"And it came to pass that the God of heaven looked upon the residue of the people, and he wept; and Enoch bore record of it, saying: How is it that the heavens weep, and shed forth their tears as the rain upon the mountains? And Enoch said unto the Lord: How is it that thou canst weep, seeing thou art holy, and from all eternity to all eternity?... The Lord said unto Enoch: Behold these thy brethren..." Moses 7:28-29,32

No words exist to describe the events of December 14, 2012 only tears; God's tears mingled with ours

 

“The beginning of love is to let those we love be perfectly themselves, and not to twist them to fit our own image. Otherwise we love only the reflection of ourselves we find in them.” Thomas Merton.

The time has come for a new and personal post. My mind seems to have spent much of the past 6 months blanketed in a haze of uncertainty and indecision. Combine that with the added influence of family conflict and health issues and I guess it would be fair to say I have been mentally and emotionally hibernating. But lying dormant has been this wellspring of curiosity about a fairly common and mysterious virtue: love. Recently, I have been perusing older journal entries and even blog posts and a type of self designed motif suddenly struck me when I came across the quote above.
The unvarnished truth is I am a quantifiable disaster at loving people the way they are in such an open an accepting manner. I like boundaries and rules and mutual respect. The older I get the the clearer it becomes that this is a child's fantasy I have yet to exorcise. And yet I struggle to accept the notion that in order to truly love others we imply an acceptance of how they may treat us no matter how injurious and disrespectful. When one opens one's self up to others  and becomes subject to their whims and capriciousness how far must one go to exemplify love and kindness? At what point does charity for others become more important than respect for self? How does one both love with total acceptance and maintain a sense of value for one's own needs? I will let you know if I ever find the answer....

The Philosophy of the Groundhog...

           What gives life meaning? What makes an individual life meaningful? What is the Good life? How should we treat others? Do we have any control over our own lives or is everything predetermined? What part does time play in all of this? What if there was no tomorrow? All of these are questions which are addressed in some form by director Harold Ramis’ 1993 comedy Groundhog Day.

6:00 am on February 2 comes early and often for weatherman Phil Connors. Sent to Punxsutawney Pennsylvania to report for the 4^th year in a row on what is the country’s oldest Groundhog Day celebration, cynical and snide Phil, played by Bill Murray is surly and unpleasant towards his cameraman, Larry (Chris Elliot),  producer, Rita (Andie MacDowell) and pretty much everyone he comes in contact with. He is constantly acerbic and insincere in his weather reporting as well as his social interactions. Phil is a man who doesn’t like people, telling Rita and Larry on their drive to Punxsutawney, that “People are morons.” After reporting half-heartedly on the Groundhog Day ceremony Phil is desperate to get back to Pittsburg immediately but Mother Nature has other plans. They get caught in an oncoming blizzard that Phil ironically predicted would miss the area altogether and are forced back to Punxsutawney. It is the next morning when Phil wakes up to the same song playing on the radio, I Got You Babe, that he senses something is not quite right. With a sense of déjà vu, asking the owner of the B&B “Do you ever have déjà vu, Mrs. Lancaster?”Phil goes throughout the first day recognizing a sense of familiarity with even the most mundane events. But Phil is the only one aware of this and is clearly the focus of this phenomenon. At the end of each day Phil heads back to his room ad wakes up the next morning at 6:00 am to the same song playing on the radio. While any concept of time progressing is nullified by the repetition of the day there is a clear progression in Phil’s behavior as he begins to rack up the February 2s.  Having been a man who saw himself as in his way to bigger things there is an irony in the fact that he is now caught in this pattern of waking up stuck in the same place. A place he is desperate to escape; or at least he is desperate initially. 

As he accrues Groundhog Days the obviously self-imposed alienated Phil reminds us of the groundhog celebration itself and we are the spectators wondering if he will come out of the hole and see his shadow. It is awkward to watch such a self-satisfied person turn to others to find a solution to his problem. First he sees a medical doctor and then a psychologist to try and understand this sense of helplessness in the face of an unexplained and unyielding time loop. What is the point? And why this day? Exasperated by the inability to find answers Phil looks for solace in the working man’s therapy, drinking at the local bowling alley where he inquires of his fellow patrons “What would you do if you were stuck in one place and every day was exactly the same? And nothing that you did mattered?” Is Phil talking about his current circumstance or his life as a whole? We get the idea that Phil’s dilemma is a more universal struggle when one of the men at the bar responds “That about sums it up for me.” When Phil decides these drinking buddies are too drunk to drive themselves home he is inspired to take the first step in his philosophical journey when he asks them what would they do if there was no tomorrow and they point out that if there is no tomorrow there are no consequences and so they would do whatever they felt inclined to do. This strikes a chord with Phil and so begins his life of hedonism. He continues to pay little attention to the feelings and experiences of those around him and decides to throw caution to the wind. When Rita sees him chain smoking and eating a gluttonous meal she asks him why he does not care about his health and quality of life and he responds “I don’t worry about anything, anymore” as he stuffs pastry into his mouth. Rita is disgusted and sums up the state of Phil’s character with a line from a Sir Walter Scott poem:

"The wretch, concentred all in self,
Living, shall forfeit fair renown,
And, doubly dying, shall go down
To the vile dust, from whence he sprung,
Unwept, unhonoured, and unsung"

Phil is a selfish self-centered person who will ultimately live and die alone. 

