Thank you to all you new subscribers!  I hope my blog is fun, uplifting and useful to you! 

I just drew three names from my mixing bowl !

The big winner is Tressa!  She wins the $20 gift certificate to DB.

The two copies of Hidden Branch go to Lisa Faber and Linda Garner

Winners, please send me your snail mail address at ggvan2@gmail.com so I can mail your prizes.

As a consolation prize, I have some beautiful bookmarks for Pieces of Paris as well as a bookmark with all the Alex and Briggie book covers on it.  If you are interested in receiving one or more bookmarks, just send me your snail mail at the above address!

Friends, please visit my new website at http://ptsdweb.com.  If you know anyone with this disorder, this could be the best Christmas present you could give them.

All the Christmas Shopping is done (thank Heavens for Amazon), however the house in in turmoil because I haven’t finished decorating.  Our whole family (including our grandsons!) will be here for Christmas!  We are so excited to have a Christmas Eve pageant again for the first time since the kids have grown up.  We have a baby Jesus (Micah) and Joseph (Jack), but either my daughter or me will have to be Mary!  We need a granddaughter!  We will then have an Italian spread of meats, cheeses, fig jam, and flatbread or bread along with my special Christmas trifle (recipe below) and a dessert as yet to be determined.  After the little ones are in bed, we will put together a very challenging puzzle of the ceiling of the Sistene Chapel that I bought in Rome at the Vatican last May.

David and I will not be going abroad this year, because I have plenty of material for three books already!  We have decided to give each other a trip to Jackson Hole in the spring for our Christmas gift.

G. G.’s Christmas Trifle

• 1/2 Angel Food Cake broken into chunks
• 2 large cans of pears
• 2 large pkgs vanilla pudding (cooked)
• 2 cans cherry pie filling
• 2 pts. whipping cream (whipped)
• 1 small pkg slivered almonds

Using a glass punch bowl, crumple angel food cake into the bottom.  Pour about 1/2 the pear juice over cake.  Arrange pear halves so they show on the outside of the bowl. Pour hot cooked pudding over all.  Top with canned cherry pie filling, making sure that plenty of it shows on the outside of bowl.  Put whipping cream over all and sprinkle with almonds.  Enjoy!!!!

Before I begin to describe my roadtrip with my sister there are a few things you need to know.  We are "Gibson Girls" and share a few traits that made my husband e-mail us that when apprised of our coming, half of Santa Barbara was evacuated:

1.) Due to various causes, both Buffy and I have acute short term memory loss.

2.) We have trouble reading maps or following directions, and my rental car didn’t have enough power to run my GPS.

3.) Any kind of electronic device immediately absorbs the "Gibson Curse" when we try to use it.

4.) We were both very tired.

5.) Whenever we have a problem of any kind, our immediate response is to burst into gales of laughter until tears are running down our cheeks.  (On a prior roadtrip, this phenomenon was illustrated by our behavior following my receipt of a ticket for going 90 in a 70 mph zone.)

So our roadtrip started in Irvine, CA, as we headed for the Getty Villa (museum) in Malibu.  We got there fine.  Our troubles started when we decided to use the IPads they provided for us with a guided tour of the villa and its statues.  We simply could not figure out how to use them.  After several patient guards helped us, we were still in the dark.  The Gibson Gremlin had definitely made an appearance.  We stood in the middle of the villa, choking with laughter as we tried to bring up the sculptures we were looking at.  Finally, I succeeded in bringing up the Roman statue of Hercules.  However, the dialogue was in Spanish!  More laughter!  After a cursory view of the Getty’s Roman treasures, we decided to eat.  I had a plate of cheeses, raisin toast, and nuts and dates.  It was delicious!

