Sicily

Chaotic. Grungy. Noisy. Compelling. That's Palermo, Sicily in four words. 

Palermo was my home base for a trip to Italy during the first week of October. The purpose of the trip was for me to give the keynote talk at the 10th Audit Quality Workshop -- a gathering of 100 or so faculty and PhD students primarily from European universities. My slide deck is pretty fascinating, so hit me up if you want to get the skinny on audit research trends and tips. OK, maybe not. Anyway, this conference is held every two years and is always in Italy. I attended in Florence in 2016 but had kind of forgotten about it since then, so I was glad to get the invitation. 

I had a day and a half to myself before some of my friends arrived, so of course I spent it wandering half strategically and half aimlessly. The first point I'll make is that I think Palermo may have more old churches per square mile than anywhere I've ever been. Maybe it's tied to the absolution ka-ching from hundreds of years of Mafia activity?? I dunno. But it's truly remarkable. I always enjoy popping into random ones as I stumble across them, but three that I can for sure recommend are within about 20 steps of each other in the Piazza Bellini -- San Cataldo (12th century), St. Mary of the Admiral (ditto), and Santa Caterina de Alessandria (14th century). The first is my favorite of the three because it's tiny and dark; the second is bigger and pretty extra in a Baroque sort of way; and the third is really big with interior architecture and other stuff that is right out of a fever dream. I realize Rick Steves isn't going to hire me to write any of his content based on those characterizations, but that's how I see things.

San Cataldo

St. Mary of the Admiral

  

Santa Catarina

Next stop ... Church of Jesus (aka Chiesa del Gesù di Casa Professa). This one is originally from the 16th century and is beyond words. Looks totally simple on the outside, but once you get inside you get a very different picture. Heavy baroque decor and a bunch of old frescoes and such, but in WW2 a bomb collapsed the main dome and it took them 50+ years to rebuild a good bit of the interior. As a result, you have the old stuff juxtaposed with what I refer to as Graphic Novel Jesus. The effect is fascinating.

I think most people who do the church thing in Palermo probably focus on the Palermo Cathedral and the Palatine Chapel -- which are very interesting, with their combined Arab and Norman architecture and influences -- as well as the Cathedral in Monreale, which is about a 20 minute Uber ride up the hill. But Gesu definitely was the church highlight for me. While I'm thinking about it, though, the trip to Monreale is worth taking. The Cathedral was begun in the late 12th century and is an Italian national monument. I've heard it's a madhouse during summer but there were barely any people there when I visited. You can access the roof and bell tower and the adjoining monastery as well, and Monreale is just a cool little town to wander around in. Plus the King of Magnets lives there.

On the way back from Monreale, I got to experience the glories of Palermo traffic first-hand. I'd noticed it was crazy and had heard that it was among the worst in Europe, but I timed my trip up to Monreale pretty carefully in an attempt to avoid one of the three "bad time" windows. The trip up was about 20 minutes. Trip back was at 50 minutes when I decided to just get out of the Uber about 2 miles (aka 30 minutes) from my final destination. There are lanes. Technically. But if you decide to ignore them, it's fine / expected. Plus more often than not there are two cars simultaneously sharing a single lane. Motorcyles are constantly weaving in and out on both sides (frequently going the wrong direction). As my Uber driver commented -- completely unprompted -- about 45 minutes into the return trip, "Palermo traffic is war." When I first got there, my thinking was that the only place I'd seen that was worse was Istanbul, but I'm now going to say that Palermo might well take the cake. If you do go and if you are planning on driving or being driven ANYWHERE, just try to make it between 9-11:30 and 1:30-4:00. But even at that, expect chaos.

