A Last Great Place

I promised one more post about Block Island (also known as New Shoreham, Rhode Island), included on a list The Nature Conservancy started in the early '90s called "The Last Great Places." The single reason this island remains special is that over 40% of it is preserved as open space in perpetuity by the Block Island Conservancy, the oldest environmental protection group on the island. The BI Conservancy, which works to preserve the unique characteristics of the island, also oversees a conservation easement program, which according to its website is a "legal agreement between a landowner and a land trust or government agency that permanently limits uses of the land in order to protect its conservation values." This allows landowners to continue to own and use their land as well as sell it or pass it on to family heirs. Mitchell Farm, featured in Robin Langsdorf's Polaroid transfer in my previous post, was a conservation easement purchase of 22 acres in 2007.

Nantucket has a beautiful, cobblestoned Main Street and a whaling history that made many islanders rich. Martha's Vineyard has lovely Edgartown, the Black Dog bakery, and the bluffs. BI's history does not mirror the history of its neighboring islands, and is far less fashionable than either of them. Dutch explorer Adrian Block charted the island in 1614 and the Old Harbor area was named a National Register historic district in 1974. Just a few of the island's other distinctive features are 17 miles of gorgeous beaches -- each different, with its own character, and all free -- and the Greenway trail network -- which includes more than 30 miles of connecting hiking trails -- and the very cool sacred labyrinth (pictured above), off Corn Neck Road with picturesque views over Sachem Pond toward North Light. This labyrinth is one of my favorite places on the island and is little visited, at least in my experience. As you can see from the photo, the labyrinth is a single, circular path that leads to a center bench and then back out again. It is not a maze, which has several dead ends. It is one of BI's quirky little spots, and as a browser on yelp.com noted, "make sure your stupid, demonic and twice accursed cell phone is off. The labyrinth is a very special and unique place and deserves respect." I applaud this sentiment.

The photo of the staircase and the sea was taken at Mohegan Bluffs, a family favorite, and the other two photos are of the Rodman's Hollow plaque and a view over it. "It" refers to a 230-acre parcel of land that is considered the birthplace of conservation on Block Island. There is a wonderful hike through here and the preserve has the largest population of the state-endangered bushy rockrose in Rhode Island. Additionally, the also-threatened northern harrier feeds and nests here, and the only natural population of federally-endangered American burying beetle east of the Mississippi lives in the hollow.

For an island where there is supposedly not a lot to do, it surprises me that we always leave with a long list of things we didn't get to. This year, because of the hurricane, we didn't get to enjoy tapas on the great lawn of the Atlantic Inn. Or drinks on the fabulous porch of the National Hotel. Or sandwiches at Three Sisters. But at least we had an outdoor, candlelit dinner at the wonderful Manisses Hotel and we had the opportunity to see the new animals at the Abrams family farm (behind the hotel) and pet a baby alpaca. Then there was dinner at The Oar, games of bocce at the house we rented, Blocks of Fudge, Mansion Beach, feeding the ducks at the duck pond...the sparkling, late days of summer are over for the year on Block Island but they are still fresh in my memory. And one of these years I'll visit in the fall, which I'm told is an equally beautiful season.

'Littlefield Farm with Ferry,' Polaroid Transfer by Robin Langsdorf (Robin B. Langsdorf Photography, http://www.robinlangsdorf.com/)

I never would have imagined that it would take over eight weeks before I posted again, but then again, I also couldn't imagine that Hurricane Irene would cut my summer vacation on Block Island short (and leave us without power for five days) or that my daughter would need to have her appendix out (she also became a bat mitzvah in the middle of all this!) or that we would have a freak snow storm in October (that again left us without power). Anyway, we're all busy, but rather than continue to list reasons why it has taken me so long to return to my blog, I'll just get started again. I have so many wonderful things to share!

