thisweekinitaly.com

NIMBY (Not in My Backyard)

In Italy as in USA people don’t want certain unpleasant but essential features of modern life near them.  This week there was a protest against a proposed garbage dump in the south of Italy.  Nearby residents blocked a main highway for several days, a typical type of protest here.  In Pistoia parents at a school are up in arms because a cell phone repeater antenna is being placed near the school.  I guess this is the issue of microwave pollution.  Italians love cell phones, but don’t want the antennas anywhere near them.  I think the cell phone infrastructure in Italy is deficient and service is not good.  This may be one of the reasons.

Dealing with Auto Pollution

It is not uncommon in Italy, when pollution levels are too high, to restrict auto traffic coming into a city either by a system of alternate license plates (plates ending in even numbers can come in one day; odd numbers the next day) or simply by banning all but essential motorized traffic.  If you have one of the newest low pollution cars or a car that runs on natural gas, the restrictions do not apply.  I don’t know if banning all cars for some days has been tried in USA; with the poor public transit systems in USA, I think it would be difficult to do so.

Health Update

I saw my doctor in Florence.  He wants to continue to treat my condition with drugs for a few months (Fortunately he reduced the number of drugs I  am taking.) and then decide if it will be necessary to insert a stent in the aorta.  Meanwhile, I can live a normal life.  I simply must avoid physical or mental stress.

Watching the Chinese Film

I went to a Chinese film festival.  As always in Italy, the film was dubbed into Italian.  But whereas in an American film the dubbing is artfully done so that the Italian words fit into the open mouth of the actor, this is impossible in a Chinese film.  The amount of time the mouth is open and the way it is open when one speaks Chinese is just too different than Italian.  This is an advantage in one way in that the translation of the dialog into Italian can be freer because one does not have to try to fit it into the open mouth.

Privatization of Government Assets

The national government has announced a plan to privatize some government owned entities, the post office and a large utility company. In Italy the government in the past owned some of the major industries.  Most of these are already partially or fully privatized. What’s different in Italy from the USA is the main rationale for privatization. In the USA it is that private enterprise can do a better job than the government.  In Italy it is to raise money to balance the budget.  In the past the government has sold government office buildings to private companies and then immediately leased back the office space.  This raises cash now but increases expenses for the future, but as I have mentioned, in Italy you solve today’s problem today and worry about tomorrow later.

Making Polenta

At the grocery store I noted a box of a mix to make polenta.  This popular Italian dish is essentially  corn mush.  This was the quick cooking variety, 8 minutes rather than one hour.  The one-hour variety must be constantly stirred; there are even special pots with an electric stirring device for cooking it.  The instructions on the box I bought were for cooking the entire box at once.  I did this and now have a lifetime supply of polenta.  I need that book “101 ways to serve polenta.”

Weather

For three or four days we had rain mixed at times with snow.  Pistoia is at the bottom of a snow belt. A few miles north of here, you have snow every winter.  In northern Italy and the higher elevations of southern Italy there has been a lot of snow the last week.  When you drive in an area with snow in Italy, the rule is not that you have winter tires on the car but that you have tire chains in the car if not on the tires themselves.

A Sunday Wedding

My son and his fiancé visited me from Germany.  On Sunday morning we went to the local civic museum in the town hall. As we were leaving , we noted that a wedding was about to begin in the main room of the town hall.  The starting time of the wedding would be 11:30 or noon.  This would be an usual time in the USA.  In the USA church going on Sunday is sufficiently common that people don’t schedule such events for Sunday morning.

The Old Pianist

I went to one of the series of Friday night concerts I attend which now have a new location ½ block from my apartment.  The artist was an elderly pianist, I think in his 70s.  He was a delightful old gentleman; he looked like a typical Italian grandfather.  The audience gave him five encores – not, in my opinion, because he was a better pianist than the typical artist but because he was such a charming elderly man.  It reminded me of the youth orchestra concert I went to last year at which the Italian grandmothers were hugging and kissing the smallest orchestra members as they circulated through the audience.  The very young and the very old are very much loved and respected in Italy.

