WARRIOR CHORUS FLORIDA
WELCOME WARRIOR CHORUS FLORIDA PARTICIPANTS!
*Find our two-page reading list/program overview here.
*Weekly meeting primers and recaps, beginning with the most recent, are posted below.
*Scroll to the bottom of the page for background about the program, which is part of an initiative sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities and headed by Peter Meineck of New York University and Aquila Theatre.
MARCH 2020 FOLLOW-UP: Our Final Event
Thanks to each and every participant for giving of yourselves during our six-week training in January and February 2020. Due to Covid-19, our public program run-through and final show (scheduled for March 11 and March 25) have been postponed. Looking forward to seeing you all very soon.
WEEK 6 FOLLOW-UP (Feb. 20, 2020): Our Preliminary Public Program Guide
Thanks to everyone for coming out to our final training meeting, where we had a great discussion about content for our upcoming public program. Many of you volunteered to share your impressions of the Odyssey, and your own stories with our community, and I think we have planned a dynamic event — excited to see it become a reality. I loved looking at the photos that we could include as well.
As we discussed, we will have a run-through on Wed. March 11 at 7pm, and the final public program on Wed. March 25 at 7pm. Both gatherings will take place at the VFW Post 8195 social hall at 4414 Pembroke Rd., Hollywood, FL 33021.
Click here for the preliminary final program that I put together based on what you said you’d like to contribute during our event. Feel free to email me if you’d like to share ideas or questions; otherwise, we can use this as a guide when we meet on March 11 to discuss the final program structure. If you are not listed in the program guide, and would like to be included as a reader or speaker, please tell me.
Look forward to seeing you at 7pm on March 11!
WEEK 5 FOLLOW-UP (Feb. 14, 2020)
Dear Warrior Chorus Florida,
This week, we wound down our content-focused discussions with a conversation about excerpts re. Odysseus’ reunions with his son, wife, and father. First, here are the four items we asked you to bring to our final meeting Feb. 20, when we will discuss our public program:
1. Your folder with the notes sheets from Week 2, Week 3, Week 4, and Week 5, along with any written (or unwritten) thoughts on the listed questions. If time is limited, please focus only on the final page of each week’s sheet.
2. At least one idea for something – a personal story (perhaps your own), a topic, an excerpt from the book – you’d definitely like to see included in the public program, based on our discussion content from previous weeks.
3. (If you’d like), a photo or song name that relates to your military/homecoming experience, and your impressions of the Odyssey, which you’d like to see or hear during the public program.
4. Your completed W9
And to recap our dynamic Week 5 session, George kicked things off with a thoughtful question: Why does Odysseus lie to his father about his identity, and cause him such suffering? This one sort of stumped the group, but people did note that Odysseus’ experiences might have hardened him to human emotion, might have ensured that he was hesitant to trust, might have made him more, as Emily Wilson puts it, “ruthless.” As people mentioned last week, he could have been waiting to feel extra secure before revealing himself.
This made Bobby and others remember the brutality of combat. “Remember My Lai?” he asked. Arthur said he noticed a change in the way rules of engagement were explained to service members after the U.S. government was lambasted for inhumane treatment of civilians. People needed permission to fire, he said; they they had to shout warnings. Chris observed that Abu Ghraib had a similar impact during the conflict in Iraq and Afghanistan. Despite an increasing emphasis on rules and regulations, however, most agreed that war – whether in the time of Odysseus, Vietnam, or now – has a way of minimizing human life. Willie remembered being told by his military superiors before going into missions that he could expect “heavy” or “light” casualties. “That used to freak me out,” he said. “They didn’t know the value of human life.”
Making his father suffer as he lies about his identity, perhaps, didn’t seem so terrible to a person who had endured – perhaps laid the groundwork for – the (often brutal) deaths of his own 600 men.
When thinking through Odysseus’ meeting with Telemachus, participants observed that war’s suffering is often not limited to those in combat. “What about the guys who saw women, kids get slaughtered?” Bobby asked. “I had to think a little different when I got back. There was Robert White before Vietnam and Robert White after Vietnam. When you see little kids getting killed and you have to just suck that up… it was hard to get close to my own kids.”
