Amanda On The Move

Amanda August 29th, 2008

I was trying t find ways to watch Barak’s Obama’s acceptance speech live, and realized that radio might be my only choice.  So I clicked on the iTunes Radio link for LA’s KPCC in a trial run and had a mild cultural freak out as Steve Jullian (sp) talked about trouble on the 4 level in Downtown LA.  I clicked off as fast as I could and resolved to “You Tube” the speech the morning after.

To quote the immortal words of Dr. Frank-n-Furter – “I’m goin’ hooome”… uh, in about 2 weeks.  But tomorrow morning I leave my apartment by the sea and close a big chapter of my time here.  Today I took my last swim off the glorious Tyrranhean coast (as in Medi-tyrranian) where the water is never too cold or too hot, though inevitably a tad too salty.  I said goodbye to Emanuel the lifeguard and Enzo the fruit seller and tonight I will say goodbye to Camillo’s brothers Vittorio, Carlo, and Italo, and their wives Marina, Anna, and Titi.  That my leaving coincides with the end of summer is only fitting as this town as already on quieting down for it’s long, unpopulated fall, winter and spring.  The crowds have been thinning; chairs at the beach easier to find.   A big part of me has been ready to return to my regular life for the last 2 weeks or so, but I suspect once I leave here I’m going to miss it a whole hellova a lot.

In the last 2 weeks I’ve gotten a cooking lesson from Mirella and a bigger lesson in the power of a big family from, well, everyone.  I’ve also come to realize what a perfect social experiment coming here turned out to be for me.  I’ve been listening to a little Oprah and Eckhardt Tolle lately (feel free to click back on “You Tube” at any time now), and they talk a lot about separating out your true self from your social roles we’ve created or adopted, and from the judgmental, nattering classes of voices in your head.  Thrown in with a group of people who knew little about me and with whom I lack not just a common language, but a common cultural vocabulary, it’s been an opportunity for me to get a little more in touch with who I am at my core person,  beyond the snappy retorts and glib observations.  And I’ve had my Sally Field “theylikemetheyreallylikeme!” moments.  It’s also been a lab to see how I deal with men (yes, that’s a post on it’s way), and a chance to honor my roots, my mom, and surprisingly, my father – those are two posts more that need writin’.  While the experience may be drawing to a close, I expect the reflections, stories and insights to continue a while longer past my return.  So keep checking the site, even if you pass me in the aisle at Trader Joes in two weeks time.

Now, I must go get ready for a big final end of summer dinner here.  I’ll rerun my cached You Tube file of Barak’s great speech last night while I do my hair and make-up And I’ll think about the big picture promise of America, and the smaller picture of what it will feel like for l’il ol’me to return there.

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Amanda August 25th, 2008

On the eve of the Democratic Convention, I thought I’d pipe up with a few political anecdotes and observations.  I don’t understand the system here well enough to offer specific examples of things they do right that we should emulate, and I think it would be tough to find a lot of Italians who are really happy with their government and have no complaints.  Not to mention the fact that no one can explain to me exactly why you can’t find a clothes dryer in this entire Westernized country for love or money.  It’s not perfect here.

What I offer today aren’t policy prescriptions, but rather a snapshot of reactions I’ve gotten while discussing certain aspects of life in America.  Make of them what you will; I think these unvarnished responses often provide a decent moral compass by which to judge how we run certain things.

HEALTH CARE:

Some of the Italians have seen Michael Moore’s movie “Sicko” and others are aware of it.  However, the idea that health crises are the leading cause of bankruptcy in the US is absolutely shocking.   That you could lose your house because you got sick is seen as perverse and insane.

I haven’t done any kind of informal survey to see how the Italians feel about the health care system, but the subject simply never comes up in their conversations among themselves, so it seems as there are no major problems… will try to do more recon on this before I leave.

CREDIT CARDS:

Someone I know here works for a division at a bank that gives loans to people in somewhat dire straits.  This person was a little embarrassed to talk about his department because he considered the interest rates so high as to be a little shameful.  So high, in fact, that he would never recommend to any friends or to anyone in his family to actually use his own bank’s financial product.  This shameful interest rate?  About 9%.

Many of the Italians simply refuse to believe me when I tell them that Americans regularly pay 18% interest on credit cards, or that with late fees and penalties these rates can rise to near 30%.  Recently, I had this conversation with Carlo and he kept pointing out to me that I simply had to be wrong, because the Fed’s interest rate right now was only  2 – 3%.  I tried to explain that for the majority, exorbitant credit card rates had virtually no connection to the Fed’s rate, but there was some serious cognitive dissonance.

EDUCATION & STUDENT LOANS

College is virtually free here and anyone who wants to, can simply go to any of the universities (Rome, Bologna, Cosenza etc.) he or she chooses.  While right now one of my cousins is studying very hard to get into a competitive Medical School program, generally there is no Byzantine admissions system, no SATs, no college essay etc.  I tried to explain the system one night to Camilla , and was surprised how difficult it was to explain something that I took for granted… and how strange and illogical it sounded once I started explained it (2 year schools, 4 year schools, public, private etc.).  But then she hit me with  a question that absolutely floored me, because I’d never really thought of it as inherently shocking or ridiculous until she asked me.

