bici vecchia: an errant in... nyc

How lost is lost?

2009-03-26T23:12:00.006+01:00

Riding home on the subway today, I got distracted by reading Bill McKibben on knick-knack factories in China and locally milled oats in the Lake Champlain Valley and ended up in Queens. Which is not where I live. At all. Even as I rode off of my intended route, I noticed unfamiliar stations passing with little more than a nod - "23rd St. and Ely? I never noticed that before..." And then I lifted my head out of my book long enough to realize I wasn't in Kansas - or Manhattan - anymore.

One day, Charles Dickens saw a most peculiar word painted on the inside of a window.

MOOREEFFOC

For those of you who are still working on the translation, it says “coffee room”, or at least it would from the outside looking in. Later, G.K. Chesterton, another British author, heard of Dickens’ experience and took this term “mooreeffoc” to denote anything that becomes odd and unfamiliar when looked at from a new angle.

Walking today from uptown from down, starting at Wall St. and wending along Broadway, I had a similar mooreeffoc moment when I arrived at Canal St. Unexpectedly, like someone had folded the map to cut out in-between terrain, a wrinkle not in time but space. An "I didn't realize it was so close" moment, like seeing the topography of a well-known place through an airplane window.

*******
Xavier plays Pitt in the Sweet 16 tonight in Boston at the new Garden. My brother, parents, and cousin will be in attendance. Wish that I were there. Go X!

Catch a Fire

2009-03-18T00:07:00.002+01:00

For the first time since Aught Eight, I saw the turtles out today in Morningside Park, sunning on the rocks along the edge of the pond and floating out in the water and taking part in relaxing turtle activities. I take this as a good omen.

This year, St. Patrick's Day brings a sense of floating: a world adrift in a bellicose, uncertain time; sliding masses of humanity through migrations, excisements, shallow-rooted wanderings; and optimistic lanterns wave-lashed yet speckle the dark.

And today feels like spring. Spring. Truly Scrumptious. [Side note: did everyone besides me know that the authors of Chitty Chitty and Casino Royale were one in the same?]

Only 19 days till Opening Day. Light till nearly 7 PM. Turtles up and about. Spring is here. Sure, we could yet get lashed with the cat-o-nine-storms, but today I heard the thwap of baseball on leather gloves, uncreaking after a winter's nap. Like turtles, another good omen. Hope you too are floating a little lighter in your shoes, be they have toes curled back or otherwise.

In honor of St. Patrick's adopted island and the graces all around us, from Gerard Manley Hopkins, Irish Jesuit mystic poet - all great things:

34. ‘As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies dráw fláme’
AS kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies dráw fláme;
As tumbled over rim in roundy wells
Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell’s
Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name;
Each mortal thing does one thing and the same:	5
Deals out that being indoors each one dwells;
Selves—goes itself; myself it speaks and spells,
Crying Whát I do is me: for that I came.

Í say móre: the just man justices;
Kéeps gráce: thát keeps all his goings graces;	10
Acts in God’s eye what in God’s eye he is—
Chríst—for Christ plays in ten thousand places,
Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his
To the Father through the features of men’s faces.

Mother Nature don't do bailouts

2009-03-08T21:01:00.004+01:00

(photo courtesy: http://creative-commons-photo.com/image/61-humpback-whale)

Thomas Friedman asks, in his Op-Ed in today’s New York Times, “What if the crisis of 2008 represents something much more fundamental than a deep recession? What if it’s telling us that the whole growth model we created over the last 50 years is simply unsustainable economically and ecologically and that 2008 was when we hit the wall – when Mother Nature and the market both said: ‘No more.’”

For years, I’ve fed on writers who have shouted similar messages from their pulpits, smaller and less amplified than the New York Times usually but pulpits nonetheless. I have long been a convert to various strains of “Less can be More” credos of consumption, if at times admittedly lapsed in my dedication. Bill McKibben and Wendell Berry before him have long argued for a combination of personal and collective action to counteract prevailing destructive forces of contemporary capitalism; Gary Snyder and Annie Dillard are champions of the wild that is out there and in us; E.B. White examined work, craft, and community; Henry David Thoreau filled reams in an attempt to walk the walk he was talking.

Recently, I’ve sat down with more sobering fare: The World Without Us by Alan Weisman, I Am Legend starring Will Smith to name two. Both ask related questions: How might we push ourselves over the cliff edge? What will the ensuing post-apocalyptic world look like? A related, though ultimately more uplifting movie is the fantastic Whale Rider [If you haven’t yet, see it.]. A subplot that shook me was the story of whales. Whales elude conveyance – by saying that a house is large, blue, and south-facing, have I showed you what kind of home it is? Whales, like the dolphins in A Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy trilogy, may yet leave. I think I should resume a previous habit of answering, whenever asked, “What animal would you choose to be?,” – a whale.

While I can’t swim like whales, what lessons can I learn from them? Put another way, how can I better walk the walk of a concientious consumer/educator/friend/citizen? What can I do to help restore balance? What am I, what are we doing differently in 2009 that will help us climb up to greater stability, sustainability, and symbiosis? Symbiosis?

Yes -- "sym·bi·o·sis, noun 2. a cooperative, mutually beneficial relationship between two people or groups." To this definition I would add “or systems” – educational, health care, political, financial, energy, industrial, military, transportation, commercial... What systems will we create to ensure that Mother Nature and the market, our families and communities can look back and say, confidently and gracefully: “Never again.”

Swing Low, Sweet Chariot

2009-02-25T22:30:00.001+01:00

The image in my head is sepia-toned, muted colors in low lamplight. I’m maybe 5 years old, lying on the floor while my grandfather sits beside me, in my parents’ bedroom because of the out-of-town guests. His voice is low, strong, voluminous like an organ in church, claret. He sings an old spiritual almost as slow as I can stand it – carrying me softly towards sleep. He doesn’t describe the song or its meaning, doesn’t stop to ask me what I think or how I feel, doesn’t belabor his obvious love of singing – creating music with nothing less than his own voice. I feel safe, cared for, a part of a shared tradition. Back in West Virginia, I know he sings with choirs at church, at work, has done so for years, but right now my grandfather is singing for me.

Lawrence G. Hess would have turned 93 this past weekend. He would have had some short, sly, witty thing to say about it, too, had he been able to see the day. He was a good man, a kind father, a loyal employee, a brilliant chemical engineer, a devoted Catholic, an adventurous spirit, and a passionate fan of Notre Dame.

Happy Birthday, Grandad. We miss you. We hold you in our hearts.

Come on up, lay your hands in mine

2009-01-28T00:38:00.003+01:00

To present any coherent collection of my thoughts and recollections from the past election-into-elect-into-Inauguration season is beyond me these days. I would, however, like to fire out some ramblings, errant-style, before the first heat of this historic moment passes completely.

To start, here are some jottings I made late in the evening after gathering with friends to watch the election results come in, back on November 4th. We met at an apartment in our neighborhood and then, as it was clear the rising was upon us, we joined a thronging mass of humanity up on Harlem's historic 125th Street to ring in the new era...

+++++++++++

The hope is tangible. The joint is jumpin'. The fireworks are poppin'. Car horns and beams of light and chants and clapping and screams and high school girls dancing in the streets and traffic thrown off all over the area. All TVs I hear through open windows on an unseasonably warm night playing the same speech, in loud volume - people cheering out doorways and from rooftops and in living rooms and on street corners and more. The city pulses more than I've ever felt it - a throbbing "Yes we can" and "Yes we did", the realization of dreams of generations, of national pride unparallelled in my experience - "a new kind of patriotism" - we all in this together. Even those who did not vote for him, he WILL reach out to you. An articulate president again, an intelligent president again...

"I may not get there with you, but we'll get there."

Campaign songs blaring from car windows, on the crowd's lips, from the speakers of the rally at 125. 40,000 people at the New York State Office Building. Traffic is completely stopped. Riding in a cab, heading south away from the growing crowd along the main drag of Harlem - no need to hyperbolize the significance of the neighborhood in African-American history and US history in general (Is this a dream deferred realized?!) - riding in that cab, passing celebrating gaggles on sidewalks spilling into the street, buoyed by the spirit of the evening, listening to Barack on the radio, turning it up and nodding, clapping along with the cabbie.

And back at home still I hear the cheers, the honks, the yells - I imagine I will into the night. It's 12:28 and we are mere minutes into a new era. Fireworks. Even dogs getting in on the act - barking up a storm in fits and starts, lulls when the human voices have settled back from the ripples heading out.

Voices on the radio, calling in from their corners of celebration:
"America is full of wonders."
"Everybody is smiling. People are proud to be American again..."
"I have never seen the city so alive.'

Rep. John Lewis - "I don't know if I have any tears left to cry this week."

Manicotti and Musketeers

2009-01-21T04:51:00.002+01:00

There is a restaurant on Arthur Avenue in the Bronx that advertises “Fine Family Dinning.” Does that mean you can bring the kids and let them make a racket? Is “dinning” like “dimming”? Or more like “dunning”? Neither of those sounds good to me. What does sound good is, “Hey, I’m going up to eat at Dominick’s on Arthur Avenue. You want to join me?”

I did have the pleasure of eating at Dominick’s this past weekend with my brother, father, and L. We combined the gustatory delights of that menu-less family-style Italian eatery with a basketball game at Fordham, vs. Xavier. Our cousin Mike is a trainer for the Musketeers and, as always, it was nice to see a friendly face on the opposing team’s bench. Go Rams! [Photo is a little fuzzy because either a) the kind woman sitting near us was sitting in a Sharper Image chair when she took it; b) the lens was covered with castor oil; or c) pick 'em.]

Dominick’s, for those unfortunate many who have not had the pleasure, is a treasure of the Bronx’s Little Italy neighborhood, a collection of bakeries, restaurants, specialty stores, and the like. Some of the restaurants have fine dinning, others no. Regardless, as yet another outpost of il bel paese, Arthur Avenue ranks with Court Street in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn, and the most famous Little Italy in NYC centered around Mulberry St. in lower Manhattan. 2009 – a year to shake off lethargy and explore those infrequently visited spots of your place in space. A hedgerow, a side street, a nearby valley, a borough. Get out there! Don’t forget your decoder ring.

And watch out for misspelled signs. They’re everywhere.

++++++++++++++

One sign you could not miss today:

C. H. A. N. G. E.

As one blogger put i: Black president, y'all.

Something in the air

2009-01-15T02:05:00.007+01:00

Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we've been waiting for.
We are the change that we seek.
~ President-elect Barack Obama

2009 is the year of change, if we make it so. I’ve gone walkabout for too long now and it is time to come home to writing in this space again. I don’t know if anyone else missed “the old bike” as much as me, but I’m going to get back on, start pedaling, and see what happens. I resolve to change my no-good lay-about writing ways.

President-elect Obama’s inauguration is next week in our nation’s capitol; I plan on attending some of the weekend’s pre-festivities and look forward to sharing stories afterwards. Additionally, I resolve to be more conscientious of the part I must play in turning Senator Obama’s rhetoric to action. What role do I play? What about you?

++++++++++++

Sometimes old adages prove true. “The more things change, the more they stay the same.” Example #1: it is interesting and encouraging to see a growing consciousness not only of more sustainable ways of doing things, but also of the need for a fundamental examination of the motivations behind those actions. As Sandra Steingraber points out in her essay in the current Orion magazine, the increasing trend towards Velcro and Croc-style slip-on shoes weakens our self-reliance by removing knot tying as an early childhood skill and deepens our petro-reliance by adding yet more oil-based products to our lives. Knot-tying as self-reliance? Yes. While arguments can be made for ease and comfort, do we not lose when we trade map for GPS, pick-up for delivery, post-cards for Facebook? The path of least resistance can be difficult to climb in reverse.

So what is staying the same? The ability of some old-fashioned technology to solve more than one problem at the same time. Sighting houses for light can also greatly increase energy efficiency. Reusing materials salvaged from the garbage cuts down on landfill and keeps your wallet fat. Drying your clothes on an indoor line in a winter NYC apartment lowers your electric bill and helps humidify a dry space. A little bit. Any which way you slice it, this last activity, drying clothes sans electricity, is a new endeavor we’re trying in 2009 – commonplace technology in many parts, outlawed practice in some, exciting pastime in a my TV-free apartment. But that’s another story.

Interested in learning more about clotheslines? Check this out. I resolve to pedal around and check more things out. For example: will President Obama plant an organic farm on the lawn of the White House? I don’t know, but thanks to my friend Dan I now know that these folks hope so – and more power to ‘em!

2009. Winds of change are blowing. Reap ‘em.

Frank Sinatra famously sang

2008-04-23T05:13:00.002+02:00

Frank Sinatra famously sang of New York that it's the city that never sleeps. The other night I was reminded of those nocturnal whirrings that prove Old Blue Eyes true. Walking the streets of a quiet Chinatown, Sunday nearing midnight, I noted a well-dressed family trailing strings of gold balloons; wooden packing crates broken down and stacked, the cooling asphalt releases scents of tar, fish, dirt. Across the street from Fire Department Engine Company 9, the oldest in New York and home of the Dragon Fighters, is Wing KEI Noodle Inc. Through doors open wide to the night I could see a world in miniature all in white: walls, uniforms, lights, ceiling, flour, floors, paper hats, thin rolled noodles.

I remembered that the composer Nico Muhly lives nearby; perhaps he buys Wing KEI noodles or maybe bobbins from the sewing store or fried chicken from Popeye's on the corner (whose signs are all in English and Chinese). I do know that he is merely 26 and composes pieces for quartets, orchestras, choirs. After reading this article, I know that Muhly draws on numerous and disparate sources for inspiration: medieval cosmologies, David Bowie, Egyptian archaeology, Italian Fascist architecture, the history of the novel, Balinese gamelan music – a frenetic, omnivorous taste.

On Easter Sunday last month, my family and I had the pleasure of attending services with my friend Gabrielle at Middle Church in the East Village. In addition to a pair of choirs (one of which showed in rocking form that "gospel" is a state of mind that can leapfrog matters of heritage), the services featured a jazz quintet, a "maverick organist," and a parade of children in silly hats. The musicians and the traditional choir premiered Muhly's Christ and the Whale. The soloist sang in a spirit from beyond the church, a clarion bell. And they rolled the rock away and there was... music? Light?

After prodding from the musical director and his mother seated beside him, Muhly stood briefly to accept our applause. He waved once, bent fractionally at the waist in partial bow, and sat. Sitting directly behind him, I had the chance to be the first to shake his hand. A unique, intoxicating experience – melting the late winter blues away among human nightingales, bald dynamo choir directors, rainbows and sermons on looking for love in all the wrong places, congratulating an avant-garde composer on the occasion of the world premiere of one of his works.

Muhly is one of les enfant terribles. Which also happens to be the name of a café around the corner from Wing KEI. Ah, New York.

Rambling 'round Brooklyn

2008-03-31T04:50:00.006+02:00

Around 3.5 million people live in Brooklyn, making it the most populous borough of New York City. Yesterday, many of us took to the streets and parks to enjoy the most Spring-like day in weeks. Everywhere were runners, walkers; bikes, skateboards, strollers; horseback riding lessons and long-line kiting; short sleeves, long sleeves, hats, scarves, shorts; soccer, baseball, cricket, football, frisbee, handball. It was the kind of day when everything seems cut from glass, even the break and especially the sky where it is occluded along the edges of rooftops, water towers, steeples. Edward Hopper light in all directions. In celebration of wheeled freedom and temperatures in the 50s, I wandered, by bici, through various quilted sections of Brooklyn.

Red Hook along the waterfront of reclaimed warehouses, container cranes silhouetted, soon-to-open Ikea, sprawling Fairway grocery, main drag Van Brunt lined with oddities and antiques, early season baseball practice next to a series of giant grain towers – from the little I watched, the winter ice has not quite melted on throwing arms and creaky gloves.

