Developments

OK, I have been busier than a busy thing. This fact might be obvious, since I haven’t posted a thing here in over a month. Oops. Since then, Blogger has finally allowed me to switch over to my Google login to manage my blog. Just the ability to add tags is reason enough to celebrate. Still, I’m not sure that I want to give up posting my Technorati tags.

The good news: I am the proud owner of a new camera: a Canon EOS 30D. A friend bought my Rebel (Thanks, Jamie!), so I was able to upgrade. I’ve been enjoying the hell out of it. Coupled with Apple’s Aperture, I am growing quickly as a photographer. Still, I want a new lens: the Sigma 30mm F1.4. I’ll have to wait a bit, methinks, ’cause of the bad news.

The bad news: my PowerBook’s hard drive died. First, it stopped being able to install anything new, then it would take forever to download anything from Firefox, but it would still boot and run normally. Disk Utility told me there was a problem, so I booted off the Tiger install disk to try to fix the problem. It could not fix it; instead it seemed to supply the coffin’s final nail. Now, the PowerBook will no longer boot at all. I see the gray Apple screen with the wheely thing rotating at the bottom for about five minutes before the computer just shuts itself off. It seems I need a new PowerBook MacBook Pro. I’m thinking about the 15″, as if I can afford that. Until then, I’ll just use the department’s 17″ G4 PowerBook (slow and heavy) until a student requests to use it. (I’m not sure where it is…)

Computer woes aside, I have purchased some domain names, one I mentioned previously. Since purchasing grlucas.net, I now own Big Jelly (bigjelly.net), LitMUSE (litmuse.net), and the Humanities Index (humx.org). Here are my plans: this blog will soon be relocated to earthshine.org; when I say “soon,” I probably mean May at the earliest for professional reasons. I will continue to use Blogger, cause it’s cool and does exactly what I want without all the hassle of trying to keep up with Movable Type. Grlucas.net already has much of my portfolio on it, transferred from Earthshine. I will use it to feature one of my favorite things in life: me. LitMUSE will do what Earthshine used to do: operate as my courseware site for students; it’s already well underway.

I hope to use the Humanities Index as a collaborative space where educators can share notes on various aspects of literature for students. Here is where I will put all of my literary notes, ideas, and ramblings. I will encourage my colleagues to do the same. I really think this could be a worthwhile project. I’ve been porting entries from this blog over there, and I hope to have more there soon. Interested in contributing? Send me an email. And you don’t have to be a professional educator.

Now, Big Jelly should be interesting. It is the brainchild of Tom and me, based on the ideas in the eponymous short story by Bruce Sterling and Rudy Rucker. Like a big jelly, our ideas are kind of squishy and amorphous right now. We want a place to talk about science fiction and futurism and how these ideas wind in-and-out of one another and touch other cultural texts that interest us. We want to have round tables, reviews, essays, editorials, links, and anything else we think might be apropos. It’s as a place where old school meets new skool. There’s nothing there right now, but stay tuned.

I guess one of the most exciting things about these new domain names is that I have discovered a new web host: AN Hosting. Unlike the crappy support and services of IPowerWeb, I can host up to 10 domain names on one account, for about $30 less a year. Too cool, no? When I send tech support an email (no mandatory web forms to fill out), I usually have a response in under an hour. No kidding. It used to take IPowerWeb two days to send me some boilerplate that didn’t even answer my question or solve my problem. So far, I am very pleased with these new guys.

Now, to try to enjoy the rest of my break. Hope everyone is having a relaxing holiday.

Developments

OK, I have been busier than a busy thing. This fact might be obvious, since I haven’t posted a thing here in over a month. Oops. Since then, Blogger has finally allowed me to switch over to my Google login to manage my blog. Just the ability to add tags is reason enough to celebrate. Still, I’m not sure that I want to give up posting my Technoratitags.

