The Italian Election- Part II

The People Have Spoken

And what exactly did they say? They said “Va fannculo”, which more or less translates to “Go fuck yourself” or “fuck off”. This was the campaign slogan of the populist ex-comedian Beppe Grillo, who frequently exhorts his public to say it while flashing a “V” sign with forefinger and middle finger. My apologies for the language but that's Grillo, whose sensibilities run parallel to those of the late George Carlin, never one to use a polite word or phrase when there was a more off-colorful option. Grillo's new party, the Five Star Movement (M5S) led the field, getting 25.5% of the votes for the Chamber of Deputies, leaving 25.4% for the pre-election favorite Partito Democratico (PD), 21.4% for Silvio Berlusconi's Polo della Libertà (PDL), and 8.3% for Mario Monti Lista Civica.

Italy has 20 regions and each has a proportional election to select a bunch of Senators and another to elect a bunch of members of the Chamber of Deputies. Nobody gets to vote for a person. You vote for a party with a list of candidates. Here in Umbria, one of the 20 regions, we had thirteen lists competing for seven seats in the Senate (curiously divided into twenty-two national voting districts) and sixteen lists competing for nine places in the Chamber of Deputies (even more inexplicably divided into twenty-six voting districts) Those seats are apportioned more or less in proportion to the percentage of votes the party receives but clearly most of the smaller parties or lists get no seats at all. The small parties tend to team up with the larger parties, presumably to agree on policies but, if I understand correctly, also to share in the number of seats awarded to the group. How candidate lists and the apportionment of seats are determined remain mysteries to me and, I suspect, to the majority of Italian voters. Thus, while the M5S got a high percentage of votes throughout Italy, the PD, which had the higher totals in central Italy, and the PDL, which won decisively in the northern regions, both took far more seats in both Houses of Parliament than the M5S. That was due in part to their having three or four smaller lists affiliated with them, while the M5S ran alone.

The election rules threw the Va fannculo back in Grillo's face, as you can see from the following:

In the 2013 voting for the Senate the results were:

Grillo's M5S, with 23.8% of the vote, got 58 Senate seats, (19.2%)

Bersani's PD and allies, with 31.6% of the vote, got 113 seats (37.5%);

Berlusconi's PDL and allies, with 30.6 %, got 114 seats (37.8%) and;

Monti and friends, with 9.1 %, got 16 seats (5.2%) for a total of 301 Senators, not counting a small number of Senators for Life, a sort of golden parachute program for respected senior citizens.

In the Chamber of Deputies the breakdown of votes and seats went like this:

M5S 25.5% 110 seats (17.8%)

PD+ allies 29.7% 340 seats (55.1%)

PDL+ allies 28.9% 121 seats (19.6%)

Monti + allies 10.6% 46 seats (7.4%)

617 seats

All this adds to a robust total of 617 deputies deputies in the highest paid parliament in Europe and perhaps in the world. (Note: The charts showing the pre-election division of seats show 291 senators and 580 deputies as opposed to the new totals of 301 and 617. We don't know if the discrepancies represent delegate creep or just that the newspapers have just lost track of how many MPs there really are.)

While we have similar discrepancies in US elections between the numbers of votes cast for a party's candidates and the number of those elected, this result would seem to exceed the wildest gerrymandering dreams of Karl Rove and Scott Walker. The American system confers two Senate seats on each state, whether they be the size of Rhode Island, or of California. In the US House of Representatives the disproportion is even worse, based mostly on gerrymandering, i.e. the manipulation of electoral districts to bundle like-minded voters into a few districts while defining other districts to include just enough of the traditional partisans of the gerrymanderers to assure their control. However corrupt this may be, Americans at least get to vote for a person with a name and a face against another known person. In Italy if you mark a ballot with the name of a person on a party's list, that ballot is annulled. Other than family and friends, nobody in Italy has any idea of who these people on the lists are or how they got there.

Following the election results, all the pundits, parties and newspapers declared Italy ungovernable. Grillo was to meet with Mario Monti, the unelected head of the recent government of technocrats, i.e. bankers, rather than career politicians, whose aim had been to impose on Italy some of the currently fashionable austerity, which has done so much to restore the virtue, if not the efficacy, of governments in Greece, Spain, Portugal, Ireland and the UK. Grillo apparently would support an interim government headed by Monti to pass measures limited to two areas, election reform, and anti-corruption reform, before new elections would be held.

His objectives start with his party's own rules for the election:

1. All candidates on his list must not have had past affiliations with existing political parties.
2. All M5S candidates had to agree to accept no more than 25% of their parliamentary salaries, with the rest going to a fund to promote small businesses.

Among his more dramatic and attention getting getting proposals are:

• referendums on Italian adherence to NATO, the EU, the Euro and Free Trade Agreements.
• A citizenship salary of €1000/month.
• Default on the public debt.
• Nationalization of the banks.

However, he also calls for a vast number of measures to save energy, reduce corruption and make the government more responsive to the electorate. Among them are:

• Abolition of provincial governments and the combining of comunes (townships or counties) with fewer than 5000 residents.
• Abolition of governing funding of the election expenses of the (many) political parties.
• Limits of two terms for elected officials.
• Elimination of special privileges for Parliamentarians, including their pensions after two years served.
• Prohibition on parliamentarians from holding outside jobs, or additional political offices, while serving in Parliament.
• Parliamentary salaries to be brought in line with national norms.
• People found guilty of serious crimes shall not be eligible for elective office nor for managerial positions in publicly listed companies. (Many convicted felons, besides Mr. Berlusconi, occupy high office in Italy, although he represents a pinnacle of sorts.)
• All laws must be self-financed when enacted.
• New laws must be published on the internet three months before taking effect.
• Referendum results must be enacted into law regardless of the percentage of voters participating in the referendum. At present they are advisory and non-binding if less than 50% of the voters participate.
• Free internet access for everyone.
• No one person shall be allowed to own more than 10% of any national publication or TV channel.
• There will be only one public TV channel and it shall have no advertising.
• Executive salary limits on all publicly traded corporations and for those with government participation.

