About Me

Graduate student with MAs in classics and mythological studies currently working on a PhD -- what a mouthful! -- I try to be a bard and storyteller for the modern world.

My lenses reflect my eclectic interests -- classical studies and mythology, depth psychology, art history, web design, teaching and humor, writing, computer graphics, and thoughtful ways to help the environment and the world. Oh yes, and baseball. Don't get me started on baseball.

My main lens, Ancient Greece Odyssey, traces my own journey through Greece after many years studying its ancient art, literature, myths and gods.

I create my lenses for several reasons -- to share my passions, to
teach, and to help pay for books and cat food. (The cat's name is Samhain... give yourself a pat on the back if you know what it means without googling it!)

GreekGeek's Squidoo Tips: How to Get Your Lens Found

So, you want to learn how to build good Squidoo lenses (or any kind of webpage) and attract lots of visitors! Here's ten quick steps to help bring web traffic your way. Credentials: I came here with zero web marketing experience, but my first lens was...

SquidU Lensmaster Lounge: Help for Newbies

The SquidU Lensmaster Lounge is a great place to learn new Squidoo techniques, ask questions, and get to know your fellow Lensmasters. But what if you've never used an online discussion forum before? Are you trying to get links to work? Wonder how to...

Convert Your Prius to a Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicle (PHEV): Even More Gas-Efficient!

As a Prius owner, I was recently invited to be part of a focus group for Hymotion Hybrid Plug-in Conversion Kits. We weren't told what the focus group was for until near the end of the meeting -- I and the other Toyota Prius owners assumed it was a c...

Russell Martin of the LA Dodgers

Less than a year after settling behind the plate at Dodger Stadium on May 5th, 2006, Russell Martin had become the face of the Dodger franchise. True Blue fans pray he will remain so for many years. This Russell Martin fan page was originally create...

Volcanoes Are Hot Stuff

A mountain roars. Rivers of molten rock race to the sea. Towers of ash and smoke billow into the sky. Volcanoes are some of the most terrifying and magnificent wonders of our restless planet.   Scientists have learned a great deal about volcano...

Funny Signs

Ever seen an unintentionally funny sign that made you go "What?!!" Perhaps you remember the infamous "Cruise Ships Use Airport Exit" freeway sign outside of San Diego?  This lens is dedicated to the weird phrases that people t...

Yes, I Love My Hybrid Car

Yep, I am a rabid Prius owner. I got it for the environment. I love it for the mileage, especially after the gas prices here jumped over $3! When hybrid cars first came out in Japan, I thought I'd wait a few years until they'd worked out all the kinks...

Ancient Greece Odyssey: A Traveller's Journal

Myth major seeks armchair travellers, art lovers, and born-again pagans for a ramble through the ruins of ancient Greece. Odyssey Latest Update: Mycenae Museum Posted 4.25.08 I visited Greece in spring 2005 for the first time, where I have been going...

Advanced CSS: Layout Tricks and Lab Experiments

Columns! Images! Colored boxes! This lens is my CSS sandbox, where I'm testing fancy layout tricks to make Squidoo lenses look great. As I figure out new CSS techniques, I'll share them with you, so you can use them on your lenses! This lens assumes...

Aligning Graphics on Web Pages

Want to place a picture on a web page or lens? Need side-by-side graphics and text? Or are just trying to align an image left, right or center? First, I'll review Squidoo's built-in ways of uploading pictures onto your lenses. Then I'll show you how...

How to Build a Pyramid Kite

Alexander Graham Bell is well-known as the inventor of the telephone, but few people realize he also invented an early form of airplane! Well, not quite. It wasn't a plane -- a flat wing -- but a tetrahedron, a pyramid-like* structure with four sides...

The Care and Feeding of Apostrophes

    I'm here today to talk to you about a terrible tragedy that's sweeping our planet. It's not the disappearance of your favorite brands from the store courtesy of those dastardly Brand Police, nor is it the scented kitty litter that...

Ancient Greece Odyssey Index

This will be an index, table of contents, and guide to my online book, Ancient Greece Odyssey: A Traveller's Journal. Following the Table of Contents, I am compiling a list of all my photos with their descriptions, and a list of all the websites I r...

Squidoo Modules List

Modules are the building blocks of Squidoo, like widgets in blogs. Each module has certain settings you can change and customize to fit your lens (web page). For example, there's modules for photo galleries, displaying a Youtube video, polls, lists...

Ancient Greece Odyssey: Part Two

Welcome to Part Two of Ancient Greece Odyssey: A Traveller's Journal, a travel blog by a student of classics and comparative mythology. This section covers my third day in Athens, including my visit to the Acropolis, the Parthenon, the Erechtheion,...

How-to Photoshop Trick: 3-D Picture Frame for Photo

Plopping a web graphic directly on a web page is fine, but plain. Here is a way to make it look 3-D, like a photograph lying on a flat surface. You will need Photoshop CS, Photoshop Elements, or a full version of Photoshop (one that uses Layers). In the...

