In one of my books that I'm reading for my Modern Turkey class, the final section of each chapter is a narrative, which actually doesn't fit into the point of the chapter.  At the end of the fourth chapter though, the narrative that is told, is the story of Troy and the role of Achilles.  But, to start out the story, the narrative describes his mother, Thetis, sitting on the shores of the Euphrates River in southern Turkey.

There is no background to who Thetis is, beyond stating that she is Achilles' mother, and a sea nymph, in this narrative.   When I started reading this section of Crescent and Star, I thought about what her story must be.  So, I've spent the last couple of hours trying to connect a mythic character to a physical place that I've spent the entire semester learning about.  It's really hard for me to place that connection because I am so used to facts and dates, that prove something happened.
At the same time, though, I think that the story of Troy is mostly true (even though most people think that it is highly exaggerated to make it seem like a bigger deal) including the role of Achilles, so that kind of has to mean that Thetis was also real, even if her origins are exaggerated and turned into myth.

Her story, in Metamorphoses, is pretty much like the other stories, the gods were fearful of her, because she  was going to give birth to Achilles, so they sent Peleus to marry her in an attempt to prevent this.  And then he raped her and had her tied down to prevent her from escaping.  But, in the end, she married Peleus and gave birth to Achilles.  So, by trying to stop Achilles' birth, Jove pretty much caused it.  And led to the battle of Troy.  That, in turn, led to the author of Crescent and Star to record this story in a random section of the book  I don't know what the significance of this could possibly be, but I really like that one of my history books actually tells a story from mythology.

Ryan and Christine had been married happily for ten years, even though their jobs both required them to travel, causing them to spend a lot of time apart.  One day, in mid-January, Christine was supposed to fly back to Billings from a business trip in Denver; but, on the way to the airport from her hotel, she was hit by a semi.  After being rushed to St. Luke's Hospital in Denver, Ryan received a phone call, informing him that his wife had several severe injuries from a major car accident, and that he should come to Denver immediately.

Ryan's first thought was to book a flight and get to Denver with in a few hours, but he could not find any flights that had space seats open until the following night.  Instead of waiting another twenty-four hours, Ryan packed a bag and quickly piled into his Ford F-150.  If this had been a normal drive, he could have made it to Denver in about nine hours, but he encountered several issues along the way.  In Casper, a freak snow storm hit, closing down all the main roads.  But he was able to talk one of the traffic control workers to open up the roads, by persuading him that the truck could manage anything.  Although he was held back by three hours, Ryan was able to get back on the highway twelve hours before it opened for everyone else.  To make up that time, Ryan picked up speed and completely bypassed Douglas, not even considering that his gas tank was running low.  About twenty-five miles south of Douglas, the truck ran out gas, and Ryan had to talk someone into giving him a lift to Glendo to get enough gas to refill his tank.  Once again, this diversion took about an hour.  From that point, Ryan stopped only when he needed gas (in Wheatland and Fort Collins).  He finally made it to the Denver Metro, in time to hit rush hour.  When he tried to take a side road to the hospital, he started to speed and was pulled over by a large, old police officer.  By some miracle, he was able to convince the police officer to not give him a ticket, and to escort him to the hospital.  It took nearly fourteen hours to reach the hospital, and when he walked in, Christine's doctor was waiting to speak to him.

Christine had lost all function on the right side of her body and had been in a coma since she got out of surgery.  Her doctor said that Ryan could spend as much time with Christine as he wanted, as long as he did not touch any of the tubes that were attached to her, particularly since she was not able to breathe on her own.  The following morning, Ryan got up from the chair beside her bed, to go get some coffee, and accidentally pulled several of the tubes, including the one on her face.  Unknowingly, he left the room.  When he returned, the room was filled with doctors (and a crash cart), attempting to resuscitate Christine.  Unfortunately, by doing the one thing that he was told to avoid, he had created an even bigger accident that took his wife's life.

