Working out when to go home.

It's not quite this...


But it is this.

As you might have guessed, I'm OK. But I am spending every waking moment of every day thinking about when I can go home and start doing my life again.

I admit that for about five seconds I contemplated the idea of not going back. Maybe just staying down in the lowlands and being a Vatican reporter again.

HA HA HA HA HA HA HAAAAA!!

No.

(I was probably thinking this while I was in the City eating Japanese food with a friend of mine - neither of whom I see very often.)

Frankly, even with Norcia being described as being like a war zone, I'm this close to just going home. I'm so bored. I need my house. If this experience has taught me nothing else it's that I am to my core a domestic country mouse. I don't do cities, and I really shouldn't be away from my house for more than very short periods.

This camping out is OK. I finally settled in a little holiday flat in Santa Marinella. It's decent, clean and close to the train station. It's got every domestic thing you might need to survive and it's cheap because it's the off season. So I'm not suffering anything worse than homesickness (which is actually amazingly acute!) and boredom. But the fact is, we're physical beings and, to put it simply, your life happens where your stuff is.

the studio work bench

I've been thinking about what physical elements go to make up life. My art studio is in my house. My kitchen and all my culinary and garden experiments are in my house. My garden, my sewing, books, bike, projects... life.

How do you know you're not a mendicant? How do you figure out that you've got a more stability-oriented vocation in life? Try an earthquake or some other natural disaster and see how it suits you. If you feel relieved that you're free to move around and do lots of stuff out in the world, that's a pretty good sign you should look into the Franciscans. If you keep trying unconsciously to go to your book case and find a book or absent-mindedly think, "Oh, I should turn over the compost tomorrow," or "I really do need to bottle the last batch of beer," ... if you wake up every morning wondering where the heck you are...

I've got nothing to do here and it's driving me up the wall. Up there, especially since my house is OK, I could be of some help. I could go down to the zona industriale and help serve meals and sort donations and whatnot. There must be a volunteer signup sheet, right?

And of course, it's becoming clear that outside an extremely small number of places in this country (five, I think) the Faith isn't practiced. You can go it alone only for so long. Mass on Sundays in Rome is fine, but it's an hour long train ride. All the reasons I left Santa Marinella to live in Norcia in the first place are still out here.

So, I've been working on a list of basic things I need to start thinking about going home:

- electricity and running water - which I'm told we have at my house. No gas, but I've bought a cannister-run heater that is incredibly efficient and just before the quakes I got in a three month load of firewood, so heat isn't an issue. Cold showers don't scare me;

- a place to buy food, even a little shop where I can get the basics: meat and veg, rice, oil, milk, tea coffee and kitty food. I don't mind simple fare and short rations, but I really don't want to be another mouth that the volunteers and military have to feed. And there's always the kitties to think about. They're pretty good hunters, but they like their meals regular. I could prolly benefit from a little fasting but they can't. But, I'm told the shops are open in Cascia and a friend with a car has stayed in town. Also, the bus is apparently running daily down to Spoleto - not much further away from Norcia than Rome is from S. Mar - so if it comes to that, I can make a weekly shopping run. Also, the Umbria Journal says that the Coop (big supermarket chain that is the main food thing in Norcia) is planning to open a smaller version in a new building in the zona industriale by Christmas.

- (this is a big one) for a place to go to Mass. I actually left England because there were so few choices. I moved to Norcia in the first place to be closer to the Mass. Even if I suck about going to daily Mass, I need it to be close enough.

This latest update from the monks has given me hope that we could be closer than I had first anticipated:

"Starting next Sunday, the chapel will make it possible for us to offer Mass on the monastery grounds (San Benedetto in Monte) for the few brave souls still remaining in Norcia, providing immediate benefits to locals and to allow us to start getting back, if only a little, to normal."

kind of up there

Now, that's up on their mountain property, which is physically too much for me to get to every day. It's about 3 miles from my house and up the side of a mountain.

I have walked it, but the simple truth is that I'm not as physically strong as I once was (chemo... middle age... etc) and whenever I've done the hike, I've generally been good for nothing the next day.

Same road in winter. Pretty but kind of hard to walk on

I'd need to find some form of transport.






























- some kind of internet access that is at least regular if not constant so I can make a living. I've got my mobile internet stick, however, and can recharge it in Spoleto or Cascia. Not sure if it would get a signal there. On Quake Day, we were only getting sporadic cell phone signal, so I don't know. But my friend Emanuele is up there and seems to have daily access from somewhere. He's the expert and if anyone can get me enough internet to keep working it's him.

