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Live Archives - Page 3 of 13 - Itch.world

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January 23, 2022 In Best Of, Live By Nancy

My own private theater

Descriptions of modern high-end houses often brag about having a private theater where one can gather with friends and watch a movie. Starting in the Renaissance, wealthy Italian home builders also had the desire to share entertainment with their friends, but instead of small screening room they built actual theaters in their houses, sometimes including stages with sets, an orchestra pit, and box seats, so they could host theatrical productions or operas in the comfort of their own homes. Or, uh, palaces. Even our small village of around 6,000 people used to have six different private theaters, and recently I did a walking tour that visited them all.

The most mysterious one of them (pictured above) was one I’d only heard about only once or twice over the ten years we’ve been here. When we were looking for a house to buy a couple of people asked if we’d seen the place for sale with the theater, right in the middle of town. A friend said she was walking around the rundown rooms and she opened a door that she thought was to a closet and BOOM, there she was, in the middle of a private theater. Seemed kind of too good to be true, but we couldn’t find anyone to show it to us and when we finally saw plans of it we reached the same conclusion that friends had—the layout was very difficult to convert into a house. So when I had the chance to see this place on the tour I jumped. It’s on the main floor on a smallish palazzo on the distinctive steep, straight street of town that descends and then crossed the valley in a perfect line. Inaugurated at the beginning of the 18^th century, The Ulivi Stefanelli Palace theater is pretty humble. It was designed for a standing audience and has its backdrops painted into the walls instead of changeable, but the backgrounds are full of perspectives where your gaze loses itself in the search of imaginary places dotted with bizarre and fantastic characters. It has a petite balcony surrounding it where guests could watch from a different angle.

Today, the old palazzo has been divided into flats so the main floor now holds the theater, a couple of other rooms that could be used as bedrooms, a place that could be a kitchen, and a back garden. (Apparently the floor above is also for sale which could make it much more liveable.) And yes, it is for sale if your home owning dreams include your own spettacolo.

This desire to see a mysterious piece of real estate in the village made me curious about theaters in Italy. Turns out that Italians invented theaters as we know them, as well as some of the widely-credited art forms that are still performed in them, like opera and the Commedia dell’arte.

Theaters started to boom in Italy during the Renaissance as the passion for perspective that was taking over painting naturally extended to backdrops for performances, setting the stage (OK, I will stop) for a flood of innovation as they brought their theories into this three-dimensional space.

The first permanent modern interior theater, the Teatro Olimpico, was designed by Palladio and is still in existence in Vicenza, near Venice. Opened in 1585, the theater has an elliptical shape with tiered seats so everyone could see and hear well. The design was a reflection of Palladio’s love of Roman antiquities.

The scenery could not be changed, but the set incorporated the latest thinking about perspective and vanishing points, emphasized by a tilted floor to force perspective. Every seat was aligned to marvel at one of these views.

The demand for spectacle drove even more innovation and in 1618 the Teatro Farnese was designed in Parma and had the world’s first proscenium, creating a window around the action, the standard in most theaters today, and it also allowed for scene changes. First used in 1628, it hosted about everything you’d want to share with the 3,000 people you’d invited over for pizza and a beer: drama, opera, and ballet were performed on the stage; equestrian acts and sumptuous balls were held in the large arena between stage and seating—this area could also be flooded to a depth of two feet and used for mock naval battles; and, when not floating little boats, hosted court ceremonies and princely extravaganzas.

Competition heated up across Italy and noble families were quick to put the artists they had on the payroll, including Michelangelo and Da Vinci, to design costumes, scenery, and stage machinery for their private events between the big assignments, like the Sistine Chapel.

The ultimate piece of scene change high tech, the chariot and pole system, hit in 1641. Giacomo Torelli designed a set of slots in the stage floor to set backdrops into that were connected to a set of understage “chariots” on casters to roll them back and forth, all engineered with winches, pulleys and ropes so that scenes could be changed with a single winch. This clever bit of engineering quickly spread all over Europe and was the standard until the end of the 1890s. This technology was more than just pretty—it allowed for the use of specific scenes rather than a general static backdrop—plays could now be written about much more specific places and situations.

Back to the village, in addition to the small gem I talked about at the open, the theater craze hit hard and six theaters were built over the years. According to the director of our local theater, Andrea Merendelli, in 1631 Italy was in the throes of yet another round of the plague, which had killed 10,000 in Florence out of a population of 75,000, and one out of four people in Milan. At that time wooden blockades were put up at the village gates to check health passes that travelers carried to prove they had not been to plague-ridden towns, and to keep anyone suspect out. On February 17, local records show, not only were a troupe of performers admitted to town to put on plays but the wooden planks forming some of the blockades were repurposed to extend a stage. Merendelli assumes that they must have been a well-known troupe for this exception to be made—actors were beginning to be stars during this period and often cannons were shot off to announce their arrival in larger towns.

