Okay, okay...not a parable. A saying. Got it.
On the western coast of Sicily, they harvest salt. Not as much as they used to, but they do , indeed, still do it.
(The tiles are placed, obviously, to hold the salt down. Hey! Tiles! Again!)
I was determined to see this salt. I have never really understood how it's done, and I was interested.
So on the day we went to Erice, of course we would also go see the salt, which was just north of Trapani, which was just west of Erice. Simple.
But of course, I had neglected to bring my very good Sicily map with me that day, so of course as a result, we spent at least an hour driving around, trying to find the damn SALT PILES which, according to what I thought I knew, were just north of Trapani, which should be easy to find because the guidebook said they were and gave me the towns identified with the SALT PILES, but again, it took me a very long time to finally make my way over far enough to find them. Acting all the while as if this was *so* interesting and we're just *on a journey* here, and of course we can *learn a lot* from driving on the same streets in the same suburb of Trapani, what, *five* times now? No, four. I'm sure it was only four.
But we (well, I) did eventually find the right road, so we did, indeed, go to the Salt Museum:
Which, as you can see, is a wildly popular attraction.
The woman assured me, as I handed her my five Euros or whatever it was, that the important information in the Salt Museum was in English as well as Italian, but as far as I could see, only one placard was in English, and so as a result, the very interesting equipment lying about in the museum remains a mystery to me, even today.
(Not, I hasten to add, that I expect anything at all to be in English - but, you know, if I know ahead of time that no more than about 5% percent of what I'm about to see is in English, I'll probably save my Euros and appreciate the windmill and the salt piles on their own, thanks.)
So there you have it. Salt. No flavor lost, guaranteed.
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Amy
I believe the lady's low pay hinges on the entrance fee take and she hustled you on the English text question... or she does not know English and says yes to all questions. In St. Croix I clearly told a street hotdog vendor that I wanted the smaller hot dog, I turned a moment, and when I had turned back, he was handing me the huge and more expensive version...or so he thought. Natives earlier in the week had stolen our rental car's front tire... so my exhortation to said hot dog man left something to be desired in terms of Benedict's "quota of gratuitousness"...heck...it left something to be desired from the "turn the other cheek" passage since I was on the verge of turning the vendor's other cheek...which departs too greatly from the passage's real meaning. I'm sure my emotions at least ring a bell...cathedral size perhaps. On vacation, being hustled is a downer especially after wandering in search of said place.
Father Z reports that a salty event -- in the Gospel sense of the word -- will be in Birmingham next month.
Can't assist in interpreting artisanal artefacts, but how about a hermeneutic on salt? Here's a blogging concordance ;-)
__Covenants in both the Old and New Testaments were often sealed with salt: the origin of the word salvation
__Greek slave traders often bartered salt for slaves, giving rise to the expression that someone was not worth his salt
__Roman legionnaires were paid in salt - a salarium, the Latin origin of the word salary
__Thousands of Napoleon's troops died during the French retreat from Moscow due to inadequate wound healing and lowered resistance to disease - the results of salt deficiency
__In 2200 BC, the Chinese emperor Hsia Yu levied one of the first known taxes. He taxed salt. .. Until 1975, in Italy .. (t)he State had a monopoly on the manufacture and sale of salt, and fixed the final market price, which included the tax rate of about 70% of the selling price.
__French kings developed a salt monopoly by selling exclusive rights to produce it to a favored few who exploited that right to the point where the scarcity of salt was a major contributing cause of the French Revolution.
__Salt motivated the American pioneers. The American Revolution had heroes who were saltmakers and part of the British strategy was to deny the American rebels access to salt.
http://www.saltworks.us/salt_info/si_HistoryOfSalt.asp
And consider "If the salt should lose its savor . . ."
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20071127165508AAcpITO
savor c.1225, from O.Fr. savour, from L. saporem (nom. sapor) "taste, flavor," related to sapere "to have a flavor" (see sapient, to perceive). (H/T EtymologyOnline) recalls homo sapiens no? As in a human developed in the "savoring" wisdom of Truth perceived as Love. . . Too little? Wounds to the body politic won't heal. Favored access? Social stability breaks down.
"Salt is as free as the water suspending it when it's dissolved, and as immutable as stone when it's dry - a fitting duality for Lot's wife, who overlooks Sodom to this day" And for a world desiccated by a lack of Caritas. . .
And yes, human tears are salty. We were made to be sapient!
On our tour in June, we went to the salt harvesting on the north side of Marsala. There was a video in English in the museum, we walked up the stairs in the windmill, not much else. I bought salt to take home to my siblings. Some people elected to not go in. There was a bar on the property where they hung out til the rest of us were finished. I was interested because my grandmother was born and grew up there.
I have the same trouble of driving around aimlessly because I think I know the way to somewhere. My favourite cities for this include the south side of Chicago, Akron OH and London England.
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