Oct. 11th, 2004

eve_prime: (Default)
The conference call with Columbia Univ. and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, which I've been preparing for for the better part of a month, ended at 10:44 a.m., and with that, my vacation began. After the first surge of elation, I promptly fell back asleep for an hour, having barely slept last night (from excitement, I suppose).

My next vacation activity was to read outside in the glorious October sunshine, during the first hour of D's nap: more of Travels with a Medieval Queen, by Mary Taylor Simeti. This idyll ended abruptly a few minutes ago when a big flatbed truck backed into the long driveway, just beyond the picket fence that encloses our yard, to deliver some piece of heavy equipment for the building of that new house. So I've retreated indoors. I wanted to quote p. 149-150:

"Nicetas Acominatus, the Byzantine author already quoted, goes on to describe how some German knights, sent by [Holy Roman Emperor] Henry [VI] in 1195 to demand tribute from Constantinople, were received by the Byzantine emperor Alexius III, who hoped to intimidate the Western barbarians with the pomp and ostentation of his court. Nicetas encapsulates in one brief moment the clash of two opposite empires, of two irreconcilable civilizations:"

ExpandGerman knights in Byzantium )

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