Blog Updates for the New (Gregorian) Year

Congratulations.

We are roughly halfway through the Athenian year, and at the beginning of a new year (2010) in the Gregorian Calendar. In this midpoint of the 1st year of the 697th Olympiad (the 2785th year after the Olympic games were restarted), I would like to point out the blog goals created last year at roughly the same time. You can view them here or in the sidebar to the left. A selection is reprinted below for the convenience of those using feed readers:

KALLISTI was created to serve modern Hellenists’ needs (especially those in the English-speaking world) by providing anecdotes of personal practice, communicating about various theological/moral/philosophical beliefs of both the author and others, linking to valuable and/or interesting media sources, and sharing resources about Hellenic Polytheisms with the general community, from the perspective of a young woman who worships the Theoi.

From the first post on Hellenic Polytheism, KALLISTI has existed since April 2008. When it started, there was very little content available on the blogosphere from the perspective of someone in Hellenic religion. Now, we have a lot of great content written by everyone from strict adherents of reconstructionist methodologies to revivalists—proof of the rich and vibrant diversity within the modern community of Hellenistai. Our combined voices are raising awareness of the modern manifestation of traditional Hellenic religion in the English-speaking community.

I have some great content planned for 2009.

Firstly, we have several great movies that deal with the history of Greek religion or Greek mythology: Agora, The Lightning Thief, and a remake of Clash of the Titans. I plan to review all of them as close to their opening dates as possible. In addition, I have plans to do a live blog of my reactions to the physical book The Lightning Thief to figure out whether my fears about this movie are justified or not. It looks like Harry Potter with Greek Gods meets teen superhero action adventure, so hopefully the writing isn’t as bad as J.K. Rowling’s.

With my new tech gadget (a Kindle), I have been using ebook conversion software to locate and download a lot of translated material from Many Books, the Internet Archive, and the Gutenberg Project. Look forward to a lot of commentaries. I will continue to investigate Greek and Roman women writers for information and pray that someone uncovers a giant library of codices on everything I want to read.

Here’s to great blog conversations and to increased camaraderie in the coming year!