 |
| On the table: charcoal-grilled lamb chops and rice/mushroom salad. |
 |
| Dessert: vanilla pudding with fresh peaches. |
 |
| The sea near the Turkish coast, south of the location of the ancient city of Troy. Thinking of Odysseus, who began his voyage as the Trojan War ended. And his new movie! |
“Tell me about a complicated man. Muse, tell me how he wandered and was lost when he had wrecked the holy town of Troy, and where he went, and who he met, the pain he suffered on the sea, and how he worked to save his life and bring his men back home. He failed, and for their own mistakes, they died. They ate the Sun God’s cattle, and the god kept them from home. Now goddess, child of Zeus, tell the old story for our modern times.” (beginning lines of The Odyssey)
“There sat Calypso with her braided curls. Beside the hearth a mighty fire was burning. The scent of citrus and of brittle pine suffused the island. Inside, she was singing and weaving with a shuttle made of gold. Her voice was beautiful. Around the cave a luscious forest flourished: alder, poplar, and scented cypress. It was full of wings. Birds nested there but hunted out at sea: the owls, the hawks, the gulls with gaping beaks. A ripe and verdant vine, hung thick with grapes, was stretched to coil around her cave. Four springs spurted with sparkling water as they laced with crisscross currents intertwined together. The meadow softly bloomed with celery and violets.”
 |
| A year ago we visited the exact spot that Homer mentioned: Cape Sunion; In the distance, in this photo, you can see how it looks now, with the ruins of an ancient temple (but built long after Odysseus was there) on the hilltop above the shore. |
 |
Illustration from the Odyssey, which I’m currently reading |
 |
| Owl in the Parthenon Museum, Athens. (July 11, 2025) |
 |
| Ancient Greek coin |
 |
| From Evelyn in Lake Placid, NY this week |
 |
| From our birding trip in the Netherlands, 2022. |
 |
| Picasso kept a pet owl named Ubu, which inspired him to create many owl images, though Ubu's life story is a bit sad, as is that of many captive owls |
“In The Iliad, not a single commoner speaks (with one notable exception). Homer’s omniscient perspective closely aligns with the point of view of the Greek ruling class. It is an aristocratic perspective. Whereas here [in the fictitious epic the Psoad], a commoner speaks so much he practically filibusters.” (p. 62)
Son of Nobody alternates between two stories, one modern in the US and England, and one in the ancient world of the Trojan War. The link between the stories is a classical scholar who has discovered a new epic about the Greeks at Troy, the Psoad, the history of a common soldier named Psoas. This scholar works at a library in Oxford, while his wife and child have remained in America. At the beginning of each chapter of Martell’s novel, we read an excerpt from the newly discovered epic (which of course exists only in the novel). Following each excerpt, we read the story of the scholar as he hears from his wife, who resents his absence from their home while he’s in Oxford.
Tragedy strikes: their child dies of a sudden infection. Martell suggests connections and similarities between the modern and ancient stories. I find the situation of a very sick child and remote father to be poignant, though contrived. Throughout there are vivid and significant details — such as the appearance of the pottery fragment where the previously unknown epic was recorded. Emotions like the suffering of the family, the grief of a bereaved father, and the fear of the mother all are vivid. But collectively, the descriptive passages somehow did not come together for me: I don’t think the book succeeds.
As far as I can discover, the character Psoas along with his name and the epic about him are the creation of Martel, not taken from ancient myth or history. There is an English word psoas, which refers to “a long, ribbon-shaped muscle in your back. It starts at your lower back and runs through your pelvis to the top of your femur.” (source) I see no connection between the word’s meaning and the character in the novel.
