Marv Davidov RIP

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for justice, 

for they shall be filled.

Marv Davidov was a kind of saint, by which I do not intend the trivial, goody-two-shoes, popularized  meaning, but the real meaning –  a person of heroic public virtue:

He was fearless in combating evil –  the forces of wickedness that seek to destroy the creatures of God, such as racial segregation, the Vietnam war – indeed all war and war profiteers like Honeywell –  and the whole, Godless economic structure that insures increasing misery and inequality.    

         

He cared nothing for money, and he was always poor – at least in terms of that idolatrous structure.

Marv Davidov was also a patriot – I mean in the real sense of the word, not in the Orwellian sense of the “Patriot” Act, which makes people like him into criminals.  Marv was a patriot in that he spent his whole life trying to get America to live up to its own ideals. The best testament to that is own FBI file, which he read in public at a fund-raiser!

Marv had a sense of humor, which is also a mark of sanctity. Humor and joy. I will never forget a long conversation with him, thirty years ago, about fasting and singing in a Mississippi jail. He actually radiated joy.

By any religious or philosophical standard, Marv Davidov led a good life – an exemplary life. I have no doubt that, in the language of my tradition, he has heard the stunning words:

Well done, my good and faithful servant. 

Enter into the joy of your Lord.

Feast of St. Sulpice

January 15 is the patronal feast of my favorite parish in Paris: St. Sulpice in the Latin Quarter. It has a terrific organ - the second largest in Paris. 

Carles-Marie Widor played it for 63 years. They always have a recital before and after the principal mass, with organist, Daniel Roth. And today they have a concert in the afternoon, too:

 

Dorian Toccata of Bach by Nicolas RIVES. ? Folia Antonio Vivaldi :  Laetitia Richardoz first violin, second violin LAGACHE Melody,  Paul SLAMA bass. ? Concerto for violin and oboe JS Bach : Laetitia Richardoz violin, oboe Gabriel PIDOUX, Bastien ROLLAND violin, viola Anne Lapasset, Paul SLAMA bass. ? first four movements of the second Partita in D minor J. -S. Bach

Like the Basilica of San Petronio in Bologna, it has a meridian line on the floor. For convenience, many large churches installed these in the Renaissance, as an aid to scientific calculations about the size and motion of the earth. St. Sulpice posts the following disclaimer, in response to the fantasies of Dan Brown: 


The "meridien" line materialized by a brass inlay in the pavement of this church is part of a scientific instrument built here during the 18th century. This was done in full agreement with Church authorities by the astronomers in charge of the newly-built Paris Observatory. They used it for defining various parameters of the earth's orbit. Similar arrangements have been made, for the sake of convenience, in other large churches like the Bologna cathedral, where Pope Gregory XIII had preparatory studies made for the enactment of the present, "Gregorian" calendar. 

Contrary to fanciful allegations in a recent bestselling novel, this is not the vestige of a pagan temple. No such temple ever existed in this place. It was never called a "Rose Line." It does not coincide with the meridian traced through the middle of the Paris Observatory which serves as a reference for maps where longitudes are measured in degrees East or West of Paris. No mystical notion can be derived from this instrument of astronomy except to acknowledge that God the Creator is the master of time. 

Please also note that the letters "P" and "S" in the small round windows at both ends of the transept refer to Peter and Sulpice, the patron saints of the church, not an imaginary "Priory of Sion."




The baroque building was erected during the reign of Louis XIV. the distinguished Abbé whose project it was used to accept lots of dinner invitations from wealthy people, who always found silver missing after his visits. It is said that helped build the church! 


After Mass, I walked over to the little square just down the hill from the Odeon theater in the Luxembourg Garden to find that the Horse Tavern was closed for remodeling. It is an Irish bar, but it has a fine choucroute alsacienne.

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP: pork belly (fat bacon) frankfurter, smoked porkchop, rindwurst

So, I settled for Les Éditeurs across the street, which had a nice brunch (nothing special).

This is the book-shop part of town, near the University, hence the library theme. It is also the neighborhood of the famous Shakespeare & Co., which was associated with Hemmingway and others in the '20s - not to be confused with its equally-venerable namesake founded by the recently-deceased George Whitman.

