Late

When meeting people I am generally anxious and on time, maybe even a little early. It is more familiar to me to be waiting a bit, nervously, for a short time, or sometimes even for a little longer.

But today I made the mistake of trying to make a minor adjustment on our new espresso machine's grinder, which was not quite as minor as I imagined. And so I was ten minutes late in meeting a friend.

There he was, sitting patiently. And as I arrived he sprang up, ready to go. The party began with me.

Suddenly, I could see the appeal.

All the talented birds

I was walking along the Mississippi River and I came upon a raptor, a great bird. His head was all white, but the white did not end at the shoulder, rather it bled into tan and then into something almost cappuccino colored as it flowed down his body.

"You're not an eagle." I said to him in mild surprise.

"I get that all the time." He replied, and then he flew out over the river.

He was unusually good at it.

On library time

Black holes are well known for their strange effect on time. If one has heard about gravitational time dilation once, one has heard about it a thousand times. But having had a quarter century of my life swallowed up into the irresistible maw of a public library I am aware that it is not only black holes that have a unique effect on time.

In short, time acts with extreme peculiarity in and around libraries. And it doesn't take a deeply invested library professional like myself to see it. You yourself have undoubtedly at some point checked out a book at a library only to find out a couple of days later that the book is now fourteen days late.

"How is this possible?" You wonder.

"I must have made a mistake." You rationalize.

You didn't make a mistake.

Oh, you will never catch time in the act of mischief at a library. Time always has an alibi. But alibis are not the same thing as innocence.

I'm just saying that here at my library I'm skipping around in its curious time like it's Slaughterhouse Five. And I am not alone.

Today at the front desk a regular came up to me and greeted me with real warmth.

"Hey, it's great to see you. I haven't been here for ages! Do I still have a card in this system?"

I was slightly worried his mind was slipping. "I'm pretty sure it's only been a few weeks since I last saw you."

"No, I don't think I've been here since the new building." That would put it at maybe ten years since his last visit.

Ten years, three weeks? We regarded each other curiously for a moment. Then we moved on and caught up on things. What was to argue? We were both right.

Italy, a conversation

"Italy." My co-worker says. "You've been to Italy, haven't you?"

"Yes. I was there just two weeks ago." I reply, tactfully not mentioning the small gift of a wrapped chocolate from Italy that I had recently given this person.

"Is it nice?"

"It is very beautiful." I replied. Then, growing thoughtful I added "Though I suppose it all depends on where you are."

"Oh, and where is it beautiful?"

"In Italy!"

Who wins Florence

As much traveled visitors to Rome, the great Baroque city if ever there was one, my wife and I received many hints there of the Renaissance. They seemed increasingly appealing the more we looked. So we thought we'd go to Florence. We thought we'd see a little bit of the footsteps that led to the flourishing of Rome, the best city we've ever seen.

There is a lot of great art in Florence. After all, 600 years ago Europe woke up there; The Renaissance, don't ya know, with all the burning energy of a thousand year sleep. With so much amazing art to see I wondered who, above all, would blow through my soul. So we made the rounds.

Filippo Lippi, of whom we had seen precisely one intensely captivating painting in Rome, all angels, grace, and gold, was every bit as good as the promise of what we had seen in The Doria Pamphilj. Botticelli was like a refinement of that grace, and his paintings, well known to us, and to most people on the planet, were a whole other world of loveliness, one that was never apparent exactly in the reproductions, which were all I'd ever seen of him before. The Da Vincis were fascinating, but no real match for what hangs in the Louvre. Raphael seems to oscillate in a tiny fraction of an inch between sheer genius and mundanity, mostly wonderful, nothing better than what is in the Barberini in Rome, but plenty remarkable. Giambologna was ridiculously good, with statues more baroque than I dared hope or imagine, every one a thrill to see. Donatello was fascinating. Pontormo's Deposition was a painting I've always longed to look at in person. It is a mad and ridiculous painting, an absolute joy that sums up everything anyone might ever need to know about Mannerism in a single work of art, all graceful and nearly purposeless poses, lurid, wonderful Sistine Chapel colors, and skill almost just for the sake of skill. There is our bizarre bridge from the Renaissance to the Baroque.

And of course there's Michelangelo, towering over it all. Influencing everything with his touch and magnificence. 

And yet...

