Monthly Archives: January 2013

GeekWorld, Humanities, Latin, Myth and Story, Translating Metamorphoses

Moving Day

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Winter                                                              Cold Moon

A lot of time today going back over translation of Jason and Medea, trying to fix broken phrases, suss out mysteries hidden behind Ovid’s syntax and word choices.  I’m beginning to get a taste now of what the task of translation entails.  I’ve spent three years now levering myself up over the transom; I’m in the room; but, I can’t sit down to work yet.  Too much still to know.  But, I can see myself working in that room in the foreseeable future.

(The Ancient Roman Temple of Bacchus, commissioned by Roman Emperor Antoninus Pius and designed by an unknown architect c. 150 AD)

At the same time I had set today as moving day for all internet related tasks, all tasks requiring good security, all task but writing, really, and even there, the blog moved over to this new(ish) computer.  I’ve had this one for six months or so, but the work required to transfer all those functions over here is, at least for my tech level, significant.

Anyhow, I’ve got most of it done now, all the necessary stuff and I’m writing this entry on the new machine.  In the way of computers this work (the writing) is much the same.  It’s the guts that differ.  A terabyte of storage.  8 gigs of ram.  A bigger screen.  A fresh hard-disk and room to swap another one in when I need it.

[YOUR ALUMINUM FUTURE]

I now have a land of forgotten computers, brave electronic servants whose capacity got left behind by changing times.  This computer, though, I think will last a while.  The PC is fast becoming a less and less expensive door-stop though I still prefer them to laptops.  That’s  in part because I work at home; but it’s also because I love the ergonomic keyboard and  greater capacity for less bucks.

I did encounter one head scratcher in the transfers I did today.  I moved 25 gigs of images onto this machine.  I had them organized in folders.  Folders I understood.  For some reason, undoubtedly a reason of my own making, each image got its own folder on this new machine, meaning I have to sort through and reorganize literally thousands of images.

It’s not all bad. I’ve wanted to cull and reorganize my images for awhile, but I hadn’t decided on now.

Meanwhile Kate’s come down with a cold.  I convinced her to go to bed and try rest and fluids.  These are not necessarily obvious moves to the physicians among us.

Politics, US History

The Second Inaugural Address

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Winter                                                                      Cold Moon

Read the text of Obama’s second inaugural address today.  I’m a words guy, that should be clear by now for those who read this.  Words matter.  Yes, actions matter, too, but I’ve never been a fan of what I consider the false dichotomy between thought and action.  Acting and thinking, words and deeds, run together in life, preceding the other, and effecting the other in turn.

This is an important speech and it seems, from what I’ve read, that Republicans caught its importance more than the Democrats.  This is an unabashed hymn to the America I love.  The one where the founding documents inspire us to move towards more inclusion, a broader and deeper sweep of justice and to embrace the collective as well as the individual.

Like words and deeds, the individual and the collective are not in opposition, rather they are in dynamic tension.  When the creative work of the people is done, it helps the collective, but it does that by helping individuals.  Freedom is not a zero sum game.  As I gain more and more freedom, you don’t lose yours, your freedom grows along with mine.  We both test the limits of our individual destinies and in so doing increase the available free space for all.  Individual action breeds collective health and collective health breeds individual freedom.

An inaugural address is not policy, or executive order or legislation or federal rule, but neither was the Declaration of Independence.  It was a call to a fractured people, join together and together we will become more than a colony.  This second inaugural underscores the common action that has traditionally made us strong and renews the call of the Declaration.  I’m proud to have a President who speaks these words.

About time.

GeekWorld

Gettin’ Things Done

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Winter                                                                                 Cold Moon

I’ve discovered a neat tool that has helped me get stuff done.  Well, three of them.  In particular.

The first one is the Weekly Planner.  I guess it’s based on Stephen Covey’s work, though I haven’t read the Seven Habits.  What it does is very simple.  It gives you a column for creating color coded roles in your life.  Mine are:  Self, Husband, Father, Grandfather, Family Guy (Siblings and Cousins), Scholar, Writer, Art Historian/Critic, Blogger, Gardener/Beekeeper/Woodsman, IT Guy and the role name I’m least happy with:  Pagan Thinker.  Just not sure about that one.

Next it asks you what is the most important thing you can do this week in that role.  There is a one-week calendar next to the list of roles and you slide the goal over to the day and it goes with the color of the role attached.  Then, you click on it when you’re done.

Here’s why it’s helped me.  It makes me consider, at the beginning of a week, what are the important matters I need to be sure to work on.  I don’t clutter this calendar up with other matters unless I have an appointment or time with a friend.  Then, I enter them here only to ensure I leave enough time for what’s really important.

It’s simple and effective.  If you’re into this kind of thing, I imagine you’ll find it useful.