On Thursday other people started arriving, so I went with a couple of my friends to Cefalu - about an hour to the east by train. It's an easy trip and wasn't high season, but the weather was warm and there were (conservatively) about 70,000 people trying to get to the beach ... all via the same train. We somehow managed to get seats but people were standing all over each other in the aisles. Cefalu itself is a charming little village once you get off the 2-3 main streets. One of the people I went with wanted to hike to the top of the mountain that shadows the town (there are ruins about 2/3 of the way up and a castle at the top), so I joined her in that quest. In hindsight, it would've been better to just hang out and wander, but it was an interesting climb. The first picture I've included below is stolen from another website, but it gives you a pretty good flavor of the place, and you can see the mountain as the backdrop as well. The one after is an aerial view from the hike about halfway up. Anyway, I definitely recommend a day trip to Cefalu, especially if you are there in the off season. The cathedral is supposed to be cool but it was closed when we were there.

As for the conference, it started Friday morning. People seemed to enjoy / get something out of my 75-minute talk, and a good friend of mine (Hi, Jaime!) and I managed to give some hopefully useful feedback to three PhD students who presented in the session we chaired that afternoon. That night, we all went to the conference dinner at the Santa Caterina monastery, and I hung out for a good long while afterwards with friends from different European universities. I think I headed back to the apartment around 1:30 and it felt (as always) like the evening's activity in the city was just getting started.

Other notable random things ... 

1. I highly recommend Alessandro's apartment. It's an easy walk to the main sights and to the streets where most of the action is. But it's about 100 yards off of the Via Roma, so it's totally quiet at night. If you've spent any time at all in similar areas, you'll realize how important that is. The apartment has dual balconies, is spacious, and Alessandro is a great guy. His pottery shop is right around the corner so you can check out his wares and support the local economy there.
    
2. If you are into old things (jewelry, random heirlooms, table decorations, paintings, who knows what else), you definitely need to visit Fecarotta Antichità. The shop has been in the same family for seven generations, the current guy is terrific, and they have a lot of cool stuff.
   
   
3. For another great small shop experience, stop in at Antica Cravatteria. It's a classy little hole-in-the-wall, centrally located, with a good selection of ties. I realize that basically nobody wears ties anymore, but I'm one of them (a tie-wearing person, not a tie) and I try to find places like this whenever I travel.
   
   
4. I really want to visit this guy's apartment. It's between the Church of the Gesu and Antica Cravatteria, and trust me ... you can't miss it.

Where was I? Oh yes ... the conference ended at lunch on Saturday, and I flew back to Rome that afternoon to break up my trip back to Kansas. I stayed in a town on the coast, Ostia, that is about a 20-minute drive from the airport. There are some well-preserved Roman ruins on the edge of town, but I didn't get there in time to go check them out. I did, however, roam around town a bunch, taking in as much of the local flavor as I could. After getting away from the center of town and turning down a couple of side streets, I found a likely looking pizza shop with a small counter and two tables. Nobody spoke English but I managed to get the point across, and the owner seemed pretty excited to see me. Maybe somebody told her about my slides?? As I started on my pizza, an English-speaking (sort of) friend of the owner came in, talked to her, and asked me whether I'd ever tried "suppli" before. When I said I hadn't, the owner told her to ask me if I would like her to make some for me ... to which I responded "si" (because that's how good I am). So about 10 minutes later, she brings out a couple of fried-on-the-outside croquette-type things, one filled with potato and tomato and one filled with rice and cheese. I thought they were quite good, which made me even more popular. Anyway, if you ever find yourself in Ostia, definitely stop in at Pizzeria al 26. It's extremely local, and you get a big pizza and a local brew for 10 euros (never mind the free suppli if the owner likes you). I can also safely recommend Hotel Sirenetta. It's nothing super-special, but it has a good vibe, is 100 yards or so from the beach, and has a nifty kindasorta library-themed bar and breakfast area.

I guess that's a wrap. Italy is my favorite European country, and what I saw of Sicily was a nice complement to where I've been previously. I'm not sure I'd have a huge desire to return (whereas I would happily go to the Tuscany region every year), but it does have a good bit going for it. They're talking about Cremona for 2026, which would be cool. We shall see ...

Cheers,

Mike

Curacao

I've had a reminder set since the second week in January that has been nagging me to put together a quick piece on our trip to Curacao so that I wouldn't forget stuff about it. Four months later I'm finally getting around to it, so we'll see how much I actually remember.

