A Chilly Roman Holiday

I think it will come as no surprise to Sean or anyone else that I have officially voted this our least successful vacation ever.  I mean, we've had a run of luck with fantastic trips in the past, but this time there were just too many things weighing against us--the stress of Sean's conference, his health issues, my existential career crisis, the thoroughly uninspiring weather conditions, etc. etc.  The first three days of our trip were incredibly unpleasant.  Happily, Sean's paper went well yesterday, and we'll be reunited tomorrow; it's been really weird being in the same European city but not together.  Being with Carla, I can definitely say, has been the high point--we haven't spent this long a stretch of time just the two of us since college! Tonight we're going to the Vatican for a night tour, the first time I've been back inside since 2009.  I'm excited!

A Slow Start to Summer

It seems that monthly posting has become the norm for me, hasn't it?

The past month or so has been rough, as we've worked through the aftermath of Sean's decision to stop taking the anti-depressants.  One of the results has been our new eating plan, based on the Dysglycemia Diet for those with unregulated blood sugar (recommended by Linda's homeopathic doctor).  It's been surprisingly easy to transition away from eating so many grains and into more fruits and vegetables (legumes have been a bit harder to incorporate on a daily basis, unless it's in hummus).  If I went back in time and told myself a couple of years ago or even a few months ago that I'd have given up Cheerios, granola bars, sandwich bread, and pasta...I'm not sure I'd have believed myself.

There was a high note on the exercise front a couple of weekends ago, when Sean and I went to Sleeping Giant and I bravely agreed to take the blue trail, the most difficult and dangerous, all the way up the quarry.
It wasn't like anything I'd ever climbed before; not only was it really fucking steep, on the highest points you're not even on a trail, per se, but rather you're hauling yourself up exposed rock faces at 45 degrees or so.  This isn't my picture (I fear breaking my camera took much to ever bring it), but it gives the idea:

Believe it or not, I actually preferred this kind of climbing to the a steep dirt trail where little rocks are flying out from under your feet; at least you know the cliff face isn't going anywhere!  Real rock climbers would undoubtedly roll their eyes, but for the complete novice it's really exciting to find handholds and footholds and pull/push yourself up!  It showed me how much stronger I've gotten in the past couple of years.  Mind you, I could barely bring myself to look out at the incredible view once we'd made it to the summit.  Or rather, I could look out, but not down.  Jesus Christ.  We passed some people who were headed down that way, and I couldn't figure out how you'd possibly shimmy down those rocks.  I sure as hell couldn't.  That I did the blue trail in spite of my enduring fear of heights made me prouder of myself, but don't they say that exposure to your fear should lessen them?? Because that has not been my experience.

The lower note in exercise terms has been my continued struggle to do the Couch to 5k program.  As I've learned, you can't skip even two days of jogging without seeing your stamina plunge, which is so ridiculous!  Sean told me this like it was obvious, and I'm like, wait, you mean even if I do make it to being able to run 30 minutes, I'll have to keep doing it every other day for the rest of my LIFE to keep it up?  Ugh.  I'm still doing it, though I have yet to complete the last run of week 6, which is a full 25 minutes. This morning I set my alarm, got up and ran at 7am (not the nicest weather; the combination of humidity and low temp, plus the dark clouds over the water, reminded me unpleasantly of my Venice runs).  I'm going to try this and see if I have more energy running in the morning than in the evening--even though jogging through Lighthouse Park and looking at the sun set over Long Island Sound is so beautiful.

When I started the program I had the rough idea that I'd be in shape enough to go running with Carla when we got to Rome, at least a little bit...I'm not so sure anymore, though I plan to go jogging on my own.  It's not every day you can jog across the Tiber and through St. Peter's Square!

Hamlet

A couple of weeks ago we went to see Hamlet at Yale Rep courtesy of Sean's friend Shane, who works there and gave us the tickets. The title role was played by Paul Giamatti, and I (like many other people, including apparently actors originally approached to co-star) had initially been dismissive of the idea that a jowly, paunchy, middle-aged man was appropriate to play a character who is still in university when we meet him.  I was delighted to be wrong, because Giamatti was excellent in the role.  I was still leery during his first appearance in Act I, but I think that's because you meet Hamlet as such an emo whiner, sniffling about his mom's remarriage, that he's not instantly a winning character--you don't care about his angst just yet.  The angst is to come, of course, but what really surprised me was how much humor lies within the play, not only in Hamlet himself, but also, for example, in Polonius (the second-best performance, by the guy who played Uncle Fred in Home Alone), who I have always found pendantic and boring both on the page and the screen. During intermission I ran into Richard Regan, my Shakespeare professor from Fairfield, who did not remember me. He did give me a stern look when I admitted surprise at the amount of humor, and say "Well, it is a very funny play.  You just have to know how to mine it."  Eep.

This was my first time seeing the play on stage, though I've seen various film versions.  Sean had never even read it, so it was all new to him.  He pointed out that although we all know that we owe so many of our turns of phrase to Shakespeare's invention, it's still really incredible to realize just how many are packed into a soliloquy like "To be or not to be", which seems to contain at least one well-used phrase per line, if not more.  For my part, I was surprised during that speech to hear the phrase "to sleep, perchance to dream" spoken not in the gentle lull we often hear it in modern usage, but with a clear note of dread, the fear of the unknown waiting beyond this life.  It was another impressive reminder of how different the act of reading a play is from the experience of watching others interpret those lines before your eyes.

Sean told me just this morning that the NYTimes gave a pretty lukewarm review to the whole production, with the exception of Polonius.  Apparently they couldn't get past the clear lack of age gap between Hamlet and his parents. I would have agreed with them last month, but now I just think, where's the suspension of disbelief? Plus, if Hamlet was first enacted in 1602 (they're really not sure, apparently), the star, Richard Burbage, would have been 35 years old.  Not quite Giammati's age, but no spring chicken, either.

Philadelphia, Revisited (Frequently)

This academic year I've been doing monthly Gallery Spotlights at the PMA.  Each month's spotlight focuses on a single object in the collection.  So far I've done a 15th-century terra cotta portrait head, a Florentine relief plaque of the Madonna and Child, a Resurrection of Lazarus Panel by Palma Vecchio, and a mysterious portrait by Titian. The Spotlights are envisioned as 'conversations' rather than lectures, and it's fascinating how the conversation is never the same from one day to another (since I do Spotlights on the same object three days in a row each month).  Part of this is due to the composition of the groups; Thursdays sees a lot of people who are themselves museum guides, while Friday has a big group of retirees who have all been attending together for years. Saturday doesn't have its own standard following (unless you count Phyllis and her friend Luanna!), so it's something of a grab bag.

I've been pleasantly surprised at the level of enthusiasm and the response to the individual objects.  For example, I've always been impressed by the physiognomic accuracy of the terra cotta head and its sense of psychological presence, so I was taken aback to hear from many people, including Phyllis, that they'd never given it a second glance before. Gratifyingly, they were telling me this to frame their new-found appreciation after the Spotlight!  I was especially pleased that a number of the guides reported later that they had added the piece to their tours with great success.  In the case of the Palma Vecchio, I was surprised in a different way, by the audience's interest in something that I had found pretty unimpressive.  I'd been worried that there wouldn't be a vibrant conversation at all, and yet one day we got caught up talking about techniques of Venetian oil painting, and another about Christian liturgical practices. The people who attend are there because they're really interested in talking about art, even if they have little background in it.  That level of attention plus the mature age of most of the participants, which adds a greater element of life experiences to the mix, provides a nice change from the classroom experience.  The people are all really friendly and interesting to talk to, as well.  Actually, yesterday I received a really nice compliment from one of the women; she told me she wished I had a clone, since she'd been hoping to set me up with her son but had realized I was married!

The Spotlights have also given me a good link to Philadelphia this past year.  Last semester Amy awesomely let me use her apartment in Center City, but this semester I'm shacking up in Chez Phyllis. I don't ever miss Philadelphia when I'm in New Haven (I've noticed that I always think I'm going to be really mournful about these kinds of changes--leaving Shelton, leaving Philly--and then I adjust really quickly), but being here has been really wonderful.  It's just all so comfortable and familiar--I did spend four years here, after all. I love Phyllis' house, its space, its profusion of exotic stuff, all of it with interesting tales attached, like the frieze-like fragment of a Hindu painting framed in her office, which she rescued from the trash at her almost-fiance Ravi's family home in India.  New things have appeared in my absence, including an upright piano in the dining room (I don't think she plays, so I need to ask her about this tonight), and a new kitty, Echo, who is a black Abyssinian.

