Nancy, Author at Itch.world

Nancy, Author at Itch.world - Page 13 of 20

A three-minute escape to Italy.

Tuscany, travel, medieval village, Italy, festivals, celebrations, customs, cooking, recipes, living in Italy, moving to Italy, visiting, visit, restaurants, language

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May 12, 2019 In Best Of, Live By Nancy

Passing as Italian

(Part 3 of a series on driving in Italy. Photo is out our back window one day when we found ourselves in the middle of the famed Miglia Mille rally on our way to lunch. Full disclosure, both cars did pass us.)

One of the most important things to master to drive well in Italy is the art of passing. The first thing to know is that Italians drive when they drive. There is no drifting along in your lane, thinking of what really should have been said in that meeting, or what to make for dinner. (This generality does not apply if the driver is in an older white or green Fiat Panda. That self-identified group has their own distinct norms and behaviors—the subject of a future Itch.)

The norms of passing are most evident on the autostrada. Rule number one is that you never drive drifting along in the left lane—which is used only for passing. You wait your turn in the right lane behind the car or truck you want to pass, looking in your side mirror while cars blast past, then pull out, pass, and quickly reenter the right lane before another car comes up on your rear madly flashing its lights for you to get out of the way. And know that if you are not regularly being trailed by an irate driver in an Audi flashing lights then you are going far too fast.

Passing on local roads is not an occasional thing but something you do constantly, which I guess has to do with the wider variety of vehicles on the road than what I was used to in America. We contend with the full range of under-powered scooters, three-wheeled vehicles called apes (pronounced “au pey” which in Italian means “bee” — not to be confused with the Vespa, or “wasp”). Then there are the tractors, trucks, and previously mentioned white or green Fiat Pandas. All require passing.

The rules for passing are well-documented and necessary to master in driving school, but nearly nonexistent in practice. It’s up to everyone’s definition of common sense—like parking. Friends who were staying with us were marveling at having been passed on a striped-off section of road leading up to a tunnel. I knew exactly where they meant, having become Italian-enough by now to pretty frequently use this particular patch of road—just wide and long enough—to pass somebody before reaching the tunnel.

In general all of this passing works out well, with a great deal of common sense and politeness, as least in our area of Italy. But one time I was passed I got so angry that I actually followed the offending van to have a word with the driver. I had been waiting in the left turn lane at a light, the light changed and I started to move forward, when suddenly this white van behind me pulls out into the oncoming lane, passing me to the left of my left turn lane, to make the same left turn. This could have resulted in a head-on collision with oncoming traffic. I followed the van to the local hospital where he stopped and much to my delight there were two policemen in the parking lot. With Donella’s help, and full of fury and indignation, I spewed my tale of catching this rogue in an act of very, very unsafe driving and demanded that they ticket him, or at least yell loudly. The police officer glances up the hill to where the white van is now parked near a small door going into the hospital and says that he understands my frustration but isn’t going to speak with the driver. “He’s picking up a body at the morgue. A difficult job. Sometimes things in life that are hard make you drive badly.” I kinda got his point.

A small detail from driving school rules I found interesting. The person being passed is equally responsible for the safety of the event as the person doing the passing. I don’t remember a similar law in America. It seems a bit unjust, but also oddly mature and pragmatic. An odd reminder that I have more responsibility for the events in life than is sometimes fair or comfortable. But true nevertheless.

May 12, 2019 In Lingua, Live By Nancy

Brava!

I think I’m addicted. I find myself going out of my way to do certain things that might provoke a hearty Brava!, usually accompanied by a beaming smile. Once you are used to people saying brava to you daily there is no going back. (Of course brava has its gender and singular/plural equivalents: bravo, brave, and bravi.)

For me the easiest way to earn a brava is to provide correct change, or pay 2.16€ instead of just 2.00€ so that a 1.66€ purchase is easier to make change for. When I travel to the U.S. or Britain I find myself plunking down ridiculous configurations of bills and change for a coffee, trying to make the job of the cashier nice and tidy, all with the secret intent of earning a brava. The clerk usually looks at me like an idiot and wonders why on earth I’d be giving them 2.16 in cash instead of making life easier by paying with Apple Pay or a contactless credit card. And then I know that I am not in Italy anymore.