“What we went through there,” Willie agreed, “made us more distant here.”
When discussing Odysseus’ meeting with his wife, Jonathon mentioned the changing nature of relationships before and after military service. Once you get a letter ending a romance, he said, “it makes you not trust – not want to get close.” Willie recalled, “when I went to Vietnam, I lost some feelings, emotions. We turned off something in Vietnam that we couldn’t turn back on.” Years after the war, once Willie had begun meeting with other veterans and identifying his PTSD symptoms, his kids wrote him a “stressor letter.” “They said, ‘we know you loved us. You couldn’t show it.’ They said I changed when I started coming to veterans’ groups.”
As various participants shared stories about multiple marriages and relationships, Delvena questioned what service members seek from romantic partners after service. They have developed relationships while serving, she said. Perhaps when men came back from Vietnam, she said, it wasn’t “love you were looking for.”
Perhaps, some proposed, returning service members are looking for exactly what they had before they left. But their prior partners are now different, their kids are different, and they themselves are different. Chris recalled having to rediscover the roles he would play as a husband and father upon return. When he was gone, his wife had assumed all the responsibilities that had been his – manual labor around the house, paying bills. Seamlessly weaving his way back in to the routine took time and work. Penelope’s faithfulness to her husband, her stoicism, many agreed, was admirable – almost like Mary, as Bobby said.
Each of Odysseus’ family members, participants recognized, are disbelieving that he has actually returned – that he is alive and safe. We know by the end of Book 24 that Odysseus will reassume his place in Ithaca as a father, husband, and son; we know he has fought a mighty battle to have a place of security and power in his kingdom. But we know little of the long-term struggles he will endure as he adapts to civilian life.
WEEK 4 FOLLOW-UP (Feb. 7, 2020)
Dear Warrior Chorus Crew,
Part of the mission of the organization sponsoring the Warrior Chorus project – the National Endowment for the Humanities – is to bring people together to talk about things (books, ideas, etc.) they might not otherwise talk about. I feel so privileged to have been a part of our dynamic conversation last night – to be learning from you, to be enriched by your stories.
Bobby and Huey got things started with some songs from the late 1960s and early 1970s, which brought many in the room back to the days of the Vietnam War, and returning home. Most recognized Curtis Mayfield’s “Back in the World”… named for the term Vietnam Era service members used to refer to the return home:
Six long years stretch
And we boys was in a hell of a mess
I gotta keep my mind; take it slow
Fightin’ hard for what I don’t know
I wanna get back home, gotta get back home
Back to the world
With their emphasis on home and the “mess” of war, Mayfield’s lyrics get at some key ideas in our Odyssey reading, which this week focused on Odysseus’ arrival back at Ithaca. The first excerpt on our notes sheet focused on Odysseus landing at the shores of his home, the second on his violent encounter with the suitors, and the last on the brutal murder of enslaved women.
We first addressed the question of why Odysseus told a fanciful and untrue story when he arrived at the shores of Ithaca. “He lies because he doesn’t want to be identified until he has the upper hand,” said George. “He’s a schemer,” Arthur argued.
Jonathon framed the point a bit differently. “Throughout the story, deception is his gift,” he said. Recounting Odysseus’ experience with the Trojan horse at Troy, and his reference to himself as Noman when he was with the Cyclops, Jonathon added, “Odysseus wins through deception.”
Chris guessed that as Odysseus realized where he was, he had to work through some fogginess. “He’s been thinking for 20 years about what it’s going to be like when he gets home,” Chris said. “When you’re gone, everything – in your mind – is exactly how you left it. But people lived their lives.”
This brought to mind for Bobby a moment soon after he returned from Vietnam, when he was sleeping on the bottom of his bunk bed in his parents’ house. He was having a dream about the war and “in my dream, I couldn’t move.” When Bobby woke, he realized, “my mother was sitting on the edge of my bed, holding me, praying for me; ‘Lord, bring my son home.’ And she meant spiritually.”
