Rachel Alexander's Blog, page 241
March 24, 2019
superbloomings:
Let’s take a look at some Blue-Eyed Grass (Sisyrínchium béllum). Found in the Iris...
Let’s take a look at some Blue-Eyed Grass (Sisyrínchium béllum).
Found in the Iris Family (Iridaceae) these common perennial herbs are native to our mountains and bloom typically from March through May in grassy meadows and other open spaces.
Fun fact: Spanish Californians used the roots to make tea for the specific purpose to ward off fevers and called S. béllum “azulea.”
Ancient fact: Sisyrínchium was a plant the Greek student Theophrastus (372-287 B.C.) described relating to the Iris. His works on plants were relied extensively on by Renaissance writers. He was Aristotle’s successor.
References:
Dale, N. (2000). Flowering plants of the Santa Monica Mountains: Coastal and chaparral regions of Southern California. Sacramento: California Native Plant Society.
McAuley, M., & Kenney, J. P. (1985). Wildflowers of the Santa Monica mountains. Canoga Park, CA: Canyon Pub.
I hope there is nudity equality in your show. On top of everything wrong with the 50 shades movies Dakota Johnson was completely naked while Jamie Dornan was wearing pants during sex scenes!
Yeah that’s bullshit. Glad I didn’t see them.
There’s definitely going to be equal butt time.
We all know it's Nickelodeon that's bidding on the show.
If they did I would have to say hell to the no because, uh, 18+, kids. But for real though, the producer already said no to two offers, one for a network catering to viewers younger than my demo, and one catering the viewers older than my demo.
I listened to Nick Cave's The Boatman's Call album and that song Bring It On after seeing that one ask about it and WOW the accuracy is astounding, especially Far From Me.
Oh yeah!! That song and Lime Tree Arbor are kind of perfect.
The whole album was pretty much Nick Cave’s eulogy for his brief relationship with PJ Harvey, and you can see it in West Country Girl.
The final lyrics are “west country girl with a big fat cat/ looks into her eyes of green/ and meows he loves you and meows again”, which doesn’t make sense with the lyrics, but if you use the original lyrics: “west country girl with a big fat cat/ looks into her eyes of green/ and meows he loves you Polly Jean” it makes a whole lot more sense.
He did the original lyrics live a couple of times, right before he finally stopped the downward slide into an inevitable overdose and went to rehab.
Not that I am a huge obsessey Nick Cave fan or anything.
therkalexander:
“While you were away I got a head start on...
“While you were away I got a head start on learning how to write to you in the old tongue.”
She relaxed again. “So is that what you’re doing to my shoulders right now? Writing to me?”
“Mm-hmm.”
“What does it say?”
Aidon slowly traced the outlines of two glyphics, sounding them out as he wrote them. “I love… you…”
Only two chapters remain…
Receiver of Many returns tonight with a new chapter on Archive of our Own, FictionPress, and FanFiction at 12:00 AM Pacific Time.
teashoesandhair:
artemisemrys:
dusty-purple:
I just love the myth of Persephone, i mean the real,...
I just love the myth of Persephone, i mean the real, original version of it, because it’s not like she got kidnapped, no, this bitch was la-de-da-ing in a meadow and she just happened to find an entrance to the Underworld and she was like “Imma check this out”. And she just wanders into the Underworld and discovers that hey this place ain’t too bad.
Meanwhile Hades is in the background “????? UM??? PRETTY GIRL??? WHY ARE YOU HERE?????? YOU AREN’T DEAD???”
And Persephone (who was originally called Kore just a little fyi) just looked at him and said “I like it here. I’m staying.”
And Hades kinda just went with it, until Demeter started throwing the temper tantrum of the millenium upstairs and Zeus had to intervene because this shit was getting out of hand and its actually his job to be admistrator of justice. Which considering the shit he gets up to is kinda histerical but that’s another story there.
And basically Persephone wasn’t a prisoner or kidnap victim at all she just really loved the Underworld and her (eventual) husband, and the Greeks feared her arguably more than her husband because Hades could be reasoned with but Persephone was the one laying the smack down on sinners, and really, who wouldn’t be at least a little scared of someone who’s name means something along the lines of “the destroyer”
Basically, Persephone is amazing and everbody needs to get on her level
@teashoesandhair, is this true and right and accurate? I ask you because you are The Knowing when it comes to things of this nature…
*sweats nervously* no, this is not true and right and accurate.
