thisweekinitaly.com

Why a special double issue? Because I will be in USA from August 28 to
September 28, mainly to attend my son’s wedding on September 20. Newsletters
will probably not be sent during this period. In USA I can be reached at
717-334-7327 except August 16-21 when I will be in Los Angeles for the
wedding. On those dates I will be at the Millennium Biltmore Hotel at
213-624-1011.

Old Italian Films

Whereas in USA you can get almost any old film of at least some importance
on both DVD and videotape, in Italy this is not so. The DVD offerings are
not extensive. Italy may be a smaller market in which a film must be more
important (e.g. more potential buyers) to be put on videotape and DVD. A
classic film of Fellini is “I Vitellone.” It is not on DVD and is only
available to buy, not rent, on videotape.

In My Building

On the first floor is the local office of the national hunters’ association.
At times there is a crowd at the door waiting for the office to open. I
assume one can get a hunter’s license and/or the rules for the hunting
season at this office, and this is the reason for the crowd. The crowd
reminds me of the folks ones sees in Redding’s Hardware and Gun Shop in
Gettysburg. All that is missing are the pick-up trucks with the gun racks
behind the front seats.

Surgeon General’s Warning on Cigarettes — Italian Style

Italian cigarette packages, as those in the USA, contain a health warning.
But the warning is not uniform on all packages. There are different versions
of it that warn of different health risks from smoking. The warnings are
printed in different sizes of type — some large some smaller. I don’t know
if (1) there is a set of warnings and each manufacturer must use all of
these warnings — at least one of them on every package, (2) there is a set
of approved warnings and the manufacturer can choose which one it wants to
use on its packages, or (3) manufacturers can submit a proposed warning to
the government agency for approval. My guess is that the answer is # 1.
Anyway I saw one warning, in very big letters, that I think you will not see
in the USA. One one side of package it said: “Smoking obstructs the arteries
and causes heart attacks and strokes.” On the other side it simply said:
“Smoking kills.” I don’t know if the rate of smoking in Italy is going up,
down, or is level. It is clear that more adults smoke in Italy than in the
USA.

Tourists Littering in Italy

You may have seen the story in American papers about the churches in Italy
cracking down on tourists who litter. There were photos of tourists being
asked to get off the steps of the Cathedral in Florence. Someone sent me one
of these articles. The article really spoke of two problems. One was people
who sleep on the church steps and use them as a personal bathroom. These
people sound like Italian street people, not tourists. The other group was
those who eat on the church steps and leave their litter there. It’s ironic
that Italian officials will grouse about these folks — the Italians litter
everywhere. Maybe the Germans would have a right to complain about such
tourists in Germany, but in Italy the complaint rings a little hollow

What Do I Do With My Dirty Car?

As I noted last week, car washing is forbidden in Pistoia during the
drought, but don’t worry. If your dirty car bothers you, you can take it to
the Car Wash. These businesses are still open.

A Basketball Game

I went to see the Italian National Women’s Team play the women from the
University of Iowa. The Iowa team was at a disadvantage. It had only
practiced together for 10 days before its European tour. Also in Europe they
use international rules and a bigger (men’s size) basketball. Italy won
115-54. Clearly the Italian team was better, probably on the level of the
best collegiate women’s teams in USA. European basketball is at least at the
level of American soccer. The American team in the soccer World Cup could
play with the good European teams fairly evenly. In the last men’s World
Basketball Championship, the USA sent a team of second string NBA players,
and this team lost the championship.

The Palio in Siena

I watched this famous race around the center of the Campo in Siena on TV.
Well I did not quite see it “live.” Let me explain. The twelve horse race
has no starting gate. Horses line up in order at a rope which then is
dropped to start the race. Needless to say, it is hard to get the horses to
take their places in line behind this rope and stay steady until the start.
I saw seven unsuccessful attempts to start the race including two false
starts. At 8:00 pm the one hour alloted for live coverage of the Palio ended
(without the race having started) and the 8 o’clock news came on. At end of
news there was a videotape of most of the race including, as usual, horses
smashing into the sides of the narrow track around the Campo. The pageantry
is beautiful. The race is mayhem.

Other Palios

Other cities have copied the idea of Siena of having a competition among the
various areas of the city. In Pistoia it is the Giostra di Orso where
mounted horsemen joust at a target of a bear. Last week I saw the Palio of
Serravalle Pistoiese — an archery contest among representatives of the four
areas of the city. The archers looked like extras from a Robin Hood film.
But unlike the Robin Hood film, there was no archer who split in two with
his arrow an arrow that was already in the bull’s eye of the target. I think
that happens strictly in the movies.

