A Very Bernini Spring

I really have the damned-est time trying to update this blog these days. I can't count the number of times I've written a sentence or two of a post and then suddenly, acutely, felt the sense of "meh"! A sign of my own wavering attention span, I wonder? Certainly not any slackening of the usefulness of this blog itself--just last night, as I was Skypeing with Adam, the subject of Le Petit Cafe came up and he wanted to know what the food was like, so I gleefully opened the post where I had copied out the description of our first (and most decadent) visit there to read to him. (Side note: we got another gift certificate to Le Petit from Sean's dad for Christmas, so there will be at least a third visit!)

Anyway! We're a month and a half into our big Baroque Bernini exhibition, and it's going really well. The museum has had close to 2,700 visitors in that time, when in the past they'd hope for 2,000 over the course of a full four months. I'm enjoying it immensely! It certainly doesn't hurt that museum-goers in general are a self-selecting crowd, and ones that have sought out the Fairfield U. Art Museum are definitely there because they're interested in Italian art, the Baroque, Bernini, or all of the above, so there's a receptiveness there that is not always present in the classroom (where one of my students, a senior finance major named Eric, literally cannot be bothered to repeat back a definition or concept that I stated five seconds previously; his default is a drawled "Couldn't tell ya").

The exhibition catalog was just published, 639 pages of beautiful full-color photographs and essays by leading scholars, as well as five catalog entries written by yours truly! My "author copy" is sitting on the record player as we speak. Honestly, I haven't even read all the essays yet, but every time I dive in I learn something new and fascinating. One of the most titillating mysteries to come out of this show is the fate of a drawing of the original wall tomb of Robert Bellarmine in the Gesu, which was demolished in 1841 to create a new doorway adjacent to the church's apse. The 17th-century drawing is the only record of the original wall tomb, which included full-size statues by Bernini's father Pietro, and it is supposed to be in the Biblioteca Nazionale in Rome, but when Xavier Salomon went to go look at it in preparation for the show, it wasn't where it should be. Unfortunately, things do go missing from libraries and archives in Italy all the time (not all of them have the anti-theft systems of the Vatican library). A further twist, however, was someone--an Italian--commenting on our Instagram that they had a "drawing of that tomb" in their possession, and then sending a quick digital photo of what was definitely the missing drawing! Whoever it was, they didn't respond further to our efforts to contact them, and we're not sure why they contacted us at all--were they going to try to sell it to us? Did they only belatedly realize it had been stolen? Who know.s

Speaking of Italy, Sean is headed back to the bel paese next month for a conference in Pisa. He's routing through Rome, but his travel schedule has him staying there overnight only on a weekend, meaning no chance to see any of the Academy staff. We joked that he could definitely make it for Saturday lunch, but there would be only Alessandro, who would give him a quick "Eh, Sean!" and move on; it's really Gabri and Tiziana that he'd want to see, as well as Tommaso. Anyway, I'm still super-envious because he's going to go to Bi-Won, aka the Korean restaurant of my dreams. Isn't that ironic--I'm not jealous of the actual Italian food he's going to eat, haha? Basically, once Sean demonstrated his mastery of matriciana, it was clear that we could basically recreate any of the dishes we want here (with exceptions for things involving hard-to-acquire ingredients such as puntarelle or fresh anchovies).

I AM totally jealous of the coffee he is about to receive, though. Our moka pots do a fine job for the morning, but we've searched fruitlessly for any coffee shop that can actually pull a decent espresso (and include crema!). Unfortunately, American tastes have been forged by Starbucks' dark roast, so there's always a burned flavor (unless you pour 20 oz. of milk into it and pay $5 for the privilege, natch). Gabri also lectured us repeatedly on how important it is to thoroughly clean the machine daily, or you'll accumulate an aftertaste there as well. (This is the kind of thing that Sean and I will only ever discuss with people we knew from Rome, because there is no way not to sound like a snotty Europhile asshole when you complain about the impossibility of obtaining properly-pulled espresso in the States).

Anyway, on our next visit to the city our goal will be to try this Italian espresso bar, Zibetto, which recently opened in several locations in Manhattan. I can only imagine what they charge for an espresso, but Sean and I agreed that based on the pictures, it really does seem like a proper bar in the Italian sense--a place you can drop in, order a 1-euro coffee which will be served to you in a real cup and takes all of 1 minute to sugar, stir, and drink, and then you're on you're way. Without the bar to stand and drink at, it's not a bar! Seriously, I think that bars might be the single aspect of Italian cultural life that I respect and miss the most--not least because it's not a thing even elsewhere in Europe. The cafe near in our apartment in Paris regarded us with such puzzled amazement that we didn't want to sit and enjoy our coffee on the sidewalk. They did have a bar, which is why we were initially hopefully, but then it turned out that they used it for food prep, and everyone sat for an hour sipping their cafe au lait. Non!

The Good Old Days

We just finished up watching all 9 seasons of The Office last night. In the finale, Andy says something about wishing there was a way to know when you're in the good old days while you're still in them. In the shower this morning I realized that I have realized it, a number of different times in my life. I remember the sort of 'advance nostalgia' that gripped me the summer after high school, and then at the end of each college semester. I felt it in Rome many times, especially toward the end of my second year. I feel fortunate for that, the early reminder to enjoy the great time you're having in the knowledge that it may not be that way again.

And even if not everything is the good old days, they can still be great days. This holiday season has been a little less joyous than it would have been, because Sean spent a week--including Christmas--in bed with the flu, but I also had the chance to see Carla (not once but twice!) and sit in the Flanagan living room catching up with Heather, Gary, and Mama Flan while Donut humped my leg repeatedly.
Tonight we're capping off the season by heading to Jordy and Pinto's for an new kind of adult NYE party: sweatpants and a screening of "The Room."

2017 may have sucked politically, but it's been pretty great personally. I have my PhD at last, I have a job that I love, and I have friends and family (especially little Charlie!). I've been incredibly lucky. Here's to 2018!

To the Lighthouse

On Sundays mornings, I run from our house to Lighthouse Park, and on days like today, when I'm actually feeling like I can make it, I run into the park all the way to the beach. Running itself isn't fun to me like it is for some people, but it's such a pleasure to see the water while the beach is pretty empty, and then to come around the side of the carousel building to see the lighthouse itself. Like a nerd, I usually say "to the lighthouse!" to myself (as if anyone in Virginia Woolf's book would be caught dead jogging).

I like the lighthouse: I like that it's faceted and not round; I like seeing it silhouetted against a bright blue sky, as I've been lucky to see it most Sunday mornings; and I like sitting on one of the benches at its base and watching the people fishing and families moving into the park to claim the best spots for their picnics and family reunions. This morning I saw two men in a distant part of the shore who were using a net to fish in the shallows...for what, I couldn't tell, but they were tipping something into a bucket. It's peaceful and beautiful, and even the profile of New Haven across the harbor has some elegance to it from such a distance.

Once my heart rate is back to normal, I walk out of the park and then run from the entrance back home. My cardio stamina is fine for running these days; my feet and knees object before my heart and lungs ever do. I'll never train to run marathons like Carla, that much is clear. I'd much rather stick with 9Round in the hopes that one day I can actually transition to a real boxing gym. And, on Sundays when the gym is closed: to the lighthouse!

Le Petit Cafe At Last: A Religious Experience

Tucked away behind an unassuming storefront in the center of Branford is a French restaurant that often winds up on a list of best restaurants in the US. It's been there for 20 years, and its best-known quirk is the European-style dining on Fridays and Saturdays: 2 seatings at 5:30 and 8:30 for a three-course prix-fixe meal. Sean and I have been planning to go to Le Petit Cafe for years, quite literally! After we went to France in 2014 and experienced the wonders of their cuisine, we decided to try and recapture the gourmand glory in our own background--but then we wound up cancelling our reservation, for reasons I can't even remember. Skip over the two years abroad, and this past January we decided to try again for our anniversary. This time it was Mother Nature that intervened; there was such a huge storm that the restaurant closed in advance. This past Saturday, however, we finally made it, as a belated celebration of Sean's birthday. And oh, did it ever live up to the years of heightened expectations! The entire experience was perfection, start to finish. We both agreed that it was without a doubt one of the best meals we've ever eaten in the States and a strong contender for best meal anywhere.

To begin: the restaurant isn't pretentious in the slightest. Rather, it's small, cosy, and yellow-painted inside. The table was already prepared with pickled yellow beets, olives, and black truffle butter, and the waiter immediately rocked up with a small, warm loaf of crusty French bread that they make themselves. Of course they make it themselves, it was fucking delicious! Not something you're going to find in a bakery here. And the truffle butter was just out of this world. We were in seventh heaven before we'd even ordered anything. Our waiter was a young kid from the Ukraine, who was adorable in a Anton Yelchin (RIP) type way, but also had kind of a thick accent that we had trouble deciphering--he'd ask me for my plate and I'd hand him my fork. You know what? That only made it feel more like we were really eating in a French restaurant (aside from his general politeness, of course).

Then, the menu! I copied the descriptions off their website so that I can conjure up these flavors in the future. Appetizer: I had "Sautéed French escargot (Burgundy) served with blue cheese (premium French “St. Agur”) and cognac sauce on herb accented puff pastry." Now, I was being pretty bold here; I've only had escargot once before in Paris, and did indeed send one flying across the table as I dug it out of its little shell. However, I was pleasantly surprised that these were already de-shelled and in that incredibly rich sauce (combined with the lower lighting, you could easily be eating a bit of calamari or clam or anything else a bit chewy; I'm not sure if there's a particular flavor to escargot themselves) and laying in the nest of the puff pastry. Sean chose as his appetizer "Chef Roy’s country style pork pate layered with armagnac infused cherries & house-cured foie gras, and served with cornichons, spiced shallot chutney, and dijon mustard." I'm not a fan of pate or foie gras, but Sean loves both and was very pleased.