Old shop then

and now

I figured out how to take the bus from Suresnes, avoiding the metro (too many stairs). And you see allot more, of course. My route takes me through the Bois de Boulogne

To Porte Maillot

Convention center on the left, Avenue de la Grande Armee and the Arc d'Triomphe at the top, my bus can be seen at the lower-right-hand corner

On through the fashionable 16th to the Place Victor Hugo

and Trocadero

Then across the Pont d'Iena

past the Tour Eiffel

and the Hotel des Invalides (Louis XIV's old soldiers' home, to which Napoleon III added the tomb of his uncle)

and up to the Gare Montparnasse

and finally to the Jardin de Luxembourg, named for the palace built for a queen, which now houses the Senate.

(This is not how it looks this time of the year!)

Anglo-Catholic Socialism

I have been asked to provide a forum for tthe adult education hour at our Episcopal cathedral in Paris. It should be amusing, since (a) the congregation contains a lot of rich expatriates, and (b) it is locate dat a very swanky address in the "golden triangle": right off the Champs Elysee next to one of the world's most expensive hotels (The Four Seasons). So, I have decided to talk about the necessity of Christian socialism!

In preparation, I have been running across lots of interesting stuff. Here is a sample, a quotation from Fr. Kenneth Leech, one of the luminaries of my generation:

Transformation occurs only in the liturgy and not in the world, there bread and wine remain hoarded, but not offered, concentrated and not broken, maldistributed and not shared. The Eucharist becomes a freak, a contradiction of social reality, instead of a pointer to how reality should be reshaped. If we then go back to read the early Christian Fathers we find how far we have come from their understanding. St. John Chrysostom draws the closest connection between the real presence of Christ in the Blessed Sacrament and his real presence in the poor and oppressed. We need to recover this connection between the Sacraments and the structures of the world, and to take seriously the social and political consequences of being one body in Christ.


And here is one of St. John Chrysostom's sermons. It is rather hilarious, in that it asks the congregation of the principal church in the Roman capital of Constantinople to imagine what it would be like if everyone did as the first Christians, and gave everything they had to the Church for redistribution! "And if you please, let us now for awhile depict it in words, and derive at least this pleasure from it, since you have no mind for it in your actions." 

Trapani

From Palermo to Trapani on New Year’s Day has been delightful – more rewarding than expected. First, I have the train almost to myself. [As in Spain, most natives travel by bus, becsause it’s faster.] Second, it is warm enough to open the windows on this little local train. The three-hour journey stops everywhere and goes to the south side of the peninsula first. This gives me a tour of the Sicilian countryside, on what turns out to be an exceptionally fine day. 

It is like Spring in early May in Mn. Clear skies with cotton-ball clouds and rain- fresh air.  The first party of the trip, along the north coast, is spectacular – mountain after mountain, shaped like the Rock of Gibralter, vertical cliffs rising right out of the sea.

Sicily here does not seem that poor. The stuccoed stone houses and new apartment buildings look almost prosperous. As we turn inland, I notice that there aren’t Any trees. Big difference from Calabria. Here, the only trees seem to have been planted – all olives, no citrus here – and the few pine and cedar are all around houses.

Farther south, toward Marsala, the mountains give way to a plain with vast olive plantations  and vineyards. 

I think I read somewhere that  they cut down the forests centuries ago. Now there are signs of some attempt at reforestation – but it’s mostly cultivated. It’s vivid green this time of year, but I’ll bet its yellow and brown in the summer. 

Other side of the island at dusk. Pale pink-stucco and some rather nice looking villas by the sea.

No cabs at the station, so I walked over to the main street. Same story, so I asked a teenaged couple, who were most helpful. The girl, who was lovely despite her braces, did most of the talking – having claimed some English – but the boy ran ahead, leading us back to the station, where a cab was – rather miraculously – waiting. I shook both their hands and thanked them profusely.

My B&B, the Alla Marina, seems to be in medes res – with a live jazz band playing very well outside the window in a kind of park for welcoming tourists. The ferry wharf is across the street, and the main street with restaurants is a block the other way. The room itself is in an old pensione-style apartment on the third floor. It is just about perfect: high, curving ceilings, dark woodwork, antique furniture, real fabric on the walls above the wainscoting. [Now I REALLY feel I am living in Il Gatopardo!] 

Although my room looks like it was decorated by Josiah Wedgewood, it has all the conveniences, including cable TV. Best of all, the wi-fi and elevator actually work!