Health Update

All I know so far is that my second CAT scan was essentially the same as the first one.  So I’ll have to wait until my appointment with the doctor next Friday to learn more. Meanwhile, I have felt noticeable stronger over the last few days.  I hope this is not simply only in my mind (although it is good to feel better even if it is all mental) but represents some absolute improvement in my condition.

Getting Things Done in Italy

Some friends came to visit Florence, and I mailed to their hotel an envelope to be delivered to them upon their arrival.  When they arrived, the clerk said there was no envelope and my friends called me.  My immediate assumption was that the envelope was there, but when it was not right in front of the clerk’s eyes, he told my friends that it hadn’t arrived.  So I had my friend who is head of the Pistoia Tourist Bureau call the hotel and ask them to look for the envelope.  I assumed his request might carry a little more weight than mine.  Sure enough, after looking for two minutes, they found the envelope.  This kind of frustration is not uncommon in Italy.

Joining the Italian National Health Service

I am now covered by the Italian National Health Service.  Full medical coverage for $500 per year which I pay because I am a foreigner who is not employed in Italy. The enrollment process was quite simple. There are many foreigners here who do not work and who also are very poor.  I’ve asked about what they do for medical coverage.  They too would have to pay the $500, but they have no money.  Some charitable organizations pay for their coverage for one year.  Beyond that I am not sure if the government eventually enrolls them as charity cases or if they do what poor people without medical coverage often do in the USA –they go to the Emergency Room of the hospital when they are sick so that the Emergency Room becomes their family doctor.

At the Doctor’s Office

To join the National Health Service I needed to find a doctor who would add me to his list of patients.  Friends arranged for a doctor to do this for me.   I went to the office which opened at 4 pm on Monday.    There were many patients waiting for the door to open, but they were not in a line.  After they entered, they tried to reconstruct (certainly without full success) who had come first, second, third, etc.  But nobody seemed particularly worried about what was the absolute correct order.  The office was run very efficiently– easily as efficient as a doctor’s office in the USA (which type of office probably is not the model of efficiency in the United States).  Always in Italy you never know whether something will be very efficient (as was the enrollment in National Health Service and the doctor’s office) or a minor disaster.  The hallmark of life here is not efficiency or inefficiency but uncertainty.

Card Carrying Communist

This was a phrase used in the 1940s and 1950s to denominate a dedicated advocate of communism.  This phrase could then be contrasted with another – communist sympathizer.  I don’t know if the Communist Party USA in fact ever issued membership cards.  But parties do in Italy.  A major way parties raise funds is by having members pay a fee and get a membership card.  Unlike the USA, you don’t “register” by party at the election office.  Probably because the campaign financing laws are different in Italy from the USA, you don’t have in Italy all the “special interest” groups who solicit money separate from the parties and candidates, but then use the money to support candidates who favor their cause.  In Italy the way of supporting a specific issue is to support directly a political party that agrees with you.

Malpractice Law Suits

I did find out that if the official government investigation of a doctor’s actions does result in a finding that the doctor made a mistake, there can be a private law suit based on that result. The law suit is usually against the hospital, but if the hospital (actually the National Health Service) pays, the doctor has to reimburse the hospital.  Such suits are less common in Italy and do not, I think, result in the high verdicts sometimes found in the USA.  There is no “malpractice” crisis talked about in Italy. In Italy, unlike the USA, a serious mistake by a doctor can involve criminal charges against the doctor.  In Italy the degree of “fault” necessary to support a criminal charge in many areas is lower than in the USA.

Valentine’s Day

If you ask an Italian wife “Does your husband give you flowers, candy, or some other gift for Valentine’s Day”? she may look at you strangely.  Italy is a country where things are very romantic before marriage but not much so after marriage.  Occasionally in the USA you see advertisements to sell a product (e.g. diamonds) that show romance between a married couple.  You don’t see these in Italy.

