Our values make us different

The weekly shop, for my Dad.  The queue looked long but that was mostly due to the wide gaps between shoppers. Inside the store all was orderly and mostly well-stocked.  One woman, standing next to the pack of yoghurts I needed, seemed to think it was necessary to read the small-print on each individual pot on the entire shelf.

Later, I walked to my favourite Hollingworth Lake cafe, which is of course closed, as are many businesses.

The first listen of choice today was the album "Upp" recorded by the jazz/rock/funk band of the same name in 1975. Two interesting (to me, anyway) facts - Jeff Beck produced the album and played guitars on it; and the bass player was one Stephen Amazing (aka Steve Fields.) My favourite track was Give It To You.

Painting of the day was "Penelope and the Suitors" (1509) by Pinturicchio (which I gather means "little painter.") Now in the National Gallery in London, it was painted as one of eight frescos in the Petrucci palace in Siena. It is not in the best condition, not having been properly restored.

Pandolfo Petrucci was a local "tyrant" a term which was not wholly negative in those turbulent times. This classical scene, from the story of Penelope, the wife of Odysseus waiting in Ithaca for the return of her husband, may have been intended to compliment Petrucci for his noble toughness, like Homer's hero, and his wife for her chastity and patience. However, at such an early stage in the Renaissance, printing was not well-developed and Pinturicchio's understanding of the tales of Odysseus was vague at best.  It is far from clear that the young men on the right of the picture were actually suitors. The one near the centre may have been Telemachus, the son of Odysseus and Penelope.  

The legend has it that Odysseus was watched-over by Athene, the goddess of wisdom, who was said by Homer to have taken the shape of a swallow and "darted aloft to perch on the smoky main beam of the hall" in Ithaca. The bird in the top left of the picture is definitely not a swallow and it is perched on the frame of a weaving loom.