L'Aquila! July 11

Yesterday morning we painted on the terrace of some friends of ours from Denmark that have a holiday house here. They are in Denmark in the miserable rainy weather and we are on their deck. Jim finished his drawing, but I will be back tomorrow. 

Today we took the train to L’Aquila.

Abruzzo is made up of four regions. We live in the region of L’Aquila and the capital of L’Aquila is L’Aquila. L’Aquila was also the epicenter of the April 2009 earthquake. We have never gone there because so much of it was destroyed and people said it was very sad. It is still sad. Every town we see in Abruzzo has a crane.

Our first understanding of how bad the earthquake was in L'Aquila.

In L’Aquila, it was impossible to take a picture without a crane except in the one church. This is a big city and the damage is huge. I can’t not imagine where all the people have gone that lived in the damaged area.

We walked and walked and occasionally asked people if there was any place with tourist info. We did not have a map and we assumed that, like in Sulmona, there would be an obvious information center. L’Aquila is way bigger than Sulmona and way bigger than we expected. I do not think we will return. I do not think it will be restored in our lifetime. 

The church we visited is at the end of the the scaffolding. 

Cranes

We went in one church. I believe it is the one that the dome collapsed in on itself. It has been repaired and was filled with interesting paintings, gold leaf and a mummy of a monk in a San Franciscan robe. So if it is a mummy of a monk, does that make it a monkey? Trust me this is the only piece of levity available in L’Aquila. There was another mummy of a bishop with a silver leafed face. No jokes come to mind. The church was huge and I don’t know how it could ever be filled, but all along the sides were modern works of art that were made to be carried by four people in religious processions. They had a Bread & Puppet quality and each one individually represented hours of work. They were made to light up and a night procession of these moveable art works would be amazing. 

Mummy in box on red cloth

Restored dome

Cool processional artwork

Who needs Rome?

Small Jim in big church

cool thing

We also found the large piazza, but no tourist info ever. We managed, finally to get over 10,000 steps in a day. And it was not too hot. Oh and we also went into a mall that had an escalator! 

This van transforms into a small crane

In the big square

 As you know many buildings are wrapped while they are being worked on. It is not attractive, but in L’Aquila some of these wrappings have been turned into works of art or representations of what is behind them using enormous photographs. There was a series of three enormous black and white except for a huge, red, sculpture of a heart, photos.. One picture showed workmen carrying it out to the foot of Connette Grande. (big mountain, Mussolini kept captive there, helicoptered out by Hitler) The last picture showed the heart resting in the mountains. Why did I not take a picture? Too much back light.

Example of decorated wrapping

My favorite part of the trip was the train ride through the field dotted valley between the Sirentes (our mountains) and the Gran Sasso Mountains. (their mountains) We were prepared to hitch hike or walk home from the train station. This is the same train station where we found ourselves on our first arrival at night in CVS. Jim observed that in America towns were built up around stations, but here in Italy trains are so new that they are outside of town. Like airports. It is 2 km. to CVS from the train. I would not mind walking, but the road is very narrow and winding. We walked up to the street where the railroad crossing guard was still down. We were standing there when the woman waiting asked if we would like a ride. No thumb sticking out was involved. 

Since our big adventure we have been hanging out at home watching the weather on the big screen. 

And no, we did not go out painting. More thunder is coming so better end. 

Painting, Shopping, Red Garlic Saturday July 9

We have been so busy since the hail storm. Everyday is like three or four instead of the normal two. Things are going suspiciously well this year. A few years ago we were in Sulmona and we only had a 50 Euro note. That is the same as having no money. We tried to buy lunch, but the guy could not make change. Jim went in to a branch of OUR bank and waited in line about one hour to have them tell him, no, they would not make change and he should go to the post office. We went without lunch. Hungry in Italy. Its a sin.

After the hailstorm

This year we faced a similar challenge on market day. We had 20 Euro notes, but most people cannot change a 20. Most people cannot change a 10 at the beginning of the day. We went in the local branch of our bank and I read my little note. I was somewhat nervous about pulling a note out of my pocket in a bank, but all it said was, “can you change this to smaller bills?” He said, “YES!” giant success. We were doing so well we decided to ask if we could deposit money in our account. (Usually this takes 2 hours minimum in the bank in Pratola, which we can only get to by car. Usually this is what we do with our rental car on the first day we have it) He looked up Jim’s name in the computer and YES we can deposit money in this bank. All this work and it only took 15 minutes. Last year we were in the bank so long that I picked up a book to buy. That took three pages of paper work and probably added another 45 minutes to the total time. So we will be headed back to the bank with enough dollars to cover next years expenses.

