Mom's Eulogy for Grandma Mary

So far, I haven't had a "guest blogger" on here. But I decided to post Mom's eulogy for Grandma Mary here for anyone who wasn't there Friday. It was a beautiful service and I don't think any daughter-in-law has ever spoken so lovingly about a mother-in-law :).

I love you Grandma Mary!


Eulogy for Mary S. Gregory
Given at Newport News, Virginia
By Sharon G. Gregory
Friday, August 12, 2011


A number of weeks ago, I received a call from Mary, very early one morning. She was very short of breath, and she said she didn’t have much time because she was about to have a rather dangerous procedure on her heart. She went on to say that this was something she had to do, no matter how risky, because she could not live so short of breath. She said, “I’ve called for you to promise to do a couple of things for me.” She said, “If I don’t survive this, I want Aaron to sing at my funeral and I want you to speak.” I said, “O Mary, let’s please don’t talk about this today. Let’s agree that God is greater than 86-year-old arteries.” She said, “I’m not asking you to stop praying for me. I just want to have everything in order, and this is what I want. You will know what to say.” I promised that, someday, I would do what she asked. But I went on to tell her, “You know, Mary, I’ve never believed it’s a good idea to go to these places. You could well have to speak at mine instead.” She followed with, “I would if you asked me to.” I guess we settled it in that moment.

Now I am not oblivious to the fact that many of you are wondering why she would ask me to speak. And that’s a good question. There are many of you who have spent more time with her than I, many of you would be considered to be closer to her than I, you would perhaps be able to speak with far more intimacy of her than I. All of this being said (and true), Mary did not ask me to come to speak of her today. I think it is really far more accurate to say Mary asked me to speak for her today.

There is no question, I could well fill this time with many wonderful things about her. She was a devoted daughter, sister, wife, mother, grandmother, great-grandmother, aunt, and friend. She was always a gentle, soft-spoken, true Southern lady at all times. She could cook a meal for fifty people without turning her kitchen into the Abyss. In this family, she was the true and original Paula Deen, always cooking up something new and delicious with a ka-bazillion calories. I don’t think her house has ever been introduced to dust, and she actually played with her grandchildren when they visited.

In forty years, I only hear one curse word cross her lips. The word was “damn” and it was followed by “cigarettes.” I’m pretty sure that’s how God refers to them too.

She was wonderfully talented and creative and meticulous in all endeavors. I recall Andrew coming back after spending the day with her with his very own Virginia license, complete with picture. She had remastered her old one. I remember hoping she wouldn’t redo it when he turned 16. As I said, she was very talented, a stickler for detail.

She had the heart of a teacher, always happy to share her knowledge and ability with great patience with anyone who asked. She blessed many with her beautiful cakes and crafts and many babies and children born at Riverside with her stuffed animals. There was always a great deal of love and care in whatever she put her hand to. In her work, she strived for excellence and hit the mark every time.

I could go on and on. But if I did, it would not be what she asked me to do. Mary did not ask me to speak today to exalt her in any way. She asked me to speak today to lift and exalt her Savior, Jesus Christ.

Seven years ago, this June, I lost my mother. Her death was unexpected: a seemingly perfectly healthy person falling over dead right before your eyes. We went out for Chinese and to look at a car. Instead, I came home without her forever, with her car, her purse, and a paper bag with clothes that had been cut from her body. I remember so well driving back across the bridge that night and saying to her, “O God, Mother, what have you done? What the hell were you thinking? You have died and—O God—I can’t fix this.” That was an incredible understatement. That night began a journey for me that I would never have believed. As I told Wayne the night Mary passed, “This won’t kill you. But, for a time, you will wish it would.” In serious times of trouble, a person can only choose to go two ways. She can run to God, or run from him. I will always thank God that, for once in my hard-headed life, I chose correctly.

I had always believed in God, and I confessed Christ as my Savior from a young age. By this time, I was a regular church-goer, no longer a Chr-Easter (an “Easter and Christmas” Christian). I was rather active in the Church, and in looking back, I realize I was doing so because I knew it was the right thing to do, but not because of the right reason: love and devotion to a Savior who loved me so very much.

Over the course of the next two years, I began a journey that would allow my God to show me who he truly is and what kind of relationship he wants to have with all his children. It was as if he moved into my house, in an almost physical sense, for literally two years. In that time, he revealed to me things about him I could never have imagined. And he also revealed to me things about myself which were beyond heartbreaking, but always followed by love and comfort so undeserved. At times I felt like George Burns, in the role of God, had moved into my house. He was so real. He was loving and kind and comforting, but painfully truthful, honest, and uncompromising in his leadings. At the same time, my cousin Muncie, who is an absolutely awesome Bible teacher, came to work for me at my daycare. Not by chance, for sure, but certainly by design. Muncie was the first to tell me of John 1:1-5, and 10-14.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him, all things were made. Without him, nothing was made that has been made. In him was life and that life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it…

He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, children born not of natural descent nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God. The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.

Jesus Christ is the Word, so when we pick up our Bibles, we pick up Christ. As described in this Scripture, if we are not in our Bibles, it is like living in your house without turning on the lights, trying to muddle through living by what you think you can see. The Bible is our guide for good living, given to us by God, not as a taskmaster, but as a loving Father who wants his children to know how to negotiate the potholes on this road known as life in a fallen world.

In the Word is the knowledge of all things Christ accomplished on the cross for us: salvation and eternal life, for certain, but O so much more for the here and now.

God tells us, in Hosea 4:6, “My people are destroyed from lack of knowledge.” Hebrews 11:6 tells us that, “without faith, it is impossible to please God.” Hebrews 11:1 tells us that “faith is being sure of what we hope for, and certain of what we do not see.” It is totally impossible to be in fear and in faith at the same time. They cannot coexist on any level.

Romans 10:17 tells us how we acquire faith. Paul says, “So faith comes from what is heard, and what is heard comes through the word of Christ.” Mary and I spent these last years speaking of all these truths. She was like a sponge when we would talk about it. When she was recovering from her knee surgery, I had what has become a most precious blessing of spending two evenings with her, when we talked until way past midnight about God and life and death and so many things. She said that night, “I just love when you come and talk to me about these things. They mean so much to me. They make me feel so close to the Lord.” She blessed me equally as much by her enthusiasm and her encouragement, never rejecting and skeptical, but always welcoming and validating.

The last time Mary and I spoke, I said, “You’re down in the dumps, aren’t you?” She said, “Yes, I am.” I said, “It’s because you aren’t going home, isn’t it?” She replied, “It is.” She went on to say, “If I cannot fully recover, I want you to let me go.” I told her I would. It took right up until her death for my heart to truly come into agreement. In spite of all I have lived and learned, letting go is another frontier yet to be conquered. Many hours before Mary passed away, she began to make the motion of writing across her chest, as if writing a letter. She seemed to write several pages, followed by putting her hands in a praying position under her chin. We asked if she was writing, and she confirmed that she was. We were fairly certain she was writing to God. She just stayed at that task for hours and hours. Her nurse, Shannon, said Mary had spent the entire night writing as well.

As I began to prepare for today, God revealed to me, through his word, that Mary was not writing her thoughts, but rather taking dictation from the Great Comforter. She was covering her heart with the promises of God. No wonder it was so very long. 2 Corinthians 1:18-22 says,

For no matter how many promises God has made, they are “Yes” in Christ. And so through him, the “Amen” is spoken by us to the glory of God. Now it is God who makes both us and you stand firm in Christ. He anointed us, set his seal of ownership on us and put his Spirit into our hearts as a deposit guaranteeing what is to come.

2 Corinthians 3:1-6 says,

Are we beginning to commend ourselves again? Or do we need, like some people, letters of recommendation to you or from you? You yourselves are our letter, written on our hearts, to be known and read by everybody; you show that you are a letter from Christ, the result of our ministry, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts.  

Such confidence as this is ours through Christ before God. Not that we are competent in ourselves, but our confidence comes from God. He has made us competent as ministers of a new covenant, not of the letter but of the spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.

and verse 12 of the same chapter again, “Therefore, since we have such a hope, we are very bold.” And verses 17 and 18,

Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord’s glory are being transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.

Proverbs 7 says, “Guard my teachings as the apple of your eye. Bind them on your fingers; write them on the tablet of your heart.” This describes beautifully what Mary was doing.

Matthew 24:35 says, “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away.” Isaiah 41:10 tells us, “So do not fear, for I am with you. Do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you. I will uphold you with my righteous hand.” 1 Corinthians 2:9: “No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him. But God has revealed it to us by his Spirit.” Mary went to meet God without any apparent fear whatsoever, with boldness and confidence, totally outside the normal realm of being human.

