The Age of Reason, Part 1

Below I've posted some extracts from the pamphlet "The Age of Reason" by Thomas Paine, known most widely to us as the author of the Revolutionary pamphlet "Common Sense." He wrote "The Age of Reason" later in life, living in France during the days of their Revolution, where he was quickly dismayed to see the ideals of freedom turned to bloody ends. Eventually the French imprisoned him as an enemy foreigner, and he passed the first part of the manuscript off to a friend as they hauled him off to jail.

According to Susan Jacoby, the writing of "The Age of Reason" was responsible for Paine's relative anonymity throughout much of the intervening two centuries. It was only in the 20th century that he was re-discovered by scholars; in the interim, he had been thoroughly tarred and feathered with the brush of secularism, atheism, blasphemy, and, most ironically, for such a staunch supporter of revolutionary ideals, lack of patriotism. "The Age of Reason" is a rational deconstruction of the claim of all religions to authenticity, but in particular, it is an attack on Christianity, which, unsurprisingly, earned it and its writer the full opprobrium of the Church.

The beginning and the end of the essay are the most powerfully written portions. The middle, where he basically goes book-by-book in the Bible showing how it's all nonsense, Moses didn't write Genesis, Luke and Matthew can't even agree on a geneology of Jesus, etc., is a little much, not in the least because that knowledge has become part of an educated reading of the Bible nowadays, even for many devout Christians. However, the passages where he defines Deism and where he attacks the way organized religion has clouded our perception of the world are quite striking.

And without further ado, from "The Age of Reason, Pt 1:"

"I believe in one God, and no more; and I hope for happiness beyond this life.

I believe the equality of man, and I believe that religious duties consist in doing justice, loving mercy, and endeavoring to make our fellow-creatures happy.

But, lest it should be supposed that I believe many other things in addition to these, I shall, in the progress of this work, declare the things I do not believe, and my reasons for not believing them.

I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Turkish church, by the Protestant church, nor by any church that I know of. My own mind is my own church.

All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian, or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit.

I do not mean by this declaration to condemn those who believe otherwise; they have the same right to their belief as I have to mine. But it is necessary to the happiness of man, that he be mentally faithful to himself. Infidelity does not consist in believing, or in disbelieving; it consists in professing to believe what he does not believe.

… Every national church or religion has established itself by pretending some special mission from God, communicated to certain individuals. The Jews have their Moses; the Christians their Jesus Christ, their apostles and saints; and the Turks their Mahomet; as if the way to God was not open to every man alike.

Each of those churches shows certain books, which they call revelation, or the Word of God. The Jews say that their Word of God was given by God to Moses face to face; the Christians say, that their Word of God came by divine inspiration; and the Turks say, that their Word of God (the Koran) was brought by an angel from heaven. Each of those churches accuses the other of unbelief; and, for my own part, I disbelieve them all."

Creeping Up on 900 Posts

Anyway, ever wonder who those people are who manage to throw checks out? As it turns out, I'm one of them. Somehow, I discarded my federal tax return check and had to call the hotline to have them re-issue it. Sigh. So I'll be cashing that in about, oh, mid-July, if the government fulfills its 45-day promise.

This weekend Sean and I will be headed back to Pomfret to meet with the owner of Gwyn Careg, go over the estimate he sent me and maybe, just maybe, put down the deposit. Excitement! And on an unrelated carpe diem-ish note, below is a poem I enjoy.

To his Coy Mistress

by Andrew Marvell


Had we but world enough, and time,
This coyness, lady, were no crime.
We would sit down and think which way
To walk, and pass our long love's day;
Thou by the Indian Ganges' side
Shouldst rubies find; I by the tide
Of Humber would complain. I would
Love you ten years before the Flood;
And you should, if you please, refuse
Till the conversion of the Jews.
My vegetable love should grow
Vaster than empires, and more slow.
An hundred years should go to praise
Thine eyes, and on thy forehead gaze;
Two hundred to adore each breast,
But thirty thousand to the rest;
An age at least to every part,
And the last age should show your heart.
For, lady, you deserve this state,
Nor would I love at lower rate.

But at my back I always hear
Time's winged chariot hurrying near;
And yonder all before us lie
Deserts of vast eternity.
Thy beauty shall no more be found,
Nor, in thy marble vault, shall sound
My echoing song; then worms shall try
That long preserv'd virginity,
And your quaint honour turn to dust,
And into ashes all my lust.
The grave's a fine and private place,
But none I think do there embrace.

Now therefore, while the youthful hue
Sits on thy skin like morning dew,
And while thy willing soul transpires
At every pore with instant fires,
Now let us sport us while we may;
And now, like am'rous birds of prey,
Rather at once our time devour,
Than languish in his slow-chapp'd power.
Let us roll all our strength, and all
Our sweetness, up into one ball;
And tear our pleasures with rough strife
Thorough the iron gates of life.
Thus, though we cannot make our sun
Stand still, yet we will make him run.

Not on Secularism, But Thoughts Pt 2

My recent contemplation of my thoughts on religion and secularism has been provoking more and more of these little moments where I find myself mentally confronting another of those beliefs that has no rational basis, but which has managed to hang on determinedly in my mind all the same.

These kind of beliefs remind me of knick-knacks: they serve no purpose, take up space and are often kept around for purely sentimental reasons, but you know you still kind of like them. For example, why do I have in my den, among other things, a miniature carnival mask from Venice, a replica of the Eiffel tower, and a Native American pot? They're not high quality and I don't need them to remind me of where I've been; that's why I have photos. They're just tourist junk, but I keep them around all the same.

Anyway, in this particular instance the issues that came to mind were the existence of heaven, the immortality of the soul, and really, the existence of any soul at all. I was driving back from CVS on my lunch break and thinking about death (which is not that unusual, for me) and how I think it's kind of foolish for people to be afraid of what happens when you die. I mean, everyone fears the unknown, and of course we also fear the pain of dying, and what it means to be cut short from life, but really, if you're a good person, what do you have to be afraid of? If there is a God who has a heaven, you're probably going to go there. Alternatively, if there is no God or no heaven or just nothing, you won't know that until....ever. Because you'll be dead. End of story.

Then I stopped myself, because I started to question the assumptions that I was making. Does God, if he exists, necessarily have to have a heaven? My concept of God as a remote observer does not include the threat of eternal damnation, so I don't quite see that there would be the promise of eternal life, either. I find it entirely possible that there could be a God who offers nothing more than your single, finite life on this planet. Next, if I accept that there could be a heaven, what part of you resides there? Most religious authorities would say the soul. I'm not going to spend a lot of time going over the various concepts of the soul, but I think a lot of people would think of it as something that separates 'man from beast.'

Of course, then my question becomes the following: if I accept as scientific truth that humans emerged from so-called lower forms as part of a continuous (and continuing) process of evolution, instead of the dirt-and-rib creation myth, is it possible to identify a moment in that process where God stepped in and said "Well, the ape behind you had no soul, but you're a man now, so you have one. Go put on a fig leaf." It's kind of impossible to do so, especially since species don't evolve in an instant. There was never a time when there was one single homo sapiens that suddenly popped up among his soul-less Neanderthal relatives as the only creature on the planet with a soul. I don't believe God 'steps in' anyway. So this theory for the human soul doesn't make sense to me.

Alternatively, you could posit that what we think of as the soul is really just a by-product of evolution, a more highly developed sense of self-awareness that other species, given infinite time, would have at least the possibility to develop. This would obviously make a lot of people unhappy, because just as mankind clung so long to the theory of geocentricity as a way of underlining human exceptionalism in the universe, suggesting that our precious individual souls are nothing more an yet another evolutionary outgrowth would be a damaging blow to the collective ego of the species. Still, this is the explanation that makes the most sense to me. So, if I don't believe that God, at my conception, created a unique soul for me and sent it out into the world, how can I expect that, at my death, there is anything more special reserved for it than the same end the rest of me will meet?

The obvious and disillusioning implication of this theory is that if the soul does not have immortality and there is no afterlife, there is no chance that I'll ever see my parents again. That is a bitter thought, indeed. I remember being on the point of tears a few weeks ago in Zoi's Pizza when Sean casually mentioned, during a conversation on old age, that if I lived to be 85, when I died I wouldn't have seen my dad in seventy years. But like I said before, a lot of beliefs we keep because they're comforting, not because they're logical. Of course it's comforting to imagine my family waiting for me in heaven, but...I have to admit to myself that I don't really believe they are.

I think humans have spun tales of the afterlife for so long precisely because it is so terrifying to think that we have only this short span of life on earth, and that those whose are gone, are really gone. We want more--when haven't we wanted more of everything? Humans are frequently, if not inherently, greedy with food, money, status, and sex. Life is no different.

Viewed in another light, for those people who quake with fear at the thought of facing judgment when they die, this concept can really be more freeing than anything. What will you do with your life if there is nothing more beyond it? How will you use the time you're given, and how will you be remembered by the ones who loved you? To my mind, that's the only immortality we can hope to achieve. In that sense, then, my family is not only present, but enduring. As long as there are stories to be told of the Fat Man and Mrs. D., they'll live forever.

Gwyn Careg

Yesterday Sean and I visited the Gwyn Careg Inn in Pomfret, which was about an hour's drive from Sean's apartment. It was a pretty day and a very scenic drive, with more and more small farms as we got closer. When we turned down the inn's road, I looked to the right and there were two llamas grazing next to a fence. Awesome! You know I love the llamas.

The inn is, quite simply, fucking awesome, and we are getting married there. I knew this for a fact about ten minutes after we arrived and met Dennis, who along with his wife is the proprietor of the inn. He was really friendly and gave us a tour of the house, and the five suites on the second floor (his family lives on the third floor). The rooms were all awesome, especially this one two-bedroom suite with three queen size beds that could easily fit bridesmaids for the night beforehand...let's think about that, bachelorette party! The bridal suite was pretty awesome too, with a canopied bed and a huge baroque-style mirror.

