The ASUCLA Bookstore is a dangerous place.

The Young Research Library has any title I could ever invent, organized on dusty shelves in dark corners. But the bookstore has all the best books pared down to what the faculty thinks we should be reading, all lined up in plastic wrapping, by department. So, of course, when I go there at the beginning of every quarter, I do some intense browsing.

I hit the Italian section first, knees bent for Machiavelli, tiptoes for Ariosto (or as Prof. Betti likes to say, l’Arrosto). Then I go to Comparative Literature– they always have way better stuff than the English department. I browse French, Greek, History, Iranian, and Latin, and then I go back to the c’s for Classics. There I always find new editions of stuff I can’t wait to read in the original. I run my fingers over the hardbacks and take time to observe the illustrations on the new paperback editions. Then I check to make sure that Roman Civics is still putting Plautus after Petronius.

A new one caught my eye in Classics this last time. I think it is what their graduate students have to read, and I hope Italian has something similar. It is What the Best College Teachers Do by Ken Bain from NYU. It costs $21.95, and I bought it for two reasons:

• I'll be teaching college courses next year (!) and I'll need lots of help
• I wanted to see my judgments about my professors validated

(Wait, does the way we spell judgment bother anyone else?)

Now, after reading all 200 pages in exactly 24 hours, from Monday night to Tuesday night, I am applying the theories from Dr. Bain’s pedagogic study to my own college teachers. It turns out that I don’t have any bad ones this quarter. In fact, they are all probably the best! According to this book, one of the first steps that teachers should take when beginning a course is to extract some kind of contract or agreement from their students so they will actively decide to learn and participate. Today, one of my professors actually used the word agreement in the same context. That woke me up with some serious validation.

More importantly, though, the book taught me how to think about my own mental processes without becoming emotionally affected. It’s neat to be able to objectively observe myself learning. The Socratic method is most effective, and it even works without an ancient Greek geezer standing barefoot in front of me refuting everything I say. All it takes is disproving a micro-reality and fixing it with better information (these are my own words). No togas or Mount Olympus needed.

Here are my last classes before graduation:

1. Latin 3 – the last grammar class – Charlie Stein and Rob Groves
2. Italian 116B – Power & Imagination in the Renaissance - Franco Betti
3. Italian M158 – Women in Italian Culture - Lucia Re
4. Comp Lit 4AW – Antiquity to Middle Ages - Jeannine Murray-Romàn

Total Side Note: The only time that I ever saw Prof.ssa Adriana Chemello laugh was when I used metonymy incorrectly and pronounced it with a thick American accent. Unfortunately, since that day, my reality has been that I will never be able to learn rhetorical literary terms. Two days ago, I saw the title A Glossary of Literary Terms at the bottom of a handout for CompLit. I don't feel that way anymore.

Adriana & Monica Streifer at Mt. Baldy and a Memory

Today Adri and I drove to Scripps to visit her little sister Monica. She swiped us in for brunch in the dining hall and gave us a tour of her beautiful, private university in exchange for a trip to Trader Joe's with my car. Then we drove 6,000 feet up Mt. Baldy, braved the bitter wind gusts, quickly pointed out that the snow was covered in redwood dust, and left in a hurry.

On the way back to Los Angeles with the sun setting behind downtown, Adri and I compared current feelings about our year abroad together. I try not to think too much about the past - life always gets better - but I did allow for one comparison. In Italy, I spent a lot of time alone. It was easy. I just walked everywhere and looked and thought and looked and thought.

I remember this one time after class when I walked out past the medieval archery tower and directly to the center of the Piazza della Frutta. The starless sky was so pink and heavy that even the evening seafood vendor wasn't there. I turned my face up to the first flakes of snow and closed my eyes. I contemplated my place in the world and how much I love being alive, and when I opened my eyes, the cobblestones were covered white. I really appreciated making that first trail of footprints.

I couldn't reproduce that anywhere else.

College: When Pondering the Universe is a Form of Procrastination.

It is the evening, and after much reading on the symbols of fidelity in the Odyssey and after much eating of grilled zucchini and goat cheese, I am taking a break to intentionally not react, ever so indifferently, to pages R6 and R7 of the November 12, 2006, Los Angeles Times Book Review.

R6 and R7 are the center pages of the section, so they open up callously into a rectangular sprawl of atheism vs. Christianity, two-thirds “Keepers of the non-faith” one-third “Let there be enlightenment” with a picture of the earth from space creased down the middle.

Here are my two favorite quotes:

“Scattering secular fatwas with abandon, [Richard] Dawkins assumes the mantle of an ayatollah of atheism.”
-Robert Lee Hotz

“If human understanding evolves, surely the ability to apprehend the divine also evolves to keep pace, even if organized religion lags behind."
-also Robert Lee Hotz

And as I watch my bird peck furiously at its reflection in the mirror attached to its cage, either trying desperately to open the window to the next dimension or, more likely, to mindlessly murder that other bird, I wonder what we (this neatly organized, chaotic mass of emotional tentacles that cling so tightly together serendipitously as our tiny little spherical rock races towards its destiny) are really getting at.

I Heart Padua.

I guess this is what happens when you listen to sappy music and look at old pictures.

I really need to get in touch with my friends.

Especially Jim Pulizzi!

European Children - A Comparison

If you are looking for something academic, sorry, I am not in the mood for anything serious.

Observations: This baby is Italian. I took this picture in the rich shopping area of Padua in June 2006. Notice the bib ready to catch drizzling spaghetti and meatballs with legs. He has a rat tail all'italiano, a smooth soccer stride, and a confident air about him.

Observations: This baby is French. I took this picture in those gardens by the Louvre that start with a T and rhyme with reverie in January 2006. Notice the creepy green chair, the inauspicious black crow, and the Alfred Hitchcock flock of birds. He seems uncomfortable in his situation, and now I ask myself, where are his parents?