BLOGGAX

corporalitas

2012-01-05T04:19:00.013+01:00

a. d. ii Non. Ian. ann. dom. MMXII

Cum meum librum nuper corrigerem, etiam meum corpus in memoria habebam...

Cranking out book revisions, as I had occasion to do lately, I was struck by how much body-memory there is in writing.

I was working on an episode in Ovid's Metamorphoses — the Byblis episode of book 9, if you want to know — an episode I'd written about in graduate school at the end of spring quarter, 1993. It was one of my better papers, as I recall. (I actually don't have to recall it, since I've fetishistically saved it.) It was good enough to get my future dissertation director to take me on, anyway.

What I remember most is where I wrote it, the kitchen of my second apartment. Our second apartment: I'd been married just over a year. I loved that place, a corner unit with lots of wood in an old brick building near campus. I can close my eyes and feel myself there, all of my Ovid texts and commentaries propped open on other books, articles and random paper strewn across the tabletop. The table, once my grandmother's, is next to a window. The fridge is directly across from me; the stove, on my left. It's the middle of the night. My wife is asleep, and I'm at work on the manuscript. I mean that literally, because I'm writing it by hand on scratch paper. Once I've gotten enough pages, I'm going to head to campus and type it in on the Mac Plus.

My back hurts from sitting too long. Every now and then I stand up and stretch. Sometimes I head outside to the park across the street, and I shuffle slowly up and down the strip of grass along the road, sorting it all out. There's not much traffic at this hour. The evening air is pleasant and cool. Dry, too — it hasn't rained much in the last few weeks.

All of this came rushing back as I worked through my 2011 thoughts on Byblis. And, inevitably, I was struck by how much has changed for me since then...and how much hasn't. It was still the middle of the night. Most of those same books were in front of me in awkward, uneven piles. I was still working by hand on scratch paper. Though I've gotten better over the years at composing on-screen — I'm doing it right now — sometimes it just flows better the old-fashioned way. The old table and chairs were in another room in the far corner of the house. House! I'm a homeowner now, and a father. By some miracle, I'm still married. I'll leave the cat out of it.

I was especially struck by the differences in my body then versus my body now. I was leaner and quicker then, and I could pull an all-nighter without hesitation. I didn't drink coffee, though I swill the stuff now. I was always prone to fits of hypochondria, particularly about cancer, my mortal fear. In 1993, though, I was much less apt to worry about every little tic. Flash forward ten years or so to my first sabbatical when, being cooped up in the house by myself, my body-sensitivity was driving me and everybody else crazy. I went through a period of months where I was aware of each and every time I swallowed. Did I mention I've had a sore throat lately?

More or less constant has been my inner persona. I don't feel older in my mind. Maybe that's what I should be worried about.

* * * * *

I've heard a few friends speak, every now and then, about their internet-only friends: people they've never met in person, but know well through online collaboration or social media. Often these friends — the internet friends — get mentioned in the context of illness or, unfortunately, death. "One of my internet friends broke her ankle." "I learned that a friend from the internet died last week." How do we mourn those whose faces we haven't seen for ourselves?

I suppose, if you're an academic, it's very much like learning that someone in your field has passed away. Someone whose scholarship you've read or look forward to reading, whose work overlaps with yours in ways that make you part of the same community. And yet you might never meet. Maybe your schools are at opposite ends of the country. Maybe you've just never crossed paths at a conference. Maybe it was just a matter of time, until time ran out.

All of which brings me around to my friend, S. I was reminded of her the other day when doing reference-checking on Byblis, and I ran across S.'s article. Brilliant, brilliant stuff, working in everything from Barthesian discourse on love to gender theory. Here's a quote, one of many thoughtful and insightful passages: "Byblis is driven to destruction precisely because of her status as reader and writer. When Byblis finally realizes that her deployment of the conventions of erotic poetry is ineffectual in wooing Caunus, she is devastated. For Byblis, her pen will prove to be as deadly as [a] drawn sword." I'd been thinking along these lines, but it was as if S. had been in my head, spinning my mossy ideas into gold.

I never met S.; never corresponded with her. I didn't even know who she was when she died in 2004, age 34. This surprises everyone, especially me. She was a fellow Ovidian. An activist. A wife and mother. A Buffy the Vampire Slayer enthusiast. I'm sure our paths would have converged eventually, but they never did. Those who knew her well assumed I knew her, too. The offhand, intimate references were the most unsettling: "...And then, of course, that whole thing with S...."

That whole thing was cancer. I'm told that she was feeling lousy for the better part of a semester. When she finally went to the doctor, it was already too late. Her community — which included everyone in my community, except for ignorant me — mourned her. I feel her loss, though, both in my community's lingering sadness and in my own regret when I rediscover one of her pieces. I'll never get to talk with her about Ovid, or film, or anything else. And how I want to! I feel as though I know her a little through her work, well enough to hear a voice...someone else's, not my own...when I read her words. It's the voice of a friend I've never met.

* * * * *

One of those offhand references to S. came from my colleagues. It was maybe the second time I'd heard her name, and I must have looked confused. That's when I learned they had interviewed S. for the same position I eventually got. "We almost hired her instead of you," they told me. "She was fourth on the list."

I still can't wrap my head around that. Knowing S. as I do now — the depth of her learning, her keenness of mind, and her compassion — how the hell did I get higher up on a list than she? (That's a rhetorical question. I have a theory, but now's not the time.) What I heard in my colleagues' voices, though, was that same sadness, and also relief. On the one hand, they were imagining the road not taken. On the other hand, they were relieved not to have taken it. And who can blame them? There but for the grace...

I can see that road, too, because it's mine. Had S. been hired instead of me, she would have set up shop in the office so familiar to me. She would have sat in my chair and toiled into the night. My students would have been hers, especially those rare few from my early years on the job, who are now my friends and colleagues. I know, because I'm only now hitting my stride, she'd have done better by them than I. She'd have made friends with my other friend S. in Philosophy five doors down. It would have been the S1 and S2 Show, and soon S1, S2, M., and A. I can see them all laughing together at the dinners we used to have.

* * * * *

These visions are weighing on me, like an inverted echo of body-memory — except it's not a memory, and my body's nowhere in the picture. It's certainly not at Yale, where S. landed her dream job.

My wife and I always say that if we weren't where we are, we'd be in Madison. That sounds about right. Maybe in this alternate universe I've conjured, I'm there right now, jamming or playing cards, or walking with my daughter on a chilly State Street.

That'd be just fine.

cervisia

2011-09-29T19:41:00.003+02:00

a. d. iii Kal. Oct. ann. dom. MMXI

Plures memoriae mihi sunt, quas scribere debeo dum in mentem veniunt. Ecce haec fabula juvenilis de cervisia.

I can see the party from the second-floor lounge, a gathering in one of the rooms of an adjoining dorm. The songs of Cinderella, Genesis, and a hundred more, mixed for the occasion and mingled with laughs and shouts, waft upward on the evening breeze. Springtime in Beloit.

A guy in a polo roosts in the first-floor open window, his backside hanging over the sill two feet above the grass. He's the Bartender. When someone wants a beer, it's his job to reach into the 24-pack of Busch on the ground. It's taken him a good five minutes to hone his craft without looking behind him. His eyes locked on the party, he leans back slightly and sets his forearm, just so, on the rim of the carton. The weight of the cans keeps him balanced. He tucks in his fingers, plucks out a can, and pushes off, his arm tracing a wide arc, like a crane unloading a boxcar. It's a thing of beauty, and he knows it.

I don't drink, but Dave does. "You wanna beer?" I ask.

"Hell, yeah!" Dave replies.

"Me, too!" Christine chimes in.

"Yo!" calls Marc.

The news spreads. Before I know it, I'm compelled to provide for seven floormates. No backing out now.

I'm crawling under the evergreen bushes outside the dorm, just below the party window. Their branches extend up and outward toward the brick, forming a narrow tunnel that leads straight to the beer. I wait for the Bartender to grab one. He's working a little harder now that half the pack is gone, but he's still in fine form. As he pushes off, can in hand, I tilt the carton onto its side and start rolling the beers to me, one by one. It takes longer than I'd like, because I'm lying on my stomach and there's not much room down here. I hope to hell that no one wants to be served.

Ten cans later, the carton is empty. I set it upright again and crawl backwards, clutching the beers to my gut in the folds of my t-shirt. My legs are free of the tunnel, but I stay low, worming my way around the corner.

A master of stealth and subterfuge, I haul ass upstairs. Cheers ring out as I burst into the lounge and start unloading the cargo. "Have they figured it out yet?"

"Not yet."

"Kill the lights." I survey the scene. The Bartender hasn't moved. The carton is upright. Minutes pass, and some of my floormates, satisfied but bored, wander off. Marc, Dave, and Christine are still with me. We watch in silence, broken only by smug little sips.

After what seems an hour, the Bartender leans back, reaches, and lowers his forearm. Without a counterweight, the carton slides out from under itself. The Bartender flails with both arms and topples backward out of the window, crushing the carton between his ass and the soft earth. The party erupts with a chorus of what-the-fucks.

"Defenestration!" I cry out.

The Bartender, still on his back, opens his eyes and glances upward: there's vengeance, even murder, in his gaze.

"Oh, shit!" exclaims Dave, and we back away, retreating to our rooms, where we spend the next two days in hiding.

enigmata

2011-06-28T14:01:00.005+02:00

a. d. iv Non. Iul. ann. dom. MMXI

Sunt multa Italiana quae comprehendere non possum....

Unsolved mysteries of Italy, 2011 edition, in no particular order.

How does Alitalia stay in business? Mystery-within-a-mystery: how can an airline deviate from its schedule and act as if all is normale? My flight from Rome was scheduled for 2:40. It left around that time in the days before and since. But on my departure day, 6:00, and not an explanation to be had. (Nor any viable options for changing the flight.)

Why is it that, even when you speak very loudly and repeat yourself twice, there's always one Romekid who doesn't hear you? Corollary: Why do all the Romekids hear the one thing you never meant to say?

Why can't you print on the printer that is allegedly working, but you can print on the printer with the fuori servizio ("out of service") sign?

Also on the IT tip, why do you have to turn over your laptop to be enabled to use the wireless internet? Why isn't the wifi just password-protected like everywhere else? What nefarious shit got installed on my computer?

Who runs the St. John's Rome Center, anyway? Stefano Whatshisname? That cute girl who speaks English? Satan? The Pope?

I know that dining out in Italy is a luxuriant, lingering affair, but why can't I ever get any waiter's attention anywhere?

What do the Bolognese do for a living that their local economy can support portico after portico of shops? Food shops, coffee shops, clothing shops, electronics shops, more food shops. Seriously, the city feels like a mall sometimes.

When your cab driver sees the pullman (tour bus) broken down and blocking the street and waits for other cars stuck behind the bus to back out of the street and to make a detour, why does he then proceed to turn onto the street with the broken-down bus and to act surprised when he gets stuck, too?

Why, when you want the number 30 bus, does the 280 — which you wanted yesterday but couldn't catch if your life depended on it — blow on past three times?

Why don't you, who are competent at making change in the U.S., ever seem to have the right change in Italy? I mean, you get one- and two-euro-cent coins, but where do they go?

Why does Florence have so many goddamned mosquitoes?

How can my friend and colleague, Jackie, call Caffe Sant'Eustachio the best coffee in Rome, when only its arch-rival, Tazza d'Oro, uses Blue Mountain Jamaican grind, which she considers the best coffee in the world?

All of this sounds rather whiny, but it's not meant that way. I had a great time, despite these enigmas here and there. Tune in again some other year for more unsolved mysteries of Italy!

postea

2011-06-06T11:31:00.011+02:00

a. d. ii Non. Iun. ann. dom. MMXI

Nunc viae vacuae sunt....

The streets seem empty now, even though flooded with tourists. The hard rain that threatened the past two weeks has finally come. It drives away al fresco diners, but everyone else carries on: so much to see and do.

My girls have arrived. The husband and father in me is overjoyed; the didact, relieved. No one to corral or correct, to remind or redirect. My people! No need to explain or expound. Tedious ritual of unpacking my mind, of tying up loose ends, of choosing from a thousand points only three — farewell.

And yet....

Our first family meal in almost month. There on the menu is Gia's pasta. I advise my girls to order smaller portions, as Jordy and Emily should have done. As we walk Pompey's cavea I seem to see Sarah racing toward the playbills of the theater that survives.

We pass the stand where I waited with anxious Jordan, who needed a cab to the Spanish steps. Jackie arrived a moment later, bent on a rendevous with archaeologists in Trastevere.

Entering Piazza Navona, my girls puzzle over Bernini's rivers, but I can hear Allan and Melissa describing them all, while Sandy gushes over the jagged rocks. There's the restaurant that cost too much, where Nicole waited too long for prosciutto e melone. There's Amari's bench, though she much preferred the Aventine.

Turning into Piazza della Rotonda, my daughter marvels at the Pantheon just as Shannon and Katie did on that long first night, when the whole tour lay ahead. I want to remind my wife, as I did Guerry and Jovany in St. Peter's, that the porch's bronze was melted down for the baldacchino — but she taught me that fact two years ago.

On to the Trevi by request. La figlia eyes the trinkets for sale, while I contemplate the maiden revealing the virgin spring, a relief I'd never noticed until Katy and Ryoko pointed it out. How obvious, now.

The water glitters under and above the light. I see why Erika felt like a mermaid, a feeling she shared with all of Rome on the morning of Republic Day. I wet my hands and fail to convince anyone that the Giovanni knock-knocking is not il battista. Liz bought it, though, when my hands were dry.

Past the shop windows and headed home. I wonder if Carolyn would have admired those shoes. Or if Alissa will think of the Largo Argentina as a republican forum for the rest of her life. My eyes grow heavy, like Maria's, and I stumble like Sarah, dear baby deer.

The palimpsest is full. My city has been mapped over. Romekids, I look for you everywhere.

ultima nocte

2011-06-02T13:10:00.006+02:00

a. d. iv Non. Iun. ann. dom. MMXI

Est mihi pictura photographica, quae me iuvenem ultima nocte Romae monstrat....

I have a picture, which I've never taken the trouble to scan in, of myself on my last night in Rome in 1994. My twenty-seven year-old graduate-student self, the one with the cheap glasses and tattered clothes, the one who could eat anything, whose knees didn't hurt, whose throat didn't pop and click when he swallowed, who had an intact left hand and lacked the chronic morning cough.

And the hair. Oh, the hair. Starting to thin at the crown, true, but still wiry and full. In the photo it bushes out in every direction because the kid was too cheap, and too timid, to visit a Roman barbiere.

He smiles, knowing that this is the very last exposure on his last roll of film. He takes care not to smirk, but to show some teeth. He remembers how smug he looked in his wedding album, quite by accident, when he thought he was smiling.

His arms are bent behind his back for no good reason. He wears an off-the-rack white dress shirt and a grey tie, the one he packed just in case. His pants are forest green, his favorite pair, because they were airy but dark enough to hide the Roman grime, and they were long enough to cover his white tube socks. His basic brown shoes are out of frame, but they are battered and worn from pounding ancient pavement — all the viae, viali, piazze and scale. He's lean and a little haggard, but the ten weeks have treated him kindly.

Ego ille sum, sed ille non ego est.

Behind him, guests from the wedding mingle and dance. Marco, a graduate student from the Italian program, got married in Santa Maria in Cosmedin. This is the reception, on the Janiculum, above the Piazza San Pietro. (The Galleria Principe Amedeo Savoia Aoata, my map tells me now. My forty-four year-old self can never remember the goddamned name.) Jennifer, the student of voice, has just performed what he knows only as that song from A Room with a View.

It's the golden hour, when the city is steeped in creams and yellows. To the west, the dome of St. Peter's blazes orange and red in the sinking sun. Soon he'll make his way down the hill and ring for the portiera to open the gate. He'll take his last walk along the Tiber, across the Ponte Sisto, and home to the Campo.

