Classical ways of handling classes

Regular readers of this blog know that El Cabrero is a total Greco-Roman classics geek. Homer, Hesiod, Aeschylus, Virgil, Plutarch, name it. Bring it.

When I first started reading about Greek  and Roman history, I was struck by how much of it was shaped by class conflict and how they found different ways of working it out, at least for a while. I remember thinking "wow, the history of all hitherto existing society REALLY is the history of class struggles, at least a good part of the time" to paraphrase a certain out of vogue political economist whose name escapes me at the moment.

Anyhow, from the NY Times, here's an interesting look at classical approaches to class conflicts by way of Athenian democracy, the Roman republic and the politics of Aristotle.

One thing has been clear to me for a long time: the doom of the Roman republic came when they lost the ability or will to work out class compromises. Good thing that would never happen here, huh?

Late Expectations

It has long been observed that youth is wasted on the young. Sometimes I wonder whether the reading of classics is too. When I was in school, I read some that eventually became favorites but seemed boring at the time. It wasn't till I re-read The Scarlet Letter as an adult that I realized how hilarious Hawthorne's opening chapter on working in the customhouse was.

Dickens' Great Expectations is another example of one I didn't fully appreciate until I revisited it as a grown up. Jack Murnighan, author of Beowulf at the Beach: What to Love and What to Skip in Literature's 50 Greatest Hits, hit the nail on the head:

The fact that everybody doesn't already realize that Great Expectations is one of the most delightful books of all time absolutely befuddles me--and is a testament to how badly we mishandle literary education. What should be a cherished favorite in everyone's library is too often squandered by being assigned to people who can't go alone to R-rated movies.

I'm not saying kids shouldn't read classics. But maybe they should contain a warning label saying something like "The contents of this book will seem way cooler in 15 years or so."

A PARTIAL WIN? WV Gov. Early Ray Tomblin partially restored funding for domestic violence legal services and early childhood programs. This is one of the top issues of the Our Children Our Future child poverty campaigns, although folks are trying to out what this really means.

SOMETHING ELSE TO DENY. That would be the latest climate change news.

URGENT LONG SNOUTED DINOSAUR UPDATE here.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Scour the anchor

Image courtesy of wikipedia.

Perhaps the Gentle Reader has noticed that people who are actively engaged in doing productive things tend to be less quarrelsome that those who aren't.

El Cabrero came across a similar sentiment in Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography. When Franklin was working with a group of men on defensive preparations during the war between England and France in the 1750s, he noticed

...that, when men are employed, they are best content'd; for on the days they worked they were good-natur'd and cheerful, and, with the consciousness of having done a good day's work, spent the evening jollily; but on our idle days they were mutinous and quarrelsome, finding fault with the pork, the bread, etc., and in continual ill-humour, which put me in mind of a sea-captain, whose rule it was to keep his men constantly at work; and, when his mate once told him that they had done every thing, and there was nothing further to employ them about, "Oh," says he, "make them scour the anchor."

GETTING IT RIGHT. Can we avoid the Mother of All Depressions? Can we make instead the Second Cousin of All Recessions? Only if we do just about everything right.

LABOR GOES GREEN. Here's a post from the AFLCIO blog on green jobs and good jobs.

ON THE SUBJECT OF READING CLASSICS, here's a cute item.

SPEAKING OF A CLASSIC, here's Nobel winning economist Amartya Sen's take on Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations and Theory of Moral Sentiments.

DARWIN AND LINCOLN, not necessarily in that order, are the subjects of David Gopnik's Angels and Ages. Here's an interview with the author.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

The forgotten man

Hades, god of the dead, and pet.

The Goat Rope Odysseus odyssey continues. You'll also find links and comments about current events.

One of the tough things about the life of a soldier--and lots of other people too--is that they don't often get to pick who their bosses are. They could be good or they could be awful and often there's not a whole lot that can be done about it. It's luck of the draw.

No doubt the Gentle Reader has already figured that out...

Sadly for his men, the hero of the Odyssey is a terrible leader. In the Iliad, he fought well enough and was a good staff officer for Agamemnon and Menelaus and was capable of acting independently in raids and intelligence missions. But as a leader responsible for the well-being of the soldiers under him, he's a disaster.

If you've been following this series or are familiar with the story, he's been losing men by the score--since the Trojan War was over. Some died in a botched pirate raid, some were eaten by the cyclops, and hundreds died at the hands of the Laestrygonians, who were man-eating giants. He's down to one ship from an original twelve and the ship that's left is not at its full roster. One would think he'd try to do a little better at keeping up with the few who are left.

But when he makes his visit to the land of the dead and offers the appropriate sacrifices, he is surprised to find that the first ghost that speaks to him is someone he thought was alive. It is Elpenor who was just with him on Circe's island.

His death was about as unheroic as they come. He had been sleeping on the roof of the house and fell off, breaking his neck.

OK, so we can't blame Odysseus for that one, but after losing so many men you'd think he could at least be bothered to freakin' count the ones he has left before taking off.

In the Homeric world, the afterlife was a pretty bad place but it was even worse for those who were unburied. The ghost begs Odysseus to do what's right for once:

...my lord, remember me, I beg you! Don't sail off
and desert me, left behind unwept, unburied, don't,
or my curse may draw god's fury on your head.
No, burn me in full armor, all my harness,
heap my mound by the churning gray surf--
a man whose luck ran out--
so even men will come to learn my story.
Perform my rites, and plant on my tomb that oar
I swung with mates when I rowed among the living.

That's one promise Odysseus will keep, but many more of his men died worse deaths and never received their rites.

So this one goes out in memory of all the forgotten people who have suffered in war and peace from the neglect or incompetence of their leaders.

THE CULT OF THE MARKET GOD is up for some criticism here.

ON A SIMILAR NOTE, here economist Dean Baker on the Wall Street meltdown.

THE FOG OF WAR... The war on drugs in this instance. Here are some interesting numbers on drug related arrests.

RATIONAL VOTERS.This item from Newsweek asks where they are.

MATH IN THE BELLY. This NY Times article looks at the latest research on human mathematical abilities. A lot of it is intuitive.

URGENT ANT UPDATE here.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Hades!

Persephone and Hades in the underworld, courtesy of wikipedia.

If this is your first visit to Goat Rope, the current theme is the Odyssey of Homer and what it has to say to us today. There are also links and comments about current events. If you like this kind of thing, please click on earlier posts. Right now we're about to visit the land of the dead.

