week 3 ended coursera course

Here is a drinking cup with Odysseus and Circe. The men have been turned into animals by magic, but Hermes gave Odysseus a potion which blocked Circe's magic.

We're supposed to finish the book and write a short paper this week. I'm on vacation in Santa Fe and didn't get a chance to see the live video because I was in the air, and the wifi on the plane wasn't so good for my sons, so I didn't get it for myself. I'll watch the video today. Again it took me 2 tries to get 100% on the quiz.

I think I'm drawn to the structuralist or functionalist paper. I like the idea of binaries. It's reminds me of the Buddha Dharma's insight into duality. The functionalism is interesting too, but it's hard to imagine what to write about besides Xenia, the Greek concept of hospitality, which I find fascinating. I'm enjoying the hospitality of my parents this week, so it's an interesting subject. Someone uploaded some texts that might help. My sons are going horseback riding so I'll have some time to work on the stuff and read.

I started reading The Mark of Athena on the side. It's the 7th book of 10 (the 10th one hasn't come out). These Rick Riordan books about ancient mythology are fun books, I think they're rivals to the Harry Potter books. The premis of the books is that half bloods inhabit the earth. Gods are still sleeping with mortals. The half blood children are attacked by forces that don't want them to exist, so if you survive long enough, people try to find them and take them to camp to train them to survive, and generally work the various missions of the gods and mortals. There are 5 books set with the Greek gods, and then the author turns them to the Roman gods and they interact with the same characters in the first books.

Beginning of second week

I got the Fagles edition of the Odyssey from the library. I read a third of the Shewring translation, but now the assignment is to read books 1-8, so I'm going to do that, and listen/watch the lectures.

When you hear about returning home from the Trojan War stories, and I thought it would be cool to pick an obscure character from the Illiad who isn't accounted for and give a return story for him. I guess there are the stories of Mary Renault and that wonderful retelling of the Illiad by Madeline Miller.

Then I thought about telling the story of Odysseus when he was with the Calypso for 10 years. "...the bewitching nymph, the lustrous goddess, held him back..." I wonder what that was like. She kept him in her "arching cavern," and, "forever trying to spellbind his heart with suave, seductive words." Yea, I've known a few women like that. I mean I wish. I guess I could lose 10 years pretty quickly that way.

I was reading Great Books by David Denby and he had a chapter on the Odyssey. He's a really good writer, and writes about the teacher and what it means for the teacher to tell the students that they are Telemachus.

Hospitality

David Denby said in Great Books, that he sat down and read the Odyssey in one sitting.

The only book I read in one day was The Hobbit, when I was a teenager over the summer when I was visiting my father. I woke up and read it, and fell asleep after I finished, one day.

I'm going to visit a friend who has a house on Long Island sound. I will pour a libation to Zeus, Poseidon, Buddha, Vishnu, Jesus, Mohammad, Zoroastrian, all my dead relatives, nature, all the gods and goddesses, all the things that capture the human mind, devine and mundane. I shall pour the libation onto the bluff above the sea to mark the glorious day.

I won't have to clasp the knees of my friend to get his hospitality.

It's funny who we think deserves hospitality. If you're poor, the wrong color, and have problems, people mostly like "tough love". We're so afraid that if we help people, then they won't help themselves, because somehow we have to rationalize the grave inequalities in our society. People always act like it's so obvious, it's easy to be a Mitt Romney and live off your accumulated wealth. Like he's earned his wealth. If work is so great, why does he not have to work, why is he exempt from the rule? Because he's so wise and frugal? Driving with a dog on the roof for a family vacation. I laugh when I think of the episode of New Girl, when Schmitt pretends to be a Romney. He's too Jewish. But I digress.

There is a feel in the Odyssey that Odysseus gets the hospitality he gets because he is part of the elite. King Alcinous does not ask him who he is until he's hosted him for quite a while, but he knows he's of noble bearing. What are the easy traits of nobility, that can't be copied by the common man?

