Nancy, Author at Itch.world

Nancy, Author at Itch.world - Page 7 of 20

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

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August 26, 2020 In Best Of, Roam By Nancy

My Mt. Blanc helicopter rescue

I drove Sebastian to the airport last Monday to fly back to London for school. Saying goodbye was even harder than usual as I don’t know when or where I will be able to see either kid next. I feel like a mother saying goodbye to a child about get in a covered wagon and go far into the wilds. Like Michigan.

Maybe a road trip to Paris would head off any incoming gloom. John can’t come with me as he’s been having back pain so I set out by myself with adventure in my heart and a rallying cry of “you never know what will happen next” on my lips. God, if he exists, heard me. I do not use the “he” pronoun lightly as I now am quite sure that the long held presumption that God is a man is true and that he decided that I need to be taught a lesson or two as I chose to set out on my own to have fun while my husband is lying on ice back at home.

My trip begins, complete with coronavirus protective protocols, routes, and equipment. My first night out is in Chamonix, at a really lovely inn. After a killer breakfast I ask the woman at the desk for good day hike ideas. I had already done research online and what she said matched what I’d found. So far I am adulting very impressively. Amazing views of Mt. Blanc, a great 6 hour or so hike, what could go wrong?

I set off, on my own, with my half-liter, eco-friendly bottle of water in hand. I start to get a bit concerned as the hike starts out paralleling a gravity-powered roller coaster, complete with upside down parts.

Chamonix trail to Montenvers

I keep climbing through woods. My Apple watch tells me I’ve climbed 75 flights of stairs in a mile and a half. A sign says is an hour more to the top. At this point I am being insufferable on the family group chat, sending a constant stream of statistics about my climb and distance. I am unstoppable. Some might even say smug.

I reach the top of the rail line at Montenvers, where I plan to rest and eat but there are long lines for the restaurant and to buy water and sandwiches. I fill my little bottle in the bathroom and hit the trail again as this part is supposed to be an “easy and pleasant” walk along the ridge to the Plan De L’Aiguille where I can catch the funicular back down.

trail with mers de glace

But when I get to a fork in the trail I take the “advised route” going via “Le Signal” which turns out to be a another summit. With all that implies. Off I go having no idea that I had hours more climbing ahead of me.

I arrive at the Le Signal and feel horrible. I realize that I don’t have enough water and haven’t had anything of substance to eat all day. I find myself “resting” on the trail every hundred meters or so, occasionally even laying flat on the trail to keep from getting dizzy.

Le Signal summit

John and I have been talking and he has been tracking my location while looking at Google satellite images. He realizes I am in big trouble. I am insisting that I can go the next 2km of hard walking to get to the funicular down. He tells me to stay where I am and he calls the hotel to get the rescue helicopter.

The rescue team calls me immediately and conferences in a doctor to hear my tale of woe. He authorizes the rescue, they send me a text that I respond to that locates my exact position, and tell me that they will be there in ten minutes. And that I should put anything that can possibly fly away in hurricane force winds away in a bag.

If you squint you can see Chamonix at the bottom where my “walk” started.

I am flat on the trial, too dizzy to move, when I hear the “helo” as they referred to it lovingly several times on the call. I sit up and hold my arms in a y-shape as instructed, wondering where the hell they are going to land as the terrain is very steep. Doesn’t faze them. They hover the thing with one leg about six inches off the narrow trail and the other hanging in space. Three very cute, buff dudes hop off. One grabs me by the back of the neck like a bad puppy, forces by head down, and throws me into the helicopter. We are down in ten minutes.

Part of the reason I didn’t want to call is that I was worried about cost and that I’d probably have to spend a night or two in a hospital for observation. But no. We arrive at the bottom, get out, they take my ID, inform me that it’s all paid by the French government, and tell me to go to the nearest bus stop that is about a kilometer away to get back to town. They are clearly unimpressed by my saga. I wander away stunned. I arrive back in Chamonix and start drinking water. Liters and liters of water. I shower and my fingers are unrecognizable; they are indented like the proverbial prune. I keep drinking. 24 hours later I finally have to pee.