(Note: This sounds better if you can say it both incredulously, and in a charming Italian accent.)

“Amanda, once I had a teacher who had lived in the United States, and he told me that when a baby is born there, the parents…? Start to save money…? To pay for college…?  Is this true?”

Huh.

Yeah, it is true.

Wow.  It is kind weird and wrong when you think about it like that.

Then when I explain the cost of an American university and the amount of debt our students graduate with, they are absolutely flabbergasted.  Their system does have it’s flaws – students stay in school for a long, long time, earning no income while their family supports them.  And lots of universities has lead to a fleet of underemployed lawyers and other professionals.  The job market here is really tough and starting wages are the lowest in Western Europe – or so I read in the New York Times a few weeks back.

But the education is a good one.  I looked at the Standardized Test questions my 18 year-old cousin is expected to answer on his Medical School test.  While the test has the same inherent flaws of all standardized tests, there was an emphasis on facts and general knowledge that you never see in the U.S. – one that I think is missing in our system.  And the level of questions being ask of him was quite high.  While you could easily argue that knowing who artist Paul Klee or Frank Lloyd Wright are has absolutely nothing to do with becoming a doctor, having vast general knowledge does speak to both an intellectual curiosity and voracious reading.  As you may imagine, my former work as a private SAT tutor and the whole test prep industry is also quite hard to explain

THE ELECTION

My same young cousin studying for the test also spoke to me incredulously of my contention that Barak Obama or any other presidential contender could beat a war vet who had been a POW.  With my limited language skills and his limited knowledge of John McCain it was hard to explain to him why that was indeed possible and, to my thinking, likely.  But his steadfast refusal to believe that any other piece of information could be more important or more resonant that McCain’s Vietnam experience gave me pause, for this 18 year-old foreigner’s political sophistication may well indeed be on par that of the middle-brow American public.  Yikes.

And many Italians have pulled me aside and delicately asked if I really think America would actually vote for a black man.  Again it’s hard for me to explain the subtleties of Barak Obama’s candidacy in another language… but campaigns are not subtle, and my questioners distillation down to the most obvious of broad strokes has given me just a little pause.

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Amanda August 21st, 2008

Apologies for the radio silence, but I’ve entered the summer vacation part of my trip where the days just bleed into each other. The last two weeks have been marked by a constant stream of comings and goings of different members of the family, lazy days at the beach, long dinners, and a complete lack of structure, marked by, for me, a fair amount of moving between various apartments.

TO THE POST

I didn’t think it was possible, but it seems that my quick-to-the-surface sentimentality, is even a little over-the-top here in Italy among a people famous for their emotional demonstrativeness.  The scene:  A big family lunch at Roberto’s on a hot Friday afternoon celebrating a traditional holiday here known as “Ferraugosto” –  the middle of the month and ostensibly the hottest day of the year.  Think 4th of July with better food and no fireworks.  While Vittorio & Carlo’s clans were missing, it was my last change to address the majority of the family as a whole.  After much joking around, I got up to make a toast to everyone, to thank them, to tell them all how blown away I’ve been by this family and all that good sappy stuff.  Except when I started to speak off the cuff, I was stunned to find myself choking up.  Rather than let me get past the giant amphibian taking residence in my throat, the family quickly and good naturedly issued a round of “brava’s” clinked glasses and moved on to the next course.  Part of me was relieved, but part of me still wants to say the things left unsaid.  Hmmm… if only I had a public forum where I could express myself unrestrained… tee-hee-hee.

While the Italians are noted the world over for their passion (see: hands comma talking with), I’ve found that this reputation is not entirely accurate.  For beneath the rapid- fire speech and legendary lovemaking, lays an underlying reserve, rooted in an rarely articulated but commonly understood sense of decorum.  Yes, they greet each other with a kiss on each cheek – something that initially seems strangely intimate to an American.  But the attendant body language is to hold the person by both shoulders, maintaining a clearly defined distance.  It turns out, a good ol’ unrestrained American bear hug, is actually the more demonstrative and affectionate action, while the kiss on the cheek more often than not is a gesture than an expression.

It was another lovely day with the family.  The food was, of course, delicious, and the nature of the meal – lunch and a lazy afternoon by a pool was more relaxed and laid back than other events I’ve been to. Lounging, chatting, eating were the order of the day.  Particularly fun, and something I can’t imagine happening in an equivalent American event was an hour-long round of word games at the end of the day, played by about 10-15 people.

