At last! The falling stars of San Lorenzo honoured properly in our household!

Everything I know about the meaning of San Lorenzo:

Lawrence of Rome (c. 225 – 258) was one of the seven deacons of ancient Rome who were martyred during the persecution of Valerian. Lawrence is said to have been martyred on a grill. During his torture, Lawrence cried out "This side’s done, turn me over and have a bite." - Wikipedia.

There is a famous poem about the martyred San Lorenzo by Giovanni Pascoli that everyone quotes:

	San Lorenzo, io lo so perché tanto di stelle per l'aria tranquilla arde e cade, perché si gran pianto nel concavo cielo sfavilla...

my translation:

Saint Lawrence, I know why so many
stars burn and fall through the tranquil air:
it is because your tears
are sparkling in the concave sky...

How many years have we been in Italy on August 10, the day of San Lorenzo, known for its association with falling stars? Hundreds? Well, at least 10. As usual, the nights of August the 10th and 11th were overcast. Never yet caught the effect of the falling tears.

Meanwhile, astronomically speaking, the annual passage of the earth through the "Perseid meteor shower" continues, although the actual peak night is now really August the 12th. Thank goodness someone gave me a heads-up to check the sky again last night.

The night was so clear, I wished I had a star map to learn some additional constellations. Luckily I can recognize Cassiopeia, and the darkest part of our balcony faces it, because I looked it up this morning and I now know that the Perseids fall from Perseus, which is right below Cassiopeia and beside Andromeda, so we were looking at exactly the right band of the sky, without even knowing it. I had a sensation of a flash/fade from the corner of my eye. Once. Hmm - am I imagining it? Twice? By the sixth time, I realized this was it! (Here is the perfect place to check it out: http://stardate.org/nightsky/meteors/)

It was like magic. And as always, it is the pile-up that makes the feeling so intense:

• thinking of the meteorites as astronomical objects and the shower as a purely astronomical event. How cool is the universe?
• thinking of the story of Perseus and Andromeda and Cassiopeia, and how wonderful it is that they are linked in the constellations (see below).
• thinking of San Lorenzo and his martyrdom.
• thinking of the poem and its metaphorical linkage of the meteor showers with the martyr's tears.

By the way, Andromeda was the daughter of the beautiful queen Cassiopeia, who, in punishment for her mother's bragging, was chained to a rock to be sacrificed to a sea monster. She was rescued by Perseus as part of his adventure. Further connections: He also killed the Medusa and here in the museum in Pesaro is an enormous ceramic Medusa by a local ceramicist, (copied from Caravaggio's self-portrait as the Medusa) which killed the artist by falling on him, a continuation of the Medusa's malevolent spirit...

The marigold is wondering rather nervously:
If you could know everything, would it ALL connect?

Summer Holiday

Like everyone who can, I like my summers to be as different as possible from the school year. We take our children to a beach town on the Adriatic in Italy, where we eat and play for a couple of months. No homework, no planning. It makes a brilliant immersion experience for all of us: The kids have to play in Italian, I have to grocery shop in Italian, and look for novels to read in Italian, the newpapers are Italian, our friends are Italian (even though a few of them speak English brilliantly - a shout-out to Barbara here). We can't get things done when we want, because life doesn't work that way here. We can't go shopping on a whim, or get milk at the last minute, because retail doesn't work that way here. The slower pace is mandatory.

However, I do like to observe the local ritual of the apertivo as faithfully as possible. The idea is to stop around 6pm or 7pm or 8pm for one delightful drink, and a couple of snacks. Each bar offers a particular selection and a particular atmosphere. You know the other patrons, by sight if not by name. You know which weather conditions are best suited to which location.

This year, an old moribund chestnut, Aperol, has been revived by a TV ad (see link) into the absolute in cocktail chic: an Aperol spritz, (or sprizz) made by mixing Aperol with white wine, preferably sparkling, and/or water, preferably sparkling. And it is a fantastic drink! Refreshing after a few hours at the beach, light on the alcohol so you can actually go on to eat comfortably after you've had one. For me it is especially fun because Aperol reminds me of a couple of friends we may not get to see here this year, the most absolute in chic of any people I have EVER met, and the husband has been drinking Aperol all along. Now the world has caught up to him. (Yes, a shout-out to Poul and Gitte!)

