Another lovely paragraph from The Students of Spalato:
"At scarcely five minutes walking distance from here, on the other side of the island, among the corn fields, olive terraces, and vineyards, in hidden peasant huts, sheep wool was being spun into yarn, just as it had been over a thousand years ago. The people baked their bread in the open over hot coals just as in the days when patricians paid their taxes in silk to the Doge of Venice. The fields were ploughed with wooden ploughs and the olives pressed for oil in stone tubs, as they had been in the days of the Roman imperators. Homespun was made on looms, and women washed white clothes in the brook and beetled them as of old, and at night wicks burning in oil lighted up the roughhewn table. In the bay white-sailed boats rocked on the water. Besides the smacks they had one other method of travel, by donkey. Autos never purred along the narrow paths, and only the butcher kept a horse, for hauling. Fishing was done at present in the same fashion it had been done in the time of the Illyrians by harpoons flung from the canoe-shaped, ancient barques."
This is kind of along the same lines as the architecture / physical remnants of the past post, but this seems more important to me. For one thing, because it serves as a reminder to me that before we had permanently affixed our lips to the tit of electricity, we got along FINE. We cooked, we had heat, we made stuff. We lived full lives. Not that I would ever want to live without electricity. Not at all. But it gives me comfort to know that it's really not that big of a deal, you know? It also makes me harken back to my Army days, wherein we regularly lived for weeks with no access to electricity. And it was FINE.
And then I decided to do a little annotation. Not that it's needed. It just amused me to use electricity in this manner.
patricians: Aristocrats or noblemen. Also, my last (not in the absolute sense) tattoo:
Doge of Venice: According to Wikipedia, the Doge was the "chief magistrate and leader of the Most Serene Republic of Venice for 1,100 years (697-1797). Doges of Venice were elected for life by the city-state's aristocracy. Commonly the man selected as Doge was the shrewdest elder in the city."
stone tubs: I know this is self-explanatory, but there are some cool pictures and videos at http://beitlehi.org/discover_olive_ritual if you want to check them out.
Roman imperators: Wikipedia says, "The Latin word imperator was originally a title roughly equivalent to commander under the Roman Republic. Later it became a part of the titulature of the Roman Emperors as part of their cognomen. The English word emperor derives from imperator via Old French Empereür."
beetled: Here's everything Wikipedia knows about the history of beetling: "Within Ireland, beetling was first introduced by Hamilton Maxwell in 1725. Beetling is part of the finishing of the linen cloth. The hammering tightens the weave and give the cloth a smooth feel. The process was gradually phased out, in lieu of Calendering. A similarity is the compression; however, with Calendering, the finish does not remain for the life of the cloth. This distinguishes it from Beetling." There are some super cool pictures of Beetling Machines to be found at https://www.gracesguide.co.uk/Mather_and_Platt . . . though of course that isn't the kind of beetling to which the novel is referring.
roughhewn table: I know, no explanation needed here, but I just wanted you to know that I found this on Wayfair (listed as a HOT DEAL! too): "Reclaimed Wood Industrial Farm Harvest 30" Dining Table by Napa East Collection $1,979.99 $2,200.00 10% Off Payments as low as $175/month. Heh heh. My car payment is $175 a month. Just seein' how the other half lives, man.
smacks: Merriam-Webster says: "a sailing ship (such as a sloop or cutter) used chiefly in coasting and fishing." I was pretty sure it wasn't a reference to Dig 'Em's favorite food, but I'd never heard of a ship that was called a smack before this.
Illyrians: people who inhabited a region in the western part of the Balkan Peninsula 800 B.C. to 600 A.D.-ish. The name is derived from a minor character in Greek mythology.
barques: Wikipedia? "A barque, barc, or bark is a type of sailing vessel with three or more masts having the fore- and mainmasts rigged square and only the mizzen (the aftmost mast) rigged fore-and-aft." So bigger than a smack, right? Riiiiight.
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