Basically, I decided back in November that Paige and I should go somewhere in the Caribbean right after New Year's because Hollis had to head back to A&M a lot earlier than he ordinarily would. I have a conference every year in mid-January, but the time between New Year's and then is pretty dead on campus, so a quick trip seemed like a decent enough idea.

And it was.

After a couple weeks of painstaking research - largely trying to figure out a place light on tourists and heavy on right-off-the-beach snorkeling - I decided on Curacao. In case you aren't familiar with it (I wasn't), Curacao is one of the three Dutch "ABC" islands about 40 miles off the coast of Venezuela. I'd heard people say that it's like being in the Netherlands but in the Caribbean, but the only real parallels I could see were the language (occasionally) and the fact that there are some typically Dutch colorful buildings in Willemstad.

Anyway, we left on January 2 and stayed for five nights. It's an easy trip - less than 3 hours to Miami from KC and then maybe 3 hours from there to Curacao. Recommended rental car company is Advance Car Rental. They're not actually at the airport, but they have a guy there who drives you across the street to where they keep the cars. It looks a little sketchy at first, but the online reviews are uniformly positive, prices are great and include insurance, and the guy who runs the place is super-nice. We were in and out in like three minutes and had no issues on either end of the transaction.

We spent the first couple of nights at the Villa Tokara Boutique Hotel just outside of Willemstad, which is the main population center on the island. It's probably a 20-minute walk from the hotel to Willemstad proper. I walked down there one afternoon by myself when Paige was doing something else, but didn't really see much to recommend it. I mean if you're on a cruise ship and get off and want to look at shops or whatever I guess it's fine, but I wouldn't wanna do either of those things so obviously the appeal wouldn't be great for me. The hotel is nice and is easy walking distance from several good restaurants (Soi95 was particularly noteworthy), but mainly we just used the first couple of nights to kind of get accustomed to the area before heading off to the northwest part of the island.

Before doing that, though, we did go to one secluded south-side beach - Director's Bay, which is maybe a 25-minute drive from Willemstad. The beach is public but used to be owned by the top brass at Shell Oil Company. Snorkeling was decent here, but I think it could be rough if the wind and waves weren't right. There were only two other people on the beach when we went, and it was an easy place to get re-accustomed to snorkeling. Speaking of which, Diep Curacao is your best bet for renting gear. They'll bring gear to you and pick it up from you anywhere in Willemstad, and they rent for a fraction of the cost of the dive shops. Director's Bay is also very close to Fort Beekenburg, which is a 300+ year-old castle (remains of a castle, anyway) that was built to protect the bay. There isn't a whole lot to do there, but it's kinda cool nonetheless.

After a couple nights in kinda-sorta Willemstad, we headed an hour or so to the far northwest corner of the island to our digs at Landhuis Klein Santa Maria. We were there for three nights and had an absolutely terrific time. It feels more like a guesthouse than a hotel -- a couple of big upstairs rooms and then maybe 2-3 smaller rooms downstairs and a separate casita type thing on the other side of the parking lot. There's a restaurant on-site serving good, typically local fare (verrrry much on island time, of course), and the setting is wonderful. The fourth shot below is from the outdoor restaurant area where we had dinner every night, right around sunset. All that and the price is less than you'd have to spend at a Holiday Inn in Lawrence. No joke.

We spent our three days in the area snorkeling different beaches, reading outside at the hotel with the lizards and parakeets, driving around exploring random areas, and just hanging out. The beaches we hit were Playa Jeremi, Klein Knip, and Grote Knip. All three are in protected coves with coral on both sides and water gradually getting maybe 30-40 feet deep. Snorkeling from the beach in these spots is simple, and the variety of fish is outstanding. On a couple of the days we probably saw 70-80 different species, and at Playa Jeremi we spent some time swimming with sea turtles as well. Plus, there just weren't very many people around. There are larger beaches closer to Willemstad where you can hang out with 1,000+ of your closest friends, but it seems that nobody wants to drive an hour. Hallelujah.

