street names

"Whenever I come to a new town, I like to get my bearings. I want to understand the layout of the streets and the layout of the people. In some cities this can take you days to accomplish. In Boston, it can take you weeks. In New York, years. The great thing about Morgen, Nebraska, is it only took a few minutes.

The town was laid out in a geometric grid with the courthouse right in the middle. According to the mechanic who'd given me a lift in his tow truck, back in the 1880s the town elders spent a whole week deliberating how best to christen the streets before deciding -- with an eye to the future -- that the east-west streets would be named for presidents and the north-south streets for trees. As it turned out, they could have settled on seasons and suits because seventy-five years later the town was still only four blocks square."

This is how Duchess describes how small Morgen is, in The Lincoln Highway by Amor Towles (page 85). The town we lived in in Nebraska when I was in high school was a bit bigger ... but not much.

I too am intrigued by how cities are laid out and what effect that has on its people. Imagine how different Manhattan would feel if its street layout above 14th Street was more like the Financial District or Boston.

When we were in Morgantina, a Greek archaeological site on Sicily, I was intrigued that the streets were numbered in either direction but they were arabic numerals in one direction and roman numerals in the other.

separated at birth: goats and antiquities

The Ortlip Gallery at Houghton University currently has an exhibition of "Lithographs of the Holy Land and Egypt by David Roberts, Royal Academician." I know I recataloged a bunch of large portfolios, including like Roberts if not Roberts himself, when I was in the reclass section at Cornell between 1969 and 1971. Here's one of the lithographs that especially caught my eye in the exhibition.

"Goats at the entrance to the caves of Beni Hassan"

David Roberts, R.A. (1796-1864)

Part of the reason it really caught my eye is that we had seen sheep and goats at the ruins of Solunto. We heard their bells before we saw them. We were heading along the northern coast of Sicily, about to return our rental car and spend a last couple days in Palermo before heading to Rome and home.

We also have seen goats being used for grass and shrub control in Prospect Park in Brooklyn. It's a fairly old park but not antique.

teary meltdowns in Cefalù

We stayed in Cefalù as we neared the end of our month's circumnavigation of Sicily in 2013. Our hotel was away from the center, near the sea. This view was from the deck outside our room. I was feeling quite teary about the impending return to the U.S.

The days before Cefalù had taken us from Taormina and the landscape around Mount Etna, through the mountains, along the northern coast, visiting several sites of the Fiumara d'Arte.

I am often taken back to Sicily in my thoughts, sometimes just flashback memories, sometimes by reading or films. I just finished watching From Scratch on Netflix. It's a love story of a Black American woman and a Sicilian man. She's an artist, he's a chef. He grew up in a small town not far from Cefalù. We didn't go through Pollina where his native town scenes were filmed but we were close. There was plenty of Florence and Sicily as setting, along with Los Angeles. They also thanked the town of Termini Imerese in the credits; we drove through Termini Imerese and discovered this wonderful 18th-century bridge.

At one point in the film, after Lino and Amy have moved to Los Angeles and before Lino has found his place in the sprawl, he notes that he is flummoxed by Los Angeles because there is no center. In Italian towns, even the small ones, the Centro is important. Amy, naturally and beautifully, says that she will be his center as he is hers.

Plenty to get sentimental about, as well as being tear-jerked by the story of Lino and Amy. I checked the IMDb page for Zoe Saldaña, the female lead and producer for From Scratch. She is also a June 19th-born person.

separated at birth: Roman roads

Roman road, discovered at the site of a new McDonald's in Marino, Italy, restored and now visible under glass floor; photo from Hyperallergic article, February 2017, courtesy of Superintendency for Archaeology, Fine Arts and Landscape

Roman road, exposed, at Selinunte, on the southern coast of Sicily, photo 2013

Modern roads vary in smoothness and general condition too.

separated at birth: Sicilian mecca

 

Selinunte,

on the southern coast of Sicily,

picture taken in March 2013

Mecca Hills Wilderness, California,

picture taken by DAS in February 2022

Italian post offices

One thing I have really enjoyed in Italian cities are the post office buildings. Good public architecture. Today's Docomomo Italia feed on Facebook included this wonderful Palazzo delle Poste in Ostia Lido.