- and, last, but far from least...

FOR THE GEE DEE !!!*@#*&@;$!!%^!!! - ING EARTHQUAKES TO STOP!

JUST STOP!

STAAAAAHHHHPPPP!!!!

~

Latest earthquake news isn't very encouraging:

We had a 3.9 yesterday at 9:41 pm with the epicentre a few miles north of Norcia.

But the day's list is a lot longer and includes quite a lot more over 3.0:

3.1 just after midnight,


3.5 at 3:57 am,


3.1 at 3:41pm,


3.3 at 4:16 pm,


3.5 at 7:09 pm,


3.6 at 7:34 pm,


3.2 at 7:51 pm,


3.4 at 8:40 pm,

November 27 total: 88 above 2.0

And at least a few smaller shakes for every hour of the day.

That's a pretty big jump.

Up from November 26: 44 above 2.0 and only  2 over 3.0

So yeah, it looks like it's getting lively again.

~

But even with the quakes continuing, I'm wavering.

Dulce Domum

Home, for me, is what life is for.

~

Vatican firefighters in Norcia

They're helping people with shops and homes inside the Red Zone (the whole town inside the walls) get their stuff out.



Take a spin around and see everyone. Cool tech, huh?

These are my two friends, Emanuele and Katia, who own and run the computer/internet shop in town. Emanuele does most of the computer/internet communications for everyone. So getting his business up and running is a key component of making the town function as a town again, and making it possible for me and everyone else to go home and start putting our lives back in order.

He has asked me to pass on his heartfelt thanks for all who have donated to get the business functioning again in temporary accommodations in the town's industrial zone (that is all recent construction and was mostly undamaged).

Anyone with a few spare shekels can donate here.



~

Leftover turkey pie

The English tradition of sealed, raised meat pies meets American Thanksgiving leftovers.

This method of making meat pie crust is not very well known anymore. But it was very commonly used in the Old Days when refrigeration was rare. It completely seals in the meat and gravy and doesn't leak. In the town of Melton Mowbray, it is used to make their famous pork pies. They make the dough a little more dense and build it up without a form, so the sides bow out a bit, then when it's baked, pour in melted aspic and allow it to cool together. The aspic gells and seals the meat. If they're not cut, they can keep a very long time. Much of the old timey cooking methods are actually meant as ways of preserving foods.

With this kind of meat pie crust, you can do any sort of meat or veg pie, and of course it keeps and reheats beautifully. The real blessing is the spring form cake pan. You can't easily buy English pork pie pots here, and the spring form thing allows you to just lift the sides away without any bother. Much easier with baking paper. The carta al forno helps too.


(Had to steal these pics from the innernet. My camera was damaged in the quake.)



Take:
1 pound of flour
1/2 tsp each salt and sugar
200 g lard (butter will do)
1/4 cup each water and milk
1 egg

Warm the lard, with the water and milk and beaten egg, over a low flame until the lard is melted. Wisk.

Make a well in the dry ingredients and pour in the mixture while stirring, to form a soft dough. Knead gently a few times and set aside in a bowl to rest.

Take:
Leftover turkey dinner

Cut up the meat into nice big meaty chunks and put it in a large mixing bowl. Season to taste with salt, pepper and red wine. You could melt a turkey or "delicato" soup cube in a few spoonfuls of water in the microwave and mix that in.



Line a spring form cake pan with baking paper. (I didn't do it this neatly; just sort of stuffed it in.) Into this, place a large blob of dough in the centre and use your fingers to press it outward until you have covered the bottom of the pan.

Add lumps of dough around the edge, and press those gently upwards until the pan is entirely lined with dough. This can be a bit tricky and takes some patience.

The dough should be no more than 1/4 inch (1cm) thick and even all over. It will tend to be thicker in the corners. Make sure there is a little bit hanging over the edges of the pan.

Take another bit of dough, roll it out on the counter and save it for the top. Cut three good vents. Big ones.

Put the pan and the top into the fridge for a few minutes for it to stiffen up a bit.

When it's a bit less goopy, take a layer of turkey meat and spread evenly over the bottom of the pie. Do a layer of leftover stuffing, then a layer of whatever you've got leftover. Corn is especially good. Do a thin layer of cranberry sauce, then more turkey. Keep filing up until the pie is full. To keep the pie from being dry, include plenty of gravy. Don't worry, it won't run out if you put a layer of stuffing in to absorb the liquid.

