[No! it's not a Hallowe'en party! It's teachers from L'Aquila wearing ass ears to protest proposed changes in education here in Italy (guess what: less money, fewer hours: "useless people" those teachers!]
Every day this week, we've had thunderstorms and protests. Students are occupying the schools. Thousands (hundreds of thousands, from the looks of things) are marching in the streets, in spite of thunder, lightning, and heavy heavy rains. "If nothing else, Berlusconi has really energized the populace," everyone is saying. Indeed. Though why they weren't so energized on election day here is another question ----
But in the windows of the American Academy in Rome:
(It was really hard to get an angle, but I'm guessing you can see the OB A MA there through the gate.)
* * *
I've always loved Hallowe'en. Maybe it's the Irish in me, Samhain and all of that. Or having one day during the year when people don't ask, "Why do you dress like that?" (See Ministry, "Every Day Is Halloween," currently playing on my iTunes.) And speaking of, if you need a Goth fix next week, don't miss this:
Literary Reading
Contemporary Gothic: Poetry & Prose
Thursday, November 6, 6-7pm
Special Exhibitions Gallery
The Museum at FIT (E building)
Horror and the macabre embodied in contemporary gothic literature influence fashion on display in the museum’s Fall exhibition, Gothic: Dark Glamour. Join local authors as they read from today’s best examples of the genre. Selections to include excerpts from J.G. Ballard, Margaret Atwood, Ann Rice, Stephen King and Bret Easton Ellis. [And, friend Amy Lemmon tells me, a poem by me. Weee.]
Anyway, I've always loved Hallowe'en so much that I was happy to end up getting married on the very day, last year. We'd be celebrating our anniversary in a more appropriate fashion (deep red wine and other dark, lacy, gothy things) but Damiano has the flu. Luckily I WAS paying attention when the lady said "in sickness and in health," so, having made him some tea and tucked him into bed, here I am, drinking a bit of a nice Tuscan red by myself, and thinking how, hmm, maybe I should start a business. Goth Rome Tours: Dead Poets and Monk Bones.
Boo. Happy Hallowe'en.
[Keats's Death Mask, Keats-Shelley House]
