Live in Gettysburg Area ? – Mark Your Calendar Now for April 14 

On Monday, April 14, at 7 pm I will be giving a public lecture titled “Making Sense of Italy and Italians: An American in Tuscany” in Mara Auditorium of Masters Hall (not in Johnson Theater of Breidenbaugh Hall as announced in some previous publicity) on the Gettysburg College Campus

Grammatical Mistakes in Textbooks 

In helping Italians improve their English, I have some textbooks for foreigners studying English. Rarely do I find a misprint or grammatical error in these books. In my Italian class at the local Intercultural Center, there are similar books for foreigners learning Italian.  Not infrequently, the teacher points out a grammatical error in the textbook.  Why more errors in the Italian books? Because Italian grammar in much more complex than English grammar so the opportunities for errors are much greater.

Identifying the Origin of an Italian Speaker 

Many Italian cities and regions have their dialects which an Italian, but not I, can identify.  There is, however, another difference among cities.  Even when Italians from different cities use exactly the same vocabulary, the mode of speaking can differ.  Pistoia is 20 miles from Florence on one side and maybe 15 miles from Pescia on the other.   People here can often tell if someone is from Florence, Pistoia, or Pescia simply by the intonation, speed, etc. of their speech. 

Finally Total Agreement among All Elements of the Italian Political Spectrum 

There was a political demonstration in Rome where representatives of all the shades of the Italian political world marched together. It was a “Free Tibet” demonstration. Of course, the Chinese government does not seem to give a damm what Europeans think of China’s actions in Tibet, and whatever happens in Tibet will have little effect upon life in Italy. So it’s no surprise that complete agreement comes over an issue, however noble, that has no practical meaning or importance for Italy.

Solving a Non Problem – Another Italian Exercise in Impracticality 

The newspaper reports a proposed change in the Criminal Code – to eliminate the life sentence and to have the longest possible sentence be 38 years. What this proposal seems to ignore is that the life sentence in Italy is already a fiction. With time off for good behavior, occasional general amnesties and general pardons, few, if any, convicts in Italy serve a life sentence. I’d like to know how many convicts currently imprisoned in Italy have been incarcerated for over 38 years.  If it were as high as 20 persons, I’d be very surprised. Furthermore, if there are any prisoners who serve over 38 years, they are exactly the most horrible criminals whose release would lead to a public outcry about their being out of prison.

 Helping Children with Serious Learning Problems 

If a child of normal intelligence in Italy exhibits serious problems learning at school, the school may hire a tutor to work one-on-one with the child, but there is not likely to be any testing for a learning disability, and the tutor is not trained in special techniques to deal with such disabilities. So if the child simply needs more intensive instruction in the ordinary manner, the tutor may have success. If the child needs alternative accommodations for a specific learning disability, such success is not likely.

Saving Alitalia 

Alitalia, the national airline, is pretty much bankrupt.  The government has been trying to sell it. Air France is the one remaining bidder, but Air France, as would any other buyer (There is talk of putting together at the last minute an Italian consortium to make the purchase) , demands the right to cut the bloated workforce and the high salaries (the reason it is bankrupt).  This is unacceptable to unions and political leaders in Italy. In the past the Italian government periodically bailed out Alitalia from bankruptcy, but under the current European Union rules, such governmental subsidies are forbidden.  The Italians have always been clever in finding ways to circumvent rules (of the European Union or otherwise) so that many think there will be at least a covert bailout again. 

How to be a Swimming Champion

Last year French woman swimming star Laurie Manadou moved to Italy to be with her true love, Italian swimmer Luca Marin.  She broke the world record for the 400 meter freestyle. Things did not go so well outside of the pool.  As I noted in an earlier newsletter, after she broke up with Luca, nude photos of her appeared on the internet. Luca denied responsibility, but he also found a new girlfriend, Italian swimming ace Federica Pellegrini.  Last week Federica surpassed Laurie’s world record in the 400 meter freestyle.

My advice to any budding world class female swimmer: go to Italy and hook up with Luca Marin, but don’t let him take  photos of you.

Catching a Mafia Fugitive 

A Mafia leader, who had been sought by the law for a while, was captured at Easter. They found him hiding out at his mother’s house where he had gone to have Easter dinner with her. In the conflict between staying in a safe place or satisfying your mother’s demand that you come home for Easter, for an Italian male (no matter how mature), there is only one answer.

 Improving Relations Between the Roman Catholic Church and the World of Islam – How Not to Do It. 

