After a Week of Decision Making, a Great Show

After a week of thinking about how to modify the broadcast schedule to allow for the fact that I am running low on ideas for shows, and the time to think creatively, I nonetheless had a great show. First the dilemma. I am almost totally into my college teaching, sending e mails to students with progress reports, preparing lessons, traveling into the city, etc. I also work out the Y, am writing a book which is kindly being edited by one of my oldest friends, so the show has taken a back seat. I will be working most of today developing shows for the next few months. I have about 5 or 6 ideas, so if I did one a month I could then get to Italy and back with enough photos and fresh ideas to continue. Ellen told me I could cut back, so right now that appears to be the best way to go. I was reluctant to tell her because I know how much she likes to engineer the project. After today I will know more about the future.

Meanwhile, I finally did the show using the Alinari photos of 19th century Florence after a year and a half hiatus. Show # 24, Florence, Then and Now focused on the comparison of how places looked back then compared to how they look today. It is a fascinating concept to examine photos of a specific location and try to analyze how they changed and why. Part of the reason is obviously the passage of time, modern improvements, and social and political issues. Trying to research which of these considerations is the reason is the best part. Trying to recall all this during a live show, in front of the camera, and with very limited notes (my fault), it is very daunting. I still get stressed doing a show, and this after 88 now. I come off much more relaxed than I am, believe me. It has been and always will be a struggle.

So this was part 2 of the 4-part story of 19th century Italy, with Florence well represented in the first two shows. My next one will focus on Tuscany in general outside of Florence, and then all of Italy. Now I have to get to work, so for now, ciao.

Always Something New and Different with which to Cope

If anyone was actually waiting with bated breath to see Alan's Italy Show # 88 - Florence, Then and Now, Part 2, please be advised that after about 10 minutes into the broadcast my computer malfunctioned causing the decision to cancel. We will try again next week. While I was zooming in and then out of my close-up shot of the empty space on the front portico of the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence where Michelanelgelo's David stood for 371 years, from 1502 - 1873. The statue, perhaps the most famous in Florentine History, was removed from the spot chosen by the famous committee in 1502 (Botticelli, Leonardo daVinci among others), was moved to the Galleria Accademia where it has been ever since. In its place at the Palazzo Vecchio in 1910 was placed the copy we all see now. So, for a period of 512 years, except for the 37 year period between 1873 and 1910, there was no statue on that spot. The photo I showed was obviously taken during that period. This always fascinated me, so I did a close-up of that spot, and then as I was "backing up", the screen froze, never to return to normal. Yet another problem with the concept of live broadcast on public access cable television. Just add to the list that I have compiled since Dec 9, 2011 when we began.

Actually Ellen agreed to begin the show10 minutes early so I could end early enough to attend a birthday party for a friend of ours. By the time my computer returned to normal, it was too late to broadcast the show and then get home and then to the party, so we ditched the whole concept. Normally, we just would have continued along starting and ending later than usual. Therefore, other than my computer, the party was the real issue. I will call Apple and see what could be done, but I have already taken steps to correct the problem. I had a lot of other programs opened at the time I was using IPhoto so that could have been the problem. I also took a screen shot of the "empty space" on the Pal Vecchio so there will not be a need to zoom in and out, which I hate doing on the air anyway. I will also rearrange the presentation as I have other ideas now as well. I think the new version should be better than the original. We shall see. Stay tuned.

Horrible Weather with a Hopeful Future

I just wanted my following of readers to know that due to the incredibly terrible weather, we are having difficulties producing additional TV shows, and barring that, the blogs have been sparse as well. It snowed yesterday again as I went into NYC to teach my college students, but returned to a snowy and icy car. Today it snowed again, however the temperatures are supposed to climb for a few days so we may have a respite. With that in mind I am planning to broadcast this Friday, Feb 21. The show is still planned to be Florence, Then and Now, Part 2.

As many of you know one of my great interests is 19th century photography of Italy and the next three shows will focus on that theme with amazing 150 yr old photos of Florence, Tuscany, and Italy in general. Most of this interest has been inspired by my friend and native Tuscan, Luca, who gave me as a gift a photo book two years ago. This past year he brought me to the bookstore which used to serve as the workshop for the Alinari Brothers (Fratelli Alinari) who were the forerunners of 19th century Italian photography. The purchases I made in that store form the basis for the next three shows, Alan's Italy Show # 88, 89, and 90.

I hope you tune in, and apparently a continuous run of views have pushed the total views since the inception of my Youtube Channel to close to 12,000, an astounding number considering the esoteric nature of the material. I am gratified that so many people have taken an interest and will try very hard to get back on the air.

