Olly Olly in Free

05 Monday Sep 2016

Posted by jturner@mi-connection.com in Travel

Despite the name, this is not a game. Coming back each year, there are places we hold dear.

Those that are still open run “olly olly in free.” Those that are chiuso (closed), alas, sadden Rebecca and me.

Week One’s treks of rediscovery are such agony. (We think we have a stagnant economy.)

Best news by far, already expected: the dear couple at Osteria Del Trivio, our local haunt for Sunday dinner, are back and strong after suddenly closing last year.

A close second, always uncertain: the arts supply store is still at the top of Via Porto Fuga. (It was here, according to legend, that Hannibal was routed when the besieged Spoletini showered his troops from a tower with oil.)

I mention this, in part to explain the straining after yet another (entitled) pun. But I should mention as well, perhaps, that Hannibal and all his elephants couldn’t keep my wife from traipsing up that climb to her ‘art’s content.

My own photographic supplies, so far, are pretty thin. Wi-Fi and me are not so friendly! (With luck, perhaps I will soon be able to come out from hiding without going insane.)

“Nothing Like the Sun”

03 Saturday Sep 2016

Posted by jturner@mi-connection.com in Art

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: St. Gregorio Maggiore, from our terrace tonight

William Shakespeare’s Sonnet 130 mocks the conventions of the showy and flowery courtly sonnets in its realistic portrayal of his mistress.

My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips’ red:
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damask’d, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound:
I grant I never saw a goddess go,
My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground:
And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
As any she belied with false compare.

My photograph, straining against the limitations of its taker (or lens), isn’t exactly mocking the realistic conventions of the medium. But it does look sort of painterly, as even my artist wife might admit.

Whether any of that means anything, much less makes it art, only explains perhaps why the allusion popped into my head. I just thought it (the title) was funny, and (it, the image) looked “pretty.”

Who Moved the Dumpsters?

03 Saturday Sep 2016

Posted by jturner@mi-connection.com in Travel

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Your inattentive Spoletini have just misplaced the public trash receptacles, after three years of convenient nightly deposits at the end of our cross-street.

A wonder how much sorry waste there is in the course of our daily goings-on. And then there’s all the paper, and plastic, and bottles, and refuse to boot.

Language Lesson 3.0

03 Saturday Sep 2016

Posted by jturner@mi-connection.com in Education

≈ 1 Comment

Or, “Clueless, Just Take the Euro!”

Eurospin Giveaway, apparently, works this way: a certain supermarket customer, randomly passing through the checkout line, is offered an immersion blender for a Euro.

When U have an uncertain Italian student, who is basically flunking out, the whole transaction goes to pot: first, the clerk tries her hand in Italian; then, a customer in broken English takes a spin.

Finally, in mock-exasperation, she exclaims “Just take the Euro!” The one, apparently, she has been trying to hand me, lord knows why, for some time.

And with that financial exchange, apparently, the conversational exchange is completed.

“Do you know what just happened?” Reb asks as we are leaving the store. “Of course not,” I reply in my best student voice.

Only when we get home and read the printed receipt does the clue finally arrive: “Frullatore ad immer” (1,00 Euro) is printed out below the “Subtotale.” In other words, the immersion blender was at the bottom of this language lesson all the time.