La oca is getting grassa

There has been a frost of early morning the last few days. Some of the cold lingered yesterday on north-facing roofs, in the shadows on the soccer pitch, along irrigation ditches out in the fields. The street cleaners whirring by sweep up the most recent brown leaves, remnants from an extended fall. Each week the signs of Christmas’s approach grow in number and illumination. As in the United States, whispers of Natale were heard in these parts as early as late October – in the supermarkets, I frequently saw panettone, the traditional Milanese sweetbread, alongside Halloween decorations.










Now, every street has at least one house or apartment strung with lights (unfortunately I haven’t seen yet any of the palms trees so decorated). In the absence of yards, many hang the most popular decoration of the season from their windows or balconies: Babbo Natale climbing a rope ladder. Cute and everywhere. Though, with his feet dangling off the rungs, St. Nick looks less magical than out of shape, a kid struggling in gym class.


The towns and cities I have seen recently are tastefully, festively, even whimsically bedecked for Yule. In Milan, il Castello Sforzesco is draped with electric blue icicles. The comune of Parma have put up a large, well-appointed tree in Piazza Garibaldi; simple strands of white lights add elegance to a small side street.

Here in Codogno, as in many Italian communities, most of the streets in the center are spanned by a variety of bright stars and geometric constellations. One street even has wrapped presents sprouting from the walls above it.


I have seen no menorahs, dreidels, or potato latkes, much the pity. Hanukkah is not much celebrated in these parts.

We turn this week in our elliptical orbit - in the Northern Hemisphere a turn from darkness back towards light: the Winter Solstice. I hope that you and joy find each other, wherever you are and whomever you’re with. I hope that you can celebrate a festival of lights, with ample reasons for thanksgiving and continued hope for peace. And remember the words of Zuzu Bailey, “Every time a bell rings, an angel gets his wings.”

The Shortest Day
by Susan Cooper

And so the Shortest Day came and the year died
And everywhere down the centuries of the snow-white world
Came people singing, dancing,
To drive the dark away.
They lighted candles in the winter trees;
They hung their homes with evergreen;
They burned beseeching fires all night long
To keep the year alive.
And when the new year's sunshine blazed awake
They shouted, revelling.
Through all the frosty ages you can hear them
Echoing behind us - listen!
All the long echoes, sing the same delight,
This Shortest Day,
As promise wakens in the sleeping land:
They carol, feast, give thanks,
And dearly love their friends,
And hope for peace.
And now so do we, here, now,
This year and every year.

And when you're out of fuel I'm still afloat

Boccaccio wrote in his Life of Dante (1374): “Everything that is acquired with toil has more sweetness in it.”

The marathon. Mark and I ran the Milan Marathon last Sunday, and we lived to tell the tale. Overall, I found it to be a very positive experience - look at me! I'm healthy enough to run this far! I'm lucky enough to be here, in Italy, on this day!

It was a thrill to be running - thanks to some sage advice from former roommates and Mark's sister, marathon experienced folk, we kept an easier pace through the first 2/3s and it made worlds of difference. The course is flat which made for easier running. A nice if unusual way to see the Milan sprawl, the course winds through a number of neighborhoods I had never visited and probably won’t again. The cold, mists, and fog added an ethereal quality to the day.

There were great provisions along the way - every 5 km the course organizers had tables manned with volunteers stocking cookies, orange slices, water, warm lemonade, warm tea... Slices of heaven. Staggered with those were stations dispensing sponges soaked in water - given the cool to cold temperature and periodic wind of the day, I avoided the sponges but I did like to run past the stations swinging my arm a la Eddie Van Halen - never failed to get a cheer out of the red-coated volunteers.

I enjoyed thanking as many of the volunteers and sparse fans as I could, including the police who stopped traffic - a thankless job as the Milanese seemed neither aware of nor enthused by the marathon snarling their already wicked snarled streets. It was quite unlike the marathons I have seen in Boston and New York: hilarious arm-gesture-accompanied invectives and horn honking abounded at intersections made dangerous by the collision of an immovable object (Milan traffic) with an unstoppable force (marathoners in the zone). In defense of the Milanese, the marathon is young (this was only the 5th running) and there are bound to be growing pains.

