The Team

The entire Mystic Krewe of Saturnalia, including the representatives from the Dream Team.

Fletcher, Katelyn, some old guy and the esteemed Brandybuck.

Mystic Krewe of Saturnalia

And here is another chaotic situation that is completely caused by my manic, hyper-competitive friend Cyndi Brandenburg.  As we all recall, she was truly the driving force behind the Chicken Wing for Charity competition because of her smack-talking.  And now she's done it again.  Every year Champlain hosts an Iron Chef competition to raise money for a student organization.  Cyndi, as is her wont, decided that she had to get involved, and, putting aside our natural rivalry and history of antagonistic competition, she pressured me into being her partner.  We worked together to come up with a recipe and I supplied the team name - the Mystic Krewe of Saturnalia.  The entire thing is pretty complicated, so expect many posts.  Our team - including more than a dozen folks because of Cyndi's ability to cajole people - hung around the cafeteria from 7:00 to 11:00 p.m. last night for preparation.  The competition is this afternoon, but we had lots of chicken and sausage to cook and sauces to prepare last night.  I also had to devote a goodly amount of time to hiding the green peppers so that they didn't find their way into the recipe.  I would love to show a picture of our friends and competitors, the Bayou Voodoo, the excellent Steve Wehmeyer and Mike Lange, but I don't think I have one wherein Lange is not flipping me off.  More later.

The team captain - and faculty senate president - Dr. Cyndi Brandenburg.

The hired help.

Mesa of Lost Women

As is pretty well-documented I am a complete movie nut.  While I don't have the encyclopedic knowledge of  cinema that my good friend Erik Esckilsen has, I am hooked on film.  Not only do I wear out my Netflix account, but I also get tapped by the nefarious Erik to host many of the college's public film screenings - which is just about favorite chore.  What may be less well-known, although not to my long-suffering friends, is that I also love bad cinema.  I think I may have memorized Welden's Psychotronic Guide of Film, both volumes.  One of my favorite memories of my teenage years was watching the Cool Ghoul (Cincinnati's late night horror movie host) every Saturday night.  One night in particular an astonishingly bad movie entitled Mesa of Lost Women came on.  It was so mind-numbingly horrible that I actually woke my father up out of a sound sleep to come in and watch it with me.  Luckily, he avoided the obvious and appropriate response of beating me senseless and instead gracefully got up and watched the movie with me.  We laughed so hard we cried, and it remains one of our fondest memories.  Follow the link and watch it - if you dare.

I'm not certain how many Oscars it won, but not enough to match the joy it has given me over the years.

Fool in Action

And here's a nice picture that my excellent student Brianna took.  She was a student in my Concepts of the Self class in the fall and needed to take some pictures for a photography class and asked if she could visit my Islam class.  It was a day when I asked the students to bring in their laptops so that we could discuss Umayyad and Abbasid art that I had collected in an Artstor folder.  So here's a shot of me on bended knee talking to a group about Islamic art.  Years ago I moved away from lecture almost entirely and instead always stress analysis of documentary evidence and classroom discussion.  Even I get tired of listening to myself talk.

I loath having my picture taken, and here's another example of the correctness of that view.

School of Athens

And here's another great artwork that it was my pleasure to see on the recent trip to Rome.  While I knew that Raphael's masterpiece was in Rome, it still caught me off guard when I walked through the door at the Vatican Museum and saw it.  Not only does The School of Athens take up an entire wall, but it is also still in pristine condition.  I had discussed this work of art in my classes for years, so, much like seeing the Botticelli's Adoration of the Magi in Florence, it was amazing and humbling to see if up close.  Plus, I agree with Raphael - we are all graduates of the School of Athens.  Being in a city with the incredible history of Rome brings home the intellectual legacy of the Greeks and Romans.

And while I look like poor Diogenes sprawled out on the steps, I'm probably much more like Socrates in the upper left starting an argument.

St. Valentine's Day in the UAE

One of the misconceptions that Americans have about the rest of the world, and especially the Middle East, is that they have to leave the familiar behind.  That is hardly the case, especially in the UAE.  I guess it may seem strange to celebrate a martyred Christian saint in an Islamic country, but we are all peoples of the book - and the Emiratis are even more commercial than we are.  I was determined to make sure that Laura received a dozen roses for Valentine's Day.  Yes, it is a ridiculous corporate holiday, but I am both very old school and also absurdly romantic in my own odd fashion, so not getting flowers was inconceivable.  Now, how to pull it off?  I drafted our good friend Mel, who teaches with Laura at Zayed, into the covert operation.  Mel, being a good soul and a person with tremendous clandestine potential, had two chores: tell me Laura's office number (even though I'd been in the office a thousand times I couldn't have told you the number) and swing by Al Bustan Flowers to gather information.  It may seem odd that you would have a flower shop on campus, but Zayed has one on the female wing of the Abu Dhabi campus.  So, I emailed Jinan at Bustan Flowers and she managed to get a dozen lovely roses delivered on time.  The only thing we haven't figured out is how to pay for them.  The online tool for paying with a credit card isn't working, so I truly got the flowers on credit.  I told them I'd swing by in a couple weeks when I visit Abu Dhabi for my spring break, which they were perfectly cool with (try that at home).

The good folks at Al Bustan Flowers.  The female students stay on campus all day, so flower shops and nail salons are a natural fit.

Nicely done.

