A Carpe Diem Snapshot:
Yesterday evening we bid farewell (for the summer) to a couple who have become good friends over the past year, after their visit to Piety Hill last summer. We took Mom to a classic Italian restaurant reminiscent of her first visit to Rome in 1962 when all the men still wore finely cut suits. Lo Scarpone, on the Janiculum, has been in operation since 1849 and reflects the history of the hill. Beneath our feet in the photo are the extensive catacombs of San Pancrazio, leading to the basilica down the street. The restaurant used to store its wine collection within these now-empty tunnels until the bottles began to disappear (that's another story I probably shouldn't put in print!). The name itself means "big, worn-out old shoe" and the story is that it was a nickname of Garibaldi given to him by the then-proprietor of the inn that is now the restaurant.
Liturgical: Friday of the Seventh Week of Easter
"...when you were younger, you used to dress yourself and go where you wanted;
but when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will dress you and lead you where you do not want to go."
Sanctoral: Paschal Baylon (1540-1592), Aragon, Spain. Patron saint of cooks, shepherds, and Eucharistic Congresses. Pascal and the Kitchen Angels by Tomie de Paola.
Blessed Antonia Messina, Italy +1935 Martyr of purity, patroness of rape victims.
Human: 1861 First color photograph, of a tartan ribbon, is shown by Scottish scientist James Clerk Maxwell to the Royal Institution in London.
1940-- Germany invaded Belgium, France, and Luxembourg during World War II.
1954-- the US Supreme Court ruled that racial segregation in public schools was unconstitutional, in the landmark case of Brown v. Board of Education.
1983-- Lebanon’s President-elect Bashir Gemayel was assassinated.
Natural: 1749 Birthday of Edward Jenner – English physician and scientist who pioneered the concept of vaccines and created the smallpox vaccine, the world's first vaccine. The terms vaccine and vaccination are derived from Variolae vaccinae ('pustules of the cow'), the term devised by Jenner to denote cowpox. He used it in 1798 in the title of his Inquiry into the Variolae vaccinae known as the Cow Pox, in which he described the protective effect of cowpox against smallpox.
1970 Thor Heyerdahl and his crew crossed the Atlantic on the Ra II, a papyrus boat.
1990 the World Health Organization removed homosexuality from its list of mental illnesses.
Italian Word of the Day: Famigerato= notorious/infamous
Quote: "Seek not that the things which happen should happen as you wish; but wish the things which happen to be as they are, and you will have a tranquil flow of life." --Epictetus
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