Unlooked for Blessings!

Well, maybe a little looked-for. I flipped on the TV yesterday morning, curious to see who was playing, and what do I find but the opening minutes of Packers v. Eagles! On live TV! In Oakland!

Bliss.

Actually, save for a few moments of excitement courtesy of Ol' Number Four, the (really-really-outstanding-looking) Packers Defensive Line, and the Eagles special teams unit, it was a pretty boring game. The Packers offense didn't drive for any touchdowns (and I think the three field goals came off of turnovers). Most of the game was a push, honestly. But it was tied up to the last minute, when Green Bay punted, the Eagles receiver muffed the punt, Green Bay recovered, and then...

And then Fox announced they were taking us to the beginning of the local game. So rather than the gripping, chilling, suspense-filled final seconds of action (which I found out later culminated in Mason Crosby's 43 yard game winning kick) I got fifteen minutes of dull, dull, dull pregame coverage of Oakland v. Detroit, delivered by two schmoes I'd never seen before on a broadcast (Fox's D-Team, no doubt; I mean, Raiders/Lions? Who's gonna watch that?!!?)

I was left super-unsatisfied. Super Unsatisfied. Fortunately I was able to channel that unsatisfactory energy into getting needlessly stressed out about last night's Youth Group picnic. And, the Packers won, even if I didn't get to witness it in real-time. Could be worse!

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Be true to your school now!

This is a cross-posting of a comment I left on peacebang.com's recent post about my school, Starr King School for the Ministry. PeaceBang, who is apparently a UU Minister in the Northeast, posted a few days ago an item about my school's supposed "banning" of the term, "brown bag lunch," because of the racialized connotations of brown bags.* Her post was, to my reading, haughty and dismissive, and she seemed awfully pleased with her own wit and ability to take cheap shots at others with little to no basis for her opinions. I think the comments for that post are up to 40, and it's a pretty lively back and forth. So, here is my contribution: "This may not be the ideal forum for “deep, serious conversation,” but one of the cornerstones of Educating to Counter Oppression is the importance of having deep, serious conversations wherever they happen. The status quo of “waiting for the right moment or forum” to engage with these issues too often leads to...

Family and Gender in Ancient Rome

I mentioned below that Prof. Diane Lipsett delivered a wonderful lecture on the conversation currently taking place between New Testament scholars, family historians, social archaeologists and the like. The title of this post is actually the title of en entire semester-long course taught by Prof. Lipsett, so for our, geez, ninety minute session she condensed her focus to Men, Women, and Children in Ancient Rome. With her permission, I am posting my notes from this lecture below, tweaked a little for readability. Prof. Lipsett is interested in studies of gender formation among non-elites as well as elites, those people about whom we know much less because they did not have the resources or clout to commemorate and study themselves, generally speaking. Roman households were much broader than we conceive of in modern terms, with a wide spectrum of people connected by family and employment living under one roof (the terms domus/eikos/ikea capture this idea of an indiscriminate household...

Depicting Rome, pt. 1

The Tiber as seen from the Ponte Principe Amadeo--this sideways problem is tricky. All I can say is that portrait-oriented photos don't get sidewaysed in Preview, or in iPhoto. Computer friends, help! The interior dome of the Pantheon. The whole of the temple dome is poured concrete, with walls 20 feet thick at the base. The interior is exactly as tall as it is wide: 140 feet. It survives (at least in part) because it was made a Christian church in the 7th century. The Sacristy in Santa Maria sopra Minerva Sundown in the Roman Forum Detail of the Triumphal Arch of Titus . It commemorates the Roman Imperial sack of Jerusalem in 70 CE. This panel, from the interior of the arch's span, shows the triumphal procession parading the spoils plundered from the Herodian Temple--note the large candelabrum. Roman Jews are a distinct group, historically descended from Palestinian Jews who moved to Rome in the Second Century BCE. Thus they are neither Sephardic (Spanish) nor Ashken...

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