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| The Burgess Shale 20 most recent entries |
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 Friday, June 26 and Sunday, July 5 - Rome In my honeymoon photo posting schedule, I seem to have broken the Piazza Navona out into its own photoset. I'm not sure why, but if I had to guess I'd say it was because of the photo above, a detail from Antonio Della Bitta's Neptune Teabagging an Octopus. It's really quite an excellent octopus. I'm finding it hard to think of a place in Rome more crass and crowded and touristy than the Piazza Navona, to say nothing of the Angels & Demons connection, but I can't hold that against it. It's a permanent art fair and performance space, filled with street artists selling luggage-packable art, living statues, puppeteers, musicians. (All expertly mercenary — Michael Jackson died the day we left home, and by the time we reached the Piazza Navona the next day one puppeteer had incorporated a Michael Jackson finger-puppet into his act.) I can and do blame it for being difficult to photograph — the western side of the plaza is dominated by the Palazzo Pamphilj and Sant'Agnese, which cut it off from the sun beginning in midafternoon. Next time, morning light. We visited the Piazza Navona on our first day and our last day, so it serves me as memory bookends — from masterpiece overload to harried souvenir-shopping, from homebody uncertainty to globetrotter confidence, from being ready to devour all of Italy to being ready to go home. ( Cut for further nudity! ) More Navonaness here. post a comment
 Thursday, July 2 - Florence It's taking me longer and longer to upload photos. On the one hand, I keep learning new things to do in Photoshop to spruce them up, and each new technique adds time. On the other, once they're prettified, I'm compelled to research each photo, so I can accurately tag them — Who painted it? Where was it? When was it built? So, for instance, I know that the funeral monument above was Félicie de Fauveau's last and greatest work, sculpted in 1858, and that the ascending soul is that of Louise Favreau. This takes time, enough time that I could probably be called self-indulgent, but it also deepens my appreciation of the places we visited on our vacation. I see connections I wasn't aware of before (Brunelleschi is everywhere!), and I feel I'm adding to the sum total of knowledge on the internet. Louise Favreau's funeral monument is in Santa Croce, which is all about tombs and cenotaphs: Michelangelo's tomb, Galileo's tombs (the secret one and the public one), Dante's cenotaph (he's buried in Ravenna, as you may recall), Machiavelli's cenotaph. Dozens of heraldically splendid floor tombs. Monuments to Marconi and Florence Nightingale, and the monument to Niccolini that was the basis for the Statue of Liberty. It's not as opulent as St. John Lateran, but it's not for nothing that it's called the Temple of the Italian Glories. There are also two perfect cloisters, hatfuls of grand frescoes, and quite a nice museum, to boot. ( Cut for Italian Glories! ) 85 more photos available on Flickr. post a comment
Hoo-hah. I completed revisions to chapter 11 on schedule, and passed page 200. Also finally named an Empress (and since she has two names, that took extra-long). Chapter 12 is printed — it's the first "nadir" chapter, in which everything Scrutiny has hoped for and had faith in is dashed to bits. Should be fun! post a comment
This is an old meme, and I don't usually meme, but I was charmed by the results. Here's the drill: shuffle your iTunes library, and pick the first 20 songs with lyrics. The first lines of those songs, in order, and punctuated as necessary, form five stanzas of a poem. The name of the 21st song is the title of the poem.
Bostonians!
