I have been advised that the best time to publish a blog post is Tuesday through Thursday and not Friday morning as I have been doing lo these many years. As Tuesday is, inexplicably, my favorite day of the week, I have decided that, from here on out, I will publish on a Tuesday rather than a Friday. For this last Friday, here’s an excerpt from my as yet unpublished novel, The Oracle of the Mountain, set in the early 1800’s in the Sibylline Mountains of Italy, wherein Padre Eusebio, an elderly priest, attempts to dissuade Prior Bacigalupo from exorcising a witch on a Tuesday:
“But, Prior, it’s Tuesday! Tuesday!” the old man pleaded.
“And what in Heaven’s name is wrong with Tuesday?” Bacigalupo demanded.
“Every terrible thing that has ever happened to me personally happened on a Tuesday. It is my unlucky day.”
“It’s not just you, Padre,” Mama said. “Tuesday is everyone’s unlucky day. As my old Nonna used to say,’ De Venere e di Marte né si sposa né si parte’. Very unlucky to marry or embark upon a journey on a Tuesday . . . or a Friday, for that matter. That’s because Tuesday is named after Mars, the Roman god of war, and Friday is named after Venus, the goddess of love. Mars and Venus. Those two cause a lot of trouble!”
“See!” Padre Eusebio crowed. “Tuesdays are very bad luck. I’m not just making it up!”
“That’s ridiculous!” the Prior blustered. “We live in an age of reason . . . of science! There’s nothing wrong with Tuesdays! Tuesdays are a perfectly good sort of day.”
“They are a terrible, fearful sort of day,” the priest insisted. “Awful things always happen on a Tuesday!”
See you Tuesday!
Melissa Hardy 