Rome - Ellicott City, MD

July 6, 2019 Peace and Good, I arrived home in Ellicott City this past Monday and I will be in the States until the end of the month (taking one side trip to California for the opening of the year for the new novices). I came from a very, very hot Rome (with the temperature reaching 100 this past week - which is more like August than June) to a hot and humid Baltimore. The week before coming to the States was a good catch up week for me. I have finished all my articles for the Messenger Magazine in Padua til the end of the year. This past week I wrote six new articles for our magazine in Kenya (I have been writing for them for the past few years). I also caught up on daily reflections, so this month I can take it easy. I have finished some reading: The Rise of Humans: Great Scientific Debates by Prof. John Hawks This is a great courses series on the development of hominids upon the earth up to very recent times. Some of the lectures and quite technical and speculative so this is not necessarily a course for everyone. I remember coming in from a walk and telling someone I had just been listening to a lecture on DNA evidence in the mitochondria of Neanderthals. Yet, I learned a lot from this course. John Muir: the Life and Legacy of America’s Most Famous Conservationist by Charles River Editors This is a biography by the Scottish environmentalists who was responsible for much of the conservationist movement in the West of the US, especially leading to the development of Yoshimite National Park. He began his career as a handyman but also wrote beautifully poetic accounts of his observations. The books gained him fame, but also led to the development of a movement to esteem the beauty and at times fragility of nature. The Thugee by Charles River Editors We have the expression, “a thug,” implying a brutal person who does not follow any rules. The thugees were actually a band of highly secretive assassins in India who dedicated their lives to the worship of Kali, an ambiguous goddess who is seen as both creative and destructive. They would ambush their victims and rob and kill them, giving part of the booty to the goddess and keeping a large part of it. The power was only broken by the British army after years of investigation. The Most Famous Battles of the Ancient World: Marathon, Thermopylae, Salamis; Cannae and the Teutenbourg Forest by Charles River Editors This is one of the books by Charles River Editors which is a collection of their other offerings. In this case, it deals with the five battles spoken of in the title. All five of the offerings in this collection were well written. They all speak about the general situation before the battle, of the various combatants, of the battle itself and of the consequences. Day of Infamy by Walter Lord This is an account of the attack on Pearl Harbor. Walter Lord has written a number of this type of books. In this one he tries to examine exactly what happened, giving a large number of eye-witness accounts. It is a bit dated considering what has been discovered in archives in the past few years, but it is still a good read. Wicked Plants: the Weed that killed Lincoln’s Mother and other Botanical Atrocities by Amy Stewart I read the companion volume wicked bugs a while ago. These accounts are very informative with good examples. Sort of makes you want to stay indoor all the time, without any house plants around. It, in a strange way, is entertaining. Have a good week. Shalom fr. Jude