On Leveraging Technologies in the Midst of Family Crisis

Our recent family vacation has just concluded, albeit on a scary note.  We had a medical emergency at the Luis Muñoz Marín International Airport in San Juan, PR.  Linda’s and my oldest son Corey had a grand mal seizure in the waiting area near the gates.  If you’ve known me on Facebook for the better part of the past 20 years, you may recall posts about Corey’s 2008 medical odyssey resulting in the removal of a cavernous hemangioma from his right temporal lobe (you can find those old posts if you wish).  Then, seven years ago or so, he had a seizure at his lab bench and began what will be a lifetime of precautions and care in the hope of preventing future seizures.

 

However, despite lifestyle alterations and perpetual medication, there is never a guarantee that he will not have another seizure.  And this was borne out for us last Saturday morning at the San Juan airport.  Corey’s family members were the first to attend to him, but other folks around us also came to our aid – a woman from an Orlando seizure clinic and a nurse practitioner, both of whom were (amazingly) sitting very close to us.  Eventually EMS arrived and treated him in the short term until he could be loaded on a gurney and taken to the hospital.  I stayed in Puerto Rica with Corey and Mika while Linda and others (including Eliza) flew home on our scheduled flight.  We are all home now and Corey and Mika will discuss next steps with his neurologist.  And as a family we will support them in whatever comes next.

 

But from this point forward, this post is not about the medical side of the story, it's about how we were able to leverage modern technologies in 2024 in order to (1) remain connected with one another while separated by half a city in the short term and then, once their flight landed in Wilmington, by nearly 1,600 miles; (2) address the challenges of communicating with ER staff who mostly did not speak English; and (3) navigate a distant and unknown city in the midst of the stressful tumult of this ordeal.

 

Here are some of the challenges we faced, how we addressed them with technology, and how it might have looked 40 years earlier, before the era of the smart phone or even the rudimentary cell phone.

 

·      EMS told us the name of the hospital, but I was unsure of where it was or if it was the only hospital by that name in that large city.  In the turmoil of the moment, I didn’t think to ask.  But in 2024, I was able to use the web browser on my iPhone to answer both those questions.  In 1984, I would have needed to find an English speaker at an airport information desk and then take that information on faith.

 

·      Since the ambulance could only accommodate one other person, I had to get to the hospital on my own.  I used my Uber app to quickly find a ride to the hospital.  In 1984, I would have needed to hail a cab, admittedly not a huge hurdle.

 

·      Once I got to the ER, I was able to freely call and text Linda on her iPhone while she was still on the ground at the airport.  In 1984, there would have been no texting and calling would have been very impractical as it would have required us both to use pay phones.  Since we are beyond even a vestigial presence of pay phones in most public spaces, it is hard to know how hard this would've been; there would've needed to be a pay phone near the airport gate and one near Corey's exam room in the ER for this to have been even remotely practicable. 

 

·      Eventually the others boarded their flight and left.  In 1984, this would have meant nearly four hours of uncertainty with no communication.  And I would have no way of knowing when they had landed.  In the present, although I still couldn't communicate with them midflight, at least I could track their flight using the Flight Aware app.  I could see them make progress out over the Atlantic Ocean and I could see when they were safely on the ground in Wilmington so we could reopen communication by text and phone.

 

·      Linda and the others flew home with all the luggage, including Corey’s, Mika’s, and mine.  But it wouldn’t all fit in our car at the airport along with Linda, Emlyn, Rachel, Dylan, and Eliza.  Mika’s Subaru was also at the airport, but the car keys were with us in PR.  I was able to talk to Emlyn on the phone so he could tell me when they were standing next to Mika’s car.  Corey was able to remotely unlock and lock the car from his phone in the ER in San Juan using the Subaru app.  This allowed Emlyn to securely stow our bags in the car at the Wilmington airport.  In 1984, arrangements would have needed to be made for (1) storing the luggage at the airport or (2) finding a cab as a second vehicle in order to accommodate all the people and luggage.