Anyway, the inside is nice, but it's the 14 acres of beautifully landscaped grounds that are the real selling point. There's a lake, and there's a walled garden where people usually have the wedding ceremony (you can see my pictures here). As soon as we walked outside I told Sean "We're getting married here!" and he agreed. It's a very "us" place. Obviously, it's kind of out of the way, but it's been pointed out to me that people are generally pretty willing to go a little out of their way for a wedding, especially when there's food and possibly an open bar involved.

Now I just have to wait for Dennis to email me a quote, and figure out which is the best weekend in June for scheduling purposes. Sean will be graduating Notre Dame around mid-May, and we need enough time to get us both back to New Haven and put the finishing touches on everything. Sean thinks the 12th would be the better idea, but I'd prefer the 5th, for no other reason than I like the number 5 than the number 12. If I'm going to be celebrating this day for the rest of my life, I might as well pick something that appeals to me aesthetically, right?

Thoughts on Secularism, Part 1

I'm almost finished with Susan Jacoby's book "Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism." In addition to filling in gaps in my knowledge about the way American society has grappled with the idea of the secular state as envisioned in the Constitution, it's really helped me draw together my own thoughts on religion and why I don't have one--namely, because I think religion, in all its incarnations, is essentially a barrier to human freedom, a freedom based on reason and logic instead of the fear of divine retribution.

I think people have a hard time envisioning a world without religion because we've been taught by the religious establishment that an irreligious culture is inherently more violent and more depraved, and that only religion can serve as a bulwark against moral chaos. People tend to think that morality can only exist within a framework of religious belief becuse so much mud has been flung over the centuries at people who live their lives outside of it. I don't think we need divine revelation to provide codes of proper human behavior. I don't think we need to be treated like wayward children by some paternalistic deity to know that killing and war are evil things, or that we should help the poor and extend rights to men and women of every color. Do I need the Ten Commandments to tell me that adultery is a bad idea, or that lying is wrong? Couldn't we figure that much out on our own?

Of course, to my mind, we DID figure that out on our own, because I don't think any religion's holy writings were inspired by God. I think it makes more sense that every religion is a man-made product of the time and people among whom it sprang forth, and reflects their understanding of what proper codes of behavior should be, reinforced with "by the way, this is Truth with a capital T, our God says so!" That, to me, is one reason why the God of the Old Testament, with his smiting of everyone who even looked sideways at the Israelites, wouldn't even recognize the touchy-feely "suffer the little children to come unto me" God of the New Testament if he passed him in a hallway. Different time periods, different cultural situations, many, many different writers.

So it's not that I'm saying that the moral codes on which many religions base themselves are inherently wrong; I just wish people would be able to remove the supernatural elements that keep everyone so at odds with one another. Forget the need to justify everything as coming from God in order to be right--trust human ability to determine what is right and wrong. Societies would be much more able to co-exist if we were emerging from a common, rationalist background, instead of vehemently defending this or that faith. Look at how much time the Catholic church spends claiming its supremacy over all other Christian faiths; look how much energy Muslims put into reviling infidels and apostates to their 'true religion.' Why do we have to assume that God intended to prescribe every inch of our behavior? Why were we provided with the capacity to reason, if not to make a better world for ourselves?

I do believe in God, incidentally. In my more cynical moments I wonder if that's because I find it too frightening to give up that last belief in an over-arching divine plan. On the whole, though, I don't find it incompatible with reason that there is a God. The universe began with the Big Bang, but who pushed the lever on that one? This is basically the "prime mover" argument, which provided the foundation of the Deism that was popular among America's founding fathers. In my mind, God set the wheel in motion and stepped back; he/she/it is a remote, though benevolent, observer.

I know that my frequent motto of "things work out the way they're supposed to" is not compatible with my ideas on God, and I recognize as irrational my persistent belief that in certain situations God 'steps in.' It's hard to shake it, not only because it's so ingrained but also because it's comforting--and who wants to give up what is comforting for what is more frightening? For example, it's easy to characterize my parents' deaths as having occurred because that was the way God wanted it, but really, let's be honest here, my father died because he was an overweight diabetic with too much stress, and my mother died because of years of anorexia weakened her heart, coupled with high triglycerides and diabetes. I don't believe God is sitting up there punching people's tickets.

I used to ask God to watch over my mom and keep her safe, because I was afraid of her dying and being left with no parents. I can’t really say that worked, obviously, but I still find myself nightly asking God to watch over Jen and Sean, because they’re the family I have left. I know I say it more for myself than anything, because as much as I do believe God is watching, I don’t really believe that God intercedes here or there on the basis of someone’s prayer. And yet I don’t consider it irrational to thank God for the good things that happen in my life. After all, if that prime mover had never begun this process in the first place, would I be here enjoying the fruits of creation? I like to give credit where I feel it’s due.

To bring this back to the subject of my post, Jacoby’s book helped me recognize that not only do I believe in a humanist morality based on reason, I think organized religion prevents people from utilizing their full faculty of reason and capacity for goodness. Religion convinces people of their own unworthiness and demeans them to a state where they have to rely on ‘divine revelation’ (transmitted through entirely fallible human conduits) to tell them how to live. Why else do Catholics say before Communion, “My Lord, I am not worthy to receive you, but only say the word and I shall be healed”? That accomplishes nothing besides keeping individuals in a state of intellectual and spiritual bondange. And people stay, not only because it's how they've been raised, but because it feels safe. Imagine how much freedom mankind has been willing to sacrifice in favor of being told what to do.

Weekend

This weekend I ventured into the hinterlands of Brooklyn to visit Jen for her birthday. It was lucky for me that it was a nice day; because of some construction the D dropped me off not at 20th Ave and 86th, about a five-block walk from Jen’s apartment, but at 20th and 63rd. Of course, it was worth walking thirty blocks to be greeted by Sapphire, aka “Feed Me,” who has, improbably enough, grown even more rotund since the last time I saw her.

As spending time with Jen goes, this weekend wasn’t bad—we didn’t even get into a single fight the whole time. Somewhat of a pall was cast by the fact that Bill’s mom is in the hospital and likely dying of cancer. Apparently it began as ovarian cancer and they didn’t catch it in time—she never went for the yearly OB/GYN exam, a reminder to all you ladies—and now she’s refusing chemo, pain meds, everything. It’s been very hard for Bill, who functions sort of as the paterfamilias in the absence of any more senior male members of the family. It’s also hard on Jen, because Bill tries to be one of those stiff-upper-lip guys and she doesn’t want to push, but she wants to be there for him like he was for her when our mom died. When she was trying to offer the kind of “you’ll make it though this” advice that I, personally, found extremely annoying to receive when you’re in the middle of a crisis, Bill pointed out that the situations are very different. It’s one thing to get the call that something awful has happened, and another to wait and wonder and not know, from day to day, if they’re going to die.

It sounds terrible, but I think it’s easier when there’s no hope. There was a difference between my dad’s and my mom’s deaths—when he collapsed and the paramedics were trying to revive him, I didn’t know if he was going to die or not. My mom said later she knew because his skin had turned a grayish color, but I didn’t know, so of course I was praying and hoping and making all kinds of deals with God, and I think that made it even more painful to get to the hospital and hear that they couldn’t save him after all. It was a terrible blow, too, to find out that my mom was dead, but it was already done with. There was no last, desperate chance that they might revive her and it would all be OK.

Anyway, in light of what’s going on with his mom, and it being Mother’s Day, naturally the conversation turned to death a few times. I was kind of surprised to find that Jen agreed with me that it was better for us the way our parents died. I thought she would have wanted to be able to say goodbye at any price, but she acknowledged she wouldn’t have been able to watch our mom waste away in a hospital bed. We also agreed that, when the times comes, that’s the way we want to go out. It’s the DiMarzo way.

However, I was also disturbed and saddened to find out my sister’s real feelings about our dad. I made some joking comment about how Bill is like him, and she got all serious and said that Bill never makes her feel bad about herself like he did. I was surprised, and naturally I tried to remind her about all the good times we had and how good a father he was, but she cut me off and told me that I’ve obviously glossed all the bad parts over in my mind and that I don’t remember things the way they really were. Which is not true—I remember the screaming fits that would start over nothing, I remember him making me cry, I remember being angry at him a lot of the time and swearing I’d never be like him. But what I also remember, and what Jen is choosing to forget, is all the laughs we shared and the fun we had, and how often he told us how proud he was, how smart we were, how we could do anything. My dad had flaws; he was depressed, he struggled with his expectations of what he wanted from life, and he took his frustrations out on his family. But that doesn’t mean he didn’t love us or that he wasn’t a good father. I know that a lot of who I am today is because of him, in a good way.

I also know that my relationship with him was different that the one he had with Jen. They were adversarial, always arguing, and Jen pushed his buttons on purpose, although she got mad and cut our discussion short yesterday when I mentioned that. I was the type to try to smooth things over with him, the type to try to avoid starting a quarrel, but Jen always had to get right in there and say something to set him off. She was the eldest, too, and everyone knows they get it harsher from their parents. I was younger, I never had any trouble in school, and I always tried to placate him as much as possible, so we wound up in fewer conflicts. I do remember him picking on her for things like her posture, her manners (which are still pretty bad to this day), the fact that she didn’t do well enough in math to make him happy. I remember a particularly hair-raising fight that came from her getting a C in math in high school.

Maybe it’s understandable why she remembers things differently; maybe he did make her feel bad about herself. But Jen also has a tendency to remember things in the most gloomy way possible—for example, her random assertion that she thinks we weren’t good daughters to our mom, or that she feels bad using any of the money we inherited because it was theirs and we don’t deserve it, or another gem that came out of this weekend, namely that my grandfather’s creepiness at the end “broke Mom’s heart” and contributed to her death. WTF? The man was senile! Yes, I’m sure it bothered my mom a good deal to be hit on by her father-in-law, but broke her heart is a little over-dramatic, and very….Jen.

