a banner day

The day here in England is exactly what one would expect: gray, drizzly, quiet. But John and I are very bubbly because two copies of the paperback advanced reader copies (or ARC's) arrived today. That's right! A first look at John's book! I, in my emotional pregnant state, immediately started crying. Perhaps I would have anyway because it's been so many years of work, and it's so wonderful to see it becoming real, but it was a very exciting moment. There are hardback ARC's coming out as well, which should be beautiful, but those will be bound with the 600 sheets of vellum that John painstakingly signed on Sunday and just shipped back, so we won't see those for a while.

Of course these ARC's also arrived with the final edits on the galleys (which is the typeset copy of the book- I'm so impressed with myself for picking up all this publishing lingo!), so John still has work ahead of him. This will be his third and final pass, and then the retail hardback books will be put together. The launch date? April 5th. Yep, if you don't recognize that date, it's my Birthday. I was super excited about attending a fancy New York party for my Birthday this year, but now it appears that my husband will attend without me while I am home with a three-week old! So instead I keep reminding John that really important things come into this world for him on that day! He groans in response.

I usually say that extra quietly, though, because I don't want this baby to get any crazy ideas about staying in the womb an extra three weeks....

The Cotswolds

Right in the middle of England is this region known as the Cotswolds. It's called the "heart" of England, which makes sense considering its location, but I think that name also speaks about the spirit of the Cotswolds, which, with the rolling green landscape and small villages, feels incredibly English.

England's limestone comes from this region, and all the houses are made of it, stacked horizontally. It's a muted greyish-cream color, and the ubiquitous usage makes the towns look very cohesive. My favorite quote to date is, "the whole secret of the beauties of Cotswold architecture is conveyed by the word 'unspoilt' - unspoilt by architects. Poor architects!" (Robert Henriques 1950). I had to laugh. I think he's probably right. Architects wouldn't have allowed it to be so quaint.

The area is still mostly agricultural, with tiny villages of 12 or so houses tucked between the fields. They all have names you can't quite believe aren't farsical. For example, we live in Upper Oddington. really. There's Lower Oddington just a 5 minute walk down the road. Past the town of Stow on the Wold there's Upper Slaughter and Lower Slaughter. We're embarassed to say any of these towns out loud, of course, because the Brits always say it differently and laugh at our American pronunciations. At the supermarket the other day the checkout clerk said he loved the way Americans say, "vehicle." I asked John if he remembered how the clerk said it, but John admitted he hadn't been sure what word the guy was saying.

At this point I go out for a daily tramping along the many footpaths, scaring cows and annoying horses who are disappointed when they discover I don't bear treats. While out I imagine I'm living in a Jane Austin novel, which is quite easy in this landscape.

Ciao Italia! 'ello England!

Friday started as a beautiful sunny day in Radicondoli, but by evening it had begun to rain and it felt like fall in Italy had finally arrived. We packed up our stuff, said goodbye to the dogs, got some free gelato from our new friends in town, and slept for the last time in our lovely Italian farm house.

Saturday morning we drove to Pisa for a 2 hour flight to London. Despite mailing back some boxes of stuff on Friday, we still had an enormous amount of luggage: our three original suitcases, a box of vellum John needs to sign for his publisher (long story), my pregnancy pillow (acquired after my back went out), a backpack each for our computers, and one more bag for all our electrical paraphernalia we didn't want to check (iphones, adaptors, speakers, fitbit,etc). Since I can do little to help, John was really a hero, rolling two large bags with additional bags/boxes on top, wearing two backpacks (one forwards, one backwards). John always calls me the queen of Sheba when I sleep in, and now it felt like I was definitely deserving of the title!

We're now cozily ensconced in a little stone house in the Cotswolds, Rose Cottage. It's tight after the vastness of our last residence, but it's also much, much, much colder here in England, so we're happy with the smaller spaces since they're easier to heat. Today it's raining a light drizzle, and I think that's probably going to be par for the course. It does make for a gorgeous green landscape with lots of flowers. Whenever the rain does stop, the birdfeeder out back is crammed with birds trying to fatten up before the cold gets worse. I think we're going to enjoy our new home for the next month.

the menagerie minus one

We discovered the name of the yellow-white dog: Linda. She loves to follow us into town, and once there, the townspeople usually yell, "Linda, vai a casa!" or "Linda, go home!" Clearly she must wander up to town a lot. Yesterday we drove up to town so Linda didn't follow. We were at the stationery store and on our way out the owner said to say, "hi" to Linda and to tell her to come visit. I guess we've been in town long enough that Linda is now seen as our dog.

We have a new dog as well, Schizzo (as it says on his tag). Schizzo seemed pretty skinny, so we called the number on the tag a few times, but no luck. Then we asked in town, and they said Schizzo showed up two years ago abandoned. Since he has a lovely blue collar and there was a phone number that's no longer in service, we worry that his owner must have died. Anyway, John then decided we needed to give Schizzo some food so he bought a large can of dog food (we couldn't find any dry food). Linda was there as well, so we also fed her. Boy, did those dogs love us after that.

Meanwhile Kitty has benefited from any remnants of milk. She drinks it down so quickly it's rather astonishing. I also fed her scraps from our picnic lunch the other day. How many American cats do you know that would eat a cannelinni bean or a chunk of tomato? The animals here are hungry.

But I think we've reached the end of our beneficence. Yesterday Linda showed up with a dead rabbit. Clearly the animals here fend for themselves.

