Summary of Classical Literature with Dr. Sexson

It has been an enlightening semester. Not at all unlike the other two classes that I had the pleasure of taking with Dr. Sexson, Oral Tradition and American Lit. We explored the everything from American Gothic to sparagmos and back to Hades and Heaven. My favorite part of the class would be a mixture of the transformations in Ovid's Metamorphosis and the Golden Ass. I know that the past possesses the present and that there is a one in three chance of everything. Thanks to this class even reading the newspaper has become a small adventure, looking for all of the connections and references to mythology and the past.

Today's Presentations

The two presentations today were fantastic as all of them have been. Who knew that there was so much talent sitting in our class room. It is still so interesting how each and everyone perceives the material that we have covered over the semester and applies it to situations in their own lives. Again, the separate poem writing in group 2 proved that while we have all read the same material throughout the semester, we will take our own understanding of it away with us.

Gay marriages:

In the Sunday, April 5, 2009 edition of the Bozeman Chronicle there was an article that reminded me of Deborah's presentation on misogeny. The state of Iowa plans to begin gay marriages on the 24th of this month. While this article would have been of little to no interest to before, I stopped and thought to myself: oh that's just great!It's hard enough to find dates in this wierd dy and age, now the men can just marry one another and never have to deal with us women. According to Deborah's presentation we'll probably end up discarded as the ugly "other" without...

Quick Chronicle note:

March 22, 2009: This article caught my eye while surfing through the paper, the title; "Two States consider ban on bestiality" for staters, I think it should "beastiality". Then why are they only "considering" it? I think it goes without saying that unless you're Zues in the form of a beautiful swan, you should not mix species!

Favorite passage in Cupid and Psyche:

There was so much to love about the Cupid and Psyche story in the "The Golden Ass". The lines that touched me most were started on page 117. The paragraph begins with:"Psyche was terrified". The breathtaking part begins with,Cupid's divine beauty: his golden hair, washed in nectar and still scented with it, thick curls straying over white neck and flushed cheeks...Then, the best part, his wings! "At his shoulders grew soft wings of the purest white, and though they were at rest, the tender down fringing the feathers quivered naughtily all the time." Naughtliy, what a fantastic word!

Mentor:

The American Heritage Dictionary term for mentor: A wise and trusted counselor or teacher. A tutor in Homer's "Odyssey". At the end of the "Odyssey" the term mentor is mentioned in the last sentence; "Then Athena assumed the form and voice of mentor, and presently made a covenant of peace between the two contending parties"

Catharsis:

It works. After blogging about the tragic suicide of my friend, Gail, last night I do feel less burdened by grief. I still don't understand the act but I feel better.

The past obliterating the present and the future

If you were casually flipping through the pages of the Bozeman Chronicle on Sunday April 12, 2009, you may have skimmed over the obituary for Gail Keiter. She was a friend of mine. On the Wednesday before she must have decided that she could take no more of the present. I can only imagine that she let the residue from the past come creeping over the walls of the present. Gail was a tragic story of how the past can not only possess but consume the present as well as any hope for the future if you are not vigilant in your attempt to create an acceptable present day and a hopeful future for your and those who count on you.

Nostalgia; the longing for the past to possess the present

On Saturday April, 25, 2009 the annual horse drive down Main Street in Three Forks, Mt. will take place. This is how the western cultured people of modern day hold on to the the stories and traditions of those who tamed this land and lived to set the traditions that we hold so dear to our hearts today. The annual horse drive is just one more avenue for the truly western at heart to say that "it's O.K. that Monday morning I'll hop a flight to L.A. and get some business done, today...I'm a cowboy with a herd to move. That is a classic example of the past possessing the present, or of the average person longing for the past to "replace" the present.

New highway signs put Bozeman on the map

This headline in the Sunday, March 15, 2009 edition of the Chronicle caught my eye. The article is in regards to why there is a Butte sign 5 miles east of Bozeman. Obviously some Bozeman residents have taken offence to the fact that Butte seems to prevail before Bozeman in the great order of highway sign significance. While I was reading this article I could not help but think of the "crossroads", and did it really matter if you put your soul on the line in Butte or Bozeman, Montana?

