Last night, we celebrated my partial recovery by drinking a bottle of Zibibbo. The grape, otherwise known as the Muscat of Alexandria, is most often made into a sweet wine or even a passito. Passiti, which go back to the ancient Mediterranean, are wines made from grapes left to dry on the vine. Columella says the Carthaginian version was called Passum, a term that may be preserved in the Italian.
A young lady – well, not that young, actually, let’s say about my age – has reviewed my new book in The Spectator, a British literary and political weekly once known for its conservative sympathies. Suffice it to say that when I wrote for it in the 80’s and 90’s the magazine was under the editorship of a man who was later appointed the authorized biographer of Margaret Thatcher. But that’s all water under the bridge now. The reviewer, named Sara Wheeler, is a “travel writer.” In the West, where anybody can travel as easily and as fast as she...
On Saturday, I finally was able to fall asleep in the afternoon, but my slumbers were cut short by the expected arrival of Il nostro amico Russo, who had driven down with my landlord, a lawyer in Palermo, who returns to his home periodically. I was not the most entertaining of hosts, though I did bring out a good bottle of grappa di amarone, barricata. I had managed to drink a glass or two the previous Thursday and now had to watch as Navrozov ruthlessly swilled glass after glass. I begrudged him not my liquor, but I did resent his enjoyment.
Baby, it’s dumb outside! The revolutionaries are blaming Trump for the divisions they have been creating for over 50 years.
Ecumenism for Orphans –Carl Hildebrand “Ut unum sint…” Zivania—the “dry traditional aperitif” of Cyprus. My American vulgarity wonders how it would go with Coca-Cola. Not as good as Jack and Coke, but I won’t let that get in the way. Some months ago, I lived off-and-on in Nicosia, the capital of Cyprus, whose current partial occupation by the Turks since 1974 is only the latest chapter in that Levantine island’s storied history of invasion and seizure. Cyprus’ strategic position, jabbing its spindly north-eastern finger of land into the armpit of Asia Minor, made the occupation of Aphrodite’s famed birth-place a...
This is perhaps my sixth trip to Sicily. I say “perhaps,” because I’m not very good about dates. It’s not that my math skills are particularly deficient. As a schoolboy, I always tested higher in math than in verbal skills. It’s not even my almost complete lack of interest in mathematics, which has kept me blissfully ignorant of most higher math. My real deficiency is something I regard as a virtue: an instinctive refusal to apply numbers to the phenomena of human life. Aristotle did not make the mistake that has been made, over and over, by philosophers since Descartes...
We had decided to stay in a little hotel in the center, the place in which we had spent a week during our first trip to Italy, 30 years ago. I had been foolishly attracted to the Alberto Cesàri, when I discovered that Stendahl had passed a good part of his sojourn in Rome in this very place. It was and is an unpretentious place, though about five years ago they added a rooftop bar and breakfast room. In 1988 most of the guests were tourists like us, but this time we were the only Americans, except for a Fox...
Not Christmas Yet. Avoiding the incessant vocal vandalism done to traditional Christmas carols and holiday chestnuts is all but impossible if you go anywhere in the American marketplace between now and January 1. Unfortunately having one’s ears stuffed with cotton is not particularly polite when in public. While I love good Christmas music, and there is a wealth of fine music for that holiday, the season of Advent is all but ignored by all but a few. In a sort of personal resistance to the American obsession with the holiday spirit, prior to the holiday, I listen only to Advent...
Speaking a different language forces the traveler to wonder how in the world foreigners manage to distort English—and vice versa. In Italy a bar is a place to get coffee and a pastry, have a light lunch, drink a glass of wine, but it is not for serious drinkers and does exclude children.
A paragraph from an irresponsible rant on the murder of a Saudi journalist. …. It is quite possible that the murder took place exactly as the press, claiming the CIA as the ultimate source, has described it. On the other hand, there is no reason to believe anyone in the media, whether Jim Acosta or Sean Hannity, and after the past few years it is pretty clear we have no reason to believe the FBI, and if the FBI is specializing in political propaganda, can the CIA–the agency that appears to have engaged in massive drug smuggling in order to...
