Sonoma Road Strategies

10/24/2024

Geezer Tour 5: Italy -- A Little Off-Center

Are those eggs? Breasts? Mangoes? Nope. That monster necklace on the goddess Artemis in the Vatican museum is made up of bull's balls, a display of ultimate male power on a female deity. She's just another slightly off-center element that underlies much of what's left of classical Rome.

Artemis (AKA Diana in the Roman pantheon) was the country folks' favorite in the Greek religion BCE, as Apollo's twin sister and daughter of Zeus and Leto. Mistress of wild animals and the hunt and indeed of all wild nature, Artemis was thought to dance around, accompanied by nymphs, in mountains, forests and marshes. She had a temper that some believed manifested itself as storms and other natural disasters.

What's she doing tucked in among all the pious guys in togas? Beats me. I'm guessing, crudely, that they had the statue and wanted to display it. One piece I read indicates Catholic leaders in the early days were hedging their bets, since Artemis was so popular across much of Asia; the last thing they wanted to do was alienate possible new adherents to the Christian faith by trashing one of their most potent symbols.

Symbolism is big in Rome. Since much of it is engraved and preserved, it's not always benign. Walk toward the Coliseum from the business and government center and you'll come across this fascist-era column with eagles and a reference to the SPQR ancient glory that Mussolini was trying to resurrect in the run-up to World War II.

And some of it is just silly, which can be a relief. Stroll by the town's wax museum and you can pose with a rotating Pope John Paul II or catch a glimpse of two other icons: Elvis and Bob Marley, together at last.

When you can't take in one more august, disturbing or awesome "sight," take in lunch. We stopped at Ristorante Abruzzi, a traditional place that attracted less tourists and more locals from nearby offices and a few big family groups seemingly starting their weekends a bit early, hushing the approaching waiters so they didn't wake their stroller-bound baby.

Wine, cool water, tonarelli with mushrooms, zucchini and tomatoes, veal Marsala and a salad rounded out our meal, the last big one in Italy before heading home. A little off-center and the perfect finish.

10/22/2024

Geezer Tour 5: Italy - The Wow Factor

It's tempting to write off Rome as New York City with ruins. That would be a mistake, even though the remains of previous civilizations are glorified and preserved here, and not just as a business decision to lure visitors. If you're an American of a certain age, you'll see a lot of versions of yourself here, many in town as part of a tour or cruise stop, wearing sensible shoes and day packs, checking off items on a long-deferred bucket list. But then you look out and up and realize there's more to it than that. There's a considerable ambient wow factor.

Our home base was an outpost of a small hotel along the Via dei Condotti, named for one of the conduits that brought water into the city. Now it might more properly be called Fashion Avenue, with every designer name you can think of within a five minute walk of the Spanish Steps at the head of the street: Giorgio Armani, Ferragamo, Jimmy Choo and Hermes in the space of a single block. Our apartment was off the main drag on Via Bocca di Leone (Lion's Mouth Road), behind a temperamental door lock and up a flight of stairs. Luckily the sales lady at the high-end leather goods shop next door was nice about helping us fiddle with the key and get in. More than once, I'm embarrassed to say.

When in Rome, you almost have to take a tour or two, and we did that at the Vatican. Two thoughts: 1) there's no free-ranging around Vatican City so tours are essential, but don't believe that hype when you buy a skip-the-line ticket because like it or not, you will be waiting in some lines, though probably shorter ones than if you didn't pay extra to avoid them, and 2) Vatican City, the seat of power for mostly celebate men, is named for the Etruscan mother goddess Vatica. History has an ironic sense of humor.

History is also everywhere in Rome and you don't need a ticket to see it. Pick a sunny October day and circumnavigate the Coliseum, with the blue sky streaming through the arches. On the way, pass an ornately carved column celebrating the Roman emperor Trajan's military campaigns in Dacia, basically where Dracula hung out in what is now part of Romania.

