Crypto Corner

 In the far corner of my office in the cabin I'm developing a definitive Crypto Corner. After winning the 2025 Cryptozoology Bowl (an official Event of Excellence in the TPFL calendar) I received an amazing bobblehead Bigfoot in the mail (Andy, being a Gentleman of Excellence, quickly sent along the required cryptozoology swag - I have several years of swag to send to him in the future to pay off inevitable losses to the powerhouse Shackleton Shockers). Now, where to put him? Naturally, he'd be happiest living next to my bobblehead Santa Champ. Somehow, Bigfoot looks best with the log cabin background.

What is scarier: Champ or Bigfoot or a dozen or so Proust-related books?

A Note of Excellence from Andy.

The Last Last

 For sometime now I've been joking about "the last car" or "the last class", etc., that is, the last car I would ever own or the last class I would ever teach or, well, fill in the blank. However, I guess I'm not really joking about that any more. The other day when I sent an email to several  administrators informing then that this school year would be my last, it clearly meant several things (beyond merely the obvious: good luck seeing me at any meetings for the rest of the year). It essentially kicked the "last" series of events into high gear. My goal for this summer is to sell my Outback, with the hope that it will truly be "the last car" I ever own. It's not out of the question that, depending upon where we settle in Italy/Portugal that we might end up buying a Yaris of some little Euro-friendly car, but we'll include that on Janet's ledger. The last class will be here before you know it, especially since this fall semester is suddenly half over already. Of course, the other side of that is the beginning of a series of "firsts": favorite café in Catania, etc.

Janet snapped this picture the other day, in my "last office."

2025 Readings 95

 As we passed through the Fort Lauderdale Airport on the way back from visiting Jack and Julie we had time to spend in the bookstore in Terminal 2, which would probably constitute the second best bookstore in Vermont (seriously, it was a nice little bookstore). While there I picked up a copy of Charles Dickens's Pictures from Italy, which I owned at one time in the antediluvian past in a complete hardbound set of the works of Dickens (one of the many great gifts that my ex-wife Brenda bought me over the years). Sadly, all those books went the way of all flesh, and I don't really have that many actual, physical copies of Dickens left - and considering our upcoming plans I'm not going to be adding more on this side of the Atlantic. Still, I was happy to stumble across this book so I went ahead and picked it up.  It's essentially a travelogue that Dickens wrote on a vacation in Italy. I don't think it's great (and this is coming from a complete Dickens nut), but it's still interesting. When I think of what made Dickens a great writer I believe it was the slow evolution of his characters, and less his physical descriptions or quick snapshots, wo, with that in mind, I would argue that a travelogue didn't really play to his strength. Still, I liked it, and borrowed some of it for the epics books to serve as an introduction to a section. If you like Dickens or Italy, you should still give it a look.

Let us look back on Florence while we may, and when its shining dome is seen no more, go travelling through cheerful Tuscany with a bright remembrance of it, for Italy will be the fairer for the recollection. The summertime being come - and Genoa, and Milan, and the Lake of Como lying far behind us, and we resting at Faido, a Swiss village near the awful rocks and mountains, the everlasting snows and roaring cataracts of the Great St Gothard, hearing the Italian tongue for the last time on this journey - let us part from Italy with all its miseries and wrongs, affectionately, in our admiration of the beauties, natural and artificial, of which it is full to overflowing, and in our tenderness towards a people naturally well disposed and patient and sweet tempered. Years of neglect, oppression and misrule have been at work to change their nature and reduce their spirit: miserable jealousies fomented by petty princes to whom union was destruction and division strength have been a canker at the root of their nationality, and have barbarized their language, but the good that was in them ever is in them yet, and a noble people may be, one day, raised up from these ashes. Let us entertain that hope!

And let us not remember Italy the less regardfully because, in every fragment of her fallen temples and every stone of her deserted palaces and prisons, she helps to inculcate the lesson that the wheel of Time is rolling for an end - and that the world is, in all great essentials, better, gentler, more forbearing and more hopeful as it rolls!

Mapping CFL Excellence

 After our tortuous return trip on Wednesday morning (yes, it was supposed to be Tuesday - thanks Delta), Janet and I popped by campus on an errand and I found the following map hanging outside my office. This was some excellent mischief, engineered by Erik, Cyndi, and Mike.

Obviously, in pin placement, I was careful to chose green pins for Edmonton and red pins for Calgary, etc., to line up with the team colors - as one would.

There are times when I think these guys may actually miss me when I'm gone.

Fifty Years Is Not Enough

 Here's a great picture of my friend Jack, my best friend for now over fifty years. We're sitting at some divey bar along the beach in Fort Lauderdale, enjoying adult scholarly beverages, watching the ocean, and constructing film noir scripts from the cast of characters that populated the strip. It was such a great trip, and I'll share a few more posts about it. What a tremendous blessing these fifty+ years of friendship have been. Julie and Janet are amused by the fact that in fifty years Jack and I have had exactly one argument, which to us is more than we could ever imagine having.

Truthfully, there was also a bit of a bittersweet feel to it all, and I'm not simply being too Scudderian in my response to things. There were a couple times when I had this feeling that this might be the last time we saw each other.  We're men of a certain vintage, with our own sketchy medical history, and Janet and I are leaving the country next July. It's easy to construct a world where Jack and Julie will never actually fly over to see us in Sicily, and on the few times that I'll come back I won't build in a separate trip down to Florida (or Colorado, which is where I suspect they'll end up). A lot of Zoom chats will go a long way to making me happy and the move easier. 

2025 Readings 94

 On our recent trip down to Florida to see our dear friends Jack and Julie I blew through Olga Ravn's The Wax Child. I've been raving to anyone who would listen about Ravn's novel The Employees, which is just extraordinary. I don't know if I liked The Wax Child as much, although that would hardly be a condemnation, considering how much I liked her earlier work. The Wax Child is a literary retelling of actual witch trials, told from the perspective of a wax figure created for casting spells. At times it almost felt too much as the recounting of a series of fascinating/troubling witchcraft beliefs from the medieval world, as compared to a story that held together more cleanly. Still, it may just mean that I need to give it another read, which I was hoping to do anyway. 

The Drive to Work - Yet Again

 OK, this is the last morning picture of Bliss Pond that I'm going to post, at least until the next one.

I mean, come on, that's beautiful.