Back to . . . Italy!

O! O! The adventures I'm having! I've been seeking out the stranger quarters, as usual, by my extraordinary but still incomprehensible "gift". I'm not sure about the roots of my gift, but I've identified several possible sources of my unusual ability to find, in any collection of people, the crazies: subconcious intention, an internal wierdo magnet, or - aha! - magic. Regardless, I am, much like the sister in the awesome photo I copied today at the National Museum of the Mountain in Torino, having one heck of a time. Getting to know the Crazies is an involved undertaking, and my internet access, following suit with the rest of my life, is often more than a bit unpredictable. Hence: You'll have to grab me with a crampon - or, now that I think more about it, a glass of wine and a piece of dark chocolate would be much more effective tools - and I'll gladly story you up. I'll have more time to color in the shadows, that way, too. For now, a children's picture book about my last few weeks:

After the chateau in theLes Audes, France, I went to work on a git (a type of rural B&B) in the Alps, still in France, still part of WWOOF. They advertised for help in their organic garden, preparing organic meals for guests, and setting up a system of solar panel. After using my fantasy-to-reality translator, which only works on location, I discovered that a better translation of this would be: washing dishes. Essentially, I just washed dishes. Hours and hours and hours of dishes. Nothing against dishes, really: in fact, it's a chore I could even say I kind of like. But I already know how to wash dishes . . . it's the organic farming and the solar panels I was hoping to learn about. Here's my valley, near Briancon, France:

Anyway, I took advantage of the situation and hiked all around the area. It was beautiful!

I also did a lot of hiking because the family had three demon-children, and I did everything I could to avoid being in the crazy house. I think flowers and mountains and walking are much nicer than demon-children. And, adding to my obsession, I discovered that a branch of the Camino de Santiago passes right by the gite doorstep! So I had to follow it . . .

Also, I'd become obsessed with doing a Via Ferrata. They're kind of like JV rock climbs: they can be really challenging, but they don't have to be. There are iron spikes and handgrips already in the rocks, and the site rents you equipment, so you can basically just show-up-and-go . . . from there, you can make it as hard or easy as you like. (You know which way I chose.) This also turned into a crazy adventure: I was exactly halfway up a 500-foot sheer rock wall when the weather suddenly changed. A storm came, a storm with hurricane-force winds and pelting sideways monsoon-like rain. I had no choice but to go down . . . or up . . . so I went up . . . ! It felt like a real adventure, anyway. Also, I dig the helmet, and am thinking about replacing my bike helmet with a Via Ferrata model:

The Crazies started to make me a little too crazy, so I bailed out of France and into Italy. I made it to Turin, where I'm staying with Silvana, an amazing woman I linked up with through Hospitality Club. She's an incredible host and even took me to Eataly (also an extraordinary place, worth checking out the website) for a Welcome-Back-to-Italy pizza:

Choose-Your-Own-Adventure

So: I’m WWOOFing in France. (It’s a long story, but the short of it is: I got fired from my sweet bike job. So I decided to turn it into a positive and learn French!) I’ve spent the last few weeks on a chateau / wine estate / garden / B&B / restaurant in Le Aude, a beautiful but atrociously hot, fly-ridden part of Southern France. It’s kind of near Barcelona, Spain – that’s probably the easiest way to describe it. My “estate”, La Sabine, makes reds, whites, and roses – I like the whites the best – and they host dinner-concerts on their patio every Thursday night. I’ve been disappointed in the experience in that I haven’t really learned what I hoped to learn – about wine, about organic agricultural production, about restaurants – but I have a learned a lot of other things - about business and entrepreneurship and toilets and psychiatriac problems -, progressed with French to the point where I think it’s now fair to say that I “speak some French”, and seen an area of France that seems a little off the foreigner-beaten track.

My favorite experience so far was my hitchhiking-trekking-and-camping adventure last weekend. This was an adventure of the choose-your-own variety with a turn-to-page-X option every five minutes. It took me 14 different pick-ups to get to the Peyrepetuse Castle and back, and along the way I met, amongst others, a dealer of “strange African paintings”, a Belgian cyclist, a Brasilian musician, a stoner-cum-boat-builder, a stoner-cum-raver, and a couple of stoner-cum-Rastafarians. My most interesting ride, however, came from an 82- (“and-a-half”) year old man from the area. I could understand this guy easier than lots of other people, believe it or not, because he spoke a local dialect that seemed closer to Spanish than to French. He went on and on and on about the oak trees. There are white oaks and green oaks. Green oaks and white oaks. Look! There are some there! And there! And there! (We were driving through a forest.) The man was obsessed with oak trees.

It turns out that the man was obsessed with oak trees because oak trees have acorns, and acorns are what the wild boars eat, and this man, at the age of 82 (and-a-half) continues to hunt wild boars. In fact, last year he caught a wild boar that was 130 kg – about 280 pounds, or three mes!

This is important because it helped me to “identify” some of the “night sounds” that graced my camping-in-the-wild experience that night. I have, admittedly, no training in identifying wild boars. But I am absolutely convinced that the snorting not at all so far from my tent was – yes – a wild boar (and probably one that weighed 130 kg, too). Though I’m not usually one given over to fear, I will admit that I was terrified for most of the night, motivated to pursue an early-morning 6 AM departure, and even more motivated, at 5:55, to forget the rest of my PowerBar and skedaddle, right through the blackberry briars and garrigue scrubland, to someplace far, far away from where I had camped.

On the plus side, I saw a beautiful sunrise over Peyrepetuse Castle, hiked a good bit of the long-distance Cathard Way, soaked my feet at the gorges of Galamus, met some interesting people along the way, and at least temporarily sated my taste for adventure.

Here are a few photos.

Tim Moore Fan Club

I just finished an awesome book, French Revolutions: Cycling the Tour de France. Author Tim Moore is a (purportedly) unathletic Brit who decides to cycle the Tour de France route. Being unathletic, British, and riotously sardonic, Moore naturally transforms his tour into one long misadventure. This is the same guy that walked the Camino de Santiago with an ass, and there too basically went looking for crazy things to happen. What he does is pretty amusing to begin with, but what he thinks about it (and what he thinks about in general) and how he says it are just wickedly funny. If I had to choose a writer-model, this would be the guy. Anyway, he’s too good to not tell you about. Here are a few of his lines that made me smile . . .

. . . Attracted perhaps by my attempt to encapsulate the works of Heronymous Bosch in a single sound, and perhaps by leaking ceiling, the proprietress had seen fit to enter my room at a moment which coincided unhappily with my wild, humid egress from the cubicle [shower].

. . . And though cycling might be the national sport of France, from what I saw that day strimming [weed-whacking] runs it a close second. Every garden and field buzzed with Canutean attempts to hold back the green tide, to keep the undergrowth from overgrowing. I even saw a couple of leather-faced fellers with scythes, which was pleasingly traditional. Death must be dreading the day when they upgrade him with a strimmer.

. . . I put the hammer down but it bounced back and smacked me in the teeth.

And also literarily pleasing but of primarily – ah . . . – “cultural” interest, Moore also makes me laugh with what he has to say about my adopted countrymates. If I were in sophisticated company and trying to be supremely diplomatic, I think I might respond to these comments with an “I can appreciate what you’re saying, Tim. More wine?” Actually, if I were in sophisticated company, I probably wouldn’t be discussing Tim Moore, and if I were somehow discussing Tim Moore, I’m quite certain I wouldn’t proffer these examples, but I think it would be cool if one could, in “sophisticated company,” discuss Tim Moore, as well as politics, sex, and religion. Furniture upholstery and regional weather peculiarities only take me so far. In any case:

. . . [He was sick to his stomach and uncomfortable all night:] As dawn prodded at the curtains I was still writhing and groaning like an ankle-tapped Italian footballer . . .