When night falls, climb to the top of the Spanish Steps and look down on the Via dei Condotti after the delivery trucks, taxis and throngs of shoppers have settled elsewhere for the evening. And remember to look up when and if you do go to St. Peter's Basilica. Some of the best stuff is on the ceiling. Too many wows to count.

10/21/2024

Geezer Tour 5: Italy - Rome Under Wraps

The Eternal City has a feeling of dress rehearsal these days, especially behind the high walls in the Vatican, where scaffolding is everywhere and workers are spiffing up the place for the influx of visitors they expect for the 2025 Jubilee. It starts Christmas Eve 2024 and lasts through December 14 next year.

The Jubilee -- Giubileo del 2025 in Italian -- clearly means a general glow-up for the seat of Roman Catholicism. Among all the golden antiquities in the Vatican museums and St. Peter's Basilica, artisans and others are refurbishing sculptures and architectural details, buffing the marble floors and vacuuming the tapestries. Exactly what a normal person would do with company coming, but on a grand, global scale, with as many as 35 million tourists expected, 20 million more than usual.

There will be concerts and pageants but the salient feature of the ceremonial year is the opening of the Holy Door at churches around Rome, including the four major basilicas, starting with St. Peter's. The open doors signify the opportunity for Catholic visitors to ask for plenary indulgences -- the remission of sins -- for themselves or deceased relatives. The doors all close up again on Epiphany next year.

Jubilee years are usually every quarter century, but the last one was just 10 years ago. This will be Pope Francis's second jubilee. I'm guessing the world could use a little extra jubilation these days, no matter one's faith or lack thereof.

10/17/2024

Geezer Tour 5: Italy - Welcome to the Ghetto

Venice has a way with words. The term quarantine was born here, derived in the 14th century from the 40 days ships and people had to wait in Dubrovnik, then under Venetian control, to make sure they weren't carrying plague (spoiler alert: they were).

Then there's the word ghetto, now shorthand for anyplace you want to put undesirables. It comes from an old term that refers to a foundry and in fact the part of Venice that became the Jewish ghetto was once a place where weapons and ammunition were forged. That business was long ago moved to an area called, appropriately, Arsenale. The Jewish ghettoes -- at least two of them -- remain, at least in spirit.

Venice decided to lock up its Jews starting in 1516, with a stringent curfew enforced by Christian security that the Jews had to pay for. It cost a lot to belong to the Jewish faith in those days: you couldn't design or build your own home, even in the ghetto, so you had to hire Christian architects and contractors at exhorbitant prices. Your career choices were extremely limited. You were squeezed into a tiny area. Yet Venice was more congenial than lots of other places in Europe, so Jews came from Turkey, from the Levant, from Spain and Portugal, from Germany. Each constituency had its own synogogue, either grand like the Spanish synogogue with its chandeliers and coffered ceiling or extremely humble and hidden, like the tiny dark wood sanctuary tucked between houses on an upper story.

Now the ghettoes -- the Old Ghetto, which is actually more recent, and the New Ghetto, which is the original one -- are places tourists visit, though clearly people still reside here, by choice. There's a kosher bakery, a kindergarten, restaurants aplenty. If you go, be prepared for a full security screening, including a bag search and a magnetometer wand that is set high enough to pick up the tiny bit of metal in a bra clasp. As in 1516, it's still an uncertain world.

10/13/2024

Geezer Tour 5: Italy - Carne Diem

I understand that for many, meat is in bad odor these days as an environmental extravagance and as simply a less-healthy thing to eat. However, when I heard a few years ago about Dario Cecchini's megameat restaurant and butcher shop in Panzano, Italy -- he starred in one episode of the Netflix series "Chef's Table" -- I knew if I ever had the chance, I'd have to experience it. And now I have.

To recap Dario's story, as the son of a traditional Italian butcher in Tuscany, which is famed for Florentine steak (a massive three-inch thick T-bone), he grew up with respect and love for cattle, hoping to become a veterinarian. After his father's untimely death, he went into the family business, but with a different philosophy.

"I believe in a good life for the animal and a compassionate death," he says, right on the placemat. "I believe in using every part, thoughtfully, and in giving thanks for the gift we have received; as it is a death that nourishes our lives." The words "carne diem" are all over Cecchini's shop and restaurant.

Lunch begins with a street party overseen by a life-size blue-painted plaster cow, with red wine in small tumblers and bread smeared with seasoned lard. Once inside, our party of seven had a table all to ourselves, plus a lovely Brazilian woman traveling alone, whom we adopted as one of our own. Huge bottles of Chianti and baskets of raw vegetables were on the table and -- knowing what was to come -- we took advantage of both.

First course was Chianti crudo AKA beef tartar, surprisingly easy to get down with a squeeze of lemon. If you miss the connection to Dario's nose-to-tail idea, the placemat features a diagram of the edible parts of a cow and labels each dish with the part it comes from; Chianti crudo comes from the shoulder.

A parade of meat followed, from belly to rump, climaxed by the monster Bistecca alla Fiorentina, cut in thick slices from the bone. Since nobody else leaped in to claim the T-bone, it landed on my plate. The waiter told me not to bother with a fork and knife and to just pick it up with my hands, so I did. It was delicious, with a little of the restaurant's seasoned salt sprinkled on every bite.

As a sort of palate cleanser, there were foil-wrapped roasted potatoes in their skins. The waiter didn't have to tell me what to do with those: open the foil, slice the potato in half, slather on some of that seasoned lard and close up the foil so it could all melt together.

Was there dessert and did we manage to eat it? Yes and yes: a semolina cake that looked like American skillet cornbread, with a sugary top, served alongside glasses of sweet wine.

10/08/2024

Geezer Tour 5: Italy - Harvest Time in Chianti

The weather has been just a bit off in Chianti, as it has around the world this year. While the US Southeast mops up from one hurricane and braces for another, the part of Italy known for wine, olives and wild boar is experiencing what locals philosophically call an English autumn: drippy, cloudy and veering between raw and almost balmy.

Outside the small town of Castellini, the harvest is in full swing unless the rain is too heavy for people and machinery to get through the long rows of grapevines and olive trees. A few grapes show signs of fungus while others turn to raisins before they can be picked, though most look healthy and plump even as their leaves turn a seasonal red.

If you're lucky, and we were, the thing to do on a day like this is to crowd into a kitchen at a small winery and learn to cook the way locals do, with ingredients found nearby, often at the Coop supermarket.

Start by making dessert: a chocolate caprese cake made with mostly almond flour (just a couple big spoonfuls of wheat flour mixed in), eggs, sugar and vanilla powder.

Next, the first course: homemade tagliatelle with a sauce of what they call pumpkin -- Americans know it as butternut squash, though the Italian version has no seeds in the plump bulb of the vegetable, making it a lot easier to cut into small cubes and roast with olive oil -- and pork sausage sautéed with red onion, olive oil and white wine. When tossing the eggy pasta with the sauce, start with a healthy ladle or two of squash and sausage in the bottom of the bowl, then the pasta, then the rest of the sauce. The starch that clings to the noodles mixes with the fat from the sausage and the wine to produce a creamy but not heavy dish that goes great with grated grana padano cheese on top. And wine made from the vines growing a stone's throw from the kitchen.

If you have stomach room after that, there is chicken scallopini with sage followed by the chocolate caprese. And then a nap.

10/07/2024

Geezer Tour 5-Italy -- Getting There

As always, getting there is half the fun, whether driving through the U.S. Midwest and South to view a total eclipse or venturing to Tuscany and other parts of the Italian boot. The trip started with a benign flight delay -- the catering truck got lost somehow at Dulles, not a mechanical problem -- and then moved along to Rome and a trio of trains: 1) the Leonardo Express to the main Rome station, 2) the speedy train to Florence and then 3) the local to Siena. After that, an intrepid cab driver got us along the steep hairpin turns of Chianti and finally down a gravel road to the gorgeous winery where we're staying with generous friends.

