I could tell you about lots of things.

Maybe I'll tell you about some of them.

Hooray, the 3-day weekend has begun!

How did I celebrate its onset? I watched Vertigo on streaming Netflix. Vertigo has been on my to-watch list for years and years and years. Frank has had a framed movie poster of it since college. When I first saw the poster, I asked him something along the lines of whether it was really such a good movie. His response reflected his disbelief that I had not seen the film. That, as I mentioned, was years and years and years ago. So tonight I was on Netflix and realized that it would no longer be available for streaming after the end of the month. So I figured I would inaugurate the weekend by watching it.

And while, yes, some of the plot twists were really fun, I couldn't get over two things:

1. Kim Novak. Ugh! She has one of those faces where the cheekbones are way full and they sink in to a pointed chin at some mighty crazy angles. And the painted-on crazy fat eyebrows only made it worse. I couldn't stop looking at her eyebrows! and then it occurred to me: she looks like Linda Evangelista in those horrible horrible L'Oreal Visible Lift commercials. Same facial structure. I actually had to check Wikipedia to make sure they weren't related.

Don't they kind of look like they're trying to get peanut butter off the roofs of their mouths?

Kim Novak

Linda Evangelista

2. As though the eyebrows weren't bad enough, I could have lived with them if she had just had some spine. What an awful character she played! And yes, I realize that this is an old movie, but wow - talk about unable to do anything without a man pulling the strings.

So although the animated opening and dream sequences were very cool, Vertigo didn't do it for me. I'll stick with The Birds and Psycho. And I still have Rear Window and North by Northwest on the list to see.

*****

There are some activities that are very calming to me and yesterday I enjoyed one of them: running my car through the car wash. Why, you might ask, would such an activity be calming? Well, when I worked at the rental car company after college, sometimes the best part of the day was sitting isolated in a car with a buffer of water all around - no one could possibly pop in with a problem that needed attention there.

I should indulge in a car wash more often, even though of course the fact that I washed my car yesterday unleashed a weekend of thunderstorms. We have been on a crazy schedule at school to accommodate all of the state testing going on, and that has meant three-hour-long classes in the morning. Which means spending lots and lots of time with my hardest class. It has been awful. Yesterday was one of the days that that class met. Which meant the onset of an all-day migraine. I swear it melted away as soon as I got into the car wash. Really.

One day when I was in the carwash I had the greatest idea for a story. Someday when I write it, I'll share.

*****

I think I'm done buying books for a while. It's going to take a little while to get through the ones I have bought. This week the Borromini book came. Genius, genius, genius. I want a trip to Rome.

*****

Shall we have a song of the day? I downloaded this album last night. It was just the suggested album on the front page of emusic when I logged on, and I liked it, so I got it. This morning while getting ready for work, I had it playing and this song caught me. Then I was on the npr website later today and found a video.

Listen to it on the embedded video below. Then, if you like the song, see the more literal video on npr. But really, just listen to it first.

Josh Ritter - The Curse

Crates

It is the end of the semester at the university. While I very very very much love teaching there, this semester I taught two sections and having double the correcting to do while spending twice as much time in class was difficult. (Spending the time in class was not the difficult part. I love the part of teaching that is the teaching! Finding time to do the persuant paperwork was the hard part. It feels like the end of four months of chasing my tail.) Anyway, now I just need to get caught up at the high school, and it will be time to start thinking about packing things up there. Only five more weeks there, and it will be back to the university.

The other thing to try to fix now is the disaster that is my house. Maybe I have mentioned that I am not the best housekeeper in the world. There are enough interesting things to do in life that housekeeping just fails to make the cut. Some progress on this front had been made as recently as February or so. But we all know that if I can make progress, I am just as capable of double regression. This time it came in the form of books. (!!!) I came into a LOT of Italian books - Italian textbooks, Italian readers, books on Italian study, etc. etc. etc. They have been sitting in the living room for about a month, and with the end of the semester, I finally felt that maybe I could figure out what to do with them. So yesterday I went to Staples and bought six filing crates. Because I figure this way I can stack the books in a corner or something. Really I don't know what I'm doing, but it seemed to make sense at the moment. And I really didn't think I would need all six, but my motto (and the root of all my troubles) is buy too much so you don't have to go back for more.

Between the Italian books and the Theory of Knowledge books I am starting to accumulate, I have seven crates of books in my living room right now. And I think I will probably need at least one more by the time I finish accumulating the first wave of Theory of Knowledge books. The end of which I ordered this afternoon - it should be arriving over the next couple of weeks.

It's overwhelming and crazy exciting all at once to think of how much reading I have to do. I need to go on sabbatical. Which is long overdue. I mean, wouldn't that mean take the seventh year off? And I'm finishing my eighth - not to mention the three pre-teaching years. How glorious would it be to have a year off to study and prepare and think uninterruptedly?

Ha ha. Yes, we know I would spend most of my time surfing the Internet and rotting my brain. Maybe I had better stick with the panic tide of ever-crashing deadlines. Sure, the heart attack will come a few years earlier, but in the end I will have gotten something accomplished.

Would you like a song? note: for this one, be sure you hang on for the instrumental finish.

Beirut - St. Apollonia.

It is early.

I totally got up super early this morning - the new album by The National, High Violet, dropped today, and I couldn't wait to download it. I love this band. Here is the first track.

