La Verna is a Francescan sanctuary located on an isolated mountain, high in the Apennines. The location is breathtaking. The monastery itself is beautiful in an austere, Romanesque and early Renaissance sort of way, although this can be deceptive, because, the basilica and all the little chapels have the most glorious Della Robbia ceramics. You just have to open a small door to find another of these pieces right in front of you. Continue reading La Verna
All posts by Ann Game
Learning Italian
For the past few months, I have been having Italian lessons with a wonderful teacher who has insisted that I just speak – ‘avanti, avanti’ – without thinking about making perfect sentences, without worrying about making mistakes. ‘Keep it simple’, my teacher says, ‘listen’, and ‘ask questions’. This is the way to make contact. If you are thinking about grammar and how to construct your next sentence, you’re likely to lose contact. Continue reading Learning Italian
Market Day
It is Wednesday, centuries-old market day in Anghiari. The main (medieval) piazza, which is referred to as piazza mercatale, has been filling with stalls since before 6 – we have heard the busier than usual early traffic coming down Corso Matteotti this morning. The market spills over this main (renaissance) road, through a loggia, into another more recent, 18th century, piazza that becomes Viale Antonio Gramsci. There’s a mix of stalls – clothes, cheeses and salumi, the porchetta van, and fruit and vegetables. I recognise the same people, located in the same places, from previous stays here. We are drawn, down the street, to the sense of life in this weekly ritual. Continue reading Market Day
Anghiari, December 2015
Yesterday I arrived in Anghiari, a mediaeval town in eastern Tuscany to which I have been returning over the past 12 or so years. It is early morning and the bells are ringing around the town, one set after another.
Continue reading Anghiari, December 2015
Bondi: Yooka Symonds
‘There, but for the grace of God, go I’
Renowned Bondi figure, Bill ‘Yooka’ Symonds, died in September 2015 at the age of 93. His twin brother, Curly, died 6 days later. In 2007, we interviewed Yooka in connection with research we were doing at the Norman Andrews House, a Bondi drop in centre for the homeless. We asked Yooka to tell us about his voluntary work (for which he received an OAM).
Continue reading Bondi: Yooka Symonds
This Child: The Unknown Soldier
Can I know the unknown soldier?
I started writing this on Anzac Day, 2014, and the Sydney Morning Herald was carrying a story entitled ‘On a foreign field a girl remembers the fallen’:
An Australian schoolgirl unexpectedly wells up with tears over a nameless Fromelles gravestone. Zoe Bell, 17, of St Leonard’s College in Melbourne, isn’t usually like this, her teacher tells me. This isn’t hysteria or histrionics. Just history.
Here in northern France, the numbers and politics and clichés of a century-old war fall away, and the reality of it rises from the ground like the thick local fog. Its meaning chills you so sharply that it can force water from the most cynical, surprised eyes.
All those dead. On this soil, it doesn’t take a supernatural imagination to sense their presence.
There are a multitude of Zoes on the Western Front right now. Swarms of coaches buzz from one cemetery to the next.
(Joe Barton, SMH 25/4/2014, pg 7)