Research: it’s called ‘hands on’ for a reason

This youngster’s portrait carries the name Eutycheion but mysteries remain. Was he slave or free?

Welcome to our final “Fresh Eye” interview with Stephanie Lile, ace author/researcher, and currently curator at the Washington State History Museum in Tacoma.
VL: Stephanie,  I’m excited about the “hands on” parts of your research, because that’s an area I am especially drawn to. As you know, in studying the ancient world, earlier historians often dismissed humbler objects and quotidian details, preferring instead to focus on the doings of great men and the writings of patrician superstars. Today that attitude has changed; and with it, the methodology. Let’s start with the tools you employ these days.
SL: At our museum’s History Lab Learning Center, we identified seven key “tools of the history trade” (artifacts; ephemera; maps; people;  images; books/periodicals; and electronic media) to help us get a handle on past lives and civilizations. As the most valuable sources for historical evidence, these tools apply to all fields of research, not just history.
VL: Artifacts; what do you folks specifically mean by the term?
SL: Artifacts are three-dimensional objects made and/or used by humans. They often blend function, art, and culture. Works of art, such as pottery or textiles, are artifacts.
VL: What are the memorable artifacts you’ve handled in your careers as museum curator and researcher?
SL: I love Greek pots. I admire them for their usefulness and their artistic merit. For example, one particular pot at the Getty Villa shows Herakles (known as Hercules to the Romans) fighting the nine-headed Hydra. That pot made me realize that Greek vases are, in fact, the first graphic novels! A whole story is told on that painted pot.

http://www.getty.edu/art/gettyguide/artObjectDetails?artobj=12550

SL: My current favorite is the inner coffin of our museum’s mummy, Ankh-Wennefer. It’s covered with beautiful paintings and hieroglyphics—–which depict the entire life story of the man he once was. Imagine having that on your coffin! We’re presenting an exhibit on this extraordinary artifact in January 2011.

VL: Your second category, called ephemera (Greek for “day”) sounds modern. In it you include paper documents and printed items intended for brief use. What sorts of ephemera do you find invaluable?
SL: Most of my Tail Gunner novel is based on the World War II ephemera my father left behind. Things like tickets to the Vatican Museum and to Pompeii; a dinner pass to a Royal Air Force club; postcards from a Florida gunnery school. I used this “trail of breadcrumbs” to trace my dad’s movements. Ephemera may be fleeting but their usage in research provides tangible evidence like no other.
VL: I recently did a blogpost about unlikely discoveries found on recycled pieces of ancient papyrus. One was a to-do list from an Egyptian official named Zenon, who lived in the 3rd century AD. That would classify as ephemera, wouldn’t it?
SL: Yes, because (like our own daily to-do lists) it was  a casual, “use and throw away” item.
VL: Let’s jump ahead to images. I’ve gotten a deeper understanding of people who lived in ancient times by studying encaustic paintings of them on wooden panels or shrouds. One group,  collectively called the Fayum mummy portraits, seem to speak directly to me. What do such images convey to you?

http://www.getty.edu/art/gettyguide/artObjectDetails?artobj=15466

SL: One that sticks in my mind is another Fayum mummy portrait. While working at the Getty Villa I got to know Herakleides, the collection’s Red Shroud mummy, very well. He was a favorite because of the crossing of cultures he represented. His name was Greek, his mummification technique was Egyptian, and his portrait was in the Roman style. Even more intriguing, the body of an ibis bird (found via CT scan) was found in his mummy wrappings.

The partly shattered wood panel of this portrait lets us see the material and how it was assembled

VL: On their artwork, Greeks and Romans included multiple mythological symbols, astrological signs, jewelry and other indicators of social class, and other pictorial “shorthand” that viewers of that time readily understood. What do you use to help you translate this visual meta-language for today’s museum-goer, educator—or for a writer like me, doing historical research?
SL: I have a shelf full of symbology dictionaries, both old and new. Symbols are tricky because you to have take into account both the symbol’s meaning and the time period in which it appears. For example, at countless ancient Roman sites you see eagles and snakes depicted. Thus it wasn’t an accident that the founding fathers of America also picked the eagle and the snake, symbols of strength and solidarity, for their new country.

