Breakfast with Pandora

Le Guin writes Lavinia

It's not often that one of my favorite writers collides with one of my favorite stories, but that's exactly what's happened with Lavinia, the new novel by Ursula Le Guin.

Lavinia's title heroine is the princess of Latium-- stomping grounds of the most ancient Romans-- who is the prize in an ancient civil war, subject of the Roman poet Vergil's Aeneid.

Aeneas, survivor of the Trojan War, lands in Italy years after the fall of Troy with the remnant of his people. Aeneas is fated to become the father of the Roman race, and as a widower he can only become the father of the race if he has a new wife.

Lavinia, daughter of King Latinus, has been betrothed to Turnus, native son of the neighboring Rutulian tribe. But when Latinus finds out about the Aeneas prophecy, he is more than happy to re-gift his daughter to a genuine war hero and legend in the making.

Juno, goddess who hates the Trojans, tries to derail the marriage by inciting Turnus and his mother Amata against the Trojan/Latin alliance.

It's war, and in all the action we never find out much about Lavinia. She is a symbol and a plot device more than a person. Lavinia

The last I read of Le Guin was the Earthsea trilogy, which I loved and which I should read again, as I have a feeling it will help the writing of Healing Knowledge.

If you read the book, let me know what you think. I will, and I will.

Light breakfast for the summer

Writing for the myth course is now in full swing, which means generating about 5,000 new words a week or so. How that will affect my blogging is anyone's guess for now, but I suspect I won't be posting as much.

What you might get is brainstorming around a topic, or something completely unrelated to Greek Mythology, as I seek to retain my sanity.

Yesterday I saw a friend whom I hadn't seen in quite a while, and I mentioned Mount Athos, about which I blogged some time ago.

"Didn't I read that in your blog?" she said.

I had no idea she was keeping up.

Thanks to all readers: those I know, and those I don't.

Choices that make a difference, maybe

I am now hard at work on that Teenage Heroes in Greek Myth course for 5th to 7th graders, and considering all the possibilities thereunto pertaining. The editor wants me to make sure there is a theoretical base for all the content, which will mean grouping lessons into units with universal titles, such as The Hero, Hope, and such like.

Photo: The goddess Iris pays a visit to suburbia.

So I have been kicking around universal titles for units, and one that popped out today was Choices and Responsibility.

Well, I thought. That might work.

The first lesson in that unit pairs Achilles and Paris, gigantic presences in the Trojan War, the former on the Greek side, the latter on the Trojan. They both play pivotal roles in the lives of many both in the Iliad and in the story of the Trojan War writ large. And they construct the conditions for those roles in their teenage years.

Achilles begins his life in the court of his father, King Peleus of Phthia (don't try to pronounce it). He is the son of Peleus and the sea-goddess Thetis. His mom knows that Achilles is destined to die in a great war, and so she hides him as a young teen in the women's quarters of a household. While in that household Achilles manages to have a son, Neoptolemus, so he isn't exactly playing the woman's role to the hilt. But he grows up in a situation that is just the opposite of a normal ancient Greek teen boy's life. And when he is given the choice (that word) as to whether he wants to live a long and quiet life or a short and glorious one, he chooses glory.

And that means not only death at Troy, but death for a huge number of people he kills, plus the death of his best friend Patroclus.

Paris, for his part, begins life without knowing who he is. His mother, Queen Hecuba of Troy, has a dream while pregnant with Paris that she gives birth to a torch that destroys the city. So she sends Paris away as a baby, and he is raised by a shepherd. As a young man, before he takes a wife and has any responsibility (that word) for a household, the god Hermes comes to him with a choice (the first word again).

Here's a golden apple. Give it to one of the three goddesses who appears most beautiful to you.

Paris' choice of Aphrodite, who rewards him with Helen, the most beautiful woman in the world, triggers a firestorm. All the hundreds of Greek chiefs who were after her before she was married to Menelaus agreed to go after any guy who took her away from Menny.

So the adolescent choices of these heroes affect the lives of thousands upon thousands.

That's the short version. So, okay. Will it be an exciting thing for gifted 5th to 7th graders to see that the choices one makes when young can radiate out with unimaginable consequences?

Or will it just seem like another preachy adult telling them to stay off drugs, booze, and sex?

