Viva Rapallo!

Depiction of Genoa from the Nuremberg Chronicles, 1498

The Most Serene Republic of Genoa was an independent state from 1005 until Napoleon put an end to so much in 1797.  During its heyday it claimed territory as distant as Syria (most of these far-flung territories were conquered by the Ottoman Empire in the 15th century). On May 17, 1229, Rapallo swore absolute fidelity to the Genoese Republic and by an act effected in the Palazzo dei Fornari di Genova, became a Podesteria.   A Podesteria is a district administered by an official called a Podesta, usually of the noble class, which we would today call a Mayor.  Until 1608 the Rapallo Podesteria was under the aegis of the Chiavari Captaincy.   In 1608, owing to its increased historical and strategic importance, Rapallo was elevated to its own Captaincy which included the towns of Santa Margherita Ligure, Portofino, Zoagli and parts of the Val Fontanabuona.

On Sunday (May 12) about thirty Rapallesi in marvelous costumes re-enacted the celebration of the constitution of the city as a Captaincy.  After the parade there was a program at the town Bandstand. which recreated the presentation of the city to the Capitaneato,

Here are some photos of the re-enactment (all I could think as I was watching it was how much more colorful, peaceful and fun it was than an American Civil War re-enactment.

Flag on left is, amusingly, of the Fireworks Committee of San Maurizio di Monti; flag on right is for the Capitaneato di Rapallo Pro Loco

The drummers played very medieval sounding cadences.

I thought this was the most medieval-looking character of all.

They never missed, even though they threw them very high.

I thought perhaps this regal couple had elevated standing, but my policeman source said no.

It was by the luckiest of chances that we happened upon this re-enactment.  We had gone to town to meet someone, and just stumbled on what should have been the main planned event of the week.  What I loved most were the costumes – there’s a part of me that wishes we still dressed like this – maybe not the hats, though a good veil is always an excellent accessory.  I love the long dresses that fall from an empire waist, with slit sleeves – it’s all impossibly wonderful.

McDonalds? Really??

Weren’t we lucky? The sun was shining and we could see the ground when we landed at London’s Heathrow Airport. What a treat to see the tapestry of Merrie Olde England spread out beneath us. It gives one a very clear visual understanding of their Greenbelt philosophy.

We spent the night in London before making the rest of the trip back to Italy.  It’s hard to resist the siren call of good British Beer, consumed by Speedy in this photo at the Wheatsheaf Pub in Harlington, adjacent to the airport.  That man behind him?  Turned out to be very friendly, a sort of Harlington Ambassador.

(By the way – a very useful aside – if you find yourself in London and are overstaying at an airport hotel, you do NOT have to take the confiscatory Hoppa buses to your hotel. Free local transport – red doubledecker buses – make the run down Bath Road where many of the airport hotels are. You won’t be dropped at the door, but you will save L 7 for the round-trip.)

London airport hotels are mingy in two ways – 1) you have to pay for the wifi that we’ve all come to depend upon and 2) breakfast may not be included.  It wasn’t in our case, and we didn’t have a lot of options nearby.  However, a little bird whispered in our ears that the McDonalds down the street offered free wifi, and, with a bit of an arcane registration ordeal, it proved to be true.  We decided to kill two birds with one stone (though we spared the kind whisperer) and to take our breakfast at McDonalds in addition to making use of their wifi.

Egg McMuffin! Though they are now called something completely different, I don’t remember what. I have always loved them. The ‘English Muffin’ is but a squishy hint of the real article, and the egg was probably laid by an unhappy hen; but the bacon was delicious! And here’s why:

What a shock!  McDonald’s has gone all socially-conscious and responsible on us.  I would never have imagined.  Speedy found the Egg McMuffin odious, but I loved mine (could have done with a bit of mayo, perhaps), but then I have always been a gustatory philistine.  So, the bacon was delish because it came from happy pigs.  And guess what else McD’s is serving:

Genuine organic milk!  I note they say nothing about the milk coming from cows who have not been treated with antibiotics and so forth, but oh well.  ’Organic’ is a start.

