Via Cavour 77

Here you go, pictures of the apartment in which I will be living this year!

The five windows on the top floor from the corner are mine, as well as two going from to the right (one is not shown). The middle floor is the school so my commute is not literally walking down a flight of stairs.

View from my window.

Via Cavour 77. This serves as the entrance to the building for my apartment and school.

The front door of the apartment from the stairwell in the building.

The "salon" to my apartment. You are looking into the master bedroom.

The master bedroom. The closet in the far corner is HUGE.

My living room, with fireplace.

Living Room looking into salon and master bedroom.

Kitchen (Yes, it's a bit out of focus)

My first home cooked dinner in Italy. The pesto was store bought, not homemade.

My bathroom. According to previous tenants, the shower drain develops quite an odor over the course of time. It's something I'm going to have to do battle with.

The stone spiral staircase guests take to get to their floor of the house.

Guest bathroom on left and guest bedroom on right.

Guest bedroom

So, am I not kidding when I say I have plenty of room for guests? COME VISIT!!!

24 Hours in Italy

24 hours ago, or about, I landed in Italy. First thing I noticed is that the baggage at Fiumicino is handled by different unions. If you fly Alitalia, your baggage is handled by that airline. Flying in on SwissAir, my bags, as well as the flight coming in from Damascus was handled by "FirstGate", whoever that is. There was a third union I saw on the board. Weird. I wonder if that's how it's done in the United States as well?

Having been in Italy just a year and a half ago, I knew how to get to the train station and buy a ticket. To get to the city of Viterbo, you have to take two local trains. First take a train to Rome-Trastevere station and transfer to the Viterbo-Porta Romana local train. The second train stops some 18 times before getting to the end where one gets off. The whole trip takes 2 hours from the airport.

I was met by the SYA host family Eleonora. It's actually a short 10 minute walk to the school from the station but the significant thing is that you enter into a walled city. I now live in a walled city!!! You will see pictures of my apartment in the next day, but it is so large that the guest bedroom and bath are on a different floor that you have to take a spiral stone staircase to. I'm NOT kidding.

My first evening in town, I grabbed a spinach and ham (I simply pointed at the menu about 2/3 of the way down and its what I got) pizza, and then strolled through town and found a bunch of gelaterias and had my first gelato. One can walk around the entire walled city in about 40 minutes.

This morning, I got up, unpacked my backpack and suitcase and went out shopping. I found a great fresh produce stand where the owner was so kind to teach me the names of the fruits and vegetables I bought. I also found the "supermercato" to buy my toilet paper, toothbrush and frozen peas. I'm still on the prowl for my local bakery, meat and cheese store and newspaper stand, but all in good time.

I just returned from obtaining my cell phone. The Italian teacher, Alessandra, was kind enough to register the phone in her name to be able to qualify for some discount (I think). Even though the man at the store knew I didn't speak or understand any Italian he kept looking at me and talking and talking and talking. He didn't shut up. I am wondering if he's married because I would be getting earplugs if I were his spouse. I have a phone number that is temporary for 10 days and then my permanent one kicks in. I'll reveal to you all that one when it actually activates.

Ok, so I'm going up to cook some lunch. My plan this afternoon is to hop on one of the local buses and ride the entire line. Then spend part of the day working on translating the comic book Alessandra gave me. Maybe the next time I post there will be some Italian phrases I'll kick in!

Blueberries for Ernie

I think the story of the blueberry form is best told through pictures. So here goes....

Amos H., youngest son of my college friend Bill H. and his wife Amy.

Blueberry field in Maine here on Red House Farm. Blueberries grow so well in Maine because the soil is so rocky and therefore have no competition from other plants. Yes, basically blueberry bushes are the low plant on natural selection totem pole and are winners here.

Red House is an organic blueberry farm, therefore the berries are considered "low bush." The berries grow best when the plants are new buds, that's why there number of berries are so great. To get new buds to sprout, the fields are burned after a harvest and therefore are on a two-year cycle. The berries are so numerous because of the hand weeding that the farm does in the winter and spring as the bushes are starting out.

