It’s the usual practice for bloggers and independent scholars to pick a favorite topic, whether it’s World War II history or butterflies or anime or prog rock, and circle around it for a lifetime. It’s a time-tested method for gaining expertise, creating blogs, and joining a community.
My way is that of Odysseus resisting the Sirens.
I hear them but not for long. The ship keeps moving, Different Sirens, different songs.
For the past nine years, I’ve been following the bulk of the Open Yale Courses curriculum, one or two courses at a time. (Read: My Yale Years.) These courses provided a starting point, and local libraries allowed me to follow through with additional reading and research.
But the most important part of the project was the knowledge that each course would end. The awareness that upon finishing the lectures for one course, a new course would soon follow.
In 2014, I completed courses on The Hebrew Bible and Cervantes’ Don Quixote. These were my first choices in the Open Yale Courses curriculum — the first, because it’s my heritage; and the second because I hadn’t yet read Don Quixote in full despite my familiarity with Cervantes’ talking-dog short stories.
Just days after starting the lectures for The Hebrew Bible taught by Professor Christine Hayes, one of her students invited me to a Talmud study group. (Read: Cautionary tales.) I might have stopped the whole Yale project right there.
Siren, Siren, love that song. Sorry, Siren, moving on.
Next up for 2015 were African American History, Ancient Greek History, and The New Testament. The first, banned in schools; the second, defunded on campus; and the third, missing from the usual reading list for someone of my background. People spend lifetimes in these fields, and nobody would expect me to give them more than a glance.
This is precisely where education has its greatest potential value, offering perspectives beyond our inborn views.
You can orbit yourself for a lifetime. I’m off the ecliptic. Askew to the new.
I still carry the old songs with me. That very same year, I learned how to read from the Torah and reenacted my bar-mitzvah. (I’ll spare you that story for now.) I also had the idea of writing a book based on my unconventional reading of Don Quixote (saving that for last) and on the lost adventures of the Greek anti-hero Testocles (throwing that one back in the water).
Old songs, new rhythms.
This blog started one month ago. It’s still evolving.
And that’s where I met up with my friend Beverly Aarons, creator of Artists Up Close, for one of our expansive chats about writing, art, technology, and the world around us. Beverly knows that I’m a big fan of the talking-dog genre and so directed my attention to The Trojan Women: A Comic, illustrated by Rosanna Bruno with text by Anne Carson.
In this graphic novel, the Trojan Women of the title are dogs and cows, Poseidon is a giant wave, Athene is an owl mask plus an empty pair of overalls (“Warhartt”), and Talthybius is a giant crow. There are surprises on every page, deft movements from comedy to tragedy, and an essential faithfulness to the spirit of the source material.
And talking dogs, plenty of talking dogs.
Over seven years after a deep dive into Ancient Greek History, this is exactly how I want to imbibe the classics.
Between 2012 and 2014, I took about a dozen drawing classes at Gage Academy of Art, culminating in a trio — Pen & Ink, Composition, and Beginning Color Theory — with Margaret Davidson. Best art teacher I ever had.
At the start of class, we’d put our latest work up on the corkboard and take turns sharing what we did, what we liked about our work, and what we might have done differently. A reflective, guided self-critique rather than the piñata approach, in which you hang up your piece and let people take blind swings at it.
Margaret Davidson stopped teaching at Gage. The traffic between Skagit County and Capitol Hill was getting to be too much. Completely understandable. Even the traffic within Seattle between Queen Anne and Capitol Hill was too much.
I tried a painting class in early 2015, but then stopped going to Gage until it went virtual with the pandemic.
For much of that year, I had an art desk at home: Pencils, brushes, pens, color pencils, pen-and-ink paraphernalia, pastels, calligraphy brushes, sharpeners, erasers, cutting boards, tapes, glue, charcoal, rags, chamois, blades, a triangle, a protractor, art instruction books, a wide selection of paper, and a plaster cast of a foot.
