Boxing Day

The blogging now resumes after a long hiatus; last semester, my Master's thesis and four other jobs took precedence.  However, I don't have anything to write.

Troppo da fare

Quick updates and a few pictures before returning to my Master's thesis, which is due in fewer than two weeks.  I have moved into St. Mark's English Church; I manage the apartments there and need to be on site.  I built a new website for the apartments that you can find at florenceholidayapartments.org.  Since the church has a transient congregation, stewardship is lacking.  We are using the apartments to keep in the black, but because of pending restoration projects, we need to find new means for raising funds.

Teaching at the International School and tutoring privately is going well but demanding much more time than I expected. 

In the place of more writing, here are some pictures:

Piazza del Camp in Siena

 The same piazza during the Palio

 Sabre Brigade

 Street in Cascia

 San Agostino in Cascia

 View of Florence

 San Felice in Piazza

Ponte Santa Trinità

Catch Up List

Palio

ISF

Norcia and Cascia

Visitors

Lights out

The power went out yesterday morning, and the electrician and I just now restored it.  In fact, it was the simple matter of switching the main breaker.  Dr. Ewell had told me where to find the two fuse boxes inside lo Stallino e la casa grande, each with a main breaker of its own.  These were all switched on, but not the mother breaker, which I just now found hiding in the external wall side of the Stallino.


While not having electricity for twenty-four hours may sound like an inconvienence, it was lovely.  It rained yesterday afternoon, and I napped with the windows open to the cool air.  At night, the skies cleared, and I built a fire and cooked porkchops and peppers.  Mist breathed in the valleys, and the headlights of the cars that swept across the hillroads formed solid mass that drummed staccato through the trees.  I sat in front of the fire past midnight with Toby and a bottle of Syrah, reading and watching fire from the pit and the silver candle-sticks brought up from the dining room, while over time, their dripping wax gathered in weeping stalactites.  Night birds and tree-frogs sang to me, stars fell overhead, and I bathed in firelight watched the heavens' silent chalice turn.

Outline Done

I have completed an nine-page outline.  For me creating an outline is always harder than actually writing the paper.  I can generate ideas and arguments quickly, but rigidly organizing them so that the logic smoothly cascades from one paragraph to the next is a greater challenge.  If minds were guns, I would be a shotgun, not a rifle.  But now that the outline is done, I am cranking on the writing.  I should have the majority of this thesis knocked out by September.  This fall, I will need to continue to read through the Berenson archive at Villa I Tatti, and what I find can be inserted into the paper to further support my conclusions.  I doubt I will find anything that jeopardizes my argument.

Otherwise, for my birthday tomorrow I am roasting a leg of lamb, and today I am preparing a crust of mustard and rosemary in which I will marinate the lamb overnight.  This is a favorite dishes that reminds me of special events at home: birthdays, Easter, etc.  Tomorrow night may just turn into a Townsend Party: me, red meat, red wine, Otis Redding, and more red wine.  Ah, the pleasure of one's own company.

Piove

The rain is moving over the hills, and the crickets are singing in the grass.  I am finishing my outline and listening to Byzantine chant.  Refilled the damigiana this morning with the maid's husband, who keeps tanks of wine and olive oil in his garage.

I went to Siena the past few days to walk, think, and observe the buzz and flow of the city.

Greeting from Lecchi in Chianti

I began house-sitting last Wednesday.  I met Charles and Addison at the Florence airport and took the car back to their home in the countryside near Lecchi in Chianti.  I spent the week reading for research and pleasure.  I gave myself a haircut and slept a lot.  I feel like a new man.  The house is beautiful, its gardens consummate.  I read on the terrace overlooking the horizon that is full of green hills and empty of people.  When the day cools and shadows fall, I walk through the garden with a glass of Chianti and water the plants.  At night, I work on my thesis and listen to Nancy's LPs.

Friends visited this weekend.  We hiked through the hills and vineyards behind the house and went swimming in the pools near Lecchi.  For dinner we made Bellinis, pureed white peaches and prosecco, and grilled steaks and sword fish.  We drank wine into the night, sitting out on the terrace and watching the night sky rotate above us.  Past midnight, the wild boar bark to each other in the woods and run through the garden.  The dog goes nuts when they're on the property.

There is a bush full of hot peppers that are red and ripe.  I am going to pick and dry them and try to make hot sauce.  I have always wanted to start a hot sauce company.

A Handful of Photos from the Past Months

I've neglected posting enough photos to my blog, so I am adding a few now, including the one of the stuffed cinghale head, Mr. Pope.  Hope y'all enjoy, and if you would like to see more, please check out my albums on Facebook.

Ponte Vecchio looking west at sunset

My street

San Lorenzo

Calcio storico parade

The sun setting behind San Ferdinando

My unit on the dig, The Impregnable Fortress

Spoils

Jack Russels are Jack Russels no matter what language they speak

The Ricasole castello Meleto

My van

The Hog Demon

Guidando

Rain sweeping over Chianti

Break at I Tatti

Studying now at I Tatti, which still maintains much of Berenson's original vision of gentility, otium, and scholarship.  Everyday the fellows gather for a seated lunch, and readers, like me, fend for themselves.  I have been using the Berenson Archive to research Cecil Pinsent's relationship with the Bernard and Mary Berenson, and since the reference librarian, who keeps an eye on everyone using archival materials and books from the special collection, eats with the fellows, I have to give up my documents for an hour and a half each afternoon.  I just finished my sandwhich and drank a few Lilliputian cups of espresso.  I need to get back on the horse after last night, when some friends and I went to the Pitti for the opening of the vinticulture exhibition.  They served copious amounts of wine at the opening, some of them very good, especially after the first two glasses, and afterwards a few friends came over for dinner: fried green tomatoes, salad, eggplant, and pork loin.  We polished off a few more bottles of cold white wine, which I never appreciated until I found myself senza AC.  Try drinking red wine or eating heavy food in Tuscany during the month of July; you will catch a raging case of the meat sweats, often reaching epic proportions.  The night ended with music and dancing in the kitchen, having opened every window and door in the apartment, praying for a cool breeze.

I finally fixed my mosquito net, but the little bastards are still sneaking in somehow.  Very upsetting.

Tomorrow, I leave to house-sit in Lecchi in Chianti until September.  I have been in squirrel mode since Alan left, hording books, articles, and notes, so that I can write the majority of my Master's thesis while I am out in the country.  I am excited about my time in Chianti: me, a five liter damigiana, a epileptic dog named Toby, a garden that needs Burwellesque watering ever other day, and the ghost of Cecil Pinsent.

July in Florence

The dig ended in the middle of June, and I was sad to leave Radda to return to Florence.  One can stay relatively cool throughout the summer in the hills of the Chianti region with their wind, shade, and swimming holes.  In Florence there is no escape.  The stone city bakes day and night; even the breezes in its narrow streets are hot.  The apartment does not have air conditioning; it is too expensive to fit this ancient palazzo with the units and too expensive to run them.  The apartment neither have very good ventilation; its windows open into an inner stone courtyard that emanates heat long past midnight.  To the joy of the mosquitoes, I never shut my windows, allowed me to witness better the living apartment building.  The exposed pipes shuttle water noisily down the walls of the courtyard and couples bicker and argue through their open windows.  People sing, answer phone calls, and play music.  Sometimes, I am treated to Wayne Newton or "Sweet Home Alabama", and if I'm really lucky, I get to hear someone singing along in a thick Italian accent.

