveling. Well, we make everything an adventure though, again, right? It might just be an hour up the road. We haven't taken them on any international trips yet. That was in the works, but that's been canceled. The world's got changed. You know, it'll happen. The world's still gonna be there. Yeah. All right, so another thing too about, especially being an archeologist, a field archeologist, if you don't like being outside, you're gonna be in a lot of trouble. And so from an early, you know, time, I always wanted to be outside, you know, as a, especially when I was a, in my 20s, I felt like the inside part was just what enabled me to be able to do the outside part of, you know, camping every single weekend, if I could, year round, rain, snow, whatever, I still went camping. And I also always interested in hiking and just being outside as much as I possibly can. And that really translates well to being a field archeologist because you will be outside in all of those conditions. And like, that's not really something that's negotiable. That's reminding me of the first camping trip that Bill took me on, actually. It was really just dating a few months. And he said, let's just go camping. I don't know if it was one night or it's supposed to be the weekend, but I was just on board and fine with it. But he knew it was actually supposed to rain. And so it was a real test. I think I would be put to the test, but I was. Well, was it on Mount Rainier? Cause you're probably likely to get rain. Yeah, no, it was just in, it was just nearby in Idaho where we were at near Moscow, Idaho. Yeah, on Rainier, she kind of drew the line at camping in the snow. She's like, yeah, I'm not really gonna do that. I think on some hikes on Rainier, once we got up to the glacial line, I said, this is beautiful right here. I'm gonna just hang out and do those like tiny baby steps up the mountain and I'll be here when you come back. Oh, it looks like we got a question here on the chat. Someone writes in, I'm writing a novel in which my main characters are archeologists. Can I ask how you two met? Oh, should we tell them now or? I don't know, is it later in here? No, it's not later in here. Sure. Yeah, I'll let you tell the story. So we did meet in a very classic way, which was at a bar. We had mutual friends. I was out with my best friend and her then boyfriend and Bill and her boyfriend were colleagues at a grocery store where they were working during college. And so, yeah, Bill showed up with another of his friends and they just sat down and shared the table. And really, I mean, that's how we met. It's just very simple like that. But the story perhaps gets better in that my best friend introduced me to Bill as this is Clarity, my best friend. She just moved back from living in Holland and right away, Bill started talking to me and he shared with me that he was gonna be going to Amsterdam. And I was like, oh, gosh, you've got to be kidding me. Great, when are you going? And he said, it was a few months off. And I said, well, do you have your flight ticket yet? No, no. And then I thought, oh, geez, well, do you have your passport yet? No, no. And at that, I kind of was done with the conversation. She was like, oh. I just thought it was some way to try to talk to me or trying to say Amsterdam's cool, like you who've never been there, you know. And yeah, so that was kind of it. I mean, I don't really think we talked much more that night, but because we were in a small college now, but more. We didn't get to talk more because she wouldn't talk to me anymore. So that was the end of the conversation for her. So then because we lived in a small town, you know, once you've seen a person, you start to bump into them. Then I had the opportunity three or four times, I think, to see him in line for coffee or see him out at another bar and say, oh, did you buy your tickets yet? And well, two or three times he said no, and that was it. And then finally the time that I saw him and he did have his tickets, I did an about face. And I was like, here's my phone number then. I have friends in Amsterdam. You can call with them on and on from there. So once she knew that I wasn't full of it, then all of a sudden she would talk to me. Right, right. Then you had to do some, some Dutch language practice. And time to thank you. I only had to get a passport. That's what it required to, you know, get into dating. We're here a traveler. Yeah, yeah. So then, you know, going on to about this, the outdoors ends up being what we do. And so the vacations and the traveling and stuff are almost always two places. The kids are interested in, you know, traveling and everything. Well, if we go somewhere it almost always has some outdoor component. And like they just have to get used to that. So, you know, right now they're indoors a lot for school and all that stuff. But we're always saying, go outside. Then whenever we can, we're going outside. And it's all just go outside, right? So they've actually gotten used to that too. That vacation basically means going somewhere where we're outside. Mm-hmm. Oh, here we got another question. Do your