Tonight and still going on, end-of-the-year and retirement party in honor of Donna Haraway. Here are a few pictures of this event, taken about an hour ago for the last ones. Speakers: Jim Clifford, maître de cérémonie; Susan Harding; Helen Moglen; and many others. Food prepared by Joe of ex-India Joze, all in leather and knives…

Moving, transfixing interpretation last night by Paul Whitworth of Beckett’s *Krapp’s last tape*. A vision of interminable efforts at dragging one’s shadow on stone, paper, tape or film, memorializing, in the end keeping only to moments of love on swaying punts which have been sacrificed and turned into capital on the altars of … what Moloch? the authorial self-aggrandizing, that of a whole Europe or West too, still imperial and dangerous, perhaps sinister, even in its cooking down or bibliophilic selecting of pithy accounts, with flashes of poetic takes on a life, year after year, slowly reduced to near non-sense? The burning chrysolite eyes have been thrown to the shadows and become a licking of bananas and downing of scotch. They are still burning, a flickering, shaking, fragile burning of a burning.

There have been some on-going discussions at UCSC regarding the limits of public debate at public universities when it comes to policies of the Israel government. I say “some”, because I hope there will be more, thoughtful and respectful. I should say in the same breath that I hope there would be more thoughtful and respectful discussions of the policies of many other governments, including of those entities whose evil ways we are so accustomed to naturalize that we don’t even begin to ask questions. In this case, one particular question is the nature of public support for discussions of such topics at UCSC. Should public money go evenly to all positions, no matter how rational or irrational, despicable or elevating, antisemitic or philosemitic, leftist or right-wing they are perceived to be by some, and no matter what “some” means, i.e. the number of people affected by, or interested in, one or the other sides of the matter? Or should public money go to none? This [article](http://www.forward.com/articles/137927/) in the *Forward* is useful because it presents the recent issue with some clarity, while giving perspective.

What can and should be the role of music and dance in modern productions of classic Greek drama? See for yourself this week (beginning 5/20) what it can be in [Orestes Terrorist](http://humweb.ucsc.edu/gweltaz/announcements/Orestes_poster.pdf). A conference on [Music and Greek Drama](http://humweb.ucsc.edu/gweltaz/announcements/Music_drama.pdf) follows, next week.

It is now possible to hear modern readings of ancient Babylonian, courtesy of the [School of Oriental and African Studies](http://www.soas.ac.uk/baplar/recordings/), University of London: Code of Hammurabi, Epic of Gilgamesh (Old Babylonian version and standard version), story of AtraHasis, etc.

Geronimo and Bin Laden. Before Geronimo became an expression of daring and courage for paratroopers and could be used for special operations by the military such as the targetting of Bin Laden, it was the name given to a Chiricahua Apache (1829–1909) who resisted the land encroachments by Mexico and United States. I’m reading the wiki. A Christian name indicating fear among the Mexicans he was attacking (“saint Jerome, have mercy” or the like?). Revenge attacks. He surrendered to US soldiers after an intense, costly search. Is that the difference? Geronimo was kept a prisoner until his death, supposedly became a Christian, was exhibited, and was buried in the prisoner of war cemetery of Fort Sill, Oklahoma. It became a movie in 1939. Paratroopers watched the movie and used the name as a cry meant to demonstrate courage, goes the story.

Bin Laden = Geronimo? Both reacting vengefully against the stealing and demeaning of their worlds? No, impossible equation for those who think of the US as the fount and acme of *world* civilization. Geronimo was carrying out a personal vendetta, a matter of honor. He was slightly crazed and perverse at the time, but we understand that and can steal his memory after we stole everything else, and reshape it as we see fit. While Bin Laden, that is another matter, he was not slightly crazed, he was completely demented to go after “civilization” itself (the US). It could not be revenge he was after, like the Apache chief, a thing we understand and can make our own after a fashion. What could he be avenging? Humiliation? Exploitation? Hadn’t the US / civilization been good to all of the oil-producing countries, and didn’t the Bin Ladens profit from it? Wasn’t the US helping with its calls for a more humane world? Yes the US had troops in the Persian Gulf and even in Saudi Arabia, but was it at fault for that? Surely not. It simply was going along, developing more sophisticated, leveraged means of payment for oil and other wealth, an ever more complex way of paying “the fair price” for essential resources.

