How lost is lost?

Riding home on the subway today, I got distracted by reading Bill McKibben on knick-knack factories in China and locally milled oats in the Lake Champlain Valley and ended up in Queens. Which is not where I live. At all. Even as I rode off of my intended route, I noticed unfamiliar stations passing with little more than a nod - "23rd St. and Ely? I never noticed that before..." And then I lifted my head out of my book long enough to realize I wasn't in Kansas - or Manhattan - anymore.

One day, Charles Dickens saw a most peculiar word painted on the inside of a window.

MOOREEFFOC

For those of you who are still working on the translation, it says “coffee room”, or at least it would from the outside looking in. Later, G.K. Chesterton, another British author, heard of Dickens’ experience and took this term “mooreeffoc” to denote anything that becomes odd and unfamiliar when looked at from a new angle.

Walking today from uptown from down, starting at Wall St. and wending along Broadway, I had a similar mooreeffoc moment when I arrived at Canal St. Unexpectedly, like someone had folded the map to cut out in-between terrain, a wrinkle not in time but space. An "I didn't realize it was so close" moment, like seeing the topography of a well-known place through an airplane window.

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Xavier plays Pitt in the Sweet 16 tonight in Boston at the new Garden. My brother, parents, and cousin will be in attendance. Wish that I were there. Go X!

Pachyderms on Parade

The other night I saw elephants walking through the streets of Manhattan. This was not Jumanji or I am Legend or Dr. Seuss. We knew they were coming and we lined the barricades in anticipation.

We waited for what some said was too long, but I think elephants in Manhattan are worth waiting for.

Eventually, after midnight, when most of the city oscillated in slow night rhythms, the elephants emerged from the Queens Midtown Tunnel. They walked east in a line, tail to trunk, the centerpieces in a quick moving stream of people and cars and caravanning horses. Seven elephants walking down 34th Street amidst numerous attendants. Police had cleared the streets of traffic; there was not a pith helmet in sight. Camera phones and cameras just flashed; people cheered and waved; the elephants responded by drawing their trunks along the pavement and hurrying along.

And then before you could shake a stick and call it dancing, they were gone. Off to Madison Square Garden, home to the circus for a fortnight. It was, like many others, a New York spectacle exciting, brief, and full of controversy. Even just knowing that it happens - like Burning Man, like the tides in the Bay of Fundy, like the monarchs' migration, like the Staten Island Ferry - is enough to bring a bit of sunlight into any grey day. To think that I saw it on 34th Street...

(photo above from http://flickr.com/photos/dlogsdon/)

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.

Libel, reversism, and other abuses

James Agee, in Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, wrote:

"For in the immediate world, everything is to be discerned, for him who can discern it, and centrally and simply, without either dissection into sciene, or digestion into art, but with the whole of conciousness, seeking to perceive it as it stands: so that the aspect of a street in sunlight can roar in the heart of itself as a symphony, perhaps as no symphony can: and all of consciousness is shifted from the imagined, the revisive, to the effort to perceive simply the cruel radiance of what is.

This is why the camera seems to me, next to unassisted and weaponless consciousness, the central instrument of our time; and is why in turn I feel such rage at its misuse: which has spread so nearly universal a corruption of sight that I know of less than a dozen alive whose eyes I can trust even so much as my own."

Here are some recent odd notes from the Italian symphony, well represented or no.

Men are constructing a new structure next to the town sports bubble, but first they had to clear the space. Apparently they could not find George Washington to borrow an axe or Texas Massacre people to borrow a chainsaw, because they knocked down the problematic trees with a small excavator. The perfect tool for the job.
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Graffiti in Italy sometimes seems nearly ubiquitous. I am still investigating this phenomenon. Few Milanese buildings are completely clean of paint. Churches and monuments do not escape inclusion in the defacing/expression. Here is a stencil I found recently here in Codogno. Perhaps it was a first draft. Or maybe there is some Satanic message to be heard when the text is read backwards...


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Among the legion of small vehicles plying Italian roads, my favorite is the Ape (or Bee, a companion of the Vespa, Wasp). Essentially small wee trucks, Apes can be equipped with a flat bed or a closed back, usually have only three wheels, and sometimes have handlebars instead of a steering wheel. They are more common in Tuscany than here in Lombardia, unfortunately; even more unfortunately, this next picture documents a good Ape turned bad. I do not blame the Ape.



