 Image Copyright Alice Whitney 2018 As promised, another great 'Word Article' and part 2 of our story on the Minotaur. Enjoy!
Conversation turned, a while back, on the subject of the Minotaur. You will recall that his birth to the wife of Minos, then living it up as the king of ancient Crete, really had the old phone wires humming as the news got out that Mrs. Minos (her friends called her Pasiphae) had been delivered of a baby with a bull's head, and, according to all accounts, a bull's personality. Doubtless you also recall that this unfortunate event was the direct result of some sharp practice in cattle trading carried off by Minos, who had got the better of a rather watery deity named Poseidon. Minos stood to make. a fortune in breeding fees on Poseidon's bull, and Poseidon. was not pleased. The Minotaur (his friends - if he had had any, which he didn't - would have called him Asterius because that was his name) was Poseidon's revenge, in the form of a rather nasty but witty practical joke.  Artwork © Alice Whitney We've taken to calling articles or columns that don't explicitly talk about farm life as 'Word Articles'. Please enjoy this Word Article as much as we did.
This last patch of cloudy, cold weather left me for once with some time on my hands and the opportunity to do a bit of reading. Ordinarily. I wouldn't think of reporting on this sort of thing but I was reproached by one of my constant readers for my off-handed allusion in an earlier column to Duke Theseus and the Minotaur, and so it seemed that another of those great old tales has temporarily dropped off the hit parade and needed to be reintroduced. I must say I spent a few delightful hours catching up on some of the more scandalous doings and the Who-was-married-to-whom's of ancient Greece. Now you may think that every-body around here is related to everybody else but you ain't seen nothing yet - not until you start to mix in the Greek gods and goddesses who got around in the most amazing way and with the most amazing results. Take the minotaur, now. He was what you might call bull-headed and as far as his personality went, he didn't have any. In fact, he had the friendliness of a Jersey bull on a difficult day but instead of being a vegetarian he insisted on steak but I'm getting ahead of myself.  Photo by C. Carle 2018 We've been a bit negligent in posting material for the past few months, but spring is here; and with it a sense of renewal and purpose. Originally posted in May of 1987, I hope you enjoy this story as much as I did.
We are in that "in‑between" season right now when it is too early to do much to the garden but the seed orders are in and there is really no reason to go through the catalogues another time, although I got a seed catalogue from a company down in South Carolina a few weeks back that has me thinking disloyal thoughts about our puritanical climate. My wife, more given to action than to words, seized a garden fork and a rake the other weekend and produced a raised bed within minutes. It was obviously the work of one who was tired of waiting for 40 growing degree days (GDD) to arrive with some sort of regularity. |