The amazing David is exquisite and almost unbelievably monumental in a way that nevertheless feels a little emotionally flat to me after the excruciatingly moving Pieta. Maybe if they put it outside where it belongs? All the masterpieces of the Medici Chapel are better, but renovations there, and obscuring scaffolding, may have hampered my enjoyment along with his weird version of breasts and a sense that he didn't quite finish his plan for it all the way he wanted to. His early work kind of... sucks, up to Bacchus, which is more proof of talent than an epiphany.

Which, maybe I should have known all along, left us with three Caravaggios, of all things. 

The Sacrifice of Isaac, a story I've always found a touch ridiculous, made me tear up. The Medusa, a demonstration of gloss and perfection like I've never seen before, and sleeping cupid, a painting I'd only barely looked forward to, which is a picture of love sleeping by an artist at the height of his magical powers in full, shuddering expressive force.

Sleeping Cupid. No pretty child. Apparently Caravaggio used a dead child as a model. Yellow light. Flesh. Love lies sleeping. A picture is worth an entire language.

I suppose there are best current artists.

And there are artists of their generation.

And there is the greatest artist of their age.

And then there is the most brilliant artist of an entire era.

And then there's Caravaggio.

The gelato diet

A bit less than a year ago I restructured the way I eat. This was for a variety of household and health reasons, and to make a little more room for my hobbies of cocktails and coffee. One thing about the restructuring meant that I eat less. Sometimes it seems like a lot less. I don't use sweeteners. I don't eat or drink after seven. I have very particular meals and mealtimes, and not that many of them. And I can't complain. All of this has largely done the job. I still have my middle age issues, but I feel pretty much healthier and less inclined towards physical breakdowns, back injuries, colds, and some other miscellaneous ailments, than I had before. Plus I look dashing in my vests.

But when I went to Italy I decided, for my two weeks there, to set all that carefully to the side. As my wife and I tramped all over Florence and Rome I ate and drank whatever, and whenever. I had as much coffee as I could manage. I drank regularly- a bottle of wine, Fernet Branca at night, cocktails on piazzas, afternoon Spritzes like it was a religion. I consumed great quantities of cheeses, finding our first great cheese plate at Pitti e Gola where I had three glasses of sparkling wine and one of something called Orange Wine. I ate plates of raw meat. I had pastry every morning stuffed with creams and chocolate. I bought porcini mushrooms and swordfish and fried them in olive oil. I ate all the potato chips they brought me with my Spritz.

And I had gelato.

I had gelato every day. I had gelato in the morning. I had gelato in the evening. I had gelato in the afternoon. I would get gelato, eat it, and go back to order more gelato. I ate gelato walking along. And I ate gelato sitting down. I ate planned gelato and I ate spur of the moment gelato. I had whipped cream on my gelato and I had gelato plain in a cup. Sometimes I had espresso over my gelato. I ate a lot of gelato.

Outside of one unpleasant night early in the trip which I blame on an injudicious nightcap of Fernet Branca and possibly a questionable panini, my health was excellent in Italy. I felt good. A few weird home ailments ceased to bother me in Italy. I came home well and whole and I might have even lost a pound or two while I was there, or so it was suggested to me.

Now surely one could say that our near constant walking in Italy wiped away all the other sins. Or that for all I ate it turned out we were too busy for me to actually eat all that much. One could argue that the joy of Italy helped me out, the lack of stress, the complete cessation of anything remotely comparable to a sedentary lifestyle.

And those would be good arguments. Very sensible.

But wrong.



It was the gelato.

Home to the birds

The biking season should perhaps have officially ended last week. But I went out and biked to the University anyway. The wind cut through my wool mittens like a circular saw going through a piece of cheese.

"Hey," I said to the cold. "You do know that you don't need a circular saw to cut cheese, you can even just break off a piece of cheese?"

"Yes," Replied the cold "That's what we're planning on doing when your fingers sufficiently... stiffen."

So when it was 14 degrees out this morning I understood that I like my fingers. I'm using them right now to tell you all about how much I like them! I put away all biking things and prepared my feet for walking.

The down side of walking is it takes longer.

The upside of walking is it takes longer. 

While walking one sees everything. Cardinals, bald eagles, blue jays, geese, turkeys. Well, maybe one doesn't see everything, but one definitely sees birds. Riding a bike it is not very safe to be gazing over one's head, watching an eagle circle in the clear and bitter morning light. Walking it's almost safe to look all one might want. I mean, it's probably safe enough.