But what’s it a start of?  It makes it all so confusing when the companies we, as card-carrying liberals,  are meant to hate (McDonalds, Walmart, etc.) start engaging in behavior we approve of (even Walmart is up to some good, it seems).  I guess all we can do is applaud the steps they are taking, hope for ever more advances (especially for the employees), and enjoy the bacon.

Poor Neglected Blog

This blog has been languising, or rather my inspiration for it has been languishing. There have been hikes to tell you about, art exhibits, concerts… but somehow I’ve not sat down to do the work. We are about to return to Italy; I hope events, sights, smells, sounds and food will all conspire to produce some more entries.

In the meanwhile, here are a few photographs of what we leave behind us in Arizona. The saguaro cactus are in bud. They flower in a sort of halo up at the top; I had hoped to see the actual blooms this year, but we will miss that by a week or so.

This outrageous flower bloomed across the street.  It opened in the night and lasted for one day.

The curved-bill thrasher is a frequent visitor to our seed bell. One of my favorite birds, his eyes and general expression remind be of a raptor, though I believe he’s about as far from being one as is possible.

The prickley pear are in bloom:

A crown of buds sits atop the tall saguaro:

And a cactus wren sits atop the buds:

A small mamalaria cactus planted itself in our yard a year or two ago. This year it flowered:

This hummingbird (or one just like it) is a frequent visitor to my friend’s penstamen. The hummers’ little feet just dangle when they feed, which I never noticed until I took this photo.

Talk to you soon from the boot. Ciao.

Things That Fly

First hole at Painted Mountain Golf Course

When I was growing up we didn’t think much about golf in our family – it was a rich man’s sport and we weren’t rich.  We knew some people who played golf, and some of the boys in my circle of friends caddied on weekends (which made me very envious, because they got $5.00 a round, much better than baby-sitting paid in those days) (girls couldn’t caddy).  There was a lovely golf course in our town, the property of the small liberal arts college there, but we were not members.

Later, when I was a young adult and well into adulthood, I thought golf was the stupidest game in the world.  For starters, you didn’t hit a moving ball – what fun could that be?  Then there was the enormous waste of space – think of all the people who could live on those lovely greenswards.  Criminal!  Later still I reviled the game for the waste of water and energy to maintain the courses, and for the chemicals that are liberally applied to keep the grass so thick and green.  On a much more superficial level I found the clothing worn by golfers hilarious.  White shoes and belts, men in pink trousers (Sheriff Joe would love it) – definitely all fashion ‘don’ts.’

Now I’m an old fart and a seasoned golfer of some three years and I’ve changed my tune.  Speedy, the cause of my descent into the world of golf, and I usually walk when we play; after all, it is meant to be exercise, and a round of golf gives us a good four mile hike.  The game is much more challenging than I ever imagined, and much more fun (on the days when it’s not infuriating). Here in Arizona all the golf courses are watered with ‘reclaimed’ water – not stuff you want to drink.

But best of all, for me, is being outdoors for a four-hour stretch, looking at the flowers, the trees, the water (as long as I’m not looking for my ball in the water) and most of all, the things that fly over and around our golf course.  I won’t even bore you with the jets landing at Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport – they are a near constant, though still high enough that their noise is not intrusive; or with the numerous helicopters that fly around – MD Helicopters and Boeing both manufacture whirly-birds, which are frequently given test runs above Mesa.  Of more interest are the historic planes that fly from nearby Falcon Field where there is a museum operated by the Commemorative Air Force.

B-17 Flying Fortress (Sentimental Journey)

Here she is on the ground at the Air Museum:

This last is not housed at Falcon Field.  The Metlife blimps don’t have permanent homes, but rather stay near the events they are covering. (You can read all about them here.)

But I love the birds we see around the golf course even more than the flyers with engines.  As I began to prepare this post I realized that I’ve got far too many photos of golf course birds to put here, so I’ve made an album which you can see by clicking here (then click ‘slide show’).  I’m not even remotely confident about my bird ID’s, so feel free to correct me.