The main theater in the village is well-used and loved to this day. We’ve been many times to events ranging from a Pink Floyd tribute band (Pink Floyd is huge here) to school plays, to film screenings, to all sorts of performances.

Lola loves evenings at the theater.

Sebastian’s fifth-grade play packed them in.

Built in 1789 as a part of a grand compound that included a palazzo, a private chapel, and a garden leading to the private theater, the grandness has gone—the garden is now a parking lot and a road through town—but the theater remains as an historical setting for a vibrantly alive local events.

The other four theaters in town did not fare as well. One burned, two were broken up and converted into unrecognizable civic offices. One tiny piazza still hosts events, now mainly musical, as it has since the 1500s. A tunnel leads in from one side in which, during the Renaissance, a large machine was placed to produce an echo.

I had so much fun uncovering all of this and realizing how much the Italian love of spectacle and beautiful spaces, that has been a constant through the centuries, adds to life daily life. I wonder when they were creating these spaces if it ever crossed their minds that villagers would be enjoying them, and making them their own, hundreds of years later. Somehow it seems unlikely that will be the case for most of what we are building today.

December 5, 2021 In Best Of, Live By Nancy

The ties that bind us

The echoes of WWII are all around us here. The war is not an abstract thing—I have a friend who found a bomb in the woods when he was a kid and he and his brother were thinking of hitting it with a large stick before they decided to show it to their parents. The bomb removal experts came and said it was unexploded, and if they had pounded on it they would likely both be dead. Occasionally, a discussion with one of the oldest members of the village will disclose a great wrong done during the war to their family by another family in the village. The shadows are everywhere, including which coffee bars and grocery stores people frequent; some bars are known to be more fascist or communist. I know people who will not shop at the Co-op grocery store as it is owned by the communist party.

This year’s village play, Tovaglia a Quadri, picked up on some of these themes. When, and how, is it appropriate to make our way back into society after having been a refugee hiding away—or in quarantine; how do people create a plan for the future after a catastrophe; and what role do elections, and politicians play (or don’t play) in such times? The performance, as I’ve covered before—go to Itch.world and search Tovaglia a Quadri for other editions—is a witty, sardonic look at events in the village and nation, always freshly written a few weeks before it’s performed. The thread that united the series of vignettes this year was the importance of the links between people that tie us all together—and how to find it again and restore it. The title of the play, Filocrazia, alludes to the power of the invisible ropes, or cables (a filo), that bind us to one another, and to a place.

The play is usually staged in a tiny square in the village, but due to Covid restrictions they had to move the location for the first time to an old castle a kilometer or two out of town and stage the play in its larger courtyard. This castle, which is now a popular place for a pizza or a large gathering for Sunday lunch, is on a site that dates back to pagan times, but the present structure was built in 1234 and passed from one powerful family to another. It was the summer home of a famous nobleman and soldier from the 1400s, Baldaccio Bruni, who was murdered in Florence in the Palazzo Vecchio by another Florentine noble family who was concerned about his growing power. His body was thrown out the window, dragged through the streets, and then beheaded in the Piazza della Signoria. His ghost is said to haunt this castle, which actually seems possible when you go down in the dungeons at night. Considering what happened to him I think he has every reason to be a ghost.

The castle had a rich history during WWII as well. It was the German headquarters, into which an Allied pilot, who was shot down, accidentally parachuted.

The site informed the play as it featured a group of refugees who have moved to the castle in the countryside to hide from an undisclosed great danger. They think the danger has now largely passed but are split into factions between those who are eager to return and take up the old ways, those who want to remain sequestered, and those who want to use this opportunity to reinvent and improve their community.

The play took place during the runup to the election for mayor in the village and the playwrights couldn’t resist adding a bit current political commentary. Two candidates come to the castle to campaign during this pivotal moment for change, one from the right and one from the left. One is dressed in white and one in black, but they are indistinguishable in every way—they say exactly the same dialogue to the same people, making the same promises. The pilot who parachuted into the castle makes an appearance, as well as a philosopher who comes to help clarify matters, holding a large book called The Book of the Future. It turns out all the pages are blank. A particularly fitting symbol for our current situation—the future is always unknown, but right now it is more unknown than usual. The conclusion of the play, which I profoundly agree with, is that only our ties to each other will get us through and allow us to move forward.

This year’s audience included Ralph Fiennes, right, with director and playwright Andrea Merendelli.

On the topic of the echoes of WWII John and I finally stopped in the lovely hilltop town of Lucignano, between Arezzo and Siena. We went to a little square for lunch and I noticed an interesting inscription on the wall. I am always trying to decipher signs, but this one was particularly intriguing.

