ROME 23/04 – Day 29: A bad nun and a bit with a dog

Rome enjoyed a new sunrise at 06:07 and looks forward to another beautiful building hue changing sunset this evening at 20:08. Seven minutes later the Ave Maria is supposed to ring… but won’t… mostly.

In the Novus calendar it is the Feast of St. Catherine of Siena, Patroness of Italy. In the Vetus calendar, she is celebrated tomorrow bumping the Sunday of Eastertide. Today, however, is the Feast of St Peter Martyr, who was killed, if memory serves, with a sword to the head by a Cathar assassin.  Those Cathars!  He is said to have, in life, conversed with Sts. Catherine of Alexandria, Agnes and Cecilia.

Welcome new registrant:

RikiPotsticker

There is a new Chinese potsticker place (and other dim sum) nearby at P.za Farnese.

I’m writing this part in the morning.  Today I have to finish a weekly piece for One Peter Five and get into Game 14 between Nepo and Ding.  This is it.  The last classical game for all the marbles.   A draw will result in a tie-break.  This has been a really exciting match.  In a way, I’m sort of glad that what’s his face isn’t in it.

Morning Mass brought me to look longer at a painting by the altar I used that I thought was St. Rita of Cascia.  It is really St. Giacinta (Hyacintha) Marescotti (+1640), a Franciscan.

Here are two photos of the painting, one with my older, Italian iPhone XR and one with my little Canon SX720 which you might remember that I (thanks to readers) repaired. HERE

What do you think?  Which is better?  Same position, same light, default settings. No touch ups.

And this…. 5.67MB

And this 1.91MB.  A quarter of the size of the first.  There has to be more data in the first, right?  However, it gets the colors right.

Here is a touch up of the first, using Adobe Photoshop Elements 10.

What say you?

More about her.  She was a bad nun.

Her given name would have pleased Dr. Lector, Clarice.  She was a frivolous thing even after a life-threatening event.  She had her heart set on a young Marquis who dumped her for her younger sister, so, to whitewash her shame she went into the convent.  She kept stashes of good stuff for herself, had only the highest quality of habits and received lots of visitors.  One day when she was ill a priest brought her Communion, saw her stuff, and read her the riot act.   Total conversion resulted.   She got rid of the stash and finery and during plague served the poor and sick in fasting and great mortifications.  When she died she had a terrific “fama sanctitatis”.  She is one of the patronesses of the Archconfraternity of the Pilgrims and Convalescents which is now revived at the parish.  Surely this is because of her work with the poor and ill.

After Mass I went, as one does, to my fishmonger.  Tonight, I told myself, its spaghetti with clams, vongole veraci, “da Zeta” and not in a restaurant where they charge criminally high prices for things you ought to be able to make yourself.   But, alas, most people roaming about for restaurants are tourists or short-stay folks, constrained to eat out.

This is one of the reasons I am so grateful for your donations so I have have a longer term place with a kitchen: I save huge money by cooking for myself.  Not only save, I enjoy it from the planning to the shopping to the prep to the execution and to the consumption.  Dishes, not so much.  I have, however, learned how to say “I am washing the dishes” in Hungarian: mosogatok (accent on the first syllable).

This morning, therefore, off to the fishmonger where I was greeted by the usual chorus, with a hearty, “What’up?”

Bye to the fish guy:

Hello to the veg stands.  A couple of shots.

Look at these baby artichokes.  Do you imagine them to be good?  Gotta get me some.

Hi to the flower guy, Pippo… and (I think) Milagra.

As usually happens, I catch myself smiling as a progress through the streets which sight, a grinning priest in a cassock carrying the groceries around elicits a great many “Buon giorno, padre!”s, also from the Carabinieri and soldiers on security around the area.

Purging the clams even more.  They say that they are purged.  Uh huh.  Trust, but verify.  You have to be careful with shell fish.

Speaking of, I was invited to a genuinely good restaurant recently and I had a bit of a fit.  Normally when something isn’t quite on par you can shrug and go “meh!” and move on.  However, this was with mussels, cozze.  They sent out some pasta with cozze and about a quarter of them didn’t open.   made serious and pointed comments to the waiter when he asked how it was.

Mussels are not mysterious.  You heat them.  They open.  If they don’t open, do NOT pry them open and – quod Deus avertat! – eat them.

From my point of view, having worked as a cook for years before seminary, it was not the fact that I got fewer mussels in my serving than I should have (that too, of course) but mainly that a cook would send out a dish with something so obvious that could make an unsavvy customer seriously ill.

If you have ever gotten sick from bad seafood, mussels, oysters, clams and the like, you know what I am talking about.  You feel like death might just be an attractive option.

Thus, I shall carefully purge my evening’s vongole for a few hours more. I will be careful not to attempt any that don’t open well.

I still have a few things to gather for the vongole feast this evening: white wine, bread.  I have in the wings some itty-bitty strawberries, fragoline, which I plan to dress with a little sugar and perhaps white wine, as the Romans do, instead of lemon, which is never bad.

Meanwhile,  white to move.

NB: I’ll hold comments with solutions ’till the next day so there won’t be “spoilers” for others.

GAME 14 TODAY!

I am now a chess.com affiliate which is handled by House of Staunton.