May 14, 2008
Back . . .
. . . here, and in time for graduation!
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:04 PM | Comments (0)
May 13, 2008
Almost ready to return to the frozen North
After 4 months in Italy I have a pretty severe food reaction, and this trip was no different. Since getting home I have eaten variously and well, but I've covered most of the bases - Chinese, Indian, Southern, Mexican - and today barbecue! And tonight, Krystals!
I guess I can head back to Geneva, now.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 1:26 PM | Comments (2)
May 12, 2008
Oddly put
The oddest paragraph I've read today - this from today's Wall Street Journal:
Dawn Brown, a vice president and spokeswoman for Barneys, said the company had no comment. Mr. Jackson, Istithmar's chief executive, said Sunday that, "We have no comment." [Dodes, Rachel, et al. 2008 "Barneys CEO Is Expected to Quit." Wall Street Journal, May 12, 2008, sec. B.]
There's something off about the repetition and the variety of indirect and direct quotation.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 12:46 PM | Comments (0)
May 10, 2008
Ol' times
I got to see a free, bonus childhood friend, Miss Juanita Lane, proprietress of Dulce desserts. Cookies for us! Yum! If I lived in Nashville I would be thinking of reasons to order a fancy cake . . . .
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 5:00 PM | Comments (2)
May 9, 2008
Strolling through someone else's graduation
I'm visiting my life-long* friend the Catholic chaplain for Vanderbilt University for a few days. For various logistical reasons (remember last year's summer-of-the-tenure-case hell?) I haven't been to Nashville for a couple of years (he was appointed chaplain in the summer of 2006), so I've had some catching up to do. We're still working on scheduling lunch with another high school friend, (both of whose parents were also at Vanderbilt with ours, by the way, and with whom I went to school from K-12).
We walked over to the graduation to see part of the procession. I was struck with how BIG Vanderbilt is - or maybe what a small liberal arts college these Colleges are. Vanderbilt has to have a Jumbotron on the Quad! The music was shaping up to be splendid, but we left before the faculty procession; I wanted to stay for the headgear, always the highlight of regalia, but Father has a funeral.
Click and send money to the Chaplaincy. Father Baker promises to have a more integrated click-and-give function up soon!
*At the brunch he threw for graduating students, people kept asking how I knew Father. The simple answer is that all four of our parents knew each other at Vanderbilt - I don't remember not knowing Father.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 10:21 AM | Comments (1)
Death of an Ecclesial Community
I've been following the end of Seabury-Western Theological Seminary with some interest - it's always luridly interesting for someone like me to see how a board of trustees can fire an entire tenured faculty by declaring financial exigency. Hobart and William Smith has a long relationship with Seabury-Western - our previous chaplain, indeed, left these Colleges for a chair at Seabury-Western. I also have been an irregular reader of AKMA's Random Thoughts, a blog from a Seabury faculty member for a few years.
Here's the board's own position on the closure. Note the wishful thinking in the last paragraph about keeping a doctoral program open. How do you do that without a faculty?
Captain Yips points out a lo-how-the-mighty-are-fallen moment in the affair:
Considering Seabury-Western's collapse, it's worth noting that the Seabury Board thinks that they need $18.7 million, and that this goal "significantly exceeded Seabury’s fundraising capabilities."It's not a small amount, to be sure, but in the fundraising and nonprofit worlds $18.7 mil is relative chicken feed. There was a time that a more confident and assertive Episcopal Church could have raised that money (in 1890 dollars) over lunch at the millionaire's table at the Chicago Club, from some guys named Field, Armour, Pullman, Shedd, Higginbotham, and Swift - and for this purpose, the older version of TEC would have had a seat at that table. Some of the millionaires were, to be sure, scoundrels, but they were civic minded scoundrels, and the amount needed would have barely dented their resources. Northwestern University's top student charity fundraiser, Dance Marathon, pulls in $700,000 every year. That Seabury doesn't even consider the effort is an interesting marker on the road to collapse.
Really. They didn't try to raise a little less than $20 million to save an institution in Chicago? Admittedly, the alumni/ae of seminaries are seldom sources of large contributions, but whatever happened to all those rich Episcopalians?
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:48 AM | Comments (0)
The government is subsidizing the development of robots as caregivers for the old.
That's from an article about the slow-moving demographic collapse of Japan.
The number of children has declined for 27 consecutive years, a government report said over the weekend. Japan now has fewer children who are 14 or younger than at any time since 1908.The proportion of children in the population fell to an all-time low of 13.5 percent. That number has been falling for 34 straight years and is the lowest among 31 major countries, according to the report. In the United States, children account for about 20 percent of the population.
via Cronaca
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:10 AM | Comments (0)
May 8, 2008
Pymgy? Only among whales
Only among whales can a species get to 21 feet long and still be designated 'pygmy.'
