August 2006
Monthly Archive
Sat 26 Aug 2006
Posted by Robert C. Nordvall under
2006[2] Comments
Germany vs. USA — The Battle of Omnipresent Advertising
I noted last week that I saw advertising in Germany printed on the paper towel rolls in men’s rooms. I asked if advertising on toilet paper was next. My son Chris, who lives in Germany, reports that he saw there advertising for a Paternity Testing service printed on toilet paper. Uncle Sam, however, does not easily give up his crown as the country with the most pervasive advertising (in the tackiest places). My friend Kelly heard a report on TV about advertising printed on the deodorant cakes that are put in urinals in men’s rooms in the USA. For my lady readers I will report that these cakes (often round) are about the size of a large bar of soap and made of a substance similar to that used in moth balls.
New Discount Card for Railway
I had to get a new senior citizen’s discount card. In the past one purchased this at the train station. Now you enroll for it on the internet and are sent the card through the mail –’presto’ in the words of the internet site. About three weeks ago I registered over the internet. No card yet. It may be that in August the employees of the railway who mail out the cards are all on vacation.
My Yearly Calendar Appointment Book
I have a lovely book bound in leather given to me by a friend who works for the Bank Intesa. In the front of the book are illustrations of three art works owned by the bank by the early 20th century Italian artist Umberto Boccioni. If such a calendar in the USA included art works, they would be used as large illustrations to enhance the beauty of the product. In my appointment book, however, these reproductions are not large and are used as illustrations in a critical essay about the works of the artist. The essay is the important item. This is another of many examples I have cited of how art is both more important and taken more seriously in Italy.
Children in Car Seats
There is a program on one of the major TV channels to get Italians to drive more safely. This program promotes the used of seat belts and car safety seats for children. The announcer urged Italians to put the child in the safety seat even if the child did not want to go there and put up a fuss. This seems to be simply common sense; why bother to say it. If you love your children (as the Italians certainly do), you want them to be safe. But the Italians are also very indulgent with their children, rarely forcing them to do something that the children don’t want to do. So when a child starts crying upon being put in a car sear, this raises a conflict for the typical Italian parent that would not exist for the typical American parent.
Satellite Radio
I purchased one of these so I could listen to NPR from the USA. The problem is that the little round antenna has to be pointed toward the satellite with no obstructions in between. I can’t do this from my apartment. . Fortunately in Italy by law an apartment tenant has the right to put a satellite on the roof.
Usually when I buy something from USA, I have it shipped to USA and then mailed again to Italy by a friend. It comes then into Italy as a personal package and avoids Italain customs duties. When I purchased the satellite radio, the offer included free shipping anywhere. So I had it shipped directly to Italy. Upon arrival I had to pay about $40 in customs duties (It came as a commercial package) which was more than the postage would have been to have it shipped by a friend from the USA.
Italy vs. USA in World Basketball Championship Tournament
I saw this game on TV. As is typical when a team of NBA players play a top foreign team, the foreign team moves the ball better, shoots better from the 3 point range, run set plays better, shoots free throws better, etc. In this game the smaller Italians squad even out rebounded the USA.. As he watched the American players constantly miss free throws, you could see USA coach Mike Krzyzewski thinking –’ They pay these guys millions of dollars, and they can’t shoot free throws as well as a high school player.’ The NBA players use the style of professional basketball which emphasizes individual pyrotechnics rather than team play. The USA won because the players are simply more talented, but when an American team, in international competition, plays an foreign team that has close to equal talent, the foreign team wins.
Obesity in Italy
There was a show on TV about the growing obesity problem in Italy. Italian children are the fattest in Europe. The program included an account of a demonstration by obese people protesting discrimination against them. I did not catch exactly what were the dimensions of this discrimination. Is obesity simply a matter of individual choice or lack of will power or is it something more? Alcoholism in the USA is treated as a disease or disability for certain purposes, and one type of it has a genetic factor. Do obese people process food differently rather than simply eating much more? Is their eating caused by a psychological compulsion rather than mere lack of will power? The answers to these questions would be important in the USA (with its strong sense of individual responsibility) in determining the public response to obese people. In Italy, with its diminished sense of individual responsibility, these questions may be less important.
‘Saving Bambi’
This is how the nightly news titled the story (complete with films of baby fawns) about the region in Italy that sanctioned a deer hunt to reduce the size of the growing deer herd. Animal rightists fought back by trying to impede the hunters. In my home state of Pennsylvania animal rightists have been active trying to stop the annual pigeon shoot in Hegins, PA. (Releasing some captured pigeons simply to shoot them does not seem to me to be the essence of sport; if this shoot was moved to Venice, Italy, I could support it fervently). Trying to stop hunters from getting their deer in Pennsylvania, however, is another thing altogether. It would be about as safe as showing up with a satirical portrait of Allah and Mohammed as your gift for Osama bin Laden’s birthday party.