For those who remember the old "I Love Lucy" episode where Lucy and Ethel are in a big tub stomping grapes, that's simply not how it's done. The harvest is fully on now and workers at this vineyard were dumping big plastic bins of grapes into a de-stemming machine, which spits the stems out on one side, destined for compost. The grapes are crushed and go through a long reddish plastic pipe to start the process of becoming wine. The fact that this takes place in such a lovely setting is just gravy.

04/11/2024

Geezer Tour 4-Eclipse -- A Five-Armadillo Day

Yesterday was a driving day, facing homeward and dictated by a massive storm stretching from Texas to the Ohio Valley, leaving chaos and floods in its wake. We headed north from Fort Smith, Arkansas, to cross Missouri to Cape Girardeau. The route was outside the main area of torrential rain and lashing wind but still wet and messy.

We've gotten used to roadkill on this venture to the middle of America: the usual deer, raccoons and possums. Northern Arkansas and southern Missouri were the locations where we saw our first DOR armadillos. Five of them and probably more we didn't count, in a single day.

I include this photo of a live armadillo because it looks marginally better than a dead one. Based on anecdotal evidence -- ours -- there's a standard death pose for these armored creatures: on their backs, feet in the air, corrugated tummies exposed, tail facing away from the road.

We were surprised to see them this far north, but it's clearly nothing new to regions as far north as Chicago. You expect to see these so-called Hillbilly Speed Bumps in Texas and Louisiana, and when I went to Baton Rouge for work 16 years ago, there seemed to be a DOR armadillo every couple miles or so.

Of course it's a climate thing: these hairless (at least the species in the US are hairless) mammals have a tough time in cold temperatures, when the grubs they dig for go too deep underground for them to find. Also, the armadillos get chilly.

No longer. Warmer winters up north make armadillos downright common in more northern parts of the country, though not very welcome. The top results of a quick online search for armadillo turned up a raft of pest companies promising to get rid of them as a bane to gardeners. They also are thought to carry the microorganism for Hansen's disease but you probably won't get leprosy if you touch one.

Not what I thought I'd be writing about in the middle of Middle America.

The armored mammals have been spotted in parts of the U.S. that were once thought to be too chilly for them.

04/10/2024

Geezer Tour 4: Eclipse -- The Streets of Fort Smith

The first minute I strolled down Garrison Avenue in Fort Smith, Arkansas, the mournful melody of "The Streets of Laredo" started playing in my head. Maybe it was the wide sidewalks, nearly empty traffic lanes and vacant store fronts. Maybe it was the gruesome murals painted on the sides of buildings. Or maybe it was the town's claim to fame as the hanging-est community on the 19th century western frontier.

Judge Isaac Parker, legendarily known as the hanging judge in a zillion westerns and the popular American imagination, presided over the U.S. Court for the Western District of Arkansas for 21 years, sentencing 160 people to death. Executions were carried out at a gallows a stone's throw from the courthouse. The town's history museum features a re-creation of Parker's courtroom and another gallery that documents the stories of the defendants who appeared before him.

One of the most famous was Crawford Goldsby alias Cherokee Bill, who may be best known because his ex*****on was documented by a drawing made from a surreptitiously taken photograph of his hanging in 1896. The museum displays a group picture of Goldsby and the men it took to bring him into custody and displays a remnant of the rope used to hang him.

The gallows was torn down in 1897 as a "crude and unsightly" relic of the Old West. By 1957, nostalgia sparked by TV and movies prompted Fort Smith's leaders to re-create the gallows as a tourist attraction. That reconstructed gallows, built 75 yards away from the original, was demolished in 1981, when the National Park Service built another one on the original site.

