Thursday, July 31, 2014

Future Shows

My loyal viewers and readers deserve a lot of credit for keeping me going. I would like to thank all of you for your support. Although I only sometimes receive e-mails from my fans, I can see how many people read the blogs and watch the shows. I am very gratified, and it provides the added motivation I need to sustain the project.

As you all know my wife, Laura and I returned from Italy this past June with over two thousand photos, most of which are stunning! It has been our pleasure subsequently to fashion them into future broadcasts. How is this accomplished you might ask? Laura begins the process by editing all of the photos and placing them on a hard drive for me to transfer to my computer. This took a couple of weeks. Then my first step is to create large albums (perhaps 600 or more photos) of the four places we visited, so that I started with albums representing Cinque Terre, Western Tuscany, Florence, and Lake Como. The second step is to go through every photo once just to become acquainted once again with the places we visited thinking ahead to future broadcasts. The third step is to create smaller albums representing the intended shows I wish to create. The fourth step is to hone those albums into what will eventually become a future broadcast. The fifth and final step, which will not occur until a week or two before a scheduled broadcast is to hone once again to create the actual show. While I am performing this final step, in all probability I am doing research for some of the places with which I am not well acquainted. At this time I begin to take notes which I will use on the actual show. It is then possible for me to tweak further a few times during the final hours, just to make certain everything is the way I want it to be. When I am confident, comfortable, and somewhat relaxed (not totally as you well know), then I set everything aside and hope for the best!

The past week I worked towards step four, and although not quite ready, I have arrived at a tentative schedule for the next year. I say tentative because I can never be sure who may want to be a guest on the show or what sudden idea I may have. For example, when I found out that Professor Eve D'Ambra was willing to do a show on Pompeii, which as you know is scheduled for August 8, I set aside everything to accommodate her. Nonetheless, it behooves me to now list the upcoming shows until and through most of the spring.

Show # 97: Pompeii with Professor Eve D'Ambra (Friday, August 8)
# 98: Varenna on Lake Como
# 99:  Divine Life on Lake Como: Bar il Molo
#100: Special 100 Anniversary Special: A Evening to Remember - Dinner with Simone and Silvia at Sala Comacina
# 101: Villa Melzi on Lake Como

I chose the Lake Como material first deviating from my usual chronological approach to our trips, since it is possible Simone may come to the United States to be on a show live and I wanted to set the stage for that event.

# 102: Return to Cinque Terre: Boating Along the Coast
# 103: Monterosso al Mare, Part 1 - The Old Town
# 104: Monterosso al Mare, Part 2 - The New Town
# 105: Boat Trip and Afternoon at The Beautiful Town of Portovenere
# 106: Return to Western Tuscany: Lucca
# 107: Return to the Alpi Apuane, Part 1: Castelnuovo di Garfagnana
# 108: Return to the Alpi Apuane, Part 2: The Castelnuovo Fortezza and Eglio-Sassi
# 109: Tuscany with Lidia Part 1: Montecarlo
# 110: Tuscany with Lidia Part 2: Serravalle
# 111: Tuscany with Lidia Part 3: San Miniato
# 112: Tuscany with Lidia Part 4: The Town of Vinci and a Look at It's Native Son
# 113: The Streets of Rome
# 114: Selected Renaissance Art at the Metropolitan Museum in NYC
# 115: My Favorite Sculpture Museum in Florence: The Bargello
# 116: Shopping in Florence

At two shows a month, this should bring us into the month of May, ready for the next trip which is too tentative to discuss now.

I hope you enjoy the coming year complete with my best attempt at quality shows and very readable blogs about my experiences broadcasting Alan's Italy. I have now exceeded 15,400 views on Youtube, and 6,100 reads of this blog. I have planned about a half dozen trips for people, and have advised countless others on smaller segments. Although I have cut back on my lectures, library forums, and courses on Italy, as you know, I am now also heavily involved in my life's career of college teaching in mathematics which begins again, I hope, soon.

