tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-49027499290155727242024-03-14T01:24:44.399-07:00globalmoxieCultural reportage and insight from a transnational American living in Italy. Th'Italian Sassenachhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01135866794196036425noreply@blogger.comBlogger170125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4902749929015572724.post-30124751304404490152018-11-29T01:28:00.001-08:002018-11-29T01:31:17.650-08:00Globalmoxie is retiring! / Globalmoxie si pensiona.<b><i>Ciao a tutti! </i></b><br />
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Got an an important announcement here:<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhM_ajdpjN9OQqEwvCINytA96NXxdLrHJU2x04Vz4CRsoOCPDmCf1V4PxXn9aP83BhO-FlABz3G34qhuTzvRLJgDUdoT5Z9zlCr1xdMqM-qiXFG5PRRcEqOyedg3vgv9qc9JJBt2p0HUy_/s1600/images.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="229" data-original-width="220" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhM_ajdpjN9OQqEwvCINytA96NXxdLrHJU2x04Vz4CRsoOCPDmCf1V4PxXn9aP83BhO-FlABz3G34qhuTzvRLJgDUdoT5Z9zlCr1xdMqM-qiXFG5PRRcEqOyedg3vgv9qc9JJBt2p0HUy_/s1600/images.jpg" /></a><br />
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<b>The Globalmoxie blog is retiring. </b>This URL won't be deleted, but all new content from now on will be posted on https://sharpmonica.com.<br />
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This my new author site where all my creative pursuits are gathered in one place, with a focus on my writing. It is also integrated with my Instagram account, so all the pretty pictures will me there, and, with the near-seamless integration with my brain, all my new writing will be posted there. Blog posts, publications, mischief I tend to get up to, and all the rest of it. My life is pretty random so things tend to emerge and change fast!<br />
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Globalmoxie has had an excellent, long, and quite unexpected second run.<br />
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Launched in 2013 in Arezzo, Italy, re-launched in 2016 when we moved back to Italy, the humble blog here has been home to more than 150 posts about our life and progress in Italy: nuts and bolts, cultural adjustments, new jobs, new offices, new schools. But it was time to go to a friendlier, more versatile platform that gave me more freedom to evolve and reach my audience.<br />
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The new site https://sharpmonica.com went live on Tuesday and has already had over 500 page views. (I am surprised and delighted.) Please click the link to meet me there, and follow me again.<br />
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Thank you to everyone who frequented this space and read my work here, commenting in an always-gracious community. You have no idea what your support has meant to me during these years of momentous family changes of plot, scene, and supporting cast.<br />
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Onward and upward!<br />
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<i>Grazie mille!</i>Th'Italian Sassenachhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01135866794196036425noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4902749929015572724.post-9538057806829032212018-11-25T00:47:00.001-08:002018-11-25T00:47:11.931-08:00Thanksgiving in Italy: 2018 InstallmentSince we moved to Italy, we have not observed Thanksgiving in the traditional manner, even though in Florence opportunities abound for large dinner with American expats.<br />
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Pros: Italian food, great wine. Cons: don't know many people, our kids will whine that it is boring.<br />
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So that generous two-day holiday, the American Thanksgiving Work Relief Program? (See recent cultural rant <a href="https://globalmoxie.blogspot.com/2018/11/thanksgiving-in-practice.html" target="_blank">here</a>.) Since we moved to Italy in 2016, we have taken the Thursday of the weekend, the high holy day of Thanksgiving itself, as a vacation for us. The kids are in school of course <i>(grazie, Italia). </i><br />
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In 2016, our first year, Jason and I drove to Artimino for a fancy quiet lunch <i>in due</i>. It was a beautiful sunny morning. The vineyards were ruddy and glowing on the hills. Purple and dove grey clouds scattered low in the sky like the background of a Renaissance portrait. We were two of a handful of people eating lunch that day in the modest ristorante that Jason had found for us. The wine was good and we bought a few bottles of it. We drove home in quiet solitude, grateful for the tranquility. We agreed we would do it again the following year.<br />
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In 2017, we switched it up and headed to the hot water heaven of <a href="https://www.asmana.it/" target="_blank">Asmana</a>, north of town in that well-known spa area of Calenzano/Campo Bisenzio. My inner Finn demanded a hot sauna, hot water, and steam. Asmana offers all of this. They have a good onsite restaurant on site with a brief, well-curated wine list. We soaked away our cares in the saltwater hot tub in the sunny, brisk outdoors and ate a fancy quiet lunch <i>in due </i>and wearing bathrobes, drinking wine as we chatted among the two-tops full of squeaky clean couples.<br />
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The theme emerges. A fancy quiet lunch. Just the two of us while the children are in school. With a car here, we have freedom to daytrip.<br />
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A few weeks ago Jason suggested that we combine work and pleasure for this year's Thanksgiving foray. He had to pay a visit to an estate outside of Florence, in Montespertoli, to scout specifics for a Gonzaga law seminar.<br />
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The <a href="http://www.castellosonnino.it/" target="_blank">Castello di Sonnino</a> is a winery that also produces olive oil, honey, and any number of additional Tuscan staples. With a small enoteca also onsite it was an ideal candidate for our small trip out of town. I read up about them on their website before we set out and filled Jason in on the basic facts of the noble family, headed by Barone Sonnino De Renzis.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0QMRs_gB-1nRSozqBlcoboh2HF_sgf2p_3m2n9YnCcvKQTThvvODOrG_vDeR6JX831qtTKPZTG0h4nMRed_tPMZHNwkexqtHGgZGdBiBahGi9m99uqbF61wBEqs6QkyJypwKhqIF0SIi6/s1600/20181122_123914_HDR.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0QMRs_gB-1nRSozqBlcoboh2HF_sgf2p_3m2n9YnCcvKQTThvvODOrG_vDeR6JX831qtTKPZTG0h4nMRed_tPMZHNwkexqtHGgZGdBiBahGi9m99uqbF61wBEqs6QkyJypwKhqIF0SIi6/s400/20181122_123914_HDR.jpg" width="300" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Belltower with Etruscan base on estate.</td></tr>
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Again the weather cooperated, against all November odds. We dropped off the kids at school on a glorious sun-filled morning and headed out of town. The drive afforded further Renaissance views of rolling hills carpeted in neatly tended olive groves and vineyards cultivated for millennia. Putting the car in second to climb the hill to Montespertoli, we made a sharp left into the estate, parking with a few other cars in a small lot bordered by tall, thin cypress trees. It was not at all clear which door was the entrance, as a low building sported a long row of doors.<br />
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We walked past all the doors and finally picked the door on the far left. We rang the bell. After a few moments it opened, and out peeped the friendly face of none other than the baron himself. I knew this from my online research.<br />
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"Buongiorno," he said smoothly, a natural Italian bass. His white hair was neatly cut, and a well-trimmed white beard framed a handsome face. Clad in a winter suit of tweed, he had the build of a hunter: fit, and neither portly nor thin. He was collected and graceful. We were at his manor, after all, and were welcome.<br />
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"Buongiorno," Jason replied. "We're here for ..." he unfolded his small note. "Jessica."<br />
"Certo," the baron said. "Come in, come in." He extended his arm into the foyer with an outstretched hand. "Jessica!" he turned around to call.<br />
We waited in a foyer tiled with terra cotta, lined with archival photos of the property, an ancient gnarl of olive branch mounted to the wall.<br />
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An attractive Englishwoman with short blonde hair quickly appeared and ushered us into a conference room with a long table and many light-blue wooden chairs. She returned back with espresso for me in a tiny white cup and saucer. "This will be so easy," she said. "We can just stay in English. But let's not talk too much about business before Caterina arrives." It was not clear to me who Caterina was.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXZV8jFep6ffPcZ3EB4opq37tifCns3JZ4k9ti5JKmbnO1lIm_6MHm6_5TZVwp0Zoaxs5ij3RUn0mM5i74YD8thlmJXi5uKQquOu5xD5i5mEPikYqnBRIBDbnQsct1M4cRMIGtiyP5c7FS/s1600/20181122_120448_HDR.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXZV8jFep6ffPcZ3EB4opq37tifCns3JZ4k9ti5JKmbnO1lIm_6MHm6_5TZVwp0Zoaxs5ij3RUn0mM5i74YD8thlmJXi5uKQquOu5xD5i5mEPikYqnBRIBDbnQsct1M4cRMIGtiyP5c7FS/s400/20181122_120448_HDR.jpg" width="300" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Jason at the window, surveying the property.</td></tr>
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We chatted about London and Florence, her work with Gucci in London, how she came to be in Montespertoli doing this kind of work with the estate. Her teenage children, and how different life was in this small Tuscan hilltown compared to Stansted. The window at the end of the vaulted room faced east, and bright sunlight poured in and flooded the room. I excused myself to the <i>bagno </i>and puzzled for some time over the taps/pedals system to turn on the water, then admired a collection of country hand towels on an old wooden rack.<br />
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A few minutes after I returned to the conference table, the door opened and in swept an older woman with her red hair in a thick double ponytail. She wore a quilted jacket and boots. Her face was scrubbed clean, and was open and still beautiful even lined, in the way that older Italian women so often are. <i>Is she a gardener? </i>I wondered. <i>A groundskeeper? </i>She had obviously just come in from working outdoors. She took the seat to my left and greeted us.<br />
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"Ah, Caterina!" said Jessica.<br />
"Did you talk too much business yet?"<br />
"No, no. Just small talk and coffee."<br />
Caterina looked at Jason. "You've already met my husband."<br />
<i>Her husband? </i>I thought. <i>Whom did we meet? Did we meet a husband? </i>Then I realized quickly and with an embarrassment that I am sure flushed my cheeks. <i>Oh, she is the baronessa</i>.<br />
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Caterina immediately took charge of the conversation which meandered over an hour and a half, covering Italy, Italian politics, education, the history of higher education, liberal arts, and study abroad. The family are developing a study abroad center on their estate with the support of <a href="https://hecua.org/" target="_blank">HECUA</a>, making admirable progress.<br />
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Caterina made eye contact with me often as she made one point or another in the bright room, firmly clasping my hand or squeezing my forearm. It all began to feel very much like my beloved Russian classics, on the estate in the parlor of the <i>baronessa </i>on a sunny morning in November after the harvest. I closed my eyes and began to take notes for this piece. When I opened them, I noticed Caterina's two enormous rings, one on each ring finger: a lion with a mane of jade, and a large aquamarine cabochon set in gold. She also wore diamond hoops. Of course she was the<i> baronessa. </i>She was country nobility.<br />
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After we finished up our business, Caterina went to attend to her affairs and Jessica brought us upstairs to the <i>magazzino </i>to admire racks and racks of <i>vin santo </i>grapes fresh off the vine, aging in the old way in preparation for <i>vin santo, </i>that Tuscan delicacy that tastes like the <i>aperitivo </i>of angels (in fact it is a <i>digestivo </i>made to be consumed after a meal.)<br />
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"Monica, watch out!" Jason gasped as I backed up for a shot, running into some dowels lined up on a rack behind me. "You almost ruined a fortune in <i>vin santo</i>."<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9pKK4qh8I6GTWk2HOfIIPndKV7Lm_eueKlckeP95LtaqxtUcMFOAuiPougovvN9QPS0k5_G1BpflLESFvc4J5IqYotMkzsOf-76rkVauXpL0xXcp6GUOoa_sZ4HNQlluOWUHICDyefdIi/s1600/20181122_121206.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9pKK4qh8I6GTWk2HOfIIPndKV7Lm_eueKlckeP95LtaqxtUcMFOAuiPougovvN9QPS0k5_G1BpflLESFvc4J5IqYotMkzsOf-76rkVauXpL0xXcp6GUOoa_sZ4HNQlluOWUHICDyefdIi/s400/20181122_121206.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Do NOT ruin these. The<i> baronessa </i>will never invite you back.</td></tr>
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We hopped over to the enoteca to make a reservation for a light lunch, and met Christian, a lovely young Italian-Canadian from Vancouver in the process of completing a slow food internship on the estate. He joined our anglophone trio, bringing a huge set of keys.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDzvW5aesNqKL7vjhMCmYzHStKVzwPL_rBgsD6hvACMmyxe_qk40eJf7jmMXSs34O8Tj-eel1pVwCiXjuY2uM8bPdr6jh5h2qBAriu-EM2FbzJEk_ec9zF6_e5cuRvoOxmx2Zcx81If_B6/s1600/20181122_122853.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDzvW5aesNqKL7vjhMCmYzHStKVzwPL_rBgsD6hvACMmyxe_qk40eJf7jmMXSs34O8Tj-eel1pVwCiXjuY2uM8bPdr6jh5h2qBAriu-EM2FbzJEk_ec9zF6_e5cuRvoOxmx2Zcx81If_B6/s320/20181122_122853.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A small fortune in Chianti, with no ventilation.</td></tr>
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From there we went up a low hill to the <i>cantina, </i>in use since the early 1500s as a cistern for the town above, then as a cellar for dozens small French barrels of reserve Chianti. Patches of black mold lined the stone walls. Christian hurriedly explained that the mold did not affect the wine. The estate produces about 200,000 bottles a year of various Chianti blends, the small barrels being the most desirable. Larger vats held younger wine that was fermenting and would soon be bottled as <i>vino di tavola.</i><br />
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Caterina rejoined us, as Christian returned to the <i>ristorante</i> to start his lunch service. She took us up to their home in the <i>castello,</i> with its Etruscan-base belltower and adjacent chapel. The <i>barone's</i> great-grandfather was Sidney Sonnino, an Italian statesman and prime minister of Italy during World War I. His historical archive remains in the <i>castello</i> along with a warren of libraries and a priceless book collection. Jason almost fainted as the <i>baronessa </i>began unlocking cabinets and bringing out priceless annotated copies of Dante's <i>Divina Commedia. </i>They quickly bonded further over his knowledge of Dante and the history of his masterpiece. She was especially impressed when Jason flipped the aged pages to a <i>canto </i>where he pointed out the book had been printed in Venice, beyond the reach of the pope, evident by the heretical verses remaining intact and uncensored in the copy she had brought out. "The <i>doge </i>of Venice," he said. "The pope was no match for the <i>doge </i>in this century; they each kept to their own grounds." At this point the <i>baronessa </i>seemed to have offered Jason an indeterminate job of uncertain compensation a few times already. I giggled in the shadows, well-accustomed to this particular plot that I have seen played out so often in Italy: Jason and older noblewomen of significant education.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8FCHwTmxURO1YtcCDsx9dvsOjK4FyOj82No-H2kBmNCrRVFm9NblWZEH776W3rPolov4CofZyTmfCbjbJbyKGeLJntmUViV5mcAzgnnBzofnd4Sa1W32BCef29DH9R-ccnXGwfdcVcHjv/s1600/20181122_130816.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8FCHwTmxURO1YtcCDsx9dvsOjK4FyOj82No-H2kBmNCrRVFm9NblWZEH776W3rPolov4CofZyTmfCbjbJbyKGeLJntmUViV5mcAzgnnBzofnd4Sa1W32BCef29DH9R-ccnXGwfdcVcHjv/s320/20181122_130816.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">One of at least five rooms of library we toured.</td></tr>
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The huge rooms were freezing. Caterina cursed gently as she closed a number of open casement windows. She opened the shutters in one of the parlors to reveal a fantastic full-room mural painted before 1600 of all the marvels reported from the New World - morning glories, mimosas, flora and fauna in abundance that seemed to leap out from the wall. The<i> baronessa's</i> daughter works for Gucci, and none other than Lallo himself (the head designer for Gucci) commandeered the <i>castello </i>for a two-week photo shoot with beautiful thin maidens and their goateed swains. Indeed the entire <i>castello</i> was a capsule of Italian history from 1300 to the present, plaster walls cracked from the bombing suffered as a result of its situation on the Gothic Line in World War II.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBLis2sb3AucazD8-sgk4w3YVJ6ZPrBt4f51z3bfJK5J6FShrpGXjnEmr-dN0fXzk4VCJ55oEt4LWkahE3-BtI9Bt-clesnOrrE7V-m4Y-fDtLT411VBnIL6bR-Os823qW59Gc1M6vqg-n/s1600/20181122_130039.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBLis2sb3AucazD8-sgk4w3YVJ6ZPrBt4f51z3bfJK5J6FShrpGXjnEmr-dN0fXzk4VCJ55oEt4LWkahE3-BtI9Bt-clesnOrrE7V-m4Y-fDtLT411VBnIL6bR-Os823qW59Gc1M6vqg-n/s400/20181122_130039.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">I still cannot get over this room.</td></tr>
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We finished our tour of the <i>castello</i> in the kitchen. When Caterina opened the door, again it felt like a movie set. Two professional cooks were serious and at work, one stirring an enormous steaming pot, the other seeing to dishes in a marble sink much like our own in Florence. the woman flashed me a genuine smile when we said "buongiorno." The ancient hearth was at least ten or fifteen feet long, garlanded across the mantel with dried oak boughs. A few tables of butcher block held platters of pasta, vegetables, small cutting boards of herbs, ready to be assembled into a Thanksgiving dinner for the American students on the estate. I wanted to remain as it smelled fantastic and was by far the warmest room in the <i>castello. </i>It also looked like a Renaissance still life <i>mise en scene.</i><br />
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We returned to the enoteca for our lunch. A table of students were on our left, and a small group of Americans on private tour from Florence were on our right. The heavily botoxed wife announced that "tomatoes were discovered in the Yew Nah Ted States" in a loud voice that made me cringe.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVHazWfrQutzvz6215VVchcIkL97EoOr9iehPPYqLrif0l3tgAY6sEHH0zumArd09hHF-e7INGPoTpopYrLr58rx8d6TdNlzQNq5s3DwJ8WwWUfyDmFS98gduwAXdYt31NtsdWg_rLfo-k/s1600/20181122_145127_HDR.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVHazWfrQutzvz6215VVchcIkL97EoOr9iehPPYqLrif0l3tgAY6sEHH0zumArd09hHF-e7INGPoTpopYrLr58rx8d6TdNlzQNq5s3DwJ8WwWUfyDmFS98gduwAXdYt31NtsdWg_rLfo-k/s320/20181122_145127_HDR.jpg" width="240" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Enoteca, open to the public. <br />
If you're in the area stop by!</td></tr>
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But a glass of wine later and working our way through traditional Tuscan courses of <i>crostini, fettunta, </i>then a board of cuts of salami and prosciutto, then <i>fusilli all'amatriciana, </i>which Jason knew was good when I said it did not even taste like iron nails. (This is always my strange complaint about <i>fusilli. </i>Does anyone else think those corkscrews taste like nails? How can pasta have such a different taste based on shape alone? This is a persistent Italian mystery.) I faintly heard the husband relating all the branches of the US military in which his children served. I no longer cared. The <i>vin santo </i>was brought out with almond <i>cantucci. </i>It was the perfect Thanksgiving meal. We bought a half case of Chianti on our way out into the sunshine and wound our way back down and through the hills, home into Florence.<br />
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We did take the kids out of school on Friday for a chill day at home, but I think we will keep our Thanksgiving day to ourselves as a tradition as long as we are not living in the U.S. It is really the one day a year in Italy we have for this kind of time, and I am thankful. May the deranged pilgrims forgive us for our baronial Thanksgiving <i>in due </i>with fine wine. I am sure it was not what they had in mind when they presided over the apocryphal holiday, but it is an outgrowth of the evolution of our gratitude. For this life in Italy, for each other, for our thriving and happy children, for opening a new adventure as a family. For health and dreams. The practice takes a bit of a different shape in Italy. We are thankful.Th'Italian Sassenachhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01135866794196036425noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4902749929015572724.post-66851765859243653262018-11-24T00:08:00.001-08:002018-11-24T08:15:15.431-08:00Thanksgiving in PracticeAmerican culture is stingy with holidays and time off. The rest of the globe - meaning especially people who do not know any Americans or who have never lived in America - may assume that Americans enjoy a reasonable and manageable work culture. That Americans have holidays and time off. That Americans have a time when they can stop thinking about work, and can be relaxed and with their families.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgv52_nqDzR0DwMt3-6tYv7KaXhQrKDuI7eJHDZQbBnrA05VPCOGaztpUQQpwpLZYx9Oe5R3AQz9mczaUs8qgOrI_0MywFDYRx-qbVv1ccHvCt0iPY7KdEq1YgnksCnVLTcZ59HQqFCpzPI/s1600/download+%25281%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="181" data-original-width="278" height="260" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgv52_nqDzR0DwMt3-6tYv7KaXhQrKDuI7eJHDZQbBnrA05VPCOGaztpUQQpwpLZYx9Oe5R3AQz9mczaUs8qgOrI_0MywFDYRx-qbVv1ccHvCt0iPY7KdEq1YgnksCnVLTcZ59HQqFCpzPI/s400/download+%25281%2529.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">An image from a different time.</td></tr>
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(I am not even going to go into American policies on sick leave for oneself or family members here.)<br />
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Well, that does not really happen. We all get our leave calendars at work and accept them as though they are somehow reasonable - seven holidays a year plus two weeks of paid leave (for anyone who does not work for a bank or on Wall Street), compared to Italy's fourteen days a year (plus various <i>ponti, </i>or bridge days, taken off in the middle to make a longer holiday) plus four to six weeks of paid leave, or Japan's 21 holidays a year plus six weeks of paid leave (two weeks at a time, three times a year!). I learned all this in a language class last year at the Sprachcaffe with classmates from various countries. It was a day I took my <i>espresso corretto</i> in the break time that morning with a solid plug of strong anise <i>sambuca </i>just to absorb the reality of what had come to seem normal to me as a worker in America.<br />
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On the campus where I worked before moving to Italy, we received 19 hours a month "to use as we wished." That mean to use for sick days <b>and </b>for time off. If you got sick, then you had no vacation. And if you have kids? Fugeddaboutit. Babies and little kids are always sick. Being a working parent means you get no paid leave nor do you get sick leave for yourself. Every time I try to explain this to Italians they look like they've seen a ghost. "But that is inhumane!" they protest on our behalf. Yes, it is - and the culture pressures workers to be thankful that they have a job at all. I don't miss it.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjsLKQLZf7x_yjEcfvkQnGSnIEJJrq6yXfL80eEaj6m3Zr1M44G5WXr2_83WeKmH7QoLkir4JoucZ8cfAyRrPJpcqA1XOuNyzgY-hOfLHeHgEZzzeeAp-SOZMeIo8615-uMzQmGNrJKEsfF/s1600/IMM_212-800x450.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="450" data-original-width="800" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjsLKQLZf7x_yjEcfvkQnGSnIEJJrq6yXfL80eEaj6m3Zr1M44G5WXr2_83WeKmH7QoLkir4JoucZ8cfAyRrPJpcqA1XOuNyzgY-hOfLHeHgEZzzeeAp-SOZMeIo8615-uMzQmGNrJKEsfF/s400/IMM_212-800x450.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Actually in the sixties American workers probably got decent time off. <br />
Problem was, most people couldn't get a job.</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgX83wGWjcaErbRYBo70bUQTGLn0ITEF9taXfpcXcHME_twfkC0fqaiDzUK8k9GMszOqBRbc2zN9tCU7_j0RVXBN-NdnaYizrl_AfyLJYNQx71HGFfBFKUcOip486RKRyepu-050Wr1mU-3/s1600/803311-ljhlhjkhlkjhkljh.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="185" data-original-width="197" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgX83wGWjcaErbRYBo70bUQTGLn0ITEF9taXfpcXcHME_twfkC0fqaiDzUK8k9GMszOqBRbc2zN9tCU7_j0RVXBN-NdnaYizrl_AfyLJYNQx71HGFfBFKUcOip486RKRyepu-050Wr1mU-3/s1600/803311-ljhlhjkhlkjhkljh.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Deranged as hell.</td></tr>
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It is very depressing to list American holidays side by side with the holidays of all other developed economies in the world. We have one day off a year for one religious holiday: Christmas. All other holidays are secular: New Year's Day, Memorial Day, Independence Day, Labor Day. And then comes the crown jewel of our holiday calendar: Thanksgiving. The apex of American time off, in which all Americans receive <i>two days off in a row</i>. Two! Of course its origins are spurious and apocryphal (one English friend in casual conversation has recently referred to "deranged Pilgrims").<br />
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A time to give thanks, to travel to someone else's house for a long meal or to host at yours, and the relaxed chatter that is normal in most cultures. So rare has this time become in the US that we consecrate one meal a year to it, and then, as only Americans can, we really overdo it. We eat a lot. We prepare an elaborate menu that is through the roof. We invite people over. We often go round the table to say what we're thankful for in a routine that is itself the source of much dread and comedy. We all eat; like a wedding or a parade, it goes by so quickly. Then we all pass out thanks to tryptophan, whose name we all now know from that "Seinfeld" episode. I am pretty sure "Friends" covered it too. American menfolk eventually rouse themselves and crawl to the nearest sofa to watch some American football.<br />
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I get asked a lot of questions in Italy like<i>, "Cosa e Thanksgiving attualmente?" </i>I say we spend time with our families and eat, and often get a funny look in return as though to say<i>, "You have a holiday for that? We call that dinner." </i>Then I mention the football and get a bit of a nod; its Italian equivalent, <i>calcio, </i>has been known to put quite a few menfolk at games and on sofas to watch really fit players chase a little ball around a faux battlefield while would-be soldiers scream.<br />
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Italy has also, and unfortunately, adopted the Black Friday trope of enticing discounts designed to encourage unbridled consumerism. Without the Friday off as in America, and no relaxing day off on the day before, it seems to fall flat. It is mostly put forth by international brands like Amazon and Aveda, and the advertising for it is everywhere.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Me, after Black Friday, ca. 1988.</td></tr>
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The vulgarity of such grabbing and escalating violence around buying crap made in China has always affronted me. I have never "done" Black Friday, although I know people who participate annually in the US. (I may get on a soapbox about that practice at a different time, how Black Friday seduces the working poor much like the promise of a lottery, the idea of some ship finally coming in, somewhere.) My mom and I once went to Balliet's in Oklahoma City for Black Friday. I returned home with a kelly green mock turtleneck, which needed constant small repairs with a needle and thread until I finally got rid of it, and a pleated white skirt of unflattering length but I wore anyway for awhile until I tired of looking like a Civil War era doll.<br />
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I meant to write a post about what Jason and I did on Thanksgiving Day 2018, but it turned into this piece, a necessary prelude to our adventures yesterday in the Tuscan countryside. That post coming soon.Th'Italian Sassenachhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01135866794196036425noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4902749929015572724.post-78218842641089345792018-08-08T02:01:00.001-07:002018-08-08T12:02:38.219-07:00French Alps / Les Alpes francaisWe are in La Rosiere, a small burg just over the Italian border crossing the Col St. Bernard. Yes, the namesake big dogs are native to these mountains, their steep ridges and dark valleys still treacherous in the winter months, roads closed from November to May or June.<br />
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Eleanor calls them "doctor dogs," recognizing their wooden barrel, and the shield of Savoy, which resembles both the Swiss flag and the Red Cross emblem.<br />
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The next largest town is Bourg Saint-Maurice, visible from our balcony on the valley floor below, flooded in sunshine. Mont Blanc and Montrose are in this chain of peaks, still snowcapped in the second week of August.<br />
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La Rosiere is small and incredibly safe. The front door to our <i>apparte-chalet </i>has never been closed or locked since we arrived. A scattering of businesses address any need: <i>pain au chocolat, </i>gin, baguettes, aspirin, slingshots, stuffed St Bernards. The town must have as many <i>bars au vin </i>as hotels. Everything is well connected by paved pedestrian paths. It's a bit like Bend, OR, but in the Alps. There are hiking paths everywhere. An intermittent stream of semiprofessional cyclists round the bend and come over the hill into town, high on that Tour de France feeling. La Rosiere was the finishing point for the eleventh day of the Tour de France this year, and all the signage is still up.<br />
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We arrived on Saturday night, on the eve of <i>Les Clarines </i>(cowbells), their annual celebration of traditional culture. Starting Sunday morning, <i>femmes savoyardes </i>(local women) filled the street wearing peaked velvet headdresses that resembled Cruella de Ville. There were multiple bouncy castles and Saint Bernard puppies and plenty of wooden clogs. The local PTA sold cotton candy <i>(barbe a papa) </i>and hosted a "learn how to milk" cow that was a hit with Vic and Eleanor. We watched sheep eat a fresh salad for some time in a pen that had been erected onto the street, the farmers at a card table next to it selling fresh Brebis cheese from a cooler underneath. We join the long tables of French families and tucked into a Sunday dinner of steak and polenta, local cheese and apple tart, red beer and redder wine.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmcGUim6tB-ew21ApGO4jeZE4JM1E_6e3CLDnRPmaKcTsT7ktbRQnBT6_FsoloPKJ_4_MljQZVnwLsNl8eQZjcBJ7couyBua5KJbZQpx4jce03jXPdrkwQlp48R4t8p9NLCdxMH9ohtgjZ/s1600/20180805_110614_HDR.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="900" data-original-width="1600" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmcGUim6tB-ew21ApGO4jeZE4JM1E_6e3CLDnRPmaKcTsT7ktbRQnBT6_FsoloPKJ_4_MljQZVnwLsNl8eQZjcBJ7couyBua5KJbZQpx4jce03jXPdrkwQlp48R4t8p9NLCdxMH9ohtgjZ/s400/20180805_110614_HDR.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Where French cheese begins, tout vous.<br />
We are very glad for it.</td></tr>
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I maxed out on a carb binge on Saturday and Sunday (a little too excited about the <i>patisserie </i>and <i>boulagerie </i>nooked into a dark corner of the wooden arcades across the street) so have switched to French eggs, butter, <i>fromage Beaufort, </i>and dark green <i>mache </i>leaves for the last three meals running.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">We really ought to limit ourselves to a few of these a year, not five or more per day.</td></tr>
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Our balcony faces west. I have commissioned it as my morning office as this is a working vacation for me. I managed two three-day weekends in succession, but have been otherwise engaged in my remote work as Eleanor attends the French kids' club (she loves it), Jason takes his bike up to the Col Saint Bernard (ditto), and Vic hikes with whomever is available to accompany him. Our good friend Flavia is here with us, installed in the second floor of the apartment with sweeping views of the valley and a set of bedding that seems transported from a Heidi scene.<br />
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Speaking of scenes out of <i>Heidi </i>(which was, I will confess, one of the first novels I ever read that made me yearn to go abroad, to go to Europe, to be elsewhere under wide skies), there is an actual farm underneath this balcony. The first two days I thought I was hearing things, but then realized that those were actual bells on actual sheep who were grazing on the green pasture below. A very steep pasture, I might add. <i>Are these velcro sheep? </i>We ran into another flock of sheep last night in a pen next to a terrasse (the much nicer term for a small shopping center - the Alpine version of a strip mall), hunting for Pokemon with Victor. Eleanor fell in love with the lambs, and refused to come away from the fence, sniffling and cooing about how cute they were and how they loved her.<br />
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My heart swells to hear French again, and have it spoken to me, and to be able to comfortably respond in kind without missing too many beats. I am grateful for the added dimension that French has brought to my life, in spite of the fact that its initial undertaking in 1993 seemed excessive, and my year in Strasbourg two years after that was haphazard at best. Still, here they are, those little French language skills, dusty tools tucked away in a kit, ready to be used as soon as they are called forth. And it is true: the moment I hear a familiar French word or expression, a door opens in my mind leading to a tumble of useful linguistic bits and bobs. <i>Oh, this! Hey, I forgot about that!</i><br />
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Exposure is the better part of language fluency. This is the reason Italian still feels at times like a stranger to me: I simply haven't heard the word, the verb, the expression, the structure, before. I lack Italian exposure. I'm hearing these Italian words for the first time now, at 44. Whereas French was an intensive three-year slog of Extreme Language Acquisition from 19 to 22, and I leveled up more quickly and more deeply than I had imagined possible. Parents: forget the half-hour lesson, the daily lesson, the weekly lesson. Immersion, whenever and wherever possible, makes the imprint.<br />
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Also, kids' club and Saint Bernards.<br />
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<br />Th'Italian Sassenachhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01135866794196036425noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4902749929015572724.post-91339273174962563102018-07-31T02:22:00.001-07:002018-08-01T08:53:02.871-07:00Firenze: People and Places / Gente e LocaliIt has been three weeks since I moved offices to The Student Hotel, out on the <i>viale</i> and close to the Fortezza.<br />
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The move has been positive. I love the rooftop gym, and the bathrooms are spotless. We have two dedicated office managers who resolve requests (internet stuttering, air conditioning too strong), place fresh water and fruit in the kitchen, and in general provide a friendly, calm presence as other professionals come and go in the space. As a shameless lay cultural anthropologist, I am also very interested to observe the dynamics among my new coworkers.<br />
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The space is divided into desks and offices, with a general work area out front that can be leased more cheaply. I am in a desk, as are three others - all British men. There are a few Dutch people who float in and out, and a small clutch of Italian women who are designers and architects on the back row. They keep to themselves.<br />
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The small glass offices are occupied by Italian startups or small companies - it is set up to be an incubator situation. One office is truly overfull of Italians. I don't know what they do, but they are beautiful people. There are eight of them in that small room, wearing headphones, and having what appear to be client meetings in the shared workspace out in the front foyer area. They have purchased their own Lavazza espresso machine, and walk over to the kitchen with tiny cups and saucers and espresso pods. The man who appears to be somewhat in charge of the group is named Marco.<br />
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One morning last week Marco approached me in the kitchen, and under the assumption that I actually speak fluent Italian, unleashed a small monologue about "Dangerous Dragons" and his friend Simone. I looked at him for the duration, mostly making sounds like <i>mmm, oh, </i>and <i>si, </i>while trying to look intelligent, and when he turned and walked away I realized he had been talking to me about Jason's D&D group in Italy - I heard only Dangerous Dragons, and was certain he was telling me about a soccer league or something, which didn't make sense because aren't all dragons, by definition, dangerous? Oh, <i>Dungeons </i>and Dragons, not <i>Dangerous Dragons</i>. In any case, Marco is friends with Simone, the Italian Dungeonmaster who Jason plays with weekly and who owns an <i>agriturismo </i>with a pool in Arezzo where we will relocate with the children for the final week of August.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Jason's adult study abroad curriculum.</td></tr>
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The space hosted a cocktail hour last week, and we came with the kids, after promising they could swing on the giant swings, and Victor could look for Pokemon with Jason's phone playing Pokemon Go. I also brought a soccer ball to play with in the <i>piazzetta, </i>because Italy.<br />
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Victor and Eleanor played with the soccer ball in the huge internal courtyard. We spied the pizza being brought out from the restaurant to the work space. A huge bucket of cold Nastro Azzuro beer on ice was placed on the counter. The pizza was hipster pizza on <i>foccaccia</i>, with anchovies and jalapenos and foamy ricotta - hardly the fare of the school-aged set.<br />
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I found a piece of <i>margherita </i>for Victor, and he nibbled at it. "What's this leaf here for? Where is the cheese?" he wanted to know. He put it down, and five minutes later Eleanor was wheedling about her empty tummy.<br />
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Jason picked up the piece of hipster <i>margherita </i>pizza and showed it to me, asking "Did Victor lick the top of this all over?<br />
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"No," I said, "it looked like that when it came out." The kids looked glummer and glummer. Jason finally took Victor back out to play more soccer.<br />
<br />
Eleanor meanwhile had met Marco's two young sons, bilingual Britalians, and quickly formed a play group of three, crawling among the adults and giggling. Jason and Victor came back in, and I introduced him to Marco. They had a long conversation about Simone and Dangerous Dragons and the <i>agriturismo</i>. Marco took a picture of him and Jason and immediately WhatsApped it to Simone the Dungeonmaster.<br />
<br />
We still cannot work out how Marco initially began talking to me about Simone and Dangerous Dragons and my husband's RPG hobby - eventually it will become clear. What I can say is this: in true Italian fashion, as my <i>gens </i>here increases, my social capital becomes more firm. Now all Marco's coworkers in the small glass office greet me warmly, engage in small talk in the <i>cucina condivisa </i>(shared kitchen), compliment me on my Italian (um ok thanks), and share their coffee with me. Thanks to Dangerous Dragons and Simone and Marco and my husband, I can now be placed in the vast Net of Indra that is Italy. Adding this to Andrea, whom we know from the kids' school, and Maria, friends with our friend Megan in Turin, and it's feeling like a proper workplace.<br />
<br />
The added amusement of cross-cultural puzzling is easily my favorite activity, and it is available in spades with the Brits. The anglophones in the area have all spread out to opposite corners, where we are not looking at one another; in contrast, yesterday an Italian man made himself at home across from me, while his colleague, an Italian woman tapped away at my right elbow. Were they close enough? Were they cold? Did they need something?<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOvxZomTsQqGE-RmdYjo7ZenX4dBJnq8t8L9cBVmCjsuayxxc2d1ltYEiSveg0G_QyWZNGiXqGyc1uy-mpP4fxxq9mkPA7s7hi4wJ5jE-zAkF8vcN62wL8Sl2xB3iTB8XJUZl4AeVwizhy/s1600/friendly_italians.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="180" data-original-width="240" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOvxZomTsQqGE-RmdYjo7ZenX4dBJnq8t8L9cBVmCjsuayxxc2d1ltYEiSveg0G_QyWZNGiXqGyc1uy-mpP4fxxq9mkPA7s7hi4wJ5jE-zAkF8vcN62wL8Sl2xB3iTB8XJUZl4AeVwizhy/s400/friendly_italians.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Hey? Kinda tight here.<br />
Do you see all the space here in this huge space? <br />
Can you please use some of that space? Grazie </td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<i>Culture! </i><br />
<br />
Britain and I have discussed our disappointment in the coffee situation (not great espresso by any measure in the coffee bar on premises; not free in kitchen as advertised; no pods available) so this past weekend I picked up three boxes of Nespresso-compatible pods at the IperCoop in Novoli. I am pleased to have coworkers after two years of working in near solitary confinement in the Sprachcaffe on Piazza della Repubblica, and planned to share the coffee.<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
One of the Brits was raised in Italy, and thus is very calm and culturally proficient. I hear him with the Italians and it is clear he is a native speaker. He completed his schooling in Italy. He works on fintech and has a product that is pretty cool - it moves money around international accounts at the current exchange rate with no wire fee. <i>Take my money Giorgio!</i><br />
I shyly pulled out the coffee pods that I had put together for the Brits. When I handed Giorgio the coffee, he politely pointed out that he had already acquired his own pods over the weekend. I should have thought of that - he is <i>britaliano</i>. He put my pods on his desk next to his pods, and pronounced me "a legend."<br />
<br />
The second Brit is a sweet Mancunian who does film.<br />
He confessed to me that he accidentally jammed the fancy Lavazza espresso machine of Marco's workgroup. He said he did not know that different pods go in different machines, and had stuffed a Nespresso pod into the Lavazza machine, resulting in a loud Lavazza alarm and a bright flashing red alert light.<br />
"What did you do then?" I asked him, intrigued.<br />
"I left the area," he said. "I came back to my desk and sat down. I asked Oscar the office manager to go have a look at it, but by the time he got round to it they'd fixed it, hadn't they."<br />
"Clever," I nodded. "I don't see how or why they bought that machine for the kitchen - the Nespresso is just fine. Plus it takes up an outlet, and is huge."<br />
He agreed.<br />
We chatted briefly about coffee pods versus espresso machines - it really is something you need to know in Italy.<br />
"Here's some new pods," I said, handing him the small sack of espresso pods and sugar packets. "They go in the small machine only. Don't stuff them into the Lavazza machine."<br />
"Right," he said.<br />
I relayed this anecdote to Jason later on in the day, and he was highly amused by the level of tamper protection built into the Lavazza machine. <i>Do not screw with the Italians' workplace espresso machines!</i><br />
Perhaps Manchester would like to write a treatment of this episode for an indie short. Plenty of action, plenty of farce.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-UZUvl37dRJC0tZjevkP6m3umRrKiVFTzumek36YQwGewqErvCfRJb_myv_lLDtJ_oRqSQnQzoazxv5p8oooXayWbDkz13MAr150AywIF-h-sCcZMlHWiDaIpNAshX9g9TIeB-gU6YkyB/s1600/download.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="170" data-original-width="233" height="291" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-UZUvl37dRJC0tZjevkP6m3umRrKiVFTzumek36YQwGewqErvCfRJb_myv_lLDtJ_oRqSQnQzoazxv5p8oooXayWbDkz13MAr150AywIF-h-sCcZMlHWiDaIpNAshX9g9TIeB-gU6YkyB/s400/download.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">OF COURSE the model is called <i>Espresso Point. </i><br />
In Italy, if you make a thing or a business, make sure you append "Point" to the branding. <br />
That way, people will know it is a thing you use.<br />
Imagine this with alarms and red lights going off, and a jammed pod in the chute.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
A third Brit showed up a week after Giorgio and Manchester and I had settled in to our dedicated desks. He came with a duffel bag, looking around in a preview with Maria, and five minutes later came back with a key and immediately set to work. He eventually slipped that he is from Bristol. He owns his own tech firm and was very quiet his first week. When I gave him the coffee pods yesterday, he asked me what they were for.<br />
"You don't drink coffee?" I asked. "Oh, no - are you a tea drinker?"<br />
"I drink both," he said.<br />
"I do too," I quickly rejoined. Agreeable American! "Tea in the morning, and espresso after. Coffee is not hot enough for me. I need a ... a mug of <i>builder's brew</i>." (Note to Yanks: this is Brit argot for <i>a very strong cup of tea</i>.) "I cannot drink the tea in Italy," I added. "It's awful."<br />
"Yes," Bristol mused. "What we really need is some loose tea."<br />
"Oh, there is a shop in town, it's local, called La Via del Te. They'll have it, and loose."<br />
"I like Assam and Darjeeling," he said. "I'll bring a teapot."<br />
I laughed. "A teapot! I never know how to drink it all fast enough so that it stays hot. I hate cold tea."<br />
He looked at me. "It's called a cosy."<br />
"But you wouldn't take a teapot and a tea cosy to work, would you?"<br />
He nodded. "People would." He thought again. "They would."<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHsqh5lkDyGflwGZap0lU1vmkoTwuBHV_w4BD_cua69HjFAahypJrZQMzm6OnY69y0e2OHI7i_4G2JR3vsq4vg4hJb2GkMdlrc19hayJmTNwuPqihvSCCIOFEm88NuikF3IonB7sSfUp8h/s1600/il_570xN.812543279_23a8.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="345" data-original-width="570" height="241" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHsqh5lkDyGflwGZap0lU1vmkoTwuBHV_w4BD_cua69HjFAahypJrZQMzm6OnY69y0e2OHI7i_4G2JR3vsq4vg4hJb2GkMdlrc19hayJmTNwuPqihvSCCIOFEm88NuikF3IonB7sSfUp8h/s400/il_570xN.812543279_23a8.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Oddio, </i>will some <i>inglese </i>please bring this to work and set it next to me.<br />
Yes, I find this quite a normal item to have in the workplace.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
It's really nice to be in a workspace where people know I am working, and who are working along similar lines. I often felt the suspicion in the Sprachcaffe - <i>what was I really doing? How could this possibly be work? Where were my coworkers? Did I work at all? No, it seemed I worked too much.</i> I get none of that here. Everyone bikes in, taps away, works out, does a few conference calls. Types some more. It's good.Th'Italian Sassenachhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01135866794196036425noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4902749929015572724.post-15579022977716826962018-07-22T09:48:00.000-07:002018-07-22T16:38:40.583-07:00Italy: Where Two Italians Gather...A cultural observation? If I may.<br />
<br />
Italians love to consider problems in groups. They absolutely love it. It is a birthright.<br />
<br />
My new office space is a recently renovated palazzo, formerly Trenitalia. It has had a lot of work done. There are finishing touches taking place now - painting fresh murals on walls, putting in light bulbs that look like 1920, adjusting air conditioning. This has all been happening around me as I work in the new space this week.<br />
<br />
Every problem, even the smallest problem, requires at least six to eight Italians to consider it and bring it closer to a point of resolution. I do not know if the problem could be solved with just one Italian.<br />
<br />
Is this a union thing?<br />
<br />
A vent was malfunctioning in my new space yesterday. Eight Italians came to look at it and talk about it. One man held something that seemed like a precision instrument, to measure air flow. The other Italians looked up and made comments.<br />
<br />
Comments included:<i> crap; this makes no sense; why, what are we going to do; who knows what to do.</i> Et cetera.<br />
<br />
The man holding the precision instrument seemed not at all confused, nor did he seem to be consulting any of the other Italians in the group. He calmly measured, squinted, looked up a few times, jotted down some numbers, and left. The other seven Italians trailed out after him. I would wager they all went to get an espresso.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEie2JGlaKXSEr55CXnExIYp4d4-PoQwZTGk8dysSyhb27scAng6mpBkPvuKrzu0hsR6NCFQD3qqtJ7xF1DjJE6eJPibhY-eIyelUACgo1KwYXRAoAhtM4YQCm20_OlSdW90fcLMrMUys7az/s1600/b2ap3_large_coffe_20151024-091442_1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="660" data-original-width="1124" height="233" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEie2JGlaKXSEr55CXnExIYp4d4-PoQwZTGk8dysSyhb27scAng6mpBkPvuKrzu0hsR6NCFQD3qqtJ7xF1DjJE6eJPibhY-eIyelUACgo1KwYXRAoAhtM4YQCm20_OlSdW90fcLMrMUys7az/s400/b2ap3_large_coffe_20151024-091442_1.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px;">We're not done here. There's more to say.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
I mused a bit.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjE97hFtmzoQNFNSFc3V918zIK6O7vyn5JqLcOgQCOsEvg1BL-8bO3El4gOsXjDQxJBs3JG7EZhyphenhyphenvvRyCWb4nqSX1f6OvyrowhEqEm0msKYWNZ9Ssd-ltbZVNioNjKeZUyk5-K4p-j2I1BH/s1600/a-Light-Bulb.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="576" data-original-width="565" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjE97hFtmzoQNFNSFc3V918zIK6O7vyn5JqLcOgQCOsEvg1BL-8bO3El4gOsXjDQxJBs3JG7EZhyphenhyphenvvRyCWb4nqSX1f6OvyrowhEqEm0msKYWNZ9Ssd-ltbZVNioNjKeZUyk5-K4p-j2I1BH/s400/a-Light-Bulb.jpg" width="391" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px;">The American way.<br />
Do it yourself. Work with no one else. Suffer. The job is probably too big.<br />
Do it anyway.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
This would be like eight cable guys in the U.S. coming to your house to hook up your cable, or to resolve a cable issue. One guy's got the needle-nosed pliers to fix the thing, and the other seven guys are all standing around talking about the NFL draft or pre-season, and how silly their employer is. One is saying to the other, <i>hey, I like those pants, the flat-fronts are flattering. </i>Other dude is stroking his sideburns. Afterwards, they all leave together in three trucks to go do it again.<br />
<br />
Where two Italians gather, let there be more. And as they solve the problem in front of them, let them suggest further unrelated problems which they might easily resolve, on macro- and micro-levels.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjndMhgWSOiPV5kLR2eHmXSVar2SBRY-D2xxBqq-SjmHKxBBxpaUZEqHzn98POlmqeKGxGRmZzCMCggxrImFiz1FvlTnjV9ffbG9mk36uK_nUuZCxj3YCyh8WbodAWKD315yzbr_n0IcB82/s1600/p1311433652-3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="376" data-original-width="580" height="258" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjndMhgWSOiPV5kLR2eHmXSVar2SBRY-D2xxBqq-SjmHKxBBxpaUZEqHzn98POlmqeKGxGRmZzCMCggxrImFiz1FvlTnjV9ffbG9mk36uK_nUuZCxj3YCyh8WbodAWKD315yzbr_n0IcB82/s400/p1311433652-3.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px;">This. Pretty much. Every day. Your civic right to public debate<br />
with family, colleagues, friends, and strangers.<br />
C. Oliver Stegman Photography</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Th'Italian Sassenachhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01135866794196036425noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4902749929015572724.post-21876316540046088462018-07-17T08:25:00.003-07:002018-07-18T01:00:32.057-07:00Florence: Turning a page / girare la pagina<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3cEtxojljziYz6EgWZbBFb2plbwmaPgCxRaHGEfEIvL5fdHuDGYaLpVmXyawf_WtAGx5oSET3WDL1H7cX7C6vFg4ir3ViLlxnBgOl-AlWpnvSS2qbWXGrEdsHH5Ccso9odSPljylWXVoL/s1600/20180716_143007_HDR.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="900" data-original-width="1600" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3cEtxojljziYz6EgWZbBFb2plbwmaPgCxRaHGEfEIvL5fdHuDGYaLpVmXyawf_WtAGx5oSET3WDL1H7cX7C6vFg4ir3ViLlxnBgOl-AlWpnvSS2qbWXGrEdsHH5Ccso9odSPljylWXVoL/s320/20180716_143007_HDR.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">This whole post is about my new <a href="https://www.thestudenthotel.com/florence/" target="_blank">workspace</a>!</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
As many of you know, I work remotely for Terra Dotta, a software company based in North Carolina. I am going on six years now with the company, and find my work engaging and fulfilling on many levels. It is a boon that the position has been remote since they hired me for the second time in 2013 - good for me, good for my career, good for our family, and frankly, good for Terra Dotta, as I remain deeply involved in our product development from Oklahoma and Italy, in way that would be impossible had I been issued an ultimatum to relocate to Chapel Hill.<br />
<br />
It has long been a discussion in our marriage that I am easily employed, with a wide latitude in my career encompassing immigration, marketing, writing, editing, publishing, software development, testing, end user documentation ... the list goes on. Foreign language teaching. Branding. I fall quickly into often fruitful employment situations: freelance, contract, full-time. A random conversation many times has turned into income for me.<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
This hasn't always precipitated pleasant discussions in certain years in my marriage, when Jason felt stymied professionally. He has a profundity of education and a level of specialization I don't; he is supremely qualified for a handful of positions that turn over infrequently. So it worked out well that when Jason was offered the position in Florence, I was able to bind up my roots and transplant my work to Italy with relatively little churn or burn. Happily, my position continued, and continues, to grow and change and expand in ways that remain interesting and engaging for me from abroad.<br />
<br />
However, Italy is not San Francisco, or Seattle, or South Korea, or Germany or Finland, in the sense that jobs are very rooted to a sense of place and the Roman concept of <i>gens</i> - who you know, and who is in your network, and who your parents are, and where your clan has lived for the last, oh, one thousand or two thousand years. The job market in Italy is tight and sewn up. Publicly posted positions are almost always mere formalities, as they were filled some time ago in name, and now only the details remain to be completed.<br />
<br />
Italy is not also San Francisco, or Seattle, or South Korea, or Germany or Finland in the sense that remote work is barely an idea here. If an Italian asks me what I do, and I explain it to them, they are usually astonished. The entire concept of full-time remote work is so far beyond their hermeneutic horizon that I am met only with disbelief.<br />
<br />
And, most importantly, Italy is not San Francisco, Seattle, or South Korea, or Germany or Finland in the sense that, more often than not, the lack of reliable internet here is a constant source of stress. I think of the places listed here as places with awesome internet! Fiber! superfast speed! Very reliable, and new networks. Italy does not really have that. They try. Oh, they try. They place paper flyers on the doors of buildings, <i>"La fibra vi arriva!"</i> I no longer believe it. It is like trying to wire the Colosseum to be a tech incubator. Italian infrastructure at times can seem truly hostile to modernization. Can't drill a hole... walls will crumble, stones will break... historic building ... not to mention every time they rip up a street or piazza it seems to be that some very suspicious bundles and braids of blue and yellow ethernet cabling are snipped, and carelessly tossed about with abandon.<br />
<br />
And so it was that my rented office situation in Florence began its quick, explicable descent. From my office balcony since March I have watched the commune tear up Piazza della Repubblica, digging holes and planing old flagstones. The ruins of the razed Jewish ghetto under the piazza merited further academic investigation, and an anthropologist wearing a white sunhat was soon seated at a desk in a pit. My internet got worse and worse, and in the old building, there was nowhere to plug in. I did not have an option to wire. My afternoons were frequently fraught and gave me minor chest pains as I failed to complete call after call and meeting after meeting with any kind of grace or success.<br />
<br />
When I asked why the wifi was not working, the staff insisted it was my laptop, that the wifi was fine.<br />
<i>But the wifi is not fine,</i> I said. <i>I want to wire in, </i>I begged.<br />
<i>You cannot, </i>they said. <i>All these outlets are non-functional</i>.<br />
Meanwhile I further annoyed my colleagues with an audio that sounded like the aliens from the movie Mars Attacks, and no video.<br />
<br />
So I went home to work for a week.<br />
<br />
I should mention here that Jason is in the US for work and the kids are home on summer break. Working from home has been touch and go at best. Even with sitters, and we have many, my life at the working parent switchboard is like a military CentComm.<br />
<br />
In a midnight moment of insomnia, I remembered the pleasant lunch I had had recently with one Maria, a marketing manager and host of a co-working space a bit out of <i>centro</i>. Maria and I had been introduced by Megan, another remote tech professional whom I met a year and half ago on Piazza della Repubblica. Megan had since moved to Turin, leasing office space that was hosted by Maria and her company, <a href="https://www.thestudenthotel.com/florence/" target="_blank">The Student Hotel</a>.<br />
<br />
The Florence location opened this month, I remembered. I had missed both of the events to which I had been so kindly invited, due to scheduling conflicts. I had not seen the space yet. Maria is colleagues with another person we know, Andrea, a mom of kids at our kids' school, whose <i>bambini </i>are roughly the same age as ours. <i>Why didn't I email Maria? What was I waiting for? </i><br />
<br />
My loosely structured <i>gens</i>, such as it is, could be put to work for me here.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
I contacted Maria the very next morning. She immediately responded and invited me to come look on Friday at lunch. It's a quick ride from our palazzo on the bike path.<br />
<br />
<i>What's the internet like? </i>I grilled her. <i>I would like to remain employed, and to not have a cardiac in my remote position due to my lack of connectivity.</i><br />
<i>It is good, </i>she affirmed.<br />
The building is newly gutted and renovated - it is a former HQ of Trenitalia, the state rail system. They maintain a very pretty office building next door.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTzou8hcvILsBP8wSH1PoKnfdQTcTbGvma1PLd-gRVJwhT7GpNPOxBuo04jYMw4gDZA4Mzeb4q4ZRgEAVJ8DssrR1vmd8WyJ95m70zC_xxiz6-Dqk6T-cfV4M_ihp4iZgtvr8zHshu-598/s1600/20180716_141451.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="900" data-original-width="1600" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTzou8hcvILsBP8wSH1PoKnfdQTcTbGvma1PLd-gRVJwhT7GpNPOxBuo04jYMw4gDZA4Mzeb4q4ZRgEAVJ8DssrR1vmd8WyJ95m70zC_xxiz6-Dqk6T-cfV4M_ihp4iZgtvr8zHshu-598/s400/20180716_141451.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Trenitalia HQ next door.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<i>Can I wire in?</i><br />
<i>Yes</i>, Maria said. <i>It is a LAN too. Bring a wire. </i><br />
She took me around. New furniture, functional air conditioning. Office space, social space, classrooms and cafes. A juice bar. A deejay booth, I am not kidding, for a nightclub that seems to start at a later hour, like 10 or 11 pm. A recording studio which I will be using to rehearse. A rooftop gym with a sweeping view of the Florentine skyline. A rooftop pool (can't use) and bar (can use). Laundry and kitchens. Restaurants. A bike shop. A salon. A retail design store. Big swings.<br />
A LAN I could wire into.<br />
This place was off chain. <a href="https://www.thestudenthotel.com/florence/" target="_blank">The Student Hotel</a> is a Dutch enterprise, and it shows. Design is thoughtful. Spaces are clean and inviting.<br />
Maria and I passed Andrea in the hall, and soon we were three for lunch at the fancy restaurant, which is leased by La Menagère, which is a high-end eatery in <i>centro</i>.<br />
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I said I would return on Monday for my free trial day to work. But my mind was made up the minute I unlocked my bike from the pole on Friday. This would be my new, reliable office. With a wired LAN. I was so excited I could have screamed.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_pMKO7dB_SbBhHhZT1aAQ0ZLDH0GFzHJzheYJuumuMaCkGL6sShsmd1sUM3iZ_YAcyTrelp6yc84PxmY92wJhFrlBST4oXU1GR0_rU2YNLMaqFHx2SL2aPK5R99CXMgYXZUiaZOXivd6t/s1600/20180713_123410_HDR.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="900" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_pMKO7dB_SbBhHhZT1aAQ0ZLDH0GFzHJzheYJuumuMaCkGL6sShsmd1sUM3iZ_YAcyTrelp6yc84PxmY92wJhFrlBST4oXU1GR0_rU2YNLMaqFHx2SL2aPK5R99CXMgYXZUiaZOXivd6t/s400/20180713_123410_HDR.jpg" width="225" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">My new office building.</td></tr>
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I came on Monday with my work backpack and got down to it. Wow, it is so easy to work when you have internet and a tiny bit of air conditioning! It was nice to have an ambient cohort also all working and doing their things in the vicinity. I struggled in Oklahoma and Florence with feeling isolated. I do not love to have people on top of me, but I appreciate being around professional people if they're not eating stinky leftover food they've just heated up in the office microwave.<br />
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Seriously, people. I got so much done with minimal stress. Wifi was awesome. Wired LAN was dreamy. I cannot overemphasize how stressful this was on Repubblica. Then I hung out in a little nook and got even more done!<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjC9oYOy2nHn73FyNVNGHjiUZK6sIuq8KoAUOulWOBE7K7vslss2e72Mcr-5baWj5eDmtzuANDwG3VnIwue8BI8Hjh-pPrSpbQRbC6GSMY_p0hDp_JoyU_yu8_FR3LHRRIchh7rD9D3Vnm/s1600/20180716_103305.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="900" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjC9oYOy2nHn73FyNVNGHjiUZK6sIuq8KoAUOulWOBE7K7vslss2e72Mcr-5baWj5eDmtzuANDwG3VnIwue8BI8Hjh-pPrSpbQRbC6GSMY_p0hDp_JoyU_yu8_FR3LHRRIchh7rD9D3Vnm/s400/20180716_103305.jpg" width="225" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Work nook!</td></tr>
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This morning I messaged my rental colleagues on Repubblica to let them know I was not coming back to work, and that I would bring the keys back. It feels a bit like a breakup (sniff). I started working there the second month after we moved here. Through all four seasons, the vagaries of that grand palazzo, the thin heat in winter and the stifling rooms in summer. The Evita Peron balcony from where I spied on all the activity below each day. The six months of Italian language classes that I took. The clipclop of the carriages carrying tourists. And oh, all my friends at Caffe Paszkowski, which is fortunately on my regular route home from St. James on Sundays after I sing at mass. The buskers in the piazza below, and my easy access to the bustle.<br />
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I've got a new neighborhood now to explore, though, which isn't Piazza della Repubblica, but is still plenty full of caffes and restaurants. Plus, the fact that I will be able to ride a bike path for the full commute is wonderful - no more playing Frogger (TM) in centro with aggressive Florentine taxis.<br />
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Up and away! Turn the page.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLsXURNA2VtVrZqbdK7MVtA7kwZ6dR1pbC9eIy7-ECCqljzGu2khagO8B0QUX7QpuKs_gTuM2A1i5h5qzpIbEX9e9nnRHcKVnno8ftDK2Sm1w2iB9_2rXPTIEhNHyMvd5BOXo4yLA4tljX/s1600/20180717_111944.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="900" data-original-width="1600" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLsXURNA2VtVrZqbdK7MVtA7kwZ6dR1pbC9eIy7-ECCqljzGu2khagO8B0QUX7QpuKs_gTuM2A1i5h5qzpIbEX9e9nnRHcKVnno8ftDK2Sm1w2iB9_2rXPTIEhNHyMvd5BOXo4yLA4tljX/s400/20180717_111944.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Fresh fruit, fancy water, keycard. Feels like old times in Seattle.</td></tr>
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Th'Italian Sassenachhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01135866794196036425noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4902749929015572724.post-51568188015082677042018-06-29T05:55:00.001-07:002018-06-29T05:55:01.992-07:00La Certosa di GalluzoIt was very late in the morning by the time we drove out of Florence, and wound our way up into the hills to the south of the city, where the Ema and Greve rivers meet at Galluzzo. The rivers this time of year are slow-moving, and green. Galluzzo is a sleepy town with a Tuesday market, but is the gateway to the Certosa di Galluzzo, which holds court as it has for centuries from a hill high above town.<br />
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We were with Jason's Italian colleagues, Elsa and Susanna, medievalists all three of them. This was a very special visit to the Certosa for them, as Jason's associate Don Alessandro, a Catholic priest with all the keys, was to meet us in the courtyard. His order, San Leolino, are the newest custodians and residents of the Certosa. They plan to eventually grow it into more of a retreat center.<br />
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Don Alessandro says Mass at Gonzaga in Florence on a regular basis. He is a very friendly man, with a wide smile and blue eyes. A youthful priest in the best sense, we are on warm terms with him, having even been to his local parish at Panzano in Chianti a couple of times for Mass (followed by an amazing <i>pranzo </i>at Cecchini.)<br />
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Elsa and I sat in the back seat and worked on deriving the etymology of "Galluzzo" - "gallo" means "rooster" in Italian, but the ending brought another shade to the definition, which we debated at length, much to the amusement of the professors up front. Was it a big ugly rooster? Or just an ugly rooster? or a strange, ugly rooster? Maybe a weird rooster.<br />
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Jason and I had been to the Certosa (the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Charterhouse_of_Parma" target="_blank">Charterhouse</a>, as in the Stendhal novel) before, but had only picked our way around the parking lot, and seen the courtyard, as we had arrived too late to make the final guided tour. This time, as we pulled in the car and got out, a squinting attendant asked us our business, and Jason was quick to inform him that we were meeting Don Alessandro. The attendant quickly desisted and ambled back to his small table and chair under a canvas lean-to.<br />
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The midday sun was strong, and bright white. I kept to the shadows of the buildings. Olive groves lined up in martial formations in the hills around the Certosa. We waited in the courtyard, admiring the distillery and the gift shop, the front of a smaller chapel, until Don Alessandro strode up in a clerical collar, smiling and gave each of us a strong handshake. Elsa and Susanna wanted to make a few purchases in the gift shop, so Don Alessandro called a couple of his companions to attend to us. I perused the books, noting that none other than Oriana Fallaci had historic links to Don Alessandro's Order of San Leolino, based in Panzano in Chianti. I also scrutinized the many monastic remedies available to purchase, of contents both herbal and alcohol. Susanna selected a small wall ornament designed to hold holy water in the home, for her mother in Viareggio.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhs_oGmZhjjuvAYgeM6Rq3Mr8WzruLjTeomBYBIKMN32GBnz666cZl9-2YLOgkUZxaZMg97HXm_yko5tDCqUdr3CoQNZMlXLMi4f3qNHBaW9u8zwraKhOlVKA6uvtt4TVsqa_aYYRmOpt_P/s1600/20180620_113857.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="900" data-original-width="1600" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhs_oGmZhjjuvAYgeM6Rq3Mr8WzruLjTeomBYBIKMN32GBnz666cZl9-2YLOgkUZxaZMg97HXm_yko5tDCqUdr3CoQNZMlXLMi4f3qNHBaW9u8zwraKhOlVKA6uvtt4TVsqa_aYYRmOpt_P/s400/20180620_113857.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Pick up your medieval liquor here.</td></tr>
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We paid for all our small things (bottles of liquor, books, postcards, ceramics, honey, rosaries), and walked with Don Alessandro up the long flight of stairs to the adjacent Palazzo Acciaiuoli, where the founder and namesake Niccolo had imagined all manner of humanistic erudition would take place. Today used as a conference center, the two main halls adjoin in an L-shape, with vaulted ceilings and enormous oil portraits of assorted patron saints and leaders, chief among them San Bruno and San Lorenzo. The palazzo itself was never intended to be a sacred space, but rather a sort of college appended to the Certosa in which learned study might take place.<br />
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A few quick historic notes here for non-medievalists. The <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carthusians" target="_blank">Carthusian Order</a> was founded by San Bruno in 1084, in Grenoble, France, where it remains headquartered. It is a hermetic order that maintains vows of silence. The brothers remained in seclusion, and even received their meals through a specially-designed cupboard with offset openings so that they never saw the faces or hands of those who waited on them.<br />