When it's full, flip the edges of the dough over the top and lay the top bit over it all. Pinch the edges together well.

You can brush it with an egg to give it a bit of shine.

Place in the oven and bake for maybe 30 minutes.

V. good with hot English mustard or Branston Pickle.

You're welcome.

Yes, it's possible to rebuild

Norcia, after the quake in 1859





Valletta, 1941



Dresden

Monte Casino

A walk through Norcia today

My friend Emanuele, the owner of ABC Online, the shop where I got all my internet/computer work done, made this video of Norcia today, from the Porta Ascolana, past the destroyed Sta. Maria Addolorata church, past the destroyed Basilica of San Benedetto, past my beloved Enoteca, into the little piazza where that video was made of me running through the rubble and yellow dust, and down the main strip and out the Porta Romana.

This is my town, and I want to go home.

I'd rather live in a tent in the ruins of Cair Paravel than in the new suburbs of Mordor.


~

If you can, please consider making a donation to Emanuele to get the shop up and running again in temporary mobile accommodations. He is the author of an initiative to get all of Norcia's businesses - the little mom n' pop places that sell the sausages as well as the farm produce, the shoes, the hardware, the clothes and linens... and all the stuff that makes a town function. He's kind of the communications guy for the town, and he knows that telecommunications are central to getting Norcia functioning as a town once again, and making it possible for all of us displaced by the terremoti to go home.

Donate to ABC Online, via Paypal here.



~

Monday was Canadian Thanksgiving.

It's not Catholic, but it does give us an opportunity to think about the blessings of our lives and to cultivate the virtue of gratitude.

Thomas says:

"...since what we owe God, or our father, or a person excelling in dignity, is not the same as what we owe a benefactor from whom we have received some particular favor, it follows that after religion, whereby we pay God due worship, and piety, whereby we worship our parents, and observance, whereby we worship persons excelling in dignity, there is thankfulness or gratitude, whereby we give thanks to our benefactors. And it is distinct from the foregoing virtues, just as each of these is distinct from the one that precedes, as falling short thereof."

We do a pious act when we acknowledge that the things we have are not of our own making. I was just thinking this as I was sitting here darning a sock. I know so many younger people - and many who are not young any longer - who do not have basic domestic skills.

The 20th century was the Age of Destruction and everyone who is an adult today was raised in the second half of the 20th century and suffered from grave losses during that destruction, even if they are not aware of it. And a great deal of that loss was cultural. Children were not raised being taught things.

I'm constantly amazed at the helplessness of modern people. They can't do simple things. They can't light a fire in a grate. They can't cook a meal. They can't dig a vegetable patch. They don't know how to sew on a button or hem their trousers. I was horrified to learn that in England the skill of making a pot of tea is being lost.

There is an excellent series of fantasy novels by Ursula LeGuin about a marine world in which magic is known and used by a class of trained magicians. In one of the Earthsea books, the best one, a wicked magician, a man who has perverted himself by his lust for everlasting life, has torn a hole in the fabric of reality and all the knowledge of the people of all the island nations of Earthsea is draining out. The people are forgetting their songs and customs, their skills like fishing and building and writing are just being forgotten, and misery is growing though no one has any idea why.

Not only are their abilities vanishing but the memory that they once had them is slipping away, so that though they are in misery, and increasing squalor and poverty as they forget how to care for themselves and others, they have no memory of having lost these things. They become increasingly debased and savage, their ability to love and understand eventually disappearing as their memory of who and what they are drains away.

The main character of all three novels is given the task of pursuing the demon that has entered the world and stolen the memories, and he chases it across the whole world, the wide sea, and corners it at last, banishing it at great cost to himself and sealing up the hole.

I reread this book a few years ago and immediately recognised it as a parable. We have lost so much. It has just slipped into a hole where everything good and beautiful and true is draining away.

So, today I find myself grateful that I was taught things. My mother was raised in post-war England - a place that had next to nothing materially. Their extreme poverty necessitated a retention of those ancient skills that were lost everywhere else much sooner. She was raised in a world where women always had some knitting in their bags - no one had central heating and if you wanted to be warm you needed a cardie - where supper was always a sit-down meal around the table with the whole family. No one had a television, and entertainment was mostly being together and doing things together.

She was raised in the way that little girls had been raised for centuries in England, and because she could see no reason not to, this is how she raised me. So today I am grateful beyond words. The sock I'm darning is one that she knitted for me many years ago, and the ability to shore it up with a needle and a bit of yarn is something she taught me.