How successful Grillo's populist efforts will be remains to be seen. We do have strong doubts about the likelihood of any of the three other competing groups getting anything done to resolve Italy's major problems. The Italian press, and even more the international press, writes of both Grillo and Berlusconi as buffoons unworthy of consideration. We're pleased that, unlike the US, where politicians all seem bent on creating false problems, crises and deadlines while ignoring real problems and running the country into the ground, Italy seems to have at least one political leader who is proposing bold solutions where they are needed.

The Italian Election- Part I

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The Silvio Critiques

On February 24, 2013, the day of the Italian national elections, Frank Bruni published an article in the NY Times on the elections, and in a fit of pique, I responded to it. My comments are logged around noon of Feb.24. Having suggested that it would be befitting for Americans to keep quiet about Italian politics, I will now ignore that prescription. Silvio Berlusconi is the target of many foreign commentators such as Frank Bruni. His position can best be understood by non-Italians by comparing his role to a number of other public figures. It takes many of them to give a full picture and while I do not wish be seen as a defender of Mr. Berlusconi, it must be admitted that he doesn't fare too badly in some of the comparisons.

Berlusconi, the self-made man, came from a prosperous Milanese family and like Donald Trump, another son of a moderately wealthy family, used his entertaining manner and driving ambition to build a large personal fortune. Berlusconi started out as an entertainer on cruise ships then used his friendship with Bettino Craxi to build a real estate empire in Milan before turning to building even larger empires in media and politics. The Donald also had a good deal of success in real estate but at the end of the day, he got into the casino trade in Las Vegas and New Jersey, and starred on a cheesy reality show, whereas Berlusconi has managed to control roughly 90% of the media in Italy, becoming its richest man and, in a manner of speaking, turning it into one big casino.

Silvio Berlusconi is seen by the American press and most politicians and diplomats in Europe as a buffoon. His dealings with Angela Merkel and other European leaders are filled with gaffes and insults, intended or not, to a degree very similar to those of George W. Bush. Silvio's comments are often crude, rude, and insulting, but occasionally amusing. Those of Bush were often also funny, but the comedy was mostly due to his unprecedented mangling of the English language. There have been many books and calendars dedicated to his malapropisms. The major distinction between these two buffoons is that Berlusconi started neither wars nor major recessions.

As amoral, sexual predators go, JFK may have been the real thing. Bill Clinton got the label but, like so many others, from Ike and Wilbur Mills to Gary Hart and John Edwards, he succumbed to the allure of ambitious young women, themselves seduced by the proximity to power. Where others have denied their involvements, Silvio has, except when under indictment, bragged of his exploits, perhaps creating a womanizer image magnified out of all proportion to reality. Whatever his perceived sins in this area, he has never approached the hypocrisy of a Newt Gingrich, who publicly attacked Clinton for his sexual peccadillos while informing his cancer stricken wife in the hospital that he was divorcing her to marry his mistress.

With regard to conflicts of interest, it's more difficult to find anyone with a comparable issue, since Berlusconi's interests are so vast. Collectively the entire US Congress comes to mind. They are paid base salaries of $176,000  with generous benefits for working 126 days per year to represent the American public, but a large majority appear to be more richly rewarded by corporations for representing their interests in Congress. The ruling majority of the Supreme Court, which declared money speech and corporations citizens, seems to enjoy similar conflicts. Clarence Thomas's wife is highly paid to lobby for organizations dependent on favorable outcomes of SC decisions but we don't recall Justice Thomas (or his radical right brethren on the Court) reclusing himself on any such cases.

Being tall is a big advantage in politics. Both Presidents Washington and Lincoln towered over their peers, physically as well as metaphorically. It's virtually impossible to imagine Mitt Romney getting to run for any office if he stood at under 5'-8”. However, small men, from Napoleon to Michael Bloomberg, driven by ambition, talent, intellect, arrogance or presumption, have striven to make themselves great, sometimes with mixed results. Silvio Berluscono fits that mold.

The closest comparison to Berlusconi by any one man would have to be with that other media tycoon, Rupert Murdoch. Both men are active in numerous countries. Murdoch started in Australia, expanded into England and then metastasized into the US. Both have taken respected publications and turned them into trash. Berlusconi's operations have also expanded outside his native Italy. Although it did suffer setbacks in France, his TV empire has stretched into Spain and other European countries. Both men have successfully maneuvered to expand their media holdings, in opposition to anti-monopoly laws, to further their their political goals and personal fortunes. In their TV programming both have used attractive young women to bolster their ratings. Berlusconi's mostly appear semi-nude and dance, while Murdoch's blonds dress well and read Goebbels-style propaganda in the guise of news. Just imagine Murdoch buying up the NY Times, CBS, NBC, ABC, Time Magazine and the Dallas Cowboys, then starting his own political party from scratch, calling it “America's Team”; then taking over Congress and getting himself elected President, and you get some idea of Silvio Berlusconi's place in Italy.