As the Groundhog Days continue to accrue we have no real sense of how much time conceptually has passed but Phil has become familiar with the people and events of the town and the notion of living a life led by impulse and  satiating desires begins to lose its shine. This is when he focuses his attention on Rita. And yet he is still looking to gain something for himself without really looking to himself for the solution to the problem at hand. He pursues Rita by adapting himself to the type of man she would be attracted to a standard he learns by repeating his interactions with her and extracting more information each time. His purpose becomes wooing her by proving he is a man who meets her criteria. But it is all flash and no substance. As the days continue to repeat themselves Phil finds no real happiness in this façade as he wakes up the next morning to the dreaded tune of I Got You Babe and either the night before had ended with a slap in the face or with Rita gone from his room. It seems in the disingenuousness of his existence has become mechanical even while pursuing something that could ultimately contribute to his happiness, like a meaningful relationship with Rita. Up to this point in Phil’s journey to discover some redeeming kind of meaning and happiness in the mechanical monotony of everyday life he has managed to accomplish the things that fail to do so.

When he wakes up again on February 2^nd at 6:00am after all his hedonistic efforts Phil has moved on to the fatalistic attempts to end this repetitive existence. As Rita and Larry watch in disbelief Phil describes the town festivities for the camera in this way:

This is pitiful. 1,000 people freezing their butts off waiting to worship a rat. What a hype! Groundhog Day used to mean something in this town. They used to pull the hog out and they used to eat it. Your hypocrites, all of you! ...You want a prediction about the weather? You’re asking the wrong Phil I’ll give you a winter prediction. It’s gonna be cold. It’s gonna be gray. And it’s going to last you for the rest of your life.

And the very next scene is a montage of Phil waking up and smashing the clock radio to the sound of Sonny Cher. And his next news report perfectly reflects Phil’s larger existential problem “there is no way this winter is ever going to end as long as this groundhog keeps seeing his shadow. He has to be stopped and I have to stop him”; meaning he cannot take this life anymore and the only solution is to end it all. When Phil’s attempts at ending his life through a variety a ways i.e. driving off a cliff with the groundhog at the wheel, diving off a building, walking into oncoming traffic, and getting into the bath with a toaster he is forced out of this philosophy of ending his existence as the focus of his existence. We get to see the toll Phil’s journey of self-discovery takes on Larry and more frequently Rita in moments shown on-screen by the reactions they have to his behaviors. But the next day it is all fresh. Nothing has happened yet. But not for Phil.

            It is finally when Phil acknowledges the value in learning and improving himself by taking piano lessons, ice sculpting lessons, avid reading, and learning about the people around him in a more sincere and selfless. When he tells Rita that he has killed himself so many times that he doesn’t even exist anymore she tells him that having all this time on his hands could actually be a good thing, how much he could accomplish with “eternity”. Even after he begins to develop a real connection with Rita, it is not until he focuses on developing himself and then using those skills and talents to improve the community i.e. saving an ungrateful kid when he falls from a tree, changing the tire on a car full of elderly women, saving the mayor from choking, and doing all in his power to keep the old homeless man he ignored at the beginning of the film from dying. It is only after Phil takes an active role in his life as well as the life of others that he seems to enjoy life, as repetitive as it is, having made real connections with people and placed a value on his relationships. This is when he finally wakes up the next day with Rita by his side.

            Since this movie came out in 1993 it has been one of my favorites. It is a masterful film that forces us to take a look out the most basic philosophical issues of how to be happy and what makes life worth living in a comedic and almost imperceptible way. The theme of the groundhog seeing his shadow, a signal of 6 more weeks of winter, is parallel to that of our desperate need for Phil to come out of his hole of self-absorption and see that spring is on its way , that there is meaning and happiness to be found in living; and we get that glimpse when in his last Groundhog Day report on scene the once gloomy pessimist states,” When Chekhov saw the long winter he saw a winter bleak and dark and bereft of hope. Yet we know that winter is just another step in the cycle of life. But standing here among the people of Punxsutawney and basking in the warmth of their hearths and hearts I couldn’t imagine a better fate than a long and lustrous winter.” This Phil has finally discovered what it is to truly live.