Palazzo delle Poste, Ostia Lido, 1933-1934

Designer: Angiolo Mazzoni del Grande (1894-1979)

(collezioni Casa dell'Architettura di Latina)

Our hotel in Ragusa was around the corner from the Poste and I have just discovered that it was also designed by Angiolo Mazzoni:

Palazzo delle Poste, Ragusa, Sicily

(photo from ragusaturismo.it website)

Our first B&B in Palermo was across the street from the Palazzo delle Poste. We had a small balcony in our room and could look up and down the Via Roma with the Poste as the centerpiece. I guess Angiolo Mazzoni was the post office architect as he is credited with Palermo too.

When Trump first started talking about infrastructure programs, I was glad to think of public money going to public works. It hasn't much happened and certainly not on post offices.

Palermo Springs

Palermo viewed from Monreale

(my picture, spring 2013)

Palm Springs, California

(Daniel's picture, January 2020)

We both studied at the Claude Lorrain School of Landscape.

separated at birth: Siracusa and Little Rock

Lunch at La Spigola in Siracusa, Sicily, March 2013

Lunch at Flying Fish, Little Rock, Arkansas, March 2015

Siculo-Normans in Buffalo?

When we were in Palermo and elsewhere in Sicily, we saw these domes on various Siculo-Norman churches:

This is a view of San Giovanni degli Eremiti, near the Palace of the Normans in Palermo. Earlier today, I saw these pillars on University Avenue at Main Street in Buffalo:

We did talk about various European and other groups in Buffalo at the SAH chapter meeting last night. Perhaps the Sicilians and Normans lived in this neighborhood. Or maybe Eric Northman has been lurking about.

separated at birth? Troy, NY, and Palermo, Sicily

To the Sicilians: Trattoria Bar Da Nino Titos, Ragusa

We walked down the Scala di Ragusa and then back up into Ragusa Ibla (the older part of town, the newer part being built after the great earthquake of 1693) and out toward the Giardino Ibleo. It was about time to eat lunch and we'd scribbled down the name of some restaurants out that direction. We passed the lovely Vecchio Portale di San Giorgio, all that's left of the Arabo-Catalan Romanesque/Gothic church. Whatever style, the great mix of Sicily.

The highly recommended Quattro Gatti, just beyond the old portal, was closed so I walked on ahead of Christie to see if Trattoria Bar Da Nino Titos was open. The door was open but there wasn't much evidence of business yet. I asked the fellow that came to greet me and he said that they were indeed open. I let him know that I had to go back to get "mi amica" and then we'd come for the big meal of the day. When we got back to the restaurant, they'd set up a table for us. Tablecloth, silverware, in a little alcove, etc. Most of the tables were uncovered.

As we were getting settled in, a group of young women came in, all bubbling. They had discovered the Harlem Shake meme and were getting ready to do one of their own. I hadn't heard of it but Christie recognized it. There was some international chitter-chatter understanding. All was well: international understanding beyond a shared verbal language, gracious hosting, good cheese antipasto and meal.

infill

We really loved the art nouveau houses in Vittoria. The smallish one above seemed just about the right size for a pied-à-terre. But I also really liked the infill shop below, very attentive to detail, proportion, and context, yet thoroughly modern classical. It fit right in on the main shopping street of Vittoria.

After I got home, I was talking to another village planning board member about houses in the village and the sprawl that inhabits the hills around the village. Just think if we could fill in some of the vacant spots as intelligently as this building. No, I don't know what was in this spot before so leave me with my fantasy that no historic building was taken down.

More pictures of Vittoria:
http://www.flickr.com/search/?ss=2&w=56294332%40N00&q=vittoria&m=text

Bosch in a shop window

When we saw this shop window in Palermo with little Bosch figurines, I scoffed. Now, I wish I'd gone back when the shop was open to buy a tchotchke to put on the dashboard of my car Hieronymus.

I also wish that I'd bought another O Chive pocket watch or maybe two more.

To the Sicilians: stone fences

We were intrigued as we drove around by the stone fences. The fences were sometimes hard to distinguish from outcroppings. They were mostly dry wall, that is, no mortar. The enclosures varied in size and we didn't often see occupied enclosures but did see cows in an enclosure near this scene along the road between Vittoria and Modica, down in southeastern Sicily.