If I could speak with this kid — this grinning, cocky young jackass — what would I say?

That in a little over a year, he'll be a father of a baby girl, and so being he'll discover his best self.
That, seventeen years later, he'll love his wife more ardently than ever.
That he should buy stock in the internet.
That all of his anxieties over graduate school and the dissertation will bear fruit in gainful employment.
That his fears and phobias (that mole here, that lump there) will be proven baseless.
That he should avoid table saws.
That the closest friendships of that decade will devolve into, at best, polite acquaintances.

But what's the use? He can't hear me. And if he could hear, he wouldn't listen. He's immortal and he knows everything already. And, on the off chance he did listen, he might change our future. He's going to need all of it — paternity, love, poverty, even that maimed hand.

And a haircut.

lena

2011-05-27T17:01:00.003+02:00

a. d. vi Kal. Jun. ann. dom. MMXI

Bene facere videtur...

She seems kind enough, offering to take our picture in front of the Colosseum — which wasn't my idea, given all the photo-whoring I'd already put up with. She is tan and blonde, and casually dressed like so many American tourists. She looks through the viewfinder but can't fit us all in, so she steps backward over the railing and onto the grass of the former Meta Sudans.

     She counts off and clicks. Our togetherness documented, we break apart. I stroll off to study the south face of Constantine's arch, since we're supposed to be moving in that direction anyway, toward the foot of the Palatine.  Surely the rest will follow.

     They don't. I make my way back to the north face, quickly but not too quickly. I don't know, walk casual. The students have gathered in a semi-circle around our photographer friend, who sits on the railing, looking down at her lap but talking enthusiastically. She's writing with a chisel-tip maker. My colleague is standing with the group, nodding agreement. I move closer.

     "Yeah, yeah," says my colleague to the group, "That's the one I told you about." I can't see her eyes for her sunglasses, but I know the tone. Her authority is being tested.

     "And, ladies," says our friend, "there's a ton of places in Testasho you can party your asses off at."

     Testaccio? Ah.

     Our good samaritan is a pimp, of a kind. It's her job to scope out tourists of a certain age and to lure them to a local club with promises — of booze, of women, and of men. Subtler than the hawks dressed like gladiators, but no less sharp, she saw the twenty young women in our group coming a mile away. She saw us before we landed in Rome. The photo was the thin edge of the wedge.

     She's dispensing general advice, still couched in helpfulness. The hook is coming, and she'll need the flyers she's been marking up. Right about...now.

     "So there's Testasho, and every Monday and Wednesday we do a pub crawl. First hour, all the drinks you can slam, and we take you around...."

     I start to zone out. It's been a long day — all our days are long, here. Bits and pieces of patter, made grating by her husky, sorority-girl twang, get through.

     "...international and local crowd..." "...keep drinking all night ..." "...party your asses off..." (Apparently the centerpiece of her repertoire.) "...you want the Spanish men, honey, I'll bring 'em to you..." "...help you get home on the bus..." "...and, again, my name is Trish...."

     The students are eyeing me. I'm not sighing deeply. I don't have my head in my hands. I'm not covering my ears and shouting, "La-la-la!" I'm not jumping up and spiriting them away. I'm simply waiting for them to get their fill, so we can move on. Maybe that's a mistake, since I don't want my silence to be taken as consent. After all, we've made a culture of joking about this sort of thing. It's the female students' role to yell, "Paolo! Paolo!" And it's my part to dramatize discomfort when they do. I know that Trish doesn't really have their welfare in mind, but an intervention would make me look even more stodgy than I already feel.

     What bother me, though, are the assumptions in Trish's pitch: that the avowed "EuroBash" of her brochure is the real reason our students — our American students, and especially the women — have come to Rome. And, I suppose, that my colleague and I have been working them too hard, and that we don't understand their wants and needs — at least, not the way Trish does. What, I wasn't young once?

     Then I hear, soft but plain, a snort of derision from one of our sophomores, and I know it's going to be okay, whatever happens. We thank Trish and slough off to the Palatine. She is much discussed: the constructedness of her rhetoric, her eye for tourists, how she must have to sit there all day.... One thing our students understand is façades. Perhaps not architectural ones — Yes, that was the Arch of Constantine. No, you're thinking of Septimius Severus. — but they have the social ones down pat.

ekphrasis

2011-05-27T01:49:00.004+02:00

a. d. vi Kal. Jun. ann. dom. MMXI

Equiti stapes desunt...

He has no stirrups. Perhaps the Romans never used them, but he doesn't need them. His horse, like his empire, is his to commad. He wears no armor, only a cloak with folds that resemble a toga's. He is the first citizen of Rome, immortalized in patinaed bronze. He stretches forth his right hand, calming the people. The horse reciprocates with the right foreleg. His left hand, cupped and held above the thigh, curls inward as if holding invisible reigns -- but he doesn't need them, either. His face is stern and benificent. He wears a beard. He is a philosopher and a king.

(Equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius, Capitoline Museums)

ceyx et alcyone

2011-05-14T06:06:00.000+02:00

a. d. iii Id. Mai. ann. dom. MMXI

Nuper fabulam novam spectavi, quae mea discipula creavit....

I want to devote some space to the work of a student of mine. Last fall I taught a seminar on Ovid's Metamorphoses, in which I required the students to research one of the poem's many narratives. My student chose the Ceyx and Alycone story in book 11. She enjoyed it so much that she decided to adapt the narrative for the stage as her senior project in theater.

My involvement in this effort was twofold. First, I worked with her this spring on reading the Latin. Not just translating, mind you, but poring over the text and teasing out the nuances. Second, Ovid and performance is my thing — inasmuch as I have a scholarly thing these days — and I became the de facto advisor on the project after our institution's playwright got too busy to participate. I should add that my student had another advisor in the Theater Department: I tend toward the theatrical, but it's strictly Amateur Night with me. Professional help was needed.

What I initially worried over — a project to which I might not be able to devote enough time — easily became the best part of my semester. What a pleasure to work with such an interested, devoted, and bright person! Amidst all of the the Latin we had time for discussions about Greek seafaring (not to spoil the story, but Ceyx dies while sailing to the oracle at Claros), ornithology, the role of fate in a godly universe, and lots of witty banter. Sometimes an independent study becomes intermittent study as other courses and commitments intrude upon students' (and sometimes faculty members') schedules. Not here. We met every week, come hell or high water, and the time was always well spent.

And then there was the play itself. I attended a few rehearsals and saw a completely different side of my student. In Latin class she always projected an air of diffidence and deference. The studio, however, was her turf. I was struck by her confidence and her command of both the space and her young troupe of actors. She didn't bark out orders. Rather, she encouraged her cast to think through who their characters were and what they wanted; she asked them to deliver their lines more slowly or more quickly; she invited them to re-position themselves or the props. She wasn't giving them fish, she was teaching them how to fish for themselves. It was all very productive and enabling. Of course it was. What else should I have expected?

The final performance — night two of a three-night run — was brilliant. The lines had all been learned; the blocking, perfected. There had been some moments earlier in the term, as I read the script or spoke with the student, when I'd not understood what she was after. Now it was all clear. The Ceyx and Alcyone arc is tragic, as Ovid's stories about mortals almost always are, and she caught it just right. Balancing the sadness was divine comedy as Juno and Iris (her role greatly expanded from the original text) bickered over Ceyx's destiny or as Iris visited the cave of Sleep (one of the most beloved sections of the original and done justice in the play). The metamorphosis of Ceyx and Alcyone into birds was handled simply and beautifully. I walked out of the studio realizing I'd just seen something I'd never seen before.

At the performance, which was in the round, I was sitting opposite my student. As much as I enjoyed what was happening on the stage, I loved seeing her reaction, a very steady and satisfied grin. It wasn't so much that the performance was the embodiment of her vision (though surely it was); instead, I think she was continuing to discover new things about her own piece, as if it would never truly be finished.

As the term draws to a close, I'm feeling melancholy. I nominated the student for one of our highest scholarly awards: she won, and I'm looking forward to the award ceremony next week. And I'll see her and her family at graduation. It's not that I didn't appreciate the work while it was going on. I'm missing the work, which really wasn't work at all. I've said goodbye to many students, male and female, over the years — sometimes gladly (it happens), sometimes sadly. This farewell will be among the latter. It hurts.

memoriae

2011-05-14T06:00:00.001+02:00

a. d. iv Id. Mai. ann. dom. MMXI

Tres memoriae mihi sunt, quae quomodo iungi possint nescio....

Dave shoves some books into his backpack. "I'm going to Italy," he sings, slowly. "I'm going to Italy."

This little song is for my benefit, because I am staying behind. Next year, baby, look out. I'll have saved up enough money, and my teaching stipend will cover the rest. I've never been to Rome, but then neither has Dave. Yet. "I'm going to Italy. I'm going to I-ta-lyyyy."

"Go fuuuck yourselllf," I sing, for his benefit.

* * * * *

A year earlier, same drab office. Karen and I are waiting for Tracy, so I can pay her back.

     I skipped Greek Prose Comp, and Karen tells me we were never given an assignment. But Tracy, who was supposed to cover for me, tried to trick me with an assignment of her own. She typed up an intricate battle scene in which the Athenian left wing faced the onslaught of an elite corps called the Apple-bearers. She must have photocopied it twenty times over. It looks exactly like the crazy, antiquarian shit we've been translating all term, and I bought it. Now I'm going to pretend I was up all night translating it. It's a poor riposte, but it's the only card I have to play.

     I hear our department chair outside, talking to the students in the other office. I hear him say Tracy's name. I open the door with a flourish. "What was that?"

     His mouth twitches. "Tracy's dead." A pause, and a look of deep pity. "I'm sorry."

     I turn to Karen, who has gone pale — and in Seattle that's saying something. She looks like she's going to faint. I don't hug her. I take my seat and stare at the walls.

     Tracy can't be dead. I saw her just two days ago, when she gave me our so-called homework. My ex-roomate. My friend from St. Louis, whom I ended up following out west. My peer and my rival. But as the minutes lope onward it's clear she won't be bursting through the door like she always does — did — on Mondays, fresh off the bus from the ferry terminal. Why did she have move out to the provinces with that rube?

     Sheila stops by, a professor, but always Sheila to us. She crosses the room to Karen and enfolds her. Karen starts to cry.

     We go to Prose Comp, for lack of something better to do. The old man looks solemn. "We have lost one of our own," he intones. What does he know? Sometimes he forgets my name.

     The details come later. The motorcycle ride. The missing stop sign. The head-on collision. Glenn was thrown from the bike but survived. Tracy died in an instant. My lasting image of her is a fabrication: her chin resting on Glenn's shoulder, her arms around his chest, her hair streaming as the bike surges forward. She is smiling because she is happy and in love and free.

* * * * *

Two years later, Rome. I live in Club Roma, an apartment above the Campo de' Fiori. My rommates are six women. I have my own bedroom. Two floors down is Camp Roma, where the other male students reside. They all sleep in the same bedroom. Their apartment has a dirty, itchy couch, which we have dubbed the Crumbbucket.

A week ago my roomates and I organized ourselves into an oligarchist collective. We are the People. The People pool their money (several thousand lire from each party member every few days) and buy their food in common. The People share the duties of shopping and cooking. Being seven in number, the People have instituted an efficient laundering system, each member having a designated day of the week for using the washing machine. Today is my day. The People are unified in mind and ideal.

It's Easter Sunday. I'm standing on our small balcony looking down on the southwest corner of the Campo, where the bakery is and, more important, where the payphones are. I have to call my parents and my wife, and the apartment phone does not dial out. Mr. Dicaeta is a sharp landlord. I'm checking the line for the phones in the square. If there are less than five in the queue, I'll head down and wait my turn — though I'm not particularly eager to tell my folks I didn't go to Piazza San Pietro to receive the Pope's blessing.

Ever the American, Erica has decided to dye some eggs. After wrangling with some food coloring from the back of the pantry, she's managed to coat about a half dozen in some...unusual...pastels. Not bad, though.

Then I notice the carton. "Where did you get those?"

"From the fridge."

"You used the eggs" — I pause to make the point — "of the People?" Lie to me. Please. Cilla, who's been watching this exchange, clears the room, muttering, "Oh, no."

"Of course. What else would I use?"

I am speechless. Seeing my patent distress over this blow to the body politic, Erica scowls and asks, "Well, would you like one?"

I grab one and head down to wait in line. I'll need a snack. "You have the People's thanks," I say over my shoulder.

It's the start of a long spring.

blancitas

2011-03-24T23:43:00.009+01:00

a. d. viii Kal. Apr. ann. dom. MMXI

collega mihi est, quae tacere non scit....

Today I partook of a faculty interest group on the topic of whiteness. There've been several racially-charged incidents on campus, with much attendant hand-wringing on the part of faculty and the administration. This group seemed to me a productive way of getting at the issues.

A white colleague attended, and she made it her business to sabotage the work of the group from the get-go, monopolizing the conversation and casting serious aspersions on the notion of unseen privilege — I shit you not, she called it "dangerous."

I did my best to get a word in edgewise, but I'm not the best off-the-cuff debater — and a debate is what it devolved into — especially when my buttons are pushed and wine has been served. (Oh, the retrospective irony: wine at a discussion of critical whiteness. Does it get any more white than that? Not that I'm complaining, mind you.)

Anyway, instead of telling the loudmouth off like I should have done, I'm left to rant at the rest of you. Why is it that the privileged white are compelled to control discussions of white privilege? I felt sorriest for the junior (untenured) colleague who had taken the trouble to organize the group. My friend, it is not your fault.

filia futura

2011-02-24T17:50:00.025+01:00

a. d. vi Kal. Mar. ann. dom. MMXI

Puto meam filiam olim venisse ex futuro ut me viseret....

I've come to the conclusion, after some meditation, that I met my grown-up daughter while she was still a baby. That is, I think a twenty-year-old version of my daughter traveled back in time to see me when I was a new father. Yes, I know how that sounds. No, I don't care to revise my story. Yes, go sit somewhere else, if you'd like.

It was 1997, or maybe even 1998. My daughter — my 1990s daughter — would not have been much more than three years old. I was a thirty-something graduate student at the University of Washington working on my doctorate. One of the teaching gigs you get at this stage is Big Myth — a course on classical mythology taught to an audience of 250-plus students. You wear a microphone; you use PowerPoint (well, I used overheads); you play the hall and try to sparkle. And, if you're me, you ask your students to write a short story and invite them to your office hour to discuss it.

She was blonde and petite. She wore jeans with the obligatory tattered knees, and a white blouse with bell sleeves. She came to see me about her paper, but she clearly knew what she was doing, so our conversation turned elsewise. She made a show of noticing the collage of pictures above my desk: my daughter as a baby and a toddler, a mosaic lovingly cut and assembled by my wife, color-copied and laminated to order at Kinko's (and still adorning the office of my forty-something self).

She started to ask me questions: How did I like fatherhood? What did I want for my daughter? Did I love her? She knew things: How I wanted — want — my daughter to be strong and witty. How I'd have her learn a martial art so she could protect herself. At the end of all the banter she smiled and thanked me, though I had done nothing at all. By the next class she was just another face in a room of faces. I don't even remember her name. I have records, but I'm not sure I could pick her out. I'm not sure I want to try.

Maybe she was just another student who had my number. Or maybe she was my Kaity, displaced in time and come to check it out, to see how it began two decades prior. That's what I would do, if I had the chance. I used to pore over my parents' wedding pictures, looking for signs of me — though my absence there proves nothing: I might have been canny enough to avoid being photographed. Mustn't be too obvious.

