whereas today the sound check and the backstage pass were a breeze.
Only that still left us uninvited to the party: must have been the way we were dressed!
Last night’s rain caused nothing but problems,
13 Saturday Sep 2014
Posted in Uncategorized
Author Archives: jturner@mi-connection.com
So Simple, So Very Simple
13 Saturday Sep 2014
Posted in Food
Il pane, l’olio d’oliva, l’aglio, il sale. E il panne, l’olio d’oliva, i pomodori.
La zuppa di lenticchie, il farro, i porri
La pasta, il sugo di pomodori.
E il formaggio.
So simple: bread, butter, garlic, SALT, tomato; lentils, faro, leeks; pasta, sauce. CHEESE.
So good!
What a Difference a Year Makes #2
12 Friday Sep 2014
Posted in Travel
Don’t get me wrong. La Cattedrale di Santa Maria Assunta, the Duomo, is quite magnificent–and its Piazza, with or without the festival in play, truly an amazing sight to behold as you come upon it, unexpectedly (as captured in these photos from October 2013).
But what a difference a year makes. More than ten days have passed, and we have not felt the need to rush out and see it, perhaps because we knew we had penciled in the “rock” dance performance (details unknown) in the Duomo piazza for this afternoon. Pictures to follow, weather permitting.
But it’s raining at the moment. Weather man calling for more. Not that we put much stock in the predictions when the clouds, and your relation to them, turn on a dime. So we’ll see. In the meantime, images from near and far stick around to play in our minds:
Yum Yum
12 Friday Sep 2014
Posted in Food
With the door shut tight and without any light or movement inside, the sign required little translation:
Once the shopkeeper arrived, however, there was just no slowing her down. Fluttering around the il piccolo alimentari (a small deli), words flew faster than any hands or ears could catch them. We, of course, simply had to come away with most of them in our bag. A good thing, too. I mean, a very good thing:
Now, if we only knew the name. Not for a lack of trying: Il nome?, we ask. Something something something something, she replies. A quizzical look, we provide. Something crema something something, she offers again. Another quizzical look follows. La dolche crema di something something, the words are starting finally to get through. In the end, maybe, something like this: La dolche crema di mozzarella di bufafa. Yes, that’s right: we definitely like this.
Coming and a–going Weather
11 Thursday Sep 2014
Posted in Travel
By mid-afternoon the sky has changed. Safe enough to drop off the trash, pick up some cash, and climb back home, stopping to see about dinner choices; then off again, up the hill, to see if we can’t lose a few of those Euros on art supplies, perhaps a jacket or blouse, before slipping past the art gallery below (hint: think “mermaids”) to steeple-watch and to sky-gaze from the terrazzo.
Hail Last Night (Really), Monsoon Before Noon (Figuratively)
11 Thursday Sep 2014
Posted in Art
All the while Reb’s been sketching up a storm:
“Fiera Post” Toasted
10 Wednesday Sep 2014
Posted in Education
Duh. Turn around, idiot, turn around.
In the first place, it would help with my Italian if the Agenda Eventi would print the whole name, “Fiera della Madonna di Loreto,” instead of the foreshortened “Fiera di Loreto.”
In the second place, it would help with my Italian if Google Translate had not at first returned “Proud of Loreto.” Time waits on no man to look up that “Loreto” (person, place, or thing), apparently, since the aforesaid pride is all-wrong to begin with.
In third place, it would help with my Italian (as my dear wife kindly tells me) if maybe I looked around for context clues at the fair, exhibition, or (even use your ancient French, if you must) fête. Like the one we’ve been passing on the street for two days straight.
In the fourth and last place, about the link she has told me (and told me again, even after I thought I had fixed it) didn’t work: it does function now, I think. Nice picture. Looks exactly like the one iPhone took, except for it being much better than mine (which itself doesn’t seem to want to reload itself exactly the way the others have, when you click on it. There will be time to learn the HTML hereafter, I suppose. Meanwhile, WordPress still mis-formats the expanded image. But I have learned, perhaps, in trying to solve that problem that the photo itself holds some promise if you crop more and more of it. Who knew?).
To Live Deliberately
10 Wednesday Sep 2014
“I went to the woods” at Walden Pond, Thoreau never writes in his spiritual classic, “to write.”
Yet that half-truth is as much the plain fact of the matter as the one so well remembered–for many of us, indeed, by heart. (For those without familiarity or in need of a jog this morning, click here for the sidebar.)
Pilgrim’s Progress?
10 Wednesday Sep 2014
Not much, since the rains of September finally came.
If Chaucer were writing his Canterbury Tales today, I suppose he’d frame them as independent blogs. Or, to keep up the social interaction between the multiple tellers and the tales, as a series of postings on “The facebook.”
Techno 101
10 Wednesday Sep 2014
A year ago I was amazed by a Moka coffee maker, which perks up (instead of dripping down).
This year, more so, I am mesmerized by the locking mechanism on the terrace shutter doors. A good place to start, as always, is at the bottom of things:
Around this innocent-looking (but do not be fooled, lest you happen to trip over it) device on the left, the two doors (one with and one without a mechanism like the one on the right) fit snuggly into place:
How the mechanism manages to hold these pieces against themselves, thereby keeping the doors locked in place, is a marvel to behold:
Far be it from me to divulge the magician’s tricks of the trade. Suffice it to say, it works.