I just got out of the closing VRA plenary lecture by Alex MacLean whose aerial photographs document land use and settlement, city edges, topography, and, intriguingly, the fourth dimension of time. His words on how motion and time are manifest in a photograph were compelling: light (time of day), climate (mistiness rising off a river), human intervention (dust trail behind a car), abandoned buildings. He also talked a bit about how field size may be determined by how many stones are available and how far you'd be willing or able to move them.

As an aside: MacLean mentioned studying at Harvard with John Brinckerhoff Jackson, the great landscape historian and writer. Thinking about Jackson always reminds me of Nancy Wynne, long-time librarian at the Amon Carter Museum, who had a lovely watercolor by J.B. Jackson hanging in her home. Nancy was Milan Hughston's predecessor as head librarian at the Carter and, at the same time, my predecessor as cataloger.

To the Sicilians and Cambridge: Brute, brutta, Calogero

One of the reasons, the main reason, that I came out to Boston a day early on my way to VRA in Providence was to see the "Brute" show at the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts at Harvard. The Carpenter is the only building by Le Corbusier in the U.S. and it's a marvel of Brutalist architecture, a style I fell in love with in college as Davis Brody's Wooster Science Building was being built at New Paltz State. I hadn't read more than announcements about the show and was expecting a retrospective of the building. No. There WAS a large model of the building on the first floor and photos on other floors. The  gallery space on the third floor, however, was devoted to an installation of chairs with a dozen archival photographs. On the podium were six or eight Le Corbusier chairs and facing the podium were about 40 chairs of a wide variety, from little plastic chair to vintage rocking chair. Lots of thoughts: people come in all shapes and sizes; Le Corbusier was an inspiration to many and preached theory; singularity and diversity; furniture can be lonely without people, or not.

In Italian, at least in Sicily, "brutta" can be used for ugly. When we checked into the B&B Giucalem in Piazza Armerina, it was a nice country retreat, a bit of a respite after the rainy check-in into the B&B Proserpina in Enna. That was brutal: scary circular stairs, rain, reception area under construction, water shutoff for construction (they DID fix it in 10 minutes, after we called when we got back from supper). From the B&B Giucalem, the red house on the hilltop was afire in the late afternoon sun. I was amused. Giuseppe and his son Calogero, hosts at the Giucalem, thought the house was brutta.

Breakfast brought some very yummy plum jam made by Nonna (grandmother) from the trees on the property. The slogan for the B&B is "La casa negli orti" or the house in the orchards. We'd have bought some of the jam to bring you if they'd been selling it.

It wasn't the only time we ran into a Calogero. Our host in Capo d'Orlando at B&B Le Terrazze was Calogero Nici. He grew up in the Nebrodi mountains in the town of Ucria. His brother is an officer of the Nebrodi park. Signore Nici enthused in the evening (another after-dark arrival) about his love of the musician André Rieu. I said I loved classical music and Rieu sounded vaguely familiar. In the morning, he took us on a tour of a video of a recent Rieu concert at Radio City Music Hall. It isn't really my style of classical music; Christie described it as "schlocky" but appreciated Signore Nici's total lack of sarcasm or irony in looking at the musical presentation. I really appreciated his sharing his enthusiasm too.

The last morning we were in Sciacca, I went out for a walk up to the high part of town above the Via G. Licata near our B&B, the Conte Luna. And, there, I found the Porta San Calogero and, through the gate, the general market. Love the morning activity: people setting up their market booths; deliveries being made; streets being swept; coffee. And it doesn't hurt that morning sunlight is glorious, just like the evening sunlight on the brutta house on the hill above the Giucalem.

To the Sicilians: Valerio at Morgantina

When we arrived at the Morgantina site, there was this old codger directing you into the parking lot, looking a little suspicious. He came over with a stack of books and stuff. He had the “best” guide and his own hand-drawn map of the site. It was clear as he talked that he loved Morgantina and one just must have his hand-drawn guide. Christie used to work at the University of Virginia and UVa has been one of the sponsors of the excavations. Christie asked the old guy if he knew Malcolm Bell, her art history professor and erstwhile director of the digs. Well, they settled into a lot of Mack Bell stories. The old guy brought us a bottle of his home-made wine, partly made from Nero d’Avola grapes. When we got back to the parking lot, I asked him his name: Valerio. He wouldn’t give me his surname, not secretive really because he’d been in the American papers and they all knew him. Christie did find him with a “valerio morgantina” search. And, now, as I write, I’m drinking some of the Vino Rustico di Valerio (which is quite green, i.e., not aged). Christie is calling it “grape juice.” I will sleep well tonight. Wine with lunch in Caltagirone. Two Campari/sodas after we got settled in the hotel. Now, a couple glasses of Vino Rustico di Valerio.

