The Cat's Table

A Plague of Noise

2011-12-23T06:39:00.000-08:00

Why has it become impossible to find a café, restaurant, bar, clothing boutique, elevator or garage that is not blaring some awful non-music noise? Even at 9am in the morning my local coffee source is playing the mind numbingly monotonous sounds usually requiring a ghastly price in the front row of a fashion designer’s runway debacle. If you ask them to turn it down in aid of conversation, the principle activity in these places until the stoned adolescents arrive around 8pm, they turn nasty and look at you like a turd in the punch bowl. It might be tolerable to listen to, say Ray Charles, at this volume but it is currently impossible to find ACTUAL MUSIC being played. Since the median age of tourists is certainly over 40 (here in Italy it is probably over 60) and they have spent an increasingly huge sum of money to see an idealized version of our locale, why would anyone think these folks want loud, stupid AMERICAN music played so loudly it precludes normal speech? Not to mention that the entire population of those under 35 now wears ear buds 24/7 and is living in their own universe anyway. On my first visit to Europe in the dawn of time – 1965 – I was charmed to hear local versions of our American rock and roll and jazz but also to find the French form, or the German style or the Spanish take. But it seems that now the music has consolidated into an international drek with no discernible identity. AND IT IS ALWAYS TOO DAMNED LOUD! I have even seen the barrista at my downstairs bar actually shooing away the gypsies who play – in truncated and bad form – the clichéd Italian standards which were actually written for the Godfather movies, parts one through nine. I have heard it said that there are more deaf people under the age of 65 than over now that earbuds are part of the dress code. I believe it. I just wish that those of us who can still hear could be left to talk in an environment permitting same.

How I met Salvatore

2010-11-07T01:37:00.000-07:00

On Easter Sunday I wanted to see part of the crazy exploding cart thingy that is traditional in Florence. This tall pagoda-like structure is covered with fireworks of all kinds and pulled to the front of the Duomo by four giant white oxen where a flying mechanical dove ignites the fireworks. A spectacular display is said to insure a great harvest or good luck or something. I only wanted to see the oxen up close. So I walked over to the cart’s garage and met friends and scoped out the beasts. Magnificent and huge and festooned with flowers. After 30 minutes of my gawking, the parade of flag throwers and drummers and gun toters and flowery maidens moved off in the direction of the Duomo. I began my walk back to the apartment to prepare Easter luncheon. At the Ponte alla Carraia, I saw that I could sit on the river wall and watch the parade, so I did. It was all very festive and Buon Pasqua was said by all. A group of people came across the bridge from behind me and I thought I saw someone I knew. He looked at me. I looked at him. He passed by and immediately circled back to talk to me.

“Are you Florentine” he asked.

“No, Americana” I said.

“Americana, Americana?” he asked, since many Americans are of Italian heritage.

“Americana, Americana” I said.

“Di dove sei?” Where are you from?

“California, but I live here.”

“Where?”

“In Piazza Santo Spirito.”

“IN the Piazza?”

“IN the Piazza.”

He said he went there all the time to drink the water from the fountain since it was so good. I said well, I sit in the piazza most days and drink coffee from 10 to 12. Then he asked me if I liked to dance. Sure, I said since I do. Would you go dancing with me? Sure, I said since I thought it would be completely safe to be in a public place with a man I did not know. Do you smoke? No. I am a little deaf on the right side, he said. Me too, I said. He couldn’t pronounce my name let alone spell it so I put it into his phone and took his number. And then I went home to make pranzo for 10 people.

He called me later to be sure I really meant it and I said yes I did. And then he sent a text about 9pm wishing me Buona Notte. Very sweet. The next morning was Pasquetta which I thought would be normal but in fact it was even more of a holiday than Easter. He came at 10 and we went for lunch. Not finding a cheap restaurant open that day, we bought food and went to my place to cook. After lunch we went on a three bus ride to a neighborhood west of the city. We walked into a small courtyard between two long narrow buildings: half of one side was a small bar with everything from coffee to gin. On the other was a card room with all of Martin Scorsese’s uncles and grandpas, dark coats and slouch hats and all. I felt like I had walked into one of his movies. When we entered the other narrow building, we found at least 50 men and women dancing around in a circle to a live musician. They were all of about the same age as me and Salvatore, in ties and coats and spangles and heels. The music was a mix of traditional Italian songs, modern pop music and rock and roll covers played by a single guy on a wild assortment of acordians, trumpets, trombones, piano and drums to the accompaniment of an electronic backup group.

Salvatore turned out to be a great dancer. He circled me around the floor and grinned and smiled and laughed as we learned to dance together. He chucked my cheek and kissed his fingers. He talked in a low graveley voice about my occhi azzurri (blue eyes), he introduced me to his friends, all women, Carla with orange hair, the two blond sisters with the huge breasts, the siciliana. All women! They all said “C’e’ un buon uomo”, this is a good man. He is. I was completely smitten. I still am. Salvatore describes his first sight of me as a “colpo di fulmine” a lightning strike, love at first sight. It is very romantic and I am very happy.

Bocci

2010-10-10T04:48:00.000-07:00

We took the bus number 31 to the end of the line. It was going to be the 10 but we missed it. So “cambiamo il programma”. It took us to Grassina, a small suburb of Firenze where he wanted to see the cemetery. He made me promise that I would bury him there. But we were hungry when we got there and so ate pizza with anchovies and pasta with bacon and pecorino. After lunch we walked back to the center to the “Casa del Popolo” the community center found is nearly every neighborhood. These are often large and well equipped senior centers with a bar, a dance hall, game rooms, a garden with outside seating and lots of anziani. At this hour of the day it was all men.

I said “where are all the women?” He said “at home, cleaning, making lunch.” Grrrr. Typical Italian, women doing all the work. We wandered around, peeking in the rooms, eventually out past two very busy card tables under the trees. Beyond was a shed roofed open sided structure with a crowd of men at the sides watching a bocci ball game. The ancient roof beams and weathered pillars covered a clean swept, slightly dished surface edged with wood and capped by troughs at each end.

We sat to watch just as one of the teams of four rolled a ball to within 4 or 5 inches of the target, a pink rubber sphere the size of a golf ball. Two balls seemed to be the same distance from the target so a measurement was required. A stalk from a broom was cut to fit the space and used to determine the winner. The winner collected several coins. A toss of the target and they began again. These vigorous old guys, short, mustachioed, all in jeans, windbreaker vests and athletic shoes, were able to roll the most amazing curves, esses and arcs that stopped on a dime, or straight shots with deadly accuracy, or throws that rolled up the side inclines, circled through the other balls to land practically on top of the target. Incredible. Only the 8 were playing. Another 15 or so watched and chatted and commented. We sat outside the shed on a bench under the trees. The language was a dialect that Salvatore didn’t recognize. The fall day was cool but sunny, the shouts of a football game and the gurgle of the river nearby; the chatter and laughter of the men a rolling, bubbling comfort.

Warming Up

2010-03-14T15:47:00.000-07:00

Well today felt like the first day of spring. The flea market was in the square and a multitude came to see the crapola on display. It was finally warm, at least in the sun, of which there was a goodly amount. I came out early, despite a late night at Nikkie’s for dinner with the lovely Ennio and Stefano who walked me home, to find Novella had returned from her getaway weekend to Kenya with fancy man Chicco. She brought her six year old with her, the adorable Tappo (which means cork as in bottle stopper) who lugged along a grand bag of treasures which he proceeded to spread along the pavement and sell like all the others in the piazza today. We coffeed and watched as generous local ladies perused the cars and key chains he had to sell. He actually sold quite a bit. Not really sympathy sales but close.
After a browse, we ended up on the church steps soaking up the sun, which has been sorely missed these last months. All the spaces on the steps ended up filled so the denizens were a bit cramped. Janie’s crew arrived after a mass and blessing, not hard to find around here. More browsing. I found some little plates for a sensible price which I had sought for weeks in order to serve tiny dolci, the best kind. Janie found the EXACT piece for her bedroom to hold the TV and maybe socks and underwear. Random visitors were greeted. I went off with Doran to see a trendy furniture show in the former military fort. Nice contrast. More browsing, with wine. More people in the piazza than at any time all winter. Duh. Lots of tripe sandwiches were sold plus honey, cheese, oil, wooden things, books, pottery, picture frames, incense, purses, African masks, 50s jewelry, old shoes, furniture, bed spreads, candied fruit. Everything. One of the best parts of this adventure is to be so close to the action. With the advent of the nice weather and the tourist season, it’s only going to get better.

