Loretta Alper's Film Packs the House in 'Hamp

Last night Loretta Alper must have been damn proud. That's because a packed to the rafters, turn-people-away-at-the-door crowd piled into the Academy of Music theater to see the film she produced make its debut. The film is 'War Made Easy: how presidents and pundits keep spinning us to death' and the film was a historic recollection of the many wars that presidents and the press have tried to make palatable to the American public. It's a pattern that began with Korea and continues just the same way through today's war in Iraq.

The film was a mix of clips and a commentary by Norman Soloman, and obviously played to the crowd of Massachusetts liberals who are united in shock and awe at how much we all hate the current war in Iraq. The buzz that the film created was due in part I think to how much we all are united too in trying to make a statement---to say something to register our disgust at the cost in money and lives and injuries to Iraqis and our soldiers. Maybe just lining up to view this movie was a way we could vote with our feet.

But I kept thinking, as Johnny Memphis, Bill Dwight, Bill Hewitt, Paul Shoul, Kathy Brown, and so many other of my friends and folks in the media all were there, taking their seats, at how impressed I was that we all were turning out for Loretta's movie. Then we came home and saw her on the TV news. Wow.

Showing Off Big Boobs Gets Her the Boot

In one of the trade papers a small item caught my eye. 'Busty Tourist told to cover up or leave,' it said, quickly getting my attention. Stuff.co.nz had the rest of the story.

"A night of celebration turned to humiliation when an English tourist's "offensive" breasts upset fellow punters at the Christchurch Casino. Helen Simpson, 33, from Nottingham, was wearing a low-cut, black evening dress when a woman staff member told her to cover up or leave.
"She said I was wearing too low a top, which people found offensive," Simpson said. "I was highly embarrassed – humiliated, absolutely humiliated.

"There were girls at the casino wearing short skirts that I think are nothing more than belts.
"I feel like I've been discriminated against for having big breasts." One of Simpson's group lent her a zip-up top to cover her chest, but the night got worse when she learnt bar staff, croupiers and security staff had been told.

Simpson has written to casino management saying she left feeling "humiliated, discriminated and highly embarrassed".She wrote: "Being well-endowed in the upper region is something I did not choose in life and something I'm certainly not proud of. "In turn, have you ever been shopping for a formal cocktail dress that is accommodating to a size 14 woman with the top half demanding a size 20?"

Simpson said it was discrimination. "You don't see women with too small boobs being criticised, do you?" Her boyfriend, Chris Olivier, 34, said he had found Kiwis polite, friendly people, and the treatment had surprised him.

"She'd changed quite a few times before we went out and I thought she looked really nice," he said. "It's just disappointing."

World Hum Rejects Me--with Class

I got a nice rejection letter from my friend Jim Benning who runs World Hum, an interesting travel website based in California. I have been interested in Jim because earlier this year the website was acquired by the Travel Channel. I remember talking with him about his business a few years back and it was clear that the part he liked best was editing and putting up stories.

He was working a day job then, and so my ideas about advertising and monetization weren't that interesting to him. But now he's worked out a great arrangement. The site is owned by the Travel Channel, promoted on their site, and he concentrates his time on editing and writing and finding great content for the site.

I asked him how it's going and what it's like to have a boss. He said he was having a great time, and that while he is in touch with the Travel Channel folks every day, it's a good relationship, they let him do his thing and happily, he no longer has to work that other day job.

As a result of the new owners, World Hum now pays $100 for stories, and so I had hoped to get my story published there. Unfortunately my piece about Italy didn't fit the criteria and so all I got was a polite rejection.

But I gotta give Jim credit; Most editors never bother to either reply nor read the submissions...and I think it was a kharmic payback since I reply to every query or email. I won't give up though, there is a good home somewhere for this story and I'll keep plugging away til I find it.

The Idea of Free Wireless is Great--Just not for Real

Today's WSJ had a story with the gloomy headline: Free Wi-Fi Still An Elusive Goal. The story told of how difficult it has been to roll out and 'monetize' the envisioned beltway of free wireless connections on every town square and across miles and miles of the US. At one time, I too was caught up in the giddy notion that we could put up little devices on telephone poles and make money offering a wireless internet service to our neighborhoods. But in each of the cities that these dreams were talked up, problems have arisen.

Earthlink, the major muscle behind this idea in a dozen cities has retrenched. They just don't think enough people want or need the premium version of the free service and don't want to move ahead. A huge project to create free Wi-Fi in the entire Silicon Valley has also stalled. IBM and Cisco have cooled and while they say they are still interested, nobody is writing the big checks.

