2 Baci in a Pinon Tree

Bumping into Gladiators

2009-11-11T17:43:00.002-05:00

I never really gave much thought to the iconic Roman fighters known as gladiators. Sure, we skimmed over them in my ancient history classes in college, and I read a bit of background when I visited the Colosseum for the first time. I have seen them talking on cell phones and getting bawdy in coffee bars while on break from their jobs as costumed kitsch performers offering photo ops to tourists

A Happy Birthday

2009-11-04T19:32:00.002-05:00

Yesterday was my birthday. While I'm not particularly *thrilled* to admit that I've turned 43, I'm not one to lie about my age, either. I figure I've lived, experienced, and earned all of the joys, tears, laughs, meals, chores, events, mistakes, excitement, monotony, pleasures, fears, decisions, and dreams of each of those years, and I wouldn't deny any of them. I don't mind the laugh lines

The Eagle is Slowly Rising

2009-10-26T16:25:00.002-04:00

I was strolling through the rotonda of the National Gallery of Art when a gloriously gilded painting caught my eye. The beautiful triptych was obviously Italian from the Medieval period. I went to take a closer look and discovered why the altarpiece struck me as familiar; it had been housed in the Castello Spagnolo in L'Aquila, and was brought to the US as a gesture of gratitude for American

The Last Mule of Anzi

2009-10-17T10:48:00.004-04:00

A friend told me the story of her father-in-law’s emigration from Italy. He left Lucca at age 17 for California, like so many others, in search of opportunity and riches in the New World. His wife and her family had likewise come from Lucca, but he had long shunned the idea of returning to Italy, despite his kids’ pleadings. Finally, after much insistence that Italy had changed in the forty

Home Food

2009-10-08T14:45:00.001-04:00

In my last post I reported on a "home cooking" trend in the US. As you might expect, Italy takes the concept of home cooking to a different level. The organization Home Food was started to preserve and showcase the special and unique regional dishes and food products of each area. "Typical", "traditional" and "regional" are the buzzwords they live and cook by. They even wax poetic: "Food is

Cooking at Home...or Home Cooking?

2009-10-05T10:00:00.000-04:00

Down the street from our house is a little shopping center. Along with the handful of eateries and shops is a storefront business I'd never heard of before, called Let's Dish. The window had a menu posted and a glance inside revealed a few stainless steel kitchen prep areas. Curious, I went inside to inquire about the place. I was told it is a "revolutionary concept" in home cooking. A "

To Italy and Back - at Lunchtime

2009-09-26T15:14:00.001-04:00

We have had company. Normally, in years past in our other "destination spot" homes, this meant playing tour guide, finding scenic drives and regional restaurants, and showing our guests all the beauties of the area during their visit. This time, however, it involved a vastly different itinerary that involved tiring trips up and down the three stories of the townhouse, hours huddled in the

O Foods Contest for Ovarian Cancer Month

2009-09-19T19:16:00.001-04:00

Olive all'Ascolana is an Oh-so-good O Food September is national Ovarian Cancer Awareness Month, and I'm getting both my blogs involved to participate in the recipe contest hosted by Michelle of Bleeding Espresso and Sara of Ms. Adventures in Italy, initiated to draw attention to the disease and its symptoms. The gist of the contest is to highlight a food that begins or ends in O, while talking

Clearing the Cobwebs

2009-09-14T17:58:00.001-04:00

Ciao tutti! If it seems like cobwebs have been gathering on the nest, it is because we have been in transit. The vagabondi have yet again packed up and moved onward. How many times are we up to since January? Anyone keeping count? I can barely keep it all straight in my memory at this point! We feared that we would once again be loading and/or unloading in rain, as has been the trend in our

A Granddaughter's Tribute

2009-09-08T16:56:00.004-04:00

Today is my grandfather's birthday, so I want to give him a rousing shout-out: Happy Birthday, Gramps! We went to my hometown on Sunday to take him out for a brunch celebration. Sunday was my sister's birthday, and ever since her first birthday they have gone out for lunch as a dual celebration, usually just the two of them. We honed in this year, since it was only the second time in the

How Art Can Change The World

2009-09-02T14:53:00.006-04:00

Fiona Donovan has a big heart. Living in Alexandria, Virginia, in the Washington, DC metro area, homeless people are not an uncommon sight to her- on park benches, along the roadsides, or roaming the streets. She was especially bothered that there are children without homes and wanted to do something to help. That's when she struck on an idea to use her natural talents and create art, sell it

Do The Artusi

2009-08-26T10:58:00.005-04:00

Last night, for the first time in about three years, I went to a movie. With so many other things to do in Italy, we didn’t spend much time at the cinema. Truth be told, I’ve never been a big movie-goer anyway, so it wasn’t much of a sacrifice, especially when there were concerts in the piazzas, plays in the opulent opera house teatro, and various festas to attend year round. But, having just

Tour del Gelato

2009-08-16T18:28:00.006-04:00

The weather has finally turned hot; good grief, it took long enough! I was starting to think that 'summer' was not on the northern Ohio calendar year and that only two seasons existed here: winter, and not winter.Seizing the opportunity to get some sun and some Italian atmosphere, we headed down to piccola Italia (Little Italy) for the blow-out party of the year, the Feast of the Assumption. Just

