On the Dante Trail trail: Behold, America: A Ham Tree!

Now we're talking. Our third Station of the Belly: charcuterie, the sacrament of the teologia dei suini and its apostle.

To leaven lurking little voices like this

The primi piatti was spaghetti with mushrooms and black truffles, and the secondi was a mixed grill that included, yes, wild boar. I wish I had a boar piglet sleeping at the foot of my bed tonight. And I wish Nonna would come by and bring me warm milk and tell me a bedtime story.

with at least some alibi of spirituality we also get this sworn testimony

I spent an hour today praying my prayer rule in front of the altar of the crypt church, underneath the church you see above.

Why an hour rather than 50 minutes or an hour ten isn't specified, and as usual how anyone but Rod would really know isn't either, but I think the message comes through loud and clear: Rod is a prayer athlete, no doubt also explaining his inexhaustible need for fuel, particularly black truffles which contain the vital amino acid precarosine.

Those of us who maybe pray for five minutes or so at bedtime for our family and friends would clearly be out of our league in this sort competitive exhibition.

Not to put to fine a point on it, but an hour of prayer taken from the day is an hour that wasn't spent learning much about Dante, which tends to reinforce my suspicion that the Dante book will be more about Rod's interior life than about Dante and his work. You, potential Dante book reader, will in turn be vicariously saved, not so much by Dante, but by absorbing these various sensibilities of the athletic apostle we're following here as if they were a spiritual vapor rub.

The ham tree and its associated signs from this SOTB shift our tote board once again:

Total pics: 38 - 100%

Selfies: 7 - 18% of total

Things Rod Ate: 9 - 24% of total

Our Dante Trail trail takeaway this evening: by your works you shall be known. Although our following leads with this piety, salted with the language of the donkey-born traveler of yore

Casella and I find ourselves lodging here tonight. We came to make a pilgrimage to the church and monastery built over the birthplace of the saint and his twin sister, St. Scholastica. A happy, happy benefit of coming here is that Norcia (Nursia, to Americans) is known for cured meats, wild boar, and truffles.

the picture sequence reveals a completely opposite set of priorities. As Rod himself says, there's a lesson here for us Christians in these times.