Swing Shift in the City of the Animals

The preceding haunting photos were taken at Teatrino di Norimberga in the Citta della Domenica park outside Perugia, Italy.

Messing About

In honor of this week's Sepia Saturday "girl in a boat" theme, I'll feature my daughter...

Viareggio, 2007

Praiano, 2007

Anzio, 2007 (with her brother)

Puget Sound, 2011, aboard "Gannet"

Passegiata

In honor (sort of) of this week's Sepia Saturday theme, I present this dark offering...

One special pleasure in traveling in Italy is taking a stroll in the evening ("passegiata") with the rest of the populus. And among the many pleasures of passegiata is seeing things you don't see during the day; darkness filters out the obvious and highlights the obscure, it emphasizes objects and relationships that are overlooked in daylight.

Lucca

Maiori

Orvieto

Alive, Dead, or Fake

Orvieto

Siena

Urbino

Arezzo

Borgo Grappa

Playground

Here's my playful take on this week's Sepia Saturday "upside down, the wrong way up, and all over the place" theme.

Brighton, 2005

Citta della Domenica, Tuscany,2007

Anghiari, Tuscany, 2007

Eye, Norfolk, 2005

Cats of Orvieto

Busy getting our house ready to sell, just time enough for a quick post: A small sampling of the feline multitudes in Orvieto, Italy.

Swanning about

This week's Sepia Saturday features a rather ferocious swan encountered while puttering up the canal at Skipton, Yorkshire (2005).

Out for a swim

We were fine until we got within hailing distance of her squad of cygnets, at which point she literally ran us down, snapping at our outboard motor and attempting to devour us, starting at the gunwales.

Out for blood

Sampling the oarlock

We hastily retreated to the more peaceful town centre where the wildlife is somewhat mellower. Although, note as the two mums pose carelessly on shore, the two swans eye the escaped toddler.

Civilisation

Swans were not the only creatures keeping an eye on us.

Canal life

Time standing still

Parade

Another triple meme entry this week!

The splendor of parades for me is just as much, if not more, about the spectators as the participants. I'm always thinking about, say, the crowd scenes and character studies of Leonardo or Breughel... Here are some shots I took during Carnevale (Mardi Gras) in Tuscany, scenes that have not changed much over the last five hundred years...

People and arches, Anghiari

Blaring, Sansepolcro

Costumes, Sansepolcro

Please also visit our sponsors, Sepia Saturday, plus Black and White Weekend, plus The Human Condition.

By request, here's a color version of the first photo. The yellow figures toward the back are 10-foot-tall bees in various archetypal outfits (butcher bee, floozy bee, farmer bee, etc.). (Why? Spring is coming, I guess!)
    

Dabbling in the Past

A triple meme entry this week! Please also visit our sponsors, Sepia Saturday, plus Black and White Weekend, plus The Human Condition.

Bolton Abbey, Yorkshire 2005

The Ruin
An fragment of an Old English poem from the Exeter Book - this transcription taken from the Labyrinth. For a stab at a translation, see the page of Siân Echard, University of British Columbia.