I continued on through South Slope, past historic Green-Wood Cemetery (final home to, among others, Samuel F.B. Morse and Boss Tweed), into Sunset Park and up onto the eponymous hillcrest park: Walt Whitman, in his days with The Brooklyn Eagle, may have sat just there and imagined his yawp sounding across the rooftops in Brooklyn, across the East River above the beating financial drum of colossal Metropolis, and on to the rest of the world.

After winding back through Windsor Terrace - a pocket of columned-porticos, stalwart Farrell’s, lipped on the freeway - I visited an old friend, Prospect Park. Lying in the sun, I could almost convince myself that I needed sunscreen.

A few parting lines from that sweaty-toothed madman:

What is it then between us?
What is the count of the scores or hundreds of years between us?

Whatever it is, it avails not - distance avails not, and place avails not,
I too lived, Brooklyn of ample hills was mine...

Picking up the pen again

2008-03-25T16:49:00.002+01:00

Today it is sunny, windy, late winter in Brooklyn and the other boroughs. A few hours ago, the Red Sox beat Oakland in Japan in Major League Baseball's first game of the season. Tulips and crocuses and the leaf buds on trees are about to call out in color. Spring is nearby but apparently lost with poor directions.

For those who have been wondering what happened to the Americano riding around small town Italy on his bici vecchia gialla, I am here, in New York City, alive and as well as one can be when not in Italy. I have been reluctant to write anything of life on this side of the Atlantic, but the twisting streets and muttering retreats of this metropolis offer more than enough material.

As for my return to bel paese... Ci vediamo.

Pachyderms on Parade

2008-03-20T12:36:00.003+01:00

The other night I saw elephants walking through the streets of Manhattan. This was not Jumanji or I am Legend or Dr. Seuss. We knew they were coming and we lined the barricades in anticipation.

We waited for what some said was too long, but I think elephants in Manhattan are worth waiting for.

Eventually, after midnight, when most of the city oscillated in slow night rhythms, the elephants emerged from the Queens Midtown Tunnel. They walked east in a line, tail to trunk, the centerpieces in a quick moving stream of people and cars and caravanning horses. Seven elephants walking down 34th Street amidst numerous attendants. Police had cleared the streets of traffic; there was not a pith helmet in sight. Camera phones and cameras just flashed; people cheered and waved; the elephants responded by drawing their trunks along the pavement and hurrying along.

And then before you could shake a stick and call it dancing, they were gone. Off to Madison Square Garden, home to the circus for a fortnight. It was, like many others, a New York spectacle exciting, brief, and full of controversy. Even just knowing that it happens - like Burning Man, like the tides in the Bay of Fundy, like the monarchs' migration, like the Staten Island Ferry - is enough to bring a bit of sunlight into any grey day. To think that I saw it on 34th Street...

(photo above from http://flickr.com/photos/dlogsdon/)

La oca is getting grassa

2007-12-17T13:01:00.000+01:00

There has been a frost of early morning the last few days. Some of the cold lingered yesterday on north-facing roofs, in the shadows on the soccer pitch, along irrigation ditches out in the fields. The street cleaners whirring by sweep up the most recent brown leaves, remnants from an extended fall. Each week the signs of Christmas’s approach grow in number and illumination. As in the United States, whispers of Natale were heard in these parts as early as late October – in the supermarkets, I frequently saw panettone, the traditional Milanese sweetbread, alongside Halloween decorations.

Now, every street has at least one house or apartment strung with lights (unfortunately I haven’t seen yet any of the palms trees so decorated). In the absence of yards, many hang the most popular decoration of the season from their windows or balconies: Babbo Natale climbing a rope ladder. Cute and everywhere. Though, with his feet dangling off the rungs, St. Nick looks less magical than out of shape, a kid struggling in gym class.

The towns and cities I have seen recently are tastefully, festively, even whimsically bedecked for Yule. In Milan, il Castello Sforzesco is draped with electric blue icicles. The comune of Parma have put up a large, well-appointed tree in Piazza Garibaldi; simple strands of white lights add elegance to a small side street.

Here in Codogno, as in many Italian communities, most of the streets in the center are spanned by a variety of bright stars and geometric constellations. One street even has wrapped presents sprouting from the walls above it.

I have seen no menorahs, dreidels, or potato latkes, much the pity. Hanukkah is not much celebrated in these parts.

We turn this week in our elliptical orbit - in the Northern Hemisphere a turn from darkness back towards light: the Winter Solstice. I hope that you and joy find each other, wherever you are and whomever you’re with. I hope that you can celebrate a festival of lights, with ample reasons for thanksgiving and continued hope for peace. And remember the words of Zuzu Bailey, “Every time a bell rings, an angel gets his wings.”

The Shortest Day
by Susan Cooper

And so the Shortest Day came and the year died
And everywhere down the centuries of the snow-white world
Came people singing, dancing,
To drive the dark away.
They lighted candles in the winter trees;
They hung their homes with evergreen;
They burned beseeching fires all night long
To keep the year alive.
And when the new year's sunshine blazed awake
They shouted, revelling.
Through all the frosty ages you can hear them
Echoing behind us - listen!
All the long echoes, sing the same delight,
This Shortest Day,
As promise wakens in the sleeping land:
They carol, feast, give thanks,
And dearly love their friends,
And hope for peace.
And now so do we, here, now,
This year and every year.

Libel, reversism, and other abuses

2007-12-13T09:41:00.000+01:00

James Agee, in Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, wrote:

"For in the immediate world, everything is to be discerned, for him who can discern it, and centrally and simply, without either dissection into sciene, or digestion into art, but with the whole of conciousness, seeking to perceive it as it stands: so that the aspect of a street in sunlight can roar in the heart of itself as a symphony, perhaps as no symphony can: and all of consciousness is shifted from the imagined, the revisive, to the effort to perceive simply the cruel radiance of what is.

This is why the camera seems to me, next to unassisted and weaponless consciousness, the central instrument of our time; and is why in turn I feel such rage at its misuse: which has spread so nearly universal a corruption of sight that I know of less than a dozen alive whose eyes I can trust even so much as my own."

Here are some recent odd notes from the Italian symphony, well represented or no.

Men are constructing a new structure next to the town sports bubble, but first they had to clear the space. Apparently they could not find George Washington to borrow an axe or Texas Massacre people to borrow a chainsaw, because they knocked down the problematic trees with a small excavator. The perfect tool for the job.
*****
Graffiti in Italy sometimes seems nearly ubiquitous. I am still investigating this phenomenon. Few Milanese buildings are completely clean of paint. Churches and monuments do not escape inclusion in the defacing/expression. Here is a stencil I found recently here in Codogno. Perhaps it was a first draft. Or maybe there is some Satanic message to be heard when the text is read backwards...

*****
Among the legion of small vehicles plying Italian roads, my favorite is the Ape (or Bee, a companion of the Vespa, Wasp). Essentially small wee trucks, Apes can be equipped with a flat bed or a closed back, usually have only three wheels, and sometimes have handlebars instead of a steering wheel. They are more common in Tuscany than here in Lombardia, unfortunately; even more unfortunately, this next picture documents a good Ape turned bad. I do not blame the Ape.

*****
Where else but Italy are you likely to find graffiti scrawled against both the current and preceding Bishops of Rome, using their pre-Papal names?!

Fogginess surrounds

2007-12-11T10:19:00.000+01:00

Reading an article about surfing and pelicans in my favorite magazine Orion last spring, I came across the following: There is a German word, funktionslust, meaning “pleasure taken in what one can do best.”

Does the weather here thrill to bring us fog? Last night, the soccer teams practiced despite low visibility - looking out the window felt akin to flying through clouds and coming upon a gaggle of angels playing ninepins.

Babbo Natale's foggy beard draped all over - hoary weather reminding me again of Ireland ('Until the Battle of the Boyne Ireland belonged to Asia.' W. B. Yeats), and also of the California coast where fog is as regular as bow-tying laces, honeybees, and extra pennies rolling in gutters.

Another fog poem, this one from a poet of the California coast.

Boats in a Fog
by Robinson Jeffers

Sports and gallantries, the stage, the arts, the antics of dancers,

The exuberant voices of music,

Have charm for children but lack nobility; it is bitter earnestness

That makes beauty; the mind

Knows, grown adult.

A sudden fog-drift muffled the ocean,

A throbbing of engines moved in it,

At length, a stone’s throw out, between the rocks and the vapor,

One by one moved shadows

Out of the mystery, shadows, fishing-boats, trailing each other

Following the cliff for guidance,

Holding a difficult path between the peril of the sea-fog

And the foam on the shore granite.

One by one, trailing their leader, six crept by me,

Out of the vapor and into it,

The throb of their engines subdued by the fog, patient and cautious,

Coasting all round the peninsula

Back to the buoys in Monterey harbor. A flight of pelicans

Is nothing lovelier to look at;

The flight of the planets is nothing nobler; all the arts lose virtue

Against the essential reality

Of creatures going about their business among the equally

Earnest elements of nature.

Fogginess abounds

2007-12-10T12:22:00.000+01:00

Here in small town northern Italy, we are officially in the Season of the Fog. Apparently la nebbia plagues local airports, causing flight cancellations and the like. Apparently, it gets worse as we move further into winter. I've lived with cold, rain, and snow, in heat and humidity, but fog? It calls to mind Baskerville hounds and Heathcliff out on the moor. With life imitating literature, the fog brings some mystery to the day. This is Seamus Heaney weather.

The Peninsula
by Seamus Heaney

When you have nothing more to say, just drive
For a day all round the peninsula;
The sky is high as over a runway,
The land without marks so you will not arrive

But pass through, though always skirting landfall.
At dusk, horizons drink down sea and hill,
The ploughed field swallows the whitewashed gable
And you're in the dark again. Now recall

The glazed foreshore and silhouetted log,
That rock were breakers shredded into rags,
The leggy birds stilted on their own legs,
Islands riding themselves out into the fog

And drive back home, still with nothing to say
Except that now you will uncode all landscapes
By this: things founded clean on their own shapes,
Water and ground in their extremity.

And when you're out of fuel I'm still afloat

2007-12-09T11:15:00.000+01:00

Boccaccio wrote in his Life of Dante (1374): “Everything that is acquired with toil has more sweetness in it.”

The marathon. Mark and I ran the Milan Marathon last Sunday, and we lived to tell the tale. Overall, I found it to be a very positive experience - look at me! I'm healthy enough to run this far! I'm lucky enough to be here, in Italy, on this day!

It was a thrill to be running - thanks to some sage advice from former roommates and Mark's sister, marathon experienced folk, we kept an easier pace through the first 2/3s and it made worlds of difference. The course is flat which made for easier running. A nice if unusual way to see the Milan sprawl, the course winds through a number of neighborhoods I had never visited and probably won’t again. The cold, mists, and fog added an ethereal quality to the day.

There were great provisions along the way - every 5 km the course organizers had tables manned with volunteers stocking cookies, orange slices, water, warm lemonade, warm tea... Slices of heaven. Staggered with those were stations dispensing sponges soaked in water - given the cool to cold temperature and periodic wind of the day, I avoided the sponges but I did like to run past the stations swinging my arm a la Eddie Van Halen - never failed to get a cheer out of the red-coated volunteers.

I enjoyed thanking as many of the volunteers and sparse fans as I could, including the police who stopped traffic - a thankless job as the Milanese seemed neither aware of nor enthused by the marathon snarling their already wicked snarled streets. It was quite unlike the marathons I have seen in Boston and New York: hilarious arm-gesture-accompanied invectives and horn honking abounded at intersections made dangerous by the collision of an immovable object (Milan traffic) with an unstoppable force (marathoners in the zone). In defense of the Milanese, the marathon is young (this was only the 5th running) and there are bound to be growing pains.

We met folks from across the United States (a West Point graduate from Houston living in Kiev; a woman from Seattle living in Turkey; a student from Connecticut who knows the Buckhorn Lodge, my favorite bar in Southern California). And of course Italians, many of whom spoke glowingly of running other marathons in Italy and the States.

I saw a man finish who ran the entire thing barefoot.

Mark and I finished together right around our goal time and received medals for participating: we did it! The space blankets that they give out at the end of the race are one of my new favorite inventions – without one, I may have lain down to freeze to death.

Soon to think about the next one... But not too soon.

Watching all the cars go by, roaring as the breezes

2007-12-06T10:22:00.000+01:00

Trains bombed with words, here and there around Italy:

I dance to the beat, shuffle my feet
Wear a shirt and tie and run with the creeps
'Cause it's all about money, ain't a damn thing funny
You got to have a con in this land of milk and honey

They push that girl in front of a train
Took her to a doctor, sowed the arm on again
Stabbed that man, right in his heart
Gave him a transplant before a brand new start

I can't walk through the park,

'Cause its crazy after the dark
Keep my hand on the gun, 'cause they got me on the run

I feel like an outlaw, broke my last fast jaw
Hear them say you want some more,
Livin' on a seesaw

Don't push me, 'cause I'm close to the edge
I'm trying not to lose my head
It's like a jungle sometimes, it makes me wonder
How I keep from going under

- Grandmaster Flash, The Message

The bocciodromo

2007-12-05T10:08:00.000+01:00

Around the corner from our apartment sits the town’s bocciodromo. After seeing everyday from my steps, passing it on my way to the grocery, I finally got around to visiting the other night...

A sign printed in bold, red ink reads: Access to the bocce playing courts is exclusively reserved for those who are wearing shoes with regulation smooth rubber soles.

There is almost no talking, hushed like a pool hall or a high-stakes poker room. Lit like a rink, the sounds of the bocciodromo are reminiscent of hockey, without the scrapes and slicing of skates. Echoes are shorter and lighter. Almost all of the fans keep their coats on. The players hang theirs along the risers, above their bags which have separate compartments below for shoes. There is one woman out of 50 people present. Conservatively, I am the youngest by 35 years.

Four matching courts, divided by short partitions painted barber-stripe red and white. The floor is a grey concrete covered in a fine green dust that shows broom sweeps and skids and knocks and the drag of feet on follow throughs. On an empty court, a pair rolls in anticipation, checking the give and flow of the surface, like goalies, golfers, skiers. Against the green background, the piebald balls stand out, some in day-glow bright, others blue or grey marble, a plain flecked yellow like lemon sorbet. The shadows thrown by the legs of onlookers appear at first glance to be small undulating valleys. Boards at the end of each run tell the score in black and hunter orange numbers on white plywood.

I focus on one player who in turn focuses on the pallino, a small pink ball 35 feet away. He rests his hand low, almost touching the ground as if to pick up a coin. The bowl approaches perfection, to within four inches. He turns to a friend behind the glass with a familiar smug smile. On another court I see a ball launched airborne. Arcing nearly the length of the floor, it swoops in to knock an opponent’s ball from its proximity to the pallino. Because of back spin the thrown ball stays dead put.

Like grown up marbles, bocce is a game of precision and touch. The judge carries a device with sliding calipers to measure distances and a marking end to note ball locations. Walking past me, he slides in a new piece of chalk and I notice his laminated name badge. The players all carry buffing towels in their non-throwing hands. The pairs wear uniforms, shirts long-sleeved and collared, pants a polyester athletic blend. The shoes blend the aesthetic of Florida white pants retired and East Village tight black jeans – Puma, Adidas, unknown brands. All, undoubtedly, have the appropriate soles.

The tournament started with 128 teams and will be down to the finals tomorrow night.

