Dubuque October 24-November 3

I next traveled to Dubuque, Iowa for a family visit; I had last been in Dubuque a year ago. I took the 6:10 am Burlington Trailways bus from Chicago that arrived in Dubuque at 11:00. On this trip I stayed with my parents in the Luther Manor retirement home.  I slept on the fold-out couch in the living room, which made things a bit crowded, but it was cheaper than a hotel room. I had most meals with the other Luther Manor residents.

One task during my stay was to sort through my stuff that I have stored in my parents’ garage. I managed to reduce the amount by two large cardboard boxes, by donating some books to the public library, throwing some papers away and taking an additional suitcase full of stuff back to Jordan, but there is still a lot of stuff from my years up through grad school that I have no use for, but cannot yet just discard. I also had dental appointments and a physical exam scheduled during my stay.

I went to Luther Seminary a couple of times to do some work on my Humayma reports in the library there.

 

Luther in a Halloween costume

I also started to watch a series of lectures about India, and especially early Buddhism, that were posted on the internet as video podcasts by the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco. Rani Sarma, my colleague in India, sent me the latest draft chapter of her book about early Buddhism in India, which I edited for her.

Sunday October 30 was family reunion day. My sister Linda and her friend Dennis came up from Iowa City and they as well as my brother John and his wife Renee joined Mom and Dad and me for church at St. Peters. Then we went to the restaurant at the Julien Inn downtown. Dad had invited Roger Bentley and his wife Marilyn to join us. Roger is a recently retired teacher and coach at Dubuque Senior High School, although I have no clear memory of him from high school days. Marilyn had worked with Mom on a number of volunteer activities over the years.

 

Roger Bentley, Renee, John, me and Linda on the left, Marilyn Bentley, Mom, Dad and Dennis on the right.

 

The Schick family

On Wednesday afternoon November 2 I traveled to Chicago for a night flight back to Jordan. I decided to take the Burlington Trailways bus to Rockford and then to take the Van Gelder bus from Rockford directly to O’Hare. That worked for my 10:00 pm flight back to Jordan with stopovers in Heathrow and Frankfurt on November 3.

Chicago October 20-23

I traveled to the USA on Thursday October 20 in order to attend the annual Byzantine Studies Conference, held this year in Chicago. The flight left Ben Gurion airport early in the morning and after a few hours layover in Warsaw arrived at O’Hare at 3:45 in the afternoon. Unfortunately there was an hour and a half long line to get through passport control. Thus it took me a while to get to the Art Institute in downtown Chicago, but still in time for the opening reception of the conference. During the days of the conference I stayed in Hyde Park with Yorke Rowan and Morag Kersel, two archaeologist friends of mine who work in Jordan.

I spent the next day, Friday October 21, attending the sessions of the Byzantine Studies Conference held at De Paul University. That evening I attended the conference lecture and reception at the Oriental Institute at the University of Chicago; I otherwise did not spend any time at the University of Chicago on this trip. On Saturday October 22, I attended the conference sessions and gave my presentation on The Archaeology of Early Christianity: the Jordanian Contribution that morning. I attended the conference business lunch and the conference reception at the De Paul University campus that evening. The conference continued through noon on Sunday October 23. The conference was especially useful for meeting people I had not seen for years; I had last attended the Byzantine Studies Conference in 1993.

After the conference ended, I stopped at the De Paul University Art Museum and then, on a beautiful fall day, I walked around to Lincoln Park, where I went to the Nature Museum and the Zoo; I was last at the zoo in 1985.

Butterflies in the Nature Museum

Meerkats at the Lincoln Park Zoo

Jerusalem October 2-19

I spent the first half of October in Jerusalem. My crossing over the Allenby bridge on the morning of Sunday October 2 was routine, but long. In Jerusalem I stayed at the Albright Institute, sharing the Annual Professor’s apartment with another research fellow. The group of current Albright fellows was particularly friendly, and included three researchers from China, part of a new fellowship program for Chinese scholars. One evening we all walked around the Orthodox Jewish neighborhoods to see the preparations for Sukkot. Sy Gitin, the director of the Albright Institute, also held a reception one afternoon for the Albright community.

My reason for coming to Jerusalem was to resume work with Khader Salameh on the catalogue of Arabic inscriptions in the Islamic Museum. With some difficulty, Khader had obtained a permit for me to enter the Masjid al-Aqsa compound freely, which was a help. Khader has now retired as the director of the museum, but continues as director of the library. I spend most days with him in the library working through our draft text of the catalogue.

During these weeks I also worked on my article about the Masjid al-Aqsa compound and did some further work on the Dalman translation project.

On the afternoon of Monday October 17 I went to Bethlehem to visit Iman Saca, who is now on sabbatical from Saint Xavier College in Chicago. I met her at the Palestinian Heritage Center that her mother runs.

Iman, her mother and brother and me with some tapestries in the background at the Palestinian Heritage Center in Bethlehem

Back in Jerusalem that evening, I met Tawfiq Deadle, an archaeologist at Hebrew University, whom I had first met at the American Schools of Oriental Research annual meeting in Atlanta last November.

On October 19 I gave a public lecture at the Swedish Studies Center on Muslim Pilgrims to Jerusalem in the Ottoman Period; in past years I have given other public lectures there. That evening I packed up for my trip to the USA.