Living the Impossible: November 2008

History is an amazing study. Not only the proven stories amaze, but the rarely heard and little known stories, the mistold and misrepresented stories. Even as a kid I loved the stories of people who lived in the homes, castles, towns that I was touring (or being dragged through by my bedraggled parents). I remember visiting old Etruscan ruins and knowing that the ruts in the road had been there for about a thousand years. The carved names in the old tombs meant people had lived and moved and breathed and died here. And the feeling of walking in the footsteps of people who shaped the world as I encounter it stuck with me.

I always had some romantic notions of far off places and how the old days were so much more magical. How noble to fight the battles (little did i know girls didn't fight), to build towns, to man ships, to discover new lands. How adventurous to encounter new people, to try new foods, learn new patterns for life. What a world!

And how wrong I was. In the first century the life expectancy of someone my age in the Middle East? 30 years. How glad I am to live in a time of antibiotics, drive through coffee joints, and bathing consistently.

A recent trip to the Oriental Institute in Chicago reminded me that history and the present intertwine. The old is entangled with the new. Today is wrapped in yesterday.

We have to keep our eyes open. Even if we just have one.

Took a trip to the northern bits of Michigan with friends. Am amazed to see the beauty and lushness of this part of the world. I thought perhaps all of the beauty had moved south of here. Happy to be proved wrong.

We saw trees. Lots of lovely fall foliage laden trees.