Christmas in Naples - Guess who's coming to the Manger?

You gotta hand it to the Neopolitans...centuries of subjugation from foreign overlords, drug lords, and local kings has imbued them with a terrific modus vivenda: a strong sense of humor in the face of so much adversity.  Now I'm not sure how many residents are truly laughing about the garbage crisis redux (excepting the dirty contractors laughing all the way to the banks), but here's the Best of the famed Neopolitan Nativity Scenes has on offer -- even Julian Assange - pc in hand -- has made the grade:

The Magi bringing trash to lay at the feet of Bambin Jesù

Julian, not yet handcuffed, alongside Hilary & Barry

The Holy Family stops for air on the flight from Egypt (clearly, the oxygen masks have dropped due to low cabin pressure)

 

 

 

 

 

Some have commented that perhaps it's all a bit blasphemous, but the fabricators on via San Gregorio Armeno say in their defense that forcing this situation on the residents is altogether blasphemous.  As for me, I like the ones depicting Berlusconi in any number of positions; not that I'd put him in my manger scene, however.

Let's hope that as we celebrate Natale, it's a Rebirth or Renaissance for Bella Napoli.
To read more about via San Gregorio Armeno, click here

Life in Italy: What to get the Italian Lover who has everything?

What to get the Italophile in your life? 

A User's Manual to Life in Italy!

Francesca Maggi takes off her rose-colored glasses and takes on Italy's world-renowned Quality of Life.  Starting with her X Commandments of Life in Italy [Thou shalt not covet thy customer, Thou shall hold La Mamma as your one true omnipresent and omniscient lord of the household], she tackles Italian bureaucracy, drivers, superstitions, traditions, La Mamma and more.  Readers will get a hilarious insider's guide from an outsider's perspective, taking us through the trials and tribulations of life in Bell'Italia.

About the author...Francesca Maggi first came to Italy at the tender age of 4 months.  A return visit at age 6 sealed her fate as she endured the agony and enjoyed the ecstasy of this country of contradictions.  She has been working with Italy for nearly 30 years, 20 of them as a resident while traveling the entire swathe of the Boot and taking in the sights, sounds & society's peccadillos from Trapani to Trieste, from Trento to Taranto.

Illustrations by...Each chapter is introduced by the inimitable witty vignettes of Gianni Falcone, or GianFalco...www.gianfalco.it which are part & parcel of the humor of the book...(including the cover image).  You can see more by Gianni by clicking the main tab on the blog page, Cartoon of the Week...or visiting his blogs on OpenSalon (Just a few Pixels) or Diario Acido.

What they're saying...Francesca Maggi is brilliant -- a modern day critic following in the footsteps of Luigi Barzini's The Italians.  Her stories are at once funny, irreverent and poignant.

OMG - i just read the first few paragraphs of the ''Baby on Board' part of your book! that was hilarious.....       i'm still laughing  ROFL!

Been reading your book and LOVE it!! Great insight and funny, FAMILIAR anecdotes!

Get a signed copy if you purchase the book off the Official Home Page 
Burnt by the Tuscan Sun

http://burntbythetuscansun.blogspot.com

Mozzarella from Naples: Italian Cuisine Good Enough to Eat?