Richard Nixon faced scandal as Vice President, serving under President Eisenhower, but he managed not only to extricate himself from that scandal and survive an unsuccessful run against Kennedy, but to come back from the political graveyard to be an almost two term President, before his paranoia-driven propensity for criminal activity terminated his presidency. Italy's own Comeback Kid has faced prosecution on many charges, been convicted on several, but has always managed to use Italy's bizarre rules regarding appeals and statutes of limitation to keep him out of harm's way. Last Fall, after his conviction, he announced his withdrawal from politics, but by February's elections, he was back in the fray, leading his party to a third place finish.

Karl Rove comes to mind as the only other present day political figure comparable to Berlusconi in wanting to win at any cost. The most recent charge against Berlusconi is that he paid several million Euros to a politician to switch to his party. He's also been known to bring expensive-to-defend lawsuits against journalists who have reported too accurately on his activities. Rove tends to favor raising obscene amounts of political “donations” to support chosen campaigns. He also is expert at inventing voter suppression measures. Both men suffered setbacks in the past year. We're unaware of any other achievements of Rove, but should they team up, he and Berlusconi could be a dangerous team.

Finally, in the New Face of the Year category, there are many candidates, but the best match I can come up with for a comparison to Berlusconi's penchant for spending vast wealth on cosmetic surgery of dubious value would be Jocelyn Wildenstein. The pictures speak for themselves.

Cat People and Cats

For the first time in twenty-five years our house has no kitty litter box. Tina, the last surviving member of our household feline population, which grew to a maximum of nine back in 1995, died on the third day of the new year. She was no longer mobile and clearly in considerable pain so we had the vet come and administer her terminal medication. Tina was a member of the family for seventeen years after our eldest daughter rescued Tina and her brother Teo from an abandoned litter in Perugia. Besides naming her, I tended to give her the nickname of Miss Italia because, with her velvety charcoal gray fur, she struck me as unusually beautiful. We miss her but at the same time I'm reminded of a joke our friend Jake Gruber once told us. A Catholic, a Protestant and a Jew were discussing theology, and the issue of when life begins came up. The Catholic says that life begins at the moment of conception. The Protestant says no, we believe that it starts at birth. The Jew then says no, you're both wrong; life starts when the dog dies and the children move out. At times like this, such feelings do emerge, along with a little guilt about having such feelings. 

Most of my closest friends are, or have been, dog owners. I've never held it against any of them, even though I've never managed to bring myself to share their enthusiasm. With cats, it's different. I become blind to any defects I might otherwise be irritated by in people when I know they are good to cats. A case in point. Some time ago a man in our village named Crispoldo died. For years he had fought with his relatives and he had been rather hard on his immediate family, which consisted of his wife and their adopted niece, both of whom, as fate would have it, had predeceased him. He was a tough landlord and not a particularly friendly neighbor. And yet, Crispoldo loved his cats, and he was good to them. When he ate, they would eat first, or right along with him. While Crispoldo and I were not close friends, we got along better than there was any logical reason to imagine. 

This week we got the sad news that another long-time neighbor, Antonello Aglioti, had passed away. Despite his living just down the hill through the woods from us, I only met or spoke with him on a few occasions, most recently a year ago when I asked him if he could provide a little creative spark for our summer festa. Unfortunately, I never followed up on that. Antonello was a theater and film director and set designer, as well as being a journalist who recently had his own TV interview show on RAI. Here in the village, he didn't mix very much. The most vivid memory I have about him was of a spectacle he invented, produced and directed during the town festival in Baschi some years ago.. The entire Comune (township or county) of Baschi, which includes about a dozen villages besides Acqualoreto, only has a population of 2800, but his show, which integrated music, dance, lighting, figures on stilts and fireworks, seemed like something you might see in Paris or New York. Amazing! 

 Besides his talent and imagination, the other thing I knew about Antonello was his love for cats.   My wife's sister-in-law Graziella, took care of his house and his cats. When he was in Rome, he would call up to see how the cats were doing.   She respected him and appreciated his concern and consideration.   Graziella herself is second to none in the care and feeding of cats.   Besides Antonello's large herd of almost a dozen, she feeds half the cats in Acqualoreto. 

Antonello leaves yet another house vacant. Several years after his death, Crispoldo's estate has not been settled and his two houses remain unoccupied.   In an earlier piece I mentioned losing three members of our local international community last year.  At least two of them had cats.   Their houses remain unoccupied and their cats dispersed.   I saw a story in the New York Times about a woman from Italy who runs a cat refuge in North Carolina. If only she could come back to Italy and do the same thing here! Among the blogs I often read, Jeremiah's Vanishing New York documents and laments changes to the city, as businesses are forced out by gentrification's many pressures. As one business closes, another rushes in to take its place and sometimes, those leaving are pushed. Such constant change can be disorienting and demoralizing but change, whether good or bad, inevitably happens everywhere. Our problem in Umbria is hardly a too rapid turnover of people or businesses. When people here die or simply go somewhere else, they typically leave vacant houses behind, and those houses often remain empty for years, if not for decades. On a commercial level, we see the same in Todi, where many storefronts have stood vacant for twenty years or more. All these uninhabited places get to be a little depressing for those who remain. It's worse than depressing for the cats! Antonello is gone. May another Antonello appear!

Decorum

Like fresh air and clean water, you aren't aware of decorum until it's missing. My wife recalls that as a girl she was reprimanded by the parish priest for attending mass in a dress with short sleeves. She was even sent home to change. Nowadays, one encounters the gum-chewing faithful wearing low-riding shorts or skirts designed to show off their navel rings, a display which might be considered redundant, given that the bellies on display are often protuberant enough to draw one's gaze without any embellishment.

