1st entry – le marche 2011

The last time I was at the Paris airport was 20 years ago. I was with the Wertheimers and once we retrieved our luggage we headed into town.

The Charles de Gaulle airport is all renovated. Security is double what it is at any other airport. (Twenty years ago there were soldiers with machine guns walking around.) And the French are efficient, but miserably detached and non-friendly. (The Zingas are originally from France that may explain some of the family characteristics.) It’s the only airport where they had me take out all my camera equipment and put it into one of the security trays. And on the flight from Paris to Rome, the pilot and attendances would give these long explanations about Genoa, Torino, the Alps in French and then two sentences in English. At first I thought they just don’t have the facility with English that they have with French. Wrong! (It’s the French, F the rest of us.)

One of my anxieties about the trip was getting from Fiumicino – Rome Airport – to Stazione Termini – Rome Train Station. (The Roma Termini pic is something I found online.) I had all these concerns that I would get a rogue cab-driver. Instead I ended up with the airport taxi-group. The driver had on a shirt-and-tie and a jacket, very professional. The ride into town was 50 Euros, around $80. (That is what I had expected.)

Stazione Termini was the best. First there were support people everywhere. And the people . . . If it’s wasn’t my first time back in 40 years, and if I wasn’t exhausted from the flight, and if I was with someone else, I would have taken out my camera, assembled the lens and shot and shot. The place was crawling with humankind. These people were all real, they were alive. They were the regular-folk wrapped in their Felliniesque costumes and Italian manners – muzzled dogs leading owners, cigarettes dangling from red-red lips, stiletto heels holding Rubenesque calves, man-purses slung on narrow shoulders, left-over hippies looking for their euro-rail passes, and young kids slumming it, because it’s cool to take the train with the regs.

The train left on time and got to Fabriano on time. It stopped at Spoleto and I was nostalgic for that trip, because it was a great one. On the way I texted Rose and Derrick to tell them where I was and once got off at Fabriano, there they were on the platform.

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From Fabriano we drove through the country to the house in Isola di Fano. The landscape was magnificent.

We rented a renovated workers’ cottage. (When I told my dad where we stayed, he laughed. He grew up in one of these workers’ houses. It was home to some 18 family members who worked the padrone’s land. The first floor housed the animals; the sharecroppers all lived on the second floor. The sharecropping system, abandoned after the war, left many workers houses vacant. In modern times, these cottages have been reclaimed and rehabbed.)

The image below is the view from the kitchen window.

Rose’s comment was, “When you have this outside your window, who needs a painting?”

Large farms cover the northern section of le March. They crown the hills and the tree-lines serve as fences separating one farm from the next.

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One of the things that I’m doing in this set of journal entries is using larger images. I really like this one.

After getting off the train in Fabriano, I said to Rose and Derrick that I needed to do something that told me I was in Italy. (Up to then, I had interacted with traveling attendances – memorable are the nasty airport workers at CDG – but no Italians, no landscapes, no art, and no food.) Well, first came the drive back to the house in Isola di Fano. There was the landscape; nothing like it anywhere; yes I was in le Marche. The house – cale cerque – was the next surprise. (The branches behind Rose are le cerque the oak trees that give the house its name.) Set in the rolling hills, its beautiful yellow-orange stucco blended with the natural colors of the plowed earth that sheltered it. And finally came the food and the wine.

Rose and Derrick are always ready for meals. They spend time shopping for food, cooking it and then sitting down and enjoying it. Dinner was a simple affair. Pasta with fresh tomato sauce, cheeses, a salad and wine from the agriturismo they were at before heading to le Marche. The table is on the upper portion of the property, it’s under a pergola and back-dropped by rolling farmland. This is the northern section of le Marche.

As the moon silvered the twilight, we ate, drank and laughed. I had gotten there late, but I was in finally in Italy doing the things Italian do.

2nd entry – le marche 2011

On Thursday we decided to go to Urbino. From Isola di Fano it was a half hour ride. This hill-town is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. (When I told Paul we had gone to Urbino, he announced that no one knows where that is. I hope it stays that way.)

I love Piero della Francesca’s painting of The Duke of Urbino.
(I want his hat.) How did he produce the red pigment that he used for the hat and the coat?

We approached Urbino from the south-east finding it on the horizon whenever the tree-line broke. It sat across the valley, its cathedral a blue crown.

We entered through one of its ancient gates to find a lived-in, medieval town absent of tourists. (For me that was the best. It’s hard to not find tourists in Italy, in August.) The rock-paved streets are wide letting the August sun in and the cars through without scraping the walls or the walkers.

Reminders of its Papal State status are everywhere in the city center. The cathedral and ducal palace are riddled with papal crests, statues and sacred liturgical artifacts.

Urbino is also the birthplace of Raphael. And that artistic legacy is embraced by the university. As we walked, hiding in the shade, students were going in and out of palazzos that have been turned into classrooms and offices.

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On our way home from Urbino, I suggested we go up to the monastery and then back down to the cemetery in Fossombrone. (I had noticed the signs and today we had some time.)

The road up to the colle dei Cappuccini was out of a Calabrian nightmare. In a province covered by round, cultivated hills, the road was narrow, scratched with 90 degree turns, and ledges that looked down and down and down.

Rose was beside herself. Derrick and I were surprised to find this mountain road. At one point we met a driver coming down. He had to back up and make way for us, because there were two cars going up. Also, we had no room on the right to pull over. The over was into the valley.

It took us a good half-hour to reach the top. And there was the Cappiccin Monastery. But the view was the thing. Before us was the valley of the Metauro and the terra cotta roofs of Fossombrone. (I am in front of the monastery, at an overlook and I am shooting into the valley.)

The monastery was established in 1528. I cannot image walking to the summit, let alone bring up building materials.

The expression in Italian for someone going into a monastery suggests that the person is going away from the world. Up here at the summit of the colle dei Cappuccini I finally understood the expression.

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The church, swaddled in green gauze, was part of the original Cappuccin complex before two monks left and went up to the mountain to find solace and solitude and ended up founding a new branch monastery. The old church and monastery cemetery are now the modern cemetery of Fossombrone. After years of neglect the old Cappuccin church is being restored.

The cemetery is one of the most efficiently designed and planned burial ground that I’ve ever seen. (In mountainous Calabria where flat land is a premium and the ground is rock, level expanses are given over to the fields of the dead. And tombs are wide-spaced, stand-alone and above ground.) Here in Fossombrone the cemetery is probably half the area of the one in Aprigliano, but holds double the number of dead.

The tombs are all underground crypts and the bodies are stacked one on top of the other. The mausoleum on the right already has 13 people buried in its crypt. And there’s probably room for another 10 or so. All the family crypts have a decorative marble/stone cover.

On the inside, the perimeter wall is lined with porticoes and under each arch is a family mausoleums; evidence of the wealth in the region. On a second ring of porticoes were many crypts in modern design. This was a surprise. And in the middle of the old cemetery were single graves with mounds of earth and stone. The grave-markers on these mounds were make-shift and temporary. (I would not be surprised if these are temporary graves and the family is waiting for room in the new, mausoleum.

There are so many shelves on the above ground crypts that the cemetery provides ladders so family members can reach the flower vases. (It looks like Home Depot with its ladders-on-wheels in the middle of the isles.) These modern hives are two stories and so well planned that the street-level is a piazza like space.

The emotional effect of this planning is a less morbid environment. I was more intrigued by the design, the traffic flow and the lack of funereal boxes than the atmosphere of a place of the dead. It all made for a neutral response. (I don’t know if families who come to visit their loved ones have the same detached response.)
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3rd entry – le marche 2011

We left Fossombrone and headed north-east to Ferrara. Our last visit to Emilia Romagna took us to Bologna. We went there to eat and were not disappointed. (We have now been in Emilia Romagna twice and the food is absolutely the best.) This trip, I suggested Ferrara hoping for the same eating options. And we found them in droves. And because it’s off the tourist route, prices were amazingly low and the food was amazingly great.

Also, Ferrara is the city of The Garden of the Finzi-Continis and a memory in Stephen Sondheim’s dreamy Liaisons.

Is this the room and ceiling Madame Armfeldt (Hermione Gingold) was dreaming about as she remembered her life in A Little Night Music?

Liaisons
…
At the palace of the Duke of Ferrara
Who was prematurely deaf, but a dear.
At the palace of the Duke of Ferrara,
I acquired some position, plus a tiny Titian.
…
Liaisons!
What’s happened to them?
Liaisons today
Disgraceful!
What’s become of them?
Some of them
Hardly pay their shoddy way.

This is the ceiling of one of the street-level reception rooms of Palazzo Constabili. The corner frescoes represent the four seasons.

(The grand palaces of Ferrara are all brick-faced. Absent are the smooth, marble facades of Tuscany.) This Renaissance palazzo is beautiful even without external ornamentation. However, the interior of the Palazzo Constabili was amazing – the courtyard-garden rippled with thistle and hawthorn; cicadas sang in the pines; and the stone well was topped with lacey, wrought-iron sunflowers; on the main staircase, the risers were written with curlicues of inlaid black-marble; upstairs the piano nobile boasted the largest Etruscan collection in Italy; (The artifacts are from the ancient town of Spina an Etruscan port that flourished between the 6th and 3rd centuries.) and the ball-room had been re-decorated with murals of Spina, the old administrative divisions of the province and maps of the Nazi occupation of Emilia Romagna. (Talk about contrasts.)

last entry – le marche 2011

It’s been years since I was in Rome. (The Rome airport doesn’t count. BTW, I hate the Rome airport. It is one of the most difficult airports to begin a trip from; checking in is miserable. And the domestic terminals are over-run with passengers, and not very clean.)

We left Ferrara Monday morning and drove down to Rome. (We were going to return the car and stay overnight at the airport Hilton. My flight was at 7:30 in the morning and I headed over at 5:30. It took me an hour to check in. Why I hate the Rome airport.) Part of our plan was to take the hotel bus into Rome and spend late afternoon and early evening in the city.

This part of the return trip was the best. I loved being back in Rome. I had forgotten how great the city is. In Rome everything is exaggerated. The churches are grand, the streets are wide, the buildings are refurbished and elegant. And most of all, the city is big enough that you can avoid the tourists. Santa Maria in Trastevere was beautiful; Piazza Navona was over-run by tourists and we left quickly; the Pantheon was closed; Piazza Venezia was roped off, but still magnificent; and the Campidoglio was a wonderful surprise.

My favorite discovery was what has been done on the shores of il Tevere. I remember il Tevere in late August as a muddy trickle. I had never gone down to the river, because it felt unsafe. It was far down to get to the river and hardly anyone went down to the edge, especially when all that was down there was a muddy, shallow stream littered with garbage. (Different than Paris, where the banks of the Seine were full of people enjoying a stroll.) Well all that has changed. The water it high and the banks are filled with theatres, restaurants, walkways and people. The street noise if gone and you are surrounded by tents and tables; one restaurant had hookah pipes to smoke and pillows to lounge on as you watched the Romans and wannabes stroll by. Welcome to Lungo il Tevere … Roma.

1st entry – le marche 2012

Left home yesterday to make a 5:40 flight to Philadelphia. Between engine trouble and delays, didn’t leave until 7:00. My flight from Philly to Frankfurt also got delayed. Supposed to leave at 8:30, but didn’t leave until 10:00. (BTW, the Philly airport is new, and very nice. Even had charging stations, so my kindle and iPhone were fully charged.)

Made it to Frankfurt with an hour to go. (They had already booked me on the 6:00 pm flight assuming I would not make my 12:40 connection.) From the air Germany looks a lot like Pennsylvania in that it’s very green. The difference is in the clustering of the towns. For us, rural Pennsylvania is spread out. Rural Germany is clustered very close together and the surrounding area is all woods or small farms.

I made sure to deplane as quickly as possible, then at Passport Control I asked if I could go first and the efficient Germans let me. Next, I ran to the gate and made it with 20 minutes to spare. Rose and Derrick were happy to see me, otherwise they would have had to wait in Bologna until the later flight got in.

With all that hassle out of the way, the next worry was luggage – would my bag make it onto the Bologna flight? It did, we landed at 2:00. But the line from hell was waiting for us.

The next step was to pick up the rent-a-car. By 2:15 we were in line at Budget. We didn’t get up to the counter until 4:00. The drive to Earle-and-Suzanne’s (Isola di Fano) was supposed to be an hour-and-a-half. It took us three hours. On the Autostrada, we met up with all the Italians who were heading to the beach for the weekend.

We got in at 7:00. Ran down to Fossombrone to the grocery store, came back showered and had our first dinner in Italy. We polished off two bottles of wine between the three of us.

2nd entry – le marche 2012

The farm up the road from us, has turkeys and goats. I love the billy-goats. And like Rainer’s cats, when I walked by they expected food – sorry guys!!