According to Greek myths, Zeus divided up dominion over the cosmos with his two divine brothers. He got the sky, Poseidon got the sea, and Hades got the underworld, or land of the dead--not exactly prime real estate.

Hades was also known as Pluto, a word associated with wealth as in plutocracy. That was probably because valuable minerals were buried under the earth and because he was kind of greedy for souls; once you go there, you're probably not getting out. Over time, Hades became the name of the place.

Hades doesn't show up in a whole lot of myths, but the best known one is of his abduction of the beautiful Persephone or Kore (meaning "young girl"), daughter of the earth and grain goddess Demeter. When her daughter was taken, Demeter was so bereaved that she wouldn't allow the crops to grow, thus threatening the whole order of things. Eventually a deal was worked out whereby Persephone divided her time between the underworld (the winter) and Olympus (spring and summer).

There's a whole lot more to the story. One good primary source is the Homeric Hymn to Demeter.

The whole story of Hades, Persephone and Demeter gave rise to one of the earliest and most long-lived mystery cults of antiquity, the Eleusinian Mysteries, which endured for well over 1000 years in the ancient world before being suppressed by imperial Christianity late in the 4th century.

Those initiated were sworn to secrecy about the ritual, an oath that they pretty much kept over all those years. Scholars are still debating the secrets of the cult, but they included a procession, sacrifice, fasting, drinking a special brew, and being shown some sacred symbols. It was believed that being initiated among other things improved one's lot after death.

In general, though, the underworld was a place you didn't particularly want to visit if you could help it, although a few heroes did and got out again. More on them tomorrow.

SPEAKING OF HADES, the US financial system may be going there.

HUNGRY COUNTRY. Here's more from AARP's coverage of hunger in America today.

HUNGRY STATE. This item from yesterday's Charleston WV Gazette-Mail looks not just at the demand for food from charities but its quality.

THEM BELLY FULL BUT WE HUNGRY to quote the immortal Bob Marley. This item looks at CEO pay and other corporate skullduggery.

DINOSAURS. Were they fitter than the competition or just lucky?

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

A DAUNTING JOURNEY

Circe, courtesy of wikipedia.

The theme at Goat Rope these days is the Odyssey of Homer, but you will also find links and comments about current events. If you like this kind of thing, please click on earlier posts.

After many ordeals, Odysseus and his men have it pretty good on the island of Circe. As he put it:

...there we sat at ease,
day in, day out, till a year had run its course,
feasting on sides of meat and drafts of heady wine...
But then, when the year was through and the seasons wheeled by
and the months waned and the long days came round again,
my loyal comrades took me aside and prodded,
'Captain, this is madness!
High time you thought of your own home at last,
if it really is your fate to make it back alive
and reach your well-build house and native land.'

Circe is cool with all that (unlike the other nymph Calypso in a similar situation). She promises to help but warns him that he must undertake yet another journey if he is ever to make it home:

'Royal son of Laertes, Odysseus, old campaigner,
stay no more in my house against your will.
But first another journey calls. You must travel down
to the House of Death and the awesome one, Persephone,
there to consult the ghost of Tiresias, seer of Thebes,
the great blind prophet whose mind remains unshaken.
Even in death--Persephone has given him wisdom,
everlasting vision to him and him alone..
the rest of the dead are empty, flitty shades.'

It will be a dangerous trip, beyond the confines of the know world. It sounds like the dead "lived" underground beyond the Mediterranean somewhere in the Atlantic, which the ancient Greeks considered to be the river Oceanus. Neither he nor his men are glad to hear the news. She gives him final instructions for his task and helps him on his way.

The way you know you've really arrived as a mythological hero, by the way, is to take a trip to the land of the dead. Odysseus will join the company of Orpheus, Heracles, and Theseus. In future years, Aeneas and Dante will make the trip as well.

Come to think of it, I guess we all will, one way or another.

AMERICAN HUNGER. Here's an item from AARP on the growing problem of hunger and food insecurity in the US.

OCCUPATIONS have their problems, as economist Joseph Stiglitz discusses in this op-ed on Iraq and Afghanistan.

THE ROLE OF GOVERNMENT in helping the economy grow is discussed here.

PUT MONEY IN THY PURSE. Financial compatibility may be the key to a good marriage.

RELIGION ON THE BRAIN, literally.

SPEAKING OF WHICH, if you feel like a theological workout, here's an interesting paper on the history of Christian views of warfare.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

OUT OF THE FRYING PAN

A bad day in the harbor of the Laestrygonians. Image courtesy of wikipedia.

The Goat Rope Odyssey jag continues. If you like Greek mythology, please click on earlier posts. You will also find links and comments about current events.

After a series of disasters on their way home from the Trojan War (an ill-fated raid, drugged out Lotus Eaters, a nasty cyclops and a botched chance to make it home), Odysseus and his men finally wind up at what looks like a safe haven in the land of the Laestrygonians.

Between the botched pirate raid and the encounter with the Cyclops, Odysseus has already lost nearly 80 of his more than 600 men. Bad luck is partly to blame, but the actions of Odysseus himself are more of a factor.

It's about to get worse.

While most of the ships take shelter in the quiet harbor, Odysseus keeps his own ship outside and sends in a recon party. They wind up rousing a hornet's next of hungry giants:

Down from the cliffs they flung great rocks a man could hardly hoist
and a ghastly shattering din rose up from all the ships--
men in their death-cries, hulls smashed to splinters--
They speared the crews like fish
and whisked them home to make their grisly meal.

While his entire fleet is being destroyed, Odysseus cuts the cables and escapes:

I pulled the sword from beside my hip and hacked away
at the ropes that moored my blue-browed ship of war
and shouted rapid orders at my shipmates:
'Put your backs in the oars--now row or die!'
In terror of death they ripped the swells--all as one--
and what a joy as we darted out toward open sea,
clear of those beetling cliffs...my ship alone.
But the rest went down en masse. Our squadron sank.

Holy Douglas MacArthur leaving his men in the Philippines at the start of World War II, Batman!

(Personal note: according to family traditon, a distant cousin was in the Bataan Death March; he weighed well under 100 pounds when it was over.)

One really can't help raising questions about Odysseus' style of leadership. If he for some reason sensed the danger of the harbor, why did he let the men under his command go there? Now fewer than 50 remain. It amazing how quickly Odysseus rushes through this story of hundreds of exhausted men dying a miserable death.