Another way to earn a brava is to express an opinion that is slightly beyond brutally obvious, or might echo a matter of taste that the other person in the conversation shares. “I think that shutter would look better painted in gray” might very well elicit a “brava, brava, brava!”

I never wanted to know the true degree of awesomeness really being expressed, preferring to compare myself to an opera diva or a world-class ballerina when I make correct change, but John made me ask. So I talked to my hairdresser about it, asking him to rate brava on a scale from OK to Fabulous. Turns out it’s about a quarter of the way up the scale from OK. Another quarter up the scale is bravissima. I will still happily take any brava I can get. Try it, you may see what I mean. Next time you execute a great parallel parking maneuver, or think of the perfect response in a conversation, give yourself a hearty bravo and see how it feels.

May 5, 2019 In Best Of, Roam By Nancy

Cunning, danger, and beauty: La Foce

Every once in awhile there’s a person, place, point in history, or an aesthetic creation that stops you in your tracks. Something that causes you to think “Could I have ever done that?” And even more rarely, “Could I have ever been that brave?” La Foce, and Iris Origo, provide that spark for me.

The first layer of the experience is the garden, one of the most magnificent in Italy. The Val d’Orcia, south of Siena, and more specifically Pienza and Montepulciano, is one of the most arid and rugged parts of Italy, described by Iris as “bare and colourless as elephants’ backs, as treeless as mountains of the moon. A lunar landscape pale and inhuman… a land without mercy and without shade.”

Iris and Antonio Origo purchased an old, crumbling villa with no running water or electricity, surrounded by this barren land, and over fifty years, starting in 1924, created one of the most iconic gardens in Italy. This curved road, flanked by cypresses, is often on the cover of guide books and was created by them from the barren land.

Iris was half American and half British and very wealthy. Her father died of tuberculosis when she was young. Her father’s family had never accepted his marriage to an Englishwoman and his dying wishes were that she grow up “free from all this national feeling which makes people so unhappy.” He suggested Italy, where she could become “cosmopolitan, deep down” and “free to love and marry anyone she likes, of any country, without its being difficult.” Her mother raised her in Florence, in the Villa Medici in the hills outside the city, where frequent guests included Bernard Berenson (her mom used to play a “guess what painting that detail is from” with him), and Edith Wharton. There she met and married Antonio Origo, the illegitimate son of an Italian aristocrat.

The couple decided to experiment with the latest in agricultural and social ideas with their new property, La Foce, restoring the main buildings, and the tenant farmers’ quarters, creating schools and healthcare facilities, a social club for workers, and undertaking massive work restoring the land to arability. Iris took the lead on the workers and families, who when they bought La Foce, lived in dismal tenant-farmer conditions and were 90% illiterate. Antonio focused on making the farm productive. The land had been deforested by the Etruscans, who had cut down all trees and overgrazed the grasses resulting in the loss of almost all the topsoil. For the next 2,000 years the land remained barren, making the planting of crops, and even the movement of people on foot between nearby villages impossible due to the heavy, wet clay.

(photo thanks to La Foce)

The before and after is clear in the landscape below—previous to their work most land in the Val d’Orcia looked like the lunar landscape to the right in the photo. The rolling green hills, curved road, and rows of trees were all created by them.

They brought in the British landscape designer, Cecil Pinsent, to work with them on creating the formal gardens. He worked on La Foce on and off for the next 30 years. It is said that the garden gets progressively more subtle and sophisticated as his Italian, and hence the ability to communicate with his worked, improved.

All this is fairly interesting to me, and lovely to visit, but the part that captures my imagination lies with World War II and the fact that Iris was a genius at observation, a very talented writer, and a bold and brave woman caught between her adopted Italian homeland and her British and American roots.

Before the war, and during it, she kept diaries which she kept hidden in different places on the property. If the diaries had been discovered by the Germans during the war it would have meant certain death for her, and possibly for her family. She was very well-connected in Italy, England, and America (her godfather, William Phillips, was the American Ambassador to Italy) so her comments are often deeply behind the scenes but she’s equally adept at capturing what a range of Italians from illiterate workers to the middle-class in Florence to the aristocracy were thinking and feeling during this period.