The good news: I am the proud owner of a new camera: a Canon EOS 30D. A friend bought my Rebel (Thanks, Jamie!), so I was able to upgrade. I’ve been enjoying the hell out of it. Coupled with Apple’s Aperture, I am growing quickly as a photographer. Still, I want a new lens: the Sigma 30mm F1.4. I’ll have to wait a bit, methinks, ’cause of the bad news.

The bad news: my PowerBook’s hard drive died. First, it stopped being able to install anything new, then it would take forever to download anything from Firefox, but it would still boot and run normally. Disk Utility told me there was a problem, so I booted off the Tiger install disk to try to fix the problem. It could not fix it; instead it seemed to supply the coffin’s final nail. Now, the PowerBook will no longer boot at all. I see the gray Apple screen with the wheely thing rotating at the bottom for about five minutes before the computer just shuts itself off. It seems I need a new PowerBook MacBook Pro. I’m thinking about the 15″, as if I can afford that. Until then, I’ll just use the department’s 17″ G4 PowerBook (slow and heavy) until a student requests to use it. (I’m not sure where it is…)

Computer woes aside, I have purchased some domain names, one I mentioned previously. Since purchasing grlucas.net, I now own Big Jelly (bigjelly.net), LitMUSE (litmuse.net), and the Humanities Index (humx.org). Here are my plans: this blog will soon be relocated to earthshine.org; when I say “soon,” I probably mean May at the earliest for professional reasons. I will continue to use Blogger, cause it’s cool and does exactly what I want without all the hassle of trying to keep up with Movable Type. Grlucas.net already has much of my portfolio on it, transferred from Earthshine. I will use it to feature one of my favorite things in life: me. LitMUSE will do what Earthshine used to do: operate as my courseware site for students; it’s already well underway.

I hope to use the Humanities Index as a collaborative space where educators can share notes on various aspects of literature for students. Here is where I will put all of my literary notes, ideas, and ramblings. I will encourage my colleagues to do the same. I really think this could be a worthwhile project. I’ve been porting entries from this blog over there, and I hope to have more there soon. Interested in contributing? Send me an email. And you don’t have to be a professional educator.

Now, Big Jelly should be interesting. It is the brainchild of Tom and me, based on the ideas in the eponymous short story by Bruce Sterling and Rudy Rucker. Like a big jelly, our ideas are kind of squishy and amorphous right now. We want a place to talk about science fiction and futurism and how these ideas wind in-and-out of one another and touch other cultural texts that interest us. We want to have round tables, reviews, essays, editorials, links, and anything else we think might be apropos. It’s as a place where old school meets new skool. There’s nothing there right now, but stay tuned.

I guess one of the most exciting things about these new domain names is that I have discovered a new web host: AN Hosting. Unlike the crappy support and services of IPowerWeb, I can host up to 10 domain names on one account, for about $30 less a year. Too cool, no? When I send tech support an email (no mandatory web forms to fill out), I usually have a response in under an hour. No kidding. It used to take IPowerWeb two days to send me some boilerplate that didn’t even answer my question or solve my problem. So far, I am very pleased with these new guys.

Now, to try to enjoy the rest of my break. Hope everyone is having a relaxing holiday.

The Iliad: Rage and War

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]he Iliad (a song about Ilium, or Troy) along with its companion epic the Odyssey form the foundation of ancient Greek culture and address the extremes of human experience through war and peace. Both epics are primary, or oral, epics that draw on an enormous wealth of cultural stories in unified structures that we attribute to the poet Homer, in eighth century B.C.E. The epics are written in an unsentimental style: the Iliad depicts the ambivalence of war in meticulously accurate details. Both the nightmare of war and its excitement find expression in the Iliad, just as the Odyssey‘s pages quest for a home, or a peace that seems hard-won after the devastation of war.

