TDBP Week in Review

First of all, we would like to remind the Evacuee to consistently choose titles for her posts. Untitled posts lack a certain zing or pop. This is a blog, not a secret personal journal. There are certain production standards that must be maintained. (Labels are also encouraged.)

Also, we here at Mission Control are proud to announce that the Thirty Day Bus Pass is now officially a smoke-free blog. Valued visitors, please feel free to breathe normally again.

Our next item of business is the announcement of the official deity of the Thirty Day Bus Pass. There was some debate among us (i.e., the unruly bunch in tapered Wranglers and white Reeboks frolicking in our smoke-free Mission Control headquarters), but in the end it was really no contest, with Hermes handily winning out over Ganesh. It's really quite a natural fit.

Hermes . . . , in Greek mythology, is the Olympian god of boundaries and of the travelers who cross them, of shepherds and cowherds, of orators and wit, of literature and poets, of athletics, of weights and measures, of invention, of commerce in general, and of the cunning of thieves and liars. The Homeric hymn to Hermes invokes him as the one

"of many shifts (polutropos), blandly cunning, a robber, a cattle driver, a bringer of dreams, a watcher by night, a thief at the gates, one who was soon to show forth wonderful deeds among the deathless gods."

As a translator, Hermes is a messenger from the gods to humans, sharing this with Iris. An interpreter who bridges the boundaries with strangers is a hermeneus. Hermes gives us our word "hermeneutics" for the art of interpreting hidden meaning. . . .

Among the Hellenes, as the related word herma ("a boundary stone, crossing point") would suggest, Hermes embodied the spirit of crossing-over: He was seen to be manifest in any kind of interchange, transfer, transgressions, transcendence, transition, transit or traversal, all of which involve some form of crossing in some sense. This explains his connection with transitions in one’s fortune -- with the interchanges of goods, words and information involved in trade, interpretion, oration, writing -- with the way in which the wind may transfer objects from one place to another, and with the transition to the afterlife.

Wikipedia.

God knows there's plenty of "interchange, transfer, transgressions, transcendence, transition, transit or traversal" going on here at TDBP. And we've already touched upon the relation of TDBP to the "transition to the afterlife." Also, both Hermes and Ganesh are, in certain ways, gods of commerce, and we are all well aware that TDBP is nothing if not a blatant attempt to wrangle a juicy book deal, or at least a syndicated column.