Psalm 23 does say, “Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me. Your rod and staff, they comfort me.” Mary allowed God to cover her with his promises, and then walked boldly into her new life and future. It was a peace that did pass all understanding. I feel honored to have been there.

Mary’s last words, or more properly her last songs, were “A man and woman will never part as long as they have a happy heart. The Lord loves my heart. H-E-A-R-T! Amen and amen!”

It is with your mother’s great love for all of you that I bring to you her final hope (and yes, prayer) for you, her children. It was her heart’s desire for each of you to begin to serve the Lord. She knew you were all believers. That was not a concern. But she wants more, much more, for each of you. A mother dreads to approach her children with these desires for fear of rejection. However, she knew I would have no such fear. This is the real reason she chose me to speak today. Your mother wants her death to create in you the burning desire to run into the arms of God, to fall passionately in love with him, and all he has provided on your behalf. This is what she has fervently prayed for these past few years. There is no greater loving request any mother could leave her children than this: she wants you to have God’s best, fully covered in the same precious promises he covered her with in her final hours, one of which, I’m certain, was Isaiah 54:13: “All your sons will be taught by the Lord, and great will be your children’s peace.” And perhaps Isaiah 59:21:

‘As for me, this is my covenant with them,’ says the Lord. ‘My Spirit, who is on you, and my words that I have put in your mouth will not depart from your mouth or from the mouths of your children or from the mouths of their descendants from this time on and forever,’ says the Lord.

Or perhaps Isaiah 44:3 and 4: “I will pour out my Spirit on your offspring, and my blessing on your descendants. They will spring up like grass in a meadow, like poplar trees by flowing streams.”

In speaking on Mary’s behalf, I have told you everything God gave me to say, and everything she shared with me as well. I give you this with my love, and I hope you will receive it in that way. I would just add, in closing, your mother found each of you perfect in every way. Her prayer was not to change you, but to leave you the greatest inheritance you will ever know. The last time we spoke, she said, “I’ve always loved you, Sharon.” I replied, “I wish I had been more loveable.” I would like to say the same to you, my brothers and sisters. May God greatly bless and comfort you.

God shows up in an ordinary chore...

I don't know whether green is my favorite color because it is the color of Ordinary Time or Ordinary Time is my favorite season because its color is green.  In fact, I'm not even sure when green became my favorite color.  I feel like it was before I came to William & Mary, but I can't be sure exactly when.  Regardless, since we're in Ordinary Time now and my years as a W&M student and a Wesley House resident have come to a close, it seems especially appropriate to reflect on a few things.

I will continue to serve on the Wesley Board of Directors, and I look forward to that continued relationship with the organization.  But I moved out of the Wesley House for the last time on June 30, 2011.  I lived there for four school years: sophomore, junior, senior, and my M.A. year.  I had a single room for the first three years and a double for the fourth.  Living there was one of the most special experiences of my life.  Residents met as a group with the campus minister for theological discussion once a week, acted as a welcome party to Wesleyites and anyone else who came in the door, and did weekly chores.  The chores, particularly my last chore before moving out, led me to write this reflection.

Every resident has his favorite (or most tolerable) chore.  Lock-up is probably the universal first choice.  This chore entails locking the doors every night, putting the recycling out on Tuesday night, and putting the trash out on Thursday night.  On Monday night, when everyone else is scrambling and scrubbing, the lock-up person just locks the doors and has the rest of the night free to do work (or not, as the case may be).  The living room chore involves vacuuming the living room, the hallways, the stairs, and the campus minister's office.  You also have to dust some furniture and give the fireplace floor a light scrubbing.  The kitchen chore is just that: cleaning the kitchen (floor, counters, sinks, etc.) and also sweeping the back deck.  The basement chore was just as straightforward: vacuum and dust in the basement.  The bathroom chore only involved the public bathrooms (in the Fellowship Hall and in the hallway by the campus minister's office), cleaning the floors, sinks, and toilets.  Finally there was the fellowship hall chore.  This involved vacuuming or sweeping the floor, mopping the floor with a bit of water, and wiping the tables down.

I saved the fellowship hall for last on my list because it was my least favorite.  The basement was as big an area as the fellowship hall, but at least you were done after you vacuumed.  With the fellowship hall, finishing vacuuming meant you weren't even half-done!  Bathrooms and kitchen involved a lot of individual tasks, but at least they were compressed spatially.  The fellowship hall chore was a lot of tasks spread over a lot of space.

Now, Wesley House residents recognize that these chores are a small bother compared to what many people go through.  There are plenty of people in this world who wish water were such a mediocre commodity that they could slosh some all over their floor with a mop, and that such work was the most difficult of their week. At our best, this thought makes us a little sheepish at the griping we share about our chores or the little effort we sometimes put into them.  But still, in my microcosmic universe as a Wesley House resident, I dreaded cleaning the fellowship hall.  I would actually trade chores to avoid it.

When I prepared to do my last-ever chore before moving out of Wesley for the last time, I wondered what it would be.  Murphy's Law, I thought, would surely have me mopping that fellowship hall.  It wouldn't have been unbearable.  Finishing my resident years with the fellowship hall chore actually would have had some symmetry to it.  That was the room in which I had experienced so many amazing worship services, programs, meals, and of course the Holy Eucharist celebrated every week.  My most poignant "God moments" had happened in that room (sometimes even when a mop was involved).  Spending my last moments as a Wesley House resident cleaning this space would have seemed an appropriate conclusion.  But God had other plans.  I had to clean the living room, office, hallways, and stairs.  Not my favorite chore, but far from my least favorite.  How anti-climactic, I thought.

My chief memories of these spaces were not memories of spiritual ecstasy, nor were they memories of humbling defeats.  They were general, everyday moments, like resting on a couch, poking my head into the office to say "Hey!" to David or Max, or walking up the stairs every day for four years just to go to my room.  Rather mundane memories came to me.  I wanted something a little more momentous to mark my exit from the Wesley House.  I almost wanted to clean the fellowship hall.  But our God is bigger than my conception of "momentous."

As memories of the mundane flooded my soul, I realized how precious these memories were.  The living room was where we played Wii Golf, ate Domino's pizza, watched Real Genius, and even studied on occasion.  It was where we met in the mornings before going to the Rec to play basketball, in the evenings before going to the Sunken Garden to play frisbee, and on Sundays before going to church.  In short, it was a gateway to most of the amazing experiences which made up my years at Wesley.

The office was a warm place to study in the cold months (we never knew why that room got so much warmer than the rest of the house).  In that room, surrounded by theological and pastoral classics, I passed several evenings with my laptop, paper notes, and a diet coke (and, sometimes, a box of wheat thins).  On days when David was there or Max was there, I could never "just poke my head in," a conversation would ensue without fail, sometimes without end :).  But I always left that office blessed by my time in it.

The hallways and stairways were everyday passages to my room.  My mom always called the stairs "Methodist stairs" because they were really small and really steep like the ones you find in old churches.  But after a few years, I could run up and down them with a full laundry basket on my hands and my eyes closed.  The back stairway, leading up to the double I shared with Ben this past year, was a little safer, but still had its quirks.  While the other stairs were carpeted, the back stairs were finished wood, so they had mats bolted to them to make them less slippery.  The fourth stair had a terrible creak and the second-to-last one's mat was loose and, if you weren't careful, you might pull it up and trip as you ran up the steps.  I couldn't tell you how many times I ran up and down each of those staircases, but it was at least hundreds.  Hardly memorable stuff-- in fact, I walked those hallways and stairs on autopilot so many times, it's hard to call up an actual memory of walking up the stairs or through the hallways.  These spaces of everyday blessing were where I spent my final moments as a Wesley House resident.

It didn't take too long for the significance to hit this calendar-conscious Christian, but I insisted on waiting until my thesis was finished to write this reflection.  It's Ordinary Time, the longest season of the Church calendar.  The term "Ordinary" in "Ordinary Time" refers not to the fact that it's an unexciting time, but to the fact that the weeks are "ordered" or numbered (think "ordinal numbers").  But our usual association of the word with the everyday or the mundane has a truth about it as well.  It's not a time of deep reflection or fasting like Advent or Lent.  It's not a season of unbridled joy like Christmas or Easter.  The paraments in our churches aren't black or deep purple, but they're not bright white and gold either.  They're green.  This is a picture of our lives.  The majority of our times are not mournful, not joyful, but ordinary.

Ordinary Time falls in two chunks.  The shorter chunk falls between Epiphany and the beginning of Lent.  This shows us that, even within the bounds of Christ's earthly life, there was a significant chunk of Ordinary Time.  From the time of his revelation to the Magi to the 40-day fast and his journey to the Cross, the in-between years were not exclusively ones of joy or sorrow, though they certainly included some of both.  They were, by and large, ordinary times.  Times of growth and learning, times of work, times of the everyday.

