Two Birds with One Stone

It's the last day of National Poetry Month and the day after William & Kate's wedding.  So here is a poem by Stevie Smith in the nick of time.

The Hat*
I love my beautiful hat more than anything
And through my beautiful hat I see a wedding ring
The King will marry me and make me his own before all
And when I am married I shall wear my hat and walk on the palace wall. 

 *Stevie Smith, The Collected Poems, New York: New Directions Books, 1983, page 272.

Miscellaneous

I finished The Bones of Avalon.  I don't usually go for historical novels, but I love Phil Rickman's Merrily Watkins series.  So I was waiting for the next one to come, and instead out came The Bones of Avalon.  I did enjoy it.  It had many of the same themes as the Merrily Watkins series: mysticism, murder, church politics.  It takes place in Elizabethan times, but Rickman only slightly antiqued his language.  In his afterword he thanks various linguists for their advice which he ended up mostly not taking since, "a strict adherence to Elizabethan written structures and terminology would only have made it sound stilted in ways it never would have been at the time."  Fair enough.  He has a great talent for taking masses of material and making it into a riveting story

Speaking of stilted language, I was thinking about the pronoun thou, which is no longer used by most speakers of English, but which used to be the informal form of you--the form you'd use for family, close friends, or people you were insulting.  Nowadays we mostly hear it used in prayers and hymns, so that it has formal, exalted associations.   That's why The Philadelphia Story had this scene between Macaulay Connor (Jimmy Stewart) and a Quaker Librarian

Librarian: What is thee wish?
Macaulay Connor: I'm looking for some local b - what'd you say?
Librarian: What is thee wish?
Macaulay Connor: Um, local biography or history.
Librarian: If thee will consult with my colleague in there.
Macaulay Connor: Mm-hm. Dost thou have a washroom?
[the librarian points]
Macaulay Connor: Thank thee

It's hilarious to use a holy, exalted word in the same sentence with washroom--at least from the Judeo-Christian viewpoint.

In other news, we had pizza for lunch in the office today.

I think this must be a magic mushroom pizza.

Two Layers of Cat

The Romeo Suspension bridge over the Juliet river of snooze.

From above.

Romeo's famous thumbs.

A Snooty Cutie

I need to sleep like this so I can keep my nose up.

A Cat in a Box is Worth Two in the Bush

Vacation Recap: March 18

Friday morning we went back to the Leather School, so I could re-buy the items I lost.  We took the train back to Rome.

We wanted to eat dinner at a well-reviewed place, but it was full.  We ended up at La Scala, Via Sabotino, 2.  We had a mushroom pizza and some pasta.  The pizza was good; the pasta a bit salty. The next day, we flew back to Boston.

Vacation Recap: March 17

Museli, blood orange juice, and coffee, then it's off to the Basilica of Santa Croce.  We got the audio-guides and hit all the most important points (as indicated by our audio-guide pamphlet) as well as a few that interested us.  I only took one photo, because I bought myself a book of photos from the souvenir shop.

 

I was surprised that such a modern person would have a memorial in such an old church. 

I bought a pair of boots at a tiny shop.  Sue resisted buying a beautiful bag at a shop that had supplied her with other bags.

Of course we also checked out the School of Leather, where Sue ordered a belt.  I bought a wallet for me, a wallet for my brother, and a change purse for my sister-in-law.

We walked through the Farmacia of Santa Maria Novella, but bought nothing.

Then, after getting back to the convent, I realized I no longer had my bag of leather goodies.  I had either put it down somplace, or it had been snatched while I was tired and trying not to hit other people with my umbrella.  (It was drizzley in the afternoon.)  Sue felt so sorry for me that she insisted on taking me to dinner at Trattoria 4 Leoni that night, which brings me to my favorite dish of the trip: artichoke lasagne.  There was a nice British couple at the next table.  She had the lasagne; and her enthusiastic approval confirmed that selection plus a pasta (was it with pepper?) and the house red.  We had a gelati and cheesecake for dessert.  Sue said she was normally indifferent to cheesecake, but this one was good.  The British couple told us they had discovered the restaurant seven years ago, and wanted to come back. (And, obviously, they did.)

