Hi Ma

    Itś been a cold couple of days and I´ve had to curtail my long days working outside. My back, and especially my hands don´t like the cold damp weather weŕe having. So I thought I´d settle down by the fire and write you a note. 

   We didn't get the long, warm Indian summer we usually get in October, but we did get our first Olive harvest in three years since the big fire stunted most of our trees. Both these reasons put me behind in my preparations for winter. My big job is to get a good load of firewood under cover before the rains come. We have a load of un-cut lengths of scrap from the lumber yard left over from last year. They were cleared off the driveway this summer and moved off to the terraces where they were caught by early October rains. We bought a load of cut and split firewood to make up for shortage but my tools, such as they are, had to give way in the woodshed in order to keep the wood dry. This forced me to work double-time in constructing a temporary shelter to replace the one that burned to the ground during the fire. I had no intention of replacing that first temporary tool shed, but serious delays in getting building permission for a proper garage has left me no choice. 

    Luckily, we were approached by a friend offering us free building materials in exchange for dismantling her pergola which she had built without permission. This provided me with lots of metal roofing and stout beams with which I could design and build my own shelter. I tried to design something sympathetic to the hillside that wouldn;t offend the neighbors. Limited by available materials, I had to change my design a number of times.

​   This time, I was determined to provide a level, dry floor. That required getting the old cement mixer going and doing a little site work. 

    Thatś Harry, our young English volunteer who took over my gardening jobs while I concentrated on the shed. Here we have tilted up some walls on the platform.  The roof was to be the metal pergola on itś post and beam structure and I had planned to marry the two once everything was in place. 

​    Of course, everything must stop as soon as the olives are ripe and the weather behaves.

So here´s Harry again sitting down on the job among the olive netting. This took a couple of days and we were very lucky with the weather as well as a good yield of fine olives. About 35 litres of bright green, piquant, fresh olive oil. Lovely.

 

 The weather then turned blustery and I went to bed every night convinced that the wind would carry off my fragile, new roof before I could get all the bracing and screws in place.​ 

​    Then it was a matter of bringing the walls up to meet the new roof. ​The back wall remained a vague idea until it occured to me I could put to use some enormous doors we had recovered a few years ago from another demolition project. I had to learn how to set new hinges (which I botched first time!). These things proved agonizingly heavy. On my first attempt, I got alexś help but she banged her head on a beam I could clear without injury. For the second try I had to use levers and cantilevers to get them hung properly but it was quite rewarding when they dropped into place.  

    

 

Cellar Check

hard work this isolation

solar powered Tesla lawnmower

making sure we'll make it till tomorrow

Snow on Mount Pausillo

Keep splitting the firewood

Our little coronacrisis

17 April, Friday

   Mobile testing due to arrive tomorrow. It understood that both girls will be tested, but that is a little unclear.

   As of April 12, Germany and Italy lead the world in number of tests per capita. Germany has tested 2.1 and Italy 2.0 percent of the population. By contrast US has tested .98 and UK .49 percent.

14 April, Tuesday

Thomasina still coughing, no fever. We report her symptoms to Umbria health officials. 

12 April, Easter Sunday

Happy Easter. 

     Yesterday, Thomasina complained that she couldn't sleep because her cough was keeping her awake. A week after arriving here and setting up in the empty house of Amie and Marc, she complained of cold symptoms. I drove over with a thermometer while Alex called the doctor. As of last night, she has no fever.

     Thomasina believes she has a cold. She also states bravely that she would not dread getting the coronavirus. She believes that she would overcome it quickly and that it would make her immune. I agree but, then, I still worry. A constant anxiety accompanies every contact we make, even with our own children. Everyday for two months we are faced with alarming news. We have been getting screening calls from the Umbrian coronavirus tracking office in Perugia and up until now have reported no symptoms from either girl. 

Picnic suppers at Santa Maria

10 Aug, Good Friday

Thomasina reports cough, no fever.

8 Aug, Wednesday

We have a summer picnic with the girls. Thomasina reports cold symptoms.

1 Aug, Wednesday

girls fly from Heathrow to Rome. Alex picks them up from the Rome airport

23 Mar, Monday

May IB exams have been cancelled.

21 Mar, Saturday

 For information on quarantine and passenger screening:   
Alitalia: From Italy 892010 (Paid number)
From abroad +39 06 65649 (Variable cost based on your tariff plan to the fixed network)

International Baccalaureate info update page  for you Isolde

La Squadra Cadell social distancing at Little Ships, Ramsgate, UK

     We enjoyed an unusual Skype dinner party last night. Alex and I set the table with our laptop and, at the prescribed time, we joined another couple for supper. A great evening!

20 Mar,  Friday

   We purchased air tickets for the girls to return to Italy, 1 April. No foolin'.
Alitalia, 1 apr 2020, LHR -> FCO, 19:50 - 23:20,  book code JUVOMP 

  Just in time to get the victory garden in shape.

19 Mar,  Thursday

    Confusion still reigns. Isolde is in the International Baccalaureate program, a global standard of instruction. She takes classes in a UK school that offers both the state diplomas and the IB program. The Prime Minister announced cancellation of all schools and exam programs but the International Baccalaureate organization is not prepared to cancel exams worldwide. No solution as of this afternoon.

    Europe is closing borders, airlines are parking their fleets. Getting the girls back to Italy may only be possible by using the Alitalia repatriation flights in April. 

18 Mar, Wednesday 2020  evening

   Isolde and Maeve are waiting for an announcement from their school and the International Baccalaureate program on what will happen to the exam schedule. This is crucial to Isolde's admission to Oxford. 