Let's think about this. A multitude of ordinary soldiers dying as a result of the bad decisions of the people in charge, who are all too eager to change the subject. Golly, it's a good thing that doesn't happen anymore, huh?

ON A SIMILAR NOTE, the VA reported yesterday that veteran suicides hit an all time high in 2006:

In 2006, the last year for which records are available, figures show there were about 46 suicides per 100,000 male veterans ages 18-29 who use VA services. That compares with a trend of about 20 suicides per 100,000 men of that age who are not veterans, VA records show....

VA records show that 141 veterans who left the military after Sept. 11, 2001, committed suicide between 2002 and 2005. Then in 2006 alone, an additional 113 of the Iraq- and Afghanistan-era veterans killed themselves.

BROTHER, CAN YOU SPARE A DIME? Several states are running out of money for unemployment benefits, even as jobless numbers climb.

MEGACHURCHES have been growing for years, but that may be starting to change.

SPACE CRITTERS! The tiny tardigrade, an eight legged invertebrate sometimes called a water bear, survived space travel without a suit. Check out the picture at the link. They're kinda cute.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

NOBODY HURT ME!

Odysseus and his men blinding the cyclops Polyphemus, courtesy of wikipedia.

The Goat Rope series on the Odyssey of Homer continues. You'll also find links and comments about current events.

Things aren't looking good for Odysseus and his men at this stage of the game. By day, they are locked in the cave of the cyclops Polyphemus while he grazes his goats and sheep. By night, the one-eyed wonder chomps down on Odysseus' men. The good news is that Polyphemus is feeling generous and gave Odysseus a gift: he'll be the last one to get eaten.

I prefer gift certificates...

The classical scholar Peter Meineck has argued that the story of Odysseus in the cave can be seen as an initiation story. He is separated from the ordinary world and put in a situation where he has to undergo an ordeal and learn something to make it out. His eventual emergence from the cave can be seen as a kind of rebirth. That may be true, but Odysseus doesn't seem to gain a whole lot of insight.

At any rate, he's in a situation where mere force and violence won't help much. If he and his men kill the cyclops, they're doomed to die in the cave, which is sealed by a huge stone.

You probably remember this part of the story. Odysseus gets the Big Boy drunk one night with some super-powered wine he just happened to bring. They have a conversation in which he identifies himself as Nobody. After the cyclops passes out from the wine, he and his remaining crew blind the cyclops with a sharpened pole that has been heated in the fire.

I will spare the Gentle Reader the details. Suffice it to say that Odysseus and his men don't just put it part way in for a second. They plunge it in deep and grind it over and over. The physiological details are excruciating.

When Polyphemus screams, other cyclops gather around and ask what is the problem. Polyphemus screams "Nobody hurt me!"--so they go home.

The rest of the story is also well known. Odysseus and his men sneak out the next morning hanging beneath the Cyclops's sheep and hightail it for the ship to make their escape. Everything might have gone OK had not the hero of this story opened his big mouth. Instead of just getting out of Dodge, when he's at a safe distance, Odysseus announces his real name:

...'Cyclops--
if any man on the face of the earth should ask you
who blinded you, shamed you so--say Odysseus,
raider of cities, he gouged out your eye,
Laertes' son who makes his home in Ithaca!'

Bad move! You might as well give him your home address, phone number, Social Security number and credit cards.

The cyclops, son of the god Poseidon, prays thus:

...Hear me,
Poseidon, god of the sea-blue mane who rocks the earth!
If I really am your son and you claim to be my father--
come, grant that Odysseus, raider of cities,
Laertes' son who makes his home in Ithaca,
never reaches home. Or if he's fated to see
his people once again and reach his well-built house
and his own native country, let him come home late
and come a broken man--all shipmates lost,
alone in a stranger's ship--
and let him find a world of pain at home!'

That prayer is granted. By his own lack of self control, Odysseus condemns himself to years of further suffering and his men to certain death.

He has issues...

WHERE'S THE BEEF? The US economy doesn't manufacture much and is short of ideas, says Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz.

EMPLOYEE FREE CHOICE ACT. The EFCA, which would make it easier--and safer--for workers to organize into unions, received support in the Wall Street Journal, of all places.

BIG WIND. A new study shows that hurricanes and typhoons are getting stronger, apparently as a result of climate change.

LIFE IS SHORT and getting shorter for residents in some WV counties, especially women.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

GOING FOR THE GROSS-OUT

Image courtesy of wikipedia.

The theme at Goat Rope lately is the Odyssey of Homer, along with links and comments about current events. We're in the middle of the encounter with the cyclops Polyphemus right now. If you like this kind of thing, please click on earlier posts.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that if one is attempting to make the acquaintance of a possibly cannibalistic one-eyed giant, then breaking into his house uninvited and eating most of his cheese is not the best way to start. For that matter, one would be well-advised not to visit the island of the cyclopes at all unless driven by dire necessity.

As Dylan once sang,

The moral of this story, the moral of this song, is simply that one should never be where one does not belong.

Odysseus, alas, was a little impulse-driven and not given to taking such sage advice. When he and his men are busted in the act, he begs for hospitality:

...we're at your knees,
in hopes of a warm welcome, even a guest-gift,
the sort that hosts give strangers. That's the custom.
Respect the gods, my friend. We're suppliants--at your mercy!
Zeus of the Strangers guards all guests and suppliants:
strangers are sacred--Zeus will avenge their rights!'

Polyphemus is unimpressed and not particularly religious:

'Stranger,' he grumbled back from his brutal heart,
'you must be a fool, stranger, or come from nowhere,
telling me to fear the gods or avoid their wrath?
We Cyclops never blink at Zeus and Zeus's shield
of storm and thunder, or any other blessed god--
we've got more force by far.
I'd never spare you in fear of Zeus's hatred,
you or your comrades here, unless I had the urge...'

And by the way, he doesn't have the urge.

Lurching up, he lunged out with his hands toward my men
and snatching two at once, rapping them on the ground
he knocked them dead like pups--
their brains gushed out all over, soaked the floor-
and ripping them limb from limb to fix his meal
he bolted them down like a mountain-lion, left no scrap
devoured entrails, flesh and bones, marrow and all!