“No stairs”, however, does not translate into Italian. When I booked the room, I made a clear note in the “special needs” box. I received an e-mail back assuring me about the elevator. When I arrive, I found three steps to the elevator and another three to my room! They just don’t count here! Oh well, I didn’t make a scene, although I did mention it. “ ‘No stairs’ doesn’t mean ‘no stairs’ in Italy”, I remarked. The nice, English-speaking owner (who lives in the first floor) laughed and agreed that it was very difficult to avoid them.

It is a commendable place, however, and I may stay a few extra days to chill out. It’s a good deal. @$75/day. My Eurailpass expires today, having gone out with a whimper – no sign of a conductor on the train at all. And we passed the airport on the way into Trapani. The bus to it leaves from right across the street, and there is a RyanAir flight direct to Beauvais, from which there is a shuttle-bus to Porte Maillot.

The restaurant San Lorenzo is a small (two-man) operation on the Corso Vittore Emanuale which is the auto-free main drag. 

One again, I seem to be right on Nicollet Mall, which is fine with me. The Sicilians, like everybody else in this part of the world, apparently, like to walk around slowly just after dark. I got into the restaurant at 8:30 and it was still a bit early – even on New Year’s night. 

I tried their caponata and discovered that it isn’t really a relish, but a kind of stew of eggplants and olives, with a little tomato and herbs. [Everbody has their own recipe.] The chef came out afterwards to ask how I liked everything, and he also told me that he puts sugar in the caponata. I am going to have to try this at home. I mentioned Inspector Montalbano, and he smiled – he said he knew him! I said that if figured Trapani was Montelusa.

The pasta was a local, hand-made specialty called basiunale, which is like very thick, twisted spaghetti – or like long, thin rotini. Mine was a pesto of garlic and something green (not basil) and French fries! I noticed that their salata caprese is made with oregano, not basil. Maybe it’s too hot here for basil. 

Trapani seen from the west. The neck of land on the left is the old town. On the north side,
you can just make out the white hulks of the ferries and passenger ships that go to Sardinia and Tunisia

I recommend Trapani without reservation (except that you probably have to fly RyanAir to get there). The people, architechture, food, sea  and countryside are all lovely - and pretty affordable, considering what you get.

Monreale and Palermo

Monreale was my reason for staying a whole day in Palermo. My cab-driver from the station offered a private tour, for a fairly hefty price, but the convenience was worth it. Giuseppe spoke good English and looked like he worked for Tony Soprano. He couldn’t have been nicer. Monreale – as the nasme suggests, on top of a mountain, for defence – was the Norman capital in the 12^th C. Here William II built one of the world’s great churches.

The Basilica/Cathedral of Monreale (still an archiepiscopal see, although Palermo long-since surpassed it in institutional importance), has the best mosaics I have ever seen. They are perfectly preserved Byzaantine master[ieces. They give one an idea of what Hagia Sophia must have been like before iconoclasm. The pictures give an impression; but to be among them is breathtaking.

The whole interior is covered in perfectly-preserved mosaics. They depict biblical stories from the Patriarchs to Moses to the Gospels, as did the later gothic windows in France. But these representations are far more legible 

On the way back, G. stopped at a great, panoramic vista of all Palermo. This city of about a million (five million all told in Sicily) has been through Romans and Byzantines and Arabs and Normans and Spanish and finally modern Italians. 

There are lots of narrow back streets, but no really impressive boulevards, as in Montpellier. But there are citrus groves everywhere: lemons, oranges, tangerines. And plenty of markets – one every day right in one of the many ancient city gates, which are still preserved.

The Cathedral of Palermo is dim by comparison, although – as Giuseppe observed – its exterior is more beautiful. But the baroque interior is nothing special. The Teatro Massimo is a big opera house. The Royal Palace has a Norman section and a Bourbon (Spanish) section. 

The Kingdom of the Two Sicilies had its capital in Naples, but kept the palace in Palermo for state occasions, I guess.

I kept thinking of Giuseppe di Lampedusa and his middle-aged Prince Fabrizio of Salina, who on the way to see his mistress, would get out of his carriage to kneel on the pavement when the Bl. Sacrament was carried by on the way to a death bed. (The priest used to be escorted by a little procession, preceded by a ringing bell, to alert the faithful.) There are still plenty of carriages of the kind in which the nobleman rode – now for tourists, of course.

One of the churches – S. Cataldo – is a handsome old former mosque. 

I remember stopping in Taranto in ’78 on the Feast of S. Cataldo, who is apparently the patron of that Apulian city. Big festivities, in which his silver statue is carried through the streets.

