Omran Daqueesh -- my little reminder

I’ve saved the front page of The New York Times from yesterday where there’s a photo of a Syrian boy whose silent, dust-covered face has captivated the world (the photo that accompanies this video above in the online version of the story). He captivated the world -- including me. But for how long? He was recovered from the rubble of his apartment building, which was struck by missiles during the endless civil war in his country. And I guess he was in shock so his quiet patience might be quite understandable, but the photo and the short video the entire world has seen are capable of stopping your heart. Quite literally – no hyperbole. 

I’ve saved it – just as I saved the photo of the poor Syrian boy who drowned during a crossing with other refugees and washed up on a Turkish beach, lifeless – in the hopes it can inspire me on at least two different levels. First: this is happening, people are suffering and what are you doing about it, Jeanne? You’re not even reporting on it – the very least you could do, that is your skill, if so much can be said of what you know of journalism. That's the first level. 

Second level: I don’t know how to put it, it seems to jar me awake from my daily parenting slumber – something along the lines of thinking that no matter what Leo does, he is an absolute GIFT from GOD that I must cherish every day every day every day. Because to imagine that he could ever have to experience something like this – and to know we are lucky enough that he probably won’t – well, it’s a reminder that we never have hard times. He never does anything that we can’t fix. A day in which he refuses to eat spinach and won’t touch regular milk and doesn’t want to have “quiet time,” well, a day like that, to use the cliché again, is a gift from God. 

The mother of this little Syrian boy would quite literally give her right arm to have a day like that.

Funny thing, I’ve taped the front page of the Times up on the bedroom wall to the right of this bookshelf I use as a desk/computer stand. I think it’s fairly hidden, you wouldn’t really see the folded paper taped up unless you were standing at the computer – something Mike never does. And that’s an important detail because I'd taped up the photo of the lifeless boy’s body lying on the beach in Turkey and he asked me to take it down. I taped it up for the same reason – WAKE UP JEANNE this is happening, you are so lucky, so lucky to have this boy, your little Leo – all very noble, I suppose, but the image was too much for Mike. 

I don’t blame him; I cherish his reaction in some ways. He cannot countenance all the bad that’s sewn into everyday life on Earth. We humans. For shame. And yet my God I, *I*, need a reminder. Because we will all go on, we will all go about our business and this little boy will be forgotten. But his little face (he looks to be about 4 years old – you-know-who’s-age) – and the unspoken sadness written upon it, his little plaintive stare, are so stunningly sad, the tragedy so stunningly unnecessary, that I need to remember. Give me the strength and the resolve, someone, to remember and to do something about it.

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"My other question is: do polar bears fly?"

I've been publishing excerpts here on the blog of my "Bits" journal, to borrow the expression, again, from poet and FSU writing professor David Kirby. Here's another excerpt below. It's just a collection of notebooks and computer files where I record everyday thoughts, inspirations, ideas for stories, etc. This one draws heavily from a 'sub-journal' -- the Leo Diary.

*

April 30, 2016

6:33 a.m.

I have to think Atlanta is some kind of bird sanctuary. I’ve never heard so much birdsong or such loud tweets anywhere else. My God! Lots of red-feathered cardinals – the only bird I know to recognize.

*

It gets light so early these days. Which means SOMEONE wakes up early, cutting severely into Mommy’s writing time. I put these words down to give a sense of my life, not really to complain. It’s the change of the seasons wrought into a specific detail: Here’s what early spring means to me…abbreviated writing sessions, and also one of the few times of the year when the morning darkness dissipates quickly here. 

Atlanta, city of darkness. Lately I’ve been tweeting that it’s a city of murals. And it really is. It’s one of the few distinguishing characteristics. I guess thanks in part to Living Walls. And maybe also the specific geography of Atlanta: lots of train tunnels. The Living Walls in Cabbagetown, after all, are along the train wall that leads to Krog Street Tunnel.

