Alice Day

Note: we interrupt Goat Rope's regularly scheduled programming for the following breaking news:

Today, March 14, 2011, will be eternally celebrated in the annals of culture. Or maybe not. In any case, one of the idols of my junior high years will be officially inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

I am referring, of course, to Alice Cooper, who was one of three stars in my early adolescent firmament. The other two were Bruce Lee and J.R.R. Tolkien. What can I say--I had good taste back then.

At the time, I loved the irreverence expressed in lyrics like School's Out:

Well we can't salute ya
Can't find a flag
If that don't suit ya
That's a drag

Unlike those who would follow, the father of Shock Rock didn't take himself too seriously, as can be seen in the following lines from the same song:

Well we got no class
And we got no principles
And we got no innocence
We can't even think of a word that rhymes

I went to see him with a friend once when he came to Charleston. My friend, more enterprising than me, bought a poster and forged an autograph from it that he showed off all over school the next few days. And if I was ever lucky enough to get a back stage pass to one of his concerts, like Wayne and Garth did in the movie Wayne's World, I probably would have come close to hurling myself.

I haven't followed his career that closely beyond the years that I first took sustenance from them, but that was enough. Happy Rock Day, Alice!

OKINAWA DREAMING. When news came of the horrific earthquake and tsunami that struck Japan, I thought at once of Okinawa and the people I had met there last spring. The island is more than 1,000 miles south of the epicenter and was spared the worst. According to a friend in touch with the situation there, there was only a tidal wave about about 12 inches and some disruption of cell phone service. My thoughts still go out to those lost in the disaster and those still at risk, both from the natural cataclysms and the danger of nuclear meltdowns and contamination.

SPEAKING OF WHICH, here are some reflections on the destructive capacity of water.

WHO'S BROKE? E.J. Dionne talks sense about deficits and budgets here.

SOLIDARITY. Depending on whom you talk to, several hundred to over 1,000 people rallied at the WV State Capitol this weekend in solidarity with workers in Wisconsin. Here is coverage from the Gazette and WV Metro News. Late last week, the WV House of Delegates passed a measure supporting public employees in that state.

SPEAKING OF THE LEGISLATURE, I'd better pass, lest I say things that may come back to bite me someplace. I might, for instance, speculate about whether racism is alive and well in the state senate and it wouldn't be prudent to do that (although some recent happenings there make me go hmmmm).

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Against purity

Frances Perkins, U.S. Secretary of Labor under FDR.

One of the many things El Cabrero likes about Jesus was his general disregard for the purity codes of his day. In the synoptic gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke), he always seems to be making someone mad for transgressing this or that rule of apparent righteousness by hanging out with the wrong people, doing things at the wrong time or not doing things the "right" way.

I've found that purity codes were not limited to first century Palestine but can be found amongst almost any group. They can be particularly prevalent amongst people working for social justice.

It often happens that people will refuse to work with this or that group because they aren't pure enough or will oppose this or that reform because it doesn't go far enough--even though nothing else is on the table. Sometimes, people even oppose a positive measure because it isn't done with the "proper" motivation.

Whatever. This may be my Scotch-Irish talking, but I believe in playing the cards you're dealt, with the understanding that you try to improve your hand as much as possible. I tend to regard moral perfectionism as the unforgivable sin.

This chain of thought was triggered by reading Kirstin Downey's The Woman Behind the New Deal, a biography of Frances Perkins. Perkins served as secretary of labor under Franklin Delano Roosevelt and had an amazing record as an effective reformer way before that.

One of the things that contributed to her success was her ability to deal with people as they were, including corrupt old school Tammany Hall politicians. As Downey put it,

Her ability to accept human foibles, to see both failings and strengths was becoming a core personality trait, bolstering her effectiveness. She found that making deals with imperfect people and focusing on their strengths provided a pathway to actually achieving social change.

As the saying goes, "God is a potter, he works in mud."

HOT AIR. Dean Baker takes on lies about the climate change bill here.

ME TOO. Research suggests that community norms and peer pressure influence how people relate to conservation and environmental efforts.

STRANGE DAYS. The giant retailer Wal-Mart has embraced a mandate for major employers to provide health insurance for workers, a major plank in overall health care reform legislation.

AGUA...the new oil.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Adding on

The human race should have learned by the end of the 20th century that goats are a pain in the tuchis.

As I mentioned in yesterday's post, I've decided to start making a list of Things The Human Race Should Have Figured Out By the End of the Twentieth Century.

A Goat Rope email subscriber sent in the following contribution:

*that violently attacking your enemies to “teach them a lesson” does not make you safer, does not cause them to fold their hands and desist in attacking you, and while it does cause some people to admire you, these are the people you don’t want to turn your back on.

*that giving money and tax breaks to the rich does not lift all boats and increase the size of the pie, and the only thing trickling down smells bad.

Here's my latest item:

*The excessive intermingling of government and religion doesn't generally lead to better government but it does lead to worse religion.

Note: Sorry, this post came out late due to a typo. My bad.

ON THE BRIGHT SIDE of the economic mess, many states are questioning the mania for building more prisons and filling them as rapidly as possible.

SIGN OF THE TIMES. More Americans are skipping needed prescriptions as the economy tanks.

WATER, WATER (NOT) EVERYWHERE. Here are some thoughts on the new oil.

TO EVERYTHING THERE IS A SEASON which is starting about two days earlier as the climate changes.

A GREEN COLLAR ECONOMY is already taking root in some surprising places.