First, back to Block Island: we (my husband, daughter, brother-and-sister-in-law, and nieces)returned to BI for our seventh visit in late August, after not going for two summers in a row, and were reminded of how much we love this island. I've sometimes contemplated beginning a love letter to BI with that somewhat common phrase, "At the risk of ruining a good thing,...."; but I don't believe I have to do that because I don't think Block Island is on the brink of being ruined or is about to receive thousands of new visitors. The islanders have a very strong sense of what they want their island to be, which is decidedly not to be another Martha's Vineyard or Nantucket, which is refreshing. I have been to Nantucket three times in my life and once to the Vineyard, and they are both lovely; but I vastly prefer BI. to me, it reminds me of another one of my most favorite places on earth, Corsica. That may seem incongruous -- a mountainous, Mediterranean island and a relatively flat New England one -- but Corsicans, too, know what they don't want their island to be (the Cote d'Azur, the Italian Riviera) and they are fiercely protective of it.

One of the joys of Block Island is its twice-weekly farmer's market, held on Wednesdays and Saturdays. When we first visited, in 2001, the market only had about a dozen vendors, but today there are about twenty-five. There is some island produce, smoked fish, and baked goods for sale at the market, as well as island specialties like Littlefield Bee Farm honey products and Island Mist bath and body products, but there are also local artisans and it is this combination of vendors that makes the market so fun. It's rather remarkable how much time you can spend here after you stop to talk to everyone! Plus, as at other markets around the world, you can learn an awful lot about a place and pick up some great tips.

This year I discovered a photographer, Robin Langsdorf, who displayed her collection of unique Polaroid transfers, like the one featured above. These transfer works are only one project of Langsdorf's -- she's a terrific portrait photographer as well, and her travel work is impressive, too -- but she devotes her booth at the farmer's market to the transfers, which all feature Block Island scenes. (You can see the full range of her work at her own website, above, as well as at the Spring Street Gallery, across the street from the lovely Hotel Manisses and the longest running gallery on the island.) Langsdorf majored in journalism in college and was always very enthusiastic about taking photos, but it wasn't until she was traveling around Nepal and Varanasi, India twenty years ago that she was inspired to "get more serious" about developing her passion for visual storytelling.

I immediately fell in love with the Polaroid transfers, and Langsdorf, too, told me that when she learned the Polaroid transfer process she "began a love affair with this beautiful, painterly, impressionistic photographic art form. Sadly, Polaroid is no longer making this film." I knew I wanted to buy one or two of her images, but was having difficulty making up my mind which ones to choose. So I did something I always, always advise my readers to avoid: I didn't buy anything, figuring I would go to the Saturday farmer's market and decide then. Naturally, there was a hurricane, and naturally, I had to leave the island empty-handed. [Note to travelers: do not repeat my mistake, and adopt my (mostly observed) motto of "When in doubt, buy it now!" The likelihood of being able to retrace your steps to a particular merchant when it is open is slim, and, well, there's always the possibility of a natural disaster. One has regrets only for the roads not taken -- or the object not purchased!]

Before I had to evacuate the island (I didn't really have to evacuate, but it sounds much more dramatic) I did stop by the Spring Street Gallery to pick up one of Langsdorf's business cards, so I was able to get in touch with her later via e-mail, and I'm now the happy owner of the Littlefield Farm transfer above as well as another one of Mitchell Farm, which is, according to the Block Island Conservancy website, "one of the island's most cherished vistas, over 1,000 feet of road frontage with open field landscape." The Mitchell Farm Campaign raised the funds needed to complete an easement acquisition, and again to quote from the website, "those 1,000 feet are as important to Block Island's sense of community as is the overlook at Rodman's Hollow" (more about Rodman's Hollow in my next post). Family member Adrian Mitchell noted that "my values about what is important in life were shaped right here on Mitchell Farm in view of the sea and these green pastures. I want future generations to see this place as I have and be nurtured by it." My transfer prints are in appropriately rustic, wooden frames, and they are daily reminders of my many visits to this special island.

