From our room at Hotel Signum, Salina. Panerea in the distance.
Hotel Signum‘s celebrated restaurant — Sicilian cuisine — with one of Salina’s six volcanoes behind.
Guy Wiggins teaching the kids that it’s all one big poker game.
Twilight music played by a handsome man-servant.
Dragging ourselves away from the pool at Villa Zinna and from the abundance of music at the Ibla Festival, we decided we had to make a pilgrimage to Scicli to see Christ in a Skirt. Scicli hides in a gorge in the Val di Noto and you come upon it like a surprise. In one way or another the town has been hiding there, mirage-like, since 300 BCE. In 1693 an earthquake leveled the town, killing 3000. It was rebuilt by the ruling Spaniards in their Baroque style — a maze of palaces and churches with San Matteo looming above it all on a rocky outcropping.
Scicli (pronounced SHE KLEE) is lovely to drift through as Jenny and I and our families did.
At high noon no one but us was foolish enough to be on the streets. The town was empty, the temperature hovering around 100 degrees, but dry and cool in the shade. Too hot for a gelato even.
Above, Santa Maria La Nova in background.
The palaces and churches brim with gargoyles and decorative fancies and crazy faces.
And finally…
Chiesa del Carmine
Cristo in gonnella: Christ in his skirt
(I’m not sure why he’s wearing a skirt, but it is very rare. There is one other in Burgos, Spain.)
Visit Jenny McPhee for more on Sisters in Sicily.
Jenny and I arriving for the Ibla International Music Festival in Ragusa Ibla, Sicily. Here for ten days listening to musicians of all ages from around the world. And also we are exploring the Val di Noto World Heritage Site of south eastern Sicily.
Jasper grew this at school for his grandmother’s garden. It is surrounded by basil to keep away the gnats. The angels actually aren’t angels, but our family, sculpted by Livia, now years ago.
My brilliant sister Sarah has a new and astonishing book.
“A highly original work by an accomplished and enterprising scholar, Bernini’s Beloved offers a compelling, untold human story. It shows us the lively 17th-century Roman art world from a novel perspective, that of a woman. . . . It will be welcomed by anyone interested in art, artists, gender, and the social history of Rome during the flourishing of the baroque..”—Elizabeth S. Cohen, York University
“Bernini’s Beloved will definitively change the way people look at Bernini’s portrait of a woman who turns out to be the descendant of a Pope. . . Sarah McPhee argues that Bernini used his utmost artistry to convey Costanza’s divine dignity as a new Venus, reconciling the background of this remarkable statue with its evident value in artistry and materials. The whole picture, for the first time, makes eminent sense.”—Ingrid Rowland, University of Notre Dame
Entertainment at Maho Beach Resort, St. Marteen
The Maho Beach Resort was an unlikely end to a gorgeous Caribbean vacation on Anguilla, but that’s where it ended in a massive hotel with over five hundred rooms, a casino, a vast pool with a bar in it, people sipping cocktails, playing bingo, smoking cigarettes, relaxing. On the beach next to the hotel, a beautiful white sand crescent, jumbo jets roared in from Paris and Amsterdam, 747s, 767s, 757s to touch down just on the other side of a barbed wire fence, one after the next, glinting in the sun on the horizon, growing bigger and bigger until they were right above, so close it seemed you could jump up and touch their bellies. When they weren’t landing they were taking off, blasting several hundred tons of thrust from both engines, blowing sand ferociously like thousands of small needles piercing the skin, making waves in the sea, causing people to hang onto the fence. Planes have never seemed possible to me somehow, like extraordinary, potent magic. Here the show was free; you watch it from your beach towel.
Check out Josef Hoflehner’s photos.