Garbage Service is Not Free

I wrote earlier that one takes his or her garbage to a dumpster along the
street, and there seemed to be no charge for this service. Well this month I
got my portion of the bill assessed against all the residents of my building
for garbage services. This is the only such bill I have received in my
almost one year here. My share was about $38. Still a good deal.

Coping with Dead August

Since so many things are closed in August, especially the second half of the
month, the town publishes a list of what stores and services are open
including how to get medical and dental services during August. A nice
service for residents.

August Sales

Apparently January and August are the two big sale months. Many stores now
have everything marked down 50%. In many cases, however, this means, as my
good friend Breen Murray once said “the prices are marked down from sky-high
to merely ridiculous.”

Folding a Document

I now have to joy of waiting in line again at the Police Station to get my
permission to stay in Italy renewed for a year. In preparation, I made a
photocopy made of my current permission form. When I folded the original
copy and the photocopy to put them in my pocket, the person who made the
copy for me said “don’t fold it.” When an Italian presents an official
document to a government official, it is unfolded and in a plastic sleeve.
Just a small example of how official documents are much more important in
Italy than in the USA. I figure if it is readable, who cares if it is
folded.

Motorcycles and Motor scooters.

In general the Italians like racing style motorcycles. You see fewer of the
Harley Davidson type of cycle here. Italians love motorcycles. I talked to
some Italians who had visited south central Pennsylvania. I asked them if
they went to Gettysburg. No, they only went to the Harley Davidson factory
in York, PA. Italians also have motor scoooters. We all remember the little
Vespa scooter on which Gregory Peck and Audrey Hepburn toured Rome in “Roman
Holiday.” These still exist, but there also are larger and more powerful
Motor scooters that really approach a small motorcycle in their speed. All
of these motorcycles and Motor scooters are plenty noisy as they barrel down
the stone canyons of the Italian city streets.

Foreign Films Dubbed into Italian

Twice I have seen a foreign film (one American and one German) dubbed into
Italian in which in one or more scenes the boom microphone used to record
the dialog was visible at the top of the screen. I’ve never seen this is a
film in USA except an X rated film for which the production standards are
not high (and the audience does not seem to mind). My guess is that
sometimes when a film is dubbed into Italian, a copy of the film is sent to
Italy before the final edited copy is complete so the Italians can get a
head start on the dubbing process in order to have the film ready for the
release date in Italy. I’ve been told that the projectionist can shrink the
image on the screen and thus hide the image of the boom microphone that
intrudes on the top of the screen, but it makes no sense to have the final
editing of a film depend upon the many projectionists in the theatres. So
in these two cases I think the copy of the film sent to Italy for dubbing
was not the final one.

Article of Interest from New York Times

Italian Puzzle: The Land That Doesn’t Seem to Fit
August 20, 2003 By FRANK BRUNI ROME

Italy has long occupied an odd place in Europe, too potent to be ignored but
too peculiar to be embraced. It is a member of all the right clubs, with an
undeniably awkward place at the table. In garnering more attention than
respect in recent months, Silvio Berlusconi, the prime minister, has
mirrored his country’s standing among wealthy Western nations. He is
arguably as much a symbol as a cause of the strange regard in which Italy is
held. Italy weds overarching political stability to underlying political
madness: a rapid-fire series of more than 50 governments since World War II.
That disarray is deepened by profound regional differences (an ultra-rich
north, a persistently poor south) that make Italy look all the more
incoherent to some of its neighbors. It is a major economic power, its
national output comparable to countries like France and Britain. But after
its defeat in World War II, it has never sought to be a military player of
any significance.

“Italy has always been considered the least reliable of the big states in
Europe,” said Roberto d’Alimonte, a political scientist in Florence,
comparing it with the other European countries – France, Germany and Britain
- in the G-7 group of the world’s richest industrialized democracies. Along
with Canada, Italy was included in that group at the last minute, as Paul
Ginsborg notes in his book, “Italy and its Discontents: 1980-2001.” “At the
reunions of this most exclusive of clubs, Italy’s prime ministers have
always appeared grateful to be there,” Mr. Ginsborg writes.