Soon after he became Pope, Benedict made some statement (I forgot what it was) that offended a lot of Muslims. To quell the uproar, he announced that he was very interested in improving relations between the Catholic Church and Muslims. On Easter Sunday, in a very public ceremony (shown on all TV news shows), he baptized a well known Egyptian intellectual who works for a major newspaper in Italy and was converting from Islam to Christianity. Imagine how well this went over with the Muslim world! I don’t know if it is a good idea for the Pope to be seeking better relations with Muslims.  Even if it is a good idea, I don’t know how possible it is. I do know that he seems to be doing it in the wrong way. 

 Still Two Weeks Open to Stay in My Apartment in Pistoia This Summer 

At this point the weeks open are August 31- September 6 and October 12-18.  Even with the falling dollar, at 250 Euro per week this is a great deal. If interested, contact me at bobnordvall@hotmail.com

 
Italian Politics in a Nutshell

The newspapers here have articles claiming that salaries in Italy are the lowest in Western Europe; usually Portugal or Greece had the lowest salaries. Meanwhile the salaries of national politicians (members of Parliament, Cabinet members, etc.) in Italy are the highest in Europe. One reader of a newspaper sent a Letter to the Editor noting these two facts and ending the letter with the Italian equivalent of the English phrase “What’s wrong with this picture.” (By the way the Italian Parliament, much larger than the US Congress is, I think, the largest one in Europe if not in the world.)

Competing with the Chinese

Shoes are one item of clothing that I don’t necessary find more economical to buy in Italy than the USA (even before the recent drop in the value of the dollar). I loaned my pair of black dress shoes to a friend who is spending a few months in Great Britain where he occasionally needs to wear dress shoes. So I decided to buy an inexpensive pair of black dress shoes in Italy if I could find some I liked. I went to the semi-weekly traveling shoe market, and found a pair with an Italian brand name but made in China. They were an attractive traditional style, made of decent leather, partially leather lined, with a sewn sole. They are certainly more than adequate for my needs. The cost was 15 Euro ($23.00). Eventually there may still be high-end designer shoes made in Italy, but there is no way a shoe of this quality could have been made in Italy for anything near 15 Euro.

Disaster Relief in Italy and the USA

Italians often comment that when there is an earthquake in northern, Italy, fairly quickly the damage is repaired and buildings are reconstructed. After an earthquake in the south, on the other hand, the government money for reconstruction seems to disappear (into hands of corrupt officials and the Mafia) and it takes many years (if ever) for the area to be rehabilitated. I met a lady who once had the task of interpreting for a group of European Union officials who came to southern Italy to see the results of European Union money allocated for earthquake relief. She was very apprehensive because it was obvious that nothing had been done and the money had disappeared. Fortunately the official EU officials and their Italian hosts spoke enough English and French that they could communicate without her services.

When Italians see stories on TV about the lack of progress in rebuilding New Orleans after Katrina, they are surprised. They see the USA as an efficient and less corrupt nation. Yet the situation in New Orleans seems exactly like what they are used to seeing in the Italy after a natural disaster in the south of the country.

Women in Italy: One Step Backward and One Step Forward

Here are two news items about recent court decisions in Italy. As I have noted in the past, Italy is a “masculine dominated” society regardless of what the laws say about equality for women. Here is an example.

Sexually abusing a teenager is a less serious crime if the girl is not a virgin, Italy’s highest court said in a ruling. The court ruled in favor of a man who forced his 14-year-old stepdaughter to have oral sex with him and appealed a prison sentence of 40 months, arguing that the fact that the girl had had sex with other men should have been taken into consideration at his trial as a mitigating factor. The court agreed, saying that because of the victims previous sexual experiences, her personality, from a sexual point of view, was more developed and that therefore the damage to her was less than if she had been a virgin. The decision, which drew a barrage of criticism, opened the way for the stepfather to get a lighter sentence

On the other hand, a recent decision handed women an important victory. To put this in context, we need to recall that until a court decision in the 1960s or 1970s (I don’t recall the exact date), it was a crime in Italy for a woman to commit adultery but not a crime for a man to do so.

Italy’s highest appeal court has ruled that married Italian women who commit adultery are entitled to lie about it to protect their honor.
The court gave its landmark ruling after hearing the case of a 48-year-old woman, convicted of giving false testimony to police by denying she had lent her mobile phone to her lover. The appeal court did not agree that she had broken the law. It said bending the truth was justified to conceal extra-marital relationships

Another “Classic” American Film

I am attending a film series at local library of American musical films from the 1940s. The latest offering was “Bathing Beauty,” a 1944 film with Esther Williams, Red Skelton, Basil Rathbone, and the orchestras of Xavier Cugart and Harry James. It is no way a great film, but perhaps a bit unusual in that Red Skelton plays the part of both the broad comedian and the romantic lead – two things that were usually separate. If you want to see musical numbers in a pool today you have to watch the synchronized swimming competition at the Olympics. This was the first American musical of the 1940s to be released in Italy after the war and it caused quite a sensation. Children under 18 were prohibited from seeing it. You can guess how powerful and narrowly moralistic the Catholic Church was in Italy in that it could impose what we call an R rating today upon a film of Esther Williams!

