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Artemisia: Between Greece and Persia
September 14, 2020 September 14, 2020 Erik1 Comment
We know little about the life of Artemisia I (early 5th c. BCE – ca. 460 BCE) apart from one event, but that event and her participation in it give us a valuable insight into how Greeks lived at the frontiers of the Persian Empire.
Artemisia was the daughter of Lygdamis I, the first satrap of the city of Halicarnassus under Persian rule. Halicarnassus was a city on the coast of Anatolia, modern-day Turkey, one of many culturally Greek cities on the eastern shore of the Aegean Sea in the region more broadly known as Ionia. Like other such cities, Halicarnassus' population was a mixture of local peoples—mainly Carians from the surrounding mountains, in the case of Halicarnassus—and the descendants of Greek settlers and merchants who had migrated to the Anatolian coast over several centuries. Artemisia's family was a product of such interactions, as her father, Lygdamis, was of mixed Greek and Carian ancestry, and her mother was from Crete.
Lygdamis passed his power down to Artemisia's husband, of whom we know nothing else except that he died soon thereafter, and Artemisia herself came to power in his place, probably acting as regent for their young son Pisindelis. Artemisia ruled Halicarnassus as a satrap, or local governor, on behalf of the Persian kings. Her most famous deeds came in this role.
When the Persian king Xerxes mounted his invasion of Greece in 480 BCE, he called upon the Ionian Greek cities to furnish warships for the campaign. Despite Athenian efforts to persuade the Ionians to defect or hold back in the fighting, Ionian Greek ships and their crews participated eagerly in the Persian invasion.
As satrap of Halicarnassus, Artemisia had the responsibility to furnish her share of ships for the fleet, but she went even further, personally commanding her own contingent and serving Xerxes as an adviser during the campaign. The historian Herodotus describes her this way:
She led the forces of Halicarnassus, Cos, Nisyurs, and Calyndus, crewing five ships. Of all the ships in the fleet, besides the Sidonians, hers were considered to be the best, and of all the allies she gave the king the best advice.
– Herodotus, Histories 7.99
(All translations my own)
Herodotus credits Artemisia with an exceptional display of skill and cunning in the midst of the Persian naval defeat at the battle of Salamis:
I cannot say exactly how any other ship, whether Greek or barbarian, did in that battle, but this is what happened to Artemisia and won her even greater respect in the eyes of the king. The Persian fleet was in chaos and an Athenian ship was bearing down on Artemisia's. There was nowhere for her to flee to since her ship was hemmed in by friendly ships and close to the enemy lines, so she made a decision which turned out very well for her. Pursued by the Athenian, she rammed a friendly ship at full speed. This ship was crewed by the Calyndians and carried not only many Calyndian men but also their king, Damasythimus. I cannot say whether there had been some quarrel between Artemisia and Damasythimus when they were stationed at the Hellespont, or if she had planned to attack him, or if it was just by chance that the Calyndian ship was nearby. In any case, when Artemisia rammed and sank that ship it turned out well for her in two ways. In the first place, when the Athenian captain saw her ship sink one of the barbarians, he thought she was either on the Greek side or was coming over to their side, so he broke off and turned his attention elsewhere, and so she got away. In the second place, even though she was doing harm to his own fleet, she won high praise from Xerxes.
They say that as the king was watching the battle and saw her ship ram the other one, someone by his side said: "My lord, do you see what a good fight Artemisia is putting up and how she has sunk one of the enemy's ships?"
The king asked it if was really Artemisia and the bystander confirmed it, since he knew the markings of her ship well and assumed that the ship she destroyed must be an enemy. As I said, all this turned out to her benefit, since no one from the Calyndian ship survived to accuse her.
In response to this observation, it is reported that Xerxes remarked: "My men have become women, and my women have become men!"
– Herodotus, Histories 8.87-89
Artemisia displayed similar shrewdness when, after the defeat of his fleet, Xerxes consulted his advisers on how to continue the war in Greece. When the general Mardonius offered to remain in Greece and keep fighting while Xerxes himself returned to Persia, Artemisia offered this advice:
When consulted on the question of what to do, Artemisia said: "Sire, it is hard to give good advice in such a case, but what seems best to me is for you to march home and leave Mardonius and whatever troops wish to remain with him here, if he is willing to undertake this task. If Mardonius is successful and accomplishes what he says he can, the credit for it will belong to you, since he is your servant. If he is wrong and things go against him, it will be no great disaster for you and your house. As long as you and your line endure, the Greeks will often face great struggles, and no one will much care if anything happens to Mardonius, nor will defeating your servant count as a great victory for the Greeks. You, however, will depart having accomplished what you set out to do, which was to burn Athens."
Xerxes was delighted with this advice, since he had been thinking exactly the same thing. He was gripped with such fear that he would not have stayed in Greece even if all the men and women in the world had recommended it. He thanked Artemisia for her advice and entrusted her with taking his children to Ephesus, since he had some of his illegitimate children with him.
– Herodotus, Histories 8.102-103
Now, Herodotus—a fellow Halicarnassian—may be accused of partiality and playing up Artemisia's involvement in the war effort, but the kinds of deeds he attributes to her are telling. Artemisia was actively engaged in Xerxes' war, but she was also politically canny and willing to seize her own advantage when it came. Given the opportunity to demonstrate her utility to the king, she took it and personally led her forces as part of the Persian fleet. Finding herself in a difficult position in battle, she saved herself at the cost of a friendly ship. When consulted for her advice, she told the king what he wanted to hear and was rewarded with an important commission.
Many Greeks were in positions like Artemisia's when it came to the Persian Empire. Persia was large, powerful, rich, and right at the Greeks' doorstep. Persia was a huge market both for Greek exports and for the services of Greek artists, crafters, and mercenaries. For all that historians have tended to celebrate the Athenians and Spartans for resisting Persian invasions in 490 and 480-479, far more Greeks worked for the Persian kings than ever fought against them.
The boundary between Greece and Persia was porous. Many people went back and forth across it as their own interests dictated. While modern narratives have tended to paint the division between Greece and Persia in stark terms, the reality was much more gray than black and white. Not everyone who negotiated the space between Greece and Persia did it with the skill and panache that of Artemisia, but she was far from alone.
Image: A modern artist's impression of Artemisia, detail from "Die Seeschlacht bei Salamis" via Wikimdeia (Maximillianum, Munich; 1868; oil on canvas; by Wilhelm von Kaulbach)
History for WritersGreece, history, Persia
Doricha: Mastering the Art of Cosmopolitanism
August 17, 2020 September 26, 2021 Erik
There is little we can say for sure about the life of Doricha (sixth century BCE, approximately contemporary with the poet Sappho). Most of what we know about her comes from legends and tales that make her larger than life. Even so, those legends in themselves tell us something important about the world of the Mediterranean in the Greek archaic age.
Doricha was a courtesan (hetaira in Greek) who worked in the city of Naucratis in Egypt. Courtesans were a class of sex workers in the ancient world, but unlike lower classes of sex workers, who provided sexual services in return for fairly standard rates of pay, courtesans offered and expected much more. A courtesan would do more than have sex with a client (although that was part of what she offered); she offered companionship, conversation, artistic performance, and social grace. What she received in return was often not so clearly specified. It could include money, but also gifts of jewelry, clothing, furniture, and food. She might enjoy a house paid for by a client, or even live with him long term. Courtesans often had ongoing relationships with a select few clients, and part of their work was to build the illusion of a purely romantic and emotional relationship around what was at base an economic transaction of pay for services. This was demanding work, and not everyone could do it well. A successful courtesan had to cultivate an aura of mystery and glamour. At the same time, courtesans were exposed to all the same pressures and dangers that women offering sex in exchange for money have always faced in male-dominated societies. Yet for some women, those who were lucky and who were good at their jobs, work as a courtesan offered a path to personal independence and financial security that few other women in the Greek world could claim.
Doricha was both lucky and good at her job. Originally from Thrace, she arrived in Naucratis as a slave being put to sex work by her owner, a Greek merchant from Samos named Xanthes. While working in Naucratis, she met Charaxus, brother of the poet Sappho, who was trading wine from the family's home on Lesbos to Egypt. Charaxus was so smitten with Doricha that he bought her freedom from Xanthes. (When he got home, Sappho had some choice things to say about how he had spent the family's hard-earned money on his business trip, bits of which survive in some of the fragments of her poems.) She then chose to remain in Naucratis and keep working as a free woman the trade she had begun as a slave. She became so successful that at the end of her life she wanted to leave a lasting memorial of her wealth. According to a story told by Herodotus, she spent one tenth of her fortune to make a massive pile of iron roasting spits and deposited them at Delphi, the site of the famous oracle, where Herodotus reports that they were still to be seen in his day. (Herodotus, Histories 2.135)
Like other courtesans, she cultivated an intriguing persona to appeal to her clients. This persona included an alias, Rhodopis, meaning rosy-cheeked in Greek, by which name she is better known. (It was not unusual for ancient courtesans to use aliases, for all the same reasons that women today performing as strippers or porn stars do.) This mysterious persona influenced how her life was told and retold in later generations, and a number of folktales became attached to her story. One claims that while she was a slave in Samos, the fable-writer Aesop was at the same time a slave in the same household. While this one is not impossible, the coincidence stretches belief (and it is not even certain among scholars today that Aesop was ever a real person). Other stories are attached to Doricha's later life and are even more unbelievable.
One popular tale is the earliest known version of the Cinderella story:
They say that one day, when Rhodopis was bathing, an eagle snatched her sandal from her serving maid and carried it away to Memphis. There the king was administering justice in the open air and the eagle, flying over his head, dropped the sandal in his lap. The king, moved by the beauty of the sandal and the extraordinary nature of the event, sent all through the country to find out whose it was. She was found in Naucratis and conducted to the king, who made her his wife.
– Strabo, Geography 17.1.33
(My own translation)
Another popular myth among Greeks held that one of the three great pyramids at Giza was Doricha's tomb, built for her by the king after her death. (Herodotus correctly points out that this story was impossible as the pyramid actually belonged to the king Mycerinus, who ruled Egypt some two thousand years before Doricha ever got there, but he also documents that it was a tale widely known among Greeks. Herodotus 2.134) Doricha's life was one that seemed fabulous, bordering on the mythic. Some of that wonder is down to Doricha herself, who certainly seems like she would have been an interesting person to know, but the tales about Doricha also reflect the wider Greek experience in Naucratis.
In Doricha's day, Naucratis was a newly-founded Greek colony, and a unique one. Over the course of the archaic age (roughly 750-480 BCE), Greek cities founded numerous colonies around the shores of the Mediterranean and Black Seas. Some of these colonies were large settlements devoted to controlling farmland and producing food, which was a scarce resource back home in Greece, and some colonies either began with or in time acquired a military might that was able to dominate and subjugate the local peoples, but not all colonies were of that kind. Many were small, fairly humble trading posts or Greek immigrant neighborhoods already busy foreign cities and ports. In these colonies, good relations with local people as hosts and trading partners were essential. Naucratis was in some respects like these trading colonies, and one of its important functions was as the official port of trade for Greeks in Egypt. (Herodotus 2.178-9)
