Puglia

For Easter break I decided to fulfill a long-held dream: travel all the way down the boot of Italy to Puglia. It's a sun-bleached region surrounded by breathtakingly blue waters, former home to Greeks, Romans, Goths, Lombards, and Byzantines, with fields of olive groves and wild flowers, steeped in tradition and poverty and folk music, la pizzica e la tarantella, the dances of love and death. Of course I wanted to go. We spent 6 days and 7 nights, beginning our stay in Lecce, moving to the coast at Gallipoli, stopping in the countryside for a wonderful Easter lunch with sort-of distant cousins (you can find family anywhere, really), and returning to Lecce for Pasquetta, the day after Easter.

There's a lot to write about with Puglia, and I'm not sure I can do it justice. But I felt like I was having a great adventure there, that I was truly someplace different. The salty air, il sole che picchia, the colors of the countryside and of the people, seduced me, enchanted me, and I was very sorry to leave. So to indulge my nostalgia and to sort through some of the 400 digital pictures we took, I give you a few entries on this lovely and complicated region.

Il processo Ruby

So Berlusconi's trial begins today, the one in which he is accused of paying for sex with a minor, Karima El Mahroug/Ruby Rubacuori, misusing his power to get her out of prison, and just being a pig in general. The trial is at risk of suspension, Berlusconi is waging a campaign to discredit the judges as corrupt communists, the nation is holding its breath. And the folks that brought you Berlusconi Inception-style bring you another awesome trailer. Enjoy:

I hear Italy singing

I haven't written anything about the political situation in Italy--that of bunga bunga fame-- and I don't have much excuse for avoiding it. The events of the past months, with Berlusconi at their center, are scandalous, outrageous, and at times incredibly depressing. Rather than get into it now, though, I thought I would share some of my students' (indirect) words about it.

A few weeks ago, I tortured my 5th year kids by making them write (gasp) poetry! We had just read Walt Whitman's "I Hear America Singing," the full-throated song to the joy of hardworking former-colonists, and so I assigned them an Italian version for homework, "I Hear Italy Singing." There was a delightful chorus of groans and moans. I told them to be as playful or sarcastic or patriotic as they wanted to be, and a few of them did a really nice job. Many were very pessimistic, a majority of the poems mentioned corrupt politicians and the mafia. A few stuck to the classics, citing Italian food and beautiful monuments and singing gondoliers. Many brought up football in some way, and playing children. Here are two of my favorites by two students N and A:

"I Hear Italy Singing"
I hear Italy singing, his mediterranean vibes I hear
The vibes of the greengrocer yelling through his loudspeaker,
How red his tomatoes are and how mellow the grape
I hear the jangle of the steel rails, crossed by their streetcars.
The gondolier singing, about Santa Lucia,
The businessman singing, the joy of the contract,
Just signed with the mobster, more joyful than him.
The streetwalker singing, what's on her own menu,
Thinking about the time when Italy's song was her only hope
I hear Italy singing, his melancholic vibes I hear.

"I Hear Italy Singing"
I hear people singing only when the national football team wins
I hear the corruptors and the corrupted singing together
I hear the pope and the priests singing about morality
I hear the politicians singing about nothing while talking too much
I hear the premier singing about the importance of family while paying for sex
I hear the Mafia's criminals singing while they get richer making business with mayors
But then I hear other songs
Those of my friends and my family who don't accept Italy as it is
Those of the honest workers
Those of all the Italians that believe in good before anything else
I hear Italy singing while I'm quiet.

9 eyes in Italy

(Italian Google Streetview images from the art project 9 Eyes by Jon Rafman)

culture shock

While waiting to check out the supermarket, I had a moment of that special culture shock that I haven't experienced in a while. Because I saw this:...cioè, baby food made of horse meat (40%, the company proudly declares).

