Plaques and Gold Medals

Once when he was awarded a gold medal for his poetry, Robert Graves later took it to a jeweler and discovered that it was not gold at all.

He got an essay out of the experience, at least, turning the experience into a metaphor for true poetic gold as opposed to gilded base metal or pinchbeck. Graves had very definite ideas about what constituted “true poetry.”

Wednesday I was on the list of honorees for a campus-wide awards luncheon, but as I was coming down with the godawful head cold that led me to cancel my classes for the rest of the week, I skipped it.

I went instead to my office, took care of various matters–at the end of the academic year, we are always hit with requests for recommendation letters for various jobs, internships, and graduate schools–and eventually went home. I did not want to sit sniffling and sneezing at a big table, almost unable to talk.

As I left my office to go home and to bed, I encountered a student who was looking for me. She had brought my plaques–one of them 5×7 inches, the other one 8×10 inches. Each bore a pseudo-metallic plastic face plate with pseudo-gilt highlights bearing such sentiments as “In honor of your retirement.” The smaller was for my 15 years of service, apparently. (Technically, I did not retire–I quit.)

So somebody wasted the taxpayers’ money down at the trophy shop in the strip mall. Am I supposed to hang them on the wall of my study at home and contemplate them?

By contrast, when we had the departmental joint retirement (that word again) party for two senior colleagues and myself last Saturday night, my colleagues gave me gift cards for Amazon and Barnes & Noble. Bam! No more Amazon.com wish list. Thanks, everyone!

But, geez … plaques.

So I thought I could pry off the face plates and use them as display bases for some other project.

On closer examination, however, I saw that they were merely made from some kind of pressboard with a plastic wood-grain veneer. So they cannot be sanded or refinished.

Maybe there is a metaphor there too, but I am going to leave it alone for now.

The Religion of Beer

As “religion,” beer predates Christianity and Islam. And it is back on sale in Iraq.

(In some areas, as I understand, the sellers of alcoholic beverages come from Iraq’s dwindling Christian community. I do not know if that is the case here.)

Via Instapundit.

Relief for Tired, Bloggy Eyes

My eyes cringe at Web pages with light-on-dark type. Dark-on-light was good enough for Gutenberg, and it’s good enough for me.

Now there is a solution: a Java script in the form of a toolbar bookmark that lets you flip headache-inducing light-on-dark pages to the way that Johannes intended. (Thanks, Kelley.)

For the bookmarklet, just scroll down to the box marked “Update,” and drag and drop.

Running on Fumes

In the course of a discussion which begin with the how-to of inserting video clips into blogs, some of my students and I watched the following:

• “Steamboat Willie,” the original 1928 Mickey Mouse cartoon, in which Mickey was much more rat-like and nasty than today’s dumbed-down, cuter, and neotonous version. Not to mention that the chewing-tobacco part is so un-PC.

• The “Now is the winter of our discontent” speech scene from the 1930s-fascist version of Richard III, the one starring Ian McKellen.

Several of them had already seen it in Professor B.’s Shakespeare class, but they were ready to see it again. As for me, the opening scene of that film — the teletype machine — held me spellbound when I first saw it. (But I was thinking, “Run, dog, run!” very soon.)

• Jeff Dunham doing his “Achmed the Dead Terrorist” routine, holding the jihadists at bay with laughter.

I was the only who did not already know about Achmed. What will I do for popular culture when I stop teaching?

The Heart Has Its Reasons–For Wanting a Beer

Stories like this one about a heart transplant may seem like fodder for Fate magazine.

But they do raise interesting questions about the whole body-soul split, which is basic to all those religious traditions that teach we are spirits temporary in bodies–or trapped in bodies, as some would have it.

Was it possible that my new heart had reached me with its own set of tastes and preferences? It was a fascinating idea. During those early days, I had no idea that I would look back on this curious comment as the first of many mysteries after the transplant.

UPDATE: Purely by coincidence (really!) Yvonne Aburrow is thinking about organ donation. Consider the implications.

The Warrior

Some of the littlest things are big to Jeff Deck, who is traveling the country in search of mistakes.

May angels bear him up.

The God with Many Eyes

The new issue of The Entheogen Review carries a piece by David Luke on cross-cultural encounters with a godlike being covered with a multitude of eyes. (Yes, Ezekiel’s cherubim are one of the references.)

