I may not make a lot of friends with this one, but I need to say it: There are entirely too many adults reading Harry Potter on the train. Reading a novel is an investment of time and a luxury! Why are you frittering away all of that novel-reading time on a 700-page children's book?

More photos of Mark and my parents. In Mary's absence, I feel that I should post something to keep the blog moving. Also, pray for Raul!

My mom and dad recently came to Chicago. It was really nice to see them. My mom and I both look really good in this picture. Dad is making a crazy face. But this is about as photogenic as we get.

I had a great time last night. I didn't play my best (I was actually so nervous that I choked on my voice) but it didn't matter. I was extremely touched that so many of my friends and coworkers came out to see me play, and the kids who hosted the show were very sweet and welcoming. The whole evening was just really nice and fun -- saw some interesting music, met some lovely people and felt so happy and blessed. OK, that's my gushing for today.

Go see Adele's show!

Oh, and the rest of my Italy travelblog is here.

I certainly do not want to preempt Mary's amazing tour of Italian toilets below (possibly the most edifying post ever to appear on the CM). But I do want to let you all know about my little solo show, which is taking place on Tuesday, July, 17 at 2122 N. Maplewood Ave. around 8 p.m. It's free, and I'll be playing with these adorable girls and other quiet acoustic people. I am really excited and slightly terrified, so your presence would be appreciated on both counts! I'll be driving from R'wood, so let me know if any of you andersonville militia members wanna hop on that caravan.

Inappropriate Vacation Photos!

In between your travelogue history lessons, I decideded to display some of the more refined, mature examples of my photography. For the greater good, you know.



The first day we were in Italy we went to a pizzeria in a small town in the middle of nowhere. So middle-of-nowhere, in fact, that the sausage was made from wild boar hunted in the local forests. We got our pizza in a to-go box, and discovered (much to my brothers delight) a most unfortunately placed ventilation hole. Added bonus: look at the two tomatos floating just below the hole. Classy!




This was taken the morning after our first night at the BJ hotel which, to be fair, was very nice for a one-star, though I was a bit stiff in the morning, as this photo can attest.

I made Julia take a photo next to the tombstone of St. Franciscus Pennisi in the Enna Cathedral. I love this picture because of how uncomfortable Julia looks next to it, and the fact that I forced her to take a picture next to the word "pennisi" accurately portrays my sophomoric sense of humor.

While we were in Siena, we happened to stumble across the big contrade festival, where all the burrows compete against each other in a bareback horse race around the Piazza Publico. Before the race, each contrade marches through the streets of Siena with flags and banners and drums and horses. This photo was a happy accident of me recording the proceedings. I was looking over the photos in the car on the way home and I just about died laughing when I saw this random dude in the forfront of the photo, holding the contrade mast in a very awkward position.

While in Marsala, Jordan and Zach kept complaining for food because they were sooooooo hungry like oh my gosh they might just die THIS MINUTE if they don't get some food. All the shops and restaurants were closed because it was the lunch hour (you know, as you do if you're a dining establishment), so we had to seak out some really skeazy stand which claimed to only have one type of sandwich, though we suspect he was sticking it to us because we were Americans. He gave the kids a fried panna sandwich, which is of course fried pasta in between two slices of bread. No mayo, no sauces, just a bit of salt and pepper. And the amazing thing was: the kids actually kind of liked it. It was like, such a carb overload (seriously, how many more carbohydrates couled you possibly fit into a food item?) that it perversely seemed delicious to them. Kids are nuts, that all I know.

This is a photo taken at the top of Gubbio, in the Bascilica Sant' Ubaldo. The patron saint of migraines, we had to take a funicular basket all the way up a mountainside to get to this monestary, which had up on it's alter the PICKLED BODY OF SAINT UBALDO OH MY GOSH I KIDS YOU NOT. Italian Christianity is by far the weirdest form of Christianity I have yet encountered. The body of the saint had been pickled in brine, then dried out, and there it rested, up on the alter, it's horrible mouth open in a frozen scream, surrounded by gold and crystal and lilies. It was so awesomely perverse, I made the kids take a photo with the corpse, instructing them to be as enthusiastic as possible. Thumbs up, Ubaldo! Oh, and thanks for nothing--I went home with a migraine after visiting your stupid shrine.