I just got a new Bountiful Router in the mail, this was the heart of our own little Free Wi-Fi zone in South Deerfield. With no state funds nor town support, we built a free wireless network that expands about 1000 yards all around downtown. My neighbors in other shops, men in Verizon trucks, and even a guy in Subway, on the next block, eagerly and regularly log on to our network and surf the net. We love it...giving away something we value very much gives us a great feeling.

Pissing People Off Every Day on Readuponit

I am constantly amazed at how mad I make people with this blog. Who knew that words I peck here reach so far and wide...but they do. So you will just have to guess which blog got somebody so steamed up I had to remove it. No, don't try to recall it, just trust me...a lot of the things I write about get yanked down or altered. Sometimes in a few hours, sometimes it takes a little longer.

I heard once about the folks in the local hardware store...mad as hell at my arrogance for speaking askance of the mighty millionaire from Leverett. And how many stories have I shared using pseudonyms yet still making their subjects uncomfortable?

I am a little amazed because, well, it always comes down to sharing what somebody shared with me. I have come to regard my blog as my tablet, my open book, the place where I go with my news. I am unafraid of honesty, but the truth is many people are aghast.

Women Who Make Big Bucks Beef About Poor Boyfriends

I went out and bought the ridiculously expensive Sunday NY Times for the cafe. $5.00?! Come on! But inside, as usual, was a bunch of first-rate articles including a feature on why women who make big bucks have such a hard time finding dates. Subtitled "young women discover the pitfalls of 'dating down', the story profiles women like Whitney Hess, a '25-year-old software designer in Manhattan, who wanted to dine at trendy Tribeca bistros but found her dates, those creative types, more interested in diners.

One actually told her that her higher income made him uncomfortable. Like a good New Age Guy, he owned up to his feelings, and he said he was trying to get over it. He didn't. The article explains that part of this growing gulf between the sexes is because more women than men finish college, and especially, perservere through graduate school.

Another New York City woman named Hilary Roland bought her first condo when she was 18, and works in some sort of on-line business. She makes enough to usually fly business or even first class. She sniffed that her 34-year-old musician boyfriend made her fly in coach and endure a 2-hour layover in, gasp, Salt Lake City on a trip where they stayed with a friend. She told the Times she would have preferred paying her own way and flying in her usual manner.

It's not only the low incomes that bother these career gals, it's more than that. It's a lack of drive. "I have to say that I didn't like his career, I didn't think he had the goals of someone I would eventually like to be with or have respect for," said Jade Wannell, a 25-year-old producer at a Chicago ad agency. Her former boyfriend, who didn't work many hours at his job at a trucking company, wanted to go out to a bar instead of taking her to art galleries. "I was bored and didn't feel challenged," she explained.

A Soft Fall Evening in the City that Springfield Wants to Be

Saturday morning at the cafe. We went down to the city last night and the deck at the Depot was glorious. It had that soft easy early fall feeling, just the right temp and perfect time to meet my lovely lady for a glass of wine.

We're pleased to have one of BJ Roche's students, Jon Brandt, as our new GoNOMAD intern. So far he's doing well, managing to update the Travel Reader blog despite having a cast on his right hand from a wrestling injury. It's great to have another intern to write articles and review travel books for us. You'll see his articles on the website starting next week.

A Fine Man Speaks His "Last Lecture"

We both felt wobbly Cindy and I, after we read in the WSJ about Professor Randy Pausch,45, and his graceful grip on his exit from this world. Diagnosed with deadly pancreatic cancer, he strode up to the lectern at Carnegie Mellon University to deliver his final thoughts. The last words, in what is commonly known as 'his last lecture.'

Jeffrey Zaslow described it. "He began by showing CT scans of his liver: ten tumors were revealed. He showed slides of his life. His childhood dreams, to win stuffed animals at carnivals, to walk in zero gravity, to design Disney rides, to write a world book entry. By adulthood he had achieved them all. He and his wife have three little kids between 1-5.

Flashing his rejection letters onto the screen, he talked about setbacks in his career, repeating: Brick walls are there for a reason. They let us prove how badly we want things." He saluted his parents, who let him make his childhood bedroom his domain, even if his wall etchings hurt the home's resale value. He knew his mom was proud of him when he got his Ph.D.