(Edit 2: tbh any post that says THIS IS THE ORIGINAL MYTH is going to be wank, because we don’t know what the original myth was - we only have the first written sources, but without a time machine there’s just no way of finding out how the myth developed in an oral tradition)
The first source we have for Persephone being carried away is in Hesiod’s Theogony, written in the 8th or 7th century BC. We also have the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, written in the 7th or 6th century BC, which is explicitly about her being taken away by Hades.
Hesiod is one of the oldest Greek sources that we have, roughly contemporaneous with Homer. We don’t have any earlier sources than this which say ‘hey, Persephone went to Hades because she thought it would be cool’. A lot of people have theorised that this could have been an original, or at least an earlier tradition, but it’s about 60% wishful thinking, 20% misinterpreting evidence (i.e. assuming that Persephone and Demeter used to be aspects of a great mother goddess, which they weren’t) and about 20% conjecture based on actual rational thought (i.e. the fact that the oldest written source we have is about an abduction doesn’t mean that it is the original source; there could be older non-extant written sources or just oral tales which pre-dated writing). It’s not fact.
It’s true that Homer himself never explicitly says that Persephone was abducted (he just describes her as Hades’ wife) but he also doesn’t say that she wasn’t abducted; it could well be that the myth of her abduction was so well known that he had no need to recount it.
It is true that Persephone’s name was Kore, which means ‘maiden’; however, this could be an epithet because she was unmarried. (Edit 3: it’s also theorised that it was a euphemism of sorts for when people didn’t want to name Persephone outright; again, this is a theory). The name ‘Persephone’ does not mean death / destroyer; the etymology is unknown (the ‘death / destroyer’ theory is just one of many, and others are based around ideas of harvest and grain).
The reason Zeus got involved wasn’t just because he was tasked with sorting out justice - it was because he had told Hades ‘hey, you want a wife? Cool! Abduct my daughter, Persephone. Her mum totally won’t mind,’ and then when Persephone’s mother did mind, Zeus was like ‘I fucked up real bad, I should sort this shit out.’ Edit 4 - in Ancient Greece, women didn’t have to consent in the same way as we do now. Abduction marriages were actually illegal (or at least very very naughty) but the bride’s consent basically took the form of her father saying ‘you’ll marry this dude, right? Yeah, cool. She’ll marry you, dude.’ Here, Zeus gives Persephone’s consent to Hades by telling Hades that he can marry her - this is why technically she wasn’t exactly abducted, because the necessary consent - her father’s - was given. HOWEVER, let’s not get into Greek law here. She was abducted by our standards.
It is also true that Persephone became a very feared goddess and basically had a great time in the Underworld. She wasn’t exactly more terrible than Hades, though; there are certain myths (e.g. Sisyphus and Orpheus) where she’s the one who says ‘Hades, babe, shall we give this guy a chance to make his way out of the Underworld alive?’ HOWEVER, she did usually do this with the implementation of specific terms, meaning that she had a level of control in proceedings which a lot of other wife goddesses didn’t have over their respective spouses’ spheres. Most mythological canons also give her and Hades a very healthy and monogamous relationship (with the exception of Orphism, which is a bit more iffy on that front) so, disregarding the abduction part of her myth, their marriage was really relatively healthy, even by modern standards. (Edit 5: also, Persephone did not ‘lay the smack down on sinners’ - the whole idea of sinners is basically a Christian concept. The Underworld was not Hell. It wasn’t a place for bad people. It was just where the dead went. Tartarus was the place where the really bad guys went to be tortured and shit, and is more indicative of Christian notions of Hell. People weren’t punished in the Underworld. They just went there.)
I love the idea of Persephone as a consenting wife of Hades. I am a fan of modern reinterpretations in which she chooses to eat the pomegranate seeds willingly, or where she falls in love with Hades and goes to the Underworld of her own accord. However, these are modern interpretations, based on modern gender politics and ideas of reclamation and representation. I will forever fight for people’s right to reinterpret myths however they like, but this whole idea of the ‘original myth’ of Persephone being devoid of any misogynistic undertones really needs to die.
(Edit 1: putting my tags here in case anyone thinks I’m just a hideous puritan:
#i love all the myriad interpretations where she actually has agency #but she didn’t in any of the oldest original sources that we currently have #and i don’t like people saying that she did #because it negates all the misogynistic bullshit that women have been subjected to #and i don’t think it should be negated
I should also point out that I’m doing my MA dissertation partly on the modern feminist reclamation of patriarchal myths, including the erroneous claims that these myths were originally matriarchal, so this post definitely counts as work and I’m 100% not procrastinating… sort of…)