The larger chunk falls between Pentecost and Christ the King, the day we celebrate our anticipation of the Second Coming.  This shows us that our entire lives (so far) are encompassed in this season.  The Holy Spirit has come, and we have work to do, but we also wait anxiously for Christ to come again.  We commemorate Christ's suffering and his Resurrection every week, but the majority of our days are ordinary days.  The majority of our times are ordinary times.

An ordinary living room, an ordinary office, ordinary stairs and hallways, ordinary chores reminded me that we live in a cosmic Ordinary Time.  But if it's one thing the Church teaches, it is that there is a holiness in the ordinary.  Ordinary bread and ordinary wine become the very presence and body and blood of Christ.  Ordinary water, composed partially of hydrogen, the commonest and most ordinary element in the universe, becomes a vehicle of saving grace in Baptism.  We have moments of inexpressible ecstasy.  We have times of unspeakable sorrow.  But together these form a small portion of our time here.  The better part of our time here (both in quantity and, I would argue, in quality) is Ordinary Time, the seasons when God shows us what he can do with people, spaces, things, and actions we have written off as "ordinary."  That is the message of the season of Ordinary Time.

As I took my leave of Wesley, I didn't have the coveted lock-up chore, which would have been a source of some joy.  I didn't have my least favorite chore, the fellowship hall, which would have been less than enjoyable.  At least in the fellowship hall, God had been so easy to find.  But I spent my last hour as a house resident cleaning the living room, office, hallways, and stairs: ordinary spaces where I spent ordinary times.  And as I vacuumed, I saw how present God had been even in those times and spaces.

If you're looking for a constant stream of limitless joy, Ordinary Time is not the time nor Earth the place to find it.  If you're a sadist and are looking for endless sorrow and suffering, the same holds true.  Most of our lives are spent in ordinary places and ordinary times, somewhere between the two extremes.  And in those seasons, perhaps especially in those seasons, God is with us.  I tend to think of God most in times of joy or sorrow, more often the latter, you know, when I actually feel like I need him.  But cleaning such ordinary spaces in my last moments as a resident at this extraordinary place reminded me how extraordinary the ordinary can be.  We need only to stop and recognize that God himself lived through years and years of ordinary time.  He knows that the mundane and the commonplace dominate our lives.  He knows that those are the times when we will be least inclined to think of him.  He knows that those are the times in which he must reach deep to remind us of his loving presence.  And he does just that.  He had me clean a living room and reminded me of the fellowship, the laughter, the holy conferencing that happened on those couches.  And I knew without a doubt that he was always there, even in the times when I was hardly thinking of him at all.  Thanks be to God!

Thank you, Father, for the years you allowed me to spend in this incredible place.  Thank you for the blessing of your presence and your smile, in times of joy, times of sorrow, and in the vast Ordinary Time.  Thank you for the blessing of years with housemates who love to laugh, watch movies, eat pizza, and more importantly, love each other.  Bless all those who call this wonderful, ordinary, extraordinary place "home."  Let them see you in their seasons of joy (when they have lock-up), in their seasons of sorrow (when they have the fellowship hall chore), and in the ordinary times (when they have the living room chore).  Let them know that you are with them always, and that a great cloud of saints, witnesses, and past house residents is surrounding them with love and prayer.


In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.  Amen.

Groups and Identities

Good evening!

So I haven't really blogged since getting back from Pamplona, and I don't plan to do so regularly until the thesis is done and I'm just focusing on my teaching job.  My thesis is moving ever closer to being off my back, and I've decided to take a little break this evening before possibly doing some more work.  Right now, the thesis seems to be coming into focus as a study of the mutual exclusivity of certain identities in early modern Spain (especially Navarre, where most of my primary source material is from), and how this characterization is much more nuanced and complicated than the pat explanation of certain groups and identities being considered inherently vile by everyone (including people who belong to those groups) or the more recent suggestion of Ruth McKay that occupation-based exclusion was just a figment of 18th-century illustrados' imagination.

SO, still keeping the general direction of my thesis in focus as I take this break, I've decided to create a list.  If I don't do this soon, this information may be completely lost forever!  You see, when I first joined Facebook WAYYYYY back in the spring of 2006 (yes, over half a decade ago), there were these things called "groups."  Now, groups still abound on Facebook, but they're in a totally new format.  Something about "pages" or whatever.  Anyway, Facebook is in the process of archiving/deleting all the groups of the old format.  Once they do this, I don't know if I'll be able to see what group memberships I've accumulated, especially in those early years.

I'm not sure if I would still identify with all of these groups, but they seemed like good ideas at the time.  For now, I'm not going to include any explanation for any of them.  The attraction to some of them, after all, was the sheer wittiness of their group names.

Here are the identities, groups, and causes I've accumulated on Facebook since the spring of 2006, in alphabetical order:

8th Graders need to back off 9th grade guys especially other peoples BF's
757
Abortion is a Complicated Issue
a little math for you: House > Grey's Anatomy...
American Legion Boys Nation 2005 Alumni
American Legion Boys State Alumni (Global)
Angelina Can Wreck My Home
Anti-Popped Collar Club
Anyone That Says They Hate Virginia Obviously Never lived in Hampton Roads!
Audition for the W&M Choir!
Audition for the WM Choir!!
Automatic Doors Make Me Feel Like a Jedi
Beauty, Intelligence, & Personality.. yes, I am a Boys/Girls Nation Alumni!
Because I'm over the age of 6, I know the difference between your & you're
Bill Clinton Is Still My President
Botetourt Is Hot!
Bring back Habeas Corpus
Brunettes are Sexier
Burst Into Songsters
Cancel Class Tomorrow
Choir
Christian Apologetics
Christian Democrats
Christian Groups on Campus United
Churches for Middle East Peace
Club For the appreciation of Dostoyevsky
Colbert Nation
Concerned Students for the Advancement of Relevant Class Discussion (WM Chapter)
Defenders of Grammar and Spelling
Dog People
Don't Tickle Me Or I'll Kill You
F.A.T. - Friends Against Thomas
Facebook Members In Support of the Kyoto Protocol in the United States
FoMNiE - Fans of Music Not in English
For Every 1,000 that join this group I will donate $1 for Darfur.
Free Rice to end world hunger
Friends of Teach For America at William and Mary
Good Grammar Is Hot
Good News
Google Enthusiasts
Grammar Nazis
Great Minds were born in 1988!!!!
Harry Potter and the Bad Pickup Lines
History Honors Society
HOKAY, so here's the Earth!
House, Md
I'm Saving Myself For Wild, Passionate, Awkward Honeymoon Sex
I'M taking the hobbits to Isengard and I'm bringing facebook with me.
I assume you suck when your facebook status is grammatically incorrect.
I bet I can get 100,000 Virginians against the VA healthcare law suit
I bet we can find 1,000,000+ people who DO approve of the Health Care Bill.
I Hyperventilate When Katie Midland Is around
I live at a Wesley Foundation
I Need My Daily (Brian K.) Bailey.
I shouldn't have to walk through a haze of smoke to get into Swem!
Isle of Wight Academy Chargers
IWA cast and crew of You're A Good Man, Charlie Brown
IWA Posse... missed more than they will ever know!
IWA Scholastic Bowl - A Dynasty
I was there when Maite Cubilette destroyed a little piece of us all
I Went To a Small Little Private School
I Went To Private School....and therefore I am Better Than You.
JACKSON - Boys State of Virginia Best City 2005
Join this group if you've sung Renaissance polyphony with somebody in it...
Kaplan Krazies: Official Supporters of Tribe Men's Basketball
Leslie IS a Big Deal
Let us have had dared to translate a Pluperfect Semi-Deponent Subjunctive
Live from New York...it's Saturday Night
Man Law
Men
MIGHTY MORPHIN POWER RANGERS!
My Church Preaches Social Justice
New United Methodist Hymnal
Non-Humanities Majors Lack an Informed and Nuanced Outlook on Life [WM Chapter]
oh my gosh, I totally just realized I'm the best!
oh thank heaven for the 757
Old School Nickelodeon (W&M Chapter)
One Accord Members and Fans
Overheard at William and Mary
Palpatine Vader 2008
Paper Can Not Beat Anything!!!!
People Who Use Handicapped Door Switches Daily
Peta (People Eating Tasty Animals)
Pick up a copy of The Virginia Informer today!  THEN BURN IT.
Pierce for State Representative-District 20
Pro-Choice, Anti-Abortion
Professor Beach Rocks My Socks
Proud to be called Liberal
Red State Refugees
Renew Gene Nichol's Presidency
Sleep... it's the new sex
Smithfieldians Fo Life.. YO
Snakes on a Facebook
Spike was SO clutch in the Land Before Time (the original)
Spotswood 06-07
Spotswood 3rd Lower 2006-2007
Students for the Preservation of the Oxford Comma
Support Stem Cell Research
SUPPORT THE PETITION
The Class of 2010
THE LORD ON HIS WAY BACK TO GET ME
The West Wing
The William & Mary Tribe's Woolly Mammoth
Treats vs. Nutes: A Clash as Old as Time
Tribe Basketball is good this year
Two Feathers
Vote NO on VA's "marriage amendment" Nov. 7th
Vote Rojas-Ruzic for SA President and Vice-President
Vote Stephanie McGuire for Class of 2012 VPSA
W&M Commencement 2010
W. Taylor Reveley, III
Want More?  Get More!.Scott Morris for SA Senate
We are ridiculously Methodist!
Wesley Basketball
Wesley Foundation
Wesley New Triathlon
Wesley Sports
When I was your age, Pluto was a planet.
When I was your age, the first African American President was elected.
When I was your age we double spaced after periods.
William & Mary IS Hogwarts, and MY dorm is Gryffindor Tower
William & Mary Supports Haiti
William and Mary says "No" to Ken Cucinelli's Discriminatory Letter
Without William and Mary, UVA wouldn't exist
WM Remembers Virginia Tech
Wonderful World of Disney
woooah, free laundry?
Worship & Song
You're killing me Smalls!!
You Are Not Married