He showed pictures of his bosses and students over the years, he said that helping others fulfill their dreams is even more fun than achieving your own."

He was a brilliant professor, inventor of a software that allows people to create 3D animations, and he challenged his students to try and invent a video game without sex or violence. They all rose to the challenge. "Like Moses, I get to see the promised land, but I don't get to set foot in it," he said.

The Sober Buddy Doesn't Come Cheap

Nikki Finke is a toughie and a funny writer. She writes about Hollywood with a scorched keyboard in LA Weekly. She pointed out a new trend in LA that's bubbling up to the mainstream.

"Hollywood is now indulging in a different kind of rehab substitute. It's intense and round the clock sober companionship, aka "The Sober Buddy". Rather than spending the standard 60 to 90 days in a clinic like Promises or Betty Ford, the actor or actress or exec hires a sober companion to keep on track. Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, this coach by your side makes sure you stay clean.

Such intense monitoring doesn't come cheap, as ABC News-- which claims Owen Wilson has a sober buddy -- found out from Douglas Caine, founder of Sober Champion with offices in LA, NYC and London. Caine says his prices range from $450 to $1,500 a day for care. as it happens, art is imitating life: Jim Carrey is supposedly still linked to a Universal project in development titled Sober Buddies to play a court appointed "sober buddy" to a hard-partying businessman needing an alcohol-free biz trip to Vegas.

The glitch? The sober buddy falls off the wagon himself. Then again, Carrey's recent projects do have a habit of falling apart."

'Don't Tase Me Bro' Guy Loves Controversy

Popping around the 'net on Monday night, I met the tasered guy named Andrew Meyer. He was questioning the very boring Sen. John Kerry at a Florida speech and they asked him to leave. He refused and was famously tasered, and of course the videotape is on YouTUbe with the priceless quote. For the remixed video visit YouTube.

"Don't Tase me Bro!" Owwwwwchhhh. Scream! Scream!

I read about Meyer and his propensity for irritating and annoying that goes back a long way. In the Alligator newspaper in Florida, he is quoted in a column as saying "I absolutely love the thought that some nonsense I wrote irritated poeple enough to take time out of their day to let everyone know how much they disliked what I wrote."

"It's unfortunate it came down to that," she said. "But UPD didn't know what his intentions were. They were just trying to protect Sen. Kerry and the crowd." Meyer's friend, Ricky Cuellar, doesn't think his buddy is too over the top.

Cuellar, an events management junior, thinks that Meyer, or The Andrew Meyer as he calls himself online, simply wanted to ask Kerry some tough questions."That's just how he is," Cuellar said. "He's really into asking the difficult questions, and he loves conspiracies."

Cuellar called UPD's tactics "a little more than ridiculous...It made me think of when someone speaks out at an assembly in high school," he said. "They would get sent to the principal and get a referral. But he got tackled by six officers and Tasered."

Meyer, who celebrated his 21st birthday Sept. 15, runs a Web site -- www.theandrewmeyer.com -- where he airs his views on music, movies and politics. The site has had more than 45,000 hits since the arrest.

Town Square, Barga Italy

In Barga everybody is part of the town. Pants or not.

One Girl for Every 1.23 Boys...China's Time Bomb

Nicholas Eberstadt writes an op-ed piece in today's WSJ that highlights a striking problem with man messing around with nature. He weighs in the China's One Child Policy, that since 1979 has created a juggernaut of population make-up problems and caused something that has never happened before. Now there are 123 males for every 100 baby girls, so there will be a class of men who'll have to fight over the few available women partners of the same age.

It was intended, of course to ease food shortages and lower the population. But since fertility has been declining world wide since about the time this program began, now China faces a less than replacement reproduction rate of 1.7 per every two people....so by 2030, the country's population will go down. That will leave a hole and make the country full of old people and not-so-full of able bodied younger men and women to do the work.

What will China do, Eberstadt asked, with tens of millions of unmarriageable young men? He concludes by saying that if people were just left to their own devices, they would have fixed the problem and not created this sexual imbalance that throws such a monkey wrench into society.

Diluting Concentrated Poverty Worked in Atlanta

Sitting in the cafe on a gorgeous fall day...wishing more people had come in today. Oh well. I read in a column in the Republican by Leonard Pitts...the story began with a horror show and ended with a lesson in how things can change for the better.

