Current Events - Sarasota Soundings

Easter Pies

Skip — Sat, 19 Apr 2014 14:52:08 +0000

The local Amish community here in Sarasota have some wonderful pies on offer at this time of year.

Sign at a local Amish community restaurant
Copyright © 2014, Skip Lombardi

For a little insight into the way Italian-Americans make pies for Easter, have a look at our other blog Almost Italian.

You can find our recipe for Italian Easter Pie in our cookbook.

Buona Pasqua.

The post Easter Pies first appeared on Sarasota Soundings.

Pineapple Passeggiata

Holly and Skip — Thu, 09 May 2013 17:35:08 +0000

Join Sarasota’s savvy shoppers, foreign film buffs, antiquarians, artists, collectors, vintage & couture fashionistas, diners, spa lizards, and all-round hipsters when they gather EVERY 2ND FRIDAY to stroll on South Pineapple Avenue.

Shops and galleries that are usually closed at night remain OPEN from 6 until 8 PM (some as late as 9 PM).

Delight Couture
One-of-a-Kind Custom & Vintage Apparel
537 South Pineapple
Photo: Skip Lombardi, Copyright © 2013

With its Roaring Twenties Ringling-era Spanish-Med architecture, exuberant wall murals, and attractive plantings, South Pineapple and the adjacent live-work-dine enclave of Burns Court comprise one of Sarasota’s most engaging neighborhoods.

Since Mother’s Day is only a few days hence, be sure to come out this Friday, May 10, 2013, to stroll, shop, and stay on for a film or al fresco dinner. In fact, this Friday would be the perfect time (before the Sunday Moms’ Day brunch-crunch) to bring Mom out for a relaxed and stylish evening on the town.

Tortoise & Pearl – Extraordinary Art Prints, Antiques, & Accessories
539 South Pineapple
Photo: Skip Lombardi, Copyright © 2013

We’re sure you’ll want to mark your calendar for the second Friday of each month for the rest of the year. There’s always something new to experience in this charming quarter.

This week you’ll find casual Italian fashions at newly-opened Jelosa. Discover Sarasota’s cutting-edge boutiques, studios, and restaurants when they first pop up, here in pedestrian-friendly Burns Square, where Pineapple meets Orange Avenue.

Map of Pineapple/Burns Square:

Can’t come Friday night? No problem, since most of the Pineapple shops will also reopen by late Saturday morning. So, count on enjoying the Saturday Sarasota Farmers Market before you meander along Pineapple.

In addition to her shop, you’ll find Delight’s breezy creations under her white tent at the market every Saturday (right next to the big red double-decker Java Dawg coffee bus).

You can’t—and shouldn’t—miss it!
Sarasota Farmers Market: Every Saturday 7:00 a.m. – 1:00 p.m

Shoppers at Delight Couture at the Saturday Morning Market.
Something to suit every princess & her fairy godmother…
Photo: Skip Lombardi, Copyright © 2013

More at Delight Couture at the Saturday Morning Market.
Photo: Skip Lombardi, Copyright © 2013

Note: Even off-season, nearly all shops in the South Pineapple area are open Monday through Saturday, from late morning until late afternoon or evening. However, a few are closed on Monday so it’s a good idea to check before planning your visit.

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The Best Photo Ever

Skip — Sun, 31 Mar 2013 16:43:44 +0000

Photo Credit: Jim Houghton

When I learned that Phil Ramone had died, I immediately thought of the photograph above. It’s the back cover of Billy Joel’s recording, The Stranger from around 1977.

While Mr. Ramone won several Grammys and at least one Emmy, he had a reputation for being a behind-the-scenes guy, so some of you may not recognize him. He’s the fellow standing, wearing the Yankees shirt.

For me, it’s a perfect photograph for several reasons: It’s a bunch of guys—obviously friends—getting together for a meal at a neighborhood restaurant. We can pretty well surmise from the surroundings that the cuisine is Italian. It helps that the guys are drinking wine from juice glasses. It tells me that outside the recording booth, this is a place and these are some people with whom Mr. Ramone is very comfortable.