You probably have not seen the film “Bathing Beauty,” but if you have seen Mel Brook’s “History of the World –Part I,” the final scene in the section on the Inquisition is a direct parody of the final scene of “Bathing Beauty” except that the babes in swim suits are replaced by by beauties dressed as nuns.

Making an Old Joke a Reality

Here is the joke.

Husband # 1: I love my wife so much I bought her a big diamond ring for her birthday

Husband # 2: I love my wife so much I bought her a new Mercedes convertible for her birthday.

Husband # 1: Really. Where can you buy a fake Mercedes convertible?

In Italy husband #1 might be able to give his wife a luxury car for her birthday.

Italian financial police have busted a ring of counterfeiters who built fake Ferraris and sold them for as little as $30,000 a car, officials said Thursday. Authorities have confiscated 14 fake Ferrari Modena 360s, seven sold and seven under construction, in an operation reaching from Palermo to Milan, said Guido Geremia, head of the Palermo unit that led the investigation. ?Investigators do not know how many of the cars have been sold in the past but Geremia said the buyers knew the cars were fakes and were clearly seeking to impress unknowing neighbors with the sleek-bodied speed machines.

My Latest Article in the Florentine Newspaper

Irresistible temptation for the shopaholic

BY ROBERT NORDVALL (issue no. 75/2008 / March 20, 2008)

The traveling weekly market

I confess to an addiction that has caused me to have to find ways constantly to expand the clothes storage space in my apartment. Others, however, may be able to enjoy the experience of the traveling market in a more balanced fashion.

In most Italian cities, the traveling market arrives once or twice a week. In Florence, it comes to the Cascine on Tuesdays. From cosmetics to shoes, from jewelry to gadgets, the markets offer a wide range of goods. The substance of the market, however is clothes, new and used.

The stalls selling new clothing tend to specialize in a single type or a few types of garments. The inventory tends to be constant; you don’t find a lot of new items every time the market comes to town. The prices also are usually stable. The lowest-cost merchandise, no surprise, comes from China. Often a vendor will note if his goods are made in Italy. These stands provide an excellent reference point for the shopper with a specific item in mind. If you want a cashmere/merino blend sweater, it is easy to compare prices and styles between the market table that has these sweaters and what is available in local shops. Usually the market price is cheaper, but this may not be the case during the sales at the shops.

For me, the true pleasure of the market is the bargains at the used clothing sellers. Of course, thrift shops and Salvation Army stores exist in the USA, but they can’t compete with the variety of selection and quality you find in Italy. The inventory at the used clothes stalls changes weekly. Among the items are always some brand new pieces that have found their way to this table.

Where do the clothes come from? Various groups that collect used clothing for charitable purposes sell lots to market vendors. Some pieces have been rejected by a store or individual because they have defects. (If a flaw is in a hidden place or hard to discern, I say, ‘who cares?’). Some come from dry cleaners where, apparently, the owner did not redeem them. Most of the inventory is made up of garments discarded because they are no longer on the cutting edge of style.

Not infrequently the sizes are mismarked-if they are marked at all. But the vendor can always give you a good estimate of the size. Unfortunately, the facilities for trying on clothes are usually limited or nonexistent. You cannot return what you buy from these sellers.

But the price of a mistake is not high when you are paying three euro for a shirt, skirt, dress or pair of pants, or six euro for a sports coat.

If what you like doesn’t quite fit, consider whether it can be easily altered, particularly well-made men’s clothing. At these low prices, it may be a bargain even after the cost of the tailor. For example, a size 56 cm pair of men’s pants can easily be taken in to fit a 54 cm waist, and a 52 cm size can be let out to 54 cm if there is extra cloth in the back seam.

Although the majority of these pieces are from Italy, you find clothes from many European nations, especially Germany. I have even occasionally found clothes from the US (who knows how they got to the used clothing world of Italy). You soon learn the difference between labels that say ‘Made in Italy’ and those that declare ‘Styled in Italy’. Occasionally the provenance will be only ‘Imported product’.

What about counterfeit name-brand clothing? Is the Armani jacket an original or a knock-off? Sophisticated buyers can probably answer this question upon close examination. On the other hand, if you like how it looks, and it cost only five euro, does it really matter if it is the real thing?

