I am blessed by a possibility to invite you to Gallerie dell’Accademia in Venice where I have found the Muse Polyhymnia! The Muse inspires us to write and sing a Hymn to Easter! Hymn to Life! Polyhymnia – greek “the one of many hymns”, also spelt Polymnia. Muse Polymnia is the creation by Italian sculpture Antonio Canova.
“The most heavenly serenity and calm to be fond in the face of this statue, the elegant and youthful forms of which are united to an overall majesty that is fitting for a Muse”, writes Leopoldo Cicognara in Lettera Sulla Musa Polimnia
“Polyhymnia is on a hinge where she turns with the breath of air that blows when a windows is opened, and the pressure of the little finger of a damsel produces a marvelous effect”.
The effect is in the lifting of the energy to live and to create, celebrating Easter in a happy new way. We are inspired by beautiful Muse.
All creatures of our God and King,
lift up your voice and with us sing
alleluia, alleluia!
Thou burning sun with golden beam,
thou silver moon with softer gleam,
O praise him, O praise him,
alleluia, alleluia, alleluia!
A writer of hymns is known as a hymnodist. We are all a hymnodists now. Inspired by Polyhymnia let’s go at the table with a pen in a hands or with harp, lyre and lute. We are creating the Life in an infinite ways.
And you now “It should be simple and metrical in form, genuinely emotional, poetic and literary in style, spiritual in quality, and in its ideas so direct and so immediately apparent as to unify a congregation while singing it”.
Happy Easter! May the Muse Polymnia inspires You for Today and always!
Thank You for my cone of stracciatella I am licking now! As for me and it has deep roots from my childhood true Spring begins from a cone of ice-cream without a threat of laryngitis.
Vanilla ice cream with small, delicious shreds of dark chocolate – mmmm, it is mouthwatering. With this epitome of perfect taste I am happy to invite you in Bergamo, Northern Italy, where the door to the single place where you can try original taste of Stracciatella Gelato opens!
Gelato is the Italian word for ice cream, derived from the Latin word “gelātus” (meaning frozen). What differentiates gelato from ice cream is its dense, yet super creamy texture. This is mainly the result of two things: gelato is churned so that very little air is incorporated, so it’s less fluffy than ice cream; two, gelato at the gelaterias is stored at a higher temperature than most ice cream, so even though its dense it doesn’t freeze solid – like many ice creams left too long in the freezer.
The story of Stracciatella Gelato begins here on Largo Colle aperto 2/4, Bergamo, in cafe “La Marianna”. Please, come in and seat at the table you like.
“La Marianna” is a strong family-run business, and in Italy it means that father has unlimited power to involve his children to help than to live by the business. Enrico Panattoni, the youngest son, was responsible for stirring eggs in the soup-like dish called “Stracciatella”. “Stracciare” means “to shred” or “to tear up” in Italian and, indeed, that is how the soup looks after stirring some beaten eggs with some cheese in a good chicken broth.
The soup was the main dish in the menu of “La Marianna” in 60’s. The cafe was mecca for “Stracciatella” soup. But Enrico Panattoni was sad – every customer wanted to eat only the soup.
“It seems I have to stir eggs for the end of my life” he thinks even not asking a new client what he or she would like to order. Enrico was sure all clients want to eat this damn soup!
It happened in April in 1961. A girl had changed everything! This girl in a silk vanilla color blouse and dark chocolate-brown skirt in soft cream suede ballerina shoes opened “La Marianna”s door and Miracle had smiled to Enrico! He floated in her eyes and he knew she would not order the soup. She would order something different. “I would like, mmm, I want, I will, ge-la-to. Yeas, I would like a cone of gelato” the girl made her choice.
“Tuk, tuk, tuk – I hear every beat of my heart” Enrico happily noticed. “My dream, my old dream is on the way to its realization. Today I am going to present my creation. This girl will try my Stracciatella Gelato!”
After various and repeated experiments in tight secret from father, Enrico Panattoni created a particular gelato. His method of “drizzling in” melted chocolate creates the characteristic shreds – when melted chocolate hits the cold vanilla ice cream base it immediately hardens and breaks into small, brittle shreds – which are dispersed throughout the ice cream during the churning. The melted chocolate just remember the egg congeals into the boiling broth of the soup “Stracciatella”.
“You have to give a name to this delight and then … why not call it as one of the most popular dish of the restaurant “La Marianna”, “Stracciatella”?” happy Enrico had just prepared the cone of his creation to the girl.
The girl was beautiful. April tender breeze was playing in her hairs and her lips had touched the cone of gelato – Enrico’s creation! Do you know what happened with the girl and Enrico? For romantic Italian boy the lips which tried his creation at the first time became the single lips he kissed every day in their happy marriage.
Enrico Panattoni held tightly the original recipe, which is still a family secret – no patent, no copyright, people arrive to “La Marianna” to try “Vera Stracciatella”!
Stracciatella Gelato prepared according to the original recipe here. That Stracciatella which is still produced with vertical machines (the famous Carpigiani L40 with tinned copper bell and wet brine) with simple ingredients such as fresh milk, egg yolks, sugar, cream, gelatin and alginate sodium as a stabilizer. Chocolate coverage today is the Lindt dark chocolate with 58% cocoa.
