The Best of Youth-Reflections on Flooding

Madonna toppled by Hurricane Irene in VT-photo by Jenn Megyesi

The title of this post is taken from Marco Tulio Giordano's 2003 Italian film, La meglio gioventù (The Best of Youth).  If you haven't seen this amazing film yet, you can get the three, two hour episodes on Netflix. I am thinking about the best of my own youth quite a bit these days as I grieve for Vermont, my home State. In Giordano's film,  there is a powerful scene where the two protagonists, brothers Matteo and Nicola, meet in Florence during the 1966 Arno Flood. In it, we see the entire divided community of Florence uniting in spontaneous volunteer brigades to try to save the paintings, books and numerous treasures under water in Florence's famous museums. I am reminded of this scene as I watch images of my home State of Vermont and hear stories from family of similar community efforts there to salvage sodden houses, fields and roads left devastated by Hurricane Irene. 

There are no medieval frescoes or renaissance masterpieces in Vermont. The treasures there are less tangible but just as connected to the lives and history of the place. Rivers and bridges in Vermont are central to its soul.  Seeing footage of covered bridges crumbling under the roiling crush of flooded rivers is terrifying. In aerial photos I can trace routes that I have driven hundreds of time-they are gone. Whole roads have fallen into the rivers.


 I received an email this morning that the route of the Covered Bridge Half Marathon that I ran this summer in Quechee is still in-tact. But the photos of the ragged dirt roads and shredded banks of the river make me fear otherwise.  

Sta. Croce, 1966-David Lee's photo

As a cheesemaker and dairy goat farmer, I cannot imagine what it must be like to lose an entire herd of dairy cows to these raging rivers. Any dairy farmer knows that you interact with these animals twice daily in a mutual relationship every bit as deep as that an artist experiences with the fresh wet plaster of his emerging masterpiece.


 Will this be the best of youth for those young people like my nephew, Brad and my nieces, Sydney and Berkeley, witnessing the destruction of their little home towns? I think so. Yesterday there was a message from Brad posted on Facebook, "I was on Channel 5 news!". He was helping to gut a home destroyed by the flood in Bethel, VT. He remembers the news coverage today, but later he will remember how it felt to work along with his father and neighbors. People bringing everything they had to help-tractors to plow fields at Hurricane Flats where farmer Geo Honigford lost every acre of his organic vegetable crops; food to feed volunteers, housing for whole families of strangers. 


My nieces will remember how their mother, my sister, held her traditional Labor Day food extravaganza, but this time fed people with much bigger appetites-many had spent all day helping Waterbury residents clean-up their flood ravaged homes. They will remember how they could help-how something so terrible could be overcome by the sheer will power of a community coming together to do just that.And this is a treasure as great as any of those lifted from the flooded Arno in 1966, cleaned and restored so that all of us could share it together far into the future.


How to help VT flood victims

Tagliatelle

Our Seminar met just down the street from Trattoria La Torre whose wonderful food Ron and Bill had praised. It took me nearly 6 weeks to get there-a mistake that I hope future visitors to Siena don't repeat. You'll want to eat here your first night in the city.  You should make reservations by stopping by earlier in the day (via Salicotto, 7-9) or phoning (0577 287548). It is a small trattoria with a menu out front-but "Signor Torre" will also tell you what there is to eat. It was no struggle for me to decide on primo as this is what greeted us on entry (thanks to Sarah Chan for her wonderful photos!):

Fresh Tagliatelle and Pici Noodles (tomato, spinach, plain)

The sauce choices were ragu (a typical tomato meat sauce), cinghiale (wild boar). Naturally, we all ordered the cinghiale. Though other contorni do exist, the owner has particular ideas about what to pair with each dish. We were brought potatoes with a light red pepper sauce-tasty but I think a salad would have been a better accompaniment to the rich sauce.

We were going whole hog so we each ordered secondi.  You want a really stout appetite to eat in the Italian style of four courses-and we brought ours. Ossobucco  was the clear choice here. Each of us received an enormous portion. The meat fell off of the bone and melted in your mouth-and the marrow was sweet and velvety.

I have recently pulled out Marcella Hazan's 1962 The Classic Italian Cook Book  which was weeded out of my Aunt Anita's impressive cooking library. I think I'll try to make some tagliatelle of my own tonight-or maybe some ravioli stuffed with goat cheese and parsley. It sure won't be able to stand up to Trattoria Torre fare, but it may bring back the spirit of the wonderful evening.