The National - Terrible Love

Yes, I know I just mentioned this one yesterday...

but here it is. I have been in a very melancholy mood today, and this is the song.

(I've been on ebay looking at accordions. Chording, though, was never my strong suit playing the piano, so I wonder if I would conceptually be able to get the accordion.)

Gogol Bordello - Sun Is On My Side

So you remember what I wrote a few days ago...

about happy music? And how I really can't stomach it? I lied. Today I downloaded the latest album from Gogol Bordello and I admit defeat. I just want to dance. Exuberantly. Not that the whole album is a happyfest - some of it is not happy. But it's an emotion-wrenching ride throughout - and honest, and authentic in a way a lot of music isn't. Like you remember in the 80's when Bono's voice was so hungry? and U2 played with such urgency? Gogol Bordello's got that now, but the traditionality of its sound base takes it beyond rock in its urgency and tenacity. Maybe? Or maybe I should leave the describing to the music critics and just dance.

Here's a link to listen from GB's website. I recommend the whole album, but if you're picking and choosing a sampling, Pala Tute, My Companjera, When Universes Collide, In the Meantime in Pernambuco, and for something a bit more melancholy, Sun is On My Side. Enjoy.

Gogol Bordello - Pala Tute

Lucked out today...

...and when one of my 1st period freshmen, one who is usually sullen and complainy, asked me to print out for her a Langston Hughes poem this morning I actually didn't screw up the task in her eyes for once. I told her that she should probably pick out the one she wanted in the library, but she really didn't want to go. I asked her point blank if I was doing an assignment for her and she said it would be something she would be working with in class, but it wasn't an assignment yet. So I did it. In exchange for her making and posting a sign on the door saying we were going to another classroom for the day. Anyway, I didn't dare just blindly print out one poem for her, or it wouldn't have been one she would have accepted (did I mention sullen and complainy?) So I printed out four. One hopeful, one celebrating jazz life, one recounting the experiences inherent in his roots, and one miscellaneous, slightly melancholy one. I figured that about covered Langston Hughes.

Not until the end of the class when I was handing over the sheet of poems did she say, "So did you print out my favorite one?" And I'm thinking 'ooooOOOOOOoooooh. So now you let me know you have a preference.' I just gave her the paper. A minute later, she was back at my side, pointing one of the poems out. It turned out that by blind luck I had hit the one that is her favorite. And for just a moment the look in her eyes was not one of sullen complainy hatred or distain...she actually smiled. Ya gotta love it. (Here's the poem: Mother to Son.)

So yes, in the year 2010 it's a little trite, but today's song HAS to be:

Nirvana - Smells Like Teen Spirit

Ha! And once upon a time, I was in high school listening to that, all sullen and complainy, and now I have to go finish writing the final for the class at the university. Fun for all.

And p.s. - I did take time out this afternoon to watch Lost. Tears.

I am so tired...

...and I just became extremely pissed off. I have been so careful for six years not to let anyone even speculate to me about what might be happening on Lost. And this semester my night class makes it so I don't get to see Lost until the next day when I can catch it on the Internet.

So tonight I got home from said night class extremely exhausted from five hours of reviewing for final exams and I was innocently Facebooking when a "friend" posted a major spoiler about tonight's show. It has taken all my willpower not to unfriend him on the spot.

What the hey???? I mean, that is just soooooooo uncool. I realize I should know better than to be on Facebook, but there is serious wrath inside me nonetheless.

So I am going to choose a lull-myself-to-sleep song for tonight and I will go to bed and try not to think about it.

Merz - Verily

It was a good day.

Today was a good day.

1. I didn't write any referrals.

2. I saw that there will be Shakespeare in Maymont Park in a couple of weeks.

3. I saw on the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts website that in the atrium they have a Sol Lewitt sculpture. :)

4. I saw #3 while I was looking on their site about the show they have coming up in conjunction with their grand re-opening after much remodeling--a Tiffany show. Can you hear the glory singing in the background? What better way to re-open a museum than with light and glass?

Hooray!

So since it is a good day, a good song is needed. Mind you, I'm not saying a "happy" song - I don't listen to "happy" music. In fact, my Pandora station has evolved into an endless procession of songs in minor keys. So keep in mind, it's a good song, not a "happy" one, because I really can't stomach much of that.

And you might as well know: I'm having an Eastern European/southwest Asian steppes moment. I'm starting to wonder about travel in Bulgaria and Ukraine and the western -istan nations. Which means gypsy music, but violin and accordion Balkan/Slavic gypsy music, not flamenco gypsy music, which is the gypsy music I have enjoyed for a long time. And DeVotchKa plays with this eastern style very well.

DeVotchKa - Such a Lovely Thing

April in Pictures

This is what the sky did this evening after a fantastic clap of thunder and a vicious cloudburst. I love in-and-out rain. It is furious, it washes your car, it gets out while there is still light to dance in what's left of the clouds. Hooray spring!

So here are a couple of other pictures I took around town earlier in the month. They are pretty much reverse chronological.

on campus - sorry, no idea what kind of flowers these are...

a dogwood at the school

dogwoods near the school

a church near the school - my first couple of years teaching, back before I got good blinds on my windows, I would look at the steeple from my classroom, but let's face it: too much sun + too many windows generates too much heat to leave the blinds open for the sake of a pretty view!