La Buona Notte di San Lorenzo

2009-08-10T09:20:00.012-04:00

Today is San Lorenzo, the feast day of Saint Lawrence, a popular festa throughout Italy. He is the patron saint of librarians and is called upon by comedians and cooks, owing to his famous quip during his martyrdom, "I am roasted enough of this side, turn me over now". He is also one of the patron saints of Rome. The notte di San Lorenzo is widely celebrated, though I suspect it is because his

A Rose in Barcelona

2009-08-06T10:08:00.006-04:00

My grandmother’s name was Rose. She had a cousin Rose, who traveled to Italy a couple years agoto meet us, accompanied by my cousin Celia. We all spent a wonderful week on the beautiful Costa del Cilento, hanging out together, cooking together, and visiting the Motherland together.Both of these Roses were named for their aunt Rosa, who was the sister of my grandma’s mother, and who is referred to

Italy in Bits and Pieces

2009-07-31T09:11:00.004-04:00

The past few weeks have been pretty busy so I put blog-reading on the back burner. But after just a week I started missing my normal haunts and feeling withdrawal symptoms. I initiated a sort of "rotation system" to try to read a couple a day, just to keep up with things.Then yesterday I went on a bender. I sat down with my bookmarks and blissed my way through a few hours of unabated blog

Be Neighborly - Buy Locally

2009-07-24T09:13:00.004-04:00

One of the (many) things we love about life in Italy is the sense of community. People gather in the piazzas, chat on park benches, and meet regularly for un caffe` or aperitivo in their favorite haunt. The mom-and-pop shop is still alive and well and steadfastly supported by neighborhood residents.We knew that when we bought veggies at the mercato dell'erbe the person we were buying from was

A Small Place in Italy

2009-07-17T09:00:00.004-04:00

Eric Newby was a wonderful travel writer who chronicled his experiences as an escaped prisoner of war being protected and housed by Italians in his famous book, Love and War in the Apennines. His sequel of sorts was A Small Place in Italy, where Newby tells of returning to Italy with his wife to buy a casa. With characteristic dry wit and descriptive character sketches, he recounts the

Reunion Week Continues

2009-07-10T17:10:00.013-04:00

We are still on the road; I guess we figured that since we’ve been living the life of vagabondi anyway, we may as well make it mobile for a while. There are lots of people we haven’t seen in a long time. Besides, since summer had not yet arrived in Cleveland when we left twelve days ago, we’ve had to go looking for sun and warmth. Strange how I don’t remember those weather quirks from my

Happy Independence Day

2009-07-04T12:39:00.002-04:00

For the first time in three years we will get to celebrate the 'giorno della indipendenza' in the company of our fellow countrymen. In our case, we are among la famiglia having a little family reunion of sorts. Not technically a reunion, I guess, since I met one cousin for the first time this weekend, and have not seen the other, my cousin Celia's dad, since I was about five years old. What

The Eternal Gratitude of Aliano

2009-06-29T09:00:00.002-04:00

Our tour of Basilicata continues...Aliano seems to bask in its infamy. Seventy years ago it had been a typical peasant village in remote southern Basilicata, scraping to survive, and ignored and derided by the central government. It would have remained hidden and forgotten in its lunar-like hills had it not been paid a visit by destiny.When the Mussolini government wanted to silence the political

The Lost Leonardo

2009-06-24T08:56:00.009-04:00

Acerenza is a pretty place. Set up on a massif high at the end of a squiggly road, its position above the Bradano River has been enviable and strategic since before the Roman age. It has seen -and survived- many invaders through the millennia, but like many towns in this area it was the Middle Ages that left the most lasting features on Acerenza, endowing it with narrow pedestrian lanes and

Back to Basilicata

2009-06-19T11:19:00.009-04:00

I’m returning to Italy today, at least in thought and blog, because let’s face it, there isn’t a lot to say about Cleveland these days unless I want to expound on the public corruption scandals and depressing job market (I don’t). Besides, after our Motherland sojourn I promised to fill you in on some of the great places we visited, so no time like the rainy-day present to get started!PISTICCIDon

Homesick

2009-06-17T04:00:00.000-04:00

The one question we used to receive constantly while living in Ascoli Piceno was, "come mai Ascoli?" (why are you living in Ascoli?) Now that we're in Cleveland, everyone is asking, "Why Cleveland?" where the current city motto seems to be, "at least we're not Detroit!" The second question everyone asks is, "don't you miss Italy?" Answer: Yes. Every minute. With every fiber of my being. I miss

Is This Some Kind of Joke?

2009-06-12T20:23:00.006-04:00

I have never talked so much about my car in the thirteen years I've owned it than I have the past two weeks, but here I am again blogging about Arnold.The good news is, Bryan took it to a mechanic, reputable and recommended by the next door neighbor, who looked it over and said that the dreaded fuel injector problem was, in fact, just a cracked spark plug, which cost waaay less than we