Church at Castelletto Blair Pessemier Acrylic/canvas 18 x 24" 45 x 60cm SOLD
Fields in Spring Laurie Fox Pessemier Acrylic/canvas 18 x 24" 45 x 60cm
Flags, Assisi Blair Pessemier Acrylic/canvas 12 x 16" 30 x 40 cm
Drummer Blair Pessemier Acrylic/canvas 19.5 x 12" 30 x 50 cm
Boy with Drum Laurie Fox Pessemier Acrylic/canvas 13 x 9 33 x 22 cm
Magic Geraniums Laurie Fox Pessemier Acrylic/canvas 12 x 16" 30 x 40 cm
Room at the Table
After stopping our
morning Italian lessons, someone mentioned there was a free Monday night
Italian class starting in Zocca, the next town up the hill after Rocca Malatina.
It started at 8:30 on Monday night...
We arrived to find an
array of black faces standing outside the library. Beautiful young faces,
mostly speaking French. “Refugees,” I whispered to Blair.
The teacher arrived.
“Follow me”, she instructed, unlocking the doors, turning on lights. Like the apostles, thirteen students sat in upholstered
swivel chairs around a huge wooden
table.
“I am Saiki from Ivory
Coast”; “Baraka from Burkino-faso”; “Blessing from Nigeria”; “Aristide from
Mali”; “Said from Morocco”; “Blair from Seattle”. Wonderful faces,
smiling, shy, humble men in their 20s mostly wanting to learn to read and write
Italian so they can get a driver’s license. All proudly announced their
professions: cheesemaker, tailor, car
repairman, French teacher - the only other woman in the group is a Moroccan policewoman,
already working in Zocca.
“Are you all muslims
here?” the teacher asks. Yes,
excepting Blair and me and Blessing. “Look
at the historic Zocca pictures on the wall,” she continues, “those women are all
wearing headscarves like you do.”
The teacher is wonderful,
the widow of an artist. She lived in
New York for many years. We will have
much to talk about. But tonight we talked
about where we come from and wrote the words for table and desk and curtain in
our notebooks. I am surprised that we are almost the only people here who can
write and spell. But the others can
speak so much better than us.
On Thursday, for
Blair’s birthday we drove to Assisi to visit Giotto’s murals, and the city
where St. Francis preached to the birds. Harika was one of the surprisingly few
dogs there. We saw a man in actual sack
cloth approaching the cathedral on his knees.
We ate tons of truffles, and I developed the gout.
Of course, we were most
interested to see the frescoes by Cimabue, Giotto and Simone Martini – they
were more fabulous than I imagined. We
went into the church twice, and it was amazingly uncrowded, so I could spend
more than an hour looking at “the life of St. Francis” and numerous other stories.
Giotto painted people
who looked like town folk. In fact,
there was a man in the breakfast room of our hotel who so resembled a
character, that I stared at him.
Shockingly, he spoke to me in English.
He was born in Assisi, now living in England. He explained people in Assisi were dressed in
medieval costume for the celebration of Calendimaggio, in which the upper town
(once faithful to the emperor) fought the lower town (who supported the
pope). Workrooms were set up to sew
costumes; elaborate velvet and brocade flags flew from the windows. This celebration has been taking place in
May for hundreds of years.
We walked around the
church, admiring the arcades and stone work.
In a corner of the upper courtyard, was a run down, painted wooden boat
about 15 feet long. “This boat carried 12 refugees across the Mediterranean to
Italy, where they found refuge,” the
sign read.
