thisweekinitaly.com

A Law a Bit Too Extreme

The major party in the governing Central-Right coalition is the PDL of Silvio Berlusconi. The next largest party in this wing is the Northern League which, among other things, is strongly anti-immigration. So, at the behest of the Northern League, the governing coalition proposed a new law requiring doctors who treat illegal immigrants and teachers who have illegal immigrants in their classes to report the names of these illegal immigrants to the government. This was too much for some moderate members of the PDL; 100 of them signed a petition saying they would vote against this proposed law. Berlusconi quickly backed down, and the proposed law will be modified.

A Bit More on Subtitles

When I watch an Italian DVD, I use the Italian subtitles which are those for the hard of hearing that include not only the dialog but descriptions of sounds that occur during the movie. Often the subtitles do not exactly match the dialog; they may convey the idea in fewer words so it is more easily read. Recently I watched a film (Due Amici Two Friends) that offered two choices for the subtitles – Italian for the hard of hearing and subtitles for the dialog of Messina which was common in the film. Messina is at the northern tip of Sicily. So I assume many folks there must be trilingual – Italian, Sicilian, and dialog of Messina.

The 1001 Faces of Barack Obama

This is the name (translated from Italian) of a biography and explanation of Obama written by an Italian journalist who has covered politics in the USA. Like many quickly written books about a new personality on the political scene is a bit slapdash. In the back there is a glossary of American political terms used in the book. One of these is “Lame Duck” which the author incorrectly says refers to a President of one party who is in office at a time when the other party controls Congress.

Paying for Medical Care in Italy

When Americans consider a state run medical system, they often envision one in which there are unavoidable long waits for services and you cannot choose your own doctor. At least as far as Italy goes, this is not true. Under the state system you choose your own primary doctor. There is a parallel system of private clinics where you pay for your medical services. Often these are services for which you might have to wait a while in the state system, but some people prefer the private clinics even when there is no wait in the state system. You can buy medical insurance to pay for services in a private clinic. Obviously private clinics are more often used by people who have some wealth. It seems that doctors who have private clinics also have to do some service in the state system.

The Twentieth Exhibition of Antique Camellias of the Area Around Lucca

I went to this event in the little town of San Andrea di Compito. This is the time of year when Camellias are in bloom in Tuscany. As with roses or tulips (and probably many other flowers as well) there seems to be almost an infinite variety of Camellias. My friends and I went to lunch in a local restaurant which, not surprisingly, was crowded on this special day. Still the food seemed to be of top quality despite the pressures of feeding so many. I ordered something in Italian but asked for an explanation of what it was. The waitress said in English “they are ribs.” After hearing only these three words, I said “when did you spend time in the USA”? It turns out that she had lived in the USA for 29 years. If an Italian speaks English without an accent, it takes no more than three words to know that they have spent a considerable period in an English speaking country.

Of course after I speak only three words in Italian, it is already apparent to an Italian that I am from elsewhere.

Civil vs. Criminal Negligence

In the USA if you are negligent and harm another, you may have to pay damages to the injured party, but you are not criminally liable. If you are recklessly negligent (e.g. driving a car at 100 mph while drunk), you can be charged with a crime. The same is true in Italy, but in Italy the point at which negligence can carry criminal penalties is much lower. There was an air crash for which the cause was the failure of airline personnel to fill completely the fuel tank of the plane. Twelve employees of the airline were criminally charged and sentenced to seven years in jail. This type of mistake would not have caused a criminal charge in the USA. Now, lest Italy look to be much more severe than the USA, one must remember that after multiple appeals, it probably will be the case that these 12 employees will spend little or no time in jail. In Italy, the important thing in initially sentencing them criminally is not to punish them, is not to deter others from acting likewise; it is instead to give satisfaction to the families of the victims of the crash that “justice was done.”

Tourism Bust in Italy

It is no surprise that tourism is declining rapidly in Italy during these hard times. Tourism is Italy’s number one business providing 10% of the GNP. Italy may well be the major nation most dependent on tourism in the world. Although the number tourists from all over is in decline, Americans are missed the most because they tend to spend more and especially tip more.

In general Italians are suffering less from the economic downturn than those in the USA. As I mentioned before, there has been no economic boom in Italy in last 15 years from which the current decline is a bust. Italians save more than Americans and have less personal debt. Unemployment benefits last longer in Italy (for those who qualify). Italy has free medical care. Family members are more likely to support each other. Banks did not issue a lot of sub prime mortgages. If you lose your job in Italy and stop paying the mortgage, the bank does not foreclose on the mortgage. This process would take many years so the bank prefers to wait and see if you will be able to start paying again later.

