Chris Howard's Writing Blog

Classic

Here's another shot from my ancient Hellas collection, a detail of the "Mourning Athena," relief sculpture (artist unknown, c 450BCE).  Click the pic to see the large view.

Apollo

Apollo (Aπόλλων), the son of Zeus and Leto, brother of the huntress Artemis (they're paternal twins).  (I took this in the museum at Delphi).  Click the pic for the large view.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo

Sift and post

As promised, I have spent exactly ten minutes scrolling through 1200 images, and pulled these three nearly at random.  I took these on two different islands, Patmos and Mikonos, and then in Corinthos.

Click on the images to see the large view

Windmills Without Wind

Narrow Path

Corinthian Capital Prototype

Aristotle on the value of biology and Heraclitus taking a dump

Here's Aristotle trying to convince his largely aristocratic students that studying the "less valuable animals," such as fish and rodents and hen's eggs (Not just cavalry horses and lions) is a valuable pastime in itself.  There are things to learn about their actions, the habitats in which they thrive, their eating, sleeping, mating behavior.  Aristotle--before there was a science of biology--had to go out of his way to make it clear that examining all animals and their ways is a worthy exercise.

Read this passage from Parts of Animals (De Partibus Animalium):

(PA I 5, 645a4)  For this reason we should not be childishly disgusted at the examination of the less valuable animals. For in all natural things there is something marvelous. Even as Heraclitus is said to have spoken to those strangers who wished to meet him but stopped as they were approaching when they saw him warming himself at the oven—he bade them to enter without fear, ‘For there are gods here too’—so too one should approach research about each of the animals without disgust, since in every one there is something natural and good.

Here's what's really cool about this passage.  The phrase "warming himself at the oven" is thought to be slang referring to going to the bathroom, i.e., sitting on the pot, taking a dump.  "There are gods here too."  Heraclitus' use of "gods" doesn't refer to actual divinities, but to processes worth discovering, exploring--the idea that some value may be gained by studying what would be considered the lowest of functions of the body.

Of course, another quote--the very famous fragment--from Heraclitus has him saying, "Everything flows..."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heraclitus
http://www.non-contradiction.com/2007/09/on-the-parts-of.html
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aristotle-biology/

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Writers Love Books

I'm a huge fan of ebooks.  I want them to succeed.  I've been using a Sony Reader (PRS-500) regularly for about ten months, and I love it.  I think it works, it fits in my hand, it has the right weight, the eInk display is so page-like.  It's not backlit like a computer screen.  It's like a real book--so much so that book lights work well with it.  I don't buy ebooks nearly as often as I buy print books, but I do shop at Fictionwise and Amazon (for ebooks as well as print).

And then again...it's not quite a real book.

I also collect books.  Real books.  I specialize in a few areas, but my prizes are all works of Aristotle.  I have well over two-hundred books by, on, about Aristotle, Aristotle's philosophical works, his place in the universe, on Aristotelian commentators.  I have books printed in 2007.  I have books printed in the early 1500's.  The oldest was printed on the 25th of July, 1516 by the family of the famous Venetian printer Ottaviano Scoto.   (The printer's mark of Ottaviano Scoto is a circle with a double cross with the letters O.S.M, the initials of Octavianus Scotus Modoetiensis--Ottaviano Scoto of Monza).

It's the oldest in my collection, but it's not my favorite, which is a 1550 Madius edition of Aristotle's Poetics.  I pulled it out of the bookcase tonight, which I don't do often enough, and I just flipped through the pages, smelled 457 years of book.  It's a big book, folio sized, with stiff end boards.  It's in Greek and Latin.  It is astoundingly beautiful--so beautiful in fact, that I cannot imagine it ever being supplanted by anything as square and plastic and electronic as an eReader.  Perhaps used in combination with devices able to store, search and display thousands of books, but not displaced.  Never displaced.

I have a pretty wild imagination, but I can't imagine it happening.

In case you're wondering, the name of this blog, Theophrastus, comes from the name of a friend and student of Aristotle.

The Ultimate Greek Key Site

Everything you need to understand and create your own Greek Key patterns.

http://gwydir.demon.co.uk/jo/greekkey/keys.htm

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Northern New Hampshire Roadtrip

We need some help with names, a German Shepherd female with a name that begins with "L."

Me and Alice and the kids spent most of yesterday driving up the far reaches of I-93 to the Littleton area of the Granite State, to see the beautiful White Mountains of course, but especially to see a German Shepherd breeder.  I'm a total dog lover, even if some of them really are alien invaders decanted into dogs and bent on seizing control of our world.  I just can't help myself.

So, the plan is to have a German Shepherd pup by the end of the year, something with an "L" name.  My first choice is Lysistrata, but we've started lining up a bunch of them, including Lykeia, Lydia, Lucenza, Lysandra. 

Thanks, Dave, for pointing me to Lori Lemaris, Superman's mermaid girlfriend from Atlantis.

Man's best friend conspiring with aliens to seize control of our planet!

Some pics of the area, Cannon Mountain, Littleton:

IF: moon

Study the moon in ancient Athens.  Here's my entry for this week's Illustration Friday topic: moon.  Three Athenian gentleman trying to settle an argument over what causes the shadow on the moon.  Is it the earth blocking the rays of Helios? 

I thought it would be cool to knock out the Acropolis with the centered temple of Athena Parthenos against the night sky.  Not really sure if I pulled it off.  Watercolor on 300# hotpressed.  Detail view below.  Click the pics to see them larger.

Detail:

Raising Alexandria

Link: Raising Alexandria in Smithsonian Magazine.