The Nazis decided to house American and English POWs at La Foce and Iris had to walk a careful line as she needed to appear to side with the Germans or their ability to help hundreds of people behind the scenes, and their work on La Foce, would be lost. At night she was taking food and information to the partisans who were camped in the woods around the house, and to the POWs whom she could not interact with during the day. They were housing orphans and evacuees from the bombings in Turin when the Germans seized La Foce in 1944. The Origos led 60 people to safety (among them many children and babies) by walking to Montepulciano, including through mined fields.

And at night she wrote. Crisp and vivid of detail, while also capturing the big picture of the war, it is almost impossible to believe that she could create such a body of work under such conditions. Her most famous work is War in the Val d’Orcia: An Italian War Diary 1943-44. Very recently published is an earlier diary, A Chill in the Air: An Italian War Diary 1939-1940 which seems, unfortunately, to be relevant today. Iris writes in April 1939, “It is now clear what form propaganda, in case of war, will take. The whole problem will be presented as an economic one. The ‘democratic’ countries, i.e. the ‘haves’, will be presented as permanently blocking the way of the ‘have-nots’ to economic expansion… Fascists are thus enabled to see the impending war as a struggle between the poor man and the rich—a genuine revolutionary movement.”

To immerse yourself in all-things-Iris, it is possible to visit the garden on a guided tour several afternoons a week. The Origo’s daughters, Benedetta and Donata, now have the property and have converted some of the outbuildings into places to stay. The social club they built for the workers, called the Dopolavoro (literally “after work”) is now a restaurant that serves simple but lovely food and wine with a nice outside area to eat on hot days. My hint would be to do the last tour in the early evening, followed by dinner. Pinsent designed the gardens so that the shadows would move like dancers.

April 27, 2019 In Best Of, Live By Nancy

“Endgame” in a small Italian town

Warning: some spoilers

Avengers fever has hit our valley. Sebastian went with friends to see Avengers: Endgame in Italian on opening night in a packed theater in a small Italian town. (Not the theater you are picturing—it’s a theater from 1836, highly decorated, ringed by four floors of tiny boxes with three or four seats each.) He was so excited that we insisted we go to the English-version screening the following evening at the multiplex in the larger town of Arezzo.

As this was one of the few showings in English our theater was packed with Americans. It was fun to compare the experience of seeing the film with an American audience with how Sebastian described the all-Italian audience in the smaller town. Our American crowd, largely consisting groups of teen boys, was pretty darn quiet and reserved. It didn’t feel like there was a shared sense of catharsis and that we were all kinda there on our own seeing the film, although we were in a group.

Not how Sebastian and his friends experienced the movie. First of all, there was a large age range of attendees. He said that groups of middle-aged friends (sans kids) were as common as groups of teens, and many families with small kids. He came out of the movie buzzing, and it said it was largely because of how the whole theater of 400 was responding to the film throughout. It went from a shared gasp of feeling and shock when Hawkeye’s daughter disappears in the opening scene, to laughing shouted comments on the heavy-handed Audi product placement, to absolute, stunned silence when the dead superheros return in yellow orbs with Dr. Strange. (Sebastian said he, and the person next to him, and it felt like the whole audience, was trembling. And this is from a 15-year old.) Many people cried, and there were cheers throughout.

I wish I had of seen that version, but again, I’m one of those people who think it is the most delightful thing in the world when airplanes full of Italians applaud and cheer upon landing—much to the disdain of the often British minority of passengers. There’s something about this accessibility and ease about emotions that I just can’t get enough of.

April 27, 2019 In Best Of, Live By Nancy

The world of Italian brotherhoods

The Misericordia procession on the night of Good Friday is mysterious and evocative, and to an American sensibility, alarming. A procession of hooded and robed figures carrying crosses and a symbolic coffin, lit by torchlight, followed by hundreds of villagers is a glimpse into another world. It is one of those moments when I need to put my cultural instincts on hold to understand what is really going on in my little corner of Italy. I was watching the procession when one of the figures, unrecognizable in his hood, paused to say hello and I recognized the voice of a friend. I called him later to invite him to meet for coffee so that I could learn more.

