As a musician, teacher of literature and writing, journalist, and poet, Deborah Stokol works as a bard. She uses her composition, words, voice, piano, harp, guitar, and mandolin to tell stories, some from her imagination, others from bardic works like The Odyssey, others from history, sacred text, and mythology. In this case, she uses the bardic media of voice and harp in addition to her own translation of a passage of The Iliad to tell the beginning of Achilles’ tale and how he chose a short life of glory to a long life in the shadows.