Naucratis was also different. It was the only foreign settlement in Egypt officially sanctioned by indigenous kings, and it had begun not as a trading post but as a settlement of Greek and Carian mercenaries in Egyptian service. The kings of Egypt found the Aegean world to be useful recruiting ground for professional soldiers. Greece had all the qualities that powerful states have historically looked for to find mercenaries: it was poor, politically disorganized, and wracked by violence. The result was a large population of experienced fighters who had no stable home or livelihood. Naucratis became not only a place where Greek merchants could bring goods that were in demand in Egypt, like iron, wine, and olive oil, but also a place where Greek soldiers who fell on hard times could go to find ready employment in the Egyptian army.
For the Greeks, Naucratis was the gateway to Egypt and to the possibility of striking it rich, whether as a courtesan, merchant, or mercenary. The tales told about Doricha reflect this sense that Naucratis was a place where amazing things could happen, where one could imagine starting out as a slave and ending up the rich and beloved consort of the king. Most people who came to Naucratis, of course, never had such success, but Doricha is evidence of what was possible there for the talented and lucky. While her story may have been exaggerated over time, it is clear that she managed an enviable rise from low status to exceptional wealth.
Opportunities of this kind were available in the Greek colonies for those lucky enough and determined enough to make the most of them, but making it big in a place like Naucratis required one skill above all: the ability to work across cultural boundaries. Doricha was originally from Thrace. She made her name by serving Greek merchants in Egypt, and at the end of her life she proudly proclaimed her success by making a dedication in the international sanctuary at Delphi, a place frequented not only Greeks but by people of many cultures around the Aegean and eastern Mediterranean. The legends about her life imagine her becoming the beloved of the Egyptian king and being commemorated with an Egyptian tomb. All of the other merchants and mercenaries who sought their fortune in Naucratis had to negotiate similar boundaries. Doricha's life is an example of what could be achieved by those who mastered the art of cosmopolitanism.
Image: "The Beautiful Rhodope in Love with Aesop" via Wikimedia (1780; engraving by Bartolozzi after a painting by Angelica Kauffman)
History for WritersEgypt, Greece, history, social history
The Strange Poetry of an Index
July 13, 2020 May 24, 2020 Erik
One of the tricks of the trade in academia is: when you pick up a new book, look at the index first. Seeing what terms appear there and which ones have large numbers of references tells you a lot about what the book is about.
I've been working on the index to my latest book, a collection of primary sources on the Greco-Persian Wars. Most of the entries are proper names for people, places, and institutions, and their specificity tells you pretty clearly the topic of the book. If you take those out, though, the terms that are left have a strange kind of poetry about them. You could let your imagination wander and dream up some very different books that had these terms in their indices. For your enjoyment:
animals, archers
beer, bees, bread, brick, bridges, bulls
canals, cannibalism, carnelian, cattle, cavalry, chariots, childbirth, clothing, colonies, crown, cuneiform
democracy, diplomacy, disease, dreams
earth and water, earthquakes, esparto, exiles
forgery, fowl, frankincense, frontiers
gifts, goats, gold, grain, guest-friendship
hair, helots, heralds, heroes, hoplites, horses, hostages
incense, ivory
labor, language, lapis lazuli, laws, linen, lions
medicine, mercenaries, merchants, moon, mules, multiculturalism, mummification
oil, ointment, oligarchy, oracles
palaces, papyrus, phalanx, pomegranates, poultry, propaganda
racing, rain, religion, roads
sacrifice, satraps, satrapies, sheep, shields, ships, shipwrecks, sieges, silver, storms, stone
temples, tolerance, tombs, trade, translation, tribute, triremes, turquoise, tyrants
walls, water, wind, wine, wood
How It Happensbooks, Greece, history, Persia, your hosts
Sappho: Making a Life in Archaic Greece
February 24, 2020 February 23, 2020 Erik1 Comment
The poet Sappho (c. 630 – c. 570 BCE) is among the earliest writers whose work comes down to us from ancient Greece. She is best known for her lyric poetry, much of it on themes of love and longing. (Read some of my translations of her work here and here, or hear a recreated musical performance of one of her poems here.) Her literary works were widely popular in Greece and Rome, and later authors wrote many things about her life, few of them reliable. Much of what we think we know about Sappho's life is conjecture based on her poetry. Still, even amid this uncertainty, Sappho stands for us as a representative of one of the most important transformative forces in ancient Greek history: the rise of trade.
During the Early Iron Age, a period of Greek history extending from around 1200 to 750 BCE, the Greek world was largely isolated. People lived in small villages of at most a few thousand people. Most people got by at a subsistence level, producing enough for their own needs and engaging in trade outside their own households in only a limited way. Political power, such as it was, rested with an entrenched class of warrior-aristocrats who monopolized control of scarce farmland. This elite class occasionally traded their agricultural surplus overseas for modest amounts of foreign luxuries, but that trade had little impact on the Greek world, and to the extent that it did, it only reinforced the social status of an existing elite. The poetry of this elite is represented by the Homeric epics, the Iliad and the Odyssey, which celebrate martial values and the exploits of the warrior heroes that the aristocrats claimed as their ancestors.
Between 750 and 700, this stability was rapidly undermined by the development of new patterns of trade. Greeks began to venture out into the larger Mediterranean more often and more purposefully. The earliest accounts we have from the outside world describe the Greeks as pirates and raiders. Such dangerous ventures were not for the comfortably well off. The first Greeks to try their luck abroad were those who could not survive at home under the dominance of the entrenched aristocracy. Their risky raiding voyages had limited success, but the experience they gained in places like Egypt and the Levant prepared them for more profitable ventures as mercenaries and merchants. By the mid-600s, there was a growing class of successful merchants, artisans, and other professionals in Greece whose prosperity came from their connection to the outside world rather than control of land and who were increasingly agitating against the old aristocracy for a share of political power.
Sappho spoke for this new class of Greeks whose wealth came from abroad. Her brother Charaxus, whom she addresses in a few of her poems, was engaged in trading wine from their home on the island of Lesbos to Egypt. Sappho's poetry invokes the importance of foreign contacts by using Lydia, a kingdom in Anatolia, as an image of beauty and luxury. Unlike the Homeric epics, Sappho's lyrics speak of immediate, personal, emotional experiences. Individuals with their own desires and passions emerge as more important than family lines or warlike values.
Sappho's poetry describes her intense romantic feelings for young women. Although we cannot know for sure to what extent these poems reflect Sappho's personal experiences and how much is just literary invention, the idea that love mattered was, in its way, a radical thought. Among the landowning class, marriage was mostly a matter of family politics and economic negotiation. Ideally, of course, husbands and wives felt affectionately toward one another, but powerful, passionate love was not something to be sought out or valued. Homer's heroes have little time for the emotional power of love: Helen is a prize to be fought over like any other piece of treasure, and the suitors who clamor for Penelope's hand talk of their estates, not their feelings. In Sappho's day, the Greeks who were making their living in trade could still be perfectly mercenary in their personal relationships, but the idea that love had power and that the feeling of longing for another person was worthy of attention was new and exciting. In much the same way that the shift from an agrarian economy to an industrial one in the nineteenth century CE brought with it a new interest in romantic love, Greeks in the seventh century BCE whose fortunes no longer depended on controlling land were beginning to think of individual feelings of love as something to value in a relationship.
Like the merchants and mercenaries who sought their fortunes amid the dangers of the unknown world outside Greece, the voices of Sappho's poems dream that they might have what they long for, that their individual lives and struggles might matter.
Image: "Sappho embracing her lyre" via Wikimedia (Musee des Beaux-Arts de Brest; 19th c.; painting; by Jules-Elie de Launay)
History for WritersGreece, history, Sappho
Listening to Sappho
February 20, 2020 February 7, 2021 Erik1 Comment
Sappho, like many ancient poets, wrote her poems not to be read on the page but to be sung. We don't know specifically what her poems originally sounded like when performed, but we know enough about the notes, rhythms, and structure of ancient music to make some reasonable guesses. Here's a version of Sappho's first poem (my translation here) performed on a reconstructed ancient lyre by artist Bettina Joy de Guzman.
Sappho fr. 1: to Aphrodite via Bettina Joy de Guzman
An occasional feature on music and sound-related notions.
Fine TuningGreece, music, Sappho
Myths and Marketing
February 10, 2020 October 15, 2022 Erik1 Comment
A lot of people have made comparisons between the pop-culture heroes of today like Marvel's superheroes or the characters of Star Wars and the heroes of ancient Greek myth. (I've done it myself, here and here.) There's a lot to be said for these comparisons in terms of narrative, but there are also interesting similarities in the way these characters are portrayed visually and sold to an admiring public.
Ancient Greek art went through an extraordinary transformation over a few centuries from the early archaic age (mid-700s BCE) to the high classical age (mid-400s BCE). One of the most telling signs of this transformation was the change in how mythic characters were represented.
Geometric krater, photograph by Metropolitan Museum of Art (found Attica, currently Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; 750-730 BCE; pottery; attributed to the Hirschfeld workshop)
Here is a scene from a Greek vase painted around 750. The human figures are highly abstracted with no individual identifying characteristics. We can make out some of what is happening in the scenes. In the upper register, a single figure lies horizontally on a table or bed surrounded by standing figures with their hands on their heads. This scene is generally interpreted as a funeral, with wailing mourners surrounding the deceased. On the lower register, warriors with shields ride in chariots. Still, for as much as we can make guesses about what is going on in these images, the details elude us. Are these generic images or are they meant to tell a story? Are the two registers even related to one another? One possibility is that this image represents the funeral for Patroclus, from the Iliad, with the funeral pyre on the upper register and the games in honor of the dead on the lower, but we have no way of knowing for sure whether that was what the artist intended or not.
Polyphemus amphora, photograph by Sarah C. Murray via Wikimedia (currently Archaeological Museum of Eleusis; c. 650 BCE; pottery; Polyphemus painter)
This image comes from a vase painted a hundred years later, around 650 BCE. Now we have a definite story. A group of men come from the left carrying a long spear to stab the eye of a larger, seated figure on the right holding a drinking cup. Putting all these elements together, it is clear that this scene represents the blinding of Polyphemus, the giant cyclops whom Odysseus and his men got drunk before stabbing his one eye out. The scene is clear enough if you know the story, but reading the image depends on knowing the whole story and seeing the whole picture. The figures within it are not distinctive. If you took any one of the figures out and looked at it on its own, you would have no way of identifying it or guessing what story it came from.
Black figure olpe, photograph by Jastrow via Wikimedia (currently Louvre; c. 540 BCE; pottery; Amasis)
Another century later, the ways of depicting mythic figures had developed into something new. In this vase painting, from about 540, we see figures with distinctive characteristics. On the left a robed and bearded man holds a trident: unmistakably Poseidon, god of the sea. Hermes, the messenger god, approaches him, recognizable from his broad-brimmed hat, his snake-twined herald's staff, and the wings on his sandals. Athena comes next, indicated by her helmet and spear and the shield she carries bearing her symbol, the owl. Behind her comes Heracles, not so visible in this image but still recognizable from the bow he carries and the lion skin he wears. Even though nothing much is happening in the image—it's just a line of people—with this combination of characters, we can tell that it is representing the story of Heracles' ascension to join the gods on Mount Olympus. Each character, though, is distinct. You could take any one of them out of the scene, and you would still know who you were looking at.
Ancient Greek art developed a rich but understandable visual language for identifying important figures from mythology. To understand why this development mattered, we have to think about the Greeks' place in the larger Mediterranean.