After the salad course--very simply dressed, the tomatoes bursting with flavor--it was time for the main event. Sean chose "Pan-roasted five spice duck breast served with organic black rice, port wine infused cranberries, toasted organic pine nuts, and orange sauce." His dish was, in his opinion, very good. I didn't try it, even though I like duck well enough. Why? Because the first bite of my dish,
"Roasted center-cut pork rib chop (Berkshire, all natural) wrapped with jambon de Bayonne, and served with sautéed organic spinach, roasted Russian banana fingerling potatoes, crispy pancetta, fresh grapes, and port wine sauce" was, indeed, a religious experience. Muffled moans of pleasure were to be heard from my side of the table. The sauce was exquisite--there's no other way to describe it, warm and rich and electric with flavor. I understood once more the saying about the secret ingredient of French cooking being time, because that dish had clearly taken plenty. Dear God. Sean agreed, and acknowledged that this was a rare case in which I had chosen the better entree sight unseen!

After we polished off our plates, the remaining bit of French bread, and our bottle of wine (Cote du Rhone, not my favorite, but then I could never really warm up to French wines), and it time for our final selection of the evening: dessert. I'm not really a dessert fan, particularly not in restaurants; I'll have a brownie or ice cream or something, but I don't go in for pie, pastries, etc. And yet, I ate every bit of this dessert. Sean called it a 'deconstructed' apple tart; a thin rectagular raft of pastry on which the sliced apple was lying, drizzled with a caramel sauce, and accompanied by fresh-made Chantilly cream and blueberries. I ate the cream. I didn't even want to eat Chantilly cream while we were in Chantilly a couple of years ago, but at Le Petit, I ate it, and it was delicious, as the blueberries--perfectly firm and ripe!--burst in your mouth alongside each bit of cream.

Not only was the food wonderful, it was the perfect opportunity to reminisce about our trip to France, still one of our favorite trips, especially the Avignon-Bordeaux part. We brought up the Tripadvisor page for the B&B we stayed at in Naujan-et-Postillac and were thrilled to see that the English couple is still running it (and that it has an exceptionally high rating, with only a dozen out of over 500 reviews ranking it merely "Very Good" as opposed to all the "Excellents"). We talked about our night at La Poudette, the little house-restaurant out in the middle of nowhere that is another contender for Best Meal Ever, where the geese who ran across the drive as you walked up from the road were the same ones destined for the foie gras later. Sts-Maries-sur-la-mer, where the sky stayed streaked with light until almost 10 o'clock at night as we drove back to Avignon. Chateauneuf-du-Pape, a hilltop ruin buffeted by some of the strongest winds I've ever felt. The plane trees in Arles. The peaceful abbey of Senanque. The distant view of Mont Sainte-Victoire, even though we couldn't get up there. The friendly British couple we met in a restaurant in Avignon. So much beauty, so lush and verdant. I want to go again! Le sigh.

To the Tune of Lana Del Rey and White Wine

An inveterate radio-channel-flipper I've never been able to say that I have terribly well-defined musical preferences. Other people's recommendations have led me to so much music I wouldn't necessarily have encountered elsewhere. I miss the age of being able to borrow a CD from a friend and then either buy or burn my own copy if I liked it enough! Kay Cosgrove lent me her Elliott Smith CD freshmen year of college, I used to steal Carla's Regina Spektor CD in senior year, Lakshmi gave me Lykke Li at the Academy. Since the dawning of the mp3 age, though, I've become really fickle with regards to music. I rarely buy an actual album outright, but rather settle for one or two songs I've heard. Of course I know that this means I'm missing out on great songs that are elsewhere on Lorde's albums or on Muse's. It's my own fault, but not one I've ever been in any rush to rectify, despite the availability of Spotify and other streaming services. I don't even own some of my favorite albums anymore. Tool's Aenima wore out before I got around to burning it, so when I feel the need to rock out, I just bring it up on Youtube.

There are a few exceptions. Ligabue, for one; I've got most of his recent albums, including the one I bought in a record store in Florence in 2006 and the one I burned off of Sylvie during my time at Middlebury in 2011. Lana del Rey is another; not only do I have all her albums as Lana del Rey, plus assorted soundtrack songs, I have her much less impressive previous work as Lana del Ray and Lizzie Grant. And I just bought Lust for Life, which is playing right now as I write. Sean likes to call this "slit your writs music," but I would call it perfect "look out the bus/train window and daydream" music. This most recent record is my least favorite so far, but it might grow on me. I have such warm nostalgic associations with the previous albums; I associate Ultraviolence, for example, with our month in Venice, August 2015 (and even more specifically, for reasons I can't quite explain, with walking from our apartment near S. Maria Formosa over a few bridges toward the grocery store early in the morning while there were few people out), while Honeymoon I associate with our second year at the Academy.

A year ago, we were in Paris, waiting out the month before our brief return to Rome and departure for home. It seems a lifetime and (half) a world ago, not least since at that point, I had no idea how I was going to fill in the missing 2/3 of my dissertation. Now I'm waiting again, this time to begin my job at the end of the month, and, along the way, start revising my dissertation into an actual book manuscript. In preparation for my forthcoming working life, I finally acquired my own car, this lovely 2008 Honda Civic, which is in beautiful condition.

It might not have the leather heated seats of Sean's car, but it has much better gas mileage. In fact, Sean called a short while ago to ask if we could just meet at his dad's, since he had students wanting to talk to him late about tomorrow's final exam for the summer class. What would have been impossible a week ago is now as simple as pie.

"What News from Kent?" : A Job, and Jane Austen

First, briefly: I got the job at Fairfield! The peasants rejoice! Ahem.

Second, yesterday was the 200th anniversary of Jane Austen's death, and the Atlantic has a series of posts this week reporting on readers' favorite characters, quotations, and first encounters. My first encounter wasn't a successful one. The year was 1998, and I really liked the movie You've Got Mail, a movie that's held up surprisingly well, considering the number of times you have to listen to the AOL loading noises. In it, Meg Ryan's character talks to her internet pen pal about her love of P & P, and Tom Hanks tries reading it to please her but gives up in disgust, not impressed by the famous scene of Darcy snubbing Elizabeth. I, in turn, decided I wanted to read this classic novel, but instead of taking it out from the library, I used AOL and brought up an HTML version through Project Gutenberg (or some similar site). The poor quality of the online reading experience might help explain why I wasn't really impressed, but I do remember that, like Tom Hanks, I got to the dance scene with the snub and was like "...that's it?" I'm not sure if I even finished the book at all at that time, and neither am I sure when I fell in love with it or any of her other books. I searched my blog for mentions of Jane Austen, and the earliest is from 2004, when I mention planning to re-read P&P, so evidently by that time I had read it--definitely in a physical copy.

The Sunken Garden and Billy Collins

Sean and I agreed that the presents we came up with for our six-month dating anniversary in the summer of 2005 were a joint high point in our gift-giving history. I bought and framed the war/peace WWII newspapers, while Sean wrote to Billy Collins to ask him for an autograph for his girlfriend. Unfortunately BC didn't write back in time, so Sean gave me a book of his (with autograph) that he'd found in a used bookstore. Then, lo and behold, a month or so later BC wrote back, sending a little pre-printed poem as well as a note, "Hoping you and Michelle are still together..." (that ellipsis really said it all, don't you think? Six months seemed such an accomplishment to us then, but to a divorced guy it was probably pretty funny). Linda matted and framed both pieces of paper, and they're on the wall in my office. It was a great gift, and a wonderful story. I went to see BC read at Sacred Heart in Fairfield in 2007, and brought along a tiny picture of the frame taken on my LG Chocolate phone, to show him, but I decided it wasn't worth waiting in the long line of old ladies to show it to him.

We made up for it on Wednesday night, though! BC was the headliner of the 25th anniversary of the Sunken Garden Poetry Festival, held on the grounds of the Hillstead Museum in Farmington, where my high school friend Meghan's mom was a docent years ago. It turns out that the woman who designed the house for herself, Theodate Pope, did so with the help of McKim, Meade, and White, the architects of the AAR main building. The ground floor of the house was open, so we took a walk through admiring what really is an impressive collection of French Impressionist paintings, but also little gems like the anonymous 16th-century Venetian painter who painted a Saint Lucy, head tipped to the side in a reverse of Titian's Salome, her gaze on her two cartoonish removed eyeballs on a skewer in her hand.

Sara's mom took us to the poetry festival once during high school, but I don't really recall any of it, besides it being hot. We got there relatively early, a little after 4, which meant we could snag a parking spot right on the grounds, and then a spot for our chairs with a good view of the podium. It rained at one point and we got wet (before Sean ran to the car to retrieve the umbrella, which turned out to be a good call since there were repeated cloudbursts/sunshowers for an hour or two), but then it turned brilliantly sunny, and stayed clear as the sun went down on the longest day of the year, as BC read his work. The garden itself is beautiful, the birds were singing, and the sun striking the trees and the house as it slowly set were really lovely.

When I saw BC in 2007, I recall being a bit taken aback by the dryness of his voice and tone; poems that had seemed sincere to me on the page suddenly took on a sardonic edge when he read them. I remember thinking he seemed rather bitter about life, having (recently?) gotten divorced. This time, though, it was perfect. Sean enjoyed himself hugely, and said he hadn't laughed that hard in a very long time. One he particularly enjoyed was among the brief haiku BC read--poems which, he reminded us, can only have 17 syllables (he noted dryly that plenty of poets write three lines about a frog and call it a haiku). This was also the only one to which he had given a title:

New England Haiku

Whose woods these are I
think I know. His house is in
the village though. He

Maybe he read that in 2007, but I don't remember it (a quick search of Google suggests it's one of his standards) but we laughed so hard. BC mentioned that he's engaged, so perhaps that has slightly improved his outlook on life!

After the reading was over BC was available to sign books. Of course, we hadn't brought any books, but Sean suggested we get in line anyway and tell him about the gift. I was reluctant, but that was really a great idea. He was so gracious, and evidently tickled by our story. He shook my hand three times, told us we seemed like a really happy couple, and then joked "but if anything happens, don't blame me!"

