On a Musical Genius

Derek Amato is a musical genius. That much is beyond dispute. You can find his videos online and hear that for yourself if you doubt me. We think of people with artistic talent at this level being gifted from birth with wonderful abilities given to them by nature. Derek is an anomaly to this type of genius, however, in many ways. That fact doesn’t take away from his amazing skills, however. It simply makes him unique.

Derek’s story starts when he was born as a child of the 1960s. He didn’t have a great deal of musical background growing up. Oh, he played a little guitar as a young man, but that was mostly to impress girls. And he could pick out Chopsticks on the piano. But that was about it. No formal lessons in any instrument. No indication that he had a great talent inside of him.

He had a fairly typical young adulthood. Marriage. Kids. Bounced around between jobs and careers. Nothing special. Even had a rough patch in the early 2000s when he was so broke that he had to sleep in his car for a bit. But he bounced back and got a good job with the US Postal Service. That job gave him good benefits and steady work. Things seemed to be going right for Derek. Then, disaster struck him–sort of.

The scene was a backyard barbeque beside the pool. You know the type–grill getting too hot, beer iced down, people running around and horseplaying in the water. The year was 2006. Derek was a few months shy of 40 years old. Someone yelled at Derek to catch and threw a football towards the pool. Derek dove headfirst into the pool to catch the pigskin. That’s when it happened. He jumped too far from the side and his head hit the tiles on the opposite side of the narrow pool. He knew instantly that something was wrong. His friends at poolside knew it, too. They helped him out because he was not able to help himself.

He’d suffered a severe brain injury hitting the hard tile surface. As Derek tells it, as his buddies pulled him out, their mouths were moving, but he couldn’t hear them. He realized that he was partially deaf as well as partially paralyzed. Luckily, his motor skill returned quickly, but the deafness and the brain trauma lasted a bit longer. After several days in the hospital, Derek was released with the doctors telling him that he was incredibly lucky to be alive. Eventually, his hearing returned.

That’s when it happened.

Five days after leaving the hospital, Derek visited a friend, one of the ones who’d pulled him out of the water a couple of weeks before. That friend had a piano. Derek says that something pulled him over to the keyboard, and from his fingers came an amazing and completely original and complex piano composition, immediately composed as Derek played it at that moment.

Everyone was amazed, most of all Derek himself. Again, he’d had no training. Now, after the incident, he could play anything after hearing it only once, and, not only play it, but improve upon it by improvisation. He had that Mozart-like ability to take a simple tune and make it incredibly complex and beautiful. And his improvisational compositions were and still are amazing. His ability is so great that he is now composing and performing music full time.

What’s more, Derek’s doctors have told him the “gift” could leave him at any time, even without another traumatic injury. Until then, Derek is determined to enjoy his talent–as long as it lasts him. So, while some people are born to greatness, it seems that some others have greatness and talent concussed into them.

Derek Amato is an example of the latter.

On an Airplane Jump

Nicholas Alkemade was a British man who fought in World War 2. His job during the war was not an enviable one–he was the tail gunner in a British bomber. That position was one that had a short life-span. Many of the men who were tail gunners never lived to tell the tales of what they experienced as the bombers flew miles above Germany during the war. You see, the tail gunner had a great responsibility. The German attack planes that were sent up to stop the bombers would usually attack the Allied bombers from below and from behind. Men like Nicholas had the difficult task of trying to fend off the attackers so that the bombers could carry out their tasks. But that also meant that they and their small, cramped nest at the rear of the plane were incredibly vulnerable. They were the first ones to see and sometimes even feel the bullets the Nazi airplanes spewed into the bombers. And, too often, the bombers retuned to England after the bombing raids with no tail gunner at all.

On March 24, 1944, Nicholas, who was 21 years old, and his bomber group were tasked with making a raid on Berlin, the German capital city. And the attack was scheduled, as many were, at night, when it would be more difficult for the enemy to see the bombers. Three hundred planes were sent on the mission. Now, once the bombers crossed the English Channel, they were over enemy territory and thus susceptible to anti-aircraft fire as well as the harassing German fighters, fighters that were much faster than the lumbering big bomber.