(It’s time to cook and eat. I’ll come back after supper.)

Today was a get-adjusted-to-the-local-time day, so we decided to explore the surrounding area. We went to the Gola del Furlo. It’s the valley and gorge of the River Metauro. It’s also the old Via Flaminia, the ancient road from Rimini to Rome.

So first about the house and my morning trek – the fields are different than last summer. Cut wheat-stalks cover the fields that last summer were plowed. There are no farmers plowing into the night, instead the fields are yellow with mowed wheat and bales of new-tied hay. At the farm next to us, the turkeys are still there and so are my favorite billy-goats. (This morning there was a breeze from the north; could it be the tramonto? And it perfumed the air with cow manure.) The waking sun crested the hilltop. I wanted to walk the field the sun lifted from, but it was too far away; maybe tomorrow morning.

At 8:30 the valley was alive with church bells. Yes, it’s Sunday and the bells called all to Mass. For me, the bells pulled memories of long ago. They are the Pavlovian bait that grabs me and throws me back to Calabria, to the late 1950’s; to a time when the rhythms of my life were governed by the agrarian and Roman Catholic calendar that acculturated me.

It’s midnight. Rose and Derrick have gone off to bed, and I’m blogging. I’ll finish the posting about the Gola del Furlo tomorrow morning.

We decided to explore the gorge – Gola del Furlo – not realizing that the tunnels through the gorge were chiseled out by the Romans and their slaves. Who knew that the old Roman road la Via Flaminia was less that 20 kilometers from Isola di Fano. (Vetruvius was supposedly the architect for the tunnels through the gorge of the Metauro.) It’s amazing to realize that the two tunnels were hollowed out by hand. The pick marks are still there.

The structure on the left of us is a small un-consecrated church. (Also, between the two tunnels, was a grotto and some Italian put a statue in it. Whoever said stereotypes are not valid just has to look at the grotto with its madonna, votives and plastic flowers.) There was a young man, a volunteer, who told us all about the Via Flaminia. (In Italy, it’s young men who volunteer at churches and local museums. No sign of the old, retired ladies that volunteer at similar places in the U.S.)

The Italian word for tunnel is galleria. Rose keeps saying that the words sound so much prettier in Italian. The German overtones that permeate English are not there in la bella lingua.

It’s Sunday, it’s August, the natives are no where to be found and nothing is open. (We knew that, hence the mad rush to the grocery store last night.) So we had to figure out supper. We settled on pasta with a sauce of fresh, sauteed tomatoes, chopped artichokes in oil, sauteed red pepper, and porchetta – a pork roll stuffed with wild fennel and garlic.

The pergola is an al fresco dining area on the property. We waited until the sun went down and then brought our food to the wrought iron table under the canvas awning.

The image is a repeat from last summer, when we sat down for my first meal in Le Marche. Then too Rose had made pasta with a fresh tomato sauce, and like last summer we ate under Earle-and-Suzanne’s pergola. It’s actually a stretch of the word, but it’s a wonderful structure, so un-Italian.

The property looks different than last year. Earle-and-Suzanne have tackled the garden area and are beginning to make some real changes to the ivy covered bank that is the base for the top-half of the property. (I love it when a property has different elevations, even if only a difference of two or three meters. My dad’s vineyard in Calabria was on three different elevations, and I remember how fun it was climbing the into-the-hillside steps between the three fields.)

3rd entry – le marche 2012

For Welch …
We got up early and headed down to Fossombrone for the weekly farmers’ market. (Fossombrone is the municipality that the house we are in, is part of. Isola di Fano is the village that the house is in.) The markets are a mishmash between fresh fruits-and-vegetables, household items and clothing. In my mind, it’s the mall coming to the consumer and therefore my kind of thing. Young Italians are more willing to go to the indoor box-store malls with parking and chain stores. However, so far there is not a critical mass heading to the box-store malls and the outdoor markets are still busy and vibrant.

I love all the fresh fruits and vegetables, my kind of thing, and not having to go to a mall or a Giant Eagle kind of store is an added perk. We walked around looking at all the products and then we settled on the one or two vendors we liked. This ‘liking’ is a gut feeling consisting of answers to questions such as – do they have nice looking sales clerks? are they pushy in their sales pitch? are they helpful and tell me things I don’t know? are they willing to let me pick out my own tomatoes? are they snobs with airs? (You have to ask this of Italian vendors. Snobby usually means a 10% increase on the sales price. And given that I can be snobby with the best of them, I can pick them out immediately and I’m not giving my money to snots. I may be one, but I’m not paying extra for the priveldge of being with my kind of people.)

When I go with Rose and Derrick to these things, I’m the voice of reason. Left to their own devices, they would buy everything in sight. When it comes to food buying their frugal approach to life goes out the window. Derrick saw the cranberry colored beans – faggiole Borlotti – and then decided to buy three kilos. Now the debate is – “Do we take them home to Michigan or eat them here?” Even my mother urged them to eat them fresh and cook them immediately. (They decided to take them home to Michigan.)Once we got back fromt the market, they sat on the porch and husked them into a bowl. (I love the fact that an iPad is on the table as they surciano le surache an old Calabrese expression for shelling beans.

Lunch was fresh tomato salad with green onions and basil, a picante local cheese and these wonderful cucumbers. Rose and I put as much bread into the salad oil as we could jam. There is nothing as wonderful as Italian bread soaked in tomato salad juices.

The afternoon adventure was a trip to Fano to the TIM’s store to put in a new sim card into Derrick’s phone so that next week we could use it as a hot-spot. (Earle-and-Suzanne’s was not available for our second week, so we booked at an agriturismo – La Tavola Marche – and they do not have Internet.)

4th entry – le marche 2012

Earle-and-Suzanne’s house is in the Metauro River valley; it’s on the northern slope of the rounded hills that form the valley below us. Each morning I look out and see the hilltop towns of the next valley, and I’ve wanted to go exploring these structures that shape the horizon. Today was the day to explore the next valley to the south of us. We drove down to Isola di Fano and then up the mountain and into the next valley. (Derrick had put in ‘off-road’ when he was setting up the GPS, and Rose yelled and yelled. The off-road trip would have taken us 3 hours, the fastest-time trip had us at Fratte Rosa the hilltown we see from the kitchen window in 30 minutes.)The interior of Le Marche is these cultivated, rolling hills. And this patchwork is one of my favorite landscapes.

Our first stop was to Fratte Rosa and immediately there were signs of foreigners. The entire town has been beautifully refurbished; all the houses have been cleaned and pointed. (It reminded me of Assisi. Modern day Assisi is the disneyland of Catholicism. The entire town has been refurbished to keep the tourists with loaded pockets coming. Forget the fact that Francis made poverty a virtue, modern day Assisi is anything but poor.)

The next evidence of foreigners was in San Lorenzo in Campo. (It was full of tall, blond Germans.) I did forgive them their invasion, because we found a Frutta e Verdura shop where the owner sold us the best Visciolata wine ever. This is a dessert wine made in Le Marche. It’s made from wild cherries mixed with wine. I walked in and asked if he would sell us a bottle of wine and then open it so we could have it for lunch. Of course he would. Well, he ended up having to uncork two bottles before he was successful at getting the plastic cork out. He put those two bottles aside and he picked out a third with a real cork that he was able to remove. We now had our wine. Earlier I had bought two slices of pizza with bacon and eggplant, Rose and Derrick had paninis stuffed with porchetta. (I told the owner of the Frutta e Verdura that in America it would be illegal for him to open the wine and then sell it to us. He said American is very open, but very contrary.)

We drove to the next small town and sat in the piazza in the shade and had our picnic lunch. Oh yes, the man from the Frutta e Verdura packed us three plastic cups. After our piazza lunch I went over to the local real estate office. (It was the only business still open.) It listed all these farm-houses for sale. Some were completely restored,, others were ruins. The prices were beyond high. They were so over-priced that I couldn’t believe people were paying these prices. I guess the Germans dodn’t see the prices as exorbitant, highway robbery, out-right stealing …

The Viscolata we had after dinner with fresh melon. (Rose is already planning a trip back to San Lorenzo in Campo to buy more Viscolata. She’s planning to take at least one bottle back to Michigan. I’ll think about it throughout the year and it will become another reason to return next summer.

5th entry – le marche 2012

The weather has been miserably hot, but last night it broke. And at 2:00 in the morning the farmer from the next property was still plowing. I understand working in the cool night, but am amazed by the practicality of it all.
In many ways that’s what keeps surprising me about Italy – how practical everything is organized. The problem is that this orderliness is severely taxed in the summer months when the country is overrun with mobs, and I mean that in a literal sense, of foreigners. And then we all whine about things being inefficient. I wonder if any country can efficiently manage the millions that descend into Italy each summer. Disney can do it at a theme park, could it do if for a whole country? Especially when the locals have to continue their day-to-day routines – go to work, cook, visit, go to doctor’s appointments, go food shopping – all while the tourists, who have left their day-to-days back home, want entertained, want no interruptions, want immediate service, want no traffic jams, want cool days, want people who speak English …

This morning the farmer is back out, I heard the tractor as early as 6:00. He’s spreading manure in the lower field, and because the wind is blowing away from us, there is no perfumed air.

We decided to head south to the caves at San Vittore. This southwestern region is full of caves; the best know are the Grotte di Frasassi. To get there, the GPS took us on the provincial roads that hug the mountains. (In Italian there are different words for mountains depending on their shapes. In Calabria, with its Sila peaks, they’re montagne. Here in north central Le Marche, with its tall rolling hills, they’re colline.I love the ride through the center.

These are the provincial roads and the only arteries into the country with amazing vistas. (The tolled Autostrada and the non-tolled Supra Strada run in valleys, on flat terrains, along the coast, along the side of mountains, through tunnels in gorges. They are full of traffic – foreigners and locals. For the Italians speed limits and traffic laws are only suggestions. This drives the foreigners crazy. I like the Italian word for foreigner better than the English. In Italian foreigners are stranieri. Our word strange is wrapped up in the Italian comment about people not like them.) The provincial roads are the only access points for people living in the interior. They lead to all the postcard-perfect hill towns we see in travel brochure. But because most stranieri aren’t willing to deal with the roller-coaster ride that the provincial roads offer, they avoid the interior.

The image in this post is the gorge where the Grotte di Frasassi are located. Before we got here, we stopped at a local supermarket and bought lunch. You buy all the ingredients for a panino and the clerks assemble it. We left the store with two panini, two slices of pizza, some olives and both carbonated and non-carbonated water – lunch. There was a picnic table on the right. We sat there and ate out grocery-store lunch. (My pizza was bland, but that’s what I expected when I bought it at the large, chain store.)

It’s 10:00 pm local time and the farmers of the valley are plowing. The evenings are cool and the night sky is black with stars. The farmer from up the road is driving his blue tractor making patterns in the hillside. If last night is any indication of his work schedule, he will be at it all through the night. The farmer is using a huge tractor to plow. I shot a series of pictures as he came down the hill, the plow into the earth. (The gold haze of the mowed wheat fields is one of my favorite colors.)Coming from a country and city where farm rhythms are things of the past, it’s hard to put my head around the work routines here in rural Le Marche.

Today we drove through Senigallia, one of the premier beach resorts on the Adriatic. I bet no one there works through the night plowing fields. I bet no one there knows anyone who makes their living plowing fields.

After supper, Derrick and I took a walk up to the old abandoned house I found the other night when I went into the fields to shoot. The field is the highest point on this side of the valley and I wanted to shoot from that vantage point. And there in the trees at the top was an old farmhouse. I figured out where the driveway was and tonight we make the trek back up the house. The view is truly spectacular. From the property you have a 360 degree panorama.

6th entry – le marche 2012

Today we drove to Pesaro and the northern coast. Where Senigallia is overrun with tourists and frantic, Pesaro is full of locals and slow. The streets in the old town are shadowed by trees, and the beaches are orderly if riddled with umbrellas.We got there early enough to walk the streets with the locals. Near the government center, an old church had been retrofitted into a post office, and I decided that would make a great shot, so I walked across the street to shoot the facade with the yellow postal sign inside the main entrance. A young man came up to me and began a harangue about the injustice of having retrofitted a church. He then asked if I was from Pesaro, I went into a full-American pretending I had not understood him and that I was a lowly tourist. He looked disgusted, but left. (So, was the disgust about the injustice of government taking over a church or that I was an American who only spoke one language – American English?)

BTW, most of the English you find here is British English – axioms, spellings, terminology. For example, at lunch the menu had an English translation. I wanted a salad, and I’m looking at the ingredients in English and one of the items was ‘rocket’. What the hell is rocket? There’s no such vegetable with that name. Rose told me that rocket is arugula. And that the British call it rocket. What!! (It may come from the other word for arugula – rucola. But how do you get rocket from rucola? Only a culinary challenged society could call an edible grass a rocket.) Another item for my list of Things-to-Hold-Against-the-British.