The two birds I love seeing the most are the peach-faced lovebirds which are native to arid regions of Africa and the Phoenix area.  They are popular pet birds, and some most have escaped around here; clearly they’ve been successful in adapting to Arizona life.  They are colorful and congregate in groups; they are tremendously chatty.  It’s not at all unusual to be lining up your golf shot and have a lovebird zoom in front of you about three feet away. Doesn’t this guy have an impish expression??

My other favorite to watch is the Great-tailed (or Boat-tailed) Grackle. The female is a rather dull brown-black in color, but the male is glossy black and proud of it.  They stalk around in a show-offy kind of way, and frequently stop and put their heads up in the air as if they were smelling something (if it’s Painted Mountain and 5 p.m. they’re smelling BBQ).

This week I got to see what I take to be the mating display of the male. He sat on a tree branch as normal as could be.  Then he ruffled out all his breast feathers, as if he were taking a deep breath, which he then held for a moment as he opened his beak.  At last he spoke – or rather sqawked, because that is the sound they make.  He alternated between the usual squawk and a sort of whistle.  The Cornell Ornithology Lab has a terrific web site where you can hear a lot of different birds, including the grackle - but I have to say, I think the ones on our golf course have a lot more raucaus call than those the lab recorded.

Here are a couple of other bird pictures which I hope will encourage you to look at the rest in the web album.

The coots are very entertaining as well, mostly because they are called coots, and when they get in your way you can say, “Watch out, you coots!”

Is there any place in the world where mallards are not at home?

Things that fly – the sky is full of them, and so are the golf-course ponds.  There is always something wonderful to look at to distract you from actually playing the game.

Our Neighborhood – Donald’s Bench

Donald has a mental illness, though I can’t tell you specifically which one.  In much the same way the church bells of San Maurizio mark the passage of our days there, Donald’s presence on his bench tells us that things are in order in this small corner of the world.

He arrives from his home sometime in the middle part of the morning and sits for his morning shift.  Late in the morning he walks along the busy four-lane highway to the supermarket about two miles distant and buys some food which he carries back in a plastic sack to his bench for his daily picnic.  Sometime in the mid-afternoon Donald takes himself home.  When he’s not actually present on his bench during the day, Donald leaves his warm jacket, a bag and a bottle of soda to mark his territory.

He’s a friendly, if remote, man;  I put him somewhere in his mid-50′s or early 6o’s, though it’s quite impossible to know for sure.  Passers-by almost always offer Donald a pleasant greeting (augmented sometimes with a treat if they know him), and if he’s not completely engaged in an interior dialogue  he returns the greeting cordially, while at the same time not inviting further chat.  Donald has a deep and musical voice; to receive a greeting from him is to hear a hymn.

So many elements contribute to the emotional content of our neighborhoods and give us the sense of ‘home.’  Donald makes such a contribution for us.  When he was absent for a few days last week we worried – influenza?  did he move away?  He returned this week and suddenly all was right with the world. Thank you, Donald.

Lakeside stroll

When one thinks of Arizona, lakes are not the first things that pop into one’s head. In fact, though, there are quite a few lakes in the State – from the large Roosevelt Lake created by the Theodore Roosevelt Dam in 1911 to the hundreds of teeny lakes that dot the many golf courses in the region.  It’s a disorienting but not unusual sight to see a large pick-up hauling a big motor boat along a desert highway.

Recently Speedy and I took ourselves and a picnic lunch to Tempe Town Lake, formed by a dam on the same Salt River that creates Roosevelt Lake, but some 80 miles closer to Phoenix.  In fact Tempe is just a stone’s throw from downtown Phoenix, and is the home of Arizona State University.

It is also home to the beautiful Tempe Center for the Arts, completed in 2007, just in time for Speedy’s and my arrival in Arizona.  It was a concert by the Ridge Trio that took us to the Art Center with our sack of food, and a very civilized time of it we had, sitting in metal park seats and watching the passing scene on the broad sidewalk between us and the lake.  Over two million people use the park each year, and we saw a fine cross-section of them: Dads with cameras and babies; boyfriends with cameras and beautiful girl friends; fitness enthusiasts speed-walking; young men practicing complex moves with a plastic sword; roller-bladers; co-eds jogging together; couples jogging together; solitary people jogging; and of course my favorite: dog walkers.  The largest dog we saw was Sally, a seven-year old Great Dane with one blue eye and one brown eye:

She was a very friendly girl, and I must say, it’s always a pleasure to meet someone who outweighs me by a good thirty pounds.

