Picture: Looking Through the Door of a Subway Car Window on the Pelham Bay Local

I took a photograph of a subway car door's window and posted it here on my website. Check it out and read other fabulous stuff by Greig Roselli.

Greig Roselli Has a Fascination with the New York Subway

If you read this blog, you may notice that I have a certain fascination with the New York City subway. Riding the trains, one gets a glimpse into various bisections of the city that it is nearly impossible to witness in any other setting. New York City is a very segregated town — in the sense that the "haves" do not mix with the "have nots." On the subway, people are forced to commute together — so it is possible to see a stuffed shirt punching away on a laptop sitting next to a rag-a-tag homeless man asking for spare change. It is both disturbing and beautiful, both topsy-turvy and the norm. No one really expects much on a subway ride — but I swear it is the best place for writer types and artists to get a punch of inspiration. I'll just ride the subway for fun, often just staying on the train several stops after my home station — just to finish writing. That's what I'm doing now. The Six train has pulled into the Pelham Bay Park station — so it is time to go back downtown. See ya.

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Essay: How to be Generative Without Having Kids

Learn how my Uncle gave me his set of matchbox cars to me when I was young and how this influenced my understanding of passing something down from one generation to the next.

image credit: Tilt-Shift Photography

   When I was a boy my uncle gave me his complete set of diecast matchbox cars.

   There is a photograph of me as a toddler hanging on to our family coffee table, grinning in the flashlight of the camera’s aim, illuminated – darkening the background where you can see strewn on the carpet a multitudinous display of diecast cars. Not only did my uncle give me his entire set of matchbox cars but he and my aunt would take me on Saturdays to the flea market to scout out hidden diecast cars buried underneath piles and piles of junk. I was especially in love with the Matchbox brand, which started out in England as the Lesney company in the 1940s as a cheap way to sell toys to children during the war. I had Hot Wheels too. And I liked Corgi's models. But, my heart, in the end, was stuck on Matchbox.

    Visiting the flea market was a big deal. My aunt sold fashion for porcelain dolls. When she and my uncle frequented the flea market stalls, they were looking for deals on doll fashions. My aunt instructed me on the first day I tagged along to help them pick out fabrics. "Don't touch anything," she told me. She put her arms behind her back and turned around to show me, saying, "this is how you walk. Hold on to your arm so you can catch it if it tries to grab something on the shelf." She was right. The flea market stalls were filled with items that screamed "tangible!" The musty smelling curtains and chain-smoking clerks, ogling collectors handling precious prints of Andy Warhol Marilyn Monroe's and 1950s Hugh Hefner Playboys were for me, a boy's wonderland. I obeyed my aunt, though, and tried not to touch. Besides, I had no interest in handling thin veined china or opaque Depression-era glass. I wanted the toys. While my aunt and uncle felt and measured lacy fabrics, I would look for cigar boxes and glass cases filled with diecast cars, hoping to find the prized Matchbox models that would add to my collection.

A Lighthouse Stamp Illuminates the American College

The American College in Leuven, Belgium is a residence for American seminary students studying for the priesthood for United States dioceses. The facility is operated by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops in Washington, D.C. I lived here in my early twenties when I studied Continental Philosophy at the Hoger Instituut voor Wijesbegeerte, the faculty of Philosophy at the Katholieke Universeiteit Leuven.

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Movie Review: Salt

In this post, I review the new Angelina Jolie movie Salt.

image credit: NYT

Despite insane physical hijinks, Salt (2010) is a pretty damn good spy thriller. Jolie is Evelyn Salt, a Russian mole, and CIA agent. She is married to an arachnologist, which means he studies spiders for a living, played by August Diehl. Her cover's been blown. She's been accused of being a Russian spy by a Russian defector who shows up just when she's gearing up for an anniversary feast with her hubby. The defector (Daniel Olbrychski) claims she'll assassinate the Russian president. It's a big ole mess. Who is Salt? At least, that's what the tagline asks. The director Phillip Noyce keeps us guessing and Kurt Wimmer's screenplay is taut and satisfactory. The jumbled mess keeps us interested. The story grabs your attention from the start and does not let go.

Billy Elliot, Anatomy of a Scene: "You Can't Take That Out on a Junior Ticket"

In this blog post, I take apart one scene from the Stephen Daldry film Billy Elliot.

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     Stephen Daldry directed Billy Elliot (2000), written by Lee Hall, now a Broadway Musical, about a young boy's persistent desire to be a dancer despite the disapproval of his overbearing, but in-the-end loving father (Gary Lewis). Sped on by his indomitable, but cranky teacher, Mrs. Wilkinson (Julie Walters) Billy deals with the death of his mother and the stark reality of living in an oppressed coal mining town in England circa 1984.
     The film is set during the coal miner's strike when Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher sought to cripple the colliery unions that were seen as a roadblock to a conservative economic strategy. The film is filled with stark images of life with police barricades and protest riots. However, the film chooses not to depict Billy's life as completely bleak. The scenes are shot in bright tones which seems to protest against the otherwise somber historical background of the coal miner riots.

Gone Flat Land: Why XML Seems Promising

A nerdy post on library science and the future of library cataloging.

image credit: "Tempus Fugit" by abbeyprivate

This essay was written as a requirement for an introduction to cataloging course. An entry like this is not typical stones of erasmus fare, but I post it for all my library and cataloging buddies out there. I warn you, though, I made a C+ in Cataloging. I took the course as an online component. While I like the Reference and Information Services course I took online (which garnered me an A+) I found the Cataloging course online more challenging. My satisfactory grade is most likely attributable to my difficulty keeping up with deadlines, but I also found the assignments hard to conceptualize. Most catalogers use a cataloging application (e.g., Connexion) on a PC to create MARC records or to copy catalog. But, for this class, we had to use a generic MS word document to fill in the fields which I found to be terribly awkward. So, a word from the experienced: if you take an online class in cataloging make sure you have access to a good MARC program.
Anyway, here is my report on XML from a C+ point of view. Enjoy:

"Voice II" Mailed to Keizersberg With a Nod to the Times Picayune

Credits:
Keizersberg is a small Benedictine monastery in Leuven, Belgium; also home to students who go to the Catholic University. And Stella Artois. The mural of the Omega Christ on the bottom right was painted by Dom Gregory DeWit, a Dutch monk and muralist. The mural can be found at Saint Meinrad Archabbey. Voice II is by the American Artist George Tooker. The newspaper clipping is from the Travel section of The Times-Picayune. A librarian meets her philosophy pal at the steps of the stad huis in Leuven.

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