Aside from the fact that I feel like my father’s memory is being a little tarnished by Jen’s over-dramatization, I also feel sad for her that she can’t draw on those happy memories. I guess I had always assumed that she told funny JTD stories too, and that she and Bill cracked jokes about him the way Sean and I do. I told Sean yesterday that sometimes I feel like Sean really knew him, even though he was dead long before we met, because of the way we joke about things he would have said or done. We talk about all my dead relatives that way: ‘Remember, your grandfather grew up a young Polish boy in Chicago!’ It’s comforting as well as being amusing, because it’s like they’re still around, they’re not just faces in photographs.

My personal favorite, of course, is Sean’s imagining of a little Mrs. D visiting her grown-up self and asking about the fate of her three deadbeat brothers: “What do you mean, we haven’t danced on their graves? What do you MEAN, we went first?!”

My Boss is Awesome...Again

So this morning I was kind of annoyed that in spite of my boss' return to the office after four days' absence, I still had absolutely nothing to do besides twiddle my fingers and roam the Internet's wild expanses, which, as this week has shown, gets old fast. Then as I was in the midst of a Wikipedia-fueled refresher course on the causes of the Civil War (see what I mean?) Paul called me into his office and had me shut the door. Ruh roh, you might say, except you are forgetting that Paul is (1) awesome and (2) thinks of me as some kind of office wunderkind who has the most amazing organizational skills ever. Definitely an exaggeration, but one that works in my favor.

Anyway, reason for the closed door was Paul decided to give me another raise, which is under any circumstances a reason of awesomeness. Then he tells me that he considered just giving it to me as a really nice bonus when I leave, but he decided that it would more helpful to me to be able to say to future employers that at my last job I was making X amount and have X be the largest possible number. So Paul is not only awesome, but thoughtful, too, even though I then burst his bubble by telling him the next time I'm negotiating a salary will probably be the better part of a decade from now, and they probably won't care what I was making the year before I started grad school.

We also discussed the issue of my replacement, the hunt for which started a few weeks ago and has already been a pain in the neck. We narrowed it down to two, but those two then neglected to send thank-yous after their interviews, and Paul is a big stickler for etiquette in these matters. I took the opportunity of asking where exactly he's planning on putting whoever we hire, for the three and a half months that I'll still be here. (I won't lie, foremost on my mind was protecting the fun times Heather and I have out front. It would be kind of difficult to share salacious stories of our pasts and make inappropriate comments about things posted on DListed if there's someone sitting right next to me, not to mention the adverse effect it would have on my own Internet surfing.)

To my chagrin, Paul said he thought he would put the new person at my desk and have me move to one of the two empty offices, to which I replied (in my mind) "Dear God, no." Empty Office 1 is what we call "The Batcave," a tiny windowless space in the back, with paperthin walls and a quirk of the heating/cooling system in there that results in the temperature being regulated by our next door neighbor's preferences. Empty Office 2 is the one next to Heather and I and is actually the largest one in the office, but it bears the taint of what befell the last two attorneys to occupy it. Namely, they're not in it anymore.

Thank God, though, that Paul is cool enough that he actually wanted my input on this. Future new person: welcome to the Batcave.

May Already

Time flies when you're having fun! Which I'm not, this week, because my boss is out of the office and left me with virtually nothing to do. Even the internet gets pretty boring after a few straight hours of impatiently checking DListed and Jezebel to see if they've been updated yet.

I also just remembered with great irritation that I forgot my book to read at lunch. In Paul's absence I'm deprived of my free New York Times, and I'm way too cheap to go buy one at the gas station. Yesterday I finished reading "Devil in the White City," which is a kind of narrative non-fiction that blends the story of the creation of the Chicago World's Fair in 1892 with the tale of America's first famous serial killer, a doctor who murdered dozens of young women (in addition to men and some children) who came to the city on their own looking for adventure and freedom. The book was extremely detailed and well-researched, and compellingly written, definitely on my list of recommendations.

Now I've moved on to Susan Jacoby's "Freethinkers," which is a history of American secularism, although of course I won't be reading any of it today because it's sitting on my couch at home. Tonight is also Thursday, which means one of the rare nights I'll actually watch TV. Ugly Betty and Lost, baby!

In Which I Have Baked

Successfully! It feels good to know that I'm not a failure at this, which was definitely one of my mom's gifts. I made Amish friendship bread from some starter that Sean's step mom Debbie gave me. It's basically a bag of goo that you have to "mush" every day for ten days, adding some flour and sugar in the middle while it does its business. I've discovered that fermentation of bread, like any other kind of alcohol production, smells kind of off-putting. It is not entirely pleasant to catch that scent wafting out of the cupboard in the morning as I grab my Cheerios, but how else would I remember to fulfill its daily mushing quotient?

The bread itself is good, it's basically a similar consistency to banana bread, it just tastes very sweet and cinnamon-y. Too sweet for my taste, actually. And I really don't think it's worth the time and money (3 eggs, 4 cups of flour, 4 cups of sugar, and a host of other surprisingly-expensive baking items go into each week's batch) to make bread that I could much more easily whip up with some blackened, frozen bananas. It is cool that it makes four separate starters each week, so I could pass three on and keep one. I plan on giving one to Linda and one to Mrs. Flanagan if I see her this weekend.

Sean comes home on Sunday! He's had a great trip thus far, and we've been fortunate to be able to talk a little every day, either by phone or email, so that I can assure Linda that her darling boy is safe and not having his kidneys removed in a bathtub full of ice. Last night in Killarney he even got to stay in a four star hotel because the two-star sister hotel he was booked into couldn't get his room ready in time. That kind of awesomeness is what traveling is all about!

Heather came back from Ireland last Sunday, and her little sister Hilary comes home from her Dublin study abroad tomorrow. Everyone's going to Ireland, it seems! Um, except based on what Heather told me, I feel confirmed in my opinion that it's not a place for me. On another note, all this talk of travel has given me the urge to buy another ticket to someplace, even though, yes, I obviously just came back from Italy, and the next place I go will probably be either Venice next year, if I study there, or Egypt with Sean. I wish, how I wish, we could go on the National Geographic Expedition to Egypt. You go to absolutely all of the awesome sites, you cruise on the Nile for a couple of days, and you get an Egyptologist as your guide! Incredible, right? So's the price--$14,000 for the two of us. Sigh. One can dream.

Sean's Irish Adventure

Not to be outdone by my trip to Italy last month, Sean took himself off to Ireland on Friday for a weeklong solo tour of the southwest portion of the country. Today he's in Kilkenny, where he made friends with a 50-year-old Englishman on top of a tower, with whom he has dinner plans this evening. That's just so Sean.

This weekend Sara and I visited Rae in Worcester, where we met her roommate and *cough* 'special friend' Dee, who has traveled extensively, including to everyone's favorite island of Malta. Interestingly, he presented a much different picture of the Maltese than what I gleaned from Carla's experiences; apparently he encountered a lot of sketchiness while he was there.

Included in our weekend sojourn to the "Land of the U-Turn" was a trip to a bridal store for some pre-pre-pre wedding shopping, wherein I discovered that two years is apparently not considered "early," as some people have actually bought dresses four years in advance! Sara and Rae found a full-length dress which they both liked, and the chocolate color looked absolutely awesome, except for the chorus of Jen-and-Carla voices who are clamoring for green.

I tried on two dresses, and learned that that lovely silhouette presented by most wedding dresses is not achieved by the dress alone; oh no, my friend, it requires an organ-squeezing corset, a voluminous petticoat (just like what a Victorian would have to wear, no lie--it's huge) and, in these dresses' case, a lace-up back that functioned like a second (and entirely unnecessary, since I could already barely breathe) corset. At the culmination of this process, I'll admit, one of the dresses was really pretty, had a long train, made me feel all Disney princessy, etc etc. Problem? I have no intention of being unable to bend, sit, eat or drink on my wedding day. My torso felt like it was made of iron, for crying out loud! I also have no intention of sweating my ass off in summer with ten pounds of fabric wrapped around me.

So, in conclusion--I really made no progress on that front whatsoever, besides deciding that I definitely want an ivory gown instead of white. White dresses are really kind of blinding, and let's be honest, this isn't much of a 'white wedding' anyway!

Tax Day

Today is the eighth anniversary of my dad's death. I don't have anything particularly meaningful to say, I just felt that I should mark the occasion in here somehow. Hard to believe it's been so many years.

On My Hatred of Weathermen and A Decision

How many times this winter were we promised storm-of-the-century-esque blizzards, only to wake up to an inch or two of snow? Similarly, I was apprehensive about our trip to Philadelphia on Friday because every weather service predicted heavy rains all day Friday and Saturday. Naturally, that didn't happen--Friday was cloudy, and maybe we saw a droplet here or there, but Saturday was absolutely gorgeous! I can't believe I spent so much time worrying over whether I should put the trip off in fear of having to see Temple in a downpour.

That said, the trip was great. Everyone warned me that Temple's in a rough area, and certainly when you get off the highway you're driving through blocks of a very run-down area. That changes dramatically, however, once you enter the campus area, where everything was well-kept, there were tons of people walking around and the scarlet T was emblazoned on everything from the manhole covers to the tops of high-rise buildings. We met up with two graduate students, both in the Phd program, who gave us a tour and answered all my questions. Sean and I couldn't help but feel like country mice at the mere size of Temple, which has tens of thousands of students to Fairfield's.....five? When they took us into the tech center that just had acres of computer rooms, I was laughing to myself because the library at Fairfield had maybe....thirty computers on the main floor? Yeah, small potatoes.

Most of the graduate students live outside Philadelphia in the suburbs on the PA side, although one of the grad students I met, Aliza, actually lives in Center City. That's probably what I'll be doing as well. I'm not a city person, and I guess it only struck me this weekend that I'll be spending the next five or more years in a city! It's OK, I should learn to live in a city. I like what I've seen of Philly so far. Saturday (we spent Friday night at Richardson's apartment in Cherry Hill)I went into the city via the ridiculously 70s PATCO train, and allowed myself the luxury of a taxi to the art museum, which gave me a pleasant, if brief, tour of Center City. The museum itself is gorgeous from the outside, and really impressive inside as well. I only had about an hour before I was supposed to meet Dr. Hall, so I basically took the museum at a trot. Bronzino's "Portrait of Cosimo I as Orpheus" greeted me on my way into the European art gallery. Ah, Mannerism.