Nighttime Magic

I always assumed that the best way to create a show was to choose a theme, go through our collection of over 10,000 photos of Italy, and choose about 100 - 150 and voila, a broadcast has begun to be formed. Then the tweaking, creating a narrative, and interweave my experiences. That is exactly how Show # 87: Nighttime Magic was created. I knew we had hundreds of nighttime, evening, and morning photos of different places in Italy, so I chose my favorite couple of hundred, narrowed it down to about 150 and fashioned a program. Laura's input helped hone the finished product, as she edited some, and discarded others. The actual broadcast was flawless, and the show will become, as Ellen, my engineer predicted as I left the studio, a classic.

I built the show around some of my favorite towns in Italy such as Sorrento, Varenna, Stresam Varenna, Orvieto, Cortona, and la Spezia, all with evocatively stunning scenes. I also threw in my "big three" Venice, Florence, and Rome. Italy is amazing in the nighttime and evening, truly magical and that came through perfectly on this broadcast.  Places that are charming enough during the day take on a truly eerie flavor in the evening. One of the great experiences for me is to choose a hotel right in the center of a town, stroll to dinner down some blind alley way, have a delicious Italian meal in a small family run trattoria, and then try to find our way back to our hotel down narrow, winding alleyways that pass for streets, getting somewhat (but not totally) lost along the way. The aroma of smoke from fires throughout these towns adds to the mystic. Even when I am home and smell the fires in upstate NY I can easily imagine myself and Laura, strolling arm and arm, wending our way through the maze of medieval streets and buildings hundreds of years old. I can easily imagine myself back then. Just close your eyes and take a deep breath.

Then, of course, getting back to our hotel, a beacon of light in a dark desert and perhaps sitting in the lobby or garden for an hour or so before heading up to our room really enhances this amazing experience. The whole package is what I tried to convey to my audience; Alan's Italy's ideal stroll around town in the magic of an Italian night.

Two weeks from now I begin a three part series on Italy, Then and Now featuring 19th century photos of places in Italy together with modern versions. First focussing on Florence, then Tuscany in general, and then locales all around the country.

Finally !!!!!!!

When we came home from Italy in June 2013, due to my impatience, we began to put together a show on the 55th Venice Biennale. That process continued until Friday morning, Jan 17, 2014. I usually change shows a lot between the conception and the broadcast, but this was the world's record. I decided not to do the show several times, and even the past week came to the conclusion that this would be too difficult. The Palazzo Bembo Shows at least had videos in which the artists themselves explained their work. In other shows related to art, I have along side me either Ric, Franc, or Eve. This time I would be on my own, and frankly, although somewhat schooled in the Italian Renaissance, I would have trouble doing a show on the 15th century Italian Art I have seen and studied for twenty years. Although Laura refused to appear with me or even be on the phone during the broadcast, she did spend countless hours with me helping to put together the show, explaining the art, teaching me about what I would be showing, and encouraging me to go through with it. I was rearranging, adding, and subtracting up to 3 PM on Friday, and went into the studio very nervous for the first time in a very long time.

It began with Ellen telling me of a house catastrophe, so I was upset about that at the get go. I looked over my notes which were "voluminous" in comparison to what I usually have. Sometimes I do a show without any notes at all. We began and the show went fairly smoothly although, because I did not have my reading glasses with me, I had a hard time reading. Nonetheless, I did it and it was now over once and for all. In the future I would have a hard time trying to figure out if I should do an art analysis show of any kind, but for now that is it. Now I can turn my attention to other projects and prepare for my renewal of my college teaching which begins on January 28.

Upcoming I will do as my next show on Jan 31 the Nighttime Magic Show about which I was quite excited, and Laura has shown no excitement. I am, however, very excited about simply showing stunning photos of amazing places without much commentary. That will be a welcome change. I can simply talk about the places pictured, and why they presented a nighttime or evening or morning sunrise view that captured my imagination. That is really my favorite thing to do. Then Ric has promised a two-part history of Florence during the 13th - 16th centuries. Otherwise I still have three Then and Now Shows, one on Florence (Part 2), one on Tuscany, and the last on all of Italy. That will be fabulous, because the Florence, Then and Now, Part 1 show that I did during the first year of production is still one of my favorites. After that I have a variety of decisions to make before we head to Italy for new material. I have one on Shopping in Florence that I think will be quite good, as there are many ways to shop in Florence ranging from markets to expensive upscale boutiques, and I pretty much know of them all, or most at least. Then I was thinking about a show on the Streets of Florence focussing on the famous and not so famous. Oh yes, Ric has also indicated a desire to do one on Carsulae, the very obscure but amazing long abandoned Ancient Roman Town which only has nondescript ruins. He knows a lot about that town and can pin point where everything in the town was.

So that's where we now are. I have a website for my college students which you may find interesting, www.profgreenhalgh.com. Have a look but it is very esoteric.

