Two roads diverged

“Two roads diverged in a yellow wood. ...” So begins Robert Frost’s poem “The Road Not Taken.”

Ever since ancient times, people have been fascinated by the power of crossroads. They have been the subject of poetry, song, myth and folklore.

Examples range from Robert Johnson’s classic blues song of the same name back to the days of ancient Greece, where they were sacred to Hermes, god of boundaries, borders and exchanges, and to Hecate, a witchy goddess associated both with magic and the home.

The image shows up in both the Hebrew Bible (Christian Old Testament) and the gospels. In Jeremiah 6:16, the prophet says, “Thus says the Lord: Stand at the crossroads, and look, and ask for the ancient paths, where the good way lies; and walk in it, and find rest for your souls.”

In Matthew 7:13-14, Jesus says “Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the way that leads to life, and only a few find it.”

Metaphorically, I think most of us have come upon crossroads where a choice must be made that can have lifelong consequences.

I think West Virginia is at a major crossroads now, one that will have a lasting impact on its future. It has to do with the face we present to the world: will it be one of narrow-mindedness, fear, hatred and bigotry or one of openness, hospitality, solidarity and basic fairness?

Let’s just say that if the West Virginia Legislature is any indication, the jury is still out. We’ve had one delegate embarrass the state by comparing people who identify as LGBTQ to terrorists ... and worse.

The leadership of the majority Republican Party has condemned these remarks, yet they refuse to move legislation ending discrimination — and some have even attempted to pass legislation that would undo local anti-discrimination ordinances.

Still other lawmakers have sought bills that would keep out refugees and immigrants in a state largely composed of the descendants of refugees and immigrants that is also rapidly aging and losing population.


That kind of thing sends a message loud and clear both to young West Virginians who feel they have no place here and to other bright and energetic people who will think two or three times before moving here.

It discourages the kind of employers and investments that would provide good jobs while promoting a good quality of life.

That degree of closed-mindedness says that education isn’t valued here and that we are proud of what — and who — we don’t know.

That kind of thing sends a message that we should continue to be nothing but a sacrifice zone for extractive industries, whether they are those that take away our natural resources or those that strip-mine our public schools.

It doesn’t have to be that way. To paraphrase the last lines of Frost’s poem, we could take the road less traveled by, and that could make all the difference.

(This appeared as an op-ed in today's Charleston Gazette-Mail.)

Miasma

Recent acts of senseless violence and other forms of trauma reminded me of the ancient Greek idea of miasma, which means something like pollution. The religion writer Karen Armstrong talks about it as a contagious power that “has an independent life of its own.”

Think of it as hazmat.

The Greeks seemed to believe that every act of violence, hubris, cruelty or excess unleashes a bit of miasma on the world. Often the people who unleash it minimize it or think they can control it. They can’t. Miasma isn’t loyal. It bounces. And like a toxic chemical or an infectious disease, it can leak into the atmosphere and water and have effects far beyond the initial point of infection.

Miasma also doesn’t seem to respect borders — even those with walls — or to have an expiration date. The effects of the spiral of violence and trauma (miasma) can continue across continents and generations.

The child who is abused or witnesses abuse may one day abuse. The victim may one day become a perpetrator. The trauma done to a group or individual can have effects across time and space. The eventual target of all this may be random and innocent. It may be us.

One strand of Greek mythology follows the thread of miasma across generations in one family. It started with Tantalus, who for a time enjoyed the favor of the gods. He tried to trick them at a feast by feeding them the flesh of the shoulder of his son Pelops. For this he was punished in the underworld by eternal hunger and thirst. Hence the word “tantalize.”

Pelops, who was restored by Zeus, would later murder his would-be father in law by cheating in a chariot race. He also murdered the person who helped him do the deed. Not surprisingly, the victim cursed him with his dying breath. The curse would play out in the future.

Pelops’ sons were Atreus and Thyestes. They murdered their own half-brother but later had a deadly quarrel, which ended in a horrific act of child murder and cannibalism. Each brother had a son who continued the curse and the conflict in the next generation.

Agamemnon, son of Atreus, led the Greek forces to invade Troy. He sacrificed his own daughter Iphigenia to gain favorable winds for the fleet. While he was gone, his wife Clytemnestra became the lover of Aegisthus, the son of Thyestes, who was born of an incestuous union.

Yeah, it was a mess of extra-biblical proportions.

Agamemnon was murdered by Clytemnestra and Aegisthus when he returned from the destruction of Troy. His son Orestes murdered his mother and her lover and was pursued by the Furies, dark underworld deities who punished crimes against blood kin.

On and on, one thing after another. Kind of like world history.

In the end, as the Greek tragedian Aeschylus tells it, it took divine intervention, rational deliberation and democracy to bring the awful cycle to an end.

The way things are going, we may need all that as well.

The American philosopher Martha Nussbaum finds some lessons for us in all this:

“Greek tragedy shows good people being ruined because of things that just happen to them, things that they do not control. This is certainly sad; but it is an ordinary fact of human life, and no one would deny that it happens ... . Tragedy also shows something more deeply disturbing: it shows good people doing bad things, things otherwise repugnant to their ethical character and commitments, because of circumstances whose origin does not lie with them.”

Things happen to us and to others. We react, not always in the best ways. We get caught up in situations beyond our direct control. The chain of events gets longer. Dominoes fall. Which means more miasma.

Recent research in the field of public health shows that the long-lasting effects of the trauma of things that happened to us or that we get caught up in aren’t confined to mythology. They can occur in much more ordinary ways — often in childhood — but still have long lasting effects.

That’s the bad news. The good news is that trauma isn’t destiny and that there are ways we can help those who’ve suffered from it and reduce the damage that it can do now and in the future. Often these are as simple as a positive relationship with a responsible adult.

I think it would be a huge step forward for us all if we became more conscious of the ways that the effects of trauma can spiral out over time and space — and if institutions such as schools, health care providers, public services, law enforcement, courts and corrections institutions became more trauma informed and adjusted their practice accordingly.

As Albert Camus put it, “We all carry within us places of exile, our crimes, our ravages. Our task is not to unleash them on the world; it is to transform them in ourselves and others.”

(This appeared as an op-ed in yesterday's Gazette.)

Enemy brothers

(Goat Rope's survey of Greek tragedy continues. You'll also find links and comments about current events below.)

When men die by a kinsman's hand,
When brother is murdered by brother,
And the dust of the earth drinks in
The crimson blood that blackens and dries,
Who then can provide cleansing?
Who can wash it away?

The theme of enemy brothers shows up pretty often in myth, sacred stories and folklore--and sometimes in real life. Cain and Abel, Jacob and Esau, Romulus and Remus are a few that come to mind.