Soccer Broadcasts

From the 1930s through the 1950s in the USA you often had “remote” broadcasts of baseball games.  An announcer would be sitting in a studio in Chicago reading a ticker tape of events of a baseball game in St. Louis.  There would be crowd noises in the background.  So it seemed like the game was being broadcast “live.” In Italy the major soccer games are shown only on satellite TV.  So the regular networks cannot broadcast these contests, but people are eager to know what is happening at these matches.  So on Sunday the major networks have an announcer at these games.  What you see (only for a short report) is the announcer in a booth at the match summarizing what has happened.  You also see a picture of the crowd at the game.  You don’t see anything that is happening on the field itself.

Italy and Private Property

Two friends passed on to me an article by  Alberto Mingardi  from Wall Street Journal that started out discussing the new smoking ban in Italy, but ended up commenting that Italy’s Constitution had very little protection for rights of private property, a situation the author attributed to long Italian tradition of contempt for property and individual rights.  Mr. Migardi (who is based in Milan)  should  be much more of an expert of Italian history than I, but the low regard for private property in the Italian Constitution in my opinion does not require an explanation of a long Italian historical tradition. It  is probably simply the result of fact that Constitution was drawn up at a time immediately after WWII when the left and right in Italy were approximately equal in  power.  So quite naturally the Constitution has  more of a leftist tilt than similar documents from countries where the left was less potent.

I’ve commented before about how it was “touch and go” in Italy after the War as to whether the nation would be part of Western Alliance or be closer to the Eastern Bloc.  In 1948 there was an assassination attempt on Palmiro Togliatti, Italy’s Communist leader.  The country was on the brink of Civil War—remember that leftist and rightist forces had continued an armed struggle against each other even after the end of WWII in 1945.  Alcide De Gasperi, a Christian Democratic Leader called the cyclist.   Gino Bartali who was in France half way through the Tour de France.  Bartali was past his prime; he had won the  Tour 10 years earlier.  De Gasperi pleaded with him to win at least a stage in the tour to help reunify the Italian people and to take their minds off of the crisis. Bartali did more,  Gradually he improved his standing and entered Paris at end of the Tour as the leader and winner. All this was over a half of a century ago, but  memories of those times still resonate in Italy today.

Great Service

To join the Italian national health system I needed my new Permesso di Soggionno which was waiting for me to pick up at the police station.  But going to get it requires usually a 3 hour wait in line.  A friend took a doctor’s note to the police station saying that I was medically unable to wait in line to get the Permesso.  The document was delivered directly to my apartment by a policeman!  Remember in Italy the mail is not a reasonable alternative in such a situation.  There is a type of Registered Letter in Italy that is used to send legal notices, but one gets the feeling the purpose of it is so the sender has met the law about notification – not that the recipient will necessarily receive or read the item.

Not So Great Service — Medical Update

My doctor was to be in for consultations Friday Feb. 11.  I called Hospital to see if he had received the results of my CAT scan.  . He was not in. The person to who I talked suggested calling back on Sunday (13th) or Monday. At this point I had not identified myself over the phone.  Then an hour later I got a call from a secretary at the Hospital saying that I had an appointment with the doctor at 5:30 pm on Friday, February 25.  This is obviously much too long to wait for results of my CAT scan. I asked about taking to him earlier.  I got the “I’m just the Secretary who makes appointments…” reply.  In Italy getting anyone to take responsibility for anything is a major task.  So now  an Italian friend will call the doctor Sunday (good luck!) and Monday if she can’t reach him Sunday in order to get some information and I hope schedule an earlier appointment.

Eating

I have very little appetite – perhaps from my illness, perhaps from all the drugs I am taking for the illness.  One of the reasons I want to see the doctor soon is to be able to stop taking some of these drugs. The meals that I cook for myself have little appeal. If I go to my favorite restaurant or an Italian friend brings over some leftovers, then the food is special enough that I can eat decent portions.  I have lost weight.  This was obvious to me when I noticed, all of a sudden,  that my face had become thinner.

