[Ravensfort] A Dark Age

[env_drh]

http://www.uh.edu/engines/epi577.htm


".............; ruined habitations ...
The maker of men has so marred this dwelling
That human laughter is not heard about it
And idle stand these old giant works." 

Greetings all,

With the flurry of activity on the list this day, I was given inspiration...
;) It's been a bit since I've posted up an Engines episode.  Several, in
fact more than several, A LOT, of people have caught me by chance and said
they enjoy my humble musings and the gentle prompting to go off and learn
something new.  ...and with that I am much flattered.  Thank you. 

The 'Engine's of our Ingenuity' series is built on our hind site of the
past.  That which has sifted down to us from all of history, not just a
vignette. In it we, as anachronist, have an opportunity to put the Medieval
and Renaissance into perspectives that our period counterparts could never
have imagined, and I think we should. In retrospect, we can look at it all
and find the commonalities to our lives today.  In doing so we pay tribute
to our counterpart's passing and their legacy.  It validates their
accomplishments and the trials of their time.  ....and for us, history's
students, and its heirs, it makes the past alive.  So, here we go again...

Today we're off to Poitiers, but not for a battle, nay, for a rebirth.  We
find there, the first glimmer of a Medieval world yet to come.  It is a
humble temple.  A tribute to glory.  European architecture's first roughhewn
move away from the darkest of the Dark Ages, with its maurading Viking
hordes, and mud huts, and toward European society, as a society, with an
identity, in it's own right.  For in one "pretentious little church" all of
what was to become the towering spires seen all over Medieval Europe, began.
That rebirth took a bit.  Power sources had to be developed, construction
methods experimented with, guild structures established, even the spread of
Christianity itself had to take hold over the paganistic beliefs of old
Europe, but what emerged was the architectural grandeur of Medieval Europe.
We call it the Gothic.

The episode caught my eye with one line, "It is a valiant attempt to start a
new life with grace and beauty in it."  I see a lot of that around me these
days.

MUAHAHAHA!!!

Take a listen, and enjoy,

Dsd

P.S.  And now for something TOTALLY off topic....

http://www.break.com/top_rated/grannymachinegun.html

....let's take a couple of THOSE BABY'S to GULF WAR!  :)



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