. . . They’ve never needed a Seventies revival in Italy: along with fare-dodging, drink-driving, and sexual molestation, littering is just another in the nation’s impressive roll-call of lingering period pastimes.

. . . Simon O’Brien had been at Nick and Jan’s place in the Pyrenees the night before the Tour passed their front door in 1997, and offered a stark warning of what can happen when you’re out there in the dark with a paintbrush, how your intended ALLEZ CHRIS can find itself evolving into an EVERTON FOOTBALL CLUB or a FUCK THE MANCS. The Italians, however, sated these unseemly urges in a more appropriately artistic manner. Their preferred icon was the erect penis, sometimes as an incidental prop in a scene depicting unpopular riders eagerly fellating or sodomising one another, but more commonly as a stand-alone icon, a vast, scarlet-frenumed, wispy-scrotumed deity solemnly spanning both sides of the carriageway.

And a final passage, which I think summarizes my current perspective perfectly, and explains why I am reasonably happy cleaning toilets for no money in France:

. . . Actually there was something else. Wheeling ZR [his bike] back out through the Holiday Inn’s automatic doors and into the misty sun I’d seen a roomful of sales-conference delegates staring bleakly into their Styrofoam cups as a bald man drew pie charts on an overhead projector; one of them turned to me as I cleated up and as our eyes met we both understood an important truth: however wretched my day might be, even if it meant going back to Belfort [254 km] and back, his was going to be far worse.

I think that says it! Rock trumps scissors, scissors trump paper, paper trumps rock, and toilets trump cubicles every time you play.

2008

Two thousand eight is a great year, in my opinion: Not only is it the International Year of the Potato, it's also the International Year of Languages.

Did you know . . .

. . . That there are over 1200 varieties of potatoes cultivated in the "potato park" at the International Potato Center in the Peruvian Andes!?

. . . That, of the 6700 languages in existence, about 50% are considered "in danger of disappearing," and that, in fact, one language does disappear every two weeks?

Thus, tomorrow I am going to eat a pomme de terre and study francais. (Not to be confused with eating french fries.)

The French Villa

The last month has been a blur for me. (But not for you, since I haven't written anything at all, so you're welcome for sparing you that slightly "twanged" feel I'm sure my Ashe-slant writing imposes, and sorry for not assuring you that I haven't, in fact, been kidnapped, though that's an apology you'll probably have to pass along since the kidnap-worriers are precisely the same subgroup as the non-computer-users. Anway, moving forward . . .) I finished up my last papers in Bologna. Packed up my apartment. Said goodbye-for-the-summer (isn't that a cottage song?) to everyone I knew. Flew to Salt Lake City (where they lost my bags). Did training in the Salt Lake City office of my new favorite company, Backroads (http://www.backroads.com/) - learned how to repair bikes, drive a trailer, and handle tricky customer service "challenges". I was so impressed - the training program, the trainers, and the leader-focus of the company just knocked my new bicycle-style socks (but not my new bike shorts, because they're spandex with a tight padded butt and thus remained firmly in place) off. And then, and then . . .

Went on a mock trip to Southern Utah - Bryce and Zion National Parks. This was awesome, and also holy-shite-level hot. On the awesome amazing side, it was beautiful. I slept my first night on the bank of a desert river. (Actually, as one of my co-leaders pointed out, it's not actually a desert. But it's sandy and sand-colored and cloudless and little-red-horned-guys-with-pokers hot, so I think the label is perfectly, though not scientifically - how do you like that one!? - justified, and I'm going to continue using it.) Since it was - yep - hot - I went tent-less and lay in my sleeping bag listening to the running water, peeking at the moon and the stars, and feeling impressed, even in my slumber, by the red sandstone cliff in front of me. With my training group, I made lots of fancy picnic lunches, did some public speaking exercises, went on some hikes and bike rides . . . and ate food prepared by camp chefs that you'd never in a million years guess didn't come out of a professional kitchen, enjoyed the company of my awesome co-leaders (at least most of the time - the too-many-leaders-in-one-campsite virus definitely unleashed a few strains of hyper-competitiveness), and learned a ton. It was really awesome. And then . . .

Got my summer assignment: Family Camping Trips in Southern Utah. Yep. While the Canyons were spectactularly beautiful, and I'm spectacularly in love with Backroads, I was less than thrilled with the assignment. It's all about the match, kind of like choosing a college, and looking at the three principal elements of the trips - "Family", "Camping", and "Desert" - none of them really got me going, especially since I really believed I was heading back to Italy to do trips that essentially focused on biking and gastronomy. But a miraculous intervention occurred, and . . . I write to you now from a villa in France! My scheduled changed at the last minute, and I'm now kind of an "all-Europe back-up." I'm stationed in the Leader House - although I prefer to refer to it, according to my mood, as either the "Villa" or the "Chateau" - in Provence, and I'm scheduled to do a trailer drive to the Czech Republic and to be on-call as a replacement leader for any last-minute leader injuries or the like. (And I guess they almost always use these on-call people, so - for me - that's great.)

Not bad, eh! (My two housemates right now are Canadian. I haven't yet heard any ehs flying around, though. I think it would be an interesting study to quantify eh usage per province. These guys are from Montreal.)

A picture game

I went to Terra Futura in Firenze last weekend. It was a conference on "sustainability" from all different perspectives. I learned about electric cars; indulged a vegan by letting her evangelize me for a while . . . and then had a little fun asking questions she couldn't quite answer; tried almond milk; saw an awesome concert in Piazza della Signoria; and saw a great film called "Merica". There's so much I "want to tell", but I'm disciplining myself until I finish all these research projects!

So, I leave you with these pictures. First, anyone who can tell me why I took these two shots wins a prize:



And second, I think I've told you about the Italian obsession with enormous fashion handbags. This isn't the most gigantic or the most fashionable bag I've seen, but I think the carrier-plus-fashion composite score rates rather highly:

A few of my favorite things

Possibly my favorite thing about living in Italy is the market. I love going to the market! In Bologna, the "Mercato delle Erbe" is a ten-minute walk from my house, it's open every day but Sunday, and they sell everything I need. The central area is filled with "beautiful" (and mostly expensive) fruit, and the side wings offer in-season produce, often local, at good prices. I'm a side-wing shopper, myself. My bread man Pietro and my vegetable man Luca take care of me.

Every day I have a delicious salad of spinach (I like the stems the best), fennel, tomatoes, and now I'm adding cucumbers. Luca tells me that the spinach season is finishing up, though, so I'm going to have to move on to another green. He's suggested chard.

Oranges are about a dollar a kilo, and I have one or two every day. The south of Italy is filled with oranges, so they're always available and always delicious. My favorites are the Sicilian tarocchi; they're red inside, and I think we call them blood oranges.

Here's another photo related to the market. It's Pietro, the Bread Man, who also plays in an African drum band. He told me about the Festival of Soup a few weeks back. I went, bringing with me, as instructed, a spoon and a cup, and I must have tasted a few dozen different soups! My favorites was a peanut soup from Bolivia.

The Movie Series Begins. I hope.

I know I’ve mentioned this before, but it’s worth repeating: The Bologna Cineteca is awesome. It’s basically a movie theater that screens films in a “meaningful” way. Lots of the films are themselves “meaningful” – in the sense that they’re not Die Hard 37 – but the Cineteca also makes them more meaningful by making them into series (“Focus on Argentina”), staging lectures related to the films, and inviting the directors to present the films and field questions. Best of all, they host film festivals, and the most recent was Slow Food on Film.

