from Sandy Needham

Sunday, December 9, 2012

Rome Dispatch

Newton and I met up in Athens, where we stayed at the same gorgeous location on the Aegean Sea that we always do when visiting his company’s partners there. I passed the two days in the beautiful surroundings along the water’s edge and the nearby town of Nea Makri a short bus ride away. While we had not perceived any dire evidence of hard economic times in Spain – and this was partly because we were in an area that thrives on tourism and we were traveling pristine highways that were provided by the European Union – it was pretty disconcerting to visit the Nea Makri town square. At least half of the businesses were closed up. It definitely looked and felt depressed.
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We had planned a connection home through Rome so we could get a quick two-night Italian fix! We decided to stay in the Trastevere neighborhood west of the Tiber River. The ‘hotel’ was an overpriced disappointment, but life around the Piazza di San Cosimato never ceased to be lively and flavorful. We walked over a bridge and caught long afternoon shadows on the remains of Imperial Rome.
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A large neighboring piazza in Trastevere provided the Felliniesque setting for our dinner. Venders were selling little lights that could be propelled right up into the night sky above the buildings, and these were flying up everywhere and descending upon the crowded Saturday night passeggiata – citizens and tourists of all ages out for the evening. Rome magic!

The next day was one serendipitous poem. Newton got a Facebook comment on his iPhone at breakfast from our Spanish friend in Natal, Carmen. She said that her favorite park in Rome is Gianicolo, overlooking the city. That turned out to be right next to us in Trastevere. The park was peaceful and beautiful and clearly making Sunday morning Romans happy.
Gianicolo park 2Park 1
puppetscity view 2
Even better than the park’s monument to Giuseppe Garibaldi, the famed 19th century revolutionary who was instrumental in unifying Italy, is the monument to his fiery Brazilian wife, Anita. Garibaldi is also famous as a revolutionary in South America, where Anita, an accomplished horsewoman, accompanied him into battle for an attempted independent Rio Grande do Sul. Here she is escaping the surrounding Brazilian soldiers with her baby in one hand and a gun in the other. She was taken prisoner at one point and escaped again when the soldiers allowed her to search among the dead bodies for Giuseppe – whom they falsely claimed was dead. She died of malaria in Italy and is buried under this statue.
Garibaldigaribaldi's wife
little restaurant streetYou may or may not remember that we have a food guru for Italy, Fred Plotkin. His outstanding book, Italy for the Gourmet Traveler, just opens up worlds of culinary appreciation for all regions of Italy. We had zeroed-in on a recommendation of his that turned out to be practically on the path out of Gianicolo Park!
 
Fred says: “…you should try Picolla Trattoria da Lucia, which retains the flavor of old Rome. Local wine is freshly tapped out of wooden barrels here. For pasta, order la gricia, which is a spaghetti dressed with robust olive oil mixed with lots of cheese, pepper, and pancetta (Italian bacon). This dish, a sort of eggless carbonara, was originally eaten by shepherds.”

The place is family-run. I continued my habit of sautéed chicory for every meal in Rome, along with a plate of cheeses from the Roman pantheon (the gods, not the building)! Newton was intrigued by Fred’s recommended pasta and wanted only to return for dinner and eat it again. The family, being Mediterranean and having deeply imbedded clues about how to live, forsook the additional income that would have resulted from staying open past three and serving the line-up of people waiting – and Newton again – and most likely enjoyed a beautiful Sunday evening. To die for, Fred.
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We wandered back towards our hotel in a state of bliss and happened upon a fabulous little toy store in the corner of our Piazza di San Cosimato called “Citta’ del Sole.” We bought a gift for a friend’s baby, though we couldn’t resist a couple of fun gizmos for our own grown-up babies.
mushrooms
Later, dinner was decided upon when passing this tray of mushrooms on the street. I felt like Persephone herself eating these sautéed gifts from the underground, next to my greens, of course. We would have been happy to have stayed on in Rome indefinitely!