 

·      Most of the ER staff spoke very little English.  I was able to do rudimentary things like greet people, say thank you, and ask the location of the bathroom, but I relied on Google Translate to communicate with them on the important matters related to Corey’s care.  In 1984, we would have had to do our best to work through the language barrier and hope for the best.

 

·      Our plan was to get Corey treated and released, make our way to the airport, and find a flight home.  I was able to use my Kayak app while we waited in the ER to monitor available flights home (and I watched them sell out, one after the other, on one of the busiest travel weekends of the year...).  If not for the uncertainty of how long we would be in the ER, I could have also booked one from the hospital.  When we finally did leave the hospital, we were able to use Kayak to give us a sense of what airline to try first, so we knew where to have our Uber driver drop us off (it is a large international airport with several terminals).  In 1984, we would have had no idea of potential flights and would have needed to move from airline counter to airline counter in trial-and-error fashion in an attempt to find a flight.

 

·      Once we found a flight, I was able to communicate this to everyone at home by text and was able to call with updates about how Corey was doing and how Mika and I were holding up.  In 1984, this would have required a pay phone and unless I was able to give Linda the number of a pay phone in the airport and we sat near that phone, it would have meant calls would have occurred only when I initiated them.  

 

·      Once we touched down in Philadelphia the next morning, I was able to text Emlyn about what terminal he should come to in order to collect us and take us home. 

 

As I said, Corey and Mika are not in this alone.  We will navigate this next chapter as a family by supporting them as they need it, and I'm confident we will continue to leverage 2024 technologies in order to do so.

 

Until next time…

 

Telephone Numbers, Xpanders, Fire Trucks, and Memorial Day Parades: Swirling Down an Internet Rabbit Hole

The other day I found myself wandering around at the bottom of a rabbit hole of my own doing (I suppose all internet rabbit hole journeys are self-assigned…). I was working on my latest project for Winterthur when I stumbled upon an alphanumeric phone number, that is, a number old enough that it begins with letters instead of numerals.  Does anyone remember them?

I was at once reminded that the earliest of our family phone numbers I can remember as a kid in Hopewell, NJ also began with letters.  But since I couldn’t remember the specific number, I decided to try and find it online. A few libraries in NJ have old telephone directories for Hopewell, including from the early 1960s when (1) phone numbers began with letters and (b) we lived in Hopewell (and would be in the book), but they are only available in print in the libraries. No help there.

I decided to check out the copious resources available on the website of the Hopewell Valley History Project.  I sorted their digital collection by date and looked in the vicinity of 1960.  I didn’t find a phone directory, but I did find a resource that gave me the answer!  It was a 52-page book celebrating the 50^th Anniversary of the Hopewell Fire Department.

My father was a member of the fire department in those years and I remember having this publication in our house up on the hill.  I loved leafing through it when I was a kid looking at the pictures of the fire trucks. 

 

 

Anyway, I searched the document using my last name as the search term and BINGO!  My dad and his business partner Sal Taormina had taken out an advertisement for Xpanders, their home improvement contracting business – WITH phone numbers.  You can see our number in the advertisement.

 

That's right, our number was HO 6-0502, short for HOpewell 6-0502.  Here's another Xpanders relic, a sticker Dad and Sal had made to advertise the business.

 

This is the first time in at least 55 years that I've looked through this book, what else can I find?

For one thing, I was reminded that Dad participated in preparations for the 50th anniversary as a member of the Decorations and Stands Construction Committee.  Makes sense.