But without the structure of a class, I didn’t keep up the pace. I did The Honeymoon Album, a bunch of self-portraits, and a few other odds and ends, including this map:
Ivan Schneider. “Greek-Italian Dragon-Map” (2015).
What I like about it: There’s a twisty, dragon-like quality to the land masses on the right, with Crete as the dragon’s mouth and the Adriatic and Western Black Sea coastlines as the dragon’s flanks. Perhaps that makes Italy the dragon’s claw. Sicily is Sicily.
What I might have done differently: Seems unfinished. Too much contrast between the heavily worked areas with dark colors and the lightly cross-hatched areas with light colors.
Margaret Davidson would suggest doing a series of ten when starting out with an idea. That’s what it takes to figure out what you’re doing and where you can take it. And if you’re still interested by the time you get to ten, you’ll be ready to keep going.
Anyway, here are six self-portraits in color pencil.
Bust of tragic poet Aeschylus in Athens, Greece (Adobe Stock)
Robert Greene’s Laws of Power came out the same year I got an MBA. It was in the zeitgeist, and since then it’s become one of the most requested books in prison.
When I read Laws of Power, I began to recognize how its adherents shape our world. For example, LAW 6: COURT ATTENTION AT ALL COSTS. Need I say more?
When you encounter a Machiavellian framework such as this, you have a choice:
Accept: Learn the laws and play to win.
Reject: Follow your own principles and hope for the best.
And if you don’t like either choice, there’s yet another way.
Deconstruct: Learn how frameworks are made.
To make your own framework, all you need to do is cast a wide net throughout history to find interesting stories and then extract from them pithy lessons aimed at modern sensibilities.
With that in mind, let’s see what we can learn from the Oresteia, Aeschylus’ tragic trilogy of the fates of Agamemnon and his family after the Trojan War.
The Oresteian Rules
RULE 1: JUDGE IMPARTIALLY.
In the myth of the Judgment of Paris, Paris of Troy was asked to judge the fairest of three divine contestants. Each contestant offered a bribe. Paris might have chosen Hera’s diplomacy or Athena’s military power, but he chooses Aphrodite’s gift of the most beautiful woman. Maybe Aphrodite was truthfully the fairest, but when Paris accepted Aphrodite’s gift, he incurred the wrath of the other two, Athena and Hera.
Paris was doomed no matter which bribe he took. Had he picked Athena’s military power, Troy would have been undefeatable but vulnerable to a diplomatic or romantic defeat; and had Paris picked Hera’s diplomacy, Troy would be vulnerable to military or romantic defeat.
By choosing between the three bribes, Paris abdicated his role as judge. He was no longer judging the fairest, but rather judging the quality of the bribes.
It may seem difficult to refuse bribes, but that’s exactly what a judge must do.
RULE 2: STAND BY YOUR BROTHER.
Accepting the gift of Aphrodite, Paris took Helen away from Menelaus, her husband, and brought her to Troy.
Menelaus turned for help to his brother, Agamemnon.
Had Agamemnon refused Menelaus, it would have risked a sibling battle to match that of the prior generation, in which King Atreus killed his own nephews and served them up in a meal (c.f. the “Frey pie” in Game of Thrones) to their father, his own brother, Thyestes. Agamemnon’s refusal would have also emboldened other nations to strike against the Achaeans (Greeks) without fear of retribution.
Agamemnon gave his assistance without limit. The Achaeans fought on faraway enemy turf without foreknowledge of Troy’s offensive or defensive capabilities. They risked their lives and left their families and estates behind to restore Menelaus’ house.
RULE 3: OBEY GODS WITHOUT QUESTION.
Agamemnon sacrificed his daughter Iphigenia to gain divine favor to win the Trojan War, placating the gods who would have kept the Achaean armies in check.
If you accept the existence of gods, you cannot question them, no matter what they ask of you.