“QUANDO SI È FORTI SI È CARI AGLI AMICI E SI È TEMUTI DAI NEMICI.” “When you are strong you are dear to your friends and feared by enemies,” is a quote from Mussolini from March 26, 1939 during a celebration of the twentieth anniversary of fascism. I was intrigued so I investigated and found that this phrase is thrown around even now. In October 2020, when Italy briefly opened gyms during one of the waves of Covid, the anti-fascist journalist Paolo Berizzi, whose work uncovering neo-fascists has forced him to live under the protection of security for over a year, managed to anger almost everyone with a single Tweet. “Robust support from the center right in defence of gyms. ‘When you are strong you are dear to your friends and feared by enemies.'” This linkage of gyms to political extremism went too far, according to one person who responded “This tweet, frankly, does no honor to anyone, neither to you, nor to anti-fascism. You know that I often love to talk to you, so I think I can afford it: it really fell down …”

That’s it for now from the village.

November 14, 2021 In Best Of, Live By Nancy

An accident

Friends of ours have a daughter who is a fairly new driver. She borrowed her parents’ car to drive a friend to the train station. A series of things made the drive to the station tense—they were running late, her friend had to make this particular train, and the car was almost out of gas. They arrived at the station with minutes to spare. The station had been newly renovated and she wasn’t sure where to go and pulled into the old passenger drop-off and said goodbye to her friend, tired and stressed. She got back into the car and as she tried to drive away there was a problem: a car was parked in the very small roundabout in front of the station with no driver in sight. A line of cars behind her was growing, as was her uncertainty about how to handle the situation.

She waited for a minute and no driver appeared, so she decided to edge past. She hit the inner side of the roundabout, hard enough to put dents in the car, bend the traffic sign, and lodge the car on the curb.

At this point the owner of the parked car reappears. He’s in his early 60s and with a younger woman. They head for their car to drive away. A person in the car behind gets out to shout that she needs to stop them and get their information. She calls her mother, who in the quick exchange assumes that her daughter had hit the other car, rather than the center post, also says that she should get the information of the driver in the other car. She approaches the two in the car she had needed to get around, who refuse to give her their information, as they had done nothing legally wrong.

She’s desperate. She’s wrecked her parents’ car, there’s a line of people shouting at her what to do, the people in the other car are refusing to give her the information she thinks she needs, so she physically stands in the way of the other driver’s door, blocking him from closing it.

Then things go really wrong. He grabs her to get her away from his door. She feels under attack and scratches his face. She calls her parents to tell them what has just happened. And that the police had been called and were arriving at the scene. Our friends say that they will be there as soon as possible.

When the parents arrived at the scene there were around ten police officers there and several police cars, lights flashing, and blocking the entrance to the station. They learned what had unfolded while they were driving and it was about as unexpected as possible.

They are met by a policeman who comes up with a big smile and says that he lives in their village and that his daughter had been in a local advertising video with their son several years ago when they were both kids. He had just had a long talk with their daughter that she needs to learn to approach life con calma. Their daughter is standing next to the woman, who turns out to the the daughter of the man who was scratched. Our friends’ daughter had been sobbing uncontrollably about what she had done and this woman had held her for five minutes while she cried. Their daughter had immediately recognized that she had gone too far in her anger and fear and kept going to the older man asking if there was anything she could do, each time crying harder as she saw the bleeding scratches. The man and his daughter were consoling her, saying that she could have been a member of their family, mistakes happen, and that we all react emotionally sometimes. The man’s daughter confesses that when she was the same age she actually hit an old man with her car, and that the scratches don’t really matter as her dad was already old and ugly. He agrees, and laughs. Our friend’s daughter learns that the man had double parked in order to come into the station and help his daughter with a heavy suitcase. Our friends tell us that this results in a fresh round of crying.

The officer who had had a long talk with her tells her that she needs to learn to expect that everyone is good and to always look for that. Another officer is preparing a police report and takes their daughter’s statement. Although she doesn’t say anything about the other factors that contributed to the situation the officer puts in the report that the girl was upset because she’d wrecked her parents’ car; the crowd, and her mother’s erroneous advice, had added to her reaction; and that she was a young driver and this was her first accident. The officer doesn’t mention the scratches, only that she defended herself with her hands. The officer remarked that she’s never seen such identical statements as of the girl and the older man. Three different officers apologized to the family and the girl that they need to issue a ticket for entering into the wrong place in the newly rerouted station layout, as well as for damaging the sign.

All begin to disperse and the man, and his daughter, come up to the parents and their daughter. There are warm wishes, forgiveness, humor, and graciousness.

Our friends’ daughter told her parents that this was one of the biggest lessons she’s ever had—that things like a double-parked car might not be a selfish thing but a father helping his daughter with a heavy bag; that is it possible to find the common humanity even after crossing into a dark abyss of rage; and that people can accept mistakes and move on; and, mostly, that people are almost always good. Also that sometimes you need to give yourself a time out before responding. Not bad lessons for a Friday night.