In Aeschylus' Seven Against Thebes, it's the two sons of Oedipus, Eteocles and Polyneices. The two were supposed to alternate in power in Thebes following the...uhhh...family problems of their old man, but Eteocles refused to yield to his brother. Polyneices then roused an army led by himself and six other heroes, hence the title.

Both were cursed by their father for maltreatment after his fall. Oedipus predicted that their inheritance would be divided by a stranger, which turned out to be iron.

There's not a great deal of action in this play. Eteocles, attended by a chorus of Theban women, receives news from and gives orders to a herald, dispatching forces to guard six gates of the city from the invading army. The last enemy at the gate is his brother. Though he is warned against shedding kindred blood, he insists on facing Polyneices himself and they kill each other.



Kinship problems ran in that family...

The ending of the play, which anticipates Sophocles' Antigone, may have been tampered with by later scribes. It is of course the later Oedipus plays of Sophocles that are best known, but cursed families such as his were a favorite tragic theme of Greek dramatists.

Aeschylus was particularly concerned with the cycle and spiral of violence through the generations and how this could be brought to an end. He took up the subject at length in his Orestes trilogy, a masterpiece for the ages. More on that next week.



GETTING IT RIGHT THIS TIME. Here's Paul Krugman with warnings on health care reform.

GREENING COWS. A change of diet may reduce methane production caused by windy cows.

ALTRUISM. This item speculates on what may have been its bloody roots.

DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS. Here's the link I messed up yesterday on a new report showing that West Virginians lead the nation in psychological distress.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

The first cowgirls

The Danaides, by John William Waterhouse by way of wikipedia.

"On trouble's wing you will not find two plumes alike.."

Goat Rope lately has been looking at Greek tragedies, with those of Aeschylus being the main items on the menu at present. If you scroll down, you'll also find links and comments about current events.

Most of the plays by Aeschylus and the other tragic dramatists that survived to the present are incomplete trilogies. One such is The Suppliants, the first and only survivor of a trilogy that relates the story of the daughters of Danaus, a descendant if Io.

If you recall, Io was a young woman of Argos who attracted the amorous attention of Zeus. Hera tried to head things off and punish her by turning her into a cow tormented by a gadfly. She wandered the known world and eventually wound up in Egypt, where she was restored to human form and gave birth to Zeus' child Epaphus.

The trilogy by Aeschylus takes place a couple of generations later when Danaus and his 50 daughters flee Egypt to avoid a forced marriage to the 50 sons of their uncle Aegyptus. They seek refuge in their ancestral city of Argos, where King Pelasgus and the citizens of the city grant it. They are pursued by the sons of Aegyptus, which is pretty much where the action ends.

What probably happened in the rest of the trilogy was that Pelasgus was killed in the ensuing fight and Danaus became tyrant (non-hereditary ruler, not necessarily a dictator) of Thebes and was forced to agree to the marriages. The daughters of Danaus agree to kill their husbands and all but one, Hypermnestra, do so. She was motivated by love and for this is punished by her father.

Danaus in turn is killed by Hypermnestra's husband Lynceus, who becomes ruler of Thebes. The women who killed their husbands are pardoned with the help of the love goddess Aphrodite.

The theme may have been the power of love to promote reconciliation. One fragment spoken by Aphrodite survives from the concluding play that shows love as a cosmic force on which all things depend:

"Longs the pure sky to blend with Earth, and Love
Doth Earth impel to yield to his embrace;
The rain shower, falling from the slumberous heaven,
Kisses the Earth; and Earth brings forth for mortals
Pasture for sheep-flocks and Demeter's grain.
The woods in spring their dewy nuptials hold;
And of all these I am in part the cause."

The play and the earlier myths that inspired it raise some interesting issues. One is the debt the Greeks felt they owed to Egypt. Another is the sacred relationship between guest and host and especially that between a suppliant--someone who begs for mercy and/or help--and the person to whom he or she appeals. Zeus was the patron of supplicants and it was considered dangerous to deny mercy when someone pleaded for it.

Blessed are the merciful, in other words. As the chorus puts it in the play,

"If you respect the suppliant,
The sacrifice you pay will be the best
That a man of pure life can offer
On the gracious altars of the gods"

ECONOMIC RIGHTS/HUMAN RIGHTS discussed here.

BUBBLE (HOUSING) BUBBLE, toil and trouble.

HEALTH CARE. The recession has caused many Americans to cut back on refilling prescriptions. Meanwhile, here's the latest on President Obama's approach to health care reform.

THIS JUST IN. Scientists can track penguin poop from space. While that is undoubtedly a worthy objective in itself, they are using it to locate penguin colonies. I'm waiting for the wolverines...

STRESSED OUT. Residents of El Cabrero's beloved state of West Virginia have the highest rate of psychological distress, according to a new federal report.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

"...freedom only after countless pains"

Heracles would eventually liberate Prometheus. Image courtesy of wikipedia.

Goat Rope these days is taking a tour of ancient Greek tragedy (but you'll find links and comments about current events below). This week the theme is Prometheus Bound by Aeschylus.

Why Greek tragedy? I'm convinced the tragic lens often is the one that applies best to current problems. In an earlier post about coal and Appalachia, I argued that we too often tend to view the world through a simplified action movie lens, with clear good guys who are all good and bad guys who are all bad (see former President Bush) and a happy ending. Would that it were so.

But back to the story at hand.

It is easy to see Prometheus as the archetypal rebel against tyranny and to view Zeus as an evil usurper. But Aeschylus was concerned with a deeper matter: how excess can be tempered and holy moderation can be achieved. He was all about avoiding excess and calling for moderation.

We only have the first play of his trilogy, but we know it ended with the release of Prometheus, who would aid Zeus with information that would allow him to remain in power.

Zeus, after violently overthrowing the old order, was excessive in his punishment and use of power. Prometheus, though he benefited humanity, was excessive in his pride and defiance, as some of his sympathetic visitors suggested.

Totalitarianism and the rule of force must give way to restraint and the rule of law. Prometheus and Zeus are symbols of forethought and reason on the one hand and power on the other--and these must be reconciled.

Too bad we can't see how Aeschylus got there. Too bad we haven't figured out how to get there ourselves.

Y'all have a good weekend and try not to get chained to any rocks.

SPEAKING OF BEING CHAINED TO ROCKS, this essay hopes we'll be liberated soon from the rock of market fundamentalism.

HEALTH CARE COSTS exceed wage gains in El Cabrero's beloved state of West Virginia (and elsewhere in the US too). Meanwhile, it looks like the health care industry, after making a show of supporting reforms, is trying to sabotage President Obama's health care plan. Their main target is a public option which many see as the key to moving towards universal coverage.

REASON # 42949 why we need the Employee Free Choice Act here.

NOT COOL. WV's proposed state budget includes cuts in legal services for domestic violence victims.