From my own childhood, I remember travelling carnivals with freak shows which featured dwarfs, hermaphrodites and “the tattooed lady”. While dwarfs and hermaphrodites don't seem to have proliferated in the interval, tattooed ladies can now be seen, free of charge, in every small town supermarket.

About twenty years ago, one of the young bachelors in the village made a habit of perusing large hard-core pornographic magazines on the steps of the village bar/general store. The old ladies, who have always made up a majority of the local population, would either pretend not to notice, or would walk away in disgust, while the children mostly giggled. At the time, these magazines were crowding out other publications on newsstands throughout Italy. The news dealers scrambled to create large, out of public view, areas to stock such publications, but a certain aura of sleaze permeated all the major outlets. With the arrival and wide diffusion of the internet, this assault on decorum received a fatal blow, as pornography became easily available in every household. Italian newsstands have been restored to the days of old, where the most widely sold magazines are those showing remarkably tanned TV and film celebrities cavorting with their new loves in the chic resorts of Sardinia. These magazines, which feature bosomy stars in low cut dresses and small bikinis, despite being reliably present in every barber shop, seem to be mostly sold to women, which I find strange, but upon reflection, may be no more strange than men reading magazines about heroic sports figures, another top category. We all keep brooding about what (we) might have been.

This summer, which has been characterized by long family visits, hellish heat and a hectic village festa, has brought the notion of decorum to mind on multiple occasions. My grandchildren, all six of them, were present for a part of the summer, and while they are all above average, even exceptional, in every imaginable category, from beauty to intelligence, musicality to cuteness, their progress toward decorum may be lagging slightly behind. I have suggested that navel rings may be out of place in church but, at the same time, toy cars are every bit as foreign to the reverence of the ceremony. I could go on to lament the presence of dogs in church as well, but I'm treading on thin ice here, as I very rarely attend mass myself. However, the church is not the only locale where some concept of decorum should reside. I regard the dining room table, not to mention the living room floor, as being as sacred in its way, as any part of the church. Toy cars, dolls and electronic devices have no place there. Perhaps when introduced to alcohol and other pleasure inducing substances, the children may give up their addictions to plastic and electronic toys, but I fear that addictive behavior itself tends to become a personality trait, rather than just being associated with any one substance.

Among my own addictions, one of the most serious is watching sports. Sky Sports allows me to indulge my habit at little cost, but I have noticed that decorum in professional sports has taken a major hit. When I moved to Italy four decades ago I was shocked to see sports venues here littered with advertising. This cancer has spread, and now the once pristine wall boards of the Madison Square Garden hockey rink are plastered with ads for McDonald's and other commercial graffiti. It gets worse! During the long TV breaks for commercials, disco music is now piped into the arenas at NHL and NFL contests, as well as Major League baseball games. I wonder that there are any live audiences left but I suppose they are mostly recipients of free tickets from corporate sponsors filling their tax write-off boxes.

This summer brought us more tennis than usual, due to the Olympics. While I prefer the blood sports, I've always thought of tennis as being a little bit classier than some of the other sports. After all, at Wimbledon, players all wear white, and the public eats dainty sandwiches in the presence of royalty. However, at the US Open the other day, I noticed that during the breaks, they were piping in the same disco babble that the more proletarian sports have adopted. So much for tennis! I'm calling for Roger Federer to stage a walkout. There's too much money at stake for that, but will Roger, always a paragon of decorum, start learning to do back flips and a little victory dance ritual a the conclusion of a successful match?

With this backdrop of worldwide cultural decadence, I suppose it was too much to expect our tiny village to demonstrate more decorum in our summer festival than major institutions in New York City can muster. Much of the festa went well. As always, the food was good. The home-grown theatrical production was well done and well received, its only defect being that the sound was slightly under- amplified. The following night, that was compensated for by mind rending amplification of the most inane disco pop ever heard since Abba retired. This was Youth Night, youth in Italy being people between the ages of eighteen and thirty-eight. (Before that, they're bambini.) When I complained to the president and other members of the governing committee that the sound levels were grotesque and dangerous, I was told that the youth liked it that way. Possibly so, and perhaps they also like to stand around excavation sites with eight or ten jackhammers in operation. All of these people making that judgment were well over sixty and I'm not sure they know any better than I do what the youth like. Based on twenty year old anecdotal evidence, I would guess that they like porn. Had they decided to put a live porno exhibition on stage in the piazza, would the town elders have shrugged and said “that's what the youth like”?

Times, people and customs change. The fellow who once offended the standards of the village is now an upstanding pillar of the community. I have no idea if his tastes have changed but his hair is now streaked with gray and his comportment is exemplary. Decorum is, after all, simply conformance to accepted standards. Perhaps tomorrow that will simply mean keeping your navel ring polished and lint-free.

Milestones

Time marches on. The odometer of life's journey keeps clicking off the days and the weeks without our taking much notice, but at the end of the year, when the big number changes, we usually pause for a moment to consider what's been gained and what's been lost since the last New Year. Kids are delighted because being a year older confers more privileges; young adults look to the new year with the optimism that it will bring a new love or a better job or some unimagined opportunity. We older folk look upon the onset of another year with more nostalgia, and as much anxiety as optimism. Will this be the last one, or how many more do we have left? Is the world (the economy, the environment, the government) going to self-destruct? And will we be around to see it? Watching vulture capitalists and lunar colonialists participate in the circular firing squad of the US presidential primary campaign does nothing to alleviate the anxiety.

