Day Marks

 Jimmy was a miracle. James Kevin Hallen was born on April 15, 1962, in Albuquerque, New Mexico, the “Land of Enchantment.” My parents were not expecting another child because they were already dealing with the special needs of my little sister Diana, who was born with health problems. Part of Jimmy’s mission on earth was to help Diana survive (although you couldn’t always tell because he teased her so mercilessly). Diana had to be fed by a tube in her stomach for the first two years of life, and before her reparative surgery the doctor told my mother to start letting Diana taste things; otherwise, she might refuse to eat by mouth after the operation. A letter from my mother records that Jimmy was instrumental in giving Diana an example: “the other day, she tried for the first time to taste a graham cracker on her own. She begged a piece from Cindy and put it in her mouth and licked on it. I’m sure that she got the idea from watching James eat, as she seems fascinated watching him ...

"In different hours, a man represents each of several of his ancestors, as if there were seven or eight of us rolled up in each man’s skin — seven or eight ancestors at least — and they constitute the variety of notes for that new piece of music which his life is." (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

What Happened to Herman Hallen? Herman Hallen was born in 1844 in Spellen, Westfalen, Germany. He was the youngest child of Hermann Hallen and Elisabetha Wink. Hermann and Elisabeth had five other children: Joanna, Theodore, Christina, Godfrey, and Anna. Immigration records show that they all traveled from Spellen to Waterford, Racine, Wisconsin, in 1856. They all show up on the 1860 United States Census. Herman was sixteen years old at the time of the census. The 1860 census is the last record of Herman. In the 1870 census, his name is missing. The names of his parents and siblings appear in the 1870 census. They show up in various church books and civic records thereafter for marriages, christenings, and deaths. The other Hallen relatives have gravestones with dates in the cemeteries of Waterford, Burlington, Lyons, Phillips, or Marinette. Although stoic German parents would refrain from verbal expressions of grief, Herman’s death would certainly ha...

Connelly, Joan Breton. Portrait of a Priestess: Women and Ritual in Ancient Greece. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2007. "Priestesses serving the cult were forbidden to wear fancy dress, anything of the color purple, gold ornaments, or face powder . . . Sanctuary laws thus served to level distinctions among worshippers and to promote an atmosphere of communality in which devotion to the deity came first" (90). "White has long been associated with a state of purity and was the required color for priestly dress at many sanctuaries. It was worn by all incubants and visitors at healing sanctuaries of Asklepios, such as at Pergamon. Indeed, Asklepios was understood to be a divinity who himself always dressed in white. On Delos, those who entered the sanctuary of Zeus Kynthios and Athena Kynthia were required to be 'pure of hand and soul' and to dress in white garments. All persons entering an unnamed sanctuary at Priene were required to wear wh...

This article was a favorite of mine from the anthology Crossing Cultures that we used in teaching English Composition to International Students at the University of Arizona. "Body Ritual among the Nacirema," American Anthropologist 58 (1956): 503-507.

Memorial Service for Mary Ellen Ryder 6 September 2008 * Boise State University Student Union Building Friday, September 5, was a late summer day, with searing sunshine, cool breezes, and pure blue skies. It was a good day for the drive north on I-15 and I-84 from Salt Lake to Boise. There was no hint of the recent tragedy, no sign of the disaster, except for small stretches of scorched land near the freeway in a few places. At a rest stop near Boise, a “Biker Mama” said that she used to live in the Columbia Village where the fire occurred. She said that news reports stated that the fire spread very quickly, that homes just exploded one after another as flames devoured dry brush nearby. After I got settled in a hotel near the Boise State University campus, I took a drive north on Highway 55, winding my vehicle and my thoughts up the beautiful Payette River canyon in the evening light. I wanted to have a sense of Mary Ellen’s landscapes in Idaho, to see some of the places she had...