Category Archives: American habits and customs

Back in the States and It’s All About Voting

03 Monday Nov 2014

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We returned to the U.S. yesterday, and everyone is all abuzz about voting. (Easy, comfortable trip, thank you for asking.) As an Italian citizen Speedy can vote in Italy, but I cannot. Here I can, and I’m planning to. There’s nothing like not being eligible to do something that makes you appreciate it when you can.

There are some interesting initiatives on our Arizona ballot, one that pretty much says that the Federal Government can make mandates, but if we don’t wanna, we won’t. The battle between States rights and Federalism – always spirited and interesting.

Anyway, WordPress, who gives me this blog space free (thank you WordPress!) has put together a tool to help voters, which, if you’re interested you can access here:

It says,”I Voted.” I haven’t yet, but by Tuesday afternoon that will be true. And I hope it will be true for you, too; I hope you won’t have to stand in a long line.

Thank you…

08 Tuesday Jan 2013

Posted by in American habits and customs, Italian habits and customs, Uncategorized

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Illustration by Charles Dana Gibson

Illustration by Charles Dana Gibson

This is by way of being a poll.  What I want to know is this: how important in this digital age is the hand-written thank-you note?

My mother taught us always, always, always to write a thank-you note, as soon as possible, for any gift we received.  In fact when we were young and given toys, we weren’t allowed to play with them until the thank-you had been written and approved.  They didn’t have to be fancy.  Here’s an example of a perfectly acceptable thank-you note from those days.

Dear Nana,
Thank you very much for the teddy.  I like it very much.  I have named it Nice.
love,
Fern

That sort of brevity didn’t pass muster as we got older; on the other hand no one was checking over our thank-you’s when we were in high school.  By then we were so well trained no one had to!

Customs of saying thank you differ a lot from country to country.  Here in the States it is customary to call the hostess a day or two after a dinner party and tell her again what a marvelous time you had and how good the food was, how remarkable the other guests.  In Italy that doesn’t happen.  People come, they have a marvelous time, eat great food in exceptional company, say thank you and go home, and that’s enough (although I’ve noticed a creeping post-event thank-you trend amongst friends who have spent time in other countries).

So my question is, are written thank-you’s, birthday cards and so forth out of date and hopelessly old-fashioned now that we can dash off a heart-felt e-mail and subscribe to clever e-card sites?  Please tell me!  We sent out e-Christmas cards this year (again) and I’m feeling a little squirrely about it.  I enjoy so much receiving actual Christmas and birthday cards from other people (any greeting is always welcome).  But I don’t feel the same way about thank-you notes.  Somehow to me  e-mail seems quite a sufficient medium for gratefulness. I’d certainly like to know what you all think about it though (if you think of it at all), and if you tell me… I’ll thank you.

quill pen

Just a bit more then I’ll stop, I promise

23 Sunday Dec 2012

Posted by in American habits and customs, Crime, Law and order

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A very good friend has written a blog with a point of view quite different from  mine expressed in my last post (he usually writes about education, with an insider’s view; his blog is well worth reading).  Here’s what I put in his comment section:

Here’s a voice of reason… I’ve been thinking over your post and the various comments made in response.  I don’t see how a total ban on ‘guns’ would ever work.  But I do think there are a panoply of weapons that have no business in the private citizen’s gun cupboard.  Hunting guns? certainly.  Small hand guns for protection? if you must.  But automatic weapons that are designed for a battlefield?  no.  So why not a partial ban? We do that with fireworks, for heaven’s sake.  Small are okay, large, not (because they are dangerous). Then, I also think that anyone who wants to use a gun must prove that s/he knows how to use it responsibly.  We have to do that before we are allowed to drive automobiles.  People who have guns could be required to carry insurance in case of unforeseen accidents.  Perhaps the insurers would be more careful about background and mental health checks than gun stores are!  We require our doctors to carry insurance lest they hurt us; we require vehicle drivers to have both licenses (after passing two kinds of test) and insurance.  Why should we not regulate guns in the same manner?  They are every bit as lethal as cars, and I’m guessing a lot more lethal than your typical doctor.  And the regulations would not be any more onerous than those already in place for other situations.

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I’m willing to back off my No Guns Ever Under Any Circumstances stance because I begin to see it’s probably impractical at the very least.  But I think the above are some pretty good ideas!