This is the second rental place we stayed at in Castel Rigone. I add this to the collection because, while not particularly funny or inappropriate, it's a perfect example of wealthy European decoration. This was one of 4 homes owned by this particular family, and it was packed with antique china, weaponry, furniture, dolls, boxes, mirrors--every surface had things crammed on and in them, every table had a damask or a slip cover. And the paintings--dear heavens, it was like a Victorian Admirals wet dream: nothing but ships and naval battles and royal flagships in stormy seas. Hilarious.

We are beginning to suspect that Jordan has some kind of mild autism, like Asberger's, because she seems to be unable to connect with humans, instead reserving the majority of her love, affection, and delight for critters: dogs, cats, cuddling things--you know, human substitutes. Her love lead her to contract fleas in Castel Rigone when she fell in love with the most hideous and mangy looking cat and cuddled him for a full afternoon, after which, we had to strip off her clothes and seal them in a plastic bag to keep her from infesting the whole house. This photo was taken in Paestum--the antiquity grounds were full of roving wild dogs, which of course were the only things she was interested in. Look at the pure glee on her face--you would never guess she's almost 14.

This last one comes to you from Herculaneum. A small town near Pompeii which was also buried in the Vesuvian blast, Herculaneum is absolute pristine and stunning. While most of the art is beautiful, colorful, and quite tasteful, I couldn't help but snap this fantastic photo of two roman statues. Ntocie the stag being torn to pieces by wild dogs. Virile, masculine, bloodlusty right? Now look at the statue in the background--the fat, naked round man fingering his penis, positioned towards the stag as if he's looking on. How awesomely sick is that?

This last series is one i've been meaning to do for years: Toilets of Europe. This is the real tragedy of the stolen camera: margaret had at least 12 more toilets on her memory stick. In Europe, every toilet has a unique flushing mechanism and a unique bowl apperance. So dazzled by the array was i and my family on our first trip to Europe that we constantly talked about creating a scrapbook of European toilets to document their variety in their natural habitat (I will take donations from anyone traveling--Michael Sherman, I know you're with me on this). Here, let me guide you:

Toilet 1: The Push-Button


Location: Rome McDonalds
Bowl Description: Clean, white, ceramic
Seat Cover: Yes; lay-flat model (traditional), toilet seat and matching lid
Flushing mechanism: Stainless stell, wall mounted push button
Other Defining Features: stainless steel wall-mounted cover for recessed tank


Toilet 2: The "Georgian Tapper"


Location: Hotel BJ
Bowl Description: Clean, raised, white
Seat Cover: Yes; Layflat model: toilet seat and matching lid
Flushing Mechanism: A push-button lever located on the underside of the raised, wall-mounted porcelin tank; This allows for a genteel, Georgian sort of up-ward tapping moment during the flush, which is infinitly more sophisticated than the crude, dragging handle of the hoi polloi.
Other Defining Features: the pipe connecting the basin and the tank is ever so delicately hidden in the wall; mounted porcelin tank had tendancy to "sweat" in the cold or after one took a shower in the bathroom.

Toilet 3: The "Utiliterian" (Natural)


Location: Pasta restaurant on the outskirts of Agrigento
Bowl Description: Lozenge-shaped toilet bowl, low to the ground, lower-wall mounted piping with hidden recessed tank, vanilla cream ceramic finish
Seat Cover: No
Flushing Mechanism: The Floor pedal
Other Defining Features: The Utilitarian is most often found in the free public restrooms: it's no-frills design and lack of seat covers make it both cost effective and safe; the lack of back mounted screws indicate that this is an indigenous Utilitarian, rather than one which was made by later-in-life seat removal. Notice also the shower in the corner of the WC: a common feature in many Italian lavatories.

