Sainted weather...

The topics in Codiponte these days are two: Covid Lockdown or, the weather. Let’s talk about the weather. I haven’t belly-ached about it for a while…

it’s been raining for the last two months! The story…

You calls me about 10 times a day. A mainstay of our shared Lockdown since last February. The first call is usually around 8:30AM. I have already had one caffe’ and am working on a second when the iPhone squeals the arrival of his call. They are a forum for him to ask… Che tempo che fa… literally, What’s the weather?… but, in another sense of the Italian, it’s really to ask… What’s up? Well, more than a month ago… on December 2, 2020, to exact… You called at Our Anointed Morning Hour and I took his query as an opportunity to complain about the weather…

Pretty darn shitty, You. Cold and grey. IT’S RAINING!!! And, there’s a new Moon tonight too. Means we have to put up with this crappy weather for the next month, thanks to the phases stuff.

Va’ be’… buckle your belt… said You… because, besides la luna nuova, it’s also the onomastico for Saint Bibiana. The saint’s name day. You’ve got rain coming for the next 40 days.

What? Saints get an extension to the month-long climate change?

Go to go.

And, lo’ and behold, our weather has obeyed the saintly order of things. The January weather forecast is for continued rain to reach the 40 days!!!

Lately, we’ve enjoyed a rhythm of 6 days of cold, grey, rain, wind and 1 of semi-sunshine. Ephemeral is our Signor Sole. Covid-19 has taken a back seat along with Donald Trump, Brexit, the recent Christmas holidays. People are going nuts about the wet.

Who is Saint Bibiana? A virgin and martyr, of course. Wikipedia states 2 legends. One is soft-core suffering and the 2nd is XXL suffering to martyrdom. Let’s focus on the later. Bibiana was the daughter of a Roman Empire functionary, Flavianus, who unfortunately irritated his emperor by being a devout Christian. The emperor wanted to rid Rome of the scourge of Christianity, and so named one, Apronianus, as governor of the Eternal city, entrusted with the mandate to bring a hasty end to any Christian when and where found. Flavianus was discovered, tortured and banished. Bibiana’s mother, Dafrosa, was beheaded… which seems a bit unfair… while Bibiana and her sister, Demetria, were relegated to a life of poverty under house arrest. The two fasted and prayed. What else could they do? It didn’t end there. Apronianus was so appalled the two women could survived his punishment, he had the two women brought before him. Demetria confessed her Christian faith and promptly died at the governor’s sandalled feet. Saved herself a lot of trouble and pain, which fell upon Bibiana. She was turned over to a wicked-woman, who tried to seduce the poor virgin. Rejected, the vile female beat poor Bibiana yet, she steadfastly remained true to her faith, like her sister. Apronianus, furious, took the matter in his own hands and had the poor virgin dragged and tied to a pillar and viciously beaten until death. Bibiana’s body was then tossed to wild animals who refuse to touch it. Years later, Pope Semplicius conferred upon her a holy martyrdom. And, the martyr’s former house was consecrated as a church dedicated to her and her martyrdom. And, for all those sufferings, we are now paying penance with rain, rain, and more rain. Snow for tomorrow afternoon. Naturally. We’re in January.

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Summer break...

It’s not what you think.

I went to dinner at my English Friend’s house the other night. Codiponte, in its own way, is a very international retreat. Many of the World’s nations are represented, besides the Brexiteers or, non-… me, as the lone American then, a clutch of Dutch, a Brazilian family though they now live in Argentina… did not quite understand the explanation as to why, so I filled in the subsequent blank with Tax Dodgers. Buenos Aires seems the last place on the face of Dear Mother Earth to avoid the financial worry of excessive taxation… and some Australians. These later persons haven’t shown their faces in a couple of years. Must be the abominable airplane trip through Dubai since, QANTAS eliminated Rome from their docket of destinations or, now, the COVID-19 scare. Oh, well… back to my English Friends….

The wife is a determined Good Cook. She served a shrimp cocktail with homemade mayonnaise… a Southern Down Home Favourite, especially the mayo. Well, the shrimp too ‘cause I have relations who hail from Savannah, Georgia, Shrimp HQ… broiled to a crip outer shell river trout and an unofficial version of ratatouille. Odd though there were NO POTATOES!!! Like Italians, who do not count a meal a meal without bread, I thought the same with the English and spuds. What found a brief home on the plate before me was delicious and a bit Fall-ish. Summer fair cold meats, steamed vegetable and/or too many salads. Blessedly, there was lots of white wine and conversation to cover the absence of no roasted tatters.

One whirl of conversation that evening was on our Summer weather. Ghastly hot. Terrifically muggy. LITTLE RAIN!!! The English Wife is a True Believer in the Phases of the Moon. N’er a move without consulting the Lunar Calendar. I was remotely aware of this info conveyance but, typically, gave it scant thought. Filed it away and next to the amount of pressure for my beat-up SUV’s tires. Ah, she said, new Moon tonight, dears. The weather is due to change its tune. Yes, rain will be our music for next week. Get ready. It’s going to rain like it hasn’t since October of 2013. Gosh! Well, we are in next week and all I have seen was some spray just at the moment I needed to carry off the debris after two days of gardening, while You grumbled & groaned setting to rights our salotto and sala da pranzo post-camino construction. Three months of dawn arrivals of the workmen… the Dog and I are communally comatose until at least 9:00AM, he contemplating an imminent evacuation, me on nursing my third tasse di caffe’… no shows of others, vacation interruptions, for cryin’ out loud, dust, disorder, depression. The English Wife said Summer would break. Come on…

My first experience with a Summer Break… can’t recall experiencing such a phenomenon in America but, boy do they need it in California, Oregon, Colorado… was the first Summer I came to Italy. Florence. To learn Italian. August. Not the month to be anywhere but Greenland or, in the upper reaches of Norway. The city of the Medici is in a bowl. The prevailing winds pass right on over the place, leaving a desperate sort of heat & humidity. A smoggy dark brown haze soddens the antique stones and roof tiles. Must be why I found the Florentines so grumpy and unpleasant. I have since altered my perspective on the city. I fell in love twice in Firenze. One stuck!!! I have to confess… I stopped going to the Leonardo da Vinci School of Italian after the first week. I had paid for a month. Annoying teachers, treacherous students from Eurolandia and, my own personal freak-out in attempting to master Italian beyond Ciao! and Arrivederci. I will not speak of two difficult Italian verb tenses, except to say, I still, after thirty-six years, steer clear of any linguistic necessity to resort to them. One, however, is only used in places like Sicilia and the darker regions of Calabria. Ahime’. Travelled instead. Talked to old people waiting for the corriere at, Thanks to the Almighty Lord, a shady bus stop… normally these spots are situated on a large expanse of asphalt charmingly referred to as la piazza… and saw stuff. Best trip was to Assisi. But never mind. Oh, but no! It was upon my gainful return to Florence from the city of Francesco d’ that an enormous thunderstorm struck Florence and environs. Black skies, multiple & simultaneous bolts of lightening ripped across the sky, pounding torrential rains, a good deal of pandemonium with traffic, fear, terror and, a number of trees knocked down too. OK… so no electricity for a few hours afterwards. Candle light is so atmospheric. Yet, the next morning sprung a gloriously beautiful August day of blue skies, breezy, cool temps, DRY!!! Fall like weather. WONDERFUL: Summer was broke. The drenching heat & humidity snapped until the following June. That is what the English Wife was implying. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I must practice my Italian Rain Dance. Still no sight of rain, darn it.

Doesn’t look like rain to me…

…but, my laundry is drying nicely. No, that’s not my stuff hanging on the line. Mine is on folding stands in the courtyard, where it belongs, out of view. I’m not from Naples, thank you very much!

Frosty time of the year...

Lo’ and behold, the day & night temperatures suddenly dropped the day after Christmas. Hark! The 25th was a Yuletide scorcher of 70F degrees at 1:30PM. I know for a fact because, I was out on our loft’s balcony in Genoa with my sister-in-law-who-smokes and the pharmacy’s electric sign-board sent speeding across it in Bright Green the afternoon’s current temp. Hark, again! Everyone else was inside gorging themselves on my 4-day-in-the-making Christmas Day dinner of focaccia, an exquisite salmon torta, an artichoke soup which, I must say turned out quite well after the crisis in discovering the recipe I was following was WRONG!!! If you boil or, steam the artichokes, you do not have to sauté them too. Plus, no call for an onion and some sort of meaty fat which, I feel are always necessary for a hearty soup. This despite the au courant of avoiding meaty fats these days. Perhaps, Julia Child would back me up on this, I would hope… followed by a delicately spicy shrimp & sausages pasta, a roast turkey from the best butcher in all of Genoa, Mario’s, Brussels sprouts braised with butter & prosciutto…. Euw, ick, Brussels sprouts but, they were the only vegetable available in sufficient quantities at my green-grocer’s… an abundant potato puree popped under the broiler for a stunning cap of a golden brown cheese crust, and for dessert, an exaggerated array of pane-this-and-that… panettone, pandolce, panedoro, paneforte… and chocolates, chocolates, chocolates, and nuts, nuts, nuts and clementines, and clementines, clementines, clementines, the Christmas fruit of Italy. The Italians do-up wreaths with them and bay leaf branches. Very festive. This abundant gastronomic buffet preceded the annual photo sessions of the family with la nonna and, the sensational display of modern Christmas consumerism for our five nieces to open sacks full of geeefts from their uncle You. I had to have a sit-down in my post-Modern wing-back chair sipping from a tall glass of white wine to observe the commotion and enthusiasm… Oh, zio! Che bella!! Grazie!!!

But now, back to the today’s temps…

The drop in temperature added to l’aria asciutta was a definite change of pace to the warm temperatures and the constant rains & humidity of October, November & half of December. The Dogs now insist upon waking me up in the middle of the night… Shhh! Not a word to You, who is absolutely opposed to this canine custom… they sleep with me under the covers ‘cause it’s c-c-cold… to vie with one another on who gets to be closest to me. I am the in-bed furnace, apparently. What a joy! I then take advantage of being awaken to untangle myself from them and the layers of bed clothes… heavy Sardinian wool bedspread, down comforter, blue wool blanket and my fake fur stole and hobble into the bathroom to pee. While aiming, I unlatch the interior shutters of the bathroom’s single window and gaze out upon the roofs of Codiponte, all frosty white below an indigo starry night sky. Beautifully eerie and quiet.

The morning has the same scene though lighted by a timid sunshine yet to creep up and over the Borgo Castello of Codiponte above us at il Poggiolo. Our garden has many guises through the year but, I do find its Winter one the more charming. I took a quick tour of the garden this AM… in running shorts with a T and track-shoes… outside the Azzurro Apartment where I am camping out with said Dogs, who, by the way, ABSOLUTELY REFUSED TO LEAVE THE COMFORT OF THEIR CLUB CHAIRS before the warmth of the fire. I had to go it alone in the chill, the quiet and the frost.