Routine

So, Annamaria has very kindly offered to help me rototill the entire Big Dry Patch. I'm going to do it in beds around the trees so they're like pools of green. In between the plan is to lay down some wood chip mulch or maybe use some of the broken bits of tile around to make paths between the big round beds. In the beds the plan is for mostly aromatics and flowers but for some part of it to be a dedicated orto. (She said she's going to be renting the bit I used this year to her daughter for some for-profit project, so we're making my patch into a proper orto.)

A funny thing today when I found an old rental ad on the internet for my apartment, and got the actual dimensions. It said that the garden is 200 sq/m! Which is certainly the biggest bit of land I've ever had to play with. I can hardly wait to get going. Nothing can really be done until the weather eases off and the rain starts softening things up. Anna said that rototilling the ground as it is would be like trying to break through concrete. But it should be fine in the autumn, which is when you plant things anyway.

I just had a late dinner. Chopped up a bunch of stuff that needed finishing in the fridge and threw in some strips of turkey breast I had thawed for dinner on Thursday but turned out to be too big a package for one meal. All the veg was from the orto, either mine or stuff that Anna has given me: pumpkin, zucchini, tomatoes, a yellow peach, an onion, sweet red and green bell pepper and a little bit of minced hot peppers (which I didn't know until I started picking them were actually Scotch Bonnets!!!... the kind you have to be very careful with when you're cutting them not to get any juice under your fingernails or absent-mindedly brush your face with your fingers). I just sort of stewed everything together cooked in some butter and a bit of sesame oil, with a handful of basil (from the pot on the terrace) garlic, sesame, coriander and cumin seeds ground up, and all cooked together for about 20 minutes and then the sauce thickened with a handful of almond flour.

It occurred to me that very nearly everything in it except the meat and the mushrooms came from 20 yards away. Some of it came from plants I started from seeds I saved. I bought the pumpkin's parent in the produce shop in Norcia.

I've got a routine now. I get up just after dawn and feed the kitties, put on a pot of coffee and sit on the terrace under the sunshade umbrellas while I do a bit of reading ("Lectio," I'm working on a book about Benedictine liturgical spirituality by Cecile Bruyere) and drink my coffee and iced tea chaser. Then when it's too hot to stay on the east-facing terrace, I usually go inside to sing the Office along with the Le Barroux chant mp3 (which makes me homesick). (I'm thinking of maybe splashing out on an Antiphonale from Solesmes. Our friend Peter K said that it's the only way to go after you've got the general gist of the Monastic Office from the Diurnal. I figure listening to the chants, getting used to the Latin phrasing and pronunciation, the next logical step would be to have the book to follow along with the Little Squares so that starts sinking into the brain too.)

After that's done, it's work of various kinds; housework, writing, digging... Today I needed to do some internet things and didn't really want to stay in the house and felt the need for a bit of exercise, so I rode the bike to the village and just sat in the Why Not Cafe, the nice little bar in the centre of town that has air conditioning and wifi, and a barman/owner who speaks pretty good English and is very friendly. On the way home about 90 minutes later, I stopped to pick some blackberries that are really coming just perfect now (the survivors that is; there are a lot that were just fried by the heat). It's the second half of August and there just aren't many people around; those who are around aren't doing anything but snoozing and barbequing. The kids in the house next door spend a lot of time in their raised pool.

Obligatory photo of Pippy and Bertie curled up snoozing together. At precisely 8pm every day, they all wake up and start demanding their dinner. After that it's outside all night to chase small creatures. 

In the late afternoon the sun comes blasting around the other side of the house so I go around closing all the windows and shutters. Lately I've been hanging opaque cloth covers on the metal shutters that the afternoon sun turns into barbeque grills. The walls are 20 inch thick stone, so no heat gets through at all, but the windows, even with the shutters closed, can actually get hot to the touch. So the second half of the days in late summer are spent in a cool dark room, which is good for writing, with the kitties draped all over, sound asleep stretched out their full length. The humming fan and the dead quiet, the heat and the cave-like gloom can make it hard to stay awake. I'm still in the Mad Dogs and Englishmen school and don't usually take an afternoon riposo, but I might be cracking soon.

Once the sun has definitively gone behind the mountain and the evening breeze picks up, you have to open all the windows and shutters again to get the air flowing. It actually gets cool enough to need a little cover for sleeping, and the sound of owls can be heard in the woodsy bits behind the house. When you go out on the terrace in the evenings, before it gets full dark, you can see dozens of bats flittering silently around. Catching mosquitoes and moths.

The other day I got a nice note by email from some SSPX nuns who have a monastery near here, down in Narni, about an hour's drive at the other end of the Tiber Valley. There's a little train that goes straight there several times a day. They said that of course they don't cancel the Mass in the summer and I was welcome to come down to stay over night on Saturday to attend the Sunday Mass there. (Of course, they have Mass there every day but it's at seven am.) She said there are some Americans in the community so there would be someone there to chat with. I've got aaaaalmost enough money socked away to buy the Ah-pay, so transport will be less of a problem. I'll see if I can do that next week and give a report.