Thanks for everything!!

Warmest wishes,

Alan

Saturday, July 26, 2014

Understanding Train Travel in Italy

After an extraordinary day on Thursday during which time I reconnected with long lost cousins who I hadn't seen in perhaps 30 years, I eagerly looked forward to doing a show I always wanted to do. As I explained on the broadcast, I hate driving in Italy, but once I am securely ensconced in my seat on the train, really relax in the warm embrace of a smooth ride to wherever. My goal was to spend perhaps fifteen minutes talking about some of my favorite experiences, good and bad, of train travel in Italy during the past 22 years. There have been scores of train rides from and to practically everywhere, exposing me to numerous experiences. The goal of that segment was to rather selfishly relive some of the happiest moments of my Italian travel experience, and despite the fact that some of the negative experiences seemed at the time to be rather disturbing, are an integral part of my life leading up to this moment.

I then planned the rest of the show to explain the entire process of train travel including all the minute elements that a person must go through until they finally sit back and enjoy a great ride. One of my biggest challenges has always been determining the correct train, time of  travel, obtaining tickets, finding the train at the station, and then trying very hard to place myself on the platform near the correct car and then find my seat. The final part of that can be very harrowing, especially when hundreds of people are also trying to do the same thing at the same time. There is not more aggravating experience than competing with so many people trying to find their seats on a narrow car. The Italian Rail System, Trenitalia, has made it much easier lately to find your car and one of my goals was to explain that process.

I hope I succeeded in making train travel in Italy easier for people, and perhaps Alan's Italy Show # 96 will become a beacon of light for people seeking to plan their own trips to and around this great country.

Meanwhile I eagerly await the show in two weeks which will focus on all aspects of Pompeii through the expert eyes of Professor Eve D'Ambra of Vasser College. After a two-year hiatus, Eve is back to guide us all through the amazing story of one of the great tragedies in history which has been translated into one of the most fortuitous events. The more Pompeii is uncovered, the greater becomes its glory, as people all along the spectrum from tourists to experts use the remains of the town to understand more about the Ancient World. I hope this will be a harbinger of things to come with Eve participating more on the show.

Friday, July 11, 2014

New Territory for Me

For the first time I attempted to discuss, solo, the art of a great Renaissance Painter. For the occasion I chose my favorite artist Domenico Ghirlandaio. I have loved his work and his story for over 20 years, so using him for my inaugural foray into unknown territory seemed appropriate. Although I knew quite a bit about his life and work, I did tremendous amounts of research over the past several weeks. Other than a slight mixing of the photos within the actual album from iPhoto (reason unknown), the show was acceptable to me. At the time I felt uneasy, insecure, and seemed to fumble my way through. Ellen told me it was wonderful, and upon further scrutiny at home came to the same conclusion. For some reason I am always quite hard of myself. In this case I had bad news about periodontal work I would be undergoing soon, so did not seem to have my full concentration. Nonetheless, examination of everything indicates a fairly good presentation, crisp(despite some fumbling around because of the mixed-up photos), and I appear competent.

Usually I would do a show of this type with Ric Hirst, but with him out of the picture, I am flying solo. I like doing art broadcasts, however, and will attempt to do more. I would still like to focus on sculpture and will try to get something together on my favorite sculpture museum, The Bargello. Also, I would like to do some shows on some more artists such as Raphael and perhaps Fra Angelico. I would prefer to focus on less famous artists, not Leonardo, or Michelangelo whom Ric and I did twice, in Florence and Rome.

Meanwhile we near the time when Laura will have completed the editing of the photos we just came home from Italy with. I will download soon and begin to put together albums which will be turned into shows. I saw some of them and they appear to be spectacular. I have several ideas that I developed during the summer so far not including these newer photos, and would like to not have to use the newer stuff until I have consumed more of that. Not sure as yet how many shows could be created from the 2000 or so show photos of the areas we visited, and would very much like to take my time with that process. Therefore, you may not see one of these newer shows until the fall. Stay tuned.