The robed members of the procession were members of the Misericordia, an ancient cofraternity, or brotherhood, present in nearly every town in Italy. Today, the Misericordia provides ambulances and emergency staff, volunteers to drive the elderly to doctors appointments and physical therapy, and during Donella’s year in middle school it was the Misericordia who drove a fellow student, who was quadriplegic, to and from school every day in a special van. But I was unclear on how this civic function related to the procession.

The idea of laymen banding together in such brotherhoods is a very ancient tradition, first happening in Constantinople and Alexandria. The first one in Europe popped up in Paris in 1208. Cofraternities arose during the middle ages when these groups of “brother citizens” filled gaps that existed because there was no functioning government, only a feudal system caught between the power of rich landlords and the church. Somehow people needed to get buried, especially during times of plague, the sick needed to be tended, orphans and illegitimate children needed care (and dowries!), and prisoners needed a companion to take them to execution. Another friend (who is not a member) mentioned that these brotherhoods often aided members in deeper business and social ties with bits of friendly information and advantages, in addition to fulfilling one’s duties as a “good Christian”.

Although there were a range of these organizations, the main one that exists in modern times is the Misericordia. Our village organization dates from 1348, the year the plague hit. (Once was not enough in 25 years as the plague also returned in 1363 and 1374.) The group had a few struggles in the 1700s when the Grand Duke Leopold thought these brotherhoods had too much power and disbanded them, but they returned as nothing nearly as effective replaced them.

My friend from the procession, who is a member, said that he is the third generation of his family to belong and that supporting the group is an important tradition, especially as membership has declined by about 50% over the last forty or so years. The Misericordia is deeply rooted in the Church, but not run by the Church, and it was impossible for my friend to weigh whether belonging had a more religious or secular/service meaning. “As with much in Italy, it is largely the same.” People in the village are expected to support the group by contributing what they can in time, money, or both. Some of the staff is highly trained and receive salaries to work full-time as EMTs, but there are many ways to be involved, such as volunteering to drive those who can’t to appointments.

I was describing the difference between calling “911” in America, where an ambulance appears that you will have to pay for, staffed by people you’ve never met, with our experience once in calling “118” here where five paramedics appeared with an ambulance which took us to the hospital, all free of charge, and my friend was surprised. I said that we have no equivalent (or tradition) of the Misericordia because we don’t have the same sense that seems to pervade the Italian village that we all need to take care of each other. He looked puzzled as he tried to imagine this lack of ties to the people who live around you.

April 27, 2019 In Live By Nancy

No matter where you go, there you are

I didn’t write Itch last week—first time since I started on August 10th. I blame it on Easter, Donella’s birthday preparations, friends in town, and a delay in an interview or two, but there was probably something more.

I think I needed a reflective pause to listen to a kind of thirst, rawness, desire that I can’t quite name—usually a sign for me of the necessity to change. Without wanting to meet its eyes too directly I think it’s trying to signal that not all is solved by a change in culture and location. (Perfectly expressed in the quote in the headline by the great philosopher, Buckaroo Bonzai, in 1984.) The instinct to move to rural Italy was right, but didn’t entirely quiet the dark breezes in my soul of fear, unspecified non-enoughness, and scarcity.

So, inward I go. And deeper into Italy as a powerful catalyst to grow. And wanting to use Itch, and all of you, to keep me honest.

What I’d love to know from you—what is touching you about Itch? What stories are the most memorable, and which ones reached your heart? What’s not working for you—topics, length, etc?? I’d love to hear, if you have a moment to drop me a note.

And now, onward and forward. We have some really fun things planned, including a field trip to Beirut in May, hopefully a trip to John’s ancestral village in Calabria to cook with a grandmother, and loads more.

April 13, 2019 In Best Of, Chow, Live, Recipes By Nancy

How I know it’s spring in Tuscany

One of the things I love most about creating Itch is that I’m constantly reminded to keep attentive to what unfolds around me every day. I had so much fun thinking about spring for this post, and the little things that make me know that it has arrived.

1. Fava Beans

In the spring fava beans are suddenly everywhere, but show up in two completely different ways. First there are the fave that you eat. Italians often serve them in a very different way than I’d had in America. I was used to the beans being shelled, the small inner beans removed, and then blanched to make it easier to remove the skin around the inner, bright green bean, which was the only part served. (One memorable exception to this was many years ago in San Francisco’s Mission District at Delfina when they served fried baby fava beans which were eaten whole, outer pod and all. They were delicious.)