On the whole, I think things are working out, settling down. Or at least, so I fervently hope. I do hope my brain calms down. I know I'm not the only terremotata who has experienced some long-term effects. We had 50+ earthquakes a day, 24/7 for three months. I guess that's going to have an effect, though at the time I didn't really think much about it. I find I am still having strange, unexpected bursts of anxiety. But things are settling down now externally, and that can't help but help. We'll see what comes next. Maybe it'll be peace. Wouldn't it be funny if I found peace just as the world was losing its collective mind.


~

Strength and virtue - a good place to start again

DAY-um!

I knew I sort of liked this guy. (And no, not for the obvious reasons.)


He's actually a lot like many of the people I grew up around. In the 70s, the hippie movement on the West Coast hadn't morphed into the solipsistic leftist political stuff it is today, and there was room in it for genuine masculinity, and the general gist of rejecting the Modernian lies about how we are supposed to live was still there.

I wish we could do something to make these kinds of people Catholic. We could do with some of this. It's not entirely gone, that old virile, pagan, filial piety, virtue. The kind that was Christianized in the early centuries and went on to build an entire civilization.

Yesterday Annamaria was telling me what sort of fertilizers to put on the tomatoes, and we were in the big garage under my flat where they keep all their contadini stuff. She pointed to a big round basket-y kind of thing hanging on the wall and asked if I knew what it was. In fact, there were two, hanging up together, one made of a big round wooden frame with one side closed in with metal mesh, about 5 feet in diameter; the other smaller made of wicker, looking like giant flour sieves. I said no, and she said, "My father the contadino used it when I was growing up." Then I realized.


I'd seen it on television and in the movies; it was for winnowing grain by hand, a winnowing fan.

You put the grain in the baskety thing, and on a breezy day, you toss it up in the air, and allow the wind to carry away the chaff while you catch the grain again, to throw it all up again, and again. People had been using them since the agricultural revolution began.

One generation away. Annamaria is probably old enough to be my mother, maybe in her early 70s. She dug out five rows of ground, three for her and two for me, to plant our tomatoes, zucchini, beans, peppers and melanzane. The rows are about ten meters long, and she did it by hand with a long handled iron mattock, a job I could not possibly have done myself.

They've given me a huge patch of land to do whatever I want with, and I'm a little overwhelmed. Frankly, I haven't been terribly strong, physically, since chemo, and after 15 years of sitting down to work, but I remember when I was 19 or so, redoing an entire garden alone one spring. A little house I'd rented with some friends hadn't been seen to in a couple of decades, and I took to it like a duck who'd never seen water before.

I rented an electric trimmer, and cut and pruned, and trimmed and dug and turned over beds that hadn't been dug in a long time. I found the old compost bed that someone had dumped an entire sack of potatoes into some time in the past and that had therefore become the potato bed, and produced the best potatoes I'd ever eaten before or since. I did carrots and beets and broccoli. I cut back the wilderness of Himalayan blackberries that had grown to fifteen feet deep, and of course - being roses - they loved the pruning so much they produced an enormous summer crop of berries. Someone had planted climbing white roses right next to the hedge and they had grown right into it, so when I trimmed the hedge I also pruned the roses, which then sprouted huge white blossoms all along its length. The pink clematis had turned into a huge tangled wall and I cut it down into an arch that became a mass of flowers in the summer.

That spring and summer in that little garden - that we lost again the following winter when the landlady sold the property to developers - will stand in my mind as one of the happiest periods of my life. I remember it in a kind of pink and green and golden glow. I'm not 19 anymore, but maybe we can do something like it again.

I've been here three weeks and it's been busybusybusy, so it only occurred to me the other day that there's a good chance here, perhaps even better than in Norcia (where flat land is hard to come by). Unlike the city, where rotting, corrupt Modernia is still reigning supreme in the last days of its wicked glory, here, only a few miles away, a much older kind of life is still lived, and remembered. I think Annamaria likes me because I so obviously value it, and so clearly want to live it myself (I think her daughter wasn't that interested). Even though our ability co communicate the details is still a bit limited, we've become friends because we both discovered a similar kind of soul, the same sort of priorities.


I've mostly finished organising the house. The books are all out of their boxes and arranged in the cases, and the oratory is set up. I sang Compline in it on Sunday night. The only thing that's missing now is someone to share it all with.

A bit of what will be the flower garden, with the oldest fig tree I've yet seen.

But I'm also happily anticipating the arrival of a friend from the US. (Note to self; order sofa-bed from Ikea.) She's a young lady who found that her ordinary life - with good, morally praiseworthy work, good, believing friends, a large and loving Catholic family - wasn't enough. She is thinking thoughts of bigger things, as you do, and her spiritual director suggested she come to Europe.

Annamaria's doves. In the big shed behind it are chickens and rabbits.