Other ways to cool down are null here.  Italians do not believe in ice.  I learned this the other week when I wanted to make mint juleps for a friend from England.  We found bourbon, fresh mint, and sugar, but could not remember anywhere we had seen ice for sale.  We looked for it at various bars and stores and asked in polite Italian where one can buy ice in Florence.  We were politely answered that one does not sell ice in Florence.  A woman a tabacchi was kind enough to explain that once one could buy ice, but that was fifty odd years ago before refrigerators, when large blocks of ice were packed and delivered to the community.  So we resorted to a foolproof plan.  I waited on the street while my friend entered a bar, flirted with its tender, and promptly returned with a large bag of ice.  If I want a large quantity of ice in the future, I will need a cute girl in tow.

The mint juleps were delicious, but I was still curious about the question of ice.  I asked a few Italian friends about it and learned that ice is, in fact, a deadly additive.  If a drink is too cold, it is bad for the stomach and digestion.  If a drink is ice cold, it is worse and, in fact, sometimes fatal: if someone drinks a Coke on ice, they run the risk of their stomach literally exploding.  Digestion is one of the most important  superstitions in Italy.  It has its own tastes and cannot bear cold, mixed wines of different colors, wine mixed with water, milk after 10.30, and coffee at any point before a meal is entirely finished.  While at any point of the day, cheese and raw meat can be consumed with abandon--in Italy, meat, often raw, is not only a course, but a condiment--a cappuccino after dinner or switching from white to red wine are bold moves.

On a side note, I have come to thoroughly enjoy eating raw meat.  One of my favorite appetizers is pork sausage stuffing and stracchino cheese mixed together uncooked on crostini.  If this seems nasty, remember that salami and prosciuto are nothing more than thin slices of cured, uncooked meat.

With ice out of the picture, I have come to accept sweating and constantly looking like the despot of some small Caribbean island.  If you want to cool down, you can either brave the hordes of Japanese in the museums or do laps in the grocery store, neither of which are very enjoyable.  I am looking forward to returning to Chianti at the end of this month, where it is cool and green.

I will write more later about London and the shenanigans that Alan Jackson and I have been getting into, but I needed to complain about the heat first.

Long dig post

We are in the middle of the third week of the excavation.  The first two weeks of the dig have mostly been preparation for finding the artifacts and pottery that will shed light on Cetamura and the Etruscans.  This involved surveying the units perfectly, removing backfill, and rediscovering where the last team left off in the units and in their notebooks.  From there the first locus of a particular type of dirt or feature, such as a stone wall, is measured topographically and drawn to scale.  Because we have had to remap and redraw the units that haven’t been excavated since the seventies, progress has been slow.  Although we have found a few interesting pottery shards and gaming pieces, nothing particularly interesting or important has been discovered.  At night, I have been dreaming about grandiose finds: full-size bronze figures and inscribed pottery, but so far, buckets of brown dirt and broken terracotta have marked the development of the excavation.

Regardless, the site is beautiful, resting atop a hill overlooking Chianti and shaded by oak trees.  It has been cool and sunny, and my trench mates and the entire group get along wonderfully.  The most excitement that I have had so far was last week, when I was exploring the well on the summit.  I was trekking through the underbrush, following the exposed stones that mark structures that have not yet been fully identified.  At one point, I stepped beside a stone and felt something writhe around my ankle, a feeling that I remember well from when I worked on the farm.  I would cleave a beaver dam and the ensuing current would lead a water moccasin to twist around my legs.  Feeling the snake against my calf, I leapt on the wall behind me, and looked down to see it struggling to get back onto its belly, which it quickly did.  As it slithered away, I recognized that it was a viper from its diamond-shaped head and triangular markings.  Hell of a feeling that was.

I had to cut the first week of the dig short in order to return to Florence.  My cohorts and I had to give our last presentations of the semester on our Master’s theses and take our last courses in paleography.  The former was a hoop-jumping exercise: the professors shot holes in everyone’s theses and research in order to spur us into working over the summer.  The latter was truly interesting, as we learned where to find and how to read primary sources in the Archivo di Stato.  The courses ended on Thursday, but I did not immediately return to Radda.  I stayed in Florence to attend the Friday evening the opening of the Caravaggio show at the Palazzo Pitti and the Uffizi.  While I like Caravaggio just fine, I was more interested in spending time in the Vasari Corridor that was opened for the night, a rare opportunity.  I came back to Radda on Saturday with a few friends, and we spent Sunday barbequing and strolling around Radda, La Villa, and Cetamura.

Sunday evening, I arrived early when I went to pick up the group of students returning from various places at Montevarchi.  A friend and I wandered to the main piazza and found a Renaissance festival.  Members from the community had dressed up as soldiers, ladies, and nobleman and oversaw the events, which included flag throwing, crossbow shooting, and falconry.  The falconry exhibition was the best, because it was a disaster.  It started well; a man and his girlfriend released a small falcon that flew to various posts and back.  The next bird was a larger raptor, a hawk, which once it was released, shot into the sky, flushing a legion of pigeons from the piazza and rooftops.  The falconer tried recalling his bird to no avail.  It had flown into the city, reappearing only every now and then over the piazza.  Pigeons and swallows darted across the open sky at full speed as the hawk circling above, occasionally giving chase.  A few streets away, a small dog began yipping excitedly from a high balcony, and I wondered what would happen if the bird took that for its prey and what reception it would then receive on its return to the piazza.

After twenty minutes of calling the hawk with clipped yelps, the falconer gave up, deciding instead that it was time for the next bird.  His girlfriend brought him a beautiful barn owl, and when he released it, it again flew away.  It reappeared only once when it soared into the open window of a building that was under construction.  Out poured more pigeons that the hawk then pursued.  The exasperated falconer signaled to his girlfriend to bring the next bird, an enormous eagle, nearly half the size of a man.  Luckily the eagle wanted no part in the other birds’ avian shenanigans.  He attacked the dead rabbit that the falconer’s girlfriend dragged behind herself.  The eagle pinned the rabbit to the pavement and perched and folded its wings around the dead animal as if it were a minister delivering a benediction, then tearing and bolting down strips of its flesh.  Many of the children were horrified, and once the eagle finished eating, the lord of the festival quickly announced the next spectacle, crossbow shooting.  The falconer and his girlfriend gathered up eagle and then began assembling a tracking antenna in the corner of the piazza.

This last weekend was the first that I have spent in Radda.  The moon was full on Friday night, and a few of us stayed up late drinking wine and smoking cigars on the balcony overlooking the vineyards.  Some of the girls think that the house is haunted; one in particular, a coed from the mountains of western North Carolina, is particularly adamant about the existence of the ghost, its diabolical intentions, and its agency to harm her.  She goes on and on about the villa’s nightly horrors, and to the chagrin of her roommates, sleeps with the lights on.  In my room, there hangs the stuffed head of a cinghale, a Tuscan boar.  About midnight, we removed it from the wall, and kneeling, I wrapped myself in a white blanket, holding the boar’s head in front of mine.  It protruded from the sheets that trailed and wrapped around it like a monk’s habit.  I shuffled into her room, grunting and hissing, and she woke up right when the boar’s head was across from her face.  She screamed and cussed us out as we ran from her room laughing.