Birds, beauty, perambulations, and a bottom feeder

2007-12-04T11:33:00.000+01:00

Walking the Florentine streets, we came across many things of interest. A few Irish pubs selling Kilkenny, a great Irish beer that is unfortunately not exported to the U.S. My mother’s new favorite digestif, limoncello – a sweet essence of summer lemon groves liqueur that may be the closest drink we have to Ray Bradbury’s dandelion wine. Christmas lights strung across the narrow streets, lighting the window shoppers, low-hanging constellations in blue and white. Taking the advice of my brother’s roommate, we took special care in crossing the streets – many Florentines zip through the city on scooters like rabbits late for very important dates – occhio!

In Piazzale Michelangelo, above the city and across the river, a green copper copy of the David stands above kitsch booths and buskers – we heard delicate classical guitar played by a focused youth with his back to the views. This piazza and the cemetery higher up on the hill are not to be missed.

From the banks and bridges of the river Arno, we caught frequent glimpses of the Duomo and the crenellated tower of the Palazzo Vecchio, admired skullers from the world-champion Florentine crew club and the reflection of Ponte Vecchio on the still waters of a cloudy day. My brother and I also saw some locals feeding imperial Roman quantities of bread to a flock of pigeons and a family of nutria – rats of the sky and rats of the water. Brilliant.

Perhaps the oddest aquatic sight was the giant catfish we saw pulled from the river by Hemingway’s Italian old man. I would not have thought such a beast possible in those waters. Leaving the fish up from the water’s edge, the fisherman waded back to shore through a whorl of gulls. He was loaded down with long rods, a cooler, a net large enough to seine for shrimp. He rode off on his bicycle and we did not stay to see whether or not he returned for his catch.

Revisiting Siena

2007-12-03T19:15:00.000+01:00

During my family's visit last week, we took a day trip by bus, through fog, to the Tuscan jewel Siena. Because of the Bubonic Plague and its long history in the shadow of her busier rival, Florence, Siena has retained her medieval structure, feel, traditions, and politics more significantly than many other places in Italy. I visited in August for the Palio, perhaps the most famous bareback horse race in the world, and it was a pleasure to go back with my family. Thanks to the excellent introduction to the city I received from Magno (like our favorite team, the Red Sox, sempre campeon), I was able to play tour guide for part of the day. And what a day it was. The winding labyrinthine streets of the contrade. The elegant striped and unfinished Duomo, home of an amazing marble floor and a stargazing scriptorium. The sloped scallop of the picturesque Campo, site of the biannual race and a perfect setting for a late afternoon drink. A wandering ramble past churches, the university, vistas, the calcio stadium, leather and paper and ceramics and artisan shops, eventually back to the bus station. Here are some of the many photos we took.

Exit music for a film, with leather and stone

2007-12-01T10:34:00.000+01:00

On today's trip through memories of Florence we visit Santa Croce. This piazza has retained a smaller, older feel than her more famous Fiorentine sisters. Last Sunday's marathon finished there, a thought to keep you going during 42 kilometers of hills and gasping questions. Inside the church are buried a cadre of famous Italians, including giants of literature, art, science, and politics: Dante, Machiavelli, Galileo, Michelangelo... The central door is massive but it was not enough to hold out the flood of 1966 – a plaque on the wall marks the water's high line.

Exploring the church, through the carefully lit scriptorium, out past the stained-glass transept, a visitor can wander into the Leather School and watch masters craft leather into bags, purses, wallets. The reflections from angled mirrors and the orderly collections of worn tools could have kept me mesmerized for hours.

Tucked into a dark cellar just off a spacious courtyard we found a small exhibit dedicated to the printwork of native son Pietro Parigi. Anyone who has read the Catholic Worker will recognize his simple, rustic style. I am fascinated by this art form; some favorites include the California artist Tom Killion and the book The Man Who Planted Trees by Jean Giono.

During two visits to the neighborhood around the church, we heard great street musicians – a trio named Grupo Romm Dracula's that is comprised of stand-up bass, djembe (or its cousin), and a hammered dulcimer, a stringed instrument resting on a stand that is played with small mallets. The members are Romani, or gypsy, and perhaps have brought strains of the Middle East, even India with them to Florence. [On a side note, this minority is currently much maligned here in Italy, as so often in the past in so many places – e.g. the word “gyp,” as in “That market vendor gypped me.” Xenophobia: a topic for another day...]

The music was new yet somehow familiar, like a bite of some untried sweet that carries remembered tastes, spices. Novel madeleines. Watching people walk away down a narrow Fiorentina street, with the lyrical skipping music playing behind me, I felt like a camera recording the closing scene of a movie. I was reminded of the ending of The Third Man; I later confirmed, through conversations with my classic-movie-knowing family and a bit of Internet research, that the score of that great film noir featured a zither, a close relative of the dulcimer. Romani music – yet another rabbit hole to wander down some other day.

Trading post cards for boarding passes

2007-11-30T12:33:00.000+01:00

For Thanksgiving this year, I ate no turkey and watched no American football. There were no pumpkin pies cooling in my kitchen, no traditional Quaker hymns sung across generations. I did receive a gift beyond worth when my parents and brother came to visit for a week. We spent our time together in Tuscany, mostly in Florence with a day-trip to Siena. We rambled and ambled, wined and dined, raptured at art and city and captured moments on film. To avoid gluttony of reading and writing, I will try to describe the vacation in installments. Hey, it worked for Dickens and Matthiessen, right?

The Uffizi. A grand palace with an overwhelming collection of art. Countless Adoration of the Magi; innumerable Madonnas, including Madonna of the Pomegranate, the Long-necked Madonna, and a dark 15th century portrait that reminds me now of Munch, found by museum representatives at a flea market in Milan in 2002. I learned about the martyrdoms of various saints: Sebastian killed by arrows, Florian thrown from a bridge with a millstone chained to his neck. Many of the Masters are there: Caravaggio, Botticelli, Raphael, da Vinci, Michelangelo, Giotto, Titian, Dürer... Having now traveled a bit in Italy, I recognize its plants, architecture, and landforms in Renaissance art: who knew that Bethlehem looked just like the Tuscan countryside? At night, the city sparkles along the river and the dome of the cathedral still boggles the mind despite the shadows.

The Accademia. We lucked out and, with the combination of a slower tourist season and an afternoon rainstorm, walked right in without waiting in line. The pen-and-marker graffiti along the wall lining the sidewalk attest to the expectant purgatory of visitors past. The small museum has one room of amazing paintings and another exhibition area of musical instruments from the Medieval and Renaissance periods. However, the gallery’s main attraction is Michelangelo’s David, and rightly so. A few unfinished sculptures precede the David and show some of Michelangelo’s process and genius. The 17-foot tall David is... Giorgio Vasari, Michelangelo's contemporary and biographer, said: "Whoever has seen this work need not trouble to see any other work executed in sculpture, either in our own or other times, by no matter what craftsman." The stone seems more alive than some people I’ve known. I had to remind myself of optical illusions when I saw his chest swell with breath. With tired feet and a curious mind, I was happy to sit and stare for a long time. To think that Michelangelo completed the sculpture by the time he was thirty...

Dancing in the dark

2007-11-29T11:48:00.000+01:00

Last night I went to church. There were over 11,000 congregants, eight deacons, and one high priest. By the end of the service, I could have spoken in tongues. If I still had my voice. Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band tore through Milan’s Datch Forum like a steam train running full-head downhill and I willingly went along for the ride.

[photo source: popmatters]

Until last night, I had never seen Bruce Springsteen live. When the show went on sale back in September, my friend David and I tried in vain to buy tickets. Hope does spring eternal - through a series of fortuitous turns, we found ourselves grinning like fools walking onto the floor of the Datch Forum for last night’s show.

I have heard from friends and read reviews of Springsteen's legendary energy. Backed by a drummer, two keyboardists, a violin/fiddle/guitarist/vocalist, a bassist, two vocalists/guitarists, and one mean saxophone player, Bruce lived up to his reputation. Most of the songs were from their new album, Magic, which I have not yet heard. I could not sing along, but as with attending mass in Latin or other unknown languages, I could still participate in the rites and rituals, feel the reverence. The concert was 2 ½ hours of chanting and shaking and hand waving and singing. Without rest, even between songs – a quick drum change from cymbal and high hat to kick bass snare overdrive – in the few moments of transition while the band wrapped up the previous song, Bruce would douse himself with a carwash sponge soaking in a bucket by the drummer’s feet, shake his head snorting like a horse at the gate, and charge 1 2 3 4 into the next song’s beat over the decrescendo of force. Centrifugal and centripetal.

Some will scoff and say dismissive things of Bruce. Others will bristle at the comparison of a rock concert to a religious experience. What I know is this: never have I seen a band and crowd so earnestly, unselfconsciously in sync about the joy of music. I have drunk the Kool-Aid.

A rose by any other name

2007-11-21T11:18:00.000+01:00

The magpie is back, outside my window, walking with exaggerated strides and short hops. From the spotty lawn, she pulls seeds? worms? Her black head and shoulders look like an executioner’s hood and the flash of blue on her wings is captivating.

Back home, I am so-so with flora and fauna identification, an area I would like to improve. I felt most knowledgeable in the montane zone of Colorado where I worked for a few seasons, though the relative symplicity of the ecosystem there made it easier to learn than the crowded temperate forests of southern New England.

Here in northern Italy, I’m most often unknowing when it comes to the natural world. I have plenty of opportunities to see plants and animals that invite investigation, especially on my runs out along the Via dei Mulini, about which I have written before. Long elegant herons are justifiably skittish and leave off whenever I approach within 100 meters. Nutria, large riparian rats, are hunted systematically by farmers during the fall, after the corn and hay have all been take in; an invasive species, they are unwelcome and left dead on the sides of the road. During this season, I have also seen the men wandering the fields, usually with baskets and dogs, searching for mushrooms.

The European magpie I knew by name. It was not the bird baked into a pie, though that “Sing a Song of Sixpence” nursery rhyme, like many others, has an interesting back story – this one with pirates! Arrrr! The magpie, as I found in my research, is common throughout European folklore and is often associated with unhappiness and trouble. Occhio!

The list of plants and animals to look into grows. I will never be the Thoreau, Abbey, or Muir of Codogno, but perhaps I can take part in the ancient practice of naming the world around us.

A poem on names and the light inside the named.

34. ‘As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies dráw fláme’
by Gerard Manley Hopkins, SJ

As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies dráw fláme;
As tumbled over rim in roundy wells
Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell’s
Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name;
Each mortal thing does one thing and the same: 5
Deals out that being indoors each one dwells;
Selves—goes itself; myself it speaks and spells,
Crying Whát I do is me: for that I came.

Í say móre: the just man justices;
Kéeps gráce: thát keeps all his goings graces; 10
Acts in God’s eye what in God’s eye he is—
Chríst—for Christ plays in ten thousand places,
Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his
To the Father through the features of men’s faces.

Walking on the edge of winter

2007-11-20T16:21:00.000+01:00

Today, walking back from the grocery store with a full red pack like a mountain peddler, I smelled woodsmoke and saw a palm tree. I normally consider these things to be of different worlds, but I was wrong. It is growing colder here, with nighttime temperatures dipping just below freezing, and I have heard rumors of snow. Apparently it does not get cold enough here to prevent palm trees from growing. I have also seen some succulents, like jade, and caught hints of fragrant plants that I cannot name, reminding me of California.

Just a short walk from our apartment, one can leave the small town behind and find the sky open up across scattered farms here on the flat plain of the Po Valley. Here are some photographs I took a few weeks ago, on a particularly breath-taking day. A distillation of fall.

Following that one-lane road path leads after two miles to Mulazzana, a collection of 6 or 7 houses with no stores and a church I have never seen open. Beyond that, it is almost another two miles before one reaches the village of Camairago. I do not know how many miles I have run and biked along that road, but I am familiar with its turns, stretches, trees, the irrigation ditches that line it. Recently, as the weather has cooled and the rains have cleared the hazy air, distant mountains that were formerly invisible have come into view: the Ligurian Apennines to the south and the snow-draped Bergamo Alps to the north.

A poem from a man of the mountains.

Riprap
by Gary Snyder

Lay down these words
Before your mind like rocks.
placed solid, by hands
In choice of place, set
Before the body of the mind
in space and time:
Solidity of bark, leaf, or wall
riprap of things:
Cobble of milky way,
straying planets,
These poems, people,
lost ponies with
Dragging saddles—
and rocky sure-foot trails.
The worlds like an endless
four-dimensional
Game of Go.
ants and pebbles
In the thin loam, each rock a word
a creek-washed stone
Granite: ingrained
with torment of fire and weight
Crystal and sediment linked hot
all change, in thoughts,
As well as things.

On steel horses we ride

2007-11-19T11:34:00.000+01:00

On Friday night, I attended the Bicycle Film Festival in Milan. An international festival, it may be coming soon to a city near you. Occhio! If you like bicycles and bike culture, you will find it right up your alley. I heartily enjoyed the black hoodie sweatshirt and rolled pant scene, guys with scraggily beards and thick frame glasses, girls with beautiful fixed gear bikes and small-brim bike caps. Good movies, too. This was a crowd favorite: a group of Oakland kids waxing ridiculous about their tricked out “scraper bikes.”

Wendell Berry, one of my favorites, writes beautifully, thoughtfully, and passionately how we can improve the health of our families, communities, and the natural world all around us. Those who have read his essay “Why I Am Not Going To Buy A Computer” will agree that the bicycle fits many of the criteria he uses for technological innovation:

1. The new tool should be cheaper than the one it replaces.
2. It should be at least as small in scale as the one it replaces.
3. It should do work that is clearly and demonstrably better than the one it replaces.
4. It should use less energy than the one it replaces.
5. If possible, it should use some form of solar energy, such as that of the body.
6. It should be repairable by a person of ordinary intelligence, provided that he or she has the necessary tools.
7. It should be purchasable and repairable as near to home as possible.
8. It should come from a small, privately owned shop or store that will take it back for maintenance and repair.
9. It should not replace or disrupt anything good that already exists, and this includes family and community relationships.

I love bicycles. I love riding them, looking at and photographing them, reading, writing, and talking about them, extolling their numerous virtues. I am more and more convinced that the bicycle is one of the best technological advances we have made (the knife, the bowl, the pencil, the printing press, the camera, the surfboard, the ski, and musical instruments are also excellent, among others). As I've mentioned before, Italy, while not on par with Denmark or the Netherlands in bike culture, is definitely more bike-friendly than the United States. I am frequently impressed by the feats of balance (two people on the same bike is a common site), style, and function that Italians manage a bici. Riding in the rain? No problem. Here are some other photos I have taken over the past few months of le biciclete italiane.

For an interesting examination of the power and efficiency of bicycles, I recommend these excerpts from Ivan Illich, published in 1978 and even more salient today.

If you are looking for some inspiration on world traveling, or if you would like to read about an amazing adventure from your arm chair, I can recommend checking out Heinz Stücke, “the Bike Man.”

The parting words I leave to Queen.

Let my steeple snow!

2007-11-16T10:15:00.000+01:00

Language students are frequently reminded to notice cognates. But as with the Ides of March, beware the false cognates! One student studying in Chile, as urban legend has it, was taken to the hospital after a series of fractured conversations with her host family. She wanted to say, “Yes, I’m sorry. I feel so embarrassed.” Embarazada, right? In Spanish, embarazada is pregnant. Not embarrassed. Occhio!

Besides hospital visits, there are of course many reasons to learn another language. Ordering in a restaurant or discussing food can also be fraught with danger. Mark relates a story of his first summer here in Italy when responded to a question about his favorite recent meal by saying that he had really enjoyed i cappellini. “Really?” “Yes, i cappellini were very tasty.” Now, capellini is angel hair pasta but maybe only in the United States? And yes, the two ps make a difference in Italian. Mark’s friends soon informed him that he had been extolling the gustatory virtues of “cute little hats.” Maybe they were just pulling his gambe...