So I invited her to come to think them here, to stay and use my place as a home base to look for answers to her vocational yearnings, (there's no more centrally located place in Italy than Perugia.) and meanwhile, eat a lot of good Umbrian food and drink a lot of tea. There are monasteries on the continent where the Faith is preserved, though not many. And there are plenty of other things going on. She says it's a funny sort of urge, to leave where she is and come to Europe to look for something. How well I know that urge! Say a prayer that we can help her find what she's looking for. She will come in September.

San Fortunato, the church on the hill behind the house. 

Annamaria's chair in the orto, where she has a rest and a smoke and can just sit and look at the view.

Last night I went down to the bottom of the garden with a pair of kitchen scissors and cut the remaining wild chamomile to start drying. It grows very abundantly all over the place here, usually twined up together with the brilliant scarlet poppies that are just coming into bloom now in the fields and along the edges of the roads.

Her patch, and mine on the top right, which we planted the other night. 

The other night I took a bit of a stroll around as the sun was going down and the opening chords of our next stormfront was starting to really blow, and stood watching three kestrels wheeling and spinning and riding the wind like acrobats.

This weekend, I'm going to start building my flower beds, and I've got a bucket of seed packets and jars of wild seeds I'd collected from Norcia. We're a bit late in the season to start seeds but I don't mind.

The growing season here is very long. Who knows what we can grow here, given enough time.



~

Bonfire Night

It just occurred to me that I never got around to posting the photos of Bonfire Night.

In England, they commemorate the night of the Gunpowder Plot, and burn effigies of Guy Fawkes.

In Norcia, they commemorate the Translation of the Holy House of Loreto.

In briefest terms, because of the threat of desecration by the Mohammetans, the angels picked up the Holy House in which our Blessed Mother spent her early life, and experienced the visit from the angel announcing her role as the Mother Of God, and brought it to safety.

As the Catholic Encyclopedia has it:

Angels conveyed this House from Palestine to the town Tersato in Illyria in the year of salvation 1291 in the pontificate of Nicholas IV. Three years later, in the beginning of the pontificate of Boniface VIII, it was carried again by the ministry of angels and placed in a wood near this hill, in the vicinity of Recanati, in the March of Ancona; where having changed its station thrice in the course of a year, at length, by the will of God, it took up its permanent position on this spot three hundred years ago [now, of course, more than 600]. Ever since that time, both the extraordinary nature of the event having called forth the admiring wonder of the neighbouring people and the fame of the miracles wrought in this sanctuary having spread far and wide, this Holy House, whose walls do not rest on any foundation and yet remain solid and uninjured after so many centuries, has been held in reverence by all nations." That the traditions thus boldly proclaimed to the world have been fully sanctioned by the Holy See cannot for a moment remain in doubt.

It has been the custom in Norcia, and previously all over the Holy Valnerina, to light fires in succession on that night, the vigil of the Feast of the Translation of the Holy House of Loreto, December 9th, to light large bonfires to help the angels find their way across the dark and uninhabited places of the mountains.

Bundle up, it's cold out.

When the day comes for pitchforks and torches, we know the right people.



A total of nine fires are built around town the day before, looking like huge haystacks, and people set up large wood barbeque grills. You go down the hill about nine pm, and meet your neighbours who fill you up with grilled pork, mulled wine, truffle fritata and lentils.



We explained that it is a bad book, against Our Lord, and we'd brought it to burn.



The local county-mountie taking a video for the kids.



It's chilly out; better drink with both hands.



Outside after dark + grilled pig, mulled wine and a house-sized fire =  happiness



~

Successful experiment

In the photo of my sitting room below, you will see that in the hearth there is a grill for cooking meat. This is apparently still a very common feature of life in these parts, and the grill, which looked like it hadn't been cleaned in years, was here when I moved in and had obviously been well used.

Tonight, I tried it, and mmmm-boy!

I had observed the technique at a favourite restaurant in town

where there is a large traditional wood-burning open hearth oven/grill.


If you are ever in Norcia, you absolutely must eat at least once at Granaro del Monte restaurant. And try the fegatino. It is in a large vaulted medieval banqueting hall kind of place, in the 16th century palazzo of the hotel Grotta Azzura, one of the four hotels in town run by the wonderful Bianconi family (who have been exceedingly kind and welcoming to me and my friends).

Anyway, the technique is as follows: You start your fire fairly far forward in the hearth. When there is a good bed of coals, push the rest of the combustible stuff (wood) way to the back and let it keep going. Rake all the coals forward into a pile. Flatten them out with your poker, and put the grill on so that it's not more than an inch or so above them. If your grill doesn't have little feet like mine does, just put two largish pieces of wood on either side of the coals for a stand.

I did lamb tonight, and just marinaded it a little, rubbing with seasoned salt, then letting it sit in some olive oil and red wine. I didn't have any rosemary, but this is really great if you let it grill with the rosemary sprig right on the grill. It doesn't take long, and if you've got a good cut of meat, it will do exactly what it's supposed to do, which is get nice and crispy on the outside, and seal in the juices and be incredibly tender.