Step 1: Rake

Step 2: Fill box

Step 3: To the Winnowing Shed

The winnowing machine at rest

Step 4: Dribbling the blueberries into the winnower. The dribbler is the point guard of the winnowing operation. Depending on the quality of the berries (i.e. are they too mushy and squished or are there too many stems) the dribbler has to maintain the right pace for the pickers below.

Once the berries go "down the chute", a fan blows out all the leaves and branches. The downward moving belt guides the heavier and nicer berries down to the second belt while whisking the lighter/smaller berries out the back. 30-40% of picked berries are rejected at this stage.

Step 5: Pick through. Sitting for hours on end (sometimes) picking berries is tough. You're looking for squished, small and discolored berries. Once the belt is turned off and you look at the belt, it appears to move backwards. Totally a mind blower.

Step 6: Boxing and Delivering! 230 Pounds of blueberries ready for delivery to a local coop. The majority of Red House blueberries are delivered to a local coop and CSA. However, about 1/3 of blueberries are sold via pre-order for pick up by local residents. Red House boxed 300 or so pounds of blueberries a day.

However, these are premium blueberries for personal consumption. A majority of berries are harvested for a local company which doesn't care about the visual quality of the berries as they will get these other not-so-perfect berries into yogurts and pancake mixes. Red House takes some 500+ pounds of these type to an outfit called "Coastal Blueberries". At the end of the season, Coastal will determine a price per pound and credit the farm for the amount they delivered.

For those of you wondering, Amy and Bill both teach and make the bulk of their income that way. Running the blueberry farm in the summer is a work of love and also earn enough income to send their three kids to school.

Here the berries are marketed at the local coop!

Family photo at the coop from a few years ago.

The red house of Red House farms.

I spent the week sleeping on the enclosed porch seen here.

The kitchen! It's amazing how well one can eat while on a farm! The food tastes so much better. It's true!

Less that 5% of food I ate the week I was here was processed.

A tomato and potato blight has moved through New England. Here is Bill burning the tops of potatoes.

The boys had just received the game of Risk for one of their birthdays. I was roped into playing.

They were so obsessed with it that for most of the week we would play while winnowing by rotating out the player who was not involved in a battle. Alas, I have to admit that I introduced trash-talking to the boys of Red House. When I starting saying "Man-Up" and "Bring-It-ON", they looked at me funny. But by the end of the week, they had clearly learned the essentials of goading each other and followed my lead in taking great joy in eliminating a player off the board. Their parents asked me to hide the game by the end of the week. Boys, if your reading, the Risk game is under your parents bed!

Afternoon swims at a pond around the corner occurred almost daily!

The boys with Noah of Lubec, ME. Noah is from Down East and worked for Red House for the week. Turns out he knows former students of mine from Lawrenceville from Lubec AND went to college with two HRS students I know. Perhaps my world is too small.

"Frroonzis"

Many of you know that I am spending a week in Maine helping out my friend Bill H. (a fellow high school Math teacher) his wife Amy and their three sons, in age order, Max, Ezra and Amos on their blueberry farm in Maine. There will be a posting in the days to come about life on the farm and blueberries (like huckleberries in Montana) are coveted like and illicit drug by those who know about this organic blueberry farm and its product.

Instead, this posting is about my experiences with native rural Mainers. A few days ago Bill and I drove down the road to his neighbor George's to deliver some blueberries in return for George helping Bill and his wife bale hay earlier in the summer. Bill warned me for the experience, to speak slow and to listen closely. As we're driving down there is a car at the side of the road just sitting there. I get out and ask the woman if everything is ok. She says that her car keeps stalling but that she'll keep trying. I tell her that if we see her on our return that we'll help her out.