Not only is he a cannibal--he's got bad table manners! At one point, as his culinary adventures continue, he even gets drunk, passes out and vomits up the remains of his supper. Odysseus and his men would like to kill the monster--but they are locked up in his cave by a massive stone so large that

no twenty-two wagons, rugged and four-wheeled
could budget that boulder off the ground...

This could be a setback... More tomorrow.

NO DIRECT CONNECTION TO THE TOPIC AT HAND, but Massey Energy has been ordered by a federal judge to rehire 85 union workers who lost their jobs in 2004 after the company acquired a formerly union mine.

HOMECOMINGS. One theme of the ongoing series on the Odyssey is the difficulty combat veterans face in going home. The health care injured veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan isn't helping.

ALL IN THE MIND...or at least some of it. Here's an interesting item on the connection between mental attitudes and health.

MACHIAVELLI made the Wall Street Journal recently.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

THE CYCLOPS, CONSIDERED AS CHEESEMAKER

The Odyssey series continues, along with links and comments about current events. We're just now at the part where he meets the cyclops.

Speaking of which, sometimes El Cabrero's Spousal Unit reminds me of a cyclops. I'm not saying that she's a one-eyed giant cannibalistic monster, necessarily. Let's just say they have common interests. He's got goats (and sheep) and is a cheese maker.

When Odysseus and his men visit the cyclops Polyphemus cave, he is still out with his herd. It sounds a bit like Goat Rope Farm, only on a much larger scale. As Odysseus puts it,

'So we explored his den, gazing wide-eyed at it all,
the large flack racks loaded with drying cheeses,
the folds crowded with young lambs and kids...
And all his vessels, pails and hammered buckets
he used for milking, where brimming full with whey.'

We get a glimpse of the giant at work:

Back he came from the pasture, late in the day,
herding his flocks home...
Then down he squatted to milk his sheep and bleating goats,
each in order, and put a suckling underneath each dam.
And half of the fresh white mile he curdled quickly,
set it aside in wicker racks to press for cheese,
the other half let stand in pails and buckets,
ready at hand to wash his supper down...

It sounds kinda like home to me...

But I digress. As mentioned earlier, a major theme in Homer's epics is that of xenia, the sacred guest host relationship. Odyseus and his men get off on a bad foot, entering his cave without asking or being invited. They build a fire and started chowing down on the cheese before he even gets home. Didn't these guys ever hear of Miss Manners?

Polyphemus doesn't like surprises:

'Strangers!' he thundered out, 'now who are you?
Where did you sail from, over the running sea-lanes?
Out on a raiding spree or roving the waves like pirates,
sea-wolves raiding at will, who risk their lives
to plunder other men?'

Based on their past behavior, that's pretty much exactly what Odysseus and his men are. It's just about supper time...

More tomorrow.

NOT SO GOOD. A Rutgers University scorecard on the state of American workers found some disturbing--but not surprising--trends.

REDISCOVERING AN OLD FRIEND. AP reports that more Americans are using public libraries in hard economic times. I can't imagine how people could do without them in the best of times. At any given moment, El Cabrero is abusing the borrowing privileges of about four different library systems.

SPEAKING OF WHICH, here is an item on books that changed history.

STILL MORE on CEO pay.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

LOTUS EATERS

Look but don't eat or you may not make it home. Some people think the lotus referred to in the Odyssey was the blue water-lily of the Nile. Image courtesy of wikipedia.

The Goat Rope Odyssey odyssey continues, along with links and comments about current events. If you like Greek mythology and the classics, please click on earlier posts.

While the story has delighted listeners and readers for ages, it also deals with a current issue: the difficulties returning combat veterans face in trying to make the transition from war to civilian life. Lots of things have changed since then, but lots of things haven't.

At this point in the story, Odysseus in narrating his version of his journeys after the Trojan War to an audience of the peace loving Phaeacians, who will help him on his way home. Note: since Odysseus lies just about every time he speaks in this epic, he should be considered a very unreliable narrator.

As yesterday's post related, his first stop on the way home was a gratuitous raid on the Circones that ended badly and indicated that he is still in combat mode and not quite ready for peacetime life.

But that's not the only way to lose one's homecoming. After ten days in the stormy sea, Odysseus and his men arrive at the land of the Lotus Eaters. He sends out a party to scout among the natives, who represented a different kind of threat. The natives

had no notion of killing my companions, not at all,
they simply gave them the lotus to taste instead...
Any crewmen who ate the lotus, the honey-sweet fruit,
lost all desire to send a message back, much less return,
their only wish to linger there with the Lotus-eaters,
grazing on lotus, all memory of the journey home
dissolved forever.

In one of the rare moments in the Odyssey where its hero acts like a good leader, Odysseus forces his men back to the ship:

...I brought them back, back
to the hollow ships, and streaming tears--I forced them,
hauled them under the rowing benches, lashed them fast
and shouted out commands to my other, steady comrades:
'Quick, no time to lose, embark in the racing ships!'--
so none could eat the lotus, forget the voyage home.

It's not clear what kind of drug Homer had in mind here, but metaphorical lotus eating is a live and well today. Many people who have been through stressful and traumatic events--not just combat soldiers--find some equivalent of lotus to eat, smoke or drink.

The problem with lotus eating is that it's so addictive, you don't even have to have gone through an trauma to get hooked. We've got lots of different kinds of lotuses in our society. In fact, lotus eating of the modern pharmaceutical variety is a major cause of death in my state of West Virginia.

Looking back, I'm amazed at how many people I know or grew up fell under the influence, literally. It can cause you to lose you homecoming even if you never went away.

THROUGH THE ROOF. Here's another item on CEO pay.

SIFTING THROUGH THE RUBBLE of Census data, here's a snapshot from the Economic Policy Institute about how working families have lost ground since the 1990s.

ON CREDIT. Consumer outrage about abuses by credit card companies has led to proposals for new regulations.

FROM THE RIDICULOUS TO THE SUBLIME. There is new evidence in support of subliminal learning.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

OLD HABITS ARE HARD TO BREAK

J.G. Trautmann's version of the fall of Troy, courtesy of wikipedia.

Welcome to Goat Rope's ongoing series on the Odyssey of Homer. You'll also find news and links about current events. If you like the classics, click on earlier posts.

As mentioned before, the Odyssey is in part about what it takes for someone who has spent years in warfare--ten in the case of Odysseus--to go home and be fully integrated into peacetime life. Then as now, lots of people never make it home and Odysseus himself is an example of how not to do it.