kids want to be archeologists and do you want them to be? I mean, I'm one of the best people to help them become an archeologist, but they're not interested in it. Yeah, they'll probably get their share of time screening and serving. Yeah. Yeah, in fact, Bill bought a little mini screen recently. So, yeah, Lydia has helped with that because we were resetting a fence post just recently. And so Lydia got to help us in screening just because we needed rocks from the bottom of the hole. So. But I told them when they're done with the, when they're too old to really go to the summer program. So they just have to come with me into archeology all summer. They don't have a choice. They just have to come with me and research and dig and whatever. Yeah. That's a good question. So, you know, the other thing about traveling and always interested if you're an archeologist, you're always trying to explore and figure out something new. So, you know, sticking with the routine or staying in place is not really part of what we, we're always looking for something new and trying to do something different. And then, you know, as a side effect, you end up getting exposed to a bunch of stuff that, you know, as a child, you get exposed to things that you wouldn't have before, but then also, you know, as a partner, going with your archeologist partner, you end up getting exposed to a lot of different stuff and exploring things that you wouldn't really have thought about going to check out. Yeah. It's like I have my own little historical encyclopedia, right? I'm not a history buff, but I can always ask Phil and I'll probably get a more in-depth answer than I need it. Yeah, I have, when she asked me questions on the past, I have time limits. In just seconds, in two minutes, tell me about this, right? You can't go all the way back. Yeah, but so that is the other thing that as an archeologist family, I know, you know, even when I was doing cultural resources and I couldn't bring my family with me, just the way that it was so close to my heart and always on my mind, you end up going along with the archeologists because they're always looking for stuff and they're always out there trying to figure out something new. And really, you know, you're along for the ride, whether you wanted to or not. And, you know, that seems to have worked out pretty good for our family. We've gone to quite a few different places and now the kids are actually old enough to look for artifacts. When my kids were toddlers, they knew how to identify different kinds of southwestern ceramics just because we were always hiking to sites and, you know, seeing a bunch of stuff. Pretty interesting, they went to the Presidio in San Francisco and they were doing excavation I think in 2017 in the summer. And so we were just there to hang out. And so we went over and saw the dig and, you know, they were saying, hey kids, have you ever seen a dobi before? They just roll their eyes like, oh yeah. Oh yeah, this little dobi brick, you know what that is? And they're like, yeah, we know about that too. And then, you know, somebody else was over at a gopher hole like, you know, there's ceramics coming out of this gopher hole, right? And they were like, oh yeah. Well, there was a whole bunch of, it looks like there's a wall on another wall there. And these guys were like five years old and they were talking about it. So that, you know, they ended up learning a lot about the past and they know a lot. But trying to make it happen is actually the only thing about being an archeologist, you're working real hard towards a goal. And then the same thing translates to trying to make your family happen, trying to make your career happen and the lifestyle you want to happen. Well, this is the last slide. I think we went over on time a little bit, but you know, this is not any different than what people have been doing around the world. You don't have to be an archeologist to have all those same kind of experiences. You know, this is kind of actually part of being a human being, especially in the United States where we move a lot for jobs and we go, you know, to a lot of different places for vacationing in the United States. What I just described there is what a lot of folks are experiencing, you know, on the everyday level. And a lot of folks are also wrapped up in their work, you can imagine folks who own a family-owned restaurant. The relationship between work and life is, you know, totally meshed together, right? But when it comes to archeologists, you know, because we are spending so much time thinking about the past and spending so much effort trying to go out, you know, you do end up being with someone who always is figuring out something pretty interesting. And I can't say that all those trips and all those adventures were actually 100% exciting, but there was excitement somewhere in there, right? And digging the shovel probe and you find something in it, then that's kind of exciting. Well, we do have one more question here. Do you have any anxiety about maintaining roots to a place, storing your stuff, avoiding homelessness, et cetera? Oh yeah, I