Photo from the excellent website
SaporieRicetti

I am not someone who is paranoid about what I eat, although I am a firm believer in 'You are what you eat'.  I am seemingly intolerant to pretty much everything, but will never refuse a glass of prosecco, a slice of pizza or incredible nibbles that may give me a migraine later.  But, long before the show came out on Italy's toxic 'Terra dei Fuochi' (Scorched Earth - watch on youtube or find link on my Burnt by the Tuscan Sun facebook page) area surrounding Naples, and the place from where many of the gorgeous fruits of that earth abound, I gave up buying anything that I knew came from Campania (except cheese on my pizzas -- I could hardly go back in the cucina and ask where it came from).
After the show aired, about 30% of Italians did the same thing.  We were told that glowing tomatoes were being sold to all the big food cos., we saw old ladies with strawberry fields just below the toxic waste sites and insisting the water feeding her vines was good enough to drink.  We envisioned cows out to pasture with tumors larger than their udders.  So we stayed away.
So, in accordance with the Consortium for Bufala Mozzarella - four Consumer's Assocs., set out to prove everyone's worst fears.  And we were all stunned by the results.
They sent sample packages of mozzarella cheese bought in different parts of the country for testing in a lab in Germany.  They figured (rightly so), that no one would ever trust the results of local labs here in Italy...all it takes is a few slabs of dough in one's palms, I suppose to get the "right" outcome [just like "studies" conducted in the USA and financed by the very cos. they are purported to investigate].  I found this humorous, because along with Austria, these northern neighbors are the same ones who gave us glowing ricotta and blu mozzarella; new varieties the world had never seen.
Turns out, the Neapolitan mozzarella contained five times FEWER dioxins that are accepted by the Board of Health.  Somewhere in the processing, or maybe staying with the Bufalo in the first place, those chemicals that have lit the earth on fire were not getting into our food chain, after all.
This, in my opinion, was very good news.  Naturally, journalists affirmed that...had they been a bit more proactive back in the day - five years ago - when the cat got out of the cheese cloth...well, things would not have fallen so low.  Either way, I now only have to worry about my headaches from yeast when I down another pizza napoletana.

Amazon's Drone Delivery Arrives in Italy

Of course, this title is not true. But when the airwaves were abuzz with the sounds of Drones landing like Hitchcock's The Birds on your doorstep, well...I started fantasizing about what that might just look like in Bell'Italia:

First off, packages might be getting some lift-off in China, where I imagine if you're caught stealing the box outright you will find your head on a post in the piazza by noon the next day.  I even suppose this might work in the U.S. suburbs or rural areas where, should a box be landing on your doorstep, it's not a bad thing (that is, until another UnaBomber decides it's a pretty nifty way to deliver all sorts of evil without passing thru U.S. post offices and their darn stamp machines...).

But, clearly, boastful Bezos & his crew haven't quite conceived of the urban setting or else they never would have bragged about this service on 60 minutes and in markets where most have packages delivered round-the-clock.

The view from your window

Easy as 1-2-3

So, for starters, let's all just relish Amazon's vision for a few moments.  After all, there's not a person in all of Italy who wouldn't want to see mail being delivered to them - at all - drones or not.  [Okay, excepting the mail carriers who don't seem to want to deliver the mail even when they have to - as also featured in my book, in the chapter, The Postman Never Rings Even Once].  In this momentary blissful vision we see the Italian economy jump 6 points because people start ordering things online, rest assured they'll actually be delivered.  Heck - Amazon could even start a new service...Note to Amazon: Check to make sure the thing you ordered hadn't been swiftly substituted with a box of kleenex instead.

But then, bureaucracy rears its ugly head.  After all, who would sign for the package?  Those blips on the economy upswing would be merely temporary as companies far & wide go belly-up due to millions of belly-aching claims to the contrary:  I never rec'd my package.  Please resend or refund [okay, I know the refund is sheer fantasy but we are dreaming, right?) Note to Amazon: Add CCTV camera footage to assure the drop.]  Italian businesses still operate on the stay-at-home-wife for everything; including package delivery and trips to the post office [well, she's not so stay-at-home -- busying herself at the market stalls and passing her formative years in lines at the Post Office]. Packages cannot be left without someone's 'signature' (and I use the term loosely - as loosely as an unintelligible scribble since that's what signatures look like here).

