Notes from a fascinating world.
The world is like a bazaar, full of interesting odds and ends, and I've been exiled into it. This is my all-over-the-map (literally and metaphorically) attempt at capturing some of the world's many wonders.
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A recent “Dear Abby” column recommended that parents who may have non-Western backgrounds give their children “traditional ‘Western’ names.” A non-Western name, Abby wrote, can “cause a child to be teased unmercifully” in school. She went on: “Why saddle a kid with a name he or she will have to explain or correct with friends, teachers, and fellow employees from childhood into adulthood?” Unsurprisingly, there has been a substantial amount of backlash, not least on that fount of genteel and good-natured discussions called Twitter, against this bit of racist-lite parenting advice. But the controversy makes me consider the significance of my own name, or rather names.   The Lion Gate at Mycenae. For no particular reason, certainly not because of the politics of our day and the new UN environment report saying that we have twenty good years left, #sarcasm, I have had the end times on my mind.
It was in this frame of mind that I visited ancient Mycenae the other day. I first saw pictures of the Lion Gate and Cyclopean Walls when I was in high school and read the mythology surrounding this place. Many of you know the story. The three major “tholos” or beehive-shaped tombs here are ascribed to three major characters from that tale: Agamemnon, Clytemnestra, and Aegisthus. Helen of Troy, the face that launched a thousand ships, was the wife of Menelaus, whose brother Agamemnon was the king of Mycenae. When Helen ran off with Paris, the prince of Troy, Menelaus and his big brother demanded satisfaction. So Agamemnon rallied the Greek states for a join assault on Troy. But the goddess Artemis commanded unfavorable winds so that the Greeks could not set sail; for the winds to change Agamemnon was required to sacrifice his own daughter. He did so, killing his daughter Iphigenia. The Greeks attacked Troy and finally destroyed it after ten long years. During Agamemnon’s absence, his wife Clytemnestra took Aegisthus as a lover. And upon his return, Clytemnestra and Aegisthus murdered him. His son Orestes then killed his own mother and Aegisthus to avenge his father. There’s a story from my days at Yale that I don’t remember ever telling anyone. But then I watched Mr. Kavanaugh make “but I got into Yale” into a moral defense against accusations of criminal wrongdoing. Well, so did I, buddy, so did I. And in my case, I actually had no connections to the university, whereas his grandfather was an alumnus. In the summer of 2001, the summer after my freshman year, I rented a house just off campus on Lynwood Place with several classmates. Each of us had intended to major in one science or another — physics in my case — and each of us was working that summer in one lab or another. Summers are when American colleges hold reunions. One Friday night, when I happened to be the only one in our house, the doorbell began to ring incessantly. I went over to the window from which I could see who was at the door. It was a white man in his mid- to late-twenties. And he was visibly drunk. He saw me through the window as I saw him.  The Yale campus in 2009. |
AuthorWriter, traveler, lawyer, dilettante. Failed student of physics. Not altogether distinguished graduate of two Ivy League institutions. Immigrant twice over. "The grand tour is just the inspired man's way of getting home." Archives
March 2020
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