Nicholas’s plane, a British Lancaster bomber, had a crew of 7 men. They had dropped their bombs, and they turned for home. That’s when a small squadron of German Stukas, a heavily armed fighter/bomber, attacked. Nicholas and the other gunners tried to fend off the Stukas, but their plane was shot up badly. It caught fire. It began to spiral down towards the earth. There was nothing Nicholas could do but abandon the burning plane.

When he landed, Nicholas was quickly captured. He’d sprained his leg when he landed, so he had to be assisted by the German soldiers who captured him. The Lancaster had crashed nearby, and four of his fellow crewmates never made it out of the burning plane. Nicholas was taken to the local Gestapo (the Nazi secret police) headquarters for interrogation. That part was routine; the Nazis wanted to know the location of Nicholas’s airbase, what the number of planes were in his squadron, and other such information that might help them in the war. Of course, Nicholas didn’t reveal anything other than his name, rank, and serial number. Oh, and he told them about jumping out of the burning plane, of course.

And that’s when the Nazis began to doubt Nicholas’s story. How did he manage to jump out and survive when four of his fellow crewmembers didn’t, the Nazis wanted to know. His tale seemed too incredible to believe. The plane was at 18,000 feet (5,500 meters) above the German nation when Nicholas bailed out. Something didn’t add up about his story, the Nazis said. Yet, Nicholas insisted that his version of what happened was the truth.

The Nazis called him a liar. They made the injured man return with them to the crashed Lancaster. They forced him to show them where he was when he jumped. And then he pointed to his parachute. That’s when the Nazis shook their head in disbelief, but they had to admit that Nicholas was telling them the truth. You see, the charred parachute that Nicholas pointed to, the one that he was to use in case of the bomber being shot down, was still in the plane, still lying in the burned out wreckage of his tail gunner’s position.

And Nicholas Alkemade had somehow survived when he jumped 18,000 feet to earth without it.

On a Bus Rider

You know this story.

A young Black woman in Montgomery, Alabama, in 1955, refused to give up her seat on a public bus and was arrested for her refusal. But there’s much more to her story than you may realize.

You see, we sometimes forget that the United States was a racially segregated nation within living memory. I have a memory from when I was about 4 years old of going into the “wrong” restroom at a bus station–I went into the “colored” restroom and was gently escorted out and shown the “mens” room by a nice person inside. Black Americans simply did not enjoy the same rights as White Americans. One significant but overlooked area in which this was true was in where Blacks were allowed to sit on public transportation. The laws in Montgomery, a city only about 4 hours south of where I grew up, said that Black riders could sit anywhere they wished–until the front seats were needed by White citizens. That was the law and it was enforced. So, if the bus were starting to get full, and a White person boarded, Black citizens had to get out of their seats and move to the back of the bus so the White person could sit.

And that’s what this young Black woman was fighting against when she took a stand in March of 1955 and decided she wasn’t going to move, that she had the same right to the seat as any other citizen of Alabama and the United States. The police were called, and she was arrested for violating the law. Well, the truth of the matter is that is what happened, and it’s also not what happened.

You see, the decision to test the law was made by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). In order for the unjust law to be challenged, there had to be a court case. And, the way you achieved standing (the right to have a case tried) was to have a reason for being in court in the first place–the issue has to affect that person. And the way a person can show that the law had a negative impact on them was to be arrested and have the case heard. And that’s what happened.

Except this story ends differently that you might think. You see, the young woman who got arrested in March of 1955 for not relinquishing her seat to a White person was not quite what the NAACP was looking for in a sympathetic defendant in court and in the court of public opinion. The attorneys for the group felt strongly that she was wrong for the test case on several counts. First of all, she was single and pregnant at a time when that situation still caused a negative reaction by the public at large. Secondly, she had extremely dark skin, and that was off-putting to many White people. Finally, she was only 15. So, despite the injustice she suffered, Claudette Colvin’s case wasn’t taken up by the NAACP.

It would be 9 months later before a more suitable candidate for the lawsuit, Rosa Parks, would be arrested for the same thing.

On a Hidden Grave

Cemeteries still fascinate me. The older I get, the more their hold over me grows. All those lives–the years of work, happiness, sadness, love and hate, all now lying peacefully and peaceably under the dirt–now becoming part of the earth from which humans sprang and from which we are made. We place grand markers, often, to call our attention to remembering those who have died. Sometimes, we place no markers at all. And sometimes, those who die wish that no one ever knows where their mortal remains lie.

