The Odyssey

“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)

All the big news about a new film about the ancient hero Odysseus inspired me to read the book this week. Yes, I agree with thousands of years of literary opinion — definitely a Classic! I loved reading the details about the famous characters: Odysseus the traveler; Penelope his faithful wife and her resourceful refusal to accept a greedy suitor; Telemachus their wimpy son; and the various gods and goddesses who either help or try to hinder Odysseus. I found the brief descriptions of ancient technology intriguing —such as the ships powered by rowers and wind. I loved the many sensory details as each long description unfolds:

“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.”

I enjoyed recalling my visit last summer to one place mentioned by Homer. In the words of Odysseus: “We reached the holy cape of Athens, Sounion. There Phoebus with his gentle arrows shot and killed the pilot, Phrontis, as he held the ship’s helm as she sped along. No man knew better how to steer through any storm, so Menelaus stopped to bury him with proper rites.”

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.

How is it possible to relate to people who lived in such a totally different world? The nights then were darker than anything I’ve ever seen, since I live in a lit up city. Even the foods of elite men like Odysseus, a king, were basic and relatively unvaried: mainly hearth-baked bread, seasonal vegetables, milk and fresh cheese. And the occasional sacrifice of a large animal which would be roasted in honor of a god and then eaten by the men and women. For entertainment even the king’s household had only oral poetry — the scribe who wrote down the tale was long after the events. But I think most modern readers like me become captivated by Odysseus and his tale.

Athena’s Owls

Illustration from the Odyssey, which I’m currently reading

Owl in the Parthenon Museum, Athens. (July 11, 2025)

 More Owls

Ancient Greek coin

Not Athena’s Owl

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

Nobody

 Son of Nobody: A Novel by Yann Martel

“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.

Artifacts from Homer’s Era

From our trip in 2025

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)

Blog post © 2026, photos © 2025 mae sander

Not Much Going On Here

 

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.

A Brief Weather Reprieve

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.

Wrapping up 2025

Wishing You a Happy New Year and a Look Back at 2025

May, 2025: Alice Graduates from University of Virginia, one of the highlights of the year!

My Kitchen, 2025

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).

December Celebration

Outstanding Books, 2025

I read and reviewed many books this year, as I enjoy reading and I had time to read. Here are just a few of the ones that I especially liked.

Interesting Places, 2025

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.

The Dismal State of the Union

Politics this year has been a nightmare, and I’ve avoided any attempt to write about my reaction to the horror show in our nation. However, to wrap up the year I feel I must at least acknowledge how terrified I am that the fundamental philosophy on which the American experiment has rested for 250 years is severely threatened. Here is a summary that seems to capture the situation:

“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

Mona Lisa in 2025

Macron announces plans for Mona Lisa.

“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

Blog post © 2025 mae sander

Richard Halliburton and the Acropolis

Earlier this summer, I visited Athens and the Acropolis for the first time. I read about the Parthenon and all the other remarkable ancient-Greek buildings on this site when I was around 12 years old in the Book of Marvels, which had first been published in 1938. Its author, Richard Halliburton (1900-1939), became one of my heroes.

Soon after reading this compendium of Halliburton’s lifelong adventures, I read the other books by this highly romantic and highly successful author. His first book, published 100 years ago (in 1925) was The Royal Road to Romance. I loved its breathless descriptions of the exotic places the author visited. I was fascinated by the idea of travel, and hoped to see many of the “marvels” eventually. 

In The Glorious Adventure, I read about a very romantic night that the author spent on the Acropolis, after climbing the fence after hours. Here is Halliburton’s dramatized description of the Acropolis at night:

It took decades, but a few weeks ago, I finally saw the treasures of ancient Greece for myself, including a visit to the Acropolis. Of course my visit took place during normal opening hours, among the huge crowds of tourists who want to see this historic site. And unlike Halliburton, I can’t say I actually had a conversation with the Caryatids: that is, the women-shaped columns that hold up the porch of the building called the Erechtheion. Seeing this magnificent sight was the fulfillment of a long dream.

How I Met Richard Halliburton

My longing to travel began when I was around 12 years old, when a neighbor named Mrs. Rosen introduced me to the books of Halliburton, a travel writer who had been active from 1920 until his disappearance in the Pacific Ocean in 1939. She loaned me all of them, beginning with the Book of Marvels, a compendium of his favorite places in the world. I loved reading about Halliburton’s trip to the Alhambra in Granada, which I visited in the 1990s, and his swim in the Panama Canal described in the book New Worlds to Conquer, which I visited in 2014. As the years went by, I continued to wish to see the Greek temples on the Acropolis — the adventure I had missed, as he described it in The Glorious Adventure, his second book. And finally I’ve seen them.

One of the copies Mrs. Rosen let me read was even autographed -- years earlier, when she was in high school, she had gone to a book signing at a bookstore near her home (I think she was from Connecticut). She had been an avid fan, and described what a handsome man he had been, saying how she hung around the bookstore all afternoon just looking at him.Halliburton still appeals to a surprising number of readers, despite or maybe because his books describe a world that's no longer the same. He describes a sort of adventure travel that way too many people have attempted to copy. An article in the Guardian called him "the greatest adventurer in history" -- see "Seven League Boots by Richard Halliburton – review" by David Shariatmadari, published February 1, 2013. This reviewer writes, for example, that according to Halliburton, "Traditional societies, black ones in particular, are 'primitive'. His retelling of the astonishing story of Henri Christophe, King of Haiti, is polluted with racist condescension and stereotype. But curiosity and a love of the unfamiliar also leap from the pages." I didn't have that kind of sophistication when I was reading the books. I just loved the idea of those adventures.

At some point I collected most of Halliburton’s books, which were such great best-sellers that many copies are still easily available to buy.  My copies don’t have dust-jackets, but above you can see images of what they looked like when they were published. And I’ve seen quite a few of the other destinations in Halliburton’s books. What is it like to read these old volumes now? Sorry to say, the style is extreme, with much self-congratulation, and a flowery over-written prose. I don’t feel like rereading more than a few pages. But the memory of how much I loved them all those years ago hasn’t faded, and I’m happy that I finally visited one more of the romantic locations from the books.

Links to my posts about Richard Halliburton from the past: https://maetravels.blogspot.com/2014/02/the-panama-canal.html, https://maetravels.blogspot.com/2007/03/sacred-well.html

My first visit to the Acropolis and the Parthenon, July 2025.

 Blog post © 2025 mae sander