I showed the summary of a lesson to my son, who has a level head on his shoulders about these things. He asked, "What grade level is this going to be for?"

"5th to 7th graders," I said, hoping against hope that he would say it was appropriate and would be interesting.

"Good," he said. "Seems like, once you get up to eighth or ninth grade, no one wants to read anymore. I mean, I know a guy who said he has one book in his room. One."

I would say God help the younger generation. But I think God needs to do something about the neurotic teachers first.

At dinner tonight...

Over chili and coleslaw, son was talking about a homework assignment for Romeo and Juliet. Read up to Act 3, scene iii, and write a letter to one of the characters who had shown two sides.

"There's Romeo," I said. "Tender and tough."

"Did you teach Romeo and Juliet?" he asked.

"Yes, to ninth graders just like you."

"Did you teach the Odyssey?"

"Yes, and the Epic of Gilgamesh, and Animal Farm."

"What's Animal Farm?" chimed in daughter, the sixth grader who let Dad help her with her algebra homework that afternoon.

"It's an allegory," I said. "Do you know what an allegory is?"

"A book by Al Gore?" she guessed.

The plot thickens in Borschland

Over at Te borscher sporttelegraf, there is news.

So far in the fantasy hockey league blog (run by my teenage hero son) that I have high hopes will become a kind of novel-in-collaboration, the great traditional powerhouse team, Te Staff, was unbeaten and seemed destined to win another championship.

The main reason for the team's success was the American hockey player Sherman Reinhardt, who had lately begun a romance of sorts with a local poetess.

Now we find that Sherm has disappeared without a trace, and so has the poetess.

What will happen? Anyone's guess, but the post that broke the story of Sherm's disappearance has received a comment beautifully envisioned and written by one Erki Turkommen, a Finnish fisherman who sails out of the Borschic port of Onatten.

You can go over to the blog and get in on the fun. Be part of the creative collaboration. Create a persona of your own who lives in Borschland, or post as yourself and play tourist or eavesdropper.

Most of the blog is statistics, which is dear to son's heart. But between the lines he has left clues as to how a person with imagination can be part of the creation of a world.

See you over there.

The ancient art of foundation deposits-- in Yankee Stadium

Amidst the doom and gloom of the news lately, there was one hidden gem. It came in the form of a hidden baseball jersey, encased in the concrete of the newest incarnation of baseball's national temple: Yankee Stadium.

Photo: The All-American Pre-Game Meal.

Did you read about it? A construction worker and Boston Red Sox fan-- rivals of those New York Yankees who will play in the new stadium-- decided he could put a curse on the Yanks by burying in the foundation of the new stadium a jersey with the name of superstar Red Sox player David Ortiz, number thirty-four.

The worker helped lay the concrete for a section of the stadium and threw the jersey in with the mix. The stuff had hardened sufficiently that when someone else snitched, they had to go in with jackhammers.

Baseball is famous for superstition. It was claimed, for example, that the Red Sox laid a curse on themselves almost a century ago when they made the disastrous decision to sell then young pitcher Babe Ruth to the Yankees. The Red Sox couldn't win a World Series for decades and decades, including in those years some memorable World Series slipups. Now the curse is over, however, as the Sox have won the Series twice in the last four years.

How is it that in these secular days someone could believe that a piece of fabric buried in a building could have any effect on anything?

Old ways die hard.  The ancient art of foundation deposits goes back at least four thousand years, when massive temples were built to the gods rather than to Alex Rodriguez.

For example:

King Ur-Nammu [c. 2000 BC] rebuilt and enlarged one of the most important temples in ancient Mesopotamia - the E-kur of Enlil, the chief god of the pantheon. [A] figurine, which was buried in a foundation box beneath one of the temple towers, represents the king at the start of the building project - carrying on his head a basket of clay from which would be made the critically important first brick. The foundation deposit also contained an inscribed stone tablet; beads of frit, stone and gold; chips of various stones; and four ancient date pits found perched atop the basket carried by the king.

This foundation deposit was supposed to be a bringer of good luck. It was in a way a blessing of the building project, encasing in the building itself the good intentions, wealth, and prosperity of the king. Good vibrations.

The Ortiz jersey acted like a figurine of a king, but of a king of a rival city. This king would bring ill intentions and cause bad vibrations for the usage of the baseball temple. Powerful magic, if only no one found out.