Icarus and "The Croods"

Apparently, the Icarus story is following everyone through their lives at this point.  I went to see the new Disney movie, The Croods, last night with friends and could not stop thinking about Icarus.  At some point in the movie, each character had a moment where they were "flying".  There was also a lot about stories... and "life lessons".  In one of these stories, a man "jumped on the sun and flew to tomorrow".  This seemed to be a running theme through the whole movie.  I don't think that any of my friends would have gotten the reference, because they were just there for the entertainment, but, literally, every five minutes, there was something else that was "Icarus" related.

  I think that this story is a really nice displacement.  It told the story in a new way, that was kind of subtle, and was very entertaining.  And beyond that, it will probably be a movie that kids think about in ten/fifteen years when they read the Icarus story.  They'll have a very modern representation of the story that they have grown up with and care about.  

I wish that I could really go into detail about more things from the movie that made me think of Icarus, but I don't want to spoil it for anyone that wants to see it and hasn't yet.

So, I'm in my senior capstone class this semester.  The topic of my class is animal history and we have to write a 20-25 page thesis paper about something related to animals. The plan for my paper is to discuss the interpretation of snakes and wolves in popular culture.  For the most part, I just get to read stories and watch movies to see what the character of each animal.  I've actually found a lot of stories about wolves.  One of the books that we had to read for class, Vicious by Jon T. Coleman, told folklore stories about wolves that would follow families through the woods in Ohio and in order to save their horses or cattle, parents would feed their children to the wolves.  Stories like this were passed down to future generations as bedtime stories, even though they were mostly nightmares.  This reminded me of two things.  The first in the "Little Red Riding Hood" story, because the wolf eats the grandmother, and wants to eat "Red".  But it actually reminded me more of Lycaon because the families were given a choice about what they could offer up to save themselves, and they chose to give up little children (four of them) instead of give up an animal.  It's a pretty far fetched comparison to make, because these families weren't feeding their children to the gods, but they were still offering up humans to take make some sort of point.
There's a certain sense of naivety between all of these stories.  Lycaon for some reason thought that giving the gods human flesh to eat was a good idea, and that the either wouldn't get  caught or wouldn't get punished.  Red Riding Hood, trusted the wolf, even though it was apparent that it wasn't her grandmother.  And the people in the stories thought that they would be safe if they just offered up one of their children to save themselves, even though they had to repeat the sacrifice three more times, before the wolves finally left.  The idea that these people all acted similarly, at least in their motives, is a way that these stories all connect.  And how they all somehow come back to Metamorphoses even though all three stories are from different time periods and different parts of the world.

The Spinners: role reversal

I don't know of many representations of gods/goddesses, where they appear so much more humble than their human counterpart.  But in "The Spinners", that is exactly the case.  If looking at the painting with just a simple glance, there appears to be nothing strange or confusing about it.  But, in both sections of the painting, Arachne seems to be more sure of herself (in other words, more cocky) while Minerva is appearing to be a hardworking woman that does not want to sit in the spotlight.

In the forefront of the painting, the scene is divided, with Minerva on the left and Arachne on the right.  Arachne is sitting under some form of light, facing away while the people.  The two women on her side are averting their gaze, as if intimidated by her or scared of her response.  On the other side of the painting, Minerva is sitting at a loom, with her face visible.  Unlike Arachne, she is having a conversation with one of the other spinners.  One of the most telling things about this, to me, is that the Minerva is looking up at the other woman.  Usually the person that is of higher stature is never lower than someone of a lower class... that speaks volumes about the position that Minerva is placing herself in.

This is also shown in the background of the picture.  Arachne is standing in the middle of the room, with her hands spread wide, as if she is expecting the praise of everyone around her.  Once again, she is drenched by the light of the room, making her the focal point.  Minerva stands back, almost in the shadows, while just looking on at the scene unfold.  In order to find her in the back room, you have to be looking for something, which further shows that she is not forcing herself into the center, taking her position as a goddess as the devine right to be praised (even though that is how she felt).

I really like that this painting is a paradox of the role of gods/goddesses and humans.  The focus, and praise, that usually belongs to a god is given to a human.  And Minerva willingly allows herself to seen as a lesser character.