There are many reasons for Italy’s place at the bottom of the top of the
pack. One is that its leaders have been more inward looking than those of
its economic peers. “Fundamentally, the Italian political leadership has
been very parochial,” said Gianfranco Pasquino, a professor of political
science at the Johns Hopkins University campus in Bologna. Those leaders
were in some ways forced by the roller-coaster ride of Italian politics, he
said, to keep their gazes and energies fixed on Italy. “The struggle to
remain politically alive in Italy is obviously much more intense than to
remain a chancellor in Germany,” he said. “In Italy, you never know.”

Mr. Berlusconi wanted to change that; he craves nothing more than to be
taken seriously and to be viewed as the leader of a major power. But in many
ways, he illustrates another of Italy’s enduring problems: the porous, oddly
fuzzy boundaries between the public and the private domain. “With the
exception of France in the past but not in the present, the intertwining of
business and politics has been much, much greater in Italy than in any other
country,” said Stanley Crossick, the director of the European Policy Center,
a research group in Brussels. Mr. Crossick was referring to Western
democracies. There are few better examples than Mr. Berlusconi, whose
commingling of public and private power is unrivaled in Europe and has
prompted questions about whether democracy can truly flourish when one man
dominates so much of a country. He is not just the head of the Italian
government. He also owns more of the Italian media than anyone else,
including three of the seven national television networks. He can exert
influence over another three, which the government controls. He is Italy’s
wealthiest man, with a sprawling empire built over a span of decades in
which the spoils often went to the one who greased the right palms and
pulled the right strings. That has led to scores of corruption
investigations into his past and criminal charges against him, all of which
he has denied and none of which have ultimately stuck. It even led to a
trial earlier this year in Milan, where Mr. Berlusconi stood accused of
bribing judges in the mid-1980’s to influence the sale of a state-controlled
food conglomerate. When he testified in May, he said the only reason he got
involved in the bidding over the company was that Bettino Craxi, then the
prime minister, asked him to. He also maintained that other government
officials were trying to steer the conglomerate toward their preferred
buyers.

The scenario he painted was precisely the kind of thing that gives many
Europeans pause about Italy, and so was the way the trial came to an abrupt
halt – Parliament passed a law that gave the top Italian government
officials, including him, immunity from criminal prosecution during their
time in office. Italy’s ascent into the European Union presidency gave
Europeans an opportunity to express their misgivings. In the days before
Italy and Mr. Berlusconi took over, Information, a Danish newspaper,
asserted that Italy remained “a country in which nepotism, corruption and
dishonesty are incarnate in the political leader.” That was the context for
his inaugural appearance before the European Parliament in France, where a
German representative questioned Mr. Berlusconi’s ethics and the prime
minister responded by comparing him to a concentration camp official.

President Bush recently invited Mr. Berlusconi to his ranch in Crawford,
Tex. – a gesture of gratitude for Italian support, one that the Italian
leader relished. But, dogged by scandal, Mr. Berlusconi remains a figure who
has scarcely reinforced Italy’s desire to be seen as a major power. Once
again, the remark put Italy at the center of European attention, but once
again the reason seemed to be less its importance than its unpredictability.

The Drought

It continues in Central and Southern Italy. As in the USA there are both
restrictions on water usage (no washing the car or watering the garden) and
suggestions for conserving water. The suggestions include the usual items
such as take a shower instead of a bath, wash only a full load of clothes or
dishes or use a cycle with less water, etc. But there is one item on the
list in Italy that you don’t see in the USA – - recycle the water used to
cook the pasta to wash the dishes.

As in the USA religious leaders and parishioners are praying for rain. This
happened too in Pennsylvania over the past two years with the result that
winter 2002-03 and Spring 2003 were unusually wet. When people complained,
I reminded them that God was only answering their prayers. There is an
unusual fillip in Italy to such prayers. There is a group that prays the
Rosary on line over the Internet to call for the end of the drought.

The Forest Fires

They also continue. A headline in the paper said Pope “excommunicates”
pyromaniacs who start forest fires. The word excommunicates was in
quotation marks because actually the Pope only severely criticized such
persons. But you can tell the problem is important when the Pope is
involved.

I was struck by an article in the paper about a teenage boy who started such
a fire. The boy, who had no criminal record, said he started the fire to
get the attention of his parents who are divorcing. The boy’s explanation
of why he did it got a lot of coverage in the article. It would not have
received such extensive coverage in the USA. The Italians are less
judgmental about criminals and more sympathetic toward explanations of why
the crime occurred than people are in the USA. In this case too, divorce is
considered more traumatic for the children in Italy than it is in the USA.

