Traversing Italy sprayed by the sun, anointed with olive oil, and confessed with wine. Part 2 of 3

 

By tradition Roman roads are worthy. The three lane A-1 carriageway up the backbone of Italy is no exception. Its tolls are modest, has on-highway petrol stations, and is a testament to Italian engineering as tunnels and viaducts are plentiful, with a five mile long tunnel between Bologna and Florence.  On a few occasions I got our six speed Fiat Panda up to 150 km/h.  You do the math.  Again, as in urban areas, nearly all of the vehicles are compact.  As we headed north up the carriageway from the Lazio region of Rome through Umbria and into Tuscany we could see ancient fortified towns topping hills above picaresque golden wheat fields and elegant cypress trees.  These towns are the relics of conflict. 

Florence was the center of the Renaissance rebirth from the Dark Ages with crowning achievements in the arts, architecture, science, and culture.  Rome, to the south, was a city of ancient ruins. Northern Italy was prosperous with trade links from the Crusades bringing spices, dyes and silks from the east and wool, wheat and precious metals from the north.  Florence made woolen textiles and its trade routes were conduits of culture and knowledge from distant land. Trade developed surpluses which allowed investment.  A mercantile class arose as tradesmen became wealthy and began to demand luxury goods.

Improvement was not steady.  There were many periods of war, instability, famine, and plague.  The Black Death wiped out a third of Europe’s population.  The Church was unable to provide relief.  But, the resulting labor shortage increased wages and the wealthy had more money to spend on luxury goods fortifying bankers, merchants, and skilled artisans.  When Florence was faced with mercenary war from nearby City-States, civic leaders presented it as a choice between despotic monarchies and a free republic.  Eventually a hard earned peace arrived and the idea of a free republic persisted. The Medici bankers of Florence reestablished trade routes and Renaissance ideals spread to neighboring states of Tuscany, Siena and Lucca.  The Papacy returned to a poor and ruined Rome and engaged famous Tuscan masters to lay the foundation for a Roman Renaissance.  Stability of the Renaissance ended as European states began to invade Italy in the decades long Italian Wars, peasants backlashed over its indulgences, and trades routes dissipated as Vasco Da Gama found a new route to India from Atlantic ports.

We stayed at the Hotel Alessandra in Florence, just around the corner from the Ponte Vecchio, the Piazzale degli Uffizi, and Palazzo Vecchio. Hotels in Italy are on upper floors and retrofitted with tiny lifts with little room for luggage and people.  The staff at Hotel Alessandra were buoyant.  Emily rested on a leather couch, entertained by a puck-like imp in the reception area, as I navigated the Fiat to a garage and hoofed it back.  From there, we walk past Giotto’s Bell Tower and the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Flore (the “Duomo”) on the Piazza del Duomo on route to the Galleria del’ Accademia to see the actual Statue of David.  We passed several fakes on the way there.  We arrived two hours before our ticketed time and waited and waited in 101° heat and humidity.

But my oh my, the wait was worth it.   Once inside we hurry past treasured sculpture and paintings to an enormous white Carraran marble so alive that David appears to move as the assembled multitude carves space for selfies and gaze upward at him, his left hand toting a sling and his left the stone to slay Goliath, under an eight segmented glass domed vestibule.  And all too quick we are off to the museum café for large bottles of cold refreshing water.  Then outside to summon a taxi driven by a woman whose prowess includes uplifting a handful of fingers to rain tawdry utterances upon wayward lambs.  After a long rest at the hotel we make our way to the Ponte Vecchio to peruse the gold and jewelry in its shops.  But, it is Sunday and closed.  Instead, a quartet plays classic rock as the wind sweeps down the Arno River at sunset.  It is lovely.  We dine on the narrow cobblestone lane at Mangifocco Osteria Tartferia.  I am enchanted by our white shirted black slacked Italianesque waitress even when she only remembers half of what I order.  Less is more.  Emily and I agree that Florence is certainly the highlight of our adventure.  The city abounds in lingering contentment.  The varied hues and patterns of its stone buildings, arrayed in pleasing happenstance ways, instill serenity and longing.  Up early the next morning our hotel elves wish us well and we are off to Venice.  And after that to Milan with views of the Dolomites and the Alps along the way.

