Category Archives: Law and order

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

≈ 5 Comments

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.

********

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

≈ 15 Comments

Tags

, , , ,

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.

Bucket or Bellyful?

27 Monday Aug 2012

Posted by in Italy, Law and order, Liguria, Photographs, San Maurizio di Monti, Uncategorized

≈ 11 Comments

Tags

, , , ,

(Click on photos to get larger, clearer images)

It’s been a fiery summer in both Europe and the U.S.  We’ve had our own little bit of excitement here in San Maurizio, although nothing on the scale of the tragic fires in Spain or the numerous fires in western U.S.

It began Thursday.  Speedy was home reading in the afternoon, and noticed there seemed to be a lot of helicopter traffic.  He had a look around, and this is what he saw on the hillside behind us:

Photo by Speedy

He kept track of the action all afternoon. First the wind blew to the east, then it swapped around and blew to the west. Two helicopters carried countless buckets of water to dump on the stubborn fires which, instead of going out, seemed to simply move on to another shrub or tree.  With so many individual fires we wondered if this were arson.  We don’t know, but we have been told the cause of the blazes is under investigation.

The ‘copter pilots are real sharp-shooters with their water buckets.  I wondered, though: as they move slowly to a position above their target fire, do the rotors fan the blaze and undo some of the good the water is doing? In any event, they do some demanding and amazing flying and, more often than not, their bucketful of water lands right on the selected target.

Photo by Speedy

The thing is, it looks like such a teeny amount of water – and so much effort is required to get it to the fire. It’s hard to imagine that it’s effective, but it is. By the end of the afternoon it looked like the fire was largely under control. The helicopters don’t fly at night, so it was good to see that the flames were out.

Or so we thought. I woke up at 3 a.m. and looked at the mountain to see it all ablaze again. This was disconcerting, and instead of going back to sleep I spent the rest of the night tossing, turning, and making a mental list of things to put into a box to carry away should it become necessary. Speedy spent his wakeful hour using GoogleEarth to compute how far the fire was from us. According to his calculations it was about 750 meters from our house as the cinder flies. It was less than 300 meters from the restored rustico of some friends. That’s too close!

Fortunately my list of what to pack was unnecessary. And the reason why is because, unbeknownst to us, there was a legion of volunteer firefighters  (Vigilanza Antincendi Boschivi) on the ground, not only that night but during both days of the fire. It turned out that one of our acquaintances, who is too modest to allow me to use his name, is one of these volunteers, and he was able to give me some useful information.

Photo courtesy of vab-arcetri.org

The Corpo Forestale is in charge of organizing the fighting of fires outside of cities and towns. They decide which aircraft will be used (if needed) for each fire, and where and when the volunteers will go. There are two sizes of helicopter (ours was the smaller one) and the famous bright yellow Canadair airplanes (about which more shortly). The small helicopters carry what look like rather small buckets of water, though our friends says that when the water is mistakenly dumped on the volunteers it does not feel like a small bucket. The Canadairs carry a belly full of water, much more than the small buckets. We were told that the larger helicopter carries even more water than the plane, but we’ve never seen one. There are fires that don’t require aircraft, but forests in Italy tend to be on steep mountainsides; more often than not a plane or helicopter is the only way to get water to the fire.

The volunteers often work more on fire containment than actual fire-fighting; our friend said, however, that they did both with this particular fire. They hump in some heavy equipment and somehow manage to keep the fire from spreading. That is why, on Thursday night, the fire burned up the mountain instead of coming down towards the houses below and why, even though I watched, and heard, tree after tree go up in flames, the fire slowly abated so there was less of it as the sun came up. Thank you, VAB volunteers!

Daylight brought us a Canadair.

It is so exciting to watch these planes fly. They swoop down over the sea and fill up the plane’s belly with water, which they they carry back to the fire and release. There are moments, watching them, when it seems certain there is going to be a terrible mishap.

They use the plane’s inertia to propel the water where they want it to go. The pilot might, for instance, fly right at the side of the mountain, nosing up abruptly just before hitting, and releasing his water at the same time. The water goes straight into the mountain, and the plane, thank goodness, does not. Other times the pilot is able simply to drop his water as he goes (watch out, volunteers below!). Retired old pilot Speedy says it is no doubt very scientific, that the pilots are able to compute when to release the water based on air speed and altitude above target.