So, don’t hike without enough water.

Next Itch will be my following night in the chateau that smells like death with my friend the bat. Remind me again why I wanted an adventure?

August 9, 2020 In Best Of, Live By Nancy

Notes to a former self

A good friend of mine recently found this photo of me that she’d taken when we were at university. The photo caused a flood of memories — not so much around the specific moment as I don’t remember where the hell it was taken or what road trip we were on — but about that younger version of myself, and what I have, and haven’t, wised up to since then.

I feel like these months have stripped me bare, having lost so many of the trappings that I use to prop up my ego. Some weeks I feel lost in it all and have a hard time feeling focused or positive about anything. Other moments feel like a ray of light comes out showing me the way forward. But through it all this sense of being raw. This kind of vulnerability reveals the throughlines of self.

So what would I tell the me in the photo? That she can relax and play more. She will find love, marry, and create a family. That a beautiful, creative, and eclectic home in California waits, and then it will be outgrown and reborn in completely unexpected ways in Italy. That the group of friends she met at college who felt like family would not be the first or only experience of such connection and that I’d be lucky enough to have people in my life who see me as I am and still love me. I’d tell her to take more risks. Fall in love more often. Look up more often. And above all, that striving for perfection is no life at all.

Sounds so easy when I look at the photo. But here I am, with the same unnamed fear somewhere behind my heart that she had, and a familiar litany in my head that differs in specifics but not in tone — I haven’t used this time to grow our business, blast Itch into the millions of readers and film and book deals, lose weight and get in the best shape of my life, become fluent in Italian, pick every weed in the garden, and more. And thus I am somehow less than.

And here we come to the wising up part. Mostly I am thankful that this period is tough as the times I change the most are when being the same is too hard. I feel like it is time for the ultimate showdown with the boring voice and its litany of ways I’m not perfect. That it’s more interesting to be in the moment and to celebrate the things that make me who I am and bring me pleasure.

I am spending time with the discomfort, attempting to meditate, reading a lot, and comparing notes with others. I’d love to hear from any of you who are confronting discomfort what is working for you.

Because when the future me looks at a photo of the current me I want her to say “That’s when you learned to trust and relax inside. When you really started to have fun, love yourself and be completely who you are.” And I probably won’t arrive there this week, or next month, as the voice of perfection would like, but I am closer than I was.

August 2, 2020 In Best Of, Live By Nancy

Bored at home yet? Come to the village!

One of my favorite things that happens in our village is the local musical play, called Tovaglia a Quadri, performed every August in a tiny piazza filled with long tables. The plays are written a month or so before they go live and tackle current and controversial topics ranging from how Amazon touches village life to the Genoa bridge collapse. Tovaglia a Quadri is satirical, introspective about the village, and broadly performed, but hard to experience for non-locals as the dialog is in Italian and the local dialect, and tickets are almost impossible to get.

tovaglia a quadri

As with most things this extraordinary year the fate of Tovaglia a Quadri’s summer play was not looking promising — it wasn’t just the restrictions against crowds gathering in close quarters but also a prohibition against serving food at theatrical performances, which put a damper on the three-course meal. But this is the 25th anniversary of the play and the show must go on. The intrepid creators, Andrea Merendelli and Paolo Pennacchini, decided to make a movie instead.

The movie will be subtitled in English and available to stream from August 24 – Sept. 6th — ten nights just like would have happened in our parallel “normal” universe. I can’t give too much away, but the plot is a humdinger. While Andrea and Paolo were writing the play there was a positive case of Covid-19 in our village. The person involved was a healthcare worker who had returned to Anghiari for the weekend from a city where he worked when he received the positive result. The reaction of several of the villagers was surprisingly extreme. Andrea and Paolo wove parts of this event right into the play. Their fictional character has to flee to the village rooftops to live, in fear for his life should he descend. Meanwhile the rest of the village is gathered around a community bread oven rediscovering the joy of making bread despite the shortage of flour and yeast. The title, as always, is a pun: Pan de’ Mia, which refers to the pandemic as well as means “My bread”. It’s a clever glimpse into one way that Italians are processing the horror of the epidemic with grace, creativity, and humor.

