Recommended Over and Above

 

The Song of Cid was recommended to me by a friend name Rui, who pointed out that it was tied to the name Rodrigo, which was tied to the name Rodrick, which was the proper name of the swashbuckling man of action in the epic poem.   Invariably a good tale from around the late medieval campfire, I’d read “In search of El Cid” before the actual poem and the real fellow had nothing to do with hero in this tale.  I kept thinking of Cortez and Pissarro as guys who must have read this story growing up.  This was the hero who took sword to the infidels.  It must have been what they emulated as they decimated, and robbed native American Aztecs and Incas on behalf of God, Queen and themselves. 

I then decided to have a look at a book my daughter had to read for school: “If on a Winter’s Night A Traveler” by Italo Calvino.  I started out on the train with the mysterious woman and was lost in the next unrelated chapter and then again, the one thereafter until I realized that getting lost was the entire mechanism of the tale.  I powered through and didn’t really enjoy the work, noting as I went that there were many, many anachronisms like ‘microfilm’ that will always date such a work. 

 

The older one needed to head to work early.  We needed to leave home at 6:30AM.  To me it wasn’t early, but I enjoyed the ride up, in the misty morning ride over the mountains to the land of the Catskills.  I saw the Adams parking lot and figured I’d go do my shopping there, but they weren’t open yet at 6:50AM.  Back home, I made some bacon and eggs for the little one and my wife when I came back and before I got started on the lawn, like I told myself I’d do, Later still I started “Isabel the Queen” by Peggy Liss.  This biography from the nineties was recommended over and above the newer biography of the queen I’d found online, though I found it a bit dry and the ironic set ups and allusions seemed to fall flat.  Still, I was glad to consider her and her husband, particularly on the day they met, which was wonderfully rendered and romantic, odd, unique.  They certainly started something enduring together, for better or worse. 

There was a precooked turkey breast in the fridge.  I’d better use it or lose it, soon.  There in the front were corn, tacos.  I looked and confirmed there was a half a bag of pinto beans that I soaked and later began to cook and cook into a refried mush with mole and tomatoes and onions.  All in all the taco dinner wasn’t bad, and seemed to make both the carnivorous daughter and the vegetarian daughter happy, though I'm not sure about my wife. 

Sunday, 08/01/21