I'm off to see Fahrenheit 9/11 tonight. It will be satisfying to see an American left wing yahoo giving all those Fox News types and Rush a run for their money. Meanwhile my friends are calling and e-mailing from Siena province to tell me that the weather is spectacular and, even though they're enjoying their stunning gardens, the lush countryside, their friends' swimming pools, their tranquil villages and each other's company, they would love to be coming to this movie with me tonight. They're finally hearing a sarcastic and simple middle-American voice that's giving vent to their own views, views that have been condemned as unpatriotic and un-American for so long that the concept of a loyal opposition elicits only looks of dumb incomprehension from our so-called leaders and the talking heads that toe the line. It may not be a great intellectual coup but it affords comfort and relief to the half of the citizenry who were beginning to wonder if each of them weren't alone in his or her experience of cognitive dissonance within the borders of what they thought was their country too.

One thing that annoys me about the template for this blog is that the link font in the body of a post is so faint that I wonder if anyone ever clicks through, e.g., the Pasquino or MoveOn.org links in previous posts.

And I'd really like to encourage more comment if anyone would like to take issue or hold forth about anything written here. Shiny Stat tells me lots of people look at the blog but I'm left wondering what anyone thinks of it, even allowing that a large percentage of viewers are just not particularly interested. Well, you, my anonymous readers, will let me know... or not. Va bene.

posted by Joanna @ 6/27/2004 11:32:00 PM 3 comments  

Here's one of my favorite views of my village- up there on top of the hill. The photo was taken from Bagno Vignoni.

posted by Joanna @ 6/27/2004 08:55:00 AM 3 comments  

Well, I got a real wake-up call this week! Received a message from a childhood classmate and when she looked at this blog she still wasn't sure if I was the person she'd been seeking. I know I've been evolving, but I didn't realize I'd become such a stranger to my past. But then as I look over the blog I realize that I mention next to nothing about the historical markers in the rear view mirror. Mmmmm....

Well, I was born in San Francisco, went to convent school and then to U.C. Berkeley. Then I went to Asia for a couple of years (Peace Corps, Korea), worked in Hawaii for awhile, moved to New York, taught English in East Harlem and the Lower East Side, and then went to graduate school. After a long career in mental health I ended up becoming the associate director of an outpatient mental health service and living in the historical landmark district of brownstone Brooklyn. Along the way I became progressively leftist, feminist, iconoclastic and anti-authority of any kind. I read voraciously and often became tediously obsessed, in the eyes of my many long-suffering friends, with such arcane subject matter as Celtic mythology, Jewish history, and maps of any kind. For a few years I skied every chance I got. I've traveled a lot but not enough. I devoted some years to the club scene in New York and then switched to opera at the Met and lots of museum going and fine dining. I suppose you wouldn't know from that list that I continue to spend inordinate amounts of time just lying around, but I do, and as long as I have a good book nearby, that's what I all too frequently love to do.

So now I'm going to stop working and try living off accumulated modest assets. I'll live in Italy and work on my medieval house and on my garden. I'll keep studying Italian and try to revive some long neglected skills, like drawing and painting, and to develop some new ones like computer graphics, and- getting really grandiose here- trying my hand at something like fresco? Anyway, I've left out a lot here, like the men and the cats in my life, but maybe this is a portrait of sorts, or perhaps a bit of a caricature.

I'm pretty convinced that Monotheism kills! and that the only reliable indicator of sanity is the capacity to laugh at oneself.

And speaking of humor, here's a quote from one of my favorite people in the whole world:

Europe has a new constitution with no mention of GOD or Christianity. How fucking wonderful! And now Spain is onto the gay marriage thing. The guy in the Big House in Roma is peeing in his dress, but luckily he is wearing depends.

posted by Joanna @ 6/25/2004 04:52:00 AM 0 comments  

I keep feeling that I'm not really giving vent to some of the darker things in my mind, mostly about power and fear and the horror this country's recent ruling faction is dragging us further into. I don't want to be a good German or a 1940's Californian. People lately of my neighborhood might be in Guantanamo or in the Brooklyn House of Detention on Atlantic Avenue. The laughable thing is that everytime I write to people in power they put my name on their fundraising mailing list. Guess they're not reading the letters. Duh!

