Hang Out

If you have followed my blog for some time, you know that I could not travel to Italy without taking at least ONE photo of laundry drying on the line. Here is the one (yes one, I restricted myself this time, looking for other themes) I took in Siena. I was reminded to post it by reading a recent article about line drying and energy use.

Your electric clothes dryer is the biggest energy-gobbling appliance in your home after the refrigerator. So hang clothes outside, or inside until they are almost dry and pop them into the dryer.

Hanging out your laundry is a great way to save some money and have great smelling sheets as well. But you already know that.

Seas of Peace!

Hello Family! Please check out a piece on our program, Seas of Peace by Maine Public Radio. We are taking 18-21 year olds from Palestine and Israel on a tall ship in a few days. First we are in Portland learning to sail and doing intensive dialogue and leadership training, led my Tim and me! It is going well so far! Let me know if any of my Maine family will be in Portland in the next week. I would LOVE to see you. So much love, Carrie

Give it a listen and a look:

Seas of Peace radio program

dinner at home

Yes, this is where we stayed. It is as good as it looks!

We stayed in a small farm house for five days at Tenuta di Spannocchia, a centuries old agricultural estate located in central Tuscany near Siena. It is now an organic farm, educational and conservation organization and center for art and culture where workshops are held on all number of things.

You can also just stay there which is what we did. We slept late, read a lot and traveled to nearby hill towns in the afternoons, usually stopping for dinner on the way back. On our last night we cooked at home drinking the wine made on the thousand acres of land that comprises this splendid place.

To see more go to the Spannocchia website.

food

Homemade breakfast at Montecino (our farmhouse)

Lunch in Florence

gelato

food on the go.

Cafe in Lucca

Dinner in Florence

images of italy

directions

lock

roses at the door

lace curtain

courtyard

postcards from the edge

Many of you know how much I love correspondence that is stamped and postmarked and delivered by the postman to the box at the end of my driveway (now affectionately or dismissively called snail mail.) I am grateful to all of you who send me postcards from your travels. I save every one and sometimes rip them to pieces to include the stamp in a collage.

The reality of travel now is that it is far easier to find an internet cafe, pay one euro for fifteen minutes of time and send off missives to friends and loved ones in a flash. It is no problem to find postcards, but to find a post office that is open and figure out the language and currency is not so easy. And who wants to stand in line on their vacation?

So here is my postcard to all of you. I did find a hotel where the man at the desk provided stamps for one letter. I decided to send it off to Eliza in Africa who has two mail stops on her trip. The postage was the same to Tanzania as it was to the States. We were closer to her there than we are at home. Imagine my surprise to see the statue of liberty and the Brooklyn Bridge on this Italian stamp.

Stamps tell a story. On returning home, I did a little investigative research.

The internet turned up a New Yorker article about the New York Police Museum and an exhibit about Joe Petrosino, the subject of the above Italian stamp. He worked at fighting organized crime in New York. That work took him on a fateful trip to Sicily.

He was one of the only NYPT officers ever killed on an overseas assignment. Lieutenant Joe Petrosino, was assassinated, presumably by the Mafia, while on a secret mission to Sicily in 1909. A quarter of a million people showed up for his funeral back in Manhattan. There is a small but fascinating exhibit about Petrosino up at the New York Police Museum. Petrosino was a pioneering member of the Italian Squad—at the time, New York had about a hundred and fifty thousand Italian residents, and only a handful of Italian officers. You can’t fight crime if people can’t come into station houses and make themselves understood.

Impressive story. Local boy makes his country proud.

More to come on our trip to Italy. Hope you enjoyed getting my postcards and letter.

weather, seasons and time

The rhododendron are more lovely this year than I can ever remember them being. Perhaps it is because of the long, cool spring. The same is true with all growing things. The natural world is lit up and on full display. Birds wake me at 5 am with their discourse. A nest has appeared on top of the light fixture above the front door again this year. Here we go with the eggs dropping out and cracking (happened today) and the chicks falling out and gasping (last year). There is drama everywhere in spring.

Stay tuned for photos of this year's vegetable garden.

Animals, plants and humans make the most of this short growing season in New England which is bracketed by long cold winter months. We almost forget that it will ever warm up and then before we know it, we are in the throes of it, breathless trying to keep up.

Happy June everyone.