We met folks from across the United States (a West Point graduate from Houston living in Kiev; a woman from Seattle living in Turkey; a student from Connecticut who knows the Buckhorn Lodge, my favorite bar in Southern California). And of course Italians, many of whom spoke glowingly of running other marathons in Italy and the States.

I saw a man finish who ran the entire thing barefoot.

Mark and I finished together right around our goal time and received medals for participating: we did it! The space blankets that they give out at the end of the race are one of my new favorite inventions – without one, I may have lain down to freeze to death.

Soon to think about the next one... But not too soon.

Dancing in the dark

Last night I went to church. There were over 11,000 congregants, eight deacons, and one high priest. By the end of the service, I could have spoken in tongues. If I still had my voice. Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band tore through Milan’s Datch Forum like a steam train running full-head downhill and I willingly went along for the ride.

[photo source: popmatters]

Until last night, I had never seen Bruce Springsteen live. When the show went on sale back in September, my friend David and I tried in vain to buy tickets. Hope does spring eternal - through a series of fortuitous turns, we found ourselves grinning like fools walking onto the floor of the Datch Forum for last night’s show.

I have heard from friends and read reviews of Springsteen's legendary energy. Backed by a drummer, two keyboardists, a violin/fiddle/guitarist/vocalist, a bassist, two vocalists/guitarists, and one mean saxophone player, Bruce lived up to his reputation. Most of the songs were from their new album, Magic, which I have not yet heard. I could not sing along, but as with attending mass in Latin or other unknown languages, I could still participate in the rites and rituals, feel the reverence. The concert was 2 ½ hours of chanting and shaking and hand waving and singing. Without rest, even between songs – a quick drum change from cymbal and high hat to kick bass snare overdrive – in the few moments of transition while the band wrapped up the previous song, Bruce would douse himself with a carwash sponge soaking in a bucket by the drummer’s feet, shake his head snorting like a horse at the gate, and charge 1 2 3 4 into the next song’s beat over the decrescendo of force. Centrifugal and centripetal.

Some will scoff and say dismissive things of Bruce. Others will bristle at the comparison of a rock concert to a religious experience. What I know is this: never have I seen a band and crowd so earnestly, unselfconsciously in sync about the joy of music. I have drunk the Kool-Aid.

On steel horses we ride

On Friday night, I attended the Bicycle Film Festival in Milan. An international festival, it may be coming soon to a city near you. Occhio! If you like bicycles and bike culture, you will find it right up your alley. I heartily enjoyed the black hoodie sweatshirt and rolled pant scene, guys with scraggily beards and thick frame glasses, girls with beautiful fixed gear bikes and small-brim bike caps. Good movies, too. This was a crowd favorite: a group of Oakland kids waxing ridiculous about their tricked out “scraper bikes.”

Wendell Berry, one of my favorites, writes beautifully, thoughtfully, and passionately how we can improve the health of our families, communities, and the natural world all around us. Those who have read his essay “Why I Am Not Going To Buy A Computer” will agree that the bicycle fits many of the criteria he uses for technological innovation:

1. The new tool should be cheaper than the one it replaces.
2. It should be at least as small in scale as the one it replaces.
3. It should do work that is clearly and demonstrably better than the one it replaces.
4. It should use less energy than the one it replaces.
5. If possible, it should use some form of solar energy, such as that of the body.
6. It should be repairable by a person of ordinary intelligence, provided that he or she has the necessary tools.
7. It should be purchasable and repairable as near to home as possible.
8. It should come from a small, privately owned shop or store that will take it back for maintenance and repair.
9. It should not replace or disrupt anything good that already exists, and this includes family and community relationships.

I love bicycles. I love riding them, looking at and photographing them, reading, writing, and talking about them, extolling their numerous virtues. I am more and more convinced that the bicycle is one of the best technological advances we have made (the knife, the bowl, the pencil, the printing press, the camera, the surfboard, the ski, and musical instruments are also excellent, among others). As I've mentioned before, Italy, while not on par with Denmark or the Netherlands in bike culture, is definitely more bike-friendly than the United States. I am frequently impressed by the feats of balance (two people on the same bike is a common site), style, and function that Italians manage a bici. Riding in the rain? No problem. Here are some other photos I have taken over the past few months of le biciclete italiane.

