thisweekinitaly.com

Health Update

I visited my doctor in Florence recently to discuss my third CAT scan. It
essentially shows no change. He wants me to confer with another specialist
which I will do on the 29th. I think that eventually I may need a stent in
the aorta (a simple procedure today), but we will see.

My Repaved Street

I reported that my street got a new layer of asphalt right before the Giro
d Italia bike race came over it. The goal must have been simply to have it
smooth for the race because already, less than two months later, there are
large cracks in the new asphalt. It must have received the quick and dirty
repaving job.

Women Doctors in Italy

My family physician in Pistoia tells me that today over of the class in
the medical program at the University of Florence are women. But in
medicine, as in many things in Italy, the sexes are not exactly equal. I
have a woman doctor in the USA. When I was discussing with two Italian
friends a general medical examination in the United States, they were
surprised to discover that a woman doctor would do the standard prostate
examination on a male patient. They said this would not happen in Italy;
other Italians have told me that on this point my two friends are wrong.
But the very fact that they raised the issue says something about the roles
of men and women here.

In the News

—this week another “affair of the heart” that get incredible press coverage
here. A Lesbian woman killed her lover in a fit of jealousy by stabbing her
20 times while the lover was in the bathtub. The lover had been visiting a
sorceress (card reader?) in Florence. Such practioners of magic are common
in Italy. The woman was jealous of the relationship of her lover and the
magic lady. Such a story will get press coverage everywhere in the world.
Here it got three full page separate stories on the first day plus one page
of photos. Today (the second day) the headlines are “I still love her” and
“Aged Mother accuses magician of causing the death.”

—National Leader Berlusconi is in the news again for a gaffe. While
discussing the controversy of where to locate a new European food security
center (Finland or Italy) he noted that he had to woo the female President
of Finland with his best Playboy techniques to get the center in Italy. He
also said some unkind things about Finnish cuisine. People say that
Berlusconi fancies himself as a greqt lover. If so, it must be proof of
Henry Kissinger’s statement “power is the ultimate aphrodisiac” because
Berlusconi is no Clark Gable. The President of Finland, to put it gently,
is no beauty. The Finns were not amused by this show of humor and recalled
their ambassador from Italy for consultations. Meanwhile I think that
Berlusconi relishes his reputation as a guy who says what is on his mind
even if it is not politically correct.

Dance Recital

I went to the yearly dance recital of the Florence Dance Center. It was
held in the Roman Amphitheatre at Fiesole. There are dancers of all ages
beginning at about age 5. As the recital progressed of dancers from the
most elementary levels to more advanced ones, I really got a feeling of how
hard it is to do on stage things that look natural and easy to the audience
when done by professional dancers. The youngest dancers could do very
little. As more advanced techniques were displayed, it was still quite hard
for the dancers to do them at exactly the same time while maintaining the
correct distances among themselves. I went because I had a friend who was
in a tap dance routine. Her class was three middle aged women who decided
to take up tap dancing. None of the three are Italian this type of
adventuresome spirit to try something new later in life is not an Italian
trait.

Names and Regions

Unlike the USA, in Italy a persons surname often reveals the region he or
she is from. There are some surnames common throughout Italy, e.g. Rossi,
but others are more regionally based.

Helping a Local Business

As I wrote once before, Italian retail businesses often have a sign
Ingresso Libero free entrance. In Pistoia one shop decided to put this
sign into English. The result: This is an Open Space. I stopped by to tell
them that this is not a good translation into English that conveys what they
want to say. Ill have to see if they have come up with an alternative.

A New CD

At the suggestion of my jazz loving friend, Gianfranco (the watch
repairman), I purchased the CD Nuttin but Nat by Italian pianist/singer
Larry Franco. It is a tribute to Nat King Cole. Although it does not
detract from my enjoyment of the music, the lyrics on the CD have some
subtle mispronunciations of the English words. Now if I made a CD in which
I sang Italian songs, I would certainly confer with a native speaker first
about the pronunciation of the words. This is even more important for a non
native speaker singing an English song since pronunciation in English is
not regular. In some areas the Italians are very precise and accurate
foreign languages is not one of these.

8000 € in Parking Tickets

There was an item on the news about a woman (I think in Rome) who had
accumulated 8000 € in parking tickets. She cannot afford to pay these.
As far as I could tell, she parked in the same illegal space everyday. So
the same police officers were writing tickets every day. In every society
there are people who go through the motions of doing a job and those who
in fact try to accomplish the goals of the job. Here the police were going
through the motions giving tickets but not trying to solve the problem
(stop the illegal parking). In the USA, I think it is likely that the car
would have been towed, the car would have gotten a Denver boot, or the lady
would have been arrested. I think going through the motions is a little
more common here.

