Michele Roohani

I had the best coffee in Los Angeles  last week at Caffé Luxxe. Following  a tip from the director of Coffee Quality Institute—aka the Cupper Gods—I experienced the joy of having a real espresso outside europe: “espresso should have a rich honey-like texture topped off with a velvety, dark red-brown “crema.” This is the sign of una bella tazza di espresso: a beautiful cup of espresso.”

Here is my first cappuccino:

I was so sick and tired of (at best mediocre and at worst just plain bad) coffee served in the chain stores. The horror in the eyes of my european friends  after receiving a bit of bitter coffee in the bottom of a big paper cup has always amused me! It looks like they are serving you what’s left from the previous customer…

I went back this morning for an early cup and standing at the counter, Italian bar style, I read a horrifying article about Putin and Georgia (call me a masochist) and remembered all the problems I was trying to forget… The great coffee brought back the vanished smile to my face!

They have a great Synesso machine and Yaniv, the talented barista creates these fabulous cups with panache! To see how, watch this short clip and if you have a better attention span (read more than 30 seconds) watch this one on the craft of making coffee art.

So is coffee good for us? An excellent article on the subject by Jane Brody in New York Times has some answers.

Finding a European style café that serves great espresso in Los Angeles can almost make one forget the world’s problems.  Now If you really want to be scared just look at this map from Le Monde Diplomatique.

How is that for a nightmare in the making? Not only we are not at the End of History  but people like Fukumaya should start paying attention to the latest conflict involving Russia!  You take Kosovo, we take Georgia and Moldova!! Be scared people, be very scared…

“I cannot forecast to you the action of Russia. It is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma: but perhaps there is a key. That key is Russian national interests.”  Winston Churchill

These are sobering times - now you know why I needed to find a good cup of joe.

My smile got bigger and bigger as I continued listening to Professor Riccardo Zipoli talking about Iran in his near perfect Persian; but then I got a bit frustrated remembering that in spite of speaking three languages myself, I have to applaud every non-Persian who can say 4 words in my mother tongue! Listen to him talk here to see what I mean by Zipoli’s flawless Persian.

These two pictures are from the Professor’s huge archive. He has a soft spot for the rural landscape/people of Iran.

Born near Florence, teaching in Venice, reciting Sohrab Sepehri better than most of the natives has endeared Zipoli to Persians. I particularly like his Tree series. You can find more of his pictures on his site.

Looking at these images made me nostalgic so I went to look for some pictures from my last trip to Iran about 14 years ago. Here is one of my favorites from the Shah’s Mosque in Isfahan, a marvel of Safavid art. I still remember my awe in front of all these magnificent architectural wonders.

“If you come to visit me
Come gently and slowly lest the fragile china
Of my solitude cracks”
به سراغ من اگر مي‌آييد،
نرم و آهسته بياييد، مبادا كه ترك بردارد
چيني نازك تنهايي من
“Si vous venez m’y chercher,
Venez-vous-en donc lentement et doucement
De crainte que ne se raye
La porcelaine de ma solitude.” Sohrab Sepehri

And for all of you people who are still looking for a Persian in Venice, I am sharing this picture I took some years ago.

Una furtiva lagrima
negli occhi suoi spunt�…

A sullen and secretive tear
That started there in her eye…

Una furtiva lagrima, Nemorino’s aria from L’Elisir d’Amore

Pavarotti died two days ago. I remember the first time i heard him and got my operatic learning from this chubby affable Italian with a voice from heaven; I had this one cassette and kept listening to it for months in my car in the early eighties. I was trying to “educate” myself in OPERA (and a little bit of latin and italian to understand his lyrics in the pre-internet era). I later bought the CD, and the rest is history…I couldn’t be indifferent to his death, so I put together some of the pictures that I could find from the Metropolitan Opera and I made the image above. The photo below is Pavarotti in 1968.

Incidentally, a very dear friend of my family, Jamshid Askari, passed away last week at exactly the same age of 71; he was as gentle and kind as an angel with a beautiful voice to match. Roohash Shaad.

i’ve been to Venice, Italy some years ago but i think that i would probably not go back to this beautiful but over-crowded city for a while - as usual i like it better when it’s empty of the unwashed masses. Venice has been home to the great Titian, Veronese and Tintoretto (cinquecento Venice) and Casanova…

i was moved by Venice and its 120 islands on the Adriatic sea but i loved it most at 5:30 in the morning. after years i still like these pictures i took one foggy morning when everybody was asleep.

“I stood in Venice on the Bridge of Sighs, a palace and prison on each hand” Lord Byron

i never particularly liked Turner - i didn’t know him much and i found it exasperating that 10 of his paintings were hung side by side in a museum in london (all yellow seas) - it all changed the day that i bought (in 2004) a book called Turner and Venice. i was humbled by the beauty of his paintings (all blue skies) and sketches. i’ve been watching Simon Schama’s “Power of Art” on pbs and he talks about Turner in one of the eight episodes (among other giants like Picasso, Rembrandt, David and Rothko).

i would love to go back to Venice one day when it snows and everybody else is at Disneyland.

they say: “While Beethoven wrote seven concertos, Brahms four and Bach, Haydn, Handel and Mozart at most a few dozen, Vivaldi wrote over 500 (and more are being uncovered each year)! When you’re that prolific, some recycling and lapsing into formula is inevitable.” the funnier version would be that Vivaldi didn’t write hundreds of concerti but only one concerto hundreds of times! i fell in love with Baroque violin virtuoso, Giuliano Carmignola, a few years back; it was astonishing to hear Vivaldi’s over-exposed, over-played (ad nauseam) “Four Seasons” in a different way: the presto of summer has never been this fast combined with some feverish allegro sections.

listen to some of his music, or even better watch the short video clip - he’s amazing; Carmignola has mostly played with the Venice Baroque Orchestra using their period-instruments which makes the performance sound the way that the old Venetian, Vivaldi, would have imagined, composed and conducted it…

unfortunately, the above images are not mine - i tried to catch his southern california concert a couple of years ago but he stood us up! got sick on the plane from Venice or got scared of our governor.