While Fort Smith was the end of the road for those who faced the noose, it was a way-station for many others. After gold was discovered in California in 1848, some five thousand members of an "emigrant train" set out from Fort Smith the next year to try their luck. The town was also one stop on the Trail of Tears on which members of eastern native American nations were forced west. Some of the modern murals make reference to their deadly passage.

With that dark backstory, you wouldn't think Fort Smith would be a place to linger, yet we stayed longer than we expected. One solid recommendation: Neumeier's Rib Room. Have the brisket sandwich and onion rings.

04/09/2024

Geezer Tour 4: Eclipse -- Moon Eats Sun

All my life I've been sort of ho-hum about solar eclipses. I mean, they happen all the time and you see the moon's shadow blot out part of the sun. It's cool and all, but seriously, what's the big deal?

Millions of people in the North American total eclipse path today, including me, can now answer that question. First off, it's a communal event, though probably not the big money-maker lots of business folks along the path expected. We watched from Booneville, Arkansas, in a small city park where folks came from as far away as Maryland (us) and Colorado and as nearby as the Cherokee and Choctaw nations just across the Arkansas River.

It was like a community picnic or a July 4th fireworks celebration, with folding chairs and bored toddlers and a creek running through the whole thing. Teenagers played basketball and kids horsed around until the partial eclipse began. Even then, it was more like a signal to make sandwiches and have another sip of a drink, rather than a time for intense observation.

That came at totality, a few minutes before 2 p.m. I know I gasped when the sun was completely covered and the sky darkened instantly in a 360-degree dusk, with Venus visible, and the temperature dropped maybe 10 degrees. For four minutes, the eclipse glasses came off and the crowd of few dozen people stared straight at our own star, blotted black by the moon's passage.

Others have done a better job than I can of describing the unearthly pallor of the light just before and after the sun was covered up: you knew it was sunny -- only a few wispy clouds were in the sky where we were -- but there was something off about it. It's something I wanted to see at least once in my life and I didn't want to have wait until the next total solar eclipse over the contiguous 48 U.S. states in 2044, when I'll be 90. If I make it.

It strikes me that a lot of people of a certain age are making these bucket-list pilgrimages at least in part because of an awareness that there is one deadline we can't push back. The geezers are really going for it now, hitting the road to everything we've put off and savoring each moment.

04/06/2024

04/06/2024

Geezer Tour 4: Eclipse -- The Other Mississippi Crossroads

The most famous crossroads in Mississippi, the place where Robert Johnson legendarily sold his soul to the devil, is a couple hours' drive from another fated crossroads in the tiny town of Corinth, not far from the Tennessee border and the Civil War battlefield at Shiloh/Pittsburg Landing.

Besieged like the Greek city from which it takes its name (and doomed to repeat its history of war and siege), the Dixie Corinth was long synonymous with bad water and soldiers buried in shallow graves in not one but two battles fought for control of a railroad crossroads that was vital to communications and supply. The anniversary of the first siege of Corinth, Mississippi, is this weekend. Reinactors were already setting up yesterday when we visited the Shiloh battleground, now a national park.

There's an interpretive national park in Corinth, loaded with well-preserved artifacts and a comfortable theater where a film explains how the fighting, siege and resulting disease and death decimated the town. The scars are mostly gone now but many, many monuments to various Confederate military men remain in the part of town that is filled with lawyers' offices and banks.

On the other side of town is a sculpture garden commemorating the so-called Contraband Camp, where escaped slaves found refuge within Union lines. Not a single artifact is displayed at the site but realistic statues tell a benign story of education, training and eventual military service in the U.S. forces. In an ironic touch, the railroad tracks that were the tactical reason for the fighting run along the park's southern edge.

04/04/2024

Geezer Tour 4: Eclipse -- Three Faces of Bardstown

People from anywhere else naturally think of this small town outside Louisville as the headquarters for Bourbon whiskey because that is the face it presents to the world on every bottle of spirits made here. It seems to me there are at least three faces of this place, and you can see them all in a day.

