Moonman

I had planned on continuing on into the Third Turning, with another post that was mostly about the history of Astronomy.

Which lasted until a decision to look a bit deeper into a coincidence only noticed within the last few weeks: Galileo and Shakespeare were born in the same year, 1564.  There's nothing mysterious about this, they simply happen to have been born a few months apart. The search led to an article primarily about Galileo and the circumstances of his persecution (although it does mention Shakespeare a couple of times). It was interesting for a number of reasons:

• Bertolt Brecht - the 11th member of the Hollywood Ten - wrote a screenplay about Galileo that was produced in 1947 - so just ahead of his testimony to the HUAC.
• Brecht's "Hollywood exile" is mentioned,  referring to his time IN Hollywood after fleeing Nazi Germany. Soon after his testimony, he would be in exile FROM Hollywood.
• It appears that Galileo's trouble with the Inquisition - like Brecht's troubles in the U.S. - were during a First Turning, a time when organizations find it necessary to identify those unwilling to conform.
• Galileo's father, a lute player, wrote about the right way to tune musical instruments when his son was a youth. His writings show similarities to Galileo's, including a reliance on experimentation to confirm what actually happened, rather than relying on what existing books already said.