Italia Mia - Note 4

Friday, 15 April 2011

Wireless internet remains a mystery to many Italians I've met on this trip. Though friends at Sorrento's city hall have tried to set me up with reception for the iPad, it's still not fully successful. Efforts to email today failed, and I can't know when I'll be able to transmit more of these notes. But I continue to write them, possibly because it's easier to document activities than to work on the manuscript I'd hoped to further while here. That novel requires exclusive attention, which I'm not able or want to give it just now. Concentration on the story and the people I've created for its development would mean holing-up someplace -- a form of hermitage, really -- where friends could not intrude or local sites and treasures distract me. Notes for this giornale are not governed by fictional characters who, when stirred, dominate everything writers of creative literature think or do.

All morning was spent at the elegant town hall where architectural students from Alfred State University, New York, were showing and explaining their designs for the evento Immaginare un Nuovo Futuro per Marina Piccola. This program, inevitably, did not start until an hour later than scheduled, and I used the time to study displayed renderings of proposals for Marina Piccola; and, of course, to tell anyone who spoke to me that Ellen and I with infant Gian had attended a summer course in ceramics at Alfred University in 1954. I don't know which of the students spread that word, but very shortly I was approached by a professor who insisted I must meet Alfred's president, who'd come from the States for this occasion (the students have been here for 4 months working on the project). When I was introduced to President Dr John M Anderson, a photographer suddenly fronted us and began taking photos. Most people there hadn't been born in 1954, and I assume I appeared a relic to them.

All of the students' designs were good, a few outstanding, and the best in my opinion was by a young man named -- if I remember correctly -- Daniel Lamm. His plan and elevation included, in addition to handsome portals lining the boardwalk to ferries at Marina Piccola, a tall column topped by an arch which contained a statue fronting the sea. I spontaneously began telling him about the aborted project for my bronze of I Pescatori Dispersi al Mare, originally conceived for Marina Grande under ex-mayor Marco Fiorentino's direction, later considered for Marina Piccola, eventually abandoned. Antonino happened by as were talking, and went into his customary complimentary spiel about my work, particularly lauding my wax model for I Pescatori Dispersi. He also mentioned the San Francisco with Prairie Dog bronze fronting Santa Fe's City Hall, which he'd seen on official Sister City visits. The student was most impressed, didn't have a card but asked for mine, said he'd email me.

At the ensuing hours-long Evento, I was escorted to and seated in the front row of the hall by the mayor's Public Relations director, had my first glimpse of newly-elected Mayor Giuseppe Cuomo, and for the most part -- though it could have been shortened -- enjoyed what all the politicians, business men, architects and students had to show and say about the future for Marina Piccola. It's evident that none of the students' designs will ever see fruition -- if good, they are nevertheless too bold or overly abstract, too divergent from traditional Sorrento architecture and cultural values. But there's a good chance that the project has given Sorrentini interest in fostering Marina Piccola upgrading from local architects. The ubiquitous growth of cruise-ship tourism is dictating change to accommodate hundreds of increased visitors to the city brought to the Marina by tenders from their floating palaces out in the Bay.

Light rain started in the afternoon and has continued since then. Quite chilly, locals bundled heavily against it and complaining how unseasonal it is. I spent a little time in Antonino's office, where one of his associates it trying to get me wireless iPad connection. If works off and on for web browsing, but not at all for email. Seeing how cold I was, Antonino suggested we cross Piazza San Antonino Abbate for a hot drink at one of the bars. Wonderfully delicious cappucinni, and Antonino insisted we have dolce to go with it -- he's convinced I don't eat enough because I'm avoiding restaurants. After leaving him, I went under light drizzle to Standa Supermercato and made a few more purchases -- mineral water (drinking much more than I usually do), coffee (there's an espresso pot in my kitchen), and, wanting greens, a prepared chicken salad (little chicken but abundance of greens, carrots, olives and fine condimento balsamico).

