I am a member of a Facebook group for my little neighborhood in Grand Forks, North Dakota: the Near South Side. Recently the conversation has turned to traffic flow through our neighborhood largely in response to a study of traffic flow across the town and a more specific study of traffic flow in the Near South Side. I’ll probably blog on this at some point (and it’s a bit more interesting than it sounds!), but the conversation got me thinking a bit about stop signs.

For whatever reason, I’ve always been a bit interested in stop signs. I have long kept a little tally in my head of my favorite stop signs in town and find their assertiveness and confidence a reassuring reminder that authority still exists even in such a completely impersonal form. Beyond their brash confidence, stop signs also tell specific individual stories. Some remind us that there are other people in the world who have places to go that are every bit as urgent – and maybe more so – than you. The most iconic signs control the flow of traffic across busy intersections. Others simply remind you to slow down, take it easy, and to enjoy your journey. These are traffic calming stop signs. Some stop signs are aspirational. They stand at isolated intersections and tell us that while it might not look like much now, in a few years, this intersection will be bustling. Some are historical reminders that an intersection and a place used to be something more than it is now and stands out of time and place in the changing landscape and traffic flow. In short, stop signs tell stories and the relationship between the traveler, the sign, the space, the community, and the planner who suggested that a stop sign should stand at a particular intersection is part of how we negotiate and recognize a sense of place. A whole essay could be written on how this sense of place – on the corner or at the crossroads– can become menacing, welcoming, or ultimately lead you to sell your soul to the devil.   

In any event, over the past decade or so in Grand Forks, I’ve created a little list of my five favorite stop signs. The list has a changed a bit over time as my routines and routes have changed, but as it stands now, I think it reflects my sense of place in town.

1. 8th and Reeves. This is the stop sign nearest my house and I’ve spent many a long summer evening watching cars approach this unusual intersection from the south on Reeves. Northbound cars come to a complete stop only to realize that they aren’t sure entirely how traffic flows through this intersection as the cars heading south on Reeves also have a stop sign, despite the fact that the two roads do meet in the middle of the intersection. Other drivers confidently roll through the intersection craning their necks to the west to make sure that traffic isn’t heading east toward them on 8th. Some stop and then inch forward looking all the while to the the west, and others – especially approaching the intersection from the north – barely glance to the east, before cutting the corner and turning south on Reeves to continue their journey. Many of the drivers are merely passing through this intersection on their way south or north to or from the Point Bridge that crosses the Red River and links our town to East Grand Forks, in Minnesota. The intersection also marks a change on Reeves drive where the more modest turn of the century homes give way to the houses of the local elite that line the most prestigious stretch of road in town. 

2. 3rd Street and 1st Avenue. This intersection is in the heart of downtown Grand Forks. In downtown Grand Forks, 3rd Street is the home to restaurants and bars as well as condos and apartments that embody the idea of a walkable downtown. In the summers there are planters along the street and some of the bars and restaurants install temporary decks to allow folks to enjoy outdoor seating. In the winter, there are lights stretched above the street which glitter off the snow and give the district the feeling of the winter holidays. There’s a stop sign on 3rd Street that I suspect is designed to slow the flow of traffic down 3rd street and make it easier for pedestrians to cross the street. 1st street isn’t really a busy road largely because it ends one block later at the flood wall. 

There are just so many distractions along this road, and the stop sign is pretty far from my line of sight. As a result, I end up running this stop sign maybe once a month (or at a rate of one time for ever 15 drives down this road). Because this part of downtown is busy, I’m usually driving slow so it’s not that I’m in hurry to go somewhere else. In fact, I usually realize it and stop in the middle of the intersection, which probably serves the spirit of the stop sign even if I don’t embrace its explicit purpose. Whenever I stop or run this sign, it gives me a little smile.

3. 13th Avenue and 14th Street. This stop sign transports me to a different time and place. 13th avenue is a “major collector” road formal nomenclature and we often use it to get across town. The intersection of 13 avenue and 14th street is an unusual one for me. It occurs one block to the west of 13th Avenue crossing a major, four lane road, Washington Street and 14th street feels something like a service road running along the back of a strip mall and a car dealership. The businesses at this intersection feature a couple auto repair establishments and a laundry mat. A rather rough looking mobile home part stretches along the west side of 14th street to the north. The vibe is distinctly small town and rural, despite being just a block from a distinctly suburban stretch of Washington Street with a McDonalds, a strip mall, a DQ, and until recently a Starbucks. In fact, this intersection reminds me of the small towns in the Bakken where people are getting by just fine, living their lives, working in small businesses, and on a sunny afternoon might be more than happy to stop and have a chat while their laundry finishes at The Bubble Laundry Co. or they get their brakes done on their 2003 Ford F-150. 

