Update

I've been neglecting the blog, and I apologize for that. I haven't felt much like writing because I've been in a funk, and I've been very busy too, working on several winter and holiday sewing projects. I will be posting more regularly, but at a reduced pace, over the next couple of months. Between now and the beginning of February, N, Pata and I have all of our onomastici and birthdays, which, together with the holidays, will leave little time for blogging.

A couple of recent projects:

Velvet wreath

Table runner (sorry about the very crappy photo!)

(For those of you who are curious about the sewing projects, I'll be writing about them in more detail on my other blog, which I'll make public soon.)

Some photos from a recent trip to Sperlonga:

Code Mixing

Yesterday morning, Pata was playing with her bath toys. As she pulled each one from the mesh bag that holds them, I asked her for their names.

"Pinguino," she said, holding the penguin up for me to see.

"That's a penguin," I told her, in the nth futile attempt to teach her the English word.

She placed the pinguino on the edge of the tub and rooted around in the bag for a few seconds before drawing out another animal.

"Oh, what's that, I asked?

"Duck! Quack quack." She said, placing it next to the penguin.

"Ooh! Ooh!" she cried, looking into the bag. She pulled out a seahorse, and without my prompting, exclaimed, "Questa...caba...caba luccio (cavalluccio)!"

"Oh, that's a seahorse," I said.

"Oh, horse!" she repeated. Then she neighed.

"No, it's a seahorse," I told her, "it doesn't make that sound. Seahorse. Say, seahorse."

"Oh, sì sì (yes). Sìsìhorse!"

I decided to let that one go. It was too cute to be corrected.

Sessa Saturday: Dome

The dome of Santissima Annunziata from Piazza Ercole

This is a photo I've been saving for a post on Sessa's tiled domes, but given the seemingly unending inclement weather we've been experiencing here, I felt the need to post something with blue sky in it.

Sessa Saturday: Closed-up Arch

Arch, Via Taddeo de Matricio

I had hoped to post something else today but I didn't get a chance to go to the cathedral this week to get a photo of it. This arch is located near our house, and I've been told that the wall that it once opened was part of a (now ruined) convent garden. It carries a date of 1595, with each five carved as an ess.

Pink

Pata showing off her new wrap jacket and matching trousers

Pata's newest mama-made outfit was inspired by the "Make it Pink" contest, which I think is a fun way to raise money for breast cancer research. It's open only to residents of the United States and Canada, so I couldn't participate, but I thought it might be nice to make some pink clothes for Pata and post photos of them here in honor of Breast Cancer Awareness Month.

While I had a few projects planned, I managed to complete only one, as this October has proved to be a particularly trying month for me and I just didn't have the time or energy to do more. But I think this outfit turned out very well. I made it in memory of Pata's namesake, my mother, who died of breast cancer thirty years ago, at the age of thirty-seven.

October, Campo di Pere

Some photos I took at Campo di Pere earlier in the month, when we went up there to check on our olives:

Olive trees

Olives


Pata

View towards Gaeta (the promontory at left on the far side of the bay)

View of Sessa Aurunca

Sessa Saturday: Pulpit

View of Pulpit (and Paschal Candelabrum,) ca. 1224-59, cathedral of Sessa Aurunca

The pulpit in the cathedral of Sessa Aurunca is the largest and most ornate of the works created there by the thirteenth-century masters Pellegrino and Taddeo. Its basic form, an enclosed rectangular platform supported by columns, was fairly common during that century, but its elaborate decoration, carried out in sculpted and inlaid marble, sets it apart from the several pulpits to which it is related stylistically.

South side of the pulpit, with polygonal projection for lectern

The reader's platform (Sessa's pulpit is actually an ambo, which is dedicated to the reading of the gospels rather than to the preaching of sermons) is decorated with intricate mosaics depicting geometrical and animal motifs. The most delicate of these appear on the pulpit's south side, where the location of the lectern is marked by a polygonal projection into the nave.

View of east face of pulpit

A sculpture of an eagle clutching a human figure entwined in a serpent's tale appears on the pulpit's east side, which faces the choir. The motif is not an unusual one for a Campanian pulpit, and it represents the triumph of the gospels over sin.

Detail of mosaics of the north side of the pulpit

The mosaics of the northern panels differ somewhat from those on the other three sides of the pulpit. Here the geometric decoration is largely confined to interlacing bands that frame small figural compositions. These are dominated by images of birds, which appear singly, like the pelican (a symbol of Christ) at the center of panel pictured above, or in groups of two or more, perched within orderly tangles of vines spiraling outward from fountains, symbols of paradise.

Prophet

The reader's platform is supported by an arcade, and in the spandrels of its eastern and western arches are sculptural depictions of classical sybils and biblical prophets. They symbolize the time before the New Covenant of the Christian era, and their placement beneath the platform from which the Gospel is read is a visual statement that they have been supplanted as sources of authority on things divine.