Me, PhD

Updates here have been few and far between. There was, unsurprisingly, a considerable amount of stress leading up to my defense, although I count myself lucky in general (no sleepless nights, no crying fits). My defense went incredibly well. The outside reader, a Titian specialist and David Rosand alum, loved my dissertation, and thinks I should try to publish it as a book immediately, and Coop (who I can now call Tracy!) wants me to have a book proposal ready for CAA in winter 2018. Since the mantra about publishing is "your dissertation is NOT a book," this was a really high compliment. They also gave me virtually no edits for the text, so I was able to get everything formatted quickly and submitted to the Graduate School, where it was officially accepted last week. My graduation "date" is August 2017, but I'm effectively a PhD. Woohoo! Depending on how one calculates, it took either nine years (from when I started at Temple) or seven (from the beginning of my doctoral coursework). Either way, I beat the curve, since the average age for women to get their doctorates is 33...

Done!

Today is our eighth wedding anniversary! Yesterday I defended my dissertation. I have a PhD now! :-)

Friend Times

We're on Academy-Dave overload here! We stayed with Dave S., and saw Dave M., in Chicago a couple of weeks ago, and then met Dave McK. for dinner in New Haven on Friday night. He lives in Brooklyn and has been teaching at Yale's art school. He was from my first year, and even though we haven't been in contact since that year ended, we had a really good time. We even spoke a little Italian with the owner, who is originally from Assisi, and was delighted to learn we'd all lived together in Rome.  After dinner we headed down to Milford to get drinks with Sean's friends, two of whom, Pinto and Quinn, just had offers accepted on houses this week. Naturally, I'm slightly envious of their adult settled-ness, but at the same time, buying a house has come to mean the equivalent of "this is it: we're staying here forever" in my mind, and I'm OK with not quite being at that point yet.

Yesterday was my dad's 17th anniversary! Sean commented how it's interesting how mentions of my dad have dropped off over the years on this blog. It's normal, I suppose, because my life has grown so far beyond what it was when he was a part of it. I told him, I really only thought of my dad yesterday in a light-hearted context; I spent most of the day at my sister's house, playing with Charlie and helping my sister haul all of her bulk trash to the curb for pick-up. I teased her about why she doesn't like to leave the front door open, even though it lets in lots of light, and her answer was that someone might be watching her, and I said that's Dad talking (my sister lives across from a wetland nature preserve; the only thing likely to be watching her is a squirrel). She has a great picture of him in her bedroom, from a holiday at my auntie Donna's when we were kids. He's wearing a gray suit, sitting, with a glass of something in his hand, and smiling--not grinning--at the camera. He looks healthy, not the heavy, bloated, tired man I remember vaguely from the months immediately preceding his death. He was also, interestingly enough, more dark-skinned than I recall (and it can't have been summer, given the suit and that we were there for a holiday...)! Anyway, it's a nice photo. It's my dad the way I'd like to remember him, and more importantly, the way I'd like Jen to be able to remember him, since she has more pain there than I do. Charlie will still probably only hear about his Grandpa Joe from me and Sean, but that's OK.

Luckily for Charlie, in addition to Vinny's parents he also has a stand-in grandma in Linda! We Facetimed her yesterday so she could see him and it really made her day. Not incidentally, Sean finally had a vasectomy last week, so if she hadn't fully accepted that we were never having kids, it's probably pretty clear now. We joked to Daniel that he's now the only hope for the Gleason line, but he demurred, so who knows. Jen, always eager to shake off her in-laws, has already decided that they're spending next Easter with us (ie, at Linda's), and Vinny was even on board, which is good.

One of the few remaining things that annoys me about my sister (and Vinny) is that they are constantly falling all over themselves to thank us for anything, including a) coming to visit, b) going to the store with one of them, c) helping to clean, d) entertaining the baby so they can do something else, or e) all of the above. Like, twenty times in one visit. Partially this is just their own neuroses, I know, but I don't know how else to communicate that I enjoy  being there, and I like being useful! Charlie's cool and all, but actually sitting around for a whole afternoon watching him throw blocks on the floor isn't my idea of a party. I'd rather help clean. I've seen how stressful it is for them trying to balance work, the house, and the baby, and it really does make me happy to help her out when I can (though I still haven't yet cleaned a poop diaper, thank god). My mom would be so happy and amused to see us getting along so well, I'm sure.

Buona Pasqua!

Post-Conference Highs

A lot has happened in the last couple of weeks. Toward the end of March, I went down to Philly to represent Temple at the Barnes Foundation Symposium, an annual colloquy of graduate students from Philadelphia-area schools that used to be held at the PMA. In fact, when I went to visit Temple for the first time, Dr. Hall invited me to come to the symposium and then took me to lunch in the fancy museum restaurant. The Barnes, which moved to its new building on the parkway in 2012, just as I was moving out of the city, is a beautiful museum, and clearly a great deal of money went into it. Everyone agreed, for example, that the chairs in the auditorium were the most comfortable of their kind; enough so that you could spend an entire day sitting without your butt hurting!

My paper there went really well. Dr. Bolman and Dr. West stood in for Hall and Cooper, both of whom were traveling. It was really nice, in particular, to spend a little time with Dr. Bolman, who is both fiercely encouraging and wonderfully blunt--she had classic Bolman critiques to offer after my talk, including "no using "they" as pluralization" and "make sure to enunciate further, in case you have ESL listeners" (the latter of which honestly had never occurred to me, but as a Byzantinist she attends more international conferences). Dr. West also gave me a really warm introduction; apparently younger students still consider me some kind of a role model in the department? Who knew!

It was also great to spend some time with Phyllis, even though her house was pretty cold. I'm still vaguely used to it, but poor Sean was suffering! Her new housemate has an adorable tiny dog, a Papillon named Petey, who kept Sean company. One night we dined at Bacio, where Phyllis is totally in with the owner--who she once engaged in a spirited debate on the proper way to make Italian meatballs, (ie, his was not the right way) during which I was edging toward the door in embarrassment! Now, though, they're bros, and we got to enjoy a plate of incredible off-menu appetizers as a result. They're such a chill restaurant; there's a fat little tan dog who begs at all the tables, and like most restaurants in the city it's BYO, so you can sit there and drink your own wine for hours. There's no restaurant quite like that here; Home is our favorite in this area, but it's not quite as neighborhood-casual as Bacio.

We also went out to Media for lunch with Stuart and his wife Maureen; they had attended the symposium, along with another guy named Roland, who apparently was one of the Spotlight regular attendees. He seemed surprised I didn't recognize him, and I'm thinking, dude, that was four years ago! I was assured that my Spotlights are still considered the best, haha. Media is just a few miles away from Swarthmore, so that was our next stop; our friend Jeremy teaches there, and managed to wrangle one of the on-campus houses, partially out of luck and partially out of coincidence, as it happened to need a year's renovation while he was going to be in Rome last year. It's literally a five-minute walk from his office, and ten minutes' from Ruthie's school, while Bluma goes to Quaker kindergarten also on campus. Jeremy legitimately has the most enviable set-up of any academic I know (complete with annual research funding for a center they're opening in Trent, in the Dolomites!). We had a great evening with them, which naturally included some karaoke (for everyone but me, of course), including Sean's great staple, "Mack the Knife."

When I got back to New Haven, we had just 72 hours before we left for Chicago for RSA. Dr. Hall decided she couldn't wait for Dr. Cooper to actually send her comments on my dissertation and that she needed to have it by March 30, which meant applying all of the 200-odd corrections I'd been saving in a separate Excel sheet to the "master." Good thing we were flying out of Tweed, ie right behind our house, because I sent the revised draft to her at 1:30, packed in a hurry, and was on a 5:30 flight (ironically, back to Philadelphia, before going on to to Chicago).

In Chicago we stayed with other friends from Rome, Dave and Jinn. They're both painters, and Dave teaches at U of Chicago. Their apartment was lovely--so many incredible books! We stayed an entire week, though the conference itself was just three days. A whole bunch of AAR folks from my second year were in town: Will, one of the writers, lives in Chicago; Bryony was in town to give a lecture, and John was presenting at the conference; Lauren was doing the same, so Rick came with her. We had dinner one night at an amazing (if expensive) Mexican place in Dave and Jinn's neighborhood, which is Andersonville, about 45 min ride on the train north of downtown where the conference was being held. Lauren, Bryony, and John were all staying down there in the conference hotel, and headed back there after dinner, but Will and Rick came back to Dave and Jinn's place, and we ended up sitting around talking until 3am. By that point, Lauren had told Rick that it'd be best if he just stayed out, since she had to be up so early for her panel the next day, so he decided to stay over, and Will followed suit. Of course, the only spare blankets and pillows were already in use in the "guest room" (ie, Dave's office, air mattress, white curtain strung up in the doorway), so one of them took the couch, one the floor, and slept bundled in their coats. It was weird and wonderful. Sean pointed out that one of the signs that we're actually a group of friends, and not just Rome-friends, is that we barely discussed the Academy itself; we had other things to discuss and debate. It was so much fun, even if by the end of a week I was eager to get back to my own space and my own bed.

The next morning we all rallied, had breakfast, and then Sean, Rick and I went downtown to go to the Art Institute, where he and I spent a long time looking at the Nighthawks by Edward Hopper, one of Sean's favorite paintings. It was such a treat to stand there talking about it, a painting we both find interesting, as opposed to many times when Sean has patiently stood there as I inspected various early modern words (or more often, begun cracking jokes about them). Afterwards we met Dave Morris (AAR Year 1!) for a drink nearby, which was a pleasure, as he is still his loveable, chortling self.

What about the conference itself? That went great too! I was the lone grad student presenting alongside major scholars, which was a thrill. Unfortunately, the organizers of the conference put our two sessions in one of the smaller rooms, and it was literally standing room only. One of the speakers in the second session, Stephen Campbell, had to stand in the hallway for the first session!  I got good feedback from my fellow panelists and from attendees (Deborah Howard! Paul Hills!). Melissa Conn from Save Venice was there, and offered to put me in touch with the collector who owns one of the recently-attributed works I touched on in my paper. Apparently, a Bolognese doctor discovered what is now considered by some to be a self-portrait of Titian in a frame in an antique shop...in Connecticut. It seems unbelievable, but apparently the drawing is still being held here on the East Coast, so I might be able to go see it in person! Another good result, that I'm trying not to get too excited about, is that a woman from another session on coins and medals approached me about publishing my paper in a volume they're going to propose for publication...with Philip Attwood, a curator at the British Museum. That would be awesome if it happens, but we'll see.

