Oranges in a Turquoise Bowl Laurie Fox Pessemier Acrylic/canvas 18 x 22" 45 x 55 cm
Boats Carnivale Blair Pessemier Acrylic/canvas 12 x 24" 30 x 60cm
Unpainted masks Blair Pessemier 14 x 19.5" 35 x 50 cm
Madonna near Castelfranco Laurie Fox Pessemier Acrylic/newspaper 25 x 17" 61 x 43cm
Cyclamen Laurie Fox Pessmeier 12 x 12" 30 x 30 cm
Pagliacci with Drum Blair Pessemier Acrylic/canvas 16 x 12" 40 x 30cm
It’s been a rainy and difficult week here in
Stimigliano. Harika was “sicker than a
dog”, and threw up at least 2 dozen times on the rug. I mention the rug because although our house is
entirely paved in tile, the carpet was the target, on nearly the same place
each time. We have friends who often
take care of neighborhood dogs, and all of them, including ours, choose the
same spot on their carpet to barf: must
be electrical fields. When the rain lets
up some, I’ll hang the rug over the balcony to “wash”. It will never be the
same.
It wasn’t only Harika who was sick. A young American friend in Perugia was taken
ill. We went to see him today. He was much improved to the point we even enjoyed
an Italian lunch together. We’ll see him
and his family in few weeks up at our Rocca Malatina house. I had never been to Perugia before and it was
quite wonderful. It is an amazingly
intact medieval city – wonderful stone buildings cresting the hill. There was a sense of ongoing life there: I mean, our friend would have been one of how
many people still occupying this 15th century abode?
And it was wonderful to be with a younger person – I could
understand how grandparents go gaga over the next generation. I felt even more compelled to fight to make
the world better, cleaner, more full of love for him. And he’ll work to clean it up.
Harika’s was a harrowing ordeal, this sickness ensuing at
about 2 AM every nights since last Saturday.
I’d hear her walking around and next thing… So we weren’t sleeping, either. We went to the vet suggested to us by the
owner of a healthy looking golden retriever.
The vet was sure we had done something wrong; this is always a good
sign, I believe, that the vet takes the side of the dog. He gave us medicine. It didn’t work.
I became expert at looking for clues to Harika’s
plight. She was only throwing up water
and bile, so any other items were suspect.
Finally, I saw what looked like little bits of tomato peel. Except they were completely uniform: plastic!!!
I thought of those sad dead whale
pictures. She did not eat all that day,
but later perked up. It was the first
morning I’d not given her usual morning snack:
dried duck strips (made in China).
In the next 24 hours she made an astounding recovery and now she’s
eating homemade turkey soup.
We went to the cemetery again this week in pursuit of
flowers. Our town is just too small for
a flower store, and we can find plants at nurseries a little further out. But I like the cemetery, full of Maries, and
possible free flowers, and the flower seller always seems a little lonely. All he really had this week was one apparently
pitiful cyclamen. When I balked about it
having only 2 blooms, he lifted its green skirt, and said, look what’s coming!
