Last-last time, I answered my first two questions about Ares (Why had Xena never seen him before the sixth episode of the first season? And, if he was Xena’s mentor all throughout her warlord days, why is that he never shows up or is even mentioned in any of the flashback episodes to that time?).

Today, I will take on the three middle questions from my original post. As a refresher, they were: 3) How did losing his sword in “Ten Little Warlords” cost Ares his godhood when none of the other Olympian gods had this problem? 4) Why, if peaceful people became pugnacious without a sitting god of war during that episode, did the same thing not happen during the entire year and a half plus between “Motherhood” and “You Are There”? 6) How did Ares perform the body-swap on Callisto and Xena in “Intimate Stranger” if his powers don’t work in the underworld, as he claimed in “God Fearing Child”?

*gif below*

The answers to these questions are all linked. As noted previously, Hades was not pleased to learn about the unsanctioned body-swap performed in his realm. It is strongly implied in “Ten Little Warriors” that he confiscated his nephew’s/brother’s (LOL) sword and gave it to the dead King Sisyphus in retaliation against the god of war. Hades seemingly also put Ares’s godhood up for grabs, supposedly promising King Sisyphus immortality if he could find a suitable replacement and/or that Sisyphus himself could become the god of war. This part is less clear because the tricky king tells two different stories about what happened. But, even if Sisyphus was lying or wrong on either or both accounts,* and Ares’s godhood was irrevocably linked to his sword, then there is still a workable solution. The reason the other gods didn’t lose their godhood when their possessions got stolen would be two-fold.

First, the items taken over various XWP episodes— Hephaestus’s metal and chains, Hermes’s and Hades’s respective helmets, and Apollo’s urn— weren’t those gods’ primary symbols, not major parts of their identities and so, not endowed with their godhood. I checked around to be sure, but their symbols / sacred objects are as follows: Ares, sword; Hephaestus, hammer or anvil; Hermes, caduceus (the medical-symbol staff) or talaria (winged sandals); Hades, cornucopia; and Apollo, chariot or kithara (a type of lyre). Of course, the XenaVerse Celesta didn’t exist in Greek mythology, but her story parallels Ares’s nevertheless. What happened to him happened to her, with a slight difference. Her sacred object, her candle, got put into jeopardy twice, but since she is death personified, the loss of her symbol and godhood meant the loss of her altogether. This somewhat relates to the fact that…

Second, Ares (and later, Aphrodite) suffered identity theft as well. The world became more war-like in “Ten Little Warlords” and less loving in “You Are There” because other characters wrongfully tried to take the true deities’ places. As Ares says multiple times over the years, natural godhood is meant for beings born into that destiny (i.e. not Callisto, etc.) Hades and King Sisyphus stole Ares’s godhood with the intention of replacing him, as Caligula did to Aphrodite. So, the world got thrown into chaos. However, it did not lose terror, wisdom, hunting, the underworld, etc. after Xena killed the gods connected to those things because she had no intention of seating herself on their thrones, and gave no one else that opportunity either. The same goes for why war remained in the world and nobody got seized by battle-lust without a sitting god of war after Ares willingly gave up his godhood in “Motherhood;” no one else tried or was able to take up his mantle.

With the fifth question, we return to Ares’s punishment for the Callisto-Xena body-swap. Ares was able to win back his sword and godhood with Xena’s help at the end of “Ten Little Warlords.” Thus, his punishment got nullified. So, I think for pride and safety’s sake, Hades (with or without Zeus and the rest of the family, whom Ares found himself on the “outs with” more than once, as he later asserted in “The Furies”) made it so that Ares’s powers would never work in the underworld again.

.

BUT

I can say that these frickin things:

OOGH

MMM

I would like to eat many at once

They are like those sugar cookies except they don’t make you feel like you can’t eat any more after one cookie

But god they’re so frickin good.

Whenever I eat these it feels like I went to eat it then suddenly their is nothing in my hand and I’ve forgotten that I’ve already eaten it

. . .

Emmett Till’s casket a 'sacred object' at the African American museum

Among the most difficult decisions that Lonnie Bunch III had to make as he searched the world for objects to tell the story of African Americans was whether to include a casket that once held the mangled body of a murdered black boy.

"I remember struggling with, 'Should we collect that?' " said Bunch, the founding director of the National Museum of African American History and Culture.