Love,
Sandy

Wednesday, November 21, 2012

Dublin Dispatch

you said itNewton and I flew from Malaga to Dublin, Ireland, where for one night we mingled with the hordes of revelers in the Temple Bar neighborhood of the city, known for tourists and Guinness Stout. Newton was connecting to Poland the next morning for business while I had three days to go, so we made the most of a heady pub. We miraculously garnered two barstools, tried a small Guinness - which we still didn’t like despite the proper setting – settled on an old favorite, Harp, and took in the show! Our friendly bartender could, honestly, fill three pints at three draught spigots with one hand while totaling up a check with the other. The crowd was a happy international mix that overflowed into the streets with those from the other pubs. The Irish know how to share their personal charm and that of their great city, and share they do.

draft at its bestlate night Dublin

THREE PERFECT DAYS

DAY ONE: I walked from the hotel on Saint Stephen’s Green towards the River Liffey, which divides the city north and south, happening upon the old Gaiety Theatre almost immediately. I had already decided that I did not need a “Leopold Bloom” tour of Dublin – the Dublin odyssey of the protagonist of James Joyce’s Ulysses on a fictional June 16, 1904 – even though I had finally read Ulysses only in the last few years; however, I did stop in my tracks when I saw on the theater marquee that a stage adaptation of James Joyce’s short stories, The Dubliners, was ending that day. The matinee was starting in half an hour. I got a ticket.

In this theater piece, excerpts of funny stories and stories typifying Irish life and Irish problems – drunken men letting someone down or beating their wives – were dramatized with minimal set changes and multiple roles for the actors. I was riveted by the level of acting - to which we have sometimes been treated in the finest USA cable series. John Houston’s last film (1987) was a gorgeous adaptation of one of the stories, The Dead. This theater performance ended with the last scenes from The Dead: The wife sings a haunting traditional Irish song at the party, and this actress vocalist put us under a spell with her wistful, evocative voice. The wife then becomes inconsolably grief-stricken remembering an early admirer, Michael Furey, who used to sing the same song. She sobs to her husband, while we, the audience, become utterly still, how she spurned the young man as he was dying, how he no longer wished to live. Her cold and distant husband comes to envy the ardor of that life cut short. We are all transfixed by the actors’ command, by the poignancy of the wife’s agony on a desolate night. The matinee ends with the husband’s spoken thoughts:

“A few light taps upon the pane made me turn to the window. It had begun to snow again. I watched sleepily the flakes, silver and dark, falling obliquely against the lamplight. The time had come for me to set out on my journey westward. Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling, too, upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. My soul swooned slowly as I heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.”

No one in the theater was breathing. There was no clapping. We were utterly stunned there in our theater seats, facing the truth by which only moments in life itself or great art can wake us. I will never forget that chill-bumped moment, that beat before the place exploded and we were supposed to go out into the urban afternoon and hold on to our temporary transformation for what duration we could.

JoyceI entered Saint Stephen’s Green. Coming up immediately on my left was this bust of James Joyce with the inscription: “Crossing Stephen’s, that is, my green…”

After being so moved in the theater, studying the unique Irish afternoon light on the treetops was all I was good for.

I returned each day to the Green for the beauty and the homage.

 

 

 

 

St. stephen's 2St.tephens 3

Swans at StephensBut now they drift on the still water,

Mysterious, beautiful;

Among what rushes will they build,

By what lake's edge or pool

Delight men's eyes when I awake some day

To find they have flown away?

           - William Butler Yeats, “The Wild Swans at Coole”

 

 

DAY TWO: I had pre-booked a tour to an ancient mound in the countryside, Newgrange, near the River Boyne. I can highly recommend Mary Gibbons Tours for fellow history buffs, as Mary lived up to her internet description beautifully. I did not even mind that she repeated herself often, also being “of a certain age.” She is a walking encyclopedia of Irish history, and Irish history has many stories to tell. I was also curious about my own Scots-Irish blood from my mother’s McCracken side. Mary described this group: James I of England lured Scottish immigrants to northern Ireland in the early 1600’s to insure that the landowners and tenants around Ulster were Protestant. Many of these Scots-Irish Presbyterians began immigrating to the thirteen American colonies in the eighteenth century, again for religious reasons. They are represented in the USA by frontiersman Davy Crockett, several presidents, and the genetically deficient of Appalachia!

