Bookends

"I put a sheet of paper across the face of an especially mossy old marker, one you couldn't even read. With my No. 2 pencil, I revealed a hand pointing up to the dear dead person's heavenly home. I hunted for another really old tombstone and found an even neater one. Biting my lower lip, I rubbed my pencil fast. A face appeared, an angel's face with eyes like headlights and bird wings on its shoulders. And then, calendar dates: November 25, 1814 ~ April 11, 1873. Bookends, they seemed like, on each end of Sarah Somebody's shelf of days."   Carmen Cathcart, my main character in my 2006 book Just For You to Know.

       Bookend-wise, today  marks one of some significance. The long & glorious shelf-full of the days of Leonardo Da Vinci,  which began in Tuscany, in mid-April, 1452, came to an end in Clos Lucé, a grand house in Amboise, in central France, on the 2nd of May, 1517.  495 years ago today.