You can read or hear obituaries for Phil Ramone practically anywhere today. But for me, as this photo illustrates, he was a New York guy who elicited a New York sound from every recording he produced. And he accomplished this without being a prima donna or a tyrant. He did it by being a friend.

Standing in phograph (L – R): Phil Ramone (Producer) Liberty DeVitto (Drums).
Seated (L – R): Doug Stegmeyer (Electric Bass), Richie Cannata (Alto & Tenor Saxophones), Billy Joel (Piano, Vocals).
Location is unattributed (but I’ll bet Scungilli and Sausage & Peppers are on the menu.

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Palm Sunday in Sarasota

Holly and Skip — Sun, 24 Mar 2013 22:56:05 +0000

While tourists may bemoan their luck whenever they encounter ever-greater aberrations in Florida weather, our neighbors and their landscapers surely rejoiced in the thunderstorms of the past week. It’s not every day we can watch a cargo of Dypsis decaryi, Triangle Palms, off-loaded at a private residence. And it’s a blessing when mature palms can be installed without someone leaving a hose running for several hours.

Along with the flowering Madagascar periwinkle, baobabs and the traveler’s, Bismark, and raffia palms, Dypsis decaryi are among the distinctive flora of Madagascar, where their habitats are seriously endangered by the island nation’s rampant deforestation. Thus, the Florida propagation of these striking exotics may help keep triangle palms from extinction.

New to our ‘hood: A quintet of triangle palms awaits installation
Copyright © 2013, Skip Lombardi

We’re delighted to welcome these stately, silvery palms to the neighborhood and wish them their share of April showers!

The post Palm Sunday in Sarasota first appeared on Sarasota Soundings.

Remembering Dave Brubeck

Skip — Thu, 06 Dec 2012 23:23:20 +0000

I‘ve been a Dave Brubeck fan for more than 50 years. Although I knew him only through his concerts and recordings, the news of his death yesterday struck me like the loss of a dear, old friend.

Photo Credit: Richard Avedon

I had an uncle—an ardent Jazz fan—who always seemed to have a new recording with him each time he visited. By the time I first heard Dave Brubeck in 1954 or ’55, I was already familiar with Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk, and the rest of the mostly black, New York-based, Hard Bop Jazz players. Even though I was only eight years old, I had, thanks to my uncle, developed a good basis for comparison of their different styles.

Dave Brubeck was considered to be a “West Coast” musician: a member of the “Cool School” of Jazz. And indeed, his music—particularly with Paul Desmond on alto saxophone—lacked the edge and drive that typified the “East Coast” be-bop of the day. But he and his quartet played with élan, facility, brilliant contrapuntal improvisation, and previously unheard harmonies.

My very first Dave Brubeck album was Jazz—Red Hot and Cool. Recorded live in New York City at a nightclub called Basin Street East, it captivated me.

The album included a number of tunes considered to be part of “The Great American Songbook.” Brought up-to-date with Brubeck’s unique sense of harmony and Paul Desmond’s wonderful lyricism, their arrangements swirled above the ambient nightclub clinking of cocktail glasses.

Photo Credit: Richard Avedon

Beyond the music, that album, whose cover featured Fifties supermodel Suzy Parker and Brubeck in a nightclub, eptomized for me the coolness of Jazz. Richard Avedon—one of the premier fashion photographers of the 20th century—clicked the shutter at the hungry i, then the hippest of San Francisco’s nightspots. What many Brubeck fans have forgotten is that both Helena Rubinstein cosmetics and Columbia Records shared the same Avedon photo for their joint promotion of both the record album and Jazz, a new lipstick and nail polish color launched by Mme.Rubenstein. That interesting cross-disciplinary use of art predated Mad Men by several decades.

But my most powerful recollection is a simple four-bar modulation in the last chorus of George Gershwin’s Love Walked In. As a child, I had yet to acquire the vocabulary to describe what I heard, but all these years and an undergraduate degree in music theory and harmony later, I can easily retrofit the experience.