No virgin, no peace.
RULE 4: PRUNE THE FAMILY TREE DECISIVELY.
As told in Aeschylus’ tragic play Agamemnon, Clytemnestra and Aegisthus take revenge upon Agamemnon for the sacrifice of Iphigenia. While Agamemnon was away, his wife Clytemnestra took a lover, the renegade Aegisthus, the only son of Thyestes that was not killed and cooked by King Uncle Atreus.
Agamemnon returns home from Troy and takes a ceremonial bath. Clytemnestra wraps him in a confining, heavy blanket of robes, and then, with the help of her lover Aegisthus, stabs him. The chorus wails.
The moral of the Iphigenia story is that if, on behalf of your brother, you’re going to kill your own daughter, you might as well go ahead and kill her mother too because there’s no coming back from something like that.
The moral of the Aegisthus story is that if your father kills all but one of your cousins, don’t be surprised if the sole surviving cousin comes around and stirs up trouble with your wife.
RULE 5: FATHERS OUTRANK MOTHERS.
In Aeschylus’ The Libation Bearers, the children of Agamemnon and Elektra take revenge against their surviving parent.
Grieving at Agamemnon’s tomb, his daughter Electra wishes for the return of her brother Orestes, who then steps forward and swears by Apollo to avenge Agamemnon. He enters his mother’s palace in disguise, claiming to have news of his own death. His mother’s lover Aegisthus is brought in to hear the news. Orestes first kills him, and then Clytemnestra, a matricide that summons the Furies. Orestes flees.
Did Orestes really have to kill Clytemnestra? Could he have cast aside Apollo’s warning and Electra’s exhortations? Could he have spared himself from the wrath of the Furies? Apparently not. Orestes had to pick a side. Along with his sister Elektra, he picked Dad’s side. Even though Dad killed Orestes’ sister Ginny on behalf of Uncle Menny and his Trojan War. He was a war hero, so he gets a pass retroactively.
RULE 6: IF YOU SEEK JUSTICE, GO VENUE SHOPPING.
In Aeschylus’ The Eumenides, Apollo helps Orestes to elude the Furies. Recall that Apollo had sanctioned the hit on Clytemnestra.
Orestes reaches the temple of the Athena, goddess of wisdom. Athena convenes a citizens’ court to try Orestes for the murder of his mother. It’s a tie vote. Athena breaks the tie in favor of Orestes.
The Furies protest and threaten to spread miseries among the people, but Athena placates them to wrap up the episode.
Why did Athena acquit Orestes and placate the Furies?
The answer is that Athena wasn’t an impartial judge. Paris chose Aphrodite over her, and Agamemnon sacked Troy with her blessing. In Athena’s wisdom, she was not ready to punish the Apollo-sanctioned killing of the murderer of a war hero.
RULE 7: DISREGARD RULES 2 THROUGH 6.
I didn’t write the rules … oh wait, yes I did.
So let’s say this instead – I didn’t write the stories that the rules are based on. I just wrote the rules extrapolating lessons from the stories.
The first rule came out fine, and the second isn’t objectively horrible until you grasp the implications, and then we get into some pretty dark places. Not at all what I had in mind.
If you want to change the rules, if you want better rules and fairer rules, if you want true justice, start with different stories.
“As there are no accounts of these events which are independent of Herodotus, a historical reconstruction, as opposed to a validation of all or part of Herodotus’ narrative, is impossible”
Figueira, “Herodotus on the Early Hostilities between Aegina and Athens,” The American Journal of Philology 106.1, Spring 1985, 49).
The famine in Epidaurus
The Epidaurians’ crops failed, and so they consulted the oracle of Delphi. The oracle answered that the Epidaurians must create images to goddesses Damia, of the earth, and Auxesia, of growth, and that these images were to be made of olive wood.
The Athenians possessed the best olive trees – or, some say, the only olive trees – and so Epidaurus asked Athens for permission to cut olive wood from the plains of Attica.