Quick note!

I made myself a cup of tea today, like every day, however, today I read the little "fortune" hanging from the tea bag, it read..."The world is a tragedy to those who feel, but a comedy to those who think. (Horace Walpole, 1717-1797.) How did they know that Dr. Sexson's Classical Lit. class would be discussing tragedy and comedy at this very point on the great time line?

Bozeman Chronicle: Phaethon

This particular article was from the Sunday, February 15,2009 edition of the Bozeman Chronicle. Ofcourse, it was also national news and all that was on the one channel that I recieve up here in the sticks.

The headline read, Investigator: Plane fell flat onto Buffalo house.

It was the heartbreaking story fo an ill-fated flight that crashed into a house in Clarence Center, N.Y., killing everyone on board and one person from inside the house. The survivors from inside the house were a mother and daughter pair. Now tell me that the godesses were not some how involved in that miracle.

It was a sad and tragic accident. While I was reading the article I could not help but think of Phaethon's fall from the heavens to the unforgiving ground below. It was only Phaethon who lost his life after his tragic episode with the sun god's horses, unlike this sad story where the only survivors were two unsuspecting women and one young man who did not get on the doomed flight. Hopefully, this young man will consider Phaethon's fall and the fate of the passengers on that flight and consider each of his remaining days a gift from the gods.

The Midas Video

The video that group 2 made of their version of the story of Midas was so fun to watch. Every time I have thought about it today, I giggle to myself. Who knwe that we had so much talent tucked away in that class. They all deserve an Oscar. You never know, that video could hit the air and one or all of them could possibly end up on teh big screen. If that were to happen...then something they touched in Classical Lit.would have turned to gold.

Presentation Day!

Well our performance was certainly a lot of fun this morning, I just hope that the themes of each of the plays was clear to everyone in class. Bizz and Grace were hilarious with their parts in "Mark and the Toilet". The fact that two of our three plays were based on true events proves that the past possesses the present, we repeated the past this morning. The "Man Eating Himself" play however, has more of a connection with "Ovid's Metamorphosis" than anything else. We had fun rehearsing and performing for the class. It's too bad that we couldn't get the music up and running but thankfully, we had Rio to save the day!

Deborah and Brian's blogs.

I was just reading Deborah and Brian's blog and wondered as I did while listening to the "love" scripts on Friday, if they had consulted with one another. Deborah's "Death is the Mother of Beauty" and Brian's blog with the quote and poem from Eeva-Liisa Manner both have time as a central theme. In Deborah'sblog she discussed how death drives us to live. We have a concept of time because we know that we only have so much of it and no one knows how much that is. The fact that death stirs passions and makes us all realize that the time you give to others should be rich with sincerity. If you consider the quote and poem from Brian's blog where Manner claims that nothing is original and that even the subtlest of dejavues just confirm that it has all been done before. How some people may think that their time and experiences were oringinal and somehow unique. The "false conception of time" theory is very interesting. When you consider both blogs and the many variations of views that are possible with regards to "time" you realize that a person could sit and spend the rest of their life giving thought to the subject, that is until the dryer buzzer goes off and reality comes calling from across the house to remind you that there is only so much "time" before the clothes will wrinkle in the dryer.

Friday's Presentations:

Those were two fabulous presentations with very different themes. However, diversity is so easily achieved even among the same subject matter as the first group's presentation demonstrated. The scripts about "love" that each member of the first group wrote were all so enlightening. To think that they had all written them seperately and without consulting one another is amazing. It just proves that one emotion can have so many different perpectives. Once again, all of the scripts were beautiful.
The second group was a lot of fun too."Television for Immortals" would be a fantastic way to keep the gods entertained and from medling in mortals lives and probably save us all a lot of trouble.