It's only a little bit strange to be here as guest, rather than resident.  It's great not to have to wonder where the spoons or extra towels are, but I've been really thrown off by being in the spare bedroom on the second floor, it all just sounds different somehow, to the extent that I can't distinguish someone coming up the stairs vs someone coming down from the 3rd floor.  That someone would be Laura, of course, my youthful replacement, who is very nice, but definitely quiet, and not always certain of how to interact with Phyllis, I think.  We all went out to dinner together last night to Bacio, a perennial favorite, and as we were leaving Phyllis, true to form, wound up getting into a 15-minute conversation with the chef as Laura and I stood by the door.  I told her how on my first visit to that restaurant with Phyllis, she (politely, but opinionated-ly) schooled the chef on how they might improve their meatballs by following her mother's approach of soaking the bread in milk, while I just stood there semi-awkwardly. Hopefully Laura realizes how awesome Phyllis is, though.  She had left yet another present for me on the spare room bed when I arrived, and I had to laugh, because while most of Phyllis' gifts to me have been great (several of the nicest shirts I own, and which I typically wear on Spotlights, came from her), she also often tries to give me her clothes, which are a little too mature in style for me just yet.  This gift was a chocolate turtleneck sweater from Lord and Taylor, and it was lovely--but she'd also added a little silk scarf of the same kind she often wears, which made me laugh. Not yet, Phyllis!

Holiday Cheer

I started writing "It's been more than two months since my last post" before I went and checked my last entry, which turned out to start with the exact same line!  Yes, it's been quite a dry semester for blog posts, for the same reasons mentioned before--anxiety over my proposal.  However, "Titian and the Culture of Mid-century Rome: A Venetian Among the Ruins" is currently in the hands of Dr. Cooper, who says she likes what she's read so far, though she hasn't actually returned it yet.

The holidays are in full swing in our house!  Behold our lovely tree, which I ferried home from the tree lot atop the noble Corolla:

Sean's childhood stocking is MIA, so yesterday I made him one.  You know what love is?  Love is standing in line at Walmart during holiday shopping season to purchase a $2.97 set of variously colored glitters and nothing else.

Last night I tried my hand at making anginettes for the first time, with good results!  Hubbard declared them better than her own (granted, she hasn't made them in years and also is of unreliable memory), and Sean generously said they were almost as good as his but excellent for a first effort.  *eye roll*  Speaking of first effort, I just pulled my test-batch of homemade dog treats out of the oven.  It seems I left them in a shade too long, they've begun to darken on the underside, but luckily dog treats are supposed to be crunchy.  Now I'll let them cool and then slip some to Lulu on the sly to see if she likes them.  Hopefully it's a good recipe, because it's super easy and I'm planning to give these to everyone we know who has a dog: Linda, Michelle, Daniel, Danny G, Dana's daughter Morgan.

...Seriously I am becoming such a housewife.  I actually googled "how to make your own all-purpose cleaner" a little while ago. I regret nothing.

Lacuna

Wow, nearly two months since my last post.  That's quite a long time, though I'm not sure if it's the longest gap in the decade I've kept this blog.  Hm, that's a project for a rainy day...

For much of the past two months there hasn't been a great deal to tell.  I came back from Venice without a dissertation proposal to hand, which was really disappointing, and my early enthusiasm about doing research in Yale's art library waned quickly.  I hate working there; it's cold, ugly, and the chairs are uncomfortable and too low relative to the tables. My affiliate ID won't get me in the door, so I have to have a guard call in for a librarian to come walk me in like a toddler--which I have to repeat if I want to leave for lunch or to get a tea refill.  There's not really much of an alternative to working there, though, since you can take out only ONE book at a time, for ONE day, no renewals. Lovely.

Unhappiness with my surroundings bled into my general discouragement over not being able to develop any kind of promising topic. Titian has been so thoroughly treated by passels of art historians that I kept coming back to the dreary thought of "what is there to say that hasn't been said a thousand times already, and probably in at least three languages?"  That led into equally discouraging thoughts of "why am I even doing this?  Do I actually want to spend my life with this?" which led to further harrowing thoughts of "but what else would I want to do?" And it went from there, until I gave up even bothering to go the library, until I developed a Pavlovian-style negative response to the mere mention of the words "Titian" or "dissertation." (Sean had quite a bit of fun springing those words on me until I had to ask him to stop).  There was a period of a few weeks in late August where my spirits were at the lowest they've probably ever been in my life.  My first brush with depression. Whoo.

Then a very good thing happened!  At the end of August, I was contacted by Marice Rose from Fairfield, who needed a last-minute sub for an intro art history course. That was exactly the kind of invigoration I needed. I hadn't been in front of a class for a year, and I really did miss it.  I like teaching, I really do--it's the research, which is the Holy Grail to people like Dr. Cooper, that I care less about.  So within a whirlwind span of time I found myself with a Faculty Stagcard to add to my collection of IDs.  My class is small, just 25 students, and we're in the brand-new museum classroom, not the old rooms of Canisius where Eliasoph provided me with my first introduction to art history nine years ago.  In general, my students are of a higher caliber than those I've taught at Temple, but really not by as much as I might have expected (there is a disturbingly widespread lack of understanding of the function of an apostrophe, for example).  Our museum trip is this weekend, actually, and since Fairfield doesn't let you require the trip the way Temple does, I'll be taking just half the class (side benefit: only having to give one tour).

Teaching didn't help my progress proposal-wise, of course, so much as it gave me a good excuse to do other things.  So too with practicing French and German, and teaching myself Latin at a pace that could be bested by a glacier.  I also started jogging--at last, something I could trump a glacier in, even if not by much.   Then there's the housewifery; Sean has a very full schedule with school, and I do not, so it makes sense for that to be my responsibility, but it definitely takes more time and energy than I was expecting. I really don't mind it, and indeed, it frequently offered a perfect excuse.  "Oh, I could work on my proposal, but you know, no one's ever gone around and wiped down all the cabinets and door frames in here. Yeah, better take care of that."

This is not to say that there wasn't plenty of guilt and shame involved in this avoidance.  I've invested no small part of my self-identity in the role of "graduate student, future PhD and professor," and the thought that maybe I couldn't make it, that maybe I'm not cut out for academia after all and it's just taken up until this last great hurdle to reveal it, was really frightening.  But for the first time, I'm facing something that I can't just buck up and make myself DO, like I did with the once-terrifying specter of exams.  You can't just make a list and start hammering away at it, when the only item on your list is "figure out awesome dissertation topic that will win you grants." And it doesn't help, of course, that so many of my friends have proved amazing in this regard--Jasmine and Erin with their Kress grants, my friend Laura who's on a fellowship at the Smithsonian this year, Amy off in Rome. I felt like I was falling behind, failing expectations, and that was really miserable.

It didn't help that Dr. Cooper and I have been virtually incommunicado.  There was a period of like a month in which she didn't really respond to my emails and shrugged off my request for a Skype date with a question about when I'd be in Princeton next.  (Sometimes I think she really doesn't get that there's 200 miles between CT and Philadelphia; she even tried to get me to sit in on her class every Wednesday!)  I decided that this lack of radio contact clearly meant she hated me now for not immediately having a great topic (yes, so dramatic).  I wasn't able to meet with her until this past week, when I was in Philly to shadow the education director at the PMA on one of the talks I'll be doing next week.  And you know what?  She wasn't upset at all.  We had an amazing, nearly three-hour conversation about all manner of things, not just art history, that reminded me why I enjoy her company as both a person and as a professor.  We also talked about the germ of an idea that might have more promise than what I was thinking about before; at the very least it definitely piqued my interest much more than anything has recently.  I left campus somehow relaxed and energized, which was a wonderful contradiction. Things are looking up a tiny bit, at any rate, and that's certainly something to be thankful for.

Reading

Between the Cape trip and just generally avoiding what I should be doing since I got back, I've done a lot of reading.  I finished up Anna Karenina shortly after I got home, and afterward decided to go all the way with Tolstoy and read War and Peace. (Never fear, to counter this level of erudition I also re-read the vulgar and hilarious Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove).  Anna Karenina was a re-read, too; I couldn't remember when, but thanks to the helpful search function on this blog, it turns out I've had a number of past associations with it that I've mostly forgotten.

