From the land of art!
Painting in Casa Vasari, Arezzo.
Ciao, 2017!
What does a stylish Italian newborn wear anyway?
When I was eight months pregnant with my son, the private clinic where I was to give birth gave me a list of clothes to bring with me for the newborn. There were articles of clothing that I’d never heard of before: bodino, ghettina, tutina.
They all ended in -ino or -ina, which meant they were little and cute, but what were they?
If this wasn’t enough to send my hormone-assaulted brain into a spin, the clinic specified the required type of fabric. So my fetus and I set out to find a ghettina di lana leggera (light wool leggings) and other outfits that would compose his first foray into the world of Italian fashion.
My plan was to hand the list to the lady in the store with my credit card and be done with it. The shopkeeper was around sixty, a beautiful, gravelly-voiced grandmother. I was done for.
Approximately two hours and hundreds of euros later, my fetus and I emerged, sweaty and agitated. The signora had regaled me with questions. Which kind of cotton do you prefer? Lace at the collar or on the sleeves? Oh, she was full of questions.
But somehow I couldn’t get up the nerve to ask mine. I had only two, and they were fundamental at that point in time. Which is cheaper?
And, where is the bathroom?
Later, I handed my completed assignment over to Raffaella [mother-in-law]. She put her glasses on to examine the list and to feel the tiny garments. She was Giorgio Armani before a Vogue photo shoot. She was a Hollywood image consultant.
She described the workmanship of each minuscule article, saying things like “cross-stitch embroidery” and “cream and sky-blue appliqué.” I tried to figure out if these descriptions meant the clothes passed the test. I did not want to visit the exacting, gravelly-voiced grandmother at the baby store again.
My son was not yet at term and his look was already being scrutinized. He would have to be stylish and elegant as soon as he saw the light of day. Weren’t they going to give him a couple of months to get into the swing of things? Couldn’t he be given a few weeks of leeway on account of his American, sweatpant-wearing mother? “Hmmmm…” Raffaella would have to think about it, work on it, match some of these things with items she had bought. But it looked like my job was over. Hallelujah.
“You know, in the U.S., we usually buy baby clothes that can go in the washing machine,” I ventured, finding renewed confidence in my ninth month.
“Are you serious? They get ruined that way! What about the satin lock-down stitch?”
I didn’t mention that we also tend not to spend two hundred bucks on a wardrobe that would last less than a month, and that was destined to be covered with milk and vomit.
It was pointless. I didn’t want my son to get the figlio di nessuno, the “no one’s kid” label, as soon as he was born, so I let Nonna Raffaella handle my newborn’s wardrobe. After all, I figured, who cares what they dress him in? I had enough on my mind.
Wilson, Katherine. The Mother-in-Law Cure (Originally published as Only in Naples): Learning to Live and Eat in an Italian Family (p. 208). Random House Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
How Italians drink coffee
In Italy coffee is not a social drink—it is a drug. It is not drunk; it’s mainlined. No sooner does the tiny espresso cup and saucer touch the counter than whoosh, in goes a quarter-pound of sugar, and whoosh the thing is downed in one gulp, and the caffeine is racing through your veins and you’re ready to attack—literally—the world.
From Máté, Ferenc. The Hills of Tuscany: A New Life in an Old Land (Augustana Historical Society Publication) (p. 38). Albatross. Kindle Edition.
In Italy, the sound of coffee in a bar is clinking porcelain. It is cacophony, racket, loud voices arguing and laughing over the ssssshhhh of the espresso machine. These sounds, a prelude to the hit of that syrupy black nectar that is called caffè, remind me that everything is possible. I can fight the good fight.
I think the fundamental difference between the experiences of coffee in the United States and coffee in Italy comes down to the concept of “to go.”
In America, coffee is taken to go because there’s a lot of liquid to be consumed. It accompanies you as you go about your morning. There is comfort in the feel of large quantities of lava-hot liquid under your fingers, of knowing that this coffee will be with you for hours. Your big hot cup of American coffee or latte or macchiato or whatever else Starbucks has decided to name it, will be held close, cuddled and nursed. Your very own grown-up sippy cup, thanks to that marvelous plastic mouthpiece (a beccuccio, or little beak, they would call it in Italian), which enables you to sip without spilling or scalding your mouth. Sipped and dripped. American coffee is sippy and drippy. It is like the saline bags that are linked to an intravenous drip: the level of fluid in your bloodstream never drops below a certain level.
Italian espresso, on the other hand, is a hit. A fast, intense bang to your veins. It is a one-gulp switch of the wrist that wakes and revs you up in an instant. For this reason, Italian coffee to go makes no sense. You can get your one-gulp hit somewhere other than the bar as long as it’s close by and the whole endeavor is performed quickly.
From Wilson, Katherine. The Mother-in-Law Cure (Originally published as Only in Naples): Learning to Live and Eat in an Italian Family (p. 136). Random House Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
Doris Day and Edith Head, and oh yeah, Alred Hitchcock and Jimmie Stewart
These principals all came together in The Man Who Knew Too Much.