I probably need to re-examine my comments. The young man from Pesaro was ranting against the government take-over of church-owned buildings, I’m here ranting about the British. I guess all Italians have something to harangue about, even old ones who now live full-time in America.

7th entry – le marche 2012

World War II still shapes the Italian character. My family left after the war, and here I am back.

People of my parents’ generation lived through the war years and their children carry that legacy without even knowing it. It took me a while to understand how the war changed my life. Because, my parents were too young to participate, I never thought that their actions and decisions were the result of what the war had done to their homeland. I just assumed we left for Canada, because all the grandparents were there. Certainly never thought about the fact that the economy of post-war Italy was in the toilet and my dad could not make a living.

And growing up in Canada and the US, the war stories were about winning. The books we read in high school were about British men and women who fought valiantly and won. I didn’t hear about the holocaust until I moved to America. And still no one ever talked about Italy in the war except to mention Mussolini. (I came to hate Winston Churchill’s writings. They tell a one sided story. In the writings he has no understanding of what the regular people of Italy and Germany suffered. He has no empathy for the victims of the war. Instead he brags about the resolve of the British people and the low character of the Germans and Italians.)There are World War I memorials in all the piazzas of all the small towns. World War II memorials are rare. The one in Pesaro was disturbing. It’s a wall of funereal pictures of the freedom fighter.

This part of Italy was the Gothic Line – The Gothic Line – Linea Gotica – formed Germany’s last major line of defense in the final stages of World War II along the summits of the Apennines during the fighting retreat of German forces in Italy. The Allies breached the Gothic Line on both the Adriatic and central Apennine fronts during Operation Olive also known as the Battle of Rimini in the autumn of 1944. Over a million men participated in the battle.

How can I pass up a title like that, even if it doesn’t mean anything to people who read this?

After Pesaro we headed north on the winding coastal road that runs along the top of the Apennine ridge; the vistas down to the Adriatic are wonderful.

(Some facts – the road on the ridge is lined with Renaissance mansions. Rich Italians, to escape the blistering summer heat, went to the mountains not the sea. Only poor people, who lived in the mountains throughout the year, would go to the beach for a summer break. The villas of the rich look out onto the Adriatic. The servants would open the house sometime in June and spend the next months cooking the local cuisine. The landowners sat on their verandas and were waited upon.)

The cliff area, outside of the Pesaro, is a national park. And during World War II, this was the Gothic Line that the Germans defended until they lost it in the Battle of Rimini.

At the end of the ridge is the resort town of Gabicce Monte a small quaint mountain-town full of restaurants that cater to the beach crowd. We had lunch at one of these restaurants. I ordered a salad – I can’t do a full lunch and not go back to the house and sleep for the afternoon. (In this way, I’d fit in perfectly with the Italian afternoon routines.) Rose was scandalized that I would order a simple salad when I had a full menu of Italian specialties to pick from. (This was the menu that listed ‘rockets’ as an ingredient in my arugula salad.)Below us, Gabicce Mare is the small coastal town at the north-eastern border of Le Marche and Emilia Romagna. The area is actually two towns, Gabicce Mare on the Le Marche side and Cattolica on the Emilia Romagna side. The pic is shot from our table at the restaurant that served rockets in my salad. The lines in the water are breakers – stone walls to keep the tides away from the sun-bathing public. (I suspect that there are no dermatologists in Italy. No one would pay any attention to their advice about staying out of the sun. Remember, the Italians embrace the sun – O Sole Mio.)

Today is our last full-day at Earle-and-Suzanne’s. (Tomorrow we head over to La Tavola Marche.) We decided to have dinner at a restaurant, in San Lorenzo in Campo, that specializes in farro dishes. San Lorenzo is in the next valley to the south of us and to get there you literally go over the mountain and through the campi.

Because of our dinner reservations, we decided to explore close to the house and Urbania fit the bill. It’s claim to fame is a Befana festival in early January. It’s a small town on the cusp of renewal.
The town was quite lively and full of Italian tourists and foreign students. (There is an international school here and kids come from all over to the music academy.)

After our exploration we stopped at a gelateria and it had a Nutella flavored gelato. I had to have one. It was really not good – too much Nutella and not enough gelato.

The next eating adventure was at the Farroteca in San Lorenzo in Campo. The drive over, as I said, was over the mountain. (We go by one of my favorite hill-towns – Fratte Rosa – and I think I like that valley more than the one we are in.) We parked in the main piazza and walked the short distance to the restaurant.

The place is on a property with three structures – a villa, the itinerant farmers’ residence that is now modernized and the old animal shed that has been renovated into the restaurant. The owner – Lea – is this vivacious older woman who had us laughing throughout the entire meal. (She complained loudly about the Italian version of Socialism and was taken back when I told her that millions of Americans don’t have health care. Her answer was, “Questo non e gusto.” – That is just not fair.

Dinner was great. It was a fixed menu. We began with a farro salad. (The olive oil is from her property across the valley – Monterosso – and tasted amazing.) This was followed by cheese with prosciutto and small farro breads topped with olives and zucchini. The third course was a fresh, soft cheese on farro pita. The primo piatto was ricotta ravioli with porcini mushrooms. This was followed by sweets served with the local dessert wine – Visciolata – and espresso finished the meal. (We had a bottle of red wine from her vineyard and two liters of sparking water with our meal.) The entire dinner cost us 75 euros.

8th entry – le marche 2012

Today is our last day at this great house.
Last year, Rose found this listing and we decided to take a chance. I believe our expectations were what they had always been – probably looks better online than it really is. We were wonderfully surprised.

The house is a restored itinerant farmers’ house. (My dad’s family lived in such a house in Calabria. The property owner housed the workers in various such houses on his property.) The ground floor was where the animals were kept and the first floor was where the family lived.

Earle-and-Suzanne have restored the ground floor and they live there. The first floor is the rental. The tall beamed ceilings are all visible, the kitchen is very efficient and comfortable. There are two bathrooms, one en-suite and very large second one. One of my favorite things about the house, and I know there are many, are the views. You get up in the morning to the manicured valley. (The house sits on a hill in the middle of the Metauro Valley.) We sit on the porch and have our morning espresso.

We’ve been going exploring late morning and early afternoon, but we are back by 3:00. We rest. The natives have been home since noon, but we tourists add some extra hours to the first part of the day. We begin preparing for supper around 7:00 and go and sit under the pergola for our evening meal.

For us, the house fits perfectly. It’s convenient to the provincial roads and the Autostrade. There is a small hamlet at the bottom of the hill for bread and cheese and Fossombrone is twenty minutes away.

We left Earle-and-Suzanne’s this morning and drove to La Tavola Marche. It’s a combination agriturismo, cooking school and mountain retreat. We showed up around 12:30 and we got settled in. We’re on the top floor. Our apartment is very nice, very roomy. After we had unloaded everything, especially the food, we had lunch and headed over to the pool. It was so nice to just sit in the sun and when it got too hot, jump into the cool water.

The image is the mountains outside our kitchen window – a very different landscape from the Valley of the Metauro in Fossombrone. (Ashley told us that the top of the mountain is really Umbria.) We are in the south-western section of Le Marche. The area around the farmhouse is void of human traffic. The only things you hear are the cicadas, and the other guests at the pool. And if the guests are taking their afternoon nap then the place is silent.

In order to get Internet, we have to go down to Piobbico, a ten minute drive down a dirt road. My strategy this week is to do all the Photoshop and writing off-line and copy and upload everything when we are in town. (Piobbico is the town where they have the Ugliest Man and Woman festival.)

It’s 6:18 pm. I’m sitting outside at the Cafe del Corso in Piobicco, eating a cooffee granita and finishing this posting.

Rose took a picture of the old man, blogging. Once she sends it, I’ll post it.

If it were up to me this is the kind of pic that would never see the light of day, but it’s a record. I’m sitting in Piobicco and that is a coffee granita in front of me. And for those truly observant anal retentive friends – yes, I’ve shaved the beard. (Another reason to bury the pic in some directory where it would never be found.)

All the foreigners come here to get Internet access. It’s mainly Dutch and German tourists. They flock here because of the hiking.

After we finish with our online fix, we are heading back to La Tavola Marche and will figure out what to have for supper.

Decided to add to this entry, because I always like to fill up the space around the pics. Yesterday and today, I prepared everything before we come down to Piobbico and then sent it up to the journal while at the Cafe del Corso. I think that writing the entries ahead of time has resulted in text almost free of tension. I’ve been leaving out the edge. An edge, a sarcastic voice that had found its way in as I sat, leisurely reviewing the day.

Today at Cafe del Corso there are more locals than foreigners. The three of us are the only ones sitting together, but not talking. We are busy with our various devices. The Italians around us are all yaking away. (There’s lots of complaining about various family members.) Tonight’s crew is older and probably on a passegata before heading home to the Sunday light meal.

My mandatory drink tonight is a cold chocolate. Still not great, but better than last night’s. Buy something and get Internet connection. Not a bad deal.

BTW, I was telling Rose that I get most of my protein from cheese and she was surprised and had to look up the protein value of milk products.

9th entry – le marche 2012

I love being in the mountains. (Earle-and-Suzanne’s is urban compared to where we are this week.)
This morning I walked down the road and there were all the farms that dot the valley. Came back and started shooting the sunflowers – le girasole – on the property. And the bees … (It was really the dark, dark blue.) There are hives on all the farms we pass, and now I know where the bees end up. Also, found that the plants that look like corn are pig corn. It grows nothing like American, genetically modified corn. The pig corn grows a single cob, a plume at the top of the leaves, with no husk. Here corn has always been something farmers feed the animals. Humans do not eat corn-on-the-cobs in Italy. But, there’s a whole food culture in northern Italy based on polenta – a mush made from corn flour – as the staple.

Today we decided to explore Sant’Angelo in Vado. We expected a back-water town and it turned out to be a great little town. We got there after Mass let out and it was teeming with locals.

To get there we literally went up and over the mountain. The road is this twisty, steep slope heading forever down. The name is Saint Angelo in the Valley. Guess we had to get down the mountain and into the valley. When we got there, we followed the town people into the Cathedral. (I didn’t take pics. There were too many of the faithful still milling around.

We found a store and bought dinner – roasted rabbit in wild fennel and garlic, stuffed zucchini, eggplant and peppers.

We left Sant’Angelo in Vado and did not want to go back up the mountain road, so we headed into Umbria and the provincial roads. We might as well have gone back up the mountain. We traded one mountain for another and headed down the next steep incline into another valley. (The speed limit is 70 km/h. I don’t know how they do it on the mountain roads. Even the bikes are racing the roads. BTW, everyone here wears helmets. There are signs everywhere reminding drives of the dangers of not wearing a helmet. Too bad Americans put machismo ahead of safety. But then they aren’t driving the mountain roads of Italy.)

10th entry – le marche 2012

Today we drove across Le Marche and then south to Loreto, the city of the holy house. (Supposedly, angels carried the house that Mary lived in from Palestine and deposited in Loreto.)

The Basilica is this huge structure with a square in front. The square is surrounded by porticos. One side is the Apostolic Palace – Church offices on the piazza level, Church residences on the second floor. These are grand residences that are now a museum and it’s clear that the Church officials who lived in these rooms were nobility. There is no poverty here.
A young man was painting these chalk-drawings on the floor of the piazza. He had three baskets for donations under each. (Hey, if Mother Church can collect from all the pilgrims that flock here, why can’t he?)

Loreto attempts to do the same thing that Assisi does – create a destination for pilgrims. The difference between the two locations stares you in the face. Where Assisi has historical significance – the birth place of Francesco di Bernardone – and artistic significance – Giotto’s famous frescoes line the walls of the Cathedral; Loreto is fictional Catholicism. The Church made up this place.

Inside of the Cathedral, behind the main altar is this four-sided, open box of marble, beautifully decorated with carvings and reliefs. This external box is amazing in its complexity and artistry. The inside is lined with rock – supposedly from Palestine – but open to the dome. The ceiling is early Signorelli. In Orvieto, we see the mature master depicting the Apocalypse with its avenging angels assigning the locals their place in a tableau of eternal-rest. (In Loreto the avenging angel is in grey armor. In Orvieto he’s gloriously naked. In Loreto he’s a two meters tall controller, in Orvieto he’s a 10 meters tall beautiful avenger, the central figure in the tableau.)

It’s hard to walk through this box and think of the young Palestinian woman who was supposed to have lived here. There are frescoes on the stone walls, frescoes of angels. (Judaism does not depict heavenly creatures. The frescoes are Italian in execution and culture.) There is a marble altar in front of the back wall. There are gold candle holders on the marble altar. And the stones look like they could have come from any quarry in the area. And there are small niches with other gold ornaments. It’s absolutely clear that this whole complex was created and given meaning by some Church official. There is no theological, archeological, or religious base for anything here. It was created as a place that would attract pilgrims, that would attract pilgrim money. It is extremely successful. Four million pilgrims a year journey to Loreto.