Bin Laden’s body buried at sea, from a warship. With a US Muslim chaplain saying the requisite prayers? Filmed presumably. No burial place to come to, no relics, *damnatio memoriae* of a sort. Old way by states of disposing of dangerous symbols: the Roman Empire regarding Jesus, for instance. Not that Jesus’ and Bin Laden’s hopes and methods can be compared, since one called for forgiveness and the other for all out war, including committing atrocities against non-combattants. From the imperial or state’s point of view, however, the positions of such enemies don’t matter, they are dangerous by themselves and especially as potential symbols. So, execution is deemed necessary, demeaning if possible (but US as a modern state can’t do the crucifixion bit since Constantine) and absence of a tomb and relics. The last part is important: no relics! Another example: the Christian martyrs of Lyons in 177, from a crazed group of believers from Phrygia (foreigners), whose bodies were burnt after their killing and the resulting ashes thrown into the Rhone river. See Eusebius, *Church History* 5.1.62 (ET by Kirsopp Lake, LCL):

Further on they say: “Thus the bodies of the martyrs, after having been exposed and insulted in every way for six days, and afterwards burned and turned to ashes, were swept by the wicked into the river Rhone which flows near by, that not even a relic of them might still appear upon the earth.

It didn’t prevent the collection of relics, which washed up on an island, that story goes, and were commemorated by a later church/abbey foundation (St Martin d’Ainay in Lyons).

This [orchid](http://humweb.ucsc.edu/gweltaz/images/bletilla_striata.jpg), thanks to a determined family member, has naturalized in our front yard on the Westside. It does quiet the mind or at least one mind which was fuming after hearing the way NPR news was “reporting” on the Guantanamo fiasco…

On Wednesday, 27 April 2011, 7:00 pm, at the Florence Gould Theater at the Palace of the Legion of Honor in San Francisco (100 – 34th Avenue, Lincoln Park, San Francisco), there will be a lecture by Miriam Avissar, Senior Archaeologist at the Israel Antiquities Authority, on *[The Lod Mosaic](http://www.lodmosaic.org/home.html) and Its Menagerie: Roman Influence on Local Mosaic Art*. The show, Marvelous Menagerie: A Roman Mosaic from Lod, Israel, will be at the Legion of Honor 23 April–24 July 2011. This is one of the largest (600 sq.ft.) and most beautiful mosaics found in Israel, dated to ca. 300 CE.

I recommend this [article by a long-time observer](http://www.ceras-projet.org/index.php?id=4902#description_auteur), economist, general secretary of the Dominican Institute of Oriental Studies (Cairo). If I have time I’ll translate it tonight.

[The state archives of Assyria](http://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/saa/), eighteen volumes of them, are accessible online in an extraordinary project made available by the University of Pennsylvania. Since 1987, an international group of editors (Parpola et alii, Fales, Postgate, etc.) have transliterated and translated into English more than six thousand cuneiform texts reflecting many aspects of life in ancient Assyria in the 8th and 7th c. BC. Context and explanatory materials are now provided via portals, such as [Knowledge and Power in the Neo-Assyrian Empire](http://knp.prs.heacademy.ac.uk/), dealing with letters from the 7th c., or [Assyrian Empire Builders](http://www.ucl.ac.uk/sargon/), about the 8th c. political correspondence. More portals are planned.

I find this kind of tool wonderful and exciting. Printing textual and archaeological artefacts has long been so expensive that access was extremely restricted—essentially to a few great libraries with enough money to buy such collections. Now, many more people can explore Neo-Assyria, as they can other growing collections of classical (Perseus) or biblical materials.