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Boccaccio is a special figure in the Certosa, as Niccolo Acciaiuoli was his patron, and so his personal history closely intertwined with that of the institution. Indeed, the Certosa's geographic location (high on a hill, fresh air, sewage runs downhill) made it an ideal escape from which to ride out the bouts of plague that so often swept through Florence.<br />
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Boccaccio was a signatory on the document that established the financial gift from Acciaiuoli to begin the project. About 10 years later, after Boccaccio fell out with Acciaiuoli, he made fun of the Certosa, calling it a pile of rocks on a hill that would never bring everlasting fame to its patron Acciaiuoli. But history proved him wrong, and let that be a cautionary tale for readers here.<div>
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From the Palazzo Acciaiuoli (very successful! historically noted!) we stepped out onto a grand piazza, in full sun, crowned by the facade of the church. </div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">One big piazza, check.</td></tr>
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The inside, like almost every building in Florence, was surfaced in an amount of fine marble sufficient for a thousand luxury bathrooms. Don Alessandro explained that the foyer of the church was for the public, and lay monastics, whereas the interior of the church remained closed to the public to maintain the Carthusian seclusion. We went into the main sanctuary. The ambient temperature progressively dropped. Don Alessandro kept up his knowledgeable patter, supplemented by the exclamations of the medievalists who offered facts or confirmation here and there. I hung back to look at the wooden choir stalls, with their bare, buxom mermaids leaning out as though from the prows of ships.</div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOxn7sNFw_3G2OygCW4hR1nbnxbLt7z26QhF7H-dvK2Gf3OSjNfLNihguy8HutuLiDrJL7FhjENdnWGadDdKTBmWsWkt14xr0Q7gpvHvuiLNhtrUp0o6HKw1s1o34lmYOTVdZyqHs-lXtT/s1600/20180620_121904.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="900" data-original-width="1600" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOxn7sNFw_3G2OygCW4hR1nbnxbLt7z26QhF7H-dvK2Gf3OSjNfLNihguy8HutuLiDrJL7FhjENdnWGadDdKTBmWsWkt14xr0Q7gpvHvuiLNhtrUp0o6HKw1s1o34lmYOTVdZyqHs-lXtT/s400/20180620_121904.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Choir stalls, Certosa.</td></tr>
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We followed Don Alessandro into the sacristy to see the liturgical treasures: chalices and tabernacles, votives and relics. He unlocked and opened an enormous set of cupboard doors that reminded me of my recent trip to the Great Synagogue, and where the Torah is kept. Around the walls of the sacristy were frescoed, in a kind of wainscot, images in single-tone of what England did to Catholics in the early seventeenth century. "The English were incredible," Don Alessandro smirked. "If there was a way to torture a person, they would do it without hesitation." The depictions on the wall attested to this, as Carthusians were shown being drawn and quartered, beheaded, crucified, burned, and more. Farm carts were piled high with torsos, legs, and arms. A calligraphied narrative clarified the facts of the scene - quite a counterpoint to the serene icons and portraits of saints, and the gleaming gold in the sacristy's cupboard. <i>Oh, England, </i>I thought.<br />
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We twisted through a maze of halls, down an unlit two flights of stairs, to reach the crypt of Acciaiuoli family. Cells phones with flashlight apps came out. The medievalists were beside themselves. There in a small chapel at the end of the crypt were Niccolo himself, and his wife, and a sister and brother, in their marble tombs since the fourteenth century, their long fingers clasped in silent, eternal prayer. It was cold. I began to shiver, but after the heat and the sun above, it felt good. A voto was set within the wall, with more remains in a vault.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjT0zAOfzQcWs3TB-DxT12PX9txQ62rkm2jXL7Zl2C7TE4wj_l2OZWQU-EaIXvjqSsxXii2bnHcJdFrYhXfCJQyLDINAsGizGrBKNbef4py2uj_5zSBd7hBxaolSWtgiGiv_H-8SbVqHaOo/s1600/20180620_122717.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="900" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjT0zAOfzQcWs3TB-DxT12PX9txQ62rkm2jXL7Zl2C7TE4wj_l2OZWQU-EaIXvjqSsxXii2bnHcJdFrYhXfCJQyLDINAsGizGrBKNbef4py2uj_5zSBd7hBxaolSWtgiGiv_H-8SbVqHaOo/s400/20180620_122717.jpg" width="225" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Wife of Niccolo Acciaiuoli, Margherita degli Spini.<br />She's been resting here now for quite some time, since the fourteenth century.<br />No telling where his mistress Catherine of Taranto is laid.</td></tr>
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<br />Outside of the Acciaiuoli chapel were laid what appeared to be every member of the Ricasoli family who passed to eternal rest in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, their marble lapidaries attesting to the enduring one or two basic facts of their life ("distinguished solder," "long and painful illness," "grieving wife," "epilepsy.") A few more altars were tucked here and there in dark spaces, and one more tomb of a Bishop of Florence, gleaming in white marble with a small rope hung around it like a hapless fence.<br />
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We climbed our way back up the dark and dusty staircase, until it became warmer and warmer. A small gallery with wooden seats set into the wall was situated between the sanctuary and the courtyard. This place, Don Alessandro said, A sign at the end of the hall over the door read "Penitentibus" (<i>for penitents</i>, plural ablative, thank you Peggy Chambers) and I imagined what sins a secluded monk under vows of silence might confess. Had unkind thoughts about another brother? Perhaps caught a glimpse of his weekday waiter through the offset windows in the wall?<br />
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We passed into the courtyard preceding the refectory, which was situated like another set of cloisters, with a massive stone <i>lavandone </i>that had three metal taps, and bore an inscription about washing off iniquity.<br />
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The grand cloister of the Certosa is huge, like a residential college at Yale or Oxford. The doors of the monastic cells open onto its cloistered path, shaded from the sun, looking out onto a massive garden of grass and lavender. A huge well was sunk into its center. The green space in front of the cells was matched by a private garden, with lavender and oleander and a bench, a place to sit and contemplate God's works. I mentioned their dinner cupboard above, but also, next to the cupboard, was bored a small opening above the monk's bed. This, Don Alessandro explained, was so that the good health - or not - of the monk might be verified if he had not been seen or heard from in more than a day or two. When the questioning knock came, he was to reply, "Deo gratias" - <i>thanks be to God</i>.<br />
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Outside in the cloister, along the main wall of the building and the low wall surrounding the garden, were more tombs, hundreds of them, seemingly of parish members. I was struck by a memorial for a baby who died at three days old, and the many tombs for the laity, again with the one or two remaining facts of their lives chiseled into marble plaques. A smaller, sectioned off cemetery contained the graves of nameless monks, whose extreme abdication of the ego brought them closer to God even in death.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPQHtr3Do1hluHzzULzb3TyBBJmWZFEns12VGuecYCE2YU6mWn3emtKLU2DkR67zjduH11ijiHL3xj7fkgnehbzUK6eBGy8D_wSWvc2stt5oFAhmmy4kcS5GFp70uyk3gkYUVZ4ZF2ptVl/s1600/20180620_124613.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="900" data-original-width="1600" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPQHtr3Do1hluHzzULzb3TyBBJmWZFEns12VGuecYCE2YU6mWn3emtKLU2DkR67zjduH11ijiHL3xj7fkgnehbzUK6eBGy8D_wSWvc2stt5oFAhmmy4kcS5GFp70uyk3gkYUVZ4ZF2ptVl/s400/20180620_124613.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Grand cloister.</td></tr>
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We made a quick final loop through the refectory, which looked much like the choir stalls. A dais at the east end of the room was, presumably, for the abbot, and a lectern set high into the corner to the left of the abbot's place ensured that the <i>lectio divino </i>read out by one of the brothers would be heard by all the monks, chewing carefully and in silent contemplation, with their one or two possibly sinful thoughts pushed away for the moment.<br />
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Our tour complete, Don Alessandro again shook hands warmly with each of us while Jason and the medievalists continued their conversation about the conference they planned to hold on the grounds next year. The monastery had taken on the midday hush of Italian midsummer, save for a lone woman speaking loudly into a cellphone, who was greeted by name by Don Alessandro, after which she seemed to pipe down. Don Alessandro got into a small car outside the Certosa walls and waved goodbye from the window as he departed down the gravel road.</div>
Th'Italian Sassenachhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01135866794196036425noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4902749929015572724.post-14223129983135938422018-06-18T13:50:00.001-07:002018-06-20T06:31:18.147-07:00Choices, and Their Lack: Mendicants of Santissima AnnunziataI routinely transit la Piazza della Santissima Annunziata each morning when I accompany Eleanor to preschool, and again when I return home to the palazzo where we live.<br />
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Perhaps at midday, bringing a critical but forgotten item back up to the kids' school - a lunch ticket, a <i>felpa </i>(hoodie), a change of clothes. Or meeting Jason for lunch in the blocks around Gonzaga in Florence, most often la Trattoria di San Gallo, or Il Giglio in a pinch for their four-euro fresh pasta plates, consumed next to office workers in suits and workmen in jumpsuits, their hands white with plaster or chalk.<br />
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It is a space I now know well, and have come to love: the Brunelleschi arches of the Ospedale degli Innocenti, stretching in uniform conformity along the eastern side of the piazza, each little swaddled <i>putto</i> slightly different than the one next to it, as though to underscore the humanity of orphans and lost children. The western side of the Loggia dei Servi di Maria, and its apartments overlooking their own set of steep steps. The arcades of Michelozzo's church of the Santissima Annunziata, on the north side, where I often duck in to make a quick petition to God, or any god, or any presence (I fold fast) who might be willing to receive it. The two walrus-man fountains in bronze reign in the middle, and hotels and restaurants line the south side, at the intersection of what I like to call the Gateway to the Molten Tourist Core of Florence. Via dei Servi begins at the south side of the piazza, and its crowded pavement extends all the way to the <i>duomo</i>, visible in slices between tall buildings crowding the narrow street.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEipHtLkLoliy4KOiCndURmq4jcunL12A4BFDy01q2yfIfT2O0L7k7pgCBwI1FftJdf1CPGRXUyE4QEcyxmc8AyAWRpTh9eAxVhxgNsqM_oCxFOOnNuBDkCa5IsvAF-m0ofM3gMCMbo2ATDs/s1600/20180617_092842.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="900" data-original-width="1600" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEipHtLkLoliy4KOiCndURmq4jcunL12A4BFDy01q2yfIfT2O0L7k7pgCBwI1FftJdf1CPGRXUyE4QEcyxmc8AyAWRpTh9eAxVhxgNsqM_oCxFOOnNuBDkCa5IsvAF-m0ofM3gMCMbo2ATDs/s400/20180617_092842.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Walrus fountains, Santissima Annunziata.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
And yet, for all these flagstones and fountains and architecture, what captures my attention is the name: the most holy annunciation. What has not been chosen, when the lots are drawn. Mary, learning that she's bearing none less than God's only begotten Son. No choice there for a twelve-year-old Palestinian girl headed into an arranged marriage.<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivH-MoDGx4ALejQ2FNwLQlqfbafJ4yD0r38JrEo60TqYs_DtxYCXiJuDyd_cJv9QBttZ7NUQn1hmAtNFjqa_7qOO-_EJIIQXqxsmq9YsIsdYkptLxkAX0_y1qA51G5K2KoWlFBGXzNXyrJ/s1600/20180519_132155.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="800" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivH-MoDGx4ALejQ2FNwLQlqfbafJ4yD0r38JrEo60TqYs_DtxYCXiJuDyd_cJv9QBttZ7NUQn1hmAtNFjqa_7qOO-_EJIIQXqxsmq9YsIsdYkptLxkAX0_y1qA51G5K2KoWlFBGXzNXyrJ/s320/20180519_132155.jpg" width="160" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Tiny tokens once attached to a foundling.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Thousands of Florentine orphans and children of impoverished families passed through L'Ospedale degli Innocenti for hundreds of years, from 1445 to 1875. The museum inside maintains all the records of the babies, and while some of them did grow up and go on to be productive members of Florentine society (artists, statesmen, orphanage administrators), many met an early end as they failed to thrive, shuttled as newborns between city and country, and paid wet nurses. <i>Giovanni died at 13 days old, </i>one tag read. <i>Annamaria died three days after arriving, </i>said another<i>. </i>The tiny tarnished bit of a broken medal on a frayed piece of ribbon all that remained to remember them by. The hope that the two pieces might be joined again one day.<br />
<br />
Not all babies met such a quick end; many survived, and indeed, thrived. This was a boon to the Silk Guild, the underwriters of the orphanage budget. <i>There is always a reason</i>. There is no simple charity. What was in it for the powerful silk guild, the owners of not only the bronze statue of St. John the Evangelist that graces one of the outer niches of the Orsanmichele Church, but of the entire loggia of the Orsanmichele itself and the statues of all the other thirteen Florentine guilds, wealthy and working class alike? <i>There is always a reason</i>. Think. Think hard. What could a guild of wealthy and powerful silk merchants want to do with a seemingly endless supply of small, young, nimble hands?<br />
<br />
Carding silk. Weaving silk. Being apprenticed to the many textile workshops in the city.<br />
<br />
And so the mutually beneficial, if lopsided, arrangement thrived for years, as the child labor of the orphans benefited the business pursuits of the wealthy and powerful silk merchants who funded their home.<br />
<br />
So, they had a social safety net, but no child labor laws... win some, lose some. Still, light years ahead of their time, and frankly, a revolutionary concept.<br />
<br />
The women who had been met with ruin as unwed mothers and fallen women were consigned to a disturbing fate within the Ospedale, giving up their own baby and being stationed in a wing for newborns, where they would lie in bed, a baby on each side of the bed under the curlicue of a mosquito-netted cot. The women would breastfeed around the clock while a medical nurse attended to them. Having recently returned from six years myself in the Land of Breastfeeding, I mentally uttered a firm <i>nothankyou</i> upon viewing those archival photos.<br />
<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjw3YZ9YQppJSqmmIjTHWUKT7cV_lLtw0NZK7ruTaDRDLU4hoqOtJA6GB9zJxYq4Fr9OTf97ZtxVhmwVvUUUwmWiXUhih7YRbGI4X_N2BsCL5ahJvARkGiByU37x-iouFYVuEpAuDnPioKU/s1600/20180610_095401_HDR.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="900" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjw3YZ9YQppJSqmmIjTHWUKT7cV_lLtw0NZK7ruTaDRDLU4hoqOtJA6GB9zJxYq4Fr9OTf97ZtxVhmwVvUUUwmWiXUhih7YRbGI4X_N2BsCL5ahJvARkGiByU37x-iouFYVuEpAuDnPioKU/s400/20180610_095401_HDR.jpg" width="225" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">An aged nun makes her dogged way down <br />
to Santissima Annunziata.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
I always see priests, monks, and nuns in these blocks, walking up and down the sidewalks in sensible sandals and habits and robes as they have done for centuries. I thought also of the religious orders, and how getting thee to a nunnery was almost never a free choice, but rather an option of last resort for women without marriage dowries, women from poor families, and orphans. Perhaps the <i>suor </i>was the tenth of twelve children, in a merchant family down on its luck, and the next-eldest sister scraped the last of savings for her marriage. Or more rarely, a wealthy young woman who wished to continue an unusually profound education, but was barred from doing so via the institutions available at the time, so probably begged her father to deposit her dowry in a convent and went there to study and read, or write, or write music.<br />
<br />
All these people, all these forced choices. I suppose when a forced choice is termed something along the lines of a most holy announcement, it goes down a tiny bit easier, or much more easily for the faithful. After all, God's choice. Who are humans to presume to choose the lot they'd like to receive in this life?<br />
<br />
Another cast of characters that give me pause for thought are the mendicants of Santissima Annunziata. Staking out a post at the well-trafficked entrance to the church virtually guarantees a profitable day of begging. There is a fairly standard set I see in the arches and the portico.<br />
<br />
An African mother who has been separated from her three daughters by Italian immigration authorities (as best as I can tell from her literature and her science-fair-esque poster display, which is heartrending) hands out flyers and asks for help to pay a huge legal bill that might resolve her issue and reunite her with her daughters.<br />
<br />
The Rom women, in their mismatched print scarves and long skirts, socks with cork sandals, and gleaming braids.<br />
<br />
A man who looks like he could be Rom, but also possibly a college student, with a level of grooming far too fine to really seem down on his luck.<br />
<br />
Another man who truly is down on his luck is frequently seated on the step at the entrance of the cloister, to the west of the main church entrance. His grubby hands and rheumy eyes speak to a lifetime of suffering; his clothes are layered and poorly patched. He watches the street, and one morning, months ago, I accidentally dropped Eleanor's gingham string bag with her extra change of clothes. I was on my bike, and did not notice until I was at her school. I returned to the piazza, and the beggar had darted out in the street to pick up the bag, and was waiting for me on the step with it in his hands. I thanked him profusely and gave him a euro. A few weeks ago he was perched on his step with two breathtaking black eyes that made me inhale hard when I saw him. He looked as though someone had beaten the crap out of him on a dark street, and they probably had. His injuries were awful, but I see him every day, and he is slowly returning to his normal. The nuns and priests always give him coins, even though he does not position himself at the entrance of the church to preen and curry favor with the faithful like the handsome Rom/not-Rom youth.<br />
<br />
I empty out my coin purse to this cast, whether just walking by or opting to duck into the church for a quick five minutes with the thousands of lit taper and oil lamps. One day, I gave the Rom/not-Rom youth a euro on my way out. One of the Rom women (clearly not a friend of his) saw me do it. She quickly sidled up to me on the marble floor under the arcades, following me closely, her entreaties growing louder and more agitated as I repeated, <i>mi dispiace </i>(I'm sorry) until she finally devolved into a few profane threats, and I crossed the street.<br />
<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTsNtf8eyiE_w_kAA070E-yJQRVz2vrKFvl2iJutj_VhL2xn3cJk94Txi6sAaVDESfRv_MEm71Z-vP0Uzp9LroTubKqxFzIBMF-LTEGnHSfpjh99tyv-1nLZ0jKsDyGr9wmJF3mpnXaLhm/s1600/Lampedausaaa2--400x300.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="300" data-original-width="400" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTsNtf8eyiE_w_kAA070E-yJQRVz2vrKFvl2iJutj_VhL2xn3cJk94Txi6sAaVDESfRv_MEm71Z-vP0Uzp9LroTubKqxFzIBMF-LTEGnHSfpjh99tyv-1nLZ0jKsDyGr9wmJF3mpnXaLhm/s320/Lampedausaaa2--400x300.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Adnkronos, Lampedusa, Italy.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Another group that drifts through the space are the African immigrants. They are clearly those with the least choice. Even the Rom are swaggering and confident next to the nervous glances of the Africans, toting their trays of tissues and umbrellas from corner to corner, or, if they have just arrived, simply holding out a cap - literally. The situation between Africa and Europe is always in the news, and getting worse; the recent refusal to permit first one, then two, then three migrant boats from landing in Italy while <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2018/06/18/world/europe/ap-eu-italy-roma.html" target="_blank">Matteo Salvini</a> crowed that he was somehow <i>taking back Italy</i>. <i>Make Spain and France take those boats! </i>The young men, always under twenty-five, it seems, break my heart. I can see and smell the white salt in their tears, their hands and hair, and I don't know what to do to help them. <i>The Italian government gives them homes</i>, I am assured, <i>none of them sleep on the street</i>. Yes, but what of their days on the street, on the sidewalk, the utter lack of dignity? The looks and comments they endure? What choice did they have to stay or leave where they came from? I always say <i>buongiorno</i>, and I always feel their resolution to not show weakness, to keep that stiff upper lip, to hold strong on their corner. Can we allow dignity to those who have had no choice?<br />
<br />
And to those who say, <i>but they had a choice, </i>I invite you to get out of your comfort zone and try their "choice" on for size, for a month or two, and come back and tell me if it was true choice or a forced choice. Because these are my former immigration clients stateside, and I know all their stories, in both type and detail. What poverty, what violence, what <i>want </i>they experienced where they were born. Go somewhere, if you haven't been, to see for yourself. See what circumstantially forced choices feel like, look like.<br />
<br />
The choices we have, and the choices we do not have, are cast in high relief on the Most Holy Announcement (hilarious and businesslike in English, with little of the Italian solemnity), its church and its piazza. I reflect on my choices and my forced choices in this life - my lot, my inheritance, if you will.<br />
<br />
I am fortunate in this life to have accessed a wide array of actual choices - and also fortunate to see when my forced choices were neither good nor bad, but simply a path I followed because it opened up to me, like Via dei Servi between two fountains, down a narrow shaded street, meeting the massive orange cupola of the cathedral as the Piazza del Duomo lays out its grey flagstones on the other end.Th'Italian Sassenachhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01135866794196036425noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4902749929015572724.post-71713467690653581242018-06-10T13:18:00.001-07:002018-06-13T01:54:21.436-07:00Spain on the Brain / Spagna nella menteTwenty-five years ago, I was wrapping up my first European foray. Spain, where I'd spent the semester in intensive Spanish language and literature classes; Santiago de Compostela, to be specific, that rainy northwest corner of Spain whose American counterpart Seattle stole my heart five years later.<br />
<br />
Looking back, it is hard to believe that I undertook such an endeavor at nineteen. I was naive but trying hard to be brave. I was fortunately armed with a decade of Spanish language education. I insisted for years as a teenager on going to summer camps out of state on my own, so had mustered what skills I could in the American Midwest and on domestic flights, long roadtrips, Greyhound buses, and more.<br />
<br />
It was my first transatlantic flight, and I deliriously journaled in my seat about my perceived shared affinities with Hemingway and Fitzgerald, headed over <i>finally </i>for my own continental chapter. No wonder my mother cried in the Oklahoma City airport, as I practically ran down the jetway that January. I had little room for sentiment and nostalgia. My view was full forward.<br />
<br />
But I was ill-prepared for the mechanics of that trip. The flights were not good, the connection ridiculously short, then suddenly long, because I missed my short domestic flight to Santiago. I was waylaid in Madrid Barajas for twelve or fourteen hours, and berated by a frustrated Iberia customer service representative at a desk for my crappy Spanish. I was alarmed by the military atmosphere in the arrivals hall, freaked out by Spanish soldiers in camouflage uniforms pointing semi-automatic weapons down at the trudging travelers. The acrid smell of black tobacco stung at my nose. I am pretty sure I cried in the airport bathroom.<br />
<br />
But I collected myself, and arrived in Santiago at midnight on a pouring January night with my overpacked bags. I was promptly ripped off by an exorbitant taxi fare thanks to the late hour, resulting in a loud dispute between the <i>taxista </i>and the hotel manager. I fell asleep for sixteen hours and the manager's wife woke me up at four the next afternoon, nervously asking me if I was <i>bien</i> and did I need to check in with anyone, ¿<i>tal vez tu madre?</i><br />
<br />
There followed an adventurous, studious, joyous, and highly amused five months. Santiago embraced me. I quickly made friends and in no time was being shuttled to various Spanish homes for the weekend. I dated the eldest son of six children, Antonio, his sister Virginia my hallmate in the <i>residencia</i>, and became friends with the whole family, remaining so to this day.<br />
<br />
I learned how to drink coffee, the value of a fresh-squeezed orange juice, <i>porto </i>and <i>orujo </i>and <i>chupitos</i>. The lemon curd pastries on the way to class, <i>merluza a la romana </i>- I ate so well that semester. The seafood! My midwestern palate prior to Santiago was totally unschooled, but I learned to crave octopus and mussels and oysters and clams, and especially the sweet long quadrangles of razor clams. Fresh shellfish that tasted of the sea and its salt. The dark tobacco that all the Spanish puffed then, boxes of Gitanos and Lucky Strikes that I tried unsuccessfully to socially smoke. (That "sticky gene" for smoking? I do not have it.)<br />
<br />
I hitchhiked around Galicia with my boyfriend, I fell in love with the wild <i>costa gallega </i>with its <i>rÃas altas </i>and <i>rÃas bajas </i>- the high fjords of the northern coast, and low fjords to the west. I was very glad for my years in Spanish class. I experienced very little language or culture shock - I was simply delighted and amused, and learning. I went home to Oklahoma, throttled back to first gear, and hit a slump so hard that only campus overachieving would restart me.<br />
<br />
I returned to Spain in 1995 for three weeks, in 2005 for six weeks, in 2013 for a week. But, still when I hear a peninsular Spanish accent, I wheel around to see where it is coming from, so great and deep was my exposure to the language that semester in Santiago. I know now that the peninsular accent sounds to <i>latinos </i>like a thick Scottish brogue sounds to Americans, <i>"¡Venga! ¡Gracias! ¡Hasta luego!"</i> But I heard so much of it that the immersion made its deep imprint.<br />
<br />
I harbor a particularly warm allegiance to Spain and Spanish culture, and to my Spanish friends. So when I learned that, by some stroke of luck, my return trip from Philadelphia included a nice solid layover in Madrid Barajas thanks to serendipitous routing, I anticipated with pleasure this little Spanish culture hit.<br />
<br />
I immediately sussed out my seatmate in flight. He was a Basque pharmacologist from Bilbao about my age who had just completed a three-month research project in Philadelphia at one of the teaching hospitals. Although I slept most of the flight, when I was coherent he was more than happy to chat Spanish politics (the prime minister Rajoy had just been forced out hours earlier), American culture observations, and compare travel stories with me. I laughed about the exuberant Spaniards in the row in front of us, and mentioned that Florentines would never be so unfiltered, preoccupied as they are with maintaining <i>la bella figura</i>. "Yeah, we don't have that preoccupation," he chuckled.<br />
<br />
I stumbled through my <i>italospagnolo </i>with him, but like all Spaniards, he admired Italian culture, and so my grammar errors and fumbles were met with patience. I did not get a chance to say <i>hasta luego</i> and <i>gracias </i>for the welcome conversation and company on that transatlantic haul.<br />
<br />
All the international flights that arrived in the early morning hours were emptying their passengers into the long terminal halls of the airport. The soldiers on camouflage with semi-automatic weapons are gone. The airport is now no-smoking. I did not feel like I was arriving on a military base in Afghanistan, scrutinized with suspicion. Madrid Barajas is now beautiful, and shines with the best of Spanish design, all wood and curves, in a sensual yet spacious welcome.<br />
<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTss70eKyK2C0RZlLY2XGvDr_p44C_21GOtfXdSSYvfFVfmggrssz84v6I4asNmRD6lGZuz4Qe_wShX8eU6OXsdqGJZ5PuXpCcMSYFkhQuPiFyh697MkkU4GBJqkGUiMNU0IFzaEls-ZM0/s1600/20180602_005141_HDR.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="900" data-original-width="1600" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTss70eKyK2C0RZlLY2XGvDr_p44C_21GOtfXdSSYvfFVfmggrssz84v6I4asNmRD6lGZuz4Qe_wShX8eU6OXsdqGJZ5PuXpCcMSYFkhQuPiFyh697MkkU4GBJqkGUiMNU0IFzaEls-ZM0/s400/20180602_005141_HDR.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Pre-dawn concourse, Madrid Barajas.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
We eventually made our way into the arrivals hall to be processed for immigration. A Spaniard in a blue suit stood at the top of the line, calling out <i>"¿pasaportes europeos? ¿Venga aqui vale? ¿Vale? ¿Vale? ¿Pasaportes europeos?"</i><br />
<br />
I chuckled and remembered of the blind ONCE lottery ticket vendors omnipresent in Spain. The man sounded just like them, plus the clipped "¿vale? ... ¿vale? ... ¿vale? .... ¿vale?" that the Spanish insert frequently into their chatterstream.<br />
<br />
I stood in line with approximately half of Perú and a good part of the Yucatán, picking out the pale Yankees among the crowd. A group of four Mexican <i>abuelas </i>from Merida at the start of their European tour struck up conversation with me, and asked, "were all these people on our plane?"<br />
No, I said, estimating the crowd in the enormous hall to be at least one thousand to two thousand people.<br />
"How many people can each airplane hold?" they asked me with curiosity.<br />
I don't know, about 275? I said. Maybe more? <i>"Estos dias los aviones son muy grandes! </i>These days planes are huge!"<br />
They nodded and agreed. "Our plane was really big!" they said. Yes, but not 2,000 passengers big.<br />
<br />
Toward the end of my half-hour wait, I found myself next to two young American students. They were extremely clean cut, and well-fed. I heard them talking and asked them where they were from.<br />
South Carolina, they said. We go to school there, ma'am.<br />
Really, where? I asked.<br />
The Citadel, ma'am, have you heard of it?<br />
I said, yes, I certainly had. I have a handful of seminal sad memories tied up in the Citadel that I will not detail here. I kept my cultural comments and memories to myself.<br />
Where are you going? I asked them.<br />
Ma'am, we are headed to Santiago de Compostela.<br />
I lit up. Really! Were they serious!?<br />
Yes ma'am, serious as a heart attack.<br />
They did look extremely serious.<br />
Are you doing a one-month language program? I asked them.<br />
Ma'am, how did you know?<br />
I studied abroad in Santiago in 1993! I crowed. Before you two were born, probably.<br />
Yes ma'am! they said in unison.<br />
I proceeded to pepper them with questions and give them advice about ground transfer to the city, and where to stay, and what to eat, and Santiago culture. I told them their good manners would serve them well in Spain. They beamed at me like I was some kind of American fairy godmother, breaking into wide smiles.<br />
Ma'am, we are so glad we talked to you here. We have no idea what we are doing, and we do not speak Spanish.<br />
I reassured them that they would be fine, and would soon be welcomed by the locals of Santiago into that most historic of hospitable cultures, a destination for adventurers and voyagers since 1100!<br />
My heart warmed to see that Santiago was still a desirable destination for naive nineteen-year-old Americans.<br />
<br />
At the window, the immigration control officer flipped through my passport, frowning.<br />
Where do you live? he asked me.<br />
<i>Florenthia, </i>I said, and flashed my Italian <i>permesso di soggiorno.</i><br />
<i>Vale, vaya, </i>he said, and stamped me in, waving me onward. <i>Go on then, you! </i>I snickered because now I always mentally translate the Spanish of the Spaniards into the English of the Scottish. Snort. Very inside joke, audience of one.<br />
<br />
I wound my way through the airport labyrinth, opting at every chance to walk and take the stairs after the long hours in flight. My goal was to find a <i>café con leche </i>and a <i>medialuna </i>and a fresh <i>zumo de naranjjjjja, </i>then any type of salon where they would wash and dry my hair. I peered at a store full of Spanish shoes, glanced into an enormous Zara, drooled over the arty <i>jamón</i> stand.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTOZ9m1QMn-HmEoolqo_-QibFGS_n9pYMOQjBt2mqh6gjf4y6aboY6jnqj5hI2bcDiDKmHQUuUX768XzG0WJg3GEZkhkliEIzm-1706GQabN1TR4uP8phOXJ3WxIYqxstVR0FfVqsT8iOH/s1600/20180602_074410.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="900" data-original-width="1600" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTOZ9m1QMn-HmEoolqo_-QibFGS_n9pYMOQjBt2mqh6gjf4y6aboY6jnqj5hI2bcDiDKmHQUuUX768XzG0WJg3GEZkhkliEIzm-1706GQabN1TR4uP8phOXJ3WxIYqxstVR0FfVqsT8iOH/s400/20180602_074410.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Don't ever accuse me of failing to love <i>jamón serrano, </i>but I am looking for an open salon.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
My hair was beyond grungy after the flight and travel, and the NAFSA week. Neither sexy Spanish shoes nor apparel nor <i>jamón serrano </i>could dissuade me from my mission to find a salon that would give me some post-flight TLC, stat.<br />
<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghcjJOJwks_FhBgMkxPAX7KdYQBRYYIOejHzsF55an83PEp28YFaqc5cbhA1QmAybwSp6QkFtoEeopncq6U4sOQYvM7mLMc-47oBGQnijwXm7r3oIKda8Cqm5D9SA50hk5I2MzQB15fael/s1600/20180602_074458.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="900" data-original-width="1600" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghcjJOJwks_FhBgMkxPAX7KdYQBRYYIOejHzsF55an83PEp28YFaqc5cbhA1QmAybwSp6QkFtoEeopncq6U4sOQYvM7mLMc-47oBGQnijwXm7r3oIKda8Cqm5D9SA50hk5I2MzQB15fael/s400/20180602_074458.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">These shoes are extremely cute, but I got plane hair to get washed.</td></tr>
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I found one at 7:15 am, and they still looked plenty sleepy as they were just opening. I opened my mouth and poured out some lazy Italian mumbo jumbo about needing a <i>piega</i>.<br />