Willie identified with that. Recently, his sister read a book containing the stories of members of VFW Post 8195 – including Willie’s – and she said, “Now, I understand. When you came back, I was looking for the relationship we had.’” To that, Willie could only reply, “Things change and they are never gonna be the same. I realized I never came home. There are a whole lotta things different now.” To George, the issue was, “We were kids when we went to war. And you come back as a totally different human.”
Connectedness with home was at the center of people’s minds when reading about Odysseus’ trials soon after he arrived in Ithaca. Was it better to do as Odysseus had, and imagine home without directly contacting anyone there (only getting secondhand reports during his journey), or was it preferable to receive and write letters, as Vietnam veterans had? Did Odysseus have it better, or worse, than Chris and his generation, who could sometimes communicate with friends and family instantaneously by email from Iraq and Afghanistan.
These questions made Jerome recall a moment two years after he had come home from war, when he was sitting on the porch with his father. “He told me my mother drove him crazy,” Jerome remembered. Jerome’s mother, his dad said, would awaken in the middle of the night asking her husband, ‘”Do you think Jerome is OK? Do you think he’s going to make it home?’” She had no idea, Jerome said, “because I never sent letters. I don’t know why I never wrote.”
Jerome’s account, and Odysseus’ violent return, made Chris think about his conception of legacy and closeness to home. He had set the goal of getting married and having children while in the midst of a firefight and wondering, “If I die, what will be left of me?” During a year home in between deployments, he accomplished his mission; less than a year after his wedding, his new wife gave birth while he was on a second deployment. Even though Chris had the luxury of seeing his family online from Iraq, he said, when he returned, he felt he lacked a connection with the new family he had helped create.
Excerpt 2, about Athena’s expectation that Odysseus would instinctively and courageously attack the suitors – and her disappointment that he waivered – made us ponder what it meant that she had to push the returned warrior to act. Was she right to do so? Was Odysseus’ instinct to withhold, or at least delay, violence – actually smart and beneficial?
Those questions made many in the room think of how larger circumstances, conditions, and challenges at home shape post-war experiences.
“People at home,” Arthur said, “have certain expectations of you. They expect something from you because you’ve been at war. They want to know, ‘why are you afraid?'” In 1968, Arthur and others recalled, police and National Guard units occupied Black neighborhoods at a time of tremendous social tension. “When we got home, we had a curfew,” Arthur said. “If you were a Black man in Miami, you couldn’t be out at night.”
Jonathon provided context. “We came back at the height of the Civil Rights movement. Coming home as Black soldiers, we were expected to take charge. A lot of that was thrust on you.” Jonathon recalled returning to Philadelphia and being asked to join the Black Panthers, a group characterized at the time as embracing radical rhetoric and militancy, and now being reappraised as a highly effective community service and Black empowerment group.
“We left chaos,” Jonathon said, “and came back to bigger chaos. People were dying. There was no peace.”
“We came back to war,” Willie remembered. “I saw tanks riding down streets; National Guard around the corner from my house. That made me feel bad. I was disappointed. In a sense, I expected more from my country than what it was giving.”
Willie B. returned to Virginia and watched as a fellow veteran was beaten in public. What is going on in our country?” he wondered.
Chris recalled hearing similar stories from his dad, who served on a PT boat in Vietnam. “He was drafted. He didn’t choose to go. And he still came back and was treated badly.” For Chris, the challenges were different. He was welcomed home from Iraq and Afghanistan, but had to reconcile how to be a father to a child he hadn’t met, how to be a husband, how to change a diaper.
That was a challenge the older veterans in the room could relate to. “Our guys came home looking for love,” said Bobby. Many have been married three, four, five times.” Two participants recalled being woken by wives and girlfriends who said they were attacking them in the midst of a dream at night.
“It’s a trust issue,” Charles proposed. “Once you’re back, you’re thinking, ‘Am I coming to a peaceful place or am I coming to hostility?'”
