©2012 Mormon Insider. All Rights Reserved.

©2012 Mormon Insider. All Rights Reserved.

Now in middle age, Filippo (Brunelleschi, the architect of the dome in Florence)  though was short, bald, and pugnacious looking, with an aquiline nose, thin lips, and a weak chin. His appearance was not helped by his dirty and disheveled clothing. Yet in Florence such an unsightly display was almost a badge of genius, and Filippo was simply the latest in a long and illustrious line of ugly or unkempt artists. The name of the painter Cimabue means “ox head,” and Giotto was so unattractive that Giovanni Boccacio devoted a tale to his appearance in the Decameron, marveling at how “Nature has frequently planted astonishing genius in men of monstrously ugly appearance.” Later, Michaelangelo would become legendary for his ugliness, which was partly the result of a broken nose earned in a fracas with the sculptor Pietro Torrigiani. And like both Giotto and Filippo, Michaelangelo was indifferent to the state of his dress, often going for months on end without changing his dogskin breeches. In the end, ugly and eccentric artists would become so much the norm that Filippo’s biographer, the painter and architect Giorgio Vasari–himself an uncouth man, with a skin disease and dirty, uncut fingernails–marveled that an artist as talented as Raphael should actually have been physically handsome.

p. 32-33

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Margaret Rockefeller Strong Larrain donated the Villa de Balze to Georgetown University in 1986. When she inherited it, she wanted to donate it for an educational purpose. She invited universities to submit proposals and Georgetown beat out the likes of Harvard, Yale and Stanford for the chance to educate their students here. It could have been because her lawyer was a Georgetown alum.:)

The garden courtyard.

The view, part of it. My camera’s zoom is really good.

The greenhouse

The dining hall where we eat almost all of our meals prepared by Italian cooks. Lunch has two courses, starting with pasta and dinner has three courses, starting with pasta. Seriously, my jeans are already a bit snug by this point.

One of the two libraries. This is the room where I’m currently sitting.

Upstairs hallway to some of the bedrooms, including mine.

The bathroom

Our room, there’s just two of us, so it’s not as cramped as it looks.

The view from the bathroom.

There’s also a classroom space for our evening lectures and we’re locked up inside gated walls. Not too shabby.

I’m really grateful to be here and I appreciate fellowshipping with Georgetown students. They’re very bright and many of them are faithful Catholics, which I appreciate. There’s not much of a religious presence on Georgetown campus apart from their values banners and usually empty chapel. Since I go to school at night after work, I don’t get to interact as much with my peers as I would have in a daytime program. However, it still draws people of faith. This weekend we went to Assisi where St. Francis lived, served and died and now holds a huge basilica in his honor. Our conversations the whole weekend were full of theology and open, authentic respectful discussion. When everyone else was drinking wine and I consistently declined, it came out that I was LDS (Mormon) which only adds to the the discussion.

Learning for me is a spiritual experience. Hearing others’ views  expands that process. That’s beautiful to me.

©2012 Mormon Insider. All Rights Reserved.

Today we toured locations associated with Dante. To lay the scene, our professor said living in Florence during his time was like a mix between the Godfather and Romeo and Juliet. Yikes. The patrician families in power were very violent. It was not uncommon to have one’s throat cut simply by walking about in the street. The rising merchant class sought to create a secure public space because business transactions can’t happen when people fear for their lives. These families typically built their homes like towers they could close up tightly for protection. Here you can see in the inner courtyard of the Donazioni, which was this kind of fortress.

Eventually, the merchants gained enough power to displace from the city one of the most  violent families. Their ability to achieve this showed a general change in attitudes toward power holders in Florence.  These changes generated a sense of civic society and made it possible for the wealthy merchants to support the development of the arts (before the church was the only patron of the arts for the public).

Later, we toured a Medieval chapel where I took this picture.

Turns out, you can’t take pictures in churches. I thought it was interesting that it’s not okay to take pictures, but it’s okay to yell irreverently from across the huge church at someone taking pictures.

After we saw more sights, we stopped to get coffee. Mormons don’t drink coffee so I had some yummy hot chocolate.