17 Mar, Tuesday

  Tonight, we learn that the son of the landlord of the guest house where Isolde is staying is likely to have the disease. He has returned home and Isolde and her roommate have fled. We are housing them in the Royal Harbour Hotel and hoping they are not now vectors of the disease. School is still open but fewer and fewer teachers and students are showing up.

the situation

  1- The prime minister has just announced the closure of all UK schools.

  2- We have Thomasina up in Durham and Isolde in Ramsgate. Thomasina is in a university affiliated "dorm" room which she must move out of. Isolde, with her friend Maeve, has just moved from Victoria's house to the Royal Harbour Hotel at the generous offer of Jamie and Caroline. 

  3- The virus crisis has precipitated all these moves. The whole world is closing down fast. Stocks plunging day after day. All "gains" made during the past three years of Trump erased. Travel restrictions clamp down harder and harder each day. Whole airlines stopping service, borders closing, prices rising, and the guarantee of returning to UK shrinking fast. We would love to have the girls return to Italy for the rest of the year. 

   4- Both girls are reporting possible exposure to the virus through various contacts.

   5- Scarlett, Dominic, Isabella, Barnaby, Isolde, Maeve and Thomasina are due to arrive at Royal Harbour Hotel. Scarlett is coming from London where she has been exposed to her roommate, a health care worker, who has been exposed to the virus. Scarlett has symptoms.

   6- Two Italian roommates at victoria's house have reserved a house (?) for next year. Isolde and Maeve have been invited by the mother, Sabina, to occupy the house through the summer.

fatigued by obligation

I'm floating on a floor constructed from my fantasy. Layer upon layer like sediments deposited over time: Tile, adhesive, concrete, heating tubes, polystyrene insulation, waterproofing membrane, more concrete, iron reinforcement, structural support, prestressed concrete beams, excavation, wall reinforcement, foundation reinforcement, prestressed concrete perimeters. It's a lot. Layer upon layer of anxiety. It's the history of the restoration of this damned building. This damned building that will certainly fall down as soon as the earth thinks it's time to shake off the dust.
   But I decided to resist the forces. The inevitability of time. I'd done it before. I couldn't cut it as a member of a team. I thought what the hell? Do or die. My way or... Screw it. I only need 15, 20 years. I'd done it before: The bike store. The house was right, the builders were wrong. I could do this according to me and take as long as I needed.
     First thing: inspiration from a partner who could see through the fantasy to the hard details. That would be Alex. The girl who has such a loose idea of hard details that she didn't mind packing up the house and moving into a primitive derelict with a one year old daughter and a second newborn still nursing. Secondly, a solar relationship.  South facing. Large southern wall. Big solar "gain." South slope. Good roof. Pretty good walls. Enough land. Thirdly, a constant drip of on the job training. Hit a brick with a hammer and see how it breaks. If you do that often enough you find that, counter intuitively, you must strike toward the center to break off a small chunk. And so it all proceeded, chip by chip.

     Twenty years later and I'm finished. Not the house. Me. I'm weaker, more tired. I'm an inch shorter. Dried up, wrinkled. My back hurts. Some say it was a foolhardy project. Let them come and sit in my house. In front of the fire, or in the morning sun. It's true that some of it is a bitter disappointment. The underfloor heating remains disconnected. What a waste! The woodstove that is supposed to heat the water is a flawed concept not to mention a rotten execution. My flue pipe and plumbing for the thing is one blunder after another. When the rain blows, water penetrates the windows and the house is damp. But when the sun shines, which is often, we bask. And I have a proud moment. I have a brief moment when our plaster is what I see and not the rotten rubbish that is the wall underneath. It's a metaphor for something.
    Happy birthday me. I'm 70.

Legend of Ciuccio

Dogs are people to their families. Friends outside the family can sort of get it, but I don't think the emotional relationship is enough to see the obedient animal as a real person. They have personalities and however you characterize the relationship, they connect in a family kind of way. They are pack animals and the family is the pack. 

Uniquely, for this dog, she chose the pack she wanted to belong to. We didn't go to the breeder, we didn't go to the dog show, we didn't go to the kennel. She tried a few options. She ran with a few others, but she came to us. From the wild. Really. We already had a dog. A beauty. We rescued a puppy, a white lab-marimana mutt and gave it shots and food and freedom and a safe place and a couple of baby girls to play with. And we called it Mozzarello because Mozzarella might be a girl's name. And maybe we gave it a little too much freedom because one day a mangy, black, little girl dog started hanging around. They were too young to be really serious about each other but the relationship began to annoy us. The little mangy black dog wore a short length of rusty chain dangling from its collar. We assumed it was a runaway with a bad upbringing. You know, damaged goods. Italian dogs can be mistreated. We didn't feed it, we latched the gate, we discouraged the relationship. We didn't want fleas.

And then, one day, the gorgeous white dog with all the good fortune life can bestow, ran away. Just up and left. We called around. We raised a fuss. We got the community to go looking for our dog. Some suggested a farmer might shoot a loose dog who gets into the chicken coop. Others suggested a hunter might be eager to take up a lovely, new dog. Anyway, Mozzy was gone. We presumed that the black bastard mutt led our dear innocent away, that they ran off like a couple of bandits on a chicken hunting spree. After all the little black girl had been identified as the type of rough neck sent in to root out wild boar.   

The lovely white lab never returned. And was never spotted. We were heartbroken. But one of our theories didn't hold up because the black mutt did return. Regularly. We would shoo it away but all it would do is give us a disappointed look.

