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Dateline - Trenton, February 2002
The WWW is such a wonderful venue for meeting people having a similar interest. I think that I have more online friends living quite distant, even in foreign countries, than those living in my immediate area!
About nine months ago I received an email from an old Abbot of a monastery located deep inside the Ukraine, nestled among the lush forests of the Carpathians. He had read my genealogy pages and noticed that I use a Macintosh computer, as does he.
He stated that he had made a startling discovery in his archives, and that I should go there as rapidly as possible to examine it for myself, discuss it with him and to take some pics. He had selected me to be the one to make public his find. I was extremely flattered, needless to say.
I replied that I was deeply honored to have been chosen to announce some important discovery to the world via my web site, and would really love to make a trip back to the homeland of my grandparents, but unfortunately I did not have the financial means for doing so. I did not receive a reply, that is, until two weeks ago!
The bell rang, and when I went down and opened the door, was personally handed, by Papal courier, an envelope containing round trip plane and bus tickets to a small village high in the mountains of the Ukraine! I invited him up to my modest apartment for some vintage Chateauneuf-du-Pape and goat cheese. During our prolonged animated conversation he mentioned that John Paul II took an interest in my Polish Kardas ancestors cited in Kardas.net! Wonders never cease!
The very next day I flew out of JFK, and after sleeping for more hours than I usually seem to be able to at home, finally arrived in the Ukraine! Instead of a bus, a car was waiting to pick me up at the airport and I was immediately on my to meet Abbot Alexi. Fortunately the driver spoke fluent English and we talked about this and that along the way, the time seemingly flew by and we finally caught a glimpse of the abbey. What a sight! It almost seemed as if we were transported is Dr. Who's Tardus back to the Middle Ages!
Abbot Alexi met me at the drawbridge, and immediately escorted me to the small spartan monk's room in one of the abbey towers which was to be my lodging during my visit.
After freshening up a little following my long journey, I was invited to partake of a repast with the monks, and it was anything but spartan! I doubt that I have ever participated in a more sumptuous feast, even at the pomp and splendor of that at Durham castle in Scotland when I attended a NATO Palaeoclimate Conference in my younger days and met some of my scientific mentors for the first time, including Dr. Maurice Ewing.
Many of the monks looked like they were in the 50's (and it turned out that some were 30+ years older than that!), but there were also about a dozen who appeared to be in their 20's and even younger. Abbot Alexi did NOT seem anywhere near his chronological age of 79! I guess that a simple life, meditative as well as spiritually and materially productive and totally satisfying, might tend to allow one to age gracefully, without being encumbered by all those things which prematurely produce gray hair and premature aging in society in general. Conversation ranged from 9-11, life in the U.S.A., to how the Ukraine has changed since their independence, to more monk oriented topics such as their daily activities and their views on life in general.
Later that evening I was to be able to see for myself the fantastic discovery which brought me here. The Abbot, a younger monk and I spent countless hours studying and discussing the manuscript source, as well as other things in the monastery, over the next several days.
Brother Petrus, one of the monks, age 23 although he did not appear older than 18, somehow took an immediate liking to me upon my arrival, and also accompanied me in just about all of my activities. The curious thing was, his birthday is on 14 January, the same as mine, and by chance, his room adjoined mine in the tower!
He had his own Apple computer -- and iPod! Of course I brought mine along on the trip, and he partitioned his hard drive to download my tunes to a new playlist. I copied his playlist onto a ZIP disk to bring back to the States with me. Petrus' personality and overall way of doing things was so very much like my own it was amazing! Just about everything about him was as if I were looking into Dorian Gray's mirror. He had a natural inquisitiveness about many of the same things as I, virtually the same sense of humor, and our views of life, politics and religion were carbon copies. It was almost as if I were somehow transported back in time, to some other contextual space-time coordinates, and came face to face with an alter-me, a zeitgeistlicher Doppelgänger, if you will! And to top it off, he even spoke German and Spanish as well as I do. I was somewhat unhappy because I do not speak a word of Ukranian. It really did not matter that much, as even without saying a word a lot of times, we were always on the exact same wavelength.
Sorry, I do seem to digress every so often -- but it IS part of the story.
What is shown below and briefly discussed was discovered by the revered Abbot Alexi among the pages of an authenticated French illuminated manuscript, dating back to the early 15th century, called a Book of Hours. It was hand-painted/inscribed on vellum, probably in a monastery reminiscent of that which you may be familiar with from the motion picture, The Rose. It was executed in Paris, and according to the details of its overall format and execution, was probably made by followers of the style of Jean Pichore. It is handsomely bound in citron morocco by Capé, with multi-colored precious stone inlays to a typical French 16th century strapwork design.