It reminded me of Christmas. It was rich and smooth. Maybe next time I have hot chocolate, I will think of Florence.:)

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I thought it was cool he was reading the Book of Mormon while he waited for his flight. Good missionaries use their time well. I suspected he was a good missionary.

I decided to talk to him.

He was returning home to Florence from the New York South mission. After a few minutes of talking with him, I concluded he was a good missionary.

We talked until we boarded and ended up sitting next to each other on the plane because there was an open seat next to him.

Now we’re friends.

©2012 Mormon Insider. All Rights Reserved.

I love efficient moms.:)

©2012 Mormon Insider. All Rights Reserved.

This week I’m going to Italy for a two week study abroad to learn about the changes between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance.

When I started my now job, I felt like a shrewd negotiator when I secured these two weeks to finish the final course of my Masters program without consuming any vacation time. Now that I know my boss better, I’m not so surprised he granted it to me. He’s a former professor and still a scholar and he told me “there will be a quiz” when I return. He wasn’t kidding. It won’t be with pen and paper, but he’s going to want me to share what I learned and it better demonstrate I spent my time well.

I should be finished reading several books at this point, but of course I’m not.

I’ve spent the last week reading these:

The Renaissance: A Short History by Paul Johnson

The Rise and Fall of the House of Medici by Christopher Hibbert

I’ve especially enjoyed reading Johnson. His text flows smoothly and he provides personal descriptions of each leading historical figure like a talented novelist. I now want to have dinner with almost every person I’ve met through his pages, including Machiavelli (wouldn’t want to be friends, but dinner would be interesting).

It’s worth reading for more than his description of people. The passage of most interest to me so far has been the following:

One feature of the English scholarship, at both Oxford and Cambridge, was its spirit of criticism. This is an immensely important point, and is worth dwelling on a little. Of course the critical spirit–that is, the tendency not simply to accept texts at their face value but to examine their provenance, credentials, authenticity and contents with a wary eye–was not invented in Oxford. It was a Renaissance characteristic, and one that was to prove fatal to the unity of the church, once it was applied to sacred texts and ecclesiastical credentials. It long antedated the Renaissance, needless to say. Indeed it went back to Marcion in the second century A.D., who first subjected the canonical texts of the New Testament to careful exegesis, accepting some and rejecting others. But this kind of approach was rare in the Dark and even in the Middle Ages; it is odd that churchmen-scholars of the caliber of St. Augustine or Thomas Aquinas paid so little attention to the integrity and background of the texts that came down to them, and on which they commented so copiously. But so it was. Thus the revival of the skeptical approach of Marcion was one of the most striking aspects of the recovery of antiquity and the most explosive. (p. 53)

I want to study more about how the further development  of critical thinking tactics later influenced how people during the Renaissance period thought about religion and how it affected the power of the Church. Fascinating.

I still have to read these:

Since I still need to pack and tomorrow night, I just can’t help but watch the season finale of Once Upon a Time, I’m thinking I’ll read summaries online of King Lear and Dante’s Inferno and read Brunelleschi’s Dome by Ross King in full. My boss specifically told me we would discuss this book because he used to assign it to his grad students as an example of engaging narrative on a topic that could potentially be dry and tedious.

If I finish a sufficient amount of reading before boarding the plane, I’m going to read the next of the Hunger Games book in the series, Catching Fire while en route. It will help me manage jet lag because I’ll have to keep reading. For the first one, I stayed up until 3:00am.:)

I’m anxious and excited all wrapped up into one. The David‘s going to be so happy to see me, finally.

©2012 Mormon Insider. All Rights Reserved.

©2012 Mormon Insider. All Rights Reserved.

Warning: As usual, Jon Stewart is off color, but also as usual, he effectively uses satire to expose absurdity in politics.

Evaluate Mitt Romney for his suitability as a presidential candidate, not by fear certain media pundits on cable news shows generate about Mormons. You may not believe as Mormons do, but generally speaking, individual Mormons seek to live good lives and make their communities a better place to live. For the most part, making Mormons look crazy is to achieve a specific political purpose, not to teach people the reality of a vibrant religious community thriving in American society and around the world.

©2012 Mormon Insider. All Rights Reserved.