Found Artifacts

Pardon my taking this day off from the usual fare at Irenic Thoughts to divert to the personal and share with you some recent photographic work of mine, which I call Found Artifacts. The photos were taken on my trip (with my wife and daughter) to Italy and France in June of 2007. A decidedly old school feel is intended for the forty photos at the website, four of which are displayed here.

The camera used was a Holga camera on 120 format black and white film. The pictures use the particular nature of that less-than-perfect, all-plastic toy camera from China to create images designed to look less like contemporary photography and more like found artifacts. They are new images made to feel as if they have been lost in the photo album of a well-traveled, eccentric uncle; collecting dust on a forgotten shelf in the attic since between the world wars.

The photos are exhibited online at planetanimals.com/foundartifacts/. Our travels from a more up-to-date, digital photography perspective are found here Irenic Thoughts: Travel.

peace,
Frank+
The Rev. Frank Logue, Pastor

Capisco solo un po' d'Italiano

Roman soldier impersonators on break
The headline means, "I only understand a little Italian." That is probably an exageration. The truth is I can handle a few greetings and understand almost no Italian. I think this through in today's religion column for the Tribune & Georgian. Writing of our recent trip to Italy and France I say,

This is where I confess to not being as bad as I wanted to be. It helps to know that I have found in traveling on four continents, that making jokes in other languages is fun. The native speakers enjoy it immensely as it gives them a chance to laugh at me as well as with me. I have pulled off some pretty good jokes by the right use of a limited vocabulary.

The odd little phrase book we bought in Italy offered a lot of choice ways to make a joke. I just never had the courage to speak up.

For example, think of the possibilities to say to a guard in The Uffizi Gallery in Florence, the oldest art museum in the world. While looking admiringly on a painting by da Vinci or Michaelangelo, I could have said “Ha anche altri colori?” which means “Have you got any other colors?” Or I could have used the Italian for “Is it under warranty?” “I have just had an accident” “Do you have something cheaper?” “a viper has bitten me” or the ever useful phrase from the book, “I must insist on being compensated.”

There would have been that awkward pause while the guard decided if he heard me correctly. Then the second pause as he considered if I meant what I said. Finally, as I smiled, would come the dawning realization that is was a joke. He would have gone home telling that story.

Of course, it could have gone wrong. He could have misunderstood and been offended. Then I could have just used another phrase from the book like “I have been in the sun too long” or “I had an electric shock.”

The full column is online here: Nothing is lost in translation with the language of God.

This is the end of mining my recent three-week vacation for blog posts. Tomorrow this blog returns to the regular programming. In the meantime, I will share a few more photos from our trip. They don't necessarily illustrate this post, but they are one final look at our vacation.

And for one last look at our phrase book, I find it's fun to mix phrases from part of the book, so you get the Italian for, "I suffer from insomnia and a poor appetite. Can you deal with it temporarily?" Or you can always try, "I've lost a lot of blood. Can I continue on my journey?" I'm sure tourists must need these phrases everyday. After all, they're in the book.

peace,
Frank+
The Rev. Frank Logue, Pastor

Cafe scene in Rome, Italy


Two scenes of Rome, Italy

Todi, Italy at night

The Tyber River in Rome

Florentine shop owner

Michaelangelo's David


An actor pretending to be a statue and a real statue

Assisi, Italy

Griffin on a cliff over the Mediterranean Sea

France's rocky Cote d'Azur


Two views of Provence

A house in Villecroze, France


Two scenes from Villecroze, France

A doorway in Villecroze, France

A fountain in Villecroze, France with grape vines for shade


Two places to be with God - a Jean Cocteau-designed chapel and trees on a hike in Provence

Taking a break on a 12km hike in France

An olive branch in front of the church steeple in Villecroze

Inside the H&M store in Marseilles

Driving in Provence, France


Lavender growing in Provence

Provincial landscape from Les Baux

Connections

Todi, Italy seen from the countryside
Isn't it odd how you meet someone and then soon after, you see that person all over the place? How many times you must have passed by one another before, but you never had met and so there was no spark of recognition, no connection. Then, once you meet, there the person is at the grocery store, in the car ahead of you at the red light, everywhere.

Yesterday, I was with my wife at the Fourth of July parade in Saint Marys and we ran into a LOT of people we know. We also passed by a lot of people with no recoginition. Yet even those we didn't recognize are people we may meet and come to know well later. But we passed by without knowing one another yesterday.

One connection we made on our recent trip to Italy is that we lived for a week in Todi, Italy. It was a small medeival village perched on a hill in Umbria, a region in central Italy. I would never have imagined that I had any knowledge of anyone who lived in Todi. Yet, while there, we saw various things about Jacopone da Todi (c.1236–1306) an early Franciscan buried beneath the altar at church near our apartment.

I decided to Google Jacopone on our return. Here is some of what I discovered:

The former proud doctor of law, Jacopo dei Benedetti, mocked and scoffed at by the boys in the streets of Todi, received the nickname of Jacopone. Once, saddled and bridled like an ass, he crawled on all fours in the public square of Todi; on another occasion, to the great confusion of his family, he appeared at a wedding in his brother's house, tarred and feathered from top to toe. When asked by a citizen to carry home a pair of capons for him, Jacopone brought them to the man's family tomb, saying that this was his true house. Jacopone's folly was however the folly of the Cross, as he says:

Senno me pare e cortesia
Empazir per lo bel Messia.
(A wise and courteous choice he'd make
Who'd be a fool for the dear Lord's sake.)

I found that in addition to becoming a Fool for Christ, he is also the likely author of the 13th century Latin hymn Stabat Mater Delarosa. Oddly enough, my wife, Victoria, and I wrote a Stations of the Cross service earlier this year in which we used the text of that hymn within the service. We had quoted the village of Todi's best-known poet a few months before coming to spend a week there.

It's odd how these connections work. I think it shows how the world is smaller and the communion of saints more closely woven together than we usualy appreciate.

Have you experienced this sort of surprise connection as well?

peace,
Frank+
The Rev. Frank Logue, Pastor

PS: Here is a link to some of Jacopone's poetry: Selected poetry of Jacapone da Todi

Cuurious about "our" apartment instead? The rental information is here: Casa LeFavi. It's owned by the Rev. Bob LeFavi, the priest at St. Luke's Effingham, another recent church plant in the Diocese of Georgia.



More photos of Todi, click any of the photos here to see a larger version of the same picture.

Todi today as Jacopone might have trouble recognizing it.

A resident walks one of the steep streets of Todi.


Two views of the same street with one of the town's many cats.

The main square where Jacopone was once humiliated



A Todi street by night


Todi's narrow medieval streets

Todi bathed in that Umbrian light painters so craved