thisweekinitaly.com

Confronting the Economic Crisis

In reading and listening to the news in Italy and from the USA about the current recession, I notice a big difference. Stories from the USA often stress the retraining of workers and how people might redirect their careers. There is clear theme that many people are never going back to the job they lost. In Italy, the discussion is simply when businesses will hire back the employees they have laid off. This difference illustrates how the USA is more of a dynamic society while Italy is more of a static one.

Mike Buongiorno ( a footnote)

I wrote to weeks ago about the death of this Italian TV personality who was born in the USA. I looked at a biography of him at a newsstand. In it was a photo of his father when his father was a student at Princeton. Clearly Mike did not come from a “just off the boat” poor immigrant family in the USA.

At the Antique/Flea Market in Florence

I went to a large antique/flea market in Florence. A common item was reproductions of signs from the former legal houses of prostitution in Italy (that closed in the 1970s). The signs listed prices according to time spent with the lady or according to the sexual practice selected. My colloquial Italian is not good enough to translate these various practices into English, but I did understand the phrase that promised assistance to youthful first-time visitors.

Apparently there was a style of dress adopted by the ladies who worked in these establishments. This style was in the news this week because it provides the inspiration for some of the garments in the most recently displayed fashion collection of Armani.

Well, There is No Harm in Trying

This is an item from the Lost and Found section of the classified ads in The Florentine, the English language newspaper of Florence:

Lost blue velvet pouch in the city in July: one Cartier diamond rolling bands, Cartier vintage diamond ring, chain with round gold medallion, diamond cross rubies, sapphires. E-mail: jacquelinegill@ aol.com

Maybe the owner put this ad in all the Florence newspapers or maybe only in The Florentine figuring that her only hope of recovering the jewelry was if an English speaker found the pouch. The item was lost in July, but The Florentine is not published during the summer so the ad ran for the first time in September.

It Happened in Italy

This is the title of a new book by Elizabeth Bettina that talks of the fate of foreign Jews who were interned in Italy during World War II. Anti-Semitism was not part of the ideology of Fascism in Italy, but at the urging of Germany, Mussolini in 1938 instituted racial laws that banned Jews from jobs and schools. Before this time, many Jews from other parts of Europe had fled to Italy. Whereas Italian Jews were restricted in their activities after 1938, foreign Jews eventually were put into internment camps. These camps were in no way concentration camps. They appeared to have been better than the places into which the USA put Japanese-American citizens. The camp residents were not treated cruelly or abused. They were treated with respect. In September 1943, the Germans came into occupy Italy. By this time many of these camps were in areas already controlled by the Allies. As for camps that were in Germany occupied areas, local residents helped Jews escape before the Germans arrived and sheltered them. Why did the Italians in general treat the Jews better than the residents of many German-occupied nations? Italy in the last century was not a place of strong Anti-Semitism. Furthermore, as I may have noted before, the Italians to me are not generally given to hatred (They are quite tolerant) except against members of their family or neighbors with whom they are feuding!

Gianfranco Fini

He is one of the two heirs apparent to Berlusconi in Italy from the center-right. The other is Cassini. In the last election, Cassini broke with Berlusconi and is part of the opposition although not allied with the center-life parties of that wing. Fini stuck with Berlusconi and was rewarded with the post of President of the Senate. In fact, however, Fini has taken a line increasingly diverse from that of Berlusconi and the rest of his coalition. Of course Fini’s criticism of government policies, coming from within the group, gets more publicity than that of Cassini. I mentioned recently that some think Berlusconi is becoming increasingly erratic and will soon do or say something that will force him to resign. I wonder if Fini, in constantly confronting Berlusconi, is not trying to help give him a shove over the edge.

Because of the prominence of the Ferrari team, Formula 1 racing is a big deal in Italy. Recently the head of the Renault racing team was fired and then banned from Formula 1 for life. One of his drivers accused him of having made the driver crash into the car of another squad in order to help the prospects of a different Renault pilot to win the race.( A year or two ago there was a scandal that a British team had spied upon the plans of other squads.) Renault is a French car, but the man who was banned is, guess what, an Italian. The Italian penchant for finding clever ways to cut corners and avoid the rules probably extends to Italians in the world of sports.