The package gets dropped. Once, while loading up my car in front of my doorman building in my swanky Milanese neighborhood, I set down a huge bag of clothes (within the entryway and just beyond eyeshot of my usually vigilant doorman).  By the time I came downstairs again, the bag and most of its contents had vanished.  I found remnants of my articles strewn down the street; my familiar family of gypsies making off like, well, bandits.  To this day, I still can't decide if I was more upset from getting my clothes stolen, or discovering that some of my prized pieces actually went rejected by the wandering gypsies who took them in the first place.
So, yes, Amazon -- Drone Delivery would be a definite improvement in people's lives.  The hordes of gypsies currently plunging head first into humongous garbage containers like Santa picking out the perfect present -- could set their sticks aside - for good.  They would only have to gaze up in the sky to find their proverbial pennies from heaven dropped at their feet.  Before long, their Flea Markets (in the true sense of the words) would become Amazon outposts -- you could go to the Train Station or around the Vatican and shop to your heart's delight - at bargain prices.  And everything, in spanking new condition.

Imagine that-Amazon's Drone Delivery would actually put the bricks & mortar shops they've so roundly razed back in business.  It might not be a bad thing, after all.

A USA-ITALY Cultural Differences in perspective

While all us (Italian and foreign) dog lovers in Bell'Italia would agree with this poll - and I cite the gazillion dog lovers I meet & greet every day at the parks - Many Italians do not live in urban centers. Dogs are parked in gardens or are strictly utilitarian - for hunting, for truffles, for saving lives, for experimentation or guarding the home or farm animals.  They are loved and respected.  But generally are not allowed near kids or kitchens.  I have a few excerpts in my book, Burnt by the Tuscan Sun dedicated to the health risks of pets interacting with humans.  



One sight you rarely see on Italian portals are these...but they do exist. Just like the Loch Ness monster.

In the USA - 93% consider pets as family
In Italy...it would be interesting to see the statistic

You say tomato...I say toxic waste

Italians have their collective Dolce & Gabbana underwear in a twist over this cheeky advert that came out recently from tomato sauce purveyor, Pomì.  After so many reports, videos, and so much buzz about the fields of tomatoes that are actually smoking from only-San Gennaro-knows-what detritus is buried beneath them, coupled with a Mafia turncoats recent affirmations about the triangle of death where they've dumped nuclear waste and more...Well, I imagine that tomato eating has perhaps gone down.  A farmer on the report by the courageous women of Le Iene said he sold his rotten tomatoes to every major brand in Italy - which then went and turned them into bottled sauces and whatnot.  As for him, he risks his life just cultivating the cancerous fruits - the Lycopersicon symbol of the luscious Mediterranean lifestyle...

So, out came Pomì - in an attempt to squash the rumours...

Some have said that the North is just as polluted as the South - sure, with small particles and especially traffic.  But I'd take those particles sprinkled on my pasta over the stuff that's bubbling just below the earth in Caserta.

Bravo Pomì:  Now, just sign the change.org petition to force the magistrates to reveal the names of all those buyers of these toxic tomatoes. 

A new, similar report has come out on Olive Oil - revealing the not-so-breaking-news that - oops! - the olives aren't really from Italy.  This is something that's been out & about since the 1980s...with a terrific book exposing it Extra Virgin as well.

As for me, my eye-witness report on the olive oil scene is here:  http://burntbythetuscansun.blogspot.it/2010/08/unlocking-secret-of-italian-olive-oil.html

Captain Erich Priebke on the lam - but only after death

If it's true that 'Only the good die young', well then former Nazi and clearly not-so-good Christian Erich Priebke who died on October 11th, 2013 at the ripe old age of 100 is the poster boy for that sentiment.  I first learned of Priebke when visiting the Fosse Ardeatine - the Ardeatine ditches, the site of a WWII massacre conducted under the direction of a certain Captain Priebke.  I always take people there - it's the closest you can come to feeling the horror and randomness of war.  I really never gave much thought as to whether the man responsible was still alive.  Not only was he alive, he was clearly well-off, imbibing in fine Italian wines compliments of the countrymen that he had slaughtered.  

Although he'd been extradited to Italy from Argentina only in the late 1990s (following a US News report), he'd been shuttling in and out of courts while claiming he was merely following orders ever since.  Because of his age, he more or less got a slap on the wrist for his efforts.  And so I thought it was peculiarly astounding when, in death, the Vatican (the very country that gave him his 'Get out of Jail Free' card; issuing him a passport to Argentina back in 1946, with an Argentinian Pope would have refused a funeral and burial in the church. The story gets even stranger when a priest of Jewish origin and 'friend of the good Christian soldier, Priebke' decided he would hold a funeral for him in Albano -- in the shadows of the Pope's summer residence. 