Imagine for a moment that you have spent that many at a war you didn't particularly want to participate in and it's finally over. Most people would probably picture themselves taking the shortest possible route back home.

Not our boy. When the wind blows his ships to Ismarus, he engages in a gratuitous raid on the Circones, a people who did nothing to provoke the attack. In his own words,

...There I sacked the city,
killed the men, but as for the wives and plunder,
that rich haul we dragged away from the place--
we shared it round so no one, not on my account,
would go deprived of his fair share of the spoils.

To put it mildly, he's stuck in combat mode and clearly not ready for a peaceful homecoming. Not surprisingly, the situation goes south from there. His men get drunk and disorderly:

there was too much wine to swill, too many sheep to slaughter

Soon other Circones rally to support the raided village and drive them off, after Odysseus' men suffer significant casualties.

As Jonathan Shay, author of Odysseus in America, puts it,

...Homer shows us the first way that combat soldiers lose their homecoming, having left the war zone physically--they may simply remain in combat mode, although not necessarily against the original enemy.

Shay knows whereof he speaks, having spent many years working with Vietnam combat veterans traumatized by their experiences. He has found both that the epics of Homer shed light on the experiences of veterans and vice versa. Some of the people he worked with, like Odysseus, have trouble turning off the switch.

While the military sometimes presents itself as a vast vocational school, the skills learned in prolonged combat--such as controlling fear, cunning, skill in using lethal force and weaponry, etc.--are very real and highly specialized--they just sometimes don't transfer well to civilian life.

He quotes the World War I veteran Willard Waller:

Most of the skills that soldiers acquire in their training for war are irrelevant to civilian life...The picture is one of men who struggle very hard to learn certain things and to acquire certain distinctions, and then find that with the end of the war these things completely lose their utility...Digging a fine fox-hole or throwing hand grenades with dexterity, they are entirely valueless...

The boss, who hired and fires him, writes recommendations for him, raises or lowers his pay, and otherwise disposes of his destiny is nothing but a soft civilian. The foreman thinks he is tough...While the veteran was risking his life for his country, the boss and the foremen were having an easy time of it...The veteran cannot help reflecting that a smash of a gun-butt, ore even a well-directed blow at the bridge of the nose...might easily dispose of such a man forever.

Shay gets the last word today:

Homer put first the pirate raid on Ismarus. I take this as a metaphor for all the ways a veteran may lose his homecoming by remaining in combat mode...Everyone knows that war can wreck the body, but repeatedly forget that it can wreck the soul as well. The sacrifice that citizens make when they serve their country's military is not simply the risk of death, dismemberment, disfigurement, and paralysis--as terrible as these realities are. They risk their peace of mind--please hear this familiar phrase, "peace of mind," fresh again in all its richness! They risk losing their capacity to participate in democratic process. They risk losing the sense that human virtues are still possible. These are psychological and moral injuries--war wounds--that are no less of a sacrifice than the sacrifice of the armless, or legless, or sightless veteran. One of my former patients, a combat medic in Vietnam, has said, "Just acknowledge the sacrifice!"

WITH MY MIND ON MY MONEY AND MY MONEY ON MY MIND, I might not play nicely with others. Here's an interesting item by Peter Singer on some recent experiments showing how money affects human interactions. Holy alienation, Batman!

WHAT THE CENSUS DATA DIDN'T SHOW. Here's an item from McClatchy about disturbing economic trends.

SOCIAL ENTREPRENEURS are trying to combin welle doing with doing good.

URGENT GIANT SQUID UPDATE. The largest one ever caught has been described by a scientist as "a giant, gelatinous blob."

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

ENTERTAINING THE CIVILIANS

Athena telling Diomedes to chill out. Image courtesy of wikipedia.

The Goat Rope series on the Odyssey of Homer continues, along with links and comments about current events. If you like this kind of thing, please click on earlier posts.

It is a fact of life that war has for thousands of years been a kind of entertainment, particularly for those not engaged in it at the time. This is also true when Odysseus finally makes it to his next-to-the-last stop on his lengthy journey home from the Trojan War.

He is hosted, pretty graciously, by the prosperous and peaceful Phaeacians. His hosts even offer games in his honor, although not those involving the fighting arts. As his host the ruler Alcinous put it,

We're hardly world-class boxers or wrestlers, I admit,
but we can race like the wind, we're champion sailors too,
and always dear to our hearts, the feast, the lyre and dance
and changes of fresh clothes, our warm baths and beds.

While they're not much for fighting, they love hearing about it. The blind bard Demodocus (see yesterday's post) enthralls his listeners, although his all-too-realistic songs of the Trojan War cause cause the battle-weary Odysseus to hide his face and cry.

As Jonathan Shay, author of Odysseus in America: Combat Trauma and the Trials of Homecoming, put it,

The gulf between Odysseus and his civilian hosts is visible in their drastically different responses to the songs of Demodocus. This bard is the genuine article--the Muse whispers the truth of the war at Troy in his ear when he composes his songs. His songs, narrative poems like the Iliad, reduce Odysseus to tears, which he tries to hide. Afterward he proclaims that Demodocus sings with the truth of someone who was there himself. The Phaeacian civilians love these epic poems of war...--along with the harper's dance music and his bedroom farces...It's all the same to them. It's all entertainment. But for Odysseus, the truth-filled stories of the Trojan War open the gates of grief.

The Phaeacians aren't bad people. They just don't get it. Shay uses an example from the present to make his point:

Picture this scene: A Vietnam combat veteran goes to a family wedding some ten years after his service. (Odysseus is ten years out from Troy.) The band plays a Jimi Hendrix piece that reminds him of a dead friend, blindsiding him with emotion. He tries to conceal his tears, but a rich relative notices and says, "Why aren't you over that Vietnam stuff yet?..."

The song of Demodocus causes Odysseus to reveal himself and he finally begins to tell his own tale of the long way home. About which more tomorrow.

SPEAKING OF HOMER, here's an item on the evolutionary psychology of the Iliad and one on its use of humor.

POVERTY DAY. Yesterday the Census Bureau released information on poverty, income and health coverage for 2000. Here's some commentary by Robert Greenstein of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, along with a link to the Census data and here's an analysis of state data from the WV Center on Budget and Policy.

