Raising Alexandria by Andrew Lawler

There’s no sign of the grand marbled metropolis founded by Alexander the Great on the busy streets of this congested Egyptian city of five million, where honking cars spouting exhaust whiz by shabby concrete buildings.  But climb down a rickety ladder a few blocks from Alexandria’s harbor, and the legendary city suddenly looms into view.  Down here, standing on wooden planks stretching across a vast underground chamber, the French archaeologist Jean-Yves Empereur points out Corinthian capitals, Egyptian lotus-shaped columns and solid Roman bases holding up elegant stone arches.  He picks his way across the planks in this ancient cistern, which is three stories deep and so elaborately constructed that it seems more like a cathedral than a water supply system.  The cistern was built more than a thousand years ago with pieces of already-ancient temples and churches.  Beneath him, one French and one Egyptian worker are examining the stonework with flashlights.  “We supposed old Alexandria was destroyed,” Empereur says, his voice bouncing off the damp smooth walls, “only to realize that when you walk on the sidewalks, it is just below your feet.”  With all its lost grandeur, Alexandria has long held poets and writers in thrall, from E. M. Forster, author of a 1922 guide to the city’s vanished charms, to the British novelist Lawrence Durrell, whose Alexandria Quartet, published in the late 1950s, is a bittersweet paean to the haunted city.  But archaeologists have tended to give Alexandria the cold shoulder, preferring the more accessible temples of Greece and the rich tombs along the Nile.  The rediscovery of ancient Alexandria began 14 years ago, when Empereur went for a swim.  He had joined an Egyptian documentary film crew that wanted to work underwater near the 15th-century fort of Qait Bey, now a museum and tourist site.  The Egyptian Navy had raised a massive statue from the area in the 1960s, and Empereur and the film crew thought the waters would be worth exploring.  Most scholars believed that the Pharos had stood nearby, and that some of the huge stone blocks that make up the fortress may have come from its ruins.  No one knows exactly what the Pharos looked like. Literary references and sketches from ancient times describe a structure that rose from a vast rectangular base—itself a virtual skyscraper—topped by a smaller octagonal section, then a cylindrical section, culminating in a huge statue, probably of Poseidon or Zeus. Scholars say the Pharos, completed about 283 B.C., dwarfed all other human structures of its era.  It survived an astonishing 17 centuries before collapsing in the mid-1300s.  Franck Goddio is an urbane diver who travels the world examining shipwrecks, from a French slave ship to a Spanish galleon.  He and Empereur are rivals—there are rumors of legal disputes between them and neither man will discuss the other—and in the early 1990s Goddio began to work on the other side of Alexandria’s harbor, opposite the fortress.  He discovered columns, statues, sphinxes and ceramics associated with the Ptolemies’ royal quarter—possibly even the palace of Cleopatra herself.  In 2008, Goddio and his team located the remains of a monumental structure, 328 feet long and 230 feet wide, as well as a finger from a bronze statue that Goddio estimates would have stood 13 feet tall.  Perhaps most significant, he has found that much of ancient Alexandria sank beneath the waves and remains remarkably intact.   This 2007 article was adapted from its original form and updated to include new information for Smithsonian’s Mysteries of the Ancient World bookazine published in Fall 2009.  Read much more at:  http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/Raising-Alexandria.html 

Beneath your feet  Roman ruins still exist underground in various countries, such as England, France, and--of course--Italy. 

The MacArthur Foundation has named its 2013 class of MacArthur Fellows, recognizing 24 exceptionally creative individuals with a track record of achievement and the potential for even more significant contributions in the future.  Fellows will each receive a no-strings-attached stipend of $625,000 (increased from $500,000) paid out over five years.  Without stipulations or reporting requirements, the Fellowship provides maximum freedom for recipients to follow their own creative vision.  Meet the 2013 MacArthur Fellows at:  http://www.macfound.org/fellows/class/2013/ 

Range Poultry Production Systems:  commonalities between systems by Anne Fannatico  June 29, 2013  Range poultry production offers potential niche markets for producers interested in boosting income and diversifying operations.  Common features of range poultry production systems include access to fresh pasture and the use of non-medicated, natural feeds.  The specific production system used is only a small part of a larger picture that allows a producer to access niche markets.  Many of these systems are integrated with cattle, sheep, or goats, which is especially helpful in keeping the forage at a manageable level for the chickens.  Birds forage on plants, insects, and worms but concentrate feed is important for commercial production and to properly balance nutrients.  Systems discussed are:  Pastured poultry, Free-range, Semi-intensive, and Permaculture.  http://www.apppa.org/content/12620  Read Kentucky farmer David Wilson's story and recipe at:  http://www.courant.com/entertainment/restaurants/a-la-carte/sc-food-0920-better-chicken-20130925,0,5783686,full.story  Sept. 25, 2013 

Common expressions--easy to use, but hard to write out?   Take the simple expression 'uh huh.' Uh huh can mean that we're listening to what the person is saying, so this is a way of keeping them talking.  It can also mean yes, or it can be pronounced 'um hmm.'"  Unh unh is no.  

Uh-Huh!  Lyrics and Actions at:  http://supersimplelearning.com/songs/original-series/two/uh-huh/

Example of Huh? as a sarcastic comment in the lead-in to Glenn Kessler's Fact Checker, the Truth Behind the Rhetoric:  One lawmaker says Obamacare is the most unpopular law in the history of the country.  Another says 59 percent support it.  Huh?  

Full article:  http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/wp/2013/09/25/how-unpopular-or-popular-is-obamacare/ 

Sen. Ted Cruz's all-night talk-a-thon on the need to defund Obamacare has finally ended, clocking in at 21 hours and 19 minutes.  After starting at 2:41 p.m. Sept. 24, 2013, Cruz wrapped up at noon Sept. 25.  Sen. Harry Reid had offered to allow the Texas Republican senator to continue speaking until 1 p.m., but Cruz declined the offer because he wanted to be granted unlimited time to speak.  http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/ted-cruz-pulls-nighter-senate-obamacare/story?id=20365712 

Sen. Ted Cruz decided at 8:04 p.m. on Sept. 24, 2013, just over five hours into what we're calling his talk-a-thon, to read from the Dr. Seuss classic “Green Eggs and Ham.”  The story now appears on the official Senate record.  Cruz broke with Dr. Seuss' classic rhyming couplet structure in order to modify the text:  "When Americans tried it, they discovered they did not like green eggs and ham and they did not like Obamacare either," Cruz read.  "They did not like Obamacare in a box, with a fox, in a house or with a mouse.  It is not working."  “Green Eggs and Ham” was not the only children's literature Cruz referenced in his bid to stand in one place with cameras on him for a long time.  Within the first half hour, Cruz invoked the classic tale of perseverance, “The Little Engine that Could.”  Still talking Sept. 25, shortly before 9 EDT, Cruz referenced the work of novelist and Objectivist philosopher Ayn Rand.  He chose to read from her longest novel, “Atlas Shrugged,” which, like “The Little Engine that Could,” also heavily features the theme of perseverance, and of course trains.  http://www.latimes.com/books/jacketcopy/la-et-jc-ted-cruz-dr-seuss-ayn-rand-to-stall-senate-20130925,0,5096260.story 

The Senate will vote on a motion to proceed on the Continuing Resolution Sept. 25 at 1 p.m. ET.  If the motion to proceed passes, Senators will have 30 hours of debate on the measure to fund the federal government at current sequester levels of $986.3 billion through December 15 and to defund the Affordable Care Act (ACA).  Follow the procedure at:  http://www.c-span.org/