Italy

Music is a moral law. It gives soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, and charm and gaiety to life and to everything.Plato

The 55-meter tall Tower of Pisa (Torre di Pisa) is the freestanding campanile (bell tower) of the Cathedral of Santa Maria Assunta. The marble-covered tower leans at about 4 degrees and took almost two centuries to be built (1173-1372). Inside the belfry there are seven bells, one for each note of the musical scale.See also: Santa Maria AssuntaExternal links: Piazza dei Miracoli - Leaning Tower of Pisa (Wikipedia)(Why are we posting about Pisa? Click here for an answer)Versione italiana

Speakers of other languages are often surprised to find that, in English, it is possible to string several adjectives together in one sentence and that there is an accepted order for these adjectives, according to their meaning. We say, for example, "a nice young man" rather than "a young nice man". The native speaker usually uses the correct order automatically and does not have to think about it but the English learner needs some rules to hold on to, so is taught that the "opinion" adjective comes first, then the "size" one, then the "age" adjective, then "shape", "colour", "nationality", "material" and "purpose" ["a nice, big, new, rectangular, brown, British, wooden dining table"].We were practising such combinations today in class and, towards the end of the lesson I asked students to use three adjectives together in a sentence describing a person and another three in a sentence describing an object. One student wrote,"My English teacher is a beautiful, middle-aged, Welsh woman."Besides admiring his good judgement in his choice of "opinion" adjective, I could have hugged him for having the gallantry to leave "size" out of it and for not writing "old". What's more, he even remembered that I am Welsh! Could this mean that I am getting somewhere in my campaign to convince Sicilians that "Inghilterra" is not Britain and that Britain is not England? No.... that would be too optimistic!Weren't these the days?Image: WP Clipart

Well, if you've seen one mozzarella dairy you've seen them all. Or so I thought. Until I bumped into Raffaele Barlotti at his dairy's bar one Monday evening. Over a caffe' he invited me to come back the next day for a look around.I arrived at about 10:00 am the next morning. After just five minutes, my tour guide Sandro at Caseificio Barlotti, I forgot about the dozen or so times I have seen mozzarella at work as a chaperone on the obligatory school field trips. This time seemed like the first time. Sandro decided that we should begin in the production area which was in full swing. But first, he sais, I needed a little protection,. A pair of blue plastic baggies that I just slipped over my shoes and I was ready to go.Ready to observe all the action of mozzarella making Paestum style . So much activity going on all around. I listened attentively as Sandro explained the cheese making process...First of all...100 % buffalo milk...from buffaloes milked two times a day on Barlotti's dairy. Then a series of steps such as acidification and coagulation. I watched as the curd was broken up...the serum separated from the curd...Every now and then, Sandro told me to step back. This was the phase in which boiling water was added to the curd. Then, the cheese maker with his wooden magic wand stirred and stirred until he magically transformed the broken up curd into something smooth and beautiful.At this point, the mozzarella was almost complete. The mozzarella balls that we all know and love could be formed by hand or by machine. Either way, their last stop was into a tank of water to cool down. Then transferred into saline tanks so that the cheese can absorb some of the salt...some of the flavor. Fresh mozzarella that if conserved properly (4 to 10 degrees Celsius in the lovely liquid that it was sold with) for 8 days.As much fun as I was having in the production area, Sandro suggested we go and see the buffaloes. And why not? First a quick walk through the milking room to see where the buffaloes are milked, two times a day...at 3 am and 3 pm. All by machine with just one worker to man the equipment.Then I was ready to see the buffaloes. And there were plenty of them. First, the older females...some relaxing in the sun. Others eating an early lunch of straw, hay and corn. It was entertaining to watch a few who would toss up the mixture in the air with their snouts to search for the sweet dried corn.Before I could ask where the little ones were, Sandro explained that they were in quarantine...After a week or so with their mothers, the law requires that they are separated from the older ones. We stopped by for a visit.After several months in quarantine, they (females) would then be free to eat drink and be merry until the ripe old age of three. When the child bearing milk producing years would begin. Where their milk would be used to make mozzarella or other products such as ricotta, butter, caciocavallo, provola etc. Available for sale online, in their shop, or even in their small restaurant which is open for lunch. Over a glass of buffalo milk, I learned about how precious those buffalo were. Not only for their milk...but for their meat as well. :Lean. High in protein. Low in calories. And maybe on my next visit I'll try some. In Barlotti's small restaurant. A small table in the garden. A few slices of salami produced with buffalo meat. A side of ricotta. A few boccocini di mozzarella...and a glass of wine.Yes, that's what I'll do.Caseificio BarlottiVia Torre di Paestum 1, Capaccio Paestum SalernoTel. +39 0828811146Fax +39 0828721047

Regular readers of this blog will remember when I have written about our friends, Dinah and Allen and the place that they own in nearby Lucignano.  They have been having a lot of work done to the place and the wonderful terrace was turned in to a builders’ store yard.  But now the work is finishing; Allen is about to come for a stay; summer is arriving; so Dinah wanted to clean up the terrace add some color and make it an inviting place to sit. She asked me to go with her to help pick out plants.  Ohhhh, yeah, she really had to persuade me.  Nothing I like less that looking at and buying plants.  HA!     One afternoon, we went out to my favorite nursery and Dinah helped the local economy by buying a nice selection of plants.  The next day was cloudy and a good day to get all the plants in the ground. Here are the results.                       Here’s Dinah!             Dinah thinks that I was being sooooo helpful.  Little does she know, that like many gardeners,  I am always looking for more space to plant.  I was really just ‘colonizing’ her terrace.   Now if I could get her to buy a hot tub….

We were walking down to Sericciolo a few days ago to look at the progress of the bridge that’s been out for many, many months and ran into Enrico, the guy whose garden we graze on. “The most rain in 200 years,” he said, glancing up at the sky. And then there was the water rushing past the bridge. Usually it’s barely a trickle this time of year. Now it’s got some serious whitewater to it at times. Lots of water has consequences. Good and bad consequences I suppose. It makes your pictures look bad. Well, not really bad, but it looks like you put your picture in Photoshop and cranked up the green like an addict cranks up the crank. But really, the view below is the view you get when you take the narrow little road from Fivizzano to Comano. You’re almost to Comano, the Castle tower at Castello is about to come into view. There’s a space to pull off, pretty much the first one you’d dare use. Then this: See what I mean? Oh, yeah the lens had a smudge the size of Kansas on it, but what you see is pretty much the new growth green, scoured by constant rain until it’s polished like the silvery ball embedded in a pretty girl’s tongue. We’re looking at the edge of the Tosco Emiliano National Park. It’s pretty country all around. And if you noticed the picture way at the top, you’ll notice snow. It’s late May. What’s that doing there? Odd year, innit?

Suddenly, New York is awash in futuristic bike-stands, leading to typically New York laments.

Maybe it was a fad. After all, the torre pendente (leaning tower) of Vernazzano is just across the border from Tuscany, and was also built way back when. Granted, not as glorious or beautiful as its more famous counterpart in Pisa, but leaning nonetheless. Truth is, while the architects did of course know what a… (more)The Note Another Leaning Tower…? appeared first on ItalianNotebook.

Matthew McConaughey has an actor's movie breakout in Jeff Nichols' "Mud."

Fountain by the sculptor Arnaldo Pomodoro, in Piazza della Stazione (Train Station Square).(Why are we posting about Pisa? Click here for an answer)Versione italiana