100

The Lukeion Project in Retrospect

By Amy Barr of The Lukeion Project

This is our 100^th Sassy Peripatetic Blog! Sassy Peri began September 21, 2018, after a full decade (likely more) of people pestering us about starting a blog. Of course, we knew we should start a blog, but for the first five years of The Lukeion Project, we hadn’t worked out how to get a full night’s sleep much less how to add anything new to our workload. It took us another 5 years to catch up. Many of you may not know our story, so gather around. This is the abbreviated version.

The idea of The Lukeion Project was hatched toward the end of 2005 by two Classical archaeologists, namely me and Regan Barr, as we painted our daughter’s bedroom (pink and purple, if you must know). We had settled into very mundane lives after over a decade in the archaeological field, digging at places like ancient Troy. A financial crisis forced us to get creative about our future. As crises almost always do, we were given the chance to return to our roots, namely our passion for dead languages, Classical history, archaeology, and Classical literature. We wanted to teach they way we wish we had been taught. We wanted to take our students seriously.

When we began our small venture, we had to pick a name. We had no intention of becoming a full school or academy offering a comprehensive curriculum to all ages. We were well skilled in Latin, Greek, and related fields but had no intention of adding things like art, sports, and science nor did we have the patience of saints necessary to teach all ages.

As everyone should, we turned to Aristotle for answers. His philosophical hangout in Athens was known in Latin as The Lyceum. In Greek – as Aristotle would have used—it was called Λύκειον (Lukeion). Aristotle established his school in Athens in part of the temple to Apollo in 335 BC (he worked with what was available). He lectured there, led his students on walk-abouts (thus their name Peripatetics), and established the first European library in history. He had always been a book collector and then his student, Alexander the Great, helped by sending him crates of scrolls and copies of important works as gifts to his former tutor.

The word Project in our name was chosen because we didn’t want people thinking we were a full school nor an academy since our courses were meant to supplement the curriculum of our primary audience, home educated students working at the high school level.

When we first began classes in the spring of 2006 there was only one other online program out there. Most of their classes were still conducted by correspondence but a few had gotten high tech like our classes. This meant we were the first of our kind. Every big flashy online program that we see at conferences today first talked to us way back then about what we were doing and said, “hey, that’s a good idea.”

When we first went to homeschool conventions to spread the word about our classes, we spent half our time explaining what an online class was. Terms like webinar were not commonly understood. Words like blog, vlog, and podcast were still in the formative stages. The wizardry of having students synchronously join us online, hearing, and seeing material as we taught was also virtually unknown at the start. Our first online learning platform was for business meetings. It often had as much as a 7-second delay making online discussions a bit tricky. Such technology has now become so mundane that even 10-year-olds get irritable if our internet gets crackly or because we don’t let them play with the video filters in class.

In 2012 we successfully cajoled our archaeological colleague Dr. Sue Fisher to join us as she expanded our Latin program and then expanded our Classical literature offerings with her Muse series. Since then, we’ve added Prof. Baty (literature including AP/writing/rhetoric), and then Dr. Johnson (logic and more) who stepped in right after the sudden tragic passing of Dr. Haggard (logic/philosophy). Prof. Powell came on board last year to expand our Latin program further. Regan Barr (beloved teacher of Witty Wordsmith/Barbarian Diagrammarian) also directs our 8 years of Classical Greek plus Greek history, and Philosophy. I (Amy Barr) direct the large Latin program (also 8 years and expanding) plus Roman History.

The Lukeion Project has offered semester classes since 2006. As we now begin our 17^th year, we have had over 3000 (close to 4000) students, 100 blogs, hundreds of semester courses, and at least a thousand workshops. We’ll never win awards for fame nor size, neither breadth of influence nor endowments. We’ve labored to keep standards high (despite direst pressure to drop them low) and to keep tuitions low (despite direst need to increase them). We work without the safety net of government support nor impressive private capital. Our few faculty and staff are dedicated, humble, and talented beyond measure. there will never be enough thanks nor money to truly pay them.

Our rewards are less earthly and more eternal. Like Aristotle getting gifts from Alexander the Great, our former Lukeion students send back crates of greatness. Their lives have now spread into the stars at NASA, into the lights of Broadway or Carnegie Hall, into the classrooms of Ivy League schools, into excavations, laboratories, and libraries as doctors, lawyers, writers, scholars, linguists, dancers, artists, and (perhaps best) as moms and dads who delight in educating their own children whom we hope to teach—in turn—in the years to come.

The poet Horace (Odes 3.30) expressed our hope most fittingly in 23 BC:

exegi monumentum aere perennius

regalique situ pyramidum altius,

quod non imber edax, non Aquilo inpotens

possit diruere…

I have built a monument more lasting than bronze,

higher than the Pyramids’ regal structures,

that no consuming rain, nor wild north wind

 can destroy… 

Setbacks and Stand Ups

Let Tides Rise AND Fall in Your Life

Amy Barr with The Lukeion Project

I rarely get the chance to visit the beach. When I do, I love to watch the tide come in and eventually go back out. As the tides change so do the residents. Birds appear when tide pools strand little fish for an easy meal. Buried under the sand unseen are little clams that make their presence known only when the tide hits a certain area. Joggers and dog walkers appear at low tide when the sand is firm and cool while seagulls enjoy extra treats turned over by high tides.

As an avid gardener who hopes to tweak my skills, I’ve recently added a few tips from phenology to structure my garden plans. Phenology is the scientific study of periodic biological phenomena, such as flowering, breeding, and migration, in relation to climatic conditions. This means that I know it is time to plant my potatoes when the daffodils begin to bloom. When my lilacs bloom, I’ll plant my beans. Sure, if the weather tells me there’s a snowstorm on its way, I’ll change my plans, but it is important to observe natural ebb and flow in nature.