With twelve bars left in the tune, the group spontaneously modulated, or changed, the key of the tune, up a whole step for four measures of the final phrase before returning to the original key for the last eight measures. I had never heard anything like it and couldn’t understand it, but I felt completely drawn into the music. I have been similarly amazed by Dave Brubeck countless times since.

While I mourn his passing, I can console myself with some wonderful musical discoveries and memories, and continue to enjoy the great legacy he’s left behind. Rest in peace.

The post Remembering Dave Brubeck first appeared on Sarasota Soundings.

How Not to Comment on Our Web Sites

Holly and Skip — Thu, 16 Dec 2010 00:04:07 +0000

Could it be a cyber-indicator that the holidays are upon us? With the economy so shaky, we suspect some under-employed computer hackers may be shopping themselves out as evil elves. Recently we’ve noticed a significant increase in spam messages among the legitimate comments on our three blogs. While the volume of spam hasn’t seriously disrupted our day-to-day operations, like those hard plastic bubble packages enclosing techie accessories, it’s a nuisance.

We’re glad that we chose WordPress as our “blogging platform” because it has a feature that spares you, our readers, this detritus. In order to comment on any WordPress blog posts, the commenter and his comment require our approval.

A sampling of actual comments we’ve received (but did not approve) appears below. We are publishing them to illustrate a shady form of social networking + internet marketing + search-engine optimization. With apologies to our longtime readers, today’s article is for new ones who’d like to join you. Think of this as an an intro-level course. During Blog Participation 101, we’ll show you how to do it right.

When you comment on someone else’s blog, you can sign off and leave a link to your own Web site. Later, when the Google robot comes around, it will note that your own Web site (URL) has been mentioned on someone else’s. The more external “sightings” of your URL, the higher the placement you’ll achieve in future Google searches. For example, this is what happens when (as AlmostItalian.com) we weigh in on a blog where someone is discussing Sicilian pasta shapes.

But if you’re hustling male enhancement drugs or your “comment” is no more than a thinly veiled invitation to your online, offshore Ph.D. mill in Bermuda. you’re not going to “advertise” with us.

We’ve withdrawn from the cacophony of Facebook and Twitter, and thus we particularly appreciate our readers’ thoughtful commentary, to which we always respond. Our writing has earned us friends around the world and we do indeed try to make our blogs into “conversations.”

We’re delighted to hear your theories about Chicken Vesuvio or Fried Ravioli. By all means, please share your nonna’s recipe for googootz. Tell us which pushcart peddles the best Italian Beef Sandwich in Chicago. But when you greet us with vague praise, telling us we’ve made our point brilliantly and that you can’t wait to add our blog to your RSS Feed…we know you’re jive. You won’t get a seat at the tavola. No Sunday Gravy for you!

Below are the sorts of unapproved “comments” that have been clogging our spam filters. Avoid these as you would canned spaghetti (Our responses, in bold type, were not published).

Comment:

This blog could be better using Links Shortener.

And you’d like us to place a LINK to your product on our blog, wouldn’t you? Fuggeddabboudit.

Comment:

I have bookmarked this blog simply because I found it notable. I would be quite interested to know more information on this. Thanks a lot!

More info on scungilli? Cudduruni? Ligurian dialect? Be specific, please!

Comment:

I cling on to listening to the newscast speak about receiving boundless online grant applications so I have been looking around for the top site to get one. Could you tell me please, where could i get some?

And we have a winning Lotto Italiano number we’d love to share with you.

Comment:

There is perceptibly a lot to know about this. I think you made certain good points in features also.

Your voice is familiar. I think I called you for software support a few months ago.

Comment:

Sitemiz di? beyazlatma,ortodonti,?ocuk di?,?ocuk di? hekimli?i,pedodonti,implant,zirkonyum,estetik di? hekimli?i,kanal tedavisi,protez,protez di? bilgilerini i?ermektedir.

