IN MEMORIAM-LIMONCELLO 2005-2006

Limoncello escaped yesterday. He was outside in his cage for a few minutes while I was futzing with the laundry and suddenly he started making loud squawking noises. I turned around and saw him on top of his cage! The door was open-I must have not have secured it as I carried him out. I called out to him, but it was too late-he took off over the treetops toward freedom. He seemed so happy! May he always be so, for he made us very happy. I hope he is finding all the cute little girl birdies in the area that have called to him this song-filled spring.

GIBELLINA NUOVA

On our way back to town on Sunday we went by new Gibellina and decided to go in and take another look around. This is the town that was built after the 1968 Belice Valley earthquake that killed hundreds and left thousands homeless in our area. They say there was little input by the locals as to the design of the place so it looks like a ghost town much of the time. But on this father’s day Sunday, we saw many people around and some even walking their “passagieta” in the piazzas.
Old Gibellina is also a place I have reported on before as one of the spookiest places in Sicily, having been covered over with “a great sheet of concrete” as it says in the guidebooks, cementing over the ruins of the towns and some say, with the fallen bodies still in place under it. The town is supposed to be an artistic monument built by the artist Alberto Burri, and it is called the cretto di Burri.
New Gibellina has artistic pretensions and some important modern day Italian artists worked to create many sculptures and buildings that make this town different from any in our area. There are piazzas everywhere, wide streets, newish buildings with back and front lots, and museums and public buildings. One of the places we had not seen before in our wanderings through the area is the headquarters for a series of shows and drama events that take place every other September, the Orestiadi. We have read about these events, but unfortunately have not attended, as we are usually just coming back from the states at this time. From a distance, you see buildings against a picturesque hillside, but as you drive the winding approach, you begin to see an incredible cement pile with horses rising out of it, is reminiscent of Burri’s cretto. I got the chills just looking at it!
We have “seen” many towns in Sicily in our sightseeing trips, but just as Sciacca always yields surprises up to us, we know there is always something new to see. I’m glad we got to see the upper part of town on this drive through because it looks interesting enough to return to again. The picture of old Gibellina is from one of the many times we have gone back to see that site, often with other people.

SAINT JOSEPH'S DAY

Sunday was Father’s Day in Italy. It made sense since Joseph was Jesus’ father, and Sunday was his feast day. It was the name day of anyone named Joseph, so we called Joe and wished him “Buona Onomastica.”
It was also the day that many of Sicilian descent in the states celebrated with a big food celebration. It always came in the middle of Lenten fasting, so I remember it well. I especially remember Saint Joseph’s day feasts as kids at my grandmother’s house. We would get together with all the cousins and aunts and uncles and eat a lot of foods we did not eat during the year, like fennel, canoli and sfingi, Italian doughnuts. We kids would have some watered down wine and there would be lots of toasts that would go something like “Viva il San Giuseppe.”
Saint Joseph was a saint that was particularly revered by Sicilians. When there was a favor to be asked of God and when a saint was called on for “intercession” with the big guy, the prayers were often directed to Saint Joseph, with a promise that a ‘big table,’ or “tavolata” would be made to celebrate the granting of the prayer. If the wish was granted, a huge feast with all the guests that the family could manage (and then some!) was held. There was an article in last night’s paper about a family who had asked for help for their son’s health problems and that had their wish granted. So the paper showed a picture of the mother and many friends and relatives who put on the feed for many families in Sciacca in front of a Saint Joseph altar.
We did not know these people so we were not invited ourselves, and we knew that many of our friends were involved with their own families and fathers on this day. So we rode to the nearby town of Salemi that has quite a reputation for celebrating the feast day since Saint Joseph is their patron saint.
The main celebration in town took place in the historic town center, a maze of buildings in the area around the castle that has been shrouded in construction material for as long as we have been here. The roads into the town center were blocked off by police when we tried to go up there. But in looking around for a place to park and take a bus up, we saw a small grouping of tents in a piazza and a lot of people milling around. We had stumbled upon the bus staging area around a small “feria” or gathering of tents full of information and merchandise. We walked around the area and got samples of bread and pasta and took pictures and generally felt satisfied that we had seen the parts of the celebration we had come for. We know if we took the bus up, we might be stuck there for hours, for the main celebration, complete with fireworks and bands, does not take place till after dark, and we were hours away from home. Still I am content with what we saw, and we can visit there again another time.
I remember Saint Joseph’s day bread being made and blessed by the parish priest when I was a kid. Apparently, this town has developed an art form of the bread making. It was just beautiful! The display window pictured was even prettier, probably made by a master artisan of the craft. But the bread itself was too hard for me to eat! I kept my piece to take home to Limoncello, and that is one smart canary, preferring the softer bread I offered him with it. It is still sitting there.