Then we were on our way to Santa Barbara via Highway One.  Neither of us had ever made the drive before, and it was absolutely spectacular, reminding me much of the terrain in Greece.  I told my sister that this was her European trip. Highway One is definitely the long route and we arrived in SB at around five o’clock to find that we had no reservations in the hotel I had reserved on Saturday.  The hotel was also a vast disappointment.  Instead of a "mountain retreat with a view of the coastline and city of Santa Barbara", it was in Goleta, hard up against the Highway 101.  Had we had a scenic room, our view would have been of the highway.  There were also ominous sounds from the roof they were repairing.  The desk lady told us in no uncertain terms that we had no confirmed reservations, we realized I had somehow messed up.  Taking Buffy’s laptop, we sat in the lobby and looked up the hotel on Priceline (very good rates, if you ever travel).  Then and there we made a new reservation, and carrying the computer to the desk lady, showed her our confirmation number.  Finally realizing we were sisters and not Lesbians, she became very helpful.  First she upgraded us to a garden deluxe room.  Then, at our request (there was no elevator) she put us in a first floor room.  And she figured out exactly what we had been up to in the lobby (to make sure we got the best rate) and laughed.  We could barely stifle our own laughter at our coup.  The Garden Deluxe Room, turned out to have a short hedge outside our sliding door which almost, but not quite, screened us from the parking lot.  Our patio was four feet square with two plastic chairs.  We dissolved into hysterics.  My sister refused my invitation to sit out there and luxuriate.  "I don’t want to inhale gas fumes".  I spent the next interminable hour confirming our Carmel reservations which I had apparently not done either.

Then, dinner.  The desk recommended Toby’s which turned out to be a sleazy joint across the freeway.  We consulted our map, and noticed a restaurant called "Fresca."  It had a nice ring, so we endeavored to find it using the map.  After dozens of wrong turns, we stumbled on it by accident.  We had turned up trumps.  Outdoor heaters, a guitar-playing minstrel, and wonderful fresh food.  We especially enjoyed our desert which was layers of chocolate mousse in a goblet,interspersed with some kind of Italian sweet cream which we are determined to find the recipe for (we are writing a cookbook).  After this triumph, we slept well.  The next day, we visited the town which has parking places limited to 75 minutes on the street.  We dashed between stores and reparking the car.  That was an adventure, because we kept going the wrong way on one way streets.  Nevertheless we found an Italian shoe store with a half price sale, a Nordstrom’s with a wonderful cafe, and an Italian pottery shop that was uber expensive but had "picnic ware" in melamine which was portable and cheap.  I indulged.  I swear it looks genuine.

By two thirty we were on the road, and on the road, and on the road.  We thought we would never get to Carmel.  We arrived only 10 minutes (at a surprisingly nice hotel/resort, cheaper than the room the night before.  Bless priceline)before the 8:00 massage I had scheduled for both of us in my room.  We barely had time to strip.  But the massage was absolute heaven.  I had arranged for roomservice dinner beforehand, knowing that we would be limp noodles afterwards.  So we ate a steak dinner in bed, and then went to sleep.

The following day was superb.  We ate breakfast at a very small and friendly cafe and Buffy was able to watch the final moments of the US soccer game which the owner had recorded.  Then we strolled and ended up in a linen store (with Italian linens!) where the owner bonded with Buffy because she used to live in SLC (my sister is a graduate of the U).  She told us about a state park, not 10 minutes away.  Mostly to curb my spending in all the wonderful Carmel shops, we decided to give it a try.

It was magnificent.  I swear that Pt. Lobos State Park off Hwy One just outside Carmel is the most beautiful place on earth.  More beautiful than any place I saw in the Greek Isles.  Clear aquamarine water, cliffs covered with wildflowers and Monterrey Pines (you know the ones that grow horizontally), rock formations in the sandstone that looked like whales, sea lions, picturesque fog creeping over the surrounding hillside that was covered with green flora.  We hiked and my hips didn’t even hurt!  It was definitely serendipity–the best part of our trip.

That night we ate in a snazzy restaurant, dressed to the nines, with Buffy’s son, who wears dreadlocks and jeans and lives in a commune in Santa Cruz.  Peter is the most loving and gentle creature alive–just born a generation too late.  His love for his mother was overwhelming, and he was so glad to have a great meal that didn’t come out of his garden.  We told him that if anyone gave him trouble about his hair, we would say he was a rock star.  He said, "And you’re my groupies?"  We were flattered!

Back to our room to pack.  We had to leave at dawn to avoid the LA traffic when we got close to home.  Peter drew directions for the fastest trip on the paper table cloth.  We left at 7:30 AM, and aside from a disastrous trip to Carl’s Jr. where most of my burger ended up on my white shirt, we made the trip smoothly, arriving at 2:30 pm in Irvine.

