Author: sanborn

I love doing this blog. It makes me learn new facts and history!

I was just going to post this: “The festival of Saint Martin is the excuse for a two-day food festa in Pietrasanta and many other places.” And I got to wondering, how widespread is this festival and what the heck is it? So (via Wikipedia) I learned “The celebration of Advent began in the fifth century when the Bishop Perpetuus directed that starting with the feast of St. Martin, 11 November, until Christmas, one fasts three times per week; this is why Advent is also named Lent of St. Martin.” Wow, who knew!?

So I guess in medieval times, the feast of Saint Martin was the big kickoff before a lean food season. Is this, as with so many Christian events, built on top of a pagan event? After all, this is a significant moment in the farming calendar (again, from Wikipedia), “This is the time when autumn wheat seeding was completed, and the annual slaughter of fattened cattle produced ‘Martinmas beef’.”

So there you have it… There’s history behind this wonderful weekend of food and drink. I went last year and bought some delicious cured meats. I hoped that stall would be here again. And it was…

It’s mid-November and the tourist season is over. It’s starting to cool down, and rain. Jackets are out. It’s dark at 5:30. It’s Sunday…and the piazza was absolutely jammed! You can hardly move between the stalls

Mushrooms, cheeses of all kinds, beer stands, porchetta. A nearby town, Gombitelli, is renowned for cured meats. The Garfagnana region is famous for its pecorino (sheep) cheeses. There was a booth from the Tyrol area with sausages and a couple from Sicily with the most intense pecorino I’ve ever had. See how dark it is next to a normal pecorino:

There are huge bins of dried mushrooms and plenty of cheeses. Why don’t you come next year?

I love being in a crowd at night is the piazza. The buildings are lit up, the atmosphere is super festive, it’s great.

And for my final photo, here’s what I could be wearing this winter: cozy, cheerful, elegant. Isn’t this so me?

The Henraux marble mining company was founded in 1821 and still wields huge influence today. According to their website, Michelangelo explored around here in ~1518 and Cosimo I de’Medici started the excavation of marble here for statues in 1568. In the 1700s, marble quarrying declined, but then Henraux, who was the French superintendent of marbles for French monuments, built up a company to quarry and deliver marble for public statues.

The company chose the best quarry sites, but over time they have allowed a few to be abandoned. One such is on the road to Castelnuovo di Garfagnana that I rode the other day. I’ve ridden past a few times but haven’t ever stopped. I don’t know why.

This time I stopped. It was very special. I’ll go back when I have more daylight. It felt like a stage setting. Quite wonderful. And I was completely alone in the fading evening light. Sigh…

The road shoulder widens into a stony wasteland dotted with scruffy scraggly trees. You could park here, but it’s littered with massive marble boulders. High above there’s an old Henraux sign that’s missing a letter or two. Below there’s a narrow slot corridor beckoning.

How can I resist? I lean my bike up against a big piece of blackened old marble and go in. It’s like going into a tunnel at Petra, high arched and mysterious.

As I walk the last feet, I’m shocked. In awe. I’m in a marble theatre, tall walls curve away to the left, blackened by decades of water pouring across them.

I stand in wonder. The stones are scattered as if for a monumental production of Aida or Julius Caesar.

I’m not the first to slip into this remote marble gallery. You can see that others have left their mark.

On this facade, you can see the circular saw marks.

I notice the light is disintegrating. I’d better get going. I turn and make my way out.

What an incredible place. I’ll come back when I have more daylight.

To finish, another couple shots of the sliced marble walls.

Here the stone looks like it’s weeping…

One day I’ll hike all this…

The rain break continues…so I jumped at the chance for a long ride. Up and over the Alps through the Cipollaio tunnel and down to Castelnuovo Garfagnana.

It’s a very pretty ride. A slow ascent zigzagging up. Incredible views of Through the tunnel and down down down the valley into town. And back again…

On the way up, I see a major quarry come into view. Isn’t it gorgeous?! And rode past a very tidy winterized wood-cutting depot.

Then, through the tunnel and down through a beautiful valley into Castelnuovo Garfagnana. Past the village of Isola Santa (“sacred island”).

Then past a huge gravel quarry, with a fortress-like new building. Doesn’t it look strange? And a sign warning me about their big machines. Watch out!!

Many sections of road had a line of ancient oak sentinels. They must have been pruned a few years ago, but the trunks have accumulated decades of moss.

To finish, some views of the scenery along the road.

