This week The Wall Street Journal ran my story about the adored and adorable Pitt Rivers museum of ethnography and world archeology in Oxford, England (as opposed, I guess, to Oxford, Mississippi). You can read it here. For length, they did cut an anecdote about my first visit:

It was 2002, and I was just starting a year of graduate management studies at Oxford University. My friend Roland, an Egyptologist in my college whom I’d met “in hall” (i.e., at one of the nightly formal, gowns-required dinners that passes for normal mealtime at Oxford), toured me around the museum’s labyrinth of curiously labeled curio cabinets: “Snuff-Taking Equipment,” “Amulets, Cures and Charms,” and “Treatment of Dead Enemies,” where I came nose to nose with some shrunken human heads.

Examining the case marked “Origins of Writing,” we were approached by a cheerful, clipboard-wielding volunteer who wanted to record our feedback. I remember Roland, who was fluent in more dead languages than living ones, remarking: “Oh, this place is wonderful! But I’m afraid I do have to tell you: this cuneiform tablet is upside down.” The docent flushed; I laughed. To a mere mortal, this is like noticing that a Japanese flag is hanging backward. But that’s Roland for you.

Read “Where Shrunken Heads are a Big Attraction” in it’s entirety.