Christmas day!

We went to my Uncle Steve and Aunt KD's house for Christmas day. We had beef and played a a gag gift game. Here are some pictures of my family. The paper crowns are from the Christmas Poppers/Crackers my mother brought to the partay.















Christopher, my younger brother, home from Par-ee.















Christopher, again, and my father, Riccardo.




















My Grandpa Stan. He is a World War 2 veteran.















My Nonna. She is from Italy, although she was born in Missouri. She moved back to Italy, where her parents were from when she was a baby after her mother died.
















My father's younger brother, Mario.




















My Uncle Steve, my dad's older brother. He tells lots of funny jokes like my father. James said that he missed his calling as a game show host, after having witnessed his good job emcee-ing our gag game.




















Here is my aunt Katie. She is an excellent German cook from the Ohio/Pennsylvania area. Her sausage stuffing was a hit at my Thanksgiving.















My Auntie Anne's (my father's younger sister) children, my cousins Andrea and Joseph. Andrea is having a baby! which is very exciting.
















My cousins, (children of KD and Steve), Alex, Andrew, and Aaron. Birth order, however, is Andrew, Aaron, and Alex.

My Auntie Anne and James were there too, but they seemed to have escaped my camera's gaze.

Merry Christmas!

Christmas time 1

The most wonderful time of the year!
















Me and Barbara, James's mother with our presents. and our Santa hats


When I got home, we had a cookie decorating party, with Siobhan, me, Christophe, and Dot, our neighbor.
















There was a contest to see who made the best cookie. I won.













Above are the three winning cookies. Mine, the snowman, came in first place. very cute, if I do say so myself. Second, was Siobhan's tree. Well-executed. I also came in third place with a classic take on Santa Claus. This is one of the Santas that escaped Christopher's ruthless pom-pom removal campaign. Only 3 Santas were spared.
















Above is the judge, my mother, Elise Keel. She was very impartial. However, she favors a traditional cookie decorating approach which may have unfairly kept some of the more "experimental" cookies out of the running.




















This is my best friend, Siobhan. She is very artistic.

November and Thanksgiving

Here is me, in front of my house.


I like apple pie better, but I made a pumpkin pie for Thanksgiving. I made my own crust, just like Mungy, my great-grandmother used to make. James all of a sudden decided that he liked pumpkin pie. Sarah brought an apple pie over later, so I wasn't too unhappy! I didn't take a picture until after a piece had been eaten. Also, in the interim, my computer broke. so I'm posting the picture now.

In the realm of the absurd...

I was in a parade. On my segway. I wore a Santa hat.

sorry about crappy resolution. It was downloaded from Kodakgallery.com which doesn't let you download full resolution pictures. which is crappy.

Book Review: Vidalia in Paris

On Thursday, I received an exciting package in the mail from Amazon. Vidalia in Paris, by Sasha Watson. I read the whole book in one night. I also wrote a short book review on Amazon which you can find here.

Vidalia in Paris is an exciting read that might make you feel a bit wistful that you never had such an exciting experience when you were a teenager. On the other hand, if you had had an exciting adventure, you think that you might have acted a bit like Vidalia in the process. Vidalia deals with some tough questions about friendship, love, and morality and sees her mind open to new possibilities. However, I think that the strength of Vidalia' story is that she ultimately reaffirms the kind of person that inside, she has always been.

The book takes place in Paris, la ville-lumière, and if you've ever been there, this book makes you wish you had just one more afternoon to wander around the city.

I would highly recommend Vidalia in Paris, but if "Reading Rainbow" taught us nothing, "you don't have to take my word for it!"

Movie Review: Before the Devil Knows You're Dead

J and I rented this movie last night. It got overwhelmingly good reviews on metacritic and rotten tomatoes.

The movie is about two brothers who decide to rob their own parents' jewelry store. The premise of the movie might have made a fine comedy.

However, comedies don't generally make you feel empty and dirty for watching them. Not dirty as if you were watching something smutty. But dirty as in having witnessed something deadening and lacking in humanity. There is nothing uplifting about this movie, nothing redemptive. The characters are incredible unlikeable. Fat and Sweaty drug-addicted Phillip Seymour Hoffman, his Nervous and Sweaty brother Ethan Hawke, Ethan Hawke's bitchy ex-wife and bitchy daughter, Slutty and Useless Marisa Tomei, and a whole cast of other characters leave you with the impression that human beings are awful and unpleasant to be around. Every other word out the characters' mouth is a swear word. The brothers' father, Albert Finney, is initially slightly sympathetic but the lesson of the movie is that everyone is 2 steps away from being totally evil. Hence the title I guess.