If it was you, baby, thank you. It's a comfort to know that, despite these dark days and my ham-handed, half-assed parenting, you turned out so beautiful and so wise. (Not that I ever doubted you would.) And so funny: to think that you sat there for ten weeks right under my nose! I must have given you an A. You always did take after me.

dies digitorum mutilatorum

2010-08-29T16:30:00.045+02:00

a. d. iv Kal. Sept. ann. dom. MMX

Fabula est, hactenus nefas, quomodo duos digitos casu mutilaverim. Caveant lectores....

(Warning: This post is not for the faint of heart.)

While the country looks back, as it should, on New Orleans five years after Katrina, I have a little anniversary of my own to commemorate. This is the story of how, in a matter of seconds, I nearly amputated two fingers from my left hand.

August 28, 2005. Summer was waning, and I was striving to complete a few outstanding projects on the house before the official start of the school year. This was an exuberant era, fueled by recently-discovered talents. I had learned to hang drywall, to trim out windows and ceilings, to paint, to rewire outlets and install new ones — all of this in the service of rebuilding our daughter's bedroom. That Sunday night, I had taken up residence in the living room-turned-shop, working on what eventually became the door to her custom-made vanity.

The door was — is — long and thin, and served as framework for a full-length mirror. This meant routing out a groove inside the frame to cradle the mirror, and then cutting a second dado, a little wider and shallower than the first, to hold a wood panel, which covered the mirror and held it in place. It was not only an exuberant era, but a frugal one. My wife and I had considered a buying a router for this and other jobs we could foresee, but two factors pushed us in another direction. One, the expense (there was the cost of the tool itself and the attendant table — and we'd just finished paying off the new chop saw); and two, the time required for me to learn the tool, which seemed too much for a relatively modest amount of work.

No router, then. If you know anything about carpentry, you know there are other ways to cut grooves in wood. You can channel your inner medieval craftsman and use a hammer and chisel, but I hadn't the skill or patience for that. You can cheat a bit by running the workpiece a few times over a table saw, blade set to the required depth, and then chiseling out the remainder. Or, and this is the option we chose, you can retrofit a table saw with a dado blade. There are two kinds of blades: one, a stack, involves stacking the appropriate number of blades side-by-side on the spindle to cut a dado of the desired thickness; other, sometimes called a "wobbler," can be adjusted to cut on a diagonal ellipse instead of a strict horizontal. Given that my saw couldn't support a stack, we went with the wobbler.

It worked beautifully, especially when we needed to cup the baseboard and window trim (that is, to hollow out their backs to prevent buckling). And since I already knew my table saw and its quirks, I had a very shallow learning curve. It was just like cutting any piece of wood, but with one exception: the blade is invisible, which means it doesn't cut through through the top of the wood. Rather, it stays below the surface, gnawing out its groove as the board passes over. There's a danger in this: the piece being worked might split in half or kick away, exposing the rotating blade to anything unlucky enough to be in the vicinity. It's vital to know where the blade is at all times (marking out the area with strips of painter's tape helps) and to keep one's hands well away.

On that fateful evening, I was running the boards that would form the mirror frame over the wobbler. I had been working for a few hours, and though it was late, I didn't feel tired. My daughter had gone to bed. My wife had come downstairs to check my progress. One of the boards was stubborn and refused to slide forward; maybe there was a knot in the wood. I gave it a push, well back from the blade, and it kicked back a little, jerking up into the air. Knowing the dangers of kick-backs — you never want a piece of wood shooting backwards into your ribs at over a hundred miles an hour — I moved my left hand farther up to steady the board, farther than I should have.

But the board already had flown away.

I didn't see — or don't remember seeing — what happened when my hand made contact with the blade. (My wife saw it all, and to this day she refuses to talk about it.) I felt a tearing and a burning, and I hollered. I do remember crouching over the kitchen sink and rinsing my index and middle fingers. For a few moments I managed to delude myself into thinking that, despite the distended nail on the index, it wasn't so bad, at least when the hand was viewed from the top, palm-down. However, that was to be expected, given how dado blades work. The palmside was a total mess, and the copious bleeding soon had my wife, my very groggy daughter, and me with my elevated hand speeding toward the emergency room of Saratoga Hosptial.

En route there was a moment of retribution. Two years earlier (on a Sunday, no less) we had paid a visit to the emergency room following a chance meeting between my daughter's thumb and an Exacto knife. She had asked, while holding her hand above her head, if they were going to cut off her thumb. I told her no — but then, in a misguided attempt to raise her spirits, I added that they might have to amputate her whole hand, but they could easily replace it with someone else's...even a squirrel's hand if need be. (I know, I know. Moments like these are why the Father of the Year Award constantly eludes me.) Flash forward two years later, as I hear a small voice from the back seat: "Don't worry, Papa. You'll be all right, even if they need to give you a squirrel's hand." I laughed — what else could I do? Touché, darling. Payback's a bitch.

If Hell has an eighth circle, it must strongly resemble the Saratoga ER on a Sunday night. I got past the front desk almost immediately — staggering in with a raised arm swathed in bloody paper towels and declaring that you've had an accident with a table saw is an effective passport — but I soon languished in a corridor. It was the weekend of the Travers' Stakes, and packs of winos cut by broken bottles descended on the hospital. The staff were harried but apologetic: "Sorry for the delays, it suddenly got crazy around here. Usually it's dead on a Sunday night." Funny how that happens.

Once I got attached to a morphine drip, things got much more tolerable and much more blurry. I remember x-rays, talk of airlifting me to Albany Med., a bureaucrat with her portable workstation taking my information, and a few visits from my wife and daughter. At last a doctor gave me a digital block, put some sutures in my fingers, sewed my nail into place to provide a guide for the new nail, and wrapped my hand like a mummy's. The upshot was that the index finger had taken the brunt of it: the bones in the tip were shattered, but recovery was possible; the middle finger was badly gashed, but nothing more than a very deep cut. An appointment was made with a hospital-affiliated specialist, pain-killers were doled out, and I was sent home to rest — about four hours after I had arrived.

There's something very eerie about returning to the scene of your own accident, at any time but particularly so the same night. I think the table saw was still plugged in; certainly the wobbler was still raised above table level, as though I had just taken a break. Drops of blood led from the saw to the sink, and the paper towels lay on the countertop, unrolled and askew. I grabbed a few sheets with my good hand, wetted them, and went back to the workroom to clean up my own damned blood. I didn't want my wife to relive the accident as I just had. Bending over caused my fingers to throb, and I spent a restless night waiting for the pain-killers to kick in.

The next several days were tolerable enough. On the one hand — oh, that metaphor! — my wife checked out many, many DVDs from the library to keep me occupied, and I rested as I have seldom been able to do at the start of a semester. On the other hand, the tedious process of informing colleagues, family, and friends about my accident — even the most horrific story becomes rote — kept it present in my mind. People were sympathetic and gave advice freely. Did I know Dr. Roberts in Albany, who helped a world-class violinist regain full use of his hand? And Dr. Mitchell in Clifton Park, who was just the best, apparently took cases like mine all the time.

The day of the appointment with the specialist dawned, and I was anxious: Would my fingertip survive? What would it look like when the bandages came off? Would I even be able to look? These questions haunted me as I sat in the waiting room holding hands with my wife, but any hope of talking through them was drowned out by strains of classic rock blasting from the speakers. Finally, one headache and thirty minutes after my scheduled appointment (and with no other patients in the office) we were ushered into a visitation room, where we waited another 15 minutes. An extremely old man, dressed for the fairway, sauntered in and began staring at the x-rays I'd had to shuttle over from the hospital. Neither my wife nor I knew what to say. Was this another refugee from the Travers' or the doctor? It was the latter, we found out, only because the nurse-receptionist walked in and explained who I was and why I was there. The doctor mumbled to me to take off my own bandages — my wife helped me when I faltered — prodded my fingers a little, and then asked me to bandage them back up. He beat a hasty exit, muttering something about a floppy finger, while the nurse was left to try to schedule a follow-up appointment.

The aftermath of this visit was one of the few breakdowns I had during the entire ordeal. As we sat in the doctor's parking lot, my wife dried my tears and vowed she would not rest until we found some proper care. I love that woman.

Proper care was found two days later at a practice that specialized in sports medicine. My new doctor was a strapping gent with rugged, almost chiseled features — so much so that my wife named him Dr. Stoneface: "What did Stoneface say today?" "When's your next appointment with ol' Stoneface?" He took pity on me, a feeble academic, patiently answered my questions, and (best of all) offered a hopeful prognosis: if I could keep my index finger stable, there was every likelihood that the shattered tip would fuse; meanwhile, the damaged nerves in both fingers might possibly reconnect. My days as a hand model, however, were over.

The next few months were trying but productive. In a matter of weeks I went from a bandaged hand to bandaged fingers, protected by little plastic sleeves. Two sleeves eventually became one, on the index finger. The dried blood peeled away, revealing new skin and tissue. But the index finger itself kept pointing the wrong way. Usually the digit curves toward the middle finger: in my case, it curved away toward the thumb. The tip, moreover, was indeed floppy. The bone typically has some give (try it); mine wiggled around not unlike a loose tooth. Dr. Stoneface showed some uncharacteristic pessimism as fall turned to winter: perhaps the fusion of the tip was not to be. A conclusive x-ray, however, put the matter to rest and (almost overnight, it seemed) the index finger began to curve normally, and soon I could fret a guitar string without wincing.

It was time for physical therapy to rebuild the hand's strength and agility. I hadn't been babying it, but I hadn't been using it fully, either. My grip was weak, and my fingers were stiff because the finger sleeves didn't allow the upper joints to bend. I had never considered my hands as having an expiration date, but the old adage is true: use it or lose it. My therapist put me through a regimen of exercises and treatments, including attacking the scar tissue with mild caustics and electric currents. I met an older fellow, a DIYer like me, who suffered the same accident around the same time and was being treated by the same physician — except that he eventually lost the tip of his finger. Why? Unlike me, he smoked, which impeded his bone development. He showed me photos of his projects, and I wondered if I'd ever be able to work up the nerve to use my table saw — or any power tool — again.

I did, some time after I had graduated from therapy. With a panoply of new and somewhat excessive safety gear, I finished the vanity door project about six months to the day. Which is not to say it wasn't a nerve-wracking experience for me or for my wife. She had insisted on being there in case I had another accident, though she waited it out upstairs with the bedroom door closed — far away enough not to watch, but close enough to hear the screaming.

Five years later I have a middle finger with some numbness on the side, and an index finger with quite a nick taken out of it and some inflexibility. They work perfectly well, though, and no one ever notices unless I show them — which I do only at dinner parties and other special occasions. I was lucky; and even had I lost both fingers, I'd still be lucky in many other ways: lucky it wasn't worse, lucky I was insured, lucky to have the support of my family. The incident rankles to this day, however, and when I least expect it. Like the time a friend showed me his new kitchen floor, which he was assembling from hundreds of minuscule walnut tiles. I froze as I realized that he could only have cut the tiles to size by running them manually along the rip fence of his table saw, which must have been set no more than an inch-and-a-half away from the blade. I looked him in the eye, and I didn't need to hold up my hand to know that he knew that I knew. But I held it up anyway.

Or a few weeks ago, when a colleague insulted me on Facebook. Yes, yes, Facebook, but hear me out. A friend had inquired about ways to cut sheet metal cleanly. I put in my two cents, and then the colleague, who was neither part of the conversation, nor a possessor of any known skills, jokingly suggested that my injury made my advice worthless, since my having only nine fingers is obviously a sign of ineptitude on my part. We haven't spoken since. The non-apology, which boiled down to "I'm sorry if you have a problem with what I wrote," didn't help matters any. I was surprised at how angry I was, and still am, especially since we've joked about it before. One time too many, I guess.

But let's be clear. I have not nine but ten fingers, all functional. That said, I only need the one to perform a time-honored, if obscene, function at any given moment. This one's for you, baby.

inceptio

2010-08-04T19:59:00.009+02:00

a. d. ii Non. Aug. ann. dom. MMX

Si fecisti picturam moventem de somniis, quae somniis non similia sunt, num te bene gessisti?

(Warning: minor spoilers ahead.)

Ah, Inception, that heady, mid-summer blockbuster that has almost single-handedly revived the season.

I've seen it twice, and I like it. No film can be so well-heralded that it fails to suffer a backlash. I've read many critiques of the film — positive, negative, and in-between. I can get behind some of the negatives (okay, Cobb's conversations with Ariadne are barely-veiled exposition — though they're hardly less useful for that). But, frankly, some of them seem so subjective to me that it's not worth the argument. (Ultra Culture, I'm lookin' at you.)

One complaint, however, crops up again and again, and it's a formalistic one, which means that it might be worth entering the fray: How can one make a movie about dreams that don't feel like dreams? Isn't this a grand failing of the film?

I have to scratch my head at this. I thought that the whole premise of the movie was to create dreams that feel realistic — that don't feel like dreams. This semblance of reality is precisely what enables our band of thieves to steal from their marks. A true, unstructured dream would be too difficult to navigate and too unpredictable. Note what happens when Ariadne starts to fool around with the architecture of Paris. Note, too, that Cobb and company never enter their marks' dreams (despite what they tell their marks); rather, it's the other way around: the marks enter the thieves' constructed dream spaces, which are precise, detailed, and controlled.

In fact, the problems that arise during the caper with Fischer the younger arise specifically because the lucid dreams are becoming too dreamlike. Cobb's dreaming mind, with all of its guilt and grief, is simply too unpredictable to be controlled. Hence trains running through city streets and one headache — a Mal di testa — of a deceased wife. Others might not be able to forgive Inception for not being a Buñuel film (or even Dreamscape, for that matter), but I don't see what all the fuss is about.

PS: Ariadne. Maybe 40 years ago this name would have seemed heavy-handed to a generation of movie-goers with some semblance of a classical education. I dunno, today it feels like an easter egg — a little reward for knowing a little myth. I wish DiCaprio could actually pronounce the name, but that's neither here nor there.

PPS: Now if someone could just explain to me why, if Cobb and Mal grew old in limbo, we see their younger selves with their heads on the tracks.

septem leges

2010-03-13T14:00:00.010+01:00

a. d. iii Id. Mar. ann. dom. MMX

(Ignoscete mihi morato: haec epistula erat scripta, sed non publicata quia nondum erat publicandum.)

You might have heard about the one-person Latin department at Centenary College, recently slated to be closed down. No? I wish I could say I'm surprised. The decision is economic. From Inside Higher Ed. (March 4, 2010):

"At Centenary, much of the discussion about which programs to eliminate focused on size, and [Stephen] Clark makes no claims that Latin classrooms are packed. Enrollments of five to seven students are good for upper division courses and most years there are only a few majors, sometimes just one."

This is not an uncommon state of affairs for classics departments at small liberal-arts colleges (or SLACs, as the acronym runs): small numbers of faculty by definition tend to yield small numbers of majors. On the one hand, the small faculty-to-student ratio is a hallmark of the liberal-arts tradition; and classics, the top dog of the humanities, still has enough prestige in the academy to glory in such ratios, at least in theory. As one colleague at a SLAC opined not too long ago, a liberal-arts education is all about "four students reading Euripides with a [single] faculty member."

On the other hand, the days of glory are passing. Classicists cannot take their exalted status for granted any more: our discipline is probably not at any institution's core curriculum — it hasn't been for some time — and fewer and fewer administrators, who themselves are increasingly unlikely to have experienced a classical education in any form, understand what classics is, or (more important) what it can be. We are now one of many programs, and we have to justify our existence or face extinction.

"Centenary officials say they have nothing against the programs that are slated for elimination, but want to create funds to invest in growth in new areas. With about 860 students, the college needs to balance student interests with what it can support financially, they say. 'We're trying to look into the future, and part of that is streamlining the program so we can invent new programs,' says Rick DelaHaya, a spokesman."