You can also use the grill, as they do at the Granaro del Monte, to make toast.

If you come to Norcia, one of the first things you see on the main strip are these iron monger shops that sell all sorts of things made out of steel, copper and cast iron to use with your fire.

There are pans for toasting nuts, including chestnuts, all sizes of grill, copper pots and tripods, hooks and ladles and fire irons and warming pans, and all sorts of old fashioned looking things. Of course, the first thing you think is that this is just touristy kitsch, and in a way I suppose you'd be right. Except that I've learned that a lot of people still do use these things, at least some of them, and they're sold to locals.

I get the feeling that life here, until they finished the tunnel to Spoleto in 1996, hadn't changed much since the time that painting at the top of the post was done, and I think it probably looked a lot like that.

I've also learned how to "bank" the fire, so the next morning you can start it again quickly to get the tea on.



~

A stranger place than I thought...

It turns out that Norcia and the Sibillini mountains are a much, much stranger place than I had thought at first. I've spent way too much time today entranced by reading about the very strange and tangled legends and fairy tales surrounding the Apennine Sibyl, the mysterious and extremely ancient stories of a magical "Lady of the Mountains," "Queen of Sibyls," an enchantress or oracle, that are all over the local area.



The stories about this mysterious figure, who was said to have lived in a magical labyrinth of caverns high up above Castellucio at the peak of Monte Sibilla, seem to have some possible connection to the stories of the Sibyl of Cumae and the story of Aeneas, but there are hints that they could possibly go back even to predate the neolithic.

A rather garbled series of legends about her and her magic, wisdom and natural knowledge go back at least as far as Suetonius and persist with remarkable consistency through the Middle Ages to the 16th century. And there are dolmens and man-made megalithic stone constructions in the higher mountains around here that indicate pre-Christian worship had been going on since before agriculture came here.


For centuries the Sibyl's cave or fairy cave was well known, located on the Monte Sibilla about 2150 m above sea level. It was regarded as a place to go to learn ancient wisdom and secrets. Magicians and sages would bring their books to have them "consecrated" in the lake below the cave by the magical Lady of the Mountain.

As you see above, the cave is still well known, but what is left of it at the surface is quite shallow and was mostly closed by landslides and earthquakes, by the 17th century, but is still called a path to the underworld. The story, that goes back to the 13th or 14th century, is that this cave is only the antechamber to the vast system of caverns that go very deep, where she and her followers lived. She wasthought at that time to be a "fata" which is basically the Italian word for "fairy". There are medieval stories of knights going into the cave system and living there with the fate (plural of "fata" pronounced "fah-tay") and coming out with fantastic stories of an underground paradise and a fairy queen.

Legends of the Sibyl and her magical kingdom were well known among learned men until the 1600s. Most of the stories of her show her to be a benevolent semi-supernatural person who dispensed advice, prophecies and natural knowledge.


Abraham Ortelius' 16th-century atlas, Cartographia Neerlandica, describes her realm:

The Mountain Apennine here looms over the country with exceedingly high cragged tops, in which one finds that huge cave called Sibylla's cave, (in their language Grotta de la Sibylla) and which the poets would have the Elysian Fields. For the common people dream about a certain Sibylla [supposed] to be in this cave, who [is claimed to] possess a large kingdom full of gorgeous buildings and Princely palaces, covered with pleasant gardens, abounding with many fine lecherous wenches and all kinds of pleasures and delights. All of these she will bestow on those who through this cave (which is always open) will come to her. And after they have been there for the period of one whole year, they have the freedom and liberty given to them by Sibylla to depart (if they please) and from that moment, having returned to us, they state that they live a most blessed and happy life ever after. This cave is also known to our countrymen by the name of VROU VENUS BERGH, that is, The Lady Venus mount.

Among the legends of the Sibyl and her maidens/witches/fate is that they came out of their caves and down to Norcia (which would be a heck of a journey on foot) and taught the local village girls secrets of spinning and weaving.

The stories of the Sibyl lasted for a few hundred more years into the 14th century, and then a series of earthquakes and landslides closed off the deeper sections of the caves and now you can only see the remains of the shallow antechamber. In the 19th century amateur archaeologists tried to use explosives to re-open the system, but succeeded only in collapsing more of the first cave. Later investigators claimed that the earlier descriptions of a vast network of caves, forming the "paradise of Queen Sibilla," were nothing more than fanciful tales. In 1946, Caesar Lippi Boncambi wrote in his book "The Sibillini Mountains,"

"Few are the caves, and which do not show any interest in caving. I was able to explore a single cave, barely worthy of the name, famous for the legends which gave rise to the huge literature and historical, romantic and poetic that has flourished around it in Italy and all 'foreign from the Middle Ages to the present day..."

His diagram shows a drawing only of a single room a few meters high and deep.