Furthermore, biking, this, that happened today, has never happened before:

Coming to the point where I leave the river and head into the University, I was writing my usual dark blog posts in my head. For no reason that I understand I looked up and saw three huge turkeys perched high in a tree. They were enormous, four foot tall, 50 pound turkeys. The biggest one was at the very top of the tree, like an absurd Christmas ornament.

Of course, I've never seen that not on a bike either.

My favorite gelato

In my endless quest to understand, evaluate, and eat the gelato of Italy I generally avoid ever ordering any flavor of chocolate. One can probably manage to tell the difference between good and bad gelato through the flavor of chocolate, but one is unlikely to be able to discern between the various levels of good gelato with the flavor of chocolate. 

It's too easy. Chocolate tastes like chocolate. It is not a flavor to be delicately coaxed out and balanced in the general recipe of great gelato. It is pretty hard to mess up a chocolate gelato.

So I don't order chocolate.

Except, of course, I did, just once on this trip. 

I ordered chocolate once only, at Fatamorgana, in Rome. The thing was, I wasn't working. I wasn't studying. I wasn't comparing.

 I was just there admiring.

I wasn't searching out the best gelateria. I'd already found it. They were it.

I was eating gelato for pleasure.

So I got their chocolate.

Only, it was the great Fatamorgana, brightest star in the Italian firmament of gelato. So it wasn't chocolate, it was Lapsang Souchong Chocolate.

Of the roughly 45 gelato flavors and varieties I had in Italy over two weeks, it was the single best one.

Chocolate, not too sweet, a nod to the bitter, then the smokey coming through like a stroke of inspired genius, and finally the bare hint of black tea underneath.




I'm sorry, I can't go on anymore. I'm getting a bit... emotional.

Gelato of Florence

We've spent a couple days leading up to this survey of the gelato of Florence. The cat's already out of the bag as regards to the best gelateria in Florence; Dei Neri. And as much as one might like to be the great gelato sleuth of Florence, ferreting out some miraculous hidden gem, the fact is that if, from my research, I had to guess what would have been the best gelateria in Florence I would have guessed Dei Neri.

This is not bad news! Dei Neri is centrally located, easy to get to, and never, as far as I can tell, besieged by any serious lines. If you want just one gelato in Florence, go to Dei Neri, and if you want to experiment, start with Dei Neri. Simple.

But the other good news is that all these runner up finishers to Dei Neri are so close in quality to Dei Neri that it's just not that big a deal, unless you're an absolute gelato fanatic, to miss Dei Neri and instead end up at them, mostly. Especially towards the top of my list.

Which brings me to my ranked list of Florentine gelaterias:


1. Dei Neri

The best flavor I had was coffee, which, unlike any coffee gelato or ice cream I've ever had, both tasted exactly like coffee and tasted better than coffee, both true to coffee, and the ideal of coffee. They had one of the best pistachios I've had here too, matching Come il Latte's remarkable version in Rome.  Once I got a four flavor cup all of fruit flavors, raspberry, passion fruit, mango, maybe clementine? All the flavors were reliably pure and straight from the fruit, the gelato fresh and impeccably smooth, and the sweetness quietly pitched.


2. Della Passera (tied)

A sweet little place in the Oltrarno (but not the far away Oltrarno like the one it's tied with, more just across the river from the main parts of Florence). I had a two-flavor cup of clementine and vanilla and the clementine was an eye opener, fresh, sparkling like a really good clementine, and the vanilla was a smooth perfect foil. I wish I could have tried more from here, but this was so nice and felt so right!


2. Pintucci (tied)

Here, alas, is the wonderful gelateria pitched maybe a bit too far from the center of town and from where most travelers will be to be worth the extra trip. As a reader of gelateria reviews and blog posts I find these kinds of places particularly irksome as they're immensely interesting to me, but usually, in the end, not quite worth the very specific journey. So for you I'm glad this wasn't the very best of all gelato, per se, even if it was fantastic. That it was fantastic was great because my lovely wife, who so kindly indulged my frequent gelato diversions, and I just so happened to be staying out here for part of our trip, just beyond the Porta Romana. I had a lot of gelato here! The flavors were very pure and only the slightest step off of Dei Neri. The high water mark for them was the best hazelnut I've ever had. It was brilliant. It tasted like, get this, hazelnuts! They had a really good passion fruit here too.


