I have finally discovered what blogs are good for: reconnecting with those lost people in your past (and possibly for hooking up with slightly older Cretan Goddess/Witches--if your girlfriend weren't so hung up on this monogamy thing...I mean, it's not like I'm trying to be Henry Miller or anything). Anyway, thanks to my public narcissism, I've been reconnected with a great friend from my undergrad days at Wingate University (the university formerly known as Wingate College): Scott Lewis. Here's a link just for him...he knows why...
Today's etiquette advice comes from Book of Etiquette: Volume II by Lillian Eichler 1921 (Nelson Doubleday, Inc.):
Ask questions only if you are gifted with great tact. Otherwise you are bound to create embarrassing situations. If you do ask questions, make them of a general character, rather than personal. But never be curious, because people resent inquisitiveness--and rightly so, for it is a very undesirable trait to have, and each person has a right to privacy.
That's right, stop questioning me, you damned inquisitive people...everyone resents you anyway. This has been your etiquette advice from some old books I found.
Jet lag has made me into a 9 to 5 guy. I wake at 7 in the morning and get tired at 10 at night. I'm working through the pain. So I went to the Queens MFA reading tonight. First up was Margot Singer, who read from her short story collection The Pale of Settlement (University of Georgia Press), winner of the 2006 Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction. The other reader was Alan Michael Parker (AMP to acronym lovers), and he gave me hope for poetry with his comic listing poems and his reading of the title poem from his new collection Elephants & Butterflies. It also helps that he admitted to being a "pretentious shit" for titling a poem in Latin.
So 2 plane rides, 4 rough hours sleep in 36 hours, and some number of students (the correct number, not a one lost...physically--I'm sure they're lost in all kinds of mental and spiritual ways I'm not responsible for) delivered to the good ole U.S. of A., and I'm back in all my shabby, jet-laggy self.
Note to shabby self: write a museum guide for people who hate museums, e.g. ignore the overplayed Mask of Agamemnon at the National Archaeological Museum in Athens for the far more humorous phallic-handled spoon.
My major disappointment came when watching a round of Eurovision in an Athens restaurant where they gave me a salad with lettuce rather than that Greek abomination that contains only tomatoes, olives, and feta. Eurovision you probably know though I've never seen it mentioned in the States is that infinitely superior American-Idol-esque competition where countries send a musical act to represent them (often well known rather than just discovered). These are often pop princess clones like Greece's own entry this year, but sometimes...not. My favorite this year was eliminated that night of the lettuce salad: Ireland's entry. I'm doubly sad because mocking the contest you're trying to win is probably noble and also because the country that wins hosts the next year's contest, and I'll be in Ireland then.
That's right, the big man who broke literary boundaries and wrote the risque Tropic of Cancer and Tropic of Capricorn is a coward when it comes to cold, dark, wet confined spaces. He twice visited Mycenae, an ancient Greek hilltop fortress, home of the Mycenaen empire. Each time he attempted to climb down the winding steps that lead into the underground cistern:
"Thinking back on it now, after a lapse of months, I honestly believe that I would rather be shot than forced to descend that staircase alone. In fact, I think I would die of heart failure before ever reaching the bottom." --- Henry Miller, The Colossus of Maroussi (1941)
Not only did I descend the staircase, I reached the bottom. Along with a lot of other tourists. Here's the picture to prove it...okay that's not me, but a bunch of my students--I'm the one at the bottom taking the picture.
So thanks to Heather and her banana lecture I did not go hungry today when faced with a green banana and unable to peel it the right way. I flipped that sucker over and opened it from the bottom. That's right, I'm as smart as a monkey. Here's a picture of the blue monkeys fresco in Santorini:
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