But here's the kicker, modern geological technology has found that there really is a huge system of very deep caves up there, all interconnected with passages:

"Promotion Committee "Cave of the Sibyl Apennines", under the auspices of the Archaeological Survey of Marche (represented locally by Dr. Nora Lucentini responsible for the Province Picena), with the active participation of the Department of Earth Sciences of the ' University Camerino represented by prof. Gilberto Pambianchi and assisted by Dr. Angelo Beano, with funding of members and the Cassa di Risparmio di Ascoli Piceno, promotes the geological and geophysical surveys at the site "Cave of the Sibyl." The scientific report prepared by prof. Pambianchi and dr. Beano is kept in the records of the Department of Earth Sciences of the University of Camerino. From the results of the GPR prospecting confirms the existence of a vast underground complex at the depth of 15 meters below the ground surface, made ​​of labyrinthine tunnels and cavities of the considerable length of about 150 m. The synthesis of the studies published in the Proceedings of the Conference (organized by Project Elissa) "Sibyl Shaman mountain and cave Apennine". The next phase of investigation, which would have provided the coring noninvasive points deemed most significant of the ground level facing the collapsed vestibule, was interrupted."

These legends are so ancient and so consistent that it seems impossible they weren't based on something real. But danged if I can imagine what it would be. It's really mind-boggling. It's hard to imagine how anyone at a neolithic level of technology could have survived for very long up there. The winter conditions are almost arctic with temperatures that can often go down to -40 C. Even now nothing much other than lentils and spelt can be grown in the short season on the Piano Grande at Castelluccio. But it could be remembered that Italy's mountains are all volcanic, and that caves up there could be geothermic, or perhaps could have been once upon a long time ago. Maybe...

Given that the legends of mysterious and magical wise women eventually gave way to more recent confirmed histories of saints and hermits who were mystics and visionaries, I can't help but think I may have come to a genuinely "magical" place. The world is stranger than we think, and while we may not understand it, there is a lot more going on out there than we usually imagine. There is certainly something that strikes you about the place immediately. I've spoken with an American who has lived here who agreed that it had struck him the same way, that it was a lot like living in Narnia or Shangri La. Of course, he only meant it poetically. But now that I'm thinking about it, all this has really got my "Ancient World was Stranger than we Think" antennae going all a-quiver.

At any rate, I'm completely captivated to find these stories right on my doorstep. All through my childhood, I was obsessed with the fairy stories about magical underworld fairy realms that you could get to through certain "weak or thin" spots in the world between our world and theirs. The Twelve Dancing Princesses, the fairy legends of Ireland, and Narnia itself, of course. I thought at that age that I really could find a magic door or stone, and if I just knew what to say or how to say it just right, I could go through. And now it seems I've found a real one, albeit abandoned by them a long time ago.

There's a book about the local Sibyl legends in the trekking book shop. It's in Italian, but that's getting to be less of a problem. There's bits and pieces here, but there's not very much else in English. Here's the Wiki page in Italian about the Sibyl's Cave or the "Grotta delle Fate".

"In the Museum of the Cave of the Sibyl at Montemonaco, is kept a dark stone, called "The Great Stone" which is engraved with mysterious letters and found near Lake. According to legend, this would be the lake Averno from which you enter the world of Underworld."

And the Lake of Pilate that was once called the Lake of the Sibyl and has long been associated with magic and necromancy. Here is a little article by some trekkers on their trip to the Grotta della Maga

When I said I had come here to look for the Door to Narnia, I was more or less speaking metaphorically. But it now occurs to me that I have come to one of the places in the world that are always described as "magical" for more reasons than the scenery and sunsets. If nothing else, I've already got stories and maybe a novel forming in my brain...



~

Nope, no vocations crisis over here...

There are a lot of reasons I live here and not in Angloland. One of which is the superabundance of monasteries, and the fact that the Italians retain the faith that includes an appreciation of the worth of monasticism.

Imagine any of the state broadcasters in the Commonwealth countries doing a series, consisting of dozens of episodes, on "a day in the life" of every monastery in the country. Well, TV 2000 has been doing it for years, and it's pretty popular.

Maybe one of the reasons there isn't much of a "vocations crisis" in Italian monastic life? People see it, on tv, all the time.

Well, now that we've got YouTube, so can you.

I passi del silenzio



~

Found some new nuns

So, I've been feeling the urge for a while now. Been looking around locally for some nice Benedictines to go visit and I've found these guys.


Benedictine Daughters of Divine Will
Might be an article in it.


And they're on Facebook, and are pretty friendly. I just sent a FB message and said, "You seem nice, can I come to hang out?" and they basically said, "Sure." I've got a couple of things on for the next few weekends, but I figure I'll take a train around the first weekend of Oct. Nearest town is Rimini, and I've never been to the Adriatic coast before, so that'll be cool.


They live in one of the teeniest towns I've ever spotted on Google Earth.

Every town in Italy seems to have at least one little odd thing they do that is their very own, unique tourist attraction. Talamello's seems to be a cheese pit.


Yep. It's exactly what it sounds like: a pit where they keep cheese.

Gonna go check it out. I'll report back later.



~

Oh crap!