Clothes from Italy make an excellent gift for friends in your home nation. Italy has a high reputation for quality. The cloth in Italian garments is often exceptional. I usually mail such items in padded mailing envelopes, for which you do not have to complete a form indicating the contents and their value.

A warning. The market is a favorite locale for pickpockets. Keep your money in a safe place.

One final hint. The only source I have found in Florence that compares with the weekly markets for price and quality is the monthly thrift shop usually held the first Wednesday morning of every month (except during the summer) at St. James American Church on via Bernanrdo Rucellai.

Bob Nordvall is a retired American who lives and shops in Pistoia, where he publishes a weekly internet newsletter of his observations about Italy: www.thisweekinitaly.com
 

Movie Nights 

Each year I have a series of four or five movie nights at my apartment at which I show films in English with English subtitles for Italian friends who are learning English.  I usually try to find some recent films that were quite well reviewed but were not distributed in Italy. This year I’ve put in some “classic” films including “Roman Holiday” with Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck (1953). This film is very well known in Italy, but few Italians have ever seen it in English. The DVD has on it a documentary about the making of the film. As so often is the case in a famous film in which the leading actors seem perfect for their parts, in fact, the roles were first offered to other performers.  Remember that originally the producer wanted Ronald Reagan to play Rick in “Casablanca.” In “Roman Holiday” the first choice for the male lead was Gary Grant. For the princess the role was first considered for Jean Simmons and Elizabeth Taylor.

Early in the film Gregory Peck and Eddie Albert are playing poker with some buddies.  They seem like “high rollers” as they raise each other 500 or 1000, but then it becomes apparent that they are playing with Italian Lira, and the 500 or 1000 bills still are “penny ante” poker in terms of dollars. The humor of this scene is a little bittersweet for an American living in Italy today where the Italian money is worth more than the American.

 Political Corruption Investigations 

These seem to be far more typical in Italy than in the USA. Does this mean there is more corruption in Italy or does it mean that Italians are more diligent in investigating possible political misdoings? In Italy being the target of one or more of these judicial proceedings does not seem to harm one’s political career—the number one case in point being Silvio Berlusconi. Such investigations, also, rarely seem to end with any severe penalty.   The idea that the judiciary itself (which carries out a bigger investigatory role than in the USA) sometimes conducts political vendettas is common in Italy.

  Explaining International News Stories 

When the television news covers stories from other nations, especially with far different cultures, the newscaster sometimes has to elaborate on the story a bit to make it understandable to the viewers. Recently an Italian news show reported on the scandal of the Governor of New York and the high-priced prostitute. After hearing the facts of this story most Italians would think “A politician had sex with a prostitute.  What else is new?  Why is this news?” So the newscaster explained “in the United States this is a mortal sin.”

 Restrained Italian Police 

I’ve mentioned before that Italian police are much less likely than those in the USA to use violence in dealing with suspects. I cite two recent examples of this difference.  On TV I saw a film of police cars chasing and finally stopping a runaway car.  The police were very gentle in removing the driver and placing him in a police car. Now you might say that, since the incident was being filmed, the police were on their best behavior, but I have seen films of similar incidents in the USA where the police were nowhere near so gentle. 

A friend of mine saw the police in Milan chase an African who was selling counterfeit designer purses on the street. (This is unusual in that the police usually let such vendors run away.) Finally they were able to tackle and restrain the seller, but he broke free.  Some more police joined the chase, and they stopped him again. Originally they simply had four policemen holding his arms and legs. After the second time they stopped him, they cuffed his hands behind his back. They put him in the police car.  He bolted out the other door.  So they grabbed him again and put him between two policemen.  Never in this whole event did they treat him roughly. My friend was surprised by the restraint shown by the officers.  In the USA I think he would have been given a few hints with the billy club that it was time to simply lie still. 

 My Ongoing Attempt to Explain Italian Politics to My Readers 

Here is this week’s lesson.  You will recall that Berlusconi is the leader of center-right coalition and that the two “princes in waiting” for him to die or retire are Fini and Cassini.  Belusconi formed a new party this year.  Fini (who last year swore he would never ally with Berlusconi again) merged his party with the new one.  Cassini refused to do so and is running on his own.

One reason Fini may have been happy to get under the umbrella of this party is that his own party is known for its neo-Fascist past.  So as Fini strives to become a national leader, the neo-Fascist image of his party was a problem for him.  By associating with Berlusconi’s new party, he sheds that image. The parties are making up their slates for Parliament.  Berlusconi put on his party’s list a leader from Rome area who has a Fascist background.  The newspapers interviewed this guy and he said that he is proud to be a Fascist.  Notice this statement is in the present tense, not the past tense. Fini went ballistic, but Berlusconi told him that the party needed this guy on the list because he is able to deliver a lot of votes for the party.  So Fini had to grin and bear it.