Despite the importance the modern West has accorded to ancient Greek culture, ancient Greece itself was not a powerhouse of the Mediterranean. Greece was a poor, fractious backwater compared with the great centers of wealth and culture like Egypt, Persia, and Carthage. Trade was crucial to the Greeks' survival, which meant they had to have something to offer that other people wanted. Wine and olive oil were the major commodities the Greek traded overseas, but over time they increasingly began to export their cultural products as well. Greek artisans, poets, musicians, and actors found work throughout the Mediterranean world and beyond. The changes in how Greeks depicted myths in their art went along with their expansion into the Mediterranean's trade networks.
Exporting culture only works if your culture can offer something the market wants. The most valuable cultural property the Greeks had was their mythology. Greek mythology was not a complete and canonical body of work to be exported whole (as I discuss here), but a flexible, malleable set of stories and characters ready to be reimagined and recombined in new and unique ways. This flexibility allowed individual Greek artists and merchants to offer their patrons and trading partners versions of myths that suited the tastes of the local market. Heracles, for instance, went over well in Etruria, and before long Etruscans were creating their own stories about the character (calling him "Herkle") that no Greek would have imagined. The Amazons similarly found their way into Egyptian literature. Underlying it all was a set of characters (gods, heroes, monsters) with basic identifying characteristics, personalities, and stories. A Persian or Carthaginian picking up a new Greek vase in the market might not know all the myths depicted on it, but it was easy to recognize Athena's owl or Heracles' lion skin and begin to put together the story from there.
In a similar way, symbolic attributes have become an important part of how we identify our modern heroes. From Captain America's shield to Luke Skywalker's light saber, from the Doctor's TARDIS to the house crests of Westeros, having a set of easily recognizable symbols helps us identify our favorite characters and stories at a glance. They are also great fodder for marketing merchandise—which is exactly what our ancient Greek counterparts were doing with their mythology, too. Besides being the common cultural property of a far-flung people, Greek myths and their visual representations were a brilliant marketing device that got lots of Etruscans, Romans, Egyptians, Scythians, and others to buy Greek goods.
History for Writersart, Greece, marketing, myth
Myths Are Fanfiction
January 13, 2020 December 29, 2019 Erik1 Comment
If you're like me and a lot of my students, you grew up with Greek mythology. The monster-filled adventures of Odysseus, the (somewhat bowdlerized) philandering of Zeus, the just-so story of Echo and Narcissus, and others were part of my childhood reading. Myths seemed like any other sort of story, with well-defined characters and plots. But there's something different about mythology. We can't think of it the same way we think of other kinds of literature. Mythology, in fact, has more in common with fanfiction than with literature as we usually think of it. Greek mythology is one of the best documented and most widely known mythic traditions in the West, so it makes a useful example. When you dig into the primary sources of Greek mythology you find that it is stranger, more complicated, and less cohesive than it seemed when I was a child.
Defining exactly what makes a story a myth can be surprisingly difficult, but if we take as our starting point stories about fictional characters who are larger than life and more than human, we have a good chunk of Greek literature and art to work with. The literary versions of myths that have come down to us must themselves have been based on oral traditions passed down through generations, retold and reimagined in every new performance. There is no canon of Greek mythology. There is no original text that we (or the ancient Greeks themselves) can point to and say: "This story is the correct one; anything that conflicts with it is wrong."
The nearest thing to a canonical text in ancient Greek culture was the two epics attributed to Homer, the Iliad and the Odyssey. Neither of these epic poems was written down until the sixth century BCE, although some version of them circulated orally for hundreds of years prior. These poems were themselves just elaborated snippets of a much broader oral tradition which encompassed the whole story of the Trojan War and its heroes' return to Greece. There was, however, some collective sense of how the epics ought to go. We know this because of the scandal caused by Peisistratus, the tyrant of Athens, who was accused of tampering with the Iliad by inserting a line to suggest that the nearby island of Salamis ought to belong to Athens. On one hand, the fact that such a minor tweak to the poem caused an uproar suggests a degree of reverence for the text. On the other hand, it is clear that the text could be tweaked. We have no idea how many changes the text of the epics may have gone through over the centuries that went by unremarked because they were less politically dicey.
If the Homeric epics were viewed with a certain reverence by the ancient Greeks, the same is not true of our other major sources of mythic stories. Our knowledge of Greek myth mostly comes from the literary productions of a few particular places and times. These works were regarded as literature, free to be debated, reinterpreted, or ignored. Apart from the oral traditions codified the Homeric poems, these include:
Athenian drama, mostly written in the fifth century BCE at a time when Athens was a major economic, military, and political power in Greece, the leader of an Aegean empire known as the Delian League, and wrapped up in ongoing conflicts with Sparta, Thebes, and the Persian Empire.
Poetry and prose composed in Hellenistic Alexandria, much of it by scholars working at the Library, which compiled and retold stories from earlier Greek traditions as part of the Ptolemaic kings' propaganda program celebrating their links to classical Greek culture.
Roman poetry of the late republic and early empire, composed at a time when Roman society was in crisis and different factions within the elite were competing for power.
There are significant works of art and literature not from these times that add to our knowledge of Greek mythology, but much of what we know comes from one of these clusters. Each one represents a time of fraught cultural and political tensions, and these tensions are reflected in the literature of the period. Fifth-century Athenian drama often portrays Athens as a place of wisdom and sound democratic government while painting Athens' major rival Thebes as a chaotic city of violence and tragic folly. Written at a different time and in a different context, Roman versions of mythic stories, such as Vergil's Aeneid, position the Romans as worthy heirs to the glory of ancient Greece.
The works of these different periods also reflect different literary interests. Athenian comedy often took heroic figures from myth and put them into ridiculous situations for laughs. The Alexandrian authors liked to show off the breadth of their learning by tying together disparate characters and tales into grand narratives, or retelling familiar stories from the point of view of minor characters. The Roman poet Ovid played to the sexual culture of his day by composing a collection of imaginary love letters between famous mythic couples.
All of these variations on mythic tales depended on an audience who already knew the stories and characters that were being referenced. They could also end up representing wildly different interpretations of the same events or figures. Part of the fun for ancient readers and theatre-goers was recognizing familiar stories told in a new way. In this respect, mythology worked the same way fanfiction works today. Whether it's a passionately rendered love scene between Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock, a quippy duel between Batman and Iron Man, or the adventures of Aragorn and Galadriel's secret love child, the fun of fanfic comes in taking the stories we have in common and doing something new with them—sometimes something inspired by the social and political context around us, and sometimes just for the delight of bringing a favorite character back on the stage for an encore.
The fragmentary nature of the literary record from antiquity means that when we try to put together the narrative of a certain character or event from Greek mythology, we are often cobbling together bits and pieces of sources from many different genres, written centuries apart on different continents for widely varying audiences and purposes. The fact that we are able to make any sense out of these stories at all is a testament to how much the ancient Greeks and those who learned their stories loved their myths and enjoyed retelling them. But whenever we deal with mythology—Greek or otherwise—we have to remember that what we are dealing with is a wonderfully strange mishmash of stories, none of it canonical as we understand the term today, but all of it lovingly retold by generations of people who made the stories their own.
Image: Mosaic of Vergil with the muses of history and tragedy, photograph by Giorces via Wikimedia (currently Bardo Museum, Tunis; 3rd c. CE; mosaic)
Story Time is an occasional feature all about stories and story-telling. Whether it's on the page or on the screen, this is about how stories work and what makes us love the ones we love.
History for Writers, Story TimeGreece, myth
Shadows of Athens
November 11, 2019 October 27, 2019 Erik
While the subgenre of mysteries set in ancient Rome already has a number of talented practitioners, ancient Greece is a largely unexplored territory, which makes J. M. Alvey's Shadows of Athens a special treat. In this book we follow an Athenian playwright, Philocles, whose preparations for presenting a new comedy are interrupted when a dead body turns up on his doorstep. From there the action unfolds both in the theatre—for the show must go on—and in the streets of Athens as Philocles, aided by his family and patron, investigates a shadowy conspiracy that somehow seems bent on both starting a war in the Aegean and cornering the market for leather.
Shadows of Athens is a skillfully handled mystery whose various threads are deftly woven together. The stories of Philocles' play, his family's leather business, and the geopolitics of the Delian League all come together in a satisfying conclusion. Along the way, we get some wonderful treats including a fully-staged Greek comedy, a sloshy symposium, and Philocles' views of both the bustle of the Athenian street and everyday family life. Alvey's ancient Athens is alive, full of both joy and trouble, and Philocles is a companionable guide to its twisting streets, even as he pieces together the conspiracy that left a dead body in front of his house.
For myself, as a historian, Alvey's work is a particular treat to read. The book captures the richness and complexity of Athenian life in a specific moment—a generation after the Greco-Persian Wars, as the empires of Athens and Sparta were beginning to tilt toward war—with a liveliness that no textbook or scholarly history can match but with exacting attention to historical detail. It was delightful to be able to pick out details and know which primary sources Alvey was reading (and to recognize a cameo appearance by my dear old friend Herodotus).
I thoroughly enjoyed Shadows of Athens and eagerly recommend it to anyone with a taste for historical mystery looking for something new to pick up.
Image by Erik Jensen
Story Timebooks, Greece, history, mystery
Just a Happy Little Sea Monster
October 17, 2019 September 29, 2019 Erik
Wherever you want it to be, there it will be.
Sea monster, photograph by Carole Raddato via Wikimedia (Casa del Drago, Caulonia, Italy; 3rd c. BCE, mosaic)
This particular sea monster is in a mosaic from a house in the ancient Greek city of Caulonia in southern Italy from the third century BCE. Ancient depictions of sea monsters like this one often have long, snaky bodies, spiky fins, broad tails, and wings. These various pieces may have been cobbled together in the imagination from scattered sightings of whales, dolphins, sharks, squid, and other large sea creatures.
Out Thereart, Greece, history
Alexander and the Sea Monsters
Sea monsters prevented Alexander from building Alexandria. He took a wooden container in which a glass box was inserted, and dived in it to the bottom of the sea. There he drew pictures of the devilish monsters he saw. He then had metal effigies of these animals made and set them up opposite the place where building was going on. When the monsters came out and saw the effigies, they fled. Alexander was thus able to complete the building of Alexandria.
– Ibn Khaldun, Kitab al-'Ibar
Translated by Franz Rosenthal
This wild tale about the foundation of Alexandria is cited by the 14th-century North African historian Ibn Khaldun as an example of the ludicrous fictions that some earlier historians had filled their histories with but that had no place in the kind of scientific, rational history he set out to write.
The story as Ibn Khaldun relates it seem to go back to a legend in the Alexander Romance, a highly fictionalized account of Alexander the Great's campaigns, about a large snake that frightened the workers who were building the city of Alexandria on the coast of Egypt until Alexander had the snake caught and killed. Over centuries of retelling, the hunt for one big snake turned into a struggle against terrible sea monsters.
The story of Alexander and the sea monsters is fiction, not history, as Ibn Khaldun rightly points out, but what a story it is! Wood and glass submarines! Ancient kaiju! Tactical deployment of art! How has no one made a movie out of this already?
QuotesEgypt, Greece, history