Italian Bus Incident #67

2009-12-23T12:57:00.000-08:00

Well, I have had rather a mess to deal with: my wallet was pinched out of my purse Monday afternoon around 2pm. For whatever idiotic reason I went to inquire about a job opening for which I was totally unqualified since I DON'T SPEAK ITALIAN! (in my defense, they asked only about madre lingua English which of course, I am/have/can/do/whatever.) So I was on my way home on the #6 bus and it was really jammed and well, you know. But I was in a hurry because I had an appointment with a plumber to fix my caldaia because it shut off on Friday afternoon - when it snowed 2 inches - so I was without heat or hot water all weekend so I slept on Janie's couch rather than brave the 12 degrees in the apartment. I was out of cash and had no money for the plumber so I hurried to the bancomat and that's when I discovered the theft. I screamed and swore and attracted undue attention (screaming old lady, nothing to see here, move along). And the fucker cancelled anyway! So I called Sonia (la proprietaria) who was not pleased because I have had to call her 4 times about this and she thinks I'm an idiot because it is usually just the pressure has gotten low (except none of the people I know have this problem with their heating equipment) so she called the tecnico but said he had "un sacco di chiamate" because of the minus one cold so I lose hope. But when I get home the first plumber calls and says he's arriving so I call Nikkie to translate and front the cash. He comes, pushes one little button (WHICH I PUSHED!! ah, but not long enough) and voila, hot water and heat. Curses. I am an idiot. And then we wait until Nikkie arrives with the cash and translates my million questions while I'm making a list of who to call to cancel all the cards and get info about a new passport. And then the OTHER guy calls twice but my phone is dead and the charger is at Janie's but she's waiting in line at the quaestura in -1 degrees (the twit!) because she just HAS TO HAVE her permisso di soggiorno, and I can't get my charger. And then the tecnico actually arrives and we have this awkward two plumbers dance until Nikkie learns that the second guy is really a caldaia specialist so plumber number 1 (P#1) gets 20E and goes away and the other guy tears the boiler apart for an hour and Nikkie goes home leaving a dinner invitation for later. Eventually plumber number 2 (KB: "Tutto bene?" P#2: "Speriamo!" = let's hope) goes away planning to mail a bill (WHICH SONIA WILL MOST DEFINITELY PAY!) and I spend the next three hours calling everyone I need to to keep from having my credit ruined and a billion bad charges on my cards. So I eat with Luca and Nikkie and regale them with the Karma of Kimberly stories and they lend me 50E so I am not totally green. Yesterday at 8 am I went to the consulate (Ma signora, aperto alle nove) with filled in forms and documents of all kinds (thank dog I had copied all the cards in my wallet before we went to Poland) but am sent home to make an appointment online for today, which I do. And then in the afternoon I went to UniCredit to cancel the bancomat card and get 300E out of my Italian bank so I can feel normal and buy coffee. Almost. I still don't have any ATM or credit cards. Today I hit the consulate at 9, am nearly stripped naked, relieved of anything sharp or shiny to stand in line while hapless Italo-Americans plead for succor over lost/stolen/incomplete/forgotten/whatsits. Eventually I submit my supremely efficient materials and learn that I will get a fully valid passport which will save me at least $850 because I won't have to change flights or shovel out cash for an expedited passport which is fundamental to the whole stupid reason I'm going back. And this adventure only cost me $100. Today I went to see the Carabineri to make a "denuncia" (sounds like some Emile Zola j'accuse! thing requiring black balls and pointing). I managed the whole thing in Italian without sounding too stupid, (well except for getting ripped off on the bus for god's sake) Great.
As for Christmas: I am invited to dinner with Nikkie, Luca at Gabriele's who is squatting at the home of Birgitta (she's in Burkino Faso. Burkina Faso?!!?) We will have traditional Christmas Eve fare: tortelloni in brodo. On Christmas Day I will have The First Annual Orphans' Christmas Feast and Gift Exchange. If they all leave on time, I am invited to Fawn's for family Christmas that evening at her Mother-in-law's and I will have a party on 31st here. I am grateful for my friends and hoping to see the ones in Berkeley when I get back. Can I camp at your place occasionally?

Italian Snow

2009-12-18T15:27:00.000-08:00

It's snowing in Florence. The weather service has been threatening us with snow all week but tonight it finally arrived. I went to dinner with Nina, Kathy and Janie in the center and after a lovely long meal we emerged to find a squishy storm in progress. It is wet and sloppy and turns to mush on the streets but the car tops are white and the blobs fall slowly to the pavement. The Ponte Vecchio, set up for, of all things, a golf driving event (they hit ‘em into the river?) provided a lovely view of the bridges in the strange light that snow provides. We skated and slid to our neighborhoods. In mine I was assaulted by snowballs from the local hangers-out who destroyed my umbrella completely with several well places missiles. I wandered through the piazza wondering at the snowy trees and shrubs which no doubt look much more fabulous in the dark than they will in the cruel daylight. The frequenters of the bar downstairs were admiring the collapsed umbrella over the outside seating, finding it the source of ammunition for another round of snowball attacks. I made it inside in time to remain mostly dry.
It doesn’t snow often in the city itself so the inhabitants are mostly incompetent in the snow. But in the suburbs, especially those in the ridges around the city and further out in the real hills, the snow can be really deep and the equipment to cope is often not adequate. So things kinda slow down or even stop when it snows. Not unwelcome by me, but I suppose if you have to work, it’s misery. When dawn breaks we will see what the world looks like with this new application. Last time there was a good snow storm, the hills were really beautiful.

Knee Repalcement, Part 4

2009-12-03T10:46:00.000-08:00

I arrived at The Hyatt Residence (http://www.hyattclassic.com/go/palo-alto.html) on the Saturday following my surgery. I had a nicely decorated private room with TV, armoire, visitors chair, carpets and drapes and a lovely large bathroom (including an accessible shower). It was much more like a hotel room than any hospital room I’d even been in. The requisite adjustable bed was there with call button, reading light and that panel with connections for tubes and wires as a headboard. The whole place was carpeted and nicely decorated with pictures and real flowers. There was a TV room for meeting with visitors and a patio and garden that were beautifully planted. This facility was the ultimate level of a four level senior residence. Most of the other patients in this building needed fairly high levels of care. But there were also several like me who had just had a knee replaced and needed help for a week or so. One of my fellow victims had had BOTH done! That’s brave!
We got vitals monitored and medications delivered and mobility assistance and physical therapy and pretty good food delivered (until you can make it to the dining room). The first full day, Sunday, the OT got me into the shower which was a blessing even if it was strictly forbidden according to the doctor’s instructions (they are REALLY concerned about infection because it is the worst problem). We wrapped me up good and I shampooed and felt completely renewed. On Monday PT began and I was really surprised and pleased at how well it went and how fast I could progress. I used a walker most of the time because you really don’t feel confident about where that new knee thing is going at first. BTW, you don’t use a walker like a shopping cart with it pushed out in front of you as you see most of the time; it’s supposed to be right next to your hip so you can walk upright normally.
The hardest part of the rehab is trying to lift your new knee leg with the muscles of your thigh. It hurts and even if it doesn’t, it’s nearly impossible. Also, no heroics with the meds. Take the pills!!! People don’t get addicted to these things if they are just trying to keep the pain away. And pain relief is critical if you are going to work hard enough to make PT pay off. After my PT sessions I was strapped into an electric contraption that bent my knee for me for a couple of hours to keep it from stiffening up. And of course they ice the knee frequently to reduce the swelling. I could go up and down stairs the first day and took a walk around the garden the second. I looked for a place to use my computer right away and found to my delight there was wireless in my room. I was urged and had no trouble taking a walk around the facility several times a day. People came to visit and I watched a lot of TV. (Italian TV is just gross so it was kinda nice to watch news and stuff without wiggling floozies.)
By the end of the week I was fully capable of fending for myself so my brother and his wife came to get me and I went north to stay at his house for the rest of my recovery. I used the walker to get in the door and except for a few trips to the bathroom, never used it again. Terry lent me a cane and I was able to walk three blocks home from the first session of PT in the clinic near their home.

Knee Replacement, Part 3

2009-11-22T12:26:00.000-08:00

Waking up was not fun. When you come out of the anesthetic, I think you aren’t fully medicated since you aren’t awake to let them know when it kicks in so they must wait until you are awake to apply enough to keep you pain free. Also they need you to wake up and make you breathe. Always important. I also tend to shake rather seriously after anesthesia. So I had a short time of really intense pain but I have no idea how long it was because soon after I was medicated quite heavily and stayed that way for the next two days. After a few hours in recovery, I was moved to a regular room. This is the Gulliver part: I had surgical pressure hose on both legs, a pair of inflated cuffs cradling both my lower legs, an inflatable bed pad under me, both of which inhaled and exhaled every time I moved, more IVs, an oxygen nasal tube, a drain from the incision, a urinary catheter and a giant dressing on my new knee. Felt a bit tied down. I was quite swollen with fluid but dry mouthed. Dilaudid was the main pain reliever I was given but there were others in the mix. Dilaudid makes me quite nauseous so I was in a quandary about using the self administering system to keep the pain down. I found if I didn’t move much and slept a lot, hardly difficult, I could use the button less often since I was really nauseated when I dosed myself. After a day’s worth of retching every time I took a dose, they switched me to oral medication to reduce the nausea. It worked. Thus I passed the first and second post op days.
I felt more alert and focused on the second day. I still was unable to eat much but didn’t miss it. I could sit up a bit and greeted the various gangs that came through: the catheter gang (not that one) took out the nerve block after about a day, the pain gang wanted numbers more than once (Is it a 3 or a 5 or a 7?), the doctor looked in with his fellas (fellows?) and I had hot and cold running nurses. I got flowers and phone calls. I was way too stoned to answer the phone which made my family a bit anxious. No phone calls before day three seems a good rule. Toward the end of the day, or first thing in the morning I had first my catheter and then my wound drain removed. Bled like crazy.
The morning of day three (Friday) I got my first visit from the physical therapist who got me to try to sit up straight and even move my legs toward (but NOT over!) the edge of the bed. She came back in the afternoon and got them over the edge and me standing, for a minute. Then when I needed to go to the bathroom I could use the walker she provided at the edge of the bed. By that evening, I could make it. Food seemed a reasonable concept by now, so I ate my first food on day three. The clouds began to clear and I could answer the phone and talk to people although I have no idea what I told them.
My next stop was arranged by an efficient woman who told me there might be a place in a skilled nursing facility nearby where I could stay for the next few days while I was unable to really care for myself. This is standard practice for many people who don’t have a good situation at home: no one able to be there all day, or not strong enough to pick you up if you fall down, or too grossed out by staples in your knee, or so on. Indeed there was and Medicare covered it and they would take me tomorrow!
So Saturday am, after a slow but resolute walk 30 feet down the hall of the hospital corridor, I took a special taxi to the Radisson Suites Healthcare facility attached to a senior housing complex less than 2 miles from Stanford Hospital. I told someone that the taxi was special because they need to tie you down. Then I saw a look of horror on her face and realized she saw me strapped to the floor of a van! No, they tie the wheelchair!! It cost $65. And that is the total amount this entire adventure has cost me. Medicare for everyone.

Knee Repalcement, Part 2

2009-11-18T13:09:00.000-08:00

I arrived in SF on 1st July to spend a few days with my brother who will put me up during my recovery. But since he and his wife both work every day, I rented a car and a hotel room and took myself to Palo Alto for my surgery. I had a preliminary appointment with my surgeon and another with anesthesiologists and still another with my personal physician who cleared me for my surgery.
On the night before surgery, I did not sleep well despite the elegant hotel room in Palo Alto. Woke about 5 and being NPO, no eating or drinking, I read and paced until 6, then showered again with the special soap. Completely germ free for at least 30 seconds. Began to see all surfaces as crawling with bugs! Paid my bill and exited just as my cab arrived.
As I strolled into the main entrance of the Stanford Hospital, I had the strange sensation of not really being there. I walked comfortably, no pain, no problems. What am I doing here? I don’t need this! This is for OLD PEOPLE! But I moved obediently toward the check-in desk where I had been only a few days before. Smart to get you oriented in advance. I was checked in and tagged (both wrists this time) and led, still obediently, to the surgery prep. I undressed and donned the famous backless gown. They’re bigger and more complicated now. And then was settled into a corner to wait to be prepared for surgery.
At least 3 nurses attended me: one added two bright red allergy tags to my wrist décor and the others asked me the same 10 questions I had answered for the last 10 days. A pretty child doctor from anesthesiology came with questions about previous surgeries. Another pretty one came in as the lead of the “catheter team”. Catheter team? It takes a team? God. It seems they will install a catheter in the femoral nerve bundle that numbs the whole leg from upper thigh to mid calf. More team mates arrived pushing an ultrasound machine which was used to locate the appropriate nerve. In a bunch they install the catheter without even a stick. Go team! In 10 or 15 minutes it feels as if someone has left a large dog in my lap. My leg has departed me.
More visitors: my doctor signed my leg; anesthesia angel again; vampire brigade (lab techs seeking blood); porters to take my goods away to my future room.
Finally, around 11.30am (original time was 10.15) I am laid flat and rolled into the OR. It is seriously cold!! Seems the surgeons must wear a lot of protective gear (they look like the boy in the bubble of TV fame) so they like it cold. It’s ultra bright. The room is crammed with shelves of tools. It looks like a clean bright hardware store. I avoid looking at the scary stuff. There’s a traffic jam of people: several nurses, three or more greened up doctors, orderlies. I am shifted like luggage to the table and set upon. Egg crate foam under the other leg, arm supports, more wires, another stick, wrap this, cover that, and then a mask and orders to “breathe deeply, it’s only oxygen.” I am bid sweet dreams, arms wide, eyes clenched, shaky and cold.

