Travelogue 1019 – November 28
Santa Maria in Trastevere

The story of our food experience in Rome unravels quickly after its humble beginnings. We’re increasingly in the thrall of two overpowering forces, parenting fatigue and the charms of the city. These forces combine to make daily planning nearly impossible. By dinner time we are fine finding somewhere nearby for ease. We also want something more local and less touristic. Our solution is to cross the river and stroll around Trastevere. This is how we discover the Piazza Santa Maria in Trastevere.

This is a lively area of Rome. It wouldn’t be fair to say it was “Roman” in the sense we hoped for. There are just as many non-Italians here as in the Campo de’Fiori, but in Trastevere they are expats living or studying in Rome. In that sense only, we’ve graduated to something more local. We return there for dinner several nights in a row.

The piazza is old. The fountain in the centre dates back to the eighth century, though what you see is the work of Bramante. The basilica on the piazza was first founded in the third century. Much of the current building dates back to the twelfth century, notably those mosaics along the top of the façade. The church is long and squat, in the style of many basilicas in Italy, offering a somewhat blank face to the piazza, despite its embellishments, with a tall and square campanile in the back. The weight of so many centuries settles on this square with a sobering effect. Despite the piazza’s reputation for nightlife, the spacious square, laid with fanning cobblestone and lined in Renaissance colours, still feels a bit forlorn and quiet.

In the piazza, or along one of the nearby lanes, we tried pizza al forno and tried more pasta carbonara. We sat outside when we could, watching the night overtake our new little quartiere. We watched lovers sitting on the steps of the fountain. We watched the young lady chase a purse snatcher across the piazza. We watched the police van lazily pull into the piazza some ten minutes later. We placated our restless little girls, promising them gelato if they would sit still a few moments longer.

Travelogue 1018 – November 21
Rommel

I’m grading papers, digital piles of digital papers. Students are reporting their research findings, drawing conclusions, and making recommendations. I’m reading with an evaluator’s eyes, judging language, capturing errors, and tracing the arc of thoughts in flight, like the darting of starlings in mid-air. Perhaps it’s more like turkeys taking flight in some cases. But it’s quite a task, when you think about it, this construction of cases, this logic by numbers, this raising of towers with bar magnets and steel balls. It’s a kind of miracle. How do children manage this? I mean, developing to this sophistication of thought?

I turn away from essays for a moment to watch my girls. I wonder at the journey ahead of them. I imagine them consulting with me about argumentative essays and rhetoric.

Baby Jos was recently reciting to me a silly rhyme she learned from a friend, “There was an old lady who swallowed a fly. I don’t know why she swallowed a fly.” I laughed with her, enjoying her pride in having acquired this verbal toy. She repeated it all evening. Little Ren, meanwhile, was insisting that I call her “sensei”. She showed me how I should bow to her. Her big sister had helped her craft a black belt from paper. How long will I be able to share these small triumphs with them? How long will they include me?

Can it be possible that these thoughts experiments, my girls’ rhymes and their playacting and the three-letter words in their little books, will compound over time and evolve into essays for teachers like me?

Baby’s teacher recently posted a video of their classroom. Overnight, everything had been overturned and the room was a mess. The children entered with their mouths open in wonder. Clearly, the school had received a visit from Rommelpiet. Rommelpiet is one of the more entertaining of Dutch Christmas traditions. Sinterklaas comes to the country at this time of year. (Sinterklaas is NOT Santa Claus. Santa has a closer analogue in the ‘Kerstman’.) And when Sinterklaas travels, he does so with a retinue of ‘Piets’, who, unfortunately, are conventionally portrayed as black sambos. The Piets are tricksters, but none more than Rommelpiet, who likes to sneak into schools and turn everything upside down. ‘Rommel’ means mess in Dutch.

I wonder if Rommelpiet requires an ‘inside man’ at each school. I would like to volunteer. Imagine the hallways littered with essays. If only they were still on paper.

Travelogue 1017 – November 20
I Made This

Just a block away from the Caffe Sant’Eustachio is the one of my favourite sights in the centre of Rome. You come upon it quite suddenly, because this part of Rome is really the medieval city, where buildings crowd in and huddle against the cold centuries between ancient and modern. These are the streets north of the Palatine and Capitoline hills, where, during the Roman Republic, armies were called to duty and were trained. The fields there, collectively called the Campus Martius in those days, lay outside the city walls. Once the Western Mediterranean had been conquered, and Rome’s wars had become long campaigns fought far away, the armies were encamped and trained outside the city, often outside Latium. During the Civil Wars and Augustus’s reign, the Campus Martius became a place to build. Pompey built his theatre there. In an ironic stroke of fate, this would be where Pompey’s greatest adversary would be assassinated four years after he himself had been called to Hades. Years later, Augustus Caesar’s great general, friend, and son-in-law Agrippa would build the Pantheon in the old Campus Martius. No one is quite sure of the original function of the building, beyond it being a temple, hardly a novel purpose for structures in ancient Rome, where gods and goddesses abounded.