They regarded at me quizzically.<br />
I apologized and said, I am sorry, I am so tired, normally I do speak Spanish.<br />
They laughed, ¡<i>no hay de qué! We will fix you right up!</i><br />
I consulted their <i>listina prezzi </i>and saw that, surprisingly, Spanish does not seem to have a word like <i>piega </i>in Italian, or blowout in English. "Lavar y secar," the <i>listina </i>indicated.<br />
A young woman led me back to a chair, tilted me back, and started washing my hair with warm water and a shampoo that smelled like handfuls of crushed rose petals. I was in heaven, and almost asleep. She kept up an amiable chatter while she worked, and said she was from Romania, where work in a salon does not pay like it does in Spain.<br />
I said appreciatively that her haircut and color were very becoming, which was well for a woman who works in the aesthetic industry.<br />
She gave me a great scalp massage. I pretty much forgot the airplane and arrivals hall.<br />
She asked if I would like a massage too.<br />
<i>Oddio si!</i> I exclaimed in Italian. <i>God yes! </i>More of this please! This was the best use of a Saturday morning connection ever. Five hours to kill and this adorable little salon is just buzzing over me at the start of their day.<br />
When she finished, I felt like a Kerry Blue ready to be shown in Westminster. It was a very good <i>piega</i>.<br />
Her colleague came to get me. He read my intake sheet and said, "oh! you wrote it in Spanish!"<br />
I laughed and replied, "I have no problems writing in Spanish, but speaking it, these days, on the other hand..."<br />
He worked out all my cricks and kinks, again chatting amiably in Spanish, about Slovakia, where he was from, and how Slovakian culture is so unhealthy "on account of all the beer they drink. Good god, I moved to Spain and lost 15 kilos!"<br />
I walked out a new woman. Long haul, what long haul? Ninety hour work week, who me? I felt magnificent.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhM1HjD08OFKjAvRxv6_AzEUSg0pHzZazabvoq1x-P7StXy5nnkd2Ps6N31Zz5I0L-idj-VmchI1254C2z9vVSMBfKZBH5lvb7TP0X2F_tj2O-NX76OK5Y4r9ciIjV_WhVUpex1uUCZRASN/s1600/20180602_095152.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="800" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhM1HjD08OFKjAvRxv6_AzEUSg0pHzZazabvoq1x-P7StXy5nnkd2Ps6N31Zz5I0L-idj-VmchI1254C2z9vVSMBfKZBH5lvb7TP0X2F_tj2O-NX76OK5Y4r9ciIjV_WhVUpex1uUCZRASN/s320/20180602_095152.jpg" width="160" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">a tiny bit bleary but feeling grand</td></tr>
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Over to the cafe for <i>el menú desayuno</i> - the breakfast menu. Spain, which like Sicily enjoys a year-round surfeit of oranges, loves a fresh squeeze. Out came the <i>café con leche grande </i>with its generous portion of scalded milk, a <i>medialuna </i>(cornetto/croissant) more savory than sweet like they bake them in Spain, with a tender center, and a generous glass of Spanish <i>zumo de naranjjjjja. </i><br />
<br />
(Side note: It took me a while to learn how to say <i>naranjjjjja </i>correctly in Spain. The waitstaff in our student residence and at the university building where I took my my classes drilled me mercilessly on the dry Ummayyad gargle that is a J or a soft G in Spain. I had such a soft Mexican J from my years in Spanish class in the U.S. By the middle of that spring or so I could dry gargle my Js with the best of them, and so was able to publicly order orange-based items free of mockery for the remainder of the term.)<br />
<br />
Breakfast down the hatch, check. Spain, you are sorting me out so sweetly!<br />
<br />
By this time my gate had been posted on the list, and I headed down another long concourse to board. Two ridiculous American college boys in the vicinity were living some Che Guevara dream with red bandannas and helmets. They gave me serious side-eye and sniffed when I took a seat next to them in the lounge, asking them if they were Florence-bound. I inadvertently wound up in the middle of a pack of chattering of Chilean high school girls, and with my backpack momentarily passed for one of them, to my enormous amusement, thanking the gate agents for the compliment.<br />
<br />
Buckling in to my seat for the flight across the Mediterranean from Madrid to Florence, I mused at how happy the tiny slice of Spain had made me. Granted, I was able to access services and commodities that are well-documented people pleasers, like good coffee, warm croissants, fresh orange juice, rose-scented shampoo, and massage. But there was something else too about the openness and relaxation of Spain, and floating about in one of my language heavens, able to read and understand everything perfectly even if the words coming out of my mouth sounded more scrambled. In some ways it was so relaxed and so far from my Italian experience.<br />
<br />
<i>Gracias, España, por esa mañana perfecta de sábado.</i> / Thank you, Spain, for that perfect Saturday morning.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEitJfOW4id25kNLrU8LyjKJ9tN5nnUvZ6mrNoN_FWJIhPrOtYnkopnNhk_O2-WY88ves-GpotbcBQZPY_KCEWXm64JQOE8ZWEj7bokh6dMPberhwihCljf-g_Ex9ymC422eEAAUnYoUqQp7/s1600/20180602_113154.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="900" data-original-width="1600" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEitJfOW4id25kNLrU8LyjKJ9tN5nnUvZ6mrNoN_FWJIhPrOtYnkopnNhk_O2-WY88ves-GpotbcBQZPY_KCEWXm64JQOE8ZWEj7bokh6dMPberhwihCljf-g_Ex9ymC422eEAAUnYoUqQp7/s400/20180602_113154.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Bye-bye Barajas!</td></tr>
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Th'Italian Sassenachhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01135866794196036425noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4902749929015572724.post-47904800421590536892018-06-05T19:04:00.001-07:002018-06-06T06:27:33.376-07:00Viaggio di lavoro in America / American Work Trip<i>Work trip to the US last week in review. Philadelphia, the NAFSA conference, a quick Sunday jaunt up to northern New Jersey, and Matthew Broderick's priestly sister!</i><br />
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My annual week of NAFSA conference work concluded last Friday - this year, in Philadelphia, whose gloomy weather and cobbled eighteenth-century streets gave a true feel of England. I have been to Philly once before, in 2004, for the massive MLA conference with Jason; we were in the Club Quarters in a room the size of a shoebox.<br />
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I stayed my first weekend in Cedar Park with my friend and colleague Liz, whose home looks like a set backdrop for Lemony Snicket. She had just been our guest in Firenze for the preceding week, and gamely retrieved me from the airport and whisked me off to buy some shoes for the week since my selection was skimpy and uncomfortable. We got our Ethiopian spice and <i>injeera </i>on at <a href="http://www.gojjos.us/" target="_blank">Gojjo</a> - my fingers smelt of <i>wat </i>for days. Her turret guest bedroom looked out onto St. Frances de Sales, calm and hulking in the Philadelphia humidity.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPCrBiwda40HTCUnQLxgyqgQZD6IYHUh3zpnVQu-GHoE6bD0onbloG2rX-J1mqD_y55h4ztZgIBwNg9x8n8RjHDGl3OSkaFN0Ovn5jfEiGI1KCkTiiddpq_T4POn_gSUFDM2muSbWhdNOc/s1600/20180527_073602_HDR.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="1600" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPCrBiwda40HTCUnQLxgyqgQZD6IYHUh3zpnVQu-GHoE6bD0onbloG2rX-J1mqD_y55h4ztZgIBwNg9x8n8RjHDGl3OSkaFN0Ovn5jfEiGI1KCkTiiddpq_T4POn_gSUFDM2muSbWhdNOc/s400/20180527_073602_HDR.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Liz's genteel home, channeling Thornton Wilder for reasons unknown to me. <br />
I spied on the street below from the top turret.</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTxRlUjTTJdrjsR9uldFePMXqW1CLOHvg2ywZLm3h8S8BcxUXtmVlpX5BR_pOVcyo9B3GZLzldzb29zrXp1t_i1dsmMDBOOgSl1HuT0w5W79ieKlk9sO6cGqOKHWOPk0m0v1ClBX_voW7l/s1600/20180527_054900_HDR.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="1600" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTxRlUjTTJdrjsR9uldFePMXqW1CLOHvg2ywZLm3h8S8BcxUXtmVlpX5BR_pOVcyo9B3GZLzldzb29zrXp1t_i1dsmMDBOOgSl1HuT0w5W79ieKlk9sO6cGqOKHWOPk0m0v1ClBX_voW7l/s400/20180527_054900_HDR.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">St. Francis de Sales, seen from Liz's guest turret.</td></tr>
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I took advantage of the Sunday to take an Amtrak regional train to Iselin, New Jersey, to catch up with a dear friend and her family. Quick note here - Philadelphia's 30th Street station, what a gem.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiH87tC3tDDyuD8cqwX9vYmr6oQ2hoW0hb70We2yRloB3X1SXfloAdYpfQMOtK6O08GUo2zWeSsqUdiCC4jSPLLBoikBNaOcFUCrCdwgXinKFQV2GyAdQwkY-qgojqeR06qKZjhYG758exc/s1600/20180527_075146.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="800" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiH87tC3tDDyuD8cqwX9vYmr6oQ2hoW0hb70We2yRloB3X1SXfloAdYpfQMOtK6O08GUo2zWeSsqUdiCC4jSPLLBoikBNaOcFUCrCdwgXinKFQV2GyAdQwkY-qgojqeR06qKZjhYG758exc/s400/20180527_075146.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">30th Street Station in Philadelphia, gleaming Art Deco insouciance.</td></tr>
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It rained so hard that day that the flash floods in Maryland took out the small town of Eddicott for the second time in two years. The train was peaceful and clean, the windows streaming with rain, impromptu ponds filling up in the fields as we slipped quietly by. I read a recent <i>New Yorker,</i> enjoying my Atlantic seaboard morning. My friend picked me up at Metropark, and we went straight to St. Peter's Episcopal in Morristown for 10:15 mass. The music was superb and that choir was huge! Also, Matthew Broderick's sister Janice is the rector there, and employs in her role all the charm and presence that clearly runs in that family.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBvmezZyIeqUmp7AwaCYWgbNyzkVL3zxG7pcHuyqc9p5QdQH0nUybf1Uqs-JJCIV5uTulFrZLgDASOvEW_V7W9O-6p6b7PpAPJTL60p0yIbH3fLc5y1HWBCimOwYTWuAmygR2h3nFhgG61/s1600/20180527_113051_HDR.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="800" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBvmezZyIeqUmp7AwaCYWgbNyzkVL3zxG7pcHuyqc9p5QdQH0nUybf1Uqs-JJCIV5uTulFrZLgDASOvEW_V7W9O-6p6b7PpAPJTL60p0yIbH3fLc5y1HWBCimOwYTWuAmygR2h3nFhgG61/s400/20180527_113051_HDR.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">St. Peter's Episcopal, Morristown NJ</td></tr>
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Betsy and I repaired to her home next to the Deserted Village Watchung reservation for lunch and then headed to that most international of American experiences - the weekend salon for pedis. I felt so at home among the many Spanish accents. Plus my sparkling gilt fingers and toes garnered comments and compliments the moment the woman finished, and through the rest of the week. I slid back down to Philly in an easy 45 minutes and went straight into work mode.<br />
<br />
NAFSA is a ninety-hour workweek every year, and one I enjoy for its annual occurrence, because I could not do it with any greater frequency.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBnmSrJVlvMhnPe5IBdVnxPX12z_9sjpcUz8PXUsNNJcMyuMenU5UKK87BBEXFAg33S6iagm2FklIuuGJFovNuSE2V8YDl3NYzpY0z1hubv1x2H95O51BqVr9DYthUwH2aMcaPSIxrSlSp/s1600/2018-06-06_0756_goabroad_awards.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1068" data-original-width="1600" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBnmSrJVlvMhnPe5IBdVnxPX12z_9sjpcUz8PXUsNNJcMyuMenU5UKK87BBEXFAg33S6iagm2FklIuuGJFovNuSE2V8YDl3NYzpY0z1hubv1x2H95O51BqVr9DYthUwH2aMcaPSIxrSlSp/s400/2018-06-06_0756_goabroad_awards.png" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Terra Dotta represent!<br />
GoAbroad awards reception, May 31.</td></tr>
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Eight to nine hours on the floor with 13,000 attendees, company meetings after, leavened by strings of evening receptions with clients, colleagues, and prospects, frequently at genteel venues. Two highlights -<br />
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The Creative People reception at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts <a href="https://www.pafa.org/museum" target="_blank">museum</a>. (I just love that NAFSA has a home for creative people of both professional and sidebar persuasion). They put on a calm, high-culture respite from the nuttiness of the expo hall just across the street, although I forgot to switch my Google map to "walking" from "driving" and so we took the extra-extra-long route. I giggled when one of the hosts informed me that the Academy was "so old!" as it was founded in 1805. Oh America, the innocence... I ran into a few people I knew, made a handful of new friends, and made one very shy videographer very uncomfortable with my well-meaning but possibly too-straightforward conversation (sorry shy guy) while a colleague who knows me well looked on and good-naturedly rolled his eyes. (In my defense, I was genuinely interested in what he was doing and how he got to be doing it, but understand that a person whose career has included screening documentary film submissions alone in a room for hours, for <i>months</i>, on end may not be the most prepared person to discuss much in public.)<br />
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The AIFS dinner aboard the <a href="http://www.moshulu.com/general-info.html" target="_blank">Moshulu</a>, moored in the Delaware River, was the ideal cap to the long week, summer night on the water in good company. Local colleagues filled us in about Camden town across the way ("full of hurt and pain"), and later, I bizarrely found myself in a minor dispute with an American late in the evening about whether or not the Oltrarno was, in fact, part of Firenze centro (Me: of course not. Him: pulls up map on his phone to press his point. Me: I know where the Arno is...) And now I just read the history of the ship, which includes Astoria Oregon, Bainbridge Island, and Finland, plus the history of the name, well, I like it even more ... I have the soul of a sailor, I swear. My heart thrills to the sea.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdMS3IrJosdGTZI7U8jyoB8WN5vUSZBl-CudN7kbsXDFNUyRPHMc5XrGd_le-Uby7x0d4gCXZX-Cb306_UMyyTmIKzIXJMTRS0HG-Rjy6kjGRQpySEFJ0UpFxxgtkGJFlccLcMDwublHxd/s1600/1200px-Moshulu_at_philadelphia.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1063" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdMS3IrJosdGTZI7U8jyoB8WN5vUSZBl-CudN7kbsXDFNUyRPHMc5XrGd_le-Uby7x0d4gCXZX-Cb306_UMyyTmIKzIXJMTRS0HG-Rjy6kjGRQpySEFJ0UpFxxgtkGJFlccLcMDwublHxd/s400/1200px-Moshulu_at_philadelphia.jpg" width="265" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Aye cap'n! I'll gladly be shanghaied onto the Moshulu!</td></tr>
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Philadelphia's pre-Revolutionary streets, side streets, and alleys were festooned with foliage in this late spring season, and although I did not get out of the conference center much to see it, one long evening walk from Town Hall to Penn's Landing via Spruce Street and I was smitten. Past medical residents swarming about the sidewalk at UPenn Med, brick stoops with boot scrapes and flower boxes overflowing with sweet pea and violets and ranunculus. Paned windows with pewter candlesticks, perhaps the better to airbnb by? I hoped not. A duck into the amusing <a href="https://vargabar.com/" target="_blank">Varga Bar</a> with its retro and homage pinup art for a beer (many medical residents noted in bar and in scrubs). (I am tempted to post a picture here, but my colleagues might stop talking to me). Brick walls incorporated dates into their designs - 1701, 1770. For the US, this is old. The entire quarter was like Georgetown, but an arterial.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgoCHURpSAQ3DwuzVGPXijklM8B0QU6fb1VnSYbQsMpCAOvJUcjqA5SHErzRtCENYtu-9zeOAVu7jvwSElNlNrAxlyr5jz5lQE6jB1cSzzCKKdjQSOcE2WUXjb4OzriXvCeivLmJnx0qQV7/s1600/20180531_191632.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="900" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgoCHURpSAQ3DwuzVGPXijklM8B0QU6fb1VnSYbQsMpCAOvJUcjqA5SHErzRtCENYtu-9zeOAVu7jvwSElNlNrAxlyr5jz5lQE6jB1cSzzCKKdjQSOcE2WUXjb4OzriXvCeivLmJnx0qQV7/s400/20180531_191632.jpg" width="225" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Philly, you so pretty.</td></tr>
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The gloomy weather all week was rough - it did little to ameliorate my jetlag. Philadelphia is not Los Angeles, obviously; last year's conference was sun-soaked, backed up by the <i>La la Land </i>soundtrack. But I always appreciate these trips back for the anchor they give me to the US, the more so since we are not returning this summer as a family to Spokane. Jason will make the work trip much shorter this time and on his own. Philadelphia, you made me miss the US.<br />
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<i>Coming next: five dreamy hours in the Madrid airport where I explain why this travel and cultural connection rendered me so verklempt. And the Italian cultural adventures continue unabated - </i>Th'Italian Sassenachhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01135866794196036425noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4902749929015572724.post-48160788806906403882018-05-24T08:16:00.000-07:002018-05-25T07:43:36.012-07:00Italian Elections<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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It may be of use for our friends and family in America for me to chronicle the outcome of the most recent Italian national elections, as best as I understand it. My understanding is certainly imperfect.<br />
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Italy voted on March 4 in national elections. It's a parliamentary system here, which is still opaque in certain ways to me <i>("What do you mean a 'no confidence' vote dissolves the government?"), </i>but the most important aspect to remember for Americans is that Italians vote for parties with platforms, not for individuals. This is the inverse of the US, where we vote for individuals with ideas, and the RNC and DNC lurk in a shadow background of massive funding and string-pulling.<br />
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I sometimes bemoan our American, personality-driven election cycles. I remember as a wee university runt interning in the US Senate in 1994, hearing august senators bemoan in public the gridlock in the American political system, and others citing a parliamentary system as a way to require political collaboration. But these days it is hard to say which system breeds more gridlock: parliamentary or ... the US system... whatever we call it now.<br />
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For much of the old guard progressives, the March 4 elections were nothing short of a disaster. The PD (Partita Democratica) posted its worst result in perhaps forever. These are the old school, post-war liberal democrats. The party of Matteo Renzi, and big neo-liberal ideas that just don't even begin to address the even bigger problems that Italians perceive in their society.<br />
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The Lega and Cinque Stelle parties posted a huge portion of votes between the two of them, but neither of them earned enough to have a majority and thus appoint all their own ministers to cabinet positions. So, parliamentary fun! This is where I am always either amused or quickly lost: It's Coalition Time!<br />
<br />
The Lega party arose in the Po Valley some decades ago. It is widely known as an Italy First party that promotes Italian sovereignty, but the ugly flipside of that platform is a lot of xenophobia, outright racism, and hatred for anyone not meeting a narrowly defined idea of Who Is Italian (Thanks, Risorgimento! Those mid-nineteenth century nation-state ideals are really paying handsome dividends in the twenty-first century).<br />
<br />
The Cinque Stelle party started about ten years ago, headed by a well-known comedian who was convicted of vehicular manslaughter before he started the party. This man, Beppe Grillo, is an agent provocateur. He has no real ideas other than to provoke and to say that "government is bad and should be different," and he is ineligible for public office due to that unfortunate incident. When his five-star (luxury non government? what does Five Stars even mean) party began, it attracted many young people and untried politicians. The first elections were exciting. People under 80 getting elected in Italy! who woulda thunk it!<br />
<br />
Cinque Stelle started behaving as a group though in faintly alarming ways, if one ever read and remembered one's twentieth-century Italian history. These tendencies! They stayed in a sort of Roman dorm together when the legislature was in session. They got checked in and on to make sure they were up to snuff for the platform (does this happen in other parliamentary governments? Feel free to weigh in, Brits and Spaniards.)<br />
<br />
Jason joked once to a friend of ours, who is an elected Cinque Stelle official on a smaller town's city council, that all they needed were matching shirts, perhaps in a tasteful black and tan? The friend was not amused. We have not made a similar joke since. They are touchy about the political tack the party has taken, to the right, anti-EU and anti-immigrant. Because what has the EU ever done for Italy! Well, Italy, aside from the fact that you are a founding member, and also those two most unfortunate<i> world wars </i>that started and ended here and elsewhere, and also some breathtaking genocidal incidents. But, you know, screw the EU!<br />
<br />
Then Turin and Rome voted in mayors from the Cinque Stelle party, and that has not gone so well. Both mayors are young, smart women (Chiara and Virginia, respectively) who have been fed to the metaphorical woodchipper, and will soon be fleeing their proverbial burning cities. Rome is now widely judged to be ungovernable, a chaotic melee covered in bags full of trash, and Turin, who knows? It used to run pretty well, a stronghold of the left, and still seems like a nice place to live to me, but I am not Italian. It's really polluted too, in that valley, so much so that it looks like you're schlepping through London, ca. 1880.<br />
<br />
So, as far as I understand it, la Lega and Cinque Stelle are populist parties with some fairly typical platform overlap. And Cinque Stelle has <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luigi_Di_Maio" target="_blank">a 31-year-old leader</a> who looks like he's in high school, keepin' it youthful, y'all! He actually reminds me of some Trumpsters who have lately found themselves in hot water stateside. Better than the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lega_Nord" target="_blank">Lega leader</a>, who has been known to take personal action against the presence of immigrants in his local area up north. And after almost three months of polemic, there emerged yesterday an agreement and a formal coalition between the two parties: they will govern together, for as long as they can all stand each other, and their leader is <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/21/world/europe/italy-government-giuseppe-conte-di-maio.html" target="_blank">Giuseppe Conte</a> of Cinque Stelle, an attorney from Puglia who lives in Florence where he teaches on the law faculty. He looks, it must be said, a lot like Renzi. They must get these guys out of central casting, but then again, they are Italian. Dimples, HWP, tailored suit, nice smile, not much grey.<br />
<br />
Here's a side by side. Uncanny, no? <i>We got a replacement, Italy! It's gonna be okay! He's wearing a suit - a nice one - you won't even notice the difference! </i><br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqBcHAr9LTVQ2L9ECGdtw9VT9Dwjc-zJTTHT8QSu8VH4ELT6MhdkrdwPpHNBbND2nJSXF1Yp1ajoWwXJQkZAoIO_sa1AFlxDqdBsa3gvtdW7V5SQ94ZJ_HfpfAqvgHj1vofXGmFlTEyli3/s1600/conte.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="168" data-original-width="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqBcHAr9LTVQ2L9ECGdtw9VT9Dwjc-zJTTHT8QSu8VH4ELT6MhdkrdwPpHNBbND2nJSXF1Yp1ajoWwXJQkZAoIO_sa1AFlxDqdBsa3gvtdW7V5SQ94ZJ_HfpfAqvgHj1vofXGmFlTEyli3/s1600/conte.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Conte.<br />
<br /></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKO6NV9cRpNycsFWrSVC8HoFXNc3R59y3oeMFWNFG807AIBwaxPfloYPyKhej3Jd_hRmDz2CXkaFWXAmI8wBSUxz7CwxeDF6f_d5rR55R30WiB8XhI1uWf2jtrSQk-BSvFV39ZsloLPls_/s1600/renzi.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="225" data-original-width="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKO6NV9cRpNycsFWrSVC8HoFXNc3R59y3oeMFWNFG807AIBwaxPfloYPyKhej3Jd_hRmDz2CXkaFWXAmI8wBSUxz7CwxeDF6f_d5rR55R30WiB8XhI1uWf2jtrSQk-BSvFV39ZsloLPls_/s1600/renzi.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Renzi.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
They say he is discreet, a man of measure, passionate about the law.<br />
<br />
(I gleaned all this from reading the headline article in<i> Le Monde </i>this morning on my phone, and I was amused at the very French compliments, seemingly in diametric opposition, of a man at once both discreet and passionate. For heaven's sake, he sounds like a Parisian Lothario, but we'll leave that for later speculation or revelation. "Tell me what you know about Conte, because we know nothing!" my dentist chirruped at me this morning as I presented myself for yet another appointment.)<br />
<br />
Conte is passionate, again, about Italian law. That must be a great deal of passion, because Italy has a LOT of laws that seem to have taken root in Roman times and grown and accrued until today (and also, thanks Napoleon, for that sweet sweet code), and now they have so many laws, you'd better be passionate about it if you think law is the right career choice for you!<br />
<br />
This breaking news today is on every Italian mind. As I was walking into my office on Piazza della Repubblica, one of my rented colleagues cornered me. I have mentioned Iris before in these posts, and her political explanations. Today, of course, she wanted to cover this development.<br />
<br />
"Who knows who this guy is!" she said. "But Italy is so broken, we have to try something."<br />
<br />
"Spain had no government for over four years, and no one really noticed, Spaniards included," I said. "Maybe this is the natural conclusion of all G-7 countries, because Spain, the UK, Italy, and the US all have the same problem. The country cannot calmly be led, but meanwhile there is <i>lo stato profondo </i>underneath that is still working away and functioning." I was pleased I got all this out in Italian.<br />
<br />
"Well, we will try this," she said, rolling her eyes. "Who knows how long it will last."<br />
<br />
"France gives it five, no more than six months," I said, neglecting to mention the article had quoted Italian insiders.<br />
<br />
Iris looked taken aback. "Well, who cares what France thinks. We have to <i>try!</i> Nothing works here. And anyway, if this doesn't work, in four years we will change it to another way that also doesn't work."<br />
<br />
I laughed out loud on the stairs.<br />
<br />
"You have universal healthcare," I said. "And a lot of vacation time."<br />
<br />
"Yeah, so what!" she replied. "Our real income has not increased in decades."<br />
<br />
I pointed out no one in America had recognized any real income increase either, and that GenX and GenY were making less than our parents even when both parents worked, in terms of purchasing power. She conceded my perspective.<br />
<br />
I am always amazed at how Italians think Italy is broken, and then attempt to good-naturedly indict me on grounds of my purported rose-colored (surely American) glasses.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgaxH8JpKXtpsk_rWdKL04u4VyPYGpqIquA1GLs7FHLE0IKb5a4ZpNzlrlBjIuivU0DNGYn2UxlAyhD4SlmitNqxRDbKSD-byffsYj32PLUE_AIhAWVlK1z-l32uSLnETRffvg1wJPNVxHw/s1600/glasses.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="225" data-original-width="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgaxH8JpKXtpsk_rWdKL04u4VyPYGpqIquA1GLs7FHLE0IKb5a4ZpNzlrlBjIuivU0DNGYn2UxlAyhD4SlmitNqxRDbKSD-byffsYj32PLUE_AIhAWVlK1z-l32uSLnETRffvg1wJPNVxHw/s1600/glasses.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Note: work on projecting <i>more grumpy </i>in Italian public.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
"Italy is like heaven for Americans," I thought, mentally ticking off all the safety, and good food, and affordable healthcare here.<br />
<br />
"You are so American," she sighed, as we walked in the door.<br />
<br />
"You need your own television show, or podcast, and call it <i>Parla Iris, </i>and you can explain political topics like this to, uh, foreigners like me."<br />
<br />
She rolled her eyes at me and sat down at her desk.<br />
<br />
Thinking about it now, what concerns me most about the recent result is the lack of diversity in leadership. Italy is more diverse than they admit, or want to be. Everyone at the table in this conversation is an Italian man out of central casting.<br />
<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTluxnEPAA6duLG151rq6t_3QGhbgnOmwMZA7bRms2RHw1OtaYjJ8M74YOgUTR0WxgGBjS5GuGx2bIvffvnFUPLUirXWy1t9Q66smYhUuk0Ul3dXhiQJmkHAP3-JoonOcae_Z_IZwjkGFM/s1600/12_Angry_Men+%25281%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="546" data-original-width="970" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTluxnEPAA6duLG151rq6t_3QGhbgnOmwMZA7bRms2RHw1OtaYjJ8M74YOgUTR0WxgGBjS5GuGx2bIvffvnFUPLUirXWy1t9Q66smYhUuk0Ul3dXhiQJmkHAP3-JoonOcae_Z_IZwjkGFM/s320/12_Angry_Men+%25281%2529.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Twelve Angry Italians.</i></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />Th'Italian Sassenachhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01135866794196036425noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4902749929015572724.post-36849342228184300682018-05-22T02:10:00.001-07:002018-05-23T03:13:02.340-07:00Italian HealthcareThe doctor had been a very handsome young man once, it was clear. His large eyes, easy smile, and grey hair betrayed a fidelity to style unchanged since his time in <i>liceo </i>in the sixties. I had been referred to Dr. Mastrolorenzo by my gynecologist for a short list of dermatological complaints related to a lifetime of living inside a thin suit of fair, sensitive skin.<br />
<br />
I had a small lump here. A nubbin there. Another thing on my temple. An annoying rash on my torso that had been coming and going for a while now, even through both pregnancies, but which I had never managed to eradicate. He held my hand a few minutes into my explanation, looking at me with calm eyes. I am sure I was oozing historic anxiety about my questions.<br />
<br />
My doctors in Oklahoma had been either too lazy or too uninterested to care much about any of these complaints, beyond shrugging, telling me "just don't worry about it," looking it up on WebMD in the office as I sat on the exam table, or measuring one lump with a tiny pair of calipers in attempt to at least apply some methodology and diagnosis (thank you, female doctor - truly). A well-meaning nurse midwife told me to try essential oil on the rash once when I was hugely pregnant with Eleanor in the summer of 2014. Of course the oil did not resolve the skin fungus I had picked up on the mats in the student gym where I used to routinely work out.<br />
<br />
In the context of the US medical culture, out of pocket costs skyrocket, insurance expenses increase disproportionately to income as employers offload higher premiums to employees, and a good primary care physician can be hard to find. Even more so in a red state, as we were for years. It's bad enough in the US in a sane city. No good doctor really wants to stick around the third-largest town in Oklahoma with its transient university student population, making it very difficult to create a reliable patient base. The ER and assisted living centers seem to be busy enough in those parts, but the middle class squeeze, and our cultural reluctance to seek timely medical care, or to access reasonable preventative care, makes the doctoring prospect an overly challenging one.<br />
<br />
I had an excellent physician for less than a year. After the usual uninspired care I received in Oklahoma, Dr. Wani was a breath of fresh air. Pakistani, intelligent, calm, confident, she ran her own office on the west side of Norman. She immediately put me at ease. She definitely had not drunk or slept her way through medical school. She did not open up her laptop to consult medical MD. She listened to my questions, silently nodded, and examined me as carefully as an valuable object connaisseur might prior to making an appraisal. Her nurse staff were all equally competent women, mostly African American, doing good work in a small office in a medium-sized Oklahoma town.<br />
<br />
Dr. Wani moved to New York the year after I became her patient. I cried when I got the letter in the mail. I had finally found a sane, smart doctor, and she left. The letter offered to refer me to another doctor in the area. But who? I thought. Who. I trudged back to the university student health clinic, where appointments were booked for three weeks, and I was stuck in a ten minute phone tree just trying to make one. The healthcare culture of Oklahoma was exhausting. So many assumed premises, so little actual care, so much cost.<br />
<br />
And, so much ingrained sexism, as with my regular well-woman appointments in Oklahoma. It's not like I am crazy about an annual exam, but when you've had two kids in four years, you tend to be very, ah, aware of your health. I've had irregular results before, so am very careful about checkups. I understand that it is recommended only once every three years now. One doctor recoiled when I simply asked him if he would be able to manage my well woman care. "No!" he said, recoiling, a look of distaste on his face. "We refer those out." In another, different doctor's office in Norman, I waited in a small exam room for an hour while the nurses outside argued over who might examine me, if anyone - no one ever did. They sent me home and said they'd reschedule me for a different day, or maybe next year. In a year sounds good. I received a reminder card for twelve months' hence, and left wondering why no doctor in Norman would acquit their professional responsibilities.<br />
<br />
So, after childcare, healthcare was a major push factor for me to leave Oklahoma and the US for Italy (followed by, roughly in order, food, wine, nice people, gun control, non-fatal weather, good aesthetics, quality of life, scenery, language, literature, film). Our first year here was one of settling in, and so my short list of medical questions was placed on hold. This year, however, I found a handful of doctors in a practice on Piazza della Indipendenza that it turns out I really like, and it is a breath of fresh air.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjY79AhgUV2dIAUKk4eoixVxm-JKsakSt_S2PFnjwC9YGyMPlcsxZVuRMr8JJuAN1Mg3LHhz2TjEn0QAUwc8LCh13FRJ-cNxAFZ__rQOHvypo2j3-StrTYVKbK9B1-aHtHMjm4YEU_PJL6V/s1600/immagine+indipendenza.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="330" data-original-width="620" height="212" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjY79AhgUV2dIAUKk4eoixVxm-JKsakSt_S2PFnjwC9YGyMPlcsxZVuRMr8JJuAN1Mg3LHhz2TjEn0QAUwc8LCh13FRJ-cNxAFZ__rQOHvypo2j3-StrTYVKbK9B1-aHtHMjm4YEU_PJL6V/s400/immagine+indipendenza.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Piazza della Indipendenza</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
The obgyn thoughtfully listened to my list of concerns. She was smart, patient, competent, and personable. I felt like crying to even receive such careful attention in a medical office. When I said I also had a short list of dermatological concerns, she immediately referred me to her partner in the practice, which was how I came to meet with Dr. Mastrolorenzo. The doctors here did not dispense the refrain of medical advice so beloved in Oklahoma: "Just try not to worry about it. Ignore it." I am not kidding.<br />
<br />