As for Langsdorf, she recently left for Brazil, where she has family members, and she is working on a series of Polaroid transfer prints collaged with photos of her family taken during the early part of the 20th century in Prague. It's set to debut in 2012, and I, for one, can't wait to see it!

Required Reading. The tenth anniversary of September 11th was a few days ago, and though I'd initially thought to mark it in some way on the 12th here on my blog, I picked up this wonderful, brilliant book on Monday morning and knew I had to postpone my entry. Islam Explained by Tahar Ben Jelloun (translated from the French by Franklin Philip, The New Press, 2002) is a book you need to read, right now. Jelloun, a French writer of Moroccan descent, also wrote a previous book you may remember, Racism Explained to My Daughter (New Press, 1999, hardcover; 2006, paperback), originally published in France and translated into twenty languages, which is also a must-read.

Jelloun was moved to write this volume when he heard his own children repeat some inane remarks about Islam, and he thought that if Islam was misunderstood within his own family, how distorted was it in other families? He then read (or reread in some cases) books written by specialists, of which there is no shortage in France as Islam is the country’s second religion after Christianity. And then he started writing, with the goal of extracting the essentials and presenting them simply, clearly, and objectively for young readers in particular but also for adults (and I'd like to stress that this really is also a book for adults). It's “the book of a father who, talking to his children, would like to talk to all children everywhere,” and what Jelloun is seeking to do is “tell the story of Islam as it is recounted in serious books, to present it as something belonging to the universal heritage of humanity.”

In his Preface, Jelloun writes what is certainly among the best sentiments I’ve ever read about tolerance. He says that beyond the knowledge Americans may have of Islam and beyond a desire to know “the other” or “the foreign,” there is also a need to keep the doors of one’s own culture open. “We can enrich ourselves only by exchange, in cultural and economic intermixing, in the dialogue between different peoples. For this, we must not indulge in racism or impose our cultural and religious values on others. It must not be said that “Western civilization is superior to other civilizations,” nor claimed that the world is experiencing “civilization and culture shock.” Cultures travel: they move around and get into homes without even being invited. The only dominant culture is that of intelligence, knowledge, and sharing. In this way culture does not dominate, but opens doors to those seeking to learn and to know what is going on outside their own tribe.”

Written in a straightforward question-and-answer format, this little book is only 113 pages long, and you can, uninterrupted, read it in about an hour. It is utterly clear and simple, yet packed with key words (hegira, chachada, sura, Sunnis, Shiites, mullah, hijah, chador, hashashins, hadits, shari'a, fatwa, etc.) and key concepts, such as "Tolerance has meaning only if it is mutual. Intolerance is not accepting and even rejecting those who are different from oneself. It fosters racism." I was also fascinated by a list of words Jelloun provides that originated in Arabic. These are now used in languages derived from Latin, and in other languages as well, but most people don't know their origin. They include admiral, alcohol, algebra, artichoke, carafe, caravel, carousel, chess, divan, emerald, giraffe, lemonade, magazine, monsoon, rice, saccarine, safari, spinach, taffeta, tarragon, and zenith.

This is one of the most powerful and unsentimental books I've ever read, and I urge you to go out and find it and read it and share it with everyone you know. Maybe, just maybe, Jelloun's words will resonate widely.

Other related reads I particularly admire are:

*The World of Islam: Faith, People, Culture (Bernard Lewis, W. W. Norton, 1992).
*Islam: A Short History (Karen Armstrong, Modern Library Chronicles, 2000). In this slender but fine work Armstrong wisely warns that "Western people must become aware that it is in their interests too that Islam remains healthy and strong. The West has not been wholly responsible for the extreme forms of Islam, which have cultivated a violence that violates the most sacred canons of religion. But the West has certainly contributed to this development and, to assuage the fear and despair that lies at the root of all fundamentalist vision, should cultivate a more accurate appreciation of Islam in the third Christian millennium."
*A History of God: The 4,000 Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam (Karen Armstrong, Alfred A. Knopf, 1993).
*Oriental Treasures in the Mediterranean: From Damascus to Granada (Henri Stierlin, White Star, 2005) which features Islamic architectural, artistic, and scientific masterpieces in the Near East, Asia Minor, North Africa, and Spain.