These moments of reverie and displacement have predictable results. About once ever ten trips through this intersection result in my slamming on the brakes at the four-way stop (or even running the stop sign entirely). The change from the bustling but predictable flow of Washington or even the near suburban feeling of 13th on the east side of Washington to the small town intersection feeling at 14th and 13th never fails to disrupt my mindless drive across town.

4. Reeves and 9th Avenue. This intersection was basically terra incognito to me despite being just a block from my house. I walk south on Reeves periodically and sometimes even jog, but I never think about this intersection at all and probably mindless cross 9th avenue without even a deliberate check to see if there’s traffic. This makes a certain kind of sense, though, because there isn’t much traffic on 9th avenue which ends at the flood wall just a block to the east. There is traffic on Reeves of course, as I explained above. Many commuters use Reeves to avoid the busier routes of Belmont (a minor arterial road) or Washington Street several blocks to the west (which is a principal arterial to use the pleasantly biological terminology of traffic analysis). I almost never use 9th because it is laced with stop signs between Reeves and Washington, although I will admit to sometimes driving west on 9th just to enjoy the unusual “yield” sign at 9th and Oak. 

This is clearly one of those stop signs installed to slow the flow of traffic along Reeves because if this intersection needed a stop sign to control traffic, it would make more sense to have it on 9th which is already a stop sign aficionados paradise. In fact, because I rarely drive south on Reeves, I almost never think about this stop sign while in my car. I think I’ve likely run it a few times because it is so unexpected and the road is close to home and I’m usually turning west on 9th before entering the alley way between Reeves and Belmont. I started to notice this stop sign, however, as I’ve started to ride my bike more regularly in the summer and fall. I generally proceed down 9th to Almonte and then to the Greenway bike paths. For quite some time it struck me as oddly courteous that folks would stop for me as I crossed Reeves on 9th because I completely forgot that there was a stop sign there. Maybe the best stop signs are ones that you don’t notice?

5. 20th Street and 36th Avenue. For me, this stop sign is always its best stop sign. It simply works. I usually proceed through this intersection on 20th Street heading south toward the dogs’ club on south Washington after running errands on the bustling principal arterial that is 32nd Avenue. Usually I turn south out of Happy Harry’s Bottle Shop at around 5 pm on my way to get the dogs and head home for the day. It’s not the first intersection south of Happy Harry’s (which is on the corner of 32nd Avenue and 20th St.), but it’s the first notable intersection. More than that, it feel like this intersection is a gateway to the new, more suburban and sprawling Grand Forks that I call, in my head, the Far South Side. There are apartments here sprouting from agricultural fields and massive athletic complexes, new schools, new health care centers, and new versions of venerable Grand Fork’s businesses arrayed in strip malls along Washington Street.

This stop sign embodies some of these changes in town. It’s a four way stop that often has a few cars waiting for their time to proceed. There is great visibility because the intersection sits amid new construction that is politely set back from the road and which frame the open spaces to keep your attention on the palpable bustle of this new suburbia. It’s an aspirational intersection, in some ways, which welcomes the driver heading south to new things (even if these new things are, the same old suburbs). It gives you a reason to stop and take stock. Maybe someday, there will be a stop light here, but for now, the stop sign seems to tell me that there is more to come.

Honorable mention:

Confusion Corner: There is nothing more interesting than both stop signs and yield signs.

6th Avenue and 15th St. (and Washington): Something about stop signs on frontage roads that just gets me right in the feels. 

Belmont and 62nd Ave.: This stop sign is both useful and aspirational. 

~

About this post: 

Over the last few months, I’ve been writing some short essays on small town life for theNorth Dakota Quarterly blog. I like to try them out here first, but here are the others: The Dog Park at the End of the Universe, In Praise of Trucks, Alone Together in a Small Town, Bump outs, Logistics, and Citizenship in a Small Town. I pretend that they’re chapters in a fictional book of essays on life in Grand Forks, North Dakota.

The Christmas-New Year holidays continue here, which is just as well as it allows me to get something worthwhile done.  It also allows me to plan things for the year to come.  After several dull days this morning was bright, sunny and full of light; and so, therefore, was I.

When household papers arrive on my desk, I tend to pile those which might be useful later into a pile at one corner.  Naturally this grows.  I last pruned it well over a year ago. I spent this morning doing so.  I was rewarded by finding a shopping voucher that a previous client had given me, due to expire in a few weeks time.  Sometimes virtue is its own reward.

