A Journey of a Thousand Miles Begins With ... Too Much Luggage

It's Gratitude Friday, a day when many bloggers, inspired by Diana reflect on things for which we are grateful.

Today, I’m certainly grateful that my blog is up and running again – Slow Travel blogs have been down all week with technical issues.

And I’m grateful that my car repair bill wasn’t any larger than the $1,500 I had to pay yesterday. Crikey – that was painful!

It made me wish I was driving Purple Ed, rather than my Toyota Tercel.

Purple Ed is, of course, one of the vintage trucks my brother has restored. I’ve been learning to drive a standard on Ed (named after his predecessor Old Ed, a beautiful cream-coloured light delivery truck sold in haste by my brother during a fit of pique.) However, as sturdy as Purple Ed is, my brother assures me that his upkeep would likely be even more expensive than my Toyota.

And, in fairness to my Tercel, which is 18 years old, I haven’t had to spend anything on her in 11 years. Seriously. Since I moved here 11 years ago, I have paid for semi-annual oil changes, a new battery once, and that’s it.

So I suppose I was due. But still. That $1,500 could have paid for my next flight to Italy and back, with enough left to cover my share of the rent of the house in Anghiari in June.

However, I am grateful the car repair bill wasn’t any larger. Now, I just hope the damn car continues to run.......

I’m going to Anghiari!

Well, not right away, of course. But I just paid a small deposit to rent a lovely house in Anghiari with a friend in June. (The second photo above is the view from the upper terrace.)

I realize that June 2010 is a long way off, and as much as I love planning trips, this is a bit extreme! But I need a lift. I find November depressing enough, and I’m still feeling exhausted after a bad flu bug last week. So anything happy and exciting – such as thinking about a trip -- is welcome.

I don’t know a great deal about Anghiari. However, I do know that it’s a small town near Arezzo, on the border of Tuscany and Umbria. So, the location sounds great for interesting day trips. I would love to see Arezzo again, and revisit Piero della Francesca’s stunning fresco cycle, The Legend of the True Cross.

I fact, I’d like to follow the informal Piero della Francesca trail, including seeing works in Sansepolcro, which is near his home village and located only about 7 kilometres from Anghiari. I would also love to do a day trip over the mountains to Urbino, the family home of the great Raphael.

I think this area must ooze great Renaissance art!

Continue reading "I’m away to Anghiari" »

I am so sick. I haven't been this sick in a long time. Is it swine flu? I don't know. I don't care. I just feel wretched. But not so wretched that I can't whine about in my blog!

OK, I don't believe there is a real connection between Piglet and swine flu; that's probably just one of the millions of misconceptions floating around about the virus. That said, I hope that my neighbours don't show up at my door with flaming torches to rid the building of my pestilence.

Actually, after a really wretched night, I now feel more calm. So long as I don't try to eat or drink or move (fingers flying over the keyboard don't count.) I think I have a fever but I can't be bothered to dig out the thermometer to find out.

If this flu was caused by one of those little piggies, I'm impressed by their ability to seek out my weak points. Amazingly, as the virus got its grip on me yesterday afternoon, it zeroed right in on every place in my body that causes me pain: it has completely settled into the tight spot on my lower back and has my ongoing neck and shoulder problems utterly in its evil grip.

I'm actually not that bothered by the nausea and all that goes with such matters, but the throbbing in my neck that burns all the way up my head -- now that bothers me.

Oh well. I'll live. But I'm beginning to think I'd like to see those little piggies turned into pancetta.

It has been a while since I've written about a book I've loved, but I recently finished this short novel by Canadian author Steven Galloway and was extremely impressed.

The story is riveting. Carefully and cleverly told, this novel conveys a powerful sense of what daily life in a war zone would be like, and the emotional challenges that one would be forced to deal with. It's also a story about the enormous importance of art -- in this case, music -- in every day life. As the author said, in an interview, it's about the necessity of "art and music ... to remind us of our innate humanity.”

And although this particular story is set in the early 1990s in the city of Sarajevo, in the former Yugoslavia, in some ways I think a similar story could be told almost anywhere during any war.

For I imagine that the enormous difficulties that people under siege would face trying to cope with daily life -- from finding clean water and food while navigatating treacherous streets, to living without heat and electricity -- would be somewhat similar, no matter the war.

And the very big question -- how do you retain some of your humanity under such enormous threats -- would also be universal.

The novel is fiction based on a few facts. During the siege of Sarajevo there really WAS a cellist, who in 1992 saw from his apartment window a mortar attack that killed 22 people as they waited in line outside to buy bread. In commemoration, he decided that each day for 22 days, he would sit outside on the very spot where the deaths occurred, and perform the mournful, stately Adagio in G Minor.

The cellist put himself at enormous risk. During the siege of Sarajevo, over approximately two years, troops fired on civilians trapped in the city. Hundreds of men, women and children were killed while they were shopping, tending gardens, fetching water from the river or otherwise trying to go about their daily lives.

The rest is of the novel is fiction, involving three different residents of the city who are trying to survive, and are all brought together in some way by the cellist. One character is a young woman who becomes a sniper, first to defend her city and later to defend the cellist whose performances are bringing people together and helping them reconnect with their humanity. Which is exactly what the attackers, described only as "the men in the hills" are trying to destroy.

The novel doesn't ever assign nationalities or religions or political tags to any of the people in the novel. The main characters are simply referred to as Sarajevans, facing their common enemy in the hills who are trying to destroy the multi-ethnic, cosmopolitan centre.

A very good friend of mine escaped Sarajevo in the earlier days of the siege, when she was a university student. She recently read the novel and was amazed at how well it captured the sense of the city, the people, the life she used to know.

I've just returned from an eventful week visiting family and friends in Alberta. There was much cooking (including a fantastic pound cake from Gina de Palma's Dolce Italiano cookbook); much eating; way too much unseasonably early snow; and far too much time sitting in Emergency with my elderly Mom who is fine but scared me half to death with a potentially dangerous nosebleed.

I also helped my brother build a kitty playhouse for the adolescent and oversized Timothy (nothing like the Martha Stewart house pictured above) and had my butt very badly kicked by a group of senior citizens-- several in wheelchairs -- during a game of shuffle bowl.

So, after all that, I'm now feeling a bit let down and even a bit bored with my regular routine.

The scariest part of the visit was sitting for 10 hours in Emergency with my Mom, who insisted she felt fine and was not pleased that I stuck a tampon stuck up her nose to staunch what could have been a serious nosebleed. But it worked well, and ultimately, the Emergency room doctor supported my action and left it in, just to be safe.

But poor Mom. She has been on blood thinners, necessary to prevent strokes but potentially dangerous. It's hard to get the dosage just right and recent blood tests showed her levels dangerously high; that is, her blood had become far too thin, meaning any bleeding could potentially be fatal. So when she developed a slight nosebleed last week, her local doctor sent us straight to the nearest hospital Emergency room, a 45-minute drive away from the small town where Mom lives.

Mom was feeling just fine, so the long wait in Emergency really irritated her. However, I stand by my decision. Her dosage of blood thinners is being adjusted and closely monitored.

Mom was very pleased, however, that I played shuffle bowl (a cross between bowling and shuffleboard) one afternoon with 16 of her friends at the senior's home where she now lives. I placed about 10th, well back of the winner, a very aggressive elderly lady who leaped out of her wheelchair to punch the air when she won the game. I was bitter over the loss, but I think I hid it well.

Meanwhile, my brother Robert has been feeling so bad over the recent death of Mrs. Cat, that he convinced me to help him build a kitty playhouse out of cardboard boxes for young Timothy. He's another feral cat that arrived in the summer as a kitten, and has stayed on. He's been bored, however, with Mrs. Cat gone and so Robert decided Timothy needed a playhouse. However, Timothy is a big boy and keeps getting stuck in the doorways (I should have carved them larger.) Perhaps I should have followed a formal plan, something like the blueprints that Martha Stewart is selling on the Internet. However, that seems a bit much -- do we really need formal Martha Stewart blueprints for a cat playhouse????

I did closely follow Gina de Palma's blueprints for her ricotta pound cake, and it was extremely delicious. I love pound cake, but this recipe is extra-good. Even Robert (who is a very picky eater) loved it, as did the rest of the family. I borrowed Jerry's photo, and his idea of adding cherries to the basic recipe. Yum!!!

During my visit, I did a lot cooking, which I enjoy -- roast beef one night, and a roast turkey for Thanksgiving. Unfortunately, I ran out of time before I could try a few other recipes, like Letizia's pizza.

We had quite a lot of snow, which shouldn't be a surprise in western Alberta in October, but it was still a drag. I am so not ready for winter!