Listen to the sound of ducks and other birds for free online from the Cornell University Lab of Ornithology (http://www.birds.cornell.edu).

“Seahorse”- Arts Gala

“Hanging Lotus”- Delaware Natural History Museum

“Dream Plate”- Delaware Natural History Museum

For I, “I owe this to you,” I shall say.
The one through which I have known
The faltering depths of my resolution
And through whom I have known great love
With the help of many long and endless nights
Mingled with sunny smiles and torrential tears.

Because I have been graced with your presence in the dark of night
And have come to interlace your path with my own during the day,
The world I now see is eternal and the pale blue
Sky dons its robes of my favorite velveteen purple
To mark the celebration of our accomplishments—
Of this change I believed myself incapable of.

He shall be the sole witness—the one who gives the pale glass brimming with gold—
And holds one for himself fully aware of the color in my cheeks and the radiant heat
My body shall give off in triumph.
And he will KNOW what it means.

He’ll see we are meant to be and will stand there proud as ever,
his green eyes shining this time.
“To you,” he’ll say as he lifts his glass
And I’ll raise my own as my heart beats faster still,
Betraying all that I feel with one simple tear.

At last he’ll raise the glass to his lips and I shall follow suit
And liquid victory shall touch my lips at last.
It shall be no treachery—our affair—for I loved you
Before I loved him and the sense of completion
From a single night with you is very much like one with him.
For though he holds my heart, you hold years of my soul’s passion.

And we shall toast the love began with the desperation of a crying soul
And shall enrapture the world in what is ours—a timeless art
That will take the form of my heart’s desire: a manga.
I can just imagine it now, nights of endless labor illustrated
In pure black and white.
And it is for this promise that I love you
The promise to give me a paradise of my own creation
Should I fail to find one in the light of day.

But we are not lover’s of the sheets.
We are not lover’s of some unruly passion restricted by the day or the night,
Although our affair does take place between sheets of a sort.
My hands are instruments meant to portray our vision.
I give create the story and through you pair it with art.
Mine is the mind that is the dwelling of your delight.
We are more than body and soul
And that is why you are the best lover.

Through your devices, I allow others to perceive my soul.
Through your charms I take my place amongst those I have longed admired
I count myself amongst their number as will the world!
For our love is pure yet selfish and our crime is blameless before all.
For our passion is that of the imagination.
And you are the master of my soul: illustration.

http://youtu.be/A6MHZK4OXxQ ”14 shirts. 1 kid. to mushc time on my hands”

Listen to the song again and read the lyrics below the video still: http://youtu.be/mkl5ZyVMOME (as uploaded and transcibed by CuppyCakePr0ducti0ns)

Do You Realize – that you have the most beautiful face
Do You Realize – we’re floating in space -
Do You Realize – that happiness makes you cry
Do You Realize – that everyone you know someday will dieAnd instead of saying all of your goodbyes – let them know
You realize that life goes fast
It’s hard to make the good things last
You realize the sun doesn’t go down
It’s just an illusion caused by the world spinning round

Do You Realize – Oh – Oh – Oh
Do You Realize – that everyone you know
Someday will die -

And instead of saying all of your goodbyes – let them know
You realize that life goes fast
It’s hard to make the good things last
You realize the sun doesn’t go down
It’s just an illusion caused by the world spinning round

Do You Realize – that you have the most beautiful face
Do You Realize

Bubonic plague… Pneumonic plague… Septicemic plague: “Plague is a severe and potentially deadly bacterial infection.” (PubMed Health http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/PMH0001622)

“The disease struck and killed people with terrible speed. The Italian writer Boccaccio said its victims often ‘ate lunch with their friends and dinner with their ancestors in paradise.’ By the following August, the plague had spread as far north as England, where people called it “The Black Death” because of the black spots it produced on the skin. A terrible killer was loose across Europe, and Medieval medicine had nothing to combat it.” text from the Middle Ages.net (http://www.themiddleages.net/plague.html) 

Plague “Plague was known as the Black Death during medieval times, when it killed up to a third of the population of Europe. Currently, plague occurs in fewer than 3,000 people per year worldwide. It can be deadly if not treated promptly with antibiotics.” (definition by The Mayo Clinic staff http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/plague/DS00493)

Visit the Center for Disease Control and Prevention online (http://www.bt.cdc.gov/agent/plague/) to download a brief video (4 min 3 sec) called The History of Bioterrorism: Plague (http://www.bt.cdc.gov/training/historyofbt/03plague.asp)

(Image courtesy of http://twistedpurplecow.blogspot.com/2011/02/plague-death-came-within-hours-spurred.html)

Look up these Subject Headings using a Browse Search in the DCAD Library catalog:
Black Death–England–Fiction
Disease Outbreaks–history
Plague–Europe–History–Fiction
Plague–history

ND621 .F7 M4
Painting in Florence and Siena after the Black Death by Millard Meiss

PQ2605 .A3734 A23 2004
The plague; The fall; Exile and the kingdom; and selected essays by Albert Camus with an introduction by David Bellos
Contents: The plague — The fall — Exile and the kingdom — The myth of Sisyphus — Reflections on the guillotine.

