A C. T U. A L. L Y

" Who knows if Iolanda will ever notice me... " I can't speak for Iolanda, but I noticed him--as I took stock of Palermo and its environs-- a few weekends ago. Friday :  a walk along the sea wall and then through the neighborhood, where I saw the touching graffiti above and a crew of men setting up lights for the festival of Santa Maria della Mercede. Saturday :  two contemporary art openings, a fairy tale wedding, and then a carousel of lights in Piazza Sant'Anna. Sunday :  a five-course tasting menu at La Strummula in Santa Flavia, walked off by a hike to Sant'Elia at the edge of town, its limestone cliffs overlooking a limpid cove where the locals enjoyed a late afternoon swim.   Just another weekend in and around Palermo. The date palms along the Foro Italico are bursting with fruit and it still felt like summer that Friday. But the clouds seen from our bathroom window (surely the best bathroom view ever) give a clue that Fall is on its way.   Friday af...

Caspar David Friedrich was never one of my favorite landscape painters.   I’ve seen quite a few of his canvases at the Alte Nationalgalerie in Berlin and they never much appealed.   Yet, after a recent getaway on the German island of Rügen on the Baltic Sea (which the Germans refer to as the Ostsee ), where we saw the magnificent chalk cliffs he painted (above), his work took on a new resonance.   On Friedrich from Wiki : Caspar David Friedrich (5 September 1774 – 7 May 1840) was a 19th-century German Romantic landscape painter, generally considered the most important German artist of his generation. He is best known for his mid-period allegorical landscapes, which typically feature contemplative figures silhouetted against night skies, morning mists, barren trees or Gothic ruins. His primary interest was the contemplation of nature, and his often symbolic and anti- classical work seeks to convey a subjective, emotional response to the natural world. … F...