The Gibson girls obviously have a guardian angel.  We don’t know who it is, as we derive most of our crazy genes from our father, but we suspect a third great grandmother who crossed the plains with nine wagons without her husband.  Thank you, Vira Ann!

Our main reason for returning to Florence was to Cosimo and Elisabetta, who have become dear friends.  However, there was one thing I hadn’t been able to accomplish on my last visit.  I hadn’t been able to attend the Puccini concert in Lucca in the chapel where he was baptized.

Cosimo was dear enough to drive us there (together with his faithful Adriana in his new Fiat!).

He was a dear and handsome as ever and I warned him severely against Hollywood.  The drive through Tuscany was lovely, and when we arrived at Lucca, we had to park outside and take a spooky passage under the city wall.  Cosimo had never been there and was almost freaked out by an entire city with no cars or scooters!  We quickly found the chapel and then had a bite of Pizza.

The Concert was thrilling.  They sing different arias every night, and I wish we could have stayed an entire week to hear all my favorites.  The soprano was superb, and the tenor smooth and obviously talented, but didn’t have the lung capacity to compete with the piano and the soprano!  But it was molto enjoyable.  I was thrilled, and determined right then, that a future trip must include Milan and La Scala and an entire Puccini opera.  He was such a genius.  His music stirs the soul in a way that I can’t describe.  It feels inevitable, as though we knew it well before we entered mortality.  It soothes and then exalts.  And to hear it where he was raised as an infant was a tender experience.

By the time Tuesday 5 am rolled around, we were indeed ready for home.  The flight was difficult, especially the 6 hr. layover in NYC, but I slept from there to SLC, from SLC to Provo (my son informs me that I snored), and once I found my bed I did not wake up until Thursday morning.

My grandchild was born sometime during that time period.  My sister called for a report.  I found I couldn’t remember the baby’s name, I was so deep in sleep.  I said, “It’s something like Milo or Malachi.”  Now, of course, I have memorized it and it takes me only a second to remember that it is uh, um, ah! Micah!!  The pictures Buffy has sent of Jack cuddling with him are making me way too anxious to see him next Saturday!

I have no idea how many miles I walked today, but as usual the days you just leave everything to chance are the ones that work out the best.  After a breakfast of bitter Italian cocoa and a croissant, I trekked the streets of Rome trying to find the way to St. Peter’s which kept moving around.  You can see it from everywhere, so I always thought I was close.  However, all this had a happy ending in that an East Indian boy found me and bade me follow him to a little restaurant where they were signing people up for a really cheap all day tour of the Vatican.  My troubles were over.  For 25 euros I had a wonderful guide who steered us magically past all the lines, gave us a receiver for his microphone and we entered St. Peters.  All I can say is that it is a foretaste of heaven.  Absolutely magnificent and enough to make any Catholic proud.

St. Peters Basilica

I had only a little disposable camera, so unfortunately I cannot send you pictures of the Pieta by Michelangelo, nor his mosaic ceiling of the great dome of St. Peters which looks exactly like a fresco.  (Note from David – These photos are from Wikipedia)  I couldn’t believe it was mosaic.  Everything about it is exquisite.  I could have spent all day there and not seen everything.  Then we had lunch, and I was accompanied by two Armenians from N.J.  Since they were Armenian, I naturally had to tell them about Hidden Branch. (When I got home and saw what I looked like in my fuschia outfit with my hair frizzed, I realized they must have thought I was a batty old lady, but then I am, so that’s okay)

Ceiling of the Sistine Chapel - Partial View

Anyway, by the time we finally worked our way through the Vatican Museum to the Sistene Chapel, I was dizzy from looking up.  I couldn’t begin to take it all in.  Our guide’s commentary that Michelangelo was a genius 500 years before his time (his paintings were baroque rather than Renaissance) was not lost on me.  That ceiling should be one of the wonders of the world.

View from St. Peter's Basilica over St. Peter's Square

Tonight is a bit less picturesque than last night.  The rain began to pour shortly after I arrived home, and I was too tired to face going out again, so I am dining on tap water and trail mix, however all I have to do is look out the window at the extraordinary Alladin’s castle that I think must be a monastery (I saw a monk) and I remember that I am someplace extraordinary.