I strongly recommend to buy a cone of Stracciatella Gelato in the nearest gelateria. You will understand what I am telling here about. Thank You for your pleasure!
Today is a happy day. I have found a treasure in WordPress Planet. The treasure is dutchbarbieworld.wordpress.com I love it! Thank you, Rogeir, for your great job.
I would like to add the paper doll of Yves Saint Laurent by Tom Tierney
and the quote:
Thank you for sharing with me this moment of wonderment, happiness and love.
Since Yesterday the Foundation Pierre Bergé – Yves Saint Laurent opened the French designer’s archives to the public online.
The Fondation Pierre Bergé– Yves Saint Laurent was created in 2002 and have his headquarters at 5, avenue Marceau in Paris. This is also the place where the duo started their couture house in 1974. This foundation has 5000 garment, 15000 accessories and tens of thousands other designs that they have carefully conserved. But because a lot of these pieces are so fragile they can’t put permanently on display. And now thanks to a digital initiative from the French Ministère de la Culture et de la Communication, people all over the world will have access to fashion history.
The first online exposition is about paper dolls. At the age of 16 Yves Saint Laurent created an amazing collection of paper dolls. He used pictures from models and combined them with his sketches.
Thank You for a wonderful time we are spending our lives in. We live in fantastic time when we have a possibility to learn Renaissance, to walk in Florence and to share our impressions worldwide immediately. We are lucky to live now.
“The lion cannot protect himself from traps, and the fox cannot defend himself from wolves. One must therefore be a fox to recognize traps, and a lion to frighten wolves,” Machiavelli wrote in “The Prince”. “It’s a handbook for gangsters.” Francis Bacon said about Machiavelli’s “The Prince”.
The Lion’s side of Machiavelli is well known. But what about fox’s side?
Fifteenth-century Florence was an exciting place to be. Renaissance is blooming and beauty is the ruler. Nicollo Machiavelli is a student of human nature, “a witty man and a very ordinary husband and father who enjoyed love affairs and filles de joie,” Miles Unger writes in “Machiavelli: A biography”.
O,la,la it seems we see a fox’s side in him!
Everyone knows Niccolo Machiavelli’s status as a great politician, but few are also aware that he was a first-rate playwright and satirist.
His play Mandragola (probably written around 1519) is one of the outstanding comedies of the Italian Renaissance stage.
The plot centers around a wealthy doctor of law, Nicia, and his beautiful wife Lucrezia. Callimaco, a young man, hears about Lucrezia’s beauty, and decides that he wants to become her lover. He learns of the couple’s inability to produce a child, so (with the help of his servant Ligurio), he disguises himself as a doctor and informs Nicia that he can produce a potion from the mandrake plant that, if taken by Lucrezia, will enable her to conceive. However, as Callimaco warns Nicia, the first man to have sexual intercourse with her will die from the effects of the potion. Luckily, Callimaco knows a man who will consent to have sex with her and bear the punishment of death. Nicia consents, and (along with Frate Timoteo) persuades Lucrezia to do the same. Callimaco disguises himself yet again, and is able to have his way with her.
The play is a brilliant comedy. It is also amazing to learn that it was performed successfully in 1520 before Pope Leo X in Rome. The fact that the play celebrated sex and seduction, and totally ridiculed the clergy as frauds, bothered him not at all. In fact, the Pope liked it so much that he asked Cardinal Giulio de Medici to award Machiavelli a commission as a writer.
For a good summer night I would like to recommend the movie “La mandragola” (1965) by Albertto Lattuada. The film quite deservedly was Oscar nominated for Costume Design but also deserved a nod for its excellent cinematography. You will enjoy it, I promise!
Thank You for the river of joy which our life is. Every moment of my life I swim and am immersed in the flow of this river.
I would like to share with you a magic waves of joy and invite you for a walking along a beautiful mountain river somewhere in Italy. We are going to listen the sounds of nature and I tell you about my favorite movie of month.
It is “Samsara” movie. The movie is undoubtedly a masterpiece by Pan Nalin. There would be hardly 100 dialogues in this film spread over 2 hour 20 minutes but every word from the movie is great wisdom.
“Everything you contact is a place to practice the Way”
“I want you to tell me what will happen to that stick? -It will drown! -Suppose it doesn’t. -It will get stuck in the rocks! -Suppose it doesn’t get stuck. – It will stay in the water and rot! -No. It will get stuck in the whirlpool … or it can go down with a waterfall and crash! -Suppose even that doesn’t happen. What then? Do you give up?
The answer is simple. The stick will reach the sea!
The water in the river is crystal clear.
… you will be able to tell me what’s more important: Satisfying one thousand desires or conquering just one?
Thank you for sharing with me this moment of happiness. I do hope I inspire you to watch the movie. It worth to spend 2 hours of life.
How can one prevent a drop of water from ever drying up? By throwing it into the sea…
Polyhymnia – greek “the one of many hymns”, also spelt Polymnia. Muse Polymnia is the creation by Italian sculpture Antonio Canova.
Glorialana Magazine 