I have been unusually fortunate in my teachers over the years. Looking back at the litany of their names, I can see them almost as mile-markers leading me along the path that has brought me to where I am today.

I just happened to start thinking about this for rather silly reasons. I only just realized this morning that the new Indiana Jones flick is coming out in ten days, going for the classic Lucasfilm release week. That'll be the day after I leave Jackson, where Harrison Ford lives, although I suspect with all the premieres and promotions that it'll be a while before he would be seen around town, much less invited to the local movie house's premiere. I saw Raiders of the Lost Ark in what I remember to be a huge movie theatre in the Florida Keys, some weeks after it had come out, as a delighted sixth-grader. It was a rather fruitful 24 hours. I had severely burned myself that afternoon in the swimming pool, and would spend the next few days peeling my back off. But the pain didn't start becoming apparent until we were on our way back to my Dad's place that evening after seeing the show. Stopping in a 7-11, I picked up my first issue of The Legion of Super-Heroes (just before the great Paul Levitz run), and later, unable to sleep for the pain, I stayed up all night watching a festival of the old Charlie Chan movies on WGN, which was a blast and very much increased my taste for the old 1940s flicks, an appetite probably already heightened by the Spielburg-Lucas homage to the serials that I had witnessed earlier that night. So while that night introduced me to three great favourites, Dr. Jones, as a character, made a particularly long-lasting impression, reinforcing a growing belief within me that old things were incredibly cool, and that history itself was the greatest adventure.

I had seen the Treasures of Tutankhamun exhibition at the Field Museum the year before, crawling on hands and knees under the crushing crowd so that I could surface next to the death mask. The nationwide craze inspired by that art tour heightened a certain awareness of, and interest in, old things for me, such as when I read local author Leona Ellerby's novel King Tut's Game Board. This was probably built on the foundation of a year living outside Washington, D.C. in first grade, and being taken by my Mom to all the historical sites and museums. So by this time in Oregon, Illinois, I was then starting that list of teachers I mentioned above. Mr. Robertson, 5th grade social studies teacher and WWII veteran. I had started reading WWII histories the year before – probably my real introduction to reading history – and he was shocked when I gasped when he mentioned that he had served on the U.S.S. Hornet and then blurted out, "You were on the ship that took out the Yamato?!!" Looking back on it, that moment seems to stand out as a realization that I was picking up more history than my peers (although now I wonder if he said U.S.S. Wasp, and I got it wrong). My 5th grade science teacher Mr. Bouska, while helping me win the science award for the year and leading me on what seemed to be my clear path toward the physical sciences, also introduced me to local history, which I became quite well read in by my teen years, and learning that love of the local as well as the global. World History with Mr. Hicks and U.S. History with Mr. Hart were also masterfully taught with an eye toward young students, and what usually has a reputation for being a dull topic was anything but in their hands. In high school, World History and a particularly deep immersion into the French Revolution with Jim Sullivan was followed by the real treasure: starting to study U.S. History and Government with another WWII vet – Amherst and Kentucky-educated William Ellerby, the husband of the local author mentioned above, who was also the high school's librarian. "The Colonel" leaned heavily on me, holding me up to public ridicule for anything less than an "A," but done in such a way that I both accepted and was challenged by the teasing because I could trust the good-hearted motives behind it. Reading his letter of recommendation for my undergraduate honors program gave me just about as much insight into myself as I've ever received from another person, and taught me something about how much attention a good teacher is really paying to his students. High school was rounded out with the arrival of another extraordinary instructor, Larry Loomis, one who made current events dramatic on a daily basis and tried to inflame students' sense of their always living in the midst of electrifying history.

So I had had an uninterrupted string of no less than six highly-gifted history instructors over these eight years of my childhood formation. I cannot think that that is a streak of good fortune that most kids would get, but by my sophomore year of high school, I already knew that the study of history was going to be center to my college education. By my graduation I was thinking in terms of a double-major with Museum Studies, which Northern was shortly going to be starting a program in, and which I figured, with its proximity to Chicago, would be an easy internship and entry to the major Chicago museums. I had been asked so repeatedly by family what I was going to "do" with History that Museum Studies seemed a more "hands-on" or concrete prospect.

Two weeks into my first History class at Northern – a standard ancient/medieval Western Civilization survey – I was so taken with straight History that I never really bothered with the Museum Studies idea again. Dr. Jones came up again here, as my Mother repeatedly warned me that "it's not like in those movies," which speaks volumes for what was deemed regarding my possession of any basic sense. But I didn't owe this one to any entertaining fantasy. Medievalist Thomas W. Blomquist taught that first survey, and I just read that he died last August 17, 2007, which especially sparked writing these thoughts. That's another one of those debts I never really acknowledged: although I never studied with him again, he certainly did something right to so attract me to the field.