And we were back to Odysseus on the shores of Ithaca, thinking perhaps the same was true for him. He lied, told stories, and vigorously fought, in part, because he didn’t trust.
Next week, we’ll delve further in to ideas about homecoming and relationships, exploring how the tendencies we have come to understand Odysseus possesses – the propensity to lie and outsmart, to depend on Athena, to be driven under pressure – shape his long-awaited encounters with his son Telemachus, his wife, Penelope, and his father, Laertes. Some guiding questions from the reading list: How do Odysseus and his loved ones react to reuniting? What is most surprising or interesting about their interactions? How do his experiences parallel, and differ from, those of twentieth and twenty-first century former service members?
See you at 7pm February 13 for Week 5… our last week discussing content, before turning to plans for the public program during Week 6.
WEEK 3 FOLLOW-UP (Jan. 31, 2020)
Dear Warrior Chorus Florida,
Thank you for your insights during another good conversation. I am learning from you at every meeting and am grateful for your time and contributions. Here is the “notes sheet” we used to guide our conversation. Before re-capping, I want to mention two things: 1) I loved the thoughts you shared on the QTIP sheets (Question, Thought, Idea, Problem – my catchy acronym). I very much appreciate your ideas and openness. 2) I will aim to gear Week 4 so it resembles Week 2, when we remained pretty focused on the text and got through multiple excerpts. Weeks 4 and 5 are our last two weeks discussing content (during week 6, we’ll talk about the public program).
Here is a Week 3 recap:
We started off by jotting down notes for the QTIP exercise, which prompted Jerome to ask a thought-provoking question stemming from last week’s readings: Why does Odysseus taunt the Cylcops when the men are about to escape his island? “He’d already eaten six of his men,” Jerome noted. With one of the best analogies of the evening, Jonathon equated Odysseus’ actions to a football player dancing in the end zone after a touch down. The group agreed that there was a parallel between the two forms of egotistical gloating, with one key difference, according to Chris: “What Odysseus did could get him killed.”
In order to preface our reading about Elpenor, Willie and Jerome offered some background on Circe and her powers to transform men into pigs… Or, did she? Bobby wondered whether there really were “witches” who could transform people in the time of Odysseus, and whether people in Homer’s time truly believed there were – or if Circe’s acts were intended to symbolize something deeper about the impacts and the events of homecoming. For Bobby, Circe’s poison brought to mind Agent Orange. It also made Bobby think about states of consciousness and whether “you can take your attention to the source of your thoughts.” We discussed as well Greek “mythology” v. Judeo-Christian theology.
That made me think about how Odysseus both blames the gods for his troubles, and praises them when he feels things are working out. People rely on higher powers at all different times, and for all different things. More on that next week.
These issues made us ponder how similar and different each of us is from “people back then,” and Odysseus. How foreign are his actions, his ideas?Our conversations (and our notes sheets) really underscore the humanness of Odysseus, and how we can relate to him — his actions, his thoughts, his feelings. The Odyssey has remained powerful for thousands of years, some say, because regardless of historical circumstance – through the 9th century, the 15th century, now — people identify with Odysseus. We identify with his strengths, his despair.
The excerpt about Elpenor touched Willie, Nate, Chris, and many others who had memories of losing friends in service, and dealing with the aftermath. Both Willie and Nate came home from Vietnam and felt a pull to visit the individual families of fallen friends. When we wondered what compelled them to do it, Willie said, “I would have wanted someone to visit my family if I died and to tell them, ‘I was with him; I know how he died.’”
Chris said that, to him, the people in the land of Hades seemed to be in a state between life and death. The scene with Elpenor, he said, brought to mind the experience of holding a fellow service member as he died, “seeing the life go out of him.” Odysseus’ promise to hold a funeral for Elpenor and give him a proper burial was similar to the experience of the gathering Chris had with others from his National Guard unit. They all knew the young man who died, they all felt his loss – and when they returned home, they came together, drank beer, remembered him. That, said Chris, was their version of Elpenor’s funeral on the shores of Circe’s island. Sheila shared her thanks for Chris’ impressions as she shed a tear thinking of what he’d gone through, and remembered her own time being responsible for providing coffins for bodies being returned to the United States.