Today's Song - April 26

So this one is for Cutest. I lurv yer guts.

Cat Stevens - Trouble

Thinking about Palestine

Something else I've been doing in the past month is watching a couple of films about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. (Netflix is great.) The renewed pique in my interest was probably sparked by the Israeli announcement of additional apartments in East Jerusalem when Biden went to visit, although I didn't think at the time, "Wow! I've got to watch more documentaries about that!" It's been more subconscious than that.

So the NY Times reported today on a march of about 70 far-right Israeli demonstrators going through East Jerusalem (where a lot of Arabs do live, and where the Arabs see the future capital of their independent state). The Arab residents of the area came out on their balconies and did a lot of pot-banging and shouting of their own. My favorite quote of the article came at the end, when a Fatah representative said, "Where else in the world would you need 2,000 armed, fully equipped police officers to secure a failed march of 70 of your own citizens in an area that you claim as your capital?"

Besides reading in the news, here are the films I've watched this month:

Paradise Now (2005) - yeah, I bought this one. I had been eying it since its release. Finally I got on Netflix and found that I could stream it - and then the stream was only dubbed in English. I stopped watching about 6 minutes in convinced that I would need the DVD but that it would be powerful enough I would need a copy. I wasn't disappointed in the least. The film follows two young Palestinians who have agreed to be suicide bombers.

Encounter Point (2006) - a documentary about people on both sides of the conflict with family members who had been killed by the other side, and about their decision to meet each other and discuss their losses rather than perpetuating the hatred. Very moving. Can we hope that their desire for peace above all will come to fruition?

Until When... (2004) - another documentary, this time only of the Palestinian side, but it focuses on the refugee settlements. In interviews with five individuals/families, you get a pretty keen feel for the way the constant conflict and the pursuant interruptions could get under your skin. Having to buy water because it's just not turned on often enough to be able to store up what is needed. The checkpoints. The constant shooting, and the shelling. The interviewer invites each person/family being interviewed to describe the homes they had to leave behind, either with the first wave of the establishment of Israel, or in the settlements that continue to crop up. They talk with such longing, they describe their trees and their gardens, and places where their dialect was spoken. The underlining theme was an argument for the right to return.

I've ordered The Lemon Tree to watch soon. I've also had a book by the same name sitting on my shelf, waiting to be read, which I'll have to try to get to sooner or later. They don't appear to be linked beyond their titles. The film will be a must-see just because of one of the actresses, Hiam Abbass, who was phenomenal in The Visitor and had supporting roles in Paradise Now, Amreeka (SUPERB!), The Limits of Control (one of the more cryptic films I've watched recently), and Munich. Anyway, Hiam Abbass is one to watch a movie for.

But back on topic. I don't know how anyone can objectively look at the situation and not feel that the Palestinians have the perpetual short end of the stick. I have nothing admiration for the people who live there who can force themselves to work for peace and a solution. So will there ever be peace? I hope so, but my hope feels small.

Today's Song - April 25

I've been bad and I have done some downloading today. Yes, I know it is bad to spend money downloading, especially when money could do so many other things, but over the past month I have kept coming back to OK Go, and today my willpower crumbled and I downloaded their albums.

Why do I keep coming back to them? Good percussion, sure, but a bunch of their songs keep coming with a dose of reality tempered with an attitude of the real reality: You've just got to live, so you might as well focus on the good part.

So here is today's anthem from that mindset:

OK Go - All Is Not Lost

I had no idea there was lightning

This is a must see - photographs of the volcano erupting in Iceland. Lightning in the eruptions. I had no idea.

From the depths of the Earth to Outer Space

I admit I watch the TV shopping networks when they're showing jewelry. Stone jewelry. Precious, semi-precious - I am amazed at the colors of rocks that come out of the earth. But tonight I had to laugh when the presenter was trying to figure out how much three payments on $90 would be - she was like "I know we have someone here who can just figure that out..."

That woman makes a lot more than I do, and she gets to wear lots of pretty jewelry. Just saying.

Another funny thing today. I was reading an op-ed in the New York Times from Iceland. It's worth reading, but my favorite part was a description of a couple of the jokes that are making the rounds there, since the bursting bubble of Iceland's economy has caused problems in Europe, and now their erupting volcano has thrown air traffic in Europe off for the better part of a week. My favorite line?

"It was the last wish of the Icelandic economy that its ashes be spread over Europe."

Yeah, I had to laugh at that one out loud.

So here is today's song. Why? I don't know. Something about "And all the science, I don't understand. It's just my job five days a week..." And I was thinking about how you just don't get popular songs about outer space any more. Are we so used to it, those of us who were born after the start of the space age? We interact with space every day, sending information bouncing around from satellite to satellite and back again, and looking at the cool colorized pictures that the Hubble telescope shoots back to us. But who dreams of going into space? Why don't we long for it and sing about it? Have we given that dream up to the robots? I don't know. Anyway. Here is the song.

Elton John - Rocket Man

Tonight's Song - April 18

I am awake. Terribly so. I am tired enough that I should be asleep, but I have been awake since about 2:30 this morning, and I only slept fitfully before that. I think I am nervous because I have to speak in Sacrament Meeting today. I am not looking forward to it, and I don't feel like I have had time to flesh out my ideas - it has been a crazy week, so much so that I didn't even wake up Thursday morning until my first class had been in session for about 40 minutes. So I don't feel so put together these days, and speaking in church is only worsening the sentiment.