Police Violence

As I have noted before there are strong sanctions against police violence in Italy that are based in part on the memory of the police as a repressive force during the Fascist years. A policeman is now being tired for murder because he shot a man while trying to break up a fight between rival soccer fans. He may well go to jail. In the USA it is almost impossible criminally to convict the police of violent acts – consider the Los Angeles policemen who beat up Rodney King or the New York policemen who put 43 bullets into an unarmed immigrant who was reaching for his wallet. On the other hand, such cases in the USA result in large civil damages paid by the city to the person injured or his family. In Italy, there may or may not be a civil case, but it will not result in a payment of millions of dollars.

Measuring Quality of Life

The news constantly reports the growth or decline of the Gross National Product (GNP) of various nations. It is a prime measure of how the economy is doing. It can be measured fairly accurately. Quality of life in different countries is another matter, but how do you measure it? A group in England came up with a quality of life index that has surprising results: Italy ranked ahead of the USA and Germany but behind Argentina and Mexico. Here the rankings could probably vary quite a bit depending upon the factors chosen. Still it is a good idea to remember that a growing GNP is not the alpha and omega of life for a country.

Another Little Example of the Quality of Politics in Italy

‘Pianisti’ curbed as MPs fingerprinted for votes
4:00AM Thursday Mar 12, 2009
By Catherine Field
PARIS – Under pressure from a public sickened by the taint of corruption that hangs over the legislature, Italy’s Lower House of Parliament has called on MPs to register their fingerprints before they can vote.
The high-tech electronic system aims to curb cheating by absentee MPs, who get a mate to lean over from an adjacent seat and press their voting buttons on their behalf.
Caught many times on television, the button-pressers have been dubbed “pianisti” – “pianists” – for their sinuous arms and dextrous hands.
The practice, politely called “plural voting”, has stoked ire. The public’s already sour mood towards MPs – viewed generally as sneaky, lazy or on the take – has been compounded by the economic recession. Yet despite the anger over the “pianisti”, no vote has ever gone to a recount or been declared invalid.
“Deputies have a duty to vote only for themselves,” the Speaker of the House, Gianfranco Fini, said last week as he unveiled the new system. “It’s a matter of public morality.”
With the help of “pianisti”, absentee MPs can be recorded as present in official records, and this entitles them to claim the daily parliamentary attendance allowance of 250 ($650). The “anti-pianisti” system requires an MP to press his finger on an electronic fingerprint reader during the vote.
The new system was put to the test yesterday when the House voted in favour of a resolution calling for China to respect human rights in Tibet.
Although the fingerprinting is voluntary, rightwing deputies kicked up a media storm, declaring it a form of surveillance and a semi-criminalisation of MPs.
With these methods, the representatives of the people are being violated and it’s unacceptable,” said Paolo Guzzanti, a member of a small group, the Liberal Party, and one of 19 MPs in the 630-seat legislature who refused to be fingerprinted. “I condemn the ‘pianisti’ but the solution is worse than the problem.”
Fingerprinting carries special stigma in Italy because last year the country began to fingerprint Gypsies in a bid to crack down on crime, child begging and illegal immigration. The campaign was attacked by the European Parliament, which described it as “politically motivated and based on prejudices”.
Guzzanti noted acidly that Italy was joining “only Albania and Mexico” in using electronic fingerprinting in parliamentary votes. This discredited Italian democracy and helped the rise of extremism, in the same way that fascism arose in the 1920s, he argued.
James Walston, professor of international relations at the American University of Rome, scoffed at Guzzanti, accusing him of failing to address the real issue – public trust that has hit rock-bottom.
“In Italy, the saying is ‘as soon as the law is passed, somebody finds a way around it’,” Walston said. “I can’t think of a way around [the fingerprint voting system], apart from cutting your finger off and lending it to a friend. Whether they will or not, the general presumption in Italy is that they will.”
One of the top-selling books in Italy in the past two years has been La Casta (The Caste), a tell-all book about Italian politics.
With salary and other emoluments, legislators typically clear 12,000 ($30,500) a month, making them the highest paid in Europe, it says. Additional privileges include free or highly discounted air and train fares, bodyguards, bullet-proof chauffeur-driven cars, personal tennis lessons and a large pension that is paid from 60 even if an MP has served for as little as 30 months.
Two dozen MPs in the present assembly have criminal convictions, according to Italian press reports.