As the narrator states first thing: the subject of the Iliad is the rage of Achilles and the consequences of that rage for both the Achaeans and the Trojans. War effects not only the men who fight the battles, but also the women and children whose lives are then shaped by its outcome. War represents the worst and, ironically, the best of humanity: ugly brutality and terrible beauty. If you doubt this, look at the place violence holds in our culture; films like The Matrix even show violence as poetic: a graceful dance of destruction that thrills the audience like little else. We both pity with Hector and sympathize with Achilles; neither side of the war holds all of our sentiments. The final outcome of the war, then, becomes truly tragic: only one culture can continue while the other is destroyed or enslaved.

The Iliad‘s participants are the nobility of both cultures, or the aristoi: “the best people.” They are the hereditary holders of wealth and power, and their decisions effect all of the culture. For example, Agamemnon’s decision to infuriate Achilles at the outset of the Iliad has lasting effects on the Greek warriors during the last weeks of the Trojan War. Like most epics, of which the Iliad is really the definitive example, the action begins in medias res, a few weeks before the end of a ten-year campaign, with all of the epic’s traditional accouterments. The Iliad poses questions, as will the Odyssey, about the nature of political order and what humans must do to maintain that vision and structure. The initial contention in the Iliad is between the Greek champion Achilles and the Greek commander Agamemnon. Who has the stronger claim to right: Agamemnon who has the hereditary position, or Achilles, the one with merit? Ultimately does it matter? When swords are drawn, reason becomes irrelevant.

Upon reading the Iliad, I’m often struck by the selfishness of the culture of men. Indeed, one may argue that all wars since the beginning of time are about men and what they want to control: state, wealth, women. What will men do to maintain their view of order and structure? What are the consequences of the resulting pride, arrogance, destruction? In book one of the Iliad, we discover that because of Agamemnon’s refusal to relinquish Chryseis, Apollo has rained a plague upon the Achaean forces. Because he is eventually challenged by Achilles — who represents the wishes of the rest of the men — Agamemnon decides to claim Achilles’ prize (a girl named Briseis) to reassert his authority and put Achilles in his place for his challenge. Achilles shows cunning and restraint — qualities that are usually associated with Odysseus — in his argument with Agamemnon, while the latter rages and rails like a wounded child. Yet, when Agamemnon’s men take Briseis, Achilles, also child-like, begins to pout by his ships, cries to his mother, and refuses to play the war game anymore. This final decision precipitates the death of many Achaeans, including Achilles’ friend Patroclus. Achilles’ resulting rage ends with the death of Hector in book twenty-two, and Achilles’ own apocryphal death under the bow of Paris before the war’s end.

The brutality of Achilles and its consequences are most evident in Book XXII of the Iliad. Achilles’ rage blinds him to anything but the death of Hector, the Trojan champion that killed Patroclus in book sixteen. Replete with epic similes of the hunt, book twenty-two illustrates Hector’s own reluctance to do what he sees as his duty to face Achilles, yet thinks only of himself and what his people might think if he doesn’t face the Greek killing machine (cf. ll. 108-156). Hector’s resolve is soon shaken as he sees Achilles closing, bloody rage the only thing that Achilles sees. Hector flees, but is soon tricked by Athena into stopping to face Achilles, perhaps a commentary on Hector’s need for companionship and Achilles’ desire for only personal vengeance and renown. Hector is mercilessly murdered in front of Troy’s walls, like a fawn at the jaws of a lion.

The death of Hector, then, is given a final cultural context from Hector’s widow Andromache. She now sees the demise of Troy, but personally she sees no future for their son Astyanax. The death of the father, then, is a weighty metaphor for the Trojans: the order that they secured will soon be rendered useless by the barbarity of war; the father’s death leads to the destruction of social order. This theme will be taken up in the Odyssey as well: what is the responsibility of the son for maintaining order in the absence or death of the father? As Andromache sees no future for Astyanax, life does continue even after the carnage of war, yet a new order is imposed on the losers — those who escape death. This theme of continuity is also addressed by Virgil in his Aeneid.

Is war, then, a necessary component of human life? Just because it has been historically up until this point, are we to be like Achilles who could not hear reason through his bloody thoughts: “No truce / till one or the other falls and gluts with blood” (XXII.313-14)? When do we decide that war is better than order?