Italy in a nutshell

I'm almost out of booze!

The local supermarket has started selling Lambrusco and it's so good, I have to admit I have been drinking it like pop. (And no, I don't care who knows I like it; I just do... < cough >Greg...< / cough > I can like whatever the hell I want, dammit!)

This is something ever-new and wondrous for a Canuckistani living abroad. In the People's Republic, you can't buy anything alcoholic outside of a government liquor store. The sight of shelves of booze in the supermarket is a great consolation that staves off homesickness. And because it's Italy, it's all cheap-like-borscht. In this country, even the cheap wine is good wine, compared to the awful California plonk you pay 90% tax on in Canadia. It didn't take me long to get into the habit of treating wine like milk, as in: "Damn, I'm short of milk! Gotta go to the store."

Anyway, I was horrified just now to look in my cabinet and discover I'm down to one bottle of Mirto, an untouched bottle of Bushmills that I won at Pub Quiz last year and mickey of vodka I bought to make bay leaf liqueur (which turned out amazing!). This is the most depleted my stock has been since I moved in. Damn you, Christmas Party Season, and all my worthless friends who didn't bring booze to my last two parties.



~

Broccoli

The other day I was overjoyed to see that the wonderful Fibonacci broccoli is back in the shops.

Italy's food production is determinedly cyclical. In the wrong season, you cannot, for love or money, get anything that isn't coming out of the ground or off the tree right now. It makes grocery shopping a little more fun. You have to learn what things are available when and what things to look forward to, and when to stop buying something because, perhaps unsurprisingly, the Italians are usually right. Food that is getting to the end of its season is really not as nice. And every time you get used to something (I've been eating the huge yellow peaches at a rate of about a pound a day) you have to learn to let it go when it's at its end. But it's OK, because it just means that the next nice thing is coming along.

The Fibonacci broccoli, properly called Romanesco, is much, much nicer than the "regular" kind we're used to in Britain and N. America. Apart from its delightful shape, and interesting mathematical/cosmological implications, it's taste is much milder and somewhat sweeter. It comes in heads like a cauliflower, only smaller, and you can cook and eat every bit, stems and leaves too, which are also very good. I usually steam it lightly, drizzle in a little olive oil or fresh butter and grate some peccorino over it.

But when I was very small, I was not such a broccoli enthusiast.

I don't know whether this memory is one of those real ones, or one of the kind your brain makes up later and convinces you is real, but one way or another I do remember it.

My dad used to take me for weekends when I was small, and on one of these occasions, I recall that we were to have dinner at his house and then go to the park to play on the slides and swings, at that time, my all-time favourite thing to do.

I asked him what was for dinner and he said, something, something... "and broccoli".

I said that I didn't like broccoli.

My father, being a guy and therefore having a rather more practical turn of mind than a woman would have, promptly responded, "OK, will you eat it if I give you five dollars?"

I agreed to this sensible transaction, believing that I was definitely coming out the winner. ("Five bucks!! Woot!"... I'm five, remember).

Well, it turned out that broccoli was actually wonderful, and I've had a lifelong love of the stuff ever since. But Fibonacci broccoli is an entirely different matter, a stage of evolution better. If you see it in some N. American yuppie specialty food store, get some immediately. You won't be sorry.



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Weird, removed from reality and spooky; indeed, slightly creepy

I've figured it out: Venice is Miss Havisham.

Indeed, if there ever were a place hiding a mad old woman living in a crumbling palace, dressed in motheaten finery, waiting in bitterness for her long lost grandeur to return,

you'd find her in Venice.

I'm home. Somewhat the worse for wear. I spent 12 hours stomping around the weird old place in my big tall black winter boots in the freezing cold on Saturday. My legs, not used to that much punishment (all stone streets, up the bridge stairs, down the bridge stairs, stomp, stomp stomp...) have entirely seized up. Am applying the ancient Grandma solution of a hot-water bottle under the knees.

I can see why people get obsessed with that creepy old place, and can't stop themselves from going back again and again. It's out of my system for now, but I suspect I'll be seized with the urge again at some point. But I can't tell you how good that strangely sterile and crumbling old city makes Rome and Santa Marinella look.

Rome is vibrantly alive. Venice is a ghost.

More later. I'm tired.



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Venice!!!

I'm having a "Yay, I didn't die of cancer!" celebratory holiday in Venice.

When I was too sick to move off the sofa without help, I vowed I would go to Venice the first moment I was strong enough. This week, I've managed to get my medication down to a quarter of what I was on at the start, and I can consistently do two articles a day and ride my bike all over Rome and go to class after work, so the time has come.

There's an el-cheapo train ticket for the slow train from Termini up the Adriatic side of the Boot. Six hours from Rome and lots of sights.

Going up for Immaculate Conception at the FSSP parish there and will spend Friday and Saturday nights camped out at a convent and walk all over the weirdest city in the world.

Got my Blue Guide (thanks Greg!) and a map, and my sketchbook and my rubber walkin' boots and I'm all excited!