Now as a cynic one might say that the major problem for politicians in a democracy is to hide the fact that any principle they hold can and will be compromised if necessary for them to get elected. A major difference between Italy and the USA is that in Italy they make only a very weak attempt to hide this fact.

 Eating Your Way Out of Prison (More Potatoes, Please) 

A jailed Mafia leader in Italy was moved from prison to house arrest.  The reason: at 460 pounds he was too obese to be accommodated at the prison. He could not fit through the door to the bathroom, and the bed was too small for him.  I think in the USA the prison authorities would have found a way to modify a cell to accommodate him, but in Italy ……

Changing Customs in Italy

Whatever their reason might be, a passing hearse or simple discomfort, Italy’s highest court ruled that men may not touch their genitals in public. The ruling settled an appeal by a 42-year-old worker from Como, north of Milan, who was convicted in May 2006 of ostentatiously touching his genitals through his clothing, though his lawyer argued it was a problem with his overalls. But the court struck against a broader practice: a tradition among some Italian men of warding off bad luck by grabbing the crotch. The court ruled that this has to be regarded as an act contrary to public decency, a concept including that nexus of socio-ethical behavioral rules requiring everyone to abstain from conduct potentially offensive to collectively held feelings of decorum. The judges suggested that if they need to, men can wait and do it at home.

 Renato Guttuso 

I went to an art exhibit marking the 20^th anniversary of this artist’s death.  He was both a well known painter and Communist in Italy. The catalog for the exhibit had a biographical section, but it turned out to be a sanitized one.  It did not mention that his major model, the wife of an Italian Count, was his long time mistress. It also overlooked the controversy surrounding his death. At the time of his final illness, his family refused to let any of his friends visit him. The “official story” was that he had a deathbed conversion (or reaffirmation) of Catholicism.  All this made his mistress so mad that she went public with her complaints. As a result her husband, who had turned a blind eye to her affair with Renato, was forced to divorce her.

 Political Advice from Me to Barack Obama 

Here is an excerpt from a Letter to the Editor of a local Italian newspaper: “We need in Italy a candidate with the characteristics of Obama, a person honest and sincere who works for Italy and the Italians. I would surely vote for such a candidate.” I suggest to Barack that, instead of facing an uncertain nomination and an uncertain election in the USA in November, he should come to Italy now where he can be elected President in April.

  I Felt the Earth Move…. 

One morning I awoke to feel my bed shaking.  I thought that somebody must be doing construction work in a nearby apartment that was causing vibrations (even though I heard no noise). Later I discovered there had been a mild earthquake.  Earthquakes are not uncommon in Italy.  Pistoia, however, is not in an earthquake prone zone of Italy, but apparently at least very mild quakes occur here too.

 Dinner with Classmates 

I went to a dinner at the home of one of my classmates in an Italian class at the Intercultural Center. The guests were five members of the class (all women) besides me and their spouses and boyfriends. The classmates included one German, one Ukrainian, two women from Romania, and one from Peru. Four of these were married to Italians. For the most part they met their husbands when one or the other of them was on vacation.  They are not women who moved to Italy while single and discovered a husband. As I mentioned before, many Italian men prefer foreign women.

  Caring for the Elderly Person with Alzheimer’s  

In Florence an 86 year old man lived with his 83 year old wife who had Alzheimer’s. One day, after their umpteenth argument, he killed her and called the police to come to his house.  There are in Italy, as in the USA, facilities for infirm older people and for those with Alzheimer’s, but many Italians can not afford them. This type of expense is not covered by the national health plan. Typically in Italy older people are cared for in their homes by a live-in assistant called a “badante.”  These are usually woman from Eastern Europe. A badante, however, is not equipped to deal with special problems of an Alzheimer’s patient.   So in Italy, as in the USA, those without the funds to pay for special Alzheimer’s care face a serious problem in dealing with a family member with this disease.

