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The World Alzheimer Report 2013 'Journey of Caring: An analysis of long-term care for dementia', calls for governments around the world to make dementia a priority by implementing national plans, and by initiating urgent national debates on future arrangements for long-term care.
Alzheimer's Disease International (ADI) and Bupa commissioned a team of researchers, led by Professor Martin Prince from King's College London, to produce the report.
The report reveals that, as the world population ages, the traditional system of "informal" care by family, friends, and community will require much greater support. Globally, 13% of people aged 60 or over require long-term care. Between 2010 and 2050, the total number of older people with care needs will nearly treble from 101 to 277 million. Long-term care is mainly about care for people with dementia; around half of all older people who need personal care have dementia, and 80% of older people in nursing homes are living with dementia. The worldwide cost of dementia care is currently over US$600 billion (£395 billion), or around 1% of global GDP.
The report states that more attention needs to be paid to maintaining and enhancing quality of life; helping those affected, and their families to 'live well with dementia'.
Ten-fold increases in research funding are needed to re-energise the work on dementia prevention, treatment and care. This investment is essential to mitigate the impact of the global dementia epidemic on future long-term care needs, and improve quality of care.
The Report recommends that:
- Systems should to be in place to monitor the quality of dementia care in all settings - whether in care homes or in the community
- Autonomy and choice should be promoted at all stages of the dementia journey, prioritising the voices of people with dementia and their caregivers
- Health and social care systems should be better integrated and coordinated to meet people's needs
- Front-line caregivers must be adequately trained and systems will need to be in place to ensure paid and unpaid carers receive appropriate financial reward in order to sustain the informal care system and improve recruitment and retention of paid carers
- Care in care homes is a preferred option for a significant minority - quality of life at home can be as good, and costs are comparable if the unpaid work of family caregivers is properly valued
- The quality of care in care homes should be monitored through the quality of life and satisfaction of their residents, in addition to routine inspections, as care homes will remain an important component of long-term care.
Professor Martin Prince, from King's College London's Institute of Psychiatry and author of the report, said: "People with dementia have special needs. Compared with other long-term care users they need more personal care, more hours of care, and more supervision, all of which is associated with greater strain on caregivers, and higher costs. Their needs for care start early in the disease course, and evolve constantly over time, requiring advanced planning, monitoring, and coordination. We need to value the unpaid contribution of family caregivers more, and reward paid caregivers better. We can build quality into our care systems, but to do so while containing costs and achieving equity of access for all will be a challenge."
Marc Wortmann, Executive Director, Alzheimer's Disease International said: "We need to value those that provide frontline care for people with dementia. This includes paid, as well as unpaid family caregivers, who share much in common. Governments need to acknowledge the role of caregivers and ensure that there are policies in place to support them. "
Dr Paul Zollinger-Read, Chief Medical Officer, Bupa, said: "An ageing population around the world means that improving dementia care and support is one of our generation's greatest healthcare challenges - a challenge we must tackle. We're calling on governments around the world to make dementia a national health priority by developing national dementia plans. National plans ensure that people living with dementia have a good quality of life and friends and family, who often take on the important role of a carer, are properly supported too."
In response to the global Alzheimer's epidemic, Alzheimer's Disease International and Home Instead Senior Care®, have joined together to host Living with Alzheimer's: A Journey of Caring World Alzheimer Report 2013 Release & Roundtable Discussions. The events, held in three international capitals, address the global impact of the disease during World Alzheimer's Month. The first event was held in Washington, DC. The other two events are in London on 20 September and Beijing on 26 September.
Roger Baumgart, CEO of Home Instead Senior Care, said: "Studies consistently show that older adults overwhelmingly prefer to age at home, and with support, they can age at home. However, two-thirds of the calls we get every day are from families in crisis. Caregiver stress is a driver for transition to institutional care. Interventions that provide support, education and training for caregivers have considerable potential to reduce or delay transition into institutional settings. It is our responsibility as a society to determine how we can better support their needs. We are working actively to raise awareness of the needs and challenges for families and to offer the support, educational classes and materials we've developed widely available around the world."


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Get a glimpse of what visitors to the Canton shrine don't see.
Sometimes the best memorabilia collections are the ones you rarely see.
Both the Baseball Hall of Fame and the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio have plenty of authentic memorabilia on display. The rest is in storage, ready to rotate in when a new display is created. Most of the time, though, it's only seen by special tour.
Check out two videos which feature looks at some of the items in the Football Hall's collection. #1 is entitled "The Hall's Collection" and #2 is called "Behind the Scenes. Watch them here.

subset: commoncrawl


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New Newsletter
TAKE GOOD COMPASS BEARING and navigate your way into oldest times so long ago!
Recent Notifications of immense ancient cogitation will get you there!
Bardot Books makes a regular practice of Classical Thoughts. These are Notifications of interest to buffs of Antiquity by brief topical treatments of what's the new academic consensus of scholars with whom the Bardot Group is intimate.
We regret that we can't reproduce the illustrations that attend these bulletin items. Go to the Facebook page of Saltonstall Weld Bardot and you'll find Classical Thoughts & Thinking complete to any Figures by accessing Notes of SWB's Wall.
Classical Thought & Thinking : Notification No. 10
March 19, 2012
I have held back from new Notifications since I began a serialization of the Mythical Saga of Perseus & Andromeda. It appears in reverse of the serialization upon my Blog, which can be found at http://swbardot.authrosxpress.com. Now that I'm almost finished the synthesis of the Saga's prehistorical bases I can at least be brief by this latest contributions to Newsletter section of this website.
Greek Homosexuality from Antiquity :
Classical Thought & Thinking : Notification No. 9
February 8th, 2012
When does Life Begin?
We are troubled and polarized by the harsh extremes of either held conviction, about the pro-life versus the pro-choice opinion on abortions. There seems to be no middle ground to either, and that proves for good reasons. How can there be a middle ground when it's so totally evident which is the absolutely right stance to take! If life is a sperm and an egg as melded, at the instance of absorption of the former into the latter, any time to abort afterwards is a high crime's occasion. That is hard science: it must compel all our universal answers to when life begins.
But then there are among us the hardheaded thinkers that until life is viable because wnated there is no life by mere congress of sperm and egg. Viable means wanted life, supposedly by the parents awareness of its coming event for themselves. But if not to their want, then wanted can mean for burgeon and increase of society by contribution of new life as an inalterable blessing. If the parents of a fetus in the female womb would have it ejected, then they do not want the child by it, even to detesting the thought of nurturing the birn chuld after the conception. As transformed by pregnancy into viable, stand-alone life by the sixth month to term, however, the decision to end life still doews not achieve mounting, until insupportable reasoning against termination by abortion. That reasoning does occur, and it has legally ended fetuses completely ready for the parturition from their wombs.
To remove that reasining legally, as a last trimester of pregnancy decision, we most often hold for an broadly alleged crime of pre-meditated murder. The pro-choice stance still says then that a fetus can be ejected at anytime on grounds that it's still unwanted, still incapable of receiving the irrevocable love of either parent. To bring a child into a cruel world unaided by that irrevocable love, of either parent so posited, is a cardinal transgression. That tenet also holds that every religion should hold that paramount value judgment, thus become pre-eminent and licit over any other in contention, that there's no soul of a fetus. No soul, then the life can't be killed, because it does not have "existence" yet. Accordingly, a charge of murder can't be made while fetal life and fetal soul can't be the same thing in any existential sense.
To which, of course, the pro-life position remains, that any end-of-life decision has nothing to do with some reasoning in proof of existentiality. Or is no longer true that a rigorous scientific justification must trans cend any morality of ending life, for any appropriate reason or faith, because the life so ended has been viable as soon as sperm's insemination of egg.
I have deliberately rendered to extreme the stance by either the pro-life or pro-choice decision that's embodied within all of us. So deliberately difficult, so deliberately difficult, too, of any compromise unto a middle ground position. For the leading fact will likely always remain, that we can't or won't agree upon any such middle position as universally acceptable. That's why I speculate further upon the matter of such polarized thinking by considering how Greeks born to the 8th century BC might have thought and adjudged ours and theirs about terminating unwanted life.
Farthest back then, I can say with confidence, Greeks had evolved their value-in-fetus decision to a belief that some child lives must be subject to terminations on good grounds. By the century cited Greeks everywhere had achieved a highly conditioned panoply of values and beliefs about both the dignity and viability of life. That century is also the middle point in their race's ethnic evolution where some kind of middle position might have become possible to the satisfaction of both extreme positions. Earliest Greeks ever, no longer pre-Hellenes, would have been almost universally pro-life, even as they too exposed maimed babies after conception, as supposedly unviable of any existence that did not command undue burden or distress upon their parents or their communities. Not long before that 8th century BC, however, most all Greeks suffered the deep economic distress of their underpopulated regions. Their lands' occupants could not meet the potential of its resource for the insufficiency of labor to cultivate them or bring them to adequate yields. What little land they could manage just didn't support community beyond a bare subsistence level. Often the oxen that enabled the plowing, tillage and seeding commanded most or too much of what was fostered by cultivation to have themselves fed. Insufficiency of yield was by definition the inadequacy of gain by human stoop labor or animal toil together in order to bring land to adequate surplus. So to for husbandry by the raising of livestock for steady state cull and meat consumption of the old or yearling bred livestock species. The only solution was more life, for as much life as could be born. To terminate life before a child could grow into useful labor was more than murder; rather, it was as though a termination of meaningful social existence.