October 24, 2021 In Best Of, Live By Nancy

On elections, mayors, and boars

Italy’s largest cities—Rome, Milan, Turin, Naples, and Bologna—recently held mayoral elections, as did our village. Perhaps our election was less covered in the international press, but that doesn’t mean that it lacked drama.

Rome’s election was largely about trash and wild boar. The incumbent, Virginia Raggi, the Five Star Movement candidate (an anti-immigrant, Eurosceptic, right-wing party), was elected in 2016 but didn’t even qualify for the 2021 runoff election, largely because of Rome’s handling of basic services. When I’ve been to Rome over the past few years, especially in the suburbs, I’d see piles of overflowing trash surrounding groups of dozens of mounded dumpsters every couple of kilometers. This plentiful availability of food is heaven for rats, of course, but also wild boar. The wild boar population in Italy soared during quarantine as hunting was suspended, made worse by climate change and a longer breeding season, and boar from the countryside around Rome have started to make their way into the city providing many moments that were perfect kindling for social media.

A video shot in a parking lot of a grocery store near Rome of a woman being pursued by a group of boar, who are after her groceries, got international attention.

Then, several days before the election, unfortunately for Mayor Raggi, thirteen boar decided to stroll down a busy Roman street, which launched a Twitter storm, including helpful suggestions that the bike lanes be replaced by wild boar lanes.

The mayor’s race in Rome was won by the center-left candidate, Roberto Gualtieri.

Which brings me to the photo at the top, which I cannot resist sharing, as we are on the subject of wild boar. As reported in The Guardian this hapless man was sunbathing in a park in Berlin in the nude when a wild boar ran away with a plastic bag that contained his laptop. The nudest gave chase. The photographer, Adele Landauer, stated he “gave it his all.” After he successfully got the swine to drop the bag, and his laptop was recovered, he returned to his sunbathing spot to the cheers of onlookers.

But closer to home, and back on topic, our own incumbent mayor was running against two challengers. (He is the first non-communist mayor the village has had since the war.) From when we moved here nearly ten years ago the election norms have changed. It used to be that the only sign of an election were a few posters in the square featuring the smiling faces of the candidates. But now glossy, color, multi-page booklets of campaign promises started to invade our mailbox several weeks before the election. A friend of ours declared that he was going to vote for the candidate who’d made no promises, said nothing, and published nothing. The day after our friend’s declaration the biggest, fatest pamphlet of them all, from candidate #3, appeared in our mailbox, nixing our friend’s well-thought out plan.

One of the candidates positioned himself as the outsider challenger, although he had been mayor before. One of his vows was to replace our centralized trash depositories, which some deem unsightly in “One Of The Most Beautiful Villages In Italy,” with door to door trash collection. As popular as this ideas was, the village has a strong collective memory and I kept hearing the stories of how when he had been mayor before he wanted a stronger connection between our village and the neighboring town. As much sense as this might make on a practical level he somehow overlooked the fact that we’ve always hated them, and they have always hated us.

They are a flat, larger town surrounded by the necessary modern bleak morass of car dealerships, gas stations, and grocery stores. They have a Renaissance center with a pedestrian-only main street that runs from one end of the old town walls to the other that is perfect for the passeggiata. A well-known artist friend of ours who grew up between our village and Milan has defined the passeggiata as the fatal flaw in the psyche of our valley neighbors. As they gather several times a week to parade up and down the main street, all dressed up to see and be seen, they have come to think of themselves as fashionable and superior, even though, according to him, they are mere bourgeoisie.

We are, to them, insular, brutish, simple mountain folk (probably inbred) who sit smugly in our steep, walled village and look down on them. This is true, both literally and figuratively. They are also jealous of our superior cultural events. This animosity is not a recent thing. In 1450 a group of raiders from the town breached the main 13th-century gate to our village and stole the gate key, which was not returned for two centuries and is now safely housed in a local museum. It was viewed as an act of hostility and the echoes lasted for centuries. In 1685, Federigo Nomi wrote a 11,848 line rhyming heroic/comic poem about the great key stealing event, and other hostilities between the towns, and was not afraid to name names of prominent local families.

This very gate was defiled in 1450 by the neighboring town when they stole the key. For 200 years.

I don’t know how deeply this historical slight influenced the election or not but the candidate advocating for closer ties lost to the incumbent.

We had a dinner party a few nights before our election and the most pressing topic was one of the candidate’s proposal to replace some of the paving stones in the square. The discussion of this went on for longer than one would imagine, largely having to do with how thick the proposed new, large pavers would be. Another hot topic is the state of repair, or more often disrepair, of the two elevators which whisk people from the lower parking lot up to the level of the town. The debate about these kinds of issues can get brutal, especially on the village Facebook group, where some of the election debates have not yet subsided and allowed us to get back to the usual discussion of lost dogs, weather, photos people take of the sun rising and setting over the village, and photos of transgressions to the beauty of the village of things like electrical boxes being placed over frescoes in historical niches.