I can't speak for Professor Clark or his program (though I sympathize tremendously with a tenured professor faced with both a curriculum changing under his feet and the prospect of losing his job). I can, however, speak from my position as chair of my particular SLAC classics department. Mine is not a program with a long and illustrious institutional history. Though Latin was taught early on (at least for a while), the formal study of classics began in 1975 when a professor of German and a professor of History floated the idea of starting a classical studies program at a faculty meeting.

Since then my colleagues and I have worked (sometimes strenuously, always assiduously) to build our program. But how does one build a program in Classics in the decades following the cultural revolution? The short answer is, take nothing for granted and provide added value to the College. For those who want something concrete, I offer the following seven rules for classics programs — essential work for maintaining visibility and viability.

Disclaimers. Not every rule will work at every institution (each is born, unapologetically, of a SLAC mentality). Nor, as a beleaguered colleague pointed out after I posted the rules on Facebook, will they save a program already targeted for elimination. Fair enough; but, if followed early and often, they can place a classics program in the strongest possible position. Finally, if these rules seem banal, my congratulations: you must already be following them. In which case, I'd like to know what else classicists can do to keep future students focused on the past.

* * * * *

SEVEN RULES FOR CLASSICS DEPARTMENTS/PROGRAMS:

I. Get your courses, especially literature-in-translation, to count for as many all-College requirements as you can. Make yourselves accessible.

II. Teach as many courses that count in other departments/programs as you can. Make yourselves indispensable.

III. Make a personnel succession plan that goes at least ten years out, and include that plan in your annual report. Don't wait until the semester your senior colleagues retire.

IV. Reach out to students from underrepresented groups. They are the future.

V. Remember the mantra: to understand the past is to understand the future. Context is everything.

VI. Tell anyone who will listen, especially your deans, about the added benefits of Latin and Greek: grammar, vocabulary, attention to detail, problem-solving, and logic. That's multi-tasking.

VII. Stay in touch with your alumni and showcase their achievements. They are living proof of your viability.

conscriptio

2010-01-14T13:42:00.009+01:00

a. d. xix Kal. Feb. ann. dom. MMX

in mea vita multos conscripsi, at nunc sentio me conscriptum esse....

We all know people for whom we have little-to-no use. My list includes that student who whines about the smallest amount of work. That Facebook friend whose posts reveal a neo-con wingnut soul. That colleague who is a shameless apologist for the administration of my school. You get the idea. I'm not talking about the toxic, who should be excoriated. I'm talking about the boring: those whose every ham-handed, wrong-headed move you can anticipate and shake your head over. Those who never even realize they're on your list.

But what of that moment, when you realize you're on someone else's list? I had that moment recently, seeing a certain former professor at a conference. I admit, I'm rather easy to write off on the surface: average height and build, white, balding, bespectacled...pretty standard stuff. Boring, even. I'd like to think I have other, more interesting qualities that emerge once you get past the superficial. And I've actually come a long way since graduate school. Don't worry, I'm not going to rehearse here all the reasons why I shouldn't be on that professor's list: I'm really not that insecure, and I'm not looking for validation.

Still, that kind of hand-wringing is part-and-parcel of the moment. First comes the realization itself, then the self-inventory, then bewilderment-cum-bemusement. And then what? You move on, I suppose. White, balding, bespectacled guys like me have been listing and de-listing others since time immemorial: turnabout is fair play. Besides, there are true life-or-death matters on the human race's plate at present, in comparison with which my momentary anxiety seems silly to the point of narcissism.

All of this said, I'll be watching for the day that professor becomes chair. And when I make my annual donation to the program that nurtured me in all other respects, I'll relish the letter the chair is obliged to write, thanking me for my generosity.

viatores in tempore

2009-12-21T17:36:00.008+01:00

a. d. xii Kal. Ian. ann. dom. MMIX

nuper scripsi fabulam Italicam, in qua tres viatores, credentes se servare continuum spatii temporisque, se occidunt....

For the final project in my Italian class I was supposed to write a three-page, three-act comedy. I managed three acts, but went beyond the page limit — probably to the annoyance of my instructor. The play, whose title translates as "In Just a Few Minutes Ago," involves three Italian time-travelers who end up killing each other while trying to save the space-time continuum. (That's not a spoiler — the prologue tells you as much.)

Anyway, here it is in all its glory. Apologies to those who don't read the language, and apologies to those who do and find errors (I'm still learning). If my public demands an English translation, maybe I can muster one. Until then, buona lettura.

FRA ALCUNI MINUTI FA
una commedia di chi viaggiano nel tempo

DRAMATIS PERSONAE

MORETTI: Professore del diciannovesimo secolo che ha scoperto come si viaggia nel tempo.
MARINO: Successore di MORETTI dal ventesimo secolo.
MANCINI: Contessa e successore di MORETTI e MARINO dal ventitreesimo secolo.
NARRATORE

PROLOGO

NARRATORE (dietro le quinte): Viaggiare nel tempo è possible in teoria, ma non in practica. Le ragioni sono molte. La difficoltà a viaggiare precisamente al momento esatto. La immensità delle personalità di chi viaggiano nel tempo: ognuno pensa che gli altri esistano nel suo proprio presente. Finalmente, il Messia-complesso che sprona spesso i viaggiatori a salvare il mondo.

Ecco il disastro che è accaduto durante il primo e solo viaggio nel tempo del Professore Moretti, quando i successori, agendo in base alla storia tragica, hanno provato a salvarlo. Nel far ciò hanno distrutto non solo se stessi, ma anche tutta la possibilità del viaggiare nel tempo. Quest’è veramente una commedia di errori.

ATTO PRIMO

(Quinte. Il palcoscenico è vuoto. Un baleno e un rumore «zap». MANCINI, viaggiando dal ventitreesimo secolo, appare nel centro della scena, una donna alta ed elegante che porta una tuta d’argento ed una cappa rossa, con una spada sul fianco. Controlla il suo orologio digitale e sembra piuttosto ansiosa.)

MANCINI: Figlio di puttana! Ma dove sono, loro? Sono troppo in ritardo? (controllando il suo orologio ancora una volta) No, sono giusta, più o meno. Devo aspettare. (Si muove a sinistra della scena e aspetta, controllando il suo orologio ogni tanto.)

(Un altro baleno. MORETTI, viaggiando dall’atto terzo di questa commedia, appare a destra della scena, un uomo calvo, basso, e un po’ corpulento che è vestito in gilè marrone e pantaloni di lana. Si guarda attorno e vede MANCINI.)

MORETTI: Accidenti! Contessa Mancini! Ma dov’è Marino? Fermati subito!

MANCINI (sorpresa): Professore Moretti, piacere di conoscerLa. (tendendo la sua mano, che MORETTI ignora) Ma ci siamo già conosciuti, mi sembra. Ascolta, Professore —

MORETTI: No, ascolta tu, Mancini —

MANCINI E MORETTI (insieme): — non abbiamo molto tempo!

(Fanno una pausa.)

MANCINI: Cosa dici?

MORETTI: Cosa dici tu?

MANCINI: Ho studiato il tuo lavoro, Professore, ed ho scoperto anch’io quei segreti, con cui si viaggia nel tempo. La storia insegna che tu, durante il tuo viaggio primo, fosti ucciso da un conviaggiatore in malintenso tragico. Sono venuta a salvarti —

MORETTI: E sono venuto io ad impedirti, signora. Il Marino, lui ti ucciderà, forse fra alcuni minuti...ecco, dammi la spada.

MANCINI: Lucca Marino, il tuo successore? Ho studiato anche lui. Dunque il Marino è l’assassino! (indietreggiando) Ehi! Nessuno tocca la spada di mio padre!

MORETTI: Dammela, insisto! Non c’è tempo da spiegare, dammela!

(Lottano, e MANCINI trafora MORETTI accidentalmente. Lei fa cadere la spada.)

MANCINI: No! Sono venuta a salvarti!

(Un altro baleno. MARINO, viaggiando dall’atto secondo, appare a sinistra della scena, un uomo robusto e delle spalle larghe, che è vestito in impermeabile nero ed un cappello bianco. Tiene una spada che rassomiglia quella di MANCINI. Ferito a morte, barcolla a MANCINI e MORETTI.)

MARINO: Mancini! Moretti! Sono troppo in ritardo?

MANCINI E MORETTI (insieme): Marino!

MANCINI (vedendo la ferita di Marino): Signor Marino, com’è successo, questo? (vedendo la spada) La mia spada!

MARINO (inginocchiandosi): Che Dio ti maledica, Mancini! E che maledica anche te, Moretti! Hai promesso di impedirla!

MORETTI (barcollando a Marino): Ho provato! Avrei dovuto arrivare alcuni minuti prima!

MARINO: No, non prima! Un po’ più tardi…più tardi. (Sviene, morto, vicino a sinistra della scena.)

MORETTI: Più tardi? Accidenti!

(Acquistando la forza, MORETTI raccoglie la spada caduta e barcolla al centro della scena. Saluta MANCINI e si tende, chiudendo gli occhi. Un baleno e svanisce.)

ATTO SECONDO

(MANCINI è lasciata col corpo di MARINO.)

MANCINI: Figlio di puttana! (Movendosi al corpo, raccoglie la spada che MARINO teneva. La guarda.) Quest’è la spada di mio padre, certamente. (Frustra l’aria con la spada, poi guarda il corpo.) Ma non ho ancora capito niente!

(Un baleno e MARINO, viaggiando dall’atto terzo, appare in piena forma a destra della scena. Tiene la spada.)

MANCINI: Figlio di puttana!

MARINO: Contessa Mancini! Vivi ancora! Ascolta, non abbiamo molto tempo....

MANCINI: Signor Marino, vivi ancora tu! Ma come mi conosci di nome?

MARINO: Non importa, perché fra alcuni minuti io — (a vista del suo corpo sulla terra la sua voce sbiadisce) — io...vado a...uccidere...te....

MANCINI: Come?

MARINO (rivolgendosi a MANCINI): Dov’è il corpo di Moretti?! Era qui — o sarà qui! Che confusione! Allora, quando sono morto? (alzando la spada) Rispondi!

MANCINI: Alcuni minuti fa! Sei apparso e —

MARINO: E come sono morto? Dalla mano di chi?

MANCINI: Non lo so, ti giuro!

MARINO: Bugiarda! Dimmi la verità! Hai promesso di spiegare!

MANCINI: Io? Quando?

(Duellano. MARINO richiede la verità, e MANCINI si dichiara innocente. Difendendosi, MANCINI trafora MARINO.)

MARINO: Che Dio ti maledica, Mancini! Sono venuto a salvarti. E che maledica anche te, Moretti, dovunque sei!

MANCINI: Il Professore? Era appena qui, alcuni minuti fa.

MARINO: Alcuni minuti fa? (ridendo) Alcuni minuti fa! Allora ci vado. (Acquistando la forza, MARINO barcolla a sinistra della scena.) Se fossi tu, Contessa, mi preoccuperei del mio futuro.

(MARINO si tende, chiudendo gli occhi. Un baleno, e svanisce con la spada in mano.)

MANCINI: Il mio futuro? Lo vediamo!

(MANCINI si muove a destra della scena con la spada in mano. Si tende, chiudendo gli occhi. Un baleno e svanisce, lasciato il corpo di MARINO.)

(Un baleno, e MORETTI, viaggando dall’atto primo, appare nel centro della scena con la spada in mano. Ferito a morte, barcolla al corpo di MARINO.)

MORETTI: Accidenti! Marino, sono troppo in ritardo! (Inginocchiandosi, tossisce ed ansima.) Che Dio ti maledica, Mancini!

(MORETTI fa cadere la spada e sviene, morto, accanto al corpo di MARINO.)

ATTO TERZO

(Un baleno e MARINO, viaggiando dal ventesimo secolo, appare in piena forma nel centro della scena.)

MARINO: Che ora è? Sono troppo in ritardo? (Controllando il suo orologico, si ferma a vista dei due corpi.) Che Dio mi maledica! (movendosi più vicino) Questo, deve essere il Professore…e quello…. (indietreggiando) Io? Ma come? Ecco. (Raccoglie la spada caduta.) L’arma d’omicido! (Frustra l’aria con la spada, poi guarda i corpi.) Com’è successo, questo? Ci siamo duellati a morte? Sono venuto a salvarlo!

(Un baleno e MANCINI, viaggiando dall’atto secondo, appare a destra della scena con la spada in mano.)

MANCINI: Marino, vivi ancora! (vedendo il corpo di MARINO) Ed anche sei ancora morto. (vedendo il corpo di MORETTI) Figlio di puttana! Moretti! Quand’è successo, questo?

MARINO (vedendo la spada di MANCINI): Io ti farei la stessa domanda. Io, che ho scoperto il lavoro del Professore e ho seguito i suoi passi. La storia insegna che lui, durante il suo viaggio primo, fu ucciso da un conviaggiatore.... (rivolgendosi a MANCINI) Tu! Che Dio ti maledica! (Si muove a lei.)

MANCINI: Marino, posso spiegare. Fa’ cadere la spada, per piacere.

MARINO: Se l’hai ucciso, hai dovuto uccidere anche me! (caricando) Devo impedirti!

(Duellano. MANCINI richiede un’opportunità da spiegare, e MARINO si dichiara vendicatore. Sono interrotti da un baleno. MORETTI, viaggiando dal diciannovesimo secolo, appare nel centro della scena.)

MORETTI (controllando il suo orologico tascabile): L’ho fatto, il mio viaggio primo nel tempo! (vedendo MANCINI e MARINO) Accidenti! Chi siete? Che cosa fate? (vedendo i due corpi) Che diavolo è successo qui?

MANCINI (tendendo la sua mano): Professore, sono la Contessa Mancini, e sono venuta a salvarti —

MARINO (movendosi tra di loro): Professore, sono Lucca Marino, e sono venuto io a salvarti!

MORETTI (indietreggiando): Allora, stiamo tranquilli, tutti e tre….

MARINO: No, Professore, ascolta! Quei corpi li sono il tuo ed il mio, traforati da questa cosiddetta Contessa.

MANCINI: Figlio di puttana! Non capisci cosa dici!

MARINO (caricando): Bugiarda!

(Il duello è rinnovato. Difendendosi, MARINO trafora MANCINI. Lei fa cadere la spada e sviene fra le braccia di MORETTI.)

MARINO: Che Dio mi maledica! Non possiamo mai sapere cos’è successo. Moretti, dobbiamo reviaggiare nel tempo ad impedirla, forse alcuni momenti fa. Promettimi di provarlo!

(MARINO muove a destra della scena.)

MORETTI: Io...io non capisco.

MARINO: Promettimi!

(Un baleno e MARINO svanisce con la spada in mano. MORETTI è lasciato con MANCINI, ferita a morte.)

MORETTI: Accidenti! (abbassando MANCINI sulla terra) Beh. Contessa Mancini, mi dispace molto abbandonarti. Non è giusto che tu muoia così. (alzandosi) Non voglio lasciarti, ma devo viaggiare e provare ad impedire il mio morto, ed il tuo. Se potrò, ci vedremo nel tempo più beato. (Si muove a destra della scena e saluta MANCINI.) Addio!

(Un baleno e MORETTI svanisce. MANCINI è lasciata coi due corpi. Lei si alza e commincia a strisciare lentamente verso della spada di suo padre. Afferra l’impugnatura.)

MANCINI: Figlio di puttana…. (Sviene, morta.)

(Quinte.)

mors Iohannis

2009-11-24T21:12:00.016+01:00

a. d. viii Kal. Dec. ann. dom. MMIX

amico perdito, nunc est celebrandum. sic transiit ratio noster, cum unus de intimissimis nostris inventus est insensilis, more mortuorum....