MONKEY BRAINS aren't all that different from ours.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

"Power newly won is always harsh"

Your kindness to the human race has earned you this.
A god who would not bow to the gods' anger--you,
Transgressing right, gave privileges to mortal men.
For that you shall keep watch upon this bitter rock,
Standing upright, unsleeping, never bowed in rest.
And many groans and cries of pain shall come from you,
All useless; for the heart of Zeus is hard to appease.
Power newly won is always harsh.

Those words are spoken by the metal working god Hephaestus at the beginning of Aeschylus' Prometheus Bound, the first and only surviving work of a tragic trilogy.

The Titan who gave humans the gift of fire and many others was brought to a remote spot in the land of the Scythians by Strength and Violence, the unquestioning agents of the new Olympian order. The lame Hephaestus regrets his task of fastening the bonds but is afraid to violate the orders of the new ruler of the cosmos.

In Greek mythology, the early days of the universe were scenes of violent struggle. Zeus has come to power in a bloody revolution against the old order and, like many in such situations, he is all too ready to use violence to crush any challenges to his rule.

Prometheus, whose name means foresight, saw it coming:

...I know exactly every thing
That is to be; no torment will come unforeseen.
My appointed fate I must endure as best I can,
Knowing the power of Necessity is irresistible.
...For bestowing gifts upon mankind
I am harnessed in this torturing clamp. For I am he
Who hunted out the source of fire, and stole it, packed
In pith of a dry fennel-stalk. And fire has proved
For men a teacher in every art, their grand resource....

Fire was not his only benefit:

...What I did
For mortals in their misery, hear now. At first
Mindless, I gave them mind and reason. --What I say
Is not in censure of mankind, but showing you
How all my gifts to them were guided by goodwill.--
In those days they had eyes, but sight was meaningless;
Heard sounds, but could not listen; all their length of life
They passed like shapes in dreams, confused and purposeless.

He taught humans to use tools and build houses and ships, measure the seasons, do arithmetic, domesticate animals, use medicinal herbs, interpret prophecies and dreams, use minerals and more. Zeus, on the other hand, was scornful of humans and may have wished to see them wiped out and replaced by a new model.

In his agony, Prometheus is visited by the Titan Oceanus and his daughters, who form a sympathetic chorus. He has a hostile interview with Hermes, messenger of Zeus. And he meets with Io, the unfortunate woman courted by Zeus who was turned into a cow by the jealous Hera and tormented by a gadfly.

Prometheus reluctantly relates to Io the course of her future wanderings and suffering, but, like him, she is destined to eventually be released from punishment. And one of her descendants, the future Heracles, is destined to free him from bondage.

It may sound like this is a story with a simple good guy (Prometheus) and a bad guy (Zeus), but the tragic spirit is too deep for that . Aeschylus is going after something else. About which more tomorrow.

ON THE BRIGHT (GREEN) SIDE, here's a nice item from CNN about how the Veteran's Conservation Corps is helping returning vets from Iraq and Afghanistan with green jobs and a healing environment.

THE FUNCTIONS OF POVERTY. In case you missed yesterday's link to a great Washington Post story on how expensive it is to be poor, here it is again. That article reminded me of this classic essay in sociology by Herbert Gans titled The Uses of Poverty: the Poor Pay All.

DIRTY POOL. Here's a look at how employers have intensified their fight against union organizing in recent years.

IT'S WHAT WE DON'T KNOW that really bugs us.

EXTREME MAMMAL UPDATE here.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

The rest of the story (and a canine obituary)

Chiron tutoring Achilles. Image courtesy of wikipedia.

Goat Rope is in the midst of a series on Everything You Always Wanted to Know (or not) About Greek Tragedy. You'll also find links and comments about current events. This week Aeschylus' Prometheus Bound is on the menu.

Most people who know anything about Prometheus myths know that he was chained at Zeus' command to a rock in the middle of nowhere and had his liver torn out daily by a vulture for giving humans the gift of fire. But there's a good bit more to the story that might be good to know before looking at Aeschylus' tragedy.

His punishment was not destined to last forever. It seems that over time Zeus recognized that his punishment was over the top. It was arranged that the great hero Heracles would free Prometheus.

Prometheus, for his part, overcame some of his haughtiness and earned favor with Zeus by warning him not to have a fling with the sea nymph Thetis, who was destined to give birth to a son who would be greater than his father. That would have been the only way that Zeus could have been overthrown. Fans of Homer will recall that Zeus married her off to the human Peleus, whose son was the great warrior Achilles.

One requirement for his pardon was that Prometheus wear a ring made from his chains with a stone from the mountain to which he was chained. That's where the custom of wearing rings came from.

Some other traditions say that Prometheus' suffering was fated to continue until another immortal agreed to go to the underworld in his place. This was done by the wise centaur Chiron (aka Cheiron), who was weary of life and suffering from an accidental wound from a poisoned arrow of Heracles.

Next time: the play itself.

CANINE OBITUARY DEPARTMENT



It is with regret that we announce the passing of Lily, the Spousal Unit's 17 year old dog. She was rescued as a pup from a dump in Brazil and had a pretty good run. Her full name was Lilushka Grushenka Arcadia Aureliania Jose Maria Santiago la Bella Garcia Lorca de Unamuno Ortega y Gasset. We wish her a fortunate rebirth in the Pure Land of Amida Buddha.

BEING POOR is expensive.

HITTING HOME. Here's a good resource from the Economic Policy Institute on how the economic downturn is affecting people.

URGENT CICADA UPDATE here. Sneak preview: they like prime numbers.

WHILE WE'RE AT IT, here's an item on what makes Komodo dragons so dangerous.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Forethought

Hesiod and the Muse but Gustave Moreau. Image courtesy of wikipedia.

Welcome to an ongoing series about Greek tragedy, along with links and comments about current events. The topic at hand is the myth of Prometheus, which is the subject of Aeschylus' play Prometheus Bound. If you like this kind of thing, please click on earlier posts.

The earliest source on the myth of Prometheus is probably from the Greek poet Hesiod, who probably lived in the 8th century BC. He left two major works, Theogony and Works and Days. The former is one version of how the universe and gods came into being. The latter has some of that, along with advice on farming. Prometheus appears in both.

Hesiod's vision of the origin of things is anything but serene and orderly a la Genesis. The universe began with a void or chaos and many struggles, wars and reversals led to the triumph of the Olympian gods under the leadership of Zeus.

Prometheus, whose name means forethought was a Titan, a member of an earlier generation of immortals. He could foresee the outcome of the struggle between the older generation of Titans and that of the gods and sided with Zeus in the struggle.

His foresight wasn't much help in keeping him out of trouble. He initially enraged Zeus by a trick over a sacrificial meal. A dispute arose as to who got which part of a sacrificial ox. Prometheus tricked Zeus by disguising the best portions and allowing Zeus to choose. Zeus picked the part that just contained fat and some bones, while the humans got the good parts.