Rome’s symbol: an eagle and SPQR ( the Senate and the People of Rome)

VL: Stephanie, another of your tools is maps. What can be gleaned from maps of earlier periods, besides the differences in placenames and political boundaries?
SL: Maps show change. They show changes in thinking and knowledge, technology, and places. They can provide the sense of a place in a previous time that we’d never guess would have existed.
VL: Today’s children spend a growing amount of time in “virtual reality.” Their exposure to the natural world, and to the world of the past, comes largely via imagery on screens large and small. Granted, it’s often beautiful, startling, even emotional—but the images are still second-hand representations. How can the language of objects, the kinds of things you talk about, help children get engaged with the real world, past and present?
SL: Many aspects of our lives are so pre-packaged that we (adults as well as kids) have forgotten where they come from, and how. Historical inquiry fosters a natural curiosity about the objects in our world. Thinking skills–the same ones used by doctors, detectives, writers, and inventors–are valuable for more than studying history. They’re essential to anyone seeking the truth. Whether you’re a schoolchild or a working adult, knowing how to use research tools beyond Google gives your work an authenticity you can’t achieve any other way.
VL: Thanks very much, Stephanie. Learn more about research and sources at her blog (http://whatsthatthing.wordpress.com) and from her book History Lab to Go! published by Washington State History Museum. Learn more about that museum’s mummy at: http://columbia.washingtonhistory.org/kids/Fall2008/collections-conumdrum.aspx.

Cyber-research & three-way learning

Welcome to Part 2 of our “Fresh Eye” interview,  where we dig into more research issues and endeavor to make sense of it all. We’re again chatting with Stephanie Lile, whose resume runs from magazine founder and nonfiction author to curriculum developer and researcher at a variety of museums. The learning spaces she’s proudest of developing include the TimeScape at the J. Paul Getty Villa in Malibu and the History Lab at the Washington State History Museum in Tacoma.

VL: Welcome back, Stephanie. To start with a Big Picture question, how do you view research as it relates to writing books?
SL: For me, it’s as much a process of “finding” a story through the research as writing it. Research inspires me. I know I can stop researching and start writing when I hear an opening line repeat itself in my head.

VL: Today it’s a simple matter to look up a great many things online. Lightning quick, in fact. What’s your philosophy when it comes to wikipedia, google, and similar shortcuts?
SL: These tools are helpful starting points and often turn up unexpected sources. They cut down on what I call the “drilling time” tremendously. Nevertheless, once you get to the core of the subject, you still have to talk to people, dig around for primary sources, experience processes, and observe activities. A writer friend, for instance, while doing a recent book about a blacksmith and a wheelwright, took a blacksmithing class to get a better
feel for it.

VL: Stephanie, do you think that other researchers take research as seriously as you do? Or should they?
SL: Writers and filmmakers have a huge responsibility to get their research right. Why? Because studies have shown that children learn more history from books, film, and other sources than they do in school. Therefore, we as writers have an obligation to thoroughly explore all possible resources in order to give an accurate as possible picture of a time or place—even if the story is fiction.

VL: Tell us about the wonderful online resources of museums. How do you rate them? Any tips for searches?
SL: More and more museums are putting their collections online, and I constantly use them for research. Being an insider, however, I am painfully aware that only a small percentage of any given museum’s collection is actually online. I know this sounds shocking. But digitizing a collection is a mammoth longterm project. A further complication: museum holdings don’t often turn up in random google searches. So if you’re researching, you have to know which museums have items related to your subject; only then can you do internal searches on their websites.

VL: Stephanie, you and I met at the J. Paul Getty Villa a few years ago, where I gave a presentation on the jobs held by ordinary Greeks and Romans of long ago.  The participants at that summer institute were teachers from across the U.S, the topic being “ancient Greek colonization and trade.”  Tell us how you organized that workshop, what the research goals were, and how you went about enabling the educators to achieve them.
SL: As a museum educator, my goal is to say it three times, three ways. Most often that means visually, verbally, and kinetically, through an activity. It’s the approach I developed for the History Lab Learning Center at the Washington State History Museum. You model it (show people how to do it), map it (analyze how and why it was done) , and apply it (have people try it themselves.) People retain things better this way, especially on subjects with which they may not be too familiar.

