Day 4: Sunny vs cloudy (a test)

Posted on July 29, 2012 by The Daily Cure

I don’t know about you, but I find nonstop, sunny weather vaguely boring. My upsy-downsy tendencies need a touch of pathetic fallacy every now and then. Fog! Rain! Elements that howl! Nothing like a good grey, blustery day to set the mood straight, blow out the cobwebs and drive away the headache. Life just isn’t blue-skied 24/7, so isn’t it suitable that our climactic wallpaper reflect that fact? But I’m curious. How do you feel about it? Using the beautiful Atlantic Coast of the Arcachon peninsula as your subject, tell me, which do you prefer?



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Day 3: By hand, by heart

Posted on July 28, 2012 by The Daily Cure

An experiment in blogging
inspired by the signage
in Cap Ferret.
(This is for Ron.)










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Day 2: Shutters

Posted on July 27, 2012 by The Daily Cure

A walk around Cap Ferret is a tour through color, all of it showing off like a group of giddy starlets against a beautifully dull backdrop of sand, weathered wood, and the ebbing and flowing tide. Factor in a frequently grey and overcast sky, and you get the picture. The colors, at their most beautiful, are those splashed on the fishermen’s cabins that line the Bay. I always wonder what inspires people to choose the colors they do. How they settle on the shade they want to frame their view of the world until the sea air fades it down to a weak coating of “barely there.”








[It’s interesting to compare this graphic freedom to the restraint of Bourgogne. Here in my first post, more shutters, but in a controlled color palette. “The Importance of Blue.”]

Posted in COLOR, FRANCE, OUT & ABOUT | Tagged , , , | 3 Comments

Day 1: Where the world is your oyster and vice versa

Posted on July 24, 2012 by The Daily Cure

Recently back from stunning Cap Ferret on the Arcachon Peninsula in S.W. France, where I was finally able—between sun, sand, various bottles of white and red Bordeaux, and inimitable French style—to shake off my Milanese back ache. This is a world that takes over your own, redefines your priorities, fills you up, empties you out and sends you on your way new and improved.

NOTE: Yes, there were still sibling squabbles and the interminable Italian homework to grapple with (that’s a story for another day), but something magical was at work despite the domestic cacophony which defines us and travels with us wherever we go. I’ve noticed that the best solution to children’s fighting is to get them out the door. And here, “out the door” meant “into the water,” and salt water seems to put an end to even the most violent of disagreements. They vanish without a trace never to be seen again, like footsteps in the sand at high tide.

The bay at low tide, on a brilliantly sunny day.

The presqu’île (“almost an island”) is French shabby-chic with a bustling, though small-scale, oyster and fishing trade right in its midst. And this reality—and it is the reality of the few thousand people who inhabit this strip of land year round—is what makes this place so beautiful. The small towns dotting the Bay of Arcachon cater to your needs just enough, but don’t ever abandon their own reason for existing. And that reason is dependent on a fragile ecosystem whose very shifting moods and seasons, ebbs and flows, insure that Nature is more important than you are. And therein lies the reason to relax. It’s all so much bigger than you.

The Atlantic Ocean seen from Le Truc Vert, on the very same sunny day.

Existing on a tiny width of land between the mighty Atlantic ocean and the calmer Bay of Arcachon, the peninsula puts you within a bike ride’s distance from the idyllic Bay with its dramatic high and low tides to the east and the crashing waves and wild dunes of the Ocean to the west. In between: vast expanses of pine, sand, and a yellow flowering scrub that make this place one of those rare spots on Earth that seem to be clinging to Land’s End.

This is just an overview. In the next few posts, I hope to show you more.