I had lunch with Dr. Hall in the museum restaurant, a place I never approach in any other institution because it's always ridiculously expensive. This one was no different, although she graciously treated me to lunch. Still, $29 for one of the smallest lunches I have ever had, even if it was delicious. I told her my decision to come to Temple, and we had a really pleasant lunch. She's an older woman, very elegant looking but with a rather quirky, offbeat sense of humor that I liked.

So there it is--my decision is made. Now I have to email all my professors, and Dr. McHam from Rutgers who was sending me very persuasive emails. I liked her too, but alas, you can't have it all.

Anne of the Century

This month marks the 100th anniversary of the publication of Anne of Green Gables, one of my favorite books growing up. Jen and I had the whole set of seven books then. Only a well-worn copy of Anne of the Island (the book I loved most out of the entire seven-book series) endures from that collection, but I picked up a brand new set at a tag sale a couple of years ago. It's funny that I couldn't bring myself to discard the old copy of Anne of the Island, when I had a perfectly new one in the very same edition, the same cover and typeface and everything, but there's a lot of history in that volume. Its spine is cracked, its cover worn, and so many pages dog-eared because of the number of times I read it and dreamed of being just like Anne--beautiful, spirited, and seeing the magic in everything.

The anniversary came to my attention because Gawker had an item mentioning that Margaret Atwood had written an essay on the book for a London newspaper (there's a link to it here. It's a good enough essay, but the best thing about it was that it made me want to read the books again, which I did tonight, at least two of them: Anne of Avonlea and Anne of the Island. Apparently for Atwood the other books couldn't come close to the original story, but for me it was that first trilogy that really sparked my imagination and remained warmly in my memory. This is probably due in no small part to that fact that Anne's friendship and semi-turbulent courtship with Gilbert Blythe takes place over the course of these three novels--spoiler alert, they get engaged at the end of book three! Rereading those pages tonight, I lingered on this paragraph at the end of Anne of Avonlea, which has caught my eye before:


Perhaps, after all, romance did not come into one's life with pomp and blare, like a gay knight riding down; perhaps it crept to one's side like an old friend through quiet ways; perhaps it revealed itself through seeming prose, until some sudden shaft of illumination flung athwart its pages betrayed the rhythm and the music; perhaps...perhaps...love unfolded naturally out of a beautiful friendship, as a golden-hearted rose slipping from a green sheath.


Yes, there's some parts of the books where the nature imagery and the romanticism of it all forces me to skip ahead paragraphs or even pages--I can handle only so many descriptions of sun-dappled fields, so many exultations over fields of poppies or a formation of clouds, before I get a little impatient. It's also true that the movie versions of Anne of Green Gables and Anne of Avonlea (although the latter, for reasons of narration, was really a patchwork of the second and third books along with some made-up elements) did a great deal to cement the books, and Anne herself, in my mind's eye. There will never be another Anne for me but the actress who played her in those two movies; the Anne drawn on the bookcovers is merely an approximation. The handsome actor who played Gilbert, meanwhile, was probably one of my very first crushes in life, and I have to confess that if I had to choose between the Gilbert of the books and the Gilbert of the movies, I'll take the cinematic version, because he's just a little more spirited than his literary alter ego.

I guess it's hard to separate the magic of the books and movies in my mind, because both have been mutually reinforced by re-readings and re-watchings (last night, too tired to start one of the books, I watched clips from both movies on Youtube). The movies' score never fails to stir me, and I can't really describe the way I feel when I hear it, especially during those scenes when she stands on the cliffs of Prince Edward Island, and the wind blows the long grass behind her.

I've always wanted to see PEI, even though I know it's not the pristine, untouched place it was a hundred years ago when LM Montgomery was writing. I'm sure I'd be disappointed by the tourist spectacle that they've manufactured there--Atwood writes about the "Green Gables" they've tarted up, which apparently even includes the cameo brooch Marilla accuses Anne of stealing in the first book. I also have no interest in seeing the Anne of Green Gables musical. In fact, I'm kind of sad I even had to write that phrase. Anne was never a musical girl, she was a dramatist, a poet--I never forgot "The Lady of Shallott" or "The Highwayman" after she recites both of them in the movies. Probably the more so for the former, because of the whole Elaine floating down to Camelot stunt. Come on, did anyone who read that book NOT want to hop in a skiff, make like a corpse, and float downriver till you spring a leak and have to cling to a bridge pier until your erstwhile enemy sexily rescues you? That was the stuff of daydreams when I was younger, I tell you!

That's what's amazing about these century-old books, the way they still have the power to affect me. I still feel close to Anne when I read them (she would have said "kindred spirits"); I still laugh when she pulls off a particularly clever reply or when Davy asks hugely inappropriate questions the way little kids do, and I still cry at some parts, especially when Ruby Gillis dies in the third book. She was a girlhood friend of Anne's and they've grown apart because Ruby is really only interested in guys, but everyone knows she's dying of consumption and she's too terrified to talk about it to anyone but Anne. It's just so heartbreaking to read as Ruby, who Anne later reflects has really stored up all her treasures here on earth, talks about her struggle with fate: "I'm so young, Anne. I haven't had my life. I've fought so hard to live--and it isn't any use--I have to die--and leave everything that I cared for."

You know, I always go back and forth on whether I want a daughter or a son (because, as you know, Sean and I only want one; we're like Communist China) and usually I'm all for the son, having been a daughter already, but tonight after re-reading those books it strikes me that I want to give those to another little girl someday, and watch them ignite the tinder of her imagination like they once did mine.

Almost April

My dad was in my dream last night, perhaps unsurprisingly so since I mentioned to Sean yesterday that today would have been his 58th birthday. All I can remember from the dream is that I was asking him if he wanted to visit my grandmother, and he was saying no; then I turned and there she was, sitting on a stool in front of a stove, pale and wearing a very ungrandma-like shade of dark lipstick. Meaning? Perhaps I like dreaming about dead relatives. I should have thrown my grandfather and my mom in there and then we could have had a real party!

Sean played one of his records for me yesterday, a song by Harold Arlen called "For Every Man There's a Woman," which included the following lyrics: 'For every prince there's a princess / for every Joe there's a Joan." I'm glad that was true for them, just as it's true for us.

The Season Is Over, 7-3

That would be the number of grad schools I got into versus those that gave me the old thumbs down. On the winning team we have Temple, Rutgers, Notre Dame, UMD, UMass, Boston University, and today's dark horse surprise, NYU! On the losing team (Boooooo Hissssss) we have Emory, Princeton and (sigh) Columbia. Oh well, you can't win them all, right?

On Older Posts

Sometimes when I read older posts on this blog I feel like such a tool. The immaturity, the selfishness, the all-too-frequent lack of punctuation and capitalization...sigh. Still, I've kept this journal going for seven years. Seven! It really has become a valuable asset--it reminds me not only of what's gone on in my life, but also of who I've been.

I was reading an article about David McCollough's (author of "1776") recent talk at Fairfield, in which he said that once public figures stop keeping journals, not only do historians lose a vital source of insight into their character, but it also means that those figures are no longer working their thoughts out on paper. That interested me, although I'm not sure that I agree. First of all, I can't imagine that every great public figure of history kept a journal. Napoleon? Really? What would he even need to work out? "To Do: Eliminate enemies, conquer known world, pick up eggs." I think McCollough simply benefited from studying a period of history in which diary-keeping was very much in vogue. I don't think we can assume that everything necessarily goes to hell just because some people prefer not to write everything down.

However, the quote also made me wonder how blogging will fit into the historian's milieu. For one thing, just how permanent is blogging? A physical diary can certainly be damaged or lost, but usually some care is taken to protect it. You really can't do anything to ensure the longevity of content you post online. If Blogger's servers one day failed (although I'm sure there's some kind of complicated back-up system) everything I've written in here for seven years would be gone forever. That's daunting. The same could apply to a public figure who used a blog in place of a diary.

There's also the issue of private versus public blogs. Barack Obama could have a secret blog no one knows about where he gives voice to all those un-politic things he wishes he could say but can't, and it could be a veritable treasure-trove one day to the eager historian looking for a fresh angle on an oft-studied figure, but if no one knew about it, the information would be gone forever. If the privacy settings were on, there's not even the chance someone could stumble over it one day the way people find old letters and Jackson Pollock paintings in their attic.

I guess the question comes down to whether this technology is reliable and durable. Will there still be an internet for us to use in thirty or forty years, or will we have moved on to some unimaginable other? If the internet is still around, will I still be able to access what I wrote here, decades before, or will it have long since become obsolete and disappeared, much in the same way that Sara's and my old Geocities-era webpages have been consigned to the electronic scrap heap?

Even more importantly--will I have any freaking clue what I was talking about in half of these posts? This one, at least, I feel that I can confidently answer...with a no.

Italian Hours

That's the title of a book of essays on Italian cities by the late-nineteenth century writer Henry James that Carla had in her apartment. He apparently spent a great deal of time living in Venice, as well as traveling around to other points of interest in the country. Everything he had to say about Venice was laudatory, except when he mentioned the rank smell of the canals in summer and when he complained about the tourists--in the 1870s, long before air travel made visiting Italy a possibility for so many people outside of Europe, and way, way before what we like to call "the Asian invasion," which anyone who has ever fought their way through one of their massive tour groups clogging a main traffic artery will recognize.

There were definitely advantages to being in James' Venice. There were actual Venetians to speak of, for one thing; nowadays, most people who work in the city live on the mainland and commute. It's hard to imagine him writing today of the "character" of the Venetian people. Like every other place, they've become diversified and spread out. Money seems to have been another plus, as a gondola ride (then the preferred mode of transportation rather than a tourist luxury) cost only a few francs,instead of 80 euro. It costs you 6.5 euro to go inside San Marco today, plus extra to climb to the top or see the treasure room, but no one had thought yet of entrance fees to a church in the 1870s, and James was free to stroll into the church every day as he pleased.