 Vacancies on the Schedule for Renting My Apartment This Summer  Although I have had reservations for all the weeks this summer, from time to time people’s plans change and formerly reserved weeks become open.  At present there are openings for June 29-July 7 and August 31 – September 6. In April I will require a deposit from those who have made reservations. Information about apartment is in Newsletter 271 at www.thisweekinitaly.com   Gift From Me With Strings Attached (Well a Little More Than Strings) 

At my church’s Thrift Shop there were some new men’s suits and sports coats donated by a local store with the price tags still on them. I bought a coat for a friend in the USA. After I got it home I discovered that it still had the plastic anti-theft security tag on it. These do not come off easily, but I assumed that with some big tools my friend could remove the tag.  When he asked about getting it off, he discovered that these tags sometimes contain ink; if you break them, the ink goes all over the fabric.  So he had to find a store that used such tags and whose machine would demagnetize the one on the sport coat and remove it.  Of course, it turned out that the plastic device from Italy did not fit into the machines at stores in the USA. His wife suggested that he wear the garment with the tag on it as a conversation piece.  Finally at the sixth place he tried, a determined sales clerk was able to jam the security tag into the machine and release it. I’m sure he looks elegant in the coat.

 Respect for the Law 

Respect for the law is not a high value in Italian society.  So how does one explain the fact that the law against smoking in public places (enacted a few years ago) is well obeyed in Italy? When I asked some Italians about this the answer was that to smoke in public in violation of the law shows a lack of respect for one’s fellow citizens who are sharing the public place with you. Breaking laws like tax laws and traffic laws seems to be viewed as lack of respect for the government (that Italians think deserves little or no respect) or the public at large but not fellow citizens who are in your immediate presence. An Italian would never come to your house, unwrap a candy bar, and throw the wrapper on the floor, but he or she might very well throw the wrapper on the public sidewalk

Shamless Advertising for My Family   Go to web site http://fromathenatozoe.blogspot.com/ and click on arrow to see latest video of my son Andrew featuring a reluctant new female star whom I think is great. 

 Why Are You Getting Two Copies Each Week of this Newsletter? 

If you are, it is because I now distribute it both through my web server (which functions poorly) and also as a direct e mail message from my personal e mail account. I have not yet shut down the distribution through the web server because my web master thinks we may be able to get it to work properly, but as for now some readers will be getting two copies.  Sorry for the inconvenience.

Politics:  USA vs. Italy 

The story of John McCain alleged “girlfriend” has come out in the USA. In Italy such a story would not be news.  It would not appear in the media. If it did, it would be at most a minor story.  In Italy you have major politicians who are living and having children with their girlfriends. One major leader is openly bisexual. All this is seen as politically irrelevant.

One Italian newspaper did report the comments of David Letterman to these revelations “Wow!  I though he was just one of these old guys spend a lot of time at the barber shop.  You know the old codgers you see at the Supermarket who are perplexed by the automatic doors.”

In Italy, one the other hand, there is the case of the man who is currently a secretary of the Chamber of Deputies. One political party wants to put him on its list of candidates, but another party, with whom an alliance is being sought, refuses to make the agreement if this man is a candidate.  Why? The man involved was in the 1970s a member of a terrorist organization. He was in prison. When other members of the organization tried to break him out of prison, one person was killed in the attempt. The man stayed in prison until about 1990 when he was released. Can you imagine any political party in the USA promoting this guy as a candidate?

In Italy, unlike the USA, there is a strong feeling that once someone has served his sentence for a crime, it is wrong to hold his past against him.  Some attribute this view to Italy’s “Catholic Culture” which has the idea that a sin confessed and repented no longer has any importance.

Spain vs. Italy 

I have mentioned how in Italy the old political rivalries, accentuated in the Civil War of 1943.45, between the Fascists and the Communists are still alive today.  Spain too had a Civil War between these two groups which was bloodier than that in Italy. I’ve discovered that in Spain too these old rivalries persist, but in Spain somehow these antagonisms do not paralyze the political mechanism.  Spain continues to move forward while Italy stagnates.

Echoes of Pistoia on “Sex and the City” 

A couple of months ago I purchased for about $8 at my Church’s thrift shop the complete videotapes of the first three seasons of this TV show. I find the show sometimes silly, but often funny, and occasionally quite insightful. Recently I was watching an episode in which a guy who is making love with one of the characters gets really upset when, because her menstrual period suddenly begins, she bleeds all over his sheets.  He says in anguish “Jesus. These are Pratesi sheets, two grand a pair!” We all know that these sheets are made in Pistoia.  (I can get them for your wholesale, at today’s prices maybe $1000 or $1500 a pair.)

Death of a Ballerina  

The newspaper headline said that a young “ballerina” (the same word exists in Italian and English) was found murdered close to nearby Montecatini, stuffed in a suitcase and thrown into a garbage dumpster. I envisioned an aspiring member of a modern dance troop or classic ballet company whose promising career was cruelly cut short. As I read the article, I discovered in this case the Italians use the word “ballerina” in a broader way than we do in the USA; she was described as a “ballerina of lap dance.”  Within a day, a customer who was enamored of her confessed to the murder.  Apparently he did not realize that, if you are given to jealousy, it’s not a smart idea to fall in love with a lap dancer.

