from: Violet Meyer

Hi! How are you? Have you seen this http://bastadl.com/sun.php?Violet_Meyer before? Oprah had been using it for over a year! Violet Meyer Sent from Yahoo Mail for iPhone

From: Violet Meyer

Hi! How are you? Have you seen this http://anke-arens.dk/point.php before? Oprah had been using it for over a year! Violet Meyer Sent from Yahoo Mail for iPhone

from: Violet Meyer

Hi! How are you? Have you seen this http://tbsbilisim.com/living.php before? Oprah had been using it for over a year! Violet Meyer Sent from Yahoo Mail for iPhone

from Violet Meyer

Hi! How are you?

I saw it on TV! http://philbetsy.com/calling/could.php CNN said it really works!

Violet Meyer
Sent from my iPhone

Violet Meyer

One of the best lessons from Oprah here http://experthomelakehome.com/uvd/our.php

Violet Meyer
Sent from my IPhone

END OF THE ROAD AND LAST POST

                                                              ROME                                                                           

This is my last hoorah before getting on that 11 hour plane trip home.  I arrived in Rome on Friday, a couple of days early because I just could not take being constantly cold at Massimo's home with no where to go to get warm.  Massimo and Janne understood.  I do not know how the four of them live being so cold at least 2 months a year.  At the very least you'd think they'd just start burning the wood furnace for the heat and hot water sooner than 4 p.m. each day.  They have lots of wood!
But I get to spend my last days in Italy in one of my most favorite cities anywhere.  Even though I was here 7 years ago, I have forgotten so much that this trip on foot through the city feels very new.
I actually got lost and ended up at the Pantheon yesterday.
  My first trip here in 2005 was by bus so to all the major sites we were brought.  No maps to decipher needed.  Now with the city being a huge maze of streets, I have to find my way around.  Most street names are not marked.  Even though I have a street map with all the street names, if you don't know what the name of the street is you are on--you're lost---a lot.  That was the case yesterday.  With very wet feet from the rain I trudged along determined to find some points of interest on my wish list while here.  I ended up at the amazing Colosseum which I could visit every day.  I love that old stuff.  And by the way, the Pantheon is the oldest, firmly intact building in Rome.  No other building is as complete and in full form as that one.  Everywhere you go here, every turn in the road presents another 'piece' of amazing, ancient architecture.  I saw pieces of stone pillars laying on the grass on the side of the sidewalk!  This kind of stuff is what you get to see when lost and not on a directed tour.  So there are good things about being lost.
Many people speak English here which helps in the 'being lost' category.  And I know I'm always a 5-7 Euro cab ride back to the hotel.

          MORE LATER.....

NOTO and my new farm

NOTO is a hillside village which was one of the many towns totally destroyed in the late 1600's by an earthquake.  So its' buildings are about 300 years old.  It looks like it sits on the southern coast of Sicily but you have to drive about 5 miles out to reach the sea.

The farm where I am staying is owned by Massimo, Janne (yonni), son Mattias (22) and daughter Sophia (17).  It is mostly a citrus farm with a few olive trees thrown in.  Fruit trees are abundant also but not in season right now.  He has about 100 acres here set in a valley where 2 streams meet, flowing into one.  It is very quiet and peaceful here almost like a garden of Eden.  There are a few villas where tourists come mostly in the Summer to rent.  I'm staying in one of the apartments used for rental.  It is one half of the walkout basement to their house.  It consists of a large room (bedroom), a fully equipped kitchen and full bath (no bathtub).  As soon as 4:30 p.m. comes and the sun goes down below the peak of the mountain to one side, it gets very cold.  Janne does not start the wood fired furnace that supplies heat and hot water until 4 p.m.  And even then, the one very small heater in my room cannot possibly heat the whole place.  So I am very cold most of the time.  The down quilt on my bed is my saving grace.

Mattias is home from college until Feb. 1st.  He goes to a university in Denmark.  Janne is from Denmark originally and remains  a dual citizen of Denmark and Italy.  Being of Danish citizenship, Mattias gets all the perks and attends the university for free and gets 700 Euro/month living expense from the government.  It's enough for rent and food.  And he is allowed to attend college for 7-10 years under these conditions.

The whole family here is Macrobiotic.  They eat no animal food.  Except the wild rabbit we ate the first day I was here.  Don't understand that but so be it.  Janne and Massimo both are excellent cooks.  The food is amazingly good even without the use of any herbs or spices.  It is jaw-dropping to see the amount of food they all eat.  And they are all very thin.  Beautiful skin.  Beautiful hair.  And they all get along like they're not related at all.

The tasks I do here is: gather and carry with a wheel barrow as much firewood as I can find to fill a little hut for that purpose.  Also I have picked lemons and oranges.  I have pulled weeds out from between the stones in the walkways and fished out small round stones from the stream for Janne to use in her trench which carries water down and away from the house.    But the biggest and most tedious of all is fixing the loose stones set in sand that serves as a driveway/parking area.  This means I have to take a small flat-ended ax and chop up sand around the existing loose stones (about 10x12" ea.), add more sand and then pound it into the space between the rocks with the blunt end of the ax.  Sounds complicated.  It's not-just hurts my back like picking up olives one by one like I did in Carovigno.