 

I also found a photo that  reminded me that one year I rode in the Hopewell Memorial Day parade in the front passenger seat of this fire truck:

This photo is from the bottom of page 13 (the document itself has no page numbers – look on p. 13 of the PDF) – a late 1940s (probably 1947 or 1948) American LaFrance pumper.  The parade must have been prior to 1966, because the parade route we followed while I was riding shot gun in this swanky fire truck was the one that snaked through town when the American Legion hall was still on Mercer Street.  (If I recall correctly, this route went past all the cemeteries in town.)  When the Legion moved to Van Dyke Road, the parade route was basically a straight shot up Broad Street from east to west and out to Van Dyke Road before ending at the Legion Hall. 

I also recall being a little leery about being a passenger in a big fire truck being driven by a man who, while in reality was probably in his 60s or early 70s, seemed to the very young me at the time to be about 150 years old.  I recall coming down off the railroad bridge on Greenwood Ave past Jimmy Hall's and hoping he would be able to get us all the way to the end of the parade. Spoiler Alert:  We made it just fine.

I wonder what photos of the Hopewell Memorial Day parade I might find on the Hopewell Valley History Project?  Although none of me in the fire truck nor of me marching with my Cub Scout Pack dressed as a minuteman, but I did find this one:

And this brings me back to Xpanders, in a way.  But first, older Hopewellians will know where this photo was taken.  The same place I described above when I was in the old fire truck and wondered about the potential of the driver to make it to the end of the parade route.  The airplane is about to bank to the right and fly down Model Avenue.

Anyway, the workshop for Xpanders was located in one of the barns on my grandparents’ farm, adjacent to our property (the house on the hill).  I don't recall what civic group this float represented in the parade, but Dad was a member of the Jaycees, so perhaps it was them.  At any rate, this airplane was built in the Xpanders shop in my grandparents barn.  I don't know who helped him build it, but I'm confident it was a group effort and that Black Label beer was involved (his preferred brand before discovering Gablingers).  I recall the fuselage before the fabric was stretched over it and I remember having fun sitting in the cockpit.  I also have vague memories that after this parade, the plane came back to the shop where it festered and fermented before being consumed by age and neglect.  But I may have this wrong.

I'm not sure if that's Dad driving the Wheel Horse tractor or if it was even our tractor, but we did have one, several actually.  This photo is a little older and the tractor has different rear tires.  But notice the Black Label can in the lower left.

 

 

And with that, I'll climb out of this rabbit hole and get on with the day.  If you have questions, give me a call - HO 6-0502, that's HOpewell 6-0502.  I'll pick up.

 

Until next time...

On an Interesting Confluence of Two of my Passions

Two passions of mine include music and the written word.  I love to listen to, think about, talk about, and make the former.  And I love to read and write the latter.  In fact, when I retired a few years ago, I pledged to myself to try to do four things everyday:  Listen to music, make music, read, and write.  Not a day goes by without me doing at least two of these things. Adding a third is quite easy, and doing all four is hardly ever out of reach. 

 

My activities in retirement help.  I volunteer in the library at Winterthur where I get to engage in some serious scholarship in the form of historical and genealogical research and writing on new acquisitions by the library.  And my ushering gig at The Grand and The Playhouse on Rodney Square enables me to see lots of live music for free.

 

My two passions sometimes converge, but generally only in one direction, oddly enough.  I do like to keep the Facebook nation apprised of new music that moves me, older music that I can’t believe I’ve missed, or interesting podcasts that lure me down musical rabbit holes that lead to even more new music that moves me or old music I can’t believe I’ve missed.  But that writing is nothing more than frivolity, not the more serious stuff I did during my career or what I’m doing now at Winterthur.   

 

And I have this old blog about music which is semi-comatose at the moment.  You’re on your own to find that one.  These are also idle thoughts and fluff; best avoided. 

 

Interestingly enough, I rarely read books about music, at least non-fiction works.  More than a decade ago, I almost finished Ted Gioia’s Delta Blues – the Life and Times of the Mississippi Masters who Revolutionized American Music.  And I have an old copy of What to Listen to in Music by Aaron Copland (1957) that has been waiting for three years to be read.

