Homer’s epic poem The Odyssey is a classic adventure filled with shipwrecks, feuds, obstacles, mythical creatures, and divine interventions. But how to visualize the thrilling voyage?
The map below traces Odysseus’s travel as recounted to the Phaeacians near the end of his wandering across the Mediterranean. Odysseus’s ten-year trek began in Asia Minor at the fallen city of Troy (the green marker) following the end of the Trojan War. His ultimate destination: his home in Ithaca (the red marker). Click the markers for information on each step of his journey. It is important to note that the 14 locations plotted on this map have been widely debated by both ancient and modern scholars.
Barry Powell, translator of a new edition of The Odyssey, asserts that the currently agreed upon location of the Island of the Sun (#11) is in fact modern-day Sicily. However, the characters in The Odyssey are in “never-never land,” and consequently, the locations plotted cannot be deemed entirely accurate.
Click here to view the embedded video.
Barry B. Powell is Halls-Bascom Professor of Classics Emeritus at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. His new free verse translation of The Odyssey was published by Oxford University Press in 2014. His translation of The Iliad was published by Oxford University Press in 2013.
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Recently I’ve been importing the ancient Librarian Avengers archives to live within WordPress. Because the site goes back to…hrm… 1997, there’s some data munging to do.
Right now I’m concerning myself with the period after Graduate School, when I moved to Ithaca, NY for an ostensibly-cool digital library fellowship. I couldn’t talk about how much I hated it at the time so the entries are mostly tangential to the work I was doing, but there’s still some fun stuff.
Importing ancient blog posts involves a bunch of tagging, titling, category-setting, and general modernization. I’ve been progressively making my way through the old posts, adding images, fixing spelling mistakes, and generally adding a bit of polish.
Part of the reason I’m taking on data scrubbing as my One Designated Personal Thing to Do this evening, is that today has been a study in helplessness. My daughter has a (small) fever. It’s the first time she’s been sick, and I’m trying to direct my need to control something (anything!) in a positive direction.
Also, cleaning data is pretty therapeutic after some of the body fluids I’ve encountered recently.
Related posts:
- Shh. “The Library” is the subject of the Freebase Data Mob I’m a librarian by ethnicity, if not profession these days,...
- Another Data Mob at Freebase – Ethnicity Wanna enrich some data? Got OCD? Tired of trying to...
- Freebase Hack Day II: The Return of Hack Day Librarian? Data junkie? Obsessive compulsive? Come to the Freebase hack...
was crawling through my archives this morning and came across this little rant that I wrote years ago, during my first, horrible, post-grad school job at the Cornell University Library. I know several of you Gentle Readers are in school right now, and I thought you might enjoy the sentiment:
First of all, and lets just get this out of the way: a full-time job is actually a pretty shoddy reward for 2.5 years of graduate school stress.
Yes, I’m grateful and all, glad to be here, nice to meet ya, etc. but frankly, I think I was looking for something along the lines of “congratulations on your degree, here’s your houseboat, now get out of here you scamp.”
I suppose having a stable schedule and slightly-more-realistic paychecks is reward enough, but lately I’ve had to face what seems to happen any time you put enormous effort into something. Which is, a rather slow transition into something different that requires enormous effort.
Like learning not to scream when someone suggests you attend the Metadata Working Group Meeting.
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I drove to Vancouver on Wednesday for the annual Hycroft Event hosted by The Vancouver Children's Literature Roundtable and CWILL (Children's Writers and Illustrators of BC). Almost thirty local children's authors and illustrators presented their new books. What a great evening.
Each author and illustrator had just two minutes to wow us, and boy, did they wow. Such style, such variety, such creativity! (I'm still chuckling over the be-scarved Dan Bar-el doing his entire presentation as Libby Gaborchik, heavily-accented fairy extraordinaire from his book Such a Prince. “Laughing is good for your health. Trust me, I’m a fairy. I know these things.” is still running through my head.)
The evening concluded with an inspiring keynote from the Incomparable Nan Gregory (author of How Smudge Came and Pink) followed by high tea in the library and diningroom at Hycroft, an elegant, Edwardian mansion in Vancouver's Shaughnessy area. I can't think of a better venue in which to steep one's self in children's books.
I haven't made it in to the big city for CWILL meetings much in the last year, so it was great to catch up with everyone.
You can see photos of the Hycroft Event on the CWILL blog here and here (including the aforementioned "be-scarved Dan" as Libby).
Only 362 days until the next one!
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