Nancy, Author at Itch.world

Nancy, Author at Itch.world - Page 13 of 19

A three-minute escape to Italy.

Tuscany, travel, medieval village, Italy, festivals, celebrations, customs, cooking, recipes, living in Italy, moving to Italy, visiting, visit, restaurants, language

archive,paged,author,author-nan-cy7,author-1,paged-13,author-paged-13,ajax_fade,page_not_loaded,,select-theme-ver-4.4.1,paspartu_enabled,wpb-js-composer js-comp-ver-7.9,vc_responsive

April 27, 2019 In Best Of, Live By Nancy

“Endgame” in a small Italian town

Warning: some spoilers

Avengers fever has hit our valley. Sebastian went with friends to see Avengers: Endgame in Italian on opening night in a packed theater in a small Italian town. (Not the theater you are picturing—it’s a theater from 1836, highly decorated, ringed by four floors of tiny boxes with three or four seats each.) He was so excited that we insisted we go to the English-version screening the following evening at the multiplex in the larger town of Arezzo.

As this was one of the few showings in English our theater was packed with Americans. It was fun to compare the experience of seeing the film with an American audience with how Sebastian described the all-Italian audience in the smaller town. Our American crowd, largely consisting groups of teen boys, was pretty darn quiet and reserved. It didn’t feel like there was a shared sense of catharsis and that we were all kinda there on our own seeing the film, although we were in a group.

Not how Sebastian and his friends experienced the movie. First of all, there was a large age range of attendees. He said that groups of middle-aged friends (sans kids) were as common as groups of teens, and many families with small kids. He came out of the movie buzzing, and it said it was largely because of how the whole theater of 400 was responding to the film throughout. It went from a shared gasp of feeling and shock when Hawkeye’s daughter disappears in the opening scene, to laughing shouted comments on the heavy-handed Audi product placement, to absolute, stunned silence when the dead superheros return in yellow orbs with Dr. Strange. (Sebastian said he, and the person next to him, and it felt like the whole audience, was trembling. And this is from a 15-year old.) Many people cried, and there were cheers throughout.

I wish I had of seen that version, but again, I’m one of those people who think it is the most delightful thing in the world when airplanes full of Italians applaud and cheer upon landing—much to the disdain of the often British minority of passengers. There’s something about this accessibility and ease about emotions that I just can’t get enough of.

April 27, 2019 In Best Of, Live By Nancy

The world of Italian brotherhoods

The Misericordia procession on the night of Good Friday is mysterious and evocative, and to an American sensibility, alarming. A procession of hooded and robed figures carrying crosses and a symbolic coffin, lit by torchlight, followed by hundreds of villagers is a glimpse into another world. It is one of those moments when I need to put my cultural instincts on hold to understand what is really going on in my little corner of Italy. I was watching the procession when one of the figures, unrecognizable in his hood, paused to say hello and I recognized the voice of a friend. I called him later to invite him to meet for coffee so that I could learn more.

The robed members of the procession were members of the Misericordia, an ancient cofraternity, or brotherhood, present in nearly every town in Italy. Today, the Misericordia provides ambulances and emergency staff, volunteers to drive the elderly to doctors appointments and physical therapy, and during Donella’s year in middle school it was the Misericordia who drove a fellow student, who was quadriplegic, to and from school every day in a special van. But I was unclear on how this civic function related to the procession.

The idea of laymen banding together in such brotherhoods is a very ancient tradition, first happening in Constantinople and Alexandria. The first one in Europe popped up in Paris in 1208. Cofraternities arose during the middle ages when these groups of “brother citizens” filled gaps that existed because there was no functioning government, only a feudal system caught between the power of rich landlords and the church. Somehow people needed to get buried, especially during times of plague, the sick needed to be tended, orphans and illegitimate children needed care (and dowries!), and prisoners needed a companion to take them to execution. Another friend (who is not a member) mentioned that these brotherhoods often aided members in deeper business and social ties with bits of friendly information and advantages, in addition to fulfilling one’s duties as a “good Christian”.

Although there were a range of these organizations, the main one that exists in modern times is the Misericordia. Our village organization dates from 1348, the year the plague hit. (Once was not enough in 25 years as the plague also returned in 1363 and 1374.) The group had a few struggles in the 1700s when the Grand Duke Leopold thought these brotherhoods had too much power and disbanded them, but they returned as nothing nearly as effective replaced them.

