Welcome back, friends of La Romita!
As you see here, the website has been renovated and updated and made thoroughly more useful by the work of two of our family members. Alessandro Quargnali Linsley and Amina Quargnali Diehl are the son and daughter of Enza’s sister Paola Quargnali, who passed away in 2003. Enza and Paola made La Romita what it is today by their hard work and total dedication to the idea of real cross-cultural exchange between Italy and the US. Sandro is a musician and writer living in Chicago while Amina is a lawyer living in Alabama. Sandro visited us this past year at La Romita and got some great ideas for these updates. Amina visited us in 2009 with her two amazing little kids.
Edmund Zimmerman
She and her family just spent the Christmas holidays at La Romita and I hope she can add something about the wintry life of La Romita…something we don’t often experience in our sun drenched sessions.
Our brochures went out a bit late, as we had lots of traveling and family pressures. My son David is off at college at the University of California San Diego—I just drove him back there from his Christmas break—talk about sun drenched! He assures me that its renowned engineering department lured him there…but I’m sure the beaches didn’t hurt. Ben and Enza celebrated their fiftieth wedding anniversary by…surprise…a trip! They went with their son Lars, his wife Francesca, and Ben and Enza’s grandson Giulio, (along with other friends and family), to Machu Picchu. They carried in glasses and Champagne to toast half a century of life together…of life at the epicenter of art and architecture and education. Their love for each other has bolstered their love for the arts and has informed their relationships to world culture in general, and La Romita, specifically.
2010 was a challenge for us at La Romita as it was for most of us on the planet. Changing economic realities are unavoidable sometimes, but we’ve weathered them and hope that you have too. I will soon post some pictures here of some of the amazing times we had this past season.
Hi Edmund and Ben and Enza. Such good news in this first newsletter… a great success and celebration go to Ben and Enza on 50 years of marriage. 6 friends are planning a trip for late september and october of next year… hope we can drop by and see every one .. we are doing a cooking tour,,through the region… i would love for everyone to meet you all and perhaps have lunch together when we are near by.. take care and best wishes for the newsletter and all of this media connectedness.. Good health to every one. Betsy and Alex Allen. Bob Rankin says hello!
Congratulations Ben and Enza on the occasion of your 50th wedding anniversary and wishing you many more.
Earl and I continue to talk about our fist trip to Italy and share with those who are polite enough to sit through all of our pictures from that wonderful trip.
Best to all,
Michol and Earl Gebel
Bon giorno, La Romita! I love the new website, videos, & the blog. Enza talked in the videos about La Romita fostering life long friendships, and that is certainly what happened with the people who came with Ken O’Connell in 2006 (and many again in 2008). In fact, we enjoyed sketching together in Umbria so much, that those of us in Eugene, Oregon, decided we wanted to continue to do that (see our website, topdrawers.org). Since 2008, we also have a Portland, Oregon, adjunct group, called BASA (you’ll have to ask them what it stands for!). We all try to get together a couple of times a year to continue our arting together. Thanks so much for providing such a nurturing, rich environment!
Ciao!
Jane