Italy on pause

This is actually happening.

Italy is in lockdown. Zona Protetta, as Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte defined the country: a protected area.

"The country needs the responsibility of each and every one of you, it needs 60 million little big sacrifices. Let's keep a distance today to hug each other more warmly and to run faster together tomorrow. All together we will make it through."

The day after the decree was issues with hashtag #iorestoacasa (I'm staying at home) as national directive for people to stay put and help stop the contagion from increasing, the World Health Organization elevated the outbreak to pandemic.

I have to keep reminding myself, this is actually happening.

The perception abroad, given the media coverage––both domestic and foreign––is of Italy's deserted streets and monuments, hoards of people fleeing home from Lombardy, Emilia-Romagna and Veneto aka "red zones" where the contagion and casualties are higher, and general hysteria at the supermarket.

It's a lot more than that.

Being here and living this surreal situation feels more like the country is on pause.

We are living in one of those strange nightmares. The ones where time is prolonged and everything feels unknown, like a heavy burden. Trying to run away from the monster with lead in your legs.

What exactly is a lockdown? And why are we in it?

What: Lockdown means the entire Italian population is asked to stay home and only leave the house for absolutely necessary errands like buying food, going to the pharmacy and taking a short walk with our kids and pets. Italy is essentially shut down at least until April 3.
We don't congregate, we keep 3-ft social distancing and we wash our hands much more than usual.

Why: We are closed off from the outer world so that we don't infect others and put countless people at risk, and by the same token we potentially avoid contracting the virus from others who may be infected. That's because coronavirus is sneaky, its symptoms appear after a 2 to 14 day incubation period.

A monumental effort. But necessary.
I feel proud that I'm doing this for our elders, our community and our country.

We can no longer go to the bar for espresso (or a grappa, or both). It was tough enough grabbing a coffee while maintaining the 3-ft distance between barista and other customers, given our average personal space is much smaller than the rest of the world's. Now I miss my cornetto like it's crack.

Buses are still running, but the few I see driving by are always empty. We can no longer visit museums, watch a match at the football stadium, attend a concert. We can't hug our aging relatives. We can't go to the gym. We can no longer do impromptu pizza night with friends. We'll hold off on going to the cinema, theater, ballet, getting manicures, haircuts. You'll just have to accept my grey roots showing.

No more day trips to the lake or the countryside. In order to leave our region of residence, we have to carry a signed self-certified declaration stating the reason for the transfer. Work and emergencies are permitted, trespassers without the signed form (or a not good enough reason) outside of their region/province will be fined up to €290.

Don't think martial law. Just strictly applied rules.

The general feeling is of melancholy. A strange new sadness.

So many questions are flooding our minds.

Will my family and I stay healthy?
Will cancellations continue to pour into our mailboxes?
Will I have to homeschool my teenage son who in June is supposed to take a major final written and spoken exam to advance to high school?

We're so used to multitasking and going about our busy daily routine that all this "spare time" is also, quite frankly, driving us a little nuts. But we Italians are also creative, resourceful and never forget our sense of humor.

Lack of work and restricted activities are obviously causing everyone trouble. The travel industry is on its knees. People's livelihood is at risk.

My heart goes out to Venice, my beloved Venice. After the acqua alta in October, now this.
Forza Venezia, we can do this!

As soon as the quarantine lifts, and when it will be safe to travel again, I personally will go to Venice and support its artisans, guides, gondoliers, restaurateurs, bartenders, hotel managers and the general population with my presence, my money, my love. I will do the same with my friends in Bologna, Parma, and other gravely affected areas.

This suspended time will furthermore allow us to do all the things we had previously put on the back burner in the name of fast-pace stakhanovism.

Little sister and I will teach our 82 year old mother (who lives 2 blocks away) to use Skype and Facetime, so we can do video-calls.
I'll make it a habit to check in with family and friends more regularly.
I'll have more time for writing.
I can polish off the book pitch.
Get free pet therapy with our new puppy.
I'll beat my son at scopa.
He will defeat me at Monopoly, as per usual.
I'll finally have the time to read, work out, and do nothing––rare commodities for self employed entrepreneurs…

We will beat this.
We'll find solidarity, our sense of compassion and community––all at a distance.
We'll wash our hands for 60 seconds humming the alphabet or "Tanti Auguri a Te" twice.
We'll try not to touch our face.
We'll stay at a safe distance from others.
And we will make it through this moment.

We will resume complaining about traffic and crowds.