My friend from the procession, who is a member, said that he is the third generation of his family to belong and that supporting the group is an important tradition, especially as membership has declined by about 50% over the last forty or so years. The Misericordia is deeply rooted in the Church, but not run by the Church, and it was impossible for my friend to weigh whether belonging had a more religious or secular/service meaning. “As with much in Italy, it is largely the same.” People in the village are expected to support the group by contributing what they can in time, money, or both. Some of the staff is highly trained and receive salaries to work full-time as EMTs, but there are many ways to be involved, such as volunteering to drive those who can’t to appointments.

I was describing the difference between calling “911” in America, where an ambulance appears that you will have to pay for, staffed by people you’ve never met, with our experience once in calling “118” here where five paramedics appeared with an ambulance which took us to the hospital, all free of charge, and my friend was surprised. I said that we have no equivalent (or tradition) of the Misericordia because we don’t have the same sense that seems to pervade the Italian village that we all need to take care of each other. He looked puzzled as he tried to imagine this lack of ties to the people who live around you.

April 27, 2019 In Live By Nancy

No matter where you go, there you are

I didn’t write Itch last week—first time since I started on August 10th. I blame it on Easter, Donella’s birthday preparations, friends in town, and a delay in an interview or two, but there was probably something more.

I think I needed a reflective pause to listen to a kind of thirst, rawness, desire that I can’t quite name—usually a sign for me of the necessity to change. Without wanting to meet its eyes too directly I think it’s trying to signal that not all is solved by a change in culture and location. (Perfectly expressed in the quote in the headline by the great philosopher, Buckaroo Bonzai, in 1984.) The instinct to move to rural Italy was right, but didn’t entirely quiet the dark breezes in my soul of fear, unspecified non-enoughness, and scarcity.

So, inward I go. And deeper into Italy as a powerful catalyst to grow. And wanting to use Itch, and all of you, to keep me honest.

What I’d love to know from you—what is touching you about Itch? What stories are the most memorable, and which ones reached your heart? What’s not working for you—topics, length, etc?? I’d love to hear, if you have a moment to drop me a note.

And now, onward and forward. We have some really fun things planned, including a field trip to Beirut in May, hopefully a trip to John’s ancestral village in Calabria to cook with a grandmother, and loads more.

April 13, 2019 In Best Of, Chow, Live, Recipes By Nancy

How I know it’s spring in Tuscany

One of the things I love most about creating Itch is that I’m constantly reminded to keep attentive to what unfolds around me every day. I had so much fun thinking about spring for this post, and the little things that make me know that it has arrived.

1. Fava Beans

In the spring fava beans are suddenly everywhere, but show up in two completely different ways. First there are the fave that you eat. Italians often serve them in a very different way than I’d had in America. I was used to the beans being shelled, the small inner beans removed, and then blanched to make it easier to remove the skin around the inner, bright green bean, which was the only part served. (One memorable exception to this was many years ago in San Francisco’s Mission District at Delfina when they served fried baby fava beans which were eaten whole, outer pod and all. They were delicious.)

Here, even at very nice restaurants, when you order fave you often get a plate of raw, whole beans, along with some thin slices of pecorino cheese, salt, and some olive oil. You then remove the inner pods yourself and eat them raw, along with the skin coating them, accompanied by some oil and cheese. We still aren’t totally convinced that this is as good as just the innermost pod cooked in some delicious way, but this kind of dish makes everything dependent on the essentials: the fave must be very, very fresh and the quality of the oil and cheese is critical.

My sister turned me on to a recipe that involves throwing whole, really fresh fava beans in a plastic bag along with some olive oil, sea salt, red pepper, and garlic, tossing together to coat, and then roasting the beans over a fire until cooked and tender and a bit charred in places. You can eat these whole and we have served them several times as an aperitivo, along with a prosecco.

But fave in markets and restaurants aren’t that unusual in many places around the world. The second way fave are a harbinger of spring is that they are used as a cover crop to restore nitrogen to the fields where tobacco was planted late last summer. All those glorious little beans are plowed under just when they get really promising, unharvested.

