In “Sabbatical,” one of my all-time favorite poems, Julia Randall writes about the hated cleanup, focusing at one point on the logic of keeping a piano, despite its having one lame key joint. The line that comes back to me (and I dearly hope I have remembered it word for word) goes like this:

I don’t think it was laziness always to repeat the same sonata.

If these adventures are our sabbaticals, they leave us to wonder often if Spoleto is our strictly repeated sonata. Sunday, from start to finish, the verdict was a resounding vote for a small, precious, polished gem. Little to nothing all day long was the same: the list (as I start it) would bore you.

Suffice it to say, that long and winding road leads us to the doorway of Osteria del Trivio, our Sunday evening haunt for classic Italian eating. Last week, when the owner wasn’t there to greet us, we worried. But again tonight, with him MIA, a full-fledged dread has firmly settled in. Between the half-closed window and the open door, which says more?

The Photo opts, intended here, fall victim to the Wi-Fi bug.