As I fathom the further evolution of the Greeks, as they grew in populace whereby to adequately bring all arable land into good use and production, more farmers and more livestock herders allowed considerable adequacy of labor to meet greater and greater land productivity. At just the right time in the prehistory of those Greeks, too: For the diversity of human preoccupation attended that adequacy of population to yield at best produce or cull from a whole community agronomy. They assumed as a blessing taken as granted that young children served some chore or function at either tilth or husbandry. We know of matriarchal times, by the ages of so-called primordia, that labor was communal by the cooperation of the lowliest with the most ennobled, the youngest with the oldest, at plantation yields to surplus. Labor was still in shortage because so many pregnancies of women failed to come to term as healthy babies, or to survival of the mothers at the dire process of delivery. Thus the ingrained belief of cultures longest living ago was that life was invaluable at the reckoning, because always wanted, thus rejected only for incapacity to become viable through the normal aging process beyond infancy.
We have, furthermore, in the Greek language some suggestion of when they deemed life fully viable in keeping with such tenets of matriarchy. Blatantly put, it was at the first anniversary – what we call the first birthday – of a baby. The Greek word for a fetus was an embryo(n), which is to say a neuter living thing. Once a baby delivered from womb, the then born child was a paidion or an uion, which is likewise to say a child thing because also a neuter life as so worded by declension.
This should not have us wondering. The "life" of a fetus and a baby was highly vulnerable, even constantly imperiled during those times of least scientific and technological remedy to child inflictions. So greatly wanted, so greatly grieved for the loss of baby, by miscarriage or by infant malady respectively, language reflected some forbearance of direst hurt. To bear that suffering, best to consider that life hovered just barely within some neutral existence of a single year's duration. Accordingly, once the first birthday, or the first anniversary of the neuter life still under divine probation, a true child was born and recognized! No longer an embruo(n),the baby became a paidion/paidia or a uion/uia, a baby boy or baby girl by the gender of those words for either. I'm sure that good contemporary psychology, howsoever anachronistic as we'd deem any most ancient psychoanalysis, held greatest celebration for the viable life attained at first birthday. And for any failure of an infant to achieve that anniversary, so, concomitantly, the least suffering of "its" loss.
Just as our times present us the dilemma over when first life or viable life occurs, so did the oldest times of the Oldest Greeks. The difference, quite obviously, was back then that the Oldest Greeks could not celebrate the unborn or new born as children under one year of age. That, however, was their own confirmed science, much more than a belief by faith of simpletons, but also much less scientific than what biological science now dictates to our own times.
Humanity loves life on practical terms more or less. Greek humanity required that new life be nurtured until useful. That nurture very often failed, and for no lack of "trying." A mother could accept that lower expectancy of the born child from her womb while nurturing "it" to a first birthday celebration. All the more celebrated that life became affirmed, then, because no longer endangered by whatever unhappy destiny could cause too sudden an end of infancy "as divinely fated."
For some of us, this Notification shall offer some discipline, perhaps some gratification too, to their own position at the pro-life or pro-choice extreme. I end by saying that a child by the Mordern Greek still takes the neuter gender of paidi. But for that I have no explanation or any existential argument. That neuter gender so enduring simply commands of us more room for diverse belief in whatever an aborted life. Whether a pre-meditated crime or a reasonable societal expediency, as either there's a decision of most passionate conviction that the primordial Greeks can guide us to.
Classical Thought & Thinking : Notification No. 8
January 31st, 2012
Homer's Real Name and Place in the 8th Century BC
Being a prehistorian and not an expert in literary analysis, I still can be grateful for the occasional breakthrough exposition about how literature was created through the evolution of earliest writ. The literary journal of Boston University, Arion, offers an outstanding book review of a tome by M. L. West, a paramount Homeric Scholar and the author of the work cited below my closing initials. The reviewer is Professor Emeritus Norman Austin of the University of Arizona. I am going to quote from him liberally, to the point of gross plagiarizing, but that's because West's book is likely to prove scriptural among our advanced academic communities, at least those that I follow assiduously.
The book has two sections, Disquisition and Analytical Commentary, from the first of which Professor Austin extracts the book author's "coruscating brilliance." He leads with the generality, " We do not know who Homer was and when he lived, if indeed he was a person at all or a confederacy of singers." Still, we're informed later in the review that an early Lyric Age Greek of Anatolia, born to either Smyrna or Chios, lived most of his life far west of of both maritime city-states, at somewhere between the ancient named Hermos and Kaÿster Rivers. He likely lived amidst refugees from the Greek Peninsula. Those congregations of highly cultured expatriates/emigres by the Dark Age were beginning returns to the homelands of their Bronze Age forbears, by emigration back and across the Aegean Sea. They were also the Greek intellectuals who led a brief renaissance that began in Anatolia. Its tide reached summit high as the Lyric Age, from 800 to 600 BC. His name comes down as Melisigenes, born 700 BC, floruit 680-40 BC. He was most definitely the accomplished poet and writer behind the first ever material writ of The Iliad, whereby he consolidated a culmination of magnificent recitations in epic verse, as earlier rendered by bards called rhapsodes. They in turn had evolved from a confederacy of their ilk, ancestral bards so to speak, who had composed in full all the subsidiary epics behind The Iliad. They were "the school" just before the masterpiece consolidation of all those epics by a supposedly illiterate genius. His name comes down to us as Homeros, Homer, but it must be stressed that he could not have been the epic poet of the epic work without the skills of writer/composer by alphabet, which Homeros most likely was not. Even so, her serves glory for his masterful consolidation of Trojan War saga, and no wonder, accordingly, that disciples of his stylization became known as the Homeridai.
West further postulates about Melesigenes as follows, as I again plagiarize off Professor Austin:
Accordingly, there's the open question about whom was truly the poet of The Odyssey. Appositely, the school of epic poets called the Homeridae should have cited Melisigenes, in so far as he was the master guide of epic by the content of the final masterpiece. They should also have cited the rhapsodes as the forbears who brought rendition about the Trojan War from the copious writ of its remembrance by syllabary, by Linear B Greek or Oldest Greek.
[Allow me briefly here an edifying expansion upon the Professor's remarks so far upon West's Disquisition.
As matters went further, through the throes of joint collaborations, between Phoenicians and Dark Age Greeks, scribes respective to each forged the two separate and yet kindred alphabets just after the 8th century BC had begun. I shall defer to a later Notification the forensic and decryptic sciences that allows us understanding of that further evolution. It served the 1st millennium Greeks the oldest remembrances in verse until the rhapsodes. It took most of the Greek Dark Age (1200 to 800 BC) for revisionist masterful recitations off the whole copious Trojan War lore to allow transcription from writ off syllabary(ies) into standardized alphabetic compositions. That evolutionary process enabled the very last rhapsodes to pass on their composed masterpieces. Howsoever proven to have been subsidiary works of comparable length to The Iliad, they did not survive in full beyond the legendary Homeros' lifetime. By redaction of those penultimate epic recitals, nonetheless, the diligent Melisigenes modeled most painstakingly, and understandably haltingly, a first manuscript of The Iliad.]
To keep the limelight on our good book reviewer, allow in gist an evolution of the masterpieces from "illiterate singers," early Dark Age of lifetimes, to early rhapsodes who were mnemonic adepts, to last scribes at writ by syllabaries, and thus to first scribes ever at transcription of all former opera to alphabetic writ. West collapses those agencies into one: The final epic poet was trained in oldest techniques of pre-literate song while a writer who personally fixed his own songs and made them a written text. For the matter he may had had an amanuensis for the actual writing by instrument to physical media. That would lessen the glory in attribution of the finally composed, first ever manuscript to Melisigenes. "Homer" is, and remains, the last of the pre-literate singers, a genius rhapsode of inordinate publishing talent considering that he couldn't put down text by his own hand.
Professor Austin goes on to discuss the controversy that becomes inevitably from pat exposition that ends a longstanding quandary now resolved. I don't want to go into citing scholars and endless litanies of pro and com arguments. Just be assured that a fuller study is enabled you through what I cite below my initials.
Classical Thought & Thinking : Notification No. 7
January 23rd, 2010
Charis [Χαρις], A Highest Virtue of the Oldest Greeks Known:
While it has taken the Bardot Group whole decades to discern the etymology of this earliest Greek word for a highest deemed virtue of character and personality, it should interest modern readers that we've hit upon a final finding. I'd like to use the heroines Alkestis and Penelope by way of illustrating the virtue's embodiment on woman, before breifly discussing the virtue as adaptive to earliest hero cults that survived into the historical periods of the Greeks.
Charis means a person possessed of "selflessness," someone without any expectation of return upon generosity or even to gratitude for unselfish acts. It also connotes self-sacrifice in an ultimate sense, even to forfeit of life; but usually the self-sacrifice is that which attends deliberate loss of place, wealth or endearment from others for the sake of the common good, or for some other goal that transcends human self-interest (which, may I add, was not a bad thing or necessarily ungenerous of any person).