VL: How did your method specifically apply at the Getty?
SL: We used Greek pottery as a base for that weeklong workshop. Because pottery was a common trade item in ancient times, the pots themselves had utility, and most also had imagery and stories painted on them. So I had the participating teachers examine the stories painted on the pots, then compare the similarities and differences of the pots from a variety of Greek colonies around the Black Sea.

VL: Did your workshop tie in with a traveling exhibit, perhaps?
SL: Yes. Because it was at the Getty Villa, the participants had the good fortune to see objects that had been borrowed from the Hermitage collection in Russia. This was a pretty rare opportunity, since these were items found by 19th century archaeologists at the Greek colony sites on the Black Sea. The teachers got to closely examine the types of artifacts that were found, learn how they were used, and how ideas were spread through such art objects. This is an ideal way to utilize museum collections. It allows teachers, writers, and anyone involved to get a much more vivid, 3-D sense about objects and their uses in different periods.

VL: You have more than 20 years of experience at this detective work. What question are you still curious about—and still looking for answers?
SL: Context. That’s what I wonder about most. We might display objects from a given period, but often, how they were made and used and worshipped is still very sketchy.  Take some common object in use today—a flash drive, say. How would anyone who’s never seen or used one know what it is, and what it contains? There are millions of mystery objects (from the past) out there; and frequently we still have no real idea how they were used and why.

VL: You are currently on another research journey—your mom has dementia. As a caregiver, you’ve been looking for fruitful ways to interact with her, comfort her. What have you discovered about this sad dilemma that affects so many families today?
SL: I’m going on personal experience and longterm observation—a very viable form of research. As I’ve watched my mom fade, and watched others who live in her care facility come and go, I’ve learned that memory loss is not the same as personality loss, although they’re both devastating for those involved.  When she moved into the memory care
unit, she didn’t want me to leave but couldn’t hold much of a conversation anymore. I discovered that reading to her was a great way to interact without any stress on either side. Just as she used to read to me at bedtime, I enjoy reading to her now.
• It’s also a useful way for other visitors to spend time with her. Quizzing people afflicted with memory loss about what and who they remember is, in my view, simply cruel. Mom loves classics like Charlotte’s Web and Richard Peck’s books because they are set in her childhood years. Middle-grade novels, such as Seaglass Summer and Where the Mountain Meets the Moon also have  events, actions, and emotion that she can relate to. Overall, I like to believe that it comforts her to hear my voice as she falls asleep at night.

VL: Thank you, Stephanie. What a loving experience for your mother—and an invaluable “research tool” that others can emulate.
• We’re not finished, folks. Please join us on my next blogpost for our finale, Part 3 of our interview with ace researcher-teacher Stephanie Lile. In my next post, we’ll be talking about Lile’s “hands-on” research techniques.

Research, the magnificent journey

• Welcome to another “Fresh Eye” interview, where we explore the underpinnings of research. Seasoned scientists, educators, and writers have “bloodhound” instincts, far more relentless than google. How do they carry out their research? Why does it satisfy? What can we learn from them?
• Today we’re chatting with Stephanie Lile, who’s honed her research skills for two decades as author, educator, curriculum developer, and museum curator. We’ll hear more about her methods, as well as the scoop on that vintage WWII bomber that heads up this blogpage.

VL: Stephanie, some time ago I attended a lecture by Richard Peck, famed author of A Year Down Yonder and other stories for tweens. He has a memorable way of defining research. In his words: “It isn’t research unless YOU go to IT.” Please tell us about the times where you as a researcher have gone to it.  What were the hurdles? And the payoffs?
SL: Ironically, some of my first writing and museum jobs required writing and teaching about places I’d never been. For them, I had to rely heavily on secondary sources. Afterwards, I vowed that in future, I’d find ways to visit places, interact with locals, and achieve a deeper context for my work.
• Often, that meant intense preparation before traveling “to it.” For my young adult novel set in WWII-era Italy, I brought along old photos of the places my dad had visited during the war that I’d identified beforehand through diary entries, troop movement orders—even ticket stubs. At Pompeii, we found the exact location where he’d stood some 65 years ago. On Capri, we found the beach where he swam. Although I was able to retrace his footsteps, I’ll never know what he was thinking as he stood there—or why he went. The experience of place, however, of “going to it,” gave me precious context for the box of “stuff” he left behind and the novel it inspired. And some of my most moving experiences  became key elements of the story.