For an interesting examination of the power and efficiency of bicycles, I recommend these excerpts from Ivan Illich, published in 1978 and even more salient today.

If you are looking for some inspiration on world traveling, or if you would like to read about an amazing adventure from your arm chair, I can recommend checking out Heinz Stücke, “the Bike Man.”

The parting words I leave to Queen.

Ramblin' 'round Milano

A few more reasons why Milan continues to grow on me like a pleasant moustache. What? Never mind. I don’t know either. Must be all of these late night/early morning Red Sox games. Oh, and a BC football game. Oh, and Mark just brought home two hockey sticks – I can see the headlines in Il Cittadino now: “Intrepid immigrants inject area inter-murals with hockey sans ice.”

A stone's throw from the castello, Milan's Chelsea/West Village lies in wait. Artists lounge, smoke, chat, doodle, scan the perforate-toothed want ads and have ads, discuss Matsuzaka’s Game 3 start in spacious Coors Field – an art school with balustraded courtyards, an astronomical museum, and a botanical garden. Sagan, spray paint disk space scenes busked, Audubon hummingbirds, O’Keefe, Da Vinci (same of the navigli). Perhaps it is common to use cartoon characters to advertise exhibitions of historical astronomical instruments but... i Simpson? He who designed said sign ingested perhaps an additional hallucinatory hot pepper.

Meanwhile, across town... The navigli, or canals, as I’ve mentioned before continue to wave their flower-boxed windows at me, smile back from their colorful reflections, wind their way towards my heart. They are twists on the type, an endearing wrinkle in the fabric of the city. Not as whimsical as the slide from a pedestrian walkway at the top of the ascensor where I lived in Valparaiso, Chile, but unexpected just the same.

Later, with the day winding down... il Duomo stands stately over the largest piazza in the city, justly famous for staccato spires and a reconstructing facade. Inside, I found it hard to see the trees for the forest – the nave and transept crossing at great heights, both filled with gild and gesso-glossed gigantic canvases. Devotional candles, a collection of closed-door confessionals, stone pillars smooth from years rising above a foundation started 700 years ago... Il Duomo inside is one of the most breath-taking buildings I’ve ever been in; outside... well... I’m curious to know if there are any cathedrals the world over that allow you to sit on the roof and take in the sights. And what sights. After walking up the stairs (or taking the lift if you want to pay an extra 2 euros and get there quicker), you can elbow up with saints and gargoyles, gulls and flying-buttress sight lines, but sadly no kite lines. The green copper domes of other churches rise above the sprawling centro storico. Cranes swings stories above rooftops constructing the new amidst the old. The clouds color as the sky fades to black.

For more photos of my Milano meander, please click here. No here. Okay, really here... or here. That will work. Pinkie swear.

Travelin'

When it rains, it pours, and I've been drowning in good fortune recently. Traveling. A lot.

Pico Iyer said, about travel writing, "[You should] try to catch the feelings — the sound, the smell, the tang, of a place — immediately, before it goes. A place is like a dream, and unless you record it instantly, however tired you feel at the time, it will fade and fade, and you will never be able to recapture it."

As I am not de Tocqueville, nor am I Iyer. However, during my recent travels, I have made some attempt at capturing impressions of places. These writings are neither remotely grammatically correct nor comprehensive; I may be right or wrong, but it's my opinion you can find 'em both at the Grand Canyon, sundown...

Milano. A cookie and also a city. Much underrated and often overlooked by foreign travelers, Milan buzzes with cosmopolitan life. Unfortunately, many were the faces that drooped when I said I'd be living in her shadow - "You shouldn't move there." "Oh, other Italian cities are much nicer." "Um, two words: yuk and yuk." I disagree and find the city growing on me. Just as turkey should not try to emulate the other animals (thanks, Mitchell), so too does Milan have its own thing going. Aperitivi of delish bar food, meandering streets and grand piazzas, palazzi of historic families and fame, canals lined with cafes and bars and crossed by squared pedestrian bridges (think the Amsterdam of northern Italy, sort of). Orange trams from the turn of the 20th century still ply the streets, hinting of remembered whispers of fedoras and bespoke and war-time rationing and emigration. I stumbled across an artists’ studio school with 20 acolytes attentive to a Titianesque brunette up on a platter.