There is a silver lining to all this (because I always try to see the glass half full).
The air smells amazing. Smog levels have dropped. In the early morning when I take the dog out for his first walk, the dawn smells of flowers and springtime. Reminds me of when I was 17.
This is not going to last forever.
We reach out more and talk to each other on the phone/FaceTime instead of messaging.
Banding together as a community and following the rules feels empowering.
It will be fun to declutter
There will be time to learn a new language... Russian is high on my list.
We Italians, so famous for our love of sharing food, have made no visible effort to raid shelves and panic buy. We've left enough for everyone.

If across the web you've been seeing photos of handwritten sticky-notes and rainbows on banners hanging outside windows, you may be wondering what Andrà tutto bene means.
Literally: "Everything will go well."

Italian restauant no-no's

Pet peeves are personal by nature. They make waves at a gut level. Restaurant peeves develop over time and usually stick with you. It pains to report that some Italian restaurants—no matter how fine their food—manage to unhinge diner patience to the point of ruining the experience of guests who don’t know what hit them.

My own patience is limited. To me, a reputation for good food is blunted by an unpleasant atmosphere.

Collected here is a brief list of no-no's that can drive restaurant-lovers away, sometimes for good.

The acchiappino: In tourist-jammed cities (Rome, Florence and Venice) a hawker is often added to the payroll to reel in passers-by. He's known as an acchiappino, a "customer catcher."
You've seen his kind standing outside the entrance waving a menu and flirtatiously trying to lure you in using any means necessary ("Good morning, bonjour, guten tag, hola…pasta-pizza-tiramisu?") Anyplace that needs someone to convince me to enter isn't worth my money. Arrivederci.

Continue reading "Don't you dare" as appeared in The American Magazine in Italia

Italian beverages you probably never heard of

As late summer heat continues pummeling the boot-shaped peninsula, Italians run to their fridges to grab their favorite beverages.

Forget Coke.

Many of these drinks are vintage classics, others postwar staples. None are universally known or widely sold beyond Italy.

Here's a little Italian beverage companion to have handy when offered Italian mystery drinks, as published on The American Magazine in Italia.

Continue Reading ➔

Mal d'Africa

I cried the first time I flew out of Africa. I sat numbly gazing down as the plane pulled away from the thick gum tree foliage and the red dirt roads I'd gotten to know intimately. That moment taught me mal d'Afrique, the inexplicable sense of loss and heartache rooted above all in a place. When it bites hard, the Africa bug leaves you bittersweet and charged with mysterious longing and nostalgia.

A similar kind of irrational, romantic attachment enters American journalistic essays on the Italian experience. The angle? Very often it's food. Long-form articles promoting Italy speak less of Stendhal Syndrome and the Bel Paese's world-famous artistic attractions, natural wonders and historic treasures than of the eating experience. These enraptured pieces, a mainstay in newspapers and magazine, prompt a mal d'Afrique-style question: What it is about the Italian mood (and the food) that sweeps Americans off their feet and leads them to write unbridled love stories and food-forward reportages?

Continue Reading ➔

What produce is in season in August?

Fact: produce is of better quality and taste when in season.

Though Italians have cooking and eating a selection of produce that rotates seasonally in their DNA, lately mass distribution and globalization have confused these rhythmic, natural guidelines, making the calendar distinction on our plate a little fuzzy.

Here is a list of what fruits and vegetables are in season in August in Italy, gracing our market stalls from Sicily to the Alps.

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Drink wine like an Italian

Italians regard wine an essential expression of their culture, it's in every Italian's DNA! As a fundamental testimony to the land's incredible biodiversity and ultimately a part of any meal, Italians – even the non-connoisseurs – give great importance to their vino and respectfully drink it accompanied with delicious regional dishes.

So when in Italy, drink wine like an Italian. But what's the best way to enjoy it like a local? Here are some wine-drinking tips that will add a little Italian flair to your next glass.

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Italy's most curious sagre

Italy believes strongly in preserving tradition. Monuments and works of art are the most obvious and notable examples. Often overlooked is a more specific and occasionally eccentric manifestation of cultural heritage, the sagre di paese, in essence a town festival that celebrates a specific local food. The Italian word sagra derives from...
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Jet-lag ramblings

We're back. Jet lagged beyond belief and bloated. Holding images of beautiful California coasts and family reunions in our bloodshot eyes, trying to figure out what our bodies are asking of us. Lame, foot-dragging zombie by day, famished vixen by night. It's 5 am and I could eat a horse.