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Transitions: Getting there

Posted on July 3, 2012 by The Daily Cure

There is nothing about the drive to Bougogne that isn’t, in its own way, picturesque and captivating. Between Milan and “nowhere in particular” in the middle of France, there is one beautiful sight after another. Castles. Alps. Amazing tunnels. Valleys. Grasslands. Herds of cows. Ancient towns. Chateaus. Cut cut cut, like a well-edited film. No time to tire of monotony, because the next major feature is just beyond the curve in the road. And yet, the drive can get long. So when we turn off the French expressway, at long last, onto the “side” road that takes us to our destination, I feel a certain Pavlovian-Proustian-Whatever-You-Want-To-Call-It joy with every bump, pothole and badly engineered twist of the road. We’re here!

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Milan color story #6: Heat wave yellow

Posted on June 19, 2012 by The Daily Cure

I didn’t blog yesterday. Couldn’t. The Southerner in me dictated inactivity. It was just too damn hot. You could have fried one of those goose eggs I wrote about on the sidewalk. Or on your car hood. Or on your own forehead for that matter. It’s a brilliant combination isn’t it: a stagnant economy and a heat that prohibits any accomplishment more ambitious than blinking. But be careful, if you blink, to put on your fine Italian shades, because the sun is blinding.


And there’s a color that goes along with this heat. It’s the yellow of the yolky center of the sun, splattered on earth just in case we should forget it’s heating up out there. Merciless yellow. Aggressive yellow. Emergency yellow. It’s not widely used here, but when it is, you can’t avoid it.


That last picture is from a poster for Letizia Moratti. She was running for mayor of Milan last year. She lost. I was preparing then to write as I’m writing now about the heat, but it was too hot then. Just like it is now. Too hot to blog. Too hot to do anything. So the images sat for a year, waiting. You see, this is a seasonal woe. And it’s the reason the Milanese run for the hills and the sea as fast as their legs or Fiats will carry them. You can’t abide this hot yellow heat. You just can’t.


You close your blinds. You sit in the dark. You lie still and imagine that a cool wave is lapping over your ankles. When the dark night falls, the heat abates just enough. You sleep with the sounds of the city simmering outside the window. This is summer. This is Milan until September.

[If you enjoyed this post, you might also like the post about Milan color story #3: Pink].

Posted in AROUND US, COLOR | Tagged , , , , | 6 Comments

You, too, are an honorary Italian

Posted on June 15, 2012 by The Daily Cure

I apologize in advance to my Italian readers who may find this post terribly cliché or just simple-minded on my part. But this is one of those things that, as an American and an outsider, I find both endlessly entertaining and somehow frustrating.

Something that absolutely cracks me up in Milan is the way American names have been used to name streets. Two examples come immediately to mind. Via Giorgio Washington and Via Tommaso Edison. Yes, you read that correctly. Giorgio and Tommaso—both great Americans. Apparently it was the tradition before the internet turned us all into citizens of a very polyglotty world, to call foreigners by the combination of their Italian-ized given name and their actual family name. That makes me Carlotta, a name which I like, but which doesn’t in the least fit who I actually am.

(NOTE: Italians don’t actually force the name Carlotta onto me, but they do struggle a bit with the pronunciation of Charlotte. The way we Anglo-saxons swallow the second syllable just isn’t easy for an Italian to do. Every syllable is important and plays a part in their musical language. So I get called Char-LOT quite, well, a lot. Or CHAR-LOT, where the syllables bear equal weight and the “char” comes out as it would in the word char-broiled. Such is life.)

But back to the amusement at hand. The illustrious gentlemen above, aside from the Giorgio and the Tommaso I’ve already mentioned, would therefore have been called Andrea Jackson, Abramo Lincoln, and Alessandro Hamilton. Some of your names, in case you’re curious, are as follows:

Janet – Gianna
Suzi – Susi (short for Susanna)
Anne – Anna and Anne – Anna
John – Gianni
Diane, Diana – Diana (with the i being pronounced like a long e)
Cecilia – Cecilia (except those c’s are pronounced ch)
Michele – Micaela
Daniel – Daniele (and that nickname, Catfish, would be “pesce gatto”)
Judith – Giuditta
Ginger – Zenzero (this is a direct translation, using the word for the spicy root, but this name doesn’t exist in Italian…

…which leads me to another peculiarity of Italian naming. If I’ve understood correctly, you can’t just go off and, like Frank Zappa, choose Moon Unit for a name. Or Spike. Or Edge. You have to petition for the right to do so. I have an Italian friend who wanted to name her daughter Andrea, even though it’s considered a boy’s name, because she liked the sound of it. To hear her tell it, there was no end to the bureaucracy involved, and fortunately, she was victorious in the end. (Maybe things have changed. I humbly invite any Italian readers to correct me on this.)

