Leaning Tower of Debt - to History

It seemed like I would never meet an Italian who was entrepreneurial in a BIG way.

Seems like most everyone I come in contact with in my day-to-day life in Florence has a Small Business, Smallish Personal and Financial Goals, a Defeated Before I Try aura. Lots of excuses, or complaints, or arguments why things will never change.

Fatalistic even. This is life. I’m living, so things are fine.
“Come sta?” I ask one Florence card shop owner in rare confidence of my basic Italian. She looks up slowly from her book, and replies, “Bene, bene. È quasi tempo di siesta!” referring to the fast-approaching siesta hour, when most businesses close for two or three hours.

A few weeks ago, three friends and I stayed at an Umbrian B&B compound with luxury appointments and breakfast, noteworthy landscaping and a divine pool above Lake Trasimeno. The owner, Nadine, who grew up in Interlaken, Switzerland, clearly has a vision and passion.

But then she mentioned that her Italian husband, whom she met while a student at university in Perugia, worked during the week as a meter money collector, emptying coins from machines in towns near and far. “It is boring, but it is a job,” Nadine says, with a shrug.

This entrepreneurial inertia in Italy has been perplexing to me, the American.

In the Santo Spirito

The church bells are already ringing when I leave my Firenze apartment at 10:15 this Sunday. The peels wash over me as I cross Piazza di Santo Spirito and climb the basilica’s stone steps.

I follow a mother and her young daughter, maybe 8 years old, as they enter the 13th century Augustinian church through a side door. The girl is wearing a white summer smock, with matching ponytail ribbon. An attendant greets them familiarly, but looks me over before nodding me through (my polka-dot dress, covering both shoulders and knees, apparently passing muster).

As we three walk down the long nave, a friar in a simple black, hooded cassock unchains the front pews to allow parishioners closer to the altar. He greets the mother and daughter, his voice warm, and chats with a group of older women up front.

I haven’t attended Mass on my own volition, well, ever.

On the Bright Side...

While sifting through the 50 photos my Italy students sent from our trip to Venice, one person kept re-appearing, a chameleon with a charming, genuine smile.
La vie de la partie.
In fact, you'll find him dancing with a street musician in my own post below.

Justin Russikoff is not a Miami University guy, but joins us from Penn State.
If I ever am privileged enough to receive the url to his blog, a requirement for my class, I'll share it here.

This week, my students are crafting scenes observed in quiet moments (and some rowdy ones) while traveling. Read them via the links at right.

I could have written a scene including Justin, but doesn't this visual - taken on a Venetian river taxi - say it all?
UPDATE: Link to Justin's blog. Someday, you may see this link on Comedy Central.

Hot and Cold in Venice

As the water taxi rounded the corner to our drop-off point in Venice, the sun beat down upon the cream, maize and faded pink of palazzos facing the Grand Canal.
In moments, that brilliant midday sun was beating down on our heads, too, as we hauled our weekend bags to the Messner Hotel, near the spectacular Santa Maria della Salute church on Venice's southeast corner.
At 95 degrees, this was a day for the beach, for an air-conditioned nap, for several glasses of something cool in the shade.
We would get none of that.

No, our 55-person group was off to tour the Doge's Palace and the Basilica di San Marco, where tour guides would ply us with rich Venetian history, with spectacular statuary, with a close look at a famous prison just steps from where the Doges lived for centuries.

And out a prison window, through the bars, comes the view of The Bridge of Sighs, that last vista a doomed prisoner might get before being hanged. Say goodbye to family and friends, waving at you from that bridge, then you are dragged to the gallows. (I love you Richard Russo!)
We mopped the sweat from our faces, necks, arms as we went.

It was a metaphor for a weekend in which Mother Nature just got in the way of treasuring a famous city.

Corriere della Culture

What is news in Italy?
Answer: Whatever makes it past the government and Berlusconi media "censorship."
Censorship both self-inflicted and power-inflicted.

In case you think I jest, Freedom House in 2009 ranked Italy as only "partly free" in terms of media censorship. For novices: The prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, is a media mogul, and what he doesn't own, he oversees as PM.
This is a very complicated and nuanced scene, and not the focus of my posting today, although Italy's recent persecution of YouTube - and the ramifications of that - are breathtaking.

Back to the Corriere headline: I do love to read the Milan-based news media Corriere della Sera, or Evening Courier if you must, since the former is so much more poetic.

Today's headlines in the English language version of "Corriere" cannot fail to attract attention, although the writing in some is tedious.

"Dell'Utri Found Guilty - Forza Italia Not Involved." The hed does not do this lady justice, as the mafioso political crime verdict story says so much about the criminal justice system in Italy. For further information, read "The Monster of Florence."

"Pope Attacks Belgian Magistrates Investigating Paedophilia Scandal."

Corner of Via dei Serragli and Lungarno

Sometimes at random moments I find myself transported to the corner of Via dei Serragli and Lungarno.
Sometimes I am eating a dark chocolate gelato.
Sometimes I am watching customers - two or three deep - milling before the glass cases at the gelateria, overwhelmed by the choices.
Sometimes I am leaning over the bridge ledge, or even sitting on it, watching the River Arno slide by.

But always it is dusk, the city of Firenze spread out around me, warmed by those last golden hues.

Firenze is an easy city to love, a hard city to leave.
In four days I will be there again, struggling with my Italian, tripping over the cobblestones I simply cannot navigate in heels (so embarrassing), greeting the used bookstore owner with a cheery "buongiorno" (does he ever sell anything?).

Most of all, I get the guilty pleasure of exploring a Renaissance gem over 7 weeks. It will all seem new again, I am sure.

There are also dark things to mull over, like the rude shopkeepers, like the $300 traffic ticket I am still fighting from last summer. I got it for picking up a rental car in the Firenze historic district and dropping it off again. Why haven't they dropped the ticket, you might ask? Hey, it's Italy.

I leave for Firenze optimistic. About what a different culture teaches me. About having some time to think. About...

...what new thing I will spot at the corner of Via dei Serragli and Lungarno. At dusk.

Ciao, Summer 2010!

Just learned that I will be teaching in Miami University's summer program in Florence again in 2010!
How cool is that?

One of my favorite Miami students, Louisville native Kaitlin Walter, will be joining the group. Guest No. 1 for my Thursday night dinner-at-Annie's events.

If you haven't seen the video short that Summer 2009 Journalism student Lauren Doyle produced about the program, you can find it here.

Meanwhile, the Berlusconi government in Italy is on the defensive again, this time accused of paying off warlords in Afghanistan to protect its troops stationed there. Check it out. No surprise that they did it, but the French troops who eventually took over the Italian area apparently did not know about the payoffs and were attacked.