Bethlehem rocks

A cave of soft white limestone typical of the Galilee.

AN OLD ENVELOPE turned up in a book donated by Sister St. George Skurla, CSJ, one-time head of the English Department. Dealing with old envelopes is kind of why archives exist, so it made its way to us this morning.

Even in an archives full of wonderful surprises, it's not every day you see something like this. In the envelope was an original typewritten letter dated June 1, 1964, and signed by the mayor of Bethlehem -- the Bethlehem, not the one in Pennsylvania. It was written on the letterhead of the "Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan" and attested to the authenticity of an archaeological dig in late 1963 in the Holy Land, during which some amount of rock was excavated from the site of the 4th Century Basilica of the Nativity, believed by Christians to be the location of the stable where Jesus was born.

Mr. Stanley S. Slotkin, the letter went on, obtained some of the rock with the idea of sending it back to museums and churches in the United States, "with the conviction that these stones will create interest in all faiths." The rocks were shipped, the mayor confirmed, accompanied by a letter of authenticity similar to the one we held.

At the name Slotkin we perked up. We've seen Stanley Slotkin's name elsewhere in the Mount Archives, usually associated with one of our treasures. He was the founder of Abbey Rents and seems to have spent part of his fortune donating rare books, whole collections of books, paintings, and illuminated manuscripts to colleges, universities and museums in the United States. Slotkin, who died in 1997, was on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land in the winter of 1964 when he decided to start giving away Bethlehem stones.

But there was more in the envelope. we pulled out a shiny black card with magenta trim and white lettering, and glued in the center was a tiny white rock labeled "Stone from Bethlehem's Cave of the Nativity, Manger Room."

At that point we confess to goosebumps. Manger Room? The rock -- pebble, really -- is chalky and soft, which is what made digging caves for houses, inns and stables so popular in 1st Century Bethlehem. But this particular little piece of Palestine geology, tradition says, saw the birth of the Son of God. We held in our hand a bit of calcareous rock that is a souvenir of the Incarnation.

It's on our desk, with Mayor Elias B. Bandak's letter. As we work through this third week of Advent, we will have in front of us a piece of the cave to which Mary and Joseph resorted when they were turned away at the inn. Mary gave birth to her divine Son in that cave, and perhaps some of the light of that Holy Child and those choirs of angels and the light of the Star glinted on this little rock.

What to do with it? We suppose we'll add it to the collection of other treasures Slotkin donated -- some sheets from books of hours, a fragment of a 12th Century Quran. Seems strange, though. Maybe that's why Sister St. George tucked it into a book, to be forgotten for the next 46 years. What do you do with a souvenir of Ground Zero in a cosmic shift in the universe?

Message in a bottle: postscript

We don't need a glass expert - we have John Deeb! He reported this little factoid:

I was able to identify the manufacturer of our milk bottle. It was made by the Illinois Pacific Glass Co. and was either made in 1917 or 1927, as indicated by the single number 7 next to the logo. In the 1930s they used two-digit date stamps. So... I'd be willing to bet the bottle was made in 1927, shipped to a dairy sometime after that and made its way to our basement in the early '30s.

John ("now that I'm an amateur archaeologist") mentioned that some years ago he found a 1950s-era vodka bottle in an area that was once a rubbish heap near the CSJs' convent. The area is now a shrine. That's another fun one to muse on -- how did it get there? (And who consumed the contents?)

The larger point, though, is something I tell my San Jose State library students: Given enough passage of time, virtually anything will become valuable. That makes preservation decision making interesting, because you can see the easy argument for trying to keep virtually everything. We all know people who do this. Lone Arrangers know better.

Message in a bottle

There's a Greek word, synechdoche, that refers to the way an ordinary object calls to mind a much bigger picture.

I'll risk semantic impurity here to talk about a synecdoche that yesterday was pulled out of the dirt underneath Brady Hall.

That object is a one-pint bottle of thick glass with a logo featuring a big M and the letters SCDA. It was removed from some exposed dirt in the basement of our beautiful Brady Hall by John Deeb, our assistant director of facilities (who took this picture). Of course, he was down there looking for something else. But as always in archives, we find interesting things when we aren't looking for them.

John thinks it might be a milk or cream bottle. It would take a glass expert to identify its provenance, but let's assume it dates from the early 1930s when Brady Hall was first built and occupied.

What bigger picture does an old pint bottle suggest? For one thing, how did it get there? Until 1939, Mount St. Mary's College was one lonely building atop a steep hill with little more than truck farms between it and Santa Monica. In those days before refrigerated trucks, that little bottle had to travel up two miles of winding dirt road – it wasn’t paved until about 1932. Was there milk delivery or did the Sisters have to buy it down the hill?

Or did a worker bring it in his lunch? Brady went up in 1930 just as the Depression was settling in. An especially wet winter mobilized the fractured slate and shale on the hilltop and cost extra time, worry and money in the midst of construction. There were delays, problems with one of the architects. Did the workers lose pay while they waited this out? Was that bottle of milk "dear," as they used to say?

Or did it come from the Mount kitchen? The whole student body in 1931 numbered fewer than 75 (top photo), but we know students in any era eat enough for an army. We can imagine the Sisters' little truck struggling up Bundy Drive weighted down with groceries. Did a hungry student sneak the bottle from the kitchen and then dispose of the evidence?

The Mount in the early 1930s was a special place to be sure.

I mentioned that John was looking for something else when he came across the bottle yesterday. I had welcomed two visitors to the College Archives who arrived unannounced and on a mission. Many years ago they had befriended Rose Alice Wills Smith '31, who passed away in 2009 in her 90s. Rose Alice, they said, loved to talk about the Mount and spoke often of some "mementos" that the Class of 1931 left behind "in the basement." The two men were curious to see them. Would the mementos be in the archives?

In 1931 there was only one basement – Brady’s – but I’d never heard of any artifacts being preserved. I pinged John, who expressed his doubts. He emailed me that the basements had been in constant use and as far as he knew, nothing of interest was ever found. But added that there were a couple places that were "rather remote" and might yield something. A short while later after a bit of digging (literally) he produced the little bottle. After that stroke of luck, he said hopes to keep digging (figuratively and literally) as time permits.

It's doubtful that the mysterious “mementos” spoken of by Rose Alice would include litter, but in a sense the bottle is a memento of those early days just the same. It's often true in archives and preservation that mundane objects prove more interesting than “important” stuff for what they tell us about daily life in a bygone time -- that's the idea behind a synechdoche.

It's fun to think about a famished coed in her navy-blue uniform, surreptitiously sipping from a bottle of milk, high above and far away from the world. Like I said, it's a special place.