Awful Awful movie. terrible soundtrack (ponderous, repetitive, faux-sombre). A lot of things made no sense. Why would Ethan Hawke have been the favored son, leading to Seymour Hoffman's resentment? Ethan Hawke played a sweaty loser that no parent would love that much. Why did Sidney Lumet decide, in his eighties, to make this soulless film? Has his long life taught him this, that there is no redemption or joy in life but "chaos, hostility, and murder?" (cf. Werner Hertzog).

I wish I hadn't seen this movie.

Asheville, part 3

So we took at trolley tour on our second day (after my early morning walk, see two posts below). We had a knowledgeable guide named James. We saw many beautiful houses. Asheville, nestled in the blue ridge mountains, had its heyday in the early part of the century, therefore there are many beautiful victorian houses.

We started out the tour in the Montford Historic District.

This yellow building is part of an old mental hospital (Highland Mental Hospital) where Zelda Fitzgerald once was treated F. Scott came to visit sometimes. She died in a fire in a building there in 1948.

James Taylor also once stayed here for treatment for heroin addiction.

Downtown, there are many beautiful art deco buildings. This is one of only 58 Roman Catholic basilicas in the United States.

Here is another building, city hall.

Later, we went to the Thomas Wolfe Memorial, where the writer grew up.

J commented that he had big shoes to fill, in re Wolfe.

sock-clad feet are J's

A fun time was had by all.

Dinner

Shrimp Fra Diavolo

Mrs. Palin

http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=XR9V_aOCga0

Trip to Asheville, day 2

I woke up early and took a walk, looking for pipsqueaks. The morning was chilly and I was wearing the wrong shoes. But it was fall and my favorite season and the mountains were all around. The road went along the Swannanoa river. Asheville is west of the eastern continental divide. So I'm assuming this water will eventually end up in the Mississippi and eventually the Gulf of Mexico.









Here is another picture.












As the sun started to come out more, I noticed that the mighty kudzu was seemingly unperturbed by fall's chilly breath.










Unfortunately, I was hard-pressed to find any pip-squeaks this morning. However, I did run into Fredbird and his girlfriend Fredericabird. Only Fredbird is in this picture, however, Fredericabird being more demure.













Later, we took a trolley tour of Asheville . . .

Trip to Asheville, day 1

I am on fall break from school. We went to Asheville, North Carolina

First, We went to the Blue Ridge Parkway. Then we hiked up Mount Pisgah. Pisgah was awash in fall colors.














Here is J en route to the top.













Then we went to a graveyard, Riverside Cemetery in Asheville. The helpful folk at the Asheville Visitor's center pointed us in the right direction and even gave us a map of the cemetery.

We saw Thomas Wolfe's and O. Henry's graves. The following picture is of me standing next to the sign pointing us to O. Henry's grave, whose real name is William Sydney Porter.















I started noticing that there were a lot of pip-squeaks in the graveyard. J, at first scornful of my interest in the furry creatures, became the most intrepid pip-squeak hunter of them all, capturing this one on my camera.

fun facts

http://fundrace.huffingtonpost.com/neighbors.php?type=emp&employer=Duke+Law+School
http://fundrace.huffingtonpost.com/neighbors.php?type=emp&employer=duke+university&search=Search

note, dean levi gives to both candidates, (compare links), but $1300 more to Obama

dinner

pork tenderloin

Walk to woofstock

Went to Forest hills park where there was a dog festival and a very large great dane! http://www.gmap-pedometer.com/?r=2312007

Pim, on NRO

http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=Mzc3NTc0MmY3NzQzZmVmYjYwMDhmZGU5ZGIzOThhZDQ=

Eagles-Cowgirls 50 seconds left in first half

Great game so far. I really like Donovan McNabb. My prediction was that Desean Jackson would have some growing pains this game, which clearly happened. Whatever, I also predicted that McNabb and Westbrook would have solid games...so far...so good. Still sad about Brady. In other news, I hate T.O.

Ida May Fuller

The first Social Security recipient. She paid 24.75$ in social security taxes in total over 3 years until her retirement at age 65 in 1939. Her first monthly check was for $22.54. By the time she died at age 100 in 1975, she had received $22,888.92 in social security benefits.

http://www.ssa.gov/history/idapayroll.html

very special houseguest

I'm off to buy her a litter box scoop.

Cupcake!

Walk to my friend's

July 28th. Went to my friend's house. map.

Bivins street is a nice street to walk up, very tree-y at the end.

walk to hill house

July 27th. Went to see John Sprunt Hill house, 900 S Duke St, Durham, NC, yesterday and discovered orchard park, which contains the foundation of the Hill house's greenhouse. The park was kind of overgrown and closed off. No one was there

http://endangereddurham.blogspot.com/2008/01/hill-house-gardens-orchard-park.html

very cool. there was a dude peeing in the park who freaked me out though.

This was my walk route

I ended up in Forest Hills park.
I didn't go all the way home because someone I knew was driving down the street.

Duress

"If a man, by the terror of present death, be compelled to do a fact against the law, he is totally excused, because no law can oblige a man to abandon his own preservation. And supposing such a law were obligatory, yet a man would reason thus: If I do it not, I die presently; if I do it, I die afterwards; therefore by doing it, there is time of life gained"
Hobbes, Leviathan, Pt. II, ch. 27 (1651)

DeFunis v. Odegaard

Marco DeFunis was denied entrance to University of Washington law school.

have been reading this

Duke Students for an Ethical Duke

Dunbarton, SC

My grandfather was born in Boston, but he grew up in Dunbarton, SC. Dunbarton no longer exists because the Federal government built a nuclear materials processing center there in 1950, at the Savannah River Site.

Crack babies

Johnson v. State, 602 So. 2d 1288 (Fla. 1992)

Jennifer Clarice Johnson was convicted under a Florida statute that made it unlawful to "deliver" a controlled substance to another person. During her first pregnancy, Johnson admitted to having ingested crack on the day night before her delivery. During her second pregnancy, she had a crack overdose having ingested $200 worth of crack cocaine and was hospitalized. The next month she admitted to having smoked crack when she was in labor. Johnson was convicted for having "delivered" crack to her baby through the umbilical cord after the baby was born but before the cord was severed.

Chief Justice Major B. Harding delivered the opinion of the Florida Supreme Court overturning the conviction, in part, because:

The Legislature considered and rejected a specific statutory provision authorizing criminal penalties against mothers for delivering drug-affected children who received transfer of an illegal drug derivative metabolized by the mother's body, in utero. In light of this express legislative statement, I conclude that the Legislature never intended for the general drug delivery statute to authorize prosecutions of those mothers who take illegal drugs close enough in time to childbirth that a doctor could testify that a tiny amount passed from mother to child in the few seconds before the umbilical cord was cut. Criminal prosecution of mothers like Johnson will undermine Florida's express policy of "keeping families intact" and could destroy the family by incarcerating the child's mother when alternative measures could protect the child and stabilize the family. Johnson, 1294.

The Center for Reproductive Law and Policy represented Johnson. Litigation director for the CRLP Lynn Paltrow said "It's a great victory for public health, for women and newborns and common sense." Tamar Lewin, Mother Cleared of Passing Drug to Babies, N.Y. Times, July 24, 1992.

1. "Keeping families intact"
2. "Criminal prosecution of mothers like Johnson...could destroy the family"
3. "A great victory for...newborns and common sense"

Well it doesn't make sense to me.

My case book offers this wisdom from Prof. Dorothy Roberts:

Prosecution of crack-addicted mothers diverts attention from social ills such as poverty, racism, and a misguided national health policy and implies instead that shamefully high Black infant death rates are caused by the bad acts of individual mothers. Punishing Durg Addicts Who Have Babies: Women of Color, Equality, and the Right of Privacy, 104 Harv. L. Rev. 1419, 1436 (1991). Reprinted in Kaplan, John, et al. Criminal Law: Cases and Materials. 5th ed. 2004. p. 130.

I see.

Today

was the first day back in classes...it made me really exhausted

but some fine words from Blackstone as cited in Proctor v. State 176 P. 771 (1918): "no temporal tribunal can search the heart, or fathom the intention of the mind"