Recent Reading: The Lightning Thief

I read The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan partly because I knew a movie of the book was being made and I wanted to check how solid the mythology was. I like Harry Potter, but the distortions of Latin get on my nerves. Rowling clearly knows enough Latin to get it almost right. Imagine my joy, then, when I discovered an exclamation in Homeric Greek in The Lightning Thief! The first book of the Percy Jackson series reminded me a bit of John Christopher's initial offering in the The White Mountains trilogy due to a careful balance of a full story within a projected series.

The Latin and Greek in the book is grammatical and colloquial. The book follows the standard literary convention that only obscenities remain untranslated, although I doubt the intended audience would realize quite how offensive the phrase 'eis korakas' truly is in Ancient Greek. Riordan extends his untranslated expletives beyond the vocative (the lazy man's foreign language) and even includes the plural imperative of a deponent verb. For those of you who lack the ars grammatica, that means he used a verb form which is passive in form, but active in meaning; that's a level of detail which many grade school Latin students would miss.

The reason for the movement of the world of Greek mythology to the United States is well presented, even if it does show the usual bias towards New York. Riordan has solved creatively the problem of a limited (and previously killed) roster of Classical monsters. The monsters themselves are true to the traditional mythology, and dwell in the appropriately iconic cities and regions. The choice of the entrance to the Underworld is a little surprising, although there is a certain logic to it.

The trio of heroes (an apt term for this subcreated world) fill the Harry Potter mode of main character, best friend, and opposite gender friend/potential love interest, but the character interaction placed between the desperate attempts to avoid assassination (this is a children's fantasy, after all) rings true and explores a lesser known dynamic between two gods, or rather their children. The Lightning Thief compromises as little as possible the occasionally sordid interactions between the Olympian gods - this is a relief from the bowdlerization of many other tales.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book, and I can endorse it as a Classics major and occasional fantasy fan.

Prête à Portmanteau

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090812/ap_on_re_eu/eu_france_burquini_banned

So this 'Carole', a convert to Islam, wanted to go for a swim, but also wanted to remain modest. So she bought a burquini, a burqa-bikini portmanteau, and tried to go swimming. But French laws about wearing 'possible street clothes' while swimming prohibited her.

This seems to me typical French ideological overreaction, combined with the usual legislative blindness and resistance to future complications. Any gym or pool I have ever entered has hygienic requirements, usually mandating that one bring a change of clothes and shower both before and after using the pool. The problem here could easily be solved by Carole and other similarly inclined women changing from their non-revealing street clothes to their non-revealing burquini, which presumably has a design intended for la plage et la piscine (although, if I were a woman, I'd hesitate to wear it in a known undertow area). If you've seen photos of 19th century bathing suits, the burquini design doesn't seem at all outrageous, and has an absence of hideous carny stripes to recommend it. After all, the bad on nude swimmers is at its heart a matter of modesty rather than hygiene – swimming trunks or a bikini aren't going to keep a filthy person from polluting the pool, as various “accidents” in our client associations' pools have demonstrated this summer.

Bible Reading: Suffocating Debt

<sup>In Matthew 18:23-34, Jesus tells the parable of the unforgiving debtor. The servile debtor, who owes the equivalent of millions of dollars, appeals to his master to commute the sentence of slavery, and the king yields. When the debtor is departing from the manor, he encounters a fellow servant who owes him the equivalent of twenty bucks. This man pleads in the same way as the debtor had done, but the debtor is unforgiving, chokes him, and throws the other man in prison. When the other servants witness this, they report the debtor's actions to the master, who orders the debtor to be handed over to the torturers until he repays his debt in full. As usual, the parable refers the divine consequences of human interactions. Then, Jesus caps his parable by saying, "My heavenly father will do this to you, if each one of you does not have mercy on your brother from your hearts." (Personal translation, from the Vulgate).



This parable could be applied to certain recent events, and almost certainly has, but that's not my interest here. When I was in Confirmation Class (which I took very seriously, unlike some of my fellow students), we had to memorize, understand, and paraphrase the Our Father, Nicene Creed, and various instruments of faith of the Episcopal Church to the best of our ability. In the process of studying the Our Father, I had an insight which was deep for my early teenage psyche: "forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive the trespasses of others". This segment of the Our Father was not a statement of desire for the Heavenly Father, nor a straightforward request for sustenance, be it material or spiritual; rather, it required explicit action on the part of individuals. It was the first time I understood my individual role as a member of the body of Christ. I also think that this act of human forgiveness, and the difficulty which many people experience in doing it, drives home what an incredible deal Christians have received.



It's worth noting that the language of the Our Father does not deny the seriousness of the trespasses; "forgiveness" in secular parlance has come to mean, in certain times and places, a diminution of the gravity of the offense, or even pretending the offense never occurred. If that is the way someone understands "forgiveness", it is small wonder they are loathe to forgive! Christians who are unable to forgive the peccadilloes of their fellow men, while accepting divine forgiveness for themselves, are worse than Pharisees, although the attitude is similar; at least the Pharisees placed the same (absolute) price on their sins as the same sins of the Judaean peasants. The other reason, I suspect, that this phrase receives such prominence, is that the Christian who cannot forgive others out of love also cannot understand the greater love which prompts God to forgive him.