2. The Lamborghini come out

If we were to do an MRI of our brain activity with the verbal prompt “Lamborghini” I think our brains would light up in very different ways. The image I conjure up is one of a tractor. After WWII Ferruccio Lamborghini started a company to make tractors out of reconfigured military equipment. He also made heating and cooling equipment and between his businesses became wildly successful. So successful that he started to collect luxury cars, including a Ferrari, which was a constant nightmare to maintain. He decided to start his own car brand in 1963.

Today, in the valley, having a Lamborghini tractor is definitely the cool kid choice and at this time of year the tractors, Lamborghini or otherwise, hit the fields and make them incredibly well-groomed. Soil is also prepped in long, rectangular patches for personal vegetable gardens, called orto, often in the front yard of a house.

3. The dandelions face their natural predator, the horse

We cheated and put a horse cookie in the middle of the dandelions to make sure that Salome would cooperate for the shot, but she ended up ignoring the cookie to concentrate on her favorite thing, fresh dandelion greens.

4. The world turns blue and green

5. Poppies

6. One of my favorite restaurants opens again after a long winter.

Laura and Marco open Il Travato in Monterchi sometime around Easter. I just saw Laura near the piazza and she said that Pasquetta is THE DAY! (Pasquetta is literally “Little Easter”—the relaxed family day after Easter usually marked by a picnic.)

Laura taught us how to make her best-in-Tuscany spaghetti aglio olio e peperoncino, which we often make at home.

7. Bees

April 6, 2019 In Best Of, Roam By Nancy

La Verna: my night with the monks

After years of curiosity I finally got the courage to book a room at the monastery at La Verna. I’ve written about this strange desire to retreat for a night to a monastery. The urge increases when we have terrible weather—it seems to take the fun away if it’s not adequately dark and brooding. We had a wave of stormy weather with intense clouds, and they had a room available, so this was my moment.

I’ve visited La Verna many times for day trips and find the landscape mysterious and otherworldly. The sanctuary is located near the summit of Mount Penna, known for huge exposed rock plinths and sheer cliffs that look as if the gods were playing with blocks. (The mountain takes its name from the pagan god of the mountain, Pen.)

La Verna is famous because of St. Francis, who was given the mountain in 1213 as a retreat. He was meditating away up there one day in 1224—September 14th, to be precise—when he received the stigmata. He carried around these bloody wounds for the final two years of his life until he died in 1226 in Assisi. In case you have any doubts about the stigmata thing they have his blood-stained robes on display.

Turns out it wasn’t just St. Francis who found the La Verna landscape charged. Long before he arrived the mountain was the site of a pagan shrine to Laverna, who was the goddess of thieves. Apparently the abundance of caves and the thick forests were perfect for those so inclined to thievery, although who they would have found to rob on this deserted summit is a bit hard to imagine.

I arrived up there, checked into a spartan but comfortable room with a single bed, and followed my instinct to hike up to the summit. I followed a stunning trail through an ancient woods of beech and spruce, kept undisturbed by the monks since 1213, that twists around to reveal sheer rock faces and huge rock plinths. For the next four hours I saw no one.

When I came back down the mountain I visited my favorite spot in the monastery, which is the bed of St. Francis. Apparently he often meditated here, in a sort of cave, formed by perilously piled fallen rocks. I sat in the spot where he slept (now protected by a metal grate as people were chipping away at it) for a good 20 minutes, listening to the rain, undisturbed by other visitors, and I must admit, did have a moment of profound peace. One of the first in my nascent practice to think less and be more.

My sense of peace even lasted during a meal with three strangers, all traveling on their own, speaking only Italian.

And the silence of the night was perfect.

I think I found what I was looking for, and now appreciate this special place on a different level, which is handy since I can see the distinctive shape of Mt. Penna from our house and often need that prompt for a bit of a reset.

Oh, and for those of you who enjoy art, they have several amazing Della Robbia ceramic alters and decorations.

April 6, 2019 In Best Of, Live By Nancy

The mysteries of Italian shutters

I’ve noticed that in Italy most shutters are always closed—even in houses where people are living and seem to be home. I’ve wondered why so many shutters are closed so much of the time, and how people live with them shut, so I asked some Italian friends.

One friend thinks that it is an artifact from an earlier way of living and happens more in small villages like ours with an older population than in larger, more age-diverse cities like Milan. Traditionally a house would have only one room that was heated and the whole family would gather there to stay warm whenever they were in the house. You’d cook, eat, and basically live in this room and the shutters would be open. Bedrooms were used only for sleeping and shutters were always closed. Closed shutters help to insulate from the cold (and the heat in summer) and also protect expensive windows from weathering.

