First Post

This is hard. The first post. And the wine I had last night was swill. And it was white.

I'm reading two books right now (three if you count the Insight Guide to Italy), but I'm not far enough along with them to comment. The one I'm reading for book club is Garry Wills' Why I am a Catholic. This is really out of character for us. We usually read classics or novels with some type of interesting historic or cultural backdrop. This book came up because Linda's granddaughter was going to be baptized Catholic and she didn't know much about Catholicism. She started quizzing me about my religion and I couldn't help much. I mentioned I bought this book awhile back (when I was having trouble understanding why I was a Catholic) and never read it but thought it might provide some interesting insights. We'll see....

The other thing I'm reading is The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat as Peformed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade, a play by Peter Weiss. That's my first assignment this semester in 16th Century Literature. Francis X. Ryan, SJ (hmmm, wonder what the X stands for) admitted starting a course dealing with Tudor literature with a play from the 20th century is rather odd. (I thought so but, then again, all my John Carroll professors have done similar things. We studied every playwright but Shakespeare in my Shakespeare class.) Anyway, Dr. Ryan says, "the play highlights the vast ideological difference between what concepts and beliefs we take for granted and those which were foundational values of 16th century England -- obedience, for instance. This will be the fourth class I've taken at JCU, working toward my MA in Creative Writing -- just for fun. I have a real job. Two classes I took right after college -- about 25 years ago -- also transferred. So I think I have another 5 or so to go after this. I didn't think I'd be anxious to finish because I'm doing it for the joy of reading and discussing literature and the opportunity to learn from other writers. But suddenly, I want to be done. I think if I was retired, it would be a different story. But the demands of work make the demands of school a little less "joyful." Was this a terrible first post?