IN GOOD COMPANY
(from More Magazine — November 2007)
On a corner in Fort Worth’s Southside, my friend Donatella Trotti (known as Dodi) has opened a tiny trattoria. It is called Nonna Tata, after her grandmother, and is in a 500-square-foot cinderblock building on a seemingly lonely street. The cozy interior is completely designed by Dodi, the walls sponged a pale yellow, tables and stools laminated with flowers and photographs and old Italian adages: LIFE IS TOO SHORT FOR BAD WINE. AT THE TABLE YOU FORGIVE EVERYONE, EVEN YOUR RELATIVES. Now widely popular, Nonna Tata took nine months to open. “Like a baby,” she says to me in her strong, exacting Italian accent. Of course, I had to visit. Dodi is one of my oldest and closest friends. I am who I am because of her. She is who she is because of me. We met, as I like to say, when I was 16 and she was 17. “Yes, I am a year older,” she admits with a roll of her eyes when I tell our story. A Rotary Club exchange put us together.
My husband and I were fortunate to see Porgy and Bess on Saturday night. I still have chills from Audra McDonald‘s performance. This Porgy and Bess is elemental, the tragedy of Bess is felt in a very personal way. I physically ached for her, the way we ache for Anna Karenina or Lily Bart — women trapped by making bad choices in a supremely unforgiving world. Though ultimately Joe Nocera isn’t a fan of this production, his Op-Ed in the New York Time’s was illuminating on the history of the opera and is a must read whether you see the production or not, like the production or not. I recommend you see it. In most of our lifetimes we won’t have this chance again, to be moved indelibly by the power Porgy and his Bess, Bess and her Porgy, by the power of their story and music.
I met Christina Ball first day of freshman year at Bowdoin College. She was my roommate and she arrived in our room with an entourage: a sister, a brother, a mother and father, a grandmother. They crowded in, inspected, turned over pillows, looked out windows, absorbed us — my father and me. We’d arrived first, in time for me to haul in a suitcase and a lamp and to realize the two small rooms would be even smaller with three people living in them. After Christina had surveyed the room, she went to my lamp and, not knowing that it was mine (a brass floor lamp that was now dark with age — it had been my grandfather’s at prep school), said, “This is ugly. We’ll have to get rid of it.” I wasn’t sure what to make of her. She was tall and had lots of dark hair and big dark eyes. She was gorgeous and self-possessed and had an eager curiosity that made her seem ready to alight. I was more introspective and quiet, happy alone, in love with an Italian across the ocean and to whom I corresponded endlessly. At first glance we were opposites, and what is it they say? We attract? It didn’t take long. We bonded over our desire to get rid of the third roommate, mainly because she was unhappy with us and because we wanted her space. After that mission was accomplished we became unstoppable. We labeled ourselves the Cosmo Bohemians and wore clothes that caused us to stand out on the rather preppy campus. We wore plastic high heels in electric colors (snow or shine), started wine tastings and a catering business to make some extra cash. She loved that I spoke Italian and that I’d been to Italy many times, that I’d lived there the previous year. She wanted to know all about it and dreamed that she’d be able to go with me the following summer. That was our first realized dream, paid for with our catering money. I took her to Italy, to Greece and to France. She had never been to Europe before. And, as my life was changed by a chance summer exchange with an Italian girl three summers earlier, her life was changed too, Italy creeping into it to take it over quite miraculously. She would marry an Italian, have an Italian daughter, run a thriving language school, Speak Language Center. She wouldn’t live in Italy, but that is just a detail; she was surrounded by Italy all the same. Now some thirty years later she has invited me to dream with her again, this time in Todi with writers longing to have time with their craft. She’s arranged a workshop at a boutique spa hotel with sumptuous food, Roccafiore. It is my honor. And I can’t wait.
Unforgotten Italy (an article I wrote for More Magazine on Christina)
for my husband’s birthday i bought tickets to the movie turned musical at
the new york theater workshop.
a neighbor had raved about the performance and tickets were already sold out.
the show was moving to broadway,
but i didn’t want to wait for that.
so here’s what i learned, a tip:
call at 1pm on the day you want to see it to put your name on a waitlist.
you have until january 15.
tickets come up, not but many, but they do. tickets have been saved for guests who want to become patrons.
call 212-460-5475.
the night we were there alan rickman was there too.
the music is marvelous.
overall, even better than the movie.
go.
be sure to have a drink on stage.
MARTHA McPHEE 