 Monday, June 29 - Rome Saint John Lateran is the highest church in Roman Catholicism. #1. El guapo. Most people expect that to be Saint Peter's in the Vatican (at least I did), but the papal cathedra (throne) is here, and that makes it the mother church for all Catholics. Within its ridiculously opulent walls are (ostensibly) the heads of the apostles Peter and Paul, the table at which Jesus ate the Last Supper, and St. Peter's altar, which is built into the high altar, which only the Pope may use (and then only if he's been very good). The cathedral abuts the city walls of Rome — if you could look over your shoulder, you'd see the Aurelian Wall and the Porta Asinaria ("gate of the donkeys"). (You can see a bit of wall in the lower left, below the umbrella pines.) The orange building is the Lateran Palace, where the popes lived for a thousand years before moving to the Palace of the Vatican. It was a gift to the Bishop of Rome from the emperor Constantine, who aquired it when he married his second wife, Fausta; the palace hosted the bishops when they convened to declare Donatism a heresy in 313. Constantine also built the cathedral, as well as the baptistry next door. The obelisk in front (see below) was built by Thutmose III in the 15th century BC, moved to the Circus Maximus by Constantine's son Constantius II in 357 AD, and erected in front of St. John Lateran by Sixtus V in 1587. (Sixtus V never saw an obelisk he didn't want to move somewhere.) We were only there by chance — it was a public transportation node, between catacombs and San Clemente. Fortunate fools we. ( Bring me the church of John the Baptist! ) More pix here. 1 comment | post a comment
Beantowners! Next month, The Slutcracker is returning to the Somerville Theater for ten shows over two weekends: December 10-13 and 17-20 (Thu-Fri-Sat-Sun @ 8PM and matinees Sun @ 2PM). All tickets are $20. It is, if you don't know, a burlesque parody of The Nutcracker which is joyous and rowdy and very very funny. I saw it last year, and wrote: The Slutcracker is BRILLIANT. It sold out the main theater at the Somerville, and earned a ten-minute standing ovation from a crowd of hipsters and middle-aged ladies and assorted perverts. [...T]he dancing was really quite lovely and technically adept, with stage combat and on-stage costume changes and hula hoop spinning and belly dancing and whatever else you can think of. [It] manages to be coy and sweet and sexy and hilarious, all in pantomime. [...]I know you're all sad you missed it last year. Well, now is your chance to atone — I'm going at least once this season, and I know a couple of people out there want to get in on the trip. Anybody else interested? Let me know in comments if you have a preferred date. 1 comment | post a comment
Attention Bostonians! Tomorrow at the Coolidge is the Found Footage Festival: From the curiously-produced industrial training video to the forsaken home movie donated to Goodwill, the Found Footage Festival resurrects these forgotten treasures and serves them up in a lively celebration of all things found.They're not connected to Found! Magazine, but they seem to be in the same genre. Hope to see you there, won't you? http://coolidge.org/node/2469 http://www.foundfootagefest.com/ 9:30PM, Coolidge Corner Theater, 2 hrs., $10. 3 comments | post a comment
 Monday, June 29 - Rome On Monday, between lunch and the time San Clemente opened, ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} adfamiliares and I wandered the Esquiline, which is now given over to a connected series of public parks. This follows a long tradition of public land use — civic-minded emperors used the space for temples, amphitheaters, and Trajan's massive bath house, which has, over the intervening centuries, decomposed into the American southwest (see above). Those emperors were sending a political message: Nero, in a wildly unpopular move, appropriated the Esquiline for his sprawling and excessive Domus Aurea (Golden House) after the Great Fire scoured the hillside clean of private residences. The palace was leveled and filled in after Nero's death, so his successors could build public buildings. Now, 1900 years later, it is being re-excavated via tunnels all through the Esquiline — adfamiliares and I spent a happy hour tramping over the grassy hills and peering down ventilation/light shafts, trying to puzzle out what was going on underfoot.Monday was also the day we toured the Catacombs of Domitilla — miles and miles of grim tunnels, lined with rough stone slots where bodies were stored. We descended from a lizardful garden to a sunken basilica, then down a little stair to the catacombs. They're huge (see link below) — our tour was abbreviated (after a lengthy wait in the monastery garden), and our irritatingly "spooky" guide seemed in a rush to get back aboveground for siesta, but we could've walked for hours and still not come to the end. After dark, we played tourist and tossed coins into the Trevi Fountain, then climbed the Spanish Steps with gelati, to gaze out over the city at night. ( Cut for night photos, and frightening hot dogs! ) More photos here. They weren't permitted inside the catacombs, but there are some remarkable maps and images from a 3D mapping project on the Austrian Academy of Sciences site (scroll down, and don't miss the team portrait). I try to imagine what it would be like navigating that maze with the body of a loved one. post a comment
 Happy Halloweek! Having carved out this fellow's mouth, I was left with an interestingly twisty segment of pumpkin. "Whatever shall I do with this?" I thought. "Jam it into his forehead!" something on my shoulder muttered. 'Tis the season, so here are some autumnal photos, from Honk!toberfest and apple-picking at Shelburne Farm in Stow. ( Cut for fuzzy pink top hats and billygoats! ) More photos, including a llama, here. 8 comments | post a comment
There's nothing better, after a weekend of being sick, than waking up to an ice-cold spongebath because your hot water is out.
