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Hello all, here's the conclusion of my Pittsburgh report - written from back in Maine. If you're reading this, you might as well start from the post below it (Pittsburgh day 1 in photos), to go in the proper sequence.

Now that I'm back home, I'm just absorbing and pondering the many inspirational moments of my weekend, some of which are captured here on film.


I began my day with a long-awaited trip to Homestead. I had planned to drive east through town, and then take the Homestead Grays Bridge (recently renamed as such) directly south into Homestead, which sits just across the Monongahela River. But Pittsburgh's Great Race, a 10 K road race that results in a lot of streets being closed, was on. So I drove through the South Side. These billowing stacks made me think of the days of the Homestead Works, when Pittsburgh really was the steel city. Not sure what these stacks were exerting themselves for, but they added much to the atmosphere.

Homestead was a steel building town directly south of Pittsburgh. Actually, it's a part of Pittsburgh, which I didn't fully realize until visiting. I found the place to be eerily silent on a Sunday morning. Apart from this beautiful mural on the side of ta building, there was precious little there commemorating the town's historic past. Still, I felt particularly energized while walking its main drag, and peering around corners.

This sign seemed to capture the spirit of Homestead today somehow.

Walking up West Street, I made my way to the old Homestead Grays field, which is actually located just over the border in Munhall. I'm not sure just when exactly the Grays started playing here, or when they stopped (though in their heyday in the late 30s and 40s they were playing a lot of their games either at Pittsburgh's Forbes Field, or Washington's Griffith Stadium), but I know at some point they stood upon this field. Perhaps the stands have been rebuilt since then, or perhaps not - they're not in such great shape. The Grays got their start in 1913, and in the early days consisted mainly of steel workers from the nearby Homestead Works, the factory for Carnegie Illinois Steel.

This fence made me think of something I recently read in Buck Leonard's autobiography (The Black Lou Gehrig). When Buck was seven, he would go to the local ballpark in Rocky Mount, North Carolina, and peep through the cracks at the Class B white team as they played. Of course he wouldn't have been allowed entrance to the park. (Who got the last laugh? Buck was inducted to the Hall of Fame alongside Josh Gibson in 1972 (only Satchell Paige beat them to the Hall, but Josh and Buck were the first two never to have played in the majors to be inducted).

The field was deserted for the entire length of my visit, except for a fairly large school of Canadian geese that I only gradually became aware of. Then, at some point, it hit me - I was in the presence of the spirits of the great men who played astounding baseball on this very field in years gone by. As soon as this concept took hold, I could not shake myself free of it, and spent the rest of my visit in awed contemplation. I wanted to talk to the spirits, but as I approached them they walked, rather determinedly, away.

Might a young Josh Gibson have once sat upon this bench, eagerly awaiting his turn to pummel a ball?

After my encounter with the spirit geese, this house struck me as being rich with significance.

Next, after checking out of my hotel, I stopped at the Heinz Center, which includes the very nice Western Pennsylvania Sport Museum. These Pittsburghers are absolutely wild about sport. As Rob Ruck explained to me, there may be no other place in the country where sport plays such a role in building community. When I was in the airport later in the day waiting for my flight, I heard groups of people from all directions simultaneously bursting into applause. Why? Because the "Stillers" had done something right on the tv, that's why.

Then it was on to Allegheny Cemetary, where such notables as Andy Warhol and Stephen Foster found their final resting place. I didn’t have time to look for them, however. This picture is from the perspective of Josh Gibson’s grave, which is buried high on a hill in the cemetary’s section 50. That’s my rented red SUV in the distance.


Here’s Josh’s grave. Despite his being listed on findagrave.com, and also despite a sign pointing the way to his stone, I still had difficulty finding it. Josh lies beneath a rather nondescript flat headstone, with the concise inscription “Legendary Baseball Player.” He is in a row with three other graves, the names of whose occupants are not familiar to me – perhaps they bear no relation to the great slugger. In my research the day before, looking through old Pittsburgh Couriers I found a 1979 article entitled “Why? Josh Gibson Worth Only a Stone.” The author, Philip Harrigan, bemoans the fact that despite his great accomplishments, Josh is buried without any pomp, in an almost hidden corner of the cemetery – which during his visit was rather unkempt to boot. Harrigan does some investigating, and comes up with a startling possibility. He finds a sales counselor for the cemetery’s Mausoleum who explains “[section] Fifty was an emergency type situation. When somebody dies and you have no funeral property, a lot is sold on behalf of the family in the emergency section….[Fifty’s] always been an emergency section for blacks.”
My experience of the grave site was somewhat different than Harrigan’s. I found it to be extremely peaceful and quite beautiful, although I agree that the humbleness of the actual marker and its seemingly unprivileged (though it was at the top of the hill) vantage seemed at odds with Josh’s historical stature. Still, having visited the near freak-show that is Jim Morrison’s grave at Pere Lachaise in Paris, I was somewhat grateful for Josh’s seclusion in Allegheny. I didn't have a chance to compare Stephen Foster's grave - and it's too bad, since Foster died in even worse financial straights than did Josh. I wonder if they've done right by the writer of "O Susannah!"