Take the instance of a man in Asia who lived and died 800 years ago. He wished that no one would discover where he body was after he died. His instructions were to place his body near where he was born–this much we know–but to cover up the grave site. The reasons for this remain a mystery to this day. He was wealthy and powerful, this much we know, and 800 years later his nation still celebrates his life. And that makes the mystery of his grave site even more intriguing.

We westerners usually honor our great leaders with not only praise but also with memorials. Grant’s Tomb is only one example of building a large memorial tomb to honor a hero or a famous leader. And this man was a hero to his people. He was, as at least one historian has said, not only a leader but also a civilizer. He brought a safe postal system to the land. He introduced paper money. He established religious freedom. He made it safe for foreign diplomats to conduct political and trade business within the nation’s borders. And those borders stretched from the Pacific Ocean to the Caspian Sea, the largest empire up to that time in the world. And remember that this was 800 years ago. So, it makes sense to a western mentality that to find and honor this man’s gravesite is the right thing to do.

But the social construct of middle Asia is different. The honor they give their heroes is to honor their memories with less tangible methods. They have put him on their money in the modern nation, surely, and there are statues in many of the cities there, but to mark or commemorate his gravesite would be a sign of great disrespect to the man’s memory. The prevailing mentality is that if the man had wanted his gravesite memorialized and marked, then he would have made it obvious where it was to the wider public.

Instead, as his body was carried to its final resting place, those who were met on the way were dispatched by those accompanying the body. After the coffin was interred in the earth, it has been said that 1,000 horses ran over the site for an entire day in order to hide where the great man lay. Today, there are some guesses as to where he’s buried (such as some sacred mountains or a mesa or plain in those mountains), but no one knows for sure. And, apparently, that’s exactly as he wanted it.

And that’s why we may never find the burial site of history’s greatest conqueror, the Mongol Emperor, Genghis Khan.

On a Merry Gang

We hear the phrase Toxic Masculinity these days to help us define and understand the concept of a male who believes that men are the dominant gender and should be free to exercise that dominance in any and all situations. Hostility towards women (whether overt or covert), lewd or rude behavior (“No one can tell me what to do!”), and a sense of entitlement all mark the toxically masculine. Not that men have often behaved in this manner throughout history, but the rise in the practice of such behavior in some quarters has been a reaction to what is perceived to be a feminization of men by society at large.

That was certainly the impetus behind the formation of what came to be called The Merry Gang. This group of mostly wealthy young men from prestigious families in England met to bemoan the condition of manhood in their country. They decided to live their lives like they thought the men of medieval England did–not caring for what others thought of their behavior and doing pretty much what they pleased. They took inspiration from King Henry II from the 1100s and said that, when Henry ruled, men were men (whatever that means), and what they felt was the current social convention of men “getting in touch with their feelings” and being considerate and kind was only men becoming more like women. Thus, they sought to return to the “good ol’ days” which, apparently to them, meant behaving like boors and creeps.

Some of the deliberate outrageous behavior of the Merry Gang included exposing themselves to women at any and all opportunity, appearing drunk and obnoxious in public, and bragging loudly for all to hear of their sexual “conquests.” They would walk down busy London streets and touch women as they pleased, making crude remarks as they did so. Now, some might say this sounds like a case of “boys being boys,” but that’s the point, isn’t it? The Merry Gang believed that kindness was equal to femininity and the de-masculinization of men in English society. That weakness, as they saw it, was everything that was wrong with the modern world, and they sought to fight against the rising tide of equality and the idea of men getting in touch with their feelings.

Their leader, an earl named John Wilmot, had the political and financial clout to get any of their group out of trouble with the law if they ever were caught or charged with their outlandish antics. For example, two of the Merry Gang’s members were in a pub, and they were drunk. They decided to go upstairs to the pub’s balcony above a busy London street and get naked. Once they’d done that and drew the attention of the passersby on the street below, the pair began miming lewd, sexual acts for the stunned and shocked crowd. Apparently, according to reports of eyewitnesses, they also took a large bottle of wine and loudly toasted to the health of the new King Charles, a man they saw as one of their own for his own reported sexual exploits. Soon, the constables were called, and the two were jailed. Wilmot not only bailed them out and paid their fines, but he also rewarded both of them handsomely.

