I was recently in Tuscany. I don’t have much to say about Tuscany. Maybe I should rephrase that. So much has been said about Tuscany, so many pictures taken, films made, that it seems I would be foolish to add to the praise. Tuscany is many things and only one of them is the picturesque hillside villages of the interior.

            People live modern lives in Tuscany, regardless of the views of rolling agricultural valleys.

            The medieval village of Montisi in Tuscany where I joined friends at the end of my trip was absolutely picturesque. But from my survey of the cars parked around town the home of an affluent populace.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Maybe even a bit disenchanted with the beauty of living in Tuscany. After all how many orderly olive groves, how many buildings burnished with age can you look at before you want to go and turn on the X-Box.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Certainly there are pure moments of bucolic charm in Tuscany, one cannot avoid turning their camera toward.

 

 

 

 

 

 

And there are cell phone towers in Tuscany.

 

 

 

 

 

 

In Tuscany there are bored youth, “chickens scratchin’ for immortality”.

 

 

 

 

 

 

There are gardens in Tuscany of absolute formal elegance, like Cetenale outside of Siena. Unspeakable really to stand in them, transporting, inspiring…

 

 

 

 

 

But then, there must be room for self-expression in Tuscany.

 

 

 

 

 

 

There is in Tuscany a very evident desire to be part of the modern world. The architecture of the agricultural school at the University of Pisa could just as well be part the Bellevue College campus outside Seattle.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And there is in Tuscany a call “to broaden our views” beyond modern living.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In Tuscany the light of September, the last of September, the beginning of fall is beautiful beyond compare. There is no more lovely place to spend a few weeks that time of years and my heart aches now, thinking about what a lovely place that was to visit.