mean, especially as a cultural resources archeologist, I was always concerned about being homeless. In the beginning, you know, when I was first starting out and just working from project to project, I mean, I wouldn't say I was homeless, I was renting a place and everything, but my possessions were pretty much expendable. I mean, whatever I needed could fit in my 1991 Geo Metro, and I could go to where the next project was. And when I got to that place, if I was there long enough, I rented an apartment and just went to the second-hand store and just got furniture or when God was on the curb and stuff and just put it in my house. And other than my computer and my clothes and my archeology equipment, I mean, when I moved out, I just gave it all away, put it in a dumpster, whatever. So in the beginning, I pretty much was just, I tethered going around looking for jobs. And, you know, when Clarity and I got together, then that changed a lot that I wouldn't say that we went out and bought a bunch of new possessions and everything, but the goal was to try to find these cities or metropolitan areas where we both could find a job. Ironically, the places that have big universities or several universities within the Everdrive also have several cultural resources companies. So in that place, it was like, we've had a symbiotic relationship where she has a job, and then when I lose my job and get unemployment stuff, my partner is there to actually help cover the bills. And then when she decides to change careers or change another job and her employment changes, then hopefully I have a job, right? So anxiety as far as, you know, not having a place to live, if you just live as if you don't, then it's not that big of a deal. When we got a family though and we had a mortgage and all that stuff, then the stakes were way higher and the choices were a lot less. And there was a couple of times where I had to decide whether I was going to keep doing archeology or do something different. Yeah, I'm remembering related to that, that Bill had read years ago, the book that's in contract. And that's one that helped also inform some of our actions and choices as a couple together in our early 20s that we already at that time did what we could. I mean, it wasn't perfect, so we strove to only spend one of our incomes recognizing this societal trap, so to speak, that we're all in somewhat, right? That, you know, we spend to the level of our income or beyond and then you're totally just stuck. And so that was something that we made some sacrifices early on and continue to make, right? Like that we always strive to live beneath our means both for, I guess it's just somewhat in our values but also for in how we raise our children that to us it's important that maybe we're setting aside for a rainy day or a cut and pay or for the kids as opposed to just getting that brand new car or whatever. And I'm not sure if that ties directly to the question that was being asked but it's just a series of little choices that helped us to be able to, you know, weather the ups and downs of the CRM reality. That's right. Yeah, well, thirsty traveling is probably a partiality of most archaeologists. I can remember the first time Bill and I went to Europe we part of the time we were in hostels and we did this alternating, like we would stay a night in a hotel for comfort and then we would mix it up and go to a hostel which definitely didn't have that comfort and things like that to be on a tighter budget and or like we had Bill put some pictures from our trip to South Korea and that trip we were staying with friends. And so yeah, absolutely traveling on a budget. Yeah, and that's one of the reasons why you see our photos camping so often because camping, I mean, you can drive from here to Virginia in camp several times and you only have to stay in a hotel a couple of times. So we just get used to camping like that. We get used to just traveling like that and then the vacation ends up being now a car trip. But even if we fly a lot of times, well Airbnb has really made it a lot easier to travel as a family. But we will stay for a long time and we'll try to get mileage points and stuff like that on credit cards to be able to afford to travel. So we still try to live, it's not easy here in the Bay Area but we still try to live on one income. Well, yeah, well, we've run out of time here but I wanted to, could I ask you to repeat the name of that book that Clarity mentioned? Oh, yeah, the two income travel. Two income travel. I don't remember the author, but it's out here on the show. Yeah, we've had it somewhere. All right, well, thanks again. Thank you for sharing the photos of your adorable family. Yeah. Yeah, and I wanted to thank our listeners and the people who sent in questions and also I'd like to invite our viewers to come and see the next episode of Ask an Archaeologist. It's a Colin Domnauer and Christine Hastor will be speaking about iconographic investigations into the use of an Andean hallucinogenic plant. So that's next Tuesday at noon. So thanks again, Bill and Clarity. It's been a great talking to you. Thank you. Bye.