Welcome to the 20th Century

I noted once that although movie shows were among the first businesses to
install air conditioning in the USA (in the 1930s), in Pistoia the shows
close for the summer. Now we have a newly renovated movie house with air
conditioning in Pistoia and it is being installed in our multiscreen
facility.

Common Problem in Italy and the USA

As some American states start to recognize gay marriages, the issue arises
whether other states (that dont allow such marriages) have to recognize a
gay marriage as valid under the full faith and credit clause of the US
Constitution. This issue will be resolved by the US Supreme Court. A
similar issue is arising in Europe. Recently an Italian gay couple, who
were married in the Netherlands, tried to register as a married couple in
Italy. The registration was refused. I dont know the extent to which
members of the EU must recognize as valid legal acts from another member.
This possibly is an issue addressed in the new European Constitution that
was recently rejected by the Netherlands and France.

The Cash Machine

Ive mentioned that when you use the English instructions on a cash machine
in Italy, the final screen says Operation Completed. Machine will be ready
for another in a few moment (sic.) A few days ago I used a machine that
had different English instructions. I was eager to see if the grammatical
error on the final screen also was absent. It was absent. The final screen
of English instructions said Operation Completed. Thank you. This final
screen, however, had these words in Italian, not English. I guess that is
one way to solve the problem.

The Results of the Referendum on the Law Regulating Assisted Fertility

The referendum failed by not reaching a quorum of voters. Only 26% of the
voters participated. Some see this as an indication that Italians favor the
law that the referendum would have partially eliminated. But in fact the
last referendum too failed to get a quorum. Referenda are held as special
elections, unlike in the USA where they usually are part of a general
election. So a voter has to care enough about the issue to make the effort
to vote on this issue only. It seemed to me that unlike some of the great
issues that have gone to referendum in the past in Italy, e.g. divorce and
abortion, this issue did not grab a lot of people as important to them.
Furthermore, for some reason I dont fully understand, the referendum did
not seek to abrogate the entire law. Instead it was divided into four parts
on which the voter had to vote separately about specific provision of the
law. Many people found this overly complicated; they also found these
issues to be highly technical and thus hard to understand.

For the leftist parties that mostly supported the referendum, there was one
good result. They had unified before their recent success in the regional
elections. After that success, they began to fight again. Now they are
back to unifying.

The American Community in Pistoia

I keep meeting more Americans who live in Pistoia and surroundings. Unlike
Florence, there are not organizations in Pistoia to which Americans and
other English speaking persons naturally gravitate. So you discover other
Americans by chance from time to time.

American Music

I have a radio with thirty preset stations. The other night I scanned
through all 30 before going to bed. About 20 of them were playing music and
at least 2/3s of the songs being sung were in English. Italians who have
studied English often complain that they lose their ability in English for
lack of the opportunity to practice it. I dont think Italians use the
preponderance of music in English as an opportunity to listen to and
improve their understanding of the language.

Adopt a Grandparent

All of Italy was moved last year when an elderly man wrote to a Milan that
he had no children or grandchildren so that he could not be a grandfather.
He asked to become an adopted grandparent. He was flooded with invitations
to be adopted by various families. His plight led to a national discussion
of whether the traditional strength of the family was declining in Italy so
that more and more old people were isolated alone. A family did adopt him.
It now turns out he is a con man. He stole from his adopting family and
others.

Soccer News

New plans have been revealed to stop soccer hooliganism. They involve new
seating arrangements; tickets on which are printed the buyers name,
address, and date of birth; and sophisticated video surveillance cameras.
The Olympic stadium in Rome will be the first to institute these changes.
These changes will cost money. It will be interesting to see how many major
stadiums ultimately adopt them. Furthermore. the Italians may not be good
at obeying the law, but they are masters at finding ways to circumvent new
legal efforts. Meanwhile, at least one political party has called these new
plans a violation of the guarantees of privacy in the Italian Constitution.

I’ve mentioned before that at the end of the year, when certain soccer
matches determine whether a team will rise to a higher level league or fall
to a lower level one, agreements are made between teams to fix matches
that are important to one of the teams but of no real consequence to the
other team. The Florence Team was in danger of falling from the A League to
the B League. To stay in the A League not only did Florence need to win
certain matches, but the results of other contests (in which Florence did
not participate) had to go a certain way. A miracle happened (according to
the Florence paper). Everything went Florences way. This week in the paper
there is a report of an investigation as to whether the Genoa team paid off
some players from another team so Genoa could win key matches to stay in the
A League.