He describes a neighborhood in Atlanta called East Lake Meadows. "Built of bricks and ringed with barbed wire and called 'Little Vietnam' because it was a war zone. "Do you know where you are?" a horrified cop once demanded of a lost driver with out of state plates....and a Carter administration official was once terrified during a visit, even with the Secret Service by his side.

It had it all...$4000 average yearly income, 75 percent drop-out rate, almost 60 percent of the people on welfare. And an open air drug market all around. Only 14 percent of the people had jobs.

Fast forward to 2007: Now this neighborhood is totally changed, 75 percent of the kids pass the math tests, crime is down an astounding 87 percent, and about 5 percent of residents are on the dole. The secret: a new owner came in and mixed middle income residents in with the poor. The landlord now requires background checks and criminals can't live there. By diluting the concentrated poor, and building quality charter schools and asking the poorest to pay 30 percent of the rent, it was all turned around.

Budget hotels in Atlanta

The Blackest Pasta You've Ever Loved

The ultimate seafood pasta is made with squid ink and infused with chunks of calimari. We ate this in Portoferraro, our last meal in a 'housewive's cafe' on the enchanting island of Elba.

Since I've returned I've been talking up the place and can't wait to go on Arthur's Around the World Radio show next Thursday and tell people about how great it is on the island of Elba.

Back in '87, They Feared the Fax Machine

David Callaway, the editor in chief of Marketwatch, recalled his early days at the Boston Herald when in 1987, everyone thought that newspapers were endangered--because people would get their news over the fax machine. But as a survivor and a business reporter, he discusses the transition and what it has been like to work for a 'dying industry' for more than twenty years.

"Back in the 1980s, the hot new thing was to deliver news by fax machine, and papers were going to die because readers would be able to get news quicker by fax. They would even be able to tailor the type of news they wanted to receive. Imagine that.

At one of the (news) sites Wednesday afternoon, the lead story was a video from YouTube headlined "Leave Britney Alone." Another site led with "How to hide beer in the office" -- clearly an underemphasized talent but hardly newsworthy on a day when oil prices hit $80 a barrel and Vladimir Putin dissolved the Russian government.

I know I'll come under fire for stepping into this, and maybe after 20 years I'm in danger of becoming the curmudgeon I always thought some of my older journalistic brethren were. But as long as there are Enrons and WorldComs out there; hedge funds and pyramid schemes; crimes, wars and corrupt leaders, there will be journalists who will find platforms to report on them -- whatever the technology.

Indeed, this is not the beginning of the end for journalism. It wasn't 20 years ago either. It's a bull market for those who can write a sentence and tell a story and know how to do it across the mediums of print, Web, audio, video and mobile. The stories are there for the taking. Oh, and one more thing about my first job at the Herald. It was owned at the time by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., incoming owner of Dow Jones & Co., which publishes MarketWatch.

Roast Chicken for a Day at the Beach in Elba

For a day at the beach, we needed sustenance and for this we turned to this man in a truck who offered rotisserie chickens and fried potatoes in Marciana Marina, on the island of Elba.

We drove to the far south and enjoyed a classic beach day, sharing our delicious chicken with bees who tried to land on the food. The scene was serene with blue skies and perfect temps.

I swam out and floated in the Mediterranean, and thought of how much I love this island where there are no high-rise hotels, no congestion and surprisingly, no construction cranes looming overhead. That's because it is ninety percent national park, protected forever from development. So all you see are quaint little medieval towns, rocky and stony beaches, and sweeping views of the blue Med as far as you can see.

To Cavoli, for an Italian Beach Day on Elba

Today was the classic Italian beach day. But first it was time to visit the market in Marciana Marina. A typical Italian weekly market, with the usual stuff--clothing, shoes, kitchen stuff and one highlight--rotisserie chicken. We had asked our guide Tatiana her favorite place for lunch and she steered us to the stand where they roast it in the back of a truck.

So we headed off to the island's southern coast to the small beach town of Cavoli. Like so many of these towns, it's a long way down from the road up above, and mountains tower over that. We wound our way down and found a parking place that also sold umbrellas and beach chairs. So we made our way up to the first row and devoured the chicken and some fresh figs and peaches from the market.

No where on Elba, it seems, do you get to park for free near the beach. There's always a machine to feed coins into, or an attendant waiting for euros. So for e22 we had the whole package and were set for a half-day of beach front leisure.

The water was brisk but soon felt great as I floated out and looked back at the beach. There was nothing to do except bask, bask in the lovely little sliver of beach, bordered by rocks, and gaze at our fellow beach goers while letting the afternoon drift away.