And I thought Italy couldn't surprise me anymore.

il cavaliere inesistente

Italo Calvino outside the Einaudi publishing house in Torino

I've been gobbling up books lately, too quickly actually, driven by more a fury to read than to digest, so I decided to slow myself down by reading something in Italian. The book is I nostri antenati, our ancestors, an anthology of the three novellas by Italo Calvino, Il cavaliere inesistente, Il visconte dimezzato, and, the only one I've already read, Il barone rampante. So I'm in Il cavaliere inesistente right now, the story of a knight in Charlemagne's army who doesn't exist; his suit of armor is empty of any body, it contains only his mind, his spirit, maybe his soul? I think I have to finish the book to find this out.

Midway through the book, Agilulfo (he who doesn't exist), Rambaldo (a young and idealistic young man hoping for glory), and Gurdulù (the mad fool who has been assigned to Agilulfo as a page by Charlemagne--O bella! Questo suddito qui che c'è ma non sa d'esserci e quel mio paladino là che sa d'esserci e invece non c'è) set about the task of burying the bodies from the earlier battle. Each confronts a corpse and has his own reverie: Agilulfo thinks proudly and defiantly of the pains and disgust of having a body that can die, Rambaldo questions his fury for glory and thinks of his love...and Gurdulù:

Gurdulù trascina un morto e pensa: "Tu butti fuori certi peti più puzzolenti dei miei, cadavere. Non so perchè tutti ti compiangono. Cosa ti manca? Prima ti muovevi, ora il tuo movimento passa ai vermi che tu nutri. Crescevi unghie e capelli: ora colerai liquame che farà crescere più alte nel sole le erbe del prato. Diventerai erba, poi latte delle mucche che mangeranno l'erba, sangue di bambino che ha bevuto il latte, e così via. Vedi che sei più bravo a vivere tu di me, o cadavere?"

Gurdulù drags a dead body and thinks, "You're farting out worst stink than me, cadaver. I don't know why everyone pities you. What do you miss? Before you moved, now your movement passes to the worms that you nourish. You grew hair and fingernails: now you will melt to manure that will make the grass grow in the sun. You will become grass, then milk from the cows who will eat the grass, blood of the baby who drinks the milk, and so on. See how you are better than me at living, o cadaver?"

l'arte di arrangiarsi

The occupation has ended, with a whimper. Classes began again today as everyone had expected, the desks had been put back in their rightful places, the signs removed from the windows. I came into my fifth year class and asked, "Soooo, what have you guys been up to?" The answers included: staying at home to play video games, playing poker, and attending the assemblies organized by the students.

The assemblies included a meeting with some of the immigrants who had been occupying an old factory smokestack near my home to protest the new curfew in their neighborhood, a rapper who found solace in music during his time in prison, and a scholar of the Piazza Fontana bombing. An assortment of political causes, insomma. Then this morning, instead of having classes for the fourth and fifth hour as usual, the students held an assembly for the whole school outside on the basketball court and requested that the teachers join them.

I went with Giovanna, my teacher, and watched as an intrepid group of students with a microphone implored their peers to come up and share their thoughts about the occupation, about the reform, or about politics in general, with no success. The teachers who had braved the cold stood on the edges, a few smoking, while the others watched from inside or waited it out in the teachers' lounge. The kids sat in a big ring around the basketball court, talking to each other in lowered voices, staring back at their friends with the mic, but no one wanted to come and share their views. Those who actually had articulated thoughts maybe were too shy. They are teenagers, after all. Giovanna and I had a giggle, thinking that now these kids were experiencing a little bit of what we deal with every day: the difficulty of making adolescents talk.

As they repeatedly lectured the others about standing up for their rights and how they should be ashamed that they wouldn't speak, Giovanna and I began to talk about Italy in general. She said that the students were protesting (in part at least) the debt owed to the school, but the truth is, there just isn't any money. People do work all the time, she said, that simply isn't paid. There's no money. Berlusconi pushes private schools to funnel money towards the church and private enterprise. Only immigrants are willing to pay taxes. There's corruption everywhere. And people just won't speak up. She said Italy has always possessed l'arte di arrangiarsi, the ability to worm out of even the most dire problems, but maybe it is getting too bad. Maybe Italy is losing its art.

She said that she thought the families would always be what holds Italy together, what gives it the ability to adjust. She looked around at the teenagers before us and said that the situation is bad, people don't have work, so they depend on their parents. And their parents, with their pensions and what little extra money they might have, support them, shelter them.

