My first post.

Hello Internet!

This marks the moment of where I begin my very first blog post... ever! I mean, I have a Facebook, but I've never managed my own blog before. There is a good chance I may become addicted. I love personalizing things and making something look really cool (and I've dabbled in HTML editing before, teehee) so this could be a good thing for me. Because I'm sure that if this weren't for class that EVERYONE would otherwise really want to know what I think. [:

As for Petrarch, whom we refer to as the "father of Humanism," I wonder whether or not he would have had a blog had his generation been blessed (cursed?) with the existence of computers and the world wide web. Plumb mentioned his love of travelling. I cannot recall exactly where I read it but sometimes we could consider him the first tourist. How cool is that?! Seems like my kinda guy.

Having spent a year in Spain I was very fortunate to do a lot of travelling... almost every weekend was filled with exploring some exotic new locale. I sure love to travel! Don't you enjoy hearing a new language fill your ears? Sampling new foods? Seeing incredible architecture that you just can't find in South Bend? I bet that if Petrarch could have he would have kept such a travel blog, like the idea I mentioned about it in class. (I also bet that the elusive Laura would have been number one on his list of followers).

I didn't have one personally (although I did have a Picasa, the link for which you might see at the right column there, under "Clickables"), but lots of other kids did, and it was really fun to read them! I never realized how creative and personal you can get with a blog! You can post pictures, videos, links, music, you name it!

I would have LOVED to read Petrarch's travel blog. Now that would have been a good read, amid all the imaginative dialogues with Saint Augustine. I think, perhaps, that he might have had more than one, for each different persona that he seems to adopt. At one point he is obsessing over his Laura; at another he is writing My Secret, somewhat full of melancholy and depression, obsessing over death, expressing an understanding of the self, others, and the Divine, but also remaining very self-critical (because it takes a lot to realize one's own flaws). If he begins with a conflict of these 2 selves, I wonder if he joins them together in the end.

Petrarch is temperamental and he seems to have some extreme personalities (all of which contribute to his glorification of the individual, part of being a Renaissance man), but I don't think he goes overboard with the Renaissance cliches. There is a certain delicacy in invoking these characteristics, don't you think? He sort of mixes a new Renaissance humanism (he is, after all, the "Father of Humanism") with some old values.

I hope that fares well as my first blog post! Enjoy! (and don't forget to check back weekly for more of my clever clever musings.*)

*note the sarcasm.