Vacation Recap: March 16

Now we took the train to Florence, where we would spend a couple of days before returning to Rome. The rocking train put us to sleep. At the station, Sue's Italian went back into action, finding us the bus we needed to get to Casa Santo Nome di Gesù, Piazza del Carmine, 21. An elderly Florentine woman on the bus gave us much friendly advice.
After checking in at our convent, we headed back out to Villa I Tatti.  This Harvard library and research center is Bernard Berenson's former home on the outskirts of Florence.  We had signed up for a 3 O'Clock tour to see some of the artworks Mr. Berenson left to Harvard.  It took a while to get there.  We took a long ride on bus !0, then we climbed a hill.
Among the other members of our tour was a woman Sue remembered from a Freshman or Junior Parents Weekend, at which event this woman had spent most of her time complaining about the fact that she hadn't been able to use Lamont when she was at Radcliffe.  And, strangely enough, when she found out that we worked at Lamont, she again bewailed her former exile at great length.  Well, it was an injustice, but that was over 45 years ago.  Was this woman a Lamont-access monomaniac?
No, I don't think so.  My further observations suggested that she simply needed to be the center of attention. She was the girl in your class who always had her hand up.  She had a Susan-Sontag hairdo.
Our guide was an enthusiastic, charming, and knowlegeable woman.  She told us a story about a portrait of a man who had been at a party where all the guests were massacred (by the Medicis?); but his name was the only one remembered among the massacred.  A previous tourist had asked our guide if it was worth being murdered, just so you could be remembered.  "You'd have to ask Achilles that!" said the Susan-Sontag wannabee.  OK.
Inside photos were forbidden, but here's a picture of the garden.

 

We also had a tour of the library, so it was after 5 when we left.  We wanted to eat at a place called Trattoria 4 Leoni that night, but it was full up.  So we made a reservation for the next night and continued our quest for grub.  We sat down in a casual place filled with student-types.  A peddler came in and began pitching his stock from table to table.  We agreed to leave.  Finally we ate at Il Magazzino, Piazza della Passera 2-3.  The guy told us we had to be out in an hour.  I can't remember the meal, but the receipt says we had bevande, piatto unico, and primi piatti. I do remember they had so much wine they were storing bottles on their window sills.

We Interrupt Our Regular Blogging For a Special Post...

I've been watching old movies again.  The Hideous Sun Demon confirmed my belief that the sun is our enemy.  But what a great surprise I had while watching Appointment with Danger, in which Alan Ladd played a hard-boiled postal inspector investigating the murder of another postal inspector.  In the opening scene, two very familiar-looking thugs lug the dead inspector to an ally.  They were the very young Jack Webb & Harry Morgan, who would later portray the iconic pair Sergeant Friday & Officer Bill Gannon in Dragnet!  Wow!  And what was really cool was what baddies they were is this film:

UPDATE:  Ranald has pointed out that bronzed baby shoes are not as heavy as this clip implies.  However, I'm willing to allow them poetic license.  The bronzed shoes are a load on the poor hood's heart.

Vacation Recap: March 15

More great Villa Rosa rolls and coffee in the morning, then it's off to the Colosseum!  Wow, it was already crowded.  We got the audio-guide, but we suffered geographical confusion when we tried to find the listening spots.  So many people were taking photos of other people, that I quit trying to avoid getting in the way.  We went to the souvenir shop, and I got a book called Rome Reconstructed which had layered pages showing sites as they were then/now.  It helped me figure out stuff the audio-guide told me that I didn't understand.

Next we went to the Forum, which was roomier and quieter.  I took out my book, but once again suffered geographical confusion.  The arch that I attributed to Tiberius actually belonged to Septimus Severus.  Then we found a shrine to Julius Caesar, and, since it was the Ides of March, it was filled with offerings.

We took a tour of an ancient church, the Oratory of the 40 Martyrs.  Tours were in Italian or English, so our group had Russians and others for whom English was not the mother tongue. In fact, I believe we were the only Americans.  I took a photo of the old-fashioned crosses with the yellow peacock.

We had some lunch and gelati at Valoran's Forum S.R.L. right near the Forum on Largo Corrado Ricci.  Sue had 2 flavors :bacio and kiss (chocolate with hazelnuts); I had banana.  Then Sue saw a couple of women standing near us as though waiting to sit down, so we got up for them.  But the women weren't together.  One ignored us; the other started telling us that she didn't know where her place to sit down in life was.  We fled.  I tried to use the debit card I'd gotten specifically for the trip.  However the mnemonic I'd invented for remembering the password was not good enough.  So Sue had to float me a loan, while I charged everything I could on my MC.