We left the boar’s head facing up from the toilet in the girls’ hall, and a low partition wall kept it out of view from the rest of the bathroom.  The next morning we learned that a semisomnic coed went to use the bathroom at three in the morning.  When she stumbled upon the head lewdly grinning up at her from the toilet.  She let out such a frightened scream that she woke up the entire floor.  I now realize why Dr. Ewell highly recommended that everyone pack earplugs.

The next day, most of the group left for Florence first thing in the morning, and along with those who were staying in Radda, I took the van and toured the vineyards.  This week is the Classico e’ festival, which celebrates Chianti wine and culture.  While I was driving and abstained from drinking, we stopped at various vineyards and castles and the towns Gaiole and Greve in Chianti to sample wine from the local producers.  We came back that evening and cooked steaks and drank the bottles we had purchased during the day’s peregrination.  The tour gave me an idea for starting my own business, and I am checking on the details.

I spent today walking through Radda with my friend and former flatmate Nicola.  We both speak Italian and stopped in on various shops and shot the breeze with their owners.  Radda is a small town and not yet fed up with tourists; it’s much warmer than Florence.  We ate a late, lazy lunch and then drove to Siena to pick up the returning students.  On the drive, we discussed my plans after graduate school.  They are unripe ideas and hopes, and while I have time, I am unsure about the future.

All in all, life is good.  Hope everyone is well.

The site and Etruscan religion

The excavation is on a hill in Chianti that overlooks the surrounding patchwork of vineyards, olive groves, and forest.  The hill can be divided into three terraces, and we are digging on the upper two.  The middle terrace contained a crevice that leads into a limestone cavern below, which is now covered with earth.  The upper terrace contains a well that has been filled in, and although past excavations have dug within the well, they have only reached the strata from the medieval period.  Given the Etruscans penchant to throw things into wells, there is much left to be discovered there, but there is not enough funding for the machinery and experts to dig below the water table.

The site was established in the Paleolithic period, as evidenced by the tools found there.  The Etruscans turned the site into an artisan's workshop and sanctuary, likely because of the crevice on the middle terrace that leads into the caves below.  The Etruscans were pantheists and believed that the gods informed and charged each object and event.  Their religion was much more mystical than the Greeks and Romans, and their priests read the future and the will of the gods through lightning, portents, and the entrails of sacrifices made to the gods of the sky, earth, and underworld.

Sites where crevices or caves gave access to spaces below the earth were conducive for sacrifices to the underworld gods, who were often variations of sky and earth gods.  Additionally, the mystical foundations of Etruscan religion made these sites important.  Roman writers record that the Etruscans learned their religion from a child named Tages who resembled a withered old man.  The child came from and returned to the space below the earth.  Since Tages's revelations laid the foundation of much of Etruscan religion (much of it also stemming from Greek mythology), Etruscans priest tried since then to further uncover the spiritual underpinnings of the physical world through divination and other practices of revelation.  In Tarquinia, past excavations have found a child burial beside a crevice in the earth that became an important sanctuary for the founding of the city at Tarquinia.  As forensic evidence has shown, the child was an epileptic and likely suffered hallucinations; we can likely assume that he was considered prophetic and revelatory like Tages.  Whether the Etruscans were returning the child to the crevice in the manner of Tages after its untimely death, or whether they sacrificed the child is unknown, but the practice of human sacrifice seems to have been a part, though rare, of Etruscan religion and culture.

At Cetamura, the site where we are digging, Etruscan artisans created votive pottery and figure that pilgrims or passthroughs bought and dedicated to the gods of the sanctuary at the crevice.  There was a small habitation site around the sanctuary, which does not seem to be urban or aristocratic.  A few years ago, the dig team found pottery with inscriptions that revealed the names of the gods to which the sanctuary was devoted.  These gods are rare and obscure, and the only other evidence that we have of them are a few bronze mirrors identify them with inscriptions.  The gods are represented as wild and prophetic, often with bare chests, long hair, and their heads thrown back, howling at the sky.  In one mirror, one the gods is show examining a severed human leg in the process of divination, a curious scene.

Last year, during the excavations of the what was thought to be trash pits between the middle and upper terraces, the dig team found a slew of bones.  Some were common: cow, sheep, pig, but other bones, such as those from dogs, puppies, and suckling pigs, serve as evidence that animal sacrifices were made at the site and that the supposed trash pits were actually the depositories of the sacrificed animals.  The lab results also revealed that one of the bones was a human tibia.  Given that this leg was found with the other remains of sacrifices, it support the conclusion that Etruscan priests who were dedicated to the site's gods may have used human sacrifices and body parts for divination, just as the bronze mirror shows.  This year's team is itching to get more out the depositories and are currently removing the wall of an ancient Roman bath complex that stands above them to find what lies below.

Primo giorno

The dig began last Saturday in the rain.  I met Dr. Ewell and Dr. Taylor that morning at the rental agency, where I received the keys to a massive black van, stick-shift, that I will be driving for the season.  I drove the van from Florence to lunch at Dr. Hatfield's in the piedmont northwest of the city.  I had to pick up the archaeology students at the Siena train station at five, but lunch started late and I lost track of time.  Leaving late, I wheeled down to Florence, hit the Viale, and made my way to the Super Strada.  Unfortunately, I took the old road to Siena winds through the hill country in Chianti.  I realized my mistake and tried to make up for lost time, riding the clutch down the hills, bursting out of a switch-back or hairpin turns, and zooming past small towns like Greve and Castellina.  It was raining and the foliage that hadn't yet matured into the deep green of summer was wet and verdant, nearly neon against the grey sky.  The van lurched and bobbed through its tortuous path, the engine roaring, catching, accelerating.  I arrived at the station a only little late and full of adrenaline.  I then responsibly shuttled the students to Radda.

We are staying in villa built in the 1960's that is located a kilometer down the hill from Radda.  The villa overlooks the vineyards that produce Chianti Classico; it is cavernous and decorated as it was half a century ago.  It has been cold and at night, we light fires to keep the house warm.  We take our meals together there, leaving for the excavation site at eight and returning at five.  I have plenty more to write about all of this later.  Ciao.

Finito

A few more paleography and archival research classes aside, the semester is finished at last.  I have learned that just as discretion is the better part of valor, avoidance is the better part of scholarship.

The dig begins Saturday, and I need to finish the game-plan for the Symposium and a few books on the Etruscan site at Cetamura.  I have a few dinners this week, including a goodbye dinner for a friend and MAN FEAST(!) on Thursday night.  MAN FEAST(!) will be held at an undisclosed location; early reports indicate that there will be a lack of glasses, muliebrity, utensils, vegetables, time, and possessions.

It's been raining and cold since early last week, and this weather is supposed to continue until the end of this week.  When the sun emerges briefly, I have been escaping to the Boboli Gardens to read there.

St. Mark's Apartments

I've launched the website: http://florenceholidayapartments.org/

Please take a look and feel free to contact me about it.