A bunch of yards closer to the main road stood the more impressive headstone of Gus Greenlee and his wife Helen. How interesting that Gus, who stole Josh away from the Homestead Grays in 1932, only to have the basher abandon him in ’36 for the warmer climate and better working conditions of Puerto Rico, should be reunited with Gibson in death. I have a soft spot in my heart for Gus, the great numbers man who was everybody’s friend and a pillar of the community (despite gaining his livelihood from illegal doings).

With a little time on my hands before my evening flight back to Maine, I called Sean Gibson to ask for the address where Josh Gibson grew up. Over on the North Side, not too far from PNC Ballpark and the Mattress Factory (an installation museum), I found the corner of N. Charles Street and Brighton Rd. Sean tells me the house isn’t there anywhere, but there was this house – I couldn’t tell if someone was living in it or not. But it had character, and I let my imagination take hold, envisioning a ten-year-old Josh, out smacking balls with sticks on the front sidewalk.

A little further up Charles Street, as Sean said I would, I found Josh Gibson Drive, near a rather new housing development. Sean told me that despite the fact most people think that’s where Josh grew up, it wasn’t quite the actual spot.
Standing at the end of Josh Gibson Drive and looking back towards Charles Street, I saw a young black boy going into a pitching windup. I thought, this is just too cinematic. If the movie were to end here, we’d see the young boy pretending to be a major leaguer, hearing the crowd and letting the pressure and joy of it course through his body. And we’d understand just how different the world of possibility awaiting this youngster was than that which stood in wait for another young ballplayer, who played in these Pleasant Valley streets some eighty years ago and also dreamed of greatness.

Well, sometimes Hollywood Endings are kinda satisfying, you know? This one worked for me.

I came to Pittsburgh to walk in the footsteps of Josh Gibson, the hero of my opera, and to meet with a scholar and a great grandson. It's been an overwhelmingly rich and productive trip so far, and I wish I had the brain cells and energy to formulate one of those really juicy blog posts I sometimes write. But if a picture's worth a thousand words...


Started my day with a terrific meeting with the preeminent scholar of black sports in Pittsburgh (and one of the major Negro League scholars anywhere), Rob Ruck. Rob's book Sandlot Seasons has been hugely important in developing the plot of the Summer King. He was kind enough to look through some of my materials, give me historical feedback, and even help me work through several thorny plot points. But I forgot to get a photo with him! So here's the lovely inscription he gave me.

At Rob's advice, I then moved on to the nearby Carnegie Library, where I combed through folders on the Pittsburgh Crawfords, the Homestead Grays and Josh Gibson. But before long I switched over to the microfilm machine and searched through some old issues of the Pittsburgh Courier, making some photocopies along the way. How to describe the thrill of seeing all these wonderful players and teams and personalities coming to life, Saturday after Saturday, jumping off the screen with all their vividness and sudden incontrovertible realness. I could have spent all weekend.

Struggling with my map, I then intended to move on to the Heinz Historical Center, where I was hoping to investigate the Western Pennsylvania Sport Museum. I was running low on time, though, and couldn't resist the draw of the Hill District, where the Crawfords used to play, and the Crawford Grille was the center of the universe. You can imagine I almost drove off the road when I saw this marker. I parked the car and ran over to check out Ammons Field (which has officially been renamed "Josh Gibson Field," although I didn't know it then.)

Can you stand it? The field's been moved, reconfigured, and will soon be renovated all over again, thanks to the Pittsburgh Pirates and the Josh Gibson Foundation. But on this patch of earth, Josh Gibson first played ball with the Pittsburgh Crawfords in 1929. This is the air he gazed upon from his catcher's crouch. There wasn't a soul in sight as I stood in front of the backstop, listening for ghosts and taking in the spectacular sunny afternoon.