The Canadair, joined briefly by a second, grey plane, flew back and forth all morning. After lunch one small helicopter came back, and by the end of Friday it seemed the excitement was over. Our friend said he had been called to go back Saturday, but we saw no activity at ‘our’ fire. Perhaps he was out putting out other fires. Sadly, there’s no shortage of them at this time of year.

There are some more photos of the fire here, and I tried, for the first time, to make a video, which you can see here. (Sorry that it’s a little wobbly – next time I’ll use a tripod.) The most exciting part of the video is that you can hear the cock who can’t tell time (1 a.m., dawn, sunset: all the same to him), you can hear the loud sound that water meeting fire makes, and you can hear a short conversation between Speedy and myself. Very exciting. Unfortunately you won’t see the plane actually dumping water as that happened behind the mountain – but you can hear it (as well as the lovely low grumble of the twin engined plane).

The systems the Corpo Forestale have developed for fighting the numerous fires in Italy are admirable. The timely arrival and expertise of all the firefighters has surely saved millions of euros over the years (although the cost of fire-fighting with aircraft is extraordinary.  The small helicopter, the 412, costs E 2,200/hour; the larger, the Ericson S64, costs E 7,000/hour and the Canadair costs E 10,000/hour.)  What did they do before airplanes were invented? I suppose lots more forest burned. How lucky we are that we have helicopters with their little buckets and planes with their great big bellies. Given the choice, I guess I’d always choose the plane, just for the drama. But there’s an elegance to the helicopters, and a delicacy of approach which is also very appealing. Actually, I guess if my house/land were on fire I wouldn’t care who came, as long as he brought a lot of water with him!

A(nagrafe) to Zed

19 Thursday Jul 2012

Posted by in Italian bureaucracy, Italian habits and customs, Italy, Law and order, Uncategorized

≈ 12 Comments

Tags

, , ,

Anagrafe (an-ah-gra-fey) is the office in each comune that keeps track of who’s who and the status of each inhabitant: births, deaths, marriages, divorces, that sort of thing.  This is true, it seems, for both Italians and resident expatriates  (Anagrafe issues our Carte d’Identite).  I’m sure they do other things of which we’re completely unaware.

One such thing was brought to our attention last week when we received a visit from the very affable Piermanlio (a roman name, he told us) who spent two and a half hours grilling  interviewing us.  He works for the Statistics Department of Anagrafe (who knew?) and spends a good part of his life traveling from one expatriate domicile to the next interviewing people.  Then he spends some more time transmitting his data to the main office in Rome (without identity information attached) where it is all, presumably, crunched up and turned into important reports of some sort, which in turn lead to enlightened social policies, new laws and more bureaucracy.

Here are two things you might not be able to tell about Manlio from the above photo:  he is probably one of the most patient and kindest guys in the world; it is hard for him to find shoes because his feet are large.  For this reason he takes exceptionally good care of the shoes he wears. ( I guess that’s three things, but since the last two are so closely related I’m counting them as one.)

The last time the U.S. took the census we won the long-form lottery, and spent about thirty or forty minutes filling in the form with information about our race, gender, education, income and what kind of house we lived in.  Well.  Italy could certainly teach the U.S. something about long forms.

At first we thought Speedy would be the only one interviewed, which was fine by me, as it took ages.  To the surprise of all three of us Manlio was instructed by his computer to interview me when Speedy was done.  What response triggered that, I wonder?  Most of the questions were the same, but there were some amusing differences.    They were all multiple choice questions and all answers were entered immediately into Manlio’s laptop.  If an answer was wildly out of the norm the computer might give Manlio a query sign.  If it was totally ridiculous the system was blocked til a realistic answer was put in.  How do we know?  Speedy answered 8 years old when asked at what age he began working (happens to be true).  Turns out the question meant when he stopped being a student and began to work as an adult.  ‘8 years old’ caused a delicious block.

Here are some of the topics Manlio covered with us during our time together, other than the obvious of age, heritage, race, religion and education.

Do we have relatives living in Italy?  Do we have relatives living outside the US but not in Italy?

In our family, who makes the decisions?  Who does the housework, do we share the burden? Who does the marketing?  Who cooks?  Is it up to the husband to choose who the wife’s friends will be?

Do we like Italian food?  Do we eat it often? Do we eat food of other cuisines?

