The middle ages

I was talking to Jon about the middle ages on Saturday night and couldn't remember exactly when it was. I figured it ran from about 1000 (ce) to 1500, maybe 1450. I've finally got around to checking... ooops, not quite. Losing track of 700 years (the article puts the middle ages from 300 to 1500) was pretty big but I still can't quite believe that the dark ages were part of the middle ages.

The pluralization is tucked in there pretty well, lurking for all who don't think about its meaning. Can you imagine the committee meeting where they decided to just shuffle off the whole dark ages and hide them in the basement of the middle ages? Look we have to do something to get the dark ages out of everyones way, they were awful, we can't have people thinking about those bad times. How about we slide the dark ages into the front end of the middle ages and drop the whole name. A hundred years from now, who'll know?

When I was telling Jon about it tonight, I managed to work in some discussion about the renaissance, but I hadn't read about it lately. I was interested to see that some date the end of the middle ages to the fall of Constantinople in 1453.

I wound up stubbing my toe again when I started running through a bunch of people from the renaissance and tossed Frédéric Chopin into the list of classical musicians. Of course, he had to stop me on Chopin. We don't have any of his music, so he's never heard of him. I remember liking Chopin, that's why he came to mind so easily... I can't explain not having a standout recording. That's something to fix while working on remembering that he was a 19th century composer, not quite a renaissance type of guy. Too bad.

Dang, still haven't posted. I've been listening and kicking myself a bit. How the hell did I let Mr. Chopin fall out of my life like that?