OZ?

I was thinking about finding OZ in Bozeman and I remembered that there is a store on Main street that is perfect for it.
The Ruby Slipper is a shoe/accessory boutique that caters to womens need for fashion and want to look amazing.

"The bird flew to Memphis, where it dropped the sandal from high in the air onto the pharaoh's lap as he was judging people's disputes out in the open. The Pharaoh saw that it was a beautiful sandal. He sent men all over Egypt to look for the woman it belonged to." pg 271
Even in mythology a shoe can play an important role, this sounds similar to the story of Cinderella which is a childrens fairytale. Shoes, so often taken for granted, worn out, keeper of the sole, and essential to life. How can we ever live without them :)

"That happiness is an early symptom of misfortune, that 'inherent' within happiness is the power to bring on misfortune, above all through the agency of resentment, whether of men or gods, is a vision that was to persist among the Greeks when almost all others had faded. Yet they did want to be happy." pg 262

How one can live without happiness is beside me. I feel like whenever I get down in the dumps my whole life turns upside down. I have to find someone to have a good time with. Not only does my happiness affect my whole life but it ends up affecting other's lives as well because if I am not happy you can tell and it puts a damper on the mood. I like to be happy and I enjoy making others happy.

Human love is good-will, affection, promoting the happiness of others and finding joy in their happiness.~ Immanuel Kant

This is more so my philosophy of life.

Iroquois Cosmology Myth

In the beginning there was no earth to live on, but up above, in the Great Blue, there was a woman who dreamed dreams.

One night she dreamed about a tree covered with white blossoms, a tree that brightened up the sky when its flowers opened but that brought terrible darkness when they closed again. The dream frightened her, so she went and told it to the wise old men who lived with her, in their village in the sky.

"Pull up this tree," she begged them, but they did not understand. All they did was to dig around its roots, to make space for more light. But the tree just fell through the hole they had made and disappeared. After that there was no light at all, only darkness.

The old men grew frightened of the woman and her dreams. It was her fault that the light had gone away forever. So they dragged her toward the hole and pushed her through as well. Down, down she fell, down toward the great emptiness. There was nothing below her but a heaving waste of water and she would surely have been smashed to pieces, this strange dreaming woman from the Great Blue, had not a fish hawk come to her aid. His feathers made a pillow for her and she drifted gently above the waves.

But the fish hawk could not keep her up all on his own. He needed help. So he called out to the creatures of the deep. "We must find some firm ground for this poor woman to rest on," he said anxiously. But there was no ground, only the swirling, endless waters.

A helldiver went down, down, down to the very bottom of the sea and brought back a little bit of mud in his beak. He found a turtle, smeared the mud onto its back, and dived down again for more.

Then the ducks joined in. They loved getting muddy and they too brought beakfuls of the ocean floor and spread it over the turtle's shell. The beavers helped-- they were great builders-- and they worked away, making the shell bigger and bigger.

Everybody was very busy now and everybody was excited. This world they were making seemed to be growing enormous! The birds and the animals rushed about building countries, the continents, until, in the end, they had made the whole round earth, while all the time they sky woman was safely sitting on the turtle's back.

And the turtle holds the Earth up to this very day.

This was my origin myth that I found on http://www.crystalinks.com/namcreationwomen.html

"The capacity for control, the ability to dominate oneself, to govern things, the sharpness of the eye, the sober choice of the means to achieve an end- all these things detach the mind from those powers that came before Athena, give us the impression of using them without being used by them." pg 230
Athena is officially my favorite goddess. She kicks some serious ass, but can still be kind. She is described as a "protecting presence" and overall she is an excellent warrior. She reminds me of Elizabeth Swan in Pirates of the Caribbean, Elastigirl in the Incredibles, and Princess Leia in Star Wars. Athena can be liked to so many of today's female movie star heroes. Not only does she posses the brute warrior capabilities but she is also said to be very desirable. Sounds like the kind of character we like in our movies today. She was powerful and noble, good qualities for a goddess!

" It was male then that acted. But only the female had the metis, the intelligence that preordains action in the silence of the mind." pg 202
This section of the book lets the reader in on the fact that the women helped the gods get their revenge on each other. Not only do I find this rather entertaining, but I think it's funny that it is still the truth. Women have always been behind all the great ones. One o my favorite quotes in the movie "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" is "The man may be the head of the house, but the woman is the neck, and she can turn the head however she wants!" Another is "Behind every great man is an even better woman." For centuries women were considered below the man, that might have been true, however I think that women have always been the ones who have helped make the great men. Needless to say i think it is great that even the goddesses helped the gods.

"It showed Leda beneath the wings of a swan. It showed Danae under a shower of gold. It showed Asteria in the clutches of an eagle. And it showed Erigone, who Dionesus tricked with his grapes. Not a word more does Ovid give us. But out of a sense of defiance, Arachne's cloth does include only stories that would bring shame to the god. Erigone, then was deceived and seduced by the powerful fruit. Other authors tell us that Dionesus and Erigone had a child: his name was Staphylus, "bunch of grapes," but this was also the name of the child other writers attribute to Dionesus and Adriadne." pg 38
I chose this quote for a couple of reasons: 1) because it shows the importance of name, Staphylus meaning bunch of grapes goes back to the way he was conceived. Not only is this important to history for his parents but it also gives individuals a way of knowing part of their meaning. This process of name giving has ceased to exist in today's culture instead of the beauty of what's in a name we get names like Coco, Summer, Cooper, etc. 2) I like that the description of the pictures shown on the cloth are those that "bring shame to the gods." So much emphasis is put on gods being just, right, divine, and omnipotent, however, Greek god mythology does show that they could still be sinister, deceptive, and ultimately wrong.

This selection of reading material is altogether beautiful but it also shows us that even though this mythology was written many years ago and told before writing ability had come to be, our society hasn't morally come very far or gone as wrong as most people think. Society and culture can be deemed just as bad as our ancestors and can show that we don't learn from our mistakes. The gods made mistakes and humans make mistakes, but we still can show love, pleasure and enjoy life to the fullest despite those with selfish intentions.