Customer Service in Italy – Revisited

In stores, shops, bars, and restaurants in Italy the clerks are generally friendly and often quite well informed. Frequent customers often get a little discount. Still the general ethos of customer service is not pervasive. I think I mentioned once before that if you spill a drink at a bar or restaurant, the waiter will clean up the mess, but generally will not offer to refill your glass. Here is another example. There is an ice cream shop where I sometimes order a milkshake (called a frappe in Italy). The woman often puts a little too much milk into the mixing can so that after the shake is completed, and she has filled my glass, there is still some liquid in the can. She doesn’t think to tell me to drink a little from my glass so she can refill it with this extra amount. She doesn’t give me another glass (these are plastic ones) with the excess. She just throws out what did not fit into the glass. It is not a matter of money in this case; she doesn’t save money be discarding the excess. It is a matter of not seeing the situation from the viewpoint of the customer.

Kids Love Those Cell Phones and Text Messages Except….

when the principal of a local school announced that text messages would be sent to the parents’ cell phones when the students were absent. Text messages would also be used to send grades home to the parents – no more forging a parent’s signature on a report card. This use of modern technology caused a loud protest among the students.

Using Cell Phones While Driving

It’s illegal in Italy as it is in many states in the USA. This law is widely disobeyed in Italy (as it may well be also in the USA). I think I saw a new low in this regard when the bus driver on my bus was talking on a cell phone. In his defense, he did have an earphone so he did not have to hold the cell phone in his hand, but it my understanding that even use of “no hands” cell phones while driving has turned out to be dangerous.

Getting Ready for School

Every year there are articles in the paper at this time about the high cost of text books (paid by parents) for middle and high school students in Italy. We are talking about up to 350 Euro. Of course textbook publishers know the old racket of constantly issuing new editions so that the used text books available become out of date.

However, I noticed another cost (of course there are clothes too) of sending Pasquale or Maria to school. There are coordinated sets of backpacks, pencil cases, cases for miscellaneous items, belts, etc. –even an alarm clock. To give you an idea of the costs, the cloth pencil and pen case costs 26 Euro ($36). You can bet many Italian parents spend up to 150 Euro for a coordinated set of these vastly overpriced (and often unneeded) items.

Stefano Bardini Museum

Stefano Bardini was an Italian art and antique collector and dealer who died in 1922. He left his house and collection to the City of Florence as a museum. Bardini had a unique way of displaying together items of various types from various periods. The first curators of the new museum, however, added new items to the collection and radically changed Bardini’s mode of presenting them. Now, after being closed for 10 years, the Museum has been reopened with the items displayed more or less as Bardini had them. There is an extensive new system of explanatory signage in Italian and English. Here is a slight problem. Twice while touring the museum I came upon a phrase in English on the signs that I could not fully understand. Fortunately I could read the Italian version and figure it out. Although the English translations are generally sufficient, as often is the case it Italy, the museum did not get around to having a native speaker check the signs before they were printed in English.

Respecting Berlusconi in Parliament

The recent incident of the outburst of Rep. Wilson when President Obama was addressing Congress, points out something I have noted before. Obama is both the political leader of the nation and the symbolic head of state. So the tradition is to show him respect as President (symbolic head of state) even if you totally disagree with his policies as political leader. In Europe these two positions are separated. Berlusconi is the head of the government (called President of the Council) but Giorgio Napolitano is President of Italy. Berlusconi in fact is a member of Parliament but doesn’t often (if ever) speak in Parliament. Anyone who speaks in Parliament could be jeered by his opponents. Nobody would ever show public disrespect to the President of Italy who addresses the Italian people directly rather than through speeches in Parliament. I like the European system that separates these two roles.