Dr. Mastrolorenzo, like the obgyn, was pleased that I had brought a neat list of concerns. We covered each one of them at his desk.<br />
<br />
"Step back here," he motioned me, back to the exam area, which was demarcated with an old-fashioned white fabric screen.<br />
<br />
I showed his this lump, that nubbin, the other big lump, and the rash. I was self-conscious but relieved to be accessing a competent diagnostician. He was very clear on each of my concerns. They each had an actual medical term, and the term was not "you worry too much." He wrote out two prescriptions for my rash, which disappeared within a week (thus retiring my Human Cheetah moniker). He labelled and discussed the thing and the nubbin, which turned out to be a small cherry angioma (annoyingly sited on my left temple, just behind the bow of my glasses) and a sebaceous cyst on my thigh (sounds gross, doesn't hurt, easily removed with the cherry angioma, he assured me). The back lump was a small lipoma, which is common enough, I suppose, in people my age, along with the other two complaints. He referred me out to a clinic close by for an ultrasound to determine the nature of the lipoma, and a course of action.<br />
<br />
I obtained an appointment at the clinic easily enough for the following day. Cost: 111 euros. My exam was completed by the clinic's namesake, a lugubrious radiologist who was efficient and kind. (Result: inert and fine. Do not mess with it without a good reason.) I picked up the results that week and shared them with Dr. Mastrolorenzo in his offer afterward.<br />
<br />
"This is fine," he said, after reading the paper copies. "We will not touch the lipoma. What do you want to do about the other two things? And are you reading <i>The New Yorker</i>?" he peered at the magazine I had been reading idly in the waiting area.<br />
<br />
"I am reading <i>The New Yorker</i>," I said -<br />
<br />
Followed by a ten minute aside about his famous friend in New York.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIlCVkl138qWByK1N4NNwH6LH6BoiumJpViQ56sAbxVuHW84JkUJCu92JoU1XpXOmVyP4WOX9fCKX0NZjOFvY58i8XrNsqY08G0uNFPFaZotv989vhsqOm0-nRxoB78u0uVrV7Q-O2Mk4h/s1600/Greenwhich-west-village-manhattan-ny-new-york-washington-square-arch.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="780" data-original-width="1170" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIlCVkl138qWByK1N4NNwH6LH6BoiumJpViQ56sAbxVuHW84JkUJCu92JoU1XpXOmVyP4WOX9fCKX0NZjOFvY58i8XrNsqY08G0uNFPFaZotv989vhsqOm0-nRxoB78u0uVrV7Q-O2Mk4h/s400/Greenwhich-west-village-manhattan-ny-new-york-washington-square-arch.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">New York, where the Italian doctor's doctor friend lives, and apparently reads <i>The New Yorker</i>.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
"- And I would like to remove these two other things. They bother me. If it is easy to do - "<br />
<br />
"Oh, very easy!" he boomed. "Very easy. That little angioma, 30 seconds. The cyst, twenty minutes, but I must stitch first on the inside, then on the outside."<br />
<br />
This sounded fine to me.<br />
<br />
"Are you going to the beach anytime soon?" he asked me.<br />
<br />
I actually am. "Yes, the first week in July."<br />
<br />
"Well. Put surgical tape over the sutures, or use a very good sunscreen."<br />
<br />
We set the surgery date for June 7, and he made to conclude the appointment. I hesitated before I stood up.<br />
<br />
"There is one thing I must, ah, ask you," I said. "I do not have great health insurance. The deductible is very high." I felt my American panic response to medical offices start spinning at high speed. "It is four thousand dollars."<br />
<br />
"What?" he said. "You are not on Italian healthcare?"<br />
<br />
"No," I said. "We do not qualify now, my husband and I are both on American payrolls, but I am paying Italian income tax now, so that could change." His eyebrows wiggled up. I continued. "But for now, I am on private American insurance."<br />
<br />
I really wanted an estimate, to prepare, or brace myself. How much was this going to cost me, since my insurance will cover, in all likelihood, <i>none of it</i>? Four hundred euros? Two thousand euros? a hundred euros? I quickly calculated mentally my cash savings against some additional important health and dental needs I will be covering this year and next.<br />
<br />
"Ah! Do not worry. I will write an excellent letter for your insurance company." He tilted his monitor toward me. It looked like an excellent letter, for sure. Long, and full of long words.<br />
<br />
"Right. But they ... this won't matter. The letter will not force them to cover this procedure."<br />
<br />
He looked at me blankly. This lovely Italian doctor had no idea what I was on about.<br />
<br />
I wanted to shout, <i>how much is it going to be</i>, but that felt like a vulgar impulse. I was embarrassed by my anxiety about it, and still very relieved that this doctor was so competent and proactive. I did not want to suddenly seem to him like a neurotic American who was more trouble than she was worth. I took a deep breath, and left.<br />
<br />
I still have no idea how much it is going to be. But the costs of Italian healthcare are all held down by the universal participation in their healthcare system. So far, my nervous medical estimates in Italy have been radically high, and I have been surprised by how low the cost has been, having been seen in an ER, for a regular obgyn appointment, various dental procedures, at a radiology clinic, and having taken Victor to the pediatric cardiology appointment last fall. All bills were shockingly low. One or two hundred euros, about, every time.<br />
<br />
In the US, it was the opposite. My very nervous estimates were exceeded on an order of magnitude, and cleaned out our savings a few times for major but fairly common family health crises.<br />
<br />
I think it will be less than a ... thousand euros. I will report back after I am stitched up.<br />
<br />Th'Italian Sassenachhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01135866794196036425noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4902749929015572724.post-27487793178299532652018-05-01T04:58:00.002-07:002018-05-01T06:01:26.539-07:00Il pettine d'oro / The Golden CombAs an American abroad, and with my particular identity and experience, I am frequently drawn to patronize immigrant business in the towns where I live. I am reminded of that Indian grocery store on Asp in Norman that put out fresh hot samosas at 4 pm. Pretty much everywhere I have ever had a pedicure. And likewise, many of the places I like to eat, up and down the West Coast.<br />
<br />
I remember especially New Year's Day 2013, in Himalayas, the Bangladeshi grocery store in Arezzo, which was the lone shop open on that day. I needed a toothbrush; I do not remember why it was urgent. But I walked into the store - not the first time - and immediately felt so relaxed and so at home with the group of Nigerians and southeast Asians perusing the produce and dry goods that I did not even stop to think to myself, <i>Am I really going to fry these plantains when I get them home?</i> or <i>What would I do with a quickly softening jackfruit? </i><br />
<br />
I wandered the three aisles, cataloging the packets of curry and curry spice and curry powder, neem oil and tamarind paste, endless rice options, sandalwood soap wrapped in paper and tied with twine. Coconut milk in powder and liquid, in both UHP tetrapaks and cans. Tofu and baby bok choy, edamame and pappadums. Tins of masala. Soft drinks - unknown to me - in Sanskrit and English, their bright metal cans beckoning and begging an impulse purchase, next to the powdered laundry soap and bars of naptha. And a toothbrush. And subcontinental toothpaste.<br />
<br />
How can I explain to you that this scene triggered no nervousness or confusion at all for me, but rather a sense of deep relaxation and calm -<i> ahh different lovely things, these are my people.</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6imdLhHvzo2XCHNO05AjFz0Ubzm-dYXbuxT0xFghzDjth7cmm00dzGa_r4MKXz2Xm71IqSns-U1n8dMFTzRu5YvPCx57uxXjWEVpfmrb5SCjwUn2-qZTVqC18BTioAi_v0tWithCzHaMC/s1600/INdia.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="250" data-original-width="250" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6imdLhHvzo2XCHNO05AjFz0Ubzm-dYXbuxT0xFghzDjth7cmm00dzGa_r4MKXz2Xm71IqSns-U1n8dMFTzRu5YvPCx57uxXjWEVpfmrb5SCjwUn2-qZTVqC18BTioAi_v0tWithCzHaMC/s400/INdia.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Yummy.</td></tr>
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The man at the till gave me a quizzical look when I bought my toothbrush and toothpaste, a few cans of coconut milk and a bag of dried chickpeas and a small can of tahini. The <i>aretini </i>local to town regarded Himalayas as a curiosity, but would never step foot in there or shop there. I am as relaxed in a new place as many people are in a familiar place. Some combination of genes and a life lived everywhere means that a slightly musty grocery store in a third country is a major serotonin trigger for me. Had those <i>aretini </i>spoken English, I am sure they would have exclaimed to me, in a bourgeois assessment, <i>but it's not proper Italian food! </i><br />
<br />
I can still hear a certain group of Englishwomen in Strasbourg, when I lived in France, schooling me on the "proper" nature of things: proper flour, proper sugar, proper food. "Proper," to these young Englishwomen, meant not just "it is the right thing," but "it is the expected thing," and further, "anything different than what we expect is therefore improper!"<br />
<br />
How I snorted and laughed even then, to their confused reactions, and how I still snicker to think of a certain English woman in particular personally importing five-pound bags of "proper flour" on her trip back to France from the UK at Christmas.<br />
<br />
"Becky!" I howled, laughing. "Do you really think the sugar and flour are any different here?!"<br />
<br />
But yes, yes she did. And she was quite happy to make crepes with her proper flour, and since I was eating them three at a time with sugar and lemon, and getting quite plump that year, I ceased my interrogation.<br />
<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8pX_IQJzD18LuzqaGDOikcm6Bi7qsy4iBoAHvNw9BMp6-96SphNr5TqvJjCpkZJtKOHY8zy3wn26KccSdiA5gT7JwpY_jvT7yXMarT6lmLJ3PSCgvfESfPKgexcBa0aNox6sGg6M_b2B8/s1600/cd7f2dc7409d70b60fc3405d75773c39.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="691" data-original-width="681" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8pX_IQJzD18LuzqaGDOikcm6Bi7qsy4iBoAHvNw9BMp6-96SphNr5TqvJjCpkZJtKOHY8zy3wn26KccSdiA5gT7JwpY_jvT7yXMarT6lmLJ3PSCgvfESfPKgexcBa0aNox6sGg6M_b2B8/s400/cd7f2dc7409d70b60fc3405d75773c39.jpg" width="393" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">"But, darling, it is just not proper flour, I can't even."</td></tr>
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Smaller European cities can be broadly characterized by their homogenaeity. Florence is an exception to this, and in any case, it is not so small, but has found itself the master of a trade route and crossroads for millennia. I suspect that <i>veri fiorentini, </i>true Florentines,<i> </i>wish to patronize only "proper Italian" businesses for their needs; meanwhile, a significant immigrant community and infrastructure has grown up over the centuries, and in the last fifty years in particular.<br />
<br />
This immigrant infrastructure is a boon to incoming immigrants such as ourselves - I hesitate to apply the "expat" label; it smacks of privilege and a closely guarded inequality to the benefit of the speaker. "Expat" implies you have a desirable home to return to; "immigrant" whispers doubts of the "proper home" from which you came, and the purposed pressures, economic or political, under which you must "have escaped." An expat escapes with money and retains options; an immigrant flees with nothing, and has no options. But I digress.<br />
<br />
I love Italian salons. I have a lot of hair; I need hair help. My Finnish heritage has ensured that I have a thick mane that, even at my age, and after kids, requires strategic thinning and layers cut into it so as to make me look slightly less like a troll baby doll. On the plus side, my hair does recall a kilim rug in its dry wooliness, a human single-coat terrier, if you will, and I can go one to two weeks between blowouts. Definitely more than one. Two weeks with dry shampoo. So for me, a <i>piega </i>that can be regularly scheduled is worth it, since I do not immediately wash it out ... but rather wait ... and wait... and have hairstyle strategies ... dry shampoo... pins and clips ... and ponytails.<br />
<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6_nGLooUY9hyphenhyphenfyeUg8CnXguOH9rwLnBC2m_PKsmXzSoSYBhG3Wm_kaY7ow0sqU4z8m-F5dWdvEwZeJnHHI3E89ANzeP1CahfuzLf3-J95XoUV6-tHGXuSUYH6SLfxury10p8tnGrtt9ru/s1600/a6e6c8e1695024c0a5540cf5812ba998--troll-dolls-good-luck.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1000" data-original-width="717" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6_nGLooUY9hyphenhyphenfyeUg8CnXguOH9rwLnBC2m_PKsmXzSoSYBhG3Wm_kaY7ow0sqU4z8m-F5dWdvEwZeJnHHI3E89ANzeP1CahfuzLf3-J95XoUV6-tHGXuSUYH6SLfxury10p8tnGrtt9ru/s400/a6e6c8e1695024c0a5540cf5812ba998--troll-dolls-good-luck.jpg" width="286" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Maybe some layers would help?</td></tr>
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I had a great salon in Arezzo, Gocce, that was all Italian, all the time, with Mayra and Lucia. They were around the corner from our building, just off the Corso. They were the best. Their owner was Italian, and busy expanding his brand globally to Costa Rica, the UAE, and Los Angeles (business planning ...) The two women stylists were deeply provincial, with an accent I struggled to parse, and committed like no salon I'd ever had before to make sure I felt like a million euros every time I finished an appointment there. Their prices were affordable, at twenty euros for a shampoo and blowout.<br />
<br />
Returning to the US in 2013 with my unruly, genetically Arctic mop was difficult. American stylists either did not take the time, or you couldn't get an appointment, or when you did get an appointment it would be six weeks out, and would take three hours, and cost $180. Your hair would look fantastic, but at those schedules and those prices, it could only happen once every 18 months. Ykes. Too long!<br />
<br />
A regular and affordable <i>piega</i> was very much on my list of things I looked forward to returning to, in 2016, as we made our preparations to come back to Italy long-term. I had a salon here in Florence that I found through the network; it was recently shuttered. Another one that I also really liked was recently sold. A third one was ok, but with such high tourist-target prices as to be laughable. Plus I walked out of there looking like Elizabeth Taylor at the senior prom, which is not problematic in and of itself, but ... for everyday? It was a bit much.<br />
<br />
Couple this to the fact that, perhaps due to the nature of tourists and the tourist economy, I found it difficult to find an appointment in my morning. Salons seemed to say they opened at 11, but then really opened around noon, and then were ready to greet you at 12:30, and maybe start on your appointment by 1 - I do not have this kind of time to dally around. I want a <i>piega,</i> and I want one regularly.<br />
<br />
One day in Italian language class last year, our instructor Franco diverged into a long dissertation about Italian salons, and how they were suffering due to the influx of Chinese businesses. That Italians were, lamentably, become more and more hurried, and less able to spend many euros on an Italian salon, where the chitchat and the process is also part of what you pay for, in addition to fantastic hair. But how a Chinese barber or stylist would get your hair done in two snips and a fluff, and out the door you'd go, when in the same amount of time in an Italian salon they would have just gotten you an espresso and covered the potential life threats inherent in that day's weather (too hot, too cold, too wet, too windy, too cloudy, etc.)<br />
<br />
<i>Hell yes, </i>I whispered to myself, <i>I am going to find a Chinese salon!</i><br />
<br />
I had often passed one on my circuit around our neighborhood; it was always busy, with a constant stream of Italian clients. It is directly across from an Italian salon that specializes in the three-hour appointment and large bill. I have friends who go there regularly and so have heard firsthand accounts. <i>Italy, I love you, but mamma does not have time for that</i>.<br />
<br />
The Chinese salon did not have a discernible name, but it did have a price list poster out front, with a small pleather-upholstered stool. I felt so relieved about my solution that I walked in about a month later.<br />
<br />
The first <i>piega </i>was less than a success. The stylist curled my hair with a curling iron for about 20 minutes, and I looked like I was headed to the junior prom forthwith. I do not love extensive heat styling anyway; the burning hair smell is a total past life witch trigger for me.<br />
<br />
I continued to also frequent my two Italian salons (before they shuttered and changed hands). But it was a challenge to work in a regular appointment for Arctic mop care when I have this much hair. I am like a Hungarian puli getting groomed. It is a real commitment. And no, I do not want go straight up Sinead or Annie Lennox. But I do hate washing my own hair, because there is so much of it that it is hard to get clean. Is it clean? and then, how am I going to dry all this? I know I have friends who understand, who are also from the Thick Hair club.<br />
<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZMBUQCXNfrASjcssWQrKvTI4UcblGryv49Z1jLOA4oXam9sHvowUxTpWKEOGseGjNyFdonhyphenhyphen9TCdWEhHP9M6-CP4i99P8abZglWbGzaCfYrB3jXRM33iLPPUYbcDaFMHWcoFCLkkXz2S3/s1600/6915968.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="451" data-original-width="499" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZMBUQCXNfrASjcssWQrKvTI4UcblGryv49Z1jLOA4oXam9sHvowUxTpWKEOGseGjNyFdonhyphenhyphen9TCdWEhHP9M6-CP4i99P8abZglWbGzaCfYrB3jXRM33iLPPUYbcDaFMHWcoFCLkkXz2S3/s400/6915968.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">I am not really into dreads for myself, but Hungary is rockin this look.<br />
Plus, the sheep? They never even notice him.</td></tr>
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Then, about a month ago, after I had been trying to chase down any kind of an appointment for weeks, and had called and gone into a salon when advised to do so, only to be advised in person that they were too busy and to go home again, I realized that it is impossible to obtain a <i>piega</i> on a Saturday in Florence. Just don't even try. The salons are beyond full. They can't even take a walk-in, not even in a granny salon, and if they say you have an appointment at noon to mollify you, you will be hanging out in said salon til three until it is your turn.<br />
<br />
I went back to the Chinese salon on Borgo La Croce. They were gracious, and fast. They are very like the Vietnamese nail salons in the US. An older woman sat me down and gave me a vigorous, three-step shampoo and massage that restored my mental clarity. I asked for a <i>piega liscia</i>, just a straight blowout, to avoid the pitfalls and burnt hair of the junior prom curling iron. The shampoo matron's colleague (possibly her daughter?), had me dried and ironed out in about 15 or 20 minutes. The cost? Ten euros. I tipped them two more, out of joy, which they tried to refuse, until I insisted that I felt I had to do so because I was American, and I could not escape my cultural habits.<br />
<br />
Two weeks later, I went back, having not washed my hair since the last <i>piega cinese</i>. They were happy to see me, and greeted me before grandma got down to scalpy business again at the shampoo station. Their Italian is so accented that it is hard for me to understand, and I suspect that that is the case for all their Italian clients. But in a place where everyone in charge speaks Italian as a second or third language, I feel like I can relax. There is no greater startle for me than an unexpected volley of language when my thoughts are focused elsewhere.<br />
<br />
A much shyer young woman in a green gingham-checked jumper dried my hair. As she worked on me, I heard an older Italian woman to my left berating her stylist for failing to achieve the proper lift in her bangs with the blowdryer. She went on and on. She dried it herself. Personally I have not been that concerned about the lift of my bangs since 1986, so it was interesting to see this sixty-year-old <i>nonna </i>in a leather jacket schooling the stylist. The <i>nonna </i>eventually called it good, and went to pay, where she continued to berate the staff for having gotten water in her eyes at Shampoo Station. She paid her ten euros and left. They all were quiet as they watched her leave. Not one of them smiled.<br />
<br />
I, on the other hand, was most satisfied with my clean, ironed hair. I paid my ten euros (total time: 25 minutes) and tipped the Chinese Laura Ingalls Wilder a euro, which she was too surprised to try to hand back with any conviction.<br />
<br />
Interestingly, this time they issued me a handwritten receipt, showing that I had paid the ten euros. The name of the salon was printed at the top in red: Il Pettine d'Oro, the Golden Comb. Which struck me as so appropriate for its wide allusion to both Greek (Jason's golden fleece) and Chinese culture.<br />
<br />
I am pleased with my Pettine d'Oro solution and will continue to patronize them, and glad too for the immigrant ambiance in Italy. <i>Xie xie,</i> Pettine d'Oro.Th'Italian Sassenachhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01135866794196036425noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4902749929015572724.post-46549689670343749792018-04-27T03:08:00.000-07:002018-04-30T03:16:13.952-07:00How Italians Relax / Come si rilassano gli italianiToday I'd like to address a topic that inevitably comes up with Americans in Italy, one that is deeply embedded in culture and cultural expectations: how does one relax?<br />
<br />
This issue is brought to the symbolic fore by the most American of furnishing institutions, the sofa <i>(divan, couch)</i>, which ironically makes me think of Greek dinners with Socrates and the vast storied banquets of the Roman Empire.<br />
<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQJYLMiP1yUpCGtnjH75dpUL8qLwgp7h129R76SI8hY9XXOMIiOgEE29Pvz_cIDPJMUlG2yaTwyiWcRxNXgH2wgtZ8wDzxOKQwktLUK2o84epmOnKlP0GwvCIhD4zIJsMuXHU-qc9wZmcP/s1600/David_-_The_Death_of_Socrates-600x394.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="394" data-original-width="600" height="262" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQJYLMiP1yUpCGtnjH75dpUL8qLwgp7h129R76SI8hY9XXOMIiOgEE29Pvz_cIDPJMUlG2yaTwyiWcRxNXgH2wgtZ8wDzxOKQwktLUK2o84epmOnKlP0GwvCIhD4zIJsMuXHU-qc9wZmcP/s400/David_-_The_Death_of_Socrates-600x394.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Socrates at dinner, right before he downed that goblet of hemlock.</td></tr>
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I preface my discourse by saying this: the Italian cultural expectation I will explain is deeply traditional, steeped in centuries of agricultural subsistence farming, but also the urban bourgeois - think either farmers in the countryside, or well-to-do Italian merchants in well-off city X in some bygone century.<br />
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Italians have three main modes of relaxation, available to all on a daily basis: the dining table, the public park, and the <i>passeggiata</i>, or daily stroll each evening before dinner through your neighborhood.<br />
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Upon entering an Italian home, you may note that the dining table is the largest visible feature. It is huge. In our modest apartment, the table is enormous, and can easily seat eight or even ten in a pinch. Our owner's table in their dining room upstairs has been known to seat 24 or more family and guests. Italian culture values the meal, and the pleasure in relaxing around a table, over leisurely <i>apertivi </i>and wine, enjoying the courses that come our from the kitchen as they are ready.<br />
<br />
This is a chief relaxation strategy of Italian culture (and Mediterranean culture in general, I'd wager, as a former resident of France and Spain, and lay anthropological researcher into, the French and Spanish cultures). Mediterranean culture will never give it up. There is no television to distract. Laptops or tablets at the table are rude. Smartphones are often forgiven if not obtrusive, because work, and also, you got a life to keep going at your personal socio-logistics switchboard. It is relaxing for Italians to gather over food and drink and chat, with no definite beginning or end point. The more anxious among us may mark beginning and end points, if desired, with the polite production of a glass of <i>prosecco </i>(beginning) and, hours later, the equally polite production of a cordial or <i>espresso </i>(end).<br />
<br />
The cordial (in English) itself, as a sincere offering of cordiality (<i>cor, </i>from the heart), gains semiotic heft when it is considered as a nonverbal way to say "your time here at the table is drawing to an end... as soon as you finish this tiny, sweet jigger." In Italian, it is more accurately called a <i>digestivo. </i>As in, "drink this, and go happily digest, but not at my table."<br />
<br />
But a meal is not even necessary to enjoy the relaxing mode that a large table in an enclosed community can offer, a place to pay bills, read the paper (laptop, tablet), catch up on the news of analog people living in the home, fold laundry, assist with the stream of <i>compiti </i>(homework) if children live there, planning trips or vacations to see the extended family community in the generous holiday periods that are enjoyed by Italians. Simply being at the large table is relaxing, because things happen in an unhurried way. It is impossible to run around like a headless chicken when you are seated at a table. For heavens' sake, sit down, have a coffee or a glass of juice, and thoughtfully consider what you need to do next.<br />
<br />
This is the first way in which we may note that Italians relax. This may also link back to a deeply Catholic culture, the familiarity with the Lord's Supper, and the general popularity and significance of a scene at a supper table. In addition, the long roots in monastic tradition that continue to inform Italian education and higher education may still be sensed in this tradition - think refectory table, long meal, and calm. Prayer and community, interaction, and bond-strengthening. I always notice the dining scene in a home because we very rarely ate together as a family when I was a child. It was something I missed then, and is a value that I actively sought to discover, and cultivate now as an adult.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIatnjCog983AZ9mj0cgyCEsziRwLbu3-v6Hq3YpjDJ5AqeNqDChrjYJtsrerqJbOp6_wBXwl_DSiDerCKDGeZG90KMk6j-JecXAYaB6oo8zHcM5X9HWA3MuqfJBeD6TDeQwLYgK716Qe1/s1600/3873.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="200" data-original-width="300" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIatnjCog983AZ9mj0cgyCEsziRwLbu3-v6Hq3YpjDJ5AqeNqDChrjYJtsrerqJbOp6_wBXwl_DSiDerCKDGeZG90KMk6j-JecXAYaB6oo8zHcM5X9HWA3MuqfJBeD6TDeQwLYgK716Qe1/s400/3873.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Greek Orthodox monks in a refectory, <br />
deep in thought over pita bread and probably a lot of other delicious things.<br />
Makes up for that male wimple.</td></tr>
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Secondly, the public park. Imagine a huge and well-kept public garden, generously furnished by the community with benches, leafy plane trees spreading their branches overhead. You need not mow the lawn, or plant and weed flowers, or wade into an algeous fountain to clean the pump mechanism. This point of relaxation could also be a on a piazza with stores and perhaps parking spaces around it. In the park in front of our building, <a href="http://www.stamptoscana.it/articolo/societa/stamp-turista-giardino-piazza-massimo-dazeglio" target="_blank">Piazza D'Azeglio</a>, there are easily 80 to 100 benches, which can fit five people each (as I learned in Ognissanti in January when one Florentine <i>nonna </i>politely reminded another Florentine <i>nonna </i>of the official Italian cultural marshall seating capacity of each church pew.)<br />
<br />
It is relaxing to be outside in pleasant weather, on the bench with your paper, or doing a crossword, or simply people watching (cute kids, what people are wearing, the progress that little boy has made on his bike, or that little girl riding her scooter). It is relaxing for Italians to be in community and to see other people, and to be acknowledged as a member of community. This provides a deep assurance and a sense of rest and well-being.<br />
<br />
The drawback to this second option? Weather does not always cooperate, but fortunately this is Italy and not the Arctic, so we have many many months of pleasant outside park time in which to relax.<br />
<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_hOcTPypHVv3cVVYu22eLVvZ8QcJeqed4C_jWh1K8TcJ1slmYlYme4uNPZfZAPz6GU738EPiPLVmWY-96TqFzQoeOk_Enzw4BNXOKLkvwmB-gfHqrUTmRSbrK2u0-cpn0AoIHHk8Bwt5a/s1600/14000233529_79cf13f7b7_b.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1024" data-original-width="683" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_hOcTPypHVv3cVVYu22eLVvZ8QcJeqed4C_jWh1K8TcJ1slmYlYme4uNPZfZAPz6GU738EPiPLVmWY-96TqFzQoeOk_Enzw4BNXOKLkvwmB-gfHqrUTmRSbrK2u0-cpn0AoIHHk8Bwt5a/s400/14000233529_79cf13f7b7_b.jpg" width="266" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Row of park benches, Piazza D'Azeglio.<br />
This is such a true to life and lovely picture that I am reposting with credit.<br />
(c)<span style="background-color: white;"> <a class="o5rIVb irc_hol i3724 irc_lth" data-noload="" data-ved="2ahUKEwi--q-FitraAhWJXRQKHYW1Al4QjB16BAgAEAQ" href="https://it.julskitchen.com/altro/travel/un-giorno-a-firenze-la-mini-guida" jsaction="mousedown:irc.rl;keydown:irc.rlk" rel="noopener" style="color: #7d7d7d; cursor: pointer; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; text-align: start; text-decoration-line: none;" tabindex="0" target="_blank"><span class="irc_ho" dir="ltr" style="margin-right: -2px; padding-right: 2px; unicode-bidi: isolate;">Juls' Kitchen</span></a></span></td></tr>
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In all seasons excepting pouring rain or snow, Italians will get dressed to go outside for a stroll, thereby calmly and casually encountering all their friends, neighbors, and often family without needing to make any specific plan to see people. This is the third mode of Italian relaxation. The <i>passaggiata </i>is more diffuse in a city the size of Florence, just because it is so big. But people will still get out in their nice clothes to go run a couple of nominal errands (pick up a bottle of wine, get something at the pharmacy), and enjoy an ice cream or a cocktail before they go to dinner. This was very noticeable as a custom in a much smaller town like Arezzo, where we lived in 2012-2013. Arezzo has just one main drag, the Corso Italia, and literally, with no planning at all, you could walk out the door around six in the evening and run into 8 people you knew and have a few nice chats. The flowing throng of people filled the street, up to its narrow banks of tall buildings. The <i>passeggiata </i>is still on in cold weather, but if it is raining, nope, no way. Being social is fine and all, but under no circumstances should you ever court death.<br />
<br />
(Note: if you are an older Italian, the park bench in #2 becomes the <i>passeggiata </i>in #3, as your younger compatriots fulfill their cultural expectation of parading by for your review and appraisal.)<br />
<br />
Back to America, and American culture, and what it means to relax and be at home. In general, American culture is much more homebody and privacy-driven than Italian culture. We return in the evenings and weekends to our house on lots with yards we mow and gardens we work in. We sit in our houses and eat dinner quickly, unless we go out to eat. We watch TV while we eat dinner. The dining room table is not a place to gather so much as to eat, and quickly. I think, for many Americans, it is not relaxing to be in public in community, as opposed to Italians. A <i>passeggiata </i>cannot exist in the US because there is no culturally agreed-upon set time for it, and anyway, we're all driving around. (I am suddenly reminded of 'cruising' in high school on the weekends, endless loops up and down Broadway in cars in Edmond to yell things out the car window at people, but, uh. Not really similar.)<br />
<br />
Where do Americans want to relax? We want a nice, comfy sofa in our living room from which to watch a really big flatscreen TV. Italian apartments often do not have such sofas. There are small hard loveseats with springs. There are old tiny loveseats with blankets thrown over them. But they are not big, they are not comfortable, and they do not face a TV.<br />
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<br />
All this being said, it is true that all three apartments that Jason and I have lived in have had large, comfy sofas. I do not know why. They have all been filled with down, generously cushioned and thickly upholstered. In our apartment now, it does face a TV that we put there, but which we rarely watch. In Arezzo, five years ago, our very comfy sofa faced a TV that we purchased for the purpose. I watched a lot of Italian news that year and it really helped my language. In Florence in 2005, in that adorable apartment up in Le Cure, we had an incredible yellow sofa stuffed with the feathers of a city of geese, and the sofa faced the dining room table, an amusing arrangement in itself, suggesting that the meal at hand was the actual show.<br />
<br />
Meanwhile, so many other locales that we have found and rented, or that we have stayed in ourselves, had the hard, springy loveseats that remind me of the bench in our old VW van that my parents used to unbolt for long roadtrips, or to move something across town, like a new purchase - perhaps a sofa. These VW-type benches are not comfy. But you know, should you find yourself in such uncomfortable circumstances, it might be best to scope out your closest dining room table, park bench, or ask around to learn when and where the <i>passeggiata </i>happens.Th'Italian Sassenachhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01135866794196036425noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4902749929015572724.post-72042893305760066152018-04-18T03:55:00.001-07:002018-04-18T08:06:21.990-07:00Firenze: Antica Farmacia Santa Maria Novella: Baroque Charm, Post-Industrial Customer ServiceWe are fortunate to receive a generous gift box from the <a href="http://www.smnovella.com/" target="_blank">Antica Farmacia Santa Maria Novella</a> each year from an Italian business associate of Jason's, stuffed with lotions, potpourri, soaps, candles, and more. I have been a fan for years. I love the stuff.<br />
<br />
The tea room is tucked away, behind a warren of small rooms, hallways, specialty dedicated rooms with marble counters (dietary supplements, room fragrance). We stopped first in the small chapel to the right on the way to the tea room, admiring the medieval frescoes up close.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Free art with your purchased hedonism.</td></tr>
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I had brought my friend Nahyeli to the <i>officina profumo </i>when she was in town last week, and staying with us for a few days. I'd never been to the tea room before, but had heard and seen a bit about it, and marveled that I had not yet been in for the tea and cake. We agreed that we were in no shape to shop premium fragrance and skincare until we fortified ourselves with tea, cake, and medieval liquor.<br />
<br />