This January has been particularly loaded with reminders of time's passage. During the month I watched all ten NFL play-off games, several of which were decided by “sudden death overtime”. In reality, all the games were sudden death because all the losing teams were eliminated. Extinct! Next year there will be a Baltimore Ravens team wearing the same black and purple uniforms but it will be a different team, no matter how many current players and coaches return. The team that lost on that missed field goal is gone. We all cling to the the comforting fiction that there will be another chance, maybe next year. That team, along with thirty others, lost its chance.

The day before New Years Eve we went to the funeral of a village fixture, a 94 year-old woman who spent her last years shuffling around the piazza bestowing blessings upon anyone she encountered. The blessings came with questions such as “Do you like Acqualoreto?” although her impaired hearing precluded any possibility of her comprehending the reply. After four decades here, being a foreigner, I was still regularly posed the same question. It felt like she would be doing this forever.

January brought the news that the brightest kid in my high school class had died after a three year battle with Alzheimer's. I had a series of injections of Vitamin B-12 to correct a deficiency, which doctors suspect could risk leading to a similar outcome. When not visiting medical facilities for shots, tests or physical therapy ourselves, we've been visiting friends recovering in hospitals from largely self-induced ailments.

In one case, we've witnessed the decline and death of a long-time friend who was a regular at our Wednesday foreigners' Happy Hours. A witty and creative person with a wonderfully ironic sense of humor, she was also a fine and sensitive writer, a gourmet cook, a voracious reader, a cat lover, and an organizer of Christmas caroling expeditions, book exchanges and even Halloween celebrations. Best of all, she was one of the few regular readers of, and commentators on, this blog. Unfortunately, she also had a self-destructive side worthy of a rock star or a celebrity starlet. Linda abused alcohol with the best (or worst) of them. Our community, which has many ex-smokers but virtually no ex-drinkers, tends to be tolerant, even when occasionally concerned, regarding that particular vice. It was her unrelenting addition to nicotine that drove her friends away, intensified her solitude, and nudged her health into its downward spiral. In one of her last lucid days, she reminded the woman who had spent years caring for her that her organs were to be donated, to which the woman replied, “but Linda, your eyes, heart, liver and lungs don't even work for you any more. Who's going to take them, or what else is left to donate?” The decline apparently spun faster than she anticipated. Though her intentions seemed kind and generous when expressed in numerous conversations with her friends about her plans to donate her material assets as well as her organs to worthy causes, by the time her sister, her one surviving direct relative, arrived from the other side of the world to see her in the hospital, she was unable or unwilling to inform anyone where her instructions could be found in case the doctors' valiant efforts proved futile.

We've been trying to help her non-Italian-speaking sister and brother-in-law deal with logistical and bureaucratic matters for the past couple of weeks. They need all the help they can get and there is some satisfaction in helping people in such very difficult circumstances. But the inescapable thought arises that the Kafkaesque nightmare that they face could have been avoided. We have gained from this sad fiasco, one powerful lesson.

It's later than you think!

Thanks for the lesson Linda, as well as for all the parties, cookies, blog comments and general zaniness you've brightened our lives with. For the organizational example, not so much.

UPS, Uncle Harry and the paramus of Todi

I wasn't the first in my family to go into architecture. My Uncle Harry had gone to drafting school and started working in an architect's office It didn't last long. Architectural work wasn't particularly remunerative even then but it might have afforded him the appearance of a more dignified calling, something which Uncle Harry couldn't care less about. He wanted to be outdoors. Harry was smarter than people gave him credit for. He thought that being confined to a drawing board under artificial light for forty hours a week was a bad deal with the devil, so he quit and got a job driving a truck for the United Parcel Service.

The Great Falls

That was in the days before Paramus NJ became the world's first and worst agglomeration of shopping centers. My mother, like most other suburban housewives in the area, would take a bus five miles to Paterson, with me in tow, to do her shopping. A few days later a UPS truck, often driven by Uncle Harry, would show up at the house with the clothes, furniture or whatever else my mother had purchased. I liked to go to Paterson. Not so much being dragged around the department stores but sometimes my grandfather would take me to see the firehouse he had worked in, showing me the hook and ladder with steering wheels at the front and the back and the shiny brass poles the firemen slid down from their upstairs sleeping quarters when the alarm sounded. Paterson also had the Great Falls, one of America's larger waterfalls, which just last month became a National Park, with Hinchcliff Stadium, the midget auto racing Mecca, just a stone's throw from the Falls. There were also Chinese restaurants where we could get Chow Mein to take home. There was even a street full of colorful gypsies. My parents warned us about them and when we went by car to Paterson, my father got through that one block of River Street as quickly as possible, making sure the car windows were all closed. That sense of urgency added to the gypsies' appeal but I was very much taken by the bright flaring skirts the women wore, so much more interesting than the dreary clothes of all the “normal people” around. The city had, and still has, a lot of interesting buildings, from the churches and institutional buildings reflecting the Dutch origins of many of the citizens, to the wonderful Victorian era brick industrial buildings. I can't say that as a kid I realized how rich that architecture was but I did sense that there was something there more interesting than in our manicured suburbs.