Toilet 4: The "Utilitarian" (Man-made)


Location: Cave Restaurant, Enna, Sicily
Bowl Description: Lower wall pipe with hidden tank, short bowl, off-yellow color, dirty interior, sharp bowl edges
Seat Cover: Present in original design; since removed
Flushing Mechanism: Wall Button, stainless steel
Other Defining Features: The presence of the metal-covered toilet seat cover adds a touch of refinment to an otherwise plain design. The artifical nature of the Utilitarian is in this case most likely a safety decision, as the toilet is open to the public and the toilet seat could be used as a weapon, or possibly stolen.

Toilet 5: The "Push Petal"
Location: g8 Gas Station, Perugia
Bowl Description: Clean, white, lozenge-shaped bowl; plastic visible tank with side-mounted piping
Seat Cover: Yes, though flimsy
Flushing Mechanism: The "Push Petal"--so named because of it's petal-like plastic pedal on the (normally) right side of the tank lid--is one of the commonest forms of high-class, low-end toilets. This model had merely one pedal which performed one uniform flush for
Other Defining Features: The plastic accessories add for a clean, sterile, furistic look that really ties the whole theme of the stall together.

Toilet 6: The "Tip-of-the-Hatter"

Location: Palermo Airport
Bowl Description: White, anchored to wall rather than steming from the floor, sharp edges and thin rim; midwall metal pipe and overheard stainless steel tank.
Seat Cover: Equipped with weights on the back, the "Tip-of-the-Jatter" must be physically pulled down with every use, much to the convience of the forgetful male urinator, but much to the annoyance of the female, as balancing a bag while pushing down a yawning toilet seat is no easy task
Flushing Mechanism: Stainless-steel motion censor
Other Defining Features: lower than usual water levels; thankful lack of automated sanitary wrap, the true bane of the airport traveler.

Please email all additional toilets found on European Vacations (as well as all relevant information pertaining to said toilets) to the capitalistmafia@gmail.com. I thank you for your help in this venture.

I have like, an hour to do this before I need to get back to work. No seriously. I leave for New Zealand in 2 days and I am starting to freak out.

The trip to Mainland Italy was very lowkey, as the rental place was about an hour from Florence and 2 hours from Rome, and we have already done "The Central Italy Experience" a few years ago--2001 or so--and did the whole Rome/Florence/Amalfi thing. That sounds very snobby and flippant--it isn't meant to. I just mean we were concentrating on small villages, artisan ceramic areas, and the more cultural side of Italy, rather than the tried-and-true sites.

Dad split up his time so that his first week was spent in Sicily, and his second week in mainland Italy. Driving up from Messina to Rome required stopping and spending the night near Napoli, and while in the area we decided to see some sites that we wouldn't have the patience to make the drive to see. The first place we went to as a family was Paestum--the ruins of a Greek city rebuilt into a Roman city and then abandoned then the river it was built next to went dry. I think. I might be confusing that with some other town. But it was a sprawling, wonderous area with one Doric temple and 2 late Roman temples--one to Poseidan and the other to Hera (I believe). Not much was left of the homes--there were some nice cisterns and some brick foundations, and the road was in excellent condition. Margaret and I had to exit VERY quickly when we were caught by a guard in the middle of our own makeshift excavation near the amphitheatre and we had to play the roles of Confused Female Foreigners in order to escape without having our pockets turned out (mosaic tesserae, pottery fragments, brick pieces, etc).

We didn't stay at Paestum long, as we were in a hurry to reach Herculaneum before siesta. Though lacking the erotic frescos that make Pompeii such a delight, Herculaneum is the much more lavish, much better preserved, much more colorful cousin of the Mt. Vesuvius explosion. It manages to be rather eerie--homes and businesses standing completely still, wide streets, colorful shrines, bathhouses, and mosaics that only look as if they've been abandoned for 50 years or so. One of the first things that hit me about Herculaneum was just how bright and gaudy the roman colors weer. You learn in school that the romans painted everything in reds and purples, but it isn't until you see the pillars with blood red plaster, the marigold frescos in the dining rooms, or the lapis blue mosaics in the atrium that you really begin to piece together what an ecplosion of color the civilization must have been.

The frescos were ridiculously beautiful. the plan of the city is open, with only a few rooms roped off, so you can wander about, exploring houses and secret passageways and streets. When you least expect it, you'll turn a corner and find yourself in some kitchen with delicate little birds painted on the ceiling, or garlands of flowers painted around doorstops. Apparently there was an entire subterranean temple I missed, as I was taking care of the children. The details of a roman wall thrush are completely lost on you if you're 10 and you're hot and there is nowhere to buy a drink because it's 2pm and the museum gift shop doesn't have a cafeteria or sell drinks.

After dad left, we went on a tour of a whole bunch (listen to me--you can totally hear that writing degree in my attention to word choice) of Tuscan hilltop towns. Each one was much more easily navigatable than the Sicilian counterpart, so I was less stressed planning daily activies than I was in Sicily. Places visited include Perugia, Gubbio, Orvieto, Deruta, and Arrezzo as well as bigger cities like Florence, Rome, and Siena. Perugia was pretty unimpressive--I wouldn't recommend going there, unless you have a raging hard-on for medieval and early renaissance altar paintings (which I do). To continue the penis-related metaphors, Perugia is a bit of a cocktease church-wise: the Duomo claims to be in the possession of the Virgin Mary's wedding ring, but refuses to release it out of the vault. So instead of an awesome medievalr elic, you instead get a hallowed out romanesque church with poor lighting and ugly baroque flourishes. The Etruscan well is a cool find, though, if you don't mind the rip off (4 euros to look in a damp hole! oh my gosh did that phrase sound vulgar!) Deruta was basically a ceramics outlet--every pattern of italian pottery you wanted, you could find. After exploring the entire bloody village we managed to find 2 shops that didn't produce a bunch of mass-produced, factory created plates. Both shops painted their pottery according to 12th and 13th century methods, using crushed lapis, copper, and russet. Both shops were ridiculously expensive, and both completely worth it, as the design was absolutely exqusite. Neither shop had an apprentice, as the kids aren't interested, and the tourists don't appreciate the quality, so they had the feel of death to them, which was terribly sad. One even offered Maragret a position as an apprentice to the art wouldn't die with the owner--she's actually thinking of coming back and living in Italy for a summer; maybe 6 months. Arezzo's only claim to fame is an antique fair that meets once a month and some supposide gold ateliers, which i couldn't find. The antique's fair was overpriced, though I did manage to get me some 19th century sleep for the ridiculously amazing price of 5euros an item. I now have bloomers--BLOOMERS!

As far as the worth-your-time villages go, Gubbio and Orvieto were very cute. Orvieto is known for 2 basic things: an underground village of Etruscan caves, and a banded cathedral which was stolen from Florence (who in turn stole it's banded design from Siena). Orvieto's cathedral was quite beautiful on the inside with some very charming 14th century frescos, but the best chapel is the gilded Chapel of Madonna di San Brizo, which they actually close off to tourists unless you want to cough up the 8 euro entrance fee. And don't get me wrong, it was lovely (i looked in from the wrought-iron fence around the chapel), but it wasn't big or impressive enough to charge that kind of money. What WAS that impressive was the frieze outside of the cathedral depicting biblical scenes starting with Adam and Eve continuing all the way to the Judgment. The faces and the body language were amazing. Near the cathedral is an archeology museum that has the remains of a vth Century BC etruscan fresco which looks peculiarly Egyptian in the colors, body language, and costumes depicted.

If you turn left at the cathedral and follow the road down the mountain (as you can't without a guided tour because hey, this is europe during the summer and every chance to gouge you as a tourist will be employed) you will find a small enterance to an underground series of caves. The first cave, used as an olive press, dates to about the 12th century, and the further into the mountain you go, the more and more caves you find, and the older they get. The Etruscans found it was cheaper to build down into the ground than it was to build additions onto their homes, so all of the storage, many of the workshops, and all of the garbage shoots and wells are sunk deep into the earth. The most amazing part of these caves are the series of etruscan pigeon coops that have small windows to the outside to invite wild pigeons to roost.