I promise to return to more light-hearted and on-blog-topic posts very very soon…

Slaughter of the Innocents

19 Wednesday Dec 2012

Posted by in American habits and customs, Crime, Law and order, Uncategorized

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Illustration courtesy of goboxy.com

Illustration courtesy of goboxy.com

“A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” (Second Amendment to the Constitution of the United States)

“When Herod realized that he had been outwitted by the Magi, he was furious, and he gave orders to kill all the boys in Bethlehem and its vicinity who were two years old and under, in accordance with the time he had learned from the Magi.” (Bible, Book of Matthew, Chapter 2. There’s nothing modern about killing children.)

We don’t much like guns and we don’t have any.  Many of our friends, though, do like guns and do have them.  These friends fall into three categories: hunters, who keep their rifles and ammunition locked up in gun cabinets; target-shooters, who also keep their weapons under lock and key; and those who keep weapons for self-defense.   Presumably these later keep their weapons loaded, locked and close at hand.  The reason I don’t like guns and don’t want one anywhere near me is I’m afraid I might use it, against someone innocent, someone guilty, or on a really bad day, myself.

Gun ownership in the U.S. is an incredibly complex issue. Exactly what the Second Amendment, quoted above, means has been hotly debated pretty much since it was adopted (you can read about Second Amendment cases that the Supreme Court has heard here, earlier Second Amendment cases seem to have had more to do with States versus Federal Rights rather than the right to bear arms per se).  In any case, so far the judges have found in favor of the interpretation that private citizens have the right to own, keep at home, and use pretty much any kind of gun. Forty-nine states have laws which allow carrying concealed weapons of varying types.

As we are all too sadly aware in these days, there are plenty of guns to go around.  The best estimate I could find on various web-sites was about 300,000,000 or more guns in the U.S., which works out to almost one for every man, woman and child in the country.  The following chart offers lots of interesting gun statistics, including the most obvious: that the US has more guns per capita  than any other country in the world. Italy, in comparison, has about ten guns for every one hundred people. In many parts of the world there are fewer than ten guns per hundred citizens.

gun ownership
I know – it’s teeny.  If you click on it it will be larger, and if you want to see it in much larger format, click here. The graph on the right show people in favor of gun control (white line) and those against it (black like).  The number of Americans against gun control in the U.S. has been growing in the last few decades.

There is no end of data available about gun ownership and use in the U.S.  The question we all must face, and answer, in the days ahead is this: how can we keep guns out of the hands of people who will abuse them, without abrogating the rights of those who use them responsibly?  Regulation has been a joke up to now.  I’m adding my voice to the growing chorus saying enough is enough.  The precious right of all of us to carry a weapon (assuming the Constitution gives us that right, and I’m not convinced that was the framers’ intention) is not worth the lives of the twenty little six- and seven-year-olds and six adults who were gunned down in school in Newtown last week.  It just isn’t.  Let the guns be held in militia headquarters and if you want to go hunting or target shooting, go check one out.

I hear my friends howling that they have the absolute right to protect their loved ones.  But I have to ask, is your right to protect your family worth the lives of all the children who have been slaughtered in the spate of school shootings over the past years?  Have you ever actually needed or used your gun for self-protection?

It is such a can of worms.  95% of gun owners are probably responsible and careful. The people we know are obsessively careful with their weapons.  But the havoc wreaked by the other 5% in gang shootings, murders, and rampages ruins it for everyone else.  The number of people killed by accident by guns is astonishing (680 in 2008) and again, it is frequently the children who suffer.  According to The Survivor’s Club, every day five children in the U.S. are injured or killed by handguns.

I wish there were an easy answer, but there so clearly isn’t.  And I wish a rational and calm discussion could take place, but I think that’s unlikely as well.  People who have guns become enraged at the idea of having to give them up  (being someone who has gotten on very well for many years without a gun I have to wonder why) and people who want gun control are equally emotional, vituperative and accusatory.  Anti-control voices tell us there are so many guns already in circulation that limiting their purchase or ownership now would be next to useless in stemming the violence, that we would be removing guns from the law-abiding while the crooks and nut-cases would still have access to theirs.  That may be true, but somehow it would at least feel like a start.