Extracommunitario

This is a legal term in Italian that means a person is not a citizen of one of the countries of the European Union. Thus I am an extracommunitario. The word, however, has come to take on a secondary significance that indicates “foreigner” in a negative manner. This would be especially true when applied to immigrants from places like Nigeria, Morocco, Romania, Tunisia, etc. An Italian court has ruled that when used it that way it is slanderous and the person using it to address another can be fined. The Italians try harder to have “politically correct” speech (as this phrase is used in America) than in the USA.

A New Film Experience

When an Italian film is shown in USA, it almost always has English subtitled. Americans don’t tend to dub foreign films into English. I watched the DVD of an old Italian film recently that did, however, offer a dubbed English soundtrack. While watching the film in English, I turned on the Italian subtitles (that are there for those who can’t hear) which, of course, showed what was said on the original Italian soundtrack of the film. Not surprisingly, the English soundtrack often did not bother to translate the entire Italian dialog. This was especially true for dialog that displayed the sentiments of the characters but was not particularly relevant to the plot. Let’s just say that in the dichotomy in drama between thought and action, the former is more important in Italy and the latter in Great Britain and the USA.

Tourist Troubles

In Florence there are zones in which you can drive a car only if you have the resident sticker for that zone. The system is enforced through telecameras. Unfortunately, there are not a lot of signs warning drivers about these zones. So tourists, who have rented a car, often run up to $500 in fines by driving their cars in forbidden zones. The credit card company, whose account was used to rent the car, pays the fines and just adds to the credit card bill.

Mixed Marriages

Marriages between Italians and folks from other nations increase every year as there are more immigrants in Italy. However, 80% of these marriages end in divorce within three to four years. It is unclear how much of this high divorce rate is due to the problem that the marriage is cross-cultural and how much is due to the fact that some of these marriages are made for the sole purpose of obtaining Italian citizenship –what is called a Green Card marriage in the USA.

Can’t Afford a CAT Scan for Your Cat?

While the USA debates how to reform its health care system, Italy moves forward. Parliament is considering a law that will provide for state-funded veterinary care for the animals of pet owners who are too poor to pay for such services.

Why I Like Living in Italy

Here is an account of a day not necessarily typical, but also not particularly unusual. I get up at 9:00 and go to free city Internet Point to look at e mail. It’s market day so I check out what is available. I cannot resist a new sports jacket of very fine cloth for only $8. (Of course, the rule is that every time I buy a new garment I must take a similar garment from my closet to the Thrift Shop at my Church so that my wardrobe does not grow). I visit a shop where a friend makes original jewelry to drop off a little gift for her. I stop by my favorite bar and meet with some English speaking friends while I have a café latte. I also review the daily paper.

I’m invited to lunch at a restaurant just outside of town where the owners are interested in affiliating with our Made in Pistoia project. We start with a puff pastry filled with melted cheese and an onion sorbet. Next comes ravioli with a green herb sauce. This is followed by deep fried vegetables and fish – as always with a light breading and not greasy. We then have a small beef filet with a breadcrumb and balsamic vinegar topping. Dessert is a mixture of creamy white and dark chocolate with a chocolate piece on top on which is embossed the name of the restaurant. Of course there is also good wine, water, and coffee.

After such a lunch, some exercise on my bike is called for. I take a nap instead. I work on getting out invitations to two events I am hosting. One is a series of four movie nights at my apartment in which I show films in English with English subtitles for Italian friends who are learning English. The second will be a one-day tour of Pistoia for a group of ladies from my church in Florence.

I skip dinner because I am still full. I attend with a friend a lecture and performance by American pianist and musicologist Charles Rosen who discusses, with musical examples, the musical influence of Beethoven on subsequent composers. He speaks in somewhat broken Italian that I can easily follow.

Great food, good friends, bargain clothes, enjoyable culture. Not a bad life at all.

Solving the Small Business Credit Crunch – Italian Style

In Italy, as in the USA, banks have become very reluctant to loan money to businesses during the current economic crisis. In Italy, however, businesses, especially small businesses, have an alternative – the Mafia loan shark. The Mafia has highly liquid assets and is eager and ready to make loans at prohibitive interest rates. Whereas banks worry about loan repayments in these hard times, the Mafia does not. In fact if banks in the USA had only adopted the Mafia loan collection techniques, the current mortgage default crisis would have been avoided.