I was also curious, being a fan of Yeats, to hear the dramatic tales, the “terrible beauty” of the Irish struggle for independence from England in the early 20th century.

Just as I was pro-Moorish kings and anti-Catholic Inquisition in Andalusia, I could not help being pro-ancient Celts and anti-Saint Patrick as I traversed the green, green countryside. I have heard it said that like many Native Americans, the Celts turned to drink upon losing their cosmology. And there were no snakes on the green isle; Saint Patrick was driving out the pagan nature-worshipping tradition to establish Catholicism in the fifth century. I admit that the history of murderous popes, the institutional propagating of ignorance, the excommunication of Liberation Theologists, pedophile priests, and most recently, the silencing of American nuns by the Vatican for focusing too much on poverty and economic injustice instead of abortion and same-sex marriage…have made me a bit cynical against the Catholic hierarchy. No offence intended here to the rank-and-file.

Hill of TaraOur first stop was at the Hill of Tara, home to the earth goddess, Maeve, and coronation site of hundreds of Celtic High Kings. They were crowned at this “stone pillar” after symbolically marrying Maeve. There is a church nearby, which I declined to photograph, though the graveyard beside it was too beautiful to resist. I also opted to photograph the phallic stone over the statue of Saint Patrick.

The surrounding beauty is precisely the quintessential Irish countryside that I had set out to see.

 

 

Tara cemeteryTara countryside 2

Tara countryside

The Hill of Tara was damaged over the years, including in 1901 when British scholars of Israel came seeking the Arc of the Covenant, believing that the Irish were part of the Lost Tribes of Israel. Spielberg hasn’t made that movie yet.

New Grange 2NEWGRANGE, the mound built in 3,200 B.C., older than Stonehenge, predates the arrival of the Celts from Europe by 2,600 years. It is a Neolithic structure built of stones without any mortar or other adhesive material. Those people knew how to stack! No cameras are allowed inside, but a passageway leads to a domed stone room with three bone depositories, clearly associating the mound with burial rituals. More fascinating about these Neolithic geniuses is the astronomical significance of Newgrange. Sunrise on the Winter Solstice sends the sun’s beam through the opening above the door – this clears the path from the horizon - down the corridor to illuminate the stone room. There is an annual lottery to determine which lucky ten people on each of several frigid mornings surrounding the Solstice get to travel to Newgrange and witness this 5,000-year-old wonder…weather permitting! There were almost 30,000 lottery applications submitted for the 2012 Solstice. The earth’s precession over the millennia – degrees of rotation of the axis as it moves around the zodiac – has altered where the beam hits the back wall, though the sunlight’s journey through the passage continues.

 

New Grange entranceNeolithic spirals

new Grange 1The spiral relief at the entrance is magnificent.

I stupidly set out on the tour without an umbrella, declining the extra weight in my bag while admiring the morning sunshine. I was roundly soaked and shivering at Newgrange. These were the only three days of our trip that could possibly encounter cooler fall weather, so I had not packed a coat. I gathered the soaking wool shawl around the soaking knit jacket and later stuck my head under the hand dryer in the bathroom to dry my dripping hair. Best part: did not catch a cold!

Mary Gibbons explained something that made sense to me: the Celts passed a rich oral tradition down through centuries; when reading and writing arrived in Ireland in the 4th century A.D., “they took to it like a fish to water.” I am clearly partial to their literature, poetry and drama - the way this Celtic oral tradition radiates through it all in such a vibrant way. My Irish friend Steve in Natal loaned me a crazy Flan O’Brian novel which I brought on the trip, The Third Policeman…a bizarre vision of hell wrapped in extraordinary language. Full disclosure: I am also partial to the literary tradition of the Brits (my father’s side!).