OK, Fine! Lets take a look at this skin eczema. And here's some left over food from our real dog. And that's how Ciuccio (Chew cho) adopted us. The name derived from the Italian for a baby's pacifier. Probably because she did pacify our girls. She didn't seem to miss Mozzy. She seemed to like to hang around with us. It was a perfect fit, actually. She got virtually excessive freedom. I guess we were flattered by her good taste in a new family. We relied on her judgement and she delivered. And when we made the drives up to the new house at LeCoste, well, that really paid off for her because this was dog heaven. No hunting and lots of wild rabbits. Yes, Ciuccio was a hunter. Boar, deer, porcupine, fox, mice, rats, and lovely, delicious rabbits. That dog was no fool. This was a good gig.  

 She lasted a long, long time through a beautiful but difficult period of our lives. With every new day, she would astound us with her keen, independent intelligence and understanding. She didn't need lessons. If you didn't want her to pull on the leash, she'd stop. If you wanted her to walk at your heel, she would. I suppose by quickly proving to us she could do these silly things she might get us to stop asking. And we did. She lived virtually her whole life without a leash or closed door. When the house at Borgo Petroio was little more than a shell that we camped in, she killed the rats, protected the vegetable garden from rabbits and deer, greeted guests (and their pets) with a friendly wag and a floppy ear. And she made a wonderful mischief with anyone on the estate that we didn't like. She taught the little girls a thing or two like how to eat a fresh rabbit, and if you had the stamina, she would lead you to the most far reaching dark corners of this wild estate. If we snuck off on foot, she seemed to sense it in her sleep. She would bound ahead, then check back that we were still on course, and leap ahead another twenty meters as if to drag us along. Once underway, she would suddenly vanish, and suddenly, when you least expected it, she would overtake from behind at full speed, frightening twice. Once when you thought you'd lost her for good, and again when she would fire past. On these "walks," she made no sound; but at night, what a racket. She was smart enough to stay out of the firing range of wild boar or porcupine, but that didn't stop her from non-stop confrontation for whatever time it would take to clear the area.

    She survived. She would drag home corpses of long dead creatures. She could crunch through bones, swallowing fish and foul without a problem. She even survived a couple of poisonings which killed a number of pets on the estate.

And when she died, she died with grace. A seizure left her bewildered and walking obsessively as if she was trying to find something she remembered, some place where she could begin to put it all back together. No anger, no aggression. A curious, impatient walk outside, then in again. Not hungry. Manic. Alex let her out again in the dark and she never returned. Or perhaps she returned to the wild whence she had come. She was so like us, and she knew it before we did. 

We're not going to replace her because we can't. 

Incendio

    Our ADSL line was re-established yesterday (20 Sept) and with it our landline phone. Here's a quick copy of my story of the Moiano (Le Coste) forest fire.

     On the aftenoon of the 19th August La Tenuta Le Coste experienced a large forest fire. Strong south-west winds propelled the blaze into Borgo Petroio. (google "Incendio Moiano") It swept through our property, destroying my tool shed, our greenhouse, our firewood storage and our entire photovoltaic array. The family is safe and the main house has not been damaged.
    Hours before the fire, Alex and I discussed the final stages of our landscaping and finish work on the house. Isolde and Thomasina have grown up here and want to keep the house while Alex and I recognize that we'd be better off with our future wheelchairs on one level. I stepped outside, saw a yellowish smoke to windward and a tiny ash in the air.
     "If you think property is a safe investment, just wait a few minutes." I suggested we gather a few valuables, put them in the wine cellar; and put on good boots. I moved the car out to the lee side of the hill, pointed down and away, then hiked back up to the house to round up the family. Isolde and I ran out to the workshop for one last look at the hillside and confirmed our fears. We grabbed a couple of bikes and I took one last photo. Running back, wind whipped a towel off the drying line and it burst into flames behind us. We gathered Alex and kept running, now down to the car where the fire crews stood screaming at us.
     From the safe distance of Moiano we joined the town folk watching the destruction sweep across our hillside. A great plume of black smoke rose from the location of our workshop and photovoltaic panels. A fire department helicopter dumped great bags of water on our houses but from our vantage point it seemed totally futile. The fire now covered our entire westward panorama and driven by a strong wind, seemed able to engulf the entire estate and the downwind forest. Eventually, a seaplane arrived carrying tons of water from lake Trasimeno, saving the next hillside, but our Borgo looked finished.
    The vigili (fire department) evacuated all residents from their homes at the last minute and did not allow residents to return to their homes that day and the next. Many gas bombollas and lost WW2 ordinace exploded into the evening. A few hours after the main firestorm, I walked in with three other homeowners accompanied by a crew member. I instructed the crewman to follow me to our new fountain where we filled garden buckets to douse numerous stump fires that threatened to ignite the remaining banks of brush. The neighbor's buried gas tanks continued to burn spectacularly and no attempts were made to extinguish them. I located our poor lost dog and jogged back down to join the family.

     In a little side drama, we had a family of house guests staying with us. They spent a day at the lake where they could see the smoke and were shocked to find it was their house that was in danger! The mayor of Castiglione del lago kindly provided free accommodation for them. We spent the first and second nights with Jenny and Mike in citta della pieve.

    Our uphill nighbors had a particularly scary day. The four of them got into their car but found the driveway blocked by fire department vehicles. With flames in the tree tops, they abandoned the car and had to sit out the fire inside their house. In panic, their son was separated and ran down through the woods on the far side of the house. They remained separated for most of the day. The vigili rescued the family after two attempts and took them to C.d.Lago hospital for burn treatment. The car they tried to escape in was totally consumed and slid down the hillside where it melted.

    It was traumatic for us but we're trying to be sensible and balanced in our reactions. The girls wanted to keep a distance and limit our hours in repairing damage. This proved sensible because once one begins sifting through the ash, a strange hypnosis takes over and our whole history in this house begins to unwind. The process telescopes into an infinite waste of time: scrap metal in this pile, melted glass over there, possible salvage here, toxic waste in the bucket...etc. I carefully saved some tool bits only to find them distort into spirals when I tried to use them. Best to spend a few hours at this everyday and then get out!