And, see a terrific article I was unable to include in my Paris book: "In the Heart of Paris, an African Beat" by Seth Sherwood, The New York Times travel section, 18 December, 2005.

Do you subscribe to Bonjour Paris? If you -- like me -- do, then you already know it's the best site around for All Things Paris. If you don't, and you -- like me -- are a Francophile or someone who is only un petit peu interested in Paris and France, you should start your subscription immediatement! BP is a terrific resource for anyone planning on visiting Paris for the first or fiftieth time, and it's also a great time-waster. What I mean when I say that is that once you're browsing around the site you can really get sucked in and it's hard to leave, and an hour can go by really quickly. BP is practical, but it's also a great place for daydreaming about Paris!

Run by American expat Karen Fawcett, the site is a real community of people interested in a wide variety of topics pertaining to Paris and to France. I've not yet met Karen, but I interviewed her by telephone for my book (pages 632-635), and after only a few minutes I knew we were kindred spirits. She is very sympa and savvy, and as she noted in a posting on May 1, 2010 (her twenty-second anniversary in Paris), "after all these years, more of me is French than American...Paris has captured my heart and part of my soul."

In her post this week, 'Meandering in the Paris 7th,' I was reminded of my own year in the 7th arrondissement, where I lived as a student in 1979 with a French family dans la rue de Grenelle. One of Karen's neighborhood favorites is the Rodin Museum (the photos above were taken from the museum's website), which was and is one of my favorites, too. As Karen notes, if you have a young visitor with you (under the age of 8) you can stroll the museum's really pretty gardens for free, something I did about twice a week as I was also working as an au pair for three children, the youngest of whom was 3. The museum is located on rue de Varenne, only one parallel street away from rue de Grenelle, so from my family's house I could be at the Museum's gates in about seven minutes. Laurent and I were most definitely regulars.

The gardens are truly a special place in Paris, but the museum is, too. In addition to all the works by Rodin, there are some paintings that were in his personal collection, like the one above by Van Gogh. When I first saw 'Arles: View From the Wheat Fields' (1888) I immediately loved it, and even this many years later I still feel the same way about it. It was a natural for inclusion in an exhibit entitled 'Vincent Van Gogh: Timeless Country - Modern City' held at the Complesso del Vittoriano in Rome that ran from 7 October, 2010 to 6 February, 2011. I didn't see the exhibit, but the accompanying book is of very good quality and is quite interesting (edited by Cornelia Homburg, Skira, 2011).

When I read how fond Karen was of the Rodin Museum in her post, it reminded me that I hadn't enthused about the museum in my book; that of course is the limitation of a book -- I can't, after all, include everything I love about Paris in a book because it would be as big as a house -- but is the opportunity of a blog. However, in my book I feature an entry on the Jeu de Paume museum in the 'Paris Miscellany,' which I included as a way to remind readers not to overlook Paris's wealth of small museums. (When I was a student, the Jeu de Paume housed the works of the French Impressionists -- it's now reserved for temporary exhibitions -- and for many years I was still able to remember the exact placement of each painting in every room.)

I am an enormous fan of the 7th arrondissement -- and another museum gem in the neighborhood is the Musee Maillol, at 61 rue de Grenelle -- as well as of the Louvre and the Musee d'Orsay; but as I note in my book, "I will never forget how standing and looking in the Jeu de Paume made me feel about art, about my life, about the extraordinary place that is Paris." In any of Paris's small museums, you may very well have your own illuminating thoughts.

