October 2006
Monthly Archive
Sat 28 Oct 2006
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A Prediction Come True
Last year when Italy passed a law allowing police to seize the motor scooters and motorcycles of persons not wearing a helmet, there was an item in the news showing many seizures in Naples where the rate of compliance with the helmet law (as well as most other laws) was low. I predicted that this ‘crack down’ would not last long. Sure enough it did not, and this week there was another news item about a new ‘crack down’ on those not wearing helmets in Naples. This one too will not last. Now it may be that after each spate of momentary enforcement, the number of people who wear a helmet does increase a little, but Naples will remain a city where obedience to the law is far from the rule.
The Film ‘The New World’
I wrote about this Italian film. The title in the USA is ‘The Golden Door.’ This may be because there was a film about Columbus a few years ago in the USA titled ‘The New World’
Speaking of Films
A famous Italian film is ‘Cinema Paradiso’ which won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film in 1989. In this film, when a new movie comes to the small southern Italian town when the film takes place in the late 1940s, the projectionist must first provide a private viewing for the local priest who requires that certain scenes (with passionate kissing) be cut out of the film. The local projectionist ends up with a reel of these eliminated scenes which he and his friends can view with enjoyment. I was reminded of this movie when I recently went to see the 1980 American film ‘Dressed to Kill’ at a local film club. I understood most of it, but the next day, I went to local library and took out the DVD to look at some scenes I did not fully get in the Italian version. I then discovered that the most sexy scene in the movie had been cut out in the film I saw at the club. There could be many reason for this — by 1980 local priests were no longer moderating the morals of Italians, but I could not help but think of ‘Cinema Paradiso.’
Going to a Concert
A concert was advertised for 9 pm at a local museum in a schedule of events I received. In another schedule, however, the time was shown as 7 pm. So on the day of the concert, I called the museum to verify the time and was told it was 7. When I arrived at 7, there was a notice on the door that (for technical reasons) the concert had changed locations and the new time was 8 pm. Attached to this notice was a printed announcement of the event which also showed the location at the new place and the time as 8 pm. So the change was not a last minute one. As so often in Italy, the left hand does not know what the right hand is doing.
Female Mormon Missionaries
There are two male missionaries always in Pistoia. They change every six months. I have never seen female ones until recently I saw two males and two females on a train together. I was told by a friend that female missionaries are not common in Italy because they are harassed by Italian males and that the problem (no surprise) is particularly severe in Naples. In general the idea of Italian males as guys who are frequently pinching the behinds of women is no longer true, but apparently this type of misbehavior has not totally disappeared.
Movie Queens of the Past
I saw in the news that for the umpteenth time Liz Taylor is getting married, as usual now to a much younger man. Well Italy can’t be left behind in such matters.
Italian movie icon to marry 45-year-old suitor in November (ANSA) – Rome, October 20 – Gina Lollobrigida, the Italian movie icon whose sultry looks thrilled male cinema audiences in the 1960s, has shown she still has what it takes to get her man four decades later .
The 79-year-old actress, once tagged The Most Beautiful Woman in the World, has confirmed that in November she will marry a man 34 years her junior. The groom-in-waiting is Javier Rigau Rifols, a Spanish property entrepreneur from Barcelona, whom she claims to have known for 22 years, ever since they met at Monte Carlo. “He’s young, fun-loving, intelligent. We have a good time together. We don’t feel the age difference,” she told Italian television news .
Lollobrigida, better known to Italians as ‘La Lollo’, said she would be getting married in America where there was likely to be more chance of escaping the paparazzi .
Since retiring from cinema Lollobrigida has tried her hand as a photographer, sculptor, photojournalist and a fashion and cosmetics executive. Seven years ago she stood unsuccessfully for the European Parliament. Rigau will be her second husband. The diva was divorced in 1971 after a 22-year marriage to a Yugoslav doctor, by whom she had a son “I’ve had many lovers and still have romances. I am very spoiled. All my life, I’ve had too many admirers,” she said in an interview six years ago .
Having A Baby in Italy
Many years ago, when you went to a hospital have a baby (or for any reason) in Italy, you brought things to hospital like your own toilet paper. Medical care was free, but no luxuries. The hospital is today is more comfortable and accomodating. The latest change: now you don’t have to pay extra to get epidermal anesthesia during childbirth.
Consumer Advocate Column in Newspaper
They have these it Italy as in USA. Supermarkets here, as in USA, have special discount cards; those with these cards also get points based upon the amount of their purchases that can be used to get premiums. A reader wrote to complain that recently his card was seized by the supermarket, and he was told that all his points were cancelled. Despite repeated calls to the company, he could not find out why. The newspaper consumer advocate also got nowhere making phone calls and e mails, but finally he got an interview with a company executive.
