Paolo Veronese at the Prado Museum

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Back in a previous lifetime, I used to collaborate with a polymer extrusion company (sexy, I know) located just outside Florence. For work purposes, of course, I used to visit them every year, spending a week in Florence. Because of this, I am quite familiar with the Florentine Renaissance and less so, I must admit, the Venetian Renaissance.

Fortunately, I recently had the opportunity to (partly) fix this by going with my sister to an amazing Paolo Veronese (1528-1588) exhibit at the Prado.

I was blown away!! There are over a hundred paintings from the Louvre, the Metropolitan Museum, the National Gallery in London, the Galleria degli Uffizi, the Kunsthistorisches Museum of Vienna, and, of course, the Prado.

When you mention the Renaissance, the first thing you think of, in painting, is perspective, depth; this is something Veronese has mastered. More importantly, I found the details, and even more importantly, the narrative capacity of the paintings —the ability to tell a story, really special. From a technical or art history perspective, the Renaissance started in Florence, giving them the edge, but Venice soon countered with brighter colors, as a young El Greco would learn. However, all this makes little difference, for a non-specialist like me, I just freaked out at the beauty.

This being the Renaissance, most paintings are of Biblical or Greek mythology stories, making it relatively easy to situate oneself.

So if you are in Madrid until September 29, see the Veronese exhibit at the Prado. You are welcome.

La Valparadisea Luis Correa-Diaz

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La Valparadisea LCD

Hay tres tomas de Valparaíso en la película Los diarios de la motocicleta: La primera en la oficina de correos donde Ernesto Guevara, el futuro Ché, recoge una carta de su novia, cortando con él. La segunda es un trayecto en el funicular donde no hay siquiera diálogo entre Guevara y su amigo Granado. Y la tercera es en la playa, donde Guevara acepta que no le queda otra que seguir su aventura. Esto es todo lo que sé, o lo que sabía de Valparaíso hasta que empecé a leer los poemas de Luis Correa-Díaz. En su última entrega, La Valparadisea (Altazor, 2025) Correa-Díaz nos invita a una excursión en dron —droncito— y recoge los corazones rotos como el de Guevara, los trayectos en el funicular, sin diálogo, y las meditaciones en la playa.

Con Correa-Díaz siempre hay más. Sus líneas están llenas de referencias: Jorge Manrique junto a Starbucks, la Nueva Trova Cubana junto a Hieronymus Bosch, al Papa junto a Herzog y todo ello en las calles, plazas, cafés y urbanizaciones de Valparaíso.

Pero lo importante no son las calles ni los edificios, sino la gente que llena los poemas de LCD: Amigos, libreros, familiares, transeúntes, otros poetas, músicos, tenderos, camareros, la gente que hace una ciudad, que le dan el color, la textura, la profundidad y la memoria a los sitios.

La memoria y su hermana la melancolía son el tejido que colorea el tapiz que es La Valparadisea. Los recuerdos de Correa-Díaz, los recuerdos de nuestros hogares que tenemos los que vivimos en el exilio —aunque sea elegido.

This summer’s obsession: Pine nuts.

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My mom’s garden has a handful of pine trees, and one of them in particular is a prolific producer of pinecones —with pine nuts, piñón (not all pinecones have pine nuts, depending on stress, gender (only female trees produce pine nuts), etc.) Also, pine trees do not make the same number of pinecones with nuts every year. The average number of pine nuts per cone is anywhere from 10 to over 100, according to the interweb.

This year, this one tree has an unstoppable quantity of pine nuts. So I started collecting them.

Possibly my favorite pasta sauce is a rich, flavorful pesto: the silky olive oil, the rich combination of cheeses, the fresh basil (with some parsley for extra color!), the tangy garlic, and to bring it all together magically… the pine nuts!!!

The goal: to make a kickass pesto.

The process: to crack hundreds (thousands?) of pine nuts.

Chatting with our neighbor, a local guru who knows all there is to know about nature and country life, showed me his machine for cracking pine nuts.

I am not a fan of Amazon, but I’m in the middle of the country, and I need a nut-cracking machine; the old stone or hammer won’t cut it with the number of pine nuts I have to crack. So I ordered a machine. Although it is advertised as cracking pine nuts, these are too small for this machine, probably designed to break almonds, hazelnuts, walnuts, you know, bigger nuts than mine. I returned it to Amazon (sorry, no photo of the first machine).

Second machine: this one does fit and cracks pine nuts, but it pulverizes them. I try to go slow, but there is no way; the flesh of the nuts disintegrates with each swing of the lever.