Milan is now the mercantile center of Italy.  Emily and I were headed to Italy in April of 2020 when Milan was quarantined with the first non-China outbreak of Covid-19.  We deferred.  I realized why the virus spread there first as we walked from our Wyndham resort to the underground Metro and rode in close and constant contact with the multitude to the historic city center to see Sforzesco Castle, the Duomo di Milano, the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II, the Leonardo da Vinci Statue, and Teatro alla Scala.  All were magnificent.  It would be an injustice not to describe each in detail here, but in the interest of brevity google it.

Maybe it was the Kenya-bought safari shirt I was wearing, but in all these venues Kenyans would approach.  The first offered our picture with his camera in front of the Duomo.  He asked whether I was Kenyan by comparing our arms; mine tan his obsidian. He said he was from Mombasa.  “I have been there,” I replied.  “Jambo, Jambo” was his retort. It is Swahili for hello.  “Jambo, Jambo,” I replied. Nevertheless, I pointed to my Canon EOS Rebel Camera and deferred.   At the Leonardo da Vinci Statue another Kenyan tied red braided twine around Emily’s wrist, cut the loose ends with a finger nail clipper, pronounced it a gift, and stood with an endearing smile in front of us.  I showed that we had no Euros.  He smiled, again offered it as a gift, but would not leave.  Secretively, Emily removed the weaving.  He noticed and moved on to the father and mother of a child.  Finally, a third Kenya approached.   “Jambo, Jambo,” I shout.   “Jambo, Jambo,” he retorts.  He compares arms. “Mombasa”,” I say.  “Yes. Mombasa. Jambo, Jambo,” he replies.  He slaps a nice leather bracelet around Emily’s wrist as a gift.   I find two half Euros in my pocket as payment.  He accepts.  We flee.  Emily keeps the bracelet but comments to me that it is worth just half a Euro.  She is correct, but peace is worth the other half. 

We head back to the Wyndham resort, past the cleaned up mess from a farmer’s market just outside the resort, to our least Italian meal as terrible Beatles tribute band plays at a party next door.   We stay in separate modern American rooms down the hall from each other.  It is a shock not to be in the serenity of Florence, the bustle of Rome, or the allure of Venice.  But, lessons learned.

Traversing Italy sprayed by the sun, anointed with olive oil, and confessed with wine Part 2

€ is for Euro, the currency across a Europe united in finance but not politics.  Except in Venice.  There, an expressive nature of its populous follows what we experienced throughout this passionate nation.  In Rome, leaving the Spanish Steps, we encountered the driver of a wrongly-parked horse drawn carriage throwing American curse words at Armani wearing Polizi di Stato.  Staccato utterances.  Emily and I were in glee.  Splendid.  In Florence, our taxi driver had just offered up her favorite place as Piazzale Michelangelo high up on the outside of town with tremendous views of the Duomo when a phone entranced pedestrian veered our way.  Our otherwise gracious driver, with an uplifted handful of fingers, spewed a litany of wonderful sounding curses. Marvelous.  Likewise in Venice.  Loaded with backpacks and suitcases we took seats on the ferry, clearly marked only for the elderly and disabled with no luggage, to return to the Tronchetto to fetch our rented Fiat.  An elderly husband and wife wanted our seats.  Knowing I was in the wrong, I refused to budge.  His politeness rose to a beady stare and then language.  I held my ground to the disbelief of Emily.  The husband summoned the on-board transit policeman who had us move our luggage but allowed us to stay.  The husband and wife moved to wide selection of empty seats behind us and glared.  I felt infinitely small in my victory. Oh well.  When in Rome.