When there are special bargains, these are often limited to one or two items to a customer. Usually if you try to buy more than the allowed number, the computer at the cash register tells the clerk not to allow the purchase. For some reason the computer program (if it existed) did not work in this case and the customer bought 1400 Euro of cakes on sale. Who knows why? Anyway, the supermarket did agree to give him back the card and restore the points.
As in the USA, the consumer problems are often not earth shaking.
Two Major Weekly News Magazines
These are Expresso (allied with the political left) and Panorama (allied with the right). Often they have premiums (book, DVD, CD) bundled with the magazine as a item at a very low price. In the last two weeks the premiums with Panorama were a DVD of “The Godfather II” and a DVD of a tour by an Italian rock star. Expresso on the other hand had two books — “The Theory and Practice of Nonviolence” by Mahatma Gandhi and “Eros and Civilization” by Herbert Marcuse (Marxist guru of the 1960s radicals in the USA).
Apartments for Sale
If all my praise of Pistoia has aroused the interest of anyone to live here, I have two friends who are both selling nice apartments.
New York Review of Books
Versions in Italian of American magazines are not typical. I see them mostly in fashion and women’s magazines such as Vogue and Glamour. I think National Geographic and Reader’s Digest also have Italian editions. Recently I saw for the first time the Italian version of The New York Review of Books. It comes out once a month and has I think review articles from the English version but only for those books that are available in an Italian translation.
Sat 21 Oct 2006
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Television Show Strikes Back
The TV show that was prohibited from showing the report on drug use by members of Parliament, came up with another report to embarrass the lawmakers.
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But Le Iene, which goes out on former premier Silvio Berlusconi’s commercial TV network Mediaset, went ahead with another report in which MPs were stopped outside parliament and quizzed on their general knowledge .
Several MPs were unable to answer a question on Darfur, with one male lawmaker responding with conviction that the conflict-torn region of Sudan was “a lifestyle, a hurried one” .
Another MP failed to answer the question “what is Guantanamo?” . When told that it was a US terrorist prison camp, the MP said it was in “Iraq or Afghanistan” instead of Cuba .
More than one MP was convinced that former South African president and Nobel peace prize winner Nelson Mandela was from South America while another was clueless as to why he had won his Nobel .
One female MP was clearly embarrassed at her inability to say what Consob, the bourse watchdog (like the Securities and Exchange Commission in the USA) , was .
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Now I think you could do a similar show after interviewing some members of Congress in the USA. One thing, however, does make it easier for an ignoramus to be elected in Italy. In Italy candidates run simply as a member of a party list. You vote for the party, not the individuals. So candidates do not have a single ‘opponent’ against whom they debate. Candidates do not speak to the press (only top party officials do so) or to public meetings of voters. It’s easier to hide your ignorance in Italy.
Rape of American Student in Rome
Arrested for this crime was a French professional soccer player who was in Italy trying out for a position on an Italian team. There was an article recently in ‘The Florentine’ newspaper about the problem of rapes of foreign students. The author noted that when she warned students about drinking too much in bars in Florence or Rome or in traveling late at night on certain streets, the students resisted this advice saying that they were savvy enough to take care of themselves. Of course once somebody becomes drunk (as the student was in this case) , she is by definition no longer savvy. The author of the article called for steps to be taken to remedy the problem, but it is not easy to say what such steps would be. Italy could (as in the USA) provide better assistance to rape victims and change the rules of evidence to make prosecuting a case less traumatic, but I doubt that these changes in fact lower the incidence of rapes. For better or worse, this still is an area where an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
Sexual Misdeeds by Priests
I’ve mentioned that stories about these appear in the Italian press, but there is not the large scale scandals as in the USA — in my opinion because in Italy these cases do not lead to a spate of private law suits. Recently a priest was arrested for sexually abusing young immigrants with whom he works at a Welcome Center for immigrants. As is sometimes the case, this priest had been in trouble before (although not for sexual problems), and had been moved around from parish to parish. The most amazing fact — the guy is 81 years old.
Nostalgia Time
I mentioned that there are still many little FIAT 500 cars on streets in Italy even though the last model was made over 30 years ago. Now FIAT plans to bring out a new 500 that will look like the old one but have, of course, more modern components. This may be a competitor to the Smart car. Meanwhile Vespa is bringing out a motor scooter in the 1950s style, similarly with updated features. This is the vehicle we all remember from the film ‘Roman Holiday.’ The movie poster from that film is still popular in Italy.
