by Maureen | Apr 23, 2010 | Featured Articles, Introspection, Journal, Photo of the Day, Photos, Quips
“My car fits. Doesn’t that make it a parking space?”
“It looks like a parking space.”
“Oh. You mean this is a sidewalk?”
“If I park here in the road, when I come out I can just put the car in gear and go.”
Not ALL Italians are on foot, bike or metro! Seattle cops would meet their yearly budget if they were giving out tickets here for “improper parking”. Sometimes I’m walking along and just crack up at the creative parking I see. This would NEVER go over in the U.S.! But I guess it’s an understood system and it seems to work for everyone and so it’s OK. (It still cracks me up.)
Side note: Stop sign? I’ve figured out that, for the most part, they’re there to establish right-of-way and fault in case there’s an accident. People don’t actually stop. Not even a “California Rolling Stop”. There’s a particular stop sign in the city when I’m heading southbound out to the bike route… Cars go even faster through that intersection than if there were no sign. One day, a northbound car (with the right-of-way) approached the intersection at the same time a southbound car and I did. I realized very quickly that I’d better stop because Mr. Northbound wasn’t going to! The southbound car slowed just enough to make it all work. (In the very center of town, there’s more adherence to signals and signs, but it all seems to be a very loose, squishy system.)
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by Maureen | Apr 10, 2010 | Introspection, Journal
Journal Entry – 10 Aprile 2010
Really, I’ve kept my world very small. There are some that would rush to assure me otherwise, but when I honestly scan the content and structure of my life, my relationships are one-on-one and my focus is on small details. I’m not a “Grand, Big Picture” thinker.
I think I have good design thinking. And yet here I am in Milano, a world capital of design, and I have not set foot into it. I have not immersed myself by meeting who’s who and participating in local projects. I haven’t consumed the buzz of either design refinement or innovation, though opportunities overflow the city.
What have thrilled me most while here have been the fleeting encounters with people along the way: Mary at the Cemetery with her traditional handwriting; Angelo giving me a history lesson as we rode bikes through the farmland; elderly Signor Conforti in his bookshop in Florence and his handshake goodbye; the old woman in fleece pants on New Year’s Day that chatted with me about handkerchiefs and big buttons. These little meetings have been many and they’ve always left me beaming for the day.
Very informally I have been an observer and recorder of the visual lushness around me, whether it’s architecture and sculpture, garbage cans and curb cuts, or simply odd juxtapositions that tease my eye.
All of this is very telling about my priorities, desires, strengths, values and direction. Though I believe very deeply in the power of design to change the world, and though design absolutely permeates my day and my thinking, my greater joy is in personally touching one life at a time, in the smallest ways. Reality is, design fills and textures my life, but is not the focus of my life’s efforts.
I’m a “good” designer, not a “great” designer. I am unknown in the design world, amongst other designers. (Which is fine with me.) Have I “wasted” my talent? Design gives me a good living and I have assisted many clients with their goals. Is that sufficient?
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(All of these musings help to form a plan for my direction during the remainder of my time here and once I return to the U.S. I’ve certainly had a lot of time to think!)
by Maureen | Apr 10, 2010 | Discoveries, Food!, Introspection, Journal, Shopping & Markets
THIS is the time to be in Milano. The temperature is warm enough (75 degrees) to be comfortable in light linen and cotton, and enjoyable having the windows open to fresh air, but not so warm that there’s any thought yet of air conditioning.
I had a wandering, leisurely ride through the farmland exploring roads I hadn’t tried before. Then I showered, changed and took off walking up along Corso San Gottardo. When I need a variety of miscellanea, this is the local area I frequent.
Last September, my local Bartell’s hadn’t given me enough of a thyroid medication. It’s a pretty simple and standard thing, but necessary. I needed to buy a month’s supply and expected the process to be complicated. (International prescription refill?!) I took the bottles into a local Farmacia, they looked up the chemical component of my prescription online and walked over to a drawer for a braille-embossed box of 50 pills for 2.90 euro, about $3.90. (Hmm. At that price, maybe I should stock up before I return to Seattle? Isn’t it about $33 for a month’s supply back at home?)
There’s also this notion in my head about buying some “cool” eyeglasses to take home as my “souvenir”…Glasses that you’d never find in the U.S.…Glasses that say “somewhere else”. On San Gottardo, I stepped into a centro ottico – optic center – that I had been in before. After looking around for a while, the man that owns the shop said that he remembered me. He wasn’t just flirting. He recalled the glasses I brought in two years ago when the little screw had fallen out of the hinge. In the summer of 2008 he had replaced that little screw at no charge, and simply gave me the glasses back with a smile. (To be here in a foreign country, a big city, and be remembered from two years previous…Remarkable and touching!)
There’s something about the Italians and lingerie and hosiery. They do them well. With the warmer weather, I wanted some lightweight, little socks, just enough to provide a lining, but also interesting enough with lace and fishnet and other fun patterns. I’ve scoured shops in the Seattle area and just don’t find the selection there. (Yeah. In Seattle we’re usually bundling up, not going lightweight.) I bought several pairs of socks and hose (and will have to consider stocking up on those, too, before returning to Seattle!)