Money is different in Venice. Sumptuous meals across Italy - pastas or veal or eggplant – paired with Tuscany wines and a ready supply of various breads and olive oil cost about €20, which is $20.  That low price is due to the now weak Euro. In most eateries the tip is included.  But, the price of dinner in Venice is double, my sense due to logistics as Venice is built on a cluster of islands in a lagoon in the northern Adriatic Sea.  Trucks and trains must cross a long causeway, cargo is then broken down for water transport to small docks, then reloaded into handcarts to be pushed over stone canal bridges and through narrow cobblestone paths and offloaded into narrow-doored restaurants.  It is wonderfully beautiful but you pay for the charm.

Our late night meal was fabulous and expensive (€€€) at Antico Caffe’ Martini opened in 1720 as a coffee house adjacent to the famous La Fenice Theatre.  I had eggplant parmigiana. Emily had grilled salmon. Afterwards, we lingered in San Fantin Square to savor the coolness of the night, then strolled back to our Hotel Mercurio only a blocks away.   We could have stayed for weeks.  Emily bought earrings just below the Rialto Bridge.  We were serenaded in gondolas piloted across the Grand Canal into irresistible side canals. We marveled at Saint Mark’s Square and had skip-the-line tickets to tour its massive gilded Basilica.   On our way out of the Basilica we admired three ornate wood confessionals.  We gave no penance. Our favorite on the Square is the Torre dell’ Orolgio, a fifteenth century clock tower with a solar system inscribed clock face adorned by life-sized bronzed bell-ringers using hammers to strike time hourly.   Ancient clockwork being what it is, it rings four minutes early.

Italy has two grand flourishings, the Roman Empire and the Renaissance.  Long before that around 750 BC, twins Romulus and Remus were order killed by their granduncle King but instead were abandoned on the Tibur River.  That King was killed and his brother, the twin’s grandfather, retook the throne and the twins set out to build the city of Rome.  They did not agree on where to build Rome.  Romulus preferred Palatine Hill and Remus Aventine Hill.  They disputed and Remus was killed.  Romulus became King of the republic building Rome on Palatine Hill along the Tibur River and began its institutions, government, military, and religious traditions.  

In the wake of Julius Caesar’s brutal assassination, Rome became an empire in 27 BC with the beloved Augustus Caesar as Emperor restoring morale with the Pax Roma peace.  He ruled for almost sixty years. Caligula, Nero, Flavian, and Trajan followed and the Empire swept over three continents connected by Roman roads.  Rome eventually collapsed from bloat, corruption, and disarray. 

We visited Rome in almost 100° heat at the start and end of our journey.  Our first night we stayed at Hotel Portoghesi.  Its exterior is used as Julia Robert’s character’s apartment in “Eat, Pray, Love.”  My tiny but robust six speed Fiat Panda scooted us in and out of narrow cobble stoned paths, crowded by ancient stone buildings, to drop off bags at our hotel in the ZTL car restricted zone.  That afternoon we took a short walk to cross the Ponte Umberto bridge and then hiked along the Tibur River another mile, past Castel Sant’ Angelo, to join the multitudes at the Piazza San Pietro of Vatican City and enjoy the wonders of St. Peter’s Basilica and the Sistine Chapel.  Returning by taxi we relaxed back at the hotel then journeyed out again. It was as if in a dream to witness the soothing ancient Corinthian granite columns and pediment of the Pantheon, mingle with women in camisoles filling water bottles from the well at the Obelisco del Pantheon, and be watched by tourists having gelato or drinks on the cobblestone Piazza at Di Rienzo Ristorante al Pantheon.  Then a short zig and zag to the mesmerizing “Taming of the Waters” tableau of Trevi Fountain teeming at every view point with selfie takers.  Then another brief stroll to the serene Spanish Steps where tourists lounged along the oblong lipped bowl of the Fontana della Barcaccia in the Piazza di Spagna at the foot of the Steps.  Seeing the wrongly parked carriage and Armani styled police in verbal fisticuffs, we departed by taxi back to savor pasta and wine under moonlight at a restaurant just down from the hotel.  