In honor of my friend John's birthday, we're going back, way back, to Beloit College, 1986. In those days, kids, we hatched our nefarious plans face-to-face. Barring that, we phoned each other, which means something a little quainter than it does today: we used the telephones common to each floor of our dorms, a process that required (on the one end of the line) actually dialing phone numbers we had memorized, and (on the other end) answering the call, fetching whomever the caller wanted (if not you), and taking a message if he or she wasn't around (very often the case). We didn't have email, cell phones, SMS, IM, Facebook, Twitter or any of the myriad technological marvels that now circumscribe our social interactions. And we had wood-burning calculators and walked to class barefoot through the blinding snow.

I seem to digress, but I'm trying to make the point that our world was far less interconnected than it is now, and darker and more spacious. So nobody really blinked an eye when John went missing for three or so days in September. Then as now classes were cut, journeys of discovery undertaken, and navel-gazing entertained — all part of the semi-circadian rhythms of modern college life. It wasn't until a critical mass of friends happened to gather and to compare notes that John's absence was deemed strange enough to warrant action. Whereupon Residential Life was contacted, John's room unlocked, and John himself discovered unconscious but otherwise unharmed. It was frightening stuff nonetheless, and everyone kicked themselves for not acting sooner. In coming to terms, we did the only thing that made sense.

We threw a party.

With John's consent, we drew up a guest list and sent out invitations, announcing his death and inviting all comers to grieve and condole, formally-attired. We decorated the dorm basement in black and pushed two couches together to create a makeshift coffin. On the eve of the party John lay in state, his beloved stuffed cow tucked under his arm. Mourners gathered to pay their respects and to see if they could get a rise out of the deceased. Not a few threw themselves on the corpse and had to be restrained. We sang hymns, read poems, shared the good times, and testified how much we would miss our friend. Our pal Seth delivered an extremely alliterative eulogy ("Oh, what wondrous webs of words I would weave!" vel sim.), in which he exposed John's previously unknown necrophiliac, Satanic, vampiric, and cannibalistic ways and expressed hope beyond hope that his poor soul, though unquestionably damned for eternity, might yet know a modicum of peace.

The one thing we hadn't quite worked out was how to end the wake. Our original plan was that we'd cover the corpse, crank the mix tape, and get the real party started. John would slip away, change, and rejoin us, declaring himself much improved. Nice idea, but not nearly cathartic enough for the crowd, which refused to leave John's side. Finally, during the second, plodding verse of "Amazing Grace," the dead arose and hollered at everyone to knock it the fuck off. Cheers rang out, a miracle was proclaimed, and we danced the rest of the night.

de dulcibus

2009-11-18T20:20:00.011+01:00

a. d. xiv Kal. Dec. ann. dom. MMIX

adhinc viginti duobus annis, scripsi litteras....

22 years ago today I wrote a letter that changed my life.

There was this girl, you see, with whom I was in love. Being of awkward disposition, I laid it all out in a letter, which I sent via campus mail. I was clever, or so I thought: I put the letter in an airmail envelope with a red and blue border, so I could peek into the little window of her mailbox and see whether she had picked up her mail. Until she did, I reasoned, I could enjoy not feeling even more awkward around her, searching her face for signs and fretting over what she was going to say in reply.

Oh, yes, I've always tied myself up in knots. If you didn't know that, are you new here?

Anyway, the girl knew me well enough to know that I'd be obsessing over the red and blue stripes, so she extracted the letter but left the envelope in her mailbox, where it sat mocking me.

For four days.

Four days of passing each other on campus and eating together, with me wondering when she was going to check her mail and whether I'd screwed everything up, and with her knowing that I was wondering all of this and thoroughly enjoying keeping me on the hook.

I remember lying on my bed in despair and staring at the ceiling, when I heard the shuffling of paper under my outer door: an envelope addressed to me in her inimitable hand, and a letter that told me everything I had hoped for.

And that's how it began. For 22 years I have loved this woman. We have traveled together, studied together, cooked, built, drunk, read, loved, conceived, cried, argued, worried, worked, relaxed, recuperated, and rejoiced together. She tethers me to reality yet enables me to dream. She helps me be the best version of myself. I can only hope that I don't give her too much grief. That I can still make her laugh, I take as a good sign.

Happy anniversary, Sweets. I love you, now and always.

sub Rosa

2009-10-08T12:41:00.006+02:00

Last night activist Rosa Clemente spoke at Skidmore under the auspices of our Hip-Hop Alliance. Although attendance was low — typical of diversity-oriented events at this school — Ms. Clemente's energy and urgency could not be denied. She was outspoken and engaged, and held forth on a wealth of topics: health care, the environment, President Obama and the politics of the Democratic Party, imperialism, the wars in Iraq and Afganistan, and (of course) grass-roots activism. Not surprisingly, I learned that many of her issues are my issues, too.

On the other hand, Ms. Clemente showed up late for her own talk, promised to speak for only 40 minutes but went on for well over an hour, often going off-script and jumping from topic to topic almost incoherently at points. I had wanted most of all to learn about the intersection of hip-hop and activism, and why she believes that intersection is necessary for real change. I got a taste of it during my time in the room, though I'm not sure I learned anything new. Perhaps the Q&A that followed made sense of it all, but the clock struck 8:30 (after a promised 7:00 start) and I had to leave.

So, here's my conundrum. I deeply appreciate the HHA's bringing Ms. Clemente to campus, especially this campus. And those who know me know that I am commited to breaking down barriers, particularly those that might silence voices like the one I heard last night. Still, though I appreciate the message, I can't get past the medium. As an academic, even a rather self-made one, I cannot fathom being late for my own talk and using more than my allotted time to name-drop and extemporize randomly. (And don't even get me started on her grammar, the unorthodoxy of which rang stark in the confines of the lecture hall.)

But whose yardstick I am applying to Ms. Clemente? That of the academy, originally fashioned after white male aesthetics, and best at measuring what conforms to those aesthetics. Wielding this instrument literally and mercilessly means the occlusion of just about everything that Ms. Clemente is and proposes: This clever and compassionate person, this strong woman, this Green Party Vice-Presidential candidate, she simply disappears and nothing ever changes. And, yes, I realize that Ms. Clemente has her own yardstick, equally formidable and exacting, which I suspect might not even register the existence of my white, male, professorial, complacent ass.

What I'm left with are questions I cannot answer. Can Ms. Clemente's message even be vocalized within the standards of the academy? Can she be the powerful force for change, the Real Deal that she surely is, by conforming to academic norms of The Talk? As Audre Lord teaches us, the master's tools will never dismantle the master's house.

Somebody help me, please.

latina servanda est

2009-06-23T14:18:00.008+02:00

a. d. ix Kal. Jul. ann. dom. MMIX

schola est, cuius duces studium linguae Latinae abolere susciperunt....

A local girl's academy, arguably one of the best in the nation, is phasing out Latin. The motive is economic: in these hard times — and they are hard, make no mistake — underperforming programs must be cut.

Which school? Ah, well, that would be telling. In the interest of decorum and tact (yeah, yeah, I know) let's leave names out of it for now. Suffice it to say that you would know which school if you combined, rebus-style, the first name of a match-making Jane Austen heroine with the first name of a movie misfit who trains large rodents to do his evil bidding.

Ever the activist, one of my colleagues spearheaded a letter-writing campaign. Here's the salient text of his letter, which not only makes a good argument for the preservation of Latin in the most difficult of circumstances, but also quotes the school's Latin mottoes in the process. Impolitic? Perhaps. Delectable? certe.

We are saddened to learn that [name of school] has decided to phase out the teaching and learning of Latin. While we appreciate the challenges that your institution, indeed all of our institutions, face in these difficult times, we hope you will reconsider this decision. We see the loss of Latin at [name of school] as a loss for your students, your school, and all of us who value educational excellence.

As one of the nation’s leading college preparatory schools for young women, [name of school] has fashioned a reputation for unsurpassed excellence. Those graduates who matriculate at our nation’s colleges and universities rank among the finest students enrolled and bring with them the renown and the high aspirations of their alma mater. That reputation, and those aspirations, have been fostered by a diverse and exciting curriculum that offers young women the full spectrum of disciplines, perspectives, and ideas. In our judgment, the decision you have made to eliminate Latin from the curriculum runs contrary to [name of school]’s historic mission and will deprive current and future students linguistic and literary windows on a profound culture.

All of the data, both regional and national, demonstrate a continuing upsurge in interest in the study of Latin. In the Capital District, Saratoga Springs H.S. teaches 225 students in Latin, and Shenendehowa High enrolls 425 [editor's note: !!!]. And, at [names of baccalaureate institutions], Latin and Classics are thriving, and annually we witness exceptional achievement from our students as a result of studying Latin and ancient Greek. The intellectual discipline that these languages demand distinguishes our students, who routinely apply their studies in Classics to the challenges of contemporary society. Latin and Greek don’t just expose students to two ancient civilizations; they equip students with the requisite skills to meet the challenges of a global and complicated world.

...This is not the time to cut a program that has been at the heart of [name of school]’s academic program for nearly two hundred years. Indeed, your school’s mottoes strike us as particularly apt to this issue: gaudet patientia duris, “Patience rejoices in adversity,” and semper fidelis, “Always faithful.” How ironic it would be if a school with such a commitment to perseverance, to its traditions, and to the value of knowing Latin would discard that commitment.
Respectfully, etc.

domi

2009-06-16T04:54:00.016+02:00

15 giugno 2008

Sto sedendomi qui nella cucina familiare a Milwaukee, preparando la cena di domani, bevendo un po', e pensando a molte cose -- sopratutto al passato. Come mai? Perche non ho habitato in questa città per molti anni ed ci ho viaggiato da solo per fornire assistenza ai miei genitori nella loro traslocazione.

Allora, naturalmente viene in mente il passato: curiosamente, è non solo il passato lontano, quando ero stato giovane, ma anche il passato recente, quando ho fatto il professore. La verità: ho passato tutta la settimana nel passato!

Quest'ossessione ho cominciato quando, arrivando in città, sono andato a casa nell'autobus in cui andavo sempre da scuola: il numero 57. L'ossessione è stata continuata quando mi sono abbonato a Facebook, poi ho ordinato le fotografie vecchie della famiglia, e poi sono uscito a bere qualcosa con un amico dall'università ed il giorno prossimo a mangiare qualcosa con i miei cugini. Tanta nostalgia! Mi ritrovai per una selva oscura!

Ma adesso ho la massima nostalgia di mia moglie e mia figlia, e vorrei molto ritornare in un posto dove la maggiorparte delle cure è del presente e del futuro.

certamen periculosum

2009-04-29T20:10:00.009+02:00

a. d. iii Kal. Mai. ann. dom. MMIX

debeo narrare certamen periculosum, quod non optavi, sed in quo invitus implicatus sum....

Okay, so there's a win-a-new-car contest currently being hosted by my least favorite local radio station. The listener who correctly decodes the clues and finds the car can claim it for himself or herself. Someone gets a free car, the station and the dealership get to look munificent in a terrible economy — it's win-win all around, right?

Wrong.

The back-story invented for the contest is that one of the station interns has absconded with said car. Listeners, if they believe they have spotted the intern, must approach her and demand the car using the officially-mandated phrase.

Do you see the problem yet?

Well, did I mention that my wife, who works in the heart of the station's broadcast area, less than two months ago bought a car identical to the one being given away (exact make, model, and color) from the very same dealership?

How about now?

No? Last week someone tailed my wife all the way home from work (about 40 miles), pulled into our driveway, and demanded the car. (I guess she did say, "Please," which is technically not part of the magic phrase.) Luckily, she was sane and took "no" for an answer.

Another one. This past Monday two men driving in the opposite direction from my wife spotted her car at an intersection, got out of the right-turn lane and into the left-turn lane, and began to follow her home. She lost them on the way by taking some back roads, but got home really late after all that.

This is harassment. What else to call it? Before you tell me that I'm overreacting, let me make a few more points:

As I noted, these are crazy economic times to begin with. A contest like this only threatens to make things a little crazier, not only because of the bounty, but also because the contest itself involves driving. Call me silly, but anything that combines car chases and desperate consumers is probably a bad idea.
I don't understand how the radio station and the dealership can be so confident that everyone who wants the car is capable of exercising self-control. Never mind the potential for vehicular violence: let's think about the listeners who actually manage to confront an innocent driver and then refuse to take "no" for an answer.
I wonder how many women drivers, particularly young women who might resemble the intern much more than my wife, have been endangered by this contest. Think about it: if you're a 20-something woman driving the same kind of car, would you want absolute strangers stopping you and demanding the keys? Imagine you didn't know about the contest at all. Might you mistake an encounter like that for an attempted robbery?
Surely the car dealership knew how many identical vehicles it had recently sold when cooking up this fiasco. So how come they didn't give my wife a warning? Or a chance to opt out? When the dealer and the station established this contest and released the hounds, they opted her in against her will. How about a sign or a magnet that excludes her and her vehicle?
The dealership prides itself on customer service and loyalty. Perhaps, but by enlisting my wife unwillingly, by causing both of us to fear for her safety, by tacking on time to her already long commute, by making her and me worry about all of this crap in the first place, and by not responding to our repeated calls in a timely fashion, they're doing us a disservice and fomenting a lot of disloyalty. I removed the dealer's frames from around the license plates: no more free advertising from us.
The disc jockeys seem especially dismissive of other drivers' concerns. They took a call, I heard, from a woman who also complained of being followed: she said that she was going to put a sign in her window stating hers was not the giveaway car. The jocks then mused on air about whether or not to instruct the intern to do the same thing, just to throw people off the scent. In other words, innocent drivers can't exclude themselves. Only complete strangers can exclude them, and only then by confronting them directly. Nice!

My wife finally got the dealership's General Manager on the phone. After some back and forth, in which he made it clear that the contest would continue, he offered her a loaner car (different in every respect) to use for the duration. An acceptable solution for us, yes, and an example of their fabled good customer service — even though it has a whiff of humoring the crazy lady. When handing over the loaner today, the GM apparently told my wife that most of the comments they've received about the promotion have been positive — one notable exception, it seems. Naturally, nothing's wrong if no one says it's wrong. And one person is really no one.

So, good for us. At least I can stop staring out the window in the evenings, wondering if my wife's been car-jacked. Let's hope nothing happens to the other drivers out there who didn't bother to make a deal, or who didn't know that they could.

vale, Zoe!

2009-03-22T00:10:00.005+01:00

21 marzo 2009

Due settimane fa abbiamo detto adio ad una buon'amica, Zoe. Lei fu una macchina molto brava, portante spesso mia moglie al lavoro e poi a casa.

Cara Zoe, spero che i nuovi guidatori ti trattino con l'amore e la dignità!

ego, bloggax

2008-12-18T23:03:00.011+01:00

a. d. xv Kal. Jan. ann. dom. MMVIII

nunc est bloggandum, quo modo haec pagina nominata sit.

If you've ever wondered how this blog got its name, now it can be revealed.

I started with the assumption that bloggo, bloggare means, "to blog." Of course it doesn't -- if we really wanted to render the idea of blogging into English, we'd have to resort to some kind of ponderous periphrasis like, inscribere aliquid in telam totius terrae or something equally less fun.

It's important to note that the verbal suffix -are (everyone's favorite, because the conjugation is so regular) is a factitive suffix: it often gets attached to noun stems in order to turn those nouns into verbs, which mean "to do something with [the noun]." A nota is a mark; notare literally means to do something with a mark (i.e., to make a mark, or simply to mark). nomen is a name; nominare means to do something with a name (i.e., to name, or to nominate).

Hence, bloggare should mean to do something with a blog, or to blog.

The other key element in bloggax is the -ax suffix. This is an uncommon adjective-forming suffix that gets attached to the present stem of verbs to form an adjective meaning "tending to [verb]." rapere means to sieze; rapax means tending to sieze (or rapacious). tenere means to hold; tenax means tending to hold (tenacious). loqui means to speak; loquax means tending to speak (loquacious). As you can see, -ax becomes -acious in English. This is because the genitive form of an -ax adjective contains a -c- (your Latin dictionary says: loquax, loquacis), and the genitive form often gives English its derviatives.

