Same-Sex Dancing

Here's a lovely terra cotta relief of My Rare One and I celebrating Pride Month! Actually, we bought this a few years ago in Italy, at a garden centre just outside the tiny Tuscan village of Vinci (where Leonardo da Vinci was born).

You wouldn't believe all the trouble we had getting this damn thing home. Because it's breakable, I put it in my carry-on, wrapped up in t-shirts to cushion it. The airline said no, it couldn't go on board the plane because I could use it as a weapon and hit someone over the head with it. So we had to frantically rearrange our two carry-ons while in the security line and then check one so it would go under the plane. All the while holding up this huge line of impatient people behind us, of course.

Anyway, it did ultimately get to Edmonton in one piece and now every summer it graces My Rare One's backyard cedar fence.

[Photo by Debra She Who Seeks]

Witchy Brooms

I have a real thing for witchy brooms and I'm always on the lookout for them when traveling. I saw these lovely brooms a few years ago when we were in Italy. They were lying about in Monterosso, one of the picturesque Cinque Terre villages on the Italian Riviera.

I'm convinced these brooms belonged to a local strega (witch) who was stockpiling them for a midnight ride with her sisters.

I saw some great witchy brooms this spring in Japan too. These beauties were spotted at the Asakusa Sensoji Temple in Tokyo. Perhaps a local witch was moonlighting as a groundskeeper?

And I found these in mountainous Takayama, tucked away behind historic government buildings dating from the Tokugawa Shogunate (Edo era). As you can see from the snow in this photo, local witches really needed those plastic snow shovels too!

[All photos by Debra She Who Seeks]

Casato Prime Donne, Part 2

After siesta time, we were given a tour of the wine-making process and the cellars where the wine is aged in huge wooden barrels. It was fascinating and impressive!

It was cool and dim in the cellar. There was art here too.

After the tour, we arrived back in the small gift shop where wine could be purchased. The staff were experts in packing the wine in special styrofoam containers for safe transport home in our luggage. Because I am allergic to red wine, we didn't buy a bottle of Brunello but got a nice white wine instead.

Our intention was to drink the wine on our next anniversary in 2009. Well, we forgot. 2010 came and went too, with our bottle of wine still gathering dust on the wine rack. But this year we made a determined effort and remembered to open our special wine on our anniversary.

It was a wonderful remembrance of our perfect day at Casato Prime Donne.

[Photos © 2008 and 2011 by Debra She Who Seeks and My Rare One]

Casato Prime Donne, Part 1

My Rare One and I are not big into wine so when we visited Tuscany in 2008, we only toured one winery. We visited the Casato Prime Donne in Montalcino, a region famous for its red Brunello wine. Montalcino is south of Siena and Florence and in the late Middle Ages, it suffered greatly in the power struggle between those two city states.

The Casato Prime Donne is owned and operated entirely by women, a rarity in Italy's male-dominated wine industry. This assertive feminist connection was the drawing card for us, not the wine!

But speaking of the wine, it is aged in the Casato's beautiful old stone cellar house --

There was lots of art displayed on the buildings and grounds -- see the white ceramic doves high up under the eaves on one side of the building?

We arrived at siesta time after lunch when everything was closed, so we spent about an hour walking around the surrounding vineyards and countryside. The soil here is heavy, dense clay which is ideal for only two things -- growing grapes and making terra cotta pottery and other items. No wonder those activities were traditionally Tuscany's two main industries!

Harvest was just starting on the day we were there and already, the fields were dotted with many bright plastic containers full of grapes. My Rare One had a lovely conversation with some women harvesters even though no one spoke each other's language. She can talk to anyone!

Tomorrow -- a cellar tour!

[Photos © 2008 Debra She Who Seeks and My Rare One]

Photo Tag!

Thanks, Julie at The Domestic Witch and Faerwillow at ~serendipity~, for tapping my shoulder in the Photo Tag game currently making the rounds! The rules are:

1. Go to your first photo file and pick the 10th photo in it.
2. Tell the story behind the photo.
3. Tag 5 other people to do likewise.