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:51 AM | Comments (0)
May 7, 2008
The power of the visual
Stage-managing a rally to create a sense of the overwhelming enthusiasm for Change for the Sake of Change - go look. Yet another sign of the normal behavior of the Obama campaign. Everyone on both sides does this kind of thing, but it's always nice to get it confirmed.
Be sure to scroll down for the bumpersticker, too.
via Instapundit
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:30 AM | Comments (0)
May 6, 2008
Times to trust experts and (some) journalists and to distrust (all) politicians
If you think for two minutes, you will realize that you have stumbled upon one of those extraordinary cases where people who have spent their whole lives studying a subject actually understand it as well as, or even better than, people who have spent their whole lives scheming to get their hands on as much political power as possible.That's Miss McArdle on the gas tax.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 12:47 PM | Comments (0)
May 5, 2008
Suing Alma Mater
About Priya Venkatesan at Dartmouth (I've mainly been following Prof Soltan's coverage) I noted something that I'm not seeing many folks point out. Venkatesan has her own BA from Dartmouth. She knew what she was getting into!
Any idea that mean Ivy League patriarchalists ambushed a nice woman who didn't know the setting is off.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:29 PM | Comments (0)
May 4, 2008
Not dead - just grumpy
Sorry for the hiatus. I re-hurt my knee* and gosh is it making me grumpy. Somehow I just can't bring myself to write a cheery blog entry about the show in Venice or about the duty-lunch-gone-well that last weekend in Rome. GRRRRR.
*My own damn fault - I helped my parents' yard lad get the rototiller down from and back up into his truck. Too heavy, I guess, because a few hours later the knee started to swell up again.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:20 AM | Comments (3)
May 1, 2008
The Dissolution of the Universities
Massachusetts proposes taxing endowments over $1 billion.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 12:14 PM | Comments (1)
Stuff you never find in your local park in America
Swedish boy finds trove of 4,600 silver coins from the 13th C.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:29 AM | Comments (1)
April 30, 2008
News of the Ick
But when Hogan arrived at the river that afternoon, he found that not only had the anglers reeled in a 14-foot-long (4.3-meter-long) ray, but that the creature had also just given birth to a dinner plate-size baby.
Ick! Monstrous freshwater rays and their dinner plate-sized babies.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 5:35 AM | Comments (0)
April 29, 2008
Birdsong!
And I awake at 6:58 a.m. to birds! Noisy birds! Many different varieties of birds! I think the centro storico of Rome has two kinds of birds - pigeons and gulls. Last night my parents put out the leftover catfood (picky picky eater, that Luc) "for the owl." I heard him hooting in the night, too.
It's good to be home.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 1:09 PM | Comments (0)
Home after insane travel day
Home to my parents' house - showered away the grime of 20 hours of travel using a lovely American water heater rather than an inline thingie and ready to collapse into bed.
oh - I wasn't sleepless at 3:24 a.m. as the time stamp on this entry would have it, but was dazed enough at 9:24 p.m. that I didn't reset the time zone for my computer.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 3:24 AM | Comments (3)
April 27, 2008
Il Papa on the Jumbotron
I did get over to the Angelus today. The weather was beyond perfect and the crowd was bigger than I've ever seen.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:01 PM | Comments (0)
Have I ever mentioned how much I hate packing?
This has been a weekend of last minutery - saying good bye to folks, talking about next fall, grabbing last minute gifts, and packing. Have I ever mentioned how much I hate packing? Well, I do. It makes me sweat. I have no idea why.
So I'm trying to cram everything I brought with me or bought this semester - less the 20 odd kilos of books I shipped back to Geneva on Thursday - into my bags and wondering how I GOT it all here. In fact, I've already trashed my sneakers, tshirts, a pair of socks, a pair of khakis, and various toiletries. I'm thinking of tossing the jeans. Why didn't I mail the leather jacket home when I stopped wearing it - I sure can't wear it on the plane tomorrow.
My first night here I had a few glasses of wine with Pier Alberto Merli, who runs the language school we work with. We're booked for 7 this, my last evening. Symmetry is good - and tonight it's warm enough for his roof terrace!
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 5:40 PM | Comments (1)
April 26, 2008
Writing History
Prof. Burke offers a quick guide:
I tell my students that all good research projects and analytical writing have to provide an answer to the question, “So what?”, a justification for the project or the essay. One student asked me if history as a discipline had any stock or standard answers to that question.I started to list a few that I could think of, and then a few more. I thought I’d try out the results here, to see if readers could knock a few down or add some more.
Go read his list.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:26 PM | Comments (2)
April 25, 2008
Getting Ready for HOME
And the Leningrad Cowboys kinda help. Thanks, Dan!