The land of the dead seemed to some to be like a dream, which made Jerome recall one of the only dreams he’s ever had: He saw his recently deceased brother walking down the street, then enter a house. He closed the blinds and, try as he might, Jerome could not get in. “That’s like Odysseus and his mother,” Jonathon said. “He couldn’t reach her, he couldn’t touch her.”
As for next week’s meeting (Thurs. Feb. 6 at 7pm), as we discussed, you should eliminate the Book 10 reading excerpt from the reading list. Please just complete the the Book 13 excerpt, and the two from Book 22. Each of the readings focuses on moments after Odysseus returns to Ithaca, his home. And our theme is “higher powers and vices” – in other words, forces that are more powerful than humans, and bad habits. In the first excerpt, our protagonist encounters his comrade Athena, and before he knows who she is, he lies about his past. Odysseus, in fact, often lies. In this instance, why does he do it? In the other excerpts, Odysseus and his men find themselves in extremely violent situations. As we discussed, the suitors they are fighting (in the first excerpt) have acted in vile ways; they have tried to marry Penelope, Odysseus’ wife, and they have abused his home, his food, his resources. Is the violence Odysseus and his men perpetrate justified? In the final excerpt, Odysseus and his men execute enslaved women they feel have betrayed them. In that section, who has power? If you think about the scenario from the perspective of the enslaved women, rather than Odysseus, how does your interpretation of it change? And here are the questions from your reading list: What higher powers and vices strengthen and threaten Odysseus? How do they work for and against him? How could Odysseus better manage the forces? Are there parallels in the modern world? In closing, what should we consider before undertaking the reading for next week?
Here are some key characters to look up in the Glossary before you start:
Athena: The glossary doesn’t mention that Athena often disguises herself in order to assess situations and/or help Odysseus. She has a special affection for Odysseus and his cunning, clever ways.
Eurymachus
The swineheard (see Eumaeus in Glossary)
Eurycleia
Melanthius
WEEK 2 FOLLOW-UP (Jan. 24, 2020)
Dear Warrior Chorus Florida contingent,
Thank you for an awesome meeting and discussion last night.
Warrior Chorus Florida, Jan. 23, 2020
To recap… we used this “notes sheet” to guide our conversation and think through how leadership and heroism are represented in The Odyssey – specifically in Book 9, when Odysseus and his men encounter the Cyclops.
We talked about Odysseus’ naïve view of the land of the Cyclopes, and his dangerously reckless assumption that its inhabitants would share his customs and beliefs. Arthur, Jerome, and Willie pointed out that Odysseus thought he would enter the cave and receive hospitality and gifts. But Cyclops totally disregarded the protagonist’s preconceived ideals about how strangers should be welcomed, and how hospitality worked. Once that transpired – once, as Sheila presciently said, Cyclops intimated that he “didn’t give a shit about Zeus” – it was clear that Odysseus and his men were in peril.
Charles and George noted that perhaps Odysseus’ gravest error was in underestimating and failing to understand his enemy. Connie and Arthur pointed out that Odysseus’ attitude brought on memories of their time in theater during the war in Vietnam. “We expected the people to be happy we were there,” Arthur said.
When considering the perspective of Odysseus and his men, many discussed the alternate reality that exists during wartime. Sometimes, subordinates don’t trust commanders, don’t agree with their approach, but they follow their orders – “trapped in the chaos of war,” as Bobby put it. Even though Odysseus’ men plead with him not to act in certain ways – not to enter the cave, not to taunt the Cyclops as they leave – they fail to change his mind. To Delvena, Chris, Luis, and others, Odysseus’ reckless behaviors seemed emblematic of a leader’s hubris, ego, and pompousness, left unchecked. After 10 years at war, many agreed, he felt indestructible and invincible. The end result is, in the case of the Cyclops, the violent destruction of some of his best men.