*

I hear a voice outside – which turns out to be cat – and I look over my shoulder to see the pinkening sky through the transom window. This image = my life in Atlanta. My early morning writing life in Atlanta. The pinkening sky, glimpsed briefly through the transom window.

April 27, 2016

The lyrics and the music to the song “Graceland” replay in my mind. ‘My traveling companion is 9 years old. She’s the child of my first marriage…. I have reason to believe we’ll both be received in Graceland….Graceland, Memphis, Tennessee…we’re going to Graceland.”

Songs of redemption.

April 26, 2016

Leo: “My head is so full of questions.”

He asks a fairly mundane question, and then says, “My other question is: do polar bears fly?”

No, but nice try.

A review of Mingarelli's "A Meal in Winter"

I've begun reviewing books and of course I have a special desire to review fiction in translation. In this case, the book in question was originally written in French, not Italian, but no matter. It 's stunning.

Here's an excerpt of the review for Cleaver magazine. To read the rest, click the link below.

A MEAL IN WINTER
by Hubert Mingarelli
translated by Sam Taylor
The New Press, 138 pages

reviewed by Jeanne Bonner

A Meal in Winter by French author Hubert Mingarelli is a subtle book that quietly but methodically stalks the reader’s sympathies. It does so through a beautiful, spare prose style that begins with the first line: “They had rung the iron gong outside, and it was still echoing, at first for real in the courtyard, and then, for a longer time, inside our heads.” This is lovely writing (deftly rendered from the French by translator Sam Taylor, himself a novelist)—yet a bit ominous, like something that can’t be escaped. Later, setting the scene for the winter’s walk that takes up much of the first part of the narrative, he writes: “A pale sun hung in the sky, as distant and useless, it seemed to us, as a coin trapped under thick ice.” Trapped. What is trapped? Or who?

Read the rest of the review here. Then please read the book!

Women in Translation? Here's your book list!

August is Women in Translation Month; a month when, if you felt so inclined, you could curl up with a wonderful book by a foreign authoress translated into English by a wonderful translator and have yourself a time.

And in honor of the designation, some translation-loving folks, including Katy Derbyshire and Susan Bernofsky, have compiled a list of books written by women from around the world (the non-native English-speaking world) and translated into English. For my part, I contributed the absolutely unneeded suggestion of adding Elena Ferrante to the pile (as if).

The list only goes so far as works published since 2010 but whoa! Look at this smorgasbord! You could curl up for two or three years with this list.

Books written by women and translated into English, published since 2010

In alphabetical order by author

HIGH TIDE, Inga Ābele (Open Letter Books)

THE NUN, Simonella Agnello Hornby (Europa Editions)

FROM THE LAND OF THE MOON, Milena Agus (Europa Editions)

SECOND-HAND TIME, Svetlana Alexievich (Fitzcarraldo)

ROCK, PAPER, SCISSORS, Naja Marie Aidt (Open Letter Books)

BROOKLYN HEIGHTS, Miral al-Tahawy (American University in Cairo Press)

CHERNOBYL PRAYER, Svetlana Alexievich (Penguin Modern Classics)

WILLFUL DISREGARD, Lena Andersson (Other Press)

WOMAN OF TANTOURA, Radwa Ashour (American University in Cairo Press)

SPECTRES, Radwa Ashour (Arabia Books)

ONE HUNDRED TWENTY-ONE DAYS, Michèle Audin (Deep Vellum)

THE QUEUE, Basma Abdel Aziz (Melville House)

PANTY, Sangeeta Bandyopadhyay (Tilted Axis Press)

OH, SALAAM! Najwa Barakat (Interlink Books)

THE LIFE OF ELVES, Muriel Barbery (Gallic Books)

THE COUNTRY UNDER MY SKIN, Gioconda Belli (Bloomsbury)

SWALLOW SUMMER, Larissa Boehning (Comma Press)

THE OTHER WOMAN, Therese Bohman (Other Press)

BEFORE, Carmen Boullosa (Deep Vellum)