I always understood Martin Luther on an intellectual level. After being in Loreto, I understand him on a gut level. Seeing the Disneyland house and realizing it’s a for-profit operation, makes Martin Luther a visionary, a prophet that the Catholic Church could not accept or learn from. And like all true prophets, he was persecuted and ostracized.

Oh, BTW, the Madonna of Loreto is a black Madonna.

11th entry – le marche 2012

Last night I drove from the agriturismo into Piobbico on my own. It was my first time driving the rent-a-car. (It’s only registered in Derrick’s name.) I was cautious and wanted to get back before sundown; I didn’t want to drive the unpaved country road in the dark.

BTW, the Musa is the Lancia rent-a-car. It’s a great small car. (Wish we had access to some of the small car models they have here.)
We come into town daily to check email and blog. (The agriturismo is in the mountains about 1,400 feet abovee sea-level and no Internet.) For some reason, tonight I could not get Internet access anywhere in the cafe. Even moved my seat to two different tables.

So after calling Leger, because I had a phone connection, I headed back.

I like driving in Italy, it’s never boring. (There’s not a straight road anywhere.) Yesterday we spend most of the day on either the Autostradra or the provincial roads. These are fast arteries on the plains or the side of the mountains. The road to and from the place we are staying at is unpaved and the dust clouds hide the car as we drive its ruts and shoulders.

Today was a recoup. We went into Piobbico for the market and for coffee; and then headed back to La Tavola Marche to sit by the pool. (The Dutch family with its four, loud children left for the day; we had the pool to ourselves.)

It is incongruous to be in the mountains of Le Marche and to sit by a pool full of clear, blue water. It’s Italian and American at the same time. (The two young owners of La Tavola Marche are Americans.) To add to the incongruity, the water in the pool is from a sulfur spring on the property, and every morning it’s treated to make it clear and sulfur free. And finally, Natalie Merchant is on my iPhone singing:

I do like being in the mountains. It really is the summer vacation of my youth. Many families in Aprigliano would go up to La Sila for the summer months. The mountains were their retreat from the summer heat. When she was a young woman, my mother went up with my grandfather, because he lived up in La Sila with the sheep during the summer months. My dad went up to La Sila to work, to hunt, to pick mushrooms. And even though I never went, I am of that generation most associated with my parents and their narrative became my early reference point. I just assumed sooner or later we would go up to La Sila during August. (Nah, we went to cold northern Ontario.) It’s with Connie that my parents’ narrative lost its meaning. She was two when we left Aprigliano. The narrative she heard was of her parents struggling to make a better life in Sault Ste Marie and how she would benefit from their struggle.

It takes a long time to situate oneself in a family continuum and age helps to figure out one’s placement in that family line. That awareness is faint during the time when we are building careers and families. (For me the awareness has come when those two accomplishments have been safely established.) Spending the last 8 summers here in Italy brings me into the continuum that is my family’s legacy to its oldest child.

The idea of going to the sea – al mare – during the summer is a modern protocol. I guess the way we know we are old and the mantle has passed is when the next generation begins to create its own routines. All my cousins in Aprigliano now talk about il mare throughout the summer. They send me pictures of them sitting in the maze of beach-chairs and umbrellas along the Mediterranean coast. I try and explain to my parents that they are on holiday, but the idea is not something they can associate with Calabria. For them, the beach in the summer is an American experience. (Last night we talked to them, and I kept telling Rose to just say that we are in a place like La Sila. As soon as they heard that reference they knew exactly what the area we are in looks like.)

12th entry – le marche 2012

Today is that magical holiday in Italy where everything is supposed to be closed and everyone is away on vacation. (It’s the feast of the Assumption and the Italians are supposed to bee in church.) Since we’ve been coming, we’ve seen this tradition change. This morning all the cafes, on the street are open and I’m sitting in Crazy Bar, with Internet access. (I have no idea why Italians think that using American names for their establishments is great PR.)

The first couple of days we just looked at all the locals down the street at the Crazy Bar. None of the tourists ventured down there. Well, given that Internet access was sporadic at the other location, I walked down, plopped myself among the old me and flipped open my laptop. They looked over and I said, Bongiorno without a trace of a foreign accent. They went back to their card-playing, I went back to blogging.

When we were in Cosenza, everything was closed for ferragosto. And given that Le Marche is similar to Calabria in its history with poverty and Church control, I’m pleasantly surprised to find that the marchegiani seem to have thrown off the shackles of Mother Church.
Later we will head down to the river for a picnic. That will be our contribution to ferragosto. The tourists that come to this area of Le Marche spend their time trekking the trails around the river beds. (At this time of year, the rivers that in the spring are torrents are trickles of water. This makes the river-beds great trails to walk and explore and picnic along.)

Tonight, on ferragosto, we went to a Sagra del Polentone alla Carbonara in a small town – Cagli – between Piobbico and Aqualagna. (I hate polenta, and here I am going to a fish-fry type event that will serve nothing but polenta.) My mother and Leger will give me a very hard time about this. The sagra was in the parking lot of a Romanesque, country church – S. Maria A. di Naro, Chiesa Romanica, (sec. XI) – built in the eleventh century.

Tables and tents were everywhere. We went early; the polenta was being made as we got there. And within 15 minutes we got our food. The carbonara sauce was super rich, so here I am eating a gelato to balance the grease. BTW, the cafe down the street from us has a DJ and he just finished playing Everybody is Talking at Me.

Tonight we will have a quiet evening and tomorrow we are going exploring the small towns around Fossombrone. We really like that part of Le Marche.

13th entry – le marche 2012

This morning I finally got up early and headed down the road for a walk. (There’s an abandoned cemetery and I wanted to go shoot it.) Mornings are amazing, the sun is just rising, so you don’t get the onslaught of the mid-day heat and the bugs are sleeping. The mountains at this time of day are silent. It’s taken me all these years to finally get into the mountains. (There are side-roads off the unpaved main road, but I didn’t have the proper clothes to trek up these paths.)The pig-corn is still a wonder for me. I’ve not see anything like it in America. (I’ll have to google it and Wikipedia it and see what comes up.) I also found a wide path down to the river – a tributary of the Candigliano which in turn is a tributary of the Metauro. However, the find of the morning was the cemetery. There are less than a dozen graves left. (Ashley said that all the people buried here are from the same farm-family up the road.)

The cemetery has a wall around it. The wall opposite the gate has the chamber that would have been used to keep coffins in the winter. The repository chamber is open, so I went in. Inside were all these wrought iron crosses, no two are the same. (In the cemetery in Aprigliano, I was amazed when I discovered all the different crosses that topped the small mausoleums. All were different.) These abandoned crosses are made to put into the ground as markers. Given that the whole left side of the courtyard is empty, these abandoned crosses must have come from that side. (It’s not uncommon in Italy to un-inter a coffin and re-bury it in a new, better, more prestigious location. (Most of my paternal grandmother’s family in Aprigliano, has been moved from the old cemetery in to the newer section. My mother told me that as soon as they build the above-ground crypts in the Soo, many Italian families un-interred their loved ones and placed them in the above ground crypts.) I suspect that many coffins were moved from this small mountain cemetery to the new cemetery in Piobbico. The only remaining graves are on the wall to the right of the chamber. These are the graves of the Gnucci family.

On my way back, I kept thinking that landscape can shape character just as much as family. Italy, except for the coastal plains and these are narrow strips, is a country of mountains. People live in these unique communities with mountain barriers separating them. (In Pittsburgh we talk a lot about the different neighborhoods and how the topography isolates communities and how these communities have developed distinctive personalities.) Well Italy is a whole county of such distinctive communities. No wonder it took forever to unite the country. It also explains the lack of national identity and the focus on local identity. (Pittsburgh too is famous for local identities and a lack of municipal consciousness.) Italy has been dealing with one other variable that only now America is recognizing – bad central government. The lack of trust in a central government, a by-product of living in isolated communities, has added to a strong township allegiance.

In the afternoon we drove to Mondavio and then Corinaldo. Corinaldo is the birth place of Maria Goretti. The only thing I remember about this saint is that she died rather than give up her virginity. (I remember a lot of jokes about her being the only Italian girl to say, “No.”) Well today got a different story, one that has me thinking that the Church in Le Marche has done some very unusual things – declaring that angels brought a house over from Palestine; declaring that a young girl from a migrant-workers’ family is a saint, because she put up a fight rather than give up her virginity to the landowner’s son. The son frustrated by of her refusal, stabbed her to death. But, before she died, she forgave her would-be-rapist.

The story continues – the son then goes up to Goretti’s mother – Mamma Assunta – and asks for her forgiveness. The mother tells him that since her daughter forgave him, he was forgiven. He then goes to live with a group of Franciscan monks, but never takes vows. Goretti is buried in the church of Santa Maria Goretti in Corinaldo in the crypt, her mother is buried on the left side of the nave and her would-be-rapist on the right side of the nave.

Now, my version of the story – The landowner’s son is the would-be-rapist that part of the story is consistent, but I suspect that his well-connected father went to the local Franciscan prior and made a deal. – “Declare Maria Goretti a saint, but let it be known that she forgave my son before dying. House my son in one of your monasteries and I will give a large donation. The Church gets a new saint from the peasant class, think of how many donations that will bring in; after all the villain is the landowner’s son, another plus in the class warfare propaganda the Church likes to traffic in, but don’t forget that she forgave him proving her worth to be a saint. Plus let’s not forget my sizable contribution.”

Nowhere in the story is law enforcement mentioned. And how is it that a migrant-worker’s family, who was as poor as dirt, can get through the bureaucracy that is the Roman Catholic Church to get their daughter proclaimed a saint. Nah, there were other more powerful forces at work. And for me those are the rich landowner, the Franciscans, and the local law enforcement. All had to agree on the plan and all had to get something from it – a win-win situation – in order for it to work.

The Italians had a new saint. Le Marche had a second site to attract tourists with religious leanings who hopefully will put money into the offering boxes.

14th entry – le marche 2012

Today we headed up to Urbino. It’s my favorite place in Le Marche. It’s the Milan – modern, organized, clean and rich – of the province. The old centro is vibrant and well maintained. The surrounding suburbs are modern and development is controlled and well managed.

The old city-center was full of bancarelle – vendor-booths to celebrate La Festa del Duca. We got there as the vendors were setting up. (All the stalls used bales of hay to mark their perimeters. Guess it’s to go with the medieval look.) In the evening more actors would be out participating in processions, jousting tournaments, theatrical performances and other dress-up events. (We didn’t stay for this part of the entertainment.)

The image above was too difficult to resist. (I did take it with the zoom, wasn’t sure it was polite to shoot it up close.) For me, it’s two medieval characters – one playing at dress-up, the other wearing her required uniform; one representing the merchant class of the Middle Ages, the other representing the corporation that ruled at the time. (In the future, will some men walk around in Armani suits when everyone else is wearing unisex spandex and riding segways or landspeeders? Will cities host Sagra di McDonalds or Bill Gates Festivals?)

Urbino’s palace culture gave rise to the first-ever painted images of utopian cities in the form of a trio of intriguing panels, all now known as “The Ideal City,” one of which remained in Urbino, the other two are in Baltimore and Berlin.

Years ago, I spent part of my junior-year at the Universita per Stranieri in Perugia. At that time Perugia was this sleepy, Umbrian hill-town in the middle of Italy. We lived with the locals. And Corso Vannucci – the main thorough-fare was full of local vendors who tolerated us. There was this great bakery/cafe that had the best pastries. The owner was this very masculine looking woman who ran the register. And after having our espresso or a granita-di-cafe, we had to get up the courage to go up and pay hoping that the she wouldn’t insult or berate us. (For the longest time, I pretended to not speak Italian because I didn’t want her telling me that I had a Calabrian accent. Il Mezzogiorno – the provinces south of Naples – were in great disfavor and looked down upon. I certainly didn’t want to be associated with them people.)

15th entry – le marche 2012

We are leaving La Tavola Marche and heading to Bologna. I wanted that iconic “Italians in the window” shot, so I asked Ashley if she would take the pic. We are leaning out of the dining-room window looking down onto the courtyard, the outside dining space. (I need to explain the close-up feature of the camera. All the people that I asked to take our pic never zoomed in. Are they uncomfortable with the big camera?) Ours was their largest unit. We had two large bedrooms with en-suite baths and a nice sized living-dining-room/kitchen.

I enjoyed our time in the mountains. It was a surprise to hear nothing but the whirring of the cicadas. And I like my attic room with its tall ceilings, beams-and-slats, wooden shutters. (It reminded me of our house in Calabria, me lying awake in bed looking up at the ceiling. And the twin beds certainly stirred the old synapse awake.) The shutters stayed shut all day to keep out the blistering sun, but at night I kept them partially opened to let in the cool night breezes. (I really liked the mechanism that, when open, kept them flush with the outside walls.)