One of the benefits about giving my paper in the first session on the first day was that the stress was over, and I could enjoy the rest of it! I saw a bunch of friends from Temple, including Erin Downey and Tammy, fought my way through lines at the reception for my free drinks, and hopped in a cab, buzzed, to zip uptown for one last dinner with the Academy gang. It was really, really great.

On our way back to New Haven, Dr. Hall responded with her comments, which happily were nothing structural (though she caught so, so many typos!). Naturally Dr. Cooper now wants a new edited version before she'll bother commenting, which is both frustrating--she was supposed to be the primary reader--and also nothing I can change, except by getting her the revised version ASAP. My outside reader will be Jodi Cranston, one of the organizers of my RSA session, and one of David Rosand's students. She said she'd be honored, which...squee!

Another

I came to my blog yesterday so that I could re-read my posts about my visits to Spain, so I could give some travel tips to Stuart, the retired scientist who is effectively my dissertation's first "outside reader," having read and commented on all 236 pages of the current draft. Then I saw the main page and realized I hadn't updated since November, yikes.

So, as the preceding paragraph suggested, I submitted a draft of my dissertation to Dr. Cooper! She got it last week and basically warned me she's in no rush. I'm not technically graduating until the summer semester (if I wanted to graduate this semester, I'd have to defend by March 24), so it's fine, but I also really want to hear her feedback, not least since my last chapter is really only partially written and just sort of trails off into a bunch of possible headers. I'm really lucky to have Stuart, since he's provided interim feedback that is mostly very helpful. He's very anti-parentheses (and I over-use them...see?) and fond of weirdly short paragraphs. He's also British by origin, so some of his corrections, like specialty/speciality, I have to respond with "...nah." I met him when I was doing the Spotlight program at the PMA a few years ago, and he's been peppering me with questions (and requests for Jstor articles) ever since. He used to work on the lab side of the UPenn Archaeological Museum and is deeply interested in art of all kinds; he and his wife Maureen also travel a ton (hence the Spain tips). He's getting one of the biggest shout-outs in my acknowledgments section!

I'll be seeing him when I present at the Barnes Foundation conference later this month. That presentation, which is for a non-specialist audience, is all set to go, but I've got precious little for my RSA paper for Chicago the following week. I'm really looking forward to Chicago in general; we're staying with Jinn and David, friends from Rome, and will be having a mini-reunion with other AAR folks who are in town for the conference. But I'm super anxious about the stupid paper, especially since--if I have to look for non-academic jobs after graduation--this could well be my conference swan song. Oh well.

In other news...well, there is no other news. The country is a dumpster fire and my disssertation has been consuming my life, albeit in decently pleasant fashion. Oh, and my nephew is way more adorable than he has any right to be! I mean, we're hoping he doesn't peak in babyhood. Those DiMarzo/Tranquillo genes, man.

One Big Update

Well, I haven't written here in a few months because in a certain sense not much had happened, really. Until it did. It's still unbelievable. Every day I have this constant mental back-and-forth with two people in my mind who represent deeply divergent points of view: on the one hand, a good friend from the Academy, a woman of color who is deeply afraid and angry and is taking a very combative, isolating, and anarchist position; on the other, Sean's aunt, who is basically completely pleased with the results of the election. I'm constantly debating my actions (or inactions) with the one, and trying to find a way to communicate or convince the other.

One benefit of this is that it's pushing me to concrete action, rather than merely the discussion Sean and I were having before the election. I joined the ACLU, I've gotten in touch with our Democratic representatives, and I applied to work with an ESL literacy program in New Haven. I'm not sure I can go to the march in Washington, only because my dissertation is going to be due shortly thereafter. (At this point, I can hear the mental edition of my AAR friend scoffing that it doesn't matter). We've decided that we have to make a policy of engaging with the people around us here in New Haven, who are mostly working to middle class, without college educations, and who supported Trump, whether openly or quietly. We have to start actually reacting to the casual racism that comes out of the mouth of people who are very dear to me, like Sean's mom, instead of awkwardly changing the subject. I hope we can help make a difference, instead of continuing to be laissez-faire liberal intellectuals.

Other notes: my nephew Charlie will be a year old on Thursday, and he remains adorable. He's a bit more cranky now as a couple of teeth are coming in, but still, world's best baby. I still haven't changed any diapers, and I count that as a win. Also on Thursday, I'll be getting my medical marijuana license. Turns out it's incredibly simple, if you meet one of CT's requirements, which, alas, I do. To be honest, this is more for Sean, who continues to struggle with depression and anxiety, than it is for me, but I certainly feel more anxious lately, and I'm willing to give it a go, in some smokeless fashion. Apparently it even comes in the form of honey! Who knew?

Hm, what else. We're enjoying being able to cook and bake again. Our fridge is full of our homemade section, which currently includes applesauce, peanut butter, and hummus, but will soon be back to including fresh bread, courtesy of the starter bubbling away in a crock on the lower shelf. I've been reading a lot of food-related books, including Anthony Bourdain's original Kitchen Confidential (too much of a dick for my taste) and Gabrielle Hamilton's Bread, Bones, Butter, which had been named as the best chef memoir ever written. She has an MFA in addition to her cooking training, and certainly has lived an eventful life, but I was really disappointed when the focus of the book turned, in the final third, to her terrible green-card marriage to an Italian (who she started sleeping with while her girlfriend of several years was still slaving away for her in her restaurant). Spoiler alert, it did not go happily. I didn't finish it. Really what I want is something on the level of My Life in France, or Provence 1970, or any of MFK Fisher's work. Or Michael Pollan, who got me excited about cooking and baking in the first place.

I did read a novel that I enjoyed recently, Major Pettigrew's Last Stand. It had been recommended by NPR a while ago and had been lingering in the bookmarks folder where I stashed all the books I wanted to read once I was within range of public libraries again. I remember years ago Phyllis explaining that she read nothing but non-fiction, and I was surprised, but now I find myself doing the same thing! For some reason, selecting a contemporary novel seems like an inordinately difficult task--I want a good story and I want elegant prose--while a nonfiction book will hopefully teach me something new and interesting, even if it's not the loveliest work of craft. But this novel lived up to its recommendations, and I'm looking forward to getting her second novel, which just came out.

In terms of television, Sean and I watched Luke Cage when we got back, and really enjoyed it (Sean missed the conclusion, since he fell asleep and I couldn't stop). Both that show and Jessica Jones have been excellent (Daredevil was only OK). Now we're going through Parks and Rec, which Sean had never seen, and he has found his soulmate in Ron Swanson. We had been watching Poldark, but gave up. Instead I'm getting my costume drama fix from The Crown, which offers the kind of comfort of "hey, this has already happened, no surprises." Unlike contemporary history.

I think that's most of our updates. We've been fortunate to see most of our friends and family since we've been back, including some of our Academy friends, which is great. I'm really looking forward to rejoining our family Thanksgiving, which of course I've been away from for two years. Sean hasn't seen my aunt and uncle since Thanksgiving 2013! He's looking forward to cracking Cape oysters with my Uncle Dana, and I'm going to retake my rightful turkey leg.

And now, back to the dissertation! See you in another two months, Blogger.

Home Again, Home Again

We've been home for two weeks! Everyone keeps asking us if we're happy to be home and if it was easy to transition back to American living; the answer to both is "YES" for Sean and "mostly yes" for me.  I don't miss Rome specifically as much as I miss the pace and style of life that's common in Italy. Sean likes to point out how much more convenient and comfortable our life here is, which is true, but I also look around and see all the ways in which our society encourages, and sometimes even requires, sloth, excess, and wastefulness. Why is every store air-conditioned to the point of discomfort, for example? (Worst offender: Stop & Shop). Why are they lit to freakish brightness and contain 3,000 types of breakfast cereal, which is shitty for you anyway? That's not to say that I'm fetishizing the Italian way of life, which has its own slew of problems. Nor do I plan to be one of those people who go on about how my true home is in Rome or something. That's annoying, no one cares, and most importantly it's not true; Sean and I are in agreement that we could only live in Italy if we had enough money to supply ourselves with the American-level creature comforts, like a dishwasher, air-conditioning, and a good mattress. Since that's super-unlikely, I'm not dreaming of becoming an ex-pat one day. (I've learned to dislike that word: ex-pat is just a euphemism for "wealthy white immigrant we approve of," as opposed to the poor brown ones). We can enjoy what we had for two years in Rome, and make our jokes to each other. Memories of the umbrella pines will have to do for now. 

One important aspect of our Roman life has been translated more or less successfully: coffee! I had previously sampled both Starbucks espresso, which was very bitter, as well as independent place in Branford, which was both bitter and had an after-taste. Sean repeated the experiment and agreed that both sucked. In all likelihood, they don't clean the machines often, which gives coffee a bitter taste (at the Academy, people complained that Monday coffee was more bitter, since Alessandro was known for not cleaning the machine when he closed on Saturday). And it's expensive/wasteful anyway, considering they give you a regular-size paper cup for a single espresso shot. Although I haven't tasted it, Sean's department apparently has some excellent espresso. It's capsule coffee, but his adviser Raffaella is from Turin and wanted the good stuff. They even have actual ceramic Illy cups! Truly, the grad students are living the life.

Since bar coffee is never going to be an affordable or tasty solution, it's up to us to make it at home. I bought Kimbo espresso-ground coffee and a Bialetti moka pot on Amazon, but unfortunately I didn't realize how large a pot I was buying, so we've each been drinking a double every morning. Without the power of an actual espresso machine, you can't get the crema that gives bar espresso its special slightly thicker texture, but the taste is solid, and it does the job! I had stopped ordering it macchiato months ago, so we don't even need to bother with frothing our own milk, which seemed like a pain in the ass whenever I watched someone do it in the common kitchen. One day, perhaps, when we have decent income, we could think about investing in a real machine. In the short term, we need to find some decent cups. Somehow I thought that with all the Italian-Americans around (Linda has a moka pot, for example, though she only uses it to make the decaf espresso Gary drinks after big dinners) I'd be able to find some espresso cups at Goodwill, but I've checked a couple with no result.

