But other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, didn't you think the Ephesus setting just didn't seem realistically fleshed out at all? She's had to move halfway across the known world and it's as if nothing has changed except the people? Maybe that's plausible and it's certainly a nice metaphor about the sucky drudgery involved, but ehhh.
I mean, Artemis of Ephesus is totally badass-looking and the site itself is amazing. But I'd rather have read a book from her perspective.
A zealot engaged in polemical speechifying directed at Greek-speaking Jews who were too accommodating of Roman rites and authority? Probably not, actually.
1: well, I perhaps should have made clear that I am talking about the play, not the book, which I haven't read, but I thought there was basically nothing good about it, so I'm prepared to agree with you, sure.
6: I thought you might be referring to the play, but I figured there can't be all that much difference between the two and why should not having seen it keep me from talking about it here of all places?
There is basically no significance to the setting in the play. She could be anywhere.
I just read my son a whole goddam Percy Jackson book about Artemis. In that book, she's 12. So, not very old.
Spanish or Mexican chorizo? Mexican probably makes more sense, but slivers of Spanish chorizo with crumbled cornbread sounds fantastic.
Yeah I assumed Spanish. Sounds great.
Maybe some mussels and Spanish chorizo with some pastis.
And speaking of nefarious foreign influences, in Ephesus-of-our-era, I found the wish wall at the place known as Mary's house very moving and would have wanted to put some visual reference to that into any play I did about Mary in Ephesus even though it would have been ahistorical, because it's all going to be somewhat ahistorical. AISIHMB I am a big fan of Turkish wish trees, where people tie scraps of cloth to a tree at the top of the tallest hill to mark prayers or wishes and then they weather with the tree and it's really beautiful. I know it's done other places too, but I like it.
The other thing I like about Ephesus is that one of Turkey's most popular beers is named for the town and sponsors the dig there and supposedly they get free beer because of it, but I was not on that dig and don't drink beer anyway, though I sometimes buy that brand for Lee when she says she doesn't care what I get her. And I've now told you all more about Ephesus than readers of the book or viewers of the play would know, I think.
My playgoing companion likened it to the first drama written by a fourteen-year-old Catholic schoolboy.
But I hear The Master was good!
Would it have been better if Artemis had been referred to as one of the new gods?
For example according to Jablonski,[10] the name is also Phrygian and could be "compared with the royal appellation Artemas of Xenophon. According to Charles Anthon the primitive root of the name is probably of Persian origin from *arta, *art, *arte, all meaning "great, excellent, holy," thus Artemis "becomes identical with the great mother of Nature, even as she was worshipped at Ephesus".[10] Anton Goebel "suggests the root στρατ or ῥατ, "to shake," and makes Artemis mean the thrower of the dart or the shooter".[9] Babiniotis while accepting that the etymology is unknown, states that the name is already attested in Mycenean Greek and is possibly of pre-Hellenic origin.[8]
The name could also be possibly related to Greek árktos "bear" (from PIE *h₂ŕ̥tḱos), supported by the bear cult that the goddess had in Attica (Brauronia) and the Neolithic remains at the Arkoudiotissa Cave, as well as the story about Callisto, which was originally about Artemis (Arcadian epithet kallisto);[11] this cult was a survival of very old totemic and shamanistic rituals and formed part of a larger bear cult found further afield in other Indo-European cultures (e.g., Gaulish Artio). It is believed that a precursor of Artemis was worshiped in Minoan Crete as the goddess of mountains and hunting, Britomartis. While connection with Anatolian names has been suggested,[12][13] the earliest attested forms of the name Artemis are the Mycenaean Greek 𐀀𐀳𐀖𐀵, a-te-mi-to /Artemitos/ and 𐀀𐀴𐀖𐀳, a-ti-mi-te /Artimitei/, written in Linear B at Pylos.[14] R. S. P. Beekes suggested that the e/i interchange points to a Pre-Greek origin.[15] Artemis was venerated in Lydia as Artimus.[16]
I like the bear cult story, not out of any classical knowledge but because bears are so awesome. How could they be about and not have a cult? (I myself am technically an adorer of the Golden Bear, although our practices are much decayed.)
My playgoing companion likened it to the first drama written by a fourteen-year-old Catholic schoolboy.
No, that's definitely Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All for You.
