Sisyphus Acres

Thank you! and Why we are Sisyphus Acres

Hi, what a delight to find this morning that I am this weeks featured blogger ~ thank you so much.  I so enjoy all of your wisdom and hearing about all of your homes ~ this is a great place to be!  And in response to nancy's question ~ Why Sisyphus Acres ~ this was posted a LOONNG time ago when I first started blogging here ~ but this is the reason behind the name Sisyphus acres.  We have a sign at the house officially dubbing it sisyphus acres, with a pic of Sisyphus rolling the rock up the hill...

Blessings, val

The Myth of Sisyphus

Posted in Daily Musings

    We've named our homestead Sisyphus acres in honor of my father, who reminds me so much of mythical Sisyphus.  Having moved here last winter, my father's first North Country winter, he was bound and determined to keep our tar driveway black and down to the tar throughout the season.  He toiled daily, removing every bit of snow and ice from the surface, only to have wind and mountain flurries recover his work each morning.  He never wavered, and set out daily determined to triumph over his foe...a north country winter.

    As spring settled in, the mud/brush became his next enemy, and in summer the lawen...sense a pattern?  He used to go around the yard at his old house picking up acorns off the ground to "clean up" the yard...giggle...it would be really funny if I didn't see so much of that in me...in my garden, and quilting, and...dear me, we are all like that ~ me, my dd Hannah, my dad, even my mom...but my dad is the most pronounced

    My father is not the knave described here, but his ceaseless toiling so reminds me of Sisyphus' eternal sentence, and is the primary reason why we are naming our little spot here Sisyphus Acres.  I decided my first blog should explain the name of our little homestead.  The following is directly quoted from http://www.mythweb.com/encyc/entries/sisyphus.html .  Enjoy the mythology lesson (lol), and we'll talk with you tomorrow!

Sisyphus  (SIS-i-fus)
 

Sinner condemned in Tartarus to an eternity of

rolling a boulder uphill then watching it roll back down again. Sisyphus was founder and king of Corinth, or Ephyra as it was called in those days. He was notorious as the most cunning knave on earth. His greatest triumph came at the end of his life, when the god Hades came to claim him personally for the kingdom of the dead. Hades had brought along a pair of handcuffs, a comparative novelty, and Sisyphus expressed such an interest that Hades was persuaded to demonstrate their use - on himself.

And so it came about that the high lord of the Underworld was kept locked up in a closet at Sisyphus's house for many a day, a circumstance which put the great chain of being seriously out of whack. Nobody could die. A soldier might be chopped to bits in battle and still show up at camp for dinner. Finally Hades was released and Sisyphus was ordered summarily to report to the Underworld for his eternal assignment. But the wily one had another trick up his sleeve.

He simply told his wife not to bury him and then complained to Persephone, Queen of the Dead, that he had not been accorded the proper funeral honors. What's more, as an unburied corpse he had no business on the far side of the river Styx at all - his wife hadn't placed a coin under his tongue to secure passage with Charon the ferryman. Surely her highness could see that Sisyphus must be given leave to journey back topside and put things right.

Kindly Persephone assented, and Sisyphus made his way back to the sunshine, where he promptly forgot all about funerals and such drab affairs and lived on in dissipation for another good stretch of time. But even this paramount trickster could only postpone the inevitable. Eventually he was hauled down to Hades, where his indiscretions caught up with him. For a crime against the gods - the specifics of which are variously reported - he was condemned to an eternity at hard labor. And frustrating labor at that. For his assignment was to roll a great boulder to the top of a hill. Only every time Sisyphus, by the greatest of exertion and toil, attained the summit, the darn thing rolled back down again
 

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{ 11:25, 2006-Jul-10 } { Posted by BackyardTreasures }

Val,

I was delighted to see that you were Blogger of the Week.
CONGRATULATIONS!!!!

~~Anne

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{ 03:39, 2006-Jul-10 } { Posted by Carol }

Congratulations on being chosen "featured blogger of the week". Well deserved.

As to the bats, I was like you the first one that came in the house. I was crawling on hands and knees trying to get to our bedroom and shut the door. Meanwhile, dh was laughing so hard he could hardly catch the bat. On Friday night, dd was trying to catch it without her glasses on and not having much success. I stayed downstairs until I thought it was outside. They are not my favorite things.
~carol

Ahhhhh

{ 07:53, 2006-Jul-11 } { Posted by HSBFrontPorch }

I figured that you must have blogged about a unique name like that, but I must have just missed it when I was scrolling through your entries.

It makes a lot of sense now. There is always SO much to be done....

Maybe I should call my laundry room - Mt. Sisyphus!!!!
~Nancy
Senior Editor

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{ 11:36, 2006-Jul-11 } { Posted by BuzyMumof3sons }

Congratulations dear Friend!! You have a wonderful blog!