The day of voting is always wonderful. The elections take over the village school, which to the delight of the kids is closed for election day and also the two days following so that the classrooms can be adequately disinfected. We always vote in classroom number 3, where our son attended fourth grade. One wall is all windows, has a door open to a grassy area outside, and is usually filled with sun. There are about five people running voting in each room. We happen to know everyone in number 3 so no IDs are needed. They hand us the ballot and a pencil. There are three small tables with little curtains and you unfold the paper ballot and put a huge “X”, in pencil, over the name of the person you are voting for. Then you fold the paper back up and drop it in a box. You know almost everyone walking to and from the school to vote, as well as having a coffee in the nearby cafe after voting. Voting here always brings a huge smile to my face.

The election, as well as re-entry to the world from quarantine, was the subject of this year’s village play, the Tovaglia a Quadri, which I will write about next week.

July 25, 2021 In Live By Nancy

Postcard: Choose your poison

I’m at one of my favorite bars, waiting for my coffee, when I man walks up and requests cigarettes from the rack next to the espresso machine. The barista asks him which of the health warning photos he wants from the range on his preferred brand. About seven different packs are laid out on the bar ranging from tumors to lungs filled with tar. He considers each one, chooses a colorful tumor, and leaves.

July 25, 2021 In Live By Nancy

One night in the piazza

The big news in the village is that there is a new, shockingly hip (for our village) wine bar in the piazza. It took over a vacant store which used to be a florist. They’d moved shop to a small building next to the cemetery as the primary audience for flowers, mostly plastic but some fresh, is the dead. We are a vegetable patch versus a flower garden kind of place. This prime location was taken over by the son of our contractor, an architect who is a wine buff. Dad, son, and the son’s business partner worked hard on the space which is elegant and spare, and the menu is surprisingly adventurous, featuring things like a few French wines and cheeses—absolutely unheard of in our ‘hood.

The balance of businesses in the village is carefully managed—who serves what, what days they are open—so that all can coexist and prosper. I was worried about the other cafes and restaurants with the success of the new venture, which adds an additional place to get a drink to the mix, and often packed with a young crowd. I wondered how the other businesses were feeling about their new neighbor, particularly the pizzeria almost next door. The pizzeria is a bastion of the square, run by two couples. The woman of one of the couples is the sister of the man of the other couple and they often feature on the informal poll I have going with Sebastian to name the sweetest people in the village—a tough competition. Oddly enough, despite the married and sibling relationships, and the very long, hard work hours, in all these years I’ve not noticed any tension. Any. They seem to always have ready, relaxed smiles, be calm and welcoming, and usually greet you with a joke. I was unsure if this new entry to the business mix of the piazza would concern them.

One night it’s nine in the evening and I arrive in the piazza an utter mess. It’s been a few days of stress unlike few others I’ve experienced—a family health scare which is now completely resolved and all good—but I rolled up in the middle of the crisis badly in need of company, comfort, and a good glass of wine. It’s Monday night and the piazza is deserted as most businesses are closed, but the wine bar is open. The only customers are the entire crew from the pizzeria, with their extended group of wait staff and cooks, about fourteen in all. It’s the only night that the pizzeria is closed and they clearly are out for a celebratory evening, all dressed up, and seated at in a long row of pulled together tables. They quickly add a table at the end for me. Most knew what was going on in the family, news travels fast here, and I was greeted with a lot of questions and concern. The waitress at the wine bar, who I had just recently met when they opened (at least I think she works there as she will occasionally hop up to deliver food although spends an equal amount of time sitting with friends) gave me a hug every time she went by.

I began to calm down and appreciate the moment. The pizzeria crew enjoying their evening, ordering bottles of champagne and wine. The almost-walking daughter of the wine bar co-owner “driving” her small remote control sports car all over the quiet piazza, controls being worked by the mother a few feet away. The son of one of the pizzeria couples, who we’ve known since he was small when he inherited Sebastian’s Nerf Guns, is now tall and all dressed up in a three-piece suit, wildly patterned shirt and tie, and fedora. The pizzeria table was trying all the appetizers available at the wine bar with enthusiasm and complimenting the owners on everything. The ease, acceptance, and goodwill towards this new competitive situation overwhelms me. I often notice a lack of people feeling competitive because they seem deeply content with who they are. This is a trait that keeps me in love with Italy. (The two businesses are now collaborating to bring in a small band that plays between their nearly adjoining eating areas. Last night I walked through the piazza and both places were packed, band playing away in between.) I have been procrastinating writing about my feelings about spending the month of April in California as they are so undefined, yet strong. I realized that this moment defined it. This is what I missed when I was in California, and worse, I started to lose that ease in myself the longer I was on my old home turf.

I ask them what they are celebrating and they said “nothing.” I said that “sometimes nothing is everything,” which was met with applause and blown kisses. And sometimes it is.