Maybe I choked up because I was tired.  The night before I went out with a huge bunch of the cousins to split level disco accurately and provocatively called “Sopra-Sotto” (“up & down” – get it?) and we didn’t get home until after 6 in the morning.  Partying here starts and ends late.  The highlight was dancing madly with a fleet of cousins along to a kickin’ band who worked their way through classic and current American and Italian cover tunes (including YMCA!).  It was here on the dance floor and in the club I got to see the male cousins in all their sexually charged glory and the women in their beauty.  Woe be to the American women who try to resist their charms, should any of the Caruso boys ever storm our beaches!   Same goes for American men and the Caruso women – yikes!

I believe this is where I whip out the metaphor of having to beat the boys off with a stick, for indeed I did (and no – they weren’t cousins!).  If the classic French museum move is a possessive arm around the shoulder, I learned that the classic Italian disco move is dancing behind you and then kissing you on the neck.  Seriously, they should market this stuff.

So there I was dancing my tushie off  on the dance floor… and it was at about this time the back seam of my dress ripped.  All.  The Way.  Up.  Yup.  Up and up.  And up and up and up and up.  And by the end of the night it was up over said tushie, causing no small amount of embarrassment and discomfort, not to mention, an engineering nightmare.  I went to the ladies room to see if anyone had a safety pin to fix my problem, to which all the scantily clad 20-somethings unironically replied “What problem?”  I had two safety pins with me, but, of course, couldn’t find them until the next morning.  Uhg.

Now girls, what have we learned  from today’s lesson?  When you’ve been eating a lot of pasta for weeks and weeks, and you bust out a dress you haven’t worn in months and months… uh… pack a bunch of some safety pins, would you please.  Better yet, needle and thread.

Anyone know what Lean Cusine’s going for these days?

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Amanda August 15th, 2008

If you are driving in Italy, and you decide finally – after weeks of Italian passangers making fun of your cautious ways that you will drive like the Italians, pass a slow moving garbage truck even though the divider line is solid while talking on a cell phone… The Carabinieri will pull you over.

If you do not have 200E in cash to pay your fines on the spot… they will take and keep your documents until you pay them.

If they then notice that your Italian drivers license has expired by 1 day… they will be very frustrated with you.

And if you are female, and American, and pretend to cry… they will let you go.

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Amanda August 12th, 2008

FALLING IN LOVE AGAIN
So before I left the States pretty much everyone I know eventually made the same comment about how maybe I’d find myself a hot Italian Lover… and maybe, just maybe, I’d even fall in love over here.  And it’s time to admit I have developed a bit of a crush. It’s actually a little weird writing this knowing that my crush object will probably read this, knowing that my secret will be out as soon as I click “publish” but what the hell.  I’ve never been good at playing games or being coy.  Besides, it’s not like you think.  I haven’t fallen for a person – I’ve fallen for this entire family.

As most of you know, I’m an only child. At 12 my parents didn’t just split up – they continental divided, with my Mom staying in New York and my Dad moving to Los Angeles.  Both are now dead now, so nuclear-wise, I’m on my own.  Extended-wise, I have 2 Aunts, and 3 first cousins some of whom I’m lucky to see once a year, the others I’m lucky to see once a decade.  In terms of numbers and geography, my extended family is pretty typical for the US – we’re spread out across many careers and many States, connected by frequent phone calls and emailed pix of vacations and grandkids.

We are a trifle compared to the Caruso brood of 7 siblings, 7 spouses, and 17 children and various significant others.  But the story isn’t really in the numbers.  It’s not just that there are a lot of Carusos, it’s that the Caruso family is a sophisticated and complex, highly functional living organism.  Camillo and I talked about this at lovely dinner after ae gave me a highly personalized tour of historic Cosenza a few weeks ago.  As he put it, they are like a family from 1950 living in 2008.  He was the first to acknowledge that here family helps each other and that, in his words “it’s better that way.”  Sick?  Call your cousin the doctor. Have a project you need to do?  Your niece’s/brother’s/someone-in-law’s company is just the ticket.  They’ll actually do good work – really.   I know I should have some hilarious 3rd example for the comedy triplet, but honestly, there’s no joke here.  No punchline.

We’ve all heard that it takes a village to raise a child.  Well, here your family is your village and I’d argue that it takes a family-village to raise 17 children, because of all the cousins – and I’ve finally met them all – there isn’t a loser to be found.  I’m not kidding.  Every one is a college-bound or college-educated professional who seems – at least at first glance – to be shockingly unneurotic.  Not that they aren’t 3 dimensional people with quirks or strong, distinct personalities or problems of their own, because of course they are.  It’s not like I’ve had long heart-to-hearts with everyone.  But it’s really hard for me to wrap my head around just how… functional this family seems.  And the mind-blowing part of it, is that, by and large, they all seem to like each other.  Really.  Think about it.  A giant family that likes each other.  Man, if we had those in the United States, we’d probably have no indigenous literature whatsoever!  And of course you could kiss the Sundance Film festival “buh-bye.”

Judging from anecdotal evidence, I’m not alone in either my envy or my affection.  When I was in the North, I had a conversation with an Italian with only one brother who spoke longingly of the big, traditional families in the South.  And conversations with different cousins have revealed that various Significant Others over the years have fallen in love not just with individual Carusos, but with the Caruso clan as a whole.  I know of at least one ex who still corresponds with the mother of his former inamorata, and I’ve heard tell of others.  Lovers who, on their mental lists placed giant check marks in the plus column next to “amazing family!” and “loves mother.”