Term Paper Topic:The Significance fo Callisto as a Constellation

Ovid's tale of Callisto and Arcas is only the beginning of the story of the Great Bear in the heavens. The constellation known as Callisto houses one of the most widely used astrological navigational bearings, the Big Dipper. Along with the constant celestial reminder of Callisto's tale, her sad story repeats itself almost daily in every culture arounf the world.
The constellation know as Callisto is the third largest of the eighty-eight recognized constellations and is visible in the Northern night sky all year round. Within this massive constellation begins the stars that form the Big Dipper. The Big Dipper has been the navigational backbone for everyone from ancient sailors crossing inhoispitable seas to the cowboys of the American West driving their herds across the vast grassy plains of an uninhabited land. It si even possible to tell the time in the night sky by observing the Big Dipper and referring to the Polaris Star Clock ( Check: Polaris Star Clock Assembly). All of this is possible from following the stars that lead off of the tail of the great bear who will forever watch over and guide those forget what they have remembered and need to find there way home. The tragic story of how the constellation, Callisto came to be is mostly known to those who have read mythology and Ovid's fabulous tales. However, some have claimed that there is no bear outlined in the hevenly stars of the Northern skies. Then there is also no explanatin for how some Native American tribes: Algonquin, Iroquois, Illinois and possibly others have also identified this same grouping of stars with a gigantic bear in their ancient writings and records.
Callisto's story is one that we have become desensitized to through modern media. Her story is the past that possesses the present every time you turn on the news and hear of a lover's triangle being resolved with the murder of the mistress at the hands of the wife. It is as though the mistress had forgotten to remember to resist the advances of the ever charming god, Jupiter or as he may be known today: Tom, Bob, Larry, Mr. Harris etc... This tragic story is told on almost every other episode of "48 Hours" andversions of lust ending in the murder of the innocent light up the marquis. All the while Callisto silently watches and must wonderwhy we insist on repeating her tragedy over and over again.
What are the chances that the transmigration of Callisto's tortured soul to the starry heavens could have affected so many over the ages? When you gaze into the zodiac and the great constellations try to remember what you have forgotten about their stories. And when you feel lost, take a moment to search the night sky and let Callisto help you find your way home.

Golden Ass, The Story of Aristomenes

4/12/09:
The witches were interesting in this chapter, I wonder if we will see more of them. It seems to me that they must have had a purpose for Socrates and Aristomenes other than just to leave one dead by a creek and the other panicking through the countryside. But...we'll see. I found that the refernce to Socrates' wife crying herself nearly blind made me immediately think of Niobe from Ovid. Since reading the Ovid passages though I find that I look see little references to all of those stories in just about everything that I'm reading. There was also the transformation of the cheating lover to Meroe that she turned into a beaver with the hopes that he will eventually chew his own testicles off...interesting. The power of the oral tradition is mentioned when he claims to have been "towed along by his ears and not his horse" to his destination.

New Thesis Statement

4/6/09: I would like to incorporate the zodiac into the theme "the past possesses to present."

4/4/09: Death of a Pet.
I was invited to some friends house last night for dinner and a movie. They had rented "Marley and Me" of all the movies out there... Naturally there wasn't a dry eye in the house when we finally turned it off. I had intended not to see this movie, having barely survived reading the book however, painful as it was I survived the movie as well. It made me realize that Dr. Sexson probably knows what he's talking about when he says that to write about it will get it out from the deep place where painful memories haunt.
Her name was "Denali". She was a six week old German Sheperd puppy when I got her. She grew up to be a big loveable girl. At the time I had a riding program for children with disabilities in S. Florida and she loved the kids and they loved her. Over the years she developed a lot of problems with her back and hind legs. When I brought her out here to Montana with me in 2000 shw was so happy. She loved the snow and the cooler temperatures. She loved to hike for as long as she could take it without getting painful. I was working as a veterinary technician at the time so Denali had the best medications that I could get for her. The vets kept telling me that this symptoms were normal for a 12 year old sheperd that was as big as she was. She gout to the point where she couldn't get up and down the stairs and I had a hard time carrying her so I moved into the living room downstairs. Then she stopped enjoying the hikes and finally she stopped enjoying food, even ice cream. I had to make the decision to put her to sleep. I was with her at the end. Sometimes I'm struck with the thought that I didn't do enough for her, maybe I should have got one of those doggy wheelchairs for her. I brought her ashes with me on a trip to my mother's place in Fla. last year and buried her under a boganvilla that blooms with bright purple flowers.