Visiting the Site of Napoleon's Trysts

We took a long walk this morning up to the top of Madonna del Monte, the tallest peak on Elba. There is a chairlift that brings people up, but we took the path that is marked by 14 little white stone domes--stations with pictures of Jesus that look like phone booths, along the faded concrete steps that line the way.

Our excellent guide, Tatiana Segnini, a lifelong resident here, had time to share some of the lore of Napoleon, who spent a few nights up here with his lover Maria Velesca, just a short time after he arrived on the island in May 1814. He worried about her safety during a storm when she left, and he didn't mind the spartan setting--he was there for love, and he was a military man, after all.

Tatiana told us that he suffered from ulcers, or stomach cancer, hence the constant clutching of the breast. And that he was frustrated at his sentence to be exiled here, and tried to poison himself unsuccessfully. And that he spent his last six years exiled to yet another island, even further away, St Helena off the coast of Africa. But by then he was a prisoner, not a King as he was on the French controlled Elba. when he came for his famous nine-month stint.

Napoleon came to Elba without his wife, Maria Louisa, and he wrote her letters every day. But his father-in-law, Austria's King, never showed them to her and eventually she took up with another man. The emperor was busy here--funds were cut by Louis the 18th, who despised him, so he had to raise taxes and he helped establish schools, hospitals, and a working economy.

He gave this island a lot, mostly the fame and notoriety that would live on for centuries. And the silly palindrome that everybody says when you tell them you're going to Elba.

Espresso, Tuscany Style

Here is a perfect cup of espresso. Note the thick 'crema' that's what baristas the world over try to achieve. I drank one of these at about 7 pm one night last week and regretted it, as I tossed and turned 'til 4 am. Never again, at least at that hour!

One of Elba's Best Citizens Does God's Work in Kenya

Some of the best moments on our trips are the times we arrange to meet 'interesting local people' and learn about fascinating work that is being done in the very place we are visiting. We had an eye-opening visit in Roberta Adami's home this afternoon in the tiny village of Poggia. She is 45, a medical researcher who spends a great deal of her time and energy helping the poorest of the poor--orphans and adults who live near Lake Victoria in Kenya. She told us about the Mama Magdelena Ndeda Foundation and how she's rallied people from Elba and the world to adopt Kenyan kids and help improve their lives.

"One time I opened my door and there were 3000 people waiting there, all wanting medical care," she told us. "There wasn't anything we could do, you can't pick and choose." She goes to Kenya regularly during the year, helping a pastor there minister to a flock of thousands. "Once we asked all of the kids who are orphans to raise their hands...and nearly every hand went up." She laments that the country seems to be comprised solely of orphans and widows...so many widows. "45% of the people in the region are HIV positive," she said, making health care even more difficult.

Despite the grave situation, she remains hardworking, steadfast, and hopeful that her hard work will someday ring the ears of some of the rich Kenyan widows she knows. "If we could only start a family home, a place where kids could live...I know someday we will be able to do it."

We ate icecream and as she talked, her passion and devotion to this place and these hard tales was palpable and noble. She is a lovely woman who deserves a rich widow or a richer foundation's generous funding.

Elba's Stunning Vistas and Crisp Whites Please the Senses

Elba is fantastico and fabuloso. I knew we'd like it here but I didn't count on such stunning cliffside vistas, such gorgeous beaches, and such crisp dry wine and fresh from the sea meals.

We began our day at the Hotel Ilio and met Maurizio, who had just returned from Milan. He's getting his masters in marketing. "You know how you have passions and you have your job? I have this hotel but what I really love is marketing and promotion. So he runs his own PR shop and helps promote not only this hotel but this part of the island and Elba proper.

Over coffee we reviewed our maps and decided to go to Marciana Marina, where a long protected harbor is flanked by a concrete seawall and a long beach is filled with Sunday morning loungers. We walked its length and made it to the end where we found Attilio's Ristorante Capo Nord.

We walked in and immediatly were greated by our host. "Max! GoNOMAD!" he said, and brought us to a prime table overlooking the stony beach and sunbathers basking on the rocks on the far right. We decided to leave lunch in his capable hands, and he didn't disappoint, bringing out a plate of appetizers of tuna, anchovy in tomato sauce, little white beans and mussels with breadcrumbs. It was all delicious and the sun shone brightly as people teeter-tottered their way into the sea.