I would like to point out that I am more than the sum of my various identities, and not all those identities are represented in my group memberships haha.  Maybe during my next break, I'll go back through those groups and get their front-page pictures.  Some of them are awesome =D.

Till then, good night!
-A

At EWR

I've made it back to the U.S.!  As usual, Newark was an awesome customs experience-- all of 20 minutes or so to get through and the only reason it took another 20 to get here was I had to change terminals.  I'm at my gate with about 45 minutes to spare before my flight to Richmond starts boarding.

I was going to take a rental car from Richmond to Williamsburg.  I've known the Williamsburg Enterprise Rent-A-Car branch to return cars to the Richmond airport, so I assumed a one-way rental would work.  Upon calling them late last night, I found out that one-way rentals have to be done with a major credit card.  No debit cards and no cash.

Okay I've actually loved Enterprise to death for a while, but this is the second time some ridiculous payment issue has kept me from using them.  Last time was when I wanted to use those Visa/AmEx (can't remember which it was) debit cards, accepted "everywhere Visa/AmEx are accepted," EXCEPT everywhere I would like to use them, apparently.  I couldn't use them at Enterprise, and I couldn't use them to buy a money order (which I could have used at Enterprise).  Anyway, I understand that they want to cover all their bases when someone's doing a one-way rental, but seriously.  When the online chat person can call up my last reservation just from having my first and last name, I feel like I'm a regular enough customer that I'm allowed to be P.O.'d about this kind of crap.

Anyway, the train will provide me with good one-way transportation, and Amtrak DOES consider a debit card (or cash, if I wanted to use cash) an acceptable form of payment.  In their defense, most other rental car companies have similar policies, and one of them would have cost three times as much as Enterprise would have, so I guess Enterprise is still the best.  But still, kinda annoyed at them at the moment.

The important thing is that I have been re-patriated, and I've made it to my gate in plenty of time for my connection.  I doubt I'll make another blog post at Richmond-- I'll need to get in a cab and head for the train station pretty soon after I get my bags.  My next post, I hope, will be from the comfort of my room at the Wesley House.

Thanks again for reading; it's been an absolute blast!
-A

The Last Night

I don't feel like I've been here very long, and I guess in the grand scheme of things a week isn't that long.  But I do feel like I've gotten a good amount of work done, I got to see dear friends I hadn't seen in a year, and as is the standard of success of a trip for me, I'm coming home with more books than I left with.

I bought two volumes of Don José Luis's catalogue today before I left the ADP.  We got one of the other people working in the archive, Maria Rosario, to take some pictures of us:

Me with Don José Luis sitting in his office.

Me with Don José Luis in the Archive.

After leaving the ADP, I met Peio and Maripat for café and a croissant at "El Coloniale," a nice little place on the Calle Estafeta near the Plaza del Castillo.  Mari had heard from Peio about my adventure to San Sebastian on Wednesday, and I told her more about it.  I was sorry to report that I hadn't had time to go down to sea the ocean while I was there (the return bus to Pamplona was leaving in 15 minutes!), but I can see the Atlantic anytime =D.

After café, I realized I hadn't gotten pictures of the AGN like I wanted to, so I went back to snap some real quick before heading for the train station.

With books in the auxiliary library in the Research Room at the AGN-- faculty directory picture maybe???

Second try for a picture with Peio-- he was adjusting his glasses in the first.

So my investigaciones complete (or rather, the time I had for investigaciones having more or less expired), I set out for the hotel.  I stopped on the way to pick up a few souvenirs, got back to the hotel, called a cab, and headed for the Renfe station.  In the little restaurant there, an episode of Fresh Prince of Bel-Air was on (in Spanish, of course).  It's always interesting to see how they do voices in the dubs.  For instance, in episodes of The Simpsons, I feel like everyone has almost the exact same type of voice as they do in English-- it's almost like the English voice actors are doing the dubbing in Spanish.  Not so with Fresh Prince; that voice sounded NOTHING like Will Smith =D.  iCarly (kind of embarrassed to say I saw a couple of episodes the other night) was similar.  Spencer (or Espencer, as he's called in Spanish) sounded like a fifty-year-old man.

Anyway, my critique of Spanish dubbing of American TV shows being finished, I got on the train, and after we made a stop in Tudela, the movie came on: Salt in Spanish.  I think I got most of it.  I understood more than I did watching The Rebound (La Segunda Vez in Spanish) on the way to Pamplona from Madrid.

Arrived at Atocha, got a cab, and headed to the Lisboa, where I rested for a while before meeting Lu Ann downstairs.  We stepped across the street for a light dinner and I told her about my adventures.  She doesn't have Internet at her hotel in Madrid, so she hasn't seen the blog in a few days.  The last she had heard, I was planning a trip to Barásoain.  Well I told her about my visit to San Sebastian, and she also painted it positively, reminding me that it was a really pretty ride.  I told her about a lot of the stuff I found-- I think I talked a lot, not unlike what I do in this blog-- and she thinks I'll be in good shape for my colloquium/defense in two weeks.

It's been awesome, and even if I don't have a reading public of thousands of readers, it's been great to spew my thoughts at the end of each day.  I hope you readers have enjoyed reading about this trip as much as I've enjoyed being on it.  Chunks of this blog will probably be revised and included in my thesis, so if you've found this interesting, maybe I'm getting closer to having a good answer to the "So what?" question of my thesis =D.

I'll post again tomorrow when I get to Newark-- I paid for a month of Internet at the airport, so I should still be good to use it.  Only a cab, two planes, another cab, and a train stand between me and Williamsburg.  And I was reminded tonight that I'll need to get right back to work as soon as I get back-- my group is producing discussion questions for our "Africans in the Atlantic World" class, and it will be extremely helpful for me to do the reading before producing a discussion question =D.

Thanks again for reading!

¡Vuelvo a los Estados Unidos mañana!  ¡Hasta luego, España!

-A

Back to Madrid!

I've arrived safely back in Madrid and am in my room at the Hostal Lisboa.  Meeting Lu Ann downstairs later!

I'll blog about today in full tonight =D.

¡Hasta luego!
-A

La noche final

I finally found out why the Internet at the Maisonnave has seemed so weird sometimes.  They cut it off at 2AM!  Unfortunately, I wasn't done with yesterday's blog when that hour came, so here it is =D.

What a day!  I didn't travel 160 kilometers today, but I feel like today's work has made up for the three lost hours yesterday =D.

I called Peio last night before heading out for dinner.  We arranged to meet this morning at 9 to talk about the English-language WIKI web site I made-- basically an English translation of the information on the AGN's web site.  Other than an e-mail address change, he thought it looked awesome.  Apparently none of my translations were so far off the mark that they required a correction.  It was a pretty awesome affirmation.

At the end of our meeting, Peio gave me a copy of his latest book.