PR6108 .A87 B57 2008
The Black Death: a personal history by John Hatcher
Recreating everyday life in a mid-fourteenth century rural English village, the author focuses on the experiences of ordinary villagers as they lived and died during the Black Death (1345-50). Hatcher describes the day-to-day existence of people struggling with the tragic effects of the plague. 
Contents: Preface: The Nature of This Book ix — Introduction: Walsham in the Middle Ages 1 — 1 Master John 13 — 2 Late Summer, 1345 21 — 3 Autumn 1345 to Winter 1347 35 — 4 Christmas and New Year, 1347-1348 53 — 5 Spring and Early Summer, 1348 63 — 6 Midsummer and Autumn, 1348 81 — 7 Autumn and Winter, 1348 101 — 8 New Year, 1349 119 — 9 Lent and Easter, 1349 135 — 10 Mid-April to Early May, 1349 149 — 11 Mid-May, 1349 163 — 12 Late May to Early June, 1349 179 — 13 June 10-20, 1349 201 — 14 Summer, 1349 217 — 15 Summer and Autumn, 1349 233 — 16 September to December, 1349 249 — 17 1350 263.

RC172 .K445 2005
The great mortality: an intimate history of the Black Death, the most devastating plague of all time by John Kelly
Chronicles the Great Plague that devastated Asia and Europe in the fourteenth century, documenting the experiences of people who lived during its height while describing the decline of moral boundaries that also marked the period.
Contents: Oimmeddam — “They are monsters, not men” — The day before the day of the dead — Sicilian autumn — Villani’s last sentence — The curse of the grand master — The new Galenism — “Days of death without sorrow” — Heads to the West, feet to the East — God’s first love — “O ye of little faith” — “Only the end of the beginning” — Afterword: The plague deniers.

VIDEO PN1997 .S57 1998
Sjunde inseglet (The seventh seal ) by Ingmar Bergman

Look up these Subject Headings using a Browse Search in the DCAD Library catalog:
BOCCACCIO, GIOVANNI, 1313-1375. DECAMERONE.
BOCCACCIO, GIOVANNI, 1313-1375.–STUDY AND TEACHING. Black Death–England–Fiction.
Disease Outbreaks–history.
Plague–Europe–History–Fiction.
Plague–history.
Storytelling–Fiction.

PQ4272 .E5 A357 1977
The Decamero: a new translation: 21 novelle, contemporary reactions, modern criticism by Giovanni Boccaccio (selected, translated, and edited by Mark Musa and Peter E. Bondanella)

PQ4287 .A77 2000
Approaches to teaching Boccaccio’s Decameron edited by James H. McGregor

PS3557.A7155 D4 1986
The decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio with an English adaptation by C. Gariano

VIDEO PQ4273.7 .T3 1991
Tales from the Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio produced and directed by Esme Solnick for Channel 4 by Celeste Productions Ltd.  Presents 6 of Giovanni Boccaccio’s original stories, adapted in verse by Roger Woddis using shadow puppets to tell the stories.  Contents: Desire for drink: seventh day, fourth story — Holier than thou: ninth day, second story — Beauty of Bologna: seventh day, seventh story — Theme and variation: seventh day, first story — Cross purposes: fifth day, tenth story — Pestle and mortar: eighth day, second story.

Author’s epilogue:
“Most noble damsels, for whose solace I addressed me to this long and toilsome task, meseems that, aided by the Divine grace, the bestowal whereof I impute to the efficacy of your pious prayers, and in no wise to merits of mine, I have now brought this work to the full and perfect consummation which in the outset thereof I promised you. Wherefore, it but remains for me to render, first to God, and then to you, my thanks, and so to give a rest to my pen and weary hand.”

Pier Paolo Pasolini – The Decameron (1971)

http://youtu.be/WeQHATMzlUw (2:19 clip)

Pier Paolo Pasolini – Il Decameron (1971) FILM COMPLETO
(1:46:18 entire film)

Online resources:

Free full-text online:
The Decameron, Volume I http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3726 and Volume II http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/13102 translated by J. M. (James Macmullen) Rigg

The Decameron http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/23700 translated by John Payne

The Decameron http://www.fordham.edu/Halsall/basis/decameron.txt

The Decameron Web in Italian and English courtesy of Brown University http://www.brown.edu/Departments/Italian_Studies/dweb/index.php

“Few great books like the Decameron have shaped our very notion of storytelling and its crucial role in the negotiation and production of shared social and cultural values. In its hundred stories, shared in ten days by ten young people escaping the Plague in mid-14th-century Florence, it combines sheer entertainment with a meaningful humanistic message. A tribute to human ingenuity, an epic masterpiece of a rising, dynamic mercantile society that pursues pleasure while being threatened by sudden extinction, the Decameron can be read as a transgressive and escapist manual of behavior as well as a breviary of moral predicaments intended for a secular, unprejudiced reader… The guiding question of our project is how contemporary informational technology can facilitate, enhance and innovate the complex cognitive and learning activities involved in reading a late medieval literary text like Boccaccio’s Decameron.”

Giovanni Boccaccio - Opera Omnia
http://digilander.libero.it/il_boccaccio/translate_english/index.html
Summary
1313 – Birth
1344 – Elegy of Madonna Fiammetta
1351 – Decameron
         Proem
         First day
         Second day
         Third day
         Fourth day
         Fifth day
         Sixth day
         Seventh day
         Eighth day
         Ninth day
         Tenth day
         Conclusion
1375 – Death

St. Valentine’s Day Cour Amoureuse

and find out “Which DCAD major makes the best lover?”

(Image courtesy of http://www.houstonheartcenter.com/html/heart_healthy.html)

4 x 6″ photos with an 8 x 10” border. 
All digitally shot and manipulated in PhotoShop CS5.

TR676 .F48  A24 2004
Love & lust by Donna Ferrato