Zeus retaliated by withholding from men the secret of fire (and by creating the mischievous race of women to plague mankind, but that's a different story). You probably know the rest of the story. Prometheus stole the divine fire and gave it to humans. Then, according to the Theogony,

Cunning Prometheus he [Zeus] bound with unbreakable and painful chains and drove a stake through his middle. And he turned on him a long-winged eagle, which ate his immortal liver; by night the liver grew as much again as the long-winged bird had eaten in the whole day...

Thus it is not possible to deceive the mind of Zeus or escape his judgment. Even the trickster Prometheus, Iapetus' son, was not able to escape the heavy consequences of his anger. In spite of all his cleverness he lies helplessly bound by a great chain.

The punishment wasn't destined to last forever, but we'll see tomorrow that it lasted long enough.

IT'S ABOUT TIME. The new federal budget will expand protections for workers.

THE FAT FOOD INDUSTRY (AND A RECIPE) here.

CLIMATE CHANGE. From Coal Tattoo, here's a look at the prospects of climate change legislation.

SENDING MESSAGES. Here's an interesting article on evolution and consumption.

ANNALS OF SOCIAL SCIENCE. Here's an item about path finding sociological research that involved walking around with untied shoelaces (for real).

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

The first rebel

Ouch! That had to hurt. A 17th century painting of Prometheus by Jacob Jordaens, courtesy of wikipedia.

Welcome to Goat Rope's latest series on Everything You Always Wanted to Know (or not) about Greek Tragedy. If you want to skip this part, you can scroll down for links and comments about current events. If, on the other hand, you are a budding or a seasoned classics dork, please click on earlier posts.

Aeschylus was the earliest tragedian whose works survive. Out of dozens and dozens of his plays, only seven survive, which is a real tragedy. Included among his surviving works is the only intact trilogy, the Orestes cycle, which includes the Agamemnon, Libation Bearers and the Eumenides.

I'm going to start a survey of his work with Prometheus Bound, the first and unfortunately only remaining work of a trilogy on the Titan who rebelled against Zeus to help humanity and paid a terrible price.

This is a deep myth, one that predates Aeschylus by centuries and has continued to inspire art and thought for thousands of years afterward. But it was Aeschylus' version that made the biggest impression.

Later generations of religious and political radicals would seize on the Titan who stole the fire of the gods and gave it to helpless humans as the founder of their line.

The English poet Percy Shelley, the archetypal romantic rebel, wrote a revolutionary play in 1820 called Prometheus Unbound. His widow Mary Shelley would subtitle her novel Frankenstein as The Modern Prometheus (although the analogy doesn't quite seem to work).

Another rebel, the young Karl Marx, in his doctoral dissertation on The Difference Between the Democritean and Epicurean Philosophy of Nature called Prometheus "the most eminent saint and martyr in the philosophical calendar."

Herman Melville in Moby-Dick compared Captain Ahab to Prometheus:

God help thee, old man, thy thoughts have created a creature in thee; and he whose intense thinking thus makes him a Prometheus; a vulture feeds upon that heart for ever; that vulture the very creature he creates.

And, while we're at it, the rebellious composer Franz Liszt composed a work in his honor.

All of which is to say, this story has legs. More to come...

CHEW ON THIS. From Democracy Now, here's an interview with Michael Pollan on the politics of food.

CAP AND TRADE. Here's Paul Krugman on current climate change proposals.

UNSPORTSMANLIKE CONDUCT. West Virginia's recently privatized workers compensation system is messing with people again. This looks like it could be a nice little fight.

THE UNION PREMIUM. Yet another study shows that unionized workers get a better deal.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

When a god comes to town, be nice

Modern Chinese sculpture of Dionysus. Image courtesy of wikipedia.

"...he will know too late Dionysus, god most benevolent to mortals, yet if his blessing is scorned into curse, god of inhuman terror."--the Bacchae

Goat Rope's series on Everything You Always Wanted to Know (or not) about Greek Tragedy continues. If you like this kind of thing, please click on earlier posts. If you're just interested in links and comments about current events, scroll on down.

Earlier posts in the week looked at the background of tragedy and Dionysus, the god at whose festival these were performed. It only seems fitting to start looking at specific tragedies with one in which he has the starring role. That would be the Bacchae, which may have been the last play written by Euripides, the most recent of the three tragedians whose work survives.

In it, Dionysus is newly arrived from Asia to Thebes, the home of his mother Semele. The former king of Thebes was Kadmos, Dionysus' grandfather, who was pious enough to recognize that Zeus was the new god's father and to honor his mother with a shrine. Semele's sisters, however, disbelieve and have spread rumors that his father was human.

The new ruler of Thebes is Kadmos' grandson Pentheus, who is...well...a bit of a wanker: young and arrogant, he is dismissive of the new cult and prepared to suppress it.

Dionysus, looking like a dissolute and androgynous youth, strikes the women of Thebes with his divine mania. They abandon their homes and revel in the mountains, tearing calves to pieces in their frenzy. Pentheus tries to arrest the youth, but you can't arrest a god. The city is destroyed by an earthquake. Not able to take a hint, Pentheus threatens to send soldiers to suppress the revelers.

Still, he kind of wants to watch. Dionysus tempts him by offering to lead him to a safe place to view the scene. The wild women or maenads, lead by his mother Agave, see him and think he is a mountain lion. They tear him to pieces in their mania and triumphantly bring the remains back to the city in triumph. Only when the madness fades does she realize what she has done.

"Humility and respect for the gods is the only wisdom. Yes, and for us mortals, the only weapon in hand--if only we used it."

GOOD LOOKS can boost your paycheck.

DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS. This is the article about the mismatch between new jobs and workers seeking work that I meant to link yesterday.

NEANDERTHALS may have been pretty smart after all.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

The new god on the block

Welcome to Goat Rope's ongoing series on Everything You Always Wanted to Know (or not) About Greek Tragedy. If you want to skip that part, there are links and comments about current events below. If you like this kind of thing, please click on earlier entries.

As mentioned before, Athenian tragedy was performed as part of the festival of the god Dionysus, the god associated with the vine, wine, growing things, ecstasy and other fun stuff. The situation of his birth was described in yesterday's post.

His childhood was a bit rough as well. According to some myths, Hera, the jealous wife of Zeus had him ripped to pieces (like a grape maybe?), but he was reassembled by his grandmother Rhea.

Once he was mature, he went from place to place introducing grape cultivation. He was followed by wild women or maenads who flouted social conventions, tore wild animals to pieces for food and carried a rod tipped with pine cones which was a symbol of the cult.

I kind of picture Dionysus as being a bit like Jim Morrison in his prime. And when he came to town, it was kinda like a really wild Doors concert, only more so. Women would abandon hearth and home to head out to the wild places.