Can we not all work together to keep guns out of the hands of those who will misuse them?  It shouldn’t be impossible to identify those individuals.  If you haven’t read “I am Adam Lanza’s Mother” you can do so here for an idea where we could start.  It would be nice to think we have evolved, at least a little, since the days of Herrod.

Hard Landing

25 Sunday Nov 2012

Posted by in American habits and customs, Arizona, Customs, Italian habits and customs, Rapallo, Travel, Uncategorized

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Once again, as every year, culture shock has blind-sided me.  Yes, it is gorgeous here (see above) and yes, it is warm (even hot) and dry.  But it’s not Italy, is it?  Sounds so obvious, but somehow it takes me aback annually.  In fairness, I have to say that there will be a repeat of culture shock, in reverse, when we return to Rapallo in April or May.

But just what is the shock?  Size is one thing – everything is so darn big here.  When it comes to living quarters, I like that.  When it comes to servings when eating out I don’t.  Cars? no.  Sense of humor? yes.  Noise is another thing: there are non-stop sounds in Rapallo; scooters dash up and down the mountain, dogs bark non-stop, the rooster who can’t tell time crows his ignorance, diners clink their cutlery against their plates at Rosa’s and even, if they’ve had enough, break into song or begin to cheer loudly. Over at Case di Noe someone has fired up a brush-cutter, and every half hour the church bells remind us what time it is. (Speedy has addressed this part of the problem by down-loading chimes to sound the hours on the computer – not the same as the jazzy bell concert San Maurizio gives us each Sunday, but better than nothing.)

There are plenty of noisy places in the U.S., but we don’t happen to be in one of them.  Our neighborhood has forty homes, of which probably one-third are occupied now, it being still early in ‘the season.’  The family with small children who lived across the street have moved – how we miss their constant activity and cheerful little voices.  If we listen carefully we can hear the hum of traffic from the highway that’s about a mile away.  When the birds visit our feeders they are likely to squabble.  The humming birds sound like teeny little power saws when they zoom in and out.  But mostly it’s just very quiet and peaceful.  That’s nice, it really is, it’s just such a change.

The biggest change, though, and the hardest to adapt to, is the societal difference.  Italians are out and about for a good part of the day.  One must shop daily, the passagiata awaits at the end of the day.  There are friends and family to visit and ‘news’ to be discussed endlessly.  The silence in our neighborhood is but a reflection of a larger silence that I think of as particularly American.  People are afraid to discuss ‘issues’ for fear that they will offend or anger the person to whom they’re speaking. Somehow Italians have found a way to express differences without letting it get personal, and without letting it get in the way of friendships.  Here people are afraid to make eye contact with strangers, unlikely to greet strangers on the street (any one of whom may be carrying a weapon, concealed or otherwise, at least here in the wild west), and uncomfortable with the idea of discomfort.

Of course Italy is far from perfect.  But part of culture shock, I think, is the tendency to idealize the place one has left, to look back through the fuzzy lens of rosy glasses, while looking at present circumstances with the critical lens of a microscope.

I’m not asking for sympathy, believe me.  We are terribly fortunate to be able to enjoy life in two such diverse places, and yes, we are Thankful that we are able to (’tis the season).  I’m just saying that the transition is, for me at any rate, difficult, but difficult in an interesting way, not a painful way.  So please, stick with me for a while?  Pretty soon I’ll have my feet under me again and will share some more of the excitement of life in a most peculiar state.

Smoke!

06 Thursday Sep 2012

Posted by in American habits and customs, Italian habits and customs, Uncategorized

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The other day I found an empty cigarette pack along the path.  What struck me immediately was how bold the health warning was:

You probably don’t need a translation, but just in case: it says Smoking Kills (literally it says ‘the smoke kills’ but we know what they mean).  This is the message that an Italian smoker will see every time he flips open his pack to take out a ciggie.

It’s been a long time since I smoked.  I remember the rather tepid warnings that the Surgeon General  placed on cigarette packs in the U.S. some years ago.  Are they different now than they used to be?  Nope.  Here’s the sissy warning a U.S. smoker may or may not take note of each time he lights up:

First, it’s on the side of the box where it’s much less obtrusive.  Second, though it informs us that dire diseases are the caused by smoking, there’s no mention of the ultimate price: death.