According to Ashley, the third floor was where the family, that owned the house, lived. I find that odd, because the more common arrangement is that the animals are housed on the first floor and the family lives on the second floor. (The only thing I can think of is that it’s a huge house and may have had more than one family living in it. And that the owners chose to live as far away as possible from the smell of the animals.)

We flew into Bologna thinking that it would be a shorter ride to Fossombrone than driving from Rome. Distance wise it is shorter, but we totally forgot about ferragosto and beach traffic. Two weeks ago, it took us four hours to get to Earle-and-Suzanne’s and today it took us five hours to get back to Bologna. This time we hit all the traffic going home after the August 15 holiday. (It should have been a 2 hour drive.)

We also flew into Bologna knowing that we would have a day there to walk around, visit our favorite restaurant, and visit our favorite cheese and salami store. (The food in the Emilia Romagna region is worth going out of one’s way for.) This time there was an added treat. They are repairing the weather damage to exterior of the cathedral and for 3 euros, you can climb the scaffolding to the top and see the city from on-high.

The shot is of the Neptune Fountain in the north western section of the piazza.

The front of the cathedral has no fancy marble facade. The Reformation put an end to the steady stream of cash and the cathedral was left unfinished. It’s amazing to realize that the Reformation destroyed the economy that the Catholic Church had created. (It’s always presented as a theological threat and never explained as the trigger that ended the reign of a corporate giant. I guess Martin Luther didn’t believe in “too big to fail”.)

One of the main reasons we flew into and out of Bologna was because we wanted to eat at Ristorante Alice. We had eaten here three/four years ago and really liked it, so we were determined to get back to it. (I kept reminding Rose that the restaurant may not be there. After all, our favorite enoteca was gone. We resigned ourselves to that loss and had a glass of Sangiovese at a tourist joint.)

The things we remembered about ristorante alice were the antipasti, the wheel of cheese, and the pasta. Rose had kept the phone number, so I called and made reservations for 8:00. (Italians are just getting dressed to go out at 8:00, we were at the restaurant ready to eat. Whenever we go out to dinner, we are always the first to arrive.)

The restaurant is in the old city – via d’Azeglio – and its outside tables are under one of Bologna’s many porticos. The streets of the old city are lined with these beautiful and practical overhangs. Some are plain and some decorated with frescoes. However, all keep the sun off your head and the rain off your clothes. (In the area of town with Bulgari, Prada, Bottega Veneta, Armani, the porticoes are covered with frescoes.)

We began with the antipasti and the waiter brought out three – grilled zucchini, eggplant, and chick-peas in a balsamic reduction. We just kept smacking out lips and I complained about there being only three. Rose told me to just hold on and the rest would come out slowly. And they did. There was grilled zucchini, buffalo mozzarella, chickpeas in a balsamic reduction, grilled eggplant, roasted peppers, cabbage, dry sausage and prosciutto, roasted turkey with potato dumplings, Borlotti beans with tomatoes, and frittata topped with tomato sauce. We then decided to have a primi piatti, Derrick and I ordered the home-made fettuccini with porcini mushrooms. Rose ordered the ziti with a tomato sauce. She complained about the fact that once again she had missed out on getting the really good pasta. And she had. (The problem was that it was way too much food. I’m not used to eating three full meals a day. One thing about going home is that I will be able to get back to a more restrained eating regiment.)

last entry – le marche 2012

The read this series in chronological order,
click on the category title – le Marche-12 – on the right.

I’ve always wanted to steal lines from John Denver’s Leaving on a Jet Plane and I finally got the opportunity. (I took the shot from the scaffolding covering the front of the Bologna cathedral.)

At 4:30 in the morning even the tourist-packed, under-renovation airport in Bologna is empty. I was the second person through security.

The story of the return trip happened at the airport in Frankfurt. I was one of the first to board the US Airways flight to Philadelphia, so I’m sitting there across the tarmac from an EL AL plane. The entire ground around the plane was roped off and there was a police vehicle at each corner and an armed guard patrolling the perimeter. (The guard had an Uzi strapped across his chest.) Any airport worker coming into the roped-off area was frisked with a metal detector; the perimeter was so secure nothing was allowed to breach it without a full body inspection. There were two layers of security that workers had to maneuver around – the outside layer with the police cars and guards, the inner layer with about 10 supervisors. The police and guards kept people from coming in, the supervisors managed anyone inside the security zone. I don’t know if this is standard-operating-procedure for any and all EL AL planes, or if this only happens in Germany. (I’ve never been on the tarmac next to an Israeli plane before.) I watched for almost 45 minutes and all movements were scrutinized and recorded. Yes, the supervisors had clip boards and made marks every 10/15 minutes.

The trip home, compared to the trip there, was uneventful. (My conclusion is don’t book a trip that has me going through three different airports.)

not leaving on a jet planeprologue – le marche 2013

This will serve as the prologue for the journal entries of the 2013 trip to Le Marche.

It’s early June and I’m exactly two months away from leaving for Rome, but I want to tell the story of the horror that is booking through Alitalia.

Back in October, we booked three seats from Toronto to Rome to Ancona. We would be flying Alitalia all the way. But, the tickets were booked through Delta. (We were willing to drive to Toronto so that we could fly into Ancona.) We’ve been experimenting with flying into smaller cities to see if we can make the trip to Isola di Fano shorter and easier. Last year, we flew into Bologna but that became an experience we never want to repeat. Unknown to us foreigners, Bologna is the entry point for vacationers going to the Adriatic beaches. First it took us 4 hours to get through the rent-a-car line and then a trip that should have taken an hour-and-a-half took us 5 because of beach traffic between Bologna and Rimini. For this year we settled on Ancona, believing that we would not hit beach traffic.

Ticketing was a bit difficult, but the Delta agent got us seats and just asked that we check with Alitalia to confirm the seats between Rome and Ancona. By the end of November we had all our seats. (I was a bit anxious, just because it had been a lot of work to get the tickets. And in Kaua’i we agreed to touch base with Delta and make sure everything was on track for the August trip.) Last week, Rose got a phone call saying that the Rome – Ancona leg of the trip had been cancelled by Alitalia. The next couple of days were horrible. She called Delta repeatedly, but they had no access to Alitalia’s new partner for flights between Rome and Ancona. Alitalia would not help, insisting that the ticket was booked through Delta and therefore Delta was obligated to fix the problem. (I even spent a couple of hours at the Pittsburgh airport with an agent to see if she could help. Nothing!) Delta could not get seats from Alitalia, and Alitalia would not let us book on its new partner. (We had already booked a rent-a-car at the Ancona airport. We had already booked hotel rooms for the Saturday before the trip home.) Alitalia refused to help in anyway shape or form and no one at Delta knew how to get to Alitalia. Delta’s option was to refund the ticket.

After much cursing and swearing, we agreed that we would not win against Alitalia and that we had to re-group and figure out how to minimize our financial losses. Rose came up with an absolutely elegant solution. She re-booked the three seats through Delta. I’m flying from Pittsburgh to Detroit, meeting up with Rose and Derrick in Detroit and then fly on to Rome. The return is the same. So we don’t have to drive to Toronto, pay airport parking for two weeks and then drive home. In Rome we will pick up a car and drive the 3 hours to Isola di Fano.

marcia francescana1st entry – le marche 2013

Last summer we walked into this church in Pesaro and taped to the podium was this wonderful poster – Tu sei bellezza – announcing the pilgrimage from Loreto to Assisi. When I got home and did some research, I found that the walk is an annual event sponsored by the Frati Minori d’Italia – Franciscan Brothers of Italy. The poster is what I was amazed by – its design, its concept, its colors, its use of the Gothic Annunciation to frame the title – Tu sei bellezza – You are beauty. Every year in late July, early August the pilgrimage goes from a religious center in central Italy to Assisi. Given that the 2012 walk went from Loreto to Assisi, using Mary in the poster was correct, consistent and celebratory. The designer of the poster cropped the figure of the Virgin from the altar piece – Annunciation with St. Margaret and St. Ansanus – by the Italian Gothic artists Simone Martini and Lippo Memmi. The poster is built around the cropped image of the reluctant young woman receiving Gabriel’s announcement in her study. The altarpiece has the following words coming out of Gabriel’s mouth – Ava gratia plena Dominus tecum (Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with thee).

This year’s poster announces Chi Crede Cammina – Who Believes, Walks. It features two figures, a young person and a Friar with back-packs, walking on shallow water. In its Italian incarnation the title is all about alliteration. Each word begins with a hard c sound. (BTW, the titles of both the 2012 and 2013 posters use a 6 syllable phrase. Tu sei bellezza is six syllables, Chi crede cammina is six syllables.)

This post is really about the differences between our American approach to religion and the Italians’ view-point. In American, religion is about God and Jesus, superiority, it’s about pointing out others’ faults, it’s about voting against, it’s about Puritan self-righteousness, it’s about the rich being God’s favorites, it’s about suppressing women, it’s about paternalism, it’s white, it’s about social division, it’s about separation, it’s about rejection. It’s not about loving your neighbor, it’s not about taking care of the poor, it’s not about contemplation, it’s not about prayer, it’s not about self-sacrifice, it’s not about ritual, it’s not about holiness, it’s not about Mary, it’s not about Joseph, it’s not about the saints. And it’s certainly not about art. As a matter of fact art and artists are viewed as anti-religion in America.

The Frati Minori are hiring some amazing artists to create art that will publicize the annual pilgrimage. American churches use artists to blow up images of fetuses that are carried in rallies. Posters are homemade and announce doom and gloom or personal hatreds. None of the images of American Christianity are about beauty, inclusiveness, humanity, self-sacrifice, self-reflection.

on a windowsill, in ferrara2nd entry – le marche 2013

This is a first – I’ve already written a prologue and two posts for the journal le marche 2013  and I haven’t even left Pittsburgh.

I was watering earlier and when I got to the Mandevillas all wrapped around the Magdalena statue, I had to get the camera. (The sculpture is Alfonso Iannelli a southern Italian immigrant who at 10 years old moved with his family from eastern Campania to the windy city. He worked with Frank Lloyd Wright creating many of the Sprite statues, but Wright never acknowledged Iannelli’s contribution.) The hair, the hair-band, the braids, the vines, the green, the cement, the discreet gesture, the turned head, the lip-stick red trumpet.

The image on the right is all about using a lens made for landscapes to shoot closeup. I discovered this in Maine. Mac and I had been out walking the shoreline in Portland and we headed up to the museum. When we got there, I realized all I had with me was the 12-24 mm lens. In statuary hall, I started getting right up to the pieces and found that the wide-angle gave me great images when I shot real close.

If this post is about technical issues and throwing around a dead architect’s name, then why the reference to the Renaissance city of Ferrara? · · · It was August 14, 2011. We were on our third day in this left-leaning, Emilia-Romagna jewel and walking, in the meager shade, to the museum. And there behind wrought iron posts, on a windowsill littered with dirt, was a single Mandevilla – the image on the left. Of course I stopped the trek and shot the lone plant jailed behind rusting bars. (I had bought Mandevillas for the first time that summer and seeing them in Ferrara was a glimpse of home. I’ve planted them every year since.) It always surprises me to see plants in Italy that I grow in my own back-yard. I’m surprised because I keep thinking that the fauna and flora of Italy should be different than what we have in Western Pennsylvania.

The Mandevillas have now become harbingers of my trip to Italy and from the day I plant them, I begin a count-down to the date I leave. (I’ll have to be more conscientious and protective of this harbinger. Remember, I forgot all about the Snowdrops, the harbingers of spring, when the flower-bed on the side-yard was ripped out.)

Next week at this time I should be on plane heading for Rome.

Part One – Not Leaving on a Jetplane3rd entry – le marche 2013

I began Friday, August 2 by going into work. It was a half-day for everyone and there were items that I was in charge of at the morning meeting. Got home by noon, had a quick lunch and got ready to leave. (Dan and Ellen drove me to the airport.) And given that I like going early, I got to the gate two hours before departure. We boarded on time and then began the nightmare. First, the plane had hit a bird on its way from Detroit and that residue had to be cleaned; next we were over-weight and two airline employees had to get off; then we pull away from the gate only to wait on the tarmac for 45 minutes; by this time the couple behind me who had been on the phone to the airline trying to figure out if they were going to make their connection in Detroit, when it was obvious that they had missed the connection, decided that they would rather remain in Pittsburgh than overnight in Detroit; we went back to the gate to let them off. It was now 4:30, an hour delayed. The flying time was only 38 minutes, but we had to get in the air before that applied.

It was 4:55 before we were in the air. I got off in Detroit at 5:45, and began my sprint to terminal A. (Terminal A is the opposite end of the airport. The whole wait-time I had been in contact with Rose and the were just as anxious because we were going to have to deal with the consequences of my not making the Rome flight.) I literally ran the whole way and got to the gate by 6:00. The lounge was empty, and they had to special open the door into the jet-way. I got to my seat with 10 minutes to spare. (As a sat down the thought of my luggage kept floating through my head. Did it make it onto the plane? If it didn’t how was I going to retrieve it? Was I going to have to drive into Rome on Sunday?) The plane to Rome was this luxurious, huge thing so at least the flight was going to be comfortable.

We got to Rome, the line through customs wasn’t too annoying, my bag was at Baggage Claim, and because we got to the rent-a-car before the crowd, we got our Punta and were on our way by 10:00.

Part Two – Todi and Tavola Calda

The original plans for this trip were to fly into Ancona, but those fell apart and we were back to driving from Rome to Earle-and-Suzanne’s. Driving out of Rome is like driving out of any modern metropolis. Driving time was three-and-a-half hours and we weren’t scheduled to have access to the house until 4:00. We kept debating how to stretch the time. We settled on stopping in Todi for lunch. We like Todi.

We got off the highway and made out way up the mountain to beautiful Todi. (The GPS is totally annoying as it keeps repeating – Recalculating, recalculating …) We actually go in to see the inside of the famous church outside the walls of the ancient city. (The last time we were here, the church was closed and a couple from the UK took our picture sitting on the wall outside the church.)

Parking is always a problem in the hill-towns, and we were practically outside the walls before we found a spot. As Rose and Derrick were negotiating the parking machine, the owner of the restaurant came out to tell us that on Saturday parking was free between 1 and 4. I looked at the place he came out of and decided that we needed to go in there with the locals and have lunch. It was a great first meal.

the morning rhythms4th entry – le marche 2013

This year the farmers from up the road are running two tractors. Both the old farmer and his son are plowing. Last year one plowed while the other spread manure. This year, the manure was all spread when we got here. Earle mentioned that they have been plowing every day for the last two weeks. And they are plowing the fields around Earle-and-Suzanne’s. In the morning they are outside the the kitchen window. They begin at sunrise, and go till about 11:00. They will begin again around 5:00. (I want to ask some questions – what is the family’s name, why are they running two tractors, given that they leave behind huge lumps of earth, will they re-plow when it’s time to plant, what is in line for planting, and who do they sell the harvest to?)

Answers

The family name is Finocchi. The old man is the father and his name is Fausto;
the younger man is his son and his name is Fabrizio.
They will re-plow in the spring before planting. (OMG, do all that plowing again!)
The sunflowers are planted every four to five years and only the heads are harvested;
the stalks are plowed under to replenish the soil.
The farmers in the valley belong to a farming co-operative based in Isola di Fano.

Also, this year the region is much greener. Last year it all looked and felt dry and dusty, parched. And this summer that desert feel is gone. They had a wet winter and the water table is much higher. The Metauro has water in it. (Last year the river bed was wet with puddles here and there.) The garden is green; the oleander is tall and full of flowers; the lavender is a rich gray and sprouting blue plumes; the oak trees are dense and a deep green.

the market in fossombrone5th entry – le marche 2013

Monday is market day in Fossombrone. And the first 5 images in the header slide-show are from the there. (The five images are: olives, zucchini flowers, hot peppers, tomatoes, and Borlotti beans. And my favorite is the zucchini flowers. Rose asked me if I wanted to cook them and I passed. If next week they have them, I’ll buy them and make fritters.) The image on this post is the tray, from one of the non-food vendors, brimming with all the trinkets/charms available to string into a necklace.

lunch on the veranda6th entry – le marche 2013

For the first time in 3 years, we sat and had lunch on the veranda. (In the past, lunch was a pick-up on our way to somewhere. Many times it was something we bought at the Co-ops and then ate when we got to the next town. Most of these experiences satisfied hunger. The quality of the food was sub-par. The only good experience was last year in San Lorenzo in Campo when we met all those great people. The shop-keeper introduced us to Visner and he even uncorked a bottle of wine for us to take away.)

We had bought this great cheese at the market and lunch gave us a change to eat it slowly and with a glass of wine. The table has on it left-to-right – bread, sopressata and prosciutto, wine, sliced cucumbers, ricotta, and various pecorino cheeses. It was totally relaxing to sit and eat and know that we could still get to an outing. (After lunch we went to Monestario Fonte Avellana – an amazing place.)

Today, there will be three separate postings.
– lunch
– Fonte Avellana
– after dinner conversation with Earle-and-Suzanne

eremo di fonte avellana6th entry – le marche 2013

The Monastery of Fonte Avellana has a checkered history. There were periods when it had a notorious reputation. Today is boasts a library full of ancient manuscripts that the monks diligently copied, wrote and acquired.

It is a sprawling complex in an isolated wooded valley at the feet of Mt. Catria (elev. 5,600 feet above sea level) The monastery was founded in 980. Dante, who stayed here for a while, mentions it in the 21st canto of Paradiso.

Today, the monastery is a shadow of its former self. A community that at one time numbered a couple of hundred is now down to under 20. However, the Italian, Catholic tourist industry has stepped in and the monastery has become a pilgrimage site. The grounds were crawling with people who had just had lunch in the refectory and were waiting out the clock, to getting back on their tour bus, at the picnic tables that littered the visitors area in front of the monastery gift-shop.

The image on the right is of the window in the small refectory. All the windows in the chapter house and chapel are modern stained-glass and beautiful.

under the pergola6th entry – le marche 2013

This has become the signature picture of each of our stays here at Earle-and-Suzanne’s.

We had an almost vegetarian meal except for the porchetta – rolled pork seasoned with wild fennel and garlic. It’s a local preparation and very popular. (I discovered the rind, baked to hardness and smothered with seasoning.)

Earle joined us for a glass of wine and began talking about his trip to Puglia. I suspected that it was connected to his interest in restoring some ruin. And sure enough he told us that they are close to sealing a deal to buy and restore and four-cone trulli. These are the farmhouses of Puglia, where the itinerant farmers lived and worked the fields for the padrone. They are unique to Puglia and their cone roofs are famous. They will restore it and rent it out much like they do the house here in Le Marche.

We will be one of their first renters.

through a medieval arch7th entry – le marche 2013

Today we decided to venture close to home and go looking for the pecorino cheese cured in a hole in the ground. Cartoceto was our destination.

We had never been to this area and I kept thinking that it would be nothing like our little corner of Le Marche. And again the idea that Le Marche is really found off the main roads proved true. (I kept thinking that nothing off the SP-78 could be worthwhile and yet today was wonderful.)

Cartoceto is another hill-town and on the ridge. This area of Le Marche is about owning the hill-tops and leaving the valleys to the farmers. (Our area is about owning the valley, because that’s where the Metauro runs, and leaving the sides of the valley to the farmers. Here the water of the Metauro is the currency of power.) What I liked best about Cartoceto is that across the valley was its cemetery. The town’s windows look out onto the valley and onto the cemetery on the opposite ridge. (Aprigliano has the same set up. Looking south-east, the Apriglanese look onto the cemetery.) In the image, the cemetery is at the top of the ridge on the left. We drove there hoping to take a picture of Cartoceto from the opposite ridge, but the cemetery was a walled enclosure with no openings

i girasoli8th entry – le marche 2013

This year the sunflowers – girasoli – are everywhere. Earle said that they are more of a replenishing crop than a cash crop. The heads are harvested and the stalks plowed back into the ground.

We stopped in a field of sunflowers outside Todi and then yesterday on our way home, we saw a field with yellow heads above Isola di Fano and stopped. Unless the plants are young and you are shooting them as they reach for the sun, they are not interesting. So, I’m looking for a field of recently bloomed plants and a field I can get to where the flowers are facing me. (The Italian word – girasole – means turns to follow the sun. I need to find a field where they are turning and looking at me.)

la madonna della misericordia9th entry – le marche 2013

We went south specifically to see this painting. It’s in the cathedral in San Ginesio.

We walked into this dark church and are looking everywhere, and I spot it behind the altar. We start taking pics, but it’s a weird angle, so I go up the gate and find that the lock is not closed. Derrick and I open the gate and walk into the monks’ stalls and now we’re shooting the painting right on. Don’t you know it, this pretend priest comes in and at first says nothing and then goes off yelling at us. (He screamed something about an alarm going off.) We played the tourist card and left. But I got the shot.

When we get back to Isola di Fano, I’ll add more info about the painting. (The connection here at the hotel is sporadic and I’m amazed it stayed on long enough for me to do this post.) Tomorrow on our way back, we are stopping at another small town to see another rendering of La Madonna della Misericordia – Our Lady of Mercy. It’s a new awareness learning the word misericordia, because it sounds like another word in a famous Italian curse – porca miseria. I grew up listening to the old Italians cursing, and to re-imagine the new word as connected to Mary saving people from the Black Plague, and not to remember the cursing is work.

This particular rendering has a name – Madonna del Populo – by Pietro Alemanno; it is signed and dated 1485.

on the border with Abruzzi10th entry – le marche 2013

Ascoli Piceno has the same problem as Reggio di Calabria. Everyone refers to these two cities by the first part of the name.

Also, the people at the hotel kept saying Ascoli with the emphasis on the first syllable. And this morning, two other guests were talking about Offida again putting the emphasis on the first syllable and it dawned on me, that I’ve been pronouncing the words wrong. Also, that once you say the word with the emphasis on the first syllable, there is no need for a second consonant sound at the end. (I’ve been wanting to spell Orvieto and Loreto with double t’s.) Now I understand that the double consonant at the end of the word is the clue to changing the emphasis from the first to the last syllable. The example is Abruzzi. The emphasis is on the last syllable. (It’s taken my a long time to figure this out, but then I’m finally using Italian enough to begin to relearn the language.)

American English generally puts the emphasis on the last syllable. This tends to slow the language down. Italian with its emphasis at the beginning or the word allows for a much faster speaking speed, because you don’t stop to emphasis the ending, rather you are speeding up and onto the next word.

The images is of the top of one of the two matching fountains in the Piazza del Duomo. (An inland city dreaming of sea-horses and fish?)

piazza del popolo11th entry – le marche 2013

Ascoli’s Piazza del Popolo is both beautiful and famous. It’s one of a few main piazzas with large, flat paving-stones rather than the more common single stone to make the flooring. One guide-books refers to it as Le Marche’s living-room.

In one corner is the famous Caffè Meletti. The Caffè opened in 1904 and still has period decor. We went in last night and ordered their famous Anice. I like it way better than the Sambuca, because it’s more herby and less sweet. My goal once I get back home is to figure out where I can buy the Meletti Anice.

I really liked Ascoli and would gladly go back, I just have to figure out how to identify a decent place to eat, because the suggestions from both the hotel and the people online were not very good. (I suspect the hotel people were pushing restaurants that they had a connection with and the online people are too jaded to recognize a good restaurant.)

red sky at night … shepherds’ delight12th entry – le marche 2013

For the first time in 3 years it rained – unbelievable!! After the rain, the sky was a wonder and I shot it from my bedroom window and then I ran up the road and just shot and shot. The red is the sunset hitting the clouds; the horizon is the hilltops looking south-east. I brought the tripod thinking I would shoot the full moon, but I missed it, (Tonight there’s the sliver of a new moon.) but never expected to shoot the night sky after a rain.

We had spend two days down south and coming back north, it was great to have rain and to see the northern sky after such and unusual disturbance. Fausto Finocchi started to plow, but left when the thunder-gods began to argue. All the soil, in fields around us, has been turned over; we live in an undulating landscape of earth tones.

We had supper on the porch and watched the sky redden. I had to run and shoot it. (The last time i shot a sky this red was two years ago in December in Sault Ste Marie.)

the second madonna13th entry – le marche 2013

Sarnano is a small town in the foothills of the Sibillini the mystic mountains. (The dark-green fungal circles marking the grassy hillside are where the goat-footed witches come to dance at midnight. And from caves in the craggy mountains clairvoyant sibyls delivered prophecies in ancient times. Countless female-centred cults held sway in these mountains at one time or another, and one modern academic points out that, viewed from the air, seven ancient churches scattered across the Sibillini mountaintops replicate the arrangement of the stars in the constellation Venus. Witches, soothsayers, devils, goblins. How could there not be such things in such an otherworldly landscape?)

The medieval borgo with its narrow, steep streets culminates in a silent piazza at the top. There in a small church is a second Madonna della Misericordia by Pietro Alemanno. The central figure is very similar to the one in San Ginesio, but her robe covers fewer people. (It’s too bad that the painting is not displayed as well as the one in San Ginesio. In front of the painting is a smaller one of the crucifixion. Apparently this smaller piece is paraded through the old town on feat days.) In the crypt are two frescoes attributed to Alemanno. (On the pews were the weekly missals, the cover was Alemanno’s madonna cleaned up and minus the smaller crucifixion. Rose borrowed one to take back to Michigan.)