Bill and I deliver the blueberries to George, who greets us in his yard with his son Alvin. They have just installed a new motor in Alvin's truck. Bill and George start talking farm stuff so I am there chatting with Alvin. I literally have NOTHING in common with this 20 year old. We end up talking about the barn on their property that they rent to some person who houses 10,000 chickens within its huge metal walls. However, this took me some three minutes to get this information as I need to keep asking questions of Alvin to try and figure out what he's saying, while not asking him to repeat himself. There I am going, "so you say that there are birds in that building?"

Our business time with George and Alvin comes to an end and so we hop back in the truck to drive back to the farm and the car on the is still on the side of the road. Bill hops out, tries to get it going and it keeps stalling. No dice. He and I decide to pop her car into neutral, tie a rope from his truck to her car and tow her to her destination. However, this requires me to get into the car with the older woman, who we guess has only seen an Asian person on television but not in person. I am going to steer the towed car.

There's your picture. Myself and an older native rural Maine woman in the passenger seat. We first try and find the emergency blinkers, we are successful. However, the two of us are unable to communicate how to figure out how to turn on the defrost as it's starting to steam up in the car. No, there was NO hanky panky, but for some reason the windows kept fogging up. I try and start a conversation with her by asking her name. Her reply, "Frooonzis". I say, "what?"

Now, make your mouth into a sphere and put your tongue at the top of your mouth. Pretend there are marbles between your tongue and the back of your throat. Now say the name, Frances. Say it OUT LOUD. DO IT. That's what I heard.

Frances is wearing hot pink sweat pants and doesn't carry a cell phone and turns out when we see her get out of the car, doesn't really walk well. My mind thought about what she was going to do if we didn't help her out. She just sat there, seemingly totally at peace and without any sense of distress.

Bill and I towed her the mile to her destination, which apparently was the family of her son's girlfriend. They came out of their trailer, yes, I said trailer. Three of the men were shirtless and had body types that did not allow them to see their feet. The women were wearing sleeveless shirts and were not the most efficient of walkers.

Bill untied the truck from the car and pushed the car into a logical spot while I finished my steering duty. Frances got out the car as fast as she could, before I had even finished turning off the car. One of the men said thanks to us and we went on our way.

Bill chuckled in the truck on the way back stating that I had truly had a Mainer experience.

Addendum: The next day, Bill, the boys and I were driving to go swimming and saw a boat trailer that had been towed apparently blew out a tire because we say the gouged swerve of the blown tire (and now rim) in the dirt road. Where did the new rut end? At the trailer where we had dropped off "Frroonzis." Where else?

Hiking the Appalachian Trail

NO! I am NOT Governor Mark Sanford of South Carolina. Come on! I've just spent a few days in the wonderful Upper Connecticut River Valley with beloved teacher Anne S. By the way, I now understand why she gets so excited when I come and visit because I have students who I have taught for whom I feel the same way. When the likes of Emily D., Alicia D., Peilin C., Nick J. and Evan B. find me to connect, I must get just as excited as she does.

A couple of the highlights of this past few days has been the discovery of the Upper Valley Aquatic Center (an amazingly nice pool that is open for lap swimming ALL the time), seeing my friend David C's mother who is the director of the Prosthetics unit at the VA Hospital in White River Junction, seeing the movie "(500) Days of Summer" (Joseph Gordon-Levitt, when did you become such a hottie) and having dinner with Carlos P. in Brattleboro, VT. Anne and I drove the North-South leg and Carlos the East-West leg coming from the Albany, NY area and we converged for dinner.

However, the most enlightening part of the few days was spending a couple hours hiking a tiny section of the Appalachian Trail in New Hampshire.

Doesn't it look like the tree is growing out from the rock itself?

Anne S. and see if you can spot her dog Mr. Bunsby!

What was enlightening you ask? As many of you know, I have this romantic desire to hike the length of the Appalachian Trail. I was planning on hiking Georgia and North Carolina portions in late June/early July but I chickened out. I have always imagined that the hike would be full of inspiring vistas and a beautifully maintained trail itself. Boy has that been shattered. Anne and I spent a couple hours mucking through mud, fighting off the bugs and in the "green tunnel". As seen by the pictures above, it was just a wall of trees. Not a vista for miles. I'm rethinking this hiking the Appalachian Trail thing, well, at least, I have a more realistic vision of what it will be if I ever tackle it!

90% of My Material Possessions in One Room

Well, the day is here. I have packed up my belongings and they are all in one of the rooms in the lower floor of my condo. It's pretty empty in the rest of the place, the echos are pretty startling. I've spent a lot time this past week saying to myself "this is the last time I'll see/do "this" in a year". It really is like saying good-bye. Even though I know it's just a year, and that will fly by in an instant, somehow there is this sense the this is a final good-bye. I'm not sure where the future is going to take me, but I have this gut feeling that San Francisco might not be where I live when I return to the United States.

But looking to the future, it's all pretty exciting. I've got lots going on in the month of August. Look out for lots of postings and pictures and adventures that will make you envious of the life I'm leading at the moment.

On the streets of Downtown Seattle

When I was in Seattle last week, I was walking along 3rd Avenue and I hear my name called out. It was Chris W. who I met and became friends with back in the summer of 1987. He was waiting for the bus to go home. I had a couple hours before meeting a friend for dinner, so I rode the bus home with him and we did our best to try and summarize our lives while playing Wii tennis. Even after the decades, the conversation fell into a comfortable rhythm and openness. It was the highlight of my visit to Seattle.

Myself and Chris W. on the front steps of his home in West Seattle

A close up taken by Chris

Accounting

These last 10 days of July are a whirlwind of good-bye's to people who I won't see for a year and less thrilling, packing up my stuff to put into storage. Luckily, I pack the boxes and then simply move them downstairs. You see, I'll be using the two bedrooms in the basement as my storage unit. Convenient.

I'm doing an adequate job of culling items that I don't need to pack up. For instance, the possibility of me actually using the Structural Geology textbook from college again is nil considering I haven't opened it since 1992. The most interesting thing to come out of this packing chore is the amount of electronic gadgetry that I have just sitting around and am no longer using. Here's a list of what's in a box that I will put into the e-waste corner of the dump next week.

Found in 121 Cortland Avenue, San Francisco, CA

1 Wireless Router
2 Land line Phones (with cord)
1 Alarm Clock
1 Cordless Phone
3 Smoke Detectors
1 Cable Television Box
1 External Hard Drive (Dead)
1 Answering Machine
1 Wireless Keyboard
1 Inkjet Printer
1 DVD Burner (I'll keep this)
1 Canon S400 Digital Camera (Dead)
2 Auto Focus Film Cameras
1 1-6 Plug Expander
1 103 Plug Expander
2 Jawbone USB Chargers
3 Jawbone Plug Chargers
3 2 Prong to 3 Prong Plugs
1 Cable Splitter
1 ???
1 Stereo/Speaker Wire
3 USB/Sqaure Side Cords
4 Mac Laptop Charger Extender Cords
3 Coaxial Cables
2 IPod Earbud Earphones
2 Airline Earphones
1 30 foot Internet Cord
1 6 foot Internet Cord
1 3-Prong Plug Extender Cord
3 Cell Phone Chargers
3 Audio/Video Television Cords
3 Phone Cords
2 Cords where I can't read my handwriting

And I consider myself someone who is about average in terms of purchasing electronica. I can only imagine the amount of e-waste sitting around this earth. Yikes.

All you readers with kids, here's something for you (actually your kids)

Announcement and opportunity from my friend Mason K. (who now lives right in my 'hood and who has an office spitting distance from my front door)

I have some excellent news to share with you: AMK's First Annual Kids' Digital Design Contest is now up and running! It's a free juried digital design contest that we are putting on for kids between the ages of 0 and 15. That's right--take care to protect your keyboard from animal crackers and spilled juice boxes--this competition challenges kids and (with their parents help) to use SketchUp to create a "structure for living" in an aquatic, intertidal site. SketchUp is free to download, easy to learn and dangerously difficult to put down) There are separate age groups to ensure fair competition and plenty of cool prizes for participants as well as winners. For further information and links to free software downloads, click on this link.