“You don't get heaven or hell. Do you know the only reward you get for being batman? You get to be Batman.” - Neil Gaiman

I've been in love with Batman most of my life. It's true. If you ask my sisters what the best way to push my buttons was when I was little they would tell you about how they used to delight in tormenting me with their rendition of the theme song to the original Batman tv show with Adam West. It went something like this: nana nana nana nana nana nana nana nana Matman and Bobin. It drove me beserko. Did they not understand my love for the caped crusader and a young girl's delight at seeing a strong female character as a superhero in the development of Barbara Gordon as Batgirl? Of course they didn't care about any of that! As teenage sisters their focus was on holding me down as they cracked the knuckles in my toes and tortured me with the mockery of their ridiculous "Matman and Bobin" theme song. It was the thought that motorcycle riding girls could fight crime and have a PhD in Library Science that helped me overlook the campy condescending spin the original television show put on the world of Bruce Wayne and his alter ego.  But I always loved the characterization of this flawed human man who used his money to battle the Jokers and the Riddlers of the world. Not  to mention tangling with the awesome Catwoman! Yet it wasn't until I started swallowing whole the tales of Bruce Wayne and the Caped Crusader from the mind of true geniuses like Frank Miller and Jeph Loeb that my heart was fully conquered. Batman/Bruce Wayne became this brilliantly flawed archetype  damaged by the violent loss of his parents as a child and determined to save the soul of his city, perhaps attempting to save his own at the same time. He is a man who lives according to his own rules and will not be ruled by the whims of others. One of my favorite scenes in any Batman arc is the fight that occurs between Batman and Superman in Frank Miller's classic The Dark Knight Returns. The scenes are told and drawn to depict raw emotion : anger, frustration, exhaustion. And for a human vs. alien battle Batman's intellect and skills manage to hold their own.
        And then there is the mastermind that is Christopher Nolan. Can there be any other Batman story arc before or after his trilogy is complete? The rise and "fall" of a legend has never been more powerfully crafted into entertainment. I would defy George Lucas to tell such a compelling and powerful story in 3 films and then calling it a day. If Christopher Nolan is smart, and I think the evidence speaks for itself, he will leave his version of Gotham City as is at the end of this last film and give us the gift of seeing this Batman universe untainted by the Lucas effect.  I have no doubt there will continue to be Batman movies but I hope DC and Warner have the good sense to shift the story and character of Batman in a way that is true to his inherently universal humanness. 

The Art of Seclusion

Vincen Van Gogh Bride in the Rain 1887

The Art of Seclusion: How the Age of Edo Came to Shape Western Art

            Throughout history the production of art has been a means by which history can be understood. The arts often reflect the very evolution of the social and political developments of any historical period as well as being shaped by those very events; one might wonder why the metamorphosis of art isn’t more readily used as a biography of the modern world particularly in regards to the impact of major world cultures coming into contact with one another on the world stage. Such is the case with the development of art in the Edo Period of Japan, with its long period of seclusion, and its impact on the trajectory of the art movement not only in Japan but also in the Western world once contact was re-established in the mid-nineteenth century

By the late sixteenth century the ruling Ashikaga shogunate in Japan was losing its political dominance. As the shogunate crumbled various daimyos and their samurai battled to fill the growing power vacuum left by the weakened Ashikaga rule. Civil war ensued, destabilizing Japan’s advancements in economic and social arenas and returning it to a collection of independent feudal states battling for dominance During this period, Oda Nobunaga , Toyotomi Hideyoshi, and then Tokugawa Ieyasu  began to consolidate power over the various feudal states of Japan including areas left untouched by Ashikaga authority (Murphey, 273).. While Nobunaga and then Hideyoshi begin the drive to expand and centralize power it is Tokugawa Ieyasu who defeats and unifies the numerous “rival factions” by the beginning of the 17^th. Ieyasu then moves the capital form the Ashikaga Kyoto to Edo, what is now Tokyo, ushering in the Edo (Tokugawa) period (Arima, Medieval Culture). Yet however victorious Tokugawa had been in defeating his rivals there was a deep-seated concern about revolt, it was for this purpose a new form of political control was implemented by means of land distribution. As Arima describes it:

Domains were allotted according to whether the Daimyos had supported Ieyasu before his final victory in1600. Those who had supported Ieyasu from the start (fudai) were allowed to serve in the government; those who had surrendered only in the final battle (tozama) were excluded.To try to preempt any revolution a system of control of the samurai families was instituted.Strict rules of conduct, rules governing marriage and construction of castles were also in place. The Daimyos were also often shifted from one domain to another. (Arima, Merchant Culture)

 Reinforcing this rigid social structure was the “alternate attendance system” known as Sankin Kotai which demanded the daimyos alternate annually between a residence in Edo and their own homeland with the stipulation that the families, particularly their wives and heirs, were to remain in Edo permanently. With the expenses that would accrue in travel and living arrangements for the daimyos as well as the overhanging hostage like situation of their families there would be little political or financial resource to revolt against the shogunate. The result of the financial hardship on the feudal lords was their growing dependence on the merchant class for financing which would be achieved through loans or even arranged marriages (Murphey, 275).