Fantasy Football, Italian Style

I wrote once that something like Fantasy Football (in which participants make up an imaginary team of players from different squads and then get a score for their Fantasy Football team depending upon how the individual players on their squad perform in their various contests) would be easy to conduct in Italy because after every soccer game each player is given a performance rating in the newspaper for that game of 0-10. The ratings in fact vary from about 4.5 to 8.5. Apparently there is Fantasy Soccer in Italy. I saw in the sports newspaper a page tilted Magic Cup on which each all the players on the major soccer teams were listed. Each player had a point rating from 2-38. I assume you get so many points to use in making up your imaginary team. If you choose the biggest star you use up 38 points and have few left to choose the others players. I assume you just add up the ratings for the players on your team to get that teams score for the weekend matches, but there may be other adjustments too.

Muslim Father Murders Daughter Because She is Dating an Italian

This happened for this week for the second time in four years. When you read this story, you don’t know how many Muslim girls have dated or married Italian men without (or in spite of) strong opposition at home. It isn’t news if a Muslim girl’s family accepts her dating an Italian man or if she breaks from her family over this issue and no violent reaction occurs.

Aftermath of the Earthquake in Abruzzo This Year

Italians can all recount that in the past, after a major earthquake, sometimes victims whose houses were destroyed were still living in temporary housing 20 years after the event while their original houses were never rebuilt despite government promises to do so. After the Abruzzo earthquake, the homeless were put in hotels or in a large tent city. Berlusconi promised to have those in tents into temporary housing no later than the end of this year. The first of these temporary (not trailers but prefabricated wooden houses) houses were occupied this week at a ceremony with great fanfare. The ultimate goal is to move these folks back to their original house, now rebuilt, and give the temporary houses to the local university to replace destroyed buildings. So step (1) has been accomplished – the first houses were ready on schedule. Step (2) is to complete the rest of the temporary housing on time. Step (3) is to rebuild the destroyed houses. Step (4) is to move the citizens from the temporary housing to the permanent housing. Step (5) is for the temporary housing to be useful buildings for the university. Everybody in Italy was informed about the success of Step (1). My prediction: as we move from step (1) to the later steps, at each stage, there will be less and less publicity and in the end few will know the fate of the total process.

Visit to I Tatti

With my sister and her friend who are visiting me, I took a trip again to I Tatti, the Harvard University Center for Medieval Studies in Florence in the former villa of art connoisseur Bernard Berenson who died in 1959. The center has a research library that was started with the books in Berenson’s collection. The library has a photographic section containing photos of thousands of art works. This photo collection contains a section called “homeless” – art works that Berenson catalogued during his life for which the current location is not known. These photos are being scanned and put on the web. Something to refer to if you are looking at very old art works in antique shops, hoping to find a hidden treasure.

Death of Six Italian Soldiers in Car Bomb Attack in Afghanistan

The usual evening national news is 30 minutes. On the night of this story it was 38 minutes, 32 of which covered the attack and Italy’s position in Afghanistan. Given the population differences, this news item is tantamount to a story that 30 American soldiers were killed in such an attack. In Italy most of the majority coalition and of the opposition support the mission in Afghanistan, but there are groups on both sides of the aisle that call either for an immediate withdrawal or for a fairly rapid one.

Lyrics from the Musical Evita

Commenting on Evita’s death, early in the work the song “Oh, what a Circus” says:

She had her moments –she had some style

The best show in town was the crowd

Outside the Casa Rosada crying “Eva Peron”….

Argentina is the most Italian nation in the world outside of Italy. So it is probably no surprise that the politics in which style outshines substance found its way to Argentine.

Restaurant Woes

A friend who runs a restaurant specializing in pizza and grilled meats complained to me about the problems of obtaining high quality ingredients. He said that today even buying from the supposedly best sources does not guarantee the quality that was present in the past. Now there may be a couple of shipments of high quality and then a product arrives that is noticeably lower in quality. He attributes this mostly to increased production which limits the quality of items that have to be aged and products for which the supply of high quality basic ingredients is limited.