After we had carefully examined as many historic flasks, pipettes, and huge bottles as we could stand, we waited for a bit for a table to clear. The tea room was bustling at all six of its tables. We were ushered to a tiny marble-topped bistro table, where the capable hostess took our orders for tea, cordials, and cake. It all came out moments later, the tea steeping in beautiful tiny porcelain teapots with matching cups, the cordial in tiny vessels of pressed glass, a generous slice of cake atop a saucer with two silver forks. I felt like I'd stepped into one of my beloved Russian classics, perhaps Gogol or Dostoyevsky on a grand estate, minutely detailing the habits of a landowning family.<br />
<br />
I ordered one loose tea for Nahyeli, and another for me (cinnamon and spice), to go with our almond sugar cake. Both cordials glowed russet in the afternoon light that filtered in through the windows looking onto the courtyard. We sampled each other's teas, as both of us are dedicated tea <i>aficionadas</i>, and shared the cake, then sipped on the cordials to finish - I had the <i>stomatico</i>, and Nahyeli the traditional Medici <i>alkermes. </i>The latter is no longer being distilled from the rosy carapaces of some desert beetle, but none the less surprising in its taste.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Tea, cake, cordial. Missing only a dowager duchess.</td></tr>
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I love how in Italy I am still able to taste (and smell) completely new things, and have added <i>alkermes </i>to my short list of "wow! totally new Italian flavors!" (<i>Kaka mela, </i>sun-warmed <i>ficchi, castagnaccio, grifo, biettole, valeriana, </i>and now, <i>alkermes</i>.) As we paid, the <i>comessa</i> complimented us on our mix of Spanish, Italian, and English, saying that she was Russian. We compared notes on language and language learning, and deploying acquired languages <i>in situ. </i>Our nerves relaxed, our bodies hydrated, we made our way into the dietary supplement room.<br />
<br />
I took a few more pictures and admired the lawn of the cloister.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px;">The lush lawn of the Dominicans.</td></tr>
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We had carefully perused the product list over tea, and so had a few specific questions before we made our choices. Nahyeli selected a draining supplement, while I opted for a borage-based skin supplement that purported to also be useful for fair skin when exposed to sun (hand shot up). I have many fond memories of picking borage flowers for the dinner salad on Lummi Island, in Washington state.<br />
<br />
The esteemed <i>farmacia antica </i>is less <i>antica </i>now, in that you receive a <i>tessera, </i>or a small card with a magnetic strip, which each <i>comessa</i> (sales associate) swipes at each of their grand marble counters to add your items to your shopping list. You take the <i>tessera </i>to the <i>cassa, </i>when your shopping feels as complete as it can possibly be in such an emporium of time-tested luxuries, and they have your bag waiting for you. Only there do they swipe your credit card to pay the unholy sum that is your ransom fee, worthy of the Medici themselves.<br />
<br />
After the apothecary/dietary supplement room, we progressed to the main attraction: the grand foyer where the perfumes, soaps, and skincare are arrayed, underneath frescoed ceilings, the mahogany woodwork buffed to a deep shine. Innumerable <i>commesse </i>stand at their posts, ready to dab or spray you, or to proffer samples to sniff at. They are impeccably attired in smart blue suits with the SMN <i>stemma</i>, or logo, on the breast pocket of their blazer. It is impossible to overstate how busy this place always is. It is a Destination for every female tourist over the age of 14 who is visiting Florence, and many a father and husband in tennis shoes and cargo shorts trail behind, looking awkward and/or bored while their womenfolk make their selections. It is also popular with tour groups, and frequent groups of 30 to 40 or more (often Asian) file through, swiping their credit cards before they leave. This place has got to be so profitable. The <i>commesse</i>, in addition to being suited and beautiful, must also be hired on the basis of their prodigious language skills, because it feels like the UN in there.<br />
<br />
Nahyeli and I approached the perfume dais, where the high queen of <i>profumo </i>that day was a striking young woman from Buenos Aires, with skin as flawless as tiny teapots we'd just served ourselves from in the tea room. Her stylish, owlish glasses perched perfectly on her straight nose. Her poise was commendable, and I am certain that that post for a <i>commessa </i>is a pole position for only the most professional associates with steel nerves, since the perfume dais is the most mobbed of all counters. Nahyeli and I spent a good twenty minutes spraying and sniffing. I'd bought a bottle of the <i>profumo vaniglia </i>in 2005, and enjoyed it. I'd been following their Instagram account for a few months to make sure I got all the public input on their <i>profumo</i>, which comprises at least 50 or 60 single note and blended fragrances. As soon as the <i>commessa </i>heard Nahyeli's Spanish, she switched too, and we dominated her time a bit longer before we made our decisions. Nayheli took a pass, but I was moved to purchase a 100 euro bottle of the Tabacco Toscano, about which I had read so much, its popularity well justified.<br />
<br />
One more stop, for tonic water for the complexion, because what could be a more medieval and solid choice in such an institution. I chose one that was promised to make my skin smooth and supple (yes please), and it too was swiped onto my <i>tessera</i>. Under normal circumstances I am an impatient and very decisive shopper, but it was pleasant indeed to be there with a fellow member of the Tea and Fragrance Appreciation Society. We beelined into the <i>cassa </i>room where they swiped our credit cards, and left the <i>officina profumo </i>with our heavy white bags of gorgeous traditional products.<br />
<br />
(Important: I was chatting with Nahyeli in Spanish most of this time, and read none of the fine print.)<br />
<br />
I returned home with my purchases and applied the perfume. What? What was this smell of wet dog? Steely wet dog. Maybe my nose was wrong.<br />
<br />
I recapped the bottle and put it aside. The next day I smelled it again. Come again? what was this smell? This made no sense to my nose. I am a very nosy person. I could not believe I would have bought this.<br />
<br />
I checked the bottle but did not see the name of the perfume. In the small bag, the receipt remained tucked into a paper flap. I lifted it up to read it and was shocked to see I had gone home with a nice, big bottle of Wool. Liquid wet wool. Hence the doggy smell. There is no way I was ever going to use this fragrance. I carefully replaced the bottle in the box with the receipts, put everything into the bag, and returned with it to the <i>farmacia </i>on my bike yesterday morning.<br />
<br />
I know this part of town better now, as it is halfway between our home piazza and St. James Episcopal. Not wanting to brave the one-way traffic coming up Via della Scala, I chained my bike on an iron pike at the south end of the piazza, and took my bag to the <i>officina profumo, </i>feeling confident an even exchange would be quickly effected.<br />
<br />
The <i>cassa</i> room was packed, so I returned to the perfume dais, where the <i>commessa </i>held court. She was the same one who had dabbed me with various tonic waters and serums the week before. I explained my concern. She was unmoved, and quickly went into legal defense mode.<br />
<br />
"It is written in numerous places that we will not exchange or refund. All our products are handmade; we cannot accept them back, even for an exchange."<br />
<br />
I was floored. Really? I did not want this bottle of wet woolly dog, no matter how prestigious or medieval the fragrance.<br />
<br />
"But the Lana fragrance was formulated for Valentino. It is a designer fragrance."<br />
<br />
I stood there, not knowing what to say, in the High Court of beautiful smells. "I don't like it," I said. "I did not mean to buy it. I wanted to buy a bottle of the Tabacco Toscano."<br />
<br />
"You must check when you pay," she insisted. "We are not responsible for incorrect selections."<br />
<br />
I like perfume, and a lot, but even for me a hundred euros is steep for a nice smell. It is way too much for Soggy Wool in a bottle. Maybe I should stick to L'Erbolario, where a mistake at the <i>cassa </i>would cost just 20 euros, and in any case, I can select and verify my own product before I purchase.<br />
<br />
"It is a winter smell," she forged ahead. "It is not meant for summer. Perhaps that is why it does not appeal to you."<br />
<br />
"But I did not even select this fragrance," I said. I remember telling Buenos Aires that the Lana was not for me, and her reassurance that <i>all fragrance is so personal, there is no math or logic that can be applied.</i><br />
<br />
"Wait until winter and use it," the <i>commessa </i>suggested.<br />
<br />
I continued to stand there not knowing what more to say.<br />
<br />
And, finally, "You can spray it on all your wool coats and scarves in winter. It is very nice."<br />
<br />
Of that I have no doubt, but that season is now six or seven months away again ... <i>wait, did she just tell me to spray the Wool perfume on my wool items in six months to mitigate their mistake?</i><br />
<br />
<i>Yes, she did.</i> I entertained for just a moment a threat of a verbal tell-all blog post, or to say I was done tagging them for free advertising on Instagram, or bringing visiting friends by to load up on their product. I thought I'd say how I might advise our business associates to purchase our gifts from the competing <i>farmacie antiche </i>in town - Santissima Annunziata, or Inglese. But I could tell by the look on the <i>commessa's</i> face that she didn't care. The tour buses would come and unload more tourists who would pay and leave and never come back.<br />
<br />
At that point, I sighed, and said, "Then please give me a bottle of the Tabacco Toscano, because that was the only one I wanted when I was here last time."<br />
<br />
She sighed back at me, pursing her lips, put the request on a<i> tessera, </i>and I went back to the <i>cassa </i>again to stand in line behind three middle-aged American women who were bemoaning their luggage weight limit in light of the impressive heft of the glass bottle containers of the Officina Profumo. I did spy at least four placards in six languages of their stern exchange and refund policy. Sigh.<br />
<br />
At lunch a few minutes later, my <i>falso italiano </i>husband suggested many things I could have said in the very French <i>l'esprit de l'escalier </i>to the <i>commessa, </i>or to anyone who would listen to me. (The French spend a lot of time living in past conversations, formulating perfect retorts that will come in handy the next time such a conversational configuration occurs.) My Italian is not up to his level, though, and I certainly do not boast his steely nerves. Come to think of it, he would be a great Dio di Profumo for the dais, if he liked fragrance as much as I did. The man is unflappable. He could give that Argentine a run for her money.<br />
<br />
"The client care is as medieval as their product recipes," I said, spooning the broth of my pork ramen.<br />
<br />
He thought a moment. "No," he said, "that kind of a defensive response is very industrial. Anyway, they don't care; they cater overwhelmingly to tourists they'll never see again. They probably had too much Wet Wool fragrance on hand as they moved into summer months. Perhaps they were advised to discretely move the Wet Wool onto some tourists to make space for the summer fragrances."<br />
<br />
"Actually," I added, thinking, "I think the response was very postindustrial. Profit over client." He nodded. "I don't know if I can bring myself to return."<br />
<br />
"You probably will," he said.<br />
<br />
"For the tea," I said. I made note to bring our daughter Eleanor and Jason's mom to the tea room.<br />
<br />
He took home both the bags with the perfumes after lunch for me.<br />
<br />
This morning, I applied the Tabacco Toscano, and it was as pleasant and multi-levelled a fragrance as I remembered from the week before. I carefully put the Wool perfume away, for the colder months that will start again in November, to use on my woolen scarves and coats to make them smell more woolly.<br />
<br />
I will work on making more positive associations for Wet Wool, since it is not going to appreciate sitting in its box in my perfume cabinet. (Yes, I have one of those.)<br />
<br />
Now that I think about it, it does smell a bit like a terrier who's been out for a walk in a gentle spring rain, and that is a nostalgic smell I do love.Th'Italian Sassenachhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01135866794196036425noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4902749929015572724.post-77978797575581881132018-04-06T08:19:00.004-07:002018-09-21T07:06:31.781-07:00Firenze: Concert in Palazzo Tornabuoni Sophie had first mentioned it in a fairly offhand way.<br />
<br />
"Can you come to a concert on Monday? It's free."<br />
<br />
"Sure!" I said. The timing was perfect for my workday, and the Palazzo Tornabuoni is just around the corner from my rented office space on Piazza della Repubblica.<br />
<br />
Sophie asked me if I would like to invite Jason too, along with Claudio and Francesca, our upstairs neighbors and the genteel owners of our palazzo.<br />
<br />
"Yes, I would like to invite them,"<i> </i>I said, but given logistics and perpetual prior commitments, they were very likely unable to attend, or worse, would confirm first but then have to bow out the day of, with short notice. "Let me just come," I said. "I can promise I will be there."<br />
<br />
"Superb,"<i> </i>she said. The Palazzo Tornabuoni is next to the Bulgari shop, across from Palazzo Strozzi.<br />
<i><br /></i>"I know it well," I responded.<br />
<br />
I have come to learn that Firenze is first and foremost a city of constellations, with the large <i>piazze </i>interconnected stars, and the smaller <i>piazze </i>(Peruzzi, Pier Maggiori, as examples) and named palazzi smaller dotted stars among them. D'Azeglio, Liberta, San Marco, San Giovanni, Repubblica, Signoria, Indipendenza, della Stazione, then Santo Spirito and Tasso in the Oltrarno. Donatello, Michelangelo. And on and on. The streets change names so frequently, every tiny block or so in some places, that it is easier on my bike and on foot to simply plan my route by<i> piazza</i>-hopping.<br />
<br />
The day of the concert was Pasquetta, literally "little Easter." The Monday after Easter that is a federal holiday in Italy. All Italians were off work, strolling on sunny streets and eating <i>gelato </i>in the warm air. I was not eating gelato in the warm air; like an American schmuck, I was holed up in my second-floor office overlooking the festive <i>piazza</i>, watching the world swan by. But I was sustained by the prospect of a live concert. My singing with St James has quietly opened up for me a network of live music and musicians, dilettante though I might be, and I find myself here and there about town for performances as they come up, which I love. They are most often classical music with vocals and a few instruments. I do not think I am truly a symphony or philharmonic type, or even grand opera. Give me a small venue, let me feel the chords in my chest, let the singers hit their notes in close proximity. I need to be tucked as solidly into the middle of the music as possible.<br />
<br />
At the entrance of the <a href="http://www.palazzotornabuoni.com/en/default.asp" target="_blank">Palazzo Tornabuoni</a> I realized it was a hotel managed by the Four Seasons, and a timeshare. Hundreds of such entries exist in Florence, and you never really know what they are until you are invited and can legally snoop. A liveried doorman stood at his podium, "Nome?" and let me in after confirming I was on the short list.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhk_ovvJuKbhnG8FCUu49VZlv0qkOBdrn8CHaGh9Ffi9sxPSauoef7CTa2A86imSY7Giijqt0T6xazkGWgi90aYFzpixdLkF7JH9tc_sUpLcvlzOLSFWt_6glm0qwjKs0h9rp723kcHpeor/s1600/P1000754-e1331904284648.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="800" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhk_ovvJuKbhnG8FCUu49VZlv0qkOBdrn8CHaGh9Ffi9sxPSauoef7CTa2A86imSY7Giijqt0T6xazkGWgi90aYFzpixdLkF7JH9tc_sUpLcvlzOLSFWt_6glm0qwjKs0h9rp723kcHpeor/s400/P1000754-e1331904284648.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A palazzo? A timeshare? A luxury hotel?<br />
A locale of historic operatic import?<br />
All four.</td></tr>
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Lost to Florentine history are a few political events and turns of fortune in the 14th and 15th centuries that resulted in families changing their names so as to ensure a fresh start on the PR - what some of our less savory political families in the US might prefer to be called, and in two or three generations, no one would remember the crimes of their antecendents, in fact believing the conceit of a positive-sounding last name. (Think of Javanka renaming their kids "Goodpeople" or something like that.) When I find the original name of the Tornabuoni, I will post it back here, because I remember this was a very funny fact.<br />
<br />
I bumped into Sophie's parents, visiting from England, in the elevator, and we made our way upstairs into a grand salon where we were immediately offered flutes of <i>prosecco </i>by the hostess, an ebullient blonde Brit with a beautiful <i>piega </i>(I always notice, and Italians do too). Her mother and I caught up on the month prior when I had last seen her, in early march<br />
<br />
Sophie's parents and I all settled into the leather-upholstered furniture and admired the space as more and more people trickled in. As it happened I knew quite a few people at the event, so the small talk did not induce in me its normal anxiety. Despite being a social person, small talk gives me hives, as I am thoroughly allergic to disinterested, prescriptive banality. Sophie was nowhere to be seen, but I did meet her amiable pianist, Martyn, also from England, and out of central casting (see: Young Musical Prodigy).<br />
<br />
The high ceilings were covered in bookcases, a hearth glowed with candles in hurricane lamps, and we remarked on two urns so oversized as to be vulgar, and possibly stash holes in plain sight for contraband and people. A well-groomed bartender was busy pouring more <i>prosecco</i>.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Lovely venue for an after-work prosecco. The bar in Palazzo Tornabuoni. <br />
Check out those urns. Got anything to hide? Better be big.</td></tr>
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"You know," Sophie's mother said sotto voce, "the Four Seasons got in a heap of trouble with the commune after they remodeled the space, because they scraped it down to the stones and boards."<br />
<br />
I looked around, and agreed with the <i>comune</i>. The space did carry more than a whiff of Restoration Hardware and Pottery Barn, especially with those gigantic cement urns, which seemed so out of place. There was very little of the dusty, formerly brightly painted woodwork that is so often seen in historic <i>palazzi </i>here in Florence.<br />
<br />
The hostess came back and brightly announced that it was time to come through to the recital hall. I trotted in with the group, which also included, as I came to know, many residents of the palazzo, also out of central casting (see: Well-Heeled August European Petty Nobility), offered cultural events in the palazzo by the Four Seasons by way of in-house Florentine entertainment.<br />
<br />
I gawked at the symbolic hat of the Belgian woman, worthy of the Windsor Derby, a huge ivory affair held to her forehead with a headband, and her giant owlish glasses with ivory frames. She was accompanied by an older gentleman, and a younger man with a waxed handlebar mustache over a three-day beard, clad in kneesocks and knickers.<br />
<br />
I took a seat in front of Sophie's mother, who thanked me for doing so, as we are roughly the same size. The room glittered in glass and white marble, and a photograph of the larger hall through the doors behind us gave the impression of an even larger space. The hostess welcomed everyone, and noted that we were in the same room where the first opera was performed ever, in private - <a href="https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dafne_(opera)" target="_blank">"Dafne," by Jacopo Peri</a>.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Copy of original program for Dafne.</td></tr>
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Sophie and Martyn came out and set to making their music. Mozart and Poulenc filled the air first; then Martyn owned that priceless grand piano as he furrowed his way thoughtfully through Chopin's "Raindrop" - <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mvHLT16Bq1g" target="_blank">"Prelude in D Flat Major"</a> (breathtaking).<br />
<br />
Sophie came back and sang more! Debussy, a beautiful operatic excerpt from Charpentier's "Louise," and finished with a round rendition of "Tonight," with a nod to the appreciate Yanks in the salon.<br />
<br />
I remembered the accomplished pianists I have been lucky to know in my life, and though of how glad I am to be in the presence of our Riccardo when he plays at St. James, sweeping down the aisle after with his sleeves billowing behind.<br />
<br />
The hostess returned to applause, and invited the appreciative private audience back into the bar for further drinks and what is called an "aperitivo abbondante." I partook as I was able, but then had to slip out to get back home to Jason and two children with sniffles.Th'Italian Sassenachhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01135866794196036425noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4902749929015572724.post-9174212901637631682018-03-30T02:20:00.003-07:002018-03-30T02:20:42.744-07:00Life after Facebook / La Vita Dopo FacebookIt's been a week and a half since I decided to leave Facebook.<br />
<br />
I have not yet deleted my account. It is deactivated. I keep thinking I will be in a calmer place to do so. I'd like to do so from a place of purpose and intent, without compunctions.<br />
<br />
Facebook makes it incredibly complicated to actually delete your account, much like cancelling a phone number with T-Mobile, another major PITA with which I also have extensive personal experience. They do not want to let your data go. A lost account is anathema when your brand relies on marketing and subscriptions. Apparently it takes them two weeks or more to delete your data from their servers, but we all know there is no such things as a true deletion. I am fairly confident that some version of my data will remain vestigially in Facebook, to be used in stats and trends, snapshots and numbers for year-over-year growth and loss.<br />
<br />
I did successfully download and unzip my file. I learned I created the account in 2006. That was news to me.<br />
<br />
I do have more time now that I am looking less at Facebook, which I always likened to some version of a beauty pageant of friends. You log in, and you see your list of friends, but that is far from accurate compared to your analog friends list, the same way that Trump's Miss Universe spectacle is hardly a spectrum of the most beautiful women in the world. It is simply a self-filtered list of self-identifying women who believe they are beautiful, or who were trained to be beautiful, and so now find themselves on a stage in a swimsuit and a sash talking about how to solve world hunger.<br />
<br />
From the start I have had friends who refused to use Facebook. I never thought they were less a friend for having made that choice, although they were at times harder to track down.<br />
<br />
I have more time now. I am feeling calmer. I am reading things I want to read, written by thoughtful people, rather than dumbly scrolling up, down, up, down, clicking things like a lab rat.<br />
<br />
<i>Click, click, click. </i>Looking for news from friends. Who can take this much stimulus? What kind of an example am I setting for my kids, aged 3 and 6?<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">It's all become so Orwellian, and we've done it to ourselves.</td></tr>
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As a confessedly extroverted person, Facebook and social media have presented a particular allure. Especially when we have been living abroad. I do feel that I am breaking light social links which, who knows?, might be missed or needed someday. But then again, perhaps not. The more friends I made and shed within the parameters of Facebook, the more stressed I felt about my analog life, the time I spent with my children and husband, how I felt about work. The people I met in my day to day meanderings about Florence.<br />
<br />
I also note that Italy without Facebook feels much more like the Europe of the early and mid-nineties where I cut my international travel teeth. Quieter and more thoughtful. More observational, rather than being observed.<br />
<br />
I do not love that Facebook owns WhatsApp and Instagram, my remaining social media outlets. I am still on LinkedIn, but it is noisy and less sticky for me.<br />
<br />
What does it mean, to have a friend, a friendship, to be a friend, in this time of online friendships? I have made a small handful of friends online, and I treasure them. You know who you are. And I'll keep you as friends and regard you as friends in this new chapter.<br />
<br />
What of the five senses? How can we reclaim the physical experience of life, that is not imagined, as we imagine and fill out experiences when online? I cannot see or hear those online friends as we chat or interact. I do not sense their mood, the conversation stripped of context and reduced to typed phrases. It is difficult. What of all the feelings that online time generated in me, feelings that had nowhere to go, no outlet, no receiver, as I stewed in my own feeling juice. I became exhausted by my own dead-end responses. This, as I yearned for in-person friends and an actual network of social acquaintances who would know my name, greet me, as me how I am, allowing me to reciprocate.<br />
<br />
Life has quieted down. My world is shrinking in one sense, and growing in another. Another plus: unhooking from the dopamine loop has really improved my overnight sleep cycle.<br />
<br />
Mark me: the next great move culturally will be going off-grid. As much as possible. Private, secret networks that do not sell data to marketing firms. I have been rebuked; people have told me, "I have nothing to hide. I do not care if they monitor me." But that is not the point. Their monitoring purpose is to datamine and sell your data. What irks me the most is companies like Facebook are making billions off of us each quarter, with their selling selling selling to advertisers, and giving us nothing we would not have already had. We all have friends. We all have groups, and networks. Facebook simply superimposed a filter that we all came to rely on, or so we thought.<br />
<br />
I'm on the cusp of something. This reminds me of a Rinzai concept with respect to novitiates: those with the biggest ego to shatter are the best students because they must learn and change the most. I acknowledge I was a frequent Facebook superuser. (This is starting to feel a bit like the twelve steps...) But it became very, very unhealthy.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Leave your ego at the door.<br />Time to strip it down.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
As the French cynically and correctly observe, <i>"Si c'est gratuit, c'est vous le produit!" </i>(If it's free, the product is you.) I refuse to log in for the privilege of reading the equivalent of junk mail. With apologies to my handful of thoughtful friends who remain.<br />
<br />
Onward with analog life in Italy, parenting small children, my adorable intelligent husband, writing, my work, my friends. Making new friends. Valuing analog relationships. Forging ahead. Finding that true horizon.<br />
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<br />Th'Italian Sassenachhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01135866794196036425noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4902749929015572724.post-18282216153870964082018-03-26T02:08:00.000-07:002018-03-26T08:15:30.411-07:00Exit Facebook / Uscita di FacebookIt all began innocently enough, in the fall of 2007, when Jason and I were faculty in residence on campus. In our orientation the year before to our duties as wholesome adults providing non-alcohol-based programming options to undergraduates in university housing, an outgoing professor - a well-known college dean - had said he had joined Facebook for a while, but had deleted his account a few months after, when social boundaries began to blur and hierarchies of common sense became morally ambiguous.<br />
<br />
"I deleted my account because I felt really weird when students poked me, and I did not want to poke them back."<br />
<i>Hmm, interesting, </i>I thought; <i>what is this Facebook?</i><br />
<br />
But I paid it no heed until the following year when it became clear that Facebook had become our main marketing strategy for events with the students. These were amusing Facebook days, when everyone and their dog was not tapping away on Facebook. I could toss off a post without thinking. It was very stream of consciousness. It was an amusing scrapbook, a sketch pad, a old-school bulletin board. I actually formed groups based on one of the many elementary schools I attended, I friended my best friend from the fifth grade, I talked with a random person about a second-grade teacher whose bizarre affect had made a major impact.<br />
<br />
More and more people joined Facebook. As more people got on the platform who fit into categories of "people who did not need to know my every thought," such as my parents and manager and conservative cousins, I chafed at feeling so reserved, and I missed my social sketch pad. These were the days when I took quizzes and gave posts thumbs-up and shared posts to my timeline and other people's timelines. These were also the days when random personages such as "ex-husband of high school friend" showed up with an itch to argue. I tried to ignore such online skirmishes, but congenitally do not have the stomach for much conflict. I snooped people who had exited my daily life, gracefully or not, to see what they were doing now, but it never made me feel any better. It just fed the curiosity, and seemed to make every year and every phase of my life concomitantly present in a space that seemed more and more like a chaotic emotional warehouse.<br />
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I understand that some higher spirits may view as a drawback the human need to live within a linear time frame, but our brains are wired that way for a reason. For about ten years, everyone and everything and every relationship was all alive at once on Facebook, in high relief. As a social person, I found this exhausting.<br />
<br />
However, as our years in Oklahoma continued to accumulate, Facebook provided a glimpse into what life I might be living elsewhere, an important remedy for me at that time. It offered endless escapist imaginings, but it offered no roots in exchange.<br />
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I did not have FOMO. I was deeply afflicted with WIWSE (wishing I were somewhere else.)<br />
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I "Facebooked" (by now, and ridiculously, its own verb) far less when we were busy with tasks that finally led to the arrival of Victor, being depressed and burying myself in work, and plenty sick of living on campus by that time, in our fourth year. I did not make a single post about being pregnant, fearful I would jinx the delicate chemistry. I did post a picture of the newborn Victor, and someone commented that they had not even known I was pregnant.<br />
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Once he was in the world, though, all bets were off, and hundreds of baby and kid pictures were posted. I regret this now as an invasion of his privacy, regardless of the good intention behind it to let grandparents see how he was growing.<br />
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In Arezzo five years ago, I was on social media frequently, keeping in touch. As a gentle social medium, Facebook is ideal. I remember the years in the nineties when I used to write paper letters, then 2000-word emails, to friends in other cities, and in other countries as I continued to return to Oklahoma from Europe. A small broadcast seemed the ideal antidote to the draining exercise of recounting afresh events along a segment of the timeline for a single person. As a person who travels frequently, and has lived abroad often, something like Facebook became necessary to knit together the disparate episodes of my life. Maybe I did not want everything clamoring at once for attention, but the ability to successfully find and ping person <i>x </i>from place <i>y </i>was useful to me.<br />
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I should have become more suspicious the day I saw the blue Facebook <i>f </i>on the label of a Heinz bottle of ketchup. Hmm, I was using Facebook for my purpose, but what was their purpose? Zuck didn't care about me, a dumb f***.<br />
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I continued to post pictures, stories, poems. Of myself and friends. Of Victor, and then Eleanor, when she came along. Gradually I noticed the newsfeed changing, how it would throttle the scroll until I read the ad. Ads in Messenger. Ads that matched my recent searches. Ads that bordered on offensive when I realized the extent to which my Messenger conversations were being datamined. Ads that were offensive when Facebook made assumptions about how I viewed myself and my world. I started reporting offensive ads. I dropped off my Outlander fan groups.<br />
<br />
I work in the field of IT, as do both my brothers. The software devs in my company were horrified that I used Facebook at all.<br />
"Why??!!" they yelled. "Why!"<br />
"I don't know," I responded lamely. "Grandparents want to see pictures of our kids."<br />
"That is NOT a reason!" the grumpy one shouted. "We are trying to help you."<br />
<br />
When we moved back to Italy almost two years ago, I was still very active. But social media for me has always felt like a verbal junk food. Like a binge night out, I never felt better after a session scrolling around and liking and posting on Facebook, no matter what their corporate marking department claimed. I gave up on Twitter long ago, and have never really cottoned to any other platform, except Instagram lately, which vexes me all the more for its acquisition by Facebook.<br />
<br />
I began to write and write and write in Italy, the cloud of Oklahoma slowness and sadness having lifted, and I began to focus my creative energy on my writing, which has always been a refuge for me: blogging, fiction, poetry, journalling. Reading good fiction. Picking up my <i>New Yorker </i>subscription again. The more I wrote for myself, the calmer and happier I became, in ways that social media has never provided me with its Proustian buffets of regret and vexed spirits.<br />
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The 2016 election in the U.S. was a turning point for me. I confess I was one of those people who had become wrapped in the echo chamber of Facebook, obtaining far too great a percentage of my news from behind the login, as a member of Pantsuit Nation, the "secret" group with something like 3 million members. I had believed my newsfeed. I had been lulled into complacency.<br />
<br />