Why is it that when you feel like this you always run into something about how you're not just judged by whether you do something, you are also judged on your heart and WHY you are doing it? I wonder if my heart will ever be right.

Anyway, so I am awake. I read for a while, but I spent most of yesterday reading, so that didn't last long. Then I re-read a lesson I'm giving today (the teacher development course), and I finally decided to look for some music to listen to. And I decided to listen to The Temper Trap. They are awesome. And they have tonight's song.

The Temper Trap - Soldier On

Today's Song - April 12

Found this one while figuring out who won the Sanremo Music Festival this year, as I'll be doing a reading on the festival with my 3rd year student this week. This guy won the best young artist award. I liked this song better than the winner of the overall prize, so this is the one we'll do a fill-in-the-blank exercise with. Oh, isn't it fun to make everything scholastic. :P

CHEEZY ol' video, though. Overly sentimental even by Italian standards, I would think.

Tony Maiello - Il linguaggio della resa (The language of surrender)

Today's Song - April 10

Paul McCartney - Distractions

Today's Song, or Maybe Yesterday's?

I woke up with this one in my head. Does that mean it is mad at me for not posting it yesterday, or is it really today's song? I don't know. We'll have to see if another song comes along and takes over for today.

On an unrelated note, yesterday I did some cooking with coriander and fenugreek, and a little star anise and cinnamon, and today the house smells like bacon and maple syrup. Urgh. So I'm thinking I need to cook something with rosemary to drive that smell out. The smell of bacon should smell good to me, I know, but after working in the beef jerky factory years and years and years ago, it's just one of those smells that doesn't go away fast enough - especially when it's like today, smelling like bacon without ever really having been bacon.

Anyway. Here is today's song, or maybe yesterday's.

The Rosebuds - Silja Line

Today's Song - April 7

Just because some days it's just Tom Petty.

Runnin' Down a Dream

Today's Song - April 6

Broken Bells - The Ghost Inside

Ok, so this is the live playing from Jimmy Fallon. Amilynne actually called me up a few weeks ago to tell me to download this, and I had done so a couple of days before. She likes it because of the "clap clap" percussion. I love the horn. Anyway, it's awesome.

4/18 update: the Jimmy Fallon performance was removed from YouTube, so here's the studio version.

Today's Song - April 5

Shearwater - On the Death of the Waters

There is something about the first song on an album that I love. So often, it is one of my very favorite tracks, more than just as an introduction. For this song, it is the screaming middle after the quiet intro - it was not this song that attracted me to the band, (maybe that one will be the song of the day on another day) but it is one of the songs I keep going back to. Agony and a reflection of the pain in life.

Cleaning Up the Blog

So I've made a couple of changes to the blog, upgrading to the new format, getting rid of old links that didn't work, changing the name to something that says a lot more about me. (For the history books, it used to be "Don't Feed the Bears" - which also said something about me, but a lot less than the current title.) Who knows. Maybe I'll go back, but there doesn't seem to be a reason to.

That and I'm trying to figure out a new picture to replace the one in my profile of me at a very young age. I love that picture, but certainly something more current and memorable has been captured in the last 15 years.

Or maybe not.

Anyway, it's spring break, which is just lovely. I slept in this morning, and read in bed later still. I am reading ...And Ladies of the Club, and I've been reading it since last summer. Once upon a time I would stop everything in my life to read a book, now it has to fit into everything else. I was never going to be that kind of an adult. Anyway, back on topic, I read the book the summer I turned 21, right before going on my mission. It was the last great read before novels became a no-no for a while. Fantastic book. It chronicles the "Waynesboro Women's Club" and its members in a small Ohio town from the end of the Civil War well into the 20th century. Anyway, this morning one of the main characters died, and so I put the book down and did some work, because I'm not ready to go on yet. And I'm only 2/3 of the way through the book (it's just under 1500 pages). So maybe I'll finish it in under a year.

After this, I have some serious reading to do. This weekend I started going through Jacques Barzun's series of lectures from 1973, The Use and Abuse of Art. I wonder how much I understood when I first read it as an undergrad, and I wonder if I understand more or less now. I like to think that my mental capacities are now broader than they were. But I wonder.

Here is what I need, though. In the intro to his lectures, Barzun states that he assumes his essays' title will bring to his listeners' minds the title of some work by Nietzsche, The Use and Abuse of History. So what I need is for the libraries of the world to be completely interconnected so that I can click on that title, read a brief synopsis, decide whether to read the whole thing, and then get right back into Barzun. Why are we not there yet? The iPad was released this week, and one would hope that we are getting closer, but one fears that the publishers will never let us get so interlinked with anything they are hoping to still profit from. Wouldn't it be wonderful if the world's knowledge were linked together like the synapses of an all-encompassing brain? Wouldn't it be wonderful to be able to download understanding? But of course, it would take all of the work and effort out of it, and it would be absolutely defenseless against point-of-view and brainwashing...

But my undergrad years were wasted on me when I was young. Young, like in the profile picture. Does that person look like she gets it? Probably not. But oh, what a life ahead for her.

