Sunday, December 13, 2009

Fishing in Tuscany

There isn't any, really. Not where we go. I just needed a hook.
After seeing a show of Sally's photos in Montalcino, Russell Wilkinson and Eileen Guggenheim (who run the New York Academy of Art where Eric Fischl mentors) were inspired to call and tell Sally how much they liked her work, which inspired Sally to invite them to dinner, where I was inspired to invite Russell fishing, which led us to bob around in my little 17-foot Boston Whaler in the Atlantic off Montauk, where we hooked sharks longer than the boat (and let them go), which gave us the subject for one of the tales that now gets told at the table of Podere Villore, the villa Russell bought near Montalcino the same week he saw Sally's photos, in Tuscany, where we've returned many times ever since Russell offered to let me use his guest house as a writing retreat while Sally taught her photo workshop during the scorching summer of 2003.