Kendim babam dis hekimdir ve turkce okuyorum. (Translation: My dad is a dentist and I read Turkish)

NOTE: Unbelievable as this seems, it is A REAL SPAM EXAMPLE, that came to AlmostItalian.com from a Turkish site that offers dental services, including tooth whitening, orthodontia, and laser treatments. It just so happens that one of us is a dentist’s daughter who speaks Turkish…

Comment:

Keep doing work, good position!

Earn $28,000 per week with your own home-based business! No experience necessary.

Comment:

:O So mush Information :O … It is he MOst Remarkable Website DUDe…

Dude—you read. That’s cool.

Comment:

Pc’s help for us to edit inside a non-linear vogue, tweak our online video in submit creation, and add exclusive results and music as necessary. Considering not all computer systems are developed equally, studying your alternatives will make sure you identify the top desktop computer to match all of one’s video clip modifying desires. Computer systems have grown to be an nearly indispensable device for grown ups. From writing letters to obtaining facts around the Web, people depend on laptops in several techniques everyday. Desktops of all sizes have gotten scaled-down and scaled-down. This can be particularly real for laptop computer computer units.

We certainly agree that non-linear vogue and tweaking can clip modifying desires. Good luck and thanks for stopping by! Your friend, Skip

(We didn’t know that James Joyce did technical writing…)

Your comments?

The post How Not to Comment on Our Web Sites first appeared on Sarasota Soundings.

The Greatest Real Estate Agent

Holly and Skip — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 17:17:19 +0000

Holy Multiple Listing Service! St Joseph is the Ultimate Real Estate Agent.

March 19th has long been marked on Christian calendars as the Feast of St. Joseph.

It’s hardly surprising that Joseph, the carpenter-father figure in the Holy Family is the patron saint of carpenters and those who work with wood. (These days, he’s probably watching over the non-union work force at Home Depot, too.) Besides his association with the building trades, Joseph is also credited with some Renaissance miracles involving the Church’s acquistion of land.

And indeed, in recent years, we’ve known people who venerated the saint for his rumored ability to move real property; popular lore has it that images of the saint must be buried on the subject property. St. Joseph medals favored centuries ago have given way to little statues—interred in back yards or (in the case of condo apartments) efficaciously tucked into potted plants

Much to our amazement, we’ve found entire websites, complete with Twitteresque testimonials, extolling the realty marketing powers of St. Joseph. At first we thought that remodeling icon Bob Vila had finally been canonized and was now authorized to wear a halo. But no, it was just St Joseph (who probably never had to work with toxic sheet rock or pull a building permit).

“The best real estate agent ever…” proclaims one happy seller.

Another is ecstatic that St. Joseph got her $5K over her asking price.

Presumably these people benefited from all the components of the $10.99 Saint Joseph Home Sellers Kit, which includes:

• One painted 4″ St. Joseph statue
• Color Prayer Card
• Burial Instructions (presumably for the statue)

There’s also a $7.99 Kit (sans prayer card).

In this market, many of us need all the help we can get, so it’s worth noting that the same vendor also offers a statuette of St. Jude (whose bailiwick is Lost Causes…) Think about it: for the price of a couple of FSBO signs, you can have higher powers on your sales team. If you invested in a real estate property like a parcel of land that you plan to sell, be sure to get in touch with reputable land buyers. Clients can easily sell Washington land through our expert services. We provide fair prices and handle every detail, ensuring a smooth process.

It really is time for the saints to come marching in….

And if your heritage (or heart) is Italian you’ll also want to see today’s post on our food and culture blog about the Festival of San Giuseppe. It turns out that St. Joseph is so successful, he can get away with merely moonlighting as a Realtor. As San Giuseppe, he fulfills a very different role…

The post The Greatest Real Estate Agent first appeared on Sarasota Soundings.

Sarasota Orchid Show, 2012

Holly Chase — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 01:10:32 +0000

Kovachii Orchid
Illustration by Stig Dalstrom*

With many of Sarasota’s nicer flowering shrubs and annuals tented in everything from garbage bags to bed-sheets, residential landscapes look rather peculiar this week, as if Halloween has been moved to January. Recent, freezing night-time temps have posed a serious threat to food crops and subtropical ornamentals, so it was a a veritable benediction from the weather gods that exhibitors had a mild and drizzly Friday on which to set up their orchid displays at the Sarasota Municipal Auditorium.The show and sale promises this weekend’s attendees a dazzling tropical respite from the cold.

We’re posting just a few sneak previews of the exhibits. Please click the link at the bottom of the page to see an online album—additional shots of some especially dramatic blooms.

What: 55^th Annual Sarasota Orchid Society Exhibit & Sale.

When: Saturday, January 7^th & Sunday January 8^th.
Hours: Saturday, 11:00 a.m. — 5:00 p.m. Sunday, 9:00 a.m. — 5:00 p.m.

Admission: Open to the public $5 admission; children under 8 are admitted free. Free parking.

Where: Municipal Auditorium in downtown Sarasota, Florida. This is a wonderful Art Moderne building on Sarasota’s Bayfront.

Learn about orchids and see rare, seductive specimens of these fabulous flowers.

Join educators, growers, illustrators, and vendors of plants, seeds, and everything orchids and their owners could ever want.

*Former orchid curator at Marie Selby Botanical Gardens and world-renowned botanical illustrator Stig Dalstrom will be exhibiting his botanical prints. His booth will have information about his April 2010 Botanical Tour to Turkey ,an exciting adventure in the wild regions along Turkey’s Aegean and Mediterranean shores, which are rich in terrestrial orchid species.

Click this link to see more orchid photos

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Phish Are Jumpin’

Skip — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 17:44:26 +0000

I‘ve had only one management position in my career. As “team leader” I managed four young software engineers who did quality assurance testing. Among my charges was a young fellow from Belarus who was particularly dedicated to the task; he took it personally whenever he found something wrong with the software in development.

When he found a bug, he’d come into my cube shaking his head, gravitas oozing from his pores, and say to me, “Skeeep,” before showing me his findings, “thees smells of feesh.”

I mention this because I was reminded of my young friend today when I got an e-mail—allegedly from Google—telling my my Google Adwords account had been canceled. As you might imagine, the e-mail provided no fewer than three links to my “login page,” along with helpful instructions about how to rectify this dire situation.

By now, we all know that Google hires only the best and brightest engineers in the business. And I’m certain they seek out the same capabilities in those who provide their public face through the written word. Today’s e-mail alert was not good writing.

It took very little surf-casting of my own to ascertain that the URL provided by the author of the e-mail was http://google-mc.com. A quick look at whois.net revealed that google-mc.com is registered as follows:

[Querying whois.internic.net]
[Redirected to whois.melbourneit.com]
[Querying whois.melbourneit.com]
[whois.melbourneit.com]

Domain Name.......... google-mc.com
  Creation Date........ 2009-12-16
  Registration Date.... 2009-12-16
  Expiry Date.......... 2010-12-16
  Organisation Name.... denis rogers
  Organisation Address. 22th fireball ave
  Organisation Address. 
  Organisation Address. new york city
  Organisation Address. 74836
  Organisation Address. NY
  Organisation Address. UNITED STATES

As you can see, not only are the address and zip code bogus, but the registration date hasn’t yet arrived.

Putting my Web Debugger through its paces, I also found that google-mc.com eventually does hand you off to http://google.com/adwords. While this looks legitimate, be afraid… be very afraid.

So, if you get an e-mail that appears to be from Google, and if you have an Adwords account, do not follow the links in the e-mail. Instead, type http://adwords.google.com in the address bar of your browser. Even if you don’t have an Adwords account, it would be useful to forward the message to phishing@google.com. I’m sure they’ll put some of their best and brightest on the trail to seeing to it this doesn’t trouble us again.

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Celebrating Spring – Hidrellez

Holly Chase — Wed, 06 May 2009 01:49:33 +0000

Hidrellez, the Turkish spring festival, is celebrated throughout the country.