No news

So I have nothing much to write about, but here I am and I would rather blog than get ready for the next week. In my defense, it's one heck of a week coming up - Foreign Language Week - including our Foreign Language Film Festival after school (in reality, it's been going on for a week already, but we show the Italian movie Wednesday), decoration and banner making in class this week, the Foreign Language Honor Society inductions and banquet Thursday night, and cooking with my Italian classes Thursday and Friday. So I have spent much of this weekend trying to figure out just what I want to do - which film I want to show (I've settled on The Icicle Thief), what I want to cook (NO IDEA), etc, etc.

I really do need to figure out tonight what I will cook with them so I can put together a grocery list for tomorrow evening. Last year we made crostata. I don't remember what we made in the year before; I think we focused on how to make a good red sauce; and two years before that we made risotti - cheese in most of the classes, and a seafood one in classes with older (and more daring) students. We made chocolate salami before that, and before that gnocchi, and spaghetti alla carbonara, and one year we made fresh pasta, which I would like to do again, but it makes a colossal mess and I know I wouldn't have 6th period cleaned up before the freshman orientation class came in 8th period. Because of that, it might just be chocolate salami time again - it's quick, easy, and fairly low-mess. But I did something sweet last year, so I haven't decided for sure. I'm also considering pasta with tuna sauce, because it's one of my favorites, quick and easy, and something very different from what any of them would consider. I could maybe do one batch tuna and another onion so the fish haters would still have something to nosh on.

Anyway, plenty on the docket for this week, and I have a feeling I'll have plenty to recuperate from when spring break hits.

Back from Houston...

... and my brain is buzzing. There is so much to do. I have barely unpacked and I sat down at the bookcase to yank out any and all books having to do with philosophy, criticism, or thought of whatever kind. I've got to put these next in my reading list. There is so much to learn and to consider, and so little time.

So why all this? Because next year I should be teaching one level of Theories of Knowledge for IB. Which is such a huge mental exercise! But hopefully it will give me some interesting ideas to work out here, so maybe it will be a cause for more blogging.

Anyway, so here is the injunction I found scrawled on a tablet in the bookcase. I don't know the source, all I have written is that it is from Sanskrit 4500 years ago:

"Look well to the one day for it and it alone is life. In the brief course of this one day lie all the verities and realities of your existence. The pride of growth, the glory of action, the splendor of beauty. Yesterday is only a dream and tomorrow is but a vision. Yet each day well lived makes every yesterday a dream of happiness and each tomorrow a vision of hope. Look well, therefore, to this one day, for it and it alone is life."

Stone carving at Rice University, Houston

Farinata genovese

So in Genova there is a flatbread called farinata. It is quite different from other breads in that it is made of chick peas rather than flour. Strangely, to me it tastes kind of eggy, even though there are no eggs in it. Amilynne called me and was wondering about it because since it is made of legumes it is probably better for you than most breads. So I pulled out my recipe, we had a few laughs and a good language lesson translating it, and the farinata just came out of the oven.

Here's the recipe:

250g (about 2 cups) chick pea flour

3/4 of a liter of water

salt and pepper to taste

1/2 c. olive oil

First, soak the flour in the water for 4 hours. Then strain it. This was the surprising part - I ended up using my yogurt strainer and it took 28 hours to strain it all. I imagine that the needed time using cheesecloth would vary depending on how much surface area your strainer had. Anyway, once it's strained, stir in the oil really well - and it does take some stirring to suspend all that oil in the flour paste. It ends up the consistency of pancake batter. Then you're supposed to pour it on an oiled cooking sheet - I poured it into a giant nonstick oven-safe skillet instead, as it seemed that the oil content was probably already high enough. Bake until golden.

It turned out pretty good - a little less oily than the original, but still tasty. Buon appetito!

Epistemology, Subjunctive Mood, and Pizza

I love teaching Italian. Love it absolutely unabashedly smashingly 100%. Especially during the summer at the university. When the students have to look at it every day, it is an avalanche of information, but we're so absorbed in it that it gets in our bones.

I also love it because it's Italian. Have you ever heard a more beautiful, expressive language? Really? Right. I thought not. Sometimes just the sounds of Italian can be enough to choke me up and put tears smarting in my eyes. Some poetry is so mellifluous it could bring the world to its end. I was talking with an Italian friend once and I asked her if Italians realize just how beautiful their language is. "Ma certo," - of course - she said, out of hand.

And today was extraordinary. First off, you have to know that I have just the best little class right now. They are all working very hard and have their footing better than I did when I took Italian 102. Italian 102 made me cry. I have never felt more stupid than I did taking Italian 102, which is saying a lot. Let's just say that I am not the person from my Italian 102 class who was voted Most Likely to Be an Italian Teacher. I probably came in last for that, and my professor would probably die of shock if she found out. Anyway. I have a great class of students who are working hard.

So today started normally for a quiz day: vocabulary review, grammatical review, quiz. And a five minute break after the last person finishes their quiz. Well, the five minute break ended and two of the students were still gone, so I waited an extra minute but then we just went ahead and got started going over last night's homework. We hadn't gotten too far when one of the missing students poked her head in. She made a funny wincey face and then asked (in Italian), "Can we eat in here?" I consented. Both girls came in with slices of pepperoni pizza. And they're like, "Do you want some pizza? There's free pizza down in the quad." So the students in the class were all "Let us go get pizza!" I looked at the clock, and they were like "We'll stay late! Let us go get pizza! Come on! You want some too!"

