Greekless in Seattle

First, I have to apologize for not updating my blog in awhile. I've been busy with my job, as well as some other stuff. Still, that doesn't mean I haven't been working on my Themistocles novel. In fact, I've started to carefully reconstruct it using an Excel worksheet, and I have to say this method of outlining has been really successful so far! I'll be sure to blog about it later.


In the meantime, my job took me to Seattle for a gaming even called PAX, where I was a speaker at the IGN Girlfight panel. If you don't know what it is, Girlfight is the name of a podcast on IGN featuring me and four other women talking about video games and any relevant topic pertaining to them. It's a far cry from Ancient Greece (well, unless you count games like God of War and Kid Icarus), and I didn't expect to see anything that would inspire ideas for my novel. How wrong I was!

I arrived in Seattle Friday afternoon, and was welcomed not by blustering winds and showering rain, but by a flawless blue sky that arched elegantly above lush green boulevards and the most pristine city streets I’ve ever seen. So, I decided to take advantage of the great weather and play tourist, visiting everything from the Space Needle to the famous Pike Street Fish Market. I even saw the original Starbucks...I think. The chain is so ubiquitous that I couldn't even tell which coffee shop was the original--there are two old-school stores right down the street from each other!

But what really surprised me was the Seattle Art Museum. It's home to mostly modern art, which to be honest doesn't appeal to me. I mean, I too can paint a canvas blue and call it something exotic, like Tears of a Whale or Mermaid Eyes. Luckily the museum also features wings dedicated to more traditional art pieces, including artifacts from Ancient Greece, Persia and Egypt. Naturally since I'm a lover of history, I took in every detail of every vile, vase and votive offering with relish. I was especially surprised to see a small portion of the palace wall from Persapolis, featuring a servant carrying a wine skin to King Darius. And as always I was amazed at how well intact all the Greek pottery was, despite being thousands of years old.

So, Greekless in Seattle? I expected to be, considering I was attending a video game event. But happily I was able to see some rare pieces from Ancient Greece, and that has inspired me to get going on my novel!

New Acropolis Museum

Judith Weingarten has a Youtube video tour of the New Acropolis Museum in Athens up on her site. Since I enjoyed it so much I thought I'd link it here as well:

New Acropolis Museum

I'm hoping to see it myself one day and really enjoyed a close-up look at some of the priceless artifacts. I also thought the news that an entire neighborhood was excavated during the building of the museum was super interesting. Hopefully it will shed even more light on the Ancient Greeks!