Saturday, July 31, 2004

The Feast of Sant Agrippina

From a postcard that Syl got (along with a badge) for pinning a dollar tothe goddess... "Sant'Agrippina di Mineo (guessing that she was no relationto Sal Mineo) was a beautiful, blond princess who was unmercifully tortured to death by the Emperor Valerion (the bastard) in 256 A.D. After her death,her body was taken from Rome to Mineo by three women: Bassa, Paula and Agatonice.Sant'Agrippina is the patron saint of thunderstorms, leprosy and evil spirits". (and I thought that they were holding that job for me)
So, we got there to find that we'd goofed up... they don't parade her through the streets until tomorrow, Sunday. We were early and the vendors were just starting to open up. Wandered through the streets, this is one of the oldest parts of the city... old like 300 years...not much really. Most of the architecture seems to be late 1800's. Old North Church (Christ Church) is here, where the lanterns to signal Paul Revere... "One if by land, Two if by sea..."were hung. There's an house of his around the corner.. dating back to the1690's (still not that old). It's an Italian neiborhood that has been cutoff from the rest of the city by the elevated Central Artery. The elevated has been cut down... the traffic is underground (Boston's Big Dig) and we'll see what happens to this area. I can't see how the old Italian ladies can afford to live there, even now.
Anyway... enough of my tour book writing.We found a place to eat... with a table at the open window onto the street. Payed 3x too much for a bottle of wine but had a nice meal... we even talkedto each other as neither of us had brought any reading material. We wanderedour way back through the street fair and Syl took my pic as I was sittingin a big inflatable chair. Sorry we don't have pics of
Madonna through the streets for you... just me in the comfy chair.

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