The Epidaurians received the Athenian olive wood and made the holy images. In return, the Epidaurians promised to render upon Athens yearly sacred dues to Athena, the city’s patron goddess, and to Erechtheus, the city’s mythic founder.
The oracle did not say: “Go beg for food from Athens.”
The oracle offered a magical solution, that carved images from an olive tree would end the drought. Instead of images of bronze or stone that Epidaurus could make on its own, the oracle prescribed olive wood that could only be found in Athens.
Athens took advantage of its monopoly by demanding an annuity rather than a one-time payment, as the annual tribute would bring neighboring Epidaurus closer to powerful Athens. In return, Epidaurus might have cause to ask Athens for help during any future famine.
If crops had continued to fail even with possession of the carved images, the Epidaurians would have said to the Athenians: “You say Athenian olive trees are holy, but your olive wood has failed us, and this is your fault.” The Athenians would have been honor-bound to support the Epidaurians, whose tribute was a form of insurance.
The olive-tree images served their purpose, and the crops returned.
What would have happened if the crops had failed again?
Perhaps Athens, after having received annual payments during the good years, would have been amenable to sharing its wealth during the bad years.
However, the moral force of the agreement would have weakened over time. The Athenians could claim that the images had already done their job by ending the first famine; and that the new crop failure was no longer their fault, but rather divine displeasure incurred by the Epidaurians on their own account. The Epidaurians would then have to enter into greater debt with the Athenians by purchasing more olive-wood in exchange for higher annual tributes. Or, Epidaurus could travel to Delphi for another expensive consultation.
Unless Epidaurus believed that it would receive good faith support from Athens during a future crop failure, the annual offerings would have become harder to justify.
How might the Epidaurians have broken the contract?
The Epidaurians couldn’t simply return the images to Athens. The arrangement was made under an oracular pronouncement. Any person that denied the religious significance of the oracle and of the efficacy of the images to Damia or Auxesia would be in serious jeopardy, even more so if the crops were to fail following their removal.
The politics of the contract were also important. Epidaurus would have to tread lightly with nearby Athens, their mighty maritime neighbor. In addition, a small state would hardly wish to put itself in direct opposition to the oracle. Delphi was a powerful enemy, and their pronouncements could be bought. One can easily imagine a future oracular pronouncement: “Destroy the Epidaurians.”
If Epidaurus had wanted to annul the contract, they would have had to find another way, one that respected the gods, one that saved face with Athens, and one that preserved the integrity of the oracle.
The raid of the Aeginetans
Aegina was a former colony of Epidaurus that built its own ships and then revolted. With ships, an island people no longer must subject themselves to the rule of farmers. With ships, an island people can embark on raiding and trading. With ships, an island people can take revenge.
The Aeginetans “ravaged Epidaurus, and even carried off these very images of Damia and Auxesia, which they set up in their own country, in the interior, at a place called Oea, about twenty furlongs [2.5 miles] from their city.”
It’s a suspicious theft. Perhaps by stealing the olive-wood holy images from the Epidaurians, the Aeginetans hoped to invoke another famine or spark conflict between Epidaurus and Athens. Or maybe it was a chance opportunity to steal a prize from their former masters.
But what if someone among the Epidaurians enticed the Aeginetans, or colluded with the Aeginetans, or made it easy for the Aeginetans? Placing the blame on the Aeginetans would be an ideal exit clause from their annual obligation to the Athenians.
In any event, the Aeginetans reinstalled the stolen images in their own sanctuary.
… they fixed a worship for the images, which consisted in part of sacrifices, in part of female satiric choruses; while at the same time they appointed certain men to furnish the choruses, ten for each goddess. These choruses did not abuse men, but only the women of the country. Holy orgies of a similar kind were in use also among the Epidaurians, and likewise another sort of holy orgies, whereof it is not lawful to speak.