TEXAS: THE GREAT THEFT, Carmen Boullosa (Deep Vellum)

BABA DUNJA’S LAST LOVE, Alina Bronsky (Europa Editions)

THE SECRET WAYS OF PERFUME, Cristina Caboni (Transworld)

THE LAST LOVER, Can Xue (Yale University Press)

MR DARWIN’S GARDENER, Kristina Carlson (Peirene Press)

THE FIRST WIFE, Paulina Chiziane (out August 9, Archipelago Press)

ALWAYS COCO-COLA, Alexandra Chrietieh (Interlink Books)

HOME, Leila S. Chudori (Deep Vellum)

THE ISLAND OF LOST TRUTH, Flavia Company (Europa Editions)

Review -- "Only in Naples"

I don't think I have ever reviewed a book on my blog. But I've done quite a few things in the last four years that I have never done before so let's get right to it!

There are lots of books written about Italy. Lots of books. You could even say tanti.

But this book by Katherine Wilson, which was published by Random House earlier this year, stands out for several reasons.

First of all, it's about Naples. Not over-exposed Tuscany or well-documented Rome (though Rome does appear in the book) or even Milan, which Americans have begun to visit more frequently in recent years.

Nope. It's about Naples.

(And she began doing her research long before Elena Ferrante's books spawned literary tours of the Southern Italian city.)

Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, this woman, Katherine (or 'Ketrin', as her Neapolitan in-laws call her) knows Italy.

She knows a very specific part of Italy but that doesn't change the fact that she's one of the few American authors of memoirs to truly penetrate Italian society and learn its every molecule.

She also has a unique story on her hands: she loves her mother-in-law. Her Italian mother-in-law.

And what's not to love?

Click 'continua a leggere' to read the rest....

Montreal Journal

As I'm about to publish this excerpt of my Montreal journal, I realize I've included almost nothing about where we walked or what we saw (the McCord Museum of Canadian History, for example, the Parc Jean Drapeau, which overlooks the city, the Marche Jean Talon where we stocked up on lunch supplies for a picnic).

 

It's all about me and language. Not even sure what to say about that.

 

I left out the lovely park on Rue Beaubien Est across from the cinema, I left out the birreria where Mike lounged two nights of our stay after Leo went to bed. I left out the Basilica of Notre Dame and the view of the city we glimpsed from the island park where we had our picnic (and visited a science museum that was not the science museum we thought we were visiting).

 

I also said very little (in the entries below) about the market, which is such a key part of any vacation we take. The Marche Jean Talon (see the picture above -- we had the most delightful Quebecois tomatoes there).

 

And Little Italy! Just a quick mention. Three days, as you will see from my gush of emotion, are not enough to explore Montreal. Not by a long shot. Just enough to give you heartache.

  

June 27, 2016

3:30 p.m.

 

On the highway, the signs as we near Canada say “hebergement” – lodging! I'm giddy with excitement!

 

Later

 

It’s dangerous for a writer to go to a foreign city….and by dangerous I mean, there’s a very real peril of the writer going insane from a linguistic orgasm…especially if the writer knows even just a little of the country’s native language.

 

I’m here in Montreal dumbfounded and ecstatic about being surrounded by French and I think, almost instantly, what would it take to become fluent? Or semi-fluent? Without having spoken French since visiting Luxembourg in 1997, I’m able to tell the waiter that I do want to speak French but I’ve just arrived and need a moment to get myself acclimated. Then I order my dinner at La Boulette, a nice neighborhood restaurant in Rosemount-La Petite Patrie ('Rosemount, the little country'). Later, I order ice cream.

 

And I soak in the surprisingly foreign vibe of Montreal (surprising to moi). A city surrounded by the English language and its serpent-like hold on communications world-wide. And yet I feel as though I am in a French version of London. Every sign is in French and French only. Every transaction is presumed to be in French until you signal you’re an idiotic American who can’t step up.

