Greetings y'all (and apologies for cross posting),
As some of you might be aware, much on my Atrium site has lain untouched
for a while as I finish my diss (honest!) and as technological problems get
in the way. The primary technical problem was that a search facility that I
made use of for putting together my Commentarium (which generally took
three hours or so to put together), shut down for a month and then became a
payfer service (i.e. ya gots to pay for it). To put Commentarium together
using the standard search engines was taking *days* of continuous work ...
obviously that sort of time I don't have. In any event, I've come up with
another strategy for putting Commentarium (and the Rostra) together and a
month of testing suggests this might be too cool for words. But I also
realize that there are folks out there who hate to wait for each issue of
Commentarium and, given my current finish-the-diss. goal, I probably won't
actually update that page for another month. And so, as a happy medium and
as a semi-alternate service (Commentarium will never be shut down), I am
now offering an email newsletter called Explorator, which will be free and
will essentially come out on a semi-daily basis (probably two or three
times a week, depending on how busy the week is) and it will be a short and
sweet list of urls relating to the ancient world in the media, with brief
descriptions of what they contain. Essentially what this is is
'Commentarium in Progress' ... when I get my act together, the links that
are still alive will appear in Commentarium (or Rostra) [every 10 days or
so] ... you'll still want to visit Commentarium for extended coverage ...
stories on a particular discovery will only appear once in Explorator [i.e.
if something is covered by CNN, Reuters, and AP, you'll only get one]; at
the same time, there will be things in Explorator which won't be featured
in Commentarium (but might surface somewhere else in The Atrium). There
will also be links to advertisers.
To give you an idea of what I might send you (I'm still thinking about the
ultimate format), here's a sampling of what would have been sent today (and
yes, these links are real):
-------------------------------------------------
Explorator: Scouting the World for the Ancient News of the Day
(or something like that)
May 5, 1998
1. On May 2, Ann Townsend was a guest on NPR's Weekend Edition Saturday and
spoke on the Thracian Gold Exhibit which is currently making the rounds in
the USA (5.00 minutes; requires RealAudio):
http://www.npr.org/ramfiles/980502.wesat.07.ram
2. Also on May 2, Elaine Fantham was a guest on Weekend Edition Saturday
and enlightened the world about the Roman god of mildew (6.00 minutes;
requires RealAudio)
http://www.npr.org/ramfiles/980502.wesat.16.ram
3. This week's edition of Christian History has an article by John Gooch on
the triumph of Christianity in the late Roman Empire]:
http://www.christianity.net/christianhistory/57H/57H041.html
[this is an example of something that wouldn't make it to Commentarium]
4. If you can read Italian, the May 5 La Repubblica has a nice report on
links dealing with the Latin language, including much info from the
Rassegna site (and A. Cristofori, its owner)
http://www.repubblica.it/online/cultura_scienze/latino/uno/uno.html
5. The May 5 Jerusalem Post has a feature on an exhibit at the Bible Lands
Museum in Jerusalem entitled *Sacred Bounty Sacred Land,The Seven Species
of the Land of Israel* which explores the the species' (vines, figs,
pomegranates, etc.) imagery in various ancient artistic media which covers
quite a space of time and a variety of ancient cultures
http://www.jpost.co.il/Tourism/Article-1.html
[there would probably be an ad or two interspersed amongst the reports; at
the end would come subscription info and links to get things like RealAudio]
---------------------------------------------------------
Or something like that. Another major reason for doing this is to allow you
access to articles that have a very brief shelf life. In any event, what
I'm looking for are some folks who are interested in receiving this to drop
me a line (offlist, of course) asking to subscribe so I can further work
out the logistics of this. As I work these out, the newsletter will be
somewhat sporadic, but will probably still be worth reading.
regards,
David Meadows
[log in to unmask]
P.S. I *will* be covering archaeological things other than from the ancient
mediterranean world as I have in my Commentarium; this was just for example
purposes.
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