Another carry-over from Rome: boxing! We joined the distinctly non-gritty 9Round boxing/kickboxing gym, which offers a different 30-minute workout every day. We do the rounds twice to get a good workout out of it, and it is tough, so that's nice. Sean looked at me once as I was flagging and said (quietly) "Come on, ladeee!" like Leo would have, and I both laughed and worked harder. We're never going to actually learn anything new in terms of technique, though, and obviously never even glove-spar with someone else, which is a bit disappointing. Even though I sucked at it, it was definitely a challenge. But never fear, 9Round offers its own things for me to suck at--like jump rope. Yes, the pastime of 10 year old girls is beyond me. Oy. 

Arrivederci, Roma

So it's almost here, after two years. Our flight leaves at 9:40am tomorrow.

 I'll miss Rome: not just the coffee, the wine, and the food, but its grandeur, its beauty, and even (a little) its chaos. Where else in the West do you encounter history so casually, and frequently? Walking to dinner the other night with Carla, for example, I looked up at a Renaissance building I hadn't noticed before, on which its frieze proudly announced, in Latin, its owner's name (Turci), his title as an apostolic notary, and the date, 1500. Just for a second, as I read the inscription and admired the building, I felt like I was participating in a conversation across time. I'll miss those moments. Hopefully I won't forget them either...one reason I still keep this blog.

Further Assorted French Musings

One week to go! This time next Sunday we'll be winging our way back to Rome, and to a dinner with Adam at Bi-Won, an excellent Korean place that may well have ruined me for other Korean restaurants (I say this having been only moderately enthused by a plate of spicy pork and kimchi at a well-reviewed place near Republique yesterday).

Last week we took another trip outside Paris to Provins, a small town south-east of Paris that features regularly in all the "day trips from Paris" recommendations, since its preserves its medieval character in the upper town. I think time in Italy, with its plethora of charming hill towns, has made me snobby, because I wasn't really that impressed. The medieval part of town was pretty small, and without many features of interest; the main (and only) square had a smattering of overpriced cafes as well as the requisite ice cream shop and carousel, but not much else. We climbed the "tower of Caesar," which did give a view onto the medieval church and to the town below, but beyond that the landscape was pretty uninteresting (for example, a new subdivision that could easily have been in New Haven). We checked out the church, the nave of which was never completed, and then walked to the other end of town to see the Gate of Joy, the plain but sturdy-looking gate that still preserves some of its ramparts. And that was all! Definitely not worth 50 euro for two train tickets from Paris, in my opinion. What did strike me a day or so ago is that Provins would have made an excellent setting for Madame Bovary: stifling, provincial, and small. Anyone would go crazy, have affairs, and ruin their husband if they were trapped there! Even Sean agreed, sort of (he's never had much sympathy for poor Emma).

After we arrived I briefly re-read How Paris Became Paris, and was reminded that compared to Venice, Florence, or especially Rome, Paris was such a late-bloomer as a city! Almost all of the significant architecture in Paris dates to the 17th-19th centuries. In the middle of the 16th century, an emissary of Phillip II who was on a mission to survey important architecture in the north of Europe reported that there was nothing of architectural interest to see in Paris, and stayed just a single day. At that point, of course, there were no squares, no boulevards, no great public gardens. Even the sameness of the architecture (tall, narrow facades painted white, slate mansard roofs) which seemed kind of bland to me the last time we were here, now reminds me of the incredible control that was given to city planners, to force new construction to adhere to certain standards so that the growing city would have a "look" to it, something that no other city had had before.

Again, always comparing to Rome, we've been so impressed by the public spaces here--not only by their cleanliness and organization, but by the wonderfully diverse ways in which the French use them. At the Parc du Belleville, a five-minute walk from our place, you can see out over the entire city from a looktop at the top; you can also see nearly every inch of grass taken up by people sun-bathing, reading, or just hanging out in groups. Walking back through Place du Republique on a weekend evening, people are skate-boarding on one half of the huge, traffic-free central square, while one of the cafes has put out all sorts of table games and kids games for patrons and families to enjoy. Official communication seems to be pretty clear, too; for example there are large, easily legible maps of your surroundings at every bus stop and metro entrance, and even on the sides of the (many and free) public toilets. Today I got a bit lost while running found myself at a highway on-ramp; I ran south until I found a bus stop and could figure out that I'd taken the wrong street at one of those spiral intersection.

Another example of surprisingly good communication: at Pere-Lachaise cemetery there were signs explaining that the city had discontinued use of a particular weed-killer that was carcinogenic, and asking for patience with the weeds as they tried out different solutions. Unthinkable in Rome (and probably most places in the US, too). Of course, underneath all this admiration of Paris as such a livable and functioning city is my awareness that I don't really know anything about what it means to live here. If you don't speak the language, your awareness of a culture and its problems is limited to what you can read in the English press. After all, we're certainly not getting to know any actual French people. France clearly does have a lot of problems, racial, post-colonial, and religious problems--but it's so easy, as a short-term visitor, to see only the lovely surface and not what may be underneath.

A note on Pere-Lachaise: when we were here a couple of years ago, I noted how I didn't think the cemetery had the charm of the Protestant Cemetery in Rome. This time I realized why: it's not just the atmosphere, the lack of the cypresses and the Pyramid of Gaius Cestius. Partially it's the recent date of the cemetery; it wasn't opened until the 19th century, so the style of the tombs tends to be very similar, and there are far fewer idiosyncratic tombs (aside from Oscar Wilde, etc.) than you find in Rome. But more than this, I think it's the sheer variety of people from all nations and faiths who are buried in the cemetery in Rome that captures both my imagination and my pity. The people buried in Pere-Lachaise are overwhelmingly Parisians buried where they lived and died, but most of those in the Roman cemetery probably didn't expect to die there, in a foreign country. The gravestones, in fact, often speak of sudden illnesses and disasters while traveling. Standing in front of those sorrowful monuments, a traveler yourself and far from home, empathy comes easily. I wonder if, at the end, even those who were permanent transplants wished they could have died on their native soil, with the people they knew.

Chantilly and Musee Conde

Yesterday we took our first real trip out of Paris; Chantilly is only a 30 minute ride on an express train, but it seems world away. The town itself, of which we didn't see much, is small and quaint, but everyone comes there for the Domaine de Chantilly, the vast park surrounding the Chateau and its exquisite Musee Conde. We took a rather roundabout way from the train station and wound up on a path crossing an immense field, by what we later realized was the hippodrome or horse-racing track, moving toward a vast building that we assumed was the chateau itself. Nope! It was merely the incredibly large stables, built by Louis XV, which still house live performing horses as well as the Museum of the Horse. A couple of galleries were dedicated to carousels, with the majority of the colorful examples coming from the US in the early 20th century, including Rhode Island and Philadelphia (a rabbit, a zebra, and a giraffe included!)

The Chateau itself was further on, behind a huge wrought-iron gate with a gilt crest, and across two bridges, the corners of which were ornamented with big 19th-century statues of hunting dogs and stags, a nod to the original function of this place, which was a hunting retreat for the French royal family. An equestion statue of Anne de Montmorency, the Constable of France under Francis I, who had the chateau built in the 1560s, stands before the main gate; from his family the estate passed eventually to the Grand Conde, the first prince-of-the-blood (cousin to young Louis XIV). His family is the reason the museum inside is called the Musee Conde, but, rather confusingly, the collection is neither his nor Montmorency's, but a totally unrelated nobleman, at least insofar as French nobility is ever un-related: the Duc d'Aumale, whose father, Louis-Phillipe, was the last king of France, reigning 1830-1848. Aumale had to go into exile once his father was forced to abdicate, but he had been bequeathed the Chateau by his godfather, the last prince of Conde (whose only son and heir had been shot by Napoleon). Once he was allowed to return to France in the 1870s he reconstructed the Chateau, which had been mostly destroyed in the Revolution, into its current state--in which everything, from fireplace grates to doorknobs, bears the monogram of a superimposed H-O, for Henri d'Orleans, his actual name.

He was a fantastic collector of books, drawings, and paintings. There are three paintings by Raphael in his collection, including the small, delicate Three Graces and the so-called Madonna di Loreto, which was thought only to be a copy after a lost painting from the Borghese until a cleaning reveal the Borghese inventory number. Other notable paintings included a very sexy Ingres self-portrait (adjacent to a copy of Titian's Prado Ecce Homo), a small Maso di Banco Lamentation over the Dead Virgin once thought to be Giotto, Piero di Cosimo's posthumous portrait of Simonetta Vespucci, the loveliest woman in Florence, and the gallery of small portraits of various members of the French royal houses (not collected by Aumale). Probably one of the most valuable objects is the one not on view, except through a facsimile: the Very Rich Hours of the Duke du Berry, a 14th-century illuminated manuscript that's included in every art history survey as an example of "International Gothic."

The house itself was also really cool. A couple of rooms that survived the Revolution had been restored by Aumale to the 18th-century Rococo splendor. The dining room featured gas sconces that apparently produced flame in the shape of the fleur-de-lis, and in the adjacent service kitchen there was a speaking tube in the wall going down to the actual kitchens (which I was tickled by since we just watched the Aristocats!) The grounds were also exceptionally lovely, and large. The gardens closest to the house were designed by Andre le Notre (who designed Versailles), but further away the grounds were permitted to become 'manicured country style' (complete with sheep grazing alongside a river) and woods. The grounds were so large, in fact, that as I was dragging myself on our march back to the main gates (Sean, of course, was trotting happily along after 5 hours) we saw a sign that indicated that there was a kangaroo enclosure on the grounds--but on the far distant side! Not even the lure of a 'roo, alas, could induce me to walk all of that over again (especially not when we still had to walk back another half-hour to the station) so we regretfully bid them goodbye, soothing our sorrow with an ice-cream cone. Real ice cream! Not gelato! I do love France. Best of all, the ticket-seller had given us both the student discount, no questions asked, so we paid 20 euro for all of this beauty and splendor, instead of 34. I also love a bargain.