June 20, 2021 In Best Of, Live By Nancy

The three diviners

Ten years ago our friends needed a new well. Their contractor suggested using a scientific approach to the question of where the well should be placed: have three different diviners come out at different times and if there was a common location that all three selected then that would be the spot to drill. To be as scientifically rigorous as possible the contractor suggested using diviners with different techniques. Although the techniques differed the diviners were remarkably similar: old, very short, Tuscan men.

The first diviner to visit our friends brandished a forked wooden divining rod. I am not sure if this was the same old, very short, Tuscan man who our contractor had brought in for a consultation about our water situation about five years ago. According to our builder he is famous all over the area. He appeared to be such at the top of his profession that he had an assistant carry the divining rod until he needed it. Maybe the assistant dropped the stick, or this was a different famous rod-using-diviner, but our friends’ expert appeared alone. He wandered all over their hilly four acres until he was satisfied that he had found three spots that he was certain contained water. These were subtly marked.

The second diviner came a week later. He was not a fan of the stick method and instead deployed a heavy washer suspended from a string which he proceeded to swing in a circle as he walked. He covered the acres as well and ultimately declared that he had found three spots which were carefully and unobtrusively marked. One of his spots was very near one from the first diviner.

My friends waited impatiently for what the third diviner would discover. He arrived a week later, introduced himself, and then turned away from my friends and appeared from the back to be fiddling with his pants. He turned back around while zipping up his fly and had a meter-long piece of metal wire emerging from the front of his trousers. He walked around the property, swinging the metal wire which preceded him, until he arrived at a spot and declared that he didn’t need to look further. This was the place where the water was. He knew because the wire was connected his “most valuable and sensitive pair” and he pointed to the wire and to the valuable and sensitive pair. Remarkably the spot he identified was very close to the position that the other two diviners had found.

Thus the well placement was scientifically determined and the task of drilling commenced. Water was struck and our friends have never had a problem with supply since.

May 31, 2021 In Best Of, Live By Nancy

The Signora of the grass

Old men stand in small groups on the street by our house to watch me mow. Being men, I am certain they have strong opinions about what I am doing. As Italian men I am even more certain none of them agree, except that I am doing it wrong. People are often referred to by their eccentricities and I am sure I have earned a nickname like La Signora dell’erbe.

That I’ve started doing the mowing doesn’t sound momentous, but when you have over ten acres and are watched by hundreds of eyes from the village it quickly gets overwhelming, especially in spring when it feels like you can see the grass grow. I pickup up this, eh hobby, because John has been having some problems with his back and the experts all agree that mowing is not helpful. When he was doing it I would often be stopped in the square, sometimes by people I don’t know, who would offer their complimenti to my husband about his mowing which is why I know the state of our grass is of interest in a town where not a lot happens.

I first make straight, careful rows but as I start to navigate around all the trees my mowing paths begin to look like cooked spaghetti. I am sure there are best practices about this—how to mow around a bunch of olive trees without sacrificing one’s precise pattern. If it involves stopping the blade, I’m not interested. I think that’s cheating, like lifting your pencil on one of those puzzles where you are supposed to create a design without lifting your pencil.

My partner in all things mowing is the magnificent Grillo Climber. Grillo means cricket in Italian and my bright green mowing marvel can navigate almost any hill. There are a couple of slopes that need to be mowed parallel that do worry me in case of tipping over, which might mean death. John tells me that the Grillo doesn’t have a problem with these slopes, except for one dangerous part which I will know when I get there. I think he knows that I have just renewed our life insurance policies.

There are always tall weeds and grass that are too close to each tree to cut and make my end product look sloppy. There is time to daydream while mowing and I think of strapping young men bearing weed wackers showing up to whack my weeds. And I do not mean this metaphorically. (I refuse to go British and use their term, strimmer. Weed whacker has that in your face American directness that I love.)

Before my new side-gig in lawn maintenance I never thought much about decapitation. Rarely comes up when pitching a client. Now, the brim of the hat I choose when I mow becomes important—not too large to block seeing the low tree limbs. I comfort myself in the news that Cate Blanchett recently had a small chainsaw accident (she’s fine…). If Cate can wield a chainsaw Nancy can dominate cutting the grass.

I’ve been at this for six months and so far the tally has been: John’s carefully laid out drip irrigation for the baby trees, ripped up. A family of hare, saved. The battle between a metal stake, the mower, and my finger, finger lost the small fight, but it’s healing well and wasn’t too bad. A field of chest-high wild blackberries (the dreaded rovi), gone.

Maybe next I will try the chainsaw.

May 2, 2021 In Best Of, Live By Nancy

Search and rescue—house hunting in Tuscany

When I saw where the “mad” brother had lived for decades, and died in the 1950s, his battered old clothes still hanging on hooks on the wall next to the bare mattress on the dirty stone floor, shaving cream still over the sink, I realized I wasn’t house hunting in the San Francisco Bay Area anymore.