I’ve long thought that the importance of Family as an institution is at the heart of the enduring popularity of the Italian Gangster in American movies and TV.  Just to be clear (my Wesleyan PC instincts kicking in) – most Italians and Italian-Americans aren’t mobsters, certainly not my family, but this is the dominant cultural reference for Italian culture that we Americans are all familiar with.  Think about it – from the serious and violent gangsters in “The Godfather” and “The Sopranos” to the hapless, cannolli-scarfing thugs in countless cheesey comedies, no other villains are cut such slack, much less romanticized as are Hollywood’s mafia members.  In the movies, these guys may be monsters, but hey – they love their mothers, wives, children and Sunday dinner a lot more than your average Junior Vice President does, and for that we Americans like to watch and envy them.  I know I do.

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Amanda August 6th, 2008

I actually held back for almost a week between discovering I could subscribe to “The Daily Show” via the iTunes store and actually signing up. It just felt wrong. I mean, changing my routine, living without television, finding new kinds of input, discovering a new culture – that was the point of going to live in another country, right? How tough could it be? Surely I could go a few months without oxygen – er, I mean cutting edge political satire. So there’s an historic presidential campaign going on – so what For Gods sake, I chided myself, “Somerset Maugham did not have an iTunes store when he was living and writing in Liguria.

“The Daily Show” just seemed too decadent – temptation to be resisted. But really, why was “The Daily Show” so different from the precious “Mary Tyler Moore” episodes I’d put on my hard drive. True, the later has official A.E.C.F.D.A. approval (Amanda’s Emotional Comfort Food and Drug Administration) as a proven anti-depressant, clinically established as more effective than both chocolate and ice cream (though perhaps not the Zuppa Inglese Gelato I’m now in love with). On about day 7… okay, maybe day 5, the blinding light hit: “Wait, wait, wait, wait… you mean I can live in Italy AND watch the Daily Show??!! How freakin’ great is that???!! Yes, Mr. Jobs, please take my money. Are you sure you don’t want it in Euroes? How about a nice bottle of Limoncello for your troubles – to take home to the wife.”

So here I am in my apartment by the sea, all alone. Yep, just me and my good friends Jon Stewart, Larry Wilmore, John Oliver, and Mary, Rhoda, and Lou. And the gang from “Taxi” Season. Don’t forget my good buddies from “Sports Night”, my political podcast pals at NPR, from and my new forensic friends over at “Bones” – the best part about is they all speak Italian (I got some DVDs here – take that Signor Jobs!). So while I’m self-medicating with media, I’m also studying. Neat trick, huh? You see, I’m not watching movies. And I’m barely reading the dozens of books I shipped here. All of these shows have something in common. A familiar and familial cast of loveable characters. They are fictional, but the affection I feel for them is real.

I don’t know how I would have survived my first week here at Guardia without “The Mary Tyler Moore Show.” I was alone in a strange, unpopulated place, isolated by poor language skills and a $#@ing stick shift, and those familiar voices and sitcom rhythms helped me settle into a rhythm of my own. But I can’t help but wonder if the companionship I get from these faux families and pretend friends has helped me survive alone in the less taxing circumstances that I call my regular life. As most of you know, I’m single and have been for as long a any of you can remember. And maybe without these pretend friends whom I know so well, I’d have had to go and make myself a real family a long time.

It’s hard not to notice that television and movies play a much smaller role in life here – well, in everyone else’s but mine. One of the reasons it’s truly difficult to explain my job here is that the entertainment industry doesn’t dominate the fabric of everyday life here the way it does in the States – a new trailer for the new Pixar movie isn’t news. Instead of spending time with TV families, they spend time with their actual families. Instead of watching the latest reality show on TV, they’re go to the source, and watch the longest running reality show of them all in that local outdoor theater known as the Piazza. The public square – every town has one and it’s brilliant. Want to find people to hang out with in pre-iPhone days? Go to the piazza and someone will be there – old men, bored teenagers, young parents with strollers, you name it. And they still go. In my first weeks here, I was amazed to find the tiny Piazza at Montalto Uffugo buzzing on a random Saturday night. Nice to know you can’t completely eradicate hundreds of years of tradition with 50 years of technology. And what about computers? We’ll there are two Wi-Fi hotspots here in Guardia. One is in the main piazza, and the other is in the biggest café. So I guess the idea is if you’re going to check email you should do it alongside the old men who are kibitzing about soccer scores.