After going to the Homestead Grays for a few years, Josh came back to the now-professionalized Pittsburgh Crawfords in 1932. The team was owned by famed numbers man Gus Greenlee, who built the nation's finest black-owned stadium at the top of the Hill on Bedford Avenue. I went looking for the place (the stadium was torn down in 1938, and soon after replaced by projects). A man on a stoop saw me with my camera and pointedly asked me what I was doing. I explained about my pilgrimage, and I entered into some nice conversation. But he let me know "I'm not prejudiced, but you are a white guy, and up here that's unusual. People might get the wrong idea if you point that camera around without explaining what you're doing." Duly chastened, I climbed a little further up the hill to this patch of grass, right next to the projects, where several people told me Greenlee Field once stood. Some of the finest baseball ever played happened under this sky, atop this soil.

This is the site, but I don't think the actual building, of Gus Greenlee's second version of the Crawford Grille. This is not the location of scene 4 of my opera. That happens in the original Crawford Grille, which is now covered over by the Mellon Center, a great arena that I gather more or less wrecked the Lower Hill District. Still, on this quiet, almost deserted corner, much great jazz and baseball chatter must certainly have taken place. The building's for sale now, and I wish someone would bring it - and the too-quiet surrounding neighborhood - back to life.

The numbers game lives on! But I think this version is legal (Gus Greenlee's wasn't).

In the afternoon I was the guest of Sean Gibson - Josh's great grandson and the director of the Josh Gibson Foundation - at a tailgate party put on by the Amen Corner, a venerable Pittsburgh organization (so-named, by the way, not due to any religious affiliation (this is not Rick Santorum's Amen Corner) but because they used to, and probably still do, end all their meetings by saying "Amen.") What an incredibly gracious and generous host Sean was - and what an absolute thrill it was for me to talk with him about his work and his family, and a little of my work too. This party took place in a parking field outside of PNC Ballpark, where a Pirates game would soon be played.

Here's Sean signing a shirt won by a very lucky raffle winner. It's a replica of Josh Gibson's shirt from Vera Cruz Mexico, where he played the entire 1941 season. This is now available in a collaborative production by Nike and the Josh Gibson Foundation. It's not just because a scene from the opera happens in Vera Cruz that I absolutely MUST have this jersey! Wait until you see it on me.

Here I am with the two illustrious Gibsons at the entrance to PNC Park, where they've mounted a very nice tribute to the Negro Leagues. Thanks to Sean I even got a private screening of an informative film (co-created by the same Rob Ruck who appeared early in this photo essay about Gus Geenlee and Cum Posey and their baseball legacies in Pittsburgh.

Okay people, how well do you know me? One of these players is a major character in my opera. One is my cat. And one is none of the above. Submit your guesses via the comments field and win yourself an undisclosed prize.

Oh my word I'm exhausted after all that! Good thing that, thanks to Priceline, I get to come home to one of the best hotels in town, right in the center of Downtown. Tomorrow I go to Homestead, the Heinz Center, and Josh's grave. Oh, and then Maine. Nuff said for now.

Continue to Pittsburgh trip part 2.

Hi everybody. Yes - I did it, I went a whole month without blogging. And now, I'm writing in desperation, getting ready to go out the door and catch a plane to...you guessed it....Serbia. Oh my life's getting interesting. But I'll try to fill you in about that another time. Got the real camera fixed AND MR. Moto, and most importantly, Fantasy Baseball season is almost over (yes- that's where all my blogging hours have gone. Lest you thought I was doing something productive like writing an opera or book).

The important bit of news I need to convey here is this. Luna Lovegood turned about to be a boy, so we changed his name to Judy Johnson. Yes, you read that right. Go google up Judy Johnson - a great historical figure - and maybe you'll know where we're coming from. Or maybe you'll still think we're nuts. He's a sweetheart and a holy terror. We love him and fear him, and we almost named him Voldemort.

And now friends, Serbia awaits. (I may never get to type THAT again!).

Check in - I'll write. Oh get that scowl off yer pug...

Hi it's me - remember me? The guy who just took, what, 9 days off from this blog? I apologize, buttercup. (Only one or two other people in the world recognize that as a line from my opera.) This photo is of Bald Point on the Gulf of Mexico. The darkly clad figure in the distance is either Alex, or Arielle – the harpist who just gave a wonderful performance of my piece Whistlesparks down at the Florida State New Music Festival. It was a great several days, although it was bloody cold, and not what Alex and I had been hoping for when we envisioned a February trip from Maine to Florida. Ah well, the weather kept me off the beaches and in the concert halls, which I suppose is where I really belonged.

