Week one!

02Oct09

I don’t really have a whole lot of time, and in order to update this with pictures, I have to constantly resize them and reformat them, and it’s a huge hassle. This link will take you to the album of the first week, and it’s a little scattered–I have more pictures, I’m sorry I’m pressed for time…but I have to live it up in Roma while I can!

First week album

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Pre-Roma

09Sep09

I’ve been hanging out on Thomas More campus for the past week or so, and thought to post some pictures of the adventures!

I went to the beach…





And saw a beautiful baby seal!!

Also, I’ve been attending Humanities all week, so I’ve also been reading…

And was part of a dawning of a new era on the smokers porch…

And before all of this, I was in the beautiful Western New York…

….

I’m going to miss this kid…

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Disarray

24Aug09

This is my room. See that bed? I haven’t slept in it in three days. Thanks to my lack of figuring out where I was going to school, I now am packing close to the wire to go to Rome.

I do plan on posting once or more times a week with pictures and all that jazz, mostly for family and friends, since I don’t think I have any form of readership. I don’t know what to say…I’m just boring on the Internet.

Friday, August 28th: I’ll be in New York
Tuesday, September 1st: I’ll be in New Hampshire
Thursday, September 10th: I leave for Rome from Boston (to Canada, then Roma!)

Ciao!

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Stumbles

24Jul09

Bah! My life has been full of nothing but phone calls deciding on what I am going to do with my life! Once I have made a decision, all…one of you? will know what I’m doing.

But, I have been doing some really cool things on the internet, and by that I mean, I have discovered this little device called “StumbleUpon” and I guess everyone has discovered this, but I’m positive it is what makes the internet a demon. But I am so addicted, I can’t stop. So! I am going to share with you a few of the beautiful little things I’ve found. I’m going to skip past the assinine humor stuff, but otherwise, I’ve saved all the useful things to share.

Luminarium: A sweet site with a lot of history and full collections of Irish writers.

Full Text Archive: name's a little self-explanartory

Barista College: Step by step in becoming a barista for free. I thought it was awesome, since I'm getting a liberal arts degree and will need a back up if grad school decides I don't belong, haha.

Free Library Online: More useful for articles

Delocator: Type in your area code, it shows you the corporate and local places around you depending on category.

Hope that keeps you all occupied for awhile, I would post all the stuff I’ve found but it would take too long. I’m sure I’ll find more and share more.

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How we ease the summer lull in Elkhart.

20Jul09

A week ago, around one in the morning, Orion, Karen, Heather, Chris Crawford and myself went to the Riverwalk downtown, chalk in hand, and drew. I only have a few poor pictures of the night…

And today, with Christopher Beachy and his girlfriend Olivia, we took to the sidewalks again.

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Too long.

22Jun09

In my abscence from this, I have been…

Been sick in bed for two days with a chest cold.

Started to re-read this here book. <3

Begun listening to this album over and over and over and over…

Played Puzzle Quest Galatrix until my eyes hurt (puzzle game+rpg=most addicting game ever)

And! Went to Bomb Prom 5! (Moped Rally: Cincinnati, OH)

Where there was boxing…

And I rode in the chase truck the entire ride!

That, by the way, is the worst photo ever taken of me. But it depicts the awful heat and misery of riding in the van.

Sorry for a really elementary entry. I felt I should update.

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Beaton…

09Jun09

I’m terrible at this updating daily thing, and since I’m crunched on time, I’m just going to link everyone back to Hark! A Vagrant again.

Yeats=LOVE

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Needing conversation…

05Jun09

I apologize that my blog doesn’t have more of my own thoughts. During the summer months, my brain is usually stagnant and I can only get it going in the heat of good conversation, which I thankfully have been finding more and more in the city of Elkhart.

But I’ve been reading Josef Pieper’s Leisure: The Basis of Culture recently, and wanted to post a part of it that really stood out to me (in regard to the “Worker”) and was wondering what anyone (whoever actually reads this) thinks about his ideas.

“Once again, then, what is it to be proletarian? … summed up something like this: being proletarian is being bound to the working-process“
…..
“To be bound to the working process is to be bound to the whole process of usefulness, and moreover, to be bound in such a way that the whole life of the working human being is consumed.”
…..
“The proletarian is one who, whether or not he owns property, is constantly on the move ‘because of the practical necessities of the absolutely rational production of goods.’ …the proletarian is one whose life is fully satisfied by the working-process itself because this space has been shrunken from within, and because meaningful action that is not work is no longer possible or even imaginable.”
( All above from pg. 42)

Pieper also makes this distinction: “On the other hand, one can be a proletarian, without being poor: the engineer, the ’specialist’ in the total-work state is, certainly, proletarian” (41).

Perhaps I just think it is an interesting way of seeing the proletarian, because I did have the conception that the proletarian and “working class” were summed up in the word “poor.” I kind of bring everything back to education–the view that a degree is a means to an end, which has always bothered me. Are we bringing up a generation of proletarians? Is leisure being reduced to “breaks” and “vacations” where we are in fact “rushing to relax” as Wendell Berry writes in Jayber Crow?

Also, I found this online lecture (I’m guessing it is a lecture) from Pheonix College, which I thought was interesting, so I thought I would link it.

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Lullaby

04Jun09

Deep apologies for not updating (though as far as I can tell, not a single person reads this) but life has been crazy with finding a job, filling out scholarships, helping my aunt move, and the list goes on.

That said, I’m in love with Auden.

Lay your sleeping head, my love,
Human on my faithless arm;
Time and fevers burn away
Individual beauty from
Thoughtful children, and the grave
Proves the child ephemeral:
But in my arms till break of day
Let the living creature lie,
Mortal, guilty, but to me
The entirely beautiful.

Soul and body have no bounds:
To lovers as they lie upon
Her tolerant enchanted slope
In their ordinary swoon,
Grave the vision Venus sends
Of supernatural sympathy,
Universal love and hope;
While an abstract insight wakes
Among the glaciers and the rocks
The hermit's carnal ecstasy.

Certainty, fidelity
On the stroke of midnight pass
Like vibrations of a bell
And fashionable madmen raise
Their pedantic boring cry:
Every farthing of the cost,
All the dreaded cards foretell,
Shall be paid, but from this night
Not a whisper, not a thought,
Not a kiss nor look be lost.

Beauty, midnight, vision dies:
Let the winds of dawn that blow
Softly round your dreaming head
Such a day of welcome show
Eye and knocking heart may bless,
Find our mortal world enough;
Noons of dryness find you fed
By the involuntary powers,
Nights of insult let you pass
Watched by every human love.

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The Jumblies

29May09

Far and few, far and few,
Are the lands where the Jumblies live;
Their heads are green, and their hands are blue,
And they went to sea in a Sieve.
-Edward Lear-

(My apologizes for not updating daily. My family from New York is here, so I’ve been busy.)

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