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Where else but Italy are you likely to find graffiti scrawled against both the current and preceding Bishops of Rome, using their pre-Papal names?!

Fogginess surrounds

Reading an article about surfing and pelicans in my favorite magazine Orion last spring, I came across the following: There is a German word, funktionslust, meaning “pleasure taken in what one can do best.”

Does the weather here thrill to bring us fog? Last night, the soccer teams practiced despite low visibility - looking out the window felt akin to flying through clouds and coming upon a gaggle of angels playing ninepins.

Babbo Natale's foggy beard draped all over - hoary weather reminding me again of Ireland ('Until the Battle of the Boyne Ireland belonged to Asia.' W. B. Yeats), and also of the California coast where fog is as regular as bow-tying laces, honeybees, and extra pennies rolling in gutters.

Another fog poem, this one from a poet of the California coast.

Boats in a Fog
by Robinson Jeffers

Sports and gallantries, the stage, the arts, the antics of dancers,

The exuberant voices of music,

Have charm for children but lack nobility; it is bitter earnestness

That makes beauty; the mind

Knows, grown adult.

A sudden fog-drift muffled the ocean,

A throbbing of engines moved in it,

At length, a stone’s throw out, between the rocks and the vapor,

One by one moved shadows

Out of the mystery, shadows, fishing-boats, trailing each other

Following the cliff for guidance,

Holding a difficult path between the peril of the sea-fog

And the foam on the shore granite.

One by one, trailing their leader, six crept by me,

Out of the vapor and into it,

The throb of their engines subdued by the fog, patient and cautious,

Coasting all round the peninsula

Back to the buoys in Monterey harbor. A flight of pelicans

Is nothing lovelier to look at;

The flight of the planets is nothing nobler; all the arts lose virtue

Against the essential reality

Of creatures going about their business among the equally

Earnest elements of nature.

Fogginess abounds

Here in small town northern Italy, we are officially in the Season of the Fog. Apparently la nebbia plagues local airports, causing flight cancellations and the like. Apparently, it gets worse as we move further into winter. I've lived with cold, rain, and snow, in heat and humidity, but fog? It calls to mind Baskerville hounds and Heathcliff out on the moor. With life imitating literature, the fog brings some mystery to the day. This is Seamus Heaney weather.

The Peninsula
by Seamus Heaney

When you have nothing more to say, just drive For a day all round the peninsula; The sky is high as over a runway, The land without marks so you will not arrive But pass through, though always skirting landfall. At dusk, horizons drink down sea and hill, The ploughed field swallows the whitewashed gable And you're in the dark again. Now recall The glazed foreshore and silhouetted log, That rock were breakers shredded into rags, The leggy birds stilted on their own legs, Islands riding themselves out into the fog And drive back home, still with nothing to say Except that now you will uncode all landscapes By this: things founded clean on their own shapes, Water and ground in their extremity.

Birds, beauty, perambulations, and a bottom feeder

Walking the Florentine streets, we came across many things of interest. A few Irish pubs selling Kilkenny, a great Irish beer that is unfortunately not exported to the U.S. My mother’s new favorite digestif, limoncello – a sweet essence of summer lemon groves liqueur that may be the closest drink we have to Ray Bradbury’s dandelion wine. Christmas lights strung across the narrow streets, lighting the window shoppers, low-hanging constellations in blue and white. Taking the advice of my brother’s roommate, we took special care in crossing the streets – many Florentines zip through the city on scooters like rabbits late for very important dates – occhio!

In Piazzale Michelangelo, above the city and across the river, a green copper copy of the David stands above kitsch booths and buskers – we heard delicate classical guitar played by a focused youth with his back to the views. This piazza and the cemetery higher up on the hill are not to be missed.

From the banks and bridges of the river Arno, we caught frequent glimpses of the Duomo and the crenellated tower of the Palazzo Vecchio, admired skullers from the world-champion Florentine crew club and the reflection of Ponte Vecchio on the still waters of a cloudy day. My brother and I also saw some locals feeding imperial Roman quantities of bread to a flock of pigeons and a family of nutria – rats of the sky and rats of the water. Brilliant.


Perhaps the oddest aquatic sight was the giant catfish we saw pulled from the river by Hemingway’s Italian old man. I would not have thought such a beast possible in those waters. Leaving the fish up from the water’s edge, the fisherman waded back to shore through a whorl of gulls. He was loaded down with long rods, a cooler, a net large enough to seine for shrimp. He rode off on his bicycle and we did not stay to see whether or not he returned for his catch.

Let my steeple snow!

Language students are frequently reminded to notice cognates. But as with the Ides of March, beware the false cognates! One student studying in Chile, as urban legend has it, was taken to the hospital after a series of fractured conversations with her host family. She wanted to say, “Yes, I’m sorry. I feel so embarrassed.” Embarazada, right? In Spanish, embarazada is pregnant. Not embarrassed. Occhio!

Besides hospital visits, there are of course many reasons to learn another language. Ordering in a restaurant or discussing food can also be fraught with danger. Mark relates a story of his first summer here in Italy when responded to a question about his favorite recent meal by saying that he had really enjoyed i cappellini. “Really?” “Yes, i cappellini were very tasty.” Now, capellini is angel hair pasta but maybe only in the United States? And yes, the two ps make a difference in Italian. Mark’s friends soon informed him that he had been extolling the gustatory virtues of “cute little hats.” Maybe they were just pulling his gambe...

Living in a country where English is mostly an amateur sport, I have had ample time to consider language. As many of you know, I taught in an English/Spanish bilingual classroom in New York City for two years. Through that experience and my graduate studies, I learned more than I want to remember about BICS v. CALP, comprehensible input, Krashen’s theories on the stages of second language acquisition and the psychology of affective filters, and... Sorry, the dormant grad student in me took hold of the keyboard there for a moment.

Recently I have been curious about focusing on my own Italian language development. Through self-examination I thought perhaps light could dawn on Marblehead, to use an old New England saw. I turned to an old stand-by, the Student Oral Language Observation Matrix (SOLOM), which assesses five categories: Comprehension, Fluency, Pronunciation, Vocabulary, and Grammar. The matrix is scored on a scale of 1 to 5, where 1 signifies “has no proficiency” and 5 means “approaches native fluency.”

To improve the accuracy of the test, I tried to approximate lifelike testing conditions. I installed a speaker on the wall that occasionally spit loud gibberish. I taped some of my artwork and a recent spelling test by the window. I instructed my roommate to throw erasers at me. For breakfast I ate three pounds of Twizzlers. After the test, I decided that I rate a high 2 or low 3. I scored especially well on Comprehension, not surprisingly as this area is usually the first to develop.

My Vocabulary is okay, given the number of cognates from English and Spanish. But there is certainly room for improvement. I give you Example #1, translated from the Italian, in the case for “This guy often doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”

My Italian friend and I were talking in a bar.
Me: “Look at those Jews over there.”
Friend: “Excuse me?”
M: “Yeah, those two Jews over there are crazy, huh?”
F: “Ummm... What do you mean?”
M: “Look at them. They’re talking loudly, gesturing wildly, making a scene. [Snort] Jews.”
F: “What?!”
M: “Those two Jews. Yikes. That’s embarrassing.”
F: “......... No. Not Jews – drunks. They’re drunks.”
M: “Uh... right. Drunks. Thanks.”

Obviously in English this would be an egregious offense. In my defense, however, the words are close in Italian. You be the judge: ebraico – Jewish; ubriaco – drunk. A related note: this “Italian Friend,” who speaks English well, had thought for years that the Beatles had been singing, “Hey, Jew, don’t make it bad. Take a sad song and make it better...” The Chosen People are everywhere!

For more fun with words, I recommend a site I found through friend Bleeding Espresso. Free Rice - a vocabulary game that rewards achievement with donations to the United Nations World Food Program.

Wascally wabbits and other unearthed gems

Italian television, a strange and wondrous place, continues to amaze, astonish, and entertain. My new favorite show is Bugs Bunny dubbed – “Ehhhhh - Che succede, amico?” The other night, Mark and I saw what seemed to be a giant group talent/variety show pitting two groups of mostly buxom and scantily clad women against each other: le bianche e le nere. The white women versus the black women. And no, I’m not talking about uniform colors. Interessante...