Not content with simply telling us that cigarettes will kill us, the Italian packs go on to tell us how on the back:

Fatal lung cancer.  There.  Just in case you were in any doubt – your lung cancer will be fatal.  Smoke these things and you will die sooner than otherwise.

So are all the warnings over the top?  It turns out the answer is a resounding no.  Smoking is enormously costly, in terms of money and of life itself.

Infosearchlab.com reports that more than 443,000 people in the U.S. die annually due to cigarette smoke.  Of these deaths, 50,000 are caused by passive (second-hand) smoking.  In China, 2,000 people die of smoke every day – 1.2 million a year.  According to the Corriere della Sera,  70,000-83,000 Italians die every year due to smoking, which works out to about the same per capita number of deaths annually as the U.S.

It’s such a difficult question, isn’t it?  To what point should a government intrude in the behavior of the citizens?  When does a vice stop being something personal and become something public?  I guess given the prevalence of smoking and the expense of caring for all the people it makes sick, government intervention is advisable.  To paraphrase an old nostrum about punches, your right to smoke ends where my nose begins.

An interesting side-note that Speedy mentioned: as recently as 2005 tobacco companies in Italy were mostly owned by the government.  In an Alice in Wonderland twist, the government was promoting and profiting from the sale of cigarettes at the same time they were instituting dire warnings on packages and limiting where people may smoke.

How much warning is too much?  Clearly the Italians are giving a much harsher warning than the Americans.  Recently a U.S. court of appeals found that a Washington DC lower court’s ruling that graphic warning images must be put on cigarette packs violated Corporations’ right of free speech.  (Don’t get me started on ‘Corporations are people.’) The issue was whether the tobacco companies should be required to put images of things like a man breathing through a hole in his neck on the cigarette packs.  The first court said yes; the appeals court said no.  Supreme court, anyone?  The World Health Organization says that pictures are effective deterrents.  Australia has gone to the extreme.  Beginning in December they old familiar cigarette packaging will be gone, replaced by gross graphic images like this:

Photo courtesy of cbsnews.com

How to reduce the number of people smoking in places like the U.S. then, if you can’t require that disgusting pictures be put on each pack?  High taxes is one way.  According to Huff Post this is the route Indiana has taken.  Placing a minimum price on a pack of cigarettes is another (the theory being that people will not be able to smoke as much if they can no longer buy cheap ‘off’ brands).  This is the approach Italy has taken (with some amount of EU difficulty), though there’s  debate about whether or not this approach is effective.

So how much does it cost to smoke?  Prices have sure gone up since I used to put .35 cents in the vending machine in the basement of my college dorm (it was right next to the candy bar machine, making for a complete, if not well-balanced, meal).  That depends upon where you live.  If you’re in West Virginia you can support your habit for $4.84 a pack.  But if you live in New York the same pack will cost you $12.50.  Here in Italy cigarettes cost about E 5 a pack, about $6.

Do Italians smoke more than Americans?  According to the WHO again, 25% of Italian males aged 25 and older are ‘current smokers.’  In the US it is 34% for the same demographic.  19% of women in both countries aged 15 and older are’ current smokers.’  And we won’t even discuss China.

Our own observations suggest that there is a lot less smoking here than there used to be, though we still see both men and women zooming around on their scooters with a fag clutched in their teeth. And it seems that a lot of young people smoke – I guess it’s still considered cool.  Smoking is not allowed here in any public building – no such thing as a ‘smoking section’ in a restaurant.  If you want to smoke, step outside please.

They say there’s nothing worse than a reformed smoker for being anti-smoking.  As a former 2-pack a day person I guess I qualify.  Here’s the thing though – while I may deplore the fact that smokers cost all of us huge amounts of money every year, and while I will run as fast as I can to get away from your smoke, I’ll never blame you if you’re a smoker.  I remember all too well how much I loved smoking, how it was woven into the fabric of my daily life, and how almost impossible it was to quit.  I still miss it.

Where it comes from…

10 Sunday Jun 2012

Posted by in American habits and customs, Italian food, Uncategorized

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Possibly the world’s ugliest fish?