 G. told me that Palermo’s patroness is Sta. Rosalia. He also showed me the plaque in the Piazza Marina honor of the Italian-American investigator, Joe Petrosino, who was assassinated by the mafia when he came to investigate them in 1909.

The four-star hotel is a splurge – big and modern. The Tyrrhenian Sea fills my window, which faces directly north from the 11^th floor. Beautiful and sunny today, the mistral blowing steadily from colder places. So, there’s no hanging out on the terrace or beach, but I think the temperature is about the same as Barcelona. Tomorrow to Trapani and then back to Paris. One day of being driven around a Sicilian city confirms the wisdom of my decision not to rent a car here. 

Sky Cable has all the European news channels, plus FOX and CNBC, but no CNN. Also a direct, live Vatican feed. I was able to watch vespers and Solemn Te Deum from St. Peter’s. The Pope wore a gorgeous gold cope and mitre, deacons’ dalmatics matching. Lots of cardinals and monsignori. The deacon carrying the Bl. Sacrament, wore an enormous humeral veil, the size of an altar cloth, and an attendant held an ombrellino over him. Choir was dramatic, Italianate. Another vimpa for the papal mitre-bearer, but no double-wheelies! The occasion, I guess, was the eve of wha5t the Romans now call the Feast of the motherhood of Mary. [January 1 – eight days after the Nativity – used to be called Circumcision. We changed it to Holy Name, which is what the Romans used to call it, before they decided Mary needed more attention. Somewhere in there, I seem to recall it was called the Feast of the Holy Family.] The Latin Divine Praises now include something about Mary’s Assumption, if I heard correctly.

Dinner was at a Ristorantino Agrodolce, right next to the hotel (which is now full of Germans in mink). I walked a few block up the shabby street, risked my life crossing some – in the striped crosswalks, which speeding Sicilians give up to pedestrians with great reluctance,  to find only a EUR 40 menu that didn’t look that interesting. I am very happy with my choice, because I got some authentic Sicilian food, I think – the kind Inspector Montalbano is always finding Adelina has left for him in his refrigerator:

1.       Antipasto of assorted Sicilian dishes

a.       caponata – a cold eggplant-and-olive concoction that is a signature of Sicilian cooking

b.      pannele –  garbanzo bean fritter (flat)

c.       stiglioni – another, heftier fritter with some kind of creamy, vegetable filling

2.       Casarecce – a pasta that was new to me – a kind of double-barrelled spaghetti, cut in two-inch lengths – al dente with a fish and eggplant sauce. with a nice aglio olio sauce.

3.       Canolo again, only this time with ricotta and crust broken up. It was the waiter’s suggestion. Maybe they were trying to get rid of it, but that is fine with me. It was divine.

Salerno

Pulling into Napoli. Got an earlier train from Siena to Florence and the earlier Florence-Salerno train was late in leaving. Out the window, Vesuvio looms with its perpetual cloud.

This highspeed trrain is fun. An hour from Florence to Rome and another hour from Rome to Salerno.  I have a feeling the train slows down after Naples.  The people already look like the cast of The Godfather. Now I’m looking forward to some zuppa de pesce or something equally maritime. My cold is better, thanks to Prof. Dr. HadI Newmark’s suggestion of zinc and echinachaea. The Bolognese Rx compounded it with vitamin C, the one in Siena substituted papaya.  

 It seems to be getting warmer – and I am getting happier. My cold is on the ropes, too, despite a chilly room in Salerno. The Polo Nautico is right on the water, not far from the station. But then, nothing is far from the station in this little backwater city. Among backwaters, however, Salerno has to be near the top of the list for spectacular settings. 

The large, deep bay is bounded on the north-west by the Amalfi coast, on the other side of which is Sorrento and the Bay of Naples. That road is one of the great, mountain-cliff-seacoast drives. (in ’78, Eric Monrad and I stayed in Amalfi and took the bus to Ercolano –  the excavation of a smaller city also destroyed with Pompey) In many places, the steep mountainsides are terraced for cultivation, from bottom to top.

This is also the home of the Sorrento lemon, which is hard to find elsewhere, although products made from it are sometimes available. Its sweetness  is what is special about it: people eat them like apples. This is thought to be the result of the unique combination of volcanic soil, mountain shelter, and the unique microclimate.  I may have had one last night – with my miserable, little slice of grilled swordfish. I bit into it, and – sure enough – it was sweeter than an ordinary lemon: still tangy and sour, but a different flavor. (It was also green on the outside, but it was not a lime.) 

