The history of Florence, as rich in deeds of violence as in creative works of imagination, affords serious people much food for thought, not all of it of the pleasant sort that encourages optimism about human nature
Of the many, possibly apocryphal, stories about Diogenes, I like the one where he came to visit Plato bearing a basket of figs, which everybody in Athens knew were the man’s favorite snack. Diogenes meant to treat him to a few figs in the basket, but instead Plato wolfed down the lot, leaving none for Diogenes and leading him to exclaim: “You just can’t control the animal in you! And you call yourself a philosopher?”
In this lesson we learn how to talk about things around the house, review definite article and the verb to be, and get introduced to some descriptive adjectives that should be immediately useful.
His performance confirmed this was a setup. His handlers set this earliest debate ever to display his decrepitude. The NY Times headlined online just a couple hours after the event, “Democrats Talk About Replacing Biden on the Ticket.”
But beyond commercial rivalry and the Guelph/Ghibelline feud, there is the fact that all these little Tuscan cities–especially Siena–were ferociously competitive, both internally and with rival cities. They competed not just for commercial domination and military might, but also for beauty.
Before going to bed, I made the mistake of checking the news and found clips of “the debate.” I exhausted my vocbbulary of Americanisms drawn from Captain Billy’s Whizz Bang. Gee Whillikers. Holey Moley.
One of the topics that ought to come up at the Thursday Biden-Trump debate, but won’t, is the fate of the U.S.S. Dwight D. Eisenhower, CVN-69.
A venerable old derelict who washed parked cars up and down the little street where I first lived in London had been born in a house next door to Winston Churchill’s. His only character flaw was drinking sixteen pints of bitter every evening, and as I never owned a car he felt he could talk to me with a frankness that rose above mercantile niceties.
