Dear friends and family,

We thought we were incognito, but our friend, Deborah O., unbeknownst to us, managed to get this shot of Don playing gondolier.

Love,

Era and Aldo (what the Italians call him)

Dear friends and family,

Venice is fairly unchanged in the last 10 years (we have been back at least one time since) and we don't really remember too well what it was like 30 years ago, except that it was shabbier and more smelly. The same beautiful buildings are still there in the same place, still beautiful and in a more or less frozen state of decrepitude (at least from 10 years ago), although I'm certain a lot of renovation and repair has been done over the years.


Bob Morgan, Ewa and Felicite could not have been kinder and warmer hosts. We are sorry we never were able to touch base with our friends Franco and Maria Ferrari. We heard from Susan Filter that they are going to Romania also. Maybe we'll run into them there!


Robert Morgan in his studio. (Don helped him document and color correct each of his paintings.)


On the Zattere.


Traffic jam.

We walked all over Venice; hardly ever choosing to take a vaporetto. It is such a pleasure for us to walk, especially in a city like Venice. The little streets and campiellos (small courtyards) are beginning to look familiar. I asked Bob, who has lived in Venice for probably 35 years, if he thought there were any little alleys or campiellos which he hadn't been through in Venice, and he said yes, although not many.


Era and Bob crossing by traghetto, with a somewhat reluctant gondolier.

We went to the Fortuny Museum today, our first visit there. The Fortuny dresses and fabrics were gorgeous. Also, they had an exhibition of samurai armor, always fascinating. I was interested to see them; curious to see the presentation. They had an impressive and very large collection of stunning armor on display. The colors melded beautifully with the Fortuny dresses, capes and hangings. A similar aesthetic. Bob told us that the Fortuny Museum used to be an art school, and that he had met Susan Filter there - long ago.

Our meals with the Morgans have been lovely mostly vegetarian and light suppers; a very nice counterpoint to our mostly heavy Italian pasta and sometimes meat lunches. Our last meal with them was quite amazing and elaborate: a roast guinea hen with a delicious, mouth-watering aroma and flavor, some beautiful organic cabbage, which Ewa had cooked with lots of fresh dill and lemon, baby potatoes, a salad, some of our Imagery wine which he had lugged from California.

We ate early as Don and I had to catch an overnight train to Budapest. I had read on TripAdvisor all sorts of people saying that whatever you do, don't take the overnight train from Venice to Budapest. When Don heard this, he immediately wanted to take it. Bob and others have been teasing us about thieves squirting knockout gas under the doors and through the keyholes, then rifling thru your luggage at their leisure. We also had to go to the ATM machine and gets loads of cash, as we have to pay for our Budapest apartment in cash (euros). Bob also regaled us with a story of visiting Poland and getting pickpocketed by a team of thieves on the bus. (I am typing this on the train right now, and I think Don and I will sleep on our valuables, although I'm really not that worried about it.)

Bob was so kind and insisted on accompanying us to the train station and carrying and wheeling my luggage. It involved wheeling to the vaporetto stop and then making a transfer. Don said he wanted to make sure we caught the train and didn't come back to stay with them for a still longer time.

On the train now in our little private sleeping compartment. Bob laughed when he saw our Hungarian train. He said they had forgotten to open the windows when they had to spit. Quite a contrast to the sleek Austrian train on the other side of the platform. Everything does look a little retro, but clean enough and neat. I stood as our train pulled out of Venice to salute the magical city. It's dark outside and our compartment does make a bit of a rattle. I just closed our door and the conductor admonished me to lock it. There are 2 bolt locks on the door and we are using them both.


No air conditioning or heat; thus the extra scarf as covering.

More later.

We did survive the journey to Budapest with life, limbs and worldly possessions more or less intact, although we were woken by uniformed guards numerous times in the middle of the night. The first was border control as we passed into Slovenia around 3 in the morning; then Croatia about 20 minutes later; then leaving Croatia about an hour and a half later; then Hungary about 10 minutes after that; and shortly following, another Hungarian official inquiring if we had anything to declare. No, surprisingly, we had not managed to pick up anything in Slovenia or Croatia. At each interruption Don's smile became broader and broader. He was so pleased at the absurdity of the situation. Sometimes he is really strange.