When we stepped back and tried to assess Odysseus as a leader, a few things struck the group. First, he was reckless by going in the cave – at a moment when he was not under pressure, and when the lives of his crew were not threatened. But Odysseus was tremendously thoughtful and strategic when he was actually trapped in the Cyclops’ cave, and in grave danger. This brought up for Willie a point based on his time in Vietnam; when a service member first arrives in a combat zone, he/she is “shaking like Jell-o,” but also reckless – searching for excitement. That changes as service extends and the end of a tour nears – when folks begin to “see home,” as Connie put it. Others saw Odysseus’ drive toward the cave as being akin to a more sweeping and potentially self-destructive search for adrenaline.
To Bobby, Odysseus’ ability to shrewdly plot an attack against a strong foe under virtually impossible conditions highlighted how nimble service members can be in extreme situations. “We can be in chaos and make a good next move. Our minds are incredible,” Bobby said. On the other hand, Sheila pointed out, it can be challenging to function in “normal” environments once someone has adjusted to the reality of making life or death decisions in real time, or giving orders and having people immediately follow them, no questions asked.
Several contributors pointed out another issue related to leadership and heroism in Book 9 and beyond: in order to understand Odysseus’ motivations and actions as a leader, and his men’s willingness to respect his commands despite their seeming senselessness, we need to consider the past. “What’s important is what came before this story,” said Chris. Some imagined that the crew was already racked with anxiety, guilt, and self-doubt given their experiences in Troy, and encounters like the one with Cyclops would only exacerbate those feelings. Still, in the journey homeward, the men looked to Odysseus as their strong and trusted leader. The legacy of the war, in other words, shapes these men, for better or worse.
Next week, we focus on the theme of grief and loss. Odysseus visits the land of the dead, where he encounters Elpenor, one of the men he has lost during the journey home, as well as his mother. Then, you’ll travel forward in time but backwards in the book, to the island of Calypso, where Odysseus is grieving, but not because of death. I’ll bring another discussion guide next week. Please contact me at any point if you’d like to suggest a passage to include in the guide, or if you want to share questions or ideas. As you read this week’s selections, keep the following guiding questions in mind: What makes Odysseus feel fear, grief, regret? How does he handle those emotions? What does he seem to do right, and how could he do better? Can you relate to his experiences? What is common or unique about them?
WEEK 1 FOLLOW-UP (Jan. 17. 2020)
Hi everyone,
It was great to see you at our inaugural session last night. We have a good and spirited group and I’m excited for the discussions to come. I initially searched out Bobby last summer to see if he would partner on this project because I had met a Post 8195 member at the Miami Vet Center way back in the Fall of 2018, and he shared not only a copy of the awesome book some of you co-authored, but also his very positive impressions of the Stone of Hope program. I was honored to meet some of the people who make the program so dynamic – including those who are author-teachers via the Post’s book – and really happy to be with new and old friends who are willingly giving their time and smarts to this initiative. Thank you to all!
Moving forward, I will try to use this site as a clearinghouse of information about the program.
Big thanks to Christopher Johnson for sharing this photo of our first meeting on Jan. 16, 2020
As we discussed during our welcome session in November, our discussion meetings over the coming weeks are really trainings. They are intended to provide a forum where you can discuss your views of the events, themes, characters, and ideas in the Odyssey — and how you do (or do not) relate to them. And they will prep you to educate others — via a local public program, and participation in pre- and post-show discussions of the Aquila Theater Company’s production of the Odyssey — about how military veterans perceive this complex and seminal text about a post-war journey home. (For more details, see “What We’ll Do” below, or the Program Overview recruitment packet.)
In Week 2, we finally get into the text and you should use our reading list to find page numbers and guiding questions. As we discussed, we’ll focus primarily on the encounter that Odysseus and his men have with the Cyclops, depicted in Book 9, p. 246-256. The selection begins in the middle of the Odyssey, but near the beginning of Odysseus’ journey home from Troy. The book as a whole, as we noted last night, asks the reader to step in and out of seeming reality, and back and forth in time. So, Book 9, for example, is actually chronologically earlier than Book 1. Complex.