   Luckily, we were offered the use of Amie and Marc's house on the undamaged side of the estate where we stayed for two weeks. Thomasina joined us there for her summer holiday.

You should be able to view a photo album here.

late november sunrise

anticipating house wiring with snake and conduit 

   Here's a very short blog post I've been wanting to post for a while. It's about a small, personal triumph.
   The weather has finally turned cold. But at this time of year, a remarkable effect warms my heart.
   Seven years ago I took a picture of myself while organizing the wiring of our future kitchen, laundry room, dining room, and living room. The wires would pass through conduits that would be buried in the cement floor. Previously, we had excavated the dirt floor down about a meter, reinforced the wall foundations with steel reinforced concrete, spanned the air space with pre-stressed concrete beams, laid hollow blocks on the beams, provided ventilation ducting to the underfloor space, and cut our steel reinforcing grid for the floor.

burying the waste pipe

   We were ready to pour a concrete floor. Except that once the concrete hardened, we'd be unable to install plumbing or electrics.  In order to finish the floor, we had to design the kitchen. And the living room, dining room and the laundry room. And we had to predict the position of electrical outlets and plumbing points.
     In the years it took to do all this, I lived down there in the cantina through all weather and seasons. I breathed the dust, sweated in the clay, froze with the cement, and got to know the sun, wind and rain. The room layout ideas were batted back and forth between Alex and I. I wanted a garage, a big kitchen, no second door in the pantry. She wanted a "drawing room," a separate dining room, two doors to the pantry, and certainly no garage. She got her way most times. Probably for the better. But one thing I did get was morning sun in the kitchen.

golden cappuccino at 7am

    This morning, like many mornings in the fall and spring, the rising sun penetrates right across the kitchen counter to the back wall lighting my coffee with a light like transparent gold. It's something the architect in me has always wanted. As I've said to many recent visitors, the memories of those difficult days struggling with puny efforts against ridiculous tasks make it difficult to sit back and enjoy. I can still see the filthy rubble behind the plaster, the falling bricks from the smooth arches, the gaping hole of damp clay under the white floor. They are like ghosts laughing at me. The plaster will fall away. the arches will crack and crumble. It's only time and an earthquake away. But getting that morning sun to join me in a little toast and coffee and warm fire. That is something. 

asparagus soup

   Three and a half years ago we decided to push all our chips into photovoltaic panels. The Italian government had encouraged us with a generous incentive program and we now enjoy the benefits of essentially free electricity. However, at the time, it required a serious sacrifice. In order to make room for an ugly steel structure to support all our panels, we had to replant six fruit trees and a promising bed of new asparagus plants. The young trees we moved with the help of a mechanical excavator. Some of them lived. Some didn't. But the asparagus had to be moved by hand, and, with the Italian incentive program for solar power set to expire, we had to move fast. Rain and wet clay didn't matter.

 Today we've got roughly 16 square meters dedicated to asparagus. I'd say all of it survived the backbreaking transplant. Every Spring the mysteriously barren bed sprouts with thick asparagus spears, expensive asparagus spears, sweet asparagus spears: asparagus far too precious to be given away. If you've ever chewed the stalk of freshly pulled meadow grass, you know the difference between that and the sickeningly stinky stuff left in the lawn mower bag from yesterday's cut. When the Spring asparagus shows it's head, I'm inclined to stop what I'm doing, stop listening to my wife, stop helping the children, stop thinking about Spring bike rides, and start thinking about getting up in the morning and heading down to the veg garden.
   It's the perfect garden crop, really. It's harvested during the most beautiful season. It never grows long enough to be attacked by deer, rabbits, wild boar, porcupine, worm, or bug. It's easy to clean and prepare. It cooks in seconds. Lots of starch and it must be good for you since it's so green. Fresh, it tastes great. And when you're bored, it just grows into a durable fern that controls weed growth and takes care of itself for the rest of the summer. In fact, by the time winter comes, it provides a beautifully dry tinder to help start a woodstove.

a "selfie"

   If, during the spring harvest time, you miss a day, or two, or three; then the spears can reach two feet high and threaten to go to seed. The stems turn woody and fibrous and you find yourself wracked with guilt. The rhizomes have stored up a limited amount of energy which is devoted to the sprouts of the Springtime. The trick in harvesting is to take the first, sweet sprouts for as long as the plant has sufficient strength; and then to let it go on to produce it's ferny energy factory.
   Asparagus grows fast in a warm, wet Spring. Today was such a day. Looking down on the asparagus patch after two days of rain, I spotted a forest of tall stalks. Uhhh.
   Ok, that's fine. I'm going to spend a little time snapping off woody stalks, freeze the fresh heads and make a soup of the rest. Easy to say. Jamie Oliver makes it sound so easy. And, actually it is.
   I made the soup. And it was great. And I felt very smug.
   Now, some months later, the asparagus patch has turned into a impenetrable forest. I proudly produced a carefully bagged packet of frozen asparagus spears to take to a neighbor's feast. After thawing and a moment of cooking, the lovely spears had disintegrated into a brown, filthy mess.
   Next spring we're going to eat it all in season. Meanwhile, I've got to clean out the freezer.