La Guerra de Navarra, 1512-1529: Crónica de la conquista espanola highlights the conquest and absorption of the Kingdom of Navarre (whose capital is Pamplona) into the Crown of Castile (the central kingdom which united with Aragón, Andalucía, Catalonia, and the other areas of the peninsula to form what we know as Spain.  Peio said he thought the cover looked like a "beach book," despite it being a pretty serious (and politically charged) work of history.  I assured him that I thought the cover was very emotional, as is appropriate for the topic.  The cover art is a part of Manuel Picolo López's 19th-century painting La Batalla de Villalar, which was actually a battle in the Revolt of the Comuneros, but it conveys the same idea.  I told him I thought the painting looked like Velásquez;s The Surrender of Breda except with conquerors who were much less gracious.  Thinking back, maybe that was like saying "It's just like American Gothic except without the farmer and his daughter."  Here's the Velásquez masterpiece:

In the center on the right, you have Ambrosio Spinola.  Spinola was an Italian general in charge of the Spanish army who conquered Breda, an important fortified town in the southern Netherlands, after an 11-month siege.  Spinola is graciously receiving the key to the city from Justin Nassau, the Dutch commander.  While Velásquez definitely painted this to make Spinola look good, the terms of surrender at Breda are still regarded as extremely kind to the defeated Dutch.  Spinola forbade the Spanish soldiers from mistreating or even jeering at the Dutch, and supposedly, he saluted Nassau as he received the key.

This painting is at the Prado, which I visited last Saturday; it's featured prominently on the first floor, opposite Las Meninas, another Velásquez masterpiece.  Anyway, my point was: look at La Rendición de Breda, and then look at the painting on the cover of Peio's book.  My first thought was, "I can tell who the defeated were in this painting."

But back to the book, and then back to my day.  The book was first published last May, and it's already in its second edition. Apparently, it has been very well-received.  I couldn't tell Peio enough how grateful I was to have a copy.

At the ADP, I worked on a few other trials.  One was a pending trial that was quite short, and I got everything I needed from it (there wasn't much-- but the AGN will be able to fill in some of the holes).  The trial involved Andres de Echeverria, a clockmaker who seemed to have trouble getting people to pay him for his work.  In the 1660s, the town of Echarri-Aranaz refused to pay him for a clock, citing the low quality of the workmanship.  The same town refused to pay him for various silver works he made for them in the late 1670s.  Finally, the town of Piedramillera paid for some silver repairs (for the large cross and several chalices), only after being admonished to do so by the court.  He sued Piedramillera in 1682 for not paying him for a clock.  He brought that suit in the ecclesiastic court, and the case hadn't even reached the witness testimony stage when it suddenly terminates.  But the full trial involving the silver works is at the AGN.  Since the disputes overlap in their timeframe, there might be information about the clock in the AGN trial.  I'm going to peruse it tomorrow morning.

I also was able to learn about all these Latin phrases that keep showing up in seemingly unrelated trials.  It turns out that Spain still considered itself bound, in various ways, by Roman law, including the law "si convenerit de jurisdicione omnium judicum" ("the jurisdiction of all judges").  It seemed like, in almost all my trials, the parties renounce this law ("the jurisdiction of all judges").  I was just translating the phrase, not knowing it was an actual Roman law.  It also seemed weird to me that it's like this law was written just so it could be renounced in so many cases.

It turns out that, according to the Justinian Code, no judge has the power to rule in a case outside his jurisdiction.  Sounds reasonable enough.  But, for instance, if a clockmaker from Estella signed a contract with the town of Echarri-Aranaz, and the town refused to pay, a judge in Echarri-Aranaz would have no power to adjudicate the case, because the clockmaker was from the jurisdiction of Estella.  This basically meant that no judge ever had any power to make a ruling, since so many cases involved people from different jurisdictions.  But, if the parties agreed to renounce this law (the law guaranteed that they could only be judged by a judge from their jurisdiction), then and ONLY then, the judge's ruling would have the force of a true judgment.

I found an explanation of this law in an instruction book for ecclesiastic scribe.  It was in a list of renunciaciones.  Again, the renouncement of this law was very common, so common that in this instruction book, the law is listed in the "Laws to Renounce" section.

At the AGN, I did a fair amount of transcribing and ordered my photocopies for tomorrow.  I did some more work on my case involving the deprivation of a government office because the officeholder was reputed to be engaged in mechanical work.  The officeholder's lawyer was very active.  In fact, after the initial accusation, the trial record has no more entries by the plaintiffs.  The defense lawyer enters a contradiction of the charges (saying that his client hasn't engaged in manual work since he was married, that he was a hidalgo, and everyone in the town knows what a diligent court official he is).  I was able to read several of the witnesses testimony, and sure enough, most of them agreed that the man was an excellent official, and they had never known him to engage in the manual labor he had been accused of.

I also transcribed four or five other folios from another couple of trials, for which I was pretty proud of myself.

After the afternoon's work, Peio took me to Barasoain!  The church was closed, but I got some good pictures, which I'll post later.  No clock, unfortunately (I had suspected that it would be inside the church if it was even still there), but it was still awesome to see the beautiful town and to know I was walking where Don Antonio had walked.  We even found a family coat of arms with the name "Rada" on the side of a house!

I feel like today's work was a good response to my unsureness of yesterday.  I feel a lot better about what I've accomplished, and I think I'm in a good place with my defense TWO WEEKS AWAY!!! Wow, that just hit me!  There won't be much time to rest once I return to the states =D.

Tomorrow I'll wrap up my work in the morning and meet Peio and his wife Maripat (a very nice Wisconsin expatriate) for cafe, head to the Renfe station and take the train back to Madrid.

I'll let y'all know when I get to Madrid safely!

¡Hasta luego!
-A

Miércoles de Ceniza

¡Buenas tardes a todos!

I figured I'd go ahead and blog now, since I doubt anything that's going to happen tonight will top the adventure I had today.  Today may have been the most exciting, yet still frustrating, Ash Wednesday I've ever had.  At one point, I was pretty sure I was on my way to join Christ in the wilderness...literally.

Few things ever go right on the first try.  Using the bus system in a foreign country, no exception.  The good news is that, at 4:30 this afternoon (two hours earlier than I had planned), I disembarked from a bus at the Pamplona bus station, made it back to the AGN for an hour of work, and am now safely back at my hotel.  The bad news is I never got to Barásoain.  By the end of my outgoing trip, I was 100 kilometers from Barásoain.

I had it all figured out.  I got up early so I could walk to the bus station and buy the tickets before starting work this morning-- GoogleMaps assured me it was a mere 8-minute walk.  Well I took a wrong turn down the Paseo Sarasate, which was nice, but not where I was trying to get.  I finally got my bearings straight and got to the bus station.  It took fifteen minutes or so to get someone to give me a straight answer as to where to buy the tickets.  I finally got to the counter I needed to be at and bought the ticket, and all was well.  Got turned around again trying to get back to the casco antiguo (the old quarter, where my hotel and both archives are).  Finally got that figured out.  By the time I made it back to the Maisonnave, it was about twenty minutes before the ADP would open.  I had hoped to be back in time to go to the AGN at 9 and work there for an hour and change before going to the ADP, since I'd be missing out on most of my afternoon time there.

Worked at the ADP from 10:30 to 12:30-- with the problems this morning, I wanted to make sure I had enough time to make the 1:30 bus.  I swung back by the hotel to make sure I had everything (I was extremely glad later that I had gone back to get my sunglasses) and set out.

This time I found the bus station, no problem.  The ticket said "Bus: 1," "Asiento: 2," and "Linea: Pamplona-Zaragoza Pueblos."  Well there were numbers beside various bus loading spaces at the station, so I went and sat on the bench by spot "1," thinking "That's where Bus 1 will load."  Wrong-o.  I almost did the same thing at the Renfe train station in Madrid, but I remembered that the gates for the trains aren't even chosen until about 20 minutes before the train leaves.  Buses work the same way, it seems.  1:30 came and went and no bus pulled into spot 1.  This was another problem of being American.  I've never known a bus to be on time.  In Spain, it turns out, they're always on time.

When 1:40 came around, everyone at my bench got up and moved over to spot "7."  I looked up at the screen (first time I had noticed this little thing that could have saved me 160 kilometers of travel today) and it listed the various outgoing buses.  Sure enough, #7 said "Bus 1, Zaragoza-Pamplona-San Sebastian."  I was like, "Whew, good thing I followed the crowd."  My bus # was 1, just like this bus, and it was a line with stops in Zaragoza and Pamplona, just like mine.  The bus driver was talking loudly and laughing with another couple of bus drivers, and people were just walking onto the bus without feeling any apparent need to show their tickets, so I did the same.  The bus was almost completely full, but my seat, seat #2, was open, and after I sat down, no one came forward with that ticket to let me know that was their seat.  Another unmistakable sign that this was the right bus, right?

The bus pulled out.  I was going to Barásoain.  It was actually happening.

Then things just started to seem wrong one after another.  For starters, as we were leaving the city, I noticed that the sun was behind us and slightly to my left.  In Spain, as we approach the spring equinox, if you're traveling south, the sun should be slightly ahead of you and in the afternoon it should be slightly to the right (moving toward setting in the west).  Strange, I thought.  Maybe we have to leave the city in a northerly fashion before turning south to Barásoain, I "reasoned."  Over the next twenty minutes (which should have been the entire length of my bus ride), the mountains were getting bigger and bigger, and numbers on signs saying "Francia" were getting smaller and smaller.