 

About ten years before I retired, I moved (almost) exclusively to fiction…on purpose.  There are too many good novels to read, and I don’t have the time anymore to mess around with all that non-fiction (except the odd Erik Larson or David McCullough).  So, if I read a book about music, it is purely coincidental.

 

This week, one such coincidence occurred when I picked up a copy of Mitch Albom’s The Magic Strings of Frankie Presto.  I finished it this morning.  It was a very good read.  The book tells the story of a musical prodigy born in Spain in the mid-1930s.  I’ll leave it to you to learn more about the plot.  Go to Goodreads.com, if you want.  Or your favorite website about books.  Or just read the book.

 

 

The book is narrated by Music.  That’s right, some sort of ethereal personification of music.  Aside from telling Frankie’s story, Music shares many insights about music as an art form that has been pursued by humans for as long as humans have been pursuing things.  Two of them caused me to need to pause my reading so I could give them further consideration.

 

Early in the book, Music helps us understand his role – bestowing musical talent on humans, but such that some get more of it than others.  The book opens at Frankie’s funeral with Music there to collect Frankie’s vast talent so it can be re-distributed to newborns in some reincarnation-like fashion. 

 

How you ask?  Here’s a passage from page 2 of the book,

 

Of course, some of you get more of me than others. Bach, Mozart, Jobim, Louis Armstrong, Eric Clapton, Philip Glass, Prince – to name but a few of your time. In each of their cases, I felt their tiny hands at birth, reaching out, grabbing me. I will share a secret: this is how talents are bestowed. Before newborns open their eyes, we circle them, appearing as brilliant colors, and when they clench their tiny hands for the first time, they are actually grabbing the colors they find most appealing. Those talents are with them for life. The lucky ones (well, in my opinion, the lucky ones) choose me. Music. From that point on, I live inside your every hum and whistle, every pluck of a string or plink of a piano key.

 

I cannot keep you alive. I lack such power.

 

But I infuse you.

 

Wow…

 

Frankie grabbed a lot of it when he was born in Spain in the mid-1930s.  Read the book to find out what he did with all he grabbed, you won’t be sorry, especially if you feel you grabbed any at your own birth.

 

The other thing that caused me to pause was this passage from Music on p. 267.  It captures something I’ve long believed but struggled to put in words.

 

What would you give to remember everything? I have this power. I absorb your memories; when you hear me, you relive them. A first dance. A wedding. The song that played when you got the big news. No other talent gives your life a soundtrack. I am Music. I mark time.

 

I don’t know what color Music is, but that seems to be the color I also grabbed.  I didn’t grab much of it, mind you, to be honest.  Not enough to be wildly and naturally talented.  Not enough to have made a career of it in performance or teaching.  But enough so that it has been able to provide a stabilizing force through all the chapters, er, movements of my life; I am gratified and grounded by music every day.  As I am sure Music knows, I am infused by it and my time is marked by it.

 

I found this book to be very gratifying.  Not as much for the fictional tale of Frankie’s life which, don’t get me wrong, is very good.  No, as I mentioned, I was more gratified by the insights from Music and how they explained so much about me.

 

And now, I need to get ready for a show at The Grand – Joe Jackson and his 100+ year old alter ago, Max Champion.

 

Until next time...

Observations of my walk in the park - Part 2

This is the second part of a two-part observation/reflection resulting from my walk the other day in a park near my house.  The first part was posted on Facebook (most who are reading this, I suspect, arrived here via the link in that post) and was about a super interesting podcast I listened to while I walked.  This second part is a little less light and a whole lot more concerning (at least to me).

 

The place I walk most often is informally referred to as HAC.  It’s in Hockessin, DE, just a couple of miles from our house.  HAC refers to the Hockessin Athletic Club, a private health club facility.  HAC’s facility is located in and is surrounded by Tweed Park, a public park in Hockessin.  The park has a series of walking trails the longest of which encircles HAC’s building.  It’s a pleasant place to walk.  I tend to call the entire property HAC even though the walking trails in the park have nothing to do with HAC and are open to the members of the public, like me.