 

And the architecture of this neighborhood (which, again, is called 'Rosemount-La Petite Patrie') – a bit off the beaten path in Montreal, I would say – is just delightful: duplex apartments with second floor balconies and front stoops overflowing with flowers and bikes and the odd pair of running shoes oh and personality.

 

It would take nothing to be sucked into the allure of French-speaking Canada.

 

June 28, 2016

8:41 a.m.

 

Montreal absolutely deserves a week of our time. The people are lovely, the city – especially this neighborhood with its rowhouse duplexes – is a place to settle into, the food a dieter’s nightmare, which is so good for a foodie vacation spot. I listen now as a typical Tuesday night plays out for the family below us – the family renting us our apartment. Dinner, familiar yelling between the main house and an out-building where they appear to hole up when this apartment where we are is occupied. My view from the kitchen: a cozy, leafy enclave framed by back veranda. It gives onto the bowels of a residential neighborhood where 'bowels' means how we live and love and cook and vent.

 

My Montreal Journal. Here it is. In dribs and drabs. So overwhelmed, so caught off guard, so trying to hold it together so I'm not submerged into another intellectual obsession.

 

5:03 p.m.

On trips like these, I see everything through the prism of whether I understand the language or not, whether I make myself understood or not.

 

Yes, like I said, it’s dangerous to drop an aspiring writer, such as myself, with an incurable addiction to Romance languages, into a proud Francophone city like Montreal. Within hours, I’ve hatched half a dozen projects in my mind, including translating a French-Canadian book that would illustrate the culture’s fight against English-language hegemony.

All because I was able to say "Bonjour" and "je voudrais" and "comme ca" a few times.

June 29

6:20 a.m.

 

A word about the houses: They are mainly two-story apartment buildings that sort of look like homes you’d expect to see in New Orleans perhaps because they have prominent outdoor stairs linking the upper unit to the sidewalk. Stairs that people sometimes paint pretty colors or adorn with plants. Bikes grip the railings of every other bottom unit’s front gate. Touches of home, touches of personality, the sense of home pride … everywhere, everywhere on the facades of these apartment homes.

 

8:20 a.m.

 

Update: I’ve learned to say "bonne journée" as opposed to “bonjour” at the end of transactions (as I’m saying goodbye to merchants), and given the hum in my step, you’d think I’d discovered the cure for cancer.

 

Really: big whoop since it’s the same in Italian. Buona giornata or buona serata (note the suffix ‘ata’) when you’re taking your leave. But whatevs. I’m re-learning French! Bonne journée!

 

8:45 p.m.

 

A walk after dinner as the sun prepares to set, casting my new neighborhood in a golden glow, as if anything more were needed to render these days in sepia tones. The sunset’s palette adds texture to this urban French neighborhood. The duplexes, each different, each an opportunity for human contact – not that I would necessarily be talking to anyone -- but for research purposes. I try to divine something or instill some sense of kinship because I see a flower pot, a bike chained to a railing, a wreath on a door. As if the eye were begging for variation. Even when the nuance or variation is a vacant storefront (rare) or a cluttered porch. Somehow these somewhat unpleasant variations set the stage even better for tender displays of picture-perfect flower boxes, a family of cats supping on a patio, an aged but stately stained-glass window in a home.

 

The sky becomes purple as I walk and I crane my neck to see more of the sunset. I even cross the street to improve my vantage point. I know this moment, occasioned by the decision on a whim to take a walk when otherwise I would be reading or working, is special. I was meant to fall in love just a little more with Montreal, and the sunset’s colorful blanket thrown so perfectly over the neighborhood is doing the trick.

 

I catch a glimpse of soccer players on a sliver of parkland I spy between duplexes. I’m writing an ode to something simple, yet lived-in, loved-in. Ode to the basic architecture of a neighborhood that has a bit of everything – as good city nabes do – a church, a corner store, a grocer, an off-license, a hair salon, a book shop, a toy emporium, a real estate office, the tax attorney, the plumber, the driving school (automatique et manuelle). Plus, a glance down an alley is repaid as if it were a glimpse into a diary: those back decks stuffed with people’s lives that one spies between duplexes and humble neighborhood businesses.