First a little bit of etymology to get at some further subtleties. Charis was not the root word for charity but it may serve some basis to what the word "character" evolved into, in English, my precursor sense of "the graced whole person," as embodying the virtues of integrity, courage, fortitude, honesty, and loyalty. But there was no Latin counterpart as, say,charitas that took such a meaning by the semantic gestalt. Rather, the Latin preserved the plural of the word as the Charites, for the Three Graces Aglaia, Euphrosynë and Thalia, supposed attendants at the birth/genesis of Aphroditë. Latin's closest word to the quality of person that charis imputes wasdignitas, but with a slightly different shading. To the Romans, any person of uncommon generosity, whose acts were selfless to the common good, built for himself what we now understand as personal self-dignity. The selflessness has to be there, and the person who projects it must not have any vanity as a do-gooder. Dignitas reached to especially high acclaim if the unselfish person was spoken aloud for all his good deeds and generosity of personality. What counted was that any and all acclaimmust be said by others, thus without bribe or inducement.
The most perfect woman of charis has to be Alkestis in the context of a myth about her husband Admetos, whose theme or morale renders about the unnatural contentiousness between matriarchy and patriarchy. As the story goes, Admetos was granted the favor of Apollo for a year's service by the god at his duly performed penance to Zeus. He was also a very good friend of Herakles from the superhero's young days in Thebes, where his father Amphtitryon was regent.
The boon of god and superhero went to Admetos' head, even to his expecting them to win the trials-at-bridal of Alkestis, a most sought after maiden for a marriage. Besides her beauty and allure she would bring her husband exaltation as a high king over all the confederated petty realms (and Kings) of Aeoleis, a region upon the north mainland of the Greek Peninsula. Asking Apollo for favors to win her, the God complied; but the sacrifices of thanksgiving attendant the marriage rituals themselves were insufficiently generous, in proof that the upstart Admetos did not qualify on virtue for the prize of a high kingdom. Herakles came forward to assist Admetos, however, interceding the divine wrath through appropriate gifts and promises of good conduct. Apollo and his sister Artemis were so satisfied that they together gave Admetos a final boon before acquitting the year of commanded service. As it went, should Admetos be faced with too early a death, he could avoid it through the expedient of having a substitute volunteer to go to Hades for him.
To explain, the cardinal virtue of the selfless sovereign was his willing self-sacrifice and utter selflessness by possessed charis to die in defense of home, hearth and realm, each as supposed in fealty to himself. Admetos did not have that quality but he did have the formidable strengths of a warlord when called upon to prosecute defensive hostilities against a formidable invader. Such did the Minyans prove to become by mass incursion of the realm of Pherai through the lowland terrain of the North Plains (later Thessaly). Admetos admitted himself willing to undertake the peril of defeating the Minyans, as duly aided by Herakles over the Highlanders of the Pindus Mountains. He asked his parents to forfeit their lives should he be so grievously wounded as nigh to dying for sure. He asked his aged parents to comply, but they refused. Alkestis then willingly afforded her life at forfeit for the cause of her husband's salvation.
The Pharaians went into full revolt over the issue, however. Traditional at their faith in highest womanhood of her manifest sacral grace, and utterly grateful for all the generosity that Alkestis had always bestowed upon the common orders, they refused all support of Admetos unless he promised outright to fight to the death, as was becoming to a proper patriarch at his deserved autocratic war powers over Aeoleis.
Still Admetos refused. Alkestis drank a poisonous potion to sacrifice herself in advance of the necessary warfare, whereupon Admetos, Herakles and the alliance of Pharaians to Highlanders threw back the Minyans until they must sue for an enduring peace.
Akestis dying of a potion for her husband Admetos' sake
Alkestis was received in Hades by Persophonë, who became utterly enraged that Alkestis had forfeited her life for her husband's sake. She shrieked how greatly lacking in virtue he was! But Alkestis refused to state that the reason for her self-inflicted sacrifice of herself. She claimed that somebody of highest royalty had to die under the hallowed tradition of an offering, a high royal sacrificial victim, in propitiation of Goddess Eris Strife for victory by irrevocable warfare. She had neither a son nor a daughter to perform such a divine mandate of propitiation. Persephonë, a goddess become of excellent judgment since abducted to the afterworld by Hades, discerned that Alkestis was fibbing; and, moreover, that she had lied about her circumstance most graciously. Accordingly, she summoned Zeus to send his son Herakles down to Hades, by way of escorting Alkestis away from the underworld and back to the upper ethers.
Alkestis refused to comply even at that juncture. Plucking a pomegranate off its tree, she threatened to eat it should any divine redress be imposed upon Admetos for his openly declared refusal to fight to the death in repulse of the Minyans. For all Greeks, earliest to last, knew that a bite into the core of a pomegranate rendered a living person a soul forever dead. Persephonë and Hades himself made the grant of intercession against any penance imposed. Herakles led the virtuous wife back to her husband that they might have children together while regnant over the high kingdom of Aeoleis.
Alternatively, I cite why Penelopë became lauded for her own conduct as graced bycharis. For her virtue was not that alone of her twenty-years of fidelity to Odysseus, while his ten years at warfare in Troy and ten years afterwards of constantly opposed return to Ithaca. Nor did that virtue lie in the fact and understood assumption that her Odysseus would screw away in dalliance and frolic with all the women of great strength that would take him to bed both during and after the Trojan War. Penelopë knew her husband for his attractiveness to both mortal women of formidable powers and to goddesses who sought their sexual gratification in so rare an exquisite mortal man as Odysseus stood at manhood.
Penelope at her loom
No, what made her paramount by good conduct, as inwardly compelled by her charis, was her refusal to remarry. The fathers of the suitors, who would vie to win her in marriage, decreed her a widow who must remarry. It was from them that she exacted the condition that she would complyafter she had fully loomed the burial shroud of her father-in-law Laërtes. While plying the loom by day and unraveling it at night, he also explained to her son Telemachus, who thought his father dead after twenty-years away, that Odysseus was fated to return as told by his childhood chum, the prophet Haliatherses; and, too, that the way to his re-ascension must be preserved by her own wealth kept intact by Lakonia, as once had been forfeited each year both before and after the Trojan War, even as equity through acquitted debts repaid to her father Ikarios since that war's end. For all such returns of tilth and husbandry had gone to the war effort in support of the restoration of stolen Helen to her husband Menelaos. As Odysseus had duly obeyed the pledge to uphold that marriage, so must she ease his return to her as an unmarried woman. For the last of the two terms (durations) of their marriage compact had expired after 200 solar months had elapsed.
Further, and besides that complicated explanation, Penelopë knew, and thus said, that all their subjects of Ithaca and other Isles that composed Cephallenia would damn her for outrage of adultery for her infidelity to spoken Fates by breach of troth, even considering that she was deemed unmarried, even if not yet a widow for sure, after seventeen years of nonrenewal of the marriage vows.
And so when Odysseus returned to find her unmarried and awaiting him rapturously, those vows were retaken with reinvigorated life and perfect memory of first youthful marriage term together. And so famous was she for her virtue, as solely by the acclaim of others to vouch for it, that all Greeks, even those who later detested her homeland of Lakonia become Sparta, had to acknowledge her a paragon over all women ever born to Greece. More to that fact, the Goddess Athena saw that Penelopë was asleep while Odysseus slew all the suitors for her remarriage, even to having everybody clean up the bloody mess and corpse residue before causing the good wife to awaken again!
Odysseus' reward of her as most faithful wife was his own selfless conduct over twenty years by fighting for others, even to restoring them to their realms after the Fall of Troy. Too, he had gone away to Troy as Penelopë's consort home protector; had served to Helen's cause as a foremost Trojan hero beholden to her; and, finally, had performed penance for all the banes brought upon their royal House by curses against him by unhappily incurred enemies—for which acts of redress his seemingly endless years at futile return to Ithaca. That he had dallied boisterously with a consort mistress while the war years, been a consort to a demi-goddess, and then to a minor goddess, a surrogate for the Goddess Athena herself, was taken matter-of-factly as venal sin readily forgiven.
Future Notifications shall address what a consort home protector was, in more robust fashion, by way of a precursor status to the typical hero of the Greek Heroic Age.
Classical Thought & Thinking : Notification No. 6
December 30th, 2011
Graybeard and silver haired classical studies aficionados have their social get-togethers. Often their conversations move into and beyond the largely inductive thinking that climate change study often inspirits. It's always seemed to all us buffs that the Eastern Mediterranean in general, or the Greek Peninsula in particular, was pleasantly cool in dry seasons, long, snowy and wintery by the brief wet seasons. I've found, however, that there's also a rough consensus of climatologists (sic) about a duration, from 2500 BC to 600 AD, wherein a single relatively brief chill-to-chill duration of climate cycle occurred within two very long and salubrious warming periods.
Consider next the following hard dates from third party climate study.
Chilling from1600 BC to 1125 BC, an apogee of cold
Warming from 1125 BC to 750 BC, an apogee of warmth
Chilling from 750 BC to 200 BC, another apogee of cold
Warming from 200 BC to 600 AD, a second warming period's finality
The previous warming cycle took until 1600 BC for it's apogee. Its period probably exceeded 1,500 years, a mean reckoning of cyclical duration by the single source data that shall prove important by my later discussion. The ensuing chill apogee at 1125 BC attests a relatively short duration cycle of 975 years to achieve another chill apogee of 200 BC. A next warming cycle began to culminate toward the Roman Warming Period that lasted until 600 AD, by itself another relatively brief duration of 1,150 years. Admittedly, spot dates of chill and warm cycles by their durations are hard dates by pure intuition, even as well reasoned from literary description. Every one of the numbers cited, moreover, can be off by a whole half-century, or 50 years.
Before describing the how and why of that intuition, about how smart it is and improved it can be, let's consider the more general domains of climate change science.