Despite failure to sleep last night and the other lingering effects of being sick, I met my goal of finishing revisions to chapter 10 tonight. This time around, I feel much more confident describing a quasi-Roman city; can't imagine why! I've just printed chapter
Bit sick. Weary, sniffly, 100.2°, mild aches, itchy eyeballs, no real nausea. Hungry. Preliminary self-diagnosis suggests cold, not flu:
(From familydoctor.org.) 1 comment | post a comment
 Sunday, June 28 - Rome Remember Augustus's mausoleum from the last post? Good-sized tomb, sure, but a hundred years later Hadrian said "Piffle!" and built a mausoleum that was so big it went on to be used as a fortress (5th-6th centuries) and a castle (14th-19th centuries). Moreover, he built it on the opposite bank of the Tiber, within sight of Augustus's little rockpile, just because he could. Today, it's called the Castel Sant'Angelo — that winged fellow on top is the Archangel Michael, who (they say) appeared atop the fortress in 590 and sheathed his sword to signal the end of the plague. Like every other ancient structure in Rome, Castel Sant'Angelo is home to a museum now. Unfortunately, photography was forbidden inside the museum proper, so I can't show you the flintlocks and military uniforms and opulent libraries; you're stuck with the fortress itself. Which is still pretty cool, though we spent a good third of our visit circling around and around it, following the complicated multi-layer overlay map in an ultimately fruitless effort to reach the upper levels. (They were closed for restoration.) ( Cut for angels, not demons! ) See more here. 2 comments | post a comment
 Sunday, June 28 - Rome The Ara Pacis ("altar of peace") was erected by the senate along the Via Flaminia to celebrate the Pax Augusta, the end of civil war as brought by Augustus (aka the end of the Republic and the start of the Empire). It's a remarkably persuasive piece of architecture — decorated with portraits of the imperial family, symbols of peace and prosperity, and other pro-imperial propaganda aimed at convincing the populace that this new Empire thing was what the gods really wanted anyway. And anybody coming to Rome from the north couldn't help but see it. It was lost in the Tiber's flood plains for centuries, but eventually chunks started turning up, and archaeologists were able to do a fair job of reassembling it in the early 20th century. Mussolini had it moved next door to the Mausoleum of Augustus in 1938, which is where it stands today, though his fascist outer building was torn down and replaced in 2006 with a big, antiseptic-white, glassed-in gift-box designed by Richard Meier — very controversial! adfamiliares hadn't seen the Ara Pacis before, and was suffused with girlish glee the entire time we were there. "It's a very significant monument," she says when I tease her.( Cut for peace and imperial rule! ) The rest of the set is here. 1 comment | post a comment
 Sunday, June 28 - Rome On our third day in Rome, we dragged ourselves way the hell around the city, on buses and trains and foot, from Trastevere in the southwest to the Ara Pacis and Castel Sant'Angelo in the northwest to the Trevi Fountain and Quirinal in the northeast to the Forum Holitorium in the southeast, then back to Trastevere and back up to the Quirinal for an ultimately disappointing dinner (many restaurants are closed Sundays, it turns out). We spent far too much time walking along the Via Nazionale and Via del Quirinale through the generic-big-city center of town. We were cranky and frustrated at times, betrayed by confusingly named Metro stops and buses that never came — in my notes, I wrote that this was the day we "hit the wall between being tired and doing everything we wanted." But this was also the day we had the amazing mozzarella lunch at Obikā, and saw the Crypt of the Capuchins, and stumbled across the sunken 5th-centry church of San Vitale, and saw the dome of St. Peter's silhouetted at sunset from the Ponte Palatino. Even when we were waiting interminably for the bus, with adfamiliares nearly falling asleep in a doorway, the wall beside us was graced by the angel pictured above. (I believe she's part of a WWI memorial.) It's hard to stay cranky in Rome.Though the public transportation and all the walking were time-consuming and tiring, today in particular, I'm still pleased that we traveled all over three cities in Italy without driving or taking a cab once. I'll talk about Sant'Angelo and the Ara Pacis in subsequent posts; for now, some photos of city wandering. ( Cut for far-flung photos. ) The whole set is here. post a comment