One of my classmates hooked us all up with “credentials,” which let us see as many films as we wanted for free. It also gave us a lanyard with a nametag, which is almost like a membership card, and you all know by now how important membership cards are. So the credentials were great on both counts. I saw a few awesome feature-length films and a bunch of documentaries and shorts. (I’m a short fanatic, if you didn’t know.) I learned a ton – you could become a semi-expert in food just by going to the festival – and I have to say that the quality of the filmmaking really impressed me. Definitely the best film fest I’ve been to. In any case, I saw a few films that are definitely worth seeking out, and – if I can manage to follow through on the idea – I thought I’d introduce you to a few of them in the next few blog posts.

The first one is King Corn. Two guys graduate from college, discover in a hair test that they’re basically “made of corn,” and move to Iowa to farm an acre of “King Corn”. In the process, they discover all kinds of absurdities and abuses that pervade the American food system (and – really – American food). Definitely worth a look, and I’ll bet you can even find it at the library.

In other news, I made octopus for the first time tonight. I’m crazy for it, I told you, but this is the first time I’ve actually made. It comes frozen, and I bet you can find it at Wegmans if you want. If you buy it frozen, it already comes de-eyed, so you just have to plop it in a pot with a little garlic, white wine, lemon juice, and just a touch of water, and it’ll take care of itself.

So, my recommendation for tonight: A trip to Wegmans, a trip to Blockbuster, octopus, and King Corn.

Chestnuts and Cannibals, oh my!

I apologize for the lag in entries. I’m up to my eyeballs in schoolwork. It’s awesome, though. I just love what I’m working on. I have five final papers due by the end of the month. I think I’ve just about finished three of them and have two more to go. Want to hear what I’ve been studying?

The first project I finished was on the chestnut. I’ve been working on that one for a while. Go ahead, try me, ask me anything about the chestnut! I now know for sure that the horse chestnut (which I tried to roast and eat the last time I came back from Europe) is definitely NOT related to the chestnut and it is definitely NOT edible! All of the real American chestnut trees got wiped out by a fungus in the first half of the last century, and – this is incredible, to me – its pathogenic spores are still floating around out there and the American chestnut still cannot grow successfully in North America. There is, thank heavens, The American Chestnut Foundation, which is doing its darnedest to bring ol’ Chester back to life. Seriously, they call the Castanea dentata “Chester” on their website.

Then I finished up a research into cannibalism. One interesting finding I had was that, in Medieval Europe, even though there weren’t practicing cannibals, per se, there were a few interesting cannibalistic “trends”. Yeah, how do you like that? Today it’s tight black pants and tomorrow it’s cannibalism. Go figure. Anyway, there were a handful of popular uprisings – the price of bread was too high, or they imposed a new tax, or whatever filled the Text-Message-to-the-Editor column in the Ye Old Town Crier of 1385 – in which the townspeople took to capturing the scapegoat politician, whacking him, sticking his head on a pole, and then eating his intestines. And then, there were some edgy docs who started prescribing human blood as a curative for all kinds of health problems. Most of the time they got the human blood from criminals who had been hanged or decapitated, and a whole chain of “mummy shops” opened up in the big cities to meet the growing demand. (I’ll bet there was a pyramid scheme/scam and everything.)

Then I had to analyze a piece of art. Most people stick with sensible genres like Last Suppers and Madonnas eating pears and things like that. Horrified by the prospect of seeming normal, I stuck with my cannibal theme and instead analyzed this picture:

Next up, I have a bibliography project I’m doing on sustainable agriculture, and – this is what I’m really excited about – my paper for “Anthropology and Food.” I talked with my prof, and he supported my idea: I’m basically going to do a “field study” regarding the differences I pick up between the food cultures of the United States and Italy. Now that gets me going!

Did I tell you that I'm taking a painting class? I figured that, since I'm in Italy, I should stage my own Renaissance. I finally finished my first painting, a copy of Caravaggio's San Giovanni Battista. (Some people have argued that, because of its strong sensuality, it's not actually St. John the Baptist, but rather Isaac or even Bacchus.) Although I expect it will demand great concentration and discernment, try to tell which is the original :)

A Week of Firsts

I had a bunch of “firsts” this week . . .

On Sunday I ran my first half-marathon. I liked it. Tough, though: It was, effectively, 12 km UP the mountain, and then 9 km DOWN the mountain! It was beautiful: I could see snow-capped peaks in the distance and river valleys below. I did pretty well, won some cheese, and some guy gave me a salami.

On Monday I cooked my first risotto. It’s basically rice, but – at least if you make it well – there are three things that elevate it to all-star status in my book. First, it gets a lot of flavor from whatever vegetables you use. You sauté the vegetables – lots of ‘em – at the beginning, and they create a good broth. (At least, that’s what I do. The Italians do whatever they can to make it unhealthy. Butter. Pig fat. Probably some disgusting fatty meat product if it’s on hand. Which it always is.) Second, you use arborio rice, which is very starchy and kind of disintegrates a bit when you cook it. That gives the risotto a “creamy” texture. And the third thing is that instead of putting all the water (or broth, or wine, or whatever you’re using as liquid) at once, you “give the rice only what it needs,” adding the liquid little by little and stirring regularly. On Monday I made a zucchini risotto, and I liked it so much that I made another risotto yesterday – this time with mushrooms. Next on my list: risotto with butternut squash!

And on Tuesday I gutted my first fish. Yeah, it was pretty gross. I need to wander over to Google videos to figure out what all that stuff in there was. In any case, I figured that if I’m going to be a good cook, I better start gutting fish. The experiment turned out well. After gutting the fish, I filled its belly with the top parts of a fennel stalk, a little salt, and a little lemon juice, wrapped it in foil, and put it in the oven. I’ll definitely repeat.

And, not related at all to my week of firsts, here’s a photo I shot in Piazza Maggiore. I love this pic. Check out the way Cop #2’s cap is tilted – straight out of a ‘50s TV series!

Made in Italy

The Italians have good food. No question, right? But I’m getting a little tired of the “Made in the Italy” arrogance. Yesterday and today I’ve had a series of amusing moments all centered on the same theme: “In Italy, we eat well. And definitely better than you.”

Last night, I went to an Italian farmhouse for a contadino meal. It was lots of fun: they roasted meat on a grate in the fireplace, and the wine flowed freely. I knew they’d try to make me eat all kinds of fatty meats, and – all right, that’s what I expected, I wanted to sample them, and then basta! (Enough!) Really, I wanted to taste them, and a taste is all I needed. But it’s definitely not all the Italians need.

The entire meal consisted of fatty meats. First course, cured meats: Ciccioli, coppa di testa, salsiccia curata, salame. Second course, cooked meats: salsiccia mata, salsiccia fresca, pancetta, ribs, and I’m probably leaving something out. The pig is 95% useable, and, believe me – they use it. In any case, there were – I’m counting – at the very least eight different kinds of fatty meats. As I said, a bite works for me. But everyone else there, including women and children, devoured entire plates of the “appetizers,” ate a full piece of each of the cooked meats, and then asked for “seconds”! (Or would it be “ninths”?) Incredible! And disgusting, in my opinion. But, amazingly enough, and perhaps assisted by Bacchus in my noble quest for tolerance and open-mindedness, I wasn’t feeling judgmental last night. If they want to eat a diet consisting entirely of saturated fat, great, go for it. (Just as long as they don’t make me do it!)