True Love Triumphs

Outside a nearby city there is the convent of an order of cloistered nuns. They avoid all contact with outsiders. They have a little store where they sell postcards, but the money and cards are passed through a closed window using a circular tray. You don’t see the sister on the other side. So it was a bit of a surprise when one of the nuns ran off with the local priest. How did this romance blossom? My guess is that the nuns had to confess to a priest. I envision the nun in question as having confessed to impure thoughts, at which point …. (I will leave you to fill in the rest of the story).

Murderous Dogs

Recently there were two cases in Italy in which a previously docile family dog mauled a child to death. These dogs were of breeds that are used at times as guard dogs—probably not a good breed to have around a child. Now there have been two cases of the same band of dogs attacking persons, killing at least one. .

On TV there was a story about the police trying to capture the dogs in this band. After they are captured, they are taken to the pound and put to sleep. When you have a wild band of killer dogs, you should not try to capture them one by one—it is more efficient simply to shoot them. Shooting them, however, makes a bad image when shown on TV; in Italy the image is always more important then considerations of efficiency.

I don’t know how many of the dogs in these incidents were male or female. I think that the Italian practice of almost never castrating a male dog means that if something goes wrong, these male dogs are much more likely to be dangerous than are castrated dogs.

A (Somewhat) Big Fish in a (Very) Little Pond

On March 14 the local section of a newspaper carried a follow-up story to an interview with me last year. The title was “Pistoia? A Continuing Discovery.” The introduction notes that few foreigners come to Pistoia to live compared to nearby Tuscan cities. I describe how I was taken with the beauty of Pistoia when I first saw it in 2001 and decided to come here to live. I liked the location along the rail line (convenient both to mountains and the sea) and the reasonable size of the city and the reasonable costs of living here. I noted that people complain about the train service, but trains in Italy are much cheaper than in the rest of Europe. You get what you pay for. When asked what the shortcomings of the city were, I noted that often churches with outstanding works of art are closed when you try to visit them (a problem throughout Italy). I ended by noting the two web sites with which I am associated www.thsiweekinitaly.com and www.madeinpistoia.com (for the new cultural association of which I am President)

Infuriated Merchants?

The vendors at the semi-weekly market in Pistoia pay a fee to the city for the spaces where they set up their stalls. Recently the fee was raised. The headline in the paper said “Market Merchants Infuriated at Increased Fee.” The man in charge of my favorite stall is Giuseppe, a most pleasant fellow. I told him that he did not seem to be infuriated, and he just laughed. Now there are signs on the stalls protesting the increased fee. Of course the government agency that raised the fees is not likely to be moved by the signs.

It makes perfect sense that these merchants would protest the higher fee, but in Italy almost any change results in a protest. Almost always the protest is useless. The idea of change as an opportunity as well as a challenge is an idea with little currency in Italy.

The Bridge to Somewhere

Ever since I came to Italy, and before, there has been a debate about whether to build a bridge across the Strait of Messina from mainland Italy to Sicily. It would be the largest ever public works project in Italy. This, of course, makes it the biggest opportunity for corruption and cost overruns in the history of Italy. The chance of such malfeasance is, of course, more probable in the south of Italy. A friend told me that the roads in Calabria and Sicily leading to the site of the bridge are so poor that it makes no sense to build the bridge. If there is ever a high speed train that goes all the way to Sicily, such a bridge would be necessary. Trains to Sicily now cross the Strait on a ship. The idea of building the bridge is being revived now as a measure to boost the economy.

A Paying Customer?

At the American Bar I frequent, while having a snack, there will be two or three Nigerians who will come in selling little items and begging for change if you buy nothing. I’ve finally “adopted” one of them to whom I give a little each day. Owners of bars and small restaurants in Italy will often give food to beggars. The other day I saw a very well dressed Black man eating a sandwich at the bar. He spoke English so he was very likely a Nigerian. After he left, I asked the owner Anita if he was a paying customer. She said “no.” He comes in from time to time, but she has never asked him to pay even though he looks like he might be able to do so.