10:30 PM

Antonino just phoned. He's loaned me a cell phone to keep in touch, wanted to know if I'd had dinner, do I need anything, etc. He'll take me to Sant' Agnello in the morning to Areavacanze's office to complete registration forms for this apartment. Said it's still raining outdoors, was pleased to hear that these notes and reading have me utilizing time well once beyond the locked entrance to Residence Tasso.

Birdsong

I could have been buying a pig-in-a-poke when I purchased our canary nearly a decade ago. The pet shop that day was overly crowded and noisy, clerks frenziedly busy with little chance, or inclination, to give any customer special attention. The selection of a canary was limited to a mere three sharing a small room of cages housing scores of parakeets, finches, doves and parrots. All chirping, shrieking, clattering, clucking! A din. I'd come to listen to and compare the song of available canaries, but it was impossible to isolate any sound or its source.

Aside from the three upstaged --intimidatingly silenced, or else non-singer females -- canaries in the cacophonous aviary, there was one other in a small cage atop the checkout counter. I kept watching its throat for vibrations, and detected that it probably was singing. Although the clang of the cash register beside its cage and a loud waterfall display behind the counter, accompanying the shrieking parrots, yipping puppies, caterwauling kittens and voluble shoppers, negated anything so subtle as birdsong. When finally able to get a harassed employer to give me attention, I asked if the canary on the counter was a male and a good singer. "He never shuts up," was the abrupt response. Sale, but not without doubt that in my impatience to have a canary in the house, I'd purchased an untested product.

A given in manuals on the nurturing of canaries is that they require a period of settling into a strange environment. Don't expect them to be normally active, and certainly to sing, until they've spent a few days, even a week in the new habitat. Giorgio broke all rules. He burst into song immediately after release from the small dark carton from which he left the pet shop and was placed in a flight cage I'd purchased. Was very active, and quick to sample food and drink. We soon discovered that he was rarely quiet, that his song was strong and beautiful, and that minutes of silence were quickly broken, greeted with melody if he heard running water or music from the stereo. No doubt, the kitchen tap substituted for the splashings of the shop fountain he'd heard, and our stereo for the "music" reaching his ears from hundreds of creatures sharing the emporium he'd known since a nestling. He preferred vocal music to instrumental, our large collection of opera recordings eliciting wondrous bursts of accompanionment to sopranos, tenors, quartets, choruses. His name Giorgio commemorated a basso we'd known who'd made it to the great opera stages of the world.

Neighbors loitered near our home during warm summer days when house doors were open to hear Giorgio sing. And the song frequently lured tourists on Canyon Road into our studio/gallery. Business asset? On a few occasions, visitors told me that curiosity brought them into the studio because they'd assumed such exceptional birdsong had to come from something mechanical! There was even a breeder of canaries, visiting Santa Fe from out of state, who heard Giorgio and came in from the street to ask if he were available for rental!

One of the many rules Giorgio's broken is to live longer than the 5 years most references estimate as canary lifespan. Giorgio's entered his 10th year, and did have me thinking in recent months that he was nearing the end. Decline started with loss of wing feathers which prevented his flying, and had never before happened with annual molting. Not just flying -- he couldn't flit from perch to perch, spent most of his time huddled forlornly on the bottom of his cage. With never a sound. An octogenarian myself, not unfamiliar with the limitations of aging, I wondered what he was feeling. No running water, no stereo music stimulated him. But he stirred often enough to visit the seed and water cups, and I told myself he wasn't suffering. Morning after morning, when I uncovered his cage, it wouldn't have surprised me to see an inert body. But then wing feathers began to grow back, he was able to gain lower perches. Phoenix-like, Giorgio, following months of non-flight, was brightly hopping about. And if still not singing, well, wasn't that to be expected. Opera stars give up the stage at advanced age. But he's made a Comeback! Beginning over many days with chirps, peeps, then short trills, a few runs at the sound of water or the stereo, the voice has grown impressively strong and beautiful again, and he gifts us with it many hours every day. Last week a local FM radio station broadcast the 1962 recording (remastered) of Madama Butterfly starring Leontyne Price and Richard Tucker, Erich Leinsdorf conducting. Giorgio was transported, his song as strong, clear and beautiful as in his early years, in crescendo with soprano and tenor for every rise in aria or duet. Un bel di!