THE BARRACKS

We took a ride over to Menfi the other day on our way shopping in Castlevertrano. The newspapers said that the old post earthquake housing in the town was coming down, finally, after 38 years. There were thirty or so families still living in this housing, some of whom had bought the property from others as families who had lost everything in the devastating quake became more prosperous, and some who had lived there for two generations. There were young kids in 1968 who had grown up, raised families and started grandchildren’s families in these structures, as they waited for the government to finish the “house of bricks” promised them after the deadly seismic eruption.
The reason that they were finally coming down? The Italian central government environmental department was paying for their destruction since asbestos was used in their roofs. Otherwise, they would probably still be up! Government foot dragging to help the powerless families here was a national disgrace and widely reported on. Of course there were charges that the government was not acting fast enough because it was for the poor south, always discriminated against, as opposed to the richer north when similar tragedy struck there.
The event made national news and was described as a shameful milestone, coming so late after the quake itself, and only after the asbestos was discovered. The daily satire program here, “Striscia la Noticia” showed the demolition which did not treat the roofs any differently from the rest of the debris, and joked that the roof material would find its way into landfill along with all the other trash from the demolition and some other family could now live in the same asbestos for a few more generations.
People were paid for leaving and finding other housing, but promised government housing is still not complete. There was even a bit of a problem with protesters who wanted to keep their “barrack” to stable their horses! But most of the structures were abandoned long ago or used as storage sheds as some sort. One paper says that there were 242 units still standing, and there were other structures too, since these government ones were not put up immediately after the earthquake. New government low cost housing will go up on the property once the ruins are cleared out, an estimated nine months of work.
Yesterday in the paper there was a report of a demonstration in Menfi of about 100 residents of the barracks who did not want to leave their homes until the housing was built! They said they had been promised government housing and they wanted that in place before they moved out. These are the same people who demanded that the government housing be put up on the spot where they are living now, somehow while they continued to live there. Strange!

THE ACADEMY AWARD WINNER, CRASH

We watched Crash this weekend. I could scarcely stand watching it, really. The violent scenes and the suspense were a little too much. But I stuck it out and finished it. It is definitely thought provoking. I am not sure if it is Academy Award winner material, but it is way up there, at least.
We had bought a copy with a weekly newsmagazine here, and it is both English and dubbed in Italian. So we wondered which of our friends would like to see it. That got us thinking about what Italians would think of this movie.
The blatant racism and lack of understanding or trust that is prominently featured between the different races of the city of Los Angeles is a surprise when you are away from it for so long. At least it was for both of us. Not that there is not racism here: every time a child comes up missing, gypsy camps are searched, and anti-Semitic epithets are common (a friend told Steve that someone they knew “works like a Jew.”). But the gun shop owner’s attitude was a shock to me in his contempt for anyone who could not speak English without an accent. I speak the language here with an American accent! There was also the scene with the two gang bangers who hated the rich white couple for obviously distancing themselves from them (this just before they stole their car at gunpoint). Then there was the way this same rich woman did not trust the young tattooed locksmith who changed their house locks after the robbery and who treated her Mexican maid as an underling (until she decided that this maid was her only, and best, friend).
The sense of family that is so important to Italians is also shown in strong little bursts, but I am sure some of it would be puzzling to them. The wealthy white husband and wife who are robbed of their luxury vehicle are not surprising in their fights over her insecurities, but the black couple that are “messed with” by the white cop are probably quite alien to Italians. No Italian man would be sensible enough to stand being a “cornu” by a white cop pawing at his wife. The druggy mother of the black cop who favors her criminal son and blames his death on the good son-well, that brotherly friction is a pretty timeless theme. But I (seriously!) doubt if very many Italian mothers can take time out from their cooking and spotless house keeping to develop drug habits. That sounds flip, but it is realistic. The Iranian shop keeper who is robbed and furiously exacts revenge on the locksmith-well, that is pretty Italian. So is his daughter’s love and concern for her father’s rage.
The loveliest scene in the whole movie is with the locksmith, the scene with the little girl under the bed, when her dad gives her the protective cloak. Such love and patience, such understanding! That is certainly Italian and easily understood and recognized here. But the irony of her shooting may not be so easily understood. This movie is full of irony, from the way the bad cop ends up saving the woman he felt up the night before to the mistake over the Saint Christopher statue. The statue itself would not have to be explained at all, of course.
The corruption of the police and the good cop/bad cop controversy is certainly part of life here in the land of the Mafia kickback (still!!). I think a puzzling part would be the gang banger, Ludicrous, when he changes radically enough to give freedom to others at the expense of his own profit (but without knowing about the death of his buddy at the hands of another LA cop). Maybe Italians would have to be told about the white slave trade of Chinese and Mexicans in LA, but many know and understand about the “clandestini”, the Africans fleeing their impoverished countries to go to the mecca of the European Union by way of Sicily.
All in all, this movie made me glad that I do not live in LA.