In Book 9, Odysseus is recalling what have come to be known as his “Great Wanderings” – the adventures, tragedies, and challenges he encounters during the first years of his journey home after the Trojan War. He’s presenting his tale to a wealthy people called the Phaeacians. Earlier, we learn that Odysseus arrived at the land of the Phaeacians with nothing… no ship, no clothes, no nothing. He has (as Willie reported last night) left Calypso, resisting her temptations for a life of ease and immortality, because he has an unyielding desire to return home — to his loyal and noble wife, Penelope, and his son, Telemachus. But Odysseus goes off-course after leaving Calypso and arrives — again, with nothing… naked, and in really rough shape — at the land of the Phaeacians. Initially, he tells no one that he is the famed Odysseus of the Trojan War, but eventually, in the hopes of having the Phaeacians grant him a boat and other resources that will help him get home, he reveals his identity and tells them the tale of his homeward travels. (As Chris, Delvena, and others discussed last night, the sort of storytelling Odysseus was doing here — and that initially made epic poems like the Odyssey accessible — was oral performance art… people paid for a good story.)
The Cyclops excerpt is towards the beginning of the “Great Wanderings flashback” (which encompasses most of Book 9-12). Because Odysseus himself is presenting the story of his journey, this portion of the book is in first person.
As you dive in to the story of the Cyclops encounter, note that Odysseus reports that he has chosen to visit the barren land of the giant one-eyed cave-dweller (see p. 245, circa line 172) for reasons that are somewhat unclear. He is, it seems, curious. Keep this character trait in mind as you consider Odysseus’ actions moving forward. Also, for some background on how Odysseus first represents the land of the Cyclopes, see p. 245 (line 172). What does it seem like he thinks of this place and its inhabitants?
As our reading list notes, the theme or topic for Week 2 – which we will focus closely on during our discussion, is leadership and heroism. As you read, keep the following questions – from the reading list – in mind: How do you characterize Odysseus as a leader? What does he seem to do right, and how could he do better? Can you relate to the challenges he faces, and his successes? Are those challenges and successes universal or particular? In closing, what should we consider before undertaking the reading for next week? In addition to possible answers, please feel free to bring to the group your own questions.
*Note that Wilson has included brief and helpful summaries of each book in the “Notes” section (p. 527-552).
SEE YOU FOR OUR SECOND MEETING AT VFW POST 8195 ON THURSDAY JAN. 23, 7-8:30pm. Dinner will be served.
AND AFTER THAT, OUR REMAINING DATES ARE: JAN. 30, FEB. 6, FEB. 13, AND FEB. 20.
WARRIOR CHORUS PROGRAM OVERVIEW
WARRIOR CHORUS FLORIDA
WHAT WE’LL DO: There are three main elements to the program. First, you will meet with about 15 fellow Veterans, as well as the site director and scholar, for six weekly discussion/training sessions focused on how themes in The Odyssey relate to real life experiences. You do not need to have read this work before, or be familiar with it; just come prepared to listen and share your experiences with the group. You will also help plan a public event involving members of the group, such as readings of key scenes from The Odyssey, which will take place at a Miami area institution. Finally, you will develop, and have the option to participate in, public discussions about your group’s perspectives, which will take place at performances of Aquila Theatre’s touring production of The Odyssey.
DATES: Weekly discussion group meetings take place Thursdays, 7-8:30pm, January 16-February 27, 2020
LOCATION: VFW Post 8195, 4432 Pembroke Rd., Hollywood, FL 33021
REQUIRED MATERIALS: Homer’s Odyssey, translated by Emily Wilson (Norton: 2017). You will be given a copy of this book to use and keep.
HONORARIA: You will be paid $600 for completing all six discussions/trainings, $150 for participating in the Miami area public program, and $250, plus hotel and transport, for participating in outside-of-area events. Payment is made by check from the New York office at the culmination of the discussion program following submission of attendance by Site Director. Event payments are made one week after attended events.
