Day Marks

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...

"I know whom I have believed and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed unto Him." Noah Webster inscription from the sculpture behind the Frost Library at Amherst College in Amherst, Massachusetts. (born October 16, 1758; called back April 28, 1843).

The one whose weakness seems so obvious has strengths that will astonish you.

"There's nothing wilder than a life of humble virtue, for it is through selflessness and service that God wrings from our bodies and spirits the most we ever could give, the most we ever could offer, and the most we ever could do."