The importance of Tokugawa Ieyasu on the development of a unified Japan cannot be overstated. Not only was he adept as a leader in battle, “Ieyasu was a shrewd and calculating politician who changed the social structure of Japan, enabling him and his heirs to control the various factions. He established a dynasty to ensure that the Tokugawa clan continued to rule long after his death. He also supervised early diplomatic relations with Europeans and passed an edict banning Christianity from Japanese shores” (Katsushika Hokusai, What Was Japan Like Then?). Tokugawa instituted a social order that would eventually give rise to an influential merchant class. The stabilization of the political structure would allow for the Japanese to flourish for the next two and a half centuries despite its rigid social order.

            While the blending of daimyos and wealthy merchant classes out of economic necessity and social ambition yielded a kind of cultural unification of Japan the Tokugawa shogunate became more leery of outside influences particularly that of Christian missionaries and foreign traders. Concerned with maintaining the peace and stability they had structured for their society, foreign influence became seen as a threat to the country’s unity and order. By 1638 not only had Christian missionaries been expelled as a state policy but so were all European traders. Western influence would be extremely limited in the Edo period. Yet during this time of seclusion Japan’s growth internally was impressive with increases in production and commerce creating greater wealth for the merchant classes who would then align themselves with cash poor feudal nobles. This accumulation of wealth allowed for the rise of a bourgeoisie and an urban life full of arts and entertainment for those with money (Murphey 277-278).

            While Tokugawa Japan was characterized by a feudal social rigidity its economic growth gave opportunity to the inferior classes in Edo society, the artisans and merchants. It was this increasing “middle class” that drove the cultural revival pursuing and playing off of old traditions to create a flourishing arts culture characterized by kabuki theater, Geisha, literature and poetry, and sumo wrestling (Katsushika Hokusai, The Edo Period). But it is important to remember that

In Japan's self-imposed isolation, traditions of the past were revived and refined, and ultimately parodied and transformed in the flourishing urban societies of Kyoto and Edo. Restricted trade with Chinese and Dutch merchants was permitted in Nagasaki, and it spurred development of Japanese porcelain and provided an opening for Ming literati culture to filter into artistic circles of Kyoto and, later, Edo.( The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Edo Period)

The artistic boom of the Edo period was a reworking of traditional arts along with the exposure to some external influence particularly by Chinese culture.

            As Murphey points out the culture of Edo is dominated by the wealthy middle class who have the money and time to engage in social amusements as well as supporting artistic endeavors. The “Floating World” culture, “an amusement quarter of theaters, restaurants, bathhouses, and geisha houses” become one of the favorite subjects represented in an increasingly popular art form: the woodblock print.(Murphey, 280) . “Ukiyo-e [i.e. woodblock] prints became the symbol of this new culture. With their strong linear forms, complemented by flat areas of colour and strange angles, ukiyo-e was some of the first massed produced art in the world, giving normal people the chance to appreciate what had been until then the domain of the rich and privilege”.( Katsushika Hokusai, The Edo Period) It is the popularity and distinctly Japanese development of this artistic form that will shape the evolution of Western and Modern art.

             Tokugawa rule brought about peace and prosperity and allowed for the production of an artistic golden age with the likes of woodblock printmaker Hokusai producing such masterpieces as the 36 Views of Mount Fuji. The greatest master of this technique, Hokusai, produced aesthetically pleasing prints with clean bold colors and simple lines. Although, Hokusai, died in 1849 prior to the opening of Japan to the West just a few years later, his artistry would make an indelible impression on both European and American artists (Murphey, 281).

Katsushika Hokusai  The Great Wave 1830-1833

            Just as Japan is responding to the show of force by Commodore Perry in 1853 by opening its doors to the Western world, “Western art was, by the 1850’s in the doldrums, unable to find a way forward” and it was just at this time that Japanese arts began to flood into Western Europe, where it was viewed as a whole new way of reflecting the world through a drastically different use of form and space (Checkland, 111). As Lemaire describes it, the introduction of Japanese style into the Western perspective caused a “profound change in the focus of aesthetic, with a taste for things Japanese dominating from the 1860s onward…Europeans marveled at the delicacy and sumptuousness of Japanese crafts and visual arts, and in particular Japanese prints” (Lemaire, 282). This adoration of the arts of Japan became more than just a fleeting interest in something new and exotic by Western imperialists, japonisme became an “artistic movement” that found a following by the likes of Manet, Monet, Van Gogh, Whistler, and Cassatt who each found in it a means by which to question the rigidity and complexity of form in Western art (Lemaire, 282). These artists in turn would revolutionize the development of art and the traditional form of aesthetic standards in their Impressionist, Post-Impressionist, and Expressionist movements.

            The history of the world is often written by the victors and as such we have often viewed the significance of the Western world over those they sought to dominate as the focus of study but as is evident in the rich history of Japanese art and society influence can be found beyond political boundaries when looked at through a cultural lens.