Maybe even get an Acqua Alta!

Wouldn't that be cool!

Last trip in July 2010






More more more!

And here's a video for you from a band I was crazy about when I was 27




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Real nuns!

Doing real nun-work! Who knew?

I suspect there are actually quite a few real nuns left in Italy, quietly and un-glamorously doing the Master's work

and not appearing at all on Oprah.



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I missed this year's Gardone conference

...for chemo

For frick-ing CHEMO!!

Am I mad? Am I annoyed by this?

Why yes.

Yes, I am.




The lectures. At most conferences, the lecture periods are the times when I normally pull (grateful) conferees out of the hall to be interviewed. Which works out for everyone, really.

At Gardone, I go to the lectures.

Incredible, huh?



Sign up. Save up. Seriously, it's worth every nickel. You won't have a better holiday anywhere.



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Elf n' Safety?

Went for an evening stroll last night to the beach promenade. They have a sort of market there on summer weekends where you can buy things like antiques (or possibly "antiques"), sun hats, scarves, beach wear, jewelery, second hand books and random stuff. Mostly people stroll up and down in the warm, humid air, eat ice cream, chat with neighbours and tourists, listen to the waves on the beach competing with the music playing from the Gigi bar. My friend Andrea and I went down there last night after dinner. I bought another hat and she bought some "hand painted" traditional Italian crockery.

While I was trying on a hat, squinting myopically into a mirror, she said, "Do you see that?"

I have broken my glasses, so I had not at first noticed the procession that was moving past the market stroll on the Via Aurelia. A horde of young kids, teenagers, all rollerblading up the street, decked out in brightly coloured spandex clothes and safety helmets carrying lit tiki torches.

I laughed. "Only in Italy. In Britain, 'elf n' safety would be having apoplexy."

There's a lot to love about this country.



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Almost finished another one this weekend

A study by Michelangelo for one of his ignudi for the Sistine Chapel.

I've solved the problem of finding inexpensive prints of the great painters to copy. The ones in books are fine but they tend to be very small, and small is difficult.

Solution? Calendars. There are a lot of Italian art calendars around this town.


My idea lately is to try to learn to eyeball as much of it as possible, using the plumbline to plot points as little as I can. I started the contour outline with just about ten plotted points.




Then as the contour line was finished, I mostly did the halftones and cast shadows by eye.


The face will need some serious point-plotting however. I had to re-do that mouth about three times, which in sanguine is really problematic, since once you have erased it is very difficult to get the pencil to lay down a mark over the erased bits.

The suddenly-disappearing-line: one of the exciting quirks of sanguine pencils. Scrub at it as much as you like, no line will appear on any surface that has been interrupted with erasing, or has had too much oil rubbed into it from your fingers.


I think I'll be buying a mahl stick soon too, since I ended up using a square of tissue, held in the crook of my little finger so I could rest my hand on the page without marking it or smudging.

I toned the lighest parts, the left forearm, the right thigh, where the light fell, using sanguine powder I collected when I was sharpening my pencil with sand paper. I just took a little watercolour brush and dusted it as evenly as I could. I found that with the lighest parts, the untoned paper left too high a contrast and the cool tone of the greyscale paper looked just a little odd with the warm tone of the sanguine. I tried it at first just because it seemed a shame to throw away all that sanguine powder. Now I think I'm going to collect it in a little jar and keep it around.


I found that I just couldn't get a dark enough mark with the sanguine pencil for the darkest shadows, so I cheated a little and shaded in the darker contrasts with an HB. I wondered how Michelangelo managed to get such dark lines but thought he was probably using a stick of pure sanguine, rather than a modern manufactured pencil and that I had no idea how big the original was. For all I knew, the original was big enough to use a sanguine stick as thick as my thumb that would make very dark marks. Or maybe he used a bit of charcoal on the darker bits and blended them together.



Going to try to finish tomorrow.

I've discovered that sanguine is an incredible pain in the butt to work with, but I like the results so much that I think I'm going to stick with it. Graphite is easier but not nearly so pleasing.


My pencil collection. I go through odd phases where I obsessively buy HBs.


Andrea working. She hates having her picture taken, but I thought this was a good one. And it gives a nice idea of the calm and quiet atmpshere in the studio. Outside, the Big City roars and rages; inside all is calm and good sense.


The tomb of Blessed Fra Angelico in Santa Maria Sopra Minerva, my favourite of the Big Churches in Rome.

See Italy's treasures

Art Tuesdays
(issue no. 129/2010 / October 7, 2010)
New initiatives launched by MiBAC

How to attract new visitors to Italy's state museums? Open the doors for free once a month. To further promote Italy's vast cultural heritage, the Italian ministry of culture (MiBAC) is taking that idea a step further and offering once-a-month evening entrance to Italy's museums-for free.