But my reliance on my TV families is drawing to a close as the real family descends on Guardia for summer vacation. Almost all of Vittorio’s family is here while Camillo, Rosella and Camilla come tomorrow; Simone and Angese join us at the end of the week. Last night after dinner at Vittiorio’s I had to resist the urge to go home, pack away one final episode of “Bones” season 1 (they found her mother!), and force myself to go out to a bar with Antonio and Vittoria (Francesca’s sibs, for those of you keeping score). And yes, it was really freaking late and I was tired. And yes the crowd at the bar was way too young as I’d suspected it would be. But they were all live and in person. And while the evening meandered and dragged on until 3am, instead of an efficient story-packed 42 minutes, it really is the only way to work these new, more complex characters into a new, more reciprocal kind of history. Some day, if I log enough episodes, they may even qualify as comfort food.

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Amanda July 31st, 2008

I think I’m going to have to learn how to sing “My Way.” It’s coming up a lot.

I’ve long had a fantasy of being a chanteuses in a swanky hotel bar, regaling champagne-swilling patrons with my delightful renditions of Cole Porter classics and hidden gems from the Gershwin songbook (“I’m A Poached Egg” anyone?). Okay, so my taste is pretty rarified. But when I was traveling I couldn’t believe the profusion of clubs that seemed to lay in every hotel – signs declaring “Piano Bar” were everywhere! Surely I could convince one of these piano bars to give me a try on a slow Monday night, right? Then I realized that the word “piano” also means “floor” and the signs were directional. You know, telling you what floor the bar was on. Oops.

But Tuesday night I did get a chance to sing at a hotel, and it went well enough that the small band wanted to talk to me about hiring me in September and invited me to sing with them again the next night – yeah me! However, The Carlyle it ain’t, and finding material that works for the crowds here is proving a challenge. Every Tuesday night, my beloved Hotel Zilema, where I often use the internet, has these delightfully festive and unpretentious outdoor musical soirées. The “Band” consists of Gerardo, a really smooth tenor, and Roberto, who plays accordion and the electronic keyboard that also provides the rhythm section. Turns out there are a lot of electronic one-man bands like this working the hotels and restaurants here, all playing a similar repertoire; that they have two guys is unusual.

They play a really danceable assortment of music, from Latin pop songs, to old-timey, Italian folk songs – songs you can dance the Tarantella to, or whatever the Italian equivalent of the Polka or the Meringue is. It’s so incredibly uncool, that I just adore it! Everyone dances, from free-styling disco, to partnered dancing to complicated line dances that many people seem to know. It’s an all ages event, though there’s a decided dearth of teenager.  My favorite is the grand dame of the event, this amazing 60-something year-old woman who just never stops moving.

Anyway, I’ve become friends someone at the hotel who heard me singing along to a song one day and he encouraged me to get up and sing – not unprecedented by any measure; I’d seen others do the same. So I went through my tracks to see what might work for the room that I could do well… and wound up doing “Que Sera Sera” again, to much success. I also did “Embraceable You” and “Route 66.” Yesterday I wrote specialty lyrics to “Route 66” shamelessly replacing the names of the US Cities with the names of Calabrian towns – can’t wait to try it out.

Anyway, when I was done people were asking me to sing more, and one lady simply refused to believe that I wasn’t prepared to belt out “My Way.” It came up another time when I sang with another small jazz band here, and prior to that with the family. And at the wedding. Sinatra is, of course, as popular here as he is at home, but the popularity of this particular song puzzles me. I pitch other Sinatra songs I can do – big ones, “Night and Day” “Lady Is A Tramp” “One For My Baby” but get blank stares or disappointed don’t-you-get-it “no, no, nos”

No one seems to accept my reasoning that it’s really not a song for a woman (“For what is a man, what has he got”) or the fact that I’m not, you know, over 60. But I’m also trying to look at my resistance to the song (Hi Karen!). I mean really, why don’t I want to sing “My Way”? You know, besides fear of tanking on the big notes and making everyone’s ears very, very sad.

One of my biggest issues in life is that I really suck at making choices. Part of it comes from being the child of divorced parents. If you don’t want to completely hate one of them, you get really good at seeing the gray areas in life; in seeing the validity to all points of view and multiple options. But this ability also paralyzes me. Too often, not making a choice is making the choice to change nothing – to remain in the perpetual limbo of the status quo. And you can’t sing passionately about having done things “Your Way” if you live your life in the gray areas.

So I think I need to learn how to sing “My Way.”
And I need to find a way to sing it like I really mean it.

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Amanda July 28th, 2008

A little while ago I posted about my Aunt Jo and how it is due to her that I have a connection here. But as we all know, to make a relationship work, it takes two. True, the Italians in general are known for their strong commitment to family bonds, and no where more so than here in the South. But that doesn’t make it any less remarkable or worth noting. Yes, Aunt Jo wrote letters and stayed in touch, but over here, people read them and responded.