They created movie magic at its finest. Time travel back to 1956. American surgeon, Dr. McKenna (Jimmie Stewart) takes his wife (Doris Day) and young son to visit Morocco, for he had been there, serving in North Africa during WWII. They literally stumble into all kinds of espionage and trouble in Marrakesh, and their son is kidnapped in the process.
Alfred Hitchcock directed this classic film and Edith Head made this sketch of a beautiful suit for Doris Day to wear in the critical parts of the movie.
The suit seen above, without the stole, was realized in gray silk and Miss Day wears the suit throughout the second half of the film, during which she is seen in Albert Hall in London, as well as in the Embassy of some unspecified but critical country. Her kidnapped son had been taken to London and she and Mr. Stewart are there to find him.
I loved the movie and highly recommend it. Here are the lead actors and the director:
And here is the poster advertising the film.
Call me by your name, and I’ll call you by mine.
Catching up on movies during the holidays, I loved this one. Maybe it is because it is set in Italy, maybe because it is set during my own youth and coming of age, maybe its because I have a beautiful son like the one in the film, maybe because I have spent my life searching out and writing about art like the father in the film, maybe it is because I was in breath-taking Sirmione last summer on Lake Garda where the ancient sculpture is dredged up from, maybe it is because I liked the affectionate relationship between the mother/son, maybe because I’ve met charismatic men who can do anything like the protagonist, or maybe for the collective wisdom of the parents; for whatever combination of reasons, this movie moved me. Catch it if you can.
Rome’s first university: Hadrianic times
A huge public building known as the Auditoria, dating to Hadrian’s time in the second century, came to light under the central Piazza Venezia during an exploratory phase. Archaeologists believe the two-story building was Rome’s first university, used for cultural events and lessons. Today the square is a busy crossroad for traffic and tourists.
From:
Elephants and Persian peaches found in ancient Roman
A good pencil is hard to find
I am betting this is a topic you have never thought about. Why would you?
But, I have become an expert on the topic, and I have news for you: you cannot find a decent pencil in Italy.
Now I am guessing that if you go to an art supply store, or an engineering store (are there such things?), you could buy a fancy pencil that would put my favorite ones from the US of A to shame.
But, I am talking about being a student here, in a language school for foreigners, and trying to take notes. Not an artist or a engineer.
I typically write with ink, because it flows so much better than pencils and I like a fine point. But, I had to take such fast notes and so many notes in language school, and so often made so many mistakes as I wrote Italian, that my ink written notes look like a scratch pad. More lines through words than just plain words. A mess.
So, I looked high and low for erasable ink pens. I found a bunch. They were all worthless. The points were too thick, the erasers were not good. I ended up tearing the paper. So, I went back to pencils. My notes had looked (and functioned) worse in the erasable ink than in plain ink crossed out. At least then my paper didn’t have rips in it.
Another issue is that when you think you have located a decent wooden #2 pencil here, it will not have an eraser on the end. Or, it will have an eraser that is made out of something like marshmallow fluff. It looks like an eraser, so you buy the pencil(s, since you might stock up when you think you’ve finally spotted a winner).
So, you take out your new pencil, which you must also carry a sharpener for as well. Because you will break the lead, many times. The lead isn’t that great. And, if you are like me and want a sharp point, well…you will need that sharpener. And you will need to empty it pretty often. And, in all likelihood, your lead will break many times while you are manually sharpening it, and before long your new pencil will be a stub, and worse, still not that useful.
And, by that point, you will have missed the entire discussion (in Italian) of the subjunctive tense. And so, now, how will you ever be able to talk about wishes, or hopes, or things like that?
You won’t.
Anyway, you finally get your pencil stub sharpened and you start writing furiously, maybe even trying to look at your neighbor’s notes (which will be in Korean or Japanese or German), while trying to find your sea legs in the subjunctive. And damn, before you know it, you have made another mistake but you feel a bit smug, since you have a new pencil, albeit a stub, with an eraser!!
You flip that sucker over and start to erase and the entire eraser breaks off at the line where the pencil meets the eraser.
So, the next day, in desperation, when you are walking to your yoga class in the Piazza della Republicca, you pass a tourist souvenir kiosk and you notice that they sell pretty Florentine paper wrapped pencils and they have erasers. Never in your lifetime did you think you could be so excited about the prospect of a new pencil.
You don’t have time to buy the pencil because you are already late for yoga, but visions of that pencil dances in your head in every down dog you do. You cannot wait to be done with yoga and back in the loggia by the Post Office to buy that pencil. You are obsessed. Plus, it’s pretty to boot and, hello, if you read my blog, you know beauty is at the top of my list, all my lists!
You buy the pencil and take it home and admire it and hope it will be the one. You sharpen it when you get home and try it out. You discover that the pretty Florentine paper is the only thing that makes this pencil different from the ones you’ve already tried.
So, when you go back to the USA to renew your Visa at the Italian Consulate in Chicago, you take a shopping list with you. And no one can believe it, but at the top of your list are #2 Pencils, with erasers at the end. And you feel very safe and secure, ready to go back and try the subjunctive again.
get back, lauretta! 
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