Herodotus
Epidaurus stopped paying tribute to Athens, as they no longer had the olive-wood holy images.
Athens asked Aegina for the return of the olive-wood holy images, and Aegina refused, as they had no obligation to Athens.
But Athens wanted the olive-wood holy images returned to Epidaurus so that the tribute could resume. Plus, Athens had its reputation to consider.
The massacre at Aegina
Athens conducted a raid on Aegina, sending ships to retrieve the images by force. There’s no consensus on what happened during the raid, but only one man of Athens returned alive.
“It is, however, unlikely that the Athenians could have penetrated to the Damia/Auxesia sanctuary at Oie in the Mesogaia c. 490. It would have been imprudent for them to detach a large force (strong enough to annihilate a picked corps of 1000 Argive hoplites) while an Aiginetan fleet of 70 triremes might reappear. The interior of the island, in any case, is rough terrain for the most part, scarcely the place to fight a hoplite engagement.”
Thomas J. Figueira, Excursions in Epichoric History, 45.
Herodotus offers two accounts of the events that transpired.
In the first version, according to the sole Athenian survivor, Athens had sent a single trireme whose men tried to haul the images away.
“In the midst of their hauling suddenly there was a thunderclap, and with the thunderclap an earthquake; and the crew of the trireme were forthwith seized with madness, and, like enemies, began to kill one another; until at last there was but one left, who returned alone to [the Athenian port of] Phalerum.”
Herodotus
The second version, told by the Aeginetans and their Argive allies, held that Athens sent a large number of ships to Aegina. The Athenians came inland to fetch the images, and in dragging them, the two statues “fell down both upon their knees.” Meanwhile, the Argives and Aeginetans cut off the Athenians from their ships and attacked. At that moment, as with the other account, there was thunder and an earthquake.
Why would there be Argives in Aegina? Thomas Dunbabin suggests that Argos may have encouraged the Aeginian revolt to weaken, and then conquer, Epidaurus. In return for protection, Argos would have a friendly port and other advantages.
Yet there’s something missing in both accounts.
“Only in the Aiginetan version (albeit supported by the Argives) did a military conflict takes place. To the Athenians, their ship had come to grief mysteriously. Aiginetans and Athenians both agreed on a single survivor, but the motif of the single survivor might have played a different role in each of their reports to Herodotus.
[…]
“For the Athenians, the existence of the survivor provides a witness or guarantee that the Athenians did not suffer a military defeat. Neither Athenians nor Aiginetans bother to tell us how the survivor got back to Attica. The Aiginetan version ends with Athenian humiliation, while we have no Athenian report at all of an aftermath to the expedition.”
Figuera, Excursions in Epichoric History, 52
The surviving sailor
Herodotus says that the Athenian emissaries went to Aegina demanding the return of the images, and they are turned away.
Maybe so, but I think something else happened.
What if the Athenian emissaries had been offered a different form of recompense for their stolen olive wood?
“We are not farmers like the Epidaurians and can offer no tribute of that kind,” said the Aeginetans, “but would you care to participate in our ritual ceremonies?”
The details of these ceremonies – it’s not lawful to speak of it.
The Athenian emissaries get a taste. They return home. They spread the word to certain people. A group of likeminded Athenian citizens assemble to discuss.
“Satiric chorus, holy orgies. Who’s in?”
“This thing on Aegina, it’s got potential.”
“But what do we tell our wives?”
“And won’t they expect us to come back with the statues? How do we explain that?
They come up with a plan, to put on their armor, make a big show of protecting the honor of Athens, and then sail to Aegina for a few days of partying. They’ll come back empty-handed.
“Those sneaky Aeginetans must have hidden the holy images.”
“We’ll just have to try again next year, and the year after that.”
But it all went wrong. The satiric chorus and holy orgies, that was the bait. The Athenians took it and they paid with their lives, all but one. The sole survivor returned with the thunder-and-earthquake story, but that story didn’t hold together.