This afternoon I have been dealing with three books in my “out” tray, scanning whatever I wanted from them.  I’ll probably post some excerpts in another post soon.

The first was the autobiography of liberal theologian-turned-evangelical Thomas Oden.  I found it rather thin, full of events that a better writer would have done more with.  But it contains a slightly more interesting section that might concern us directly.  He refers to the IVP “Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture” series, which he created and edited.  He mentions that his minions scanned the text of the 37 volume Ante-Nicene, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers collection of translations.  Now my own interest in the fathers as a class was facilitated in the mid-1990s by finding online text files containing these volumes.  They came from Wheaton college in the US, itself associated in some way with IVP.  Were these text files the output from that process?

The second was an “anecdotal history” of IVP – Intervarsity Press – in the USA.  This was frankly very dull.  I do not need to know that in 1958 Mr Suit became head of carpets.  Why do I, the reader, care about Mr Suit?

But I did learn from it why “IVP Academic” came into existence.  While I value what they have done in making translations available, it has always seemed to me like a distraction from the college Christian ministry, to serve which IVP was founded.  But all is revealed.  IVP, like many Christian enterprises, is run on a shoe-string.  Reference volumes are steady sellers, that help give financial stability to a firm.  This, it seems, is why they grabbed the opportunity to do the series.

The third volume is also related to student ministry, although distantly.  It is Tissington Tatlow’s official history of the Student Christian Movement, published in 1933, and more than a thousand pages long.  It’s self-published, and unreadable.  It is, in truth, the annual report of a dull bureaucrat, extended to the point of madness.  Like all such reports any hint of irregularity is suppressed.  So it is both long and meaningless.  It does contain some interesting early photographs.

Unfortunately I have been obliged to break the volume and scan the pages using a sheet-feeder.  I hate the idea of destroying books.  But I am quite certain that, if I had opened every page and scanned it in turn, I would have been the first person to do so since the typesetter.  Nobody can ever have read this torrent of sludge.  It needs to be online, where it can be consulted.  So in order to preserve the work, I have been obliged to kill a copy.  I hesitated long.  But I could not bring myself to spend a couple of days of my life on it.  I apologise, but plead for mercy!

The thing is still going through the sheet-feeder as I write.  This has been a productive day.

This is one of a series of posts designed to support students and teachers looking at the Love and Relationships unit of the OCR Classical Civilization A-level. You can find all the posts in the series by clicking on the OCR Seneca hashtag.

A major feature of Roman moral education was the use of exempla, from which we get our word ‘examples’. An exemplum was a biographical story which communicated some important moral lesson about what it meant to be a proper Roman – or, for Seneca’s purposes, an important Stoic truth. Seneca was very aware of the power of exempla, not least because of his father’s background in Roman controversiae and suasoriae, which relied heavily on the use of exempla as part of the fictitious cases that young men argued as part of their legal training. From the way that both Cassius Dio and Tacitus report his death, he seems to have deliberately framed his forced suicide in an effort to out-Socrates Socrates and make himself the go-to exemplum of a perfect philosophical death. (James Ker writes more about this in The Deaths of Seneca.)

Given that Seneca knows about the power of the exemplum, it’s not unreasonable to ask what he says about his own marriage and whether there are lessons here about what he thinks a good marriage should look like. One particularly moving passage comes from his description of his bedtime routine in On Anger 3.36.3-4:

I use this ability and every day I plead my case before myself. When the light has been taken away and my wife, my accomplice in my habit, becomes still, I examine my whole day, and I reflect upon my words and deeds; I hide nothing away from myself and pass nothing by. Why should I fear any of my mistakes, when I can say ‘take care that you don’t do this again; now I forgive you’?

As Seneca talks about his daily routine of scrutinising his conscience, he notes that his wife remains quiet so that he can concentrate on his process of reflection. She does this because she is familiar with her husband’s nightly ritual and respects it, presumably seeing in the value in it and supporting him in the process. Whether or not she is quiet because she is going through the same process, Seneca does not say; the word used, conscia, is usually translated to mean that she is aware of Seneca’s practice, but could also mean that she is a fellow participant in it.  The central point to draw from this vignette is that Seneca’s wife supports him in his pursuit of virtue. This links nicely back to the idea found in the fragments that the recognition of each other’s virtue and a shared journey towards reason is so important as the bedrock for marriage; what this passage of De Ira shows us is the way in which Seneca’s own relationship built on this critical principal.