‘Locavore’ is a word I abhor.  Oh I know, it’s a perfectly good word and absolutely descriptive.  But, to me, it carries moral overtones that I don’t like – the idea that if I eat food that is all grown/produced within, let us say, fifty miles of where I live, I am somehow a better person than the poor sod who has to eat out-of-season apples from Argentina and whose beef comes from the mid-west and which enjoyed a last supper of who knows what.

We lived in New England when I first heard the term.  I thought it was laughable. What would we, in Connecticut, eat in January if all our food had to be grown nearby?  Frozen food?  But think of the energy costs associated with that.  Food that was grown in our own gardens that we lovingly canned.   While it’s true that canned fruits and veggies seem to retain most of their nutritional value, they likely give up a great deal in texture and crispness.  Wouldn’t you rather eat a fresh green bean than a canned one?

Then I thought about the long arc of the history of what we eat.  In the Middle Ages people were restricted to a diet of food produced nearby because the means to move it any great distance simply did not exist.   Their teeth turned black and fell out.  They had diseases associated with vitamin deficiencies: rickets, scurvy and beriberi.   How wonderful it was when  trade began to bring spices and food from the East, the Caribbean  and South America, and eating changed forever.  Sugar!  Coffee and tea!  Sublime.  Lemons and limes.  Pineapple!  Poi. No, forget about poi. Chocolate!! (never forget chocolate…)  Empires grew and food moved ever more freely from point A to point B, and it was all good (and from more than just a culinary point-of-view, but that’s another subject altogether).

Then, about a decade or so ago, the specter of eating locally reared its head.  Farm markets (of which I am a huge fan, incidentally) sprouted on every village green.  Calves seen cavorting in a neighbor’s pasture one day were in his freezer the next day.  Everyone had a chicken. And that was good too.  But the idea that that’s all we should eat seems to me to be nonsense.

So, having said all that, let me recant just a bit.  I think it’s really important to know where our food comes from, and to make intelligent choices about what we eat using that information as one criterion.  I have a personal preference against eating a fish from China – God only knows what that fish ate, so I don’t want to eat him.  I also think it’s really important for everyone, especially children, to know that food doesn’t ‘come’ from supermarkets.  Milk comes from cows and goats, and cheese comes from milk – these are really good things to know.  Jellies and jams are not born that way, and spaghetti doesn’t grow on trees, despite what you see about Switzerland on Youtube.

People in Italy take food very seriously.  The fresh fods  we buy here are marked with a quality grade and geographical source.  There are plenty of Italians who won’t eat food not grown in Italy (or, maybe, France and Switzerland) – but there are plenty who will.  The important thing is that the information is available and one can make a choice.

Fish is a topic of often spirited discussion: wild caught or farm raised?  As ocean stocks grow ever smaller, there’s much to be said for farm-raised fish, as long as the farmer is responsible about the fish food he uses (I suppose the same thing could be said for chickens – but when was the last time you ate a wild-caught chicken?  I digress.)  There is a large fish-farm off the coast in nearby Chiavari; you can see the pens as you drive down the hill into the city.  But in neighboring Santa Margherita Ligure you can do one better – you can go to the port at about 3:30 or 4:00 p.m. and watch the day’s catch as it is delivered to the fish stalls in the arcade across the street.  Then, if you’ve seen something that whets your appetite, you can go over and buy it immediately, sometimes still squirming.

Many of the small Rivieras communities no longer have fishing fleets, but Santa and several others still do.  The boats are all business, as you can see above.  They usually moor  a short distance from the port, and the catch is ferried in by skiff.

The fish are all neatly sorted and put in flats.  The person taking the box will trot through a gauntlet of curious onlookers, cross the street, and deliver the goods to the vendors.    Sometimes the fellow who transports the fish is the vendor.  Who goes to see the fish come in?  Some are tourists who have just happened by, some are buyers for the local restaurants, and some are consumers looking for a good fish for dinner.

Yum!  Someone’s having octopus tonight.

This guy was so pleased with his fishies he had to share the good news with his friends.