We’ve had a break in the weather and I’ve been out on my bike. A couple short trips and today a longer one (separate post). All local, rode from my house.

Got some dramatic photos with an interplay of cloud and sun. I followed a stream up towards the mountains. You can follow along with me.

I also did another short ride above Camaiore, but didn’t take my phone, blast it, so no pix. I’ll return with my phone next time because (of course) there were cool things. For example, a huge mural of Pinocchio on the side of a house way up in the mountains. Like…why?!

On the last village up, there was a plaque to the horrific flood of June 19, 1996 when houses were pulled apart and people died. The plaque says that these two houses are no longer there but nobody died in them.

Finally, as I rode home, I passed this evening fog/smoke scene. The light was going, but the gray drifting through the trees just took my eye…

I spent yesterday and today helping Neal and Susan pick their olives. They have 42 trees, most of them hundreds of years old, and this year it seems that the yields are around 18-20%, which is pretty decent. If we can pick more than 200 kilos, the mill will clean and squeeze them and they should get ~40 liters.

Friday it rained all day, so they couldn’t do any prep, which meant that things are a bit behind, given that they had a 4pm appointment at the mill today. Ah well… We returned in the morning to help some more.

So, what’s the deal?

The first thing that has to happen is getting long sheets of netting and big tarps set up below the trees.

Next, we need to get at the olives. You can reach up with a tall rake or you can cut the branches down. Neal sends his son Teo into the trees to prune the branches. And some of Teo’s branches are huge and we have to recut them into smaller sections.

Then the helpers, like me, use small yellow or orange hand-held rakes to comb the olives out. Here’s Teo combing a branch:

The olives pile up in the tarps and netting. When there are enough or we finish a row, we gather them up and pour them into a crate.

Yesterday the skies stayed clear and it got hot enough to wear shorts. When it was too dark to work, we went inside and shared lasagna and sausages and salad. By now we were 8 indoors and 4 boys outdoors. Great company!

[One footnote: early in the day, I happened to glance up exactly as a single olive fell down. Pop! Right into my eye. Pop went my contact lens out! Nowhere to be found. I looked and looked for ten minutes… But no. It was gone. Now and forever more, a little piece of me lives at Neal’s place.]

Today Birke and I arrived at ten with brioches. Susan made coffee. Teo and several of his pals were hard at work already. We settled in. Only a few trees to go. Rain tried to interrupt us, but we kept going. Finally there were no more trees to strip.

Then we cleared the nets and rolled them for next year. I raked the stone steps. Lots of olives landed on them and they were oily and slippery.

Lunch, then so many crates of olives in Neal’s car, it looked like a flat tire. The olive press is in Pietrasanta. It’s an unassuming building I’ve driven past a million times. Who knew?!

You dump all the olives into these huge crates. They weigh them and they have to be over 200kg if you want a private pressing and get your own oil back. Otherwise, you can dump them into the communal pile and get communal oil back.

Inside is a huge pile of the dry squeezed olive meat. I don’t know what they do with it.

When it’s our turn, our crate is weighed. We were a bit under, but they know Neal, so it was okay.

The olives are dumped into a screened hole and they make their way up into the system like a water wheel.

The leaves and twigs are cut out, the olives are cleaned and cleaned, the pits are removed, and the rest is squeezed dry. Then liquid gold comes out:

Neal gave me a bottle, so now I too have some liquid gold!

Net result, for those who care about the numbers, was that we only had 184 kg but the yield was 20%, so there were 36kg of oil! In the parking lot before he drove home, Neal poured some from the big steel container into glass bottles for each of us to take home with us. Yay!

Last night I had dinner with a new friend. Birke has been here this summer working at my mom’s old studio, Pescarella. We went to an antiques market last month and now we’ve had an ele moi iNgant dinner together. The meal took four hours because we talked so much. Lovely!

Driving home earlier in the day, the mountains with their fog lay before me.

Weds night, I went to the festa at Studio Polveriera, where Rita works. A fun evening, interesting art. Saw three pieces by Fernando Rojas, an Argentinian sculptor, that I loved. There’s something about a piece of marble that’s been made to look soft, like cushions. The ability to transform cold hard stone into inviting softness is inspirational. Check them out:

There’s something about this older woman that really grabs me. Unapologetic, defenseless…real.

This post is dedicated to my running buddy, Barb Kempeny. I wish she’d been here running with me.