 

Once again, a five-minute walk is a passage into the sublime because I can observe. Nothing wrong with the suburbs or the countryside. But the myriad impressions of the human stamp in the city become a feast of plenty. One more pang for someone who’s always searching for the perfect city and who knows it’s stitched together with a 1,000 imperfect but highly imaginative, highly personal strands (no cookie-cutter cul de sacs here).

 

Ah Montreal, after all these years (~three decades), oui oui je t’aime.

 

June 30, 2016

9:03 a.m.

 

This is a city … that I’d like to call my own, in the way, as a traveler, I collect cities around the world.

 

1 p.m.

 

Visits today to the Marche Jean Talon and Petite Italie.

 

We are skimming the surface. A relatively quick, disorganized, disjointed shopping excursion followed by the pedestrian equivalent of a driveby to Little Italy. A cultural fusion that even just briefly left me sbalordita. 

 

An American Italophile visits an Italian bastion within a French-speaking city of a largely Anglophone country. 

 

Whoa! Any way you sliced it – Bonjour madame or buongiorno, I was good!

 

All of these glancing encounters temporarily fire up my brain and lead to brief intellectual explorations that must be aborted. To wit:

 

*What’s Quebecois culture all about?

*How to understand the fight for instilling the French language as the dominant form of communication in Montreal

*How does Quebecois Italian culture fit in?

*What can the U.S. learn about relations with indigenous people?

When we visited Little Italy – ‘Petite Italie’ en francais -- I wandered into a bookstore (its name, 'Librarie Italienne,' look like magical words to me), and the proprietor said, "Buongiorno. Cerchi qualcosa di particolare?" You know, as if the shop were in Rome.

Another shop sold the Italian newspaper and a recent copy of L'Espresso (which I bought because Matteo Renzi was on the cover with a very clever hashtag headline).

This morning when we woke up, the kittens belonging to the duplex next door were lined up on the patio, suckling milk from the Mommy cat.

 

6 p.m.

 

Out in our neighborhood in Montreal and from across the street I peer into a salon where a small boy is squirming in the arms of his father, crying, scared, as a hairdresser hovers about his head, trying gamely to snip a few locks. A scene of uncommon yet everyday tenderness that draws me into Montreal and a mere 36 hours into my stay convinces me I’m a part of the city and it is a part of me.

 

Quotes for the Leo journal: “Rain is like a shower for animals,” and “It could be funny if chickens knowed how to drive!” Oh, dude it already is funny!

-30-

Bennington journal - June 2016 - #2

Back in big sky country (Vermont edition).

Walking in the wild-flower filled fields this morning, I think about the lessons I’ve learned and those I can impart, perhaps, to students of my own some day. And it’s this: seek out hard work and start doing so now. Pursuing hard work entails a monumental shift – a conversion, occasioned by the process of learning something new, something vital while aiming at an objective (a goal). You may quickly abandon your original goal or add new ones. You may have to adjust the measurements of your project – instead of one year, it may take two to reach your goal, for example. It matters not – in setting a goal and striving to reach it through hard work you are transformed. I was. And that’s hard work’s gift to each of us.

*

I’m sitting in Tishman casually analyzing my lecture, given yesterday morning, through the prism of today’s lectures. Comparing delivery and topic, etc. Then I see it in my mind – the moment Leo (and Mike) entered the lecture hall. The moment during my lecture when my heart leapt, and I was moved to murmur, “My son is here,” (or something to that effect – in the preciousness of the moment the words have been erased, the singular, stunning emotion of being a mother remains). There was a catch in my voice, a momentary loss of control. The vision of him holding Mike’s hand, his smile as he watches me, then looking down at the stairs so he can watch his steps – it’s fixed in my head, like a favorite movie scene, something I’ll cherish and relive for a long time. Like breathing in his scent, instead I’m searing forever in my memory his gorgeous face and the joy it has given me.

