You may have thought you were doing the dog paddle, but maybe it was the cat paddle.
Do be careful if you ever try this. One comment on the video points that that if the cat can’t get out on its own, you might end up with a freaked out and drowning cat. Other comments worry about the cat abuse, but the cats don’t look to me as though they are very reluctant. And it’s right to worry about the cats falling into pools.
“Worshipping Women: Ritual and Reality in Classical Athens,” is at the Onassis Cultural Center in Midtown Manhattan. The show sets out to address a particularly serious cluster of misconceptions:
The main misconception is the notion that women had a universally mute and passive role in Athenian society. It is true that they lived with restrictions modern Westerners would find intolerable. Technically they were not citizens. In terms of civil rights, their status differed little from that of slaves. Marriages were arranged; girls were expected to have children in their midteens. Yet, the show argues, the assumption that women lived in a state of purdah, completely removed from public life, is contradicted by the depictions of them in art.
and 
There is no more moving image in the show than that of two women, one seated and one standing, facing each other in carved relief on a marble grave stele dated to the fourth century B.C. …An inscription identifies the woman commemorated by the stele as Nikomache. The exhibition catalog suggests that she is the seated figure, the one who has settled in and will keep her place when the other walks away. The parting is evidently in progress as the women clasp hands and meet each other’s gaze.
Sappho again, and a poem called “Long Departure”:
Then I said to the elegant ladies:
“How you will remember when you are old
The glorious things we did in our youth!
We did many pure and beautiful things.
And now that you are leaving the city,
Love’s sharp pain encircles my heart.”
The article cited above does not say whether the incorporation of Sappho’s poetry is suggested by the show’s curators or not. A slide show of items from the exhibition is here.
HRC (not Hillary, but the Human Rights Campaign) has a petition urging Obama to show restore the trust of the LGBT community by committing to their excellent blueprint for change:
Issue an Executive Order within the first 100 days that reaffirms protections for federal workers based on sexual orientation and expands them to also include gender identity;
Work with Congress to sign Hate Crimes legislation into law within 6 months;
Support only a fully inclusive Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA);
In the first 100 days develop a plan to begin the process of eliminating the failed “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy; and
Work with Congress to end unequal tax treatment of domestic partnerships benefits.
They seem to be taking the line that Obama *should* un-invite Warren. But if he doesn’t do this, he needs to do some serious work to show that he actually gives a shit. This seems to me an excellent strategy. If you agree, go sign!
Feminist Philosophers 