Italian Journalist Kidnapped in Iraq

You may recall that when two Italian aid workers were kidnapped in Iraq a few months ago, the Italians paid some kind of ransom to get them back. I noted that Americans, unlike Italians, would be less likely to pay such a ransom on the grounds that it would encourage more kidnappings.  Maybe the journalist will be released even without a ransom, but I think that a ransom will be paid if that is necessary to secure release.

Comment by a Doctor

A friend of mine has an elderly father with a variety of medical problems.  He needed to have a hernia operated upon.  Because he takes medicine to thin  his blood, the doctor told him to stop this medicine for a week before the operation.  When there was a check-up on the operation a week after it was done, a second doctor told him that he had considerable internal bleeding. In that doctor’s opinion, the first doctor should have waited at least two weeks after the man stopped taking the blood thinning medicine before doing the operation.  Well in USA, it is not very likely that a second doctors is going to recite chapter and verse about the exact error your first doctor made.  But Italy does not deal with malpractice through private law suits.  As I mentioned before it deals with malpractice through official state investigation of suspicious cases.  I’ve never been able to discover exactly what are the sanctions imposed if such an investigation shows gross negligence by a doctor.

Remembering Trieste

I noted recently that in 1954 the issue of Trieste (on the then Italian/Yugoslav border) was finally settled and Italy got part of this territory back.  In 1943 and in 1945 Yugoslav soldiers slaughtered Italian civilians living in Trieste area and threw them into mass graves with the hope of scaring other Italians into leaving.  I assume the idea was that if the disputed area was more Yugoslav in its population, the Yugoslavians would have a better chance of getting more if it in the final settlement.  This story has been in the news this week—probably 50th anniversary of the event.

Marco Pantani (the Great Italian cyclist)

It is one year since he died of a drug overdose.  The daily national sports paper had an article calling his death “an open wound” and spoke of “unending sorrow.”  Now the daily sports paper has to “overplay” a lot of the sports news to fill 40 pages every day.  Many Italians could not care less about Pantani.  But this week an Italian girl skier (only 13) won a silver metal in an international competition.  She dedicated the victory to Pantani whom she said she loves.  When you shave away all the hype, all the florid prose, etc, you still have a feeling that this kind of emotional issue cuts deeper in Italy than in the USA. In the USA, there was the NFL star who volunteered to serve in Army and was killed in Afghanistan.  I’m sure his sacrifice is not forgotten, but the Italian response towards a guy who killed himself with drugs is probably still stronger emotionally than the American one toward a guy who died for patriotism.

The Film “Aviator”

This is one of many films I saw in USA in December.  It is now showing in Italy.  A friend  who saw it here told me that Italians don’t really know who Howard Hughes was, and the film is a bit too long for them.  In this film there is a scene in which Hughes is trying to get from a newspaper columnist some “compromising” photos the columnist has of Katherine Hepburn and Spencer Tracey together so the photos can be destroyed.  The columnist tells Hughes that the pictures are not for sale.  Hughes asks the columnist is he “ever attended a Communist Party meeting.”  Suddenly the photos are for sale.  No Italian who is less that an expert on US history is likely to understand this scene.  How could the fact that a person at one time attended a Communist Party meeting be of any importance?  In Italy no; in the USA of the 1940s, yes.

No smoking in Restaurants

The new law says there is no smoking in indoor places unless there is a designated smoking area with a ventilation system.  The first week there were 50 policemen in Florence assigned to enforce this new rule.  Smokers are talking of forcing a national referendum on the law.  Will the new law  succeed?  The law forbidding smoking on most trains ( starting about two years ago) seems to be fairly well obeyed.  So maybe the Italians will accept this new restriction, but if not, there are not enough policemen in Italy to enforce it.

Buffet Restaurants

I wrote recently that the “all you can eat for $10.95” buffet restaurant is rarely seen in Italy.  Guess what?  There is a new such restaurant in my neighborhood.  The food is Brazilian.  The cost is 9 € at lunch and 20 € at dinner.  These are high prices. Generally foreign cuisine is not highly popular in Italy.  So for a whole variety of reasons,  this restaurant should fail.  Maybe there is a big Brazilian community to support the place, but I doubt it.