TRICKSY INDONESIAN HOBBITS may not have been human, recent skull research suggests.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: YO NO SE

HOW TO BREAK UP WITH A GODDESS

The god Hermes gives Calypso the bad news. Image courtesy of wikipedia.

The theme at Goat Rope these days is the Odyssey of Homer, but you'll also find links and comments about current events. If you like that kind of thing, please click on earlier posts. The series started Aug. 4.

Odysseus doesn't really enter the story in his own right until Book 5 of the epic and he's in a strange situation. Imagine having everything most people think they want--and still being miserable.

For seven years, Odysseus, having lost all his 600+ men on the way from Troy, has been marooned on the island of the beautiful goddess Calypso. It's sun, sea, sand, sex with a beautiful partner and good food and wine every day. One other thing--she's even willing to give him immortality and freedom from further aging so he can keep doing that forever.

I know lots of people who would kill for a gig like that...

In spite of all that, Odysseus stands at the edge of the sea every day, weeping for his home. Thanks to the intervention of the goddess Athena, Zeus sends the messenger god Hermes to Calypso to tell her she needs to let him go. She doesn't take it very well:

..."Hard hearted
you are, you gods! You unrivaled lords of jealousy--
scandalized when goddesses sleep with mortals...
So now at last you train your spite on me
for keeping a mortal man beside me. The man I saved,
riding astride his keel-board, all alone, when Zeus
with one hurl of a white-hot bolt had crushed
his racing warship down the wine-dark sea...
And I welcomed him warmly, cherished him, even vowed
to make the man immortal, ageless, all his days...
But since there is no way for another god to thwart
the will of storming Zeus and make it come to nothing,
let the man go--if the Almighty insists, commands--
and destroy himself on the barren salt sea!"

But even with Zeus on your side, it's dangerous to hook up with an immortal--and even more dangerous to break up with one. When she tells Odysseus that she's willing to help him leave if he really wants to, he is characteristically cautious, making her swear by the River Styx that she isn't tricking him.

Then he has the delicate task of letting her down easily. One thing you don't want to say to a goddess is "You're OK but I like another woman better"--even if she's your wife. In a masterpiece of tact, he explains

"Ah great goddess,"
worldly Odysseus answered, "don't be angry with me,
please. All that you say is true, how well I know.
Look at my wise Penelope. She falls far short of you,
your beauty, stature. She is mortal after all
and you, you never age or die...
Nevertheless I long--I pine, all my days--
to travel home and see the dawn of my return,
And if a god wreck me yet again on the wine-dark sea,
I can bear that too, with a spirit to endure.
Much have I suffered, labored long and hard by now
in the waves and wars. Add this to the total--
bring the trial on!"

He may have been the inventor of the classic "It's not you, it's me" line. At any rate, she helps him on his way.

More tomorrow.

THE BIG ECONOMIC SQUEEZE is working its way up the income chain.

WATER, WATER (NOT) EVERYWHERE. Here's an item on the links between global water and food problems.

ONE GENDER GAP that is closing is the math gap between boys and girls.

MEDICAID. West Virginia's redesigned version of Medicaid took another hit in a study by Families USA.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

TWO KINDS OF EPICS

The rage of Achilles was the subject of The Iliad, an epic of kleos. Image courtesy of wikipedia.

Aside from links and (occasionally snide) comments about current events, theme here lately is Homer's classic epic poem The Odyssey. If this is your first visit, please click on earlier posts.

The Iliad and the Odyssey, both attributed to the bard Homer, are the only two surviving epics about the Trojan War, a major theme of ancient Greek literature and legend. Most historians think that there really was a war between some Greeks and a city in Asia Minor (now Turkey) sometime around 1250 BC, although Homer's epics probably date from much later, probably the 8th century BC.

For that matter, nobody knows who Homer really was or whether the epics should be seen as the collective creation of generations of bards rather than a single individual, although many people incline to the latter view. One semi-serious joke says that the Iliad and Odyssey weren't written by Homer but by someone else with the same name.

Whatever can be said of all that, the Iliad and the Odyssey are two very different kinds of epics. The Iliad, which tells the story of the wrath of Achilles in the last year or so of the war, has been called an epic of kleos or the attempt to gain glory through valor in combat. The Odyssey is an epic of nostos or homecoming.

A word about both:

Kleos is often translated as glory, but it means more than that. Homer's characters had a pessimistic view of life after death. People in the underworld were shades of their former selves--jibbering bats, as one passage puts it. The only meaningful kind of immortality was to live and die in such a way as to be remembered in song and story after one's death. That was kleos.

Achilles in the Iliad is the perfect example of a hero motivated by kleos. He is given a choice between a long and peaceful but unremembered life or early death but lasting glory as a warrior. He chose the latter (although his ghost in the Odyssey regrets that decision).

Nostos (sorry for my horrible efforts at Greek) means homecoming, as in how a veteran of the Trojan War tries with or without success to go home and reintegrate into a peaceful community. It's about going from a state of war to a state of peace--if you're lucky. (Methinks it's also related to the word nostalgia.)

One of the challenges Odysseus faces in his homecoming is leaving kleos and the overwhelming desire for it behind.

But as many veterans and others have found, sometimes surviving war or other ordeals is sometimes less difficult than the homecoming. Many never quite make it home, whether home is considered literally or metaphorically. More on that tomorrow.

BOTTLE BATTLE. The movement against the environmental impact of and waste created by plastic water bottles is growing.

GOODBYE TO ALL THAT. A former white supremacist who broke with his past spoke in Charleston last night.

THE NOSE KNOWS all kinds of things. It helps you feel them too.

AW, HELL! Fewer Americans believe in it.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED