future plans

Why Ireland?

Sarah Bringhurst Familia

“I like to think of them as the first Europeans. The idea that the European Community was already happening,” comments Professor Miranda Green in the documentary “Lost Treasures of the Ancient World – The Celts.” She describes them that way because she says they were always moving at the drop of a hat.

We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time. – T.S. Eliot

Those of you lucky enough to have been on our Christmas card list from the beginning received a handmade card in December of 2004 with that little pronouncement from T.S.… Read more

Surprise, surprise!

Sarah Bringhurst Familia

I picked up my passport yesterday, completed by the Florence U.S. Consulate in just over one week. It’s close enough to walk from our house, and they emailed me when it was ready (they would have sent it in the mail, but I’m not over-fond of the Italian post). Not bad, I’d say. Easier and quicker than doing it in the U.S. Cheaper too. It costs an extra $100 to get it in two weeks in the U.S. Considering all this, I suppose I will forgive them for the fact that my picture is quite blurry. For some incomprehensible reason, they took my perfectly sized photo and blew it up until my head almost fills the whole square.… Read more

Scoppio del carro

Scoppio del carro

Sarah Bringhurst Familia

Over one thousand years ago, the first crusade culminated in the capture of Jerusalem by an army of Europeans. A young Florentine, Pazzino di Ranieri de’ Pazzi, was the first to scale the city walls and raise the Crusader banner there. As a reward, he was given three flakes of stone from the Holy Sepulcher.

He carried the stones back to Florence in 1101, where every year at Easter time they were used to light the “new fire,” a tradition with roots in Pagan spring rituals and also symbolizing the resurrection of Christ. The fire was transported throughout the city in a cart, and given to each family to light their own hearth fires.… Read more

For lo, the winter is past . . .

Sarah Bringhurst Familia

The rain is over and gone.
The flowers appear on the earth.
The time of the singing of birds is come.

– Ecclesiastes

Tuesday we fly home. To Italy.

It’s hard to describe how it happened. In one way, I suppose it’s not surprising at all. It’s the third year in a row we’ve gone to Italy just as spring is beginning. But this has been one of those years you never want to repeat. No doubt before long I will look back on it and feel grateful for all I’ve learned. But for now, I’m just overpoweringly glad to be nearing the end of it, and delighted to find Italy waiting for us there.… Read more

There and Back Again

Sarah Bringhurst Familia

So here we are, still “in search of a dream to call home,” I suppose. The past several months, although completely and uncharacteristically uneventful on casteluzzo.blogspot.com, have been quite eventful in real life. Our business failed in February, we spent a glorious two and a half weeks in Italy in March, and we moved back to California in April.

The devastation of our business failing took awhile to fully sink in. Finally one day, we found ourselves on the living room floor, feeling as if we’d been rolled in on a stretcher. Business gone, massive debt hanging over our heads, and our idyllic Italian dream shattered.… Read more

Plane Tickets

Sarah Bringhurst Familia

Happily, happily, after several more calls to AirOne Airlines, we are now in possession of four beautiful confirmation numbers (one for each of us) on return tickets to Italy. March 26 is our lucky day!

Everyone here tells us how lucky we are to live in Italy, and I heartily concur. We’ve just been away way too long.

Tony and I started reading our first literature in Italian today. Cuore, by Edmondo De Amicis. Wish us luck! We only got through a couple of paragraphs, and we didn’t understand everything. But it made us miss Italy.… Read more

Casteluzzo Academy

Sarah Bringhurst Familia

My first Charlotte Mason term during October-December of last year was not what I would term a great success. Perhaps I was overambitious. But that’s not such a bad thing. I learned some important lessons about nearly every subject we attempted. We began a new term this week, and I’m quite pleased with the results so far.

We’ve worked out family scriptures quite well. Raj quietly looks at pictures in the Friend magazine with Daddy while I read aloud two or three verses from the Book of Mormon. Before we start, I ask a brief question to recall what we read yesterday, and one of us answers with a short recap.… Read more

Gelato on a cone?

Sarah Bringhurst Familia

We are supposed to be in Italy. The week before we were to return home, between two weddings, Christmas, and New Year’s, we realized that we had substantially overestimated the number of things we could accomplish in three months, even at a frenetic, positively Southern Californian pace. So we called our Italian airline, AirOne, which as you remember, considers carseats unsafe for children. It appears that AirOne employs one lone Indian customer service agent. It took us a few days to catch him on duty.

When we finally did, he said there was no way he could look up our reservation without a code from Expedia, where we’d purchased the ticket.… Read more

Pazienza

Sarah Bringhurst Familia

I had intended to celebrate the 100th post on this blog by taking it public. It has been private for several months, ever since we were in difficulties with Teresa in Saluzzo. My hope was that we could celebrate the 100th post by having Tony’s Italian citizenship officially recognized. No dice. But I’m making it public anyway. I’m tired of feeling like if people knew my thoughts they wouldn’t like me. They would. And it doesn’t matter anyway. My blog is a true story.

This has not been the best week as far as citizenship is concerned. Mainly, we have been getting more and more apprehensive that it would not happen before we left for our trip to the U.S… Read more

Don’t Know Much About History

Sarah Bringhurst Familia

This question of history is one I’ve been puzzling over for the past few months. It is more than an academic question for me. In fact, it turns out to be both personal and practical. Who am I, after all? What are my roots? Where are my loyalties? To whom and to what are my duties? For the less peripatetic, perhaps these questions are easily answered. Indeed, probably there is something pathetically lost about asking them at all. But I cannot help asking, because I possess, as yet, no clear answer.

My husband and children will soon officially possess both American and Italian citizenship.… Read more