Priebke had requested to be buried back in Argentina with his wife.  But the Argentines wouldn't hear of it.  The coffin seemed to be going from one town to the next, rejected here, rejected there.  One day, he'd be sent supposedly to Germany; the next, the German Embassy would report they had not been contacted at all.

All the shenanigans started to remind me of New York City's 1987 Garbage Barge...the little tugboat that couldn't -- aimlessly wandering from port to port, with no one taking the trash.  It's an amazing story now being re-examined on the New York Times' RetroReport - a fantastic look into the stories of our day (at least the days of those of us born before the 1980s, that is).  While Priebke claimed he was being blamed for all of the Nazi atrocities of WWII, it is true that from an Italian point of view, he did command thousands to their demise.  The last time I checked into the news, his body was in a hangar at Rome's airport, with his family saying he had been sequestered.

While Fascist sympathizer scuffled with anti-fascists, one person tweeted about the hypocrisy.  Let's face it-how many hundreds of thousands did Bush/Cheney kill in their quagmire of Iraq?  Or how many innocents have perished under President Obama's drones?  Why, indeed, draw the line on a 100 yr old former Nazi?  

Or to 'InHouse arrest' in a Central Roman villaPhoto Credit:  Urban MediaLab Waste

I thought he might be better off with a Burial at Sea, since Italy didn't want any memorials that would attract fascist worshippers. The compromise, is that Priebke will be buried in an 'undisclosed location'.  

Dan Rather called the Barge to Nowhere travails "The most-watched load of garbage in the memory of man."  We've since been outdone in that department, what with the Great Pacific Garbage patches, the Naples garbage overflows, and the closing of Europe's largest landfill, Rome's Malagrotta [with no announcement of new candidates for openings...].  As for Priebke, he will be gone, but hopefully not forgotten to the scrap heap of war crimes.  

For some cool pics of Garbage Barges floating up & down the East River in NYC, click here.

Ahhhh...Alitalia takes a nose dive

Okay-you know things are bad with your Company when the last resort to bail you out is a company so broke it has stopped mail delivery -- and it's the one who is supposed to be delivering the mail.  This is like Detroit trying to get bailed out by Lehman Bros.  I don't know where to start with this incredible story of how - gasp! - horrors! - The Italian Post Office is going to save Alitalia, so I'll start at the end:  Let it fail.  It's not like we'll all suddenly be stranded on our little peninsula - it's a peninsula, after all, and we could always train it out if worse came to worst.  There are plenty of airlines who would gladly pay for the slots, they just don't want to buy the Company those slots come with.

Picture by Gianni Falcone - Diario Acido

I dedicate an entire chapter in my book, Burnt by the Tuscan Sun to Italy's Post Office:  The Postman Never Rings (even) Once.  So I can't think for the life of me how you could take a company, so totally removed from the idea of getting letters and packages from point A to point B, whose only m.o. is 'raise the rates' and maybe we'll make money, and put them in charge of trying to get people and luggage from one place to another.  They'll probably put into practice their current system:  Raise all ticket prices to coincide with Denmark's, and double all prices to & from America, they can afford it.

Italy's post office offers tons of other services; so much so, they shouldn't even be in the letter business to begin with.  But, I guess I can see the commonalities: Nowadays you don't need tickets to board planes, in Italy, you don't need stamps to mail your letters.  Furthermore, both entities have problems with stealing -- fancy items from luggage / fancy items from envelopes.  Talk about core businesses.  I'm thinking that the union personnel over at the Post Office is totally behind this one:  If one group of people is going to have an upgrade, it'll be the poor sods rifling - errr - handling envelopes in the back room.  They're salivating at the bit to get their hands on real cool stuff like cameras and phones and jewelry.
But it's all not as ludicrous as the goins on elsewhere in the postal services:  The U.S. Postal Service is cutting back as well, out of money, and in the red.  And so they spend $40 million to finance Lance Armstrong through consecutive Tours de France?  [and over $100 million on the Olympics??!! -- If there's any need for a government agency shutdown, this would be near the top of my list.  Adding insult to injury, with Lance Armstrong's doping confession, they're trying to get their money returned to sender.  Maybe Lance should just try and buy an airline and it'll all work out for the best.