The subway runs effectively it would seem, and, like DC and the Bay Area and probably many others, the transit authority have installed electronic screens that advise of waits until the next trains [I can hear Marty Markowitz chiming in for New York: Fugheddaboutit!]. I have noted some interesting activities underground, however: numerous people wearing sunglasses; doors opening occasionally while the train is slowing to a stop; a driver over-shooting the platform by a half-car length and backing up to a stop. Motorini everywhere in all shapes, colors, and sizes – even a 4X4?! [Strangely, though, approximately 80% of all cars in Italy are silver or grey. What's going on here?]

Il Duomo rises above expectations and begs hyperbole; la Scala, on the other hand, is unassuming and easy to miss from the outside. Ah, but what sort of devotions and rapturous audiences congregate in one and the other? Further investigations will of course be necessary. I think I know just the Sherlock.

Here are some more photos of Milan if you're interested.

Tin roof on a hot catwalk

It is fashion week in Milan. My friend Carmen works for Jil Sander, an international design house on the high end of the spectrum. The Jil Sander fashion show was yesterday. Carmen had invited Mark. Mark is busier than the antacid supplier for Red Sox Nation with his job. Ergo, I went to a my first fashion show yesterday, in Milan at the height of fashion week no less. And as if that wasn’t enough fashion, I continued to gorge myself on fashion all day.

Even before the fashion show began, it was clear to me that I was no longer in Kansas. The security in black suits, stylish facial hair, and radio earpieces. An American woman in a bright pink wrap/shawl/sack making faces like a guppy on stilts. Lots of ankle boots, knee boots, cowboy boots, shiny pointy shoes, big skyscraper heels, sleek black loafers – all of them surely more expensive than my Adidas. As for the models, they were uniformly tall, thin, ethereal, and young, much younger than I expected and young enough that I felt uncomfortable watching them stream by wearing see-through clothing. Most had piercing eyes, jutting chins, and long hair stirred by a breeze that seems only to affect the preternaturally tall and striking. Watching the audience was as good if not better than watching the squeamish-inducing parade of teens in sheer and absurdist clothing. I use clothing here in the broadest sense of the term as some outfits were closer to elaborately folded napkins, cheesecloth made from birds of paradise, dress-size illumination bags for propane lanterns – who could ever wear such things on the street? In many places such a person could get harassed as a clown without a permit. Some appeared to have fallen from spider webs woven of diaphanous spools. Their faces reminded me of elves and aliens I have seen. I obviously know very little about fashion.

[After reading my uneducated review, perhaps you would care to see what the NY Times reporter thought.]

After the show, I had the pleasure of hanging around afterwards with the company’s employees as they came back down to earth, some investors, a few models, the hairdressers, and others associated with the show. Word on the terrace was that the show had been a great success. The important people had liked it, and everyone could relax a bit. The prosecco and finger sandwiches were plentiful. My sense of dislocation was also great - isn't that the castle? Where am I? Who am I?

To continue unspooling the fashion thread, Carmen and I spent the afternoon shopping. For me, this activity usually involves the transaction of goods and money or credit and is to be spoken of with a mix of trepidation and guilty disdain. Out on the town in Milan, I was reminded that shopping can be free and eye-opening. Carmen did not find the definitive dress for her friend’s wedding, but she was once again an excellent guide. While I would probably need to mow one lawn every 37 seconds without stopping to eat or sleep for the next 12 years to pay for the clothes I tried on, I enjoyed the game of trying on expensive outfits. Domenico acted as Virgil and led me expertly through the experience.

