The Night of the Shooting Stars

We have spent a good part of the last year and a half in various degrees of lockdown and/or restricted movement within and beyond our communities, often indoors looking from the inside onto a quiet, sometimes silent and desolate outside, wishing this thing, albeit invisible, would go away, disappear. 

Days and weeks of calm quiet, and nights of eery silence. The usual bustle of the town, the genial greetings and conversations, muffled by masks and cautious inhibitions.  Often the only things to be seen and heard were the birds. Watching the swallows provided hours of delight. 

With compassionate, conscientious compliance Barga remained relatively untouched. We passed a first socially distanced but eventful summer almost virus free, but by the winter and spring the virus resurged and there was another lockdown, this time not as severe but disconcerting nonetheless. 

Vaccinations provided hope and the country mobilized in a relatively efficient roll-out. There was a little more hopeful optimism but always that wish that this would just go away. Variants and various factors have necessitated continued vigilance. Through spring there was still the element of inhibition, and being on the inside looking out. 

About a year and a half on, the late summer of 2021 finds us once again, relatively unrestricted, enjoying socially distanced events, but still cautious. 

Each year on August 10th, Barga celebrates the great poet Giovanni Pascoli, who adopted Barga as his home, and honored it in much of his poetry, with a grand event with the reading of his poetry, and music. 

The significance of the date is three fold. Pascoli’s father was assassinated in his carriage on August 10, 1867, an event which influenced much of his poetry. In 1896 he published the poem entitled 

‘X agosto’ to commemorate the date and emphasize his three principle themes, the nest/hearth, suffering and injustice. 

The second element of the date of August 10th is the commemorative date of the death of San Lorenzo, a venerated martyr, deemed saint who was purportedly burned on a specially cast gridiron on August 10, 258 during a purge by Roman authorities under edict by Emperor Valerian. He was known for his generosity and compassion for the poor, indigent, and physically suffering.

The feast day of San Lorenzo, August 10 is also known as the Night of the Shooting Stars.  The Perseids meteor shower is most visible from about the 9th to the 13th of August each year. Pascoli’s poem references it as the tears of San Lorenzo, weeping for a swallow who is killed in mid-flight to her nest, leaving her brood parent-less, just as he and his family were left in abject despair after his father’s assassination. 

Shooting stars have also often been associated with wish making. If you wish upon a star, as the song goes, has inspired hope in many a dreamer. 

Since the early 1990’s the Perseid meteor shower has been most visible from the 11th until the 13th of August, particularly in the just pre-dawn hours. So, yes, wish upon the shooting stars on the 10th, the official Night of the Shooting Stars, and as we transition from looking from the inside out we can still appreciate watching the fascinating swallows and the shooting stars, and have time until the 13th to make that wish.