Also interesting is that I just finished watching Game 4 of the World Series on Italian television. Yes, the Red Sox still won, the Colorado fans waving white towels still looked like they were conceding surrender, the victory still felt different from 2004, and Papelbon is still crazy good and crazy just. That it is now mid-November and this game was played... 2 ½ weeks ago is odd enough, but the video editing by the Italian TV channel was really outstanding. And by outstanding I mean bizarre. So they skipped a few innings, wanting to condense the game, fine. But missing Bobby Kielty’s homer only to show him descending the dugout steps? During a pitching change for Colorado, they cut to a blimp shot of the night stadium and next to Jacoby Ellsbury of the Boston Red Sox playing leftfield? The bottom of the ninth, three final outs left for Colorado, and... they... showed... two of them? Who was editing this? Edward Scissorhands? Buñuel? Mr. Ed?

On our non-cable TV, there are three channels in a row – 14, 15, and 16 – that are identical. There are at least two other matching pairs between 1 and 30, which is as high as our TV goes. Sometimes I feel like I’m playing a game of electronic media: “Yes, yes, I know. The pope was talking on that other religious channel too... but which one?!” The local access channels that we get seem to focus primarily on karaoke and variations thereof. Call in dedication request karaoke anyone? As previously mentioned, Walker, Texas Ranger is often at home on Italian TV.

Easily the most bizarre aspect of Italian TV I have seen is what appears to be the rug channel. Yes, the rug channel. Any time I have passed it, there is a well-coiffed man in a suit and tie sitting on rugs, pointing out the qualities of rugs, standing next to hanging rugs, talking about rugs. I think he is selling the rugs – beautiful Persians, interesting abstract Modern geometric designs, etc. – but I am not sure. I have never seen anyone else on the channel, and I’m beginning to wonder if the host is in solitary confinement in a rug warehouse... with a cameraman. Maybe there is a rug fascination that has swept Italy but somehow missed our apartment. We do not have a single rug.

An additional note: in bocca al lupo to the boys’ and girls’ soccer teams at PS 161 in West Harlem! Both teams are in 1st place in the NY SCORES program going into the last games tomorrow – forza! Dai! Dai!

Islands in the Stream, Part III

The last installment of Mordecai's essay...

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Pius II’s efforts towards the creation of a utopia in the hills of Tuscany are often glossed over by historians of theology, the Crusades, and the political foundations of modern Europe. It has particular resonance for historians of sport, however, and there is a growing body of research on Pius the Sportsman. Some grants have been awarded in support of further studies of Pius II’s practice of falconry, for example, but, given the prevalence of that activity during the early Renaissance period, more adventurous historians have set their sights elsewhere.

While the evidence is scant, some historians are beginning to assert that Pius II was an ardent practitioner of a much-practiced yet oft-maligned sport: Wiffle Ball. Yes, Wiffle Ball – a variation on baseball that is played using a lightweight, perforated plastic ball, almost invariably white in color, and an invariably yellow plastic bat. Groundbreaking historians in this field, including Hampton, Grieves, et al., now claim that Pius II’s fascination for and dedication to the sport of Wiffle Ball were so great that he designed the central piazza of Pienza to be a Pantheon for its dedicants.

Centuries later, a group of us made good on Pius’ promise to Wiffle athletes. On our recent trip to Tuscany, we played Wiffle Ball in Pienza’s historic central piazza. Crazy, yes, but true. We found many pieces of Pius II’s grand Wiffle Ball stadium still in place and were frequently surprised by the overarching beauty of his plan. The locker room/dugout along the wall of one abutting palace, replete with hooks for jackets. The batting practice cage alongside the ancient well. Infield/outfield practice from the lip of the central door. A perfectly placed circle bricked into the very pattern of the piazza from which the pitcher could serve up Wiffle junk.

The lights shone bright on our field. Tickets were scalped to disbelieving neophyte fans for free – we were putting on a show and inviting all of Tuscany, even the papal ghosts, to join us. Except for when the municipal police rolled by: some of us scattered like high schoolers caught loitering in a midnight parking lot; one of us waddled off with the Wiffle Ball bat running the length of his leg. Our official photographer documented the scene. We laughed at the spettacolo and improbability of it all: Wiffle Ball in the House that Piccolomini Built for Wiffle Ball. A fitting sequel to the Lake Como Cup of 2006.

[For a fuller treatment of Pius II’s fascination with American sports invented, allegedly, after his death, I encourage you to read Jackson Checo’s thorough and impeccably researched examination of the subject, Piccolomini: The First Suburban Teenager?]

Islands in the Stream, Part II

Mordecai's essay continued...

