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.