In short, I find the novel a bit puzzling and not entirely satisfying.
 |
| As I read, I was thinking about the objects we saw last summer when visiting the Greek islands. |
 |
| A pottery fragment from the time of the Homeric epic. |
“The temptation is to see truth in the rational and mere embellishment in the myth.” (p.229)
 |
| Clytemnestra by Costanza Casati |
The characters in this novel come from Greek mythology. They are familiar figures from the Iliad, the Odyssey, and ancient Greek drama, as well as various modern reprises. Author Costanza Casati has recreated this drama as fiction about a family who embody what I see as completely modern self-awareness. Despite their modern outlook, they live in the ancient Greek world that has just suffered through the Trojan War. This treatment has good points, like the way she creates character development. It has weak points, like the excessive detail, which makes it a somewhat tedious read all together.
The food references are disappointing. Example: “ There are no nobles and warriors tonight, only Clytemnestra’s family, and the servants set out bowls of pears and apples, cheese and nuts.” (p. 112)
 |
| From our trip to the Greek islands last summer: a vase with images that relate to the Trojan War. |
 |
| A temple from the era of Clytemnestra from our trip last summer: the ancient Greek Temple of Posidon at Soumion. Picky note: the columns of that era, as shown here, are Doric columns. On the cover of the book the columns are Corinthian: an anachronism. But I guess that the book is full of anachronisms. |
 |
| What do you do in a Michigan thaw? You try to get the salt and mud off your car. |
 |
| It’s still a bit cold and messy for outdoor sports, but we have the Olympics. (Brought to us by a pharmacopia of unpronounceable drugs). |
 |
| We drove out into the rather desolate countryside. No signs of spring here. The town of Dixboro, founded in 1824, has one or two old buildings. |
 |
| Right now, I’m cooking a stew for this evening. I still love my crockpot, and haven’t replaced it. NOTE in response to comment: Crockpot is the brand name of this pot, which is also called a slow cooker. |
Blog post and photos © 2026 mae sander.
 |
| May, 2025: Alice Graduates from University of Virginia, one of the highlights of the year! |
 |
| January: cooking from Fuchsia Dunlap’s book. |
 |
| May: our kitchen extends into the back yard, which continued until October. |
 |
| September: Carol brings us a fruit tart. |
 |
| December: Chanukah — latkes and salmon. |
 |
| Christmas dinner at Nat’s house (not my kitchen). |
 |
| We had a great birding trip to Texas in April. Here is a Texas lunch. |
 |
| One of the many birds we saw in Texas: a Black-Necked Stilt. |
 |
| On the National Geographic Orion in July, after a tour of Athens, we visited a number of places in the eastern Mediterranean. Here’s the ship’s kitchen. |
 |
| After decades of hoping to see the Acropolis, I finally made it to Athens in July. This is a view from our hotel. |
“By any honest accounting, 2025 has been a year of wrecking-ball damage to the constitutional scheme. Our democratic structures are more vulnerable by orders of magnitude than they were at the beginning of the year, before Trump took office. Indeed, one theme historians will likely emphasize is the speed and breadth of Trump 2.0—the way the administration hit the ground running with pre-cooked plans, especially those from Project 2025, to erode the separation of powers.
“That unprecedented damage has come from a ruthless and often lawless executive branch, a Congress that has largely declined to act as a co-equal branch, and a Supreme Court that—too often—has been solicitous of presidential power, especially on its emergency docket. The result, at best, is a pockmarked landscape that will require a herculean reclamation project, legally and politically, if constitutional government is to be fully restored.” — Harry Litman, December 29, 2025
“The Mona Lisa will be moved to a new exhibition space at the Louvre in Paris as part of a plan to renovate the world's most frequented museum. Emmanuel Macron stood in front of the masterpiece by Leonardo da Vinci as he made the announcement to an audience of dignitaries, with the change to be introduced by 2031 and visitors charged separately to see the painting.” (BBC)
 |
| In Paris last June (from Alice). |
 |
| Jean Margat, Mona Lisa collector extraordinaire and creator of this famous issue of Bizarre Magazine, died in February. |
 |
| From Andy Borowitz |