This brings me to a project I have underway, that I hope to accomplish before I die (I estimate I have about another 40 years), which is to understand the local winds. A sea-side location, a long history of piracy, and winds of evident character, each with a name, all contribute to the interesting nature of this project. So far I have understood that the winds continually circle around the compass. I have just about memorized the names of the winds of the eight main compass points, and where they come from and how they feel. AH! I can say: like standing inside a blow-dryer (confusingly called a "phon" in Italian), must be a garbino - hot and dry from Africa. OH! Cold and blowing in through the kitchen door, must be a bora, from the north. Overnight we get a wind from inshore. Many late afternoons have a cool and humid scirocco, also from Africa, but more easterly, picking up humidity coming over the Mediterranean Sea. Our doors bang suddenly, open or shut, as the wind moves around.

What I love is the way things work together - ie in a scirocco it is nice to get an aperitivo at the bar by the beach, in a garbino you need a bar with air-conditioning, if it might rain, the bar at the other side of centro is best, and so on. As well, this has been the summer of reading Venice. (Be patient! It does connect.) I started with The City of Falling Angels, by John Berendt and Suffer the Little Children, a Donna Leon murder mystery set in Venice (thanks and a shout-out to Michela). Death in Venice (of which I love book and movie and Mahler - time to enjoy them again) concerns a scirocco in Venice (a wind we know, and we are just down the same piece of coast, with the same weather). When I am back with my library I will get to some books Berendt mentions: Henry James's The Aspern Papers, and The Ambassadors, and the Cantos of Ezra Pound. While I'm here I am looking at The Venetian Empire, by Jan Morris. To tie it all together, I also read Islands and Lagoons of Venice, by photographer Fulvio Roiter (see link), in which there is a lovely old map of Venice with a wind rose. The commentary in this book is by Peter Lauritzen, who figures in The City of Falling Angels! I should be writing this at the bar with an Aperol spritz in hand, but, Oh well.

Although so much seems old-world here, I do have a new-fangled mobile wireless modem, (Do we have those in Canada?) What makes it different from Wi-Fi, which is less common here, is that you don't have to find a Hot-Spot. I would love to move my computer to a bar to write something. That would be cool. I'll be sure to mention it if it happens.

The marigold asks, but not really nervously:
Why can't there be one-world technology? It would be so useful to those of who want to look up archeological info on-site at ruins, or sheet music at the opera, or bird names at the beach, etc, etc. One still requires a number of devices to do it properly. Isn't it micro-chip implant time yet?

Ghost Lilacs

On the Victoria Day weekend, I was driving by myself on Highway 401 between Belleville and Toronto, which is pretty boring. However, it was lilac season, and I was noticing little clumps of lilacs by themselves, or lines of lilac bushes near the highway. I was also admiring the old lilac trees around the old farmhouses, and thinking about the fact that lilacs are not native to Ontario, and I suddenly wondered if these lonely ones mark where houses had once been. These ghost houses would only be visible during lilac season, otherwise the green bushes would blend in with the bush. I thought it would be an interesting project to map the lilacs, and compare it with old county maps showing settlements and houses and farms. Some would be escaped strays, but probably not most.

I love the idea of mapping. I have always wanted to map the birds nests that are visible in the early spring when the trees are bare, so I can follow the development of the baby birds when the leaves come in. I think it would be a very child-friendly mapping process, too.
I guess mapping outcroppings of lilacs would have to be done with GPS positioning, in order to overlay it properly.

I love the idea of the lilacs being the ghosts of the houses. How tangible, yet intangible. MMMM.

The marigold wonders nervously:
Is there enough time in one life-time to figure out these kinds of questions?
Is this sufficiently interesting to be a thesis in horticulture? Urban studies?
Has someone already thought of it? Will I ever know?
The marigold wanders nervously back to the first question.
I also love thinking up potential theses. Can you tell?