There's exploded luggage on the bedroom floor: vitamins, supplements and ziploc bags are scattered everywhere. Brand new books, toddler clothes and kitchen tools piled tidily on the bathroom sink. In the chaos of unpacking madness, I cast a sideways glance at my bidet and I smile with relief. 

How do they do it elsewhere? I mean, how can anybody live without a bidet?

The flight from San Francisco left late, on a downsized aircraft which left behind 40 very angry boarding pass-holding passengers. We shared very little leg room in the 24th coach class row of the teeny 757 with a quiet gentleman who worked on his laptop for the entire time. We ate a $10 breakfast of rich yogurt, ice cold milk and soggy granola. We drank plenty of juice and watered down coffee. Played cards and painted psychedelic dinosaurs in our coloring books. 

What kept worrying me the entire flight to New York was that we had a close connection to meet to make the final Rome leg of our journey, and there was only one aisle and one exit, far far away at the nose of the plane, and we were sitting at the tail end of it. We landed in NY at exactly the time our international flight began boarding, so dragging a life-size stuffed Labrador retriever and the rest of our hand luggage across the American Airlines terminal in JFK was like when you're trying to run in a dream, where your legs feel like lead and visions of gate 14 stretch away like in a vintage Hitchcock dolly zoom shot.

The final boarding call resonated as we slided across time warp on our moving walkway, straight into a full fledged hormonal meltdown with the deadpan flight attendant ripping boarding pass stubs.

Once we settle in the otherwise empty aircraft, the flight breezed by. We fed our bodies a bad beef dinner and hydrated with lots of replenishing water, moisturizer and Evian mist spray. Mr E romantically watches the sunset outside his window and soon curled up into deep sleep. Eyes transfixed to screen, I passively watched a film with no headphones and tried to do my ankle rolls to avoid deep vein thrombosis in my lower limbs.

Eight and 1/2 hours later the sun rose, orange and pink, over France. Flashes of distant lightning illuminated whipped cream clouds over speckles of light, small clusters of sleepy villages and rural life, way down below.

We made it to down to sunlit Fiumicino airport in time to find our luggage didn't make the Carl Lewis-like connection dash in NY. It was 35°C (95°F) and 96% humidity, which made it feel more like Jakarta than the Eternal City over by the conveyor belt, but the mood was frosty among us transit passengers. No air con, so a chilled rivulet of sweat ran down my spine as I made out a mental inventory of the contents of our 4 very heavy suitcases, still sitting pretty in a JFK air terminal somewhere. After a brief chat with the Property Irregularity person over at the Lost Luggage counter, we cleared customs and ran into my mother's Mitzouko-smelling bosom, embracing and laughing/crying with very little or no restraint.

I am here now, posting this without spellcheck. A bottomless pit at the mouth of my stomach, and the peanut butter tub looming eerily on the kitchen counter.

I will begin my new healthy eating regime tomorrow. I have gained 600 pounds in America, so it'll be adieu to carbs for a while. I will nonetheless cook for my loved ones. I will resume sharing my recipes here on this blog, many of which gathered during my travels to the New World. I will start exercising and banning all chocolate and vino from my table for a while, until I can fit back in my old clothes again. I will be good and I won't cheat. I will lose 10 kilos (22 lbs) before I start the new film in the fall.

I will do it, I swear. But for now, I'll sneak to the kitchen and make me a sloppy PB&J, all by myself, and devour it with a smile and a tall glass of whole milk, in the silence of this gorgeous Roman dawn.


Buongiorno, Roma.
It's been a great vacation, but it feels good to be back home.

Tiny Heroes

The Florence American Cemetery and Memorial site covers 70 acres, chiefly on the west side of the Greve stream. The wooded hills that frame its west limit rise several hundred feet. Between the two entrance buildings, a bridge leads to the burial area where the headstones of 4,402 military dead resting here are arrayed in symmetrical curved rows upon the hillside. They represent 39% of the U.S. Fifth Army burials originally made between Rome and the Alps. Most died in the fighting that occurred after the capture of Rome in June 1944. Included among them are casualties of the heavy fighting in the Tuscan Apennines shortly before the war's end.
In the fall of 2007 I worked on a film that narrated those very events. Miracle at St. Anna follows four African-American soldiers of the 92nd Infantry Division – known as the Buffalo Soldiers – who find themselves caught behind enemy lines and surrounded by German soldiers after one of them risks his life to save an Italian boy. They take refuge in a small Italian village on the Gothic Line, that has been temporarily vacated by the Germans during the Italian Campaign of WWII. In their company is Angelo, the small boy, shell-shocked and feverish, who seems only to speak to his invisible friend Arturo.