"Learning to trust is one of life's most difficult tasks" ~ Isaac Watts

Confession: I don't trust people, not completely anyway. When it comes right down to the indecorous truth I can count on one hand the people in my life I have trusted with the best and the worst of me. The sticky thing is that my ability to allow people past my very well designed iron gates of superficial interchanges has been hampered by the hostility and rejection offered by the world at large to a young girl who lived her life with her heart on her sleeve.

When you spend so much of your life recovering from the unkind even cruel responses to the essence of who you are the human psyche seems to develop an intangible type of portcullis to prevent the enemy from wandering in and laying waste to your inner sanctum.

Sitting on my friend's couch the other evening I blurted out a statement that  I now see as a fundamental road block in developing a healthy relationship pattern with many people I know and some I may not yet know: I don't trust "people". I don't trust them with who I am and what I really think and feel. I don't trust them with the broken bits and the brilliant bits because throughout my life it has frequently come with a heavy price when I have shared any aspect of the ephemeral things that make me "me". I don't trust them to care for me as I do for them and really don't trust them to treat my Jenielleness as something special and so I keep the gate lowered. Occasionally, I have attempted to raise the bars but it has rarely been to allow for ease of access to my world more often it was for the purposes of becoming a testing ground. It is as if my inner warden says "well, we will open ourselves up just enough to see if this person is willing to crawl  through this small space to see who we really are...and then perhaps we will put faith in their capacity to value our friendship."

Without the willingness and ability to trust I know that relationships can never progress and we lose out on rich and meaningful experiences. If I am forever living confined within my own world without allowing entrance to unfamiliar people and things I am a bit fearful that those gates may actually rust and I may lose the ability to open up to anyone. But putting one's whole self out on display for the world to see or even just for the people around us to see, to care about the happiness and comfort of those who don't reciprocate, and even worse trample thoughtlessly on those things that define who you are makes trust a dangerous thing. No, I do not trust most people fully. But I do trust the ones who know me and love me and most importantly I trust completely in  God who I know will help me be wise in who and how I trust.

"The greatest glory of a woman is to be least talked about by men."~ Pericles

       The study of civilizations, with their rise and fall in world history, can be done through the lens of many different schools of thought. The transition of Greece from its influential Classical period through the dominance of Macedonia and Alexander the Great and then spread of Greek culture throughout the Mediterranean yields a ripe field of study for the disciplines of military history, political history, and even art and cultural history. One field of study that has lagged behind is the history of women and their lives as the Greek civilization changed. While it is true the influence of the classical Greek culture has shaped the political and cultural development of the Western world it is in the age of Hellenism that the role women played in society became not just subject of literary drama but real life drama as well.  During the Hellenistic period the identity of “woman” could, for the first time, become more than what they had been relegated to previously, housewife or "hetaira" (Pomeroy 89).
       To understand how the status of Greek women may have shifted from the Classical period it is necessary to first address the lives of women in the center of Greek culture, Athens. Gomme describes the view of women during this period, thus: "...legally, socially, and in general estimation women occupied a low place in Athens in the fifth and fourth centuries.."(Gomme, 2). During this period Athenian culture had been influenced by its Ionian neighbors. As Katz explains,"...under the influence of neighboring peoples of Asia Minor, [Ionians] inaugurated the exclusion of women from the public sphere and their confinement to the home and to the company of female friends. The Athenians adopted the practice from their fellow Ionians...Prostitution...sprang up as the inevitable corollary to the seclusion of well-born women..."(Katz, 73). This seclusion of women to their homes became a way of dividing and subordinating the female population to either a possession of men as a wife to bear children and maintain their households or the possession of men as a “female companion”, or hetaira. The division of men and women into quite different spheres created a society where men had the freedom of engaging in the public space while women’s space became more limited and less significant. As Pomeroy points out “While men spent most of their day in public arenas such as the marketplace and the gymnasium, respectable women remained at home...residential quarters were dark, squalid, and unsanitary" (Pomeroy, 79).

          The few women who managed to claim the attention and respect of Athenian men were usually hetaira, “escorts” of not only remarkable beauty but talent and intelligence as well. Plutarch writes of one such woman, Aspasia. Consort to the great Athenian ruler Pericles, Plutarch characterizes her influence in this way:

… some say that Pericles resorted unto her, because she was a wise woman, and had great understanding in matters of state and government. For Socrates himself went to see her sometimes with his friends: and those that used her company also brought their wives with them many times to hear her talk ... And to Plato’s book entitled Menexenus … this story is written truly: that this Aspasia was repaired unto by divers of Athenians, to learn the art of rhetoric from her. (Plutarch, 161)

While women like Aspasia had great freedom to interact with a variety of Athenian men, and sometimes even their wives, and held great influence in her social circle this freedom was not one afforded to the Athenian housewife.
            The “free women” of Athens were restricted to an inner life, lived for the most part within the inner walls of their home to prevent them from coming into contact with men with whom they were not related (Pomeroy, 81). There was no liberal education and engagement in political and intellectual debate, like might have been seen in Aspasia’s world. For the wives of Athens seclusion became codified as a signifier of status. As Pomeroy explains

