Market Day July 24, 2015

Filling up water bottles below our house

 We have been here two weeks today. On our first Friday we arrived too late for market, but today we enjoyed it in all its glory. Bright coloured clothes of polyester, ridiculous t-shirts and shoes, ten people in line outside the fish truck and endless arrays of fruits and vegetables. As you can see garlic is in season and it is about irresistible to me. We can never use it all and have to give it away. Our friend Pasquale is back from Tunisia where he works distributing medicine. His wife is here also. Her mother lives here. As my friend said, “Pasquale bravo. Therese brava.” So true. Pasquale’s birthday is Sunday. How nice to retire at 60, get a pension and go out and serve one’s fellow humans. 

The day started cloudy and cool and people seemed very happy. They all rushed out to work in their gardens while we rushed off to have coffee. The woman who sells her produce for nothing was at the market today and we got a head of rudicchio, two heads of lettuce, a large handful of carrots, Italian parsley, basil, green beans all for 3E. She weighed everything, but I don’t know why. I told her it was too cheap, but I did not know if offering her more money would be offensive. 

Garlic and beans

Household goods

Fashion decisions 

Lots of fruit

I mailed a letter to my mom after buying my stamps in the tobacco store. The most popular item to purchase is lottery tickets: mostly of the scratch off type. 

Views of the tobacco shop where I buy my stamps.

On the way up to market.

Florist

Church of San Francesco

Bravo Jimmy!

At the bakery I got some bread and ignored the long shelves of cookies and one of cute things to buy for presents. 

Then it was on to the shoe maker to see if he could fix my bag. He better charge me this year. As usual he had lots of cool hand made shoes. 

We also visited our friend Vittorio in his office. We could not make it here without him. Bravo Vittorio!

Using google translator to talk to the Americans

After helping Jim carry stuff home, I went back uptown to finish my pastel from yesterday. I think finish is an illusion in this case. I do not feel I could ever make it look good. The problem is that the buildings are higgily  piggily. This is not the only problem. I am willing to take some responisbility. The scene reminds me of “The Tenement” an etching by Whistler. So it is done and next I am going to do another scene of San Francesco. If I have bigger paper I will do a pastel to give to the commune in honour of the Festa San Francesco. I am using the Pastel Mat paper. It works well and is the size of my frames. I do have to spray it more often than Wallis, still the gold standard in spite of its absence from the world, but it holds a lot of pastel when sprayed. I do like the little white edge around the colour. 

finito!

Now I am sitting on the terrace watching it rain here and there. After some ominous thunder rolls it seems like the worst is past us. It would be unheard of for it to rain here three days in a row. At least the weather seems more or less back to normal although unsettled in the afternoon. Tonight Vittorio and Ermelinda will be coming to dinner. They want onion rings, but we are also making some other stuff. Wait, Jim is making some other stuff. Arrosachini, ensalda mista, bruschetto, granita, (I made that. Even I can freeze some blood orange juice.) and the centre of all attention: onion rings. Have you noticed that my computer insists on using English English instead of American English. Evidently that is what happens in Italy.

What I do when it is too hot outside.

Dinner with our friends was awesome and no one died in the onion ring fight. Jim made about 6 onions but it wasn't enough!