But it was the following semester that the major event of my undergraduate education occurred: Marvin A. Powell taught an honors-only section – about eight students – of a course entitled "Ancient Greek Culture." We immersed ourselves in the literature of the ancient Greeks – Homer, Hesiod, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes, Plato. The individual attention was extraordinary and every bit as brutal as I needed. Having been pleased with myself for turning in what I knew was a kick-ass first paper on Homer, I was shocked to receive back a paper sodden with red ink and dripping with criticism, featuring a large "C" on top. There was a difference between high school success and college success, I had now learned (a lesson I fear I've visited on many of my own students, in turn). Marvin adopted me after that semester, and in doing dual emphases on Ancient and Intellectual History through my undergrad, I never ceased profiting from his continued pressure and criticism – and availability. And there were others: Stephen Kern's guidance through modern European intellectual history was revelatory; Allan Kulikoff introduced me to social history in his survey of early American history; Robert Schneider lead me through a number of surprises in modern American intellectual history; Albert Resis bulldozed me through a magisterial semester on Soviet history, and became the first to suggest to me, my sophomore year, that I get a Ph.D.; and Samuel A. Kinser guided me on a brilliant trip through the social history of the Protestant and Catholic Reformations, and gave what was my single most pleasurable course of my undergraduate years: the History of the Renaissance. That course by itself almost wooed me away from the interest in the ancient Church that was then forming.

I would be handed off to greats in Notre Dame's Department of Theology after this, but in this fun moment of seeing the trailer for my favourite swashbuckling fictional professor this morning, I found myself looking through him and seeing in his Hollywood ideal the real heroes of the study of, and love of, History that have made my life so rich. </sentimentality>

Sanctuary of Rome's 'Founder' Revealed
Nov 20, 8:03 PM (ET)

By ARIEL DAVID

ROME (AP) - Archaeologists on Tuesday unveiled an underground grotto believed to have been revered by ancient Romans as the place where a wolf nursed the city's legendary founder Romulus and his twin brother Remus.

Decorated with seashells and colored marble, the vaulted sanctuary is buried 52 feet inside the Palatine hill, the palatial center of power in imperial Rome, the archaeologists said at a news conference.

In the past two years, experts have been probing the space with endoscopes and laser scanners, fearing that the fragile grotto, already partially caved-in, would not survive a full-scale dig, said Giorgio Croci, an engineer who worked on the site.

The archaeologists are convinced that they have found the place of worship where Romans believed a she-wolf suckled Romulus and Remus, the twin sons of the god of war Mars who were abandoned in a basket and left adrift on the Tiber.

Thanks to the wolf, a symbol of Rome to this day, the twins survived, and Romulus founded the city, becoming its first king after killing Remus in a power struggle.

Ancient texts say the grotto known as the "Lupercale"- from "lupa," Latin for she-wolf - was near the palace of Augustus, Rome's first emperor, who was said to have restored it, and was decorated with a white eagle.

That symbol of the Roman Empire was found atop the sanctuary's vault, which lies just below the ruins of the palace built by Augustus, said Irene Iacopi, the archaeologist in charge of the Palatine and the nearby Roman Forum.

Augustus, who ruled from the late 1st century B.C. to his death in the year 14, was keen on being close to the places of Rome's mythical foundation and used the city's religious traditions to bolster his hold on power, Iacopi said.

( Read more... )

A few articles of recent interest. The Rowling one has major spoilers, so don't read it if you're not ready!

Evidence of City Beneath Alexandria
Jul 26, 2:37 PM (ET)

By KATARINA KRATOVAC

CAIRO, Egypt (AP) - Alexander the Great founded Alexandria to immortalize his name amid his quest to conquer the world - but his was apparently not the first city on the famed site on Egypt's Mediterranean coast.

A Smithsonian team has uncovered underwater evidence pointing to an urban settlement at the site dating back seven centuries before Alexander showed up in 331 B.C.

The city he founded, Alexandria, has long been a source of intrigue and wonder, renowned for its library, once the world's largest, and the 396-foot lighthouse on the island of Pharos, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.

But little was known about the site in pre-Alexander times other than a fishing village called Rhakotis was located there.

( Read more... )

Rowling answers fans final questions
By LINDSAY TOLER, Associated Press

Just because J.K. Rowling has stopped writing about Harry Potter and his friends and foes doesn't mean she has stopped thinking about them.

She told fans Monday what she thinks happened to many of the book's characters after the final installment.

