Happy Birthday to me!

Two new beauties

Yesterday was my birthday! It was great to be home to share it with my son and many friends in the neighborhood. My son and I hosted a potluck in the backyard, and it turned out to be a lovely day for it. Earlier in the day, I walked downtown for a free gourmet coffee, a treat that is offered by a local business, Liberty Hall. According to them. having a birthday entitles anyone to free coffee, free admission to a movie,  free popocorn and soda, and a free DVD rental. Can't beat that! I've missed out on this bonanza for two years, so wanted to make sure to take advantage of it this year.

HUGE clematis blossoms in my yard!

My son gave me the gift of flowers, (or actually, money to buy them), so I bought several orchids and a red rose bush that will grow to be as tall as I am someday. He also gave me a lovely blown glass vase made by a local artist. He always seems to find the perfect gifts for me!

Last year I was in Padova on my birthday, and the year before that, I was in Firenze:  Firenze: A Birthday Surprise!  For some reason, I didn't write a post about last year, but I remember that Marisa, the mother of a friend, who I was staying with at the time, made me a special shrimp dinner and bought some elegant pastries to mark the event. I was rushing around Italy at this time last year, and my stay in Padova was especially hurried, culminating with earthquakes that stopped the trains running and delayed my return to Zagarolo for the last week of my stay.

But getting back to this year: walking downtown made me aware of how lovely our town is at this time of year. Kansas often gets a bad rap as being a conservative state, flat and boring,  but Lawrence does not fit that image. The presence of the University allows for a cosmopolitan, artsy culture, with well-educated and liberal-minded citizens, and the landscape offers rolling hills filled with trees. On my walk, I enjoyed being able to see that many yards were filled with blooming flowers, especially rose bushes, loaded down with bright blooms. Vegetable gardens were also in abundance. A cool, wet spring has generated a boom in beauty all over the city. Our city is charming, lovely and a great place to live!

Green, green, green: un paradiso!

I am ever so happy to be home this year. Seriously! I've missed seeing my yard during April, May and June for the past two years while I was in Italy, and it's a daily delight to see what's blooming. It's also wonderfully therapeutic to work in the yard, to plant the orto (vegetable garden) and many flowers. I've planted many colorful annuals this year, including impatiens, begonias, petunias, morning glories, portulaca, zinnias, marigolds, and climbing moonflowers. In addition, I have many peonies, clematis, asiatic lilies and iris that are starting to bloom.

Peonies from the peony tree

I live in a neighborhood that is dense with large trees. There are numerous birds singing all day long, and many of them enjoy splashing in the birdbath in the backyard. I watch them from the window in my kitchen. A pair of bright red cardinals have visited daily this week. Nearby there's a new 4-mile bike path that I've been riding often: going back and forth on it for 40-60 minutes is a good workout. 

Riding the bike path where there were previously railroad tracks.

After my hectic and stressful stay in Italy last year at this time, being home feels tranquil and satisfying. I have some great friends who are also my neighbors, and we've been getting together for dinners more often lately. Next week my son and I are hosting a patio party for the group, to celebrate his new apartment and my birthday. Something to look forward to! With little work to do this month, I almost feel as if I'm on vacation. And in a few weeks, the outdoor pool opens and I'll be able to swim, my favorite summer past time. So I'm finding many things to enjoy about being home in Kansas.

 

MOOC update: I've finished two courses and am auditing two more with Coursera. I also took several brief courses at the University here, and went to a performance of Puccini's La Boheme. I'm currently  fascinated with a course on Greek and Roman mythology. It's odd, but several courses I've taken this spring have overlapping information, about Descartes, Darwin and Freud, in particular. (They were courses on philosophy, great thinkers, and psychology). I'm auditing the courses I'm taking now because I don't want to hassle with the written assignments, and don't really care about getting a certificate from them. But I still do the quizzes, which motivates me to watch the videos and learn what I can.

Home sweet home

I'll be working a lot in June, then July and August I'll have a lighter schedule again. I'm hoping to get back to Italy this fall, I'm just not sure where I'll go or how long I'll stay. No housesitting gigs have come up, so a long stay is not feasible.Until then, I have a lot to enjoy here at home!

I fiori!!!

Tulips from my garden. Jasmine plant is by the window on the right.

A lovely spring bouquet!

First jasmine blossoms.

Spring a casa mia

Japanese Cherry tree in bloom

One of the perks of being home this spring is being able to enjoy the yard I've created while living nearly thirty years in the same house. Every day something new is emerging from the earth, and when it's sunny, you can be certain to find me working in the yard at least part of the day. It's great therapy when I'm frustrated by my students or other work duties.

