The Rural Nubility

Baigneuse, ciel orageux by Felix Valloton

You’ve heard of the rural nobility, but there is also the rural nubility which has continued to have an enormous influence even though we  don’t speak of it in the same breath as say the Duke of Earl. Yes dynasties like the Hohenzollerns and Habsburgs have fallen, but you will find a nubility that’s thriving in the vast stretches of verdant land surrounding the great cities of the world, composed chiefly of comely young ladies at the prime of the lives. The nubility is particularly strong in France, but it is also a very important presence in Italy, Germany and many countries in the Scandinavian block. One thing that’s important to note is the connection to some of the old world customs. To be a nubile young lady you have to have reached the age of monarchy, though you don’t necessarily have to believe in the divine right of kings. Most nubiles are characterized by a certain ripeness and what they have in common with the nobility of the past is a standoffish quality. Because a nubile young lady is highly desired and finds many men hitting on her, she must keep her distance. She also learns quickly to make the most of the her talents by playing hard to get. If you go to one of the rural discos where royalty gather, you will find many nubile young women partying into the wee hours and you are likely to feel like a rejected suitor before the evening even starts. But one thing to remember is that someone is going to get lucky and you might as well be the one. Get your cards right out on the table and remember the adage which goes back as far as King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table: swordsmanship is always mightier than penmanship.

Letter From Croatia I: Brac

“Croatian Cloud,” watercolor by Hallie Cohen

There is a rumor that stone from Brac was used in the making of the White House pillars. In any case the largest island in Croatia (there are over a thousand of them) noted for its beaches and its rocky beauty, still houses Croatia’s only stonemasonry school, where students can learn an age old trade for free. The quarries of Pucisca, Postira and Selca still produce stone that is sought after for its facility in producing a clean polished surface. Brac is reached by boat from Split (where Diocletian’s Palace still stands as a monument to Bracian stone) and its geography gave it a certain immunity from the turbulence that swept the country during the The Croatian War of Independence which was fought from l991-5. Flying from Rome to Split, you enter a new time zone. In Rome stone is a tourist attraction. On Brac, it’s an industry. Yet the sleepy villages, whose hotels with their spare socialist realist style décor still cater to Russian tourists (along with throngs of Italians, English and Americans) as they did when Marshall Tito’s Yugoslavia was allied, albeit ambivalently, with the Soviet bloc, are firmly a part of Marshall McCluhan’s Global Village. Unlike their cousins in Bosnia, the Croats (who historically braved the Ottomans from the northeast and the Habsburgs from the northwest) have emerged as intact from the strife of the past as the tidy red stone roofs visible from an airplane (in July they joined the EU). Even the Croatian clouds seem to prosper outlandishly, being so fluffy as to look like gigantic self-satisfied wads of cotton, or even snow that’s developed an immunity to heat.