Archive for the ‘scenes from village life’ Category
Goat Tears Cure Muscle Aches and Pains!
Did you know goat tears are an instant remedy for your aches and pains?
That’s what Thera-Gesic says:
I don’t care how magical goat tears are. I’ll never make my babies cry on purpose.
You wanna know why?
Happy Love Thursday!
Hug a kid!
And get in those O Foods Contest recipes!
Love Thursday: The Piaggio Love Ape 50
For the uninitiated, the “Ape 50” is a three-wheeled truck made by Piaggio that you can find on just about any rural road in Italy at any time of day.
Pronounced “AH-peh,” rumor has it that it’s named as such because the sound it makes very much resembles the buzz of a bee as it winds around twists and turns carrying hay, olives, lemons, or whatever its driver needs to get from Punto A to Punto B.
“Ape,” you see, means “bee” in Italian. Incidentally, the famous Vespa scooter? “Vespa” means “wasp.” Clever, eh?
So by now you may be wondering where exactly the “Love” comes in.
Right here baby:
Meet our newest toy, The Looooove Ape 50, which just so happens to have a heart spray-painted on the front.
I didn’t choose this treasure, so obviously I’m not the only one in the house who enjoys finding hearts out and about and bringing them home.
I know it’s bit gaudy and a lot ghetto, but I’m thinking I might like to keep it on there.
What do you think (besides that you’re *so* jealous, admit it!)?
Happy Love Thursday!
Badolato Hosts Tarantella Power 2009
From 22-26 August, our normally sleepy medieval village was absolutely overrun with people eager to celebrate Tarantella Power,* a yearly Calabrian celebration held somewhere in the toe of the boot depending on which town has won the contract.
Well, Badolato Superiore got it this year and for the next few years as well, so if you didn’t make it in 2009, get out your travel planners!
You may think it’s all about the tarantella, but it’s really a celebration of Calabrian culture in general–music, dance, food, wine, art, crafts, and more. So much more. So. Many. People. I’m told over 10,000 showed up for the Piero Pelù concert on the final night!
By the by, in this video, Pelù is singing a song with Marasà, who I’ve discussed before–the song also happens to be on the CD over there in my sidebar.
So, indeed, Tarantella Power began early on the morning of 22 August for P and me as we noticed an artist setting up next to our house, ready to paint the arch of the never-finished palazzo across the street.
As the morning wore on, I offered the artist some coffee (I know, shocking that I was making some), but he preferred water.
So I kept him in steady supply. It was *very* hot that day even though he was painting in the shade and even though some of the younguns from the group that organized the artists’ visits stopped in every now and again to check on him.
Sadly, I didn’t get a glimpse of the finished painting as I only happened to look down from the balcony just as he was packing up and walking away, so no photos of it either. We said our good-byes after exchanging business cards, then a few days later, our doorbell rang.
I looked down at the front door from the balcony (our equivalent of the peep hole, although admittedly, there’s very little peeping involved), and there was our new friend, Gregorio Cosentino, with a “pensierino” (small gift, although to me this isn’t so small!) for us.
Just for offering a little water to a thirsty man on a hot day.
I love Calabria.
*For more photos (with much better coloring), see my Tarantella Power set on Flickr.
Introducing Carmelina: Another Kid Joins the Herd
Today should rightfully be a Going Green post according to my schedule, but I’m under several deadlines and simply couldn’t do the planned topic of water conservation justice this week, so please try to suffer through these adorable photos of Carmelina, our newest kid, instead.
Yes, we have a new girl around here, this one via a friend of P’s who couldn’t keep her. Lucky us!
And in an interesting turn of events, the guy who originally had Carmelina (before P’s friend) seems to think she may already be carrying a new little kid or two. We have to get a blood test from the veterinarian to find out, but fingers crossed that there will be kids in a few months! Yay!
All the girls are getting along swimmingly and can often be found playing around and being silly with one another. I tried to get some video of their hijinks but my camera is acting up, jumping around, losing color, generally being disagreeable. I’ll keep trying though because it really is adorable to watch.
See more photos of the girls (and some other fun shots of our tomatoes, figs, grapes, a lone pomegranate that couldn’t, and more!) on my Flickr page–and feel free to friend me if you’ve got a Flickr account! That way you can always keep up with my latest photos, and I can keep an eye on yours as well.
Ah, and if you’re still in a goatish mood, check out this goat and dog pair that were wandering around Norristown, PA together (thanks Megan!). Too cute!
Buon weekend!
Love Thursday: William’s Orgasmic View Lives On
William the Englishman (or l’Inglese as he was called in the village) had a house in Badolato with an “orgasmic view” of the Ionian Sea, as he called it. He came to stay here every year from April to October.
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During the early years (we both arrived in the village around 2003), we were the only two English speakers, so we’d meet for cappuccino in the piazza before William took the bus down to the beach. Along the way he’d stop to chat with just about everyone, trying out his ever-improving Italian, helped by the years he had spent as a bar owner in Spain.
William always joked that everyone knew him, but he most certainly didn’t know everyone. The young children on the bus especially enjoyed him as they relished the chance to practice their school-learned English.
I always felt like a surrogate daughter for William, whose own precious girl was about my age back in London. When William’s house needed “a woman’s touch” as he put it, I helped him pick out dishes and other little accents. Every couple weeks, I’d set up his cell phone ring tones, phonebook, and other settings he’d somehow managed to change. Paolo and I even had him over for a very impromptu Easter dinner one year.
William called me “the Unamerican American” because I had what he considered a rare curiosity about the world and desire to live abroad–Unamerican for an American, according to William. And he never did quite understand how I was able to work via Internet in this mountaintop village and actually make a living; I must have tried to explain it a hundred times.
Lest you think he was anti-American, though, William always rang me on Thanksgiving and was always sure to pay for my cappuccino on the 4th of July.
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Soon after William bought his house here in Badolato, he was the victim of a hit-and-run back in London, and although he survived, he did so just barely. He suddenly had a long physical and emotional road to recovery ahead of him–not made any easier by all the steep hills and steps in Badolato.
And so, William considered selling his beloved casa with its “orgasmic view,” but I got the feeling that was never going to happen. He just loved his piccolo paradiso (little paradise), as he called it, too much.
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In 2008, William died in a house fire in his flat in London. Paolo had gotten word when I was away on a trip, but he waited until I got back to tell me.
At that moment, on my balcony looking out at that same orgasmic view of the Ionian (my house was on the same side of the mountain as William’s, only higher up), all the memories of William came flooding back, bringing mostly smiles and, admittedly, also quite a few tears.
Then came an overwhelming sadness with the realization that not only would we never have cappuccino again, but also our connection was completely gone. Even though I had heard many stories about William’s family back in England, I had no contact information for anyone in his English life.
But then one day a few months ago, I opened up my email and saw what I knew to be his daughter’s name in my inbox. She had found me through this blog, not even realizing that I knew her father, only that I was an English speaker who lived in this mysterious medieval village that William had loved so much.
I met William’s daughter in person last week for the first time when she and her fiancé came to Badolato. She looks so much like her father and has precisely the same English sense of humor, or “humour” I suppose.
I know she was pleased to find out how many people enjoyed the company of l’Inglese, and that he didn’t simply come here to live as a hermit. I introduced her to quite of few of William’s acquaintances, each one saying he was “bravo” or “un grande amico” or something similar.
After initial thoughts of selling the house, she and her family have decided to keep it, rent it out, and otherwise offer it as a place of refuge from the real world for family and friends–much as her father used it when he was alive.
And I like to think that somewhere, William is smiling. His orgasmic view has been passed on to a new generation–and so have some of his friendships.
For William, “Tears in Heaven” by Eric Clapton,
the man he called his “God”:
Happy Love Thursday everyone.
Michelle Kaminsky is an American attorney-turned-freelance writer who lived in her family's ancestral village in Calabria, Italy for 15 years. This blog is now archived.
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