One day last week I stopped to buy some spring onions, now in season, from a farmer selling them by the roadside. They have sizeable bulbs, which is the part the Italians eat, discarding the tops. It’s a common sight here.
If the most popular legend of its founding had any validity, Pisa would have been originally a Greek colony, founded by people from Elis in the Peloponnesus, who named it after their own Pisa, the nearest town to the site of the Olympic Games.
A new movie I might see is “Civil War.” Texas, Florida and California supposedly secede together and fight the rest of the ex-USA. Most people are thinking, No way nutty California would join with sensible Florida and Texas. But that’s just the moviemakers gaining free publicity.
A slightly revised version. To avoid any misunderstanding, the speaker is the eternal spirit of Simon Magus.
This Monday a great solar eclipse will cross the United States. It is the second such omen in the last decade, which is itself an omen, as one total eclipse so closely followed by another has not been seen in the country since its founding. Hence commentators are quoting the Book of Exodus: “And it shall come to pass, if they will not believe thee, neither hearken to the voice of the first sign, that they will believe the voice of the latter sign.”
In Pisa every year on the last Saturday in June, two groups of representatives from the different areas of the city meet at either end of the Ponte di Mezzo. The representatives are dressed in Medieval garb and divided into two teams, one for the north side of the river, the other for the south.
Those who reject Christ, reject the God who sent him to die for the salvation of mankind.
The creation of the city-commune in Pisa, Lucca, Siena, and Florence would have enormous ramifications for the future of the Europe. The institution of the commune is a more fundamental revolution than the establishment of the nation-state, and it will outlive the nation-state, in whose birth it played a significant part.
The other week I came across news reports of a crime that was apparently committed some years ago, but one that still captivates the mind.