The “Ombudsman” Newspaper Column 

In Italy, as in the USA, there is a column in the newspaper to which people can write who have having an ongoing problem with a company or a government agency.  The newspaper then tries to resolve the problem on behalf of the reader. In the USA I think a company or government office who receives a call from a newspaper in this situation thinks “Let’s avoid a lot of bad publicity. Let’s get this resolved as soon as possible.” This attitude exists also at times in Italy, but is less pervasive, especially where a government office is involved.  I read a column about a guy whose military records had simply disappeared and thus could not qualify for the military pension to which he was entitled. After numerous telephone calls, the newspaper could not get it straightened out. They did discover that this guy was not alone with the problem.

Talking about government agencies, it has been five months since I sent in my mail my application to renew my permission to live in Italy. No answer. This was the first year such applications could be submitted by mail rather than waiting in long lines at the Questura. A more efficient system but somebody forgot to hire enough people to process the onslaught of mail applications.

Scheduling a CAT Exam 

I get a CAT exam twice a year to check on the status of the desiccation of the lining of my aorta. This situation has fortunately been stable for about 3 years. I’ve read in the newspaper about the long waits that patients have to endure to get such an exam.  When I went to central health office to schedule it, I had a choice of a date at end of April or the next one at end of September. (Emergency examinations can be scheduled more quickly.)  I will be in the USA in September so I took the April one.  The exam will be at the hospital in Pescia which is about a 25 minute train ride from Pistoia. Certainly there is some inconvenience involved, but there is no charge for the examination.

The Mystery Remains 

Two years ago the nation was galvanized by the search for two young brothers who disappeared. Many leads were explored. The police determined that the story told by their father about the day of their disappearance was not completely true. So he was held in prison, but was not formally charged. Meanwhile the bodies were not found. Last week in their hometown a young boy got stuck half-way down the shaft of an abandoned well. The firemen got him out, but a rescue worker lowered into the well notices that there were two bodies at the bottom of the well. These turned out to be the bodies of the missing children.  First indications are that they were not dead when they fell or were thrown into the well; they seemed to have died of exposure and hunger.  Did one fall in and then the other perish too in a vain attempt to save his brother, or were they thrown into the well by a murderer? Or, to consider another hypothesis in the newspaper, did the chilren run into this abandoned area while fleeing their father who they feared?  These may be questions  for which there can be no definitive answer.

Look Carefully at That Train Ticket 

On a Sunday afternoon a group of us from my church were going up to Bologna to visit the “mission” church there. The rector went to a train ticket office and bought a single round trip ticket for all of us. We reimbursed him for our individual fares.  This was on a Eurostar train that has reserved seats. When we went to our seats, they were occupied. We then discovered that the ticket office has issued a ticket for Saturday, not Sunday. A brief conversation with the conductor led to the further discovery that we could not sue yesterday’s tickets on today’s train even thought they were not used on the correct day. Furthermore, beyond three hours after the departure time of the train stamped on the ticket, you can get no refund for it. The rector went back to ticket office the next day and said he had asked for a Sunday ticket but been given a Saturday one.  No luck.

In retrospect, we should have all gone to the bar car (since our seats were taken).  The conductor may never have gotten to that car to collect tickets before the one-hour ride to Bologna ended. Furthermore, since the train number and departure time was correct on the ticket, the conductor may well have never noticed that the date was wrong. If he discovered the problem and gave us a fine for not having a proper ticket, we could have refused to pay the fine, then or later, will probably no consequences.

From now on, I will check the date on any ticket I buy on a train with reserved seats.

Pier Paolo Pasolini

He was a poet, film maker, novelist, and public figure of a type that does not exist in the USA. Here is a brief article about him.

