Goddesses and girls

I had this bizarro dream last night. I’m in Columbia at a meeting, and we’re discussing tenure and promotion, not surprising since we just had a t&p workshop last week. The unusual part comes in when our system dean comes over to me and hands me a magazine, something like Discover, with an article about how Egyptian priestesses buried themselves alive with their goddesses whenever there was an administration change, when their goddesses became obsolete in the new order. He thought, he said, I might find this interesting for a poem (which is true, but not a perception I would expect either him or me to have in a dream). He didn’t seem to recognize the possible relevance of the article, although I couldn’t believe it would be a coincidence. Our candidates are burying themselves with their old goddess rather than recognize the new one? Seems the most obvious interpretation (at least obvious to those who know our political situation). Or perhaps it’s more personal, as I am evidently on some quest myself. (Most recently I’ve just finished reading The Goddess in the Gospels, which no doubt provided the primary source material to my unconscious . . . ) Nevertheless, all very odd. It looked like a fascinating article and illustration. I wonder if there is any truth to the self immolation of the priestesses? I’ll have to do some research.

In other news, we were watching The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh just before bedtime and Chris for some reason had turned on the captions, so that when Piglet’s house was being flooded, Laura apparently for the first time ever properly heard the words to the rain rain rain song. “I thought Piglet was a girl,” she announces in surprise. Nope, Piglet had been a boy all those years (although what with the pink outfit and the interesting relationship between Pooh and Piglet, this is perhaps an understandable assumption). “Aren’t there any girls in this movie?” she asks in this exasperated way. Only Kanga, the perfect single mother (Barbara Luddy also voiced Lady, I realized for the first time last night, another perfect mother figure). We had a lively discussion about how girls apparently didn’t exist as primary characters in books and film until sometime late twentieth century. (All the while Will is happily—and obliviously?— sucking his fingers.) And I had been grumpy because I didn’t want to watch Pooh in the first place!