A Florentine Masterpiece

After having a detailed back and forth e mail exchange with my friend Lidia who lives in Western Tuscany about 40 mins from Florence, I headed to the studio for the long awaited show on the Baptistery of Florence, one of the most famous landmarks in Italy. Ric Hirst and I had planned to do this show for a very long time and finally it came to pass. We arrived considerably earlier than we usually get there so that Ric and I could look over the entire show and determine correct order and also to eliminate photos that we did not need. This process only took about 10 minutes and we were on our way. Ellen was the picture of true perfection, even doing the sound check while Ric and I were having a private conversation before the broadcast began. There was nothing about the presentation that was lacking, and Ellen was so professional we hardly knew she was doing anything behind the console. If shows were broadcast like this every week, I would be very happy, and perhaps not have anything about which to write here !

Meanwhile by virtue of a lot of studying and his extraordinary knowledge of Italian history, Ric weaved a fascinating tale through the early fifteenth century. The entire story of how Italy became what we know today is an amazing story, and surely the occurrences in Florence played a significant role in that saga. Many scholars date the Italian Renaissance from the 1401 announcement that the East Door to the Baptistery in Florence would be sculpted using a different design from what had been there since the previous century. That sculptural masterpiece was accomplished by Andrea Pisano and was to be moved to the South Side, while a new conception would replace it on the East Side facing the main entrance to the Cathedral. The determination of who would be given this assignment would initiate the most significant one hundred years of art history beginning with the selection of Ghiberti for the honor of sculpting the doors. His competition is like a who's who of Florence Art, including Dontatello and Bruneleschi. Ric tells the tale with stunning images taken by Laura Gurton, and all put together by yours truly.

Meanwhile on the show we announced that the next show would not skip a week, but take place next Friday when I finally do the 55th Venice Biennale. Then two weeks later I will broadcast my Italian Night Magic with my favorite photos of Italy at night. In the interim Ric will put together a two part history of Florence during the 13th through 16th century. I already told him to take his time and we can even do four shows, but we shall see what comes out of that. Those 400 years changed the world, and we will take a very close look at that.

Pre-empted by a Snow Storm - and Some Good News

Ric Hirst and I were supposed to do the show on the Florence Baptistery this evening, but were stopped in our tracks by the snow storm that nailed the northeast with savage force. This turned out to be a bit serendipitous, however, because we decided to change the format of that show to a degree. Here is the story (there is always a story).

Ric and I were speaking during the week, and he indicated that he would like to answer two questions I asked him a long time ago. One question was: Why did the Renaissance begin in Florence in the 15th century ? Actually this question was asked by me to him and a few other people I knew just before I was about to do Alan's Italy Show # 2 on December 25, 2011. I just watched that show, and noticed that at the end of the show I had planted a question. Sorry. I had Ric call me just to get the phone calling thing going and that was the question that he was instructed to ask me. I did answer the question, but the query is really so profound that he continued researching it for parts of the past two years. The second question I asked him was simply to talk a little about the workshop/apprenticeship concept that existed in Florence during the 14th century on through the years. That question was for my own purposes, but was also referred to on that show. When Ric requested to talk about that, I immediately told him that at the beginning of the next show we do, he can have the time to answer both questions. Then he e mailed to me a list of the wealthiest people in Florence in the year that a tax record indicated the top 1.4% of the population. This concept is tied up in the other two questions, so right then and there I decided to make his next show a two parter. Even though he will still talk about the Baptistery, he will also talk about Florence in the 15th century, an idea for a show we have been batting around for several months anyway.

So next week's show, January 10, weather permitting, we will first look at the Renaissance, Workshops, and also how all of this was tied together to the enormous wealth that existed in Florence starting actually in the 13th century with the rise of the banking industry right up to the present. Then afterward Ric will begin to talk about the Baptistery, preceded by a discussion on baptistries in general. He has a lot of stories to tell related to this theme and there seemed to me no way he could accomplish all that in one sixty minute show. Therefore we will split the broadcast into two.

Meanwhile, many residents of Ulster County and elsewhere in the northeast, people are trying to dig out from a mountain of snow which began falling two days ago and continued through this morning. I was out and about after my snowplowing had occurred at about 2 PM. The roads are awful, slushy, icy, snowy, and worst of all very slippery. These very hazardous conditions did not, however, stop many very, very stupid people from driving way too fast under these horrid circumstances. It never ceases to amaze me how people could not only jeopardize their own lives but other motorists as well by just driving like they really have somewhere urgent to get to. I have often asked friends of mine, "where are these people hurrying to all the time? Please tell me! I must be missing something and want to go wherever they are going." So for now, staying home nice and safe and warm under my own roof, where I don't have to worry about reckless drivers.