And they were right. I love pizza. It may be the perfect food, along with gelato, pork chops, and chocolate. But I don't do pizza often because, let's face it, I don't need to be eating a whole pizza myself. Well, it has been such a good class. So I gave in. The two with the pizza stayed in the classroom, and the rest of us went down. It took about 7 minutes, and we talked Italian while we were in line. I did start to second guess myself that we should have done it after class, but when our last class member got the next-to-last slice, my misgivings went away. We went back up to the classroom. (The teacher for the next class was outside the classroom. She gave me a funny look as we walked past her, into the room, with pizza. Oh well.)

And this is where the class became brilliant. Because you see, language is always better if you are talking about real things, and there we were, biting into hot yummy slices of pizza, a perfect circumstance of real life having brought us to that point: some friends told some other friends about something that they had experienced.

And today's topic was the subjunctive. And here is how the lesson went.

Two students came in and said "There's free pizza in the quad." To them, the statement was absolute true fact. They had been there. They had stood in line and listened to the band performing there. They had received the pizza, and nibbled on it already. Everything about what they said was real.

For the rest of us, though, it wasn't real yet. The situation for us was different. We had to believe or not believe about the pizza. Our situation was this: "We think that there's free pizza in the quad." For all we knew, they were playing a joke on us, or the pizza would be gone before we got there, so in our case, "there's free pizza" was something that lacked complete certainty. And that would be expressed in the subjunctive.

Hooray! and perfect.

No Fly Zone

So it's July and as I am looking back over the past month, one thing is striking: I didn't fly anywhere in the month of June. Can I tell you how nice that is? I mean, I love to go to different places, but it's starting to get to the point where I wonder if having to go by plane doesn't just ruin the whole thing. In the past 6 months, I have flown round trip across the country three times, and on each trip I got stuck somewhere overnight on the outbound or on the return trip. That means that 50% of the time, they just haven't been able to get me to where I was going that day. I give the situation an F. And I'm glad to have stayed on the ground in June.

GAM

I woke up this morning dreaming of Torino. I don't know if I've ever dreamed of Torino before (besides possibly when I lived there). Always when I came back it was Genova Genova Genova in my dreams, but if I had limitless possibilities I would board a plane for Torino immediately. It is a beautiful city. I dreamed about taking my sister there and going to the Galleria Civica d'Arte Moderna e Contemporanea- GAM - a wonderful museum with much of its catalogue online. Of course, and this is typical, my favorite painting is not shown. It is IMMENSE, and it must be of St. Teresa, because it is of a levitating nun and other nuns are trying to hold her down, and there is a mother superior type nun who looks like she disapproves, although she might just be afraid. And it is (or was, in 1996) outside the galleries on the 19th century floor.

It would also be a lot of fun to go to Parco Valentino again and this time to buy the awesome catapult for sale in the weaponry replicas store. There was a guillotine there that was pretty cool too, but I've always been loyal to the catapult. And to cross the Po and see the Gran Madre, a beautiful domed church shown below (painting by Enrico Reycend, from GAM). And there were some twin churches that were cool, and a goldsmith, who was awesome, and I could really just go on and on. Anyway. Torino is just a really fantastic city, and if I were headed to Italy today, I would definitely swing by.

Captain Kirk and Filthy Wilma

So last weekend was my trek out to my mother's wedding. My scheduled arrival had me missing the big dinner the night before the event. My actual arrival was even later and included a night in the Phoenix airport. A night made much more pleasant by the generosity of a woman who cleans airplanes for Southwest at night who brought me a blanket to use, which she led me to believe was from one of the planes, but which I actually found out was her own personal blanket - the airline agent to whom I tried to return it the next morning said it wasn't one of theirs. Anyway. So when I arrived (finally!) for the wedding, one of the first pieces of news gleaned from my brother and my sister was that there was a pan of Filthy Wilma in the fridge, left over from the previous night's festivities. What is Filthy Wilma? Well, as Amilynne puts it, if you're a good Mormon, it's Republican Dessert, and if you're a bad Mormon, it's Filthy Wilma. And it's a crust topped with a cream cheese layer and a chocolate pudding layer, with various amounts of Cool Whip throughout, and it's mighty tasty.

Well, we attended the wedding, and the next day made a trek to Virginia City, which was a lot of fun. We played the Virginia City Game: on the way up the mountain to Virginia City, make a list of all of the people you want to see there. (We deviated and added a couple of things to our list, too.) Once in Virginia City, call these people/items as you see them, and when you go home, the person with the most points wins. My brother won, hands down. Let's just say that his ability to spot handlebar moustaches and mutton chops is the stuff of legend.

Also in Virginia City, we bought fudge at Grandma's Fudge Factory. Wow. You knew it would be good because you can watch them fluff up the hot fudge from the store window. It was seriously the best fudge I've ever bought. The guy working there was very funny. There was harmonica music playing, and it felt sad to him - he remarked on the irony of sad music in a candy store, and it was just funny. Anyway. We also went to the cemetery and to a shooting gallery, 45 shots for $2, which was an awesome fun time. Amilynne had made lunches for us to eat, but once we got back to the car, we decided to forego the sandwiches and go early to eat Basque food, then go see the Star Trek movie, which none of us had had a chance to see yet.

