And yet…just when you form an opinion about something, your worldview is turned upside down.  While catching up on sports news I read this post (warning – very grim language) which has a reference to a watch fob (or watch and fob – a pocket watch with a chain).  The article got me thinking – a watch fob is one of those things that is very outdated.  Most people wear wristwatches – how silly to have a whole get-up where you pull something out of your pocket to check the time.  But…we are now, and have been for a while,  in the cell phone era.  And I (a person who never wears a watch and doesn’t even own one, as a point of pride) pull my cell out a dozen times a day or so to check the time.  For me, and I imagine for others with a similar bent, the cell phone has become a watch fob without the chain.  Funny how things come around again…

Below is the picture of the public works guys fixing the water main.  Check out the old trolley tracks that were buried and were, at least for today, once again visible:

When I told him I was Greek Orthodox, Pastor Johnson told me a fascinating story.  Back in the day a black couple (parishioners of Pastor J.)  had gone to a Greek-owned restaurant for a meal.  The proprietor told them that he was sorry but he couldn’t serve them because he would get in trouble with the law.  As the pastor told it, he emphasized that the restauranteur was nice and apologetic – he was not some demented racist – he just didn’t want to get in trouble.  Pastor Johnson went to visit the Greek priest and told him what had happened.  The priest at the time – I think this was the early to mid sixties – told him to tell the couple to return to the restaurant tomorrow at the same time.  They did, and received service with a smile.  And so integration in Charlottesville, it seems, got its start with a heart-to-heart between two good Christian men, Pastor Johnson and his colleague at the Greek church.

There is a bit more to the history here.  While blacks were discriminated against by whites in Charlottesville back in the day, so were Greeks.  Greeks were not allowed to own property and had other limits put on them – perhaps this commonality also played a part in this drama.  God bless the memory of Pastor Johnson.

The resourcefulness Greeks showed in feeding themselves during the war is, like their standing up to Mussolini, a reflection of the ancient Greeks.  The ever-popular domades – stuffed grape leaves – were invented when Alexander’s troops destroyed Thebes.  To make the most of the meager amount of meat they had, they rolled it up with other stuff in grape leaves to make it seem more substantial.  Mezedes have never been the same…

Along with getting to know a new parish comes getting to know a new city.  I have been to Marlborough many times, of course, but it is different now where I am there most every day.  The church is in the heart of the downtown area and I discover something new seemingly every day.  Last night I took a break from hanging out at the Festival of Trees and walked down to the Christmas tree lighting ceremony on the common.  The event was fun and I met a bunch of people, but the highlight for me was seeing John Brown’s bell.  Read the story of it here.  I had no idea about this being in Marlborough!  I was going to joke here that as a Southerner I had thoughts of reclaiming the bell for the homeland but it seems that the bell, like John Brown himself, is a lightning rod of controversy and last year some people indeed tried to take it and bring it to Harper’s Ferry, West Virginia.  In any case, I plan to walk down there another day to read the plaque and take some pictures, but there you go.

The common wisdom is that Arabic, as spread during the onset of Islam, only displaced other Semitic languages but never really dislodged non-Semitic tongues.  Makes sense, but I would argue it never totally displaced the Semitic languages either.  People in Iraq and Morocco do not, for example, speak Central Arabian Arabic.  They largely speak their original language with a thick Arabic veneer.  When Mel Gibson’s The Passion Of The Christ movie came out some years back I went to see it with a group from the seminary, and I was curious if my Levantine school chums would be able to understand the Aramaic spoken in the movie.  Despite the European pronunciation from the characters, they did indeed understand most of what was spoken.  Levantine Arabic is pretty much Aramaic (more properly Assyrian) with a huge influence of Arabic proper.

Using this model it is quite likely that the original Phoenician tongue on Malta has survived and developed through the years and absorbed vocabulary and influences from other languages.  I imagine Paul would have either spoken Aramaic with his Punic interlocutors and eventually come to an understanding, or he would have had a strained, very formal conversation in biblical Hebrew and hopefully both parties would figure it out.

Thy soul shall find itself alone
‘Mid dark thoughts of the grey tomb-stone –
Not one, of all the crowd, to pry
Into thine hour of secrecy:
Be silent in that solitude
Which is not loneliness — for then
The spirits of the dead who stood
In life before thee are again
In death around thee — and their will
Shall then overshadow thee: be still.

For the night — tho’ clear — shall frown –
And the stars shall look not down,
From their high thrones in the Heaven,
With light like Hope to mortals given –
But their red orbs, without beam,
To thy weariness shall seem
As a burning and a fever
Which would cling to thee for ever :

Now are thoughts thou shalt not banish –
Now are visions ne’er to vanish –
From thy spirit shall they pass
No more — like dew-drop from the grass:

The breeze — the breath of God — is still –
And the mist upon the hill
Shadowy — shadowy — yet unbroken,
Is a symbol and a token –
How it hangs upon the trees,
A mystery of mysteries! –