If you've read my Istanbul book you know that Claudia Roden, one of my most favorite food writers and cookbook authors, shared the name of one of her favorite restaurants in the city, Borsa in the Istinye Park mall (there are other Borsas in Istanbul, but this is the one she was taken to by her friends Nevin Halici -- who was the first to travel around Turkey collecting regional recipes -- and her brother Feyzi Halici -- a poet and longtime senator who promoted regional cuisine by organizing cooking competitions and gastronomic congresses).

I regularly use several of Roden's cookbooks at home, including Arabesque (Knopf, 2006), Mediterranean Cookery (Knopf, 1992), The Book of Jewish Food (Knopf, 1996), and both of her books on Middle Eastern Food (the original edition was published in 1974 and the new one appeared in 2000). But a few weeks ago, I bought Roden's new cookbook -- The Food of Spain (Ecco)-- and I think it might be her best book yet. It's just fabulous. I've been dipping into it at random and can't stop reading it.

If you have my book on Northern Spain: from the Pyrenees to Santiago de Compostela (Three Rivers Press, 2003) you know that I have a soft spot in my heart for Spain -- I went there with my high school Spanish class, and it was my first trip outside of the U.S. So with Spain in mind, I went last weekend to see 'Spanish Paradise: Gardens of the Alhambra' at The New York Botanical Garden. What a wonderful garden they've created in the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory, and there is a companion exhibit, 'Historical Views: Tourists at the Alhambra,' in the Mertz Library. This is presented in collaboration with The Hispanic Society of America, which addresses every aspect of culture in Spain, Portugal, Latin America, and the Philippines and whose collections are unparalled in scope and quality. In the gardens surrounding the Conservatory there is Poetry Walk, featuring sixteen poetry boards with the poems of Federico Garcia Lorca , and there are tapas and sangria in one of the cafes as well as flamenco in the Ross Performance Hall. The whole thing was so impressive I became a member!

'Spanish Paradise' closes in just 4 days, so if you are living in or visiting the New York metropolitan area make haste and get there quick. And if you love Spain as much as I do, you'll agree that The Food of Spain is a must-have volume.

Continuing with my recommendations for some recent good reads, this post is devoted to just one: Hotel Il Pellicano (Rizzoli, 2011, $60). It landed on my desk on one of the hottest days of the year in New York, and I was mesmerized by the cover image. It seemed incredibly appropriate that I read this during the dog days of summer, so I immediately dove in. With text by Bob Colacello (former film critic of Village Voice and editor of Interview, author, and special correspondent for Vanity Fair) and Bronwyn Cosgrave (fashion historian, journalist, and author), this is mostly a book of photos, fabulous photos, by John Swope (who established himself as a photographer in Hollywood in the 1930s and after the war became a Magnum photographer; he became an investor in Il Pellicano and documented the 1964 ground-breaking of the hotel); Slim Aarons (who began his career as official photographer for the U. S. Military Academy at West Point and later became a photographer of the jet set for Life, Town & Country, and Harper’s Bazaar; he aimed his lens at Il Pellicano guests from 1967 to 1991); and Juergen Teller, a German photographer born in 1964 who is credited with campaigns for Marc Jacobs, Missoni, Helmut Lang, etc., and whose work has been shown at Tate Modern and MoMA – he and his family were invited to Il Pellicano in June 2009, when he also captured the hotel’s Globetrotters’ Party on film.

Readers of my Tuscany and Umbria book know that Dianne Hales -- author of one of my most favorite books, La Bella Lingua: My Love Affair with Italian, the World’s Most Enchanting Language (now a Broadway Books paperback) who maintains a great site you should know about, http://www.becomingitalian.com/ -- is a great fan of Il Pellicano, the hotel perched on a hill overlooking the coastal Tuscan town of Porto Ercole. And, in the May 2011 issue of Dream of Italy, she relates that the first time she went to the hotel it took her breath away: “I want you to bring me here every year for the rest of my life,” I said to my husband Bob. That was 1990 and we have indeed returned annually. How could we not? No place on earth may be more romantic.”