Project developed for Computer Communications course. We built a Reverse Proxy Server in Java that distributes incoming traffic between the connected backend servers.
Project developed for Computer Graphics class. This program generates a OpenGL scene based on an XML description of the scene to render.
Java game made during my last term in High School. The ball is falling and platforms are going up. You must not touch the top or the bottom of the screen.
Robot built by me and three friends during our latest year in High School to participate in Portugal's National Robotics Festival.


Cool Running features a gorgeous colorful design on a black background. With a luxurious non-slip leather sole, super-soft comfortable fit and invisible support strap with stay-on technology.
Cool Running is one of Moccis new design for AW17 that features gorgeous colorful designs on a black background. With a luxurious nonslip leather sole, super-soft comfortable fit and invisible support strap with stay-on technology.


You gave your energy and commitment to help fill the gap in access to education for children in rural farming communities.
When political turmoil erupted throughout Nicaragua in 2018, six million people became at risk of falling deeper into poverty. Many schools and universities closed their doors. Hundreds of thousands of people were laid off and fled their home country. Project Alianza remained steadfast in supporting education during this time of political unrest.
Two million children throughout Latin America won't go to school today because they live in isolated farming communities.
Project Alianza works in remote farming communities in Central America where educational opportunities are scarce. Without education, many children become susceptible to gang recruitment, the drug trade, or migrate to the US border in search of better opportunities.
Starting in Nicaragua, we are focusing on expanding in the poorest farming communities in the departments of Matagalpa and Jinotega. In 2018, we partnered with 20 Nicaraguan coffee farms to build schools and improve learning outcomes. We began conducting research and piloting education programs at three coffee farms in El Salvador and one farm in Guatemala.
We have provided education to 2,052 children across 160,000 acres of isolated, mountainous farmland.
Within our partner communities, 80 percent of families engage in supporting school and education.
Over eight thousand Central American youth and community members have been impacted by our work.
We believe those closest to the problem are best able to deliver sustainable solutions. 100% of our leadership and education team is comprised of Central American women.
Among students in our literacy program, 60 percent transitioned from non-readers to readers as measured by their ability to read a short passage.
All scholarship recipients completed their current year of secondary school and continued to the next. Every recipient led a community service project.
Among students in our literacy program, 88 percent showed improvements in literacy skills and reading abilities.
Project Alianza students received an additional 115,884 hours of literacy and reading programs relative to their peers in 2017-2018.
Thanks to the generous support from our partners, we make education accessible to children in remote farming communities. In 2018, we received investment from coffee companies throughout North America and farms in Central America to support education programs and improve sustainability in our supply chains.
Blanchards Coffee is an exceptional example of a roaster supporting their origin communities. With their support, we can implement our literacy program which uses the evidenced-backed Teach at The Right Level approach. Their funds support the salary of a local educator as well as health programs.
Sustainable Harvest focuses on creating transparent relationships that increase value throughout the coffee supply chain. Sustainable Harvest partners with Tinker Coffee to invest in the next generation of coffee by reallocating funds to our education programs. Their wide-reaching influence continues to give us a platform to build bridges with other partners in the coffee industry.
Tiny House Coffee Roasters, based in Austin Texas, is a socially-focused specialty roaster that supports coffee-growing communities in Nicaragua. Tiny House hosted community events and dinners to fundraise for school and health supplies to support children in their origin communities in Nicaragua.
We love our Project Alianza Family. From our staff throughout Central America, to our campaigners at college campuses, to our corporate and foundation partners, we're able to provide education to more children every year because of your generosity.
We're grateful to have your commitment to give children a future beyond the fields.
With your support, we raised $355,535 to invest in education for children who are often beyond reach of existing education structures.
This work requires bravery—the bravery to commit every day to do our part to give children an education no matter the challenges we face.
With your support, we lessen the barriers that keep children from breaking free of the poverty that their families have likely experienced for generations. We make schools safer and closer to home. We are able to adapt our teaching methods to fit students' needs, so they begin to climb from fundamental literacy to comprehension to thinking critically about information they receive. We invest in Central American economies by training and hiring local women to partner with government teachers to support personalized learning.
My promise to you, as I lead this organization, is to nurture our team's talent and the generosity of a global community to bring a vision of a better world to life.