Even after he accepted Emmett Till's casket, which Till's family gave to the museum long after his remains had been exhumed and reinterred, Bunch grappled with the idea of including it in an exhibit. "Was that too ghoulish?" he wondered.

As leaders of the new museum, Bunch and his curators must strike a delicate balance.

Every year, millions of tourists come to Washington to seek inspiration — in marble monuments to the nation's heroes and leaders, in temples of democracy and civic power. Now, for the first time, Americans will have a museum on the Mall celebrating black pioneers and highlighting the success stories of African Americans.

Excitement surrounding the historic institution propelled its boosters through 11 years of collecting artifacts and fundraising to the tune of $315 million. It will open Sept. 24 with a dedication attended by President Barack Obama and with an invitation-only Kennedy Center gala.

But for such a museum to claim scholarly integrity, uplift is not enough. In the years preceding next month's celebration, Bunch has had to consider how much of the dark corners of American history to expose. He and the museum's curators say they are ready to tell what African American historian John Hope Franklin called the "unvarnished truth" of the nation's racial past.

The question is: Are visitors ready to hear it?

As painful as it may be, Bunch said, it's essential that his institution delve into stories such as that of Till, the Chicago teenager who was murdered for whistling at a white woman during a visit to Mississippi — an event that galvanized the civil rights movement.

"You couldn't tell the story of the African American experience without wrestling with difficult issues, without creating those moments where people have to ponder the pain of slavery, segregation or racial violence," Bunch said.

But he said he also knew "that this was not a museum of crime or guilt or holocaust."

And so the museum's airy upper floors — the Culture and Community galleries — will feature the uneven-bar grips used by gymnast Gabby Douglas in the 2012 Olympics and a terry-cloth robe worn by Muhammad Ali. Visitors will be able to gawk at Chuck Berry's red Cadillac and wax nostalgic through an exhibit on the birth of hip-hop.

Feel free to go straight up there if you want — it's fun. But the museum has been designed to nudge you to descend first into its lower levels. Take one of the elevators down. Move through a dark and low-slung concourse. You will find the remains of the São José, a Portuguese slave ship that sank off the coast of South Africa; a narrow South Carolina slave cabin; and a set of shackles so diminutive they could only have been used on a child.

The effect is haunting. It's meant to be.

"It's a lot to take in," said historian Noelle Trent, who helped train the museum's docents. "It is very emotional to have so much history interpreted in a confined space."

Visitors can't escape witnessing racial violence

Surveys conducted by the Smithsonian Institution in the run-up to the new museum's creation found that the public is conflicted over learning more about slavery. It ranked as both the top subject that visitors want to know more about and the one they're least interested in exploring. Bunch and his team see themselves as providing deeper knowledge to those already familiar with the story of slavery and helping others see that understanding black history is central to understanding American history.

"Slavery is this horribly painful moment, but it is also a moment when people were strong and lived a life that many of us would emulate if we could in terms of trying to keep family together despite everything," Bunch said. Presenting this complexity is part of his attempt to push the public to embrace ambiguity. "We're not giving them simple answers to complex questions," he said.

The museum addresses Americans' apprehension about discussing these issues in part by linking the story of slavery to the push for freedom. Displayed alongside the shackles and instruments of torture are Harriet Tubman's shawl, Nat Turner's Bible and freedom papers carried by a former slave.

Bunch determined early on that visitors would not be able to skip through the history galleries without encountering stories of racial violence.

They will see images of lynching and of a slave being whipped. The most brutal lynching photos are placed so that museum-goers can avoid looking at them head-on, but they cannot totally escape them. According to historical data collected by the Tuskegee Institute, 4,730 people were lynched in the United States between 1882 and 1951: 3,437 black and 1,293 white. The museum makes it clear that such violence was not a rarity.

"You don't want people to think that was so exotic and so unusual," Bunch said. "When we talk about the extremes in America vis-a-vis race, we always discuss it as if only the craziest of people are doing that, but ... there were times when people's silence encouraged racial violence. I wanted people to realize that this was part of how America was made. Not to say that was the key, but part of the job [of this museum] is to unpack what it means to be an American."

Brutality of slavery

Officials planning the new museum consulted with the leaders of both the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington and the National September 11 Memorial Museum in New York — two institutions devoted to uniquely horrific moments in history.