At the cemetery

So just how did Captain Kirk meet Filthy Wilma? Somewhere along the ride home, Amilynne let it slip that in Reno, you can bring your own food to the movie theater. She said that she had seen people bring in pizzas and fast food bags before. So of course, much to her chagrin, that night we walked into the theater toting a shiny silver 9x13 cake pan half full of Filthy Wilma. Popcorn will never be the same.

I thought the movie was awesome, by the way. 5 stars.

Filthy Wilma

Grandma's Fudge Factory -- yeah, it costs less when you actually go there.

A few words

So my absence here can be traced to one cause and one cause only: in January, I had the cable company come to take the analog box off of my cable for the new "digital transition" and all, and when the box went away, I got like 30 more channels.  So I have been watching TV for the past five months.   Just so you know.

I've also had an incredible number of migraine headaches.  Go figure.

Today I was flipping channels and saw Prague.  Which of course meant I had to stop and watch.  The movie was xXx, staring the city of Prague and Vin Diesel.  And I watched it all.  You know the building the Americans take over as their little weapons armory?  Yeah.  That's my favorite building in Prague, except that instead of a weapons armory inside, there's a little bar where Amilynne kindly got coffee so I could sit and soak the building in.  So of course the movie prompted a phone call to Amilynne, which led to her getting out her travel journal from last summer and basically reading the whole thing, punctuated with exclamations from both of us and little details added from my journal.  So I have just relived the trek from Prague to Rome.  I can't even begin to express how I wish it were summer and I had a ticket for Europe!  

It's not summer.  I have a stack of work to grade that will only grow this week, so I ought to get to it.  And maybe do some lesson planning too, and some prep work on final exams and all.  And since the season for good television is waning, maybe I'll write more here too in the coming days.

For pure enjoyment

Yeah.  I am loving this one.

Pancetta is a gift from the gods.

So tonight I made a wonderful concoction: a couple of slices of pancetta cubed and fried up with garlic, add water, a chipotle cube, green lentils, and split mung beans.  Cook.  When they're about ready, throw in some spinach, and top with European style yogurt (runny, no pectin, super tangy).  Chompy winter's gruel.  

The Great Music Trawl - December Edition

So tonight I did my monthly Internet music trawl and came up with some interesting things.  I come up with interesting things almost every month, and I guess I could make a note of them here, why not?

So what is the monthly music trawl?  I have a subscription to emusic, so I have 75 downloads each month (and I often buy extras - yes, I'm a junkie).  I have stopped listening to music on the radio, as the redundance of the music usually bored me to tears and morning DJs around here are loud and crude and I just can't get into that.   The last morning radio show I liked was Tim and Yvonne on 93.3 in Dallas - but that incarnation of that station has been stone cold in the grave for a long time now, along with the morning show.  So I very much listen to stuff I find on the Internet.  I have found some great stuff.  Here is what I found for this month:

The Magnetic Fields.  They issued 3 albums in 1999 called 69 (vols. 1, 2, & 3), each with 23 songs - love songs.  Ha!  And I figured the love song has been dead since at least 1993.  But apparently 69 of them appeared in 1999.  The song that made me know I would like this group is called "The Book of Love" and it's about being in love with a reader.  :D   

So that was 69 of the 75 downloads.  You can guess, can't you, that I had to buy extra tracks this month.

Next I found Langhorne Slim.  He is described as being sort of country/folk, but he's more folk than country, or at least most of his better songs are (other songs are more sing-along-with-your-beer-glass-swaying).  But he's acoustic and cool, and the killer song is "Restless," all about how one could blame one's screwed up inability to commit on lots of things, but deep down really you're just (you guessed it) restless.

So really, that should have been enough for the month, but it's December, and therefore it's a month for excess, so of course I ran up against The Cribs.  They are AWESOME.  They are the band tonight that I am the most excited about - sort of Killers, sort of really 80's pop, current album (Men's Needs, Women's Needs, Whatever) produced by one of the guys in Franz Ferdinand (hooray!) so you can kind of hear them in there from time to time too, anyway, it's the album I'm listening to right now.  And did I mention JOHNNY MARR JOINED THE BAND???  Yeah.  Ok.  HAD to have it.  Here's the deal, though: for some reason, it wasn't currently downloadable on emusic, so I had to go to Amazon and buy it.  (The track Be Safe stands out because it's spoken instead of sung, but really the whole thing is fantastic so far.)

While on Amazon, a thumbnail for Weezer Chrismas caught my eye.  Couldn't be good.  But I gave the samples a listen.  Yeah.  Most of it wasn't good - let's face it, most carols just honestly sound bad when played by rock bands, especially rock bands as tied to a solid beat as is Weezer.  The exception?  O Holy Night - the complexities of the flowing accompaniament made it interesting enough that I downloaded that track.  Why not?  It's my favorite religious carol, and so I kind of collect versions of it, some better and some not as good.

So then I was done for the night.  Except then I was writing this post and clicked back over to emusic to check something and I couldn't help but start playing the sample that popped up and it was really good.  Best of Stereophonics.  Which is a band I've definitely heard of but don't know if I've ever really heard.  They are super good.  So I downloaded the Best Of album for a nice overview (some bands are too prolific to ever catch up with for real).