I can’t blame her for undertaking the struggle. I’ve always found the pool of Italian names limiting—all being connected more or less to saints (though there was a spike in the 70’s in the use of names, such as Kevin, which were made popular by American TV shows). Being a Southerner, I miss the use of last names as first names. It was lovely growing up surrounded by strong, interesting women named Nelson and Wallis. It’s hard to get enthusiastic about and-yet-another Francesca no matter how lovely a person she may be, and then there’s the problem of how to keep them all straight. Which Francesca is on the other end of the phone saying, “Hi, it’s me, Francesca”?

Sometimes I like the Italian version of a name better than I like the English one, and vice versa. I like William, but I’m not crazy about Guglielmo. I don’t love Hilary, but I think Ilaria is a spectacular name. And so it goes. If you’d like to have your name or user name translated, let me know. I’d love to try!

Posted in ITALY, THEY SAY | Tagged , , | 15 Comments

Goose eggs

Posted on June 14, 2012 by The Daily Cure

The fact that simply walking out the door in Milan is synonymous with seeing something I’ve never experienced before rekindles my passion for this country daily. And often what I’ve never experienced before is something edible. And almost always that thing which is utterly new to me, is not only not new here, but part of the way things were, once upon a very long time ago. The old is constantly reborn in the guise of modern adventure. I’ve long lost count of the comestible “firsts” I’ve experienced since moving to Italy. And just the other day, I added another to the innumerable list: goose eggs.

They were nestled comfortably in the window of my favorite butcher shop, Macelleria Walter Sirtori in Via Paolo Sarpi. The place is a working museum of food culture, a monument to old-fashioned, made-to-order service, and a mecca for the urban soul in search of the genuine, the real. Hence, the basket of large eggs, front and center adorned with a red ribbon and drawing a crowd. As the cashier explained to me, “We only have goose eggs when we have them.” Ah, I see. Naturally.

I love eggs. I’m allergic to them, just slightly, but that’s not enough to dampen the attraction. They are just so damn beautiful. Perfect. Little oblate packages of life, little universes encased in porcelain. These were clearly bigger than chicken eggs, smaller than ostrich. Some were perfectly ivory, others mottled with being scrubbed almost-clean. And their freshness was somehow made evident by the hand-written card: FRESH GOOSE EGGS — 2 EUROS EACH. (Type-setting doesn’t compete under the circumstances, does it?) I took two, enough to make an enormous frittata for four.

Back at home, I felt almost intimidated by the barnyard wonders. They were so, well, big. And when I attempted to crack them against the rim of the bowl, their thick shells resisted my feeble whacks. They required tenacity, certainty. A small degree of meanness. Bam! That did it. Out plopped over-sized yolks and whites which whisked easily into a light fluffy mass. The frittata was more or less a success, the flavor of the eggs being simultaneously more delicate and more decisive than chicken eggs. Hard to explain. I can’t say that I loved them, nor that I’ll repeat the purchase. But the experience—and that’s the important bit—was delicious.

Posted in ITALY, SAVORING | 4 Comments

Confession #6: Oh the irony.

Posted on June 13, 2012 by The Daily Cure

I started this blog because I was, at the time, under-employed. Being observant, writing, pondering, and photographing seemed like the best ways to fill my economically-challenged time. These were skills I’d built a career on, but they are my loves in any case—a vocation unto themselves—and they gave me the means to build a bridge between the people I love “over there” and the experiences I’m having “over here.” But when a project came knocking with actual euros attached, I had to park the blog and say “Yes.”

