The Feast of St. Andrew

Today, 30 November, is the feast day of St. Andrew, patron saint of fishermen and brother of St. Peter. It was Andrew who introduced the boy with the loaves and fish to Jesus.

Viterbo, like many places in Italy, has a Church of St. Andrew. It is a beautiful Romanesque church with remains of 13^th century frescoes. Closed for many years, it was recently reopened. Traditionally the priest of this church would place a chocolate fish in the holy water basin for each of his clerks and also for the bishop of Viterbo on the occasion of the feast day. For this reason it became custom for the Viterbese to give each other brightly wrapped, chocolate fish as signs of friendship and affection. Young children leave an empty plate on the windowsill the evening of 29 November and when they awake the next morning they find foil-wrapped fish that St. Andrew has left for them.

These fish can be purchased all over town as the feast day approaches. Our fish is dark chocolate, of course, wrapped in deep pink foil. We purchased it from L'Antica Latteria, a short walk from our old apartment.

Herbert

I want to take a moment to interrupt my Northern trip narrative to relate an amusing story. Today in calculus class one of the students stopped me to point out something on the floor. I took a look at it, announced it was a small, brown scorpion and kept teaching. They insisted on stopping to examine it, but since it wasn’t going anywhere fast we eventually were able to continue our discussion of the formal definition of the definite integral as it ambled about the floor. Alas, no pictures since I'm not in the habit of bringing my camera to class with me. After class, Herbert, a.k.a. Herbie the Lovely Bug, was moved back to his natural habitat. The amusing part for me wasn’t actually the bug, but the fact that few of the students had a clue as to who/what "Herbie" was referring to and the few that did recall it as a Lindsey Lohan movie. How sad is that?

Pisa: 19 November 2012

We recently returned from our first long school trip of the year. This time it was 5 nights and 6 days in Pisa, Torino and Milano. I will be organizing my thoughts and editing my pictures as I post over the next few days.

Our first stop was Pisa while in route to Torino. It was a quick stop, a total of 3 hours, just as our previous visit had been. Again, there isn’t really that much to see in Pisa once you get beyond the Duomo and surroundings including the Leaning Tower. The weather was similarly dark and foreboding as it was for our last trip which provided some interesting contrasts for exterior pictures.

The main doors are covered with copper panels depicting biblical scenes. The copper weathers to a lovely green patina which is sometimes removed by constant rubbing of visitors. One of my favorites is below. I’m not sure what the scene is supposed to be, but the dog and the fact that he has been touched often enough for the copper color to still be bright makes me smile.

During this trip, however, for some reason unknown to man or beast, the Duomo was open and free to visitors, so in we went. It is easy to say it is just another monstrously large, impressively decorated church, because it is. It has a very nice mosaic nave in the Byzantine style with a twelve foot tall pulpit which looks out toward both the altar and the back of the church.

You get a sense of the layout in this picture taken from the rear as you enter the main doors of the cathedral.

The city fathers made an interesting choice when siting the church. Rather than placing it in amongst the other buildings of the city, they created a large, open space for the Duomo and its associated buildings. The baptistery is an polygonal building opposite the main entrance to the Duomo.

Amy opted to purchase a ticket and explored the inside while taking pictures for the rest of us. The centerpiece is the octagonal baptismal font with associated altar.

You can go up to view the plan from above. The building has marvelous acoustics which are, for obvious reasons, impossible to reproduce here.

Amy enjoyed the lion holding up a column on its back.

Along one side of the grassy piazza is the Sinope, a sort of burial area which has an aura of a cloister when toured, as was possible with Amy’s entrance ticket.

We didn’t attempt to climb the tower and, in fact, never got terribly close to it. But, a trip to Pisa wouldn’t be complete without the obligatory picture including its impressive lean.

Apologies

It’s interesting how time flows and how habits can be broken. I was in the habit of reporting here, from the routine and mundane to the exciting and unbelievable. Then I stopped. It just didn’t seem like there was anything to say. That wasn’t true. Many things were happening.

• We had a six day visit from our friend Jonathan Berken who helped us see all of the familiar places around us through a fresh set of eyes. He also presented his graduate work on second language acquisition to the faculty and students.
• We took another school day trip, this time to Ostia Antica.
• We suffered the loss back in the states of our boy, Mr. Squeaky Biscuits and just a few days ago my Uncle Dan.
• I had more work done on my teeth, again.
• We had a new fruit store open near us and an old bar close.
• The weather turned bad, good, bad and then good again.
• We harvested olives with our resident director, Pat.
• Oh yeah, and we did our jobs teaching and advising many students.

Of course, there was much more as well. Life was happening here and I didn’t tell people about it. My apologies! I will try not to let it happen again