He was also one of the few gods who had the power to bring people back from the dead. He rescued his mother Semele from the underworld and secured immortality for her. For this reason, he was sometimes associated with mystery cults aimed at securing some kind of decent life after death for humans.

He was not a war god or even overly sexual (by Olympian standards), but woe to anyone to tried to obstruct the progress of his cult. That's the subject of a tragedy by Euripides, about which more tomorrow.

SOCIAL SECURITY. Here's Robert Reich on the health of this New Deal program.

HELP WANTED? Here's Business Week on the mismatch between workers seeking work and the jobs that are out there.

PERFORMANCE PAY isn't all that common in the private sector, according to the Economic Policy Institute.

URGENT ANCIENT ART UPDATE here.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Tragically hip

The Greek theater at Epidaurus. Image courtesy of wikipedia.

Welcome to Goat Rope's latest series on Everything You Always Wanted to Know (or not) about Greek Tragedy. You'll also find links and comments about current events below. If you like this kind of thing, please click on earlier posts.

As mentioned previously, Greek tragedies were originally performed during the spring festival of the god Dionysus. Attendance was a civic and religious duty for Athenian citizens. It involved a contest between three playwrights who produced three more or less related plays and a lighter and cruder satyr play.

What's really tragic is that so few Greek tragedies have survived. Of the three tragedians whose work survives, we only have

*seven by Aeschylus (circa 525-455 BC) out of 70-90;

*seven by Sophocles (circa 496-406 BC) out of more than 100; and

*eighteen or nineteen by Euripides (circa 480-406 BC) out of more than 90. The authorship of one of these is disputed.

The works of other tragedians has been completely lost. There's only instance of a trilogy surviving intact, the Orestes plays of Aeschylus.

Many of the ones that do survive are really, really good. It makes you wonder about what we lost.

If you read the works by author and compare, you'll notice that they seem more recognizable as plays as time goes by. Euripides seems really "modern" compared to Aeschylus.

People at the time were crazy about the stuff. It is said that the very few Athenian soldiers who survived that disastrous invasion of Syracuse during the Peloponnesian War were the ones who had memorized the latest by Euripides.

Who said this stuff wasn't practical?

WHEN UNEMPLOYMENT GOES UP so does poverty.

SPEAKING OF UNEMPLOYMENT, here's one by Barbara Ehrenreich on what to do with the extra time.

SPEAKING OF THE RECESSION, here's Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz on where we are now.

WV ITEMS. State advocacy groups called for minimizing state spending cuts. At Coal Tattoo, Ken Ward looks at the impact of mountaintop removal mining on recent flooding in southern WV.

TORTURE. Here's an analysis of how Americans think about it.

WEIGHT LOSS. It's no picnic.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Living myths

A mask of Dionysus. Image courtesy of wikipedia.

It's an unfortunate turn of language these days that we use the word myth to denote falsehoods or misconceptions, as in "the myth of the free market" or whatever. I'm more inclined to the saying I've seen attributed to various people that goes something like "myths are things that never were but always are."

Thomas Mann, to whom some attribute the thought expressed above, put it like this:

For the myth is the foundation of life; it is the timeless schema, the pious formula into which life flows when it reproduces its traits out of the unconscious.

Some of the most powerful expressions of myth are those developed in Athenian tragedy, an art form that reached its pinnacle in the 5th century BC. As mentioned previously, tragedies were performed as a competition during the spring festival of Dionysus, a god associated with wine, growing things, and ecstasy.

The form developed over time from dithyrambs or choral singing in honor of the god to the recitation of stories from various mythic traditions. Over time, an actor was added to answer the chorus. The English word for hypocrite, by the way, comes from the word for this actor. The tragedian Aeschylus added a second actor, Sophocles a third, and Euripides still more, so that the product is recognizable to modern readers as a play.

Greek tragedies often portray people caught up in a long series of events which they imperfectly understand or understand only when it's too late. Sometimes, they show the disastrous results of excess or a lack of holy moderation which bring on the wrath of the gods.

Far from being something removed from real life, I see tragic themes being played out over and over again in history, politics, family and personal life. Over the next stretch of time, Goat Rope is going to take a look at the surviving tragedies and what they might say to us today.

GREAT FIRST LINE. This article about how Americans are landing on or falling through state and local safety nets says it all:

As millions of people seek government aid, many for the first time, they are finding it dispensed American style: through a jumble of disconnected programs that reach some and reject others, often for reasons of geography or chance rather than differences in need.

TALKING BUSINESS. Here are two items El Cabrero and amigos are working on right now. One is the need to take advantage of stimulus money to help WV deal with its budget problems and the other is about the state's unemployment insurance system and how we can improve it.

WALL TO WALL. Here's the latest edition of the Rev. Jim Lewis' Notes from under the Fig Tree. It's all about walls from wall to wall.

BABOONS are socially smart. Some even make good goat herders. Wait a minute! Don't read this.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Cositas

Imaginitive drawing of the long since destroyed temple of Zeus at Olympia. Image courtesy of wikipedia.

El Cabrero has been so busy slacking and blogging about books for the last several days that current events and snarky comments about the same have been sadly neglected.

One more book for the road though: Tom Stone's Zeus: A Journey Through Greece in the Footsteps of a God was a lot of fun. I'm a big fan of the Hairy Thunderer and the whole Olympian family and this book scratched that itch.

(It's a bit ironic that many people have seen some kind of moral progress in the triumph of monotheistic religions over polytheism. At times I must admit that the evidence for this seems underwhelming...)

Anyhow, aside from the usual news fare of carnage and collapse, here are some items that caught my eye in the last week or so:

RECORD FINE FOR MINE FATALITY. From the Dec. 24 Charleston Gazette, Aracoma Coal Co., a subsidiary of Massey Energy, admitted criminal safety violations in a fire in which two miners, Don Bragg and Ellery Hatfield, died in 2006. The company pleaded guilty to 10 criminal charges, including one felony. The company must pay a record $2.5 million in criminal fines and an additional $1.7 million in civil fines.

WAL-MART COUGHS IT UP FOR WORKERS' UNPAID WAGES. Far be it from me to take joy in the misfortunes of others, but this is freakin' awesome!

SIGNS OF THE TIMES, PART ONE. Last week, an AP story reported that a growing number of Americans have been giving up their cats and dogs as the economy tanks. Yesterday's Gazette reported that both pets and farm animals have been abandoned at an increasing rate in West Virginia.

SIGNS OF THE TIMES, PART TWO. On a little less grim note, more people are using repair shops to fix old items rather than buy new ones as money gets tighter.

One thing that struck me on a trip to Mexico last summer was the vast number of businesses there that fix up all the things that people here just throw away. It was another reminder of how wasteful we are.