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Pope Paul VI and Archbishop Oscar Romero in 1978 (Wikipedia/Public domain)
Vatican | Mar. 7, 2018
Vatican: Paul VI, Oscar Romero Will Be Saints
Pope Francis has recognized a second miracle for each of them.
Elise Harris/CNA/EWTN News
VATICAN CITY — The Vatican announced Wednesday that Pope Francis has recognized a second miracle allowing five people on the path to sainthood to be canonized, the most prominent being Blesseds Pope Paul VI and Oscar Romero.
With a second miracle approved, the path has been cleared for a date to be set for the canonization of each of the five candidates, allowing them to officially be declared a saint.
Though no date has yet been announced, both Paul VI and Archbishop Romero are expected to be canonized together during the Synod of Bishops in October.
Born as Giovanni Montini in 1897 in the town of Concesio in the Lombardy region of Italy, the future Pope Paul VI was ordained a priest at the age of 22. He served as archbishop of Milan before his election as Bishop of Rome in 1963.
As pope, he oversaw much of the Second Vatican Council, which had been opened by Pope St. John XXIII, and in 1969, he promulgated a new Roman Missal. He died in 1978, and was beatified by Pope Francis Oct. 19, 2014.
Pope Francis himself unofficially confirmed the news of Paul VI's canonization during his annual meeting with the priests of Rome Feb. 17. However, the Vatican's announcement today makes it official.
Apart from his role in the Council, Paul VI is most widely known for his landmark encyclical Humanae Vitae, which was published in 1968 and reaffirmed the Church's teaching against contraception in the wake of the sexual revolution. This year marks the 50th anniversary the historic encyclical, making the canonization of the author all the more relevant.
Both miracles attributed to Paul VI's intercession involve the healing of an unborn child.
Blessed Oscar Romero, who was beatified by Pope Francis May 23, 2015, in El Salvador, was the archbishop of the nation's capital city of San Salvador. He was shot while celebrating Mass March 24, 1980, during the birth of a civil war between leftist guerrilla forces and the dictatorial government of the right.
An outspoken critic of the violence and injustices being committed at the time, he was declared a martyr who was killed in hatred of the faith for his vocal defense of human rights.
The Vatican made the announcement about the acceptance of the miracles March 7, following a meeting between Pope Francis and Cardinal Angelo Amato, prefect of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, the day before.
During the meeting, Francis advanced 13 saints' causes, recognizing at least one person as a martyr and allowing one religious sister to be beatified.
In addition to Paul VI and Oscar Romero, the Pope approved a second miracle for three other saints' causes, allowing for their canonization. The new saints-to-be are: Blessed Francesco Spinelli, a diocesan Italian priest and founder of the Institute of the Adorers of the Blessed Sacrament; Blessed Vincenzo Romano, a diocesan priest from Torre de Greco in Italy; and Blessed Maria Caterina Kasper, a German nun and founder of the Institute of the Poor Handmaids of Jesus Christ.
Pope Francis also recognized a first miracle attributed to Maria Felicia di Gesu Sacramento, a Discalced Carmelite nun from Paraguay who died in 1959, allowing for her to be beatified and receive the title "Blessed."
Additionally, he recognized the martyrdom of Slavic laywoman Anna Kolesárová. Born in Vysoká nad Uhom, Slovakia, in 1928, she was killed by a drunken Soviet soldier near the end of the Second World War in 1944 for refusing his sexual advances.
At the time, Soviet troops were passing through Kolesárová's district, which was then a part of Hungary, and occupied her village on the way. When one soldier entered her home and found the family in hiding, he attempted to sleep with Kolesárová, threatening her with death if she did not comply.
However, raised in a pious Catholic family, Kolesárová refused, and as a result, she was shot in front of her family at the age of 16.
In addition to these causes, Pope Francis also recognized the heroic virtue of six people, allowing them to be called "Venerable."
Among these causes are: Polish Father Bernardo Lubienski of the Congregation of the Holy Redeemer; Cecilio Maria Cortinovis, an Italian Franciscan religious; Italian Sisters Giustina and Maria Schiapparoli, who founded the order of the Benedictine Sisters of Divine Providence of Voghera; Italian laywoman Antonella Bordoni, founder of the Lay Fraternity of the Little Daughters of the Mother of God; and Italian laywoman Alessandra Sabattini.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


This is the sum total of Ron DeSantis' "action" following the execution-style killings of 5 women by a 21 year-old gunman.
New Florida governor Ron DeSantis has tweeted about the shooting numerous times to offer his "prayers" to the families of the five victims. Yet not once has he offered a single possible solution to prevent mass shootings from happening. DeSantis has an 'A' rating from the NRA and received their endorsement for governor.
Governor DeSantis, I am absolutely disgusted to see you offering nothing but "prayers" in response to the mass shooting at a SunTrust bank in Sebring. The gunman at the bank forced five women to lay face-down then killed them execution-style. He was "obsessed with guns and death," according to a former girlfriend. Also, "he got kicked out of school for having a dream that he killed everybody in his class." She knew he was dangerous and told everyone around her that. Yet there was no way to prohibit him from passing a background check and legally purchasing firearms under Florida's ridiculous laws, and that's exactly what he did when he was ready to commit mass murder. This blood is on your hands, governor, for taking money from the NRA and doing absolutely nothing to prevent the next tragedy from happening. I will be doing everything in my power—peacefully and democratically—to make sure this term is the last time you hold elected office.
Once you've contacted Ron DeSantis, fill out the three fields below and click the orange banner to report taking action!