La notte bianca e il capanno di birra

Last night was La notte bianca, The White Night, when most of the shops and museums in Florence stay open until dawn.  I made dinner with Caitlin and Nicola: pasta with a sauce made with curry, fresh zucchini, and shrimp.  After drinking copious amounts of Chianti, we met more friends and hit the streets.  The centro storico was packed.  It was midnight, and the city felt like a carnival.  We pushed through the crowds to various piazze to see the concerts and events happening there.  It wasn't long before playing rugby with half of Tuscany became annoying, so we headed to the Palazzo Vecchio and spent a few hours there exploring.  Many of the rooms that are not regularly open, like the Terazza di Saturno, were open last night, and wandering through the darkened palazzo, with its grotesques, mythological scenes, and complex architecture, was dreamlike.

Today, we walked to San Minato al Monte.  The organist was practicing Bach inside the church, and we sat outside the facade, listening to the music while we soaked in the sun and looked out over Florence.  We meandered to Vivoli for gelato and wandered through the market in Santa Croce.  I am headed now to the Oblate to finish a paper for restoration.  I'd rather be taken out back and beaten.  I have finished two of my three major papers for the semester, and this is the last one.  It's due on Monday, and Tuesday night, I am planning to go at last to Beatles night at Bee Bop.

Otherwise, Rosa's hut has reopened last week.  Rosa is a Dominican woman who sells apertivi from an octagonal metal structure in the northwest corner of Piazza Savonarola.  When I was studying abroad as in Florence an undergraduate, my friends and I often bought beer from Rosa after classes.  Sipping Heineken tall-boys, we would sit in the piazza and watch families and children from the neighborhood talk and play.  Last Thursday, after two major deadlines, Maggie, Gigi, Caitlin, and I decided to get a few drinks at the hut.  I went to buy the first round, and when I saw Rosa, I reintroduced myself and told her how sweet she was to me and my friends five years ago when I was an undergraduate.  She looked at me sideways, but suddenly a flash of recognition spread across her face.  She laughed, told me that she remembered us well, and we chatted briefly.  She popped the tops off of three beers and pushed them across the bar.  When I reaching for my wallet, she stopped me and said that this round was for old times' sake.  I thanked her, and walked back to my friends sitting under the statue of Savonarola.  Like old times, we sat, sipped our Heinekens, and watched the families and their children in the piazza.

Plans

Since I haven't written lately, I have to gloss most of what has been happening.  I am currently finishing two research papers, and I have one more left.  These are due next week, so I have spent most of the past two weeks working.  We finalized the plans for the church apartments today, and I am now managing them.  I will post a link to their website soon once I fix a few things on the site.  Activity for the Bronzino Conference should pick up as grants come due this summer, and the archaeological dig in Gaiole begins on May 15th.  After the dig, friends are coming to visit in early July.  Then it's Paris before house-sitting in Chiati during the ferragosto, when I plan to write my Master's thesis.  September brings more visiting friends and thesis work.  I head back to South Carolina for a week or so in late October to celebrate a friend's wedding.

Classes are nearly finished, though documents extends well into May, and I am glad about both.  Florence is beautiful, and when I am not writing away, I spend most of my time strolling and people-watching with friends or reading in the Boboli Gardens.  The girls have rediscovered their spring wardrobe, and life is good.  I have been studying at the Biblioteca Oblate, which has a open loggia on its roof that overlooks the cupola of Santa Maria del Fiore and gets lots of sun.  It's warm enough to start eating gelato, and I have grown to like particularly the amareno and ricotta and fig flavors.  I am growing my beard and gave myself a haircut today.  I was relatively successful.

Nukes

Regarding the nuclear disarmament talks in Russia, nuclear weapons should be better recognized for their contribution to world peace.  The Cold War would have been much hotter if the looming threat of nuclear war didn't exist.  It's that threat that prevents world powers from amassing troops for invasion, unless, of course, the country to be invaded does not have nukes of their own.  Regardless, conflict isn't going anywhere; it only must be more precise or covert.

Galleria Palatine

Over the past three weeks, my cohorts and I have met with the directors of the Uffizi, the San Marco Museum, and the Palatine Gallery at the Palazzo Pitti, where they gave us tours and explained the philosophy behind the museums and their organization.  Since these buildings were never originally conceived as public museums, their architecture and any decor or works left in situ present a singificant and obvious connection with the buildings' past.  In these museums, the amalgamation and display of their works become a work in itself.  Every museum creates a unique experience with its space, its collected works, and the classification, arrangement, and overall organization of its collection (issues with which modern theory has tremendous problems).  A museum in itself is open to examination as a form of art.

The Palatine Gallery was particularly interesting, as it was originally a private Baroque gallery whose current display remains true to its past.  There is hardly a foot of space between the pictures, which, stacked in heavy, gilded frames, reach from eye-level to the carved, golden ceiling.  Many of them are attached to the wall so that they may swing outwards in order to catch the sunlight, the only healthy source of illumination before the dawn of electricity.  Panels and canvases have been expanded or cut down to fit the measurements of frames or wall space; time periods are blended together to better express certain sentiments in different rooms; and the collection's greatest works are scattered so haphazardly that it can be hard to find them.  Without some form of guide, the Gallery, dominated by tastes and pholosophies of display of past centuries, would make little sense, but that fact lends it charm.

Otherwise, on my way back from the New Sacristy this morning, I saw Converse All-Star wedges.  What a stupid idea for a shoe.  I bet it will make millions, like Uggs or leggings.

New flatmate moving in tonight.  We're all making dinner once the vicar cleans me feet.  I'll be working for the majority of the weekend, except for Easter Sunday, when I have church and then Mexican Brunch with my fellow graduate students and TAs.  I refuse to eat Mexican Brunch on Easter, so I bought quarter a lamb today at the Mercato Centrale.  I am going to roast that puppy in a mustard, rosemary crust.  Isn't funny how all blogs devolve into food?

Back to Bronzino.

La costa di Jersey

Jersey Shore just debuted in Italy; this should be fun explaining this nugget of Americana. It was the first show I have seen here that hasn't been dubbed, only subtitled. Some bilingual genius in Italy's dubbing headquarters must have realized the impossibility dubbing Jersey Shore. It is trash in pure form. Nothing can be added or subtracted or it would lose its superlative quality.

Otherwise, cranking away on papers and quenching a wintery thirst for sunlight. How could anyone say that April is the cruelest month?

Un film

Silvia and I saw É Complicato (It's Complicated) last night.  No man should ever voluntarily see a romantic comedy or convince himself that the genre can be saved by excellent actors.  A romantic comedy is like having a crazy girlfriend: it involves wasting money and being uncomfortable as someone pleads for you to adopt their pink, petal-strewn vision of a mangled reality.  However, the movie redeemed itself insofar as it was dubbed in Italian, making it in excellent lesson in listening and comprehension.  Unfortunately, I understood it all, and now I know how to say vibrator in Italian.

I'm off to the Biblioteca Oblate to read about the Anglo-American ex-pat community in the late 19th century and early 20th century.

Uffizi & il corridoio di Vasari

On Monday afternoon, my cohorts and I met with Signore Natali for a private tour of the Uffizi.  The director discussed the reasoning behind the museum's display choices, the meaning of many of the pictures, and politics of running museums in Italy, which, as one would expect, are a goat rodeo.  The government dictates museum policy from Rome, essentially stripping directors of the majority of the power.  Museums can never let out certain paintings for exhibitions or other events, and the list of such works is constantly growing.  This is frustrating and a bit insulting for other museums and nations.  Moreover, Italy's major museums are swamped by tourists to the point that people cannot consider and appreciate works in a peaceful environment.  There are many works kept in museum storage that need to be restored.  Some are still untreated since the flood of 1966, and they may never be because of the expenses of time and money.  In fact, the restoration studios in Florence are no longer offering full-time contracts while letting many of their senior restorers retire without refilling these positions.  The economy is not in a position to support the arts, and a large percentage of restorations are being funded by the American organization Friends of Florence, based out of Palm Springs.  I believe that this city would be crippled without foreign dollars.