I’ve been at some of the shooting and the movie looks like a treat. Not only will be it entertaining but it’ll serve as a nice little escape to our village. There is a 15€ fee to stream the movie which helps to cover expenses. You can buy tickets here. A couple of production shots…

Tomatoes, harvest, vegetable garden, orto

July 27, 2020 In Best Of, Chow, Live, Recipes By Nancy

Orto adventures

This summer we have become more deeply Italian by creating the thing that makes every house complete — an orto — or vegetable garden. Most houses around here feature one prominently in the front yard. We didn’t put in any wimpy things like zucchini that grow all over the place and I don’t quite know what to do with beyond one or two things, but we did plant loads and loads of tomatoes.

Here are two tomato ideas from this week.

Slow roasted tomatoes

This recipe is from one of my favorite chefs, Skye Gyngell, and is unfussy but yields a tasty result. Skye suggests plum tomatoes but we used a mix of what we had in the photo above, halved or quartered them depending on size, and placed them on baking sheets with parchment paper underneath (we had four going). Sprinkle liberally with a mix of equal parts salt, pepper, and sugar. Then place in an oven on the lowest temperature you can get for about four hours until the edges start curling up. You aren’t going all the way to sun dried, just mid-way there. We’ve found that they store well submerged completely under olive oil and in the fridge.

We will use them often from making paninis to salads, but first out the gate was a pasta with eggplant and sundried tomatoes from chef Francis Lam. Here is her recipe for what she calls Pasta With Let-My-Eggplant-Go-Free! Puree. When she calls for tomatoes we added the slow roasted ones above.

Heirloom tomato tart

A friend in my WhatsApp “Cooking in Quarantine” food group made this today and it is on the list for this week. She said it was absolutely delicious. Recipe from the New York Times. Extra bonus points if you make your own pesto, which I think we will try, as we also have basil taking over the orto.

July 27, 2020 In Best Of, Live By Nancy

Drop everything and prisencolinensinainciusol

A friend recently told me about an Italian hit song from 1972, called “Prisencolinensinainciusol”, and I am obsessed. In the 1970s Italy was fascinated by all things American and Italian entertainer Adriano Celentano created a song that sounds phonetically like American English but is complete nonsense. He performs it below with his wife Claudia Mori. It is so effective that when John, Sebastian, and I watched the video we all had the same response — that it sounded so like English that our heads hurt because we were straining so hard to understand lyrics that were just out of reach. That if we just listened a little bit harder it would all become intelligible. It’s that good, and the video version is oh so fabulously 1970s entertaining. I think you should do yourself a favor and watch it. NOW.

The song not only reached #1 in Italy, but also in France, Belgium, and the Netherlands. I’ve cornered several village friends to listen to it now and in my small sample of Italians and a Belgian all remember it fondly. The Italians could sing it from memory. Although “Prisencolinensinainciusol” is complete nonsense clever Italian teens came up with a phrase in Italian that closely matched the sounds: presi in culo un etto di acciughe or “I took a pound of anchovies in my ass”. The eyes of the two Italians I was talking with lit up with amusement and recalled teen naughtiness at the memory.

There is a good article about the song and its history in Atlas Obscura. The song was not a isolated feat but part of a long tradition dating at least to the middle ages. Dante has a passage in The Divine Comedy that means nothing but sounds like Hebrew. And there is “grammelot, a system of languages popularized by Commedia dell’arte, a theatrical form that started in Italy in the 16th century and later spread around Europe. Grammelot was used by itinerant performers to “sound” like they were performing in a local language by a using macaronic and onomatopoeic elements together with mimicry and mime.” (From the Atlas Obscura article.)

Adriano Celentano, who is now 82, is one of the Italian greats. In addition to being a singer-songwriter and performer with over 40 albums he is also an actor and director starring in numerous comedies on the big screen and TV. He started a record label which is still active. Claudia Mori is a prolific musical performer, actor, and producer who often collaborated with her husband. They are still together.

