I don’t know how many of our readers s intend to vote in the next or any election, but if a vote is to be anything more than a shot in the dark at a tree rustling in the breeze, a citizen is morally obliged to spend a little time grappling with political realities
The Greeks’ love of competition and conflict is only the reverse side of their strong attachment to friends (including family) and community. These attachment were also a source of the great joy took in creating and celebrating beauty: They loved singing dancing, recitation of heroic poetry, parades, sacrifices and barbecues. All these pleasures were available at the great games
This post is extracted from the unpolished script for a subscription podcast series that should begin by the end of 2024.
Simple conversations, jobs, more present tense (andare), and the days of the week.
I haven’t paid much attention to the Olympics for years. It. has been a long time since the Games were a genuine amateur sport. All my life they have been big business that guaranteed endorsements and jobs to the winners. When the allowed professional basketball players in, it was a public declaration that they were giving up the pretense.
I’ve been in 15th century Florence, to be precise, colloguing with Petrarch, Pico della Mirandola, Savonarola, Cosimo and Lorenzo de’ Medici, Machiavelli, and others. As a traveler in time and space, I was eager to share my thoughts on the American present, which for them is an unimaginably distant future.
The present tense of verbs, vocabulary for getting around and talking about the weather.
While the Ciompi were clashing with the Grassi, Archbishop Giovanni Visconti’s nephew, Bernabò Visconti (who had allied himself by marriage to Mastino II della Scala of Verona), was constructing a powerful base in Central Italy by conquering papal territory on the Tuscan border.
The Guelph elite might have regained power permanently had the various families been able to work together in harmony, but the Donati, Adimari, and Tosinghi were constantly at odds.
Florence had always been close to Rome, and her relationship with the Papacy would be encouraged by the war which broke out between Florence and Ghibelline Pisa and then with Ghibelline Siena.