Note that the vowel in the -ax suffix replaces whatever stem vowel the verb brings with it: the present stem of tenere is tene-, and that final -e is long and strong. But for purposes of word formation, the -a of -ax is longer and stronger, and it wins every time. The -a- in bloggax, therefore, is really part of the suffix, not the verb itself.

Hence, bloggax should mean tending to blog (which I do tend to do, if I have the time -- and I apparently have some right now) or, if you like, blogacious.

Sharp-eyed readers will now ask themselves why I chose to use a double -g- in my root verb. That is, why not simply blogo, blogare? Answer: I did it for tha euphony, for the sake of a pleasing sound. To my ear, to which words like "blogger," "blogging," and "blogged" are more familiar than "blog" -- think about it: how often do we use this neologism in its simple form? -- bloggare is more fitting. That said, let me take a moment to praise the orthographical accuracy of the word "blogosphere."

There you have it, my mini-dissertation on bloggax. I do google the word occasionally in my moments of self-delusion, when I think I have more than one or two readers. I'm gratified that this site pops to the top of the search page (after the obligatory "Did you mean: blogger," that is), but there are two other results that catch my eye. One seems to be some Scandinavian usage I don't understand.

The other, though, comes from here: "Don't read this blog! [B]logging is a load of bloggax!"

Not what I had in mind.

fricationes

2008-12-17T16:44:00.008+01:00

a. d. xvi Kal. Jan. ann. dom. MMVIII

illa vombatus pro sodali interrogavit quomodo "wank" Latine diceretur. tandem quaestio digna et utilis!

masturbari est nimium mediocre, si transferre verbum etymologiae dubiae sicut "wank" velis. meliora sunt dicta Latina, quae delectationem sui significant. quare fricare ("rub") et tractare ("pull") optima et communiora videntur. (sic J. N. Adams, The Latin Sexual Vocabulary, 208sqq.)

tractare mihi placet (dico verbum, non factum!), cum transferri "yank" possit, quae translatio "wank" revocat. at hoc verbum delectationem virilem, non muliebrem, significat. quare est tractator qui se tractando, sed est tractatrix quae solum nescioquem virum delectat.

quae cum ita sint, optimae translationes pro "wank" et "wanker" sunt fricare (vel fricatio, si nomen velis) et fricator vel fricatrix. nunc haec verba ubicumque disseminanda sunt, ne meae horae investigationis pereant!

niobe

2008-12-16T16:16:00.012+01:00

a. d. xvii Kal. Jan. ann. dom. MMVIII

volebam scribere de illa tragedia, quam mei discipuli scripserunt et novem diebus antea egerunt.

The play was called Niobe, and it told the story (made famous in Ovid, Met. 6) of the vainglorious queen of Thebes and her hubristic slight against Leto, the immortal mother of Apollo and Artemis. In Ovid's version, Apollo and Artemis get their revenge on, shooting and killing all of Niobe's fourteen children, including her youngest daughter, Meliboea. Lamenting their deaths, Niobe weeps and keeps on weeping, until she is transformed into a rock from which an everlasting spring issues forth.

My students' version followed a lesser-known variant in which Meliboea survives and, now renamed as Chloris, exiles herself from Thebes. Niobe still turns to stone, though her transformation is narrated by Artemis rather than shown on stage, in line with fifth-century Athenian convention. And prior to being petrified, Niobe is sent into exile by Zethus, the twin brother of her husband, Amphion, who also perished during the slaughter of the children. (Actually, according to the messenger speech toward the end of the play, he disembowels himself out of sheer grief: "Then his intestines, like meat to be eaten, / Cooked and hissed upon the glowing coals.")

Sounds complicated? Yes, but the play managed to explain most everything, as well it should have, since Athenian tragedies tend to be fairly self-contained. Which meant that the record 100-plus faculty and students who turned out for this production, if they knew nothing about Niobe going in, were able to follow along.

I've been requiring performances of my tragedy and comedy students as a semester project since I arrived at Skidmore — over a decade ago, now! Naturally we do our fair share of reading the plays (in English, alas), but there's nothing like having to embody the text to activate the learning experience. Also, each course counts toward the theater major, which means that there's a good chance of having budding and talented thespians on hand to lead the way. And I much prefer a performance to a final exam, the waiving of which is one of the carrots I dangle in front of my students when I announce the project on day one.

For comedy, I ask them to adapt an Aristopheanean play for a Skidmore audience — whatever that means to them. Thus they get to keep the best and dirtiest jokes, which usually attract the most attention in class, but also get deeper insight into the political dimension of Old Comedy, the aspect usually lost on them in class. (And understandably so: not many fifth-century BCE Athenian males actually take my courses.) For example, two years ago my comedy class mounted a production — if you know Aristophanes, you know that "mount" is the right word — of Sexual Congress (a.k.a. Ecclesiazusae), in which Skidmore's female students took back their school from their male counterparts. Uproarious and filthy, filthy, filthy. Picture the venerable ex-President of the college, also a classicist, in the front row crying with laughter. And me in drag.

Though the comedies have an immediate and prurient appeal, I think I prefer the tragedies. For one thing, the class has to write its own play, which means that their process from the beginning has to mirror that of an ancient tragedian: What myth do we choose? What of that myth must remain? What has to be changed? From these questions others follow: How does our audience understand what is happening? How can they tell the characters apart? What the hell are we supposed to do with the Chorus?

This semester's tragedy class played it to the hilt: masks, three actors, an involved and engaging Chorus, and an unconventional but highly public performance space: rather than use our main auditorium, they converted the stairwell outside it into their theater. I did my part, commenting on drafts of the script (I never said "no," only what was less or more likely to happen on the Athenian stage); lending ropes, boards, and clamps (might as well put our home reno arsenal to good use); putting in some appearances at rehearsals (though saying nothing); ordering chairs from Housekeeping; and making the flyer pictured here (with my students' blessing).

My colleagues said it was the best production ever, and I'm inclined to agree. I gave the whole thing a big, fat A. It was a good moment to be a professor and a reminder of why I do what I do for a living.

Now, on to next year!

euge, nos possumus!

2008-11-05T18:33:00.009+01:00

5 novembre 2008

Ecco una foto mitica di questa compagna: Jesse Jackson piange, un candidato precedente per il candidato eletto. Questo momento, come si abbia sentito, posso apprezzare profundamente, benché io non possa mai capirlo veramente.

Sì, sì, Katerina — una donna la prossima volta, niente affatto!

hoc est in meis votis

2008-10-31T13:46:00.007+01:00

a. d. ii Kal. Nov. ann. dom. MMVIII

felix dies anniversarius nostris amicis, Vombatis! O tempora! O mores! O imaginem feliciter inventam et duplicatam ad omnes gaudendos!

speramus hunc diem tam beatum quam primum fore.

marcus loreius tibertinus

2008-10-15T14:26:00.004+02:00

Id. Oct. ann. dom. MMVIII

ecce homo et magister, quem ego adulescens saepe spectabam:

In our youth Il wombat and I saw Bernard Barcio perform on several occasions, at both local and national Latin conventions. His recreation of long-dead Pompeiian M. Loreius Tiburtinus (as well as his soldier brother, Robertus) was always lively and interesting, even on multiple viewings, and he never downplayed — or, at least, never shied away from — Roman patriarchy and cruelty. I once won a plaque from him, a terracotta of Zeus, for being able to answer the most questions after his show. I still have it. I hope Dr. Barcio will continue to inspire generations of young classicists lucky enough to see him.

(vere hoc spectaculum demonstrat quare dei TuiFistulam creaverint.)

litterae apertae

2008-10-08T14:44:00.005+02:00

8 ottobre 2008

Egregio senatore Obama,

Io, avendo intenzione di eleggerLa presidente, scrivo a Lei per esprimere il mio grande sgomento con il Suo comportamento nel battito di ieri sera.

Per piacere, smetta di giustificare, seccare, ed interrompere: Al Gore si sbagliò così. Giustificando troppo, Lei convalida l'argomento del Suo avversario.

E smetta di ripeterLa e citare le Sue orazioni di compagna, particolarmente nei luoghi informali: John Kerry si sbagliò così. Anche la candidata reppublicana alla vicepresidenza capisce questo ed almeno prova a parlare direttamente con la gente!

Il presidente dei Stati Uniti deve non solo comunicare bene, ma anche ascoltare bene — se non meglio.

Distinti saluti,

Un elettore incoraggiante.

October 8, 2008

Dear Senator Obama,

Intending to cast my vote for you in the presidential election, I write to you to express my great dismay over your performance in last night's debate.

Please, stop justifying, badgering, and interrupting: this is where Al Gore went wrong. By making too many justifications, you validate your opponent's argument.

And stop repeating yourself and quoting your stump speeches, especially in informal venues: this is where John Kerry went wrong. Even the Republican vice-presidential candidate gets this and at least tries to speak with people directly!

The President of the United States must not only communicate well, but also listen well — if not better.

Yours sincerely,

A supportive voter.

videre verticem

2008-10-01T04:30:00.005+02:00

Kal. Oct. ann. dom. MMVIII

nuper labores circumstant ubiquaque, praecipue ei quos pro meis discipulis sumere debeo: certamina evaluanda, demonstrationes adnotandi, scripta legenda. hoc anno me responsurum diligenter vovi: hactenus sic respondi. at annus novus est, iter vix inceptum: vertice nondum viso, errare saepe vacat.

Lately the work has been constant, especially the stuff I'm obliged to do for my students: grading tests, commenting on presentations, reading what they write. This year I vowed to be diligent in attending to these matters: and I have — so far. But the year is young, and the journey hardly begun. I haven't yet seen the crest of the hill, and there's plenty of time to screw it all up.

quid fututionis facimus?

2008-09-16T19:29:00.003+02:00

16 settembre 2008

Che cazzo facciamo? faccio questa domanda, perchè la settimana scorsa abbiamo comprato biglietti per guardare Sam Phillips di concerto. E poi ce li abbiamo dementicati fino a ieri, quando ho controllato la data del concerto — che, naturalmente, era ieri l'altro.

Cretini, noi, ed ovviamente troppo impegnati a troppe cose.

res octava

2008-09-10T15:12:00.006+02:00

a. d. iv Id. Sept. ann. dom. MMVIII

viii. lassulus ex academia fio.

8. Sto diventando annoiato dal mondo accademico.

8. I'm getting a little tired of academia.

The job is beginning to get to me. Maybe it's just my ongoing post-tenure funk, in which the pressure is off and I'm drifting aimlessly. Maybe it's my institution's culture, which subtly discourages disagreement with the powers that be (and don't even get me started about the monthly dysfunction called the Faculty Meeting). Maybe I wore myself out with too much service work last year. Maybe I'm getting cynical about some of my peers in the discipline, and the pastiche of lookitme moments that now stink up the professional conventions.

On the other hand, I know I'm very fortunate. Fortunate to have job security and benefits in this economy. Fortunate to be able to work in my chosen profession. Fortunate to have a moment's luxury to be able to write this screed. Fortunate to guide as many bright and engaged students as I do. Fortunate to still feel the rush after a really good class. And, really, who wants to listen to a straight, white male whine? Boo-effing-hoo, cracka.

quare quid agis, Crispine? quo tendis? I don't know, I don't know. But I can't help wondering now and then what else is out there, and what other things I might accomplish in the time remaining to me.

nunc octo res de me concluduntur: hic finis est. sed plura erunt, lectores, nolite vexi.

res septima

2008-09-06T01:45:00.009+02:00

a. d. viii Id. Sept. ann. dom. MMVIII

vii. scribo librum qui nihil ad meam librum de Ovidio pertinet.

7. Scrivo un libro che niente affatto concerne il mio libro su Ovidio.

7. I'm writing a book that has nothing to do with my Ovid book.

That's all I really want to say about this...except that it's a book I've had in mind for years and years; it's on a topic I've obsessed over since I was very young; and that my poor Ovid book (which I really ought to finish) gets jealous from time to time.

I'm a slow writer, too, and I envy my more prolific friends.

res sexta

2008-08-29T18:18:00.003+02:00

a. d. iv Kal. Sept. ann. dom. MMVIII

vi. odi iniquitatem ullius modi.

6. Odio ingiustizia di ogni tipo.

6. I hate injustice of any kind.

I realize that by being male, white, straight, and from the (lower) middle class, I have tremendous advantages over those who are only some — or particularly none — of these things. And I know that I don't even know what some of those advantages are. I've been trying more and more lately to be an ally to those who want me as an ally. And not to assuage my guilt (I'm over that, mostly), but because the work needs to be done, and it's some of the most important work that can be done.

I also hate the small injustices of daily life, particularly the quiet death of liberty in a "changed world." My latest hate-object? The war on photography, of which there seem to be so many examples lately, it's hard to know where to begin. How does my buddy John get away with it? That, and making field recordings, too?

Disneiana bona

2008-08-24T18:12:00.004+02:00

a. d. ix Kal. Sept. ann. dom. MCMVIII

satis querimoniarum! narratio de MUNDO DISNEII, cum certis rebus bonis (et non nisi bonis), concluditur.

Disney: The Good.

Enough with the complaints: let's wrap up this narrative with the Good, and only the Good. I'm sure I'll go on at length, but I'm really just scratching the surface.

Let's start with the food. Sitting on the couch with my long-suffering wife the other day, I realized that, whereas some couples watch porn together, my wife and I love to eyeball sexy pictures of food. There's no real porn at Disney World, but there's plenty of food-porn to be had, if you have the means. Luckily we had saved enough money for some indulgences, including Citricos at the Grand Floridian resort, and Shula's Steakhouse (I know, a chain, but still freaking unbelievable) at the Dolphin. We visited the former for my belated birthday celebration, and I had the most amazing osso bucco ever: tender, almost sweet, right down to the marrow. The latter we visited for my daughter's (early) birthday; with apologies to the strict herbivores out there, I was full of fatherly pride watching my almost-teen tearing into a 10-oz. filet, medium rare. Like father and mother, like daughter.

The attractions. Where do I begin? The Disney Imagineers have been working hard to put some first-class attractions in all four theme parks. We were able to hit all of our favorite rides in the Magic Kingdom many times over: Splash Mountain, Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, and of course Space Mountain (for which, during this promotional Year of a Million Dreams, we were selected to visit the control booth and learn about the ride's inner workings — very cool!). We enjoyed the refurbished Haunted Mansion (not my daughter, though, who is easily freaked out) and Pirates of the Caribbean, and loved a 3-D show called Mickey's PhilharMagic, in which the irascible Donald Duck gets himself stuck in newly-rendered (i.e., CGI) scenes from the more recent animated films (one of the highlights, though, is flying over London with Peter Pan). And in Tomorrowland, which is probably our favorite area of the Magic Kingdom, we rode the Transit Authority (a raised tram that takes you all around the area, including inside Space Mountain; no thrills here, just locomotive bliss) and were all very impressed and bemused by the Monsters Inc. Laughing Floor, which uses digital puppetry to create unscripted, improvised banter between CGI characters and the audience. The effect is quite startling, since most theme park goers tend to assume that the characters are pre-programmed with canned dialogue. Nope: you talk to the monsters, and they talk right back.

Other great attractions from the other parks: In the Animal Kingdom, Expedition Everest (a roller coaster ride through Tibet that leads to encounters with Yeti — the art direction, especially in the waiting area, is fantastic), the Primeval Whirl (think coaster meets Tilt-a-Whirl), and the Kali River Rapids (on which we always, ALWAYS, get drenched! The advertisements are true: "You will get wet, you may get soaked." Compare Splash Mountain: "You may get wet." Hardly.). In Epcot, Test Track (cruise in a prototype car at over 60 m.p.h.), Mission: Space (a lurchy rocket ride to Mars), and Soarin' (a simulated but exhilarating glider ride over California — I could do that one all day). In Hollywood Studios: Star Tours (still fun after all these years: yay, Artoo!), the Rock'n'Roller Coaster (yay, Aerosmith and Illeana Douglas!), and the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror (yay, Serling!).

