The last few days have seen some very different weather, and given the place a different look, as the temperature hovered a couple of foggy degrees above zero:
Ideal for some of that Tibetan yoga practice! But since I do that wearing basically only my underpants, there are strictly no pictures of that little exercise!
A few terraces further down, the misty riverbank is also good for reciting some yidam mantras. (An activity performed with more clothing on, I should add):
I tried to catch a picture of the splashing water sparkling in the low shafts of sunlight, but I’d need a much faster lens to catch that. All the same, I think the picture does show some of the sense of mystery and peace:
The banks are a bit rocky, so you need to give a little careful thought to the matter of what you are going to sit on. This morning the temperature was properly below zero, giving us whitened hills around and ice on the ground:
Our new cat, or “rescue kitten”, generally known as Gillie (after Julia Gillard), but sometimes as Shadowflit, is now spending most of her time living with the rest of us. This does mean that toes (ours) can be attacked in the middle of the night, but generally is much nicer than having her living in the “office”. At about seven months old she has of course a different character from the nearly 11 year-old “Tashi-of-the-Upper-Terraces-formerly-de-Leichhardt-O’Barry-as-she-was”. G adores T, T’s attitude to G is, I would venture, a smidge warmer than mere toleration. Just a smidge.
As evidence, I adduce a picture of them eating together:
Last night, water all over the floor of the “office-cellar”. Mopping, de-humidifying… Hmm, if this happens often it will be a problem. Strangely, in spite of the continued downpour, it seems to be ok today. The point of origin is still unclear- it just seems to appear out of the floor. The only conjecture I have is that perhaps dry soil with cracks in allowed water to rush through, but now that it is wet it has expanded and slowed the flow.
But yes, the rain continued overnight, turning the river that flows past a bit beyond the bottom of the garden from this:
I’ve been meaning to write about the fact that even here in the secret northern corner of Tuscany you can have a bit of an Irish Traditional experience, provided you are prepared to not be too strict about your definition. We attended a kitchen session down towards the south of Lunigiana, remarkable in part for the presence in particular of Mauro Manicardi of Tandarandan:
Mauro
See, for instance, something about them in English here, or their own site in Italian. He can produce wonderful music from that instrument, and has done a lot of research into the old, almost-gone local traditions.
We have also had a couple of other “kitchen” sessions here near Pontremoli, but I haven’t got the time or enthusiasm to describe them when this, which has nothing to do with what I’m talking about, needs a mention:
With two terriers, one greyhound, and one cat, it seemed clear that there are enough animals here. But what can you do?
To begin with, I noticed a small, scrawny and totally black cat was often not far from the office door, and seemed to be interested in getting my attention, in a distant and nervous sort of way. The reason became clear quite soon: she had a kitten. Well, at first it looked like “a” kitten, totally black like her and quite bold. In due course we saw that she had two more. One little grey one was either deformed or injured. It could not walk properly, only being able to drag its back legs behind it, and it seemed highly unlikely that it would survive until we could get at all near it. There was also a tabby who kept well back.
Now it is obvious that if you take pity on something like this, it is important to realise that once you feed them you really become responsible for catching and neutering them. Otherwise you are just creating more starving kittens. So the campaign began to create enough trust to be able to catch them. Over a couple of weeks the food bowl was brought closer and closer to the office, so that the mother, Nera as we now know her, would even come inside the office door to eat provided I was right at the back of the room. We stopped seeing the black kitten – perhaps it was too bold and fell prey to something larger. We stopped seeing the grey kitten, which, sadly but unsurprisingly, was not up to the task of surviving. The tabby was also coming into the office. Here they are just outside the door, still having a bit of a suckle:
Apart from being underweight, the kitten had conjunctivitis, hence the squint look.
With a bit of string tied to the door handle it was possible to trap the kitten, but the mother was too wily. So the kitten was taken in and taken to the vet. This was just at the time that Julia Gillard became Australia’s first female prime minister, so the kitten was named in her honor. To her friends she is Gillie.