Living in a country where English is mostly an amateur sport, I have had ample time to consider language. As many of you know, I taught in an English/Spanish bilingual classroom in New York City for two years. Through that experience and my graduate studies, I learned more than I want to remember about BICS v. CALP, comprehensible input, Krashen’s theories on the stages of second language acquisition and the psychology of affective filters, and... Sorry, the dormant grad student in me took hold of the keyboard there for a moment.

Recently I have been curious about focusing on my own Italian language development. Through self-examination I thought perhaps light could dawn on Marblehead, to use an old New England saw. I turned to an old stand-by, the Student Oral Language Observation Matrix (SOLOM), which assesses five categories: Comprehension, Fluency, Pronunciation, Vocabulary, and Grammar. The matrix is scored on a scale of 1 to 5, where 1 signifies “has no proficiency” and 5 means “approaches native fluency.”

To improve the accuracy of the test, I tried to approximate lifelike testing conditions. I installed a speaker on the wall that occasionally spit loud gibberish. I taped some of my artwork and a recent spelling test by the window. I instructed my roommate to throw erasers at me. For breakfast I ate three pounds of Twizzlers. After the test, I decided that I rate a high 2 or low 3. I scored especially well on Comprehension, not surprisingly as this area is usually the first to develop.

My Vocabulary is okay, given the number of cognates from English and Spanish. But there is certainly room for improvement. I give you Example #1, translated from the Italian, in the case for “This guy often doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”

My Italian friend and I were talking in a bar.
Me: “Look at those Jews over there.”
Friend: “Excuse me?”
M: “Yeah, those two Jews over there are crazy, huh?”
F: “Ummm... What do you mean?”
M: “Look at them. They’re talking loudly, gesturing wildly, making a scene. [Snort] Jews.”
F: “What?!”
M: “Those two Jews. Yikes. That’s embarrassing.”
F: “......... No. Not Jews – drunks. They’re drunks.”
M: “Uh... right. Drunks. Thanks.”

Obviously in English this would be an egregious offense. In my defense, however, the words are close in Italian. You be the judge: ebraico – Jewish; ubriaco – drunk. A related note: this “Italian Friend,” who speaks English well, had thought for years that the Beatles had been singing, “Hey, Jew, don’t make it bad. Take a sad song and make it better...” The Chosen People are everywhere!

For more fun with words, I recommend a site I found through friend Bleeding Espresso. Free Rice - a vocabulary game that rewards achievement with donations to the United Nations World Food Program.

Wascally wabbits and other unearthed gems

2007-11-15T09:50:00.001+01:00

Italian television, a strange and wondrous place, continues to amaze, astonish, and entertain. My new favorite show is Bugs Bunny dubbed – “Ehhhhh - Che succede, amico?” The other night, Mark and I saw what seemed to be a giant group talent/variety show pitting two groups of mostly buxom and scantily clad women against each other: le bianche e le nere. The white women versus the black women. And no, I’m not talking about uniform colors. Interessante...

Also interesting is that I just finished watching Game 4 of the World Series on Italian television. Yes, the Red Sox still won, the Colorado fans waving white towels still looked like they were conceding surrender, the victory still felt different from 2004, and Papelbon is still crazy good and crazy just. That it is now mid-November and this game was played... 2 ½ weeks ago is odd enough, but the video editing by the Italian TV channel was really outstanding. And by outstanding I mean bizarre. So they skipped a few innings, wanting to condense the game, fine. But missing Bobby Kielty’s homer only to show him descending the dugout steps? During a pitching change for Colorado, they cut to a blimp shot of the night stadium and next to Jacoby Ellsbury of the Boston Red Sox playing leftfield? The bottom of the ninth, three final outs left for Colorado, and... they... showed... two of them? Who was editing this? Edward Scissorhands? Buñuel? Mr. Ed?

On our non-cable TV, there are three channels in a row – 14, 15, and 16 – that are identical. There are at least two other matching pairs between 1 and 30, which is as high as our TV goes. Sometimes I feel like I’m playing a game of electronic media: “Yes, yes, I know. The pope was talking on that other religious channel too... but which one?!” The local access channels that we get seem to focus primarily on karaoke and variations thereof. Call in dedication request karaoke anyone? As previously mentioned, Walker, Texas Ranger is often at home on Italian TV.

Easily the most bizarre aspect of Italian TV I have seen is what appears to be the rug channel. Yes, the rug channel. Any time I have passed it, there is a well-coiffed man in a suit and tie sitting on rugs, pointing out the qualities of rugs, standing next to hanging rugs, talking about rugs. I think he is selling the rugs – beautiful Persians, interesting abstract Modern geometric designs, etc. – but I am not sure. I have never seen anyone else on the channel, and I’m beginning to wonder if the host is in solitary confinement in a rug warehouse... with a cameraman. Maybe there is a rug fascination that has swept Italy but somehow missed our apartment. We do not have a single rug.

An additional note: in bocca al lupo to the boys’ and girls’ soccer teams at PS 161 in West Harlem! Both teams are in 1st place in the NY SCORES program going into the last games tomorrow – forza! Dai! Dai!

Islands in the Stream, Part III

2007-11-14T10:39:00.000+01:00

The last installment of Mordecai's essay...

******

Pius II’s efforts towards the creation of a utopia in the hills of Tuscany are often glossed over by historians of theology, the Crusades, and the political foundations of modern Europe. It has particular resonance for historians of sport, however, and there is a growing body of research on Pius the Sportsman. Some grants have been awarded in support of further studies of Pius II’s practice of falconry, for example, but, given the prevalence of that activity during the early Renaissance period, more adventurous historians have set their sights elsewhere.

While the evidence is scant, some historians are beginning to assert that Pius II was an ardent practitioner of a much-practiced yet oft-maligned sport: Wiffle Ball. Yes, Wiffle Ball – a variation on baseball that is played using a lightweight, perforated plastic ball, almost invariably white in color, and an invariably yellow plastic bat. Groundbreaking historians in this field, including Hampton, Grieves, et al., now claim that Pius II’s fascination for and dedication to the sport of Wiffle Ball were so great that he designed the central piazza of Pienza to be a Pantheon for its dedicants.

Centuries later, a group of us made good on Pius’ promise to Wiffle athletes. On our recent trip to Tuscany, we played Wiffle Ball in Pienza’s historic central piazza. Crazy, yes, but true. We found many pieces of Pius II’s grand Wiffle Ball stadium still in place and were frequently surprised by the overarching beauty of his plan. The locker room/dugout along the wall of one abutting palace, replete with hooks for jackets. The batting practice cage alongside the ancient well. Infield/outfield practice from the lip of the central door. A perfectly placed circle bricked into the very pattern of the piazza from which the pitcher could serve up Wiffle junk.

The lights shone bright on our field. Tickets were scalped to disbelieving neophyte fans for free – we were putting on a show and inviting all of Tuscany, even the papal ghosts, to join us. Except for when the municipal police rolled by: some of us scattered like high schoolers caught loitering in a midnight parking lot; one of us waddled off with the Wiffle Ball bat running the length of his leg. Our official photographer documented the scene. We laughed at the spettacolo and improbability of it all: Wiffle Ball in the House that Piccolomini Built for Wiffle Ball. A fitting sequel to the Lake Como Cup of 2006.

[For a fuller treatment of Pius II’s fascination with American sports invented, allegedly, after his death, I encourage you to read Jackson Checo’s thorough and impeccably researched examination of the subject, Piccolomini: The First Suburban Teenager?]

Islands in the Stream, Part II

2007-11-13T11:29:00.000+01:00

Mordecai's essay continued...

*******

The Leibnitz party thought they had found their parcel of the Promised Land, but the island proved barren despite their efforts. Within a fortnight it became clear that it was not even, in fact, a true island, as the spring Proxigean tides soon inundated the small space, leaving but a speck of damp sand “the size of a rolltop desk (Adão, ed., 1957).” By that point, the party was over, and Leibnitz was the only remaining guest.

One of the last to depart, Maggie Oswald, claimed, in her interview with the New Bedford Daily Register, that Leibnitz was attempting to construct “a platform of some sort, from any which flotsam and jetsam and the like that happened by. I saw a lobster pot he had, and a shipping palette, an empty rum barrel from a pirate ship I think, a big bone maybe from a moose, a split plank flower box... I don’t know. It didn’t look real stable (Adão, ed., 1957).” Colorful as this description may be, Ms. Oswald’s report was certainly influenced by the severity of the ordeal she had just endured and unfortunately could not be verified.

Any attempts to corroborate her story of Leibnitz’s unusual tower were thwarted when, within a few days, an unseasonal hurricane swept up the North Atlantic coast. While meteorological records from the period indicate a low-force storm (Davis & Davis, 1922), by the time the weather had cleared, Leibnitz, the accordion, the two sheep, any platform, and the first ten feet below sea level of the island had disappeared. At the University of Maine at Orono-hosted symposium “Is Any Man an Island?: A Discussion on the Hermeneutics of Ill-Fated Utopian Expeditions of the 19th Century,” Dutch researcher Jan-Mendelt Van Wristler commented, “It is doubtful Leibnitz survived.” Indeed. Another arrow shot at the moon that fell well short.

Whether or not Leibnitz knew of Pope Pius II (1405-1464) is a subject of some debate among utopian historians. However, they both held la città ideale of More and Plato in high esteem: Leibnitz played out his tragedy along the Massachusetts coast; Pius II used the Tuscan countryside as his palette. What is generally agreed upon is that Pius II was “born Enea Silvio Piccolomini in1405. [He] was Pope from August 19, 1458 until his death in 1464. Pius II was born at Corsignano in the Sienese territory of a noble but decayed family. His longest and most enduring work is the story of his life, Commentaries, which is the only autobiography ever written by a reigning Pope.”

Strongly influenced by the humanists of his day, Pius II set out to resculpt his hometown, and this aspect of his papacy is of special interest to historians of urban design. Corsignano, later renamed Pienza in honor of its most famous son, became the first formidable exercise in city planning in post-plague Europe. The town still retains most of the fruits of his labor and was designated a World Heritage site by UNESCO in 1996.

Islands in the Stream, Part I

2007-11-12T14:21:00.000+01:00

On my recent trip to Tuscany, I traveled with my roommate Mark and a collection of characters associated with his baseball team. We also spent some time with an acquaintance of mine from New York, Mordecai Johnson, who is a visiting adjunct professor at the University of Bologna. He asked if he could contribute some historical perspective to my blog, and I readily agreed. Because of the length of Mordecai’s essay, I have separated it into three installments.

**********

The desire for utopia has engendered many attempts at the ideal community. Plato’s Republic and Sir Thomas More’s Utopia are justly the most famous literary antecedents. In Massachusetts of the 17th century, the Puritans believed they were establishing a “city upon a hill” that might serve as a beacon to the world. Many sought a counter-example to the increasingly teeming cities of the Industrial Revolution during the 19th century. Within this last category, the story of Arnold Leibnitz provides an especially telling example. While peculiar, the story is by no means unique; the Leibnitz party and a trove of other foolhardy experiments share a common result: failure.

Leibnitz was in many ways the archetypal aspiring utopian leader: charismatic, prematurely grey, neglectful of quotidian minutiae. With a small group of like-minded souls, Leibnitz set off from Boston in mid-March of 1857 on what was then an arduous overland journey to Provincetown, Cape Cod. Inspired by Leibnitz’s creative firebrandery, they hoped to form a utopian community apart from “the roiling mess of present society (Rosenfeld, 1975).” By early April, however, having established nothing more than poor relations with the local inhabitants, the group was run out of town. Though first-person accounts vary wildly in their depiction of the Leibnitz party’s exodus, there is a general consensus that the group was lax in paying bar tabs and maintaining personal hygiene.

Finding themselves with “but a skiff and a sack of potatoes to their collective name” (Lister, 1964), the group gathered on a dune to regroup. Eventually, after much deliberation and not a little ill will, the latter primarily directed towards the accordionist in the group, Leibnitz decided to lead the party out to a small, uninhabited island he saw just off-shore. Gesturing vociferously, he proclaimed, “There, amidst the unspoilt bosom of Nature, we shall settle and make famous our experiment (Kalantagian, 1981).”

Clamoring into the skiff, one and all with potatoes and accordion and two sheep – the reasoning being that most in the party enjoyed their tea with milk and that come fall they could “make what harvest we could from the wool of our flock” (O’Leary, 1980) - the group splashed out towards the island. They made landfall on Accordion Island, so named for completely unrelated circumstances, after over four hours of drifting caused by the group’s having neglected to bring any means of propulsion or steering and to “Poseidon’s cruel sense of humour [sic]” (Ferthen, 1917). Splashing ashore, Leibnitz fell immediately to his knees in prayer to God, Shiva, and the animist spirits of the island, it being an ecumenical endeavor...

Walking on the moon with the lights turned off

2007-11-09T09:37:00.000+01:00

Last night I wandered through a carnival being set up in town. Here in Italy these traveling amusements are called Luna Parks, though that may be a brand name? The community of carnies is living around the corner from us and the park itself is set up just down the street. While I am certainly peripatetic, I can only imagine what a 21st century nomadic life would be like...

It was odd to walk the midway before it has opened for business, like being in school on Sunday or a ballpark in November. An amusement park with its shutters down and its plugs pulled. Flashy wheeled carts and miniature fire engines and flying horses at rest. Wooden bottles in no danger of falling boxed up. A bull roping gig set to snort steam collecting dew. Bumper cars lined up in their shawls like boats at a winter marina. Food booths linger already or still with the scent of popcorn and toasted sugar. A whirly top with flanges for seats and standing room screaming only quiet dark. All of it waiting.

Durante medio siglo
la poesía fue
el paraíso del tonto solemne
hasta que vine yo
y me instalé con mi montaña rusa.
Suban, si les parece.
Claro que yo no respondo si bajan
echando sangre por boca y narices.
- Nicanor Parra

*******
For half a century
poetry was
the paradise of the solemn fool
until I arrived
and I settled in with my roller coaster.
Go on up, if it strikes you.
Of course I won’t respond if you come down
pouring blood from your mouth and nostrils.

The quickest way to a man's heart

2007-11-07T12:58:00.000+01:00

Cypress trees ring the early evening sky. The air hangs with the smell of sulfur. Steam floats off down valley in the growing dark. I’m floating, boca arriba, in the thermal baths of Bagno Vignoni. In Tuscany. On cloud nine. How did I get here?

While Italians don’t really celebrate Halloween, All Saints’ Day is a national holiday. Because it fell on a Thursday this year, most Italians took one of their favorite (among many) liberties and stretched the day-off into a four-day weekend. Fare il ponte – to make the bridge. Mark and I traveled south to Pienza in Tuscany with friends from the baseball team and a few others, some of whom who have been visiting the area regularly for ten years. Mark and I agree it is one of the best ways to travel in Italy: go with Italians who know where to go, where and what and how to eat and drink, who to talk to, what to see, etc. Thanks especially to our de facto tour guides Bodo, Moris, and Panno.

Cloud nine is a big place full of many wonders. I cannot hope to cover our trip adequately, especially not in one post. My best advice: go and see for yourself. Tuscany is magical and it calls to you.

First, let me start with our meals, since that was one of the central motivations for the trip. As with small vehicles, contour plowing, and wiffle ball stadiums, Tuscans do food very well. Perhaps too well. If I lived there the way we lived this weekend, I wouldn’t live very long. I would probably drown in the thermal baths, satiated on homemade pasta and locally-produced wines.

Eating with honorary locals Bodo and Moris, we were often that group at the various restaurants we visited: 7 guys, talking exuberantly, sitting for hours at a table that had been reserved weeks ago and marked with a little card, ordering the entire menu, turning heads of less-informed and un-local-tour-guide-blessed tourists, joking with the waiters, calling out to the owners on a first-name basis, laughing at each other and the rubes who thought they could merely walk up and get a table (most of the restaurants we ate at had between 5 and 10 tables; all were bursting with patrons), eating enough to sink small ships, and drinking enough wine to float ‘em back up.