Claudia Cardinale
I saw this famous movie star in a play in Pistoia — a new staging of Tennessee William’s ‘The Glass Menagerie.’ This was a try out in Pistoia before the play moves to Rome. Claudia was in my mind (before I came to Italy) associated only with the French cinema. In fact, she was born in Morocco of French and Italian parentage. The play got at best a lukewarm review in the Pistoia paper; maybe the critics in Rome will be more kind. It was a shortened version with, I think, some changes from the original, but I don’t have an English script to consult. The culture of the American South (especially the theme of faded glory) is a frequent background for many of William’s plays that is impossible to convey in a foreign version.
Italians Paying Taxes
A big problem in Italy is not that nobody pays taxes, but that there is a vast difference between salaried employees on the one hand and independent artisans and shop owners on the other. If you get a salary, taxes are withheld as in the USA. Also as in the USA for independent contractors and shop owners, taxes are paid on basis of income declared by the taxpayer. Tax cheating is, however, much more common in Italy. In a jewelry shop, for example, the clerk (who gets a salary) may end up paying more taxes than the owner of the shop. You can bet that the actual income of the owner is higher.
This week somebody sent me a quick summary of Italian tax law. I discovered for the first time that, as a resident of Italy, I should be paying taxes here on my income from the USA. Of course, there would be some kind of credit on the tax return in Italy (or in the USA) for the taxes paid to the other nation. So I too am now a true Italian because I don’t pay taxes here. If Italian authorities ever show up at my house with a tax bill (very unlikely), I’ll be on the next plane returning to the USA.
The Personal Touch
The local library is starting a plan under which volunteers will deliver books and audio-visual materials directly to the homes of shut-ins and the elderly. In the USA I know of Bookmobiles and, I think, deliver of library materials through the mail, but I haven’t heard of this system. In Italy family doctors still make house calls.
Article about Pistoia in In Flight Magazine of Alitalia
Some friends arriving from the USA told me there was a long article about Pistoia in the magazine this month. I went to see my friend who is head of local tourist agency to get a copy of the article. It turns out he did not know about it. I had thought that the first thing an author of such a piece would do would be to contact the local tourist agency in the city to get materials. I forgot that this is Italy. So my friend at the tourist agency called Alitalia to get a copy. He was told that if he went to Florence airport, he could get some copies at the Alitalia Club there. The idea of simply mailing him some copies was apparently too much trouble. I wrote last week about the excellent efficiency at the local blood testing lab; here, in contrast, is an example of the endemic inefficiency in Italy.
Subway Accident in Rome
I wrote a few months ago that Italian emergency officials were meeting with a group from Israel to discuss the Israeli procedures for dealing with emergencies which are well advanced because of the continuing terrorism in Israel. These new procedures were used this week when there was a subway collision in Rome. They worked well. One person was killed in this accident and another gravely injured. Many were less injured. With such an incident in Italy, The President of the country expresses his condolences immediately to the victims, the prime minister similarly makes a statement, and the Parliament has a moment of silence for the person who died. In short this is a National story, not a Local one.
Local Restaurant in Pistoia
My favorite place for lunch with guests is a restaurant that for 9.50 Euro offers a four course lunch complete also with water and coffee. The food is excellent. The owner is a man from Pistoia who spent a good part of his life living in Canada. Friends who come to visit me after eating in restaurants in Florence can’t believe you can get such a good meal for such a modest price
Sat 14 Oct 2006
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Army Recruitment
Recently it was front page news in the USA when the Armed Forces announced that they had met their recruiting goals for 2006. In Italy there are three applicants for every position in the Armed Forces. I think this may reflect the difficult employment situation for young Italians. I am sure that in the Depression in the USA in the 1930s (when the American Army was quite small) it was easy to find recruits. The Army offered a place to sleep and decent
food (‘three hots and a cot’)
Reversing the Brain Drain
It was big news in Italy a couple of years ago when a top Italian cancer researcher was wooed back to Italy (by promises to head a big research lab) from the Sloan Kettering institution in the USA. After he arrived, he discovered there was no big lab so he started to assemble the instruments and scientists he needed. Then the minister in charge or research changed and the new one told him that priorities had shifted and his research funds were no longer available. In his desire to return to his native land, I am afraid that this brilliant scientist forget why he had left Italy in the first place.