Short version of the data: poverty didn't change much. There was a small increase in median incomes and a small drop in the number of people without health coverage--BUT, and this is a big but--the numbers don't reflect the effects of the current recession. Also, if 2007 was the peak year of the economic expansion, the health care and poverty numbers are still worse than those of 2000.

AN ECONOMY FOR EVERYBODY? Three out of four Americans think the economy is getting worse. Here are some options for getting there.

MONKEY EMPATHY. Capuchin monkeys enjoy giving to other monkeys. Could it be the monastic influence?

URGENT NEANDERTHAL UPDATE. They might have been smarter than we thought.

MEDICAID. West Virginia's redesigned Medicaid program, called Mountain Health Choices, continues to be controversial. This Gazette article discusses a survey that showed most people in the program don't understand the two-tiered program, which offers a Basic and Enhanced set of benefits. Many people wind up in the basic program, which limits services and prescriptions, by default.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

A BARD AT WORK

Homer and His Guide, by William-Adolphe Bouguereau, courtesy of wikipedia. The guide, by the way, was a goat herder.

The theme at Goat Rope these days is the Odyssey of Homer, along with links and comments about current events. If this is your first visit and you like this kind of thing, please click on earlier posts.

Back in the proverbial day, stories like the Odyssey weren't read, they were heard as the songs of traveling bards, probably performed over several evenings. There was no such thing as Netflix in Argos, after all.

The bards often traveled from place to place and sang for their supper, accompanying themselves with the lyre. Interesting etymological note: the word text as in story and textile as in clothing are related as both involve weaving, in the former case with words. My guess is that a bard's performance was more like a poetry recitation accompanied by plucks on the lyre rather than wailing and strumming.

In the Odyssey, which was originally sung by a bard, there is the character of the bard Demodocus, who sings a song within a song. (Nice try, Shakespeare with the Hamlet/play-within-a-play thing, but Homer got there first.) This gives us a chance to see what a live performance might have been like.

After nearly 10 years at war and another 10 in various jams, Odysseus has finally made it to the land of the Phaeacians, who have promised to take him home to Ithaca. In the meantime, they entertain him lavishly with feasts and games. Demodocus is part of the entertainment. Like the Homer of legend, he is blind. Here's his first appearance:

In came the herald now,
leading along the faithful bard the Muse adored
above all others, true, but her gifts were mixed
with good and evil both: she stripped him of sight
but gave the man the power of stirring, rapturous song.

After a decent meal and a drink of wine, Demodocus begins to sing of the war. He is so good that his songs of the Trojan War bring Odysseus to tears as the painful memories return and help to inspire him to reveal his true identity. (Note: Jonathan Shay suggests that the singer is himself a combat veteran, which is one reason why his song rings so true.)

Homer also gave his audience a hint of how a bard was to be treated. A bit later in the story,

...Odysseus carved a strip of loin,
rich and crisp with fat, from the white-tusked board
that still had much meat left, and called the herald over:
"Here, herald, take this choice cut to Demodocus
so he can eat his fill--with warm regards from a man who knows what suffering is...
From all who walk the earth our bards deserve
esteem and awe, for the Muse herself has taught them
paths of song. She loves the breed of harpers."

Nothing like a little self-promotion. And it's only right that those who sing for their supper should get some decent tips. Come to think of it, maybe bloggers of epic themes should too...

STOP THE PRESSES!!!! Stunning new research has found that most teens pick their noses. If we had only known this sooner...

One of the researchers made this priceless remark:

"Some people poke their nose into other people's business. I made it my business to poke my business into other people's noses."

THROUGH THE ROOF. The Christian Science Monitor takes a look at CEO pay.

SPEAKING OF WHICH, the August 25 print issue of Business Week noted that an average S&P 500 CEO would only have had to work three hours in 2007 to "earn" what a minimum wage full time worker would have earned in a year.

HAPPY UP, Y'ALL. Here's another item on the predominantly Buddhist nation of Bhutan's efforts to increase gross national happiness.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

A WORD ABOUT A WORD

Rubens' painting of "Jupiter and Mercurius in the house of Philemon and Baucis," by way of wikipedia.

Welcome to Goat Rope's ongoing series on the Odyssey of Homer. Each weekday post contains a nugget from that great epic that has delighted people of all ages from ancient times. You'll also find links and comments about current events.

A central theme of both the Iliad and the Odyssey is the that of xenia or hospitality, a sacred obligation in parts of the ancient Mediterranean world. In those days, travel was dangerous and there was an acute shortage of Holiday Inns. It was a custom that a traveler could approach a house--generally but not always one of similar social status to the traveler--and ask for a meal and a place to sleep.

The host had a sacred obligation to wash, feed and shelter the guest and to take care of basic needs before asking any questions. The guest was to respect the host, take what was given and not abuse the privilege or outstay one's welcome. Often, hosts and guests exchanged gifts and retained a special bond.

It was a little risky and scary to take a complete stranger in, just as it was weird to put yourself at the mercy of a stranger if you were the traveler. For this reason, the custom acquired a divine sanction. One of Zeus' main titles was Zeus Xenios, or god of travelers and he was said to punish those who abused hosts or guests.

The ambiguity of the situation can be seen in the differing meanings of the word xenos: host, guest, stranger, alien, friend. You can see a little of this in English with the similarity between the words "host" and "hostility."

Abuse of xenia was the cause of the whole Trojan war. The Trojan prince Paris abducted Menelaus' wife Helen when he was a guest in the latter's home. Since all Greek leaders had sworn to uphold the marriage, the stage was set for war when King Priam of Troy allowed the couple to enter the city.

The obligations of xenia could also prevent people from fighting. At one point in the Iliad, the Greek Diomedes and the Trojan Glaucus decide not to fight when they realized that their fathers had been xenoi or guest-friends. They exchange armor instead (with Diomedes getting the better deal).

The Odyssey is all xenia all the time as Telemachus travels in search of his father and Odysseus bounces from island to island. There are very good examples of xenia in the story, such as the hospitality shown by Nestor and Menelaus to Telemachus and that of the Phaeacians to Odysseus. There are also examples of very bad xenia--like the cyclops who liked to eat his "guests" or the suitors of Penelope who abused their status as guests and devoured the wealth that belonged to the family of Odysseus. At one point, Odysseus, disguised as a beggar is abused by the suitors in his own home.