PROGRAM SITE DIRECTOR: Bobby White is a Licensed Mental Health Counselor and Post Commander and Executive Director of VFW Post 8195, Stone of Hope Military Outreach and Wellness Center in West Park, Florida. A Veteran of the United States Army, who completed a combat tour in Vietnam, White edited and is a contributing author of Black Soldiers Tell Their Vietnam Stories; A book written and published by Vietnam Veterans (VFW Post 8195: 2013). He is also co-author and producer of Black Vietnam Into the Light, a documentary film about Black Veterans and their service during the Vietnam War. From 1981 to 2010, he served as Director of the Fort Lauderdale Vet Center, a Department of Veterans Affairs outpatient mental health counseling center. In the 1970s and 1980s, he counseled Veterans at Florida International University, and Miami-Dade College. A retired Veteran and Minority Business Owner, he received a Commendation and Special Contribution Award from the Department of Veterans Affairs. He is a member of the Broward County Workforce Development Board and serves as Vice Commander of American Legion Post 29 in Miami, Florida. White earned his B.A. from Florida International University and his Master of Science in Psychology from St. Thomas University, both in Miami, Florida.
PROGRAM SCHOLAR: Dr. Jessica L. Adler, Assistant Professor of History and Health Policy & Management at Florida International University, researches and teaches about U.S. health and social policy, war and society, and American political development. Her first book, Burdens of War: Creating the United States Veterans Health System (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2017), is about the World War I-era origins of the nation’s largest integrated health care system. Her current projects examine late twentieth century transformations in the veterans’ medical system, and health/health care in U.S. prisons. Adler’s work has appeared in various publications, including the American Journal of Public Health, the Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences, The Washington Post, The Hill, The Miami Herald, and USA Today, as well as in edited books on military and medical history. She has also led public history projects, including reading groups geared at military veterans. Adler received a FIU Top Scholar Award in 2019 and a Columbia University Bancroft Dissertation Award in 2013.
BACKGROUND: The Warrior Chorus: American Odyssey – is a national humanities program that will present a public engagement series led by veterans and scholars based around one of the most important works of world literature, Homer’s Odyssey. The Warrior Chorus: American Odyssey will train veterans and scholars in three regional centers to lead audience forums, participatory workshops, public talks and reading groups in 24 locations throughout America, connected with a staging of Emily Wilson’s new translation of The Odyssey. This will be coupled with a dynamic use of social media and a specially developed app. American Odyssey uses Homer’s classical text to inspire people from all backgrounds to reflect on the connections between the works of the ancient Greeks and the issues they reflect in their own lives. The diverse group of American veterans that make up the Warrior Chorus is an excellent resource for fostering conversations, building bridges and bringing people together to experience live events, workshops, lectures, and discussions. American Odyssey also provides a rich contextual frame for ancient literature to inspire in-depth public discussions about conflict, service, country, home, family, identity, leadership – themes every American should have the opportunity to reflect upon as informed citizens in a vibrant democracy.
This extensive new program unites the assets of the Aquila Theatre Company, the Classics Department and Center for Ancient Studies at New York University (NYU), The Classics Departments of the University of Texas at Austin (UT), the History Department at Florida International University, the Society for Classical Studies (SCS), The Society of Artistic Veterans (SocArtVets) and NeoPangea Inc. (an app developer). American Odyssey will take place from May 2019 to Feb 2021 and will be presented in 24 geographically diverse locations at performing arts centers, museums, public libraries, and at veteran and community center. The program is guided by Prof. Peter Meineck PhD, Professor of Classics in the Modern World at New York University, Desiree Sanchez, Artistic Director of Aquila Theatre. The program is organized around four thematic units each anchored by the Odyssey: 1) The Idea of the Hero; 2) The Return of the Warrior; 3) The Meanings of Democracy; 4) The Question of Identity. These units will explore significant humanities themes that investigate the connections between classical literature and contemporary America as they relate to the issues affecting both the veteran community and the broader American public today. MORE INFO: pm57@nyu.edu and www.aquilatheatre.com.