VL: What’s the most unusual place you’ve ever gone to do research?
SL: Probably my trip to Mesa, Arizona, where (via a company called Warbirds Unlimited) I got to fly in a 1943 B-25H bomber. I wanted to experience what my father had—and boy, did I. The tailgunner position, the best seat in the house, had a nearly 360-degree view but I had to crawl on my hands and knees to get into position. Scary to learn how vulnerable it would be during combat. I’d brought along my nephews  and niece so they could get a better sense of what their grandfather had gone through—and we quickly learned why the plane had a good supply of barf bags! Even during an hour-long flight, the shimmy of the aircraft, the reek of the fuel, the  temperature extremes were rough to take. Horrifying to think what daylong missions must have been like.

Ace researcher Lile gets into tailgunner position on a WWII bomber

VL: What other challenging assignments have you undertaken?
SL: As managing editor of the e-zine COLUMBIAKids, one of my regular assignments is a column called “Collections Conundrum.” Subject of my first piece? The Egyptian mummy that had been in our Washington State History Museum since 1897. I was able to track down an Egyptologist who specializes in mummies from Akhmim, where ours originated. We’ve since collaborated to have the mummy scanned at Tacoma General Hospital. From a column for the magazine, that project has grown into a special mummy exhibit that will open January 2011. I’m curating a section of it, and doing some deep digging in primary sources for it. One of my resources: a transcript of the diary of Allen C. Mason, who on his round-the-world journey in 1891 purchased  the mummy, later donating it.

VL: Other examples you’d like to share?
SL: Another “Conundrum” I’m working on is to securely identify the scene in a huge painting by James Everett Stuart. Finally, after getting copies of the artist’s diaries from the California State Library, I found the original name of his work: “Mount Rainier from Elliot’s Bay.” You’d never know it was Elliot Bay, however, since the bay has been industrialized and dredged out since Stuart’s time (1852 – 1941). I’ve come to believe this magnificent painting may well be one of the only images of Elliot Bay in its original state.

VL: As researchers, we all encounter setbacks. We’re like the crime detective who runs out of clues. Or follows a red herring. Can you tell us about one of yours?
SL: Regarding my YA novel, one of my biggest mistakes was failing to interview more WWII Air Corps vets before they passed on. I did manage to get one phone interview with a great guy who’d served with my dad. He filled in many gaps for me that no training manual or Army document could.
False starts occur all the time. That’s what makes research “re-search.” We use the info we have to develop hypotheses about what we think happened—then we go about proving or disproving them.

VL: What keeps you from giving up? Do mistakes, wrong turns, erroneous conclusions ever lead to something fruitful?
SL: My method is to do my research in little chunks; easier to chew that way. I start with a basic search to see what turns up, then work my way toward more specifics. I also search for locals or experts in particular fields to help me.
• For example: while in Italy, I also showed a 1940s-era photo of a statue to everyone I met, asking locals if they knew where—and who—it was. No luck, not even in Rome. Finally I emailed it to a friend on Corsica. Turns out the photo shows a statue of Napoleon—and it’s on that island. That led me to believe my dad saw much more of Corsica than just the base camp. The 12th Air Corps was stationed on Corsica until April 1945. From there, they moved to Ancona, Italy, and stayed there for awhile after the war’s end.

VL: Thanks, Stephanie. We’re not finished, folks. Please return for my next blogpost, Part 2 of our interview with ace researcher and temporary “tail gunner” Stephanie Lile. We’ll be exploring the fascinating secrets of online research and museum collections–and some poignant personal research stories.