Our modern discussion of climate change is mostly about whether or not humankind is centrally at fault for the freak meteorological consequences of too much methane and carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. The back and forth has slanted so much to insistency upon man-made consequences that discussion has become mired in rebuttals. Such detraction, often justifiable, challenges the young science of climate change as a hoax. So great is the resistance to pinning predominant fault upon humankind, and so frequent the meteorological contradictions to the mentioned insistency, that the media flaks to the "global warming" and "greenhouse effect" crises (as though they're twofold, accordingly, thus "different") have even stopped using those buzz words.
Too often neglected in the contretemps about man-made causes and effects, climate change by itself has become verifiable and well-reinforced by copious data. What's getting in the way of universal conviction on the matter of what's precisely called interglacial climate cyclicality are flawed monitoring studies before, but especially ever since, a major statistical finding in 1984. The religionist and radical environmental movement has gone nuts over it, but it remains steadfast, nonetheless, because of numerous after-studies commissioned throughout the globe.
The essential thesis has two parts, the first a bold assertion, the second a muffler upon that first statement. The first goes, "Interglacial climate change clearly meets the null hypothesis that it isn't due to chance; and its period mean is 1,500 years." Such parlance is very strong to theory, as though by scientific law, and so for why its peculiar phrasing which too many of us find objectionable.
The second thesis goes, as attendant to the statistical sampling itself, "the 1,500 median period is subject to a 500 year standard deviation."
That twofold statement of thesis is derided by the man-made warming mavens because that standard deviation is one-third of the mean period estimate. That attests, alas, that they're mostly inclined to the fallacious scientists. Mostly grant study addicts, that seek to contradict the data upon which the many sound data analyses are based. That's also to say that they don't know their statistics, and, therefore, they're not proving intellectually honest by abiding within the bounds of the respected discipline's mathematics.
The thesis devolves from two data sources. The first is glacial ice core boring and ring sampling that goes far back beyond 12000 BC, about when the last glacial period ended. The method is definitive for chilling and warming cycles within the most recent domain of 5,000 years duration, as by artic spot dating of cycle parameters. Further indicative of sustained chilling and warming cycles have been petrified wood tree rings that corroborate the ice core findings of mean period duration. That means that the two different methods of dating the chilling and warming periods reinforce each other within that more finite domain of 5,000 years. That infers, moreover, that ice core sampling that goes far back beyond 12000 BC produces useful data, even as subject to the same large standard deviation rendered by the rigorous 5000 year domain of median assessment.
This brief discussion of very important data analysis is owing to the 1984 breakthrough publication of Willi Dansgaard of Denmark and Hans Oeschager of Switzerland. It was their analysis of the oxygen isotopes in the first ice cores extracted from Greenland that has proved a repository of the oldest ice still existing, thus definitive of "climactic oscillations" that can be attributed to global phenomenology. Received as highly dubious when assimilated, numerous after studies have been supportive. S. F. Singer and D. T, Avery have published an excellent book in discussion of the 1500 year mean of duration by interglacial warming cycles. I recommend their Unstoppable Global Warming for its highlighting of arguments pro and con, notwithstanding that their main case, that global warming has (1) begun anew since 1850, (2) has us only one-third of the way until its apogee warmth, and (3) man-made contribution to the warming cycle is mostly incomnsequential. Admittedly inordinate methane and carbon dioxide atomospheric increasesare negative externalities of interglacial climate cycles. Man made contribution is serious but not critical to planet atmospheric health. Atomistic air and water clean-up remains the second best solution to conservation of carbon fuels in general – all of them! That means that town, county, regions of counties, states, and interstate entities are far better as an hierarchal clean-up squad than the Feds by all nations can be. That's also to say that centralized super power shall prove ineffectual compared to the atomistic entities.
None of that polemic stuff has anything to do with Classical Thought & Thinking, except, that is, for the irony of a constant Nemesis to the doomsday superpower mavens. As it is, and is likely to go through the next two-thirds of warming increase in global temperatures, the more the press to dictate to us of dimwitted humankind about the deleterious effects of man-made climate change, the more benign, even beneficial the present warming cycle is inclined to be. Understand of the Goddess Nemesis that she was never regarded by the Greeks as an evil deity. She was good to dash the presumptuous vaunters of pwer regularly, less that ilk of bully mentality go too far beyond the bounds of intellectual modesty and commit utter outrage, hubris.
What I think we classical study buffs have to speculate about soundly, and yet put forth with sound intuition at least immodesty possible, is a Coming-of-the Greeks from warm and salubrious climates everywhere far north of the Mediterranean Sea. From 2200 to 1600 BC the draw of advanced civilizations under the boon of sunshine days and cool nights explained southerly migration. Some migrants even went north, such as Danaos, to find cooler temperate climes. The chilling period from 1600 BC took 400 years to become plainly manifest by the consequence of overrun the Greek Peninsula by equestrian cultures from the near east of Asia, mostly from off the north rim of the Black Sea. The long period prior of warmth had engendered civilization that could absorb the migrant horse-tamers from increasingly unpleasant north temperate pasturelands. So warmth was by pull of peoples distressed by prolonged frosts and killing weather by their homelands.
The absorption throughout the marine south was benign to most all peoples except for the genocides of primitives who could not, or would not work with the competition of higher human population density, which of itself was a most necessary inducement to further advanced civilization throughout the Late Bronze Age. By the 13th century BC, pull of new migrants by a more aggravating chilling period upon agronomies pushed of all northern peoples down and upon the Greek Peninsula and Anatolia. The push was twofold by vectors, (1) down the Denaric Alps, by overruns of the Balkan Peninsula denizens; and (2) off central Europe by displacements of the Achaean Horse Plains at far above the Aegean Sea. The latter had a domino effect of refugee movements by later waves of overly frosted peoples. The last wave of incursion manifest as the Sea People's of the 12th century BC, until, that is, the Iron Age surged up and throughout the Greek Dark Age as a very chill period in outset. The lag effect of the gradual warming period that ensued could have caused the brief Greek and Anatolian renaissances within the 8th century BC.
By follow up into the subsequent historical ages, per se, it took until the 4th century BC to have literary commentary in fullest proof of the cool Classical and salubrious Hellenistic Age Mediterranean, so that the Roman Warming Period could bask an empire in benign climate change for 800 years.
Classical buffs have their highly individual ways of citing examples of the mostly benign durations, which this Notification seeks to invoke. The Last pre-Hellenes and the Ancient Greeks lived semi-tropical forests or below the escarpments of their low mountains. For the most part alpine wilderness was snow-capped in late winters and earliest springs. Both seasons lasted five months of wet season before the whole summer and autumn dry seasons. Even so, there was sufficient rainfall by the latter to nurture large autumn harvests followed by a late seeding season, to bring bumper crops to every summer solstice's peak harvesting.
Singer and Avery should eventually convince us of just how beneficial and assured such warm climate change was and stands to become again. Comparably, I posit, there once was a chill period cycle by the Greek Dark Age that severely depopulated the Greek Peninsula. It drove so many of the Helladic Period Greeks to Anatolia or offshore mid-sea isles of the Aegean Sea. Those migratory spanned the harshest years ever, by whole decades of duration within too brief pleasant year respites. Single harvest reaping predominated over the former agronomy that assumed two harvests. An agronomy that had fed so many people into salubrious health and well-being became depleted by starvation or bloody invasions, either as full wipe-outs. The suffering of livestock was likely comparable even if beggaring any description of the chill period effects upon the husbandry of their cull.
That we can attest to such extreme severity lies in Bronze Age Greeks who enjoyed high protein meat diets relative to Iron Age Greeks, whose diet was extremely deprived of roasted and spitted butchery of their livestock. It also took many centuries of returns to pervasive colonization westward, from west coastal Anatolia to far past Greece and unto Magna Graeca. By such transient movements the Greeks achieved the foundations to their new apogees of advanced civilization. We might also reflect, nonetheless, upon how long it took for them to exceed their forbears by the long light age previous. Or appreciate anew how compelling of advancementthe very gradual chill by the 2nd millennium BC had been.
My own conclusion about the Eastern Mediterranean and Aegean Seas remains as follows: That the warming period of the Bronze Age was good even if at its best while the cooling off of warmth for so many years until the chill. The ensuing chill was made worse than very bad because it drew flights of interlopers from northern isolated wastes by near arctic existences.
As always I invite comments reflective of alternative impressions. Put together coherently, we might even achieve a consensus about Climate Cyclical Antiquity that lends it to Classical Thought & Thinking.
Classical Thoughts & Thinking : Notification No. 5
December 18th, 2011
What can be irking about archaeologists and their ways of managing their 150 year old legacy is how open-ended they tend to be about a tradition that should have been expunged - expurgated? - long ago. My peeve just now stems from a reading in the American Journal of Archaeology about the range and scope of Mycenaean Civilization. It renders ubiquitous a special race of Mycenaeans when there never was any such people of imperial legacy or precise imperial ethnicity as the AIA seems to insist upon upholding.
Heinrich Schliemann discovered the great Argive Fortress of Mikenos (which became from Latinized Greek ortho-graphy Mycenae, since 1864). That was almost four years after his more famous find of City Troy by Troias and the Trojans. I have no doubt that Mikenos was an impressive palace and the supposed capital seat of Argolis while the Perseid and Pelopid Dynasties, or from circa 1624 to the end of the 13th century BC. If the fortress populace was called anything, however, it was Argives, or possibly Danaans, for a race that took Danaos' name by way of his imprimatur upon the agrarian natives and indigenes that settled the Inachus River Plain at about 1700 BC +/- 25 years. Those plain dwellers were an old and venerable people identified strictly with the south mainland of the Greek Peninsula or the Peloponnese.