Two weeks ago I had a lovely dinner at Vittorio’s house – actually his spacious apartment in a Cosenza high-rise. The farm I wrote about ages ago turns out to just be a weekend place – who knew?! Anyway, first I went to his large office, where Francesca also works. There, he took me into a back room, started digging through a closet and pulled out stack after stack of blown up color photos from 1950. The photos had actually come from the 16mm negative of color home movies Aunt Jo’s husband Uncle Vic had shot both in the US and in Italy. Think for a moment, of all the most famous films from this same period in Italian film, the heyday of Neo-Realism – “The Bicycle Thief” “Open City” “La Strada” and you’ll quickly recall that they are all in black and white. Well Uncle Vic had color film and a fancy new camera to shoot it with, and he brought this camera with him on his last trip back to Italy in 1950. With it he shot footage that’s mundane in its content, but extraordinary on many other levels, not the least of which is it’s very existence. Color home movies from Calabria in 1950. Try to find color images from Italy at that time, and good luck to you. Who knew I came from a line of early adaptors!

Knowing he had something precious, Vittorio embarked on an amazing, project. He took the footage, hired an editor, and made a unique, very special film…. though film isn’t quite the right word to describe it, as there’s not much of a narrative. I’d say it’s more of a tone poem and since Vittorio also writes poetry, this makes perfect sense. I’m not going to post the film for two reasons (though I will post proper JPGS of the images when I get them). The first is practical – the movie is 40 minutes long. The second is that Vittorio is very protective of his labor of love and doesn’t want to share it with people who won’t appreciate it. While there’s certainly nothing on You Tube like it, I have to agree that the web is the exact wrong way to present this piece.

The film starts with a filmed introduction from Vittorio explaining the background. Then “New York, New York” kicks in and we see footage from a huge family picnic in New Jersey (why not New Rochelle, I have no idea). My grandmother and Aunt Jo are in there, and there’s a dark haired girl with them for a few seconds who I thought  just might be my Mom… but who turns out to be Aunt Georgina!  (thanks for the tip Aunt Gloria!).   He has added occasional slow motion effects and sometimes holds on certain images to give them more resonance – and sometimes adjust for damaged footage, which has been degraded by time The next section is Uncle Vic on the boat from New York back to Italy, and then there are sequences in Montalto Uffugo and Vaccarizo. There’s typical home movie stuff – family members parading in front of the camera, awkwardly waving, oblivious babies, joshing young men. We also see the crowded post-church Sunday marketplace in Montalto – amazing!, and a religious promenade for a Saint’s Day. Vittorio set each sequence to a different evocative song – “Arrivederci, Roma” “Vai Pensiero” from Verdi’s Nabucco to name a few, and he lets the songs and the footage play out in their entirety.

If it sounds boring, well, let’s just say that I’m really glad I knew it was 40 minutes when we started! Indeed, the pacing could be seen as challenging for someone who’s attention span has been decimated by the internet. But it’s also strangely captivating and oddly engrossing. Instead of wandering to grocery lists and “if-only-I’d-said’s” as my mind is wont to do, I found myself reflecting deeply on the larger significance of what I was seeing.

I had never really sat with the feeling of what it must have been like to leave behind this beautiful small mountain town, full of family and friends and the only people you’ve ever known. I tried to imagine what it was like to leave them behind, mothers and brothers, knowing it was likely you’d never see them again – to do all that for the chance to create a new life in this place you’ve only heard tell of called America.

I’ll never listen to “Arrividerci, Rome” the same way again.

I also understood, in a way that no guided tour could by itself could convey, that Camillo and his brothers and sister grew up in what is now a lost world. The images tel the story: dirt roads, old faces, and kids with skinny, skinny legs. Poor people with dignity. The year was 1950, but Vittorio is the first to admit that it looks is if it were 50 years before that. And truth be told, things in that town really weren’t so different another 50 years before that. Or the previous 50. Or the 50 before that. The sense of Time and History is just different here. It’s nothing we will ever be able to create, nor will it ever be in the marrow of our bones.

The photos Vittorio had shown me in his office were stills from the same film. He had blown them up and framed them as part of an exhibition on the history of Montalto Uffugo where he premiered the film a few years ago to great acclaim. Later he showed it in Toronto where, from what I understand the crowd appreciated it less. It is a unique piece and the definition of a Labor of Love.

So the love didn’t flow in one direction from New Rochelle to Italy. It was reciprocated in kind, and continues to reverberate through the decades. I feel it now.

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Amanda July 23rd, 2008

First off, apologies for radio silence, but I’ve been having relationship problems with my temperamental lover Tim who is back causing havoc in my life. For those of you just joining us, Tim is actually the name of my cell phone and internet provider here. Since all Italian names end in a vowel, the name “Tim” sounds as impersonal to the Italians as the word “Verizon” does to us – I’ve tried to explain to them that for me it’s as if the cell phone company were named “Enzo” and how oddly personal it would be if Enzo kept texting you cryptic little messages all the time.

