Facebook Posts

Here are some of the posts from Facebook pertaining to Gilgamesh's accident:

Sept 16
Yesterday our son Gilgamesh Homan fell off his skateboard and fractured the back of his skull rendering him unconscious. At the hospital they put him on various life support mechanisms including a breathing machine. There was quite a bit of swelling and bleeding from the brain. They tried to take out part of his skull to ease the pressure. That didn't work. The neurosurgeons said there was nothing they could do.

Gilgamesh is an organ donor. Now over the next 30 hours they will try to find recipients for his organs. Probably Wednesday we'll say goodbye to him, and they will take him to surgery to take out his organs that matched recipients. He is just 18 years old. It's perversely senseless.

I'm not sure how appropriate messages like this are on facebook. It's just that there have been stories about his condition circulating and I wanted to clarify briefly what has happened. Thank you for your support during these difficult past 24 hours and for what lies ahead. I'm not going to be able to check facebook for a while so forgive me if I don't answer any questions in this feed.

Sept 17
The memorial celebration of my son Gilgamesh Homan’s life will likely be Saturday September 28th. More details to follow in a few days. We will be saying goodbye to him later this evening.


Sept 18
Gilgamesh Homan passed away at 8:09 PM last night, September 17, 2019.

Gilgamesh is Gone

Hi, it's been a while.

I began this blog way back in 2003 as a means to write about my teaching. My intentions were partly altruistic, as I thought that this might make me a better teacher and help others who teach and learn in the field of Hebrew Bible and the history and archaeology of the ancient Near East. Partly it was selfish, as in 2003 I was in my third year at Xavier University of Louisiana, and I planned on using this as part of my portfolio to show the Rank and Tenure committee that I should get tenure and promoted to the rank of Associate Professor. Looking back on how things played out, I would say that all of these goals played out more or less.

Then on August 29, 2005, my life like so many others were changed forever when Hurricane Katrina blew ashore and the levees in New Orleans turned out to suck. I wrote about escaping the flooded city, and then chronicled my family's efforts to recover. We battled the insurance industry. It took us three years to get into our house.  Here I journaled the challenging journey my family and I were on, and writing about our experience was cathartic. I continued posting until 2014.

But then I quit posting. I started feeling like the world would be a better place without so much of my voice, that it would be better for me to quit posting and to be quiet and do a better job listening. I started thinking that social media was ruining the world. All of the above might still be true, but now, with recent events, I think I'm going to need to start blogging again for selfish reasons.

My son Gilgamesh died. He was 18, and had just started his Freshman year at LSU. He had a skateboarding accident on September 15th, and he hit the back of his head hard on the ground. He was taken off life support and he passed away on September 17th. It's now two months later. These have been by far the two most difficult months of my life. Perhaps I'm being naive, but I think that if I write about this adventure of grief that it might help me on this stupid and awful journey. Time will tell. That's enough for now.

Poverty Point and Palestine

A couple of years ago I had the good fortune to visit Poverty Point. I was blown away by place. I'm a big fan of archaeology in the Near East, and never was that interested in archaeology in the Americas. But the amount of work that went in to engineering the bird shaped mound 3000 years ago was inspiring. Lately Poverty Point has been in the news. It's nominated to be a UNESCO World Heritage Site, which is a very cool thing. The nomination will be voted on in June. But, UNESCO recognized Palestine as a country and then the United States quit paying membership dues to UNESCO. Also I hear The Alamo is nominated and in the same predicament. The thing is that Senator Mary Landrieu inserted the World Heritage dues of $700,000 in an appropriations bill but the House deleted it. It seems the Republican Party does not want Landrieu to get credit for this and thus get some votes from the residents of Northeast Louisiana.

"In To Wonder"

Check out this short and interesting animated film by Katherine Hogan. See if you can recognize Kalypso as a drawing.
In To Wonder from Katherine Hogan on Vimeo.

Pope Francis

I'm quickly becoming a very big fan of Pope Francis. His emphasis on mercy and inclusion rather than dogmatic enforcement is very refreshing and more in line with my views about Catholicism.

Card from Marj Rabba

I received a very creative card from three of the people who worked with me in Area AA at Marj Rabba: Madeline, Phoebe, and Tova. It's full of inside jokes so I'll do my best to translate. The card is made out of a brown paper finds bag, hence the stamp with locus and basket numbers. So why is there a fat hat-wearing turkey with a beer on the cover with the words "Happy Thanksgiving"?

The turkey is meant to be me. At some point early on one of the volunteers said she liked to cook, and her favorite dish to make was green bean casserole. I think that's cream of mushroom soup, canned green beans, some worcester sauce, and then fried onions. I then went on and on about how much Thanksgiving sucked. I think it's also in reference to me wanting to find more in the area, and not being too thankful for the finds that we had. By the way, notice the "y" is filled in with "The Dude." I reminded some of them of the Dude in the Big Lebowski.

Then it's the inside of the card that is the most interesting.