To start with, in July of 2002 I mentioned it in an entry about re-organizing my books; it and Dostoyevsky fell into the category of  books that "I started and gave up on because the foreign names got annoying."  Clearly I didn't have much of an idea of the book's plot, since I made this brief entry in June of 2003: "Did anyone else know that Anna Karenina throws herself in front of a train at end end? I didn't, but today alone I have seen no less than three references to that, in the newspaper, in The Hours, which I am currently reading, and in Maxim of all places. I have two copies of that book and I've never made it past page one hundred. Someday." (I was reading The Hours?  I must either have not finished it or forgotten it.)  I did have two copies of the book until recently.  One I acquired, like so many of my books, at some tag sale, and the other from the bookshelf of odds and ends that was in the little landing on the basement steps in my grandfather's house.  At some point I forced myself to shed one copy (other doubles included Voltaire's Candide, who had to go; Pride and Prejudice, both of which got to stay; and Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, of which I bought a softcover copy in the Shelton library booksale as a reserve, to lend out to friends, and of which I also now own an Italian-language version), and kept the one from Norwood because the cover art was prettier.  When I got home from Venice (where I'd been reading on my computer) and unearthed the paper version from the basement bookshelf here, where it had been relegated as not deserving of sufficient interest to go in the hallway bookcase upstairs that I commandeered for my books, I discovered that the copy had belonged to my aunt Janice.  I think I meant to mention it to her at the Cape and forgot; I wonder if she'd remember it all all?  She's not the literary type. 

It turns out that I only managed to read the book all the way through in my freshman year--February 2004 to be exact.  Although I was on the whole impressed with the book, I got hung up on my distaste for the title character: "it's an awful thing to say, but by the end of the book i really hated anna. i knew beforehand what her fate was to be and by the last fifty pages i was just thinking "oh my god, stop being a tearful whiny bitch and throw yourself under the train already!"     You know what else is awful?  Seven and a half years later and my opinion didn't change at all--I was still ready for her to commit suicide way before she actually does.  I also found myself bored, once again, by Tolstoy's philosophizing about the nature of workers to the land, the function of religion, etc. etc., but I think what I did recognize on this second reading is that despite the title, Anna and her tormented relationships with Karenin and Vronsky only make up 1/3 of the book's narrative, and arguably not even the most central part; that distinction goes, I think, to Kitty and Levin, while the other third is filled in by Anna's brother, the philandering Oblonsky, and his silly wife Dolly.  (I'm not sure why Tolstoy give Anna's name as the title, when it seems obvious that the thrust of his effort, and his approbation, lies behind Kitty and Levin).  Oblonsky and Dolly appear as a sort of mirror to Anna/Karenin/Vronsky--brother and sister are both adulterers, he repeatedly and shallowly, she once and out of passion, but where undeservedly good things come to Oblonsky at the end, there's only suffering for Anna. 

War and Peace had nothing so concrete a narrative structure. Lumpy is an adjective I would apply to it.  There's a vast array of interconnected characters, and the point-of-view jumps around between them.  I was impressed by his ability, particularly in the beginning, to portray how  Russian society worked in the drawing-room and--more surprisingly--how women behave when there aren't any men around, as when two lovely women help their dumpy but rich friend pretty herself up after the arrival of a suitor: "Both women exerted themselves with perfect sincerity to make her look well. She was so plain that the idea of rivalry with her could never have entered their heads. Consequently it was with perfect sincerity, in the naïve and unhesitating conviction women have that dress can make a face handsome, that they set to work to attire her."  When I read that, I understood and recognized that sense of girl-on-girl competition instinctively, I could imagine it happening today as long as you substituted "crush" for the idea of a suitor.

Unfortunately not all of the novel is so interesting.  Huge, dull portions of the book depict life at the front during the Napoleonic wars, and toward the end of the book I just started skipping those entirely. There was one perceptive description of group psychology, the adoration that the officers feel for the figure of the Emperor, particularly young Rostov, who has only glimpsed him: "And Rostov got up and went wandering among the campfires, dreaming of what happiness it would be to die- not in saving the Emperor's life (he did not even dare to dream of that), but simply to die before his eyes. He really was in love with the Tsar and the glory of the Russian arms and the hope of future triumph. And he was not the only man to experience that feeling during those memorable days preceding the battle of Austerlitz: nine tenths of the men in the Russian army were then in love, though less ecstatically, with their Tsar and the glory of the Russian arms."  Sean just told me the other day that when the US first went to war in Afghanistan, for a brief moment he did think of war in glorious terms, and even hoped that this would prove to be "our" World War II.  It was amazing to me because that never occurred to me even though I supported the invasion, and he pointed out that, duh, it's probably because I'm a girl and less conditioned to think in those terms. 

Overall, the problem I had with War and Peace is the same one I had with Anna Karenina, but even more pronounced.  For me the best kind of novel is one in which you feel the author has created real people--even if it's not set in your own time and place, and you need a lot of contextualizing to understand the constraints under which the characters operate (for example, the rules of propriety in Jane Austen's England), you should still be able to understand them, recognize them, as people, instead of two-dimensional mouths into which unconnected and unfelt words are placed by the author. Sometimes this can be the fault of the 'telling, not showing' fallacy. Anna, for example, is constantly referred to, by both men and women, as beautiful, entrancing, amazing, (insert more superlatives), and yet I never really understand why others are so drawn to her. She only becomes real to me, in her motivations, her actions, her speech, at the end, when she's terribly jealous of Vronsky's imagined lover--she acts out these passive-aggressive scenes that you could see in a contemporary novel or film. And is it a Russian thing, how everyone in his books is either ecstatically happy or terribly depressed? People are always bursting into tears, or running off in a fury, or being thrown into despair on account of a look intercepted across a busy drawing room.

I have a similar issue with Virginia Woolf, whose To the Lighthouse I attempted to re-read today. Her stream-of-consciousness writing aside, I couldn't handle the merry-go-round of super-intense emotions that her characters enter and exit so rapidly--one minute, Mrs. Ramsay is looking at her husband and thinking ecstatically (and for no reason) that she's not even fit to tie his sandal (my high-school self put indignant exclamation points next to this statement), and then a few pages later is thinking, again for basically no reason, that she absolutely can't stand him at all. Adoration and irritation, good humor and bad, the characters flip flop with shocking speed. It drove me nuts. That re-read did not end well.

Cape Cod

Last week, for the first time, the women of the DiMarzo family assembled at my aunt’s house in Cape Cod for a few days of family bonding, an adventure that was a lot of fun despite my sister being, well, my sister.  To start things off, she had taken offense to my suggestion, a few days prior to the trip, that we bring some books on tape to listen to--and I mean serious offense, snarling at me about how fucking rude that was even to suggest when I picked her up at her apartment.  I was just trying to engineer a situation in which we stayed in a car together for four hours without fighting, but hey, apparently, I’m really rude.  *eye roll*  

To be fair, we did make it up to the Cape in good spirits (it was the ride home that was the killer).  When we got there on Sunday afternoon, my uncle Dana and cousin Tyler had just enough time to say hi before they headed back to Westwood to leave the womenfolks alone.  This was my first time seeing my Aunt Janice since she moved to Phoenix last year.  Janice has always been a yo-yoer, but in recent years had managed to stay in good shape by an absolutely stringent diet that included no wheat or sugar and measured portions.  She’d told me over the phone that she hadn’t been able to maintain it with the stress of the move, but I didn’t guess that she’d gained thirty or so pounds, which was quite a surprise. She’s always loved dressing stylishly, too, and has been an Anthropologie groupie for the last few years, so to see her in really basic Old Navy clothes was a surprise too.

My sister and Janice have long had a slightly tempestuous relationship.  They don’t really openly snark at each other, but my sister says that Janice is constantly making needling, judging, or mildly mocking comments--most of which I haven’t heard or don’t think anything of--which either leads to Jen exploding in a fit of nastiness or a lot of complaining and brooding about it.  Jen is a natural grudge-carrier, and things that seem relatively innocuous to me, and which wouldn’t bother Jen if Donna said them instead of her sister, turn her into the Hulk of bitchiness. I knew it was bound to happen at some point, since this would be the longest we’d all spent in each other’s company, especially without the guys like Dana and Sean to take the heat off by making jokes.  The surprising thing, I guess, is that there was only one blow-up; Jen started talking about her OCD, Janice started giving her know-it-all advice, then Jen fired back with a nasty joke about Janice having learned that in her psychiatry degree, which in turn infuriated Janice due to Jen’s lack of respect (and also, as Jen told me later, it might have been a raw nerve since Janice apparently never finished her undergrad, with only four credits left).  We were saved from a full meltdown by a judicious separation of the parties, followed by me smoothing Janice’s feathers and Donna talking Jen down in the kitchen, followed by a quiet reconciliation.  Whew.

Donna is the one to whom I feel most analogous to in my family; our personalities are relatively similar, and we often seem to play the same role of eye-rolling peacekeepers.  I appreciate the way she never wants anyone to stand on ceremony.  Every year when she emails us about family get-togethers, she always reminds us there is absolutely no guilt-tripping involved in whether we can make it, and at the Cape we were there five minutes before she informed us that everything in the house was get-it-yourself, and showed us where the snacks and soda were. She just has a good way of setting people at their ease.  Her relationship with her mother-in-law was also similar to mine with Linda; she credits her with basically all the social graces-stuff that her own mother, who had a 9th-grade education as well as anxiety-OCD problems, couldn’t teach her. I often say the same about Linda--not that I’ve learned enough to entertain successfully on my own or anything, but I’d know I could call her for advice on that kind of thing, where my mom would have been no help at all.

The first couple of hours after our arrival was, as I call, The Jen Show, when my sister has the floor and makes everyone laugh with her non-stop stories and crass jokes. Then we went to the beach briefly, where she pursued horseshoe crabs and looked for sea-shells in the sole company of toddlers and small children while we watched her with a mix of amusement (family) and embarassment (me).  I realize that I tend to be super-sarcastic when Jen is around, and while it’s partially my sense of humor, it’s also partially to set myself apart from her, to indicate, even to family, that I am not like her please don’t judge me by her behavior.  A familiar feeling for most of my life. At dinner that night (my aunt makes a mean steak, and she made hushwei, which she makes way better than I ever have), however, I noticed that since The Jen Show had run out of material, she had become taciturn, barely participating in the conversation.  Jen is either the star of the show, or watching it sullenly. She recovered in time to play Scrabble, which we did in teams--her and Janice, me and Lisa, and Donna and her daughter Sara.  My sister is a class-A trash talker in any kind of game or sport (something that would be repeated in Apples to Apples, Uno, and mini-golf), and she crowed endlessly about winning what proved to be a close game.  I was proud that I managed to convince Donna that “toady” was really spelled “toadie,” which is what I’d put down.  Her outraged cry of “I trusted you!!” after the next round was pretty hysterical.

The next day we played our epic game of mini-golf at Pirates Cove.  Donna, Sara and I all managed holes-in-one, and I actually won (my golf-playing Uncle Chuck registered his shock at me beating his wife and daughter over the phone later)!  But you would not know, from the way Jen acted, that she came out 6 out of 6.  She plays mini-golf like it’s hockey, shouts insults, and does disturbing, hip-jiggling victory dances. As with all things Jen it’s a mix of hilarious and ridiculous, and as with all things Jen, you get tired of it waaay before it’s over.  Afterward we browsed some Cape-y shops on the main drag, where Jen was insistent on finding appropriate gifts for Vinny and his parents, which I thought was ridiculous--we were there for three days, plus they have their own house on the Cape, plus...I don’t do vacation gifts.  Sean’s dad is in perfect accord: “you’re telling me, I go on vacation, and I gotta bring YOU back something? The hell with this!” On our way back to the house one of the two-car convoy had to stop at a pool-float store so that my cousin Lisa, who has a ridiculous obsession with penguins, could inquire about a penguin pool float.  Thankfully, I was riding with Sara in her (way too tiny) Mini-Cooper, so we were spared, but my thoughts were expressed perfectly by Donna, who murmured to me in the souvenir shop “can you believe we have to stop so a 24-year-old woman can buy a freaking inflatable penguin?” Lisa is weirdly immature for her age, really.  She spent more time than I can say on her iphone texting either her brother or father for updates, photos, and videos of every little thing about their dog, Franklin, a little Pekingese-like thing, and squealing at high pitch every time she was informed that Franklin had bitten a rug, or was in his crate doing “humpies” to his blanket.  The morning she left there were so many shrieks and cries coming up from the living room I had to ask her if she was trying to establish sonic communication with an animal in Phoenix.  It was ridiculous.

I don’t really know either of my cousins all that well, really, and I’d always rather chat with my aunts than with them.  Sara and I can usually fall back on some topic related to Italy (she studied abroad in Florence, too), at least.  She’s moved in with her boyfriend, Steve, who is the son of a developer and involved in some kind of real estate work himself. They live in Boston in some expensive place right on the water that has a concierge, and she pays $150 a month to garage the mini-cooper. It’s always interesting when you get a new perspective on the life of someone that you’ve always known, even if not intimately, and realize how different it is from your own.  I mean, I always knew my aunt and uncle were well-off, but I never really got it until I saw this immaculate and roomy three-bedroom place--the size of the house Sean and I hope to one day own--and realized it was just their weekend getaway. Other revelations included the identity of Mitt Romney as one of my uncle’s big clients, and my uncle as a financial supporter. Oh, Dana. Sigh.           

Another interesting subject that came up was family history, about which I know relatively little.  It turns out that Sara joined Ancestry.com, and thus I learned that my great-grandmother’s full name was Josephine Marinaro, who married Andrea DiMarzo and gave her name to two generations of Joes.  On my grandmother’s side, her father Toufik/Thomas Matook married Elizabeth/Skiye Samra.  It was funny to watch my aunts trying to name off all the 12 siblings, and stalling at 11 until “wait! There were two Georges! One died and they had another!”  My great-grandparents must have been trying for solid American names (hence Janet, Mary, Louise) but they went a little off-course a couple of times (Olga, Leon).  I asked about Olga, who my father had once mentioned as having died of MS--my aunts too had heard the story, but I can’t imagine it was even diagnosed back then.  Janice sent us copies of research that ‘Cousin John Matook’ (as he signed himself) had sent around, including a photograph of the Samra family, showing my great-grandmother, Skiye (and what a cool name is that?), as a young woman with her siblings and my great-great grandparents, all dressed in fancy Victorian garb (a shock to Donna, who confessed she always imagined them all running around Damascus in potato sacks).  Apparently they emigrated via Bosnia to Boston in 1907. One of Skiye’s sisters looked at lot like my cousin Sara, I thought.  For the Matook side, the story remains that Toufik’s family dressed him up as a girl, long hair and all, to cross the border without being conscripted into the Turkish army.  No one quite seemed to know how all these Syrians wound up in Pawtucket, RI, though, which is where the Matooks are all buried (and where my dad’s gazillion first cousins mostly live).   

I also just got a lot of interesting tidbits about the personalities of family members from stories my aunts told. Donna told us about her wedding day, which was incredibly hot and in an un-air-conditioned church, so she spent the morning of her wedding renting two industrial fans with my grandfather and lugging them to the church, only to have the priest force them to remove them because he was afraid he wouldn’t be heard.  Janice made mention of how strict my grandparents were with them (though I bet my father got treated a bit differently), and confirmed that my dad and grandma fought a lot but pointed out that he was the most broken-up when she died.  Donna mentioned my grandma’s indignation over being advised to seek therapy by her cardiologist because of stress, and how her mother-in-law advised her, sanguinely, to consider it merely another doctor, this one for the head. Unsurprising that my dad retained the sense of stigma surrounding mental health.  Unsurprising, too, that it’s in the family--my cousin Lisa has trichillotomania, like my grandma, and Jen has OCD issues and is a ‘picker’, resulting in unpleasant scars on her skin. I discovered, too, that my cousin Tyler wasn’t born a diabetic as I always thought, but became one as a small child after an illness. Donna told me he is very close-lipped about the disease, and only his good friends are aware.  It’s hard to imagine concealing something like that in a college setting, especially as a guy who might be expected to drink beer.  I didn’t ask, but I wondered, what is he drinking?  Bringing his own O’Doul’s everywhere?  He also just got diagnosed with the genetic kind of high cholesterol, poor guy.       

