a.d. elliott - Take the Back Roads

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...