Are we healthy?  Smoke? Weight? Height? Do we take medicines? (polite Manlio: ‘oh yes?  They’re prescribed, I would assume.’  Us: ‘Of course!’)

Curious omission noted here: no questions about drinking and/or wine!

Do we have a car?  How many TV’s? Motorini?  A video camera? (why a video camera?)  When we watch TV, do we watch in English or Italian or ? Do we have a satellite dish?  More than one?

Do we have a telephone  land line?

Why did we move to Italy?  Who decided that we would move to Italy?  How did mother feel about it (Really!  This was a question for me, the only one of us with an extant mother when we came.)

What language do we use when speaking to each other?

Do we read newspapers, if yes in hard or virtual form? Magazines? Books?  In what language(s)?

Do we follow Italian politics?  Do we talk about politics with friends? Do we feel knowledgable about Italian Politics?  How often do we discuss politics?  Same questions again vis-a-vis the U.S.

What do we do for entertainment: movies? sports? concerts?

I guess one can catch the drift of the kinds of questions being asked and the kind of information they are trying to gather.  There are so many people from all over the world living in Italy now, there’s perhaps not unreasonable concern that the ‘national identity’ might erode.  At the very least there is also interest in knowing if the basic ‘rights’ generally recognized here are being observed by one and all.

I guess my favorite question, one directed to both of us, was: Has anyone in Italy made you feel uncomfortable because you are a foreigner?  How lucky I felt at that moment.  Italians like Americans; they do not necessarily like all the other nationalities represented in the immigrant population.  No.  No one has ever made us feel uncomfortable, I’m happy to say, though I’m certain others have not been so fortunate.

My favorite unasked question: Does your husband still beat you?

I guess it’s not just a cold, hard, statistical office after all.  They care about us, they really care.

What Would Be the Dumbest Thing in the World to Tax?

19 Saturday May 2012

Posted by in Animals in Italy, Cats, Italian bureaucracy, Italian gardens, Italy, Law and order, Taxes in Italy, Uncategorized

≈ 10 Comments

Tags

,

Pets.  That would be ridiculous, wouldn’t it?

Real Luciano

Speedy sent me an article he came across  from Reuters (reported by Philip Pullella; edited by Andrew Osborn) about the yahoos in Rome considering a tax on  family pets.  Evidently a parliamentary commission felt that this would be an excellent way to give a little boost to the nation’s diminished coffers.  The outcry was immediate and loud; the proposal was dead by the end of the day.

It got me thinking, though.  Didn’t Italy once tax house windows, and isn’t that why there are so many trompe L’oeuil windows painted on the houses of Liguria, where people are famously tight with their cash?

Tax Evasion Luciano

Probably the idea of taxing pets is not the silliest tax proposal ever made.  A quick Google search turned up an amusing list of the ten most ridiculous taxes ever, written by Jamie Frater.  It turns out that Rome is no stranger to bizarre taxes.  The emperors Nero and Vespasian taxed urine.  Poor Romans fortunate enough to have a pot to piss in paid a tax when they emptied their pots in the common cesspool.

Go ahead, tax my dog Rover – just get rid of the tax on my hat and my beard.  I think my favorite is the one called the Crack Tax: drug dealers in Tennessee were, before the law was declared unconstitutional, supposed to pay a tax, anonymously, on the illegal substances they sold.  If they got caught dealing crystal meth, say, and didn’t have the tax stamp… well, can you imagine?  They’d have been in pretty hot water!

It did give me an idea for another tax the Roman legislators might consider:

Photo courtesy of thedragonpages.blogspot.com

The Intergluteal Cleft Tax would either raise a lot of money or send fashion careening in a new direction.

Not all strange taxes are so amusing.  The poll tax in America was a de facto method of denying voting privileges in the southern states to recently freed slaves.  It was not repealed until 1964.

Anti-Poll Tax sentiment from the U.K.

The way things are going in this election year they may have to pay people to come to the polls instead.  Especially here in Rapallo where only 16,000 of 28,000 possible voters turned out two weeks ago to elect the Mayor.

There will always be taxes, I guess.  And I guess there will always be some silly ones.  I’m just glad that, for the time being anyway, there will be no taxes in Italy for owning a pet.  Speedy suggests that instead of taxing pets perhaps the legislators could tax vegetable gardens….