Next month the New York Metropolitan Opera inaugurates its Saturday radio broadcasts of the 2009-2010 season. I'll be listening. Not merely to the Met's great roster of stars, but to Giorgio.

Camino Canon - Peerless peer encountered

Though exorbitant gasoline prices and the threat of economic recession have sparked a decline in tourism to Santa Fe this summer, visitors to our gallery number about the same as other years. True, our modest establishment has never attracted casual sight-seers lured by larger, more prominent commercial facades and outdoor exhibits, has for decades drawn limited visitors and clients curious about what lies within the humble adobe. Many of those who've crossed the threshold became lifetime friends; many more, colorful and loquacious characters, have afforded indelible memories. Another such came through the door just this morning.

Petite, ambling with two canes and with an oxygen tank slung over her shoulder, she entered the studio with a much younger companion, obviously employed to assist her. When the aide suggested that he charge take advantage of a vacant settee, sit and rest, the older woman strongly refused, slowly circling the room to study paintings and sculpture. It was only after long minutes that she steered herself toward the settee. I heard the familiar heavy breathing of someone who has difficulty sitting or rising, the heavy sigh as her body collapsed rather than lowered into the upholstery.

She and I exchanged few words, as years greeting visitors to the gallery has taught me when silence is best. The old lady's companion seemed to know, too, the less said the better. Her employer's furrowed brow did not invite chit-chat. Yet, I studied that commanding presence -- white-haired, face lined but fine-boned and testament to great beauty, figure slim, held erect despite dependence on the canes. A multi-hued Mexican serape draped the austerely ochered Moroccan caftan she wore, and Navajo silver and turquoise jewelry adorned her bosom and arms. She'd traveled far. Yet I envisioned her in a stately parlor, simple black dress, pearls and white gloves, taking tea with the ladies, the American matron from decades long gone. Her first words to me were confrontational: "You damned artists, staring into people. The arrogance, thinking you can see more than others." The younger woman lowered her head and stared at the floor.

"But the work is good," the dowager conceded, "and those bronze medallions would be appropriate Christmas gifts for my great-granddaughters." Remaining seated, she directed her aide to bring medallions to her for selection, and chose six from the semi-abstract, stylized forms of angels and madonnas I've designed. As I wrapped the purchase, I heard her call across the room, loudly, addressing me. "You're a World War II veteran, aren't you," she stated rather than asked, and my affirmative response triggered the remark "I can always smell them out. My husband was one. Terse to the point of rudeness, you silent generation of bonded brothers." I've rarely been accused of reticence, often damned as extrovert, and her comment made me laugh. There was no need, really, for me to respond further, as the lady -- apparently assuming she was with a peer who'd comprehend whereof she spoke -- launched into a lengthy monologue of what was wrong with the world and how those of our vintage could set it right.

It was difficult to find proper gifts for young great-grandchildren because decency wasn't part of marketing for youth these days. Book she perused -- "designated children's literature!" -- focused on the trauma of teenaged protagonists from broken families, or their problems with drugs, and "always, sexual awakening, sexual orientation. A world devoid of Innocents." One of the great-grandsons asked for video games as birthday gifts, but all she previewed were awash in violence. A great-granddaughter collected discs of pop music, but most she monitored were strewn with lascivious, vile lyrics "no doubt even worse than phrases once restricted to the barracks you and my husband frequented." She'd always loved the arts, she said, all of it, but now when in New York, frequent attendance at the performing arts and in museums paid little dividends. Too much theater and "most of the cinema" contended that good drama has to be bolstered by ubiquitous profanity, pornographic language, a brutal offense to her ears. Too often museum exhibits were the neuroses of celebrated artists blatantly exploited in their paintings and sculpture. She was sick of "installations and happenings" in galleries where once she found walls aglow with modern works interesting, even beautiful, if challenging. She periodically sought escape to Europe to be again among the great public arts in the streets of Paris or Rome, to look once more on ancient masterworks. "But nowhere today is there true graciousness. I go back to my hotel and the local newspaper is at my door, wide-screen TV's in the room. No matter the country, the journals headline corruption, scandal, violence. Abhorrent American television ads cross oceans, and wherever in the world you are, assault you in English with their spiels on bowel and bladder medications, yeast infections, erectile dysfunction. Lewd. Disgusting. Sewers may be necessary, but must we frequent them." She paused, drew a deep breath. "Have some of us," the voice went plaintive, "Stayed -- as some wit put it -- Too Long at the Fair."