Here is a sampling of what we ate. Most of it was “four stars heartily shake the hand of the chef” good. Some of it was “call the cemetery and reserve a spot because I can now die and go to heaven” good. These are of course subjective descriptors and will require further research to refine. I have tried to list them as best as possible in the order in which they would be eaten during a meal. Yes, sometimes we ate the vast majority of things on this list at one sitting. I wish I had photos of all of these dishes to share, but I was too busy eating to remember my camera.

- crostini: small pieces of bread toasted with toppings: olive spread, liver pâté, pecorino (sheep’s cheese, also known in Tuscany as cacio) with chopped nuts, pecorino al tartufo (cheese flavored with truffle , a good example of how man was not born to live on bread alone)

- bruschette: another toasted bread dish, familiar to most, addictive to many; the difference from crostini seems to be that the bread is toasted first and then topped with tomatoes and olive oil, pecorino al tartufo, ricotta and green onions

- salumi misti: mixed cuts of cured meats – salami, prosciutto, culatello (another type of prosciutto), capicola, bresaola, lardo (yes, lardo) - Tuscany, or anywhere in Italy for that matter, is not the best place to keep kosher AND sane

- salad with salsa di acciughe (anchovy sauce)

- zuppa (soup) with pane (bread), fagioli (beans), olio (olive oil), pepe (black pepper), and erba cipollina (chives, or, literally, green little onions)

- cipolle al pane: onions with bread chunks, baked in the oven in terra cotta dishes (a common technique used to perfection in Tuscany)

- pecorino fresco con pancetta: fresh sheep’s cheese (there are three general categorizations of pecorino, which I hope to cover in a future post) baked in the oven with bacon – perhaps both the tastiest and least healthy food I ate all weekend – wow.

- salsiccia alla griglia: grilled sausage

- pici: a homemade pasta special to Tuscany, rolled between the hands, long like spaghetti but thicker; with cinghiale (wild boar) ragu, with briciole (bread crumbs), with aglio and pomodori (garlic and tomatoes). I would probably eat this pasta with mulch or gravel or newspaper pulp. It is wicked good.

- tagliatelle: another homemade pasta, often served with a meat sauce

- maialino di latte: roast suckling pig, served with some of the subcutaneous layer of fat – tasty but not my favorite

- semifreddi: ice-cream-esque dessert that comes in slices like bread

- cantucci e vin santo: small almond biscotti, that may or may not be baked feathers from angel wings, and dessert wine traditional to Tuscany – I think Heaven may be a piazza where you sit all day drinking caffe, eating pecorino, reading La Repubblica, writing postcards, drinking vin santo with cantucci, watching stylish women walk by in stivali (boots).

Stay tuned for more reviews from la Bella Toscana.

Spooky in Italian would be...

2007-10-31T20:23:00.000+01:00

For Halloween this year, I’m masquerading as a small-town Italian. I have many of the characteristics down pat (no pun intended): the slow bicycle rides; the affinity for gelato, cafe, and Park Club; the friend who drives a school bus; the other friend who runs a sports store with his wife; the friend who goes bird hunting just after the sun has risen; scarf wearing; a local watering hole where... well, everybody knows my name.

The Penguin Cafe has become our Cheers only it has more style and panache, decked out as it is in simple, Modern furniture and art; it serves much more wine than beer, and tasty aperitvo instead of peanuts and pretzels; you cannot watch the Red Sox or Patriots on the TV; and... right, it’s in Italy. And I don’t think anybody works for Poste Italiane, which is fine because the last thing those people need is anything else slowing down their infamously leisurely post service.

Mark met the owners, Mario and Paula, through an American who stayed here briefly over the past two summers. Now, Mark and I are greeted warmly when we arrive. We often end up staying past closing time, chatting away with a revolving series of characters. Personaggi. Just like in Cheers, the Penguin attracts many types: the longer haired charming suitcoat; the barkeep who laughs a lot and keeps everybody guessing; the wild-eyed sage on the corner stool. At a recent festa del vino, we even had the opportunity to rub elbows with the director of a vineyard. (Maybe that would be like sharing a pint with Jim Koch?)

All of us are drawn by the place and especially the penguini, as the staff are known. And the wine is excellent. Of course. [In truth, as inquiring minds might want to know, I have consumed nothing bad here in Italy. Even the strips of pig back, while far from kosher, were tasty.] As with the baseball team, it's nice to be included. To feel part of something larger than myself. Even if it is a bar... especially if it's a bar.

Happy Halloween to you and yours, wherever you may be. I’m sure that among the lot of you there are some mighty costumes. Maybe even a Sam Malone? A Papajima? Daniel LaRussa remains tough to beat, on and off the mat, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't give it a go.

Oh, and if you’re in Boston seeing the tourist sights, you can skip the Cheers bar. ‘Tis a silly place.

Ramblin' 'round Milano

2007-10-26T17:51:00.000+02:00

A few more reasons why Milan continues to grow on me like a pleasant moustache. What? Never mind. I don’t know either. Must be all of these late night/early morning Red Sox games. Oh, and a BC football game. Oh, and Mark just brought home two hockey sticks – I can see the headlines in Il Cittadino now: “Intrepid immigrants inject area inter-murals with hockey sans ice.”

A stone's throw from the castello, Milan's Chelsea/West Village lies in wait. Artists lounge, smoke, chat, doodle, scan the perforate-toothed want ads and have ads, discuss Matsuzaka’s Game 3 start in spacious Coors Field – an art school with balustraded courtyards, an astronomical museum, and a botanical garden. Sagan, spray paint disk space scenes busked, Audubon hummingbirds, O’Keefe, Da Vinci (same of the navigli). Perhaps it is common to use cartoon characters to advertise exhibitions of historical astronomical instruments but... i Simpson? He who designed said sign ingested perhaps an additional hallucinatory hot pepper.

Meanwhile, across town... The navigli, or canals, as I’ve mentioned before continue to wave their flower-boxed windows at me, smile back from their colorful reflections, wind their way towards my heart. They are twists on the type, an endearing wrinkle in the fabric of the city. Not as whimsical as the slide from a pedestrian walkway at the top of the ascensor where I lived in Valparaiso, Chile, but unexpected just the same.

Later, with the day winding down... il Duomo stands stately over the largest piazza in the city, justly famous for staccato spires and a reconstructing facade. Inside, I found it hard to see the trees for the forest – the nave and transept crossing at great heights, both filled with gild and gesso-glossed gigantic canvases. Devotional candles, a collection of closed-door confessionals, stone pillars smooth from years rising above a foundation started 700 years ago... Il Duomo inside is one of the most breath-taking buildings I’ve ever been in; outside... well... I’m curious to know if there are any cathedrals the world over that allow you to sit on the roof and take in the sights. And what sights. After walking up the stairs (or taking the lift if you want to pay an extra 2 euros and get there quicker), you can elbow up with saints and gargoyles, gulls and flying-buttress sight lines, but sadly no kite lines. The green copper domes of other churches rise above the sprawling centro storico. Cranes swings stories above rooftops constructing the new amidst the old. The clouds color as the sky fades to black.

For more photos of my Milano meander, please click here. No here. Okay, really here... or here. That will work. Pinkie swear.

Do you believe in magic?

2007-10-22T06:07:00.000+02:00

Somewhere the sun is shining. Not Mudville. Not Cleveland. Not even Codogno yet, but Somewhere is here in northern Italy, there in Cambridge and Andover and Hingham, down in East Greenwich, up in Rye and Passamaquody, over in Millers Falls and Alaska and Davis and Manhattan and Kampala and Oregon and... Red Sox Nation is smiling in the sunlight.

It is 6 o'clock in the morning here and I'm about to go to bed. Again. I slept the first time until 2 AM when Mark and I woke up to watch baseball on the Internet. Game 7 of the ALCS. Red Sox and Indians. These things at least are sure: Papelbon is sick but he don't need no doctor; Pedroia is small and plays yooge; gutsy Coco is into leather; Youk is doing the Monster Mash just in time for Halloween; Big Papi is... Big Papi; the Sawx are wicked good... I could go on, but the final score says so much so simply: 11-2. Good night and good luck.

The New England Patriots are filthy. The Bruins are heating up. Boston College football is #2 in the country. The Red Sox are going to the World Series. I think my fantasy elementary school lunch-time floor hockey team is even still undefeated. This is beautifully absurd. Perhaps I'm dreaming...

It is 6 o'clock in the morning and I'm going to bed. Andiamo.

Wait. They eat those too?!

2007-10-18T12:34:00.000+02:00

"Contrary to what Weston asserts, the habit of photographic seeing - of looking at reality as an array of potential photographs - creates estrangement from, rather than union with, nature." - Susan Sontag

Susan Sontag may not have actually written this. In fact, she probably did not. Mark Danielewski did, put her name on it, and included it as an epigraph to a chapter in his mad, maddening book The House of Leaves. I don't know about abandoning hope, but definitely tread carefully if you enter there. Having just finished the book, I can tell you that the estrangement is real.

So are the following photos. I can vouch for their authorship. They require neither doctoring nor, in some cases, explanations. Together and individually, they highlight aspects of the Italian nature around me. Some are estranging, while some are merely strange.

*******

Maybe this refers to some other sport. Or a place. Or maybe it's a rare error and is worth more. Or spelling is not what it used to be. [Clothing differences could be a whole series, with Italian t-shirt slogans and the like occupying multiple volumes.]

*******

"Watch out for the man in the low-rider bulldozer!"
Or maybe: "Be excited! The man in the small, open cockpit bulldozer is coming!"

*******

Airline ticket, Chicago to Florence: $750.
Rental car for one week: $280.
Rick Steve's Italy 2007 Guidebook: $14.95.
Delicious lunch for two of wild boar proscuitto, angel hair pasta, and local red wine: $60.
Suggested donation at quaint, historic churches in small Tuscan hillside towns: around $3 total.
Going home from your Italian vacation with a replica Confederate flag: priceless.

*******

An example of Italian ingenuity. Like with climbing skins, wooden clogs and sushi, I at first found the practice strange and am now a convert.

As this photo illustrates, many Italians lean their kickstandless bikes on curbs or steps to keep them upright. Sometimes, people leave their bikes like this on busy streets, in say downtown Florence, creating traffic issues, but that's another whole can of bachi. My question is, do you need to do this when your bike already has a kickstand? From my initial surveys, the answer would appear to be a resounding yes. The bike-pedal-on-curb technique must be used at no times less than all.

*******

Lastly... fill in your own punch line.

Blog Action Day

2007-10-15T23:18:00.000+02:00

Today I learned that it is Blog Action Day, an international call to arms focusing on the environment. [Thanks to Michelle at bleeding espresso for alerting me.] My mind staggers when I consider the task at hand... How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. One bicycle, one appliance, one letter, one tote bag, one light switch, one song, one clothesline, one conversation...

To return once again to Robert Frost, three more things I am sure are true: books, our connection to the natural world, and the possibility for change. Unfortunately, the first can be hard to read and may be an endangered species in some areas; the second is tenuous and frayed for many of us; and the third is often convicted without a fair trial. Thankfully, the first can also be dangerous and empowering; same goes for the second and third.

Rocky Mountain Institute - Thanks to my friend Dan for the thoughtful link. Much like the words to Imagine, the recent speech by Amory Lovins included on this site is naively optimistic and quixotic by some standards. Is this man crazy to profess that we can solve our problems? Was Lennon? Dr. King? RFK? Having just finished watching Bobby, a powerful movie about the day of Robert F. Kennedy's assassination, the spectors of fallen visionaries loom large before me. I am my parents' son, and their characters were forged in large part during that turbulent time. Over the weekend, they saw a production of The Man of La Mancha; my mom reminded me that we can still dream the impossible dream. We can. For a start, we should be tilting at oil derricks and putting windmills in their place. And riding bicycles.

Most of my favorite writers can be grouped together on a stage, or better in a tent, or better yet on a ridge labeled "Nature/Environment." Thoreau. Edward Abbey. Jack Kerouac. Gary Snyder. David James Duncan. Annie Dillard. Wendell Berry. Bill McKibben. Some of them might not get along with each other; others were downright anti-social. Individually and especially collectively they are dangerous, possibly in the way Don Quixote's tales of chivalry were dangerous. One thing I can guess: if Abbey saw me typing this, he'd probably guffaw and tell me to throw my computer at something and get on with it. If you haven't read any snarling writers recently, maybe you should. I should.

One book I would pick up tonight if I had it with me is Poets on the Peaks by the photographer John Suiter. It is a beautiful book about Gary Snyder, Philip Whalen, and Jack Kerouac, their friendships, and the time each spent as fire lookouts in the North Cascades in Washington State. I have long wanted to serve as a fire lookout, but I don't know if I will make it. I can live vicariously. Whalen, in a letter to Gary about his explorations of Buddhism, wrote:

Personally I feel the need for the Mahayana kind of deal - coming back to the village with gift-bestowing hands, as differing from the Vedantist and Hinayana kind of solipsism. But I don't say that their kind isn't needed; the world needs more sages than anything else right now. More prayer wheels, more visions, more poems, more magic.

Amen, Phil. In order to understand what you're saying, I have some more research I need to do, some more bites I need to take, but I second that.

The greatest earth on show.

Travelin', parte quattro

2007-10-13T21:36:00.000+02:00

Bella Roma. Mark and I went down to Rome late Friday to meet his parents and his family friends Jane and Terry before they all headed back to the States. After a long and convoluted trip, we arrived at the plush hotel [note to self: be sure to travel when possible with people who like to stay in fancy places] in time to go to bed.

In the morning, Mark and I set out on what will easily be one of the most memorable and certainly most historic runs I will have the pleasure of running in in my life. As an introduction to Rome, it sure beats the sardine-can red tourist buses with the open tops. The city speaks for itself, but it also helped that Mark lived in Rome for a few months back in 2005. In addition to the echoes of Caesars, Michelangelo, fratricide, and il Duce (no, New Yorkers and Chicagoans, I’m not talking about a 53-year old Cuban pitcher with a high leg kick), Rome holds memories ‘round most corners for Mark. Running tour guide anyone? Mark almost worked as exactly that when living in Rome; luckily he ran with me for free.

Approaching from the west, Mark and I ran towards the newly risen sun; stopping in front of the Acqua Paola fountain, we tried to catch our breath only to have it whisked away by the view of the city stretched out before us, throwing off its nighttime blanket of mist and haze. Dropping down the hill into the city, Mark and I ran past many of the nearly infinite famous sights of Rome: the Coliseum, the forerunner of nearly all modern sports’ stadiums, looking like she could still host some games; the Forum, the Circus Maximus and the Palantine Hill; along the Tiber River; countless piazzas, including the Piazza del Campidoglio with its geometric paving, surrounded by the Capitoline Museums, which opened to the public in 1734. Last time I checked, we in the colonies were still operating under a pre-mercantilist economy at that point, 40 years off from our own first museum – though work may have begun on the Giles Corey mannequin in Salem, MA.

The home stretch of our run led us through Rome’s largest landscaped park, Villa Doria Pamphili. After the enrapturing maze of alleys and monumented thoroughfares, Mark and I were thrilled to run free like gazelles (or water buffalo, depending whose stopwatch you trust). It is a gorgeous park that curves along the crests of hills south of Vatican City, full of historic villas, African savanna trees and grasses, Romans exercising, a hedge maze, space.