The Polo Nautico is a small conference center, and I recommend it highly. Though not in the winter, when it is kind of cold. It seems to be designed to be cool in the summer, with big, high-ceilinged, spacious rooms and lots of marble and ceramic tile. The nautical theme is carried out pleasantly, with delightful terrazzo decorations everywhere. And it is a bargain [but maybe not so much of a bargain in season]. A terrace for dining and hanging out stretches the entire length of the low building, right above the beach. I conceived the theory that usually the main concern here is staying cool. There was no heat at all in my room, until I got the nice desk clerk to show. Me how to turn it on. Then in the resturant, they left the door open to the bar, where there was some kind if party and lots of coming and going to the terrace, all of which produced a draft and I might as well have been sitting outside. They were very happy to close the door when asked, but they kept forgetting.

The southern Italians live up to their reputation – happy and laid-back. I went across the street for a cassoni, which I discovered is an Italian quesadilla. A couple, apparently regulars, were yelling at each other and the manager. No one was really upset, but an Anglo-saxon could never tell. I have witnessed a fair amount of yelling in my few hours south of Rome. But the people are kind. 

The young guys in my compartment, for example, fed me lunch. They were on their way to Catania. It seems the train divides at the big toe of Italy’s boot – a place called Villa S. Giovanni. Half goes to Catania and Siracusa and the other half to Palermo.

I was lucky to even get on the train. I almost cancelled Sicily altogether in favor of a train back to to Genoa, when I learned that the Palermo train was “full”. This, it turns out, was sheer disinformation (the dark side of the southern relaxed attitude). No one thought to tell me that what “full” meant was that all the reservations the station was permitted to issue were taken. I found out by accident, from a nice woman to whom a very harried ticket-seller referred me, that I could  “just get on and sit anywhere; the only difference is that it will cost you EUR 8 more than if you could have booked with me.”  In the event, I found a seat, a free lunch with the nice, young Sicilians their way home to Catania, and the conductor was utterly  uninterested in my Eurailpass. “OK, Good!” said he with the briefest of glances, not even taking it out of my hand. And not a word about a surcharge. They are relaxed here. If they HADN’T been “full”, it would have cost me $13!

On the other hand, I could easily have found myself in Siracusa. I just happened to sit in a car going to Palermo. The sign on the quay monitor said “Palermo”, but as I found out, the train divides before crossing the Strait of Messina into Sicily. Anyway, this appears to be one reason the trip takes so long. The ferry was so smooth I thought we were waiting in the station for a new locomotive or something! I even went and looked out the front and saw a strangely-shaped door at the end of the track, but it didn’t dawn on me that this was the bow of a ferry until we moved off and I saw the another one!  No problem. I have the compartment to myself – now that my cheerful young companions changed cars – and a good thriller to read.

I got most of the way through it after it got too dark to look out the window. The train from Messina to Palermo is VERY local – and almost completely empty, in first class. What I was able to see of Sicily is quite beautiful – lots of citrus trees. Forests of them, actually, crowding up the mountainside, I got another one of those lemons tonight. The waiter assures me that it is Sicilian, not Sorrentino. Anyway, I saw a bowl of them on the serving table. They are small and almost spherical – as opposed to oblong  - and they have a remarkable, spicy flavor. I have the feeling that I ran into something rare. I’ll bet they are what Costco’s Sicilian lemon juice comes from – but, of course, there’s nothing like the fresh juice out of the lemon itself.

Then there was the cannolo for dessert. The waiter said it was the Sicilian specialty, so I had to try it. I have had something like this before [creme-filled crêpe] called cannoli.  Anyway, the fillings vary, I guess, but this seemed to be kind of zabaglione or something similar. The crème was quite firm, though, not at all runny. The crêpe was large, thick, and chewy. Very satisfying.

Siena

St. Catherine of Siena  (14^th C.) is one of two female Doctors of the Church. The title is reserved for those theologians who have made essential contributions to the Church’s teaching. Paul VI gave her and St. Teresa of Avila the honor, in 1970. 

Poor Catherine was also an anorexic – and that’s what they called it even then: anorexia mirabilis, meaning literally “an astonishing lack of appetite”. Still, she worked tirelessly in a hospital for the destitute, until she died young (not surprisingly) at the age of 33.  Meanwhile, she found time to dictate theological tracts and about 300 letters to important people, including the Pope. At the time, he was living in Avignon, but Catherine convinced him to move back to Rome.