DEMOGRAPHIC ODDITY. At a time when adults in industrialized countries have grown taller, the average height of African-American women has been declining, beginning with those born in the 1960s. The effect is most pronounced in women with low and median incomes, while those with higher incomes have actually grown taller.

ONE MORE THING. Happy New Year and don't drink and drive!

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

One more road trip for the road!

The last round is on Odysseus.

Welcome to the very last day of Goat Rope's long running series on the Odyssey of Homer. You'll also find links and comments about current events. If you are a classics geek like El Cabrero, check the blog archives. The series started Aug. 4 and has run on weekdays since then, hitting the major stops of his journey.

I've argued all along that this epic has a lot to say both about the difficulties veterans returning from combat have in coming home and the human condition in general. It has often been noted in this series that Odysseus was a deeply flawed character and a disastrous leader. Still, I have a soft spot for the old buzzard and can relate to many of his misadventures. Perhaps the Gentle Reader can too.

As mentioned before, writers long after Homer have been fascinated by the character of Ulysses/Odysseus. Some of them had trouble believing that the hero of the epic would be content to stay at home in Ithaca. That is the theme of Tennyson's poem Ulysses, which I'll quote in its entirety. I was going to highlight my favorite parts but I just discovered I like it all. Here goes:

It little profits that an idle king,
By this still hearth, among these barren crags,
Match'd with an aged wife, I mete and dole
Unequal laws unto a savage race,
That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.

I cannot rest from travel: I will drink
Life to the lees: all times I have enjoyed
Greatly, have suffered greatly, both with those
That loved me, and alone; on shore, and when
Through scudding drifts the rainy Hyades
Vexed the dim sea: I am become a name;
For always roaming with a hungry heart
Much have I seen and known; cities of men
And manners, climates, councils, governments,
Myself not least, but honoured of them all;
And drunk delight of battle with my peers;
Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.
I am a part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethrough
Gleams that untravelled world, whose margin fades
For ever and for ever when I move.
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnished, not to shine in use!
As though to breathe were life. Life piled on life
Were all too little, and of one to me
Little remains: but every hour is saved
From that eternal silence, something more,
A bringer of new things; and vile it were
For some three suns to store and hoard myself,
And this grey spirit yearning in desire
To follow knowledge like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.

This is my son, mine own Telemachus,
To whom I leave the sceptre and the isle —
Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfil
This labour, by slow prudence to make mild
A rugged people, and through soft degrees
Subdue them to the useful and the good.
Most blameless is he, centred in the sphere
Of common duties, decent not to fail
In offices of tenderness, and pay
Meet adoration to my household gods,
When I am gone. He works his work, I mine.

There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail:
There gloom the dark broad seas. My mariners,
Souls that have toil'd, and wrought, and thought with me —
That ever with a frolic welcome took
The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed
Free hearts, free foreheads — you and I are old;
Old age hath yet his honour and his toil;
Death closes all: but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.
The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks:
The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep
Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,
'Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew

Tho' much is taken, much abides; and though
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

So there you have it, folks. We may not be spring chickens anymore but we're not dead yet either. To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield--let's roll!

CORRECTION DEPARTMENT. Email subscribers to Goat Rope may have accidentally gotten an earlier version of a post planned for the weekend yesterday afternoon. My bad.

AFTER THE BAILOUT, the work is just beginning. Here is an analysis from the American Friends Service Committee.

SPEAKING OF WHICH, here's economist Dean Baker on the latest developments and here's Paul Krugman on the same.

BULLYING. Why are some children targets? Here are some counter intuitive findings from current research.

JUST HANG ON TILL 2208. Physicist Stephen Hawking thinks that if the human race can hold on for another 200 years, we just might make it. Of course, this may involve leaving the planet.

GENTLEMEN PUPPIES. In a display of unparalleled gallantry and chivalry, young male puppies will often allow females to win when they play their puppy games. Now that's updog. (Could they have ulterior motives? Do they thing that far ahead?)

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: INTERPLANETARY

A hell of a trip

William Blake's rendition of Ulysses and Diomedes in hell.

Goat Rope is winding up on long series on the Odyssey of Homer. You'll also find links and comments about current events. At this point, we've covered the epic pretty well and are now looking at what other writers have done with the character of Odysseus, aka Ulysses.

As noted in yesterday's post, Plato imagined that he would choose a calm, non eventful life next time around. But other writers, such as Dante, just weren't buying it. They imagined that Ulysses wouldn't be able to give up the itch for more travel and more adventures.

In Dante's Inferno, he wound up (or down) in the Eighth Circle of hell, a place reserved for fraud for the whole Trojan horse thing. Dante, after all, was a fan of Rome and the mythical founder of that city was the Trojan prince Aeneas. But it sounds like the real reason for his punishment was an endless thirst for adventure which leads him to set out again.

From the horse's mouth:

"When I

From Circe had departed, who concealed me
More than a year there near unto Gaeta,
Or ever yet Aeneas named it so,

Nor fondness for my son, nor reverence
For my old father, nor the due affection
Which joyous should have made Penelope,

Could overcome within me the desire
I had to be experienced of the world,
And of the vice and virtue of mankind;

But I put forth on the high open sea
With one sole ship, and that small company
By which I never had deserted been..."

(Dante, of course, never read Homer. In the medieval period, knowledge of Greek was mostly lost in the west and he didn't know the whole story--like the fact that Odysseus returned alone from his wanderings.)

In Dante's version, Ulysses/Odysseus made the blasphemous decision to push beyond the boundaries of the known world and sail out into the ocean where his ship met disaster:

I and my company were old and slow
When at that narrow passage we arrived
Where Hercules his landmarks set as signals,

That man no farther onward should adventure.
On the right hand behind me left I Seville,
And on the other already had left Ceuta.

'O brothers, who amid a hundred thousand
Perils,' I said, 'have come unto the West,
To this so inconsiderable vigil

Which is remaining of your senses still
Be ye unwilling to deny the knowledge,
Following the sun, of the unpeopled world.

Consider ye the seed from which ye sprang;
Ye were not made to live like unto brutes,
But for pursuit of virtue and of knowledge.'

So eager did I render my companions,
With this brief exhortation, for the voyage,
That then I hardly could have held them back.

And having turned our stern unto the morning,
We of the oars made wings for our mad flight,
Evermore gaining on the larboard side.

Already all the stars of the other pole
The night beheld, and ours so very low
It did not rise above the ocean floor.

Five times rekindled and as many quenched
Had been the splendour underneath the moon,
Since we had entered into the deep pass,

When there appeared to us a mountain, dim
From distance, and it seemed to me so high
As I had never any one beheld.

Joyful were we, and soon it turned to weeping;
For out of the new land a whirlwind rose,
And smote upon the fore part of the ship.