Women stayed home not only because their work did not allow them much chance to get out but because of the influence of public opinion. Many families were likely to own at least one female slave, but even a woman with slaves was tied down by the demands of her household....Wealthier women were most likely to stay home and send their slaves on errands. But poor women, lacking slaves, could not be kept in seclusion ... (Pomeroy, 79-80)

The poorer a female was the more range of freedom she had by sheer necessity to run her home and survive economically, though the only women with any economic independence in Athenian society were those who made their money through prostitution (Pomeroy, 91).

The irony of seclusion lies in its inverse relationship to the political structure of Athens during the fifth century BCE. Katz notes that it actually became a growing social norm “at just the time when democratic ideals of liberty were institutionalized....Athenian men now turned to the company of hetairas ("female companions") for the female intellectual stimulation [they could not find at home]" (Katz, 73). As men were establishing democratic principles and engaging in political and philosophical debates that would greatly influence the future of not just Athens but eventually the Western world their wives were often being pushed inside and out of public engagement. But political change in the mid fourth century will impact the lives of women in an unexpected way, with the development of what will be known as “Hellenistic queens”. These royal women would become major players in political battles and intrigues often becoming both perpetrator and victim.

            While Athenians were crafting more democratic government their Macedonian neighbors to the north were, “ hardly more than a geographical expression, ...The kings of Macedon sat on uneasy thrones, their hold on power and the unity of the kingdom itself repeatedly threatened by … invasions and the intervention of various Greek states on behalf of rival Macedonian dynasts” (www.historians.org).  It was under the leadership of Philip II from 359 to 336 BCE that Macedonian power consolidated and began to expand across Greece (www.historians.org). This shift in power brings with it a new type of power player to the political scene: the mother who would be Queen.

One such queen was Philip II’s wife and the mother of Alexander the Great, Olympias. When Philip II was assassinated at his daughter’s wedding in 336 BCE it was rumored that Olympias had been behind it. Because the assassin was captured and killed there is no way to know for certain. However, “... She does seem to have been responsible for killing Philip's last wife, Cleopatra and their newborn baby... “as means of insuring her son, Alexander’s succession to the throne as well as her own continued political security (Salisbury, 256). When Alexander sets out to defeat the Persians and expand Macedonian power in the Mediterranean in 338 BCE it is Olympias who “presided over the court in Macedonia” in direct competition with Alexander’s “viceroy”, Antipater (Pomeroy, 122).

In a similar vein, Philip II’s daughter and Alexander’s half-sister, Cynane had thoughts of who would succeed her half-brother, Alexander, upon his demise. Having been raised to understand the "art" of battle she taught her daughter, Eurydice, to seek power and they set their sights on a union for Eurydice with one of Alexander’s “weak-minded” half-brothers who would most likely be designated his successor.  While their marriage goal was attained Cynane was seen as a potential problem for her son-in-law and was killed by one of his general’s. Meanwhile, Olympias viewed Eurydice’s power play as a threat to her own security and eventually had both Eurydice and her husband executed. In an ironic, if not self-perpetuated twist, Olympias was also seen as a political threat by her opponent, Antipater’s son, and she too would be put to death. (Sergeant, 16-17).

These two examples are just a few in a long line of Macedonian royal women who battle for personal and political control, a unique development in a world where men had been the political players up to this point.  As Sanford illustrates in regards to the Hellenistic queens following the death of Alexander the Great, “Though they seldom ruled in their own right, they were often interested in dynastic affairs and in Egypt sometimes ruled jointly with their husbands...Greek women of the upper and middle classes naturally gained in freedom through the example of courts, and their opportunity for education increased. (Sanford, 308).

Some of this freedom was a result of the shift away from the city-state and local political power to the hegemony of Macedonian rule. As the identity of citizenship and polis were reshaped by the cosmopolitan underpinnings of the Hellenistic world the privilege gap between men and women also evolved.  Dillon and James explain this age, spanning from the rise of Macedonian power to the conquest of the Mediterranean by Rome, as period which gave rise to a new opportunity for Greek women with a burgeoning ability to obtain and use economic power:

A new phenomenon appeared in this period, namely the political and public prominence of specific elite women who exercised power in a number of ways ...These women need not have been royal and they perceived themselves as having a right to take an active role in the lives, politics, and even wars of their cities...Female public patronage began in this period, on many levels, from helping individual citizens to paying public debts to providing important public buildings. This pattern of female prominence and participation in public life appeared throughout this cosmopolitan period. (Dillon, 229).

The era of political transition of Greek city-state to Macedonian empire became a transition period for Greek women as well. While full gender equality would not be a result of this age of cosmopolitan attitudes the opportunity for women to hold power, political or economic. and to use it was a great step forward from the life of seclusion they were generally expected to live during the Classical period of Greece.