Gubbio, as I mentioned in the other post, is the home of St. Ubaldo, patron saint of migrains, and is considered the most medieval town in the umbria/tuscany region. It's very hilly, very small. I ran into a tattooed shopkeeper who talked to me about how much she loved Sailor Jerry tattoos and american tattoo culture; in honor of mike sherman i tried some sort of pulled-pork sandwich, I stumbled across some movie set (policemen, car chases), and took up a basket-funicular to the top of a mountain to see the dead, pickled boy of Ubaldo. I also ran into one of the Admirals on AE's "Horatio Hornblower" who seemed to be on vacation with his wife.

Our interactions with the larger cities were much less successful. While we were in Florence, margaret's ($3000) camera was stolen by some shifty-looking man in the corner, and the Florentine police blew us off because "that sort of thing happens all the time" even though there was security camera footage. What was frustrating is that our family watches bags SO CLOSELY. He managed to come up behind us while we were having some fight about where the bag with the dark clothes was. After that, not only did we lose almost all of the good photos, it destroyed our confidence. My mom was tramuatized having to sit in ANOTHER police office, Margaret was depressed, and we all felt completely vulnerable, since the police clearly didn't care about this sort of thing in general, more so when Americans were involved. And then, this was the time when the whole Madeline-kidnapping mania was in the news, and a young girl had just been kidnapped in Nigeria, and then the bombings and the attempted bombings in England...it was weird. I got this flash of what traveling is going to start being like, how easy it will be to get caught, trapped, unable to leave a country, how easy it would be to lose a kid, or to be taken myself. And for the first time, with all this paranoia, and with the camera getting stolen--I don't know. Europe seemed dirty and crowded, sleazy and dirty for the first time. There wasn't a lot of romance left, especially in the big cities. So it was especially fun when the last day of the trip, my passport wnt missing in Rome

Siena managed to be a fun trip, even after the camera incident. We went on July 2nd, the day of the Siena horseraces, and got to see the medieval procession of the different teams and all of that lovely pagentry. I particularly loved the cathedral, which was the more opulant and extravagent one's I've been to--also quite unique in the floor designs. The Piccolomini library is worth the entrance fee, as it houses over a dozen medieval song books, has the original medieval tile floor, and one of the most amazing painted ceilings (mid renaissance) I've seen.

The passport wasn't found, by the way. I had to stay in Rome an extra day and go to the consulate, which is only open 4 hours a day, and if I had missed the small window, I wouldn't have been able to leave rome for an additional 4 days. Margaret stayed with me, as she speaks Italian, and as I was absolutely hysterical. I was telling Mary South how odd it was, because I am usually so completely in control of my emotions, but as soon as my passport went missing (my parents missplaced it) I went absolutely hysterical--like panic screaming that becomes crying. It wasn't because i was scared of staying in italy, i just...i don't know. i was so angry and frustrated and tired, and I was so looking forward to going home, and i loved tghat passport so much, and it was so close to being entirely full, to having evry page completely full of stamps, i was so effing proud of it. It seems so petty in retrospect, but it's odd. Emotions funnel out of me at the most unexpected times. I won't cry when family members die, but i'll cry during "Dumb and Dumber" if I see it late enough at night.

My mom eventually found it, by the way. The day after i got back to dallas, it was found in the bottom of Julia's backpack.

Sicily:
Land of Torpid, Torpor, Traffic

Normally it would take me over 2 weeks to go into depth about my vacation to Italy, as it was a month and we saw many pretty buildings and churches and history and things. But seeing as I'm leaving for New Zealand this Sunday, I need to gun it.

These photos aren't very good, nor are they very comprehensive. The vast majority of the photographs were taken on Margaret's camera, which was stolen from a Florentine laundromat 6 days before we returned home. This trip, in many ways, made me a bit scared about Europe; a very new feeling, as Europe has always felt as safe, if not safer, than the United States. I'll go into this during the "Mainland" travelblog. Right now: Sicily. (Oh, and there's a photoguide below, should you get confused.)

My family stayed in an agriturismo near Agrigento, in southern central italy, only a hundred miles from Malta and very close to Tunisia. You could feel it too: every day was 95-105 degrees, and the heat was everywhere. In Texas summers are generally as cold as winters, as one travels from one overly airconditioned room to another. Sicily, like most of Europe, doesn't believe in airconditioning, so stores, restaurants, museums, grocery stores: all of them were blanketed with this wet, oppressive heat. Eventually, I became too hot to eat, and so dehydrated that (graphic bodily description ahead) my period came out as a blood GEL rather than liquid blood. Try using a tampon when your passing a solid and tell me how much fun THAT is.