The General Pardon of Prisoners
I wrote about this a while ago. Some prisoners were exempt from the pardon (of those who were close to completing their sentences), but it led to a large release from prisons. This pardon was voted by Parliament. Now after such a pardon, two things are certain. The first is that some of those let out will immediately commit new crimes which is noted in the media. They would have done so also if released at end of their terms, but the pardon accelerated this fact. The second thing is that among those let out will be some infamous criminals. So you can be sure that there will be newspaper headlines saying things such as ‘Fiend of Florence Let out of Prison.’ So why would politicians (this pardon was supported by almost all of the center-left and a large part of the center-right) vote for a law that was bound to lead to very unpleasant publicity? As I mentioned before, among those released were some politicians from both sides of the political spectrum. The only way to get them out was through a general pardon — a specific pardon for them only was truly politically impossible.
A Classic Italian Film
I caught on TV the first of a series of films about the fictional priest Don Camillo and his battles with the Communist mayor of his town, Peppone. This film was made in 1952 and starred the French comic Fernandel as Don Camillo. As you may well guess, Don Camillo and Peppone, despite their battles, respect and like each other.
This film reflects a time when it was nip and tuck in Italy as to whether the Communists would become the major party in the government. I’ve been doing some reading about this period. There are a lot of reasons why Communism was strong in Italy but never could become dominant. One interesting one was that the ‘utopia’ of the USSR that the Communists trumpeted, was never as attractive to Italians as the ‘utopia’ of the USA that they say in films and magazines and heard about from their relatives in America. Another is that , despite the fact that reforms pushed by the Communists at times benefited Italian families, the Communists could never give the prominence to The Family in their political program that the Christian Democrats (backed by the Catholic Church) could. Under Communism the family is ultimately subservient to the collective whole. For the Italians the family is more important than the collective whole.
Clarification
I wrote last week about the film ‘The New World’ and the scene in which unmarried women at Ellis Island were forced to get married before entering the USA. I should have made clear that apparently this applied to women not arriving with their family or going to join their family. Such women had no visible means of support once they entered the USA.
One thing that impressed me about this film was that, although it showed the immigration practices at Ellis Island in a critical light, it portrayed the officials implementing these practices as courteous and respectful of the immigrants. Often when films want to criticize a certain activity, they make the persons evil who carry out the activity. As for the practices at Ellis Island, they may not look ideal 100 years later, but they were consistent with the philosophy and politics of that time.
News from the Italian Parliament
Concerning the item below: (1) I would not vouch for the accuracy of the tests, (2) politicians differed as to whether airing the item was violation of privacy, and (3) some politicians have called for mandatory drug testing of members of Parliament
Privacy regulator sparks censorship row (ANSA) – Rome, October 10 – A television prank which threatened to expose widespread drug use among Italian MPs was suspended on Tuesday .
It was due to be included in Le Iene (The Hyenas), a popular satire show which begins a new series on Tuesday evening . The show secretly tested 50 lawmakers for drug use with the results showing that one in three had apparently taken drugs in the previous 36 hours . A total of 12 tested positive for cannabis and four for cocaine, according to Le Iene .
Amid parliamentary uproar over the prank, Italy’s privacy authority intervened and ordered the piece to be deleted from the show . Le Iene, which goes out on former premier Silvio Berlusconi’s private TV network Mediaset, pulled off the stunt by pretending to interview the parliamentarians about next year’s budget .
As one of its reporters engaged willing MPs in conversation, a fake make-up artist secretly carried out drug-wipe tests on their foreheads . The sweat collected on the wipe was then tested for drugs in a method which Le Iene said was 100% foolproof .
Le Iene protested that the show would not have violated the privacy of the MPs because their faces and voices would have been masked during broadcasting .
A Blood Test
I went to get a blood exam ordered by my doctor. I have to get one before I have my semi-yearly CAT scan. When I arrived at the lab at 7 am the room was already full. I had visions of a LONG wait. Instead everything moved with remarkable speed and efficiency and I was finished by 7:30. In Italy every once in a while you encounter an office or department that is very efficient and well run. It is always a pleasant surprise.
Back Issues of This Newsletter
They are available on Web at
www.bob.it.tt If, for some strange reason, anyone wants a printed version of the first 200 issues, I have an easy to print file of these compiled for me by my Webmaster Max Hoffmann. Just send me an e mail, and I will forward the file.
Sat 7 Oct 2006
Posted by Robert C. Nordvall under
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Seeing How the Other Half Lives
I went to a fund raising dinner for my church hosted at a villa in the hills above Florence. The owners contributed the dinner to the church which then got all the ticket proceeds. The setting was lovely. There was an open bar with appetizers passed around while a combo played music. This was followed by a full four course dinner with two wines. Everything was quite elegant. In the USA when you buy a ticket to a charity fund raising event, you can deduct for income tax the difference between the price you paid and the value of the goods or food you received. The tickets to this event were 35 Euro; in fact, such a evening at a restaurant would have cost far more. So you would get no deduction in the USA.
