That to use the term "Machiavellian" is a bit of a misnomer. Machiavelli himself was not a bad guy, he just wrote a book about tactics employed by other bad guys (namely the rulers of his time, such as the Medici family) - it was reportage, not a personal dogma. According to Rushdie, Machiavelli was the life of the party in Florence and when he was exiled was sorely missed. As a playwright, he wrote the biggest comedy of the Medieval period, The Mandrake, a satire that dramatizes principles from The Prince.
So, if anyone refers to you as Machiavellian, say grazie.
Another cool bit of Italian history (as reported by Elizabeth Gilbert in Eat, Pray, Love) is that the Italian language as we know is based on the dialect used by the poet Dante Alighieri. Back in the day, Italians used disparate, local dialects until a committee of sorts, decided that the country needed to be unified, in part to keep the country from ripping apart due to feudal scrimmages. They wisely settled on Dante's version of Italian because, well, his poetry made a successful case for the beauty and ease of it's particular language.
Anyway, all is well here. Sean is home, happily setting up our shiny new iMac and hopefully shifting our files over safely from our poor, overwrought Vaio laptop. I'm feeling bloated and crappy, but I think the Midol is kicking in (three cheers for multi-symptom medication!).
Last night my wonderful friend and colleague, Lisa, invited me over for homemade vegetable soup, which was a very appealing alternative to hanging around the office until 9:00 for Sean to get out of class. We played with her dogs and her husband, Ted, went out and bought us soft-served ice cream with organic graham bunny cookies to sprinkle on top. Rather fortuitously, Sean's web design class turned out to be a bust - he has already learned what the syllabus has planned for the last week of class, so our Tuesday nights are once again free and clear.
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
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