Then he brought us pastas with swordfish chunks and risotto with octopus, redolent of the nearby sea. The wine was from Elba, crisp and dry. Later Maurizio met us and we followed him in his silver Porsche Cayman up the winding roads into the hills to the tiny village of Poggio. Here we met Roberta and learned about the wonderful work she does with orphans in an impoverished Kenyan village. More on this amazing woman later.

The Grifoglia Family

Kerry Bell, Pietro Messina and Johnny, the family who make Grifoglia a homey, cozy place where people come to relax and unwind in the hills of Tuscany.

Isola de Elba

We drove the northern part of the island of Elba and this was one of the scenes en route. We took the state-owned ferry, Toremar, in the distance you can see the Moby Lines boat coming back from the island.

We've Made it to Elba and the Surfing's Fine

We have reached the far end of the island of Elba, and we finally have a solid internet connection. For those of you (God bless ya) who come here daily, thank you for your patience, and from now on I shall be able to give you a window into what I am doing here on this island off of Tuscany.

It took quite a while of driving for us to get here from Barga, located in Tuscany's northern corner. The autostrada was fast, we cruised at 140 km and then we stopped at Autogrill. I said to Cindy, 'why don't they have these in the US?' when we lined up for a delicious meal...pesto with rotini pasta, fresh salad with balsamic and good olive oil, a plate of sheep's milk cheese and proscuito, it was all good and we didn't even get the hot entrees of mixed grilled peppers, chicken and risottos. In any case, why do we have to settle for crap like McDonalds instead of food and wine this good on our interstates? Surely someone besides us has wondered this.

We ditched the rental car (a quick and nimble Alfa-Romeo) and lugged our suitcases on board a Toremar ferry. It was a sunny hour-long journey, with sailboats joining us in the channel, and then we landed at Portoferraio, where we found Rent Mondo. A very friendly chap there set us up with a little Renault and with the top down we headed up the curvy hills to Capo Sant'Andrea, in the town of Marciana.

The Hotel Ilio is where we are staying for the next four nights....a boutique hotel with 20 rooms right next to a nature preserve about 300 steps from the stony beach.

We dine at 8 and then we'll meet Maurizio, our guide, who has promised to show us his island and all there is to see here.

A News Fast at Grifoglia is Good for the Soul

We are in the midst of a media fast. I did not realize this when we set up this trip, but the fact is that Grifoglia, with green fields and rolling hills, is in the sticks. There is nothing here except a big garden, a lovely pool, a stone house and enough food and wine to keep us all sated. So, with no TV, no radio, no internet and no newspapers, we have only ourselves to provide the entertainment. We love it!

I have taught my three mates how to play bridge. We have had long lunches with pasta, pesto, fresh tomatoes and basil from the garden, and took long naps. We have plowed through numerous books, and lounged by the pool. We have taken a few day trips, including to the walled city of Lucca, but mostly, we have enjoyed true relaxation.

Today Cindy and I interviewed Kerry Bell, who with her husband Pietro Messina founded this lovely apartment rental in the country. It has been a six year labor of love, and now she gets guests for up to 12 weeks a year from the US and the UK. Two Scots have taken up residence this week in the barn, a stone structure with a kitchenette that sits right above the pool.

This has been good for me. Enough news for me, enough absorbing so many irrelevant facts. News fasts feel very good, and there is nothing I cannot catch up on late next week.

Twisting, Turning, and Finally Reaching Grafoglia

After a twisting, turning, eyes-shut-in-the-back-seat ride up mountain roads, around curves you never, ever saw the end of, we finally made it to Grafoglia. We spied our hosts, Pietro and Kerry, outside by the garden and knew we had made it. What a gorgeous place it is!

Located in the mountains outside the walled city of Barga, Grafoglia is a place to come and relax. We sat by the pool and read our books, we made a big lunch of pasta, chicken with lemon and zucchinis and sipped Orvieto. We joked and laughed and took naps, then it was time once more to navigate the twisty roads and hope nobody was coming the other way. We made it here to this little internet point to touch base again with the world.

The buildings at our lodgings have been restored carefully, the thick stone walls afford complete and utter silencio at night. A rushing stream provides a nice accompaniment and the faraway rooster and barking dog adds a rustic charm. Kerry is a clothing designer, writer, and now, hostess, and has guests come each week to stay in the apartment and the little building that sleeps two more.

This week will be filled with good books, good eats and good wine, and relaxing is the priority at this place. It feels good to be back in Italy.