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Sunday, February 28th, 2010
Sylvia and I spent some time this weekend reading stories from a college book of mine, Rhoda Hendricks' 1972 edition Classical Gods and Heroes: Myths as told by the ancient authors -- a good resource although I don't love her translations. Looks like we should find some good translations of Hesiod's Theogony and Works and Days to learn more about the early Greek myths. It will probably be a lot more difficult to learn anything about the early Roman myths, since all the Roman writing about mythology seems to come from well after the Hellenization process was underway. I would like to pick up a good translation of Metamorphoses though, Ovid seems to be a good story-teller. Anyone who is interested in this stuff and has not read the comments to the previous post should do so -- Randolph reposted a great writeup there from Bryon Boyce.
posted afternoon of February 28th, 2010: Respond
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Wednesday, February 24th, 2010
Sylvia has gotten pretty interested in learning about the gods and heroes of Greece and Rome -- prompted in part by a study unit her class did and in part by Rick Riordan's Percy Jackson and the Olympians books; and one thing that has occupied a bit of her attention lately is learning which Latin names correspond to which Greek names. I remember doing this too, probably at about the same age; and ever since I've walked around with a sort of simple equivalence in my head, Zeus is Jupiter, Ares is Mars, Venus is Aphrodite, etc. -- that the two names identify the same entity. But I wonder how this could be? Recently I have formed a sort of vague notion that the Greeks  and the Romans, living close to each other over the millenia, had developed their mythologies roughly in parallel -- that there were two separate entities named Athena and Minerva who featured in similar stories. But how closely similar could they have been? In The Golden Bough, Frazer seems to refer to Diana and Artemis almost interchangeably, and not only that but likewise to Hippolytus and Virbius. Not only does it seem strange that the legends would be so similar that you could do this, it seems like it would be sloppy on Frazer's part to confuse two different god-and-hero pairs like this -- which brings me back to my old way of thinking, that Diana and Artemis are just two different names for the same figure. I'm puzzled though, trying to see a mechanism for this to come about -- it seems like if the religion was imparted from one group (I guess I would assume from the Greeks) to the other, the names would go along with it. I sort of thought a tribal religion was a sine qua non of a Classical civilisation, I guess.
Also kind of interesting, Frazer seems to imply at the outset that the story of Diana and Hippolytus was made up to account for the tradition of Rex Nemorensis, that this was an ancient tradition incorporated into the Greek/Roman religion à la Solstice rituals into Christianity.
posted evening of February 24th, 2010: 9 responses
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Sunday, November 29th, 2009
 Ellen's project for the last couple of months has been organizing with the South Orange/Maplewood Bicycle Coalition -- the goal is to make our towns a better, friendlier place for riding. The group hosted its first community ride today, from Meadowbrook Park in South Orange to Maplewood town center, and it went off without a hitch.
Turnout was huge, about twice as many people as expected -- Ellen thinks there were at least 50 people riding. It was a real kick to be riding down the street in such a big pack. This should definitely get us noticed -- time to push for more bike lanes!
posted afternoon of November 29th, 2009: Respond
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Sunday, November 22nd, 2009
Spent the weekend in Atlantic City with Ellen's family -- happy 90th birthday, Lou! Here is a picture I took of Ellen and Sylvia on the boardwalk last night, that I'm pretty happy with: This reminds me a lot of the picture I took of Sylvia early last year:...Leads me to the conclusion that sunsets are just generally very pretty and a very good subject for photography.
posted afternoon of November 22nd, 2009: Respond
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Sunday, November 8th, 2009
On the approximate spur of the moment, Sylvia and I went to Brooklyn today, to have lunch on the boardwalk with some relatives and to walk around. I don't think I've been in Coney Island since the last time I took Sylvia there, 5 years ago; and have not been there off-season in probably 10 years or more. What a lovely place to be! The sun was confused, shining as bright and as warm as if it were June rather than November. The amusement park is closed; but the aquarium is open -- we saw walruses, and seals, and sharks, and seductive, luminous jellyfish. Hot rock band playing on the boardwalk outside Ruby's. We walked a whole lot, probably 4 or 5 miles all told, and ate tasty snacks to keep us refreshed, and played in the sand among the wheeling gulls. It was a satisfactory day.
posted evening of November 8th, 2009: Respond
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Saturday, October 31st, 2009
Only comes around once a year... Here's Sylvia dressed for the occasion, with her friends Kaydi, Jazmyn and Emma: 
posted morning of October 31st, 2009: Respond
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 Sylvia and I are going to the toy store today to get a cribbage board. Here are my three favorite card games from childhood: cassino, cribbage, gin rummy. Sylvia is pretty good at cassino -- we played this morning and she beat me -- just learning cribbage -- we've been playing two and three hands, no board, just counting points, for a few weeks now -- and as yet not introduced to gin rummy.