Three times it made her whirl with all the waters,
At the fourth time it made the stern uplift,
And the prow downward go, as pleased Another,

Until the sea above us closed again."

As we'll see tomorrow, Tennyson picked up on this theme as well.

UNGOOD NEWS. The economic meltdown has wiped out $2 trillion in retirement savings.

LOOKING ON THE BRIGHT SIDE. Some economists see the financial meltdown as a chance to promote a more sustainable economy that looks beyond short term profits.

WHEN FACTS DON'T MATTER. Here's more on a recent study of the lasting effects of misinformation.

I KNOW YOU'RE ASKING YOURSELF THIS QUESTION, to wit: what do fish that live five miles below the surface of the ocean do and what do they look like? Your answer awaits here.

THIS IS TOTALLY WEIRD, but El Cabrero's beloved state of West Virginia is actually leading the nation in economic growth.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: INCOMPREHENSIBLE

The afterlife of an epic

Plato (left) and Aristotle in a detail from Raphael's The School of Athens. Image courtesy of wikipedia.

This is the very last week here of a long running series on the Odyssey of Homer and what it has to say to us today. You'll also find links and comments about (some) current events. If you like the classics, check the blog archives. The series started August 4 and has run on weekdays since then, hitting most of the stops of Odysseus on his 10 year journey home.

Given the popularity of this story over the ages, it's no surprise that people would have a hard time leaving it alone. The figure of Odysseus keeps showing up in works of literature over the ages.

One place where he showed up in classical Greece was in Plato's Republic. This is a little ironic since Plato didn't have a very high impression of Homer or at least of the moral value of his epics (probably because he didn't get it).

Toward the end of Plato's most famous dialogue comes a discussion of the afterlife commonly known as "the myth of Er." In the story, Er is a soldier who has what we would call a near death experience in which he gets to explore the afterlife and return to tell the tale.

In the afterlife, souls are rewarded or punished for their deeds on earth. For the very wicked, the punishment seems to last forever. Others, after a suitable interval, have a chance to choose their next life. Some humans choose to live as animals and vice versa. Many souls make grave mistakes at this point, choosing what seems to be a pleasant life even though it may lead to further punishment and sufferings.

After all his travels and sufferings, Odysseus has had his fill of adventure and the quest for glory. He chooses a dull life that others rejected. As Plato put it,

There came also the soul of Odysseus having yet to make a choice, and his lot happened to be the last of them all. Now the recollection of former tolls had disenchanted him of ambition, and he went about for a considerable time in search of the life of a private man who had no cares; he had some difficulty in finding this, which was lying about and had been neglected by everybody else; and when he saw it, he said that he would have done the had his lot been first instead of last, and that he was delighted to have it.

As we'll see tomorrow, Dante envisioned a whole different scenario for Odysseus...in hell.

WEIGHING IN ON THE MELTDOWN. Here are the views of five economists on where the economic mess is likely to go from, of all places, al Jazeera.

COAL STRUGGLE MAKES CNN. Some coalfield groups and residents are proposing wind energy as an alternative to mountaintop removal mining. The story is going national.

LATIN LIVES. Who said it was a dead language anyway?

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

The bed of Odysseus

Odysseus and Penelope by Francesco Primaticcio (1563), courtesy of wikipedia.

Along with links and comments about current events, the ongoing theme at Goat Rope for quite a while now has been the Odyssey of Homer. El Cabrero is striving mightily to wind it up but it takes a while to stop at train or turn a ship around. I'm trying though.

Whatever else you can say about Odysseus, as strange as it may seem he really did have a loving bond with his wife Penelope. This is true despite his 20 years of wandering and the occasional dalliance with a goddess or two. After all, he gave up Calypso's offer of immortality to go home to her.

One symbol of the power of that bond is the story of their bed. Toward the end of the epic, Odysseus, disguised as a beggar, gradually reveals himself to his family and faithful servants. It's hard to tell when the recognition occurred since they are all operating under stress from the threat of more than 100 insolent suitors. It's sort of a game of classics geeks to speculate about what did Penelope know and when.

Penelope in particular is skeptical of anyone who claims to have knowledge of Odysseus after many years of lies and rumors. She also fears being deceived by someone who claims to be her husband. When at last they talk, she pretends to doubt him, which leads him to protest

"Strange woman! So hard--the gods of Olympus
made you harder than any other woman in the world!
What other wife could have a spirit so unbending?
Holding back from her husband, home at last for her
after bearing twenty years of brutal struggle."

As a way of giving him a final test (or of just messing with him), she asks the maid to move their bed so that the stranger can sleep on it--alone.

Now here's the thing about that bed. It is absolutely immovable by any mortal, have been built around the stump of an olive tree. He is devastated at the thought that anyone could have moved it:

"Woman--your words, they cut me to the core!
Who could move my bed? Impossible task,
even for some skilled craftsman--unless a god
came down in person, quick to lend a hand,
lifted out with ease and moved it elsewhere.
Not a man on earth, not even at peak strength,
would find it easy to prise it up and shift it, no,
a great sign, a hallmark lies in its construction."

With that, she knows she's got her man:

"...now, since you have revealed such overwhelming proof-
the secret sign of our bed, which no one's ever seen
but you and I and a single maid, Actoris,
the servant my father gave me when I came,
who kept the doors of our room you built so well...
you've conquered my heart, my hard heart, at last!"

The goddess Athena even gives the couple a special break:

She held back the night, and night lingered long
at the western edge of the earth, while in the east
she reined in Dawn of the golden throne at Ocean's banks.
commanding her not to yoke the windswift team that brings men light...

They had a lot of catching up to do. The lengthened night gave them time to love, talk and sleep.

There are some powerful images in the Odyssey, like Penelope's loom, and this is one of them. The image of this immovable bed symbolizes a deep bond between a couple that not even the ravages of the years can uproot. You don't see a whole lot of that these days.

OH GOOD. The US lost 159,000 jobs in September, the biggest loss since March 2003, according to this Jobs Byte from the Center for Economic and Policy Research.

ON A SIMILAR NOTE, this snapshot from the Economic Policy Institute looks at trade deficit related job losses in 2007.

HOMO ECONOMICUS don't live around here.

WAKE UP. Here's an item on the medical utility of mindfulness meditation.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Dream weaver, Penelope, the bailout and more

Along with links and comments about current events, Goat Rope is winding down a long series on the Odyssey of Homer. Much of the series has focused on the misadventures of Odysseus' homecoming and how these shed light both on ordinary life and particularly on veterans coming home from war.

One character who has not received her due here has been the faithful wife Penelope, who in her own was was as crafty as her husband. Incidentally, Margaret Atwood wrote The Penelopiad to tell the whole story from her point of view.