I'm usually rather delicate and proper when it comes to bodily functions--descibing or discussing urination, defecation, flatulation, etc. On this trip, however, I got into the habit of discussing every bodily function in extreme graphic detail, as it was discovered that my sister Julia will FREAK OUT if you talk about gas or dump-taking. Seriously, winding her up is one of the funniest things ever. It's worth my personal discomfort.

Agrigento is right by the Valley of the Temples, an area of Greek temples from the 6th-4th century BC, i believe. I haven't had time to look up all the names of the vatious temples and match them with the photos I took, but here are a few of them. It was exciting seeing Greek ruins; I'm at the point where, after speniding so much time in southern france and britian, where i swear i've seen every single roman theatre and villa ever constructed, so a lot of the glamor of how amazing the age of the ruins are gets lost. Greek ruins are still new for me--I so rarely see them, that they still come across as shocking and impressive. The temple of concordia has nearly retained it's complete external structure.

Most Sicilians still consider themselves more Greek than Italian. There were still some villages in my area that spoke greek rather than Italian. We were invited one night to a party for St. Francis of Asissi (sadly, photos were on margaret's camera) where we ate greek-style sausages and did greek line dancing. That was a crazy night--Sicilians still burn their crop fields after the harvest, so we were dancing around a floor while the hillsides behind us were up in flames and a drunk monk and old woman were singing songs in the local dialect.

My mother's love of ceramics has managed to infect both Margaret and I, and for much of the trip we went to the Sicilian pottery centers to buy local pieces. The problem with these day trips, as I whined to Lakshmi in a letter, was that Sicily is not really meant to be driven. It has no Autostrades in the south, and the 'highways' are one lane roads that require passing the car in front of you every 15 feet or so as cars barrel towards you. It takes at least 2 hours to drive anywhere, even though all towns are only 120km away from Agrigento (At MOST). Then, once you get to a town, the traffic is bumper to bumper, the parking is never to be found, and even in designated parking areas there's no where to pay, as you can only buy parking tickets in tabacs and every store in sicily is closed from 1230-430 for siesta (i kid you not--NOTHING is open). So you can either park illegally in paid parking or try and make your own space, which will always be in a back alley somewhere and never near the area of town you want, and even then you run the risk of a ticket. I'm getting cold sweats again just blogging about the driving situation.

One of the first towns we went to was Enna. A little hilltop village right in the center of Sicily, Enna is known for it's rustic pottery, the Torre of Frederico the II, the Castello di Lombardia, and the Museo Civico next to the Enna Cathedral. The view, by the way, was absolutely gorgrous.

One thing you should know before you go to Sicily: every guide book on the market is out of date: prices, hours, dates open. We had two 2007 travelbooks who recommended the Museo Civico which has been closed since late 2005. It seems no one who writes these books ever actally comes back to the places that are reviewed, as i guess it's too much of a hassle. The inside of the cathedral was very pretty--there was a particularly nice carved ceiling, though the whole thing was a bit dreary, even by cathedral stanpoints.

After our disappointment with the Museo Civico, we go across town to the Torre of Francesco II. There are no signs at all, and I have to navigate based on an (suprise!) incorrect map. We make it up a huge, winding path and find the tower to be closed. Again, surprise! So we lay down on the grass and itch our bug bites (have I mentioned that our rental home has bedbugs? Oh yes, bedbugs. We are all covered in bites.) We let Jordan and Zach play in the empty moat as part of our civil disobedience.

The Castello was also a bit of a disappointment, though the view was fantastic and we all did photos on top of it. We ran into a local artist who made the most exqusite pots and wanted to talk to us about the immigration bill in congress and what we thought of it as texans. You know, just like American store owners like doing.