On the other hand, his Venice seems to have been in an even greater degree of decline and shabbiness than it is today. A recently unified Italy in those days had little money or time to spend on learning good techniques for preservation, and James writes of the 'horrors' that were perpetrated against many of the edifices, including San Marco, in the interests of stabilizing them in the lagoon. One of the most prominent characteristics I remembered from my first visit to Venice was that sense of decay--all of the houses seem to feature faded, chipped, or moldy exteriors, which gives the fancier neighborhoods an air of tragic grandeur, but makes the more prosaic areas look plain dingy. On this visit I was prepared for that, and I felt more able to appreciate Venice's beauty despite her obvious defects.

And We're Back

The legendary journeys of Michelle and Carla have ended, at least for now. Yesterday was rather exhausting--in Florence time I was traveling for about 18 hours. But now I'm safely ensconced back in my own apartment, and surprisingly happier to be back in the US than I would have expected (and never have I been happier to be an American citizen than when I realized there was no line at customs in JFK,what with a plane full of EU-ers!). It's much more wearing to visit a country than it is to live there. I miss Carla, though. I'd forgotten how good our "we're trying to go to sleep but it's not happening" talks were. Sigh.

Limping Around Florence

So apparently I hurt my right foot more than I thought, which left me awkwardly limping around the city yesterday. I have consumed more "Moment" than I would have thought necessary or possible, but it doesn't really seem to help. I'm sure the cure for a strained muscle is to stay off of it, but hello, was I going to spend yesterday in Carla's apartment? However, I conceded to myself that walking to the other side of the city and then up the eighty million steps to San Miniato al Monte and Pizziale Michelangelo was just not going to happen, so I took the bus. The view from there is really unparalleled.

I also returned to Palazzo Vecchio, which I love from the outside and also from the inside with its crazy Vasarian decorations. I superbly heart Eleonora of Toledo's clothes in all of her portraits. I should also mention that Carla and my first stop last Friday was the amazing place of adventure known as La Specola, the world's most batshit zoological museum, where we and a group of Italian schoolchildren were having a wonderful time but mysteriously we missed seeing the aiy-aiy! We both forgot about it completely.

Two nights ago we had dinner with Justin at Pizza Italiano, where the crazy chef who makes the pizzas adores Carla, and he not only sang to us but made us both heart-shaped pizzas which I would totally have photographed if it wouldn't have made me feel like such a toolish tourist. When I got here on Thursday, it was so much more crowded and noisy than I remembered it being even in May--I guess the Florence of my memories was when we first arrived, quiet streets, no lines for anything. I opted not to revisit a lot of our old haunts, like the Uffizi and the Pitti, and even David's lovely derriere in the Accademia--the line is too long, and ten euro for something I used to look at for free on the way to the grocery store? Nah. Sean requested that I think of him in the Boboli Gardens (his favorite place) but alas, my lameness precludes me from getting there, and also it is raining today. Sorry, sweetheart--you'll just have to come back here yourself!

Let's see, what else...Justin is a huge Juventus fan, so after dinner the other night we watched the last part of the game between them and Napoli, which was 0-0 until Juventus scored in the last few minutes, so it was pretty exciting. I'm glad I've gotten the chance to see the real Justin, the goofy, talkative, joking Justin, and not just the polite but shy guy I remember when Carla was first seeing him. He came over for dinner last night as well, when Carla cooked for me her famous pasta alla vodka, except she didn't have any vodka so I guess it was just pasta alla panna but it was still gooooood. And there was also a lot of Prosecco consumption (which I have recently come to enjoy) and me demanding basically to hear the entire history of the island of Malta. Carla contributed a great deal, since she's been there several times and watched this movie "The Malta Experience" that's a giant history lesson. Justin mentioned that the British ruled the island for 100 years before leaving, but when I asked him if they resented them, he was surprised and said no, of course not, they loved the British, they brought Malta into the modern age. So I guess post-colonial angst has no place among the Maltese people.

Before dinner we'd met up with my cousin Sara to go for a drink as well. She's loving Florence (who doesn't?) but she lives with six other girls in one apartment! Dear God. Carla's apartment here (did I mention that walking up 99 steps does not get easier when your foot's killing you?) is actually meant for two, and while I'm sure it's doable it's pretty sweet for one person. The noise factor of being in front of the Duomo, however, is definitely a detractor.

I should end this and limp downstairs--I want to visit my favorite thrift store, look for a scarf in the market, and go check out the other huge bookstore I apparently missed when I was here. Tonight Carla's conservatory has a concert that Justin and I will be attending. Then, sadly, I depart tomorrow morning at 8am for Rome, and thence home at 2. I got an email from HEather at work to let me know my boss is closing the office early Friday for easter weekend, so I will be working 9-1 after being gone for a week. Paul is awesome.

Liveblogging from Firenze

Is that the appropriate use of the word liveblogging? I don't know, I'm on Carla's bed in her deliciously yellow Florence apartment that's kitty-cornered to the Duomo, absolutely exhausted because we just got back from our three whirlwind days in Venice. Carla's on the phone with Justin telling him how she never walked so much in her life and she is not exaggerating. Our orientation tour in Rome two years ago doesn't even really compare, especially since I made the tactical error of choosing to wear my Converses, which I haven't worn since graduation and which have a curved inside that my feet had apparently become un-accustomed to, thereby causing extraordinary pain and limping in my right foot, despite which we adhered to the magic words of Heather and went hard before we went home. You better believe it.

Holy shit, Venice is amazing. What we experienced on the fateful Carnevale trip was NOTHING. Yesterday we saw the Accademia--you know it's a good museum when you can scamper eagerly from room to room just squealing with the joy of seeing these masterpieces that you never really expected to see up close, like Tintoretto's Feast at the House of Levi which is freaking huge! We got lost ever so many times in Venice's labryinthine streets, aided or not-so-aided by a succession of maps that never seemed to list the very street we were standing in and climbed more bridges than I care to remember. Friday night we arrived as dusk was falling and got lost repeatedly on our way from our hotel to the restaurant recommended by our host (who will be getting a warm review from me on Tripadvisor-- 3 euro Prosecco bottles in the minifridge, what!) and then even more lost as we tried to find our way back to the hotel from Piazza San Marco with perhaps the world's most useless map. Venice is not good for the directionally challenged, or really anyone who's not a local, because streets often terminate abruptly at a canal's edge, or become an alley that becomes a wall, or really just ARE alleys that are completely deserted, narrow, and unlit, making you somewhat concerned for your safety except that there's really not much crime, even of the pickpocketing variety from what I could tell. The crowds might have been heavy for this time of year, but compared to what I remembered from Carnvelae it was breezy.

Oh, and we went on that most touristy of tourist adventures, the overpriced gondola ride down the Grand Canal! It was yesterday afternoon and we had just left the church of the Gesuiti, which was pretty spectacularly in its decoration of inlaid marble-in-marble on every surface, and we headed back for the Accademia bridge, where Carla finally just decided to ask a gondolier (who stand on the bridges trolling for fares and yelling "Gondola! Gondole!") how much it was, to which he responded 80 euro--basically a hundred bucks, way too much for the two of us. However, as luck would have it, an Italian mother and her young daughter were asking the same question at the same time, so the four of us wound up sharing a ride around the Grand Canal/Dorsoduro area. I won't pretend--it was absolutely charming and I loved it. It was so worth 20 euro, just to see the city from the water like wealthy Venetians have been seeing it for centuries.

So it was an incredible time, and Carla and I had a blast even while trying to map ourselves out of the most obsure and abandoned neighborhoods we found ourselves in at night while trying to satisfy a gelato craving, and then most of today with me limping and downing tablets of "Moment," aka Italian ibuprofen. Now we're back and preparing to go out for pizza with Justin. We walked into some kind of soccer riot at the train station--Fiorentina played here today, and the police were out in full riot gear as the fans massed through the station, chanting something about the game. Did they win or lose? Justin will have to tell us. Now the window is open, and amid the crowd's noise and the cards there's a trumpet player on the sidewalk. As Benigni would say, life is beautiful.

Leaving On A Jet Plane

At this time tomorrow evening, I should be arriving at JFK for my 10pm flight to Rome. Can I say: Yesssssssssssssssssss. I'm excited to be reunited with the roommate of my life, the Ivory to my Ebony! I can't believe it's been the better part of a year since we saw each other last...May 21st, as I drove away from TH 31. Even better, we won't have to wait another year after this because she has to come home to renew her visa this summer.

I can't wait to explore Venice this weekend, either. Three days in the floating city sans fellow college drunkards and Carnevale crowds! Whoot!

My Boss Is Awesome

Heather, Megan and I called ourselves "the three blind mice" these past few weeks as we attempted to run a law firm without any lawyers in the office due to conferences and a trial. This involved subterfuge of the sort of calling courts and pretending to be attorneys filing from Rhode Island or something so we could ask for directions without looking like complete idiots. Apparently, it all came together pretty well, because my boss was so grateful for our collective efforts that he's giving the three of us a day off with the activity of our choice--Broadway, a concert, a day at the spa, or whatever we can come up with. Booyah! I'm aiming to schedule this day of delight for next Friday....I come back from Italy on Wednesday and I took Thursday off anyway, so I'd love to just round out the entire week. Can I just say that my boss is frickin' awesome?

The Score is Now 4-1

Guess who got rejected from Emory? Me! Therefore, I cheerily give a big F*** You to Atlanta, Georgia.

The Longer Version

Today is such a beautiful day! Never mind that it's only 36 degrees outside. The sky is clear, it feels warmer than it is, and Sean got into Notre Dame!

OK, the last one is non-meteorological, but it definitely heightens today's wonderfulness. Let's ignore the part where Sean's going off to South Bend, Indiana for two years (whereas I will definitely be on the East Coast, whether I wind up in Jersey, Philly, or New York) and focus on the fact that out of 150 applications, Notre Dame's website says they only took about 20. That's how fabulous Sean is at whatever Biblical stuff it is that he does! Let's also focus on the fact that Notre Dame offers free tuition to all its Master's students, which is apparently made possible because of the Fighting Irish and their ability to attract the munificence of alumni. So not only is he going, he's going for free!