It is easy for me to forget or be unaware that these simple things that I think are normal are now very unusual indeed. I'm not very good at modern things. I don't have a credit card or a smart phone. I've never owned a car and never want to. When I want to travel, I go to a travel agent and get them to do all the booking and stuff. I can't figure out how to use the modern world very well, so I tend to ignore it. I moved to this old fashioned place so I wouldn't have to very much.

I feel a bit guilty about this. I'm not 70. I was raised by the TV like everyone else. But at some point the whole thing just got ahead of me. I felt a bit like the Coyote, watching helplessly as the arrogant modern world streaked casually away from me into the distance. I guess after a while, I realized I didn't really need it.

Thank you, Lord, for my mum, and for Nan who raised her, and for teaching me which things to value and which things aren't important. And I'd appreciate it if you would please keep teaching me these things, because I think I still haven't quite got the knack of it.

Amen.

Beet and mushroom soup - laugh in the face of the apocalypse

OK, that one's going in the cookbook: Beet and mushroom soup

Step 1: build a garden

Step 2: grow a beet

Step 3: make bone stock

Step 4: make beet and mushroom soup

Step 5: survive the Apocalypse, 

Optional: laugh in the face of disaster

I planted a whole row of beet seeds, and they all sprouted up nicely, and didn't grow into beets. They all stayed these little things with some small leaves. One seed, however, must have fallen into the planter outside the veg bed where I've planted a protective wall of marigolds. It sprouted and grew right up into a full size beet. My entire crop. I learned that you have to thin the seedlings, or they just don't grow. Sigh. Live and learn. 

However, my beet was a beaut. Its leaves were large and shiny with beautiful red stems nice and lots of pretty veining. The root was a good size, about the size of a lightbulb. And the colour was excellent, a gorgeous deep purply red. 

I chopped the leaves and stems and sauteed them with a little stock and curry powder and had them as a side with lunch yesterday. 

For the soup: 

take

a few cups of stock

one beet, peeled and grated fine

blob of tomato paste

chopped mushrooms

3 cloves garlic, crushed and minced

1/2 onion, chopped small

(dried porcini mushrooms, or porcini mushroom soup cube)

tsp salt

splash of port

(optional) tsp apple cider vinegar 

(If you want the digestive benefits of apple cider vinegar but don't like too much acid, add a teeny barely-there bit of baking soda, which neutralizes acid.) 

In a heavy bottomed sauce pan (mine's enamelled cast iron) bring the stock to the boiling point, but don't boil. Sautee the chopped mushrooms, onion and garlic until they are releasing their juice and the onions are transparent, and add to the stock.(If you're using dried mushrooms for flavouring, add them to the stock immediately so the flavour can be simmered out.)

Grate the beet root very fine and add to the pot. Allow to simmer for 10 minutes - NO BOILING ! Add the blob of tomato paste, a handful of pepper, the stock cube if you're using one, splash of port and vinegar. 

Cover, and turn the heat down as low as it will go. Maybe move to the smallest burner. Leave it to simmer very, very low for 1/2 hour. 

Eat. Good with a blob of sour cream, like the Ruskies do. 

Here's a thing about how beets are the best food in the world. Antioxidants. Phytonutrients. Science!

Here's a thing about how to grow beets in the winter.

How do you know your beets are ready to pick and eat?

Not like potatoes when you just have to guess. Beets - which have a bazillion times the nutrients of potatoes - pop up out of the ground and all but say, "Hey! I'm done here! Where's the soup?"

~

Life after the shaking stops

Some photos from the last few days. For the last 24 hours, the aftershocks have slowed down and each one has become a lot smaller. You can mostly hear them more than feel them. So let's hope we're getting near the end of it.



Getting ready for the first Mass in the "scavi" today.

We've more or less just been waiting for the town engineers to tell the monks which parts of the monastery and church can be used, and today the first conventual Mass was celebrated in the "scavi," the little room that has been built over the excavated remains of St. Benedict and St. Scholastica's family home. ("ExCAVation"... get it?)

Fr. Basil told us after that "very soon" they were hoping to be able to have Vespers in that space. Slowly, slowly, things are coming back to life.




V. beautiful medieval frescoes, salvaged from another Umbrian church. Put to their proper devotional use.




Fr. Cassian intones the Gospel.




What "major structural damage" looks like in a building that hasn't fallen down. It's the wall of the kitchen of the monastery. This sort of cracking is something you can see in nearly every building in the city, and is especially dangerous since it can't be predicted how much it will take to bring the structure down. Another aftershock? Or just regular vehicle traffic over time? Who knows.