Though I’ve not been a guest at Il Pellicano, I agree that it is incredibly romantic (but in fairness I must admit that the village of Ravello, on the Amalfi Coast, might give Il Pellicano some stiff competition!). In the same year that Dianne Hales first visited the hotel, I was very fortunate to be invited for drinks there that summer by the then-proprietors of the Cala Galera Marina, who were old family friends of my good friend Charles (readers of my book may recall that Charles contributed an account of his salad days in Porto Ercole on pages 71-75). I no longer remember if we had drinks in the Il Pellicano Bar, at the poolside restaurant, or the all’aperto bar – I mean, I was given a tour of all the public areas of the hotel, but most of the time I was practically pinching myself to make sure I really was in this place that didn’t even seem like a hotel. It felt more like a grand party, one that I wasn’t invited to officially but that I was in the middle of nonetheless. It was intoxicating, stunning, hugely appealing, and downright sexy.

As Bob Colacello writes in ‘A Visitor’s Note,’ when he finally visited Il Pellicano, after hearing about it from friends, he wanted to stay for two weeks, or two months. “At Il Pellicano, the world beyond disappears. It’s a place to rejuvenate, to have a real vacation, not to network, or to see and be seen…it’s Italy the way you dreamed it would be.” He also accurately points out that both Il Pellicano and Porto Ercole are such an anomaly. “Mass travel has created mass development and mass disappointment,” and places that were once unspoiled – Marbella, Mykonos, Puerta Vallarta, etc. – have utterly changed. Porto Ercole is better known today than it was in1990, but still, I meet very few people who’ve been there. As I wrote in my book, “Porto Ercole is a pretty, pleasant coastal village with a refreshing lack of sites to see, though it’s noteworthy for the fact that Michelangelo Merisi – Caravaggio – died here in 1610. And when the Argentario area came under the control of Spain in the late 1500s, Philip II had the Forte Stella (“star fort”) built, seeking the advice on the fort’s design from Cosimo de’Medici, who recommended Bernardo Buontalenti and Giovanni Camerini. The Argentario was described as “scarcely undiscovered, but neither is it a byword among Mediterranean resorts” by Doone Beal in Gourmet (July 1988), and I think this is still accurate.” Bronwyn Cosgrave, in her essay, ‘A Tuscan Home Away From Home’ shares the opinions of several people very familiar with both the hotel and its locale. One, Frida Giannini – creative director of Gucci -- says, “There is no shopping in Porto Ercole and no showing off at Il Pellicano.” Another, Daisy (Countess Desidera) Corsini – of a very distinguished and princely Florentine family dating back to the 13th century; you may be familiar with her family’s Palazzo Corsini at via del Parione 11, one of the most prestigious examples of the Baroque style in Florence -- says that Il Pellicano, just like Porto Ercole, “has never been a jet-set place like Sardinia or St. Tropez. It is about family. Some people come here and say, “Where is Prada? Where is Gucci?” We tell them: “Go back to Rome.”

Il Pellicano (the hotel) was conceived by Michael (British) and Patricia (American) Graham, who, in 1962, “accomplished ‘what a lot of people talk about, after their third martini, but seldom do – they chucked all their so-called “security” and changed their lives” as San Francisco Chronicle Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist Herb Caen noted. Bronwyn Cosgrave reveals that after the Grahams were refused a loan from the Italian government that they’d counted on, the financial backing for the hotel came from a consortium of close friends. Michael reportedly gathered about twenty friends together and told them if they’d contribute, they and their families could come to the hotel gratis. But Michael Harris, an advertising executive who’s been staying at the hotel with his wife since 1967, said Graham “forgot one thing. Some of these people had very large families. They ate him out of house and home! So Il Pellicano never made any money.” The hotel was acquired by Roberto Sció in 1979, and his daughter, Marie-Louise Sció, an architect, oversaw a two-year restoration of the hotel in 2006. She was aiming for a very homey look, but “it all had to look Pellicano.” Bronwyn Cosgrave observes that “by using Pellicano as an adjective, Sció alludes to something its guests understand – that is, Il Pellicano is as much an attitude as it is a hotel, combining the old-school polish of Roberto Sció with the freewheeling spirit of founders Michael and Patricia Graham.”