Anyway, it’s time to sign off and check out from vortex command central here. But always rest assured – I will be back. Why, my one-year blog-a-versary lies just around the bend! So why not drop me a comment or two and remind me that someone back on earth actually receives these blips and blops.

Hi everyone. I'm a bit beyond language, and for reasons I can't explain even to myself, this picture seems to say it all.
Today we gathered to say goodbye to Julian Norwalk. I hope he gets to sleep in from now on.
I hope too that you'll listen to my band perform live on the radio tomorrow night (Friday 1-12, 7:30-8:30pm - live streaming and on 90.9 in the Portland area)!

Only this photo from yesterday, which I love. Taken at the Laurel Canyon Country Store, where everyone is beautiful and the frozen drinks sublime.

No time for details dear friends, but I just had to post this picture...what is it? Why it's the "Ladies of the Canyon House." Joni Mitchell's late 60s abode which for a time she shared with Graham Nash (this is the house of "Our House"). I made it, finally, to Laurel Canyon and walked among the blinding sun, checked out the stunning panorama of Appian Way, basked in the lovely unspoiled vibe of the Laurel Canyon Country Store (where tomorrow, alas not today, is Photo Day, a famous local once-a-year event where all the community is photographed in front of the store...but for a day I could have been immortalized in this way). Have better photos on the real cam, but his will do for now. Now I'm back enjoying scholarly powerpoint presentations on Mozart's debt to the Romanesca. Envy me I say.

We Northeasterners have all sorts of lines about how we'd never want to live in California...you know, we love the seasons, love the snow, feel exhilarated by the changing and falling of the leaves. I've been singing this stuff my whole life. But on an early November evening, when it's 34 degrees back in Portland and you're sitting outside by the 7 Mare fish taco stand, chomping on the most perfect of foods as the cars zoom past on Sunset Boulevard, or better still, on Friday afternoon, out among the palm trees and the gentle breeze, you just might come to your senses. Let's all stop the madness and just move to California, okay? We've been lying to ourselves long enough. I'm here for a music theory conference - but tomorrow I'm going to try and find Joni Mitchell's old house in Laurel Canyon. I promise updates if I can send em.

It looks better than it was. I mean, actually, it was pretty okay. This was a portion, or rather two portions, but two SMALL portions, of the journey home. We sat on the American Airlines plane for 4 hours after an aborted attempt at takeoff. Then they canceled the flight, and we waited for two more hours at the baggage claim, and then for yet another hour outside in the hot Fiumicino sun for the busses. The buses took us out of the airport, and to the town of Ostia, which I think nobody realized was a seaside resort with astounding ruins to boot (we passed them on the bus). So at 7 and at 10 I swam in the sea, and there was gelato, and I hooked up with a group of Americans heading back from Positano and we went out dancing and drinking. Back to the hotel at 2, and up for the next round of buses and plains at 5am. And then the endless trek to Portland continued, those little glimmers of sun and moonlight fading into memory. And from the vantage of the first day of classes, which is now similarly fading, I have to wonder if it was all just a woozy jetlagged dream.

It's all catching up to me. The 44 hour journey, nights and nights of no sleep. Partying in the seaside town of Ostia (where they deposited us after our New York flight was canceled)...I have no brain. Here's just a photo then. Alex and me, all existential by the Pantheon on our solitary night in Rome.

Somehow my password got messed up and I wasn't able to post to the blog. This prompted me to stop blogging entirely for a little while, but you can go back and review some of the final posts I made in Italy and the adventure of my lost luggage. My flight home was an even bigger adventure (44 hours), but I'll have to go into that a little later.

Here's my bag! Only 2 hours and 14 minutes later and my emotion couldn't be more different. The Kafka stuff did proceed for a while. I managed to get to a lost and found line, which for British Airways was surprisingly short. The woman behind the counter then made numerous phone calls for me, and ultimately walked me to the threshold of Terminal B, explaining that my bag was most likely in Terminal A, but since she couldn't reach her colleague by phone, I should just go and pick it up myself. Of course when I got to the lost and found in Terminal A there was an enormous, unmoving line. I don't think Americans can generally appreciate just how slow and long a line in Italy can be. I waited in this line for fifteen minutes, before I freaked, went back to the first, still unbusy counter in Terminal B, and begged for some more intensive help. Before I knew it, a nice young man was accompanying me back to Terminal A, and took me into the hidden depths of the place, an endless array of back closets and anterooms filled with unclaimed luggage. And in the third or fourth of these rooms, there was my bag - sitting where it had sat for the last two or three days, and none the worse for the wear. It was a joyous reunion, and so what if my afternoon has been entirely and thoroughly killed. There's still the evening, and a city that houses both a waiting wife and limitless Campari. And still time for one Last Supper in this emporium of culinary delights!

