Traditional Cooking, Traditional Work · Aug 15, 03:56 PM by James Martin
Ferragosto, the stop-work day in the middle of August when Italians get in their cars and go somewhere—if they’re lucky enough to get a decent slice of autostrada to fit a tiny Italian car in—seems a fine time to talk about some interesting things that have hit my radar lately.
First, the divine Divina Cucina is heading to one of my favorite food places on the planet, Sicily, to explain to you all about the old-world charm in the markets and cooking pots of the local population. The tour comes at a reasonable cost, and explores places lots of people wouldn’t get to on their own. See: Divina Cucina: Secrets of My Sicilian Kitchen.
If you’d like to see Judy, AKA Divina Cucina at her cook book signing at the Antica Macelleria Cecchini, see the video.
Then Gloria of “At Home in Tuscany” writes of an interesting development in Tuscany: the creation of a guild sorta thing for folks who practice the old trades. Pretty much all of the people of my village would have to be included, I’m thinkin’. (I looked into replacing my front door recently, and came up with a price of 3000 Euros. It’s not a door to a palace, it’s just a standard front door. Sheesh.) Artisans aren’t cheap, so they deserve a guild, or at least a “registry” as they call it. See: Antichi Mestieri: Old Trades in Tuscany
The reason I say that many folks in my village would probably qualify for the registry are the plethora monuments to antiquity still in use within the city limits, like the one in the picture on the right (click to see it larger). It’s the water power controls for an old mill, used to this day to grind corn for polenta. Let the water flow and wham! the wheels start turning and you turn your dried corn into polenta for putting wild bore sauce on.
Even by itself, the rustic engineering here is a pretty thing, isn’t it?
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Biking the Via Francigena · Aug 8, 05:06 PM by James Martin
I like following folks who’ve decided to make their pilgrimages public. Frank Burns (not the Frank Burns from MASH, presumably) will be starting his pilgrimage from Canterbury to Rome at the end of August. On a bike.
My Italian neighbor Enrico did the Camino de Santiago on a bike, and now wants to hike it.
In any case, by reading the early posts on his blog, I figure Frank seems thoughtful enough about the whole pilgrimage thing that his would be a good trip to follow, especially—for you Italophiles—after he crests the Grand St Bernard Pass and enters Italy. Perhaps we’ll get a chance to chat with him when he approaches the Sarzana-Luni segment of the trip.
Check out Frankburns’s Blog
Find out more about the Via Francigena and why you should consider stopping at a few of the towns along the route on your vacation.
God is My Mechanic, (and Not Such a Good One, Evidently) · Jul 26, 05:58 PM by James Martin
God does not lack for spokesmen these days. If you channel surf long enough, you’ll find maybe a million or so people on the idiot box who know what God wants and who have been entrusted by Him (in secret, of course) to take care of things, often using murder and mayhem to achieve those goals.
Now God has been put in charge of breaking washers and disrupting fuel lines on Southwest Airlines jets. Yes, in a fishing expedition to limit liability for mechanical failures that delay aircraft, the high-flying bozos at Southwest have quietly defined mechanical failures as “acts of God.” If we don’t cry out in protest, they will be able to say, “our cobbled together piece of garbage can’t fly and we’re not responsible, so you’ll just have to sleep in the airport until we find some duct tape and bailing wire. In case you’re wondering about the cause: God did it! Nah nah nah nah nah nah!”
Speaking for God used to be called blasphemy. Today it’s business as usual. That’s sad, isn’t it?
Read and weep: Southwest: Breakdown is now an act of God
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Fake Balsamic Vinegar · Jul 13, 08:49 AM by James Martin
I remember fondly a joke—or perhaps more of a cultural observation—made by Johnny Carson. Remember him? It went something like this:
Scientists have recently discovered the smallest smallest unit of time that can be measured. However, this record has been broken. The smallest unit of time is now the time between a New York traffic light turning green and the taxi behind you honking.
I think there should be a new “shortest” unit of time. It’s the time between an artisanal slow food becoming popular and the industrial crap food producers producing a really awful rendition of it for cheap. The masses gobble this stuff up, most not even having a clue as to how absolutely fabulous the real stuff is. It’s the latest thing; they must have tasted it to keep up with the crowd.
It’s that way, certainly, with balsamic vinegar. The real stuff takes years to make; each year the rapidly darkening liquid picks up the scent of different woods as it’s transferred from larger barrel to smaller barrel. (You can learn about and witness the laborious process at the Balsamic Vinegar Museum in Spillamberto. The ghostly picture to the right of a bottle of balsamic vinegar was taken there.)
You won’t believe how it tastes. Your taste buds will never be the same. Like your tongue seeks out a cavity in your teeth, your buds will forever search for the real Balsamic. Honest.
But the industrial crap, made from distilled rice vinegars to which caramel flavorings and color, has been responsible for the real Balsamic’s fall; producers say they’ve suffered “60 million euros a year in lost revenue” according to Italy Magazine
I wonder how they know that folks would shell out for the real stuff? I mean, people like cheap. It makes no difference that a single drop of real Balsamic Vinegar has more flavor than a liter of crap vinegar, folks are enamored with the price per unit weight. Most people even buy cars this way, although it’s way more expensive to make a light, efficient car than a poorly designed heavy one.
Ok people, I’m gonna say this just once. Get a grip. Indulge your taste sensations. Go to Italy and buy a small vial of some real 15 year old Balsamic Vinegar. Use it as a touchstone to your time on the boot, one of the scents you must smell in Italy.
You’ll wake up in the morning glad you did. It will improve your sex life, too. I promise. And my promise is as good as any promise in a television commercial.
I promise.
The Giro comes to Aulla · May 14, 12:35 PM by James Martin
Well, I have to say, the day dawned without much promise of race-watching bliss. There was thunder, there was pounding rain. It was just like any other spring day in 2010 here in the Lunigiana, where the ground is saturated and the seasonal streams are frothy mocha and angry. By noon the weather hadn’t changed much. But after a long lunch, we four biking aficionados (well, three fans and Martha, who bought the ice cream so we’re grateful) gazed out the window and there it was, the tiniest bit of blue.
That blue would get grudgingly brighter. By three it had won out over the gray.
So, in the glaring sun we toured Aulla to pass the time. There’s not a whole lot to see. Time passed anyway.
We ended our tour with gelato. The store was right next to where they parked the trucks with the blaring, distorted “music” they foist upon fans at these athletic spectacles. Young people jumped from cars. Many tried dancing. It was not their thing (one supposes that the odd, epileptic-like seizure was). The calmer ones handed out free things. I am now in the possession of an environmentally correct writing instrument. I think. I did not get a free California prune. Yes, California’s prunes are one of the advertisers of the Giro d’Italia. (Parse that last sentence, please. I cannot.) I have a video of the individually plastic-packaged prune aftermath. Yes, folks who didn’t want them (a majority to be sure) left them on the ground. Trucks ran over them. It was not a pretty sight. I will not foist it upon you in video form.
We eventually positioned ourselves a bit past the sprint finish line and waited. Around four a cacophony of honking maniacs arrived, many of them in the constabulary class.
Then came the real bikes.
These bikes:
The man shown in second place here after the sprint is Mathew Lloyd, the Australian who eventually won the stage.
Then, six minutes or so later, came the best of the rest:
And that was that.
——
If you like the spectacle that precedes the race stages, certainly you will like to swath your bod in Guidogear .
Prostitution in Italy Redux · Apr 25, 08:25 AM by James Martin
If you look “down there” you might find, within the tangle of words, our recent post on prostitute crossings. It’s quite popular. It concerns some quite provocative street signs.
With the help of friends on our Facebook Page, and especially of Gloria Casina Di Rosa, author of the Tuscan Essential Blog At Home in Tuscany, I think I’ve come to the very bottom of the situation.
Turns out that those “prostitute crossing” signs are limited to a single village in the Veneto region called Mogliano. It is an industrial town, as I understand. Wikipedia says: It is also on the busy Udine-Venice railroad route and, like Mestre, serves as a dormitory town for people working in the surrounding industrial areas. Hmmm, perhaps that explains the demand, if not the supply.
In any case, the signs, depicting a large breasted woman with a handbag and high heels, not to mention billowing hair, are evidently the work of Mayor Giovanni Azzolini. They are there to prevent those rear-endings you get when you start gawking at prostitutes.
I am still of the opinion that idealizing the profile of a hot babe on a sign is hardly the way to keep people from gawking. Some journalists suggest that the problem is with the growing number of transvestite prostitutes, in which case the signs are not anatomically correct anyway, and would tend to cloud the issue even further as people squinted trying to make out the details, omitted or not.
Drudge says little. Well, there’s this
“I will not leave any citizen alone to combat this phenomenon, which has by now surpassed any level of tolerability,” said Mayor Giovanni Azzolini.
Yeah, so give ‘em a sign. Good work. Maybe it would be better to do what the Swiss are doing:
Swiss prostitutes are being trained to use defibrillators to prevent clients with heart problems from dying on them.
Yes, the young ‘uns can’t afford the good life on account of gigantic money drains like Goldman Sachs, so the leave it up to us old farts with bungled-up tickers to keep the street economy going.
Yes, I hope the defibrillator idea catches on. You never know.
The Pope and the Maltese Phallus-Like Thing · Apr 14, 10:25 AM by James Martin
The world is a funny place and becoming funnier—especially with relation to staunchly upright things. I’m talking totem poles. Or I think I am.
Here’s the thing. The Maltese are expecting a visit from the Pope. They’re justifiably nervous about it this visit in general, but they have a bigger problem. You see, the Maltese also have this modern “phallic” object sticking up out of the gravely soil of their tiny island country. It’s an art thing called “Colonna Mediterranea”. It is also a column, and therefore it reminds the sexually repressed of “the thing they must not think about”, namely, the phallus, or as we commoners who don’t want our web site to be censored by machines say, “the penis.” It is predominantly blue.