Less my readers think me some kind of pedant or trivialist as a know-it-all, I would have our archaeologists recall that Mentor used both those names for the Greeks that fought at Troy, along with another verifiable nation race called the Achaeans (or the Achaiwoi as her literally nominated them). But he would have spat the name Mycenaean out as a most bitter taste off his tongue.
Those nasty dubs as apt about me would have some force vituperative were it not for the AIA's offensive article making a highly theoretical, very long winded case that goes muchy too far beyond the nuclear setting of the Argive Plain (Danaans) or imperial Argolis (Argives). The Mycenaeans become defined, accordingly, as the earliest Ionic Greeks, earliest Boeotians and the master race overlords to Aeolic speaking Greeks. Sorry, there's no "blinders-on" approach like that that works for any pre-Hellenes of the Late Helladic Period as they became the first truly ethnic Greeks ever known, or before the Doric and Achaeic ethnicities melded into them during the Greek Dark Age or Early Aegean Iron Age.
There are also other important ethnicities that are entirely overlooked by the AiA article. Paramount would be the Leleges or Lelegans, sometimes called Lelegians. Their great maritime diffusion off the Greek Peninsula began as their precursor name, the Hyperboreans, who settled Crete (aeto-Cretans thereby newly named) and littoral Karia and Lycia of the Anatol. They became the Lelegans aftyer a reverse diffusion from Karia and through the Greek Archipelago, thus back to Crete again, wherefrom, finally, the settlers of Lakonia under an eponymous patriarchal emigre called Lelex.
Yes, there's appropriate scholarly tradition to have a Mycenaean Age follow a Minoan Age of the imperial Cretans. I also can't object to a mixed ethnicity called Creto-Mycenaean, whose greatest populace was by Tiryns and the Argolid Peninsula. Still, why not call them Tirines or Tiroyns, or Late Argives by that feudatory to Argolis?
I'll never get what I'd really like, which is to drop the moniker Minoans from imperial Cretans and Mycenaeans from imperial Argives. But it will continue to miff me that the AIA will likely never admit to what's also directly under the nose of archaeologists, to wit, that the north mainland Greeks by the Great House of Aiakos shall never be called the Aiakans by their imperial meld into the Great Kingdom of Aeoleis and Minya.
But my readers will always know what's right and what's wrong, now that the great fiction that the Mycenaeans have become by our ethnologists has been brought to enlightenment.
Classical Thoughts & Thinking : Notification No. 4
by S W Bardot, December 6th, 2011
While Homer never postured himself as a moralist, and whereas Hesiod spent most of his misanthropic propensities upon driving the Greeks of his own Lyric Age to tight-ass beleifs in the orthodox polytheism of the Olympian Pantheon, their was once before them both a Greek Ethical Code in a most general sense. It was also by prelude to what the Classical Age Greeks had to say about their own after great rumination upon a past that they never understood adequately.
We are taught to think that one of their cardinal sins was hubris, a fatal flaw of the human condition in general and of sovereign persons in particular. So, when Niobe boasted that she was far more fecund than Leto, who had conceived off Zeus the last but two of the Olympian Pantheon, it was her committed "horrendous outrage" by the boast of bearing many mortal children that Leto had produced only Apollo and Artemis. No wonder, then, that the two immortal children zapped all of Niobe's brood as a single act of retribution. It was a comparable outrage that Kassiopeia committed in boast of her beauty and prowess as a queen, for which vaunt the announced expiation of her own cardinal sin was that her daughter Andromeda be posted to a vast rock off which the monstrous Kraken fed upon victims alike her.
Another cardinal sin, closely akin to hubris because deemed capable of utter outrage, was anaidos or immodesty, as a form of sovereign comportment capable of achieving its worst committed transgression. A comparable great virtue was aidos, modesty, for which the great heroine of western literature, Penelope, is cited as a paramount exemplar. Homer has Agamemnon so obdurately a vaunter of his sovereign perogatives that he stole Achilles' woman because the prophet Kalchas demanded his own spoils prize be given back to her holy father in expiation of a plague upon the Greek shore encampments at Ilion of Troias.
Tch Tch. Boy did he pay for the rupture that ensued! Suffering divine disgrace, a plague upon the troops and a total rebellion of his mortal following into a ten year war, the men who finally saved him from himself were modest kings. They could have told Agamemnon what was right and proper expiation without Kalchas. They were Odysseus, Big Ajax, brother Menelaos, Diomedes and Phoenix. They later became member delegates to a mission of embassy to resecure Achilles' Mymiradons to the battle arrays against the Trojans. Agamemnon remained the cardinal sinner he was, by a close cardinal sin committed before during the second mobilization at Aulis, because he would not admit of his sin, or ask its expiation, in a ritual manner of proper atonement. He only confessed that he'd been delusional, hideously mistaken, a victim by visitiation in dream and while awake of Atai. I translate her as the Black Fate, the kind of clairvoyance that deliberately seeks to fool her victims - righteous persons as much as unrighteous ones - and it can't be helped if a man or woman sins on account of her spell upon them.
Modesty's paramount exemplar occurred when Odysseus finally won a long bout of contention with her father Ikarios, that he be allowed, or not, to have Penelope live in his homeland of royal birthright, Cephallenia of the Ionian Isles. Her leave-taking of her homeland Lakonia had her father Ikarios declare without presumption and in fullest humility, his strongest belief that the absence of her sacral majesty from Lakonia would ruin their homeland, begrieve the commoner orders and greatly impair his sovereign dependancy upon her. She was riding a chariot with her bewed Odysseus beside her, she even holding the reins, when that declaration of her apostasy was uttered. Odysseus stared straight ahead upon the road of departure as Penelope said somewhat as follows, "Do not speak nonsense that mean nothing but trouble for all of us that I am so exalted above all our loving people, transgressive of Lakonia's best fortune in royal House as I may represent it and I'm suddenly at forfeiture of all your best abilities as sovereign. There can be no aspersion upon us that I leave thee instead to go to a new land, my husband's land, where a great people to adopt me, love me and enjoy a loving princess of their new House." Upon saying so, Penelope dropped her veil over her face, looked down, while Odysseus helped to steer their team forward to their port of embarkation at Laas upon the Lakonian Gulf. ikarios was right, though. Not long afterwards, her first cousins Kastor and Pollux died, her first cousin Klytaimnestra lost her husband to Ageamemnon whom she;d eventually marry, her two favorite first cousins were abducted away - Helen - and wedded to an impotent husband - Timandra.
Finally to comment, my own judgement has the worst cardinal trangression of the oldest Greeks as atasthalia, which translates as Presumptuous Sin. In many ways holistic with the other two cardinal transgressions, there still was nothing worst considered than the assumed divine favor upon any mortal, even a demigod, or otherwise a most worthy human being in just deserts of such favors. So, for best example, I take off the earliest construed myth of Oedipus before his tragically conceived character by Sophokles for his masterpiece dramatic trilogy.
Oedipus's father had been a very sinful man, and the consequence of his actions was a doom prophesied that he would die by his son's hand. He had cast away forthwith the child by a sexual union of his youth, maimed him (Oedipus means idiomatically "halting foot" for that consequence) and put men in charge to have him exposed to raptor birds or wild predators. His sin was the presumption that he could avoid the spoken fate as a just retribution upon him. One sin led to another, his son's the very last. For Oedipus survived the exposure and was adopted like Moses into a royal household suffering a desperate hope to have a royal heir, even if a foundling child. At his age of manhood Oedipus was granted mantic counsel that he was under a bane, and that he should seeks from the Delphic Oracle just what the divine curse upon him was. As he ascended to alpine Delphi he met his father on the same road ahead, by a track of confluence of their separate ways. The father saw his halting gate and attacked him as a hated assailant. Oedipus killed his father in self-defense and destroyed the entire royal entourage except for one man, a survivor to tell of the slaying by an unidentified assailant of great martial prowess.
The father's bride was Iokaste - she was not Oedipus' mother in accordance with Sophocles and Classical Greek Mythology. She immediately sought a man eligible for her to remarry. Her bridal would lift a plague that could only be lifted through her remarriage. A child maiden bride of greatest matrilineage, she'd been closeted in seraglio until become a still maiden widow. The tests that vetted her aspirants for her bridal hit early upon Oedipus, but officiating elders rejected him as maimed. So, accordingly, many rivals underwent the gamut of severe tests that led up to the so-called Riddle of the Sphinx, the correct answer of which would lead to accession of that rival as the royal husband but whose failed response would cause his immediate death by dispatch of the Sphinx' sacral retainers. The riddle became allegorical of all the very useful dispatch of formidable rivals to Oedipus, so that he could accede without any strong challenge to himself afterwards his correct answer to the riddle and become the life long husband of Iokaste.
Her remarriage duly lifted the plague that the lost discovery of her husband's slayer had caused.