Here, even at very nice restaurants, when you order fave you often get a plate of raw, whole beans, along with some thin slices of pecorino cheese, salt, and some olive oil. You then remove the inner pods yourself and eat them raw, along with the skin coating them, accompanied by some oil and cheese. We still aren’t totally convinced that this is as good as just the innermost pod cooked in some delicious way, but this kind of dish makes everything dependent on the essentials: the fave must be very, very fresh and the quality of the oil and cheese is critical.

My sister turned me on to a recipe that involves throwing whole, really fresh fava beans in a plastic bag along with some olive oil, sea salt, red pepper, and garlic, tossing together to coat, and then roasting the beans over a fire until cooked and tender and a bit charred in places. You can eat these whole and we have served them several times as an aperitivo, along with a prosecco.

But fave in markets and restaurants aren’t that unusual in many places around the world. The second way fave are a harbinger of spring is that they are used as a cover crop to restore nitrogen to the fields where tobacco was planted late last summer. All those glorious little beans are plowed under just when they get really promising, unharvested.

2. The Lamborghini come out

If we were to do an MRI of our brain activity with the verbal prompt “Lamborghini” I think our brains would light up in very different ways. The image I conjure up is one of a tractor. After WWII Ferruccio Lamborghini started a company to make tractors out of reconfigured military equipment. He also made heating and cooling equipment and between his businesses became wildly successful. So successful that he started to collect luxury cars, including a Ferrari, which was a constant nightmare to maintain. He decided to start his own car brand in 1963.

Today, in the valley, having a Lamborghini tractor is definitely the cool kid choice and at this time of year the tractors, Lamborghini or otherwise, hit the fields and make them incredibly well-groomed. Soil is also prepped in long, rectangular patches for personal vegetable gardens, called orto, often in the front yard of a house.

3. The dandelions face their natural predator, the horse

We cheated and put a horse cookie in the middle of the dandelions to make sure that Salome would cooperate for the shot, but she ended up ignoring the cookie to concentrate on her favorite thing, fresh dandelion greens.

4. The world turns blue and green

5. Poppies

6. One of my favorite restaurants opens again after a long winter.

Laura and Marco open Il Travato in Monterchi sometime around Easter. I just saw Laura near the piazza and she said that Pasquetta is THE DAY! (Pasquetta is literally “Little Easter”—the relaxed family day after Easter usually marked by a picnic.)

Laura taught us how to make her best-in-Tuscany spaghetti aglio olio e peperoncino, which we often make at home.

7. Bees

April 6, 2019 In Best Of, Roam By Nancy

La Verna: my night with the monks

After years of curiosity I finally got the courage to book a room at the monastery at La Verna. I’ve written about this strange desire to retreat for a night to a monastery. The urge increases when we have terrible weather—it seems to take the fun away if it’s not adequately dark and brooding. We had a wave of stormy weather with intense clouds, and they had a room available, so this was my moment.

I’ve visited La Verna many times for day trips and find the landscape mysterious and otherworldly. The sanctuary is located near the summit of Mount Penna, known for huge exposed rock plinths and sheer cliffs that look as if the gods were playing with blocks. (The mountain takes its name from the pagan god of the mountain, Pen.)

La Verna is famous because of St. Francis, who was given the mountain in 1213 as a retreat. He was meditating away up there one day in 1224—September 14th, to be precise—when he received the stigmata. He carried around these bloody wounds for the final two years of his life until he died in 1226 in Assisi. In case you have any doubts about the stigmata thing they have his blood-stained robes on display.

Turns out it wasn’t just St. Francis who found the La Verna landscape charged. Long before he arrived the mountain was the site of a pagan shrine to Laverna, who was the goddess of thieves. Apparently the abundance of caves and the thick forests were perfect for those so inclined to thievery, although who they would have found to rob on this deserted summit is a bit hard to imagine.

