riotthill

but will it? In our recession-prone world, no industry seems untouched, but the most worrying is the increase in part-time, contractual and seasonal jobs, our willingness to let somebody else provide for us — we’ve become nations of children, following direction, working ourselves into the grave and watching a handful of out-of-control financial whizzes, whom we are told we should admire because of their wealth, ruin our hopes and dreams.
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Seated goddess with child, from Anatolia (courtesy )

Recently I read a blog from a site entitled Women in Greek Mythology, where the author laments the ‘Dangers of De-Mystification‘. She wonders that her ‘use of them [the Greek Goddesses], my appropriation of them, wasn’t “authentic”‘. I commented that I had to disagree, that her current understanding of Greek goddesses and how they fit into the worldview of ancient Greeks did not make her use of them any less authentic.

An interesting thing, this re-use of gods and goddesses. As our knowledge of ancient societies expands we struggle to see them from both our modern perspective and through ancient eyes. We have discarded the notion of gods and goddesses romping at Olympia, or flying down to meddle in human affairs, but this does not make these characters any less legitimate. We’ve rejected notions of magic, our superstitions recede, our belief in the fates has been replaced by will, by our notions of self-direction. Yet the stories and myths surrounding antiquity continue to haunt us and to lure us into their fascinating worlds.
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It was a freak, this storm, self-propelled with an impossible-to-imagine natural power up from the Gulf, flying as the crow flies with the Mississippi Valley its guide, then veering eastward to arrive in Toronto late on a Friday afternoon. We hurried home from school, released early to get to home and shelter before she hit. Her name was Hazel, called so long before an era that demanded men’s names be included in the naming of storms, that yes, if we must anthropomorphize, gender should be fairly represented.
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