Another friend confirmed that she thinks of rooms as divided between light rooms and dark ones. The dark ones are only for sleeping, and the light ones are where you go once you get up.

With central heating it was no longer necessary to gather in one room close to a heat source, but old cultural habits are slow to die. In many families it is considered rude to hang out in a room by yourself—when home everyone needs to be in the same room. This habit even extends to my friend, who is in his early 30s, and lives with a woman who is a couple years younger. He finds it amusing that she feels that they need to be in the same room together when they are home. Quite a difference with our American tendency to all be off in our own rooms, only coming together at meals, or for a movie.

March 31, 2019 In Roam By Nancy

My new favorite thing in Rome: Ostia Antica

Every so often Italy offers up something that takes my breath away. Ostia Antica is near the top of that list. This archeological site near Rome is huge, almost empty of tourists, gorgeous, and compellingly, unnervingly revealing of little human details of the 100,000 people who lived there in its prime, in the 2nd and 3rd centuries A.D.

Things like this bar, at the intersection of two major streets, with a mosaic floor angled towards the front door that roughly translates “Fortunatus’s Place. You know you’re thirsty — come on in and drink.”

The streets still bear the marks of the carts which passed over 2,000 years ago.

Ostia Antica was founded sometime between 700 to 400 B.C. as Rome’s port at the mouth of the Tiber. It thrived for several hundred years and then fell into ruin at the end of the Empire. The city was silted over after that, preserving it. It’s over 80 acres and only about 2/3 is excavated. I walked for hours, passing only a handful of people.

I found it humbling. It’s beautiful and sophisticated with everything a city needed: forum, baths, temples, theaters, fire and police departments with barracks, markets, guildhalls, factories, warehouses, shops with living quarters over them, and homes, both grand and modest. The city was originally five stories and there are still staircases that ascend into nothingness. The balance and harmony of the public spaces and private buildings certainly beat what I see being created today.

Little details reveal themselves everywhere. The mosaics are diverse and abundant. (I found a good collection of photos of mosaics here.) There are still remnants of decorative frescoes in some of the homes.

The site is not too hard to get to from central Rome—you can even get there on the Metro because Mussolini believed that the Romans all needed easy access to the sea, so the line was extended to the coast. It is also just a few kilometers from Rome’s main airport, Fiumicino. In case you’d like more information I found an article in the New York Times about Ostia Antica that was interesting.

Trust me, go. And for more ideas about things to do in Rome after you’ve visited the main sites, here’s an article with other places I love.

March 31, 2019 In Best Of, Live, Roam By Nancy

Satan in a box: the autovelox

Continuing the series on what you need to know about driving in Italy…

You are driving along on a freeway. All the cars around you are comfortably ignoring the speed limit, treating it as a mere suggestion, then suddenly all the cars break dramatically to slow to exactly the speed limit for about 500 meters, then continue along their merry way. Why? Most likely you are in the presence of the dread autovelox. These camera boxes along the side of the road capture your speed and if you are going too fast a speeding ticket appears in the mail about a month later. The ticket gets more expensive the more you exceed the limit, but they’ll get you for even small transgressions. We recently got one for going only 4 k.p.h. faster than the limit.

The tricky part is that not all of them are operational, which is why it’s important to pay attention to how seriously the other drivers around you are taking the speed limit. In the province of Arezzo many of of the boxes do not function and I love the reason why. Arezzo was a very wealthy and powerful Italian city with several politicians who were some of the most connected and influential in government. It’s not an accident that the autostrada and the main train line between Florence and Rome take quite a detour to stop at Arezzo.

According to local lore one of the mega powerful and connected politicians was caught speeding by an autovelox and received a speeding ticket. He was furious. So furious that he mysteriously was able to get the vast majority of the boxes in the province turned off.

The good news for drivers is that there is always a sign warning you of an autovelox ahead of the actual box, but reading it assumes that you are actually paying attention to the constant chatter of signs that are a part of any road journey in Italy. To avoid a surprise ticket always assume they are active, especially outside the province of Arezzo.

March 23, 2019 In Best Of, Live By Nancy

Finding inner peace at the ATM

My Apple watch frequently reminds me to take a minute and breathe, as did my Calm app on my phone, until it caused me too much stress and I had to delete it.