The second tool is Evernote.  Again, a simple idea, but so useful.  Weekly Planner is free at the level I’m using it which is fine for me. It’s free, too. Evernote I pay $100 a year to use at an advanced level.  Why?  Because it’s the equivalent of a filing cabinet for the web.  See an article that would help writing my Tailte novels?  Click on the Evernote icon and it asks where to save it.  Press save article or page or url and it puts the article under Tailte Mythos.  Researching a trip or already made reservations online?  They go under travel.  You can create any number of notebooks, headed however you want.  Tres useful.

The third is Instapaper.  If you’re like me, you go through the web, see an article and think, gee, I’d like to read that but not right now.  It may not be something you want to save.  I click on the read later icon installed on my bookmarks bars and the article is stored in my account.  Which is free, by the way.  Then, when I have time, I click on my account, go to stored articles or webpages, read them, and often delete them.

Cooking, Family

Well Meat, Good Sir

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Winter                                                                                Cold Moon

Back from the Butcher and Boar.  Quite the testosterone joint for a place with no televisions tuned to the game.  In fact, no televisions.  This place is about meat.  Fish, fowl and game.  I had wild boar sausage, a side of fried green tomatoes and spicy greens.  Kate and I shared a sampler of their pickled meats.

To my surprise I liked the Braunschweiger.  It came in a small glass terrine, a paste, and made me think I’d never had good Braunschweiger before.

The place, though, was noisy.  In extremis.  Even for those without impaired hearing it would have been difficult to hold a normal conversation.

The interior is dark wood, lots of mirrors, granite topped tables and sturdy forks, spoons and especially the knives.

The bar, a long one, had almost 100% business type guys sitting ordering from the gray haired bar tender who moved methodically and quietly from patron to patron.  The wait staff is young, good looking men and women in black Butcher and Boar t-shirts.

We decided in the end that it was a nice place to visit, once.  Probably not a return place for us older generation carnivores.

Latin, Myth and Story, Translating Metamorphoses

Fafnir and Medea

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Winter                                                                              Cold Moon

Read the lay of Fafnir today.  In this lay Sigurd kills Fafnir, a dwarf transformed into a dragon by the Aegis-helm (helmet of Aegir–terror), then seizes “the cursed gold ofAndvari‘s as well as the ring, Andvaranaut.”  Loki seized them to ransom Odin and Hoenir.  When he did he was told the items “…would bring about the death of whoever possessed them.”  Wikipedia

(Fáfnir guards the gold hoard in this illustration by Arthur Rackham to Richard Wagner‘s Siegfried.)

This is core material both for Wagner’s Ring Cycle and for Tolkien.

Later I spent more time with Jason and Medea, in particular Medea right now, who is plotting, in a long soliloquy, to marry Jason, brush off her father the King and escape backwards Colchis for the wonders of Greece.  She’s trouble right from the very start.

Tonight Kate and I are headed to the Butcher and Boar for a carnivore’s night out.

Commentary on Religion, Faith and Spirituality, Humanities, Latin, Myth and Story, Poetry, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Translating Metamorphoses, Writing

A Life Long Passion

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Winter                                                            Cold Moon

“A mythology is the comment of one particular age or civilization on the mysteries of human existence and the human mind…”                                                                                                                                            H.R. Ellis Davidson, Gods and Myths of Northern Europe

A life-long fascination with mythology and its companion fields, ancient religions and folklore, can be explained by this quote.  We have multiple ways of understanding the world, of asking and answering big questions.  In our day science is regnant, queen of the epistemological universe, but it is not enough.  Not now and not ever.

(Charles Le Brun, Fall of the Rebel Angels, 1685)

Science cannot answer a why question.  It can only answer how.  Neither can science answer an ethical question.  It can only speak to the effects of a course of action over another in the physical world.  This is not a criticism of science, rather an acknowledgment of its limits.

Mythologies (usually ancient religions), ancient religions, legends and folklore are our attempts to answer the why questions.  They also express our best thinking on the ethical questions, especially folklore, fairy tales in particular.

Where did we come from and why?  “1 In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, 2 the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters. 3 Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light. 4 And God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness. 5 God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day.”  NRSV

(edward_burne-jones-the_last_sleep_of_arthur)

Want to live a good life?  Live like Baldr or Jesus or Lao Tze or Arthur.

How can we tell a just society from an unjust one?  Look at the 8th Century Jewish prophets.  Look at Confucius. (not a religion, yes, but functions like one)  Look at the Icelandic Sagas.  Different answers in each one.

I fell in love with these complex, contradictory wonderful narratives when I was 9 years old, maybe a bit younger.  Aunt Barbara gave me a copy of Bullfinches’ Mythology.  I loved Superman and Batman and Marvel Comics.  I was an attentive student in Sunday School and later in seminary.  Over time I’ve come to recognize this fascination as a ruling passion in my life, one that guides life choices with power in my inner world.