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The Leibnitz party thought they had found their parcel of the Promised Land, but the island proved barren despite their efforts. Within a fortnight it became clear that it was not even, in fact, a true island, as the spring Proxigean tides soon inundated the small space, leaving but a speck of damp sand “the size of a rolltop desk (Adão, ed., 1957).” By that point, the party was over, and Leibnitz was the only remaining guest.

One of the last to depart, Maggie Oswald, claimed, in her interview with the New Bedford Daily Register, that Leibnitz was attempting to construct “a platform of some sort, from any which flotsam and jetsam and the like that happened by. I saw a lobster pot he had, and a shipping palette, an empty rum barrel from a pirate ship I think, a big bone maybe from a moose, a split plank flower box... I don’t know. It didn’t look real stable (Adão, ed., 1957).” Colorful as this description may be, Ms. Oswald’s report was certainly influenced by the severity of the ordeal she had just endured and unfortunately could not be verified.

Any attempts to corroborate her story of Leibnitz’s unusual tower were thwarted when, within a few days, an unseasonal hurricane swept up the North Atlantic coast. While meteorological records from the period indicate a low-force storm (Davis & Davis, 1922), by the time the weather had cleared, Leibnitz, the accordion, the two sheep, any platform, and the first ten feet below sea level of the island had disappeared. At the University of Maine at Orono-hosted symposium “Is Any Man an Island?: A Discussion on the Hermeneutics of Ill-Fated Utopian Expeditions of the 19th Century,” Dutch researcher Jan-Mendelt Van Wristler commented, “It is doubtful Leibnitz survived.” Indeed. Another arrow shot at the moon that fell well short.

Whether or not Leibnitz knew of Pope Pius II (1405-1464) is a subject of some debate among utopian historians. However, they both held la città ideale of More and Plato in high esteem: Leibnitz played out his tragedy along the Massachusetts coast; Pius II used the Tuscan countryside as his palette. What is generally agreed upon is that Pius II was “born Enea Silvio Piccolomini in1405. [He] was Pope from August 19, 1458 until his death in 1464. Pius II was born at Corsignano in the Sienese territory of a noble but decayed family. His longest and most enduring work is the story of his life, Commentaries, which is the only autobiography ever written by a reigning Pope.”

Strongly influenced by the humanists of his day, Pius II set out to resculpt his hometown, and this aspect of his papacy is of special interest to historians of urban design. Corsignano, later renamed Pienza in honor of its most famous son, became the first formidable exercise in city planning in post-plague Europe. The town still retains most of the fruits of his labor and was designated a World Heritage site by UNESCO in 1996.

Islands in the Stream, Part I

On my recent trip to Tuscany, I traveled with my roommate Mark and a collection of characters associated with his baseball team. We also spent some time with an acquaintance of mine from New York, Mordecai Johnson, who is a visiting adjunct professor at the University of Bologna. He asked if he could contribute some historical perspective to my blog, and I readily agreed. Because of the length of Mordecai’s essay, I have separated it into three installments.

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The desire for utopia has engendered many attempts at the ideal community. Plato’s Republic and Sir Thomas More’s Utopia are justly the most famous literary antecedents. In Massachusetts of the 17th century, the Puritans believed they were establishing a “city upon a hill” that might serve as a beacon to the world. Many sought a counter-example to the increasingly teeming cities of the Industrial Revolution during the 19th century. Within this last category, the story of Arnold Leibnitz provides an especially telling example. While peculiar, the story is by no means unique; the Leibnitz party and a trove of other foolhardy experiments share a common result: failure.

Leibnitz was in many ways the archetypal aspiring utopian leader: charismatic, prematurely grey, neglectful of quotidian minutiae. With a small group of like-minded souls, Leibnitz set off from Boston in mid-March of 1857 on what was then an arduous overland journey to Provincetown, Cape Cod. Inspired by Leibnitz’s creative firebrandery, they hoped to form a utopian community apart from “the roiling mess of present society (Rosenfeld, 1975).” By early April, however, having established nothing more than poor relations with the local inhabitants, the group was run out of town. Though first-person accounts vary wildly in their depiction of the Leibnitz party’s exodus, there is a general consensus that the group was lax in paying bar tabs and maintaining personal hygiene.