Immigration Woes

A bartender tried to stop a fight in his establishment and was knifed to
death by two illegal Albanian immigrants. This lead to a wave of
anti-immigrant actions in the area of the crime and discussion all over
Italy. In an attempt to calm the waters, one of the national TV channels
showed the 1970s film Bread and Chocolate about the woes of an Italian
immigrant who goes to Switzerland. The message was that Italians had
suffered from anti-immigrant feelings elsewhere and should be sympathetic to
the problems of immigrants in Italy. The next day a news story was shown
about an Albanian who captured a fleeing thief (who was Italian).

Return of the Lira??

With the defeat of the proposed European Constitution in France and Holland,
many of the enemies of the EU in Europe are emboldened to come out fighting.
One such party in Italy has called for an end of the Euro and the return to
the Lira. I laugh because many people in Italy note (correctly) that there
was a great rise in prices upon the conversion to the Euro in 2002 and then
conclude (foolishly) that this price rise will be reversed upon a
reconversion to the Lira. This proposal has less than a 1% chance of being
implemented, but I would love a return to the Lira. With Italys inherent
lack of fiscal discipline, the Lira would always be a weak currency versus
the dollar.

Another Missing Word in Italian

Italian has no word that corresponds exactly to hometown in English. In
the USA you may have a hometown where you spent some brief time as a child
and then one or more other places that you have lived a longer time. Often
you will tell people that you are from the place where you have spent the
most time. In Italy you are always from the place where you were born.
Your place of birth is your town forever.

Success for My Student

I have been working to teach English to a man who plans to study for a Ph.D.
in Finance in the USA. First he needed to obtain the required score on the
TOEFL (Test of English as a Foreign Language). He has now done so. He has
been accepted to a program in Arizona. He is in his mid-thirties, but he is
so pessimistic about the future of Italy, that he prefers to spend all his
savings to obtain a degree in the USA where he then hopes to find
employment.

He read and wrote English fairly well when we started our lessons. His
problem in passing the TOEFL, which he took three times, was the short
recorded conversations about which he had to answer questions. These are
hard because there is no “context” into which you can place the
conversations (unlike the section in which you listen to a lecture) and you
must infer the answer from the conversation — the answer is not hidden in
the words of the question. For example here is a conversation: Man–
“Let’s go to the theatre tonight.” Woman–”I have a big report due at work
tomorrow.” From this you have to infer that the woman can not go to the
theatre. It may seem simple, but this kind of exercise is very difficult in
a foreign language.

The Sing Along

I attended a concert in Pistoia of the Touring Choir of the First United
Methodist Church of Kerrville, Texas. A choir member had left a music
folder on the bench where I sat. So I had the opportunity to sing along (in
a quiet voice) with the numbers performed by the choir. This was great fun
for me since in Italy, unlike in the USA, I am not involved in any singing
groups.

Maybe They Are Not Such Bad Catholics After All

People cite the low birth rate in Italy as evidence that couples practice
birth control in direct violation of the pronouncements of the Roman
Catholic Church. But a recent survey shows that Italian women rank last in
Europe in the use of contraceptive methods. Abortions among married women
are not rising. Although there are other possible explanations (e.g. lower
fertility among men), the most probably reason for the low birth rate,
despite less contraception, is simply less frequent sexual activity. I have
mentioned in the past that I think the idea of Italian men as great Latin
Lovers is a myth. This is a little more evidence to bolster my hypothesis.
(An Important Addendum. The idea that second generation Italian/American
men — especially with some mixed Scandinavian blood — are great lovers is
still totally valid.)

Problems with Becoming a Multi-Cultural Society

Italys Justice Minister has said that wearing a burka (head to toe covering
of Muslim women) is against the law in Italy and violators should be fined.
The law in question is a Fascist-era law that bans citizens from wearing
garments or head coverings that impede their identification. Situations
like this that show the strains of integrating immigrant groups into Italy
arise from time to time in the news.

Junk Mail

You don’t exactly get junk “mail” in Italy — that is items mailed to your
address either with your name or “occupant” on them. But companies are
allowed to put advertising flyers directly into your mail box without
sending them through the mail. This is different than in the USA. All in
all I get less of this kind of item in Italy because such flyers are all
local. You do not get solicitations in Italy to buy merchandise through the
mail.

