The Shephelah is the foothill region of Israel, between the coastal plain and the Judean hills. In ancient times it was the border between the Israelites and the Philistines, so it has a number of sites of archaeological interest.

“Here’s the Shephelah,” says our co-leader, Dr. John DeLancey of Biblical Israel Ministries and Tours. We’re actually at the site of Gezer, an important Old Testament city that changed hands several times and was presented as a wedding gift to King Solomon by the Pharaoh of Egypt.

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Waking up in a hotel on a Mediterranean shore is a great way to start a vacation.

View from the hotel on the morning of the first day of our Israel trip in May, 2018: The Tel Aviv beach and the ancient city of Joppa in the distance.

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The Prairie du Chien Rendezvous is a modern celebration of the historic event that drew Indians, trappers, and traders to the confluence of the Wisconsin River for many years in the late 18th and early 19th century. Every few years it draws me back, this year with my son Drew and granddaughter Eden.

First stop was the Shadewald Mound group on a small hill near Muscoda with a spectacular view of the Wisconsin River Valley.

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The last Saturday in April found me awaiting the start of the annual Crazylegs Run on the capitol square, an 8k route (5 miles).

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A warm sunny day in January is a great day for a walk. So with two colleagues from the office, Sharon and Mimi, we explored the trails of the arboretum. We started out on the Grady tract, the southern most part of the arboretum.

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2017 was a year of surprises, as I wrote in our family update a few weeks ago. The biggest surprise, our move from Monona to Fitchburg. We have been east siders since we moved back to Madison in 1982; that’s 35 years.

The last day of 2017 brought me back to the first neighborhood where we settled 35 years ago, Olbrich Park.

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Don’t usually shop much on Black Friday because I don’t like crowds.

But this year I ventured downtown to a quiet camera shop on the square where I was the first customer of the day, and the only customer for awhile. I bought a new zoom lens for my camera, the lens was on sale.

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Part of being a journalist is having the opportunity to be able to ask anybody, anything. That’s part of the job. But sometimes it’s possible to go beyond that, and actually spend some time with people who are doing amazing things. That’s what happened yesterday.

Brent Seales, who got his PhD at the UW Madison 25 years ago, returned to Madison for a lecture at the 50-year anniversary celebration of the Madison Biblical Archaeology Society. But he also spent some time on campus talking with students and professors, and me. It was a great day.

By way of background, here’s a video that details his research, at the University of Kentucky, where he is professor and chairman of the Computer Science Department. His work involves digitally unrolling scrolls that have been damaged far beyond any possibility of reading their contents.

Brent Seales,  describing the synagogue at Engedi, where a carbonized scroll was found in 1972, which he was able to digitally unroll and read in 2015. Over the noon hour he spoke to an audience of professor and grad students in the Computer Science building on the US campus.

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