After a stout breakfast at the hotel, we merry band of six set out to conquer Rome. We walked approximately 72 kilometers, each of us wearing through at minimum two pairs of shoes. We revisited many of the sights on the morning run itinerary, this time at walking pace and with the requisite POSes (photo opportunity stop) every 7 feet. Other highlights included the requisite Trevi Fountain and Spanish Steps; tap-dancing buskers in Piazza Navona, which may house the first instance of sculpture as a medium for trash talking; the Pantheon, which is the most pagan-temple-feeling church I’ve ever been in; peeking through the window at World Cup rugby outside the Abbey Theatre Pub; the sun setting behind the Coliseum; the church of Santa Maria in Aracoeli and her long staircase, built at the end of the bubonic plague. An unusual way to celebrate maybe, but a beautiful setting.

In full disclosure, I was in Rome for all of 36 hours and found nearly everything beautiful. During the weekend, Ray Allen, a new addition to the Boston sports pantheon (more on that in a moment), was stopped by a Roman policeman for riding his scooter into a no-drive zone. In the related article, Ray is quoted as saying, "Wow! What a city! They keep their ruins!" Yes, there is a lot to see and I clearly need to return.

The question of the hour is: Will I ever again have the opportunity that occasioned our visit in the first place? Boston Celtics. Playing the Toronto Raptors. In Rome. Yes, it was a pre-season exhibition game, and yes, the starters didn’t play the entire fourth quarter, and yes, there was no organ player pumping up the crowd but... a) the cheerleaders are already in great form; b) team mascots dunking a basketball by launching themselves improbably through the air off of trampolines looks cool in any language; c) Paul Pierce is a beast; and, most significantly, d) Kevin Garnett is an even bigger beast and has single-handedly upped my caring factor for the NBA to Code Orange. Or something higher than it was before.

In addition to living la bella vita en bel paese with a lifelong friend who triples as jogging tour guide, link to fun-loving, bank-rolling parents, and Italian slang translator, I get to be a Boston sports fan during an unusually giddy period. If I pinch myself anymore, I won’t have any pinches left for the babies when I throw my hat in the ring for the 2016 Presidential election. Go Sox, Pats, BC Eagles, et al.

Mille mille grazie to the Langones for including me in their vacation. Here are some photos from the whirlwind day.

Travelin', parte tre

2007-10-12T10:20:00.000+02:00

Lake Como. Mark’s parents were gracious enough to invite Mark and I to join them in Lake Como for a few days. Which is another way to say that they were spoiling us. The hotel had many stars and a stellar location; to the right, for example, is the view from our room's balcony, with the dome of the cathedral, or Como's Duomo, just visible down the lake. As the Red Sox specialize in winning and pirates specialize in swarrrrrthiness, Lake Como specializes in breathtaking views.

At times we comprised a party of nine, with Mark’s sister, our friends Chris and Glee, and Mark’s godmother Terry and her friend Jane rounding out the group. While not the Greatest Show on Earth, we may have been nominated for Oscars in the following categories: Best Comedic Ensemble (Group); Best Actor in a Role Limited to Nighttime Activities (Mark works late); Best Soundtrack (ya gotta love familiar voices from home, especially when they ring with Boston-area accents); and Best Actress Duo Impersonating Laverne and Shirley (Terry and Jane’s starring roles, as themselves).

The town of Como seemed to be in post-summer slowdown, which was fine with me as I am developing a fondness for off-season travel. We strolled the streets of the old town in the rain. We had a great lunch and admired the duomo. The green copper roofed rises impressively above the town as the latter crowds towards the water, making it seem that all the buildings want to take a dip in the lake. But nobody brought their suit.

On a long Saturday morning run with and without Michelle (she is also training for a marathon, her 17th, and ran farther than I did), I had to remind myself frequently to watch my step out of concern for the effect the unfolding views might have on my pedal locomatory coordination. We ran through a botanical garden, around many rotaries, past 17th-century palaces and cigarette boats - speedboats also know apparently as “go fast boats.” [There was a race later the day we left and I honestly thought about changing my ticket.]

Throughout our entire stay, we ate like royalty. If you’re ever in Brunate, a short funicular ride straight up from Como, and are eating in a restaurant that seems impossibly perched on the edge of a precipitous drop, enjoying the view and telling yourself to forget the effects of gravity on unsupported patios, be sure to try the wild boar and venison prosciutto. They’re excellent.

If you’re ever in Bellagio, a short or long ferry ride from Como (depending if you take the direct Discovery Channel-worthy hydrofoil boat or not), and have built up a sufficient appetite from strolling hillside shops and craning your neck looking for George Clooney’s lakeside villa, I recommend trying the wild mushroom fettucine. That is, if you can manage to chew with so much jaw-dropping beauty around you.

Riding the ferry up the lake, I could see easily why Mr. Clooney and others across the centuries have chosen to live there. The steep verdant hills caught shreds of fog and clouds and held them quiet in narrow river-run valleys. The towns that rest along the shore at intervals looked colorful and calm from the boat. On the distant horizon to the north wait mountains of varying heights that even in early October were beginning to wear white topcoats of snow. The narrow deep blue lake itself feels like the sinuous coast of Maine turned inside out.

Ferries, hills, funiculars, snow-capped peaks, wild boar, lakeside running paths, a short hop skip from Switzerland (you don’t even need the jump it’s so close), clean air and water. I was smitten. I took a lot of pictures.

Obviously, Lake Como is a world-class vacation destination raved about in all guidebooks on Italy and periodicals like the New York Times in their semi-official weekly travel articles on bel paese. Still, I was exuberantly surprised. Next time George calls, I won’t pretend to be busy grooming my llama.

And I’ll tell him I have just the cast of characters for Ocean’s Fourteen.

Fields and mountains

2007-10-11T13:22:00.000+02:00

I walked out into the fields at dark the other night. Partly I was curious to see what the path I run almost every day was like after sundown, and partly I wanted to face, even in passing, some of those fears of darkness that seem ingrained in us. The town’s development ends at a rounded curve where the path begins – or ends, depending which way you’re going. The path is mostly paved but not lit. At a turn, I veered off the pavement. I watched my step through cornstalk stubble, the field having recently been shaved. I heard a splash in the fieldedge irrigation ditch; I suspect it was a nutria spooked by my arrival. [Nutria are rodents the size of small beavers that live in waterways, marshes, bayous, swamps, and the like.]

The path is technically a road, connecting our town with an outlying village, the frazione of Mulazzana, and so is used by cars, mopeds, tractors, threshers, trucks, bicycles, tillers, walkers, runners, and other sundry motorized farm equipment. And nutria, though they usually cross it transversely from one ditch to another. That night, a few cars passed, sweeping the fields with their headlights, traveling in a little globe of light visible from quite a distance across the flat landscape.

I saw stars, though not as many as I had hoped. The glow of Codogno behind me and the streetlights along the autostrada cast an often-overlooked pollution into the sky. The cloud ribbons above looked almost like dull versions of the Northern Lights, and I thought of a friend in Alaska who is probably a loosescrew bodhisattva. I thought also of a mountain ridgeline east of Seattle in the North Cascades.

Gazing up at a starry sky reminds me of Frost again and another thing I feel to be true: we need wilderness. In his famous letter in defense of wilderness, Wallace Stegner quoted the writer Sherwood Anderson, “I can remember old fellows in my home town speaking feelingly of an evening spent on the big empty plains. It had taken the shrillness out of them. They had learned the trick of quiet...." The rectilinear farms around Codogno do not have much directly in common with big empty plains or the great tracts of wilderness in the west of the United States. This part of Lombardy feels much more like Kansas than Vermont or Oregon, but, as for Stegner, the idea that wild areas exist is some consolation to me.

People have been living in the area around Codogno for over 2500 years, but the fields at night feel at least one step closer to wild than my balcony above the street. These fields, as well as the bici vecchia culture, have lessons on the trick of quiet. Hope you’re finding some in your nape of the way as well.

Travelin', part deux

2007-10-04T13:06:00.000+02:00

Early in September, I visited David and Ben, twins who attended my high school for a few years, in Geneva. Born U.S. citizens, they are both now Swiss and give evidence of the saying: When all the chips are down, you know the buffalo is empty.

Geneva. An elegant cat stretched across a hilltop soft by two rivers and a clear lake. Swans and sunbathers and efficient looking locks, parks spilling down to the lake, stunning panoramas from the cathedral tower (once a Catholic church and now a Protestant reminder of the Reform), and nearly everywhere views of the great water jet. Why shouldn’t public spaces be whimsical? A growing art scene and East Village from back when neighborhood of people claiming, inhabiting, enlivening underused space. Skateboarders whooping it up alongside a seasonal amusement park/zoo of camels and pachyderms and French-speaking carneys – and to think I saw it all on the Plaine de Plainpalais?

Geneva is an international crossroads – Julius Caesar himself mentioned it in his writing - especially for environmental and humanitarian organizations. Just a short drive away is CERN, the world’s largest particle collider, straddling the border with France and saddling up to the infinitesimal. Did you hear the one about the hadron crossing the road?...

David and I spent one afternoon hiking up up up and then doooooown on the Jura, a pre-historic ridgeline that runs up to Germany, older than the Alps. Views of Mont Blanc, stately and large; the Rhone Valley, heading south and west through a gap in the hills, a terroir of excellent wines.

I got to watch a lot of soccer, calcio, futbol. Ben still plays on the team from his home village; he also coaches the under-17 team, and David and I saw parts of both games in addition to some others. In between games on a warm Sunday afternoon, he and I squared off in yet another example of the good life, French/Swiss/Italian style: bocce or its close relative pétanque. As attendees to a cetain backyard bachelor party this summer can attest, I’m pretty good by some standards. Some standards. David wiped the floor with me. Rhone Valley 1: Merrimack Valley 0.

Cheese. The Swiss are big into cheese. One night, before watching fellow countryman Roger Federer win yet another major, the twins, David’s roommate Piero (one of the most genuinely cheerful people I have ever had the pleasure of meeting), and I ate fondue – rich, heavy, creamy cheese with a touch of white wine kick, pushing us to eat more than we thought possible.

Another night, a group of us dined in the one restaurant in David and Ben’s childhood home village, Laconnex, 500 inhabitants strong. Rugby on TV, food rich with more cheese and potatoes and meats, wines from vineyards just down the road, engaging if sometimes unintelligible companions (French remains beyond my understanding) who share a bond grown over years, and of course the after-dinner digestifs and cafes – lucky am I to have such rich opportunities and hospitable friends.

Travelin'

2007-10-03T22:29:00.000+02:00

When it rains, it pours, and I've been drowning in good fortune recently. Traveling. A lot.

Pico Iyer said, about travel writing, "[You should] try to catch the feelings — the sound, the smell, the tang, of a place — immediately, before it goes. A place is like a dream, and unless you record it instantly, however tired you feel at the time, it will fade and fade, and you will never be able to recapture it."

As I am not de Tocqueville, nor am I Iyer. However, during my recent travels, I have made some attempt at capturing impressions of places. These writings are neither remotely grammatically correct nor comprehensive; I may be right or wrong, but it's my opinion you can find 'em both at the Grand Canyon, sundown...

Milano. A cookie and also a city. Much underrated and often overlooked by foreign travelers, Milan buzzes with cosmopolitan life. Unfortunately, many were the faces that drooped when I said I'd be living in her shadow - "You shouldn't move there." "Oh, other Italian cities are much nicer." "Um, two words: yuk and yuk." I disagree and find the city growing on me. Just as turkey should not try to emulate the other animals (thanks, Mitchell), so too does Milan have its own thing going. Aperitivi of delish bar food, meandering streets and grand piazzas, palazzi of historic families and fame, canals lined with cafes and bars and crossed by squared pedestrian bridges (think the Amsterdam of northern Italy, sort of). Orange trams from the turn of the 20th century still ply the streets, hinting of remembered whispers of fedoras and bespoke and war-time rationing and emigration. I stumbled across an artists’ studio school with 20 acolytes attentive to a Titianesque brunette up on a platter.

The su bway runs effectively it would seem, and, like DC and the Bay Area and probably many others, the transit authority have installed electronic screens that advise of waits until the next trains [I can hear Marty Markowitz chiming in for New York: Fugheddaboutit!]. I have noted some interesting activities underground, however: numerous people wearing sunglasses; doors opening occasionally while the train is slowing to a stop; a driver over-shooting the platform by a half-car length and backing up to a stop. Motorini everywhere in all shapes, colors, and sizes – even a 4X4?! [Strangely, though, approximately 80% of all cars in Italy are silver or grey. What's going on here?]

Il Duomo rises above expectations and begs hyperbole; la Scala, on the other hand, is unassuming and easy to miss from the outside. Ah, but what sort of devotions and rapturous audiences congregate in one and the other? Further investigations will of course be necessary. I think I know just the Sherlock.

Here are some more photos of Milan if you're interested.

Tin roof on a hot catwalk

2007-09-26T10:39:00.000+02:00

It is fashion week in Milan. My friend Carmen works for Jil Sander, an international design house on the high end of the spectrum. The Jil Sander fashion show was yesterday. Carmen had invited Mark. Mark is busier than the antacid supplier for Red Sox Nation with his job. Ergo, I went to a my first fashion show yesterday, in Milan at the height of fashion week no less. And as if that wasn’t enough fashion, I continued to gorge myself on fashion all day.

Even before the fashion show began, it was clear to me that I was no longer in Kansas. The security in black suits, stylish facial hair, and radio earpieces. An American woman in a bright pink wrap/shawl/sack making faces like a guppy on stilts. Lots of ankle boots, knee boots, cowboy boots, shiny pointy shoes, big skyscraper heels, sleek black loafers – all of them surely more expensive than my Adidas. As for the models, they were uniformly tall, thin, ethereal, and young, much younger than I expected and young enough that I felt uncomfortable watching them stream by wearing see-through clothing. Most had piercing eyes, jutting chins, and long hair stirred by a breeze that seems only to affect the preternaturally tall and striking. Watching the audience was as good if not better than watching the squeamish-inducing parade of teens in sheer and absurdist clothing. I use clothing here in the broadest sense of the term as some outfits were closer to elaborately folded napkins, cheesecloth made from birds of paradise, dress-size illumination bags for propane lanterns – who could ever wear such things on the street? In many places such a person could get harassed as a clown without a permit. Some appeared to have fallen from spider webs woven of diaphanous spools. Their faces reminded me of elves and aliens I have seen. I obviously know very little about fashion.

[After reading my uneducated review, perhaps you would care to see what the NY Times reporter thought.]

After the show, I had the pleasure of hanging around afterwards with the company’s employees as they came back down to earth, some investors, a few models, the hairdressers, and others associated with the show. Word on the terrace was that the show had been a great success. The important people had liked it, and everyone could relax a bit. The prosecco and finger sandwiches were plentiful. My sense of dislocation was also great - isn't that the castle? Where am I? Who am I?

To continue unspooling the fashion thread, Carmen and I spent the afternoon shopping. For me, this activity usually involves the transaction of goods and money or credit and is to be spoken of with a mix of trepidation and guilty disdain. Out on the town in Milan, I was reminded that shopping can be free and eye-opening. Carmen did not find the definitive dress for her friend’s wedding, but she was once again an excellent guide. While I would probably need to mow one lawn every 37 seconds without stopping to eat or sleep for the next 12 years to pay for the clothes I tried on, I enjoyed the game of trying on expensive outfits. Domenico acted as Virgil and led me expertly through the experience.

As a cherry on top of the ridiculous day, Mark, Carmen, and I strolled over to a party hosted by Marie Claire UK at Mozart’s former house. More prosecco, beautiful fashionable people, expensive artwork, jaw-dropping setting. Pretty standard really. This is the way I roll now that I live in bel paese. [Mile grazie, Carmen, Mark, e Domenico.]