French Musings 2

I was just writing to Jinn that I don't think we really understood how long a month can feel, if you don't have an external job or a social circle, when we decided we'd spend August in Paris. We do each have work to do--I'm turning in my second chapter to Dr. Cooper tomorrow, so that Sean can start using my laptop to finalize his conference paper--but it's surprising how *long* the days feel when it's just the two of us! Yes, all of Paris is our oyster, but Paris is also a very expensive oyster, so we can't exactly spend our afternoons guzzling wine in sidewalk cafes. We've been trying to walk as much as possible, for example, to save on metro and bus tickets, but Menilmontant is a hike, and it's also been unpleasantly cloudly and chilly.

Last night we went out belatedly to celebrate Sean's birthday; our attempt last week at Le Richer was met with disappointment, as they were closed for the August holidays. We wound up at a restaurant that was highly recommended on Tripadvisor. The service was very friendly and they're not condescending about speaking English, which probably accounts for a lot of the good feelings people leave with, but the food was mediocre at a ridiculous price. However, the night was saved by the couple next to us, Kirby and Jessica, who initiated conversation once we'd both finished our meals. They were Canadian, but had spent two years living in State College, PA, when Kirby was an assistant professor there in geography (as we learned later, geography as in climate-change research, not maps!). They were leaving Paris the next morning and heading, of all places, to Rome! We had a great conversation with them, and best of all, after agreeing on the mediocrity of our current location, they gave us a recommendation for a mom-and-pop place they had found the night before. It was really nice to have someone to talk to other than ourselves, so I told them I was grateful to them for making the first step!

After days of chill and clouds, today was a brilliantly blue, warm day, and we tried to make the most of it! This I walked down to the Bastille market to buy groceries for the week. It was less overwhelming than last weekend, and the deals are great; I got plenty of eggplant, zucchini, tomatoes, shallots, cipollini, nectarines, and grapes for less than 15 euro. Sean and I went downtown to visit the Opera Garnier, which was beautiful. I had never put this together, but one of the signs pointed out that it's a rare example of a work of architecture which carries the architect's name (along with, for example, the Eiffel Tower). Then we headed to the Tuileries to take advantage of it being a free-museum Sunday, to visit the Orangerie. It was a pretty long line in the sun, but Monet's Nymphea were worth it (although we noted that Monet's belief that the painting ensembles would produce a meditative effect on those who sat amid them would not have held up in its current environment, full of people talking and taking selfies). The pamphlet noted that when the paintings were unveiled to the public after Monet's death in 1926, people were uninterested, since it didn't seem avant-garde, but after WWII some of the expressionists returned to the paintings and saw connections to their own work in the near-abstraction of his late brushwork.

Paris has to have the loveliest and most user-friendly green spaces of any European city I've seen so far. Not only are they kept in really nice shape, but the way people use them is so incredible varied. In the Parc des Buttes-Chaumonts, there are always people doing yoga and meditating, but also people boxing, and even doing Zumba on a rare strip of level ground. At the Tuileries and other parks, there are benches, but also plenty of green metal chairs, which people can arrange to their hearts' content (provided they can get ahold of one). We snagged a couple after our time in the Orangerie and sat on the terrace overlooking the gardens. I had never thought about the way that only having benches effectively reduces the ways you can use the seating in a park; only a certain number of people can fit on one, and they can't be rearranged. Here instead you see knots of people gathered in all sorts of configurations, including plenty using a bench as a footrest or a picnic table. Poor Rome: in so many ways it comes off worse by comparison! Rome certainly lacks the money to have the kind of services and upkeep that the Parisian parks have; plus Sean pointed out, you could never have those moveable chairs there, because they'd all disappear within a month.

French Musings

We're in Paris! We're on Rue de Menilmontant in the 20th, near Belleville. The "montant" part of the street name is accurate, since it inclines slightly up from the metro stop, beginning a much steeper climb a few blocks before where we are. It was a considerable slog getting here from Orly, which is south of Paris; Menilmontant is in the north. We took a very crowded, but deliciously air-conditioned bus and then two subways--and then had to pull our bags uphill to meet Salvatrice, who turned out to speak more Italian than English, thanks to parents who emigrated from Sardinia! That would be our last moment of linguistic aptitude, I'm afraid. I told Sean today that I quite like Paris; I just wonder how much more I would like it if I could actually speak French!

It's kind of a shock to go from a country where I had decent fluency in the language as well as what I'll call cultural literacy (knowing how day-to-day things work; knowing what the mores tend to be, to help you figure out how to act in a given situation), to being back at the kid level of pointing to things and saying please! Sean's enjoying his bit of linguistic supremacy over me; it also helps that he isn't fazed by trying to say "l'eau" to a bartender several times before they get that he wants water, where I'm always embarassed. On the plus side, I can at least read enough French to get by (spotted on the bus: a sign warning people that the majority of assaults on public transit come from an effort to steal your smartphone)!

Aside from the language barrier, Paris is a welcome change from Rome! New sights, new tastes (we had Afghani food our first night here, although--Sean's birthday tomorrow night aside--we have very little money to eat out, alas). New weather--it's 20 degrees colder than Rome, saints be praised. I woke up freezing our first night, while our friends who got stuck in Rome and at the Academy for several more days, thanks to American Airlines fucking up, were suffering through 90+ degrees. There's been a mix of sun and clouds every day--I never knew how thrilled I could be to see clouds! From the top of Menilmontant, and even more so from the Parc Buttes-Chaumont, you have an incredible view of the cityscape and the fierce-looking clouds rolling in.

Where we're staying is not downtown; it takes 45 minutes or so to walk to the Seine. Paris is incredibly large, and seemingly very prosperous; it seems much more like New York than Rome, but without the soul-lessness that I found in Berlin. Yes, I like that every corner seems to have a boulangerie done up in colorful wooden panels! The neighborhood we're in has a large population of North African immigrants, and it's also something of a shock going from fairly non-diverse Italy to multicultural Paris. I told Sean that it feels like in Rome, you see the same ten or so Italian "types" over and over again, while here there just seems like more variety of people of all ages. Another fabulous French innovation over Italy is that the ATMs actually ask you what kind of bills you'd like, large or small--and the shopkeepers don't even mind changing 50s if you do have them! ATMs in Italy will never give you a 10-euro bill and they will give you every 50 they can, a bill that almost no one, outside of a supermarket or a busy pharmacy, will be willing to take without a grimace. The French, having apparently enough coins in circulation to make change, also don't expect you to balance your bill for them (as Sean's reminded me, as I was adding change to our restaurant check so that they could just give us back a 20). For contrast: Jinn and David's horrible experience with the Roman cab-driver who outright refused to take a 20-euro bill because he couldn't make change, and who, since his credit card machine was broken, as they always seem to be, insisted on Dave going into Bar G to make change while he ranted at Jinn in the car!

So far, people have been very friendly to us despite our total lack of French; I think if anything, they're more confused, since Menilmontant isn't exactly tourist central. Today we went down to one of the city's largest fruit and vegetable markets at the Bastille, and I was pleased to have successfully guestimated the cost at each of the stands I stopped at so I never had to blindly hold out cash--that is, until I was foiled buying some grapes. I handed over too little, then couldn't understand the guy's response until he said in English "50 more cents!" We had falafel wraps from a Libyan food stand for lunch, and they were great (I also paid for a 4-euro sandwich with a 50, with nary a flicker of annoyance from the cashier). I couldn't understand, though, how this sprawling food market had no trash cans anyway, just the occasional plastic bag affixed to a bench. Sean revealed that Jeremy had told him this is now true throughout Paris, since they're worried about terrorism; the bags on the benches were in fact clear.

The possibility of terrorism has been on our minds, of course, and particularly after Nice (and then the attack in Normandy). I rather assumed, given the strong military and police presence that's been going on in Rome for the past year and a half (in a nation which, although nominally targeted by ISIS, hasn't actually been attacked) that France would be doing something similar, but it's not true as far as I can see. The night we arrived, we walked all through the city, down across the Ile de Saint-Louis, people everywhere occupying the "terraces" outside restaurants and bars, and then sat in front of Notre Dame, without ever seeing more than a handful of police. It's not obvious that a show of force will necessarily deter or prevent attacks, of course, but I was a little surprised not to see more of an effort, even if only as a token. The French probably don't want to live in a police state, of course, and I get that, but I couldn't help but think, as we shouldered our way through the intensely crowded market today, that when you hear reports of suicide attacks in Baghdad and other cities in the Middle East, it's often markets that are targeted. No police anywhere in sight there either, though.

Tomorrow is Sean's 31'st birthday! To celebrate, we're going to dinner at a place he found on his last visit here, called Le Richer, near the Opera. He says that although it looks hipster-pretentious, the food is excellent, inventive, and cheap (hat trick!).

Moving Day (Almost)

I never knew how stressful packing could be until I faced having to get two years' worth of belongings for two people into four bags: two large suitcases, one medium, and one rolling suit bag. It's not even really the clothes, it's the books; I managed to get most of them into our luggage, but I had to suck it up and pay 100 euro to ship home a twenty-pound box with a couple of exhibition catalogs (as well as our boxing gloves, which, despite their light weight, would be impossible to find space for in the bags). Complicating matters is the fact that we're not actually headed straight home to New Haven, but are going first to Paris, then back to Rome for two days, then Sean goes down to Naples for his conference. We're leaving three suitcases here until the beginning of September, meaning everything we need immediately, or he'll need for the conference, has to come to Paris. Complicated.

Tomorrow I'm leaving the Academy, after two years. I'm certainly ready to get back to real existence; as charmed as our lives are here, it's still effectively an elegant dormitory. We've been lucky to make some really good friends this year, and even better, we have plans to actually see them back in the States. Rick and Lauren are in Cambridge, and have an entirely separate apartment in the basement of their townhouse that they've encouraged us to come stay at (John and Bryony, for example, are taking them up on this for two weeks in August). Emma, Jeremy, and the girls are in Swarthmore, and our plan is to go down and stay with them in mid-October, when Jinn and David are visiting from Chicago. We're also headed to Chicago in late March-early April for RSA, so we'll see them again in the winter.