Book Review from New York Times
I read the earlier book ‘Ciao, America’ by this author. The discussion below about the contradictory attitude toward change in Italy, in my opinion, is right on target.
LA BELLA FIGURA
A Field Guide to the Italian Mind
By Beppe Severgnini
217 pages. Broadway Books. $23.95.
The journalist Beppe Severgnini offers a witty, insightful view of Italy, where red lights and tax laws are viewed as advisory only.
An Insider Explains Italy, Land of Cheery
Dysfunction
In
Italy, red lights come in many varieties. A rare few actually mean stop. Others, to the Italian driver, suggest different interpretations. At a pedestrian crossing at 7 a.m., with no pedestrians around, it is a ‘negotiable red,’ more like a weak orange. At a traffic intersection, red could mean what the Florentines call rosso pieno, or full red, but it might, with no cars coming, be more of a suggestion than a command. It all depends.
The red-light mentality, as the journalist Beppe Severgnini sees it, explains volumes about Italy and the Italians. ‘We think it’s an insult to our intelligence to comply with a regulation,’ he writes in ‘La Bella Figura,’ his witty, insightful tour of the Italian mind. ‘Obedience is boring. We want to think about it. We want to decide whether a particular law applies to our specific case. In that place, at that time.’
This principle applies to traffic regulations, taxes, solemn laws and personal behavior. Everything is personal and open to discussion. As a result, Italy totters along in a state of amiable chaos, its situation desperate but not serious, which is more or less the way Italians like it, those in charge and those, in principle, being led. ‘Controllers and controlled have an unspoken agreement,’ Mr. Severgnini writes. ‘You don’t change, we don’t change, and Italy doesn’t change, but we all complain that we can’t go on like this.’
Mr. Severgnini, a columnist for the Milan newspaper Corriere della Sera, turned a fond eye on the United States in his last book, ‘Ciao, America!,’ but this time around, on his home turf, he bites harder and deeper. The paradoxes of Italian life engage him. They bring out the reflective wit that, he argues, is native to most Italians and may be their most potent weapon in the struggle with bureaucracy and social dysfunction. Intertwined with native wit is a strong sense of self-esteem enjoyed by even the humblest Italian, as well as a fatal weakness for beauty and surface appeal, ‘la bella figura.’
Italians, in other words, would just as soon look good as be good. The country suffers from an ethics deficit, most clearly visible in the attitude toward taxes. Lying outrageously about one’s income is considered normal. In the United States the public regards tax evasion as morally reprehensible. If he were to cheat on his taxes in Italy, Mr. Severgnini writes, ‘two neighbors would come round to ask me how I did it, and two more would loathe me in silence.’ No one would report him.
Mr. Severgnini presents his guide as a tour that is partly geographical and partly conceptual. Over the course of 10 days, he travels from Milan to Tuscany to the far south: Sicily and Sardinia. But the places are merely excuses for little treatises on beaches, restaurants, cellphones, airports, condominiums, piazzas, gardens and offices, all sprinkled with clever observations and telling statistics.
The differences between Italian and British flight attendants, illustrated in a hilarious vignette, help explain the Italian sense of personal drama and the national talent for creatively responding to small crises. Italian flight attendants are poor at serving you coffee but good at cleaning it up and sympathizing when you spill it. Some of this is merely glib. Mr. Severgnini, himself no stranger to the lure of la bella figura, would just as soon turn a beautiful phrase as make a point, and he might do well to heed one of his own points about the restlessly fertile Italian brain: ‘you can’t amaze everyone every three minutes.’
At the same time, Mr. Severgnini, as he skips lightly from one topic to the next, manages to sneak in some revealing statistics. One in three Italians finds a job through a relative. One in five has moved in the last 10 years, half the European average. Telecommuting is virtually nonexistent, engaged in by only 0.2 percent of the work force – in part, Mr. Severgnini theorizes, because it deprives Italians of the social drama of the workplace.
The Italy that Mr. Severgnini describes seethes with frustration. Government works poorly. The legal system barely functions. Too many Italians are crowded into too little space. Fear of failure stymies innovation. Mr. Severgnini is dismayed at the national genius for enjoyment and the Italian inability to plan for the future. ‘Our sun is setting in installments,’ he writes. ‘It’s festive and flamboyant, but it’s still a sunset.’
