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1 Later that day, as Fate would have it, I had my "Greek and Roman Epic" lecture with professor of the Humanities, Emeritus, Zolo Kydd. Students called Zolo "Rolo", because, if only in stature and complexion, he happened to resemble that particular chewable chocolate caramel candy. He was short, tan
1 Later that day, as Fate would have it, I had my "Greek and Roman Epic" lecture with professor of the Humanities, Emeritus, Zolo Kydd. Students called Zolo "Rolo", because, if only in stature and complexion, he happened to resemble that particular chewable chocolate caramel candy. He was short, tan and round, wore bright plaid Christmas pants regardless of the time of the year, and his 5 thick, yellow-white hair encrusted his shiny freckled forehead as if, ages ago, Hidden Valley Ranch salad dressing had been dribbled all over him. Customarily, by the end of Zolo's lectures on "Gods and Godlessness" or "The Beginning and the End," most students had nodded off; unlike Dad, Zolo had an anesthetizing delivery style, which had to do with his run-on sentences and tendency to repeat a certain word, usually a preposition or adjective, in a way that brought to mind a small 10 green frog bouncing across lily pads. And yet, on this particular afternoon, my heart was in my throat. I hung on his every word. "Came across a-a-a funny little editorial the other day about Homer," Zolo was saying, frowning down at the lectern and sniffling. (Zolo sniffed when he was nervous, when he'd made the brave decision to leave the safe bank of his lecture notes and drift away on a shaky digression.) 15 "It was a small journal, I encourage all of you to take a look at it in the library, the-the-the little- known Classic Epic and Modern America. Winter volume, I believe. It turns out, a year ago, a couple of wacko Greek and Latinists like myself wanted to conduct an experiment on the power of the epic. They arranged to give copies of The Odyssey to-to-to a hundred of the most hardened criminals at a maximum-security prison-Riverbend, I think it was-and would you know it, twenty 20 of the convicts read the thing cover to cover, and three of them sat down and wrote their own epic tales. One is going to be published next year by Oxford University Press. The article discussed epic poetry as a very viable means to reform the-the-the deadliest offenders in the world. It-it appears, funnily enough, there's something within it that lessens the rage, the-the stress, pain, brings about, even to those who are far, far, gone, a sense of hope-because there's an absence in this day and age 25