2009-11-15T09:14:00.000-08:00

Well, I’m back. I have been gone for three months and then here for 6 weeks just in time for a whole passel of visitors: sister Melinda, cousins Fred and Takaya, friends Bob and Kate. Each visit was charming in a different way with hiking, eating and culture leading the list. But now I’m nearly back to normal with only one of me to manage. So of course, I came down with something! A sore throat at the moment and I hope that this is all I get given the horror stories about flu all over the US. No one here is as crazy as the anti-government “Don’t get your flu shot from those commie/fascist/totalitarians” wing nuts in the US. The media here are urging everyone to get shots and stay home if you are sick, but then they have this socialized thing called sick leave, so they might just do it.

Since returning I have traveled to Spoleto, Assisi, Feltre in the Dolomites and Venice with Melinda, Siena, Orvieto and Rome with Fred and Takayo and roamed the back streets with Kate and Bob. Had a big dinner party and went to eat big meat with Paolo and friends. Looked at naked men at the Accademia (that would be David and the Mapplethorpe photos). Reappeared at the Uffizi to continue my data job in the best work space in Europe. Ran off to Pisa to look at clearly the best Chagall exhibit in Europe. Had a happy reunion with Angelika and dinners and lunches with all my lovely friends. But first I need to fulfill my promise to document the most amazing knee replacement experience ever. Next post.

My adventure in Osteoland, part 1

2009-07-12T15:58:00.000-07:00

I have been having pain and stiffness in my knees for many years. My right knee threw a bone chip in 1979 off of my femur and I had an open surgery to have it removed. I actually kept the piece in a jar for quite a while. Part of the cartilage and a bit of the bone at the end of the inside knob of the femur, about the size of a peach pit. The doctor told me then, “Well, you’ll probably need a knee replacement in 15 years.” But he also told me after the surgery, when asked about rehab, “Well, I suppose you could do some exercises.” No program, no planning, no recommendations, no nuttin’. Three years later when pain and limping began to really bother me, I called the 49ers and asked, “Who does your knees?” I figured if they could get a 300 pound football player back running full tilt down the field, they could help me. “All our surgery is done by Doctor Dillingham’s SOAR Clinic” they told me. I called right away. I saw Doctor Gary Fanton, a charming, no nonsense enthusiastic young guy who said “Let’s scope your knee!” BUT! I had to promise to do 6 weeks of rehabilitation: fours hours a session, three times a week. And it worked great! I had an arthroscopic, same day surgery in 1983 and the knee (right) was mostly trouble free for almost 20 years.
Cut to 2003ish. The knee began to bother me. I couldn’t walk right after sitting for an extended period. Had to swing it back in forth several times until it would hold weight. So in October of that year I began a no-carbs diet and took off 50 pounds. This helped. In 04 on a trip to Italy, I had some problems; mostly I couldn’t/wouldn’t stand for long periods of time. (The Elderhostel tour usually took us off the bus, zoomed us though the town and then left us on our feet for a 45minute lecture. Three times a day! I orbited mostly.) To try to extend the life of the original part, I had my right knee scoped in 04. Some improvement. In 05 while I studied Italian in Firenze for a month, I had significant trouble going down stairs. In 06, my friend Angelika insisted I must do something about my gimpy status. I saw a doctor who diagnosed sciatica in the right leg. I was happy since I knew there is treatment for sciatica but little to do for the knee short of replacement. Got better. In 08 in Italy the sciatica moved to the left side and that knee became seriously painful. Lots of pain especially at night. Finally after months of mobility decline, I saw Dr. Fanton in Nov. 09 and he said “I wish you’d let me replace your left knee.” This was the first time he said that. I was referred to a surgeon since Fanton had become the head of the Stanford University Orthopedic Clinic and was not doing this procedure. I couldn’t get an appointment before I had to leave for Italy where I now reside. So I returned in April 09, saw the new doc, Huddleston, and was urged to get the replacement done. I stalled, planning on doing it in the winter of 09-10. But the Greek chorus of coffee friends insisted: “Nobody stays here in the summer, it’s hot and crowded and full of tourists. Do it right away. They convinced me and I made an appointment for 15 July and a plane reservation for the 2nd.

Beefy Countryside or Texas on the Arno

2009-06-07T10:33:00.000-07:00

My friend Nina invited me and a guest to dinner in Chianti. We were going to a restaurant that is renowned for its Bisteca Fiorentina, a two inch thick monster T-bone from the huge white Chianina cattle that they grow around here. She was entertaining another friend from the US. Since I don’t have a car and the gimpy knee won’t bend enough to ride safely on my friend Riccardo’s motorcycle, the four of us went down to Nina’s countryside location on the regional bus. The bus route winds along narrow country roads (motorcycle ready!) to the hillside vineyard where she stays with Paolo, her Italian cowboy, winemaker boyfriend. We got off right across the street from the his traditional country villa: big gate, long allee of cypresses, two story squareish, yellow-stuccoed, green shuttered house, probably built in the 19th century. The house needs redecorating, the garden is very bare and view would be spectacular if the overgrown shrubbery were pruned. But it has a lot of potential. Nina chafes at Paolo’s conservative reluctance to change things. We drank his very nice wine under the cypress trees at the front. (Next time: the back side with view!!) Off to the restaurant, but not before I got a brilliant shot of the countryside as the sun set over the Apuan Alps, where the marble comes from.

The name of the restaurant, Da Padellina, means from the frying pan, although I think the steak is cooked on a grill. They bring it to the table for dissection allowing each person to get their choice of doneness, as long as you want it incredibly rare. I got two pieces, one just right, the other too rare for me. I asked for 30 seconds more on the grill but they murdered it. This meat is so tender that even barely cooked it melts in your mouth. I was told that the supplier is Dario Cechini, the famous Rock and Roll butcher from Panzano. In any case, it was wonderful, tender and flavorful, even the part that they overcooked. We drank Paolo’s wine and had salad and fabulous oven roasted potatoes utterly soaked in fabulous olive oil.
When we had finished our meal and were nearly the last people in the place, the owner, a big enthusiast for Dante who had greeted Nina with hugs and kisses, came to our table and began to talk Dante. Riccardo and Paolo knew the comments and then the recitation, of course, because it is a fundamental Italian grade school requirement to learn Dante. He spoke the lines as if he were telling us a recent anecdote. I heard Dante recited in the streets a couple of weeks ago and was charmed but this was quite captivating since it was so intimately directed to us. Very late, we were driven back to Santo Spirito, I with a package of bones for broth.

The Civaie

2009-06-01T14:22:00.000-07:00

The portone (big door) to my building is between two businesses: on the right a bar/restaurant now named Cabiria (it was different when I arrived last summer) which serves very nice B quality food – a step up from the C- before – and provides music to a lot of casual drinkers in the later hours. But on the other side is the Civaie Morganti. There is really no direct translation of the word civaie into English but it is a traditional seller of grains and legumes. Giovanni also sells an assortment of spices, olives, oils, garden seeds and, of necessity, a lot of tourist items: baskets, hats, vin santo & cantucci, those cutsie wrapped colored pasta that no Italian would touch. But the original focus was the grain/seed department. He has red, black, and wild rice along side several kinds of Italian risotto style rice, plus several kinds of lentils, even quinoa! I buy things from him whenever I can but as a single person, using a pound of lentils can take a while. We greet each other every day as is the custom here. Even the somewhat inebriated hangers-out say, “buon giorno, signora.”

But the best part of this vendor for me is the atmosphere of tradition that it adds to the piazza with local folks dropping by to chat and the elaborate, gesture filled conversations held either in front of the store or with those locals taking a drop in the outside seating of the restaurant. The talk is always energetic and often boisterous confusing the uninitiated into thinking of disputes, but it’s only Italian enthusiasm.

Giovanni’s store is only one of many traditional vendors in my neighbourhood: there is a frame shop, a shoe maker (very pricey), a pharmacy that originated in 1508, a bakery with some non Tuscan actually good bread, several furniture shops (mostly repair and restoration), a book seller, a candy/pastry shop, at least a dozen tiny grocery stores, and a fiaschetteria, a wine shop that sells bulk wine. You bring the bottles and they fill them up with one of six or seven types – red or white, Brunello or Rosso or what have you - for about 3.50 €. I think it is quite possible to live one’s life here and rarely leave a three block radius. Here’s a link to some of the traditional vendors around Firenze:
http://www.comune.firenze.it/opencms/export/sites/retecivica/materiali/promozione_economica/Percorso_antichi_sapori.pdf

Coffee with friends

2009-03-07T08:50:00.000-08:00

I have established a pattern of having coffee each day at 10 or so with various friends: Nikkie, an Italian, born here, raised in Canada, living here since 71, married to Luca, a Fiorentino, teaches Italian to foreign students, son Gabriele; Charles, retired NY city defense attorney, one time novelist, determined Italophile and perennial student, one daughter in US; Faith, an American living here for 35 years, with her sister from Maine; Brigitta, Swedish translator/interpreter also resident here for many years; and me. We buy cappucios and briosh and shoot whatever shit wants shooting. Currently the American economy is topic A. We met Luca for the first time at dinner da Nikkie. An elegant intellectual who is a publisher of small circulation, "giallo" (mystery) books, now he joins us from time to time when he isn't off to the the seaside to play tennis. We greet others as they pass by: the director of the British institute, Vanessa of the red specs; Sam, American student of Nikkie’s, now doing an internship here with an English language newspaper; Carol, painter, teacher, and long time expat. More seem to turn up everyday. I think if we sat there long enough, we would meet all the expats in the city. To paraphrase Claude Rains: "Everybody comes to Ricchi's". And there is crowd watching: the Godfather of the square, Signore Marini who always wears a red scarf and tie and who inspects the whole piazza daily, the camo capped rotund fellow who picks up trash and circles all day keeping an eye on things. We part around noon to do our separate adventures: Nikkie to teach, Charles to learn, me to write or converse in English. We only sometimes see each other in the evenings. But we are always back again the next morning for coffee and always seem to have a lot to talk about.