Catching the mother was much trickier, and was only achieved at the cost of some quite serious and painful scratches and bites to Sarah’s arm, which will probably bear the scars forever. However, the job was done, she has been neutered, and although she still lives wild – and probably always will – she is looking better. Nowadays she only has to hunt and scrounge for herself, rather than for her kittens, or to produce milk, or to grow more kittens inside her… Most days she comes for food here, although it will be a while I think before she comes inside again.
Gillard, meantime, is nearly big enough to be neutered herself. Unfortunately Rose, our terrier bitch, is having a hard time accepting that this new interloper is not something to be treated as prey. We are getting there, but it has been a long journey and has a way to go yet, which means that Gillard essentially still lives in the office here, though she comes to spend time with us in the main house in the evening. For the first three months of her life, of course, she never came close to a human being, so at first she was shy. She has, however, grown from a tiny kitten to a small cat, and has quickly learned how to be an office cat: dancing on the keyboard, snuggling on the chair, sleeping between the keyboard and monitor and generally being very appealing. Here is a more recent picture of her taking a Paws Break:
As I said – what can you do? Resistance is useless.
It happened. It went on very late. More than 300 people, many of whom came from all over Italy because, for instance, their grandmother came from here.
I fluffed one line, but my little turn went down well enough – the cheer from the piazza demanded that I take a bow and flourish my hat in the air for a second time. No pictures, however – Sarah was preparing desserts at the time.
The village is a-buzz with excitement and activity! There is a connecting together of electric cables; a welding of steel trestles; a burning-off of the dirt on grilles; a setting up of lights; a preparation of beer dispensers… For tomorrow, our village has its annual festival!
I too am making a small contribution. I shall be fluting my way through a few Irish tunes, accompanied by William, native of this place (though he lived in various countries, including Finland), erstwhile cabaret performer. I was worried that he wanted to provide the accompaniment on his “Band in a Box” keyboard or similar. I think he was thinking of using Celtic Rhythm number 3.
However, I had a cunning plan. I could see that if I proposed hopping between one rhythm and another, he would have difficulties following that with the machine, and would have to listen to me and “vamp”. So at our “rehearsal” two days ago I remained entirely enthusiastic about what he was doing as we worked out what metronome speeds would be needed. Admittedly, I did ask if he could be a little less heavy on the Oom-Pah Um-Pah. It’s hard to put into mere words, but those boom-chikka rhythms with bass guitar, tuba and tambourine are not exactly the feel I am looking for. I did also innocently ask how easy it would be to segue from one tune to another. Lo and behold, he had the idea that maybe he shouldn’t use the rhythm machine at all! He decided it would be better just to accompany me on acoustic guitar because, as he said, the sound is more suitable and he can listen to me and follow the rhythm! The brilliant thing about this is that it’s his idea!
Nick and Sam got married in America, so had their post-wedding bash at the Grain Barge in Bristol at the end of July. I’m not a big Facebook user, but as they used Facebook in part to get the bash together, and quite a lot of people there are users, I uploaded my pictures there. They are nothing special – just a bunch of people chatting, eating, drinking etc. in fancy dress, but if you know any of them it can be interesting. You should be able to see them here.
This isn’t the interesting, focussed blog you might have been looking for…
"Pica Pica" is, as I'm sure you knew, the name for the common magpie. It's no more than a collection of bits and pieces I wanted to make available for friends and family. I have other blogs for dharma related material (at DangZang), and a small one for translation at my work site.
Writing in the Guardian, Julian Baggini referred recently to the tendency of religious people to be critical of political or social wrongs, but to be jolly nice to the representatives of other religions. He repeats an anecdote (from Simon Blackburn) in which the representatives of various faiths react to each other’s presentations, saying, “Wow, […]
It is now 20 years since, as the book itself explains, I was among the students taken by Lama Chime Rinpoche on a pilgrimage to his home monastery in Kham, eastern Tibet. We were the first group of westerners ever to have permission to enter that region. From Beijing via Xining and on to […]
Baroness Warsi has claimed that “intolerant secularisation has to be held back by reaffirming the religious foundations on which our societies are built”, while the Pope is reported to have recently attacked “atheist extremism” and “aggressive secularism”. I’m not at all sure that I would recognise “intolerant secularisation” if I came across it. “Intolerant […]