That is, until the entire conversation turned into the usual pedagogy about how Italian food is so much superior to American food and hence Italians are so much superior to Americans. (Note the P-implies-Q causality: food is so important here that it really is a “hence.”) I figured – ho! – that, at least this time (this is a conversation that I have – or that people have on me, really, every day) they’d launch the battle on the gourmandize front. But no! In fact, we moved quickly to the health front, and the entire room agreed that the “Healthy Mediterranean Diet,” (“consisting largely of fruits, vegetables, and pasta”), shamed what Americans eat every day, which is, obviously, three meals consisting exclusively of McDonald’s hamburgers. They also said, in these exact words, “Now, you seem very thin, but all the rest of Americans are obese. Right?” I repeat: I was the only person in the room who wasn’t at least 40 pounds overweight!

No one – except for me, and I was content to amuse myself, again with Bacco’s help, by having a director’s-version conversation inside my head – seemed to note the riotous irony of the situation: A roomful of fat, slow-moving Italians devouring five pounds each of the fattiest meats you could ever find were expounding on the superior health characteristics of their diet.

That reminds me that, also yesterday, when I was at the market, the man in front of me bought two kilos of oranges. Great, good for him! Then he started to make conversation with the fruit man. “I have a ‘subscription,’” he said. “Six oranges a day. Three in the morning, and three after dinner.” I really am not being critical of this practice: six oranges a day, way to go! I just use it to illustrate the fact that nothing here is done in moderation: if you’re going to eat oranges, you’re not going to eat an orange, you’re going to eat six. And besides, from the looks of the guy, I think he also had a “subscription” to cookies.

Then today I read an article in a running magazine that included this exact phrase: “A healthy diet should include lean meats (such as Prosciutto di Parma, DOP) . . .” If prosciutto is lean, I’d really like to know what fits into the fatty category. Apparently, though, if you know where it comes from (that’s the DOP label), it’s all of sudden perfectly healthy? It’s kind of like that other theory some people have: if you bake a cake, and eat the entire thing, but in small bites right from the cake pan, and never actually take a piece on a separate plate, it’s actually the same as not eating it.

And then, also today, I heard a radio advertisement featuring a famous soccer player. “Your health is too serious to play with. That’s why I feed my team a healthy breakfast every morning: fresh milk, in-season fruit, bread, and Nutella.” If you’re not familiar with Nutella, it’s like chocolate peanut butter; its ingredients, in order of appearance, are “sugar, peanut oil, hazelnuts, cocoa, skim milk, and a bunch of chemicals.” I agree that fresh milk and fruit do constitute part of a healthy breakfast, but would anyone ever consider it ethical to advertise, say, cheesecake, as a healthy snack because you serve it with two raspberries on top?

And then I read another publication, a health booklet published by the Italian Association of Dietetics and Nutrition, and I found the standard “health pyramid.” But wait a minute! The health pyramid isn’t actually standard. This was the “Italian Food Pyramid,” labeled just like that. In this health pyramid, they actually include cookies in the same (recommended) category as pasta, rice, bread, and potatoes. They don’t make any distinction between whole grain and refined-grain products, probably because whole grain products don’t exist here. And, also notably, “Oils and Fats” are more highly recommendable than “Milk and Yogurt.” I can’t be the only person who thinks such a recommendation is absurd. I’m a pretty big fan of the scientific method; is laboratory science in Italy considerably different than that in the United States, or do they just not pay any attention to it? I’m going with the latter, especially since I’ve given up discussing the improbability that, for example, not drying my hair will give me a permanent neck ailment, or that not wearing a scarf will translate directly into a soar throat. In any case, I haven’t seen any studies lately that say, “You know, you should really think about eliminating skim milk from your diet. How about some lard instead? Oh, and . . . yep, here’s another problem. Doesn’t look like you’re getting enough cookies.”

I’m not saying that the Italians shouldn’t eat like crap. If that's what gets them going – and does it ever! – right on, they should go all out. But I am saying that they should look at themselves a bit more objectively, and that they should somersault right off that high horse they’re riding.

How I Became Italian

Saturday I took a major step in becoming Italian: I stopped playing fair, thought only about myself, broke the rules, and got what I wanted. I ran in the middle of the street and didn’t worry that I was pissing off the car behind me. I cut in line – in major fashion – at the film festival, elbowed my way to the front, and got one of the last tickets. And, best of all, I brought a plastic bag with me to the movies and rustled it as much as I could.

In fact, I think I’m going to repeat these activities intentionally next weekend, so as to reinforce the Italianization process. It’s still not quite natural for me: I’m starting to be rude and self-important (though still not fashionable), but I still feel guilty about it. I’m thinking that if I keep up the effort, though, I’ll be able act entirely without thinking about anyone else, with entire self-absorption, and with no Catholic guilt!

Sarcasm aside – ha! had you there! It’s almost back. – I have to go back in time a little to get back to today.

The Cineteca of Bologna is an awesome institution, and it’s always doing cool film series and hosting film festivals. (It’s the best. Every city should have a Cineteca!) Right now is the Human Rights Film Festival, and I’m trying to catch as many films as I can. I think there’s something wrong about the Human Rights Film Festival being the catalyst and place of my conversion to self-centered rudeness, but there you have it.

I went to a film the other night with my friend. Naturally, there was a line a half hour long, not because there were so many people, but because, despite the prestige and international character of the event, it was taking place in Italy and therefore had to impose a disorganization, and lines. There was a single person issuing tickets, and, this is great: You needed to buy not only a ticket for the film, but also a membership card – I told you, they’re huge! – to the Cineteca, which, interestingly, doesn’t ordinarily require a membership card. But not only that! You had to choose which type of membership card you wanted, and then determine whether you qualified for one of the discounts: Student? Member of the Food Coop? Patron of UniCredit Bank? And so on. So every single person in line got to the front, squinted at a full page of 8-point pica print describing the various membership options, and, after half an hour, stumbled away with his ticket (and brand new membership card). So then everyone got into the theater, the event started half an hour late, and the director introduced the film. They started the film, and, then – fifteen minutes later – realized that – whoops! – it’s the wrong film! (How do you get fifteen minutes into a film which the director has just introduced without realizing it’s the wrong film?) Ok, it can happen. Maybe. They stopped the film, and two of the festival directors went to the front to say, “Sorry. Wrong film.” And this was great, just classic: one director did that thing where you kind of shrug your shoulders, flop your arms out to the side, cock your head, and scrunch up half of your face, and she said, “So . . . do you guys want to continue with this film, or should we change to the scheduled film?” The 200 people in the audience were (surprisingly?) not of one mind or voice, and so the other guy repeated the question. People in the audience started shouting . . . This one! That one! Then they started negotiating: “If we play the one that’s supposed to run tomorrow today, can we play the one that’s supposed to run today tomorrow?” Just imagine if you went to the Regal to see Top Gun, and the cinema people told you, “Oh, sorry. Turns out we actually played Top Gun yesterday. Today . . . let’s see . . . yep. We’ve replaced it with Brer Rabbit and the Briar Patch. Another great film!” Actually, if the equivalent holds, it would be a beautiful, stylish, 25-year-old girl or guy telling you this, and you’d probably obediently buy a (supersized) popcorn with extra butter and settle down to an evening of Disney enjoyment. But that’s not the point. I went with an Italian friend, and his analysis of the situation was right on target: “Only in Italy! I guess this could happen anywhere. You put on the wrong film. Ok, it might happen. But only in Italy would we consult the audience and say, ‘Shoot. What do you think we should do now?’”

All this is to point out several key characteristics of Italian living: Organization is always horrendous, you always need a membership card, there will always be a line, and the people around you will always look tremendous.