Yet in many areas Italians have jumped at modernity and thrown over tradition almost casually. Cellphones are a national mania. They allow Italians to be Italian in new, entertaining ways. The shopping mall (but not Internet shopping) is popular because Italians pretend that it’s a piazza. New nonsmoking laws, widely predicted to be an absolute failure, have been accepted without a fuss. They created new gathering places and new forms of conviviality. One young man cited by Mr. Severgnini started smoking as a way to meet girls. Restaurants go in for all sorts of newfangled gadgets in their bathrooms, and Mr. Severgnini has a field day with the automated sinks, concealed light switches and baroque flush technology that challenge the Italian diner today.
There is one rule, by the way, that cannot be violated. It is wrong, and possibly illegal, to order a cappuccino after 10 a.m. This is worse than eating pizza in the middle of the day. It is nonnegotiable. Discussion over. Rosso pieno.
Sat 19 Aug 2006
Posted by Robert C. Nordvall under
2006No Comments
Getting Mail in August
In Italy the postal delivery person does not have a key to apartment houses that keep their front doors locked. To get access, he or she has to ring a bell and be buzzed in by a tenant. In August most Italians are on vacation. So if nobody is in the apartment building when the delivery arrives (even though some tenants are not on vacation), the mail simply is not delivered. Fortunately my building has offices in it so the door is open during the day.
News from Naples
An American tourist was assaulted in Naples and his camera stolen. He chased the robbers. He was relieved to see a crowd coming “to his rescue” only to discover that the crowd beat him up so the robbers could escape. Although it is safe to visit the main tourist attractions in Naples, there are neighborhoods one does not enter. Even the police are attacked when they do so. Lest this appear only to happen in Italy, I recall a friend whose stolen car was discovered on the street in Philadelphia. He asked the police to retrieve it, but they said that they did not enter that neighborhood to get stolen cars. If he wanted it, he would have to remove it himself.
OBSERVATIONS FROM BERLIN
German Post Office
In Germany I went to the Post Office to get some stamps. A lady in line complained that there were six stations at the counter, but only three clerks working. Still in a line of about 10 people it took five minutes to get to the front. Quite a bit faster than in Italy. One person had a slip to pick up a registered letter. The clerk went to a cabinet that had numbers on it and returned immediately with the letter. In Italy the clerk goes to a shelf and starts pulling off piles of registered letters to see which pile is the right one and then goes through that pile to find the exact letter.
Graffiti on Berlin Subways
There is much less of it because it is cleaned off almost immediately. People do, however, scratch their initials and designs onto the subway car windows with a key or other sharp object. This can not be cleaned off. Now the new windows have a protective covering over the glass. The subway (and bus) system is very quick and efficient in Berlin.
Driver’s License for Life
I think of the Germans as very efficient and organized. So I was surprised to discover that they grant a driver’s license for life. Even when people become very old and continue to drive with diminished ability (a problem in all countries with cars), they are not tested. There is talk now of changing this system.
Advertising Everywhere
As I see ads on gas pump handles in the USA, I think Americans are the champs in placing ads on every possible spot, but I saw something in Germany that I have never seen in the USA: advertisements printed on the paper towels distributed in public bathrooms in bars, restaurants, etc. Toilet paper next??
Food in Italy and Germany
I have often praised the quality of food in Italy, with good reason. One place it is not that great is fast food items for lunch. At bars in Italy you can get pre-made sandwiches. They are tasty but nowhere as nice in selection and combination of ingredients as you find in Germany. I also find German pastries and bread to be superior to those in Italy. As for main dishes, Italy is still in the lead.
Germany’s Past and Patriotism
When you go to Berlin you can see many reminders of Germany’s dark past. I saw the Jewish Museum, the Holocaust Memorial, Neue Wache — a statue remembering the victims of the Holocaust by Kathe Kollwitz, a memorial at the spot of the 1933 book burning, and the Wannsee conference Center, place of the 1942 meeting that formulated the Final Solution. Because of this past, patriotism is muted in Germany-the flag is not omnipresent as in the USA. The recent World Cup sparked an unprecedented outburst of patriotism with flags everywhere.
Germany has a problem. You don’t want to forget the Nazi past lest something like this happen again. (Racial attacks on persons of a different color seem to be more common in Germany now than in the USA). Still all nations have a ‘myth’ of their history that makes the population feel proud of that history. No nation is going to see itself permanently as an evil place. So balancing knowledge of the past with pride in the nation’s accomplishments is an ongoing challenge in Germany.
Sat 12 Aug 2006
Posted by Robert C. Nordvall under
2006No Comments
Big Lips — But Are They Real??