A New Bureaucratic Wrinkle

In Italy, as in the USA, there is a national immigration department that issues the documents that allow foreigners to remain in the country. There is local government office where you must register as a resident of the city. After almost seven years in Italy, I discovered (by a letter sent to me for the first time) that I am supposed to inform this local office every time I renew my permission to stay in Italy with the national office. I took my documents to the local office. I got a number at the machine which was number 18. The electronic sign indicated that currently the clerk was servicing client number 10. In Italy it can be a LONG TIME between customer 10 and 18, but I noticed that there were only three other people in the waiting room. It turned out that the clerk processing the papers was not pushing the button to advance the numbers on the electronic sign. So my turn quickly came.

All I had to do was present my permission form from the national government. I did not have to do anything to show that in fact I was still living in Pistoia. It may well be that the local office accepts the fact that I had to show such evidence to get a new national permission form so there is no need to ask for it again. Of course, if this is true, the local office can simply access the national computer data base to verify that I have a national permission form. This would mean, however, that the local office needed one less clerk to process papers. A lot of the bureaucracy in Italy is a way to provide jobs (even useless ones) to people in an economy whose private sector does not generate enough work.

Violence in Italy

As far as I can tell, Italy has not had a mass shooting at a school or place of work like those that occurred in Germany and Alabama this week. This simply may be a matter of luck. Italy did have, primarily in the 1970s, bombings by political terrorists that often had very many victims. There certainly are violent crimes by individuals in Italy although, as is well known, the violent crime rate in the USA is far ahead of that of European nations. Because guns are less common here, a barroom brawl is less likely to become a shooting and more likely to result in someone being stabbed, hit over the head with a bottle, etc. It is hard to know the extent to which the lower murder rate is the result of a lower propensity to violence or of the use of less lethal means of violence.

DNA Evidence –Unusual Case

At times DNA evidence has been used to prove the innocence of someone charged with a crime. Recently in Italy, two Romanians were arrested for a rape in Rome. The victim identified them. One of them confessed to the crime. Seemed like a closed case; why even do DNA testing? The DNA tests were done and showed no match. So why did one of the Romanians confess? Was it beaten out of him? (He was interrogated by a policeman from Romania.) Did he confess to exculpate the real criminal? Meanwhile there is evidence that others who may have been involved have fled from Italy to Romania. One of them should not be too hard to find – he is shepherd who is missing three fingers.

Soccer Sorrows

Forget the declining economy and growing unemployment. Let’s talk about the true biggest problem in Italy today. Each year there is a soccer tournament in Europe among the top professional teams of the various national leagues. These teams have players from many nations although obviously Italian teams have more Italian players; German teams have more German players, etc. Last year and this year no Italian teams have reached the quarter finals. The top Italian teams both this year and last year lost to the top British teams. Here is a true national disaster.

Meanwhile the fans of the local Pistoia team are so upset by the squad’s performance that they are holding a public demonstration against the owner.

A New Kind of Strike

Calvin Coolidge first gained fame in the USA when he acted to stop the Boston Police Strike of 1919 saying that there was no right ever to strike against the public safety. The problem of strikes that cripple essential services has been a constant one in labor relations. President Reagan fired the federal air controllers who went on strike. In Italy the right to strike in essential sectors is regulated by law, but outlawing strikes altogether would be either unconstitutional or at least politically impossible in Italy. So the government cannot simply forbid strikes in certain occupations. A big problem is strikes of employees in public transportation. In this area there are regulations to preserve essential services in case of a strike, but in Italy there are no effective penalties assessed against unions that strike in violation of the law or the collective bargaining agreement.

The government has now proposed a new solution – the virtual strike. The aggrieved employees will continue to work while voicing their demands, but they won’t collect their salary (as is always the case when you strike) during the virtual strike; instead the amount of the salaries will be paid by the companies to public charities. When you read things like this in Italy, you don’t know whether to laugh or to cry.

Paying to Watch Italian TV

Italians are supposed to pay a yearly fee to support the public networks in Italy. If you don’t pay, enforcement is practically non existent, but as good resident, I pay it. The amount this year is 107.50 Euro. I got in the mail a personalized form to take to post office to pay this amount. The 107.50 was printed on the form. I was paying it late, however, so there was a 4.23 Euro late fee. So I added the two together and tried to pay 111.73 Euro at the Post Office. I was not surprised to discover, however, that one cannot change the amount on the form. I could only pay 107.50 with this form. Well how does the TV authority collect the additional 4.23 Euro? They send me a second bill for this amount. It seems quite likely that the cost to the TV authority of issuing this second bill and processing my payment when it arrives (assuming that they get around to issuing the bill), will be more than the 4.23 Euro paid.

The film Nove Cento (1900)

This is a classic Italian film from 1976 by the director Bernardo Bertolucci. It is five hours long and follows a group of people from the year 1900 through the end of the Second World War. A perspective on Italian history with (no surprise) a leftist bent. The cast includes Robert De Niro, Burt Lancaster, Sterling Hayden, Donald Sutherland, and Gèrard Depardieu along with many Italian stars. It is a lushly photographed film full of interesting characters and events. It is definitely R rated.

Sunday Slow News

In most countries Sunday is a slow news day for the media because political activity slackens over the weekend. Thus in the USA if you have a press release or report for which you want media coverage, often you will release it on Saturday. For this reason American Presidents make their weekly address to the nation on Saturday. Last Saturday, Obama’s weekly address got big headline coverage in Italy. (La Repubblica in Italy gave it much more coverage than The New York Times) Why? He did not say anything particularly different. It was not about foreign affairs. I can think of three reasons. First, as I’ve noted often, there is a high level of interest in Italy in U.S. domestic politics. Second, with the world economic downturn, the idea that the U.S. economy will be the necessary engine for worldwide economic recovery causes even stronger interest in American domestic affairs. Third, Italians seem fascinated by a President who intends to carry out large scale changes because in Italy politicians often promise change and almost never deliver it.

Also on the front page of La Repubblica was an item about criticism of Michelle Obama in the USA because she posed for her official photograph in a sleeveless dress. This story viewed the hubbub about this as another example of silly Puritanism in the USA. I’d like to think that in fact this was no big issue in America. I hate to think that the average American cares much (if at all) about what dress Michelle wears for her official portrait.

Another News Item that May Have Been Bigger in Italy than USA

British chocolate maker Cadbury sponsored a poll to determine the sexiest carton character. The winner was Jessica Rabbit from the film Who Framed Roger Rabbit. Runner up was Betty Boop followed by the Cadbury Dairy Milk Carmel Bunny (Hey! Who counted the votes here?) I think Snow White came in a little farther behind. (Calling her “sexy” probably made Walt Disney roll over in his grave.). This story got good coverage in Italia press and national TV. I’m sure it was mentioned in media in USA too, but did it rate a feature story on national, network, evening news?

The world of comics, comic books, cartoons, etc. seems to be more important in Italy than in the USA.

(Italian TV also had fun with the advertisement that the networks and the NFL vetoed for the Super Bowl –the one of the web site, www.ashleymadison.com that hooks up married folks seeking a partner for an affair. The sample ad for this outfit that I saw on national evening news in Italy was more explicit than that on You Tube which is the one nixed for the Super Bowl.)

Three Male Responses to Infidelity

In the USA there are mainly two. The first, deny everything. In the film A Guide for the Married Man (1967) a wife arrived home to find her husband in bed with another woman. The wife launches a tirade while the woman leaps out of bed, gets dressed, and quickly leaves. The husband is silent. The wife continues to scream and yell at the husband while he too gets dressed. The wife’s furious onslaught continues as the mute husband calmly sits in his favorite chair. As she stops to take a breath, he finally says “what woman”?

The second possibility. When denial does not work in the USA, there is confession, begging for forgiveness, and the promise never to stray again. There can even be jewelry.

In Italy, there is a third response that is roughly as follows “Why are you so upset? Most married men have affairs. We have a nice house and lovely children. I still care for you. You need to be mature.” Of course, many Italian women are unconvinced by this argument, but it fails especially with non Italian wives of Italian men when these wives come from cultures where infidelity is not accepted as a normal part of married life.

Flower Shop vs. Florist

In Pistoia, and I assume elsewhere in Italy, you can buy flowers from a little flower shop or a street vendor. These sellers will throw in some greens and do a simple arrangement of the flowers for you. At a florist, the flowers cost more, but the arrangement is more elegant. I bought some flowers recently at the florist. She arranged them with two types of greens, wrapped them in gorgeous paper, and tied it all up with a lovely piece of string. As always the esthetic sense is excellent in Italy.

Medical Update

For the readers of this newsletter who are also personal friends, here is a quick medical update. A few years ago I had a separation in the lining of my aorta. This has been successfully treated with medicine, and every six months I have a CAT scan to check the current status of the aorta. The most recent CAT scan, as all the previous ones, shows no change. So I’ll live a little longer or if I don’t, it won’t be because of the aorta problem.