“A friend can tell you things you don't want to tell yourself” ― Frances Ward Weller

  The best laid plans of mice and men are often the source of great amusement and frequently come to naught. Yet where would we be without any plans or goals to push us forward? What is needed, then, is the willpower and determination to accomplish such things as we have set out for ourselves to do. For 3 years I have spent hours reading, studying, listening, discussing, and writing writing and then more writing of papers. I have had fairly rigid deadlines and conferences at which to present, tests to cram for, and lab hours to complete. All of this required an unyielding schedule of tasks which could then be easily noted as  completed successfully, unsuccessfully, or incomplete. Now that I have finished this stage of my education I have found myself lost in the fog emanating from the sweet release of educational pressures and anxieties. But thankfully I have wonderful family and loyal friends, one in particular, who have supported and encouraged me all along this odyssey of mine, and continue to do so. Thanks to some well timed and most certainly well deserved verbal kicks to my metaphorical behind by a caring and thoughtful person I am now ready to cut through the mental fog I have been lingering in as a result of the myriad of changes in my life and to push myself forward. Thank goodness for wise and brave friends. In light of this new phase in my life I think having some new goals or recommitting to past goals and then planning accordingly is the key to moving forward and being happy with who I am and where I am going. Could that direction change? Possibly. But moving forward is still moving no matter the direction you end up heading in. So I have decided that this summer, meaning the  months of July through September I am going to challenge myself by pursuing several quantifiable goals:

1. Attend the Manhattan LDS Temple at least once a month. I find my head and heart get "reset" and I can function better when I make the decision and then act on it to spend some time in holy space.
2. Read good books including the LDS canon and schedule regular goals for reading the standard works including the Bible.
3. Set up and then follow through with a consistent study schedule for the GRE. My test date is August 8, 2012.
4. Complete my graduate school applications
5. Return to healthy whole food eating habits including limiting my processed sugar intake and using my best investment, the Vitamix, to have healthy delicious snacks and meals.
6. And last but not least......

That's right. I have invested in a new pair of running shoes and will return to focusing on taking better care of what God has given me by pushing myself to increase my running ability and physical activity in general

Now that I have written this all out in a public space what choice do I have but to get going? Stay tuned for regular updates...

"I am in a room I've built myself. Four straight walls, one floor, one ceiling and day after day I wake up feeling potentially lovely. Perpetually human. Suspended and open....Open up your eyes and then..." ~ Regina Spektor

I'm having a dilemma. I am stuck and moving forward all at once. Words have failed me as of late and I have failed to use words as my normal means of therapy and self-analysis. The day I long awaited and dreaded has come and passed and it was was glorious and terrifying. And now this college graduate has stepped into the unstructured vastly uncertain unknown. There are plans to be made and new goals to work towards. Onward ho! Chicago or bust ?!  I have returned to  living life at the speed of an 85 year old without having lived 85 years worth of life and I look down to see my feet are stuck in dense dark mud. I know that God has a plan for my next stage but I am striving to accept what limited insight I have received into what my direction should be. There exists an underlying tension between what I want in the short term and what I want truly madly deeply in the long term and its a mighty struggle to not pull my feet out of this sludge and run in the other direction. On paper everything seems perfect, but in my heart and in my ponderings on the things of a spiritual nature there is a significant difference between what I want to do next and what God has planned for me. So the question is: how do I embrace with enthusiasm what I have had little excitement or interest in doing up to this point, even though I know it is what I need to do, must do, and will do?

Living in Coldplay's Paradise

When she was just a girl

She expected the world

But it flew away from her reach

So she ran away in her sleep

Dreamed of para- para- paradise                                                 

Para- para- paradise

Para- para- paradise

Every time she closed her eyes

Whoa-oh-oh oh-oooh oh-oh-oh

When she was just a girl

She expected the world

But it flew away from her reach

And the bullets catch in her teeth

Life goes on

It gets so heavy

The wheel breaks the butterfly

Every tear, a waterfall

In the night, the stormy night

She closed her eyes                                                                        

In the night, the stormy night

Away she'd fly.

And dreamed of para- para- paradise

Para- para- paradise

Para- para- paradise

Whoa-oh-oh oh-oooh oh-oh-oh

She dreamed of para- para- paradise

Para- para- paradise

Para- para- paradise

Whoa-oh-oh oh-oooh oh-oh-oh.

La la la La

La la la                                                                                    

So lying underneath those stormy skies.

She said oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh.

I know the sun must set to rise.

This could be para- para- paradise

Para- para- paradise

This could be para- para- paradise

Whoa-oh-oh oh-oooh oh-oh-oh.