4. Strega Nocciola

They have a couple locations here, one practically on the river in Oltrarno, and another just off the Duomo. They also have one of these in Rome, in the Spanish Steps neighborhood, which is where I first encountered them and the utter glory of their lavender gelato. I tried their bright, brilliant strawberry this time around too. This is my fourth best in Florence and I'm still splitting hairs really. If you only had gelato here and nowhere else you won't really have missed anything. This is amazing gelato.


5. Perche No, Eduardo, and Sbrino (a three way tie for fifth)

Any city would be proud to host any of these gelaterias and there would be awfully few of those cities wherein any one of the above wouldn't be the absolute best ice cream of any kind in the city. 

Perche No is maybe the most famous of the Florence gelaterias and I found their chestnut fascinating, hazelnut extremely close to Pintucci's above, and their caramel delicious but short of amazing. As with any singular visit to a place as good as this I can only wonder if, in a different mood, or having chosen different flavors, I might be ranking them even higher than my already high regard.

Sbrino I don't have to wonder about all that with Sbrino as it was small, charming, and also (maybe unfortunately for you) out across the street from Pintucci, in the distant Oltrarno, so I did a more thorough survey of their gelato. Their quality was unmistakable, most compellingly in a rather amazing Fior Di Capra, which was a plain goat milk gelato. Don't knock it til you try it. Grape with all the skin bits in didn't quite work, and a signature flavor with maybe hazelnut and white chocolate was good but not as good as it sounds. Nevertheless I kept pulling for the place, and when they got it they really got it.

Eduardo, right on the Duomo, was, well, my notes fail me! Sorry. I loved it but cannot for the life of me remember anything about it. There goes the curse of eating too much fantastic gelato!

The best gelato of Florence

Dei Neri.

The best gelato of Florence is at Dei Neri.


There. That wasn't so hard was it?

Every study you might find on the Internet of the best gelato of Florence, or Rome for that matter, will include two things, one useless and one useful.

The useless thing is lots of pictures of prepared gelato from the gelateria in question, which will be all pretty and enticing, giving life and appeal to the Internet page, but offering absolutely nothing extra in the evaluation of gelato.

The useful thing will be a warning description of commercial gelato so that one can avoid it. The warning signs are bright colors not natural to the flavor in question, fluffy piles towering magically in their refrigerated counters, and pretty, sugary drama, often all glossily located in a heavily touristed part of town. Well, fair enough, I'm down with that warning cry, though it's maybe not always quite as easy as they make it sound. There is certainly commercial gelato that is more quietly presented, and what after all is the real color of pistachio gelato, or strawberries, or clementines? At my favorite gelateria in the world, Fatamorgana (sorry, in Rome not Florence) I had a bright green mint chip gelato a mere week ago. Nothing like the mint chip ice cream of my youth, it was full of a pure, intense spearmint flavor, the chocolate firm, gentle, and unsweetened, and when I got to the bottom of the cup I only then noticed all the tiny bits of ground up mint leaves flavoring and coloring my exquisite gelato.

So as we go forth here are some extra tips for spotting this real gelato, in an honorable gelateria, without any one of these necessarily being a guarantee, but a couple of them should be enough to do you. Remember, these are the good signs:

1. Nothing rising above the surface of the bin.

2. Covered metal bins where you can't even see the gelato.

3. Claims like "Organic" or "Artigianale".

4. Strange flavors, but of real things, like avocado lime, or fig ricotta.

5. More chocolate flavor varieties than strictly seem necessary (not necessarily my thing, but still...)

6. Lines (the public isn't always right, but it often is enough so in this case).

7. And yes, slightly more muted colors.


If that sounds still a bit tricky here's the easy part: The gelato standard in Florence is supremely high. If you can eliminate, through the above tips, the slightly or very dodgy bad half, you're home free. The good half of gelato in Florence is uniquely wonderful and of a standard higher even than Rome. So dig in.

On the other hand, Florence is not exactly a teeming metropolis. One could just write down my list of gelaterias, and only go to ones on it, not worrying much about which, and all should be well. Walk around a bit and you'll hit a few.


So now that the gelaterias worth considering have been separated out from those to avoid, what are the good ones, I mean, after Dei Neri, the best of them?

Let's save that for tomorrow. I need to rest up. There are quite a few, all of them almost as good.

The preamble to the best gelato of Florence

Am I the greatest gelato reviewer on the Internet?

That's a problematic question. Without humbleness my immediate reaction is... no, of course not. 