Sappho

Sappho, born around 630 BCE on the Greek-settled island of Lesbos off the coast of Turkey, is one of the earliest writers in the western world. Only fragments of her poetry have survived, preserved by later writers quoting her or on badly-damaged p...

Ancient Greece Odyssey: Part Five

Welcome, traveller. If you have just washed up on these shores from elsewhere, I invite you to start at the beginning of my journey, and head back to Athens and the first chapter of this online e-book: Ancient Greece Odyssey: A Traveller's Journal. O...

Feline Frequent Flyer Tips: Pets on a Plane!

Airplanes. Cat carriers. Airport security. Oh, the indignity of it all! Well, if we must board those infernal contraptions, the least our owners can do is let us travel in style. I won't say "in comfort," but a good under-the-seat pet carrier lets us...

Greekgeek's Squidoo Stats

Following Giant Squid bdkz's lead, I'm going to start tracking my Squidoo stats here: lensrank, earnings, and traffic. For consistency's sake, I'm going to use her method of tracking Lensrank: # of Lenses in the Top 100 = I count 1 - 100 # of Lense...

Thoth

Thoth, Tehuti or Djehuty in ancient Egyptian, is the god of wisdom, writing, speech, measurement, the moon, and magic. He serves as the vizier (prime minister) to Re, King of the gods. He's also the gods' official record-keeper. He's Mr. Science, the...

Olympias: Reconstruction of an Ancient Greek Trireme

The trireme, trieres in ancient Greek, was the formidable warship that hamstrung the second Persian invasion of Greece and changed the course of European history. It helped Athens build an empire and the wealth needed to sustain a civilization whose...

Web Flotsam: The Best Funny Videos, Web Humor and Weird Stuff!

 "The internet is a funny place. Some people spill their guts; other people just want to show you their fish." ~ Moi, back in 1993, in the heyday of Fishcams Memes, viral videos, web humor, email jokes: when are they spam, and when are...

Travel Threads: Space

My father was an aerospace engineer and my grandmother a planetarium director. So I've always had a personal relationship with the space program -- never as my career, but as something I followed avidly, the way children of military families are more...

Not Your Garden Variety Orchid: Flower with 'Tude

This is a totally silly lens without much redeeming value, but... well... anyway. I saw this little guy in a greenhouse in Carpinteria, California, and just had to take his portrait. Worse, I had to put him on a T-shirt and a few other items. I don't...

Ancient Greece Odyssey: Part Four

Welcome, traveller. If you have just washed up on these shores from elsewhere, I invite you to start at the beginning of my journey, and head back to Athens and the first chapter of this online e-book: Ancient Greece Odyssey: A Traveller's Journal....

Greekgeek's Lensography

  Greetings from Greekgeek, storyteller and scholar. Here are most of my Squidoo lenses, for your delectation and bewilderment. For newcomers to Squidoo, a "lens" is a web page focusing on one topic, combining original information with...

Answers to Your Questions About Ancient Greece

Many visitors to my Ancient Greece Odyssey: A Traveller's Journal website surf in through Google, looking for answers to search queries like "What are the Roman names for Greek gods?" and "map of Odysseus' wanderings." I hope you'll find that site fun...

Ancient Greece Odyssey: Part Three

Welcome to Part Three of Ancient Greece Odyssey: A Traveller's Journal, a travel blog by a student of classics and comparative mythology. This page will focus on my visit to the sanctuary of Demeter and Persephone at Eleusis. Below you will find: My...

Samhain the Cat

My owner has neglected to make a shrine to the house god, so I have threatened to yark on her Dance Dance Revolution pad every day until she submits. (Could be worse-- at least it's easy to clean.) My name is Samhain, and I was adopted from a shelte...

Boost Your Self-Confidence With a Magic Cloak

Some people are born confident, and then there's the rest of us. Public speaking, interviews, and even social mixers can feel like the Inquisition. I've heard of various psychological techniques for boosting self-confidence and quashing stage fright...

Cast Iron Cookware

Cookware drives me nuts. Nonstick pans never are, and the teflon-coated ones always seem to scratch when I scrub vigorously. Flecks of teflon in the tummy can't be a good thing! Whereas well-seasoned cast iron heats more evenly than modern pans, and...

Qassia: Next Facebook/Wikipedia, or Next Bust?

Qassia combines two popular trends of Web 2.0 -- social networking and user-submitted content. Qassia has two goals: to provide a platform for getting quality backlinks that search engines will like, and to compile a huge library of user-submitted in...

Aeschylus

Aeschylus is hailed as the father of Greek tragedy; his plays are among the oldest surviving western literature. They are gripping, stately, troubling, and raise issues that are still pertinent today. They show a stern regard for justice, civil duty...