So those experiences became our baseline, a way to measure our preferences among the difference in lifestyle and attitude when in Florence, Venice, Milan, Pisa, Tuscany or finally upon our return another sector of Rome.

The Observer Effect

A longtime friend died last month. Now, in Indianapolis is a celebration of his life. I am in Alaska.  Save our first before we knew each other, each decade he was instrumental in my journey.

Wittily in high school he formed CREEP to twice anoint me as class president. Our Committee to Re-Elect the President was the same moniker as the Watergate disgraced Nixon reelection effort. I am grateful my friend was not a Republican as I.  I knew my city, Indiana, our nation, as well as the world only from family and my suburban schooling, all ingrained from reading my local conservative newspaper. His understanding was broadened by the rugged hallways of urban public schools he attended before we collided in private school. I am grateful for the particulars resulting from those encounters.

Some decades back I exited downtown Indianapolis after throwing myself headfirst in to rebuilding its decayed urban fabric. I vowed never to return.  A year ago I moved back. I like it. The city canvass completed off my watch. 

Away, I matured into a well-rounded human, experiencing the Indiana prairie where the neighborhood smart phone app daily reports fox and coyote. Turkey vultures spiral for field mice. The field in back of my farmhouse rotates corn and soybean. I mowed acreage, and painted and replaced what constantly wore out on my ancient abode. Each season was new and robust.

Now downtown, the neighborhood app continuously reports gunfire. Ambulances, police, and fire trucks rumble by at all hours of the day and night. But I am cocooned twenty floors up, behind glass, concrete, and brick unbothered and happy. An entirely new crop of folk live downtown but I also constantly see hearty friends who stayed the downtown course.

My friend, on the other hand, lived his adult life pocketed near our hard streets also quite happily. One decade, he and I played tennis nearly every Sunday - mostly on the courts of our prep school.  Neutral ground. The few times we played near my farmhouse he was sure to comment on Stepford wives playing adjacent or ‘spot’ fascist insignia.  We played rain or shine, in the cold, and in the heat, usually three sets. We felt alive. Après tennis we would coffee at Petite Chou, the ‘adult student union’ at 49th and Illinois to swap lies. Like me, he constantly rode his bike. Me in the gentile suburbs. He through urban life. He rode the Hilly Hundred in south central Indiana many, many times. Me once.

Some decades back we had lunch at the City Market after not seeing each other for a while. He listened as I wailed about divorce. Toward the end I asked how he was. If you read his obituary you will learn, as I did that day, of his Guillaine-Barré syndrome an immune disorder that rapidly deteriorates nerve coatings. To sustain him while he recovered they induced a long coma leaving his wife to care for his four very young children. He then had several months of physical rehab as his muscles had atrophied. A lesson I learned was always to focus on others. I knew I would get through what life placed in my way and bitterness only made recovery harder. Whenever asked, I would always rise to his challenge.

DOS is an early developed robust and reliable computer disk operating system. For almost his working career my friend sold systems based on DOS.  He was lucky DOS had staying power. It kept him employed. My friend is like DOS. Early on he had a coherent long lasting view of what is important in this world. I depended on him for decades.

More recently we fell out of touch. Nonetheless, I ‘liked’ his many postings of images of his children when they were young.  Which is why I was unprepared to learn he died after a yearlong battle with cancer. I forgot life has limits.

Last night I made two deep dish pizzas and delivered them this morning to his wife still at their pocketed enclave. Then I headed for the airport and not the calling. Within our limited moments, I have a lot I want to see and witness. This earth-bound existence.

Dust to dust. In the quantum world there is strong probability that specific atomic particles are where the observer sees them. But they may also be on the rings of Saturn, or on a train to Denali National Park. So, sub-atomically, the atomic ashes that are now my friend may be part of the highest peak in North America. And so I travel to that majestic place.  Selfishly. In the quantum world observation affects particles. It changes them. So, by observing, the observer never sees what is there. I am not observing the Indianapolis calling of my friend. Perhaps I may on my journey.

