Iconography = My Father

My Mom and Sister went to the NW Home and Garden show and snapped this photo. It's my father.

The Mind of a 40-Year Old Italian Male

So, I've been wondering about whether or not to post this funny story as this is a PG-rated blog, but well, I decided to roll back the details to get it down for my own posterity because it's just so.....Italian. Readers of the blog will remember that a few students and I go and help restore wood once a week and have these two great teachers, Roberto and Alessandro. So, this past Thursday, three of us and I are de-varnishing a bookcase and Alessandro shows up, late of course, he's Italian, and promptly starts lamenting about how this woman he is interested in won't go to bed with him even though he's married and she has a boyfriend. He couches it with the fact that "you want to taste different pasta...you can't always eat the same pasta."

Cut to the next scene where we are hanging out at my place and another student who knows all of us stops by and we ask her opinion on the matter. Alessandro obliges and she offers a suggestion that involves the number 3. The lightbulb goes on in his head, it's a revelation to him. We're all rolling on the floor. We ask why not get a boyfriend for his wife? He replies, "because a woman needs to focus on keeping the house and kitchen...have you ever tasted burned food?" Sometimes I'm not sure if Alessandro is playing up the part, but he talks the same way all the time and this comment just rolled off his tongue.

Alessandro then invites us over to his house but the discussion on how to get there takes 20 minutes because we've been warned by Roberto NOT to get in a car with Alessandro because of his poor driving record. His home, was a mere 10 minute walk away but in the end we piled into his car where we promptly learned he didn't have a drivers license but purchased one for 500 Euro.

We get a tour of his house, meet his two dogs and are chilling before dinner when he says he wants us to meet the woman of his desires. So back in the car we go and we're on the Corso looking for the shop where she works. Closed, but there's another woman, of Argentine descent who he also is interested in and so we find her and just hang out while he chats her up. No dice.

We then head to his friends travel shop and just walk in and hang out on the couches. It was surreal as the owner was talking with a customer. Lastly, we finally head to dinner.......

Ok, so it may not have come across as funny as it was. It was like my own mini-version of "The Hangover." So, if you made it this far, I'll be offline for 12 days as I'm headed to Sicily and Tunisia with the school. Honestly....it's part of the job.

Once a B- Student.....Always a B- Student

Some things never change. I only got 11/15 on the essay.

Malta

It's been mighty cold here in Central Italy so I decided I wanted some sun. Therefore, I went online a few weeks ago and found the cheapest flight I could find to a place somewhere south of Rome and I landed in Malta. The country of Malta consists of two inhabited islands and one small one in between them that isn't populated. The country is 90 km south of Sicily and is at the crossroads between East-West and North-South. Being one of the few islands in the Mediterranean, it has been fought over for centuries. It was a former colony of England (they drive on the left) and is now part of the European Union. The language? Maltese which is some mash-up of Italian and ????. I could understand some stuff, but some of it just sounded outright strange.

The capital is Valletta, which is a peninsula around which are two harbors. Here's the opening to the main industrial harbor.

The harbor is fortified on all sides and the bastions now ceremonial, but they do fire the cannons once a day.

The old city of Valletta reminds me of San Francisco with the hilly streets at right angles to each other and the bay windows overhanging.

Once you leave the old city of Valletta, much of the main island of Malta looks like Miami Beach, with the high rises along the beach. In the distance is St. Julian's Bay, the home of a casino (right there at the point) and all the posh hotels and clubs. Yes, I did walk around to verify the "Eurotrash club" scene, but I did not participate.

Although known for it's seafood, I ate meat pies for most every meal. You can get them for under a Euro and are TASTY!

Where do the old buses from around the world end up? MALTA. The buses are converted to diesel, repainted and put into service here. The country has set up a fantastic bus system and you can get everywhere on the bus.

Here's the inside of a bus, with the old benches and cord along the ceiling to ring the bell. I did notice that if you sat in the back and had to get out fast, the only exit being at the front is a potential fire hazard. Probably why these buses have been retired from service in other parts of the world.

Based on reading a blog recommended by Julie F., I got myself to the more rural island of Gozo. The island is charming and beautiful. This is the citadel in the middle of the island. In the 1500's because the island was so vulnerable to attack, all residents of the island were required to sleep in the citadel each evening.