Talk exhausted her. Assisted by her aide, she rose from the settee with great difficulty, and I had a better appreciation of her years -- and the toll they'd taken on her -- than when she entered the room. She teetered just a bit on the two canes before achieving balance. She'd not used the oxygen mask while in the gallery, nor did she apply it on leaving, yet I was certain she would once inside their vehicle parked in our driveway. Santa Fe's 7,000-foot elevation doesn't well tolerate extended monologues. And I saw her pinch at a slight bulge in the elegant caftan. Did it conceal some kind of back or spinal brace? But once outside the gallery, on our front terrace, she straightened her back, held high her chin to face the brilliant northern New Mexico light, and with one of her canes tapped the foot of her anxious companion. "Okay, Girl, let's get on with it."

Travel - the other meadows

What happens here, stays here, they insist, but I want to share just a little of the latest weekend jaunt to Nevada's southern city touted primarily for its neon Strip. On the only other visit to Las Vegas, I'd been escorted to the Strip by friends, residents of the city, and had surprisingly liked what I thought I'd abhor. The casinos not merely glittering gambling dens I'd assumed them to be, but components of structures housing fine boutiques, great restaurants, shops featuring wares from the best worldwide designers, art galleries where I viewed Picassos, Monets, Van Goghs. But there'd be no time for the Strip this time. I was arriving on Saturday to attend on Sunday the surprise 70th birthday party of a dear friend who'd been very close to death from pneumonia over the past month. My flight out of Vegas was scheduled for Monday.

"If you want to double your money when in the casinos," the flight attendant counseled as our plane taxied to the gate on arrival, "I've got the soundest piece of advice: take a dollar from your pocket and fold it in half. Then put it back in your pocket." Such patter is endemic for this city sprung from las vegas, the meadows, and you see it justified as you walk through the airport furnished with countless rows of slot machines manned by travelers who look anything but weary, avidly feeding coins and dollar bills into the whirring, flashing instruments of wishful thinking. I know that my forty-eight hours in town will not be in similar meadows.

Mutual friends of the morrow's Birthday Girl have kindly received me as guest in their home. I see for the first time their beautiful neighborhood of Summerlin, observe family properties expertly maintained, amid streets and thoroughfares handsomely landscaped, southwestern flora in sandy beds ablaze with brilliant sun suddenly countered by the unexpected vista of a shaded avenue under towering royal palms. This dignified eden, in the same town as the flamboyant street of neon I'd only known previously. I had a lot to learn about Vegas.

My host and hostess attend Saturday afternoon Catholic Mass and invite me to accompany them. To one more glimpse of still another Las Vegas. A huge, handsomely-designed modern church, crowded with communicants young and old. Before and after the liturgy, introduced to parishioners, I hear reports of family and friends, am shown the photo of a young man's two-year-old son, learn who is recovering from what illness, when someone's granddaughter is expected to visit. On leaving the church, I stop for a few words with the celebrant, who'd referred to his love for Rome during the homily. We exchange nostalgic longing to see again the Eternal City. I've not heard a single reference to Las Vegas' storied lures, the celebrity-studded shows, the spectacular extravaganzas, certainly not the gambling, of the Strip. Later at a restaurant, our conversation is centered mostly on the help, receptionist, manager and waiters known to my friends who are sincerely interested in the present lives and future ambitions of these young people.