But as a person who has long poured over the reviews and blogger accounts of gelato on the Internet, concerning the gelato of both Rome and Florence, I am less disinclined to proclaim myself "The Greatest Gelato Blogger on the Entire Internet".

This is because the systematic, deep, and thorough investigation of gelato in Italy and Europe that one would hope for, and even expect, does not happen. Or, if it does, because the Internet is really terrible, we can't find it. A case in point is that even though my work on the gelato of Florence is easily in the top echelon of thoughtful, informed analysis, you probably won't find it.

Which is weird, because you are reading this now.

But this only means one of three things:


1. Somehow you know me, and fell into reading this, a gelato post. Your interest in gelato is idle, at best. You're actually probably lactose intolerant to be honest. Thanks for bearing with me.

2. This post isn't really about Florence gelato, that's tomorrow's post, which you're currently not reading.

3. You are not actually reading this now, which, trust me, thousands and thousands of people who have searched "best gelato Florence" are also now not doing, at any give time.


The best gelato reviewer in the world would be a systematic obsessive, probably living in Italy somewhere, focused completely on the thankless evaluation (well, the gelato would be some reward) of gelaterias, wherever they are. The fantasy is that the Internet is full of weird stuff like this. The reality is that unrenumerated obsessive geniuses are the amazingly rare exception that proves the rule of the Internet.

Oh, what is the rule of the Internet?


The rule is:


Everything good on the Internet is an accident.






But that's okay. We here at clerkmanifesto like to make as many accidents on the Internet as possible. If we're lucky maybe the right people can get hurt. If we're lucky we will accurately describe the best gelato of Florence. It may even end up being one of the all time great guides ever written about Italian gelato!


You'll never find it.

Romaphiles

As you most likely know, my wife and I went on a trip to Florence, then Rome. We have been to Rome many, many times, once for a month even, but we have never been to Florence. So there we were. And it was lovely. First staying on the outskirts of the Oltrarno neighborhood we learned how good all the food can be there, how beautiful the countryside is, hedging in, how glorious are the vistas of the fabled city. We saw astonishing art in the Pitti Palace. I got the lay of the land on their extraordinarily high level of gelato.

Then we moved in, deep into the heart of the city, across the street from the Duomo. The thronging life of the place, its soul and essence! More beauty, more art, more food and markets.

This is lovely, isn't it? We said.

Yes, we had to answer. 

We compared. This thing is better here than there. This market is easier to use. I like how there is less traffic and big streets. I like how you can walk to every single thing.

This is lovely, isn't it? We asked again.

Yes, we had to answer.

Could we live here? 

Yes, if we could afford it this would be great, a thrilling place to live. We would live here in a second. Maybe we should live here. It's lovely, isn't it?

Yes, it's lovely, we had to answer.

It is lovely.

We had a lot of fun.

We saw extraordinary things. It was great. We ate delightful things. We shopped in charming shops. We saw miraculous art and architecture. We saw history. What a town this Florence is!

It is lovely, isn't it?

Yes, we had to answer.

Very lovely.

And then we got our train and went to Rome. And we stepped out into Rome. And we said:


"Oh."

Lines

If you are ever so inclined to travel to a world famous tourist destination you will have to answer the question of lines.

What is the question of lines?

It is myriad questions in one:

1. How much of your vacation do you want to stand in line for?

2. Is the length of a line any indication of the quality of that which is at the end of it?

3. What commitments and reservations are you willing to make to avoid or lessen lines?

4. Are you willing to chance leaving and coming back in hopes of a shorter line?

5. Is exhaustive preparation worth it to learn secret end runs to avoid lines?

6. How much will you pay to avoid a line?


The answers to these question can define a great deal of one's trip to a place like Florence, but they are personal answers. What is right for one person is wrong for another. Nevertheless I believe there are some general truths to be found in the answers to the question of lines. And so in that spirit, fresh from a lovely trip with my wife to Florence and Rome, I will take my stab at answering the above, blurring the personal with what is generally true. It's a specialty of mine.


1. How much of your vacation do you want to stand in line for?

As little as possible, as much as necessary.

Lines are inevitable, starting with the very process of flying to Europe and all that the cruelties of modern airport travel bureaucracy entail. And these Disneylandish destinations (meaning no offense, though some offense is inevitable), like Florence, Paris, Rome or Venice, have an awful lot of things that an awful lot of people want to see or do or eat, all at once.