However, walking through the empty Uffizi and listening to the director speak about the works he loves dearly, especially the Leonardos, was wonderful.  Later, he opened the Vasari corridor to us, and we took it from the Uffizi to the Palazzo Pitti.  Inside are portraits and self-portraits by celebrated artists that reach back to the Renaissance.  The corridor is normally closed to the public, and it was a rare opportunity to access it.

Urbino, Piero, Laurana, e Federigo

Great weekend: Arezzo, San Sepulchro, Urbino, Monterchi, and Remini to see most of Piero della Francesco's works.  I gained a new appreciation for Piero della Francesca.  His art is far before its time: he dabbles with form and abstraction in a manner that does not emerge until the 19th century.  In my opinion, Piero explores these questions of vision and representation more subtly and beautifully than modern artists who exclusively focus on them.  Not discounting his other works, I particularly enjoyed seeing The Resurrection of Christ in San Sepulcher and The Legend of the True Cross fresco cycle in Arezzo.

In Urbino, we saw the Flagellation of Christ, likely Piero's most famous work, but the palace itself impressed me the most.  The structural archictect, Luciana Laurana, created the palazzo with such proportions that each room and hall has a great sense of space, airiness, and light.  There is also speculation that he painted the Ideal City panel, which I believe, but I doubt that he did it alone.  At any rate, the panel shows his calm, rational approach to architecture.  Outside of the palace, in the courtyards and gardens, Laurana used evening-colored sandstone (which is very similar in color to the stone at Sewanee) and white marble, which create a much stronger sense of warmth than the coolness of the pietra serena used in Florence and the travertine in Rome.

It is said that Duke Federigo hold audience with anyone and never needed bodyguards.  His citizens loved him, and he could walk through the city alone without being disturbed.  Federigo created a court composed of many of the leading intellectuals and artists of his time.  Kenneth Clark, a famous English art historian, said that in the late 15th century, Urbino was the most civilized place on Earth.  The sense still lingers in the ducal palace.

Lavorando

Not much to report.  I have spent most of the week and last weekend working on three papers: Bronzino's Descent of Christ into Limbo, Etruscan wall painting restoration technique, and the creation of the high chapel of Santa Maria Novella.  Otherwise, I have been studying Fra Angelico in San Marco and Bronzino and Brunelleschi in Santa Croce.

I went to the clubs last weekend with friends, but I have found that I do not like going out anymore.  Chalk it up to my bankrupt youth.  It's expensive, the people you meet are rarely interesting, and you end up wasting too many hours that night and sleeping late the next morning.  The upside is unlimited Lady Gaga, gaggles of drunk American girls begging for someone to pay them attention, and showing off your Euro-shiek.

A pigeon had died on the terrazza two days ago.  Silvia has been freaking out about the "zombie-pigeon" since then.  She won't go into the kitchen, fearing that it would watch her with empty eyes through the window.  I was planning to depose of the bird last night but got in late and forgot.  While I was in Santa Croce this morning, Silvia cleaned that apartment, gathering her courage, and tried to remove the pigeon.  She failed, claiming she almost threw up.  The bird hadn't begun to decompose.  I removed it this afternoon, picking it up by the wing and throwing it out in a grocery bag.  She retreated through the hall, shaking her hands, crying out in disgust, and then locking herself in her room.  Italians can be so weird.

Francesco is probably moving out this month, and we're looking for a new flatmate.  Tonight, a ragazzo who works at Gucci is coming to see the apartment, now free from any signs of pigeon death.

Amici e giardini

Two Wednesdays ago, my cohorts and I had our first presentation in Context and Audience.  None was perfect, but all in all, they went smoothly.  Caitlin and I drank heavily afterwards.

The next afternoon, as I made my way to deliver Gatorade and Lemonsoda to Caitlin,  I ran into Meredith, a friend from Columbia who was visiting her sister.  We had a long lunch and caught up before my restoration class.  That evening, the teaching assistants and Masters students gathered for Mexican food and margaritas.  Susanne, another friend from Columbia, was in town for the night, and she met us out.  I hadn't seen her since eighth grade, and we discussed the courses our lives had taken since then.  It's amazing what can happen in a decade, and it's even funnier to think back on who you once were but no longer are.  The essence of identity is one hell of a question.

After dinner, a few of us went local and drank a bottle of vodka on the stairs of Santa Croce.  By about midnight Silvia, Tom, Tom's girlfriend, Teresiana, and I were left.  We left the deserted piazza for Tom's apartment and threw a late night 80's dance party, which woke up his Tawainese neighborhoods, who joined us and began speaking Chinese with Teresiana, who, besides studying literary theory and Proust, speaks Chinese.  It was good to hang out with Tom.  We are rare beings: straight males studying art history without a political, sexual, or religious axe to grind.  We decided a Hemmingway day is in order.  Hemmingway day = one inconspicuous bottle of bourbon + walking tour of Florence and its museums.

I didn't do much the next day.  I read slowly in the morning, ate tripe for lunch, and hit some museums during the afternoon.  Museums, Mozart, and tripe can put you back on the rails after a long night.  I met an art historian for drinks that evening, and she asked me if I would be willing to help her put together a Bronzino conference over the course of the year.  We are organizing the conference in collaboration with the Bronzino show that opens this fall at Palazzo Strozzi.  Scholarship in action!

I spent that weekend hitting museums and gardens with friends and cohorts before they left for Spring Break.  I visited Herbert Horne's palazzo on Via de' Benci.  Like Davanzati, many of the items there are arranged as the would have been positioned in a 15th century Florentine home.  Some very interesting and odd objects, like a birth tray with a putti playing the bagpipes on one side and a scene of the last judgement on the other.  I wonder what were the connections between Florence and Scotland in the 15th century, and given the theory that scenes on birth trays inspire positive qualities in a gestating child, why depict the Last Judgement with the wrathfulness of Christ and the malbolgie of Hell?  Afterwards, Silvia, Caitlin, and I saw the Bardini and Boboli Gardens, and then walked through the hills south of Florence to San Minato al Monte.  That evening, we saw Alice in Wonderland in Italian, which made it no less stupid.

That Sunday, I attended church at St. Mark's, changed clothes, and then toured the gardens at Castello and La Petraia.  Much of the garden flora in this area of Italy is similar as those in South Carolina: boxwoods, hydrangea, loquats, pines, etc.  I am writing my Master's thesis about Renaissance and 19th gardens around Florence, and I love visiting them, especially with spring approaching.

Volunteering in Aquila

Before dawn on Saturday, twelve students left Piazza Savonarola to volunteer in Aquila, which was hit by an earthquake on Sunday, April 6, 2009.  This trip was the first time that Americans had volunteered through the Caritas Foundation and also the first time Syracuse had sent volunteers to Abruzzo.  When we arrived, we were broken into different groups of American and Italian volunteers.  Each group had a different task: laying foundations for temporary housing, staining wood, moving furniture between apartments, building fences, laying floors, and reading and playing with children.  We worked hard through the weekend while we sung Italian and American songs and discussed our lives.  During meals, we ate together at loud, communal tables, and at night, we slept in "containers", metal structures akin to storage units.