Sarnano had Wi-Fi signs all through the old borgo. It like Gubbio gives anyone in the old town access. I guess it’s the least they can do for anyone still willing to live in its steep, stone paved alleys.

tomatoes and fresh mozzarella14th entry – le marche 2013

The heat spell may have broken. We can only hope. We even have the windows open, there’s a breeze and the sun is, at times, hidden by huge white clouds. (When the heat and sun reign, the house is all shut and you live in the dark. Not something I really mind, but Rose has a very hard time with the enclosed atmosphere.)

One of the things that I like about staying here is that we can eat at our own pace and we can eat what we want. The Italian schedule of eating lunch before 1:00, because all restaurants close for the afternoon, and supper after 8:00, when the heat is gone, is hard to adapt to when you are a tourist and not used to the rhythms. We usually get to a place close to 1:00 and it’s a mad rush finding somewhere for lunch. And in Ascoli, the two places we ate at were disappointing.

young, daring and stupid15th entry – le marche 2013

I walked down the hill, because I want to shoot Earle-and-Suzanne’s and the Finocchi’s farm and land to try and capture the vastness of the mountain-side that these two properties sit on. However, a totally different image became the highlight of the afternoon descent. The image on the right happened after I had shot the mountain-side and was on the provincial road. (At 2:00 in the afternoon, no Italian would be caught dead outside. It’s too sunny and too hot. But today there was a nice breeze, so I figured I could try and walk. And I also figured it would be safe walking the busy road, because everyone would be home hiding from the sun and heat.)

I’m on the provincial road and listening for traffic so that I can make sure to be off the road when the cars speed by. I hear a motorcycle and as it comes around the bend I see a young man on a Vespa with no helmet, standing up, arms extended, yelling and screaming for joy while speeding down the road. I got the camera and shot. Wasn’t able to get a clear image as he raced by, hence the blurred one on the right. (He looks a lot like Christian. My nephew wouldn’t do anything like this, would he?)

the house and the fields at sunset16th entry – le marche 2013

We ate under the pergola. Dinner was a tomato salad with lots of oily juice to mop up, and a Borlotti beans salad. We had lunch on the porch and supper on the upper terrace. Because the temperature had actually gone down we were able to sit and watch the sun set. The various shades of rust and brown are just comforting and they make the contrasting greens vibrant.

Each year I learn something new, this year I’m learning about fagioli Borlotti. (I have a built in prejudice against beans. In my family beans were associated with poor people and people who lived on farms, not people who lived the the medieval borghi that the Perri family called home in Aprigliano.) We’ve bought a kilo at the farmers’ market in Fossombrone and another at the market in Fano. Last night Rose flavored the beans with a soft sausage from Sarnano. The reason I like them is that they have a soft skin and no bean flavor.

I’m shooting from the upper terrace. The chimney and the clay roof-tiles are on the entrance to Earle-and-Suzanne’s, the second story shutters are on the bedroom Rose and Derrick use, and beyond is the clay hill-side of plowed earth.

the rich get richer17th entry – le marche 2013

Today we traveled to Sassocorvaro in the Urbino province. To get there, you take the road to Urbino and keep following it west into the mountains. The drive along the provincial roads was amazing, everything from Fossombrone to Urbino is new and wonderfully paved and designed. The road down to Ascoli was equally well maintained.

I began to think about legacies. Urbino was a Renaissance center and here we are all these years later and it still is a jewel. Pittsburgh is no longer one of the three corporate centers in America, but we benefit from the legacy of the time it was. The road to Urbino is new, modern and well maintained. (It’s too bad that the roads down south where there in no Renaissance legacy are still narrow, not well marked and full of 90 degree turns.)

Sassocorvaro is a hilltop town above the reservoir in the above pic. It’s a busy place; they were setting up for some kind of festival tonight and the town is full of small restaurants and tourist favoring shops. We seem to be following a couple from Milan the whole time we were in the hill-town. At one point they were talking to an old resident who was explaining where he lived as a young boy. He lived two streets down the mountain-side. (The above pic is of Mercatale, the town at the bottom of the mountain and next to the reservoir created on the Foglia River.)

We had a picnic lunch at a park beside the reservoir and then had a cold coffee at the park restaurant. Nine pine trees were integrated into the restaurant’s interior. The tree trunks were part of the restaurant decor.

august moon18th entry – le marche 2013

Dinner was spaghetti with a light fresh-tomato, onion, garlic and hot spice dressing. We then threw fresh arugula on top. (My dad would be making all sorts of comments about the Americani and how they have no regard for food traditions. Green leaves on top of spaghetti, NO!) We saw the arugula on top of pasta at the restaurant with the pine trees growing in the dining room.

Given that it was a pleasant night we stayed longer under the pergola, long enough for the new moon to become visible in the night sky. We began talking about the next trip that is planned for September 2014. What will be fresh at that time of year? The tomatoes will probably be done, and so will the Borlotti beans. Will we be eating lots of squash, potatoes, cabbage and root vegetables? I kept suggesting that there may still be summer vegetables given the different climate. Don’t think I convinced anyone.

Regardless of the fresh vegetable, it will be nice to be here when the weather is cooler and the mobs are home.

we only need a few tomatoes19th entry – le marche 2013

Today was market day in Fossombrone and we went expecting to buy some tomatoes for salad. Almost $80 later, we came out with bread, cheese and more cheese, 4 kilos of Borlotti beans, honey, half a kilo of hazelnuts, and a dozen cucumbers. (Derrick is taking the 4 kilos of Borlotti back to Michigan. This time he is leaving them in the shell and packing them in zip-lock bags. I’m always amazed customs doesn’t seize the various products they bring home.)

Rose and Derrick love the market and I can take pictures of all the various stalls. Today, the cut flowers vendor had some beautiful lavender.

Suzanne was up and telling us that for some reason there are many more people in Fossombrone this August. She suspects that children came home to visit family rather than head to the beach. (Last year the are was almost deserted. Today the parking was very busy and the market was full of people.)

the ridge opposite us20th entry – le marche 2013

After our expensive market trip, we decided to have lunch on the veranda and then go driving along the north-west ridge of the valley. (The Metauro River is at the bottom of the valley. And Earle-and-Suzanne’s is on the south-east slope.)

We began at San Ippolito another of the Medieval borgo that spires off the ridge. From San Ippolito, using the telescopic lens, I was able to see back to our side of the ridge and make out the Finocchi farm. Next we drove down the provincial road and stopped at Sorbolongo a small borgo that is famous for its snail festival. The valley on the other side is rolling hills and plowed fields, just like our side. Each borgo is situated atop a promontory and looks out at the fields below. The next Medieval fortress was Barchi and the image on the right is the entrance to the old borgo. On either side of the gate are two columns of wicker baskets. Last night they had a festival and these are left from then. In the old town saw a house I would be willing to live in. The house was totally restored, overlooking the valley and the best feature was its walled-in garden. My idea of a house. The garden was like a courtyard well sealed from the world.

The last borgo on the tour was Orciano di Pesaro. It had a modern plaza that was part of the rope climbing museum.

On our way back I wanted to stop at a convent outside of Fratte Rosa, but the GPS is programmed to take us the shortest route and it always messes us up at Fratte Rosa. The white-road back to Earle-and-Suzanne’s was over the hills and through the woods, so we missed the convent.

the sounds of silence21st entry – le marche 2013

The first year here everything was new. Last year we explored the area. This year most of the novelty and drive to tourist are gone. We plan market trips and grocery store outings instead. (I guess that happens when you’re familiar with your surroundings. The day-to-day activities become the ordinary.) The following post is a reflection.

I’ve been trying to figure out why I like being here at Cà le cerque. Is it’s location at the top of a hill, the farm-land that surrounds it, the lack of city noises? The answer is the remoteness of it all. (In Israel, when we were in the Jordanian desert, I understood the stories of the prophets’ finding Yahweh in the desert and in the desert wind.) Here I understand why all the monasteries are in the mountains, why all the holy places are up in the mountains. Guess in ancient lore the sacred and the profane chose to live in the emptiness.

Just like Ferrara made me aware of traffic noise by its absence, Cà le cerque makes me aware of all the ambient noises – TV commercials, iPod music, children, elevators, air-conditioners, humming laptops, phone rings, microwave dings, car radios, garbage trucks, highway rumblings – I live with. Here the cicadas dominate. Their mating calls fill the silence.

After a day of touristing, we come back the outside world is forgotten. I stop thinking about the mobs at the Fano market, the demons speeding the provincial road. The earth tones, the oak trees, the grapevines block all the noises from memory.

the town of ugly22nd entry – le marche 2013

Last year we tried to go into the Medieval town in Piobbico – the town of the ugly people – and we got stuck on the narrow road that leads into the borgo and we had to back out carefully making our way out. The road was very narrow, there were cars parked on the right and a fortress wall lined the left side. It was a miserable experience. This year we decided to go back for a caffè shakerato – a cold espresso with sugar syrup and ice shaken in a Martini tumbler and poured into a long stem glass – at our favorite bar. (The young woman asked if we wanted it from the machine or made a mano – done by hand. Obviously we asked that she do it by hand as we watched. She got three low glasses, added ice and a shot of sugar-syrup and brewed the first espresso. She threw the espresso into the glass with the ice and syrup, shoved the glass into the mixer tumbler and vigorously shook it. Then using the sieve on the mixer, she poured the concoction into this elegant glass. It was 1.40 euros.)

After our caffè shakerato, we headed up to the old town. It’s a 15 century fortress complete with ducal palace that Holy Mother Church appropriated. The entrance into the palace is now a courtyard in front of a large church. The rest of the palace is the property of the historical caretakers. (The image is of the campanile of the fortress chapel.) The small borgo is being retrofitted with sewers. I can see it being a very tony place, full of tourists, in a couple of years.

notte stellata23rd entry – le marche 2013

I like the Italian title for Van Gogh’s painting; it’s the title of the post.

Yesterday on our was to Piobbico, we stopped in Acqualagna. It’s the truffle center of Italy. In late October early November the place and the surrounding hills are over-run with Italians going mushroom hunting. The above was a huge piece of fabric hung above the narrow street. The town itself was unimpressive, (Other years, we were never there in time to see anything open.) but Rose and Derrick found a butcher shop that sold wild-bore sausage and they got some.

It’s Van Gogh’s title, it’s the name of the town, I like those sounds. (Alabama is an American word with all a’s, but none of the interesting consonant combinations. The cq and gn are uniquely Italian.)

craven idols23rd entry – le marche 2013

Everywhere you go in Italy there area idols. Holy Mother Church has legitimized all these by calling them saints, but they are statues of things people idolize and worship.

This morning we went to the restored little hill-town of Torricella di Fossombrone. (Last night the GPS took us all the way down to Pergola, 30 kilometers away, because down there is an official neighborhood called Torricella. When we asked the women, sitting around on the benches outside their homes, if this was the Torricella that had been all restored, they told us that we were looking for Torricella di Fossombrone. Rose had seen the blue sign on our way, close to Earle-and-Suzanne’s, but her suggestion was ignored in favor of the technology.) Sure enough the blue sign led us to the restored fourteen century hamlet.

The reason for the titles is because once again, while trying to do something related to a church, we ran into a mean old man. First the fool in San Ginesio who left the gate open and then yelled at us for going into the sanctuary, today’s mean old man told me that yes he had the key to the church of San Giorgio, but he didn’t give it out. What the hell were we going to do, steal their craven idols? He then condescendingly suggested that I take pictures of the outside of the hamlet. Being a good tourist is hard when you want to give someone the finger.

Meanwhile one of the women that was there with the mean old man was very helpful, telling us how the residents had all worked together to restore the houses. (It’s been a 30 year project.)

arnaldo pomodoro’s sfera grande24th entry – le marche 2013

Pesaro’s main street goes from the old city center down to the Adriatic. At the terminus on the beach-front, the city put this huge bronze sculpture, the image on the right, which has taken on the name of the artist, rather than the name of the piece. This is all helped by the fact that the sculpture’s last name is the Italian word for tomato. Everyone knows and refers to the sculpture not by its name – Sfera Grande – but as il pomodoro – the tomato.

We went to Pesaro to tour Villa Imperiale, the 14th century castle of Francesco Maria Della Rovere, Duke of Urbino. This was a summer-palace/hunting-lodge for the family. The villa and grounds are still privately owned by the Della Rovere family. And the castle is open to the public one day a week during the summer months. The Della Rovere family like all Italian noble families are closely linked to the papacy. And the narrative of the castle is all tied to the story of the papacy in the 14th and 15th centuries. (I think it’s easy to think that Italian nobility, because it is so tied to the Roman Church, is different than all others. Not true. The difference is that women are totally missing from its ranks, unless you count all the Mary substitutes, and the powerful men all wear Cardinal red.) The villa boasts a series of frescoed rooms the last of which is a portrait gallery of the papal court of one of the Della Rovere popes. The walls are littered with men in red hats.

pesaro e urbino25th entry – le marche 2013

Across from il pomodoro we got on a tour-bus to go to Villa Imperiale. It’s my first Renaissance palace. The villa’s grandeur is certainly a faded dream. It’s claim to fame these days are the frescoed rooms.