2. Is the length of a line any indication of the quality of that which is at the end of it?

Yes! And no. One might have to take one's lumps to stand in front of Botticelli's Primavera or The Mona Lisa, but really, if you open your eyes, they are beautiful, extraordinary pieces of art. However no one on earth is making a 6 euro sandwich in Florence that is worth an hour wait in a clogged street (Vinaio at lunchtime), especially when there are roughly four equally excellent panini shops in Florence that only rarely have lines (and ones easily avoided). In short, lines in great European cities almost always mean something really good, but they may or may not mean something inimitable. My Italian travel specialty is gelato and the biggest lines are not at the best gelaterias, even if they are at good gelaterias.

3. What commitments and reservations are you willing to make to avoid or lessen lines?

Us? Almost none. We don't like to be fenced in. And some of those reservations aren't as line-free as one hopes. But if one doesn't mind a bit of structure it can be worth it for something dramatic or essential to one.

4. Are you willing to chance leaving and coming back in hopes of a shorter line?

Yes. The great secret we learned for ourselves is to go to places for as long a time as possible, always better one city than three, advice no one I have ever advised has ever listened to. Oddly it turns out the more time you have to waste the less time you have to waste.

5. Is exhaustive preparation worth it to learn secret line end runs?

Yes, though it can take a lot of research. Ferreting out the secret of being able to buy an annual pass to the combined Uffizi and Pitti Palace and Boboli Gardens, something mentioned in no guide book I have read, produced serious joy and convenience and added some serious linelessness into our trip.

6. How much will you pay to avoid a line?

Not much. I like to squander all our money on swanky rooftop bars and exotic apartment rentals.

Voting

My wife and I voted, not that there was much to vote for this off year. I got my "I Voted" sticker and put it on. My wife gave me hers. I put that on too.

All day at the library I work at people said "You voted twice!"

"The first time was so easy." I replied. "But the second time was hard!"

From the school of...

My first day back from our trip to Florence and Rome (it was lovely, thank you so much. Oh, you'd like to hear about it in exhaustive detail? Well, I mean, if you insist. Visit here daily for the next month or two then and that should do it) I was shelving some James Patterson books in our teeming James Patterson section of our library, when i noted that he collaborates, a lot. Scads of people are constantly writing with him, dozens, maybe hundreds. I suppose one needs a bit of help if one is going to churn out a couple of books every month (or is it a couple of books every week?). But he is by no means alone in this. There is a whole vein of bulk bestseller authors, like Janet Evanovich or Clive Cussler, who constantly team up with people you never heard of to keep their writing empires churning along.

Of course this has been going on for awhile in publishing, and I have been aware of it. But two weeks in Florence and Rome suddenly cast it in a new light: This is not remotely new to the arts! Back in the 1400's and 1500's and so on, many of the big time artists whose work my wife and I were seeing in churches, palaces, and museums (sometimes a bit of all three at once) were running their own little private art industries. They called them workshops and as far as my limited understanding of them goes they were probably a combination of apprenticeship schools and maybe a decent living for less entrepreneurial and less brilliant artists. One of the most uneven excellent artists I have seen ran a large workshop in his successful career: Titian. The huge quality variation on his paintings I suspect stems from how much he painted on a painting. I'm pretty sure there are more than a few "Titians" that involved him coming on to an almost finished painting, worked up by some stalwarts of his studio, in order to do a few final highlights. He might be a bit of an exception in terms of how good he could occasionally be though. The exception that proves the rule. Ghirlandaio might be a better example, a very fine painter with a thriving workshop in Florence, who produced much wonderful work that, despite having just seen several million examples of in Florence, I can't for the life of me remember any of. For the most part the really great artists, burning up with creative energy, have a slightly smaller body of work, and it's pretty clear that geniuses like Leonardo and Michelangelo (briefly apprenticed to Ghirlandaio!) not only have that more modest body of work (with loads of it unfinished), but they're also the sort of people who simply can't abide help. These Van Goghs and Caravaggios of the world tend to work alone, very, very alone.

So I use this to explain the James Pattersons of today. He's not working with people exactly. I figure he's more like throwing his "co-authors" a quick outline, maybe a few guidelines, and a couple characters. Then these sort of studio assistants are writing the books according to it all as best they can. Then ol' James comes in to add a few highlights, some signature flourishes of the master, so to speak. 

It pays the bills. Many, many, many, many, many bills.

But it's not the kind of thing you'll see Kafka doing. 