His mom has mentioned several times how wonderful it would be if we were both at Notre Dame together. I did get accepted to the art history Master's program there, which is also free; however, since I also have offers for four years of funding at Temple and Rutgers' PhD programs, it doesn't make much sense for me to go into a Master's program. The faculty there is also not of great interest to me. I applied there because I was worried I wouldn't get into any PhD programs, and I figured if I was going to wind up in a Master's program, it might as well be the same one as my boyfriend. Alas, that is not to be, but it's OK. We'll make it work. I have faith in that, just as I had faith that he would get into Notre Dame. Sean has Mrs. D pulling for him up there--how could he lose?

So now I can go to Italy next week (six days away!) with a light heart. I'm still waiting to hear from six of the ten schools I applied to. My list:

Accepted Programs

Temple (PhD)
Rutgers (PhD)
University of Maryland (PhD)
Notre Dame (MA)

Still Waiting

Columbia
Princeton
NYU-IFA
Emory
BU
UMass

My fingers will remain crossed for now.

Sean's Triumph

Sean got into Notre Dame! WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOT!

A Week and A Day...

A week from tomorrow! Oh, I don't know how the time in between is ever going to pass...probably with me anxiously watching the weather reports predicting rain in New York the night of my departure, and debating whether I should bring my green coat given the colder temperatures in Venice, or leave it behind.

I may be able to meet up with a graduate student from Temple University while we're in Venice. One of the professors I've been in contact with there made a point of telling me all the preferments and opportunities she's been able to wrangle for her students, in the same way you might hold out a tasty nugget of cheese to a mouse. Included in this was a first year student who is spending her spring semester at Duke University's Venice campus, so I asked the professor to see if she'd be interested in meeting me while I'm there. I'm sure Carla will be thrilled to know there's a chance that I could be living in Italy again by this time next year...and I'm equally sure that Sean would grumble about all the time I've been getting to spend in Europe, lol. In addition, I'm not sure how desirable living in Venice actually is--it's cold and damp and they get bright sunlight like, five days out of the year. Florence, you were so perfect.

This weekend Sean and I went to a winery in Sandy Hook, CT that was tucked away--really, really tucked--down this one-lane dirt road that led to the most marvelous little gem of a farm and vineyard, isolated and beautiful. It's part of Connecticut's Wine Trail. Anyway, the old man who was there and who poured us wine for the tasting turned out to have once lived in Fiesole, the little town above Florence that provided such excellent panoramic views of the Italian sunset. He told me that Florentines are very argumentative, and he remembered getting into lots of fights with them. He has owned the vineyard since 1979, and I couldn't help but wonder if his desire to start a vineyard in Connecticut was inspired by the memory of those Tusacan hills, covered with soldierly rows of staked-up vines. The motto of the vineyard (McLaughlin's, if you're ever out that way) was "In vinis veritas," a variant on the familiar 'in wine, truth'--here, 'in wines, truth.'

Travel

It's finally March!Ten days till I depart for Italy's golden shores. I can't even believe I bought my ticket all the way back at the end of October. I have been patient, I tell you. Patient!

My aunt, uncle and cousin just returned from Florence where they visited my cousin Sara. She's studying abroad through the same program I did, and living in the piazza with the central market. I keep forgetting to tell her that there's an international food shop in that piazza that sells the Syrian bread our grandparents always had in the house. We got it from a store called Homsy's in Massachusetts, but it closed, and I had never seen it sold anywhere else till then. Pita bread is what people usually think of as Middle Eastern bread, but that's thick and I find it gross. Syrian bread is large, thin loaves, probably a foot in diameter, and they have the most delicious bready taste! I used to love the ones that were a little blackened from the oven on the bottom. I had a very particular method of eating them, too--I'd nibble around the edge until I could separate the two sides, then I'd eat the top first and finish with the bottom. Oh, memories. Damn, I can't wait to get back there and buy some of that bread. A euro a bag!

Speaking of euros, oh, how dismal is the exchange rate in Europe right now. Geez, I thought it was bad last time! Fifteen hundred dollars yields about 975 euros. That's ridiculous. I was reading a travel magazine yesterday that recommended places where the dollar is still strong, but it was mostly places I either a) don't want to go, like South America and Switzerland, or b) can't go, in practical terms, like the Middle East. Just my luck of all the Middle Eastern countries, Egypt would be the most expensive (one of the many reasons I keep pushing Turkey as our next journey to Sean, but he stubbornly insists that he must complete his ancient world triad by visiting the land of the pharaohs).

Speaking of Sean, he's going on a trip too! He bought a ticket for Ireland in April. He's going to explore the southern and southwestern portions of Ireland. So far the rough itinerary we've figured out is that he'll fly into Limerick and spend a night there, then stop in Tipperary on his way to spending a night in Cahir, followed by two nights in Kilkenny, a night in Cork, a night in Killarney, a night in Adare (which claims to be Ireland's most adorable village) and then another night in Limerick before he flies home. I have to admit that I have never had any desire to visit Ireland, and a couple of nights spent looking at guidebooks to this country really hasn't altered that in any way. So, as I've told Sean, I'm glad he can get this trip out of his system and not pester me to go later. Of course, he responded by asking if I'd ever want to go to Scotland, because he has the idea one should visit all the lands of one's heritage. Um, just as I'm not really going to be undertaking a trip to Damascus anytime soon, I really don't feel the night to brush up on my Scots-Irish background either. Sean promised to lift a glass for Mrs. D (nee Hennessey) while he's in Cork, which is apparently where her father's family was from (I remember this only because she, like so many other Irish people, liked to put little stickers on their cars with the arms of the county they were from; I remember thinking County Cork was a silly name). I'm sure she'd be thrilled he's going if she were still here. She even tried to suggest to me when I was a freshman that I should add an Irish Studies minor. I remember looking at her, completely blank, and saying "Why?" Yeah, I'm surprised the black lightning from on high hasn't fried me yet for all the Irish-mockery I've been directing at Sean these past few days. All in fun, Mom, all in fun. Erin go bragh....or something.

And On the Third Day...

For the past two days I've been engaged in the semi-glorious pursuit of doing absolutely nothing. The perfectly-timed snowstorm Friday morning earned me a day off from work,and Sean's trip down to North Carolina left me without any distinct plans for the weekend. At first I reacted with the idea that I had to find something to DO or my head would explode, but that's really not true. There have certainly been a few moments of boredom, but between books (I read Freakonomics yesterday, and just started on a biography of Phillip II) and some illegally downloaded movies (No Country for Old Men was as good as the reviews said) I've been managing pretty well.

In fact, the only real irritant to me this whole time has been the antics of my third-floor neighbor, he of the cutsey Mini Cooper and annoying girlfriend with whom he engaged in a post-Valentine's day screaming match last Friday night when Jen was here. I hung up on Sean so that I could better eavesdrop--not too difficult, since in a house this old the sounds travel fairly well from on high. Apparently he ruined Valentine's day for her (their fourth together, I learned) by not getting her the flowers she wanted, and he foolishly countered by claiming he 'doesn't do holidays'. I've heard a couple of other arguments since then, although they've certainly reconciled, if the moaning coming from his apartment upon my return from grocery shopping yesterday was any indication.

Anyway, I've never even spoken to this guy or his girlfriend, but now that I've spent two days listening to the heavy footfalls of the two of them above my head and their constant tramping up and down the squeaky, noisy stairs(another downside to being able to hear so well) I want to spray them both with a hose. Or put flaming dog poop outside his door--except that the door to his upper apartment is on the same landing as my own, so that might backfire. Apparently I've just never been here long enough consecutively on a weekend to realize how annoying he IS.

And speak of the devil, who just tramped noisily past my door with the obnoxious significant other? I think I'm going to go enjoy some quiet reading time before they come back.

Progressive Emotions Upon Considering a Graduate School

First, there was a serious level of excitement when I found out I’d been accepted at Temple, which was quickly compounded by joy when they told me they would recommend me for a four-year fellowship. Then there was hesitation when I discovered that I had to tell them my decision by the beginning of March—before the response deadlines for most of the other schools I applied to. This was followed by severe dismay at receiving a letter from the dean requiring me to submit a deposit by February 22, and then by irritation at seeing that Temple is party to an agreement among graduate schools that requires applicants be given at least 30 days to accept any admissions or funding offer. Next came trepidation and anxiety as I emailed Temple to turn down their offer, even though I hadn’t heard from any other schools.

Finally, last night came the surprising twist, when the professor I emailed at Temple responded to tell me she “just found out” that I can have until April 15 to decide, and would I like to remain in the running? A little fishy, right? Especially considering that letter from the dean had February 22 on it in bold-face type. Sean thinks I called their bluff on not giving people enough time to make up their minds and they backed down. Still, I won't look too closely at the gift horse's mouth.

Why I Love Freecycle

Mainly because I can find new homes for a graphing calculator, a Spanish-language Wake the Wizard game, a DSL modem and a Franklin mint model stagecoach, all in the space of about forty-five minutes.

One Down, Nine to Go

I got into Temple! I got an email on Wednesday from one of the professors there. She's going to be calling me in about an hour, actually, and I'm still not entirely sure what I'm going to say. They're nominating me for a scholarship that would carry full tuition plus a stipend for four years, which is awesome, except she wants my assurance that I'm interested in Temple enough to accept if they give me the scholarship. The problem is, Temple's kind of low of my list of schools, and I might not hear from the others for a month or more. I asked Jesus' advice and he told me to stall for time, and to tell them I'm waiting to hear from a "couple" (his emphasis) of other schools--not the nine I'm actually waiting on.

In other good news, I emailed a professor at Rutgers to see if she's going to their open house next Thursday, and she replied that she'd really like to meet me, and that she was impressed by my application! Whoot! Now all I'd like is to hear those words coming from the mouth of a certain professor at Columbia, and maybe one at NYU, and then I will be incredibly, incredibly joyous.