As in the Bible, sometimes divine beings would come disguised as guests--and woe to those who mistreated them. (For that matter, the story of Lot and Sodom in Genesis is really about the abuse of hospitality, not homosexuality.) The importance of hospitality is echoed in the New Testament epistle Hebrews (13:2), where it is said that

Do not forget to entertain strangers, for by so doing some people have entertained angels without knowing it.

So just remember, if you want to stay on Zeus's good side, don't devour your guests or run away with the significant others of your host.

Is this a useful blog or what?

MY BAD. Those Gentle Readers who subscribe to Goat Rope via email may have gotten a mistaken post Sunday night. El Cabrero hit the wrong button and published an unfinished draft intended for later this week by mistake.

TOWARDS A GREEN ECONOMY. Here's something about what it may look like.

SOCIAL SECURITY may or may not be wearing a bull's eye again soon, but this memo from the Economic Policy Institute counters fear mongering about it.

POVERTY DAY. On Tuesday, the government will release the latest numbers on poverty, incomes and health insurance coverage. Here's a brief from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities on what to look for.

MALE ANIMALS TEND TO BE SHOWOFFS to a far greater extent than females, with various kinds of wild displays. My guess is that you have already noticed this. Recent research in biology may have found a genetic mechanism that opened the way for all that strutting around.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

A DELICATE SITUATION

Frederick Leighton's painting of Nausicaa, princess of the Phaeacians and rescuer of Odysseus, courtesy of wikipedia.

The Goat Rope series on the Odyssey of Homer and what it has to offer today continues. If you like classics, please click on earlier posts. You'll also find news and comments about current events.

Imagine that you're a middle aged man who has been shipwrecked and lost at sea for days and that you've washed up on the shore of a strange place. You look and feel like hell and you have to introduce yourself to a beautiful young girl and gain her help without scaring the daylights out of her.

One other thing: you're totally naked.

That would be a job for someone known for strategy and cunning (Greek metis). Somebody like Odysseus.

After he left Calypso's island, everything goes OK...for a while. But then the grudge-holding sea god Poseidon gets wind that his old enemy is at afloat again and destroys his raft. (In one of his more famous adventures, Odysseus blinded the cyclops Polyphemus, Poseidon's son.) He finally makes it to the island of Scheria more dead than alive. When he returns to consciousness he asks himself

"Man of misery, whose land have I lit on now?
What are they here--violent, savage, lawless?
or friendly to strangers, god-fearing men?..."

Nudged by Athena, the beautiful Nausicaa and her maids are washing clothes near the shore. She is about 14 years old--ripe for marriage by ancient Greek standards. He grabs a tree branch to cover his private parts and approaches the girls. All run but Nausicaa.

This is a dangerous moment for everyone. She is no doubt wary of sexual assault, just as he is wary of provoking the islanders whose help he needs. He comes up with a pretty good trick:

When in doubt, ask a woman if she is a goddess.

Keeping a respectful distance, he says

"Here I am at your mercy, princess--
are you a goddess or a mortal? If one of the gods
who rule the skies up there, you're Artemis to the life,
the daughter of mighty Zeus--I see her now--just look
at your build, your bearing, your lithe flowing grace...
But if you're one of the mortals living here on earth,
three times blest are your father, your queenly mother,
three times over your brothers too. How often their hearts
must warm with joy to see you striding into the dances--
such a bloom of beauty..."

You gotta admit it, he's pretty slick. Comparing her to Artemis was an especially reassuring touch since that powerful goddess was a perpetual virgin whom no mortal man would dare to pursue.

His words did the trick. He gained the help of Nausicaa. She will introduce him to her parents, who will offer excellent hospitality (xenia) and send him home to Ithaca at last.

More to come.

THE SENSIBLE CENTER. A poll by the Drum Major Institute of self-identified middle class Americans finds strong bi-partisan support for universal health care, the Employee Free Choice Act, paid sick days, and more.

DOING WITHOUT HEALTH CARE is a reality for many working families as costs rise.

THE THINGS WE DO FOR LOVE. Here's an amusing item on things women do to make themselves attractive to men. I'm eagerly awaiting the other side of the story.

BLOGGING AND HEALTH. From the Boston Globe, here's an article about how blogging has become part of the treatment for some cancer patients.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

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

THE DRUGGED MARRIAGE

Just one look/that's all it took. In this ancient vase, Menelaus is stopped from killing his unfaithful wife Helen by one look at her beauty. Image courtesy of wikipedia.

The Goat Rope Odyssey series continues. If you like the classics, please click on earlier posts. You'll also find news and comments about current events.

When you're in a bad way, sometimes you feel better if at least you have a plan to try something. When things are bad for Odysseus' son Telemachus--his mother's suitors are devouring his substance and threatening his life while his father is apparently dead--the goddess Athena gives him a boost. She inspires him to take a sea voyage to visit his father's comrades at Troy to seek for news.

He receives great hospitality but not much news from Nestor, king of Pylos. He then proceeds to visit Menelaus, king of Sparta, and his wife Helen, who was a major cause of the whole Trojan War. Menelaus tells of an encounter with the minor sea god Proteus who told him that Odysseus was still alive. The most interesting part of the story, though, is that of the very troubled marriage of Menelaus and Helen, the most beautiful woman in the world.

Back in the proverbial day, all the leading men of Greece courted her and swore to uphold the marriage when Menelaus prevailed. But when the Trojan prince Paris visited Sparta, he abducted Helen, not altogether unwillingly, and took her to Troy. This wasn't just bad manners--it was sacrilege, a terrible violation of xenia, the sacred guest/host relationship. According to the myth, this was what led the Greeks to invade Troy and fight there for 10 long years.

Paris is killed towards the end of the war. When the city is finally taken, Menelaus nearly kills Helen but is overwhelmed by her beauty and brings her back to Sparta where they try to get back to normal.

Now every marriage has issues, but this one is way over the top. There's not just infidelity, there's also a war that brought disaster on thousands of people on both sides. How do they deal with all those bad memories and recriminations? The answer is...drugs.

Then Zeus's daughter Helen thought of something else.
Into the mixing-bowl from which they drank their wine
she slipped a drug, heart's-ease, dissolving anger,
magic to make us all forget our pains...
No one who drank it deeply, mulled in wine,
could let a tear roll down his cheeks that day,
not even if his mother should die, his father die,
not even if right before his eyes some enemy brought down
a brother or darling son with a sharp bronze blade...

