I am writing my term paper for Contemporary Social Problems (as I write, actually) on "The Sociological Implications of Immodesty". That is my Providence Academy education way of saying America is debt ridden, excessive and entitled, all three to it's detriment.
In 2 weeks time (Sunday the 30th to be exact) I will be moving into my dorm room. Classes don't start for sometime after that, so I'll have plenty of time to blog about all of the wild things happening on campus. I have a bet with my dad that I will be able to locate a keg in a dorm room in the first 30 days of being there. I don't think it will be hard, as 30% of the college professes
not to drink. I'm shocked for two reasons: first, that means 40% of underage kids are drinking, (even higher if less than 100% of the aged kids drink), and secondly, what a bold university, that 4 in 10 kids who could get arrested for drinking told the school they do drink. At least it isn't Madison, which has made every party school list to come before my eyes this year.
A big part of this blog will be all the whimsical non-heady things I do in college, so here is one such story. Well, it's not entirely whimsical, begining with the preface which is needed: Vespers is a organized prayer of the Catholic Church that priests pray, along with anybody else who wants to. There are books dedicated to how it goes (parts of it are different every day, sort of like how the news broadcast has the same general form each day, but there are different stories every day). I recently bought one such book, entitled the Liturgia Horarum. So I showed up to my favorite place for all things extraordinarily Catholic, St. Agnes in St. Paul for their Vespers service on Sunday. That was actually a pun, because the extrodinary form is the old, Latin, incense, gold way of doing things, while the ordinary form is the way most churches do things now (though there is still Latin, incense and gold). Both are perfectly acceptable now adays, by the way. At any rate, I thought that the extrodinary/ordinary division only had to do with the mass, but it has to do with Vespers too, so I showed up with my 'ordinary' book, thinking I was really cool. Well, the folks leading the service noticed I had the wrong book (I was in the front row, but still, quite the vision for these old men), so one of them came down and gave me the right book (the Liber Usualis... the extrodinary one, as it were), and told me how everything went, while it was all going on! How kind of them! So, after a wildly awesome gesture to meet him in the rectory as he was processing out, I gave him the book back. One of the other guys back in the rectory (this really does relate to collge) asked me if I was a student at the seminary, and I told him that I was going to Eau Claire. The Decon who gave me the book told me that he grew up in Chippewa Falls, and told me about an 'extrodinary' church off of Highway 53. I was EXTATIC, because I had long been bemoaning the excessivly ordinary nature of things.
If you made it all the way through that doozy of a story I'd tend to think your a dedicated reader of this little publication. So here's how you can be involved even more:
1) tell other people (who know yours truely, preferably) about this blog
2) leave a comment at the bottom of the page by clicking on the "O comments" button (in hopes of making it "1 comment"!). This will require a google account, or you can even squeeze by with a few other types of things. In short, you gotta sign up for stuff.
3) if your not into the signing up for stuff, you can send me an email. Because of all the spam floting around the internet you'll have to solve a bit of a puzzle to email me:
pistilli (dot) tony (at) gmail (dot) com
or you could think of it this way
lastname.firstname@gmail.com
Pardon the cryptics, but I only want to get
your emails. Hope to hear from you!
You'll note the contents: a bed, a place for praying (with a large crucifix, and a few books), a stove (which will be replaced by a coffee maker, for tea), and a desk. So much more beautiful. Yet I am not quite a Carthusian yet. I'd gladly not eat meat, wear sandles in the snow and exit my cell but three times a day, but I cannot as of yet give up my books. I need my books. They are an extension of my mind, in fact. I am not quite whole if I do not have Aquinas at the hand. I'm a stunted man if I cannot decide, on a whim, to read Fitzgerald. Take away everything else but my books. 