My recent trip to the Bay Area, complete with super-efficient ATMs, put my usual experience of getting cash in the village square in a new perspective. Just trying to get euros in Italy is a big, brash reminder that there is nothing to do in life but slow down, breathe, and look at the view. A friend once told me that when she gets cash from this ATM she knows she has actually arrived in Italy. And if you don’t get the message at the ATM you certainly will in line at the butcher, getting a coffee, or a ordering slice of pizza. Con calma above all. In these places we are among friends and equals and wouldn’t want them to rush or stress over the size of the line. Anything else would be rude and foolish at once.

I thought you might want to see the slowest ATM in the world in action.

March 23, 2019 In Live By Nancy

The darker view of Italian life

OK, it’s not perfect. Living in Italy has its dark sides and challenges, as does any other place on earth. I’ve been thinking about this a lot recently as we have some life decisions to make around education.

We live in a village, which offers so many good things that speak to us every day—people are warm, relaxed, funny, and coming from their hearts rather than striving to prove their worth with every encounter. I am sure we are seeing a very special slice of Italy, partly because it is rural. Living in an urban center, like Milan, is probably far closer to what it is like in New York, London, or San Francisco. What we lack in innovation, drive, and ideas doesn’t bother me as these other human elements more than overcome, and I get exposure to the “real world” pretty frequently through work, friends, and travel.

But now Sebastian is in his second year of high school. A school he adores and bounds out of bed every morning at 6:30 to attend. A school where the teachers don’t posture in any way to impose control or superiority. When John or I walk in the halls we are struck by the atmosphere, which is so different from the schools we attended, where the teachers and administrators always seemed frightened that their cloak of control would slip. Here the relationship between students and teachers seems to be almost one of peers. This even extended to a teacher discussing, with the whole class, their extramarital affair as a way of warning the class to be careful about whom they fall in love with. Students are taught to speak their minds and question authority, and they have no problem getting angry with a teacher face to face if there is a perceived injustice. John likes to say that the true accomplishment of the middle and high schools are that they taught our kids to be Italian.

The Italian system forces students to choose a high school with a certain focus—these range from the Liceo choices, which are academic (classics, math and science, linguistics, art) to trade schools for subjects like forestry and hospitality. Sebastian and Donella both chose Liceo Artistico, which we affectionately refer to as Slacker High, so our experience doesn’t speak to the more aggressively academic choices like Classico. But even the most academic of the high schools seem to rely a great deal on memorization and rote learning. The local schools work well for most of the families around here because the kids love the valley and want to stay, and there are few jobs which require university degrees. The trade off of leaving isn’t worth the possibility of greater career possibilities.

In this paradise of Liceo Artistico both hit a wall about two years in. Doing well without ever having to study outside of class and lacking peers who had any interest in going on to university lost its charm. For Donella, the answer was going to a boarding school in England and doing the IB degree, then on to university at UCL. The answer may be the same for Sebastian, but it really bothers me for our family, and for the millions of students in Italy, that this choice needs to be made at all, as well as the disparity issue that we are lucky enough financially, linguistically, and to have this path as a possibility.

I was mulling all this over one day when I went out for lunch by myself to a restaurant run by sisters from Rome, Una Terrazza in Toscana. Cinzia and Daniele (photo above) had only one other customer that day and when he left they joined me for lunch at the table they’d moved to the middle of the front entrance so that it would be best positioned for the sun and we talked for about an hour. They were asking me about what we do for a living, what the kids are doing for school, and whether we think the kids will remain in Italy. And they told me of their great sadness for Italy. That it had felt for while in the 1980s that anything was possible, but now it feels like a country for old people.

It was a theme that was beautifully conveyed in an insightful, poignant, and beautiful documentary, Spettacolo, about a tiny village in Tuscany where most of the population writes and acts in an original play every summer. The documentary followed the development of that year’s play about waiting for the end of the world, which I think a lot of Italians feel. (The concept of locally-written and produced plays, Tovaglia a Quadri, also happens in the village of Anghiari.)

I guess with any of these big, overwhelming subjects the only way to think about it is personally. And for me, the constant challenge is how I can blend the thirst for learning, challenge, and growth while not falling into the traps of competition, insecurity, and anxiety. How to blend the American and the Italian bits of myself. And I still have great hopes for Italy because I believe in the Italians.