Other exciting news: we got new, much brighter lights for our hallway. Now we can see how shabby our hallway actually looks, but there is not much we can do when periodically water pours down the stairs and out the front door. The wall that still has paint on it clearly shows what a bad paint job I did. All other paint is washed away. All the interior paint is tempera so the stones can breath. 

Yesterday, I finished up my two morning pastels and in the afternoon I finished two portraits. In-between we went grocery shopping with Noel, the Irish dude. He knows all the best places to get a cup of coffee and which places have the best value. The place we went has double sized cappuccinos and delicious cake and pastries. 

Giant Grocery Store

We had never realized their was a grocery store in the same “strip mall”. We had a very successful shopping trip. I hate to even go in a grocery store in the U.S., but hear it is an adventure. Also grocery stores here do not smell like dead animals, although you are more likely to see something that does look like a dead animal. 

In Progress

 While I was out here painting, I could hear the sound of the vegtable truck. The sound track went from "Little bity poke a dot bikini" to "Ave Maria". It is so fun here!

Wayside Cap

Finished!

Artist's Reward! breakfast cookies with MORE chocolate

After a relaxing afternoon of playing solitaire, reading and starting another portrait, Noel, Irish dude, and his wife Marzia, Italian babe, picked us up for another adventure. This time is was off to Campo di Fano for the “Red Garlic Festival”. Getting to Campo di Fano was worth the trip: proving beyond any doubt that it is the journey not the destination that maters. Fans is a hill town above Sulmona. The Marelle mountains rise straight up from the Salmon valley making them look taller that the mountains that surround Castelvecchio.There were hugh groves of beech trees, fields of corn, vineyards, gardens and sunflowers. We ended up in Salmon twice, but watching the sun set over the mountains was worth it. 

At a Garlic Festa I expected lots of interesting ways to eat garlic, possibly local vendors making deep fried garlic, garlic with powered sugar, garlic mashed potatoes, (yum), people dancing the traditional garlic dances and maybe a person dressed up like a red garlic. But no. There were none of these things. 

What there was, was at least 3000 people sitting at a combination of white plastic tables and chairs and the traditional wooden trestle fold-up tables with benches. This is how it works: first you look at the menu poster and decide what you want. You get a small piece of paper that lists all the options and you write in numbers next to what you want. Then you wait in line and pay for your choices. Next you go to another group of lines. There are many lines for the different food. Some lines take longer than others. Probably everyone in your party should go stand in line, because it is hard to get some food and then change lines. Jim and Italian babe accomplished their mission while Irish dude and I saved us a table. We had arrostichini, bruschetta with the reddest tomatoes I have ever seen and, what I suspect is typical festa food: the pizza fritte. In Vermont we call this fried dough. The pizza fritta is delicious. Honestly, what fried food isn’t, hot, crispy and super greasy. There is no powdered sugar involved. In Oklahoma we call this “Indian fry bread”. Each of us got one napkin. Oh well, that is what pants are for. Basically, the whole point of the festa is to feed 3000 people really good food. There was a music stage with a DJ playing accordion songs and little kids were dancing around trying to hop into the shifting lights on the ground. There were a few trucks selling giant ropes of garlic, the ever present peanut sellers and a truck with the kind of junk children in any country scream for. Sulmona red garlic is famous, at least in Italy. The cloves are a purplish red: very beautiful and tasty.

We didn’t order any wine, because it seemed so expensive by the glass 4 or 8 Euros, but upon reflection, I think that was the price per bottle. In the super market the cheapest wine I saw was .75 for a liter box with an expensive bottle going for 6E. At least once a week some nearby town has one of these food festas. We will be having the Solina wheat festival soon in Castelvecchio. At least there we will have homemade pasta made with local wheat. 

As we wove our way through the tables of cheerful families at 9:30 the food lines were longer than ever and more and more people were arriving. We got back to Castelvecchio after 10. The piazza was full of people spilling out into the street. Kids were running around and the place was packed. Why aren’t these people home watching TV? Silly them, out socializing in the beautiful, cool, Italian night under a waxing crescent moon. 

Haircut and Hail July 6, 2016

Random picture of my friend, Linda, talking to a passerby. 

When I made the appointment for my haircut today it seemed so far away and now it has come and gone. I am so happy to have it short as it is much cooler. 

This was just in time for a giant rain and hail storm. Right now, one of our neighbors is out in his garden taking down the tarp that was shredded by the hail. The ground looked snow covered in some places and the street became its usual river. The city is literally washed clean and many large stones are stranded out in the road. It looked like behind our house that our upstairs neighbors avoided water coming over the door sill by about 1/2 inch. That would have been bad for us as well. 