Central to Circle

Just before the recent summer solstice, I journeyed to the remote eastern interior of Alaska between the towns of Central and Circle.  So remote that it is the most difficult stretch of the most difficult sled dog race in the world: the thousand mile Yukon Quest from Fairbanks, Alaska to Whitehorse, Canada.  The Quest runs in

February when it is nearly always night and conditions are inhospitably harsh. I was traveling there east from Fairbanks in the always light of early summer across two tundra splayed mountain passes, then down again to tree line, and down further to sparse boreal land looking desperately for a place to refuel.

In over three hundred miles of there and back again driving from Fairbanks I saw maybe a dozen other vehicles.  Solitude . . . and magic.  I was not always prepared.  Going fifty on the graded dirt and gravel highway I hit the brakes as a swift moose jaunted through birch and spruce and into my path.  The moose corrected course magnificently: agile, big eared, and taut. We ventured parallel for a short distance as I slowed. It exited to the other side and vanished.  I was better prepared for another moose and her calf ten miles down the road.

Alaska is a symbol of the notion that a quest for independence and daring should become an aspiration for all. I welcomed it, as did a confluence of Middle Americans drawn by that symbol to convene as tourists in Fairbanks.

Fervor for gold created Fairbanks as riverboats, laden with heavy supplies, were unable to head further upstream on the shallow juncture of the Tanana and Chena rivers forcing entrepreneurs on board to set up trading posts at the confluence. Later, construction of the Alaska Railroad caused a surge of economic activity and allowed heavy equipment to be brought in for further exploitation of Fairbanks' gold deposits. Then, the vast Prudhoe Bay Oil Field was discovered in Alaska's North Slope. Fairbanks became a supply point for exploitation of the oil field and for construction of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline.

Pioneer Park in Fairbanks has all the relics tourists want to see: a lifeless riverboat and rusty dredges in a reconstructed mining town where the early birds, in all shapes, ages, and sizes from the Lower Forty-eight, line up for the blue plate special featuring salmon bake.  I had to flee.  But where?  Ah, the Arctic Circle. But, the well-traveled north route led to spots such as the Arctic Circle Trading Post which I imagined as a Cracker Barrel styled tourist trap along the big-rig strewn Dalton Highway. 

Then I remembered on my flight in, over the glaciers and rugged mountains of southwest Alaska, how I struck up a conversation with a woman from Circle, Alaska.  She had just finished a thousand mile drive from Tempe, Arizona to Lava Hot Springs, Idaho just to have its beauty in her windshield.  She was on the Tribe's Council in Circle and was headed back to form a women’s basketball team there. She spoke of the joy of sitting on her porch in Circle near the banks of the Yukon River shooting grouse and ptarmigan for dinner.

Ancient burial sites of indigenous infants and children in the region between Central and Circle show naming and ensoulment.  For example, two infant skeletons found there were carefully positioned on their backs alongside tools and decoratively carved antlers that had been coated with ochre, suggesting that their hunter-gatherer families mourned and ritualized their loss as we would.

Circle as in Arctic Circle. It took me a moment to register that from Fairbanks I could head northeast to reach the Arctic Circle and size up the Yukon River as well. So east I ventured, three days before the solstice, in a wonderful black Jeep Compass rented on Turo.

Surrounding Fairbanks are forests of white spruce, paper birch, and poplar trees.  Spruce lay out roots sideways due to impenetrable permafrost. So, century old spruce are skinny and short.  The distinctive curled bark peeling from birch hold a flammable resin - betulin. During the summer smoke descends on Fairbanks as lightning strikes ignite the birch bark and fires spread to the spruce.