St. Patrick's CathedralDAY THREE: A line appeared in a TripAdvisor.com review of one prospective Dublin hotel or another: “Don’t miss the overlooked treasure of the Chester Beatty Library at Dublin Castle.” My prospects on my last day included visiting the medieval Book of Kells at Trinity University; visiting Saint Patrick’s Cathedral; catching a commuter train to visit the craggy coast…or pursuing that little note in the hotel review. It helped that the Chester Beatty Library was a lovely, sight-filled walk from my hotel and the only free offering. My choice coincidentally led me past Saint Patrick’s AND offered not only some of the most beautiful medieval illuminated manuscripts of the Gospels in existence, but Paul’s letters to the Corinthians on shards of papyrus from the year 200, as well! Yet another miraculous day in Dublin was mine.

 

3rd century gospelChester Beatty was an Irish-American mining magnate who immigrated to England in 1933 and was later made an honorary Irish citizen in 1957. He applied his huge fortune to the acquisition of the world’s rarest books, emphasizing quality above all else. The collection is considered the finest private library of the 20th century. This gem of a museum was designated European Museum of the Year in 2002. It is precisely the size one can master within the window of lower back comfort and engrossed concentration duration. One floor displays historic writings and bindings from European, Middle Eastern and Asian sources; the other floor displays sacred texts from Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism and the other Asian religions.

Dublin CastleIt is hard to say what stands out, as the two floors walk one through the ages and the cultures in simply miraculous ways. The incredibly perfect calligraphy and miniature painting of Christian illuminated manuscripts, ancient Torahs (one featuring nearly imperceptible ‘rice-sized’ script), illuminated Korans, Persian tales of love, Chinese and Japanese narrative scrolls are something that astounds (no white-out, erasers or deletes). It is clear why the execution of the sacred texts, in particular, was considered a sacred task.

 

 

DSC00853ChesterBeattyLibaryFrount

Of course the Chinese jade books, the early printed texts with Albrecht Durer’s Renaissance prints, the Spanish texts illustrated by Goya, the early elaborate leather-tooled bindings, the combining of words and visual art in general were all blow-one-away accomplishment, devotion, quality, and history captured. It was amazing.

Dublin, your spell will live forever in my bones.

Love,

Sandy

Saturday, November 10, 2012

Andalusia Dispatch

FLAMENCO

The clapping rarely stops…cupped hands with interlaced thumbs, barely audible, yet there’s a subtle texture added to the piercing stares and the sound of shoes striking the floor; then it builds, and eventually shoes pound in staccato or stomp and hesitate, the guitar expands, the singer wails, the clapping is steady, very strong now, yet retaining that slightly muffled quality. I’ve been practicing.

Museo del Baile Flamenco, Seville:

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Imagine the mathematical splendor of the long fringe on the señora’s shawl flung into the same helix pattern as the sweat that flew off the señor! It was all fiercely thrilling.

flamenco 2  flamenco 3 

SOMEONE’S HEAD WAS ON KINDA STRAIGHT

My romantic notion of Andalusia (Al Andalus) under 800 years of Moorish rule began some years ago when Newton and I watched a television documentary about that era. For six hundred years Moslems, Jews and Christians lived in harmony. The Catholic Church made victorious encroachments and eventually Jews and Moslems were expelled or forced to convert under the torturous methods of the Spanish Inquisition, presided over by Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand. Granada was the last hold out, falling to the Catholic Monarchs (as the two are called) in 1492 – that familiar year that Isabella sent Columbus off “to India” for new trade routes. Some scholars surmise that Columbus was a Sephardic Jew seeking refuge from the Inquisition, but then I also discovered there are scholars who surmise that he was Polish!

columbus & Queen Isabella 

Statue of Queen Isabella and Columbus in Granada.           