On the left is the infamous insect deity. It was a small clump of mud that looks very much like the picture. We theorized that the insects worshipped it, because with their simple insect minds, they didn't know any better, --it was a god to them. Notice the ant who lost a head in sacrifice. We had many pits of all types in Area AA, hence the "pit emporium" reference. Walls without corners, we had many. Then there is stick figure me complaining that due to age differences (me late 40's, them early 20's), that we had so little that we could talk about. The best part is that there isn't a pop-up, but a pop-down feature. A student named Chas dug a one meter by 3 meter trench looking for bedrock. Instead, we just kept going down to more and more dirt. We started calling it her grave. Finally in the right, there is Gilgamesh displaying good troweling technique while in a nearby tree house. The "Big Sleep" is in reference to Gilgamesh falling asleep one day at fruit break. Funny card, thanks Madeline, Phoebe and Tova, and everyone else in Area AA and elsewhere at Marj Rabba for a memorable excavation.

Marj Rabba Updates on Galilee Prehistory Project Blog

If you are interested in learning more about what's going on at Marj Rabba, where my two Xavier students Alexis Parker and Melissa Nguyen are excavating along with Gilgamesh and me, check out these resources for updates:

Marj Rabba is part of the Galilee Prehistory Project. They're blog is here:
http://galileeprehistoryproject.org/

Also follow Marj Rabba on facebook.

Rujm el-Hiri

We just finished week two at Marj Rabba. Interesting site, great people. I've been enjoying learning more about the many mysteries of the Chalcolithic period. We work Sunday through Friday with Saturdays off, though we seem to tour something on either Friday or Saturday. Last weekend we toured the excavation at Akko. Today we took a trip to the  Golan Heights to visit Rujm el-Hiri. I had never been here before, and I have to admit that even with a map, it would have been very challenging to locate. Thanks to Chad Hill for navigating us there.



Rujm el-Hiri is an amazing site where giant basalt boulders are placed in circles, all around a central rock quern burial. Some people call it the Stonehenge of the Chalcolithic because the sunrise on the solstices seems to match the orientation of the structure. Here is a picture of the circles from an elevated position from Wikimedia:


A whole lot of people moved a whole lot of rock to make these designs. It very much reminds me of Poverty Point in Louisiana. Lots of questions are raised about the purpose of both Poverty Point and Rujm el-Hiri. There seems to be a debate about whether this was built in the Chalcolithic period or later. There do seem to be several Chalcolithic settlements in the area. It's always hard to date structures such as these. There were burials in the giant central rock quern, but they were robbed long ago. In any event, it's an amazing site.

How Gilgamesh Tried to Kill Me at Ein Gedi

I learned some valuable lessons yesterday. We rented a car and drove from Jerusalem to Ein Gedi. As we'll be working at Marj Rabba soon, I wanted my students to learn more about the Chalcolithic period. So our goal was to hike to the famous Chalcolithic temple above Ein Gedi, and talk about Ghassulian material culture, objects such as cornets and the ritual objects from Nahal Mishmar. So we walked in the Nahal David, and then started climbing. The first lesson I learned was that I am older and far more out of shape then I was the last time I did this. The second lesson I learned was that my Birkenstock sandals were not the best choice of shoes for this trek. But the most important lesson came about 30 minutes into the walk. Gilgamesh, carrying our shared backpack, decided without asking that he'd race ahead. Ein Gedi is on the shores of the Dead Sea, which is the lowest place on earth. Because the water evaporates, the place is always very humid, and it's very hot in the summer. It was 41 degrees celcius yesterday, or about 105 fahrenheit. Every time I thought we'd reach the apex, the trail would turn and there would be 100 more steps. I was getting exhausted, but more dangerous, I was getting seriously dehydrated. Also, my students didn't pack enough water for themselves and one student, Alexis, was starting to get a headache, a bad sign of dehydration. Gilgamesh had our large water bottle in the backpack, and that would have been enough for all of us to stay adequately hydrated. I quit sweating, was getting a bad headache, but slowly with much resting we marched up and onward. Finally we came to the Chalcolithic temple. Then suddenly, there was Gilgamesh. He said he had gotten lost. I said to him, with a very dry mouth and breathing heavily, "Gilgamesh, can you think of anything in that bag that I would need to survive out here?" He gave me the water bottle, but it was empty, as he had drunk all of the water. So Gilgamesh agreed to go back down to the visitors center, get the water bottle filled, and then meet us as we were descending. We took some photographs of the temple. But we were too tired to walk up a bit higher to get a better perspective. Here's the temple in a panorama shot:

Eventually we made it back down, found Gilgamesh, and then sat for an hour in the shade drinking liter after liter of water. It all turned out OK in the end, thankfully.

$1.50 Merit Raises for Teachers

The company that profits from red light cameras in Baton Rouge released a study claiming that yes, the red light cameras saved many lives over the past five years. In other shocking news, advocates for Charter Schools claim massive success in education reform for the New Orleans area.

When I travel I get this a lot. People from all over the world have heard that charter schools saved New Orleans' once dismal public education system. I found out yesterday that my wife, a teacher in a charter school in New Orleans, received a merit raise of $1.50 for next year. That's because she reached her school's goal of 80% student achievement on a certain standardized test, or something else, I didn't fully understand. We were re-watching Game of Thrones episodes and that was more interesting than taking the time to comprehend what goal she reached to get the $1.50. But the point is, as far as I am able to speculate, that the governor of Louisiana and all of the other "treat education like a business" people will now be able to accurately claim that they paid high performing teachers more as an incentive for their good work.

We haven't decided yet how Therese will spend that $1.50. Maybe she'll splurge on an ice cream cone, but those likely cost twice her raise. She spends quite a bit, as do all of the teachers I know, on classroom supplies. Maybe she'll get a few pencils and an extra eraser.