This is the kind of ‘locavore’ I adore.  It’s just people doing what they’ve done their whole lives, and what’s been done in their town for centuries.  It has nothing to do with a Philosophy, or a Point of View, and there’s certainly no sense that if you go buy your fish from Supermercato Billa you’re less of a person than if you go to the port to buy it.  It’s just the way things are. As a matter of fact, with the whole sea at their door,   one of the great winter treats for Ligurians is, surprisingly, stoccafisso, dried cod.  I think it is odious, but people here love it cooked with tomatoes, potatoes, carrots, onions and garlic. That’s the Ligurian style.  In Milan it is cooked with cream, which is even worse. Why would you eat that when you can have fresh fish?  I don’t know, but it is highly regarded here, and eaten with great gusto. Cod, by the way, doesn’t live in the warm Tigullio Sea – it comes from New England or Scandinavia.

So yes, please grow your own veggies in your garden, or buy them from your local farm market or CSA, but please, oh please, don’t make me feel guilty when I buy a peach from Israel.  Don’t turn eating fresh local food into a Cause or a Movement.  Good food is good food no matter where it comes from.  I understand the arguments about the cost of transport, but transporting goods is something that has gone on for centuries.  Let’s not go back to the Middle Ages.

Synchronicity?

20 Monday Feb 2012

Posted by in American habits and customs, Uncategorized

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What are the odds? I published the last post about Tag (Garage, Yard, Boot) Sales late on Friday night. On Saturday morning Speedy and I circumnavigated what we like to think of as our Village Square (a .5 mile rectangular street bordered by houses) and saw this sign:

The Neighborhood Garage Sale is a wonderful hybrid of the Usato and the Tag Sale where a group of families get together to sell a slightly greater variety and amount of stuff. We couldn’t resist, especially since it was only a half block away and the day was lovely.

It was certainly not the best such sale we’ve ever visited, but it wasn’t bad. For the princely sum of $9.00 we came away with a full-size comforter which, oddly, matches exactly the pattern of the comforters in our guest room (more synchronicity! or perhaps a really cheap sale some years ago?) and two matching pillow shams; a machine-made embroidered pillow case from Thailand, perfect for Speedy’s ‘meditation’ pillow (how do you spell ‘meditation’?   n-a-p); a lovely embroidered red silk scarf, also probably from Thailand, certainly Asian; a small machine-quilted wall hanging in colors I don’t love but don’t hate which, according to the panel on the back, was “Hand Made By Diana Mosely, May 5, 1997” (why didn’t you keep it, Diana??); two other jungle-print pillow shams that are going to look great on the couch we don’t have yet; and a box of Earl Grey tea tea bags (very good, I had some that very afternoon).

The coup de grace was the ‘solid brass’ hunting horn that Speedy couldn’t resist ($1.00). He played ALL the brass instruments in high school, and he was able to pick this up and toot on it right away. In fact, if there had been any hounds free in the neighborhood I’m sure they would have congregated for a hunt.

So, synchronicity… what are the odds? If I write about winning the state lottery, will I?

Photo courtesy of chestofbooks.com

Tag, Yard or Garage?

17 Friday Feb 2012

Posted by in American habits and customs, Italian bureaucracy, Uncategorized

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You see all three in home-made advertising signs: Tag Sale, Yard Sale, Garage Sale. They all mean the same thing: the householder has things, stuff, goods, that he no longer wants, and is willing to sell them to you, presumably at a very low cost.

The ‘Yard’ and ‘Garage’ are obviously the location of such sales. Frequently you see signs for Gargage Sales in parts of the country where the weather might be inclement – everywhere except the Southwest. ‘Tag’ refers to the little white sticker that should be affixed to every item announcing its price. It always gives one an uncomfortable feeling if there’s no tag – it means the seller is going to size you up and price the item accordingly. You’ll probably pay more for an untagged item if you’re wearing your mink instead of your blue jeans jacket. In New England, where we used to live, ‘Tag Sale’ was the most frequently used appellation. But whatever you call it, it’s a great thing, and something we don’t see in Italy, unfortunately.

When we’ve asked Italian friends why there are never any tag sales they have told us that they are not legal. Why? Presumably it’s because the State would not be able to collect taxes on such impromptu and unregulated commerce. What a pity. The best we can do in Italy is take our unwanted things to an ‘Usato’ – a store that sells used stuff and, of course, takes a hefty commission for doing so. A visit to the Usato is always loads of fun, there is so much to see, and of all kinds of quality. But it doesn’t have the character of each and every tag sale, which bravely puts the seller’s taste (present or former) on display for all to see. At some tag sales you might see a lot of tools; at another you might find lots of truly ugly art; at another lots of kitchen gear. You never know.