Anna Latino's photos

Sometimes volunteer workers can see things around our home that we can't, things that we have become used to and don't see anymore. Thank you Anna Latino for the vision we lack. (Click on her name to see her blog, then the entry The Beginning, where she has posted some photos of our countryside)

warmth in the cold cellar

Tonight, the girls (Isolde, Thomasina, Caroline and Alex) returned home from a visit to a neighbor after dark. The warm sunny day had turned to a cold fall evening. But instead of entering a chilly, cold cantina, they entered a warm kitchen and sitting room. The previous day, I had finished the stove pipe penetration of our roof; and this evening, I lit the first fire in our new sitting room. By the time the girls returned home, the rooms were unusually warm and cozy. And, boy, did I get a bunch of hugs and kisses! In fact, Isolde announced that we should have our supper in front of the fire as a celebration. And so we did, eleven years since the idea was hatched.

Cantinaplex

   OK, I know, it's been a long time since I've written anything; but my excuse is that I've had no descent keyboard. Our two laptops collapsed at the same instant  leaving me a Dell Inspiron mini 10 with the most minuscule keyboard ever sold as a positive asset.  I've got arthritis and I can't work this thing. I'm sorry.
   Furthermore, the Inspiron Mini has been hacked as a HACKINTOSH so I HAVE no Idea how to manage the operating system. ;lwt alone the keyboard, which has all its keys reassigned. When I get the ThinkPad back, I swear I'm going to reboot this thing as a simple Chromebook. I mean, Why?.... What is all this WYSIWYG GUI? Why?
   Off the rant and on to the story.
   And the story is that, as of today, we have doors and windows in the cantina (basement) where we used to have open holes out to the elements. For 10 years. At least that's how long we have lived with open holes. Previous occupants have certainly put up with many thousands of years more than we have, but I don't care. I've put the best years of my life into this goal of doors and windows in the cantina of this wretched Italian farmhouse and it's a big deal for me.
   Now, before you book your holidays, I've got to mention that there is still no GLASS in those doors

mauro buffini, umbrian carpenter with his mahogany doors

and windows. Only wood frames. That's right, just wood frames. One doesn't fit quite right either; but never mind. It's only been ten years. Count 'em. And I'm pretty old already. So when one doesn't fit and there's no glass.... well, what? Who's complaining, right? Before Mauro the carpenter left tonight, I had to take him aside and say: "Ho aspettato dieci anni...TEN YEARS!"
   I have a feeling he will be back tomorrow early with either silicone sealer for the glass, or a straight jacket. Stay tuned.

UPDATE
   The day after I wrote the post above, our carpenter arrived before I delivered coffee to Alex in her bed. I'm forever impressed by the pride Italian workers take in their work. Even if it's terrible. It doesn't matter. If it's crap work, they're as proud as punch. If it's really good, they're still proud. Odd. You can't trust 'em. But then, the coffee I deliver to Alex every morning is, in my opinion, always good. Simply because I've gotten out of bed before she has,
   Anyway, Mauro Buffini drove up and began fiddling around before coffee time. And by the time coffee was delivered, he already had glass in some of the frames.

did this in Caesar seem ambitious?

   Years, I tell you, years. Years of dreaming, deliberating, getting ideas, being inspired, being disappointed, deciding, changing minds, worrying. Fretting, fighting, quitting. It's been years of putting up with delays and being unable for every reason to finish the ground floor of this house. And all this time, one of our most difficult decisions was how to finish the floor. Now the carpenter was demanding a floor. He couldn't take accurate measurements for the doors without a threshold.
   It's an old house, terracotta is traditional. Shall we stick with terracotta? We've lived with terracotta upstairs, in the kitchen, in the bathroom, in the bedrooms. We're sick of terracotta. It's dirty. It's porous. It takes more maintenance than we want to do. So what else? Old or modern? Dark or light? Shiny or rough? Underfloor heating compatible? Stone! Cut stone! What stone? Marble? No; surprisingly affordable here but too grand for a farm house. Travertine? Also surprisingly affordable but wine stains. Sandstone? Everything stains. Granite? Ridiculously expensive, dark and also stains. Wood? Really expensive, worthless for a kitchen. Alex fell in love with polished concrete. Very trendy. Very difficult and expensive. I didn't think I could do it. It would require a polisher, and then a treatment. OK, how about Ultratop, a synthetic, 'self-leveling' floor poured in retail stores. It looks like a fake polished concrete in the pictures. No supply store sold it. The experts came out. We ordered a sample bag. We talked a neighbor into trying it. Theirs bubbled and they barely talk to us now.

'Tiramisu' from Carducci l'edilizia
giorgio7carducci@yahoo.it

   Desperation drove us to Omar. Omar is a modern day rug merchant, but Omar doesn't sell rugs. He sells tile. Not Chinese tile. Italian tile. Gres porcellana. Ees beeuteefull. Anytheen you want. Omar has built a three storey temple to Italian tile where people like us can find salvation. We took home heavy samples that looked stunning in his temple and ridiculous in our muddy ruin. With our capacity for decision-making exhausted, we chose a tile identical to our white-washed walls but with one concession to fashion: 'large format.' Our tiles are a meter square. I'm not supposed to lift them by myself. Pondering the methods of laying these monsters, I realized that such large tiles will magnify any

irregularity in the surface of the structure supporting the tile. A wave, crack or seam in the concrete will be amplified three feet away into a sharp, tripping edge. Panicky, I rushed to YouTube for tips and found a genius in southern Italy who has invented a tile spacer with a leveling cap built in. These draw the tile edges level with adjoining tiles while they are still floating on fresh glue. With $100 worth of these gadgets and another $100 worth of high-tech setting cement waiting, I'm now cutting our precious tiles to fit the wavy walls of our rooms.
    I figure by the Ides of March the world will be judging my work. And knives will be waiting for me in the forum.