Sunday. The surprise Birthday Party is held at a noted Italian restaurant, usually closed on the day of rest, reserved exclusively for this occasion. It is already crowded when we arrive, though Birthday Girl has yet to arrive with her husband. They and the couple with whom I'm staying are friends with whom I shared memorable times on a tour of Portugal and Spain four years ago. The restaurant hums with expectancy, all of us awaiting word of when Birthday Girl has left her house, how soon she'll appear to face a large assembly eager to express its love and happiness at her survival from serious physical assault. I meet -- all! -- her nine adult children, those who live in Vegas and those who've come from afar, and see in each of them the rich harvest of good parenting. Among family friends in attendance are fellow thespians from a local theatrical group to which Birthday Girl and spouse belong. Colorful, amusing, wonderful people with fine tall tales to tell me. I watch an elder (isn't he actually, like myself, an octogenarian?) dancing so energetically, wildly really, that I wonder if we'll have to call an ambulance. Not to worry. He was a boxer, gymnast, great athlete, I'm told, who continues to pride himself on his prowess.

Birthday Girl arrives to great cheering and a thunderous fanfare from the hired musicians. We wonder whether or not hubby had been able to keep the party a surprise, but if she'd guessed, does not display it. And she absolutely hadn't expected me to be there, our embrace is long. Wine flows, the dinner is superb -- the finest Italian cuisine lite -- and I much enjoy table companions, a lawyer and her educator husband, who've traveled far and share stories of adventures in places I haven't visited. Nearly everyone crowding the large two rooms is gregarious, and much circulating spawns many joyful encounters. I consciously consider that the occasion is in no way provincial, has nothing to do with the icon which is Las Vegas, could be happening anywhere in the world where loving families and dear friends gather. There on the dancefloor, Birthday Girl is dancing with her head on the shoulder of her husband of more than fifty years, their nine children -- and a few of their spouses, and just a smattering of the many grandchildren -- taking photos. When I speak with a son or a daughter, there's much laughter, this is a day for it, but a few times I detect a misty eye.

Back at Summerlin, host, hostess and I spend a few quiet Sunday evening hours sitting in their living room, reviewing the rock-solid bonding of family and the loyalty of friends we'd seen among everyone at the party. Television, though muted, was on across the room. Images thoroughly divorced from what we'd known this day. I wouldn't let them -- not those glimpses of world turmoil, political smut, human frailty -- intrude on what the three of us had experienced and were savoring. Call it Sin City if that pleases you, but I now know a Las Vegas, a wondrous meadow where none but good shepherds roam.

Italia Mia 1

Vesuvivo, computer art 2006

The strength of the Euro against the US Dollar continues to bring more foreign tourists than ever to Santa Fe's Canyon Road this summer. And it's a given that if they're from Italy, they'll stop in our studio/gallery after seeing the family name on our sign. They enter prepared to use their native language, exchange personal data on origins, share experiences of places mutually visited in Italy and America. Today it is a young professional couple from Chivavari, where the surname Bacigalupo seems as common as Smith in this country. They were were curious to know if I had relatives in their home town.

No such luck. I repeated the history given to many of their countrymen who've in the past expressed interest in my origins; a fourth-generation Italian-American, I never knew the great grandparents who came as youthful bride and groom to the US (1870) long before Ellis Island existed, did not know their names until late in life and only after many hours spent on genealogical research. They must have assimilated life in the New World rapidly, for their children (my grandfather) and subsequent generations were deprived the language, traditions and culture of their ancestors. My interest in the Mediterranean as a youth and young adult was in France, having studied French in high school and lusted for the highly-publicized romantic lives of American expatriates living in Paris. Italy was someplace my forebears had left behind. I'd probably never get there.