Enna was the site of one of my most humiliating experiences with European shopping. I'm not a small girl--I'm 5'10 and at press time, I'm between 160 and 165pounds. Sicilians are fat people, yes, but they are also short people; Italians are short and thin. Thus every store we went into, I was almost always pushing the largest sizes they had. I even went to one store and was looking for a shirt, and not familiar with European sizes, I picked up a 42. the saleswoman looked at me disdainfully and said "too small," then homegirl actually SLAPPED MY HAND AWAY from the merchandise and tossed at me a 46. I almost burst into tears. My mother had the same experience numerous times. The idea of tact, it seems, hasn't reached the shores if Sicily.

The best pottery town was Catalgirone. They used ceramics to decorate everything--the outside of their ceramics museum was porcelin, the street signs were tiles, the town murals and staircases were all done in ceramic. The centerpiece of the town was a staircase made out of a hundred or so steps, each step decorated in a unique line of tile.

The staircase is lined with hundreds of little shops. Apparently on a certain saints day they put special votives on every step of the staircase, creating this shimmering picture with geometric designs in red and gold.

We went to Ragusa, a small town with a collection of marvelous grotesques.

Instead of on the churches, the grotesques were everywhere--on personal homes and municipal buildings. They all looked very English, oddly enough. The inside of the Ragusa church of John the Baptist was one of the few baroque designs I saw that worked, rather than being the usual monstrosity of plaster and swirls. I credit it to the gorgeous floor. (<----)

The interesting thing about Sicily is that, more or less, it doesn't really need close inspection. There were many towns we went to that really had more of the same. Gela was a town also on the coast, a little East of us, which has a reputation as being the industral up-and-comer of Sicily. It was the only place we got ticketed (and the only town, incidentally, where there was literally no place to park. EVERYTHING was paid or residential, but there was no place to pay, and the residential signs were vague and usually obscured). The archeology museum was decent--I got a cute photo of a pot with an athenian owl--but the most fun was the archeology site behind the musuem. There was no guard on duty, no real surveilance, just the remains of an archeology dig of the roman ruins of Gela. As we tour the sights, my brother says, "hey, isn't that a lid?" and sure enough, the lip of a pot lid is right by our feet. Then next to it, we see a piece of painted pre-hellenistic pottery. So, again enacting civil disobedience, we start digging around, and uncover all sorts of human bone fragments and pottery pieces, which we immediatly pocket. For serious though, Sicily, if you guys wouldn't shut down your town for 4 hours, I wouldn't have to get my kicks looking for fragments in your historical sites.

We also gave the more Arabic-influenced Northwest coast a shot. The Arabs came in after the romans and ran Sicily until the 12th century when the Normans came in, and there was an interesting North-meets-South lovefest. Marsala is all polished white stone and Arab-looking ports, and it has some of the laziest people in Sicily. We showed up to the Flemish tapestry museum and no one was there. We checked all the guidebooks, all the posted hours, everything--there was no logical reason to explain why the museum was closed. We went to the office of tourism to ask, and they shrugged us away in the most annoying possible way. On the plus side, the town has an interesting Civic Museum with the remains of a Punic cargo ship and the recovered cargo. Oh! And some very cool roman funeral shrines.

Dad came after the first week, and we had to drive to Palermo to pick him up. Palermo is huge, crowded, dirty, and has some of the worse traffic jams in all of Sicily. Mom and Margaret wanted to check out this century-old Arab Market (don't bother--it's mostly Chinese men pawning stolen electronics). Palermo has a nasty habit of breeding these sort of swarthy, ratty looking men with whispy stubble who stand in parking lots and try and flag you into available parking spaces, then expect payment for the service. It's like the glorified gypsy-window-washer. But, we're at the this market, right, and we have to go to the airport to pick up dad, so we try exiting the market using what Margaret has coined the "ShackBack" (i.e. the Shackelford Backroad Route--using small, unexplored roads to get somewhere a few minutes faster, as opposed to the Jones way of using the largest, newest, well-traveled road). The problem is, the Shackback doesn't work in Europe, as the backroads are so small you can barely fit a minicoop through them, much less a Fiat van. The road mom took kept getting smaller and smaller, and soon we found ourselves stuck in an alley with barely an inch on either side. She kept trying to back up but our side mirrors were tucked in, and she had a manual transmission, so she kept riding the clutch, and soon there were all these Sicilians yelling at us to turn right, no no, turn left, no no, back up this way, fighting with each other, telling the traffic behind us to back up. Finally, some random dude tells mom to get out, she does, and he backs up the car in literally 30 seconds. Such a nightmare.