After lunch and saying our goodbyes on Sunday, we went to the city center to witness the effects of the earthquake.  The Italian volunteers had told that the city will never recover, and we saw why.  The earthquake damaged or destroyed the majority of the city's downtown, which is now condemned and abandoned.  The cupola of the duomo has crumbled into the transept, and the westwork towers of another church that had twisted with the earth no longer stand parallel to one another.  It would cost too much to rebuild Aquila, and there are questions as to whose responsibility rebuilding is anyway.  The scaffolding and supports that line the streets only keep structures from falling into them; no work is being to done to restore the buildings.

The state neglected both the city and those who have lost homes or jobs.  Less than 10% of people who lost their homes have moved into newly built ones in Aquila, and many dislocated people have spent the past year in hotel rooms in the resorts on Abruzzo's coast.  They do not have jobs or a city to return to.  Families are falling apart, and businesses have left.  Those whose homes were not entirely destroyed have received little to no help from the state; they remain responsible for their mortgages and costs, even if their home was severely damaged.  Aquila is a ghost town, its emptiness heartbreaking.  The earthquake destroyed many buildings, but in its neglect, the state destroyed the lives and worlds of many people who will never recover home.

Our work was directed towards building temporary housing for those with little resources and hope left, those who see their city as a cemetery.  Volunteers have made significant contributions to the rebuilding of Aquila outside of its historical center, and there is still much work to be done.  When we left on Sunday, we were sore but happy, having received more by giving back to devastated community.  There are pictures in the album "Aquila": http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2037575&id=44700526&ref=mf.

Roma, Siena, e San Gimignano

I have a lot of writing I to do.  The past two weeks have been eventful.  Two weekends ago, I went to Rome, where it snowed for the first time in over the decade.  Our class was allowed a private viewing of the Sistine Chapel, and for two hours that Friday evening, I enjoyed Michelangelo's ceiling, his Last Judgment, and the frescoes of many 15th century masters..  I spent the rest of the weekend exploring the city with a friend, romping through the ruins and popping into churches to find what we would find.  Despite the snow, it eventually warmed up to the point that it nearly felt like spring, and the streets were crowded with Carnivale plays and festivities.  We stopped for coffee during the day and for wine during the evening.  We spent Saturday night in Piazza dei Fiori, awaiting a Communist rally that was supposed to take place that evening.  It never happened, and after drinking with our countrymen, we headed home to watch American movies.  There are pictures in the album "Roma": http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2037597&id=44700526&ref=mf.

Last weekend, I went to Siena and San Gimignano with Pr. Hatfield's Masterpieces class on Friday.  Though it rained all morning, we saw the duomo, walked along the fasaccio, and explored the Palazzo Popolo.  We heard lectures on how to develop a better eye for dating, style, and phony attributions.  There are many falsely attributed works, and so much of the scholarship of art history is detective work.  After the morning's tour, Caitlin and I were soaked from the rain but ate a late, boozy, and good lunch with a group of fun undergrads.  All of us then went to San Gimignano, escaping the rain momentarily until arrived there also.  The city still has many of its medieval towers that create an odd skyline.  In its duomo are frescoes that may also have been misattributed to different periods, like those in the Palazzo Popolo in Siena.  There is also a beautiful chapel by Ghirlandaio that I want to spend more time examining.  Otherwise, the city's famous gelateria was closed, and since it was evening by the time lecturing was finished, we headed back to Florence.  There are pictures in the album "San Gimignano & Siena": http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2037596&id=44700526.

per mangiare

I love food, as anyone who sees me can probably guess.  I am on a mission to find the best and cheapest spots to eat in Florence, and I hit gold twice this weekend.  On Thursday, Cat and I met up and grabbed lunch at Trattoria Anita, which is hidden away in the block just north of the Arno between the Bargello and Via de' Benci.  It prides itself on being authentic Italian housewife (casalinga) cooking, and offers two courses and a contorno for €8.  The potatoes roasted in butter and sage nearly fell apart like mashed potatoes, and the stewed tripe was stewed well.  Simple food done perfectly.  Another casalinga spot is Trattoria Casalinga near Santo Spirito, which has been discovered, but is also good and relatively inexpensive.  The other week I had the rabbit there.  They had removed most of the meat from a dressed rabbit, made it into sausage, and then restuffed the rabbit with the sausage.  They roasted and sliced the rabbit vertically like a loin and served it with salt and olive oil.  It was fantastic.  The other place I hit this weekend was Trattoria Mario by mercato centrale.  I meant to go there five years ago, and it finally came together on Friday.  Trattoria Mario is a local hangout, and it can take time to get a table.  It's only open for lunch, and like the others, the meal was inexpensive, simple, and of excellent quality.  It was raining and cold on Friday, so I ordered a bowl of ribollita, a traditional Tuscan bean stew made with black cabbage and stale bread.  I spent an hour eating, sharing a table with two couples, and debating theology and church history with a friend.  If you want to find an excellent a relatively inexpensive bistecca fiorentina, try Mario for lunch on Saturday.  Go early, order wine, and make a Saturday out of it.

The next two places I want to try are Trattoria Giovanni and Cibreino.  One of the secrets to eating in Florence is finding the best restaurants' "sister" restaurants, which usually share the same kitchen, are more vibrant and clustered, and less stuffy and expensive.  Trattoria Giovanni is owned by the same folks who run Il latini, which is one of Florence's best and most expensive.  At Il latini, from what I hear, there is no menu, they just feed you, course by course, ending only when you ask for the check.  Another famous restaurant in Florence is Cibreo, and it has a trattoria, Cibreino, attached to it on the other side of the block.  The two share its kitchen, and Cibreino offers the same but limited menu of Cibreo, charges standard prices, and serves one of the best meals that the human race offers.

When you want to stay in and cook, the open markets offer excellent ingredients, usually fresh from the surrounding countryside.  You can find anything nearly anything there, from obscure fish and spices to fine wines and organ meat.  The markets are beautiful places places, saturated with the noise, color, and smell, and the people watching, a national past-time in Italy, is unmatched.

il fine settimana scorso (bozza)

This past weekend was the first weekend that I felt at home in Florence.  Friday was cold and grey; I spent the morning in the Bargello and ate lunch at the mercate centrale with Sarah.  That evening I cooked the pork loin and vegetables that I had bought after lunch for Caitlin, Maddie, and my flatmates.  The meal was simple and good, the ingredients perfect.  We drank Campari and wine and discussed Italian and American culture.  For example, in Italy, when you want to say something is delicious, touch the corner of your lip with your index finger and twist your fist.  In America, you say, "Nom nom nom nom nom."