Finding themselves with “but a skiff and a sack of potatoes to their collective name” (Lister, 1964), the group gathered on a dune to regroup. Eventually, after much deliberation and not a little ill will, the latter primarily directed towards the accordionist in the group, Leibnitz decided to lead the party out to a small, uninhabited island he saw just off-shore. Gesturing vociferously, he proclaimed, “There, amidst the unspoilt bosom of Nature, we shall settle and make famous our experiment (Kalantagian, 1981).”

Clamoring into the skiff, one and all with potatoes and accordion and two sheep – the reasoning being that most in the party enjoyed their tea with milk and that come fall they could “make what harvest we could from the wool of our flock” (O’Leary, 1980) - the group splashed out towards the island. They made landfall on Accordion Island, so named for completely unrelated circumstances, after over four hours of drifting caused by the group’s having neglected to bring any means of propulsion or steering and to “Poseidon’s cruel sense of humour [sic]” (Ferthen, 1917). Splashing ashore, Leibnitz fell immediately to his knees in prayer to God, Shiva, and the animist spirits of the island, it being an ecumenical endeavor...

Wait. They eat those too?!

"Contrary to what Weston asserts, the habit of photographic seeing - of looking at reality as an array of potential photographs - creates estrangement from, rather than union with, nature." - Susan Sontag

Susan Sontag may not have actually written this. In fact, she probably did not. Mark Danielewski did, put her name on it, and included it as an epigraph to a chapter in his mad, maddening book The House of Leaves. I don't know about abandoning hope, but definitely tread carefully if you enter there. Having just finished the book, I can tell you that the estrangement is real.

So are the following photos. I can vouch for their authorship. They require neither doctoring nor, in some cases, explanations. Together and individually, they highlight aspects of the Italian nature around me. Some are estranging, while some are merely strange.

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Maybe this refers to some other sport. Or a place. Or maybe it's a rare error and is worth more. Or spelling is not what it used to be. [Clothing differences could be a whole series, with Italian t-shirt slogans and the like occupying multiple volumes.]

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"Watch out for the man in the low-rider bulldozer!"
Or maybe: "Be excited! The man in the small, open cockpit bulldozer is coming!"

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Airline ticket, Chicago to Florence: $750.
Rental car for one week: $280.
Rick Steve's Italy 2007 Guidebook: $14.95.
Delicious lunch for two of wild boar proscuitto, angel hair pasta, and local red wine: $60.
Suggested donation at quaint, historic churches in small Tuscan hillside towns: around $3 total.
Going home from your Italian vacation with a replica Confederate flag: priceless.

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An example of Italian ingenuity. Like with climbing skins, wooden clogs and sushi, I at first found the practice strange and am now a convert.

As this photo illustrates, many Italians lean their kickstandless bikes on curbs or steps to keep them upright. Sometimes, people leave their bikes like this on busy streets, in say downtown Florence, creating traffic issues, but that's another whole can of bachi. My question is, do you need to do this when your bike already has a kickstand? From my initial surveys, the answer would appear to be a resounding yes. The bike-pedal-on-curb technique must be used at no times less than all.

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Lastly... fill in your own punch line.

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.

Chitty? Is that you?

La vita continues to take interesting turns.

Italian TV is interesting for more reasons than I can possibly enumerate let alone count in one post. We can look at commercials, per esempio. One of my favorites is a series featuring three men stranded on a desert island, doing deserted-on-a-desert-island-type things like making phones out of tin cans and string. I'm a sucker for tin can phones. Many Italian commercials make me go hmmm. For example, Vera, a company owned by Nestle, advertises their bottled water using a song made famous by Dick Van Dyke...

Today I was thrown a curveball when I found out that I had been signed up for a softball tournament. Does this kind of thing happen to anyone else? My team is the Bad News Bears mashed with Cocoon. In Italian, of course. A few of the players used to play for the baseball team here, but that was in the era of the phonograph. We even have the Babe Ruth of Codogno baseball, il bambino himself: Bob. Yes, Bob. I watched the first few innings from the bench, then I got the call up. "You've pitched before?" asked our make-shift coach, perhaps thinking that all Americans are born with a glove on their non-throwing hands and spikes on their feet. "Uh. Sure. Years ago," I answered. Maybe in middle school gym class? "Great. Start warming up. You're going in next inning."