"Mother's love is peace. It need not be acquired, it need not be deserved. " Erich Fromm

A letter to my mother on Mother's Day    

     There are some things no child born into this world should ever be without; access to food, water, shelter often come to mind as the necessities of life, but there is another element fundamental to the development of this precious life, a mother's love. There are a million ways to feel this phenomenon in a human life. It can be biological, yet biology is not requisite, and tragically is not  provided in every child's life. It can also be situational in which mothering and a mother's love is given and experienced in  close-knit friendship. Or it can even be biologically situational in which the heart of a mother can be endowed to someone whom has a deep connection to the recipient of such devotion. For me, I have had the blessing to experience the love and support of a variety of "mothers" in my life and I am forever grateful for that for they have been the moons reflecting the brilliance and power of the sunlight of my own dear mother's love

Mom,

It is just now as I have acknowledged my adulthood that I truly understand how much of who I am I owe to you (and dad...but he already has a blog post dedicated to him...this one's for you.) Your example has taught and guided me my whole life, whether I was aware of it or not. In a few weeks I will finally have accomplished a lifelong goal of graduating from college.  It is because of your brave example I often found the strength to carry on through the depths of emotional and physical exhaustion; to pick myself up and keep moving forward despite any seemingly insurmountable misstep. I constantly think to myself  "how could I dare give up when my mother did this same thing but had 5 kids and a job?" I often think back on the many sacrifices you made and the millions of times you could have given up on such a stubborn kid like me and didn't. I was the world's WORST newspaper deliverer ( and that is no hyberbole!), a bookworm, an introvert, a hippy who wrote all over my new jeans with permanent marker,  a runaway, a dropout,a liar,  a lost soul, and you loved me through all of it. I never told you the hurts I got at school. How hard life as a teenager was for me. But you helped me through the riptide of adolescence by getting up at 5:30 am every morning for 2 years and taking me to early morning seminary classes. My senior year of high school you were my best friend who fell asleep on the couch watching Silence of the Lambs  on a Friday night. You taught me the value of kindness to those who carry heavy burdens and that the best friendships are based on laughter and kindred hearts.

Mom, I have learned to laugh so hard I cry, especially at myself, because you are silly and fun and always making me laugh. Your smile is my smile. Your eyes are my eyes. And when people say to me "you look just like your mother"  it makes me smile because you are the most beautiful woman I know. You have cradled, cajoled, and clapped. You have hugged, hailed, and harangued. You gave me life and then have done everything you knew how to help me make the most out of it. And most importantly you have loved me. No matter what.

Love you mama.....Happy Mother's Day!   

None knows the weight of another's burden. ~George Herbert

New year. New me. Or so I hope. In reviewing my journals and postings over the past year I attempt to do so with they eye of a most critical reader. A reader who may be yearning to know how this story ends, but is more concerned with if our heroine's growth as a character has been significant or just a meandering thought. And each time I study my life over the past year I see all the little successes and giant failures through the lens of perspective and discover that, however infinitesimal it may seem, I have moved forward and come just that much closer to being the person I have set as my standard of expectation. Another observation I have found myself making is how little we often see beneath the surface of the lives of those we insist we value. Sometimes in the hesitancy to pry we can avoid the meaningful questions that allow us to erode away at the sediment of superficiality and gain the gem of deeper knowledge of the struggles of another. I have lived a lifetime of making this mistake as well as the mistake of sharing thoughts and feelings that would best have been kept someplace safe and warm. But I look forward with  better understanding of myself and a desire to better understand and truly see others as fellow travelers also striving to move forward despite the struggles and challenges life may bring to us. I may not be aware of the burdens a friend may be carrying and vice versa, yet I am hopeful that the me of 2012 will be ever mindful that we are in a constant state of forgiveness, both giving and receiving.

"Some stories don't have a clear beginning, middle and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what's going to happen next. Delicious ambiguity." Gilda Radner

2012 has just begun and with the newborn year I look forward to a grand adventure. The last half year was a sextet of ambiguity and prevarication; for me 2012 is a lynch-pin year. With graduation at long last approaching I have struggled with the weight of choosing which direction my journey should head upon completion of what has proven to be not so much a Herculean task but rather a type of 10 year Odysseus-like journey. Paralysis can and has often flooded my brain and heart when contemplating my possibilities. I love New York. It has been my home for 36 years. It has provided me with the most challenging and growth inducing experiences of my life. Equal to that, New York has provided me with a family of dear friends who have enriched my life immeasurably when my immediate family all moved away. It is in New York I have discovered myself and learned to value who I am with all my flaws despite the pain of external rejection and constant change. I have become a person who loves openly and values good company, who embraces and delights in differences of cultural and ideological beliefs. I have committed to my own religious beliefs more deeply while living in New York. In acknowledging all of these wonderful gifts it is little wonder I have been emotionally and psychologically stymied. But the time has come for me to move forward and in order to do so decisions inevitably must be made. And it was just recently that a sense of confidence to do so has crept into my mind and the notion  of how I am to know what it is that will provide me the most growth and happiness on the next stage of my journey........