Cycling in Italy

Last week I indicated that the Italians are not as successful in
professional bicycle racing as one would suspect from the strong emphasis on
cycling here. I watched on TV a major bike race in Spain, Classic of San
Sebastian, and Italians took the top five places. Maybe somebody showed the
Italian racers my newsletter.

Traffic Reports

Traffic reports in Italy tell about traffic throughout the country. There
are often live camera shots of key sections of the superhighways. In this
height of the vacation season, these shots often show traffic jams that are
miles long. The Italian highway system is simply inadequate for the demand
when the vacation season arrives.

Example 1001 That Nothing Tacky From the USA Fails to Find Its Way to Italy

I saw on TV a “funniest home videos” show in which many of the clips were
from the USA. The other high point of my TV watching was an old Roy Rogers
film in which I got to see and hear Gabby Hayes talk in Italian.

Vacation for the Judges

Italian judges get 45 days of vacation which they take around August like
everyone else. Meanwhile the average time for a legal case to come to a
conclusion is much longer in Italy than in any other European county. A
lawyer wrote an article in the newspaper calling these vacations a scandal,
but don’t look for any changes soon. Although it is certainly subject to
debate, some people think that the judiciary in Italy is too powerful and
not adequately checked by the other sections of the government. Because of
the perversion of the justice system under Fascism, this part of the
government was made extremely independent after WW II.

The Italian Economy

A friend asked me to write about the Italian economy because he had read
that Italy is in a recession. So here are my views — a longer entry. If you
only prefer short vignettes of live in Italy, you can stop reading here.

The Italian Economy is in a slight recession. I don’t know if it is better
or worse off than the economies of the rest of Europe. Berlusconi said a
while back that Italy was doing better than Germany, but Germany is taking
on the monumental task of uniting the East and West. In almost 60 years
Italy had made little progress in shrinking the differences between the
richer north and the poorer south. I’d be willing to bet that Germany
within 20 years will have done a much better job of integrating the East and
West.

When new job offerings are in the newspaper, this is a headline item. I have
a friend whose daughter planned to go onto the University to study law. A
plant nursery at which the daughter applied for a summer job offered her
instead a permanent job. The daughter is seriously considering taking this
job and abandoning her long-held plan to study law. Such permanent jobs (It
is almost impossible to fire an employee in such a job at a large firm.) are
so hard to come by, that one is loath to let the opportunity pass.

How could Italy solve its problems? A disclaimer — I don’t understand
Italian politics well and I don’t read Italian perfectly, so my impressions
may be all wet. But here they are.

Berlusconi, like every leader before him, says that the demands of keeping
his ruling coalition together make it very difficult to make major reforms.
So it may not matter much whether the right or the left is dominant in the
government, but assuming it makes a difference, here are my thoughts.

In Italy there are two major coalitions –the majority Center/Right and the
minority Center/Left. About 15 years ago there was a major corruption
scandal in Italy. As a result some major political parties were dissolved
by the courts. These included the major Centrist party. New parties arose,
but it seems that the Center in Italy was weakened by the results of the
corruption scandal.

There is a new world economic order. Communism has fallen. Capitalism is
more and more triumphant. The economy is more global with manufacturing
enterprises and jobs being exported to other countries (usually low wage
countries) as well as goods. There is the free trade zone of the European
Union. There are the budget deficit restrictions on the countries in Europe
who use the common Euro. These restrictions limit the use of budget deficits
to finance governmental assistance programs such as pensions. Either the
programs have to cut costs or the country has to produce more wealth to
finance them.

How does a nation respond to these new realities? I think that the
Center/Right coalition of Berlusconi has a more coherent response than that
of the Center/Left. This is not to say that Berlusconi’s solutions are good
ones; it is to say that at least they are aimed at the new problems.

The Center/Left on the other hand seems obsessed only with stopping
Berlusconi’s changes. This makes sense because they believe these changes
to be bad. But what are the changes that the Center/Left proposes that
differ from the ideas they proposed in the last half of the 20th Century and
that respond to the new realities of the 21st Century? I don’t get a
feeling that they have such a program (I simply may not have understood what
it is.). The Left in Europe is based upon the philosophy of Karl Marx.
Marx proposed both a critique of capitalism and a new system, communism, to
replace capitalism. His new system was a failure — he simply did not
understand the insight of James Madison that democracy requires the clash of
conflicting interests; it is impossible when all these interests are
subsumed by the government. But even if communism failed, his critique of
capitalism remains. The Left has to either take this Marxist critique and
build a new vision of the future upon it or find another theoretical base on
which to build a vision.