I have never heard of a curse foundation deposit, but ancient Romans used to buy curse tablets-- pieces of lead with inscriptions on them such as "May the Greens never win another chariot race"-- and leave them in the Colosseum and the Circus Maximus.

The construction worker's name is Italian. Maybe one of his ancestors bought a curse tablet for the ancient equivalent of the hated Yankees.

A movie quotation meme

The idea via MLight, and you can follow the trail back from her if you like.

Below find twelve quotations from among my favorite movies. Most are listed on IMDB.com. Guess the film from the quotation, without doing any "research," and comment with your guesses.

I have tried to limit my quotations to movies I think a lot of people have seen, but you will have to be the judge. If you're stumped and want some semi-legal research help, go here for a list of likely suspects.

#6 should be easy for anyone over the age of 19. #4 should be easy for the 14-19 year old crowd.

1. "You know, I have a theory that hieroglyphics are just an ancient comic strip about a character named Sphinxy." (When Harry Met Sally; Moomin Light got this one)

2. "Great, kid. Don't get cocky." Star Wars (the original, ditto)

3. "I guess some mistakes you never stop paying for."

4. "Ohh, what's really going to bake your noodle later on is, would you still have broken it if I hadn't said anything?"

5. (In an over-the-top fake Southern accent) "Darryl, you want anything special for dinner tonight?" *Not in IMDB.com, but I love the quotation, so it stays.

6. "K-mart sucks!"

7. "Yeah, I was in the show. I was in the show for 21 days once - the 21 greatest days of my life."

8. "We've become a race of Peeping Toms. What people ought to do is get outside their own house and look in for a change. Yes sir. How's that for a bit of homespun philosophy?"

9. "You know, the root of the word Miller is a Greek word. Miller come from the Greek word "milo," which is mean "apple," so there you go. As many of you know, our name, Portokalos, is come from the Greek word "portokali," which mean "orange." So, okay? Here tonight, we have, ah, apple and orange. We all different, but in the end, we all fruit." *The supersentimental quotation of the day. (My Big, Fat, Greek Wedding; This one was guessed by Iulia, who also does a great Gus Portokalos accent)

10. "Damn! We're in a tight spot!" (O Brother Where Art Thou; Michael Leddy guessed this one)

11. (In an over-the-top French accent) "Sir, do you have a license for your monkey?" *Also not in IMDB.com, for some strange reason. But there is this bit of dialogue, which comes from the same scene: "Are you blind?" "Yes!"

12. "Three weeks from now, I will be harvesting my crops. Imagine where you will be, and it will be so. Hold the line! Stay with me! If you find yourself alone, riding in the green fields with the sun on your face, do not be troubled. For you are in Elysium, and you're already dead!"

BONUS: "Mr. Kazu sent me, premium fantasy. My stockings. Rip them." (Lost in Translation, kudos again to Professor Leddy)

And as they say in New York City, enjoy.

Your choice: sex or violence?

And someone says, both.

But seriously, folks. MLight had an idea to post about why ordinary Americans might be less offended by violence in movies, or by sex, and I'm pouncing on that one.

First, for me. I am somewhat embarrassed by sex in movies, but I'm much more okay with it than I am with graphic violence. For my take on that, see my post on the movie 300.

I would also much rather my kids see movies that err on the sexy side rather than on the graphically violent, even where the violence is appropriate, such as in Pan's Labyrinth.

My conviction comes from personal queasiness,  but also from a conviction that all violence, whether simulated or real, dehumanizes and objectifies, unless one is participating in simulated violence, such as in a game of war in a vacant lot, and you are dying as often as you are killing.

Now sex can be violent and dehumanizing as well, which is why in Greek Mythology the goddess Aphrodite (of sex) and the god Ares (of war) hook up in an adulterous affair. The Greeks knew that sex and violence can be two sides of the same coin. They are, so to speak, coupled, intimately related.

Sex can also be a sacrament, however: that is, a visible sign of God's invisible grace. The natural sacrament of marriage is sex, for example. (In the Christian universe there is no such thing as premarital sex, because as soon as you have sex, you are married, in a natural sacramental way, if not officially.) So in my world, sex can be good in a way that violence cannot be.

But enough about me.

For most people, a good story has a subtle and appropriate mixture of elements with which the audience can identify and, equally, for which the audience can say, "That's not me."