We pick up dad from the airport, and then head over to the Capuchin monestary, the catacombs of which are home to Valesquez, among others. The great thing about the Capuchins is that from the 17th century, they've been hanging their dead in the catacombs, rather than burying them. Everyone is dressed in their finest clothing, some are positioned as if they were talking, some still have facial hair, ocular membranes, and all have some degree of leathery skin. It smells a bit odd, but really, much better than Julia's room, and it's remarkably uncreepy. I had to take these photos at great peril, as photography is prohibited in the crypt.

Afterwards, we went up the hill to Montreale, a church with 12th century byzantine mosaics which look as if they were 50 years old. Absolutely stunning. Though you had to pay to light up the mosaics, which i felt was pretty cheap.

After Palermo, we took dad to Piazza Armenia to see the Villa Romana, a 3rd century villa which was impeccably preserved, with some of the most amazing mosaics i've ever seen. If you look through the link I posted, look at the "PA" series of photos to see the various floors. Some of the best ones were on Margaret's camera, but you can still get a good feel for the remarkable level of preservation. We came during a period of restoration, so the floor was crawling with local tilers and buckets and things. And on a personal note, i'm not sure why, but Italy has one of the highest percentages of attractive masons and construction workers of any country I've been too. Brava, Italia, Brava.

I so wish Margaret's camera had survived so I could have shown you the photos of Mt. Etna. The most active volcano in Sicily, Etna erupts almost annually, and the drive to the top shows multiple houses buried in black rock, multiple craters, slags of sulfer sliding over the dirt. The weirdest thing about walking around Etna is how hot the ground is. At first we thought it was the result of the black rock absorbing solar heat, because the air is so crisp and cold, and the ground is so warm, but when we walked over to the tourist area, we stood on sidewalks and our feet were still hot. Amazing! It was awful descending back down into Sicily: the air was so sharp and clean, and as we descended to the foliage of the lower mountain, it was like being lowered into some bath of floral smells and pollens and sticky air.

If you do go to one place in Sicily, I recommend Syracuse. The greek ruins--particularly the Greek amphitheatre and the area around it--were very cool. Near the theatre there was a special cave called the Ear of Dionysus, where prisoners were kept. The acoustics are so amazing that the greeks had special trap doors near the top of this mammoth cave where they would hide and eavsdrop on the prisoners below. The acoustics were spectacular, too; you can whisper in one end and be heard in the other, despite the fact that the chamber is massive. I wasn't able to see any of the original greek walls--if indeed they still existed--where Archimedes hung his mirrors, but I did get to explore the back streets of the Ortigia penninsula, which has a very lovely, laid back feel without being sleazy, as is often the problem in Sicily.


My two weeks in Sicily were spent hot, in traffic, and waiting for shop keepers to wake up. Thus, my general impression of Sicily is favorable should i be looking for a place to get away with a lover, or a place to chill out with a friend, or a place to drive through and disappear, but it is certainly not the kind of place one comes with a family of 7. Dear heavens.

Photo Guide:
1.Valley of the Temples (overview)
2. Valley of the Temples: Temple of Concordia
3.Valley of the Temples: unknown
4. View from Enna
5. Enna Cathedral
6. Fam on the top of Castello di Lombardia
7. Catalgirone stairs
8. Catalgirone detail
9. Ragusa church
10. Buildings in Gela
11. Sicilian countryside
12. Marsala
13. Capuchin monestary cyrpt
14. Montreale
15. Piazza Armenia's Villa Romana
16. Mt. Etna crater
17. Ear of Dionysus
18. Ortigia Bay

I'm gone for a month and you guys post like, 4 items? For shame!

Photos are up. Travelog will be forthcoming.

I am doing something extremely cool and extremely scary on July 17 -- I am playing a little tiny solo show! Details TK!