Skip to main content

32 Days : Traces of Trieste

32 Days until I experience L-Space when reading Terry Pratchett, and not because I can't find a book in the Reid Library.

Today I was read a historical monograph of the benandanti of the Fruili region of Italy in the 16th Century. The epically named The Night Battles is a fabulous read, mostly for the extraordinary images of the male witches of the region fighting with fennel and sorghum stalks to determine the fertility of the land and the nefarious Inquisition transforming their agrarian Holy Legions to Demonic Legions by sheer bloody-mindedness.



Aquileia Basilica

Fruili is the only region of Italy I have actually visited, and the towns of Trieste, Montefalcone and Aquileia mentioned in the text are the towns I know from my few days there with Kim. While reading The Night Battles I could picture the region as I remember it, although my visit in 2003 is separated by oceans of time and context from my reading today.

Today I am looking forward to the end of my year of study so I can read more monographs of places I have visited, bringing them to life again in my mind, my memories of them having become a little threadbare from repeated handling in the last few years.

NOTE: Google Books only gives you the first four pages of each chapter to read. If you search for a key word that will be on the majority of pages in the chapter it will bring up enough pages for you to construct the rest of the chapter. That is how I get around books that are not in the library ... L-Space in truth!

Trieste

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Textbook

Trust me, they know the climate science Let’s imagine for a moment that the 1% of Australia, with their university degrees, access to the best climate science and neoliberal think tank papers and their dominance in politics, were acting in rational self-interest. They know that the water and energy wars are coming and they have a country with unique assets: No land borders Renewable energy resources Space and minerals Industries that specialise in extracting minerals Industries that can be turned to R&D and manufacturing An education system to get citizens to the point of carrying out necessary R&D And a politically apathetic population that believes whatever the politicians tell them through monopolised and crippled information outlets. To be honest, if I were a conservative politician in Australia (and the way I was brought up, I may as well be), this is what I would do to ensure my political and social survival: I would claim the government didn’t believe i
Post a Comment
Read more

Full Contact Origami

When I was a secretary at ADI, spending my days: a) writing up tutorials for my Uni course, b) having countless running email conversations with workmates and Kristen in Canberra, and c) not really doing anything I had a vast word file of all the jokes I had ever received. I am sure I have it SOMEWHERE in my box of important papers, but this one, recently sent to me again, was one of my all time favourites. I use the phrase ‘full contact origami’ all the time, usually during my ‘torment a barfly’ routine during which I tell sozzled Lotharios that I am a retired World Bootscooting champion who is looking to move into acting in karaoke video clips and was born on Ayers rock because my mum wanted me to channel Azaria Chamberlain’s spirit. Blessed are the jokers, because they will get mates rates at the bar in heaven. The following was published in The New York Times. This is a NYU college admissions application essay question, and an actual answer written by an applicant: Qu
Post a Comment
Read more