There’s food here.

2009-03-07T08:41:00.000-08:00

I’ve been trying to eat mostly at home to save a few €s, but that can be boring so when guests arrive there’s usually an opportunity to splurge and eat in a restaurant. Over the holidays Matthew and I tried out the Borgo Antico which lives two doors down from me. During the summer it is normally packed. Oddly the newish spot immediately under my lefthand window is mostly empty even when BA has a line of folks waiting. Food is indifferent it seems. But Borgo Antico after 4 visits meets spec. I’ve had pizza, gnocchi, risotto, and bresaola with rucola. They make their pizza in a wood oven (which may contribute to the nice level of warmth in my apartment upstairs) and the crust is thin and mostly crispy. I think it must be an insurmountable physics problem to get crispyness in the center, but the toppings were fresh and not a heap o’stuff layered with too much bad cheese as in USA. There is some kind of dispute about risotto: the proper doneness is just AFTER the stuff stops crunching and sticking in your teeth but I have had it more rare than that. I have made it to the express satisfaction of my own Italian foodie expert but there are those who covet the crunch. BA made me a risotto with artichokes (alas not fresh) and it was lovely, albeit a speedy meal. I underestimated the time the dish would take to chill in the 40 degrees in the outside seating. Well, it looked like a nice day! More rationally, Matthew and I sat inside for the salad. Bresaola was once made with horsemeat. Possibly still, depending on the location. Or the economy. And the center is piled with arugula and topped with big flakes of parmesan cheese. I had it in Siena with white truffles, as well. The moon rose over the Torre del Mangia and I had a lovely white wine. Major swoon. This time it was more down to earth but tasty.
The secret of the simple dishes like this is oil. Olive oil. Americans don’t really seem to get olive oil. Everything I’ve been told there is the opposite of what they do here. Lovely golden clear color? Nope. As green as grass. Clear? No way. The more meat in the oil, the better. Put it in tiny dark bottles? Not the way they use it here. Salad is dressed with oil only. And then they rub their bread in it. But that may have more to do with salt free bread. Bleeh. I bought a liter of “new” oil in November and it is almost gone. I was given a huge bottle at Christmas time and only just began to use it. It will be gone by the end of the month maybe, depending on what I make. We don’t cook with the stuff. It is the ketchup of Italy, poured on almost everything, especially in the soup. Oh yum.
My best meal so far was at the opposite corner of the piazza in Antica Osteria. After the Ikea festival, I took the Frenchies for lunch and we ended up there since it was late and not everyone stays open in the afternoon break. We six ate fantastic food, including a risotto with HUGE gamberoni for me and a magnificent meat festival for Matthew. I must take care because I don’t have the budget for a new wardrobe.

The Party

2009-03-07T07:48:00.000-08:00

After a very nice dinner at Charles’ apartment, he suggested that we have a party and each of us invite our friends and generate some cross fertilization. So we did. We held it at my apartment because it is very conducive to partiness being open and furnished with objects of derision. I started with my usual absurd thematic vision: a Tu B’shevat party since it is about that time of year and nobody knows what it means. No costumes. That was quickly shelved because it frightened the Italians. The idea was a California style open house from noonish to darkish so as not to exclude those with either jobs and or families. This was also shocking to some of the Italian persuasion. “What will we do all that time?” asked Andrea. Well, just come for a part of the time, I said. In fact they did. We had about 45 people here over the span of time. Everyone from the waiter at Charles’ favorite restaurant to the director of the British Institute to my Fiorentini pals and their expat partners and various musicians and writers. I made masses of food as always, some of which was more successful than others. I was asked for my recipe for meatballs at least twice. I ate the leftovers for a week. I met Gloria, a local with a fabulous fashion sense and a wardrobe from the resale shops that I would die for. And Riccardo, a genteel former journalist, now freelancer on his way to research an article for a motorcycle magazine in Yemen (Yemen?). And chatted with Stefano and the adorable Simona, he of the ancient merceria two steps from the Mercato Porcellino, and David and Patrizia, the British expat former butcher, now businessman and his beautiful wife, who made me a feast of wonderful Italian food at Christmastime. Affef from Tunisia and her talented husband Francesco, Edward, Padraig and Andree of the Irish contingent, and of course, my lovely wacky coffee drinking friend Nikkie and her husband Luca, a scholar and a gentleman. New friends Faith and Suzanne and old, Fawn and Andrea. Everyone seemed to enjoy themselves and I heard lovely compliments for weeks afterward, but of course in Italy complements are a de rigueur, so I only hope it was as nice for others as it was for me. I aspire to create a salon, but I think I need more decrepit furniture for swaning around.

The Mayoral Race

2009-03-07T07:40:00.000-08:00

By chance I read in the Florentine, a great little newspaper for the English speaking community (there are 40,000 in the area covered by the local consulate!), an advertisement for a candidate running in the mayoral primary. He was reaching out to the English speakers for support in the election by having a meet and greet at the Four Season’s Hotel. Newly opened after decades of renovation, the FSH is in a cloister, garden, office, whatever, once owned by a faceless corporation which let it all go to hell. So of course it needed years of restoration. I wanted to go just to get inside! Fawn came with. We arrived by taxi, a rare treat, and proceeded into the main lobby: an interior courtyard which had been roofed over so that the brilliant frescoes and bas relief frieze wrapping the inside could be protected. Eye poppingly beautiful. We were escorted through a maze of gorgeous rooms, luxuriously draped and furnished with renaissance and baroque art and furniture and paintings and cabinets full of books and silver and floral displays as from an old master. And comfy chairs. When we reached the interior garden (4 – four – ACRES!) they shuttled us across in golf carts enclosed against the rain. The far building was smaller but just as well appointed. Around a corner and into what seemed to be the chapel of the former convent: thirty foot high ceilings, painted vaults, a gallery with a frescoed face and in the apse, two painted saint in niches. Knock your eyes out gorgeous. And hardly ever open to the public. But I’m sure you could get married there. Well, we sort of did. The food on display was bountiful and arranged like a dutch still life. Free everything. We noshed heavily and greeted what seemed to be all of Fawn’s friends, some of which I knew from the cocktail party of last fall. They showed a very skillfully made video of Florentines being asked what they wanted from the next mayor, followed by our candidate, Mateo Renzi, promising just that. A bit in English, most in Italian and very well received by the upper crust audience. And two weeks later when the primary was held, Renzi came first, with a percentage sufficient to insure that he will be the next mayor. Firenze is a one party town, all genetic leftists. I liked his energy and youth, because the grownups here are way more jaded than is reasonable, often just to seem chic. I hope he succeeds since his program is a good list of things to do, but I was thrilled just to be in that fantastic venue.

I join the chic set (well for an evening anyway)

2009-03-07T07:26:00.000-08:00

Fawn called me in the afternoon one Tuesday in the late fall to ask if I would like to go to a wine tasting. Naturally I said yes. So I met her in Piazza del Carmine, the next over from where I am. [This is the one with the church with the Brancacci Chapel, which you would all recognize from the figures of Adam and Eve being tossed out of the garden: she’s wailing piteously and holding her nakedness and he’s head down and wretched.] The Piazza is rather unglamorous at first sight, with cars filling the middle. We met at the bottom of the square in front of a glassed in lobby with guardian. Inside was a huge, extremely elegant space: a huge, long narrow room with a similarly long narrow gravel floored tent beside and all decorated with orchids since this was the release party for a wine called Orchidae. The furnishings were white couches and trendy accessories, bar stools and stand up tables, with three bars serving the wine and white and champagne and fizzy water. Tiered plates held big hunks of parmigiano. We were there early with only a few others. As the crowd grew, I was introduced to all of Fawn and Andrea’s friends and quite a few business associates. I was the “dear friend from America who has just moved here.” I remember only a few of the names but they were uniformly attractive, well dressed and often spoke English. I met at least three American women who had married Italians. There were restaurant and hotel owners, fashion designers and retailers, wine biz folks and often all three in the same couple. We were almost all in black which made the white fuzzy couches off limits but a few trendy types wore soft colors and one charmer sported vintage Pucci harem pants. They served cute food which was also quite yummy and drat that large lunch! The whole event lasted from 7 to almost 10 by which time you could have been stuffed with food and tanked with wine. No one seemed to be. We managed to kiss everyone and leave, me toting a leaden collection of magazines which will serve me for at least a week. As I walked home – it was only three blocks – I felt I had been quite privileged to rub elbows and cheeks with the upper crust.

Uffizi Library

2009-01-22T12:20:00.000-08:00

Well, unless they take it back, I have been accepted as a volunteer at the Uffizi Library in the Museum of the same name. I don’t exactly get paid but they will enroll me in an insurance plan for 30€ and give me a pass to the museum which works for all the others, so it’s not exactly slavery. We actually spoke in Italian and they seemed mollified by my pronunciation if not my grammar. The director is a charming gentleman and his associate Luciana who will supervise me is warm and friendly. The work they are interested in having me do is data entry but I do lots of this at home. I call it writing but WTH. The library is a very large two story room with a catwalk like balcony around three sides. Naturally there are frescoes above and around the shelves. The visitors, researchers all I suppose, sit at tables with lamps but there is a large window which lights the place in the day. The floors are tiles that show the centuries of wear and the corridors frequently open up to vaults or pillars or in one case, the old foundations that Vasari built the place on. I feel honored just to be allowed in and they are thanking me for being willing to help out. Pinch me.