Entries are due September 15th and winners will be announced on September 22nd as part of the AIA San Francisco's "Architecture and the City Festival." So head to our contest page for more information, or feel free to forward this mail on to anyone you know that might be interested in entering-- the more the better.

Ok, I hope to hear that the winner is some child of a reader of this blog!

On My Game When It Counted Most

This past Saturday I was up in Seattle for my annual week long summer visit to see the family. My high school was holding it's annual alumni golf tournament the Saturday I was there so my Dad and I signed up (well he signed me up and paid the entrance fee all under my name) and off we went for an 18-hole scramble. The 20th Claude Johnson Memorial Golf Tournament, by the way I was one of the few at the event who actually played for Claude when he was the Lakeside golf coach, was held at a private course owned by a significant Seattle area and school family. It's their own private course with it's own maintenance staff. The course, in the town of Arlington/Lake Stevens is about a 40 minute drive northeast of Seattle.

My Dad and I were paired with an alum from the class of 1968 and his friend. We trekked out to the 9th tee and started our round there. This being my first round of the 2009 calendar year, one can imagine that I was rusty. I didn't contribute to the group score until the 3rd hole. However, as the round progressed, I got back in the groove and with the increasing inebriation of our playing partners, my Dad and I began making the shots and drives our group ended up using.

The big moments of the day happened first on the par 3 1st hole, which for our group was our 11th hole of the day. Lakeside's number 1 alumni cheerleader, and former teacher of mine Bruce Bailey and the alumni office members were sitting and watching groups go by. There was a $10,000 prize for a hole-in-one. I stepped up and hit what turned out to be my best shot of the day. It arced over an tree that hung over the corner of the green and landed some 15 feet from the pin. Bruce pulled out his binoculars to make sure he wasn't going to fork over a bunch of cash. (Before I hit the ball, however, I stated that I would donate the money back to the school.)

Two holes later, Bruce is driving along in a cart and pulls up behind our group which is about to hit our second shot into the 3rd green. My dad and the other two guys of the group spray their shots short and left of the green. I drop my ball, pull out a six-iron. As I'm standing over the ball, I'm thinking about how good it would look to again hit a great shot. The gods were smiling because I nailed a shot that the pros would be happy with. It had perfect arc, was dead on with the flag stick and eventually landed 6 feet from the hole. I got kudos from Bruce.

Who knows if this performance may play in the future when I apply for a job teaching at my alma mater. If not, at least Mr. Lakeside himself thinks I can hit the ball well on the links!

Lynn & Justin's Wedding

Childhood friend Lynn K. got married this past weekend. Desiring to not subject her friends and family to the traditional ceremony/reception double whammy, she and her not husband Justin D. went all out and did it their way. They wanted their friends and family to interact and play over a couple of days. Therefore, the wedding was held over a weekend in the Trinity Mountains in way northern California. We were about 50 miles from the Oregon/California border. About half of the attendees rode the biodiesel "LOVE BUS" which picked up at two different BART stops here in the Bay Area and then made a stop just north of Sacramento and then we were on our way. Most of us camped in tents or stayed in cabins on site. Friday evening was a BBQ and and roast of the bride and groom.

Camping in the Trinity Mountains of Northern California

Looking up from the hammock

Carlos and new friends Andrew M. and Maury M.

Saturday morning was spent hiking, playing frisbee or going swimming. The ceremony was held in the afternoon. The officiant was Justin's youngest Aunt and although the bride and groom knew the outline of the ceremony, most of it was a surprise to them.

The ceremony setting

Justin and his parents

All of the 25 children were invited to process before the bride

The bride and the couple's "soon not to be a bastard child" Terren

The married couple!

The bride's parents giving a toast at the dinner

Dancing into the night and morning

What I take away is that someday I hope to engender that much love as the couple do for each other. It was a wonderfully uplifting and inspiring weekend.

"Nulla Osta"

Shown above is the authorization for me to work in Italy for a year.