Letters from the Wall

Hadrian's Wall, ruins of Milecastle 39

A few years ago I came across the site of the Vindolanda Tablets, a huge cache of what we might call postcards written by Roman soldiers and their families who were stationed along Hadrian's Wall in the north of England.  And it's an absolutely fascinating story, this astonishing find of all sorts of everyday communications between Roman citizens in the heyday of the Empire, at a remote outpost on the far frontier. 

Party invite from Claudia Severa to her sister, Lepidina

And yet, as humans always manage somehow to do, they made the most of it.  Here's a link to one of the most charming messages, a note from one officer's wife to her sister, saying in effect, "Do come to my birthday party, it'll be fun."  These are everyday messages, not formal inscriptions or ponderous manuscripts, but scratched out with pen and ink on little thin slips of wood:  nothing meant to be saved for the ages, although by great good luck, they were.

On that same site is a little crib sheet to help you decipher the Roman cursive handwriting - one of their least successful inventions, I might add - and I have to tell you, fellas, it was a real hair-on-end moment when, poring over the letter with the help of the crib and my long-ago high-school Latin, I suddenly realized I was able to actually read it - and in that moment, the veil of antiquity fell away and it seemed the lady herself was right in the room with me, no distance between us.  Sperabo te soror:  "I'll be looking for you, sis."

If your Latin is even rustier than mine and you can't make heads or tails of the letters, here's a very cool BBC video that gives you the whole picture of where and why the wall was built, and who lived there and how they lived - which was pretty comfortably for the times, with running water, central heating, designer shoes, and everything.  Enjoy.

A Mother's Letter

William and Kate were married a year ago today in Westminster Abbey,
a moving and lovely event.  But when will it be our turn?

From the Church Times, a publication of the Church of England, comes this excerpt from a plaintive letter that shows how minds are changing:

As a committed, Bible-believing Chris­tian, I am ashamed and ap­palled by the debate about gay marriage. My views are not those of my son, who is gay and who is now an atheist, but result from some ten years of reading, prayer, dis­cussion, and serious thought.

My son came out at the age of 20, having spent much of his previous ten years knowing that he was not growing up to feel attracted to girls, but to boys. I don’t think he even knew the word “gay” at the be­ginning of this process, but he knew that he was growing up differently.

I am now convinced that homo­sexuality is a developmental condition that is not amenable to change at any psychological level; it is not a matter of choice; and is something that has caused many boys and girls to live in shame and fear from their early teens onwards. I know that my son had no access to other gay people through his adolescence, and that it was only at university that he was able to talk this through with hetero­sexual friends, finally coming to the conclusion that he was gay.

We, the Church, over centuries have perpetrated a great wickedness on these children and developing adults, forcing many to live by deceit, in failed heterosexual marriages, and even in an inability to form rela­tionships because of their own private hell.

At least the gay-rights cam­paigners have had the courage to stand up and work on some sort of social change. It is a pity that the Church did not do this in the first place. . . .

Yes, quite so.


Honk to Wounded Bird.

White House Video: Letters to the President

Over at whitehouse.gov, I found this cool video and thought I'd share it with my truckbuddies.  The President reads ten letters from the public every day.  Every day.  Think about that.