After a nearly twenty-five year long marriage that bore four children, another plague befell the realm. Prophecy commanded that the slayer "of the old king" must be found, at last, and brought to severest justice. Had it not been for Oedipus obstinate sleuthing out of the truths determining the slayer, whereby a perfect murder came to light in all its details, there would never have been a finding that he was Oedipus himself! Until that fated outcome Oedipus had been a nearly perfect husband and protector, a greatest father, and most active contrubutor to the broad prosperity shared by all of Iokaste's and his own neighboring sovereigns. And yet it was atasthalia that had propelled Oedipus down the track to utter ruin, upon his own presumption that he could discover what nobody else possibly could or would of an outrageous crime without his own knowledge to complete the criminal recollection. Throw into the mix, as well, his immodesty of means to that final end of a full discovery, wherefrom his most accidental yet outrageous regicide and patricide of his father.
This small piece of ethical elucidation will lead to a follow-up about Greek Venal Sins. Most of them we of modern time would regard most serious sins of propensity indeed. Until that Notification, however, I am, for now,.....
Classical Thoughts & Thinking : Notification No. 3
by Saltonstall Weld Bardot on Sunday, November 13, 2011 at 1:13pm
During the Late Aegean Bronze Age of the Greek Peninsula (Central & Southern Greece below Ancient Macedonia) there were two distinct calendars. There was the solar calendar with which Hesiod accorded himself for his Works & Days. Composed of twelve months, each of thirty days, it governed the agricultural year from winter solstice to the end of the next 360 days.
The new Solar Year then began five of six days afterwards, beyond what were called the Intercalaries, which were solemnized days celebrated not so differently from what we're used to as Holiday Week between Christmas and New Years Day. Without the whole gamut of our football bowl games, that is: Festival feastiing made those last days of the solar year a celebration in Thanksgiving, even in years when the harvests off tilth and culls of livestock husbandry were deeply disappointing. Knowing how despondent the Goddess Demeter was at winter solstice time, they thanked her anyway, thereby to lift the gloom she felt for the perennial loss of her daughter Kore [KORE-AYE] to her husband the God Hades over (under?) the Afterworld of the Dead.
Kore is better known as Persephone, which means, idiomatically, "Destroyer of [Winter's] Blight." For with the springtime that's just what Kore did, sending Old Man Winter into evanescence. Although I was very good at Latin, once, I really don't know what her name in Roman Classical Mythology means as Proserpina, although I guess that she had something to do with the constellation Drako, who kind of slithers around Polaris in the heavens over the northern hemisphere. Perhaps some reader can elucidate on this point as I cannot.
The second calendar was the Lunar Year for landsmen and the Naval Year for seafarers. It composed of thirteen months of 28 days each, or two fortnights each month by the wax of the moon over fourteen days, followed by the wane of the moon for another 14 days. The sum of the months and days came to 364 days, leaving a day or two left over before the next New Year Day. It was celebrated as "Last Feast," though, because there was no uniformity to just when the Lunar of Naval Year began, or even to whether they weren't separate years as celebrated in that particular fashion. For landsmen would use their Lunar Year as concurrent with Solar Year, ending both at the winter solstice as nearest as they could get to it. Most mariners began their Lunar New Year with the spring equinox, which came at either the mid-month of the third or mid-month of the fourth lunar month. The Messenians, we think, closed their Naval Year with the autumn equinox, which occurred at the opening day of the ninth lunar month. The reasoning goes that that was when all their compacts and agreements "settled up," whereby all obligations were fulfilled, or acquitted or entered into defaults by breaches of promise. When we of modern times say, "the day when all our ships come home," the Messenians thought, instead, "the day when our ships better come home or else we're going to have a lot of embarrassed merchant magnates on our hands." For if they didn't come home, someone was getting screwed, which is what Messenian matrons and maidens did with transient seafarers while they were away until their husbands' and mates' ships finally did come home.
But let's not bog down on such minutiae as the middle paragraph or with prurient thoughts such as that just completed might compel.
Even mariners accepted the Solar Year as important for various reckonings. Highly ennobled and royal marriages were set for a term of 100 solar months or 8 1/4 years. It may interest some readers that the taking of vows on a particular day of a particular solar month usually accorded with a new moon's rising. But the term of wedlock would end in divorce or renewal on the same day and same month, but with the full moon aloft the midnight sky. You had to double the duration to have the anniversary of the original vows taken befall the same day, same month and same moon aspect. The reason for terms of marriage was the same reason as that for consortships of only one or two years' duration. The sacrament was a contract of the man with the woman that he sire her children. If he proved impotent he had to divorce, leaving his betrothal gifts to her parents for her lifetime security. If he happily proved potent as her kept man, renewal of vows might follow, but often he had to take challenge from suitors if that particular wife was especially desirous and desirable for whatever her great endowments bestowed to her remarriage. An impotent husband, moreover, would often find a surrogate of appeal to his wife if that arranged "lover" was proven of potency as a sire of babes (both kinds!). So much for earliest manage a trois, pardon my French.
I leave this Notification at that. Again, it will appear in my Facebook Notes until the next, No. 4, has been composed. This Notification will then be archived on my website, www.bardotbooks.com, under the Homer Page menu category of Newsletters.
Classical Thoughts & Thinking: Notification No. 2
by Saltonstall Weld Bardot on Saturday, October 29, 2011 at 3:58pm
Isthmus of Ephyraia, 1315 BC
Whenever the Bardot Group gets a bit cocky about all the prehisotrical know-how its scholars have developed on Bronze Age civilizations of the Eastern Mediterranean, it only takes mention of Corinth [AG, Korinth(os)] for us to contemplate devouring humble pie anew. The Ancient Corinthians of the 1st millennium BC left us almost no prehistory, and they don't seem to have liked whatever they had -mostly small stuff of obviously poor retention, either oral or written. What we do know, therefore, derives from clues about what those Greeks most detested about their forbears. After tracking through what can be known, then working from there, we think modern Corinthians would be pleased to know that their most expunged and obfuscated personages lived illustrious lives that hardly to be ashamed of.
First know, accordingly, that the Isthmus was since 1600 BC at least a major destination of maritime commerce, when then began the impressive ascendancy of pre-Hellenes by their Late Helladic Period (aka, the Late Aegean Bronze Age of the Greek Peninsula). That meant burgeoning traffics mostly to and from the east, although the high city AcroKorinth over its rural vicinity and port city precincts pioneered and sponsored important trade outposts abroad, even to enabling earliest colonies as the first ever conceivable. Further, know that she likely was the embarkation point for an overland caravan commerce web, by export products drawn from herself or by both mainland divisions of the Greek Peninsula. These last rovijng emporia channeled their surpluses via re-exports off "manufactories" originating from within the entire length of the Isthmus. For important as a seat of commerce that the AcroKorinth was, Corinth and neighboring Megara [AG, Megaris] shared the Isthmus equally by the geographic definition of the LHP which my illustration renders. Together contiguous, they enjoined to the Isthmus major mainland footings at both north and south, by borders upon Eleusis and Sikyon respectively.
The lead map show the Isthmus as it was before Medeia's lifetime. The tiny picture below gives some idea of how the Isthmus, or the region of Epyrea [AG, Ephyraia], configured from 1600 to 1200 BC. Notice how the greater region of Ephyrea nested betrween two imperia, of Argolis by the Peloponnesus and of Kadmeis in the north as a precursor to Thebes.
The Venerable Great Powers of the Late Helladic Period Greece
By digging under the roots of Classical Greek Mythology and constructing the lifetime dating of illustrious heroines such as Medeia, Pleione and the Pleiades, and native son heroes such as Sisyphus and Bellerophon(tes), the Isthmus proved the least belligerent yet doughtiest region at defense of all majot powers by the end of the 14th Century BC. That's because its Supreme Sister, Medeia as a matriarch of ten years duration, managed to repulse inroads intended by Kadmeis via subversion of her faithless husband Jason. She took exile in Attica by escape from the atrocities committed in defense of Ephyrea, finding suppliance in Aigeus, who made her his consort mistress before marrying her for happiness and love. Her child by Aigeus, Medeius, was supplanted by Theseus, the legitimate son of Aigeus and Aithra by sacral marriage (hierogamy), despite that he'd been born and raised at Troezen, a realm upon the Saronic Gulf by the piedmont divide of the Argolid Peninsula.
Classical Greek Mythology claims that the successor to a ruined Jason was the matriarchal appointee Sisyphus, a supposed son of Aeolus [AG, Aiolos]. Not so. To believe so wouild mean that Sisyphus lived from 1374 BC to 1260 BC. Such longevity suggests him a composite hero, and hardly a son of the eponymous Aeolus, whom we take as apocryphal by invented genealogy long afterwards the LHP/LABA. We take him instead as an Aeolian by ethnicity for sure, by a grandfather who was a refugee to Greater Ephyrea, a plantation dominion by shoreline upon, and setback of the Gulf of Corinth. That location was better known as "the Lands of Pleione" (the mother of the Pleiades according to CGM) and situated on the west side of the piedmont divide of the northern Isthmus. Pleione, incidentally, means "greater" by the Ancient Greek lexicon.
Sisyphus' imputed father was named Aeolides I the Elder, because Sisyphus himself was named for that sire and lived by the name Aeolides II (the Younger) far into his youth and prime years of manhood. There was also an intermediary name change, of Orion, that slipped between his first and his final name, Sisyphus, which has connotation of titanic force (modern Greeks think a sisyphus is a tidal wave or tsunami).
This Notification is daring in asserting that Aeolides the Elder and Younger became the Keepers or Phylakes over Isthmian Ephyrea from 1382 to 1260 BC, the latter becoming Sisyphus by appointment of the AcroKorinth from 1340 BC onward. While regarded the illicit sire of Odysseus, by laying with Anticleia in cuckold of Laertes, he was a greatest friend of the western Greek House of Cephalos (i.e., of Arceisius per Homer), and by boon friendship with Arceisius he became a guardian of Laertes and tantamount to a godfather for Odysseus. As such until the end of his life, Sisyphus died in the late winter before the first mobilization at Aulis for the Trojan War.