With Odysseus gone and presumed dead, her status was unclear. There was little or now place in that society for an independent woman of child-bearing years. Now that her son Telemachus is coming of age, she is under enormous pressure to remarry. Over 100 suitors are basically camped out at her home and are devouring the family's estate. They even plot the murder of Telemachus.

To gain time, she says she must complete her duties by weaving a burial shroud for Odysseus' father Laertes, which she secretly unravels at night until her secret is revealed by a treacherous maid.

In the epic cycle, she is seen as the ideal wife, in direct contrast to Clytemnestra, the wife of Agamemnon who murders her husband on his homecoming to revenge his sacrifice of her daughter Iphigenia (although there are many here among us who would say Agamemnon had it coming).

My favorite scene with Penelope in the Odyssey is her discussion of the nature of dreams. As you may have noticed, some dreams make sense and some don't. Here's her explanation:

"Ah my friend," seasoned Penelope dissented,
"dreams are hard to unravel, wayward, drifting things--
not all we glimpse in them will come to pass...
Two gates there are for our evanescent dreams,
one is made of ivory, the other made of horn.
Those that pass through the ivory cleanly carved
are will-o'-the-wisps, their message bears no fruit.
The dreams that pass through the gates of polished horn
are fraught with truth, for the dreamer who can see them..."

The problem is it's kind of hard to tell true dreams and false ones apart sometimes, whether we're awake or asleep.

WELFARE FOR WALL STREET UPDATE. The House is likely to vote today on the Wall Street bailout. Here's an action alert and analysis from the American Friends Service Committee.

SCAPEGOAT. Right wingers are trying to blame the Community Reinvestment Act (and minorities) for the Wall Street meltdown. That would be another dog that don't hunt.

URBAN PLOWBOY. Here's an interesting item on the future of urban farming.

SCORE ONE FOR SIGMUND. A new medical study finds that old school psychodynamic therapy works as well as other treatments for certain mental disorders.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: WHO KNOWS?

Man's best friend and an important action alert on the bailout

Note: The Goat Rope is nearing the end of a series of posts about the Odyssey of Homer, although you'll also find links and comments about current events. If you like this kind of thing, please click on earlier posts.

What person born with a living soul isn't a sucker for a dog story? There's a great little dog nugget towards the end of the Odyssey. Odysseus, after 10 years of war and 10 more years of wandering, has finally made it home to Ithaca. He is disguised as a beggar as he approaches his home, where over 100 insolent suitors are devouring the resources of his family.

Odysseus is generally pretty good at self-control in a dangerous situation and at hiding his emotions, but he wasn't prepared for this:

Now, as they talked on, a dog that lay there
lifted up his muzzle, pricked his ears...
It was Argos, long-enduring Odysseus' dog
he trained as a puppy once, but little joy he got
since all too soon he shipped to sacred Troy.
In the old days young hunters loved to set him
coursing after the wild goats and deer and hares.
But now with his master gone he lay there, castaway,
on piles of dung from mules and cattle, heaps collecting
out before the gates till Odysseus' self-serving men
could cart it off to manure the king's estates.
Infested with ticks, half-dead from neglect,
here lay the hound, old Argos.

Out of everyone Odysseus meets during his homecoming, the only critter who recognizes and greets him right away is the dog:

But the moment he sensed Odysseus standing by
he thumped his tail, nuzzling low, and his ears dropped,
though he had no strength to drag himself an inch
toward his master.

Odysseus can't run up to greet the dog, because this would reveal his identity to the murderous suitors. So he turns his head, sheds a tear, and asks the swineherd Eumaeus about him. He replies

"Here--it's all too true--here's the dog of a man
who died in foreign parts. But if he had now
the form and flair he had in his glory days--
as Odysseus left him, sailing off to Troy--
you'd be amazed to see such speed, such strength.
No quarry he chased in the deepest, darkest woods
could ever slip this hound. A champion tracker too!
Ah, but he's run out of luck now, poor fellow...
his master's dead and gone, so far from home,
and the heartless women tend him not at all....."

Odysseus never got the chance to try to make up for lost time:

...the dark shadow of death closed down on Argos' eyes
the instant he saw Odysseus, twenty years away.

A little dog-reality note: the point of this story is about the loyalty and love of the dog and about his neglect. However, El Cabrero can vouch for the fact that lying on a manure pile is not a sign of neglect. The dogs of my acquaintance love to lay in, roll around upon, and sometimes eat all kinds of stinky stuff, manure and dead things included. And any dog--then or now--that lived 20 years couldn't have had it all that bad. But I still fell for it.

SPEAKING OF DOGS, the Senate's bailout bill may have passed, but it don't hunt. The House may vote on it by Friday at latest word. Here's the full text of an action alert urging people to contact their representatives and ask them to fill in the blanks in the legislation:

Take Action: Let Congress Know the Bailout Solution Should not be Driven by Fear

The financial crisis in the United States today is not in the Dow Jones but in our communities, where millions of people are threatened by home foreclosures and a sluggish economy. This is a deep and wide crisis that should receive thoughtful attention, not a panicked response driven by fear.

Today the Senate will vote on a revised version of the Emergency Economic Recovery Act of 2008, which the House of Representatives rejected on Sept. 29 by a 228-205 margin. Although it is likely to pass in the Senate, this bill still fails to address the causes of the crisis or its impact on most people. The House is likely to take up the issue again on Friday.

Congress should develop and pass stronger legislation that meets the following principles:

Bankruptcy Protection - This bill must grant authority for bankruptcy judges to restructure mortgages and allow government to work with loan servicers on new mortgage terms, thereby providing stability and security for local communities and the economy as a whole.

A Strong Economic Recovery Package - Congress must adopt measures that will create jobs for workers who have lost their employment and invest in the needs of local communities.

Taxpayer Protection - The public’s massive investment in our financial institutions must be vigorously protected. Tough independent oversight, transparency, and an assurance of repayment from the financial service companies must be mandatory. The public must receive significant return for the assets we acquire.

Regulatory Framework – To address the causes of recent financial failures, the financial system should be regulated in ways that support sound lending and investment, and that also protect taxpayers and consumers. The regulatory framework should be revisited to restore good governance in our financial institutions.

Limitations on Executive Compensation - Strict limits on compensation and severance packages for senior executives must be enacted on any institution receiving taxpayer-funded assistance.

Your Voice is Needed! Call your House Representative Today.

The Congressional switchboard, fax and email systems are crashing do to volume, so the only way to reach your Representative is to call their DC office directly. Click here to enter your address and find your Representative and their direct phone number.

Ask your Representative not to act out of fear and take the time to do this right for the long-term well-being of your community.

The American Friends Service Committee is providing a toll-free number to the congressional switchboard: 1-800-473-6711.

ONE MORE THING ON THAT: Here's an opinion piece from AFSC General Secretary Mary Ellen McNish about the values that should guide a response to the crisis.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED