This past weekend, along with being the culminating point for a week-long celebration of creativity, invention and science in Fiorentine Geniu, also hosted a Notte Bianca, with all the stores and piazza's open until the wee hours of the night. I've never seen my city so filled and active. Spaghetti supper in Santa Croce, Irish music in Santa Spirito. It's midnight and I'm pooped. What an old lady I am. This weekend we've also been overrun with bike riders as the huge race (I'm at a loss for what it's called) has ended and the racers are enjoying the prize-gelato. As [View Full Entry]

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Teatro Communale-Maggio Musicale Fiorentino 68th year ...keeping you in touch with my social life... Klajd and I go to see a new staging of the opera TOSCA by Puccini. The theater is nothing special, but the orchestra is talented and as soon as the curtains open, the set design proves just as wmrthy. From what I can gather from the story (the Italian text written above the stage…but quickly and in operatic terminology which tends to shorten its words and skip over other parts of speech) and my mother’s narration, this is how Tosca goes…one of the three prot [View Full Entry]

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images illustrating Genovese story May 14th-Tale of a City No One Told Me To Visit [View Full Entry]

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...With a Friend Waving Goodbye to Italy I was told the city was dirty and anomalous, lacking the breathtaking, characteristic piazzas and palazzi characteristic of most Italian cities. No famous names, but that of Cristofero Colombo, who lived in Genova many of his young years. Few tourists, no famed artists. But other sources have named it the next European capital, famed for its port life and shipping industry. So we give Genvoa a go and arrive in time to find a hotel and take a short walk before it begins raining. First impression is already impressionable. Genova [View Full Entry]

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At the age of 14, they began to learn the trade. For several years first, to learn the basic techniques, skills and habits of one that works in a botega. At 14, the muscles are still flexible and malleable, and the physical motions of the arm, wrist, and fingers necessary to complete these delicate pieces become routine. Within years, these young men apprentice and soon become masters of a craft centuries old. 25 years later, the trade is passed on to sons or trusted young apprentices of the present day. They have studied and created and perfected the craft for [View Full Entry]

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Soaking it in-Parco delle Cascine A father has a stick lodged into the back of a tricycle, right behind the pink cushion seat, sticking up perpendicular to be used as a handle to safely guide, secretly, his grandchild as she peddles as best her 7inch feet can. The Arno is flowing fiercely, and the fields and greenery around the park have been left to grow, grasses are now almost as tall as me, and the pathways are lined with flourishing plants, weeds, grasses, wild flowers, etc. Below, lining the rocky edges of the Arno west of the city center, are [View Full Entry]

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May 4, 2005 Scratching the chalkboard Centro Culturale, my school, still uses chalkboards. The chalk-covered hands and labor-intensive erasing that often leaves faded remnants of layer after layer of information piques my art-making self. What a sucker for the dirt of creativity. Literally. This final semester is not as lively as the other two, but our professor is intelligent and helpful. My classmates, however, are not very energetic, nor are we a cohesive group. Other than myself and Bonnie, whom love to share and talk and question, we have a tall, blond Russian doctor-in-tr [View Full Entry]

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PISA 90 minute trainride through the Tuscan countryside, the one that really is how you see it in the postcards. I arrive. Pisa is quiet at 2:30pm. I have no plans but I know what comes first: I grab my gelato. I stick with chocolate now. All chocolate, no mixing, no second guessing. CORSO ITALIA is the main drag, and reminds me of Via Calzaioli in Florence. In fact, the cities feel alike, except for the palm-like trees that are characteristic as we get closer to the Mediteranean. It is warm and gorgeous today. I am wearing a sleeveless top [View Full Entry]

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Pigment * THE CERAMIC SHOP on Via del Proconsolo is run by a retired nuclear engineer, covering for his dear friend Michele, whom he’s known for 15 years. I returned twice to spend a good hour each time picking through bowls and dishes of various styles, while both he and I visually hunted the walls and stacks and shelves for particular colors and decorative details. He tells me he finds the job fun and relaxing, a bit of color to his otherwise monochromatic day, as his evenings are usually spent bent over a table full of books and note sheets scribbled [View Full Entry]

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How inspiration works Is mystery ingredients on the side panel graffiti scratched into bark the haze of half sleep a clip of music an eyelash in my eye dust on that windowpane the light on his face an entrance ticket a drawing mistake is that it works [View Full Entry]

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