Seeing events and characters like oneself and one's life creates closeness and a fear for oneself, which is kind of fun.

Seeing events and characters unlike oneself creates a distance, and a sense of comfort.

So good stories create risk and let adrenaline flow, while reassuring an audience that they are ultimately safe, and that suffering is happening to someone else.

In mythology class, I often call this The Rush Without The Risk.

Under this model, more people would be okay with violence in a story, because it is not part of their everyday lives. Even when it is graphic, it doesn't seem real, because there is no possibility of the violence happening to the audience.

Sex, on the other hand, is an everyday presence in most people's lives-- if not the reality of it, then the yearning for it. Sex is more viscerally a part of everyone's psyche than is violence, at least in, say, a suburban setting, and is more stirring of what we might term disturbing feelings.

So sex in a movie might violate this idea of Rush Without Risk. You turn to your neighbor and must deal with the question, do I desire him or her? It is an uncomfortable situation. Most people deflect and deny, making the movie sex even more embarrassing.

But with violence-- with guns, with swords, with bombs, whatever-- you turn to your neighbor and you shrug your shoulders. I'm going to blow you away with a machine gun? I don't think so. Murderous rage is not nearly as much in the front of our psyche as is lust.

Which means, possibly, that those of us who don't like violence in movies may be of this opinion because we see a dark side in ourselves that is capable of killing, whereas perhaps we have made something of a peace with our sexual sides.

Dangerous to even speculate.

This is an enormous topic, and so I leave it to commenters to bring up that to which I have been blind. But if you find yourself especially repulsed by either sex or violence in movies,  you might want to ask yourself what is going on in your own psyche.

The ancient Athenians delved deep into both sides in stories, using tragedy for violence and comedy for sex, but they reserved the strongest visual and poetic iterations of these elements for festivals. Not always would you tax your psyche with an Ajax, for example, where the hero commits suicide, or Lysistrata, whose sex talk puts movies like 40 Year Old Virgin to shame.

Today, we can be exposed to graphic violence and sex 24/7/365 through TV, movies, and the Internet. Regardless of what we are repulsed by, there is something completely out of whack with that kind of system.

Big, between old childhood and new

Long ago, watching old movies on television late at night meant either a Western or a pirate show, or maybe a Laurel and Hardy comedy. Nowadays we get stuff like Big, one of Tom Hanks' earliest successes. I don't remember the last time I saw it, but I know I had a different reaction then.

Today's Hollywood might not make the story of a 13-year old boy's consciousness translated by a carnival game machine into the body of a man. Childhood has become ever more contingent in our world: on the one hand, childhood is a kind of adulthood, as we give more choices and allow more autonomy to children, and yet it is strictly protected and fragile-seeming. The dividing line between eighteen and under eighteen has never been more vigilantly demarcated.

In Big, the thirteen-year old, Josh Baskin, played by David Moscow, loses his place in his family because his mother doesn't believe it's him in that eighties Tom Hanks body. He must move to New York City and find a job, like any adult. And adult Josh has adult experiences, including sexual ones, and career success, to the point where he seriously considers not going back. You'd take some time on that decision if your girlfriend was Elizabeth Perkins and you got to dance on a gigantic piano with Robert Loggia.

It's clear what Josh will do from the beginning, since a main message of the film is that Play Is Important At Any Age, and therefore childhood, the origin of play, is worthwhile.

The checkmate, however, is the persuasion of his best friend Billy (Jared Sharpton), and the admission, "I miss my mom." And there is this montage of childhood that follows: kids playing outside, playing baseball, playing in piles of leaves, together. Everything good about childhood is in the montage. It is steeped in boomer nostalgia about growing up in the suburbs. (Never mind that at 13, both boys are shortly in for a roller coaster ride of teenage herodom.)

Then I thought back to the big, hit thing Josh was going to do with his career in the toy business: create a whole new set of toys he called "electronic comic books." Sit there with a computer and click buttons on a do-it-yourself adventure.

There it is, I thought. The end of childhood as we knew it. And a child was responsible.

The Internet and video games have taken over childhood, I thought. No one plays outside anymore. No one makes up games or plays baseball for the fun of it. Big happened at the beginning of the great divide between old childhood, which was about exercise and community, and a new childhood which is about isolation and alpha-wave fixation. And computers are the culprit.