I was on the wrong bus, and not only was I on the wrong bus, I was heading in the exact opposite direction from where I needed to go.

When we finally reached our destination, I explained the problem to the bus driver.  He said he saw my bus (the one heading south) pulling out of the Pamplona station as he was pulling in-- he asked if I had gotten to the station late.  I assured him that I was there at 1:15, and that I waited at the bench under the #1 that entire time (I beckoned to my ticket).  He took me in front of the bus to show me the linea on the front.  It was bus #1, he said, and the number on the ticket refers only to the bus, not to the loading zones (which appear on the screens in the station a few minutes before the bus arrives).  But the linea was Zaragoza-Pamplona-San Sebastián.  The linea on my ticket was Pamplona-Zaragoza Pueblos.

I had done it-- I had been the quintessential dumb American who just kind of went with the flow, assuming I was doing everything right rather than risking sounding dumb by asking the same person five times if this was the right place to be.  I had no idea where I was, other than that I was in the Basque Country, and I thought I was in the area known as Guipúzcoa.

The bus driver beckoned down the main street, and told me I could buy another ticket at the ALSA office either to go back to Pamplona or they might have a bus today for Barásoain.  When I finally found the ALSA office, the lady there was very understanding, and was kind enough to answer my helpless question, "¿En qué ciudad estoy?"  "San Sebastián," she replied with a pitying smile.

The two markers roughly in the middle are my hotel and the bus station in Pamplona.  The marker south is the town I was hoping to visit today.  The marker to the north is where I ended up: San Sebastián, a lovely city in the Basque Country.  Well at least I can say I've been to the Basque Country, right?

I did make it back to the AGN for a little over an hour of work-- I didn't feel like I could just go back to the hotel and sulk about the afternoon's failure.  After transcribing as much as I can of the new documents I've found, and trying some other searches, I feel like I've mostly just found new things to check out.   First off, I finally found a guild incorporation document for clockmakers.  It is dated 1954, and even that is a guild they shared with jewellers.

But searching for a few other key words has at least given me a sense of how professions operated, even without an actual guild.  Once a person became a master, he was eligible to be named a veedor (literally, a watcher or seer, but a better translation would be "inspector").  It seems that veedores were especially recognized by other masters as being qualified not only to practice a trade independently (the exclusive right of a master), but to evaluate the work of others.  And they didn't just evaluate apprentices and journeymen, they also evaluated masters.  One guild actually fined a master for making a work that failed to live up to the ordenanzas of the brotherhood.

That's the other thing-- my search for gremios has been so fruitless because gremio is not, by a long shot, the commonest word for "guild" in Navarre, at least in the documents held at the AGN.  Cofradía and oficio both appeared more than gremio in the results I found for disputes over artisan work.  Historians of Spanish religion know immediately why this is not necessarily a good thing for my AGN searches.  If I search for cofradía, I'm going to get a 1,000 results (and I did, believe me) dealing not just with artisan brotherhoods, but the gobs of religious brotherhoods (and I think it safe to say that these religious brotherhoods had far more members than guilds did in the 16th and 17th centuries).  And if I search oficio, even though the AGN is not primarily a repository for church records, I get a 1,000 results (again, I counted) for the Santo Oficio (the Inquisition).

This is all good information for me to have, and I'm glad I've found it.  But, I've already got close to ten pages of my thesis done (mostly background information and a deeper discussion of historiographical trends which I outlined in my prospectus).  I feel like a lot of the information I've included in my blogs this week is going to be great for my thesis (in much more polished form obviously, and with far fewer parenthetical comments...like this one).  But how do I cite the noticing of trends from an archive computer search?  Even if I had all these sources at my immediate disposal, I couldn't get information labeled by folio and recto/verso for this stuff.  And, on top of that, it's just one archive.  For all I know there are gobs of guild documents, buried in some other archive.  I guess, as I sit here at the Maisonnave, craving tapas, I'm pondering what I'm really gaining from this trip.  I know what I set out to gain, but am I getting it?

I already have an idea about it-- now that I know some of the different nuances of language, it will make searches for secondary sources more meaningful.  No wonder all my searches for gremios are turning up only books about Madrid and Andalucía-- the Navarrese were much more likely to call their artisanal organizations confradías or oficios.

But I guess I hoped to come away with ten more primary sources to wow my committee with.  And again, the primary source work, transcribing and analyzing, has had its own victories this week (see my previous posts).  I guess I wanted to come away with a lot more of the particular, but when I'm in the Archives, I find myself more drawn to reading descriptions about multiple trials and getting a sense of wider trends and features of the groups whose mentalités I'm trying to understand.  Is this the stuff a good M.A. thesis is made out of?

Tomorrow I might take Peio up on his offer to drive me to Barásoain, but I'm feeling so anxious already about the lost afternoon in the AGN, and I'm not sure I want to risk another one.  But if I don't go, I'm pretty sure I'll regret it for the rest of this program.  There's an awesome series of books that both the AGN and the ADP has called Monumentos de las Iglesias de Navarra, with the volumes organized by the merindad or county of the town.  So I checked the volume on the merindad of Olite, and found the church at Barásoain.  No mention of a clock.  BUT, I checked a bunch of other town and even city churches.  No mention of clocks there either.  But church clocks are not just an urban thing here, like they are in the U.S.  They're everywhere.  Really, if nothing else, it might please the people  in Barásoain to know that someone's reading a lot about their predecessors, including an obsessed priest who spent most of his career suing people or being sued over one thing or another, and when accused of making clocks, his response was that he "merely" designed them.

If there was a former pastor of Riverview UMC that had been that interesting, I'd love for a foreign student to come tell me about it in broken English.

I'll call Peio now and see if tomorrow afternoon works for him =D

Thanks for reading, y'all, and sorry for another long one!
-A

Martes

The Internet situation at the Maisonnave has gone from bad to worse-- last night nothing would load in my browser at all, and it wasn't a problem with my contraseña.  Apologies again for the delay in posting the blog.

Day two at the Archives was considerably more encouraging!  Isn’t that always the way =D?

I started at the ADP today, but managed to get some work done in the morning before going.  At the ADP, I finally found what I spent a week trying to find last year: my clockmaking priest’s testimony on his own behalf.  He was summoned to Pamplona to answer for the charges against him.  Lu Ann and I were both thinking perhaps he might try to explain how clockmaking was one of the ways he served God or was part of his vocation.  Quite the opposite.

He argued, rather, that the entire thing had been blown way out of proportion.

He didn’t deny anything he was accused of prior to the 1693 visitation where he was first admonished to stop his side jobs.  But everything he was accused of in the current criminal trial (1699), was apeno la Verdad (“hardly the truth”).  Sometimes, he said, by way of “diversion” or “pastime,” he assisted in the house of a locksmith or gunsmith in his village and these people received his assistance graciosamente (thankfully).  In fact, he said, he was accompanied by various others in this “assistance,” both priests and laity.

As for actually doing the work himself, he said he had never done so after the 1693 visitation, and at most he had done was “to say the mode and form of making some pieces, providing an outline (or plan) for such work.”  He said he had never made profit (a key aspect of the charges against him), nor had he ever celebrated the holy sacrifice of the Mass with dirty hands, let alone blackened hands.  Finally, he insisted, he “had not caused the notoriety and scandal imputed to him.”

With regard to his interim appointment in the nearby town of Unzué, he corrected a detail of the charge against him that looked strange to me a year ago.  In the charges against him, it said that “he is so obsessed with the work of clockmaking, that in the two months he served as interim Abbad of Unzué, he built the town a tower clock.”  It seemed to me that a tower clock would take more than two months to build, or would at least take up all his time in those two months, leaving the clergy of Unzué without a chairman.  Sure enough, Don Antonio testified that he had served the town for almost a year (more than 11 months).  I was half-hoping for him to say, “It takes a long time to do such an intricate engineering job.”  But it was just another denial.  He said he had entered, on some occasions, the house of the town’s locksmith, but it was to visit the locksmith’s wife and son who were both sick (the son actually died of this illness) and on some occasions to divert himself in the “Torre de palomas” the locksmith had.  I’m not sure what he means by “Pigeon tower” or how one would have fun there, but I’ll follow that up tomorrow.

He didn’t make the clock in Unzué, he said, nor any part of it, even though he was contracted to do so by the town.  Francisco de Aguirre, a resident of the town, made the clock—Don Antonio provided him the plan.  This is hugely important, if it’s true.  Actually, it’s important regardless.

