We left the museum and wandered into the Mercato Nuovo, so called because its current loggia only dates to the 16th century. It’s been a marketplace at least since the 11th century, when it served Florence’s fledgling trade in finished cloth. Nowadays, of course, it caters exclusively to tourists, since that’s the biggest game in
A Hobbling Tour of Florence and Rome, Part Four Il Museo dell’Opere del Duomo isn’t exactly a secret, but it has been reconfigured so many times, complete with address-changes, that it’s a bit elusive. So despite the fact that it contains glories, you don’t have to stand in a long line to get in. In
Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world. The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity. Surely some
Powber Jimmy Borden was seven, and he had no friends. He had parents and grandparents and aunts and uncles and a brother named Tommy, who was thirteen, but none of them were really his friends. His father George was a lawyer, and he worked long hours. Sometimes he had to spend several nights in a
At breakfast we met the terrazzo’s resident beggar-pigeon, a bird who has claimed the terrace as his turf and defends it vigorously from rivals pecking around for bits of bread tossed by the diners, despite the fact that instead of a tail he has only a gray stump. Angelo and the rest of the staff
Frae goblins and ghosties And lang-leggity beasties And things that gae bump in the night, Guid Laird deliver us! – Scottish bedtime prayer
Beauties and the Beast Brett Kavanaugh’s a Justice now. Repulsivans have made it big. They turned deaf ears to all the row, And slapped some lipstick on a pig.
A Hobbling Tour of Florence and Rome Observations of an Unapologetic Tourist Part Two We arrived at Florence’s Santa Maria Novella station and got a quick ride to our hotel with a sharp young cabbie who was surprised to find two obvious Americans who sure didn’t look as if their grandparents came from Italy, speaking
Dog Stories I grew up with dogs, and I’m afraid of them. Our good friends in New Hampshire have two black Labrador-Chow mixes, friendly, affectionate critters now going a bit gray in the muzzle and lame in the hips. But they are still dogs, and they regard it as their bounden duty to guard the
A HOBBLING TOUR OF FLORENCE AND ROME Observations of an Unapologetic Tourist Part One FLORENCE In June of 2006 my wife Patsy and I went to Italy, partly on business, partly as tourists, but also to practice the Italian we’d been studying for more than five years. Although we have no Italian heritage and haven’t