That’s it right there – the boy whose sheer presence, whose birth (deemed by me miraculous) set this journey in motion was there to see its fruition. The lecture is now part of our shared life together.
*

On the mother-child bond, writer Vivian Gornick tells us during a lecture, “This is how we become human.”

*

Other indelible moments: David Gates reading from "Banishment": “Reader, she dumped me.” His shout-out to Jane Austen? Possibly. He's named-checked her in interviews.

*Click on continua a leggere below to read more...

Bennington journal (June 2016 edition)

My beloved classmates – those who are graduating with me – are giving their lectures as we prepare to complete our MFAs in Creative Writing at Bennington College.

And per my usual, I’m jotting down notes about anything that interests me. 

Snippets of their lectures, lines from the poems they are reciting or stories they are reading as part of the graduation requirements.

And I’m finding wisdom, I’m finding mastery, I’m finding love for this world of writing, this world we finally realized we had no choice but to occupy, to stake out as our own.

Some excerpts (including a few choice bits from professors' lectures and readings):

“The little headstones of a season we will never sip” (Lucas)

“I was paralyzed by my own desire to be good” (Liz)

“All that chatter of being good or better than someone else fell away by not looking at the page” in a drawing class (Liz)

Advice to a young poet: “Listen to how people talk….Love what’s available” (Ed Ochester, professor)

And

"I cried out, 'My son, my only son'" (Ochester, again)

“Hers was a past I felt I had a right to know” (Rowena)

"That was so long ago." "Not for her." (Rowena) 

Paraphrasing: “Put people somewhere…given them a passion, an obsession” (Julie quoting Amy Hempel)

“Worm girl” (the name of a belittled childhood friend from an essay – Gwen) 

"Write about what you fear is true" -- not what is true (Bret Anthony Johnston, professor)

-30-

MILESTONE

My thesis!

For Bennington!

“He” looks at the massive pile of printed pages that is my thesis and he says, “That looks like a book.”

God-willing, kid. God-willing.

Kind of amazing how you set a goal and then get so busy moving toward the goal that when you reach it, or are about to reach it, you hardly pay it attention. Yes, I guess I'm about to get that graduate degree I've always wanted. Yes, I guess I've completed a 120-page thesis containing six short stories written in a genre -- Fiction -- that until three years ago I never thought I could even attempt.

But my goodness, I still have to finish writing my graduate lecture, and I have to print out the thesis, and plan the post-graduation trip to Montreal (if I really do graduate, which is so hard to imagine) and I have a dozen other writing and translation projects I'm working on in one way or another, and I'm thinking about my next freelance journalism pitches and where I will work when my contract gig at HLN/CNN finishes up this month. 

And yet look at the picture. 

It says: Refugees and Other Stories. Jeanne Bonner. 

Milestone.

-30-

Italian Books by Women We Want To See in Eng.

I've written a piece for the Website Literary Hub called "10 Italian Books by Women We'd like To See in English." That's the kind of story that writes itself since there are so many wonderful Italian books that for many reasons have not made it over into English (in some cases published decades ago and winning Italy's top literary prizes.

Here's the intro to the piece, subtitled, "Reading Beyond Ferrante":

As more attention is paid to literature in translation, more tools emerge to aid us in trying to bring new (and in some cases, old) foreign works to an English-speaking audience.

Sometimes, however, those tools tell us things we don’t want to know. To wit, the wonderful database of translated works maintained by Chad Post of Three Percent shows us who is being translated – and by process of elimination, who is not.

My interest, of course, is: what Italian language books are being translated? And when I scan the names in the excel spreadsheets one can so handily download from Three Percent’s Web site, I see men’s names in line after line of the entries for Italian books translated and published.

Of course there are exceptions – and I don’t only mean Elena Ferrante. Europa, for example, has also published two works by Viola Di Grado in recent years (the second of which, Hollow Heart, translated by Antony Shugaar, was shortlisted for the PEN translation prize this year).