Maybe some mussels and Spanish chorizo with some pastis.
Yes please!
Why no chorizo with cornbread? Natural accompaniment! And lack of fennel is just terribly sad.
I don't think you people have really thought through this bear-stuffing proposal.
I myself am technically an adorer of the Golden Bear
You went to Cal?
None of us are getting younger, but that's a cruel way to put it.
Knecht, I have a cornbread recipe that AB asks for every year, even though it's complete overkill unless we have 8+ adults. Can't dig it up now, but I'll try to get it to you tomorrow.
It is sausage, but I think with red bell peppers and spiciness (chorizo sounds good, and I think I have a version with that, but it's not my standard).
9: People (like my kids) keep telling me that since I loved the Harry Potter books, I must also like the Percy Jackson books. But the Percy Jackson books are horrible. The characters are barely placeholders. Reardon's idea of creating excitement in writing is to say "The boy ran down the hall." And then there are periodic sexist burblings. Ach.
Yummly (app) has a bunch of recipes that look good.
Somebody told me that since I loved the Harry Potter books, I should read Titus Groan. They were wrong.
Anyway, reading the first section of the articled linked in 2 gave me a deeper insight into the naming of the female lead in Underworld.
I'm trying to decide if I'm too sick to go to the bar or not.
It depends on if Underworld is on Netflix and the temperature.
30, 32: Apropos, are the Artemis Fowl books good enough to give them to kids for Christmas/birthdays/whatnot?
36 - I hated the first one and wrote so on my (now vanished) book review blog, causing hordes of indignant 13-year-olds to show up and call me a poopyhead.
I'm not taking advice from a poopyhead.
38: At least the author didn't show up at your house.
Get them American Spirit Blues and some tight jeans. You can be the cool uncle.
36: I am vaguely familiar with them, which means my kids have read them, but not very, which means my kids don't drone on about them endlessly. This probably comes out to okay, but not brilliant. Anyway, same question as snark?
Ranged 8 to 12. Obviously, my first thought was "a .45 and a case of Wild Turkey," but then I remembered that most kids aren't Zonker's Uncle Duke.
Most.
There is a good Bon appetite recipe for southwestern stuffing--jalapeño cornbread and chorizo and veggie mixture. It should be in epicurious.
Kids shouldn't get anything over 90 proof.
I shiver when I pull off the blanket. I'm thinking not bar.
At least the author didn't show up at your house.
This phenomenon is going to become a thing, about which bloggers won't know how to feel, because trolling/Ga/mer/G/at/e/that 3D printed gun twerp/Mitch McConnell, isn't it?
I'm going to stake out the pro-"stalk anyone who gives your book a bad review" ground. If you don't care enough about your book to break laws and attempt to destroy lives to defend it, you stopped revising before it was ready.
44: Checked with my staff, and there was more enthusiasm than I recalled. Not the best ever, maybe, but a perfectly entertaining series: Newt read them all and reread one last year when he encountered a copy unexpectedly. The age range you give sounds right -- he said much over twelve, they might come across a bit juvenile.
49: Quod scripsi, scripsi.
Cough bringing it back around cough like a master cough good show, Flip-dawg cough.
Anyway, the point is of course this Jew would recognize Arremis as one of the archetypal Old Gods, provided he was aware of the monolatral origins of his recently promoted deity.
Well, it's a perfectly decent cologne, if a bit '70s.
Oh man, how I hated the first AF. But given the delightful little ecosystem of kids who showed up to defend it at Snark's blog (oh, it was so adorable, they formed a tiny community there in that one comment thread that lasted for YEARS) it seems like it is generally pretty compelling if you are the actual target audience instead of a grumpy adult.
To this day they still believe Obama is the antichrist.
36: I found them HORRIBLE. just go with the series with the grey king and stuff? 5 books arthurian in nature? oh, "the dark is rising." or the book "the silver crown" meant for kids the same age, incomparably creepy and gripping.
mobes: now it is ghormenghast we are hating? santa is zipping by your fucking house without slowing down this year, bub. there is literally not enough time to get back on the good list. if you had said titus alone I would have been charitable.
I feel I should get some credit for trying. I mostly enjoy nonfiction.
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Remember when I said it would be weird if Begich and Parnell both lost? Well, it's officially weird now. (Begich hasn't conceded yet, but he's further behind than Parnell and it's very unlikely he'll be able to pull out a win.)