January musings

2009-01-17T05:25:00.000-08:00

While I am very busy I can’t always remember what it was that made me so, and it’s not the wine. Or the gin. Last night I was escorted by a lovely tall Romanian beauty Nicoleta who volunteered to show me the way to a jazz club where a new friend Tiziano would be playing. I am fully capable of finding anything in Firenze, armed as I am with maps of all scales and content, but a companion on a passegiata seemed a fine idea. So we walked, she with her bici and I with my limp, the five or so blocks (the only blocks actually here are the stones that make up the buildings and streets but there is no other way to describe the distance since I’m metri impaired.) to the piazza where we would find the venue. Italian all the way, even if she would like to learn some English. The club was in the bowels of a pizza restaurant not unlike the lower levels of the churches: arched ceilings and small bricked up proto windows, refectory style tables and benches for seating. More Italian again. And because they are very polite they told me my Italian was fine. Should be fined is more like it. After some time waiting, surprisingly free of demands that we buy drinks(TG), the musicians arrived with kisses for all including me since I was “a friend of the band!!” No backstage privileges. No backstage. The group was pure geezer rockers with either no hair or more grey than me. Six pieces: drums, bass, piano/organ, 3 guitars trading the lead and rythym. All good players. Typical west coast style. All Italian lyrics. LOUD! Glad I brought my ear plugs. Played for two hours + without stopping. Tiziano is lovely, speaks fine English. (I’ve told the ones who will listen that an Italian accent is an American aphrodisiac but some still won’t speak even if they do better at an alien language than I) The crowd was mostly middle to my age with a few young groupies including one who seemed to know all the words to all of the songs. Too loud to talk which was sort of a relief at least for the first hour and a half. Having never been a concert goer and stayer-up-later-than-12 type, I faded at the end and made for home around 1.30 texting Nicoleta that I was off. She’s adorable and I hope to see her soon again, this time for English.

A Pretty Nice Holiday

2009-01-06T06:02:00.000-08:00

I had a pretty nice holiday, all things considered. Matthew came to visit and we had a nice time together. He had something of an ordeal getting here because his plane was diverted due to fog in Pisa. So it turned into a 36 hours back smasher. And of course, he's already got a smashed back. But then we had a nice Christmas dinner together and the next day my friends from France arrived laden with fois gras and wine and chocolates and cheeeeeese, Grommit. Very nice. Lovely kids 16 and 13 and darling folks. We walked around the city and nearly froze solid, what with an arctic gale blowing. Spent a day in Siena that nearly froze our blood and actually snowed on us!! But we managed to eat several fabulous meals: my famous lasagna with Matt's famous spaghetti sauce and two (2!) restaurant meals. And they volunteered to take me to Ikea and schlep all the stuff I needed to finish making the apartment fully functional, including assembling all the purchases! Talk about good guests! And then they dashed back to France for NYrs Eve and I fell into bed with a stinker of a cold. So for the second consecutive NYE, I celebrated with cough lozenges and gin. It's medicinal. If disgusting. Matthew stepped up big time and made me tea and other hot fluids and DID MY LAUNDRY! A little old lady in the laundromat eyed his careful folding and smoothing and nodded approval so he said "Mia madre es infirma" meaning sick but he speaks Spanish, so it came out "my mother is infirm" not sick. Not infirm yet. Much. Then, as I had made a heroic recovery, we went to dinner Saturday at a friend's and had lovely food and alleged conversation in Italglish. And last night as a parting gift, dinner with another Italian friend, one that Matthew knows, well staffed with characters, mostly musicians. Sent him off to the mysterious west with lots of good stories to tell and plans to come back in the spring when he can visit a pal in Spain who will drive him here which is probably easier on the back. I will look forward to more food fests and this time conversation in Spanitalglish.

Christmas in Italy 2008

2009-01-06T05:45:00.000-08:00

The lights are all up across the streets and on the trees of the piazza. Mostly they are tiny white ones, some that move or twinkle, but the ones outside my window are blue and mercifully static. The windows have displays of desperate merchandise – very poor sales this year. Some stores have already put up sale signs. But the passersby are smiling and friendly. For the most part we are not troubled with those vampire Christmas carols that will not die or the cute Santa motifs. This is a Catholic country of course. There are some carols in my café but they aren’t insistent because it’s not common for Italian restaurants and stores to mess up your shopping or eating with bland musak. They prefer the sound of conversation. The number of visitors seems very small but I’m comparing it to what I know of the season when the streets are full. I had dinner with friends the other night and Padraig said that the restaurant we were in should rightfully have been jammed with after-shopping diners. We were the only people in the place. I am enjoying the lack of crowds but I may be the only one in town doing so.
I have been polling my friends to find out what the traditions are here. So far nothing that explodes. (see Easter) The traditional meal is tortellone in brodo (big ravioli in broth) on Christmas Eve with the broth being made from boiled beef. Then on Christmas Day they eat the beef with vegetables and potatoes. In recent years they have turned to turkey maybe from the Norman Rockwell image they get from the states. One family I know always has bruschetta di fegato (toast with chopped liver). I even got a very specific recipe for it, although my liver eating days were mostly over when a Stanford biologist said he wouldn’t touch it. This family also has Guinea fowl which is larger and darker than chicken but not as bland as turkey. The principal gathering is at midday, although you wouldn’t call it a lunch. Old Fashioned Sunday dinnerish meal is what I would call it.
For those who are religious or just traditional, there is a midnight mass in every church. I’m thinking I will go to Santo Spirito since it is 50’ away and I can sit down, I think. The bells have been ringing more this week. It’s a lovely part of the environment here. And over the door to the church is a lit star with a tail like a comet, small and just inside. I like the modest decorations and don’t miss the 10 billion bulb extravaganzas that we Americans are prone to. But then maybe the reason it’s inside the door is the lurkers who haunt the doorways across the steps most nights, Upton O. Goode and his pals.
Most of my friends are going to family or having them here in herds. Fawn and co. are off to Luxembourg to the daughter-in-law’s family. Nikkie and Luca are eating at their son’s house even if she’s bringing the dinner. Then off to the seaside house and supper with their friends there. Andree is driving to France, as we speak, to her brother. Alessandro will make a speedy trip to the Veneto and back in less than a week. Sonia my landlady is entertaining 14 in what I believe to be a three bedroom apartment. When I said I fed a bunch a few years ago but I had patios and decks, she said “Meglio tutto fuori!” (better they’re all outside!)
Matthew will be here tomorrow midday. I’m tracking him in the air as I write. (Better than worrying) We will have a tiny roast beast ala fiorentino (I have no trouble understanding food info in Italian!), oven roasted potatoes with some of that killer new oil and peas with bacon (Nikkie’s special recipe). Then when Mike and Nathalie arrive, I’ve got lasagna, pappardelli with mushrooms and onions, beef bourguignon. We won’t starve.
Sometime in the week between Christmas and New Year we will all drive to Siena and see the gorgeous duomo. And maybe Matthew will convince me to make a whirlwind tour of all of northern Italy. Or not. Time to make egg nog. Happy Midwinter Merchandising Festival from Italia.

Back from the USA

2008-12-13T08:24:00.000-08:00

Being gone for three weeks felt like three months. Not to mention the change of temperature. The weather in Firenze is typical for the time of year: cold, rainy, overcast, dreary. And I was met with a very chilly apartment since the heat had not been turned on since I moved in. There in the living room were the 15 boxes of American crap that had turned up while I was gone, only 18 weeks late. Thank you Charles for being the receiver of the goods. (Sounds truly felonious!) So a monumental unpacking job: the boxes, my suitcase and naturally a heap of stuff brought back with me. I never go "back" without some extra stuff, 'cause you can never have enough "stuff" (viz. George Carlin). I have nearly a year's worth of book club reading, pots, pans, linens, waaaay more clothes than I need, a few shoes, kitchen gear sufficient for an army mess, and the right salt. Just the basics.
I had a very nice visit to CA: completed the doctor visits I needed; survived my birthday with my dignity mostly intact (only one singing session); had two thanksgivings both delicious (Yea, Lisa's turkey and pies!!); a great visit to LA to see Aaron (complete with star sighting); lunch/dinner/chitchat with most of my pals and family; some "only in SF" events including a 49er win (actually "once in a blue moon" for this!) and a fabulous series of food memories. Now back to the unpacking of boxes. I should be done just before the lease is up.

Watching change

2008-11-06T06:57:00.000-08:00

Spent last night with some friends at an alleged election night party that turned out to be a dark, loud, third rate rock concert directed at the binge drinking crowd. Had a pair of lousy g&ts and came home early only to find nothing of use on the computer. So I set the alarm for 5am because I knew that CA polls would be closing about then. Arrived on line just in time to hear McCain's concession speech. Found it heartfelt and sympathetic and he sounded like he really meant it. Then Obama's speech (in front of 125K crowd! How does he do it!!) which left most of us in tears. Missing only Al Franken victory, Ted Stevens repudiation, and Prop 8 failure. I was hoping we were going to see the end of the Abortion/Gay Marriage/Creationist distraction game but not yet. Dawn broke on a sparkling bright, shiny day where all's right with the world.
I'm not sure Americans know how much the people in the rest of the world cared about this election. Most countries I've visited love Americans even if they hate our government. And they really wanted to like us again. In my travels over the last two years, the third question asked of me, after where do you come from and how do you like Italy, is how we get rid of George Bush? And since January, I am nearly always the expert of choice: Hillary or Obama? I always said I don't care, any Democrat will do, but now I am really pleased that it is Obama because of his incredible "presidential temperment". The man seems unflappable! And I think the next four years will have molto flaps. I have heard many black Americans saying "I am so grateful I lived to see this!' Me too.

Politics

2008-11-01T12:30:00.000-07:00

Italy bits: Berlusconi has released a CD of himself singing traditional Italian songs just in time for Christmas.
The Education Minister has introduced a set of new regulations to "improve" the schools and the students (high school level and college) have gone on strike and occupied the schools. They are milling about in front all of them and there are bedsheet sized signs hanging like wash from all the windows. This week and last there were huge demonstrations in all the major cities which included a sit down on the rail lines in Milan and a punch up between them and some hard line conservatives (read Neo Facisti) and the cops in Rome which drew the unions into the fray and last Thursday they called a general strike. I couldn't tell.
To endear himself with the aforementioned students, Il Cavaliere (Mr. B) went to a private school where there was no strike since they aren't affected, and told them "I only sleep three hours a night and I can still make love for three hours! You should be like me when you are 70 years old!" I'm sure they were impressed. (If it takes three hours, you're doing it wrong.) He won the election last April with enough members that they have passed the law excluding him and the top five members of the government from prosecution, saving him from any continuation of his trial for corruption. Interesting that he seems to have run for office to keep himself OUT of jail. Here you get three shots at a “get out of jail free card” and never see jail before the appeals are completed and never at all if the sentence is less than three years since the jails are completely full. Not because they catch and imprison a lot of criminals but because they don’t build any new ones. Life usually means 10 or so depending on your pull.
Lastly, November is white truffle month and there are festivals celebrating them all over. They are the food of the gods.