July 12, 2020 In Best Of, Live By Nancy

The Talk of the Village

It has been a busy couple of weeks around town as people emerge from quarantine.

An emergency

I was walking into the village when I heard the sirens of several emergency vehicles. To hear one at all is noteworthy, but hearing six or seven within the space of minutes is shocking. Then I heard a helicopter — I didn’t even know there was one in the area. My American mind started running wild imagining possibilities, mostly involving guns, standoffs, and some nutcase.

I later read in the paper that a man was working on the shoulder of a road when he lost his footing and fell into a big patch of wild blackberries. When he was unable to get out his friends called for help which turned out the firemen, forest service (complete with their helicopter), and ambulances. They got him out, he was treated for scratches at the hospital, and is now doing fine. The regional newspaper wrote a rather prominent article about it featuring a hero image of the helicopter, which I assume they don’t get to feature very often.

Camping complications

A group of five 17-year old guys decided to camp in the woods in the hills near here. Darkness came and they got scared when they started to listen to the noises around camp. They then packed everything up and walked back downhill through the dark to be picked up by their parents.

I’m tall, and that’s only half the story

Moving to Italy has changed my life in so many ways, not the least of which is that my towering 5’4 1/2″ self is frequently one of the taller people in a group. But most excitingly is that I’ve been told repeatedly that I have an exotic name. I was reminded this week when I ordered some bread to be reserved for me to pick up later. I clearly spelled my name over the phone but when I arrived this was waiting for me:

Yep, “Signora Nanzi”. Doesn’t get more exotic than that.

Awkward questions

The cheese guy at the market, where I get huge slabs of delicious 36-month old reggiano parmigiana for 9€ or so, wanted to know why the United States has gone crazy and is failing at controlling the coronavirus. I shared my view on the nature of our collective psyche. Meanwhile Italy’s data looks like this:

Italy coronavirus statistics

Yes, that’s right. Only 188 new cases on July 11th for all of Italy, with its population of 60 million, and this is with plentiful testing. John’s theory is that the same things that made Italy so hard hit in the beginning — lots of close intergenerational family ties and a great deal of time together — is also why it has done such a good job of following basic guidelines to keep the curve flat. There’s a sense that we are all in this together and need to take care of one another. I’ve started to see some relaxation around the edges, a guy in the grocery store with the mask pulled under his nose, two guys having a discussion in a small shop with masks both pulled down to better talk, gatherings of teens walking around on a Saturday night without masks, but in general people are still good mask-wearing, social-distancing, hand-sanitizing compatriots.

We are starting to see more and more tourists from the rest of the EU since the borders relaxed on June 3rd. The bloc decided to admit people from a list of “safe” countries as of July 1st but Italy changed its mind and is not letting any visitors in beyond the EU/Schengen zone. “The global situation remains very complex,” stated Italian Health Minister Roberto Speranza. “We must prevent the sacrifices made by Italians in recent months being in vain.”

Not that tensions don’t flare. The Guardian had an interesting article today about people from previously hard-hit towns in Northern Italy not being welcomed to book holiday rentals elsewhere in Italy, although their hometowns are now virus-free. And public beaches near Rome have been packed which has resulted in a lot of tension between the cautious and people who are not respecting distance.

I won’t be heading to the beach anytime soon.

July 5, 2020 In Best Of, Live By Nancy

How designer shoes and bags are born

Once in awhile a handbag, or pair of shoes, catches my eye and I pick it up to discover a price tag in the thousands of dollars. Little did I guess the origin story of such fabulously overpriced, beautifully made, and highly-coveted accessories. A former Gucci executive explained to me how Italian, French, and American fashion labels share a common supply chain which surprising leads to small garages in the Italian heartland.

Luxury bags and shoes start with great leather. Hides have to be of the highest quality and impeccably dyed. (Another time I will write about the man who is behind creating the “it” colors each season for brands like Chloe.) After a rigorous selection process the hides are dyed and shipped to brands like Gucci for cutting. The hides are very valuable so the process of cutting is a critical control point for profitability. Sloppy cutting results in excess leather which is wasted — unless there is enough of it from a particular pattern to rework into a new design for sale. Cutting is also controlled in-house as there is a temptation for a few “mistakes” that could be sold on the black market by less than scrupulous subcontractors. After it is cut the leather, together with any parts needed to complete the bag or shoes like zippers or metal trim, are put into a bag and shipped out for assembly.

And this is where I think it gets really interesting. All over Italy there is a vast network of highly-trained artisans, many of whom learned the trade through generations of their families, who take the pieces and make the final product by hand. Although many of these workshops are what you expect, larger factory-like buildings with dozens of employees, a significant percentage are actually a couple of people working out of their garages. I love that these items, sold in temple-like shrines of fashion and brandished by celebrities and denizens of the 1% in a constant battle of one-upmanship are actually made by some dude (albeit a master) in a garage in an average Italian town. All earning the coveted “Made In Italy” mark.

I tried to work my contacts to visit one of these micro-workshops but my inquiries were rejected. The identity and location of these prized artisans are closely guarded by both brands and the workers themselves (whose tax reporting may not be fully accurate).

Of course coronavirus has wreaked havoc with many of these workshops, both large and tiny. Many artisans may not be able to carry on as the ecosystem is so tightly dependent on the overall health of the fashion sector, which for Italy is a 165 billion euro part of the economy, expected to be down at least 40% this year. Here are two articles covering the situation from the NYTimes and Fashionista.

July 5, 2020 In Best Of, Live By Nancy

One crazy race

I originally posted this on July 7, 2019. The race did not occur in 2020, of course, because of coronavirus, so I wanted to mark the date. I had no idea how prophetic I was when I wrote below, one year ago, “Next year will be different”. Truer words have never been said…

Every June 29th the village of Anghiari hosts the Palio della Vittoria, or Race of the Victory, to commemorate the Battle of Anghiari. It’s one of the oldest, most famous, and according to the Corriere newspaper, craziest races in Italy. The battle, fought in 1440 between Florence and Milan, is known for three things: Florence’s victory cemented its dominance and set it up to be the powerhouse of the Renaissance, the battle is the subject of Leonardo da Vinci’s lost painting (believed to be his best work), and Machiavelli wrote scathingly about the battle reporting that only one soldier died—and that’s because he fell off his horse. (Local historians deny this. According to them the Tiber valley was basically awash in blood…)

The palio, at first a horse race, was held every year on the anniversary of the battle, starting in 1441. It was was stopped in 1827 because it had become so violent that one of the jockeys was killed. The race was brought back sporadically during the late 1800s through the early 1900s as a foot race and is now an annual event.

The palio is its own sort of battle. Every year teams of runners from towns in Tuscany and Umbria (who had soldiers in the original battle) are invited to participate. The starting line is at the battlefield site in the valley and the race covers 1440 meters, a good part of it straight uphill—on a road with an incline of 18%—to the main piazza. It lasts just over five minutes. The race is famous for lots of bodily contact. Runners wear tear-away jerseys that most shed the moment the starting gun goes off so they are harder to grab. The street signs are padded right before the race.

If this isn’t daunting enough on a hot summer day there’s the added element of strategy, sabotage, and subterfuge. I decided to call one of the runners, Celestino, who happens to be our physical therapist and was born in the farmhouse next to us, and ask him all about it.

Each town has four runners and they work together to “protect” the fastest from being shoved off the course (something you can see happening to the runner circled in the video above). Sometimes towns who know they can’t win will work together with other towns to help them with the understanding that the favor will be returned in a future race. (These alliances are a secret at the time of the race.) This year Anghiari and Venice worked together to help block runners from Pieve Santo Stefano, an even tinier village than Anghiari further up the Tiber river valley. Anghiari has won the race four times, and Pieve Santo Stefano three, so it was important that Pieve not be allowed to win again to tie the record, hence the alliance. One runner was employed as a sprinter who ran all out for 300 meters to get ahead and stop another runner from another town. He then walked the rest of the way uphill.

