Italy Again?

Trevi Fountain, Rome

 “Nobody can discover the world for somebody else. 

 Only when we discover it for ourselves does it become 

common ground and a common bond and we cease to be alone.” 

~ Wendell Berry

"You're going to Italy again?" (emphasis on again) a friend recently asked me. I didn't answer immediately preferring to look at her for a second or two.  "I don't know how you do that," she continued. "Why keep going back?"

Why, indeed.

It's not something that I can really explain. It's not something that even I understand. I feel as though there is a huge chain yanking me back. (On second thought,  it's probably not a chain. Maybe it's a strand of maccheroni alla guitarra.  :-) )  The aching for the place never leaves me. I'm hoping I can someday figure out why.

This trip, though, will be different for several reasons.

Pettorano sul Gizio

 Last year, a number of people asked me to take them with me the next time I went back to Italy. I thought they were joking, but they weren't.  Not long after I returned to the States in October, I discovered that they were serious. The thought of being able to share what I know about that beautiful country thrilled me more than I could ever put in words. I was in.

Fast forward to April 2015.  I have two groups (five people plus moi in each group) who will each spend two weeks in Italy with me this year.  I'm taking them to Rome, Sulmona, and Bologna. From each of those bases, we'll hit a number of other cities like Florence, Venice, Modena, Rocca Calascio, Scanno, Pacentro, and Pettorano sul Gizio, birthplace of my maternal grandparents.

The first photo I took in Bologna after I woke up there last year.

If you know me—and only four of the 10 going with me do—you know they will have a trip nothing like one they'd get from Brennan or Globus or some other tour company.  They'll get to see a bunch of stuff that they would never see if they were stuck on tours that gave them 45 minutes to look around a location. Except for the four days we're in Rome, tourists won't be running over them. Our day trips to Florence and Venice will start early to give them the opportunity to see both before the tourists wake up. I have a lot planned, but they'll have a lot of free time.

 Here's my theory on this entire trip:  I will share everything I know about everywhere we go. I will give them the best experience I can give them. And, more importantly, I will give them time to get out and experience the life themselves. I won't herd them, and I won't hover.  They'll have fun. They'll have an adventure. They'll love it. (I hope.) And I'll tell you all about it.

Firenze

Once the second group leaves, I'll be back in Bologna for about a month.  My friends and relatives in Abruzzo cannot understand my love of Bologna, and they shake their heads at my staying there.

After Mike joins me though, we'll head back down to Sulmona for a few days. My grandmother's village celebrates its patron saints with a two-day festival, and I need (yes, need) to experience it.

So, yes, I am going back to Italy again (emphasis on again), my dear concerned friend.  I will go back until I can't.

Carpe Diem

“I am always saddened by the death of a good person. 

It is from this sadness that a feeling of gratitude emerges.

 I feel honored to have known them and blessed that their 

passing serves as a reminder to me that my time on 

this beautiful earth is limited and that I should seize the 

opportunity I have to forgive, share, explore, and love. 

I can think of no greater way to honor the deceased 

than to live this way.” 

~ Steve Maraboli

 Our good friend, Tom, passed away yesterday. i'm not going to go into the particulars, but suffice to say that his passing was sudden and too soon.

Mike and I met Tom and his wife, Judi, a few months after we moved back to Las Vegas in 2009. Tom and I connected immediately because his family was from a small town not far from my grandparents' town in Abruzzo. 

 "You FBI, too?" he asked.

"Excuse me?" I was confused.

"Full Blooded Italian," he laughed.  "Haven't you ever heard that?"  Oops. I felt pretty dumb, but he just laughed, introduced me to Judi, and our friendship commenced.

From that night on, Tom always greeted me with the Italian cheek-kiss. To most people, that might be a little thing, but to me it meant that Tom really understood how much reconnecting with the culture means to me.  When Mike and I told them that we were heading to Italy in the fall of 2010, Tom and Judi gave us a lot of advice because they had actually lived in Italy for seven months some years ago. 

When I found out that I was a finalist for the Fulbright last December, Tom and Judi were two of the few friends to whom I mentioned it.  They were both supportive, and over the six months it took to receive final notification, Tom was always very encouraging.

"Call us know as soon as you know you're going," he urged me.  As I promised, I called them the afternoon I received the "Sorry, you're out" letter.  "I'm sorry," he told me. "They don't know what they're doing."

"Tutto bene (Everything's okay)," I replied, "I'll just go to Italy instead."

"Good idea."  When we had dinner with Tom and Judi before I left for Italy, they were, as usual, interested in my plans, and they shared maps and books they thought I might use.

I arrived home about three weeks ago, and I was looking forward to seeing Tom and Judi at a party this weekend so that I could tell them about Italy.

I won't get that chance.