I was shocked the morning after the election, in the dark hours when Jason came to wake me and tell me the awful news. I posted a remark about my anger and disappointment, and the specter of a conservative Christian cousin materialized with plenty to say to me in this public space, and she did. That was the first time I deactivated my account. I cried for a week after that, the conservative cousin adding insult to the injury of an election gone terribly awry. I collected myself and saw with fresh eyes the Facebook madness I had come to accept as normal, on both macro and micro levels. Their greed for profit with no foresight as to consequences led directly to this ugly and painful chapter in American history. And we all took that ride with them because we liked to know what our friends were doing.<br />
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I have deactivated my Facebook account a half dozen times since then, but my next action is deletion. I am tired of reading about Facebook's massive profits, founded on data that we have all given away because we valued community, even though we were quite capable of finding a bottle of ketchup in the grocery store without the endorsement. (Seriously, a Facebook group for ketchup?!)<br />
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I'll download my file; I will make sure I get all those baby pictures. But the cons outweigh the pros for me. Facebook is no longer the innocent distraction it once was. We need to accept the fact that it is distorting and destroying democracies in the name of relentless marketing and capitalism. As a social and extroverted expat blogger, I will be looking for better options to create and sustain my communities and to let my audience, however small it becomes, know when I have posted new pieces, be they creative or narrative, and to find my fellow writers and true travelers. I have seen my numbers plummet on this blog when I am deactivated on Facebook.<br />
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I like Instagram, but feel similarly marketed to death by the endless friending/unfriending by businesses I will never patronize, and personalities that seem to border on porn stars. There are many good reasons, some seductive reasons, to stay active on Facebook. But I think I am done. I deleted the app from both my phones, Italian and American, a year ago.<br />
<br />
Perhaps I am grumpy GenX. I do not mind being labeled; my cohorts and I form the most cynical generation. We expect to be screwed. We will not be manipulated so easily. But we can show ourselves out. I am going to go deeper into my writing and my art with the minutes and the hours that I formerly dedicated to Facebook, often without conscious intent. And I know I will be more content for it. I have proven this to myself.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibxeRLuBkhkUypXuTx0RlsZydwMfhgTqktKOBeGb727Ki2ruGtynC_KhCFIecBk0ORy9ijpRr4v_AC36kmr3OBUJOeNsh8WB0aHKupAHXlgi8908kFXMm9v22BdqMyktdgQqP4BytqjPKq/s1600/RB.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="186" data-original-width="270" height="275" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibxeRLuBkhkUypXuTx0RlsZydwMfhgTqktKOBeGb727Ki2ruGtynC_KhCFIecBk0ORy9ijpRr4v_AC36kmr3OBUJOeNsh8WB0aHKupAHXlgi8908kFXMm9v22BdqMyktdgQqP4BytqjPKq/s400/RB.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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To my friends against whom I have leveled accusation of being a Luddite for refusing to participate, I apologize. You were right, and smarter than I was.<br />
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If anyone is reading this, thanks for stopping by, even though it is not getting posted to the big blue. Drop me a comment; I am not going off-grid, although I will be deleting my Twitter account soon enough.<br />
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You can still find me on Google+, Gmail, Gchat. I am on LinkedIn. I hope <i>that </i>is not a decision I will come to regret in ten years, but I may. It just seems the better, less egregious option for now.<br />
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The writing will continue. The writing is just beginning.Th'Italian Sassenachhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01135866794196036425noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4902749929015572724.post-69218576768477707372018-03-20T08:48:00.001-07:002018-06-14T02:52:17.460-07:00Math Americans Cannot Do<div>
O my people, I read the news and weep. It is hard to watch from here. It is harder still to live it.<br />
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It does not have to be this way. Can we try some calculations that every other developed nation does not routinely engage in? Let's review some math that Americans cannot do.</div>
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<br />
THIS:<br />
How many hours/days/weeks/months til an "active shooter" situation threatens people I love and civil society - takes a life, many lives?<br />
How many lives until it matters enough to change?<br />
<br />
Or this:</div>
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How much will I spend on healthcare this year?</div>
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What is my year to year healthcare expense?</div>
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What does my employer pay out of pocket for my health insurance, and what percentage is that of my healthcare coverage?</div>
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How much do I need to save for healthcare costs?</div>
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What healthcare annual total would spell financial ruin for me and my family?</div>
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How much has my healthcare out of pocket increased %wise year over year?</div>
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How much will it increase next year? in five years?</div>
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<br /></div>
<div>
Or this:</div>
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How much will I spend on food this year?</div>
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<div>
What is my year to year food expense?</div>
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How much has my food out of pocket increased %wise year over year?</div>
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How much will it increase next year? in five years?</div>
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<br /></div>
<div>
Or this:</div>
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How much will I spend on childcare this year?</div>
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What is my year to year childcare expense?</div>
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What does my employer pay out of pocket for my childcare, and what percentage is that of my coverage?</div>
<div>
How much do I need to save for childcare costs?</div>
<div>
How much has my childcare out of pocket increased %wise year over year?</div>
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How much will childcare increase next year? in five years?</div>
</div>
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<br /></div>
<div>
<div>
Or this:</div>
<div>
<div>
How much will I spend on tuition this year?</div>
<div>
What is my year to year tuition expense?</div>
<div>
How much do I need to save for tuition costs?</div>
<div>
How much has my tuition out of pocket increased %wise year over year?</div>
<div>
How much will tuition increase next year? in five years?</div>
</div>
</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<div>
Or this:</div>
<div>
<div>
What has our country spent on the military and civilian incarceration this year?</div>
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What is our year to year military and incarceration expense?</div>
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How much has funding for military and incarceration increased %wise year over year?</div>
<div>
How much will military and incarceration spending increase next year? in five years?<br />
<br />
People. This is madness. There is plenty of money in the American engine. These should not be problems. America is more prosperous than ever before.</div>
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</div>
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<br /></div>
Do you know what I just saw? You will not believe this. IMAGINE a civil society like this: Italians aged 18 are getting a 500 euro cultural bonus now. That they can spend on culture. This includes books, theater, music...stuff...performances. More. I saw the sign in the bookstore and I teared up.<br />
<br />
Americans age 18 are trying to not get shot in class. Wondering how to pay for college. They don't even know how hard it is going to be after their degree.<br />
<br />
Is this the country we want?</div>
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<br /></div>
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It is not a money problem - we are all G7-G15 countries. It is mismanaged, so mismanaged. We are all just waiting around for the oligarchs to feel generous. They will not.<br />
<br />
Is this the country we want?</div>
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<br /></div>
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My Finnish genes are strong. Finland is the happiest country in the world. They are civil and welcoming to immigrants because no one is deprived of life, liberty, pursuit of happiness.</div>
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<br /></div>
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Why did my forebears sail away? Well, famine. It wasn't so great 100 years ago. You can stand the cold if you are eating decently. Finland suffered the last natural famine catastrophe in 1860. Now famines are caused by war and more.<br />
<br />
Is it weird that I have bad dreams about Ghouta? Someone should be.</div>
<div>
<br />
Is this the world we want?<br />
<br />
I understand that it is hard for Americans to spend too much time thinking about the global, or even daily domestic issues like childcare, healthcare, groceries, and tuition, when you have two mass shootings a month and a serial bomber is trying to blow up Austin one package at a time.<br />
<br />
Is this the country we want?<br />
<br />
Americans are so stressed. Understandable the push for legalization of marijuana - which I am all for, in any case. Weed just gives people unhealthy cravings for Little Debbie products and Funyuns. No one gonna shoot anyone after smoking a big doob.<br />
<br />
No medical care? Heroin.<br />
Work/out of work/shitty job? Weed. Or heroin.<br />
Depressed about things in general? Keep drinking.<br />
Americans are masters of self-medication. </div>
<div>
<br />
It does not have to be this way. It is not this way in most places in the world. Go research heroin epidemic and tell me if any other country comes up on the list. Go on. I'd love to know.<br />
<br />
Is this the country we want?<br />
<br />
Oklahoma is sinking into a hole literally and figuratively, yet most of of their House Republicans are running unopposed at midterms. The oligarchy holds its own - they maintain their grip. It's hard to run for public office when you are struggling day to day to make the whole thing work.<br />
<br />
Is this the country we want?</div>
Th'Italian Sassenachhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01135866794196036425noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4902749929015572724.post-2938529130302942922018-03-15T03:37:00.003-07:002018-03-15T09:40:46.327-07:00Italy: Italian Expectations / Le aspettative italianeI've been thinking a lot lately about cultural expectations - what someone might reasonably expect to happen on a daily basis, living within a culture, and further, which expectations might fracture when the plate shifts, and someone from Culture A finds themselves more or less immersed in Culture B. We are all products of our culture, whether or not we recognize this, and I grant that it can be very difficult indeed to recognize this fact if one has never lived anywhere but in one's own culture, leading to the assumption that all expectations everywhere match the ones from inside the bubble.<br />
<br />
I have written here occasionally on sociopolitical topics, but my first year in Firenze was more a fat pipe of beauty: see pretty thing, take pretty picture, share. I do love catching a breathtaking image on my scurryings about town on my various daily errands - school, work, choir, church, dentist, and more.<br />
<br />
But now, halfway through year two, I find myself noticing and comparing the cultural data I have been accruing here through experience, and comparing it with my cultural reference section, abundantly shelved thanks to my career steeped in US immigration and academic immigration, and time spent living abroad and traveling, but especially Spain, France, and the UK. Because I lived for thirty years in Oklahoma, and left not quite two years ago, those cultural reference volumes in particular bear recent evidence of perusal.<br />
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I've indexed some of these mental notes and comparisons, and present one of them below for my audience: American aggression.<br />
<br />
I am unsure if this phenomenon can be ascribed more to Oklahoma. Perhaps so, as I noticed far less of it in the more civil Pacific Northwest, and even in DC and NY, all places I have lived.<br />
<br />
America is not only a frequent global aggressor, what with our various bright ideas for deploying military power, but internally, America is an aggressive culture. Part of this is due to the omnipresence of firearms, in open or concealed carry, or illegal carry. In the US, I was terrified of any dispute's escalation. A gun was a very likely possibility.<br />
<br />
In Italy, gun control is sound, and logical. In fact, I have never thought anyone would pull a gun in the EU, and I am glad for that. Not even in Finland, which loves hunting, and is currently ranked by the UN as <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/mar/14/finland-happiest-country-world-un-report" target="_blank">the happiest country on earth</a>. My Finnish cousins in Karelia with their gun racks are not proponents of a firearms free-for-all. (In my perfect world, no one would hunt, but I do not get to make up all the rules around here. I kind of wish my great-grandparents had not gotten on that boat headed west from Liverpool, but that is a topic for a different day.)<br />
<br />
An illustration of my cultural conditioning. One day last fall in St. James, I was either serving or singing, so was in the chancel during mass. A man came in halfway through the liturgy, alone. With a backpack. Of a certain age. Of course he was a tourist, but I have been so conditioned by the lack of public safety in the US that I actually began to have some version of a panic attack sitting up there. He started to fiddle with his backpack; he wasn't paying attention. But in my reptile brain I felt pretty certain that Backpack Man had weapons in there, and my palms began to sweat. <i>Why is an usher not approaching him, or asking to check his backpack? </i>I thought. All the other Americans in the building were facing forward and paying attention. <i>Someone should really ask him to sit down, or ask to check in his backpack,</i> I thought. I tried to mentally convince an usher to do so, as my imagination was working overtime and I was picturing him pulling some gun out of the backpack.<br />
<br />
But no. It was fine. He was just a middle-aged tourist with a grey ponytail, and a backpack. He was probably looking for his guidebook to figure out where he'd just interrupted mass. He left a bit after, never having sat down, but neither having shot and killed anyone either, even though in my mind this had been a distinct and panicked possibility.<br />
<br />
This reminded me of my time working on campus. I had two offices at OU: one was in an old building, the floorplan like a glorified hallway, with a front entrance and a hallway to another door. We had a few really disturbed international students, unstable young adults on the edge (one non-traditional woman in particular), with no-trespass orders on campus and police involvement, but I always thought in my mind, <i>I can get out if someone goes nuts in here and becomes violent</i>.<br />
<br />
The other office, which I spent six years working in, was a renovated classroom, with one entrance, and this setup scared the daylights out of me. Happy international students did not typically come to our office. It was the ill ones, the failing ones, the struggling and depressed ones, the irrational ones. The office had one entrance, which was also its exit, and that was it. If someone came into our office with a gun purchased at a gun show, ready to teach me and my staff a lesson, there was nowhere to go or to hide. I literally sat at work and imagined the ways I could seek refuge under my desk, or in our supply closet where we also pumped breastmilk.<br />
<br />
I calculated how long it would take an armed student to find me and shoot me. How long would I have to stay under my desk, could I convincingly play dead, or would an irate student come looking for me by name? How far down was the jump from the second story? Could I break a window and climb down that juniper tree? Probably not in time, but these calculations nevertheless spun through my head. This thinking was sick. But I did not feel safe, we did not feel safe, and that seemed to bother no one but me and my staff. Again, and to clarify, most of our 2,500 advisees were just fine, but we had five or so each year who seemed to be on a literal hair trigger.<br />
<br />
This type of public violence did not seem to happen when I was growing up in Oklahoma and Michigan. The first mass murder by gun was in Edmond, OK, 73034, at the post office just a mile from my school, in 1986 or so. We were in shock for weeks. My mom understandably freaked out and didn't really want us going anywhere, which was more a punishment for me than my two brothers, who tended to stay home anyway.<br />
<br />
There was bullying in my high school, but it seemed limited to skinheads versus skaters. I remember a fair amount of very <i>Mean Girls</i>-style bullying in the seventh grade, but no one ever thought that someone would bring a gun to school and shoot everyone, at any time, in my schooling.<br />
<br />
<img alt="Risultati immagini per mean girls" height="224" 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" width="400" /><br />
<br />
Gun violence doesn't just start with guns. It begins in a culture of aggression and bullying, where might makes right, and boys are bred and raised to be big, and therefore stronger, and therefore dominant.<br />
<br />
In preschool in Norman there were six and seven year old boys in Victor's pre-K class (which should have all been kids who were four, turning five) who were specifically held back to grow bigger for football. This is madness. Note that girls were never held back for this purpose, as it was strictly gender-driven, and, I might argue, race-driven, since these little boys were almost always Anglo, creating a miniature ruling class of dominant males right there in pre-K that would persist in the culture in all cohorts, at all levels, for years.<br />
<br />
I talked to the school's director about it, and was told something along the lines of, <i>parents have a right to hold their children back.</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>Um, yes, </i>I thought, <i>but not for sporting reasons, </i>and those boys should not be permitted to become the bullying terrors of the class. I was just sick about it in the fall of 2015. I did not want our children to be raised in a world where this seemed normal to them, where they had to learn to protect themselves because the adults in charge indicated they were powerless to change the rules, and thus the dynamic. This was the same school where I was told that conceal carry was the law in the state, and so the private preschool would make no rule otherwise prohibiting parents from toting their pistols around in the school. This was the same year where our small children were in lock-down three times for gun-related violence.<br />
<br />
Conversely, the adults in charge might well be aggressors themselves, as with the neighbor in Norman across the street, who I saw one morning chase his son around their car, catch him by the arm, and hit him again and again until the little boy was sobbing. I saw all this from my window, like a terrible stage piece, but did not go out to confront the father because I assumed he was packing heat.<br />
<br />
I had been raised in such a world, and had adapted by developing strengths in skills of "freeze and friend": smile at the big boys, they might decide you're harmless, and leave you alone. Play dead with a weird sort of frozen smile. Do nothing to provoke. Do not challenge. Crawl under the desk and play dead. Disappear. Become silent. Keep your counsel at all times.<br />
<br />
You never see kids held back for sport in Italy. The Italian parents here actually think that soccer is a dangerous and violent sport, which really makes me laugh. The US from Italy seems like a version of Sparta on opioids, which is another topic for a different day. The overall atmosphere in the children's school in Florence is one of sane adults in charge, and I have noted little evidence of bullying. Italy, on the whole, and in this context, persists as a civil society in ways that America does not. I am sure bullying happens. I am sure it is pervasive in less well-off communities; Florence is arguably an Italian center of wealth concentration. Any Italian will tell you that the Mafia and Comorra and 'Ndragheta are bullying shadow institutions.<br />
<br />
I re-read <i>1984 </i>a year ago, looking, in part, for a playbook. Orwell does a superb job describing citizens cowed by culture, products of fear and conditioning.<br />
<br />
An Italian woman asked me yesterday to explain what is happening in America. I was late for work, and could not. I said, <i>it is a big problem, a huge problem. I am glad to be in Italy where things seem to work.</i><br />
<i>Ma che! </i>her eyes grew wide. <i>There is plenty in Italy that does not work! </i>she told me.<br />
<i>Yes, </i>I said, <i>but you have a civil society.</i><br />
She looked dubious.<br />
<i>Things work here, </i>I pressed. I listed their universal healthcare, pensions, schools, nice roads, bridges that do not fall into rivers, the luxury of feeling safe from harm in public, which should be a primary civil right, but for Americans in America, it cannot be had.<br />
<i>In Italy, </i>I said, <i>people are kind to each other. There is a sort of kindness here, of life on a human scale, which America has lost. </i><i>But also, </i>I added, <i>the US, Italy, and Poland are all on a list of <a href="https://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2018/01/daily-chart-21" target="_blank">flawed democracies</a>. I understand why Italians are upset.</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<img alt="Risultati immagini per flawed democracies" height="388" src="https://voicesfromspain.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Economist.png" width="400" /><br />
<br />
Italian electoral rules seem to be of a piece with American gerrymandering, and a fair amount of election confusion. The voting rules are so complicated that no one can make sense of them anymore.<br />
<br />
Worse, people vote, and then some other process blender takes over to assign percentages to their governing bodies based on the multiparty election results. Errrr.<br />
<br />
There then ensued a long linguistic discussion of what flawed meant, and how to spell it, and when to use it.<br />
<br />
She said my scarf looked pretty.<br />
I do not think Italians love hearing Americans list what appears to be functioning in Italy.<br />
<br />
I am still decompressing here from my time in Oklahoma. I know we are privileged to live here. We had the option to leave, and many do not. Everyone in America is compressed, with little sign of decompression possibilities on the horizon. My heart aches for this fact.<br />
<br />
Hear me: It does not have to be this way. It does not. It is not this way in so many other places. The predominant culture in the US right now is not an inevitable reality.<br />
<br />
Further topics for this discussion: Italian rules that can be broken, Italian vending machines, the school menu and nutritionist. Much more anodyne topics, unless someone out there is really feeling this soapbox.Th'Italian Sassenachhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01135866794196036425noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4902749929015572724.post-25530179403816308292018-03-13T02:54:00.000-07:002018-03-13T02:54:30.043-07:00Firenze: Fringe Opera / L'opera vanguardistaThe stables were freezing, the violinist said.<br />
There was no way they would be able to play for an hour and a half, straight through without intermission. Their hands were cold, and even more importantly, their period string instruments were strung with gut to do justice to the Baroque music.<br />
The steel or nylon wires, she said, would not have been impacted at all by the temperature, but the gut strings would have to be re-tuned every twenty minutes or so.<br />
How this was going to be possible, it simply was not clear.<br />
Plus, how were they expected to wear concert attire? I listened carefully and nodded. I am not string musician, but her concerns made sense to me. I too am always <i>freddina </i>- freezing. That condition, thankfully, is coming to a conclusion soon here in Florence.<br />
<br />
The quartet was lodged downstairs in the palazzo, in the <i>basso mezzanino</i>, which I had never seen before, but looks every inch a set for a period film by Merchant and Ivory. Two bedrooms look out from large windows onto the capacious and blooming garden behind the <i>palazzo</i>, with rows of small frescoed barrel vaults for ceilings. The furniture is nineteenth century, with tiny desks and chairs and metal beds. They were there for the week for rehearsals for a <a href="https://newgenerationfestival.org/home" target="_blank">festival production</a> of Gluck's "Orfeo ed Euridice," to be performed in the stables of the Palazzo Corsini by a young cast, with a forward-thinking director and producer.<br />
<br />
I am friends with the producer, Sophie; she was also singing Euridice. She works with the choir at St. James, and as is often my way, I had fallen into conversations with her about ground logistics and creative solutions, given their performance dates in different cities and needs. That is how the quartet came to stay for a week at the palazzo we call home.<br />
<br />
We had tickets to attend the performance on Thursday, and were going with Claudio and Francesca, who are our landlords, neighbors, and friends. I was glad they were accompanying us because I had no idea where the Palazzo Corsini was, and plus, Claudio had offered to drive us all. Francesca knows the Corsini family, and asked me what the address was for the performance.<br />
<br />
"It's in the Palazzo Corsini!" I said brightly.<br />
"Yes, I know, dear," she replied patiently. "What number? I don't even know how many numbers that palazzo has, between their doors and the gardens."<br />
I looked up the palazzo on my phone, but the street it gave wasn't even right.<br />
Francesca went back upstairs to get the poster the quartet had dropped off for her before they left.<br />
"I know where it is," she said, "it's the <i>scuderie </i>(stables) address."<br />
We headed downstairs to the piazza where Claudio was waiting for us with the car.<br />
<br />
Driving from one location in centro ZTL <i>(zona traffico limitata) </i>to another is a bit like space travel - you must go out to a ring road to come back in, so a trip that would take me 10-15 minutes on a bike will easily take 30-45 in a car. Plus some swearing and dry gargling.<br />
<br />
Claudio, however, as an unflappable Italian gentleman, gamely remained calm throughout the navigation, his beret jauntily perched atop his head as he manned the wheel of the tiny town car, telling Jason with a laugh on Liberta, "I am never quite sure which was to go here," and, later, backing the car out of a wrong turn he'd taken at the snake of an intersection currently strangling the main train station. I was plenty impressed with his aplomb.<br />
<br />
We parked in a space that looked to me like it might have just barely fit a crate of clementines, and walked around to the palazzo. In front of the Hotel Medici, Francesca lamented the large paved apron in front of the hotel, saying, "There used to be the most beautiful fruit trees here." As far as I can tell, about 35 years ago someone who hated mature, urban fruit trees, such as used to crowd around many properties in Florence, began to rip them all out, and did not stop until they were almost all gone.<br />
<br />
We arrived at the Corsini stables and walked in, through a huge door, then past car after vintage car that seemed ready for a period drama like "Downton Abbey." I am no car buff by any stretch, but these old Fiats and Aston Martins were gleaming. Claudio and Francesca had been to exhibits in the <i>scuderie</i> before, and were pleased to return. We checked in at will-call and wedged our way into the small crowd that was waiting to enter. It was a festive group, but I couldn't move. The venue was intimate indeed. Francesca immediately began to spy a few of her friends, and slipped through the packed people to exchange <i>buona seras</i>. Jason and I stood around and watched a cluster of girls on an ancient settee devour a giant bowl of popcorn.<br />
<br />
Soon a petite older woman with a booming voice came through.<br />
"Georgiana!" Francesca brightened. "It's Signora Corsini. Let me introduce you to her."<br />
Signora Corsini was all business, and leaned in to hear my name, and Jason's, while Francesca generously introduced as their friends and affiliates of Gonzaga, as opposed to the rambunctious tenant family in their grand palazzo on the opposite side of town.<br />
Signora Corsini asked me if I had had any refreshment yet.<br />
I said no, I couldn't get to it, gesturing to the packed bunch of people.<br />
She looked shocked. "Of course you can arrive at the refreshment! You must! Allow me."<br />
She parted the crowd with a deep, <i>"Permesso! Permesso, signori!"</i><br />
At a back table I had been unable to see stood two huge urns, one of mulled wine, the other of a concoction I understood to be a combination of beef broth (?), Red Bull (??), and, possibly, vodka (!?!). I do not know which observation alarmed me more: the possibility of such a drink, or the sad state of my Italian comprehension.<br />
Unable to clarify the contents of this second urn in the roaring, tiny space, I said, "I would like the <i>Gluhwein</i>."<br />
Eh?<br />
"Err, the <i>vin brulee</i>."<br />
Eh?<br />
"<i>Il vino</i>," I said, pointing.<br />
Signora Corsini dispensed a small cup of the steaming wine and handed it to me. "E lui?"<br />
Jason politely declined.<br />
<br />
The doors to the stable swung wide, and Georgiana invited "people of a certain age" to come first. Francesca looked at me and shrugged. "Of course, we're just going in." I followed her lead and we quickly found chairs. Jason had a standing post in the horse stall behind us, and neighed good humoredly. I saw a number of people I knew from St. James on this, the last night of the production, concluding their Italian tour. I noted a small group of women who seemed like they knew the place, and who all looked like each other, and assumed they must be the Corsini sisters. The daughter of one of them, aged about ten, had an enormous bowl of popcorn, and was sitting on the floor eating it with such gusto that bits and pieces were flying onto the rugs covering the stones, and dropping all over her sweater, adding a touch of farcical Wes Anderson to the whole scene.<br />
<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjROtABP9w7ABBhrmxqKUvQsh8LvPPVZ4klxjRfZn9NdHSt005tKc5pBwEFWcKGVv8MksRk1bI5FHDFvCcY27RsLEsKka3nP6KepKQ4l4nr5WTSAtyxRmEEo-G47vzWgHrlDsgfAnrVG_ZY/s1600/20180308_202514.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="1600" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjROtABP9w7ABBhrmxqKUvQsh8LvPPVZ4klxjRfZn9NdHSt005tKc5pBwEFWcKGVv8MksRk1bI5FHDFvCcY27RsLEsKka3nP6KepKQ4l4nr5WTSAtyxRmEEo-G47vzWgHrlDsgfAnrVG_ZY/s400/20180308_202514.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Povere Euridice. Will she come back to life?<br />Spoiler alert: in the Baroque version, YES.</td></tr>
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There were maybe a hundred people total in the audience, tops. The orchestra was at the far end of the stable, under a handsome stone statue of San Eligio, patron saint of horses and their caretakers, and under that, a smaller statue of the Virgin. The sound in the space was optimal, for the stables were a bit like a stone chapel, and filled with the music as the orchestra began to play. The Corsini were a historically well-placed family indeed as I counted sixteen stalls in our space, all bordered by stone columns. It looked like a horse chapel.<br />
<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCsxgGX6Jwla-fnNodDciOAcq6XSNcWmvxrA6Nvux_PCLhGYkJEShOSBNIcnBDYAYeUeoX-WFuOS1xqFfV2ep6WedMp7ixs6kiRbyfVlxLj5lzHpauebms0Iriz0tGdOZpScclVuUxZhXA/s1600/20180308_193654.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="1600" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCsxgGX6Jwla-fnNodDciOAcq6XSNcWmvxrA6Nvux_PCLhGYkJEShOSBNIcnBDYAYeUeoX-WFuOS1xqFfV2ep6WedMp7ixs6kiRbyfVlxLj5lzHpauebms0Iriz0tGdOZpScclVuUxZhXA/s400/20180308_193654.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Orfeo baragining successfully with Amor to restore to life his beloved Euridice</td></tr>
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The quartet did have to pause periodically to re-tune their strings of gut, I noticed, but they did it so quickly as to be almost unnoticeable, and in any case the handsome cast was a transparent distraction. Gluck, as a Baroque composer, had the resource of castrati countertenors at hand, but in this opera, Orfeo was sung by a beautiful, tall woman, whose face was scrubbed clean, her hair wound back in a tight braid. It took me a while to figure out she was Orfeo. I mistakenly thought at first she was the shadow Euridice - perhaps a dream Euridice - in any case, I worked it out, and the singing was beautiful, as the chorus and soloists were inches from us at full volume. <br />
<br />
The costumes were amusingly tongue-in-cheek - Amor was an Elvis impersonator, Orfeo an RAF pilot, Euridice's skirt and bodice looked like they came from last year's Feria Sevillana, castanet-ready. Moving forward, I would love all live entertainment to be that close to me; it is so much more striking than watching an opera on stage form a box, and everything looking like an animated postage stamp.<br />
<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjK53yjB3rbO3ayh5lI5ZGVI8MxAiZnrCN3lpYN6EqBpv0ZbGkgRLBp73Trsmo8YqkWrWB_QyrNs6Pg_UNPOZghJF2c7oXYDbECk8U15vVkrnw1pXGfPWtE0rykD9PR3aPsnxzCmnIlD5CL/s1600/20180308_203723.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="800" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjK53yjB3rbO3ayh5lI5ZGVI8MxAiZnrCN3lpYN6EqBpv0ZbGkgRLBp73Trsmo8YqkWrWB_QyrNs6Pg_UNPOZghJF2c7oXYDbECk8U15vVkrnw1pXGfPWtE0rykD9PR3aPsnxzCmnIlD5CL/s400/20180308_203723.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Euridice and Orfeo are reunited!</td></tr>
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The young girl continued to eat the popcorn with her mother and aunties. I tried to avoid direct eye contact with the singers so as not to fluster them. Since this production was an adaptation, and not the entire work, it was about an hour and a half in length, but none the less for it. (Good news for Jason in the horse stall.)<br />
<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Oats and opera, anyone?</td></tr>
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The finale finished to much shouting of <i>brava, bravo, bravi. </i>The conductor thanked everyone for coming, and outlined the next festival productions scheduled in the gardens of the Corsini for late August and early September.<br />
"Che meraviglia!" a Corsini sister breathed from a stall across the aisle.<i> </i><br />
