An Orange Cat in a Green Garden

Here’s Luce, our long and lean, little orange kitten (now a teenager actually). His name, inspired by our Italian sojourn last May, means ‘light’.

I’d wanted him on my lap for the filming but he was nowhere to be found when we began (camera shy perhaps). He walked by just as we finished so I scooped him up and had Maia take these stills of him … one in same view as the cat on the cover, the other, as though staring at his lookalike.

So there we have it, Tasks 1 through 10 complete.

Thank you for the fun, creative and informative journey that the Training Team put together for us. And especially, for the glimpses into our colleagues’/friends’ lives and passions outside of the Library that it has provided along the way!

A green Thought in a green Shade

Podcasts and a Mild-mannered Iconoclast

For Task #7 we were to listen to a podcast. I chose to browse those offered by CBC and found myself listening to a delightful piece called "A Woman of No Consequence" from the program "And the Winner is ..." which is a show of award winning radio programs.
Sethu Ramaswamy was reading Dickens and Virginia Woolf before she was 10 years old but coming from a traditional Indian family, she was then married at 10 to a young man of 22 and gave birth to her first child at 15.
Her time consisted of bathing and raising children (6 girls) and "cutting vegetables, that is what I remember most, cutting vegetables in the corner of the kitchen". But she was an avid reader and because she and her husband were often apart due to his work, a devoted writer of letters. Finally, this mild-mannered, cultured woman broke from tradition and at 80 years of age wrote a memoir entitled The Autobiography of an Unknown Indian Woman.
This podcast is a delightful reflection on Sethu's life by her granddaughter and features much material in Sethu's own voice.
It makes me think of several great books with Indian characters in them, A Good Wife, by Anne Cherian, The Inheritance of Loss, by Kiran Desai, the books of Rohinton Mistry, Selvadurai Shyam, the films of Deepa Mehta etc.
I can see that these podcasts would be a good way for KFPL to showcase material in our collection. If we were to choose one item at a time to highlight like in the Book of the Week but then make tie-ins to several other things in different formats ... much like in the tradition of 'Next Reads' or 'If you liked ..."

Buttons and Capuccino

The year Maia was 2, we moved to town.
At least twice a week, she and I would walk the many blocks to the Italian Pastry Shop, stopping enroute at Quick Sew to let Maia choose 3 more buttons for her collection.

Once there, it was a capuccino for me, steamed (frothed!) milk for her and maybe a pair of amaretti. A delicious time together, staring at the confections in the glass case, sorting the ever-growing pile of jewel-like buttons and then the walk home.

So picture this: the night that Maia is in the bath with her beloved pink, plastic tea set. The tiny room barely fits the tub along one wall, the toilet and the vanity with sink. She has carefully lined up the teacups along the edge of the tub.

Eschewing the teapot, she steps out of the tub and crosses to the vanity. The handle is vertical. One by one, she brings over the cups. She puts one hand on the top of the handle and the other below with a cup held in it. By the second or third cup, Jem and I realise that she's serving steam-pressured capuccinos a la The Italian Pastry Shop!

A Project Before Departure ...

So a month or two before leaving in May, I began to do database searches: Italy/fiction, Tuscany/fiction, Umbria/fiction. And when they began pouring into Central, in the courier boxes from hither and yon, I brought home armloads, stacked them in our livingroom and announced:
"All reading and viewing from here on in has to be set in Italy."
Some highlights?
The Miracles of Santo Fico, by D.L. Smith, The Food of Love and The Wedding Officer, by Anthony Capella and the mystery series by Magdalen Nabb featuring the delightful, self-effacing and intuitive Marshal Guarnaccia.
But wait!
I shall create a bookshelf to showcase them for you ...

Reading Over My Shoulder

Years ago, as I sipped my capuccino and read my book, someone asked, "Have you read any Kaye Gibbons?"

A couple of weeks later I had.

So I posted a note on a scrap of paper from my purse on the handy dandy bulletin board:

"To the woman who recommended A Virtuous Woman. I loved it. Thanks! Try her Ellen Foster. Also, her latest is 'On Order' at the library."

The next time I was in, there in the margins of my already tiny note: "Charms for the Easy Life. Her best yet!" (Though I liked Virtuous best.)

A pre-Twitter Tweet at my favourite coffee shop!

And now you'll see that I am trying enter into the Web 2.0 experience by way of my love for all things Italian. Here, in this blogspot, I will be able to muse and dream and share my love for the books and movies set there; the food and coffee, wine; the scents and textures; and the memories and pleasures of our family's dream-come-true trip there in May of 2009.

Remember?

Remember the amaretti and croccante cookies displayed in the glass-fronted cases; cannoli stuffed with sweet ricotta cheese; the smell of the best coffee in the city; the little tables squeezed against the length of the narrow shop? The owners back in the kitchen making the confections that filled their cases. She: tall, big hair, commanding; he: short, round, gruff, generous. Staff out front making the espresso and capuccinos.
The first and still unmatched coffee shop in Kingston.
And there was a bulletin board just inside the front door posted with the usual ephemera: business cards, 'Lost: one pink mitten with yellow stripes'; 'Apartment wanted downtown'.