I arrived up there, checked into a spartan but comfortable room with a single bed, and followed my instinct to hike up to the summit. I followed a stunning trail through an ancient woods of beech and spruce, kept undisturbed by the monks since 1213, that twists around to reveal sheer rock faces and huge rock plinths. For the next four hours I saw no one.

When I came back down the mountain I visited my favorite spot in the monastery, which is the bed of St. Francis. Apparently he often meditated here, in a sort of cave, formed by perilously piled fallen rocks. I sat in the spot where he slept (now protected by a metal grate as people were chipping away at it) for a good 20 minutes, listening to the rain, undisturbed by other visitors, and I must admit, did have a moment of profound peace. One of the first in my nascent practice to think less and be more.

My sense of peace even lasted during a meal with three strangers, all traveling on their own, speaking only Italian.

And the silence of the night was perfect.

I think I found what I was looking for, and now appreciate this special place on a different level, which is handy since I can see the distinctive shape of Mt. Penna from our house and often need that prompt for a bit of a reset.

Oh, and for those of you who enjoy art, they have several amazing Della Robbia ceramic alters and decorations.

April 6, 2019 In Best Of, Live By Nancy

The mysteries of Italian shutters

I’ve noticed that in Italy most shutters are always closed—even in houses where people are living and seem to be home. I’ve wondered why so many shutters are closed so much of the time, and how people live with them shut, so I asked some Italian friends.

One friend thinks that it is an artifact from an earlier way of living and happens more in small villages like ours with an older population than in larger, more age-diverse cities like Milan. Traditionally a house would have only one room that was heated and the whole family would gather there to stay warm whenever they were in the house. You’d cook, eat, and basically live in this room and the shutters would be open. Bedrooms were used only for sleeping and shutters were always closed. Closed shutters help to insulate from the cold (and the heat in summer) and also protect expensive windows from weathering.

Another friend confirmed that she thinks of rooms as divided between light rooms and dark ones. The dark ones are only for sleeping, and the light ones are where you go once you get up.

With central heating it was no longer necessary to gather in one room close to a heat source, but old cultural habits are slow to die. In many families it is considered rude to hang out in a room by yourself—when home everyone needs to be in the same room. This habit even extends to my friend, who is in his early 30s, and lives with a woman who is a couple years younger. He finds it amusing that she feels that they need to be in the same room together when they are home. Quite a difference with our American tendency to all be off in our own rooms, only coming together at meals, or for a movie.

March 31, 2019 In Roam By Nancy

My new favorite thing in Rome: Ostia Antica

Every so often Italy offers up something that takes my breath away. Ostia Antica is near the top of that list. This archeological site near Rome is huge, almost empty of tourists, gorgeous, and compellingly, unnervingly revealing of little human details of the 100,000 people who lived there in its prime, in the 2nd and 3rd centuries A.D.

Things like this bar, at the intersection of two major streets, with a mosaic floor angled towards the front door that roughly translates “Fortunatus’s Place. You know you’re thirsty — come on in and drink.”

The streets still bear the marks of the carts which passed over 2,000 years ago.

Ostia Antica was founded sometime between 700 to 400 B.C. as Rome’s port at the mouth of the Tiber. It thrived for several hundred years and then fell into ruin at the end of the Empire. The city was silted over after that, preserving it. It’s over 80 acres and only about 2/3 is excavated. I walked for hours, passing only a handful of people.

I found it humbling. It’s beautiful and sophisticated with everything a city needed: forum, baths, temples, theaters, fire and police departments with barracks, markets, guildhalls, factories, warehouses, shops with living quarters over them, and homes, both grand and modest. The city was originally five stories and there are still staircases that ascend into nothingness. The balance and harmony of the public spaces and private buildings certainly beat what I see being created today.

Little details reveal themselves everywhere. The mosaics are diverse and abundant. (I found a good collection of photos of mosaics here.) There are still remnants of decorative frescoes in some of the homes.

The site is not too hard to get to from central Rome—you can even get there on the Metro because Mussolini believed that the Romans all needed easy access to the sea, so the line was extended to the coast. It is also just a few kilometers from Rome’s main airport, Fiumicino. In case you’d like more information I found an article in the New York Times about Ostia Antica that was interesting.

Trust me, go. And for more ideas about things to do in Rome after you’ve visited the main sites, here’s an article with other places I love.