Plus, someone else in Athens knew about the expedition. And the women knew something strange was going on with their husbands. The wives of the dead Athenians were not satisfied with the lone sailor’s story.
Out came the brooch pins.
A brooch of the peace? Adobe Stock
Each of the widows, in turn, asked “Where’s my husband?” and then stabbed the sailor using the brooch pin holding up her tunic.
“Where’s my husband?” Brooch pin to the neck.
“Where’s my husband?” Brooch pin to the chest.
The sole survivor, brooch-pinned to death by a crowd of topless widows.
This is how this man met his end, and the Athenians found the action of their women to be more dreadful than their own misfortune. They could find, it is said, no other way to punish the women than changing their dress to the Ionian fashion. Until then the Athenian women had worn Dorian dress, which is very like the Corinthian. It was changed, therefore, to the linen tunic, so that they might have no brooch-pins to use.
The truth of the matter, however, is that this form of dress is not in its origin Ionian, but Carian, for in ancient times all women in Greece wore the costume now known as Dorian.
As for the Argives and Aeginetans, this was the reason of their passing a law in both their countries that brooch-pins should be made half as long as they used to be and that brooches should be the principal things offered by women in the shrines of these two goddesses.
The rich kids from good Athenian families clamored to the fights at the Cynosarges gymnasium, the best fighters in town, always a good show. If you hung around long enough, you’d pummel and grapple and bleed and laugh with the rest.
The good Athenian families were distressed to see their sons doggy-fighting with foreigners from Cynosarges, the dogs of Argos. “We take in these stray Argive dogs, and now they’re showing our noble children how to snarl and bark and eat their own shit,” they would say. “The kynos-orcheis [dog’s balls] should lick themselves, not our sons.”
But Neocles didn’t mind. He was proud of his son’s scars. Any family with a Neocles, neo-kleos for new glory, had no excess of old glory. Perhaps his son would make something of himself and the family.
“Why do they call you Testocles?” Neocles asked his son. “Why don’t you tell them that your name starts with a theta, not a tau?”
Testocles knew better than to protest a nickname. After the battles of Marathon and Salamis against the Persians, everyone would remember forever the name Themistocles. For now, Testocles.
Tamara Schneider. “It’s a dog eat dog world!” (2022)
Many a brave soul did [the anger of Achilles] send hurrying down to Hades, and many a hero did it yield a prey to dogs and vultures.
Two hundred years earlier, another Testocles was being beaten to near death by his fellow students.
The clever children had already memorized the Iliad to the catalogue of ships and beyond. Testocles hadn’t made it past the dogs and vultures of the second line.
His mother died in childbirth and his father had fallen in battle. Out of respect and pity, the elders in his deme allowed him to follow the other children in their lessons, even though he was dull beyond measure.
Testocles was not dull, only inattentive. While the other students watched the teacher draw triangles in the dirt, Testocles gazed at the skies as he invented a language of squawks and caws for the vultures circling the fields. As he listened to the epics, his eyes drifted to the streets as he imagined names and lineages for the dogs.
At last, he spoke up: “If the dogs and vultures eat the brave souls of Achaeans and Trojans, shouldn’t the Muse sing the epics of the dogs and vultures?”
At the behest of Xelus, the teacher of epic poetry, the clever children led by young Peisistratus beat Testocles savagely. He lay in the dirt, drooling bubbles of bloody snot.
Testocles squawked to summon an avenging phalanx of vultures. The vultures did not come.
Testocles whined to summon a rescuing file of dogs. The dogs, they came. Dogs of the line of Herganos of the Herganossians, strongest of the curs. Dogs of the Xipyonians from Xipynos, island of endless shade. The direct descendants of dogs who dined on the warriors killed by Achaean heroes such as Ajax and Achilles.