Walking from Sant’Eustachio, one approaches the Pantheon from behind, the first sight of the building offering hardly a clue to the significance of the place. One is positioned too close to recognize it. The wall could almost be the side of an old prison. There are a few small, irregular barred windows. Otherwise, it is blank, solid brick, old, eroded and reworked many times. One sees the remains of archways, filled in with brick. One sees the remains of mysterious walls and floors. One sees square peg holes where supporting beams must have been wedged. People are sitting on the low wall that surrounds the base of the building. The original level of ancient buildings is significantly lower than the streets today. Inside that boundary wall is a kind of dry moat surrounding the Pantheon. A narrow alley runs along the back wall, where tour groups shuffle along, blocking foot traffic, oblivious to anything but the voices in their ears. One eventually finds one’s way round to the imposing façade, where an ascending piazza allows for perspective. It’s a dramatic sight, high columns holding up the pediment of the temple’s portico, the pediment engraved with Agrippa’s name: in letters that can probably be seen at half a kilometre. “M·AGRIPPA·L·F·COS·TERTIVM·FECIT,” it says. I made this thing.

As it happens, the Pantheon we see was probably not made by Agrippa. The original was likely wholly destroyed in a fire. It was restored by Domitian and then later by Hadrian. It’s even possible that the amazing dome that tops the Parthenon, still a model for architects more than a millennium later, was Hadrian’s innovation. It’s hard to say what the first temple looked like, aside from the awe-inspiring façade that proclaims that Agrippa lived and built.

Travelogue 1016 – November 13
Deer in the Headlights

I didn’t get far in recounting our food experiences in Rome. I started about our dinner in the Ghetto district, and then my mind was drawn back to the Tiber. But that’s how Rome is, city of distractions.

Let’s talk coffee. I was quick to ask Carolyn about coffee, and she recommended the Caffe Sant’Eustachio. That venerable establishment, open since 1938, is located in the Piazza Sant’Eustachio, just behind the Pantheon in the centre of the old town. The coffee is fantastic – they are famous for their secret blend, – and we enjoyed sitting lazily in the piazza. There’s nothing much to look at in the piazza, beyond the life of the piazza itself, and it wouldn’t be Italy without the beautiful chaos of the piazza. The place, the plein, the platz, the square, the piazza: warm images come to mind, whatever the culture. But the Italian piazza is a special one for me, informed by the taste of caffe and brioche and by the noise of a hundred conversations overheard.

A piazza like Sant’Eustachio would hardly seem a space worthy of the name. It’s more like the wide bend in a stream, where tiny rivulets converge. The space is irregular, uneven. Outdoor tables seem like awkward claims on space where the ‘stream’, as it were, eddies. There is no boundary between caffe space and the street among the fan-patterned cobblestone. And the caffe itself is as much a touristic sight as any ruin, a vestige of the mid-century Rome that showcased its unique cultural alloy of exquisite taste with the disarming disarray of the Italian street.

The one sight on the piazza, might be the church of Sant’Eustachio. There’s been a church on the site at least since the eighth century. In the back, off the piazza, stands its twelfth-century Romanesque bell tower. The façade on the piazza dates to about 1700, and includes a captivating deer’s head with a cross set between its antlers, high above the entrance. It’s a reference to the saint’s conversion, which involved spotting a radiant deer like this one while out on a hunt. Eustachio was an early martyr, a Roman noble who abandoned all to join the Christians.

Travelogue 1015 – November 10
Ghettoes

I want to report about our food experience in Rome, because our friend Carolyn was so generous with good advice about where to go. I’m afraid it will be a dubious homage to Carolyn’s good taste and her graciousness, though, because I am so underdeveloped as a foodie and because our schedule for fine dining was curtailed by the little girls holding our hands.

We made a good effort. We had dinner in the old Ghetto district, not far from our hotel, where we were able to taste some real Roman cuisine, including pasta Cacio e Pepe (cheese and pepper) and Carciofi alla Giudia (artichokes fried as ghetto residents apparently did). We ate outside, under umbrellas tilting on the cobblestones. The girls were more excited about the Fanta than about the Roman cuisine, I’m afraid, but we managed to keep them seated long enough to enjoy our own meals.

We had not arrived in the Ghetto district from our hotel, but from the direction of the river, just at the end of the Via del Portico d’Ottavia. We had toured the Forum Boarium and then walked along the river, beside the pretty Isola Tiberina. The Forum Boarium was a cattle market during the Republic, on a spot that would have been right next to the river. Located in the ancient market are two of the oldest standing temples in the city, dating to the two centuries before Christ. They are small but pretty. It’s a quiet spot, a pleasant opportunity to contemplate the ancient architecture.