An Italian movie star recently won a court case against a newspaper that claimed that her large lips had been artificially enhanced.. As I noted once before, such enhancement is not uncommon in Italy, but the star was able to establish that her lips are real. What next? A law suit by Dolly Parton in the USA
Horse Race Swap
In A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway, Frederick Henry, an American in Italy in WW I goes to the race track and immediately hears the rumor that one horse is in fact running under the name of a different horse. Sure enough there seems to be a horse that is painted a different color. Frederick bets on the substituted horse, but it turns out that so many people did the same thing that the odds on the horse plummeted and the horse did not pay back anything when it won. Much later there was an Italian film, Mandrakata, about such a swap. Now it has happened in real life in 2004 in nearby Montecatini. The arrests were just made this week. In horse racing the odds are determined by betting at the track. So those who were in on the scam did not place their bets at the track, but at off track betting parlors. When these parlors discovered they were paying out too much money on numerous bets on a long shot that somehow won, the police were notified. Even though the perpetrators of the fraud were arrested, there is no way to find all the folks who won money by betting on this horse or to prove that they had been tipped off about the scam.
Americans in Italy — Being Part of the Community
As I read books about Italy written in English, I find I come across the names of people I know. In City of Falling Angels by John Berendt a character is my high school classmate, Peter Lauritzen. In another book (whose name I can’t recall now) about an American professor living in Florence, the author talked about Horace Gibson, former head of The American School in Florence whom I know. In Italian Days by Barbara Giuzziti, the writer raves about the lovely small hotel where she stayed run by my friend Mary Ann Pinto.
Antique Fair in Arezzo
This is supposedly the biggest such fair in Italy. I would call it an antique fair plus flea market. As always at such markets, I note a lot of similar items sold at various stands. In Italy at such markets I am surprised by what I would call ‘junk’ items that come from the USA: How do these things find their way to Italy.
Those Italian Trains
When I went to France last month, I started to go one day, but had to turn back because the trains were so delayed from Prato to Milan that I could not catch my connection to Nice. I had to go the next day. This week I went to Berlin. I decided to fly, but I still had to get to the Pisa airport. I allowed four hours for this 80 minute train ride. But once again there was a problem on the line and trains were not departing toward Pisa. I had to call a friend who drove me to Pisa. As I’ve noted many times, Italian trains are very inexpensive, but their reliability is the worst I have encountered in Europe.
Berlin
I am enjoying a visit with my friend Max Hoffmann who lived with me for four months when he was in 2002 an exchange student at Gettysburg High School. We visited the lovely city of Potsdam which is home to the palace complex of Frederick the Great. Frederick himself has a very modest grave stone on the grounds next to the graves of his seven favorite dogs. We have visited the Berlin Wall area and the museum of the history of the wall, the German Jewish Museum, the Pergamon museum (containing large architectural items from ancient civilizations, and even a quick trip to the museum of the French Huguenots who came to Berlin to find religious freedom. More museum visits are planned. Berlin is a very vibrant city in which there is still a lot of activity to modernize
the former eastern sector.
Madonna in the News
As always when somebody does something offensive to goad the Catholic Church into making an outraged response (and thus providing great publicity), the church swallows the bait.
From an Italian news service:
Madonna’s concert in Rome on Sunday sparked conflicting reactions here, with fans revering the star and the Church blasting her “blasphemous” performance .
Some 70,000 people crowded into the capital’s Olympic Stadium for the sell-out gig, in which the singer ‘crucified’ herself on a huge cross, while singing Live To Tell .The stunt, a controversial part of her Confessions Tour set, attracted the wrath of many religious groups, including Rome’s Muslims, before and after the concert .Another controversial part of the show was a video clip in which Pope Benedict XVI and former Italian premier Silvio Berlusconi were shown alongside people like Adolf Hitler, Osama Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein .
Family Feud Is More Important Than Money
A woman died in Sardinia with an estate of over 2 million Euro. She left it to her one son with nothing to the five daughters. The daughters went to court and said the son had disappeared years ago and should be presumed dead. First, of course, there had to be an attempt to find the son. It was known that he had lived in England, and his picture along with the story appeared in English newspapers. When the guy was found (He works for an English water company.) he said that he left Sardinia because he did not like or get along with his family — including his mother. He did not want her money. I’m not sure if he will just formally refuse the inheritance or take the money (so those sisters don’t get it) and then immediately give it away. As I noted in an earlier letter, Italians are not known to be ‘haters’ except for family members with whom they are feuding.