Anyway, so that is what happened tonight while I was trawling for music.  A nice evening.  And now there is stuff to listen to for the next month.  I'm such a geek, but I enjoy this way too much.  It's like I'm still twelve recording songs I like off the radio.  Yeah, I'll never grow up.

To be fair, Amilynne nails it here.

A bit of art history while we wait to go to the Uffizi in Firenze. Michelangelo greets Julius upon the former's return from Carrera on a trip to procure marble for the latter's amazingly grandiose tomb.

Brilliant.

Amilynne Gets It Wrong

Amilynne and I got in a discussion today over Christine's World. The discussion was prompted by my telling her about my trip to MoMA. I took the above picture just for her, but I guess now it's for everyone. Anyway. So here I am standing next to this amazing painting. And here's how Amilynne got it dead wrong.

You see, the painting is of Christine, who has fallen and can't get up, and is so dreadfully far away from the farmhouse, she could pull herself along with her hands, but that would really be a rough job, and by the time she got there, her pretty pink dress would, at the best, be grass stained, and at the worst, be torn to rags. How did she get there? Don't know. But the immensity of the space between her and the house shows that she's not getting back any time soon.

Amilynne about died when I said that she couldn't get up. She says that Christine chooses not to get up. She is just there relaxing.

Amilynne is usually right on mark, but this one she absolutely doesn't get. See how Christine is downhill from the house? See how there is almost a swirling vortex between her and the house? See how her hair has flyaways on the sides? See how the farmhouse door and the path to it point away from Christine and off the side of the painting? (There aren't even any windows facing Christine - the house is blind to her.) See how everything is late autumn dead and not early spring green and alive? She's not going to make it in before the first winter storm blows in and freezes her to death. She is not calmly relaxing. She is not at home in bed eating bonbons.

So free will or determinism? For once, Amilynne seems to be the optimistic one.

Election Politics at School

One of my students expressed yesterday that if Obama doesn't win the election, she figures she won't be at school for a couple of days after. I asked why, and she said (so matter-of-factly) that she expects her neighborhood (and mine) to erupt in riots "if they steal the election from Obama." Wow. The implications. The biggest to me: that a loss for Obama will be automatically seen by some as evidence of election fraud. So then the guys in the class chimed in about the constitutional right to overthrow the government if it fails us. Which of course implies that they feel that a McCain win would be a signal of the government's failure.

We're doing a "mock election" at school Monday. I bet it goes 99.9% for Obama, and I know exactly which kid will break for McCain.

Well, I'm going to go Halloweening. It's nice to have one night of the year to pretend that what's really scary is vampires and mummies. Tomorrow I guess we have to face politics again.

It's Official...

October is the month of birthdays - dad's and Junior's. Junior turned 3. Anyway, in typical Melissa fashion, I got the box off late. It arrived this week, and Dad took it over to open with the Kiddo and family - and Junior was very excited by all of it. Apparently he kept saying "It's from Aunt Melissa. It's from Aunt Melissa." but then he capped it off with "She's a very good girl."

Ha!

Must be true. ☺

I promise I'll eventually stop posting about the Quiz...

but Cutest finally found the post about her, so now I have to post how I see her...

Cutest seems darkslategray #2F4F4F

Your dominant hues are green and blue. You're smart and you know it, and want to use your power to help people and relate to others. Even though you tend to battle with yourself, you solve other people's conflicts well. Your saturation level is lower than average - You don't stress out over things and don't understand people who do. Finishing projects may sometimes be a challenge, but you schedule time as you see fit and the important things all happen in the end, even if not everyone sees your grand master plan. Your outlook on life is dark. You're generally a pessimist and everyone knows it; you're the one the come to when they don't want the sunshine blown around, they just want to straight truth. You can miss good things in life if you make up your mind too early though.

the spacefem.com html color quiz

And Amilynne Takes the Color Quiz About Me

Let me tell you what happens when you rent a funky bicycle for two in the Borghese Gardens in Rome. Your sister thinks you're a lot more fun than you really are.

(Borghese Gardens bicycles RULE!!!)

you are mediumorchid #BA55D3

Your dominant hues are red and blue. You're confident and like showing people new ideas. You play well with others and can be very influential if you want to be. Your saturation level is medium - You're not the most decisive go-getter, but you can get a job done when it's required of you. You probably don't think the world can change for you and don't want to spend too much effort trying to force it. Your outlook on life is brighter than most people's. You like the idea of influencing things for the better and find hope in situations where others might give up. You're not exactly a bouncy sunshine but things in your world generally look up.

the spacefem.com html color quiz

Amilynne takes the Color Quiz.

She dislikes the fact that it is all yes or no. We also had a bit of entertainment when it became a challenge to express the "yes" or "no" in an adverbial manner to match the adjective described. More entertaining than the quiz itself, even.

So here is Amilynne:

you are aquamarine #7FFFD4

Your dominant hues are cyan and green. Although you definately strive to be logical you care about people and know there's a time and place for thinking emotionally. Your head rules most things but your heart rules others, and getting them to meet in the middle takes a lot of your energy some days. Your saturation level is medium - You're not the most decisive go-getter, but you can get a job done when it's required of you. You probably don't think the world can change for you and don't want to spend too much effort trying to force it. Your outlook on life is very bright. You are sunny and optimistic about life and others find it very encouraging, but remember to tone it down if you sense irritation.

the spacefem.com html color quiz