At 6:30 last Friday morning I received a phone call from the Cambridge Police. Its message: don’t stir from your house.
That was certainly the first time such a call, with such an instruction, had ever come my way. But it was just one sign, among many, of a wild week.
Today, April 18, 2013, would seem to be an important day in American history. Yet, the occasion has attracted precious little media attention. You might expect many notices hailing the arrival of the Digital Public Library of America. The DPLA, after all promises “to make the holdings of America’s research libraries, archives and museums available to all Americans—and eventually to everyone in the world—online and free of charge.”
Each year, when I return from the annual conference of professionals in the field of aging, friends ask what hot topics were discussed. This year, Chicago was too cold to generate much other heat at the event. However, some of the speakers did stir some important thinking.
Nothing has proven itself once more. After spending hours trying to find a password to suit my new printer, I was in despair. Why did it not answer any of my reliable code words built up over the years?
As I came out of my house one afternoon, so did a neighbor come out of his, three houses away. When he saw me, he turned toward me and to my astonishment called out “Habemus Papam.” These words, meaning “We have a Pope,” astounded me.
First, I could not recall hearing Latin spoken on our short street before that day. And, more surprisingly, the neighbor who spoke them is Jewish. He did graduate from a Jesuit university, a fact that may have stirred feelings about the new pope, a Jesuit.
By using the unexpected phrase, my neighbor made me feel new solidarity with him.
You had it first here.
That is if you are a long-time reader of this column. You would have been armed for the surprising news of Pope Benedict XVI’s retirement.
On the large map of the world that adorns my study, the name Tombouctou appears near the Niger River, in the African country of Mali. My map, it turns out, uses the French language spelling for a name more commonly known to our world as Timbuktu.