Project ideas from my recent trip to Portugal, to speak at the University of Aveiro CICECO…

Tile / Azulejo

  • Tile as an external building surface covering: it is sanitary, durable. Why don’t we see more of this?
  • ceramic picture frame (presumably molded); seen in Aveiro museum
  • computer-based printing on tiles
  • Kintsugi building facade
  • Make azulejo wainscotting for building common space remodel at Marlo — but a New York scene
  • Nativity scene, but implemented as flat tiles.

Other decorative arts

  • Family crests/seals, but with readable QR codes

Wine / Alcohol

  • Drink more port; port and tonic
  • Vermouth making
  • They still crush grapes by feet in Douro valley. Put a QR code on the bottle, that will allow you to see a video of the people crushing “your” bottle of wine.

Book Idea: The Bats of Coimbra

  • Small detail noticed during a tour of the library at the University of Coimbra: a colony of bats was kept resident for 250 years to eat insects (which would otherwise damage the books). Leather table clothes were used to protect the tables from the bat excrement.
    • Work in the Jesuits as early-modern naturalists/problem solvers (they would have run the university by then?); international network of scholars. Suppression of the jesuits has to occur somewhere -interludes on biolgy of bads, how they see and hear, family structure, lifespan, and cleanliness (like in Moby Dick)
    • The Coimbra student uniform looks like bats
    • Artistic style: azulejo style paintings (with appropriate changes in color palette during the different periods). Night time are pointilistic black/blue to represent echolocation
    • Sell the book (bilingual) at the gift shop in Coimbra

Scholarly questions that might be answerable

  • Do there exist journal articles on monographs on the bats of the Coimbra library in particular, or keeping bats in libraries in this period in general? Ask a librarian.
  • How lng did the library exist before they needed bats?
  • Who/what/where/when/how many bats in the original colony?
  • Did they need to repatriate or euthanize the bats to keep the population constant? How did that work?
  • Who were the cartekares of the bats over the years?
  • What happened at the end? How were they liberated? (How/when/what?)
  • What species of bat?
  • Was Coimbra the first Universty to do this, or was it a common practice? Where did the ideas come from?
  • Is there student folklore at Coimbra about bats? Were there any famous/noteworthy bats?

Other miscellany

  • Travel idea: Build a raft and then raft down the Donnau river or the Douro river. Sort of like a camping trip, but on a raft, and with civilization (and wine) at hand.
  • Academic costumes are cool (c.f. Coimbra)
  • Secular third orders (e.g. Carmelites, Franciscans, Dominicans)
  • Philosophy/theology: How might one integrate the philosophy of Derek Parfit into Scholasticism (definitely not an easy fit, but the idea of personal identity seems to have some Thomistic threads)
  • The Maias

Things to do back in NY

  • Classical fencing with Maesto Martinez — inspired by tales of fencing in the Maias and general swordsmanship culture of Portugal
  • Swimming
  • Get back into drinking port
  • Latin & gregorian chant