Goldie: A few days back we visited the birth place of the opera composer Rossini - Pesaro, by the sea. There was a line about Rossini that awakened some new consciousness for me as an organizer. It was about how he would spend time getting to know the vocalists and rewrite opera parts to match their abilities. Rosssini’s changes sometimes resulted in revisions that would become permanent improvements.
 
Barry points out Rossini’s was a process-based approach to music, the outcome is a whole that can evolve along with the parts. This concept points to the importance of reshaping a vision, rather than attempting to bend those involved to our will. As a person of drive and strong will, the notion has the quality of a martial art concept that I can benefit from mastering.
 
Barry: What I learned from that Rossini quote is the importance of putting effort into knowing the “other” in any relationship – doctor-patient, parent-child, child-parent, employer-employee, student-teacher is capable of, feels and needs – and shaping the outcome and process based on that knowledge. “I don’t really need to know this child,” is wrong thinking. Once one really knows what is possible, then the time spent initially in the knowing can save a lot of time in the long run and the process of engagement becomes much smoother.
 
One can also extend this in getting to know yourself. In hunting for a condo we finally took the time to try to know ourselves and our needs and then within minutes of seeing a particular unit we knew this was the right one for us. This, after having looked for several years. The problem was we’d focused on what was out there rather than on ourselves and our needs re space, esthetics and cost. Once Rossini shifted from crafting the perfect piece to understanding his performers much more became possible.
 
Goldie: Lately, we’re both teaching what Barry terms ‘communication skills that heal.’ On this five week trip we determined to walk our talk with each other, to give the time and attention to process that yields quality of encounter. As Zadie Smith wrote in The Autograph Man, “He had been surprised to discover that when you subtract the rows, what you are left with is love, a huge amount of it, leaking out of you.” It is as though we have been in someway like an inchoate block of marble to one another and the exquisite living sculpture within the dynamic of our relationship, a harmonious “we,” has become revealed these five weeks. Or perhaps it’s due to Barry’s manopause or my menostop combined with our mutual computer-cease save for these weekly postings.
 
[Odd book, Barry and I had diametrically opposite opinions about the Autograph Man – he was very impressed by the caliber of the writing, I was mostly appalled by the content. Have you read it?]
 
Peaceful co-existence is attempted in so many unique ways that are documented amongst the walled cities of Umbria and Tuscany. Gubbio, some 2500 years old is visually astonishing, it terraces up a mountainside. Ascending its steep stone streets, each archway and narrow shoplet are the color we’ve deemed “buttered Umbria.” Turning right, a man bearing huge keys, what you might indeed think castle keys would look like, is unlocking an ancient door to a thirteenth century medieval dining room being readied for a religious festival.
 
Banners, we never before understood their applications in a medieval town. The iron hooks on buildings – near windows and roofs – these are catches for colorful celebratory banners, such as might also unfurl from horns announcing a king’s arrival or festoon the side of the horses of knights. Wealthy families would have servants maintain their banner collections, to hang their code of arms and devotional pieces down the walls of the palazzos (palaces.)
 
Gubbio is not a Disney thing. It is simply the real thing. Men will carry what look like three-story high heavy carved platforms on their shoulders with wax religious figures atop them in a racing manner throughout the city on the day of devotion. Though churches hold their version of shacharit, minchah and maariv throughout Italy daily [Rome alone has 750 gem-like churches from an artistic point of view], only a few elders seem in evidence except for weddings. But festivals seem to ignite passion for the old traditions; the energy is clearly building here.
 
The elaborate ancient agreements to govern this city state are worth reproducing here for you, the balanced allocation of power rather than domination is so powerfully revealed. When a young family member recently insisted on the evil of the ancient Romans because of the destruction of the temple and ultimate treatment of the Jews, it proved impossible to get a first grader to see the evolution of civilizational ideals as a process (a slip-sliding one at that) and that the Romans also left creative steps forward for humanity in their footprints on history.
 
In Gubbio, the evolution of governance forms is as striking to us as when reading in Torah about Yitro teaching Moses to set up a system of advisors. Here, efforts to govern the city states more equitably than in prior generations were being worked out. See what interests you in this paragraph I’ve transcribed from an exhibit card at the castle:
“The Consilium Generales Populis represents the citizens: the richest, forty for every quarter, constituted the Consilium centrum maloris summe; they continued in office in conformity with their position in the list of the richest. The representatives of the four quarters, fifty for each one, constituted the Consilium populi and they ruled for six months. In this assembly there were also the Captains of the Guilds, the Consuls of the Traders [and others]; they received a warrant for a period of six months.
 
The second organ of the Parliament was a magistrates’ committee with the legislative power; they were eight consuls and, one of them, was elected Gonfalonier of Justice. They ruled for two months and they lived inside the palace, on the upper floor. They couldn’t leave without a good reason: in that case they had to be accompanied by the Communal Guards. The Consuls were not allowed to speak with anyone, especially the nobles.
 