The miracle is that I am in Rome sitting in a lovely neighborhood cafe tucked behind the Vatican right down the cobbled alley from my apartment.  The reason it is a miracle is because I am traveling alone, David having been felled by vertigo 2 hours before we were due to leave.  Of course, now he is perfectly well, and assures me he will join me in Cannes where we dock on Sunday.  Meanwhile I am remembering how to travel alone in a foreign country, and aside from some minor disasters, I have amazingly landed on my feet.  My hips aren’t even sore.  I’m not staying in a hotel but in some mysterious person’s apartment.  The prior tenant took my money.  I hope that’s who I was supposed to pay.  Because of a number of things, I feel that my guardian angel is with me.  I sat next to a wonderful woman on the plane and after condoling over the fact there was nothing to read in the bookstores, I gave her Laurie’s Awakening Avery and she read it straight through and loved it!

The breeze is welcome here in my little outdoor cafe.  An artist is painting at the table next to me.  I am ready for my dolce.  Then I am going to bed!  At eleven o’clock tomorrow  morning I have an appt. with Michelangelo at the Vatican.  Can’t wait.  Thank the Lord I arrived safely!

St. Peter's Basilica - Rome

We have already decided we’re coming back next year prior to the research trip we’re planning to the Greek Islands.  It is tearing me apart to leave.  Our hostess and her son are like family.  He took us driving all over Tuscany yesterday and wouldn’t even accept money for gas.  Today we made our last round at the Market buying scarves, jewelry, ties, and momentos.  Ironically, it was the first day I was able to walk the whole way to the market and back.  My hip still pains me, but either I’ve gotten used to it, or it’s gotten better.

Now we begin to pack.  I hope to see many of you soon.  We leave at dawn tomorrow.  I can’t believe I will be waking up in Florence for the last time in the morning.  But what an experience!

As I struggle to separate myself from this place I have come to love so much in a short time, I wonder why it is so hard.  David (aka Herc) handed me the answer in an article by Jeanette Winterton in the Wall Street Journal.  Manic-Depressive, she  was exploring the connection between her disease (the same as mine) and her creativity.  She made this very revealing comment: “Art isn’t a surface activity. It comes from a deep place and it meets the wound we each carry.”

I have struggled to express this same thought so many times, mostly to beginning writers.  I have called it “writing from your bones.”  I think the reason I am so attached and fulfilled by this place is because there is a spirit that accompanies the huge collection of art and architecture that is this city.  That art represents victory over darkness in each of those artists’ minds.  When we choose to create, we choose not to die or give up.  I have always understood that in a literal sense, but it is true for great art in a figurative sense as well.  Michelangelo is not dead.  At some level, he knew that he would continue to live in his David, a sculpture that is stuffed full of life, more so than many people.

The geniuses of the Renaissance were dealing with the “divine void” (aka existential darkness) because they were coming out of the darkness that had enveloped their world for a thousand years.  The beginning of the Renaissance was an incredible explosion of creativity that began in Florence, but quickly spread across Italy and from there throughout western Europe.  After hundreds of years during which everything remained the same, incredible change happened from year to year, decade to decade in the 15th century.

Some thought that darkness was caused somehow by the church, but they didn’t understand that what the church had come to be was not representative of the true Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Maybe this is why as I sat in the Firenze Second Branch this morning, I was suddenly filled with the desire to learn Italian and come here (with Herc) on a couples mission.  Herc, who has a tin ear for language, has even decided to take Italian with me.

Maybe my novel won’t be suspense after all.  That would be the easy way out.  I guess we’ll see.

Think of my poor husband following me around Florence ohhing and ahhing the males nude statue that reside on every corner. Me not him.  Well, his day is finally come.  In an extensive and never-to-be forgotten tour of the Medici’s Pitti Palace today, I saw him on the ceiling of one of the rooms!  He had a lot more hair when his likeness was taken in the 1500’s, but I’d know those thighs and shoulders anywhere.  David aka Hercules.  Since we have been married, the main endearment I have always used is “hund.”  Yes, I know that means dog in German, but it is actually the diminutive of Me-Hunda (my man in a language David made up), which I have sometimes been known to shorten to “hundi”.  This is very puzzling to everyone, because he calls me the same thing, Me-Hunda also meaning “my woman.”

Somewhere in the middle of the Pitti Palace, I realized that Italy has changed me.  The creative juices are all juiced up and ready to go.  I am dying to learn Italian.  I want to come back here and live for several months in order to write a time-travel novel where a hip young 21st century young lady is swept back in time to one of the rooms of the Pitti Palace in the 16th century.  And because Italy makes you believe that dreams can come true, I just might do it!!!