The Tempe Town Lake lies smack between the approaches to Sky Harbor Airport’s two runways; Speedy recalls many landings using the Salt River as his visual guide.  Here’s a Southwest Air flight bringing happy visitors to a place presumably warmer than the place they left:

Between our picnic and the concert we took a little walk along the lake side and over the beautiful pedestrian suspension bridge that spans the western edge of the lake.

I realized that with a little ingenuity one could probably make a similar bridge with tools and supplies found right in one’s garage.  For starters you’d need some heavy duty wire to use for suspending your walkway (note the pretty pattern in the pavement).  Then you’d need some big bolts and some bit cotter pins.

What could be difficult about that?

The stroll along the far bank of the lake was a veritable nature walk.  While it may not be as festive as a partridge in a pear tree, it’s a treat to see a Gambel’s quail in any kind of tree:

An adjoining tree was chock-a-block full of nests – but whose?

Speedy’s sharp eye caught the best treat of all.  He saw what looked like a large water bird fly in and land on a dock.

Sure enough, there it was! A fine, healthy great blue heron  But it looked so peculiar – why?  On closer inspection we discovered that it had caught one of the many talapia stocked in the lake and was trying to swallow it.  We could watch for only five or ten minutes as our concert hour was fast approaching; we don’t know if there was a happy ending for the heron; there certainly wasn’t for the fish.

It seems impossible that such a big fish could fit down that narrow neck, but we’ll never know for sure.

If nothing else our walk showed us how adept the birds are at adapting to whatever development we throw at them.  What treats we had on our short walk!

That Special Light

There’s something almost tangible about the light in Italy sometimes.  It’s hard to capture in photographs, but here are four examples:

It’s as if you could actually slice through the light and, if you were very careful and lucky, bring it home with you.  There must be something in the atmosphere – smoke? magic? – that makes whatever you are looking at absolutely delicious.  Yellow light in Italy becomes golden; clouds are silver; roads seem to be bronze ribbons.

Arizona specializes in light too, but it’s a completely different kind of light, hard and hot.  The best time to see light in Arizona (or anywhere, I suppose) is early in the morning and in the evening; during those hours, even here, everything one looks at becomes softer.

It seems to me that the cacti catch the light very dramatically.  It’s not the soft light of Italy we see here, but the sharp western light, held for a moment, reflected in the many spines of the plants and transformed into something more benign and gentle.  They seem to glow:

Cholla

Hedgehog

Teddy Bear Cholla

As evening falls in the desert the air above gets very clear, but down below the smog from the nearby city is evident.  It’s almost the same effect as a smoky evening after a field has been burned as happens all over Italy in the autumn. But, lovely as it is, knowing it is the result of smog and construction dust makes it so much less romantic.

In the built-up areas and neighborhoods around the Valley of the Sun there are plenty of non-native trees, and they can be pretty spectacular in the waning light.

You can almost imagine yourself in New England in October, can’t you?  But no, this is Arizona, land of sharp things (about which more in the next post).

One thing Arizona has that we don’t have in our little corner of Italy is Big Sky. And with Big Sky come Dramatic Sunsets – we never get such violent skies in Rapallo, maybe because we’re on the wrong side of the Monte di Portofino.  But here in Gold Canyon, if there are any clouds in the sky we are in for a treat at sunset:

Sunset at Painted Mountain Golf Course

Gold Canyon with the first glimmers of city lights in the distance

And even if there are no clouds, the midnight blue night sky is a perfect backdrop for stars, planets and especially the moon, sights that we often don’t notice when we’re in Italy.

Photo taken by my friend Laura

And I just couldn’t resist this one because it’s fun:

Light: it’s around us all the time, but we seldom notice it.  Physicists may tell us that “light is simply a name for a range of electromagnetic radiation that can be detected by the human eye.”  But it can be so much more than that: all it takes is a special moment, a special angle, an unusual tableau for us to stop and say, ‘Oh.  It is so beautiful!’