I got to the place in my library book where I found the magnetic strip. I could return the book, then go back, remove the strip and walk out with the book. But I don't like to steal, doesn't feel right. I'll buy my own copy. I want to read this book to my sons. I wonder if I should read the Illiad first. I've never read it. On the one hand, it's the book before, the first book of civilization. On the other hand it's not as easy to read, supposedly.

young warm hopes

On p. 170 of the Fagles translation of the Odyssey, they talk about Nausicaa, "...young warm hopes..."

One of my favorite books is about pleasure in ancient Greece. Fish were not taxed by the local priests, and thus very popular.

What young warm hopes have I given up at my age? I used to love looking out the window, but now find my desire for the outdoors has diminished. I used to want to do something big in the world, but now I see how puny we are. I think about that Langston Hughes poem, about dreams deferred. I used to think a spiritual community would behave better than regular people. Now I know we can't stop being human with all the mess. I used to believe in justice, but justice is something you have to fight for because it's not the natural default, and fighting doesn't win the day.

Disillusionment is good; Seeing the world clearly is a good thing. But we still need hopes. In Learned Optimism, we need optimism because we get more done. The down side of optimism is that you squander resources. A pessimist is more likely to allocate resources in the best way. So we need to wear both of those hats. Like they say in The Meaning Of Life, that people need to wear more hats. That's my hope--to gracefully wear more hats.

Little phrases are interesting. Nausicaa's handmaidens have "lovely braids". The sea nymph who saves Odysseus has "slender ankles". The qualifiers before names, subtle Odysseus.

Coursera class structure

The structure of the class, is that every week there are assignments. There is no reading assignment the first week, but I'm trying to read through the Odyssey and do some background stuff, tangental stuff. The first week we are introduced to the context of the Odyssey, what are various ways of looking at Greek myths, with various scholars putting forth various interpretations. I just watched the 5th of 7 lectures with my son as we waited for school. Peter Struck seems like a good lecturer to me. To pass the first week, and prove you've watched the videos, you need to pass a quiz. I find that the interesting question with on line learning, how do you know if people are getting the content. I'm also excited about grading 5 other people's papers, because I think I'll learn from that as well.

I took a class on AOL in the 90's on the Brothers Grimm fairy tales. That was interesting and I learned a lot, but I found discussion with the teacher impossible. Everyone would shoot a question at him and he would answer one, and then it would happen again and again...

I think the hard thing is dialogue. To counter that they have meet ups. Seems there is a whole bunch of people who do the courses in NYC. Not sure if there is a specific group for this class. I haven't found a chat room, but that would be interesting. First you have something to say. I have ideas, but mostly I'm learning.

There are people in the class from all over the world. It seems like some are doing it to practice their English. A lot of people brag about their academic accomplishments. Smart people seem to like to keep learning.

I polled my friends about their experience of the Odyssey. Some liked it, some found it boring. They told me to watch O Brother, Where Art Thou? I saw it a while ago, but I'll probably watch it again.

Better get to the last two 15 minute lectures, and take the quiz.

Only destruction yawns before me.

There's a lot I don't really get in he first 4 chapters, before we get to Odysseus, but I do feel like I'm learning more about the mythological system, and more of the social context.

The odyssey, as a metaphor, is interesting. I find that I dislike problem solving if it's more than a few steps but sometimes things are complicated and "the gods" are not cooperating.

In ancient Greek times, a narrative was created to explain all the unexplainables. In my times, there is much more knowledge, but we still don't understand the human heart so well, and what remains from mythology is what is at the basis of our humanity.

Odysseus is persecuted by the gods. In Christianity, Jesus is persecuted not by divinity but by humans, and this might be the beginning of the divine/mundane split that is one of the great mistakes of spirituality: the idea that spirituality is somehow above ordinary life, when it's ordinary life where it happens.

Talked with a guy yesterday who was reading the book to help his daughter with her high school homework.

I looked up Leucothea. She appears as a gannet, and helps Odysseus. When Zeus is sending him terrible weather, Odysseus says, "Only destruction yawns before me." Destruction as a yawn is interesting, it points to the way the Greeks saw bad fate as capricious.