The Maltese want to take down and hide the column for the duration of the Pope’s visit. I’m sure this will please him. At least he won’t have to look out the windows of the Popemobile and ask the bigwigs traveling with him, “what’s that phallus doing there? Are your people orgiastic heathens? Well, they will be if they see that!”
(I wish to note here, for no particular reason, that this sexual repression of which we speak has not seemed to have dimmed the ardor of the people who work under the Pope. So the fix is: more repression. Repress until something cracks. That will help.)
This story caught my attention because I remember when I was dragged to church by my parents during one of our fishing vacations and was treated to a lively sermon in which the preacher read the riot act to his parishioners. I will never forget the eloquence (or volume) with which he delivered the holy punch line on the isolation of the faithful from the vulgarity of everyday life. “I do not want ever again to walk into McHenry’s Barber Shop and hear the cussing stop!” he bellowed, his right index finger held phallicly aloft until minutes later he paused and gripped the pulpet with both hands, presumably to let the freakishly swollen veins in his forehead return to their normal size. It was a good bet he wasn’t happy with his life.
So I’m thinkin’ there’s something quite wrongheaded about all this. I mean the repression, the Pope, everything. Malta’s ancient sexuality seems, after all, to be dominated by women. Fat women. They’re there, carved in stone. There are also pubic triangles hung like advertisements in front of “temples” (of lust?—who knows?). It was the Romans who hung depictions of erect “phalluses” over their shops for good luck.
And this repression thing is wrong too. Doesn’t anyone read Genesis any more? It’s in the Bible. God slaps his forehead and says, “I almost forgot but listen, Adam and Eve, there’s a single tree in this humongous garden I don’t want you to eat from…”
And so the first couple rush for the tree and eat. You’d expect them too, right? God the creator certainly did. Eve doesn’t say, “gee, I counted thirteen million and seventy five trees bearing deliciously ripe fruit in this amazing garden. We could easily not eat this apple thingey you know.”
Nope, the minute God drew their attention to it, they couldn’t resist. It’s the best part of being human. Somebody tells you something is impossible and the gears start turning. You have to work hard, but soon you’re sure you have an answer.
Yup, Adam and Eve become human at that moment and zounds, we’re still in the same state of “can-do” mind. Astounding, is it not? So just go with it, blue, ribbed, column drum phallus and all.
——
Read the inspiration for this public display of sacrilege: ‘Vulgar’ phallic sculpture should be pulled down for Pope’s Malta visit, mayor says and cuss or discuss it on our Wandering Italy Facebook Page. You should plan a trip to Malta, too. Maybe not while the Pope is there.
Virtual Sistine Chapel · Apr 4, 09:10 PM by James Martin
Thanks to Eternally Cool we now have knowledge of the Vatican’s brand new Virtual Sistine Chapel, an inspired bit of work.
Yes, there’s finally a Sistine Chapel in which a simple flick of your mouse can turn the thing any which way, allowing you to peer at the frescoes or gawk at the the floor decorations. You can gleefully zoom into your favorite figure about to be dispatched to purgatory or her breasts.
I like it.
Ok, I hear you say, “but it can’t beat the real thing!”
Well, yeah. I know the feeling. I had it when I visited Lascaux II. The zing isn’t really there when you know something is fake. Compared to the caves I’ve visited in the Dordogne that were actually ancient, a gaze, or even a long stare at the admittedly well-executed fakery didn’t do much for my soul—or even my amazement.
But the virtual Sistine Chapel is different. I’ve been to the Sistine Chapel. You wait outside for a long time. When your time comes, you’re herded inside. It’s like a cattle pen in there, except prettier. There are guys in uniform at the front whose job it is to shush you and say “no photography” about every 22 seconds, or about every 2,500 shutter clicks. Nobody shushes at all. Emboldened by the lack of gunshots behind the “no photography” pronouncements, weaselly folks start yanking cameras out of purses and pockets, shooting away at will. Flash on Captain, full speed ahead!
I truly admire anyone who can have a spiritual experience inside such a carnival funhouse. At least the virtual Sistine Chapel is devoid of dimwits, allowing the quiet and lengthy contemplation that should come from viewing such masterful, odd, and disturbing works of art. It’s like the Lascaux thing in reverse. Where Lascaux tries to substitute a fake experience for the real thing, the virtual Sistine Chapel gives a new context to the whole experience of viewing the art.
I’m not saying you’ll like it. You might say it’s not like the original because the colors are not exactly as the artist intended—but how do you know? You might be looking at the virtual Sistine Chapel on your .47 inch iWatch screen and wondering what the fuss is all about because you really can’t make out much and we know the people who make the iWatch always make a perfect product—so perfect in fact that people sleep in the middle of streets for days for the privilege of being first to own one. So dammit it must be the web page that is programed wrong.
But heck, whatever you use to look at stuff on the internet—knock yourself out. Or see the Virtual Sistine Chapel. It’s darned awesome. The Vatican done good.