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Home | opioids | oxycontin addiction
OxyContin Withdrawal Timeline
By most accounts, OxyContin is the prescription painkiller at the heart of the opioid crisis claiming tens of thousands of lives across the country. Its strong effects drive its abuse, but many patients and addicted people are unaware of the seriously damaging health effects that come with using the drug too much. OxyContin withdrawal is one of those unpleasant surprises, but it is a necessary part of the process for treatment and rehabilitation.
The Story behind OxyContin
OxyContin is the brand name of the oxycodone, a semisynthetic opioid used in the treatment of moderate to severe pain. The formulation of OxyContin, manufactured by Purdue Pharma, is such that the oxycodone is on a timed-release mechanism, giving patients relief from pain for up to 12 hours by changing how the brain and central nervous system perceive pain and physical discomfort.
In the mid-1990s, Purdue Pharma embarked on an unprecedented marketing campaign, pushing doctors to prescribe more OxyContin and directly encouraging patients to ask their doctors for OxyContin. It was a "commercial triumph," says the American Journal of Public Health, because it made OxyContin one of the most popular drugs in America almost overnight, and the doctors who prescribed the drug, as well as Purdue Pharma itself, made a lot of money in the process.
However, the astronomical success of the drug hid the deeply habit-forming nature of the oxycodone, especially when users took much more than was prescribed for them. Purdue Pharma knew about this, claimed the Department of Justice in 2007, but attempted to cover up the reality of abuse. By that point, hundreds of thousands of people were uncontrollably using OxyContin to not just alleviate real or imagined pain, but also simply to enjoy the narcotic effects of an opioid that was becoming as popular as heroin.
Oxycodone is such a powerful opioid that even proper consumption has to be carefully monitored. It can cause problems with breathing and heart rate, which, if left unchecked, can damage the brain and cause death by respiratory failure and overdose. Nonetheless, the powerfully euphoric sensation and the "emotional detachment from pain," in the words of the Clinical Cases in Mineral and Bone Metabolism journal, can compel some people to take the risk of consuming oxycodone for longer than they should. This compulsion can be driven by other factors, such as pre-existing mental health or medical conditions, a family history of such problems, the presence of other drugs, or lifestyle and environmental stressors.
Oxycodone at Work
The oxycodone opioid works by binding to specific opioid receptors in the brain and central nervous system. The action of binding changes the perception of pain and triggers a strong emotional response (the euphoria) through the forced production of the dopamine neurotransmitter in the brain. The brain normally produces dopamine as a response to pleasant stimuli, to encourage the stimuli to continue. Drugs like opioids, especially strong ones like oxycodone, push the brain to release more dopamine than it would typically for a naturally occurring stimuli. The burst of euphoria and dopamine provides a break from pain relief, but it is so strong and alluring that users often take more OxyContin to try and recapture it or to keep their pain at bay.
As a user takes more and more OxyContin to deal with pain or to try and relive the euphoric feeling, the body becomes increasingly dependent on oxycodone to manage pain and then to simply function without distress. This change is known as tolerance, which the Institute for Chronic Pain describes as a process that takes place when a person requires higher amounts of a drug "to continue to obtain the original degree of its desired, therapeutic effect." Even though the original feeling of the OxyContin is never fully realized with every subsequent dosage of the medication, the body and brain continue to increase their dependence on the drugs to the point where attempting to go without the substance becomes increasingly difficult.
OxyContin Withdrawal and Timeline
After the chemistry of the brain and central nervous system have been so radically and repeatedly altered by the constant presence of oxycodone, discontinuing intake can cause severe and distressing withdrawal symptoms. The first effects are usually felt within 8-12 hours of the last consumption of OxyContin, and the peak is felt after 72 hours without any drugs. In general, the symptoms decline in a week's time, but even though the physical symptoms are settled, there are usually psychological effects that require therapy to address.
The OxyContin withdrawal timeline depends on a number of factors, such as:
Length and scope of OxyContin consumption
The formulation of OxyContin (immediate-release or timed-release)
How the drug was taken (pills, liquids, or injected solution)
If other drugs are present in the body
The user's health, as well as their age, genetics, and physical condition
When it comes to the formulation of the medication, the duration of withdrawal depends on the half-life of the particular formulation. If the OxyContin is immediate-release, for example, it takes up to four hours for the body to metabolize half of the drug present; extended-release oxycodone takes around 12 hours to drop its content by 50 percent.
Similarly, how the OxyContin has been abused will also make a difference in the length of the withdrawal process. Whether the oxycodone has been injected, snorted, or even smoked will determine how quickly the opioid has been released into the bloodstream. In this way, some methods have an almost instantaneous effect, but the drug will be active for a shorter period of time. On the other hand, if the drug is swallowed in pill or tablet form and digested, the mechanism of effect is slower, but the medication remains in the system for longer and will take more hours to purge.
Signs and Significance of Withdrawal
Speaking to Medical Daily, a doctor in New York who specializes in drug and alcohol addiction treatment explained that in the initial stages of withdrawal, people will start yawning uncontrollably even if they do not feel tired. This is because the yawning is an overcorrection to the lack of the narcotic presence in the system. It is usually an early-phase withdrawal symptom, occurring in the first 8-12 hours since the last dose of oxycodone, and it is gone by 48 hours.
Other early signs of withdrawal include flu-like symptoms, such as a runny nose, fatigue, and a deep ache in the bones. As withdrawal progresses, people experience nausea, vomiting, and even diarrhea. All the withdrawal symptoms, from the start of the process to the finish, are signs of the central nervous system, newly freed of the oxycodone binding to its opioid receptors, struggling to adjust without the drugs upon which it had become so dependent. In general terms, the more severe the level of physical dependence on the OxyContin, the worse the withdrawal symptoms will be.
OxyContin withdrawal symptoms are not life-threatening, but they can cause complications that can become quite serious. People who have severe diarrhea, for example, can lose so many nutrients through their loose stools that they become dehydrated and malnourished. Those who have pre-existing heart diseases are at risk of a heart attack because of the general stress of the withdrawal symptoms. The vomiting might become so forceful that the esophagus becomes ruptured, which is a serious medical condition in and of itself, according to Healthline.
Supervised OxyContin Withdrawal as Treatment
A former opioid abuse told Medical Daily that "the first three days [of withdrawal] are hell, and then it starts to alleviate." The physical symptoms end after about a week of controlled and monitored withdrawal, where doctors and medical professionals monitor the patient to ensure that their health is never in danger. This might entail putting the patient on an IV drip to ensure that the diarrhea and vomiting don't dry out the body or administering drugs like buprenorphine and methadone. Both opioids only partially bind to the opioid receptors, allowing for an easier process of weaning off the stronger OxyContin. In other cases, patients might be given anti-anxiety and anticonvulsant drugs to help them weather those particular symptoms.
This kind of supervised withdrawal is known as medical detox, and it is the only safe way to withdraw from oxycodone. During detox, patients are monitored around the clock to ensure that their bodies are responding properly to the withdrawal symptoms, and their vital signs are steady. They are allowed to rest and heal in proper conditions. Withdrawing without this kind of care raises the risk of the person giving in to the intense craving of going back on oxycodone to make the discomfort go away. It is a natural inclination, but after the severity of the withdrawal symptoms, there is the danger of the person abusing OxyContin to an even greater degree than before. Given the body's weakened state during withdrawal, oxycodone could also be more damaging than it was before the attempted
Treatment Programs and Therapy
OxyContin is a powerful enough medication that most individuals will be put into an inpatient treatment program to detox safely. Those whose abuse of the drug is not as severe might be able to make use of an outpatient treatment facility, where their cravings are under control enough that they can be released into the care of friends or family members. But for people who need the full week or two weeks of withdrawal, an inpatient arrangement removes them from the lifestyle or environmental stressors that might trigger a relapse and ensures that their bodies heal safely.
After the person has safely made it through the medical detox period, they will transition into a therapy program. This kind of mental health therapy helps the person deal with the psychological causes and effects of OxyContin abuse. While successful withdrawal addresses the physical craving for oxycodone, the abuse of the medication leaves long-term emotional and behavioral scars that need to be healed. Through group, individual, and family therapy, people learn how to enjoy life without the continual temptation to recapture the euphoria and emotional disconnection from pain that once dominated their days. This part of the treatment cannot be completed until the physical cravings for oxycodone and the physical effects of withdrawal have been settled. For long-term rehabilitation from opioid abuse, it is imperative that individuals go through medical detox and then participate in therapy.
How Long Does Oxycontin Stay in Your System?
How to Wean off Oxycontin
Risks of Shooting up OxyContin
What Are the Signs of Oxycontin Abuse?