Guests

2008-10-31T00:02:00.000-07:00

Had my first visitors this week. A childhood friend of my nephew came with his lovely lady friend for several days. They were delightful and we had a lovely time. I took them on a recon trip around the center the first day. They are pretty intrepid so I could set them loose upon the city to find their own way around. But together we went to the San Ambrogio Market on Saturday and bought a massive amount of food, in particular these yummy sausages that I love. Then we ate our lunch there and proceeded through town on the cute little electric shuttles that make it so convenient to traverse the carfree zone. For dinner we cooked lots of our loot and got truly stuffed. I will have leftovers through November! Then there was the wine thing: we drank lots. Dinner on Monday was somewhat accidental since we had planned a movie but they only had the Italian version of Vicky Christina Barcelona. We were forced to make do with a brilliant dinner at my fav here, Quattro Leoni. Our last adventure was an overnight to Chianti and Siena, stopping in Panzano for a lovely lunch and eating dinner on the Campo in Siena. The return trip took us for a short stop in Monteriggioni, an adorable tiny walled town, and San Gimignano of the towers. It was my best visit ever to this tourist mecca because they were mostly gone! We ate in a tiny restaurant and while they hiked around, I caught the fabulous view at the Punta Panoramica and drank an amazing Vernaccia (the local pour) which I naturally had to buy. They took of yesterday, with what I took to be a mixture of regret and relief. Looking forward to more visits.

Book Reports

2008-10-05T12:31:00.000-07:00

Without much TV worth watching (Italian TV really sucks except for a quiz show that functions as a language lesson and old, dubbed, usually American movies) and with lots, AND LOTS of free time, I have been reading madly. Well, I’m not usually mad but some of the books make me a bit peeved: 13 books in six weeks. But it is pretty costly: about 15€ each for paperbacks in English. Of course, I should be reading in Italian but that is still incredibly slow requiring a dictionary for almost every sentence. So I joined the British Institute which has a large (largest in Europe, outside UK) English language library and also lectures, recitals, and movies. Currently they’re doing David Lean. Can’t wait for Lawrence of Arabia and the later ones. Anyway, some of the stuff I’ve read and a few comments:
The Passion of Artemisia, Susan Vreeland. A half biography, half historical bodice ripper about Artemisia Gentileschi, one of the few women to actually make it as a painter before the modern era. Aside from leaving out a whole lotta facts, Vreeland makes free with a lot of incongruous deep thinking that is just too Oprah for me. Ordinary prose and a single plot line that leaves her talking about her art as filler for a “search for love and understanding.” There are the obligatory descriptions of places and food to give it authenticity but it’s thin gruel.
Special Topics in Calamity Physics, Marisha Pessel. A mad murder mystery with more metaphors (or is it similes) than you can shake a thesaurus at. But fairly engaging and nicely convoluted.
The Betrothed, Alessandro Manzoni. The seminal Italian novel written in the 18th century about a couple in the 17th, in approximately the same period as Austin and the rest of the early romantics. Fated lovers spend way too much time trying to get married. Lots of evil lords and dimwitted clerics, saintly monks and gnarled rustics. Prefiguring Umberto Eco, whom I love, there are long discourses on many of the characters and of course they all live in castles and have names found on the streets around here. Must read for Italian students who hate it.
Julie and Julia, Julie Powell. A depressed writer decides to prepare all (ALL!) the recipes in the first volume of Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Aside from my adoration for J. Child, the inventor of Good American Eating, and my own personal food goddess, this adventure is amusing and pleasantly tasty, kinda like a nice potato soup.
The Monster of Florence, Douglas Preston and Mario Spezi. Well, this is a gimme: a) I’m in Florence (duh) and b) Tom Cruise just bought the rights to the book and you all know how I just LOVE Tom Cruise and those wacky Scientology folks. Well, no. But I was stiffed trying to get into the WORLD PREMIER of Miracle at Saint Anna and decided to eat dinner in the center hoping there would be a late show that I might get into. (There is this theatre that shows OV – original version sound = English) And I didn’t have anything to read and there it was, so I bought it. There was no later show, so I went home and the damned thing kept me up until 3:45 when I finished it. Pretty good stuff. Reveals the grimy underside of the Italian system of “jurisprudence.” Lots of dark forces influencing the path of justice and the freedom of the media. Cripes, sounds like the US. Now if only Tom doesn’t ruin it and put a cape on the American author.

Eating

2008-10-05T12:27:00.001-07:00

It is truly hard not to emulate Frances Whatsis of Under the Tuscan Sun infamy and write up my food experiences since the food thing here is major. Outside the front windows in the pizza, there is one old woman (who am I to call anyone old these days?) who runs a little truck stand every day and she is usually joined by at least two others. She has mostly indifferent and tired veggies but occasionally there’s a prize winner. Then on the weekends there are often wine tastings (30 wineries last weekend Fri/Sat/Sun) plus some kind of organic fest or food party showing off slow or at least medium fast products. I can buy honey and jam and marmalade from adorable hippy dudes or smart cuties from farms within a hundred mile radius, and need to stagger only a few steps with my bundles to be home. Yesterday I got a loaf of lovely sweet smelling whole grain bread that went beautifully with the pumpkin (not your average JackOLantern kind) soup I’d made the day before. Spread with ricotta (which is not the grainy, tasteless US version) the bread was great, hard to say about most Tuscan bread. I was told that the reason they make the bread here with no salt is that one of the Lorenzo’s or Cosimo’s put a tax on the salt so the bakers said “Phooey, no more salt for you!” And so to this day the bread here is blahx2 and usually stale. Hence the need for various forms of schmutz to spread on this stuff. So finding a lovely soft FRESH loaf even one made of some unknown and unpronounceable mystery grain seemed like a real eureka moment. Today I ate more with risotto made with some of the soup, diluted , red wine and parsley. Now where are those hundreds of threatened visits or was that the gin?

October 1, Today is the day!

2008-10-05T12:24:00.000-07:00

Today is the day!! And here is the TelecomItalia guy right on time. It could be that I will have telephone and internet and better tv by lunchtime. Sorry, pranzo! The whole project has only taken six weeks! And required me to schlep the bloody computer to the internet point a dozen times. I’ve learned the hard way that you have to connect to the internet pretty regularly and LET THEM DO THEIR UPDATES or things get rather clogged. And fiber doesn’t do it. Last spring when I was here, I had a partial meltdown because I had not been updating regularly and then some big update arrived and locked me out of my everything. Once I got home to the love and care of my gurus (that would be Matt and Karen), they put in all the updates and all was peaceful in the computer kingdom. But it was a lesson learned and now I make a point to put this thing on line regularly and CHECK FOR UPDATES. It feels a bit like being haunted or having a multiple personality disorder.
Well, not today. RATS!! Seems that by having the technico delay his install, (there was that floor thing) my internet order expired. He will be back tomorrow morning, he thinks. This is really not a huge complication except that it is all in Italian! Telephone and internet stuff is bad enough in the states when you can actually ask stupid questions in your native language, but in Italian. Bah. Well, we’ll just see what happens tomorrow.

Sunday in the Piazza

2008-10-05T12:20:00.000-07:00

There was an organic food fair in the piazza yesterday. Thirty or forty vendors selling homemade organic wine, vinegar, oil, cheese, passato (tomato base for sauce), homegrown veggies, organic wool naturally dyed; a lovely collection of country products. The sellers were just the same beads and sandals, back to the land folks you’d find in Northern California except for the occasional German or French interloper. I bought some goodies including a ceramic plate for cheese. I need to be careful however. I still haven’t learned how to make just enough food for one person and typically throw too much away. The standard plan here is to buy for tonight only unless one is going to make their own soup or broth or sauce. The same old ladies appear every morning to buy their veggies from the same old vendor in the same old place as last week (or last year or last century probably). This is just the place to buy Christmas presents as long as you understand the shipping and weight issues. Almost everything I have bought to bring back to the states cost as much to send as the original price.

Economic Rant

2008-10-05T12:13:00.000-07:00

The current disaster of the American economy and the European, Russian and Asian dominoes is not an accident. Daddy was right: this decade (actually three if you start with Ronnie’s lies about the “supply side”) of Voodoo Economics and its unmitigated greed and plunder WAS THE PLAN! The winners are those Ponzi players who got out of the game early enough to keep their loot. The losers are the “conservatives” dumb enough to choose leadership based on who they want to have a beer with and the rest of us. Distracted by shiny objects like abortion, gay marriage, and sex ed, these deluded voters didn’t recognize the game of three card monte being played by the likes of Chaney and his cabal. The Neo-cons (accent on the con) and their accomplices like Alan Greenspan and Ben Bernanke, perpetrated the ultimate free lunch scam on every boob who bought the “free market” mumbo jumbo. All I want to know is when do we shoot these looters? At least the ones in most civil disorders are either hungry or poor. And the most egregious irony of all: they insisted we couldn’t have universal health care because A) it is too expensive and B) it would be “socialism” and C) it would put the government in charge of your choices. Do you want the same people who were monitoring the derivatives market in charge of your health? Actually I’d rather have the Italian (or Mexican) Post Office. Since we have now effectively nationalized the entire banking industry, I hope I never hear another idiot ranting about the dangers of socialism. Nothing in the financial sector will change until we have rules that are clear, fair and enforced and the looters are in the slammer. Has anyone seen Grover Norquist lately? He is surely all wet, not least from strangling something in the bathtub.

I Love A Parade

2008-09-14T12:41:00.000-07:00

Well, the weather has finally changed. Last night and most of today it rained solidly. The sky is still overcast, the air cool and refreshing and it looks like it will continue for a while. I am very glad. I was really sick of the close humid heat, especially at night. My bedroom has been over 26 or 27 degrees most nights since I arrived and frequently 28+!

