Livin' La Vita Nuova

In light of recent political events, I believe we are seeing the beginnings of what Zechariah wrote about almost 2,600 years ago.

I hope you don't mind me starting out with that line -- I read it yesterday in an article posted to Rapture Ready, "The Truth About Palestine" (which I recommend, it's fine reading), and I wanted to use it to set our minds back a few thousand years to a person who lived a century before Zechariah the Hebrew prophet's late sixth century but significantly west of Judah and Persia -- in this case, in Greece. The poet Sappho's work (translated by Mary Barnard with foreword by Dudley Fitts, ISBN 9780520272934) pretty much exists in fragments, but what we can read is certainly ... I wouldn't say inspirational, but very earthy, very natural, very real. (Take my word for it, I must keep going.)

O you who venture on Love's flowery way,
look around yourselves, I pray 
and see if any suffer as I do; 
I only beg to have my say
and once you've heard my gloomy roundelay
you'll be my judge and tell me if it's true ...

Jump forward to the year 1294 of our era and you think editors and critics are harsh now? Dante Aligheri (yes, THE Dante of Divine Comedy fame) was even harder on himself. In the series of thirty-one sonnets complete with inspiration, principally from a girl Dante saw TWICE in his life -- the Beatrice you always hear in connection with him, once when he was nine and she was eight and a second time nine years later -- we see in La Vita Nuova (translated by David R. Slavitt, ISBN 978067405093), something I did not think would be so mind-blowing to me. Amazing to watch a master of Italian dissemble himself for love and guide you on the way! Fun read, really.

During Sarah's reading the last few weeks, Martha and I've been reading with her Raina Telgemeier's graphic novel Drama (with color by Gurihiru, ISBN 9780545326988) centered on Callie, a middle-schooler who'd love to act but instead finds herself on the stage crew of Eucalyptus Middle School's production of Moon Over Mississippi in the midst of ... well, middle school drama that I don't seem to remember the likes of when I was in middle school in the mid 1980s. Torn between cute boys and pressuring herself to make a set worthy of Broadway, Callie may be rushing to do so much that she's leaving her friends behind ... anyway, this too is exciting and kept Sarah going to the end!

I appreciate that of any book, that once you start reading (or writing) it, that you are willing to finish it. I have five or six in both categories like that! Now, to the life I'm living -- this morning the kids and I had to take Martha to work in our Lumina because we dropped off our Town & Country van at Northwest Tire last night to get the dipstick taken out. Sounds like we're lazy, but we've had issues with it before and had it explained by a local Chevy dealer that our particular type of van has had that complaint lodged against it before. Last night we also grocery shopped (you would think so, but NOT something to do too late at night) and cleaned out the fridge before bed, which we needed to do!

And this morning, Jeffrey comes down the stairs with his left knee hurting five days before school is out -- Minot Public Schools ends this coming Wednesday! He limped and leaned on both Martha and I as we got her to work (and grabbed some breakfast -- mine was the best chocolate chip scone I've ever had!) and we thought he was starting a growth spurt AGAIN because Sarah's knees tend to ache the same way. And I think in my mind's back that when Jeffrey doesn't run I should worry ... about an hour after Martha's at work and just before we leave for school the kids are running which leaves me shaking my head. Again.

We will all grow up, we will all grow up ...

David