Do birds sometimes get it wrong when they migrate? Do bears sometimes confuse when is the right or wrong time to crawl out of hibernation? Probably they do. But they obey the signals and do pretty well most of the time.

Humans also have tides. We too have ebb and flow, setbacks and stand ups.

Our modern lives are filled with electronics to keep track of our time and make us get up even if we are very tired. Lights are available to turn on even when it grows dark outside too early. Work and education schedules push us relentlessly even when we feel sick, sad, or even too energetic to focus well. Our few holidays are so hectic with activities and travel that we need rest afterwards but push back to our regular schedules as quickly as possible.

Humans have grown to ignore cyclical signals. As recently as a few decades ago our lives depended on them. Heading out into a blizzard was dangerous on foot or horseback. Ignoring summer heat could be deadly when obtaining water also required great effort. You couldn’t “do school” all year when your family depend on you to help with harvests and food storage. Vacations were just natural breaks between one seasonal demand and the next.

Some consider our liberation from cyclical demands to be a big gift. Dropping everything to harvest the hay was usually no fun. Fresh produce was limited to local seasons, so food choices were once limited. Who doesn’t like a safe warm car when we travel in the dead of winter? Just because we CAN ignore seasonal cycles, should we ignore natural ebbs and flows? No.

Humans can’t go-go-go full time. Likewise, we shouldn’t feel offended by difficulty or hard work. More importantly, we shouldn’t expect to be at the top of our game all the time. Setbacks are normal, natural, expected, and ceaseless. Our artificially lit, heated, and air-conditioned lives have ill prepared us for life’s tides. There will be good days. There will be truly dreadful ones. Some weeks will be filled with fresh strawberries while others will be nothing but beans and cabbage (or whatever you like / dislike).  

Give yourself grace during setbacks. All is not lost on those bad days! Visualize courage and success for yourself when things go badly. Soon the tides will turn (they always do), the season will change (it always does), the weather will improve (just wait for it), and it will be time for you to stand up once again.    

 

Pomegranates

Promise and Hope

By Dr. Susan Fisher with The Lukeion Project

It’s the new year, which in modern America means resolutions and ads for gym memberships. This stark 180 degree turn we take as a culture has always struck me as rather odd. We emerge on the first of January butterfly-like, blinking at the bright light of reality, ready to fly off as new creations once we shed the cheese and chocolate chrysalis of our holiday revelries. While the practice is sort of odd, the impulse is not, and new year’s traditions are common the world round.

One of my favorite traditions is one practiced in modern Greece and has its roots in the ancient world. This is the practice of smashing a pomegranate against the door on New Year’s Day. The number of seeds that scatter is said to be proportionate to the amount of good luck and abundance you’ll have in the year to come. 

The custom varies from place to place, with some people smashing the pomegranate at the threshold, others on the door, while still other customs abound regarding when exactly the ritual is performed, how to enter the house after it is performed, and just how lucky the one is who gets splattered.  I did this for the first (and probably last) time last year. I opted for the “chucking the pomegranate at the threshold” method and let’s just say my 2022 should have been EXTRAORDINARILY lucky, in all ways except getting the stains off the porch. That sucker went everywhere. I got sprayed and my husband, who I hadn’t warned, heard the splat, and opened the door to fruit carnage. We’ve been married a long time – the dude didn’t even bat an eye.

So why pomegranates? It’s all in the seeds, or in pomegranate lingo “arils.” Pomegranates are full of juicy, bright red seeds that were associated in ancient Greece with abundance, fertility, and regeneration. The most famous partaker of the pomegranate is Persephone, daughter of the goddess Demeter. Having been abducted by the god Hades, she was compelled to remain in the Underworld as Queen of the Dead, after having eaten six (or in some accounts four) pomegranate seeds while she was first below ground. This always seemed like a stark penalty for what was a small number of seeds, but in Greek mythology it’s the thought or the symbolism that counts, and basically what Persephone had done by eating the seeds was opting in on the whole Underworld thing and what it had to offer. For her this meant marriage to Hades, who was not only the god of the dead, but also a fertility god and god of abundance – ploutos (Pluto – another name for Hades) means wealth in ancient Greek.

The pomegranate is also associated with Adonis, the exceedingly handsome, mortal-turned-god lover of Aphrodite and Persephone, who had a sort of time-share relationship with him – he spent six months above ground with Aphrodite and six months below ground with Persephone. It was said that the blood he shed when he died created the anemone flower and the pomegranate tree. Like other fruit, such as peaches, which originated in Persia, the pomegranate may have spread east with the mythology of Adonis himself. Both Adonis and Persephone are gods who die or go below and reemerge, and this regeneration, awash in abundance and fertility, is what is represented by the pomegranate. These associations were not unique to Greek mythology either; the pomegranate has symbolic importance in Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism in many of the same ways.

So, what does the “fruit of the dead,” as the ancient Egyptians called it, have to do with the new year? The pomegranate, literally “seeded apple” pomum granatum in Latin, is a fruit of promise and hope. In the modern world, death is often seen as an end, but in the ancient world, rebirth followed death in a cycle of regeneration.  The two go hand in hand and with the pomegranate, bursting with deep red juicy arils, the cycle moves on with abundance. The old year dies, the new year is born and is bursting with the promise of prosperity.

In this way, the pomegranate is not much different from modern resolutions and gym memberships. Both are rooted in the desire for part of the old self to die so that a new self can emerge, more prosperous in some regard than before. What needs to go and what should stay? Answering this question requires some introspection. What worked last year? What didn’t? What habit or thought pattern might you want to let die so that a new one can appear in its place? These questions and more are good things to contemplate, perhaps while you are munching on a tasty pomegranate.