Here's my photo:

This is the Duomo in Florence, Italy, a huge cathedral built at the height of Florence's power and wealth as a city state during the Renaissance. Its massive dome (seen here over intervening roof tops) was an engineering marvel at the time and later inspired Michelangelo when he designed the dome of St. Peter's Basilica in Rome.
I took this photo in early October, 2008 from the outdoor terrace restaurant of the Uffizi Art Gallery. My Rare One and I had just spent a lovely morning viewing the great art masterpieces of the Italian Renaissance. This day was a dream come true for me and I shall always remember it.
Now, here's who I'm tagging, ha ha!
Jana at The Little Black Book
Twain12 at Eye in the Sky
Donna B at Mystical Journeys
Karen at This Old House
Patsy at Musings on a 100lbs+ Weight Loss Journey

Samhain Preparations

Last October, my Rare One and I were in Italy. Among other things, we enjoyed a wonderful visit to Cinque Terre, which is the collective name for five tiny towns close together on the Italian Riviera. In the town of Monterosso, I spotted these beautiful witchy brooms carefully stacked against a small retaining wall. They were obviously someone's working brooms waiting there for future use. But I knew they were not just anybody's brooms nor were they just for any kind of work . . . . They must belong to the local strega and her coven . . . . Samhain is coming! The veil is thin. We fly at midnight!

St. Francis of Assisi

Today is the feast day of St. Francis of Assisi. I've always been fond of the story of St. Francis and his complete devotion to the spiritual ideals of Christ. At this time last year, my Rare One and I were in Tuscany. We drove to Assisi in neighbouring Umbria for an afternoon. Assisi is a magnificent hill town, beautifully restored and maintained. How evocative it was to wander the same streets as St. Francis and his followers!

The one thing I wanted most to see in Assisi was Giotto's frescos of the saint's life in the Basilica of St. Francis. It was like a dream come true to see those famous medieval paintings. When we entered the Basilica, a Franciscan monk determined what language we spoke and then gave each of us a small holy card. The front featured Giotto's painting of St. Francis preaching to the birds. On the back was printed the beautiful and profound prayer of St. Francis:

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.

Where there is hatred . . . . let me sow love.

Where there is injury . . . . pardon.

Where there is discord . . . . unity.

Where there is doubt . . . . faith.

Where there is error . . . . truth.

Where there is despair . . . . hope.

Where there is sadness . . . . joy.

Where there is darkness . . . . light.

O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek

To be consoled . . . . as to console.

To be understood . . . . as to understand.

To be loved . . . . as to love.

For it is in giving . . . . that we receive.

It is in pardoning . . . . that we are pardoned.

It is in dying . . . . that we are born to eternal life.

I think that glossy little card was the most meaningful and valuable thing I brought back from Italy. Now, I'm not a big collector of holy cards. I'm not even a Christian. I think it touched me so much because the card was a simple but sincere little gift of welcome, offered to commemorate an important spiritual experience. And it did precisely that.

Il Gatti d'Italia (Part 3)

We saw a couple of cats in the charming Tuscan town of Vinci, where Leonardo da Vinci was born and raised. The first cat, a tabby, was sunning himself on a piazza. He was obviously a well-fed pet who was friendly to us, but not to the point of letting himself be petted.


The second cat was pure black and sunning himself on a car in a front yard. I didn't even attempt to disturb him. This is one of my favourite pictures from our entire trip!

Il Gatti d'Italia (Part 2)

This charming scruffball lives at the Coliseum in Rome. Apparently many Italian historical sites are full of feral cats who keep down the rodent population on behalf of the Tourism Department. These feline civil servants manage on their own for survival but if times get lean, they are fed by special volunteers called "Gattare" (cat ladies). The cat we saw at the Coliseum was obviously used to being a celebrity. He would not let anyone touch him, but he posed quite deliberately for photos by his adoring public. In the gift shop, you can buy little brass figurines of the Coliseum Cats in various poses, that's how famous they are.

Il Gatti d'Italia (Part 1)

Okay, so enough with Michelangelo, Renaissance art and goddess hi-jinks at the Vatican. Now I'll blog about what you really want to know, namely, what are cats like in Italy? There seem to be many feral or half-feral cats, so it was hard to get close to them. Even those which were clearly pets were stand-offish. None would let me pet them. I called "kitty, kitty, kitty" but no response. Then it struck me that, of course, these cats don't speak English. So I called "gatto, gatto, gatto." Still no response. They did, however, snicker at my English accent.

In Which We Honour Magna Mater

I had brought with me from Canada two tiny replicas of the Great Goddess of Willendorf, the oldest representation ever found of the Divine Feminine. To honour the continuing presence of the Great Mother in this sacred site, we each placed a replica behind two columns at the very centre of St. Peter's Basilica, near the statues of St. Helena and St. Veronica. I placed my offering to the Goddess with this thought in mind:

Magna Mater,
Great Mother,
I honour you and
I remember you,
even here.

How long these offerings to the Divine Feminine remain in the heart of St. Peter's depends, I suppose, on the thoroughness of the Vatican cleaning staff. There is, of course, a good chance that the cleaning staff are women. I would like to think that when they find the Goddesses, they will simply smile and put them back!

In Which We Infiltrate the Vatican

I read that St. Peter's Basilica in Rome was built on what was once the site of the Temple of Magna Mater, the Great Mother. In fact, some of the stone from that pagan temple was used to build the huge church that was the first centre of triumphant Christian religion and power. At St. Peter's, the Divine Feminine's place was appropriated, both literally and symbolically, by the Patriarchal Male God.

The simple fact that there is a Christian church squatting over top of a Goddess temple does not mean that the site cannot be used for its original purpose. So following our guided tour of the Sistine Chapel and Vatican Museums, my Rare One and I slipped back into St. Peter's Basilica by ourselves. At the centre of this overwhelmingly opulent church is a sculptured bronze canopy surrounded by huge statues of saints. Under the floor beneath this canopy are the tombs of all the popes from St. Peter onwards. My co-conspirator and I decided that this was the perfect spot in which to honour the original tenant of this site, the Great Goddess. Details of our ritual tomorrow!

Our Michelangelo Road Tour

I admit that I deliberately got my Rare One hooked. It started innocently enough when I slipped her a copy of The Agony and The Ecstacy, Irving Stone's wonderful novel about the life of Michelangelo. After she finished with that, though, she needed a bigger fix -- the movie with Charlton Heston and Rex Harrison. From then on she was hardcore, man, a full-fledged Michelangelo junkie. Just like me (*sob*).

So our trip to Italy became the Michelangelo Road Tour. In Florence, we saw his painting of the Holy Family in the Uffizi Gallery, then his magnificent David in the Accademia Gallery, along with the "Prisoners" statues. We visited Michelangelo's tomb in Santa Croce church. Leaving Tuscany, we went on a special trip to Rome just to see the Sistine Chapel ceiling, the Last Judgment, the Pieta and the dome of St. Peter's. But still it was not enough to satisfy our Michelangelo cravings! We took another day trip to Carrara, the Tuscan mountain town where Michelangelo obtained the pure white marble for his sculptures. We toured a marble mine and saw the house Michelangelo lived in while supervising the quarrying of his marble.

Now we're back in Canada, in Michelangelo rehab. But it was worth it!

Under the Tuscan Sun

It has been a dream of mine, ever since I was a teenager, to visit Florence, Italy. It only took 35 years, but the dream has finally come true! My Rare One and I rented a villa just outside Florence with three other friends and we have just spent two wonderful weeks exploring Tuscany. It was harvest time when we were there. I feel like I have also reached harvest time in my own life, when finally I can reap some of the rewards that I spent so many years working to attain. Over the next little while, I'll blog about a few of our experiences and adventures in Tuscany.