The whole street was filled with people walking their kids, their dogs and their lovers. People were seated and sipping caffé, vino or Campari. It was the time of the passeggiata, the evening stroll, and the weather had offered up a time so conducive to the ritual.
As I walked back home, I stopped at the little corner bakery that has my favorite trancio pizza – pizza that is cut to the size you want and charged by weight – and bought a piece with prosciutto, mushrooms and artichokes.
Across the street, at the corner flower vendor, I selected one fragrant lily stem and carried it toward home.
(What can’t I find along San Gottardo?!)
Veering off of Gottardo, and just blocks away from home, I saw my favorite, local bartender, Robbie, in the window of the Mayflower Pub and stopped to say “hello” and give him that European two-cheek kiss. We chatted for a moment. (“Favorite Bartender”? It sounds like I’m at the bar all the time. Actually, very rarely. But both NABA and Scuola Leonardo Language School have their student social nights there so I’ve seen Robbie enough to stop and say hello. He’s a sweet guy.)
I floated the rest of the way home. At almost ten months, I actually know people here, and am recognized by people here. I can wave at people as I walk past their shop windows or they stop me on the sidewalk to talk.
This is an indescribable and stunning time… I marvel at it all.
by Maureen | Apr 10, 2010 | Discoveries, Introspection, Journal
The first order of business this morning was to usher the flock* of ants OUT. As soon as the weather warmed, the ants returned. When I first shared my apartment with them last summer and mentioned it to a friend here, he said “It’s summer.” As in, “Ants? And your point is?” (A corollary response:”Welcome to Italy.”)
For the most part, they’re really no bother. They stay in their nice, little two-lane highway from a break in the exterior wall, along the baseboard of my kitchen cabinets all the way to my little garbage bin. They don’t stray much, except for the occasional wanderer up on the kitchen counter.
With a wet tissue, I wiped and crushed the ant-stream, hurrying before word made it down the line and prevented me from getting them. When I got to the garbage bin, I carefully lifted it up, along with its external and internal crowds of ants, and carried it off to the basement garbage-sorting center… which is right underneath my apartment and probably doesn’t help at all!
There’s a new sticker on the garbage room door, noting treatments against rats and cockroaches. Tiny ants are one thing. Rats and cockroaches are quite another.
*They don’t seem very “army”-like.
by Maureen | Apr 7, 2010 | Canals, Cheese, Discoveries, Featured Articles, Food!, Journal, Photo of the Day, Photos, Shopping & Markets
Wednesday is “ricotta day”, the day they make fresh ricotta at the Cascina Femegro.
Even though I had just been there yesterday, a sunny afternoon and the thought of hours-fresh ricotta on some nice bread easily convinced me to hop on my bike. I headed south along the canal, and turned west into the farmland.
There are old, stone troughs spanning the drainage ditches that wind through the farmland.
The one-lane road is cyclists’ heaven. Add sunshine overhead on a spring day, and it’s perfection.
I bought 4 tubs of cheese: 1 for me, and 3 to give away to friends. I had no idea at the time that “friends” would include 9 cats in a lazy-but-playful huddle at another farm along the way home. They very cautiously came over to me as I crouched at the road side, did the “kitty squeak” and rubbed my fingers together trying to entice them. I’ve seen them there before, either on or under the roof of the small outbuilding at this historic building. The most affectionate was the tabby mamma cat that wallowed in the attention.
“OK”, I thought, “The ricotta was cheap. These kitties would enjoy it so much.” Yes. I unwrapped a domed mound of ricotta and split it up into several locations, allowing the timid cats to have a bite to eat away from the more dominant cats. After eating ’til their bellies were full, each found a spot in the sun and did their contented cat preening.
It was nice to get my “kitty fix” since I’m catless here in Milano (and since my kitty, Laddie, has died back in Seattle during my absence).
I wonder what the farmer will think when he finds the empty ricotta tub, and some remnants of cheese…
by Maureen | Apr 6, 2010 | Canals, Cheese, Food!, Introspection, Journal, Meals
The windows are open to the day’s remaining warmth while trout and green beans grill and steam for dinner.
I had awakened this morning to bright sun direct into my bedroom, and the day held promise. After some tasks around the house and a light lunch, I went for a bike ride along the canal, past magnolias, cherry trees and forsythia, and then west into the farm land. I rode to the dairy and bought grana padano and fresh scamorza cheeses. Tomorrow, Wednesday, is fresh ricotta day. That’s worth riding back to the farm for! They will have just finished making it by afternoon and it’s so light and fresh it should be eaten by the spoonful out of its tub.
The rice paddies are green with the first new growth, and I dreamily followed the curled road back through them, returning to the canalside path. The temperature and sunny, blue sky were so delicious, and I felt warm and easy.
by Maureen | Apr 2, 2010 | Discoveries, Featured Articles, Graffiti & Street Art, Graphics, Journal, People, Photo of the Day, Photos
They put the temporary, scaffold-and-tin poster walls back up in my neighborhood just in time to feature advertising for the regional elections. Three inch holes are bored into the sidewalk, with rubber plugs for the off-season. Overnight, they can pop the plugs and throw up the walls clean and ready to be weighted with soon-flaking layers of advertising.
