And Carry a big...

While waiting for the wedding festivities to begin yesterday at Adams House on the Malibu Coast, Margaret and I visited the Getty Villa a few miles south of where we had to go at two o’clock.  We hadn’t been to the Villa since the majority of the art treasures were moved over to the main campus by Interstate 405.  Wow!  The old Villa was left with the art treasures of the ancient world, all displayed in a setting partly moved and generally recreated from a villa in Herculaneum that had been covered and generally left intact by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD 79.  I haven’t been to the site of Herculaneum, but I have been to a poorer sister city, Pompeii, that was also destroyed by the eruption of Vesuvius.  

Across from Naples, Herculaneum, of course was named for the Roman Hero Hercules who was the counterpart of the Greek hero Herakles.  Not all, but some of the treasures at the Villa in Malibu were salvaged from Herculaneum.  Others were collected by J. Paul Getty from individual collections around the world.  All in a setting that reminds a visitor that the human experience has changed not very much in the couple of thousand years since Vesuvius’ big bang,  I was reminded yesterday when Dr. Benjamin Carson made the political mistake of believing his own mythology is more important than Muslim mythology. 

I’m staying close to home today, so the photographs today are from yesterday morning’s visit to the Getty Villa.  You can have the kind of fun I had reviewing the players in the run-up to next year's election. There ain't no Europa or Antiope here, but Hillary or carly... Maybe...  Definitely you will find Rubio and perhaps Cruz...

The ancient Greeks were the myth makers of Europe.  Much of Dr. Carson’s Christianity can be traced to Ancient Greece.  Around 400 BCE the Athenian philosopher Plato coined the word mythology, he said to distinguish between imaginative accounts of divine actions and factual descriptions of events.  Plato’s time was becoming more scientific, but he recognized that religion is a problem for people who tend to believe every detail related about gods and goddesses.  The “holy” text in Dr. Carson’s case is the Constitution of the United States of America. He also happens to be an Evangelical Christian.  Because he is one of the sixteen mortals, fifteen males and one female (all described by their supporters as the appropriate next leader of “the free world,”) media savants, and especially Tea Party Americans (who also happen to be mostly Evangelical by Christian persuasion) are hanging on his every word.  He made the political gaff yesterday of saying a Muslim should never be allowed to occupy the seat of highest honor at the White House in Washington, D.C.  That belief lies in direct conflict with The Constitution.  Watching the conflict play out is a bit like reviewing history. I was back at home in San Diego reading the morning edition of the L.A. Times and Listening to T.V. news priests and priestesses tell us what we should believe about the situation.  I decided to review my pictures from yesterday’s visit to the Getty Villa.