We're down one animal, though. Mice carry the toxoplasmosis parasite which is dangerous for pregnant women, so despite thinking him awfully cute, we had to remove the mouse. The owners of the house gave us a piece of cardboard slathered in sticky glue with some parmesan cubes in the middle. The mouse totally went for it. Luckily John had it all taken care of before I even got out of bed in the morning. He feels terrible about the mouse, but I and the other animals still love him.

Pregnant

After years of hearing the stories, I have now joined the ranks of women who had to quit their job to get pregnant. I'm not sure if that's a commentary on the profession of architecture or my own inability to reduce stress, but boy do I feel fortunate I had the opportunity to take this time off! Anyway, it happened so quickly, I was still happily drinking cappuccinos and enjoying my red wine when I figured it out.

Then about a week later, I had just finished blogging about food when the morning sickness set in. After the final food blog "basta della pasta," eating became a real struggle. I know, I'm in Italy, how can I not want the food? But if you mention tomatoes and basil to me, be prepared for a green tint to my face. I had to learn how to say "sono incinta" (I'm pregnant) so I could explain to strangers why I was throwing up in the parking lot.

And my back going out? That's a typical thing to happen during pregnancy. It's something about high hormone levels loosening up all the tendons and the squishy things between your vertebrae, so you lose a lot of the support your back muscles typically have.

I also had to stop taking day trips because I'm so sensitive to the heat. It's been strange for me, the person who's always cold to suddenly be too hot most of the time. It's really weird to hear John ask if he can turn the AC down in the car. Fortunately the weather has finally turned cool.

Needless to say we're thrilled. We didn't want to say anything too soon, but it's been a struggle to blog around this! John's fairly good Italian vocabulary has been broadened by such phrases as "first-trimester screening." I've pulled a lot of numbers in Italian hospitals waiting in line to give a blood sample. I will definitely never forget this time in Italy!

The details: It's a boy, due March 14th, we'll be back in the states in November.

The Dolomites

I've been trying to write this blog for days now, but couldn't quite figure out how to describe the beauty of the Dolomites. John said it was like Yosemite but better, greener and with larger rock outcroppings. Not having been to Yosemite, I can't really compare, but I'll take his word for it (despite it being semi-sacrilege to say anything might be better than Yosemite!). Basically, I thought it was like the Alps, but with really neat rock formations added in, usually on top of the green mountain you were looking at.

First we drove north from Venice. The landscape on either side became higher and higher (when the road wasn't going through tunnels) until finally you were driving in a tight, steep valley with lush trees everywhere. We then took a left at a town called Cortina, and wound up the road, over a ridge, down into the next valley, up onto the next ridge, etc.... Not surprisingly, this area still speaks a strange language, Ludin, which comes from old Roman. I'm not surprised, because before those tunnels? It would have taken days to get into or out of any of those towns. The area was probably incredibly isolated.

But mostly everyone speaks German. That's because this area, known as South Tyrol, was part of Austria until World War I when the Allies told Italy they could have this area if they joined in and helped. When WWII came along, despite annexing Austria, Hitler allowed Mussolini to keep South Tyrol as long as he stayed on Hitler's side. Mussolini then encouraged as many Italians as he could to move into the area (he knew how precarious their claim was...). These days South Tyrol is still part of Italy, but it's allowed self governance and keeps its own taxes (it's one of the wealthiest areas in Italy). I'm sure that's how they pacified the 70% German-speaking population.

We hiked for a couple days (Italian style, where you walk a bit, stop for a hot chocolate, walk a bit more, stop for lunch...). On the way home we went west first, and came down the Bolzano valley. That was also an amazing drive. It felt like we were driving through the Grand Canyon after continuous rain for 50 years, with steep canyon sides covered in trees surrounding a lush valley. It's really surprising the Dolomites aren't on more people's lists of thing to see in Italy. We'd like to go back and try skiing there.

Architecture Biennale

Thursday we went to Venice to check out the Architecture Biennale, which is a mixture of offerings by countries and invited individuals. The countries choose to do one of three things: mount an exhibit showing what great buildings are being built there now, do an homage to a famous local architect (Brazil had a large Niemeyer display), or have theoretical work showing what the great minds of the country are up to (the US's choice). For the individual's displays, they either show a major project under way (like Toyo Ito's opera house- a cool idea, but I wonder how it will really feel with no windows...), or, especially the younger firms, they do a theoretical project showing what their firm thinks about. I was really hoping I would be inspired by great work, and there were some really interesting and innovative projects, but I'll admit that a lot of it felt just like studio for adults.

My favorite project was one by a Korean sculptor, Do ho Suh, who decided to take a building facade and make it a ceiling. This is something that I think most architects have thought about at one time, how the 3-dimensionality of an elevation would translate into other planes. He did it really well, though, with a translucent blue fabric which allowed the light from a skylight above to come through, creating an extra layer of interest and magic to the experience of being sideways in the world.

I also liked this very simple dome created by a system of sticks. The structural idea was similar to that of closing the bottom of a box when you don't have tape so you overlap each layer. It allowed for the creation of a beautiful shape with almost no material. At first I assumed it was created by some computer program that analyzed which structural members were needed, allowing you to remove anything that wasn't. However, in reading the description provided by the firm, Amateur Architecture Studio, it became clear that they just found a geometric system and worked with it.

But really the best thing of all was a video provided by the Japanese firm SANAA of the construction workers on a job site doing exercises all together before starting work. It was such a great image of Japanese culture, and it was really amusing to hear the reactions of the Italians to the idea of doing this exercise before starting work!