The third one I ordered is not from Amazon; it is from a hardware store on the other side of Spain. This machine has a much smoother cracking system, so you can apply pressure progressively until the pine nut cracks. One problem: like the first machine, even at its smallest setting, it does not crack pine nuts… The solution? A tiny board “lifts” the pine nut so the cracker part of the mechanism reaches it. Finally, the pine nut problem is solved!!

I’d better get cracking. Pesto anyone?

You should be meditating.

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Stop, inhale, focusing on the air entering your nostrils or your lungs. Exhale, focusing on the air leaving your lungs or your nostrils. There, you did it!! For a brief time, you didn’t worry about what’s for dinner, your bills, the weather, what you were going to tell your boss, your customer, or your friend. You didn’t think about politics, and you weren’t scrolling through social media. You had a moment —albeit a very short one—of meditation. The trick is to do that exact exercise with your breathing for 5, 10, 20 minutes, or half an hour. The longer you do it, and the more often you do it, the better you will feel.

My dear friend Paco encouraged me to try meditating while I was in a deep, dark depression over ten years ago. It was not easy for a hyperactive fellow like me to embrace it, but now I cannot live without some quiet time every day. And although I have written about meditation here before, it was usually in passing while talking about health and mental health in general.

This all comes to mind because I recently had the opportunity to see and hear Paco give a presentation on Christian Meditation at the Antonio Azorín bookstore in El Escorial. He filled the room and had a wonderful talk. I originally thought the attendees were curious about meditation, but during the Q&A, I realized some of them were very advanced, although from different “schools” of meditation —see below.

There are many labels for meditation, just like there are many different philosophies and methods: Mindfulness Meditation, Mantra Meditation, Zen Meditation (Zazen), Vipassana Meditation, Transcendental Meditation (TM), or Body Scan Meditation. The ancient Fathers and Mothers of the desert, the early Christians, also developed a method of meditation which nowadays is called Christian meditation, or even centering prayer. Some recent Catholic proponents of meditation might be Thomas Keating, Thomas Merton, or Richard Rohr.

Whichever way you choose to sit down in silence is fine. Of course, nowadays you can use an app on your phone to time your sits, or to guide you. I have been using Insight Timer for years, and I love it!

Every class I teach at school starts with one minute of silence. This time is a buffer between whatever the students were doing before and class, between English and Spanish; it is a moment to regroup, to breathe, and for me, it is a minute of meditation.

Recently, Maria Popova also wrote about the importance of spending time alone and in silence, not exactly meditation, but close to it. Check it out here.

So carve out a few minutes from your day: when you wake up, before you go to sleep, in the middle of the day, or, paradoxically, if you are really busy, more than once a day. Whatever works for you, sit down, and start focusing on your breathing. You are welcome.

Oh, you should definitely check out this video of Villanova’s Fr. Martin Laird on the benefits of meditation. It is a bit long, but worth it!!

Puy du Fou (Warning Spoilers)

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The gang in front of the night show stage

Puy du Fou is a theme park on the hills near Toledo. The original is in France, but the Spanish one seems to be the better one. It is a huge place where they perform historical recreations, but accented with dance numbers (fortunately, no singing). A group of friends and I went recently. The high point is the “Sueño de Toledo” night show. They have recreated the city of Toledo with the Tajo river (a copy of it, anyway) serving as a proscenium.

The show begins with an old man walking along the vast, open-air stage with his donkey. He meets a shepherd girl on the other side and starts telling the story of Toledo, only he skips the early history of the Carpetanians, and more importantly, the Romans! So they start the history of Toledo with the Christians and the Goths, that is when you realize that you are seeing a show and not a factually historic recreation. From there, they move to the Moorish invasion, which is when a group of Moorish girls walk into the ankle-deep “river” and perform a suggestive belly dance. I must admit, I was impressed when they walked into the water to do their dance number! And so they move through the history of Toledo. At another time, representing the building of the cathedral, two massive (make-believe) organs rise from the “river,” and then, paradoxically, flames start spewing from the organ pipes! I’m sure Bach would have been jealous. At another time, Christopher Columbus’s Santa María rises from the “river,” which is impressive, I must admit. There were plenty of horses, geese, goats and sheep, even pigs! Anyway, enough spoilers.

The next day, we enjoyed a series of performances. The first one was Cetrería de Reyes, which is an awesome falconry show. Unfortunately, midday in the Toledo sun in July made it, how can I say, blistering hot. But the show was cool, they brought out owls, hawks, falcons, vultures, even a Secretarybird stomping on a (fake) snake! At the end of the show, they released all the birds, and it was a grand finale!