Paradise lost

Masaccio-1420-Adam and Eve in the Garden

This will be my last post from Siena, barring a late-night burst of energy. Our final dinner is this evening and we will meet tomorrow for our last reading of the poem. I am three Cantos from the end-trying to linger and prolong the experience.

I plan to smooth out some of my posts as I continue reading at home. In addition I still have some dinners to blog about!  The above picture was taken this past Saturday at the  Brancacci Chapel in Sta. Maria de Carmine, Florence. Like many of my experiences here, this one was unexpected. We walked into the tiny chapel and there it was-a gloriously beautiful chapel that we had almost to ourselves. It is a reminder as well that I will be finding treasures like this for a long time to come-little text references that passed me by at the first reading-experiences not yet processed or fully digested to nurture future studies.

Firenze-Spanish Chapel

Thomas Aquinas Educates the Heathens

The experiences that most reach out and grab you might just be those for which you were least prepared. This is certainly the case for my trip last Saturday (July 29th) to Firenze. Ron Herzman (whom I can now confirm is not human-he never tires, never needs to pee and never forgets a detail from medieval history), had offered to go with whomever wanted to the Spanish Chapel of Sta. Maria Novella in Florence. The frescoes in this chapel are in what was the Dominican Charter House, the monastic equivalent of the secular Good Government room in Siena's Palazzo Publico.

The frescoes were done in 1365-1367 by Andrea di Bonaiuto and show the triumph of Christian doctrine and education over worldly goods. Ironically, in this very room in around 1335, the Dominicans condemned Dante's work for using poetry to convey theology. Pretty ironic given that every scene was like an illustration of Cantos 11-14 of Paradiso. Read Dante (via Bonaventure) on Dominic:

"Poi, con dottrina e con volere insieme, con l'officio appostolico si mosse, quasi torrente ch'alta vene preme, e ne li sterpi eretici percosse l'impueto suo, piu vivamente quive dove le resistenze era piu grosse."

Then, with doctrine and with a will, by apostolic license he went forthe like a torrent fed by a deep spring, and his attack struck the thickets of heresy most strongly where the resistance was greatest. Paradiso 12: 97-101. 

The educated triumph

While the frustrated devils are thwarted!

Montaperti-the Battle Won

Our destination-not reached

Montaperti is a small hamlet just 8 km from the city of Siena that figures prominently in 13th century history and in the Commedia. Several of us had wanted to make a pilgrimage there and perhaps pour out libations to the fallen and we got our chance this afternoon. After 6 hours of Dante class, we were ready to stretch our legs and so covered the several blocks to the bus stop quickly. Bus #5 to San Piero or Montaperti arrived promptly at 5:24 and about 12 of us hopped on (the bus leaves from Via Garibaldi just across from the Vecchia Dogana Pizzeria).


The ride was breathtaking-small neighborhoods gave way to freshly hayed fields and thick sunflower crops. Soon we were amidst steep  hills and deep-cut valleys and I found myself imagining the hardships of fighting and holding positions in such a place.

Two years of political maneuvering brought Guelf-controlled Florence to this site on the morning of September 4, 1260. They were an army of 30,000 including men from the towns of San Gimignano and  Orvieto. Ghibbeline Siena, though strengthened by King Manfred of Sicily and his German mercenaries, had only 20,000 troops. But Siena managed to hold the field with superior strategy. Here is wikipedia's take for all you battle geeks out there: Battle of Montaperti

In one of his most memorable mentions of Montaperti, Dante writes traitor Bocca degli Abati into the 9th Circle of Hell for his treacherous betrayal at this battle. Bocca, a Florentine with Ghibbeline sympathies, crosses his own comrades by hacking off the arm of their Standard bearer. Without a flag, the Florentine troops effectively lost sight of their battle leader and were thrown into confusion.

Storm clouds-Montaperti is 2.1 Km walk from this stop

As we approached our stop, dark clouds bristled with lightening and a  storm spread out on the horizon. We were forced to turn back-but not defeated. Our backpack picnic provisions-and their bearers- found their way to Ron's apartment-with its spectacular views of the Torre Mangia and Duomo towers.