While I still feel frustrated with the language, I have empirical proof that I’ve improved. In the last 3 days I’ve dealt with 8 DIFFERENT Customer Service reps at Tim and gotten Tim to agree to return 56 Euros to me that he over-billed AND to fix a computer problem that’s all Tim’s fault. Yeah! And only one of the 8 spoke to me in English – Luca from Cosenza and thank the-God-I-don’t-believe-in for Luca fro Cosenza, my personal Spiderman of cell phone service! Seriously, I managed to communicate with Italian customer service reps! – and it was almost as much fun as talking to customer service reps here. In fairness, if I were fluent, I probably would have only needed 6 of them. The one nice touch here – once Tim finally admitted he’d overcharged me, he sent me 3 different texts addressing me as his “Gentle Customer” and politely begging my forgiveness. Oh Tim, you sweet-talker you.

Anyway – instead of a single subject essay, today I’m serving up an antipasto of assorted fragments and observations. Homeless little moments, tidbits and insights that don’t really fit into a large theme other than they happened here in Italy.

LITTLE GIRLS ON THE BEACH

This last weekend I again joined Francesca and Gianluca for a sportive beach outing, heading south this time to a place where Gianluca did pretty much the most fun looking water sport I’ve ever seen – Kite Surfing; am seriously thinking of taking lessons. Anyway, it suddenly struck me that on the beaches of Calabria I’ve been seeing something that was really common when I was a kid, but that you don’t see in the States anymore: Little Girls wearing only bottoms on the beach. I’m reluctant to use the word “topless” because it both sounds prurient and implies that that they are missing something, that they are less a top which really they’re not because they have nothing to cover up. As a result, all the little boys and little girls playing on the beaches here look exactly the same. It’s adorable, and innocent, and the way things should be. I am now shocked that at first I was a little shocked.

But the truth is, I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen a female child over 5 in public without a junior facsimile of an adult woman’s bathing suit – maillot, or bikini top. At first, the girls here looked so… so naked. By which I mean vulnerable, not sexual. But wasn’t anyone aware that there are perverts out there who like to ogle little girls? That by not covering up these girls, you might be feeding someone’s sick fantasy? You might even be inviting trouble? Answer: Uh, no. It was hard for me to even explain to Francesca why we wouldn’t just let girls run around just like boys, wearing nothing but bottoms. She looked at me incredulously and said of 7 and 8 year-olds, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world – “But they’re just babies.”

(quick explanation: here, the word “bambini” applies to all pre-teen children; in my dictionary the first definition under Kid – is the Italian word for goat skin. Wanna know about a culture – look to the language.)

BUT WHAT DO YOU DRIVE WITH?

I was driving home late the other night and stuck behind a car driving really, really slowly. I could have passed it, but I was riveted by an intense conversation emanating from the vehicle, not by sound, but by a virtual symphony of hand gestures. As I told you all a while back, the Italians really do say “Mama Mia!” and yes, they really do talk with their hands just like every over-the-top New Joisey charactuh actuh yuh ever sawr. The Driver had only his right arm to work with, but he wielded it like Bernstein baton-ing Beethoven, while the Passenger made full use of her bi-manual advantage.

I have no idea what they were talking about, but I like to imagine it was something completely mundane. And probably about food:

Driver: (emphatic stabbing motions) “What do you mean the shrimp was frozen?!”
Passenger (Marlee Matlin on meth): “I know frozen shrimp when I taste it! And that! Was! Frozen! Shrimp!”
Driver: “The menu said fresh! They wouldn’t serve frozen and print fresh!”
Passenger: “Maybe they ran out, did you ever think of that! They thought we wouldn’t notice!”
Driver: “Of course we’d notice – we’re Italian! The only thing we don’t notice is driving 30 kilometers and hour in a 70K zone!”

FRESH VS. FROZEN

Even in the rinky-dinkiest, dumpy-wumpiest restaurants or pizza parlors, the menus always indicate if the food used in a certain dish is frozen. At first I thought it was a law (and for all I know, it might be), but now I think it’s to spare the waiters from having answer what would otherwise be incessant barrages of questions about the provenance of the ingredients.

AND SPEAKING OF NEW JOISEY…

I’ve pretty much concluded that Napoli is the New Jersey of Italy; or rather that Neapolitans are the Joiseyians. And boy do they need a Bruce Springsteen to make their case for ‘em . The Calabrian seaside draws quite a lot of Neapolitans on summer vacation. I asked why the Neapolitans would travel a few hours South to come here instead of going to their own gorgeous and closer Amalfi coast. I suspect the Amalfi Coast is probably a lot more expensive than here, what with being Internationally famous for it’s beauty and all. But I was also told that the waters here are a lot cleaner than those closer to Napoli, which is probably true – the water is gorgeous here.

The Calabrians do not particularly care for the Neapolitans. I loved Napoli and the people I met there, though my affection has been explained to me as the difference between the City Neapolitans I met (okay!) and the suburban denizens I didn’t (run!). Various Calabrese have tried to point out to me how easily you can spot the Neapolitans with their garish clothes, loutish accents, and overall ape-ish demeanor. There’s even a slang word for them with some kind of simian insinuation. Thus far, the distinction is somewhat lost on me. I can hear a Calabrian accent, but definitely cannot discern dialects on the fly. I’d need more of a wine tasting situation, or a police line up as run by Henry Higgins to really spot the differences. As for the clothes… let’s just say this entire country, north and south, has enough acid wash to go around. And yes, I’m including the tourists.