For dinner we went to La Buca di Rippetta Trattoria at Via di Ripetta 36. We got to the Piazza del Popolo and found our street.  We looked to our right and saw numbers in the hundreds.  Damn!  We were going to have to walk a long way for our dinner.  But suddenly there was our restaurant on the left.  The left side addresses were double-digit; the right side were triple-digit.  I've never run across such a diabolical numbering system in my life!  We had a fish-based meaL; small servings of salmon tartare, squid in red sauce, sliced octopus over something else, and linguini with tuna and tomatoes.  As usual, we had the house red wine.  All was very good.

Vacation Recap: March 14

We had decided that Monday would be a wonderful day for a trip to Pompeii.  At breakfast, Sister Christina urged us to hurry or we'd miss the train.  (She would stop by every table at breakfast, find out what the visitors's plans were, and give her own tips.)  So we had only one of Villa Rosa's excellent rolls and some coffee.
We took the train to Naples then took the Circumvesuviana line to Pompeii Scavi.  Once again, Sue's Italian helped us navigate the byzantine mass transit system.

At the entrance to the ruins we considered getting the audio-guide, but a distinguished man approached us and said he was collecting people for a 2-hour tour (shades of Gilligan's Island!), so we decided to go with him.  His name was Gennaro, and he gave us an excellent tour.  Here are some of the high points:  we started at the basilica, which was a public building in the forum.

We saw a tavern with stone counters.  The holes held wine in one, water in the next.  Yes, they watered down their wine, but who knows how strong it was.  The wine may have been like wine syrup.

We saw a brothel.  Prostitution was a legitimate, tax-paying business in the ancient world.

Apparently the prostitutes preferred firm mattresses.

There was a storeroom with a chain-link fence front where you could see all sorts of artifacts they discovered.  They also displayed some plaster casts of victims.

People threw coins into containers near each victim's plaster cast.*  They were treated like saints.

This mosaic in an entryway says "Beware of Dog."

Sadly, there are many stray dogs around Pompeii.  They beg for food from visitors.  Sue said that she read somewhere that the local poor had abandonned their dogs when they left for vacation in August.  (But if they are poor, how can they afford a vacation?)  Be that as it may, there is a group that tries to find the dogs good homes.

 We ended the tour at the town's Big Theater.  Of course it has perfect aucostics.

After Gennaro left us we did some further exploration including the Villa of the Mysteries, which I had particularly wanted to see.  Then we explored the adjacent modern town of Pompei.  It was pretty touristy.  Its economy leaned toward oranges and lemons.

These lemons are as big as a baby's head!

We returned to Rome and had dinner at Novona Notte.  A maniacally cheerful waiter greeted us at the door.  As he seated us he told the man at the table next to ours, "Here's a (female) friend for you. [in Italian]"  So this elderly man began chatting up Sue, who was eager to practice her Italian.  "Dmitry" said he was a lawyer in Rome on business.  He gave us food recommendations and was snapping his fingers at the waiters to get us another fork or a sample of lemoncello, etc.  As the evening progressed, his story changed.  Now he was a canonical lawyer working for the Vatican and he lived in Rome.  He knew the Pope personally.  In the meantime an American couple sat down at the table on our other side, and we chatted with them.  They were from Salt Lake City.  Dmitry wanted to join in our conversation.  He didn't know where Salt Lake City was, so they explained that it was near Las Vegas.  That excited him.  "Slot machine!"  He asked the wife if she worked at a casino; no, she was a gynecolgist and delivered babies.  Was the husband a doctor too?  No.  But before the guy could say anything more, Dmitry pointed at him, "Slot machine!" and made the pulling-the-lever gesture.  Then he made the gesture of pulling-the-baby-out.  He was so tickled with this combination, that he repeated it several times, to the embarrassment of the husband and amusement of the wife.  To make a long story short, at the end of the evening he asked Sue if she were coming (with him), and she said no.  We did have a good salad and spaghetti with olive oil and pepper.

*Gennaro told us that Vesuvius made a lot of noise before its eruption, so most of the Pompeiians fled and were saved.  Some must have stayed or returned to get their stuff.