To further spread their concept of what a man should be, the Merry Gang gave money to artists and writers and creators who felt the way they did. Sadly, the group found that they had a rather large audience for such “manly” artistic creations, and the artists and creators they supported financially flourished. Most of the public was outraged, and protests erupted against the group, but, predictably, Wilmot and his pals could not have cared less.

But, as these things often do, their antics grew tiresome even if they were still toxic. People grew bored with the group. The group began to age. Some of them drank themselves into alcoholism and early graves. Wilmot quietly stopped financing the artists and withdrew from society. In fact, he died from an STD at age 33, a disease he contracted from a prostitute. I mean, you can’t get more “masculine” than that, eh? The Merry Gang proved that toxicity runs both ways, harming both victims and perpetrators. Thus, the Merry Gang ended up being not so merry.

But, sadly, their toxic mentality is still present today–350 years after Wilmot died in 1680.

On a British Spy

I love a good British spy story. Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy is one of my favorite films for this reason. There’s something about the spycraft of it all, the casual business-like calm, the, well, Britishness of spying that makes those types of stories interesting to me. Take the story of one such spy recruited by Britain during World War I.

Many people don’t know that the British Government spy agency, commonly known as MI-5 (short for Military Intelligence, Section 5) got its start before World War 1, in 1909. Britain could read the tea leaves, so to speak, and knew that war with the aggressive regime of Kaiser Wilhelm II in Germany was going to happen sometime in the near future. Therefore, the British planned ahead. MI-5 was set up to identify and monitor possible German spy activity in Britain in the buildup to the war. The head of the agency, a General Vernon Kell (known only in the agency as “K,” of course), also knew that, when war came, it would be vital to have British agents in the nations that could help Britain win the war. So, he planned to plant British spies in nations like Romania (whose king was a relative of Britain’s George V, as were most European monarchs), Denmark, and Italy.

Italy was especially important to Britain because of their large navy in the Mediterranean Sea and the fact that they bordered Austria-Hungary on their eastern side, a nation that most assuredly would side with Germany during the war. And General Kell sought out Italians who weren’t in the miliary to be his spies; he felt that people with “normal” jobs would draw less attention in their intelligence gathering than would people who would be obvious candidates for spying. On the other hand, the occupation of these people should give them access to people, places, and events that would prove to be valuable sources of information if and when the need arose. Teachers made good spies. Transportation administrators did as well. Art dealers, book publishers, and reporters were also on the list.

Thus, one of the spies MI-5 supported during World War I in Italy was a journalist. In his capacity as a British agent, this guy could not only have access to important people but he would also be able to help sway public opinion in favor of the Allied cause. Of the several dozen spies in Italy during the war, this one was a particularly good investment. Records show the man was paid well by the British every week to provide information and also help mold the opinions of the Italian people into supporting the Allies. In fact, payments made to this journalist at the time equaled about $8,000 per week in today’s money.

As Italy’s government began fighting for the Allies, the work this spy performed made a difference in keeping Italian morale up and providing actionable information for his minders. As the war ended in November, 1918, the need for such spies also ended. Kell saw MI-5’s budget cut drastically after the war, going from hundreds of staff members to only a handful. However, the onrush of World War II brought the agency it back to life as the original Axis of Evil (Germany, Japan, and Italy) threatened the world.

Of course, Italy’s threat to Britain in the 1930s might not have been so great had it not been for the rise of the Black Shirts of the Fascist Party in the 1920s. And you know the man who led that political movement, right?

The same journalist the British paid so well to be a spy during the previous war: Benito Mussolini.

On a Court Visitor

We forget that the concept of European royalty having almost absolute political and economic power over their subjects was a thing as recently as about 200 years ago. The revolutions of the 1840s put an end to most of the period of powerful reigns of the kings and queens in Europe. One of the most powerful courts was that of the Hapsburgs, and they last ruled in what was then the Austro-Hungarian Empire. You probably know more about them than you realize, including the fact that one of the most famous products of that powerful royal family was Marie Antionette, the Queen of France, who, along with her husband Louis, was beheaded on the guillotine during the French Revolution.