A special shout-out to two attractions at the Studios. First, Toy Story Midway Mania. This ride is so popular, it took us three visits to the park just to get on. It's a trip through a CGI carnival midway, starring the Toy Story characters (your host, Don Rickles as Mr. Potatohead), in which you shoot various kinds of objects at various kinds of targets (e.g., darts at balloons, baseballs at plates, hoops at little green aliens). And it's in 3-D. After riding it once, we understood why everyone and their brother flocks to this ride and exhausts the FastPasses by 10:30 a.m. What a blast! We managed to get on three times in about an hour, once when the park opened, a second time as single riders, and a third using the FastPasses procured by our daughter when the park opened. Otherwise, starting around 11:00, the waiting time is easily almost two hours for the rest of the day!

My second shout-out goes to Muppet*Vision 3-D (yes, we love the three-dimensional stuff — and here let me also recommend It's Tough to Be a Bug at the Animal Kingdom, and Honey, I Shrunk the Audience at Epcot: yay, Eric Idle!). It's a little hard to see the Muppets appropriated by Disney, but the attraction itself, a souped-up 3-D film starring Kermit, Fozzie, Piggy, and the gang, is really wonderful and true to form, no doubt because it was directed by Jim Henson. And the preshow, a 2-D affair that playfully utilizes 3 TV screens makes for the funniest and most pleasant wait in all of the parks, hands down (there's some great snark about Mickey Mouse). It's a shame that this show doesn't seem to pull in as many people as others do, but, hey — more for me! No, I didn't cry, but I will admit to getting a lump in my throat in the Muppet-themed section of the park as "Rainbow Connection" issued from every hidden speaker.

As if all that weren't enough, we found time to hit Typhoon Lagoon, a water park, and to enjoy the Crush 'n' Gusher, an uphill water slide, before Fay rained on our parade. We also spent about seven hours total at DisneyQuest, billed as an indoor, interactive theme park, but really just a glorified arcade. Some nifty things there: Virtual Space Mountain, which allows you to build your own virtual coaster (yay, Bill Nye!) and then ride the thing on a fully-rotating simulator — note to self: never, ever again put your ancient arse on a coaster designed by a thrill-seeking teenager — and Mighty Ducks Pinball Slam, a virtual pinball machine that requires players to sway this way and that on a platform. Lots of video games, new and old: Lunar Lander, Arkanoid, Gorf, Burgertime, Tron, and Galaga (natch). Coolest new thing: Flamin' Finger, a low-tech touch-screen game in which you trace your way through a maze before time runs out. Frustrating and addictive and, like all the other games, included with admission.

The best thing of all? The look of sheer wigged-out incomprehension on my child's face when we surprised her with her plane ticket. Thanks, everyone who kept the secret. It was worth a little subterfuge to look cool in our dear daughter's eyes, if only for a week.

et ago maximas gratias iterum nostrae carae amicae Katharinae, quae domum custodivit et felem perturbavit, dum lusores aberamus. nunc rediimus ut nostras vitas resumamus.

Disneiana mala

2008-08-22T15:24:00.015+02:00

a. d. xi Kal. Sept. ann. dom. MCMVIII

narratio de MUNDO DISNEII, cum certis rebus malis, continuatur.

Disney: The Bad.

I know, I know: by starting with the Ugly and the Bad, I sound as if I hated our trip — which I most emphatically did not. As you'll see from my final post on this subject (forthcoming), there was a superabundance of good things throughout, which by far outweighs anything in the other two categories. Still, the Bad must be chronicled.

My number one beef in this category? The patently confused and ignorant advice dispensed by Disney employees. For my money, Disney World is the epitome of the U.S. service economy. All spectacles, attractions, goods, and services are packaged and sold at various levels of convenience and opulence. Apply the mantra "Want fries with that?" to any given situation at the resort (mutatis mutandis), and you have a grasp of how the Machine operates.

For the most part, Disney employees — known as "Cast Members" — are earnest and friendly folk, eager to help. And no doubt they put up with a lot from resort-goers who are zealously seeking their piece of the "Disney Magic" pie. But in soliciting advice and answers from them — for example, What's the best way to get from Downtown Disney to the Hoop-Dee-Doo Revue? Does the Big River Brew Pub accept reservations? Where is Min and Bill's Dockside Diner, so we can get a milkshake? — we learned to be cautious, because (except in rare circumstances) no one Cast Member had all of the information we needed. Unless our questions were immediate — Which way to the Haunted Mansion? — we adopted a system of asking three or four different Cast Members the same question and then averaging all the answers based on the empirical evidence.

Egregious example A: What's the best way to get from Downtown Disney to the Hoop-Dee-Doo Revue? Turns out this question generated a lot of hoop-dee-doo in its own right. Our Concierge at the Boardwalk, being young and green, didn't know, so he asked his supervisor, who thought a minute, computed a route, and spit out the answer: Take a bus to the Magic Kingdom, then take the ferry to Fort Wilderness. Sounded reasonable, but we knew that this route could take an hour or more based on prior experience. When we got to Downtown Disney, however, we saw a bus plainly labeled "Fort Wilderness." After some haggling with the Guest Services desk at Downtown Disney we divined that it was possible to take one bus to the Fort, which we did and saved lots of time. Now why didn't our Concierge know that?

Egregious example B: Does the Big River Brew Pub accept reservations? The Brew Pub is a fixture on the Boardwalk and was our choice for a quick dinner on The Night Fay Cancelled Our Flight. We had managed to secure a room back at the Boardwalk that night, so I ambled over to the Concierge's desk with what I thought was a simple question. Dining at Disney, you see, can be a complicated affair; some restaurants require reservations months in advance. Only they're not technically reservations, but priority seatings, which means that at such-and-such time you and your party get the next available table. But they are called reservations nonetheless.

Anyway, this Concierge insisted that the Brew Pub did not take reservations. I suppose at that point I should have asked whether "reservations" equalled "priority seatings," but my moisture- and hunger-addled brain wasn't working. We headed over at 7:00 to find the place hopelessly crowded and to learn that they were in fact accepting priority seatings. They did find space at the bar for us, where we feasted on excellent cheeseburgers, chips, and (for me) beer. Turns out there's a long-standing information gap between the Brew Pub, which is independently owned, and Disney World, which acknowledges the Brew Pub but prioritizes Disney restaurants. (At least, that's what the Brew Pub manager told us. It's interesting to hear a non-Disney employee who works at the resort talking about how the resort works.)

Egregious example C: Where is Min and Bill's Dockside Diner, so we can get a milkshake? We asked this question of the Dining Services booth at Disney's Hollywood Studios because we couldn't find the Diner, reputed to be Milkshake Nirvana at Disneyworld, on the park map. My long-suffering wife, however, didn't know the second name, though she described the place very well, I thought: "Min and...Someone's...place. It serves milkshakes. A diner." The woman behind the desk, who was from Portugal, however, failed to recognize the name "Min," but did hear the word "milkshake," and proceeded to recommend other places clearly not Min and Bill's. The irony? Min and Bill's was no more than 100 feet away, and within direct sight of the booth! We passed it on our way out of the park, after we had already eaten. And, naturally, it was closed when we went back to Hollywood Studios a few days later.

These small but egregious examples (and they are just three of many — I'll do little more than mention the crackpot at the front desk who assured me that Fay was probably headed south and safely out to sea) were never vacation-wreckers. But they sure as hell were annoying and, it seems to me, symptomatic of larger problems. None of the above culprits was malicious, just misinformed, and I think their misinformation stems from (1) the sheer size and complexity of the Disney Machine and (2) the prevailing attitude, probably ingrained during Cast Member training, is that questions and their askers must be dispensed with as quickly as possible. And as confidently as possible, too: it must also be part of the training that the responder can never waver or hesitate. It works: every Cast Member we spoke with seemed absolutely sure of himself or herself. I was taken in many times, and I do the same thing for a living!

While we're on the bad.... The worst attraction we visited? Sounds Dangerous at the Hollywood Studios. (Close second: Journey into Narnia, little more than a series of clips from the latest film.) The set-up: you're part of a studio audience watching a pilot for "Undercover Live," a COPS-esque TV show that plants a hidden camera on an undercover officer. That officer, however, is Drew Carey, who bumbles his way through his assignment. (I kind of like Drew Carey in my Midwestern, nerdy, phocine way, but if you don't like him, that's strike one against the whole attraction right there.) The gag is that, through most of the pilot, a power outage plunges the studio into darkness with only the audio functioning. So, rather than seeing Mr. Carey's misadventures, you hear them.

Great idea, poor execution. The sounds, apart from a swarm of wasps or the snip of scissors, aren't all that exciting or interesting. That's a pity, because I love radio shows and I am fascinated with the audiologic experience. Worse yet, the attraction was built during Mr. Carey's heyday in the late 1990's, and it's already falling to pieces through neglect. The chairs are in sad shape, many headphones non-functioning, and the audio was terribly out-of-synch with what little video there was. The icing on this stale cake is the pre-show, which consists of trivia questions about the pilot episodes of ABC shows long dead: Ellen, The Practice. Pity the poor schlub who gets assigned to work this attraction. If there's a caste system among the Disney Cast (I imagine that the Space Mountain Cast Members rule the roost), the young woman who shepherded us through the show must be at rock bottom. I wondered if, when the lights came up, she would be lying on the stage in a bloody pool, having slit her wrists from the shame of it all.

Next: The Good.

Disneiana turpia

2008-08-21T22:17:00.006+02:00

a. d. xii Kal. Sept. ann. dom. MCMVIII

nunc est narrandum, quomodo ego et mea familia septem dies noctesque MUNDO DISNEII consumpserimus ut diem natalem tertiam decimam nostrae filiae celebraremus. hinc narratio in tres partes divisa est: pars prima de turpibus est, secunda de malis, et tertia de rebus bonis. favete, o lectores, et discite.

Disney: The Ugly.

Let's talk about the weather first. Florida in mid-to-late August has always been a dicey proposition, and now, with the world's weather patterns starting to crack, it can be a dangerous one. The temperature itself wasn't as hot as expected — though I went through my share of SPF 50 — mostly due to the persistent cloud cover that generally kept the mercury somewhat low. I'd say it only got into the 90's once or twice. On the other hand, air conditioning is the law of the land, and many of the attractions are indoors, so who knows?

On day 5, however, Fay reared her stormy head. After two consecutive family ballots — with mine the only vote each time for leaving Orlando early — all we could do was watch and wait (amid jaunts to the various parks, natch) as Fay meandered s-l-o-w-l-y north and east. Our flight out Tuesday evening was cancelled, but we managed to secure — and take! — a flight twelve hours later. Some turbulence on the take-off, but smooth sailing very soon thereafter.

Ugly as Fay was, the media coverage was even uglier. Yes, there were, and perhaps as of this writing there still are, real dangers associated with this storm, not least of which are the floods and the tornadoes. Yet to witness the talking heads salivating, almost lusting, over the whole event — WESH Channel 2! Heya, whore! How's the whoring? — was a rather unsavory experience. No angle too small to sensationalize! No reporter too meek to report, parka-clad, from some or other stormy beach! Crap like this is why I cancelled cable and chopped the antenna off my roof. Thanks for scaring my daughter worse than the Haunted Mansion did, folks.

Ugliest of all is the mindset that the Disney tourist must adopt to survive. Even in the off-season, the crowds in the theme parks are formidable. From 11:00 a.m. onward, the most popular attractions in any given park have an hour's wait or more. To its credit, Disney has instituted what's called FastPass, a ticketing system that guarantees a minimal wait within an appointed hour. However, when all of the day's FastPasses for an attraction are gone by 10:30 a.m., we have a problem. The end result is that, even with the best of strategies, time spent relaxing at the theme parks can be rather stressful.

Next: The Bad.

res quinta

2008-08-10T13:36:00.005+02:00

a. d. iv Id. Aug. ann. dom. MMVIII

v. fleo Mupas.

5. Piango sui Muppet.

5. The Muppets make me cry.

Awkward, but true. Now, I won't cry at any old Muppets bit: I shed no tears over Statler and Waldorf, nor do I weep for Beaker (though I sympathize with the poor son of a bitch). No, I have to be feeling old or beat up or otherwise emotionally vulnerable — see point number one, below. Drink might be involved. My daughter might be at hand, the better for me to reflect on how she's growing up and how little time we have left. Given circumstances like these, and given the right song or sketch, I'm leaving the room for a while.

res quarta

2008-08-08T16:13:00.008+02:00

a. d. vi Id. Aug. ann. dom. MMVIII

iv. locus carissmus mihi est Florentia (at non cum plurimi viatores adsunt).

4. Il mio posto preferito è Firenze (ma non quando ci sono troppi turisti).

4. My favorite place is Florence (though not when there are too many tourists about).

Ah, Florence. I feel I might like Bologna more, but I just can't stay away from that beautiful flower. Seed of Roman garrisons, birthplace of the Renaissance, heart of Tuscany. Marble-veneered, Medici-ruled, mellifluous, murderous. And moneyed: the place is overrun with tourists every time I go, and not just tourists, but shoppers and spendthrifts caroming from store to store and sight to sight. Well, while they're raiding the boutiques or standing in line at Gelato Vivoli, I and mine are ascending the Viale Galileo to hear vespers at San Miniato al Monte.

There once was a city named Florence,
which flooded with tourists in torrents.
They swamped the museums
and other must-see-'ems
like Boboli, Pitti, and Laurence.

(res intra rem: mi piacono molto i limerick.)

res tertia

2008-08-06T13:52:00.011+02:00

a. d. viii Id. Aug. ann. dom. MMVIII

iii. numquam vinum (vel sim.) bibebam donec Romae habitarem (i.e., cum XXVII annos habui).

3. Non bevevo mai vino (o qualcosa di alcolico) fino ad abitare a Roma (i.e., quando ho avuto ventisette anni).

3. I never drank wine (or anything alcoholic) until I lived in Rome (i.e., when I was 27).

I was a teetotaler and substance-free as an undergraduate and well into my years of graduate study — though, due to my natural boyish exuberance, I was probably assumed to be on something much of the time. My fellow geeks and I had successfully avoided peer-pressure in high school, and by the time I got to college I was immunized to the opinions of others (and in those days Beloit College was a pharmacological cornucopia).

In Rome, though, something changed. Maybe I was finally old enough to drink on my own terms. Maybe it was the quintessential "When in Rome..." attitude. Maybe it was the Italian (and generally European) appreciation and veneration of wine. Or maybe I'd gotten over the fear of being a class traitor. You have to remember, my roots are Midwestern lower-to-middle class, which esteems beer, especially in Milwaukee. What was wine to us, but what we saw on television: Gallo, Lancers, and Paul Masson? Whatever the reason, I tried wine, realized that liking it wasn't the end of the world, and never looked back.

I'd like to think I've learned something about wine over the years — I've come a long way from that five-lire bottle of Est! Est!! Est!!! — but I don't consider myself a wine snob per se. I know only one thing for certain, namely that there's so much that I have yet to learn. et discere est bibere.

res secunda

2008-08-04T13:25:00.022+02:00

a. d. ii Non. Aug. ann. dom. MMVIII

ii. in spuma gelida lactis totus sum.

2. Ho una grande ossessione con gelato.

2. I am totally obsessed with ice cream.

Having grown up in Milwaukee, WI, the land of frozen custard (sorry, Buffalo, NY; tough noogies, St. Louis, MO), ice cream is in my blood. It's my dessert of choice, and I've managed to put the monkey on my daughter's back, too. Most of the stands around here specialize in soft-serve, so I've been paying less attention lately to hard-serve, which I prefer. Let me here shout out to Humpty Dumpty and the Dairyhaus, two outstanding soft-serve purveyors within my orbit. I love ice cream so much that I've been tempted to start an obsessive blog about it. Tempted, but not persuaded: I doubt the world, let alone myself, is ready for two blogs from me.