* Long-ago folks didn’t have Post-it notes or Smartphones. Instead, they wrote on papyrus (their surprisingly durable paper), wood, pottery shards, wax tablets, whitewashed walls.
* Their birthday invitations, doctor bills, love letters, work agreements, prayers, and to-do lists still exist. Often in hiding. And sometimes recycled in astonishing ways.
* Inside this mummified crocodile, for instance.
* Why should we care?
* Because these small jigsaw pieces of the past speak directly to us.
They reveal the hopes, fears, and realities of men and women
very much like you and me. Let’s eavesdrop.

What: This petition, addressed to an official in Kerkeosiris, 40 miles SW
of Cairo, was written in Greek by Tapentos, a female citizen in obvious distress.
Who: The language of her declaration gives the impression that Tapentos was an independent local homeowner, possibly a businesswomen, who lived alone. And had rivals. Or enemies. This is only my speculation, since the rest of the papyrus is missing.
When: the text dates to about 114 BC. It’s part of the Tebtunis Papyri collection, which has over 22,000 fragments of ancient writing.
Where found: In December 1899, Berkeley archaeologists Bernard Grenfell and Arthur Hunt started excavating a huge cemetery at the ancient Egyptian town of Tebtunis. Their goal: to find human mummies, prepared a certain way. As a rule, mummies were covered with protective layers of linen stiffened with plaster. Egyptologist Flinders Petri, however, had earlier discovered that less elegant mummies were coated with layers of papyrus instead of linen. Old papyrus, written on and discarded. From a history standpoint, this was huge. Grenfell and Hunt soon found papyrus-laden human remains at Tebtunis.
• The town also had a large temple to Sobek, the crocodile god. Near the temple ruins, the archaeologists found another large necropolis, this one jammed with mummified crocs to honor Sobek. Before long, the excavating team got fed up, wading through seemingly worthless reptile remains, trying to find human sarcophagi.
• On January 16, 1900, a breakthrough. Literally. An impatient workman kicked a croc mummy and it broke into pieces, revealing to everyone’s shock and delight that crocodiles too had gotten the papyrus papier-mache treatment. In addition, some of the larger animals (up to 14 feet long) had layers of papyrus wadded inside to plump them out.
• The workman’s find was indeed lucky in two ways. Although Hunt and Grenfell spent the rest of the digging season ripping through a thousand crocs, only 31 of that great number had been mummified using discarded papyri. And Tapentos’ mysterious story was one of them.
To learn more: The Center for the Tebtunis Papyri online (with a link to APIS the digitized collection) at http://tebtunis.berkeley.edu

* Long-ago folks didn’t have Post-it notes or Smartphones. Instead, they wrote on papyrus paper, wood, pottery shards, wax tablets, whitewashed walls.
* Their birthday invitations, doctor bills, love letters, work agreements, prayers, and to-do lists still exist. Often in hiding. And sometimes recycled in astonishing ways.
* Inside this mummified crocodile, for instance.
* Why should we care?
* Because these small jigsaw pieces of the past speak directly to us.
They reveal the hopes, fears, and realities of men and women
very much like you and me.
* Let’s eavesdrop.

What: it’s a papyrus document, written in Greek, listing the questions put to an oracle located in Greco-Roman Egypt
Who: the queries come from 15 unnamed Greek-speaking individuals who visited this oracle
Why: For a millennium or more, people from slaves to senators sought answers at oracles, especially at crossroads moments
Where found: in the rubbish dumps of Oxyrhynchus, an ancient town about 150 miles south of Cairo
When: the questions date to circa AD 300
To learn more: Select Papyri, Vol. 1, item 195, in the Loeb Classical Library; 1970 edition translated by A. Hunt & C. Edgar.
Testaments of Time, by Leo Deuel. (Knopf 1965). Out of the Past of Greece and Rome, by M. Rostovtzeff. (Yale U. Press 1932).

Q: In January of 49 BC, after Julius Caesar had conquered the Gauls, he and the 13th Legion (Legio XIII Gemina) marched toward Rome. When they got to the Rubicon River in northern Italy, the triumphant general stopped to perform a rite, saying, “Alea iacta est!”  Meaning “The die is cast!” What was ‘the die’ anyway? And why did he cast it?