Oh. The picture. It’s the great kiln at Morgantina. Clicking here will get you to more pictures of Morgantina in my Flickr photostream.

To the Sicilians: Davide at the Wash & Dry, Siracusa

Before we left the States, we agreed that we'd take eight or nine days worth of underwear and do the laundry two or three times during our three and a half weeks in Sicily. What we didn't know was that Sicily doesn't have (m)any laundromats. We were ready to do laundry by the time we got to Sciacca. The folks at the B&B Conte Luna referred us to the dry cleaner not too far away. They didn't really do water laundry but we settled on them doing the stuff in water and they had to hang it to dry. Come back tomorrow. They didn't know how to charge us except by the piece so it was kind of expensive but indispensable.

We learned, after further discussion with Cristina at the B&B, that what we wanted was a "lavanderia a gettone" (laundry by token). Googling led us to hits for "Sicily's first self-service laundromat" in Siracusa. We read the webpage for Wash and Dry which offered either self-service or they'd do it for you.

On our main day in Siracusa, we parked the car in the big public lot near Ortigia and took our laundry over to Davide at Wash and Dry. Davide runs the place with his American wife. He calculated the weight and said to come back in a couple hours. We went and looked at the cathedral and meandered about the centro. I noticed that Wash and Dry already has competition; there was another self-service laundromat a couple blocks away.

When we returned before 12:30 when the laundromat closed for lunch, it was ready to be picked up, folded and bagged, and we were ready for lunch. Davide recommended Trattoria La Spigola, just around the corner, where I had the mixed fresh catch of the day and Christie had mussels:

One of the great meals of fresh sea beasties that we had on our trip. Up in the mountains, we had more meat. My sausage and greens at Ristorante pizzeria La Bifora in Randazzo was splendid. The vegetables, sea or mountain, always tasted fresh and the lettuce in an insalata verde was decidedly more tasty than mundane American salad greens.

Thank you, Davide, for your service, both the laundromat and the restaurant recommendation.

To the Sicilians: the family diary at La Brace

We went out for a walk in Cefalù after we'd gotten a bit settled at B&B Villa Cerniglia. The B&B is out in the newer part of town but not far from the centro storico. The picture above was taken from the balcony of our room at the "Jersey Shore" hotel, looking toward the centro.

As we headed toward the cathedral, we passed Ristorante La Brace. Christie said she'd seen it in the listings when she was researching before we left the States. It was highly rated and the reviews had indicated a reservation might be necessary. It was way too early to have supper in Sicily so we kept walking up to the cathedral and had our Campari and sodas in a bar on the cathedral plaza. While we were sitting there, the Saint Joseph's Day parade started and we watched it and then stood at the back of the cathedral for a while during the special mass.

Afterwards, we meandered a bit and then headed for the restaurant. It was still a little early but they were ready to seat people so we entered and the young man seated us near a blind arched opening with some memorabilia.

We ordered our acqua gassata and mezzo of house red wine. I noticed that one of the items in the display of memorabilia was a journal and that it was in Dutch. The next time the waiter came over, I asked about it. He told us he had noticed that I was reading things in Dutch and that the journal was his father's. The family had moved from Maastricht to Cefalù after the Second World War. He opened the journal on the table in front of us and told us a little of the family history. We enjoyed looking through it some more. (P.S. I don't KNOW Dutch but I know it when I see it.)

We had chicken liver as antipasto (yummy), with rabbit and veal rolls as secondi piatti. As we ate, it was fun to hear the waiter talking to his mother in a mix of Dutch and Italian. "Nee, nee, mama." Good food, great stories, and Christie had a Florio Amaro after-dinner drink, recommended by the waiter. I had my caffè normale.

When we got back to Palermo, I walked over to the Villa Florio, designed by Ernesto Basile. Wonderful Italian art nouveau (Liberty).