Capital with human figures

The capitals of the columns are ornately carved, with dynamic human figures who threaten to break free of their leafy habitat. Some of them are accompanied by animals, both real and imaginary. The classicizing treatment of these tiny people and beasts provides a contrast with the decorative style of the pulpit mosaics, which instead are influenced by Byzantine and Islamic art.

Column-bearing lion

The columns of the arcade rest upon the backs of six lions, who turn their expressive faces toward the nave. The upper parts of their bodies have been worn smooth, but the legs in particular reveal a detailed and vigorous treatment of their anatomy. It is the presence of these lions that most distinguishes the Sessa pulpit from others of its type, in which the shafts of the columns customarily rest upon simple bases.

For more sculptural details, see the following bestiary posts: cat, dragon, owl, whale, and wolf.

(I apologize for the poor quality of some of the images in this post. It's usually rather dark in the cathedral.)

La Dolce Attesa

I didn't write very much about the medical care I received while pregnant here, other than a couple of posts about my condescending and inflexible doctor and a particularly absurd episode in obtaining and paying for a ticket (something like a referral.) I kept the more negative aspects of it to myself because they were so upsetting that the experience was enough for me; I didn't want to write about it too. I've written nothing about Pata's birth except to mention that it happened, and I doubt that I'll ever expand on that. I spent the first few months of her life doing the mental work of separating her from her birth so that I'd never have to look at her and remember it, and now I prefer to leave it undisturbed in the dark place where I've stored it away.

Michelle of Michellanea, whose son was born just a couple of weeks after Pata, found a much more beneficial (and, I suspect, empowering) way of dealing with her negative pregnancy and birth experience: she wrote a book about it. I think that what she has done is immeasurably important because so many aspects of what she experienced (and I and countless other woman experience in Italy) are simply unacceptable, and even shameful. Michelle is currently looking for a publisher for her manuscript, but part of it has been excerpted at the online magazine Guernica with the title "Under the Milanese Bureaucracy," It makes for compelling reading. If you haven't already read it, please do, and please spread the word about it. It's a book that needs to be published.

Sessa Saturday: Monte Massico

View of Monte Massico from Sessa Aurunca

I think that Monte Massico looks like a giant sea seamonster that came ashore at Mondragone and, slithering inland until its head reached Sessa, grew tired, fell into a deep and heavy sleep, and turned to stone.

The Right Word

A couple of days ago, Pata played in the kitchen with her little toy bat as I cooked dinner. Holding him by his wings, she shook him up and down. "Vola!" she said, "Vola Vola!"

"Oh," I asked her, "is Bruno flying?"

"Bruno!"

"Bruno is a bat," I told her, "say bat."

"Vola!" she said.

The next morning she found Bruno on the bedroom floor. "Pipistrello," she said, carefully pronouncing the four-syllable word.

"That's right!" I told her. A word that big coming from a toddler's mouth deserves recognition, whether in the right language or not.

Later, she played with her bath toys beside the tub as I showered. She arranged them on the floor, saying their names in Italian: pesce (fish,) popilo (polipo, octopus,) pinguino (penguin.) Then she put one on the edge of the tub.

"Oh, what is that? I asked, pointing to the grinning, hot pink sea creature she had placed there.

"Crab," she said.

"That's right," I said, smiling."Crab."

Recent sewing projects

I've been busy working on several projects lately, most of them involving decluttering and redecorating the house, but a few of them have been sewing autumn clothes for Pata.

Bell-sleeved embroidered peasant blouse

Bell sleeves are not the wisest choice for toddler shirts, but they are pretty. I bought this fabric at a market in Naples and payed more than I think it was worth (10 Euro for one meter,) but I liked the embroidery and figured that even if I only made a couple of things from it, it was still a bargain.

Peasant blouse and corduroy dress

I bought the fabric for this peasant blouse while I was in New York over the summer. The corduroy for the dress came from a pair of N's old trousers. I drew the pattern myself. It has a zipper in the back, but it's unlined because, well, I'm completely self-taught and haven't yet learned how to do a lining and a zipper together. I'm very pleased with this outfit because it reminds me of the sort of clothes I used to wear as a girl.

Sessa Saturday: Torre "di Transo"

Torre "di Transo," ca. 1200, Sessa Aurunca

The Torre "di Transo" is the shorter of Sessa Aurunca's two medieval towers, but despite its low proportions, it is the more elegant of the two, in large part because of its fine triforate* window. It overlooks Piazza Tiberio Massimo, believed to be the site of the forum during Sessa's Roman incarnation.

Triforate window, Torre "di Transo"

For the other tower, the Torre di San Biagio, see this post.

*having three openings