going vegan

   For a long time now, Alex has kept her ear to the rantings on the internet about the quality of our food. Before I knew her, she had tried dieting, fasting and purging to help improve her life with apparently satisfactory results since she was successful in attracting me as a mate. Now that she's succeeded, she's still not satisfied. Now, it seems, she wants to keep her mate in tip-top shape for ever and ever. That's very flattering, but the trouble is, I have to change my habits, which I fear may change what she saw in me in the first place. I'm worried because I might become a little grumpy and her grand plan could backfire.
   Today for lunch, I put a cover over my lentil salad saving it for later. At supper time, we were served garden snails to top our whole grain spaghetti. I'm not sure this is pure 'vegan,' but it may be an abstract contribution to the success of our vegetable garden which will one day contribute to our "vegetable-based, whole foods" diet. In a previous post I have already mentioned bird seed as an important contribution to our youthful complexions. Every morning we get a heap of ground up flax seed on top of our soy-milk muesli. One thing is certain: I remain a lean, mean, fighting machine.
    It's easy to say it all started with a movie called "Forks over Knives," but that's not really true. The movie is just the latest in a long string of reinforcements to the conclusion that what the grocery stores are selling isn't that good for us. Prior to watching the movie, Alex read a book called Fats That Heal, Fats that Kill. The book drags everyone through a first year study of biochemistry, before concluding that veggies are good and meat is bad. And flax seed meal is really good. Full of fresh omega-3s. Now we are moving on to the the writing of Colin Campbell, first his distillation of data in the China Study, and then on to Whole which I have a feeling will promise me an old age of worn out teeth.
    Parallel to this, I accidentally discovered the TED talk by an outrageous English thinker, Aubrey DeGray. His fast-paced argument proposes that my children may be faced with the prospect of immortality and that we need to get our "shit together." I've long wondered that the whole Darwinian thing of adaptation through natural selection is hopelessly old fashioned in the face of modern medicine, birth control, genetics technology, and wealth distribution. After all, we haven't been naturally selecting our food stocks for quite a while. George Bush and the Catholic Church may have interfered with embryonic stem cell research but the delay was brief. In Japan they have figured out you don't need embryonic cells, in fact, you don't need stem cells at all to clone to your heart's content. According to Nina Tandon, replacement body parts built from your own data is only 10 years away. It's nice to know that I no longer need to consider evolutionary improvements to myself, I feel pretty happy with myself as I am. Or do I?
    There is this other podcast (BBC's radio discussion 10 Billion) that's troubling me. Stephen Emmott writes that the global catastrophe is just around the corner. We don't have enough water and we have demonstrated that we have no intention of dealing with it. Apparently it takes four litres of water to produce one to drink, and 100 to produce one cup of coffee. With a growing population and shrinking ability to produce food, due to climate change, we're all going to die. But wait a minute, if we start living forever and stop having babies, maybe we can hold out till .... we're imortal!

permission granted

    26th August, 2013. I pinned to the wall, as required, our notification to the world that we are making

improvements to this little relic of history. It's been a long and costly grind, and is in fact our second permit it the ten years of working on this property.
   After 10 years you'd think there would be something to show off. That's a long time. But, sadly, there's not much to show. Most of it is under the building or hidden in the walls. But, time does allow evolutionary improvements through 'environmental selection.' A ten year record rainfall has demonstrated leaks in the basement and flooding in the garden, which we've been dealing with all summer. After years of observing the changing seasons, the prevailing winds, the path of sunlight, and traffic patterns around the house, we have made numerous changes in our approach to the final layout of land, rooms, doors and windows. The result improves with time.

'photo-shopped' concept of east elevation

    For example, in our main sitting room on the ground floor, I discovered that the east windows described in our original plans wouldn't work. They made some sense on paper but when it came time to plan wall demolition and construction of reinforcing elements there just wasn't any room for all this. Further, one of the windows would be so close to the corner of the building it would threaten the integrity of the wall. Not only did it violate common sense, it violated the building code. Knowing the inspectors were only keen on external changes that improved symmetry, I began to imagine replacing the two windows with one 'door.' The room already has two exterior doors and another large window so the light appeared sufficient, especially considering the ratio of glazed area to floor space, however the openings were all on one wall. Illumination was coming from only one direction leaving dark shadows everywhere and giving every face a dark side. I made a couple of re-touched photographs to illustrate the idea to all the doubters (which included everybody) and eventually I convinced our 'geometra' (architect/inspector) Ettore to submit a new design incorporating the changes.
   We needed to submit an extension of the permit anyway (for more time) and we had decided to move the

project from our old geometra to Ettore's office where we felt much more comfortable. Ettore speaks english, is young and well educated and has a keen affection for old buildings. What we didn't expect is that to accomplish all these changes, we were better off submitting an entirely new project requiring a whole new set of drawings, a repayment of filing fees, a new design review, and subjected us to a new set of anti-seismic laws following the earthquake in Aquila.
    It's a great relief to be back on the job (digging in the foundations felt like a serious reversal of fortune), but the job has gotten even bigger with the requirement of steel reinforcements. We have contracted our steel framing and Giles and I are having fun making a great big hole in the wall.