We were fortified by Vernaccia, Chianti, Sangiovese and Vino Nobile wines. Grana (a less elegant cousin to Parmesan that I prefer in the same way that I prefer Grade B maple syrup to Fancy) and asiago cheeses, along with sweet cherry tomatoes and rich breads fed us. The culmination of the afternoon was a show of Italian standards to rival any flown in battle-these in the from of Ron's Marinella ties. To paraphrase the great tie-maker himself (Eugenio Marinella): It is the total of the particulars that win the day.

The Standards

Even the tax documents are gorgeous here!

Il buon governo-1474 Ambrogio Lorenzetti

On Wednesday we visited the Archivio di Stato in Siena to view the biccherne or tax documents of the city. Thrilling as this may NOT seem, I think it should be on the Siena Top 10 list. The collection is housed just beside the Campo (Archivio), and houses all of the double city's tax, hospital, birth, baptism and death records dating back into the 13th century. Our objective was to view the covers of tax records from the  financial offices of the Biccherna  and Gabella, and expense accounts from Ospedale de Sta. Maria della Scala.

Early records were kept by French monks in double-entry account books that showed all city revenues and expenses. Sometime in the 13th century they began the practice of binding records between heavy wooden panels with egg tempera paintings. The paintings evolved-starting with pictures of office activities (the earliest we saw was of Brother Hugo sitting at the government tax table with accounting books, bags of money and the seals of the city's nobility in front of him. The city started commissioning some of its great artists to paint the covers with themes of important events in the city's history the year of each bound accounting record. One of my favorites is above- Il Buon Governo presumed to be by Ambrogio Lorenzetti (he did the Good Government frescoes blogged about early herein).

In it, we see the allegorical figure of Good Government sitting at a throne with the wolf that nursed Siena's legendary founders (Senius was the son of Remus, legend is that he and his brother Aschius were also raisedd by wolves after Remus was killed by Romulus at the founding of Rome). Presumably Good Government is overseeing city expenditures and assuring that fairness prevail.

You can trace the history of the city just from the covers of these records (who among us can say this even about our small personal financial files!). During plague years or times of strife, the covers depicted pleas to the Virgin Mary. It says a lot about a city's character that even during hard times they sought to elevate their people with beautiful images.

Unfortunately, no pictures are allowed. I used reproducible images here. You may want to see others by google image searching for them. Here is a nice write up with some of the most wonderful images: Sienese Biccherne

Assisi and San Francesco

"e quanto le sue pecore reomote e vagabunde più da esso vanno, più tornano a l'ovil di latte vòte."

"and the farther his roaming sheep wander from him, the more they return empty of milk to the sheepfold." Paradiso 11: 127-129

St. Francis

 Assisi has both the color and perfume of an olive grove. It is stunning in its beauty and in the contrast between stretches of fertile valleys and abrupt hills. On top of the hills are the towns of this Umbrian region. We passed through the large city of Perugia (famous for candies and for Italian language study programs) and arrived at Assisi at about 9 a.m. The first thing one sees on the approach is a large Cathedral jutting out from squat buildings in the outside town of Santa Maria de l'Angeli. The Cathedral is built literally around the Porziuncola-the small chapel at which St. Francis first prayed and ministered to the poor. In the distance is the sprawling complex of San Francesco-a lower and upper church and large Franciscan monastery that has grown enormously since Francis's death in 1226.

This post will be added to when I get time as it was a momentous field trip. We had an amazing lecture on the frescoes of the Upper Basilica on the life of St. Frances, and I was able to visit the Lower Basilica, St. Francis's tomb, St. Clare's church and tomb and many other sites here. For now, I want to record two impressions: first the natural beauty. The town and countryside just envelope you-the pink stones unique to the buildings hugs the sunlight firmly to it and gives back just enough to light the narrow streets and warm you. It is  a phenomenal place. Second, I was struck by the contrast between the grandeur of the Franciscan institution that grew up around Francis's teachings, and his message of simplicity and hard work.

Dante's words above express this contradiction. As Francis's message expanded, so too did the institutional grandeur of the order. Many resisted but it is a very difficult balance. I will leave you of some images of the day and a promise to expand this post.

Approach to Basilica di San Francesco

The architectural feat alone is almost excessive-the building springs out of the hillside and hovers over one end.

The motto of Franciscans: Pax et  Bonum (peace and moral good)-I found this tile in Italian on a house front.

St. Francis's tomb was a very moving place-a simple tomb with a vault leading down from the lower Basilica. The tiny chapel was lit by candles.