I have forgotten a lot of the details of cribbage rules! The first time I played with Sylvia I did not even remember to stop play at 31. Certain details of the scoring still elude me, like "Nobs" and "Nibs" -- I am relearning this stuff as I teach it to Sylvia. In general I played a lot of cards as a child, with my parents and uncle and grandfather, and solitaire. The deck of playing cards has an iconic position in my mind -- the cut, the shuffle, the fan, the visual aspect of each card and the tactile aspect of the cards, each of these feels important, like a piece of my home. I'm kind of attracted to Tarot for its connections with playing cards although the mysticism has kind of lost the charm it held for my 20 -year-old self.
posted morning of October 31st, 2009: 1 response
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Sunday, October 25th, 2009
Arachne left the ends of her warp as a delicate fringe, while her border showed ivy interwoven with flowers.
Hers was a work whose merit neither Athena nor Envy could deny. The masterwork goaded the goddess into blind fury: she shredded the fabric and its catalogue of the gods' sins. Then, snatching a branch from an olive growing on Mt. Cytorus, she lashed Arachne's face thrice and a fourth time.
The miserable girl couldn't bear the shame; she went and hanged herself. With a hint of pity Pallas said to the dangling corpse, "Live -- but for your sins, continue to hang. Your whole line will pay the same punishment."
Having spoken, Pallas sprinkled Arachne with magic herbs. At the touch of this dire elixir, Arachne's hair fell off and with it her nose and ears. Her head shrank, and then her whole body became small. Instead of legs, her wizened fingers projected from her sides, and the rest of her became all belly -- from which nevertheless she spins thread and as a spider continues the work of her loom to this day.
-- Metamorphoses, Ovid, Book VI
translated by David Drake
Sylvia's class is doing a unit on Greek mythology; she has as reading homework a pagelong summary of the story of Arachne -- she was telling me about it this morning and we agreed that it leaves out way too much detail... Before lunch, we looked up Ovid's telling of the story, which I have not read in many years; I was amazed all over again by it, and Sylvia was interested and receptive. What an extraordinary story-teller! I am thinking the summary-for-schoolkids probably has to leave out all the gods posing as animals to impregnate mortal women stuff,* which is kind of the heart of this story, and Arachne committing suicide by hanging herself is probably similarly verboten... The story's kind of weak when you take all that out.
 * (It just said something to the effect of, "Arachne's weaving showed the gods behaving poorly and made fun of them," and that the gods being angry at this is why she was transformed into a spider.)
posted morning of October 25th, 2009: Respond
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Monday, October 12th, 2009
I wanted to write a post tonight about Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs, which Sylvia and I watched last night and just loved; and I wanted to make the point right up front what a visual treat the movie is. Of course I went looking around the web for stills; and I found a lot of them, but none that quite communicates what a rollicking lot of fun it is to watch this movie... The one above is about the closest I could get. So you'll have to take it on faith I guess -- walking out of the movie you feel like you've been at a feast.
The movie is extremely clever -- there are a lot of the Pixar-style asides making jokes to the adults in the audience, they are very well-done: they made me laugh without hitting me over the head what was going on. And more, the jokes seemed true to the characters and situations. What was lacking in Up, I thought, was nuance; this movie has nuance and subtlety. It is able to make a standard-issue children's lit point -- about (in a nutshell) smart kids being ostracized and having trouble getting anywhere in life, but sticking to their dreams and eventually finding self-realization -- without slipping into after-school special sentimentality. It is, in addition to being tons of fun, moving and uplifting.
posted evening of October 12th, 2009: Respond
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Friday, September 18th, 2009
שנה טובה! Today is also the start of a new year for Sylvia; she is turning 9. Lots of fun this weekend, what with going to Ellen's family for Rosh Hashanah tomorrow, and taking Sylvia's friends to the bowling alley for a birthday party on Sunday. (This is a party choice of Sylvia's that I am totally on board with!) I hope your weekend is a good one too, and your coming year likewise.
posted afternoon of September 18th, 2009: 1 response
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