There are many different online casino games out there. It is difficult to decide whether or not or not it is real. Some look like they are and they are not. Others are genuine and even I have performed a couple of of the ones that are out there.The online poker marketplace is a $6 billion greenback a year business. The leading online poker rooms are profiting over $1 million bucks every and each working day. Leading poker affiliate marketers, who refer gamers to poker sites, make over $100,000 for each month.If you are a serious Live Casino fanatic and you might want to have some distinctive strategies in playing such games, then the factor you must do is to get a mentor or coach to help you in playing. Although having a mentor will price a lot of cash, they will make sure that you'll graduate with flying colours in taking part in. What I imply is that you'll finish up being a strategic casino participant. 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Q: Is there any program that can add titlebar functionality to the menubar panel? Looking to reproduce the Unity/Gnome3 (Linux desktops) feature set on a Mac:
specifically:

*

*adding various window management buttons to the menu bar panel (close, maximize, maybe tile left/right)

*drag from the top to drag a maximized window, just as you would drag from the top in Windows. On Gnome desktop you can just drag from the top to move a maximized window, even though there is a panel at the top of the screen just like on Mac. Really good use of Fitts law.

*double-click on empty space in the menubar panel to maximize/unmaximize a window.
Are the any ready-made solutions to this? Are these features actually possible to implement on Mac?

A: Most of what you're asking is already there...

*

*The top of every window has Close, Minimise to Dock & Fullscreen buttons.

Alt/click the fullscreen button will maximise instead.
Click & hold the fullscreen button then drag to the left or right of the screen will enable Split Screen.
Additional features can be added to the title bar - right click to Customise

*You can resize any window except fullscreen by dragging any edge or any corner.
From edges...
Alt/drag will resize from 2 sides.
Shift/drag will resize from 3 sides.
Alt/Shift/drag will resize from all 4 sides.
From corners...
Alt/drag will resize by mirroring the faces.
Shift/drag will resize from one corner, preserving aspect ratio.
Alt/Shift/drag will resize from all 4 corners, preserving aspect ratio.
Cmd/drag will allow you to resize without bringing the window to the front.
Adding any of the other modifiers will do as above, without bringing it to the front.

*Double click to maximise/minimise is an option in System Prefs > Dock

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


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Meet Daniel Mazzone: Once a homeless teen, now one of Toronto's most sought-after artists
By Tara DeschampsStaff Reporter
Sun., June 25, 2017timer4 min. read
When Daniel Mazzone walked away from home at age 15 to live on the streets, he wasn't just leaving behind the comfort of his family and their residence, but also a passion for art his art-instructor mother ignited in him over years toiling over stained glass and ceramic pieces.
As he slept in Scarborough movie theatres that only charged $2 for admission and took shelter in mall bathroom stalls, little did he know he would one day become one of Toronto's most sought-after artists with celebrity customers and a six-month waiting list.
After nearly five years of homelessness, the now 37-year-old says, "I was thinking I have got to get off the street. I am going to die here ... I wanted to make a difference. I didn't just want to be another person going through the motions."
So just shy of his 20th birthday, Mazzone headed back to the home he had fled amidst what he calls "topsy turvy" times, graduated from high school and became a mortgage broker.
But something was still missing.
"It wasn't me," he said. "Once Monday came, I was looking forward to Friday. I needed an outlet."
That's exactly what he found when he was channel-surfing one day in 2011 and he came across a television show featuring artwork. It brought back floods of memories and reignited his artistic passion. He bought a canvas, five feet by four feet and "at first, I was going to paint, but then I thought, I don't really know how to paint," he says.
Then he remembered an old newspaper collection he had and some of the stained glass techniques his mother had taught him. They inspired him to start creating a collage of Robert De Niro's Taxi Driver character Travis Bickle — the first hints of an art-pop style he's developed to include bright flourishes, newspapers dating back to the days of Napoleon and George Washington, and depictions of Michael Jackson, Prince, Charlie Chaplin, Queen Elizabeth and Frida Kahlo.
Months later he had a home full of fresh works and a friend, the owner of the now-closed old-school Italian hot spot Centro, was begging to hang one at the restaurant, in hopes of selling it.
Mazzone was reluctant. He had never envisioned selling his work and he wasn't sure anyone would like it. The pieces usually cost him between $1,500 and $2,000 to make and he was afraid they wouldn't fetch enough to cover the costs, but eventually agreed and handed over a piece featuring John F. Kennedy.
"(My friend) called me a few days later and said 'I sold your picture for $14,000,' " recalls Mazzone. "I dreamed about being an artist as a kid and I sort of lost that dream because I didn't think it was possible. That was the moment where I realized it was going to be possible."
He quickly quit his job. Soon after Blue Jays star Jose Bautista, then fresh from his bat flip fame, spied one of Mazzone's pieces — a Babe Ruth baseball card crafted with old New York Times pages — on a mutual friend's Instagram account.
Bautista desperately wanted it for his home, reached out and now he owns about seven of Mazzone's works and has passed on the admiration to teammate Marcus Stroman, who Mazzone recalls first meeting at his exhibit at the ritzy 1 Hotel in Miami's South Beach.
"He had seen the pieces at Jose's house, but didn't know I was the same artist."
Mazzone directed him to a baseball card-style piece of Jackie Robinson, Major League Baseball's first African-American player. Stroman was hooked, as were businesswoman/investor Arlene Dickinson, luxury watchmaker François-Henry Bennahmias and Tampa Bay Rays part-owner Randy Frankel, whom Mazzone counts among his customers.
The Tanenbaum family, who is among the world's top 200 art collectors, have even scooped up some of his work. Dickinson's co-star Michael WekerleDragons' Den co-star Michael Wekerle, who bought eight of Mazzone's pieces the day he met the artist and has now racked up 10, has even gone so far as to pronounce him "the next Andy Warhol."
"As an artist, you look up to these sorts of people. Even being compared to the same class as him is quite an honour," says Mazzone. "It's big shoes to fill. That's obviously the dream."
And it's a dream he says he'll be happily working towards with his mother, who's always on call to look at photos of his work he sends to her for advice, cheering him on.
"She was one of those people that maybe couldn't put everything down and do (art) and give it her all because she had kids at 17 and once you have a family, your priorities are different," he says.
"She's saying, 'you're doing what I always wanted to do' ... It's really nice to have that and to be doing something that I really love every day."
Jose Bautista, Marcus Stroman


Tonight both Pato and Adi said part of the prayer. Adi began "Thank you for food." Pato said "Thank you for food to eat." Adi said "Thank you for food that people can eat." And then they went on to explain all the things one can do thanks to food: play, run, play with friends, go to school, etc.
Then they thanked God for all of the members of our extended family, as they do every single day.
Children are wonderful. Grandchildren are especially wonderful. I can still see them with their beautiful smiles, Adi singing her Spanish songs, Pato thinking carefully as he translates into English for me. Thanks to you and Karina for bringing them into the world, our world.


the Mildly Frumpy Protagonist | By That I Mean – Episode 15: I've Got Money Riding On This Game!
By That I Mean – Episode 15: I've Got Money Riding On This Game!
Seth and Asia marvel as Rick Perry has brain farts, Republicans revive torture, Herman Cain touches women, and Penn State fans riot in support of a pederasty enabler in the 15th episode of the BY THAT I MEAN podcast.
If you like this please review us on iTunes and like BY THAT I MEAN on Facebook at facebook.com/bythatimean. You can tweet Seth @mfpseth and you should not tweet Asia @Mitchell3point0. BY THAT I MEAN is recorded and produced at the Mildly Frumpy Protagonist Studios. Check out themfp.org someday if you get bored.