And the dogs told him: We will dine on your corpse and spray your name, Testocles, upon all the roots of the earth. But first you must perform great deeds.
The customary path to great deeds goes through battle, and you rarely had to wait long. Yet Testocles was no warrior. He was barely able to carry a shield. To spear enemies while also carrying a shield? Such physical feats were unthinkable. Homer or his descendants would never write his story of valor in battle. Nor would the poets write odes about his prowess on horseback. He would win no discus-throwing contest. His javelin would set no distance records.
The poets were as weak as he, so what about them? At every competition, the poets awarded each other prizes. Could he win one of their prizes? Could he find a troupe of actors to perform his play at the competitions? Or compose an ode whose lyrics would travel around the known world?
No, what they wanted to hear, he didn’t want to sing. What he wanted to sing, they didn’t want to hear.
Testocles had dark thoughts. If I cannot perform great deeds in the world of men, he reasoned, what of the world of dogs? What are great deeds to dogs? What are great deeds to vultures?
Carcasses, piles of carcasses. The lion kills and takes its share. The dogs rip into the carcasses left behind. The vultures pick at the organs and bones.
The men, they emulate lion-hearted Achilles and the resourceful Odysseus. The dogs and vultures, they praise Helen for what her beauty provoked in men. Absent the beauty of Helen, there would be no rage of Achilles, no Trojan war, no glorious death, no heaping carcasses left on the plains.
Just ten days after watching my first Open Yale Courses lecture, I was talking with Zachary after services and found out that he had studied with Professor Christine Hayes from the Introduction to the Hebrew Bible videos. He invited me to a weekly Talmud study group to talk about whether or not chicken parm is kosher. I didn’t go.
A few months later, after watching all the Hebrew Bible and Don Quixote lectures in parallel, I met Zachary for coffee. Following my independent research, I suggested a discussion about Don Quixote’s Jewish themes. He told me that reading the Quixote would be a hard sell for his study group.
Zachary then told me the story of one of his teachers who had become enamored of Dante’s Divine Comedy and overly enamored of Christianity. A cautionary tale of one who strayed.
But it was too late for me.
As a graduate student at Harvard Extension School, I had already become enamored of the reading list for a class in European Culture in the Middle Ages: Dante’s Inferno, Augustine’s Confessions, The Song of Roland, Bernard of Clairvaux, Boethius, Chrétien de Troyes, Gottfried von Strassburg, and Abelard and Heloise, for which I wrote a “shelf talker” for Mercer Street Books.
These works are a core part of the literary legacy of humanity, a foundation of the capital-H (for “Harvard”) Humanities and I’m supposed to stay away? Nope.
I read through the Christian shelf and kept going with Arabic fiction, Russian literature, Czech literature, and yes, one wonderful class on three modern Jewish writers — Isaac Babel, Bruno Schulz, and Franz Kafka.
It’s all good.
And isn’t it a good idea to learn about how other people think, especially when they may think bizarre and unusual things about you?
If not for a broad liberal education for the sake of the Humanities, how about Survival? Understanding? Peace?
One of Dad’s jokes: Abe and Jake walk by a church where there’s a sign on the door: “CONVERT AND WE’LL GIVE YOU $100” Jake goes inside, comes out 10 minutes later, Abe is waiting. Abe asks: “Did you get the $100?” Jake replies: “You Jews, all you care about is money.”
We Jewish scholars, is Jewish literature and culture all we care about?
The Book says that bad things happen to us when we worship foreign gods or embrace foreign cultures. Dire warnings noted.
But I’m already well on my way with the extended reading list, so if you don’t mind (and even if you do), I’ll keep going.
So I read a few books, what’s the worst that can happen?
I met Stevie on a Sunday summer afternoon outside the T at Kendall Square. She asked me for directions to the movie theater. Sure, I’m headed that way. We walk, we chat. Mind if I join you? We watch the movie, make a date, then another, then more. It was a hot summer, and my place had an air conditioner.