The African American museum will share those museums' philosophy regarding the best way to convey the pain of difficult historical episodes — through compelling artifacts.

When Soviet troops liberated the Auschwitz-Birkenau and Majdanek concentration camps, they found very few surviving prisoners. But they found hundreds of thousands of pairs of shoes. A huge mound of 4,000 shoes in the U.S. Holocaust Museum's permanent exhibition is often cited as its most searing display, said Edward "Ted" Phillips, the museum's director of exhibitions and resources.

"We don't have to have graphic images of emaciated bodies to represent the mass slaughter of humans," Phillips said. "Gruesome is just not necessary."

Similarly, the 9/11 museum debated how to share the story of the men and women who jumped or fell from the twin towers as they crumbled. The museum's governing board, which includes victims' relatives, was committed to including an exhibit on the subject; it is located in an alcove, centered on startling digital stills instead of explicit moving images.

"Obviously the story of race in America is much longer than 9/11 as an event," said Joe Daniels, president of the 9/11 Memorial Museum. "But for the people that still feel rightly the pain of what existed, having a museum that takes responsibility for helping people process that is important."

That is Bunch's goal. He said it's essential that his museum draw in Americans from all racial backgrounds and help them see slavery — and other aspects of black history — as part of our collective story.

There are, of course, villains in that story, and the new museum will address the brutality of slavery and those who profited economically and politically from racial segregation. But its focus is on how African Americans survived those challenges, not on the people who perpetrated them. The museum wants to be a place where descendants of Southern slave owners can engage with black history alongside the descendants of African American sharecroppers.

This is an issue that a museum such as the Holocaust Museum doesn't have to deal with, because in that case, as Bunch pointed out, "the bad guys aren't American." Part of the mission of the new museum, he said, "is to give people not just what they want but what they need. People need to understand who we are as Americans, and you can't understand that if you don't understand slavery and segregation."

At the same time, he recognizes that reaching this understanding can be profoundly upsetting.

At the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis, Tenn., established at the site of the Lorraine Motel, where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated, visitors confront difficult racial history similar to what they will find in Washington's new museum. There is an exhibit on slavery and one, of course, on King's death.

"I have seen different people react in different ways," said Trent, the historian, who is also director of interpretation, collections and education at the Memphis museum. "You see someone and they get to Dr. King's room and walk away" unmoved, without engaging with the subject matter. On the other hand, she said, "you see some people in the slavery exhibit, and they start to tear up, and by the time they get to Dr. King's room they are in hysterics. You just don't know how people are going to react."

So Bunch's team is training more than 300 volunteers to roam the museum, taking note of visitors' body language and tone of voice, to look for those who might be in distress. Nurses will also be on call to help.

'One of our most sacred objects'

The tour through history at the Smithsonian's new museum moves from the exploration of slavery and freedom to exhibits on segregation and the period beyond 1968. Visitors walk up a ramp to enter the space containing these.

Bunch decided that he would display Till's casket in a room in the "Defending Freedom, Defining Freedom" exhibition.

The room is partitioned by a wall. The anteroom tells Till's story in the words and voice of his mother, Mamie Till Mobley, who forced the funeral home that buried Emmett to hold an open-casket service. On the other side of the wall is the casket, placed on a pedestal. Painted on the wall behind it is a mural of the choir that sang at Till's home-going service.

It's "one of our most sacred objects," the museum's deputy director, Kinshasha Holman Conwill, said of the casket.

"What this museum is going to do is make sure that America remembers that, at one point — and unfortunately, some of that still goes on — we killed our children," she said.

Bunch thought about Mamie Till Mobley, whom he met before her death in 2003, as the exhibit was being designed.

"She talked to me about how one of the most courageous things she did was to keep the casket open," he said. "She said to me, 'Emmett was martyred on the cross of racial injustice,' and she wanted the world to see what they did to her son."

He agreed. The world should see. [x]

Photographs:

A view of the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History & Culture, which is wrapping up construction in advance of its late September opening

Lonnie Bunch III, founding director of the National Museum of African American History and Culture

A slave cabin from Poolesville, Md., is on display in the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture on July 18, 2016, in Washington, D.C., as seen during a media preview tour. The museum's grand opening will be on Sept. 24