underpinning

    Underpinning. I think it means shoring up from below. Foundation work. That's what we're up to foundations?! Talk about an upside down project.
right now. Foundation work. It's been what? eight years? And we're finally getting around to the
    But, yes, foundations. Or lack of them.
    It all started with a damp spot. A damp spot that spoiled the nice new plaster that was to be our kitchen wall. The kitchen that would set us free from so much crowded, time consuming inefficiencies that have plagued us for the past eight years. 'We are experts in temporary kitchens,' I heard myself say to our latest volunteer. We have known nothing but temporary kitchens for as long as our children can remember. And a pantry? We've got plenty of food in storage but do we have a pantry? If we need a roll of loo paper, we hunt around upstairs in the dusty corridor (which is the last place left in this building site for storage) among anonymous cylindrical formations of brick dust until we find something squeezable. Hopefully it's not last years zucchini.
     The damp spot grew. Another one appeared. Then standing water. Standing water cannot be explained away by global warming. Standing water in one's future pantry is... not allowed. So we tried to melt tar paper against the wall. And we tried to will the season to return to normal. Both strategies proved futile. Then, pouring water. Water began to pour into our new stairwell. It poured in from the surface of the wall at about waist high. Just poured in. It ran down the stairs into our wine cellar where we had to siphon out lots of it every day. We were visited by an expert: waterproofing the foundation from the outside was our only choice. We dug and we dug deeply and we finished the surface and we

waterproofed and we protected the waterproofing and we... we came to a point along the wall where the foundation stopped. Oh mio Dio! Now we were not just waterproofing, we were underpinning. Serious structural stuff. The oldest part of the house had a very shallow foundation which we exposed as a rustic wall when we leveled the ground floor rooms and the outdoor terrace way back in the very first summer. Now, looking for a solution to some creeping damp, we've found a very good reason for some creeping damp but saddled ourselves with a much more serious solution.
    Ironically, at the same time, we've been applying for a new building permit and waiting for a new set of permissions along with an engineer's report before we can legally begin work. The last thing we needed was the engineer to find out that part of the house had no foundation. Especially that part where I had already, without official permission, enlarged both the window and door openings (which weakens any wall). By pure dumb luck we had excavated only newer walls when he looked around, but now we must hurry up and get some cement in, waterproof and push the dirt back before anyone notices.
    All this excitement began when we had Charlie and Richie here to push on with the heavy lifting. They could make short work of the heaviest projects (have a look at the photo of a beam replacement on the third floor. They are lifting that thing with a rope, by hand). But now they're gone and in their place are workaway volunteers. Poor things. Down in the ditch with bucket and trowel. It's been a month and a half since Charlie and Richie left. The rain has stopped, spring flowers have finished, school is over for the summer, everyone heads for the swimming pool after supper, the vegetable garden is off to a new start along with the irrigation system, the damp spots are fading, the lawnmower and strimmer are wheezing, but the waterproofing job is still not finished. We are still surrounded by a (dry) moat and the piles of mud have hardened into mountains of pottery clay. With tall weeds growing out of them. And this project is still waiting for its underpinning.

 

irons in the fire

    We've now got ourselves a fine list of jobs. The rough landscaping that had developed over the last 9 years has been uprooted to make way for our waterproofing project. The trenching and finishing touches will require the design and construction of a new outdoor stairway connecting our terraces. The stairway will require a strong retaining wall to keep the upper terrace where it belongs. The bottom of the stair will require a final plan for the old rainwater cistern which sits right where the stair will land. On the north corner we are rebuilding our drains and footing a low retaining wall to outline our little corner patio. And finally, all that soil will have to find a final resting place somewhere, before we can claim our downstairs, main patio back.

    You'd think we'd be eager to get all this over with before the busy spring season begins, but actually we've taken a pause from working outdoors (european weather is horrible this season) and decided to begin constructing two new bathrooms, one on top of the other in the stairwell. This, of course, leads to a final design decision on our underfloor heating of the top floor which requires tearing up the old floors up there to make way for the pipe runs. The trouble is these rooms have been lived in for the last 9 years and have accumulated a LOT of stuff. All that stuff has to be moved either out to the garbage bins or up into the attic and that's what we've been doing.
    It's been a busy couple of weeks. (months? years?)

trenching

   When Matt and I were growing up, Dad used to take us camping for a holiday. I was going to say 'Mom and Dad,' but I think if it were up to Mom, we would have spent our holidays reading a book or seeing a film rather than feeding a family on a makeshift gasoline stove outdoors in the rain somewhere.
   Dad taught us to pitch the tents and build the camp cots and organize the campsite: all good fun. Once the tents were up they had to be trenched. The trenches were intended to take rainwater away from the sides of the tent before it had a chance to seep underneath the canvas floor and flood our sleeping bags. This was normally done as a precaution, but I can remember trenching and re-trenching in the rain, after dark; and waiting for the pools to form in order to get the flow right.

    Now, 50 years later, I'm back to trenching. Rainwater is finding it's way into our nice new cellar and stairwell. This winter has been particularly gloomy and wet, coinciding with the closing stages of our downstairs conversion. Numerous wet spots and floods have dampened the joy of the occasion, but maybe it's a good thing. We've been forced to take on the mammoth task of trenching the house before we actually got our 'sleeping bags' wet. We delayed our hire of a digger until we got a couple of clear days and it's been a big rush to get the job done before the next rain.
   Two days later and rain will begin this evening. Stay tuned for more photos of me reliving the experience of trenching the tent in the rain, getting the flow right.

terremoto

    Leslie came around before lunch to take Alex to the post office and mentioned that there were some cracks in our road. She lives and works in London and they have cracks in the roads there but nothing like the potholes and gaps we can generate during a wet winter. We didn't really take her seriously, but when Alex returned she was so impressed she phoned the LeCoste office. They must have thought an Englishwoman has no experience with Umbrian country roads. They didn't take Alex seriously. At around 5, Charlie and I set off in the van and returned with a heavy load of wet sand. We had to bump down about four inches and 30 meters later bump back up again. To me the crack was something I had anticipated for years. The land was obviously slipping down the hill but it was still passable. I didn't take it too seriously, either.
   At suppertime the Italian neighbors called in panic. Dido, returning home, was afraid to drive his Land Rover over the crack. Alex calmed him down and I think we all felt that the Italians were overreacting. Why didn't they have the gusto to take a chance? They have a four-wheel drive car so what could be the problem? After getting little sympathy from us, Dido called the office and somehow convinced Enrico to go take a look.