A nicely laid out garden on Via Betti in Rapallo

Tragedy on Via Enrico Toti

18 Tuesday Oct 2011

Posted by in Crime, Humor, Law and order, Uncategorized

≈ 16 Comments

Imagine my horror when I walked out of my palestra (Energym) and discovered the hideous remains of a murdered male.

It’s horrible enough to find a corpse, but to find one dismembered – I’m amazed I didn’t faint dead away.

I called the police of course and they immediately arrived, put crime-scene tape all around the… crime scene, dusted the remains for fingerprints, and then summoned an ambulance to remove the pathetic body.  They put the time of death at about 8 hours before I called them as rigor was still present.

Minor crimes in Italy are frequently not solved, major ones frequently are, one way or another (we won’t mention Amanda Knox here).  But this crime will be difficult to resolve – there are obviously no fingerprints or dental work that might aid in identification.

Who was the victim?  Why was he so cruelly chopped in half in the prime of life?  And why was he left near the palestra?  There are a few clues, anyway, which will give the detectives a start.  Obviously he’s black. His fine physique suggests he cared about his appearance – perhaps he was an athlete or a model.  Clearly the disposal of his body was done in haste – the perpetrators didn’t even bother to cover him with a few leaves to delay discovery.

It is all a great mystery.  You may not read about it in the papers, but depend on it, I’ll be following developments here in Rapallo.

Spunky Old Dame

02 Sunday Oct 2011

Posted by in Italian habits and customs, Italian men, Italian women, Law and order, Uncategorized

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

,

I loved this story that appeared in the English-speaking part of ANSA news service this weekend:

Woman, 88, sees off thief

‘I would have chased him if it weren’t for my artificial hip’

(ANSA) – Pordenone, September 30 – An 88-year-old Italian woman got rid of a thief in her house Thursday, telling him he should be ashamed of himself and get a job.

The man turned up on her door in the northern city of Aviano posing as an electricity-meter man the morning after she had celebrated her birthday with some friends, Rina Zorzin told Italian TV Friday after receiving the compliments of Mayor Stefano Del Cont Bernard.

“First he asked to see the meter and when I refused he took out a gun, thinking that would frighten me,” she said.

“But nothing scares me any more, at my age, so I jumped onto his back to stop him.

“He grabbed me round the wrists and forced me to sit down”.

Undaunted, Ms Zorzin taunted the would-be thief: “look all you want, look for gold, I’m not giving you anything”.

Then, when the man was looking elsewhere, she managed to get out of the house and shout for help, crying “thief, dirty thief, you ought to be ashamed, go and get a job”.

The would-be thief gave up and took flight, Zorzin said.

“I would have chased after him, too, if it weren’t for my artificial hip,” she told the RAI state TV corporation.

******************************

What I love about the story is that this is the same kind of lady who will cheerfully elbow you out of the way at the meat counter or bus stop.  What I also love about it is that the thief gave up and ran away.  In the U.S. he might well have shot the old woman.

Citizen Salamone

04 Wednesday May 2011

Posted by in Italian bureaucracy, Italian habits and customs, Italy, Law and order, Uncategorized

≈ 11 Comments

Tags

, ,

Meet Italy’s newest citizen, The Captain, aka Louis Philip Salamone.


The procedure, I can’t call it a ‘ceremony,’ took place in the office of the head of the Ufficio Stato Civile, Dotoressa De Filippi this morning and was more casual than solemn (I would have liked a bit more ceremony, myself). Nonetheless, for us it was the culmination of several years of work and waiting, and we were both thrilled with the outcome and moved by the Captain’s new status.

At first we were afraid we were headed for a problem, one which has reared its ugly head in past administrative wrestling matches.  Whenever one gets a document, carta d’identita, permesso di sogiorno, etc.,  one must put place of birth on a form.  By place of birth Italian bureaucracy means town or city.  The Captain’s U.S. passport lists place of birth as ‘Wisconsin.’  This led to no end of trouble early in our stay here, but for some reason the good Dotoressa merely shook her head and commenced redoing the various declarations (they had to be further altered to correct the Captain’s misspelled middle name).  Then began the ritual ‘signing of the many forms,’ which occurred no fewer than four times.


Somewhere in the midst of the signing the Captain took an oath to uphold the Constitution and the Laws of Italy.  There was  no hand on heart, no holy book, no blood asked for or given, just a verbal promise to be a good citizen.