But it’s clear that the vast majority of Italian authors breaking through to English-language audiences are still men. The usual suspects, including Andrea Camilleri (the noted suspense writer) but also Umberto Eco and Antonio Tabucchi -- usual but also deserving suspects. Indeed, in trying to compile this list, I consulted Italian lists of ‘best books of the year’, plugging in 2012, 2013, etc., and found these lists were almost inevitably dominated by men (no wonder many in Italy don’t believe Ferrante is a woman – ahem).

Here, instead, are some of the women authors we’d like to see translated. The list is a mix of recent titles along with some galling omissions of writers who won a Strega – the Italian equivalent of a Pulitzer Prize – and have yet to see their works translated into English, in some cases decades later.
To read the rest, including the specific books by Lalla Romano, Erica Barbiani and Ubah Cristina Ali Farah that need to be translated, go here.

How I re-decorate

I print some new quality photos, I put them in frames, and I enjoy. That's how I re-decorate the house.

My zillions of mementos have already been arranged (and I don't really shop). So new sunny photos are all I need.

'Bits' journal (March-April excerpt)

As I mentioned in a previous post, I'm obsessed with what poet and FSU professor David Kirby calls the 'bits' journal. The little observations one makes, the asides, the day-to-day activities one jots down, just because. I've begun posting excerpts of mine here. But what I really want to do is collect OTHER writers' 'bits' journals. Who's in?

*
April 1, 2016

Leo and I make quiche together. And yesterday as we stirred the bacon together with wooden kitchen spoons, he says, “It’s like a little hand touching the bacon.” Yes, a wooden “hand” held by an actual hand (that happens to be the world’s cutest hand).

March 22, 2016

On days I stay home with Leo, every minute of every hour someone wants to talk to me. And that’s what makes it so hard. It’s what makes going to work much easier. The moment you begin your journey towards work, someone stops talking to you, stops waiting for your reaction, stops asking you the same question over and over. Someone stops trying to seize every moment of your attention, every breath you take.

March 17, 2016

From one of Leo’s children’s books: “Where do months and years go when they’re gone?”

My quick-hit guide to Florence

The wonderful, exciting, taking-over-the-world writer Alexander Chee put out a call on Facebook for tips on Florence. I was happy to oblige and emailed him some suggestions.

And then I thought, well, I may know some other people shipping off to Florence for their summer holidays. So here are some ideas for how to spend your gorgeous Florence days....

Restaurants

From my first blog post during my trip last year at this time, click here for some ideas on where to eat, including my first visit to Trattoria Cammillo.

From a few years ago (in some ways Florence never changes so these restaurants are still open and still good, even if the post is from a while back), you can find a guide here to eating in Florence. I visited many of these restaurants last year and remained impressed and full (Ignore the Italian and just go to the middle of the post where the list of restaurants is).

ALSO: There are essentially three branches of Cibreo (the expensive version, the less expensive version and the club version that gives you access to a buffet plus a performance -- I've never been to any of it but Cibreo is quite well known so worth a try)

Museums

You know the biggies (the Uffizi and L'Accademia) so let me mention Museo del Novecento (for modern art). I'm personally really interested in 20th century Italian art (Futurism, i Macchaioli, Italian impressionism), and you may want a break after all being submerged in Medieval and Renaissance frescoes.

Produce Markets:

Go to the Sant-Ambrogio Market, slightly off the beaten path, in a neighborhood behind Santa Croce. That said, San Lorenzo was recently renovated and now has some great restaurants so also worth a visit but in a very touristy, crowded part of the city.

There's also usually a weekly flower market on Fridays in Piazza della Repubblica that's visually interesting even if you have no interest in buying flowers.

Neighborhoods (and WALKS):

Don't miss San Niccolo on the other side of the Arno (and of course, Sant'Ambrogio).

In fact the best walks are on the other side of the Arno. You can do the requisite walk up to San Miniato or you could walk to Forte Belvedere, strolling up a road called Costa San Giorgio (which you access just off the Ponte Vecchio). Walks along Via dell'Erta Canina (nearby) are also lovely. They'll help you work off your Florentine diet!

