Blue Cord

At the SBL meeting in 2006 I picked up Alice Hunt’s book Missing Priests: The Zadokites in Tradition and History. I wrote a review of it on this blog a couple of months later. While the book does make some good points, I ultimately did not agree with the conclusions. Hunt argues that there are no Zadokites until the Hasmonean period because she sees no stress on Zadokites prior to that, while I would say they were around in the preexilic period, but because of their position of power they did not need to justify their position.

This month’s Review of Biblical Literature has a review of Missing Priests by Lena-Sofia Tiemeyer. Tiemeyer has a slightly more positive view of the book, so if you are looking for a review with a different take on the book, check it out.

About two weeks ago I wrote about my brother being featured in James Taranto’s Best of the Web column in the Wall Street Journal because of a piece he had written using Mr. Taranto’s name. While I was visiting with my brother last week, Mr. Taranto called for a follow up interview about the premier of the piece. Today’s WSJ has an article entitled “Fanfare for the Column Man” about my brother’s musical composition. The article has a link to a recording of “Kerfuffle”, so you can hear the piece as you read the article.

The article also mentioned a piece that my brother wrote for me for my wedding. That composition used a motif based on my wife’s maiden name.

After the interview, my brother said Mr. Taranto had asked him to define a fanfare. I told him that given Mr. Taranto’s love of language, he should have said something like, “To understand what ‘fanfare’ means, you have to break it down into its root words. A ‘fan’ is someone who enjoys sports, while ‘fare’ is food. ‘Fanfare’, therefore, is something that a sports enthusiast eats, e.g., a hotdog.” My brother didn’t take my advice, which explains why he is mentioned in the WSJ now, while the last time I was in the WSJ was 1994 (although my story was on the front page above the fold).

As my readers know, I occasionally round up a list of things that annoy me and blog about them. My last installment was back on August, so I thought it was time for another edition. Having just returned from a ten-day trip, I thought I would do a travel edition of my pet peeves.

Here are just a few things that annoyed me while I was on the road:

• Official signs on the Interstate that tell us what food and gas are available at the next exit – There should be a law that says any restaurant or gas station that is listed on that sign must be within a half mile of the exit. I hate getting off the Interstate only to find that I have to go two or three miles away from the Interstate to find the store I want. On the flip side, I love the signs at the end of the exit ramp that tell which direction each store is and how far.
• Turn signals – I know it is common place to complain that people don’t use turn signals. But this is actually a complaint about people that do. On a highway, a turn signal is supposed to indicate your intention to change lanes. It is supposed to be turned on for a second or two before you change lanes, not as you are in the process of changing lanes. When you swerve into my lane in front of me at the last second, the fact that you turned on your blinker at that same moment is hardly helpful.
• People who don’t know how to drive an SUV – Being able to afford an SUV is not the same as being able to handle one. It is a large vehicle and is not driven the same as a car. When I drove buses in Alaska, I had to get a commercial drivers license. The fact that you can own and operate an SUV without any special training is ridiculous.
• Interstate exits that are inappropriately numbered – The Interstate system is designed to be logical. North-south routes are odd numbered. West-east routes are even numbered. Major arteries have numbers evenly divisible by five. And mile markers increase from west to east or north to south depending on the orientation of the Interstate. Exits are supposed to be numbered according to the nearest mile marker, but not all states comply with this convention. I find that annoying. If I know my exit number and my current location, that should give me the ability to calculate how far I have to go. When the exits are number sequentially instead of according to the closest mile marker, it messes up the system. For the record, Massachusetts and Connecticut both number their exits wrong.
• Interstates numbered incorrectly – While I am on the subject of Interstate numbering, I should point out that some Interstates are numbered incorrectly. By law, an Interstate with two numbers must end at another interstate, and international border, or an ocean. Interstates with three numbers are either loops or spurs. Loops begin and end at Interstates and have an even first number, while spurs, which have an odd first number, can simply run out. Some Interstates do not follow this logic. For instance, I–83 in Baltimore simply ends at the Inner Harbor, which violates the rules of Interstate numbering. To be consistent, the part of I–83 that runs inside of I–695 should be renumbered to something like I–383.
• Connecticut – I experienced four backups driving the 125 miles through Connecticut. This is twice as many backups as I experienced in the other fifteen states combined. Most of these backups could have been avoided. One was caused by a junction between one Interstate and another. There was only one lane on the exit between them, but things could have flowed smoothly if everyone had simply moved into the right lane and waited their turn. Instead, a large number of cars rushed to the front of the line and forced their way in. They blocked the left two lanes while trying to push their way into the front of the line. This backed up the traffic in all three lanes for two miles. At another spot, I experienced a three mile backup in the north-bound lane because people were rubber-necking to see an accident in the south-bound lane. (Flashing police lights are so mesmerizing.) I remember this from the five years I lived in Connecticut. Drivers in Connecticut are not the best drivers in the world, and this combined with a lack of manners makes driving in Connecticut a frustrating experience.
• People who think signs don’t apply to them – When I got home to my parking garage, I was presented once again with a familiar sight: SUVs, trucks, and station wagons parking in spaces marked “Compact Cars Only.” I drive a station wagon, so I don’t park in these spots. But apparently other people think that these rules don’t have to be followed. So, they park in these spots, which means that people in small cars can’t open their car doors. Often, an SUV parking on one of these spots takes up two spots, which means there are fewer available spaces for the rest of us. Apparently, these people are willing to inconvenience lots of other people just to avoid parking twenty feet farther from the door.