The Kafkaesque saga of my lost luggage continues, and takes me to yet another airport to which I had no intention of visiting. You cannot call British Airway's lost luggage service from within Italy. From an American cell phone, the call is not allowed. With a prepaid calling card? No such number. With an Italian phone, you get through, and sometimes get into the holding queue (other times you just get disconnected). After waiting for a while on the holding queue, you get an Italian announcement that says "we're sorry, all of our operators are busy, please leave a message after the beep." Then it's beeeeep, and "La memoria è piena." (The memory is full.) So I called the American 1-800 number for British Airways lost luggage, and Skip at the Florida call center was good enough to inform me that my luggage was indeed found, and put on Alitalia flight 1038 from Rome to Milan on August 30. That's two days ago, if you're keeping track. I asked Skip if, seeing as British Airways had entirely ruined my trip, he might be able to be of a little more service to me. You know, like maybe track down my bag and get it to my hotel? Or tell me where to find it? Or give me a working number in Italy? But no, neither these options, nor a touch of sympathy or even civility, were on offer today. I was instead instructed to call Alitallia or Malpensa airport. Did Skip have a number? "No. I'm not in Italy, am I?" So I looked up the lost luggage number for Malpensa, but it's been disconnected. I tried calling Alitalia, but their number is permanently busy. So what am I doing at 3pm on a gorgeous sunny afternoon - my last in Milan? Yes, I'm on the Malpensa Express (scenic photo attached), heading straight for the airport like John Wayne, planning to track down my errant bag and maybe leave some unhappy inefficient baggage handlers in my wake. Because I know you're on pins and needles, I'll keep you posted. (But by the time I'm actually able to post this, I'll probably be back in the good old U S of A.)

Mr. Moto has a way of sucking the life out of almost every wonderful experience in the world - even climbing the Duomo in Milan. But climb we did, all 151 or so steps, after enjoying the lovely interior and suffering through an obscenely boring audio tour. Afterwards I said to Alex, you know, after seeing St. Peters (which we did last summer) all other cathedrals seem kind of on the small and spartan side. She called me a snob. Milano, much to our surprise, is a wonderful town. We're staying near the Navigli, a section that features Venice-like canals and numerous outdoor caffes and ristoranti. We touched the surface of Milan's famous shopping scene, as we are still trying to rebuild my recently-decimated wardrobe. We've also had some more fine gelato. The gelatteria here have a more modern feel, and as a whole this city is much less beholden to an illustrious past than its smaller sister to the south (from whence we came). I've had these flavors: torrone, choclate rum, fior di latte (I don't really remember what that is). Alex had more straciatella and some nocciola.. Chocolat rum was a competitor to the aforementioned Berthillon's cacao whiskey, and all in all Milan is holding up nicely in terms of gustatory offerings. Tomorrow Alex has meetings and I'm out shopping again - gotta get a suitcase if I'm to get all my replacement clothing home. Then we'll hit some museums and I know not what else. Sorry for the workaday feel of these updates. They are written in haste, and posted late because the much heralded internet hook-up at this otherwise lovely hotel doesn't work, and Italy is way behind in terms of wi-fi access.

We're off - speeding along second class, seats 33 and 38, carriage 6, on the EuroCity train towards Milano. About Florence, Mary McCarthy (paraphrasing a particular attitude), writes:

Florence is scraping the bottom of the tourist barrel. And the stolid presence of these masses with their polyglot guides in the Uffizi, in the Pitti, around the Baptistery doors and the Medici Tombs, in the cell of Savonarola and the courtyard of Palazzo Vecchio is another of the 'disagreeables', as the Victorians used to call them, that have made Florence intolerable and, more than that, inexplicable to the kind of person for whom it was formely a passion. 'How can you stand it?'