Il Pellicano (the book) is a beautiful, must-have family album of la dolce vita. I love the thick cloth binding, and how the endpapers feature a red wave design on a bright white background. I think I love the black-and-white photo section by John Swope a tad bit better than the color images, but only just a tad. Missing, to my mind, is pictures of the restaurant with some accompanying recipes (after all, it has earned two Michelin stars) and of guest rooms – I, for one, would surely glean some ideas from the rooms’ style and décor. But, I suppose that since the hotel is closed from mid-October to mid-April, the focus of the photographs is outdoors, and its publication now is not accidental as it’s a true song of summer: I can practically smell the suntan lotion while I turn the pages. A nod to the level of service at the hotel is found in the book’s acknowledgements by Roberto and Marie-Louise, who express their thanks to the hotel staff “with special mention for those boys and girls years ago who worked so hard jumping up 94 stairs and down 94 stairs just to bring water to the guests on the beach” (before they got the license to build the elevator).

Bob Colacello recalls ordering a club sandwich and fresh limonata lunch down on that cement beach (which, though it doesn’t sound like it is actually very chic and is reached by those many stairs or by taking the outdoor elevator) and revelling “in the rays of the Tuscan sun. That’s an Il Pellicano day: living in your bathing suit, reading a fat royal biography or slim avant-garde novella, breaking for dips in the warm, clean, emerald sea or in the very civilised saltwater pool.”

Hotel Il Pellicano is a member of Relais & Chateaux and its Michelin-starred restaurant is under the direction of Chef Antonio Guida. Room rates range from 420-880 euros and suites from 765-1900 euros.

Porto Ercole is in the region of La Maremma, and a good resource for the whole area is http://www.tuttomaremma.com/ (click on the British flag for the English version). Other nearby places to visit that I recommend are Orbetello, Porto Santo Stefano, Grosseto, Pitigliano, and Isola Giglio, where I had to buy two pairs of plastic blue sandals because I lost a single sandal (from my left foot) in the deep and clear water of the Tyrrhenian Sea. I still wear them today anytime I’ll be on a rocky beach.

I've been reading a number of books that I didn't know about when the manuscript for my Tuscany and Umbria book was due, and they've each been great, so I'll devote the next few posts to these very worthwhile tomes. I enthusiastically recommend them for companion reading while traveling, armchair reading if you're daydreaming about going to Italy (or have recently come back), or, in the case of a few, culinary reading if you're inspired to get in the cucina and start cooking! Here are the first two below:

How Italian Food Conquered the World by John F. Mariani (foreword by Lidia Bastianich, Palgrave Macmillan, 2011). Mariani is the food and travel correspondent for Esquire, wine columnist for Bloomberg News, and the author of several books, including The Dictionary of Italian Food and Drink and, with his wife Galina, The Italian-American Cookbook. (He's not the John Mariani who founded Banfi Vintners in 1919.) He's also been referred to as "the most influential food-wine critic in the popular press," so it will not come as a surprise to know that he tells the story of how, indeed, Italian food has conquered the world with great spirit and wit. As Mariani writes in his Introduction, we can go to a restaurant anywhere in the world today and chances are very good that we'll find Italian dishes listed on the menu. Mariani has witnessed, over the last four decades, how the status of Italian food has gone from a "low-class, coarse ethnic food to the most recognizable, stylish, and influential cuisine in the world." And how this happened "has as much to do with changing ideas of ethnicity and a surging interest in wholesome ingredients as it does with taste and fashion." He shares the stories of a great number of people, restaurants, and products, such as Mamma Leone's, Elaine's, Patsy's, Sirio Maccioni, Mario Batali, Pizzeria Uno, Ernest and Julio Gallo, Robert Mondavi, Alfredo's Ristorante, Mary Ann Esposito, Marcella Hazan, London's River Cafe, Sophia Loren, Rice-a-Roni, and Chef Boyardee -- did you know the name derives from Italian immigrant Hector Boiardi? He worked as a chef in Cleveland and then opened his own restaurant, called the Italian Immigrant, and began canning his own sauces and then spaghetti. He provided the U. S. military with canned spaghetti with tomato sauce during World War II, and after the war he made new labels for the cans featuring his photo. He also changed the name to a phonetic spelling so Americans could pronounce it easier -- Chef Boy-AR-Dee (but most Americans still mispronounced it as Chef Boy-Ar-DEE, as they do today).

