What?

Franco Zeffirelli on the Met’s new version of “Tosca”:
“It’s like having married a woman who’s still beautiful in your eyes, still wonderful, and for some legal reason they replace her with another one.”
Excellent. Also, as an aside, I’m still alive, now living down in D.C. with Ruth and Bonnie. Updates to follow as soon as there [...]

Attendant Nipples

It was a very strange week out of a long summer, and I’ll write about it when things are settled. But for now, a choice snarky quote from The Guardian about Italian censorship:
Over the table at which Berlusconi holds press conferences in Palazzo Chigi, Italy’s equivalent of No. 10 Downing Street, hangs a huge copy [...]

Where’d you get your shoes?

“Your eminence, you’re looking good,” Mr. Bush said, the A.P. reported.
Apparently, this phrase is even more problematic than it first appears.

Fried Artichokes and Passport Control

My final four days of Italy were spent in Rome, which was just as chaotic, ugly, and beautiful as everyone said it would be. We hit the usual spots (the Vatican, Trevi Fountain, Spanish Steps, Colosseum) and they were all packed with tourists, but also all stunning and worthy of their place in the standard [...]

Confused Earnestness

Williams architectural criticism professor Michael Lewis lends his two-cents to the imbroglio over Yale senior Aliza Shvarts’s final studio project, where she claims that works “may” be done with blood gathered from self-induced miscarriages.
Though his diagnosis is nothing new (learn the rules before you try to break them,) he asks not what has gone wrong [...]

Polenta EVERYWHERE

The whole summer job search has certainly been complicated by this whole being in Italy business, but the most telling experience took place this Tuesday when I had my final interview for the Steamboat Foundation internship with the Isabella Stewart Gardner museum in Boston:
The curators at the Gardner scheduled the call for 1pm Tuesday; 7pm [...]

Making Pigeon-Related Noises

Of course, when I said I’d be writing last week, that was a total lie. I don’t have too much to say about spring break aside from it being absolutely wonderful to get away from Siena and see new faces; that is, faces of friends and family that, seeing them in Italy, I found to [...]

Pizza update

Last night for dinner, two very new kinds of pizza:

Pizza con Patate: Yes, pizza covered with thin slices of potato. No sauce, a little bit of mozzarella melted on top. Lightly oiled and peppered. Unlike any pizza I’ve tasted, but actually ok once you realize you’re just eating a potato. Fiorella was amazed that I’d [...]

Too much prosecco

I’ve been getting to know Fiorella and Romano’s local San Miniato church group quite well – two weeks ago we had a big dinner for Carnivale, and this week there was a St. Valentine’s day feast. When I came in I saw a few primi piatti sitting out, but no main dish. Perhaps it was [...]

Italy FAQ

Here’s a sum-up of some of the various questions I’ve gotten about my stay so far:
What do you eat for breakfast? And dinner?
Breakfast is toast and marmalade with a cappuccino – every day! I definitely prefer it to having a huge American eggs and sausage breakfast (I can only handle that for brunch!) I must [...]