The Post Office

Everything has changed since then. Uncle Harry retired to Florida to spend his last several decades outdoors tending his grapefruit trees year round. The shopping centers of Paramus metastasized, killing off the department stores and smaller shops in Paterson, while turning housewives and their white collar husbands into part-time truck drivers. Even before the SUV (Shopping Utility Vehicle) had evolved, the monster American sedans and station wagons had the payload of about half a small UPS truck. The department stores of Paterson and Newark, as well as the shops of Hackensack, and even upscale Ridgewood, may have gone out of business, but UPS has only grown bigger. My positive feelings about UPS from Uncle Harry's time took a nosedive a few years ago when they kept leaving notes saying they'd unsuccessfully tried to deliver a package and then later that they had left my consignment of cigars with an unnamed neighbor who couldn't be found. This and their lack of pick-up points open on Saturdays led me to the firm conviction that, besides being more expensive, they are far less reliable than the US Postal Service, although Congress is doing its best to change that by eliminating the Postal Service. But back in the day, UPS provided a valuable service, which I'd like to see restored. In keeping with current economic trends, UPS and their competitors now seem to exist to service large corporations and they appear to be thriving.

A Pedestrian Entrance to Todi

Much as Uncle Harry managed to emigrate to a place in the sun, I too have emigrated to sunnier climes in Italy. Paterson, my birthplace, fell victim to suburban sprawl and urban decay. Here in Umbria we're following the same path, albeit at a slower pace. Medieval towns, such as our neighboring Todi, are seeing the shops on their narrow streets go out of business, as new commercial centers crop up on surrounding plains. Convenience is God and every person, not just every family any more, has a car. Despite soaring gasoline prices (about US$8./US gallon by today's calculation), this is not likely to be reversed any time soon. The tourist traffic, which brings in much of the region's income, will probably diminish as the beautiful town centers go dark. People will continue to go to the supermarkets in their cars. It makes sense. But why must all the other “stuff” that we buy have to be sold in big box warehouse stores that deface the landscape? Smaller shops, accessible on foot in splendid surroundings, can display whatever we need, and unlike shopping on line, we can try on the clothes, handle the objects, and discuss the products with a knowledgeable salesperson. Must we all be truck drivers? For my part I'd rather see an Uncle Harry show up at my door with the stuff I'd seen and bought in an attractive and healthy city.

"Masterpieces On The Way" in Ponterio

Todi is much smaller than Paterson but it has a longer history and deeper culture than Paterson could even imagine. I don't remember anything about Paramus, other than the horrible traffic. I expect that future impressions of Ponterio, the town where the sprawling commercial development is taking place at the bottom of the Todi hill, will be similar. Ponterio is unlikely to be a must see in any guide books that will bring people to town. Paramus isn't so much a place as a condition, and sadly, it exists all over the world. I would even suggest to one of those forums that document additions to the lexicon that “paramus” be considered a term for a zone, neither urban or rural, populated by few human residents but covered by commercial and warehouse buildings, accessed by high speed highways transformed into multilane traffic jams and to which pedestrian access is either highly dangerous or completely forbidden.

My real concern is whether Todi will face the same fate as Paterson. I've heard that Paterson has shown modest signs of a revival. I hope so. But wouldn't it be great if our towns and cities could come back without first falling quite so far.

The Hospital is Dead, Long Live the Hospital

With the opening of the new Todi Hospital in Pantalla, eight kilometers to the north, Todi has finally entered the twentieth century. Remember, the one in which each significant bit of human interaction was bracketed by a trip in a car? Members of the medical professions are delighted with the new modern facilities and potential patients in the area, heretofore apprehensive about questions of sterility in the operating rooms of the old non-air-conditioned hospital, will be reassured by the tidy new building.

I may find myself there one day, just as I have been a patient in the old hospital. Thinking back to a painful 16 kilometer race to the emergency room, I can only hope that any future trip to the more distant facility will be under less urgent conditions. At the risk of compromising my journalistic objectivity, I must admit I was fond of the old hospital. Although we knew at least two people who unexpectedly failed to survive routine treatment at the hospital, the food was good and the staff friendly. While there for nearly a week, I was cheered up by the stream of visitors casually dropping by to say hello. Over the years, when we've known that somebody from our village, or a neighboring one, was in the hospital, we've gone in to see them when we happened to be in Todi. Times change and I suppose patients will just have to get used to the TV for company.

Italian hospitals provide free basic medical care and all the tests required but for routine functions, such as getting up to go to the bathroom, or help with eating or washing, patients either have family members with them, or they pay someone to provide such assistance. There's no sign that any new system of assistance will accompany the new out-of-town hospitals. Todi is only the latest of these in Umbria. New hospitals dot the landscape outside of Perugia, Orvieto, Città di Castello and Gualdo Tadino. Even in Rome, the newest hospital is out near the ring road, more easily accessible from the airport than from the city center.

With the possible exceptions of commemorative Presidential Libraries and lavish new sports stadiums, hospitals are the most costly buildings that we build today, mostly due to their technical requirements. It's certainly easier and cheaper to build a new facility on virgin land than to try to renovate an existing and functioning city hospital. For people running the health system, the decision to close the hospitals in Todi and Marsciano and replace them with a new hospital, officially named the Ospedale Media Valle del Tevere, about ten kilometers from each city, may have been a no-brainer, but was anyone involved in the decision who weighed the social costs and other on-going expenses? Clearly, not every doctor, nurse, technician, patient, relative, assistant and visitor lives in the town center, but many do, and most of the rest are scattered around town in a fairly small radius. That translates into an extra twenty kilometer trip each day for every person, in whatever capacity, at the new hospital. In terms Americans can understand, gasoline now costs about $8.50/gallon and is trending upward. Frequent bus service has been provided between town and hospital but those buses have their costs as well. Perhaps the extra transportation costs are low relative to the medical efficiencies involved. But what of Todi, the beautiful medieval hill town that brings people and money to the region in the first place? There is essentially one street in and one street out of the center for cars, with little parking available in the narrow streets. The one traffic lane of the main descending street, Corso Cavour, is shared with nervous pedestrians. Given the risks of being run over, people have ever less reason to walk on the Corso and it shows. Once you walk down the main street about 100 meters from the Piazza del Popolo, its name changes to Via Roma and the percentage of unoccupied shops rises alarmingly. The hospital is at the bottom of the street, at this point called Via Mattioti, just before the Porta Romana in the old peripheral wall of the town. It brought a constant flow of people of people into the area and shops, ranging from tavole calde and snack bars to housewares and clothing shops, thrived there for years. Now the dead zone will metastasize.

