EXORCISMS IN THE MARCHE??

3 Settembre
I hope everyone had a wonderful Labor Day holiday in the US. What a shock to read about the new VP candidate for McCain. I was sure it would be Lieberman. Nice to see Gustav took a pass on New Orleans; I always wondered why there were never any hurricane Dwights.
We had our penultimate weekend full and for the 1st time since July are empty today. We could sleep in, although I never have that luxury with Bacco in the room! We are changing all the rooms from double beds into singles for a group of folks coming in for a wedding next weekend and then we will again be full.
I am still chopping away at olive trees as you can see by the photos. Bacco keeps guard below in case I fall and you can see the piles of branches I have cut away. These are similar to the suckers you pull away from tomato plants, nonproductive and energy stealers. The whole process is repeated in the winter months.
Still sunny and dry here and the olives look like little old men with wrinkles in their skin. We need a good drenching rain. It is nearly time to pick the white grapes and hang them up to dry for our next passito and I am currently drying a bunch of figs in the oven to preserve them.
Monday we left Nascondiglio di Bacco at 1630 with our neighbor Luigi and his wife and headed off to his priestly cousin's church where every Monday and Friday night they have a healing-exorcism service. The church was packed and I must say I have now heard enough Hail Marys and Our Fathers to last me a good while! 30 minutes at the beginning and at the end the same. I am not used to the catholic rite of saying the rosary and wonder if people ever stop to think about the words and what they are asking or just reciting words located in the "prerecorded" parts of their brains. The service ended at 1130 when the final person was blessed. There were folks screaming and moaning; you would have thought it was a pentecostal service. I hope some of the people were helped out. We then ate a communal supper with Luigi's cousin and his assistant, a francescan friar and lay helpers before returning home. We got back the the B&B at 0300, almost time to start breakfast for that day. As I told Raffaele, it is an experience I only need to see once in a lifetime and he countered with "the next time we stay out until 0300, let's go to a disco where there are girls". I have to agree with that one!
The pool has been malfunctioning the last 3 days and we are finding the lower pool half empty. We are waiting to hear the "pool guy" (a term i use more loosely each time as he has no clue about pools) say he doesn't know what the hell is wrong, but as yet he is too proud to admit his ignorance.
It is music festival time here in the Ascoli Piceno province and there is currently a classical music festival at Cupra Marittima, a brass festival at Ascoli which follows the guitar festival of a week ago and will be followed by the Ascoli Piceno festival of classical music.
There are also a few food festivals yet to come like the Sagra of frogs (frog's legs?) at Belmonte Piceno, Divino Vino, a wine festival here at Offida next weekend and in the area there will be sagras for polenta, potatoes and vino cotto (cooked wine), another for archeology and gastronomy and one for mushrooms, all in September.
The pictures show Bacco below me, my feet and part of a pile of branches, 2 trees already pruned and our vineyard looking from north to south and finally sunset from yesterday.
Have a great week!
dds