Vacation Recap: March 12-13

Sue and I fly Alitalia nonstop to Rome. They serve good food. For dinner I had chicken with vegetables, green bean salad with ham, cheese-filled pasta, fruit salad, and red wine. Sue had the vegetarian option.
I believe that the seats are more cramped than they were in 1995...or could it be that I am bigger, older, and grumpier?  In any case, I slept poorly.  It's early morning when we land.

In Rome, Sue took charge of figuring out public transportation, which propelled her quickly into speaking Itallian.  She got us to the metro stop Pyramide, from which we dragged our bags to our convent.   We arrived at our room at the Villa Rosa Convent, run by Domincan nuns, about 11:30 local time.  Sister Christina, who presides over this convent hotel, is originally from Ireland.  First site: the Protestant Cemetery.

Of course we visited Keats's grave and got to see several kitties among the monuments.  It was drizzley and dreary but warmer than Boston.

Then we walked a very long way to try out a pizza place touted in a recent New York Times article.  Unfortunately, the place was not serving any of the unusual flavors (like salt cod) mentioned in the article.  We each had a slice.  It was good, but not otherwise noteworthy.
Rain fell heavily.  We veered into the Museo Nationale Roma, which had a grumpy staff but great stuff.  At one point Sue almost collapsed into a mosaic she was looking at.  She realized that she was tired.

After the Museo, we wandered around looking for a cafe where we could sit down (the Museo had no cafe), but all the seats were taken in the places we passed.  Finally we returned to the Termini (train station), where we found one seat at a coffee bar.  Sue insisted that I sit, which I did.  She had coffee; I fizzy water.  If you order coffee in Italy, you get espresso, so I had to be careful not to get too buzzed.
At 7:30 we had dinner at Bucatino Taverna Testaccio.   At all restaurants, including this one, we ordered the house red wine; it was always good.  We had a salad made of stalks of things (Sue thought it might include fennel) topped with anchovy sauce.  I liked it.  We also had an artichoke cooked in olive oil, spaghetti with clam sauce, chocolate cake with a molten center, and "delizia pistachio," which was like a very dense ice cream.  Sue again practiced her Italian with the waiter.  Bucatino was one of the lower-priced places.  The deocor was shabby; a picture hanging on a wall near me seemed to have water damage.   But I enjoyed all the food.

More photos available at: https://picasaweb.google.com/bryant.colleen08/ItlayOverSpringBreak2011#

We're Back

Romeo Could do This!

Apparently the British are already aware of the situation I pointed out in an earlier post.

Clever Captions Will Win Valuable Prizes!

Create comical captions for either of these photos and win big!  Deadline for entries is March 20!

 

I wonder why humans stick their other ends in here?

(The winner!)

Is He Mad?

JB put a lime on a cubicle divider and left it there for the longest time.  When asked why he did not throw it out, he said it was a experiment to prove the hypothesis that the lime wouldn't rot and that some clementines would look pretty next to it.

Sounds fishy.  Does he think limes are immortal?  Are the clementines supposed to be brides of the lime?

This and That

I've been watching all sorts of stuff made before I was born.  Destination Moon was based on a novel by Robert Heinlein, my first favorite sci-fi writer.  Heinlein's stories aimed to educate.  He was always finding ways to slip in science facts.  DM used its comic relief, an ignorant engineer who had to replace a sick crew memeber at the last moment, as an excuse to explain things.  Joe Sweeney is always wailing variations on "What's happening?" in his heavy Bronx accent, so his crewmates can explain about weightlessness, outer space, and Newton's Laws of Motion.  Also, the guy who builds the rocket is a private businessman who has to raise funds for the project, so he shows the following cartoon to his rich prospects:





Very Educational.  (Though it implies that gravity is made by giant magnets.)

The other interesting thing I've been viewing is Tales of Tomorrow, a TV show that ran from 1951-1953. The DVDs include the advertisements, which were made in the same studio.  Live TV!  A couple of times I heard coughs or loud things drop while the end credits were rolling.  Perhaps they got sloppier as the night wore on.  Some good actors were in that series.  Burgess Meredith played the lead in the best one I saw: The Great Silence.  Most of the episodes were sponsored by Kreisler.

Dear Reader, I Totally Love You!

My Natural Enemy

Here is My Cubicle.

Here is JB's cubicle.

Clearly, he is my Natural Enemy.

My In-Tray is Full