My two favorite ice cream joints in all the world? Drum roll....

Leon's, Milwaukee, WI. Best frozen custard ever — thick, rich, creamy, supple — and, unlike Gilles', still the same after all these years. Il Wombat will back me up on this. If I could mainline the stuff, I would.
Gelateria dei Neri, Florence, Italy. Gelato practically runs out of the taps in Florence, particularly in the historic center, where it seems there's a gelateria every other storefront or so. Il Gelato Vivoli is the big name in town, with the big lines of tourists and locals to match, and their gelato is good — but I prefer to walk a few streets over to quieter Gelateria dei Neri. They take an artisan's approach to their gelato, and it shows in the presentation, the texture, the freshness, and the taste. How good is it? My long-suffering wife, who normally can't stand gelato, ordered a styrofoam cooler of the chocolate, and ran it back to our apartment north of the Duomo so we could have it for lunch. (We kept some in the freezer for breakfast the next day.)

Ai mei amici alla Gelateri dei Nei: cordiali saluti. L'anno prossimo ritorniamo — questa volta con nostra figlia — a fare pranzo (o colazione o cena) del vostro gelato!

rex Americae

2008-08-02T22:35:00.010+02:00

2 agosto 2008

Ieri sera io e mia (infinitamente paziente) moglie siamo andati a SPAC a guardare Elvis Costello di concerto con gli Impostori. Loro hanno dato una rappresentazione molto brava, che ha incluso alcune canzoni del più recente album, «Momofuku», e molte vecchie prefirite («Lipstick Vogue», «Watching the Dectectives», e naturalmente «Radio Radio»). Il maestro ha indirizzato al pubblico raramente e solo brevemente (e forse un po' ubriacamente?), ma ha proclamato che noi fossimo in buona forma.

I'd also like to thank (Not really! as my daughter says) the many cretins and stumblebums who used our blanket as a stepping-stone all night long. Yeah, I appreciate that the lawn of SPAC is treacherous, especially after you've had a few too many, but please don't consider muddy footprints the price I should pay for getting there early and staking out my territory! The ballet and orchestra crowd this was not.

Oh, and the Police played a show, too.

res prima

2008-08-01T18:34:00.011+02:00

Kal. Aug. ann. dom. MMVIII

illa carissma vombatus iubet meas octo res scribi Anglice. quare sic scribam, sed singulatim et non sine expositionibus (et forsan sollicitudinibus).

i. vereor ne moriar ante senectutam, priusquam meam filiam doceam omnia quae scienda sunt.

1. Ho paura che io muoia prima della vecchaia, prima che io insegni a mia figlia tutte le cose che sapere deve.

1. I'm afraid I'll die before I get old, before I can teach my daughter everything she ought to know.

Not too hard to understand, I hope. Prone to episodes of hypochondria, I find it difficult to be in my own head for too long, lest I start obsessing over this or that tic, and what dread disease it portends. Apart from that, the thought of abandoning my child to a crazy world is almost too much to bear. That said, I take comfort in knowing that my wife, who is very strong, would make sure she grows up to be a beautiful, whip-smart, self-assured person. I can already see it happening, and I don't want to miss the metamorphosis.

principia nova

2008-07-30T19:57:00.019+02:00

a. d. iii Kal. Aug. ann. dom. MMVIII

invitatus contactusque ab illa vombato, ut octo res ignotiores de me declarem, offero has:

i. vereor ne moriar ante senectutam, priusquam meam filiam doceam omnia quae scienda sunt.
ii. in spuma gelida lactis totus sum.
iii. numquam vinum (vel sim.) bibebam donec Romae habitarem (i.e., cum XXVII annos habui).
iv. locus carissmus mihi est Florentia (at non cum plurimi viatores adsunt).
v. fleo Mupas.
vi. odi iniquitatem ullius modi.
vii. scribo librum qui nihil ad meam librum de Ovidio pertinet.
viii. lassulus ex academia fio.

30 luglio 2008

Perché la vombato ha attaccato l'etichetta a me, affinché io riveli otto cose su me, che sono generalmente ignote, offro il seguito:

1. Ho paura che io muoia prima della vecchaia, prima che io insegni a mia figlia tutte le cose che sapere deve.
2. Ho una grande ossessione con gelato.
3. Non bevevo mai vino (o qualcosa di alcolico) fino ad abitare a Roma (i.e., quando ho avuto ventisette anni).
4. Il mio posto preferito è Firenze (ma non quando ci sono troppi turisti).
5. Piango sui Muppet.
6. Odio ingiustizia di ogni tipo.
7. Scrivo un libro che niente affatto concerne il mio libro su Ovidio.
8. Sto diventando annoiato dal mondo accademico.

July 30, 2008

What's this? A post? Thanks to La Wombat for getting me started again. Actually, I've been meaning to do this for a while now — post, that is, and in more languages. Why? Why not? You can probably guess that the Latin and Italian posts are the same (or meant to be — corrections are welcome). This is just a brief explanation of what the hell is going on. I might post only in English from time to time, or in another language (Greek? Esperanto? Canadian?) and I might post across languages, like today. Or I might let the whole damn thing moulder until tagged again. But don't worry, we're still on Rome time.

And now my dilemma: do I actually know eight other bloggers to tag? Are tagbacks allowed?

quare dei TuiFistulam creaverint

2007-09-26T05:07:00.001+02:00

a. d. vi Kal. Oct. ann. dom. MMVII

nuper duae manus cantorum mihi maxime placuerunt, quarum spectacula musica infra vide.

ecce Crep'tuum EUGEPAE:

pro certo nescio quomodo "transvirum" Latine dicas, sed dicere "desidero desidero desidero meas delicias" scio.

nunc ecce Alberti Domicustodis Iunioris CI:

hoc solum quaero: quam centesimam primam rem canit?

vere haec spectacula demonstrant quare dei TuiFistulam creaverint.

horror vacui

2007-09-18T23:54:00.000+02:00

a. d. xiv Kal. Oct. ann. dom. MMVII

(scio, scio -- una dies duas epistulas vidit. me in ius vocate.)

hodie mea filia post scholam finitam manere vult, ut conventum viseret athletarum quae trans agrum currunt. diu eam exspectabam, dum me vocaret. tandem -- ut longam fabulam curtem -- filia inventa est, tuta sanaque, atque omnino inscia meae sollicitudinis. paternitas non solum gaudio, sed etiam curae est.

verbum semel emissum

2007-09-18T19:19:00.000+02:00

a. d. xiv Kal. Oct. ann. dom. MMVII

me iampridem bene didicisse cogitaveris. anno posteriore desisti epistulas electronicas mittere, nominibus lectorum automatice completis, cum nimium epistularum ad lectores mittebam quos numquam notavi. hodie eandem epistulam, iam missam ad unum collegam sub nomine proprio, ad aliam collegam sine nomine mutato misi. eheu! me stultum et improvidum! istam epistulam statim revocavi, sed utrum sero fecerim, nescio. semper fac ut scribas ad aliquem salutatione recta -- praecipue aliquid petens.

libertas libera?

2007-09-12T16:25:00.000+02:00

a. d. ii Id. Sept. ann. dom. MMVII

nuper de libertate magistrorum cogitavi: quae libere discipulis dicere possumus, et quae nobis numquam dicenda sunt? certe nihil de discipulis ipsis -- quos qualesve deos colant, aut quos quasve ament, aut quomodo se pro re publica gerant, aut similia. quod si quis -- discipulus, magister, administrator -- magistrum dicendi improbe accusat? quis de hac re iudicabit, utrum magister innocens sit, et quis omnes actiones in tabellas referet, ut accusatus (vel accusata) scire possit quid fiat? tales quaestiones me aliosque vexaverunt, atque omnes de meis collegis mox vexent, cum partem sextam MANULIBRI MAGISTRORUM rescriptam legent.

tot conventus

2007-09-04T14:14:00.000+02:00

a. d. ii Non. Sept. ann. dom. MMVII

hodie erat conventus de sexta parte MANULIBRI MAGISTRORUM, quem ego et certi de meis collegis curamus. vexationes sollicitudinesque omnis modi, praecipue sexualis, sextae parti referunt. eheu! nimium tempus ad verba ferranda et corrigenda, et parum ad res urgentes disputandas datum est. nunc alii conventus constituentur, ut negotium, quod hodie non actum est, agendum sit -- aut sic spes est. pro tantis praemiis professor factus sum?

itur in antiquam silvam

2007-08-28T11:48:00.000+02:00

a. d. v Kal. Sept. ann. dom. MMVII

(salvete, lectores, si qui remanent; ad bloggandum redeo.)

ego et mea uxor hodie ante primam horam surreximus, haec ut urbem Novum Eboracum sua cum matre (i.e. mea socra) et matertera et nostra filia iret, ego ut defectum lunae spectarem. principium huius spectaculi a fenestra videre potui, sed luna currum sub arbores mox direxit. post multos conatus spectandi foris -- fingete me in silvis sine luce errantem, nescioquem lucum frustra quaerentem -- domum redeo: tot arbores ubicumque erant. atque tela totius terrae, credo, imagines lunae defectae quovis tempore monstrare poterit. cur aliquis domo gradi umquam audeat?

felis felix

2007-01-05T17:14:00.000+01:00

Non. Ian. ann. dom. MMVII

nostrae feli nausea aliqua est, ex qua parvas moles ubique saepe vomerat. medica, quae de talibus rebus sapientissima videtur, dicit nihil agendum esse, praeter cibum mutandum. aliqui feles, exponit, anxietatem et trepidationem experiuntur, unde nausea fit. ego tamen me paulo vexo, cum abhinc annos tres fere nostram Septem, quae morbum gravem accepit, amiserimus. at haec sana omnibus certis rebus est, aut sic videtur. canes amabam; cur umquam feles amare incepi?

acceptus sum

2006-12-18T20:10:00.000+01:00

a. d. xv Id. Ian. ann. dom. MMVI

nuper mei iudices iudicavere, et me tenurae dignum constituere. mox, spero, procuratores collegii hoc iudicium approbabunt. at nunc felix ego, cum ad iudicium vincendum assidue novem annos laboraverim. atque fessus sed relevatus sum, quasi ex oculo acus transii.

quomodo nunc meam vitam agam?

quo usque tandem patientia mea?

2006-10-04T19:56:00.000+02:00

a. d. iv Non. Oct. ann. dom. MMVI

peractum est. contuli omnes materias meas ad eos qui de me iudicabunt, utrum dignus sim tenurae annon. cum collegis meis pro auxilio fideque gratias agam, maximas debeo filiae uxorique meae, quae me multos menses iracundum et operosiorem toleraverunt.

omnia nunc apud deos sunt.

quid novi?

2006-06-23T17:59:00.000+02:00

a. d. ix Kal. Iul. ann. dom. MMVI

diu nihil scripsi, cum aliud scriberem, i.e. liber de Ovidio. si non tria capita ante finem aestatis effecero, peribo. noli timere, lector: omnia sunt bona. scribere autem difficile est, cum carissimi amici Albaniam mox adveniant. his visis, gaudebo. at meo manuscripto, a quo omnis spes tenurae dependet, desse non debeo. vita auctoris nimium remota est.

felis domestica

2006-05-05T14:35:00.000+02:00

a. d. iii Non. Mai. ann. dom. MMVI

felis altera nobis est, Hamilton nomine, quod mea filia tradidit (eodem nomine cani alicui indigenti Athenis tradito). ego mea cum uxore cognomen Octaviae tradidi ut illam felem optimam celebraremus, Septem nomine, quae morbo contracto apud nos breviore tempore habitavit. hodie Hamiltonta ad veterinarium medicum conferemus, qui nos certiores de eius valetudine faciat. nam vereor ne mea filia dolorem ex deliciis amissis iterum accipiat.

fas et nefas

2006-04-28T16:40:00.000+02:00

a. d. iv Kal. Mai. ann. dom. MMVI

morbus meae socrae, quem apud nos accepit, gravior fit. post nauseam, quam ipse expertus sum, vertigo et, triste relatu, languor erat: dicitur, cum domum rediebat, dilapsa esse atque sensu breviter cariusse. nunc socer nos certiores fecit eam in nosocomio iacere, renibus ex eodem morbo confectis, neque cibum nonnullos dies sumpsisse. socer fecit, dico, quod ipsa numquam aliquid, vel boni vel mali, de sua valetudine fatetur. at ego, cum de socra saepe querar, spero tamen eam mox valituram esse; et ipse hanc spem ei fatebor.

discipulomastix

2006-04-26T15:58:00.000+02:00

a. d. vi Kal. Mai. ann. dom. MMVI

me hominem patientiae aequanimitatisque puto, quas virtutes in docendo demonstrare conor. at una discipula non solum me perpetuo vexavit, sed etiam mihi aperte maledicere nunc incepit. quid agam, patiens et aequo animo? quid virtus est, si in tempestatibus deerit?

de nihilo

2006-04-25T16:03:00.000+02:00

a. d. vii Kal. Mai. ann. dom. MMVI

in Parilibus poscendis (quae occasionem nostris discipulis ad res classicas celebrandas dederunt) nescioquis magister erat, qui de Athenarum antiquis picturis photographicis sermonem faciebat. se non bene paraverat, ut credo, nam parum et nimium diu loquebatur. primo dissimulaverat ut opiniones nostras magni haberet; mox autem, nostris auribus ineptiarum plenis, se sua voce vero delectari demonstravit. iste tamen mihi exemplo erit -- si modo sermonis male facti.

ad nauseam

2006-04-25T01:46:00.000+02:00

a. d. viii Kal. Mai. ann. dom. MMVI

quattuor diebus prius vehementer aegrotus eram. causa socra fuit, quae morbum accepit ex mea matre, quae in via acceperat et post adventum prima aegrotaverat. cena posita sumptaque, tanta nausea mihi erat ut me non retinerem quin omnia vomerarem, etiam prandium et ientaculum. illa nocte iacens semimortuus meo lecto versabar atque malis somniis de piratis torquebar, dum nausea me ad latrinam redigeret. mane me cum aqua effervescente paneque sicco recreavi, quos in ventro tenere potui. o morbum familiarem! hoc solum dicere possum, quod mea uxor nataque eum nondum acceperunt. parce, precor!

socra adest

2006-04-17T22:09:00.000+02:00

a. d. xv Kal. Mai. ann. dom. MMVI

socra cum mea matre hodie venit visum meam filiam, cui vacat dum ludus clauditur. Hercle! illa femina me odit, ut credo; aut, si non odit, numquam retinenda est quin mihi obtrectet. si quiete dicam, me clarius dicere iubebit; iubebit me quietius, si clare dicam. si quid meam filiam docere velim, sermonem interrumpens privatum roget quid agemus vel cur. ei tamen magnas gratias debeo, nam meam filiam amat, et liberaliter nostris sinat ut puellam ad eam aestate mittamus.

vale, aville

2006-04-12T14:44:00.000+02:00

a. d. ii Id. Apr. ann. dom. MMVI

nuper meam filiam spectavi saltantem in fabula cui titulus est VALE, AVILLE. fabula ter acta est, quarum actionum primam et ultimam vidi (mea uxore omnes vidente). manus in plaudendo consumpsimus cum Albertus cecinit nostrae puellae ut se cum vultu beato gereret. nam sic se gessit.

epistula prima

2006-04-11T15:17:00.000+02:00

a. d. iii Id. Apr. ann. dom. MMVI

his coeptis verecunde, salutem telae totius terrae do. hic saepe, ut spero, mea memorabilia scribam, quae legens laetaberis. quisquis es, o lector, sicut me tuis nugis intendere velis, meis intende favens.