One last ritual before high school ends...

At my high school, there really aren’t any rituals that I could say are bad or mean, because I never had to go through any of them.  The things that I would classify as rituals from my “culture” are actually really fun and pretty entertaining.  I think that one, that is pretty common in this world, would be senior pranks.

My school has prided itself on some really idiotic senior pranks that honestly should have gotten students arrested for vandalism or trespassing, but that is what made them fun.  My freshman year, the seniors spent literally hours gluing pennies to the three main staircases in the building.  It doesn't seem like a big deal, but something that we learned right off the bat is that you can’t walk up stairs when they’re like that because its like a slip-n-slide.  Junior year was an interesting set of pranks.  A bunch of the AP Chem students got the help of some of the teachers and burned the grass in front of the school to say “class of ‘09” and then set up a beer pong table in the middle of the upperclassman area, where they proceeded to play for the three busiest passing periods of the day. 

But I still think that ours takes the cake…..

The process of planning a senior prank at my high school is a pain in the ass and excruciatingly long.  With a class of 500, who all have random schedules, we had to find ways to get every interested students in on the joke.  And then, we had to get it “approved” by the principal.  Which totally defeats the purpose.  The plan was for 200 of us to camp out on the front lawn of the school, set up thousands of cups full of water in front of the three main doors, and block off the parking lot by creating a giant X with cars and blocking off the exit to keep students from getting out.  Also, we were going to fork the lawn, and write messages in chalk all over the sidewalks.  But at 4:45 in the morning, we got kicked off of school property because we were all 18 and “technically” weren't students anymore.  So then we had to improvise a new pranks… which ended up being an even bigger problem and almost kept us from getting our diplomas that night.

We planted smoke bombs in one of the cars and packed it full of seniors.  Then it suspiciously “broke down” in the middle of the entrance to the school.  We created a traffic jam that ran from our school entrance, down 104^th, and then in each direction off of Wadsworth for over twenty minutes.  We kept school from starting on time, which most of the teachers found hilarious when they drove past us holding signs that were random (and many, very inappropriate based on our school standars), and then we accidently caused two car accidents. And that’s when we topped the last three years of senior pranks… no one had actually caused damage to underclassmen before.  At that point, people started pushing the “broken” car up the hill and into the parking lot.  Then our three security guards, all of the administration, and the SLHS campus cop started chasing us down.  So we fled in every direction possible.  Everyone piled into cars and prayed that no one got caught, then headed to Countryside to meet up and plan our strategy for the rest of the day.

That day, we took a vow of silence.  Everyone had to protect their butt because if one of us went down, we were all going down, and that would take 200 people out of graduation.  It became that moment where we felt like we were in the Gator version of “Fight Club”. Only rule of Prank Night… Don’t talk about prank night. 

As far as rituals go… I have to say that this is a pretty awesome one.  None of us got embarrassed or arrested, and we were all able to graduate.  And it’s definitely one of those things where we can say our interpretation of the ritual was the best, especially since we planned in in less than 20 minutes.  

I think I took the "assignment" for this weekend a little too seriously...
When we were told to experience pain, one of my friends turned it into a joke and made me wear a paperclip as a toe ring so that it would hurt, but I got tired of that within a few minutes.
And then, on Friday night, I actually really did feel pain.  I was walking around in boots with no traction while looking for one of my friends and I slipped on a giant chunk of ice.  I then proceeded to fall onto my butt, but my hand got caught on the cement step next to me.  It actually really hurt, and my hand was swollen for the rest of the night.  And on Saturday, I woke up with cuts covering my palm of my hand, as if my body wanted to remind me even more, that  I got hurt.  The worst part is that I'm left handed and now everytime I do something, my hand continues to hurt.  Also, I'm not really happy about the fact that a lot of people saw this happen... I was extremely embarrassed and wanted to go crawl in a hole until it was forgotten.
This is the one assignment so far that I was not super willing to do, and yet, I'm writing about an actual painful experience from this weekend that fits this assignment.  I think the fates were just trying to be funny.