Sickness and Salvation

When I talk with friends at Colgate, all I hear is that swine flu has been ravishing the population. All attempts to set up the Venetian creation of quarantine have generally failed. One friend who has been trying to hide from her infected friends guaranteed that she would catch the virus before winter break. I have heard that luckily, with the help of health services, the flu has not been an excessively painful experience, but the ease of spreading fits right in with our class discussions about the sweeping efficiency of the Plague in Venice.

On Wednesday afternoon, the final tour of Professor Brownell’s architecture class ended at Palladio’s Il Redentore. The church was built to commemorate the end of the plague of 1575-6 which killed more than a third of the population. Such monuments hailing God’s salvation of the city are all over Venice, a city with a highly manicured glorification of its history. Perhaps when the H1N1 virus has tired of Colgate, Hamilton NY will call upon the services of whoever happens to be the world’s foremost architect to erect a shrine to divine salvation. Or perhaps better yet, to the undefeated football team.

A piu tardi!

Ciao.

Andy