Myths and legends

As part of family time tonight, we finished reading Robert Graves' translation of Cupid and Psyche. It was more complex than I'd remembered, in terms of language and human-god relationships, but everyone followed along enthusiastically and with baited breath. They recognized its relationship to various versions of Beauty and the Beast, especially one involving a polar bear. What I hadn't realized until now is that Beauty and the Beast is an offshoot that retains the marriage-with-a-monstrous husband and the search elements, but the Arabic "Cruel Mother-in-Law," with its impossible tasks and the son who can only help his wife indirectly, is clearly an offshoot of the relationship between Venus and Psyche.

Another myth that came under examination today, is that Co., where I work, is a meritocracy. My unit has already lost its director and deputy director, who had built it and the global network that surrounded and supported it virtually from scratch. Now another executive, a talented worker and an excellent manager of her unit, has been canned, with no warning and no explanation, other than that they are elementing her position. Her team is in shock; her clients are in shock; the rest of us are confused and dismayed.

And our new head arrived. I rather expected that she would call us all together, tell us that she knows we've been through a tough time, but that she's here to keep things together and that we'll move ahead from here. Instead she met with a number of people, none of whom I've seen before. She did come by for an introduction, but was so anxious to greet the woman in a neighboring office that she just shook my hand, said Hi, and disappeared. Hope tomorrow is more promising.

Home certainly was. Michael was at a rehearsal for tomorrow's recital, so Liz, R., and I ate dinner and took Josie out for a real neighborhood walk. She's wonderfully unruffled by trotting around in the larger world: alert, interested, but calm. Even when we met a family of small children on trikes, must have been six or seven of them, right next to the sidewalk, she didn't get overly excited. She looked at them, would have been happy to greet them, but was equally willing to head on down the path. And it was the same story with everyone we met. What a pleasure she is (though even more when she has learned to heel).