The Curmudgeon Chronicle -#205

THE CURMUDGEON CHRONICLE ©

AN IRREVERENT VIEW


Time Line: February 14, 2007
Date Line: Flemington New Jersey

It could only happen in Italy and on Valentine’s Day.

The Italian scientific and government establishments have combined to make the year’s most memorable Valentine’s Day gesture. They will lift a huge chunk of earth out of the planet’s surface in order to preserve the Stone Age couple buried while embracing. The decision resolves a long standing question of how to move the skeletons; separately or as a unit?

Scientists, bloggers, normal humans, and the Clergy have discussed the circumstances of the burial ad nauseum. No consensus emerges. Scientists are hung up on why the pair are buried lying North/South instead of East/West; they question the pair being together since most Stone Age burials are single interments. No one can sneer like a scientist viewing someone else’s discovery or theory.

Bloggers say that is wrong to assume the pair were lovers. It is just as easy to imagine that they were engaged in a struggle to the death and succeeded in that pursuit. Aside from that, the blogs question whether the pair were expecting a child and who was likely to have been the father. This issue was raised when one wit claimed the female skeleton might have been named Anna.

Normal folk like us are sentimental about the situation and consider the couple to be forerunners of Romeo and Juliet, (they are clearly Italian). We take this view despite the complaints by the Gay Pride Association that the skeletons are really Romeo and Julio.

The Clergy has not taken a firm stand since without baptismal records, (none were discovered in the grave), the Vatican will not accept jurisdiction over apostates and infidels even assuming that they were not “Gay”.

The only comment about the affair that makes any sense is the current landowner’s, who will build a warehouse on the site. He said, “It makes no difference to me how you get them out of the ground, but if they are not gone by next Friday I’m going to cover them with three tons of cement like Mr. Wal-Mart wants!”

Since the landowner’s brother-in-law is also the head of the City’s Engineering Department and the Chief Archeologist is his nephew, Italian law requires that the landowner’s request be satisfied regardless of any circumstances.

The Italians who are masters of love are also masters of the pragmatic solution. That is not to say that love has been conquered by Mammon, but in the words of St Valentine as interpreted by our Managing Editor, “The power of love is second only to the power of cash properly handled and distributed.”

HAPPY VALENTINE’ DAY

HS