Good Friday, good grief!
4:49 p.m.
When I was studying ancient Greek, which is a story in and of itself, one of my colleagues and I had an informal contest under way to see who could get the professor to run to his office for the giant lexicon first. I think I was the unacknowledged winner, just because I have always had an interest in etymology and my knowledge of other languages helps me make more sonic connections. Hence, when we learned the Greek word for �suffer�, pasxo (the x is a chi, okay?), I immediately drew the connection between it and the Hebrew word for Passover, which is pesach. Of course the prof had to go get the big lexicon, for which I earned a point in the contest, and lo and behold, I was right. That is exactly where pasxo comes from, in some strange roundabout way, since pasach in Hebrew means �passed over� (hence Passover), which is what Yahweh purportedly did to the houses of the Israelites who had smeared the blood of a lamb on their doorframes to signify that this wasn�t one of the houses where a first-born was to be slain that night. The lamb, of course, got transferred across religions, as often happens, and the significance of the sacrifice that saved mankind is readily readable.
When we were in Greece we witnessed the ovine thing in its most public humiliation. Every restaurant had roasting on a spit on the sidewalk just outside the front door a lamb which was served to the patrons for Easter. For a bunch of vegetarians, it was a very distressing sight. On our way to the water pump in Kalithea we regularly passed a(n) ewe tied up in a grassy yard with her suckling lamb never straying very far. The children were entranced by this pair, especially since the baby was the epitome of �Mary had a little lamb� illustrations. After seeing the roasting carcasses on city sidewalks, they were afraid that this poor animal would meet the same fate. It probably did.
We were in Israel that year, visiting with my brother and his family for Passover. For the first time in his life, my husband experienced a non-Easter, and couldn�t believe that it was as though it did not exist. Well, to all intents and purposes, it did not, at least not on my brother�s kibbutz. For me it was a blessed relief, especially since I didn�t have to supply the kids with chocolate as I usually did on Easter morning. Hey, it�s a pagan ritual, after all. I used to buy the little foil-wrapped eggs and lay a line of them from each of the kids� rooms down the stairs and into the living room, ending at a Cadbury Creme egg hidden under some piece of furniture. Buddy Boy told me all he wanted this year was a Cadbury Creme egg, and I had a hell of a time finding some today. They seem to have all been sold out, and won�t appear again in stores until after New Year�s.
I spent several hours in the sculpture studio this morning, digging my lamia out of the plaster. I almost didn�t get in since the fine arts building was locked, but a security officer came by and let me and another girl in, and even opened up the studio for me once I showed him my faculty card. There were some mishaps. I gave her a partial mastectomy with my chisel, and the end of her tail broke off. But these were repairable. Harder was to get the upper part to fit into the snake�s coils. It required some judicious chiseling and hiding the join with more tuffstone. There are still several hours� worth of sanding and chiseling to be done, but I didn�t feel like going back in there today. Instead Hubby and I celebrated springtime as married, consenting adults, and now he and Buddy Boy have gone off to Blockbuster to rent a video or two for the weekend. I hope it�s a funny one.
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