It was a lot of fun and a lot of interesting info packed into just a few days, in other words.  Jen suggested we do it every year, and I countered it could be like the Olympics, every four!  Honestly, if Jen hadn’t been there, I could have stayed a week, but I couldn’t put up with her, and also I wouldn’t want to have to have my family put up with her that long either.  That’s a sad thing to say, isn’t it?  And they didn’t even have to live through that car ride home.  It started badly, since Jen had thrown out my directions, and her stupid GPS wanted to take us on the Pike, which I didn’t want.  Then the side of Jen’s personality that I hate the most, her completely irrational bitch-child side emerged.  First she wouldn’t let me turn on the radio.  Then she insisted on picking the station.  Then she forced me to listen to Mexican pop music for twenty minutes and cursed me out when I asked her repeatedly to change it.  It may have been her car, but I was driving, and generally driver gets privileges, but nope, not if you’re with my sister.  Once she’s past the time when she’s making a serious effort to be accomodating, she’s in total “my way is the only way” mode. Never a middle ground with her.

Still, things didn’t come to a head still we started having Serious Talk about our family, and I started pressing her on why she always starts shit with Janice.  She wound up screaming at me about how I always take Janice’s side, because I was a) asking for examples of the comments that she claims Janice always makes (to be fair, I now recognize that Janice does do that sometimes) and b) pointing out that Jen isn’t innocent, and has in the past been randomly insulting to her.  Jen is really incapable of arguing like a normal person, which in turn makes me angry, but again, things were not yet a head.  That happened when we started talking about my dad and why Jen considers him to have been an awful father.  She says he always made her feel bad about herself, always.   I remember my father constantly criticizing her, I do; her clothes, her hygiene, the way she walked, her grades, all of it. I was never the target of it, and I acknowledge that it’s possible that merely having been the object of his anger problems and his tantrums, which we all were, may have been easier for me to shake off in favor of good memories than having also been the victim of his criticism and negativity.  I can acknowledge that, even if I’m not going to stop believing that my dad was a good dad, who had his problems and made mistakes, but truly loved us both.  Still, when I pointed out that again Jen had constantly provoked him into fights, she got angry and claimed that it was his responsibility to be the adult, she was a child, she was a product of her circumstances, blah blah blah it wasn’t her fault that sometimes she chose to be a monstrous bitch for no reason.  That annoyed me.  I’m not sure at exactly what poin this happened, but at some point she did her patented announcement of “we’re not talking about this anymore. move on,” which she ALWAYS does, and which drives me up a fucking wall, because it’s like she’s the master of the universe, and everything has to happen only in the way that makes her comfortable, fuck everyone else.  And if you attempt to keep on the subject, in a rational voice, she’ll start screaming at you “WE’RE NOT TALKING ABOUT IT! WE’RE NOT TALKING ABOUT IT! I CAN’T HEAR YOU! I CAN’T HEAR YOU!”  I kid you not, 30 years old, lawyer, covering her ears and shrieking at me.  I have rolled my eyes and changed topic when she has done this many, many times, but this time I finally found the one thing I could say to get through that skull of hers: “you know why we’ll never be friends the way you want us to be? THIS IS FUCKING WHY. Because you act like a fucking spoiled child.”  Shockingly, that worked, and we wound up talking about it, she apologized, and we managed a friendly rest of the ride back to CT.  

Unsurprisingly, I’m good with seeing my sister for a while.  Unfortunately, I forgot my sunglasses at her apartment.  Dammit!!   

Aimless Torcello Day

It’s a sign of how ready I am to return home that this morning I actually stayed in bed bed surfing the internet rather than immediately getting up.  Never before has that tiny, lumpy mess enticed me to stay in it after I’ve woken up properly!  Then I puttered around, cleaned my room, and organized all my postcards, brochures, notes, and other paper what-have-yous. I restrained myself from packing just yet, only because I don’t have that much space and it’ll just make everything (more) chaotic.  Seriously, Sean would have  some kind of attack if he saw how I’ve been living these past two months.  Crap everywhere…

Once I finally left home, at around 1pm, I decided to go to Torcello, one of the outlying islands in the lagoon that was the original center of Venice in the early medieval period.  Less than a few dozen people actually live on it now, though there are two small, expensive hotels.  Getting there, especially from the Lido, takes quite a bit of time: maybe 20 minutes to Fondamente Nuova, then switching to another boat to take you 45 minutes out to the cute fisherman’s island of Burano, where you switch to another boat to take you the ten-minute ride to Torcello proper.  This route is made even longer if you stupidly forget that you need to switch at Burano, and have to ride another 20 minutes to the next stop, get off, and take the next boat (which happily came in three minutes) another 20 minutes back to Burano. *facepalm*  For all this effort, I can’t say I was over-impressed by the payoff. The only sights on the island, which is tiny, is the cathedral with its belltower and the adjacent central-plan church of Santa Fosca.  Usually you can climb the belltower, which would have been something, even if Venice is pretty far distant, but it’s under construction.  The cathedral is known for its 11^th century mosaic decoration, a Madonna and Christ with apostles in the apse and a whole bunch of scenes, including a last judgment with blue devils and some creative depictions of hell, on the counter-façade. But honestly, if you’re looking for mosaics in Venice, you’ve got the far superior example of Saint Mark’s, and in general once you’ve been to Ravenna, other mosaics have a hard time cutting the mustard. I did enjoy a tasty strawberry push-up popsicle on the hot walk back to the boat stop, though, so not a total loss.

Going home, I asked one of the sailors if I should go back around to Fondamente Nuova or continue going around in a circle through Punta Sabbioni; he told me the latter would be a little faster, so off I went to complete a full circumnavigation of the lagoon!  It was a beautiful day for It, really, maybe 82 degrees, and of course when the boat is moving at a good clip, like it can out in the lagoon (vs the crawl up the Grand Canal), the wind for anyone standing on deck is pretty strong.  All around the vaporetto raced the speedboats and small yachts of Italians enjoying a fine Saturday afternoon; nearly every boat had a pot-bellied, speedo-clad man at the wheel, while two or three bikini-clad women splayed themselves out fore and aft.  One group had the stroke of inspiration to put a full-size air mattress on the prow of the boat on which two women (always in bikinis; no one, and I mean no one, no matter age or shape, wears one-pieces here) were reclining and chatting animatedly.  I can’t really imagine a life where that’s your weekend, and I mean that in an “I’m jealous” kind of way.  Sigh. 

On the larger ferry from Punta Sabbioni back to the Lido, a trip that took maybe 30, 40 minutes, some American girls, high school age, sat down next to me on the boat.  It quickly transpired that one of them realized she’d left her bag on another boat, and went tearing off to the officers.  (For all the agitation they were in I assumed this involved the girl’s purse, but no, it was her bag of Murano glass *eyeroll*  The sailors radioed the other boat, which sent the bag to central lost and found; all would be well).  The girl who lost her bag was quite lovely, red-headed, willowy, and in the most incredible dark blue full-length summer dress with a back that was almost entirely ivory lace, all the way down her back.  The other two, who stayed sitting near me, were plainer, and they discussed whether the sailors would have been so eager to help an unattractive girl who’d lost her bag.  They ultimately decided that anyone freaked out enough would elicit a positive response, but they both acknowledged the power of attractiveness—a sadly astute observation for girls their age.  In fact, I had just observed a small instance of this phenomenon when I went to ask one of the sailors for advice on my route.  He was in the cabin of the boat with his back to me when I asked if I could ask him a question; he sort of grumpily turned around to see what this person wanted, and then very obviously broke into a charming smile when he saw I was young and attractive.  I’m sure he would have given the same response to an unattractive person, of course, but in this case it was the attitude that changed markedly.

I felt kind of disposed to like these girls, because for once they actually reminded me of our group of friends in high school.  They seemed normal, for lack of a better word; not blatantly rich, like so many tourist kids you see in Europe, for one thing, and also relatively intelligent.  Then another girl in their group, even a little bit plainer than they were, came over and was updating them about the Affair of the Bag.  They pointed out the empty seat next to me and urged her to sit down, which was nice, but they then proceeded to ignore her completely, which I didn’t like.  It was clear that these two girls were close friends, and the third was maybe just an acquaintance or a classmate, so the ignoring took the form of them giggling to each other about their own in-jokes, and then sharing headphones to rock out to dance music and loudly compare notes on the music.  I mean, I know this is how teenage girls are, I have no doubt that I engaged in that behavior once myself, and I’m sure there’s a sociological model that explains the cementing of a bond between two individuals by subtly but firmly excluding a third, but from an adult perspective one recognizes that the polite thing to do, the kinder thing to do, would have been to include the third girl in the conversation, even if only peripherally, instead of leaving her staring at her hands the rest of the way. It made me sad for her, and I wanted to talk to her, but it felt weird to have been sitting with them for 30 minutes without making it clear I spoke English (I might not fool Europeans but I feel like American teenagers would have no idea) only to suddenly initiate conversation. I know the process of becoming mature adults will probably cure those girls of what they were doing (they seemed perfectly decent otherwise), but as for the girl they were leaving out, well, I hope she’s not someone that happens to often. God, I’m happy to be an adult now, even if it means occasionally having to make conversation with people I don’t like or don’t have any interest in.  There really is something in politeness, I think.  The English aren’t always wrong.  