We spoke about immigrants, the school system, and politics, both in the United States and Italy. Giovanna said that she, ormai, has become a bit of a pessimist about the way the world is going.

We ended up going inside because Giovanna was beginning to feel the cold. I came back down to hear the last bit of the assembly, but it didn't seem like they had made much progress in cajoling their fellows to speak. A pair of my students came up to me to ask me what I thought as a foreigner. I told them that they had great power, being able to shut down a school even for three days is impressive, but they needed to organize and get productive, don't waste those precious days.

But what do I know? My only act of rebellion in high school was dying my hair blue.

super 8 film festival

Last weekend under the infinite rain cloud of fall, we discovered Milan's International Super8 Film Festival, which relieved our need to be outside of the house but protected from the downpour. It was held in a little musty theater next to a church, filled with a few damp enthusiasts and a few professionals, some of them sort of famous. Outside under the shelter was a little mercatino where you could buy your very own Super8 camera and projector. Being a little fascinated by old machines that make good noises, I was tempted, but my almost total lack of knowledge held me back.

During the question and answer sessions with a couple directors, one of a much lauded music video for Baustelle and the other of a short film with the Italian actor Sergio Castellito, the problems plaguing Italy kept resurfacing. I think it's a favorite topic of intellectuals here, and why not? They brought up the difficulty of seeing a movie in its original language, everything is dubbed, there's very little funding for independent projects, a mafia of cinema that determines what is appropriate for the public...When asked what advice he had for an aspiring filmmaker, one director replied, "Di andarsene via da qui appena possibile." To get out of this place as soon as possibile.

My favorite short was a Colombian film called "La Fabula del Negro Bautista" but being beautiful no one put it on youtube. So enjoy some of the other super8 films from the festival and contemplate stagnation.

The famous music video for Baustelle's "Piangi Roma"


Music video by Blackie and the Oohoos, a Belgian band

Blackie & the Oohoos - Love Boy from robin vandenbergh on Vimeo.

"The Birthday Cat"by Freya Elliot from the UK, I think

speaking of machismo...

Berlusconi may really be in trouble this time. His scandals are piling up and (more surprisingly) seeming to stick, his supporters are slipping away from him, and a vote of confidence in December could cause his government to fall (chaos! exciting!). A New York Times article sums it up nicely for Anglophones.

In the meantime, videos on YouTube have popped up calling on Berlusconi to dimettersi or resign. Some have taken it to the movie trailer territory:


We'll have to wait until December to find out what happens. The slippery signore may scivolare his way out of this one too.

machismo and the Italian high school student

Last week, in one of my fifth year classes at the technical institute, I presented an article about machismo in southern Europe (Spain, Italy, Greece, and to a lesser extent Portugal) and its ill-effects. The article basically argued that southern Europe's economic woes--such as lagging productivity, enormous debt, an aging population and low birthrate, and a shrinking workforce--could be helped by courting women into the labor market. (In Italy the employment gap between the genders is 22%).

I picked this article because I wanted to start some debate about women's rights and childcare. The article ended up being very difficult for them (gah why you so erudite NYTimes?) and so we didn't get to discuss the issue as much as I had hoped. So I assigned them some homework, a couple of comprehension questions and then an opinion question: What do you think about women working?

Most of the answers were almost identical, little robot responses that said women working is a good thing for the economy. Don't get me wrong, I'm happy the robots are leaning towards feminism. But my favorite response was this one, from a boy R:

"In the workplace I think that women should be treated like men and have the same rights because they work as hard as men.
I'd prefer that my wife, Valentina (his unmarried deskmate), stays at home to look after the children and I would work harder to sustain my family.
Perhaps it is machismo!"

Encyclopedia Britannica says of Italy...

"less a single nation than a collection of culturally related points in an uncommonly pleasing setting."

So true. So confused. So pleasing.