War in the 21st Century: A New (and costly) Paradigm

After 9/11, the atmosphere of America -- indeed, our whole lives, and that of many other nations drawn into the mess -- changed forever. We now live in a society where leaders speak the language of Terror instead of Progress, shifting the emphasis in...

Unicorn Fans, Support Author Peter S. Beagle!

Have you read any books by award-winning author Peter S. Beagle? Do you remember The Last Unicorn? Have you ever seen a child's wonder while watching the animated movie adaptation of that book? Or do you remember the animated (Bakshi-directed) Lord...

Dance Dance Revolution

"You'll need different shoes." I glanced down at my ugly gym shoes and back at the gleaming warehouse-sized room full of chrome and mirrors, alien technology exercise machines, and skinny well-toned folks who'd just stepped off the bus from...

Henry The Hexapus

It's not every day an invertebrate steals the headlines on the BBC and CNN! Henry the Hexapus is a six-legged octopus rescued from a lobster pot off the coast of Wales and given a happy home in the Blackpool Sea Life Centre in northwest England. At...

MYTHPHILE: The Blog for Mythology Lovers

Remember Joseph Campbell, that learned yet charismatic storyteller who never met a myth he didn't like? What if there were a blog for sharing mythology, telling old myths afresh, exploring the origins of seasonal holidays, and posting in-depth profile...

The Golden Key by George MacDonald

"For my part, I do not write for children, but for the childlike, whether of five, fifty, or seventy-five." — George MacDonald: The Complete Fairy Tales You have stumbled upon a free e-book of a little-known children's short story from...

"It's All Greek to Me!" Gift Shop

Welcome to the Squidoo lens for my "It's All Greek to Me" Gift Shop, selling unique gifts with an ancient Greek twist!   Many of you have visited my Ancient Greece Odyssey: A Traveller's Journal travel diary with photos, stories, and...

The Blizzard of '78

If you're old enough to remember Star Wars' first run in the theaters, if you lived in the Midwest, Mid-Atlantic, or New England, you remember the Blizzard of '78. People were snowed in for days. Cities were paralyzed. The National Guard was mobilize...

Ginette Paris

Dr. Ginette Paris is a French Canadian psychologist, therapist, writer, and Core Faculty member at Pacifica Graduate Institute, where she teaches Archetypal and Depth Psychology and serves as Research Coordinator for students embarking on their disse...

Jackie Robinson: An American Hero

Sixty years ago, on April 15th, 1947, Jack Roosevelt Robinson stepped onto a baseball diamond in Brooklyn, New York. That was a few years after African-American soldiers came home from defending America and freedom in World War II, only to discover...

Travel Threads: Canada

Many summers, we'd camp for two weeks in the wilderness of Ontario north of New York State. I loved Canada. As a kid, I thought I needed a patch for each trip, and I agonzied over selecting the most interesting shape or most appropriate picture. Th...

Travel Threads: American West

When I wasn't paddling the rivers of eastern Canada, I was usually on the back of a horse out west. The big skies, looming mountains, dark forests and lonely plains of the American West were dramatic indeed for someone raised at the edge of Amish cou...

Dar Williams

Dar Williams has an adaptable voice that can dance from lyrical and etherial to playful and gritty. Her lyrics are funny, sharp, lively, fresh, like the best 80s pop, yet she's got a style all her own. She weaves word-poems with a catchy beat and a c...

The BBC Dramatization of the Lord of the Rings

Millions have been captivated by JRR Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, the magnificent sequel to The Hobbit. Animators, movie directors, and sound studios have attempted to bring Tolkien's work to life, some more or less successfully. Peter Jackson's...

Travel Threads: My Patch Jacket

It's been about twenty years since I last put on this old windbreaker, which I wore into my late teens in the late 1980s. I was never a Girl Scout, but I collected patches wherever my family travelled. So this jacket has a lot of memories sewn onto i...

Sister Unity

Storyteller, nun, drag queen, and kind-hearted nut -- Sister Unity is one of the web's more unique and colorful personalities. I stumbled across her while searching YouTube for videos on Hindu mythology. Sister Unity Divine has a gift for storytelli...

Director Alex de Campi: Video Showcase

Here's a brief selection of the extremely creative music videos and indie film shorts directed by American-born British alien Alex de Campi, who "believes that the pen is mightier than the sword (and much easier to get through airport security)." He...

WindFire Cursor™ Kite: The Best Kite Ever

I've seen and flown some beautiful kites, but if I could get my hands on this baby, even my two-masted full-rigged ship kite would never leave the house. No, these images aren't Photoshopped! This off-the-wall kite is the creation of Tim Elverston o...

The Hardest Homebuying Experience Ever

It seemed so simple. The market was down, my rent was climbing: why keep pouring money down the drain? Thanks to a good agent, Josef Szigeti, I'd found a condo that felt like home. There was a beautiful park right outside, it was nestled in a neighbo...