L'anno dei Turchi 1480

Otranto, on the southern tip of the Italian peninsula's "boot heel" today is a pleasant holiday resort noted for its massive fortifications and clear blue water.  One would hardly think it was once one of the hinges on which history turns.

Unfortunately those defenses were not in place when 128 ships with 25,000 soldiers of the Ottoman Empire appeared on the horizon in July 1480.  And they looked unstoppable after capturing Constantinople only 27 years earlier.  At the time, and as usual, the states of a disunited Italy were fighting each other or planning to; not favorable to a workable defensive strategy.  

It took only two weeks to finally take the citadel and drag the garrison commander and a bishop out to be sawn in half.  Twelve thousand residents lay dead as ten thousand were carried away into slavery.  The cathedral was used as a stable. Raids were begun on towns up the Adriatic coast as this conquest was only the beginning of a campaign to take Rome, on the pattern of absorbing the Balkans after extinguishing the remnants of the Byzantine Empire.

Florence, the Papal states and the Kingdom of Naples wisely put aside their feuding, and along with two battalions from Hungary marched to Otranto's rescue.  As they arrived to do what must have seemed to be very dubious battle, Fate intervened: Ottoman Sultan Mehmet II had just died in May 1481 and most of the Turkish troops, after negotiations, withdrew to Albania. 

Today's seaside getaway had saved eternal Rome.

                        Ottomans on the attack circa 1480

    

Between the Bookends

 

"I can quit any time."  That's what the addict says.  And I did today, when I left the bi-monthly local library sale with nothing in hand.  But there will probably be a relapse, as temptation is always lurking.

A few years ago I started scooping up old hardback books, attractive but mostly secondary or inexpensive reprinted works by well-known authors, and only a very few first editions or valuable rarities.  Some of the late 19th century ones are bound or illustrated with style you don't see anymore and just had to be saved.  

People have interests, avocations and pursuits that give a shine to daily life; often these can be more like obsessions than entertainments -- things like sports, religion, family. pets, video games or golf.  You have to keep an eye on yourself.   Eyeing those overflowing shelves, someone needs to heed his own advice.

Their history is usually unknown and one wonders...were they kept quietly in one home for decades or had they endured several moves or changes of ownership?  

Many look untouched and may have never been read.  Some have a little story hidden inside:  a bookmark made from the cover of a 1940 magazine, a review of the book from 1955, a short grocery list...the best one is a moving letter dated 1978 from a mother to an adult daughter giving her a beloved volume from 1930 which her husband had given as a wedding present.   From London, this edition of the Rubiayat is bound in tooled leather and beautifully illustrated by the great Willy Pognany.  Maybe a grandchild cleared out the daughter's home and that's how it ended up at the sale.  One book had a wedding announcement inside from 1946; the name written on the flyleaf was, according to the newspaper article, the flower girl with her age given as 14 and the address.  People you never knew you come to know a little; the books may be passed on and in time someone may wonder who and what you were.

The Pognany volume

   

Eerie, PA

 

The Appalachian mountain range is old and spooky, nowhere more so than in northern Pennsylvania, an area settled late and sparsely.  After the coal and timber booms petered out in the early 20th century, they left a dwindling population, deadly pollution, and streams clogged with lumbering waste.  And the ghosts of so many who died before their time in those mines and on those untamed streams.

Many tales were told over unnumbered years of tragic lives and deaths.  One such occurred in some village whose name has been forgotten or has, like so many, disappeared back into the wilds.  Far back in the hills there lived a clan they called the "witchy people."  They looked different and all had red hair.  Their crops and livestock were unusually good, and they also possessed the power to cure people and animals of all sorts of maladies by laying on their hands.  But they could do much damage also, if that was their intention; this power increased during the darkness of the new moon and at that time they were carefully avoided.  

An unknown and devastating illness passed through the village during a new moon one year, and as it worsened, claiming one life after another, the people set their minds on driving the witchy people out or killing them.  Arriving at their homesteads they found no one there, not even an animal.  Frightened and angry, they set all the houses and barns afire.  On their return home they saw one leave a home and shot at him, killing instead a woman who had come out at the same time shouting "Don't shoot!"  Another resident peered out and told the crowd, horrified, that the witchy had just finished curing every one of the family by his touch.

Shamed, they returned to the burnt-out homes of the witchy people to apologize and offer to rebuild.  But everything had disappeared as if it had never been there.  

                                    

      Hidden blessing found in a Pennsylvania barn