Though all things considered, I prefer Shelby Lynne's version of home:
Though given where I'm headed, Miss Patti Page* is more appropriate than Miss Lynne. Well, we Southerners are enriched by our suffering, so multiple melancholies can only help.
Why melancholy? Well, I leave Rome Monday after a very good four months. We had a good program, I made some friends, I liked my apartment. Still and all, I'm headed home, and that's good.
*Omigosh - she released that the year before my parents graduated from high school!
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 3:02 AM | Comments (1)
The Milan Galleria
So also on the Piazza del Duomo in MIlano is a temple to commerce, the Galleria. Much as I love this space - the first covered mall in modern history (though the ancient Romans did it much earlier) the art historian in me flashes to Boccioni's Riot in the Galleria, one of the great Futurist paintings lusting for modernity through violence, the kind of lust that got him killed in a training accident in WWI. Still, the Galleria is an amazing spatial experience. And Boccioni was a first rate artist.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 2:42 AM | Comments (1)
April 24, 2008
College Licenseing Weirdness
I thought that I had seen a few more sweatshirts in Rome this winter with the Franklin & Marshall seal than was really probable, especially since F&M has no program of their own in Italy, but I had no idea there was a whole company doing it until I saw this shop in Milan! Wikpedia to the rescue - the last section of the F&M entry notes suppressed (9:34 a.m., 4/24/08):
In 1999, after seeing an official Franklin & Marshall sweatshirt, a company based in Verona, Italy began producing clothing in a vintage 1950's collegiate-style with the words "Franklin and Marshall" on them. F&M alumni began to report seeing F&M merchandise for sale in Europe, which puzzled the college.
In 2001, Tim McGraw posed for publicity photos wearing a "Franklin Marshall Wrestling" t-shirt, one of which was included in the CD booklet for his album Set This Circus Down. When the college became flooded with inquires about its (nonexistent) connection to the singer, they began to investigate further and discovered that the Franklin Marshall Clothing company was using its name without permission.
In 2003, after lengthy discussions, the college decided not to sue and instead agreed to accept a licensing fee from the company so that they could continue to produce their products, which had begun to gain popularity with youth, especially in the United Kingdom. The company also rewrote their history slightly, claiming that it was founded in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, rather than in Italy.
Today, the line is sold in upscale stores, such as Bloomingdales and, as part of the agreement with the college, at the Franklin and Marshall College bookstore. However, many of the designs omit Franklin & Marshall's ampersand and instead reads simply "Franklin Marshall." As of December 2007, a green shirt with the "F&M" logo was spotted on a female tee shirt in Mirabello Sannitico, Italy.
Love that classic Wikipedia concluding sentence - semi-relevant personal observation couched in the passive voice. Still, my questions, "what on earth is that?" and "I wonder if they're getting a cut?" are answered.
Milan photoset.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:36 AM | Comments (0)
April 23, 2008
Gimme Gothic
I know all my students climbed the dome of St. Peter's and to the top of the Duomo in Florence, but I prefer my rooftop experiences pointy and Gothic.
I'm standing on the flattish roof ridge of the Duomo in Milan - all marble, all the time.
Milan photoset.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:35 AM | Comments (2)
Mosaic from Milan - what IS this?
I spent the weekend in Milan and Venice, but the most excitingly odd art was the first I saw - a mosaic in the train station. I have no idea what this picture is about. Tarzan and Jane are shouting as they ride a raft with a dead and eviscerated moose?
Milan photoset.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 12:26 AM | Comments (4)
April 21, 2008
Whoo! How DID they survive the semester?
Of course, they're younger than I, but still . . . .
I ran up to Milan on Saturday morning and spent Saturday and Sunday night with a friend there. I've never really been to Milan - just changed trains in that amazing station. So this time I did all kinds of things and ate well.
This morning I headed over to Venice, the most beautiful but overpriced place in the world. I had reservations at the Palazzo Grassi for the Rome and the Barbarians show (quick verdict: go! more nuanced views to come later). It was pouring rain, so all I did afterwards was take the water bus to San Marco and go in there. I paid the small fee for the Pala d'Oro, the golden altarpiece. Yowza!
Then this evening back to Rome - that's the part that the students were doing all the time - 3 cities in one weekend. No wonder they dragged some days, even though they're less than half my age.
Pictures later!
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 11:54 PM | Comments (1)
April 18, 2008
The Horrible Yalie Story
Professor Soltan looks at the artist's statement. That's a genre that could use a lot of help anyway - this example is sadly characteristic.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:23 PM | Comments (0)
April 17, 2008
Verano
I had planned to go up to San Lorenzo fuori le mura (St. Lawrence outside the walls) even before I knew it was a grey and melancholy-looking day. It's a long ride! When I got up there I remembered that I had never been to San Lorenzo alone, and no one is ever willing to indulge my hobby of monument-choosing.