Don Antonio was denying doing any of the manual labor (the dishonorable part of the work) involved in clockmaking or these other various metalworking projects.  He “merely” designed them.  If this is true, it means he almost certainly had worked on actual clocks at some point, and may have done more work on the clocks in question than he was willing to admit.  But if he provided the plans for these “fabricaciones,” that means he had not only a tactile knowledge of clockmaking from sheer practice of handling a lot of clocks.  He had a theoretical knowledge of how clocks worked.  My clockmaking priest has fallen squarely into the categories of expertise that I’ve studied with Dr. Popper.  Don Antonio is distancing himself from techne (sheer muscle memory) and painting his knowledge more as praxis (experience mingled with reason) or episteme (pure theoretical knowledge).  These Greek terms were used by Aristotle to hierarchize knowledge, and had a profound impact on the European concept of knowledge and work.

At the AGN, my searches for gremios (guilds) have not been very successful.  However, my search for peritos (experts) and mecanico (mechanical work) has been more encouraging.  I found a case from the late sixteenth century in which two escribanos (secretaries or court-recorders) petition King Philip II to exclude a man from consideration for a job as a procurador (another court official) because of his background as a mechanical worker.  They further requested that the king issue a clear proclamation that those who do such work (carpentry, I believe, was this particular candidate’s profession), should never be considered for secretarial jobs in the royal service.  King Philip II did issue a proclamation in response to this request, but it’s rather difficult to read.  I’m going to get more out of it tomorrow.  From what I can tell, P-II agreed that workers of mechanical background should automatically be disqualified from consideration for important government jobs.

Tomorrow I’m going to try some searches for other words for experts and expertise (there are actually a LOT of words for experts, which I think is promising for expanding the corpus of the “history of expertise” to include Spain).

We’ll see what happens tomorrow.  We had some rain this evening, so it seemed like a good idea to have dinner at the hotel tonight.  Be advised.  If you order a “hamurguesa” in Navarre (or at least at this place), it’s more like a steak-sandwich.  No complaints here, but it was pretty heavy and I wasn’t even able to finish it!

More adventures await tomorrow, I’m sure.  

Don José Luis loaned me a volume on the Camino de Santiago today.  Upon learning that I’m Methodist (it came up when I asked about Ash Wednesday services at the Cathedral), he was kind enough to say that he “loves and respects everyone,” and that, as far as pilgrimages go, “the important thing is that they are done in reverence and honesty.”  I assured him that, if I ever found myself on the Camino (and I hope I will someday), I would carry plenty of both along with my pilgrim’s staff and my scallop shell =D.

Hasta luego,
-A

Day 1 in the Archives

Good evening, all!

So, apologies for the delay in yesterday's blog post.  Had the parents wondering if I was still alive, and had Lu Ann thinking I had been locked in the cathedral on one of Don José Luis's adventures!

Even though I went to Don José Luis's archive second, I'll introduce him to y'all first.  He is in his late 70s (we estimate) and has the sense of adventure of a teenager.  José Luis Sales has been the archivero of the Archivo Diocesano de Pamplona for over 30 years.  He is a priest attached to the cathedral chapter here in Pamplona.  Two years ago, he took Lu Ann, Amanda, Kim, and Eric on an expedition through the cathedral, including the bell tower.  Last year, he took us (Lu Ann, Meredith, Hanna, and me) through the underground passage that connects the Archbishop's palace (where the Archive is located) to the cathedral.  He didn't take us up into the bell tower, but he did take us to some other high places where we had a great view.

This year, Don José Luis upped the ante again.  First off, let me explain how he came to propose this adventure.  When I walked into the Archivo Diocesano, Don José Luis gave me an enormous hug and introduced me to two older gentlemen working in the archive as "a North American student who has come thousands of kilometers to see the documents we take for granted and hold in such low esteem," and reassured them that, "even though when you hear 'American' you think of California, no, no, he is from the eastern part, close to the site of the American victory at Yorktown in their Revolution" (this was all in Spanish; Don José Luis, to our knowledge, has little, if any, English).  After this awesome introduction (and I mean awesome), we went into his office to talk about what I would be working on.


Almost immediately he noticed my lapel pin: an upside-down scallop shell.  Some of you reading this blog will know what the scallop shell means immediately (especially what it would mean to a priest in the middle of northern Spain).  But for everyone else, here goes:

When I was a sophomore at W&M, I received my first subject-matter honors society invitation: Alpha Delta Gamma, the national honors society in medieval & Renaissance studies.  The symbol of our membership is a lapel pin in the form of a scallop shell, to be worn upside-down.

The upside-down scallop shell is a symbol of pilgrimage, and for the purposes of Alpha Delta Gamma, symbolizes the pilgrimage of all scholars in their quest for knowledge.  But the scallop shell is a particularly powerful symbol of the pilgrimage to Santiago de Campostela in Galicia (northwest corner of Spain).  The Camino de Santiago (Way of St. James) is one of the most popular pilgrimages in the world, along with the pilgrimage to Jerusalem and Rome.

The town of Santiago de Compostela is said to be the final resting place of St. James (Santiago in Spanish) the Greater, Christ's Apostle who was the brother of John, son of Zebedee, and witness of the Transfiguration (which I mention since this past Sunday was Transfiguration Sunday in Protestantism).  Traditionally, St. James is said to have come to Spain to preach the Gospel.  He returned to Jerusalem, possibly for the Council held there, at which time he was put to death by Agrippa I.  He was the first apostle to die-- his brother, John, would be the last.  Either by the conduct of his disciples or by a completely unmanned boat (versions of the story differ), James' body was returned to the Iberian peninsula, and was entombed in Galicia.  The remains were discovered in the year 814, and a Christian altar was built there.  For nearly 1200 years, pilgrims have flocked to this town in the northwest corner of Spain to visit the resting place of the first Apostle to die for the faith.  They traditionally wear a scallop shell, for various practical and symbolic reasons (practically, it makes a good cup or bowl, and symbolically the lines all moving to one point on the shell symbolize the various pilgrimage routes people can take to Compostela).  If you want more details than that, take Dr. George Greenia's class on the Camino de Santiago at William & Mary.  He teaches the class in the spring and takes the class to actually do the pilgrimage in the summer.  One of those few scheduling regrets I have from my undergrad years is that I never did the Camino class-- maybe someday I'll be able to do the Camino itself, though =D.

ANYWAY, the symbol of the Med-Ren honors society is an upside-down scallop shell lapel pin, and I wore it today on my jacket.  Don José Luis immediately noticed it and we got to talking about the pilgrimage.  I assured him as best I could that I had not been on the pilgrimage, but that it was a symbol of a "society of honored students in medieval studies at my university."  Nevertheless, we stayed on the subject for several minutes.  Somehow, he came to mention Roncesvalles, a town in northeastern Spain, about an hour away from Pamplona and maybe five minutes from the French border.  Before I knew it, he was suggesting that we drive to Roncesvalles (or that a "young friend" of his would drive us) and I could see "the gateway to the Way of St. James."  It took me a while to understand that he was actually suggesting we get in a car and go to Roncesvalles (yes, you Song of Roland fans, the same "Roncevaux" where Charlemagne the Long-Bearded's rear guard was routed by Basques/Moors and Roland died of a cerebral hemorrhage from blowing a horn).

Don José Luis must have seen how wide my eyes were, and he immediately assured me that it was perfectly fine if I would prefer not to, and that he understood that I had only a week in Pamplona and that I had much to do.  I think I sufficiently conveyed to him how honored I was that he would consider making such a trip with me, but keeping in mind the reasons he gave me, and my hope to make an afternoon trip to Barásoain, I told him I would postpone that trip until my next visit =D.

After a few more minutes of conversation, and letting him know how other members of the "Pamplona group" were doing, he gestured to the door with a smile, "¡A trabajo!" he said.  "To work!"

Since the ADP doesn't open until 10:30, I decided to go to the Royal Archive first.  The Archivo Real y General de Navarra is housed in the royal palace of Navarre, the home of the kings and queens of Navarre for centuries, and of the Castillian viceroy after Navarre was absorbed into Castile in 1512.  Peio Monteano Sorbet, the head archivist there, is our main contact, and a dear friend.

He assured me that all the Archive's resources were at my disposal, and that if I had any problems or questions, I need only ask him.  We talked for a little while about my thesis, and while he sympathized with my curiosity about the subject, he wasn't certain that the AGN would have many helpful documents.  He did, however, point me to some good secondary sources in the auxiliary library at the Archive.  Peio also gave me his cell number and offered to drive me to Barásoain if the bus didn't work out.