—————————————————– by James Douglas One of the towering intellects of recent times, the controversial novelist, theorist, poet and filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini (1922–1975) embodies twentieth-century Italy’s explosive mix of contradictions and inconsistencies. The polemic and the passion, the triumph and the tragedy of the mid-century seem to converge in this incisively brilliant but often exasperatingly incoherent mind. He was obsessive in his art with a sublime, incandescent creativity, violently pushing the envelope of acceptability, challenging convention and tradition, yet in his life he was wantonly self-destructive, flirting with danger and violence, rapturously enslaved to his more earthly instincts and desires. Although associated very much with Rome, Pasolini was born in Bologna and spent his childhood in Friuli, in northeast Italy. His coming-of-age was characterized by the customary adolescent turbulence of religious fervor (Catholic) giving way to political ideology (first a flirtation with Fascism, then Communism), a passion for football, establishment of sexual identity (gay), poetic scribblings and a keen interest in cinema. The war years were spent in a sort of exile. Pasolini was conscripted, captured by the Germans, escaped, but avoided active commitment to the Partisan resistance. The death of his brother in action was one of the many traumatic events of his life that were to scar his psyche indelibly. By 1947 he was a committed and proud member of the Communist Party, a newly graduated teacher and a published poet, and it was at this point that the difficulties of his marginalized status began to complicate his life. Up against the concerted homophobia of the Church, the Communist Party and, of course, the educational authorities, his prosecutable sexual indiscretions meant that his homosexuality would forever be a badge of ignominy in the eyes of the moralists and ideologues he was driven to confront. Driven out of Friuli after charges of corrupting minors and public obscenity, in 1950 he inevitably gravitated to Rome, taking along his mother, who was to remain a fundamental emotional and artistic presence in his life and work until his death—as if to reinforce the Italian cliché even among the contradictions in his non-traditional lifestyle. His spiritual and sexual homeland in the first lonely years in Rome were the borgate, poor peripheral housing estates, where he was able to indulge his passion for adolescent low-life boys whose uncontaminated sexual freedom was inspirational.  The result was his first novel Ragazzi di vita (1956) which brought charges of obscenity, followed by another novel, the fatefully entitled Una vita violenta (1959) both set in the sub-proletarian heartland of Rome and at the same time celebrating and condemning the squalor and brutality of its inhabitants, provoking the establishment on both counts. Two collections of poems, Le ceneri di Gramsci (1957) and La religione del mio tempo (1961), further consolidated his position as a provocateur of the perbene and defender of the subaltern culture in whose amoral vitality he found intoxication. In the meantime, he had been working at Cinecittà and his popularisation of Roman dialect led to a collaboration with Federico Fellini on the script of Fellini’s 1957 film Le Notti di Cabiria, not unsurprisingly set in the then insalubrious Ostia. The story of a prostitute whose determination to put a brave face on her mistreatment and humiliation had obvious appeal to Pasolini and led to his directorial debut Accattone (1961) and Mamma Roma (1962), both set and themed in the familiar milieu and circumstances of plebeian Rome. Several interconnected strands then emerge in Pasolini’s filmmaking career. With the possible exception of his curiously devout but still controversial neo-realist gospel movie Il vangelo secondo Matteo (1964), which delighted the Vatican, the films of the 1960s continue the polemical parabolic and mystical themes of social criticism in films like Uccellacci e uccellini (1966) in which the great Italian comic Totò played against the non-professional Ninetto Davoli and a talking crow in a lengthy reflection on naïveté and idealism.  The 1968 and very sessantotto Teorema stars the irresistibly attractive Terence Stamp as a mysterious stranger who systematically sleeps his way through the four members of a bourgeois family and their maid. Mythology and far-away places intrigue Pasolini as he finds inspiration in distances in time and space for parallels and oblique criticism of modern society, relishing the spirit of elsewhere and what he saw as the uncontaminated and transcendental vitality of the dramas and poetry of the past.  So we have the ‘trilogy of life’: Il decamerone (1971) adapted from Boccaccio, The Canterbury Tales (1972) from Chaucer, and Il fiore delle mille e una notte (The Arabian Nights, 1973), in which unrestrained sex and sexuality are the life forces that have always driven us but which bourgeois respectability has suppressed. And Greek drama in the form of Edipo re (1967) from Sophocles and Medea (1970) from Euripedes—in which, bizarrely, Maria Callas stars without singing a note—allows Pasolini to again emphasise the role of the outcast he felt himself to be (not entirely without his own design) and his endorsement of a romantic primitivism as antidote to the dubious virtues of civilization. The films are often crudely assembled, poorly acted, occasionally self-indulgently tedious but always fascinating and so clearly imprinted in their time that their iconic status is assured. The last, Salò o le 120 giornate di Sodoma (1975), an adaptation of the Marquis de Sade’s scatological novel to portray the 1944 fascist republic, is a horrifying and disturbing indictment of fascist corruption described in graphic and explicit detail. It was to be Pasolini’s destiny to end a troubled and sexually driven life in a violent and squalid way, in pursuit of the gratification he could always find on the street. He was savagely beaten to death and mutilated on the beach at Ostia by a rent boy he had picked up. The case, however, is still not completely resolved and conspiracy theories abound. He left a legacy of unstinting intellectual rigour in enquiring into a wide range of human behaviour, a body of work in literature and cinema that is distinctive and necessary, and an example of courage and determination against a hostile world.