Urban blight is not the sort of disease that the health authorities are asked to deal with. Discussions about closing and replacing the hospital went on for more than a decade during which time someone should have realized what closing the hospital would do to the town. Where were the local, provincial and regional governments? To my knowledge there is still no solid plan for the future use of the old hospital. There is however a plan to deal with the lack of parking and access to the town center. My early guess is that the treatment will kill the patient. More about that in a future article.

Orvieto had a similar situation when its new hospital was built out of town. In fairness, construction there took about twenty-five years, after politicians managed to misplace the first batch of money that had been appropriated, the building was trashed by vandals, and the project was restarted, so there was ample time to plan. Furthermore the old hospital was adjacent to the fabulous Duomo and the mix of tourists and patients was beneficial to neither group. The ex-hospital has been transformed into a local center for university students from Rome, as well as from several US universities, bringing increased vitality and commerce to the town center.

I visited the new Todi Hospital to take photographs but hadn't planned to use the facility prior to writing this piece. Then my wife suddenly needed to have an X-ray, for which our doctor prescribed an immediate appointment and we drove straight to the Emergency Room entrance to be processed in. After being advised to drive around to the main entrance and proceed to radiology, we chose to walk, probably a bad choice, since although the hospital has many fine features, internal circulation isn't one of them. After finding an exit and walking around to the front, I left my wife to the radiologists and circled back to move the car to the vast main parking lot. Parking, like lunch, is never free and although there is no user charge at the moment, the extensive parking lots certainly added to the cost of the new facility. However, in this case, inasmuch as no one will ever arrive at this hospital on foot, I would propose that even more money be spent on the parking, enough to plant a few trees or even to provide covered walks to allow sickly visitors to traverse the blazing pavements without recourse to emergency treatment. A portion of the hospital facade is recessed at the ground floor level providing a bit of respite from the weather. Why couldn't this have been extended across the entire facade? They were starting from scratch after all, not making do with an old building.

I wish the new hospital all success. My own future may depend on it. A more immediate wish is that the Todi city fathers awake from their coma and start showing the town and its inhabitants a little more respect.

Roadside Hazards

The other day my wife signed for a heavy piece of registered mail addressed to me from the Municipal Police of Todi.  Opening it with some trepidation, I discovered that three months earlier, a speed measuring device (Velox) had clocked and photographed me going 74 km/h (considered 69 km/h with the benefit of the doubt discount) in a 50km/h zone right in front of Tuder Green, a gardening shop in Ponterio we’ve frequented since it opened about three decades ago.  Although someone did tell me about this speed trap, the warning apparently came too late.

In the ten years since the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center, the world has been taken over by an obsessive need for a sense of safety and security, no matter at what cost.  Thus, we now need to strip off half our clothes at airports and surrender our rights regarding illegal searches and seizures.  The other noteworthy event of the past decade was the economic collapse, often referred to as “the great recession”, which has also spread from the US to the rest of the world.  Just which of these two phenomena is responsible for the recent speed control craze isn’t clear.  It may be both, but from the size of the fine (€177) and the number of these machines cropping up, it looks like some municipal authorities think they’ve discovered a foolproof way to overcome the budget crisis.  As wonderful a place as Italy is, it isn’t perfect.  A certain percentage of Italians still suffer from that post WW II syndrome “if the Americans do it, we have to do it too”, a malady that has led to the widespread diffusion of problems such as heroin addition, obesity, urban sprawl, SUVs and now, a drivers license points system.

In fairness to the Italian police, I must point out that, unlike their American counterparts who seem to take pleasure in trapping unsuspecting motorists from hidden outposts, our defenders of public safety put warning signs and flashing lights on the speed traps.  The idea seems to be to make you slow down rather than to cull the quicker drivers from the herd.

If you live in Italy or you’re thinking of visiting and driving here, there are a few things you should know about Italian speed limits.  They’re never posted; they’re seldom enforced (until now), and they are mostly unrelated to the reality of either the road conditions or the actual speeds at which people drive.  There are four basic speed limits in Italy: 130 km/h on the autostrade, 110 on the superstrade, i.e. limited access four lane highways, 90 on country roads and 50 in towns and cities.  Virtually none of these are ever indicated by signs, with the exception of the 50 km/h limit in towns.  You’re supposed to know them.  However, there are many little round signs with limits that take precedence over the standard limits for certain tracts.  I’ve always assumed them to be friendly warnings, applicable as if written in miles, not kilometers per hour.  If you’re on a country road and a sign indicates curves ahead with a “50” sign, a reasonable interpretation is that a safe speed on the curve will be 50 mph rather than the 31.25 mph that the law actually requires.  Until now, this has worked out just fine, but there is one area of occasional conflict.  As noted, the speed limit on country roads is 90.  Italy is a densely populated country and there are few roads along which no houses are built.  Indeed, most country roads are built on what were originally paths that connected isolated houses.