You don't find many trains rolling here, but the tracks divide the community. On the down-low side closer to the R. John Rowan Highway are fast food places, tire shops, payday loan stores and at least one w**d dispensary. On the other, there are solid old houses, restaurants and other businesses catering to the well-heeled tourist trade.

This includes a compact Museum Row: a military museum named for Lt. General Hal Moore, a Bardstown native and the inspiration for the Mel Gibson film "We Were Soldiers"; a Women's Civil War Museum next door, with dresses, photographs and other artifacts from that period, and also an anachronistic yellowed newspaper from 2021 predicting "Texas Abortion Law Affects All of Us" (it did, but why in this exhibit?); down the hill, a collection of 18th century cabins and a well-curated massive collection in a multi-room Civil War Museum.

The third face is the one most visitors come to see. Many don't realize they are already seeing it as soon as they get off the Blue Grass Parkway amid multi-story barns called rickhouses where barrels of Bourbon and rye whiskey age. I tried the Willett distillery for a tour because it's one of the closest to the center of town, though still far enough away to be in the country, right across the road from the immense Heaven Hill operation.

We tasted a total of six whiskeys of maybe one-third of an ounce apiece as we moved through rooms where the grain comes into the factory, to where the mash is fermented and on to where the raw, clear spirit is transfered to barrels that are then rolled to rickhouses to age and acquire a caramel color from the barrels' charred interior. The last sample was a deadly smooth 114 proof edition, served with a crunchy chocolate wafer made in Louisville and an eye-dropper full of water in case you want to slightly dilute your drink. I did.

04/03/2024

Geezer Tour 4: Eclipse -- Arriving in Bourbon Country

Here's how you don't want to start a travel day: with your cellphone buzzing ominously to share a triple alert for tornadoes, severe thunderstorms and floods. "Extraordinary threat to life or property," the alerts blared. "Take shelter in place ... Take action immediately."

But we're nuts, so we decided to hit the road anyway. Luckily we had to stop for gas before setting out. As we quickly learned, when electrical storms are imminent, gas pumps shut down. So OK, we'll get as far as we can on a quarter-tank, we thought, and merged onto the interstate outside Huntington, West Virginia. Rain was coming down in sheets, visibility was down to maybe 50 feet or less. That was our cue to get off the interstate and follow signs to the local art museum. How bad could it be? There's a school bus in the museum parking lot. We'll kill an hour here and get going.

As it turned out, the school kids were sheltering in the museum, which was about to close for the day. A kind guy who seemed to be running things there suggested we find someplace to hunker down -- NOT at the museum -- and we considered going back to the hotel we had just checked out of. Even getting back there was an adventure, since GPS doesn't keep up to speed on flooded roads, downed trees and snapped power lines. Thankfully the skies cleared as abruptly as they had darkened and we made the call to return to the gas station. If the pumps were back on line, we'd fill up and skedaddle. Which is what we did, heading for Bardstown, Kentucky, the capital of Bourbon Country.

After a lovely and largely traffic-free drive on the Blue Grass Parkway, lined with manicured horse farms and redbud trees growing wild, we arrived in what used to be a tiny hamlet surrounded by distilleries and distinctive small-windowed barns where Bourbon whisky is aged. The aging barns are still here, bigger than they were 25 years ago on my last visit. There is also a four-lane highway from the parkway that lets you zoom into town instead of taking bucolic two-lane roads. Not necessarily an improvement.

The tiny but still beating heart of Bardstown is the old courthouse (now the visitors center) across the street from the Old Talbott Inn, founded in 1779, and down the street from the old jail, founded in 1797, now a bed and breakfast, with a weathered pillory on the front lawn. As you can see from the homes below, this is a town where getting here first matters. If you can slap a date on your front porch, so much the better. A glass of Bourbon helps and Bardstown knows how to serve it. If you're like me, you'll have at least two.