It's a bit more sad to say goodbye to the staff, since I don't know when we'll be coming through Rome again (unlike most people here, who already seem to have their next visit booked). Gabri, at least, we'll see in NYC in October for "Gabri-fest," but Tiziana and Alessandro...? And poor Massimo. I don't think I've written about him on here; one of the "rossi", he got into an awful car accident about a month ago, coming home late from the staff party at the Academy. We were out back with them singing group karaoke, and Sean stayed up playing pool with the stragglers till 3am. Massimo was supposed to stay over, but decided at the last minute to drive home to Ronciglione, an hour north, and we don't know what happened (possibly he fell asleep?) but he hit a wall at full-speed. He's been in a vegetative coma ever since, and suffered really traumatic injuries. He was such a nice guy, even if he always spoke in super-fast dialect that I could barely follow.

So as not to end this on a down note, I went back to my first, starry-eyed post when I arrived here in September 2014. The cynical side of me read it with an eye to everything that I would come to find annoying, but I've often returned to the sentiment below in the two years in between, because I vividly remember thinking it:

The first night, I got up from the dinner table to use the restroom, and walking back toward the table, looking down that long, candle-covered table and everyone clustered around it talking so animatedly I thought "Two years of nights like this?" in this sort of awe-filled but also uncomprehending way.  It just doesn't seem possible, that this is a thing I am now doing, and will do for a considerable period of time.  But it is--and the only thing that's going to make it even better is when I get to share it with Sean!

Tonight will be the last time that I look down that candle-lit table. I've been incredibly lucky to be here, and--as I said two years ago--the time I got to share it with Sean has been the most special of all.

So long, Academy, and thanks for all the fish pasta!

It's Fucking Cold (And the Peasants Rejoice, Sorta)

Truly, we have reached the end of Shit To Complain About at the Academy (topics include: our fellow fellows; kitchen hygiene; relative crappiness of beds, pillows, showers, etc.; fetishization of non-Italian foodstuffs; Italian societal norms; the phrase colpo d'aria) when our main thread of complaint at dinner tonight was "Holy shit it's so fucking cold! Why is it so windy? Ahhhhhh my napkin is blowing away down the table and that guy's empty wine glass just fell over," etc.

It's been above 90 degrees for weeks, hitting an unpleasant high of 97 on Monday, only to cool as we approached the weekend. Yesterday was the first day in a long time when I walked through the city without being unpleasantly sweaty, and I found myself thinking "oh right, I like Rome!" Yesterday the high was maybe 86, but today the high was only 72, about 20 degrees from what our bodies were trained to expect as of just a few days ago. There was brief rejoicing which turned to "oh god, we've been weakened" as it got colder.

Things I enjoyed:

• being able to actually sleep in our room last night, as opposed to our office couch, where I've been sleeping since it got unbearably hot
• being able to exist in our bedroom without needing to keep the door propped open for a chance at a cross-breeze (and zero chance at privacy)
• being able to turn off the overhead fan, the only break that poor bastard has gotten in months
• being able to work in my office with the windows closed this morning, thereby (nearly) silencing the cacophony of those tiny fucking sparrows who nest in the cortile
• being able to walk around without feeling like a sweaty mass of fat
• crunching through dry lives on the Lungotevere and feeling like it was September
• needing to put a blanket on top of the bed in addition to the single sheet

Things I did Not

• needing a sweater to sit in the cortile for lunch
• feeling like an aged Italian grandma for needing a sweater in mid-July
• feeling like I was walking through a hurricane to head downtown (reality check: 18 mph wind)
• pine needle fragments directly to the eyeball on the Lungotevere
• shivering through dinner, despite sweater
• asking quickly if anyone had anything planned for post-dinner (Wednesday night we watched Predator, which I enjoyed; last night others watched Devil's Advocate, which I declined), learning several people planned to get directly into bed, and realizing this was a good option

It's going up to 81 tomorrow. But never fear! We'll be back to our regularly-scheduled 95-and-up temps as of Monday. 

Fight Club

Leo (the guy pointing, in blue shorts) came to dinner at the Academy last night.  We had a good time, and then at the end of the night he said "just so you know, just because you invited me to dinner doesn't mean I'm going to go any easier on you in the gym." Haha.

The Future

My two years at the Academy are almost at an end. I've told Sean many times that no matter where our path leads us in the future, we'll always be incredibly grateful to have had this experience together. Usually they say "we'll always have Paris" but I suppose for us it's "we'll always have Rome."

However, I become increasingly doubtful that my future path is going to be within academia. I'll be graduating, god willing, next spring, but I haven't published anything (nor do I have anything remotely ready for publication), and my ideas--I'm being honest here--aren't likely to set the world of Titian studies on fire.  I know, and have been told, that I'm an excellent teacher; I know I'm an excellent writer; and I really do love art history.  Unfortunately, those things are not enough of a combination to secure a tenure-track job, not in today's work of adjunct-only hires; it's your research and publication record they care about. Ironically, it's Sean, with his Ivy-League degree, his several publications (so far!) and his long track record of conference presentations who has the best shot at a tenure-track job, but Sean has no passion for his field and doesn't think he wants to stay in it, either. If only we could combine Sean's qualifications with my enthusiasm, we'd be one perfect tenure-track-worthy professor.

So that begs the question of what's next? Obviously the first thing is to finish the dissertation. ("The only good dissertation is a done dissertation" is now my credo). When I get back, I'm going to get in contact with the Renaissance scholar who now runs Fairfield's art museum to talk to her about paths in the museum world. It's possible that Academy networking might be of use, one never knows. I also need to discuss this with Dr. Cooper, not least because her husband, Tim, talks to the grad students about his career in academic publishing, which is something else I'm interested in.  My ideal career, believe it or not, would be at a good-sized community college, the kind that actually tenures its faculty (I knew some grad students who were already tenured in Philadelphia, even pre-defense).  The focus is actually on teaching rather than on research. The likelihood of getting that kind of job, though, is pretty low. Still, a girl can dream.

It's definitely hard to even conceive of giving up the dream of being a university professor. One of the seductive things about academia, after all, is that it preaches to itself about being one of, if not the most important things that exist in society. We shepherd the life of the mind, what could be more important than that? To enter that path, and then to leave without hitting the brass ring of a TT job, is seen as a failure--a loss of status. Nothing else you do will be considered to be as important as what those who are researching and publishing are doing.  I have to acknowledge that, and accept it. Ironically, I know that the people who will have the greatest sympathy are those who were in grad school with me; Jasmine may have gotten a TT job, for example, but her experience there is miserable. The group of us spent a lot of RSA talking about how bullshit academia is and how difficult it is to survive (and I don't even have kids, like her, Cate, Susan, and Erin).

Even if I don't go into academia, even if I don't ever get to call myself a professor, how can I regret it? I love what I've learned, the knowledge I can share in others, and occasionally the love of art I can help kindle. How could I regret a path that earned me two years here at the Academy, even if there were many parts of that filled with anxiety, frustration and unease? What I've seen, done, and learned, the friends that I've made, all of that is something I will need to remind myself of in the future. Whatever happens, it was still worth it. We'll always have Rome.

Anzio

This week I learned how difficult it is to try to plan large group movements, especially last-minute. We were trying to find a place for a weekend getaway, given the high temperatures in Rome, but with 10 people (two of them little girls) and a strong desire for air conditioning, non-shady, non-ludicrously expensive options were slim. After a lengthy struggle (which included considering renting a big air-conditioned apartment in Rome, we decided to chuck the getaway plan and instead hit the beach for the day. In the end, thanks to a recommendation Jinn scouted online, we wound up at Marechiaro, near Anzio, the site of the Allied landings in WWII. A pair of loungers under an umbrella cost 15 euro, the beach was uncrowded, and the sea was beautiful. The few times in my life I've gone to the beach have been either Long Island Sound or once on the Lido in Venice, neither of which have particularly strong currents, so the big waves coming in at Anzio were so much fun! Best of all, it was twenty degrees cooler than Rome, given the strong wind.  Twenty degrees.  Hopefully we can go once more before we leave...

Quick One

June 20th already! Our time here proceeds apace.  We've been incredibly lucky with the weather so far, in that we've only had a couple of hot days, and a lot of cool ones.  Our luck might be starting to come to an end, though; it should be above 90 this weekend, though they promise back to upper 80s next week.

Boxing is going great! Sean and I decided to go three times a week for the rest of our time in Rome; it's a considerable time-suck, considering that we leave here at 11:40am, get back at 1:45, and then have to shower (and for me, dry my hair). I'm usually good to go by 3pm, but by that time I'm also tired.  Still, we'll never have this kind of time to dedicate to gym-going, and it's a lot of fun (even as it's the sweatiest I've ever been in my life). Our friend Adam has been going too, and he pointed out that you have to be so focused on trying to survive what you're doing that you simply can't think or worry about anything else.  It's pretty Zen.  It doesn't even bother me being the least-in-shape woman in a group that's comprised almost entirely of incredibly ripped guys, along with several amazingly fit women. Sometimes the conditioning circuit includes the pull-up bar, for example.  Can I do a pull-up? Dear god, no.  So far I've progressed to being able to get my knees up a few times!  Meanwhile, the woman who is my fitness inspiration is over there doing like 10 of them before the buzzer sounds.  When we get back to the States, instead of going back to the gym I went to with Linda (sorry, Hareem!) I think we're going to join 9 Round with Sean's dad when we get back; it's a 30-minute HIIT working based on boxing/kick-boxing. (I just went to their site and watched the video and my first thought was "dear god it's so CLEAN" compared to our grungy basement gym!)