The first time I wrote, "Every gatekeeper and fisherman I passed was twittering..." about something, it meant something different than it does now. 1 comment | post a comment
But working with an eye to saleability isn’t exactly the right way in my view, but rather is cheating art lovers. The true artists didn't do that; the sympathy they received sooner or later came because of their sincerity. I know no more than that, and don't believe I need to know any more.post a comment
From the far-future Citizen of the Galaxy, ©1957, page 130: For the first time in history comic books and pin-up magazines brought many times their weights in fine jewelry.3 comments | post a comment
 Wednesday, July 1 - Florence We ate a lot of big meals in Italy. On our first full day in Florence, we decided we would skip one — we'd had an excellent late lunch of fish kebabs and bruschetta at Zà Zà, and a huge amount of pizza and mozzarella the night before with Dan C. and family. A big dinner just did not appeal. adfamiliares had been craving cannoli ever since we touched down in Rome, and every time we'd gone looking for a pasticceria it was after dinner and they were closed. So we took a pass on dinner and went directly to dessert.We found a pasticceria with cannoli on the menu and ordered two at the counter — they seemed a little pricy, but hey, when would we be in Florence again? The fellow told us he'd bring them out to us if we'd sit down, so we did, at a table on the little cobblestone street. After a few minutes of people-watching, we began to wonder what was taking so long. It was a sweaty evening, and all we had to drink was the thick, piping hot cioccolato adfamiliares had ordered. "Well, they have to fill them to order, so they don't get soggy," we said, feeling knowledgeable. Five minutes after that, we began joking that maybe they had to milk the cow to make the ricotta to fill the cannoli.So we were a little tetchy when the waiter finally emerged. With a flourish, he deposited before us two big, steaming plates of cheese-stuffed pasta, swimming in meat sauce. We started to protest, "No no no!" but then the bottoms dropped out of our stomachs as it hit us: we hadn't been saying "cannoli." We'd been saying "canneloni." The menu said "canneloni." The waiter had, quite properly, brought us due canneloni. We'd prided ourselves on escaping the clueless tourist stereotype — made an effort to communicate in Italian, covered our shoulders and legs in the churches, didn't get huffy when restaurants charged for water. Just that morning we'd had a little laugh at the expense of the British woman at breakfast who ordered caffè americano and told us about the "hard little slices of bread with nuts in" she'd gotten at dinner the night before. (She meant biscotti.) And there we were, nine hours later, stammering over two hot plates of canneloni while the waiter tried to figure out why we were unhappy. We explained as best we could, and told the reluctant waiter it was our mistake and we would of course pay for the meal, and unenthusiastically tucked in. We were saved by the graciousness of the waiter, who reemerged, before we'd had two bites, with takeaway boxes and plastic forks, telling us how nice the canneloni would be as a picnic tomorrow. (They did, in fact, make a perfect lunch in our hotel room the next day.) Abashed, we crept away, certain that we'd been outed as ugly Americans before every real Italian person in Florence. The next day, we saw the graffito above. Either it was a coincidence, or the couple stifling their laughter at the next table had a can of spray paint in their bags. 1 comment | post a comment |
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