Category: Nature

Tuscany visions

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Italy is perhaps the most beautiful country in the world, or near the top in any case. The above photo is from one of my many trips there.

The countryside is of course beautiful, but this can be said about many countries. And so it must be the Italian culture and sensibility that gives the air itself a kind of refined serenity.

They call Rome the “Eternal City” because of the feeling of timelessness there — that it will always be the way it is, a vibrant city with the gravitas of a former great empire. But I suppose the entire country could be called the “Eternal Country” because it does indeed feel as though time stops and good living begins when one is there.

Baroque music in the Hudson Valley

Last night I was lucky enough to attend a performance of Baroque music by four classical musicians — Cello, Piano, and two singers (a Soprano and a Baritone). The event took place in a small church in the Hudson Valley and it was sublime.

In the photo below you can see the church steeple nestled in the trees.

hudson-valley-church

The program included works by Bach, Handel, and Vitali, and I will confess to having experienced strong feelings of appreciation for western culture — its music, its architecture, its spirituality (“Rejoice greatly” was particularly moving, from Handel’s Messiah), its overall sensibility.

It occurred to me that three of the four performers were women and that in many parts of the world (and across thousands of years of history) women are not being / would not have been afforded the opportunity to excel and stand tall as world-class musicians. For that matter, in some places music itself is considered taboo.

But we are here, now, and rejoice greatly.

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