bits of string

why, hello there!

thanks for tuning in to this latest edition of the ramblings of yours truly. this will be mainly a short collection of "click here"s. beginning with:

a mention in the austin chronicle! go for it:
http://www.austinchronicle.com/issues/dispatch/2005-04-15/music_phases5.html
two lines is all....but better than no lines, i always say.

there is a new pope, benedetto XVI. for me, that is about 15 benedettos too many... i am ready for some creativity! so there is an italian newspaper called il manifesto that is a super leftist communist newspaper, and the headline this morning was "il pastore tedesco." talk about a double meaning! literally translated, a pastore tedesco is a german shephard. :) JP II was often referred to as the pastore polaco (polish shephard), but you can see where the difference in meaning enters in :)
http://www.ilmanifesto.it/
there is also a funny cartoon on the front... apparently the manifesto isn't a huge fan of poor Ratzinger, but then again, someone told me today that italian newspapers picked on jp II's polish accent for 10 years before they laid off....and at the time of his death, he was regarded here in italy, as in most of the world, as the most beloved pope ever....so there is hope yet for poor Benedetto XVI.

what else? i had something else....blast if i can't remember it now. you can tune it to:
www.uncommonground.com
and stream their radio station...they are featuring me on April 25 and April 27...live cuts from a show I did there in October. Who knows what you may find??

oh, funny story also. so i was reading "to kill a mockingbird" the other day, and when i finished, i was crying, of course, so i wasn't in the mood to go down to dinner at santa chiara...so i sent my friend anne a text message on her phone that said "i am such a dork - i just finished to kill a mockingbird and now i am crying all over the place. not coming to dinner." anne, having forgotten i was reading TKAM, thought that i had literally just finished killing a bird (i guess one that was suffering? who knows....) and therefore had lost my appetite for dinner. something gets lost from time to time in text messaging.... as i guess in all forms of electronic communication, including this one. :)

see y'all real soon, y'here?
vanessa

jenny littleshoes and tkam

ciao!

how are the bluebonnets coming? that is one of the things i miss most (besides family and friends, of course). i have never been here (italy) in the spring, and the other day i got a package from a friend, out of the blue (so to speak), that included new music (thank you corbett!) and better still, photos of bluebonnets! they are now posted on the fridge so that i can revel in their blue-capped glory, far may i be from home.

one of the many things i do "on the side" here, besides playing concerts and writing songs, is teach english and guitar to the children of castiglion fiorentino. one of my newest students is an adorable girl named jenny scarpini. jenny is one of those names that, having completely conquered the north american continent, jumped the atlantic and is now taking over the better part of europe. scarpini, more or less, means little shoes, so i have taken to calling her jenny littleshoes. i am not sure she gets the joke but she likes it anyhow. yesterday she taught me how to do "scooby doo," which is what we used to call making lanyards. i am starting to feel old.

our english lesson yesterday consisted of baking my famous chocolate chip cookies...we did the whole thing, from grocery shopping to the baking process, in english, which is actually a great way to learn new words...she now knows flour is different from flower (those blasted homonyms). i was in a bit of a panic, because most of the ingredients i needed didn't exist (like vanilla, or baking powder), but with a bit of improvisation and a lot of math (i had to convert the whole recipe to the metric system), a batch of delicious cookies were born and i became the best-loved english teacher on the planet.

we took some press photos the other day that are pretty funny:
http://www.icecreamonmondays.com/press.htm
if you are bored at work with nothing else to do.

I just finished reading "my invented country" by isabel allende - good times - and am now on to "To Kill a Mockingbird," which I have read countless times and which I am enjoying all over again. I can't think of the book without referring to it mentally as TKAM, because it was assigned in my 10th grade English class and was always written as such on the board ("read Ch 1-10 in TKAM for tomorrow")...I remember reading it nearly in one sitting, and finishing it in class while we were having a grammar lesson...I had to hide the book and my tears when I was called on to diagram a sentence on the board...

okay, it's time for lunch so i really should be on my way. dallas and houston shows are scheduled for june with a possible house concert in austin in the works...
happy weekend!
vanessa

new review posted

check out this new review posted by Duane Nora on CD Baby! Makes me want to kick up my heels and dance!

http://cdbaby.com/cd/vanessapeters2

the art of travel

God bless April! after a long, cold winter, nothing is nicer than the sight of little white and pink blossoms appearing on the plum trees. everything is starting to unfurl, hesistantly, like a small child waking up in a strange bedroom, opening one eye to take a quick look around before committing herself to the actual act of movement from the bed. it has been warm for a few weeks now, but a chilly wind blew through a few days ago, bringing with it some sort of nasty 24-hour-virus that has felled everyone i know except yours truly, which can only mean that any minute now i will find myself doubled over a trash can with stomach convulsions. but for now, i am fit as a fiddle and tuned to a perfect A, so to speak.

i just finished a book called "the art of travel," by alain de botton, and i am off to purchase every book the man has ever written. if any of them are half as good as this one, it will be a chunk of change well spent. the book deals with ... well, the art of traveling, which might seem like a mundane, or elitist, topic at first ... but it soon reveals itself to be a sort of instruction manual on how to get the most out of wherever you are, be you on vacation in Barbados or travelling around your bedroom. It deals with why some of us (ahem) feel a compulsive need to travel; with the inevitable let-down many feel upon arriving in paradise; with how to see commonplace things in your own life as new again. It is really quite lovely and I say to thee, get thee to a bookstore and find this book!

between the terri schiavo case and the pope passing away, it has been interesting being in italy during these last few days. schiavo (actually pronounced "sckee-ah-vo") means slave in italian. lots of discussions all around about the right-to-life and the right-to-die and what it all could have meant for the pope if he had fallen into a coma instead of dying. make yourselves a living will, each and every one of you.

show booked in Houston! more to come in Dallas, Austin, Shreveport, and beyond.

much love from the land of the little white plum blossoms,
vanessa

a nietzche excerpt from "the art of travel":
"when we observe how some people know how to manage their experiences - their insignificant, everyday experiences - so that they become an arable soil that bears fruit three times a year, while others - and how many there are! - are driven through surging waves of destiny, the most multifarious currents of the times and the nations, and yet always remain on top, bobbing like a cork, then we are in the end tempted to divide mankind into a minority (a minimality) of those who know how to make much of little, and a majority of those who know how to make little of much."