Rome Rewind Redux

Yes, it’s been two weeks since we were in Rome, but obviously, we are terribly behind in posts.  Lots of those coming.  While in Switzerland last week, I wrote a really long post on my iPod Touch with the spiffy WordPress app. Of course, when I went to post the darn thing, the app crashed.  No problem, right?  Umm… no, problem.  Post go bye-bye.

So here is that post in a nutshell.

Throughout our time in Rome, I stumbled over the name of this town square.  Hawai`i people might appreciate this…

OK, Hawaiian, that’s “POPE-oh-low” not “po-POH-low”.  As in piazza/square of the “people”.  Or poplar trees, according to Wikipedia.

Most of my last post had to do with a 16th Century philosophical dude named Giordano Bruno…

Bruno was a brilliant and prolific cleric/scholar who was burned at the stake as a heretic.  There are numerous theories as to why he was convicted detailed in his Wikipedia entry, and I found researching his story extremely interesting.  Long post short, I believe the leading cause of his death was not his “radical” ideas about humans’ relationship with God or the Earth’s relationship to the universe or even pissing off enough ecclesiastical peers.  He died because he refused to recant on all of his claims.  The Church wanted a full pullback, but he refused, so he died for his theories.  Not even Galileo did that.

Hundreds of years after his death, the Italians think of him more as a martyr, and when the Church lost some of its power over the government in the late 19th Century, it was the Romans who pushed for a monument.  The statue also shows his trial and subsequent burning in relief on two sides of the statue…

I was quite moved by Bruno’s story.  Even so, the immature side of me (“silly Maylene” as Charity says) pops up every now and then.  Those of you who have seen my Friends Are Forever Woot shirt can probably guess what I did next.  Yeah…

Yes, sometimes, I’m 12.  With my Monty Python and Gary Larson intact, thank you very much.  What have you.