There were a record number of runners this year, 84 athletes from 22 different towns. Milan was new to participating in the race. Ironically, considering the combatants of the original battle, one of their runners, Salvatore Gambino, a professional long distance runner, won.

Celestino said that the Milanese runner was unhindered since the Milanese team members were unknown. Next year will be different.

The race is followed by a seated, candlelit dinner for 1,000 on the walls of Anghiari. Runners eat for free.

June 28, 2020 In Best Of, Roam By Nancy

Secrets from a yacht

What do people lucky enough to be on a yacht discover about the Italian coast that mere mortals like me can’t get to — what fishing villages (that are actually still fishing villages), deserted coves, and hidden beaches does Italy have to offer to those on a boat?

My son, Sebastian, just found out. He was invited to join a friend and his family for a two-week sail down the coast from Naples, around the Amalfi Coast, and then over to the Aeolian Islands off Sicily. One of his favorite places of all was a tiny fishing village called Corricella on the island of Procida. Luckily, to visit Corricella a yacht is not required. With the help of a car ferry it’s possible to get there from Naples, which is why I wanted to share this hot tip and want to go myself this fall.

The island of Procida is the smaller and less-visited cousin of the touristy Ischia, which is right next door. (Ischia has had quite the boom after the publication of Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan Novels.) The port of Procida is busy and overrun but if you can get to the other side of the island to the village of Corricella a different world awaits. It’s an ancient settlement (the name comes from the Greek kora Cale or “nice neighborhood”) — such a nice neighborhood that it was used for the waterfront scenes in the movie Il Postino. This part of the world has been at the crossroads of invasion for millenium so the houses are all constructed with steep stairs leading to the front doors to make it easier to defend. The houses are painted a vivid range of different colors. It’s a working fishing village with a small harbor filled with mostly wooden boats with a few restaurants along a quai. When Sebastian went they ate alongside local fishermen and their families. The maze of tiny streets are steep and accessible only on foot. The few cars that he saw had permanently removed their side mirrors and had huge scrapes along both sides. There’s a sagging ruin of a fortress on a cliff and an old church at the top. I’m all in.

The most unusual thing that happened on Sebastian’s trip was off a remote island in the Aeolians. They were moored, having lunch, when an unusual man approached them in a rowboat and asked to speak to the captain. He was dressed in torn up, old clothes, had unkempt hair, and spoke in the strongest of dialects. The captain talked with him for a moment, went below to get a bottle of very nice champagne, hopped into the rowboat, and they headed off. He returned a couple of hours later. Turns out this guy has lived in a cave, year round, on a deserted island for over twenty years. He knew the previous captain who had told his replacement to be on the lookout for him. (He’s apparently well-known by many captains.) The captain was taken into a cave which was covered by the man’s writings on the walls and ceiling. The captain had a bit of a struggle following his stories in dialect but it was clear that he referred to other people as “you humans.” And he drank almost the whole bottle of champagne.

Sebastian’s amazing experience is not just available to friends of the family. The family’s yacht is available for charter, and two other spectacular properties, one in the Tyrol, and the other are the Pope’s apartments wrapping the Sant’Agnese in Agone church overlooking Piazza Navona in Rome are available to rent. More details at San Lorenzo Lodges.

In case you need six seconds of dolphins playing in the wake here you go:

photo of Florence skyline taken from the Duomo with the mooh

June 14, 2020 In Best Of, Live By Nancy

After the storm: life in Italy today

Italy has provided a glimpse into the future for much of the world throughout the coronavirus crisis as we were a bit ahead of the curve. Now that restrictions have largely lifted, and the contagion rate is still falling, here’s a look at what life is like this week.

Covid-19 testing is easy, available, and cheap

My son, Sebastian, was invited to join a friend and his family to go sailing for two weeks. Before anyone could get on the boat a Covid-19 test was needed. We called our doctor, he wrote a prescription, we walked into a lab and were out in five minutes. It cost 25€ for two tests — current infection and antibodies — and we had the results in 24 hours.