Yesterday morning I woke up to the strange sight of Sean, up and getting dressed before me. He announced that he and Rick had decided on a road trip, since Rick had rented a car for the weekend for something on Saturday. We left the Academy at like 8:45, and by 10am were hiking in a nature preserve about 30 miles north of Rome, where we saw an stream running orange with sulfurous water, and watching its bubbling up from cracks in the riverbed. Hiking with zero coffee in my system was a challenge (by the time we were having lunch around 1 I was reading to fall face-down in my food), but it was great!  Inside the nature preserve, at the top of a hill, there was a ghost town called Monterano that the French destroyed in 1799; there was an aqueduct, several ruined churches (including an incredible beautiful one standing alone in a field, the very definition of "picturesque") and a palace.  We were lucky on timing; since we'd gotten there early, we were leaving the site when the Sunday picnic-ers were starting to arrive, and we got to our chosen lunch spot in Bracciano just after it opened and before it got packed with people. The only bit of misfortune was that the castle in Bracciano was closed for the day, but we still saw a beautiful view out over the lake (and learned that the guy who wrote A Clockwork Orange used to live there).  Someone had also left graffiti of Tool lyrics (from Sober) in several places at the overlook.  Random!

Road trips on a beautiful day, in beautiful countryside, have been one of my favorite things in this country.  Italy, I'll miss you so (but I'll change my tune once it gets hot!)

Budapest, Vienna

We're back from what will probably be our last intra-European trip, aside from our stay in Paris in August.  It was a fun week, but I'm pretty tired (looking at some backpackers in the airport this morning, all I could think was "oh god, how?")

Our first stop was Budapest to meet up with our friends Danny and Kim, who are living there more-or-less-legally this year (their residence permits are technically for Rome) and who had just learned that following their wedding back in California in September, they'll be off to Bangalore, India for a Fulbright fellowship.  We had a great time with them, although their apartment was a bit more, um, intimate than I was expecting!  When they first arrived in the city, they were renting a two-bedroom on the eastern Buda side, but at some point they actually invested in buying an apartment near the train station on the far eastern side of Pest. Real estate is dirt-cheap right now, apparently.  Anyway, when they offered to let us stay with them if we came to town, I confidently told Sean it was a two-bedroom deal, but it was more of an all-in-one situation. Danny and Kim were sweet enough to actually sleep on the air mattress and give us their bed, because of how hard it is for Sean to sleep, but it was still different than what I was anticipating.

Sean really, really, loved Budapest: the amount of green space, the eclectic mix of architectural styles, the way public transit actually functioned, etc. The traditional Hungarian food is delicious, if a bit heavy; the first night Sean's dish of stuffed cabbage was incredibly good, as was the goulash soup. The country is in the EU but not on the euro, so the currency situation was a bit bewildering. After so  many years of traveling only in the euro zone, the concept of paying 4,000 HUF (Hungarian Forint) for something, and having that be incredibly cheap, was really hard to wrap my mind around. The language is also a huge stumbling block; it's a non-Indo-European language, meaning it has no pretty much no relationship to anything we're familiar with, and it's famously difficult to learn. Most people can speak English, and most places tourists would go had English signage, but when we stopped by a outdoor beer-garden type of place in Danny and Kim's neighborhood, the sign and all its options were only in Hungarian and the staff knew no English, so we could only point to what we wanted and smile (which makes you feel like a really dumb child!).  Sean was so in love with the city that he suggested he'd actually be willing to live there, if we were able to get jobs there (itself totally a pipe dream!) but I think the language barrier would actually be a deal-breaker for me.

Vienna, in that sense, was much easier to deal with, because even if I can't speak German, I can at least make a small amount of sense in reading it. Vienna, fellow-capital of the Hapsburg empire, is like Budapest's grander, wealthier cousin.  Everything is elegant, everything is clean, beautiful, and practically dripping money.  I liked it--who wouldn't like it? everything works, unlike Italy! --but it was also a bit too much for my taste. My real purpose there was to see the Kunsthistorisches Museum, which was an incredible knock-out, practically a temple to Renaissance and Baroque art (they have other stuff there too, of course, but at this point I'm pretty much full-up on antiquities).  You could teach an entire course just on the masterpieces they have there. We also tried one of the fancy coffee-houses, Demel, where Sean had a delicious piece of cake, and later, when I met up with one of Dr. Cooper's friends for coffee at Landtmann's, I experienced the delight that is elderflower water. Austrian food, which we tried the night of our anniversary, impressed me much less than Hungarian food, but we also had fantastic Indian and Greek food.

Like anyone who lives in Italy, we spent a lot of our time outside the country bashing all the things about it that don't work and being surprised at how well things work everywhere else...and yet I was happy to come home!

= dead

So Sean decided to join the boxing gym where Stefania, Joseph, and Mac all went last year; he reported it was super-intense but fun, so I went along today.  In words from Archer, "holy shitsnacks!" So much more intense than the standard gym I've been going to with all the middle-aged women, and a lot of fun, even if I can barely lift my arms now.  Boxing gloves are a good souvenir of Italy, though, right? :-)

Sicily

The Academy's spring trip to Sicily conflicted with my trip to Boston and Sean's to Nantes, which we were both initially disappointed about (though the trip turned out to be a disorganized, madcap four-day dash about the island, so we were probably better off).  Then we thought about doing our own trip, but were discouraged by the difficulty of renting an automatic car anywhere but Palermo, which even Romans had warned us against driving in.  Then we scrapped the idea altogether, until our friends Heather and Larry came to visit us a couple of months ago.  They've been living in Siracusa, where Heather started a study-abroad program for her tiny college in Iowa.  We'd also just heard rave reviews of the place (or rather its adorable island subsection, Ortigia) from Woody and Leslie after they went.  Larry, as he typically does, sold us hard on coming down there, particularly on the food and wine, so we bought tickets.  $90, a 55-minute flight from Rome to Catania, and an hour-long bus ride later, we were in Siracusa.

Ortigia itself is pretty adorable.  Almost all of the buildings date after a massive earthquake of 1693, so they're in a Sicilian Baroque style when is much more light-hearted than the solemnity of Roman Baroque.  There are picturesque narrow streets full of light, balconies, and drying laundry, plus some pretty impressive ruins, like the Temple of Apollo as soon as you cross the bridge onto Ortigia (where just before leaving, we watched a slender black cat toy with, dismember, and abandon in boredom a little lizard).  In the main square, the Duomo is formed out of the skeleton of the temple of Athena, by walling in between the columns (visible both outside and in) to form the outer walls, and then excavating arches into the walls of the cella to create a three-nave structure.  I've never seen a structure where the original cella is still standing, more or less!  The main square also has the entrance to the hypogeum, a series of underground tunnels and cisterns that provided air-raid shelter for Siracusans when the island was getting pounded by the Allies in WWII, and the church of St. Lucy, which holds Caravaggio's Burial of St. Lucy.  It's a beautiful, serene place, especially since we came in April when there were plenty of people but not yet the hordes of summer, who, much like in Venice or other places, come on buses from their cruise boats and depart when the sun is setting.

Sean was so happy in Ortigia!  Our hotel room had a soft bed and wonderful pillows and the shower was powerful.  There were delicious pastries to be sampled everywhere; cannoli, but course, but also fanciful marzipan, ficchetti fig cookies, and the "raviola" pastry filled with ricotta cheese, which we shared with Larry sitting in front of the Duomo, drinking the best blood-orange juice I've ever tasted.  Citrus is so plentiful in Sicily that it finds its way into every dish, from the salads to the tiramisu.  And oh, the food!  Larry did not over-sell it.  We had one of the best meals of our lives that first night with him and Heather at Apollonion, which offers a six-course fish menu that just kept coming and coming. I had an incredible pasta dish with crema di pistacchio at La Gazza Ladra, and our last night we went with Larry to Taberna Sveva (I include these names so I know what to recommend if anyone I know goes).  We invariably let Larry pick the wines, and were introduced to a new favorite grape, Frappato, which Larry told us we'd be unlikely to find outside of Sicily.

Siracusa proper boasts an archaeological site with a small Roman amphitheater, a large Greek theater, and the famous 'ear of Dionysios' cavern, the acoustic properties of which we could hear being tested by groups of Italian schoolchildren as soon as we entered the site (which is like a half-mile from the cavern). By the time we arrived, there were competing groups of high-schoolers instead, doing various chants and cheers, and holy crap was it loud! As we were leaving, one boy turned back into the now-empty cavern and simply shouted "UMBERTO EC-OOOOO!"  Lol.  Unfortunately large parts of the archeological park were closed off, and frankly, the theater had nothing on the one at Epidauros.  We felt similarly about the museum, even though it boasts a wide-ranging collection of Sicilian-Greek antiquities.  Yes, we were being those snobs who have been to "real" Greece and are looking down on the provincials, haha.

Also of interest was the catacomb of S. Giovanni, and back in Ortigia, the mikveh that dates to the 2nd-3rd century CE, the oldest surviving one in Europe.  18 meters below ground, two meters below sea-level, it was infilled with sand by the Jews when they fled in 1493 and forgotten (rather than being purposely destroyed, that is).  It was rediscovered only recently, when renovations of the hotel above were carried out.  Having just seen the catacombs, the rectangular troughs cut into the rock were very much similar to graves, which makes some sense given the 'rebirth' metaphor common to both.

Although Siracusa was probably the most JV-version of Sicily (tourist-oriented, perfect Italian instead of dialect, incredibly friendly to foreigners), we were incredibly grateful for things that were different than Rome. Different food (ahhh, the fried fish place Larry pointed us to, where 8-euro got you a little box filled with a mix of small whole fish atop a bed of calamari, or the sandwich place in the market, where his buddy 'il Mago di Panino' made us a "breakfast sandwich": wild onion, basil, and fennel, then smoked mozzarella and beef carpaccio, topped with olive oil, blood orange zest, and lemon juice--spectacular!), different things for sale (I bought a printed scarf from India, and a pair of earrings in a boutique), different sights (the sea, with its incredibly clear water).  It was good.

Srsly

Nearly a month to the date of my last post: coming off old Cold Round 4 for this (academic) year.  I joked to Sean that I'm almost taking Nathan's 2015 role of ailing Victorian maiden, except for the fact that colds < repeated rounds of food poisoning.  Still, I think I can say that I am Officially Over communal living and its attendant germ factories...