Drinks with our friends at the hotel after a morning with them at Hatshepsut's temple and the mortuary temple of Seti I where we had the whole place to ourselves.

posted by Joanna @ 10/31/2006 06:10:00 AM 0 comments  

Headed out for an evening in Luxor proper, along the corniche, at Luxor Temple and in the souk.





Then the car noses through the pitch black labyrinth of the mud walled village, headlights picking out a gaggle of girls in hajib, little boys in ankle length djellaba, a cow tied up by the front door that emanates the blue glow of the television, small donkeys munching hay, plastic bags floating in the ditches, a chained snarling dog guarding the sheep pen... we go to dinner at our friend's home here in the "real" Egypt.

Warm wonderful people with their joyous, exuberant children. We come bearing two kilos of pastry and a large package of multicolored pens, to share in their one meat meal of the week- chicken.

posted by Joanna @ 10/29/2006 05:47:00 AM 0 comments  

Birds rioting in the bouganvilla, the splash of fountains in the courtyards, the sounds of the relentless call to prayer and dogs barking drift in from the village down the road, from farther out in the desert the sound of donkeys braying... we are back in Egypt.

Coral breasted, green winged dove drinking at the pool...

posted by Joanna @ 10/28/2006 09:04:00 AM 0 comments  

I was in Rome when the shrub signed the Military Commissions Act that deprives us of habeus corpus.

...this is going to go down in history as one of our greatest self-inflicted wounds. And I think you can feel the judgment of history. It won't be kind to President Bush.

But frankly, I don't think that it will be kind to the rest of us. I think that history will ask, Where were you? What did you do when this thing was signed into law? There were people that protested the Japanese concentration camps, there were people that protested ... other acts. But we are strangely silent in this national yawn as our rights evaporate.

Jon Turley
Professor of Constitutional Law
George Washington University

It was a beautiful, sunny autumn day in Rome and I went to the Villa Borghese to see the Bernini sculptures and the Caravaggio paintings. And I was glad to be away from my native country on this day of its national shame.

posted by Joanna @ 10/19/2006 11:50:00 PM 0 comments  

So you should have seen this one coming! I'm serious about this. Get out and vote!!!




As a perk for viewing this message, here's some eye-candy from a sparkling autumn day in the Val d'Orcia.

posted by Joanna @ 10/10/2006 07:38:00 PM 0 comments  

This was the full moon last night. Autumn.

Made orecchiette con salsicce e broccoli for dinner after planting strawberries along the wall in the garden. I wanted to make banana nut bread but all the nuts in the market were whole and in their shells, so being the lazy person I am, I'd rather drive to the COOP today and buy shelled ones. The other day I harvested some of my red table grapes, called uva fragola here, meaning strawberry grapes because they're so sweet, and took them to the hair burners (hair salon) and the kids who run my favorite caffe in town.

The cantina is almost renovated (ready to be filled with wine and wood for the winter), the vendemmia has almost finished, the olives will be harvested in late November. I found a well in the back of my cantina that dates back a few hundred years. Now, I have a neighbor who gives me the most wonderful red wine from his vineyards for less than three euro a bottle. Without the label it's about twenty euro cheaper than it would be with the label. I also give him back the twelve bottles to refill from his cantina at the vineyards every couple of weeks.

This was dawn this morning. Autumn.

posted by Joanna @ 10/07/2006 09:38:00 AM 1 comments