I wrote to a friend about how depressed I have felt today. The reasons seem unfathomable. I'm not homeless, unemployed, friendless, ill or under indictment. In fact, I have TWO homes that need massive amounts of work, a job that I'm really tired of which pays a ridiculous amount, better friends than I deserve. I have raised avoiding doctors like the plague to an art form and I hope I am sneaky enough not to get arrested or burned for a witch. That particular hope, however, may be groundless since I've signed every anti-rightwing and pro-choice petition since 1964.

I found notes from a year or two ago that seem to be my paraphrase of a sentence I read somewhere: In America everything is changing; this country and thus the world is now constantly transforming, its noises becoming deafening and cruel.

I'm sure there were catastrophic disturbances in Castiglione d'Orcia as recently as during WW II, and yet I have only found one specific reference to turmoil there. It is from the fourteenth century and I have no idea yet whether or not Il Loggino even existed in this village then.

"...the little borgo of Castiglione, in that lively storm centre, the Val d'Orcia, looked with unconcealed hatred upon the monastery of Vivo because of a dispute about the use of certain meadows. In 1328 the Castiglionesi to the number of two hundred suddenly fell on the monastery, raised their banner over its campanile, pricked with their swords and lances, evidently in the spirit of rude horse-play, Frate Ranieri, who was celebrating the Mass, robbed the furniture and cattle, devastated the fields, in short, conducted themselves in a manner entirely worthy of their aristocratic exemplars."

F. Schevill
Siena The History of a Medieval Commune


Rather cheers me up, that does.


Posted by: Joanna / 11:58 PM

posted by Joanna @ 2/17/2004 09:24:00 AM