The other day, I was amused that as time, rains and passersby have swept past, the portraits on the political posters have been “enhanced”.
Isn’t this one “Art with a capital A”, all on its own!? It’s my favorite.
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Somehow, “bellezza” – beauty – seems an appropriate headline for this dandy.
And, side-by-side, this man was fortunate to have two renditions of his portrait.
The word showing through the peeled section below – “vincere” – means “to win”. Hmm. Subtle.
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by Maureen | Mar 24, 2010 | Canals, Discoveries, Featured Articles, Journal, Photo of the Day, Photos
Winter has been long and gray and holding tight, unwilling to give way. But it’s late March now, and winter goes grudgingly, allowing spring to tip toe in.
It’s rained much of this last week, and I haven’t been out on two wheels for too long. So in spite of forecast rain and the questionable sky, I suited up and headed canalside.
It was a thrill to see signs of spring at last. Cherry blossoms. Forsythia. Wildflowers in the grass. I heard the birds singing in the trees and saw a highly-colored cock pheasant in the grass along the feeder creek. The willow catkins have burst and hang long. Trees and shrubs are leafing out. And I caught a whiff of something fragrant.
At long last. We have all certainly earned our springtime here.
by Maureen | Mar 24, 2010 | Canals, Discoveries, Featured Articles, Journal, Photo of the Day, Photos
There’s an ingenious citizen taking action along the frontage road that borders the canal and leads to the bike path. Why wait until the city gets around to patching chuckholes on this minor road? Fill them with ceramic tile scraps! It may not be a perfect solution, but it’s an improvement.
by Maureen | Mar 21, 2010 | Cheese, Discoveries, Featured Articles, Food!, Introspection, Journal, Meals, People, Photo of the Day, Photos
Would you let 30 random strangers eat off your plate? Would you, in turn, eat off the plates of those 30 strangers?
The Uovo Performing Arts Festival included one “performance” yesterday of 30 individuals, by reservation only. “Mangia che ti fa bene”, “Eat that you will feel well.” For 10 euro, or about $13.50, I walked into the room to a very long table with 30 place settings, and a variety of ingredients:
- bread
- water
- eggs
- grana cheese
- cabbage
- parsley
- apples
- beets
- sesame seeds
- pumpkin seeds
- fennel
- olive oil
- garlic
- spices
- cooked peas
- oats
- radicchio
- spinach
- fresh ginger
- lemon
- leeks
- carrots
- walnuts
- fresh herbs
We were given limited, very loose guidelines.
We each grabbed a plastic apron from the group taped to the window.
Our project was to gather whatever combination of ingredients we desired, blend them and put the mix into a paper-lined, 3″ x 5″ foil pan. The 30 of us were elbow-to-elbow at the table and we were being filmed. We had graters, sieves, knives, bowls, half-moons and cutting boards at our disposal. Notes were provided about the health-inducing properties of each food item.
We asked for ingredients to be passed. We reached across the table. We laughed and chatted and mixed with our hands until our concoctions looked just right to us. Some pressed the ingredients through sieves for a uniform consistency. Others left chunks for spikes of flavor. Some formed loaf-like logs, while others patted their mix into flat casseroles. We bound up our creations in oven paper, scrawled our names on the wrap and sent the little tins off to be baked for 30-45 minutes.
While our dinners were baking, we were served lemon-slice salad, celery sticks with honey, and braised celeriac root. For our 10 euro, we also got a glass of red wine and some herb tea.
Trays of foil tins emerged from the oven, and the hostess called out names. One-by-one, the “performers”, the dinner guests, opened and tasted their creations. There were 30 recipes at the table. Like a groundswell, the sampling started. People reached over with their forks and sampled their neighbors’ meals, and everyone started passing their dish around for others to taste. It was remarkable the range of culinary directions we had each taken. I realized later that I could have gone in the sweet direction and combined bread, egg, apple, ginger, lemon and arrived at a dessert to contrast with all the savory gratins at the table.
I looked around, tickled, chuckling and amazed. Would this happen in the U.S.? Could it? How could I bring this experience to Seattle? To Burien? I easily tallied that the 30 people at 10 euros each only brought in 300 euros. And I looked at all the food, and the utensils, and the wine and thought that surely this was not a money-making proposition. In the U.S., liability insurance alone for a one-day event of this nature would probably be prohibitive.
And would people in the U.S. be willing to pass their dish for their unknown neighbor to sample from, and then fork a bite from their neighbor’s plate and relish the combination of ingredients different from their own?
This does give me ideas for an uncommon Thanksgiving dinner… but many in my family would likely balk at the idea. (But they wouldn’t be random strangers.)
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Here’s the official, “as advertised” description of the event:
The aftermath was a mess of a table!