Oh I don't know...sure we wandered around with our Rough Guide and our tattered map... but we weren't all that, and neither was Firenze. Since it was a second visit, we skipped the Duomo, Accademia, and, gasp of gasps, Uffizi. We did hit the Pitti, though, after finding that Santa Maria del Carmine was closed on Tuesdays. It's a pretty overwhelming spot, filled with Titians and Donatellis and even some more modern Tuscan Italian painters. But most interesting and inspiring for me was the room which held the most boring exhibit: the Sale Bianco. Although there was absolutely no mention of it anywhere in the museum, this is where, in 1600, Jacopo Peri's opera Euridice was given a performance for 200 (of the many more more) guests at Maria de' Medici and Henry IV's lavish wedding. Important why? Because it's the first surviving opera to have been performed (Peri's Dafne, from 1597, is lost to us). Euridice's a boring opera, and Monteverdi blew it out of the water with his Orfeo only 7 years later... but still, there was a lot of vibe to be absorbed by this eager young opera composer. So I stood in the room and soaked it up. I took a picture of the vibe, but can't find it - so you'll have to make due with this one that Alex snapped of me in front of the palazzo, feeling the spirit. Just this morning, to add to the operatic embers, we visited Rossini's tomb. He's parked at Santa Croce, along with some other lightweights you know, Michelangelo, Galileo, Dante and the like, with a few Gioto frescos adorning the walls. Probably the artistic highlight, though, was our visit to San Marco, where yes, we did visit the cell of Savanrola, but mostly focused our attention on the spellbinding frescoes of Fra Angelico (one of Alex's all time favorites). As Alex explained, frescoes are painted on wet plaster - once the plaster dries, your fresco is finito. Kind of like speed chess or somethingt, so it's all the more impressive that such moving and accomplished works of art were generated with this process. If you're wondering, no, my luggage never came. They can't find it, although my complaint is in the system. I may one day be reimbursed by British Airways, who are apparently reasonably decent in these matters. (I wonder if they'll reimburse the $100 or so I've spent using my cell phone to track the stuff...or the hours and hours of our trip we've lost to this. Or the job I'm going to lose for being completely unprepared (for having no books)). But I digress. I always be amazed, contrary to Mary's somewhat tongue-in-cheek description, of the calmness this town exudes. Even amidst the throngs of German, American and Japanese tourists that crowd the monuments and weigh down the Ponte Vecchio, Firenze never seems to lose her cool. Amidst all the additional chaos of our particular experience, we still managed to be soothed.

The gelato report so far: The first cone was definitely the best. Went back to dei Neri and had A-C-L (a sorbet of orange, carrot and lemon), chocolate crocant (i.e. crunchy), and licorice (the best of the troika - intense and lasting), while alex had the tried and true combo of straciatella (chocolate chip) and nutella. Last night we hit Caffè i Ricci, on the Piazza Santa Spirito, where I had chocolate mousse (I had asked for coffee mousse) and a flavor that I've already forgotten. This stuff was serviceable but nothing more (you could find and overpay for its like in New York). Today we hit Vivoli, the most famous gelato place in town. As is always the case with these famous joints, everyone says it's gone way downhill. Depends who you ask. I had Zabaione, Mela Verte (green apple - but it tasted suspiciously like lemon), and chocolate and coffee (1 flavor) and it was okay - nothing close to dreamlike. Alex, however, raptured on her combo of gianduia and pear caramel sorbet. The help was as surly and the prices as inflated as advertised. Here's a little snapshot of today's purchases: I'll let you guess who had the big one. Sadly, there are many, many highly respected (and some hidden gem-type) gelaterrias we/I did not have time to seek out and discover. I even heard tell of one that was better than Berthillon - the Parisian ice cream company, based on the isle de St. Louis, that for my money makes the best ice cream in the world. My first cone was in that league, but nothing since. We'll see what Milan has to offer. We couldn't get tickets to the Last Supper, despite trying 3 weeks in advance, so we'll have to find some other joys to occupy our time (or my time - Alex will be having meetings and stuff). A presto!

Made it to Firenze. It took 28 hours, door to door, from Portland, Maine. And, from the vantage of having an all out great time now, eating well, seeing the sights and soaking up the relaxed vibe of this venerable and stunning city, I can tell you that it (the travel part) was profoundly lame to its core. My suitcase is gone. Didn't show up in Rome, and the number they gave me to call, after I filled out my claim form, seems not actually to exist. I once managed to get one woman on the phone, who got as far as "I'm sorry sir, it doesn't seem..." before she got cut off. All of my best clothing, much of it new, a pair of shoes, all of my books for the coming semester are inside. All our toiletries. Half a custom made suit from India. Ah well, you win some you lose some. The pain began to melt away, though, as soon as we began to walk the streets here. Took a bus tour of the town last night, organized by the school for which Alex is working. Today we got a special tour of the Stibbert Museum, an amazing collection of armor and other oddities.We met Lisa Friend, flautist and opera expert/organizer (and Stibbert tour guide) for a late lunch in the beautiful town of Fiesole, which gazes out at Florence from on high. (The picture on the left gives only the slightest taste). Then we hit a department store and I bought stuff like shirts, pants, boxer shorts, toiletries. A nice excuse to go shopping. Too bad Italians don't make shoes in my size (well, unless you get them custom made...we're not here long enough). Alex then retired home for a brief rest and clean up while I sought out my first gelato. Went to the Gelaterria dei Neri, and it was sublime: chocolate with pistachios and hot peppers; ricotta with fig; amaretto with peach. The picture on the right does almost no justice to this transportive mixture. Then, back out with LIsa Friend to her beautiful house near Chianti, in the mountains, amongst fig trees and vinyards. We ate some grapes, had wonderful cheese with fig jam, drank local wine, and then headed out for dinner. Just got home and I'm ready for bed. Might find a wi-fi from which to send these funny little updates tomorrow.