Back to today, finally. It was a fantastic, full of great things. That’s the thing: It’s disorganized and there’s a line – but if you can parse your way through the disorganization and work your way to the front of the line, Italy is fantastic. The first thing I did today was attend a program at the Archeological Museum about the alimentary habits of the Etruscans, which was, naturally, followed by a tasting. (Which, also naturally, involved a long line. I’m becoming very literate: I’ve learned never to go anywhere without a book.)

The lecture was awesome, but almost as impressive was the concentration of the Rude Fashionable Old Italian Ladies. It was like an RFOIL convention. If you’re at all attentive, you can spot an RFOIL ahead of time based on visual clues, but I wasn’t so attentive upon my arrival and hence had chosen a seat located in a zone of particularly high RFOIL concentration. I knew this several minutes into the lecture when my (fairly low) aural skills started to pick up on a crinkling, which soon escalated to levels you might find in, say, a plastic bag factory. (I assume they make plastic bags in a plastic bag factory? I’ve never really thought about it before.)

The RFOIL is an Italian institution, and, as I said, she’s easy to spot. She’s an over-65, but she’s made-up to seem, say, “dating age.” This always includes pointed, high-heeled shoes, a fashion scarf, lots of makeup, and – the giveaway – an enormous fashion handbag. I use the word handbag, even though I’m not from New England, because the size of this “accessory” disqualifies it on a purely philological level from inclusion in the purse category. I want to make friends with an RFOIL so I can see what on earth goes into these handbags. As best I can tell, there are just layers and layers of plastic bags. Maybe these ladies are all on their way to the recycling center.

Of course, it’s not really just plastic bags: I know there are also a few other items. A cell phone, for example, which is never turned off, and which is programmed to sound in the middle of the concert. A few other wallets. For example, one might be for cash bills, another for coins, and another for ID cards. All together, they’re kind of like a matrioska doll. This means that, if you are at the supermarket, in line – after waiting a half hour, naturally – you will arrive at the front, and the old lady one person ahead of you will take the ol’ digging-in-the-purse-for-the-exact-change routine to a whole new level. She’ll get to the front. Wait for the cashier to tell her the bill. Surpise! Time to pay! (Oh!? Now?) She’ll dig in the handbag to find the change purse. Open it up, dig around . . . oh, no! Silly me, that’s the ID card purse. Dig around in the giant black-hole handbag some more. Pull out the wallet-purse. Dig around in the wallet-purse to pull out the (even smaller) change purse. And then dig around to find eighty-seven euro-cents, exactly.

Right, so I know there’s a cell phone and a series of purses-within-purses. There is also a supply of hard candy, all packaged in a complex telescoping (like the purses) plastic wrappers. This is how you find an RFOIL in public: You listen for the plastic wrappers. If you’re worried that your sense of hearing isn’t especially keen, or that you’ll “miss the moment” while distracted: Don’t. You can’t miss it. Once unleashed, the RFOIL will dig through her purse for the entire performance. First for the cell phone (because it’s going off right now, and playing Like a Virgin). Then for the change purse. And finally for the plastic wrapper. I mean the candy. No, on second thought, I think it actually is the plastic wrapper she’s going for. Wrap. Unwrap. Wrap. Unwrap. Deposit in purse once again. Man, does she ever get a lot of use out of that wrapper. Then she’ll decide she wants another piece of hard candy, and... . Repeat. For the entire performance, no kidding. And remember: the entire handbag is padded with plastic bags! Whoo!!! Plastic!!!

In case you’re wondering, Younger people usually skip the plastic wrappers and select from the multiple choice of other disrespectful lecture/concert/cinema behaviors, the two preferred choices being (1) talking through the entire performance, to oneself, if necessary; and (2) making out, noisily, through the entire performance.

So: Great program at the archeological museum. But lots of stupid RFOILs with plastic wrappers.

Which, finally, brings me back to the film festival. I wanted to see two consecutive films, and I figured – ah! There I go again – that I’d buy both tickets at one time. Nope. Turns out that you can buy tickets beginning only 30 minutes before the performance starts. (This is to encourage lines.) So I went to see the first film, which, naturally, started, and hence also finished, 20 minutes late. I went to get the next ticket, and, not surprisingly, there was a line that was about half an hour long.

And that’s when I became Italian! I decided that the line didn’t apply to me. An every-man-for-himself fury swept over me, I furrowed my eyebrows, and began the mission to GET WHAT I WANTED. My first effort, a bit too reasonable, was to approach a theater worker and explain that, since I was participating in the festival by attending the 6:15 screening, it was hence impossible for me to get in line early to buy a ticket for the 8:30 show, and that this didn’t make any sense and would in fact discourage people from attending the lesser-known films, and that hence she should give me a ticket without making me wait in line. (This was true, and entirely reasonable, but still, I felt downright sneaky.) She agreed that my dilemma was absurd, and that they should come up with a better system, but, “I can’t do anything, this time. Sorry.” But, no problem! I didn’t let that stop me. I’m Italian now! I scanned the crowd, found a young guy, joked around a little bit, and . . . basically inserted myself into the line right there. Which was the the front.

About 200 people got left in line. I got one of the last tickets. And that’s how I became Italian.

What happened to the sausage?

I'm trying my best to keep the Jack Handys coming, but I'm a little pressed for time. Wine tastings, film festivals . . . it's a busy life :) Plus I'm working on a bunch of research projects right now: one on chestnuts, one on sustainable agriculture, and one on - ! - cannibalism. They're all really interesting, and I love working on them. I can't believe I have to chance to study this stuff. (I was just about to comment about about how this probably means I'm meant for an academic career. But I don't think they allow the terms "Jack Handy," "stuff," or ":)" in the International Journal of Anthropology. So . . . I'll pocket that comment for now, I think.)

Anyway, the power of food: Here we are: Fabrizio and Paola, language exchange partners and Bolognese Bolognese; Marta and Giulia, two students who live downstairs, from Umbria, near St. Franny's haunts (whoops! academic journal foul!); Christian, lawyer, tour guide, socialite, also Bolognese; and me (create-your-own-identification). We had a fun dinner together, and talked about religion, politics, and sex.

We also ate that sausage.

I know you were wondering what happened to it.

The Parmesan cheese is still in the frig.

Eat Chestnuts!

I've been using my camera more lately, and it occurred to me today that I could use it to get around one of Italy's Big Inconveniences. Here's how:

The copisterie - the copy shops - are a huge scam. I really should go out and buy an HP printer-copier-scanner and make some bucks myself. A copy is usually five euro-cents, which seems reasonable. Unless you're copying any part of a book, in which case there's a five-to-ten euro-cent per-page surcharge. I realize that it's not ethical to copy a book, but it seems to me that there's a huge difference between copying Figure 15.14 on page 233 of the book and copying the book, and that the first doesn't come anywhere near warranting a twice-the-price surcharge. (Overpriced copiers are also, for convenience, located in the libraries. From which it's quite often prohibited to borrow books.) If you want to do anything in color, it's at least a euro. And this is the winner: To scan a document into the computer: 1 euro per page. To review: Paper use: zero. Ink use: zero. Energy use: minimal. Cost: 1 euro. It's absurd. Also, you're not allowed to make your own copies. The trained copy expert must exercise his or her extraordinary skill (Paper? Check. Index finger? Check.) and make the copy for you. Which, of course, means that you must wait in line, since there's a maximum of one employee in any copy shop, and the person in front of you will want to make six copies of his doctoral thesis.

