Success!!!!!

After some trepidation about broadcasting tonight during the half hour preceding the beginning of the broadcast, we began right on time at 5 PM. The process was relatively smooth on Ellen's side of the console, but my computer betrayed me and I had some difficulty which you will be able to view on Youtube. I think I had too many programs open at the same time and the memory did not permit so many things to be going on simultaneously and froze at times. For now I can simply solve the problem by closing down the programs I do not need which is all except Photos. Other than that I felt very relaxed and Ellen looked very calm as the broadcast continued just like old times. In the future I may have to add memory to my computer or buy a new one. I only have 4 GB memory; I could use at least 8 GB if not even 16 which Laura has and her computer is lightning fast.

So thus finishes a sequence of shows dedicated to a wonderful day out with Lidia and her friends that began with Show # 117 back in early October, 2015 and was finally put to rest yesterday, March 25, 2016 with Show # 118. The almost six month hiatus is the longest I have gone without doing a broadcast. At first I needed the rest from the sometimes arduous task of creating and then executing a show. Then I just kind of gave up the possibility of continuing, and finally when it looked promising, I began putting a show together and here I am.

However, I just cannot complain after finally getting back on TV and most importantly successfully uploading a new video after the 6 month hiatus. I have many more show scheduled and will discuss my ideas on the next show in two weeks. That show # 119 will focus on a day out at the Chianti village of Volpaia with Luca and Mary as our guides. Quite simply at this stage of my travels around Italy, I just cannot drive any longer. If not for Luca, Lidia, and Franco we would be confined to major cities (not a tragedy) or take trains and buses to the countryside which is just not so rewarding as driving. I will discuss all future plans in two weeks, but for now, yes, success!!!!

Relentlessly I Move Ahead

So on Friday, March 25 I will once again try to broadcast Show # 118 - Montefioralle. The original broadcast had some weird noise which both Ellen and Richard assure me will not be present again. I have made some modest "improvements" in the show and hopefully will download it to Youtube this Friday evening the first Alan's Italy in over 5 months.

A New Beginning, Perhaps

Last evening I arrived at the studio at 4PM, about a half hour before my usual arrival time to find a studio which appeared to be about three times the size of the old studio. Also Richard, the studio technician told me he was there to help inaugurate the equipment for my first live broadcast in five months. He and Ellen then spent quite a lot of time getting things ready while I tried to do the same on my computer. Having downloaded yet another update last week, some things were again different and I had to find the correct way to make the presentation. I succeeded and off we went at about 4:50, about ten minutes ahead of schedule. I indicated to Ellen that I doubted whether my usual Friday evening audience was waiting with bated breath for the possible broadcast, so let's just get started. I did the show quite flawlessly except that some of the images with writing on the bottom were clearly being cut off. The cause was unknown to me, but that might be an easy thing to correct on my end. Other than that I felt quite strange and nervous doing the show, although as always happens to me, nobody would know there was anything different from my demeanor. The show was shorter tan usual at about 37 minutes, and I knew this by looking at the clock, but I was really happy to gotten that far. I took the DVD and went home where Laura told me she watched the show live on TV and it was good although I forgot to say some things that I honestly had forgotten about the places we visit. I did not show Laura the show beforehand, as I usually do, so that was a another problem which can easily be corrected. She did say that she heard a strange noise throughout the show. That noise is very prevalent on the DVD and I labored all last night with the possibility of doing the show over again. Ellen did not know what the noise was. I will probably do the show over again IF Richard can figure out what the noise was. If so, then I will make some necessary changes, talk with Laura about several things and try it again on the air. All this rests on what Richard can determine and I will keep you posted.

The show itself # 118 focused once again on the Tuscan adventure we took with Lidia, Sabrina and Giulio last May, 2015. It shows some very beautiful images of Tuscany in close to proximity to the region known for for its wine, Chianti.  I hope you get to see it, and we will try to make that happen.

The Flu Grounds Alan's Italy

Sorry to all my fans, but I have the Flu and cannot do my show on Friday evening. Perhaps next Friday. Shooting for March 11.

Oh No, Another Trip to Italy!

I planned a trip to Italy in 2016 after assuring everyone I knew, including Laura, that I did not want to go this year because of a lot of conflicting situations. There was a brief window of days available and I jumped right in. I actually asked her about two months ago where she would like to go. She said she would like to go back to the Amalfi Coast, staying in Sorrento and visiting Capri, the coast itself, Positano, Pompeii and Herculaneum. I then spent several weeks getting all that ready only to find her reading a post on Facebook from a friend of hers who is taking an artist group to Tuscany. She then said, much to my delight, that she wanted to return to Tuscany and even visit the artist group in the town of Radicofani which is just south of the val d'Orcia area of Tuscany instead of Sorento. I then planned a trip which became one of the boldest I ever planned.

It is very hard to visit Tuscany properly without driving. First of all it is difficult to pick out a base of operations. Second, you must get there without driving. Third, once you do that in order to see anything decent, you must drive. I chose Siena for several reasons. Although I had been there three times and Laura twice, I never stayed overnight. To truly experience a town you must stay at least one night. You just feel the mystery of the place in the darkness, smell the soot and smoke from the chimneys, and get lost amid the medieval streets. Also, Siena was big enough to allow for a lot of wandering, a lot of restaurants, and hotels. Also it was a good transportation hub for exploring Tuscany since I had NO INTENTION of driving anywhere. We decided on 4 days in Siena, 4 days in Florence, and then two days in Orvieto visiting with Franco Sala whom we missed the last time we were in Italy. Because the hotel I really wanted, the Palazzo Ravizza (rated number 3 out of 39 hotels by TripAdvisor) appeared to be fully booked (I assumed we booked too late for a lot of choices), I chose the Hotel Duomo which still appeared to be quite nice.

Then I had to figure out a way to see the rest of Tuscany, especially places I had never seen. I relied on Lidia and Luca who both graciously and wonderfully agreed to drive us around for two of the days in Siena. I also booked a taxi service to drive us to Siena from Rome Airport, and then on to Florence four days later, a very expensive proposition, but for a non driver, absolutely essential. I then booked our usual hotel in Orvieto, the Hotel Duomo (there are a million Hotel Duomos, LOL) and asked them to book a taxi to the Rome Airport for the trip home, a total of 10 days. A lot, a lot, a lot of money for taxis. To rent a car, however, would have cost just as much and caused me untold anxiety and gastro issues. I bit the bullet. While in Florence, we could see some of our favorite museums and Lidia promises a day out again with Sabrina and Giulio and dinner cooked by Giulio who is a chef at the Westin Excelsior in Florence. All set. Short trip, as we had decided last year. Trips seem to be longer and longer the older we get.

Suddenly without much reason I went back to look at Palazzo Ravizza and found they had a couple of rooms open. I did this on the bus getting to my teaching job in NYC, so spent a whole trip down there emailing with the hotel and texting with Laura. We now have the palazzo with a garden level room for two nights and a regular room for the other two. I cancelled Hotel Duomo. I felt really badly about since they had treated me very nicely, but the thought of spectacular Tuscan views from our room in a magnificent palazzo type hotel was overwhelming. It will be more costly, but I hope worth it.

While in Siena we will try to get west to Volterra, a place I spent time in with Lidia almost 15 years ago. Also we will try to get down to the val d'Orcia area to San Quricio, maybe Mt Amiata, and then Radicofani. Great material for TV shows.

So there it is, yet another trip to Italy and probably if all works out well a year's worth of Alan's Italy broadcasts.

Alan's Italy is Back on the Air..........Maybe

To all my loyal fans around the world all I can say is, as disappointed as many of you are, I am having an even worse time. The last broadcast was show # 117 back on October 9, 2015, almost 5 months ago. My engineer just told me to prepare for a show for next Friday evening, March 4. I spent yesterday and today trying very hard to get back into it. It was not easy having not only lost some (although as it turned out not much) interest, but also forgetting how to do some of the computer stuff on IPhoto. But as of this moment, I have a very nice show prepared Show # 118 - Montefioralle, the day we spent with Lidia, Sabrina, and Giulio showing around the stunning area of eastern Chianti. In fact I became so enthused that I actually had prepared 115 photos, way too much and spent the last hour paring that down considerably. Of course, I always have a very hard time dropping beautiful photos from a potential broadcast.