A: Roman generals, when faced with an important decision (like marching on Rome with an army) used divination to see if the gods approved of the actions they planned to take. Divination took many forms. One popular method, called cleromancy, involved tossing or casting lots. You could use dice, knucklebones, or even dried beans in a pinch. Caesar’s dice throw said ‘full speed ahead,’ the good omen that Caesar (and his troops) craved.

(Much more on divination in How to Mellify a Corpse.)

author + porqueras = love

• No one said it would be easy, hurtling through time and space to research obscure corners of ancient history.  The toughest part? I’m a frequent flyer but when not airborne, I log countless miles as a “frequent walker.”
• I try to pamper my lower extremities with foot massages and ankle-deep seawater strolls while beachcombing. The best strategy, however, seems to be outlandish (but comfy) footwear. I do not mean those teetering structures designed by punitive individuals named Manolo or  Jimmy. I mean shoes with real soul to their soles. And their uppers.
• My passion really got rolling in 2004, the year I began to fill my fifth passport. After renting a house on the north coast of Mallorca Island, my partner and I had made the mother of all dares. For the entire month, we would walk everywhere; no car, no bikes. We wouldn’t even use the tram that ran back and forth to the beach. Call it dumb luck, but we happened to choose the shoe-happy pueblo of Soller, population 15,000, as our base.
• On day one, we set out from our casa on the nosebleed-steep side
of the valley to explore our new town. Before eating lunch in Soller’s cuddlesome main square, we ambled along the Street of the Moon. My feet were hurting already. Flipflops on cobblestones—bad idea. Thankfully, we stumbled across a place called Ben Calcat—or “Good Shoes,” where we met artisans Maruja and Paco, who crafted classic island footwear.
• All thoughts of lunch and exploration vanished; I got deeply into shoes. My favorites were two-toned, spats-like numbers called “porqueras.” Fred Astaire himself would have killed for my elegant new shoes. Before long I’d ordered five pairs in a rainbow of color combos—in suede or smooth leather. (Fred might have been dismayed about the name. “Porquera” means “pig farmer shoe” in English for reasons that remain enigmatic, since they wouldn’t last 5 minutes in a hog wallow. But I digress.)
• Since Soller is surrounded with phenomenal hiking opportunities,
Ben Calcat also had boots on offer. I went for an ankle-high pair called “patateras” ( “potato farmer boots”) which came in colors rich as pinot, amontillado, and Bailey’s Cream.
• Although the uppers were hand-sewn with new leathers, I discovered
to my delight that both pig and potato farmer models offered a bouncy, comfortable ride. Reason? Their soles were made of recycled tires.
• Finally heeding the pleadings of my now-ravenous partner, I tore myself away from Ben Calcat. But the die (or dye, in this case) had been cast by Soller’s aromatic, leathery offerings. I now became a dedicated hunter of unusual shoes whose common characteristics would be: Comfort. Color. And quirky recycling.

zebra clogs = heaven.

• Serendipity struck within the year. In my own home territory of small-town coastal California, I encountered another gem of shoe fabulosity, an enterprise called Sassy Feet.
• Co-entrepreneurs Margot and Destiny excel at creating one-of-a-kind footwear. Their artistic brainstorming typically begins when a customer brings in a trashed-up but beloved pair of shoes, or a find made at a yard sale. The genre doesn’t matter: high heels to tennies, sandals to slipons all get The Treatment. Like customizing a classic car,  these experts give footwear new life and style with fabrics, luscious paints, trims, handmade laces, furbelows and gewgaws.

NPR interviewer Lian Hansen + author in snazzy jaket = click

glam shoes = author secret weapon

• The best part? Your born-again shoes can be adorned with talismans of personal significance to you, the wearer. My gladiator sandals, for instance, now jingle musically with the golden “coins” from a necklace given
to me by my late brother–the only keepsake I have of him. After the Sassy Feet treatment, my pair of bland thriftshop pumps became a magic carpet, shimmering with the persimmons and skyblues of a treasured jacket I brought back from India.
• I continue to vagabond to faraway corners, doing on-site research for my books and accumulating “frequent walker” miles at a ferocious rate. These days, however, I’m equipped to go the distance. With panache, no less.