I credit it all to the Madonna of Lourdes who showed up here on Wednesday night. She was dragged through the streets at the head of a huge crowd, probably over 3000. She got to ride in a sled of course, with flowers at her feet and wearing new duds, natch, but they made her visit nearly every church in town while all 3K of them sang and prayed constantly. I spotted the line coming out of the Duomo on my way home around 9.15P and walked at speed to find the head of the parade. I passed nuns and nurses and brothers and monks and lay groups in costume (including those scary proto KKK hoods) and ambulance drivers (ambulance drivers?) and EMTs. There is some connection between Lourdes and physical debilities, as I recall. And when I got to the front of the 2 K line, there she was up on the shoulders of several monks on her pallet. All the followers carried candles with little paper wind shields and rosaries and each group has a tapestry identifying them and their city. Seems they came from all over. She’s very popular, you know. They even had bishops and monsigniors with VERY fancy outfits. There was a fantastic sound system broadcasting the prayers and songs and every 500m or so there was a set of portable speakers on wheels being rolled along so the latter saints could keep up. I left the group at my favorite short cut to go home only to find them in my piazza when I arrived. The church doors were open and the lights on and the bells were ringing. It was a lot better than the noisy, drum accompanied, drunken, litter festival that usually appears there most nights. But then she went to check out another of the branch offices in Piazza del Carmine. Thanks Madonna, for the visit and the cooling rain and all the fish. And for a more charming experience than that other Madonna.

The Concert

2008-09-14T12:30:00.000-07:00

We went to a concert. My friends Andrea and Fawn have rented a house by the sea in Tonfano on the west coast of Tuscany. A friend, Claudio, organized a grand musical evening with dinner for a crowd of us, maybe 35. Everyone was commanded to dress up. We drove off towards the mountains. You can see the “caves” where the marble has been quarried but much of the area is green with pine tees and olives or scraped raw to the crags. The site was an old mill now a restaurant with all the old grinding stones still in place. We had bits of food out on a ledge with a view of hills and orchards and the tiny river that once ran the mill dribbling over the edge of a former dam. There was a woman singer and a guy with an electric piano. The music played and the sun set and we began to regret that we had dressed for the beach climate and we were in the hills. A bit of prosecco and more music and it got colder. And then we began to share jackets and collect car blankets and one even put on the hiway orange emergency road trouble vest required of all cars here. He even lined it with newspapers! Finally after almost 3 hours of music and long discourses in Italian about the origins of the songs and their meaning we were able to sit down for dinner. (Italians NEVER eat before 9PM!) But outside! I sat next to Fawn’s daughter-in-law Alexia, Luxembourgeois with French, Italian and English! She has an adorable 9 month old baby girl. We talked babies and education. The road vest guy handed out newspapers, David, the Italo/Brit, spent much time talking to me, we had plenty of food and coffee and dolce and sambuca and more conversation. The party was finally over around 12.30 and we rolled home. But I think I’ve had all the Burt Bacharach music I can hold and I don’t think I will ever get those songs out of my head.

Music in the Piazza

2008-09-08T09:09:00.000-07:00

There’s a tango concert this evening with a flutist and a violin and a cello and an electric piano and the air is warm and there are dozens of people lounging in chairs and watching and the music is very nice unlike the last few concerts which were either loud or inharmonic or LOUD. I have a first row freebie seat for these concerts since my windows overlook the piazza. But when there is music, I prefer to observe the party from the square itself. More autentico. I think these concerts will continue for the month of September and possibly into October if the weather holds. We are warm and comfy just now but the man in the military uniform on TV says that the forecast for tomorrow is for changeable weather with a chance of showers. Actually I don’t mind if there is some variation in the clime since this resolutely bel tempo is getting a bit boring. Being from the SF area which changes weather from morning to evening, consistency is my hobgoblin. So soon I will order another G&T and dissolve into simple audience mode. It’s a nice night.
Music in the piazza v2.0. Last night a different group played. This time it was up tempo New Orleans style brassy jazz. Loud but good loud. The crowd was very appreciative with many more dancers than the tango group. Well, this music allowed a more free form style of dance. They even had some playful tricks with a balancing act and some schtick with water. Then one of the crazy denizens of the piazza accosted me and tried to lecture me on using a computer in the area reserved for paying customers (but I had a G&T, natch) and my Italian was no match for his fractured English. He sat with me for a bit and plied me with odd questions until the music ended and I went home. All the way to the other side of the piazza.

Nino

2008-09-02T08:26:00.000-07:00

Well, things are starting to happen. It has been a dry week what with everybody away for the August holidays. I was caught between ennui and depression, starting to develop heroic buyer’s remorse. But. I was swept into the drama of a displaced Georgian violinist who is reduced to home healthcare for the aged, one Nino. “Is boy’s name here,” she said in her fractured English. I stopped at a particular bar on the Arno which has a lovely view of the Ponte Vecchio as it turns a lovely series of earth colors during the sunset. Then you can turn the other way and see the windows of the Palazzi turning gold and the upstream bridges mirrored in the now relaxed stream. And they make a great gin and tonic. She was smoking and NOT buying the pricey drinks. She asked me a question about telephone cards, a ploy maybe. But for the next hour and a half, I heard her story, long and desperate. A violinist, she plays an Amati, once for the Moscow symphony, now she feeds elderly Italians whose kids only call weekly, weakly. “Be my friend, my sister, you go to Georgia, you need only ticket, after, my family take care everything!” I could not help but be affected and I told her I would do what I could but I was new here myself, blah, blah. She showed me her credentials and her clippings and told me her story and we talked about music and opera and travel and as tragic as she was, I was glad of the conversation and the interest. Maybe it was the romantic venue or the sentimental atmosphere but I truly wanted to be of help. I just have to get my own thing going here.

Italian Rigmarole

2008-09-02T08:22:00.000-07:00

Italian rigmarole is not a dance. It is the life blood of people with little else in their lives but making others' lives complicated. I have been to the Quaestura to report myself as required in all of the documents in my possession. After several hours in different offices, they aren’t interested. They sent me to the post office to fill out a set of forms which they freely admitted would only be returned in time for my departure. I have obtained a codice fiscale which is supposed to permit all manner of financial transactions except the ones I want to execute like resurrecting the telephone line which ostensibly lived in the apartment so I can install broadband (forget wireless, just give me a connection!). I have been advised by David, intrepid Italo/British pal, that I should install a targa (nameplate) on the array of bells at the downstairs door so the phone co will find me but I am concerned that the landlady will be compromised since she hasn’t registered the lease, so I pause, wondering. Do the post office types rat to the lease bureaucrats? Well, maybe it will get better when the entire world comes back from vacation tomorrow or Tuesday or Wednesday or whenever. At least tomorrow I can go to the school and take advantage of the expertise of the ladies there, even if I have to sign up for a conversation class to make it legit. Parlo molto Italiano adesso! But apparently I need to learn curse words.

Homeless at last

2008-08-25T10:37:00.000-07:00

I got out of the house at last on the 31st of July. Homeless at last! But I did it the Mill valley way with a Mercedes, a computer and two cell phones. Of course I had a whole collection of drek that I couldn't get rid of so it lived in the car for two weeks. And now I fully understand why truly homeless people keep so much crap: you never know when you will need some extraneous thing. I kept trying to consolidate things: a recipe collection which only had ten or twenty heirloom recipes but buried in an hour's worth of paper tossing; an album project from years past that need thinking and glueing; a couple of boxes of ancient school papers with some blackmail material buried deep; crutches - a great sympathy ploy for the plane but try using them with three pieces of luggage!; an ever expanding compliment of luggage - I ended up shipping more stuff; Chinese scrolls that never sold; files to take, receipts to store, and bills to pay; a fur neck piece that was impossible to wear in SF without risking animal fan's wrath - off to Italy with you, if not there, then a ritual burial; miscellaneous gifts dredged up from the travels of years past - perfect hostess gifts. I learned that you can give stuff to people, they will be grateful, and if they hate it they can toss it later in the privacy of their own home. And sometimes you can either mail it or just abandon it on their doorstep. I did enjoy the "cousining around" as my mother called this kind of friend/family visiting especially since it allowed for a one on one experience with several friends even if I sometimes needed my schedule to remember where I was sleeping that night. My last spot was with Kristin and Dennis who marvelously took me to the shuttle and are babysitting the last two cases until they get shipped. Just bought stamps for the thank you notes. Now to find a fan for the nighttime heat.

The Move Progresses

2008-07-02T19:55:00.000-07:00

I have torn up every room in my house. There are books and boxes and furniture piled up everywhere!! My bed is on it's side due to rewiring of the reading lights. So I'm sleeping on the guest bed which is very high and quite firm and which is lovely and nearly new but doesn't want to sell. I should keep it and sell the other one but I love my soft, comfy bed. The renters have allergy problems so they don't want any of the rugs which also don't want to sell. And the books!! I had no idea that I had so many books. And I haven't opened most of them in years. Some in thirty years! Why keep any of them? Just the Italian history. Luckily a friend has looked them over and flogged a few for a nice bit of cash.

The packers/movers came today and are busily wrapping and rapping and packing away. They are a nice crew of part time musicians and artists with an interesting variety of hair choices. Groovy dudes all. But there must be some corollary to Parkinson's Law that states that the goods expand to fill the available pod. After packaging, my "stuff" was easily twice the volume I had expected. But after years of time wasted playing Tetris - which I recall is a video game - the boss and his vice chairman were able to perfectly fit it all into the 8x8x16 POD with a bit to spare so I saved the golf clubs. Haven't given up actually playing my age, but now I need to live to be 105.

On stuff

2008-06-27T07:33:00.000-07:00

George Carlin died last Sunday. His comic philosophy was all over the news. Most relevant for me was his rant about STUFF. I am up to my eyebrows in 40+ years of STUFF! And George appears posthumously all over radio and TV, reminding me that it’s all just STUFF. I am pleased and only a little surprised at how easy it has been to eliminate so much of it. So how do you handle all your stuff? When I was sick in January watching dreadful TV, there was a program called Clean House where families with way too much STUFF are persuaded to get rid of lots of it so the bossy host and makeover team can fulfill the show’s mandate. Why do people accumulate so much STUFF? And why is other people’s stuff so dreadful? As George said “Other people’s stuff is shit and your shit is STUFF!” Glad to see the back of most of it. Regrets later.
Then in the NYTimes yesterday was a lengthy article about the tyranny of the HEIRLOOM! Melinda doesn’t want the mahogany table from Nana and Jonny doesn’t have room for the Deerfield chest. I am looking hard at all this STUFF. If you are going to spend real money to put it in storage it better be because you want it not because X left it to you. I have said goodbye to a lot of real drek. I just hope my children appreciate that they will not have the three week, four dumpster purge to handle when I die. But there’s still time and Italian STUFF is so much more interesting.