Because my last name looks and sounds Arabic to some people, I get a lot of Islamic Center mailings for things like family outings and Arabic children's books. So ending up on the no fly list or worse is only half a joke.

But laughter gets me through a lot and I've got a lot of very, very funny friends who share my sick sense of humour. We're all on a no CARB diet: no Cheney, no Ashcroft, no Rumsfeld, no Bush. And we play Republican Survivor on line every week and read the Nation and send money to MoveOn.org

posted by Joanna @ 6/23/2004 04:24:00 AM 0 comments  

New scanner, old photo albums, new printer, superior laptop, tiny digital camera, and links to websites where both professional and amateur photographer friends have gifted us with their amazing pictures.... This has all the makings of a huge wall of my favorite photographs at Il Loggino. All of you be cautioned, that if you feel possessive of your work and don't want to walk into my home in Castiglione and be stunned at seeing a copy of your work on my wall, you should bluntly and emphatically convey your wishes to me. I promise not to publish or sell any of the prints I make to hang on my walls, but you are all so gifted and I would like a private gallery where the joy of looking at pictures taken by people I know will warm up Tuscan winter nights.

I'll try to contact anyone whose work I want to put in a frame on my wall.

Did I mention that there are what may loosely be called frescoes under some of the thick layers of paint in some of the rooms? These I will try to salvage if I can. There looks to be a chair rail height six inch band of a rather Oriental design running along one wall that will eventually be part of my dining area. And I have just the right Yi dynasty Korean rice chest to put nearby.

Decorating fantasies to distract me from the dreaded demolition and repair phase to come.

posted by Joanna @ 6/23/2004 01:19:00 AM 0 comments  

I think I want my garden to be silver and blue and pale gray green and purples with just a tiny splash of yellow and pink or peach here and there. That's a plan- can change it whenever I want.

This is what I think about when I don't know what else to worry about. And to help myself along, I got a wonderful book on "water-wise" Mediterranean gardening. Olive trees, lavender, rosemary, iris, and lots of salvia or sage.

I take breaks from thinking about what one should expect when the house is several hundred years old with four foot thick walls and there's never been serious plumbing or central heating and the wiring is just strung around from doorway to ceiling to far wall or from thinking about creating the art gallery.

Retreat to the garden. Build a low platform under the grape arbor so I can lie down in dappled shade, read books and reach up for grapes to savor between turning pages.

posted by Joanna @ 6/18/2004 12:44:00 AM 1 comments  

I'll have officially taken early retirement when I move to Italy next spring and I own a very large house and garden there. There is an unobstructed view of the entire Val d'Orcia from both. My plan is to live on the top two floors, turn the first floor into guest quarters and then.... The ground level has two cantine which open directly onto the only commercial street in the village. It's a one way lane that runs from the main piazza at the entrance to the village all the way to the exit at the other end. Most doors along this route are entrances to private residences, but interspersed among them are a bar, a hairdresser, the pharmacy, a geometra's studio, a flower shop, a couple of clothing stores, a fabric store, a grocery, a newsvendor and the post office.

I don't want to WORK but partly for pleasure and partly in self defense, I want to do something with the space. The self defense part came about when the rather unsavory proprietor of the bar five doors down rushed me upon my arrival this past spring and tried to pressure me into renting him the space for a - get this!!!- video game parlor. Che schifo! I said, very firmly, "No, serve di me!!!" (I need the space!)

I am thinking about creating an art gallery (open only seasonally) which could feature, initially, work by several of my very talented Italian friends- a painter, a photographer, a sculptor, a dollmaker (her work is exquisite in its artistry)....

My other notion is to explore the possibility of hosting a WiFi hotspot to one side of the gallery.

It seems to me that both endeavors would be positive additions to the village without being either intrusive or competitive.

posted by Joanna @ 6/12/2004 10:53:00 AM 0 comments  

posted by Joanna @ 6/04/2004 06:37:00 AM 0 comments  

Click through here: Pasquino is busy speaking out. I have something in common with Italians this week: embarrassment about our respective nation's current leadership.

posted by Joanna @ 6/03/2004 02:09:00 AM 1 comments