Brian Finucane
I read in my hometown daily that an Eastern Kentucky native was among the thirty-two Rhodes Scholarship winners. Brian Finucane was also a DJ at WRFL 88.1, UK’s student-run radio station. I was delighted to see a fellow WRFL alum receive such a prestigious award. He is currently a student at Cornell in Ithaca, NY. He’ll soon be studying at the University of Oxford for two or three years. Through the magic of the internet and dialing “1-411″ on the telephone, I was able to track him down. He was cool enough to carve out some time for an email mini-interview. Thanks Brian!
Where is Rush, Kentucky?
Rush is about 20 miles south of Ashland, in the north east of KY. The town consists of a couple of Baptist churches and a Brothers of the Wheel motorcycle club. Our farm is about 1/2 mile from the nearest neighbor.
What has been going on since the announcement was made?
Since the anouncement I’ve been doing a lot of driving. I drove from DC to Ithaca, NY on Sunday, then down to NYC and back on Tuesday and Wednesday. I gave a talk at the Cornell Club about the Cornell mummy last night.
Briefly explain the mummy project
The mummy project began when I came across a previously unstudied Peruvian mummy in the Cornell Anthropology collections. The mummy had be in a cabinet for 100 years, but no one knew much about it. So I searched the university archives and then began a physical examination of the mummy. I was able to determine that the individual was a woman in her late thirties, about 140 cm tall. She didn’t have any evidence of trauma. She had an active abscess of her maxilla at the time of her death which may have been fatal. Radiocarbon dating indicated she died in the late 14th century. I contacted a radiologist about a free set of x-rays. He was interested in the project and passed the word along to Nat’l Geo. Last April the radiologist, an endoscopist, and a TV crew came to Cornell for a weekend. The x-rayed and scoped the mummy and then we took her to the hospital and ran her through the CT machine. The CT scan revealed a widening of the diploe space between the tables of the skull, perhaps as a result of anemia.
How did you like doing your show on WRFL? What kind of music did you
play?
I enjoyed DJ at WRFL, despite the 3-6 am time slot. I played punk, rockabilly and garage rock on my show. What really impressed me about WRFL was the enthusiasm and professionalism of the DJ’s and the station’s great record collection.
December 11th, 2002
