Diversions

It’s not all business all the time here, which is good. I go to the massive gym at ASU to get a release from the stress, and I get to go to the pool a lot to just take a break. Not only do I get to work on my pretty brown skin (which is still kind of pasty, since I spend most of my time inside the copy room or inside classroom J4 at Agua Fria.

But when I am at the pool, I’ve been reading an awesome true crime book called The Monster of Florence. It’s about Italy’s most notorious serial killer of the same name who terrorized the Tuscan countryside for a few decades towards the end of the last century. I know, I keep telling people what the book is about, and when I say serial killer, I get funny looks and sideways glances. The killer has never been found; Italy’s dysfunctional and corrupt judicial system has been accusing upstanding people for years of the murders based on crackpot conspiracy theories and personal vendettas while ignoring the basic facts and evidence of the case. The writers of the book, Mario Spezi and Douglas Preston, have been accused by a corrupt judge (the same one who cooked up the case against Amanda Knox) of complicity in the murders and weave their compelling first-person account of the vents involved into the chilling narrative relating the original evidence and reports of the crimes.

It’s a great story, a great way to escape from the challenges I face and I can’t help but to think, “Well, this is tough, but at least I haven’t been accused of the rape-murders of eighteen Italians back in the eighties.” And it’s always good to find another country that’s more messed up than ours is, as Italy is certainly portrayed in Il Mostro.

Speaking of diversions, I also got to revisit my childhood last weekend when a friend of mine and I left campus for a while to go see Toy Story 3. For many of us, the original Toy Story was a defining movie of our childhood. It was the first movie to bring the novelty of computer-assisted art to the big screen. Everyone saw it, everyone raved about it. Getting to see the culmination of the Toy Story saga (and in 3D too!) as I start my career as an educator was a fitting culmination to my own childhood; even though I’ve been out of the house for a few years, it was great to think back and reflect nonetheless.

And it’s always good to get a break from lesson planning and the copy room, too.

I hope everyone’s summer is going well, too!

peace and love from the grand canyon state,

pb