Donella just flew back to the UK and left from the Florence airport which has just reopened. She was greeted by a big tent outside the entrance for departures. The first area of the tent was for disinfection — a head to toe spray for her and a complete spray of checked and carry on bags. After that she passed through another tent where you could get a blood draw to check for active Covid-19 and antibodies for 10€ and results in 20 minutes. She was delighted to have this test, got her negative results, and then walked over to check in. Everyone in the airport was wearing masks and there were very few travelers.

Track and trace is almost here

Italy has standardized on a track and trace app (unfortunately there is not a standard one across the EU which is a huge missed opportunity). It has been released in a few regions in beta and is expected to roll out nationwide in a couple of weeks. So far the beta, with little promotion, has had over 500,000 downloads (which is pretty amazing in a total population of 60 million). I downloaded it and it is simple and elegant, although not yet functional in my area of Tuscany. It sits in the background and anonymously tracks anyone you get into one meter of who has the app. If any of those people later test positive the system notifies all people they were in proximity to. All info is stored locally on your phone and complies with the strict EU data privacy standards.

Mask wearing is ubiquitous

I’ve heard of some corners of Italy where masks are not universal, but here in my corner of the world, it is rare to see a person without one. I even spot people alone in their cars wearing masks. I went to the Wednesday market in town for the first time since it restarted and everyone was masked and respecting social distancing. If there was a narrow area people would hold back waving me through first so that we wouldn’t pass by too closely. When I take my daily hike in the countryside nearly everyone is masked — and when I walk I usually only pass a person or two so not high density — and when we pass on the wide trail everyone scoots as far apart as possible, which is a distance of several meters. I saw a sign at the market yesterday asking people to leave at least a cinghiale’s length (a wild boar) between everyone.

Our village had a case

The mayor told the village yesterday that a resident of our village who was working in another region had tested positive after they had visited home for the weekend. They were asymptomatic and the routine testing had caught it. Everyone they’d interacted with had been notified, were in quarantine, and had reported negative. The mayor shared this over Facebook and the comment section was lively. The comments were overwhelmingly that we had worked so hard, and sacrificed so much, to get to where we are and this is a reminder of how now we have to double down on precautions even more as Italy opens up. That even if we are now legally allowed to do more, more freedom must be accompanied by more responsibility and vigilance. The more crotchety comments questioned whether we should allow people who had been in other regions into the village at all, and just exactly how much of an ass this person was for traveling before they had the results of their test.

Italy’s success in its response to coronavirus is also why it was hit so hard

Why has the Italian response to lockdown and reopening been so different than the US and UK, as examples? My best guess about why the numbers were so high was largely due to how early in the pandemic Italy had the virus in circulation, partially due to the close trade and manufacturing ties between China and Italy.

But it also must have to do with how integral grandparents are to the Italian culture, and how many grandparents live with family or are frequently visited by family (usually weekly). People over 70 account for 80% of deaths from Covid-19 in Italy — the average age of death is 81. Italy is second only to Japan in the percentage of people over 65 in the population, and has one of the highest life expectancies in the world (the life expectancy for Italian women is a whopping 86 years.) Because older Italians are a vital part of life, and per capita there are a lot of them around, they were much more exposed .

The response to the epidemic wasn’t perfect, as the investigation by victim’s families attests, but Wuhan and Italy served as early tests of what worked and what didn’t.

And what caused Italy to be hit so hard — connection to family, sense of campanilismo, or attachment above all to one’s own local community or literally bell tower — is also why it has been successful so far in containment. There hasn’t been the same debate as in the US or UK about personal liberty versus community good. There has been very little of the famous Italian trait of being furbo, or trying to outfox rules and regulations, but in my experience just this attitude of “Let’s do this” to protect the vulnerable and rid Italy of yet another in a long list of plagues.

Once again I am proud, and humbled, to be part of my village.