I’m doing some research now on the chestnut. It’s awesome. I joked that I was going to do my master’s thesis on the chestnut, but maybe it wasn’t a joke. It’s really interesting! Did you know that 70% of the world’s chestnut production takes place in China? Actually, I have another idea I’m fixed on for my thesis now: Something having to do with the hallucigenic use of food in traditional religions. Wouldn’t that be cool? And maybe an excuse for some hands-on research. Of the traveling type. Of the physical traveling type. :)

Here’s a quick video I took the other day. It’s Piazza Maggiore in Bologna, about five minutes from house, where they had a soccer tournament there last weekend.

Unemployment: The Upside

The Italian unemployment rate is around 6%, which is much lower than I would’ve thought, for all the complaining about it that I hear. So I did a little further research, and it turns out that they’re right: the official number isn’t very telling. The 6% figure masks a rapidly growing migrant/immigrant workforce, a growth in part-time workers, a huge divide between the industrial North and the largely unemployed South, and a huge growth in fixed-term contracts (which, along with immigrant-bashing, is everyone’s favorite conversational sport). But from my outsider perspective, I’d say that Italy needs a high unemployment rate. And not for the traditional “ideal unemployment rate” reasoning. Here, there’s a different reason: Someone in every family must be available to wait in lines. “Waiting in Lines” and “Playing Bureaucracy”, is effectively, a job. Two, in fact; though developing skills in one or the other can prepare a beginner for successful careers in both.

Seriously, the amount of time you have to waste here to do anything can get really frustrating. For example, I recently learned that, for the upcoming elections, Italians must return to their home provinces to vote. Mail-in or internet balloting? Ha! Well, that’s not an entirely accurate criticism: If you are incarcerated in a province other than your own, you may vote in the province of your incarceration. If you are working in a province other than your own, or, God forbid, studying overseas, however, you must return home to vote. Seriously, I met a girl yesterday who flew back to Italy from her university in Spain so that she could cast a ballot.

If you need to make a payment to the university? Online payment? Check? Credit card? Ha! Go to the bank with a wad of cash. Wait in line.

And here’s a fun one: Want to take out a book from the library? Ho-ho. Grab a seat. If I had one wish for the Italian university system, it would be a well-functioning library system. As it lies, here’s how it works. There are maybe fifty or a hundred different university and municipal libraries, each with its own set of rules and practices. Need five books? You’ll most like likely need to visit five different libraries and Play the Game at each one. Maybe you need a special card to use a certain library; maybe not. Just to enter, you’ll need to leave your backpack in a locker outside so that you don’t steal any books. (Since the bar code scanners that seem to quite effectively work in supermarkets, department stores, and foreign libraries suddenly don’t function for Italian books???) Actually, more than that: Some libraries are more generously tolerant, but many actually prevent you from bringing books into the library. And, even better, many prevent you from taking books out of the library! How, then, does the library serve its function, you might wonder? Answer: You may sit in that library and read a book from that library.

Ah! But that assumes you were able to get the book in the first place. That’s a whole ‘nother story. To get a book, you can’t usually just go to the shelf and get the book. That job is reserved for a Library Employee. You must find the book in the catalog, fill out a paper form (electronic requests from the comfort of your home? Ha!), hand-deliver the paper form to the librarian, and wait for the next book retrieval period (often occuring on the hour). You may then pick up your book. If that library permits you to take out books, you’re still not homefree. You might not be able to take out that book, even if it says in the catalog that you can. For example, after visiting three different libraries, filling out a dozen different forms, waiting in three different lines, and spending – no kidding – about five hours on the entire endeavor, I discovered that practically none of the over 2000 Bibles in the Bologna library system can be checked out. I gave up.

Hence: If you want to vote, write a check, read a book – or god forbid do something more complicated such as legalize your immigration status – prepare thyself for hours and days of lines and bureaucracy. It’s no wonder to me that immigrants remain illegal. If my experience is any indication, it would be – no exaggeration – absolutely impossible to have a full-time job and to fulfill the bureaucratic steps for becoming legal.

So, here it is, the Economic Theory of the Day: Without at least one unemployed person in every family, a family would not be able to perform basic social, civic, and economic tasks. Hence, high(er) unemployment is, in Italy, an absolute economic necessity.

On that note, I leave you with this calming photo :)

Picture of the Day

I'm whipped! Lots to report, little time to report it! In the absence of a story, here's a picture of the day. I took it while "studying" (Italians?) in Piazza Maggiore of Bologna. A presto!

The Faster You Go, The More Fat You Win!

I think I told you that the “running” scenario in Italy differs quite a bit from that in the States. In case you missed those episodes, the quick summary is that running in Italy involves a team (mine is Lippo Calderara), a membership card (that’s huge!), a uniform (we’re red, yellow, and blue: I’m all set to root for the Romanians in Peking), Spandex (I invariably violate this rule), an extraordinarily complex organization (Do you want to run in the competitive race? The non-competitive race? The shorter race? The even shorter race? The walk? The children’s race? The younger children’s race?), a sexual harassment-prone landlord (perhaps that’s just my situation? But who knows, maybe it’s part of the “system.”). And . . . prizes!!!

I really like winning prizes, I dislike sexual harassment, I find the obsession with membership cards amusing, and I get a little stressed out by the complexity of the system.

As you know, I’m hyper-competitive, so I really do like winning the prizes. Now I just have to figure out what to do with them. I really get a kick out of this: The prizes invariably consist of giant packages of the fattiest, unhealthiest foods you can find. The faster you go, the more fat you win! Here’s me, wondering what to do with two of my prizes:

That’s what's left of a salame on the left, and a huge hunk of Parmigiano Reggiano cheese on the right. I figured it out, and my excitement reached a kind of violent level in this pic:

Actually, the prizes come in handy: My friends and gastronomo-classmates love them! And I like the winning-them part :)

They Study That in the United States?

I know you’ve been waiting for a language slip-up story, and finally I have one worth reporting. Not that, up till now, I’ve been communicating with such perfect clarity that I’ve been slip-up-free and people confuse me for a native Italian speaker, but I haven’t had any of those “whoops” moments that I always read about, where some poor guy accidentally tries to sell his wife for a few camels, or a foreign girl accidentally invites her professor to dinner. No, wait, actually I have done that last one . . .

Last night I had everyone laughing, though. I wanted to mention my friend who researches homeless people. In Italian, the word for a homeless person is a “senza tetto” – literally a person “without a roof.” What I actually mentioned, however, is my friend who researches people “senza tetta”: “without boobs.”

What a difference an “a” makes! Anyway, for all the flat-chested women out there (ahem), I’ve found you a researcher!

Voulez vous cou- . . . Oh. No. That’s Something Else.

I’m taking a course in French right now. Not a French course, but a course in French. The professor is great: He speaks slowly, is really patient, and does a great Powerpoint. Still, I’m impressed with myself! Not because of my French ability, which ticks in at caveman level. But because I actually understand the course! My questions go something like: “What – is – difference – feculeries – and – minoteries - ?” (Yes. There's even a hesitation before the question mark.) But I’m more or less following the course. At least, I hope so: the exam is tomorrow.

I really shouldn’t be impressed. A few of my classmates haven’t really studied French either. They’re doing the same thing I am, and probably better. And I get the idea that it’s normal in Italy to have a class or two taught in English, just because it’s something that you should know if you want to go into business. Or engineering. Or academia.

Still, I think it’s really cool that we can all do this. And it makes me want to really learn French, which – along with lots of other things – is “on the list”!