 

It becomes very apparent in the summer that children’s summer camp programming occurs in the park.  I often see groups of children engaging with those who appear to be college-aged counselors in a variety of outdoor activities.  They were out doing activities in the park.  Fun, right?

 

A couple of times last week I saw them playing laser tag.  Everyone (college-aged counselors included) was wearing and using laser tag equipment – headband sensors connected to child-sized toy versions of semi-automatic weapons.  It appears to me that the large group has been divided into two teams.  I imagine the team with the last shooter “standing” is the winner.  The players could be seen running all over the park, hiding behind trees, finding their quarry, taking aim, and shooting.  Pretty harmless, right?  Sure, good clean fun.

 

Admittedly, when I was a kid, I played plenty of games like this, absent the fancy laser equipment of course.  No harm, no foul.  I’m a well-adjusted grown-up in spite of the sorts of games my friends and I played when we were that age.

 

But here’s the thing.  We now live in society that is very different than the one I lived in the late 60’s when I was the same age as the laser-tag playing kids.

 

I’ll provide some data in a moment, but first a pair of anecdotes to demonstrate the differences between 1963 and 2023 – these specific to the notion of school children doing drills in their schools to prepare for various potentially injurious realities of the day.

 

In 1963, I was in 1^st grade in Pennington, NJ.  We had the typical fire drills, probably each month.  But we also had air raid or civil defense drills – just one or two a year.  In those drills, we were taken to the lunchroom in the basement of the school (Pennington Primary School) where we were to crouch down under the tables for a brief period of time.  I didn’t necessarily understand the rationale at the time, and the drills ended just a year or so later, it seems, but it wasn’t long before I learned they were designed to prepare us for a nuclear attack. 

 

Was I frightened?  I don’t recall being afraid, but keep in mind, the rationale for these drills was not made entirely clear to the 1^st grade me nor to my 1^st grade friends – we tended to do what our teachers told us to do.  Even later, when I learned the real purpose, the whole thing seemed to be so abstract so as not to be worrisome.  I mean, it’s not like schools in the next town or across the country were being attacked with nuclear weapons and we needed to be ready for when those weapons found our school.  First-graders in other parts of the country were not dying from ICBM missiles and scaring the crap out of all the other 1^st graders. 

 

Fast forward a few years.

 

I was in a 2^nd grade classroom at a nearby elementary school 15-20 years ago when the school went into a lockdown drill.  The teacher and my student teacher shepherded the students into the narrow and barely lit cloak room between the main part of the classroom and the wall adjacent to the hallway.  We all hunched down in the shadows in a space designed for a group about half our size for the better part of 30 minutes while members of local law enforcement made their way around the outside of the building yelling, banging on windows, and trying to gain entry through the exterior doors in each classroom. 

 

It was as unnerving an experience as I’ve ever had in a school building, and I’ve been in hundreds of them over the years.  The 20 or so 2^nd graders were absolutely freaked out – some crying, some trembling, some asking their teacher if they would be okay.

 

I didn’t stay for the rest of the day because I had other student teachers to see, but as I left, I wondered how the rest of the day would go for these children.  Would their teachers find that these students were available for learning just like any other day?  Would they be able to just pick up where they left off before the drill?  Or would they need to spend time assuaging their students’ emotions based on the trauma caused by the drill?  If a district or building administrator happened to be in this room to witness what I saw, would they continue to support drills of this sort?  What do the data tell us about the effects of drills such as these?

 

The difference between 1963 and the present is that the reality providing the rationale for lockdown drills in present day is not abstract.  Schools today are being attacked by active shooters and children are dying.  This reality is one that 2^nd graders can grasp to the extent that it has the potential to cause fear and panic, and do real psychological damage.

 

Here are some data, some may be arguable, but most not so much:

 

First, death by firearms in the US is on the rise over the past few decades (source – CDC.  This chart and other interesting slices of CDC data are from USAFacts.org):

Second, there has been a steady increase in the number of mass shootings in our nation over the past few decades (source – The Violence Project).  So far this year, there have been 43 deaths from mass shootings in the US:

 

Third, there has been an increase in the number of school shootings since 1970 and an increase in the number of victims (source of these charts and more– CHDS School Shooting Safety Compendium):

 

Fourth, according to research from Everytown.org,

 

95% of American public schools drill students on lockdown procedures. Yet, there is almost no research affirming the value of these drills for preventing school shootings or protecting the school community when shootings do occur.

 

Fifth, the same paper examines the effects of active shooter drills and gun violence on the mental health of children:

 

•     Active shooter drills in schools are associated with increases in depression (39%), stress and anxiety (42%), and physiological health problems (23%) overall, including children from as young as five years old up to high schoolers, their parents, and teachers.
  

•     Concerns over death increased by 22 percent, with words like blood, pain, clinics, and pills becoming a consistent feature of social media posts in school communities in the 90 days after a school drill.

 

Finally, Surviving a school shooting: Impacts on the mental health, education, and earnings of American youth, a study from the Stanford University Institute for Economic Policy Research, had these key findings:

•     More than 100,000 American children attended a school at which a shooting took place in 2018 and 2019;
•     A higher rate of antidepressant use among those exposed to a school shooting in the years following the gun violence;
•     School shootings lead to drops in student enrollment and a decline in average test scores;
•     School shootings also lead to an increase in student absenteeism and the likelihood of needing to repeat a grade in the two following years; and 
•     Students exposed to shootings at their schools are less likely to graduate high school, go to college, and graduate college, and they are less likely to be employed and have lower earnings in their mid-20s.

 

Given the proliferation of guns in the US (I didn’t provide data on that fact, it seems to be commonly agreed to by those on both sides of the debate on guns in America – one side calls it a fetish and the other the only way to protect against tyrannical governments…); given the increase in gun deaths, mass shootings, school shootings, and school lockdown drills; and given what research tells us about the psychological effects of gun violence and lockdown drills on children; does it continue to make sense that the activity I saw in the park several days last week is still okay?  Is it a good look for whoever was running the camp program (not sure if it is a HAC program or county parks program)?

 

In my view, it’s unfortunate that an organized educational program in 2023, even if it’s in the form of a children’s summer day camp, would choose to include in their curricular planning an activity that mimics a violent reality in this country that results in so many deaths and so much heartache, and one or which these same children are undoubtedly subjected to drills designed to teach them how to react against in the tragic event of an actual school shooter in their schools.

I think we can do better than this.  Maybe we can begin to change the gun culture in our society by thinking more carefully about the activities in which we engage children in the name of summer camp fun, even if those activities were ones that were mostly harmless when my age peers and I were kids.

 

If you want to comment on this post, if you want to agree or respectfully disagree, I welcome the conversation.  But please do so here in the blog and not Facebook. I will likely remove reactions to this post that appear on Facebook.

 

Until next time…

 

 

 

Lynyrd Skynyrd - One More for the Road

I started college in the mid-70’s by packing a few t-shirts and my vinyl collection and heading off to West Virginia University in Morgantown, WV.  That was in the fall of 1975.  Even though it is farther north than (arguably) the southern ¼ of my home state of NJ, most consider it be a southern school (I’ll return to this point in a moment).  If I had the chance to do it all over, I wouldn’t change a thing – I had a great time in Morgantown and at WVU.  

 

 

For one, and from an academic perspective, I got a darn good preparation for classroom teaching in elementary education and special education, the latter being the one I acted upon during my career.  There were clinical aspects of my program’s curriculum in the 1970’s that were adopted by the Pennsylvania Department of Education in the late 2000’s and others that higher education colleagues at my last institution talked about adopting as innovative ideas in educator preparation in the late 2010’s…

Plus, I had a lot of laughs and a lot of great times.  I’ll leave it to you to imagine in what ways those “recreational” times unfolded…

 

But this post is about a specific genre of music from that era.  And now that I think about it, I suppose it doesn’t matter whether some thought of WVU as a southern school because back then Southern Rock was pretty ubiquitous, in the south and the north.  In the 70’s, groups like Allman Brothers, Outlaws, Molly Hatchet, Marshall Tucker Band, Poco, Pure Prairie League, and Charlie Daniels (among others) got a lot of airtime on the radio, as well as turntable time in my apartment and those of my friends.  To this day, when I hear songs from these bands, I am transported back in time to familiar locations and to comfortable and comforting memories.

 

Lynyrd Skynyrd was another band my friends and I listened to a lot.  Their 1977 album Street Survivors had only been out for three days when the band’s plane crashed in South Carolina killing several members of the band including the lead singer, Ronnie Van Zant.  That was in the fall of my Jr. year at WVU and I remember hearing the news of the crash while grabbing a bite to eat at the High Street Canteen.  That event cemented the band’s cult status in a most unfortunate way.  Today, when I am carried back by their music, the crash and what that meant to those of us who loved listening to that music invades those memories with a sense of sadness that is different from other moments of musical nostalgia.

 

 

So, although this is not a new release, this 2015 live recording from Lynyrd Skynyrd, One More for the Fans, has really hit the mark for me over the past few weeks.  It features a raft of guest artists covering the Lynyrd Skynyrd songbook.  It also features the current iteration of Lynyrd Skynyrd doing some of their biggest hits (like Free Bird).  Despite the fact that Free Bird is their magnum opus, the Lynyrd Skynyrd song I always liked best was That Smell.  On this release it is covered by Warren Haynes.  To near perfection.

 

Oh, and the most surprising thing?  Don’t Ask Me No Questions being covered by O.A.R. I doubt any of those lads were even alive on that fateful day in October 1977 and the O.A.R. songbook is hardly what one would call Southern Rock.  I guess they just know good music when they hear it.  Good on you, lads.

On Religious Sites in the Holy Land

Linda and I just returned home from nearly two weeks in Israel and Jordan.  We had originally booked Jordan with the kids back in April 2020, but the pandemic told us it didn’t want us to go back then.  So, just Linda and I went this time, we added Israel and didn’t take the kids (sorry kids…).

 

Both trips had been planned around seeing Petra, the Nabataean city the origins of which date back several millennia before the birth of Christ.  And seeing Petra did not disappoint – walking through the Siq and coming around that last bend to see the looming, majestic Treasury is breathtaking.  There is a lot to see and take in.  It added another UNESCO World Heritage site to our collection as well as another of the 7 Wonders of the World.

 

But want to know something?  Adding Israel really changed the nature of our trip.  We agreed that the original trip booked back in 2020 would have been quite different and perhaps not as engaging without Israel.

 

For example, an interesting place we visited was a former Israeli bunker on Har Benta just a few kilometers from the Syrian border.  (Everything to the left of the white road going toward the horizon in the second photo is Syria.)

 

 

There are many great places to visit and things to see in Israel.  What caught me off guard (given my lack of practical interest in Christianity as religion) was how much I enjoyed seeing the numerous sites of importance to Judaism and Christianity as more than just historical locations.  And most of these sites were in Israel.  My mother would have loved that we are able to see so many of these places.  And despite my agnostic tendencies, it would have given me pleasure to describe them to her.

 

Here are the religious sites we saw, in the chronological order of our trip: 

1.   Capernaum – this site on the northern shores of the Sea of Galilee is, according to tradition and archeological record, where St. Peter's house was located.  It is said that his house (located under a present day church - first photo) is where Christianity became more organized as a religion following the crucifixion of Christ.  It is also the site of many of the miracles performed by Jesus, some in the oldest of the two synagogues once located there (vestiges of which may be seen under the ruins of the 4^th century synagogue built on top of it - 2nd photo).

 

2.   Mount of Beatitudes – this site is not far from Capernaum and is, by tradition, the site of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount.  Today, the site has a Catholic chapel built in the late 1930’s and is where a mass was celebrated by John Paul II in 2000.

 

 

3.   Safed – This city is one of Israel’s four Holy Cities.  It is located north of the Sea of Galilee and we visited it on the way up to the Golan Heights.  By tradition it became the center of Kabbalah (the traditional and most commonly used term for the esoteric teachings of Judaism and for Jewish mysticism) in the 16^th century. 

 

4.   Bethlehem – We traveled through a security checkpoint and into the West Bank to visit the town of Bethlehem and the Greek Orthodox Church of the Nativity.  Christian tradition tells us that Jesus was born in the grotto beneath the altar of the church (before the church was built, of course) and placed in a manger just a few feet away.  The grotto is connected by caves to the adjacent Roman Catholic Church of St. Catherine.

 

5.   Masada – an ancient fortification in the Judaean Desert and site of the Siege of Masada in 72-73 AD, admittedly not exactly a religious site nor event.  King Herod the Great (father of Herod Antipas who asked Jesus to perform a miracle before sending him to Pontius Pilate) built two palaces with fortifications on this mountain near the Dead Sea between 37 and 31 BC.  According to Jewish Roman historian Josephus, the months long siege resulted in the Romans breaching the walls only to find that its Jewish defenders had set all the buildings except the food storerooms ablaze and, so as not to be taken prisoner by the Romans, committed mass suicide or killed each other, 960 men, women, and children in total.  Only two women and five children were found alive.

 

6.   Church of the Holy Sepulchre – this church is in the Christian Quarter of Jerusalem’s Old City.  Several locations within this church are Christian holy sites.  First, Calvary, the location of the crucifixion of Christ, a site that was a quarry at the time, is now encompassed within the church.  Second, the stone of anointing, where tradition tells us Jesus’ body was prepared for burial.  And last, the tomb of Jesus.  We were able to see the first two, but not the tomb as a mass was underway in the chapel in which it is located. The church also contains the sites of the final 4 or 5 Stations of the Cross.

 

 

 

 

7.   Via Dolorosa – the processional route through Jerusalem the cross-bearing Jesus took from the Antonia Fortress to Calvary along which the events of the Stations of the Cross took place.  We walked in reverse order from the Church of the Sepulchre to see 5 of the 14 stations.  The first two at which Jesus encounters and is convicted by Pontius Pilate are located within what is now a school and are largely inaccessible.  We walked past #7 – Jesus falls for the 2^nd time, #6 – Veronica wipes the face of Jesus, #5 – Simon of Cyrene is made to bear the cross, #4 – Jesus meets his mother, and #3 – Jesus falls for the first time.

 

 

 

 

 

8.   The Western Wall – Located at the base of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem.  According to this site, the Western Wall is considered to be the holiest place and spiritual epicenter to the Jewish people (also where the Holy of Holies was located) given access restrictions to the Temple Mount.

 

9.   Mt. Zion – the location of the Cenacle, or Upper Rooms, site of the Last Supper with Jesus and his disciples.  Located below it is the supposed Tomb of King David (there is not consensus of this as fact). 

 

10. Bethany – After crossing the border into Jordan (which due to border tension took the better part of a day...), we visited Bethany.  Known as Al-Maghtas in Arabic, it is the site on the Jordan river where Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist. 

 

11.  Mount Nebo – this ridge in Northern Jordan is where tradition tells us Moses ascended and from where he saw the Land of Canaan (the promised land).  He later died there. A Christian church from the Byzantine era sites at the summit.   

 

Until next time..