Stevie was ten years younger and out of my league according to the bouncer who looked at our IDs and then at her with an appraising eye and then at me with a quizzical eyebrow and a nod of grudging respect.
Her parents visited around Thanksgiving. We went on a luxury dinner cruise in the harbor. We were all on our best behavior. I was invited to Christmas with Stevie’s family in southern Louisiana.
We arrive to a house on stilts.
South of Route 10 you call your girlfriend’s parents by Mr. or Ms. and their first name, so it’s Mr. Roger and Ms. Ava.
Mr. Roger is a taxidermist. His work covers every wall in every room. European mounts with just the antler and skull. Shoulder mounts. Half-body mounts, with the hooves. Full-body mounts in the workshop: bear, deer, mountain lion, longhorn sheep, plenty of birds. I want to take pictures of everything. I don’t take pictures of anything. It didn’t feel right. Taking pictures would be admitting to myself the truth that I would never return.
A bucket of oysters is being fried up in the kitchen. College basketball game on television. Mr. Roger’s running color commentary: “Look at that N— go!” “Give the ball to that N—!” Hard R. I’m a long way from home. I keep my mouth shut.
Mr. Roger wonders about the ancestral provenance of my curly hair.
“Where’d you get that hair like a N—“ “Oh, she didn’t tell you?”
It’s starting to get uncomfortable.
That night, I ask Stevie to intercede on my behalf. It’s your house, but maybe dial it down while I’m here? It dials down.
Ms. Ava lays it out straight for me. I’m not who they had in mind for their daughter, but Stevie loves me, so that’s that. Ms. Ava is a believer, she’s seen signs.
Early in the morning, Mr. Roger takes me alone on his motorboat into the swamp. It’s another world out there. Swampworld. He’s a skilled guide and pilot. No incidents, no accidents. I return, skin, bones, and all.
I learn all about the business of taxidermy. Hunting on a private game preserve is expensive, and you need to pay up again for every animal you kill. If you bag one on the first day, chances are you’ll be out there the next day looking for something bigger. And after all that money changes hands, who’s got anything left for an expensive mount job? To make a sale you need to be there at just the right time, with just the right words, giving just the right feelings.
We tour the local plantation home. On the second floor, there’s a mid-19th-century map showing which families owned which lands. Mr. Roger’s family owned a plot. Guess who did all the work. The family sold the plot in the 1920s. A few years later, the new owners struck oil.
Christmas Eve dinner with the extended family. Grandma offers a prayer for the destruction of the sinners in New Orleans. We go to Midnight Mass. I’m introduced to the priest and a few other people, and I get the feeling that it’s a small town, no introductions necessary.
Back to church for the Sunday Mass. The priest delivers a sermon on how the Lord changed King David’s heart. I can’t help but ponder how the story relates to my presence in their midst as a member of a stubborn, stiff-necked people whose heart they would see changed.
We go for a Sunday drive. There’s a CD in the player, it’s “Amazing Grace.” Sure, I’ve heard this song before.
“Play it again, Daddy.”
Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound, the sound, the sound.
Sound Sound Sound.
Seven times.
Daddy played it seven times.
Seven times around Jericho, Jericho falls.
Seven times around Ivan, Ivan is Ivan.
For the second week of the trip, we get out of the swamp. We drive up to see Stevie’s friends in ArkLaTex. I learn how to say Natchitoches and Nacogdoches.
Back in Boston, she gets into tango. I’m not very good at it, a feeling I don’t like. It would take regular practice for me to get anywhere, and I don’t have the time for that. I had just started taking a class at Harvard Extension taught by the preeminent historian of the Qing dynasty, and I had papers to write.
I got an “A.”
She moved back to the swamp.
I saw her once more, in New Orleans the year before Katrina. It had been a lonely year. I would have gotten back together, but she knew better than my tears. It was never going to work with us.