The image on the right is taken from the second floor terrace of the new villa. The original fortress is the building on the right. Francesco Maria’s wife Leonora build a second villa and attached it to the original. The second villa is about open spaces – courtyards and enclosed gardens.

The tour guide did a running commentary in both Italian and English. The Italian had all the juicy pieces, the English version was the bare facts. In Italian he talked about how Francesco Maria, from the family that ruled Urbino, moved the duchy seat from the Renaissance city on the hill in the middle of Le Marche to the coastal city of Pesaro. And ever since there has been a rivalry between these two towns. (The guide being from Pesaro was pre-disposed to his side of the clashes.) The two cities are certainly the cultural centers for this region of Italy. The other large cities of the region are industrial power-houses with little memory of a time when noble families held sovereign control. (One of Francesco Maria’s brothers, didn’t like the fact that a faction in Urbino rioted against him because he raised taxes, after all he had to keep his court in the style it had become accustomed to. So he arrested the leaders of the group brought them to Pesaro and killed them. It’s a good thing the Tea Party ideologues don’t read history.)

eating fave in august26th entry – le marche 2013

The image is the logo of a group that is re-introducing, into the small hill-town of Fratterosa, the old fava beans of their ancestors. The young man at the stand talked about how the old contadini, who lived on the farms surrounding the hill-top, relied on the fava bean for a large part of their diet. (Sarcastic me told him that all the old contadini had left and gone to America. He did laugh.)

Fratterosa is on the hilltop on the opposite side of the valley. We look out our kitchen window and its church tower silhouettes the horizon. The town is also know for its ceramics and tonight they are having a festival celebrating both the fava and the ceramics. (Where last August 15 we went to the Sagra di Polente, this year we are going to eat fava.)

The title only makes sense if you know that fava is an early spring plant. You plant in the fall and the seeds winter in the ground. They are sprouting by early April and the fava is ready to pick by the end of the month. (I remember trying to find fava in the Strip, in Pittsburgh, in late June and the guy told me, they are an early spring bean. I had forgotten that, because in Sault Ste Marie the beans are ready in June. Well that’s because the ground doesn’t defrost until late May.)

an amazing meal27th entry – le marche 2013

We were supposed to go back to Piobbico for the Sagra di Polente, because we did not know enough about other August 15 events in the area. However, Rose strongly suggested we go visit Fratte Rosa and we got to see the set-up for their Ferragosto/Assumption event. It looked interesting enough that we decided to fore go Piobbico and go up to fair in Fratte Rosa. And we’re all so glad we did. (Tomorrow we leave Earle-and-Suzanne’s and begin our trek home.)

In the afternoon we saw signs for a wine-tasting in a sub-basement. (Rose and Derrick read the sign and knew that it was free.) We also saw the menu for a restaurant that featured fava dishes and rabbit. Derrick announced that he wanted to try the rabbit. (I was skeptical of it all, thinking that it would be like the sagra we went to last year – chaotic and not all that interesting.) The event turned out to be amazing.

We began at the wine-tasting for the Terracruda Vineyard. (They were running late and it was 6:30 before they took their first tour. I was thoroughly impatient and was ready to leave. The young man running the testing was very pretentious, but he proved to know his stuff and was an excellent host. We learned about Aleatico grapes. And ended up buying a 3 bottle pack. We so liked the wines that Rose liked their Facebook page and once we get home, we are going to see if we can buy it in the States.) Next we went to the restaurant advertising the coniglio – rabbit. Rose and I ordered the pasta, Derrick the rabbit. The pasta was great, and I asked Rose if she wanted to share a rabbit and fava. We did, and it was amazing.

We came back all hyped about our experience at the Fratte Rosa Ferragosto festival. Because the whole town was part of the festival, you go to go from booth to booth and see many different things. One booth taught how to make pasta. And because it was spread out throughout the whole town it did not feel crowded or oppressive. The pic is of the three of us eating at one of the many tables throughout the town. (Two kids and a stroller behind Rose and I got Photoshopped out.)

leaving il chiostro28th entry – le marche 2013

Here on a hilltop surrounded by the peaks of the Sibillini, the world of work and responsibilities is far away. This morning we begin our integration back into the rhythms of our day-to-day world. We leave early afternoon and head down to Ancona for the day. We stay overnight and tomorrow we drive down to Rome.

I’ve never been to Ancona. (Frank remembers it from his time here and said the view of the Adriatic from its famous boardwalk is phenomenal.) The hotel, in the center of town, told us we could hang out at the pool while we wait for our rooms to be ready. The integration will be gradual – city, pool, restaurants, tourists.

Tomorrow on our drive to Rome we are stopping at the gardens in Tivoli. There nature has been tamed into ordered gardens and water features. (Did Walt Disney visit Italy before creating his fantasy lands?)

The slide show will also begin to change leaving behind the russets and greens of the valley for the formality of urban life.(The image is of the moon on Ferragosto over the rooftops of Fratte Rosa.)

angels and archangels29th entry – le marche 2013

We got to Rome early and headed over towards the Vatican. We decided to walk Corso Vittorio Emanuele rather than along the Tiber as we did back in 2011. The Vittorio Emanuele bridge that leads into St. Peter’s Square has two columns topped with angels. The image on the right is one of the two angels.

Rome is so unlike any other Italian city. Its wide streets and boulevards were build during the Renaissance and reflect the grandeur of that fabled time. (I believe that what makes this obvious is the size of the city. Rome, Florence and Venice are the three jewels of Renaissance Italy, but Rome is the grandest.) Rome has none of the oppressiveness of the Medieval borgos. It’s airy, full of green spaces and giant sycamores line the banks of the Tiber. The river is no dried-up bed; it’s been dammed and therefore full of water.

We walked through Campo de’ Fiori – the old ghetto – hoping to find a wine bar or restaurant, but Rome is empty of Romans in August and full of foreigners. We ended up in a horrible restaurant where the wine was terrible. The only thing was that it was air conditioned.

saint peter’s left foot30th entry – le marche 2013

It’s been 40 years since I was last in St. Peter’s Square. (I visited during my junior-year-abroad.) Back then, the square was grey, its columns and facades tarnished by soot and age. Also, back then you could walk into the basilica; Michelangelo’s Pietà on the first altar on the right with no glass in front of it.

Today, the square is awash with tourists and security forbids entry into the church without first going through a metal detector and then showing everything in your bag. Also, the thing that amazed me was the brilliance of the white stone columns. In the blue afternoon their white luster radiated off the blazing sun. They are white marble, who knew.

My memory of the colonnade goes back to 1954. My family had come to Rome to secure the documents we needed to travel to Canada. After getting our passports, we went to St. Peter’s. I remember having lunch in the colonnade, its grey pillars a forest sheltering us. After eating, we went into the church and rubbed St. Peter’s foot and prayed for a safe journey. We also brought a souvenir of the statue to give to my grandmother when we got to Canada.

Sixty years later, the square is full of Chinese tourists hiding from the Italian sun under multicolored umbrellas. (Orientals under polka-dotted umbrellas seemed out of place in a Renaissance piazza.) The grey pillars have been cleaned of their memories of southerners looking to leave, looking to find hope in a new land. A land of the British empire, a land antagonistic to their cherished Catholicism.

what i learnedlast entry – le marche 2013

This was my sixth summer in Italy and a bunch of things fell into place. For example, I learned that I:

• am OK with staying in a comfortable house on a remote hill-top
• want to avoid beach resorts especially in August
• like taking naps in the afternoon and avoiding the miserable heat
• like being in a dark house with all the shutters closed
• speak Italian like a native (The little nun in San Ginesio wanted to know where in Italy I was from.)
• can understand what people are saying almost 100% of time
• am OK with asking hotel receptionists and car-rental agents to explain things in English
• know how roundabouts work
• understand many of the Italian road-signs

• need to stay out of the right lane when coming up on a highway exit
  (After the exit is a very short entry lane and drivers tend to be aggressive about pulling into traffic.)

• will see the real Italy when driving on the paved off-roads
• like Meletti Anisette better than Sambuca
• can go into a specialty store and buy extension cords
• can be organized even though the Italians default to laissez faire

in a field of sunflowersepilogue – le marche 2013

This entry is so after the fact. It’s Sunday evening, September 8, three weeks after the trip to Le Marche, but because I want to use the pic on the right, I’m pretending time travel back to Saturday, August 3 …

We’re driving from Rome to Earle-and-Suzanne’s and decide to drive through Todi, one of the towns in Umbria we really like. On the plain below the town, we saw this huge field of sunflowers that still had their yellow petals. We stopped and shot pictures. Rose lifted her iPad and took the image on the right – an old immigrant in a sea of yellow with a sweater complimenting the flower petals.

I’m putting this image in, because it captures the elation, the giddiness of the beginning of the trip. The walking into the field is like a step into the looking glass. We’ve been staying in rural settings the last three years and have never found a field of new sunflowers. It seems that by the time we get here, all we find are mature plants with heads heavy with seeds and ready to harvest. (Found out from Earle that this was a sunflower year, meaning that the crop rotation had come full circle and the farmers were planting sunflowers so that the stalks could get plowed into the soil to replenish the nutrients lost during the last three growing seasons.)

The bookend to this posting is the fact that I left the yellow sweater in the closet in the hotel-room in Ancona. (I never use closets in hotel-rooms, so I never look in them when checking out. In 2009, I left three dress shirts in a hotel closet in Lamezia.) Is the leaving behind part of the sadness, the lethargy of the end of a trip?

affluence is a ghettoepilogue-2 – le marche 2013

When we were in the south, we headed to the Adriatic, to San Benedetto del Tronto hoping to find the Paolo Annibali sculptures along the waterfront. We couldn’t find them. However across the street from the beautiful ocean-front park were two proclamations, scrawled on the white walls of a fancy hotel, exposing the modern condition of isolation-and-sickness through that most virulent of art forms – graffiti.
Some of my countrymen seem to have figured out that affluence is not a gift from God regardless what the Calvinists claim, but a yellow badge that confines the human soul to a gated colony of lepers. And that beauty, as defined by modernity, is more about prosthesis and enhancements than symmetry, elegance and wisdom. (Last summer, the Franciscan Friars proclaimed tu sei bellezza about the Virgin Mary. This summer, in San Benedetto del Tronto, the young anarchists diagnosed beauty’s current condition . . .)

and beauty is sick

The rich are living in ghettos and the supermodels are dieing of beauty.

prada, dior, coach and fendiepilogue-3 – le marche 2013

It’s Saturday, August 17 and we’ve gotten into Rome early with a goal of getting into St. Peter’s and the Vatican Museums. The Hilton bus leaves us off at the Campidoglio and we walked down Corso Vittorio Emanuele towards the river.

We crossed over on the bridge with the angels and headed down to Via della Conciliazione – the grand boulevard leading from the Tiber into St. Peter’s. It’s the connector between the cloister of the Vatican and the open city of Rome. Forget its symbolic significance, in modern times it’s the street where the pilgrims huddle during papal pronouncements, it’s the street with the Pontifica Academia Pro Vita, (Who said the Italians don’t steal from other cultures? So what that it’s one of America’s most cynical ideas? So what that the word pro isn’t in the Italian dictionary?) and it’s a street with the money changers. You want a knock-off handbag, it’s stacked on the paving stones ready for you to buy – no tax, no receipt.

Does anyone really buy these knock-offs? I can understand getting caught in a rain-storm and resorting to buying an umbrella from a street vendor, but what’s the circumstance that gives one permission to buy a knock-off purse?

• My boyfriend’s 14-year old has a Coach bag and I don’t?
• The tag on my Prada fell off and I’m not going out with a naked handbag?
• OMG, Gucci makes a Lady Lock in mustard. None of my friends will have one.
• The handle on my Dior broke and I’m looking for something better … say, a Ferragamo satchel.
• I want to announce on Facebook that I bought a Fendi in Rome on Via Borgognona?

Am I that removed that it’s hard for me to believe someone would actually give their money to buy a cheap repro just so that they can pretend to have a designer handbag? What have we done to women’s minds?

The workers are all Africans making their way into a first-world nation, hoping to secure a place in the new world for their children and grandchildren. The Eastern Europeans head inland to work on farms and as domestics, the Africans head for the cities to manage the bancarelle one finds all over Italy. These new immigrants are at all the farmers markets, all around the major piazzas, the famous museums, the famous fountains, the ancient ruins, the empty churches.