The couple from Chiavari were visibly distressed. Che brutta, the ignorance of heritage, knowing so little about where and from whom you've come. Mustn't one have some knowledge of what he was yesterday to understand who he is today? Once again I launched the discourse on rediscovery of my roots. There was the opportunity in 1950 under the GI Bill to pursue graduate studies abroad, and I submitted an application for a school in France to the Veterans' Administration. The response was that current exchange policies could offer art studies in Italy, not France. Though reluctant to compromise France for Italy, I became a graduate student at L'Accademia di Belli Arti, Firenze.

That disclosure won the interest and approval of the visitors from Chiavari. But they were not yet born in that year I spent in Tuscany, never knew the Tempo della Miseria which gripped the country even five years after World War II had ended. My introduction to Italy was harsh, subsistence under the GI Bill providing an unheated room in a crumbling cold stone palazzo and one meal a day with a desperately impoverished family. Yet, despite severe privations, love for the country took root. I have never since been free of her claim, repeatedly drawing me back for study, work and joy in the wealth of her artistic and scenic treasures, a culture rich in beauty and knowledge of the good life, among a people who've accepted me as their own, uno di noi, and whom I love.

My visitors now recognized that hyphenated Americans, at least some of us, choose to look back, research ancestral records, learn even a little about our ancestors. Sometimes grow to love the country of our origin. But this young man and woman do not know split allegiances. Their love for and loyalty to Italy, and particularly for their own region of Liguria, is paramount. Travel outside their country is a pleasure, and they've roamed widely, but no place on the planet can ever share commitment with the homeland. I'm suggesting, they say, something akin to adultery, passion for more than one beloved. Where, they ask, if forced to choose, would you prefer to live -- America or Italy. And of course don't quite accept an elder's view that one needn't choose, that both places exist and that if and when possible both should be embraced. They persist. If, per exempio, world politics alienated all of Western Europe and the US, if travel were restricted, if -- God forbid -- there were war between our countries, where would you want to be. As if I hadn't already demonstrated, proved that.

I lost patience with specious argument, and made an excuse about having to get back to work. The Italians graciously rose, and our farewell abbracci and buona fortunas were warmly sincere, we'd definitely found simpatico a chance encounter. Think of me when back in Chiavari. But some minutes later, as I worked, classical music on the radio gave way to an hourly news report. Audio clips of bombastic speeches by Republicans and Democrats lauding their candidate and reviling his opponent in the Presidential Election campaign. The latest, during months of obscene politicking which has many of us feeling we need a national cleansing. And I was keenly aware that the drumbeaters were insisting, as the recent visitors had, that I make a choice, this time for a party. Having been staunchly non-partisan for many years, faithfully voting for individuals I believed could best serve the country regardless of party affiliation, I refuse to surrender the option to listen and wait, study and decide, not jump on the bandwagon under pressure from strange bedfellows. Which makes me wonder if the Italians didn't have a point about shared allegiances. Much as I love Italy, her politics have never much engaged me. I care about America's, and strive to act conscientiously when facing them.

City Different 1

One of my granddaughters, visiting Santa Fe, came upon this guitarist strumming away beside Grandpa's bronze of San Francisco which stands in front of City Hall. Seldom passing up a photo op, she captured a moment typical of incidents I've heard relating to the statue during the 28 years since it was installed.

The Santa Fe County competition for Art in Public Places, 1979, called for entries, preferably a mural, to grace the wall of a second-floor hallway in the city's municipal building. I took a look at the designated wall and considered it inappropriate, a location where few visitors to the building would see art work meant to be public. The rules of the competition did not, however, limit one to suggested media or specific site within or on the grounds of the building. I thought an icon of the city's patron, San Francisco, should stand prominently fronting City Hall where all citizens could view it. And submitted a maquette for the bronze to the juried panel of the Arts Commission, city councilors and the mayor. A few fellow artists who hadn't carefully read the competition's rules were disgruntled when an entry for sculpture took first prize in what they'd believed to be a mural contest.