It was good to get away from the smoke and crowds. I ascended the Steese Highway along the Chatanika River, up and away from Fairbanks' smoke, past the largest gold mine in Alaska, through numerous switchbacks, from asphalt to dirt and gravel up through the taiga, to the tundra of Twelvemile Summit of Pinnell Mountain, and finally down through Yukon River water shed toward Central.  It is three hundred miles round-trip and not a place to be stranded on empty so I sized up Central for fuel.

On its outskirts asphalt returned and the speed limited dropped.  Well-crafted homes appeared now and then off in the woods.  But there were twice as many run down shantys; each with several generations of rusted vehicles strewn akimbo. One hundred and thirty years ago Central House, a roadhouse, burgeoned from needs of gold prospectors scouring the creeks of the Circle Mining District. It's progeny, Central Corner, survives.

I stopped there for gas at the lone old time pump with the sign: "Limit 5 gallons."  My fueling stopped at 4.3 gallons. Puzzled and determined for five, I squeezed the trigger to get my limit not understanding that I was dousing fuel all over my shirt and jeans as my tank had topped out at 4.3. I walked inside Central Corner to pay.  Really a nice spot. Locals, coffee, and family in the kitchen preparing orders. On the community board was notice of a celebration of life of four towns people recently passed. For a town with a population of 38 that seemed a lot. Mourning and ritualized loss.

I left on account of my vapors, stripped to underwear by the Jeep, and pulled on fresh clothing. Back on the road I recalled the words of a taxi driver in Fairbanks: "Solitude here can get to people. They open the door, head out, and don't come back."  I now had a better understanding. And accidents get people, my fuel vapors reminded me.

A while later, I passed a three mile long burning fire break being establish along the left side of the highway, finally catching up with the weary firefighters headed back to the their trucks. And nature gets people.

The Yukon is the fifth largest river, in capacity, in the world. Around Circle it is very wide and shallow forming brilliant variegated braided channels.  As I crossed a long one-lane trussed wood decked bridge I spotted several men fishing in the channel below.  Again, on the outskirts of Circle were well-crafted cabins off in the woods but far more run down shantys.

A wide open lot on the banks of the Yukon presented itself for parking. I pulled in and got out.  Men with chainsaws and axes were there making firewood. They bantered and greeted more townfolk arriving by ATVs. A few restaurants and a hotel were further along up the river bank. The woman on the plane had remembered daily tour buses arriving when she was young.  Not now. Those buses head up the Dalton Highway to the Arctic Circle Trading Post.

I did not stay long. The journey back west along Steese Highway was just as beautiful in my windshield as before. When I got back to cell phone service in Fairbanks I scoured for online death notices of those being celebrated in Central.  I did not find them.  I did find these: 

"Torgny was a self-sufficient man who lived a simple but full life and could also be described as somewhat stubborn. I guess you could say he was stuck in his ways. Torgny was a good son and took care of his parents in Circle until their passing and lived a simple life as a traditional Gwich'in man. He lived in the log house he built next to his parents' house. If you asked his occupation he would say, "woodsman," and he was indeed a true-blue woodsman. Torgny can be credited with keeping Circle warm by providing firewood for at least the last 60 years."

"Gene enjoyed the peace, quiet and beauty of Alaska so much he decided to stay there permanently. Around 1997 he moved to a very scenic area in the town of Central, Alaska. The population is under 100 and a home cooked meal with good conversation happens with friends at the Central Corner. Gene built his own house, hanger and a cabin on 15 acres of land. He owned and operated a gold mining business with lots of large machinery. He also would do trapping and hunting in remote areas and has a cabin in the Artic National Wildlife Refuge area. One of his favorite places to fly was over Brooks Range across Northern areas of Alaska into Canada’s Yukon territory. Gene had a pilot license, built his own runway and restored a classic green Piper airplane which he added about every cool feature on it you could imagine. He enjoyed the outdoors, flying, mining, hunting, trapping and fishing. Gene loved to take long walks and hikes with his dog. He had a black lab, Bud and then a yellow lab, Butter. He can train dogs to do just about anything, even open the refrigerator and bring you a drink."