My sister informs me that I'm not allowed to go to Notre Dame, because it's 12 hours west of here and she wants me "within bus-trip range." Lol. Sisterly affection.

Courtesy of Rae

GOODBYE TO ALL THAT (#2) by Robin Morgan

"Goodbye To All That" was my (in)famous 1970 essay breaking free from a politics of accommodation especially affecting women (for an online version, see http://blog.fair-use.org/category/chicago/).

During my decades in civil-rights, anti-war, and contemporary women's movements, I've avoided writing another specific "Goodbye . . .". But not since the suffrage struggle have two communities--the joint conscience-keepers of this country--been so set in competition, as the contest between Hillary Rodham Clinton (HRC) and Barack Obama (BO) unfurls. So.

Goodbye to the double standard . . .

--Hillary is too ballsy but too womanly, a Snow Maiden who's emotional, and so much a politician as to be unfit for politics.

--She's "ambitious" but he shows "fire in the belly." (Ever had labor pains? )

--When a sexist idiot screamed "Iron my shirt!" at HRC, it was considered amusing; if a racist idiot shouted "Shine my shoes!" at BO, it would've inspired hours of airtime and pages of newsprint analyzing our national dishonor.

--Young political Kennedys--Kathleen, Kerry, and Bobby Jr.--all endorsed Hillary. Sen. Ted, age 76, endorsed Obama. If the situation were reversed, pundits would snort "See? Ted and establishment types back her, but the forward-looking generation backs him." (Personally, I'm unimpressed with Caroline's longing for the Return of the Fathers. Unlike the rest of the world, Americans have short memories. Me, I still recall Marilyn Monroe's suicide, and a dead girl named Mary Jo Kopechne in Chappaquiddick.)



Goodbye to the toxic viciousness . . .

Carl Bernstein's disgust at Hillary's "thick ankles." Nixon-trickster Roger Stone's new Hillary-hating 527 group, "Citizens United Not Timid" (check the capital letters). John McCain answering "How do we beat the bitch?" with "Excellent question!" Would he have dared reply similarly to "How do we beat the black bastard?" For shame.

Goodbye to the HRC nutcracker with metal spikes between splayed thighs. If it was a tap-dancing blackface doll, we would be righteously outraged—and they would not be selling it in airports. Shame.

Goodbye to the most intimately violent T-shirts in election history, including one with the murderous slogan "If Only Hillary had married O.J. Instead!" Shame.

Goodbye to Comedy Central's "Southpark" featuring a storyline in which terrorists secrete a bomb in HRC's vagina. I refuse to wrench my brain down into the gutter far enough to find a race-based comparison. For shame.



Goodbye to the sick, malicious idea that this is funny. This is not "Clinton hating," not "Hillary hating." This is sociopathic woman-hating. If it were about Jews, we would recognize it instantly as anti-Semitic propaganda; if about race, as KKK poison. Hell, PETA would go ballistic if such vomitous spew were directed at animals. Where is our sense of outrage—as citizens, voters, Americans?

Goodbye to the news-coverage target-practice . . .

The women's movement and Media Matters wrung an apology from MSNBC's Chris Matthews for relentless misogynistic comments (www.womensmediacenter.com). But what about NBC's Tim Russert's continual sexist asides and his all-white-male panels pontificating on race and gender? Or CNN's Tony Harris chuckling at "the chromosome thing" while interviewing a woman from The White House Project? And that's not even mentioning Fox News.

Goodbye to pretending the black community is entirely male and all women are white . . .

Surprise! Women exist in all opinions, pigmentations, ethnicities, abilities, sexual preferences, and ages--not only African American and European American but Latina and Native American, Asian American and Pacific Islanders, Arab American and—hey, every group, because a group wouldn't be alive if we hadn't given birth to it. A few non-racist countries may exist--but sexism is everywhere. No matter how many ways a woman breaks free from other oppressions, she remains a female human being in a world still so patriarchal that it's the "norm."

So why should all women not be as justly proud of our womanhood and the centuries, even millennia, of struggle that got us this far, as black Americans, women and men, are justly proud of their struggles?

Goodbye to a campaign where he has to pass as white (which whites—especially wealthy ones--adore), while she has to pass as male (which both men and women demanded of her, and then found unforgivable). If she were black or he were female we wouldn't be having such problems, and I for one would be in heaven. But at present such a candidate wouldn't stand a chance—even if she shared Condi Rice's Bush-defending politics.

I was celebrating the pivotal power at last focused on African American women deciding on which of two candidates to bestow their vote--until a number of Hillary-supporting black feminists told me they're being called "race traitors."



So goodbye to conversations about this nation's deepest scar—slavery—which fail to acknowledge that labor- and sexual-slavery exist today in the US and elsewhere on this planet, and the majority of those enslaved are women.

Women have endured sex/race/ethnic/religious hatred, rape and battery, invasion of spirit and flesh, forced pregnancy; being the majority of the poor, the illiterate, the disabled, of refugees, caregivers, the HIV/AIDS afflicted, the powerless. We have survived invisibility, ridicule, religious fundamentalisms, polygamy, teargas, forced feedings, jails, asylums, sati, purdah, female genital mutilation, witch burnings, stonings, and attempted gynocides. We have tried reason, persuasion, reassurances, and being extra-qualified, only to learn it never was about qualifications after all. We know that at this historical moment women experience the world differently from men--though not all the same as one another--and can govern differently, from Elizabeth Tudor to Michele Bachelet and Ellen Johnson Sirleaf.

We remember when Shirley Chisholm and Patricia Schroeder ran for this high office and barely got past the gate—they showed too much passion, raised too little cash, were joke fodder. Goodbye to all that. (And goodbye to some feminists so famished for a female president they were even willing to abandon women's rights in backing Elizabeth Dole.)

Goodbye, goodbye to . . .

--blaming anything Bill Clinton does on Hillary (even including his womanizing like the Kennedy guys--though unlike them, he got reported on). Let's get real. If he hadn't campaigned strongly for her everyone would cluck over what that meant. Enough of Bill and Teddy Kennedy locking their alpha male horns while Hillary pays for it.

--an era when parts of the populace feel so disaffected by politics that a comparative lack of knowledge, experience, and skill is actually seen as attractive, when celebrity-culture mania now infects our elections so that it's "cooler" to glow with marquee charisma than to understand the vast global complexities of power on a nuclear, wounded planet.

--the notion that it's fun to elect a handsome, cocky president who feels he can learn on the job, goodbye to George W. Bush and the destruction brought by his inexperience, ignorance, and arrogance.

Goodbye to the accusation that HRC acts "entitled" when she's worked intensely at everything she's done—including being a nose-to-the-grindstone, first-rate senator from my state.

Goodbye to her being exploited as a Rorschach test by women who reduce her to a blank screen on which they project their own fears, failures, fantasies.

Goodbye to the phrase "polarizing figure" to describe someone who embodies the transitions women have made in the last century and are poised to make in this one. It was the women's movement that quipped, " We are becoming the men we wanted to marry." She heard us, and she has.

Goodbye to some women letting history pass by while wringing their hands, because Hillary isn't as "likeable" as they've been warned they must be, or because she didn't leave him, couldn't "control" him, kept her family together and raised a smart, sane daughter. (Think of the blame if Chelsea had ever acted in the alcoholic, neurotic manner of the Bush twins!) Goodbye to some women pouting because she didn't bake cookies or she did, sniping because she learned the rules and then bent or broke them. Grow the hell up. She is not running for Ms.-perfect-pure-queen-icon of the feminist movement. She is running to be President of the United States.

Goodbye to the shocking American ignorance of our own and other countries' history. Margaret Thatcher and Golda Meir rose through party ranks and war, positioning themselves as proto-male leaders. Almost all other female heads of government so far have been related to men of power—granddaughters, daughters, sisters, wives, widows: Gandhi, Bandaranike, Bhutto, Aquino, Chamorro, Wazed, Macapagal-Arroyo, Johnson Sirleaf, Bachelet, Kirchner, and more. Even in our "land of opportunity," it's mostly the first pathway "in" permitted to women: Reps. Doris Matsui and Mary Bono and Sala Burton; Sen. Jean Carnahan . . . far too many to list here.

Goodbye to a misrepresented generational divide . . .

Goodbye to the so-called spontaneous "Obama Girl" flaunting her bikini-clad ass online—then confessing Oh yeah it wasn't her idea after all, some guys got her to do it and dictated the clothes, which she said "made me feel like a dork."

Goodbye to some young women eager to win male approval by showing they're not feminists (at least not the kind who actually threaten the status quo), who can't identify with a woman candidate because she is unafraid of eeueweeeu yucky power, who fear their boyfriends might look at them funny if they say something good about her. Goodbye to women of any age again feeling unworthy, sulking "what if she's not electable?" or "maybe it's post-feminism and whoooosh we're already free." Let a statement by the magnificent Harriet Tubman stand as reply. When asked how she managed to save hundreds of enslaved African Americans via the Underground Railroad during the Civil War, she replied bitterly, "I could have saved thousands—if only I'd been able to convince them they were slaves."

I'd rather say a joyful Hello to all the glorious young women who do identify with Hillary, and all the brave, smart men—of all ethnicities and any age--who get that it's in their self-interest, too. She's better qualified. (D'uh.) She's a high-profile candidate with an enormous grasp of foreign- and domestic-policy nuance, dedication to detail, ability to absorb staggering insult and personal pain while retaining dignity, resolve, even humor, and keep on keeping on. (Also, yes, dammit, let's hear it for her connections and funding and party-building background, too. Obama was awfully glad about those when she raised dough and campaigned for him to get to the Senate in the first place.)

I'd rather look forward to what a good president he might make in eight years, when his vision and spirit are seasoned by practical know-how--and he'll be all of 54. Meanwhile, goodbye to turning him into a shining knight when actually he's an astute, smooth pol with speechwriters who've worked with the Kennedys' own speechwriter-courtier Ted Sorenson. If it's only about ringing rhetoric, let speechwriters run. But isn't it about getting the policies we want enacted?

