Two severed fingers of Galileo found 300 years later

My italian is stupid. I took seven classes (quarters) but remain non conversant. I've read a lot of stuff in italian..
and, yes, remain stupid.
Talk to me in italian and I'll stare at you.

That's me but in French. I can decipher a couple of spoken words here and there but to keep up a decent adult level conversation in French? Tres impossible!

Give me a bit and I'll work it out. Most italians don't have the time.

So it goes. Most italians have been kindly to me. I hear France is different.
I take these as simplifications.

I have very little interaction with French speaking individuals these days but you'd be surprised how many French speakers there are living in the Upper East Side of Manhattan.

I remember for my high school trip to Paris and I tried to ask the cashier at a book store about the price of a Batman comic (the text was written in French, which fascinated me at the time) and he either was pulling my leg or my Boston accent made my French sound like zombie speak because he couldn't understand me.

I always found his hair much more interesting.

Is there any of his hair "remaining" in private collections or public archives?

Do they still move?

I believe George may have mentioned that the middle finger still twitches.

Anywhere else in France, they probably would have understood you perfectly. Parisiannes don't have much reputation for dealing with with other accents.

I don't know but that would make an excellent Christmas gift!

Speaking about bones ...

Two 1499 skull shrines in the monastery of Bentlage (in Rheine, north of Münster/Westphalia) ... with some hundreds of more relics.





(Own photos - sorry for the bad quality, but it's rather inside that room and you aren't allowed to use flash and tripod)

How do they know they belong to Galileo? Fingerprints?

We saw a shop assistant speaking english with someone. When it came to our turn, he realised we were native English speakers and he would only speak french. My friend had a bad time with that trip and had enough. He jumped the counter, grabbed him by the throat and told him if didnt help us he could lie down, bleed and wait for an ambulance. The shop assistant then proceeded to speak fluent English, better than ours (almost).

Ah, a friend of my father's, John Farrow, wrote a book about Damien.. I read it in my teens. Good man, it seems, though I'm not much of a saint follower. 'Course, he wasn't a saint back then.

I can see that, re primary sources.. I had some fun tracing statements or ideas from secondary source writer to writer, seeing where the kernal of a concept, or even an error, seemed to start.. My interests did cover the history of the piazzas' formation and what happened in them, but I also followed travellers' commentaries - Montaigne, for example. I'm not smart enough or rich enough to dig through early books in countries far away but I admire those who do. There was an a2ker of yore (I think it was a2k and not abuzz) named Mistral - he spent a lot of time, if I remember correctly, with old books in libraries. I think he was an amateur, but intense one, and that described me at the height of my interest. Again, if I remember right, he had walked italy tip to toe and back. My other interest re piazzas was the experiential qualities of moving through, say, tight byways into a large sunlit space, or the societal qualities of the spaces - where to conduct hangings, later named saints preaching, burnings of paintings and trinkets, horse races, dog walking, old men in overcoats convening, political protests, street markets...

Much as I researched, I never scratched the surface..

I would love to drive a motorcycle from tip to top of Italy. Id get a BMW and begone. The only problem is enough padding for my camera, in case I "lay it down".

Good question. I suppose they can do dna now.. (isn't he buried in the Santa Croce basilica?

Oooh, do it! And then write about it, like DH Lawrence.

Or, this guy - Bill Marzano. I still have a clipped old article from Conde Nast Traveler about his driving a jerky circle from Genoa to Bologna to Rimini to Rome via Ancona (and much more) in a Maserati Spyder. No link, the article is not apparently online.

Oooh, do it! And then write about it, like DH Lawrence.

Or, this guy - Bill Marzano. I still have a clipped old article from Conde Nast Traveler about his driving a jerky circle from Genoa to Bologna to Rimini to Rome via Ancona (and much more) in a Maserati Spyder. No link, the article is not apparently online except in abstract.