HEFEI, CHINA—According to a CNN report, researchers led by Sun Liguang and Xie Zhouqing of the University of Science and Technology of China have found evidence of a tsunami that occurred in the South China Sea around A.D. 1076, during the Song Dynasty. The team found large rocks and coral during a survey of Lincoln Island, one of the Paracel chain of islands off China’s southern coast, and shell, coral, and rock deposits on Nan’ao Island, which is located close to the shores of southeastern Guangdong province. The number of coins and pottery on Nan’ao Island from the period after the tsunami dropped significantly, indicating that it took about 500 years for activities to resume, sometime during the late Ming Dynasty. For more, go to “China’s Legendary Flood.”

WINNIPEG, CANADA—Live Science reports that 5,900-year-old remains of a woman have been uncovered near Nicaragua’s Caribbean coastline by a team of researchers led by Mirjana Roksandic of the University of Winnipeg. Ancient human remains are rarely preserved in the area's tropical climate, but Roksandic said the woman was buried in a shallow, oval-shaped pit in a shell mound, which reduced the acidity of the soil and helped preserve her bones. Her body was placed on its back with legs flexed toward the stomach and arms resting along its sides. Analysis of her skeletal remains suggests the woman stood just under five feet tall and was between 25 and 40 years old at the time of death. Roksandic also noted the woman had very well-developed forearms, perhaps from long hours rowing a boat along the coast. Her teeth also show signs of wear that may have been caused by eating shellfish. To read about another site in Central America, go to “Off the Grid: El Pilar, Belize.”

WARSAW, POLAND—Live Science reports that a monumental 2,300-year-old fortress has been unearthed at the port of Berenike, near Egypt’s Red Sea coast, by a team of researchers led by Marek Woźniak of the University of Warsaw and Joanna Radkowska of the Polish Academy of Sciences. Woźniak said the western part of the fort was built with double walls and faces inland, suggesting its designers thought an attack might come from that direction. The fort was also equipped with a rock-cut well within the gatehouse, and a series of drains and pools that could possibly have held more than 4,000 gallons of water. A trash dump at the site yielded terracotta figurines, coins, and a piece of elephant skull. The researchers suggest the fort may have been one of a chain of forts constructed by the Ptolemies to transport war elephants imported from East Africa. To read about another recent discovery in Egypt, go to “Mummy Workshop.”

MEXICO CITY, MEXICO—According to a BBC News report, a temple dedicated to the god Xipe Totec has been discovered in central Mexico at the site of Ndachjian-Tehuacan by a team of National Institute of Anthropology and History archaeologists. Xipe Totec, god of fertility and regeneration, is usually depicted wearing sandals, a loincloth, and the skin of a sacrificed human. The site is thought to have been constructed by the Popolocas between A.D. 1000 and 1260, before they were conquered by the Aztecs. Worship of Xipe Totec later spread throughout Mesoamerica. Accounts of rituals dedicated to the god suggest people were sacrificed through combat or shot with arrows on one platform, and then skinned on another platform, which conforms to the layout of the newly discovered temple. Priests are then said to have worn the skins in rituals. Sculptures found in the temple include two large skull-like figures carved from imported volcanic stone, and a torso measuring about 31 inches long. A right hand is shown hanging from the figure’s left arm, perhaps representing the skin of a sacrificed person. The written sources also say a green stone would have been placed in a hole in the statue’s belly during ceremonies. To read in-depth about archaeology in Mexico City, go to “Under Mexico City.”

2 January 2019: We publish today a new Greek text and translation of IG I³ 1 (decree relating to Salamis, c. 508-500 BC?) and a first batch of ephebic dedications, most dating before 321 BC, listed at Publication 2 January 2019. At the same time we update and expand the notes on the ephebic decrees RO 89. In the context of improving our coverage of early 4th-cent. laws and decrees, we have revised the law on the approval of silver coinage, 375/4 BC, the alliance with Karystos, 357/6 BC, the decree on the cult of Asklepios in Piraeus, early-iv BC, and the law on the repair of the sanctuary at Brauron, 354/3-343 BC. We have also added Greek texts of most of the laws and decrees of 403/2-353/2 BC included on AIO. Where not available elsewhere in open access they have been allocated specific AIO numbers: Browse by Source - AIO. In addition we have revised and updated the decree on the property of Kodros, Neleus and Basile, 418/7 BC (notes), the sacrificial calendar of the Marathonian Tetrapolis, 375-350 BC (translation and notes), and the tribal decrees honouring the taxiarch of Kekropis, 339/8 BC (Greek text, translation and notes).

Scrineum Rivista ospita contributi originali su temi di storia della documentazione, del libro, della scrittura dalla tarda antichità al basso medioevo greco e latino.