Which led directly if not causally to my taking a walk and seeing what I had considered to be extinct.

I was about a quarter mile from my home when I heard a boy's voice calling out, singsong, the name of the subdivision I was passing. I looked up; he was standing at the subdivision sign, had on a Civil War cap, and was holding a rifle. He might have been 12 years old.

I flinched. No one carries toy guns anymore. No one plays with toy guns. You could be killed by someone misinterpreting you as a threat. Everyone has heard the story of the young child killed by pointing a toy gun in the dark at someone with a real gun. And so I thought for a second, "Is that a real gun, and is he going to shoot me?"

But sanity won out, and as I continued walking, another boy, younger, emerged from a hedge, clearly having been summoned by the first boy's chant. That boy also carried a rifle.

As someone who played war nonstop as a child, I approved, even though I was weirded out.

I guess old childhood isn't dead everywhere.

Two dinners for the sake of joy

This weekend I dined well. Once I let a restaurant do the cooking, and once I did it, and both times my dining companion had good things to say. This is doubly pleasurable, because the restaurant happens to be one of the best in my area.

Photo of food looking colorful.

I was glad to go first with a sautee of chicken breast and rotini with snow peas, zucchini, green onions, and cherry tomatoes. It was lovely with a little sherry, garlic, and cayenne sauce. Dining companion raved and was grateful for leftovers which fed her for lunch the next day.

Then it was Bin 54, a "steakhouse and cellar" (local review here) and hard act to follow if I had followed; also an indicator  of how chichi the Tar Heels' stomping grounds have now become. Twenty years ago, the place was a Chinese buffet with an aquarium where dinner for two cost about $12. Next door was a laundromat. No longer.

Bin 54 is pricey, with a few cheaper options. An American Kobe beef ribeye steak is $59 for the steak alone-- yes, potatoes extra-- but if you want a hamburger and fries, they're available for $14.

My companion and I were dining on the dime of another, so we did not worry about price, and that made all the difference.

For our main course, we split a prime porterhouse. The kitchen cut the (sizable) steak into six pieces, two on the filet side of the steak, and four on the strip side. In the middle, a big t-bone that would have been excellent for a dog, except that (as I discovered upon trying to donate it) cooked steak bones can splinter and hurt a dog if they're swallowed.

To make sure we were getting the full experience, we ordered the steak "Oscar" style, which caused to appear on our table a tureen of crab meat and asparagus spears with regal robes of bearnaise sauce, intended to be poured over steak.

Our sides: King Trumpet mushrooms and Yukon Gold mashed potatoes.

Three words: W-O-W.

For an appetizer, we had the tuna tartare with green onion, wasabi crackers (rub on tongue to get tingle), and creamy soy sauce. As my friend Todd would say, "tasty."

For dessert, companion had flourless chocolate cake with a sauce that was painted on the plate like a Dutch chocolate master's dream. I had sorbet, because, of course, one needs to eat light after such a heavy meal. The mint sorbet was especially good with a spoonful of Rembrandt sauce and flourless cake.

For wine, I ordered a sampler of three different reds, and two were extraordinary: the Stoller Vineyards JV Estate '06 Dundee Hills Pinot Noir (Oregon), and the Livingston Moffett "Stanley's Selection" '04 Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon (California).

Wine commands many adjectives ("earthy yet insouciant") and noun taste comparisons ("pencil shavings and lingenberry"), but for me wine tastes like memories, and these two made a movie in my head.

Good Pinot Noir to me tastes like every meal I've ever had where there was nonstop laughter and joy. The cornucopia of fruit makes you feel giddy and the pepper makes you want to sneeze, but you don't, you just laugh a little more.

A good California Cabernet takes me directly back to the times when women wore their hair like Farrah Fawcett and every summer day was a day of swimming at the beach or the lake followed by a long, leisurely dinner in the fading light.

I think if I drank more good wine I would probably suffer from Post-Rhapsodic Gush Disorder.

So it's back to Hacienda Merlot, which is a darn good everyday wine, folks, and chicken and rotini.

But at least once I hope you go to Bin 54-- or your local equivalent-- where you have complete freedom to order whatever you want. Then the meal becomes like chicken and rotini in that it is eaten with love, for the sake of the food, and without any other expectation, reasonable or unreasonable.

Photo of Farrah from here.