Wrætlic is þes wealstan, wyrde gebræcon;
burgstede burston, brosnað enta geweorc.
Hrofas sind gehrorene, hreorge torras,
hrungeat berofen, hrim on lime,
scearde scurbeorge scorene, gedrorene,
ældo undereotone. Eorðgrap hafað
waldend wyrhtan forweorone, geleorene,
heardgripe hrusan, oþ hund cnea
werþeoda gewitan. Oft þæs wag gebad
ræghar ond readfah rice æfter oþrum,
ofstonden under stormum; steap geap gedreas.
Wonað giet se ...num geheapen,
fel on
grimme gegrunden
scan heo...
...g orþonc ærsceaft
...g lamrindum beag
mod mo... ...yne swiftne gebrægd
hwætred in hringas, hygerof gebond
weallwalan wirum wundrum togædre.
Beorht wæron burgræced, burnsele monige,
heah horngestreon, heresweg micel,
meodoheall monig dreama full,
oþþæt þæt onwende wyrd seo swiþe.
Crungon walo wide, cwoman woldagas,
swylt eall fornom secgrofra wera;
wurdon hyra wigsteal westen staþolas,
brosnade burgsteall. Betend crungon
hergas to hrusan. Forþon þas hofu dreorgiað,
ond þæs teaforgeapa tigelum sceadeð
hrostbeages hrof. Hryre wong gecrong
gebrocen to beorgum, þær iu beorn monig
glædmod ond goldbeorht gleoma gefrætwed,
wlonc ond wingal wighyrstum scan;
seah on sinc, on sylfor, on searogimmas,
on ead, on æht, on eorcanstan,
on þas beorhtan burg bradan rices.
Stanhofu stodan, stream hate wearp
widan wylme; weal eall befeng
beorhtan bosme, þær þa baþu wæron,
hat on hreþre. þæt wæs hyðelic.
Leton þonne geotan
ofer harne stan hate streamas
un...
...þþæt hringmere hate
þær þa baþu wæron.
þonne is
...re; þæt is cynelic þing,
huse ...... burg....

Coffee

Café life — or in this case, caffè life.  Here's the corner bar in San Giustino (Valtiberina), Umbria, where we lived for three months a few winters ago. Valtiberina indicates that it's in the valley of the Tiber River. There's another San Giustino in nearby Tuscany, known as Valdarno, meaning it's in the valley of the Arno River.

At any rate, as with many Italian towns, this café was the all-day hangout for the older men while the women shopped (note the shopping bag, lower-left) and then repaired to their houses to spend the afternoon cooking.  Here the sun had come out and the men were happy to move to the outside tables.

The coffee shops were often staffed by younger women.  Here some San Giustino baristas take a smoke break with one of the locals at the corner of Crucifix Street.

Here's the inside of one of our favorite cafés, Dedalo, which also served pizza.

This café is in Deruta, about an hour away, home of the famous maiolica (aka faience).

And this café is in Ravenna, on the Adriatic coast. As you can see, here are more town geezers hanging about. Some of them appear to have ridden their bikes today.

We were always happy to find a hospitable coffee shop to warm up in after tramping the frigid hilltown lanes.

Monumental

Here's a selection of sticky-uppy things to fit with this week's Sepia Saturday theme.

In the summer of 2005 I escorted my son and a friend to England for a few weeks. We were staying in Oakworth - a suburb, if you will, of Haworth, which is where I spotted this abandoned woolen mill near the steam railway.  Ruin or not, it enhanced my sense of time traveling.

Haworth, 2005

The kids demanded a daytrip to Blackpool and I was happy to oblige.  While they went on rides I wandered the town and beach, as is my wont. While we were here, bombs were going off in London around the corner from what was to be our hotel in a few days.

Blackpool, 2005

Earlier the same year, I'd accompanied my son on a school-sponsored trip to Italy, a highlight of which was an all-too-brief (though stiflingly hot) afternoon in Pompeii. Antiquity which outstrips Yorkshire by a couple of millennia. That's the dreaded Vesuvius looming in the distance. I was struck by learning that, eruptions aside, the Pompeiians suffered many deaths from lead poisoning from their plumbing system which, although comparatively innovative, in an ironic twist was constructed of pipes made from lead that their British slaves had been mining - in Yorkshire.

Pompeii, 2005

I returned to Italy in the winter of 2007 with the whole family, and again those under 20 strongly urged visiting Citta della Domenica, a zoo and amusement park outside Perugia, as a break from cathedrals and museums and tiny hibernating hilltowns. Billed as a rival of Disneyland, it fell several leagues short but provided an interesting afternoon. These towers are new constructions but are reminiscent of the myriad ancient campanili in Italy.

Citta della Domenica (Perugia, Tuscany) 2007