As you might have guessed from the last Itch, when I shared how we purchased our house in Tuscany, nothing is predictable about real estate in Italy. When we were looking for a house to buy we’d already put down roots in our village—kids in school, good friends, about eight percent of daily life figured out, and we were falling more in love with our village every day. One of our local expat friends who had moved from our village to the next town over regretted making this change and said there’s no recreating the first love of your initial bonding with a town in Italy. This meant that we didn’t throw a wide net over several regions to look at “appropriate” properties but went deep locally, looking at every house that might be available in our immediate area, like the mad brother dwelling above. Before we were able to buy the house we wanted all along we looked at about fifty houses ranging from ruins to completely restored, each one a complete surprise.

When you look at real estate in America there is a certain set of assumptions that from my newly found perspective seem pretty boring and to lack imagination, like presuming there will be a kitchen. Here every viewing was an adventure—is there a foundation here under all the brush? Will the tree growing through the roof be difficult to remove? Is that a dead … rat? pigeon? Don’t step there or you will fall through the floor. Can you give me a leg up so I can break through this window to open the door? How hard would be it to put in a road to reach this place? And the nearly universal question, will this smell ever go away? The latter is usually linked to houses where there are still livestock living on the ground floor, but not exclusively. One house, which we were very tempted by, was particularly malodorous with pigs and geese under one part of the house, a dog kennel under another, and rounds of beautiful handmade cheese ripening all over the dining room table.

The American obsession with staging real estate has grown from the old trick of baking cookies during a showing to Oscar-worthy set design that seeks to erase any possible remnant of the current owners so that prospective buyers can imagine themselves in a neutral space full of possibility. If a cosmic antimatter to staging exists it would be Italian real estate viewings. Even at the nicest properties we looked at the agent arrived at the same time as we did, and as Italian houses have thick wooden shutters on the outside of every window and door, we entered with the agent into a world of perfect blackness. The trick during a tour of a cave when the guide turns out the flashlights to show complete darkness would work perfectly at the first stage of a Tuscan open house. The smell of damp, old belongings, and stone is usually pretty ripe. As you stand in the dark the agent goes from window to window slowly revealing where you are standing. Although a couple of houses we looked at were beautifully furnished and restored, where this reveal was a positive one, most had been left in some sort of suspended animation after someone had died, or a family had left. The close family had removed anything of value and left what remained, usually a rather sad hodge podge of old electronics, furniture no one wants, clothing, and the detritus of personal grooming products. Old tools abound. There is no thought to clearing out the buildings before they are put on the market. And often current owners are there for the viewing, watching every response.

If you are lucky there are still glimpses into lost ways of life embodied in the walls. A hundred years ago Tuscan houses would often have stone sinks placed in the walls that drained directly outside—you can look at grass from the drain. Old stone fireplaces are common, although we saw a number of properties where thieves had gotten there first and hacked them out to sell. The ground floor of almost all dwellings were used to house animals—people lived upstairs—which helped to heat houses in winters. Many still have old feeding troughs and stone and brick corners of walls which have been rubbed smooth and semicircular throughout the centuries by animals scratching against them to give themselves massages. And yes, the smell of centuries of animals does come out after much sandblasting.

Some houses come with mysteries. We looked at one where Thomas Becket is said to have stayed when he came through town in the 1150s, commemorated by an ancient fresco. But even more mysterious, and easier to prove, is in the house next door to us that our friends just purchased—I will be writing about the restoration—that has three bedrooms, complete with beds with nasty mattresses, a small kitchen (so far all of this makes sense) and a bathroom with a tiny sink and toilet. There is not a shower or bathtub anywhere on the premises.

There’s an adventure and magic to the hunt here that I will always treasure, and even miss a tiny bit, leading me to drag visiting friends to view especially good deserted houses—with the side effect of increasing the Anghiari population by a couple of families who will be joining us when the properties are done. I love the unselfconsciousness and lack of preciousness of the process and, to me, it reveals more than just an abundance of deserted properties but also as a reflection of the Italian spirit. This is who I am, I am comfortable about the state I am in, and you can choose to be intrigued and go forward, or not. No presentation of perfection to tempt the slightly out of reach more perfect and evolved you that can exist if only you could acquire this house. Just don’t step on the goat poop on the way out.

March 14, 2021 In Best Of, Live By Nancy

How to buy a dream

Well, maybe not all dreams, but if buying and restoring a house in Tuscany is a desire of yours, here’s how it worked for us.

We knew from the start the house we wanted to buy, but it seemed impossible. The previous owner had lived there her entire life and died a decade earlier when she was in her 90s. She’d never married or had kids and it had passed on to thirteen heirs, some of whom we heard weren’t on speaking terms with others.