River Via Nationale

Hail left after tons of rain.

More hail by the wash house/fountain.

This was the second rain of this day and the sky is still quite threatening. At one point there were no mountains or suggestions of mountains to be seen. 

This was a non-painting day because of the haircut and the rain, but I have polished off two more portraits. I am on track for my goal of no more portraits after July 10 or 15 at the latest. 

Every day tons of building supplies (no hyperbole here) appear in the piazza to be taken up into the earthquake zone by little front loaders or skidders. Tons of rubble is carried back down by these fierce little machines and deposited in a large container that is eventually taken away with a bigger truck. Every day all the materials that are dropped off appear to be used up as every day new ones take their place. Today there was a huge pile of sand that must be mixed with other stuff in bags to make morder. From the color of the run off from up town it seems like some must have been sold down the river. 

Rubble container to take away destruction rubble

Construction materials being unloaded. Note the woman and baby stroller.

Yesterday in Sulmona, Today, Back to Work July 4 & 5

Yesterday we took the bus to Sulmona, the beautiful city of Ovid. The mountains rise straight up as a back drop for the churches and aqueduct around Girabaldi Square, Sulmona.

Are they saying that the red garlic of sulmona is a natural Viagra! 

Now we know the secret of Italian men.

You could buy these large doors, but could you open them? 

Candles lit for Mebs and Annie in a Sulmona Church. 

The other thing Sulmona has given the world is Confetti!
Almonds covered with chocolate and a candy coating. Not at all like an M&M.

For the Forth of July we had hamburgers and french fries for dinner. Today it is back to the work schedule. Today I got to try my new phrase, "I can't do any more portraits till next summer." The success of this is dubious as I now have a guy on a horse to do. Something did not work exactly right in this scene. However we have not paid for any coffee today. 

First was market. The pile of carrots and greens were the free stuff. The peaches and watermelon are amazing. I have never had a peach like these in America. Tonight: roasted chicken from the Chicken Man, new potatoes from our friends garden. Thin green beans and salad. 

It is so far down to the pastels and my socks are filled with stickers.

After a hard days work. The color is not too good in this picture. 

Work in progress.

I started a painting in the piazza this afternoon. At about 5:30 the place was inundated with small children who are spending too many afternoons eating ice cream or chips and their equally over indulged moms. They did love my picture and soon I was surrounded with chip eating, water drinking small people in chairs. Luckily it started raining so I had an excuse to quit. Tomorrow I will get here earlier. It is hard to concentrate when I am worried about my supplies, but I want to be kind to aspiring artists!

Lovely and Fresh July 2, 2016

After yesterday’s rain, today it was lovely and fresh after the dense fog burned off. We were too full from dinner to eat first breakfast. Our friends Vittorio and Emilinda came over for dinner. They had requested “only onion rings” to eat and Jim did make four large onions into delicious rings. We also had arrosticini, tiny green beans, salad, granita, and cookies they brought. It was looking like the quickest meal in Italy ever with all the onion rings consumed by 9pm after an 8:30pm start, but after that things slowed down and dinner ended about 10pm. 

This winter Vittorio refinished our front door and painted all the balcony railings with dark gray metal paint. It looks great. He has done so much for us. He and some other guys brought over a giant storage cabinet with drawers and doors for us to keep all our clothes in, one day we discovered a bag full of silverware hanging on our door after he had dinner with us and we did not have matching, or even enough silverware, and he has taken care of all our business with the commune over the last six years. 

Gregor spotted him the first summer we were all here and made friends with him and insisted that we had to get to know him. He and Ermilinda are both historians and know so much about the history and people of Valle Subequono. How did Gregor know that this was a guy we should know? 

Also, people still are talking about the first summer Jim and Gregor came and worked on the house. The international symbol for Gregor is the motion of pulling a hat onto your head. The first few years, Gregor had a leather hat from Australia that he wore all the time. Yes, people feared the worst when Jim and Gregor were here, and were extremely relieved when the Señora showed up. So thanks again, Gregor for introducing us to Vittorio. 

Last night was the quarter finals in the European Cup. Germany beat Italy after 30 minutes of extra play in the sudden death that is the last resort of a tied soccer game. The piazza was filled with a  loud buzz, ok more like shouting, this morning with a play by play complete with reenactments of foot play that helped lose the game. Still the paper headlines blared, “Bravo Italia”. I sure would have liked to seem them beat the Germans. Maybe Iceland will beat them, but watching Italy play soccer in the piazza is over for this year. 