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Amanda July 18th, 2008

My whole childhood, I didn’t have 2 grandmothers, I really had 3. There was my father’s mother whom I called “Nana,” and a double-headed, joined-at-the hip unit referred to as a single noun: “GrandmanAuntJo.” My grandmother, Theresa, and her older sister Josephina lived together as long, and probably longer than either of them ever lived with their husbands, both of whom they outlived by decades. From the 50’s on, they shared a large house in New Rochelle, New York, sometimes with other family members, until the energy crises of the early 70s made it cost-prohibitive to heat. Then they moved into a comfortable 2 bedroom apartment very close to (one generation younger) Aunt Georgina’s school, and walking distance to the local A&P.

Every hour spent with Grandma was equally shared with Aunt Jo; rarely was I in the company of one without the other. Grandma had a hearing problem which she never acknowledged, so communicating with her was not always easy; she often appeared distant and, as you might imagine, conversation didn’t always flow. Aunt Jo however, was always eager to talk and was, by far, the more animated of the two. She had strong opinions and spoke with a pointed finger in a fast, staccato style, with just the faintest traces of an accent. She had porcelain skin, bright eyes behind old-lady glasses, and a laugh that, even in an nonagenarian, could only be described as girlish.

To me as a child, they were both always Old Ladies – not just by way of Old Age, but of the Old World. In the early 70s they watched Merv Griffin and Lawrence Welk, in the mid 90s they watched the 10pm local news and “The Nanny.” They wore housecoats and slippers, read the Daily News, and they didn’t talk about their feelings. I always thought I knew one as well as the other, but I am discovering here in Italy that I didn’t really know Aunt Jo or her story at all.

It is because of Aunt Jo, and only Aunt Jo, that I have a connection to family here. Here she is known affectionately by one and all as “Zia Peppina.” Faces light up when people talk about her, and the adjectives pour forth: “Brava, intelligente, molto spirito!” She sent cards every Christmas, wrote letters regularly, and her visit to Italy in the late 70s, with my grandmother was a notable event that everyone here has his or her own memories of. You see, my connection to this family is not that of a single relative, my great-grandmother, Rosa di Buono (ne Ringa). It is a dual connection, because at age 25 in 1925, my Aunt Jo, Josephina di Buono fell in love with and married Vittorio Caruso, her 26 year-old first cousin.

The family was not happy about this. The marriage took place over the strong objections of Vittorio’s mother, Palma who still lived in Italy, but who, apparently never met nor fully accepted Aunt Jo. While the discovery of DNA was still decades off, everyone knew – probably from past experiences in a small town – that first cousins do not make for healthy children. And sadly Aunt Jo’s history bears this out. I don’t know about miscarriages, but there was a still born child, and then a boy, traditionally named Camillo after after Vittorio’s father, who died at about age 4 of leukemia. And there was a girl, a daughter they traditionally named Palma, after Vittorio’s mother. But Palma was also sickly. She had cerebral palsy, and she did not live past her twenties.

So when I speak of Camillo, my primary connection here, he is Aunt Jo’s nephew through marriage – her husband’s brother’s son, or her “carissimo nipote” (”dear nephew”) as she addressed him in a letter form the 1991that Camillo just shared with me. It was so nice to read a letter. A handwritten, “it’s been a slow summer” “here’s what everyone’s up to,” “love-to-the-kids” honest to God letter. Actually, I’m even in there – in 1991, I was “living in California in an apartment with a nice girl.” And while Aunt Jo didn’t have much to say in this particular correspondence, I can’t help but feel that she had a lot to say to me – a lot to tell me and teach me if only I’d bothered to ask. But by the time I was born, her husband and daughter had both been dead for well over a decade – and to a Poloroid kid like me, looking at the framed black and white portrait of Uncle Victor on her mantle piece, it might as well have been a century.

It seems that across the ocean – a place she only visited twice in her life – there was a world of people with as strong a claim on Aunt Jo’s emotions as any to be found in New Rochelle. I can think of many reasons why Aunt Jo maintained her connection her late husband’s family thousands of miles away, across the Atlantic: the desire to be accepted by a family that was initially resistant to her, the desire to validate a union that caused a lot of pain, the fact that the family here really is just so loving and wonderful, and most of all, the desire to maintain a connection to Vittorio, the man she truly loved.

One of Camillo’s brothers is named Vittorio in honor of his father’s brother. And I learned last week that his real name is “Vittorino” which means “Little Vittorio” because the original, Aunt Jo’s husband, was still alive when he was born, and was present for his namesake’s baptism.

In 1971, Vittorio and Camillo came to the United States to visit, and it was Aunt Jo who met them at the airport along with my (one generation younger) Aunt Georgina. As the story was told to me here, apparently Georgina asked Aunt Jo “How will we recognize them?” and Aunt Jo replied “Look for a handsome man who looks just like your Uncle Victor.”

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