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Home » Utah Jazz NBA Bubble Restart Preview
Utah Jazz NBA Bubble Restart Preview
Jan 18, 2022 2:35 PM ET | By: content upload
By: Field Level Media
UTAH JAZZ (41-23), 4th in Western Conference
Where are they now: The Jazz find themselves in a four-team duel for seeds 3-thru-6 in the West, the significance of which is two-fold: 1) Is there an opponent among the four that Utah would prefer to draw in the first round? And 2) Between the top-seeded Lakers and second-seeded Clippers, is there an opponent the Jazz would like to try to avoid in Round 2?
Utah will be the first to return to play, drawing the Pelicans in the nationally televised bubble curtain-raiser on July 30. They will take the court 1½ games behind third-seeded Denver (43-22), and one game ahead of both Oklahoma City (40-24) and Houston (40-24), who are currently tied for fifth. Among the four, the Jazz (.556) has the easiest remaining schedule in terms of cumulative winning percentage of opponents, followed by the Thunder (.583), Rockets (.587) and Nuggets (.618). Utah has one game remaining against Oklahoma City (Aug. 1) and Denver (Aug. 8), but none against Houston.
Utah Jazz First Half Highlights
The Jazz were a streaky bunch in the regular season, going 19-2 in one stretch that included a 10-game winning streak, but also enduring four- and five-game losing skids. They went into the All-Star break with a club-record 36 wins. However, they were staggering in February and March, having just split their last 18 games before Rudy Gobert tested positive for coronavirus and the NBA went on shutdown.
Those first 64 games showcased a different-looking Utah team, one much more offensively focused and defensively challenged. Who'd have guessed that the Jazz would lead the NBA in scoring after Jan. 1 (116.6 points per game), and also allow 100 or more points 13 consecutive times in the month of December? Utah ranked second in the NBA in 3-point shooting percentage (38.3) and fourth in overall field goal percentage (47.5), but just 11th in points allowed (108.8) per 100 possessions.
Utah Jazz NBA Bubble Roster Rundown
Believe it or not, the Jazz return to play with bigger problems than Gobert's frosty relationship with fellow All-Star Donovan Mitchell. That's because Bojan Bogdanovic, who played through the pain of a wrist injury suffered in January, elected to undergo season-ending surgery over the break, taking his 20.2 points per game to the hospital with him.
"We'll have to make adjustments in some of the stuff we run," noted Joe Ingles, who is expected to take Bogdanovic's starting spot. "Some of the stuff we ran for him, we can run for other guys on our team. We'll have someone like Mike (Conley) to have the ball more and he'll be able to do what he's done his whole career."
Conley, who started slowly in his first season with the Jazz, was on a nice roll before the coronavirus break, averaging 16.5 points on 45.8-percent shooting in his last 13 games. And he stayed hot during the layoff, winning ESPN's nationally televised H-O-R-S-E competition.
As for Gobert and Mitchell, they'd like to believe the standout guard's criticism over the big guy's handling of the coronavirus situation is no longer a major issue.
"As long as we respect one another and both share the same goals and we both do what's best for the team," Gobert insisted, "that's what matters."
Utah Jazz NBA Bubble Playoff Outlook
The Jazz have clinched their fourth consecutive playoff berth. Their path to a probable second-round matchup with either the Lakers or Clippers almost surely will have to go through either Denver, Oklahoma City or Houston, and each figures to be a rocky road.
Utah went a combined 2-5 against those three, losing two straight to the Nuggets and two of three to the Rockets. The Jazz split a pair with the Thunder, but the loss (104-90) was a lot more one-sided than the win (100-95).
And that was before losing Bogdanovic.
Utah Jazz Best Bet for the NBA Bubble: Jazz (plus-2½ on FanDuel)) over Pelicans on July 30. America loves Zion Williamson and hates Gobert. How else do you explain a 28-win team being favored, on a neutral site, over a 41-win club? Note the clubs met three times earlier this season; the Pelicans never won by more than two points.
Jan 18, 2022 2:35 PM ET | By: OddsUSA Staff
Our friends at DraftKings are in the holiday spirit! New users who make a deposit between Dec. 23-25 get a $25 ticket for Christmas Day Millionaire contest! Click on the image below to[...]
Latest Bubble Previews


On its face, cloud computing seems like one of those can't-miss opportunities for the channel. Despite the growing opportunity for profit, channel partners should recognize the misgivings some customers have.
On its face, cloud computing seems like one of those can't-miss opportunities for the channel. The notion that a business or consumer will benefit by simply using a Web browser to easily access important documents, emails and other applications from anywhere at any time "through the cloud" rather than a laptop seems like a no-brainer. Indeed, plenty of VARs and other channel partners are eagerly embracing this latest trend, citing its unparalleled convenience as well as its ability to make businesses more efficient.
They've got lots of partners with which to align. Salesforce.com's platform, Force.com, offers an integrated development environment, as well an exchange for third-party applications. Salesforce believes its model heralds the end of packaged software apps; it stores all the customer data and handles updates online. Amazon's S3 cloud operation is one of its fastest growing businesses. Google offers its own collection of cloud-based storage and app services. Sun, IBM and EMC, all big channel players, are heavily into the cloud business. Yahoo, in its latest reorganization, suggests it will form a "cloud computing" unit; it already hosts consumer email and other services online. Even Microsoft, the granddaddy of expensive packaged software, has skin in the game.
All well and good, but maybe the channel shouldn't rush to put all its eggs in the cloud basket. Cloud computing seems like a cool notion, but it isn't inevitable. First there is that classic IT bugaboo, the control issue. As a consumer, do you really want to place all your applications in the Internet cloud, or would you prefer to maybe own them on your desktop and access them in places (like an airplane, a hotel room or your outside patio) when Internet access can be a little dicey?
If you are operating a business, the dilemma is greater. CEOs are rightfully uneasy about having all that important corporate data had out of the building and sit in the Internet cloud where unscrupulous competitors and hackers lurk. Do you really trust those third parties to secure all that data? Of course, the cloud supporters argue that's a better alternative than scattering the data among hundreds or thousands of laptops, desktop and smart devices that are easily stolen.
Another impediment for the enterprise is losing the strategic ability to analyze the information you are collecting on both customers and suppliers, which limits the ability to suggest improvements in business processes on either end.
Finally, there's the issue of which vendors are in this new market for the long haul. As competition in the cloud continues to grow, will some players drop out, especially if the service become a commodity and prices drop?
Cloud computing certainly presents a real profit-making opportunity for the channel. But it's also important to keep your customer in mind and appreciate the issues this new trend presents. A little less hype might benefit everyone over the long haul.


I do is basically put the wig on this. Actually it has really nice hairline just in case you don't want to do this method. Wow, it's really natural.
I used to wear half wigs a lot. Because it has better air permeability and is quite natural and does not appear bulky, especially in summer.
Now let's see how to turn a full lace wig into a half wig.
1.Start at this point. Don't cut the clip.
2. Divide out the cut and weave it into a strand for us to cut.
3. Take the area you want to cut out and do it this way.
4. Cut out the one you want, according to your hair line.
5. Sew the long clip onto the half wig to make it stronger.
6. When worn, mix our own hair with a wig to make the hairline more natural .
Even if you wear the whole wig, it won't get hot, and the lace design is more natural and comfortable.


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Q: Ad block won't place correctly Basically, I need for the image at the bottom of the page with no text wrapped around it to be in the place of test post 4 (it's going to be a Google Adsense block but I am using images as a placeholder for now). I'm not sure how to do this, right now the code is the following:

    <?php if ($count == 3) { ?>

    <?php } ?>

    <?php $count++; ?>

Yet, the image is still at the bottom of the page. How can I fix this?
Here is the image:
I can't post pictures just yet so the URL to the image is http://i.imgur.com/7rw5B.jpg

A: I have to see your code to help you better with the Scripting Part, but something logical like this should work:
<?php
$count = 0;
foreach( $posts as $post ) : ?>
    <?php if ($count == 3) { ?>

    <?php } else { ?>
    <div class="post" id="post-<?php the_ID(); ?>>
<?php the_content(); ?>

    <?php } ?>

    <?php $count++; ?>
<?php endforeach; ?>