We also went to Shete Boka National Park, which is on the northeast coast, to see a couple of the areas where the surf is rough and big waves do their thing. Doing anything at all in the water on the windward side is a total no-go but it does make for some interesting viewing. We also spent some time driving through Christoffel National Park, and I probably would try to carve out another day to do some hiking there if I were to go back again.

I guess that's about it. If you're thinking about some sort of island adventure that is easy, relatively affordable, and less touristy than most places, I can highly recommend Curacao. I'm hoping we can do something like this every year after New Year's, but with different islands. Man plans and God laughs, of course, but we'll see how things go.

Cheers,

Mike

The Texas Times, Volume 30

As the title notes, this year marks the 30th annual installment of the Texas Times. Crazy. I started putting these things together the year that Reagan was born, which means that he turned 30 this year (see how good I am at math?) ... which of course further means that Paige and I are closing in on 45. Time flies.

Kids

Reagan and Hunter are still doing their bachelor-brothers-sharing-a-house-but-living-totally-separate-lives thing in Austin. Reagan's company has been pounded by higher interest rates and he is looking for new and better software engineering opportunities. Meanwhile, Hunter continues to enjoy his work as a back-end developer at Televet. They hosted the family's Thanksgiving celebration this year, and it was great to be able to hang out with everybody for a few days.

Hadley is still working for Jeff Hamilton - State Farm in College Station and injuring herself in every way imaginable playing rec sports (including dislocating her shoulder while swinging a bat). We helped her move into a new apartment ... on the third floor ... in July ... so that was as much fun as it sounds. Hollis is finishing up his undergrad at A&M a year early and will continue into the final year of the PPA program (Master's degree in Accounting) next fall. No clue what he'll end up doing work-wise but he's hoping it will be something tax / consulting-oriented.

Us

Paige is halfway through her seventh year as Dean at KU. The big news is that she secured a $50 million gift for the Business School this summer - the 10th largest gift to a public School of Business ever. Dang, girl. She continues to refine her skills at administrative Whack-a-Mole and has firmly convinced me that no story involving Higher Ed should ever begin with the phrase, "You're not going to believe this, but ..." As for me, I enjoyed my time with the MAcc and PhD students and made the world a little safer through the magic and mystery of accounting research, and the Senior Editor gig at the Auditing journal hasn't been as bad as I'd feared (knock on wood). I would love it if Paige and I both could change gears entirely, but I'm not sure what that might look like. I've tried to convince her that we should become crofters in the Orkney islands, but she's skeptical about my grasp of sheep husbandry and her ability to find stores that sell 44-ounce beverages. I would quite literally clear out my desk and get on a plane tomorrow, but until I can get more buy-in I guess I'll keep the fire lit in my ivory tower (while hoping, as always, that no one climbs the spiral staircase and demands that I defend my existence).

Travel

I gave a couple of talks in the Netherlands and Greece and was supposed to do the same in Saudi Arabia last week, but that one got canceled as a result of the Palestinian terrorist activity in Gaza. Paige and I made a 10-day vacation out of the Netherlands gig, made countless runs to Texas, did a few quick trips to other places in the States (including seeing Fritz and Fiona), and we're capping off our 34th anniversary celebration with five days in Curacao right after New Year's. Should be a nice break from early winter in the Midwest. I have invitations for Belgium and Sicily for 2024, but my interest in work-related travel has nose-dived (nose-dove??) recently so we'll see how things play out.

Books

As usual, I'll bypass the considerable stack of old stuff I read this year and make my recommendations from more modern titles. My #1 recommendation is A Gentleman in Moscow, by Amor Towles (who wrote Rules of Civility, which I recommended a couple years ago). You should also consider The Shadow of the Wind (Carlos Ruiz Zaffon), Cloud Cuckoo Land (Anthony Doerr, who wrote All the Light We Cannot See), The Secret History (Donna Tartt, who wrote The Goldfinch), We Must Not Think of Ourselves (Lauren Grodstein), The Dean's Watch (Elizabeth Goudge), and On the Marble Cliffs (Ernst Junger). The last two books were published in 1960 and 1939, respectively, but that's recent enough for me to think of them as not being "old." I'll also do you the favor of suggesting that you stay Very Far Away from The Narrow Road Between Desires (Patrick Rothfuss). It took Mr. Rothfuss 10 years to put together the most recent entry in the Kingkiller Chronicles (which is an outstanding series), and his muse appears to have left for greener pastures.

