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?

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