Newsletter Number 46

The Power of Advertising

At a travel agency I saw a guide book in Italian for the state of New Mexico
with the title “A Guide to Marlboro Country.” I believe the New Mexico
license plates say “Land of Enchantment.” The state should consider
balancing its budget by taking a big payment from the cigarette company and
changing the license plates to read “Marlboro Country.”

Fattoria di Celle

This is a large estate near Pistoia that is filled with outdoor sculptures
by famous artists from Italy and elsewhere. It is open to the public, but
you have to write ahead for a reservation. The pieces were all commissioned
for their specific sites on the estate. The guided tour takes about 3
hours. The estate itself is lovely. I enjoyed the tour, but one’s level of
enjoyment depends upon how much one likes abstract sculpture. There was an
English family on our tour, and I was able to serve as translator for them
of the guide’s comments.

August –The Dead Month

In August many places are closed for vacation. The high point of the Italian
vacation season is the middle weekend of August. There is a monthly
calendar of events for Pistoia and nearby towns. Ordinarily the majority of
events are in Pistoia. In August Pistoia has few events, and the majority
of events are in the nearby mountain towns which have a brisk tourist season
in the hot month of August.

Corrections

Last week I mistakenly spoke of “The World’s Best Yogurt.” The chain in
the USA is TCBY — The Country’s Best Yogurt. So they are not making the
false claim that their Yogurt is better than that in Italy. I also
discovered from a friend in Texas that around Austin (Lance Armstrong
Country) you do see 11 year olds on racing bikes and full Lycra outfits.

Weather Report

We are in the midst of a serious drought in central Italy. Some wells are
dry in the country areas. Some towns are starting water rationing. Forest
fires are a bigger problem each day. So when the weather forecast is for
hot and sunny is this good news (It won’t rain on my vacation.) or bad news
(The drought and fires will be worse than ever.)? In vacation happy Italy,
the answer is obvious. It’s good news.

General Pardon

Every few years in Italy there is a general pardon law. I don’t think this
is a “pardon” in the American sense of the word because the criminal record
is not erased. Instead it is an early release from prison. It applies to
persons who have committed less serious crimes and have completed at least
half of their sentence. Before the recent strict sentencing laws in the
USA, the same effect was obtained by paroling offenders. And in the USA now
some states cannot built prisons fast enough to accommodate persons
incarcerated under the new laws so that these states are having to release
some prisoners early. The general pardon law in Italy is probably a similar
way of balancing the supply and demand for prison space.

Lottery Fever

The national lottery in Italy has reached a record pay out of over 100
million Euro for next week. In Pennsylvania the drawing of weekly lottery
numbers is done primarily by a machine (with minimal human intervention)
that causes one ball to rise out of the large container in which the balls
are swirling. In Italy it is a little more dramatic (at least for this
record pay out). There is a bin with the numbers in it, each number inside
a small metal ball. The bin is turned by a hand crack mixing up the
numbers. An 11 year old boy is blindfolded. He is placed in front of the
bin. He holds up his hand to show it is empty. Then his hand is guided into
the bin. He takes a metal ball. The ball is then put by him in a clear
glass bowl. The bowl is passed to a Lottery official who opens the ball and
looks at the number in it. He passes the number to a good looking babe (as
always in Italy) who then shows the number and reads it aloud.

The Schizophrenic World of Italian TV

At least the government supported network in Italy (which is about to be
privatized) feels the obligation, which dates back to the first years of TV
in Italy, to present items that raise the general cultural level of the
viewers. So last week there was an item on the news about the German
existentialist philosopher, Martin Heidigger. I could not tell what was the
occasion for this item (publication of a new edition of his works?
anniversary of his death?). I can guarantee that you won’t see a similar
item on the NBC, CBS, or ABC evening news. But on the same newscast was
another item you won’t see in on the national evening news the USA — a
serious discussion of what foods are best to eat when you are trying to
obtain a suntan as quickly as possible.

Animals in Italy

As I have noted before, the Italians love animals. One night on a newscast
there were three separate stories about animals. So I was surprised to
learn from a friend about the Italian system of “putting down” a pet. You
take the pet to the Vet, but unlike in the USA, it doesn’t end there. Vets
don’t dispose of the aniimal. After the procedure, you get your pet back in
a box that you either have to bury (if you have land) or take to the town
incinerator.