Tom's passing is a reminder that life can change in an instant, that our time on earth is finite, that we do not know when or where.  It is also a reminder that we must "seize the day," and as Maraboli says, forgive, explore, share, love.  And, to his list, I must add enjoy.  Enjoy life. Enjoy love. Enjoy each other.

Enjoy, because we never know.

We are blessed to have had you in our lives, Tom.  We're going to miss you.

Love One Another

"Therefore welcome one another as Christ

has welcomed you for the glory of God."

Romans 15:7

(I know this isn't technically about Italy, but I have to get it off of my mind.)
 

This past weekend has been a little disheartening for me because of decisions made yet again by bishops of the Catholic Church.  Born and raised Catholic, I believed because the nuns and priests in charge of my education told me I had to believe. I believed because my mother was a good woman who believed. I believed because I was afraid I would go to hell if I didn't believe.

One of the nuns I had in elementary schools told us that only Catholics could go to heaven.  She was not alone in saying so. Friends of mine who went to different schools in different cities and states heard the same thing from their teachers.

"Sister is an idiot," my father bellowed. He overheard me telling a Presbyterian neighbor/playmate that she was condemned to purgatory (or worse) since she was Protestant. He yanked me into the house by my ponytail and whacked me. "God loves everyone, even sinners, even Protestants, even idiots who tell their friends they're going to Hell."  My father could be blunt.

Around the same time of that whacking, Sister also told us that babies and children who died without being baptized could not go to heaven directly. Instead, they went to Purgatory, the place where Catholics who don’t die in the state of grace go for temporary punishment and cleansing of the soul before they can enter Heaven . . . a waiting room, if you will.  Purgatory was filled with these children, and we prayed daily to build up “indulgences” (a get-out-of-Purgatory-free card) to send a child to his/her heavenly home. 

It was probably at that time that I started to question the Church. I started to wonder why God, who is all-knowing and all-loving, would send a helpless child to Purgatory for years if the child had done no wrong, had been born innocent, had been made in His image.  As I got older, I grew uncomfortable with Church teachings on, among other things, priestly celibacy, birth control, divorce.  Over the years, I continued to become increasingly distressed over some of the words and actions of “leaders” of the Church and its many organizations.  I wanted to know how the Church could retain its credibility when it condemned homosexuality yet ignored the sexual abuse of young boys by its priests.  I didn’t like the fact that the Church teaches that we have free wills and are responsible for how we live our lives, yet it is quick to censure and ostracize anyone who disagrees with Church doctrine.  I was annoyed that, with the number of priests is continually declining, the Church leadership would not consider allowing married or women priests.

Election of Jorge Mario Bergoglio, SJ, to the Throne of St. Peter encouraged me. I thought that the Church might be turning a corner.  Pope Francis, a truly spiritual and catholic man, said, " If a person is and seeks God and has goodwill, who am I to judge? They shouldn’t be marginalized. The tendency [to homosexuality] is not the problem…they’re our brothers."  Good God. Previous administrations, Benedict and JPII among them, had no room in the Church (or churches) for "intrinsically disordered—persons—aka gays.


Traditional Catholics, religious and lay alike, did not like Pope Francis's tolerant and progressive attitude. I've read many letters and essays written by said traditionalists in which they whine that Francis is ruining the Catholic Church. How, you may ask?  Allow me to list a few of their complaints:

     • On the night of his election, Pope Francis refused to wear the ermine and red-velvet cape and to accept the gold Papal pectoral cross.
     • Instead of living in the Papal apartments, he chose a more simple apartment.
     • He does not wear the heavily brocaded vestments during Papal Masses.
     • On Good Friday, he dared to wash the feet of two women, one of them a Serbian Muslim.
     • He stopped the backward moves to pre-Vatican II days that his predecessor allowed.
     • He was compassionate towards gays.

Simply, Pope Francis wants to restore the Church, to get back many of those who have left. Yes, he got the attention of the fundamentalists, but he also got our attention. We were hopeful.

During last week's Extraordinary Synod of Bishops, Francis urged the acceptance and inclusion of gays and divorced Catholics saying that they have a lot to offer the Christian community. Basically, his blessing follows what he said during one of his first appearances last year: "A little mercy makes the world less cold and more just.”

The traditionalists believe otherwise and voted to change the language of the text.  Gays are still disordered, but the Church will now treat them with respect and delicacy (WHAT?). Remarried Catholics are still adulterers, but the Church will do more research before coming up with a final solution.  In interviews, American Cardinal James Burke, usually critical of Pope Francis, denounced the original wording saying that it did not follow Church doctrine, that it gave a the impression that it was changing—which it was not, and that a change in doctrine was "impossible."

Apparently God's directive to "Love one another as I have loved you" applies only if you toe the line, aren't gay, divorced and/or remarried, or are progressive in thought.