Sat 5 Aug 2006
Posted by Robert C. Nordvall under
2006[3] Comments
Pardon of Prisoners
The Parliament passed a pardon for prisoners near the end of their terms. In general the right and the left agreed on the pardon. Why? Especially why did much of the right, which takes a “law and order,” still agree to the pardon? Well included among those released were some politicians of the right in jail for political corruption. (Probably some other deals were made to get widespread support for the pardon.) Taking care of friends and family always trumps principle in Italy.
My Friend in Gaza
I have a friend in Pistoia, Ahmed, who is from the Gaza Strip. Recently he returned home because, as a licensed attorney in Gaza, he had to take a refresher course and test to keep his license up to date. Now you can imagine how bad things are in Gaza if an attorney from there prefers to live in Italy and do menial jobs here. Ahmed wanted me to return home with him. I deferred party because of the danger (Soon after he returned home, the war broke out in Gaza.) but also because his family, who don’t have enough food to eat, would give what little they have to me as the guest. He is still there although he hopes to be able to get back to Italy soon. I doubt that he was able to take the test.
Tiger Mosquitoes
This is a new brand of mosquito that has arrived in Italy from Africa. The good news is that they are easier to see, slower, and don’t buzz as loudly as regular mosquitoes. The buzzing bothers me more than the bites. When they do bite, however, the bites provide a red welt and do itch. Because it is dry in Pistoia in the summer there are, in my opinion, not a lot of mosquitoes at this time. There are often quite a few in the Spring.
Strikes in Italy
There is some law in Italy about when strikes are authorized. Whenever there is some new strike, on the news the commentator usually notes that the agency that administers the law on this subject has declared that this strike is not authorized. This seems to be of no importance. One way I explain the difference between the USA and Italy to Italians is to tell the story of the time that President Reagan fired all the striking air controllers. The point of my story is not that the decision of Reagan was or was not a wise one. The point is that such an action by the head of the government in Italy would be politically impossible. The right to strike here is viewed as sacred, and also decisive strong action by the government is very rare. Almost everything is an expedient compromise.
Hot Headed Italians?
Italians have a reputation in the USA of being highly emotional and hot headed. I cannot say that I have seen this reputation confirmed while living in Italy. This week, however, a lady of 84 (or 81, the newspapers disagreed on her age) living near Pistoia shot her neighbor (with whom she had been arguing for years) as he arrived home. She is unrepentant. Now what do you do with an 84 year old who has committed the crime of attempted murder? First, she may well die before the slow Italian system takes her to trial. If she gets to trial, my guess is that they will declare her incompetent (whether or not this is true), send her for some psychological care, and be sure to take away her pistol.
Patrick Goes to the USA
A few years ago I met a young Nigerian man in Pistoia, Patrick Hughes. He is intelligent, hard working, and ambitious. Still there is not a good future for him in Italy. I suggested that he try to go to the USA to attend College. After two years of our working together on this project, he now is in Gettysburg where he will attend the Gettysburg campus of Harrisburg Area Community College. He will have to find a way to earn the money in the USA for his tuition and college costs, but I have confidence that he can do so.
Boat Immigrants
Almost every day decrepit boats of illegal immigrants arrive from Africa at the island of Lampedusa south of Sicily. Often some of them die during the trip or are near death upon arrival. They are put in a center at Lampedusa but not sent back to Africa. Eventually they are transferred elsewhere, and as I noted last week, they can just walk away from a detention center at some point. The Italians treat them quite kindly in my opinion. The new government has announced plans to try to regularize many of the immigrants already in Italy; if you are not going to arrest them and send them back, then you might as well find ways to best integrate them into the life of the country. These plans to regularize immigrants currently in Italy, however, probably encourage even more folks to get on the boats in Africa and sail to Lampedusa.
The Drug Scandal in Cycling — Italian View
It’s not a new phenomenon — in the 1940s Italians said that the great cyclist Fausto Coppi took “bombs” — the name of a pill to give you a high burst of energy.
It’s not limited to cycling — in every sport where there is a lot of money to be made and drugs can enhance performance, they are being used.
It’s not just at the top of the pyramid — A friend told me about an 18 year old he knew who was making the transition from amateur to professional cycling. His team gave him a medicine to slow down his heartbeat. At night he had to wear a heart monitor to bed. If the heartbeat went too low, the monitor buzzed, and he had to get up and ride a while on his stationery bicycle to get the beat to go up.
Who’s doing it? — In the USA, in this kind of situation, there is a tendency to divide the competitors between the good guys (who follow the rules) and the bad guys (who take the banned substances). In Italy people would divide them between those who are caught and those who are not caught (or perhaps the clever and the less clever). If cheating significantly increases your chances to win, it is assumed here that all or almost all the winners are cheating.