After dinner, we walked through the rain to go dancing.  Oibò was packed, and after meeting friends of Franci and Sivi, we left for Twice.  The scene was typical of many Italian dance clubs: wasted American girls clustered in the center of the dance floor, wearing nothing, shouting and dancing with their arms in the air, while Italian and Albanian guys watch like lions searching for the weak and wounded.  We left for Rooms, a members only club that you have to be invited to join.  I learned from Smith Point that exclusive clubs are usually more expensive and less fun than a good dive.  Rooms followed this rule.  People went there for air-kissing and posturing; many seemed only a step above the furniture.  Men wore suits that cost more than my first car, and the women were dressed to kill (one wore a see-through dress that I couldn't help admiring).  For whatever reason, I received a membership, which I owe it to my my flawless Italian, svelte beauty, and virile style (Levi's Jeans and Jos. A Bank).  It was a late night.

Saturday, Caitlin and I ate a long lunch and saw the Capponi chapel in Santa Felicita.  Here Brunelleschi originally tested the double vaulted design that he would later use to construct the cathedral's dome.  His ceiling was destroyed in the 16th century when Vasari constructed the corridor between the Palazzo Pitti and Palazzo Vecchio.  The corridor cuts through the interior of the church, creating a balcony over the main entrance that allowed Cosimo I to attend Mass without mingling with the hoi polloi.  Pontormo painted the frescoes and his famous Deportation altarpiece for the chapel.  Seeing his work in person changed my opinion about Pontormo.  In the past, I thought he was too mannerist and affected, but his work wass truly beautiful.  We explored the Boboli gardens, its tea houses, overlooks, and grottos.  The day was windy and grey, and the garden was still wet with the rain from the previous night.  It smelled like gravel, boxwoods, and clean air.  Once the gardens closed, we joined the rest of the city strolling in centro, people watching and window shopping.

That evening Silvia cut my hair, and I now sport a rocking Italian haircut.  She made comfort food for dinner: rice, broth, porcini, and peas.  We ate for a long time and then sat around the kitchen talking.  Despite being exhausted from the night before, we went out again to meet my cohorts at Glamour.  Once the Americans hijacked it, we went to Tabasco, a gay club near Piazza Signoria.  It was drag queen night, and the theme was jungle fever.  We all had a blast, dancing together, while jacked drag queens in leopard onesies pranced through the dance floor with microphones, singing along to Lady Gaga and She Wolf.  Around three, we finally emerged into the cold night air and said our goodbyes.  Silvia and I walked home slowly through the empty streets, her feet hurting from dancing all night in heels.

I woke up late on Sunday with a headache.  There is no word for hangover in Italian.  The colloquial expression roughly translates as, "I feel like a monkey is pounding on my head."  But I wasn't hungover.  You don't drink much here; it's too expensive and frowned upon.  I had instead smoked a million cigarettes over the weekend, which is something I am not used to nor plan to be.  I met a friend for lunch, and afterwards, Silvia and I took a walk through the countryside south of the city.  It was a clear Sunday, and we caught glimpses of Florence's spires and domes past the hills.  We walked back to the city through Piazzale Michelangelo, and strolled through the Oltrarno to Piazza del Carmine, where we had a drink and chocolate at Hemingway, an incredible chocolateria.  I cooked mushroom soup for us for dinner and went to bed early.  I am tired still but truly happy to be here.

Dodging mopeds and stomping pigeons.

Just returned for the Bargello, the best museum in Florence, and the mercato centrale, where I bought ingredients for dinner with my flatmates.  At the Bargello, I discovered that I like Giambologna's sculpture more than I like Michelangelo's.  Oceanus, the sculptures from the Juno fountain, and the Victory of Florence over Pisa were all beautiful and robust.  Once Michelangelo falls into his mannerist period, my interest in his works dissipates, although some, like the unfinished bust of Brutus, are excellent.  When sculpture is overly lithe, droll, or elegant, I don't like it.

Ate lunch at the mercato centrale: lampredotto, a tripe dish and the Mediterranean version of alkaseltzer.  Word is that it truly does help after a long night of drinking.  I'm off to go cruise the city, people watch, and pound caffè.

Carrara e Ravenna

Last weekend, I went with the school to Pietrasanta, Carrara, and Ravenna.  Pietrasanta is home to a community of artists and craftsmen, and it has been famous for centuries for the marble and bronze sculptures that artists have created there.  We watched modern workshops create sculptures and mosaics and learned to judge the types and quality of marble and bronze.  We also visited Carrara, which is better known than Pietrasanta and has been an important marble production center since the ancient Romans began quarrying there thousands of years ago.  Michelangelo selected his marble from those quarries, and the demand for Carrara marble is still strong, especially in newly wealthy countries.  As people continue to quarry there, the mountains are always changing shape and slowly shrinking.  Some people believe that there is a thousand years worth of marble left, but few believe that.  Moreover, modern technology has allowed quarrying not only on the surface but engineers can remove massive blocks of marble from the heart of the mountain itself.  We traveled to these inner mines through an old train tunnel and found gigantic caverns where marble had been subtracted block by block from the mountain.  In them, engineers, heavy equipment, and semis work, cutting and removing the marble in perfect geometric blocks.  As a result, these chambers are beautifully minimalistic and with four hundred meters of stone above and below them sublimely unsettling.  Our guide was an older Italian gentleman who told how during World War II, when the Allies were bombing the industrial zone of Carrara, many of the town's families would sleep in the caves.  It would so quiet that they could not hear the planes above or the bombs exploding in the valley.  There are pictures in the Facebook album "Carrara".

The next day, we traveled over the Apennines to Ravenna in the Emilia-Romana region.  In the 5th and 6th centuries, as the Roman empire decayed and fell prey to invasion, Ravenna was a strategic city for Italy's various rulers, specifically because its rich land and Classe, its Adriatic port, which connected it to the Eastern Roman Empire in Constantinople.  Western Roman emperors, Ostrogoth kings, and emperors from Constantinople won and lost this city, building monuments to Christ during the time they held it: San Appolinare in Classe, San Appolinare Nuova, Santa Placida, San Vitale, the Battistero di Neoniano.  Many of the buildings are in form basilica or cruciform, which are cheap to construct even on a grand scale.  San Vitale was particularly beautiful; it is an example of how architecture can shape space to the point that it begins to seem mystical, which was the point.  The emperor, Justian, who never in fact visited the church, and the clergy were the only people allowed in the center of the church, emphasizing Justian's place in the great chain of being, the emperor who connects his rule with the rule and will of the Lord.  Circulating through the side aisles, laymen gleaned broken views of the clergy and rituals through massive piers encrusted with sheets of marble that gave a Rorschach effect.  Even today, dim light enters through hidden windows, and the mosaics of the high chapel catch and refract it into shimmering views of kings, saints, Christ, and paradise.  San Vitale is truly one of the world's most beautiful buildings.

Besides visiting the churches, we paid homage to Dante at this grave.  Florence has built a tomb for him in Santa Croce and wants his bones, but Dante's life ended in Ravenna, specifically because Florence exiled him.  There are pictures in the Facebook album "Ravenna".

il apartamento

I live on Via de' Bardi, south of the Arno between the Ponte Vecchio and the Ponte alle Grazie.  The apartment building once was a palazzo with quarters that were converted into a clusters of smaller apartments.  In the hallway and kitchen groin vaults the high ceiling, which are flat in the rooms. In my room, the woodwork that supports the upper floor is exposed.  A massive central beam supports smaller square planks that run from wall to wall.  In between them, there are rows of sculpted porcelain flowers with golden centers and filaments, and the exposed ceiling is painted burnt red, matching the terracotta tiles on the floor.

