My "artsy" Venice photo. I wish I had been able to really figure out my camera so I could have taken more photos like this, but I mostly did just point 'n' shoot. I did take a couple of short movies where there were panoramic views; that was kind of fun. This is looking out from the loggia at the Ca D'Oro onto the Grand Canal with the blazing afternoon sun coming in through the archways.

I didn't take this second photo; it's Cafe Central, one of Vienna's most famous coffee houses, where Trotsky supposedly planned the Russian Revolution and where I had lunch today. My colleague Ed is going to his first Wagner opera tonight so we had to plan our nutrition carefully. It's Die Meistersinger (I know some of you who are groaning at this moment) which is about five hours long, maybe a little longer. What a thrill!

I added two new links below, and took off that dice game link, which didn't seem to work. The first link I added is called the Mozart Forum, and seems to be a really comprehensive collection of things. The second is from Cornell, so you know Neal what's-his-name probably had something to do with it. It's all about Mozart's keyboard stuff but I guess has quite a few other resources. Have fun surfing around those!

We spent all morning studying The Marriage of Figaro, which was a lot of fun. There's not much to report, though, that our readers wouldn't already know. I am hoping tomorrow to go see the da Ponte exhibit. The more I read his lyrics the more I laugh. I like it when Susanna calls Marcellina a "Sibilla decrepita" or something like that. This is kind of naughty, but do you think that when Cherubino says that he is always singing love songs and if nobody else is around he is "singing to himself" that he is talking about masturbation? I was going to ask our teacher but decided not to.

We are going to Prague on Saturday and I am particularly excited to start studying Don Giovanni since that's what I am going to do my project on and take the students to see at Seattle Opera in January. I have so many ideas already I don't even know where to start: the archetype, the mythology, Byron's Don Juan, gender roles, psychoanalysis (some professor for Dayton is coming over next week to give us a lecture about Freud and Don G), and that great Johnny Depp movie, Don Juan de Marco.