Marie grew up in Vienna, at the royal palaces including the large one at Schonbrunn and the palace at Hofburg. She was the 15th child of her parents, the Emperor Ferdinand and his wife, Maria Theresa. Marie, of course, would grow up to be the poster person for upper class snobbery and disaffectedness. The quote attributed to her, “let them eat cake,” supposedly said about starving French citizens who had no bread, was less about her lack of care and more about how she was raised. It never occurred to her that people would run out of bread, of course, and, if they did, well, surely they could then eat cake–because she had never done without. That gives you the idea of how isolated from how the average, common person lived that Marie’s upbringing was. And that’s why it’s surprising to find that the royal family entertained two commoners at the palace when Marie was a young girl.

This young boy was about Marie’s age, actually. He and his father had an audience at the palace at the order of Marie’s mother, Empress Maria Theresa. The man and the boy, only aged 7, came to entertain the Empress and some of her children. It was noticed immediately that the boy and Princess Marie were of similar age and size. The story goes that, during his time in the palace, the boy slipped and fell on the highly polished floor. Marie, being polite, bent down and helped the boy up. In his gratitude, the common boy is said to have said to the princess, “Will you marry me? Yes or no?” Marie was stunned and also amused. She asked him why he would ask her that. He replied, “Because you were so nice to me.” Marie is said to have giggled, and the adults thought that the scene between the two seven year olds was sweet.

While we don’t know if that event actually happened (it was told about Marie in later years), we do have written evidence that the young man did take some liberties to some degree, especially for someone who was not a member of the royal family. It seems that he climbed up into the lap of Empress Maria Theresa. His father was mortified. This was embarrassing and unseemly and an affront to the majesty of the wife of the emperor of that part of the world. But, the empress was kind and loving to the boy. She not only hugged the brash youngster, she allowed this common boy to give her a kiss on her cheek.

Later, after the father and son left the palace, Maria Theresa sent a gift to this 7 year old boy as a token of her kindness towards the family. She had some of the slightly used but incredibly expensive silk clothes of one of her sons sent to the boy. Also, the gift was in appreciation for the musical entertainment that the boy and his father provided for the court, Maria Theresa, and her young children. Of course, the real star of the recital was the 7 year old; the father, his teacher, was there to assist his musically gifted son.

And that’s how, possibly, that Marie Antoinette came to receive a proposal of marriage from a young Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

On An Accidental Travel Agent

Odds are you took a vacation sometime in the past year. And, for many of you who did, you may have done an all-inclusive trip that featured the flights, transfers, hotel and food/drink all rolled into one price and package, hence, the package holiday. Others of you might have taken a cruise, which, in a way, is a floating package holiday. The advantages of this type of trip are obvious; there’s little guesswork involved, everything is done for you, there are few or no hidden costs, etc. And they can be fun and relaxing. And they can be even more fun if its a group of you and your friends who go on the trip together. Usually for something like that, a group uses a travel agency or a large firm that handles group travel.

Take the trip Tom arranged for a group in England. The group had a common purpose in mind since they were all people of the Christian faith. They wanted to attend a convention of sorts that catered to people like them. The thing was, Tom wasn’t a travel agent. He was somewhat affiliated with the group, and, sometimes, that’s the way these things get organized. Someone in the group takes charge and makes all the needed travel arrangements. And that job fell to Tom. The other thing that was unique about the trip was that this group of friends turned out to be almost 500 souls. Yet, Tom managed to shepherd all those people on a day trip to a local town via train, and the group was grateful that he organized everything so well. But that was only the start.

The group then asked if Tom would take the lead organizing another trip. Compared to this new task, the day trip was small potatoes. In this case, this new trip was to be of some distance and over several days. Keeping track of who was going, how they would get there, where they would stay and how they would be fed, and even to the logistics of how and when they paid (and who paid and who hadn’t yet) takes the organizational abilities of something resembling the D-Day landings in complexity often. But Tom proved up to the task. He put it all together for them.

And the people who went on the trip were thrilled. Tom even had the foresight to create vouchers for the group to use in the hotels in which they stayed as payment for the food they ordered. He had pre-arranged this with the establishments before the trip, you see, and this idea meant that the travelers didn’t have to carry cash with them on the trip. Upon their return, the group thanked Tom profusely. They asked if he would organize other, longer, and more complex trips for them. Tom hadn’t considered a career as a travel agent before, but, after figuring in a percentage of the cost for each person on the trip as a payment for his services, Tom ended up making pretty good money. So, almost by accident Tom became a travel agent. He and his son registered their new business, setting up shop in London. Soon, he was escorting and selling tours around the world.

