Bacchanalia

The practicing that had gone on in thousands of homes throughout the city was at an end.

The autumn bacchanal was here at last, and the beginning service, which had started in the little temple on the green right at dawn, when the sun's rays had first touched the tops of New York's towers, was approaching its end.

The people clustered in the building, and the incomparably greater number scattered outside it, were feeling the first itch of restlessness.

soon the grand procession would begin starting as always from the temple on the green and wending its slow way northward to the upper end of central park at one hundred and tenth street then the string of worshippers would turn and head back for the temple at the lower end of the park with fanfare and pageantry on a scale calculated to do honor to the god of the festival to outshine not only every other festival but every past year of the autumn bacchanal itself the autumn bacchanal was devoted to the celebration of the harvest and more specifically the harvest and processing of the grape all the wineries for hundreds of miles around had shipped hogshead after hogshead and barrel after barrel of fine wine red white rose still or sparkling as joyous sacrifice to dionysus slash bacchus and in thanks that the fertility rites of the vernal bacchanal had brought them good crops Wine flowed from everywhere into the city, and now the immense reserves were stacked away awaiting the revels.

Even the brewers and distillers had sent along their wares, from the mildest beer to vodka of one hundred and twenty proof, joining unselfishly in the celebration, even though technically they were not under Dionysian protection at all, but were the wards of Ceres, the goddess of grain.

celebrants liquors chants preparations balloons confetti edibles and all the other appurtenances of the festival spiraled dizzyingly upward reaching proportions unheard of throughout history and in a back room at the temple on the green the late william forrester sat trying to forget all about them and suffering from a continuous case of nerves diana marched up and down in front of him smacking her left fist into her calloused little right palm now listen she said crisply i know you're all hot and bothered kid but there's no reason to be you're doing fine they love you out there "'Sure I am,' Forrester said, unconvinced.

This is your show, kid.

Make the most of it.' Forrester watched her go out the rear door.

And the ancient Romans had a special way of celebrating him.

They hosted infamous secret parties called Bacchanalias.

A Bacchanalia was a night of wild partying in ancient Rome that celebrated total freedom from societal rules and regulations.

Now, it happened about three times a year, usually around harvest time, and was typically done in secret out in like the countryside under the cover of darkness.

People thought women should be sweet, innocent caretakers.

And if they were moms, they should never be off the clock.

Oh! So just like we saw in those Roman Bacchanalias, women drinking wine was something in the 1950s and 60s that had to be done with discretion.

AKA inside the house with the windows closed and like shut in and you're alone and like you can't see anything but you better not get caught, you know? I meant that there were a lot of American housewives who were lonely, isolated, maybe just bored, and turned to wine for self-medication.

End of chapter 6 Chapter 7 of Pagan Passions by Randall Garrett and Lawrence Jenifer This LibriVox recording is in the public domain.

Chapter 7 The morning of the autumn bacchanal dawned bright and clear, thanks to the intervention of the pantheon.

In New York, the leaves were only just beginning to turn, and the sun was still high enough in the sky to make the afternoons warm and pleasant.

Zeus All-Father had promised good weather for the festival, and a strong, warm wind from the Gulf of Mexico was moving out the crisp autumn air before the sun had risen an hour above the horizon.

See store for details.

The practicing that had gone on in thousands of homes throughout the city was at an end.

The Autumn Bacchanal was here at last, and the beginning service, which had started in the little Temple on the Green right at dawn, when the sun's rays had first touched the tops of New York's towers, was approaching its end.

The people clustered in the building, and the incomparably greater number scattered outside it, were feeling the first itch of restlessness.

And, and the '60s with the flower power and the tune in and drop out, we were such a wealthy generation, more wealthy than any time in human history, that parents were able to subsidize their teenagers to go to Woodstock, uh, to, you know, dance as flower children, and somehow a, a good portion of those kids were able to somehow get on their two feet.

The very poor that also, uh, had no mor- moral support in the culture at large to be s- you know, abstinent, temperate, uh, and, and, and self-disciplining, they're the ones that had a very hard time keeping up and, and surviving in this new celebration of Bacchanalian, Dionysian, self-destructive behavior and, and a lot of these people are on the streets.

I mean, you've...

The, frankly, let's be honest, the, the, the vagrant population has a strong racial divide.

Yes, absolutely.

I feel that the scenes in Paris during the French Revolution seem to echo the ancient Greek myth of the Bacchanalia.

It is a myth that is presented in Euripides' tragedy, and it actually deals with the return of Dionysus.

So Dionysus was the god of wine, was the god of intoxication, both joyful and murderous.

None of these talents resolutely unable to say anything relevant in music honed over many months was likely to be able to add anything of consequence in a short acceptance speech.

This was supposed to be the dangerous ARIAs, the year the nominees would be served alcohol during the ceremony, resulting in all manner of Bacchanalian excess and confirming once more that no one knows how to shake the system like a rock star.

What we got was the dullest year ever, a turgid parade of bloated egos hauled their mild-mannered asses onto stage to accept awards more meaningless than an INXS lyric.

If there was a personality at this year's show, then it must have been in the toilet with its fingers down its throat because I didn't see it.

so um and then actually you know who makes the best fay prints of them all our cute

little zavy yeah you gotta hit the okay change is hard Is this him going to his Bacchanalia thing? It is.

I totally set him up for his showdown at Bacchanalia with Dionysus.

Wow.

You have a thing.