variable in the Committee's decision to award the prize to the young American president, although it is bandied about in responses here and abroad as one element of the rationale.

To give all your sources their due, it was with demonstrable hope that Demeter searched for her daughter. The torment referenced is real, certainly, but cannot be navigated around. It cannot be removed from dedication and love. Moreover it cannot be diminished in Demeter's total narrative and purpose because along her way, hope clearly attendant, she is welcomed to the supper table of a peasant family and it is to that family's youngest son that she reveals the divine secret of the grain.

A very useful by-product of her journey. Also one which is not time-specific. She honors in the youngest son his earnestness, the absence of cynicism. That son's older brother dismisses Demeter, unaware that she is divine, and for his loose, cynical tongue he is turned into a lizard by the goddess.

Extracting from Demeter's story the impulse to award Good we have Dubya cast as the older son and Barack Obama as the earnest younger son, a personification of the promise of fruitful agriculture, of bountiful harvest.

If there is a divine secret of sustaining harvest and survival, it is to the younger earnest son that such a secret be shared.