"Italian food," says Bastianich in her Foreword, "is simply gratifying, effortlessly delicious, and nutritionally sound...It is safe to say that Americans have a love affair with Italy and its food and that they aspire to live the Italian style and eat the Italian way." This is absolutely true, but it wasn't very long ago that Italian food was considered inferior, especially to French cuisine. Mariani notes that Italian food just about everywhere outside of Italy was "regarded as little more than macaroni with red sauce, chicken parmigiana, pizza, and "dago red" wines. I highly recommend his enjoyable chronicle of a now nearly universally loved cuisine. (One small quibble: this book would have benefited from the services of a good copyeditor as there are a number of annoying typos.)


The Reluctant Tuscan: How I Discovered My Inner Italian by Phil Doran (Gotham Books, 2006). This is one of those Tuscan memoirs that I was prepared to dislike simply because I didn't like the title. And, as I note in my book, do we really need another Tuscan memoir? Like others I didn't think I'd like, this one, too, proved me wrong, so yes, I've added it to my (sagging) shelves and I'm recommending it to you.

Doran was, as you may know (I admit I didn't recognize his name), a successful Hollywood screenwriter and producer whose wife, Nancy, a sculptor, saw their life together heading in a dead-end direction so she went to Italy and bought a crumbling farmhouse for them to fix up. She didn't consult Doran first, so right off the bat you can imagine how at least some of this story goes. But you can't imagine how truly hilarious their straniere in Paradiso story is, and how lovely, and beautiful, and memorable.

In the telling of the story, Doran also enlightens readers to numerous Italian traditions, customs, and vocabulary, which I particularly love. So for the word cantina he explains that this is the "heart and soul of every Tuscan home," and if we think it's the equivalent to the American den, the English drawing room, or the French parlor we're wrong. "Every Tuscan home, no matter how humble, is guaranteed two things by law: a forno for baking bread and a cantina where the family can make wine. No one is guaranteed a bathroom, but every citizen must have their pane e vino."

Initially, Doran really has no intention of actually living in Tuscany, let alone fix up a house and deal with all the local bureaucracy and the village personalities. But eventually, he warms to Tuscany, writing that "there is a fabric of life here, a texture that enfolds you in a way that as a young man I might have found smothering." He also comes to understand how much a sense of place can shape a person, and he believes there is no greater difference between Italy and America than the relationship to our natural surroundings. Though Tuscany is much older than America, it is actually more unspoiled, Doran writes, and "Tuscany is the reality, where our suburbia is the re-creation of that reality." So our neighborhood parks are really just re-creations of meadows, our malls are re-creations of villages, and swimming pools are re-creations of ponds. All of which has the effect of making our experiences one step removed from the immediate impact of life. "Our lives in the 'burbs are clean, efficient, well organized, and essentially soulless. And I would have never understood that if I hadn't come to live in Italy."

There is one tale I won't spoil here but will only say that it involves one of the workmen, Umberto, and 'The Sopranos,' and when I read it I was practically gasping for breath I was laughing so hard (and when I read it aloud to friends they were laughing, too).

Yes, you really do need to read one more Tuscan memoir.