A pluma y espada is a swashbuckling dramatized show of Lope de Vega, our most famous playwright of the Siglo de Oro (1600s Spain). Again they did the water thing where they danced and splashed about, and again they brought in the horses, which, given the indoor space, was surprising.

Allende la mar oceana recreates one of Columbus’s ships. You walk in and it looks and feels like you are in one of the galleons! You come out to a recreation of Hispaniola island!

Then we stopped for lunch, which is the weak spot of the park, but it was to be expected. After all, one is not there for a culinary experience. You can bring in your picnic, but the idea of carrying around lunch all day is not the most appetizing.

We finished the day with El último cantar, a show about El Cid. In this one, you get the horses and the dancing in a huge indoor space where the seats rotate to different parts of the fixed circular stage, impressive indeed.

There are many other shows, and they add about a show a year, but we were knackered, so we called it a day.

My recommendation? If it is not too hot, go enjoy the day. If it is hot, go to the night show. If you have the time, do the night show and then the next day go for the day. You are welcome.

La feria del libro in Madrid

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Here is a bit of a paradox: I love literature (so much that I made it my livelihood), I love books, but I really do not like Madrid’s huge annual book fair: La Feria del Libro.

Every year, the first two weeks in June, hundreds of bookstores and publishers set up camp in Madrid’s beautiful Retiro Park. Every day, there are book signings, conferences, debates, colloquia, and, of course, bars, ice cream stands, and all sorts of other associated entertainment.

I try to avoid it, but I still go and walk around together with thousands of other folks who are looking for celebrity author sightings and signings and are willing to stand in line for hours to get a book signed.

This year was a bit different for me. Celia found out that Carmen Lomana, an old employee of my dad’s in London, who is now a bit of a celebrity, was signing her memoirs. We went to her booth, chatted with her for a few minutes about life in London in the early 80s, and bought her book for Mom, which Lomana kindly signed.

We also walked around, bought a couple of books, some overpriced ice cream, and enjoyed the throngs of people.

So if you are in Madrid the first couple of weeks in June and you love books (or don’t), go to the Retiro Park and enjoy the Feria del Libro with hundreds of other book lovers.

PS: Statistics show that for the last few years, while book sales are up, book reading is down. Someone explain that to me -or don’t bother.

An evening at a Van Morrison concert

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That's Van (and my sister)

Van Morrison was featured in this blog back in June 2014 because he is my favorite contemporary musician. Well, it is time to revisit the Lion of Belfast, as I recently had the opportunity to see him at a concert in Madrid. I had not been to a Van Morrison concert since the mid-2000s!

My dear friend Paco notified me, and I immediately bought a ticket, without knowing if I would be in Spain by June 4th. Fortunately, I was. A couple of days before, Paco’s wife pulled out of the concert, so I invited my sister, Rocky. We had a blast.

The concert was held at the university’s botanical garden, which features a large amphitheater-like stage area in the center. Surrounding it, they have placed all sorts of food trucks and bars, making for an awesome, cool (literally) experience on summer nights. They host a variety of concerts (see photos).

Van played a few of his big hits, such as “Days Like This,” “In the Afternoon,” or “Raincheck.” He also played a couple of his new songs, including “Cutting Corners.” He played a few covers, including Ray Charles’ “What Would I Do Without You” and Hank Williams’ “Cold, Cold Heart”.

Van had an amazing 9-piece band with him, which shone at the end of the concert, when they performed “Gloria”. Van then left them to each do their solos, which was mind-blowing and amazing!

Van sang for a very respectable hour and a half in the beautiful Madrid evening and light. This was my fourth time seeing Van the Man, and it was certainly my favorite concert. With his melodies, he takes you on wonderful spiritual journeys, letting you daydream in the beauty of the songs, he is really unique and unparalleled.

This was the playlist (thanks to setlist.fm)

Only a Dream

Cutting Corners

Back on Top

What Would I Do Without You (Ray Charles cover)

Days Like This

Real Real Gone

In the Afternoon / Raincheck / Sittin’ Pretty

Cleaning Windows

Green Rocky Road (traditional cover)

No Other Baby (Dickie Bishop and His Sidekicks cover)

Cold, Cold Heart (Hank Williams With His Drifting Cowboys cover)

Ain’t Gonna Moan No More

Broken Record

Wild Night

Help Me (Sonny Boy Williamson cover)

Gloria

Celebrating 20 years of teaching – some takeaways

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This year marks my 20th year of teaching. It has been a total blessing. I have talked a lot about it here, but there should be at least some celebratory comments.