The house loomed just outside the walls of a beautiful village and on a quiet lane. It had been deserted for nine years, affectionately known by locals as the casa abbandonata, and the site of many a dare involving terrified kids trying to find a way inside. It was dark, shrouded by trees, and broken into occasionally, but we (and at least half the town) wanted it badly as it is in a terrific position looking up to the village and down to the valley, surrounded by a few acres, and a ten-minute walk from the piazza.

For years, whenever friends came to visit, we’d inevitably stand on the village walls which overlook the house and the land to “take in the view” but really to show them our dream house. We always added the caveat of “don’t point at it because if the village knows that the Americans are interested word will go out fast,” reflecting our American paranoia of potential bidding wars. Meanwhile the heirs, who seemingly agreed on little, were united that the best way to value the property was to add up what they all wanted to receive and use the total as the asking price, rather than getting a professional appraisal of what the place was worth and dividing by 13. The result was that you could buy a prime vineyard and restored villa in Montepulciano for what they wanted for the house. They hadn’t budged for nine years despite almost no viewings or offers. The house had been in their family since 1777, so a certain amount of irrational attachment was understandable. The villagers who had their eyes on the house had long given up and we had realtors tell us not to even bother trying to buy it because it was impossible.

In Italy the buying process can take years, if not decades (the family of one place we looked had thought about selling it since the 1940s but they still weren’t sure they were ready to part with it). Property taxes are very low, the houses are usually owned outright, and maintenance can be nothing as stone buildings take a long time to fall into ruin. It took us about three years to buy the house from when we first looked at it. We sent out some carrier pigeons about what we’d be willing to pay for the house and they sent out some return birds saying that would be acceptable. So we wrote up an offer with a two week response time excited to move ahead. Seven months later there was no answer and then fate intervened. Someone, or someones, to whom I will be eternally grateful, decided to break into the house and used a tree-trunk battering ram to break down one of the solid chestnut doors. (A villager later mentioned that she’d been driving by, recognized the intruders, and told them off. Can you imagine how embarrassing that would be from the villain’s perspective?) Suddenly, as there was a whopping 700€ of actual hard cost involved with the property to replace the door, the heirs were ready to do the deal. Yesterday. December was upon us and they were in a hurry to close before Christmas because they worried that one of their family, a woman in nearing 100, would die, passing her shares along to her two daughters who hadn’t apparently agreed on anything since 1940. Then the whole deal would have to be renegotiated. The heat was on and the closing date set for December 23, 2014.

John and I had bought and sold a few properties in the U.S. between the two of us so we thought we had an idea of what to expect. As always, Italy is full of surprises. A notaio, or notary, reigns supreme over the sale. As Americans we had to get over our image of the guy at Kinkos with the book and stamp authorizing a signature. In Italy the role dates back to the Romans where they were the legal clerks for the Emperor. Their role evolved in the 1000s when a deed issued by a notary was given a privileged “public faith”, a particular strength. Today they must have a law degree to start, then specialized training to become one of a limited number of public officers of the State, guaranteeing that all parties to a signing are who they say they are and have legal authority to sell what they are selling. They also issue and hold the official deeds. Title company, registrar, and more, all rolled into one.

On the big day we all met at the notaio’s office. Very different from the U.S. where a closing often involves a trip into a sterile conference room at a title company to sign reams of paper, completely separate from the other party in the transaction, who you may never meet, an Italian closing is a spectacle. The office was large, lined with books, and had an enormous table in the middle. We were there along with the thirteen heirs, all seated in large blue velvet chairs. After everyone was assembled the notaio entered, formally dressed, with an air of gravitas. He took a chair, set apart of the others, at the center of the table. Then he started to read the document of sale. This long document contains the name, birthdate and place, fiscal codes, relationships, and percentages of the property of all the sellers. It details how much money each person gets, complete with the check numbers of the issuing bank. It then spells out in great detail exactly what parcels of land you are buying, with whom they are registered, and the relevant contents of the house, among other details.

As you can imagine, this document is long and tedious. Italian notaries have an ingenious solution. There is a particular rapid-fire reading style that they use, akin to an auctioneer, to get through the material. The blazing speed of this blitz of information did nothing to dull the interest of the sellers, however. They leaned forward listening to every detail of who got what, eyeing each recipients in turn. We finally got to the end and everyone signed every page wherever they want with the end document resembling a birthday card that a group has signed.

Then a special moment arrives when the notaio excuses himself. Traditionally this is when any applicable bags of cash are handed over to cover any gap between the recorded and actual sales price. We know people who have lugged significant numbers of paper bags full of money to finalize the deal, which fortunately we did not have to do. The notaio re-entered after a safe amount of time had passed, the keys were handed over, in our case a big wad of them including several antique keys, and big smiles, handshakes, and greetings were exchanged. The sellers, for all their initial reluctance, were warm and pleased that a new history with a family was to begin in their ancestral family house. The deal was done, and the adventure began.