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I shared this sandwich with my dad, but I got all the peppers. The picture is shitty, but you might be able to tell that the bun was really quite good.

Not a sincere smile in the group, but that’s just because the toasted ravioli was too good for us to want to be bothered for a photo break.

After that, I partook of my sister’s calzone (cheese and spinach), and then we had these parmesan potato chips:

I was very enthusiastic about the Amaretto Puffs:

That custardy cream sauce was quite tasty, but I wish the amaretto had been more apparent in these little lumps of fried dough.

For our second and final dessert (we didn’t have room for the rice balls, after all) we had these pretty sorbetti in frozen hollowed lemons and peaches.

To top it all off, we carried a bag of Koepsell’s away with us. My dad swears this is the best popcorn in the world, and he even sends me their jars of kernels and their coconut oil when I’m at school.

This is exactly the meaning of a festival. Feasting. (The words are pretty closely related, etymologically.) I love taking a day and stepping outside of all health-related dietary considerations, to celebrate. What was I celebrating to-day? Well, being Italian, of course, and being back in Milwaukee! It’s beautiful.

The People Watching Collective

I drove past two gas stations to-day, directly across the street from one another, and one was selling gas for 4.17, the other for 4.19. And there were at least as many people filling up at the 4.19 station! I just don’t understand this. In Wisconsin, if two gas stations are kitty-corner or across the street from each other, they will be selling the same priced gas, almost without exception. Because who wants to be the guy with the obviously more expensive gas? Apparently New York Mobile does!

Who are these people who pick the more expensive gas? Do they really have that kind of brand loyalty? Or just hate turning left across traffic? What is it?

Well, I mean, I know what it is. They’re just all a bunch of nutzos.

Here on the semi-deserted Union college campus, I am sitting in the air-conditioned library, wasting precious time (I have an eye appointment at 4, and badly need to get some work done to-day), I’m taking advantage of the quiet to collect some of my sources. It is a little exciting to me that I’ve come to a point where I have what I think is often referred to as an “instrumental language,” i.e. German, a language I know well enough that I can read scholarship written in it, and thereby increase my pool of secondary information.

Really must get to work.

((Moth – Revolution))

One line runs something like “you didn’t expect, having scorned my bed” or, perhaps more accurately, something like “you were not about to…” [εμελλες] (1354) and then the next line: “to live your life through pleasurably, laughing at me.” (1355, of course)

It seems to me as if these two lines perfectly encapsulate the two sides of her emotion. In 1354 is all her spite. There is no way, she says, that you were going to get away with this, and calls the injury by name (also interesting that at this pivotal moment, the injury she names is not the breaking of oaths, but the sexual insult). In the next line, she describes quickly and vividly the life that he meant to lead, and both her brevity and her inclusions (pleasure, laughter) are more than adequate for anyone who’s ever felt resentful. That line, its irony, is pure hate.

And it’s not hate of the time that makes Medea fearful, I don’t think. Here more than anywhere, even though she’s just killed her children, she is sympathetic. In her last burst of rage, where her choice of words is no longer calculated, but expresses everything that boiled in her mind until her vengeance broke forth, she is finally human. She is more human here, when she admits that her deepest motivation the whole time was Jason’s sexual infidelity, was jealousy, and just jealousy, than she was even when she wavered in her plan to kill her children.

Maybe she’s not supposed to be quite this sympathetic to the spectator, but this is how I’m reading her. I would love to play Medea. I’m not an actress, but I think, in this scene at least, I get her.

How can you gain access to this fantastic and gripping data stream? Well, you have to make friends with my mom, and then Skype friends with my mom. It’s a small price to ask, really. (Especially since everyone who meets my mom not only becomes friends with her, but most of my friends quickly become better friends with her than with me. Oh, there goes the bitter again!)

I’ll leave you with a photo of the man himself.

But first, a word to the wise: The Exhibition Center at the Dinosaur State Park in Connecticut is Closed on Mondays. I’m just trying to save you from the same heartbreak Graham and I experienced. We wanted to go relive our heritage through the aid of dioramas and multimedia displays, but the plan was destined to failure. While it’s true that just being there made us feel closer to our ancestors, and also that we did glean some educational value from the trip, I would be lying if I said I wasn’t disappointed not to get to see the huge fossils. But that’s enough blather. I’ll let the pictures do the talking…

Please see my small google album.

Don’t worry, there’s more to come, namely a video that will allow you to partake in our exhilarating educational experience.

(I love that “love” + “body” = dance)

And when I think of dancing, I don’t just think of these things, but also of the country dances Hardy described, and the tribal dances in Africa and the Americas, of the Irish who kept dancing even when it was outlawed, of all the times people have turned to dancing in sadness, and also in elation. I need to keep dancing.