We finally squeezed out of the stables back into the entry corridor where all the vintage cars silently gleamed. In the warm evening, Francesca outlined for me the many talents and accomplishments of Georgiana, clearly a woman of much <i>fuoco e spirito.</i><br />
<br />
Driving home, Jason and Claudio debated the Gluck revision of the Orfeo and Euridice myth, agreeing at the end that Gluck was under pressure from his patrons in the royal court to make an ending more <i>piacevole </i>(pleasing), since the original plot is a tragedy, as Euridice perishes and Orfeo descends into an eternal grief. We also covered the casting, and the history of <i>castrati</i>, agreeing that the opera would have become vanguard indeed had it been edited to star Orfea and Euridice.<br />
<br />
I can't wait to see their <a href="https://newgenerationfestival.org/home" target="_blank">late summer productions</a> of Tchaikovsky, Shakespeare, and Mozart. Perhaps I too might be able to dine in the Corsini gardens with other guests ...Th'Italian Sassenachhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01135866794196036425noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4902749929015572724.post-19454038299046796162018-02-20T01:04:00.001-08:002018-02-20T01:04:28.974-08:00Italy: Weights and Measures / Pesi e Misure <i>How much of one thing equals another thing?</i><br />
<br />
This has to be one of the most overarching cultural questions. When we look at or hold <i>something, a thing, </i>a substance, we ask, how much of <i>this thing </i>is equal to <i>this other thing</i>?<br />
<br />
This varies widely from culture to culture, and yet it is transparent to the cultural participants. <i>Of course this much of this one thing is equal to this other thing! </i>Only when we shift positions do our perspectives change.<br />
<br />
Our apartment, as I have mentioned, is <i>freddino</i>. It is chilly. Our <i>palazzo </i>is beautiful, and central, and its relative advantages far outweigh its climate control. We are very happy here.<br />
<br />
But it is so cold. The cold affects me especially in the morning, when I wake up and stumble into the kitchen (still wearing the scarf, sweatshirt, socks, woolen booties I slept in) to turn on the heat, turn on the electric heater, fill the kettle and light the gas hob for tea, check the situation for Jason's coffee.<br />
<br />
When I return from our school drop-off, things have cooled down again in the kitchen. This is where I always make my same mistake: I think I will just straighten things up a little bit. Just a bit. But my hands are freezing, my fingers barely work, the hot water takes an age to reach the tap from the boiler. It feels like the winter of 1890 up here. Just a small plate, I think to myself, I can scrub this, I can quickly wipe off this other thing. But with my cold hands, in the cold kitchen, the fingers, they do not have a solid grasp, the water is cold, where is the hot water, why is the hot water not running yet ...<br />
<br />
The plate slips. The ceramic breaks. Every time. Dozens of times.<br />
<br />
Mundane plates don't bother me to break - a plain white plate, a plain saucer. They can be easily replaced at the sample ceramics vendor at Mercato Sant'Ambrogio, who sells only white ceramics, some embossed, modern and vintage-seeming, but all plain white. It reminds me of arty friends who brought out purposely mismatched and monogrammed hotel silver to entertain at home. Such elegant friends.<br />
<br />
Last week, though, I dropped and broke our spoon rest, which came with the apartment in the giant china hutch <i>(madia) </i>of assembled essentials. The spoon rest gets a lot of use, and this spoon rest always tickles my fancy, because it is in the shape of a blue Volkswagen Beetle, which makes me think of, in this order, my mom, Mexico, and Brazil. Mom drove a powder-blue Bug for years in the Midwest, usually stuffed with three small children, a mutt, groceries, and a sheet cake. No air conditioning, vinyl seats, Oklahoma City in sweltering summers. Beetlebugs are all over Mexico and Brazil, destinations I have spent happy travelling time in, so any invocation of simple transportation with three gears, any ocean coast, and windows rolled down is welcome.<br />
<br />
But this small Beetlebug was now in two pieces at the bottom of the marble sink.<br />
<br />
I heaved a sigh as I picked them up. I dried them off, and verified that they still fit together, more or less. I added them to the small white sugar bowl, whose tiny knob atop the lid had cleaved in half under identical circumstances, and been carefully stored in the bowl until such time as I determined how best to repair it. I am a fixer. I do not like to throw things away, especially if they are sentimental, or I like them particularly. I know it is not always ideal to have a glued seam showing, but I am careful, and dexterous, and can fix things. It's a personal challenge. I can work with imperfection. I struggle with total loss.<br />
<br />
When this happened in the US, I had a very handy glue pen for terra cotta that worked wonders. That glue was awesome. I could fix almost anything with it. A bright bowl from Caltagirone. An ironic ceramic bowl used for cat food. The decapitated head of a concrete Saint Francis after a scuffle with a toddler Victor, reaffixed, that lasted through many cold seasons reglued. But I did not have this glue in Italy.<br />
<br />
I knew just where I could find some, though: the <i>mesticheria </i>(home goods shop) on Pietrapiena, just around the corner from our palazzo: Casalinghi Mazzanti. Every <i>quartiere </i>(neighborhood) has one, but I like to think that ours on Sant'Ambrogio is special.<br />
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This <i>mesticheria </i>is seriously old school. The sales assistants are all men of a certain age in blue jumpsuits, with thinning and graying hair. They take their responsibilities very seriously. One might browse among the aisles of the shop, but in general it is not done; take a number, and wait for one of the jumpsuits to help you. You must have a number to be in the store, pretty much, if you plan on looking for anything or purchasing anything. The counter was amicably mobbed by day laborers and contractors, who handed over their number to say they are looking for denatured alcohol, a special kind of screw, rope of a certain weight, a new lock. A red-haired widow needed a water bottle. A woman in a luxe fur coat needed a specific can of paint. The store is packed to the rafters - my father would love it. Along with all the practical contractor inventory, they also sell Le Creuset ironware, bathroom accessories, gleaming copper pots and pans of every size and shape. Anything you might need for your home, from screws to a lightbulb to a specific kitchen tool, Mazzanti carries it.<br />
<br />
I broke the rules a bit, and began browsing for glue to fix my spoon rest and sugar bowl. The narrow aisles were a challenge to navigate, especially at this busy hour right before lunch, when all the contractors had advanced as far as they could in their morning work without that tube of silicon or box of screws. I quickly found an entire section of glue, and silicon. It became immediately clear why I might need to first take a number to ask a jumpsuit which glue to buy. I had no idea. The selection was overwhelming, and a workout for both my Italian and whatever I remembered of semiotics from grad school. A vast array of sealants and glues were neatly hung on about eight feet of aisle shelving at all levels, and I started to look for the closest approximation to my terra cotta glue-all that I knew so well in the US.<br />
<br />
After a few minutes I gave up, and went to look at the activity in front of the counter again. At least ten people were waiting. I noted the location of the number dispenser. I went back to the glue aisle and, finally, found a tube of what I needed where I had not seen it before. The yellow tube was indicated for marble, glass, and any item where visible dried glue is undesirable. At five euros, and with helpful pictures on the front of it of a broken Ming vase, a muffler, a wooden stair, and a dining room table, it was exactly what was needed.<br />
<br />
I pulled a number out of the red dispenser. 53. I settled in calmly to wait my turn and to watch the organized mayhem. The jumpsuits were very efficient, and dealt kindly with both contractors' demands and the hot water bottle needs of chilly widows. An American woman dressed in GMU-logo pushed up to the counter with two glass cruets. She spoke no Italian.<br />
<br />
"Number please," the jumpsuit said in Italian.<br />
"I want to buy these," she said, in English. Pushing the cruets forward on the counter. She smiled at him. I groaned inwardly.<br />
The jumpsuit gave her a look and disappeared from behind the counter. Her cruets had no price tags. I wondered what the word was for cruet in Italian. I felt sympathetic for a moment as I inwardly agreed that there was no way I would ever walk into an Italian shop like this and start talking to a jumpsuit about my need for a glass cruet with a cork.<br />
Everyone behind GMU began to grumble. She had jumped at least ten numbers in the line. Everyone else was holding their number and looking at it.<br />
She turned around and saw the scene. She looked sideways at me.<br />
"Am I doing this wrong?" she asked me.<br />
"They're traditional here. Gotta take a number to pay," I said, relieved I was far from the most clueless person in the shop.<br />
The unsinkable Molly Brown seemed to have assumed that other customers were simply too undetermined to pay, or perhaps fraught by indecision.<br />
The jumpsuit finally came back and told her the price for the two cruets. She paid, and hastily made her way from the store.<br />
<br />
By this time I was an expert in number-taking. One of the contractors, with plaster dust still in his dark gelled hair, asked me where I got my number from.<br />
"Di la," I said, pointing.<br />
Finally, 53! I hopped up to the front, gave the jumpsuit my number, and paid with an acceptably small banknote. He smiled at me and shooed me out of the store, already thinking ahead to 54.<br />
<br />
Realizing the master class I had just received in language and culture thanks to the long wait and general powers of observation, I resolved to contrive a reason to come more frequently to Casalinghi Mazzanti.<br />
<br />
Saturday morning I got out my broken porcelain pieces and the glue package. I set the pieces of the sugar bowl and the spoon rest on the marble counter.<br />
<br />
I read the instructions on the back over and over to make sure I knew what I was doing. <i>Clean and dry surface. Do not get in eyes. Use within two to three minutes, hold pieces to be glued together for forty seconds. Forty minutes to cure. </i>One phrase made me laugh. <i>You may tint the glue with pigment as you wish, <b>obviously </b>before adding the hardener</i>, which was in a smaller tube next to the big tube.<br />
<br />
Yeah, obviously. Maybe the contractors knew that. Certainly the jumpsuits knew that. Well, it wasn't a conversation I was going to have, with any Italian, in any case.<br />
<br />
But one detail remained opaque to me. I had puzzled over it many times, and finally called over our house expert in Italian and Florentine culture, language, and measurements, Dr. Jason Houston.<br />
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"Read this," I said. "The sentence about the <i>chicco di caffe </i>and the <i>noce</i>." It was a description of proper proportions for glueing success.<br />
He held the package close. "Yep," he said. "It is referencing a coffee bean and a nut."<br />
The package outlined the proportions for mixing the glue (coffee bean-sized amount) with the hardener (walnut-sized amount), from each tube, to successfully employ the product. The text said that the hardener should be about 2% of the total mix, which I should then mix <i>velocemente</i>. The recommended percentage preceded the coffee bean and nut reference, which were meant to clarify the proportions in an easily understood metaphor. Except it was not easy to understand.<br />
"Is a <i>noce </i>like a walnut?" I asked Jason. "Or a pecan?"<br />
"Pretty much," he nodded in assent.<br />
"Okay," I said. "And a <i>chicco di caffe </i>is a coffee bean?"<br />
"Yes," he agreed.<br />
"Okay," I said. "Do fifty coffee beans equal a walnut? It doesn't seem like it to me. Or is there another Italian nut they are referencing that is huge?"<br />
He looked at me like I had begun drinking before noon.<br />
"Seriously," I pressed. "Fifty coffee beans do not fit into a walnut. Think about it."<br />
"Maybe they mean a grain of coffee. Perhaps it is referencing coffee that is ground."<br />
"No, it specifically says <i>chicco </i>here." This is a catch-all Italian word for a grain of something - a coffee bean, or a grain of wheat. Certainly fifty grains of wheat would fit into a walnut. But the package specifically referenced a coffee bean. "Fifty grains of coffee might equal one coffee bean, and a coffee bean does not equal a walnut."<br />
<i><br /></i><i>How much of one thing equals another thing</i><i>?</i><br />
<br />
I decided to go with a dab of hardener into my unpigmented glue. The mixture reeked. I mixed it in the plastic lid from a can of Pringles and a used drinking straw. Opening a window to let the smell out, and set about holding together my broken pottery pieces. The glue seemed to work just fine, notwithstanding my confusion over the recommended agricultural proportions.<br />
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The sugar bowl and the spoon rest are now convincingly restored to their original states. I think the jumpsuits would agree that I did a fine job.<br />
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<br />Th'Italian Sassenachhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01135866794196036425noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4902749929015572724.post-67860409608363378222018-02-11T08:55:00.000-08:002018-02-11T08:56:25.108-08:00Italia: Our Italian Vacuum Cleaner / Il nostro aspirapolvere italianoYou know, it's the little things. They stick. And because they are so small, and inconsequential, until they are not, they are a rich mine for reflection.<br />
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I have written here on mundane cross-cultural topics - scarves, laundry. A dentist visit. Things that locals wouldn't think twice about, because these things are transparent to them in an <i>of course </i>way.<br />
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I read <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/column/beppe-severgnini" target="_blank">Beppe Severgnini's</a> <i><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Italian-America-Beppe-Severgnini/dp/8817125539" target="_blank">Ciao, America!</a></i> circa 2001, in Seattle. A passage in his memoir covered curtains in America, amusing and insightful for its philosophical bent. <i>The symbolic value of curtains in America</i>. How I laughed when I read it: the familiar through the eyes of an outsider, the mundane made new. I'd experienced with blackout shutters in Spain as a student many years prior, those magnificent, interior eclipse-inducing <i>persianas </i>that could make 4 pm in June seem like midnight in January, affording a long lie-in from a previous night out, or a gentle landing into a new time zone. The name itself of these external shutters, so well-known in the Mediterranean basin, invokes Persia/Iran, <i>purdah</i>, Pakistan, sunbaked bricks, protection from an unrelenting sun. I appreciated Beppe's treatise on the symbolic value of curtains in America: ineffective, thin, light permitting, offering no privacy, seem like decoration only, and what this indicated to him about our culture.<br />
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On a related symbolic note, I give you: our Italian vacuum cleaner.<br />
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We live in a generously-sized apartment whose every floor surface is terracotta tile that has benefited from decades of waxing. The tiles gleam like no flowerpot I've ever seen. They are glorious in the high heat of a Florentine summer: a natural wine cellar feel permeates the space, even on our fourth floor. But tiles are chilly in winter. Perhaps better suited to protecting fine vintages, or curing <i>terrine </i>in small pots sealed with pork fat.<br />
<br />
To address this issue, we purchased a few large area rugs shortly after arriving, both to insulate our living spaces and to provide a softer, warmer surface for our kids to play on, their endless hours of haggling and tussling and watching YouTube videos. And eating. Don't tell the Italians, but we struggle to get our kids to eat at a table at home. They are usually eating on the faux oriental rug in our dining room, generously spreading crumbs and spilling all drinks. Magnetic play sand gathers in pink blobs, marring the pattern. Play-dough (TM) dries on the fringe. Bits of toys and dried pasta abound.<br />
<br />
In an ideal world, we would live in the country and take the rugs out to be beaten once a week, and aired in the fresh sunshine on a dry, breezy day. I am pretty sure this is what happens in the Italian countryside. I like to think this is what happens.<br />
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In our old life in America, I would have run our industrial strength vacuum over the surface once or twice a week to achieve a calming sense of cleanliness and order. I credit my deeply Finno-Anglo-Teutonic heritage for this. Plus, perhaps, a bit of the cell memory of my Finnish forebears, who must have observed the basic rule of thumb: <i>have little, scrub much.</i><br />
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In our world, however, we initially tried to sweep the rugs with a broom, then with the smaller hand broom that I know from days keeping a hard floor clean in France, the nimble <i>balayette</i>.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The <i>balayette</i> always reminds me of a certain English Jane, <br />who swept while smoking, a ciggie hanging out of the corner of her mouth.</td></tr>
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We then attempted to use an old vacuum from in the <i>cantina</i> (storage) in the basement of the palazzo. But it had all the power of a DirtDevil from 1983. None, no power at all. It charged and had a cord-free feature, which was fine, but it was no fun to hear its wheezing whine and see that nothing was picked up from the rug with its feeble suction. Our rugs got dirtier and dirtier. It was a losing battle.<br />
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Jason researched and located a new vacuum on Amazon Italy. The most powerful one we could find, we believed. We have Amazon Prime here, which we hardly ever use, so the new vacuum was delivered in a blink. He brought it home and we assembled it. This was when Victor was heavy in his Lego phase, so he helped us put it together. This new vacuum cleaner resembles Noo Noo from Teletubbies more than it does any useful rug sweeper. It has a potbelly, an accordion hose, and an aluminium arm attached to a rotating mouth lined with bristles.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Noo Noo</td></tr>
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We plugged in the vacuum and turned it on. The aluminium arm barely clears my knees. You all know I am a tad over five feet tall. I had to awkwardly hunch over to push it across the rug. The bristly mouth seemed to pick up a lot of loose hair, which we shed freely on the rugs, but did little to gobble up all the particles from food and play that had gathered in the tuft. The rotating feature of the bristle mouth ensured that it kept flipping over and up, and I struggled to keep the sucking intake facing downward on the rug. After about twenty seconds of this, my lower back began to ache like I had been pulling weeds all morning.<br />
<br />
<i>This is the best vacuum we could find?</i><br />
<br />
Our babysitters used the vacuum and came back with glowing reviews, which I received with suspicion. Were we using, in fact, the same vacuum cleaner?<br />
<br />
I told Jason I did not think the new vacuum was a huge improvement over the emphysemic DirtDevil from the <i>cantina</i>. He shrugged; he accepts variant Italian outcomes with an admirable aplomb.<br />
"Their rugs here are delicate," he posited. "They cannot be ruined with overabundant suction."<br />
I looked at him. I thought of my lower back pain.<br />
"The rugs are old?" he continued, fishing. "They cannot be replaced. They must vacuum them very gently, very carefully; the fibers are delicate."<br />
<br />
I read the reviews on Amazon.it and saw that the Italians thought that this was, in fact, a pretty superlative vacuum.<br />
I was nonplussed.<br />
I put the new vacuum back in our closet and left it there.<br />
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I had to hand it to him: of course I understood that wall-to-wall synthetic carpeting, such as we both grew up with in our split-level ranch homes in the US of the seventies and eighties... well, that's just silly. A truly American goal, to carpet and upholster and heat and insulate your home to the point that you could walk around in your underwear in the winter, and feel like you were in Cabo. Americans want to edit their external environment for comfort. Italians edit their attire.<br />
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Our babysitter did use the vacuum on a fairly regular basis, and seemed to obtain better results than I did. However, its bagless design remained a seeming mystery to her. One day she mentioned that the vacuum no longer seemed to be working. After she left, I took it out of the closet, and eyeballed the clear plastic dirt receptacle, and saw that it was jam-packed with grey dirt, dust, and hair. I pried it apart and emptied it into the kitchen trash, creating a huge cloud of floating dust in the process.<br />
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A different friend used the vacuum once in our house and made an amusing onomatopoeic imitation of what it sounded like when dried bits rattled up the tube and into the vacuum's potbelly.<br />
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I thought of the horsepower of our old vacuum cleaner in the US, its motorized wheels propelling it across our rugs. Our house in the US was all wood and tile floor, with a few large area rugs, strategically placed. I knew that vacuum sucked up everything. It practically tore the yarn from the mesh. I bought a rug from Overstock.com when we first moved in that seemed to contain the better part of a sand dune from the Katpana desert, and its dirt receptacle filled with the sand that resembled extra-fine granulated sugar, shaken from a sack into a vacuum.<br />
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Now, that was a vacuum you could rely on. Even if it were to destroy the tapestries of the Medici.Th'Italian Sassenachhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01135866794196036425noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4902749929015572724.post-22521856296970525582018-02-07T08:46:00.002-08:002018-02-09T03:03:44.862-08:00Florence: Italian Rules / Le Regole ItalianePart of living in a culture is accepting received ideas, ranging from the mundane to the philosophical in nature. When plates shift and we find ourselves in a new culture, whether on domestic ground or abroad, received ideas are suddenly cast in high relief.<br />
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Italy maintains many received ideas that we do not know in America. Perhaps we knew them at one time, and lost them; perhaps we never knew them. If we are children of Ellis Island immigrants, I am positive that our recent forebears knew and observed basic received ideas handed down through culture, maintaining the health and well-being of the family.<br />
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Along these lines, some months back I covered the topic of the scarf versus the <i><a href="http://globalmoxie.blogspot.it/2017/10/firenze-medical-scarves-sciarpe-mediche.html" target="_blank">medical scarf</a> </i>in Italy, and how everyone is responsible for following basic ground rules of good health so that, should they fall into the misfortune of poor health, they cannot be immediately blamed for refusing to obey a handful of simple rules. I have been gathering a few more of these basic guidelines, and present them here for your enjoyment and edification.<br />
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<i>Exposed skin. </i>The purpose of attire, besides helping you look your best, is to ensure that one never shivers nor sweats. One must maintain one's body in a state of environmental equilibrium, as much as it is possible. This means never being too thinly or too warmly attired, depending on the season and the weather. Do not bring shame upon your mother, father, grandmother, and aunts by failing to monitor and maintain such simple variables that can quickly and easily be visually verified. Check yourself. Look down, or look in a mirror, or ask any small Italian standing nearby. Are your wrists exposed? fingers? ankles? heaven forbid, NOT YOUR NECK. If any of these danger zones appear overly exposed, take steps at once to put on socks, gloves, a shirt with longer sleeves, or a scarf/better scarf/second scarf. It is always appropriate to keep wearing Fashionable Scarf underneath Medical Scarf. Under no circumstances are you expected to forego one for the other. Do not give up good health for fashion, nor fashion for good health. You can, and should, protect both your health and <i>la bella figura</i>. There is no zero-sum game on this.<br />
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<i>La maglia della salute. </i>Literally the "knit shirt of health," this traditional wardrobe piece is cotton on the outside, ideally brushed soft wool on the inside, and is worn throughout the cold months for the purpose of its name: to ensure your good health. <i>La maglia della salute</i> will guarantee that no <i>colpa d'aria </i>(strike of air) wends its way to your torso, where even cavemen knew all your vital organs are housed. You gotta keep that torso covered and safe with warmth and security. Your health will thank you, along with all your organs, which will all reap the benefits of soft merino insulation.<br />
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Jason found me a version of a <i>maglia della salute </i>at Decathlon, an Italian version of REI, for about six euros. This was when he bought all the apparel for skiing in December for the kids. I am pretty sure it is just a base layer for skiing and various snow sport, and it is not natural fiber, but it is brushed inside and feels warm. Victor has one too, and we wear them for days on end.<br />
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Apparently the <i>maglia vera della salute </i>can be purchased at the Cascine open market behind the Fortezza. I would love to have one; the cotton + brushed merino sounds like the kind of mouse nest I need. I've got a Canadian named Margi from church on it for me; she's from Vancouver, and knows that keeping warm is <i>no laughing matter</i>. I told her I'd pay her a handsome markup if she can bring me one that is traditional and Italian and not a skier's base layer. And I might wear it all winter long until I stink like it's the <i>quattrocento</i>. And I will be so warm.<br />
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<i>Freddino/freddina. </i>Are you a person who could be characterized as <i>freddino/freddina </i>(chilly, easily chilled)<i>? </i>Apparently I am, which makes sense to me, since we live in the bottom of the Arno river valley in a city made of stone with no insulation and terrible heating. Even when I am wearing two sweaters, two scarves, socks, and wool slippers, it is fair to say that I am still very much <i>freddina</i>. This is a term applied to me especially by Italians of a certain age, who may have been raised with a wood-burning hearth as a heat source, and who never took off their <i>maglia della salute </i>from Ognissanti to Pasquetta.<br />
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Let's say it is 39F and raining outside, and I come up from locking up my bike after a quick commute across old flagstones filled with puddles, soaked and freezing.<br />
I will be told, upon entering my office, wet and shivering, "Pero Monica, tu sei freddina!"<br />
<i>This is cold to you!? </i>they ask me. <i>Are you seriously cold?</i><br />
Hey, Italy, no offense, but I doubt you've spent time at a pole, or in the Arctic.<br />
Clearly my freezing has nothing at all to do with the weather.<br />
"Well, do you like summer?" they asked me this week.<br />
"I actually hate summer," I said. "It is my number four favorite season."<br />
They looked at me like I had just grown an extra nose.<br />
"You do not like weather," they said.<br />
"I hate freezing," I said. "And sweating."<br />
They ought to understand this, right? A basic Italian principle. <i>See #1 above.</i><br />
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They are all in collective denial about how cold the winter is in Tuscany. Or perhaps they have simply been trained since childhood to not admit to feeling chilly, because heat costs money, and that <i>caldaia </i>may as well be a nuclear reactor for how reluctant people are to turn it on, as well as its associated exorbitant cost. In fact, I have learned this year that <i>"conservare la caldaia" </i>is an idiom. Gotta conserve that <i>caldaia</i>, people, no joke. Our utilities for the month of December ran to over 700 euros. And we were still <i>freddini </i>that whole month, as a state of being as well as a status.<br />
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<i>Dolce e caffe. </i>Just a note here about the proper order for the end of a meal. If you opt into<i> dolce </i>(dessert) after your <i>secondo </i>(entree), no one is going to bring you a coffee until you have eaten the entire <i>dolce. </i>I am talking crumbs on a saucer and a tiny fork licked clean. This is different from the US, where we like to<i> sip, nibble, sip, nibble, </i>alternating the coffee with the dessert. I think we lifted this bad habit from our German and Scandinavian forebears. But this is problematic, because how will your stomach receive the necessary punctuation of espresso, signalling the end of a meal, if you are sipping it with your dessert? This is just poor mealtime editing.<br />
<br />
Get it together! Eat the dessert. Patience. Await the coffee. Drink the coffee. Good. Now everyone, including your stomach, knows that the meal is complete.<br />
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This rule also applies to a snack at a coffee bar. Eat the sweet thing. Then drink the coffee. Do not intermingle the sweet thing and the coffee when consuming. You'll screw up your digestion, or worse, and won't have anyone but yourself to blame when you get put on a white rice diet for the next two days to correct your system.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Eat the sweets on the right. Then, and only then, drink the espresso on the left.</td></tr>
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<i>Coffee and milk. </i>Returning to the US now, I am always shocked at how much milk we want to drink with our coffee, at late hours! We're like babies with bottles the way we nurse those huge sugary milky drinks from Starbucks at 6 pm. The time to have milk with your coffee is prior to 10 am. You can order a <i>macchiato</i>, or a <i>macchiatino</i>, or a <i>macchiatone</i>, for the rest of the day, but it is not going to contain more than a splash or two of milk. Bars frequented by tourists in Firenze centro will make them a <i>cappucino </i>at 4 pm, but I have been to plenty of other Italian towns where such an order elicited a stern lecture from the barista about needing to educate your palate and not be a baby. Also, if the espresso shot is pulled right, it will be graced by a thin layer of <i>crema </i>at the top, that sweet golden coffee nectar that tells you the coffee was well roasted and the barista <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/how-to-drink-espresso-like-an-italian-2015-6?IR=T" target="_blank">knew what they were doing</a>. You might not even need any sugar if the <i>crema</i> is good.<br />
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<i>Coffee and water. </i>Not everywhere, but at my local bar, Caffe Paszkowski, they always give me a small glass of sparkling water with my espresso. Why? To drink first, to cleanse the palate, prior to enjoying your espresso, which is a gift. Hydrate a bit; front load some moisture. Then enjoy your espresso. Then drink the last bit of your water so you don't have old lady coffee mouth. I used to save all my water for after the coffee, until I got a scowl one day from Don Ciro, and a reprimand to "drink the water first." Read on for how I came to know his name.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The actual<i> piega </i>on the day <br />
the musical broke out in Caffe Paszkowski.<br />
Seemed pretty normal to me, this hair.<br />
But to the baristi, it confirmed something. </td></tr>
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<i>La bella figura. </i>Never underestimate the importance of looking your very best even on a normal day. There is no such thing as a normal day in Italy! Today is always a great day to look your best. Case in point: I had been a regular patron at Caffe Paszkowski for a year and a half. Once or twice per day, coffee, lunch, sometimes two coffees. I knew all the staff, but not by name, because there is no real way to introduce yourself, as a woman, to a caffe full of impeccably groomed and suited male<i> baristi </i>without coming off as really weird and obviously foreign, which I can't stand.<br />
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So I never said, <i>oh, by the way, ragazzi, I'm Monica. </i>They didn't need to know that; they were nice to me and addressing me with vanity honorifics, such as <i>professoressa, dottoressa, direttrice, </i>which had nothing at all to do with any of my actual qualifications, but are just titles they use when they want to make people blush, as far as I can tell.<br />
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One day in December I walked in to Paszkowski after a successful <i>piega </i>(blowout) at a salon close by.<br />
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The <i>baristi </i>sprang to life like it was a Broadway musical.<br />
"Buongiorno bella! Io sono Don Ciro ... questo e Michele ... quello e Lorenzo... Lui e Rolando. E Lei, signora, come si chiama ...?"<br />
I was shocked. Who expected this?<br />
I am sure I was five shades of pink.<br />
"Monica," I said, looking around.<br />
They all nodded, "Monica, bene. Monica."<br />
The Italians always like my name. Thanks again, Mom and Dad, for such a nice Italian name.<br />
I heard their commiseration behind the counter.<br />
Then they started quizzing me.<br />
"What's his name?" Pointing to the guy in charge.<br />
"Ciro."<br />
"And his?" His first mate.<br />
"Lorenzo."<br />
And so on, until I had proven that I too remembered all their names.<br />
<i>Bene, bene, bene.</i><br />
Now I am greeted by name, even on days that I look like a Parisian commoner from Les Miz (not a fresh <i>piega </i>day.)<br />
I am still called <i>cara</i>, or <i>bella</i>, but the younger <i>baristi </i>seem to me to blush ever so slightly when I greet them with a "Ciao, Lorenzo" or "Ciao, Rolando."<br />
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I hope you've enjoyed my brief tour of compiled and observed Italian rules. I will be honest when I say, I am stressed when I am not in the know about local culture beyond the most superficial of information, and I find it exhilarating and entertaining when I am learning, so I am happy to pass along my experiential knowledge.Th'Italian Sassenachhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01135866794196036425noreply@blogger.com3