(There have been times when El Cabrero wouldn't have refused a swig of that mix.)

Then as now, people who have gone through war and other traumas often seek to dull the pain through self medication. It's probably not the best way of dealing with such things. In fact, as Jonathan Shay points out in his discussion of the Odyssey, it often causes people to miss or lose their homecoming.

But with a couple like that, what are you going to do?

DOES ANYBODY ELSE SEE A TINY BIT OF IRONY IN THIS STATEMENT by Condoleezza Rice about how invading another country can make a bad impression?

The behavior of Russia in this most recent crisis is isolating Russia from the principles of cooperation among nations of the communities of states when you start invading small neighbors, bombing civilian infrastructure, going into villages and wreaked havoc and wanton destruction of this infrastructure [emphasis added] .

HUNGRY PLANET, AGAIN. Here's another take on the global food crisis.

NOT A GOOD SIGN of the health of the economy, here's the latest on a key economic indicator.

A LITTLE GOOD NEWS about environmental innovations can be found here.

THE MIRROR STAGE. Magpies can recognize themselves in a mirror. Discuss.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

THE HOMEFRONT

The Vatican Penelope, courtesy of wikipedia.

The Odyssey of Homer is about something lots of people are thinking about and living with today: what does it take for someone who has been away at war to make the transition to "peaceful" civilian life.

This has always been an issue after major wars, but it rose in public awareness after Vietnam and is once again front and center. Psychiatrist Jonathan Shay, a student of classics who works with traumatized Vietnam veterans, has written two illuminating books on the subject: Achilles in Vietnam and Odysseus in America. Shay sees in the story of Odysseus many parallels with the trials of returning veterans--in fact, the hero of the epic may be seen as an example of how not to do it.

(An alternate reading would suggest that Odysseus needed to go through all these things in order to be re-integrated into society.)

While the parts of the story that stick most in popular imagination are the monsters and adventures encountered on the way home, the epic is also about the cost of war on the home front, about parents, spouses and children left behind and about the corrosive effect of war on social norms and customs. His son Telemachus grows up fatherless in a patriarchal society and is menaced by his mother's insolent suitors who devour his household resources and threaten his life.

Odysseus' faithful wife Penelope is under enormous pressure to remarry as Telemachus' adulthood nears. Her husband is presumed long dead and the society in which she lived had no place for independent unmarried women who were not elderly or caring for children.

Penelope's young suitors are lawless and arrogant in pressuring her to wed and violating all the laws of hospitality. Perhaps one reason why they don't know how to act is because so many older and presumably wiser men have long since gone to Troy, never to return.

(To inject a little modern reality here, this is actually something documented in population research. As economist Jeffrey Sachs wrote in Common Wealth: Economics for A Crowded Planet, "a youth bulge significantly raises the likelihood of civil conflict, presumably by raising the ratio of those who would engage in violence relative to those who would mediate disputes."

The older folks have their sorrows too. Odysseus' mother Anticleia died of grief over her son's failure to return. His father Laertes has retired to a rural farm where he grieves and labors in solitude. The war has also changed the lives of servants who remain behind.

Even when loved ones finally are reunited in the story, they usually weep uncontrollably at first, mourning lost time that can never be regained.

Monsters and all, the Odyssey is a pretty realistic tale.

SLOW FOOD. Here's an item on sustainable eating.

CHEATING IN SCHOOL. Of the many sins of which El Cabrero may be guilty, cheating in school isn't one of them, although I was more than willing to slack. Nowadays it seems to be much more common. A new study looks at students who don't cheat.

DOG DAYS. Here are some reflections on summer's end.

WHICH CAME FIRST for humans--words or numbers?

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

A BEGINNING, MIDDLE AND END. SORT OF

The Goat Rope Odyssey cruise continues, along with the usual links and comments about current events. If you like mythology, click on earlier posts.

Aristotle said that every story should have a beginning, a middle and an end. That's true of Homer's Odyssey, although it's not told in a chronological way. It begins near the end, shortly before Odysseus' long-delayed homecoming after 10 years of fighting at Troy and 10 more years of wandering and getting stuck.

Here's a skeletal outline for now:

The goddess Athena asks her father Zeus to give Odysseus a break and help him go home. He's been stuck on the island of the goddess Calypso for seven years. It doesn't sound like a bad gig: sun, sand, surf, and sex with a goddess (most of whom were considered to be hot), yet he cries every day out of homesickness. Zeus agrees to cut him some slack.

The story then cuts to the Old Home Place at Ithaca. Things are bad. Swarms of suitors are swarming around his wife, the faithful Penelope. Most people think her husband is dead and she is under great pressure to marry. The suitors are insolent, bullying his son Telemachus and eating the family out of house and home.

Athena then goes to Ithaca to give Telemachus a boost and suggest a plan of action that gives him something positive to do and gets him out of harm's way for a while. He visits the homes Odysseus's' old comrades Menelaus and Nestor seeking news of his father and gaining a good repute.

We don't get to the main character until book 5, when the god Hermes (see last week) visits the island of Calypso and tells her she needs to let him go and help him on his way. Odysseus sails off with her help but is shipwrecked by the sea god Poseidon, who holds a grudge for Odysseus' blinding of his son Polyphemus the cyclops.

Eventually he makes it to the land of the Phaeacians, where he receives hospitality and eventually reveals himself. It's there that we hear from the man himself the well known stories of the cyclops, Circe, Scylla and Charybdis and the other disasters that befell him on his way home.

(There's a lot of irony in this story. One example is the fact that Odysseus is a totally unreliable narrator who has a great deal of trouble telling the truth. Was he or wasn't he?)

The Phaeacians deliver him safely to Ithaca where after many ruses he and Telemachus open a major can of smackdown on the suitors and he is reunited with Penelope. The carnage is severe but the gods again intervene to make peace.

Next time: greatest hits.

KNOW NOTHINGS. Has ignorance become a badge of honor?

ORWELL AND STRAUSS. A philosophy of fear underlies much of current politics.

LEAVING WAR TO THE PRIVATE SECTOR. Here's a good editorial from the Gazette.

TOUGH QUESTIONS ABOUT QUESTIONINGS. Psychologists are debating whether assisting in military interrogations is a violation of professional ethis.

DOING GOOD AND DOING WELL. Socially responsible investment funds are catching on.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED