Fiesole -- a step back

Before there were Medici, before there were Popes and even before their were Romans, the hills around Florence were populated with graceful people who had a special love for pointy hats.

At one time, the Etruscans had the view of the world

Today we took the bus to Fiesole, a hilltop village overlooking Florence. At one time, Fiesole was the center of society on the Italian peninsula. It was the home of people called the Etruscans.

I have loved Etruscan art since I first saw it in a college art history class. There is a depth of humanity to the sculpture and pottery that somehow speaks to me. The Etruscans were known for their bronze statuary and their black pottery painted with fine lines of red and yellow.

Fiesole was the capitol of the Etruscan peoples. It had temples, villas, workshops and, apparently, an active political society.  Fiesole vied with that city on seven hills to the south as the commercial and political power in Italy.  Rome, however, produced better soldiers who swept through Fiesole and the rest of the world.

The Romans burned the Etruscan temple and built a grander edifice in its place.  They also carved a natural bowl in the adjacent hill into an incredible amphitheater.  We went inside, to the museum, to find the Etruscans. Outside, we found the bright Italian sun and the Roman ruins.

Making sense of a museum abroad is something of a detective story. In this case, the museum had cards with somewhat incomplete English explanations.  They also provided a Samsung Galaxy with an audio-visual tour that hit the high spots. For the rest, we stared at the Italian signs and tried out words until the seemed to make sense.

My favorite area was the display of small Etruscan votive figurines that were found in graves. They showed long, lean figures wearing pointed caps like the one that Pagliacci the sad clown often wears. Maybe the "tears of the clown" first fell in Fiesole. The Etruscan's were not clowns, though. The sophistication of the tools and ornaments they left behind is breathtaking.

Of course, the Romans are always breathtaking. About 100 years ago, a couple of farm hands dug up a rock that turned out to be a step in front of a Roman temple.  The eventual excavation revealed the temple foundations, a large bath complex and an excellent amphitheater, complete with storage for props and a control area to manage the curtains.  Don't take my word for the quality of the theater -- it is still used regularly for concerts and was being prepared for a new series while we were there.

The furnaces for the baths

The Amphitheater

The amphitheater amazes me, but the bath complex fascinates me. There are no thermal springs here, so the water was heated in cauldrons, while the smoke and heat helped heat the floor of the sauna-like hot room.  Water made its way down hill to the hot pool, the tepid pool and the plain-old pool. Plenty of room on the side for massages and gymnastics.  This was an egalitarian spa -- Romans of all classes used the baths free.

Cecile and St. Cecilia

Fiesole is much more than BC antiquities, however. No tour in Italy is complete without 1) having lunch at a sidewalk cafe and 2) visiting a church. Lunch was pasta with mussels, clams and calamari for me and traditional Tuscan roast pork for Cecile.

The Museo Bandini in an old church gave Cecile a special treat -- a icon of St. Cecilia. She is the patron saint of musicians -- quite appropriate for Cecile.

Another treat was coming across a poster of an early 1900s view of Fiesole -- the lane we were walking along. It gave us a chance to photographically put ourselves into historical perspective.

It was a great day, though we were hot and tired by the time the No. 7 bus took us back to Florence. Too hot to cook. After we cleaned up, we went to a nearby pizzeria for dinner. Unlike the huge, meaty discs you get a Shakespeare's, here each person gets their own pizza (about 12-inches). The crust is light and thin while the toppings are lightly scattered over it. Washed down with a Tuscan red,  it makes a wonderful meal and a wonderful end to a wonderful day.

Friends indeed

 “Friend” has enjoyed a special place in our vocabulary over the past few days.

I am not the only Missouri journalism professor in Florence this June. While I am on vacation, Keith Greenwood and Nina Furstenau are working.  Tough duty, but someone has to do it.

Nina Furstenau, me, and Keith Greenwood

Keith teaches our arts journalism class. He is shepherding a group of students who learn not just to look at the cornucopia of art in Florence, but to share the wonder of it all with the public. Keith is a photojournalism professor with a bent for history and design.

In a similar vein, Nina has a class of students learning to write about foods and wine. She is on the faculty of the agriculture journalism department with a joint appointment to the J-School. She is an expert on agro tourism and has authored several food books.

Thursday we all got together for dinner (Nina, of course, picked the trattoria). We met at a quiet little place near the Grand Synagogue across the river from us.  Trattoria Cesarina was a luscious choice – great food, great wine, great conversation.  We dined on the sidewalk beneath great umbrellas. I split a Tuscan T-bone (highly spiced) with Cecile and she split her gnudi (pasta dumplings) with me. I had biscotti to dip in liqueur for dessert while Cecile had Tuscan cheesecake – not sweet, more like ricotta cake.

And we talked. And talked. And talked. It was a memorable evening.

Cecile on the rooftop of the Uffizi

Earlier that day we had made another type of friendship.  We became members of the Friends of Uffizi Museum. Membership has its benefits. While we are always happy to support the arts, we now get free entry into a host of state museums in and around Florence.

The savings in ticket prices wasn’t the biggest draw for us, however. With our membership cards, we can pop in and out of museums at will. This takes much of the urgency out of our trip, as we can enjoy museums and galleries in small bites.

We started by spending a little over an hour at the Uffizi.  This is the most famous of Florentine museums – the home of works by Michelangelo, da Vinci, Titian and any other famous Renaissance painter you can name. Even though our stroll took us through just a few galleries, it was an afternoon of visual overload.

So what do you do in Florence when you are overloaded? Have a cappuccino, of course. In this case, we went to the rooftop café for an overpriced frozen cappuccino and a priceless view of the city. I enjoyed watching the smile on Cecile’s face every bit as much as I enjoyed the masterpieces inside.

Today we strode off toward the Ponte Vecchio, membership cards in hand.  We were heading to the Boboli Gardens, but came to the entrance of the Bardini Gardents first.

The rich of old Florence wrapped themselves not just in gilded mansions, but terraced gardens lush with flowers, fruits and trees of all kind. The apartment in which we are staying is part of an old but unfamous villa. Through the back gate of the complex is a small but elegant garden with stone steps leading up the hill.

The Bardini Garden also has steps. And more steps. The gardens take your breath away with their beauty, but only after the climb up the terraces has already left you panting. It is well worth it, however, as the view from the top is spectacular.

Cecile took this spectacular panorama with her iPhone from the top of the Bardini Gardens

The walk to the top was precise architecture, but the walk down was simple neighborhood charm. We walked down a narrow cobbled street that wound past 13^th century buildings – including Galileo’s original observatory (now a house).

The old 'hood

At the bottom, we came out near the Pont Vecchio and a gelatoria. There is always a gelatoria around the corner. I think it may be required by Italian law.

We were close to the Pitti Palace, so went to the head of the line, waved our cards and went in. The Pitti Palace was the domain of the Medici family. It’s huge – more than 200 yards across its front.  For centuries, it was Versailles, the Tate and Lourve wrapped in one. It is still one of the most important art collections in the world and another source of artistic visual overload. When you see painting after painting that previously peered out at you from history books, your mind does flips.

The other overload, however, was on our feet. We slogged home and took a well-deserved nap before dinner. Afterwards, we sat on a park bench along the Arno so Cecile could read her Kindle and I could type this missive.

Not a bad way to spend a day.

Food for body, soul and mind

One of the real joys of spending more than a few days in Florence is the luxury of changing your mind.

Today we were walking to the Accademia to see David when we stopped to pick up a few maps at the  Tourist Information Center.  While there, we found out we could get a pass tomorrow that gives entry to a host of museums. The price was right, but even better was the thought of going to a museum for just an hour or so, then coming back later.

So go to Plan B, which is look around and head to the nearest thing that interests you.

With our stomachs rumbling for lunch, what interested us was the San Lorenzo Central Market.

I love these markets. Every European and Asian city has them, but in the U.S. we have a precious handful -- Pikes Place in Seattle and Boston's Haymarket come to mind. Maybe our small town farmers markets, like Columbia's, will help us recall our roots. Maybe.

What I especially like about European markets is the eclectic fare and the eclectic shoppers you find.  These are permanent stalls, so ordinary folks stop by for incredibly fresh fruits, fish, meat, cheese, bread and almost anything else edible. Chefs have their favorite stalls. Then there are the tourists looking aghast at the skinned sheep's head or piles of octopus tentacles.

I was in a photographer's daze of bright colors, sculptured faces and perfect lighting -- but Cecile kept her head and pointed us to a fish stand that had five stools out front.  And fresh calamari on the menu.

We shared a €10 combo plate of little squid rings, chunks of fried white fish and two prawns that could be mistaken for lobsters. Washed down with a cold Birra Moretti (at least for me).

There is food, then there is that with no adequate name that makes your mind reel around your tastebuds. I reeled and would have been happy to sit there munching calamari until I exploded.

But there was a whole market to explore.  Fruit stands, butcher shops (featuring huge Florentine steaks), a wonderful pasta shop, and a bakery with fresh treats for our dessert. And with body sated, it was time to feed the mind.

Nearby was the Basilica of Santa Maria Novella, the oldest great basilica in Florence.  The crowds are sparse, admission is cheap, but the views are wonderful. The exterior is a bold geometric puzzle -- a theme that follows inside. The whole church is an eye-teaser. Inside, the columns get closer together as they approach the altar.  That makes the nave, viewed from the back, seem far longer than it really is.

It was also something of a test kitchen for  Renaissance artists trying to develop techniques to provide perspective. Masaccio, Giotto, Filippino Lippi, Ducchio di Buoninsegna, Ghirlandaio, Brunelleschi ... it was like an art history book in stone. The cool interior and subdued lighting even gave it the comfort of a good book.

So our change in plans left us with a good day.  A very good day. A day even better when Cecile cooked fresh pasta with pesto glazed chicken thighs at our appartment to a toast of great Tuscan red wine.

Can't top that, so I vote to sleep in tomorrow.

Just a walk through the neighborhood

My Fitbit said we had already trekked about 100,000 steps in Florence, we puttered around this morning.  But by afternoon, the urge hit to take a walk through our neighborhood of Oltrarno. We followed a loop recommended by Rick Steeves, just enjoying the scenery and gelato. Here are a few pics:

I came, I saw, I stopped

Graffiti art

Well-appreciated view

Hotel bicycles

Old terra-cotta doorway figures

The gelato dilemma: So many choices

Cecile's gelato del giorno

Have phone, will text

Living high

Clay art in front of a shoe store

Galileo and the bird of superior wisdom

I was one of those weird science-class geeks in junior high school.  You know, the guy with messy hair, half-untucked shirt and a hand that flies up every time the science teacher asks a question about the Periodic Table.

Galileo

Monday, however, I started to wonder if I had actually snoozed through all my science classes and three seasons of the Discovery Channel. It just took a trip to the Galileo Museum.

You remember Galileo -- the guy who invented the telescope, figured out the Earth orbits the Sun (not vice versa) and got into trouble with the Church for saying so.

That was good enough for a place in history, but it is as incomplete as saying Edison invented the light bulb.  Galileo Galilie was a knowledge engine of epic proportions who explained everything from the structure of the solar system to the characteristics of mass to why tides go in and out.

The Museo Galileo (also called The History of Science Museum) has been in Florence since 1927, but the various collections of scientific artifacts have been in town since Cosimo Medici began picking up gadgets in the late 1300s.

Galileo's models

What sets these early science fair exhibits apart from modern museums is that Galileo and his peers had to explain basic science to a doubting public.  Not just explain, but demonstrate in obvious, slap-up-the-side of the head specifics.

So Galileo spent much of his 77 years designing models that showed how the world works in simple terms. "Models" is a poor descriptive. These are beautiful pieces of art that could earn their own places in sculpture museums.

Galileo's final commentary

With polished pieces of wood, he redefined our understanding of nature. With a hollow wooden tube and two pieces of glass, he redefined our understanding of the cosmos. But consider this: Galileo's telescope was about 30x power -- the same as many binoculars.  With it, though, he saw the craters of the moon, counted the moons of Jupiter and found Saturn had rings. Either the crisp night air was much clearer in 17th century Florence or the man had the eyes of an eagle.

One thing my 8th grade science teacher did tell me was that Galileo was not very popular with the powers that be. The Inquisition threatened him with torture if he insisted that the Earth moves around the sun. He gave in and recanted. Popular legend, however, says that has he left the courtroom he turned and said "And yet it moves."

Maybe. That would seem to be a quick passport to the rack. But he did get in the last word -- or at least the last gesture. When he died, has acolytes cut off his middle finger and preserved it. Today it sits prominently in a glass case, surrounded by his persuasive models, flipping off the doubters of his world and ours.

Under the Tuscan Sunday

Today we did what one is supposed to do on a Tuscan Sunday. We rested.

It undoubtedly had something to do with jet lag and the near absence of sleep for two days as we traveled. But it felt like a glorious celebration of vacation.

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.

We rose near noon, had crusty bread, salami and eggs for breakfast. We puttered with the clothes and travel gear we had hastily put away the day before, then went for a leisurely stroll through Oltrano -- the area of Florence "beyond the river Arno." At one time it was the equivalent to the other side of the tracks, but it has never been the same since the Medici built their palace across the bridge from central Florence.

A tether ring

Our apartment is here, behind a set of great wooden doors flush with the curb. I get a guilty thrill when I unlock the door to a building that other tourists are admiring. But more of that later.  This afternoon was a walk through the many streets, dodging motor scooters and taking in as much of the atmosphere as the brain allows.

Our door

There were many small but delightful finds, such as a marble plaque memorializing Elizabeth Barret Browning or the tether rings set into the stone walls.  Each of these has its own face -- the work not of a sculptor, but of a blacksmith. Functional art for a function that no longer exists.

We walked by the Medici's Pitti Palace and Boboli Gardens, but decided to wait until we have an entire day to enjoy them. Which way? To the Ponte Roma (the gate in the old city wall that led to Rome), of course. But that decision called for gelato (following a more substantial pizza and a corneto sandwich).

The perspective mastery of Masaccio

Nearby was the Basilica di Santa Maria del Carmine. This is the launching point for 3-D (my current academic focus). Masaccio completed a series of frescos in the 1420s that astounded the art critics of the day. Initially he painted a large scene (top) that was the first known use of realistic shadows in natural perspective. The lighting in the painting was as if it came from the large window over the altar.

He kept improving on his new form. Shadows and size in the lower fresco fooled the eye into thinking the faces and limbs of the saints actually stood out from the wall. It was dark and hard to photograph, but I want to learn more about this young artist and his colleagues who adorned the chapel. Smart History has an excellent video explaining the significance of Masaccio.

Finally, to home -- by way of the Conad Supermarket.  About the size of a 7-11, but super by urban standards. We are enjoying the ability to explore local foods in our own kitchen.  When we finally made it home, Cecile made a feast of fresh tagliolini pasta with bolgnese sauce and lots of extra mushrooms.  With a side of crusty bread, of course.

Ponte Vecchio

We walked off our meal with an even more leisurely stroll down to the Ponte alle Grazie, the nearest bridge over the Arno to us. A pocket park next to the bridge has a fascinating modern scupture of St. John the Baptist, patron saint of Florence.  We watched the sun go down over the famous Ponte Vecchio and almost reluctantly came home so I could edit photos and write this memory.

Buona notte.  Bed is calling.

Room with a view for we two – the Florence adventure begins.

It’s not really an exotic adventure unless a trip starts with drama. And of course, ours did.

Definitely not Oregon

Let me back up a bit. Cecile and I have wanted to tour Italy since our honeymoon – days short of 42 years ago. Time and money got in the way. For out 30^th anniversary, we finally went to Florence.  But it was Florence, Oregon, which was just a few miles from our Eugene home.

Once I became a professor, I could afford the time during the summer break. But Cecile could not take off as much time as we wanted for a trip. This year, however, Alliance Enterprises gave her a 12-week sabbatical to do what she pleased. And it pleased both her and me to rent an apartment in Florence – Italy this time – for the month of June.

The drama began with a text message from Delta Airlines that the flight comprising the Paris to Florence leg of our trip was cancelled. Then the St. Louis agent said she could not rebook us, as Air France owned that flight and Air France doesn’t like to talk to Delta.

An Air France ticket agent in New York found an alternative flight for us – but routed through Amsterdam and adding 11 hours to the trip.  We were bummed, but still enthused. When we arrived in Paris, a more enterprising agent found a direct flight for us, so long as we would wait around Charles de Gaulle Airport for eight hours. We tried to take a bus to a nearby super mall, but apparently the busses had the same schedule as our original flight.

So wait we did. We browsed every shop, tried sleeping in awkward seats, and read our books (Cecile on a Kindle and me on old original iPad.

Cecile is our navigator

Eventually we made it and were overjoyed to land at the Florence Airport. No ATM, though, and no place to by SIM cards for our phones. But we found a lonely pay phone to call our landlady and caught a cab to our temporary home near the Arno River.

The joyous greeting given us by Dafi Krief made up for all the discomfort the airlines could throw at us. She and her husband are artists – she a potter and he a sculptor. The apartment they own is itself a gallery. It is in a 13^th Century building next to the old city walls in Oltarno – just across the river from the cathedral district. The white walls soar to a ceiling of ancient beams. Original artwork is placed like only an artist could place it.

It is small, but incredible.

Then I discovered that we had left a bag in the taxi. In that bag was my iPad and an older unlocked phone I planned to use, among other things (like my toiletries). Dafi called the cab company several times, to no avail. I wrote a plaintive note to them in English and then in computer-translated Italian. Why worry too much, though? We actually made it to Florence, after all. 

It's more than a store

Not surprisingly, we slept in. We made breakfast from the two eggs left by the previous tenant, then went off in search of a SIM for Cecile’s phone. That took a few hours of wandering and rewandering only to find the phone store closed for siesta. But along the way ate our first gelato, got cash and enjoyed the ambiance. Had a late lunch at our neighborhood restaurant, then back to the phone store for the SIM.

Squash blossoms at Eataly

We went to a nice but rather routine supermarket for our groceries, but later found what may be the ultimate grocer. Eataly is both shopper and chef-friendly (Mario Batali owns the New York version). It combines elegantly displayed foodstuffs with scattered restaurant counters. Where else have you seen squash blossoms in the produce department? I’ll be back (and write more).

So now we are back at the apartment, where Cecile cooked a wonderful pasta that we washed down with a fantastic red wine. It is time now to reflect, recover and ready for another day in Italy.

The Hawks of Spring

Some people wait for robins, others look for swallows.  Spring comes to my world when the red-tailed hawks return to the old oak off of my back deck.   

Our lot sits on the edge of a steep hill that runs down to Hinkson Creek.  The 100-plus foot elevation drop is probably why they call it Cliff Drive, though it is more of a steep hill.

Each year, a pair of red-tailed hawks returns to a stick-and-leaf nest in the crotch of a very tall oak tree near the creek.  Because the tree sits way down in that little valley, it barely comes to eye-level from our deck.  The nest, in fact, is slightly down hill, offering a great view of the hawk family via a spotting scope.

Some years the leaves pop out so soon that we see only glimpses as the brood develops.  We hear them, though.  The babies cheep loudly and whichever hawk parent has nest duty loudly screams to the mate for more food.  Life is tenuous for the squirrels in our woods when the hawks are in town.

Spring is quite late this year.  So late, in fact, that a freak snowstorm dumped nearly 10 inches of snow on top of the nesting mom.  I thought she had fled, but the next day her head popped out of the snowbank.  By noon, she had the nest cleared and was back to warming the eggs.

Cecile, God love her, has enjoyed watching me photograph the hawks as much as I have enjoyed watching them. She made my day by insisting I buy a decent telephoto lens this year. So, while I started the season with a 55-250 mm on my Canon T1i, I now can peer into the next with a Sigma 150-500 mm lens.  Even with the big gun, the nest is just a small part of the frame that must be enlarged. It also only works well at that distance if the camera is on a tripod.

But I'm entranced with this feathered family. With any luck at all, I soon will be able to use that big (but not booming) Canon to take photos of the hawk chicks. Meanwhile, I've started a gallery of my photos on Flickr.

The tearful joy of victory

It did not take me long to break my pledge to post every week. But I've been busy doing something I'm proud of -- and learning a lesson along the way.

I'm a member of the University of Missouri Faculty Council.  We have two types of full-time faculty here. Traditionally, university faculty are either tenured or striving to become tenured.  A growing number, however, work under annual or three -ear contracts.

The rules that govern the university say only tenured/tenure track faculty can serve on Faculty Council and vote on university-wide issues. Since the staff have their own council, this left the 700 or so "NTT" (non-tenure track) professors out in the cold.

Six years ago, I was elected to council because the School of Journalism doesn't pay much attention to that divide.  More than half of our professors are professionals who turned professor without the benefit of a Ph.D.  They are all just colleagues to us, so we thought nothing when we elected a senior professional to the council.