Along with pagan customs of the Eastern Mediterranean, many pre-Islamic traditions of Central Asia and Mesopotamia live on in Turkey. One holiday in particular, Hidrellez, celebrates spring with colorful and ancient rituals that remain part of modern Turkish culture even if their original significance has been forgotten.

Photo courtesy of Phillip Salzman

Now observed throughout the country on May 6th, Hidrellez is whatever Turkey’s multicultural citizens make of it—a day of prayer, contemplation, mysticism, healing, wish-fulfillment, music and poetry, revelry— or a Turkish version of Earth Day.

A revered figure of Near Eastern folklore, the Muslim saint Hizir (from the Arabic Al-Khidr, meaning The Green One) is believed to appear as a mendicant dervish with a long white beard. Hizir has many attributions, but is generally regarded as someone with the power to grant wishes and intercede to save his supplicants from disasters.

Associated with spring planting and rebirth, Hizir has absorbed some of his character from the ancient water and fertility deities of the Middle East. He is also identified with the Old Testament figure of Elijah (Ilyas in Arabic), who was credited with bringing rain to the region’s arid croplands. This gave rise to the Turkish melding of the two names Khidr and Ilyas – as well as ruz. the Persian word for day, to yield the contemporary Hidrellez.

Hizir is also cloaked in the legends surrounding agrarian and fertility cults of the Balkans. Clad in green leaves, the Green Man of the pagans became Green George among Catholic and Orthodox Christians, who celebrated the feast day of St. George each April 23rd, in the old Julian calendar. Among many mixed communities of the Eastern Mediterranean, distinctions between Hizir and Green George were blurred long ago.

Of particular interest to us, is that Hizir is the patron saint of travelers, protecting them from the dangers and difficulties of the road. Thus, he holds a special place in Turkey, a country criss-crossed by ancient trade routes.

Hizir travels the River of Life upon a fish

Always associated with water, the turbanned Hizir is transported by a fish swimming along the River of Life. Once a year, Hizir may be approached for special favors, provided that one petitions him in an appropriate fashion.

Before daybreak on Hidrellez, (May 6th, according to the modern calendar), many Turks make or depict miniatures of things they most desire—a new house, an automobile, a business of one’s own… They place these images in their gardens or yards, or they may write their wishes on slips of paper and tie them to designated shrubs and trees. Walls bedecked with hundreds of brightly-colored rags and written wishes rise at sites of public celebrations, where gypsy bands and bonfires may also enliven the scene. During the ensuing year, Hizir may, at his sole discretion, grant a wish. If not, there’s always next year…

Here is a contemporary account from a friend of mine,* a Turkish woman in her 30’s living in southwestern Turkey. The notes in brackets are mine.

“…Let me tell you about Hidirellez in Antalya: the night of May 5th, they bury something under a rose-bush in the garden, something they wish for—like a key, to represent a house. In some places, they hang a small comlek [a terracotta pot] on a rose-bush, so that Hizir Baba or Ilyas Peygamber [the Prophet Ilyas/Elijah] will come during the night and will put that girl’s kismet into the pot. Next morning, girls gather around the rosebush and sing mani [traditional folksongs] etc.

“May 6th is like an unofficial holiday, especially in towns like Finike, Kumluca, etc. They wake up early in the morning and walk on grass [because it is something living and green], walk over a bridge [to signify Hizir’s connection with water]. My mom still goes out to the beach with her friends…

“Others meet at Hidirlik Tower in Kaleici [in the walled, Ottoman quarter of the port of Antalya] and drop leaves or flower petals into the sea. Also, very early on the morning of the 6th, they write their wishes on papers and walk to the beach and throw those into sea, too.

“In fact, in local traditions, Hidirellez is even more of a spring holiday than May 1st. It’s the awakening of Earth and Nature.

“Easter is about the Resurrection of Christ, but for an Anatolian girl like me, who was born Muslim, but who also believes in the Great Mother Goddess and other pagan goddess figures—and even in some Shamanism—it’s all about the ‘resurrection of nature!’ I always love spring! ”

Thanks to Ceylan Zere for her personal account of Hidrillez.

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