I Tatti

I Tatti is the former home of Art Connoisseur Bernard Berenson near
Florence which is now the Center for Italian Renaissance Studies of Harvard
University. I went to one day of a conference there about 13th century
architect and sculptor Arnolfo di Cambio. The sister of one of my
students is an architect and teaches architectural history at the
University of Florence. She had written an article of Arnolfo so she was
pleased to accompany me to hear some of the worlds leading scholars on
this subject. Some of the talks were in English; others were in Italian.
The setting is simply gorgeous. In fact, although I could follow the
talks, my best memory of the day (aside from the wonderful lunch) was
sneaking out to the gardens in the afternoon and taking a little nap on a
bench there.

HOORAY FOR THE FRENCH!

The French voted no on the new European Constitution. Was this the right
decision for France? I dont know. Was this the right decision for the
future of Europe? I dont know. Was this the right decision for Bob
Nordvall? yes. The vote accelerated an existing trend of a declining
Euro versus the dollar. Last year the Euro got up to $1.36. Now it is at
$1.22.

Overweight vs. Obese

A recent survey reported that 30% of Tuscans are overweight and 8% are
obese. I don’t know if the definitions of “overweight” and “obese” are the
same in the USA and Italy. Obesity is usually defined as weight above a
certain % over the recommended weight. Someone whose weight barely meets
the definition of obese is in this category as is someone whose weight is
150% or 200% of the criterion for obese. The latter folks one might call
“super obese” These kind of people are rarely seen in Italy but common in
the USA.

Memorial Day Ceremonies at American Military Cemetery near Florence

For the second time in three years, I attended these ceremonies. As I
mentioned before the cemetery is exquisitely maintained. Among the
speakers was Marcello Pera, the President of the Italian Senate. I was
surprised that he read his talk in English. He even quoted the Gettysburg
Address. I later discovered that he received his Ph.D. in the USA. An
Italian sitting close to me asked me (in Italian): How well does the
President of our Senate speak English? I replied better than George
Bush. (Even my friends who are strong supporters of President Bush admit
that he is a poor speaker especially off the cuff.)

Changing Phone Companies (contd.)

I reported a while back my difficulties in changing from one cell phone
provider to another. When we last visited this issue, I had finally
provided both the old and new provider with identical personal
identification documents. All was ready to go forward. No so fast.
Nothing happened. Then I got a phone call from my new provider to verify
my codice fiscale number. I asked the lady calling if all the other paper
work was ok so that all was ready to go forward. She said yes. Nothing
happened. I went back to the store where I had made the change order to
discover that my second request to change also had failed. Apparently the
store had forget to indicate the type of contract I wanted with the new
provider (I did get a letter from the new provider that day indicating that
there was a new problem). Now I asked if the request could be resubmitted
with this new information. I was told yes, but that we should wait until
after June 7 to do so. The reason: the incentives for changing that
existed when I made my original request had expired. Only after June 7
will there be new incentives available. You can bet that after June 7 I
will need to return to the store to be sure they have resubmitted my
request.

Fighting Cheating in Italian Schools

I heard an American who teaches in Italy complaining about combating
cheating in Italian schools. She said that there is no word in Italian that
signifies cheating in an academic context. It reminded me of a show I
saw on Italian TV comparing the legal systems in the USA and Italy. It
noted that in the area of not paying your taxes, this is considered
dishonest in the USA but clever in Italy.

Referendum on Law of Assisted Fertility

Later this month there will be a referendum in Italy seeking to overturn
the new law (passed at behest of the Catholic church) restricting various
techniques of assisted fertility. For example this law limits the number
of embryos that can be implanted at one time and who can be a sperm donor.
In Italy for an Referendum to be effective two things must occur: (1) over
50% of the eligible voters must participate and (2) a majority of those
voting must vote in favor of the referendum. The Catholic Church, and
other opponents of the referendum (who want to keep the law in force) have
adopted a strategy of urging people not to vote so that the turnout will
not reach 50%. There is an obvious risk in this strategy in that if
nevertheless the turnout reaches 50%, the referendum will probably pass
because its supporters will be voting in force while its opponents will
not.

Dont Tell Your Best Friend All Your Secrets Especially if …

Here is an example of the kind of news story that is reported with
exquisite detail in Italy. A major politician in a nearby town got into
some trouble. It seems he was having an affair with his best friends
wife. He and she had taken some photos of their love making activities
(called le foto hard in Italian) which the husband discovered. He went
over to the politician’s house to start a fight. After the police arrived,
the deceived husband informed them that the politician had some painting
purchased in London which in fact were stolen from their rightful owners.
As I read the article, this was the second time that the politician/art
collector had gotten in trouble for this particular offense. The
politician responded that he did not know the paintings were stolen. At
least he did not also say that he did not know that his lover was married.