Consider the virtues of the definite article in English, “the.” What a wonderful word! We never appreciated this until we started studying Italian. “The” is, of course, beautiful all by itself: a sturdy, little one syllable, three letter, word made up of two staunch vertical letters, T and E, joined by a vertical and horizontal …
Author Archives: Karl M. Rice
we apologize to our gentle readers
Forgive us for being off line for a week. Not to make excuses, but the school work has been nearly killing us! Faithful readers will recall that, in addition to having to study the intricacies of Italian grammar, with its prepositions, pronouns, verbs, SEVEN versions of the definite article (all of which just mean “the”, …
More Palio Madness
The Palio is the wildest horse race in the world. Held twice (occasionally three times) a year, the Palio has ten horses, each representing a Siena contrada (neighborhood), racing around the Piaza del Campo with the jockeys, in medieval regalia, riding bareback (at least for as long as they can stay on their horses). There …
Karl and Leslie Ruth continue to learn
As if studying Italian, with its prepositions and pronouns and the such weren’t enough to tax their brains, Karl and Leslie Ruth are diligently studying Italian culture as well. Each Tuesday evening, at 6:30, the students and instructors meet at Bar Manganelli for a course of study entitled “The Aperitivo In Its Many Forms, Including …
School days, school daze!
We’re back in school again, at Scuola Saena Iulia. It works this way: Everyone starts on a Monday. Monday mornings at 9:00, all students, new and old, report to school for coffee and a meet and greet. The new students are interviewed by instructors to see how far along they are in Italian (we range …
Gotcha!
Boy, have we been had! Two of our best friends, Mary and Sal joined us last year in SienaMary to go to Scuola Saena Iulia with us and study Italianand Sal to do other things, such as researching his father’s career as a Carabinieri, or federal police officer, back before WWI, and to go on …
How do know when you are back in Siena?
Well, when you see the Duomoyou begin to be suspicious, but other towns have Duomos. When you hear the drumsand see the flagsyou are pretty sure, especially when you notice that all the females have been relegated to the back of the paradeyou begin to think this must be it, although other towns have drums …
Before you dig . . .
Back home, before you do any construction related digging, everyone knows ya gotta call “Miss Utility” who comes and marks all the utilities. It’s not so easy in Rome! When you dig there, you don’t know what you’ll find, but you know you will find antiquities buried over the past 2,000 plus years, and if …
An exquisite sculpture
We had read that the Santa Maria della Vittoria Church had a wonderful sculpture done by Bernini in about 1650. We tried to visit last time we were in Rome, but there was a wedding going on. Since we had not been invited, it seemed wrong to go in. Yesterday, there was no wedding, so …
Did we mention we took a cruise?
When the record breaking heat of August in Italy this year made serious trekking imprudent (impossible? Potentially life threatening? Definitely marriage threatening!) we were able to score the last cabin on Jewel of the Seas, a Royal Caribbean ship sailing out of Civitavecchia, the Rome port. The first thing we noticed after boarding was that …
ITALY, GERMANY, AND MORE! 