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ALONE WITH MICHELANGELO: A woman follows her dreams to Italy. by Marlene Hill Someone once said that travel is the exploration of love. In 1962, Marlene Hill fell in love with Italy. On that brief trip, an overwhelming sense of belonging came over her. When her feet first touched the streets of Rome, the truth of Marlene's restricted life back home struck her with a wallop. She watched Italian women walking bare-legged without girdles. Their hips jiggled naturally. Their sandals dazzled her eyes with colored glass "gems" strung across their insteps. She was enthralled, and while in Rome, she did what the Romans did, she wore dazzling sandals and jiggled. She felt she had come "home," home to the passionate love of life she had always suspected was possible. She didn't want to leave. But life intervened and not until 1990 was she able to go back alone to reconnect with those feelings. Having no family connections in Italy and only a smattering of the language wasn't easy, but in so doing, Marlene discovered hidden strengths. She learned how to travel alone from scratch. She learned about the ancient Etruscans' art -_ those pre-Roman dwellers of Tuscany -_ as well as the art and architecture of another famous Tuscan, Michelangelo.
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The author coming out of an Etruscan tomb in Orvieto. "The hilltop city of Orvieto was as magical as I knew it would be. Halfway between Florence and Rome, Orvieto rides one thousand feet high on a magnificent outcropping of tufa left from a prehistoric volcano. Soon I would see Etruscan tombs from the sixth century B.C. ...Family names were carved into the lintels of the little house-like tombs, and soft velvety moss filled in some of the letters. I traced my fingers along the grooves Some names had faded, but others were carved more deeply by someone's determined hands twenty-six hundred years ago. My heart took a flip flop. It was as if I'd been there before." |
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Available at: Powells Books and all online retailers. Signed copies from publisher. Website: www3.telus.net/sites/book/
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ALONE WITH MICHELANGELO: A woman follows her dreams to Italy. Hard cover, 349 pages. $24,95. Published by Frank Amato Publications, Inc. Color photos and watercolors by Deanna Hunt.
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