Since I spent 2011 and 2012 in Italy during the spring months, I missed being able to see my tulips, daffodils, iris and peonies blooming. I also missed the spectacular show that my cherry and crab trees put on every year. This year I'm happy to be home so I can witness their beauty. After two years of neglecting the yard, I have a lot of work to catch up on and am re-doing or rearranging several areas of the flower and vegetable gardens. It's a work in progress, ma che gioia !

Know Thyself: Conosci te stesso

owl, symbol of wisdom

Know thyself: that's the name of the new Coursera MOOC that I started this week. It's about self-knowledge: what it is, why it's important, and how to develop it. The E-learning course is over, and this new one will last ten weeks, until the middle of May. The course has a bit of philosophy, a bit of psychology, along with information about meditation. 70,000 people have enrolled, and I've joined a study group with older students, hoping to be able to follow the discussion with a smaller group of folks. This week the readings focused on Socrates and several meditative techniques. After reading about Socrates, I feel validated in many ways. I've never been one to follow the crowd, and am always questioning things, which sometimes gets me into trouble. Finding out that Socrates had similar habits and is remembered more than 2400 years later, well, I don't feel so odd anymore! For more information, and a short video about the course, try this link:

Know Thyself

I'm also starting a 3-week course at the University of Kansas on the Monuments of Ancient Rome, and I'm eager to see what they cover. I'm especially interested in learning more about the Via Appia Antica. I tried to get to the stretch of the Appian Way that lies beyond Rome last year, but was unsuccessful, and am planning to try again next fall. Another area of Italy I want to visit is near Naples. I'd like to spend some time on the small island of Ischia in September, and while I'm in the area, I want to visit Pompeii, Herculaneum and Capri (again), to view some of the ancient buildings and artifacts stored there. I recently read a compelling book, The Night Villa, by Carol Goodman, that centers around the papyri, or ancient scrolls that were found in Herculaneum (Ercolano) in the late 1700's. 

Both Pompeii and Ercolano where covered in volcanic ash when Mount Vesuvius erupted in 79 A.D.  Ercolano is famous as one of the few ancient cities that can now be seen in almost its original magnificence, because unlike Pompeii, it was buried so deep that the the upper stories of many buildings remained intact, and the hotter ash preserved wooden household objects and even food. There is a famous villa in Ercolano called Villa dei Papiri: its name derives from the discovery of a library in the villa containing nearly 1800 papyrus scrolls. Piso, a literate man who patronized poets and philosophers (including Epicurius, who turns out to be very interesting!), had created a large and well-stocked library there, and it's the only one to survive intact from antiquity. Most of the scrolls are stored at the National Library in Naples: some of the unrolled scrolls were scanned in 2009 by x-rays, in hopes of being able to read the ancient writing, but so far they've had no luck.  (Some info provided by Wikipedia)

As often happens, I feel that I'm being led somewhere by the synchronistic events in my life, and I'm curious to see how things will play out in the months to come. In the meantime, I'm working and studying a lot....with little time for play!

Thundersnow!

Photo by Mike Yoder

Thundersnow, that's what's going on in Kansas today. What is it? Also known as a winter thunderstorm, thundersnow is a rare kind of thunderstorm with snow falling instead of rain. There was also lightning in the mix, even though the temperature is only 22° F (-5°C).

So far, we have 10 inches (25 centimeters) of snow, and more on the way.  The city has pretty much shut down, with schools and businesses closed. Snow day! Kids (and university students) are out sledding, everyone else is home enjoying an unexpected day off. A lovely way to spend this February day!

E-learning MOOC: Weeks 2-3

SMS from Lucca rooftop: Where is the happyness?

The Coursera stats for Week 2 stated that out of 41,622 people enrolled in our MOOC, E-learning and Digital Cultures, 16,963 were active.

By now, in week 3, there are 42,570 participants, and 12,000 of these have been active over the past week. With ''fewer" participants, the Discussion Boards are less troublesome than before, and I'm learning a lot!

I've been an active participant and am really enjoying all of it: the resources (videos and readings), the discussions, and the creative projects we can contribute to the course. I've already signed up for another MOOC, and joined a Meetup group in my hometown consisting of people taking various MOOCs from Coursera.

This week we have 4 videos to watch. One of them is called World Builder, and I thought that it was made in Europe, due to the street scenes shown in the video. So I watched the credits carefully to see where it was created. To my great surprise,  I discovered that the film had been made in Lee's Summit, Missouri, not far from my home. What's even more surprising is that my nephew was listed as the creator of the musical score and responsible for the sound design. What an amazing coincidence! I immediately contacted my nephew on Facebook to let him know that "his" video was being featured in a MOOC class from Scotland.

This odd experience seemed yet another testament to the fact that unusual connections are being made all over the world, thanks to technology and the internet, and, as a result, the world is indeed becoming much smaller.

Here's the link to the video: World Builder video