The apartment is not large, and in the kitchen, the stone fume hood of a lost grand fireplace overshadows the oven and stove.  A terrazza is attached to the kitchen, and during warmer months, my flatmates dry their laundry and leave planters of herbs and flowers there.  My window looks out onto the terrazza, and I look forward for warmer months when I can leave it open.  Above my bed hangs a mosquito net.  There is no air conditioning.

I live with two Italians, Francesco and Silvia, who are warm, funny, and hospitable.  I am rarely home during the day, and sometimes I eat dinner with Silvia or Franci or watch TV with them while they smoke cigarettes if I arrive home after they have eaten.  They love each other and call each other by pet names like a married couple; Silvia has a boyfriend who lives in Genova, and Franci is gay.  They keep the apartment spotless, and at night, it is so quiet, that you can hear the silence humming like electricity.

I speak Italian well enough that it is the only language we use; however, I need to improve it.  I am not able to fully communicate, which, for me, is awkward.  Nota bene, in Italian, there is not a word for awkward, so don't bother trying to say you feel awkward.  You will end up saying I feel silly or funny, confusing statements that only make things more awkward.  It's a vicious cycle.  Moreover, in Mediterranean culture, awkwardness is not as funny as in the States; it's just awkward.  Woody Allen would be all the more miserable and all the more funny here.

I have found the best way to handle awkward situations is wine.  I learned that trick at Sewanee.  The first night in Florence, I was disshevled, jet-lagged, and exhausted, and Silvia, Franci, and I had dinner as new flatmates.  We drank two bottles of wine, got tight, and then mutual friends of ours came over.  More wine was produced, I was speaking beautiful Italian, and soon everyone was dancing in the kitchen.  We shagged, pretzeled, and attempted dance moves from Lady Gaga, Russian polka, and Dirty Dancing.  Sober or not, do not try to lift women over your head, especially girls you have just met or girls debuting at the Assembly.  It won't work as you imagined it.  Nonetheless, my flatmates and I bonded that night, and it has been a true pleasure living with them.

la prima lezione

First day of class.  Professor Hatfield took us to Villa I Tatti, where Michael, the director, gave us the grand tour.  I Tatti is nothing short of a perfect library.  It houses books on two fields: the history of music the Italian Renaissance.  It's Renaissance collection covers all disciplines but is concentrated in history and art history.  It is focused and immaculate, and I would be surprised if I were not able to find any book I could ever need there.  Importantly, it is open-shelf, a rarity in Italy.  Stealing or vandalizing books is a common problem in Italian libraries.

Beyond its collection, the villa itself is interesting.  Bernard Berenson created it by acquiring a Tuscan farmhouse in the late 19th century, and over fifty years, he renovated and added wings to the original villa, barn, and quarters.  Now the villa houses hundreds of thousands of volumes, while offering views of its formal Renaissance revival gardens.  Eastern sculpture and minor or unattributed Renaissance paintings decorated the halls and rooms, and the freshly cut flowers in the common rooms make the library smell like jasmine and honeysuckle.  The fifty or so staff and fellows are served lunch and dinner daily, and many of them live on the Villa's seventy acres.

I went to church yesterday at Saint Marks, the Anglican church on Via Maggio.  The service was high Anglican; the acolytes burned incense and rang little bells at important points.  It was cold.  Heat and air conditioning are considered luxuries and not necessities -- I would like to thank my mom for raising us like Italians; there was no adjustment.  After church, I met parishioners and was invited to lunch with two of them.  We spent over four hours arguing politics.  We discussed American foreign policy, Muslim immigration in Europe, the corruption of democracy, and lessons from 20th century Italy and America.  If anyone plans to visit Europe, expertise in these subjects is a must; they come up daily.  Lunch went well, except that my host was fervently anti-Italian.  He was Italian and admitted he was ashamed to be so.  He disliked the people, the chaos, the lack of opportunity, the ineffectual and misguided national and local government, and nearly everything else about his country.  I later learned that as a young man, he had wanted to teach university, but when the university system offered him a position, because it could not pay him until he had taught for ten years, he never was able to accept a post.  He worked as a policeman and substitute teacher and has nonetheless wrote and published an enormous volume on 20th century Europe (he is working on the second).  He was a diehard Anglophile, attending Saint Marks on Sunday, clinging to the idea of the English world as a bastion of civility, order, and intellectualism.  He later told me that the minister at Saint Marks had offered him a summer at a bed and breakfast that his family owned in Cork.  But the man responded that he never wanted to visit England or the United States.  If he visited and could not to remain in an English speaking country, if he had to return to Italy afterwards, he said that he would take his life.  What an ineffectual dream he clung to, one he would purposely avoid fulfilling, so that he might always keep his pride and anger stoked.  His days have escaped him.

My quest to buy a bicycle failed again after another crosstown trek.  I found the new location of Cooperativa Ulisse, but this week, the police brought in paltry haul.  They did not have men's bikes, only women's.

Need to figure out what prova to do.  A good prova can lead to a position as a teacher's assistant (TA) next year, which I hope to earn.  TA's can stay on for years, taking and effectively teaching courses, pursuing research interests, and building relationships with art historians and professors in Florence.  No progress yet on the Symposium topic, but we have some time.  I am truly thankful that this year's Masters students all respect and like each other.  When this not the case, it poisons the well.

Tomorrow, an early morning at the Uffizi with the cohorts, a lecture in Piazza Signoria on republican architecture, and then conservation and technique class.

gio 14 gen

Drank wine with the Middlebury crowd and fell in love with a waitress who wore purple argyle and a retainer.  When I get a dog, I am naming it Figaro.

Poggio a Caiano and Camignano

Visited Poggio a Caiano to see the Medici villa and Carmignano to see the Pontormo Visitation.

The Medici villa contained a variety of frescoes from Portormo, other Mannerists, and eighteenth century artists who renovated the piano terra, which I assume was a working agricultural hub for the Villa and its tenuta during the 16th century. I do not like most Mannerist art and had gone to see the villa's gardens, which were unfortunately closed. However, I was able to see them from the villa's terrazzo and windows. It was a sunless day, and mist hung beneath the branches of the pines, willows, and cedars. Clouds cloaked and shifted through the surrounding hillsides, their hazy opalescence dissolving into the green olive groves. It was cold, and later I took a walk in Carmignano, smoking a toscano and admiring the subtle January day.

In the courtyard of the Medici Villa, a group of Chinese had gathered to take photos and videos of two newly weds and the wedding party. They all wore Western attire: tuxedos and enormous white gowns that gathered the dirt and lichen from the paving stones. The groom sported a large Louis Vuitton beltbuckle and crushed satin lapels. For hours a cameraman and a photographer took footage of the couple in between their phone calls. The groom looked miserable, the bride of honor looked chilly, and the bride herself determined. Her hair sparkled with spray-in diamonds. At the villa's gates, they posed in front of their white limo, the bride beaming, the groom now desperate. When they drove away, the cameraman chased the limo down the street to capture every moment.

After our trip, I walked home from the bus station at Santa Maria Novella. I bought a copy of Bagheria by Dacia Maraini, which I need to begin before the semester does. In a few hours, I'll cook dinner. I don't know if I will see my roommates tonight, since the Pitti Imagine Uomo fashion show began today (http://www.pittimmagine.com/it/fiere/uomo/). Ferragamo probably resembles a kicked ant pile.