His article, “Disembodied Eyes Revisited: An Investigation into the Ontology of Entheogenic Entity Encounters,” describes such encounters and descriptions from Jewish, Muslim, Tibetan, and non-traditional entheogenic experiences:

Then the multitudinous eyes of the being before me suddenly and quite deliberately blocked my curious consciousness’s further explorations by mesmerizing me with its squirming, rhythmic eyeball hypnosis.

In Tibetan tradition, a multi-eyed being called Za functions as a “protector of the law,” being a guardian deity on the borders of our world and the Other Side. Luke hints at a connection with Python the guardian of Delphi, mythologically slain by Apollo.

Searching trip reports at Erowid, he finds more similar reports, leading him to wander, “But is there anything that can be found in this wayward meandering through myth and visions that offers a case for the genuine reification of ‘the other’ encountered in psychedelic spaces on the far side of the psyche?”

Yes, it is the interpretatio graeca, saying that all these experiences are of the same deity / psychic structure / whatever. And why not? In applied polytheism, you start with your own experience.

Meme: Passion Quilt

Ambulance Driver has tagged me in a post about teaching.

I let his request rattle around in my brain during spring break, hoping for inspiration. And by doing so, I violated Rule 1, which is “Don’t wait for inspiration. Start writing.” (But, Professor, I was on vacation!)

AD writes, “If I had but one message I could pass on to my students and my child, what would it be? What lessons am I most passionate about?”

Here are the full meme directions:

  • Post a picture or make/take/create your own that captures what YOU are most passionate for students to learn about.
  • Give your picture a short title.
  • Title your blog post “Meme: Passion Quilt.”
  • Link back to this blog entry.
  • Include links to 5 (or more) educators.

As I wrote recently, I am leaving the classroom. Passion is at a low ebb right now: I just want to get through the next month.

What keeps me going

What keeps me going is this: More time in the woods. No more saying that I can’t go hiking or hunting or fishing because I have papers to grade.

So as a teacher of (among other things) nature-writing, I would like my students to know that at least some of the time you need to be in your “Pleistocene body,” walking, moving, looking, listening.

And when you do write–anything–all the clichés are true:

“Once you pass your twentieth birthday, technique counts for more than inspiration.” (And if you are in rhetoric class, it counts more before you are 20.)

“Books are our grandparents (thanks to Gary Snyder for that one).

“Writing is thinking.”

“Use an action verb.”

And my favorite: “The first million words are just for practice.”

Now that I have stumbled through that (I suck at profundity), I tag Cat Chapin-Bishop, Gus diZerega, Macha, Anne Hill , and Mary Scriver.

Gaulimaufry to Fill Space 2

Still too busy to write the really startling post that’s in my head. So here some more links.

¶ “White folks Was Wild Once Too” — The video, in case you missed it.

¶ You thought that Lord of the Rings was about a Quest? Actually, it illuminates questions of property law as well.

¶ The Druidbook blog discusses homegrown American polytheism. I like this approach.

¶ You could call these people a sort of priesthood of the dead.

¶ An online petition for a European Pagan Memory Day. Interesting idea, but do online petitions ever accomplish anything? And do signatures of people not living in Europe help or hurt?

¶ Watch this, and you will never think of Bollywood music videos in the same way again.

¶ Contrary to what you probably have read, the Thuggees of early 19th-century India may not have been Kali worshippers at all.

¶ A definitive list of fluffy and non-fluffy Paganisms? It’s a wiki, so you can jump into the discussion. UPDATE: Comment on the list here.

Gallimaufry to Fill Space

Back from a week on the road to a full inbox and a desk covered with bills to pay, I offer a few links for your kind attention:

¶ Attention Kemetic reconstructionists: Don’t let your temple-builders become anemic.

¶ A list of things that offend Muslims. Anyone want to try the Pagan equivalent? I think it would be a lot shorter. Piggy banks and Easter eggs don’t bother me. Can you imagine Pagans rioting in the streets over the crappy remake of The Wicker Man and giving director Neil LaBute the Theo Van Gogh treatment? I can’t either. We prefer to just make fun of it.

¶ This will go onto my must-see list: Jason Pitzl-Waters notes an upcoming movie about the philosopher Hypatia. An uncompromising Neoplatonist, from what I understand, she was murdered by a Christian mob after some bishop put out a fatwa against her.