Last week, in returning home from Perugia, my ultra conservative wife suggested, as usual, that instead of taking the superstrada E45, we take the country road along the crest of the hills through Marsciano.  She despises fast roads, along with airplanes, trains and virtually any mode of transport faster than walking.  Once again, I acquiesced to her request since the back road, while slower, is scenic and more pleasant.  Just off this country road, new residential compounds have been littering up the countryside and it seems the local authorities have decided that this entire thirty-kilometer stretch now consists of towns.  Velox machines have sprouted up faster than mushrooms or wild asparagus this spring.  We counted about ten or twelve of them in this stretch.  The road hasn’t changed.  It’s still a country road with a few houses along it, but it’s now one long speed trap, virtually unusable to go anywhere.  Even my speed-hating wife kept exclaiming, “This is sick!”

Although we noted several years ago that western Lazio is longer safe to drive through, the first sign of this ominous trend appeared in Umbria around the start of the year when one of these Velox machines was conspicuously placed a few hundred meters before a long smooth curve just below Ilci, about eight km north of Todi on E45.  The speed limit on the road is 110 and traffic normally moves along at an average of 120.  The curve sweeps through a change of direction of about 90 degrees and, judging from the number of lights, signs and reflectors lining it, one can suppose that a few people have gone off the road here over the years.  Nevertheless, the curve is easily and safely negotiable at 120 km/h by any vehicle capable of passing the required motor vehicle inspection.  The curve has been assigned a 90 km/h limit.  We now have the spectacle of drivers on the straight stretch of road before the curve jamming on their brakes when they see the device ahead and provoking panic stops by out-of-town drivers unaware of the trap.  How long before the first massive multi-vehicle pile-up?

While many of my peers have taken up golf, I’ve always considered driving as my preferred sport.  It doesn’t burn many calories but then, riding around in a golf cart doesn’t either, and both activities give one the opportunity to develop eye/hand coordination while viewing the better scenery that is out there.  Over the years, my cars have mostly been modest family sedans but in the mix there were two Porsches and a Mini DeTommaso, which provided some of the most joyful moments of my life.  Although it has yet to attain the status of golfers’ paradise, for a century Italy has been the world’s Mecca to people who love to drive.  I realize that some of you will dispute that, but the joy of driving isn’t about rules, cruise control, tranquility or safety.

My ninety-seven year old step-mother has taught me that with time one must renounce certain habits and pleasures and just accept life for what it still offers.  She’s given up Caribbean cruises as too fatiguing, although she did relapse for one final cruise, and recently she’s accepted her doctor’s advice to renounce her daily mood enhancing afternoon martini.  Ironically, she still drives.  

Others have urged me to seek the positive side of things, and while this goes against my genetic make-up, I will try to make the effort.  Possibly Italy can overcome all the local government revenue shortfalls with the new Velox windfalls.  The safety crusade may help to limit urban sprawl in that lovely countryside between Perugia and Marsciano, since there will be no way for people living in those new developments to get to work on time.  With a major reduction in driving, I may be able to coax another five or ten years, or whatever is needed, out of my 18 year old Peugeot.  Failing that, instead of seeking one of those low mileage used Minis or Alfa Giulias that I’ve been lusting after, I may be able to settle for an Ape.  For those unfamiliar with the Ape, it’s a little three-wheeled truck, seating two and powered by a lawn mower engine, that country folk use to transport bottled water, beehives and gas bombole.  They drive drivers of four-wheel vehicles mad but when everyone is driving at the speed of an Ape, the stigma will be gone.

The authorities have taken other measures to assure our safety.  In the past, roadside grass was cut down early and late in the spring.  Wildflowers grow happily here and from April through June, poppies line the sides of the roads as well as proliferating in the fields, creating a real distraction to drivers who should be concentrating on the road.  A better way has been found.  Instead of the early cutting of the grass, it’s simply sprayed with herbicide, which turns the grass to a sort of strawberry blond color and retards further growth.  Not only does this limit the distraction of the wildflowers, but it also saves on government manpower.



Finally, I’m happy to report that here in Acqualoreto we’ve come upon a way to cut down on speed without resorting to heavy fines or expensive electronic devices.  Two years ago, the five kilometer road from Acqualoreto down to the river road was in deplorable condition.  After many complaints about the potholes, the Comune finally repaved the worst stretches of the road.  The road seemed almost new, allowing us to get down to the valley in practically no time at all.  Then, early this year, the road started to heave.  It seems as if some mysterious power in the earth wanted to collaborate with the authorities to slow things down.  It’s better
than Velox.  The Comune has rushed in with more and more speed limit signs, first 30, then 20, finally 10.  Apparently they have no signs indicating 0 but there are signs indicating that traffic can proceed in only one direction at a time, one of those rare times that the road signs reflect reality.

Who knows where all this will lead?  Personal changes tend to become irreversible so I’m afraid my days of pleasure driving are over.  Societal changes, on the other hand, come and go like the tides, so some day Italy may return to a semblance of normality.  Will roving bands of disgruntled young men brandishing tire irons destroy the electronic Big Brothers faster than they can be replaced?  I rather doubt it.  Italians have become as passive as Americans.  Just as when government workers, who are prohibited from striking, shut down most activity by “working to rules”, I can envision Italians organizing to “drive below limits”.  This will bring the economy to a screeching halt and force an easing of policy.  

Meanwhile, I think we’ll look for a garden shop in a safer neighborhood.