Your recommended reading list of all things Alitalia (from the last time they went up for sale in 2008) as reported by yours, truly in Burnt by the Tuscan Sun:
Alitalia's Turbulent Ride 
What goes up ...
Amore per Alitalia
Who's who in Alitalia deal
Alitalia's Reality: Lost or Survivor?
Alitalia's Three Card Monty 

And, if you want to try and wrap your head around the reasons behind a failed govt agency spending money on athletes, Start Here.

Buon Compleanno, Giuseppe Verdi!

Con amore, da una Donna Mobile...compliments of the Three Tenors! 

Saint Silvio's Community Service

As things look for one Silvio Berlusconi, he never would have served any jail time for his convictions anyway.   His four years already were reduced to one, and then his age, while not preventing him to be locked up in a basement with a pole dancer at his villa in Sardinia, prevents him from actually being behind bars.
And so, his other option was In House Arrest or Community Service.
I have to say, I was not so surprised when Silvio stated that Community Service would be beneath him.  
But still, wasn't this the same guy who professed - even under oath - that all he truly wanted to do was "help out a few girls" maybe get a head start on their 'beauty' salons? What greater honor than perhaps working with women to get them off the streets.  I'm sure he has plenty of apartments where they could live nicely, with stipend.

But seriously, while Italians are quite generous with volunteer time and giving, there is not much in the way of leaving your name on a building, setting up richly funded foundations, starting universities on a scale like Rockefeller or Carnegie Mellon, or Kresge.  Sure, there are plenty of foundations, but usually, one finds these ultra-rich purchasing art & villas for their offspring, rather than create something for the good of the community.
What a legacy Silvio could have left if only he used his money or his elbow grease for doing good works?  Instead of pretending to purchase a villa in Lampedusa, maybe creating a village like Milano II - but to house those immigrants who actually make our shores, rather than keeping them behind high fences.
Although, one could argue...looking at the showgirls he plucked from obscurity to land choice jobs feeding at the public trough, he did, indeed, take a few women off the streets, or in the very least, off the pages of nude mags.
Maybe he can argue that he's already served the community all these years - with his personal brand of public service.

The Holy Sites - A sight for sore eyes?

Or, the real reason it's called the wailing wall.

