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.
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.
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.
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.
I like road trips and I like to visit my granddaughters. So deciding how to travel to a staff conference in Orlando was easy, I could drive and visit granddaughter Eden on the way.
Got an early start and made it through Chicago before rush hour. By the time the sun was coming up, I was driving through the windmill fields of northwestern Indiana. (more…)
Before our trip to Japan we were dismayed to read the weather forecasts and to see them filled with cloudy, rainy days. But it wasn’t so bad. Then, when our last day in Izukuni dawned (previous article on this page) bright and sunny, we rejoiced with an early morning excursion around the neighborhood.
Early morning jaunt.
Have already ridden more than 30 times this year, mostly home from work. But today it was time for the first bike excursion of the year, looking for signs of spring from Monona to Waunakee and back. (more…)
Every three years the ministry I work for sponsors a student missions conference to help college students and others discover what God is doing in the world, and how they can be a part of it. For many years the conference was held on the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign campus, and came to be called Urbana.
Urbana is an incredible experience and a little bit overwhelming. It was at Urbana where I first heard the phrase, 36 years ago, “it’s like trying to take a sip from a firehose.” (more…)
Welcome to Horicon Marsh
Living in Wisconsin my entire life still has not been enough time to see all of the amazing features of this beautiful state. Despite having lived in Oshkosh at one time, I have never visited Horicon Marsh, the nation’s largest freshwater cattail marsh and one of the Seven Wonders of Wisconsin (allegedly, I haven’t been able to find the complete list yet).
So last Saturday my friend and colleague Jonathan Rice joined me as we reconnoitered this beautiful natural resource for North American migratory waterfowl. (more…)
Entering the Old City
Today we started INSIDE the Old City of Jerusalem, entering through a gate that was created just west of the Dung Gate, through which you can imagine yourself walking on the first century Roman cardo (the main street of a Roman city). (more…)
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