Hello dear friends. It’s been a little while, hasn’t it? The last post on this blog is from September of 2020—nearly a year ago. I certainly haven’t lacked words, but the longer I went without saying anything, the more there was to say, and the more daunting the task of putting pen to paper became.
Maybe you've already heard some of the controversy surrounding this recently-released movie, or maybe you clicked on this post because you saw the title and thought I was crazy. But I'm here to give you some facts so you can make an informed decision about your media consumption. (As a side note: friends, this year… Continue reading why we should boycott the new Mulan (and maybe Disney, too)
When I went into work this afternoon, nothing was out of the ordinary. But now, three hours later, smoke has filled the sky’s expanse, the sunset painting it peachy, and it’s unclear whether it’s from Washington in the north, California in the south, or an Oregon town to the east of us. They’re all burning.
Before moving back down to college, I went on a hunt for my SD cards. The thing is, I have a carrier for them. It's small, padded, with multiple pouches for multiple cards. I keep it in my camera bag, right next to my charger. It's all perfectly logical. Of course, my SD cards are… Continue reading warsaw in retrospect
The other night, my car broke down. I was driving home from John’s house. It's a trip that takes somewhere between 10 and 15 minutes, though I’ve never timed it. I was two minutes in when my car just—stalled. No sputtering, no flashing lights, no smoke. The RPMs dropped to zero, and suddenly I was… Continue reading on vulnerability & injustice
Quarantine is a strange experience. The days blur together, time moves slowly, and there's plenty of opportunity for reflection. And here's the thing: I've had a lot of time to be sorry for myself. I've wept and mourned the loss of Rome. I've reminisced and railed against the unfairness of it all. And now? I'm moving on.
On March 4th, I awoke at 3:30 am, gave tearful hugs to my roommates, and took an early-morning taxi from my apartment in Trastevere to Rome's Fiumicino airport. From there, I had a brief flight to London's Heathrow airport, where I purchased a cup of soup and what might have been the worst cappuccino I've… Continue reading leaving rome / rome pt. 4
On my first full day in Rome, my study abroad program took our group on a walking tour of the city. Because our school sits atop Colle di Gianicolo (Janiculum Hill), the first part of our walk was downhill. We experienced the dazzling panoramic view of the city from Terrazza del Gianicolo (Janiculum Terrace) which no photos can do justice to. On the terrazza sat Il Fontanone dell'Acqua Paola, an enormous stone fountain built in the 1600s and fed by the same aqueduct we'd drank from earlier that day. From there we descended further, crossing the River Tiber into the city center.
Tram 3 runs an impressive forty-six stop line, passing through my neighborhood of Trastevere. I hop on at Pascarella and ride just three stops to the Ministero dell’Istruzione. The Ministero is a grand, imposing building, all white stone and stoic columns. It’s the kind of building that can’t be ignored on one’s first, second, even third glances, and yet it eventually and inevitably fades into the scenery of all the other grand Roman sites.
The Via della Madonna dell’Orto (via is the Italian word for street) is paved with sampietrini. Chiseled from basalt found in the hills outside the city, they’re small, squarish stones, graphite-colored, and they fill the roads in uneven rows. If we weren’t in Rome, they’d be called cobblestones, but instead, they are sampietrini: “little Saint Peters.” There are supposedly as many stones in the streets of the city as there are souls saved by Saint Peter.