The Cathedral of Siena was under construction when Catherine lived here. Like Florence, the exterior and interior pillars of the Duomo have a Romanesque-Gothic cast, distinguished by candy-striping of alternating courses of white marble and a dark green stone, which looks black at close range. The interior is covered with every kind of decoration – almost baroque. It IS baroque in sensibility, if not in style.  In addition to the great frescoes by important artists, the floors cought my attention. The pavement is just as decorated as the ceiling and the walls. There were no pews or chaits in these buildings, so the floors could assist in the teaching mission of the building.

These designs depict everything from the totems of the Italian city-states, to the Sybilles, to biblical scenes. All done in a kind of mosaic of large pieces of colored stone. [There must be a technical name for it, but I don’t know it.] 

The one that caught my attention was a violently chaotic depiction of the Slaughter of the Innocents. The tyrant, Herod, is decreeing from his throne on the left, and at your feet are murdered infants. As you look up there are horses and swords and a crown all jumbled together. 

If you study it, you see babies being pulled from their mothers’ arms by gleeful soldiers. It is dreadful – as intended. It made me think of the principle of double effect: Herod’s intention was to kill one Child; all the rest were “collateral damage”.

Ironically – or possibly intentionally – the life-sized Nativity scene is erected just beyond this scene on the floor, complete with Bethlehem a few feet away, and a huge, electric Star, that is periodically joined by a background of little, twinkling stars. That was actually pleaing – not as hokey as it sounds. What WAS hokey was the canned Xmas music, sung by some pop American choir. This was a lapse of taste. There is so much great Italian sacred music – why do we have to listen to an arranged stretto-canon of Silent Night?  And Morning Has Broken? Give me a break!

I don’t seem to be able to get away from American pop music. Even MINNESOTAN pop music (the hotel restaurant in Granada played lots of Dylan and Prince)! And the hotel here in Siena played non-stop kitsch Xmas music (Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer, and lots more like that), which I couldn’t miss from the breakfast room which was the only place I could find within wi-fi range.

The hotel itself is on the third and fourth (4^th & 5th) floors of an old palace. Very comfortable and friendly, even if I have to walk up the last flight, because the retro-fit courtyard elevator gets you only to the reception desk.  As in Bologna, the location is ritzy – right on Via Banchi di Soppra, which appears to be the main drag of the uppoer part of the old town. There are lots of expensive shops all around: Versace and Une Occitane en Provence are right across the street. Also across the street is the broad ramp leading down to the Campo.

Siena is very hilly. The cathedral is right on top if the main hill, but there are lots more, so it’s a lot of up and down. The Campo is a very large square that is pretty level, in front of the impressive Town Hall (the big tower you see in all the pictures). They have two horse races in it every summer, in honor of the BVM. They are pretty brutal affairs – for man and beast alike – because the jockeys ride bareback and gang up on one another, trying to knock the other side off.  I am not sure this is the kind of honor Our Lady desires!

Anyway, Siena is famous for the hue of its main buildings – especially in the Campo. I found out that iit is due to the iron-pigmented clay used for the bricks of the walls and most of the old buildings. From a distance, they appear rust-pink. The source of this clay is not far away. It is also used to make pigments that are named for the city (adding an “n”): raw sienna and burnt sienna.

Dining here is a bit pricey, but I had a memorable two dishes tonight, at the Ghibellino Osteleria, just down from the Cathedral. The primi was homemade pasta with a sauce of tomato and pancetta. This was not, I think, a long-cooked spaghetti sauce, but simply made from garlic and oil and the tiny lardons with a mashed Roma tomato or two. The secondi was pork tenderloin with prune sauce. The ternderloin is wrapped in a pastry crust and baked, then sliced very thin and served with an elegant meld of prunes and rosemary.  The lovely and helpful high-school girl, who works as night clerk at the hotel and speaks perfect English, recommended the restaurant. When I thanked her and described the dish, she said that it was a typical way to serve pork. I wonder where we get apple sauce. Normandy? England? Or is it a German deal? My guess would be Normandy. I know they use apples with pork there.

On to Salerno tomorrow, where my hotel promises immediate beach-access. (No wonder it’s on sale!) Anyway, it should be warmer there. Not bad here, but still a bit chilly. It’s rather mirabile that the northern Italians sit outside in their sidewalk cafes – all bundled up – in weather that is rather like mid-November in MN (i.e., about 40).