An organization with which I am associated recently was hiring a person from outside of Italy to come here to work. The person raised some questions of the tax treatment of his compensation in Italy. The questions were not complex but proved to be very difficult to answer for two reasons. First, it was in the second half of August and no professionals are in their office at this time to give advice. Second, there is never in Italy a simple answer to a tax question; to use a standard Italian phrase “it depends.”

An Italian friend asked me about the resignation of President Obama’s environmental advisor, Van Jones, about which she had seen a story on Italian TV. She understood the facts correctly. She was amazed that he had to resign for signing a petition a few years ago. She said that this would never have been cause for resignation in Italy. It would hardly have been controversial here, but if it had become controversial, Mr. Jones simply would have had to say that he no longer held the position stated in the petition. This would be the end of the matter. Another example of a phenomenon I have noted before; in Italy people in the political world are not held responsible for statements they made in the past if they now disavow those statements.

I realize that Mr. Jones also made some crude remarks about Republicans, but this type of statement doesn’t even register on Italian radar as possibly controversial utterances.

The Academia Museum in Florence is the home of the David of Michelangelo and some other of his sculptures. It now is holding an exhibit in which these works of his are being placed side by side with photos of the human body by the late Robert Maplethorpe. Maplethorpe is perhaps most famous in the USA for his controversial homosexual erotic photos, but they are not the subject of this exhibit. His photographs of the human form and other natural forms are often quite stunning and make an interesting contrast with the sculptures and drawings of Michelangelo.

Italy is receiving lots of criticism within the European Union and beyond for its new immigration policy of intercepting boats of persons trying to reach Lampadusa (an Italian island closer to Africa than to Sicily) and sending them back to Libya. The criticism is based upon failure to follow international rules for treating potential political refugees, a failure to help boats in distress with a consequent loss of life for those aboard, and sending refugees back to Libya where they are kept in terrible conditions in camps there. Ironically, although Italy does not like the criticism from abroad, the government is quite happy to have these stories reach potential illegal immigrants from Africa. If these folks come to believe they won’t reach Italy, they may die on the way, and if they don’t die, they will be in a horrible camp in Libya – this may well dissuade them from starting the journey. In fact, arrivals of illegal immigrants at Lampadusa (either because the boats were intercepted and/or because fewer boats are coming) are down drastically.

As I have mentioned before, Italy is too inefficient to process illegal immigrants according to international rules (not an easy task) and still reasonably control the phenomenon.

He is the Italian TV personality about whom I wrote in my newsletter 282 dated May 22, 2008. (All prior newsletters are available at www.thisweekinitaly.com). He died this week at age 85. He was an American of Italian origin who came to Italy in 1954 and introduced the American television quiz show format to Italy. I was interested to read in the newspaper that he had served in Italy in WWII as a liaison to Italian partisan forces. He was captured by the Germans and would have been shot except that he was an American. So he was treated as a prisoner of war and sent to a POW camp.

In the last couple of years a new theme has arisen among the political critics of Berlusconi. These critics argue that his actions and statements, that always have been immoderate, are becoming increasingly uncontrolled and eccentric. One small example: this week he announced “I am the best leader Italy has had in 150 years.” These critics suggest that his underlying mental stability is subject to question. Some call for a psychiatric examination of him. This type of criticism may well simply another political ploy. I mention it now in case it turns out to be more and more accurate over time.

For those wanting to keep up to date about events in Florence (and Tuscany) for reasons of general interest or because they are planning a trip to the city, of course there are many sources on the internet. I’ve often mentioned the bi-weekly English newspaper, The Florentine that is online at www.theflorentine.net . Another is the monthly newsletter of the real estate (sales and rentals) firm of Pitcher and Flaccomio at http://www.pitcherflaccomio.com/new/index.php?lang=en     Click on monthly newletter on right hand side. .