Across the street, it’s not so quiet. There, tourists line up to take their pictures at the ‘Mouth of Truth’. No one is quite sure where this huge circular mask came from, though it probably served as something like the manhole cover it looks like, possibly originating in the floor of one of the temples across the street. Now it hangs outside the church, Santa Maria in Cosmedin, parts of which date back to the 8th century. A superstition grew around this spooky mask that, if you uttered a lie while your hand was in the mask’s mouth, you would lose that hand. Standing together with all hands in the mask’s mouth is a popular family photo.

If you stop there, be sure to spend a few minutes inside the church. It’s lovely. You can spot decorative elements from a variety of eras, like delicate ancient columns, early medieval tile work and frescoes, and the Romanesque bell tower. There are suggestions of its Greek roots, as the church was founded while Rome was under Byzantine rule and set in what was then a Greek district of the city.

Travelogue 1014 – November 3
And We Protect Them

I’m looking at the disappointing results in Virginia this morning. The case against Trumpism has become so plain that making it begins to feel redundant and alarmist. It has become clear that this was never about principle. It was never about what was fair or what was right. It was never in question whether the Trump partisans in the public eye were anything but despicable. We were fools to argue it. All we communicated was that we were old school. That we were the real conservatives and the Trumpistas the (fascist) revolutionaries. I blush for people who still try to shame those operatives on Twitter. I blush a little even for the pundits who continue to deploy reason, though I admire their efforts to document the facts – fundamentally for future generations.

There was a moment, squandered by now, to suppress them. For decades, I’ve questioned America’s interpretation of free speech, as a protection for hate speech and sedition. We don’t feel shame for suppressing physical violence, but we do for suppressing the ideological kind. More people than we would like to admit respond to displays of raw power and disdain for the rule of law. By conceding legitimacy to the fascists, in the name of a false principle – that hate speech is protected speech – we have allowed them shows of power. People are excited by it, drawn to it. To people who think, it appears lemming-like, this crowding to the precipice of fascism. We reason that power for power’s sake benefits a very few people. Let’s be frank: the supporters of these fascists believe that the punishment will stop with immigrants and LGBTQ people and minorities. The police will beat on blacks. They will never beat on us. Those of us who reason things out realize that fascism has no boundaries.

I do believe in common sense. I do believe in reason. And some of us will continue to talk about these unfashionable tools of the human mind. It will be embarrassing in a world of flashy violence. But my optimism is long term. I think America will have to rediscover democracy, but I do believe it will. The question is only, how much suffering is required first? A depressing number of people need to be reminded that force and power for their own sake are thrilling only for a very short time. Power feeds on inequality. There have to be a lot of people under that thumb. ‘Minorities’ will not suffice. Power needs millions and millions of shoulders to bear its weight. It requires all their money, all their words, all their physical vitality. Ultimately, it needs all the last resources of a failing ecosystem, the system that provides food and water and air. All must be sacrificed for the pleasure of watching other people wield power with impunity.

Travelogue 1013 – November 1
The Campo

After our delays in Paris, we arrived in Rome late at night. We were exhausted, so we opted for a taxi ride into town. That was terrifying, a shot of adrenaline to wake us. It was a reminder of our many travels in Ethiopia, when our lives were in the hands of crazed taxi drivers, kilometre after kilometre on unlit highways at night, the headlights turned off to conserve the battery. But the trip into Rome was a short one, and we did in fact arrive, clasping our children to us in gratitude.

I was the first up in the morning. I went out for supplies. It was a sunny morning, and I was immediately struck by the casual grandeur of the place. We were staying a bit south of the Campo De’ Fiori, so I headed toward the famous piazza. It used to be one of my favourite spots in Rome. But it wasn’t as though I needed wait until the Campo to see the beauty of Rome. It was everywhere, the cobblestone alleys winding among palazzi and churches in every direction. This was exactly what I wanted to share with Menna, who hadn’t been to Italia yet. And I was rewarded a few hours later, once the girls were up and washed and we’d had a little snack. We stepped outside, and Menna was instantly enchanted. We needed no ambitious agenda of sights to see. The city of Rome was itself the sight, lane after lane, piazza by piazza. She hasn’t stopped talking about Italia since we returned home.

One theme for the trip was going to be coffee. Our first coffee was there in the Campo de’ Fiori, at an outdoor table where I could sit in the sun and the ladies could all sit in the shade. We have lots of specialty coffee in Holland, but there’s something special about coffee in Italia. I had been anticipating that first taste, and it didn’t disappoint. We sat for a while, watching the activity of the market in the square, regarding the lovely buildings surrounding us, some with rooftop gardens, and commiserating with poor Giordano Bruno, sixteenth-century philosopher who was burned at the stake in the Campo de’ Fiori and whose statue stands at the centre of the square.