La redazione rappresenta al suo interno vari e differenziati interessi di studio e di ricerca: perciò non privilegia alcuna lettura ‘di scuola’, né respinge a priori alcun punto di vista. Ogni storia di documenti e di libri merita di essere raccontata, purché con rigore critico e appropriati strumenti d'analisi: le ‘piste’ da seguire sono spesso intricate, frammentarie, sfuggenti, ma sono il fondamento indispensabile di qualunque indagine sulla «storia della cultura scritta» (letteraria, giuridica, religiosa, politico-istituzionale, artistica) e sulla storia delle idee, dei pensieri, dei desideri, dei gusti, delle velleità degli uomini che attraverso la scrittura hanno lasciato una traccia di sé.

Tutti i contributi sono valutati (peer-reviewed) da lettori scelti nell’ambito del Referee board indipendente o individuati in base alle competenze di volta in volta necessarie.

Download map of my Ancient History Hound podcast. Cheers to all listeners and if you want to join just look up the podcast wherever you download yours from. Here’s the main Libsyn link http://ancientblogger.libsyn.com/

TEXTE BIBLIOGRAPHIE NOTES AUTEURILLUSTRATIONS

TEXTE INTÉGRAL

• 1 Je tiens à remercier les organisateurs du colloque sur le désert Oriental d’Égypte. Je souhaite aus (...)
• 2 Les résultats des six campagnes de fouille sont publiés dans Meyer 1995 ; Meyer, Heidorn, Kaegi et (...)

1Le propos de cet article est de présenter un résumé des résultats de nombreuses années de recherche archéologique sur le site de Bi’r Umm Fawâkhir, dans le désert Oriental d'Égypte1. Il donnera un bref aperçu des campagnes de fouilles, certains aspects de la vie dans le site et un examen des techniques d'extraction et de traitement du minerai dans l’Antiquité. Le « Bi’r Umm Fawâkhir Project » de l’Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago a réalisé quatre campagnes de prospections et une campagne de fouille suivie d’une saison d'étude en 2001 à Qift. Les travaux topographiques ont commencé à cartographier l'extrémité sud-est du site en 1992 puis le travail a été poursuivi vers le nord-ouest en 1993 et 1996 ; un gros effort a été fait en 1997 pour compléter la carte de ce que nous appelons désormais l’établissement principal. Le site s’étend sur un demi-kilomètre d’une extrémité à l'autre (fig. 1). En 1999, nous avons eu l’opportunité de procéder à des fouilles mais nous avons seulement pu explorer trois des 237 bâtiments, soit un petit échantillon (fig. 1, 2). Outre la cartographie de l’établissement principal (en bleu sur la fig. 3), nous avons effectué des prospections dans les environs du site et repéré quatorze groupes de vestiges périphériques (en rouge sur la fig. 3) datables des v^e et vi^e siècles byzantins2.

via Phnom Penh Post, 28 December 2018

The post Angkor Wat a major money spinner appeared first on SEAArch - Southeast Asian Archaeology.

Françoise Graziani et Arnaud Zucker (éd.), Mythographie de l'étranger dans la Méditerranée ancienne, Paris, 2018.

Éditeur : Garnier
Collection : Classiques
444 pages
ISBN : 978-2-406-08622-2
34 €

Ce recueil croise les points de vue de l'anthropologie, de la philologie, de la littérature et de l'histoire des idées pour analyser la manière dont les mythes travaillent la notion d'étrangeté dans son rapport à diverses formes d'altérité.

This collection brings together different points of view from anthropology, philology, literature and the history of ideas to analyze how myths mold the notion of foreignness in its relation to various forms of Otherness

Contributeurs :
Contributors: Alganza Roldan (Minerva), Aufrère (Sydney), Beta (Simone), Borgeaud (Philippe), Brunon (Claude-Françoise), Fabre-Serris (Jacqueline), Fowler (Robert), Graziani (Françoise), Koch Piettre (Renée), Pellizer (Ezio), Scafoglio (Giampiero), Sergent (Bernard), Tilliette (Jean-Yves), Volokhine (Youri), Zucker (Arnaud)

Source : Garnier ed.

via Khmer Times, 26 December 2018: The Asian Cultural Council will be launched in Siem Reap last this month (Jan 2019)

The post World recognises heritage protection appeared first on SEAArch - Southeast Asian Archaeology.

via Phnom Penh Post, 24 December 2018: The Suvarnabhumi inscription of Cambodia moves to its new home in the National Museum of Cambodia

The post Ancient artefact calls museum new home appeared first on SEAArch - Southeast Asian Archaeology.