That's my testimony and understanding. Feel free to elucidate, critique, dispute, as long as it's civil.</sup>

Movie Review: The City of Ember

On Thursday night, I watched The City of Ember, based on the book of the same name by Jeanne DuPrau. I have long held a love of post-apocalyptic movies which do not involve leatherdaddies and large amounts of hairspray, ever since I read John Christopher's The White Mountains and The Sword of the Spirit trilogies, or perhaps it was early exposure to Spartacus and the Sun Beneath the Sea. I will confess, I have not read the book, which is contrary to my usual movie-watching policy.

At first, I wasn't sure the DVD was working properly, because this is the only movie I've seen with so many scenes in the pitch black that don't involve people dying horribly. The architectural geography of the actual city of Ember triggered some visual memories in me, which I could not identify until I checked the next day and realized the author was French; I had been reminded of the more nightmarish architecture of The City of Lost Children. The leads of the film were well-cast, although the dim lighting (for once justified by plot relevance) made reading their faces difficult at times. Some other reviews have faulted the film for a lack of action; while the sacrifice of certain scenes from the book appear to have reduced the action quotient, I was pleased to watch a film where the intelligence and mystery-solving sections of the book were not sacrificed for action scenes. Enough confrontations occur in the dark or dim already!

The mole and the giant mutant beetle were absurd (although moles are indeed creepy, if you look closely at them), and how everybody in these underground cities avoids rickets baffles me. I assume dwarves in fantasy books have a racial immunity. The Assignment Day, although it is common for such survivalist dystopias, seems slightly ridiculous in its system of random assignments. Lois Lowry's The Giver, which I re-read today (yes, the whole thing) in order to have some points of comparison, contains speeches that indicate careful thought on the matter of individual assignments; perhaps the book The City of Ember contains such scenes which were cut from the movie.

I thoroughly enjoyed the movie, but the location of Ember is the draw, so perhaps it's not so bad that there will be no movie sequels.

Birthday Float

This year, my birthday fell on a Wednesday. For most people, this would be an inauspicious time, but I had submitted payroll the day before, and had taken care of the imminent bills, so it seemed a good time to enjoy myself. The weather was less than optimal, despite previously glorious days, so I suspect my dear cousin Zachary or his lovely girlfriend brought the chilly weather with them. My original plan was a boat trip on the lake, since Katie had never visited Lake Tahoe, but that plan hit several logistical logs, so I chose to float down the Truckee River instead. I led my party to the wrong side of the river, where once long ago there was a launching point, so we had to return to the northern bank. The river seemed crowded, although it must be even more so on holidays such as the 4th. The boats on the river contained the expected mix of families and drunken yahoos. I had forgotten how far downstream the River Ranch was, if your craft is drifting glacially. The river was higher than I had anticipated, so many of the shallow parts, which in past years had provided me with formidable obstacles, were drowned. The point of such a trip is relaxation, so relatively little occurred that is worth noting. As we were emerging from the downstream side of one of the wooden bridges that spans the Truckee, two juvenile delinquents dumped a bucket of slightly rancid water on our items stored in the stern of the boat, as well as Zachary. Zachary grabbed the nearest projectiles at hand and hurled them at the brats; he hit both of them, but no adults were nearby, so it's doubtful they learned a lesson.

After we had finished our float, we went to the Blue Agave for a late lunch and a margarita pitcher.

The Dog That Came In From The Road

I shall not speak of work today, not because of privacy issues, but because little of interest occurred in the workplace. When Dad and I had stopped at the Dollar Hill 7-11, he for certain unmentionables, I for a coffee that I might proceed straightway to the tasks at hand (namely payroll) once I had arrived at the office, a Husky, big, shaggy, and silent, wandered into the store and casually inspected his surroundings and lay down. We marvelled at this, but the clerk seemed non-chalant. It turned out that the dog was more the store dog than the companion of any particular employee. Such behavior seems to be in the nature of Huskies, who prefer to roam at will and are large enough to spare their owners worry over bear encounters. I heard a tale recently, in which a female Husky left her house each morning, walked north to meet up with her "boyfriends", went south again past her house, and returned when evening was nigh. I suppose each breed has its own predilections.

Saturday Morning Hike

On Saturday morning I went on a hike in Meeks Bay with my brother and Olive, his 7-month-old half-lab, half-heeler. Dad and I had tried to reach the first stream of the trail earlier this summer before his feet gave out, and it's a trail we know well from taking the late springer spaniel along it - he, of course, found the destination incredibly exciting. Olive, however, had not yet grasped the idea of an outdoor activity which did not involve throwing anything, so she bounced along the trail, stopping only to stare at us with genial confusion - this behavior explains, if not excuses, the lack of pictures with this post. When strangers were near, she displayed the peculiar attitude of youngsters, in which bravery extends to a point just before the moment contact. When we reached the stream, which was low from summer evaporation, Olive was more interested in splashing than drinking.

The Meeks Bay trail lies between a waterlogged meadow on the left and a series of stony ridges on the right, leading up to the aptly named Desolation Wilderness. The meadow is a favorite spot for bears seeking berries. On either side of the trail grew clusters of wildflowers, purple and white and blue and yellow, but the soil is not fertile, since it is primarily composed of granite sand, and the clusters were farly widely spaced. Most of the water which finds its way into the valley comes from a cluster of lakes high above, descending via the stream which was our destination.