Progress!

Well, after nearly two weeks of being in my new apartment, I finally have internet and a functioning stove! This whole process has been long and at times a little tedious, but it’s definitely thrown me into the adult world headfirst!

I started my job last week (“admissions assistant” at a local vocational school, which means I call high schoolers all week), and after a couple days of training, we were ready to get started on Friday. So Friday morning, I left my apartment bright and early, planning to get there a few minutes early. I’m cruising along down the streets of St. Louis, when all of a sudden a dog jumps in front of me. Now I know that in that instance, you’re always supposed to hit the dog rather than risk your car or your life. But I can’t hit a dog. So I hit the curb instead. WHAM. Flat tire. Not just a little leak, but a big hole. Immediately my tire went down. There was no way I was driving to work on that sucker. Fortunately, with the aid of a $60 dollar taxi, I did in fact make it to work on time. But it was quite an exciting start to my life in St. Louis, let me tell you. 

Now that my job has started, I’ve had much less time for reading, but I’ve been trying to cram a few pages in wherever I can. I managed to finish a social history of LSD (Acid Dreams), and it’s always fascinating to see how the same issues crop year after year (or in the case of my medieval stuff, century after century). Much of Acid Dreams deals with the perils of having unregulated government institutions who can freely violate the rights of the American people. Although the NSA isn’t feeding LSD to unsuspecting citizens — at least not that I’m aware of — the parallels are significant, and it’s frustrating to see how little progress we truly make from decade to decade. 

One book that I found does actually offer a ray of hope at the end is The Closing of the Western Mind. Dealing with how Constantine’s conversion of the Roman Empire to Christianity affected ancient traditions of reason and philosophy, the book often seems a little more ideological than I think author Charles Freeman intended. Although I love Greek philosophy and am all in favor of looking at the world rationally, I found some of his treatment of Christian thinkers like Augustine to be a little one-sided. Still, he ends the book on a positive note with Aquinas reviving the Aristotelian tradition. Perhaps it’s because I tend to favor Plato over Aristotle and Augustine over Aquinas, but I’m not sure that Aquinas did as much good as Freeman suggests he did, and I know that Augustine certainly had more to offer than Freeman admits. But it was definitely a well-reasoned, articulate book and very enjoyable to read.