On Tuesday, the 11th of July, I watched "Bill Moyers on Faith and Reason," and heard this from Jeanette Winterson:

It's as though these people are hinged in the center, and that the good and the bad have folded back, touching each other in each person. [...] Each hero will have a task that nobody else can accomplish. And that hero's task is to accomplish the job. And in doing that they manage to free up a whole set of circumstances, which otherwise, would have remained completely locked in, impossible to shift.

And then, on Wednesday, the 12th, I saw the documentary on Woodie Guthrie, his flaws and his struggles, and Winterson's words echoed in my memory. Seems to me that Woodie Guthrie was a true hero of the people -- the sort that the ancient Greeks would have recognized.

He, too, was clearly under the patronage of Hermes -- messenger and trickster, liar and truth-teller all rolled into one.

Good stuff.