This is the back end of a row of buildings on the main street. The front of the building doesn't show any sign of damage at all, but the engineers have closed it completely, even to foot traffic. The second door on the left side is the back door to the pastry shop owned by some friends of mine who are now not able to go back to work.




Here are the engineers from the vigili del fuoco, doing their work of systematically checking all the buildings in the city for damage.




Santa Maria Addolorata, the old church of the Oratory of St. Philip Neri. You can see the big structural cracks above the doors.




Now the Ministry of Justice building, formerly the palazzo of the Knights of Malta and before that, the Oratory of St. Philip Neri.




The Basilica of Sts. Benedict and Scholastica, closed for who knows how long. You can just see the finial on the top right where it has "danced" around 45 degrees. It's made of stone and is about twice the height of a man, so that was some earthquake!




Like a giant has come along and taken a big bite out of it, and left the crumbs.



One of the two main gates into the city. Closed now to all vehicles. You can still walk through the side gate



.
Lots and lots of this.




If you can't live in your house, the government will give you one of these.




Just waiting. It's what most of us are doing. Waiting to see if they can go home. Waiting to see if their house is declared safe. Waiting to find out if the insurance will cover you. Waiting to see if the government will offer re-building costs.




Looks as peaceful as ever.




About a block from my house. This neighbourhood didn't do too badly but some houses were not built to meet earthquake standards, despite regulations. Now everyone knows which ones.




One of the medieval towers on the wall near the Rome gate. The big crack you can see running up means the whole thing could come down at any time.

Just some pics around town

I've been saving a big collection of photos from various adventures, but mostly of the garden and the local wildflowers and scenery.

Bertie and Henry, chillin'

Kitties.

The hills behind my house. Storm's coming.

Norcia.

First snapdragons. These flowered all summer. 

Garden adventures and experiments.

Poppies, self-seeded from last spring. 

Wild gardening.

Pippy loves to help Mummy in the garden.

He's a real mama's cat. Ever since I rescued him from the fence he got his head stuck in, I think he considers the outside world just a little too scary.

I don't make him wear it. He insists, whenever we're talking about... that stuff... 

Beer, proscuitto and the garden.

Sweet little bladder campions. All finished now, and the seeds spreading for next year. 

Wildflowers everywhere, and I'm recording their progress through the seasons. Later the garden came out all over in little purple harebells, and after that, with wild garlic and white scabious that the butterflies loved.

When I finally managed to make the hired "gardener" stop mowing all my flowers and ruining the soil, these little pink convolvulus spread everywhere. They died off in the really hot dry weather, but are already starting to make a second appearance. 

In Italy, everything more or less dies off in the hottest, driest parts of the summer, and then the autumn rains start and we have our "second spring."

Poppies on my upper slope. Not much soil up there, so now that it's not being mowed, it will take a while to recover. But poppies are self-seeding, so we should have lots more in the spring. 

I kept a careful record of what was growing up there through the spring and summer. We have figs, wild thyme, wild garlic and onions and all manner of beautiful birds and butterflies.

Henry; king of the ninja-cats.

And an oak tree the kitties love.

But Mum! It's already dead! Yes, Henry, but I still don't want it on the carpet. 

Henry loves to bring me his little prizes. I put this one in the garden.

My first roses this spring. The roses had a hard year. Way too much rain in spring gave three of them fungal infections. But this one survived, and is finally producing again. 

My poor roses. I had six, and am down to two. I'll have to do some reading.

Summer truffles. I found three large ones growing in the compost heap. The spores are everywhere around here, and they grow best on oak leaf litter, which was what was mostly in the compost pile. 

The summer truffles have what the Italians call a "delicato" flavour, which to me means nearly totally tasteless. I'm hoping for more in the winter though, which are wonderful.

One of our annual medieval festas. They practice all year and take a great deal of pride in it. 

The ladies.

Italians

I love the Italians so much!

They're the craziest, most obstinate, hidebound and parochial people on earth, and they can drive you mad with their lack of logic and determination to do things only one way, even if it doesn't work.

But they've got the best hearts in the world, will give you their own shirt and force you to have dinner with them while you're wearing it.

After many years, I've learned that the way they do things is actually almost always the better way. Once you've managed to divest yourself of your Anglo-saxon/germanic utilitarian mindset, you realise that the Italians were right all along, and when you tell them that, they'll laugh out loud and invite you for a drink.

Dear Lord, please don't ever make me live anywhere else, ever again.



~