To the Sicilians: houses and yards

On our last morning in Noto, we were having a wide-ranging conversation with Sebastiano and Anna at the B&B Federica. We showed them pictures of our houses and Sebastiano was surprised that we didn't have walls around our houses, that they were just on the street. That's the American way: lawn and grass, spread out (unsustainable), requires driving which requires highways which leads to more highways and sprawl. Sebastiano and Anna live in the historic center of Noto: streets are narrow, plazas are public yards, houses may have courts or decks but not yards, narrow streets become personal AND public.

Yesterday, back home in Alfred, the weekly Bergren Forum was about the village planning process AND there was a hearing about a proposed change to the zoning code regarding congregate housing (rooming houses, boarding houses, fraternities, sororities, sports team houses, that is, big houses with one kitchen and common area rather than apartments, what we used to call communes). Tangential to both of those conversations were questions and thoughts about vacant lots, sprawl in our hills rather than density in the village, living together in a socially responsible way. I could go on and on about the loss of our colleges playing enough of an "in loco parentis" role. I don't want them to babysit the students but they should be taking significant responsibility for keeping village life sustainable and pleasant. Just like fraternity housemothers used to do.

To the Sicilians: Sebastiano and Anna at the B&B Federica, Noto

I was pretty happy with all of the B&Bs and hotels we stayed in in Sicily but the B&B Federica in Noto was extraordinary, in no small part because of Sebastiano and Anna who run the place. We had arrived in Noto after dark, with a harrowing drive down a narrow street, around a hairpin turn that required a three-point turn, up to bollards above a staircase, and down another narrow street. That's iPad mapping for you. They may give the streets and intersections and sometimes the direction of traffic but they don't give you more than a hint about the width of the street. Christie stayed with the parked car while I went out on foot to find the B&B Federica. No answer at the door so I went to find a phone booth and actually found one about halfway between the B&B and the car. I got an answer at the number and got started on the conversation when the time ran out. Fortunately the connection stayed while I fed the phone another coin. I told Sebastiano that I had found the B&B and would meet him there in five minutes. OK. I looked at the room and said we wanted it for one night. All of that took about an hour. Meanwhile, Christie was on the iPad, learning that white smoke had risen from the Vatican chimney and that the papal announcement would be made at 8 pm. We moved the car closer to the B&B and got our luggage into the room. Sebastiano recommended the Trattoria Ducezio, just up the main street from the B&B. The TV was on and the captioning told us that Francesco would be a pope "dei poveri e dei più vulnerabili" (the poor and more vulnerable). The pizza was satisfying. Early signs are that Francesco will be pretty good too.

This was the view from the stoop of our room that greeted us the next morning. Our room had its own door on the Ronco Re Giovanni (the Ronco is off the Vico which is off the Via Ducezio). Ducezio, by the way, was an early king of the Sicilians, 5th century B.C.E. That's Sebastiano's motorcycle; they keep the car in a garage somewhere, probably out in the wider-street part of town.

That gray building in the background was described by Sebastiano as "abandonata" so I'm going to buy it and turn it into my studio apartment and let Sebastiano and Anna do the extra space as more rooms for the B&B .... just as soon as I win the lottery. I'll keep a dovecote so the birds don't feel abandoned.

Sebastiano was studying English and really loved learning new words and phrases and ways of saying things, perhaps even more than we wanted to learn Italian. Anna had less English but was more intuitive about gestures and expression. So we got on fine. After our first day in the Noto area, we decided we'd like to stay another night which was possible. Traveling before Holy Week meant the B&Bs were in low season and we were often the only guests. Sebastiano helped us with general directions and ideas about places to visit. We decided that we'd stay another night in Noto and used it as a hub for Siracusa rather than moving to a B&B in Siracusa. We both liked Noto much more than Siracusa which is more touristic and neater. Noto has a bit of grit. Maybe we didn't give Siracusa a full chance but we loved Noto. We are regulars even: we went back to the Trattoria Ducezio and ordered a pizza "uno per due" (one for two); the waitress said "like last night?" The second one had rocket salad on top. That's arugula and it really hit the spot.

Here's to Sebastiano and Anna and the B&B Federica in Noto:

More pictures of Noto can be seen here.