The first observation is that teaching is a vocational endeavor; if your heart is not in it, you will struggle and not be the best teacher for your students. I have taught almost 50/50 in secondary and university settings with brief stints in Middle school, and even primary school! (Read about it here.) My observation is that most teachers do it because they love it —we don’t do it for money. If you do not know if teaching is for you, try it out!

I have said this ad nauseam: all teaching is relational. We learn from a place of trust, that trust comes from the teacher-student relationship and that relationship comes from the teacher being open, better yet, vulnerable (within boundaries, of course), and honest.

Just because students are not masters of the subject matter does not make them stupid; they can see right through the teacher if you do not know the subject matter, regardless of your teaching style. So know and prepare your material, and if they ask something you do not know, get back to them with an answer. This recently happened to me, no shame in it.

Something that always motivates me is thinking of who I consider to be the best two teachers in history: Socrates and Jesus. They did not have hi-tech classrooms, which makes me always ask myself: Could I teach this with just a stick in the sand? If the answer is no, then I must rethink my lesson plan. Everything else on top of that is glitter and show…

I could probably write a book about this, but for now, I hope you liked this blog post.

So while not every moment of my 20-year teaching career has been easy, I am looking forward to the next 20, let’s go!!

An evening watching Inter Miami

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Hanging out at Inter Miami stadium

When Lukas arrived at Seacrest from Lithuania, he was a skinny 16-year-old with a lightning-quick dribble, a phenomenal shot on goal, and a way above-average soccer IQ for his age, which means he had an outstanding situational awareness and was able to “read” the game at a collegiate level. But he was skinny, so it only took a glance from an opposing defender for him to fall over. So I convinced him to work out with me after school. Within weeks, he was bulking up and able to stand up to defenders’ charges and body checks. Oh, he was also my Spanish student.

That was last decade. Nowadays, we talk about life, work, girls, Naples, old colleagues, and teachers, but we still share a passion for football. So we organized a trip to an Inter Miami game in Fort Lauderdale.

Interestingly, it was against Montreal, which was the only other Inter Miami game I had been to.

Chase Stadium is a bit of a misnomer, as the “Stadium” is a scaffolding structure, a Meccano set, surrounded by a bunch of way overpriced food trucks and bars. But we were there for the friendship, the soccer, and admittedly, to see Leo Messi play.

The game was as expected, not particularly good. Luis Suarez and Messi each scored a couple of goals, but Montreal managed to score a “dignity” goal. Although Lukas and I are both hardcore Cristiano Ronaldo fans, I must admit it was amazing to see Messi play; his skill level, how deceptively easy he made those goals look, was very impressive.

At the end of the day, driving down to Fort Lauderdale and spending a small fortune on tickets, food, and parking was well worth it to hang out with a dear friend.

Budapest

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Budapest had long captivated me, and I have been fascinated by Hungary’s history, geography, culture, food, and people for many years. Well, I finally had the opportunity to go this summer for a few days. I loved every minute of my visit!

Celia and I stayed at the Alice Hotel, an old, restored palazzo on elegant Andrássy Avenue, a couple of blocks from City Park.

Yes, we visited all the obligatory sites: Parliament, Royal Palace, St. Stephen’s (and St. Stephen’s hand), St. Matthias, the Fisherman’s Bastion, the market, the funicular, the Synagogue, the cafés, Margaret Island, the baths, etc., etc. But more importantly, we explored further: the Cemetery, which is amazing, the different neighborhoods, walking and exploring both Buda and Pest, sneaking into university buildings, and having coffee with the locals at neighborhood cafés. This is where you get to know the country, its people, and its culture. And it is beautiful.

We ate with the Budapesti: Goulash, chicken paprikash, sausages, funnel cakes, palinka, all the pickled foods you can think of, including the tiny peppers that look like innocent baby tomatoes and then blow a hole in your skull because it is the spiciest thing you will ever eat, etc., etc.

We returned to the cathedral one evening for an awesome organ concert which featured Mozart, obviously Budapest’s treasured child, Liszt (who also lived in Madrid for a stint), and of course, Bach, including the Toccata and Fugue as the grand finale!!

We became great users of the subway / public transport system which includes the oldest subway in continental Europe (London was first).

Probably one of the most moving moments for me was walking along the Danube and tripping (metaphorically) with the “Shoe Memorial,” bronze sculptures of shoes lined up along the Danube in remmeberance of when the Nazis shot jews into the river —having ordered them to take off their valuables and shoes beforehand.

Overall, it was an amazing experience, and I highly recommend a visit.