Heavy metal poured from the sound system; beads of cold sweat trickled down our opponents' necks; time froze as I strode to the mound. I unleashed a barrage of fireballs and mowed down the batters like so many dandelions, fluttering in the breeze... Not exactly, but it was fun to hear the crowd of 17 cheering my name, to see little kids posting the score on the manual scoreboard perched above center field, to cheer incoherently with the chain-smoking grandmother sitting next to me on the bench. No one asked for my autograph and the kids posted way too many donuts for our side, but la nonna played center for a few innings and I went home laughing. Game #2 is next Sunday. I'll be working on my slurve all week.

Oh, and I was almost eaten alive by a dog the size and color of a polar bear.

They eat horses, don't they?

For better or worse, I will never be the Alexis de Tocqueville of 21st century Italy. I think better because I really like electric refrigeration and don’t much care for wigs. Nevertheless, I shall find it necessary from time to time to try to put into words some of the observations I have made of Italy and Italians. This is more than a cottage industry and many already do it quite well.

Beppe Severgnini, an Italian journalist who spent many years in England and the US, has written a small collection of books on the subject, including La Bella Figura: A Field Guide to the Italian Mind. He writes, “Italy is far from hellish. It’s got too much style. Neither is it heaven, of course, because it’s too unruly. Let’s just say that Italy is an offbeat purgatory, full of proud tormented souls each of whom is convinced he or she has a hotline to the boss. It’s the kind of place that can have you fuming and then purring in the space of a hundred meters, or the course of ten minutes.”

If the following pieces of Italy were slips of paper that I could fit into a manila folder, the tab would read: Offbeat.

• The 2001: A Space Odyssey air lock at the local post office. This contraption is closely related to the package window, familiar to residents of New York City and other safe places. That relative is common at such institutions as the pawn shop, the liquor store, and the post office. Like a magician’s puzzle box, the package window has interdependent, bullet-proof sliding doors designed to foil terrorists and to confound postal service employees and customers. Here in Codogno – and I suppose elsewhere across the Italian postal landscape – the package window has become a customer door: a glass-enclosed closet that a you must pass through to conduct business with PosteItaliane. On each end of the portal there is a glass door that opens with an appropriately space-age hushed foosh, sliding into a cavity in the wall. But here’s the rub. The door in front of you will not open until the one behind you has closed, leading to a moment of suspended disbelief, pocket existentialism – will I be left here for all to mock? Will everyone know that I am not worthy to send mail? Will the oxygen in here run out before Bruce Willis and his crack team arrive to save me? Or maybe that’s just me.

• Italians eat horse. There I said it. As with a tongue twister, perhaps my brain will adapt to this idea through frequent repetition. I have recently learned that not only do many Italians eat horse, certain cuts and preparations are highly prized and priced.

• This photograph needs no introduction:
  
  

Rub a dub dub

Most travelers abroad have their favorite examples of mistranslation they have encountered, either to or from (in my, and probably your, case) English. Signs that warn of unexpected and unlikely dangers (If pulled too hard, toilet will hurricane onto floor.). Stores selling jeans that are the “nitgest level to wear.” A customer who orders breast milk instead of whole milk. And, of course, movie titles given unusual twists.

I learned today that Tremors, that 1990 Kevin Bacon vehicle, is called in German Land Of The Rocket Worms. Don’t ask me how I came upon this information, just know that my source is somewhere on the Interweb and is therefore above reproach. On a related note, I had a friend in college whose brother knew a guy in Brazil who could get you cashews, but that’s another story.

Last night, I had the distinct pleasure of watching the last 20 minutes of Pallottola spuntata 33 1/3 (Dulled Bullet 33 1/3), better known in the English-speaking world as Naked Gun 33⅓: The Final Insult. It was an unusual movie watching experience. I had to stand in one place in the living room, between two drying racks full of clothes, because if I moved the picture went static and the sound went bonkers. I could only understand one out of ten words that Leslie Neilson and the others were saying. [Allegedly, nearly all movies coming into the country are dubbed into Italian. I guess I had better get learning.] Additionally, the cast of Dulled Bullet 33 1/3 - Mary Lou Retton, Weird Al Jankovic, James Earl Jones, Anna Nicole Smith, OJ Simpson, Vanna White, and others - has had a checkered run of it since the movie’s release, adding a rearview mirror peculiarity. But, thankfully slapstick comedy transcends language. As is so often the case, the little things add bouyancy to life, like thousands of ping-pong balls glued to an elephant.