In Homer's Odyssey, Odysseus was held in a cave by Calypso. That island is supposedly Gozo, and here's her beach.

I'm not sure where the actual cave is supposed to be, but I'll just say it's somewhere down there.

Ta' Pinu Basilica and Gordan Lighthouse near the town of Gharb on the NW coast of Gozo.

At the far western end of Gozo is the beautiful Azure Window.

The rock in the foreground is called....Fungus Rock. Why? No idea.

The morning before I flew back to Italy, I attended a reenactment of a 1500's parade that demonstrated a fort's readiness. These were the spearmen.

I gather this is a Maltese Falcon. However, it was purely decorative as it did nothing but sit on the man's hand the entire time.

The general waving goodbye to the troops and his approval the the troops were battle ready.

Would I go back to Malta? Probably not. It seems like a wonderful place to live, Gozo I'm speaking of, but to visit, really not much to do. Once was enough.

Museo Della Civita Romana & EUR

If it's Friday, there's a good chance the school is on a day trip. This past Friday, I elected to join the group that went to the Museum of Roman Civilization. For those of you who have kids who ever come to Rome, this is the museum for you. EVERYTHING is a copy of the real pieces so you can touch all you want. The guards don't even bat and eye if you start fondling something. My only warning to you is that the museum is FREEZING COLD. There is a reason why, but you'll have to wait until later in the posting to find out.

The museum is great because it has great "cheesy" models like this one which tells the story of Julius Caesar's capture of the Gallic town of Alesia. Caesar was a great military general and his claim to the throne was expansion of the empire, Gaul (modern day France) was the feather in his cap.

Story goes that the town was inside the walls of the city. Caesar had the time to build these structures to eventually get his men into the city and take it. Students in one of the advanced Latin classes here knew the story from their readings. Makes me want to take Latin so I can learn these things myself.

The Museum shows how Roman life worked. Here is how they guaranteed themselves clean water. Water came in on the left and then worked its want into the bottom two chambers. As water increased the water came into the top right chamber clean because all the silt and dirt settled out into the bottom left chamber.

Augustus (you all know how I feel about him) in his classic portraiture. My advisee Steve C. is playing cupid as you see is also at the feet of Augustus.

Here's the model of what is hypothesized to be Augustus' tomb.

Here is what's left of it in Rome. It sits next to the Ara Pacis, but it's closed off.

Constantine, the emperor who changed the course of religious history by declaring the Roman Empire to be Christian.

One tool the Romans used to make right angles. If the Romans could do anything it was to build great structures.

Economics was an issue in Roman times as well. Diocletian sought to curb inflation by setting price ceilings, which as we know in a capitalist society only makes things worse. Free markets, baby!

Trajan's column, which still stands in Piazza Venezia in Rome has a continuous frieze wrapping around it telling the story of Trajan's two successful wars in Dacia, modern day Romania.

Mussolini had plaster casts of the entire column (the casts number around 125 or so) made and they are housed in the museum. Here is the cast somewhere in the middle which shows the story of Trajan and his men setting off into the Adriatic to fight the second Dacian War.

The Museum is in an area of Rome known as EUR, or "Esposizione Universale Roma". This area, southwest of historic central Rome was until the 1930's a flat plain that was claimed by Mussolini and the Facist regime as the area they would build upon to showcase, in 1942, their 20 years of rule. As we all know, that didn't come to be as WWII started and Mussolini had other issues to deal with. This is what modern Italy MIGHT have looked like without the fall of the Facists. Everything is BIG and grand, wide streets and built with a nod to great architecture of the Roman Empire. It's BIG, but it doesn't have much "heart". It leaves the viewer cold both emotionally and physically as I mentioned about the museum. The rooms of the museum are 20 feet high and huge, there is no way to efficiently heat them, therefore they are left only with space heaters, which don't do the trick.

Here's a church the facists built, but it seems to miss the mark.

The inside, not inviting.

This building is "pinnacle" of EUR facist architecture. It is known as the "square colosseum". The inscription says "A people of poets of artists of heros of saints or thinkers of scientists of navigators of explorers."