I do believe that hubris is a stumbling block for humanity, but I don't think circumstances are capricious, I think we just need to understand them or accept that we don't know. Life is so complicated that it cannot be controlled or completely understood. We know more now than we did then. Even so the ancient Greeks knew things we could benefit from.

Even today with all our knowledge, folk wisdom exists. We know for sure that colds are caused by a virus, but people persist in the notion that it's from going outside with wet hair. Now wet hair on a cold day might stress your immune system, and make you susceptible to the virus, but it does not cause the cold.

What humans are is narrative junkies, and the Odyssey was the second book, so it's interesting. I saw the name Hermione.

I showed my son the cover of my edition of the Odyssey, translated by Walter Shewring, with Polyphemus being blinded by Odysseus. My son recognized Polyphemus.

End quote: "In Egypt, more than in other lands, the bounteous earth yields a wealth of drugs, healthful and baneful side by side; and every man there is a physician; the rest of the world has no such skill, for these are all of the family of Paeon."

what to listen to while reading Odyssey?

Google is a wonderful thing. There's actually an answer to the question.

But it turns out to be wrong. Athena by the Who isn't about Athena it's about Theresa Russell, who I absolutely love in The Razor's Edge.

Calypso by John Denver isn't about the Calypso in the Odyssey. It's about Jacques Cousteau.

So, while the internet can hold some interesting answers, it also includes the information that disproves those answers. Coming to the truth is often an odyssey. And there isn't really a sound track to the Odyssey.

Blog purpose, beginnings

I'm taking a class at University of Pennsylvania on Coursera. It's on Greek and Roman mythology.

Through my travels in life, I've developed a love of mythology. Part of it's the Jungian psychological aspect, some of it's the love of antiquity, and some of it came about because my son got into the novels of Rick Roiordan. I've read about 7 of the 10 novels with ancient Greek and Roman themes. My son needs to give me the 8th one for me to read that one. He keeps forgetting.

Some of it comes from the influence of Sangharakshita, who's writings have opened me up to the ideas of so many things. The idea that paganism and other spiritual traditions that were stomped by Christianity might hold some keys to ourselves.

I've recently read Madeline Miller's The Song of Achilles, and quite enjoyed it. I've read Mary Renault's work, and one of my favorite books is Courtesans and Fishcakes: The Consuming Passions of Classical Athens.

I took classes on ancient Greek philosophy with Terrance Penner at the University of Wisconsin in the 80's. He studied at Oxford, among others with Gilbert Ryle, who is famous for coining the phrase ghost in the machine, which Sting borrowed.

Finally I'm writing about this because I've got a bit of an existential crisis, and I've found that taking classes really helps me to keep my mind alive.

The class starts June 8th, and I've decided to try and keep ahead of the syllabus. And I've been reading The Odyssey.

Reading the first two chapters, my question is what is Penelope doing to keep these guys around. If she walked around for a day puking on herself and urinating on herself she could drive these guys away. I wonder if she likes all the attention and having been single for 10 years and again yearning for the company of a man.

I wonder if people spoke in speeches in those days. I feel like I can't get through a paragraph before someone interrupts me.

What does it tell us about hospitality in those days, that he can't tell these people to buzz off.

I wish I had more visitors, I was more social. I spend a lot of time alone. I suppose when TV and books were not the great things, visitors were more important.

I have to read 38 pages a day to finish the book by the time the class starts. I only read 12 yesterday, and I need to get to p.76 today. I'm only on 26 now. I'm going to have to spend more time on this. When left to my own devises I will not push through. A class helps me to have better follow through.

Of course this sets up all kinds of tendrils of inquiry. I have a graphic novel of the Odyssey to read and there's secondary material, and I never read the Illiad, and there's just so much to read. I'll focus on reading for the class, and if I have spare time I will read around it a little.

I find it interesting that Athena inhabits bodies, and comes unannounced. It reminds me one time I imagine I was going out with the Buddha. What I felt was a woosh of compassion.

I wonder what an updated polytheism of ancient Greek gods would look like. I wonder at Battlestar Galactica's future version.