In the midst of all this the phone rang, and our proceedings were interrupted by a long discussion of what the caller’s daughter had to do to get her passport. 


It certainly detracted from the feeling that ours was a special moment, but we quickly got over it.  Then the Dotoressa read a lengthy declaration to the effect that the President of the Republic had accepted the Captain as a citizen and showed us the Presidential decree, a photocopy of which was given to us later.


A quick handshake, and the deed was done.

I thought my Captain looked so handsome in his suit – it’s perhaps only the second time he’s worn it in the ten years we’ve been here.  I wish I could fit into clothes I had ten years ago!  He did not have a red, green and white tie, so he chose a green and white tie which we decorated with a bit of red and white ribbon, a not entirely unItalian thing to do. 

Today was the end of a long road that we began in 2005.  The quest began in the office of the very knowledgable and always helpful Anna Maria Saiano, the head of the Genova branch of the U.S. Consulate.  She led us to Signore Bevilacqua (Mr. Drinkwater!) who sent us to Dotoressa De Filippi in Rapallo.  She was disinclined to give the quantity of help we needed, so we returned to Sig. Bevilacqua in Genova, and he got things going for us.

There are many ways to become a citizen, one of the most common being ‘lineage.’  We had assumed this would be our route as both the Captain’s parents were Sicilian, one by birth, one by blood.  However, because the Captain’s father became an American citizen before the Captain’s birth, in effect renouncing his Italian citizenship, it became more complex.  We would have to go back to the grandparents, born in Sicily not all that long after the unification of the country.  Two world wars have had their way with that island – the odds of finding all the requisite birth certificates were low. 

We resorted to a ‘naturalized’ Citizenship, possible after five years of residence if either of the parents were born in Italy.  There are  other routes to citizenship, which you can read about here.  Gathering all the requisite data took some time, but was not especially difficult: 1) the application 2) Marca di Bollo (stamp) for E14.62  3) Income tax returns for three years  4) Father’s birth certificate  5) Captain’s birth certificate  6) FBI certificate / arrest record (done through fingerprints taken in Genova and sent to the US) 7) our marriage certificate 8) residency certificate proving length of residence in Italy  9) Permesso di Sogiorno  10) notarized copy of passport.  All documents in English required  certified translation, which we were able to procure from an office in nearby Chiavari.  The Captain did the translation himself; the certifying administrator didn’t speak English.

What the Captain didn’t have to do, which aspiring U.S. citizens must, is learn a lot of history and take a difficult test.  I’m happy to tell you that the Captain has read the history of Italy many times over, because it interests him, and I’m sure he could pass tests in both language and history.  But isn’t it interesting that in the U.S. there is a test to prove you are worthy, and in Italy it is simply a question of having the correct papers and forms?  Bureaucracy!  Having watched Craig Ferguson’s (The Late Late Show) citizenship swearing-in on TV I was surprised there was not a bit more pomp and circumstance, and at least an upraised hand when giving the oath. 

Once we filed the application and all the attendant paperwork we simply had to wait.  The State had  two years (actually seven hundred thirty days) in which to process the application and render a decision; they didn’t go too many weeks over.  News of our success reached us when we were in the U.S., and a visit to Dottoressa De Filippi was the first order of business when we got back to Rapallo. We were surprised to learn that the Captain was the twenty-seventh new citizen she had processed already this year.

So it was an exciting and momentous morning for us.  The Captain pursued citizenship for several reasons.  In a way it closes a circle that was opened when his father left Sicily for Ellis Island in 1921.  It makes life here much less complicated: no need to be traipsing off to Genova every few years for permission to remain.  Mostly it just gives official confirmation to something the Captain has known all his life: he is Italian.

All that remained for us was a quick celebratory lunch at the delightful Trattoria del Sole across from the petrol stations on Via Mamelli where we took advantage of the daily special: penne with funghi; fried achiuge (sardine-like fish), carrots, potatoes, wine, water and coffee, all for the princely sum of E 8 each (Ligurians have the reputation of being tightfisted with their money – who are we to go against type?).


We hadn’t eaten here before, though the place has been beckoning to the Captain for some time, and were charmed to find examples of the owner’s art and crafts on the walls.

So came to a close a festive (for us) and memorable morning. Viva Italia!