This Week in Italy 337

In the USA it is common for colleges and universities now to be hiring more part time teachers who can be paid less and who don’t earn permanent job security through tenure. This is true also in Italy. Italy, however, has some additional twists to this phenomenon. A friend of mine who works for the University of Florence in a part time position sometimes does not get paid for her work until over a year later. Even this slow payment has not solved the University’s woes. So now it is asking part time teachers to sign a contract to work for no pay. Why would anyone sign such a contract? The hope of those signing is that in some indeterminate future, when the University has more funds, it will hire them to teach the same courses for pay that they would now be teaching for free.

In many contexts it does not seem to embarrass employers in Italy to say “I know I hired you for 30 Euro per hour, but I don’t have any money now [which may not be true] so I won’t pay you.” Two factors contribute to this phenomenon. First is a generally lower sense of personal responsibility as a virtue. The second is a legal system in which it is not worth the effort to try to recover money that is legally owed to you.

African Beggars Revisited

I wrote last week about Africans who are well educated and not starving in Africa who nevertheless come to Italy to become street merchants/beggars. Some Nigerian friends told me that the currency in Nigeria is worth so little versus the Euro that if these beggars can somehow survive in Italy and send even a few Euros home to their families, the little money they send has a high value in Nigeria.

Ending Battles at the Bathroom Door

A few years ago I wrote about Luxuria, the transsexual former showgirl who was a Member of Parliament. A controversy arose when he/she went to use the Ladies room in the Parliament building. Some women deputies complained. At that point Luxuria had not had a sex change operation. Now she is about to undergo such surgery, but she is no longer a Member of Parliament. A friend told me once that she speaks the best English of all the well known Italian political figures. Now, however, one of the candidates to be head of the Democratic Party in Italy is a prominent doctor who worked in the USA for many years. He may be the new champ of speaking English.

Italian Children of American Servicemen Stationed in Pistoia at end of WWII.

I wrote last week about a guy who claimed to belong to this group. His reputed father died in the War, but even if this had not happened, he might have had trouble establishing that his father was American. Not so for two other such children. Part of the occupational troops here was a Black unit. Two mixed race children were soon born. I am told that they did not suffer discrimination in Pistoia (good news). I don’t know if their fathers ever acknowledged them as their offspring.

Berlusconi Battles Everybody

Silvio is suing newspapers, both in Italy and abroad, for defamation. He has threatened retaliation against the European Union if the Press Secretary of the European Union continues to say things critical of Italy. After the Catholic Church became strongly critical of the government’s immigration policy, one of Berlusconi’s newspapers published an exposé of the personal life of the editor of a leading Catholic newspaper who then resigned. What is going on?

To me the answer is simple. Italy, like the rest of Europe is in an economic recession. Italy is not in the worst shape of European nations, and the recession is not the fault of the current government. As the election in Japan showed, however, bad economic news is often bad news for the ruling party. So it is best to divert attention elsewhere.

The Recession and the Very, Very Rich

One of my fellow ex-pats in Pistoia is a semi-retired executive of one of the world’s most famous luxury auction houses. I asked him how the current recession has affected their business. He told me that in every recession the same phenomenon occurs. The prices of the things being sold do not go down, but there are far fewer items put up for sale. The very rich assume that in a recession prices will go down (contrary to the fact) and thus do not put items up for sale unless they absolutely have to do so to raise funds. Of course, with fewer items to sell, the profits of the auction house decline.

Susan Atkins

She is the former member of the Charles Manson gang who was sentenced to death for murder but the sentence was later commuted to life in prison. (Her sentence was commuted because she was sentenced under a capital punishment law that was later declared unconstitutional.) She is 61 years old and dying of a brain tumor. She is bed ridden and has impaired speech. Her lawyer (who is also her husband) this week argued for her to be paroled for reasons of compassion. The request was denied.

No news story could better illustrate a major difference between Italy and the USA. In Italy Susan also would have received life imprisonment, but would have been released from prison long before now. Nobody serves a full life sentence in Italy. Had she suffered from a terminal brain tumor before her scheduled release, a request for an early release on grounds of compassion surely would have been granted in Italy. The wishes of the families of the victims that she not be released, would have little impact on the decision.