Flying over the Italian alps…I woke up almost 24 hours ago, and finally a hint that it might all have been worth it. The clouds hover like little tufts of cotton, casting shadows on the peaks that lie scant meters below. In the valley, congested red-thatched houses, here and there a body of still, blue water. And just like that the mountains yield to flatland…geometric shapes in every shade of green and brown. The Italian August sun casts a sultry, seductive haze across the endless swathes, squares and squares and rectangles. And then, trees! Sprinkled in like kale amidst the meat. The map shows us above Genoa. Or Turin? Where are we actually…hard to say. But 285 miles to our destination. That’s half an hour, right? Oh there’s Athens and Istanbul and Kiev and Moscow and Warsaw and Helsinki and London and Madrid and Barcelona. The world is a small place, it turns out. And somewhere in the sky, or maybe just touching down, is sleepy Alex, nervous about her Italian, searching out her bags and my flight. If she doesn’t find me when I pop out of the gate, we’re to meet by the train, where there’s a little café that injects their freshly made cornettos with chocolate or jam, your choice. I have had more breakfasts than I care to recount. One after the other. Breakfast breakfast breakfast. No matter where I go, it seems eternal morning. My computer clock tells me it is 5:55AM. But that’s a world behind me, and I’m really careening on towards noon. I have the Daily Mail and the Observer, and a whole row of seats to myself. Pisa! Florence! Dear Florence, I’ll see you again shortly… too bad travel is no longer the shortest distance between two points. And now the bright blue sea. The Mediterranean – some coastal town or city even. The water is cyan with strange beige ripples. The city, maroon. The captain announces we picked up a great tailwind so we're only a little late. We'll be in at 12:30. That gives 2.5 hours to find A, get bags, get to Rome Termini, and find our train to Firenze. I am ever hopeful.

I eventually made it to Heathrow. Then, along with the huddled masses, I walked and walked, seemingly through miles of corridors, lines, escalators, a bus. Then the horrendous line you see here, a second time through the security mechanisms (everybody here was just transfering, so we'd all already done security). All liquids are surreptitiously confiscated, along with toothpaste, batteries, lipstick, shampoo. Many people miss their flights, I think, but not me. I have time to make it through this ordeal and then hit the shops and have a great breakfast at a place called Girafffe. A tostada with 2 eggs, sunny side up, and vegetarian sausage! This always was a great airport for eating and shopping, but a hellish one for security.

Okay, so here I am, squeezed into the 5-seat middle section of an enormous 777 plane that just took off from New York's JFK towards London Heathrow. Flying to London was in fact not on my agenda of things to do today...but my flight out of Boston was delayed 2.5 hours, so I missed my direct flight to Rome by about 15 minutes. Fortunately I managed to hook myself into this one, which, with the connection, will get me to Rome only 4 hours later than originally planned (1 less pizza, 1 less gelato). Of course, this flight was delayed by an hour because a plane had broken down in front of it. So will I make my connection, who knows? Oddly, shortly before I left JFK, Alex, who left Portland four hours later than I, took off from Logan Airport headed toward Munich. What a strange thought - the two of us flying through the night to distant ciities, on separate paths to the same ultimate destination. The reunioin will be sweet. Meanwhile I am profoundly uncomfortable...and annoyed. We're flying over Martha's Vinyard...Nova Scotia...the kinds of northerly places I've spent all day trying to get out of. Ah well...here comes the beverage cart.

