Saturday, June 27, 2015

The Italian Renaissance in New York City

I felt very uncomfortable doing tho show last evening. Part of the reason was that I was very, very tired. Another thing was that I was very hungry and hadn't really eaten much that day (always very bad for me), and thus felt weak in addition to hunger. I also had my new summer teaching assignment on my mind. And finally, once again my engineer had trouble getting everything right, and only did when I made a suggestion. You know things are bad in the studio when we get on the air because of a suggestion that I make!!!!! Also, I hadn't realized that this was the first broadcast since before we went away, so five weeks. All this combined to make this a difficult performance on my part, although, and I kept thinking this all during the broadcast, my audience probably had no idea of any of this. I made several mistakes throughout, just as I used to do in the "old" days; the most annoying and perhaps glaring (but again perhaps unnoticeable) when describing the work in the Uffizi by Botticelli, I indicate that the artist depicted the Medici Family over "three centuries" when I meant to say "three generations." I thought that was my most annoying error, but unfortunately I did not realize it until I was viewing the show at home several hours later. In the Adoration, which is my favorite of Botticelli's work, we see Cosimo il Vecchio, his son Piero, and the young Lorenzo off to the side - hardly three centuries!!! I also picked up a few other mistakes along the way, but the mistake I just mentioned was the one which kept me awake all night.

I liked being on the air again, talking about our recent trip to Italy, "the agony and the ecstasy" a weird combination of magnificence and great strain and anxiety (watch the show). Now the hard part - putting together enough shows to last for the next year. I have a couple which I could fashion into shows quickly, but to get everything together will require time, a commodity I may have trouble finding since my teaching schedule will be totally dominating my time, at least for the next five weeks. Then since I have applied for a full time position at the college, that could be a future difficulty.

In the meantime it is on the schedule that the makeshift studio may closed for a while and we will be moved into the new studio in the refurbished Woodstock Community Center. Last time taking the equipment out of the old studio and setting up the trailer temporarily consumed several months. If that occurs, I will surely not be very upset, because time is what I need most to get the new year's broadcasts together. Do not expect a show now for perhaps three weeks. That show will probably be the one which is about 25 % completed on my favorite sculpture museum in Florence, the Bargello, the former prison and now the National Museum of Sculpture. After that, if we are not closed down, I will probably begin the new year of broadcasts with the one titled, Oasis in Castello, Venice - Hotel Sant'Antonin. I owe the gracious and dedicated owner of the hotel in which we stayed in Venice the honor of my first show of the new season.

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