Mother Nature is No Softy

Every time I watch Discovery Channel, Animal Planet, or the Earth series I see that every single living thing on this earth is struggling every single day to stay alive.  I can’t help but wonder where I fit in in all of this.

Compared to a wild existence, my life’s not so bad eh?  I guess that every day I’m “surviving” — but that’s really just more of a technicality, I mean, I’m not struggling-to-stay-alive.  These days I am sort of struggling to build a big-girl career, but even that’s in a healthy-growth sort of way.

This all makes me to think about the community model, and how much time we all save by trading each other for goods and services that we need and want, rather than each of us having to provide our days needs for ourselves every day.  However, in this community model, some peoples’ time is freed up for less labor-ly activities, say management.  This leisure time necessitates the need for others who must then shoulder that particular burden for the other(s).  Essentially, all of my leisure in life is made possible by the labor of others.  Wow. Now that’s a reality check.

Proud to be a Loca-vore

This weekend I met two farmers in the Boise area that sell their crops to some of our local chain grocery stores.  We got a tour of the fields, learned about the sowing seasons and the harvest, got a breakdown of what chemicals they do (and I am happy to report, do not) use, and we learned where the food is distributed in town. I was completely surprised to hear that their produce was sold to the Win-Co I shop at. I told them “I probably eat your produce!”, in a kind of wonder, and both times they just looked at me and said, “well, yeah.”  I’m not sure why I always assumed the veggies I bought from the store were shipped in from far-away-places, but I am quite happy to learn that quite a lot of Idaho-grown-food feeds Idahoans.  I think that’s fantastic!

On our tour through the Nampa farmlands, the historian inside me came to fully appreciate the water projects that took place around the turn of the eighteenth century in Boise and our surrounding areas.  Without the Federal Reclamation Act of 1905, the Boise Project would not have been fiscally possible.  Some brilliant minds dreamed about irrigating the desert, and refusing to let go of that dream, managed to make it happen.  There is so much history behind this project–because of its scope– so I’d like to leave a source for those who want to explore.

Cult of the Muses | Februa-arius or pertaining to purification

The beginning of the year is tended to by the two-faced god Janus, guardian of the threshold, which is where the month of January gets its name.  Janus is said to have the lucky privilege of looking to the past as well as looking to the future, therefore Janus became the God associated primarily with beginnings and ends. This quality caused the ancients to prescribe Aquarians with the gift of wisdom and insight.

In his tales Ovid, an ancient Greek poet, has tied Janus to the planet Saturn, which was considered to be representatative of time and matter, trials and tribulations, and more importantly, knowledge that comes through experience.  In Ovid’s poems Jupiter had expelled Saturn from the sky, and Janus provided Saturn with shelter.  The pair, it seems, found some comfort in each others’ company.

But what about the water bearer?  Popular astrology has focused on Aquarius’ guiding constellation, the water bearer.  In Greek myth the water bearer was a beautiful young man named Ganymede.  He had been the son of the first Trojan king, but Zeus became infatuated with him and taking the form of an Eagle, abducted him.  He was taken to Mount Olympus where he became the water bearer of the gods.  But the water bearer was more than just a boy toy to the Greek gods.   The Latin term Februa means purification and the suffix –arius translates as pertaining to, and so the constellation itself extolled the cleansing properties of water, just as it reminded ancients of the danger of a deluge.   It was a time to exercise any demons, finalize any unsettled business, and prepare to make a fresh start.

Hopefully we can move forward in this time of purification and new beginnings with the insight of Janus, and the good sense of Saturn.

History and Memory

There have always been members of a society who were chosen to remember the past–-chosen is intended in the most fluid of definitions here—they were the ancient scribes and prophets; their work was to not forget.  Many of these histories come in the form of religious genealogies, divination, and recitations.  And what about the great western epics?  Their tales of heroic pasts helped legitimize those in power, most commonly by creating direct ties to the family of Olympic gods.  Don’t we also create a mythical and glorious past for ourselves, events that legitimize and promote a particular ideology, that we simply refer to that as our history.

What part of the collective memory constitutes “history”? Is collective memory always the same as cultural memories, family memories, and traumatic memories?  It’s not very likely that these currents of remembrance would come together to create one big happy picture–and in fact, they hardly ever do.  They are often in conflict with one another.  So whose current does and does not contribute to the collective identity?  What makes the ‘master narrative’ so powerful against other smaller narratives?  Is it simply a matter of dissemination, repetition, and physical or political power?  I think to understand the source of narrative we have to know, who is acting as the arbiter of the past, and why are they ordained to be the scribes.  It’s a curious thing to work out.  That is what one of my classes this semester is all about.  Being a historian, it is an interesting exercise to confront my own biases and agendas, and how they will in turn, influence the way I see history just as much as it will influence the way I do history.

Palatine Chapel

Aachen (in Germany today) was the seat of power for the Carolingian king Carolus Magnus, also known as Charlemagne, or Charles the Great.  The Carolingian line emerged in post-Roman medieval Europe, and would become the first line to have been given the title of Holy Roman Emperor, in 800 AD.  In the 8th century the King of the Franks built the chapel as part of his palace complex.  He was also responsible for something of a cultural revival, certainly the art and architecture was a new amalgamation of previous styles in a traditional setting.  The palace complex no longer exists, but the chapel at Aachen has been preserved.  It is one of the best examples Carolingian Romanesque styles, and it is one of my favorite medieval chapels.

Photograph: Tobias Helfrich, May 10th, 2004.

Photograph by Holger Weinandt, October 1, 2005.