Obviously there's more to be said by expansion of what's been put forth above. So be patient..............
CLASSICAL THOUGHTS Notification No.1
The earliest of Ancient Greeks, before their final ethnicity, were called pre-Hellenes. Until the Dorians and Achaeans arrived to the Greek Peninsula in the 12th century BC they were mostly under matriarchal governance. Later Greeks, by the 1st millennnium BC city-states, looked back upon that legacy as monstrous, both figuratively and literally. But from them came women to dream of.
A matriarch took the name, sometimes name/title of Meda, Medusa, Metiadusa, Medeia and many like variants. Their tradition was grounded in Crete by the Mother Island's several Minoan Periods. As Crete suffered invasion during her declining centuries beyond 1450 BC, her sovereignty became hybrid as the co-regent matriarch, of "sacral matrilineage," with a patriarch of royal or majestic patrilineage.
The Greek Peninsula, or Helladic Period pre-Hellenes, followed this odd governance variously. The most important co-regencies would prove Kadmos & Harmonia over Kadmeia (later Thebes); Aiakos & Endeis over Aioleis & Minya (later Phthiotis and Thessaly, respectively) and Perseus & Andromeda and Pelops & Hippodamaia. Those last ruled imperially over the Argives of the 17th to 15th century and 15th to 13th centuries, again respectively.
Finally, the patriarchs took name/titles by echo of those for matriarchs - Medon, Memnon, etc. In art and mythical expression the earliest ever patriarchs usually took allegorical forms, such as drakes, ganders, dragons and,or monsters from the depths. The dragonmen, however, were mostly benign proxies of exalted sovereign masculinity, renown for their effectiveness at formidable defense of their matriarch, or through devastating pre-emptive repulses against perceived enemy advances upon the co-regent realm. For the dragon of the Greeks lay his serpentine tail in the den or cavern, rooting himself as coiled while awaiting the approach of vile foemen adversaries, or while sometimes leaping aloft to descend with utter devastation upon an enemy lurking upon his soulmate's borders. Alternatively, he was a Triton, a River God or a Monster of the Deep, wherein the essential manhood was that of the formidable defender, a Medon or "High Chief" and "Martial-at-Field." These mortals were the precursor of the hero, but only after the greatest matriarchs, such as Medeia of Ephyraia (Korinth and Megaris as once united region upon the Isthmus), had proven the first ever heroines in life - without any literary connotation whatsoever!
This Notification will be posted on the Wall until the next one supercedes it. I invite comment and challenge to its generalities.


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Special Events
Scheduling Instructions for Special Events:
- Submit your request after selecting the service and the date / time.
- On receipt of your request, you will receive an Initial email. This email indicates that the Puja Committee received your request.
- you will receive the confirmation email either after the sankalpam is done or after your sankalpam details are entered into the priests' system.


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How designers can reverse conflict
I've been increasingly interested in employee engagement—from an art director's perspective. I'm interested in finding ways for design to work alongside other people-focused departments to create modern, engaging brand cultures in the traditional workplace. This desire, itself, comes from being in a position of value that is largely misunderstood and marginalized in the corporate world.
In the corporate world, design is often a commodity. Some companies do design really well. Others have attempted to integrate good design into their business with some degree of success. Many others fall short. Inevitably, design talent is deemed too costly and corners are cut, devaluing the discipline, or design is cut altogether.
I spent a little bit of time thinking about what it feels like to perceive that one is being marginalized. Women feel this a lot in the workplace. It can seem that if we're not peppy, happy, smiling-all-the-time brand-advocating go-getters—basically high school cheerleaders—we risk being seen in a negative light. The minute we're very outspoken and assertive we risk being labeled "bossy" and "aggressive". Yet, when a man behaves assertively he tends to be rewarded with achievement and opportunity with less of the risk.
What about designers who in certain situations find themselves feeling marginalized? And this is not in-house specific—I've known of studios where strategists continually made comments that devalued their creative colleagues. "We're the brains," they said. "A monkey could do what the designers do."
I am not officially a creative director in title (yet), but I don't hesitate to act like one every day. A good creative director would go to bat for any one of their designers, any time. I would do the same. Even if it meant making myself vulnerable to being perceived negatively. Because design matters. The designers I work with matter. Their work matters. I care that much. That means speaking up and being assertive, with confidence. But those inflated strategists? I'd have assertively eaten them for lunch if I'd so much as heard them say anything similar about my designers.
And therein lies the problem.
Those who feel marginalized may come across as combative. Perceiving that someone is acting and speaking as if an entire group of people is beneath them grates, and that yields combative behavior in return. I don't think it's a chicken-egg scenario. I think it's very clear which behavior begets the other.
So what do those potentially feeling marginalized need to hear in order to rise back to positivity? It's simple:
You're not wrong. What you're experiencing is real and it matters, and you have every right to feel that way. Thanks for bringing it to light. Now let's work on a solution…
What a disarming statement.
In the meantime I have some ideas on what designers can do to avoid this kind of conflict.
The fact is, design can work alongside any department on initiatives that make a difference . But unless other departments are fully aware of the way they may be accidentally marginalizing design—those sensitive, touchy-feely weirdos who play with logos all day long—combative behavior may continue. Designers and other creative professionals should always work to educate and inspire those whom we work with. Most of the time, behavior that devalues us comes from a simple misunderstanding of just how important our work is, how we, too, are strategic thinkers, and how much value good design brings to businesses.
And if education doesn't work? Then I say then go ahead and eat the jerks for lunch!


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Contemporary Kitchen Island
A contemporary kitchen island is extremely handy to have in a kitchen. Even though they are not a must have, they take a cooking area to a totally new level when it comes to maximum utilization of the entire cooking area.These accessories come in many styles and layouts. For those who are interested in improving the look of their kitchen area while making it more functional to their everyday demands, take the following ideas into consideration:1. Implement Plumbing and Electrical power In the contemporary kitchen Island.
As an alternative for putting up a huge brick structure in the middle of the kitchen area to position your food markets, one may include electric and plumbing in to the contemporary kitchen island. A good island needs to consistently have every little thing within reach. A sink could be close-by for cutting vegetables and fruits. Having an electric cook-top installed within is an additional great idea.
2. Add Open and Closed Rack Layouts.
The open racks could be used to stores bowls and dishes while cutting boards or large pots could be equipped in closed racks. Most kitchen areas currently come with a dishwashing machine put in, nonetheless, if that is not the case, you may easily have one installed within.
3. L-Shaped Islands.
If you have plenty of kitchen area room in the middle, you may set up an L-shaped island with counter tops matching the rest of the kitchen. Not only will this add type to your kitchen space, it will certainly also make it possible for the island to be utilized as a spare dining table.
4. Oversized Islands are Excellent for Family members Eating.
If you have space to burn, putting in a big island would be best for your home. In addition to all the attributes they include, these also make terrific tables for the whole family to dine at. They give plenty of storage and capability and generally include a dishwasher, sink and cabinet area.
5. Styles For Open Kitchens.
Kitchen islands are fantastic for open layouts. They additionally include an increased dining area, a sink, dishwashing machine and compartments. It is additionally helpful as an offering area for large teams or an eating area for little events.
The choices are infinite and depend solely on your finances, preference and kitchen space. Cooking area islands are such one-of-a-kind frameworks as well as a basic one. A modest kitchen counter can easily enhance the look of your kitchen space while making it even more practical at the same time.
Small Kitchen Cupboards | Plans Kitchen Cupboards | Contemporary Kitchen Design


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Jessica Dockery
Madisonville Messenger
Share Your Views on Current Issues
It's time again for members of the Kentucky General Assembly to meet for a 30-day "short" session.
I have provided a survey covering important topics the General Assembly may consider during the 2014 Session. Please take the time to review it, answer the questions, and return it to:
Senator Jimmy Higdon
242 Capital Annex
702 Capitol Ave.
Frankfort, KY 40601
Legislative Coffee with Senator Jimmy Higdon
Senator Jimmy Higdon will be holding a legislative coffee on Monday, January 12, at 7:30 a.m. at the Chamber of Commerce building in Taylorsville. Senator Higdon will be there to share information and to answer questions. He will also be joined by newly elected State Representative, James A. Tipton. The event is free to the public and all are invited to attend.
Spencer County Sheriff's Department activity report for calendar year 2014:
• Traffic stops/warnings: 377
• Traffic stops/citations: 110
• Highway safety checkpoint: 0
• Non injury accidents: 175
• Injury accidents: 58
• Fatalities: 1
• Other calls for service: 3096
• CCDW permits 419
• Vehicle inspections 797
• Total arrests 303/41 DUI
• Subpoenas and summons
served 1053
• Recovered property $9,400
The Mt. Eden Volunteer Fire Department's Board of Trustees took a huge step in rebuilding their burned fire station by approving the bid of Walters Buildings Monday evening.
Walters Buildings, which was the lowest bidder on the project, bid $215,982 to build the new fire station pursuant to specifications provided by Walters. The bid carries with it an anticipated start date of 30 days, with completion expected to follow in 90 days.
The board was unanimous in its approval of the Walters bid which was the lowest of six bids presented for the project.