 

 

 

 

 

 

Turning a mosque into a cathedral; Seville:

seville cathedral

islamic arch. 3The Moorish house design concentrated on the peaceful presence of softly flowing water from fountains centered in rooms, courtyards and gardens. Standing inside the exquisite palaces and gardens, I imagined that the deep serenity of the setting and the harmony of the architecture were reflected in the tolerant society under the Islamic kings. Who knows? I could imagine myself spending hours there pouring over Rumi’s Sufi verses to the beloved. My romantic notions of middle eastern culture were also fed by admiration for Saladin’s more honorable butchering during the Crusades, my appreciation for the advanced learning that persisted through the West’s “dark ages” - math (Arabic numbers!), science, astronomy, mysticism from the holy land  - that made their way west with returning Crusaders. The resulting Gothic cathedrals marked an enlightening that was to inevitably grow. But before I get carried away, my romance falls short abruptly when in front of deadly fundamentalism or the notion that I would be one of many wives! Hats off to you, Moorish kings, anyway.

 

ALCAZAR PALACE, Seville:

 

Alcazar 1arabic baths 2alcazar view

islamic architecture 1arabic baths 1sculpted garden

GEOMETRY:

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geometry 4geometry 5geometry 6

geometry 7islamic arch.2inside Alcazar seville

ALHAMBRA, Granada:

Feeling like Lord Byron; “Pass me an ink pen before the clouds pass!”

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alhambra interioralhambra keyholegarden 1

alhambra 3alhambra ceilingislamic arch. 4

TAPAS

We lucked out on our first night in Seville on this hoppin’ little street: tapas of our first “jamon serrano,” sublime thin-sliced ham from acorn-fed pigs, and “pescaditos fritos,” tiny fried fish in a delicate batter made of garbanzo beans. WOW.

being out 2tapas 2

Another night we had dinner at this tapas bar – one of the oldest in Seville: El Rinconcillo. I think standing around the bar is the way to go…we sat down and were accosted by a waiter who had perfected the crashing of plates and glasses down on the table that seems to be an Andalusian trademark! In his case, he was clearly hostile and never hesitated to roll his eyes with every request, not to mention the horrid imposition of a question. It was funny and interesting and delicious and rowdy and clangy, noisy fun. Note the jamon serrano hanging typically from the ceiling. We had divine spicy spinach with garbanzo beans and more pescaditos fritos.

tapas bartapas 3

tapas bar 2Our favorite night in Seville was at a wonderful bar and restaurant where more clanging and crashing of glasses and dishes by the swashbuckling, yet benevolent bartenders was the best entertainment around. One food prep guy who spent a lot of time cutting the exquisite jamon and cheeses for orders did, in fact, smash a wine glass down too hard and it shattered in front of us. Then a waitress came over from the section with tables and threw a plate complete with food angrily into the garbage behind the bar! There were lovely folks to talk to standing around the bar, including a young couple from London who had just moved to Seville that day to seek their fortunes as English instructors. Newton had the best paella of his life.

 

 

A perfect sardine in Ronda, eaten at this wondrous place:                          

 tapas 1where we had the sardine 

We also had the best fresh tuna ever in Ronda.

In Granada, where the tapas are famous for being free, we opted instead for Arabic food on the exotic streets of Calderería Veja and Calderería Nueva. These were filled with wonderful markets and tea/hookah houses/restaurants. After we finished our second night’s Arabic dinner we discovered that just a bit further down the street was a place serving free Arabic tapas…the same dishes we had paid for twice. Next time!

Arabic street  hookah room

Let me wind this dispatch up with scenes from Cadiz on the coast, where we just stopped for lunch; the breathtaking Ronda, inland, where we splurged on a “parador” – a hotel in an historic building; and Malaga, where we spent one very late night before flying away.

CADIZ

cadiz 1cadiz 2

RONDA

That’s our hotel peeking over the gorge from the left!

Ronda 1ronda 2

our ronda hotelronda 3hiking by the gorge

MALAGA

Unlike the ‘centro” of many European cities where one wedges oneself on mere inches of sidewalk on narrow streets when the cars and motorcycles go by, Malaga’s centro is completely closed to traffic. Here is the pedestrian-friendly city at 3:00am:

malaga 3MALAGA 2malaga at 3am

Andalucía, te amamos.

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fans

 

fieldspavilion seville

Love,

Sandy

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