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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.

September 13, 2018 In Roam By Nancy

Was ‘The English Patient’ born here?

One of my all-time favorite books is Michael Ondaatje’s The English Patient. So I was thrilled to hear that the book was just awarded the Golden Man Booker Prize, recognizing it as the best work of fiction awarded the Man Booker Prize in the last 50 years.

I knew that the Italian part of the book was set largely in these parts. A major scene in the book takes place in front of the Piero Della Francesca frescoes in the Basilica of St. Francis in Arezzo—and throughout there are mentions of Monterchi, Anghiari, and other area villages.

This region is rich in war history, in large part because the front was stalled for months around here during the Italian campaign that lasted from 1943 to 1945. Locals still tell stories about the resistance, close escapes, tragedies, and recent finds of land mines and bullets.

There’s a rumor that this plaque—which stands next to one of my favorite restaurants in Monterchi—was one of Ondaatje’s inspirations for the book, inspiration that resulted in the incredible character, Kip.

The plaque commemorates three war deaths of The Central India Horse 4th Division—two men with Sikh names and one with an English name. Ditto Ram and St. John Graham Young both received the George Cross—the second highest decoration possible in England—for helping other soldiers out of a minefield they’d all stumbled into on a nearby farm. This assistance occurred after both had stepped directly on land mines and before they died minutes later. Almost 50,000 Sikh troops (mostly men between ages 19 and 22) fought in Italy.

Every year, the plaque is freshly decorated with a wreath of paper red poppies, a British tradition to honor those who fought, and died, in war.

September 7, 2018 In Best Of, Chow, Recipes By Nancy

The pasta we can’t quit (and recipe)

When I want a mini-vacation—and lunch—I head to the sleepy Tuscan hilltop village of Monterchi. In the piazza at the top is one of my favorite family restaurants, Ristorante Al Travato.

It’s only open from-kinda-around-Easter to kinda-around-the-end of October, depending on the weather and the back health of Laura. The family first opens the restaurant on weekends only, then slowly builds, with the heat, to being open most days in summer, and then winds it all back down in the fall. What they do all winter I am not sure, although they’ve hinted it involves skiing.

Marco, Laura’s husband, finds the wines for the cellar—a cave that goes back into the medieval walls—and Laura cooks. Two of their teenage daughters serve (yep, beauties. We can even get our 14-year-old son to eat there whenever we want), while the youngest daughter rides around the square on her small, enviable pink bike.

Our family craves one dish in particular, at least once a week— Spaghetti Aglio, Olio e Pepperoncini—true Tuscan soul food. It’s spaghetti that’s properly al dente, loads of garlic, and a few really hot peppers, all swimming in olive oil.

While it’s simple in its ingredient list, differing opinions of how it should be made abound. You could say of Laura’s (off-menu version): “questo spacca di brutto” (“this chops off the ugly”—I know, the translation doesn’t help me either, but the kids say it means something is a big deal). Best of all for anyone who wants to bring a bit of Italian soul food into their kitchen, it’s easy enough to do tonight with ingredients you probably already have on hand.

Here’s a two-minute video on how Laura makes the definitive Tuscan comfort food.

A cooking note: you’re going to save some of the water from cooking the pasta when you drain off the rest. Also—do this before the pasta has reached the “al dente” (still slightly firm when bitten) state. It will finish cooking when added to the pan with the other ingredients (while the last bit of cooking water helps their flavors go inside the noodles).

July 7, 2018 In Roam By Nancy

The Madonna del Parto

Another restaurant I love in Monterchi is Una Terrazza in Toscana, run by three sisters from Rome. They make the best Carbonara I’ve ever had. One cooks, one works the front, and one splits her time. It’s tiny inside and in the winter I am usually the only woman eating there as most are work men in some type of uniform, often head to toe safety orange. Because it’s also a worker’s restaurant they offer a fixed lunch of pasta, main course, wine, and water for €12. (I adore worker’s restaurants, more about the genre later, with many more addresses to come.)

Oh, this place also happens to be next door to a museum that houses one, and only one, painting. It’s Piero della Francesca’s Madonna del Parto, one of the greatest masterpieces of the Renaissance, and the first time in art history that the Madonna was ever shown pregnant. Piero painted it for his mother who lived in Monterchi and it was in the cemetery until it was recently moved to the museum. No one is sure exactly who owns it: Italy, the Vatican, or the local village. Because of this Monterchi will never let it go on loan to major museums worldwide because it might never return back to the village. The New York Times has a fascinating article about it.

There is something about her expression, and the angels’ red and green feet contrasting with their red and green robes that gets me every time.

I guess it gets other people too. One time at lunch early on in our time in Italy (really saying that I was still pretty contaminated by California thinking) a Brit at the next table was holding forth on how he was “on the trail of the PDFs.” My mind was racing—had his computer crashed and he had lost valuable documents? Was he tracing a digital trail for some fantastic white-collar crime? Nope. He was on the trail to see all of the local Piero Della Francesca’s.