Silver Memories

With less than a week to go, I am acutely aware of all the cose italiane lying around the house and office. Guidebooks, slightly yellowed from sitting on shelves, have jostled into piles on my coffee table, my bedside table and within easy grasping reach at the office. New ones, fresh from tossed Amazon boxes are there too, as are badly refolded Michelin maps. I am creating the mental context for easing back into Italy. Twenty-five years ago, Italy was home for a year and, though I know I cannot recapture that same sense of ease over just a few days, nonetheless I want to create a sense of familiarity both in places in distant past visited and, strangely, those places I have yet been.

I dragged out a few 25 year old pictures from my junior year. Strange how vividly I can still remember those moments: how wonderful that time was. Sharing the experience of discovery in such a rich culture with my 40 classmates has never neen matched in my lifetime.

The 1983 Papal Easter mass in the great piazza in the Vatican.

The pilgrimage to the seven basilica churches of Rome by scooter.

Dressed to kill; getting ready to visit James Stirling at the American Academy in Rome.

This was the last week in Rome, going around town saying ciao to all the sights.