And goodbye to the ageism . . .

How dare anyone unilaterally decide when to turn the page on history, papering over real inequities and suffering constituencies in the promise of a feel-good campaign? How dare anyone claim to unify while dividing, or think that to rouse US youth from torpor it's useful to triage the single largest demographic in this country's history: the boomer generation--the majority of which is female?

Older woman are the one group that doesn't grow more conservative with age—and we are the generation of radicals who said "Well-behaved women seldom make history." Goodbye to going gently into any goodnight any man prescribes for us. We are the women who changed the reality of the United States. And though we never went away, brace yourselves: we're back!

We are the women who brought this country equal credit, better pay, affirmative action, the concept of a family-focused workplace; the women who established rape-crisis centers and battery shelters, marital-rape and date-rape laws; the women who defended lesbian custody rights, who fought for prison reform, founded the peace and environmental movements; who insisted that medical research include female anatomy, who inspired men to become more nurturing parents, who created women's studies and Title IX so we all could cheer the WNBA stars and Mia Hamm. We are the women who reclaimed sexuality from violent pornography, who put child care on the national agenda, who transformed demographics, artistic expression, language itself. We are the women who forged a worldwide movement. We are the proud successors of women who, though it took more than 50 years, won us the vote.

We are the women who now comprise the majority of US voters.

Hillary said she found her own voice in New Hampshire. There's not a woman alive who, if she's honest, doesn't recognize what she means. Then HRC got drowned out by campaign experts, Bill, and media's obsession with All Things Bill.

So listen to her voice:

"For too long, the history of women has been a history of silence. Even today, there are those who are trying to silence our words.

"It is a violation of human rights when babies are denied food, or drowned, or suffocated, or their spines broken, simply because they are born girls. It is a violation of human rights when woman and girls are sold into the slavery of prostitution. It is a violation of human rights when women are doused with gasoline, set on fire and burned to death because their marriage dowries are deemed too small. It is a violation of human rights when individual women are raped in their own communities and when thousands of women are subjected to rape as a tactic or prize of war. It is a violation of human rights when a leading cause of death worldwide along women ages 14 to 44 is the violence they are subjected to in their own homes. It is a violation of human rights when women are denied the right to plan their own families, and that includes being forced to have abortions or being sterilized against their will.

"Women's rights are human rights. Among those rights are the right to speak freely--and the right to be heard."

That was Hillary Rodham Clinton defying the US State Department and the Chinese Government at the 1995 UN World Conference on Women in Beijing (the full, stunning speech: http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/hillaryclintonbeijingspeech.htm).

And this voice, age 22, in "Commencement Remarks of Hillary D. Rodham, President of Wellesley College Government Association, Class of 1969" (full speech: http://www.wellesley.edu/PublicAffairs/Commencement/1969/053169hillary.html)

"We are, all of us, exploring a world none of us understands. . . . searching for a more immediate, ecstatic, and penetrating mode of living. . . . [for the] integrity, the courage to be whole, living in relation to one another in the full poetry of existence. The struggle for an integrated life existing in an atmosphere of communal trust and respect is one with desperately important political and social consequences. . . . Fear is always with us, but we just don't have time for it."

She ended with the commitment "to practice, with all the skill of our being: the art of making possible."

And for decades, she's been learning how.

So goodbye to Hillary's second-guessing herself. The real question is deeper than her re-finding her voice. Can we women find ours? Can we do this for ourselves? "Our President, Ourselves!"

Time is short and the contest tightening. We need to rise in furious energy--as we did when courageous Anita Hill was so vilely treated in the US Senate, as we did when desperate Rosie Jiminez was butchered by an illegal abortion, as we did and do for women globally who are condemned for trying to break through. We need to win, this time. Goodbye to supporting HRC tepidly, with ambivalent caveats and apologetic smiles. Time to volunteer, make phone calls, send emails, donate money, argue, rally, march, shout, vote.

Me? I support Hillary Rodham because she's the best qualified of all candidates running in both parties. I support her because her progressive politics are as strong as her proven ability to withstand what will be a massive right-wing assault in the general election. I support her because she's refreshingly thoughtful, and I'm bloodied from eight years of a jolly "uniter" with ejaculatory politics. I needn't agree with her on every point. I agree with the 97 percent of her positions that are identical with Obama's—and the few where hers are both more practical and to the left of his (like health care). I support her because she's already smashed the first-lady stereotype and made history as a fine senator, and because I believe she will continue to make history not only as the first US woman president, but as a great US president.

As for the "woman thing"?

Me, I'm voting for Hillary not because she's a woman--but because I am.





RM

February 2, 2008

New York City







[Also posted on www.womensmediacenter.com]







Official Site:

www.RobinMorgan.us

Artistic Irony

I wrote an entry on February 27, 2006 about the trip we had just taken to Verona and Padua, and about visiting the Basilica of St. Anthony in the latter city. Now, two years later, I'm trying to read a bunch of books by the Rutgers professors I will be meeting next week, and one of them is about the sculptural decoration of the chapel in the basilica that held his body--a ground-breaking series of nine monumental marble friezes that line the chapel's walls, which at the time of their creation were unlike anything else that had been done in Italy since Roman times. I was in that chapel, walking right below those friezes, but I didn't look up. I didn't even know they were there! It was dark and crowded, there was a Mass going on behind us, and I was so taken by the devotional offerings to St. Anthony (my mother's preferred intercessor for all lost items) that I never even shot a glance around the rest of the room. And so I missed my chance to check out a really unique set of sculptures...all I can say is, ARGH.

Aside

Can I just take a moment here to brag about how completely awesome Sean is? On Friday I was perusing the New York Times online and saw an article about an exhibition at the Morgan Library in New York of a bunch of Florentine Master drawings, including Michelangelo, Pontormo, Bronzino, and our favorite rapscallion, Vasari. The next day, Sean reveals that my Valentine’s Day gift is going to be none other than going to New York to see the exhibition. Who has the best boyfriend ever? I do, of course.

Weekend and Trip Planning

This weekend Sean and I went to a winery in Wallingford, CT called Gouveia Vineyards. From the panoramic view of the surrounding fields and mountains, you’d never guess that you were in Connecticut and not Napa Valley. With a little imagination, you could even insert a few cypress trees and think you were in Tuscany. The charm of this place is that it’s like a giant ski lodge on top of a hill where you can buy a bottle of wine, bring your own food (or eat their cheese and crackers, like we did) and hang out for as long as you want. We tried their house white wine, which was surprisingly delicious and only $14 a bottle. It’s definitely a great place to come with a group, as the large numbers of people lounging around attested, but there were also these two women sitting right behind us, armed with a picnic basket, who were already obviously well-entrenched when we arrived and were still there when we left, hours later. As we were leaving, a couple came in carrying a large pizza box. Apparently, as long as you don’t bring in your own alcohol, anything goes. So if any of you are up for a wine-filled jaunt into the center of Connecticut, let me know.

This morning I found a hotel for Carla and I when we travel to Venice (which is T-minus 1 month and 1 week and counting). It’s called Alloggi Barbaria, and it’s in the Castello neighborhood of Venice. I was starting to get worried when I discovered that not only are lodgings in Venice (always a costly city) really expensive in March, it’s also difficult to find something moderately priced when you’re booking a mere month in advance. Plus, at most hotels, prices go up by about 30 euro if you’re staying over a weekend, which we are. I came by this little gem almost by accident, but it proved to be a piece of luck—cheaper than anything else I’d seen, exceedingly well-reviewed on Tripadvisor, my travel gospel, and recommended by Rick Steeves. And it’s actually in Venice! I had almost reconciled myself that we were going to have to stay on Lido—or worse, in Mestre on the mainland. Cheaper, yes, but transportation to Venice proper can be a hassle.

Anyway, you know it’s going to be a great place when the only thing other tourists can find to complain about is that they had to drag their bags up a couple flights of stairs to get there. The first and best hotel we stayed at in Greece, Hotel Byron in Nafplio, was the same. It was up two flights and completely unprepossessing from the outside, and inside we had to walk up three or so more flights to get to our room. So what? To this day I can remember the taste of that jam they served with the hot croissants in the morning in the little breakfast room, where we met an older American couple who had just come from Athens with the student riots going on, and their horror stories of trying to navigate the streets by car. I remember the view of the bay from the window of our tropically pink-orange room, and how I was absolutely freezing but Sean insisted on having the window open. We spent two nights there (two delicious breakfasts!) and it was awesome.

The only thing I’m worried about in Venice is the “acqua alta,” the flooding that can happen during the winter. Apparently, certain confluences of the moon and the winds can send a couple of feet of water into the city, the worst-hit area being S. Marco square because it’s also the lowest point in the city. The city puts up ‘duck-boards,’ walkways above the water that are used by tourists and Venetians alike; otherwise, you just buy a pair of hugely overpriced rubber boots and flounder as best you can. I’ve asked Carla to inquire of some natives as to whether we’ll be particularly at risk in March. Not only would I prefer to buy my boots in Florence where they’ll likely be cheaper, I’d also like to know if my coat is going to wind up below the waterline!

Sometimes, I Miss a Cul-de-Sac

This morning I knew I would have to get up before 11 because a realtor was bringing prospective buyers around to check out the house. Of course, I didn't expect to be roused from sleep even earlier by the neighbor with the 1970s purple Buick Regal, the engine of which he began busily revving around 10:30, filling our street first with the pleasant strains of drag-racing, and then with the musical stylings of Guns N Roses from the car radio, which was on at a volume that could have convinced me the receiver was in my living room and not outside and across the street. Thank you, sir, for ensuring that I could not possibly oversleep for one minute after you began your automotive ministrations. Without you, I might have been faced with the difficulty of easing myself out of an extremely comfortable bed instead of leaping up to find out which asshole was making so much noise.

Is it just me, or did life on Whitney Circle not start until noon on a Sunday? Day of rest, people. Day of rest.