The good news is that the final synod is a year away, so the Pope has time to develop the teachings and to change the synod's membership. Here's hoping that he can also open more than a few minds by that time.

Settling In, I

Portico off of Piazza Maggiore, Bologna

 

We live in a world where finding fault with 

others seems to be the favorite blood sport.

– Henry Eyring

I've been home hellish wonderful 10 days, and both the body and mind are still adjusting.  I keep waking up in the middle of the night, although the last few nights have been a little better.  For the lat three nights, instead of waking at 3 am, I've been waking at 4 am. Even better, I've been able to fall back asleep after 30-45 minutes.

Mercato in Modena

Having had to work this week added to the physical drain, I think.  I had a two-day seminar to do at the airport for the university, and I taught my first night class. In addition, I had meetings I had to attend.  It was, I suppose, better to get back into the swing of things early as it kept my mind overloaded occupied and off of Italy. 

Yes, I miss Italy.

Random street musicians, Bologna

Don't get me wrong. I'm glad to be home in a lot of ways.  I missed Mike, Jason, Riley, and my friends. I missed the familiarity of my own house, the comfort of my own bed, and the roominess of my own shower.  Reliable internet. Air conditioning. Being able to put on more than one appliance without blowing the fuse.

Yes, I still miss Italy.

Via Santo Stefano, Bologna

For the nine weeks I was in Europe, I didn't watch television. I turned one of the TVs in the flat once to make sure it worked. It did, so I turned it off and never turned it on again. While that might not sound like a big deal, remember that both my husband and kid worked/work in television.  That darn lovely thing is on almost constantly at our house.

Think of all the great things I missed by not being subjected to watching television:

Nasty political ads
The finale of Big Brother
News about nasty political in-fighting
Season premieres of Selfie
News—Any kind

Piazza Santo Stefano, Bologna

Never fear, though.  As soon as we got home, Mike turned on the television, and the first thing I saw was a political ad bashing a candidate. Ebola scares have replaced political in-fighting as the top stories in newscasts, and stupid lawyers' commercials fill in whatever ad time the nasty political ads don't cover.

Ferrara

I can't say I haven't enjoyed watching a few shows since I've been back, though. Survivor. Big Bang Theory. College football.

It is good to be home.

Too Many Choices

Buy your bread already toasted in Italy

 ". . . if you haven't been in a grocery

store in a really long time, it's really

easy to get very out of touch."

~ Zooey Deschanel

I went grocery shopping this afternoon for the first time since I've been home.  Oh, I ran into the grocery to buy produce the other day, but today I had to shop-shop. After two months of shopping in Italian groceries, I meandered through Smith's.

The "regular" soup aisle at Smith's

Don't get me wrong.  There are good groceries in Europe, and some of them can be quite large.  The groceries within walking distance of my flat—Pam, Ccop, and Conad—were not large, but they had what I needed. What I found interesting about European groceries was the fact that they didn't offer quite as many choices as American groceries. For example, if I want to buy hotdogs here, I have probably five or six different brands from which to choose. In Italy, if I found hotdogs in a store, there would be only one brand or kind.

One afternoon, I really wanted soup, so I headed to Coop to see what kind they had. There were two different types of soup—minestrone, and mixed bean soup. I went to Pam to see what they had, and they had exactly the same two Knorr canned soups: minestrone and mixed bean soup. It was the same in each of the stores I frequented.  It was a good thing I liked minestrone.

 Today, I had a coupon for Progresso soup, and while I usually make my own soup, I figured I buy the two required cans to have on hand in case we needed something quick.  Let's just say that Smith's stocks more than just minestrone and mixed bean soup (Photos above and below). I ended up not getting any soup because there were so many that I couldn't focus.

Soup aisle in the "organic" section at Smith's

It was the same with most of the aisles. How about potato chips?  Taking the brands out of the equation, we have regular, rippled, baked, kettle-cooked, no-salt, and low-fat. Consider the different flavors, too. Have you had the salt and pepper, vinegar, dill pickle, barbecue, cheese, ranch, chili limon, tomato basil, sour cream and onion, jalapeño?  How about the new flavors Lay's is testing: bacon mac & cheese, ginger wasabi, mango salsa, and cappuccino (Below). No offense, but cappuccino chips?

That's not to say that the European groceries didn't have a number of choices for certain products.  If I wanted prosciutto, I had to choose between six or seven kinds.  If I wanted hamburger, they had one kind.  If I wanted Nutella, I had about six or seven different brands per store.  Peanut butter? If the store stocked it, there was one kind only. Toast? (In Italy, you can buy packages of "toasted bread." See photo at top of the post.) There are a bunch of different kinds of that. And there is no shortage of chocolate.  Even the smallest stores had numerous brands and kinds of chocolate.

"It's no wonder Michael Frank was so taken with Albertson's," I said to Mike. Michael was our German exchange student in the 90s. From a town of fewer than 5000 residents, he was always amazed at the size of things in the States. I didn't understand at that time.  I do now.