The administration of the city (executive power and judicial bodies) were entrusted to a variety of offices, the most important were the Podesta and the Captain of the People. They had to be foreign and of the Guelph party, they came from allied City States situated at a distance from Gubbio (540 miles away) and they couldn’t have any personal relations with the eugubian people. The Podesta … ruled for six months but eight days before completing his commission, he was judged by a citizens’ committee. In the affirmative he was settled with the last two months of his salary, with which he had to pay all the people that moved him from one to another (judges, notaries, etc.)
 
The requisites of the Captain of the People was similar to the Podesta, he was judged by a citizens’ committee. His assignment were to maintain peace and order to collect fines and to solve the problems of the prisons.”
 
In 1384 Gubbio became part of the Dukedom of Urbino, the town governed by the progressive Montefeltro family covered earlier in this travelogue.

What I take from the above is that perhaps: 1) They were upfront about the role of the rich in the decision tree; 2) They were wiser than we about term limits; 3) They understood the dangers lobbying to the potential for justice and took steps to limit this; 4) Alliances were consummately consciously employed to help keep the peace.
Barry: Also Goldie, they understood [something we seem incapable of in the United States] that corruption is an inherent part of governance. Rather than giving access to lobbyists, those who might have were kept isolated. Heads of government were rotated frequently, every few months. And even our constitution seems in some way heir to that of the Gubbio-type with its arms of governance, checks and balances.
 
Goldie: Oddly, Gubio turns out to have an elevator to escort those in need up to the municipal castle which proved to be the stuff of fairy tales in scope and shape, opulence and vista. We explored entranced.
 
I’m posting this on the day we returned to the United States. We visited a few other fascinating places and had another astonishing encounter about which we’ve written provisional postings. I’ll polish them over the next few days and post them as well during this week or next as time allows.

Ponce was one place we perched for a few nights. An old, classically Spanish town, where noble buildings still are crumbling whilst streets are being made anew with major government funding, we wandered freely to the beautiful, rather new, elegant and eloquently assembled art museum. The paintings of a guest German artist David Schnell took our breath away. Stunningly skilled in the huge scale use of paints that give the impression of light, depth and architecturally fascinating spaces, he also includes what appear to be towers from concentration camps in many pieces. It was the first art we’d seen in years that engaged our imaginations with in-breath of awe and out-breath of oh. The message I took away was of a new Germany with the past increasingly far behind it in a bright and healthy way. Hope so!

El Junque, the rain forest region lived up to its name. All night sheets of rain alternated with the music of frogs found only in this eco-zone, nine species, each louder than any cricket you ever had in your bunk at camp. Owls punctuated the night too, it was like trying to sleep in New York City your first day back in town, impossibly fascinating just to listen to the soundscape. We were intrigued to learn the rain forest is destroyed by nature on a regular cycle of cyclones for as long as anyone can remember. This causes seeds of short-lived trees to germinate; they provide shade for longer-lived ancient palms and other trees to renew. These latter will gradually provide so much shade that the shorter lived trees will die, and on and on. The colorful snails were 4-6” wide. We didn’t do off trail hikes outside of the formal rain forest area after seeing our host return covered in mud over his waist, he thought we might have some trouble out there in the seasonal and rather junglish climate and terrain. We’re not writing the name of our B&B here in order to avoid lashon har-ah [unethical speech] since all things change. Let’s just say the breakfast was great, but with massive construction scenes underway on the property, the ambiance and personality of the owners were impediments to the manuscript work we have underway on this trip.

We have a food recommendation, eat the regional cuisine from food kiosks and food trucks in Puerto Rico. The “Puerto Rican” food in major city restaurants was a kind of bland bean/plantain scene, not really the Mexican Spanish Americans tend to like. The cuisine in Ponce at the restaurant at the Melia Hotel was particularly memorable - we give it five stars. Our hotel room there (ask for one’s in the older section, they are lovely with high ceilings and romantic courtyard-like overlooks) was lovely - large room, lovely large shower too. First they gave us one that was like a motel room in another wing, bleh - be sure to specifiy.

The kiosk row on the high way near the glorious beaches atLuquillo offer yummy indigenous fast foods – plantain is made into a kind of starch container for meats (if you eat that out), fishes and veggies, there are varieties of these and they are yummy, albeit deep fried. The fish is super fresh in the villages of Puerto Rico and definitely stop in the little fishing villages for just caught meals if you like we, reluctantly do eat food with a face. (I once had a dream that a fox went by driving a jeep, he leaned out the window and pointed at the bumper sticker which read: join the food chain, eat meat. I then wondered if my lack of energy might be resolved by ending 10 yrs as a vegetarian – yes, amazing how my skin and spirit began to improve over three weeks of renewing animal proteins in my diet. Guess I’m an aminal, as my kids used to say, after all, no denying it.)