( Read more... )

One of the oldest large Gospel manuscripts has been donated to the Vatican Library, which should make it more accessible to the world, given the public treasure that is the Vatican Museums.

American's donation lets pope peruse oldest copy of St. Luke's Gospel
By Cindy Wooden
Catholic News Service

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- A donation to the Vatican by a U.S. businessman enabled Pope Benedict XVI to peruse a few pages of the oldest existing copy of the Gospel of St. Luke and one of the oldest copies of the Gospel of St. John.

The Catholic businessman, Frank J. Hanna III, and his family were present in the pope's library Jan. 22 when Pope Benedict got his first look at pages from the famous Bodmer Papyrus XIV-XV.

Hanna is the Atlanta-based chief executive officer of HBR Capital Ltd., an investment management company, and co-chairman of President George W. Bush's Presidential Advisory Commission on Educational Excellence for Hispanic Americans.

Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran, the Vatican's archivist and librarian, presented both the papyrus and the Hanna family to the pope.

The Bodmer Papyrus XIV-XV, handwritten in Greek around the year 200, contains "about half of each of the Gospels of Luke and John," Cardinal Tauran explained.

"With this new precious papyrus, the library of the pope possesses the most ancient witness of the Gospel of Luke and among the most ancient of the Gospel of John," he said.

( Read more... )

Beams reveal Archimedes' hidden writings

By TERENCE CHEA, Associated Press Writer Sat Aug 5, 2:28 AM ET

SAN FRANCISCO - Previously hidden writings of the ancient Greek mathematician Archimedes are being uncovered with powerful X-ray beams nearly 800 years after a Christian monk scrubbed off the text and wrote over it with prayers.

Over the past week, researchers at Stanford University's Linear Accelerator Center in Menlo Park have been using X-rays to decipher a fragile 10th century manuscript that contains the only copies of some of Archimedes' most important works.

The X-rays, generated by a particle accelerator, cause tiny amounts of iron left by the original ink to glow without harming the delicate goatskin parchment.

"We are gaining new insights into one of the founding fathers of western science," said William Noel, curator of manuscripts at Baltimore's Walters Art Museum, which organized the effort. "It is the most difficult imaging challenge on any medieval document because the book is in such terrible condition."

Following a successful trial run last year, Stanford researchers invited X-ray scientists, rare document collectors and classics scholars to take part in the 11-day project.

It takes about 12 hours to scan one page using an X-ray beam about the size of a human hair, and researchers expect to decipher up to 15 pages that resisted modern imaging techniques. After each new page is decoded, it is posted online for the public to see.

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Maybe alarmist, maybe not? Still, as an historian, particularly an ancient historian, and as one for whom Rome is his favourite city on the planet, it's the kind of thing to keep me concerned....

A view of the frescos inside Roman Emperor Augustus' house, in Rome, Monday, June 19, 2006. Excavations atop the Palatine in recent last decades have turned up wonders like Augustus' house, including two rooms with stunning frescoes of masked figures and pine branches, which archaeologists hope tourists will be able to see once the Palatine is safer. (AP Photo/Plinio Lepri) Copyright 2006 Associated Press. All right reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

Rome's Ancient Sites Are at Eternal Peril

Jul 2, 5:20 PM (ET)

By FRANCES D'EMILIO

ROME (AP) - Weeds with stone-splitting roots. Relentless traffic belching pollution. Tourists trampling across the once palatial residences of emperors. Earthquakes and terrorism waiting to happen.

From the imposing stone bulk of the Colosseum to the romantic ruins of imperial luxury atop the Palatine Hill, the Eternal City's monuments, once pillaged by foreign conquerors, today face an array of perils old and new.

Rome's fragile ruins have the urgent attention of teams of monument "doctors," armed with such high-tech instruments as micro-cameras probing for weak spots.

So far, the Colosseum has made it through two millennia, its imposing stone bulk still standing after quakes, lightning strikes, pillaging, traffic tearing round it and subway cars vibrating below. And now, following the terrorist bombings in London and Madrid, the great stadium where gladiators once thrilled the masses is equipped with metal detectors.

( Read more... )

The last few days my musical imagination--you know, that part of your mind that just plays music, regardless of whatever you might want it to do or not?--has been fixated on one of the most beautiful pieces written in the Freek days: keyboard-player Andy Brenner's "Let Your Spirit," linked here in a solo version he recorded, for anyone of taste who is interested. Actually, as I type this, I have to smile at an irony: in a week where my academic work has largely been consumed by Augustine, I recall that the song actually uses a number of phrases from Augustine to construct this love song. Most people would never notice: I didn't at first, either. Score one for my subconscious, I guess?

