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.