“Seasons in Basilicata” by David Yeadon

I read this new book while in the hospital.  In 1935 Mussolini exiled a political opponent Carlo Levi to the small village of Aliano in Basilicata, the region of my ancestors.  Originally Levi was to live there for a few years but Benito commuted the sentence  to nine months.  This tells you how bad it must have been to live in Aliano.  While there, Levi wrote the classic account of life in southern Italy, “Christ Stopped at Eboli.” Yeadon does not pretend to be or try to be Levi, but the book is a delightful account of life in the rural south.

(How bad was life in the south?  I noted recently that the great tenor Enrico Caruso, born in 1873 in Naples, was the 15th of 21 children and the first child in his family to survive infancy.  Obviously not all families in Naples suffered such a shocking rate of childhood deaths, but the figures for the Caruso family indicate a life of abject, crushing, poverty.)

Tuesday, Feb 8

On this date I have my next CAT scan ( the Italians reverse the acronym and call it a TAC test)  in Florence at which time the doctors will decide what, if anything to do next about the separated lining in the aorta.  Any intervention will not be done immediately but probably after another month of so.  Stay tuned for details.

At the Hospital

One night a man was brought in late and put into the bed next to mine. He did not seem to want to be there. I thought he might be a homeless person they were finding  a bed for, but he wasn’t dressed poorly.  The next morning he was ready to go.  So was my cell phone that was suddenly missing.  When I had the nurse call my number, we found my phone in the guy’s bag, along with his own phone.  Unfortunately there was only one recharger in his bag which I could not tell was mine or his.  So I ended up having to buy a new recharger.  The Italians have a term for guys like this  which may best translate “small time con man.”

Joining the Italian Medical System

Before my recent episode, I  had the intention to join the Italian national medical system in March.  In March Medicare becomes my primary coverage in USA, and this can not be used in Italy.  It only costs about 400 € a year to join the Italian system, a real bargain.  To join I need to get my new Permesso di Soggiorno  that is waiting for me at police station but for which I am not in shape to wait 3 hours in line to receive. Then I have to get an official certificate of residence in Italy.  I already have the Italian equivalent of a social security card.  Maybe I’ll need to get a national identity card too.  With all these documents, I can then join the national health system —I hope.

Making Bacon

In Italy there are many meats, cheeses, etc, that are made in only one region an have very specific rules for their production.  In USA you might see “hickory smoked” or some similar phrase on a package of bacon.  Here are the rules for bacon from Calabria. It must (of course) be made from pigs born or raised in Calabria.  At time of slaughter the pig must be at least 8 months of age and weight at least 140 kg.  For four to eight days the meat is hung up and salted.  During this time the bacon is alternatively washed in water and bathes in wine vinegar.  Then it must be aged for at least 30 days in controlled temperature and humidly.  (This is far from the most complex process for prepared meats.)  How important is all this?  I don’t know. I only know you can bet your family fortune that this bacon will taste better than that “hickory smoked” stuff in the USA.

On Eve of Superbowl

The sport that is the most difficult to play may not be the one that is most interesting to watch.  Many Americans find soccer boring, and I am not a great soccer fan.  With this disclaimer, I have some  comments on soccer.  In American football and baseball players have assigned tasks that they do on each play coordinated with but also independent of what the other players are doing.  Basketball is more of a sport where a player has to watching his teammates to decide what to do next.  But the players are confined to a small area.  Also if you watch the NBA Follies it is clear that professional basketball is less and less a team sport and more and  more an exhibition of individual histrionics.

In soccer the player has to be watching what all the others are doing over a large field of play and reacting constantly.  Everyone is expected to figure out what is the best thing for him to do next.  In terms of peripheral vision, conditioning (the motion is constant), global thinking, and creativity, soccer calls for skills far beyond most US sports.  Furthermore it is played by normal size people, not a game for physical freaks.  Only the  tremendous hand/eye coordination required to hit a baseball thrown at  90 mph seems to approach the level of skills required in soccer.