New Age
In 1994 I took a bike trip in the San Juan Islands off of Washington. In a local newspaper there were ads for Iridiology, Rolfing, Rebirthing, etc. — new age techniques of which I knew nothing. The newspaper might as well have been written in a foreign language. In the old spa town of Bagni di Lucca I discovered an Italian New Age Center. At the old Villa Demidoff is the Global Village — a center for holistic medicine and psychophysical well being. They have (among other things) Rebirthing, Ayurvedic beauty treatments, and Shiatsu Massage. My favorite in their brochure is Hydrocolon Therapy described as ‘a therapy for a gentle cleaning of the colon. It is a curative treatment for constipation, food intolerance, the prevention of intestinal tumors, and the removal of toxic and cancerogenic substances. For one hour the cost is 78 Euro.
Now when I was a boy this therapy had a simpler name — an enema. My mother gave it to her children for an endless list of ailments. It was free. In fact if my mother had ever discovered that you could make money giving enemas, we would have been millionaires.
There is More than One Last Supper
The Last Supper was a favorite subject for Renaissance painters. In Florence there are at least nine of them by famous artists. The city has brochures about these nine. I went recently to see the one by Andrea del Sarto at San Salvi and that of Andrea del Castagno at Santa Apollonia. Both of these were in formerly closed convents, unseen by the public for centuries.
Taking it to the Streets
There is a big battle in Italy over the new budget proposed by the government. The opposition has threatened to have mass rallies against the budget. Now in Italy, when any government proposes something highly controversial, it knows that the opposition can, if it wishes, mount rallies against the proposal. Since it knows this in advance, it is hard to see how these rallies have any effect upon the actions of the government. It may be that some politicians will cite the rallies as a reason for voting against the proposal, but these folks would have voted against it in any case.
‘The New World’
This is an Italian film that is the Italian nominee for best foreign film for the 2007 Academy Awards. It tells of a Sicilian family emigrating to the USA at the start of the 20th century. I was able to follow the Italian version well because the actors spoke in the Sicilian language so there were subtitles in Italian. Much of the film takes place at Ellis Island. I was interested to learn ( I assume it is true but cannot be sure) that unmarried woman of marriageable age, were not allowed to enter the USA. At Ellis Island they were matched with unmarried men and married on Ellis Island before they were allowed to enter the USA.
I know that Sicilians especially were not well looked upon by Americans. In New Orleans at the turn of the 20th century there was a debate as to whether Sicilians should be forced to go to the segregated schools for Blacks or perhaps put in separate schools for themselves only.
New Drinking Age
The law in Italy now is that for children under 16, you cannot sell them certain high alcohol drinks or any alcohol drinks at certain times and in certain places. But there is no universal prohibition against selling alcohol to those under 16. The government is proposing, in line with the general rule in Europe, to ban all sales of alcohol to those under 18. If this law is enforced with the same laxity as the law prohibiting sales of cigarettes to those under 18, it will have little effect.
A Church Funeral
Those who marital status is irregular can be denied burial in the Catholic Church in Italy. Priests and bishops differ in how they enforce the rules. For example last year a priest refused to bury in the church a woman who had lived with a man, without marriage, for many years. His bishop, however, said that the priest was unduly severe in that case. Last week a priest was asked to bury a man who had been divorced and then remarried in a civil ceremony. (Unlike in the USA, annulments are not routinely granted in Italy so one can remarry in the Church.). The priest checked with his bishop who said ‘no’ to the church funeral. The parishioners were outraged. The next Sunday the priest needed a police escort to leave the church where an angry crowd had gathered outside. The parishioners refuse to talk to the priest and are demanding his transfer. This gives you a little glimpse of what the average Italian thinks about the church rules on divorce.
Dog Show
I went to see the end of a dog show in Pistoia. It was a show limited to the 14 breeds that are native to Italy. Some are ‘recognized’ breeds; others not. Among them are the very hairy Bergamasco, the very big Mastiff from Abruzze, the quite small Italian Greyhound, and a sort of goofy looking hound, the Spinone. The winner was a Neapolitan Mastiff. I can’t attend a dog show without thinking of the marvelous film ‘Best in Show’ and wishing that Fred Willard were there to provide the commentary.
Birth Rates
The average Italian woman has 1.61 children. The average foreign woman living in Italy has 2.61 children. Actually the population of immigrants in Italy is a lower percentage than in most European countries, but still the long term effect of these birth rates is obvious. The best was to shrink this discrepancy is to have the immigrants rise socially and economically in Italian society. If this happens, their birth rate will decline