Shopping
I don't care for leather goods so I can't give advice. My interests are household items (placemats, new Mokas, coffee canisters) paper goods, some clothing and of course, BOOKS BOOKS BOOKS. So, respectively, I visit the supermarkets and the casalinga shops (literally 'housewife'), Il Papiro, Barone near Piazza Beccaria (which had expanded when I went last year) and any of the Feltrinelli branches (including a fantastic one in the Santa Maria Novella train station -- peruse books while you wait for a train? Don't mind if I do!).

Field trips:

Lucca. In case you haven't been, it's a walled Tuscan city where you can even ride your bike on the ramparts of the wall. Also, there's tower in the center of the city with a tree growing on top. Plus some of the best food in Tuscany.

Local blog

Elena is a marketing expert who keeps the best blog (http://www.ioamofirenze.it/) on what to do in Florence. She no longer updates the English version regularly (http://lovingflorence.blogspot.com/)

but I'll include the Web address because there are some great links to restaurants and other attractions that are still up-to-date.

Buonviaggio!

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What Donna Leon gets right about Italian men

I've been urged to read one of Donna Leon's detective series books. And maybe I will. But in the meantime, I've picked up a book of her travel essays.

She's capable of some pretty fine insights. Here's what she has to say about Italian men:

"Most interchanges between a man and a woman here [in Italy], whether they take place between a woman and her lover or between a woman and the man who sells her cheese and prosciutto, are charged by some mutual recognition of, at however wild and improbable a distance, sexual possibility.

"This might st first sound like the ravings of frustration, the wild imaginings of a sex-starved spinster, but any woman who has lived here has surely often been aware of the sexual charge that fills the air at the most seemingly innocuous exchange with an Italian man."

Yes! Ecco! Ding ding ding!

That's it. 

Leon has nailed it.

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A Girl's Gotta Eat (Tutto)

(I'm re-posting entries from May of 2015, when I went back to my Italy.)

Is it wrong to say I didn't eat everything I wanted to eat in Italy? That I left wanting more? I suppose who doesn't?

(I also left with an ungodly number of books and yet I still wanted to buy more!)

Of course, I had a mental list of the things I had to eat. And topping that list:

A ciambella or ciambellina.

Not just any ciambellina. A fresh one. An airy one. An obscenely large one, or just simply, a very good one. With just the right amount of sugar crystals dusting the top.

There’s a reason it’s the name of this damn blog. These donutesque delights (above left) are the best pastries you can possibly put in your mouth. Especially if you like something that’s uncomplicated and pure. And honestly I would say that’s the essence of Italian cooking: not fussy, not overloaded with a thousand ingredients or dependent on some tricky sauce or filling. Just the genuine article.

I also ate a lot of savory foods, too, of course. Here's a partial list:

Pici al granchio (see photo; pici is a type of thick spaghetti often found in Siena and granchio, well, just ask Leo. It's crab); Fiori di zucca fritti; prosciutto crudo; paccheri sul coniglio (photo at top); a selection of cheeses one evening as a second (which included a lovely gorgonzola, of course, that when spread on a piece of crusty Italian bread became a snack worthy of the Medici), crostini with chicken fat and carmellized onions, and so on.

Oh and gelato. Nocciola, of course, the only gusto worth my time (even if the others are pretty good, hazelnut ice cream? You kidding me? Bring another coppetta over here, right quick please!)

And I could have eaten a lot more. I didn't get around to having anything with cinghiale -- wild boar -- which amounts to a felony in some parts of Tuscany. I also didn't have suppli (or arancini) in Rome, which produces a pretty good fried rice ball, if you ask me.

I also didn't have a Conca D'Oro, or enough red wine or fettunta with pomodorini or spaghetti alla carbonara or spezzatino (stew).

But I guess that will have to be for the next time.

Buon appetito!