The council balked and forced us back to our smaller pool of "T/TT" professors -- which eventually led to me.

From the beginning, I thought the professorial split was unfair.  I brought up the inequity whenever I could.  When I became a council officer a few years ago, I began to seriously work to change the rules.

For two years, we agonized over how to word the proposal.  Then we spent the past two months hearing traditionalists fret that the NTT would take away their tenure and that the proposal would damage the faculty's ability to oversee curriculum. I, in turn, argued passionately that this was an issue of fairness among those who should have the intelligence to fully understand the civil rights.

A week ago, the votes were finally in: 65% for enfranchisement, 35% against.

The morning the vote totals were to be released, I did everything I could to avoid opening my email.  When I finally did and saw the victory, I learned that lesson I mentioned.

I wept.

I've covered dozens of elections over the year and, like most journalist, smirked when the victors broke down in tears.  It made good photos, but seemed a bit silly for grown men and women to get that emotional over a ballot.

Then there were tears in my own eyes. The emotion I could never understand, let alone explain, was crystal clear.

I worked hard for this issue. I believed in it. And I went to bed with the sinking feeling that my efforts were for naught.

Late in life I learned the traumatic truth of democracy.  While the majority decides, the prospect of being among the losing minority is very real. The process of civic persuasion is so trying that you can see it on the faces of the victors.

And so I wept.

Pancakes for a cause

Cooking for the multitude

You do the damnedest things in the name of community.  But this week it was easy -- all I had to do was make sure a couple thousand people enjoyed themselves at the Kiwanis Pancake Breakfast.

I first joined a Kiwanis Club in 1980 when I was assistant to the publisher of the Tillamook Headlight-Herald.  When the invitation came, I had no idea what a "kiwanis" was nor why I should be interested.

My boss was too the point.  "Go, it's the service club to be in here."

That was tempered by the fact that he was the only person at the paper who qualified to be in Rotary, the boss-only service club.

When I moved to Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, I was at first too busy to think of Kiwanis.  But I found myself focusing too much on government, crime and mayhem instead of the vibrancy of our community.  I found another Kiwanis Club full of energy, good-hearted humor and the passion to serve.  Even in the snowbound darkness of Northern Idaho mornings, breakfast with my fellow Kiwanians was often the highlight of my life.

Pouring samples of MUple syrup

Eventually I went off to grad school and into management at  newspapers where I was expected to join that "other" service club.  Rotary was enjoyable and definitely the place to meet movers and shakers.  But "service" tended to mean digging into your wallet for another $5 "fine." (Exception:  The Pendleton Rotary poured beer at The Roundup.  We got about a penny a cup for our efforts and raked in $1,600 one year.  Do the math.)

I invited myself to a Kiwanis Club here in Columbia a couple of years after I took my position at the Missouri School of Journalism.  It was a spin on my earlier need:  I knew there had to be something in this town beyond Ph.D.s and hoary academic traditions.

The Kiwanis Club of Columbia takes the term "service" seriously.  We box groceries for the Food Bank, read to kids at a pre-school, serve lunches to kids in need and take on a community building project each year.  That's in addition to the score or so of children's programs we support.

Cooking breakfast ham

I good part of the funding for those deeds comes from the annual Pancake Breakfast we put on with the four other Kiwanis Club in Columbia (all spin-offs from our original club).  Each of us is supposed to sell at least a dozen tickets, but I usually buy them myself and give them to friends.

It's an amazing gathering.  People from all walks patiently stand in line four a couple of rather ordinary hotcakes and a slice of ham. The dining hall at Columbia College fill with happy conversations as men and women in K-emblazoned had refill their coffee cups and bus their tables.  I circulated and gave samples of the maple syrup the MU Forestry Department is now making.

But the sweet surprise for me came a few days earlier.  I had avoided an officer position in the club for years, partly because my seat on Faculty Council gave me more than enough extra duty.  But I'm leaving the council in June, so gave in and agreed to be vice president next year (then president-elect the year after and president the third year).

My Kiwanian friend Ernie Lee sent a causal note to me last week thanking me for taking the position and explaining that the Pancake Breakfast is coordinated each year by the vice presidents of the five clubs. 

And by the way, next year it's our turn to provide the chairman for the event.

Service with a smile, Clyde.  Service with a smile.