"More than 2,000 years after Alexander the Great founded the city, archaeologists are discovering its fabled remains, from the likely site of Cleopatra's palace to pieces of an astonishing lighthouse that was one of the Seven Wonders of the World."

I'm suing a god

I'm going after the god Helios, the Sun, for infringing on my Greek Key design copyright.  It looks exactly like this one except it's not scrawled across my own ceiling in sunlight reflected off the barbecue on the back deck.  I think he's mocking me.  Time for treble damages!  Wait a minute, Mithra's a sun god also.  No astral deity is safe!  Bwah-ha-ha-ha!

My Photo Album

Starting something new.  In between all the other junk I post, I'm going to post a pic from an ever growing number of digital images I've taken on vacations, business trips, and in my own backyard.  (Click to see the larger version of the image)

Kouros head 
Archaeological Museum of Corinth
CJH - October 2001

This is one of the pieces stolen from the Archaeological Museum of Corinth in 1990 and returned in 2001.  I believe the nose was broken in the theft because there's an older pic on the museum site with the nose intact.  Sad.

I took this one during a trip my father and I took to Greece and Turkey in 2001.  You want to know where I go for inspiration?  I can look at this shot for an hour.  The rings of hair, lips, carved in stone...theoeidês.  Simply amazing.

This was the inspiration for my Kassandra close-up:

11k into Aristotle

Okay, I spent the weekend painting more than writing, but I'm back at it with the first four chapters of my YA Aristotle novel, a solid 11,000 words in the last week--and another 20k in pretty rough shape I've culled from an old Aristotle novel. Not sure how much of this stuff I'm going to use.

I've done something a little different this time.  I wrote my query letter early.  It's done.  I expect to rewrite it at some point, and it will get a few more passes--more than most of my query letters do.  What's strange is that it was much easier to write.  Not sure if it's because I'm just getting better at building a query letter or if there's something about tapping into all the this-is-going-to-be-the-coolest-story-ever energy at the beginning stages of a novel.

Something to think about...

...the next time you design your imaginary city from the ground up.  We all know Athens.  You know, Socrates, Plato, Perikles, democracy, parrhesia, but did you know the city name is plural?  How many plural city names can you think of?  In Greek, Athens, Athenai--is like saying "Athenses".  Only one Lakaidemon.  Only one Korinth.  Many Athenses.

Me and Athena P.

Okay, two emails in a row asking what I'm standing in front of in my About pic.  That's the front of the temple of Athena Parthenos (The Parthenon) about fifteen yards behind me.  What's weird is that it was a bit crowded on the Acropolis, but somehow everyone cleared off when the shot was taken.  Just me and the marble...and an eagle overhead.  Hmmm...Athena? 

Athena Rocks!

Here's an old watercolor of Athena defeating the god of war, Ares.  (See the "my sketching..." section for the larger version).  I just can't picture Athena wearing thick sandals, hoplite armor and a helmet.  Why would an immortal as powerful as Athena need a helmet?  That is, ceremonial occasions aside, where tradition, formality, etc., stop you from wearing what you really want to wear. What would a goddess really do if she wants to make an appearance on the battlefields of Troy?  She definitely wouldn't show up looking like a man.  She’s going to have Hephaistos bang out some cool divine armor, something a little flashy that shows off her figure, especially if she also has to deal with that meddling bitch, Aphrodite (who always seems to get the credit for looking good). Athena's the goddess of wisdom, war, the arts, industry, you name it.  The Parthenon is the temple of Athena Parthenos.  The little temple of victory perched on the edge of the Acropolis is the temple of Athena Nike.  She presides over the greatest city of the greatest culture the world has ever known.  She's powerful enough to defy the other gods, even Poseidon, to help her friend, Odysseus get home to his kingdom in Ithaka.  She persuades the other gods to defy the dictates of Zeus in the war against Troy, and emerges victorious She's my daughter’s favorite.  I started reading her the Children’s Homer four or five years ago, modifying some of the more brutal sections in the story.  This is a great starter book by the way, with both the Iliad and Odyssey combined and told from the point of view of Telemachus after he's grown up and begins searching for his father.  It's not too long, contains most of the action and is nicely broken up with some fantastic ink drawings by Willy Pogany.  (Children's Homer: The Adventures of Odysseus and the Tale of Troy by Padraic Colum). My favorite trans. is Richmond Lattimore's, although I also like both Robert Fagles' and Robert Fitsgerald's.  Give me any verse translation that doesn't replace Athena with Minerva! The Iliad's one of those stories you can read over and over again and still be intrigued by new details that you'd previously read but hadn't pulled out of the tale and really focused on. You find yourself thinking about these details long after you've finished the story.  One of the obvious points that every first time reader picks up is that Aias/Ajax goes through the whole thing with little interference from the gods.  Every other major hero is directly affected one way or the other by Zeus, Athena, Ares, Aphrodite, Apollo, except gigantic Aias. He seems to be able to hold his own, even against the divinely aided Trojans, and, although his life’s story ends tragically, you can't help but like Telamonian Aias, and think that this huge, brawling, loyal warrior was, for the most part, unstoppable. During my last reading of Homer I dwelled on how powerful Athena is, and that, even though I've read those same passages several times, it never really struck me that she's the most influential god next to Zeus.  The particular passage that stands out is in book 21 where she defeats Ares.  And I’m not talking about a little scuffle between Athena and the god of war.  She gives him a good sound thrashing, beats him with a stone and lays him out cold: But Athena laughed and vaunted over Ares saying, "Fool, have you not learned how far stronger I am than you, but you must still match yourself against me? Therefore you are paying atonement to your mother’s furies since she is angry and wishes you ill, because you abandoned the Achaians, and have helped the insolent Trojans." Homer, Iliad 21 408-414