Now I wait. Next Friday I not so confidently place myself into the hands of my engineer who will probably be doing her first show in the new studio. Very, very scary!!!!! I am fully prepared to do the show, and then do it over again; that attitude is very unusually for me who always gets upset when I have to do a show over. I haven't even seen the new studio, but, again, I place myself in the hands of the person who has taken me this far - which is very far indeed. If it comes off successfully, I then must remember how to download to my computer and upload to Youtube. Gulp!!!

We shall see what happens but I also prepared for the next show # 119 which will focus on the day out in the heart of Chianti with Mary and Luca when they took us up the steep hill to the amazing town of Volpaia. We had a spectacular lunch made slightly less wonderful by the fact that my chronic gastro intestinal problems were bad that day. Still that show was quite nice ending up at Luca's and Mary's house and spending time with Luca marvelous daughter, Greta, who also took us back to Florence on the train. Then I still have two shows (which may become one) on two side trips from Varenna on Lake Como, a lunch several hundred feet above the town of Bellagio and a stroll along Lake Como to the tiny town of Fiumelatte which has a wonderful small waterfall on what is billed as the world's shortest river.

Then I would like to do two shows which I do not know if my audience will like. I would like to spend two shows talking about how to plan a trip to Italy and then how to actually navigate through the many difficult anxious aspects of actually taking such a trip. One of my followers, my friend Shawn from Chicago, loves the idea and even wants to contribute his own experiences with planning a trip. I wish other people would email me their thoughts. The show will not feature a lot of photos, but merely be me speaking directly at the camera using lists and some visuals. I have thought this for quite some time, but never actually did anything. Now I have the skeletal outline of such a series of shows. I hope that will be a public service to assist people who are thinking about taking a trip to Italy. Please let me hear from you at  alansitaly@gmail.com  Thanks!!!

Update

I consumed the last few weeks agonizing over watching my favorite sports team, the New York Mets, labor through the playoffs successfully and the World Series unsuccessfully. I still have vivid memories of the horrific plays in the field in the World Series that led to some of the losses and the insane managerial moves made by Terry Collins which were simply inexplicable at the time and in retrospect. I won't bore my Alan's Italy followers with details, although if you would like an analysis on a semi-expert level, I am the one to provide it. I have studied what could have been a wonderful end to an already stunningly surprising season which back in April nobody could foresee. Back then I would taken this season complete with the incredible disappointments. We all assumed that the Mets would be as mediocre as they have been in recent years, so actually getting to the World Series was an extraordinary achievement. Nonetheless true Met fans by the time the series began had long ago forgotten all the gratitude they should had and simply wanted, prayed for a series victory. It is not easy being a sports fan.

The Cable Access TV show known as Alan's Italy in still on hold pending the removal of all the equipment from the makeshift studio in the trailer to the new digs in the refurbished Woodstock Community Center. Fans will have to be content with the previous 116 shows (remember that the one which would have been the 117th show - actually Show # 116 -  has been removed because the subjects of the show disapproved of the final content). In the meantime it would make perfect sense if I spent the interlude developing new shows. In a very sporadic manner I have tried to accomplish this despite the honest appraisal of having lost some of my enthusiasm. I have tried to reignite my passion and will continue to try, and perhaps when I am truly able to once again broadcast, I will have some kind of epiphany and begin anew. For now I have several ideas, have created four new albums for shows that will probably be broadcasted at some future time and about a dozen total ideas for new shows. Since in all probability we will not go to Italy in 2016, missing only our second year in the past 14, the shows may be few and far between once production continues probably in December or January. I will do my best, mostly for my now very devoted audience which approaches 28,000 views as I write this with 101 subscribers, and over 9,000 reads on this blog. Even though Youtube videos which have gone viral amass much higher numbers, I am content that the very esoteric, intellectual, and refined nature of the show appeals to a small, albeit dedicated audience. It is for this audience primarily that I will attempt to sustain the show. I will keep you informed.