Our fabulously comfortable and luxe apartment in Budapest. Movie mavens (Era's movie group), note Leonard Cohen poster to the right.

Much love,

Era and Don

Dear friends and family,

On the road again. Our few days in New York were mostly business. We kept passing movie vans and trailers parked all over SoHo and Tribeca. Very early on our first morning we heard large noisy trucks and guys shouting down the block to each other. Got up to see movie trailers parked all up and down our narrow little street. Did manage to get a photo of not only them, but the KATE tapestry hanging in the Surrey Hotel and Norbert Prangenburg and John Yau's book, A Child's Vi(r)gil, at Betty Cuningham Gallery. Had a fabulous dinner at John Yau and Eve Aschheim's. Their very precocious daughter, Cerise, entertained us on the recorder and otherwise.



Business class from SF to NY, but Economy from NY to Munich. Poor Don could barely fit into the seat. It felt a bit like a cattle car, especially since there was someone very nearby having constant and continuous gastric problems. Not as bad as Harris Ranch, but close.

In Munich they parked us quite far from the terminal, so we had to take a bus to reach it. Then we had to clear security and customs again, even though we had just gotten off an international flight. We ran all the way across the airport, but arrived after the bus which took people out to the plane for Venice had left. It turned out everyone on our flight and a flight from DC who were traveling on to Venice also missed this plane. Maddening, since the plane was still there when we arrived, but they (Lufthansa) wouldn't send a bus for us. Next plane in 3 hours - not too bad. Mary Webster had warned us about Lufthansa, and she was right, although our stewardesses were wonderful.

We found a not very populated part of the vast and sparkling clean Munich airport, stretched out on some seats and took a nap. I guess after the volcano ash, everyone has become inured to the sight of stranded tourists sleeping where they can.

After we woke some fellow travelers, except they were in business class, gave us a food credit for 30 euros; they had received 2 of them for missing the same flight and because they were in business class and raised a stink. We had some coffee drinks, water, juice, a sandwich, and then just started buying things for people at the bar.

In Venice we are staying with Robert Morgan (the painter and sometimes photographer; Magnolia printed his photographs as etchings for the gorgeous book Watermark, published by Peter Koch), Robert's wife, Ewa, and their adorable and spunky daughter, Felicite, right off the Zattere. Managed to stay up until 10, then crashed.

This is the view of their back yard.


This is Felicite's walk to school.


Wildly coincidental, we thought (although Susan Filter had told us this previously), but Ewa works for a Polish Cultural institution, The Signum Foundation, which purchased the building we had seen with Susan and Peter Koch in San Polo, a beautiful square in Venice. The last time we were in Venice this building, the Palazzo Dona', was being offered for sale (by the Fonseca family), absolutely gorgeous. We toured the rather small (for a palazzo) home and fantasized about how we could possibly afford to buy it. We couldn't, short of having about 20 partners. It ended up being purchased by this Polish institution, and Ewa ended up working for them. To add to the crazily serendipitous nature of it, the director, Gregory Musial, knows our friend, the curator (and painter) Randy Rosenberg. They used to work together in Washington DC for the World Bank's art programs. Randy is the curator of the exhibition we are traveling to, The Missing Peace, Artists Consider the Dalai Lama, and thus we wouldn't even be making this trip if it were not for her.

I have gotten all kinds of mileage from anyone Polish by the fact that my boyfriend in high school, Peter, was the son of Czeslaw Milosz. If you don't know who Czeslaw Milosz was, you aren't Polish. He was a Nobel Prize winning poet who taught at UC Berkeley. He was also a member of The Committee of 100 for Tibet, which exists to help the Dalai Lama and the people of Tibet, and is sponsoring the exhibition we are in. Every Pole seems to revere him, or at least know of him, including Ewa, the small staff at the Polish institution and our young waiter at En in NYC. Don is probably tiring of the way I have been dropping this tidbit to every Pole we meet. It is odd that I almost never meet Polish people in California, but we have been meeting them on this trip.


Era and Don