Young Cyclist

In America you don’t see many 11 year olds on racing bicycles with the full
Lycra outfits ala the Tour De France. You see it in Italy. Recently I saw
one such lad who had stopped riding for a while to talk on his cell phone.
Although there is much more coverage of young bicycle racers in Italy than
in USA, Italy is not as successful as one would think in the international
bicycling scene. While watching the Tour De France I heard the Italian
commentators complain that there are few bicycle tracks in Italy which are a
necessary part of training for competitive cyclists.

Proposals to Change the Law on Divorce

Italy has the longest waiting period for a divorce in Europe — at least
three years even for an uncontested divorce. There is a proposal to lower
this to one year in the national legislature. I think I saw a figure that
12% of Italians are divorced but 27% are separated. Meanwhile, a noted
psychologist has suggested that divorce be banned when there are young
children in the home. I’m not sure how “young children” is defined. This
proposal will not become law, but it is interesting to me the amount of
discussion it received in the newspapers. I think such a proposal would be
“dead upon arrival” in the USA, but because of the stronger emphasis upon
the family in Italy, the proposal gets more serious discussion here.

Yogurt and Gelato

In addition to Gelateria in Italy, there are shops that sell yogurt. Often a
shop sells both gelato and yogurt. In the USA, one has TWBY (The World’s
Best Yogurt). It’s a lie. Both the yogurt itself and the wide variety of
toppings (many types of freshly cut fruit) are better in Italy.

Silicone Therapy

Italy is reputed to have the world’s highest rate of plastic surgery. No
surprise, if true, given the exaggerated emphasis on beauty here. Recently
I saw an ad in which a top model or actress said she did not use silicone. I
thought it referred to breast enlargement, but in fact it was about lip
enlargement. This apparently is popular in Italy (maybe in USA too, with my
looks I’ve considered plastic surgery to be hopeless so I don’t follow
developments in the field). So now when a well endowed babe walk by and
someone asks “do you think they are real,” I’ll have to ask “the breasts or
the lips or both.” After reading an article on the subject, I’m a little
suspicious of the babe who does the nightly news on RAI 1 –those lips are
awfully big!!

Good Advice

A friend told me that when I attend the semi-weekly market in Pistoia, I
should keep my wallet in my front pocket. Recently my sister sent me an e
mail item about the wisdom of photocopying all the documents and cards in
your wallet. I thought of both of these pieces of advice when my wallet was
missing this week after I went to the market. I stopped my one credit card.
I was in process of stopping my bank cash card when I got a call that
someone found my wallet. He brought it to me — minus the cash of course. I
did make the photocopies the next day.

The Italian University

The figures I hear for the % of students who go on to the university from
high school in Italy is as high as in the USA. This may be only those in
academic high schools and not include the Italian students in vocational
programs. But if 80% start at the university, about 60% of these do not
return for the second year. You don’t really flunk out, you simply don’t
pass enough exams (You can keep taking exams until you pass them.), and soon
it is clear you are not getting anywhere. There is almost no help and
guidance for the students. The cost is low, but the quality of the product
is low too. Students do not go to college, as in the USA, for the fun of
“college life.” They live at home, and their social life does not change
because of college.

Accordion Orchestra

The accordion is more popular in Italy than in USA. When I was young, I
remember my Italian-American cousins taking accordion lessons. I recently
saw an accordion orchestra on TV. Lawrence Welk must be looking down from
heaven with a smile on his face that such things still exist.

Italian Ancestors

I’ve been trying to talk my Gettysburg friend, Mike Birkner, into coming to
Italy to take a trip with me to the south to visit the villages of both his
and my maternal ancestors. He said his ancestors were from a village close
to Naples. When he sent me the name, I discovered that his ancestors come
from a village 3 miles from that of my ancestors. So we certainly will have
to make our “roots” trip together.

Bob Hope

The article in the Italian paper said that Bob Hope American “actor and
singer” had died. These certainly are not the two words Americans would use
to describe Bob Hope. Of course, Italians know him only through his movies
in which he occasionally sang. Furthermore, there is no word in Italian
that is the same as “comedian” in the USA. The closest word, “comico,”
describes a type of entertainer different from Bob Hope, Milton Berle, etc.
Bob Hope never won an Oscar for his acting. He is probably pleased that at
least in Italy he is remembered primarily as an actor.