For those of you whose visit to this wonderful place is in the future, see the Pitti first, before the Ufizzi.  It is uncrowded and much more magical a setting for the paintings.  Plus it contains my two favorite Raphael’s.  I am inexpressibly sad to see this time almost at an end, but I know I will visit it again and again in my heart.  With Herc.

‘

Today we had a very expensive and very rare treat, known during the Renaissance to only the Medici’s (ruling family of Florence and Tuscany—patron of all the arts) and their very close associates.  We found a tour that takes you through their secret corridor which is 1 km long.  It runs from the map room in the City Hall (Palazzo Vecchio)where the Medici dukes made all their political decisions to the Uffizi (formerly offices and later the home of the Medici private art collection—see post of a few days ago) down to the Arno, over the shops on the Ponte Vecchio (see earlier post), through several apartment buildings, around the house of an intransigent man who refused to have his house torn down, through a church (they could walk through the corridor to a private box/balcony that looked down on the chapel to attend Mass without anyone seeing them) and finally to the Pitti Palace where the Medici duke and his family and several hundred friends lived. 

Formerly, the head of the Medici’s and his family had an apartment in the Palazzo Vecchio, but that wasn’t fancy enough for the wife of Cosimo I (de’ Medici).  She bought the Pitti Palace, located on the other side of the Arno from the Palazzo Vecchio, and started expanding it.  This meant that Cosimo I had to walk to work, including crossing the crowded Ponte Vecchio bridge each day.  Given that he had accumulated more than a few enemies, walking or even riding in a carriage through the very narrow streets was very dangerous.  While his wife was fixing up the palace, Cosimo ordered his favorite architect, Giorgio Vasari, to build the one kilometer long corridor.  (The photo below, not taken by David, shows the corridor coming out of the Uffizi, running along the top of the series of arches, built especially to support it, then cutting over the Ponte Vecchio as a very exclusive second story to the bridge.)

Of course this secret corridor got my imagination running and I’m plotting some dastardly deeds for my first Crazy Ladies book (the whole reason we are here is to research that book).

It was a real thrill and an insight into the lives of those powerful patrons of the Renaissance.  It is probably safe to say that that the Renaissance couldn’t have occurred without them, as they were patrons of Donatello, Michelangelo, and friends—all the first artists of that time when the dark ages ended and science, music, and art began to flower.

It is a real mystery to me that I don’t have any Italian blood!  I don’t want to go home!!!

Photos below are views of the Arno River from the Ponte Vecchio.  The first one was taken from Cosimo’s secret corridor.  The others were taken later in day, after we had a bracing round of Italian ice cream.

This will be short because it’s been a long day.  After our unforgettable view of the divine sculpture of David in the Accademia Gallery this morning, we took off by bus for Lucca, a positive gem of a town.  It is small, contained inside a 2000 year old wall and has four very large churches, including a Cathedral. Roman remains have been discovered under one of the churches and it is said that the whole city is built over Roman remains. 

If I had it to do over again, we would have stayed there overnight.  It the birthplace of Giacomo Puccini, the composer of Madame Butterfly, La Boheme, Tosca and many other classic operas, and they perform his arias in a huge stone church every night. However we caught the latest bus back to Florence and didn’t have time to hear the performance!  I could have cried!  I nearly did.  To console me, David put opera on his iPhone and I listened to it on the bus on the way back to Florence.  The funniest part was that he forgot to turn it off when he put it in his pocket.  In the cab, we suddenly heard opera and didn’t know where it was coming from.  Then we both looked at his pocket and burst out laughing.

Lucca is the silk capital of Italy—so of course I purchased some.  David’s pictures will convey the charm of this place that I may retire to after he’s gone.  (Still hoping I go first).

The pictures are of two church interiors, both Catholic, of course.  The first is the church Puccini attended as a child and where he said he was “baptized into music.”  There are also photos of two street scenes.  The first includes a statue of Puccini.  This older part of Lucca is built inside walls that were in existence when Christ was living in mortality and some of the streets would be too narrow to be alleys in the United States.

I found some period Puccini opera posters and inserted them at the end.  Click on the photos for larger versions.