Here are most of the portraits I did over the winter and in the last 2.5 weeks in Italy. They are the best I can do. If people don’t like them, maybe no one else will ask me to do one. It has been two days since a request! 

Pina

Davida

?

Singer from Roma

Violinist from Roma

Sorella Miriam from Roma

And here are some pastels you have seen before, but now they are really finished after using a triangle and charcoal pencil to draw in all the railings. 

And the last two pastels that I started yesterday morning and finished today. In the end, I was pretty happy. One guy asked me if I was painting from a photo. Luckily I could only say, “no” and point. Otherwise I would have had to ask, why, if I was painting from a photo would I be sitting on a low step on the edge of a pretty busy road in front of a door to a garage from which a low, musty, oder was emanating. See, being bad at a language can be a good thing. Someone else asked why I hadn’t put in the Pharmacy sign?(Bright green cross) I counted the doors for him to show that the pharmacy was door number 4 and I only had room for doors 1 & 2. Several people called me by name that I have no idea what their names are. Always embarrassing and one person confessed to following me on Instagram!! True fame these days!

This afternoon we met with a couple of guys who are in charge of culture. We picked Aug 13 & 14 for my art exhibition. It is good to know when it will be. I am so tired from listening to, speaking and interpreting Italian! 

Market Day Again July 1

A week slips by and it is July 1st and market day in CVS. If only we could eat more! We bought cherries, peaches, watermelon, cantaloupe and grapes. We still have oranges and unbelievable, but I can’t think of the English word and I am not sure how to spell the Italian word. Great, demento in two languages. (demento here means forgot) 

After some shocking T-shirts on view in the market we headed home and saw our friend Maria. She is the one that brought us all those APRICOTS!!! (non demento!!) that we can’t seem to finish. I have had two already today. 

This actually says "Sims of Youth", not "sins" and "Hollywork"

My friend, Maria

Then I trudged back to my painting spot and Jim went to a spot that doesn’t involve so many stairs. After he went to the Supermarcoto only to discover that it was closed, because someone died. That amazes me in a good way. 

I finished off the pastel of the round stairs and then went back to the one of the magic piazza. In this piazza lived a giant. He lived at the top of the giant stairs on the left. Very small people lived next door in the surrounding piazza. If you live next to a giant, it is a good idea to have very small doors so he can’t get in. Much like a mouse and a cat. Unfortunately the creator of this small world did not notice the disparity of the two sides of her painting. Last night she spent quite a bit of time moaning and groaning about how stupido she was. But, luckily, Jim had some good ideas. I sprayed the snot out of it and then redrew and reworked with pastel from the photo I had taken. Today I sprayed it again, compared elements in the real world, made all the little doors bigger and now feel that people of the same size live in all these houses. The big stairs may go up to San Giovanni, the really BIG church in town. The back of the church is beautiful, but the front is a wreck from the earthquake. 

Today I started worrying about what I should do if there was another earthquake while I was out painting in the Centro Storico. So what do you think? Get under an arched doorway that did not fall in the last earthquake? All I can think about is getting hit on the head with a big rock and having my eyes pop out. Uhggg. 

Today as we walked by the scaffolded and wrapped building. Workers were using a jack hammer to dislodge big pieces of stone. These were crashing to the ground and I was very happy about the wrapping and the metal pieces around the bottom to hold in the stone. Dust and small fragments were escaping and I was glad I was wearing glasses. Jim was not so lucky. Note to self: next year bring shop glasses to wear near construction sites. 

I was going to start a third painting after finishing the other two. It was nice and cool after all. When I stood up, I realized the coolness was only lingering in the shade. Suddenly I wondered how I would walk home with so much stuff when it was so hot. So I took a photo and I may try the drawing thing again, although I am suspicious that this is the root of my drawing problems.  

All afternoon I have been reading. I deleted the solitary game on my phone. If I want to play I will have to use a real deck. I cannot be trusted with games. Mostly I am trying and succeeding to not work on the portraits. Only six to go from this summer and then all the ones I did not finish in the winter. How does, “ Non questa estate” sound? not this summer, so sorry, really, really sorry. It takes about four hours to do one AND from watermelon at lunch I can tell you that an average size piece has 102 1/2 seeds. Inspire of what my Texan uncle told me, a watermelon will NOT sprout inside you from 1/2 a seed. The risk is worth it, because the watermelon is so delicious. Other fun facts: if you eat soup, watermelon, wine, water and limoncello for dinner you will have to pee all night. In this case it does mean you will get to see the stars behind the majestic Sirentes!