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Boy has been enjoying having the Theodosia Throckmorton books read to him. Edwardian Egyptology fantasy setting.
60: Some day one of the national elections is going to come down to a state like Alaska, California or Arizona that have substantive late counts and everyone will go berserk. Because we're spoiled idiots.
32. Since I loved Titus Groan, does that give me an excuse not to read the Harry Potter books?
I have neither seen nor read Testament, but by the 1st century hadn't people started to identify Artemis with Ishtar? In which case you'd think a contemporary Jew would regard her not so much as one of "the old gods" as "the enemy".
60. One of the important omissions in the US Bill of Rights was the clause that should have said, "In any popular election for any federal office, no ballots shall begin to be counted until the last ballot has been cast." Jemmy couldn't have predicted the need for this since he had no concept of time zones or of electronic communication. But still.
58.1: Yeah, those books are great. I feel bad about thinking that Gormenghast is for goths who use outdated British slang in their Mid-Atlantic high schools (à la that episode of American Dad*).
* "Let the nerdy one go! The other nerdy one. The one with glasses. Steve."
Photo of recipe in the pool. Standard version and variation with andouille and red pepper.
Iris votes yes for Artemus Fowl, but I can't really vouch for her taste; she has very particular tastes, but not nec. high standards, if you're take my meaning.
"Wonder", by RJ Palacio, was a huge success with both Kai (6) and Iris (10), and is a legitimately good book.
Iris votes yes for Artemus Fowl, but I can't really vouch for her taste; she has very particular tastes, but not nec. high standards, if you're take my meaning.
"Wonder", by RJ Palacio, was a huge success with both Kai (6) and Iris (10), and is a legitimately good book.
I loved Titus Groan, but not the third one.
I thought HP was okay but not very well written at a technical level. Decent plotting but the sentences themselves; yecch. She clearly had no overall plan, and the later books are better written.
I read a bunch of the AF books and they had some interesting ideas (fairies, trolls, etc. are about high-tech, not magic) but they never gripped me. Same for my daughters (possible "duh" here). They loved HP, and are too old for the Percy Jackson stuff now.
All you people should just read Homestuck.
Given we are on kids fiction, not sure if anyone else got a pang from RA Montgomery, originator of the Choose Your Own Adventure books, passing away. I did not realise so many of them were written by one guy.
Also, someone with more literary chops than me should go ahead and argue he is the most influential postmodern writer of all time. Structural experiment, death of the author, rejection of single truth, games as fiction. All written for the most demanding audience there is.
you should read the choose your own adventure version of hamlet for the ipad, written by the people who make adventure time. it is so fucking hilarious, because it includes all these relatively sensical options and then also "decide to make your uncle watch a play that has a story just like how he killed your dad, and see if he looks suspiciously guilty, and THEN kill him." or "first I'll pretend to be crazy, then YOU pretend to be crazy, then..." you can play as ophelia, and totally fuck off to england to become a pirate ninja. although you can choose the actual plot of the play. it's just unlikely.
Someone needs to watch R&G again. There are no choices.
Sorta topical, if the teo and Smearcase show takes requests, I'd love to hear about this article. Obviously, the theory advanced in the linked article is approaching pure speculation, but it's hard to imagine a theory, other than environmental, that would make cities viable for a millenium but only a millenium.
75 actually sounds more like a fairytale curse, but if that's how we define environmental theories now then who am I to judge?
75: Interesting. I don't know as much about the Old World as the New World, but there are a lot of intriguing parallels in the developmental pattern between the two, despite the very different timing. Catalhoyuk is very similar in structure to the Southwestern Pueblos, whose traditional culture has a strong emphasis on the kind of egalitarianism Kuijt proposes for the Neolithic. In the Pueblo case, of course, the whole thing fell apart when the Spanish showed up, but it's interesting to think about what would have happened otherwise.
Anyway, yeah, the theory sounds pretty plausible to me. In terms of intellectual history, the past thirty years or so have seen a turn in archaeology away from environmental determinism toward more sociopolitical explanations for changes in the prehistoric record, and the theories discussed in that article certainly fit that pattern.
Call me when the whips and revolvers come back into fashion.
That aesthetic belongs more to the "basically just stealing stuff" era of archaeology, which most archaeologists today are embarrassed about, but maybe some of the hipster types can bring it back.