Laocoon

As is well-documented, whenever I head overseas to any part of the world I am magnetically drawn to any and all museums, which makes traveling with me more than a bit of a pain.  I'm also famous for these almost mystic responses that I have to great works of art, either because I've discussed them in class for years - or because I've never heard of them before and still felt profoundly moved (and appalled at my own ignorance of all things).  On the recent trip to Rome my experience trended, not surprisingly, towards the former.  One of my favorite statues has always been the Laocoon, and it was amazing and also a bit humbling to just stumble across it at the Vatican.  As you know, Laocoon was a Trojan priest who was punished by the gods for pointing out that it might not be a particularly good idea to bring in a large wooden horse left by the Greeks (which gave rise to that very famous saying).  Here he and his sons are being devoured by some sea snakes sent by the gods.  For many reasons it's undeniably a classic, although I suppose mainly because the passion and angst is so representative of the Hellenistic age, as compared to the more balanced and serene sculture of the Hellenic age.  I think I've always been drawn to it because I've always sympathized with Laocoon's battles with the gods and the seeming folly of pointing out the obvious.  Recently I've been involved in a series of battles here in the Champlain College Faculty Senate and I've felt much like poor Laocoon.  Hopefully the gods will treat me more gently, although harsh or gentle treatment never seems to diminish my desire to fight the good fight.

Maybe this should be my self-portrait in Concepts of the Self.

Mouth of Truth

And for once I'm not talking about me.  Here's an utterly cheesy picture of me placing my hand in the Mouth of Truth in Rome.  It's more appropriate name is the La Bella della Verita, and it is located at the Church of Santa Maria in Cosmedin.  There is some debate about its original purpose, although most folks think that it was associated with a fountain or acted as a manhole cover.  The much less prosaic version, and thus in my mind the better version, is that it tests the validity of anyone brave enough to stick their hand in its mouth by biting off the fingers of a liar.  Many folks remember it from the 1950's movie Roman Holiday where both Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck stick their hands in the Mouth of Truth.

Happily I received no damage, although it seemed to be spending as much time as the sorting hat in Harry Potter in deciding my fate.

Emily's Bridge

Vermont, despite being a very small state, is chock full of the paranormal, although I've yet to see any of it.  I've made a couple trips up to Emily's Bridge, a lovely covered bridge in Stowe, which is supposed to be one of the most haunted spots, although all I've ever gotten out of it is a series of lovely drives (which, truthfully, is quite enough for me).  No one is quite certain who Emily was or why she is associated with the bridge, although there are several theories.  She's supposed to scratch visitors as they pass across the bridge, but no luck (or, conversely, a lot of luck) so far as I am unscathed.  There's also a vague story about how if you leave your car in neutral on the slight incline leading up to the bridge she will push you toward the bridge (actually, I think it's a slight decline, but that ruins the story a bit).  On Laura's first visit to Vermont in the fall we went searching for Emily but couldn't track her down.  Maybe next time we'll come back at night, which I'm sure will lead to creepier results.

This is right before I told her to not look back under any circumstances.

If nothing else it was a beautiful view, and the scenery wasn't bad either.

Meme

In this day and age I guess you know you've arrived when you're a meme.  One of my students first showed me this a couple years ago, before I even knew what a meme was.  Truthfully, I had completely forgotten about it until my student Abel and my friend Cinse's son Richie mentioned it to me.  I guess when your picture is on the Internet (and for some reason mine is too much - just do a google image search for Gary Scudder - it's not as bad it was a couple years ago, but I still pop up way too often) these things happen.  My good friend Mike Lange always tells me that he doesn't want any Internet profile whatsoever, and I suppose there's some logic in that.  The one thing I find bothersome about this particular meme, beyond the ridiculous hat, of course, is that in it I require students to buy a $150 textbook and then don't make them read it -when in reality I would never choose a book that expensive and I abuse my students by making them read every word of every book.  The Core Division, where I am housed here at Champlain, really makes a very concerted effort to hold down book costs (actually, I think we care about it too much, but that's just my own personal belief).  Still, if the silly meme gets across the message that some professors are careless in how they assign and use books then it is all for the good.  Except for the hat.  And at least I'm not a cat with a big frown.

Well, in fairness, I do tell them that they're going to fail a lot.

Roman Holiday

And there's no way that I would have made it around Rome so effortlessly, especially with a bad back, without the assistance of Miss Laura (as Linda, the wonderful Core Division office manager, refers to her).  Laura had been to Rome a couple times, as well as spending a year teaching in Italy, so she both knows the area and speaks the language (although I suspect that she was mainly saying "just keep bringing food, you can't fill him up.").  Mainly she spent the time patiently waiting for me to work my way through museums and historical landmarks.

And here she is displaying her brilliant map-reading skills, which mainly consist of folding the map repeatedly until it somehow makes sense.

Roma

Just back from a manic and utterly amazing short trip to Rome.  While I had been to Florence and Lucca before, I had never made it to Rome (like most people, I suppose, I had visited Sana'a and Zanzibar before Rome).  I absolutely loved it and will have a lot more to say about it.  Lately I haven't been posting much, although that mainly relates to my struggle with Picasa, which has, as is the wont with contrary computers, taken over my computer and is working with my blog site to drive me crazy.  So, no pictures.  However, I think I've figured it out now so there should be a flood of postings soon.  And now the absolute question, does visiting the Vatican Museum constitute a visit to Vatican City - and does that constitute a visit to a new country.  Shameless passport staffing, really.

Oh, and as you might expect, I ate more than my fair share (or anyone's fair share) of pizza.  I loved this one, and had never had one wherein each topping had their own geographic region.