Bars e caffè

And the autogestione continues. I went into school for about an hour today, read Faulkner, and chatted with Fabrizio about grammar (Does the sentence "The question was asked to her" sound as weird to you as it does to me?). Doing very little tends to make me all sorts of hungry, and since I couldn't justify lunch at 10:30am, I headed to the bar around the corner for a cappuccino e brioche (I miss my sfoglia crema I used to get in Florence, Milan is all northern-European-y and frequently shuns my pastry of choice).

I walked in and said ciao to the barman, who always responds, "Ciao prof!" Then I heard "Ciao Rachel!". One of my students from the first two months was there, milling about in her raincoat and backpack. Her mother works the cash register. I immediately switched to English. During a short and terrified exchange half in English, half in Italian, she explained that the vice-principal had sent her class home early for the day. Then she helped me pick out my brioche. The barman whipped out a plate for my pastry and put my sugar in my cappuccino for me. When I finished, I went to pay, and I found out that my lovely student had paid for me. It made me all warm and fuzzy inside. I thanked her profusely in English (sweetie!) and headed on my way...

Bars are the best. Good things tend to happen in them. At Brother's Bar, the first bar I went to in Milan and where I go every time I tutor at the family's house, the two old barmen always seem so delighted to see me. They always ask me, "Come stai?" and when I respond bene, "Ah si vedo che stai bene," and then make some comment about being too old. At the bar near the school, the young barman knows what I get, knows what kind of sugar I like (grezzo), and always calls me prof. Returning for a visit to Florence with friends from study abroad, the barmen at our favorite cafè (TabacchiBar per sempre) not only were delighted to see us but bought us our coffee. It's one of my favorite parts of Italy, the ritual of ordering an itty bitty coffee and standing by the barman to down it in a minute or two, making a mess of crumbs and cream, eavesdropping on conversations, making friends...

Our families

Today in my 4th year class with Ms. B (finally I get to return to her class), we improvised. I had thought that it was my first time with the class, so I thought I would do my usual introduction, my life story, ask them their life story sort of deal. I told this to Ms. B as we were running in opposite directions down the hall, and she gave the okay over her shoulder. In the next period though, she stopped me and said, "You've already seen this class before!" Oops. I had thought my schedule had changed, but it was the same class I had alternated seeing the last section. I was just confused. So we decided to talk about our families. Luckily, by this point I am pretty good at improvising.

I told them about my family, how my great-grandfather had named my grandmother, one of four girls, Benny Jean because he wanted a boy. How my grandfather traveled Alabama as a pastor, moving from parish to parish ("What? I don't understand. He works with sheep? Like in Sardegna?"). How when they got divorced, my grandmother went to college and became a social worker. How my mother left Alabama, became a professor, and traveled to South Carolina. How my father was raised by his mother, after his father died of a heart attack, in the heart of Minnesota. How he traveled the northeast and then to South Carolina, also as a professor. My brother, a half brother whole feels like a whole one. Me. But we had already been over me.

These are the stories of two of my students...

N is Rwandan. His parents fell in love while on a school trip to San Francisco, and when they got back they got married. They had three children, including N. the youngest, before they moved to Italy "because there was a war." They stayed together for a little while before they divorced. His father went to London, where he remarried and had other children. His mother stayed in Milan, where she worked for a firm, and raised the children. I asked N if he went to London often, and he said never, he didn't know his father. His oldest sister works in a bank and wants to be "an important manager." His other sister studies at Politecnico with his brother. I said, "Oh, so you're the baby of the family," and he replied, "Yes, but I'm the tallest. I beat my brother at basketball."

A is Italian. He claims his parents met while working together in the United States, fell in love, and got married in Las Vegas. Ms. B and I didn't believe him, "Are you kidding?" but he swore it was true. I asked him how his parents met in the U.S. and he said, "I don't want to know, I don't want to think about it!" I asked him if he had any pets, and he said a big dog named Timmy, but don't blame him for the name because it's his mom's fault.

The stories you hear...

P.S. Today as my regular reward candy, Ms. R gave me truffle-flavored white chocolate. I found it pretty gross, I don't dig truffles. I fear offending her, but I also fear the replacement of the usual chocolate-covered cherry or PocketCoffee with mushroom chocolate. Dilemma.