The Dolomites and Verona

On Thursday morning I set off for the Dolomites, the mountain range between Venice and the Swiss Alps (and which, as I learned, are sometimes called the Venetian Alps).  It was a fairly long train ride on the oldest and slowest regional train, which was unairconditioned, or so I thought--ten minutes before we rolled into Calalzo, the last stop on the Belluno train line, an old man started closing the windows in the train car.  I thought he was just another Italian being crazy about the infamous colpo d'aria until he pointed to the ceiling and told me the AC had come on.  Oh, this country.

The Dolomites are, in a worth, breathtaking.  Although they're enormous mountains, they're still not quite high enough to have snow on them in the summertime, but the tops are pure gray rock (the mineral dolomite that gives them their name), and that provides a similar kind of color contrast to the trees blanketing the slopes.  The sight of pine trees and evergreen gave me the first sensation of the region being quite different from the parts of Italy I've been familiar with. Then as we neared Calalzo, from the train you could glimpse the green hillsides racing downward to a peaceful blue lake, which was really spectacular.  Walking up the hill from the train station, I was pretty awestruck by the scenery, by the sheer size of the mountains, which surround Calalzo on every side.  The feeling was only heightened when I got into our hotel room and opened the door to the balcony, which gave a lovely vista of the hills.

The hotel room was lovely, but when I first arrived, tired and sweaty from the train ride and then from hauling my suitcase uphill, I was pissed to discover the lack of air conditioning.  However, I quickly discovered that the reason the otherwise-nice hotel didn't have it is because you really just don't need it in the mountains, even in July.  The temperature was easily ten degrees lower than Venice, and there was zero humidity.  In fact, the following morning the weather was completely opposed to what I've been used to recently--an ominous storm front swept in, bringing with it not only a chilled rain, but even sleet!  And yet a couple of hours later it was brilliantly sunny and 75 degrees.  I can hardly imagine what it's like there in the winter, though.

Ostensibly I came to Calalzo because of its proximity to Pieve di Cadore, hometown of Titian and location of the Centro di Studi, housed in a building belonging to a related Tiziano, called L'Oratore.  My visit there, however, was less than successful.  I had scribbled down a handful of call numbers before going, only to discover that the library is split in two parts, with one part accessible only by appointment what was basically the regional president's office.  Thankfully, the very nice woman at the Centro, Letizia, called over and made sure that I could go without an appointment.  But this wasn't really a library, per se, just a collection of books donated by a deceased Titian scholar.  There was no reading room (I read at a table in the secretary's office, while she made phone calls behind me saying, rather loudly, "I'm spekaing quietly because there is a scholar here working!"), there was no catalog, so basically the few book I'd looked up that morning were the only ones I was going to get.  Also, Lionello Puppi was not at the Centro.  There too there was no reading room, and I sat at the desk next to Letizia to read the article she procured for me.  In other words, it really didn't seem like they were at all prepared to have people come and actually consult the books, which is a little ridiculous.

Pieve, like all the other little towns in Cadore, is adorable and really freaking small.  Ten minutes about suffices to get the lay of the land.  Friday afternoon Carla and I went to the Casa di Tiziano, notable for its small collection of drawings by the master; I also stopped in at Santa Maria Nascente, where Titian contributed an altarpiece for a family chapel in which his self portrait (and maybe his children's) appears (which, side note to myself, interesting that this of all altarpieces lacks any landscape references).  For some ungodly reason they'd put the damned thing behind what looked like Plexiglass, giving it a horrible glare. One of the real attractions of being in the north, beyond the natural scenery, is how different the man-made scenery is than the rest of Italy.  The houses are mostly made with wood from the plentiful forests, not plaster-covered brick, against the green hills it really felt like we were in Switzerland.  Even the church architecture was frequently different--we even saw what looked like an onion dome at one point.  (Also, the people are so much friendlier than in the rest of Italy--they say hi to you on the street!)


I really couldn't get enough of the scenery.  Carla, with her typically Protestant practicality, laughed at the way I kept having to stop and just say "wow, this amazing!!"  Friday afternoon we hiked around the lake, disappointed to discover there was no beach whatsoever, although the vistas were incredible.  Then on Saturday we rented mountain bikes and rode about 15 miles, which was incredible.  There's a piste ciclabili running from Calalzo (796m above sea level) to Cortina d'Ampezzo (1221m); a smooth asphalt bike path that follows, at least for the first few towns, the path of old train tracks.  That means you're winding around the mountains and going through the train tunnels (which were freezing) or over bridges.  At one point, you're sailing downhill so fast the wind is literally roaring in your ears; at the base of the hill a bridge carries you over a little waterfall.  All in the shadow of the mountains.  It was fucking awesome.  (However, as the sea levels indicate, we were effectively going uphill the whole way; the place where we stopped, San Vito, is 1103m above sea level.  Had we planned this better, we should have taken the bus to San Vito, rented bikes, and rode down to Calalzo, but, oh well.)


This represented the first time I've been on a bike since easily 15 years of age (and that was a three-speed road bike with a very comfy seat). When we got on the bikes at the rental place, I had a few moments of "oh shit, what if I DON'T remember how to do this?? I'm going to dieeeeee!"  Helmets were not available (and I was kind of leery once we got on the trail and realized that everybody else was definitely wearing them), which was not helping my fears of imminent doom.  Also, I was not used to the whole switching gears business (see three-speed bike, above); there was a different gearshift on each handle, and the two controls to move them up and down worked on opposite ways on each one, so I kept accidentally throwing myself into high gear right at the base of a hill, completely squandering any and all momentum. My lack of confidence also prevented me from doing the standing-up pedaling that I remember was once second nature when bike riding; I tried it, wobbled precipitously, and thought "oh hell no, I will walk this bike if I have to."  And I did have to walk it a couple of times, as Carla can attest.  Still, I made pretty good progress; in the morning I was scared to even take a hand off one handlebar to scratch my nose, and in the afternoon I was riding with one hand so I could sit up a little straighter (my back was killing me by then).  Still, I was nowhere near the level of comfort I remember having--I used to ride my back downhill on the street next to ours without hands.  Oh, those were the days.

I really kicked myself for forgetting two things in Venice, my sports bra and my light backpack, which would have allowed me to bring my camera on the ride.  Carla thus had to step in to record our journey on her cell phone, which she was carrying along with money and my credit card in the tiny pocket on her running shorts.  The scenery was so damned incredible.  Here too I kept stopping to marvel and demand she take pictures, which required her to fish her phone out of her shorts (she was a very good sport about this).  Finally she was hungry, so we stopped in what was basically a hamlet and asked a man if there was somewhere we could eat.  First he said "no," in a surprised tone (we were surprised too-really? no food?), then called to someone in his house, asking, in dialect, "Eh, Natalia fa mangi' ogg'?"  It turned out that yes, Natalie was cooking today, so we proceeded to her restaurant and had a quick, very basic lunch--bread, sliced prosciutto, a cheese plate, and some spinach.

Then we set out again--and discovered something horrible.  Giving your butt a break from the uncomfortable bike seat long enough to eat is apparently just enough time for your butt to decide "fuck no" when you try to get back on.  It hurt like a bitch!  We were hoping we'd sort of warm back up to it as we went, but not really--anytime we had to go over bumpy ground there was a lot of "owww oh shit owww" (mostly me, Carla toughed it out).  That, more than anything, began to spell the end of my original determination to make it all the way to Cortina (and who'd have thought that I'd be the one exhorting Carla that we could totally make it the whole way?).  Ultimately we found ourselves in San Vito, where there was a rental return point, and gave up the ghost, just 9km from Cortina.  I'm still pretty damned proud of myself for making it that far. Shockingly enough, my leg muscles barely protested that night, but oh dear god, my ass. Sitting down was a ginger business, to say the least.

Yesterday morning we headed to the train station to catch the 10am train to Venice, and thence onward to Verona, only to discover that there was a train strike. The 10am train was cancelled, the 12:30 might run, or it might not, no one could say.  Suddenly we realized the downsides of being in a remote part of Italy with limited transportation options.  We could take a bus to Cortina and try to catch a bus to Venice from there, but we had no idea about the schedule or anything (worse still, it was a Sunday).  A couple of non-Italian guys with whom we'd been discussing the situation offered us a ride to Mestre, where they were headed, and said they'd come back to the station shortly to pick us up.  I was feeling kind of panicky and almost ready to take them up on it, but we decided to first run our options by Joanne Maddox, Carla's old boss at the Fairfield program.  She told us, sagely, not to take the ride, even though it would probably be OK. Instead we hopped on a bus for the hour-long ride to Cortina, where we secured tickets on the 'Cortina Express' to Mestre.  Of course it didn't leave for three hours, and there was no left-luggage on Sunday, so we had to park it at a restaurant. I went down to the town briefly to look around, and bought some deliciously tart wild blueberries from a vendor.  In the end, we discovered that the express we'd gone all the way to Cortina to take would have picked us up two towns over from Calalzo anyway *facepalm*.  Oh well.  


Once we made it to Mestre, however, we faced another problem--were the trains to Verona actually running?  We'd been assured by Italians that the main routes, like Venice-Verona, had connections, and that it was just the out of the way places with only regional service, like Calalzo, that were totally SOL.  We spent a very hot, very stressful 45 minutes waiting for an incredibly crowded and un-air conditioned train, but  at least one came!  In the end we got to our hotel in Verona at 7--nine hours of travel!  Here we had a stroke of luck, though, since our hotel ran a free shuttle into and out of town for those attending the opera.  The shuttle left at 7:30, so we had just enough time to freshen up.  In Verona, we grabbed a quick bite to eat, bought a libretto and inflatable cushions, on the sage advice of someone who'd done this before, and went into the Arena to find seats.  


It was basically like being at a baseball game, sitting in the cheap seats, complete with wandering drink and souvenir vendors (with prices comparable to Yankee Stadium, too).  The opera itself was good (there was some pretty spectacular staging, including ballet scenes and four live horses onstage during a procession, plus a cast of at least a hundred) but despite the powerful acoustics of Roman engineering, it was difficult to make out some of the singers, particular the alto (who, according to Carla, wasn't projecting her voice in the right way).   Hearing an opera in an enclosed theater vs a 20k-person amphitheater is just going to be a different experience. Also, it was LONG.  Four hours long, in fact.  I would have been happy to follow the example of the German family next to us and hit the road after the second act, but of course Carla wanted to stay through the end (at 1am).  I was able to convince her to leave as soon as the last note sounded, however, so we could make it back to the hotel shuttle before it filled, so we woundn't have to wait another 45 minutes for the next one.


 I learned that in opera, you clap for the performers every five minutes.  Every aria, every scene, every act got applause.  The conductor was applauded when he walked in at the opening of each act.  The girl who rang the gong letting you know the pauses were about to be over got applauded, every time she came out!!  It was too much for me, this diva culture.  Yes, what they're doing takes intense training, but hey, that's why you applaud at the end.  As fitting my longstanding preference for male voices, I recognized that the lead soprano had a lovely voice, but I much preferred the guy singing Ramades, the male lead.  By the end, I was so tired I just wanted them all to shut up and stop singing the same two lines over and over, more and more slowly.  Die already, Aida.

Florence

I haven’t blogged in quite a long time!  Things have kept on being busy in Venice during Dr. Cooper’s stay.  She gave me an introduction to using the Archivio di Stato, which was ridiculous, and truly brought home to me why people come to study on 1 or 2 year fellowships, because it takes an incredibly long time just to locate and request the right boxes of documents, let alone trying to decipher them! I set myself the task of transcribing Jacopo Tintoretto’s will, which came in a box full of other wills by the same notary, Antonio Brinis.  Luckily, Antonio had pretty good handwriting.  Still, there was plenty of places I had to leave blank because I couldn’t figure out either what the handwriting actually said, or if it was some kind of shorthand, what it stood for.  Then after I did that I started reading some of the other wills (which were organized not by date but by first name of the testator, which I only cottoned on to after wondering “was every woman named Elena and Elisabetta in the late 16^th century??); I quickly realized how formulaic they were.  The name of the testator, the name of their father and, if a woman, their husband, the place where they met with the notary, some expressions of religious sentiment, then any specific bequests plus the division of estates among heirs (often with second-, third- and even fourth-string heirs in case people have died, more of a concern then than now), and then the closing with witnesses.  The formulaic nature is actually extremely helpful because then you know what to expect of a particular will, even if you’re having trouble making out some words; for example, in Tintoretto’s I couldn’t make out this word that came after “being of good health and,” but realized after looking at another that the word was “intellect.”

The content of these wills was in general uninteresting.  Tintoretto’s of course was fascinating, since he left all of his property to his beloved wife Faustina--with admonitions to his children to obey her, and giving her authority to cut them out of her own will if they didn’t—except for all the things of his profession, which he left to his son Domenico, who would carry on the family workshop into the 17^th century. There was also a clause stating that Domenico would finish all of Jacopo’s unfinished commissions in the manner of his father, just as he had long been accustomed to doing during his father’s life to great honor—very interesting from the perspective of thinking about workshop practice and a painter’s personal ‘brand’.  Meanwhile, in a woman’s will, she left various pieces of jewelry to female relatives, only to add a later codicil retracting the gift of a pearl necklace—I had hoped there would be a gossipy reason, like ‘Madonna Elisabetta is a ho, she’s not getting my jewelry’ but it just said ‘the pearls are no longer in the house.’ Another aspect I was having trouble understanding at first was the closing; there aren’t really paragraph breaks or anything, so one minute they’ll be talking about executors and the next something about hospitals and pious places, and it took me a while to figure out that the notary was required (it’s stated in the will) to ask the testator if he or she wanted to leave money to religious institutions or the poor (even if they had already specified such earlier).  The responses are generally formulaic but one woman just wrote (I’d like to think, snarkily) “I have already left what I wanted to leave.”  In other words, quit hounding me, asshole.

I have learned a number of things from my archive experience—I love the feel of the soft paper, for one thing!  I read somewhere that paper in the early modern period wasn’t made from wood pulp but rather cloth, which may explain why it feels soft and not dry and crack-y.  That’s not to say it’s not dry and crumbly around the edges, of course.  Rae was amazed when I told her you don’t have to use ggloves to handle these 500-year old documents—it surprised me too, honestly.  I mean, you’re obviously supposed to handle it delicately and not touch the actual ink, but when you sit down with a giant busta or box and open it up (once you’ve managed to prie open all the strings tying the box together, and then the strings wrapped around the bundle inside; I actually couldn’t get the interior knot open, so I had to slide the loop of string off and hope I could reaffix it later), little bits of edges and things are cracking all over the place.  I also learned that the archives are very hot in summer.  The archive was once part of the Frari monastery complex, and the reading room was a refectory or chapel or something; one giant room, with no open windows or fans (lest the documents get the dreaded colpo d’aria, perhaps—Italians have a fanatical terror of drafts of air), so by afternoon all the hot air is just pressing down on you.  It was pretty awful.  I don’t think I could ever come here to do serious work in summer.  We went for lunch to a place across the street, Bar L’archivio, because they have a cold rice salad dish that Dr. Cooper can actually eat (celiac s have such a terrible time in Italy, it’s sad), and met a bunch of other scholars, including one, Allison Sherman, who is close to my age and just received her degree a couple of years ago.  She explained to me how she was so depressed her first six months of research that she used to buy a Twix from the vending machine every day, and eat it in the bathroom while she cried her eyes out before going back to the reading room.  Other people at the table nodded.  I was a bit apprehensive!

Jasmine and Nick came up to Venice for a couple of days this week.  We met up with a guy, Giancarlo, with whom Dr. Cooper and I had toured San Pietro in Castello, and who had been a classmate of Jasmine’s during the Venice Duke program (and the fact that I never got to participate in that because it lost funding is extra depressing after having seen all the connections Jasmine was able to make there); he’s working at a brand new institution, the Studium Marcianum, and was able to give us a tour.  It had an amazing view from the Zattere toward the Giudecca.  After lunch I ran some errands, including locating a real Italian hardware store with multiple floors (Rata, in Salizzada S. Lio, in case I forget in the future) to buy new earbuds (Carla had told me I should find a music store to buy them in, but Giancarlo disagreed and I decided to trust the native, who was right).  I also wanted to visit the single gluten-free shop in Venice, off Strada Nuova, but of course I hadn’t written down the actual address, just briefly glanced at the Google map, so I had to call Carla to look it up for me, and then of course when I find it, it’s closed for the afternoon break!  Even when I came back at 4 when it reopened, nothing! I had to camp out in what was basically an alley for 20 minutes until the shopkeeper showed up, but I was able to get her some nice amaretti cookies as a gift, so it was worth it.  She’s been so wonderful this whole time.