   Within minutes, Enrico decided to close the road. When I rode up on my bicycle in the eerie dark of my little headlamp, I first saw the ribbon and then, well, a gap in the road; and I knew in a minute that we were trapped. Two cars and two vans and six people. We had waited too long, favoring a nice hot meal over evasive action. I had completely misjudged the speed at which the ground was moving, and standing there in the dark I could hear the slab of earth beneath me creaking and cracking. I returned with the news which encouraged Richie to go for a walk. Despite all his bravery, he too conceded defeat.

    We all slept fitfully. It's difficult to describe the feeling but when the terra becomes not so ferma, it can make one quite nervous. We take for granted that the ground is solid, but it ain't so. Next morning Richie and I walked the girls to the school rendezvous and found Enrico and three others surveying the scene. A rough plan was developed and, after breakfast, an excavator was already at work. No instrument surveys, no environmental impact reports, no permissions from the city, no building permits, no fussing around. Just plow a new road through, but this time higher up the hill.
    Unfortunately, our stacked firewood piles, which we incorrectly placed on the wrong side of our boundary, had to be moved out of the way of the excavator: a hell of a way to employ builders. The combination of poor judgement, bad planning, inaction, stranded cars and wobbly ground contributed to a humiliating sense of "what's the use?" Meanwhile, clever ol' Dido managed to keep both of his cars on the other side of the chasm.

la drama della frana

    Ten days later, the landslip continues to creep downhill. It is a curved bite out of the hillside taking 40 meters of road and three olive trees on the terrace above along with it. The vertical displacement is now three to four meters and a ladder is required to descend onto the old road surface. Remarkably, our phone line, which is buried alongside the road, has not snapped. Slack coiled at either end could be paying out as the landmass moves.
    A new by-pass has been hastily built up slope. We are all impressed by the speed and dedication of a family of two brothers and a father who have a small earthmoving company. They worked Saturday and Sunday and we were able to drive out Sunday evening.
    A meeting was held Monday evening where we were told that the four houses of the Borgo would be handed the bill for the repair. It comes as something of a surprise since these are legally designated Strade Viciniale by the local authorities. We've been told that the 'comune' is responsible but there is no money so they're not going to pay. LeCoste is washing their hands of the affair saying that they have donated the land and that's the extent of their contribution. The condominium will likely debate the matter for months and in the meantime the poor earthmovers go unrewarded.
    The house below us in the borgo has been occupied by occasional vacation renters for the past two years since Sue and Bob returned to Great Britain. Now, a Roman doctor has bought it and we are looking forward to new neighbors, however, there's nothing like a little landslide to make a new buyer get the shakes. The deed didn't manage to change hands before the road disaster so Sue and Bob find themselves in a touchy bargaining position. Enzo, our new neighborhood doctor, has been doing some homework and he's informed me that according to the law, Strade Vicinale that serve single homes or a group of homes are indeed the responsibility of the homeowners. We, along with Lorenza and Dido, the fourth neighbor Marta and Marcello, and poor Sue and Bob are going to share the expense. Sue and Bob have returned from Britain to move some furniture but we've all avoided them, fearing an angry eruption. They've done a lovely job renovating their house, but they've spent a lot of money and the market has turned against them. We've suffered some bad luck with the landslide but for them it's a nasty parting shot.

milestone

      My simple life sometimes seems stalemated by doubt and delay. I can get bogged down in the most ridiculous worry over things that shouldn't bother anyone.
      Alex, on the other hand, worries about proper stuff. She worries about the kid's grades. She worries about our money. She's concerned about our nutrition. She thinks about her mother. She thinks about my mother. She even worries about me. And she usually does something about it.

      I worry about how to connect two pieces of plumbing pipe. This is something people have done for centuries. The answer is a phone call away, or a trip to the shop. But then I worry about what to say. I worry about how I'm going to look to the shop keeper. It's crazy.

     Fully a year and four months ago, we wrestled a massively heavy steel woodstove off a moving van. The idea was to connect it to the hot water tank and provide us with central heating. The thing has sat in our way ever since and I have fretted and suffered over how to make the connections. I've lost track of how many times Alex has lost her patience. First I had one design, then I got the nerve to call the manufacturer for verification and he sent me another idea. I couldn't believe his idea would work so I fretted some more. I designed a natural heat convection circuit and a blow off valve in case the electricity failed and the circulation pump quit. I purchased enough big diameter copper tubing to break the bank. I still haven't decided on a pump. I called the local plumber and he miraculously lent me his hydraulic press for joining the pipes. Finally we managed a visit from the solar panel supplier to put in his two cents, and I changed my design again.

     In the meantime, all this back and fourth has been holding up progress on the underfloor heating installation. With Richie and Charlie on the full time payroll, progress is not something that can be held up for long. I managed to stall them with the impossible task of plastering the entire ceiling. They finished in far less time than I needed to worry about my pipe connections, so I gave them the stairwell to plaster (can you imagine the scaffolding?).

    Finally, with all the materials mustered to assembled the underfloor heating pipes, and all the sand and cement dumped on the driveway to cover whole thing, I couldn't delay my pipe connection any longer. Counting all my delays and testing and worrying, it took about 15 minutes.
    The pipes are down. The manifold is in. Richie and Charlie, with the help of a Youtube video, mastered the cementing process with a remarkably dry mix that lent itself to troweling. Now the cement is leveled and we've just passed a major milestone. Thanks to Richie and Charlie and Alex. Now I can continue to worry about my stove hook-ups while progress continues on the rest of the project.