Kentucky added manufacturing jobs at more than twice the national rate over the last five years and the average pay for those employees grew faster than the national average, according to a economic study released Monday.
Overall, Kentucky added jobs in all industries at a slightly slower rate (5.6 percent) than the nation as a whole (6.3 percent), but surpassed the job-growth rate of most of its bordering states.
Copyright © 2019
The Spencer Magnet is your source for local news, sports, events, and information in Spencer County, KY and the surrounding area.


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Sonnen Charger, the latest product from Germany's home battery market leader, is about more than anticipating a customer trend. By matching EV power demand and renewables output, Sonnen wants to address problems at both grid distribution and transmission levels.
Ahead of shipping in April, Sonnen is registering plenty of interest for its new 22kW wall-mounted charger, launched in Germany last month.
Around 10% of Sonnen's existing customers in Germany already own an electric car. That number is expected to rise fairly briskly, reflecting the wider e-mobility transition, both at home and throughout western Europe.
"There are around 50,000 electric cars being driven in Germany and what we are seeing is many homeowners already installing the necessary cabling to make their homes EV-ready. This reflects the feedback we have been gathering from our customers, where the remaining 90% plan to make their next car purchase electric," says Mathias Bloch, spokesman for the company.
Bloch also anticipates that the retrofit solar PV market could also be another source of demand for both the charger and Sonnen's core offering, the Eco energy storage system, which wraps up lithium ion batteries, bidirectional inverter technology, energy management and automation within a single unit.
A new breed of energy supplier
In the fast growing global residential battery storage market Sonnen's investment in self-learning software and digitalisation technologies has elevated the firm beyond simply being a hardware provider. As solar subsidies wane, in markets where energy prices for residential consumers are very high, or are continuing to rise, it now makes sense for households to install a battery with solar PV to increase self-consumption.
Sonnen initially launched its home energy storage system in 2011. In late 2015 the company expanded into the business of energy retail, via its Sonnen Community peer-to-peer energy trading market based on a proprietary virtual power plant (VPP) platform.
Those signed up as members, who consist mainly of homeowners with a solar PV system and a Sonnen battery installation, can pool, trade and share surplus electricity online with other members. By largely bypassing the wholesale power market, the cost of electricity the members buy from the Sonnen Community marketplace is often cheaper than the tariffs traditional energy companies are able to offer.
Providing services in combination with a robust, simple to operate, albeit premium priced, energy storage system has helped Sonnen become the largest supplier of these types of appliances in Germany. Various market studies attribute Sonnen's share of its home market to be somewhere between 22-25%.
Germany remains Europe's largest residential battery market, dwarfing all other EU markets combined, including Italy, the UK, France, Norway and Sweden.
The cumulative installed capacity of home storage systems in Germany stands at well over 60,000, which would suggest that there are at least 12,000 Sonnen batteries installed across the country.
If each system comprises an average of 4-5kWh, that's tens of megawatts of pooled electricity that can be traded and marketed among the residential energy customers that have joined the Sonnen Community platform.
Extending its virtual power plant functionality further, in 2017 Sonnen launched its Sonnen Flat service for its Sonnen Community members.
In return for surrendering control of a small portion of their battery's capacity to provide grid balancing services, those signed up to Sonnen Flat pay nothing for additional electricity they need that cannot be provided by their solar-plus-battery system. The proviso is their demand does not go over an agreed limit based on which tariff they opt for, which cap at 4250kWh, 5500kWh, or 6750kWh.
The charger rounds out Sonnen's offering. "We already have a battery pool and now EVs can be connected into this as well," says Bloch.
Sonnen's approach has always been about integration, sourcing lithium ion batteries and bidirectional inverters from third party suppliers, while assembling and testing these to work together within its Eco battery product, all controlled by the company's own energy management software. A third party firm makes the charger hardware while Sonnen has developed the software controls.
Avoiding peaks on the low voltage network
The wall-mounted smart charger allows owners of EVs that also have solar PV installed to use solar power, or energy stored in their battery system, to 'refuel' their cars at home.
The charger is either optimised for speed, or it maximises the amount of self-generated solar energy directed into topping up the car's battery. These settings can be controlled using an app.
If a member from the Sonnen Community does not have enough battery-stored solar energy to charge their EV they can use energy available via the VPP to cover the shortfall.
Owners of EVs that install the charger can also benefit from a special Sonnen Flat tariff that provides households with up to 8000kWh of free electricity a year. Based on an estimated consumption of 5000kWh, the household has the remaining 3000kWh for their electric car. This corresponds to a driving distance of 15,000-17,000km.
By integrating with the Sonnen battery the charger enables peak shaving. Rather than draw electricity from the grid at peak time the car tops up with electricity from the battery.
Even without a battery the smart charging capability relieves pressure on local grids by time shifting when the EV tops up to avoid several cars on the same feeder all drawing power from the grid at the same time.
Easing transmission bottlenecks
Integrating smart charging into Sonnen's virtual power plant platform allows EVs to optimise use of renewable energy within grids and could help relieve transmission-based bottlenecks that are commonplace in Germany's power grid.
When there is an oversupply of wind power, wind farm owners are paid to curtail generation by switching off turbines.
In 2016, the cost of curtailment and other measures to alleviate grid bottlenecks ran to €800 million in Germany, which is paid for by electricity consumers through grid charges. Besides building more high voltage cables to expand the transmission portion of the grid, creating more flexible capacity to absorb surplus generation limits costly curtailment.
A few hundred Sonnen battery systems in Germany are participating in a breakthrough pilot run by transmission system operator (TSO) Tennet. Via blockchain technology the home energy storage systems are being integrated into Tennet's grid. The pilot ends in mid-2018.
The networked fleet of batteries are controlled to absorb or discharge excess power in a matter of seconds based on location and time-specific requirements of Tennet.
To do so requires layers of software and digitalisation technologies, combining Sonnen's own VPP software, with blockchain technology, developed by IBM. In the pilot Blockchain technology is being used to create a transparent virtual environment for distributed energy resources, like home energy storage systems, to participate in providing grid services.
If this and other pilots are successful, Tennet will no longer need to rely on curtailment or firing up large power stations to balance supply
and demand, reducing costs.
Smart charging is seen as crucial to managing the challenge of more EVs plugging into the low voltage distribution network. Studies show that while EV owners tend to plug in their cars at home overnight, the cars only draw electricity from the grid for just a few hours to in order to top up. This behaviour provides a window for charging periods to be moved around without coming into conflict with most owners' car use.
It becomes easy to see how the project between Sonnen and Tennet might also pave the way for a future where EVs connected to the grid, via smart chargers, are called upon by TSOs to absorb fluctuations in supply-demand at the transmission system level, topping up with clean energy that would otherwise be wasted.
Other markets
Sonnen's charger is only available in Germany, for now. Bloch agrees that changes to regulations in markets such as the UK where a new law proposed could make it mandatory for home charge points to enable charging management will act as drivers for smart chargers. In places like the UK, other energy storage system providers are only starting to integrate third party home charger products with their technology.
As Germany is much further ahead in terms of installed battery units, the market is instructive of how others might also evolve. Australia may not be far behind. The combination of many sunshine hours, high energy prices and an unstable grid are creating perfect storm conditions that have triggered demand for home storage systems in some states. In a recent deal with the South Australia government Sonnen is supplying 50,000 of its Eco batteries down under over the next five years.
In other markets closer to Germany, the EV transition could in turn drive demand for energy storage. For example, in the UK, which in some respects is a big car market crowded onto a relatively small island, a percentage of EV owners will want to use clean energy to provide electricity for their car so may consider a solar-plus-storage investment.
Norway is already exhibiting the side effects of what rapid EV take-up is doing to distribution networks. Owners in regions where local networks are at capacity face paying thousands of euros in grid connection fees to install a home charger. A battery presents a cost-effective alternative.
In these new markets, once Sonnen has enough batteries installed it will be able to roll out its Sonnen Community VPP platform and services enabled by it. In the UK, in addition to selling its Eco battery to private home owners, Sonnen is also supplying the unit to social housing landlords, which include local councils, in Scotland, Wales and London.
The systems installed in properties, with solar PV, reduce energy bills for tenants and give them more visability over their consumption. In future, as more systems are installed they can be networked into the VPP that can be connected to the electricity balancing market, helping to keep it stable at times of high levels of wind or solar generation. Income earned can be made available to social housing landlords, as well as their tenants, in the form of cheaper or free electricity.
As older power stations are mothballed and more intermittent renewable generation is added, for stressed grids, EVs threaten to be the last straw to break the camel's back, because their load corresponds with peak demand. Smart charging turns this burden into much needed flexible capacity, enabled by self-learning software and digitalisation technologies, like VPP platforms and Blockchain.
Sonnen represents just one approach that's out there. But the company knows success depends on offering a compelling alternative to customers, not just batteries, or chargers, but a whole service that guarantees cheaper, cleaner energy, whilst creating flexible capacity that can be manipulated at the click of a mouse to address problems facing grid and distribution system operators.


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Borough residents are sending letters of protest to the Department for Housing, Communities and Local Government, to stop the Civic project in its tracks.
Together, we can still stop this ill-conceived development. Simply write a letter objecting to the Compulsory Purchase Order (CPO) that will seriously affect Hoopers and others nearby. The more objections the better.
Download letters here: CPO objection letter examples
Letters should be received before 5pm on 17th September 2018. And please encourage friends, family and neighbours to do the same. We can stop this reckless project.