Photo courtesy of L.A. Times

A digression: I used to haunt tag sales, as much for entertainment as anything else (heaven knows we have all the ‘stuff’ we could ever want or need). Years ago I went to a rather up-scale sale in the small Connecticut town where we used to live; I was thrilled when my eye fell on a pressure cooker, a tool our kitchen was without and which I wanted – more from a sentimental wish because my mother frequently used one than from any real need. It was only $5 and was in perfect shape, except for needing a new gasket. I grabbed it, and continued perusing the goods on display. I soon ran into our town’s wealthy dowager, whom I’ll call Lib. When she saw ‘my’ pressure cooker her eyes got big, “Are you going to buy that?” she asked.
“Yes!” I answered with alacrity, and then went on, “Why? Do you want it?”
“I do,” she said.
“I can’t believe you don’t have a pressure cooker, Lib,” I opined.
“Oh I do,” she replied, “I have three. I just really like pressure cookers.”
That was when I recognized that she was a fellow tag-sale junkie, and that there was no need to offer to let her buy ‘my’ pressure cooker.

A friend, when I mentioned all this to her, reminded me that there is also a thing called an ‘estate sale,’ which you see frequently in New England. But all it is is a high-end tag sale: better stuff, higher prices, and an opportunity for the seller to feel that he lives on an estate rather than in a house. Which reminds me another digressive tag sale story I must share. One of my work buddies reported that she went to a terrible tag sale in a neighboring town. On the porch of the house she found a box labeled in big black letters, “Stuff Barb Don’t Want.” We laughed over that for weeks (and still do sometimes) – it had to be the worst presentation and lousiest advertising ever. Definitely not an Estate Sale.

But back to Italy – wouldn’t it be great if people could have tag sales there? It would be a way for the house-holder to both get rid of clutter and to bring in a little cash, always welcome in hard times, which is what we’re having there now. It wouldn’t really hurt the Usato shops, because there will always be people who don’t want the bother of a tag sale. Believe me, it’s a lot of work to have a tag-sale; we’ve had many ourselves (have to get rid of all the junk I’ve bought at tag sales somehow). The lost revenue of taxes would be nothing compared to what is lost every minute through graft and cheating on taxes. And besides – as there are no tag sales now there is no tag sale tax revenue, so there’s nothing to lose except the minuscule amount that the Usato would be turning in.

So my modest proposal to Mr. Monti is this: somewhere in all the financial reforms, tuck in a proposal to allow tag sales. Everyone will win. Heck, if you’re worried about revenue, sell a permit for the sale for E5 or E10. Then it becomes a money-maker, and no doubt the apparatus to sell such permits is already in place. It’s a wonderfully Italian solution – give a bit more freedom, but encumber it with a bit more bureaucracy. Yay!

Bye Bye “Captain”

25 Friday Nov 2011

Posted by in American habits and customs, Uncategorized

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Do we all long to have a nickname?  I did, and when I was in grade school I tried to give myself one.  It didn’t take.  Since then I’ve always thought that nicknames must be chosen by others, people who have observed your particular peculiarities or, perhaps, find something amusing about your given name.

One of the Captain’s friends gave him a nickname when he was a boy – ‘Salad’ – harvested from the garden of his last name.  It didn’t stick though and no one other than this one friend ever used it.

A year ago the Captain filled out one of those endless forms we are given in Doctors’ offices.  One of the questions was simply, “Nickname.”  ‘Well,’ thought the Captain, ‘I guess everyone must have one. I don’t, but I would like to.  I’ve always thought of myself as ‘Speedy’ ‘ and he wrote that on the form.  It felt just right when the doctor breezed into the  examining room a few minutes later with a cheerful, “Hi there, Speedy.”

It’s hard to change your name when you and your friends have used the same one for, oh, let’s just say ‘many’ years; but the Captain, I mean Speedy, is persistent and has reminded all of us from time to time of his new moniker. I knew it was serious when he put his new nickname on his scooter.

Not too long ago he mentioned that he’d like not to be ‘the Captain’ any more in these pages, so join me in wishing that alias a fond goodbye and welcoming ‘Speedy’ to our midst.  Same great guy, new name, and one of the few people who’s ever had the satisfaction of choosing his own nickname.