PhotoFobic

2008-05-29T14:41:00.000-07:00

I have spent two days and perhaps ten hours with Dennis, Kristin's husband making the ultimate slide show of our pictures from last fall's trip to Europe. She and I met in Berlin, then visited my friend Angelika in Koenigstein followed by a tour of the Black Forest and Lake Konstanz, flew off to Rome where we met up with her sister Charlene, then Firenze and Siena and finally Venice. The total number of photos taken was just short of a googleplex. Some of them were actually good. But the best ones were human interest shots, I think. Those of you in the Bay Area will be able to see this magnum opus when you come to my send off party; no soft restraints will be used, just a continuous loop with loopy dialogue to comment on the locale since it may not always be obvious where we are. However, one of the funniest is herein attached for your amusement. Sage advice: make sure your camera is turned off before you stash it in your purse.

Texas Two Step

2008-05-26T17:13:00.000-07:00

I visited Baytown Texas with my friend Elsie. We went to see her sister Corinne and husband Raymond. They picked us up at the airport and drove us to their condo. During the ride, Corinne directed Raymond to "git on this lane, Raymint, git on that one" and he obediently did so. I asked it they were church goers and was told they had a pretty good new preacher but he "preached real hard." I would be welcome to come along.
They lived in a tiny space in a complex with a view of the refineries that dominate Baytown and give it the look of a space station parking lot filled with alien vehicles. The air is thick with the smell of the refinery and so hot and humid that leaving the AC in the condo you feel like you have been hit in the chest with a wet pillow. Corinne (Co-rene) took us to Galveston to see the beach. They let cars drive on the beach and the waves are no higher that 6 or 8 inches and warm as bath water. Quite different from your basic California beach experience. On the way home we stopped at a roadside stand to buy shrimp: the place was completely timed in bright yellow and blue with at least ten different sizes of shrimp. We boiled up the whole mess and threw it on the table to shell and eat. They were utterly delicious!
The next night was Saturday and we wanted to go listen to music so they treated us to the local dance scene. A huge space the size of two bowling alleys had only one of the three band stands occupied. We four sat at a tiny table with beers. Raymint finally danced with Elsie. While they were on the floor, Co-rene confided "Raymint, he cain't dance. I got to lead 'im." Then one of the locals asked me to dance: a tip of his stetson and "would y'all like to dance, ma'am?" A huge guy with a belt buckle the size of a football and high heeled cowboy boots. It was like dancing with Ferdinand the Bull, as he huffed and puffed and led me around in the Texas Two-step. More quiet waiting and then Raymint finally asked me to dance. And he could dance like Fred Astair!!! At the end of our trip around, he did a dip!! Imagine being married for 35 years and missing that.
On Sunday we went to church. It was a single story brick structure sprawling around a huge grassy lot near a woods. The place was jammed! They had 200+ children in the Sunday school! Standees lined the walls. And of course the preacher preached "real hard" and actually thumped the bible several times. I didn't follow the intense sermon which seemed to bounce randomly around the old testament, and the assemblage was quiet and solemn when I was hoping for enthusiasm and affirmations. But the whole trip was a visit to another planet and a true adventure.

Memorial Day

2008-05-26T16:49:00.000-07:00

I am not a fan of Memorial Day. I always thought that the celebration of dead soldiers only led to more of them. I admit I liked having someone put flags on the graves of relatives many of whom served (Navy, Cavalry and proto Mash units). But today I heard a very nice Memorial Day story on NPR: it seems that a French woman has created an organization that is dedicated solely to decorating the graves of the American war dead near the D-Day beaches in Normandy. They come from all over France on Memorial Day to tidy and place flowers and flags on the graves in the American Cemetary at Colleville-sur-mer. The founder was interviewed. Her lovely French-accented English described how the group does their work and sends photos of the graves to the relatives in the states, many of whom are too old or distant to visit. But the part that made me really feel the sense of the day was the comments of a man who travels all the way from Paris to this place to remember the Americans and what they did and died for in 1944. He said "Excuse me for speak French. I never forget them. I thank them for their sacrifice. God bless America." Then they played the Star Spangled Banner and he choked up and made me cry. As a frequent traveler to Europe, I have never really encountered bias against me as an individual, but America as an institution gets a lot of gas lately. How reassuring that ordinary people still remember the things we did a long time ago that were so important and so hard.

Finding an Apartment

2008-05-23T13:21:00.000-07:00

After two trips to the Italian consulate in SF, it was made clear that if I wanted a extended visa, I would have to have a rental contract for the period of my stay. I had learned from the lame website - needs a lotta help!- that I would have to provide my own health insurance and show sufficient income. I had almost everything in hand the first time I visited. The visa official looked at my stuff and asked about my income statement:
"This is your annual income?" With the rent from my house it looked fairly substantial.
"Yes."
"Are you married?" I thought he was deciding if it would cover two people.
"No, I'm a widow."
"Will you marry me?" he asked.
"Of course!" says I.
But then the rental thingy arose.
"You must have a rental contract for the whole period." Period.

So, I spent many hours searching for a standard rental on the web. Most of the available places were tourism sites with weekly rentals in the thousands. And all furnished, which I don't need since I want to cadge some stuff for myself. And nobody answered the e-mails I sent. And the phone numbers were often "not obtainable". And lots of them had been photographed with a fisheye lens, making assertions about space very unreliable. So I finally decided I had to make a trip for the sole purpose of renting something. I left on a Monday, arrived late on Tuesday and bright and early the next morning arrived at an agency that seemed to have the best selection. Nobody home. Finally arriving an hour late, the minder sent me away until 11 or 11.30 when the important people would arrive. When they showed up, we made arrangements to see two the next day, Thursday. Plus a spot offered by a friend of a friend, that made three. But minutes before the appointment the next day, the agency pushed it off to Friday and eliminated one!! Now we're looking at Friday afternoon and I am leaving on Monday AM. After a loud and animated conversation with these clowns, I pulled out all the stops and called everyone I knew to see what was possible. A second hand reference led me to a sweet aussie gal who showed me one that day: between Ponte Vecchio and Piazza Signoria, in the middle of the tourist parade, with a two burner imitation kitchen. Nope. But the promise of Friday was something in Piazza Santo Spirito, just where I wanted to be. On Friday at noon the agency dude, Aldo - all is forgiven! - showed me a nice place with a terrace, the holy grail of Firenze housing. Then Pza Santo Spirito. A big portone, wide stairs (think groceries in a carrello), a foyer, a dining room, large living room, a brand new kitchen, and a decent bedroom at the far end of the place away from the noisy (so what, I'm gonna be deaf eventually) piazza and two (2!!) frescoed ceilings. Crappy furniture a twin beds but I can do my own thing there. Took me all of ten minutes to decide: "I'll take it" Not more expensive than the others, but a fabulous place. Room for hardy visitors. A kitchen with an oven = eggplant parmigiano. Right over a cafe = morning coffee in seconds. Walking distance from Palazzo Pitti. Yea.
But then a mad rush before banks close to get the cash needed. Taxi to Citi branch, but whoa, they've been sold to Banco Di Roma THAT DAY! So more mad dashing to American Express for a huge cash advance, just in time to meet the landlady and aussie agent at 6. Signed and sealed by aperativo time. Actually had a whole day of down time before getting delivered to the Pisa bus and then the airport and the plane to JKF and luckily an upgrade from NY to SF and on the next Thursday, my application went in and yesterday Voila! a visa for one year!

What's the cat's table?

2008-05-23T10:03:00.000-07:00

Last September I was in Venice and decided to take a boat ride up a river called the Brenta. This is the route that the upper crust took to escape the evils of hot summers in Venice; think malaria, typhoid, cholera. They built wonderful country homes along the edge of the river. This is the stomping grounds of the famous Palladio so the cruise offers lots of lovely vistas. I sat near a charming woman from Austria and we exchanged stories of grown-up ladies en voyage. Come lunchtime, the "organizer" , one of the least organized organizers I've encountered, seated us all at various tables in the restaurant where we stopped. I was offered a solo seat right in front of the kitchen doors. This is the classic spot for unaccompanied women "of a certain age" (=middle or better): it's the least desireable table in any restaurant because of the noise, the rather unsightly view and the likelyhood of being ignored by the waiters. I have been relegated to this spot in restaurants from China to Italy and everywhere in between. Do they think I'm deaf? Or an embarassment? Or likely to drop food on the floor? I never accept this spot! In the establishment nearest my home in California, when I objected, the snippy teenager who tried to stuff me in this spot basically left me standing in the middle of the dining room while she "checked" with someone about whether I would be allowed to sit with the grownups. In this case, I said no grazie and sat with my Austrian chum. She told me that in Austria, this location is called the cat's table most likely for its snacking opportunities. I decided to name my blog after this view of life: choice morsels dropped by the traffic of life, with a side of crabby observations from an occasionally invisible critic. Very cat like.

Moving to Italy

2008-05-22T21:25:00.000-07:00

In March, I decided to move to Firenze. Sometime in the middle of the month, it occurred to me that I wanted to be there, not here. I asked a friend if he would go into business with me and he said yes and so it seemed to be a good idea. Then I wrote to my family with a-z reasons why and it seemed like an even better idea. (ex post facto reasoning is my favorite kind) Here's what I said:
I want to try living here. My financial situation means I will need additional income within a few years at minimum. I have avoided a regular job because it would curtail my traveling. I have been trying to find a way to do business with/in Italy for at least 4 years. People have suggested that I open a bed and breakfast based on my ability to cook and entertain and make them comfortable. One friend actually suggested that I could be helpful in showing him how to prepare his family home to become a bed and breakfast. I think I have found the perfect partner, someone who has experience and knows the territory. I have a good group of friends there, supportive and experienced in business. I stayed in California for my grandchildren but now they live a long plane ride away. That wouldn't change but I might be able to lure them to Italy. I have a lifelong goal to be fluent in Italian and it isn't happening in CA. I was offered work teaching English and giving tours to tourists three times in two days. There are many Italian American families who have shown interest in having someone to supplement the English taught in Italian schools as well as improving the language level of the parents. I am well qualified to do this. Life is short.
So my plan was:
1. Return to US (but a week late) home on the 8th instead of the 1st.
2. Rent the house for enough to at least cover the costs of this move, possibly for income.
3. Return to Firenze bag and baggage between August 10th and September 1st to stay for the at least a full year.
4. Organize my self (lawyers, accountants, stockbrokers, feng shui experts, and possibly wizzards) towards a business plan including a partnership to advance the plan of opening a bed and breakfast sometime after a year or sooner if things work out.
5. See the doctor, cut my hair, have my head examined, sell my car, put a lot of stuff in storage, work on the garden to get ready for the wedding, take Allison to France, visit Mineral King, attend Music Weekend, pack, blog, fly. So far everything is falling into place.