Music

There's an album for many different tastes in this year's music list. No R&B, no Taylor Swift (!!!), no whiny boys trying to be the next Bon Iver, and no indie girls sitting cross-legged on their beds playing the ukulele and breathily lamenting their relationship problems ... but if you're looking for high-quality obscurity, you've come to the right place.

• Matteo Mancuso - The Journey ... Mind-bending and genre-defying rock / jazz / fusion guitar (all instrumental), somewhat reminiscent of Eric Johnson but better and plays with bare fingers like a classical guitarist. Here's a representative track.
  
  
• Mighty Poplar - Mighty Poplar ... Americana / Bluegrass goodness featuring at least two of the original players from Punch Brothers plus Andrew Marlin from Watchhouse (formerly Mandolin Orange). Here's a live performance of my favorite track from the album.
  
  
• Colter Wall - Little Songs ... Not quite as good as his previous albums but still good. Try this one.
  
  
• Christopher Tin - The Lost Birds (full set) and To Shiver the Sky (full set) ... Similar to Colter Wall being what Johnny Cash would be like if Johnny Cash were actually talented, Christopher Tin is like Eric Whitacre sans pretense.
  
  
• Dylan Leblanc - Coyote ... Singer-songwriter stuff with frequently moody and well-considered orchestration. Paige heard me listening to him a few nights ago and was like "who is that??" So that's a thumbs-up from The Boss. Try this one.
  
  
• Dirty Honey - Can't Find the Brakes ... Think early Black Crowes, sort of. Best comment is from a friend who simply said "Yeah, that does not sound like it was made in 2023." Correct. Try this one.

Video

All recommendations are from Across the Pond, as is my custom. We tried watching a much heralded U.S. show last week -- A Murder at the End of the World -- and 10 minutes in I'd found it unbearable. Wait, we actually liked Outer Range quite a bit, and that is a U.S. show (Amazon Prime original) from this year. So I stand semi-corrected. Other than that, my top recommendations are Payback; the new season of Dalgliesh; the new season of Shetland (Tosh is doing just fine as temporary DCI, thank you very much); The Thief, His Wife, and the Canoe; Neboa; The Dublin Murders; Holding; Karen Pirie; Spies of Warsaw (made in 2013 but we didn't watch it until this year); and all of the seasons of C.B. Strike. 

Food

After much deliberation, I decided this week that I would share my chili recipe. You can find it here. It has been a work-in-process for many years, but I've stopped fiddling and it's now ready to blow your mind.

Words

I have two entries in the Prohibited Words list this year. The first and most important entry is "perfect." My momentum for banning this word has been building for the last couple of years, but the following actual conversation with Coffee Shop Girl (CSG) in mid-2023 pushed me over the edge:

Me: I'd like a medium Americano, please
CSG: PurrrrFECt! (jumping about 3 whole steps between the Purrrr and the FECt)
CSG: Hot or cold?
Me:  Hot, please (rolls eyes because no man almost 45 years old drinks cold coffee)
CSG: PurrrrrrrrrrFECt! 
CSG: Cream?
Me: Nope
CSG: PurrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrFECt!
CSG: That'll be $4.00
Me: [taps card ... hears beep]
CSG: PurrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrFECt!

No joke. 

Next, we have "space." Universities love to refer to themselves as "spaces" ... like spaces that allow people to be their "authentic selves" (no, I don't know what that means either) or ensure that people feel like they "belong" or whatever other pandering wordplay seems proper as we continue to encourage fragility and navel-gazing among young people instead of preparing them to be productive, independent adults. Henceforth, my rules say that "space" may only be used when referring to the zone above our planet, the bar at the bottom of your computer keyboard, or politicians (as in a "waste of ...").