Il Precario

There’s a curious difference between the ways the (average) Italian and the (average) American view work. In fact, I don’t think most Americans are aware of the “work situation” in Italy. I know I didn’t have much of an idea before living here, and I obviously don’t yet fully understand it, because a newspaper headline today caught me off-guard:

“Salaries: Young People Earn 23% Less Than Those Over 40.”

Yeah? I thought. Why on earth is this being reported in the newspaper? Isn’t this “news” of the dogs-bites-man type? There seems to be a complaint, an outrage over the finding – and yet, from my vantage point, there’d be a problem if it weren’t the case.

On the same page were two other mini-articles that also illustrate a chasmically different (from American) Italian world of employment. One is something that I’ve already written about here: Striking is downright trendy. The article “Strikes on the Rise” reported that, in 2007, the hours of strikes by Italians increased by 62% from 2006 to a total of 6.3 million man-hours. With a workforce of around 25 million people, my calculation puts that at about 15 minutes per Italian worker! That seems hugely significant to me (although I don’t have any comparative statistics). The other headline, “Pay more to better employees,” presented exactly that as a promising – but, alas, probably impracticable – employment innovation.

That probably gives you a starter feel for the difference. We could really talk for days and days about the work situation in Italy – in fact, the Italian newspapers do, and rightfully so. It’s really difficult to get a “good” job in Italy, and that’s the biggest problem facing young Italians.

Which brings us to the Biggest Difference of the Day: The “precario.” What I find most interesting about this entire “issue” is that the very concept of the non-precario leaves most Americans scratching their heads. (Rightly or wrongly). Basically, the Italian job seeker is searching for a contract “a tempo indeterminato” – an “indefinite” contract. It means that, as best I can tell, barring major criminal activity (note the modifier), you have that job, and every month you get paid, and you get to keep going to said job forever and ever, until you retire. If yesterday there was demand for 100 widgets, which made the company hire 100 employees, and today the demand drops to only 10 widgets – bummer for the company, but they’ve got 100 paychecks to write. Getting such a job is THE goal of the typical Italian. Companies, instead, for obvious reasons, are keen to give contracts “a tempo determinato” – fixed-term contracts, usually lasting six months, which can then (somewhat illegally) be extended and re-created ad infinitum, essentially employing someone long-term but in a series of six-month contracts. This leaves the employee as a “precario” – literally in a “precarious” situation. The complaint is that, as a precario, you really can’t plan for the future: you can’t get a mortgage, buy a house, get married, and settle down forever and ever.

As I said, I think the most interesting thing about this entire issue is that the very concept of the problem is foreign to most Americans. I like to think that I’m pretty well-informed, but I had to keep asking my Italian friends “clarifying questions.” (And I’m going to have to ask them another one tomorrow: It a surprise that young people get paid less than those with more experience? Is it a “problem”? Is it “wrong”? Why?)

First of all, I think the desire for a fixed contract is itself an interesting comment on the Italian identity. As much as the image of the shoulder-shrugging, toss-it-to-the-wind Italian prevails, I think a more accurate analysis of the Italian personality reveals an strong push for security, stability, certainty. Adventure, planned or imposed, is “dangerous” and best avoided. (This plays out in lots of ways, not just work: for example, even a vacation is usually “safe,” organized by a tour operator, passed with a group, or spent in a vacation village.) The promise of stability is a good thing: You don’t want 500% turnover every year, and you definitely lose something cultural and familial with lots of moving around. But you also gain something, personally and nationally, through risk, chance, innovation. I’m not surprised that a push for stability exists; I’m surprised at the extent to which it’s dominant. There are really very few Italians who are eager to innovate, to go out on their own, to try something new, to take a risk. Again, you don’t want an entire workforce taking risk, but you do need some of it for a healthy economy. It’s kind of an economic application of “bio-diversity” and genetic evolution, I think: You need some risky genes to mutate the economy for the better, in a “survival of the fittest” kind of way.

Second, I’m really surprised that few people pick up on the economic disincentive of the indefinite contract. If I’m an employer, and I know that I can’t fire a lousy employee, I’m sure as heck going to be hesitant to hire anyone. So I really don’t get the double demand: “Hire more people! Create more jobs!” and “Give everyone an indeterminate contract!” The two just don’t seem to go together for me.

This “issue” is in the papers literally every day. It’s a real issue, and really problematic; but it’s also hindered by a somewhat parochial optic. (Just as my optic, for example, didn’t include this employment worldview up until a few months ago!) I obviously don’t understand “from the inside,” and my “analysis” is pretty limited. Still – it’s one of these things that I find really interesting, and I thought you might, too.

Note the Spandex

I have good news, and I have bad news. The good news that I did another race today and ran fast. The bad news is that my landlord continues to be a sexual harasser.

I didn’t really want to do the race, precisely because running is now connected with my landlord, who is part of a running team, does all races in the area, and invites me to do all races in the area. His buddies on the running team want me to join, because I can win points for the team, and, I think, because it’s exotic to have a foreigner. As, uh, my studies keep me really busy, I haven’t been able to make any of the practices, and I’ve, uh, unfortunately suffered from sickness and injury lately, making it impossible for me to join in the weekend races. I figured they’d lose interest, but – well, you already know how the “I figured ….” figuring typically works out for me here.

A “Grampa Richie” was in charge of this race and called me with a personal invite. “We really want you here.” In fact, as it turned out, he’d already gone ahead and signed me up. Why? Because the Sexual Harasser-cum-Landlord told him I’d “almost certainly do it. With 99% certainty.” Say what? Apparently I have a manager now? I don’t like the idea of that, period. I’m an independent: I think alone, I live alone, I travel alone . . . and I run alone. And what’s even more worrisome is my suspicion that he’s not managing an athlete but rather someone he thinks of as his little girl toy. But “Grampa Richie” is a nice old man, and I felt bad that he’d already signed me, so I did the race. In fact, when I showed up, “Grampa Richie” had a membership card and a racing shirt waiting for me, though I did manage to refuse the Spandex shorts. (Seriously: what’s the deal with Spandex?) Which was all very nice of him, but I just feel bad all-around. It’s the classic Italian manipulation mode: Do something exceedingly generous (if pushy) for someone, and now she's “obligated.” To perform well? To join the team? To let the Landlord get some play? I’m not that serious a runner, and I don’t want to be a serious runner. (Although I do continue to enjoy running fast, and winning.) And I'm definitely not a fan of "inappropriate touching" (as it might be called in a grammar school bust) by the Landlord. And then – get this – they have the balls to tell me how to run. You should start off faster. You went too slow at the beginning. You “lost” third place by just a bit. I’m just pissed off all-around. I’ve thought about inventing a boyfriend or a lesbian lover to get me out of the mess, but I’m pretty sure such an acquisition would be followed, vendetta style, with an immediate rent increase. Shite.

On the glass-half-full side, I ran faster than I’ve ever ran before: 8 km race, 30:30, 6:08 miles. I think that's pretty cool.

An Ashe Connection?

Lacking tube socks and short shorts only because of shoddy weather, I entered Tourist Mode full-swing this week: It’s la Settimana della Cultura! This is a fantastic idea . . . Well done, Italy! (USA, Buffalo: Grab a notebook.) To promote tourism by tourists in non-tourist season, and to promote tourism by “locals,” the Italian Ministry of Culture sponsors a Culture Week every spring. Not only are all museums free, but there are all kinds of special events, shows, movies, lectures, and “extraordinary openings” of, say, your local Medieval palace. Wanting to take full advantage, and lured by the promise of show about Chocolate (I do study Alimentation . . . ) I spent a full day today in Modena. (Incidentally, I recently learned that the Italian word for "tube socks" is "tubolari." Excellent word.)