before: footwear wallflowers

after: paint job adds drama, pizazz

• The magenta-and-black slipons pictured here? Once ho-hum brindle brown, they now hold their own in ultra-stylish Rome as well as clamber capably around Greek temples and dusty archaeological sites.
• I asked Margot Silk Forrest (who’s also an author and professional editor) how she happened to saunter into shoe customizing. Her answer?
“I was painting fabric one day when my Gemini curiosity made me read the fine print on the label of the bottle. It said the paint worked on leather. My mind reeled. Leather? That meant shoes! Purses! So I tried it and fell in love with a whole new craft. I mean, who wouldn’t want to paint their shoes?”

• Margot and her partner in shoe legerdemain, Destiny Carter, also transform purses into wearable art;  more at: www.sassyfeet.com http://typepad.glittersweatshop.com
http://store.sassyfeet.com.
For you central California coast readers, Margot will teach shoe painting at Arts Obispo on November 7. Call 805/544-9251 for details.

• It’s early September, the season when our thoughts wistfully turn to loafing or summer partying one last time on Labor Day weekend.
• 2,000 years ago, that was not the case. The Greco-Roman calendar was crowded with “labor day” festivals–more often than not, honoring a specific occupation and its patron god or goddess.
• There were exceptions. In May, an extravagant shindig for the god Mercury, patron of merchants, orators, pro athletes, and travelers, took place. Although we’re used to seeing Mercury wearing wings on his feet and not much else, in ancient times, this messenger deity accessorized with a money purse. As the god of trade and commercial success, merchants made pilgrimages to Mercury’s well in Rome during his festival, to douse  themselves and their goods with that lucky water.
•  Minerva, known as Athena in Greece, also played patron goddess to countless workers and their careers, from horn players and teachers to artists and doctors.
• At the opposite extreme, the association of beekeepers held their own sting-free festival bash. Their headliners? Mellona, the mellow Roman goddess of bees and honey; and Melisseus, a much more ancient “bee-man” divinity from pre-Olympian Greek mythology.
• Those early deities knew how to play hardball. When Zeus was an infant, Melisseus and his good-hearted daughters hid him away from his father, a Titan named Cronos. Dad had eating disorder issues, you see. Cronos craved baby flesh, especially his own kin. As legend had it, bee-man Melisseus and company fostered little Zeus on milk and honey until the kid got old enough to become CEO of Olympus.
• Back on planet earth, when not getting buzzed at their own festivals, most Greek and Roman apiarists went the extra mile
for their bees. If local plants weren’t flowering sufficiently, industrious beekeepers would take a hike with their hives. In Italy each night, men placed their hives aboard boats and took them miles upstream. At dawn, the bees would swarm out to feed.
When the boats began to sit low in the water, the apiarists knew that their busy charges had filled the honeycombs. In Roman Spain, beekeepers labored even harder, sometimes hauling their bees from place to place—on muleback.
• In case you’re wondering: ancient beehives were made of tightly woven reeds, daubed with mud and leaves. Or from cork, or bark, or even dried dung. But most agreed that the very best hives were made of ferula—a species of giant fennel plant. With finicky care, beekeepers wove the fennel stems around a wooden framework. So strong and lightweight were the ferula hives, and so perfectly did they keep the bees cool, that they continued to be the sine qua non of hive architecture from ancient times up until the 1990s.
• In the sugarless Mediterranean world of 2000 years ago, you’d think that humans would value honey most highly as a sweetener. That role, however, was secondary. Honey, the food of the gods from toddler Zeus on down, had religious significance. And it was even more prized for its healing and preservative powers—to the extent  that Alexander the Great and lesser lights demanded to be mellified, or embalmed in honey.
• Just as bees drink nectar from many flowers, so too this post draws from varied sources: a snippet from “Roman Holidays,” an op-ed piece I wrote for the Los Angeles Times on 9-3-2007; part from the entry on beekeepers in my 2007 book, Working IX to V; and other morsels from entries in my newest book, How to Mellify a Corpse.
• Stay tuned later in September for more sweet sips about honeybees. And some mighty odd beliefs about their reproduction, bee-sides.