Michael, by the way, was the one who told me about Nutella.  He was upset because a store as big as Albertson's didn't sell Nutella.  It had not, at that time, made its way to too many US stores.  I had my first taste of it a few years later, and I've been hooked since. As Nutella has grown in popularity in the states, most groceries now stock Nutella and Nutella knock-offs. Smith's has a full shelf devoted to the stuff.

I did not have a hard time focusing on what I wanted in that aisle.

First Glance

My new store

" How you look at it is pretty 

much how you'll see it."

~ Rasheed Ogunlaru

I'm sure we all do this, but there are times when I glance at something and see something else.  If nothing else, we do it with clouds, don't we?

1.
When we were in Lucca two weeks ago, we were walking home from the market, and I looked up at a building and saw arches that seemed to be an homage to Bozo the Clown (Below). Whoever built the place obviously didn't intend for the arches to mimic the famed clown's head since the building is 300 years old, and while Bozo is ageless, I doubt highly that he was around that long ago.

Bozo Building in Lucca

2.
 The same evening that I saw the Bozo building, we were walking down another street in Lucca, and I thought I saw my name on a store (Top photo). For those of you who didn't know me pre-marriage to Mike, my maiden name was Lodyn. Lodyn is not a common name.  (Actually, it wasn't even my grandparents' last name. I always heard the story that the "real" last name was too long, had too many consonants, and was unpronounceable by Americans, so it—like so many other ethnic names—got changed.  I have no idea where they got Lodyn, although in doing a little research, I found that Lodyna is the name of a town in the Galicia, Austria, region where my father's parents were born.)

All that is beside the point.  I was the only Lodyn with the first initial "C," so seeing CLODYN on a store window sent an electric shock through me. The gal who was working in the store was of little help as she had no idea where they got the name. Darn.

Call me with questions

3.
Right after I got to Bologna, I was walking with a friend, and we saw an interesting store on a side street.  It wasn't open, and at first we thought that it closed for the August holidays.  Then I saw a handwritten sign on the door (Above):  Sono al bar  345 4322 348  (I'm at the bar. 345 4322 348). Of course, bars in Italy mean coffee bars, but my still-American mind was thinking a different kind of bar.  I loved, though, that he gave his phone number so readily on the paper in the window.

By the way, , , Just by looking at that paper, I can tell the owner of the store is not Italian. Anyone have any idea how I know that?

Madrid front window

4.
Our flat in Madrid was on the ground floor of a building in the Lavapies area. The windows were in the front wall (above), and the owner had put frosted, double-paned windows in so passers-by couldn't look into the flat.  I loved the shadow of the plants in the windows, but then it dawned on me that the buildings were right on the sidewalk and that there were no trees, bushes, shrubs, flowers, anything in front of any building on Calle Doctor Piga (Photo below). (Our building is halfway up the street on the right.)  The closest tree was in the little plaza at the end of the street.

Calle Doctor Piga

"Those aren't real plants," I said to Mike when it dawned on me that no trees in front meant no tree shadows on the windows.

"Of course they aren't," he replied. "She stuck silk flowers between the panes."  He opened the inside window so I could see the silk branches stuck between the inside and outside.

"I'm crushed."

"You'll live." Mike can be practical at times.  He doesn't care about things like that, but I do.  I still enjoyed the "view," but my spirit was a little dampened to know the leaves weren't real.

"Ah," I said. "It's like the dudes selling knock-off purses down the street. It's all fake, but I guess she's trying to fix the view." I'm sure Mike rolled his eyes because he wouldn't see the similarities.

"We don't have a view."

Duh.

Questa É Vita

If this is life . . .

 “Living in another culture, 

not just visiting it, has reshaped 

our view of the world.”
~ Nancy Petralia

I'm home. Except for the fact that my face shows my lack of sleep and the bruises from my fall have not completely faded, I think I probably look all right on the outside. For each of the three days I've been home, I've followed a somewhat regular routine and dressed in my usual clothes, but I add a necklace or bracelet I bought in Italy. They keep me close to the place for the moment.

Bologna

On the inside, I'm not normal.  I feel strange being back.

"Are you glad to be home?" a friend asked me last evening.  Before I could say anything, Mike answered.

"She'd go back in a second."

"You would?" She, like many of my other friends, can't understand why I feel that way.

Le due torre

Part of my discomfort, I'm sure, is due to exhaustion. Some is undoubtedly due to having been gone from the daily routine for nine weeks. Of course, the rest is due to missing la mia bella cittá.

Piazza Maggiore

 It's going to take some time to get used to being home.

Caffe del Drapparie

 But, this is life. We learn. We (hopefully) move forward,

The canal in Bologna

and we start planning the next adventure.