It is a right of passage for visitors to Rome, often in for a three-day extravaganza, to ponder the ordeal (and it is an ordeal) of heading over to Vatican City for a day in the Museums (commonly called The Sistine Chapel, which has almost nothing to do with the museums themselves). In reply, I often quip: Just buy the book - you'll thank me later.  This has nothing to do with what I truly think of the museum experience, and especially the Sistine ceiling. After all, as Sister Wendy (of PBS/BBC fame) states in my very own loveable audioguide, there, you find yourself standing within an artwork - and with Michelangelo's masterpiece, what a work of art it is!  But decades after I first tramped through the hours-long lines to get into the museums, only to find myself so exhausted at the end to not even have the energy to so much crane my neck, well...I've often given this advice.  I have yet met a person who has truly enjoyed the full Monty Vatican museum experience.  Post visit, they speak of it enthusiastically, but more like something they've survived, like an elephant stampede whilst on safari.  To this day, I still cannot understand why the Vatican doesn't just relent and let the 5.2 million tourists simply bolt up that short, sweet, Bramante staircase to gaze up at the ceiling for their requisite 2.5 minutes, let them check it off their 'been there / done that' list and bolt right back down as if one of the horses that may have taken that very staircase and now needed to pee -- really badly.  Leaving the 400,000 or so who truly desire to view the artworks, rooms,  tapestries, heck even the ugly contemporary religious works to do so at their leisure.  As it stands (and you'll be doing an awful lot of that), you end up feeling you are on a rich, but exhausting pilgrimage -- only to find yourself deposited in the most chaotic place on earth; inside a Chapel that is reminiscent of the Roman Forum during the Circenses.  Whereas most people speak in hushed tones when entering a place of worship, for some reason (and maybe because of the walk of sorrows to get there), people burst at the seams upon entering the Sistine Chapel.  Add to this the automated announcements blaring SILENCE! SILENZIO! at 7 minute intervals and in 43 languages, well, you begin to wonder if Michelangelo didn't have it all backwards; and we are the ones in his version of Hell; not the guys depicted up on the wall.
Okay, so what does this all have to do with Israel?  Believe me, it's all connected, seeing that that's the place where it all began.  But a visit to the Holy spots in and around Jerusalem, and in particular, the Church of the Sepulchre, well, I had the same spiritual experience; the one in which I thought I was going to meet my maker alright -- by being crushed to death by cruise ship passengers donning baseball caps (inside a church?) as they pushed and shoved to get a closer glimpse of whatever it was in their line of vision (I don't know, I could only see the backs of baseball caps).  Looking up, you can tell it is an amazing place, and, I'm sure for millions, quite over-the-top when it comes to items on your religious to-do list.  But my experience here left me with a headache; my more religious friends running out the doors to shake the crowds even faster than I -- Turns out that after lighting your candle, a priest quickly whisks them all away so new candles may be lit.  My friend didn't want to witness the fate of the candle he had traveled so long to illumine and shot out the door. 

- praying for time ticketing
in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre - 

Jerusalem is home to all of the great monotheistic religions, and so you can get the same religious experience no matter where you went.  Even at the Kotel - or Western Wall  [click here for the webcam].  We were there to attend a Bar Mitzvah, but to our surprise, so were dozens and dozens of other families. The boys, their extended families, their Rabbis and their Torahs were swept into the area, while hundreds of women precariously perched upon plastic chairs around the perimeter tried to catch a glimpse of the ceremonies below.  People inside pushed and shoved other groups for space, other visitors made their way to pray, ambulances stood on the ready while thousands more milled about on the slope and marching soldiers came by, guns strapped across their chests.  We were all so close, I got to cheer on two boys at once - with women swapping stories and candies amongst ourselves, as if the next of kin.  The experience was quite unique, and, out there with the women tossing candies, celebratory -- but spiritual?  I would have preferred a peaceful spot under an olive tree to the dodge'em car experience of vying for a space in the piazza, and later on sidewalks while heaving masses headed into the bowels of waiting tour buses just beyond.
Finally on our own bus and nestled in the quiet space of my very own seat, I was moved to recite my own prayer giving thanks for having survived my day of spirituality.  And while the Dome of the Rock beckoned in the sun, I thanked God that Mecca was not in Jerusalem as well.

Italy...After raising the Concordia

From the inimitable genius of Gianni Falcone www.gianfalco.it 

His is the hand behind my cartoon of the week (see tab on the home page of my blog, Burnt by the Tuscan Sun).

Now this....is gonna be a tough one to set straight.

Although the entire world has weighed in on this debacle:  From the 32 dead (two people still not recovered), the mind-boggling idiocy of the Captain and his utterly ludicrous self defense,  to the recent conviction of five crew members for manslaughter, to the expense of the salvage operation (eventually topping out over $1 billion),  I thought the commentary from Metro newspaper's Maurizio Guandalini was quite poignant [he invites us to make our own inference, which for me is the end of the Berlusconi govt and over to Monti's temporary govt before the elections that brought us the young Letta]:

"...we've raised up from the ashes what was vanquished a year and a half ago.  Whatever way you think on it, just know that they're watching us from the four corners of the earth.  Between the control room and the decision room, our Made in Italy name was totally putrified.  But with a nod from Leonardo Da Vinci, on the edges of a Tuscan island, we deployed our utmost genius and technical abilities."