The story is inspired by the August 1944 Sant'Anna di Stazzema massacre perpetrated by the Waffen-SS. On May 2, 1945, the enemy troops in northern Italy surrendered. Shortly before withdrawing, the Nazi left a wake of horror, atrocity and devastation behind them. The manic rush of violence and mad killing that followed as the enemy fled these lands, accounted for the vast majority of casualties and mass-murders on the Italian peninsula.

On August 12, 1944, retreating SS men of the II Battalion of the 16th SS-Panzergrenadier Division, commanded by Hauptsturmführer Anton Galler, rounded up 560 civilans between villagers and refugees – mostly women, children and older men – brutally shot them in cold blood and then burned their bodies on the holy ground in front of the town's small church.

When we arrived in Sant'Anna on the day we were to film the massacre scene, the dawn sun was shining, much like on that dreadful mid-August morning. Young extras in period costume were shivering by the craft service table, blowing into their steaming cups of early morning coffee, and trying to get a glimpse of Hollywood. Children played football by the trailer base camp, in their 1944 attire, oblivious and giggly.

We respectfully brought about our daily chores and duties, and commenced our filming day as usual, busily organizing the first shot. It involved two simultaneous tracking dollies and a wide angle crane shot. As the grips and gaffers built the tracks and the camera department assembled their gear, I took a little stroll. I met a few silent glances from my colleagues and continued on, respectful of the place's history and aware of the stagnant negative energy surrounding me. It felt so strange to be walking on the very spot where 62 years before, such horror had occurred by the hands of other men.

I entered the church at my own risk. I had been warned by the sound engineer, my friend Maurizio. He had gone in minutes prior and exited sniffling. He's usually a big smile person, so a sad face on him stood out. I wanted to go in nonetheless, to say a little prayer for those 560 people that died on a morning not unlike that one.

The entire east-facing wall of the tiny chapel was covered floor to ceiling with small plaques, faded photos, scribbled inscriptions and epitaphs. The age of the oldest victim honored on that wall was 16. The youngest was a 2-week old infant. That wall was the children's memorial section, and the images of those 110 innocent faces staring back at me gripped my throat like a tight Nazi fist. The majority of the victims of the massacre that took place in Sant'Anna di Stazzema were children and young women. The men were either fighting, dead or hiding in the mountains surrounding the town. The few invalid elders in Sant'Anna died by the same two MG34 machine-guns that swept the church ground that day.

A sign by the exit read that the church organ was riddled with machine-gun bullets and the christening font completely destroyed by a grenade. The pews were then used for a bonfire to burn bodies. Many of the corpses were doused with petrol and then set alight. When the SS unit ran out of petrol, they used phosphorous.

As the day progressed, we reenacted the horrible events that took place on that day. I couldn't get the image of those children out of my eyes and had a very hard time trying to stay focused and do my job correctly that day. I was never that close to a war as on that sunny autumn day. I had never really understood what it must have felt like to be living it. I never quite caught the true meaning of a day to celebrate the memory of the military. Until then.

...

Italian war veterans are celebrated on June 2, on the Day of the Republic. On the Last Monday in May, I salute all the American soldiers that gave their life with valour during battle here in Italy. Besides Florence, the city of Nettuno also is home to another monumental American war cemetery. I've been there recently and it is a peaceful, incredibly quiet place by the sea, where a carpet of white stone crosses blankets the closely mowed lawn.

But today it is for those 110 children and 450 innocent victims of Sant'Anna that my Memorial Day thoughts go to. They too are heroes, and I wish to remember them because they too fought a battle on their last day. They faced fear and death with honour. They are not buried in a cemetery. They do not rest with their beloved or in holy soil. They nonetheless deserve to be mentioned and celebrated on this day. Those 560 represent the many faceless civilian victims of our wars that in each combat, give their life for no cause. For no apparent reason.

The youngest victims of the August 12, 1944 massacre

Waving at you from Sorrento

Here we are. See us? The ones over there smiling, frosted wine glass in hand, gawp expression... feet up?


Yeah, over there on the terrace overlooking the beach. Waving at you from our little fishing village, Marina di Puolo.

Ciao, everyone!