Travel

12/01/09

Looking Through the Stained Glass Window

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One thing I wish I could bring home from Italy but cannot: the gonging of church bells. Here in Perugia, they mark the quarter hour with a primeval sound intended long ago for people who couldn't read, people who had no access to clocks, serfs who needed to get up in the morning and pray. Now the bells serve a different purpose: I do need to get up and make breakfast for recalcitrant schoolchildren, go to work, return home, check e-mail, make dinner. I don't need these bells to tell me the hour--I have a BlackBerry, a cellphone, and watch--but they clang out a larger, deeper measure of time, the mortal one. Continue reading at Slate

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