EARTH DAY #50

A half century ago Earth Day was a new and intriguing concept. Space exploration had given us our first images of our planet as a whole ~ a beautiful blue orb, a jewel in the cosmos. Yet many of us were painfully aware of the terrible damage our species had done and was doing to that gem.  Earth Day was an opportunity for consciousness raising, for calling attention to what needed to be done, for banding together to organize for change.

Mythology

            Edith Hamilton was featured on an episode of “The Writer’s Almanac” some time ago.  A classicist and educator, she did not begin her writing career until after her retirement from the position of Headmistress of Bryn Mawr School for Girls in 1922.  Her compendium of Greek and Roman Mythology, first published in 1942, is still in print and used widely in introductory high school and college classes.

Hearing the brief bio of Hamilton narrated by Garrison Keillor evoked fond memories.  My own copy of Hamilton’s “Mythology,” a paperback edition from the early 1950’s, is brittle and crumbling.  I won’t replace it, though, because it was a gift from my father, purchased in the Penn State campus bookstore one summer while he was working on his Master’s degree.  It was one of the first “grown-up” books that I ever owned, and I treasure it both for the gift that it was and the knowledge that it conveys.

Thinking about Hamilton led me to reflect on the concept of myth in general.  Today the word is often used to mean a common belief or story that is not true.  We can see this in such article titles as “Ten Myths about Breast Cancer” and “The Vitamin C Myth.”  A myth in this sense is something to be avoided or corrected.