• There was a cool exhibit of 1850s photographs from Rome; I feel like I have a kind of special connection with Rome (maybe everyone ever enchanted by Rome does?), and it’s amazing how much the photos, from a hundred and fifty years ago, of a city I lived in for a month, made me feel “at home.”
• I stumbled into a public library and found a map from when the world was still flat. And a couple of beautiful thousand-year-old illuminated books. Doesn’t it sound crazy that you can “stumble upon” these things?
• And then there was the chocolate show. It wasn’t chocolate, per se. It was chocolate represented in little advertisement cards from the last hundred, two hundred years. There have been some pretty cool ads through the years . . .

But here’s the interesting possibility of the day. Modena was the seat of the Italian branch of the d’Este dynasty, which had plenty of other top dogs scattered across Europe. When I got into Ashe family history a few years ago, I remember reading a theory that the origins of the Ashe name came from French d’Este immigrants fleeing . . . something. I can’t remember, exactly: it’s jumbled against the theory of a Spanish shipwreck off the coast of Kerry (though I think was more of an ambitious explanation for being the stereotypical “Black Irish”) and the rather more probable suggestion that it had something to do with an ash tree (though, in fact, the Irish word for an ash of the tree type is fuinseog). In any case, this idea of the French d’Este connection, having hibernated in the dormant-neuron compartment of my brain for the last ten years, was re-awakened upon seeing the d’Este portraits in Modena. My first thought: That’s an Ashe forehead! Not that we have a monopoly on the “extraordinarily tall forehead plus pronounced widow’s peak” style, but, you have to admit, it is pretty distinctive. And, what do you know?! Check out these two d’Este foreheads.

I think it's conclusive. I'm writing immediately to claim my inheritance.

Pasqua 2008

I had a fantastic, and fantastically unique, Easter. Italian friends from the Camino de Santiago got together: Elisa from Trieste, Matteo and Maurizio from Vicenza, and Giovanni from near Livorno. Giovanni lives in a “house with a view,” if ever there was one, in the mountain-forest overlooking the Ligurian Sea, and he played host. But he didn’t just host us: it was a full house, and full of characters! Giovanni, in fact, is a theater instructor, and lives in the forest with three of his students. They all invited friends, from all parts of Italy, and there were about 20 of us in total. And, thanks to lousy weather outside, all 20 of us spent just about all weekend in the kitchen. Some of the guys even slept there! And it was awesome.

Walter from Napoli was the Chef-in-Charge, and cooked up – oh yeah, I’ve already told you how much I love it! – an octopus that Marco (also from Napoli) brought with him. Three of the theater people put on a show for us, and I especially liked Marco #2 (who played a horse). Guillaume from France regaled the masses with tricks he learned in Circus School (really), such as walking on glass and juggling fire. Bociccio played the mandolin, Luca sang Lucio Dalla, and I laughed a lot.

Buona Pasqua a tutti voi! Happy Easter, everyone!

Talkin' Proud

Part of my "duty" as a Rotary Ambassadorial Scholar is to give presentations to people here in Italy - primary the Rotary Clubs, but maybe schools and other groups, too. The idea is to share a bit about where we come from and thus promote international understanding and goodwill. I think it's all pretty cool: I like the objective, I like that I get to be a part of it, and - you know it - I like giving presentations.

Anyway, I was searching for a Buffalo logo, and I came across the "Talkin' Proud" Buffalo from the 1970s. My real discovery, though, was the associated jingle. I had no idea there was a jingle. I mean, I'd heard the "Talkin' Proud, Talkin' Proud" bit . . . but this is a full-up jingle. Maybe even more than a jingle. It's pretty impressive for its . . . its . . . kitschyness? Can that word be applied to a sound element? Check it out for yourself at Forgotten Buffalo. Since I didn't arrive on the Buffalo scene until 1980, I missed out on this firsthand . . . if you're in the same boat . . . ah, go on - give it a listen!

Lots happening in Bologna

I really like Bologna. There’s so much going on! In fact, I have a few weeks off right now, and I don’t even really want to go anywhere! I’ve done a couple of cool things lately – and, naturally, a few have turned into veritable “Only Me” stories. Seriously, I don’t know if I attract these kinds of events, or if I create them, or what. In any case, I’m glad they happen while I’m around; I get a lot of entertainment mileage out of them.

This Sunday was the “Sagra del Raviolo Dolce,” The Festival of the Sweet Ravioli, in “nearby” Casalfiumanese. “Nearby,” however, understates the 30-kilometer distance from Bologna. I had written to the tourist office in Casalfiumanese saying, basically, “I don’t have a car. How do I get there?” They told me to take a train or bus to Imola, and then hop on local bus #44 to Casalfiumanese. Seemed easy enough – but, if you’re a regular reader of this blog (are there any??), you’re learning, along with me, to distrust any intuition that says “easy enough.” (I’m trying to come up with an aphorism for SEEMS . . . along the lines of You Know What Happens When You ASSUME . . . but the thing is, you don’t have any blessed idea of what will happen when something in Italy “seems easy enough”!!!) In any case, despite such distrust, I took the train to Imola, went to catch bus #44 to Casalfiumanese, and – surprise! – it actually doesn’t run on Sunday. The day of the festival. Small detail. So I turned to the nice man in the Train Station Information Window. His solution was simple:
- “Oh. Sorry. You can’t go to Casalfiumanese today. It’s Sunday.”
But I decided that I could, in fact, go to Casalfiumanese on a Sunday. I walked a thousand kilometers on the Camino de Santiago, didn’t I?! What’s ten or fifteen more to Casalfiumanese? And, what the heck? I have only a little daypack with me. Why don’t I run there? So, yep, to pull a favorite Greg Ashe term out of my hip pocket, I Hoaked it to the Casal. Where another adventure awaited me: The launching of sweet ravioli from the town’s clocktowers! Yeah, you bet, it was fantastic. The Counts of the Ravioli (there were several) mounted the three towers of the main plaza and launched two tons of sweet ravioli to the crowds below. Insane! I literally got walloped on the head by an airborne ravioli, launched from the tower behind me, while I was grasping in the air for flying ravioli inbound from the tower in front of me. Of course, there was also a competitive element to the event: a plaza full of ravioli-obsessed Italians to reckon with. I think this gave me a genuine sense of achievement: I came home with FOUR sweet ravioli. Ah, coming home. I’d had enough of that running shite. Did I tell you it rained and winded on me on the way there? So, going home, I did one of my favorite create-your-own-adventure picks: hitching. Great fun, as usual. Met a couple from Puglia, who took me to see a baby shark in a café aquarium. Classic.

Yesterday I went to a lecture on market and environmental analysis in Uzbekistan. I think it’s cool that there are events like this in Bologna, that they happen all the time, and that people actually go to them. And not just any people: interesting people. At this lecture, for example, a fight almost broke out: It was exciting! And very Italian. This old guy from Napoli just wanted to talk, so he managed to start a polemic about the Trash Problem in Napoli, waving his hands (and his cane) and looking just charming the entire time. This provoked the entire room to break into argument and shouting. Whooooo! Who knew Uzbekistan could be so entertaining!?

Today I checked out the Museum of the Risorgimento in the morning and stumbled across the Carducci library, which has all kinds of old books. Is it ever cool. It would be awesome to study in a place like that. And guess what? You can! Anyone can go in and request to look at one of these old books. And – this is another point-winner for Bologna – all the museums are free. A super policy, if you ask me. Especially since the euro now costs $1.56.

Summary Point: Bologna is an awesome, awesome city, and I am really, really happy to be here.