In the evening Jasmine had invited all of her friends in Venice to meet for a spritz, and I joined.  Four prosecchi later, we headed to meet Dr. Cooper and Tim for dinner, where of course more prosecco was waiting!  It was a fun dinner.  Jasmine observed later that my relationship with Coop has definitely reached a new level when I’m openly joking about how much I’ve had to drink, and I laughed and told her how Dr. Cooper advised that I sell my extra oxycontin pills for money!  Dr. Cooper has told me that there’s a difference in rapport just being together off campus, like in Princeton, and it’s even more different in Italy.  Needless to say, I’m loving it. 

Wednesday I went down to Florence with Jasmine to stay with our friend Suzanne.  Now, every Venetian I told that I was going to Florence had an expression of horror, “why would you do that?”  Carla has told me that Florence can be the hottest place in the peninsula in the summer, because it just bakes in the valley, and I believe her—getting off the train was like getting walloped in the face by a wall of heat.  Dry heat, to be fair, but heat all the same, 95 degrees every day. You’re basically forced to follow the shadows and avoid all but the most necessary exposure  to sun—you don’t cross the piazza, you walk around the perimeter under the loggias, in other words.  Jasmine and I took a taxi from the station to Borgo San Iacopo in Oltrarno where Suzanne’s apartment is.  This place was magnificent, first and foremost because of the air conditioning, set to a chilly 22-24 degrees, vs 36-38 outside.  Totally redone (entirely with IKEA furnishings and accoutrements, haha), with a microwave (rare in this country) and even an ice machine (which I would never have expected; I thought it was a breadmaker).  There was a comfy pullout couch for us to share, and a lofted bedroom and bathroom above that was really nice, double sinks and everything.  Of course, Suzanne paid through the nose for this luxury—2400 euro per month, and she stayed 6 weeks.  Jasmine and I were so grateful to her that we got to stay there!  Naturally the first thing we did on Wednesday was go to the grocery store for food and wine.  We ended up drinking three bottles, and time literally flew; it was 5pm and then suddenly it was 8:30, time for our skype date with our friend Cate, who showed us her baby bump—she’s having a boy!

 I was definitely feeling the effects of the wine when I woke up in the morning, no headache, just kind of dizzy before I had some tea.  I got to talk to Sean briefly, since he’s returned to his night owl ways and was going to bed when I was waking up.  The three of us went to Palazzo Pitti, which was awesome even if it was too hot to go into the Boboli Gardens.  After lunch Jasmine and I tried to go to Ognissanti, but it was inexplicably closed; we did make it to Sta Felicita before splitting up so Jasmine could go meet her undergrad advisor for a drink.  I went over to the thrift store by S. Lorenzo where I bought my coats to see if there was anything interesting, but no luck; likewise at the Paperback exchange.  That night we had dinner with Dr. Hall as well as Dr. Kline, another faculty member who we included only at Dr. Hall’s request, because he’s been weird in the past, but it turned out to be really fun (and Dr. Hall’s treat!) at Mamma Gina’s, downstairs from Suzanne’s place—this restaurant is enough of an institution that Dr. Hall said “oh, Mamma Gina’s!  My Mercedes was keyed outside of this place in 1963.”  Think about that statement. Haha. I had a delicious tagliata di manzo over arugula, and there was lots of wine, so I woke up yesterday morning with a throat like a smoker’s!  More tea cured that, too.

Yesterday was a pretty full day. Suzanne and I tried to go to SS. Annunziata to see Vasari’s painting of himself as Saint Luke, but were thwarted once again, arriving right as a Mass began.  We had lunch at a Greek place on Via San Gallo that I always looked at when I lived there but never went into; I had an insalata greca which came, as hoped, with a big ol’ block of feta on top!  Then Suzanne went off to meet Dr. Kline to take the bus to Villa I Tatti, which is Harvard’s research institute in the hills outside Florence.  It was the private villa of one of the most famous 20^th century art historian/connoisseurs, Bernard Berenson, who donated it to Harvard in his will.  Dr. Hall has been doing research there since the 60s, and is welcome as a former fellowship-holder (ex-borsista; a ‘borsa’ is a purse). The night before we floated the idea of Dr. Hall taking Suzanne and Dr. Kline to I Tatti—I did the floating, not on Kline’s behalf but on Suzanne’s.  Dr. Hall is not an involved advisor at the best of times, and Suzanne had told us she was worried Dr. Hall had written her off entirely.  Suzanne came into the master’s program in 2005, and because she has a mortgage, and a graphic design business, and usually at least two other jobs, she’s only now prepping for prelims for the fall.  There’s not a lot of appreciation among the faculty for how hard it is to do grad school without a fellowship.  I mean, I can hardly talk, since I had one, but I can imagine, and I give Suzanne credit for having to work so hard, but all Dr. Hall sees is that she’s not moving forward with the “real work.”  Anyway, Jasmine and I were trying to do for Suzanne’s exam panic what my friends did for me at RSA, and also encourage to put herself forward with Dr. Hall.  Hence the I Tatti idea, from which I excluded myself voluntarily when it became clear that Dr. Hall felt awkward about introducing even two random people into the center (it’s not like a walk-in library, more like an exclusive yacht club).  It turns out I apparently earned major brownie points with her for gracefully bowing out, though, go me!  And she promised me that the next time we’re in Florence together she’ll take me to get a card (Dr. Kline and Suzanne got registered and got reader cards, which are valid forever and hence like gold).

While she was off doing that, I went on a lovely tour of some sights, including San Lorenzo, the New Sacristy, Santa Croce (that Bronzino!!), and Casa Buonarroti, where I’d never been before.  Dr. Hall had emailed Suzanne in the morning about a possible dinner, and Suzanne had promised to call me when she got there, so as I’m walking home around 5 I thought it was odd I hadn’t heard.  I was hungry, so I stopped at the store, and as I’m finally walking into the blissfully cold apartment, she calls me on Dr. Hall’s cell, as hers had died.  They wanted me to come join them, but I needed to get to I Tatti by 6:15. That meant I had to catch the 5:50 bus from Piazza San Marco, clear on the other side of town, and it was 5:15, I was sweaty and gross and kinda tired.  But Suzanne didn’t want to be left to have dinner with Dr Kline and Dr. Hall’s creepy husband, so I said I’d try to make it.  I wound up taking a cab, because there was no way I could have walked in time, and caught the Settignano bus 2 minutes before it left.  So all was well, and Gerry picked us all up in the car from I Tatti and whisked us over to Maiano, where we sipped white wine on the balcony/patio of the apartment they’re renting, on this property with amazing views over the valley and an Olympic-sized pool (and dear god, how I wanted to dive in).  Then we had dinner at some restaurant up the hill where the food was delicious and the wine (and then limoncello, and then grappa for the men) flowed freely.  Dr. Hall and Gerry treated us once again, which was very nice of them, and we really had an awesome time, which more than made up for the serious hassle it was trying to get up there.  I nearly melted into a puddle of sweat on the bus, which was NOT air conditioned, and the whole way I was grumpily like “stupid dr hall, why do we have to have dinner there, argghhh.”  She even gave us a ride back to the city after dinner, since the buses had stopped running already (Suzanne and I had privately worried earlier that Gerry, who is tacitly understood as an alcoholic, was going to offer to drive us, and what we would say if he did.  Dr. Hall on the other hand, assured us she was ok to drive, but then said ‘and anyway, I’m one of those rare people who drives just beautifully when they’re intoxicated’ and we though, oh Christ…).  Then Suzanne and I strolled from Piazza San Marco, past Palazzo Vecchio, and over the Ponte Vecchio to her apartment.  It was a fabulous night.

I’ve spent so long writing this that we’re already in Padua!  We’ll be in Venice in 20 minutes.  It’s supposed to be in the 90s there too, and I doubt it’s dry like Florence.  Tonight is Dr. Cooper’s last night, and I’m having dinner with her, Tim, and Richard Schofield and his wife—and then tomorrow I’m on my own again!