09 Tuesday Sep 2014
I’m still working on the Italian. Longing, as well, for the photographer’s eye.
Click here for a first-rate image, plus the critical exchange that accompanies it.
I, on the other hand, am still pealing back Euros, like onions, from my belt-pack and trying to decipher the history and the dynamics of this two-day commercial festival. (At least we found the short-sleeve shirts to beat the heat. Porchetta, I shall save for another day.)
07 Sunday Sep 2014
Posted in Bookstand
Despite its teetering pile, the nightstand has picked up another book. Plenty to choose from in this holiday retreat.
Something about Anastasia told me it was different, though. Dedication grabs the eye: “Happy birthday to U. All the best!”
What have I beheld? Disinterest? Boredom? Or re-gifting? Back track to “Early Praise for the Ringing Cedars Series”:
Bob and Ted; Carol and Alice. No last names are ever used. Almost as odd as the “salvation” discourse fulfilling them.
To stay with this pick? Else to put it down at some point? An existential choice in reading usually avoided in school.
05 Friday Sep 2014
while I tag along for the enjoyment (not always available, I have just learned, at the website. In its stead, cover page from the gallery catalog that we received:)
05 Friday Sep 2014
Posted in Education
6 Via Porta Fuga. Quite a fancy address, for our modest digs. Whole load of historical resonance. Think of it this (linguistic) way:
Fuga: escape / flight / break / getaway / fugitive. Italian: fuggitivio m (feminine fuggitiva)
Put them all together and you get a low-down, old-fashioned exit:
After marching victoriously across central Italy, in 217 BC Hannibal passes by our place in retreat. (Tradition says.)
Attributed to Cicero: “Hannibal ante portas“ (“Hannibal is at the gates!”). Advice to the old boy, should he scamper home after ten: “Jiggle the key.”
04 Thursday Sep 2014
2013: Unknown driver awaits our anxious looks.
2014: Eagerly for us, Laurie and the Calder await.
Teodelapio (with monuments behind) captured by iPhone – Own work.
In the distance, steel framed in view, two of the town’s ten places “not to miss”: Rocca Albornoziana and the Cathedral of Santa Ma
ria Assunta with the piazza del Duomo.
03 Wednesday Sep 2014
In these days of camera phones and iBooks, it’s quite hard to picture the backlog of books (both great and small) on a retired professor’s MacBook Air. Should I secure permission from my old roommate on 3rd Belk, I’ll publish his magazines and hardbacks instead. Far more neatly stacked, sharply shot, the image captured here calls out to me still.
iBook Library that I stashed away, many at the last moment, must be of interest to me of course. How often, or in what way, I’ll be able to deliver to U a return on my investment remains to be one seen in the posts ahead. “Quick scripts,” I can assure. “Slow going,” yet, they may well prove to be. Hey, ‘re: tired profs’ usually involve poor students (in the puns of Walden) that way.
02 Tuesday Sep 2014
Posted in Education
I start filling up this book with “Flintstone.”
(Actually, there’s an historical exhibit back in the Rome Hotel which holds the place of honor: a wall-to-wall series on “Economic Rome,” with a separate plaque about Roman slave labor, worth the “photo op” to me at least.)
But I was saying, before Truth broke in with all her matter-of-factness about the exhibition, I’ve no idea if there’s flintstone in these here hills.
(For a real travelogue, take a side-trip to The Shady Forest by clicking here. [A note bene to the wise: great story, wrong region: alas, and alack, my kingdom for an “i”!] Or else carry on with this “shaggy dog” of a story here.)
Since anyone who shares the peccadilloes of a misspent youth knows our cartoon set is laid in Bedrock.