I was absolutely flattened yesterday after babysitting Renee Harris for about 90 minutes. She around that 18-month stage of starting to talk--I was "My" and she was "Nay," I realized--and when Donna and Mike got back from their errand, Donna pegged it exactly by immediately asking if Renee had spent the bulk of the time just climbing on me. I don't think I've done that much continual lifting since I moved, and maybe not then. It's finding myself exhausted by things like that that always bring back memories of being a distance runner in the most humbling way. This is the point of the entry where I ought to make some halfway-sincere pledge to myself to work out more in some way.

One of the cool things of being at school is always the opportunity to meet really compelling people. Last semester's Theology Through the Centuries class that I TAed for Mickey Mattox was the most fun I had had as a TA at Marquette because all these hard-working Honors Program students took advantage of what I could offer more than all the students I had had in the previous three years. A number of the students were folks I really enjoyed talking with--interested in the material, passionate about their own work--and by the end of the semester it was clear that a few of them were folks I could really enjoy being friends with. A few were as blessed with the gift of the gab as I was, so that we had to be careful in making appointments to do work because we had such a hard time not letting talk run away with us. Wednesday after the De Trinitate Seminar, I met Julie Riederer, one of the best of the lot, at Starbucks for a drink and a really cool three-hour conversation of that sort. She's got the same intense gift for Psychology that I'm used to from Kevin Fleming, but has more of a research edge to her that he doesn't have, so I was fascinated to hear about the kind of research into the cognition of misinformation that she was conducting with a professor. That overlapped with the pedagogical monkeywrench that The Da Vinci Code has been for the Theology Department for the last few years because of those exact, careful techniques of using a small, "flagged" piece of authentic information--like the Emperor Constantine being present at the significant Council of Nicaea in 325--and then having gotten the mind to recognize that as accurate, "approved" information, to then load it up with false content. Not that it was all lofty and technical talk, since we also laughed and spontaneously confessed to one another what junk-TV shows we currently found ourselves enslaved to. Julie also does a lot of improv comedy performance on the side, and I always enjoy being around artists who can articulate what they're doing with their work in the way that she does. My friends at Marquette tend not to have that "wing" to their lives that I enjoyed so much at Notre Dame with the strong musical/Catholic overlap in the Freek circle and beyond. It's just another strong reason to enjoy what might become a real friendship: there's only a few undergrads that I've met who have had that kind of potential. In that vein, I'm finally making plans to hang with a guy named Jonathan that I've known casually for awhile who is a member of InterVarsity and is cool and tasteful enough to have loaned me a copy of Alex Ross' and Mark Waid's Kingdom Come when I got to know him a bit last year when he was working at the desk of the Abbottsford Apartments where I lived.

I took a little time out on Tuesday with Bob Foster, who was visiting from Michigan again, studying for his Doctoral Qualifying Exams. This time he didn't stay with me, which was probably wise: I don't think he achieved as much as he wanted to in early December, when he stayed with me for the week. (See "gift of the gab," above.) Sunday night we had dinner at the Harris' downstairs where, with the Harris' conspiring, I showed up with a half-sized box of old comics (holding several dozen) that I said I had picked that I thought Bob "might want to read" while he was here. It wasn't until the end of the night when he started looking through the box (which I had grabbed because it was the closest to the door when I left) that we discovered that he had taken me with perfect seriousness and was checking to see what stories I had picked for his notice (and to destroy his study session), so we had a long laugh at that. Tuesday we went down to Downtown Books, even though I knew that Bob had already blown the allowance his wife Carmen gave him by stopping at Powell's at the University of Chicago on the way around the lake. He limited himself to a few minor biblical pieces. With less professional taste, I picked up a few used JLA trade paperbacks and a clean, good-looking hardcover copy of my favourite Star Trek novel ever, My Enemy, My Ally, by the inestimably-rich sci-fi author Diane Duane, who makes those characters and that world such a fulsome vision of the future that the best of the shows and movies are watery reflections in comparison. While to be honest, I'd probably have to rank the book a tie with her masterful Spock's World with it fictional alien history and anthropology, this novel came first. Curiously, I can still remember seeing it on the wall of Arand's Sporting Goods as a kid as I first picked it up, little knowing what I treat I was giving myself. I think Julie explained that to me, in fact, when we talked about her research in certain types of memory-flagging. So Bob accepted my reasoning as to why a quality-bound hardcover of a novel I already owned (and in fact have replaced, since that beloved original had long since disintegrated under my loving hands, along with those of my brother Joe, and such worthy friends as 2ndtimothy) deserved a spot on my much-taxed shelving space.