One of the guys

2007-09-24T12:13:00.000+02:00

Recently, a group of teammates parted ways at the end of another season. So close. Maybe next time. Wait till next year. The last two weeks of the season had been difficult physically and mentally; losing three out of four is never enjoyable. There was talk of possible retirements. But the team had gone out winners, roaring back from a deep hole to win the last game in dramatic fashion. The team walked off the field to the bus and the waiting off-season without a post-game stretch, much to the consternation of the trainer. Aching but smiling.

This scenario can and does transpire all across the athletic map, year in and year out. What made this story unique was the way the leading actors and supporting characters included me in the unfolding. As the season ended, Mark and his teammates welcomed me as an adjunct professor among an academy of lovable oddballs. Practice. Outings to Park Club (at least another post unto itself). The last two games: Codogno at Bollate.

I rode the bus with the team. I helped with outfield practice. I sat the bench and ate sunflower seeds. I warmed up the left fielder before the start of each defensive half-inning. I rode the wave of energy through highs and lows; I was in the wave of energy cheering the guys on and berating the ump in English baseball chatter, much to everyone’s entertainment.

As I’ve mentioned, I stopped playing organized baseball at 13, when pitchers threw only fastballs and changeups and there were not always outfield fences to aim over. I have had the pleasure over the years to see Mark continue to play baseball at many levels, in diverse places – for our high school, on Cape Cod, in college, around Boston, and now Italy. He is good and many of the “skilled practitioner practicing his art” clichés apply: the way he gathers a ground ball during infield practice; the momentum-building leg kick that repeats and repeats with each pitch; the slow pendulum of his bat as he sets himself in the batter’s box.

Against Bollate, the last game of the season, losing 5-0 with the opposing pitcher, a Venezuelan fireballer, working on a no-hitter through five innings, the manager called on Mark. They walked slowly together to the mound, Mark’s stage.

I wish I could say that Mark shut down the vaunted offense of Bollate, striking out 15 batters over 4 2/3 innings. I cannot. Or I could, but I would be lying (and as many will remember, if you tell one lie, it leads to another; you tell two lies and, whoa, you’re in trouble, brother). In this case, the truth is not far from the fiction. Mark threw peas; the team’s bats came alive; and Codogno stormed back to win. Mark gritted through a Rolaids bottom of the ninth, getting a final ground-ball out with the go-ahead run left stranded on second base. In the excitement of the moment, I carried myself away and walked down the line with the team, shaking hands with the Bollate players. Good game.

As so often has been the case, I have been lucky to end up among such people as the Codogno Jaguars. People honk and wave at me as they drive by; others insist on buying me a drink. Players share inside jokes. The groundskeeper knows my name and thinks I’m a great softball player (of which fiction I will not be dissuading him). It is nice to be included. Warm up the stove.

Chitty? Is that you?

2007-09-16T23:49:00.000+02:00

La vita continues to take interesting turns.

Italian TV is interesting for more reasons than I can possibly enumerate let alone count in one post. We can look at commercials, per esempio. One of my favorites is a series featuring three men stranded on a desert island, doing deserted-on-a-desert-island-type things like making phones out of tin cans and string. I'm a sucker for tin can phones. Many Italian commercials make me go hmmm. For example, Vera, a company owned by Nestle, advertises their bottled water using a song made famous by Dick Van Dyke...

Today I was thrown a curveball when I found out that I had been signed up for a softball tournament. Does this kind of thing happen to anyone else? My team is the Bad News Bears mashed with Cocoon. In Italian, of course. A few of the players used to play for the baseball team here, but that was in the era of the phonograph. We even have the Babe Ruth of Codogno baseball, il bambino himself: Bob. Yes, Bob. I watched the first few innings from the bench, then I got the call up. "You've pitched before?" asked our make-shift coach, perhaps thinking that all Americans are born with a glove on their non-throwing hands and spikes on their feet. "Uh. Sure. Years ago," I answered. Maybe in middle school gym class? "Great. Start warming up. You're going in next inning."

Heavy metal poured from the sound system; beads of cold sweat trickled down our opponents' necks; time froze as I strode to the mound. I unleashed a barrage of fireballs and mowed down the batters like so many dandelions, fluttering in the breeze... Not exactly, but it was fun to hear the crowd of 17 cheering my name, to see little kids posting the score on the manual scoreboard perched above center field, to cheer incoherently with the chain-smoking grandmother sitting next to me on the bench. No one asked for my autograph and the kids posted way too many donuts for our side, but la nonna played center for a few innings and I went home laughing. Game #2 is next Sunday. I'll be working on my slurve all week.

Oh, and I was almost eaten alive by a dog the size and color of a polar bear.

Dove? Come? Perché?

2007-09-15T16:58:00.001+02:00

There are connections in poetry quite independent of time, or rather of chronological time. I see these independent connections as little surprising electricities that shock the mind whenever we allow the mind the space to be shocked by small, stabbing connections. - Brendan Kennelly

Where are you going to live? What will you be doing? How will you earn your living?

Before I left the United States, many asked me why I was going; now that I’m here in Italy, many ask what I am doing. Friends and family have suggested, implored, and/or demanded that I: collect recipes; investigate ruins, museums, travel routes; write a book; photograph baseball stadiums and fruit stands; find a wife; learn Italian; join the Freemasons; escape the hustle and bustle; buy a custom-made bicycle; recommend cheeses, wines, prosciutto, pizza toppings; create international guest accommodation opportunities; and, neither least nor last, live life for once. That’s all fine and good, but what am I looking for?

Poetry, as always, among other things.

Robert Frost, from Lawrence, Massachusetts, hard by the side of my hometown wrote a poem that has been on my mind of late. While the leaves are beginning to yellow and I am on a path less traveled by, I have been thinking instead of “Into My Own.”

“Only more sure of all I thought was true.”

Bici vecchia. I am more sure than before of writing and bicycles. Writing this blog is a start. Bicycles, as I started to describe earlier, are a central aspect of Italian life and a crowning technological achievement. I just returned from a ride to the town library on my 1/10 horsepower steel horse. If I drank gasoline, I could travel at a rate of 1,400 miles to the gallon. As Wendell Berry noted so eloquently, bicycles and other human-powered technologies ultimately run on solar energy. My panels this morning were an apple and a chocolate brioche (unfortunately not as good as one from Zabar’s). While easy to forget, the plants we eat grow from the earth thanks to the sun and the animals we eat in turn eat plants and other animals. [I’ll leave aside discussions of industrial farms.] There can be poetry in self-locomotion and simplicity.

Eric Bende, in his wonderful book Better Off: Flipping the Switch on Technology, describes simple joys available when technology is selectively avoided. He writes, “In true leisure there is mastery. If the enemy of self-direction was passion and impulse, its ally was quiet repose, mindfulness, perceptivity. Yet the act of reflection transcended the rational; it followed a course that could not be entirely foreseen, yielding conclusions that could not be reached if too deliberately pursued.”

Both Berry and Bende traffic in “little surprising electricities” that reveal deeper, unsurprising connections. Like a pair of shoes that fit well right out of the box, their words are new and familiar at the same time. Less can be more. Questions can be more valuable than answers. I can relax without feeling lazy. While I am living a privileged life that would be impossible to extrapolate for large numbers of people, the lotus that I am eating can be shared. Bike to Work day? (or week or month or?) R-E-A-D-A-B-O-O-K of poetry instead of watching the TV? Allowing ourselves to be shocked?

My current situation, our current situation, requires new ways of thinking and looking. A once and future theme: change and balance. Wu wei. Man zou. Gelassenheit.

La bici

2007-09-06T10:03:00.000+02:00

"There is nothing - absolutely nothing - half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats." Mole, The Wind in the Willows

A few words on the title of this blog, bici vecchia. Old bike. Those who have visited Italy know that, like many places around the world, the bicycle has a much more central place in society here than it does in the United States. If we can judge the scale of popularity based on coverage in La Gazzetta, Italy’s all-sports daily newspaper, cycling here ranks just behind motor sports in 3rd place for popularity, ahead of basketball, track and field, rugby, hurling, caber tossing, and of course baseball. While thinking ahead to living here, I looked forward to riding la bici as much as anything else. Luckily for Mark, the irascible groundskeeper for his team lent him an old, rusted, beat-up piece of junk. Which is to say, the perfect bici. Luckily for me, Mark works in Milan and leaves the bicycle for me.

La bici is small – my knees almost hit the handlebar when I pedal. The seat is too low and probably unadjustable. These two factors make it difficult for me to pedal very efficiently – think of riding a stationary bike while reclining in a La-Z-Boy. Yesterday, for example, I had trouble making progress into a modest headwind. La bici is old – my sources say it may have been used by la Resistenza during World War II. One of the brake cables flops in the wind, unattached and unhelpful in any way other than aesthetic (late 1930s insect is what we’re going for). The front tire light, a bottle dynamo, works more like a strobe powered by the gyrations of a sloth [for those with an mechanical/engineering bent (JCH), here is a technical comparison of various dynamo lights].

It was love at first sight.

While I have no qualm with Mole, I would offer that simply messing around on bici is at least half so much worth doing as messing about in boats. Especially around here where lanes and roads and trails and paths lead out into the country, through small towns and villages, past neatly rowed corn fields and tree farms, along irrigation ditches flush with frogs and grasses bowing with the current. Yesterday was a grand day to mess about on bici and I explored some new areas, farther afield than I had gone before: Cornovecchio, Caselnuovo, Chiesiolo, Reghinera, and Cavacurta – towns too small in some cases to support even a single store or cafe, let alone traffic lights or a library. The day was as clear as it has been since I arrived, thanks to recent rains and the onset of early fall’s crisp days and cool nights. I could see high ridgelines on two horizons – mountains and hills calling to be rambled.

I often feel like Tolkien and his Inklings companions, who used to go on walks into the English countryside, stopping at pubs for refreshment and finding their way home in time for dinner. Given the intervening, globe-shrinking years and the vagaries of British/metric conversion, I sipped not a pint of Bass but instead 33 mL of a fine German weissbier. A fine substitute.

My next exploration? Perhaps Pizzighettone, past Maleo and across the River Adda. Still ‘round the corner there may wait a new road or a secret gate...

Twisting time is here

2007-09-04T06:11:00.001+02:00

Tossing and turning, turning and tossing – I couldn’t sleep at all last night. Whether it was mosquitos, anticipation of an upcoming friends’ visit, sympathy pains for all the teachers and students starting today, or a related built-in inability of my body to sleep well Labor Day evening, Bobby Lewis certainly sang my tune. He took the song to #1 on the Billboard charts in 1961; I took the song literally and missed my exit for the land of Lincoln, Blincoln, and Nod.

To all those teachers out there, waiting for the coffee shop to open, triple-checking your teeth and your tie and your hair, wondering where the summer went and where the school year will go, straightening the desks for the 14th time, reading your roster for the 2,000th time, remembering that the students are nervous too, reminding yourself that they’re only kids, gulping as your stomach flipflops and flopflips, hoping that it’s a good year... I am thinking of you. I hope you find strength in numbers, in the sound of your own voice, in the familiar electricity of beginnings, in your students’ curiosities. They were most likely tossing and turning last night, too, in anticipation of today, the beginning of the show. You will be their magician. As the sky begins to lighten here, I know at least this one thing for sure: You will amaze them all. Even yourself.

To all the students out there, go easy on your teachers. They’re human, too.

To all you non-teachers out there, remember that, despite their numbers, teachers are like endangered species: fragile, often misunderstood, sometimes forgotten by the government. You can help in more ways than one. Donors Choose is one place to start. And hugs are always an option.

They eat horses, don't they?

2007-09-03T13:30:00.000+02:00

For better or worse, I will never be the Alexis de Tocqueville of 21st century Italy. I think better because I really like electric refrigeration and don’t much care for wigs. Nevertheless, I shall find it necessary from time to time to try to put into words some of the observations I have made of Italy and Italians. This is more than a cottage industry and many already do it quite well.

Beppe Severgnini, an Italian journalist who spent many years in England and the US, has written a small collection of books on the subject, including La Bella Figura: A Field Guide to the Italian Mind. He writes, “Italy is far from hellish. It’s got too much style. Neither is it heaven, of course, because it’s too unruly. Let’s just say that Italy is an offbeat purgatory, full of proud tormented souls each of whom is convinced he or she has a hotline to the boss. It’s the kind of place that can have you fuming and then purring in the space of a hundred meters, or the course of ten minutes.”

If the following pieces of Italy were slips of paper that I could fit into a manila folder, the tab would read: Offbeat.

The 2001: A Space Odyssey air lock at the local post office. This contraption is closely related to the package window, familiar to residents of New York City and other safe places. That relative is common at such institutions as the pawn shop, the liquor store, and the post office. Like a magician’s puzzle box, the package window has interdependent, bullet-proof sliding doors designed to foil terrorists and to confound postal service employees and customers. Here in Codogno – and I suppose elsewhere across the Italian postal landscape – the package window has become a customer door: a glass-enclosed closet that a you must pass through to conduct business with PosteItaliane. On each end of the portal there is a glass door that opens with an appropriately space-age hushed foosh, sliding into a cavity in the wall. But here’s the rub. The door in front of you will not open until the one behind you has closed, leading to a moment of suspended disbelief, pocket existentialism – will I be left here for all to mock? Will everyone know that I am not worthy to send mail? Will the oxygen in here run out before Bruce Willis and his crack team arrive to save me? Or maybe that’s just me.

Italians eat horse. There I said it. As with a tongue twister, perhaps my brain will adapt to this idea through frequent repetition. I have recently learned that not only do many Italians eat horse, certain cuts and preparations are highly prized and priced.

This photograph needs no introduction:

A snapshot of ItaliaBall

2007-08-31T23:15:00.000+02:00

Recently, I have been making up for lost time, years of my life when I wandered in the wilderness. I have come in from the cold. I have been soaking up ItaliaBall.

As the opening game of Italian Baseball Week, last Sunday’s friendly between Italy and China-Taipei came wrapped in ribbons, flags, and pomp. After the presentation of a few awards, the introduction of the two teams, and the release of balloons, a 40-person marching band strode onto the field from a gate in the center field wall under the colorful illumination of a fireworks display. The organizing committee had done their work well. Despite a few errors here and lots of inevitable sacrifice bunts there, the game itself was baseball played well in front of a knowledgeable and engaged crowd.

The announcer gamely tried to pronounce the Chinese names, though I can only wonder what those players were thinking of his versions. One aspect of baseball as I’ve always known it that unfortunately has not taken hold here on the boot is the 7th inning stretch. The public address system did play a recording of “Take me out to the ballgame,” but I may have been the only one actually stretching and singing along.

If I train my lens away from the international stage and turn to Codogno’s team, I find a more significantly Italian take on America’s national pastime. I have started going to baseball practice when I can, which is to say every time they have it. My reasons for going are many: it's right outside my door; the players have for the most part welcomed me as a new acquaintance; I enjoy team camaraderie and gobbling up the odd grounder that rolls my way; I can use the language practice; and, heck, it's better than trying to decipher "Walker, Texas Ranger" in Italian.

I haven’t played organized baseball since I was 13 so I can't speak with authority on regional variations but there are certain touches that strike me as purely Italian. The pace of practice, like much of Italian life, is molto lento. The manager wears shorts but (gasp!) no baseball cap and rarely leaves the area behind home plate. The other night, one player snuck a cigarette while shagging flies in left field, sending what I thought would surely be tell-tale smoke signals to the enemy camp across the mesa.

Before the game on Saturday, the players warmed up to, among other songs, the Cindi Lauper hit “Girls Just Want to Have Fun.” Perhaps there are inspiring hidden messages in the lyrics?... A mere minutes before game time, most of the team convened by the snack bar for a quick espresso. Others went a step further down the additive lane... As John Fogerty sang, “Put me in, coach. I’m ready to play.”