Chopin's Nocturnes Vladimir Ashkenazy

Yes, we're back to the series I was working on before my trip to Florence and Rome. This series is the 100 greatest albums of all time. These being of course each the single greatest album ever and not a ranked list. Today, excitingly, marks the greatest album ever made, and also our first classical album, Chopin's Nocturnes by Vladimir Ashkenazy.

This one is beyond me.

These nocturnes are too good for words. This music is too much for words.

I am riding in the snow, in the woods at night 150 years ago in a horse drawn sleigh. I pull my jacket close around me. Chopin wrote snow and ice and night every bit as well as god. And he just needed a piano for it, god needed a Universe.

I'll never get there trying to explain Chopin and these essential renditions. If we let a picture be worth a thousand words, but then a nocturne is worth a thousand pictures.

I would have to write a million words. I could write all night with this music falling all around me and I won't have said the first note.





Nocturne No 1 in B flat minor.

Simple expectations

Though I am writing this well ahead of time in preparation for a two week trip to Italy (mostly Florence), today in real time, according to this blog post, I will back at work with my vacation timebank emptied out until there's just fumes (hey, it smells like wine!). But I'm not worried about it because I will be refreshed, recharged, and raring to go. Also I am expecting everyone will have sorted out most things in my absence.

Please don't feel like you're personally responsible for any of this if it didn't happen, but I am thinking everyone will have worked together to bring about the following things while I was gone:


1. Library now works on a flat, cooperative non hierarchical structure. 

2. We got pay increases. 

3. The forks I ordered came in. 

4. Everyone stopped messing with the staplers and air fresheners.

5. Barcelona won all their soccer games in my absence and are now sponsored by my local Kopplin's Coffee.

6. The Internet's heart grew three sizes, like in The Grinch Who Stole Christmas.

7. The people of Hong Kong got a little love from the world.

8. Trump is, or Trump was, um, he finally put... 

oh, never mind, it's all hopeless. Hopeless.

The winding down of vacation blogging

Well, I have spent the day writing blog posts. As you know, because I keep telling you, I have to cover all my posts while I am gone on my trip. So I sat down and wrote a lot. Now I have to write another one. I refuse to not give it my all! You didn't ask me to box myself into a corner. You aren't interested in my schemes. You probably just thought you'd pop over and see if anything funny happened at the library today. And I don't want to let you down. So yes, yes, don't worry. Of course something hilarious happened at the library today. 

I don't know what it is, but oddly I can live with that.

Florence generic panini place review

By the time you read this my wife and I will be in Florence.  I am reading a lot of reviews in preparation for this trip. I find these compelling, occasionally useful, contradictory, truly pointless, and addictive. Along with the travel vlogs I watch I feel I have a sense for the collective tone and quality of these reviews as a kind of ur-review, the ultimate review that sums up each category of establishment. Today we will continue with the generic panini place review.



Generic Florence Panini Place Review


5 Stars


This is an absolutely legendary panini place. Just look at its review average. I have never seen such a high average of reviews. They are through the roof. Some people say this is the single greatest sandwich shop on the face of the Earth. I have never been so excited to eat at a place as I am to eat here. I can hardly believe that this afternoon I will be eating one of their paninis! If I could give them six stars I would! 

I hope they're good.

Florence generic rooftop bar review

By the time you read this my wife and I will be in Florence.  I am reading a lot of reviews in preparation for this trip. I find these compelling, occasionally useful, contradictory, truly pointless, and addictive. Along with the travel vlogs I watch I feel I have a sense for the collective tone and quality of these reviews as a kind of ur-review, the ultimate review that sums up each category of establishment. Today we will continue with the generic rooftop bar review.



Generic Florence Rooftop Bar Review



5 Stars




The view of the duomo in Florence is extraordinary, and where better to gaze upon it than from this amazing rooftop bar with a bottle of wine. It was an incredibly beautiful and romantic evening. Our bottle of wine was very reasonable at 180 euros, considering, and it came with a free bowl of marcona almonds. We ate them all but became too shy to ask for any more! The piano player focused primarily on the work of the Carpenters, Morris Albert, and Henry Mancini which made me cry. I didn't know how to tip him, but there's a lady who hangs out by the piano wearing purple and with flowers appliqued on her bag and she showed me how. Apparently you have to give money to the waiter first, then you can give money to the piano player at which point he'll sadly accept it.

I will never forget that magical evening.