Death in America

06 Sunday Feb 2011

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

≈ 8 Comments

Tags

, , ,

Here we are in Arizona, now famous around the world for its violence and death, and I have to tell you that in early January I felt a bit like an  angel of death myself.  Friends visiting from Italy very much wanted to go to San Francisco, so that is what we did for three days in the early days of the new year.  One of our goals?  Walk across the Golden Gate Bridge.  We met our goal on a crisp, breezy (read ‘cold, windy’) afternoon, and it could not have been lovelier.

On almost every bridge support we were somewhat surprised to see one of these signs:

The blue sign says, “Crisis Counseling – There is Hope – Make the Call.  The consequences of jumping from this bridge are fatal and tragic.”  Also, the bridge railings are surprisingly low, making it very easy for would-be suicides to clambor over and make the leap.

On our walk back across the bridge, with the wind mercifully behind us, we noticed a small commotion at rail side.  Indeed, someone had just jumped to his or her death moments before we arrived.  The people responding to the tragedy were extremely low-key and very, very professional.  I doubt many bridge-walkers that day knew that anything untoward had happened.  There’s a reason why they were so good – they get a lot of practice.  Someone jumps off the bridge about once every ten days.  No one survives.

Flash forward a few days to January 8 – what a good day for our visit to Tucson to look for a church my friends particularly wanted to see.  There was a fair amount of traffic in the outskirts of the city, and as we waited in an accident-caused traffic jam the Captain called to tell us there had been some kind of assassination attempt somewhere nearby and we might want to head home.  We didn’t want to head home, so we pushed ahead and eventually arrived downtown.  Downtown Tucson on a Saturday is a very sleepy place – most of the shops were closed and there were very few people about.  I don’t think it had anything to do with the terrible events that had unfolded at the suburban Safeway Market a few hours previous.

These two experiences with our friends, one right after the other, made me feel extremely uneasy – is America really and truly such a violent place?  More violent that the rest of the world?  I’ve waited a long time to write about what happened because it’s taken a while to sort out my thoughts on this question.

Here is a picture of Jared Lee Loughren, the unrepentent man who shot and killed six people and injured twelve others (including the now famously and miraculously recovering Representative Gabrielle Giffords)  in Tucson the day we were there:

This is what insanity looks like, at least in one of its iterations.  And my point, I guess, is that insanity is all around us, not only in the United States, but on every continent in the world, even in our beloved Italy.  It is a difficult to find hard figures, but according to Wikipedia there were 5.7 murders per 100,000 population  in the U.S. in 2006 and in Italy there were 1.06 per 100,000.   The difference between the U.S. and Italy, I suspect, is the ease with which one can get guns and the number of guns that are in private hands.  Here in Arizona, which is one of the gun-totingest states, it is legal to carry licensed guns both openly and concealed.  I can’t tell you how disconcerting it is to be in a store and see a fellow swagger in with a pistol on his belt.

The NRA will tell you that it is not guns that kill, but people who kill.  They will also tell you that it is our Constitutional right to arm ourselves.  The first is a nonsense.  People cannot kill nearly as effectively without guns – it is guns in the hands of people like Mr. Loughren  that kill, and kill often and very effectively.  The second assertion is open to frequent debate.  The second amendment of the U.S. Constitution says, ” 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.”  Some say that it means anyone and everyone has the right to own and carry guns.  Others say that the framers intended that guns be owned privately but used in a militia setting to protect the country.

It doesn’t matter who’s right – what matters is that as things stand now there are a lot of guns in the hands of a lot of people.  Most people are responsible and careful.  But there is a small percentage who are not, and they are the ones who are deadly.

So why the description of the suicide at the beginning of this screed?  Only this.  It is disturbed people who kill – either themselves or others.  Some take their own lives, some decide to take the lives of others.  It all adds up to the tragedy of senseless death.  These deaths, all of them, are tragic to the close circle of family and friends around the dead and the killers; but they are also tragic and harmful to the fabric of society as a whole.

So… what to do?  One of the men taking care of the suicide on the bridge told me that if only the authorities would put up a wire fence high enough to make it difficult for people to jump the number of jumpers would decrease.  And it seems logical that if only we could keep guns out of the hands of those who are not stable enough to have them we would all be a lot safer.  The first isn’t happening because the bridge authorities do not want to ruin the view from the bridge.  The second is not happening because no one knows how to do it.