As part of the initiative, Art Tuesdays, art-lovers can visit favourite masterworks or discover new ones that are housed in Italy's most popular state museums on the evenings of October 26, November 30 and December 28. On these days, admission will be free from 7pm to 11pm. (See below for a list of Tuscany's participating museums; for a list of those in Italy, see www.beniculturali.it

But you won't see me there. Actually, apart from the (ridiculous) €14 it costs to get into the Vatican Museums, I find the big galleries to be very reasonably priced. The last time I went to the Capitoline, I think it was only €8 (just ignore the sign on the counter that says "exact change only". Everyone who has lived here for more than a week will tell you of the weird obsession Italian shop workers have with asking you for change. "No, actually, I don't have fifty centesimi. Why? Because I've had to give exact change to everyone I've bought something from today, and I've run out." Just one of those eight billion weird little things about life in Italy that will drive you mad if you let it...)...wait what was I saying?

Oh yes. The galleries. I think the Borghese costs nine. And it's not like the ten bucks you spend to get into the wretched Vancouver Art Gallery. I remember spending ten bucks to get into the VAG and being rewarded by a display of faux-Salish masks made out of running shoes. Clever wot?

No, in an Italian art gallery, it doesn't take more than about thirty seconds to forget all about the money (and aggravation) you spent getting in.

I'm talking about huge Renaissance palaces bursting with Caravaggios, Raphaels, Michelangelos, Ghirlandaios, Titians and Berninis. In fact, you don't really even have to go to a gallery. I was in Sopra Minerva the other night. Prayed at the tomb of Fra Angelico, got a long long gaze at an annunciation fresco by Filippino Lippi, and bought the postcard for 50c.

So much art in this city. So much of it the kind of art you spend your whole life looking at in picture books.

Honestly, people who moan over a lousy ten bucks don't deserve anything better than the VAG.



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Passel of new blogs

Huh. Turns out there's a whole world of Italian Trad Catholic bloggers out there.

Who knew?

Here's one on vocations that looks pretty nice.

They seem to like these Poor Clares of the Immaculate. Apparently the Franciscans of the Immaculate have some contemplative sisters. Someone might want to remind them to mention it on their North American website. Nice if they would let someone in the Anglosphere know about it.

Don't fret too much about the language. Italian is one of those languages that, if you just stare at it long and hard enough, magically turns into English, (albeit, English with funny spelling). Like one of those optical illusion picture things. But if the magic fails to work for you, there's always this.

All you ever wanted (or needed) to know about Italian Trads at Messainlatino.it Lots of interesting articles on lots of different topics (though if I were running it, I might do something about the eyesore colour scheme).



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I'm so dumb

This wasn't for grinding grain...

It's an olive press.

I wrote, "The big round things were for grinding grain. You put a wooden beam through the square hole in the middle, and hooked it up to a turny-thing in the middle and to a bunch of donkeys at the ends, and they just plodded along all day."

But the part about the donkeys was probably true.

Just got a note back from those American nuns in Molise. I think I'll go next weekend.



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And I bet it's LOUD!

That thing has to be made with a whole sheep.

The Restoration

Giotto Crucifix Restored.

(ANSA) - Florence, October 14 - A five-year restoration of a crucifix from the Florence church of Ognissanti (All Saints) is over and the newly acclaimed artefact will take its rightful place there as the work of Giotto, restorers said Thursday.

It was only during the painstaking restoration that the 14th-century work was definitively attributed to the pre-Renaissance master.

The large (467x360 cm) cross took so long to be renovated because it was in a "very poor state of repair," lead restorers Marco Ciatti and Cecilia Frosinini said, and the supporting structure had to be "thoroughly bolstered".

They pointed out that cutting-edge solvents were used to remove centuries of grime while "extremely delicate attention" was taken with the coloured glass in Christ's halo, which was "in very bad shape".

As well as enabling the attribution, the restoration work also "revealed a lot of new information about how the artist worked," they said.

In particular, they said, infrared reflectography examination allowed experts to discover preparatory drawings under the painting.

The crucifix will be unveiled in the Ognissanti church on November 6, although art fans will have a chance to get a sneak peek at it on October 18-22 at the Opificio delle Pietre Dure, Florence's world-famous restoration workshop, where the work was done.

As befitting its new status, the cross, which had been relegated to a little-visited sacristy, will be placed in a transept chapel and illuminated by a special new LED system.

"Hitherto, the work only attracted the attention of experts, but from now on it will inspire that of the international public," said the head of Florence's museums, Cristian Acidini.

The Ognissanti Crucifix was previously thought to have been by a relative or pupil of Giotto.

Dating to the second decade of the 1300s, Giotto would have painted it some 20 years after completing his famous monumental crucifix in Florence's Santa Maria Novella church.

Although renowned for his skill at life drawings at a time when stylised Byzantine art dominated, much of Giotto's life, travels and training remains shrouded in mystery.

He was born in Tuscany of a father named Bondone, studied with Cimabue, one of the greatest painters of his day, and completed his greatest masterpiece, the decoration of the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua, in around 1305.

However, the year and precise place of his birth and his family's background remain subjects of dispute, as does the order in which he completed his works and even their attribution.

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