The later binding is not uncommon to find in many of these early manuscripts. The original vellum was probably given to some nobleman, who commissioned an appropriate binding from a well known craftsman associated with his court. Although the actual provenance of this particular manuscript over the last six centuries is unknown, it has always been assumed that it was presented to Alexi's monastery by the King of France, either personally or though his Papal envoy.
The following is my humble attempt to interpret what I observed, based on my own limited experience.
This Book of Hours contains 136 leaves, and to give you a perspective appreciation of the finely worked details of the miniature illuminations contained therein, the vellum pages or leaves measure 190 x 125mm -- which translates into approximately 7.5 x 5 inches! The leaves presented below have been numbered f.21v (on the left), and f.25 by the first scholar to have studied it over a quarter century ago. [J.-Fr. Reny, A propos d'un Livre d'Heures a l'usage de Langres, Memoires de la Société des Lettres, Arts et Sciences de St Dizier, II (1970)]
It unequivocally represents the first user of the Apple, a female, and she is observed standing to the left of The Apple Tree of Knowledge, an appropriate and fitting symbolic detail. She appears to be offering an Apple from a tree in her country estate orchard to her boyfriend, who is seen to the right of The Tree. He is well proportioned, as is she (and I would guess that she is expecting child), meaning that he is probably a member of some local fitness club, and sort of hippy-like, a style which has appeared and disappeared at various stages in the history of mankind -- and they both appear to be naturalists.
The scene was probably painted from life during the late summer, when the Apples are fully ripe. The soil type and vegetation seems similar to that found in the south-east of France, in the Provence region, bordering on the Mediterranean.
You may also notice the snake in the grass which has slithered up The Apple Tree, thirsting for some of the wisdon it provides, obviously. It bears the well-know archaic Entel Inside logo on its scaley underside, and just happens to be a female -- and I think we all know just how fickle some gals can be when they put their mind to it -- an obvious symbolic artistic allusion to that particular operating system and its well documented characteristic defects!
On the right-facing page of this beautifully executed hand-painted illumination, so rich in acanthus scrolls and sprays of naturalistic flowers, from the iconography it would appear that Apple computers were making inroads in the average French home way back even in the 15th century. A young woman (the same one seen on the left?) attired in simple, yet elegant, period attire sits on a bench in the stone-tiled patio adjoining her classical home, and is showing her TiBook laptop, connected to the Internet via AirPort, to her visiting handsome youthful friend. Her father looks over the charming nostalgic scene from a window, keeping a watchful eye on his only daughter. The location must be in a country setting because a turtle dove is observed flying across the patio.
My Latin is a little rusty, but from what I can make out, the somewhat loose English translation states :
From my own lips
I am announcing to you the sheer joy of
How easy it is to use the TiBook
These documents prove beyond any potential reasonable doubt whatsoever that the very unusually talented unknown artist who produced this manuscript wished to describe the significance of the Apple computer to mankind as a whole, showing its distant origins and demonstrating the usefulness of its wireless technology for future generations. It is almost like a time capsule, and it seems that the right moment has finally arrived to open its sealed contents and announce them to the world.
After a week of an extremely pleasant meditative monastic sojourn so far from Trenton, New Jersey, I was somewhat anxious to return home to work on the above preliminary report and announce my findings to the cyber world - although, had I a choice, I would have stayed at the Abbey among some real friends and remained until the end of my days!
I think that you will share my absolute delight at having discovered this timeless documentary source. It is possible that through further research that the origins of the Apple may have to be extended yet farther back into the historic past as some tireless investigator discovers even older documents, perhaps in Chinese or Arabic scientific treatises, a scroll in the Sinai or even in a Mayan codex.
I wish to personally express my most sincere gratitude to Abbot Alexi for his interest in my ongoing research projects and his personal generosity in affording me the means by which I was actually able to visit his, and my, ancestral homeland and actually see with my own eyes this, and the many other treasures, sacred and secular, contained in the monastery collections.
And to my other self, Brother Petrus, who as the name suggests, was like family, perhaps even closer, and upon this rock we have built a lasting friendship. Please visit me if you ever journey to New Jersey and we can share a single solitude -- and keep that room open for me, just in case I can free myself of the, perhaps, imaginary shackles which appear to bind me to my present lower level of existence.
Brother Petrus rocks! 
Hasta la vista!
I feel blessed to have met you and to have shared so much of your life, and I truly doubt that I shall ever meet someone as compatible again. Life can sometimes appear to be the Pitts, but even Trenton seems way kewler wth you beside me in my memory! Te amo como amo a Dios, quizás porque veo al Creador y sus obras reflejado en ti. Höfentlich werden wir nochmal, bald, wiedertreffen! Viele schönen herzlichen Grüßen aus den Staaten.
PAX VOBISCUM!
Please feel free to share this information with your friends. And thank you for viewing some of the pages of Apple Bytes.
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