It will not, I imagine, fade.  It means writing fantasy is a work of great joy and a hell of a lot of fun.

Writing

I Let It In

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Winter                                                                                          Cold Moon

Let me tell you how it goes with me sometimes.  I’ll see a note like Tudor Keg Party at the MIA.  I think then not of art nor beer, nor even Tudor’s, but rather of boars.  Boars and the woods before the axe.  The woods before maps.  Of men hunting boars with bows and arrows, walking through the woods, the unmappable and unmapped woods.  A boar rushing, cruel curved tusks already sharpened on rocks, thighs burning from the intensity of his rage.  A human in my place.  My woods.

(source)

Blood, then.  And gore.  A downed hunter, the hunter hunted.  Prey become predator.  The world dangerous.

That’s how it goes with me sometimes.

Family, Travel

Global Siblings

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Winter                                                                                    Cold Moon

Brother Mark went on a tour of Saudi Arabia over break.  He saw a bit of Medina from a bus, haram to  kafirs, and much of a part of Saudi Arabia where the Nabataeans lived.  The Nabataeans built Petra, the great rock city, now in Jordan.

(a view in Jordanian Petra)

It widens the personal when siblings live such far ranged lives as Mark’s in Riyadh and Mary’s in Singapore.  It means events in certain corners of the world, say Syria or Lebanon, have immediate interest for me aside from their geopolitical consequences.  Singapore shows up in the news a lot, too, most recently as an unhappy place.

Skype means we can see each other regularly and speak to each other at the same moment, if not the same time.  Video phones!  The future!  Their lives have differences from mine that I cannot imagine, most prominently work environments where the expectations of other cultures are not only evident, but in charge.

Personal life, too, is much different, of course.  Take Mary’s story on the flowering palm at the Singapore Botanical Garden.  Or her dancing in street festivals with colleagues.  Or our visiting the fire-walking at a Hindu temple when I visited her.  Mark works as a Caucasian minority in a nation virtually closed to tourists, but thronging with foreign workers, among them his fellow teachers at Riyadh University.

He told a story in a recent e-mail:   “I got let out at these nice ruins by this older guy who let me in. He had driven me out to the ruins, they were a ways out from the gate. I was dumped out by him. I had a fairly good time inspecting these really cool ruins. Then, the same guy comes up with two cops in a jeep. One Arab interprets, I am free to go. I walked to another site, then walked out, as I agreed.  I was walking out when the same old guy who let me in appears with some other dude, probably a cop. He was in plain clothes. I have tea and coffee with the cops. Then, the plain-clothes cop gives me a lift to a hotel. Closely following were the same two cops from the ruins in a police jeep.”

Not to mention of course that we have snow and zero temps.  Mark’s in the desert and Mary’s in the tropics.

Faith and Spirituality, Family, Great Wheel, Poetry, Writing

First First

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Winter                                                                          Cold Moon

Kate premiered as both lyricist/poet and sung song writer.  She wrote the following to the words of the passover song, Dayenu.  We sang it today during the service at Groveland.

 

Refrain:            Di-di-urnal              di-di-urnal

di-di-urnal,  di-di-urnal,  di-urnal,  di-urnal:[[  di-urnal, time has come

 

 

Circles come and circles go round

Life eternal, everlasting

Everlasting, life eternal

Diurnal  (refrain)

Season come and seasons go round

Spring and summer, fall and winter

Winter, autumn, summer and spring.

Diurnal

Spring has come and life awakens

Time to get the garden ready

The ground is turned, seeds are planted

Diurnal

Summer comes and brings warm weather

Flowers bloom and insects hover

The crops grow big and bear their fruit.

Diurnal

Autumn comes and brings the ripening

Apples are crisp, berries are sweet

Harvest starts with food preserving.

Diurnal

Winter comes, the earth goes to sleep

Time for reflecting, memories sweet

The cycle ends, new one begins.

Diurnal

Circles come and circles go round

Life eternal, everlasting

Everlasting, life eternal

Diurnal

Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant.

Reimagining Faith

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Winter                                                                                   Cold Moon

Among several reasons I had for moving north, away from my southern roots, was to avoid sleety, cold rain in January.  As far as I’m concerned, it’s the one weather form that has no redeeming qualities.  It’s chill, wet and without atmosphere.  Drear.

(seasonal round of the Umatilla nation, Oregon)

That’s what we drove home in this afternoon from the Red Stag.We had brunch there after my presentation at Groveland.

Feels like the Reimagining project may finally be gaining some traction.  Folks liked the seasonal round and found beginning one illuminating.  At the end I was asked if I did classes on my faith journey.  No, I said, but then I haven’t been asked.

Made me consider what a class structure would look like for the reimagining work.  I’m not anywhere on it right now, but it’s something to put in the reimagining bucket.

Now the sleet has turned to heavy snow, wet and clingy.  Much better.  Temperature went down a bit.