As a cherry on top of the ridiculous day, Mark, Carmen, and I strolled over to a party hosted by Marie Claire UK at Mozart’s former house. More prosecco, beautiful fashionable people, expensive artwork, jaw-dropping setting. Pretty standard really. This is the way I roll now that I live in bel paese. [Mile grazie, Carmen, Mark, e Domenico.]

Veni, vidi... ?

As they say at the Brickyard, "Start your engines." And we're off. Or at least I'm off, into the wild green-white-and-red yonder of Italy. I have now been living in bel paese for one week and the international clamoring for some informazione (See? Isn't learning Italian easy and fun?) on my where-abouts, how-abouts, why-abouts, and so forth has been deafening. As many know, I rarely turn down an opportunity to tell a story, so...


I am in Codogno, Italy, in the province of Lodi in the region of Lombardy. I am living with Mark, aka Lango, a friend since kindergarten, who is playing professional baseball in Italy's Serie A2 and working full-time in Milan, 45 minutes to the north.

To extend the metaphor, if this adventure is to be an Indy car race - colorful, loud, exhilarating, enervating, at times stomach-turning but usually captivating (notice I didn't add "fast") - then for the past week I have been weaving back and forth on the track, warming up my tires.

Despite a whirlwind of moving, packing, good-byes, and good riddances (for those who bemoan the Disneyland-ification of New York City, fear not: rodents of reputation yet roam free), I managed to find myself at JFK, early and with my head screwed on straight. Muchas gracias to Dan, Sara, and Jim for hosting my little hurricane; muchisimas gracias to Lorena for so generously driving me to the airport. After a pleasant flight next to a jet-setting cosmopolitan theater director who makes Jason Bourne look positively settled, I blundered my way from the Milanese airport to the train station. Weighed down like a one-man nomadic village, I wandered towards that venerated Italian eatery, McDonald's, to meet up with Mark. Dropping my bags, I noted that I was dirty, tired, and definitely in Italy.

A tap on my shoulder and a voice, "Excuse me. I'm looking for Ray Finkle - and a clean pair of shorts." It could have been me looking for a clean pair of shorts as I was surprised to beat the band. David H., a friend from high school who now lives in Geneva, had come down to surprise me and succeeded. Ah, Europe. Together we left our bags with Mark, explored some of the highlights of Milan, and bought lots of designer shoes.

Happy hour found us meeting up with Mark, some of his colleagues, and one of his teammates from the baseball team. In the large Italy v. USA battle upon which I am sure to comment with frequency and wit, Italy wins stage 1: the bar offered aperitivo, which translates loosely as appetizer but here usually means a spread of free food put out by the bar to attract drinking customers. Salmon, various pasta salads, grilled vegetables, bread - no peanuts and stale cheese puffs this.

Saturday, Mark, David, and I spent the day and evening in Parma, where Mark spent two summers andwhere I visited him in 2004. While justifiably famous for the foods of its region, Parma seems under-visited, especially when compared with its bigger sisters Bologna and Florence. It is a charming city and often ranks high in national ratings for its quality of life. After wandering and eating and sipping espresso and snapping a few photos, we drove out into the country outside Parma to a birthday party for one of Mark's former teammates. As is usually the case, I was heartened to see some familiar faces from my first visit to Italy. Because of Mark's four summers here playing on two welcoming and hilarious teams (about whom you'll here much more in the future), he is greeted by many like a prodigal son across the region. That also has to do with Mark, and I get to ride his coattails. Generous and gregarious friends, tables of food, coolers of drink, karaoke, stars in the sky (or was that my eyes?).

Sunday, Mark, David, and I went for a run on a local road that wends out from town into the countryside. Here is a video Mark posted on his blog this spring that will give you a sense of my new favorite running route. The fields are now mostly full of corn and the air smells like growing.

The rest of the week I did what most Italians are doing this month: I relaxed. For the first time to such an extent, I have more time than I know what to do with - it has taken some getting used to but I think I am improving. I read, I go to the piazza to sip espresso and watch the world go by, I try to read the newspaper, I go to the grocery store, I nap, I wonder when offices and stores will open again, I sip espresso, I nap, I explore on bicycle the town and countryside, I take photographs.

Oh, and now I write a blog. Stay tuned for more.