John Brady, a graduate student of Tourism, believes that a person can better understand the world and how it works by travelling all around it than sitting in a room and reading about it from a book. To most individuals reading a book is the ultimate and elite source to gain information from but John contradicts the traditional form of gaining knowledge. Brady has travelled to many different parts of the world and has either bought or hand crafted artifacts that are found in the countries he has visited.To him these artifacts remind him of the rich histories of the various countries and the purpose of his trips.These items are kept in a box and include a wallet, ruler, name stamp, canoe, three chestnuts, a Mediterranean house, a head statue, a vessel, statues of a Native American drummer and one of an Egyptian man, a clay plate and a fancy piece of velvet cloth. He also has a ruler in the box which he has used to make some of the objects in the box.
The statue of the Native American drumming tells him about the rich history of early America which has almost been lost over the decades. The statues is a small but a meaningful remembrance of the special rituals of the early inhabitants of America. The Egyptian statue symbolizes how early early Egyptians were able to hand craft magnificent statues and pyramids with only their bare hands and chisel and without the technologies that modern men are so dependant on.
Not all the artifacts in the box were bought. Some of them hand crafted by Brady.Not only does these hand-made artifacts tells us a story about the countries Brady has visited but also tells us that he has a interest to practice the art of making something with his own hands. the hand-crafting not only makes him more skilled but also makes him realise how difficult it was for people back in the days to develop something without modern technology. In the box, Brady has a hand-made Mediterranean house, a canoe,a clay plate, and a leather wallet. The canoe reminds Brady of how people travelled before the modern methods of transportation. John was always an admirer of the Mediterranean culture. He has thought all his life that countries in Mediterranean were of superior beauty that countries all around the world. Brady does not to settle down in any country for good as he want to learn more and more about the world we live in today. However, if he was ever to stop travelling he would want to settle down in one of the countries surrounding the Mediterranean, preferably Sicily, the place where he hand-crafted the house while sitting on the beach.
On one of his visits to China and the surrounding countries, Brady has gathered a piece of cloth. Perhaps this reminds him of the Great Silk routes which used to exist in Asia. Countries in Asia were and still are well known for their silk.Of all the artifacts, I am yet to find out the answer as to why Brady has kept three chestnuts in the box. It is the only artifact that that is more than one in numbers, three to be exact. What does the number '3' symbolize for Brady? Or is it that the number '3' holds no significance at all.
Brady passed away in the Fall of 2009 at the age of sixty. He was a man who sacrificed his time with his family to learn more about the world we live in today. Two days after he passed away, his box where he kept a lot of his artifacts were seen for the first time by someone other than the great traveller. It was discovered by his Aaron. To Aaron's surprise the box not only told stories about the places the his father has visited but also told him what kind of a person his father was, a man with a passion to learn and understand history. After all, history is what we shall all be in the future.
