Pio is a novel set in Italy before Mussolini's rise to power. It has sat on the back burner for a while and there it will remain until I do some more research.
To that end, I am reading How Fascism Ruled Women. While it is set at some point after this novel's timeline, the effects of fascism were already becoming a powerful force on society. Reading the end point is kind of backwards, but helpful.
I order a physical copy from Amazon, which was a little pricey but worth it.
What I have found is that I need to back up in time to really capture what and why things were happening in Italy between the World Wars.
Located in Panama NY, this private park is a wonder of New York. The rock formations are millions of years old.
416 million years old to be precise. At that time, America was a part of the Euramerica supercontinent and was rotated 90 degrees so that the north of Canada was facing east and Mexico was in the west. Euramerica was located on the equator and a vast sea covered the continent from Utah in the west to deep into what would become Southern Canada in the east. The formation called Panama Rocks was a shoreline of a rocky island in the southern reaches of this inland sea.
Euramerica
Plants (and fish) dominated the Earth in this era, to the point where plants completely changed the CO2 and O2 levels, resulting in an Ice Age. Euramerica drifted north and westward and the sea dried up. Drifting east over millions of years, great upheavals and earthquakes lifted the shoreline to its current height of 1500+ feet over current sea levels. By the time of dinosaurs, Euramerica was no more. It had broken in two and formed the continents of Europe and North America, with Greenland in the middle.
Within the last 20,000 years, the last ice age ended leaving New York and Panama Rocks in their current state. What a wonder!
In modern times, the park has been in the ownership of several private groups. Approximately 100 years ago, the park was a Honeymoon getaway spot. After a period of inactivity in WWII, the park buildings and environs were renovated and improved by a series of owners. The most recent improvements occurred in 2011.
I'm hitting the books this weekend, so no documents or sketches tonight. One quote from a book:
"Tuan coined the term topophilia, which is the love of the land and the title of one of geography’s best-selling books." Urban Geography, Kaplan, p. 12
All of my little doodles and plans shows that I have "topophilia". It's interesting to learn new terms and words for things you have already experienced but didn't have a name for. Cool.
In my prior post, I began work on a building I could not identify. It turns out that this structure is a stave church from 11-1200 A.D.
I wasn't able to identify it specifically, nor was I able to place it the category of stave church. For some reason, I picture stave churches as having gracefully sloping walls and roofs, like so:
So, I am off to do some research. I have to say my dad, Philip J. Viverito, instilled a quest for knowledge in me. Using the internet, I was able to found some remarkable resources for this project in rather short order. I cannot image how my dad did it back in the 1970's and 80's with only books to work from.
One of the more impressive items I found was a short video filmed in 2000 at Uvdal Stave Church, Nore and Uvdal, Norway.
Not only is the church beautiful, the video itself is excellent. The film was put together by Erik Meyn, and the music was composed and performed by Ulf Meyn. The original publisher was Numedalsnett AS.
Although there is no speaking, this is a wonderful educational resource.
