Forgotten photos of il Poggiolo...

Spring 2022, when travelling resumed after two consecutive years of Covid-19 Lockdown…

When an Italian friend heard I was going to be in Charleston, South Carolina, where she lives half the year with her American architect husband… of some note, I might add… and the other half of the year perched with him in a terraced villa-with-pool high above the Mediterranean Sea outside Genoa, she asked if I might like to give a talk to her Italian culture group, the Dante Alighieri Society. They’re everywhere in the world, like mushrooms in forests after a rain. I said, No. A typical knee-jerk reaction. Probably hadn’t had a glass of white wine yet. Always improves my receptivity. While I am at it and FYI…

Do not hazard to chat-me-up before I have given the International High-sign that I have sipped dry my second cup of coffee of the morning.

The Italian friend did not take my reply as even remotely acceptable. She remained undaunted. Adamant. Pursued a change of heart with the following flattering enticement… Hey! You could tell the story of your fantastic house in Tuscany. The members will eat it up. You’re living The Dream, you know? Yes, I’ve been previously informed…

A cousin of mine, alighted in fair Codiponte from Addis Abeba on his way to his home in Boston after attending a three-week international conference on Health Care, took one look at me leaning against a beat-up and dusty Hyundai SUV with our Weimaraner hanging out a back window and parked below il Poggiolo, only to holler… Look, dude! You’re living The Dream. Have not been able to shake it since.

The tide did eventually turn in the desired direction on the Italian friend’s fantastic flattery. Still, I equivocated for an extra few moments for dramatic purposes. I like suspense, especially when I have fatto una brutta figura… have embarrassed myself. Yet, perhaps, I just wanted to savour the reverberations of my No before relenting with an enthusiastic… Yes! Actually, the clincher was I had had a congenial idea sprouted during negotiations between that No and Yes! An idea on how-to. What was it? Well, I could draw My Italian House Story with Magic-markers on a big newsprint pad while simultaneously projecting pictorial documents, ie photos, from my vast archive off my laptop. By the way? Where could those photos be?

When did you last take a photo with a roll of film? I haven’t since 2009 with a handy-dandy pocket-sized Olympus film-camera dangled from my neck. Bought it just before You & I had purchased il Poggiolo. I was interested in shooting trash & billboards along the streets of Genoa. Found a better subject personally documenting every phase of restoring the wreck of a Tuscan farm-house we had put money on towards a second life as Our Home in the Lunigiana. How Times have certainly changed with the advent of the iPhone and its camera. Happened mid-stream through our adventure of funnelling €€€’s to builders, electricians, plumbers, painters, etc.. The hard-core construction photos, however, were in print-film and I wanted them for the more mouth-watering part of my talk in Charleston. Somewhere in the house were piles of them. Eureka! happened when I successfully unstuck a drawer of a desk in the Casa Grande, the main part of il Poggiolo.

What a shocker. Apparently, I had DELETED them from my memory. I had to sit down. Then, a question barrelled to the fore as I leafed through the pics… What were we thinking?

Taking a large step backwards to 2009, I want to share a few glimpses of what You saw on his first visit to il Poggiolo a Codiponte on a cold Saturday, the 10th of January 2009. I had had my first visit on the previous Thursday, ridiculously forgetting the Olympus in Genoa. We made an offer after the tour that Saturday and it was accepted on the Monday after…

A second salvo from a overlooked photographic Memory Lane were the those pictures taken in late May of 2009 after the Builder’s Boys had cleared il Poggiolo of all the trash, litter, debris, filth, and icky other stuff… in and around the house & courtyard… and had carted it off to A Somewhere I don’t ever want to know about…

2009, 2010, 2011 and 2012 were the years devoted to re-building il Poggiolo…

And now for you to see the fruits of those labours or, what the dream is all about…

And so, a tasting of the past and present, of forgotten and remembered, of a house and home, il Poggiolo a Codiponte.

Still unfinished...

Archive post November 14, 2019…

I had thought that when I came back home to Codiponte from two weeks in the hospital and rehab after my left hip op, the work on the Medieval bridge would be way, way finished. Nope.

What continues to disturb…

the large blue and black corrugated plastic tubes sprouting like an art project or, a visual social commentary at the junction of two low walls which will be part of the scenic overlook adjacent to the Medieval bridge’s parking area. A new light pole has been erected to carry the electrical cables strung across the Aulella River to the central part of the Codiponte. The old pylon will be eventually be dismantled and carried off. We hope. Right now it looks like a forlorn relic. And, nothing has been accomplished to resolve the dangerous part of the bridge’s pavement. There have been accidents, sudden falls, scrapes, etc. Apparently, the Madonnina can do nothing to help. He hands are tied holding the Baby Jesus? In thanks for the new coat of stucco inside & out of Her niche and the new set of steps up to lay flowers or, place one of those Brico Centre red votive candles. One is a fake and instead, has a battery to keep the light going 24/7, its flicker an unconscious warning, perhaps?

Takes me a good 10+ minutes to cross the bridge on crutches. Morning & afternoon exercises. Would be bad enough on two legs, but with four, well, it’s a very slow & perilous go. The upside of this journey is I meet other villagers attempting the crossing too. A slow go for them. We meet and suddenly, we have a quorum to complain and belly-ache about the idiocy of carrying the bridge to this deplorable state, i.e. the appallingly iffy pavement and the roller-coaster arches doubling one’s efforts to be safe. After venting, someone shares news of the more recent disgrazie of some unfortunate citizen’s encounter with the Medieval bridge.

I have since run into other gossip circulating Codiponte that the Culture Police… La Sopra-intendenza dei Beni Culturali… insisted upon rigorously respecting the Medieval aspects in the bridge’s reconstruction barring any concession to modern conveniences… ape-scooters, baby carriages, grocery strollers… or, needs of the local populace. The median age here is over 50 years of age. And I know most folk over the age of 70 use canes. More instability than two crutches. Yet, there’s a nice number of kids under the age of 7 years, which should have been factored in. Nope.

My late-breaking impression is the majority of Codipontesi are very unhappy. We shall see how all this pans out. I just hope I don’t crash & burn in a tangle of me and my crutches.