Hipsters may as well so something useful.
teo, have you any recommendations for survey literature on the pre-Spanish Southwest?
What, artisanal bacon-and-bourbon flavored everything isn't good enough for you?
teo, have you any recommendations for survey literature on the pre-Spanish Southwest?
Do I ever! Any particular areas of interest?
Consider me skeptical that they had any kind of distilled alcohol or bacon in any but the loosest sense.
But bacon and bourbon will help you appreciate what they did have!
Any particular areas of interest?
Well, coming from southern Arizona I'm especially curious about the Hohokam/Pima/Tohono O'odham side of things; I've realized lately how little systematic knowledge I have. But I'd be into anything that's a good read.
I suspect humans are unable to live for long in societies of more than 100 unless they have alcohol, and places like Çatalhöyük were founded by a community of social drinkers.
Well, coming from southern Arizona I'm especially curious about the Hohokam/Pima/Tohono O'odham side of things; I've realized lately how little systematic knowledge I have. But I'd be into anything that's a good read.
I'm not very familiar with the Hohokam literature, and I should caution that I haven't read most of the truly introductory works out there (I sort of dove head-first into this with a focus on Chaco and read outward from that), but with that said:
The standard introductory texts are Steve Plog's Ancient Peoples of the American Southwest and Linda Cordell's Archaeology of the Southwest. More specifically focused on Arizona is The Archaeology of Ancient Arizona by Jefferson Reid and Stephanie Whittlesey. John Kantner's Ancient Puebloan Southwest is a more recent regional overview. Again, I haven't actually read any of these, and can't vouch for how readable they are.
One that I can vouch for as being very readable and accessible is Steve Lekson's A History of the Ancient Southwest. This is also a general overview, but Lekson has some very idiosyncratic views that are not shared by most Southwestern archaeologists. I think he's more right than wrong overall (though certainly wrong about some things), but for a full understanding of the state of understanding it would probably be best to have read one of the books from the previous paragraph before this one. His views on the Hohokam specifically are particularly out of sync with those of a lot of Hohokam specialists, so be forewarned. That said, he's a much better writer than most archaeologists, and in this book he addresses not just the prehistory as reconstructed by archaeologists but also the intellectual history of Southwestern archaeology itself, which doesn't always get enough attention in popular treatments.
So yeah, those are my initial suggestions. Which you choose I think depends mainly on how much more of the literature you intend to read.
91: Melting pot, yo. The traditional division of American liquor is bourbon=Southern, rye=Northern. Anything else is unpatriotic.
94: Sweet. Thank you. Those are the sort of tips I was hoping for.
The ranger thing really took with you.
91: Melting pot, yo. The traditional division of American liquor is bourbon=Southern, rye=Northern. Anything else is unpatriotic.
And yet the good old boys drink whiskey and rye, somehow.
Well, a true good old boy is ecumenical in his tastes.
73: Hey I gave that to my sister for her birthday but I haven't read it myself yet. Pirate ninja Ophelia tells me I have delayed too long.
the people who make adventure time
Interesting to see Ryan North (of Dinosaur Comics fame) described this way.
Speaking of Choose Your Own Adventure, I liked Emily Short's interactive fiction book Bee, and have been wanting to link it here for some time now. It took me about three or four hours, and then another ten minutes to try and predict what each commenter here would think of it. So whoever's interested can try it here: Bee.
98 & 99 belong in the fantasy thread, I think.
104. Emily Short is well-known as a commenter on and writer of "interactive fiction," aka adventure games. At least on the inside of my work internet connection "Bee" is on a painfully slow site, alas. Bookmarked for later.
105: I told him to use the hat to meet women.
104. Just stayed up to finish Bee: what a great book. Thanks.
It's very readable but also very carefully put together. I only plays once, but it's like one of those short great novels you can finish in one long sitting, like an interactive fiction Catcher In The Rye.
Except I never liked Catcher In The Rye that much, I liked Old Man and The Sea more. But I liked this. Is this why there's an analogy ban?
I don't suppose anyone has mentioned that in Jesus' time and place, Artemis actually kinda was one of "the old gods"? (I guess a Jew would more likely have said "idol," maybe.)
"The old gods" strikes me as a pretty modern phrase.
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