Granted, most of these are minor inconveniences, but when you experience all of them multiple times over the course of a ten-day trip, they add up.

We concluded our trip today. After 2,800 miles through sixteen states, we arrived back in northeast Massachusetts this evening.

I haven’t blogged on the trip since day 5 when we were in Chattanooga, so here is a brief overview of the last five days.

Wednesday we headed up to Jonesborough, TN, where my mother and step-father live. We stayed with them until Saturday. The highlight was Friday evening, when my parents threw a surprise party for my son, who had turned ten back on April 13. Since he was not with me then, it was nice to be able to celebrate his birthday.

On Saturday we drove as far as Washington, DC, where we stayed with a friend of mine from seminary. Today, we got up bright and early and got on the road for the final day of travel. As I was driving trough Philadelphia, it occurred to me that it would be nice for the kids to have a chance to stretch their legs. So, I got off the interstate long enough for us to stop by the Liberty Bell. The kids had never seen it before, and the last time I saw it it was in a different building. The new pavilion, built in 2003, is about three times as large and has a nice exhibit about the history of the bell.

For those who don’t recall, the bell has an inscription around its top. The first line reads, “Proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof.” The quote is taken from Leviticus 25:10, which refers to the Jubilee Year that Israel was to observe every fifty years. It is thought that one of the reasons this inscription was chosen was to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the chartering of Philadelphia. Of course, the liberty that is intended by Leviticus 25:10 is not political liberty. Instead, it is freedom from slavery and debt. Every fifty years, slaves were to be allowed to go free and land was to be returned to its original owner. Given that slavery was accepted in the colonial period and the Founding Fathers believed strongly in private property, it is somewhat ironic that they used this verse.

On Monday we drove down from Dayton, OH, to Chattanooga, TN. My brother teaches music (low brass) at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, so we wanted to swing by to visit him for a couple of days. After all, Chattanooga is on the way from Iowa to Massachusetts.

We spent Tuesday afternoon at Rock City on Lookout Mountain. For those who don’t know, Rock City is an attraction centered on the rock formations on top of the mountain (the picture at the right is my brother with the kids). The trails wind through crevasses, over dizzying heights, under overhanging boulders, and through caves. The woman who purchased the land and set it up as a huge rock garden went a bit overboard with gnomes as a decorative motif, but it is still a lot of fun. From the vantage point on top of the mountain you can supposedly see seven states. The park is just over the line into Georgia, so Tennessee is only a half mile away. Alabama is only eight miles to the west, while North and South Carolina are 50 and 80 miles respectively to the east. Mt. Pinnacle on the border between Kentucky and Virginia is supposedly visible on a clear day. Since the earth doesn’t actually have lines drawn on it indicating where each state begins, I will have to take their word that I saw seven states.

My brother and I went to Rock City for the first time on July 3, 1986. It was the first big trip the two of us had ever taken alone (we grew up 3.5 hours away). I had just graduated from high school and our parents allowed us to spend the weekend in Chattanooga. We didn’t come just for Rock City, however. We came to attend our first ever Star Trek convention. Yes, I have a long history of being a geek.

As a bit of trivia, the Rock City area claims to be the place where miniature golf was invented.¹ The husband of the woman who started Rock City had bought land to build a housing community centered on a golf course. Those are a dime a dozen these days, but back then it was a novel idea. It took longer than planned to build the golf course, however, so to keep the residents happy the man put together a small putting course, which he called Tom Thumb Golf. The idea took off from there.

Tuesday evening was spent at a Chattanooga Lookouts game. My brother’s tuba/ euphonium ensemble was scheduled to play the National Anthem. Because I also play tuba, my brother invited me to play with them. The girlfriends of one of my brother’s students was supposed to take pictures of the event, but her camera batteries ran out. So, I loaned her my camera. She took the pictures standing directly behind my brother, which allowed her to get a panoramic view of the entire ensemble, with the exception of the person standing directly in front of my brother. Unfortunately, that person happened to be me. So, even though my camera took pictures of the event, the only part of me that shows up in the pictures of the performance is my right leg. The picture above was taken while we were waiting to go out onto the field. I am the handsome gent at the right of the picture in the red shirt. I am apparently the only one who doesn’t know the correct way to hold a tuba.

The game went well. As opposed to the previous two games we saw on this trip, the home team won this game. The got out to an early lead, but their opponents - the Mobile Bay Bears - kept coming back. Chattanooga took a two point lead into the 9th inning, but Mobile tied it up. With two outs in the bottom of the 9th, Shaun Cumberland of the Lookouts hit a double into right field that scored the winning run. Cumberland had also hit a two run homer back in the 7th inning to give the Lookouts the lead then. It was a very exciting ending.

The Lookouts have an nice field which is fairly new (2000). Unfortunately, it follows the new trend of being named after a corporate sponsor. I prefer parks that are named after people (Jacob’s Field), groups of people (Veterans Stadium), or the team (Oriole Park at Camden Yards) or anything else that represents the spirit of the community. Chattanooga’s AT&T Field sits in the heart of downtown, just up the bank from the Tennessee River. For some reason, however, it faces the wrong way. Home plate is in the southeast corner of the park instead of in the southwest corner. This means the sun shines in the eyes of the fans down the right field line. I am told that the old Engel Stadium, where the Lookouts played until 1999, is a classic baseball venue.

1. Whether the claim is true or not is a matter of debate. Tiny putting courses in Europe had been around since the mid-19th century, but the Rock City area may have been the first to introduce whimsical obstacles such as pipes and windmills in place of sand traps and water hazards. [back]