I absolutely did not want to produce still another version of San Francisco holding birds, and so deliberately modeled the small maquette with the man of Assisi's hands folded behind his back. The figure was bent slightly forward, its head tilted downward as if gazing on something, and the composition demanded I put a sculptural element in his view. For weeks that element remained a lump of clay. Though I consider my work stylistic rather than representational, nothing abstract would do, something recognizable would have to justify Francis' rapt attention. One night, a friend visiting my studio demanded that I resolve the dilemma, turn that lump of clay into anything--a rock, plant, why not some small creature, wasn't the saint the patron of animals. When my response was that I could think of nothing, he countered with "It already looks like a prairie dog!" Miracolo, I think you've got it. And so it became. Once dedicated, the bronze was officially labeled San Francisco del Desierto. But locals never refer to it as such; for them it's always been and remains St Francis and the Prairie Dog.

I've cherished the public's acceptance of and interaction with the statue over the years: the many telephone calls from friends who've asked if I've been downtown, have seen the latest gift bestowed on Francis or his small friend by an anonymous donor--a bright red scarf circling Francis' throat following a heavy snowstorm; a Santa Claus cap upon his head during the Christmas season; a beautifully hand-crafted, flowered and beaded bonnet adorning the prairie dog one Easter Sunday; the coins left at Francis' feet, reportedly collected by an elderly senora and carried to the Poor Box at the Cathedral where she attends daily morning Mass. The frequent times, while downtown, I've seen residents or tourists sitting on one of the benches which flank the sculpture, reading or merely resting in the shadow of Francis, sometimes being photographed with a friendly hand on his arm. I get emails from across the country as well as from abroad by people who've read my signature on the bronze, google the name and locate my website on the internet, write words to gladden the heart. Art is essentially communication, and when we accomplish that, it makes worthwhile the hardwork and periodic rejections which come with the territory in this field of labor.

But if public approval of the statue has given me much pleasure, the city's neglect of its site triggers frustration. Awarding of the competition prize specified only that I was to execute and have the bronze freighted to City Hall. Someone employed by the administration at that time, whose name I never knew or can't recall (possibly the city architect or landscaper), designed and had constructed a solid and attractive base for the sculpture. At the dedication, on the feastday of Francis, 4 October 1980, planned and discussed (promised!) landscaping and lighting had not been done, but on such a joyous occasion I didn't consider that it never would be. The dedication was most festive, a procession of adults and children, led by vested priests, carrying or walking leashed pets from the terrace of St Francis Cathedral through the Plaza and down Lincoln Avenue to where Francis and the Prairie Dog awaited them. Speeches were made by politicians, clergy blessed the animals, and it was announced that the Procession and Blessing would become an annual event, that every year on October 4 we'd gather to honor Francisco, patron of this city named for his holy faith and patron of El Senor's wide animal kingdom. There was never again another procession or blessing, the landscaping plans not realized, no lighting installed.

Worse. The corner at Lincoln and Marcy Streets where the bronze fronts City Hall has over the years been disfigured by a long line of curbside newspaper and periodical-handout kiosks, directional signs and occasional illegal parking which all but hide Francis from approaching pedestrians or vehicles. Whenever I receive another phonecall or email from someone expressing delight in the bronze, I think of its violated site and wonder how anyone could fully appreciate it there. Those of us who love our City Different are dismayed, even angered, when someone disillusioned with it refers to it as the City Indifferent. But after many attempts with various city administrations to improve, clean up, the site, I'm no longer quick to argue the negative adjective.

Under construction adjacent to the Municipal Building and City Hall is Santa Fe's nearly completed multi-million dollar Civic Center, scheduled for opening before summer's end. A huge complex of excellent design trumpeting northern New Mexico's architectural traditions, the Center will be approached by many of its future thousands of visitors from the corner of Lincoln and Marcy Streets where Francis and his prairie dog look out on the intersection. I want to believe that pleas to rid the site of shabby accouterments--"To Beautify A City," as the Santa Fe Reporter headlined the story (27 September 1979) announcing the competition result--will not go unheeded. There Is a Season for All Things. Time to address this matter, give Francis his due as he anticipates welcoming crowds on their way to the Civic Center.