You might think that the world is filled with travel agencies and that between them and the internet, Tom would find that the competition for clients would be fierce. But, you’d be wrong. You see, this was 1865, and there were no travel agents.

Thomas Cook was the first one.

On Needing Your Help

This small corner of the webiverse has been putting out a blog post a day for over a year now. In the time of the existence of the site, almost 500 short stories have been told (this one will be number 486, to be exact). For the present, new stories will still be posted daily.

However, I need your help.

One of the not-so-secret reasons for producing this content has been to provide enough material for a book some day. And, with this number of stories out there on the interwebs, it’s time to start the Great Culling.

I’m asking you, the reader, to help me select some of the stories that have piqued your interest and ones that you think a wider audience might enjoy. While I’m not asking you to scroll through all of the posts, I am asking that you let me know which ones resonated with you for one reason or another. You don’t have to tell me the reason; I’m only interested in learning which ones you enjoyed the most.

My brother (a captive audience if there ever was one) says that, even when he knows that story, he often enjoys how this blog tells it and how we get to the ending that he knows is coming. That’s fine, too. If you already knew a tale’s ending but you like that particular story, please let me know about that, too.

I’ll be working on gathering and winnowing out the better 200 or so stories for a book.

Your help in deciding what goes in that book would be greatly appreciated.

You can reach me at charlesamillson@gmail.com or need4news@aol.com (if you’re over 60). (The email will open in a new tab, btw.)

On a Classics Scholar

Tim Fenstermacher didn’t finish high school. Nothing wrong with that per se; high school isn’t for everyone (ditto college, obviously). Yet, Tim is today recognized as one of the best linguists in a language that is no longer spoken or written: Egyptian hieroglyphics. The story of how Tim came to be a classical scholar is long and fascinating. And it began with him writing letters to other scholars and to scholarly journals.

Take, for instance, a letter Tim wrote to Biblical Archaeology Review, one of the most prestigious peer-reviewed journals in that field. I say “a” letter because Tim has written several letters to that journal and others over the years. But the letter to which I refer called the journal’s attention to a recent article that appeared in its pages. In his letter, Tim disagreed with the conclusions drawn by one of the foremost scholars in the field, and he pointed to evidence to back up his conclusions. The scholar, a highly respected archaeologist from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, had to admit that, yes, Tim’s polite refutation of her theory and his differing assertions were correct, and her paper was revised.

Now, I have some tangential experience with this sort of thing. One of my best friends in the world isn’t a literary scholar and hasn’t devoted his life to the study and analysis of the author John Steinbeck. But, when he found some important and undiscovered information about Steinbeck and presented it to that discipline’s scholarly world, he was ridiculed and derided even though what he found was new and significant. I say all that to say that many professionals do not take kindly to amateurs, no matter what the field, telling them they’re wrong or introducing new information they themselves didn’t discover. The feeling seems to be that no one outside their field can be as informed as they; its as if these scholars are in an exclusive club, and those who either don’t have the bona fides or put in the time aren’t allowed in. Only they have the keys to the kingdom as it were. Now, please know that I’m referring to provable, demonstrable scholarship and not cockamamie theories or rhetoric.

But Tim’s scholarship was impeccable. And, despite his lack of letters after his name or any actual work in the field in Egypt, classical scholars began swapping letters with Tim and seeking him out on his thoughts about this hieroglyphic text or that inscription on an ancient Egyptian temple. How did this happen? How could a middle-aged high-school dropout become one of the go-to experts in a field that he never went to college to learn about and never dug an archaeological site to gain knowledge? Well, it turns out that Tim was self-taught. He happened to find a copy of an archaeological journal in a library one day, and something about the funny figures of the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics intrigued him. He began borrowing books on the subject. He created homemade flashcards with the symbols on them, and he poured over them daily. He got to where he could find words pretty quickly, but he had trouble translating sentences. But, one day, it all clicked. There is something in Tim that allowed him to put the linguistic puzzles together quickly. He can distinguish readily between the differing ages of the language (remember that ancient Egypt was around for thousands of years before the modern era), and he reads for context incredibly well. Some scholars spend a lifetime and aren’t able to achieve Tim’s level of fluency in the language.

Of course, Tim had plenty of time to devote to the study.

After all, what else could he do in prison?