It’s been majorly windy and rainy. Venice marathon run through high water, yachts tossed onto Rapallo streets, Sanborn drenched…

The skies are clear now but it was wild and crazy for a couple days! I confess I sort of enjoyed being snug in bed listening to the hurricanes outside. And it was fun to run in the rain… As I ran back up a short hill that his through olive groves, a few olives started rolling down towards me and I stopped running to pick them up. Made me laugh with joy to catch them…

Today was low key. Trying to organize a budget so I can figure out what I can spend on the apartment remodel.

Went to Viareggio to buy some drawing paper. Ended up wandering the town. Came across a delightful home made fresh pasta shop, Franceshi. The owner told me she’d been making pasta for 58 years. Each one formed by hand. Another confession: I’m addicted to tortellini. I never have “normal” pasta at home but always some sort of tortellini. Almost always with wild boar sauce (“cinghiale”).

Tomorrow is All Saints Day, a big holiday, and a few people are doing Halloween today.

I kept walking until I got the beach front. This town has been a major destination for a couple hundred years, so some buildings are quite old. Here are some that I liked, sort of art deco.

The summer is completely done now. Most hotels are closed. Some are getting started with their renovations. Only in Italy: the scaffold covers are architectural beauties as well.

Finally, I headed back to the car. But wait…a pastry shop. A quick look in the window. OMG! I must go in. They had cakes like I’ve never seen before. I must have a big dinner party some day so I can bring this.

And I finish, with that happiest of sights: a caffe and a pastry (sfogliatelle napoletana, my favorite).

Ciao a tutti!

Spent Friday and yesterday in Bologna with a couple of friends. Becky and Dave live on a barge in France but they are driving around Italy while they are having repairs done on the boat. Since they were in Bologna for several days, I took the train over to visit.On the way, I got to experience some wonderful new aspects of life in Italy. First of all, the train strike. There was a quickie strike from 9pm Thursday to 9pm Friday and it affected only a few trains. Specifically the ones I needed to get to Bologna, two in a row. I sat in Prato, just outside Florence, for 2 hours.Once I was there, Becky and Dave took me to the Ancient Fishmongers Alley for lunch. These tiny alleys near the cathedral are full of small restaurants that specialize in charcuterie and local cheeses.After that, we took in an art exhibit from the MFA Boston on Hokusai and Hiroshige. I loved it! The details in these prints is extraordinary.We had to rush when we got out at 5pm because I had to pick up my Airbnb keys and my friends had booked a tour at 6pm, but it all worked out fine.The tour was of a Renaissance period cistern system that was built in 1563 to supply water to the Neptune statue in the center of Bologna. Bringing fresh water into town was a huge undertaking and was an announcement to the world that Bologna was to be taken seriously.The cistern was an intricate, beautiful, and carefully designed system that would remove sediment from water as it passed through. Unfortunately it never worked very well and was abandoned. Over the centuries, it has been rediscovered a few times, and has finally been restored. The design was based on Nero’s Golden House in Rome, which was rediscovered in the 1500s.It’s always fun to find something off the beaten track.The final amazement of the day was our dinner at iPortici, a Michelin-starred restaurant. We chose a meat-focused menu and were surprised and delighted by the series of small tastes that are delivered to our table. Astonishing food!A great day!!Yesterday was another awesome day. Bologna has a food and educating center called “Eataly.” It’s an enormous convention center with demonstration booths, classrooms, sales booths, restaurants, and outdoor livestock and vineyard areas. Matteo took us around and taught us about Italian food. I learned a few new techniques and, for example, i learned how mortadella, grana padana cheese, and rustic pasta are made.Mortadella hanging:A ham from southern Italy:Wheels of parmesan drying:Culatella is from a pig, somewhat like prosciutto, but it doesn’t have the skin or the bone and is kept moist as it cures.And here are some shots of candies and sweets:To finish, here’s a wall of chocolates:

Just spent a couple days with my niece Alice and her family: her wonderful husband Drew and their two young daughters. Margaret is 2.5 years old and Lucy is only a few months old. Lucy is a complete charmer. I am captivated by the delight in making her smile.

My brother Charles drove to Concord on his way to Boston airport. Here we all are at Drew and Alice’s:

My godmother Windy had sent a story book, and here I am reading it to Margaret.

After two days of babies and family, I too headed to Boston airport. On the way I spent a day wandering Cambridge. Here I am at Harvard Law, my father’s alma mater.

Eventually the rains hit, but I turned on. It was worth it to see the cobbles and pumpkins in the old part of Boston.