On the plus side of the ledger, I saw something today that referred to "phubbing," so of course I had to look that up. The Cambridge Dictionary indicates that phubbing is "the act of ignoring someone you are with and giving attention to your cell phone instead." While I've often stated that if I could eradicate one invention in the History of Mankind it would be the cell phone (shakes fist at cloud), I'll also note that those of you who are phubbing someone as you read my blog are totally good.

Whatever the case, I hope all of you have a wonderful Christmas / New Year / & Etc. Our kids have begun arriving and will be here for varying lengths of time. I am ready to embrace the chaos. 

God Bless,

Mike (& Paige)

Thessaloniki

Last week, I had the pleasure of traveling to Thessaloniki, Greece to present a paper, discuss another one, and help with the PhD Student Consortium at the bi-annual European Audit Research Network conference. I don't usually travel much during fall because that is when I teach, but I've attended this conference before (and had a good time) and I'd never been to Greece ... so ... I handed off my Tuesday PhD seminar to a couple of junior faculty and gave the MAcc students Wednesday off. Paige wasn't able to come along because there is no way she could spare 5-6 days in September, but I managed to have a good time anyway.

Travel through Chicago and Frankfurt was relatively uneventful, and I landed late Tuesday afternoon about 16 hours after leaving KC. Walked around a bit with my friend Anna from Vrije University (Amsterdam) down by the seaside and had dinner at a terrific rooftop restaurant overlooking Aristotelous Square.

On Wednesday, a buddy of Anna's who works at a university in Sweden but is a Thessaloniki native (because that is how Europe works) drove us 2 1/2 hours to Meteora, a collection of Eastern Orthodox monasteries built hundreds of years ago on top of a series of rocky outcroppings up in the mountains. It is an extremely cool place, but the dozens upon dozens of gigantic buses toting tourists around did manage to take the edge off a little bit. I definitely recommend going if you are nearby because it is a one-of-a-kind experience regardless. But if you can manage to hit it during the off-season, that would be even better.

The next morning, I spent a few hours walking a big loop from the hotel (the Mediterranean Palace, highly recommended) around some of the more interesting / historic parts of town. The first half of the loop ran up through the old Ano Poli neighborhoods past several orthodox churches, the 1st century Roman Forum, a monastery, and various sections of late Roman era walls and towers. 

As usual, though, some of the more appealing bits were just random glimpses of life in the area's many labyrinthine streets and alleys. Some of this part of town reminds me of the Albaicin neighborhoods in Granada, although Thessaloniki in general isn't as appealing to me as Granada (which was the high point of our trip to Spain in 2019).

After spending some time poking around in the neighborhoods near the old walls, I meandered back downhill toward the bay and checked out the Rotunda (sort of a poor man's Pantheon), the Arch of Galerius (Caesar), and some of the ruins of his 4th century palace. All of these things are right in the middle of town, and many of the office and apartment buildings that were constructed in the 1950s and 1960s apparently were built on ground that covers similar (perhaps less expansive???) ruins. They've been trying to build a subway system in Thessaloniki since the 1980s, but there are so many Roman era ruins underground that they've encountered almost continual delays. Some of the system is supposed to be finished in 2024 and I guess we'll see how things go from there.

The rest of my time in town was spent doing stuff with the conference, but we had a productive time there, did a lot of useful mixing and mingling, ate really good food (apparently it is impossible NOT to do that in Greece), and even had an interesting folk music and dance exhibition at the conference dinner event Saturday night. As for specific restaurants, the Elektra Palace Hotel is home to the rooftop restaurant (which was excellent), and we also really enjoyed Charoupi (Greek / Cretan fusion stuff) and Rodi Kai Meli (aka Ρόδι & Μέλι,). Our 20-ish waitress at the latter place moved (errrr ... fled) to Greece from Ukraine shortly after the war began and was one of the happiest, most endearing people I've ever met.

Overall, I wouldn't push Thessaloniki as a must-go destination, but it is an interesting city with a vibe that is very different from most of the places I've been ... probably more similar to Istanbul (minus the minarets and calls to prayer) than anywhere else. I'd very much like to go to Athens and some of the islands, and I certainly can see that happening one of these days. But only when I can get The Boss to come along.

Cheers,

Mike