What's more, there was a funeral in the basilica, so I had to find something to do - and here it is: the Verano Cemetery set. Lots of good stuff!
This is a typical street of Columbaria - the cubbyhole tombs that ought to remind you of catacombs. All sorts of sizes are available - from something approximately 12"x12" (and I have no idea how deep) to these bigger ones. Columbarium in Latin means dovecote, which is obviously descriptive - these are the homes for the doves of our spirits?
My favorite inscription in the whole place - NO TEARS, FEW FLOWERS, MANY PRAYERS. I think I'm going to have that carved on my tomb.
Further: I put all this interest in intermediate resting places down to being born and raised in Tennessee of Alabamian and Tennessean parentage, and parents with a serious interest in genealogy and graveyard-going. I am really, really Southern, no matter how I might sound when I talk. There was a particularly horrible novel of the 70s called Kinflicks. The one person I sympathized with was the mother, who had her funeral plans and grave stone text in a pre-announced pigeon hole of her desk, just in case she passed in the night. What can I say - the grotesque in Southern literature is in YOUR mind, not ours. For us it's part of the carnival. You know what bothers me? The fact that my parents haven't settled where they're going to be buried yet. Me, I'm all in favor of a small mausoleum on these lines in the Salem burying ground. Would we give scandal to the Associate Reformed Presbyterians? Well, one can hardly help that.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 5:08 PM | Comments (1)
So what am I doing with free time in Rome?
Mosaic-hopping, of course! This are the inscription and lamb bands at Sta. Cecilia in Trastevere - about all that's left of the 9th C church (yes, another Pascal I building like Sta Prassede and Sta Maria in Domnica). The knee is somewhat better, so trudging around Trastevere wasn't too bad. This morning I'm off to Saint Lawrence outside the walls - long bus ride, but not much walking.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:18 AM | Comments (0)
April 16, 2008
Gadget Yearnery
I'm glad to read this from Tyler Cowen about the Kindle - I had wondered:
The best part: For fiction -- that is fiction I'm actually going to read -- I would rather use this screen than a traditional book. It is somehow easier to have a more focused appreciation of the words without being distracted by the book as a whole.The actual worst part: For non-fiction it is not fast enough for real scrolling, flipping through, browsing and reading. The machine is best for linear, sequential consumption of the text.
So, for things you need to flip around in (non-fiction, professional reading) it's not so hot. For fiction though...I could have brought a LOT more books with me to Rome! Except that you can't download in Europe yet?
I think I would agree with Prof. Cowen's review - for non-fiction it doesn't sound so useful. I'm an inveterate flipper-around. I usually start professional reading at the back, then zip back to the preface, then flutter around. Settling down and reading straight through is my last response to a book-in-field.
Oh well - that might save me some money.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:00 PM | Comments (0)
April 15, 2008
And we forgot to take a picture!
We're so close to finished that my colleague and his family are preparing to leave Rome on Thursday for a month of travel around Italy. I had them over for a farewell luncheon. There was prosecco - and there should have been photography. Then we walked to Giolitti, where there was gelato (Elena - I had visciola in your honor, along with coco and zabaglione). I hugged Nick and Nissa and the kids goodbye and went to a bookstore to drown my loneliness in consumer spending.
There's still some work outstanding - which is perhaps outstanding work, but how can one tell until it arrives for grading? We had an appointment with the director of studies at the Scuola to pick up the Italian grades this afternoon, so we're feeling finished - and that helps a lot!
I'm hanging around Rome until the end of April. The knee is doing better, but I don't think I'm up for foreign travel and tromping around a lot. I hope to get up to Venice to see the Romans and Barbarians show - and maybe over to Milan from there. I've never really been to Milan (changing trains and running outside the station to look around doesn't count).
I have to admit though that another two weeks in Rome won't kill me. I never use it up. A day trip here or there, perhaps - but I'll enjoy free wandering without a program, deadline, or rendezvous with students. I like being places but I don't really like travelling - when I get somewhere I tend to drill in for depth rather than running around for breadth.
So - it's been a great semester. I hope you enjoy reading about my two weeks of freedom. I know I'm going to enjoy living them!
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 4:51 PM | Comments (1)
Berlusconi wins, but the Communists REALLY lose
Repubblica gives them this headline: Sinistra Arcobaleno disastro: Bertinotti lascia. The alliance of the Refounded Communists, the Communists, and the Greens won NO seats in either Parliament or the Senate. Walter Veltroni's center left alliance party, the new Democratic Party, seems to have pulled a bunch of center left and left voters together; not enough to come close to Berlusconi's majority, but his is an alliance of parties as well.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:57 AM | Comments (0)