NOVELLAME

Every spring, like clockwork, new fish in the millions are born in the fertile waters off Baia Ranella here in our bay. And just like clockwork, the dispute between the fishermen of Sciacca and the men in the boats from Palermo heats up.
Sciacca fishermen claim this abundance is their resource to do as they want, their patrimony. They self-regulate pretty well so that there are enough fish to go around to all and some more to mature for the future. But it was not always like this, for at one time environmentalists had to convince the fishermen that these millions of babies that they see could have a finite end if they were not managed correctly. So our guys here now treat this yearly boon with some respect.
But as waters get fished out around Palermo, the fishing fleet there heads south and ends up here. And our fishermen now have to convince government officials of what they have just recently been convinced of, that this bounty should not be fished to the limit. There are demands for laws, then stop orders and injunctions, and new court orders every year. Sometimes they are obeyed, sometimes not, and this year there seems to be a hold on the judicial proceedings. Yesterday I watched the boats steam in and there were 22 of them in our very small bay. They cut across each others’ bow and yelled loudly at each other and swung their nets menacingly and generally were a pain in the butt.
When we drove into Paolo’s house later that day, we saw him out on the terrace looking intently through his high powered binoculars that he uses to identify who is in which boat. He was outraged that he could not identify most of the boats except to be sure that they were not local. And of course it was all the fault of the “Palermitani”, the people from Palermo. I read in the paper that some environmentalists wanted restaurants to boycott the new fish from their menus instead of featuring them as a specialty this time of year (they are gross, a gelatinous mess with big black eyes, usually eaten raw!). That may happen in Sciacca, but probably not in Palermo. Journalists reported that while the case is being sorted out in courts, the restaurants that the judges adjourn to for their pranzo feature the novellame prominently on the menu. Damn those Palermitani!

A LOVE SONG TO ITALY

While we were flying home, I read with interest an article in the current Alitalia magazine, Ulysses, that was a commentary on the publication “Pocket World in Figures” put out by the British newsmagazine The Economist. It contains the yearly ranking of countries in various categories, comparing one to another. The author, Domenico De Masi, muses that Italy is small, tiny compared to the US or Russia, and that it does not have a large population (it is ranked twenty second in the world), nor do many people speak Italian (about 150 million Italian speakers as compared to three billion English speakers). Yet it is consistently among the top eight nations of the world. De Masi then proceeds to theorize some reasons why based on the rankings he reads:

1. Italians are healthy and sporty, having the top number of physicians in the world, world class medicine, and a fifth place ranking in terms of Olympic medals.
2. Italian quality of life is better than much of the rest of the world (eighth). It is fifth in respect to the number of foreign tourists.
3. Italians are better educated than much of the world (eighth in amount spent on books).
4. The people of Italy are extroverts. In electronic media, they are fourth in the world in telephone usage, third in terms of hosts on the internet.
5. Italians are generous and are ranked seventh in aid-giving in the world.
6. The country does not spend a lot on research (25th place) but is inventive and high in patents (18th) and Nobles (10th).
7. Italians are efficient. With the 25th largest workforce, Italy manages to produce a lot (sixth place).
8. Italians live longer and more wisely, being second in longevity (behind Japan) and listening to the oldsters in the family.

On this last point, the author muses that because of the large number of elderly, Italians tend to appreciate peace more. I believe that is true, but I also think that anybody born in the 40’s or earlier had to live through the second world war being fought in their backyards. That cannot help but dissuade people from the glamour of war.
All of this interesting stuff is hardly unbiased and can be read as self promotion, coming from a magazine for captive audiences of tourists. Yet I find Italy’s rank in the world interesting because I just read that this country was about to fall from its eighth place economic position. It is now challenged by the up and coming mega economy of China and not far behind, a flourishing Indian economy. And although I do not dispute the facts and figures the author cites from such a respectable magazine as The Economist, I note that figures in the Time 2006 Almanac disputes some of the standings cited (eg. longevity-Italy is number 10, and does not even make its “most liveable countries” list). But any writer can search for and play around with figures and note trends to prove or disprove points. I still think Italy is an amazing country, especially Sicily, even though there are now more Sicilians in the states than there are in Sicily.
So figures aside, I try to understand what make Italy the “belpaese,” with cachet right up there with the big guys in size and population. I personally think it is because Italy and all things Italian have style! Italy is a concept, maybe not as honest or just as it might be, nor as rich or dignified as some, but it shares with the whole world an enjoyment of life that makes Italians naturally enjoy each day here. Italy is a perfect blue sky, an incredibly flavorful orange, a gorgeous man in an Armani suit in front of you at the cash register. Italians always make me remember I am alive for good or for bad. What a way to retire!