Well, making through security went smoothly. I ditched my water, bought a lovely caesar's salad, took off my shoes in marched through the ancient carpet muck, and then shelled out $7.95 so I could log on...just in case I'd missed something. But I hadn't. On the bus down I saw the wonderfully formulaic and predictable movie "Failure to Launch." Concord Trailways knows just the flicks to pick to make a journey fly by. Last time it was "Along Came Polly," and I laughed so hard I thought I'd be asked to leave. Ben Stiller just speaks to me, in a very deep and personal way. On the highway coming down two cars spun out right in front of the bus. Smoke flying, whirling 360s toward the median. Our bus driver, mid-conversation, just pounded the brakes, pulled right, and then kept going. He was the happy recipient of many handshakes and pats on the back as we all descended at Logan. The spun-off cars, by the way, looked okay...but I bet they were shaken up. Everything about travel these days reminds me of what a fragile life we lead. Off now, to lead more of it. Next stop: JFK.

Well, if I was running out of stuff to blog about, the next week should fix that. I'm tagging along as Alex heads to Italia per lavoro (for work, that is). I plan to mangiare gelato ogni giorno, and brace myself for the academic year that is waiting for me on the flip side. I'll have the old trusty laptop with me, and Mr. Moto the cameraphone, and I've heard that they even have internets over in the big Boot, so you just might hear from me. e-postcard, anyone? Stay tuned!

Don't those words just ring magically in your ears? We're leaving at the crack of dawn to drive for six hours to the land of opera and baseball (and believe you me, those things go together well!) Will certainly report back, but it might be a coupla days.

I don't have much for you, friends. In the last 24 or so hours we've visited 2 sets of parents, 2 sets of grandparents, some siblings, and some dogs too. We're making our way slowly from Maine down to New York. Then, after Alex takes a peek at an exhibition space at Wave Hill, we'll make our way quickly right back up to Maine. No rest for the weary. But the highlight of our trip so far, and believe me I'm ashamed to admit it, has been Barney's Outlet at Clinton Crossing in Connecticut. Alex got two shi-shi outfits for her upcoming business trip to Italy, and I got some brown pants with a broken zipper (discount!) and a striped purple shirt. Tonight we're crashing at me sister's, cuz they're out partying on Fire Island, and tomorrow I'll run around Central Park and then hit Zabar's and Absolute Bagels - only the essentials, no time for friends, alas. Hope to write back again from the road. Secretly even hope to bring my camera phone on the run with me. It'll be like you're right there with me! Can you stand it?

Here I am at Niagara Falls. It was a gray day, so I've gone into Photoshop to add all sorts of vomity colors so you can look at it and think, gee, if only Dan had left the picture plain it'd actually be kind of nice. You hold on to that vision. We found ourselves here Saturday morning, in a white rented Pontiac Grand Prix. Several days earlier, Wednesday, to be specific, we left Portland, Maine on a 3:30 bus to Boston, in order to catch an 8pm plane to Toronto. We were on our way to celebrate the life of Manya Sax, survivor of the Russian Revolution and, much later on, grandmother to Alexandra Joy. At approximately 4:30pm, A.J., who had until one second previously been fast asleep, sat bolt upright and announced "we forgot the passports." We calmly surveyed our options. Once upon a time a driver's license would get you into our friendly Northern neighbor, but those days ended about five years ago. So we rode on to Boston, hopped on the return bus to Portland, picked up our car at the bus station, drove home, got the passports, reserved a rental car, drove to the Portland International Jetport, got the rental, left our Subaru in the long-term lot, and at 9:38pm we were, to borrow from Willie Nelson, on the road again. At approximately 5:16 a.m. on Thursday morning we pulled off of exit 42 of the New York State Thruway, and made our way to the Ramada Inn in the town of Geneva (coincidentally, the location of Hobart, alma mater of Alex's brother Ian). At 5:40 a.m. our heads hit the pillows, and at 7:30 a.m. our alarm went off, and by 8:28 a.m. we were back on the thruway. At about 12:15 p.m. we arrived in the lovely city of Toronto, fresh as a cuke, ready to mourn. And good thing, because the funeral started at 1. We were at the funeral, then at the cemetery, and then sitting shiva for the day - Jews understand better than most that mourning is about eating, and eating smoked fish to boot. Anyway, I'll have more details about our adventures in the coming days, provided nothing exciting happens before I get the chance to expostulate on the travel theme. The end of the story is that we left Toronto at 6am, left Niagara at about 11:30, left Hamilton College (Alex's alma mater) at about 4pm, and coasted into Portland around 10:20, none the worse for wear. (That's actually a phrase that sticks in my head from a little $3 book we bought about people who've gone over Niagara in a barrel. As you might imagine, it really only worked to describe a small minority of that population. And it doesn't really work to describe us the other night either, but it sure rolls off the tongue). For now, rest in peace Manya. I'm glad I had the chance to know you, and to say farewell.