BLOWING IN THE WIND

Aeolus, keeper of the winds, courtesy of wikipedia.

The theme at Goat Rope lately has been the Odyssey of Homer, along with links and comments about current events. It is a story that has delighted people of all ages for thousands of years. It also deals with a vital theme in America today, i.e. how is it possible to re-integrate survivors of war into normal "peaceful" society.

It's flawed hero Odysseus, after all, has spent 10 years fighting at Troy--but he's so damaged by that experience that it takes him another 10 years to make it home. He can even be seen as a negative example of how not to do it.

Coming home in the broad sense of reaching a state or place of safety and security isn't easy for anyone, but it can be even harder for those who have undergone trauma. As we've seen so far in this series, Odysseus has come close to losing his homecoming several times.

One danger was staying in combat mode after the war was over, as happened in the raid on the Circoneans. Another danger is losing oneself in drugs that dull the pain but can make one forget the struggle to get home, represented in the story by the Lotus Eaters. The story of the cyclops (see last week) showed the dangers of reckless adventure seeking and of provoking dangerous conflicts that could easily have been avoided.

At this point, Odysseus and his remaining men are due for a break and they get one. Sort of. They visit the floating island of Aeolus, the keeper of the winds. There they were feasted and treated with great hospitality or xenia. Odysseus is given a gift that could take him easily and quickly home. As he describes it,

He [Aeolus] gave me a sack, the skin of a full-grown ox,
binding inside the winds that howl from every quarter,
for Zeus had made that king the master of all the winds,
with power to calm them down or rouse them as he pleased.
Aeolus stowed the sack inside my holds, lashed so fast
with a burnished silver cord
not even a slight puff could slip past that knot.
Yet he set the West Wind free to blow us on our way
and waft our squadron home.

It sounds like he's home free, doesn't' it? Too bad it didn't work out that way. More on that tomorrow.

FANNIE AND FREDDIE. Here's an item on the housing bailout and what it may mean for the economy.

OH GOOD. The ice around the Arctic has melted to a greater extent than at any time in at least half a century. Scientists view this as another sign of global climate change. Meanwhile, the glaciers in the Pyrenees may be gone within 50 years. Nothing wrong here--move along!

FACTS AND STATS about the state of the union for working people can be found here.

ADDING IT UP. Here's an op-ed from the Charleston Sunday Gazette-Mail by yours truly about what the latest Census report on income, poverty and health coverage showed about the US and WV. Short version: it wasn't all bad news, but things look rocky now.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

GROWING UP BIBLICAL

Caption: This man likes to dress up for church.

This week's Goat Rope involves musing on biblical themes among many other things and was inspired in part by recent surveys that suggest many Americans--even those who claim to believe every word literally--are biblically illiterate.

But first, there is a vicious rumor out there that El Cabrero would like to put to rest.

The rumor is this: that Episcopalians don't read the Bible. That is like sooo not true. We do...in case we're ever on Jeopardy.

I actually (now) consider myself lucky to have been dragged to Episcopal services throughout my childhood by my Maternal Unit in part because it really steeps you in biblical literature. In general, Anglicans of our variety don't take it literally (as a biology, geology, or astronomy textbook, for example) but do take it seriously.

A typical service involves at least four readings, including a psalm and another reading from the Hebrew Bible (the Christian Old Testament), one from the gospels, and one from the other New Testament writings. A lot of the rest of the liturgy is also drawn from biblical texts.

As a result, I wound up as a kid involuntarily memorizing sections of psalms, canticles, and other passages. There was no way not to.

I noticed something strange in the inevitable religious discussions with other kids. While some viewed the Bible almost superstitiously as a magical oracle, they had little idea of how it went aside from a few "proof texts."

(Proof texting is a vile habit that has probably done as much as anything else to promote biblical illiteracy.)

One thing I got out of all that was the lifelong habit of reading it, regardless of how my religious opinions morphed or occasionally disappeared over time. It's some of the best time I ever spent.

When it comes to religion, El Cabrero's mind is kind of like an AM car radio driving on mountain roads; sometimes you pick up a signal and other times it's just static, although I seem to have would up pretty much where I started.

Question for you, Gentle Reader. What role has the Bible, positively or negatively/by its presence or by its absence, played in your life?

IT'S HOW THEY'RE COUNTED, as we like to say about votes in El Cabrero's beloved state of West Virginia. In this case, however, we're talking about poverty. This editorial from the New York Times is about more accurate measurements than the old federal poverty level:

According to the Census Bureau, nearly 37 million Americans — 12.6 percent of the population — were living in poverty in 2005. That means that four years into an economic expansion, the percentage of Americans defined as poor was higher than at the bottom of the last recession in late 2001, when it was 11.7 percent. But that’s not the worst of it. Recently, the bureau released 12 alternative measures of poverty, and all but one are higher than the official rate.

The alternative that hews most closely to the measurement criteria recommended by the National Academy of Sciences yields a 2005 poverty rate of 14.1 percent. That works out to 41.3 million poor Americans, 4.4 million more than were officially counted. Those higher figures indicate that millions of needy Americans are not getting government services linked to official poverty levels.

It calls for expanding the Earned Income Tax Credit and early childhood education to help combat poverty.

MEDICARE PART D. West Virginians United for Social and Economic Justice and the WV Citizen Action Group issued a statement yesterday calling for negotiated prices on the prescription drug benefit. This could save WV taxpayers $225 million per year ($30 billion at the national level.) The press release drew attention to this report by the Institute for America's Future.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED