a.d. elliott - Take the Back Roads

Dear Henry, On my last trip to Washington, DC , in addition to seeing the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception , I also toured the Saint Pope John Paull II National Shrine.  When you mention Saint John Paul II, most Catholics I know immediately say something like "I love him" or "he was my favorite pope."  But he went on to heaven years before my conversion. So when I went to see the Shrine, the only thing I really knew about Saint John Paul II was that he had miraculously survived an assassination attempt and that he was everyone's favorite pope. So I feel like I should just turn in my Catholic card by saying that. Anyway...   The Shrine is absolutely stunning.   The Shrine began as a cultural center in 2001 (four years before his death), a place to come and learn about the faith. The center also held regular exhibits featuring religious art. After Saint John Paul II died in 2005, the building began to transform, and the site formally became a shrine in...

Dear Henry, Book Three, Aeschylus's Agamemnon, of the Bucket List Book Adventure ( read about that here ) is done! Let me tell you all about it. About 200 years after Homer wrote The Iliad and The Odyssey , in 525 BC, Aeschylus was born in Greece. The son of minor nobility, he worked at a vineyard until a dream of the god Dionysus told him to write tragic plays. Aeschylus's first play was written in 499 BC, and in 484 BC, he won the victory (aka first place) at a yearly festival of plays called the City of Dionysia. In addition to writing, Aeschylus also fought for the Greek army during The Battle of Marathon (490 BC), The Battle of Salamis (480 BC), and the Battle of Plataea (479 BC). He was a fairly prolific writer, producing 70 to 90 plays during his lifetime. Unfortunately, only seven remain. He died in 456 or 455 BC, supposedly in a unique manner. Aeschylus was given the prophecy that he would die from a falling object, so he began to sleep outside to avoid that fate. Whil...

Dear Henry, I found so many tidbits of wisdom reading Homer's Iliad and Odyssey   Here are some of my favorite quotes. "They that shun dishonor more often live than get killed, but they that fly save neither life nor name." "...For he that foments civil discord is a clanless, heartless outlaw." "A man does well to listen to the advice of a friend." "What could I do? All things are in the hand of heaven, and Folly, eldest daughter of Zeus, shuts many eyes to their destruction." "Still, death is certain, and when a man's hour is come, not even the gods can save him, no matter how fond they are of him." "There is no accounting for luck; Zeus gives prosperity to rich and poor just as he chooses." "All deeds do not prosper, and the weak confound the strong." "God grants this and withholds that just as he thinks right, for he can do whatever he chooses." "...For when a man has suffered much and been...

Dear Henry, About an hour from Roanoke, there is an interesting geological feature called Natural Bridge. Let me tell you all about it.  Natural bridge is a 215-foot tall / 90-foot wide limestone feature that spans Cedar creek. There is a lot of science about how this particular feature formed, something about the Beekmantown Group, Chepultepec Formation, and Sauk Sea, which brought the limestone here 450 million years ago. Then, about 500,000 to 1 million years ago,  Cedar Creek eroded a cave through this giant block of limestone. The cave's roof later collapsed, leaving a small portion that formed the natural bridge.  In pre-colonial America, this was the home to the Monacan people but was quickly overcome by settlers after the arrival of English colonials, despite the Treaty of 1677. As a result, many Monacan people ended up leaving the area and moving north. Eventually, the gorge would be claimed by the British Colonial Government and given to the King. Thomas Jeffers...

Dear Henry, Book Two, Homer's Odyssey, of the Bucket List Book Adventure ( read about that here ) is done! Let me tell you all about it. As I mentioned in my note about the Iliad , Homer's Odyssey is one of two remaining works written around 800 BC and about an event that occurred around 1250 BC.  The Odyssey picks up the story of Odysseus ten years after the Trojan War and the events of the Iliad. He still hasn't made it home to Ithaca and is stuck on the island of Ogygia with the goddess Calypso. His wife Penelope and son Telemachus are in Ithica, living in limbo because Odysseus hasn't returned home yet, nor has he been declared dead. Suitors across Greece are camped at Odysseus's house, attempting to woo Penelope while eating and drinking Telemachus out of his inheritance.  Eventually, the gods (except for Poseidon) take pity on both Odysseus and Telemachus and begin to aid the pair. Athena directs Telemachus to travel to Nestor, the King of Pylos, and Menelaus,...

Dear Henry, One of the most amazing things I did during my trip to Washington, DC, for the Hallow Summit ( read about that here ) was to see the Basilica for the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception.   Let me tell you all about it.  The idea of the Basicila of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception began in 1846 when the 6th Provincial Council of  Baltimore petitioned the Blessed Pope Pius IX for an American shrine dedicated to the Blessed Mother. It took nearly 75 years, though, for the first stone to be laid, and it wasn't until 1920 that the land was blessed, and the foundation stone was laid by the Archbishop of Baltimore, James Cardinal Gibbons.   During the 1920s, the architects were Maginnis and Walsh of Boston, assisted by the Catholic University of America, Professor Fredrick V. Murphy. The Charles J. Cassidy and Company was the construction company that finished the lower-level crypt. The first mass in the crypt church was perfor...

Dear Henry, I have always felt a strong call to "pray for the dead," even as a child.  My grandmother was an avid genealogist (I inherited this love from her), and I used to accompany her to various old graveyards, where she transcribed and photographed old headstones. I would spend my time trying to scrape overgrown grass and weeds from the headstones, having developed the strange belief that they couldn't go to heaven if you couldn't read the name on a tombstone. It always made me so sad to see unkept headstones. While I've (somewhat) grown out of the belief that an unmarked grave condemns people to walk the earth as ghosts, the image of Patroclus, in Madeline Miller's book The Song of Achilles ( review here ), wandering the world as a shadow because no one would write his name down made me cry. I was also very sad to see this poor, unkept little cemetery right as I pulled off Interstate 581. One of my first thoughts entering the city of Roanoke for the firs...

Dear Henry, I finished the first book on my bucket list book list, the Iliad! ( Read about the bucket list here ) Let me tell you all about it! Around 3000 BC, a large, wealthy city was built on the coastal plain of the northeast corner of Turkey and across the Agean sea from Greece. It was primarily considered a myth until the amateur archeologist (and millionaire) Heinrich Schliemann discovered a city built on the plain. Mr. Schliemann was not the only amateur archeologist to be looking in the area. Frank Calvert, a British consular official, was also looking for Troy, and the two had often traded notes. However, Heinrich Schliemann's budget was much larger, and he could devote more time and resources to the work of uncovering the city. More surprising than its discovery was its age. Troy was an ancient city before its destruction and was founded at the beginning of the Bronze age. It was destroyed twice, the last presumably by the Myceans, around 1250 BC. The Mycenaeans were a m...