My searches in the AGN were not very fruitful.  Fortunately, I had planned for today to be a review day (both at the ADP and the AGN), a day to get more information from the sources I had worked with last year and to reacquaint myself with archival work after a year-long hiatus.  I accomplished those goals, and somehow managed to get a paper turned in tonight.

I've had serious trouble sleeping the last two nights, but last night was the worst.  I went to bed at 1 and didn't get to sleep until sometime between 2:30 and 3.  But, I've finished my paper, I've had a great first day seeing great friends, and I feel like my Spanish is already ten times better than it was two days ago when a frustrated waiter decided it was just easier to talk completely in English.  Maybe navarros are more understanding of our efforts than madrileños; with due respect to Madrid folks, I do think people here are a bit nicer =D.  Plus, the day's experiences with Peio and Don José Luis have reminded me how blessed I am to have been introduced to such awesome people.  I hear all kinds of horror stories in my classes about uncooperative archivists who keep things hidden and won't let professors, let alone students, see what they need to see, and thanks to the "in" I was given last year at these two archives, I've never had to deal with that.  Thanks, Lu Ann =D!


Sorry this is such a long post, but I'm convinced that if I just type until my head drops onto the keyboard, I'll actually be able to get to sleep without lying in bed for an hour and a half.

Tomorrow's post will be shorter; I promise =D!

¡Hasta mañana!
-A

All Archives Eve (posted the next day)

PREFACE: As I was typing this last night around 2AM (I know, I'm an idiot), my Internet time ran out and I didn't feel like going down to the lobby to get a new contraseña (we have to get a new one every eight hours).  But I have one now, so I'm good for another eight hours =D.  After posting this, I'm gonna finish a paper.  I'll post about Monday's adventures later =D.


[BEGIN SUNDAY BLOG POST]

Hey everyone,


The first day in Pamplona has been great!  I went exploring around the casco antiguo (old quarter) today, just to make sure I still know where everything is.  As evidenced by some pictures I took (and may include in this post if they ever finish transferring from the camera), I can still find the archives =D.

The last time we were here, there was a lot of roadwork being done at this five-way intersection.  Getting to the Archivo Real y General de Navarra (AGN) required us to go around this circle to the right in order to go down a street that was to the left from our original position.  That roadwork was done-- the intersection looks great, but I almost second-guessed which street to take and half-thought about walking around an imaginary fence just to be sure.  But I chose wisely and in no time, I had found the Royal Archive:

I had similar success finding the Diocesan Archive, but since I couldn't really get to the actual door to the Archive (it's inside the Obispado), I took a picture of the stop sign that reminds us where to go left off of the Calle Dormitalería to get to the Obispado:

I thought I'd beat the dinner crowd to the Cafe Iruña but the place was already packed at 8.  So I had a few tapas and headed back for the Maisonnave.  As exhausted as I've been, I've had a hard time falling asleep.  Combination of jet lag and nerves, I guess.  Hopefully I'll have both of them beat tonight.

I'll let you know how Day 1 in the Archives goes =D.

Later,
-A

¡Estoy aquí!...but a different "aquí" =D

I made it to Pamplona!  My room at the Maisonnave is really nice, and I've got a nice little workspace set up.  I'll write more fully tonight, the eve of my return to the Archives =D.

A presto,
-A

End of Day 1

Right back where I was when I finished my previous post-- sitting on my bed at the Lisboa.  I'm pretty exhausted so I'll keep this brief.

I made it over to the Prado after a much-needed nap.  It's still awesome =D.  Got a print of El Greco's Annunciation.  Had dinner at a little Italian place on the Calle del Prado.  I went around 8, about an hour before people usually eat dinner here, so it was pretty quiet.  But once the clock struck 9, it was hopping.  Took me a while to get my check, but that gave me some time to outline my American history paper which I hope to finish tomorrow.  Dividing my attention between early modern Spain and colonial America this week is NOT a good idea, so I'm definitely hoping to finish the thing tomorrow.

That was pretty much my day.  By the time I got out of the Prado it was already 6 (I didn't realize they were open till 10 or I might have gone later) so I didn't take in the beauty of the Retiro Park or anything like that.  Next time, Madrid, next time.

Tomorrow morning's my train ride to Pamplona, and I'm really looking forward to being in a slightly smaller big city, and one where I've spent more time and know my way around a bit better =D.

I hope everyone at home is doing awesome, especially my folks in Isle of Wight and the Wesley mission teams in Birmingham (W&M wesley) and Nashville (VT Wesley).  Wish I could be with you guys!

I'll post tomorrow when I reach Pamplona!

A presto,
-A

¡Estoy aquí!

I'm sitting in my room at the Hostal Lisboa!  The flight was fine, other than the fact that my video screen had crashed when I got to my seat and just continued to reset itself and spout random numbers (which, of course, the flight attendants could do nothing about).

But the meal was good, and more importantly I'm in Spain in one piece with all my luggage.  And yes, Mom, I have my passport too =D.

I'm gonna rest for a while and then head over to the Prado-- can never see "Las Meninas" enough =D! 
I'll write if I find that Velázquez or El Greco drew a lot of clocks.  Since I've found several poems and songs written about clocks in the seventeenth century, I don't think it's too much to hope for that they show up in the art of the period.

Buenos días, ¡Estoy en España!
-A

Waiting at Newark...

My flight from Richmond got here a half-hour ahead of schedule.  I've been chilling in Newark for almost 4 hours.  The flight to Madrid is listed as on time, and hopefully it will stay that way.

While I was changing dollars for euros, I met a woman and her young daughter (5 or 6 years old maybe?) on their way back to Cincinnati from a trip to Bogotá, Colombia.  When I told them I was going to Spain, she asked, «¿Habla español?» and I replied with a nice «Un poco.»  It occurred to me that I should start practicing a few sentences to make sure when I land in Madrid tomorrow I'm not too rusty.  The little girl, the mother told me, knew Spanish and French, and the little girl chuckled when I said with a semi-convincing French accent, "Je ne parle un mot de francais!"

A flight to Copenhagen's just been moved to our gate, getting ready to board in about ten minutes-- lots of German ringing in my ears!  I should probably double-check my own flight, though we've still got a couple of hours before we'll be taking off.

I'll post again from España!  

¡Hasta presto!
-A

Welcome!

Hi everyone (assuming that one person, let alone several, will read this =D)!

Welcome to my blog!  Rather than typing long and varied versions of e-mails to people keeping them updated, I've decided to create this blog as a one-stop-shop for anyone who wants to know what I'm up to.

Some of "what I'm up to" isn't that exciting, but this coming week definitely is.  It's SPRING BREAK!  And I will be spending this particular Spring Break doing archival research for my M.A. thesis in Pamplona, Spain!

Okay, so blogging may or may not be a condition of the grant that's supporting my trip.  But there are also several reasons I wanted to do this anyway.

First, as I mentioned above, it's more economical than sending out differing versions of a long e-mail each day describing my findings.  Different people are interested in hearing about different things.  My friend Amanda and my undergraduate advisor Lu Ann might want to hear about a unique handwriting problem I was able to solve or strange word I was able to translate or how our friends in Pamplona are doing.  My parents might want to hear about exactly what this trip is doing for my thesis and why it's important.  My friend Ben will want to know what the food's like, and whether or not (as of Wednesday) I'll actually be able to abstain from eating meat for Lent!

Second, I have found myself going back to my archived e-mails from my first trip to the Pamplona archives a year ago.  It's been useful for me as I begin writing the actual text of this M.A. thesis to go back and actually recall what I was thinking about these sources at the time I was immersed in them.  Even I don't have that good a memory that I can just call up the emotions I felt and ideas I was getting then-- it's good to have something other than dead transcriptions to go back to.

Finally, there's a chance that some people I wouldn't even think to e-mail might be interested in this ongoing problem: not only about early modern Spanish attitudes toward clockmakers, but the problem of actually doing archival research, the problem of actually writing a Master's thesis, the problem of actually convincing people (even sympathetic people in the same field) that my work means something.  With this blog available to anyone who cares to look, that information can reach more people than it would if I was directly targeting e-mails.

Some of the goals of this trip (and of the project it's supporting) are quite heady.  I am, after all, trying to get a sense of the mentalités of people who lived over 300 years ago.  But the goals of this blog are pretty straightforward: keep people informed, get my thoughts out of my head and into a reviewable medium, and pontificate endlessly (in the literal sense of "building bridges").

I hope to post at least once a day, and judging by the fact that this entry has taken a paltry fifteen minutes to compose gives me high hopes for the meeting of this goal.

Thank you, everyone, for reading!  To you unsuspecting people who stumbled into this cloud of the blogosphere expecting to breathe the sweet fragrance of coherence or drink the sweet nectar of profundity, my apologies for the crushing disappointment this must be.

Dominus vobiscum!
-A