So the culprit of my absence was, of course, work. Or, as it likes to think of itself, “Work! Work! Work!”—all brashness, explanation points and self-importance. “Work” seemed to know no limits and leeched into every minute of every day. Instead of being occupied with barn swallows and jerusalem artichokes, antique linens and il dolce far niente, I was consumed with that most Italian of consumables, pasta. My client was a pasta maker from Benevento, Italy. Rummo Lenta Lavorazione. In a nutshell: A family-run business espousing a “slow” food philosophy and an appreciation of the (truly) finer things in life. Everything, in short, I’d been trying to blog about all along.

Ma, ironia del destino… But, as fate would have it, there was nothing slow about the work in question. It was fast and furious, marked by macaronic meetings, bursts of Latin temper, thousands upon thousands of emails and phone calls all with the same urgent, though simple, goal: perfezione e subito!—two concepts I’d previously found mutually exclusive, but hey, one can always revisit old assumptions.

In perhaps the most exhilarating cultural immersion I’ve experienced since moving to Italy, I was invited—sometimes pulled—into an industrial family’s world, where father and son work side by side, with all the cinematic complexity which that relationship entails, and where pasta is the metaphor by which any mystery of life can be understood. Creativity, energy, what-if?—all spewed forth with volcanic force. (I suppose proximity to Vesuvius is bound to affect one’s character. How could it not?)

It was terrifically fulfilling, in a manic-depressive, perfect-storm kind of way (I do like drama). But it was also taxing beyond my wildest imaginings. And the taxes I paid cut deep and wide. There was less time for family. Scant time for reflection. And, alas, no time for the blog. And these compromises were a bit more than I’d bargained for. And ironically, as I was suffering them, I was creating a mid-nineteenth century world of hot air balloons, horse-drawn harvests, mystical pocket watches and lazy clouds floating over lovingly cultivated hills.

The rush is behind us. The first phase is underway. And though some projects remain in the finishing phases, I’m enjoying the chance to breathe and to prepare pasta dishes instead of just write about them. The fast has been replaced by slow, in a heartbeat. I suppose balance is the elusive, hard-earned prize, though I wonder in my heart of hearts if it isn’t over-rated. The ups and downs, the fasts and slows, are so much more…interesting.

NOTE: Graphic design by Irving & Co./London. These people can do wonders with ink, paper and cardboard, no?

Posted in CONFESSIONS, ITALY | Tagged , , , , , , | 4 Comments

Hanging right out there

Posted on June 12, 2012 by The Daily Cure

‘Tis the season—well, actually, when isn’t it?—to eschew your fine urban frocks and to hang out unselfconsciously on your own balcony.

‘Tis the season to be plucking dead leaves from your geraniums. Watering. Humming a mindless tune. Perhaps sipping on a gin and tonic or a summery Lambrusco. Studying your across-the-street neighbor’s bizarre activities. Watching the parking police hand out fines like they were going out of style. Feeling slightly smug and homey. Studying the clouds rolling in or, alternatively, the depths of the electric blue arching overhead.







‘Tis the season for being lazy. For doing nought. For storing up thoughts and philosophies. ‘Tis the season for soaking up the city. Being one with its endlessly entertaining texture and vibe. But be warned: as invisible as you may feel, if you are on your balcony looking at the world, the world is probably from some some well-hidden position looking at you. Or the relentless sun has aimed its damaging rays your way. In any case, you may want to consider doing as some Italians do and hang your green protective curtain. But then again, what’s the point of hanging out, when you’re more or less closed in?


NOTE: In Italy, when someone is stoned or incredibly spacey, it is said that they are fuori come un balcone. “Out, like a balcony.” I’ve always liked that one.

Posted in ITALY, WHAT TO DO | Tagged , , , , | 4 Comments