Unfortunately, Codogno lost both games of the Saturday doubleheader. Mark played third base in both games and came in to pitch with one out in the fifth inning of the second game. Despite a long, injury-related exile from the mound, he pitched masterfully, like Maddux of old. Painting corners, hitting spots, mixing speeds, throwing peas, confounding the Sala Baganzans. You can see the box score here. Teens flirted in the shadows of the grandstand. Toddlers sword fought with the inflatable thunder sticks. We drank beer and ate grilled sausages, though we had to bring our own senape (mustard). It would seem that baseball is baseball. [On a related note, you may be interested in this short documentary about baseball in Ghana that a friend of mine made. Don't know if they drink espresso in West Africa before games but...]

Tomorrow, I'll travel with the team to just north of Milan for the last regular season games. All the chips are on the table as the Jaguars are clawing for the last spot in the playoffs. Maybe Ernie Banks will be smiling on Codogno, 'cause they're playing two.

Remembering

2007-08-29T18:30:00.000+02:00

As my brother pointed out, today is the two-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. Following his lead, I am taking time today to try to remember where I have been, where I am, everything that I have been given, and those many whose lives have touched mine. Here are two of the many reasons I have to smile: my awesome cousins Patrick, ready for his first day of kindergarten, and his younger brother Ryan.

Opening day

2007-08-25T13:19:00.000+02:00

Opening day. The sun shines warmly on green grass and trees, white clouds sail languidly across the blue sky, a delicate breeze ruffles laundry out to dry and lifts hearts... Today is the opening weekend of Italian soccer, or calcio as the beautiful game is called here. Last season was cast in shadow by the huge game fixing scandal – Juventus played down a division in Serie B (like the Red Sox playing AAA in the International League) and three teams started with negative points (okay, Patriots, you’re going to start 0-4 this year). The league is back at full strength this year and excitement is heightened.

Local energy level is also high this weekend as the Jaguars of Baseball Club Codogno return to action after the August vacation. The biancoazzuri (white and blues) take on Sala Baganza, a team from near Parma that includes some of Mark's former teammates, in a day/night doubleheader here at home. Tomorrow, the baseball frenzy continues with an amichevole (friendly) between the Italian national team and visiting China-Taipei. Our roommate, Juan Pablo, although he grew up in Buenos Aires, is one of the catchers for the Italian team.

In many towns, referring to the “local energy level” as “high” when talking about baseball would be a joke. Codogno is different. Lango says, “I was real lucky to end up with this team, in this town. Many people who have played for the team over the years still live here and support the team.” While we’re not in Nettuno, Italy’s “City of Baseball” (think Cooperstown combined with Yankee Stadium combined with the Cape League combined with Normandy), Codogno does support her baseball.

Trees around town are wrapped in signs advertising the games; similar banners hang across the entrance to the central piazza. The team announcer wanted to enlist Mark’s help in advertising the game, but he had to decline out of concern for his boss’s reaction to any modifications made to a company vehicle.

Take me out to the gara, take me out to the spettatori...

Rub a dub dub

2007-08-23T13:52:00.000+02:00

Most travelers abroad have their favorite examples of mistranslation they have encountered, either to or from (in my, and probably your, case) English. Signs that warn of unexpected and unlikely dangers (If pulled too hard, toilet will hurricane onto floor.). Stores selling jeans that are the “nitgest level to wear.” A customer who orders breast milk instead of whole milk. And, of course, movie titles given unusual twists.

I learned today that Tremors, that 1990 Kevin Bacon vehicle, is called in German Land Of The Rocket Worms. Don’t ask me how I came upon this information, just know that my source is somewhere on the Interweb and is therefore above reproach. On a related note, I had a friend in college whose brother knew a guy in Brazil who could get you cashews, but that’s another story.

Last night, I had the distinct pleasure of watching the last 20 minutes of Pallottola spuntata 33 1/3 (Dulled Bullet 33 1/3), better known in the English-speaking world as Naked Gun 33⅓: The Final Insult. It was an unusual movie watching experience. I had to stand in one place in the living room, between two drying racks full of clothes, because if I moved the picture went static and the sound went bonkers. I could only understand one out of ten words that Leslie Neilson and the others were saying. [Allegedly, nearly all movies coming into the country are dubbed into Italian. I guess I had better get learning.] Additionally, the cast of Dulled Bullet 33 1/3 - Mary Lou Retton, Weird Al Jankovic, James Earl Jones, Anna Nicole Smith, OJ Simpson, Vanna White, and others - has had a checkered run of it since the movie’s release, adding a rearview mirror peculiarity. But, thankfully slapstick comedy transcends language. As is so often the case, the little things add bouyancy to life, like thousands of ping-pong balls glued to an elephant.

A day at the races

2007-08-22T21:21:00.000+02:00

Last week, I had the amazing opportunity to travel to Siena, a medieval city in Tuscany, with friends Paolo, Guisi, Carmen, and Magno. The event that we and thousands of others were there to see: the Palio, a bareback horse race that has been held in Siena every July 2 and August 16 since at least the 1600s.

What I didn't know before last week is that the Palio is much more than a horse race. It is medieval pageantry combined with ward politics, turf wars and territorial pride, centuries-old traditions, mob energy, religious fervor, gambling and speculating and fixing – the Kentucky Derby, a bare-knuckle fight, Yankees-Red Sox, Michigan-Ohio State, the Beanpot, Harvard-Yale times 800 years, a mad dash half blind and half chaos, the World Cup in miniature squeezed into brick- and cobble-paved streets of three-story shutter window homes lemon yellow Nantucket red bone white driftwood brown and brick, churches the pivot point around which whorl self-contained universes, walls sprouting fantastical lamps with octopus arms and Wonka Seuss dripping lights lighting the rolling crescendo of neighborhood activity cresting towards the beachhead – a day thronged with the elect and the vicarious, one hungry for victory, bragging rights, a good showing for the old home place, the biannual pinnacle day of flying the ancient colors; the other hungry for spectacle, for a glimpse (recorded in film and photo of course – otherwise, did it happen?) of exotic competition, guide book highlight, word of mouth itinerary must, transport to other times in a place that has one foot then.

The echoes creak in time with the martial drumming, rumbling through the centuries – le contrade, the 17 wards of Siena, each a world apart, insular proud marked by flying flags with coats of arms and the distinctive creatures, fountains (at least one has run with wine after a victory), and of course churches. In la contrada della Chiocciola (Snail), our homebase for the day thanks to a friend of a local resident, Chiesa San Marco acts as chapel, museum, headquarters, community center, barracks – white-washed walls and candelabra, oil paintings and statued niches, flags draped not for Lent or Advent but a horse race.

The blessing of the horse overfilled the chapel with silent faithful. After spending the time leading up to the race in the Casa di Cavallo, the anxious skittish horse was brought into the chapel to the thundering sound of silence. You cannot approach the door of the casa di cavallo before the race if you are not among those who tend to the horse. Try at your own peril; you could end up with a mouthful of fist. As the horse left the chapel, I could see many local residents with tears in their eyes.

After the benediction, the contrada gathers forces in front of the chapel and begins to cheer, sing, and wave their colors. The flag and drum corps starts their marching; they will not stop until just before the horses lineup for the race – almost five hours of drumming, flag twirling, and marching in costume. With the ceremonial horse and rider leading the way, the contrada throngs towards the center of town. From all over the city, streams converge – crowds of people following their contrada’s horse, drums and twirling flags, awash in their contrada’s colors, cheers and songs resounding in the canyons of the close streets – schools of adrenalinized fish following first one flash and then another of flag and drum. The rivalries and alliances are often centuries old as well. For example, Pantera must be friends with Chiocciola because the church they share straddles the borderline between the two contrade. As the altar is in Chiocciola territory, they could say, “No, you may not bless your horse here.” All but the Oca (Goose) have allies, yet it is the Goose with the most victories over the years - the Sienese version of the Yankees.

After wandering the spectacle all day in the company of a wonderful guide, Magno (a knowledgeable Palio attendee with 20 years experience), we settled into folding chairs in the basement of the Chiocciola headquarters to watch the race. The start itself can be another whole chapter of chaos, machismo, maneuvering, deal making, frustration, boiling excitement, and verbal fireworks. Historically, the riders came from the contrade themselves but this has changed over the years. Magno told me, “It is still every child’s lifelong dream to ride your contrada’s horse to victory, beating your rival at the line." Most of the riders today are from Sardinia: they are smaller by nature and used to riding bareback. According to Magno, there has only been one female rider in the history of the Palio; apparently there is a American movie about her out there somewhere.

Finally, after 20 minutes of archetypal jockeying, the horses flew out of the start and we all flew out of our seats. Never I have felt goose bumps so many times in one day; for those few moments when our horse and rider were in the lead, I caught my voice in my throat and felt we had a chance. Electricity coursed through the room as I’m sure it did throughout the city – I can only imagine what the gathered thousands experience in the center of the piazza...

The race has faced growing criticism in recent years because of the dangers it poses to both horse and rider. Although short – the race is over in less than two minutes, it is violent as the riders are permitted to hit their own horses, other horses, and even other jockeys with their crops; falls are common and a horse without a rider can still win. The course becomes especially treacherous at the corner just before the clock tower, as evidenced in this year’s race when our horse, after starting in the lead, crashed dramatically into the padding along the wall. Leocorno (Unicorn) rode to victory and the contrada celebrated through the streets, the cathedral, and undoubtedly long into the night. Chiocciola will have to wait until next year. You can watch the entire race here and see photos we took here. Additionally, watch for footage from this year's Palio in the next installment of the Bond franchise.

First ascents

2007-08-15T10:30:00.000+02:00

Like pioneers on the big walls of Yosemite putting up first ascents in furious rapidity, only without the chalk dust, bloody knuckles, and rapidity, I have been doing many things for the first time recently. First time to the post office. First time getting chased by a dog in Italy. First time out to take photographs of the town cemetery. First time getting kicked out of a library in Italy. First time buying a pink newspaper. First time encountering the bureaucratic “Yes, tomorrow you can come back and we’ll fix this.”

For example, my first festa della birra, a beer festival. As you're not a pogo stick and I'm not a kangaroo, let’s not jump ahead. [On a side note: the accessories which in the US are called fanny packs are more or less ubiquitous here. It is my current theory that these must be given to Italians as they come of age as elsewhere are given spirit names, cars, or bank accounts in Zurich. In Italy, they are logically referred to by many as "marsupials."] These are not beer festivals like you might expect to find in Portland or Denver or even Lowell, the Mill City. At tonight's party, you could only get one kind of beer, Heineken, but then beer was not the primary attraction.

As basically everyone is on vacation for the month of August (please hold any and all comparative labor law disputes for a later time), towns up and down the country hold festas. While similar for in their exuberance and communality to festas common to Little Italies I have seen in Boston and New York, many of the August festas here are not religiously based. Some are held for a particular crop or local historical event - the strawberry festival (where's Pete Seeger when we need him?), the festival of the sea, the festival of the escape of the ox, and, if all else fails and you're just a small town looking to have a party, la festa della birra. If you are a small town without such a festa, or merely a resident of one, here is a recipe that has proven successful:

- (one) big loud band
- (at least 3 gross) people dancing, most likely a mix of retirees, newlyweds, 7 year old girls in pigtails, parents out to embarrass their teenage children, and, if you’re lucky and/or skilled at marketing, two or three odd Americans [emphasis here is on “odd”]
- (200 bushels) good and cheap food
- (a lot) beer
- (another lot) wine, mix of white and red
- (one or more) large tent(s), preferably white
- Optional: dueling trumpets, insufficient benches, hilarious cook who also drives a school bus and plays baseball, hedge maze.

Allow to simmer under the summer night sky for 5 to 7 hours. Serves many. Here are photos of last night's finished product.

Tomorrow I’m headed south to Siena for the Palio, a centuries-old horse race resplendent with medieval pageantry. I am sure there will be stories to tell...

Veni, vidi... ?

2007-08-11T15:55:00.000+02:00

As they say at the Brickyard, "Start your engines." And we're off. Or at least I'm off, into the wild green-white-and-red yonder of Italy. I have now been living in bel paese for one week and the international clamoring for some informazione (See? Isn't learning Italian easy and fun?) on my where-abouts, how-abouts, why-abouts, and so forth has been deafening. As many know, I rarely turn down an opportunity to tell a story, so...

I am in Codogno, Italy, in the province of Lodi in the region of Lombardy. I am living with Mark, aka Lango, a friend since kindergarten, who is playing professional baseball in Italy's Serie A2 and working full-time in Milan, 45 minutes to the north.

To extend the metaphor, if this adventure is to be an Indy car race - colorful, loud, exhilarating, enervating, at times stomach-turning but usually captivating (notice I didn't add "fast") - then for the past week I have been weaving back and forth on the track, warming up my tires.

Despite a whirlwind of moving, packing, good-byes, and good riddances (for those who bemoan the Disneyland-ification of New York City, fear not: rodents of reputation yet roam free), I managed to find myself at JFK, early and with my head screwed on straight. Muchas gracias to Dan, Sara, and Jim for hosting my little hurricane; muchisimas gracias to Lorena for so generously driving me to the airport. After a pleasant flight next to a jet-setting cosmopolitan theater director who makes Jason Bourne look positively settled, I blundered my way from the Milanese airport to the train station. Weighed down like a one-man nomadic village, I wandered towards that venerated Italian eatery, McDonald's, to meet up with Mark. Dropping my bags, I noted that I was dirty, tired, and definitely in Italy.

A tap on my shoulder and a voice, "Excuse me. I'm looking for Ray Finkle - and a clean pair of shorts." It could have been me looking for a clean pair of shorts as I was surprised to beat the band. David H., a friend from high school who now lives in Geneva, had come down to surprise me and succeeded. Ah, Europe. Together we left our bags with Mark, explored some of the highlights of Milan, and bought lots of designer shoes.

Happy hour found us meeting up with Mark, some of his colleagues, and one of his teammates from the baseball team. In the large Italy v. USA battle upon which I am sure to comment with frequency and wit, Italy wins stage 1: the bar offered aperitivo, which translates loosely as appetizer but here usually means a spread of free food put out by the bar to attract drinking customers. Salmon, various pasta salads, grilled vegetables, bread - no peanuts and stale cheese puffs this.

Saturday, Mark, David, and I spent the day and evening in Parma, where Mark spent two summers andwhere I visited him in 2004. While justifiably famous for the foods of its region, Parma seems under-visited, especially when compared with its bigger sisters Bologna and Florence. It is a charming city and often ranks high in national ratings for its quality of life. After wandering and eating and sipping espresso and snapping a few photos, we drove out into the country outside Parma to a birthday party for one of Mark's former teammates. As is usually the case, I was heartened to see some familiar faces from my first visit to Italy. Because of Mark's four summers here playing on two welcoming and hilarious teams (about whom you'll here much more in the future), he is greeted by many like a prodigal son across the region. That also has to do with Mark, and I get to ride his coattails. Generous and gregarious friends, tables of food, coolers of drink, karaoke, stars in the sky (or was that my eyes?).

Sunday, Mark, David, and I went for a run on a local road that wends out from town into the countryside. Here is a video Mark posted on his blog this spring that will give you a sense of my new favorite running route. The fields are now mostly full of corn and the air smells like growing.

The rest of the week I did what most Italians are doing this month: I relaxed. For the first time to such an extent, I have more time than I know what to do with - it has taken some getting used to but I think I am improving. I read, I go to the piazza to sip espresso and watch the world go by, I try to read the newspaper, I go to the grocery store, I nap, I wonder when offices and stores will open again, I sip espresso, I nap, I explore on bicycle the town and countryside, I take photographs.

Oh, and now I write a blog. Stay tuned for more.